Caste.—In this new society there were no longer, as in the time of the Vedas, poets who chanted hymns to the gods. The men who know the prayers and the ceremonies are become theologians by profession; the people revere and obey them. The following is their conception of the structure of society: the supreme god, Brahma, has produced four kinds of men to each of whom he has assigned a mission. From his mouth he drew the Brahmans, who are, of course, the theologians; their mission is to study, to teach the hymns, to perform the sacrifices. The Kchatrias have come from his arms; these are the warriors who are charged with the protection of the people. The Vaicyas proceed from the thigh; they must raise cattle, till the earth, loan money at interest, and engage in commerce. The Soudras issue from his foot; their only mission is to serve all the others.

There were already in the Aryan people theologians, warriors, artisans, and below them aborigines reduced to slavery. These were classes which one could enter and from which one could withdraw. But the Brahmans determined that every man should be attached to the condition in which he was born, he and his descendants for all time. The son of a workman could never become a warrior, nor the son of a warrior a theologian. Thus each is chained to his own state. Society is divided into four hereditary and closed castes.

The Unclean.—Whoever is not included in one of the four castes is unclean, excluded from society and religion. The Brahmans reckoned forty-four grades of outcasts; the last and the lowest is that of the pariahs; their very name is an insult. The outcasts may not practise any honorable trade nor approach other men. They may possess only dogs and asses, for these are unclean beasts. "They must have for their clothing the garments of the dead; for plates, broken pots; ornaments of iron; they must be ceaselessly on the move from one place to another."

The Brahmans.—In the organization of society the Brahmans were assigned the first place. "Men are the first among intelligent beings; the Brahmans are the first among men. They are higher than warriors, than kings, even. As between a Brahman of ten years of age and a Kchatria of one hundred years, the Brahman is to be regarded as the father." These are not priests as in Egypt and Chaldea, but only men who know religion, and pass their time in reading and meditating on the sacred books; they live from presents made to them by other men. To this day they are the dominating class of India. As they marry only among themselves, better than the other Hindoos they have preserved the Aryan type and have a clearer resemblance to Europeans.

The New Religion of Brahma.—The Brahmans did not discard the ancient gods of the Vedas, they continued to adore them. But by sheer ingenuity they invented a new god. When prayers are addressed to the gods, the deities are made to comply with the demands made on them, as if they thought that prayer was more powerful than the gods. And so prayer (Brahma) has become the highest of all deities. He is invoked with awe:[24] "O god, I behold in thy body all the gods and the multitudes of living beings. I am powerless to regard thee in thine entirety, for thou shinest like the fire and the sun in thine immensity. Thou art the Invisible, thou art the supreme Intelligence, thou art the sovereign treasure of the universe, without beginning, middle, or end; equipped with infinite might. Thine arms are without limit, thine eyes are like the moon and the sun, thy mouth hath the brightness of the sacred fire. With thyself alone thou fillest all the space between heaven and earth, and thou permeatest all the universe." Brahma is not only supreme god; he is the soul of the universe. All beings are born from Brahma, all issue naturally from him, not as a product comes from the hands of an artisan, but "as the tree from the seed, as the web from the spider." Brahma is not a deity who has created the world; he is the very substance of the world.

Transmigration of Souls.—There is, then, a soul, a part of the soul of Brahma, in every being, in gods, in men, in animals, in the very plants and stones. But these souls pass from one body into another; this is the transmigration of souls. When a man dies, his soul is tested; if it is good, it passes into the heaven of Indra there to enjoy felicity; if it is bad, it falls into one of the twenty-eight hells, where it is devoured by ravens, compelled to swallow burning cakes, and is tormented by demons. But souls do not remain forever in heaven or in the hells; they part from these to begin a new life in another body. The good soul rises, entering the body of a saint, perhaps that of a god; the evil soul descends, taking its abode in some impure animal—in a dog, an ass, even in a plant. In this new state it may rise or fall. And this journey from one body to another continues until the soul by degrees comes to the highest sphere. From lowest to highest in the scale, say the Brahmans, twenty-four millions of years elapse. At last perfect, the soul returns to the level of Brahma from which it descends and is absorbed into it.

Character of this Religion.—The religion of the Aryans, simple and happy, was that of a young and vigorous people. This is complicated and barren; it takes shape among men who are not engaged in practical life; it is enervated by the heat and vexatious of life.

Rites.—The practice of the religion is much more complicated. Hymns and sacrifices are still offered to the gods, but the Brahmans have gradually invented thousands of minute customs so that one's life is completely engaged with them. For all the ceremonies of the religious life there are prayers, offerings, vows, libations, ablutions. Some of the religious requirements attach themselves to dress, ornaments, etiquette, drinking, eating, mode of walking, of lying down, of sleeping, of dressing, of undressing, of bathing. It is ordered: "That a Brahman shall not step over a rope to which a calf is attached; that he shall not run when it rains; that he shall not drink water in the hollow of his hand; that he shall not scratch his head with both his hands. The man who breaks clods of earth, who cuts grass with his nails or who bites his nails is, like the outcast, speedily hurried to his doom." An animal must not be killed, for a human soul may perhaps be dwelling in the body; one must not eat it on penalty of being devoured in another life by the animals which one has eaten.

All these rites have a magical virtue; he who observes them all is a saint; he who neglects any of them is impious and destined to pass into the body of an animal.

Purity.—The principal duty is keeping one's self pure; for every stain is a sin and opens one to the attack of evil spirits. But the Brahmans are very scrupulous concerning purity: men outside of the castes, many animals, the soil, even the utensils which one uses are so many impure things; whoever touches these is polluted and must at once purify himself. Life is consumed in purifications.

Penances.—For every defect in the rites, a penance is necessary, often a terrible one. He who involuntarily kills a cow must clothe himself in its skin, and for three months, day and night, follow and tend a herd of cows. Whoever has drunk of arrack[25] must swallow a boiling liquid which burns the internal organs until death results.

The Monks.—To escape so many dangers and maintain purity, it is better to leave the world. Often a Brahman when he has attained to a considerable age withdraws to the desert, fasts, watches, refrains from speech, exposes himself naked to the rain, holds himself erect between four fires under the burning sun. After some years, the solitary becomes "penitent"; then his only subsistence is from almsgiving; for whole days he lifts an arm in the air uttering not a word, holding his breath; or perchance, he gashes himself with razor-blades; or he may even keep his thumbs closed until the nails pierce the hands. By these mortifications he destroys passion, releases himself from this life, and by contemplation rises to Brahma. And yet, this way of salvation is open only to the Brahman; and even he has the right to withdraw to the desert only in old age, after having studied the Vedas all his life, practised all the rites, and established a family.

BUDDHISM

Buddha.—Millions of men who were not Brahmans, suffered by this life of minutiae and anguish. A man then appeared who brought a doctrine of deliverance. He was not a Brahman, but of the caste of the Kchatrias, son of a king of the north. To the age of twenty-nine he had lived in the palace of his father. One day he met an old man with bald head, of wrinkled features, and trembling limbs; a second time he met an incurable invalid, covered with ulcers, without a home; again he fell in with a decaying corpse devoured by worms. And so, thought he, youth, health, and life are nothing for they offer no resistance to old age, to sickness, and to death. He had compassion on men and sought a remedy. Then he met a religious mendicant with grave and dignified air; following his example he decided to renounce the world. These four meetings had determined his calling.

Buddha fled to the desert, lived seven years in penitence, undergoing hunger, thirst, and rain. These mortifications gave him no repose. He ate, became strong, and found the truth. Then he reentered the world to preach it; he made disciples in crowds who called him Buddha (the scholar); and when he died after forty-five years of preaching, Buddhism was established.

Nirvana.—To live is to be unhappy, taught Buddha. Every man suffers because he desires the goods of this world, youth, health, life, and cannot keep them. All life is a suffering; all suffering is born of desire. To suppress suffering, it is necessary to root out desire; to destroy it one must cease from wishing to live, "emancipate one's self from the thirst of being." The wise man is he who casts aside everything that attaches to this life and makes it unhappy. One must cease successively from feeling, wishing, thinking. Then, freed from passion, volition, even from reflection, he no longer suffers, and can, after his death, come to the supreme good, which consists in being delivered from all life and from all suffering. The aim of the wise man is the annihilation of personality: the Buddhists call it Nirvana.

Charity.—The Brahmans also considered life as a place of suffering and annihilation as felicity. Buddha came not with a new doctrine, but with new sentiments.

The religion of the Brahmans was egoistic. Buddha had compassion on men, he loved them, and preached love to his disciples. It was just this word of sympathy of which despairing souls were in need. He bade to love even those who do us ill. Purna, one of his disciples, went forth to preach to the barbarians. Buddha said to him to try him, "There are cruel, passionate, furious men; if they address angry words to you, what would you think?" "If they addressed angry words to me," said Purna, "I should think these are good men, these are gentle men, these men who attack me with wicked words but who strike me neither with the hand nor with stones." "But if they strike you, what would you think?" "I should think that those were good men who did not strike me with their staves or with their swords." "But if they did strike you with staff and sword, what would you think then?" "That those are good men who strike me with staff and sword, but do not take my life." "But if they should take your life?" "I should think them good men who delivered me with so little pain from this body filled as it is with pollution." "Well, well, Purna! You may dwell in the country of the barbarians. Go, proceed on the way to complete Nirvana and bring others to the same goal."

Fraternity.—The Brahmans, proud of their caste, assert that they are purer than the others. Buddha loves all men equally, he calls all to salvation even the pariahs, even the barbarians—all he declares are equal. "The Brahman," said he, "just like the pariah, is born of woman; why should he be noble and the other vile?" He receives as disciples street-sweepers, beggars, cripples, girls who sleep on dung-hills, even murderers and thieves; he fears no contamination in touching them. He preaches to them in the street in language simple with parables.

Tolerance.—The Brahmans passed their lives in the practice of minute rites, regarding as criminal whoever did not observe them. Buddha demanded neither rites nor exertions. To secure salvation it was enough to be charitable, chaste, and beneficent. "Benevolence," says he, "is the first of virtues. Doing a little good avails more than the fulfilment of the most arduous religious tasks. The perfect man is nothing unless he diffuses himself in benefits over creatures, unless he comforts the afflicted. My doctrine is a doctrine of mercy; this is why the fortunate in the world find it difficult."

Later History of Buddhism.—Thus was established about 500 years before Christ a religion of an entirely new sort. It is a religion without a god and without rites; it ordains only that one shall love his neighbor and become better; annihilation is offered as supreme recompense. But, for the first time in the history of the world, it preaches self-renunciation, the love of others, equality of mankind, charity and tolerance. The Brahmans made bitter war upon it and extirpated it in India. Missionaries carried it to the barbarians in Ceylon, in Indo-China, Thibet, China, and Japan. It is today the religion of about 500,000,000[26] people.

Changes in Buddhism.—During these twenty centuries Buddhism has undergone change. Buddha had himself formed communities of monks. Those who entered these renounced their family, took the vow of poverty and chastity; they had to wear filthy rags and beg their living. These religious rapidly multiplied; they founded convents in all Eastern Asia, gathered in councils to fix the doctrine, proclaimed dogmas and rules. As they became powerful they, like the Brahmans, came to esteem themselves as above the rest of the faithful. "The layman," they said, "plight to support the religious and consider himself much honored that the holy man accepts his offering. It is more commendable to feed one religious than many thousands of laymen." In Thibet the religious, men and women together, constitute a fifth of the entire population, and their head, the Grand Lama, is venerated as an incarnation of God.

At the same time that they transformed themselves into masters, the Buddhist religious constructed a complicated theology, full of fantastic figures. They say there is an infinite number of worlds. If one surrounded with a wall a space capable of holding 100,000 times ten millions of those worlds, if this wall were raised to heaven, and if the whole space were filled with grains of mustard, the number of the grains would not even then equal one-half the number of worlds which occupy but one division of heaven. All these worlds are full of creatures, gods, men, beasts, demons, who are born and who die. The universe itself is annihilated and another takes its place. The duration of each universe is called kalpa; and this is the way we obtain an impression of a kalpa: if there were a rock twelve miles in height, breadth, and length, and if once in a century it were only touched with a piece of the finest linen, this rock would be worn and reduced to the size of a kernel of mango before a quarter of a kalpa had elapsed.

Buddha Transformed into a God.—It no longer satisfied the Buddhists to honor their founder as a perfect man; they made him a god, erecting idols to him, and offering him worship. They adored also the saints, his disciples; pyramids and shrines were built to preserve their bones, their teeth, their cloaks. From every quarter the faithful came to venerate the impression of the foot of Buddha.

Mechanical Prayer.—Modern Buddhists regard prayer as a magical formula which acts of itself. They spend the day reciting prayers as they walk or eat, often in a language which they do not understand. They have invented prayer-machines; these are revolving cylinders and around these are pasted papers on which the prayer is written; every turn of the cylinder counts for the utterance of the prayer as many times as it is written on the papers.

Amelioration of Manners.—And yet Buddhism remains a religion of peace and charity. Wherever it reigns, kings refrain from war, and even from the chase; they establish hospitals, caravansaries, even asylums for animals. Strangers, even Christian missionaries, are hospitably received; they permit the women to go out, and to walk without veiling themselves; they neither fight nor quarrel. At Bangkok, a city of 400,000 souls, hardly more than one murder a year is known.

Buddhism has enfeebled the intelligence and sweetened the character.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] The process is as follows: when a word (or rather a root) is found in several Aryan languages at once, it is admitted that this was in use before the dispersion occurred, and therefore the people knew the object designated by the word.

[23] The Punjab.—ED.

[24] Prayer of the Mahabarata cited by Lenormant.

[25] A spirituous liquor made by the natives.—ED.

[26] A high estimate.—ED.

[27] India is for us the country of the Vedas, the Brahmans, and Buddha. We know the religion of the Hindoos, but of their political history we are ignorant.



CHAPTER VI

THE PERSIANS

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER

Iran.—Between the Tigris and the Indus, the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf rises the land of Iran, five times as great as France,[28] but partly sterile. It is composed of deserts of burning sand and of icy plateaux cut by deep and wooded valleys. Mountains surround it preventing the escape of the rivers which must lose themselves in the sands or in the salt lakes. The climate is harsh, very uneven, torrid in summer, frigid in winter; in certain quarters one passes from 104 deg. above zero to 40 deg. below, from the cold of Siberia to the heat of Senegal. Violent winds blow which "cut like a sword." But in the valleys along the rivers the soil is fertile. Here the peach and cherry are indigenous; the country is a land of fruits and pastures.

The Iranians.—Aryan tribes inhabited Iran. Like all the Aryans, they were a race of shepherds, but well armed and warlike. The Iranians fought on horseback, drew the bow, and, to protect themselves from the biting wind of their country, wore garments of skin sewed on the body.

Zoroaster.—Like the ancient Aryans, they first adored the forces of nature, especially the sun (Mithra). Between the tenth and seventh[29] centuries before our era their religion was reformed by a sage, Zarathustra (Zoroaster). We know nothing certainly about him except his name.

The Zend-Avesta.—No writing from the hand of Zoroaster is preserved to us; but his doctrine, reduced to writing long after his death, is conserved in the Zend-Avesta (law and reform), the sacred books of the Persians. It was a compilation written in an ancient language (the Zend) which the faithful themselves no longer understood. It was divided into twenty-one books, inscribed on 12,000 cow skins, bound by golden cords. The Mohammedans destroyed it when they invaded Persia. But some Persian families, faithful to the teaching of Zoroaster, fled into India. Their posterity, whom we call Parsees, have there maintained the old religion. An entire book of the Zend-Avesta and fragments of two others have been found among them.

Ormuzd and Ahriman.—The Zend-Avesta is the sacred book of the religion of Zoroaster. According to these writings Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), "the omniscient sovereign," created the world. He is addressed in prayer in the following language: "I invoke and celebrate the creator, Ahura Mazda, luminous, glorious, most intelligent and beautiful, eminent in purity, who possessest the good knowledge, source of joy, who hast treated us, hast fashioned us, and hast nourished us." Since he is perfect in his goodness, he can create only that which is good. Everything bad in the world has been created by an evil deity, Angra Manyou, (Ahriman), the "spirit of anguish."

Angels and Demons.—Over against Ormuzd, the god and the creator, is Ahriman, wicked and destructive. Each has in his service a legion of spirits. The soldiers of Ormuzd are the good angels (yazatas), those of Ahriman the evil demons (devs). The angels dwell in the East in the light of the rising sun; the demons in the West in the shadows of the darkness. The two armies wage incessant warfare; the world is their battleground, for both troops are omnipresent. Ormuzd and his angels seek to benefit men, to make them good and happy; Ahriman and his demons gnaw around them to destroy them, to make them unhappy and wicked.

Creatures of Ormuzd and Ahriman.—Everything good on the earth is the work of Ormuzd and works for good; the sun and fire that dispel the night, the stars, fermented drinks that seem to be liquid fire, the water that satisfies the thirst of man, the cultivated fields that feed him, the trees that shade him, domestic animals—especially the dog,[30] the birds (because they live in the air), among all these the cock since he announces the day. On the other hand everything that is baneful comes from Ahriman and tends to evil: the night, drought, cold, the desert, poisonous plants, thorns, beasts of prey, serpents, parasites (mosquitoes, fleas, bugs) and animals that live in dark holes—lizards, scorpions, toads, rats, ants. Likewise in the moral world life, purity, truth, work are good things and come from Ormuzd; death, filth, falsehood, idleness are bad, and issue from Ahriman.

Worship.—From these notions proceed worship and morality. Man ought to adore the good god[31] and fight for him. According to Herodotus, "The Persians are not accustomed to erect statues, temples, or altars to their gods; they esteem those who do this as lacking in sense for they do not believe, as the Greeks do, that the gods have human forms."[32] Ormuzd manifests himself only under the form of fire or the sun. This is why the Persians perform their worship in the open air on the mountains, before a lighted fire. To worship Ormuzd they sing hymns to his praise and sacrifice animals in his honor.

Morality.—Man fights for Ormuzd in aiding his efforts and in overcoming Ahriman's. He wars against darkness in supplying the fire with dry wood and perfumes; against the desert in tilling the soil and in building houses; against the animals of Ahriman in killing serpents, lizards, parasites, and beasts of prey. He battles against impurity in keeping himself clean, in banishing from himself everything that is dead, especially the nails and hair, for "where hairs and clipped nails are, demons and unclean animals assemble." He fights against falsehood by always being truthful. "The Persians," says Herodotus,[33] "consider nothing so shameful as lying, and after falsehood nothing so shameful as contracting debts, for he who has debts necessarily lies." He wars against death by marrying and having many children. "Terrible," says the Zend-Avesta, "are the houses void of posterity."

Funerals.—As soon as a man is dead his body belongs to the evil spirit. It is necessary, then, to remove it from the house. But it ought not to be burned, for in this way the fire would be polluted; it should not be buried, for so is the soil defiled; nor is it to be drowned, and thus contaminate the water. These dispositions of the corpse would bring permanent pollution. The Persians resorted to a different method. The body with face toward the sun was exposed in an elevated place and left uncovered, securely fixed with stones; the bearers then withdrew to escape the demons, for they assemble "in the places of sepulture, where reside sickness, fever, filth, cold, and gray hairs." Dogs and birds, pure animals, then come to purify the body by devouring it.

Destiny of the Soul.—The soul of the dead separates itself from the body. In the third night after death it is conducted over the "Bridge of Assembling" (Schinvat) which leads to the paradise above the gulf of inferno. There Ormuzd questions it on its past life. If it has practised the good, the pure spirits and the spirits of dogs support it and aid it in crossing the bridge and give it entrance into the abode of the blest; the demons flee, for they cannot bear the odor of virtuous spirits. The soul of the wicked, on the other hand, comes to the dread bridge, and reeling, with no one to support it, is dragged by demons to hell, is seized by the evil spirit and chained in the abyss of darkness.

Character of Mazdeism.—This religion originated in a country of violent contrasts, luxuriant valleys side by side with barren steppes, cool oases with burning deserts, cultivated fields and stretches of sand, where the forces of nature seem engaged in an eternal warfare. This combat which the Iranian saw around him he assumed to be the law of the universe. Thus a religion of great purity was developed, which urged man to work and to virtue; but at the same time issued a belief in the devil and in demons which was to propagate itself in the west and torment all the peoples of Europe.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

The Medes.—Many were the tribes dwelling in Iran; two of these have become noted in history—the Medes and the Persians. The Medes at the west, nearer the Assyrians, destroyed Nineveh and its empire (625). But soon they softened their manners, taking the flowing robes, the indolent life, the superstitious religion of the degenerate Assyrians. They at last were confused with them.

The Persians.—The Persians to the east preserved their manners, their religion, and their vigor. "For twenty years," says Herodotus, "the Persians teach their children but three things—to mount a horse, to draw the bow, and to tell the truth."

Cyrus.—About 550 Cyrus, their chief, overthrew the king of the Medes, reunited all the peoples of Iran, and then conquered Lydia, Babylon, and all Asia Minor. Herodotus recounts in detail a legend which became attached to this prince. Cyrus himself in an inscription says of himself, "I am Cyrus, king of the legions, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumir and Akkad, king of the four regions, son of Cambyses, great king of Susiana, grand-son of Cyrus, king of Susiana."

The Inscription of Behistun.—The eldest son of Cyrus, Cambyses, put to death his brother Smerdis and conquered Egypt. What occurred afterward is known to us from an inscription. Today one may see on the frontier of Persia, in the midst of a plain, an enormous rock, cut perpendicularly, about 1,500 feet high, the rock of Behistun. A bas-relief carved on the rock represents a crowned king, with left hand on a bow; he tramples on one captive while nine other prisoners are presented before him in chains. An inscription in three languages relates the life of the king: "Darius the king declares, This is what I did before I became king. Cambyses, son of Cyrus, of our race, reigned here before me. This Cambyses had a brother Smerdis, of the same father and the same mother. One day Cambyses killed Smerdis. When Cambyses had killed Smerdis the people were ignorant that Smerdis was dead. After this Cambyses made an expedition to Egypt and while he was there the people became rebellious; falsehood was then rife in the country, in Persia, in Media and the other provinces. There was at that time a magus named Gaumata; he deceived the people by saying that he was Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. Then the whole people rose in revolt, forsook Cambyses and went over to the pretender. After this Cambyses died from a wound inflicted by himself.

"After Gaumata had drawn away Persia, Media, and the other countries from Cambyses, he followed out his purpose: he became king. The people feared him on account of his cruelty: he would have killed the people so that no one might learn that he was not Smerdis, the son of Cyrus. Darius the king declares there was not a man in all Persia or in Media who dared to snatch the crown from this Gaumata, the magus. Then I presented myself, I prayed Ormuzd. Ormuzd accorded me his protection.... Accompanied by faithful men I killed this Gaumata and his principal accomplices. By the will of Ormuzd I became king. The empire which had been stolen from our race I restored to it. The altars that Gaumata, the magus, had thrown down I rebuilt to the deliverance of the people; I received the chants and the sacred ceremonials." Having overturned the usurper, Darius had to make war on many of the revolting princes, "I have," said he, "won nineteen battles and overcome nine kings."

The Persian Empire.—Darius then subjected the peoples in revolt and reestablished the empire of the Persians. He enlarged it also by conquering Thrace and a province of India. This empire reunited all the peoples of the Orient: Medes and Persians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Lydians, Egyptians, Indians; it covered all the lands from the Danube on the west to the Indus on the east, from the Caspian Sea on the north to the cataracts of the Nile on the south. It was the greatest empire up to this time. One tribe of mountaineers, the last to come, thus received the heritage of all the empires of Asia.

The Satrapies.—Oriental kings seldom concerned themselves with their subjects more than to draw money from them, levy soldiers, and collect presents; they never interfered in their local affairs. Darius, like the rest, left each of the peoples of his empire to administer itself according to its own taste, to keep its language, its religion, its laws, often its ancient princes. But he took care to regulate the taxes which his subjects paid him. He divided all the empire into twenty[34] districts called satrapies. There were in the same satrapy peoples who differed much in language, customs, and beliefs; but each satrapy was to pay a fixed annual tribute, partly in gold and silver, partly in natural products (wheat, horses, ivory). The satrap, or governor, had the tribute collected and sent it to the king.

Revenues of the Empire.—The total revenue of the king amounted to sixteen millions of dollars and this money was paid by weight. This sum was in addition to the tributes in kind. These sixteen millions of dollars, if we estimate them by the value of the metals at this time, would be equivalent to one hundred and twenty millions in our day. With this sum the king supported his satraps, his army, his domestic servants and an extravagant court; there still remained to him every year enormous ingots of metal which accumulated in his treasuries. The king of Persia, like all the Orientals, exercised his vanity in possessing an immense treasure.

The Great King.—No king had ever been so powerful and rich. The Greeks called the Persian king The Great King. Like all the monarchs of the East, the king had absolute sway over all his subjects, over the Persians as well as over tributary peoples. From Herodotus one can see how Cambyses treated the great lords at his court. "What do the Persians think of me?" said he one day to Prexaspes, whose son was his cupbearer. "Master, they load you with praises, but they believe that you have a little too strong desire for wine." "Learn," said Cambyses in anger, "whether the Persians speak the truth. If I strike in the middle of the heart of your son who is standing in the vestibule, that will show that the Persians do not know what they say." He drew his bow and struck the son of Prexaspes. The youth fell; Cambyses had the body opened to see where the shot had taken effect The arrow was found in the middle of the heart. The prince, full of joy said in derision to the father of the young man, "You see that it is the Persians who are out of their senses; tell me if you have seen anybody strike the mark with so great accuracy." "Master," replied Prexaspes, "I do not believe that even a god could shoot so surely."[35]

Services Rendered by the Persians.—The peoples of Asia have always paid tribute to conquerors and given allegiance to despots. The Persians, at least, rendered them a great service: in subjecting all these peoples to one master they prevented them from fighting among themselves. Under their domination we do not see a ceaseless burning of cities, devastation of fields, massacre or wholesale enslavement of inhabitants. It was a period of peace.

Susa and Persepolis.—The kings of the Medes and Persians, following the example of the lords of Assyria, had palaces built for them. Those best known to us are the palaces at Susa and Persepolis. The ruins of Susa have been excavated by a French engineer,[36] who has discovered sculptures, capitals, and friezes in enameled bricks which give evidence of an advanced stage of art. The palace of Persepolis has left ruins of considerable mass. The rock of the hill had been fashioned into an enormous platform on which the palace was built. The approach to it was by a gently rising staircase so broad that ten horsemen could ascend riding side by side.

Persian Architecture.—Persian architects had copied the palaces of the Assyrians. At Persepolis and Susa, as in Assyria, are flat-roofed edifices with terraces, gates guarded by monsters carved in stone, bas-reliefs and enameled bricks, representing hunting-scenes and ceremonies. At three points, however, the Persians improved on their models:

(1) They used marble instead of brick; (2) they made in the halls painted floors of wood; (3) they erected eight columns in the form of trunks of trees, the slenderest that we know, twelve times as high as they were thick.

Thus their architecture is more elegant and lighter than that of Assyria.

The Persians had made little progress in the arts. But they seem to have been the most honest, the sanest, and the bravest people of the time. For two centuries they exercised in Asia a sovereignty the least cruel and the least unjust that it had ever known.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] That is, of about the same area as that part of the United States east of the Mississippi, with Minnesota and Iowa. Modern Persia is not two-thirds of this area.—ED.

[29] Most historians place Zoroaster before 1000 B.C.—ED.

[30] "I created the dog," said Ormuzd, "with a delicate scent and strong teeth, attached to man, biting the enemy to protect the herds. Thieves and wolves come not near the sheep-fold when the dog is on guard, strong in voice and defending the flocks."

[31] Certain Persian heretics of our day, on the contrary, adore only the evil god, for, they say, the principle of the good being in itself good and indulgent does not require appeasing. They are called Yezidis (worshippers of the devil).

[32] Herod., i., 131.

[33] i., 138.

[34] Herodotus mentions 20, but we find as many as 31 enumerated in the inscriptions.

[35] Herod., iii., 34, 35. Compare also iii., 78, 79; and the book of Esther.

[36] M. Dieulafoi.



CHAPTER VII

THE PHOENICIANS

THE PHOENICIAN PEOPLE

The Land.—Phoenicia is the narrow strip of country one hundred and fifty miles long by twenty-four to thirty wide, shut in between the sea of Syria and the high range of Lebanon. It is a succession of narrow valleys and ravines confined by abrupt hills which descend towards the sea; little torrents formed by the snows or rain-storms course through these in the early spring; in summer no water remains except in wells and cisterns. The mountains in this quarter were always covered with trees; at the summit were the renowned cedars of Lebanon, on the ridges, pines and cypresses; while lower yet palms grew even to the sea-shore. In the valleys flourished the olive, the vine, the fig, and the pomegranate.

The Cities.—At intervals along the rocky coast promontories or islands formed natural harbors. On these the Phoenicians had founded their cities; Tyre and Arad were each built on a small island. The people housed themselves in dwellings six to eight stories in height. Fresh water was ferried over in ships. The other cities, Gebel, Beirut, and Sidon arose on the mainland. The soil was inadequate to support these swarms of men, and so the Phoenicians were before all else seamen and traders.

Phoenician Ruins.—Not a book of the Phoenicians has come down to us, not even their sacred book. The sites of their cities have been excavated. But, in the words of the scholar sent to do this work, "Ruins are not preserved, especially in countries where people are not occupied with them," and the Syrians are not much occupied with ruins. They have violated the tombs to remove the jewels of the dead, have demolished edifices to secure stone for building purposes, and Mussulman hatred of chiseled figures has shattered the sculptures.[37] Very little is found beyond broken marble, cisterns, wine-presses cut in the rock and some sarcophagi hewn in rock. All this debris gives us little information and we know very little more of the Phoenicians than Greek writers and Jewish prophets have taught us.

Political Organization of the Phoenicians.—The Phoenicians never built an empire. Each city had its little independent territory, its assemblies, its king, and its government. For general state business each city sent delegates to Tyre, which from the thirteenth century B.C. was the principal city of Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were not a military people, and so submitted themselves to all the conquerors—Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians. They fulfilled all their obligations to them in paying tribute.

Tyre.—From the thirteenth century Tyre was the most notable of the cities. Its island becoming too small to contain it, a new city was built on the coast opposite. Tyrian merchants had founded colonies in every part of the Mediterranean, receiving silver from the mines of Spain and commodities from the entire ancient world. The prophet Isaiah[38] calls these traders princes; Ezekiel[39] describes the caravans which came to them from all quarters. It is Hiram, a king of Tyre, from whom Solomon asked workmen to build his palace and temple at Jerusalem.

Carthage.—A colony of Tyre surpassed even her in power. In the ninth century some Tyrians, exiled by a revolution, founded on the shore of Africa near Tunis the city of Carthage. A woman led them, Elissar, whom we call Dido (the fugitive). The inhabitants of the country, says the legend, were willing to sell her only as much land as could be covered by a bull's hide; but she cut the hide in strips so narrow that it enclosed a wide territory; and there she constructed a citadel. Situated at the centre of the Mediterranean, provided with two harbors, Carthage flourished, sent out colonies in turn, made conquests, and at last came to reign over all the coasts of Africa, Spain, and Sardinia. Everywhere she had agencies for her commerce and subjects who paid her tribute.

The Carthaginian Army.—To protect her colonies from the natives, to hold her subjects in check who were always ready to revolt, a strong army was necessary. But the life of a Carthaginian was too valuable to risk it without necessity. Carthage preferred to pay mercenary soldiers, recruiting them among the barbarians of her empire and among the adventurers of all countries. Her army was a bizarre aggregation in which all languages were spoken, all religions practised, and in which every soldier wore different arms and costume. There were seen Numidians clothed in lion skins which served them as couch, mounted bareback on small fleet horses, and drawing the bow with horse at full gallop; Libyans with black skins, armed with pikes; Iberians from Spain in white garments adorned with red, armed with a long pointed sword; Gauls, naked to the girdle, bearing enormous shields and a rounded sword which they held in both hands; natives of the Balearic Islands, trained from infancy to sling with stones or balls of lead. The generals were Carthaginians; the government distrusted them, watched them closely, and when they were defeated, had them crucified.

The Carthaginians.—Carthage had two kings, but the senate was the real power, being composed of the richest merchants of the city. And so every state question for this government became a matter of commerce. The Carthaginians were hated by all other peoples, who found them cruel, greedy, and faithless. And yet, since they had a good fleet, had money to purchase soldiers, and possessed an energetic government, they succeeded in the midst of barbarous and divided peoples in maintaining their empire over the western Mediterranean for 300 years (from the sixth to the third century B.C.).

The Phoenician Religion.—The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians had a religion similar to that of the Chaldeans. The male god, Baal, is a sun-god; for the sun and the moon are in the eyes of the Phoenicians the great forces which create and which destroy. Each of the cities of Phoenicia has therefore its divine pair: at Sidon it is Baal Sidon (the sun) and Astoreth (the moon); at Gebel, Baal Tammouz and Baaleth; at Carthage, Baal-Hamon, and Tanith. But the same god changes his name according as he is conceived as creator or destroyer; thus Baal as destroyer is worshipped at Carthage under the name of Moloch. These gods, represented by idols, have their temples, altars, and priests. As creators they are honored with orgies, with tumultuous feasts; as destroyers, by human victims. Astoreth, the great goddess of Sidon, whom they represented by the crescent of the moon and the dove, had her cult in the sacred woods. Baal Moloch is figured at Carthage as a bronze colossus with arms extended and lowered. When they wished to appease him they laid children in his hands who fell at once into a pit of fire. During the siege of Carthage by Agathocles the principal men of the city sacrificed to Moloch as many as two hundred of their children.

This sensual and sanguinary religion inspired other peoples with horror, but they imitated it. The Jews sacrificed to Baal on the mountains; the Greeks adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of Aphrodite, and Baal Melkhart of Tyre under the name of Herakles.

PHOENICIAN COMMERCE

Phoenicians Occupations.—Crowded into a small territory, the Phoenicians gained their livelihood mainly from commerce. None of the other peoples of the East—the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, nor the barbarian tribes of the West (Spaniards, Gauls, Italians) had a navy. The Phoenicians alone in this time dared to navigate. They were the commission merchants of the old world; they went to every people to buy their merchandise and sold them in exchange the commodities of other countries. This traffic was by caravan with the East, by sea with the West.

Caravans.—On land the Phoenicians sent caravans in three directions:

1.—Towards Arabia, from which they brought gold, agate, and onyx, incense and myrrh, and the perfumes of Arabia; pearls, spices, ivory, ebony, ostrich plumes and apes from India.

2.—Towards Assyria, whence came cotton and linen cloths, asphalt, precious stones, perfumery, and silk from China.

3.—Towards the Black Sea, where they went to receive horses, slaves, and copper vases made by the mountaineers of the Caucasus.

Marine Commerce.—For their sea commerce they built ships from the cedars of Lebanon to be propelled by oars and sails. In their sailing it was not necessary to remain always in sight of the coast, for they knew how to direct their course by the polar star. Bold mariners, they pushed in their little boats to the mouth of the Mediterranean; they ventured even to pass through the strait of Gibraltar or, as the ancients called it, the Pillars of Hercules, and took the ocean course to the shores of England, and perhaps to Norway, Phoenicians in the service of a king of Egypt started in the seventh century B.C. to circumnavigate Africa, and returned, it is said, at the end of three years by the Red Sea. An expedition issuing from Carthage skirted the coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea; the commander Hanno wrote an account of the voyage which is still preserved.

Commodities.—To civilized peoples the Phoenicians sold the products of their industry. In barbarous countries they went to search for what they could not find in the Orient. On the coast of Greece they gathered shell-fish from which they extracted a red tint, the purple; cloths colored with purple were used among all the peoples of ancient times for garments of kings and great lords.

From Spain and Sardinia they brought the silver which the inhabitants took from the mines. Tin was necessary to make bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, but the Orient did not furnish this, and so they sought it even on the coasts of England, in the Isles of Tin (the Cassiterides). In every country they procured slaves. Sometimes they bought them, as lately the slavers bought negroes on the coast of Africa, for all the peoples of this time made commerce in slaves; sometimes they swooped down on a coast, threw themselves on the women and children and carried them off to be retained in their own cities or to be sold abroad; for on occasion they were pirates and did not scruple to plunder strangers.

The Secrets Kept by the Phoenicians.—The Phoenicians did not care to have mariners of other peoples come into competition with them. On the return from these far countries they concealed the road which they had travelled. No one in antiquity knew where were the famous Isles of the Cassiterides from which they got their tin. It was by chance that a Greek ship discovered Spain, with which the Phoenicians had traded for centuries. Carthage drowned the foreign merchants whom they found in Sardinia or on the shore of Gibraltar. Once a Carthaginian merchantman, seeing a strange ship following it, was run aground by the pilot that the foreigner might not see where he was going.

Colonies.—In the countries where they traded, the Phoenicians founded factories, or branch-houses. They were fortified posts on a natural harbor. There they landed their merchandise, ordinarily cloths, pottery, ornaments, and idols.[40] The natives brought down their commodities and an exchange was made, just as now European merchants do with the negroes of Africa. There were Phoenician markets in Cyprus, in Egypt, and in all the then barbarous countries of the Mediterranean—in Crete, Greece, Sicily, Africa, Malta, Sardinia, on the coasts of Spain at Malaga and Cadiz, and perhaps in Gaul at Monaco. Often around these Phoenician buildings the natives set up their cabins and the mart became a city. The inhabitants adopted the Phoenician gods, and even after the city had become Greek, the cult of the dove-goddess was found there (as in Cythera), that of the god Melkhart (as at Corinth), or of the god with the bull-face that devours human victims (as in Crete).

Influence of the Phoenicians.—It is certain that the Phoenicians in founding their trading stations cared only for their own interest. But it came to pass that their colonies contributed to civilization. The barbarians of the West received the cloths, the jewels, the utensils of the peoples of the East who were more civilized, and, receiving them, learned to imitate them. For a long time the Greeks had only vases, jewels, and idols brought by the Phoenicians, and these served them as models. The Phoenicians brought simultaneously from Egypt and from Assyria industry and commodities.

The Alphabet.—At the same time they exported their alphabet. The Phoenicians did not invent writing. The Egyptians knew how to write many centuries before them, they even made use of letters each of which expressed its own sound, as in our alphabet. But their alphabet was still encumbered with ancient signs which represented, some a syllable, others an entire word. Doubtless the Phoenicians had need of a simpler system for their books of commerce. They rejected all the syllabic signs and ideographs, preserving only twenty-two letters, each of which marks a sound (or rather an articulation of the language). The other peoples imitated this alphabet of twenty-two letters. Some, like the Jews, wrote from right to left just as the Phoenicians themselves did; others, like the Greeks, from left to right. All have slightly changed the form of the letters, but the Phoenician alphabet is found at the basis of all the alphabets—Hebrew, Lycian, Greek, Italian, Etruscan, Iberian, perhaps even in the runes of the Norse. It is the Phoenicians that taught the world how to write.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Renan ("Mission de Phenicio," p. 818) says, "I noticed at Tripolis a sarcophagus serving as a public fountain and the sculptured face of it was turned to the wall. I was told that a governor had placed it thus so as not to provide distractions for the inhabitants."

[38] See ch. xxiii.

[39] See chs. xxvi., xxvii., xxviii.

[40] These idols, one of their principal exports, are found wherever the Phoenicians traded.



CHAPTER VIII

THE HEBREWS

ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW PEOPLE

The Bible.—The Jews united all their sacred books into a single aggregation which we call by a Greek name the Bible, that is to say, the Book. It is the Book par excellence. The sacred book of the Jews became also the sacred book of the Christians. The Bible is at the same time the history of the Jewish nation, and all that we know of the sacred people we owe to the sacred books.

The Hebrews.—When the Semites had descended from the mountains of Armenia into the plains of the Euphrates, one of their tribes, at the time of the first Chaldean empire, withdrew to the west, crossed the Euphrates, the desert, and Syria and came to the country of the Jordan beyond Phoenicia. This tribe was called the Hebrews, that is to say, the people from beyond the river. Like the majority of the Semites they were a race of nomadic shepherds. They did not till the soil and had no houses; they moved from place to place with their herds of cattle, sheep, and camels, seeking pasturage and living in tents as the Arabs of the desert do to this day. In the book of Genesis one has a glimpse of this nomad life.

The Patriarchs.—The tribe was like a great family; it was composed of the chief, his wives, his children, and his servants. The chief had absolute authority over all; for the tribe he was father, priest, judge, and king. We call these tribal chiefs patriarchs. The principal ones were Abraham and Jacob; the former the father of the Hebrews, the latter of the Israelites. The Bible represents both of them as designed by God to be the scions of a sacred people. Abraham made a covenant with God that he and his descendants would obey him; God promised to Abraham a posterity more numerous than the stars of heaven. Jacob received from God the assurance that a great nation should issue from himself.

The Israelites.—Moved by a vision Jacob took the name of Israel (contender with God). His tribe was called Beni-Israel (sons of Israel) or Israelites. The Bible records that, driven by famine, Jacob abandoned the Jordan country to settle with all his house on the eastern frontier of Egypt, to which Joseph, one of his sons who had become minister of a Pharaoh, invited him. There the sons of Israel abode for several centuries. Coming hither but seventy in number, they multiplied, according to the Bible, until they became six hundred thousand men, without counting women and children.

The Call of Moses.—The king of Egypt began to oppress them, compelling them to make mortar and bricks for the construction of his strong cities. It was then that one of them, Moses, received from God the mission to deliver them. One day while he was keeping his herds on the mountain, an angel appeared to him in the midst of a burning bush, and he heard these words: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, I have heard their cry against their oppressors, I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites.... Come now therefore and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."[41] The Israelites under the guidance of Moses fled from Egypt (the Exodus); they journeyed to the foot of Mount Sinai, where they received the law of God, and for an entire generation wandered in the deserts to the south of Syria.

Israel in the Desert.—Often the Israelites wished to turn back. "We remember," said they, "the fish which we ate in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, and onions. Let us appoint a chief who will lead us back to Egypt." Moses, however, held them to obedience. At last they reached the land promised by God to their race.

The Promised Land.—It was called the land of Canaan or Palestine; the Jews named it the land of Israel, later Judea. Christians have termed it the Holy Land. It is an arid country, burning with heat in the summer, but a country of mountains. The Bible describes it thus: "Jehovah thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey, wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it." The Israelites according to their estimate were then 601,700 men capable of bearing arms, divided among twelve tribes, ten descended from Jacob, two from Joseph; this enumeration does not include the Levites or priests to the number of 23,000. The land was occupied by several small peoples who were called Canaanites. The Israelites exterminated them and at last occupied their territory.

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL

One God.—The other ancient peoples adored many gods; the Israelites believed in but one God, immaterial, who made the world and governs it. "In the beginning," says the book of Genesis, "God created the heavens and the earth." He created plants and animals, he "created man in his own image." All men are the handiwork of God.

The People of God.—But among all mankind God has chosen the children of Israel to make of them "his people." He called Abraham and said to him, "I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after me ... to be a God unto thee and to thy seed." He appeared to Jacob: "I am God," said he to him, "the God of thy father; fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will make of thee there a great nation." When Moses asks his name, he replies, "Thou shalt say to the children of Israel, The Lord, the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you. This is my name forever."

The Covenant.—There is, then, a covenant between the Israelites and God. Jehovah (the Eternal) loves and protects the Israelites, they are "a holy nation," "his most precious jewel among all the nations." He promises to make them mighty and happy. In return, the Israelites swear to worship him, to serve him, to obey him in everything as a lawgiver, a judge, and a sovereign.

The Ten Commandments.—Jehovah, lawgiver of the Israelites, dictated his precepts to Moses on Mount Sinai amidst lightnings and thunderings. They were inscribed on two tables, the Tables of the Law, in these terms:

"Hear, O Israel, I am Jehovah, thy God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the land of bondage." (Then follow the ten commandments to be found in the twentieth chapter of the book of Exodus.)

The Law.—Beside the ten commandments, the Israelites are required to obey many other divine ordinances. These are all delivered to them in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and constitute the Law of Israel. The Law regulates the ceremonies of religion, establishes the feasts—including the Sabbath every seven days, the Passover in memory of the escape from Egypt, the week of harvest, the feast of Tabernacles during the vintage; it organizes marriage, the family, property, government, fixes the penalty of crimes, indicates even foods and remedies. It is a code at once religious, political, civil and penal. God the ruler of the Israelites has the right to regulate all the details of their lives.

Religion has made the Jewish People.—The Israelites did not receive with docility the government of God. Moses on his death-bed could say to the Levites in delivering to them the book of the law, "Take this book that it may be a witness against you, Israel, for I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck" (Deut. xxxi. 27). "During my life you have been rebellious against the Lord, and how much more after my death." During these centuries some of the Israelites, often the majority of the nation, had been idolaters. They became similar to the other Semites of Syria. Only the Israelites who remained faithful to God formed the Jewish people. It is the religion of Jehovah which has transformed an obscure tribe into the holy nation, a small nation, but one of the most significant in the history of the world.

THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL

The Judges.—Once established in Palestine the Hebrews remained divided for several centuries. "In those days," says the Bible, "there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Often the Israelites forgot Jehovah and served the gods of neighboring tribes. Then "the anger of the Lord was kindled against the Israelites, and he delivered them into the hands of their enemies." When they had repented and had humbled themselves, "the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them." "But it came to pass that at the death of the judge they corrupted themselves anew ... bowing themselves to other gods." These judges—Gideon, Jephthah, Samson—were warriors who came in the name of Jehovah to free the people. Then they fell at once into idolatry again and their servitude was repeated.

The Kings.—At last the Israelites were wearied and asked of Samuel, the high-priest, that he would give them a king. Samuel unwillingly placed Saul at their head. This king should have been the ready servant of the will of God; he dared to disobey him, upon which the high-priest said to him, "Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel." A war-chief, David, was set in his place. He defeated all the enemies of Israel, captured from them Mount Zion, and transferred his capital thither. This was Jerusalem.

Jerusalem.—Compared with Babylon or Thebes, Jerusalem was a poor capital. The Hebrews were not builders; their religion prevented them from raising temples; the houses of individuals were shaped like cubes of rock which may be seen today on the sides of Lebanon in the midst of vines and fig-trees. But Jerusalem was the holy city of the Hebrews. The king had his palace there—the palace of Solomon, who astonished the Hebrews with his throne of ivory; Jehovah had his temple there, the first Hebrew temple.

The Tabernacle.—The emblem of the covenant between God and Israel was a great chest of cedar-wood furnished with rings of gold, which contained the tables of the Law. This was borne before the people on high feast-days; it was the Ark of the Covenant. To preserve this ark and necessary objects of worship, Moses is said to have made the Tabernacle—a pavilion of wood covered with skins and hangings. It was a portable temple which the Hebrews carried with them until they could erect a true temple in the promised land.

The Temple.—The Temple of Jerusalem, built at last under Solomon, was divided into three parts:

1.—To the rear, the Holy of Holies, in which rested the ark of the covenant; the high-priest only had the right to enter here, and that but once a year.

2.—In the middle, the Holy Place, in which were kept the altar of incense, the candle-stick with the seven arms, the table of shew-bread; the priests entered to burn incense and to present the offerings.

3.—At the front, the Court open to the people, where the victims were sacrificed on the great altar.

The Temple of Jerusalem was from the first the centre of the nation; from all Palestine the people came to be present at the ceremonies. The high-priest who directed the worship was a person sometimes of greater power than the king.

THE PROPHETS

Disasters of Israel.—Solomon was the last king who enjoyed great power. After him ten tribes separated themselves and constituted the kingdom of Israel, whose inhabitants worshipped the golden calves and the gods of the Phoenicians. Two tribes only remained faithful to Jehovah and to the king at Jerusalem; these formed the kingdom of Judah (977).[42] The two kingdoms exhausted their energies in making war on each other. Then came the armies of the Eastern conquerors; Israel was destroyed by Sargon, king of Assyria (722); Judah, by Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadrezzar), king of Chaldea (586).

Sentiments of the Israelites.—Faithful Israelites regarded these woes as a chastisement: God was punishing his people for their disobedience; as before, he delivered them from their conquerors. "The children of Israel had sinned against Jehovah, their God, they had built them high places in every city, they imitated the nations around them, although the Lord had forbidden them to do like them; they made them idols of brass; they bowed themselves before all the host of heaven [the stars], they worshipped Baal. It is for this that Jehovah rejected all the race of Israel, he afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of those that plundered them."

The Prophets.—Then appeared the prophets, or as they were called, the Seers: Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. Usually they came from the desert where they had fasted, prayed, and given themselves to meditation. They came in the name of Jehovah, not as warriors in judgment, but as preachers. They called the Israelites to repent, to overthrow their idols, to return to Jehovah; they foretold all the woes that would come upon them if they did not reconcile themselves to him. They preached and uttered prophecies at the same time.

The New Teaching.—These men on fire with the divine spirit found the official religion at Jerusalem mean and cold. Why should they, like the idolaters, slaughter cattle and burn incense to the honor of God? "Hear the word of Jehovah," says Isaiah: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and of the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.... Bring no more vain oblations, your incense is an abomination to me.... When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you ... for your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean ... cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.... Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." In place of sacrifices, the prophets would set justice and good works.

The Messiah.—Israel deserved its afflictions, but there would be a limit to the chastisement. "O my people," says Isaiah in the name of Jehovah, "be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod ... after the manner of Egypt ... for yet a very little while and the indignation shall cease ... and the burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder." The prophets taught the people to look for the coming of Him who should deliver them; they prepared the way for the Messiah.

THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Return to Jerusalem.—The children of Judah, removed to the plain of the Euphrates, did not forget their country, but sang of it in their chants: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof, for there they that carried us away required a song ... saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.' How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" After seventy years of captivity, Cyrus, victor over Babylon, allowed the Israelites to return to Palestine. They rebuilt Jerusalem, reconstructed the temple, restored the feasts, and recovered the sacred books. As a sign that they were again the people of Jehovah they renewed the covenant with him; it was a formal treaty, written and signed by the chiefs of the people.

The Jews.—The little kingdom of Jerusalem maintained itself for seven centuries, governed now by a king, now by the high-priest, but always paying tribute to the masters of Syria—to the Persians first, later to the Macedonians and the Syrians, and last of all to the Romans. Faithful to the end to Jehovah, the Jews (their proper name since the return) continued to live the law of Moses, to celebrate at Jerusalem the feasts and the sacrifices. The high-priest, assisted by a council of the elders, preserved the law; scribes copied it and doctors expounded it to the people. The faithful obliged themselves to observe it in the smallest details. The Pharisees were eminent among them for their zeal in fulfilling all its requirements.

The Synagogues.—Meanwhile the Jews for the sake of trade were pushing beyond the borders of Judaea into Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and even to Italy. Some of them were to be found in all the great cities—Alexandria, Damascus, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth and Rome. Dispersed among the Gentiles, the Jews were strenuous to preserve their religion. They raised no temples, for the law prevented this; there could be but one Jewish temple, that at Jerusalem, where they celebrated the solemn feasts. But they joined themselves together to read and comment on the word of God. These places of assembling were called Synagogues, from a Greek word signifying meetings.

Destruction of the Temple.—The Christ appeared at this moment. The Jews crucified him and persecuted his disciples not only in Judaea but in every city where they found them in any number. In the year 70 A.D. Jerusalem, in revolt against the Romans, was taken by assault, and all the inhabitants were massacred or sold into slavery. The Romans burnt the temple and carried away the sacred utensils. From that time there was no longer a centre of the Jewish religion.

Fortunes of the Jews after the Dispersion.—The Jewish nation survived the ruin of its capital. The Jews, scattered throughout the world, learned to dispense with the temple. They preserved their sacred books in the Hebrew tongue. Hebrew is the primitive language of Israel; the Jews since the return from Babylon no longer spoke it, but adopted the languages of the neighboring peoples—the Syriac, the Chaldean, and especially the Greek. The Rabbis, however, instructed in the religion, still learned the Hebrew, explained it, and commented on the Scripture.[43] Thus the Jewish religion was preserved, and, thanks to it, the Jewish people. It made converts even among the Gentiles; there were in the empire proselytes, that is, people who practised the religion of Jehovah without being of the Jewish race.

The Christian Church, powerful since the fourth century, commenced to persecute the Jews. This persecution has endured to this day in all Christian countries. Usually the Jews were tolerated on account of their wealth and because they transacted all banking operations; but they were kept apart, not being permitted to hold any office. In the majority of cities they were compelled to wear a special costume, to live in a special quarter,[44] gloomy, filthy, unhealthy, and sometimes at Easter time to send one of their number to suffer insult. The people suspected them of poisoning fountains, of killing children, of profaning the consecrated host; often the people rose against them, massacred them, and pillaged their houses. Judges under the least pretext had them imprisoned, tortured, and burned. Sometimes the church tried to convert them by force; sometimes the government exiled them en masse from the country and confiscated their goods. The Jews at last disappeared from France,[45] from Spain, England, and Italy. In Portugal, Germany, and Poland, and in the Mohammedan lands they maintained themselves. From these countries after the cessation of persecution they returned to the rest of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] Exodus iii, 1-10.

[42] There is much uncertainty regarding the chronology of this period.—ED.

[43] The Talmud is the accumulation of these commentaries.

[44] The Jewish Quarter at Rome was called the Ghetto. This name has since been applied to all Jewish quarters.

[45] Except at Avignon, on the domains of the Pope, and in Alsace-Lorraine.



CHAPTER IX

GREECE AND THE GREEKS

The Country.—Greece is a very little country (about 20,000 square miles), hardly larger than Switzerland; but it is a country of great variety, bristling with mountains, indented with gulfs—a country originally constituted to influence mightily the character of the men who inhabited it.

A central chain, the Pindus, traverses Greece through the centre and covers it with its rocky system. Toward the isthmus of Corinth it becomes lower; but the Peloponnesus, on the other side of the isthmus, is elevated about 2,000 feet above the sea level, like a citadel crowned with lofty chains, abrupt and snowy, which fall perpendicularly into the sea. The islands themselves scattered along the coast are only submerged mountains whose summits rise above the surface of the sea. In this diverse land there is little tillable ground, but almost everywhere bare rock. The streams, like brooks, leave between their half-dried channel and the sterile rock of the mountain only a narrow strip of fertile soil. In this beautiful country are found some forests, cypresses, laurels, palms, here and there vines scattered on the rocky hillsides; but there are no rich harvests and no green pasturages. Such a country produces wiry mountaineers, active and sober.

The Sea.—Greece is a land of shores: smaller than Portugal, it has as great a coast-line as Spain. The sea penetrates it to a great number of gulfs, coves, and indentations; it is ordinarily surrounded with projecting rocks, or with approaching islands that form a natural port. This sea is like a lake; it has not, like the ocean, a pale and sombre color; usually it is calm, lustrous, and, as Homer says, "of the color of violets."

No sea lends itself better to navigation with small ships. Every morning the north wind rises to conduct the barques of Athens to Asia; in the evening the south wind brings them back to port. From Greece to Asia Minor the islands are placed like stepping-stones; on a clear day the mariner always has land in view. Such a sea beckons people to cross it.

And so the Greeks have been sailors, traders, travellers, pirates, and adventurers; like the Phoenicians, they have spread over all the ancient world, carrying with them the merchandise and the inventions of Egypt, of Chaldea, and of Asia.

The Climate.—The climate of Greece is mild. In Athens it freezes hardly once in twenty years; in summer the heat is moderated by the breeze from the sea.[46] Today the people still lie in the streets from the month of May to September. The air is cool and transparent; for many leagues could once be seen the crest of the statue of Pallas. The contours of distant mountains are not, as with us, enveloped in haze, but show a clear line against the clear sky. It is a beautiful country which urges man to take life as a feast, for everything is happy about him. "Walking at night in the gardens, listening to the grasshoppers, playing the lute in the clear of the moon, going to drink at the spring at the mountain, carrying with him some wine that he may drink while he sings, spending the days in dancing—these are Greek pleasures, the joys of a race poor, economical, and eternally young."

Simplicity of Greek Life.—In this country men are not melted with the heat nor stiffened with cold; they live in the open air gay and at slight expense. Food in great quantity is not required, nor warm clothing, nor a comfortable house. The Greek could live on a handful of olives and a sardine. His entire clothing consisted of sandals, a tunic, a large mantle; very often he went bare-footed and bare-headed. His house was a meagre and unsubstantial building; the air easily entered through the walls. A couch with some coverings, a coffer, some beautiful vases, a lamp,—this was his furniture. The walls were bare and whitened with lime. This house was only a sleeping place.

THE PEOPLE

Origin of the Greeks.—The people who inhabited this charming little land were an Aryan people, related to the Hindoos and the Persians, and like them come from the mountains of Asia or the steppes beyond the Caspian Sea. The Greeks had forgotten the long journey made by their ancestors; they said that they, like the grasshoppers, were the children of the soil.[47] But their language and the names of their gods leave no doubt of their origin.... Like all the Aryans, the primitive Greeks nourished themselves with milk and with the flesh of their herds; they moved about under arms, always ready to fight, and grouped themselves in tribes governed by patriarchs.

The Legends.—The Greeks like all the other ancient peoples were ignorant of their origin. They neither knew whence their ancestors had come nor when they had established themselves in Greece, nor what they had done there. To preserve the exact memory of things as they occur, there is need of some means of fixing them; but the Greeks did not know how to write; they did not employ writing until about the eighth century B.C. They had no way of calculating the number of years. Later they adopted the usage of counting the years according to the great feast which was celebrated every four years at Olympia; a period of four years was called an olympiad. But the first olympiad was placed in 776 B.C., and the chronology of the Greeks does not rise beyond this date.

And yet they used to tell in Greece a great number of legends about this primitive period. These were especially the exploits of ancient kings and of heroes who were adored as demi-gods. These stories were so mingled with fable that it is impossible to know how much truth they may contain. They said at Athens that the first king, Cecrops, was half man and half serpent; at Thebes, that Cadmus, founder of the city, had come from Phoenicia to seek his sister Europa who had been stolen by a bull; that he had killed a dragon and had sowed his teeth, from which was sprung a race of warriors, and that the noble families of Thebes descended from these warriors. At Argos it was said that the royal family was the issue of Pelops to whom Zeus had given a shoulder of ivory to replace the one devoured by a goddess. Thus each country had its legends and the Greeks continued to the end to relate them and to offer worship to their ancient heroes—Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles, Theseus, Minos, Castor and Pollux, Meleager, OEdipus. The majority of the Greeks, even among the better educated, admitted, at least in part, the truth of these traditions. They accepted as historical facts the war between the two sons of OEdipus, king of Thebes, and the expedition of the Argonauts, sailing forth in quest of the Golden Fleece, which was guarded by two brazen-footed bulls vomiting flames.

The Trojan War.—Of all these legends the most fully developed and the most celebrated was the legend of the Trojan War. It recounted that about the twelfth century, Troy, a rich and powerful city, held sway over the coast of Asia. Paris, a Trojan prince, having come to Greece, had abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Agamemnon, king of Argos, made a league of the kings of Greece; a Greek army went in a fleet of two hundred galleys to besiege Troy. The siege endured ten years because the supreme god, Zeus, had taken the side of the Trojans. All the Greek chiefs participated in this adventure. Achilles, the bravest and the most beautiful of these, killed Hector, the principal defender of Troy, and dragged his corpse around the city; he fought clad in divine armor which had been presented him by his mother, a goddess of the sea; in turn he died, shot by an arrow in the heel. The Greeks, despairing of taking the city by force, employed a trick: they pretended to depart, and left an immense horse of wood in which were concealed the chiefs of the army. The Trojans drew this horse into the city; during the night the chiefs came forth and opened the city to the Greeks. Troy was burnt, the men slaughtered, the women led away as slaves. But the chiefs of the Greeks on their return were beset by tempest. Some perished in the sea, others were cast on foreign shores. Odysseus, the most crafty of the chiefs, was for ten years buffeted from one land to another, losing successively all his ships, himself the sole survivor of the disasters.

All antiquity had steadfast faith in the Trojan War. 1184 B.C. was set as the date of the ending of the siege, and men pointed out the site of the city. In 1874 Schliemann purposed to excavate this site; it was necessary to traverse the debris of many cities which lay over it; at last at a depth of about fifty feet he found in the deepest bed of debris the traces of a mighty city reduced to ashes, and in the ruins of the principal edifice a casket filled with gems of gold which he called the Treasury of Priam. There was no inscription, and the city, the whole wall of which we have been able to bring to light, was a very small one. A large number of small, very rude idols have been found, which represent an owl-headed goddess (the Greeks thus represented the goddess Pallas). Beyond this no proof has been found that this city was called Troy.

The Homeric Poems.—It is the two poems attributed to Homer which have made the taking of Troy renowned throughout the world—the Iliad, which related the combats of the Greeks and the exploits of Achilles before Troy; and the Odyssey, which recounts the adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses) after the capture of Troy.

These two poems were handed down for centuries without being committed to writing; the rhapsodists, wandering singers, knew long passages from them by heart and recited them at feasts. It is not till the sixth century that Pisistratus, a prince of Athens, had them collected and edited.[48] The two poems became from that time and always remained the most admired works of Greek literature.

The Greeks said that the author of these poems was Homer, a Greek of Ionia, who lived about the tenth or the ninth century B.C. They represented him as a blind old man, poor and a wanderer. Seven towns disputed the honor of being his birth-place. This tradition was received without hesitation. But at the end of the eighteenth century a German scholar, Wolf, noticed certain contradictions in these poems, and at last asserted that they were not the work of a single poet, but a collection of fragments from several different poets. This theory has been attacked and supported with great energy: for a half century men have flown into a passion for or against the existence of Homer. Today we begin to think the problem insoluble. What is certain is that these poems are very old, probably of the ninth century. The Iliad was composed in Asia Minor and is perhaps the result of the union of two poems—one dedicated to the combats of the Trojans, and the other to the adventures of Achilles. The Odyssey appears to be the work of one author; but it cannot be affirmed that it is of the same author as the Iliad.

The Greeks at the Time of Homer.—We are not able to go back very far in the history of the Greeks; the Homeric poems are their oldest historical document. When these were composed, about the ninth century B.C., there was not yet any general name to designate all the inhabitants of Greece: Homer mentions them under the names of their principal tribes. From his description it appears that they have made some progress since their departure from Asia. They know how to till the ground, how to construct strong cities and to organize themselves into little peoples. They obey kings; they have a council of old men and an assembly of the people. They are proud of their institutions, they despise their less advanced neighbors, the Barbarians, as they call them. Odysseus, to show how rude the Cyclops were, says, "They have no rules of justice nor places where they deliberate; each one governs himself, his wife, and children, and has no association with others." But these Greeks themselves are half barbarians; they do not know how to write, to coin money, nor the art of working in iron. They hardly dare to trust themselves on the sea and they imagine that Sicily is peopled with monsters.

The Dorians.—Dorians was the name given to those sons of the mountaineers who had come from the north and had expelled or subjected those dwelling in the plains and on the shore of the Peloponnesus; the latter, crowded into too narrow limits, sent colonies into Asia. Of these mountain bands the most renowned came from a little canton called Doris and preserved the name Dorians. These invaders told how certain kings of Sparta, the posterity of Herakles, having been thrust out by their subjects, had come to seek the Dorians in their mountains. These people of the mountains, moved by their love for Herakles, had followed his descendants and had replaced them on their throne. By the same stroke they dispossessed the inhabitants and took their place. They were a martial, robust, and healthy race, accustomed to cold, to meagre food, to a scant existence. Men and women wore a short tunic which did not reach to the knee. They spoke a rude and primitive dialect. The Dorians were a race of soldiers, always obliged to keep themselves under arms; they were the least cultivated in Greece, since, situated far from the sea, they preserved the customs of the barbarous age; they were the most Greek because, being isolated, they could neither mingle with strangers nor imitate their manners.

The Ionians.—The peoples of Attica, the isles, and the coast of Asia were called Ionians; no one knows the origin of the name. Unlike the Dorians, they were a race of sailors or traders, the most cultured of Greece, gaining instruction from contact with the most civilized peoples of the Orient; the least Greek, because they associated with Asiatics and had in part adopted their dress. They were peaceful and industrious, living luxuriously, speaking a smooth dialect, and wearing long flowing garments like the Orientals.

The Hellenes.—Dorians and Ionians—these are the two opposing races, the most remarkable of Greece, and the most powerful: Sparta is Dorian, Athens is Ionian. But the majority of the Greeks are neither Dorians nor Ionians: they are called AEolians, a vague name which covers very different peoples.

All the Greeks from early times take the name "Hellenes" which they have kept to this day. What is the origin of the term? They did not know any more than we: they said only that Dorus and AEolus were sons of Hellen, and Ion was his grandson.

Cities.—The Hellenes were still in little peoples as at the time of Homer. The land of Greece, cut by mountains and sea, breaks naturally into a large number of small cantons, each isolated from its neighbor by an arm of the sea or by a wall of rocks, so that it is easy to defend the land and difficult to communicate with other parts. Each canton constituted a separate state which was called a city. There were more than a hundred of these; counting the colonies, more than a thousand. To us a Greek state seems a miniature. The whole of Attica was but little larger than the state of Delaware, and Corinth or Megara was much smaller. Usually the state was only a city with a strip of shore and a harbor, or some villages scattered in the plain around a citadel. From one state one sees the citadel, mountains, or harbor of the next state. Many of them count their citizens only by thousands; the largest included hardly 200,000 or 300,000.

The Hellenes never formed one nation; they never ceased to fight and destroy one another. And yet all spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, and lived the same sort of a life. In these respects they recognized the bonds of a common race and distinguished themselves from all other peoples whom they called barbarians and regarded with disdain.