The Martyrdom of Man - Winwood Reade (golden son ebook txt) 📗
- Author: Winwood Reade
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webs of woven wind which when laid on the dewy grass melted from the
eyes; above all, those glistening, glossy threads stolen from the body of a
caterpillar, beautiful as the wings of the moth into which that caterpillar is
afterwards transformed.
Neither the Indians, the Chaldeans, nor the Egyptians were in the habit of
travelling beyond the confines of their own valleys. They resembled
islanders, and they had no ships. But the intermediate seas were
navigated by the wandering shepherd tribes, who sometimes pastured
their flocks by the waters of the Indus, sometimes by the waters of the
Nile. It was by their means that the trade between the river lands was
carried on. They possessed the camels and other beasts of burden
requisite for the transport of goods. Their numbers and their warlike
habits, their intimate acquaintance with the watering-places and seasons
of the desert, enabled them to carry the goods in safety through a
dangerous land, while the regular profits they derived from the trade, and
the oaths by which they were bound, induced them to act fairly to those
by whom they were employed. At a later period the Chinese, who were
once a great naval people, and who claim the discovery of the New
World, doubled Cape Comorin in their huge junks, and sailed up the
western coasts of India into the Persian Gulf, and along the coast of
Arabia to the mouth of the Red Sea. It as probably from them that the
arts of shipbuilding and navigation were acquired by the Arabs of Yemen
and the Indians of Guzerat, who then made it their business to supply
Babylon and Egypt and Eastern Africa with India goods. At a later
period still these India goods were carried by the Phoenicians to the
coasts of Europe, and acorn-eating savages were awakened to industry
and ambition. India, as a “land of desire,” has contributed much to the
development of man. On the routes of the India caravan, as on the banks
of navigable rivers, arose great and wealthy cities, which perished when
the route was changed. Open the book of universal history at what period
we may, it is always the India trade which is the cause of internal industry
and foreign negotiation.
The intercourse between the Indians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians was often
interrupted by wars, which recurred like epidemics, and which like
epidemics closely resembled one another. The roving tribes of the sandy
deserts, the pastoral mountains, or the elevated steppe-plateaux pressed
by some mysterious impulse—a famine, an enemy in their rear, or the
ambition of a single man—swept down upon the plains of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and thence spread their conquests right and left. Sometimes
they merely encamped, and the natives recovered their independence.
But more frequently they adopted the manners of the conquered people,
and flung themselves into luxury with the same ardour which they had
displayed in war. This luxury was not based on refinement but on
sensuality, and it soon made them indolent and weak. Sooner or later
they suffered the fate which their fathers had inflicted, and a new race of
invaders poured over the empire, to be supplanted in their turn when their
time was come.
Invasions of this nature were on the whole beneficial to the human race.
The mingling of a young, powerful people with the wise but somewhat
weary nations of the plains produced an excellent effect. And since the
conquerors adopted the luxury of the conquered, they were obliged to
adopt the same measure for supplying the foreign goods—for luxury
means always something from abroad. As soon as the first shock was
over the trade routes were again opened, and perhaps extended, by the
brand-new energies of the barbarian kings.
Babylonia or Chaldea, the alluvial country which occupies the lower
course of the Euphrates, was undoubtedly the original abode of
civilisation in Western Asia. But it was on the banks of the Tigris that the
first great empire arose—the first at least of which we know. For who
can tell how many cities, undreamt of by historians, lie buried beneath the
Assyrian plains? And Nineveh itself may have been built from some
dead metropolis, as Babylon bricks were used in the building of Baghdad.
Recorded history is a thing of yesterday—the narrative of modern man.
There is, however, a science of history; by this we are enabled to restore
in faint outline the unwritten past, and by this we are assured that
whatever the names and number of the forgotten empires may have been ,
they merely repeated one another. In describing the empire of Nineveh
we describe them all.
The Assyrian empire covered a great deal of ground. The kingdom of
Troy was one of its fiefs. Its rule was sometimes extended to the islands
of the Grecian sea. Babylon was its subject. It stretched far away into
Asia. But the conquered provinces were loosely governed, or rather no
attempt was made to govern them at all. Phoenicia was allowed to
remain a federation of republics. Israel, Judah, and Damascus were
allowed to continue their angry bickerings and petty wars. The relations
between the conquered rulers and their subjects were left untouched.
Their laws, their manners, and their religion were in no way changed. It
was merely required that the vassal kings or senates should acknowledge
the Emperor of Nineveh as their suzerain or lord, that they should send
him a certain tribute every year, and that they should furnish a certain
contingent of troops when he went to war.
As long as a vigorous and dreaded king sat upon the throne this simple
machinery worked well enough. Every year the tributes, with certain
forms of homage and with complimentary presents of curiosities and
artisans, were brought to the metropolis. But whenever an imperial
calamity of any kind occurred—an unsuccessful foreign war, the death or
even sickness of the reigning prince—the tributes were withheld. Then
the emperor set to work to subdue the provinces again. But this time the
conquered were treated not as enemies only but as traitors. The vassal
king and his advisers were tortured to death, the cities were razed to the
ground, and the rebels were transplanted by thousands to another land—
an effectual method of destroying their patriotism or religion of the soil.
The Syrian expeditions of Sennacherib were provoked by the contumacy
of Judah and of Israel. The kingdom of Israel was blotted out, but a camp
plague broke up the Assyrian army before Jerusalem, and not long
afterwards the empire crumbled away. All the vassal nations became
free, and for a short time Nineveh stood alone, naked but unattacked.
Then there was war in every direction, and when it was over the city was
a heap of charred ruins, and three great kingdoms took its place.
The first kingdom was that of the Medes, who had set the example of
rebellion, and by whom Nineveh had been destroyed. They inhabited the
highland regions bordering on the Tigris, Ecbatana was their capital.
They were renowned for their luxury, and especially for their robes of
flowing silk. Their priests were called Magi, and formed a separate tribe
or caste; they were dressed in white, lived only on vegetables, slept on
beds of leaves, worshipped the sun and the element of fire, as symbols of
the deity, and followed the precepts of Zoroaster. The empire of the
Medes was bounded on the west by the Tigris. They inherited the
Assyrian provinces in Central Asia, the boundaries of which are not
precisely known.
The civilisation of Nineveh had been derived from Babylon, a city
famous for its rings and gems, which were beautifully engraved, its
carpets in which the figures of fabulous animals were interwoven, its
magnifying glasses, its sun-dials, and its literature printed in cuneiform
characters on clay tablets, which were then baked in the oven. Many
hundreds of these have lately been deciphered, and are found to consist
chiefly of military dispatches, law papers, royal game-books, observatory
reports, agricultural treatises, and religious documents. In the partition of
Assyria Babylon obtained Mesopotamia, or “the Land between the
Rivers,” and Syria, including Phoenicia and Palestine. Nebuchadnezzar
was the founder of the Empire; he routed the Egyptians, he destroyed
Jerusalem, transplanted the Jews on account of their rebellion, and
reduced Tyre after a memorable siege. He built a new Babylon as
Augustus built a new Rome, and the city became one of the wonders of
the world. It was a vast fortified district, five or six times the area of
London, interspersed with parks and gardens and fields, and enclosed by
walls on which six chariots could be driven side by side. Its position in a
flat country made it resemble in the distance a mountain with trees
waving at the top. These were the “hanging gardens,” a grove of large
trees planted on the square surface of a gigantic tower, and ingeniously
watered from below. Nebuchadnezzar erected this extraordinary
structure to please his wife, who came from the highlands of Media, and
who, weary of the interminable plains, coveted meadows on mountain
tops such as her native land contained. The Euphrates ran through the
centre of the city, and was crossed by a stone bridge which was a marvel
for its time. But more wonderful still, there was a kind of Thames Tunnel
passing underneath the river, and connecting palaces on either side. The
city was united to its provinces by roads and fortified posts; rafts inflated
with skins, and reed boats pitched over with bitumen, floated down the
river with timber from the mountains of Armenia and stones for the
purposes of building. A canal large enough for ships to ascend was dug
from Babylon to the Persian Gulf, and on its banks were innumerable
machines for raising the water and spreading it upon the soil.
The third kingdom was that of the Lydians, a people in manners and
appearance resembling the Greeks. They did not consider themselves
behind the rest of the world. They boasted that they had invented dice,
coin, and the art of shopkeeping, and also that the famous Etruscan state
was a colony of theirs. They inhabited Asia Minor, a sterile, rugged
tableland, but possessing a western coast enriched by nature and covered
with the prosperous cities of the Asiatic Greeks. Hitherto Ionia had never
been subdued, but the cities were too jealous of one another to combine,
and Croesus was able to conquer them one by one. This was the man
whose wealth is still celebrated in a proverb—he obtained his gold from
the washings of a sandy stream. Croesus admired the Greeks; he was the
first of the lion-hunters, and invited all the men of the day to visit him at
Sardis, where he had the pleasure of hearing Aesop tell some of his own
fables. He was anxious that his capital should form part of the grand tour
which had already become the fashion of the Greek philosophers, and that
they should be able to say when they returned home that they had not
only seen the pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Troy, but also the
treasure-house of Croesus. When he received a visit from one of these
sages in cloak and beard he would show him his heaps of gold and
silver, and ask him whether, in all his travels, he had ever seen a happier
man—to which question he did not always receive a very courteous reply.
After long wars, peace was established between the Babylonians, the
Lydians, and the Medes on a lasting and secure foundation. The royal
families were united by marriage; alliances, defensive and offensive,
were made and ratified on oath. Egypt was no longer able to invade, and
there was a period of delicious calm in that stormy Asiatic world, broken
only by the plaintive voices of the poor Jewish captives who sat
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