by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, to his father
Hippocrates at the Olympic games. It was realized, partly by his bravery
and conduct, which had been displayed in the capture of Nisæa from the
Megarians--partly by his popularity of speech and manners, his
championship of the poor, and his ostentatious disavowal of all selfish
pretensions--partly by an artful mixture of stratagem and force. Solon,
after having addressed fruitless remonstrances to Pisistratus himself,
publicly denounced his designs in verses addressed to the people. The
deception, whereby Pisistratus finally accomplished his design, is
memorable in Grecian tradition. He appeared one day in the agora of
Athens in his chariot with a pair of mules: he had intentionally wounded
both his person and the mules, and in this condition he threw himself
upon the compassion and defence of the people, pretending that his
political enemies had violently attacked him. He implored the people to
grant him a guard, and at the moment when their sympathies were freshly
aroused both in his favor and against his supposed assassins, Aristo
proposed formally to the ecclesia (the pro-bouleutic senate, being
composed of friends of Pisistratus, had previously authorized the
proposition) that a company of fifty club-men should be assigned as a
permanent body-guard for the defence of Pisistratus. To this motion
Solon opposed a strenuous resistance, but found himself overborne, and
even treated as if he had lost his senses. The poor were earnest in
favor of it, while the rich were afraid to express their dissent; and he
could only comfort himself after the fatal vote had been passed, by
exclaiming that he was wiser than the former and more determined than
the latter. Such was one of the first known instances in which this
memorable stratagem was played off against the liberty of a Grecian
community.
The unbounded popular favor which had procured the passing of this grant
was still further manifested by the absence of all precautions to
prevent the limits of the grant from being exceeded. The number of the
body-guard was not long confined to fifty, and probably their clubs were
soon exchanged for sharper weapons. Pisistratus thus found himself
strong enough to throw off the mask and seize the Acropolis. His leading
opponents, Megacles and the Alcinæonids, immediately fled the city, and
it was left to the venerable age and undaunted patriotism of Solon to
stand forward almost alone in a vain attempt to resist the usurpation.
He publicly presented himself in the market-place, employing
encouragement, remonstrance and reproach, in order to rouse the spirit
of the people. To prevent this despotism from coming (he told them)
would have been easy; to shake it off now was more difficult, yet at the
same time more glorious. But he spoke in vain, for all who were not
actually favorable to Pisistratus listened only to their fears, and
remained passive; nor did any one join Solon, when, as a last appeal, he
put on his armor and planted himself in military posture before the door
of his house. "I have done my duty (he exclaimed at length); I have
sustained to the best of my power my country and the laws"; and he then
renounced all further hope of opposition--though resisting the instances
of his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they
asked him on what he relied for protection, "On my old age." Nor did he
even think it necessary to repress the inspirations of his Muse. Some
verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand
of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which he
tells his countrymen--"If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness
of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves
put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn
upon yourselves wretched slavery."
It is gratifying to learn that Pisistratus, whose conduct throughout his
despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon untouched. How long this
distinguished man survived the practical subversion of his own
constitution, we cannot certainly determine; but according to the most
probable statement he died during the very next year, at the advanced
age of eighty.
We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means of following
more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He represents the best
tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally excellent:
the improved ethical sensibility; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and
observation, not less potent in old age than in youth; the conception of
regularized popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and
spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to found a new
character in the Athenian people; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with
the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the
oppressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of
self-relying industry; lastly, during his temporary possession of a
power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence of all selfish
ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean between conflicting
exigencies. In reading his poems we must always recollect that what now
appears commonplace was once new, so that to his comparatively
unlettered age the social pictures which he draws were still fresh, and
his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The poems composed
on moral subjects generally inculcate a spirit of gentleness toward
others and moderation in personal objects. They represent the gods as
irresistible, retributive, favoring the good and punishing the bad,
though sometimes very tardily. But his compositions on special and
present occasions are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit;
denouncing the oppressions of the rich at one time, and the timid
submission to Pisistratus at another--and expressing in emphatic
language his own proud consciousness of having stood forward as champion
of the mass of the people. Of his early poems hardly anything is
preserved. The few lines remaining seem to manifest a jovial temperament
which we may well conceive to have been overlaid by such political
difficulties as he had to encounter--difficulties arising successively
out of the Megarian war, the Cylonian sacrilege, the public despondency
healed by Epimenides, and the task of arbiter between a rapacious
oligarchy and a suffering people. In one of his elegies addressed to
Mimnermus, he marked out the sixtieth year as the longest desirable
period of life, in preference to the eightieth year, which that poet had
expressed a wish to attain. But his own life, as far as we can judge,
seems to have reached the longer of the two periods; and not the least
honorable part of it (the resistance to Pisistratus) occurs immediately
before his death.
There prevailed a story that his ashes were collected and scattered
around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as absurd--though he
tells us at the same time that it was believed both by Aristotle and by
many other considerable men. It is at least as ancient as the poet
Cratinus, who alluded to it in one of his comedies, and I do not feel
inclined to reject it. The inscription on the statue of Solon at Athens
described him as a Salaminian; he had been the great means of acquiring
the island for his country, and it seems highly probable that among the
new Athenian citizens, who went to settle there, he may have received a
lot of land and become enrolled among the Salaminian _demots_. The
dispersion of his ashes connecting him with the island as its _oecist_,
may be construed, if not as the expression of a public vote, at least as
a piece of affectionate vanity on the part of his surviving friends.
CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT
B.C. 538
GEORGE GROTE
On the destruction of Nineveh three great Powers still stood on
the stage of history, being bound together by the strong ties of a
mutually supporting alliance. These were Media, Lydia, and Babylon.
The capital of Lydia was Sardis. According to Herodotus, the first
king of Lydia was Manes. In the semi-mythic period of Lydian
history rose the great dynasty of the [Greek: Heraclidæ], which
reigned for 505 years, numbering twenty-two kings--B.C. 1229 to
B.C. 745. The Lydians are said by Herodotus to have colonized
Tyrrhenia, in the Italic peninsula, and to have extended their
conquests into Syria, where they founded Ascalon in the territory
later known as Palestine.
In the reign of Gyges, B.C. 724, they began to attack the Greek
cities of Asia Minor: Miletus, Smyrna, and Priene. The glory of the
Lydian Empire culminated in the reign of [Greek: Croesus], the
fifth and last historic king, B.C. 568. The well-known story of
Solon's warning to [Greek: Croesus] was full of ominous import with
regard to the ultimate downfall of the Lydian Empire: "For thyself,
O Croesus," said the Greek sage in answer to the question, "Who is
the happiest man?" I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art
the lord of many nations; but in respect to that whereon thou
questionest me, I have no answer to give until I hear that thou
hast closed thy life happily."
The Median Empire occupied a territory indefinitely extending over
a region south of the Caspian, between the Kurdish Mountains and
the modern Khorassan. The Median monarchy, according to Herodotus,
commenced B.C. 708. The Medes, which were racially akin to the
Persians, had been for fifty years subject to the Assyrian monarchy
when they revolted, setting up an independent empire. Putting aside
the dates given by the Greek historians, we shall perhaps be
correct in considering that the great Median kingdom was
established by Cyaxares, B.C. 633; and that in B.C. 610 a great
struggle of six years between Media and Lydia was amicably ended,
under the terror occasioned by an eclipse, by the establishment of
a treaty and alliance between the contending powers. With the death
of Cyaxares, B.C. 597, the glory of the great Median Empire passed
away, for under his son, Astyages, the country was conquered by
Cyrus.
The rise of the Babylonian Empire seems to have originated B.C.
2234, when the Cushite inhabitants of southern Babylonia raised a
native dynasty to the throne, liberated themselves from the yoke
of the Zoroastrian Medes, and instituted an empire with several
large capitals, where they built mighty temples and introduced the
worship of the heavenly bodies in contradistinction to the
elemental worship of the Magian Medes. The record of Babylonian
kings is full of obscurity, even in the light of recent
archæological discoveries. We can trace, however, a gradual
expansion of Babylonian dominion, even to the borders of Egypt.
Nabo Polassar, B.C. 625 to B.C. 604, was a great warrior, and at
Carchemish defeated even the almost invincible Egyptians, B.C. 604.
His successor, Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 604, immediately set about the
fortification of his capital. A space of more than 130 square miles
was enclosed within walls 80 feet in breadth and 300 or 400 in
height, if we may believe the record. Meanwhile, with the
assistance of Cyaxares, King of Media, he captured Tyre, in
Phoenicia, and Jerusalem, in Syria; but fifteen years after Croesus
had been taken prisoner and the Persian Empire extended to the
shores of the Ægean, the Empire of Babylon fell before the
conquering armies of Cyrus, the Persian.
The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and
made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus: "Down to that time (says
Herodotus) all Greeks had been free." Their conqueror, Croesus, who
ascended the throne in 560 B.C., appeared to be at the summit of human
prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless
treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia
Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that
river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages,
extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but
comprising, in a south-eastern direction, Persis proper or Farsistan,
and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of
Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey).
Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the Tigris,
was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldæans, under their king Labynetus:
a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies
of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness
who describes it afterward in its decline--but which was then in its
most flourishing condition. The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus
reached to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories both
Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful
and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian
mercenaries and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and
settlement. Both with Labynetus and with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of
alliance; and as Astyages was his brother-in-law, the four kings might
well be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space of
thirty years, or a little more, the whole of their territories had
become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as
yet not known even by name.
The rise and fall of oriental dynasties have been in all times
distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adventurous
prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy,
acquires dominion; while his successors, abandoning themselves to
sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible
dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities
in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne.
Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and
afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their
general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his
history. For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler
of Media, are very imperfectly known, while the facts which preceded his
rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have
to choose between different accounts at variance with each other, and of
which the most complete and detailed is stamped with all the character
of romance. The Cyropædia of Xenophon is memorable and interesting,
considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical
novel. That it should have been quoted so largely as authority on
matters of history, is only one proof among many how easily authors have
been satisfied as to the essentials of historical evidence. The
narrative given by Herodotus of the relations between Cyrus and
Astyages, agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the fact that it
makes Cyrus son of Cambyses and Mandane and grandson of Astyages, goes
even beyond the story of Romulus and Remus in respect to tragical
incident and contrast. Astyages, alarmed by a dream, condemns the
newborn infant of his daughter Mandane to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom
the order is given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen,
who exposes it in the mountains, where it is miraculously suckled by a
bitch. Thus preserved, and afterward brought up as the herdsman's child,
Cyrus manifests great superiority, both physical and mental; is chosen
king in play by the boys of the village, and in this capacity severely
chastises the son of one of the courtiers; for which offense he is
carried before Astyages, who recognizes him for his grandson, but is
assured by the Magi that the dream is out and that he has no further
danger to apprehend from the boy--and therefore permits him to live.
With Harpagus, however, Astyages is extremely incensed, for not having
executed his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, and
served up to be eaten by his unconscious father at a regal banquet. The
father, apprised afterward of the fact, dissembles his feelings, but
meditates a deadly vengeance against Astyages for this Thyestean meal.
He persuades Cyrus, who has been sent back to his father and mother in
Persia, to head a revolt of the Persians against the Medes; whilst
Astyages--to fill up the Grecian conception of madness as a precursor to
ruin--sends an army against the revolters, commanded by Harpagus
himself. Of course the army is defeated--Astyages, after a vain
resistance, is dethroned--Cyrus becomes king in his place--and Harpagus
repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest insults.
Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at some
length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader sufficiently
romantic; though the historian intimates that he had heard three other
narratives different from it, and that all were more full of marvels, as
well as in wider circulation, than his own, which he had borrowed from
some unusually sober-minded Persian informants. In what points the other
three stories departed from it we do not hear.
To the historian of Halicarnassus we have to oppose Ctesias--the
physician of the neighboring town of Cnidus--who contradicted Herodotus,
not without strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially upon
that which is the very foundation of the early narrative respecting
Cyrus; for he affirmed that Cyrus was no way related to Astyages.
However indignant we may be with Ctesias for the disparaging epithets
which he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is to us
inestimable--we must nevertheless admit that, as surgeon in actual
attendance on king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and healer of the wound inflicted
on that prince at Cunaxa by his brother Cyrus the younger, he had better
opportunities even than Herodotus of conversing with sober-minded
Persians, and that the discrepancies between the two statements are to
be taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally
accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose
one out of four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity.
That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which he
overran covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from the coast
of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite indisputable;
but of the steps by which this was achieved, we know very little. The
native Persians, whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an
aggregate of seven agricultural, and four nomadic tribes--all of them
rude, hardy, and brave--dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in
skins, ignorant of wine, or fruit, or any of the commonest luxuries of
life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were
very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to numbers
and powers, among one another. First in estimation among them stood the
Pasargadæ; and the first phratry or clan among the Pasargadæ were the
Achæmenidæ, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his relationship to
the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic
fiction, we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the
spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which he saw in his march
with the ten thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us
to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to
him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However this
may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete: though
the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after
the Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great
enemy in the East is often called "the Mede" as well as "the Persian."
The Median Ekbatana too remained as one of the capital cities, and the
usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspes, on
the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their
winter abode.
The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the
Oxus and Caspian Sea to the north, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to
the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have
been occupied in these times by a great variety of different tribes and
people, yet all or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster,
and speaking dialects of the Zend language. It was known amongst its
inhabitants by the common name of Iran or Aria: it is, in its central
parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood, and
scantily supplied with water; much of it indeed is a salt and sandy
desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile,
where water can be procured and irrigation applied. Scattered masses of
tolerably dense population thus grew up; but continuity of cultivation
is not practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large
proportion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of
wandering or nomadic tribes with their tents and cattle. The rich
pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of
mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by modern travellers,
just as they attracted the Great King in ancient times during the hot
months. The more southerly province called Persis proper (Faristan)
consists also in part of mountain land interspersed with valley and
plain, abundantly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually down
to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry: the care bestowed
both by Medes and Persians on the breeding of their horses was
remarkable. There were doubtless material differences between different
parts of the population of this vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that,
along with their common language and religion, they had also something
of a common character, which contrasted with the Indian population east
of the Indus, the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Massagetæ and
other Nomads of the Caspian and the Sea of Aral--less brutish, restless
and blood-thirsty than the latter--more fierce, contemptuous and
extortionate, and less capable of sustained industry, than the two
former. There can be little doubt, at the time of which we are now
speaking, when the wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their
maximum, that Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been
since European observers have been able to survey it--especially the
north-eastern portion, Bactria and Sogdiana--so that the invasions of
the Nomads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destructive at
various intervals since the Mohammedan conquest, were before that period
successfully kept back.
The general analogy among the population of Iran probably enabled the
Persian conqueror with comparative ease to extend his empire to the
east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, and to become the full heir of the
Median kings. If we may believe Ctesias, even the distant province of
Bactria had been before subject to those kings. At first it resisted
Cyrus, but finding that he had become son-in-law of Astyages, as well as
master of his person, it speedily acknowledged his authority.
According to the representation of Herodotus, the war between Cyrus and
Croesus of Lydia began shortly after the capture of Astyages, and before
the conquest of Bactria. Croesus was the assailant, wishing to avenge
his brother-in-law, to arrest the growth of the Persian conqueror, and
to increase his own dominions. His more prudent counsellors in vain
represented to him that he had little to gain, and much to lose, by war
with a nation alike hardy and poor. He is represented as just at that
time recovering from the affliction arising out of the death of his son.