History Of Ancient Civilization Part 15

In the third Philippic (341) Demosthenes calls to the minds of the Athenians the progress made by Philip, thanks to their inaction. "When the Greeks once abused their power to oppress others, all Greece rose to prevent this injustice; and yet today we suffer an unworthy Macedonian, a barbarian of a hated race, to destroy Greek cities, celebrate the Pythian games, or have them celebrated by his slaves.

And the Greeks look on without doing anything, just as one sees hail falling while he prays that it may not touch him. You let increase his power without taking a step to stop it, each regarding it as so much time gained when he is destroying another, instead of planning and working for the safety of Greece, when everybody knows that the disaster will end with the inclusion of the most remote."

At last, when Philip had taken Elatea on the borders of Botia, the Athenians, on the advice of Demosthenes, determined to make war and to send envoys to Thebes. Demosthenes was at the head of the emba.s.sy; he met at Thebes an envoy come from Philip; the Thebans hesitated.

Demosthenes besought them to bury the old enmities and to think only of the safety of Greece, to defend its honor and its history. He persuaded them to an alliance with Athens and to undertake the war. A battle was fought at Chaeronea in Botia, Demosthenes, then at the age of forty-eight, serving as a private hostile. But the army of the Athenians and Thebans, levied in haste, was not equal to the veterans of Philip and was thrown into rout.

=The Macedonian Supremacy.=--Philip, victorious at Chaeronea, placed a garrison in Thebes and offered peace to Athens. He then entered the Peloponnesus and was received as a liberator among the peoples whom Sparta had oppressed. From this time he met with no resistance. He came to Corinth and a.s.sembled delegates from all the Greek states (337)[96] except Sparta.

Here Philip published his project of leading a Greek army to the invasion of Persia. The delegates approved the proposition and made a general confederation of all the Greek states. Each city was to govern itself and to live at peace with its neighbors. A general council was initiated to prevent wars, civil dissensions, proscriptions, and confiscations.

This confederacy made an alliance with the king of Macedon and conferred on him the command of all the Greek troops and navies. Every Greek was prohibited making war on Philip on pain of banishment.

=Alexander.=--Philip of Macedon was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 336. His son Alexander was then twenty years old. Like all the Greeks of good family he was accustomed to athletic exercises, a vigorous fighter, an excellent horseman (he alone had been able to master Bucephalus, his war-horse). But at the same time he was informed in politics, in eloquence, and in natural history, having had as teacher from his thirteenth to his seventeenth year Aristotle, the greatest scholar of Greece. He read the Iliad with avidity, called this the guide to the military art, and desired to imitate its heroes. He was truly born to conquer, for he loved to fight and was ambitious to distinguish himself. His father said to him, "Macedon is too small to contain you."

=The Phalanx.=--Philip left a powerful instrument of conquest, the Macedonian army, the best that Greece had seen. It comprised the phalanx of infantry and a corps of cavalry.

The phalanx of Macedonians was formed of 16,000 men ranged with 1,000 in front and 16 men deep. Each had a sarissa, a spear about twenty feet in length. On the field of battle the Macedonians, instead of marching on the enemy facing all in the same direction, held themselves in position and presented their pikes to the enemy on all sides, those in the rear couching their spears above the heads of the men of the forward ranks. The phalanx resembled "a monstrous beast bristling with iron," against which the enemy was to throw itself.

While the phalanx guarded the field of battle, Alexander charged the enemy at the head of his cavalry. This Macedonian cavalry was a distinguished body formed of young n.o.bles.

=Departure of Alexander.=--Alexander started in the spring of 334 with 30,000 infantry (the greater part of these Macedonians) and 4,500 knights; he carried only seventy talents (less than eighty thousand dollars) and supplies for forty days. He had to combat not only the crowd of ill-armed peoples such as Xerxes had brought together, but an army of 50,000 Greeks enrolled in the service of the Great King under a competent general, Memnon of Rhodes. These Greeks might have withstood the invasion of Alexander, but Memnon died and his army dispersed. Alexander, delivered from his only dangerous opponent, conquered the Persian empire in two years.

=Victories of Granicus, Issus, and Arbela.=--Three victories gave the empire to Alexander. In Asia Minor he overthrew the Persian troops stationed behind the river Granicus (May, 333). At Issus, in the ravines of Cilicia, he routed King Darius and his army of 600,000 men (November, 333). At Arbela, near the Tigris, he scattered and ma.s.sacred a still more numerous army (331).

This was a repet.i.tion of the Median wars. The Persian army was ill equipped and knew nothing of manuvring; it was embarra.s.sed with its ma.s.s of soldiers, valets, and baggage. The picked troops alone gave battle, the rest were scattered and ma.s.sacred. Between the battles the conquest was only a triumphal progress. n.o.body resisted (except the city of Tyre, commercial rival of the Greeks); what cared the peoples of the empire whether they were subject to Darius or Alexander? Each victory gave Alexander the whole of the country: the Granicus opened Asia Minor, Issus Syria and Egypt, Arbela the rest of the empire.

=Death of Alexander.=--Master now of the Persian empire Alexander regarded himself as the heir of the Great King. He a.s.sumed Persian dress, adopted the ceremonies of the Persian court and compelled his Greek generals to prostrate themselves before him according to Persian usage. He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his officers to daughters of the Persian n.o.bles. He aimed to extend his empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even to India, warring with the combative natives. After his return with his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three, succ.u.mbing to a fever of brief duration (323).

=Projects of Alexander.=--It is very difficult to know exactly what Alexander's purposes were. Did he conquer for the mere pleasure of it?

Or did he have a plan? Did he wish to fuse into one all the peoples of his empire? Was he following the example already set him by Persia? Or did he, perhaps, imitate the Great King simply for vain-glory? And so of his intentions we know nothing. But his acts had great results. He founded seventy cities--many Alexandrias in Egypt, in Tartary, and even in India. He distributed to his subjects the treasures that had been uselessly h.o.a.rded in the chests of the Great King. He stimulated Greek scholars to study the plants, the animals, and the geography of Asia. But what is of special importance, he prepared the peoples of the Orient to receive the language and customs of the Greeks. This is why the t.i.tle "Great" has been a.s.signed to Alexander.

THE h.e.l.lENES IN THE ORIENT

=Dissolution of the Empire of Alexander.=--Alexander had united under one master all the ancient world from the Adriatic to the Indus, from Egypt to the Caucasus. This vast empire endured only while he lived.

Soon after his death his generals disputed as to who should succeed him; they made war on one another for twenty years, at first under the pretext of supporting some one of the house of Alexander--his brother, his son, his mother, his sisters or one of his wives, later openly in their own names.

Each had on his side a part of the Macedonian army or some of the Greek mercenary soldiers. The Greeks were thus contending among themselves who should possess Asia. The inhabitants were indifferent in these wars as they had been in the strife between the Greeks and the Persians. When the war ceased, there remained but three generals; from the empire of Alexander each of them had carved for himself a great kingdom: Ptolemy had Egypt, Seleucus Syria, Lysimachus Macedonia. Other smaller kingdoms were already separated or detached themselves later: in Europe Epirus; in Asia Minor, Pontus, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Pergamos; in Persia, Bactriana and Parthia. Thus the empire of Alexander was dismembered.

=The h.e.l.lenistic Kingdoms.=--In these new kingdoms the king was a Greek; accustomed to speak Greek, to adore the Greek G.o.ds, and to live in Greek fashion, he preserved his language, his religion, and his customs. His subjects were Asiatics, that is to say, barbarians; but he sought to maintain a Greek court about him; he recruited his army with Greek mercenaries, his administrative officers were Greeks, he invited to his court Greek poets, scholars, and artists.

Already in the time of the Persian kings there were many Greeks in the empire as colonists, merchants, and especially soldiers. The Greek kings attracted still more of these. They came in such numbers that at last the natives adopted the costume, the religion, the manners, and even the language of the Greeks. The Orient ceased to be Asiatic, and became h.e.l.lenic. The Romans found here in the first century B.C. only peoples like the Greeks and who spoke Greek.[97]

=Alexandria.=--The Greek kings of Egypt, descendants of Ptolemy,[98]

accepted the t.i.tle of Pharaoh held by the ancient kings, wore the diadem, and, like the earlier sovereigns, had themselves worshipped as children of the Sun. But they surrounded themselves with Greeks and founded their capital on the edge of the sea in a Greek city, Alexandria, a new city established by the order of Alexander.

Built on a simple plan, Alexandria was more regular than other Greek cities. The streets intersected at right angles; a great highway 100 feet broad and three and one-half miles in length traversed the whole length of the city. It was bordered with great monuments--the Stadium where the public games were presented, the Gymnasium, the Museum, and the Arsineum. The harbor was enclosed with a dike nearly a mile long which united the mainland to the island of Pharos. At the very extremity of this island a tower of marble was erected, on the summit of which was maintained a fire always burning to guide the mariners who wished to enter the port. Alexandria superseded the Phnician cities and became the great port of the entire world.

=The Museum.=--The Museum was an immense edifice of marble connected with the royal palace. The kings of Egypt purposed to make of it a great scientific inst.i.tution.

The Museum contained a great library.[99] The chief librarian had a commission to buy all the books that he could find. Every book that entered Egypt was brought to the library; copyists transcribed the ma.n.u.script and a copy was rendered the owner to indemnify him. Thus they collected 400,000 volumes, an unheard-of number before the invention of printing. Until then the ma.n.u.scripts of celebrated books were scarce, always in danger of being lost; now it was known where to find them. In the Museum were also a botanical and zoological garden, an astronomical observatory, a dissecting room established notwithstanding the prejudices of the Egyptians, and even a chemical laboratory.[100]

The Museum provided lodgings for scholars, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, and grammarians. They were supported at the expense of the state; often to show his esteem for them the king dined with them. These scholars held conferences and gave lectures. Auditors came from all parts of the Greek world; it was to Alexandria that the youth were sent for instruction. In the city were nearly 14,000 students.

The Museum was at once a library, an academy, and a school--something like a university. This sort of inst.i.tution, common enough among us, was before that time completely unheard of. Alexandria, thanks to its Museum, became the rendezvous for all the Orientals--Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Syrians; each brought there his religion, his philosophy, his science, and all were mingled together. Alexandria became and remained for several centuries the scientific and philosophical capital of the world.

=Pergamum.=--The kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor was small and weak.

But Pergamum, its capital, was, like Alexandria, a city of artists and of letters. The sculptors of Pergamum const.i.tuted a celebrated school in the third century before our era.[101] Pergamum, like Alexandria, possessed a great library where King Attalus had a.s.sembled all the ma.n.u.scripts of the ancient authors.

It was at Pergamum that, to replace the papyrus on which down to that time they used to write, they invented the art of preparing skins.

This new paper of Pergamum was the parchment on which the ma.n.u.scripts of antiquity have been preserved.

FOOTNOTES:

[95] An episode told by Xenophon shows what fear the Greeks inspired.

One day, to make a display before the queen of Cilicia, Cyrus had his Greeks drawn up in battle array. "They all had their brazen helmets, their tunics of purple, their gleaming shields and greaves. The trumpet sounded, and the soldiers, with arms in action, began the charge; hastening their steps and raising the war-cry, they broke into a run.

The barbarians were terrified; the Cilician queen fled from her chariot, the merchants of the market abandoning their goods took to flight, and the Greeks returned with laughter to their tents."

[96] There were two a.s.semblies in Corinth--the first in, 338, the second in 337.--ED.

[97] The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles composed in Asia Minor were written in Greek.

[98] They were called Lagidae from the father of Ptolemy I.

[99] The library of the Museum was burnt during the siege of Alexandria by Caesar. But it had a successor in the Serapeum which contained 300,000 volumes. This is said to have been burnt in the seventh century by the Arabs. [The tale of the destruction of the library under orders of Omar is doubtful.--ED.]

[100] King Ptolemy Philadelphus who had great fear of death pa.s.sed many years searching for an elixir of life.

[101] There still remain to us some of the statues executed by the orders of King Attalus to commemorate his victory over the Gauls of Asia.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST YEARS OF GREECE

DECADENCE OF THE GREEK CITIES

=Rich and Poor.=--In almost all the Greek cities the domains, the shops of trade, the merchant ships, in short, all the sources of financial profit were in the hands of certain rich families. The other families, that is to say, the majority of the citizens,[102] had neither lands nor money. What, then, could a poor citizen do to gain a livelihood? Hire himself as a farmer, an artisan, or a sailor? But the proprietors already had their estates, their workshops, their merchantmen manned by slaves who served them much more cheaply than free laborers, for they fed them ill and did not pay them. Could he work on his own account? But money was very scarce; he could not borrow, since interest was at the rate of ten per cent. Then, too, custom did not permit a citizen to become an artisan. "Trade," said the philosophers, "injures the body, enfeebles the soul and leaves no leisure to engage in public affairs." "And so," says Aristotle, "a well-const.i.tuted city ought not to receive the artisan into citizenship." The citizens in Greece const.i.tuted a n.o.ble cla.s.s whose only honorable functions, like the n.o.bles of ancient France, were to govern and go to war; working with the hands was degrading. Thus by the compet.i.tion of slaves and their exalted situation the greater part of the citizens were reduced to extreme misery.

=Social Strife.=--The poor governed the cities and had no means of living. The idea occurred to them to despoil the rich, and the latter, to resist them, organized a.s.sociations. Then every Greek city was divided into two parties: the rich, called the minority, and the poor, called the majority or the people. Rich and poor hated one another and fought one another. When the poor got the upper hand, they exiled the rich and confiscated their goods; often they even adopted these two radical measures:

1. The abolition of debts;

2. A new part.i.tion of lands.

The rich, when they returned to power, exiled the poor. In many cities they took this oath among themselves: "I swear always to be an enemy to the people and to do them all the injury I can."