;

■

.

.

(fcs_Jl2J3 Book J

a

i a

THE

AMERICAS ENCYCLOPEDIA

OF

6°/'

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL,

COMPRISING

ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY:

THE

BIOGRAPHY OF EMINENT MEN

OF EUROPE AND AMERICA,

LIVES OF DISTINGUISHED TRAVELERS.

Illustrated with over 100 Engravings.

BY THOMAS H. PRESCOTT, A. M.

Wi'fCiam O. Jz

COLUMBUS:

PUBLISHED AND SOLD EXCLUSIVELY BY S UB S OR I PT ION ,

BY J & H. MILLER. 1857.

31 v&

.B5

int. r.-.l According I I -■ ;,i tbc v' ;ir I856,l>y the

OHIO STATE JOURNAL COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of Ihfl District Court «>f the I'nii for the Southern

Dittriet of Ohio.

I'kiMLn m OSQOOD AXB lVu.i>

n..i si) n H. 0 Bxhicsi

COI.' '10.

P Tt K F A C E.

0ns of the most useful directions fur facilitating the study of history, is to begin with authors who present a compendium, or genera] view of the whole Bubjed of history, and, afterward apply i" the study of any particular history with w hi. h a more thorough acquaintance Lb desired. The Historical Department of this work has been compiled with a view to furnishing Buch a compendium. It covers the whole ground of Ancient History, including China, India. Egypt, Arabia, Syria, the Phoenicians, Jew-. Assyrians, Babylonians, Lydiai a, M dee and Persians, together with G ind Rome, down through the dark

to the dawn of modern civilization. It also eml the his-

tory of the leading nations of modern BSurope, and of the United States of America.

Wisdom is the great end of history. It is designed to supply the w;int of experience; and though it does not enforce it.- in- structions with the same authority, yet it furnishes g iter variety of lessons than it is possible for experience to afford in the longest life. Its object is to enlarge our views of the human character, and to enable us to form a more correct judgment of human afl'airs. It must not) therefore, be a tale, calculated merely to please and addressed to the fancy. Gravity and dig- nity are essential characteristics of history. Robertson and Bancroft may be named as model historians in these particulars. No light ornaments should be employed — no flippancy of style, and no quaintness of wit; but the writer should sustain the

PREFACE.

character of a wise man, writing for the instruction of posterity; one who has studied to inform himself well, who has pondered his subject with care, and addresses himself to our judgment rather than to our imagination. At the same time, historical writing is by no means inconsistent with ornamented and spir- ited narration, as witness Macaulay's popular History of Eng- land. On the contrary, it admits of much high ornament and elegance ; but the ornaments must be consistent with dignity. Industry is, also, a very essential quality in an accurate his torian.

As history is conversant with great and memorable actions, a historian should always keep posterity in view, and relate nothing but what may be of some account to future ages. Those who descend to trivial matters, beneath the dignity of his- tory, should be deemed journalists rather than historians. As it is the province of a historian to acquaint us with facts, he should give a narration or description not only of the facts, or actions themselves, but likewise of such things as are necessarily con- nected with them ; such as the characters of persons, the cir- cumstances of time and place, the views and designs of the principal actors, and the issue and event of the actions which he describes. The drawing of characters is one of the most splen- did, as it is one of the most difficult, ornaments of historical com- position ; for characters are generally considered as professed exhibitions of fine writing ; and a historian who seeks to shine in them, is often in danger of carrying refinement to excess, from a desire of appearing very profound and penetrating. Among the improvements that have of late years been intro- duced into historical composition, is the attention that is now given to laws, customs, commerce, religion, literature, and every thing else that tends to exhibit the genius and spirit of nations. Historians are now expected to exhibit manners, as well as facts and events. Voltaire was the first to introduce this improvement, and Allison, Macaulay, and others, have adopted it.

The first and lowest use of history is, that it agreeably amuses

PREFACE.

the imagination, and interests the passions ; and in this view of it, it far surpasses all works of fiction, which require a variety of embellishments to excite and interest the passions, while the mere thought that we are listening to the voice of truth, serves to keep the attention awake through many dry and ill-digested narrations of facts. The next and higher use of history is, to improve the understanding and strengthen the judgment, and thus to fit us for entering upon the duties of life with advan- tage. It presents us with the same objects which occur to us in the business of life, and affords similar exercise to our thoughts ; so that it may be called anticipated experience. It is, therefore, of great importance, not only to the advance- ment of political knowledge, but to that of knowledge in gen- eral ; because the most exalted understanding is merely a power of drawing conclusions and forming maxims of conduct from known facts and experiments, of which necessary materials of knowledge the mind itself is wholly barren, and with which it must be furnished by experience. By improving the understand- ing history frees the mind from many foolish prejudices that tend to mislead it. Such are those prejudices of a national kind, that have induced an unreasonable partiality for our own country, merely as our own country, and as unreasonable a repugnance to foreign nations and foreign religions, which nothing but en- larged views resulting from history can cure. It likewise tends to remove those prejudices that may have been entertained in favor of ancient or modern times, by giving a just view of the advantages and disadvantages of mankind in all ages. To a citizen of the United States, one of the great advantages result- ing from the study of history is, that so far from producing an indifference to his own country, it disposes him to be satis- fied with his own situation, and renders him, from rational convic- tion, and not from blind prejudice, a more zealous friend to the interests of his country, and to its free institutions. It is from history, chiefly, that improvements are made in the science of government ; and this science is one of primary importance.

Vi PREFACE.

Another advantage is, that it tends to strengthen sentiments of virtue, by displaying the motives and actions of truly great men, and those of a contrary character, — thus inspiring a taste for real greatness and solid glory.

The second department of our work has been devoted to Biography, — a species of history more entertaining, and in many respects equally useful, with general history. It represents great men more distinctly, unincumbered with a crowd of other actors, and, descending into the detail of their actions and char- acter, their virtues and failings, gives more insight into human nature, and leads to a more intimate acquaintance with particu- lar persons, than general history allows. A writer of biography may descend with propriety to minute circumstances and familiar incidents. He is expected to give the private as well as the public life of those whose actions he records ; and it is from pri- vate life, from familiar, domestic and seemingly trivial occur- rences, that we often derive the most accurate knowledge of the real character. To those who have exposed their lives, or em- ployed their time and labor, for the service of their fellow men, it seems but a just debt, that their memories should be perpetu- ated after them, and that posterity should be made acquainted with their benefactors. To a volume of biography may be applied the language of a pagan poet : —

"Here patriots live, who for their country's good, In fighting fields were prodigal of blood ; Priests of unblemished lives here make abode, And poets worthy their inspiring god ; And searching wits of more mechanic parts, Who graced their age with new invented arts ; Those who to worth their bounty did extend, And those who knew that bounty to commend : The heads of these with holy fillets bound, And all their temples are with garlands crowned."

In the lives of public persons, their public characters are prin- cipally, but not solely, to be regarded. The world is inquisitive to know the conduct of its great men as well in private as in public ; and both may be of service, considering the influence of

PREFACE. TU

their examples. In preparing this department of our work we have aimed to introduce variety, — selecting representative men from all the various pursuits of life.

The third department of our work has been designated as the Department of Travel. It embraces the principal voyages of discovery and the lives of great navigators and travelers, since the days of Columbus and Vasco de Gama. In the history of scientific expeditions, the five following divisions may be made :

1. The earliest age of the Phoenicians down to Herodotus, 500 years before Christ. The Phoenicians undertook the first voy- ages of discovery for commercial purposes, or to found colonies.

2. The travels of the Greeks and the military expeditions of the Romans, from 500 B. C. to 400 A. D. The Greeks made journeys to enlarge the territories of science. The armies of Rome, during this period, supplied an extensive knowledge of a part of Asia, Egypt, the northern part of Africa, and Europe to South Britain. 3. The expeditions of the Germans and Nor- mans until 900 A. D. The Normans discovered the Faroes, Ice- land and Greenland. 4. Besides the commercial and military voy- ages of the Arabs and Mongols, the travels of the Christian Mis- sionaries, and other Europeans, down to 1400, furnished much valuable information. 5. The fifth period, from the year 1400 to the present time, is the period particularly embraced in this work. During this time, North and South America, a portion of Asia, and the interior of Africa, have been explored, and the adventurous voyagers in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, have pushed their researches to within twelve degrees of the poles. Sir J. Ross reached the south latitude of 78 deg. 4 min. in the year 1841. Such are the results of the labors of four centuries. The knowledge has been slowly gathered, but it will remain a lasting testimony to the triumphs of intellect. It is but re- cently that human enterprise has penetrated many of the secrets of the Antarctic regions, — that realm of mighty contrasts, — and it will doubtless pursue the investigation. ' Meantime the wintry solitudes of the far south will be undisturbed by the

vili PREFACE.

presence of man ; the penguin and the seal will still haunt the desolate shores ; the shriek of the petrel and the scream of the albatross will mingle with the dash and roar of continual storms, and the crash of wave-beaten ice ; the towering volcano will shoot aloft its columns of fire high into the gelid air ; the hills of snow and ice will grow and spread ; frost and flame will do their work ; till, in the wondrous cycle of terrestrial change, the polar lands shall again share in the abundance and beauty which now overspread the sun-gladdened zones.'

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

DEPARTMENT OP HISTORY.

ANCIENT HISTORY.

Ethiopian History 18—20

Mongolian History.— The Chinese 20—26

Caucasian History. — Ancient India— Eastern Nations — The Egyptians— Arabians— Syria— The Phoeni- cians— Palestine — The Jews— The Assyrians and Babylonians— The Medes and Persians— States of Asia Minor — The Lydians— The Persian Empire 26—53

Grecian History.— Early History and Mythology— Religious Rites— Authentic History— Sparta— Lycur- gus — Athens — Persian Invasion — Pericles — Alcibiades — Decline of Athenian Independence — Alexander the Great— Concluding Period 53 78

Roman History. — The Latins— The Kings— The Commonwealth— Struggle between the Patricians and Plebeians — Invasion of the Gauls— The Samnite Wars — The Punic Wars — The Revolutions of the Gracchi- Social Wars — Marius and Sulla — Pompey, Cicero, Cataline, Caesar — Gallic Wars — Extinction of the Common- wealth— Civil Wars — Augustus — Dissemination of Christianity — Division of the Empire — Downfall of the Western Empire 78 — 112

MIDDLE AGES. — The Eastern Empire — Constantine — Julian the Apostate — Theodosius the Great — Justinian ; his Code — Arabia— Mohammed — Empire of the Saracens — The Feudal System — Charlemagne — The New Western Empire — France — The German Empire — Italy — Spain — General state of Europe — The Crusades — Chivalry — Rise of new Powers — Wm. Tell — The Italian Republics — Commerce — The Turks — Fall of Constan- tinople— Rise of Civil Freedom 112 — 145

MODERN HISTORY.

Great Britain and Ireland.— Conquest by the Romans ; by the Saxons ; by the Normans— Early Norman Kings — William the Conqueror — nenry — Richard Cceur de Lion — John — Magna Charta — Origin of Parlia- ment— Edwards — Conquest of Scotland — Richard II — House of Lancaster — House of York — House of Tudor — Henry VIII — The Reformation — Edward VI — Queen Mary ; Elizabeth — Mary, Queen of Scots— The Stuarts — Gunpowder Plot — Revolution — Irish Rebellion — Oliver Cromwell — Trial and Execution of Charles I — The Commonwealth — Subjugation of Ireland and Scotland — The Protectorate — The Restoration — Charles II — Dutch War — Plague and Fire in London — The Rye House Plot — Death of Charles II — James IT — Expedition of Monmouth— Arbitrary Measures of the King — The Revolution — William and Mary — Establishment of the Bank of England — Queen Anne — Union of England and Scotland — Marlborough's Campaigns — House of Hanover — George I — Rebellion of 1715-16 — George II — Rebellion of 1745-46 — George III — American Stamp Act — American War of Independence — French Revolution — Rebellion in Ireland— Union with Great Britain — War with U. States — George IV — William IV — Queen Victoria — War with Russia — Alliance with France — Attack on Odessa — Operations in the Baltic — The Crimea — Battle of the Alma — Sebastopol described— Allies opening Trenches — Bombardment — Explosion of French Batteries and Russian Powder Magazine — The Allied Fleet — Cannonade — Battle of Balaklava — The Turks — The Highlanders — The Russian Cavalry — Capt. Nolan — Battle of Inkermann— Morning of the Battle — The Attack — The Zouaves— Chasseurs— Night after the Bat- tle— Council of War — Determination to Winter — Reinforcements demanded 145—256

History op France.— Clovis, A. D. 486 ; division of his Empire— The Merovingian Kings— The Carlovin- gians — Pepin — Charles Martel — Charlemagne ; his Empire — Louis — Division of the Empire — Charles — Arnulf — Charles the Simple — Invasion of the Normans — Hugh Capet and his Successors — Philip VI of Valois— Wars with England, 1328— 1415— Charles VI— Maid of Orleans— Louis XI— Francis II— France during the War of Religion — Persecution of the Huguenots — Coligni — The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1572— Henry III — Henry IV — Edict of Nantes — The Age of Louis XIV — Richelieu and Mazarin — Persecution of the Calvinists — Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 1685 — The Last Days of Absolute Monarchy — Louis XV — Louis XVI — The French Revolution National Assembly- Mirabeau, Dante, Marat, Robespierre — The 10th of August — De- thronement of the King — National Convention— Trial and Execution of the King — Jacobins and Girondists —

I CONTENTS.

history of france — Continued.

Exclusion of the Girondists from the Convention — Execution of the Queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the Dukt of Orleans— La Vendee— Fall of Danton and Camille Desmoulins— Overthrow of Robespierre and the Jaco- bins— Reconstruction of the Government— Napoleon Bonaparte — Italian Campaign — Expedition to Egypt and Syria— Return to France— The First Consulate— Consul for Life— Duke d' Enghein— Napoleon Emperor- Austrian Campaign — Russians — Battle of Austerlitz — Confederation of the Rhine — War with Prussia — Al liance of Prussia and Russia — Victory at Friedland— Peace of Tilsit— Occupation of Portugal— Spain— An- nexation of the Roman States and imprisonment of the Pope— New war with Austria — Peace of Vienna — Marriage with Maria Louisa — Russian Campaign — Conflagration of Moscow — Retreat of the French — Alliance of Russia, Prussia, etc.— Congress of Prague— Austria— Battle of Leipsic— Retreat of the French— Invasion of France by the Allies— Abdication of Napoleon— Louis XVIII— Escape of Napoleon from Elba— Defeat at Waterloo— Death at St. Helena— Louis XVLTI— Charles X— Abdication— Louis Philippe— Revolution— Louis

Napoleon— War with Russia and alliance with England and Turkey 256—302

History op Spain.— Gothic Monarchy— The Moors— Castile — Henry IV— Ferdinand and Isabella— Con- quest of Grenada— Christopher Columbus— Discovery of America— Charles V— Hernando Cortez— Conquest of Mexico— Francis Pizarro — Conquest of Peru — Ignatius Loyola — Philip II — War with England — Defeat of the Invincible Armada — Philip III — Banishment of the descendants of the Moors — Philip IV — Accession of the House of Bourbon— Charles III— The Seven Years' War— Charles IV— Ferdinand— Joseph Bonaparte- Alliance of the Spaniards and English— Return of Ferdinand— Isabella II 302 — 312

Germany and Austria. — Division of the Empire of Charlemagne, and formation of the German Empire- Succession of Henry the Fowler to the throne of Conrad of Franconia — The Germans build cities— Accession of Hildebrand— Pope Gregory III— His Excommunication of Henry IV — Strife of Guelphs and Ghibelines— Pope Adrian IV— Tancred — Richard III of England — The House of Hapsburg succeeds that of Swabia — Death of Albert — Charles IV issues the Golden Bull — Council of Constance — Martyrdom of John Huss and Jerome of Prague — Invention of Printing — Luther ; the Reformation — Thirty Years' War— Peace of West- phalia— Insurrection of Hungarians aided by Turks — The War of Succession — Prince Eugene — Maria The- resa— Pragmatic Sanction — Revolt of the Netherlands — Confederation of the Rhine — Congress of Vienna — Hungarian Revolution of 1848 312—326

History op Russia. — Russia rescued from the Tartars by John Basilowitz — Michael Theodorowitz, First of the House of Romanoff, Czar of Muscovy — Reorganization of Russia by Alexis — Reign of Peter the Great — Foundation and embellishment of St. Petersburg — Succession of the Czarina Catherine— Catherine II — An- nexation of the Crimea— Dismemberment of Poland — Kosciusko— Suwarrow — Resignation of Stanislaus — Paul — War against the French Republic — Assassination of Paul — Alexander — Coalition against Napoleon, by Austria and England— Peace of Tilsit— Napoleon declares war against Russia— Smolensko— Burning of Mos cow— Constantine— Nicholas— Extirpation of Poland— Siege of Sevastopol by France, England, and Turkey- Death of Nicholas — Succession of Alexander II 326 — 334

HD3TORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

I. Colonial History.— Discoveries of Cabot— The Huguenots— Sir Walter Raleigh— Champlain— Henry Hudson— Virginia— Jamestown— John Smith — Pocahontas— Indian War— Gov. Berkeley — Nathaniel Bacon —New England Colonies— Puritans— Principles of their early Government— Quaker Persecution— Pequod Indian War— King Philip — Royal Governors — Salem Witchcraft— Connecticut— Rhode Island— Dutch Settle- ment of New Amsterdam — Indian War— Annexation of New Amsterdam to the English Colonies, and change of name to N. York— Lord Baltimore— Civil War— Carolina— Wm.Penn— Indian Treaty— Frame of Government— Oglethorpe — Wesley — Whitfield— Principles and characteristics of tho Colonists 334—363

LT. Contest op France and England for America.— King William's War— The French War— The Ohio Company— George Washington— Braddock— Gen. Wolfe— Rising Colonial prosperity 363—368

EEL The Revolution. — Stamp Act — N. Y. Congress— War of publications against Britain— Boston Mas- sacre— Tea Party— Lexington— Declaration of Independence — Franklin, Lafayette, Kosciusko— Trenton— Brandywine— Burgoyne's Defeat— Alliance of France and America— Baron Steuben— D'Estaing— Stony Point —Arnold— Col. Hayne— Capitulation of Cornwallis— Treaty at Paris— Washington— Paralyzed condition of the Government— Massachusetts Rebellion 178(5 — Formation of Government by the Constitutional Conven- tion 368-KU

EV. Constitutional History.— Federalists and anti-Federalists— Defeat of Harmar and St. Clair— Prohi bition of the Slave Trade— Death of Washington— Purchase of Louisiana— War with Tripoli— Embargo Aot* — War with England— Campaign of 1812 — American Naval Victories— Perry's viotory on Lako Erio — Gen. Harrison— Treaty at Ghent— Battle of New Orleans— Seminole War— Lafayette— Tariff— TJ. S. Bank— NulU-

CONTENTS.

fication— Compromise of 1820— Commercial Bankruptcy— Annexation of Texas— Mexican War— Discovery of Gold in California— Gadsden Treaty 394 4^3

BIOGRAPHICAL DEPARTMENT.

Hernando Cortez ..

William Penn

Benjamin Franklin. Peter the Great . . . Count Kumfoed

415 441 467

476 498

Nicholas Copernicus #< 523

Tycho Brahk

Galileo

Kepler

Sir Isaac Newton.

Hoyoens

Halley

Feruusox

526

528

531

533

536

537

539

Sir William Herschbl , _ 544

Simon Bolivar 54-

Fraincia, the Dictator 554

Alexander Wilson 5g2

James Watt ggg

John Howard 572

Lord Byron 593

Percy Bysshe Shelley 612

Oliver Goldsmith 615

Edward Gibbon , 619

David Hume .. 623

Alexander Pope 627

John Adams 634

Thomas Jefferson 644

Samuel Adams 649

James Oiis , _# 651

Fisher Ames 653

Aaron Burr 655

Alexander Hamilton 657

Patrick Henry 660

John Hancock 664

Ethan Allen 665

Benedict Arnold 667

Horatio Gates , 680

Thaddeus Kosciusko 681

Nathaniel Green 685

Frederick William Augustus Steuben 688

Baron de Kalb 689

Richard Montgomery , 690

Gilbert Motier Lafayette 691

fsRAEL Putnam , , 696

Stephen Decatue 698

Isaac Hull , , 700

Oliver Hazard Perry , 702

John Marshall 704

John Paul Jones 706

Andrew Jackson 710

Win field Scott 713

Zachary Taylor 714

Xii CONTENTS.

John E. Wool 724

Daniel Webster 726

Henry Clay 732

Levi TYoodbury 735

Robert Rantoul 737

Franklin Pierce . . .. ™

Samuel Finley Breese Morse 741

M. Daguerre 747

Victor Hugo '*

Omar Pasha 751

Edward Everett 763

Washington Irving 754

William Cullen Bryant 756

George Bancroft •• 756

Wlllum Hickling Prescott 758

Hiram Powers 769

DEPARTMENT OF TRAVEL.

Historical Sketch of Naval Architecture 761

Early Maritime Discoveries 774

Christopher Columbus 775

Ferdinand Magellan 800

Sir Francis Drake 802

Henry Hudson 804

Le Maire and Schouten 805

Captain James 806

William Dampier 811

Captain Woodes Rogers • 814

John Clipperton 816

Commodore Anson 817

Captain Byron 823

Captain Wallis 829

De Bougainville 832

Captain James Cook 837

Captains Portlock and Dixon 864

Monsieur De La Perouse 870

George Vancouver 891

Perry's Voyages 896

Sir John Franklin 920

Travels in Africa — Parke, Denham, Clapperton, Lander and others 927

Samuel Hearne 953

John Lewis Burkhardt 955

James Bruce 968

John Ledyard 966

John Baptist Belzoni 967

George Forster 974

Edward Daniel Clarke 976

Richard Pococke 979

Overland Journey to India 981

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE.

Opium Smuggling 22

Japanese Funeral Procession 23

Aga 30

Japanese Agriculture • 31

Terrace of St. Peter's 126

Gibraltar !27

Marine Arsenal, Constantinople 232

Place of Kossuth's Imprisonment 233

Castle of Eisenstadt 322

King of Denmark 323

Captain Smith and Pocahontas 336

Providence, R. I 338

Newport, R. 1 339

New Haven, Conn 342

Philadelphia, Pa 343

Halifax, N. S 348

Lake George 349

Castle William 354

Castle Garden 355

Wilmington, N. C. 358

Prison, Phila 359

Fort Putnam 364

Pillar Rock 365

Place des Armes, New Orleans 370

Blackwell Penitentiary 371

Columbus, 0 402

Depot, Cleveland, 0 403

Cincinnati, 0 406

Sandusky City, O 407

Battle Monument, Baltimore 410

Bombardment of Vera Cruz 411

State House. Wisconsin 414

View on Grand River, Ohio 570

Bridge, Conneaut River, 0 571

Kosciusko's Monument 683

Paul Jones 707

Gen. Scott 712

Fort Ancient 716

Milford, near Cincinnati, 0 717

Gen. Wool 725

PAGE

Daniel Webster 728

Residence of Daniel Webster 729

Henry Clay 733

Hon. Levi Woodbury 734

Birth Place of John Q. Adams 736

Franklin Pierce 738

William R. King 739

Euclid Creek, 0 742

Red Bank 743

Prof Morse 744

Daguerre 746

Victor Hugo 748

Omar Pasha 752

Disappointed Gold Seekers . . 760

Gold Seeker's Grave 760

Naval Architecture, from the tenth to the sev- enteenth century (17 Engravings) 762-770

City of Panama 812

Panama Gate 813

City of Havana 818

Scene in Havana 819

Adelaide 824

Bathurst, N. S. W 825

Valparaiso 834

Iron Bridge, Jamaica 835

Sidney, N. S. W 856

Humboldt 857

California 874

Ranche 875

Post Office 876

River-bed Claim on the Turon 877

Removing Goods 878

Dry Diggings 879

Portraits of Sir John Franklin's Expedition,

(9 Engravings) 922-926

Calcutta • - ■ 973

Rail Road Bridge 964

Elk Creek 965

East Branch Rocky River 982

West Branch Rocky River 983

AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

g -

THE

AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY.

ANCIENT HISTORY.

The general consent of mankind points to the region of Central Asia as having been the original seat from which the human race dispersed itself over the globe ; and accordingly, it is this region, and especially the west- ern portion of it, which we find to have been the theatre of the earliest recorded transactions. In short, it was in Central Asia that the first large mass of ripened humanity was accumulated — a great central nucleus of human life, so to speak, constantly enlarging, and from which emissaries incessantly streamed out over the globe in all directions. In process of time this great central mass having swollen out till it filled Asia and Africa, broke up into three fragments — thus giving parentage to the three leading vari- eties into which ethnographers divide the human species — the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian or Negro — the Caucasians overspread- ing southern and western Asia ; the Mongolians overspreading northern and eastern Asia ; and the Ethiopians overspreading Africa. From these three sources streamed forth branches which, intermingling in various pro- portions, have constituted the various nations of the earth.

Differing from each other in physiological characteristics, the three great varieties of the human species have also differed widely in their histor- ical career. The germs of a grand progressive development seem .to have been implanted specially in the Caucasian variety, the parent stock of all the great civilized nations of ancient and modern times. History, there- fore, concerns itself chiefly with this variety : in the evolution of whose destinies the true thread of human progress is to be found. Ere proceeding, however, to sketch the early development of this highly-endowed variety of our species in the nations of antiquity, a few observations may be offered regarding the other two the Ethiopian and Mongolian — which began the

race of life along with the Caucasian, and whose destinies, doubtless, what- 2

18 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

ever may have been their historical functions hitherto, are involved in seme profound and beautiful manner with the bearing of the race as a whole.

ETHIOPIAN HISTORY.

A German Historian thus sums up all that is known of Ethiopian history — that is, of the part which the great Negro race, inhabiting all Africa with the exception of the north-eastern coasts, performed in the general af- fairs of mankind in the early ages of the world : — ' On the history of this division of the species two remarks may be made : the one, that a now en- tirely extinct knowledge of the extension and power of this branch of the human family must have been forced upon even the Greeks by their early poets and historians ; the other, that the Ethiopian history is interwoven throughout with that of Egypt. As regards the first remark, it is clear that in the earliest ages this branch of the race must have played an im- portant part, since Meroe (in the present Nubia) is mentioned both by Herodotus (b. c. 408) and Strabo (a. d. 20) ; by the one as a still-exist- ing, by the other as a formerly-existing seat of royalty, and centre of the Ethiopian religion and civilization.* To this Strabo adds, that the race spread from the boundaries of Egypt over the mountains of Atlas, as far as the Gaditanian Straits. Ephorus, too (b. c. 405), seems to have had a very great impression of the Ethiopians, since he names in the east the Indians, in the south the Ethiopians, in the west the Celts, in the north the Scythians, as the most mighty and numerous peoples of the known earth. Already in Strabo's time, however, their ancient power had been gone for an indefinite period, and the Negro states found themselves, after Meroe had ceased to be a religious capital, almost in the same situation as that in which they still continue. The second remark on the Negro branch of the human race and its history, can only be fully elucidated when the interpretation of the inscriptions on Egyptian monuments shall have been farther advanced. The latest travels into Abyssinia show this much — that at one time the Egyptian religion and civilization extended over the prin- cipal seat of the northern Negroes. Single mummies and monumental figures corroborate what Herodotus expressly says, that a great portion of

* Some years ago, a traveler, Mr. G. A. Hoskins, visited the site of this capital state of ancient Ethiopia, a.n island, if it may be so called, about 300 miles long, enclosed within two forking branches of the Nile. He found in it several distinct groups of magnificent pyra- midal structures. Of one ruin he says — 'Never were my feelings more ardently excited than in approaching, after so tedious a journey, to this magnificent necropolis. The ap- pearance of the pyramids in the distance announced their importance ; but I was gratified beyond my most sanguine expectations when I found myself in the midst of them. The pyramids of Gizeh are magnificent, wonderful from their stupendous magnitude; but for picturesque effect and elegance of architectural design, I infinitely prefer those of Meroe. I expected to find few such remains here, and certainly nothing so imposing, so interesting, as these sepulchres, doubtless of the kings and queens of Ethiopia. I stood for some time lo?i in admiration. This, then, was the necropolis, or city of the dead ! But where was the city itself, Meroe, its temples and palaces ? A large space, about 2000 feet in length, and the same distance from the river, strewed with burnt brick and with some fragments of walls, and stones, similar to those\ised in the erection of the pyramids, formed, doubtless, part of that celebrated site. The idea that this is the exact situation of the city is strengthened by the remark of Strabo, that the walls of the habitations were built of bricks. These indicate, without doubt, the site of that cradle of the arts which distinguish a civilized from a bar- barous society. Of the birthplace of the arts and sciences, the wild natives of the adjacent villages have made a miserable burying-place; of the city of the learned — "its cloud-cap* towers," its "gorgeous palaces," its "solemn temples" — there is "left not a rack behind." The sepulchres alone of her departed kings have fulfilled their destination of surviving the habitations which their philosophy taught them to consider but as inns, and are now last mouldering into dust. Scarcely a trace of a palace or a temple is to be seen.'

DEPARTMENT OP HISTORY. 19

the Egyptians of his time had black skins and woolly hair; hence we infer that the Negro race had combined itself intimately with the Caucasian part of the population. Not these notices only, but the express testimo- nies also of the Hebrew annals, show Egypt to have contained an abun- dance of Negroes, and mention a conquering king invading it at the head of a Negro host, and governing it for a considerable time. The nature of the accounts on which we must found does not permit us to give an accur- ate statement ; we remark, however, that the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians, are not the only peoples which aimed at becoming world- conquerors before the historic age, but that also to the Ethiopian stock warlike kings were not wanting in the early times. The Mongols alone seem to have enjoyed a happy repose within their own seats in the primi- tive historic times, and those antecedent to them ; they appear first very late as conquerors and destroyers in the history of the west. If, indeed, the hero-king of the Ethiopians, Tearcho, were one and the same with the Tirhakah of the book of Kings (2 Kings, xix. 9), then the wonder of those stories would disappear which were handed down by tradition to the Greeks ; but even Bochart has combatted this belief, and we cannot recon- cile it with the circumstances which are related of both. It remains for us on\y to observe, by way of summary, that in an age antecedent to the his- toric, the Ethiopian peoples may have been associated together in a more regular manner than in our own or Grecian and Roman times ; and that their distant expeditions may have been so formidable, both to the Europeans as far as the iEgean Sea in the east, and to the dwellers on the Gaditanian Straits (Gibraltar) on the west, that the dim knowledge of the fact was not lost even in late times. In more recent ages we observe here and there an Ethiopian influence, and especially in the Egyptian history ; but as concerns the general progress of the human species, the Negro race never acquired any vital importance.

The foregoing observations may be summed up in this proposition : — That in the most remote antiquity, Africa was overspread by the Negro variety of the human species ; that in those parts of the continent to which the knowledge of the ancient geographers did not extend — namely, all south of Egypt and the Great Desert — the Negro race degenerated, or at least dispersed into tribes, kingdoms, etc., constituting a great savage system within its own torrid abode, similar to that which even now, in the adult age of the world, we are vainly attempting to penetrate ; but that on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the race either pre- served its original faculty and intelligence longer, or was so improved by contact and intermixture with its Caucasian neighbors, as to constitute, under the name of the Ethiopians, one of the great ante-historic dynasties of the world ; and that this dynasty ebbed and flowed against the Caucas- ian populations of western Asia and eastern Europe, thus giving rise to mixture of races along the African coasts of the north and east, until at length, leaving these mixed races to act their part awhile, the pure Ethio- pian himself retired from historic view into Central Africa, where he lay concealed, till again in modern times he was dragged forth to become the slave of the Caucasian. Thus Negro history hitherto has exhibited a ret- rogression from a point once occupied, rather than a progress in civiliza- tion. Even this fact, however, must somehow be subordinate to a great law of general progress ; and it is gratifying to know that, on the coast

20 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA,

of Africa, a settlement has recently been formed called Liberia, peopled by liberated negro slaves from North America ; and who, bringing with them the Anglo-American civilization, give promise of founding a cultured and prosperous community.

MONGOLIAN HISTORY — THE CHINESE.

As from the great central mass of mankind, the first accumulation of life on our planet, there was parted off into Africa a fragment called the Negro variety, so into eastern Asia there was detached, by those causes which we seek in vain to discover, a second huge fragment, to which has been given the name of the Mongolian variety. Overspreading the great plains of Asia, from the Himalehs to the Sea of Okhotsk, this detachment of the human species may be supposed to have crossed into Japan; to have reached the other islands of the Pacific, and either through these, or by the access at Behring's Straits, to have poured themselves through the great American continent ; their peculiarities shading off in their long journey, till the Mongolian was converted into the American Indian. Blumenbach, however, erects the American Indian into a type by himself.

Had historians been able to pursue the Negro race into their central African jungles and deserts, they would no doubt have found the general Ethiopic mass breaking up there under the operation of causes connected with climate, soil, food, etc., into vast sections or subdivisions, presenting marked differences from each other ; and precisely so was it with the Mon- golians. In Central Asia, we find them as Thibetians, Tungusians, Mon- gols proper ; on the eastern coasts, as Mantchous and Chinese ; in the adjacent islands, as Japanese, etc. ; and nearer the North Pole, as Laplan- ders, Esquimaux, etc. ; all presenting peculiarities of their own. Of these great Mongolian branches circumstances have given a higher degree of development to the Chinese and the Japanese than to the others, which are chiefly nomadic hordes, some under Chinese rule, others independent, roaming over the great pasture lands of Asia, and employed in rearing cattle.

There is every reason to believe that the vast population inhabiting that portion of eastern Asia called China, can boast of a longer antiquity of civilization than almost any other nation of the world, a civilization, how- ever, diffeiing essentially in its character from those which have appeared and disappeared among the Caucasians. This, in fact, is to be observed as the grand difference between the history of the Mongolian and that of the Caucasian variety of the human species, that whereas the former pre- sents us with the best product of Mongolian humanity, in the form of one great permanent civilization — the Chinese — extending from century to century, one, the same, and solitary, through a period of 3000 or 4000 years; the latter exhibits a succession of civilization — the Chaldean, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman, the modern European (subdivided into French, English, German, Italian, etc.,) and the Anglo-American; these civilizations, from the remotest Oriental — that is, Chaldean — to the most recent Occidental — that is, the Anglo-American — being a series of waves falling into each other, and driven onward by the same general force. A brief sketch of Chinese history, with a glance at Japan, will therefore discharge all that we owe to the Mongolian race.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 21

Authentic Chinese history does not extend father back than about 800 or 1000 years b. c. ; but, as has been the case more or less with all nations, the Chinese imagination has provided itself with a mytho- logical history extending many ages back into the unknown past. Un- like the mythology of the Greeks, but like that of the Indians, the Chinese legends deal in large chronological intervals. First of all, in the beginning of time, was the great Puan-Koo, founder of the Chinese nation, and whose dress was green leaves. After him came Ty-en-Hoang, Ti-Hoang, Gin- Hoang and several other euphonious potentates, each of whom did something towards the building up of the Chinese nation, and each of whom reigned, as was the custom in those grand old times, thousands of years. At length, at a time corresponding to that assigned in Scripture to the life of Noah, came the divine-born Fohi, a man of transcendent faculties, who reigned 115 years, teaching music and the system of symbols, instituting marriage, building walls round cities, creating mandarins, and, in short, establishing the Chinese nation on a basis that could never be shaken. After him came Shin-ning, Whang- ti, etc., until in due time came the good emperors Yao and Shun, in the reign of the latter of whom happened a great flood. By means of canals and drains the assiduous Yu saved the country, and became the successor of Shun. Yu was the first emperor of the Hia dynasty, which began about 2100 B. c. After this dynasty came that of Shang, the last of whose emperors, a great tyrant, was deposed (b. c. 1122) by Woo-wong, the founder of the Tchow dynasty.

In this Tchow dynasty, which lasted upwards of 800 years, authentic Chi- nese history commences. It was during it, and most probably about the year B. o. 484, that the great Con-fu-tse, or Confucius, the founder of the Chinese religion, philosophy, and literature, flourished. In the year B. c. 248, the Tchow dynasty was superseded by that of Tsin, the first of whose kings built the Great Wall of China, to defend the country against the Tartar Nomads. The Tsin dynasty was a short one : it was succeeded in b. c. 206 by the Han dynasty, which lasted till a. d. 238. Then followed a rapid se- ries of dynastic revolutions, by which the nation was frequently broken into parts ; and during which the population was considerably changed in character by the irruptions of the nomad hoards of Asia who intermingled with it. Early in the seventh century, a dynasty called that of Tang acce- ded to power, which ended in 897. After half a century of anarchy, order was restored under the Song dynasty, at the commencement of which, or about the year 950, the art of printing was discovered, five centuries before it was known in Europe. ' The Song dynasty,' says Schlosser, ' maintain- ed an intimate connection with Japan, as contrary to all Chinese maxims ; the emperors of this dynasty imposed no limits to knowledge, the arts, life, luxury, and commerce with other nations. Their unhappy fate, therefore (on being extinguished with circumstances of special horror by the Mongol conqueror Kublai Khan, A. d. 1281), is held forth as a warning against departing a hairsbreadth from the old customs of the empire. From the time of the destruction of the Song dynasty by the Mongol monarchy, the intercourse between China and Japan was broken, until again the Ming, a native Chinese dynasty (a. d. 1366) restored it. The Mongol rulers made an expedition against Japan, but were unsuccessful. The unfortu- nate gift which the Japanese received from China was the doctrine of Foe. This doctrine, however, was not the first foreign doctrine or foreign worship

24

AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

that came into China. A religion, whose nature we cannot fix — probably Buddhism, ere it had assumed the form of Lamaism — was preached in it at an earlier date. About the time of the Tsin dynasty (b. c. 248 - 206), a warlike king had incorporated all China into one and subdued the princes of the various provinces. While he was at war with his subjects, many of the roving hordes to the north of China pressed into the land, and with them appeared missionaries of the religion above mentioned. When peace was restored, the kings of the fore-named dynasty, as also later those of Han and the two following dynasties, extended the kingdom prodigiously, and the western provinces became known to the Greeks and Romans as the land of the Seres. As on the one side Tartary was at that time Chinese, so on the other side the Chinese were connected with India ; whence came the Indian religion. It procured many adherents, but yield- ed at length to the primitive habits of the nations. In consequence of the introduction of the religion of Foe, the immense country fell asunder into two kingdoms. The south and the north had each its sovereign ; and the wars of the northern kingdom occasioned the wanderings of the Huns, by whose agency the Roman Empire was destroyed. These kingdoms of the north and south were often afterwards united and again dissevered ; great savage hordes roamed around them as at present ; but all that had settled, and that dwelt within the Great Wall, submitted to the ancient Chinese civilization. Ghenghis Khan, indeed, whose power was founded on the Turkish and Mongol races, annihilated both kingdoms, and the bar- baric element seemed to triumph ; but this was changed as soon as his kingdom was divided. Even Kublai, and yet more his immediate follow- ers, much as the Chinese calumniate the Mongol dynasty of Yeven, main- tained everything in its ancient condition, with the single exception that they did homage to Lamaism, the altered form of Buddhism. This religion yet prevails, accommodated skillfully, however, to the Chinese mode of exist- ence — a mode which all subsequent conquerors have respected, as the ex- ample of the present dynasty proves.' The dynasty alluded to is that of Tatsin Mantchou, a mixed Mongol and Tartar stock, which superseded the native Chinese dynasty of Ming in the year 1644. The present emperor of China is the sixth of the Tatsin dynasty.

From the series of dry facts just given, we arrive at the fol- lowing definition of China and its civilization : As the Roman Em- pire was a great temporary aggregation of matured Caucasian human- ity, surrounded by and shading off into Caucasian barbarism, so China, a country more extensive than all Europe, and inhabited by a population of more than 300,000,000, is an aggregation of matured Mongolian humanity surrounded by Mongolian barbarism. The difference is this, that while the Roman Empire was only one of several successive aggregations of the Cau- casian race, each on an entirely different basis, the Chinese empire has been one permanent exhibition of the only form of civilization possible among the Mongolians. The Jew, the Greek, the Roman, the French- man, the German, the Englishman — these are all types of the matured Cau- casian character ; but a fully-developed Mongolian has but one type — the Chinese. Chinese history does not exhibit a progress of the Mongolian man through a series of stages ; it exhibits only a uniform duration of one great civilized Mongolian empire, sometimes expanding so as to extend itself into the surrounding Mongolian barbarism, sometimes contracted by the press-

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 25

ure of that barbarism, sometimes disturbed by infusions of the barbaric ele- ment, sometimes shattered within itself by the operation of individual Chi- nese ambition, but always retaining its essential character. True, in such a vast empire, difference of climate, etc., must give rise to specific differences, so that a Chinese of the north-east is not the same as a Chinese of the south- west ; true, also, the Japanese civilization seems to exist as an alternative between which and the Chinese, Providence might share the Mongolian part of our species, were it to remain unmixed : still the general remark remains undeniable, that from the extremest antiquity to the present day, Mongolian humanity has been able to cast itself but into one essential civ- ilized type. It is an object of peculiar interest, therefore, to us who be- long to the multiform and progressive Caucasian race, to obtain a distinct idea of the nature of that permanent form of civilization out of which our Mongolian brothers have never issued, and apparently never wish to issue. Each of our readers being a civilized Caucasian, may be supposed to ask, ' What sort of a human being is a civilized Mongolian ? ' A study of the Chinese civilization would answer this question. Not so easy would it be for a Chinese to return the compliment, confused as he would be by the multiplicity of the types which the Caucasian man has assumed — from the ancient Arab to the modern Anglo-American.

Hitherto little progress has been made in the investigation of the Chinese civilization. Several conclusions of a general character have, however, been established. ' We recognise,' says Schlosser, ' in the institutions of the Chinese, so much praised by the Jesuits, the character of the institu- tions of all early states ; with this difference, that the Chinese mode of life is not a product of hierarchical or theocratic maxims, but a work of the cold understanding. In China, all that subserves the wants of the senses was arranged and developed in the earliest ages ; all that concerns the soul or the imagination is yet raw and ill-adjusted ; and we behold in the high opinion which the Chinese entertain of themselves and their affairs, a terrible example of what must be the consequence when all behavior pro- ceeds according to prescribed etiquette, when all knowledge and learning is a matter of rote directed to external applications, and the men of learn- ing are so intimately connected with the government, and have their inter- est so much one with it, that a number of privileged doctors can regulate literature as a state magistrate does weights and measures.' Of the Chinese government the same authority remarks — ' the patriarchal sys- tem still lies at the foundation of it. Round the " Son of Heaven," as they name the highest ruler, the wise of the land assemble as round their counselor and organ. So in the provinces (of which there are eighteen or nineteen, each as large as a considerable kingdom), the men of greatest sagacity gather round the presidents ; each takes the fashion from his supe- rior, and the lowest give it to the people. Thus one man exercises the sov- ereignty ; a number of learned men gave the law, and invented in very early times a symbolical system of syllabic writing, suitable for their mono syllabic speech, in lieu of their primitive system of hieroglyphics. All business is transacted in writing, with minuteness and pedantry. Their written language is very difficult ; and as it is possible in Chinese writing for one to know all the characters of a certain period of time, or of a cer- tain department, and yet be totally unacquainted with those of another department, there is no end to their mechanical acquisition.' It has already

2*3 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

been mentioned that Chinese thought has at various times received certain foreign tinctures, chiefly from India ; essentially, however, the Chinese mind has remained as it was fixed by Confucius. 'In China,' says Schlosser, ' a so-named philosophy has accomplished that which in other countries has been accomplished by priests and religions. In the genuine Chinese books of religion, in all their learning and wisdom, God is not thought of; religion, according to the Chinese and their oracle and lawgiver Con-fu-tse has nothing to do with the imagination, but consists alone in the perfor- mance of outward moral duties, and in zeal to further the ends of state. Whatever lies beyond the plain rule of life is either a sort of obscure natural philosophy, or a mere culture for the people, and for any who may feel the want of such a culture. The various forms of worship which have made their way into China are obliged to restrict themselves, to bow to the law, and to make their practices conform ; they can arrogate no literature of their own ; and, good or bad, must learn to agree with the prevailing athe- istic Chinese manner of thought.'

Such are the Chinese, and such have they been for 2000 or 3000 years — a vast people undoubtedly civilized to the highest pitch of which Mon- golian humanity is susceptible ; of mild disposition ; industrious to an extra- ordinary degree ; well-skilled in all the mechanical arts, and possessing a mechanical ingenuity peculiar to themselves ; boasting of a language quite singular in its character, and of a vast literature ; respectful of usage to such a degree as to do everything by pattern ; attentive to the duties and civilities of life, but totally devoid of fervor, originality, or spirituality ; and living under a form of government which has been very happily designated a pedantocracy — that is, a hierarchy of erudite persons selected from the population, and appointed by the emperor, according to the proof they give of their capacity, to the various places of public trust. How far these characteristics, or any of them, are inseparable from a Mongolian civiliza- tion, would appear more clearly if we knew more of the Japanese. At present, however, there seems little prospect of any reorganization of the Chinese mind, except by means of a Caucasian stimulus applied to it. And what Caucasian stimulus will be sufficient to break up that vast Mongolian mass, and lay it open to the general world-influences ? Will the stimulus come from Europe ; or from America after its western shores are peopled, and the Anglo-Americans begin to think of crossing the Pacific ?

CAUCASIAN HISTORY.

While the Negro race seems to have retrograded from its original posi- tion on the earth, while the Mongolian has afforded the spectacle of a single permanent and pedantic civilization retaining millions within its grasp for ages in the extreme east of Asia, the Caucasian, as if the seeds of the world's progress had been implanted in it, has worked out for itself a splendid career on an ever-shifting theatre. First attaining its maturity in Asia, the Caucasian civilization has shot itself westward, if we may so speak, in several successive throes ; long confined to Asia ; then entering northern Africa, where, commingling with the Ethiopian, it originated a new culture ; again, about the year b. c. 1000, adding Europe to the stage of history ; and lastly, 2500 years later, crossing the Atlantic, and meeting in America with a diffused and degenerate Mongolism. To understand

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 27

this beautiful career thoroughly, it is necessary to observe the manner in which the Caucasians disseminated themselves from their central home — to count, as it were, and note separately, the various flights by which they emigrated from the central hive. So far as appears, then, from investiga- tions into language, etc., the Caucasian stock sent forth at different times in the remote past five great branches from its original seat, somewhere to the south of that long chain of mountains which commences at the Black Sea, and, bordering the southern coast of the Caspian, terminates in the Himalehs. In what precise way, or at what precise time, these branches separated themselves from the parent stock and from each other, must remain a mystery ; a sufficiently clear general notion of the fact is all that we can pretend to. 1st. The Armenian branch, remaining appar- ently nearest the original seat, filled the countries between the Caspian and Black Seas, extending also round the Caspian into the territories afterwards known as those of the Parthians. 2d, The Indo-Pcrsian branch, which extended itself in a southern and eastern direction from the Caspian Sea, through Persia and Cabool, into Hindoostan, also penetrating Bokhara. From this great branch philologists and ethnographers derive those two races, the distinction between which, although subordinate to the grand fivefold division of the Caucasian stock, is of immense consequence in modern history — the Celtic and the Germanic. Pouring through Asia Minor, it is supposed that the Indo-Persian family entered Europe through Thrace, and ultimately, through the operation of those innumerable causes which react upon the human constitution from the circumstances in which it is placed, assumed the character of Celts and Germans — the Celts being the earlier product, and eventually occupying the western portion of Europe — namely, northern Italy, France, Spain and Great Britain — still undergoing subdivision, however, during their dispersion, into Iberians, Gaels, Cymri, &c. ; the Germans being a later off-shoot, and settling rather in the centre and north of Europe in two great moieties — the Scan- dinavians and the Germans Proper. This seems the most plausible ped- igree of the Celtic and Germanic races, although some object to it. 2>d, The Semitic or Aramaic branch, which, diffusing itself southward and westward from the original Caucasian seat, filled Syria, Mesopotamia, Ara- bia, etc., and founded the early kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Palestine, etc. It was this branch of the Caucasian variety which, enter- ing Africa by the Isthmus of Suez and the Straits of Babelmandel, consti- tuted itself an element at least in the ancient population of Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia ; and there are ethnographers who believe that the early civilization which lined the northern coasts of Africa arose from somo extremely early blending of the Ethiopic with the Semitic, the latter acting as a dominant caste. Diffusing itself westward along the African coast as far as Mauritania, the Semitic race seems eventually, though at a compar- atively late period, to have met the Celtic, which had crossed into Africa from Spain ; and thus, by the infusion of Arameans and Celts, that white or tawny population which we find in northern Africa in ancient times, distinct from the Ethiopians of the interior, seems to have been formed. 4th, The Pelasgic branch, that noble family which, carrying the Greeks and Romans in its bosom, poured itself from western Asia into the south- east of Europe, mingling doubtless with Celts and Germans. 5th, The Scythian, or Slavonic branch, which diffused itself over Russia, Siberia,

28 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

and the central plains of Asia, shading off in these last into the Mongolian. Such is a convenient division of the Caucasian stock ; a more profound investigation, however, might reduce the five races to these two — the Sem- itic and the Indo-Germanic ; all civilized languages being capable, it is said, of being classified under these three families — the Chinese, which has monosyllabic roots ; the Indo-Germanic (Sanscrit, Hindoostanee, Greek, Latin, German, and all modern European languages), which has dissyllabic roots; and the Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic, &c), whose roots are trisyllabic. Retaining, however, the fivefold distribution which we have adopted, we shall find that the history of the world, from the earliest to the remotest times, has been nothing else than the common Caucasian vitality presenting itself in a succession of phases or civilizations, each differing from the last in the proportions in which it contains the various separate elements.

It is advisable to sketch first the most eastern Caucasian civilization — that is, that of India ; and then to proceed to a consideration of the state of that medley of nations, some of them Semitic, some of them Indo-Persian, and some of them Armenian, out of which the great Persian empire arose, destined to continue the historic pedigree of the world into Europe, by transmitting its vitality to the Pelasgians.

Ancient India. One of the great branches, we have said, of the Cau- casian family of mankind was the Indo-Persian, which, spreading out in the primeval times from the original seat of the Caucasian part of the hu- man species, extended itself from the Caspian to the Bay of Bengal, where, coming into contact with the southern Mongolians, it gave rise, according to the most probable accounts, to those new mixed Caucasian-Mongolian races, the Malays of the Eastern Peninsula; and, by a still farther degen- eracy, to the Papuas, or natives of the South Sea Islands. While thus sha- ding off into the Mongolism of the Pacific, the Indo-Persian mass of our species was at the same time attaining maturity within itself; and as the first ripened fragment of the Mongolians had been the Chinese nation, so one of the first ripened fragments of the Indo-Persian branch of the Cau- casians seems to have been the Indians. At what time the vast peninsula of Hindoostan could first boast a civilized population, it is impossible to say ; all testimony, however, agrees in assigning to Indian civilization a most remote antiquity. Another fact seems also to be tolerably well authen- ticated regarding ancient India ; namely, that the northern portions of it, and especially the north-western portions, which would be nearest the orig- inal Caucasian seat, were the first civilized ; and that the civilizing influ- ence spread thence southwards to Cape Comorin.

Notwithstanding this general conviction, that India was one of the first portions of the earth's surface that contained a civilized population, few facts in the ancient history of India are certainly known. We are told, indeed (to omit the myths of the Indian Bacchus and Hercules), of two great kingdom — those of Ayodha (Oude) and Prathistbana (Vitera) — as hav- ing existed in northern India upwards of a thousand years before Christ ; of conquests in southern India, effected by the monarchs of these king- doms ; and of wars carried on between these monarchs and their western neighbors the Persians, after the latter had begun to be powerful. All these accounts, however, merely resolve themselves into the general infor mation, that India, many centuries before Christ, was an important member in the family of Asiatic nations ; supplying articles to their commerce, and

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 29

involved in their agitations. Accordingly, if we wish to form an idea of the condition of India prior to that great epoch in its history — its invasion by Alexander the Great, b. c. 326 — we can only do so by reasoning back from that we know of its present condition, allowing for the modifying effects of the two thousand years which have intervened ; and especially for the effects produced by the Mohammedan invasion, a. d. 1000. This, how- ever, is the less difficult in the case of such a country as India, where the per- manence of native institutions is so remarkable , and though we cannot hope to acquire a distinct notion of the territorial divisions, etc., of India in very ancient times, yet, by a study of the Hindoos as they are at present, we may furnish ourselves with a tolerably accurate idea of the nature of that ancient civilization which overspread Hindoostan many centuries before the birth of Christ, and this all the more probably that the notices which remain of the state of India at the time of the invasion of Alexander, correspond in many points with what is to be seen in India at the present day.

The population of Hindoostan, the area of which is estimated at about a million square miles, amounts to about 120,000,000 ; of whom about 100,- 000,000 are Hindoos or aborigines, the remainder being foreigners, either Asiatic or European. The most remarkable feature in Hindoo society is its division into castes. The Hindoos are divided into four great castes — the Brahmins, whose proper business is religion and philosophy ; the Ksha- triyas, who attend to war and government ; the Vaisyas, whose duties are connected with commerce and agriculture ; and the Sudras, or artisans and laborers. Of these four castes the Brahmins are the highest ; but a broad line of distinction is drawn between the Sudras and the other three castes. The Brahmins may intermarry with the three inferior castes — the ksha- triyas with the vaisyas and the Sudras ; and the vaisyas with the Sudras ; but no Sudra can choose a wife from either of the three superior castes. As a general rule, every person is required to follow the profession of the caste to which he belongs : thus the Brahmin is to lead a life of contemplation and study, subsisting on the contributions of the rich ; the Kshatriya is to occupy himself in civil matters, or to pursue the profession of a soldier ; and the Vaisya is to be a merchant or a farmer. In fact, however, the barriers of caste have in innumerable instances been broken down. The ramifications, too, of the caste system are infinite. Besides the four pure, there are numerous mixed castes, all with their prescribed ranks and occupations.

A class far below even the pure Sudras is the Pariahs or outcasts ; consisting of the refuse of all the other castes, and which, in process of time, has grown so large as to include, it is said, one-fifth of the population of Hindoostan. The Pariahs perform the meanest kinds of manual labor. This system of castes — of which the Brahmins themselves, whom some suppose to have been originally a conquering race, are the architects, if not the founders — is bound up with the religion of the Hindoos. Indeed of the Hindoos, more truly than of any other people, it may be said that a knowl- edge of their religious system is a knowledge of the people themselves.

The Vedas, or ancient sacred books of the Hindoos, distinctly set forth the doctrine of the infinite and Eternal Supreme Being. According to the Vedas, there is ' one unknown, true Being, all present, all powerful, the cre- ator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe.' This Supreme Being ' is not comprehensible by vision, or by any other of the organs of sense, nor can he be conceived by means of devotion or virtuous practices.' He is not space,

AG A.

> >

OQ

w

> a

w i— t

o

a

f

a

w

32 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

nor air, nor light, nor atoms, nor soul, nor nature : he is above all these and the cause of them all. He ' has no feet, but extends everywhere ; has no hands, but holds everything ; has no eyes, yet sees all that is ; has no ears, yet hears all that passes. His existence had no cause. He is the smallest of the small and the greatest of the great; and yet is, in fact neither small nor great.' Such is the doctrine of the Vedas in its purest and most abstract form ; but the prevailing theology which runs through them is what is called Pantheism, or that system which speaks of God as the soul of the universe, or as the universe itself. Accordingly, the whole tone and language of the highest Hindoo philosophy is Pantheistic. As a rope, lying on the ground, and mistaken at first view for a snake, is the cause of the idea or conception of the snake which exists in the mind of the person looking at it, so, say the Vedas, is the Deity the cause of what we call th6 universe. ' In him the whole world is absorbed ; from him it issues ; he is entwined and interwoven with all creation.' ' All that exists is God : whatever we smell, or taste, or see, or hear, or feel, is the Supreme Being.'

This one incomprehensible Being, whom the Hindoos designate by the mystical names Om, Tut, and Jut, and sometimes also by the word Brahm, is declared by the Vedas to be the only proper object of worship. Only a very few persons of extraordinary gifts and virtues, however, are able, it is said, to adore the Supreme Being — the great Om — directly. The great majority of mankind are neither so wise nor so holy as to be able to approach the Divine Being himself, and worship him. It being alleged that persons thus unfortunately disqualified for adoring the invisible Deity should employ their minds upon some visible thing, rather than to suffer them to remain idle, the Vedas direct them to worship a number of inferior deities, representing particular acts or qualities of the Supreme Being ; as, for instances, Crishnu or Vishnu, the god of preservation ; Muhadev, the god of destruction ; or the sun, or the air, or the sea, or the human under- standing ; or, in fact any object or thing which they may choose to repre- sent as God. Seeing, say the Hindoos, that God pervades and animates the whole universe, everything, living or dead, may be considered a por- tion of God, and as such, it may be selected as an object of worship, pro- vided always it be worshiped only as constituting a portion of the Divine Substance. In this way, whatever the eye looks on, or the mind can con- ceive, whether it be the sun in the heavens or the great river Ganges, or the crocodile on its banks, or the cow, or the fire kindled to cook food, or the Vedas, or a Brahmin, or a tree, or a serpent — all may be legiti- mately worshiped as a fragment, so to speak, of the Divine Spirit. Thus there may be many millions of gods to which Hindoos think themselves entitled to pay divine honours. The number of Hindoo gods is calculated at 330,000,000, or about three times the number of their worshipers.

Of these, the three principal deities of the Hindoos are Brahma the cre- ator,Vishnu the preserver, and Seeb or Siva the destroyer. These three of course, were originally intended to represent the three great attributes of the Om or Invisible Supreme Being — namely, his creating, his preserv- ing, and his destroying attributes. Indeed the name Om itself is a com- pound word, expressing the three ideas of creation, preservation, and des- truction, all combined. The three together are called Trimurti, and there are certain occasions when the three are worshiped conjointly. There are also sculptured representations of the Trimurti, in which the busts of Brah-

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 33

ma, Vishnu, and Siva are cut out of the same mass of stone. One of these images of the Trimurti is found in the celebrated cavern temple of Ele- phanta, in the neighborhood of Bombay, perhaps the most wonderful rem- nant of ancient Indian architecture. Vishnu and Siva are more worship- ped separately than Brahma — each having his body of devotees specially attached to him in particular.

Hindooism, like other Pantheistic systems, teaches the doctrine of the transmigration of souls : all creation, animate and inanimate, being, accor- ding to the Hindoo system, nothing else but the deity Brahm himself par- celed out, as it were, into innumerable portions and forms (when these are reunited, the world will be at an end), just as a quantity of qtiicksil- ver may be broken up into innumerable little balls or globules, which all have a tendency to go together again. At long intervals of time, each exten- ding over some thousand millions of years, Brahm does bring the world to an end, by reabsorbing it into his spirit. When, therefore, a man dies, his soul, according to the Hindoos, must either be absorbed immediately into the soul of Brahm, or it must pass through a series of transmigrations, waiting for the final absorption, which happens at the end of every uni- verse, or at least until such time as it shall be prepared for being reunited with the Infinite Spirit. The former of the two is, according to the Hin- doos, the highest possible reward : to be absorbed into Brahm immediately upon death, and without having to undergo any farther purification, is the lot only of the greatest devotees. To attain this end, or at least to avoid degradation after death, the Hindoos, and especially the Brahmins, who are naturally the most intent upon their spiritual interests, practice a ritual of the most intricate and ascetic description, carrying religious ceremonies and antipathies with them into all the duties of life. So overburdened is the daily life of the Hindoos with superstitious observances with regard to food, sleep, etc., that, but for the speculative doctrines which the more ele- vated minds among the Brahmins may see recognised in their religion, the whole system of Hindooism might seem a wretched and grotesque poly- theism.

A hundred millions of people professing this system, divided into castes as now, and carrying the Brahminical ritual into all the occupations of la- zy life under the hot sun, and amid the exuberant vegetation of Hindoos- tan — such was the people into which Alexander the Great carried his conquering arms ; such, doubtless, they had been for ages before that pe- riod ; and such did they remain, shut out from the view of the rest of the civilized world, and only communicating with it by means of spices, ivory, etc., which found their way through Arabia or the Red Sea to the Mediter- ranean, till Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and brought Europe and India into closer connection. Meanwhile a Mohammedan invasion had taken place (a.d. 1000) ; Mohammedans from Persia had mingled themselves with the Hindoos ; and it was with this mixed popu- lation that British enterprise eventually came into collision.

Ere quitting the Indians, it is well to glance back at the Chinese, so as to see wherein these two primeval and contemporaneous consolidations of our species — the Mongolian consolidation of eastern Asia, and the Caucas- ian consolidation of the central peninsula of southern Asia — differ. ' Who- ever would perceive the full physical and moral difference,' says Klaproth,

' between the Chinese and Indian nations, must contrast the peculiar cul- 3#

34 AMERICAN" ENCYCLOPEDIA.

ture of the Chinese with that of the Hindoo, fashioned almost like a Euro- pean, even to his complexion. He will study the boundless religious sys- tem of the Brahmins, and oppose it to the bald belief of the original Chi- nese, which can hardly be named religion. He will remark the rigorous division of the Hindoos into castes, sects, and denominations, for which the inhabitants of the central kingdom have even no expression. He will com- pare the dry prosaic spirit of the Chinese with the high poetic souls of the dwellers on the Ganges and the Dsumnah. He will hear the rich and blooming Sanscrit, and contrast it with the unharmonious speech of the Chinese. He will mark, finally, the literature of the latter, full of matters of fact and things worth knowing, as contrasted with the limitless philo- sophic-ascetic writing of the Indians, who have made even the highest poetry wearisome by perpetual length.'

History of the Eastern Nations till their Incorporation in the Persian Empire. Leaving India — that great fragment of the orig- inal Caucasian civilization — and proceeding westward, we find two largo masses of the human species filling in the earliest times the countries lying between the Indus and the Mediterranean — namely, an Indo-Persian mass filling the whole tract of country between the Indus and the Tigris ; and a Semitic- Aramaic mass filling the greater part of lesser Asia and the whole peninsula of Arabia, and extending itself into the parts of Africa adjoining the Red Sea. That in the most remote ages these lands were the theatres of a civilized activity is certain, although no records have been transmitted from them to us, except a few fragments relative to the Semi- tic nations. The general facts, however, with regard to these ante-historic times, seem to be : 1st, That the former of the two masses mentioned — namely, the population between the Indus and the Caspian — was essen- tially a prolongation of the great Indian nucleus, possessing a culture similar to the Indian in its main aspects, although varied, as was inevitable, by the operation of those physical causes which distinguish the climate of Persia and Cabool from that of Hindoostan ; 2d, That the Semitic or Ara- maic mass divided itself at a very early period into a number of separate peoples or nations, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Arabians, etc., and that each of these acquired a separate devel- opment, and worked out for itself a separate career ; 3c?, That upwards of a thousand years before Christ the spirit of conquest appeared among the Semitic nations, dashing them violently against each other; and that at length one Semitic fragment — that is, the Assyrians — attained the supre- macy over the rest, and founded a great dominion, called the Assyrian empire, which stretched from Egypt to the borders of India (b. c. 800) ; and 4th, That the pressure of this Semitic power against the Indo-Persic mass was followed by a reaction — one great section of the Indo-Persians rising into strength, supplanting the Assyrian empire, and founding one of their own, called the Persian empire (b. c. 536) , which was destined in its turn to be supplanted by the confederacy of Grecian states in b. c. 326.

Beginning with Egypt, let us trace separately the career of each of the Eastern nations till that point of time at which we find them all embodied in the great Persian empire : —

The Egyptians. Egypt, whose position on the map of Africa is well

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 35

known, is about 500 miles long from its most northern to its most southern point. Through its whole length flows the Nile, a fine large stream rising in the inland kingdom of Abyssinia, and, from certain periodic floods to which it is subject, of great use in irrigating and fertilizing the country. A large portion of Egypt consists of an alluvial plain, similar to our mead- ow grounds, formed by the deposits of the river, and bounded by ranges of mountains on either side. The greatest breadth of the valley is 150 miles, but generally it is much less, the mountain ranges on either side often being not more than a few miles from the river.

A country so favorably situated, and possessing so many advantages, could not but be among the earliest peopled ; and accordingly, as far back as the human memory can reach, we find a dense population of a very peculiar character inhabiting the whole valley of the Nile. These ancient Egyptians seem, as we have already said, to have been a mixture of the Semitic with the Ethiopic element, speaking a peculiar language, still sur- viving in a modified form in the Coptic of modern Egypt. In the ancient authors, however, the Egyptians are always distinguished from the Ethio- pians, with whom they kept up so close an intercourse, that it has been made a question whether the Egyptian institutions came from the Ethiopian Meroe, or whether, as is more probable, civilization was transmitted to Ethiopia from Egypt.

The whole country is naturally divided into three parts — Upper Egypt, bordering on what was anciently Ethiopia ; Middle Egypt ; and Lower Egypt, including the Delta of the Nile. In each there were numerous cities in which the population was amassed : originally Thebes, a city of Upper Egypt, of the size of which surprising accounts are transmitted to us, and whose ruins still astonish the traveler, was the capital of the coun- try ; but latterly, as commerce increased, Memphis in Middle Egypt became the seat of power. After Thebes and Memphis, Ombi, Edfou, Esneh, Elephantina, and Philoe seem to have been the most important of the Egyptian cities.

Our accounts of the Egyptian civilization are derived chiefly from the Greek historian Herodotus (b. c. 408), who visited Egypt and digested the information which he received from the priests as to its ancient history ; and Manetho, a native Egyptian of later times, who wrote in Greek. From their accounts it is inferred that the country was anciently divided into thirty-six sections or provinces called nomes — ten in Upper, sixteen in Middle, and ten in Lower Egypt. ' Many of the separate nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked local character each to itself, religious as well as political ; though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantine to Pelusium and Kanopus, is said to have always consti- tuted one kingdom.' Of this kingdom, the population, according to a rough estimate, may have been about seven millions. The government was a monarchy based on an all-powerful priesthood, similar to the Brahminical system of India ; and, as in India, the most striking feature in the Egyp- tian' society was the division of the people into hereditary castes. ' The population of Egypt,' says Mr Grote in his History of Greece, ' was clas- sified into certain castes or hereditary professions, of which the number is represented differently by different authors. The priests stand clearly marked out as the order richest, most powerful, and most venerated, distri- buted all over the country, and possessing exclusively the means of reading

OD AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

and writing, besides a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attaina- ble, and those rudiments of geometry (or rather land-measuring) which were so often called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god and to each temple throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained. Their ascendancy, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people was immense ; they prescribed that minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king himself, was passed, and which was for themselves more full of harassing particularities than for any one else. Every day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all ; and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the comparative celeb- rity of the temple. The property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with " holy marks," and who must have been numerous, in order to suffice for the service of the large buildings and their constant visitors.

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste or order, whose native name indicated that they stood on the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They were classified in Kala- sires and Hermotybii, who occupied lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in Lower Egypt. The Kalasiries had once amoun- ted to 160,000 men, the Hermotybii to 250,000, when at the maximum of their population ; but that highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier-caste was assigned a portion of land, equal to about 62 English acres, free from any tax. The lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as privileged property, and exempt from all burdens ; while the remaining soil was considered as the property of the king, who however, received from it a fixed proportion — one-fifth of the total produce — leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators. The soldiers were interdicted from every description of art and trade.'

The other castes are differently given in different authors ; the most probable account, however, is that which assigns them as three — the caste of the husbandmen, that of the artificers, and that of the herdsmen, which last caste included a variety of occupations held in contempt, the lowest and most degraded of all being that of swineherd. The separation be- tween the husbandmen and the herdsmen seems to have arisen from the circumstance that different parts of the country, not suitable for agricul- ture, were entirely laid out in pasture. The artificers, constituting the vast town population of Egypt, were subdivided into a great variety of occupa- tions, weavers, masons, sculptors, etc., who were compelled to these profes- sions by hereditary obligation. It was by the labor of this vast town pop- ulation, assisted by that of herds of slaves, that those huge works were accomplished, the remains of which attest the greatness of ancient Egypt. Part of the artisan population were exclusively occupied in skilled labor ; and in a country where there was such a taste for works of masonry, sculpture was necessarily one of the most largely-stocked of the skilled occupations. ' Perfect exactness of execution,' it is said, ' mastery of the hardest stone, and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 37

their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics, so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision.' These skilled artificers may be sup- posed to have acted as foremen and overseers of the great numbers of laborers who were employed in public works such as the Pyramids. In the construction of these works no degree of labor for any length of time seems to have intimidated the Egyptians. The huge blocks of stone, sometimes weighing 1000 tons each, were dragged for hundreds of miles on sledges, and their transport, perhaps, did not occupy less time than a year ; in one case which is known, 2000 men were employed three years in bringing a single stone from a quarry to the building in which it was to be placed. Usually, the sledges were drawn by men yoked in rows to separate ropes, all pulling at a ring fixed to the block. Where it was pos- sible, the blocks were brought from the quarries on flat-bottomed boats on the Nile. But the transport of these masses was much more easily accom plished than the placing of them in elevated situations in the buildings They were raised by the power of levers and inclined planes at immense trouble and cost. The waste of human life in these gigantic works must have been enormous. About 120,000 men are said to have perished in the digging of a canal, which was left unfinished, between the Red Sea and an arm of the Nile ; and according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests of his day described the building of the Pyramids as a time of extreme exhaustion and hardship to the whole country.

The religion of the Egyptians seems to have been, in its popular form at least, a mere gross Fetishism, whose principal characteristic was a worship of teeming animal life — the bull, the cat, the ibis, the crocodile, etc.; different animals in different nomes. Whatever profounder meaning lay hid under this gross ceremonial the priest-caste reserved to themselves, as one of the mysteries, the possession of which severed them from the rest of the population. Among these mysteries was the art of writing, which was practised both in the alphabetical and the hieroglyphic form ; the latter being used for special purposes. Some vague notion of the immortality of the soul, resembling the Hindoo tenet of transmigration, seems to have pervaded the Egyptian religion ; and this belief appears to have lain at the foundation of the Egyptian practice of embalming the dead. The business of embalming was a very dignified one, and was aided by a host of inferior functionaries, who made and painted coffins and other articles which were required. The bodies of the poorer classes were merely dried with salt or natron, and wrapt up in coarse cloths, and deposited in the catacombs. The bodies of the rich and great underwent the most compli- cated operations, wrapt in bandages dipped in balsam, and laboriously adorned with all kinds of ornaments. Thus prepared they were placed in highly-decorated cases or coffins, and then consigned to sarcophagi in the catacombs or pyramids. Bodies so prepared have been called mum- mies, either from the Arabian word momia, or the Coptic mum, signifying bitumen or gum-resin.

Although the Egyptians carried on from early times a caravan-commerce with the adjacent countries of Phoenicia, Palestine, and Arabia, importing such articles as wine, oil, and spices for embalming, yet exclusiveness and self-sufficiency were characteristics of their civilization. There, on the oanks of the Nile, these millions lived, changeless in their methods through

38 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

centuries, each individual mechanically pursuing the occupation to which he was born — millions cultivating the soil, and producing wheat, etc., for the subsistence of the whole ; others tending the cattle necessary for food or sacrifice ; millions, again, crowded into the numerous towns, occupied in the various handicrafts necessary to provide articles of clothing, luxury, etc. — a large proportion of this class being available for stupendous archi- tectural works ; and lastly, diffused through these country and town popu- lations, two other proprietor-castes — the one a militia, occupied in gym- nastic exercises alone ; the other a sacerdotal or intellectual order, within whose body was accumulated all the speculative or scientific wisdom of the country. Relations existed between Egypt and the adjacent countries ; and rumours of the nature of its peculiar civilization may have spread through the nations of the Mediterranean ; but for a long while it was shut, like the present China, against foreign intrusion ; and it was not till about the year 650 B. c. that it was thrown open to general inspection. In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., the philosophers of other countries, and espe- cially of Greece, used to visit Egypt in order to acquire, by intercourse with the Egyptian intellectual caste, some of that precious knowledge of which they were believed to be the depositaries.

Although the Egyptian civilization is known to have existed pretty much as we have described it from immemorial antiquity, yet, with the exception of what we learn from Scripture, we know little of Egyptian history, pro- perly so called, anterior to the time when the country was thrown open to the Greeks. Herodotus and Manetho, indeed, have given us retrospective lists of the Egyptian kings, extending back into the primitive gloom of the world ; but portions of these lists are evidently constructed backwards on mythical principles.' Thus Manetho, preserving doubtless the traditions of the sacerdotal Egyptian caste, to which he is supposed to have belonged, carries back the imagination as far as 80,000 years before the birth of Christ. From this date till B. C. 5702, great divine personages ruled in Egypt ; then (b. c. 5702) it came into the possession of human kings, the first of which was Menes. From the accession of Menes down to the in- corporation of Egypt wTith the Persian empire (b. c. 525), Herodotus assigns 330 kings, or, as they are called in Scripture, Pharaohs, whose names he informs us, were read to him out of a papyrus manuscript by the Egyp- tian priests, who pledged themselves to its accuracy ; ana" Manetho reckons up twenty-six dynasties, some of them native and others foreign, which divided the long period into portions of different lengths.

Arabia. The great peninsula of Arabia was in the earliest times inhab- ited by a population of the Semitic stock, in all essential respects similar to that which inhabits it now, partly concentrated in cities, partly wander- ing in tribes through the extensive deserts which mark the surface of the country. The inhabitants of the towns subsist by agriculture and com- merce ; the wandering tribes by cattle rearing and pillage. In ancient times, as now, the Arabs were celebrated for their expert horsemanship, their hospitality, their eloquence, and their free indomitable spirit. In religion, however, the modern Arabs, who are Mohammedans, differ from the ancient Arabs, who were idolaters, chiefly worshippers of the celestial luminaries, nowhere so beautiful as in the sky of an Arabian desert. The Arabs themselves trace their history back, the older tribes to Kahtan (the Joktan of the 10th chapter of Genesis), the latter to Adnan, a descendant

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 39

of Ishmael, the offspring of Abraham. It is unnecessary, however, to enter into this history, as Arabia was not incorporated with the Persian empire, and only assumed historical importance in later times, when it sent forth the religion of Mohammed over the East.

Syria. The Semitic or Aramaic population overspreading Syria — which name is generally applied to the country lying between the Euphrates and Arabian desert on the east, and the Mediterranean on the west — had early divided itself into various independent states or kingdoms, which ultimately resolved themselves, it would appear, into three. These were Phoenicia, a narrow strip of coast-land, extending from Mount Carmel to the river Eleutheros ; Palestine, or the Holy Land, including the country south of Phoenicia, between the Arabian desert and the Mediterranean, as well as the inland district lying between Mount Carmel and Mount Herman; and Syria Proper, whose capital was Damascus, and which, when the power of the Damascan kings was at its highest, included all the country except Palestine and Phoenicia. Syrian history possesses no independent importance ; we pass, therefore, to the history of the Phoenician and Jewish nations.

The Phoenicians. Phoenicia was an exceedingly small country, its length being only about 120 miles, and its breadth nowhere greater than 20 miles. Indeed it may be described as a mere slip of coast-land, suffi- ciently large to accommodate a range of port towns, such as a merchant peo- ple required. The most northern of these Phoenician cities was Aradus, situated on a small island ; the most southern was the famous Tyre ; and between the two were situated many others, of which the chief were Sidon, Berytus, Tripolis, and Byblus. The greater part of the population was contained in these cities, the rural population being small in proportion.

Originally, Phoenicia was divided into a number of little states or com- munities, each having a town for its metropolis, with a hereditary king of its own; and ere the country was restricted by the formation of the Jew- ish nation, the number of these Phoenician or Canaanitish principalities must have been considerable. The Phoenicians were a fragment of the Canaanites of Scripture; and doubtless in the annals of the separate Phoenician towns, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus, were preserved rec- ord from the Phoenician point of view, of many of those ancient transac- tions which are related in the Scriptural account of the settlement of the Jews in Canaan. Without going back, however, into the remoter period of Phoenician history, one of the questions connected with which is, whether Tyre (founded, it was said, b.c. 2700) or Sidon was the more ancient town, let us give a summary view of the nature of the Phoenician civilization at the period of its highest celebrity — namely, from B. c. 1200 to B. c. 700, at which time we find Tyre exercising a presiding influence over the other Phoenician communities.

The Phoenicians were the great trading nation of antiquity. Situated at so convenient a point on the Mediterranean, it devolved on them to trans- port to the sea-shore the commodities of the East, brought to them over- land by Arabian and Egyptian caravans, and from the sea-shore to distrib- ute them among the expecting nations of the west. Nor were they with- out valuable products of their own. The sand of their coasts was particu-

40 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

larly suitable for the manufacture of glass ; their bays abounded in species of fish which produced a fine purple dye — the celebrated Tyrian purple of antiquity ; and in various parts of the country there were excellent mines of iron and copper. It was, in fact, essential for the general inter- ests of the race that the people inhabiting that portion of the Mediterranean coasts should devote themselves to commerce. In anticipation of this, as it might seem, the mountains of Libanus, which separated the narrow Phoenician territory from Syria, were stocked with the best timber, which, transported over the short distance which intervened between these moun- tains and the sea, abundantly supplied the demands of the Phoenician dock- yards. There was something in the Phoenician character, also, which sui- ted the requirements of their geographical position. Skillful, enterprising, griping in their desire for wealth, and in other respects resembling much their neighbors the Jews, to whom they were allied in race, and whose lan- guage was radically identical with their own — theirs was essentially the merchant type of character.

Standing as the Phoenicians did as the people by whom the exchange between the East and the West was managed, a complete view of their life and manner of activity should embrace first, their relations with the East — that is, their overland trade with Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, and India ; secondly, their relations with the West — that is, their maritime trade with the various nations of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts ; and thirdly, the peculiar character of mind which either accompanied or resulted from the consciousness of such a position in the great family of mankind.

With regard to the overland trade of the Phoenicians with the Eastern countries, little requires to be said except that it was one attended with great risks — the journey of a caravan across the deserts, and through the roaming tribes which separated Phoenicia from interior Asia, being a more serious enterprise than a long sea voyage. It is probable that the Phoe- nicians managed this commerce not in their own persons, but as wealthy speculative merchants, dealing in a skillful manner with the native Egyptian, Assyrian, or Arabian caravan-proprietors, with whom they maintained an understood connection. At the same time it is likely that they stimulated and regulated the Eastern commerce, by means of Phoenician agents or emissaries despatched into the interior with general instructions, just as in later times European agents were often despatched into the interior of Africa to direct the movements of native merchants. It was in their maritime trade with the West, however, that the Phoenicians chiefly exhibi- ted the resources of their own character. Shipping the Oriental commo- dities, as well as their native products, at Tyre or Sidon, they carried them to all the coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Spain, selling them there at immense profit, and returning with freights of Western goods. With some of the nations of the Mediterranean their intercourse would be that of one civilized nation with another ; with others, and especially with those of the West, it must have been an intercourse similar to that of a British ship with those rude islanders who exchange their valuable pro- ducts for nails, bits of looking-glass, and other trifles. Whether their customers were civilized or savage, however, the Phoenicians reaped profits from them. Their aim was to monopolise the commerce of the Mediterra- nean. * If at any time,' it is said, * tneir ships bound on a voyage observed

DEPARTMENT OP HISTORY. 41

that a stranger kept them company, or followed them in their track, they were sure to get rid of him, or deceive him if they could ; and in this they went so far as to venture the loss of their ships, and even of their lives, so that they could but destroy or disappoint him ; so jealous were they of foreigners, and so bent on keeping all to themselves. And to add to the dangers of the sea, and discourage other nations from trading, they practiced piracy, or pretended to be at war with such as they met when they thought themselves strongest.' This policy succeeded so far, that hardly a merchant ship was to be seen in the Mediterranean not manned by Phoenicians. From this extension of the Phoenician commerce through- out the Mediterranean resulted, by necessity, an extensive system of coloni- zation. The distance, for instance, of Spain from Phoenicia, rendered all the greater by the ancient custom of always sailing close by the coast, made it necessary for the Phoenician traders to have intermediate ports, settlement, or factories, to which their vessels might resort, not to say that such settlements were required for the collection of the produce which was to be taken back to Phoenicia. Accordingly, in process of time, Phoenician colonies were established at all available points of the Mediterranean — on the coasts of Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and in the Balearic Islands ; the rising maritime spirit of the Greeks excluding the Phoenicians from the iEgean and the coasts of Asia Minor. Among the most ancient of the colonies from Tyre were Carthage and Utica on the African coast, and Gades (Cadiz) in Spain ; all of which were founded before the first of the Greek Olympiads (b. c. 884). From these afterwards arose smaller settlements, which diffused the Phoenician agency still more extensively among the uncivilized nations of Africa and western Europe. Gades in Spain, situated, according to the ancient mode of navigation, at a distance of seventy-five days' sail from Tyre and Sidon — a distance larger than that which now divides Liverpool from Bombay — was a colony of special impor- tance ; first, as commanding the inland Spanish trade, particularly valuable at that time, inasmuch as the gold and silver mines of Spain caused it to be regarded as the Mexico or Peru of the ancient world ; and secondly, as forming a point from which the Phoenician commerce could be still farther extended along the extra-Mediterranean shores. From this point, we are told, the Phoenician ships extended their voyages southward for thirty days' sail along the coast of Africa, and northwards as far as Britain, where they took in tin from Cornwall, and even as far as the Baltic, where they collected amber. Upon what a scale of profit must these expeditions have been conducted, when, from Tyre to Cornwall, not a merchant ship besides those of the Phoenicians was to be seen ! And who can tell what influence these Phoenician visits may have had on the then rude nations bordering the Atlantic ? — or how far these ante-historic Phoenician impulses may have stimulated the subsequent career of these nations ? Like the visit of an English merchantman now to a South Sea Island, so must have been the visit of a Phoenician trading vessel 3000 years ago to the Britons of Cornwall.

As might be expected, this great merchant people were among the most cultured of antiquity, and especially skilled in all the arts of luxurious living. The 27th chapter of the book of Ezekiel presents a most striking picture of the pride and magnificence of the Tyrians, and embodies many minute particulars relative to Phoenician customs and mode of life. Indeed it has

42 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

been pronounced the most early and most authentic record extant relative to the commerce of the ancients.

Among the contributions made by the Phoenicians to the west, were alphabetical writing, the Greek alphabet being a derivative from the Phoenician ; the scale of weight ; and that of coined money. Having made these and other contributions to the west, Phoenicia began about (700 b. c.) to decline in importance ; the Ionian Greeks, and latterly the Egyptians, becoming its commercial rivals on the Mediterranean : and the invasions of the Assyrians from the east depriving it of independence. Subdued by the Assyrians and Babylonians, Phoenicia was transferred by them to the Persians. Among the last of the Phoenician achievements was the circumnavigation of Africa B. c. 600 — a feat undertaken by Phoenician sailors at the command of the Egyptian king Nekos, one of the immediate successors of Psammetik : and, as is now believed, really per formed — the course pursued being from the Red Sea round Africa to Spain — the reverse, therefore, of that followed by Vasco de Gama 2000 years later. About the time that Phoenicia began to wane, her colony, Carthage, assumed her place in the affairs of the world. Carthaginian civi- lization was essentially a mere repetition of the Phoenician, although under a different form of government ; Carthaginian history interweaves itself with that of the Romans.

Palestine — the Jews. Palestine extends from north to south a length of about 200 miles, and 50 in breadth ; and is therefore, in point of size, of nearly the same extent as Scotland. The general character of the country is that of a hilly region, interspersed with moderately fertile vales ; and being thus irregular in surface, it possesses a number of brooks or streams, which for the most part are swollen considerably after rains, but are almost dry in the hot seasons of the year. The present condition of Palestine scarcely corresponds with its ancient fertility. This is chiefly attribu- table to the devastating effects of perpetual wars ; and some physical chan ges have also contributed to the destruction of agricultural industry. Yet, after all, so excellent would the soil appear to be, and so ample its resources, that Canaan may still be characterized as a land flowing with milk and honey.

The history of the extraordinary nation which once inhabited this land, must be so much more familiar to our readers than that of any other ancient nation, that all that is necessary here is a brief sketch, such as will assist the imagination in tracing with due completeness the general career of the East till the establishment of the Persian empire. Accor- ding to the accounts given of the Jews in Scripture, and in their history by Josephus, they were descended from Abraham, who was born in the 292d year (according to other authorities, in the 352d year) after the Deluge, 'left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and, at the command of God, went int^ Canaan, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding of all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions ; for which reason he began to have higher notions of vir- tue than othera had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God ; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but one God, the Creator

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 43

of the universe ; and that as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to His appointment, and not by their own power. For which doctrines, when the Chaldeans and other people of Mesopotamia raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country, and at the command of God he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God.' After the death of Abraham's son Isaac, his younger son Jacob remained for a number of years in Canaan, surrounded by a family of twelve sons, one of whom, Joseph, as related in Scripture, became the cause of the removal of his father and brethren, and all belonging to them, into Egypt. The Hebrew emigrants were seventy in number, and formed at the first a respectable colony among the Egyptians. Jacob died after having been seventeen years in Egypt, and his body was carried by Joseph to Hebron, and buried in the sepulchre of his father and grandfather. Joseph also died in Egypt at the age of 110, and at length his brethren died likewise. Ea.'h of the twelve sons of Jacob became the progenitor of a family or tribe, and the twelve tribes, personified by the term Israel, continued to reside in Egypt, where they increased both in number and in wealth. Their rapid increase and prosperity soon excited the jealousy of the masters of the country ; and from being in high favor, the different tribes gradually fell under the lash of power, and came to be treated as public slaves.

The entire body of Israelites, guided by Moses, fled from Egypt in the year 1490 before Christ, at a time when Thebes, Memphis, and the other magnificent cities of that country, were in all their glory. Pro- ceeding in a north-easterly direction from Rameses (near the site of mod- ern Cairo), they went through the level region of the land of Goshen (now a barren sandy plain) to the head of the Gulf of Suez, the western branch of the Red Sea. Here they crossed in a miraculous manner to the opposite shore, to a spot now called the Wells of Moses, where, accord- ing to the Scripture narrative, they sang their song of thanksgiving for their deliverance. The country in which they had now arrived was a por- tion of Arabia Petrrea, consisting of a dismal barren wilderness, now called the Desert of Sinai, from the principal mountain which rises within it. From the point at which the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea from Egypt, they were conducted by a most circuitous and tedious route towards the Promised Land of Canaan.

The country on the shore of the Mediterranean which was allotted as a settlement to this people, was at that time occupied by many warlike tribes, who had grown strong in its fertile plains and valleys ; and the generation of the Hebrews who were conducted into it were compelled to fight for its possession. The struggle was not of long continuance. The whole land was conquered in the year B. c. 1450.

According to the account given in the 26th chapter of the book of Num- bers, the Hebrew nation thus brought out of the land of Egypt and settled in Canaan amounted to 601,730 souls, unto whom the land was divided for an inheritance, according to the number of individuals in the respective tribes.

Moses dying before the inheritance was entered upon, was succeeded by Joshua as a leader, and by him the Israelites were conducted across the Jordan. The political government of the various tribes, after their con

44 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

quest and settlement of Canaan, appears to have been republican, with mil- itary leaders called Judges ; but these acted by the direction of the Priest- hood, who were immediately counseled by the Deity within the sanctuary. This period of separate government in tribes, called the Period of the Judges, lasted 300 years (b. c. 1427-1112), and was one of daring actions and great deliverances — the heroic age of the Jews.

The epoch of kings succeeded that of judges. The reign of Saul, their first monarch, though the people were stronger by being united, was gloomy and troubled. David, who succeeded, was a soldier and a conqueror. He rendered the Hebrews formidable to the whole of their enemies, and gave them a regular and defensible position, expelling their old antagonists from every part of the country. He left an empire peaceful, respected, and strong ; and, what was of as much importance, he selected from among his sons a successor who was able to improve all these advantages, and to add to the progress which his countrymen had already made in prosperity. Under Solomon, the name of the Hebrew government being able to protect its subjects in other countries, the people and their king began to employ themselves in commerce. Their trade was at first engrafted on that of the Phoenicians of Tyre. A greater contrast cannot be imagined than between the troubles of the time of the Judges (only 100 years before), and the peace, security, and enjoyment of this reign. 'And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance ; and Judah and Israel were many ; as the sand which is by the sea-shore for multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry.' (1 Kings, x. 27.)

After the death of Solomon, the country fell into the same divisions which had weakened it in the time of the Judges. Each of the districts of North and South Israel was under a separate king, and the people were exposed both to the attacks of their enemies and to quarrels with each other. Their history is a succession of agitating conflicts for independence, and of unex- pected and remarkable deliverances, of a similar nature to those of the earlier period, and they continued for about the same length of time (380 years) ; but they are marked by fewer of those traits of heroic devotion which distinguished the epoch of the Judges. The backslidings, errors, and misgovernment of their kings, is the chief and painful subject which is presented to us ; and though these are relieved at times by the appear- ance of such monarchs as Josiah, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, yet the whole history of this period is overcast with the gloominess of progressive decline.

By far the most delightful parts of it are those which relate to the lives of the prophets, who were raised up at intervals to warn the nation and its rulers of the fate which they incurred by forsaking the religion of their fathers. These inspired men sometimes sprang up from among the humblest classes of the community: one from the 'herdsmen of Tekoa,' another from 'ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen ;' several were of the priestly order, and one (Isaiah) is said to have been of royal lineage ; but the works of all are marked with the same sacredness, force, and authority. They reprehend their countrymen, in the most eloquent strains, at one timo for idolatry, and at another for hypocrisy ; and their indignation is express ed with the same freedom and dignity against the vices of the highest and the lowest.

Of the two kingdoms into which Palestine divided itself after the death

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 45

of Solomon (b. c. 975), the northern, called the Kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians of Nineveh (b. c. 722),who carried off many thousand of the people into captivity. Little is known of their fate. By some they are supposed to have been carried to India, by others to Tartary : 'what became of all the Israelites of the ten tribes,' is still a question with historians. The southern kingdom, called the kingdom of Judah, retained its independence till B. c. 588, when it was invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem, and carried away a great number of the principal Jews into captivity at Babylon. On the subversion of the Babylonian dominion by Cyrus, seventy years after- wards, the captives, to the number of 42,360, were permitted to return to their own land, and rebuild Jerusalem. At this period, the whole of Pales- tine merged in the growing Persian empire.

The Assyrians and Babylonians. That large extent of level coun- try situated between and on the banks of the two great rivers, the Euphra- tes and the Tigris, was in the earliest antiquity, the seat of a Semitic popu- lation living under an organized government. Of the cities, the most im- portant ultimately were Babylon, built, by Nimrod, (b. c. 2217) ; and Nineveh (called Ninos by the Greeks), built either by Asshur or Nimrod about the same time, but afterwards rebuilt and enlarged, according to ancient tradition, by a great king, Ninus, (b. c. 1230). With these two cities as capitals, the country divided itself into two corresponding parts or kingdoms — the kingdom of Assyria proper, including, besides part of Mesopotamia, the country to the right of the Tigris as far as Mount Zagros; and the kingdom of Babylonia, including the western part of Mesopotamia, together with the country to the left of the Euphrates as far as Syria proper. The two kingdoms, however, are often included under the joint name of Assyria ; a word which, as well as the shorter form Syria, was often employed by the ancient Greek writers to designate the whole region lying along the courses of the two great rivers from the Black Sea to the northern angle of the Persian Gulf.

Although Babylon was according to Scripture, the earlier of the two powers, yet the Assyrians of Nineveh attained such strength under their hero Ninus, as to reduce the Babylonians to a species of dependence. Under Ninus, and his wife and successor the great conqueress Semiramis, says ancient mythical history, the city of the Tigris extended its dominions far and wide, from Egypt to the border of India. This empire, known in the common chronologies by the name of 'The Assyrian Empire,' lasted, according to the usual accounts, five or six centuries, during which it was governed, in the absolute Oriental manner, by the successors of Ninus and Semiramis. Of these several are mentioned in Scripture — Phul, the con- temporary of Menahem, king of Israel (b. c. 761), Tiglath Pileser (b. c. 730), both of whom were mixed up with the affairs of Israel and Judah ; Salmanassar, cotemporary with Hezekiah, king of Judah, andHoseah, king of Israel, by whom it was that Samaria was taken (b. c. 722), and the Is- raelites led into captivity (b. c. 722); and Sennacherib, or Sanherib (b. c. 714), who attacked Egypt, and whose fruitless invasion of Judah forms the subject of the striking narrative in the 18th and 19th chapters of the second book of Kings , The last of the great line of the Assyrian kings of Nineveh

46 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

was the luxurious Sardanapalus, in whose reign the empire was dissolved, through the instrumentality of its revolted subjects the Medes (b. c. 626). After Nineveh, the greatest city in the Assyrian dominion was Babylon. Even while under the dominion of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon appears to have possessed a special organization under its own chiefs, several of whose names — such as Beldesis (b. c. 888), and Nabonassar (b. c. 747)

— have been preserved ; and, together with the whole province of which it was the capital, to have pursued a special career. The peculiar element in the Babylonian society which distinguished it from that of Assyria proper, was its Chaldsean priesthood. 'The Chaldaean order of priests,' says Mr. Grote. 'appear to have been peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city and the Persian Gulf; the vast, rich, and lofty temple of Belus in that city served them at once as a place of worship and an astronomical observatory ; and it was the paramount ascendancy of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people generally to be spoken of as Chaldoeans, though some writers have sup- posed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian Babylon by barba- rians called Chaldaeans from the mountains near the Euxine. There were^ exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their astronomical obser- ' vations,* which cannot be traced, as of definite and recorded date, higher than the era of Nabonassar (b. c. 747), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But how- ever incomplete their knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after- times, there can be no doubt that, compared with any of their cotem- poraries of the sixth century B. c. — either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics

— they stood preeminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thales and Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomon, and the di- vision of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by Herodotus to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians.' This learned Chal- dsean class seems to have pervaded the general mass of Babylonian society, as the corresponding priest-caste in Egypt pervaded Egyptian society, with this difference, that Babylonian society does not appear to have been parceled out like the Egyptian into a rigorous system of castes.

On the dissolution of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh by the Medes (b. C. 626), the Chaldsean fragment of it rose to eminence on its ruins, chiefly by the efforts of Nabopolassar, a viceroy of the last Assyrian king. Estab lishing Babylonia as an independent power in the east, Nabopolassar came into collision with Nekos, king of Egypt, who was at that time extending his empire into Asia. It was in opposing Nekos (Pharaoh-Necho) on his march to Babylon, that Josiah, king of Judah, was slain. At length (b. c 608 ) Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchodonosor, the son of Nabopolassar, defeated Nekos, and annexed all his conquests in Asia to his father's king- dom. Two years afterwards the same prince took Jerusalem, and carried away a number of captives to Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his companions. Succeeding his father, B. c 605, Nebuchadnezzar reigned over Babylon forty-three years (b. c. 605-561) ; and during his reign ex-

*When Alexander the Great was in Babylon, the Chaldreans told him their order had be- ^un their astronomical observations 400,000 years before he was born.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 47

tended the empire to the Mediterranean and the borders of Egypt, adding to it Palestine, Phoenicia, etc. With his countenance the Medes and Lyd- ians destroyed Nineveh (b. c. 601). The great abduction of Jewish cap- tives by his orders took place b. c. 588. He was succeeded (b. c. 561) by his son, Evil-Merodach, who was dethroned (b. c. 559) by his brother- in-law Neriglissar, whose son and successor, Laboroso-archod, was dethron- ed, after a brief reign, by Nabonnedus, the Belshazzar of Scripture (b. c , 555) : in the eighteenth year of whose reign (b. c. 538) Babylon was taken by Cyrus, and passed into the hands of the Persians.

It was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that the city of Babylon attained that glory which has rendered it a known word to all who are at all acquainted with history. Herodotus, who saw the city in its decline, gives a description of it which has seemed incredible to many, although now fully verified. ' The city, divided in the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded with walls in thickness 75 feet, in height 300 feet and in com- pass 480 stadia, or about 60 of our miles.' Within this circuit there was included, besides the houses, a space of vacant ground, gardens, pasture, etc., sufficient to accommodate the country population in case of invasion: the height and strength of the walls rendered the city itself to all appear- ance impregnable. 'These walls formed an exact square, each side of which was 120 stadia, or 15 miles in length ; and were built of large bricks ce- mented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime which issues out of the earth in that country, and in a short time becomes harder than the very brick or stone which it cements. The city was encompassed without the walls of a vast ditch filled with water, and lined with bricks on both sides ; and as the earth that was dug out of it served to make the bricks, we may judge of the depth and largeness of the ditch from the height and thick- ness of the walls. In the whole compass of the walls there were a hun- dred gates — that is, twenty-five on each side, all made of solid brass. At intervals round the walls were 250 towers. From each of the twenty- five gates there was a straight street extending to the corresponding gate, in the opposite wall ; the whole number of streets was therefore fifty, cross- ing each other at right angles, and each fifteen miles long. The breadth of the streets was about 150 feet. By their intersection the city was di- vided into 676 squares, each about two miles and a quarter in compass, round which were the houses, three or four stories in height ; the vacant spaces within being laid out in gardens,' etc. Within the city the two greatest edifices were the royal palace with its hanging gardens, and the temple of Belus, composed of eight towers built one above another, to the enormous height, it is said, of a furlong.

Without the city were numerous canals, embankments, etc., for the pur- pose of irrigating the country, which, as little or no rain fell, depended on the river for moisture. ' The execution of such colossal works as those of Babylon and Egypt,' it has been remarked, ' demonstrates habits of reg- ular industry, a concentrated population under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to the regal and kingly sway — contrasted forci bly with the small self-governing communities of Greece and western Eu rope, where the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic.' In the latter countries only such public works were attempted as were with- in the limits of moderate taste. Nineveh is said to have been larger even

48 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

than Babylon, and is described as an oblong, three days' journey round — that is, upwards of 60 miles.

The Medes and Persians. Extending, as we have said, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, the Assyrian empire had included not only the chief Semitic nations of western Asia, but also that portion of the Indo-Germanic family which was contained between Mount Zagros and the river Indus. Essentially a prolongation of the great race which in- habited Hindoostan, the nature of their country — a vast table-land, here and there rising into hills, or presenting spots of great fertility — had made them quite different in character and habits from the settled and stereotyped Hindoos. All parts of this plateau of Iran, as it was called, including the present countries of Persia, Cabool, and Belochistan, were not alike ; in some portions, where the soil was fertile, there existed a dense agricultural population; in others, the inhabitants were nomadic horse-breeders, cattle-rearers, and shepherds. All the tribes, however, were bound together by the ties of a common Indo-Persic language, quite distinct from that spoken by their Semitic neighbors and masters, and by a common religion. This religion, called the Religion of Zend, a modifi- cation probably of some more ancient form, from which Hindooism may also have sprung, was taught by Zerdusht or Zoroaster, a great native reformer and spiritual teacher, who lived six or seven centuries before Christ. The principal doctrine of his religion was that of the existence of two great emanations from the Supreme and perfect Deity — the one a good spirit (Orrnuzd), who created man, and fitted him for happiness; the other an evil spirit, named Ahriman, who has marred the beauty of creation by introducing evil into it. Between these two spirits and their adherents there is an incessant struggle for the mastery ; but ultimately Orrnuzd will conquer, and Ahriman and evil will be banished from the bosom of creation into eternal darkness. The worship annexed to this doctrine was very simple, dispensing with temples or images, and consist- ing merely of certain solemn rites performed on mountain tops, etc. Fire, and light, and the sun, were worshiped either as symbols or as inferior deities. A caste of priests, called the Magi, answering in some respects to the Brahmins of India or the Chaldaeans of Babylon, superintended these ceremonies, and commented on the religion of Zoroaster.

Various of the tribes of Iran, associating themselves together, constitu- ted little nations. Thus adjacent to Assyria, and separated from it by Mount Zagros, was an agglomeration of seven tribes or villages, under the special name of the Medes, the country which they inhabited being thence called Media. South from Media, and nearer the sea, was another district of Iran, called Persis or Persia, inhabited also by an association of tribes calling themselves the Persians. Other nations of Iran were the Parthians, the Bactrians, etc. — all originally subject to the Assyrian empire.

Median history begins with a hero king called Deiokes (b. c. 710-657), who effected some important changes in the constitution of the nation, and founded the Median capital Ekbatana in one of the most pleasant sites in the world. His son, Phraortes (b. c. 657-635), pursued a career of con- quest, subjugated Persia and other districts of Iran, and perished in an in- vasion of Assyria. He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, who continued his designs of conquest, and extended the Median dominion as far west- ward into Asia Minor as the river Halys. He was engaged in a repeti

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 49

tion of his father's attempt against Nineveh, when he was called away to defend his kingdom against a great roving population, belonging, as is most likely, to the Scythian branch of the Caucasian race (although some reck- on them Mongols), who, bursting with their herds of horses and mares from their native seat in Central Asia, had driven the Cimmerians, a kindred race, before them into Asia Minor, and then had poured themselves over the plateau of Iran. Defeating Cyaxares, they kept him from his throne for a period of twenty-eight years, during which they ruled in savage fash- ion over Media, Persia, etc. At length, having assassinated their chiefs by a stratagem, Cyaxares regained his dominions, and drove the invadeis back into the north. He then renewed his attempt against Nineveh ; took it ; and reduced the Assyrian empire, with the exception of Babylonia, un- der his dominion. The Median empire, thus formed, he bequeathed (b. c. 595) to his son Astyages.

Astyages having given his daughter Mandane in marriage to a Persian chieftain named Cambyses, the issue of this marriage was the famous Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy. The circumstances which led to the revolt of the Persians under Cyrus against the Medes, and the dethrone- ment by him of his grand-father Astyages (b. c. 560), had been woven into a romance resembling the story of Romulus, even so early as the age of Herodotus (b.c.408), so that that accurate historian could not ascer- tain the particulars. ' The native Persians,' says Mr. Grote, ' whom Cyrus conducted, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and four nomadic tribes, all of them rude, hardy, and brave, dwelling in a mountainous re- gion, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, of any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity ; first in estimation among them stood the Pasargadae ; and the first clan among the Pasargadse were the Achsemenidse, to whom Cyrus belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a fact or 'a politic fiction we can- not well determine, but Xenophon gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle.'

Master of Media, the Persian chief in his turn became a great Oriental conqueror ; indeed all the Oriental conquests bear the same character. A nomadic race, led by a chief of great abilities, invades the more organized states, and conquers them ; the chief assumes the government, and founds a dynasty, which after a rule of several generations, becomes enervated, and gives way before some new nomadic incursion. The first power against which Cyrus turned his arms, after having subdued the Medes, was the famous Lydian kingdom, which then subsisted in Asia Minor under the great Croesus. And here, therefore, we must give some account of the ancient condition of Asia Minor and its principalities.

States of Asia Minor — The Lydians. The river Halys divided Asia Minor into two parts. East of the Halys, or near its source, were various nations of the Semitic stock — Cappadocians, Cilicians, Pamphy- lians etc. — each organized apart, but all included under the Assyrian, and latterly, as we have seen, under the Median empire. West of the Halys, the inhabitants were apparently of the Indo-Germanic race, although sep- arated by many removes from the Indo-Germans of Persia. Overspread 4*

50 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

ing this part of Asia Minor, as well as Thrace and other parts of south- eastern Europe, this great race had been broken up into fragments distin- guished by characteristic differences. To enumerate these various nations, assigning to each its exact geographical limits, is impossible ; the chief, however, were the Bithynians, a sort of Asiatic Thracians on the southern coast of the Euxine ; the Lydians and Carians in the south-west ; and, intermediate between the two, geographically as well as in respect of race and language, the Mysians and Phrygians. These were the native states ; but along the whole iEgean shore was diffused a large Greek population, emigrants, it is believed, from European Greece, chiefly gathered into cities. These Greeks of Asia Minor were of three races — the iEolic Greeks in the north, and the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in the south ; and perhaps the earliest manifestations of Greek genius, political or literary, were among these Greeks of Asia. The intercourse of these Greeks with the native Lydians, Phrygians, etc., gave rise to mixture of population as well as to interchange of habits ; the native music especially of the Lydi- ans and Phrygians became incorporated with that of the Greeks.

When Lydia, with its capital Sardis, first began to be a powerful state, is not known ; it is remarkable, however, that the Lydians are not men- tioned in Homer. According to Herodotus, the Lydians traced their his- tory back through three dynasties. 1st, The Atyadae, from the earliest times to b. c. 1221 ; 2c?, The Heracleidse, from b. c. 122 to b. c. 716 ; and 3c?, The Mermnaclse. Only the last dynasty is historic ; the manner in which it succeeded to that of the Heracleidae forms the subject of a curious Lyd- ian legend.

The first king of the Mermoad dynasty was Gyges (b. c. 716-678), the second Ardys (b. c. 678-629), in whose reign the Cimmerians invaded Asia Minor, the third Sadyattes (b. c. 629-617), the fourth Alyattes (b. C. 617-560). Each of these Lydian kings was engaged in wars both with the Asiatic Greeks of the coast and the native states of the interior. The growth of the Lydian power was impeded by the Cimmerian invasion ; but those savage nomades were at length expelled by Alyattes ; and Croesus, the son of Alyattes by an Ionian wife, having succeeded his father b. c. 560, soon raised himself to the position of a great potentate, ruling over nearly the whole country westward of the Halys, comprehending iEolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks ; Phrygians ; Mysians, Paphlagonians, Bithynians, Carians, Pamphylians, etc. At Sardis, the capital of this extensive domin- ion, was accumulated an immense treasure, composed of the tribute which the Lydian monarch derived from the subject states ; hence the proverb, 'as rich as Croesus.'

Separated from the Median kingdom only by the river Halys, the Lyd- ian dominion naturally became an object of desire to Cyrus after he had acquired the sovereignty of Media. Accordingly (b. c. 546), provoked by an invasion of Croesus, who had received from the Delphic oracle the equivocal assurance, that ' if he attacked the Persians he would subvert a mighty monarchy,' Cyrus crossed the Halys, advanced into Lydia, took Sardis, and made Croesus prisoner. It was intended by the conqueror that the Lydian king should be burnt alive — it is even said that the fire was kindled for the purpose ; Cyrus, however, spared his life, and Croesus became his friend and confidential adviser. On the subversion of the Lyd- ian monarchy, its subjects, the Greeks of Asia Minor, were obliged to

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 51

submit to the conqueror, after having in vain solicited the aid of their brethren the European Greeks. The Lacedaemonians indeed sent an em- bassy into Asia Minor ; and one of their ambassadors had a conference with Cyrus at Sardis, where he warned him ' not to lay hands on any of the Greek towns, for the Lacedaemonians would not permit it.' ' Who are the Lacedaemonians ? ' said the astonished warrior. Having been informed that the Lacedaemonians were a Greek people, who had a capital called Sparta, where there was a regular market, ' I have never yet,' said he, ' been afraid of this kind of men, who have a set place in the middle of their city where they meet to cheat one another and tell lies. If I live, they shall have troubles of their own to talk about.' To save themselves from the Persians, the Ionian portion of the Asiatic Greeks proposed a uni /ersal emigration to the island of Sardinia — a striking design, which, however, was not carried into execution. All Asia Minor ultimately yielded to Cyrus.

The Persian Empire. Having subdued Asia Minor, Cyrus next turn- ed his arms against the Assyrians of Babylon. His siege and capture of Babylon (b.c. 538), when he effected Ins entrance by diverting the course of the Euphrates, form one of the most romantic incidents in history ; an incident connected with Scriptural narrative through its result — the eman- cipation of the Jews from their captivity. Along with Babylon, its depen- dencies, Phoenicia and Palestine, came under the Persians.

Cyrus, one of the most remarkable men of the ancient world, having perished in an invasion of Scythia (b.c. 529), was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who annexed Egypt to the Persian empire (b.c. 525), having defeated Psammanitus, the son of the Pharaoh Amasis. Foiled in his in- tention of penetrating Libya and Ethiopia, Cambyses was dethroned by a Magiau impostor, who called himself Smerdis, pretending that he was the younger brother of Cambyses, although this brother had been put to death by the order of Cambyses during a fit of madness. A conspiracy of seven great nobles having been formed against the false Smerdis, he was put to death. He was succeeded by one of the conspiring chiefs called Darius Hystaspes, who reigned — over the immense Persian empire, extending from the Nile to the Indus, and beyond it — from B.C. 531 to B.C. 485. ' The reign of Darius,' says Mr. Grote, ' was one of organization, different from that of his predecessor — a difference which the Persians well under- stood and noted, calling Cyrus " the father," Cambyses " the master," and Darius " the retail trader or huckster." In the mouth of the Persians this last epithet must be construed as no insignificant compliment, since it intimates that he was the first to introduce some methodical order into the imperial administration and finances. Under the two former kings there was no definite amount of tribute levied upon the subject provinces. But Darius probably felt it expedient to relieve the provinces from the burden of undefined exactions. He distributed the whole empire into twenty de- partments (called Satrapies), imposing upon each a fixed annual tax. This, however, did not prevent each satrap. (the Persian governor appointed by the king) in his own province from indefinite requisitions. The satrap was a little king, who acted nearly as he pleased in the internal adminis- tration of his province, subject only to the necessity of sending up the imperial tribute to the king at Susa, the capital of the Persian empire ;

52 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

of keeping off foreign enemies ; and of furnishing an adequate military contingent for the foreign enterprises of the great king. To every satrap was attached a royal secretary or comptroller of the revenue, who probably managed the imperial finances in the province, and to whom the court of Susa might perhaps look as a watch upon the satrap himself. The satrap or the secretary apportioned the sum payable by the satrapy in the aggre- gate among the various component districts, towns, or provinces, leaving to the local authorities in each of these latter the task of assessing it upon individual inhabitants. From necessity, therefore, as we'll as from indo- lence of temper and political incompetence, the Persians were compelled to respect the authorities which they found standing both in town and coun- try, and to leave in their hands a large measure of genuine influence. Of- ten even the petty kings who had governed separate districts during their state of independence, prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dignity as tributaries to the court of Susa. The empire of the great king was thus an aggregate of heterogeneous elements, connected together by no tie except that of common fear and subjection — noway coherent nor self-supporting, nor pervaded by any common system or spirit of nation- ality.'

Continuation through Greek and Roman History. How Darius, in consequence of the assistance rendered by the Athenians to the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who had revolted against him (b.c. 502), sent a vast Persian army into European Greece ; how this army was defeated by the Athenian general, Miltiades, with only 11,000 men, in the glorious battle of Marathon (b.c. 490) ; how, ten years later, Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, undertook an expedition against Greece with a host of several millions, and was defeated by Themistocles in a naval battle at Salamis (b.c. 480), which was followed by two contemporaneous defeats of his lieutenants at Platsea and Mycale (b. c. 479) ; how the Persians were thus finally driven back into Asia ; how for a century and a-half relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes friendly, were maintained be- tween the Greek states and the Persian monarchs, the degenerate succes- sors of Darius and Xerxes, under whom the empire had begun to crumble ; how at length, in the reign of Darius Codomannus (b. c. 324), Alexan- der the Great retaliated on the Persians the wrongs they had done the Greeks by invading and destroying their decrepit empire, and organizing all the countries between the Adriatic and the Indus under, not a Semit- ic, as in the case of the Assyrian empire, nor an Indo-Germanic, as in the case of the Persic empire, but a Greek or Pelasgic system ; how, on Alex- ander's death (b. c. 323), this vast agglomeration of the human species fell asunder into three Greek monarchies — the Macedonian monarchy, in- cluding the states of European Greece ; the Egyptian monarchy of the Ptolemies, including, besides Egypt, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Arabia ; and the Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidse, comprehending, although with a weak grasp, Asia Minor (or at least parts of it which had belonged to the Lydian and Assyrian empires), Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia — with the loss, however, of the countries between the Tigris and the Indus, where a germ of independence arose (b. c. 236) in a native nomad dynasty, which ultimately united all the tribes of Iran in one empire, called the Parthian

V

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 53

Empire ; and how these three fragments dragged on a separate existence, full of wars and revolts ; all this belongs to Grecian history.

How, about two centuries and a half before Christ, another, but more mixed portion of this Pelasgic family, which had arisen in Italy, and in the course of several centuries rendered itself coextensive with that peninsula — began to assume consequence in the wider area of the Mediterranean world : how it first grappled with the power of the Carthaginians (b. c. 264-201), who for several centuries had been pursuing the career of world- merchants, formerly pursued by their fathers the Phoenicians ; how it then assailed and subdued the crumbling Macedonian monarchy, incorporating all Greece with itself (b. c. 134) ; how retrograding, so to speak, into Asia, it gradually absorbed the Syrian and Egyptian monarchies, till it came into collision with the Parthian empire at the Euphrates (b. c. 134 — b. c. 60) ; how, advancing into the new regions of northern and west- ern Europe, it compelled the yet uncultured races there — the Celts or Gauls, the Iberians, etc. — to enter the pale of civilization (b. c. 80-50) ; how thus, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, was founded a new empire, called ' The Roman,' retaining, with vast additions, all that portion of hu- manity which the former empires had embraced, with the exception of what had lapsed back to the Parthians ; how this empire subsisted for several centuries, a great mass of matured humanity girt by comparative barbar- ism— that is, surrounded on the east by the Parthians, on the south by the Ethiopians, on the north by the Germans and Scythians, and on the west by the roar of the Atlantic ; and how at last (a. d. 400-475) this great mass, having lost its vitality, fell asunder before the irruption of the bar- baric element — that is, the Germans, the Scythians, and the Arabs — giv- ing rise to the infant condition of the modern world ; all this belongs to Roman history, which forms the subject of a separate treatise.

With one general remark we shall conclude ; namely : that the progress of history — that is, of Caucasian development — has evidently been, upon the whole, from the east westward. First, as we have seen, the Assyrian or Semitic fermentation affected western Asia as far as the Mediterranean ; then the Persian movement extended the historic stage to the iEgean ; af- ter that the Macedonian conquest extended it to the Adriatic ; and finally, the Romans extended it to the Atlantic. For fifteen centuries humanity kept dashing itself against this barrier ; till, at length, like a great mis- sionary sent in search, the spirit of Columbus shot across the Atlantic. And now, in the form of a dominant Anglic race, though with large inter- mixture, Caucasian vitality is working in its newest method, with Ethiopian help, on the broad and fertile field of America.

HISTORY OP GREECE — EARLY MYTHOLOGY.

The history of the Grecian states commences about 1800 years before Christ, when the Egyptians on the opposite side of the Mediterranean were in a high state of civilization ; but the portion of history which pre- cedes 884 B. c. is understood to be fabulous, and entitled to little credit.

According to the Greek poets, the original inhabitants of the country,

54 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

denominated Pelasgians, were a race of savages, who lived in caves, and clothed themselves with the skins of the wild beasts. Uranus, an Egyptian prince, landed in the country, and became the father of a family of giants, named Titans, who rebelled against, and dethroned him. His son Saturn, who reigned in his stead, in order to prevent the like misfortune from befall- ing himself, ordered all his own children to be put to death as soon as they were born. But one named Jupiter was concealed by the mother, and reared in the island of Crete, from which in time he returned, and deposed his father. The Titans, jealous of this new prince, rebelled against him, but were vanished and expelled forever from the country.

Jupiter divided his dominions with his brothers Neptune and Pluto.

The countries which he reserved to himself he governed with great wis- dom, holding his court on Mount Olympus, a hill in Thessaly, 9000 feet in height, and the loftiest in Greece. Any truth which there might be in the story of the Titans and their princes was completely disguised by the poets, and by the popular imagination. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, were looked back to, not as mortals, but as deities ; and the top of Mount Olympus was supposed to be the heavenly residence of gods, by whom the affairs of mortals were governed. And for ages after the dawn of phi- losophy, these deified sons of Saturn, and numberless others connected with them, were the objects of the national worship, not only among the Greeks, but also among the Romans.

At an uncertain but very early date an Asiatic people named the Helle- nes immigrated into Greece, in some cases expelling the Pelasgi, and in others intermingling with them, so that in process of time all the inhabitants of Greece came to be called Hellenes. They were, however, divided into several tribes the principal of which were the Dorians, iEolians, and Ion- ians, each of whom spoke a dialect differing in some respect from those made use of by the others. These dialects were named the Doric, iEolic, and Ionic, in reference to the tribes which used them ; and a fourth, which was afterwards formed from the Ionic, was named the Attic, from its being spoken by the inhabitants of Attica.

In the year 1856 b. c, Inachus a Phoenician adventurer, is said to have arrived in Greece at the head of a small band of his countrymen. Phoe- nicia, a petty state on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, was at this time one of a few countries, including Egypt and Assyria, in which some degree of civilization prevailed, while all the rest of the peo- ple of the earth remained in their original barbarism like the Pelasgians before the supposed arrival of Uranus. Navigation for the purposes of commerce, and the art of writing, are said to have originated with the Phoenicans. On their arrival in Greece, Inachus and his friends founded the city of Argos, at the head of what is now called the Gulf of Napoli, in the Peloponnesus.

Three hundred years after this event (1556 b. c), a colony, led by an Egyptian named Cecrops, arrived in Attica, and founded the celebrated city of Athens, fortifying a high rock which rose precipitously above the site afterwards occupied by the town.

Egypt is situated in the north-eastern part of Africa. It is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and is watered by the great river Nile, the periodical overflowings of w7hich by supplying the moisture nec- essary for vegetation, render the soil very fertile. From this country,

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 55

which had at a very early period made considerable advances in some of the arts and sciences (see Ancient History), Cecrops imparted much valuable knowledge to the rude inhabitants of Attica, whom he had per- suaded or obliged to acknowledge him as their chief or king. He placed his rocky fastness under the protection of an Egyptian goddess, from whose Greek name, Athena (afterwards changed by the Latins into Minerva), the city which subsequently rose around the eminence was called Athens.

About the year 1493 b. c, Cadmus, a Phoenician, founded the city of Thebes in Boeotia ; and among other useful things which he communicated to the Greeks, he is said to have taught them alphabetical writing, although it is certain that that art did not come into common use in Greece until seve- ral centuries after this period.

The city of Corinth, situated on the narrow isthmus which connects the Pe- loponnesus with the mainland of Greece, was founded in the year 1520 B.C., and from its very advantageous position on the arm of the sea to which it anciently gave its name, but which is now known as the Gulf of Lepanto, it very soon became a place of considerable commercial importance. Spar- ta or Lacedsemon, the celebrated capital of Laconia in the Peloponnesus, is said to have been founded about 1520 b. c. by Lelex, an Egyptian.

In the year 1185 B. c, an Egyptian named Danaus, accompanied by a party of his countrymen, arrived at Argos, the inhabitants of which must have been at that period in an exceedingly rude state, since it is said that he excited their gratitude so much by teaching them to dig wells, when the streams from which they were supplied with water were dried up with the heat, that they elected him as their king.

Fully more than a century after this period (about 1350 b. c), Pelops, the son of a king of Phrygia, a country in Asia Minor, settled in that part of Greece which was afterwards called from him Peloponnesus, or the island of Pelops, where he married the daughter of one of the native princes, whom he afterwards succeeded on the throne. In the course of his long reign, he found means to strengthen and greatly extend his influence in Greece, by forming matrimonial alliances between various branches of his own house and the other royal families of the Peloponnesus. Agam- emnon, king of Mycenae, in Argolis, who was, according to the poet Homer, the commander-in-chief of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, and Menelaus, king of Sparta, on account of whose wrongs that war was undertaken, were descended from this Phrygian adventurer.

Hercules, a Theban prince, was another of the descendants of Pelops.

The numerous and extraordinary feats of strength and valor of Hercules excited the admiration of his cotemporaries, and being afterwards exagge- rated and embellished by the poets, caused him at length to be regarded as a person endowed with supernatural powers, and even to be worshiped as a god.

Theseus succeeded his father on the Athenian throne (1234 b. a), and by his wise regulations greatly consolidated the strength and increased the prosperity of his kingdom. Cecrops, the founder of Athens, had divided Attica into twelve districts, each of which possessed its own magistracy and judicial tribunals. As the country advanced in wealth and population, these districts became less closely connected with each other, and at the period of the accession of Theseus, they could hardly be regarded in any other light than as so many little independent communities, whose perpet-

56 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

ual disputes kept the whole district in broils and confusion. But Theseus had influence enough with all parties to obtain their consent to the abolition of the separate jurisdictions, and to the fixing of all civil and judicial au- thority in the capital. He at the same time voluntarily resigned into their hands a portion of his own power. Having divided the people into three classes — the nobles, the artisans, and the cultivators of the soil — he in- trusted the first of these with the administration of public affairs, and the dispensation of justice, while he conferred upon every freeman or citizen, without distinction of class, a vote in the legislative assemblies. The com- mand of the army, and the presidency of the state, he retained in his own person.

To strengthen the political union of the various districts of his kingdom by the tie of a common religion, he instituted a solemn festival, to be cele- brated annually at Athens by all the inhabitants of Attica, in honor of Minerva, the tutelary deity of the city. This festival he denominated Pan- athense, or the Feast of all the Athenians, the name by which the whole of the people of Attica were thenceforth called.

The wise and liberal policy of Theseus caused Attica to advance consid- erably beyond the other states of Greece in prosperity and civilization ; and the ancient historian, Thucydides, informs us that the Athenians were the first of the Greeks who laid aside the military dress and arms, which till now had been constantly worn. The example of Athens was not lost on the other Grecian communities, all of which gradually adopted, to a greater or less extent, those political institutions which had conferred so many advantages upon Attica.

Notwithstanding the judicious and exemplary conduct of Theseus in the early part of the reign, he appears to have afterwards allowed his restless and adventurous disposition to hurry him into many extravagances, and even crimes, by which he forfeited the respect of his people, and brought disgrace and suffering on his latter years. If we may believe the tradi- tionary accounts, he accompanied Hercules in some of his celebrated ex- peditions, and assisted by Pirithous, a king of Thessaly, engaged in many martial and predatory adventures, conformably rather with the very imper- fect morality and rude manners of the age, than with his own previous char- acter. There reigned in Lacedsemon at this period a king named Tynda- rus, who had a beautiful daughter called Helen, and according to the an- cient historians, Theseus and his friend Pirithous formed the design of stealing away this young lady, and a princess of Epirus named Proser- pine. They succeeded in carrying off Helen ; but in their attempt to ob- tain Proserpine, they fell into the hands of her father, by whom Pirithous was put to death, and Theseus thrown into prison. Meanwhile, Castor and Pollux, the twin-brothers of Helen, who were afterwards deified, and whose names have been bestowed upon one of the signs of the Zodiac (Gemini), rescued their sister from the men to whom Theseus bad given her in charge, and ravaged Attica in revenge for the injury they had re- ceived from its king.

Theseus was afterwards released from imprisonment by the assistance of Hercules, and returned home ; but the Athenians had become so offended with his conduct, and were so angry at his having exposed them to ill treat- ment from the Lacedaemonians by his wicked attempt upon Helen, that they refused to receive him again as their sovereign. He therefore with

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 57

drew into exile, and soon after died in the island of Scyros. The Athe- nian people, however, never forgot the benefits he had in his wiser days conferred upon the state ; and many centuries after his death, his bones, or some which were supposed to be his, were conveyed to Athens with great pomp, and a splendid temple was erected above them to his memory.

The Lacedaemonian princess who was stolen away by Theseus after- wards became the occasion of a celebrated war. The fame of her great beauty having spread far and wide, many of the princes of Greece asked her from her father Tyndarus in marriage ; but he, being fearful of incur- ring the enmity of the rejected suitors, declined showing a preference for any of them. Assembling them all, he bound them by an oath to acquiesce in the selection which Helen herself should make, and to protect her against any attempts which might afterwards be made to carry her off from the husband of her choice. Helen gave the preference to Menelaus, a grand- son of Pelops, and this successful suitor, on the death of Tyndarus, was raised to the Spartan throne.

At this period, in the north-western part of Asia Minor, on the shores of the Hellespont and the iEgean Seas, there existed a kingdom, the capi- tal of which was a large and well-fortified city named Troy, or Ilium. Pri- am the king of Troy, had a son whose name was Paris ; and this young chief, in the course of a visit to Greece, resided for a time in Sparta at the court of Menelaus, who gave the Asiatic stranger a very friendly recep- tion. Charmed with Helen's beauty, Paris employed the opportunity affor- ded by a temporary absence of her husband to gain her affections, and per- suade her to elope with him to Troy. It was not, according to the old poets, to his personal attractions, great as they were, that Paris owed his success on this occasion, but to the aid of the goddess of Love, whose favor he had won by assigning to her the palm of beauty, on an occasion when it was contested between her and two other female deities.

When Menelaus returned home, he was naturally wroth at finding his hospitality so ill requited ; and after having in vain endeavored, both by re- monstrances and threats, to induce the Trojans to send him back his queen, he applied to the princes who had formerly been Helen's lovers, and called upon them to aid him according to their oaths, in recovering her from her seducer. They obeyed the summons ; and all Greece being indignant at the insult offered to Menelaus, a general muster of the forces of the various states took place at Aulis, a seaport town of Boeotia preparatory to their crossing the iEgean to the Trojan shore. This is supposed to have happened in the year 1194 b. c.

Of the chiefs assembled on this occasion, the most celebrated were Agam- emnon, king of Mycene ; Menelaus, king of Sparta ; Ulysses, king of Ith- aca ; Nestor, king of Pylos ; Achilles, son of the king of Thessaly ; Ajax, of Salamis ; Diomedes, of iEtolia ; and Idomeneus, of Crete.

Agamemnon, the brother of the injured Menelaus, was elected comman- der-in-chief of the confederated Greeks. According to some ancient au- thors, this general was barbarous enough to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, to induce the gods to send a favoring gale to the Grecian fleet when it was detained by contrary winds in the port of Aulis ; but as the earliest writers respecting the Trojan war make no mention of this unnatural act, it is to be hoped that it never was performed.

58 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

The Grecian armament consisted of about 1200 vessels, with from 50 to 120 men in each, and the army which warred against Troy is supposed to have amounted altogether to about 100,000 men. The Trojans, although reinforced by auxiliary bands from Assyria, Thrace, and Asia Minor, were unable to withstand the Greeks in the open country, and they therefore soon retired within the walls of their city.

In those early times men were unskilled in the art of reducing fortified places, and the Greeks knew of no speedier way of taking Troy than block ading it till the inhabitants should be compelled by famine to surrender. But here a new difficulty arose. No arrangements had been made for supplying the invaders with provisions during a lengthened seige ; and af- ter they had plundered and laid waste the surrounding country, they began to be in as great danger of starvation as the besieged. The supplies which arrived from Greece were scanty and irregular, and it became necessary to detach a part of the beleaguering forces to cultivate the plains of the Chersonesus of Thrace, in order to raise crops for the support of themselves and their brethren in arms.

The Grecian army being thus weakened, the Trojans wei-e encouraged to make frequent sallies, in which they were led generally by the valiant Hector, Priam's eldest and noblest son. Many skirmishes took place, and innumerable deeds of individual heroism were performed, all of which led to no important result, for the opposing armies were so equally matched, that neither could obtain any decisive advantage over the other. At length, after a siege of no less than ten years, in the course of which some of the most distinguished leaders on both sides were slain, Troy was taken, its inhabitants slaughtered, and its edifices burnt and razed to the ground.

According to the poets, it was by a stratagem that this famous city was at last overcome. They tell us that the Greeks constructed a wooden horse of prodigious size, in the body of which they concealed a number of armed men, and then retired towards the sea-shore, to induce the enemy to believe that the besiegers had given up the enterprise, and were about to return home. Deceived by this manoeuvre, the Trojans brought the gigantic horse into the city, and the men who had been concealed within it, stealing out in the night-time, unbarred the gates, and admitted the Grecian army within the walls. The siege of Troy forms the subject of Homer's sublime poem, the ' Iliad,' in which the real events of the war are intermingled with many fictitious and supernatural incidents.

The Greek princes discovered that their triumph over Troy was dearly paid for by their subsequent sufferings, and the disorganization of their kingdoms at home. Ulysses, if we may believe the poets, spent ten years in wandering over seas and lands before arriving in his island of Ithaca. Others of the leaders died or were shipwrecked on their way home, and several of those who succeeded in reaching their own dominions, found their thrones occupied by usurpers, and were compelled to return to their vessels, and seek in distant lands a place of rest and security for their declining years. But the fate of Agamemnon, the renowned general of the Greeks, was the most deplorable of all. On his return to Argos, he wa3 assassinated by his wife Clytemnestra, who had formed an attachment during his absence to another person. Agamemnon's son, Orestes, was driven into exile, but afterwards returned to Argos, and putting his mother

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 59

and her accomplices to death, established himself upon the throne. About eighty years after the termination of the Trojan war, an extensive revolution took place in the affairs of Greece, in consequence of the subjugation of nearly the whole Peloponnesus by the descendants of Hercules. That hero, who was a member of the royal family of Mycenae or Argos, had been driven into exile by some more successful candidate for the throne of that state. After the hero's death, his children sought refuge in Doris, the king of which became subsequently so much attached to Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, that he constituted him the heir of his throne. Twice the Heraclidsean princes unsuccessfully attempted to establish themselves in the sovereignty of the Peloponnesus, which they claimed as their right; but on the third trial, they accomplished their object. In the year 1101 b. c, three brothers named Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, said to have been the great-grandsons of Hyllus, invaded the Peloponnesus at the head of the Dorians, and conquered the greater part of it, with the exception of the province of Arcadia, the mountainous character of which enabled its inhabitants to defend it with success against the invaders.

Temenus obtained the kingdom of Argos, Cresphontes established him- self in Messenia, and as Aristodemus had died during the war, his twin sons Eurysthenes and Procles shared between them the throne of Sparta. The thrones of Corinth and Elis were occupied by other branches of the Heraclidaean family. The Dorian troops were rewarded with the lands of the conquered inhabitants, who were driven out of the Peloponnesus, or reduced to slavery. Great numbers of the Peloponnesians, who were expatriated by the Dorian invaders, passed over into Asia Minor, where they founded several colonies in a district afterwards called JEolia, from the name of the people by whom these colonies were established. Others took refuge in Attica, where the Athenians received them in a friendly manner. This, it would appear, gave offence to the new rulers of the Peloponnesian states, and war was commenced between the Dorians and the Athenians. In the year 1070 b. c, Attica was invaded by a numerous army of the Peloponnesians, and Athens itself seemed menaced with destruction. This emergency produced a display of patriotic devotion on the part of Codrus, the Athenian king, which has rarely been paralleled in the annals of mankind, and deserves to be held in everlasting remem- brance : —

At Delphi in Phocis there was a temple of Apollo, to the priests of which the Greeks were wont to apply for information regarding future events, in the same manner as the people of comparatively recent times were accustomed to consult astrologers, soothsayers, and other artful impostors on similar questions. Now Codrus had learned that the Peloponnesians had received at Delphi a prophetical response, to the effect that they should not be victorious in the war, if they did not kill the Athenian king. Determined to save his country at the expense of his own life, Codrus disguised himself in a peasant's dress, and entering the Peloponnesian camp, provoked a quarrel with a soldier, by whom he was killed.

It was not long until the dead body was recognized to be that of the Athenian king, and the Peloponnesians, remembering the condition on which the oracle had promised them success, were afraid to continue the contest any longer, and hastily retreated into their own territories. The

60 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Athenians were filled with admiration when they heard of the noble conduct of their monarch, and in the height of their gratitude, they declared that none but Jupiter was worthy of being their king after such a prince as Codrus.

It is supposed that they were partly induced to make this declaration by finding the sons of Codrus evince an inclination to involve the country in a civil war regarding the succession to the throne. The Athenians therefore abolished royalty altogether, and appointed Medon, Codrus's eldest son, under the title of Archon, as chief magistrate of the republic for life ; the office to be hereditary in his family as long as its duties should be performed to the satisfaction of the people. And as Attica was over- crowded with the Peloponnesian refugees, these, together with a large body of Athenians, were sent into Asia Minor, under the charge of Andro- clus and Neleus, the younger sons of Codrus, to plant colonies to the south of those already formed in iEolia. The settlers founded twelve cities, some of which afterwards rose to great wealth and splendor. Ionia was the name bestowed upon the district, in reference to the Ionic stock from which the Athenians drew their descent.

Several Dorian colonies in Caria, a province still farther south than Ionia, completed the range of Grecian settlements along the western coast of Asia Minor. Cyprus, Rhodes, the coast of Thrace, and the islands of the iEgean Sea, together with a considerable portion of Italy and Sicily, and even of France and Spain, were also colonized by bands of adventurers, who at various periods emigrated from Greece; so that, in process of time, the Grecian race, language, religion, institutions, and manners, instead of being confined to the comparatively small country constituting Greece proper, were diffused over a very extensive region, comprising the fairest portions of Europe and of western Asia.

While this work of colonization was going forward, the parent states of Greece were torn with internal dissensions, and were perpetually harassing each other in wars, of which the objects and incidents are now equally uncertain. Almost all that is known of the history of the two centuries immediately following the death of Codrus is, that they were characterized by great turbulence and confusion, and that, during their lapse, many of the Grecian states and colonies followed the example of Athens by abolish- ing monarchy. Others did not, till a later period, become republican, and Sparta long retained the singular form of regal government established there at the accession of the twin brothers Eurysthenes and Procles, the descendants of whom continued for several centuries to reign jointly in Lacedsemon, though, practically speaking, no state of Greece was more thoroughly republican in many important respects.

Greece had been all along divided into a number of independent states, and after the abolition of kingly government, several of these were split up into as many distinct republics as the state contained of towns. These divisions of the country, and the obstacles which the almost incessant wars interposed to a free communication between the inhabitants of the different districts, necessarily prevented the advancement of the Greeks in knowledge and civilization ; but fortunately, a king of Elis, named Iphitus, at length devised an institution by which the people of all the Grecian states were enabled, notwithstanding their quarrels and wars with one another, to meet periodically on friendly terms, and communicate to each other such

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 61

information as might be useful for the improvement and welfare of the whole.

This institution was the Olympic Festival. From a very remote period, the Greeks had been accustomed to engage in contests of strength and agility during their times of festivity, and also at the funerals of distinguished personages. Iphitus conceived the idea of establishing a periodical festival in his own dominions for the celebration of these ancient games, and of religious rites in honor of Jupiter and Hercules ; and having obtained the authority of the Delphian oracle for carrying his design into execution, he instituted the festival, and appointed that it should be repeated every fourth year at Olympia, a town of Elis.

To this festival he invited all the people of Greece ; and that none might be prevented from attending it by the wars in which any of the states might be engaged, the Delphic oracle commanded that a general armistice should take place for some time before and after each celebration. The date of the establishment of the Olympic games (884 b. c. ) was afterwards assumed by the Greeks as the epoch from which they reckoned the progress of time ; the four years intervening between each recurrence of the festival being styled an Olympiad.

Three other institutions of a similar nature were afterwards establish- ed : namely, the Isthmian Games, celebrated near Corinth ; the Pythian, at Delphi ; and the Nemean, in Argolis. These took place on the various years which intervened between the successive festivals at Olympia ; but although they acquired considerable celebrity, none of them rose to the importance and splendor of that of Iphitus. The games which were cele- brated at the festivals consisted of foot and chariot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and other contests requiring strength and agility, together with competitions in poetry and music. The victors were crowned with an olive wreath ; an honor which it was esteemed by the Greeks one of the highest objects of ambition to attain.

SECOND OR AUTHENTIC PERIOD OF HISTORY.

The second and authentic period of Greek history commences in tho year 884 B. c, at the institution of the Olympic Festival, when the peo- ple had begun to emerge from their primitive barbarism. This festival, as already stated, was instituted by direction of the Delphic oracle, by Iphitus, Prince of Elis, for the patriotic purpose of assembling together, in a peace- ful manner, persons from all parts of Greece. The festival was ordained to take place once every four years, in the month corresponding to our July, and to last five clays, during which there was to be complete truce, or cessation from war, throughout the Grecian states. Agreeably to the ancient practice at public solemnities, the festival was celebrated by games and various feats of personal skill, and the whole order of procedure was regulated with extraordinary care. ' All freemen of Grecian extraction were invited to contend, provided they had been born in lawful wedlock, and had lived untainted by any infamous moral stain. No women (the priestesses of Ceres excepted) were permitted to be present. Females who violated this law were thrown from a rock. The competitors prepared themselves during ten months previous at the gymnasium at Elis. During the last thirty days, the exercises were performed with as much regularity

62 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

as at the games themselves. The festival began in the evening with sol- emn sacrifices, and the games were commenced the next day at daybreak.

These consisted in races on horseback and on foot, in leaping, throwing the discus or quoit, wrestling, and boxing ; musical and poetical contests concluded the whole. The honor of having gained a victory in the Olym pic Games was very great ; it extended from the victor to his country, which was proud of owning him. However rude and boisterous were some of the sports of the Olympic Festival, it is acknowledged by the best au- thorities that they were attended with manifold advantages to society. It is sufficient barely to mention the suspension of hostilities, which took p]ace not only during the festival, but a considerable time both before and after it. Considered as a kind of religious ceremony, at which the whole Gre- cian citizens were invited, and even enjoined, to assist, it was well adapted to facilitate intercourse, to promote knowledge, to soften prejudice, and to hasten the progress of civilization and humanity.

At the first institution of the Olympic Festival, and for one or two cen turies afterwards, the condition of Grecian society was primitive, and almost patriarchal, but marked by strong features of heroic dignity, and a certain depth and refinement of thought. The attire of the men was very simple, consisting only of a shirt or close jacket to the body, with a loose robe hanging down over the naked limbs, while performers in the public games were almost naked. The arts, including agriculture, were also little ad- vanced ; few persons seemed to have thought of toiling to accumulate wealth ; and each community presented, in time of peace, the picture of a large family. That portion of the people constituting the freemen lived much in public, or in the society of their equals, enjoyed common pleas- ures and amusements, and had daily opportunities of displaying their use- ful talents in the sight of their fellow-citizens. The frequent disputes between individuals occasioned litigations and trials, which furnished em- ployment for the eloquence and ability of men in the necessary defence of their friends. The numerous games and public solemnities opened a con- tinual source of entertainment, and habituated every man to active physical exercise, and the performance of his duties as a soldier. These were agreeable features in the condition of Grecian society ; but there were also some of an opposite character. The people were of an unsettled dis- position, never satisfied long with any kind of government which existed amongst them, and very much disposed to wage war against neighboring states on the most trifling pretenses.

The population of the various states was divided into three classes — namely, the citizens, the enfranchised populace, and the slaves. All polit- ical power, even in the most democratical of the Grecian communities, was possessed by the first of these classes, while in the oligarchical states, only that small portion of the citizens which constituted the nobility or aristoc- racy possessed any influence in the management of public affairs. The mechanical and agricultural labors necessary for the support and comfort of the whole, were chiefly performed by the inferior class of free inhabi- tants, who did not enjoy the privilege of citizenship, and by the slaves, who formed a considerable portion of the population of every state. These slaves were sprung from the same general or parent stock, spoke the same language, and professed the same religion, as their masters. They were in most cases the descendants of persons who had been conquered in wax,

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 63

but were in some instances acquired by purchase. Society being thus based on vicious principles, it is not wonderful that the Grecian states were the scene of constant civil broils.

Sparta — Lycurgus. At the beginning of this period of Grecian his- tory, our attention is powerfully attracted by a very remarkable series of proceedings which took place in LacediTemon, or Laconia, a country of south- ern Greece, of which the chief city was Sparta. This city being in a state of intestine disorder, it was agreed by many of the inhabitants to invite Lycurgus, the son of one of their late kings, to undertake the important task of preparing a new constitution for his country. Fortified with the sanction of the Delphic oracle, he commenced this difficult duty, not only settling the form of government, but reforming the social institutions and manners of the people. The government he established consisted of two joint kings, with a limited prerogative, and who acted as presidents of a senate of twenty-eight aged men. The functions of the senate were de- liberative as well as executive, but no law could be passed without receiv- ing the consent of the assembled citizens. The most remarkable of the arrangements of Lycurgus was his attempt to abolish difference of rank, and even difference of circumstances, among the people. He resolved on the bold measure of an equal division of lands, and actually parceled out the Laconian territory into 89,000 lots, one of which was given to each citizen of Sparta, or free inhabitant of Laconia. Each of these lots was of such a size as barely sufficed to supply the wants of a single family — for Lycurgus was determined that no person should be placed in such cir- cumstances as would permit of luxurious living.

Lycurgus carried into effect a number of other visionary projects : he abolished the use of money, with the hope of preventing undue accumu- lation of wealth ; prohibited foreigners from entering the country, and the natives from going abroad, in order to preserve simplicity of manners among the people ; directed that all men, without distinction of rank or age, should eat daily together at public tables, which were furnished with the plainest food ; and finally, ordained that all the children who were born, and seemed likely to be strong, should be reared by public nurses, under a rigid system of privation and personal activity, while the weak infants should be thrown out to the fields to perish. The citizens, when they had attained the age of manhood, were engaged in martial exercises, all labor being left to the slaves, or helots, as they were termed ; and in short, the whole nation was but a camp of soldiers, and war was reckoned the only legitimate profession. These laws were in some measure suited to the rude condition of the Spartans, but, as being opposed to some of the best and strongest principles in human nature, they could not possibly endure, and there is reason to believe that some of them were not strictly enforced. It is not unusual to see historians use the term Spartan virtue with a cer- tain degree of admiration of its quality ; but the Spartans had, in reality, no moral dignity, certainly no benevolence, in their virtue, either public or private. They were a small confederacy of well-trained soldiers; and merely as such, deserve no mark of our respect or esteem. The manner in which they used their helots was at once barbarous and cruel. The murder of a serf by a free citizen was not punishable by law ; nay, it was even allowable for the young Spartans to lie in wait, as a kind of sport,

64 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

for any good-looking or saucy-looking slave, and stab him to the heart on the highway. It is certain that at one time, when the helots had stood their masters in good stead in battle, they were desired, by way of reward, to choose out 2000 of their best men, that they might receive their free- dom, and be enrolled as Spartans, and that these 2000 men were all silent- ly murdered soon after. At another time, when danger was apprehended from the growing numbers and petty wealth of the boors, the senate enac- ted the farce of declaring war against them, and coolly murdered many thousands, in order to thin their numbers and break their spirit. Had there been any redeeming trait in the Spartan character to compensate for such barbarity, one would have wondered less at the respect which is some- times paid them ; but their military fame only adds another instance to the many already on record, that the most ignorant and savage tribes make the most dogged soldiers.

Athens. We now turn to Athens, long the principal seat of Grecian learning. Athens is said to have been founded by Cecrops, 1550 b. c, and in the most ancient times was called Cecropia. It probably received the name of Athens from the goddess Minerva, who was called also Athena, by the Greeks, and to whom an elegant temple had been erected in the city. The old city spread from the mount of the Acropolis over a wide and pleasant vale or low peninsula, formed by the junction of the Cephesus and Ilissus. Its distance from the sea-coast was about five miles. In the course of time Athens became populous and surpassingly elegant in its architecture, while its citizens contrived to take a lead in the affairs of the communities around. At first they were governed by kings, but, as in the case of the Spartan citizens, they became dissatisfied with their existing constitution, and about the year 600 b. c. invited Solon, one of the wisest men in Greece, to reor- ganize their political constitution. Solon obeyed the summons, and consti- tuted the government on a broad republican basis, with a council of state, forming a judicial court, consisting of 400 members, and called the Areo- pagus. This court of Areopagus besides its other duties, exercised a cen- sorship over public morals, and was empowered to punish impiety, profligacy, and even idleness. To this court every citizen was bound to make an an- nual statement of his income, and the sources from which it was derived. The court was long regarded with very great respect, and the right was accorded to it of not only revising the sentences pronounced by the other criminal tribunals, but even of annulling the judicial decrees of the general assembly of the people. The regulations of Solon were not maintained for any great length of time, although the republican form of government, in one shape or other, continued as long as the country maintained its in- dependence. Clesthenes, the leader of a party, enlarged the democratic principle in the state ; he introduced the practice of ostracism, by which any person might be banished for ten years, without being accused of any crime, if the Athenians apprehended that he had acquired too much influ- ence, or harbored designs against the public liberty. Ostracism was so called, because the citizens, in voting for its infliction, wrote the name of the obnoxious individual upon a shell (ostreori). It is said that Clesthenes was the first victim of his own law, as has happened in several other remark- able cases, ancient and modern.

For a period of about two centuries after the settlement of a republican

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 65

constitution, there is little of importance to relate in Athenian history. Athens was gradually enlarged, the taste for refinement increased, and various men of sagacious understanding, entitled Philosophers, began to devote themselves to inquiries into the nature of the human mind and the character of the Deity. The principal Grecian philosopher who flourished in this era (550 B. c.) was Pythagoras, a man of pure and exalted ideas, and an able expounder of the science of mind.

THIRD PERIOD OF HISTORY

The year 490 b. c. closes the gradually-improving period in Grecian history, or second period, as it has been termed ; and now commenced an era marked by the important event of an invasion from a powerful Asiatic sovereign.

Persian Invasion. Darius, king of Persia, having imagined the pos- sibility of conquering Greece, sent an immense army against it in the year just mentioned. Greatly alarmed at the approach of such an enemy, the Athenians applied to the Spartans for aid ; but that people had a supersti- tion which prohibited their taking the field before the moon was at the full, and as at the time of the application it still wanted five days of that peri- od, they therefore delayed the march of their troops. Being thus refused all assistance from their neighbors, the Athenians were left to depend en- tirely on their own courage and resources. A more remarkable instance of a small state endeavoring to oppose the wicked aggression of an over- grown power, has seldom occurred in ancient or modern times ; but the constant exercises and training of the Athenian population enabled them to present a bold and by no means contemptible front to the invader. War had been their principal employment, and in the field they displayed their noblest qualities. They were unacquainted with those highly-discip- lined evolutions which give harmony and concert to numerous bodies of men ; but what was wanting in skill they supplied by courage. The Athe- nian, and also other Greek soldiers, marched to the field in a deep phalanx, rushed impetuously to the attack, and bravely closed with their enemies. Each warrior was firmly opposed to his antagonist, and compelled by neces- sity to the same exertions of valor as if the fortune of the day depended on his single arm. The principal weapon was a spear, which, thrown by the nervous and well-directed vigor of a steady hand, often penetrated the firmest shields and bucklers. When they missed their aim, or when the stroke proved ineffectual through want of force, they drew their swords, and summoning their utmost resolution, darted impetuously on the foe. This mode of war was common to the soldiers and generals, the latter be- ing as much distinguished in battle by their strength and courage as their skill and conduct. The Greeks had bows, slings, and darts, intended for the practice of distant hostility ; but their chief dependence was on the spear and sword. Their defensive armor consisted of a bright helmet, adorned with plumes, and covering the head, a strong corslet defending the breast, greaves of brass decending the leg to the feet, and an ample shield, loosely attached to the left shoulder and arm, which turned in all direc- tions, and opposed its firm resistance to every hostile assault. With men thus organized and accoutred, a battle consisted of so many duels, and the 5*

66 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

combatants fought with all the keenness of personal resentment. Th6 slaughter in such engagements was correspondingly great, the fight seldom terminating till one of the parties was nearly destroyed, or at least greatly reduced in numbers.

It was a people so animated and prepared that the hosts of Persia were about to encounter. Compelled to meet the invaders unassisted, the Athenians were able to march an army of only 9000 men, exclusive of about as many light-armed slaves, into the field. With Miltiades as their leader and commander-in-chief, they met the Persians in battle on the plain of Marathon, thirty miles from Athens, and by great skill and cour- age, and the force of their close phalanx of spearmen, completely conquered them. Upwards of 6000 Persians were slain on the field, while the num- ber killed of the Athenians was but 192. This is reckoned by historians one of the most important victories in ancient times, for it saved the inde- pendence of the whole of Greece. To the disgrace of the fickle Athenians, they afterwards showed the greatest ingratitude to Miltiades, and put him in prison on a charge of favoring the Persians. He died there the year after his great victory. Soon after, the citizens of Athens, on a plea equal- ly unfounded, banished Aristides, an able leader of the aristocratic party in the state, and who, from his strict integrity and wisdom, was usually en- titled ' Aristides the Just.' On the banishment of this eminent individual, Themistocles, a person who was more democratic in his sentiments, became the leader of the councils of the Athenians. Meanwhile the Grecian liber- ties were again menaced by the Persians. Xerxes, son of Darius, marched an army across the Hellespont by a bridge of boats from the Asiatic shore, and led it towards the southern part of Greece. The utmost force that the confederate Greeks could oppose to the countless host of Persians, did not exceed 60,000 men. Of these, a band of Spartans, numbering 8,000 soldiers, under Leonidas their king, was posted at the pass of Thermopy- lae, to intercept the enemy, and here they discomfited every successive col- umn of the Persians as it entered the defile. Ultimately, foreseeing cer- tain destruction, Leonidas commanded all to retire but 300, with whom he proposed to give the Persians some idea of what the Greeks could submit to for the sake of their country. He and his 300 were cut off to a man. Xerxes took possession of Attica and Athens, but in the naval battle with the Athenian fleet at Salamis, which occurred soon after [October 20, 480 b. a], his army was utterly routed, and its scattered remains retreated into Asia.

By this splendid victory the naval power of Persia was almost annihila- ted, and the spirit of its monarch so completely humbled, that he durst no longer undertake offensive operations against Greece. Here, therefore, the war ought to have terminated ; but so great and valuable had been the spoils obtained by the confederate forces, that they were unwilling to re- linquish such a profitable contest. The war, therefore, was continued for twenty years longer, less, apparently, for the chastisement of Persia, than for the plunder of her conquered provinces.

But now that all danger was over, many of the smaller states, whose population was scanty, began to grow weary of the contest, and to furnish with reluctance their annual contingent of men to reinforce the allied fleet. It was, in consequence, arranged that those states whose citizens were un- willing t» perform personal service, should send merely their proportion of

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 67

vessels, and pay into the common treasury an annual subsidy, for the main tenance of the sailors with whom the Athenians undertook to man the fleet. The unforeseen but natural consequence of this was the establishment of the complete supremacy of Athens. The annual subsidies gradually as- sumed the character of a regular tribute, and were compulsorily levied as such ; while the recusant communities, deprived of their fleets, which had been given up to the Athenians, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the oppressive exactions of the dominant state. The Athenians were thus raised to an unprecedented pitch of power and opulence, and enabled to adorn their city, to live in dignified idleness, and to enjoy a constant succession of the most costly public amusements, at the expense of the van- quished Persians, and of the scarcely more leniently-treated communities of the dependent confederacy.

Pericles. We have arrived at the most flourishing period of Athenian history, during which Pericles rose to distinction, and greatly contributed to the beautifying of the capital. The talents of Pericles were of the very first order, and they had been carefully cultivated by the ablest tutor- age which Greece could afford. After serving for several years in the Athenian army, he ventured to take a part in the business of the popular assembly, and his powerful eloquence soon gained him an ascendancy in the national councils ; and his power, in fact, became as great as that of an absolute monarch (445 b. a). Some of the most interesting events of Grecian history now occurred. After a number of years of general peace, a dispute between the state of Corinth and its dependency the island of Corey ra (now Corfu), gave rise to a wa-r which again disturbed the repose of all the Grecian states. Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, but having, by its maritime skill and enterprise, raised itself to a higher pitch of opu- lence than its parent city, it not only refused to acknowledge Corinthian supremacy, but went to war with that state on a question respecting the government of Epidammus, a colony which the Corcyreans had planted on the coast of Illyria. Corinth applied for and obtained aid from several of the Peloponnesian states to reduce the Corcyreans to subjection ; while Corcyra, on the other hand, concluded a defensive alliance with Athens, which sent a fleet to assist the island in vindicating its independence. By way of punishing the Athenians for intermeddling in the quarrel, the Co- rinthians stirred up a revolt in Potidgea, a town of Chalcidice, near the confines of Macedonia, which had originally been a colony of Corinth, but was at this time a tributary of Athens. The Athenians immediately des- patched a fleet and army for the reduction of Potidgea, and the Peloponne- sians were equally prompt in sending succors to the city. The Corinthians, meanwhile, were actively engaged in endeavoring to enlist in their cause those states which had not yet taken a decided part in the dispute. To Lacedcemon, in particular, they sent ambassadors to complain of the con- duct of the Athenians, which they characterized as a violation of a univer- sally-recognised law of Grecian policy — that no state should interfere between another and its dependencies. The efforts of the Corinthians were successful, and almost all the Peloponnesian states, headed by Sparta, together with many of those beyond the isthmus, formed themselves into a confederacy for the purpose of going to war with Athens. Argos and Achaia at first remained neuter. Corcyra, Acarnania, some of the cities

68 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

of Thessaly, and those of Platsea and Naupactus, were all that took part with the Athenians.

Pericles beheld without dismay the gathering of the storm, but his coun- trymen were not equally undaunted. They perceived that they were about to be called upon to exchange the idle and luxurious life they were at present leading for one of hardship and danger, and they began to mur- mur against their political leader for involving them in so alarming a quar- rel. They had not at first the courage to impeach Pericles himself, but vented their displeasure against his friends and favorites. Phidias, a very eminent sculptor, whom the great statesman had appointed superintendent of public buildings, was condemned to imprisonment on a frivolous charge ; and the philosopher Anaxagoras, the preceptor and friend of Pericles, was charged with disseminating opinions subversive of the national religion, and banished from Athens. Respecting another celebrated individual who at this time fell under persecution, it becomes necessary to say a few words. Aspasia of Miletus was a woman of remarkable beauty and brilliant tal- ents, but she wanted that chastity which is the greatest of feminine graces, and by her dissolute life was rendered a reproach, as she would otherwise have been an ornament, to her sex. This remarkable woman having come to reside in Athens, attracted the notice of Pericles, who was so much fas- cinated by her beauty, wit and eloquence, that, after separating from his wife, with whom he had lived unhappily, he married Aspasia. It was gen- erally believed that for the gratification of a private grudge, she had insti- gated Pericles to quarrel with the Peloponnesian states, and her unpopu- larity on this score was the true cause of her being now accused, before the assembly of the people, of impiety and grossly-immoral practices. Pericles conducted her defense in person, and plead for her with so much earnestness, that he was moved even to tears. The people, either finding the accusations to be really unfounded, or unable to resist the eloquence of Pericles, acquitted Aspasia. His enemies next directed their attack against himself. They accused him of embezzling the public money ; but he com- pletely rebutted the charge, and proved that he had drawn his income from no other source than his private estate. His frugal and unostenta- tious style of living must have of itself gone far to convince the Athenians of the honesty with which he had administered the public affairs ; for while he was filling the city with temples, porticoes, and other magnificent works of art, and providing many costly entertainments for the people, his own domestic establishment was regulated with such strict attention to econo- my, that the members of his family complained of a parsimony which formed a marked contrast to the splendor in which many of the wealthy Athenians then lived.

Confirmed in his authority by his triumphant refutation of the slanders of his enemies, Pericles adopted the wisest measures for the public defense against the invasion which was threatened by the Peloponnesians. Un- willing to risk a battle with the Spartans, who were esteemed not less invincible by land than the Athenians were by sea, he caused the inhabi- tants of Attica to transport their cattle to Eubcea and the neighboring is- lands, and to retire with as much of their other property as they could take with them, within the walls of Athens. By this provident care, the city was stored with provision sufficient for the support of the multi- tudes which now crowded it ; but greater difficulty was found in furnish-

DEPARTMENT OP HISTORY. 69

ing proper accommodation for so vast a population. Many found lodgings in the temples and other public edifices, or in the turrets on the city walls, while great numbers were obliged to construct for themselves temporary abodes in the vacant space within the long walls extending between the city and the port of Piraeus.

The memorable contest of twenty-seven years' duration, called, the Pelo- ponnesian War,' now commenced (431 b. a). The Spartan king, Archi damus, entered Attica at the head of a large army of the confederates, and meeting with no opposition, proceeded along its eastern coast, burning the towns, and laying waste the country in his course. When the Athenians saw the enemy ravaging the country almost up to their gates, it required all the authority of Pericles to keep them within their fortifications. While the confederates were wasting Attica with fire and sword, the Athenian and Corcyrean fleets were, by the direction of Pericles, avenging the inju- ry by ravaging the almost defenseless coasts of the Peloponnesus. This, together with a scarcity of provisions, soon induced Archidamus to lead his army homewards. He retired by the western coast, continuing the work of devastation as he went along.

Early in the summer of the following year, the confederates returned to Attica, which they were again permitted to ravage at their pleasure, as Pericles still adhered to his cautious policy of confining his efforts to the defense of the capital. But an enemy far more terrible than the Pelopon- nesians attacked the unfortunate Athenians. A pestilence, supposed to have originated in Ethiopia, and which had gradually spread over Egypt and the western parts of Asia, broke out in the town of Piraeus, the inhab- itants of which at first supposed their wells to have been poisoned. The disease rapidly advanced into Athens, where it carried off a great number of persons. It is described as having been a species of infectious fever, accompanied with many painful symptoms, and followed, in those who survived the first stages of the disease, by ulcerations of the bowels and limbs.

Historians mention, as a proof of the singular virulence of this pesti- lence, that the birds of prey refused to touch the unburied bodies of its victims, and that the dogs which fed upon the poisonous relics perished.

The mortality was dreadful, and was of course greatly increased by the overcrowded state of the city. The prayers of the devout, and the skill of the physicians, were found equally unavailing to stop the progress of the dis- ease ; and the miserable Athenians, reduced to despair, believed themselves to be forgotten or hated by their gods. The sick were in many cases left unattended, and the bodies of the dead allowed to lie unburied, while those whom the plague had not yet reached, openly sat at defiance all laws, hu- man and divine, and rushed into every excess of criminal indulgence.

Pericles was in the meantime engaged, with a fleet of 150 ships, in wasting with fire and sword the shores of Peloponnesus. At his return to Athens, finding that the enemy had hastily retired from Attica, through fear of the contagion of the plague, he despatched the fleet to the coast of Chalcidice, to assist the Athenian land forces who were still engaged in the siege of Potidaea — an unfortunate measure, productive of no other result than the communication of the pestilence to the besieging army, by which the major- ity of the troops were speedily swept away. Maddened by their suffer- ings, the Athenians now became loud in their murmurs against Pericles, whom they accused of having brought upon them at least a portion of their

70 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

calamities, by involving them in the Peloponnesian war. An assembly of the people was held, in which Pericles entered upon a justification of his conduct and exhorted them to courage and perseverance in defense of their independence. The hardships to which they had been exposed by the war, were, he observed, only such as he had in former addresses prepared them to expect ; and as for the pestilence, it was a calamity which no human prudence could either have foreseen or averted. He reminded them that they still possessed a fleet which that of no potentate on earth could equal or cope with, and that, after the present evil should have passed away, their navy might yet enable them to acquire universal empire. ' What we suffer from the gods,' continued he, 'we should bear with patience ; what from our enemies, with manly firmness ; and such were the maxims of our forefathers. From unshaken fortitude in misfortune has arisen the present power of this commonwealth, together with that glory which, if our empire, according to the lot of all earthly things, decay, shall still survive to all posterity.'

The eloquent harangue of Pericles diminished, but did not remove, the alarm and irritation of the Athenians, and they not only dismissed him from all his offices, but imposed upon him a heavy fine. Meanwhile do- mestic afflictions were combining with political anxieties and mortifications to oppress the mind of this eminent man, for the members of his family were one by one perishing by the plague. Still, however, he bore himself up with a fortitude which was witnessed with admiration by all around him ; but at the funeral of the last of his children, his firmness at length gave way ; and while he was, according to the custom of the country, placing a garland of flowers on the head of the corpse, he burst into loud lamenta- tions, and shed a torrent of tears. It was not long till his mutable coun- trymen repented of their harshness towards him, and reinvested him with his civil and military authority. He soon after followed his children to the grave, falling, like them, a victim to the prevailing pestilence (429 b. a). The concurrent testimony of the ancient writers assigns to Pericles the first place among Grecian statesmen for wisdom and eloquence. Though ambitious of power, he was temperate in its exercise ; and it is creditable to his memory, that, in an age and country so little scrupulous in the shed- ding of blood, his long administration was as merciful and mild as it was vigorous and effective. When constrained to make war, the constant study of this eminent statesman was, how to overcome his enemies with the least possible destruction of life, as well on their side as on his own. It is relat- ed that, when he was lying at the point of death, and while those who sur- rounded him were recounting his great actions, he suddenly interrupted them by expressing his surprise that they should bestow so much praise on achievements in which he had been rivaled by many others, while they omitted to mention what he considered his highest and peculiar honor — namely, that no act of his had ever caused any Athenian to put on mourning.

After the death of Pericles, the war was continued, without interruption, for seven years longer, but with no very decisive advantage to either side. During this period the Athenian councils were chiefly directed by a coarse- minded and unprincipled demagogue named Cleon, who was at last killed in battle under the walls of Amphipolis, a Macedonian city, of which the possession was disputed by the Athenians and Lacedaemonians. Cleon was succeeded in the direction of public affairs by Nicias, the leader of the aris

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 71

tocratic party, a man of virtuous but unenterprising character, and a mili- tary officer of moderate abilities. Under his auspices a peace for fifty years, commonly known by the name of the ' Peace of Nicias,' was conclu- ded in the tenth year of the war (421 b. a). It was not long, however, till the contest was resumed. Offended that its allies had given up a con- test undertaken for the assertion of its alleged rights, Corinth refused to be a party to the treaty of peace, and entered into a new quadruple alli- ance with Argos, Elis, and Mantinsea, a city of Arcadia ; the ostensible ob- ject of which confederation was the defense of the Peloponnesian states against the aggressions of Athens and Sparta. This end seemed not diffi- cult of attainment, as fresh distrust had arisen between the two last-men- tioned republics, on account of the reluctance felt and manifested by both to give up certain places which they had bound themselves by treaty mutu- ally to surrender. The jealousies thus excited were fanned into a violent flame by the artful measures of Alcibiades, a young Athenian, who now began to rise into political power, and whose genius and character subse- quently exercised a strong influence upon the affairs of Athens.

Alcibiades. Alcibiades was the son of Clinias, an Athenian of high rank. Endowed with uncommon beauty of person, and talents of the very highest order, he was unfortunately deficient in that unbending integrity which is an essential element of every character truly great, and his violent passions sometimes impelled him to act in a manner which has brought disgrace on his memory. While still very young, Alcibiades served in the x\thenian army, and became the companion and pupil of Socrates, one of the wisest and most virtuous of the Grecian sages. Hav- ing rendered some service to his country in a protracted and useless war with Lacedsemon, and being possessed of a talent for addressing the passions of the multitude, Alcibiades, as others had done before him, became the undisputed head of public affairs in Athens. But this preemi- nence was not of long continuance. An opinion arose among the people that he designed to subvert the constitution, and his fall was as quick as his promotion. Many of his friends were put to death, and he, while ab- sent on an expedition, deprived of his authority. Being thus left without a public director of affairs, Athens, as usual, was torn by internal discords : the aristocratic faction succeeded in overthowing the democratic govern- ment (411 b. c), and establishing a council of 400 individuals to admin- ister the affairs of state, with the power of convoking an assembly of 5000 of the principal citizens for advice and assistance in any emergency. These 400 tyrants, as they were popularly called, were no sooner invested with authority, than they annihilated every remaining portion of the free institutions of Athens. They behaved with the greatest insolence and severity towards the people, and endeavored to confirm and perpetuate their usurped power, by raising a body of mercenary troops in the islands of the iEgean, for the purpose of overawing and enslaving their fellow- citizens. The Athenian army was at this period in the island of Samos, whither it had retired after an expedition against the revolted cities of Asia Minor. When intelligence arrived of the revolution in Athens, and the tyrannical proceedings of the oligarchical faction, the soldiers indignant- ly refused to obey the new government, and sent an invitation to Alcibiades to return among them, and assist in reestablishing the democratic con-

72 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

stitution. He obeyed the call ; and as soon as he arrived in Samos, the troops elected him their general. He then sent a message to Athens, commanding the 400 tyrants to divest themselves immediately of their unconstitutional authority, if they wished to avoid deposition and death at his hands.

This message reached Athens at a time of the greatest confusion and alarm. The 400 tyrants had quarreled among themselves, and were about to appeal to the sword : the island of Eubcea, from which Athens had for some time been principally supplied with provisions, had revolted, and the fleet which had been sent to reduce it had been destroyed by the Lacedaemonians, so that the coasts of Attica, and the port of Athens itself, were now without defense. In these distressing circumstances, the people, roused to desperation, rose upon their oppressors, overturned the govern- ment of the 400, after an existence of only a few months, and reestablished their ancient institutions. Alcibiades was now recalled ; but before revisit- ing Athens, he was desirous of performing some brilliant military exploit, which might obliterate the recollection of his late connection with the Spartans, and give his return an air of triumph. He accordingly joined the Athenian fleet, then stationed at the entrance of the Hellespont, and soon obtained several important victories over the Lacedaemonians, both by sea and land. He then returned to Athens, where he was received with transports of joy. Chaplets of flowers were showered upon his head, and amidst the most enthusiastic acclamations he proceeded to the place of assembly, where he addressed the people in a speech of such eloquence and power, that at its conclusion a crown of gold was placed upon his brow, and he was invested with the supreme command of the Athenian forces, both naval and military. His forfeited property was restored, * and the priests were directed to revoke the curses which had formerly been pronounced upon him.

This popularity of Alcibiades was not of long continuance. Many of the dependencies of Athens being in a state of insurrection, he assumed the command of an armament intended for their reduction. But circum- stances arose which obliged him to leave the fleet for a short time in charge of one of his officers, named Antiochus, who, in despite of express orders to the contrary, gave battle to the Lacedaemonians during the absence of the commander-in-chief, and was defeated. When intelligence of this action reached Athens, a violent clamor was raised against Alcibiades : he was accused of having neglected his duty, and received a second dismissal from all his offices. On hearing of this, he quitted the fleet, and retiring to a fortress he had built in the Chersonesus of Thrace, he collect- ed around him a band of military adventurers, with whose assistance he carried on a predatory warfare against the neighboring Thracian tribes.

Alcibiades did not long survive his second disgrace with his countrymen. Finding his Thraeian residence insecure, on account of the increasing power of his Lacedaemonian enemies, he crossed the Hellespont, and settled in Bithynia, a country on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. Being there attacked and plundered by the Thracians, he proceeded into Phrygia, and placed himself under the protection of Pharnabasus, the Persian satrap of that province. But even thither the unfortunate chief was followed by the unrelenting hatred of the Lacedaemonians, by whose directions he was privately and foully assassinated. Thus perished, about the fortieth year

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. 73

of his age (403 B.C.), one of the ablest men that Greece ever produced. Distinguished alike as a warrior, an orator, and a statesman, and in his nature noble and generous, Alcibiades would have been truly worthy of our admiration if he had possessed probity ; but his want of principle, and his unruly passions, led him to commit many grievous errors, which con- tributed not a little to produce or aggravate those calamities which latterly overtook him.

DECLINE OF ATHENIAN INDEPENDENCE.

With Alcibiades perished the last of the great men who possessed the power to sway the wild democracy, or, properly speaking, the mob of Athens. From the period of his death till the subjugation of the country, the Athenian people were at the mercy of contending factions, and with- out a single settled principle of government. During this brief period of their history, in which a kind of popular democracy had attained the command of affairs, happened the trial and condemnation of Socrates, an eminent teacher of morals, and a man guiltless of every offense but that of disgracing, by his illustrious merit, the vices and follies of his cotemporaries. On the false charge of corrupting the morals of the pupils who listened to his admirable expositions, and of denying the reli- gion of his country, he was, to the eternal disgrace of the Athenians, compelled to die by drinking poison, a fate which he submitted to with a magnanimity which has rendered his name for ever celebrated. This odious transaction occurred in the year 400 b. c.

After the death of this great man, the political independence of Athens drew to its termination — a circumstance which cannot excite the least sur- prise, when we reflect on the turbulence of its citizens, their persecution of virtue and talent, and their unhappy distrust of any settled form of govern- ment. Their ruin was finally accomplished by their uncontrollable thirst for war, and can create no emotions of pity or regret in the reader of their distracted history. The Lacedaemonians, under the command of an able officer named Lysander, attacked and totally destroyed the Athenian fleet. By this means having obtained the undisputed command of the sea, Lysan- der easily reduced those cities on the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, and those islands of the .ZEgean, which still acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. Having thus stripped that once lordly state of all its dependen- cies, he proceeded to blockade the city of Athens itself. The Athenians made a heroic defense ; but after a lengthened siege, during which they suffered all the horrors of famine, they were obliged to surrender on such conditions as their enemies thought fit to impose (404 b. a). The Spar tans demanded that the fortifications of Piraeus, and the long walls which connected it with the city, should be demolished ; that the Athenians should relinquish all pretensions to authority over their former tributaries, recall the exiled partisans of the 400 tyrants, acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta, and follow its commanders in time of war ; and finally, that they should adopt such a political constitution as should meet the approbation of the Lacedaemonians.

Thus sank the power of Athens, which had so long been the leading state of Greece, and thus terminated the Peloponnesian war, in which the Grecian communities had been so long engaged, to little other purpose than

74 AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

to waste the strength, and exhaust the resources, of their common coun- try.

Condition of Athens. During the age preceding its fall, Athens, as already mentioned, had been greatly beautified and enlarged by Pericles. At the same time, the comparative simplicity of manners which formerly prevailed was exchanged for luxurious habits. This alteration has been thus described by Gillies in his ' History of Ancient Greece :' — ' In the course of a few years, the success of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, had tripled the revenues, and increased in a far greater proportion the dominions of the republic. The Athenian galleys commanded the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean ; their merchantmen had engrossed the traffic of the ad- jacent countries ; the magazines of Athens abounded with wood, metal, ebony, ivory, and all the materials of the useful as well as of the agreeable arts ; they imported the luxuries of Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Lydia, Pontus, and Peloponnesus ; experience had improved their skill in working the silver mines of Mount Laurium ; they had lately opened the valuable mar- ble veins in Mount Pentelicus ; the honey of Hymettus became important in domestic use and foreign traffic ; the culture of their olives (oil being long their staple commodity, and the only production of Attica which Solon allowed them to export) must have improved with the general improvement of the country in arts and agriculture, especially under the active adminis- tration of Pericles, who liberally let loose the public treasure to encourage every species of industry.

' But if that minister promoted the love of action, he found it necessary at least to comply with, if not to excite, the extreme passion for pleasure which then began to distinguish his countrymen. The people of Athens, successful in every enterprise against their foreign as well as domestic ene- mies, seemed entitled to reap the fruits of their dangers and victories. For the space of at least twelve years preceding the war of Peloponnesus, their city afforded a perpetual scene of triumph and festivity. Dramatic entertainments, to which they were passionately addicted, were no longer performed in slight, unadorned edifices, but in stone or marble theatres, erected at great expense, and embellished with the most precious produc- tions of nature and of art. The treasury was opened, not only to supply the decorations of this favorite amusement, but to enable the poorer citi- zens to enjoy it, without incurring any private expense ; and thus, at the cost of the state, or rather of its tributary allies and colonies, to feast and delight their ears and fancy with the combined c