step which no pious king would omit. But in the present perilous
question, Croesus did more--he took a precaution so extreme, that if his
piety had not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary
munificence to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the
suspicion of a guilty scepticism. Before he would send to ask advice
respecting the project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of
the chief surrounding oracles--Delphi, Dodona, Branchidæ near Miletus,
Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophonius at Labadeia, and Ammon in Libya. His
envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on the
hundredth day afterward to ask at the respective oracles how Croesus was
at that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the manner
in which it was met by four out of the six oracles consulted we have no
information, and it rather appears that their answers were
unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, while
Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidæ, solved the
question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional
argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination.
No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on
the day named, "What is Croesus now doing?" than she exclaimed in the
accustomed hexameter verse, "I know the number of grains of sand, and
the measures of the sea: I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who
speaks not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a
copper with lamb's flesh--copper above and copper below." Croesus was
awe-struck on receiving this reply. It described with the utmost detail
that which he had been really doing, so that he accounted the Delphian
oracle and that of Amphiaraus the only trustworthy oracles on
earth--following up these feelings with a holocaust of the most
munificent character, in order to win the favor of the Delphian god.
Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile
were placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics, together with
couches and censers of gold and silver; besides which he sent to Delphi
itself the richest presents in gold and silver--statues, bowls, jugs,
etc., the size and weight of which we read with astonishment; the more
so as Herodotus himself saw them a century afterwards at Delphi. Nor was
Croesus altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been
creditable, though less triumphant than that of the Pythian priestess.
He sent to Amphiaraus a spear and shield of pure gold, which were
afterward seen at Thebes by Herodotus: this large donative may help the
reader to conceive the immensity of those which he sent to Delphi.
The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask at the same
time, whether Croesus should undertake an expedition against the
Persians--and if so, whether he should solicit any allies to assist him.
In regard to the second question, the answer both of Apollo and of
Amphiaraus was deci sive, recommending him to invite the alliance of
the most powerful Greeks. In regard to the first and most momentous
question, their answer was as remarkable for circumspection as it had
been before for detective sagacity: they told Croesus that if he invaded
the Persians, he would subvert a mighty monarchy. The blindness of
Croesus interpreted this declaration into an unqualified promise of
success: he sent further presents to the oracle, and again inquired
whether his kingdom would be durable. "When a mule shall become king of
the Medes (replied the priestess) then must thou run away--be not
ashamed."
More assured than ever by such an answer, Croesus sent to Sparta, under
the kings Anaxandrides and Aristo, to tender presents and solicit their
alliance. His propositions were favorably entertained--the more so, as
he had before gratuitously furnished some gold to the Lacedæmonians for
a statue to Apollo. The alliance now formed was altogether general--no
express effort being as yet demanded from them, though it soon came to
be. But the incident is to be noted, as marking the first plunge of the
leading Grecian state into Asiatic politics; and that too without any of
the generous Hellenic sympathy which afterward induced Athens to send
her citizens across the Ægean. At this time Croesus was the master and
tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, whose contingents seem to have
formed part of his army for the expedition now contemplated; an army
consisting principally, not of native Lydians, but of foreigners.
The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between the Median and
Lydian empires: and Croesus, marching across that river into the
territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of Cappadocia, took the city of
Pteria, with many of its surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage and
destruction upon these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time
in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than that of
Croesus; trying at the same time, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on
the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took place between the
two armies, but with indecisive result: after which Croesus, seeing that
he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces as they stood,
thought it wise to return to his capital, and collect a larger army for
the next campaign. Immediately on reaching Sardis he despatched envoys
to Labynetus king of Babylon; to Amasis, king of Egypt; to the
Lacedæmonians, and to other allies; calling upon all of them to send
auxiliaries to Sardis during the course of the fifth month. In the mean
time he dismissed all the foreign troops who had followed him into
Cappadocia.
Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted
with success. And on the part of the Lacedæmonians, at least, there was
no tardiness; for their ships were ready and their troops almost on
board, when the unexpected news reached them that Croesus was already
ruined. Cyrus had forseen and forestalled the defensive plan of his
enemy. Pushing on with his army to Sardis without delay, he obliged the
Lydian prince to give battle with his own unassisted subjects. The open
and spacious plain before that town was highly favorable to Lydian
cavalry, which at that time (Herodotus tells us) was superior to the
Persian. But Cyrus, employing a strategem whereby this cavalry was
rendered unavailable, placed in front of his line the baggage camels,
which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or to behold.
The horsemen of Croesus were thus obliged to dismount; nevertheless they
fought bravely on foot, and were not driven into the town till after a
sanguinary combat.
Though confined within the walls of his capital, Croesus had still good
reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies, to whom
he sent pressing envoys of acceleration. For Sardis was considered
impregnable--and one assault had already been repulsed, and the Persians
would have been reduced to the slow process of blockade. But on the
fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for the besiegers that which
they could not have accomplished either by skill or force. Sardis was
situated on an outlying peak of the northern side of Tmolus; it was well
fortified everywhere except toward the mountain; and on that side the
rock was so precipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications were
thought unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault to be
possible in that quarter. But Hyroeades, a Persian soldier, having
accidentally seen one of the garrison descending this precipi tous rock
to pick up his helmet which had rolled down, watched his opportunity,
tried to climb up, and found it not impracticable; others followed his
example, the stronghold was thus seized first, and the whole city
speedily taken by storm.
Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Croesus, who was
accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were made for a solemn and
terrible spectacle; the captive king was destined to be burned in
chains, together with fourteen Lydian youths, on a vast pile of wood. We
are even told that the pile was already kindled and the victim beyond
the reach of human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to preserve
him. As to the general fact of supernatural interposition, in one way or
another, Herodotus and Ctesias both agree, though they described
differently the particular miracles wrought. It is certain that Croesus,
after some time, was released and well treated by his conqueror, and
lived to become the confidential adviser of the latter as well as of his
son Cambyses: Ctesias also acquaints us that a considerable town and
territory near Ekbatana, called Barene, was assigned to him, according
to a practice which we shall find not infrequent with the Persian kings.
The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between Persians and
Lydians, whereby Croesus is said by Herodotus to have first earned this
favorable treatment, are hardly worth repeating; but the indignant
remonstrance sent by Croesus to the Delphian god is too characteristic
to be passed over. He obtained permission from Cyrus to lay upon the
holy pavement of the Delphian temple the chains with which he had at
first been bound. The Lydian envoys were instructed, after exhibiting to
the god these humiliating memorials, to ask whether it was his custom to
deceive his benefactors, and whether he was not ashamed to have
encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous? The god,
condescending to justify himself by the lips of the priestess, replied:
"Not even a god can escape his destiny. Croesus has suffered for the sin
of his fifth ancestor (Gyges), who, conspiring with a woman, slew his
master and wrongfully seized the sceptre. Apollo employed all his
influence with the Moeræ (Fates) to obtain that this sin might be
expiated by the children of Croesus, and not by Croesus himself; but
the Moeræ would grant nothing more than a postponement of the judgment
for three years. Let Croesus know that Apollo has thus procured for him
a reign three years longer than his original destiny, after having tried
in vain to rescue him altogether. Moreover he sent that rain which at
the critical moment extinguished the burning pile. Nor has Croesus any
right to complain of the prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on
the war; for when the god told him that he would subvert _a great
empire_, it was his duty to have again inquired which empire the god
meant; and if he neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask for
information, he has himself to blame for the result. Besides, Croesus
neglected the warning given to him about the acquisition of the Median
kingdom by a mule: Cyrus was that mule--son of a Median mother of royal
breed, by a Persian father at once of different race and of lower
position."
This triumphant justification extorted even from Croesus himself a full
confession that the sin lay with him, and not with the god. It certainly
illustrates in a remarkable manner the theological ideas of the time. It
shows us how much, in the mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries
preceding his own, unrecorded as they were by any contemporary
authority, tended to cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the
threads of the historical web being in part put together, in part
originally spun, for the purpose of setting forth the religious
sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess
predicts to Gyges that the crime which he had committed in assassinating
his master would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as
Herodotus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was
at last fulfilled: we see thus the history of the first Mermnad king is
made up after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the
main facts of the history of Croesus profoundly striking to the Greek
mind, a king at the summit of wealth and power--pious in the extreme and
munificent toward the gods--the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in
Asia--then precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of
ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much toward the solution of
this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle,
when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the
affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with
an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of
mankind--the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except
themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after
he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To
the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the
relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided,
satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was
ruined--but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moeræ
could be invoked to explain so stupendous a result. It is rarely that
these supreme goddesses--or hyper-goddesses, since the gods themselves
must submit to them--are brought into such distinct light and action.
Usually they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the
unseen stumbling block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it
is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated
political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to
reside, in respect to the government of the world. But here the
sovereignity of the Moeræ, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are
unequivocally set forth. The gods are still extremely powerful, because
the Moeræ comply with their requests up to a certain point, not
thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is
carried no farther than they themselves choose; nor would they, even in
deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment for the
sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant--sentence, moreover,
which Apollo himself had formerly prophesied shortly after the sin was
committed, so that, if the Moeræ had listened to his intercession on
behalf of Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been
endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of
Croesus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the
circumstance that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to alter
it, or to grant more than a three years' respite. The religious element
must here be viewed as giving the form, the historical element as giving
the matter only, and not the whole matter, of the story. These two
elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the
history of Herodotus, though as we descend to later times, we shall find
the latter element in constantly increasing proportion. His conception
of history is extremely different from that of Thucydides, who lays down
to himself the true scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him
with the philosopher--to recount and interpret the past, as a rational
aid toward pre-vision of the future.
In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ctesias,
no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon. His narrative,
indeed, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges
materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data
altogether different.
"I shall mention (says Herodotus) these conquests which gave Cyrus most
trouble, and are most memorable: after he had subdued all the rest of
the continent, he attacked the Assyrians." Those who recollect the
description of Babylon and its surrounding territory, will not be
surprised to learn that the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor
much trouble. Their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been
taken at all--or indeed how a hostile army could have even reached it.
Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitocris (mother of that
very Labynetus who was king when Cyrus attacked the place) apprehensive
of invasion from the Medes after their capture of Nineveh, had executed
many laborious works near the Euphrates for the purpose of obstructing
their approach. Moreover there existed what was called the wall of Media
(probably built by her, but certainly built prior to the Persian
conquest), one hundred feet high and twenty feet thick, across the
entire space of seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of
the canals of the Euphrates: while the canals themselves, as we may see
by the march of the ten thousand Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa,
presented means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as
that of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was
defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the ancient
Nineveh or the modern Mosul. In addition to these ramparts, natural as
well as artificial, to protect the territory--populous, cultivated,
productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist even
the entrance of an enemy--we are told that the Babylonians were so
thoroughly prepared for the inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated
within their walls a store of provisions for many years. Strange as it
may seem, we must suppose that the king of Babylon, after all the cost
and labor spent in providing defences for the territory, voluntarily
neglected to avail himself of them, suffered the invader to tread down
the fertile Babylonia without resistance, and merely drew out the
citizens to oppose him when he arrived under the walls of the city--if
the statement of Herodotus is correct. And we may illustrate this
unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the
march of the younger Cyrus to Cunuxa against his brother Artaxerxes
Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in preparation for
this invasion, a broad and deep ditch (thirty feet wide and eight feet
deep) from the wall of Media to the river Euphrates, a distance of
twelve parasangs or forty-five English miles, leaving only a passage of
twenty feet broad close alongside of the river. Yet when the invading
army arrived at this important pass, they found not a man there to
defend it, and all of them marched without resistance through the narrow
inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that
his brother would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of
defending Babylon: instead of which, two days afterward, Artaxerxes
attacked him on an open plain of ground where there was no advantage of
position on either side; though the invaders were taken rather unawares
in consequence of their extreme confidence arising from recent unopposed
entrance within the artificial ditch. This anecdote is the more valuable
as an illustration, because all its circumstances are transmitted to us
by a discerning eye-witness. And both the two incidents here brought
into comparison demonstrate the recklessness, changefulness, and
incapacity of calculation belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day--as
well as the great command of hands possessed by these kings, and their
prodigal waste of human labor. Vast walls and deep ditches are an
inestimable aid to a brave and well-commanded garrison; but they cannot
be made entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence.
In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have
been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain. On
first setting out for this conquest, he was about to cross the river
Gyndes (one of the affluents from the east which joins the Tigris near
the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass
of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana) when one of the sacred white
horses, which accompanied him, entered the river in pure wantonness and
tried to cross it by himself. The Gyndes resented this insult and the
horse was drowned: upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so
break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it
without wetting their knees. Accordingly he employed his entire army,
during the whole summer season, in digging three hundred and sixty
artificial channels to disseminate the unit of the stream. Such,
according to Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year
the fall of the great Babylon. But in the next spring Cyrus and his army
were before the walls, after having defeated and driven in the
population who came out to fight. These walls were artificial mountains
(three hundred feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square
of fifteen miles to each side), within which the besieged defied attack,
and even blockade, having previously stored up several years' provision.
Through the midst of the town, however, flowed the Euphrates. That river
which had been so laboriously trained to serve for protection, trade and
sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made the avenue of their ruin.
Having left a detachment of his army at the two points where the
Euphrates enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to
the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had
prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of
need the superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another
reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of
which he drew off the water of the Euphrates to such a degree it became
not above the height of a man's thigh. The period chosen was that of a
great Babylonian festival, when the whole population were engaged in
amusement and revelry. The Persian troops left near the town, watching
their opportunity, entered from both sides along the bed of the river,
and took it by surprise with scarcely any resistance. At no other time,
except during a festival, could they have done this (says Herodotus) had
the river been ever so low, for both banks throughout the whole length
of the town were provided with quays, with continuous walls, and with
gates at the end of every street which led down to the river at right
angles so that if the population had not been disqualified by the
influences of the moment, they would have caught the assailants in the
bed of the river "as in a trap," and overwhelmed them from the walls
alongside. Within a square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not
surprised to hear that both the extremities were already in the power of
the besiegers before the central population heard of it, and while they
were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity.
Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances which placed
Babylon--the greatest city of Western Asia--in the power of the
Persians. To what extent the information communicated to him was
incorrect or exaggerated, we cannot now decide. The way in which the
city was treated would lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot
have cost the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes into
the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with their whole
territory become tributary to the Persians, forming the richest satrapy
in the empire; but we do not hear that the people were otherwise
ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and gates were left
untouched. This was very different from the way in which the Medes had
treated Nineveh, which seems to have been ruined and for a long time
absolutely uninhabited, though reoccupied on a reduced scale under the
Parthian empire; and very different also from the way in which Babylon
itself was treated twenty years afterward by Darius, when reconquered
after a revolt.
The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the peculiar forms
of civilization belonging to the ancient world in a state of full
development, gives an interest even to the half-authenticated stories
respecting its capture. The other exploits ascribed to Cyrus--his
invasion of India, across the desert of Arachosia--and his attack upon
the Massagetæ, Nomads ruled by Queen Tomyris and greatly resembling the
Scythians, across the mysterious river which Herodotus calls
Araxes--are too little known to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he
is said to have perished, his army being defeated in a bloody battle. He
was buried at Pasargadæ, in his native province of Persis proper, where
his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire,
while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians. Of
his real exploits we know little or nothing, but in what we read
respecting him there seems, though amid constant fighting, very little
cruelty. Xenophon has selected his life as the subject of a moral
romance which for a long time was cited as authentic history, and which
even now serves as an authority, express or implied, for disputable and
even incorrect conclusions. His extraordinary activity and conquests
admit of no doubt. He left the Persian empire extending from Sogdiana
and the rivers Jaxartes and Indus eastward, to the Hellespont and the
Syrian coast westward, and his successors made no permanent addition to
it except that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judæa were dependencies of
Babylon, at the time when he conquered it, with their princes and
grandees in Babylonian captivity. As they seem to have yielded to him,
and became his tributaries without difficulty; so the restoration of
their captives was conceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the habits
of the Persian kings took commencement, to dwell at Susa in the winter,
and Ekbatana during the summer; the primitive territory of Persis, with
its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargadæ, being reserved for the
burial-place of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the empire. How
or when the conquest of Susiana was made, we are not informed. It lay
eastward of the Tigris, between Babylonia and Persis proper, and its
people, the Kissians, as far as we can discern, were of Assyrian and not
of Aryan race. The river Choaspes near Susa was supposed to furnish the
only water fit for the palate of the great king, and it is said to have
been carried about with him wherever he went.