The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians Part 10

The fondness of the Athenians for representations of this kind cannot be expressed. Their eyes, their ears, their imagination, their understanding, all shared in the satisfaction. Nothing gave them so sensible a pleasure in dramatic performances, either tragic or comic, as the strokes which were aimed at the affairs of the public; whether pure chance occasioned the application, or the address of the poets, who knew how to reconcile the most remote subjects with the transactions of the republic. They entered by that means into the interests of the people, took occasion to soothe their pa.s.sions, authorize their pretensions, justify, and sometimes condemn, their conduct, entertain them with agreeable hopes, instruct them in their duty in certain nice conjunctures; in consequence of which they often not only acquired the applauses of the spectators, but credit and influence in the public affairs and counsels: hence the theatre became so grateful and so interesting to the people. It was in this manner, according to some authors, that Euripides artfully adapted his tragedy of _Palamedes_(211) to the sentence pa.s.sed against Socrates; and pointed out, by an ill.u.s.trious example of antiquity, the innocence of a philosopher, oppressed by malignity supported by power and faction.

Accident was often the occasion of sudden and unforeseen applications, which from their appositeness were very agreeable to the people. Upon this verse of aeschylus, in praise of Amphiaraus,

-- 'Tis his desire Not to appear, but be the great and good,

the whole audience rose up, and unanimously applied it to Aristides.(212) The same thing happened to Philopmen at the Nemaean games. At the instant he entered the theatre, these verses were singing upon the stage:

-- He comes, to whom we owe Our liberty, the n.o.blest good below.

All the Greeks cast their eyes upon Philopmen,(213) and with clapping of hands and acclamations of joy expressed their veneration for the hero.

In the same manner at Rome, during the banishment of Cicero,(214) when some verses of Accius,(215) which reproached the Greeks with their ingrat.i.tude in suffering the banishment of Telamon, were repeated by aesop, the best actor of his time, they drew tears from the eyes of the whole a.s.sembly.

Upon another, though very different, occasion, the Roman people applied to Pompey the Great some verses to this effect:

'Tis our unhappiness has made thee great;(216)

and then addressing the people;

The time shall come when you shall late deplore So great a power confided to such hands;

the spectators obliged the actor to repeat these verses several times.

Fondness for Theatrical Representations one of the princ.i.p.al Causes of the Decline, Degeneracy, and Corruption of the Athenian State.

When we compare the happy times of Greece, in which Europe and Asia resounded with nothing but the fame of the Athenian victories, with the later ages, when the power of Philip and Alexander the Great had in a manner reduced it to slavery, we shall be surprised at the strange alteration in that republic. But what is most material, is the investigation of the causes and progress of this declension; and these M.

de Tourreil has discussed in an admirable manner in the elegant preface to his translation of Demosthenes's orations.

There were no longer, he observes, at Athens any traces of that manly and vigorous policy, equally capable of planning good and retrieving bad success. Instead of that, there remained only an inconsistent loftiness, apt to evaporate in pompous decrees. They were no more those Athenians, who, when menaced by a deluge of barbarians, demolished their houses to build ships with the timber, and whose women stoned the abject wretch to death that proposed to appease the great king by tribute or homage. The love of ease and pleasure had almost entirely extinguished that of glory, liberty, and independence.

Pericles, that great man, so absolute, that those who envied him treated him as a second Pisistratus, was the first author of this degeneracy and corruption. With the design of conciliating the favour of the people, he ordained that upon such days as games or sacrifices were celebrated, a certain number of oboli should be distributed amongst them; and that in the a.s.semblies in which affairs of state were to be discussed, every individual should receive a certain pecuniary gratification in right of being present. Thus the members of the republic were seen for the first time to sell their care in the administration of the government, and to rank amongst servile employments the most n.o.ble functions of the sovereign power.

It was not difficult to foresee where so excessive an abuse would end: and to remedy it, it was proposed to establish a fund for the support of the war, and to make it a capital crime to advise, upon any account whatsoever, the application of it to other uses: but, notwithstanding, the abuse always subsisted. At first it seemed tolerable, whilst the citizen, who was supported at the public expense, endeavoured to deserve it by doing his duty in the field for nine months together. Every one was to serve in his turn, and whoever failed was treated as a deserter without distinction: but at length the number of the transgressors carried it against the law; and impunity, as it commonly happens, multiplied their number. People accustomed to the delightful abode of a city, where feasts and games were perpetually taking place, conceived an invincible repugnance for labour and fatigue, which they looked upon as unworthy of free-born men.

It was therefore necessary to find amus.e.m.e.nt for this indolent people, to fill up the great void of an unactive, useless life. Hence arose princ.i.p.ally their fondness, or rather frenzy, for public shows. The death of Epaminondas, which seemed to promise them the greatest advantage, gave the final stroke to their ruin and destruction. "Their courage," says Justin,(217) "did not survive that ill.u.s.trious Theban. Freed from a rival, who kept their emulation alive, they sunk into a lethargic sloth and effeminacy. The funds for armaments by land and sea were soon lavished upon games and feasts. The seaman's and soldier's pay was distributed to the idle citizen. An indolent and luxurious mode of life enervated every breast. The representations of the theatre were preferred to the exercises of the camp. Valour and military knowledge were entirely disregarded.

Great captains were in no estimation; whilst good poets and excellent comedians engrossed the universal applause."

Extravagance of this kind makes it easy to comprehend in what mult.i.tudes the people thronged to the dramatic performances. As no expense was spared in embellishing them, exorbitant sums were sunk in the service of the theatre. "If," says Plutarch,(218) "an accurate calculation were to be made what each representation of the dramatic pieces cost the Athenians, it would appear, that their expenses in playing the _Baccha.n.a.lians_, the _Phnicians_, _dipus_, _Antigone_, _Medea_, and _Electra_, (tragedies written either by Sophocles or Euripides,) were greater than those which had been employed against the Barbarians, in defence of the liberty and for the preservation of Greece." This gave a Spartan just reason to exclaim, on seeing an estimate of the enormous sums laid out in these contests of the tragic poets, and the extraordinary pains taken by the magistrates who presided in them,(219) "that a people must be void of sense to apply themselves in so warm and serious a manner to things so frivolous. For," added he, "games should be only games; and nothing is more unreasonable than to purchase a short and trivial amus.e.m.e.nt at so great a price. Pleasures of this kind agree only with public rejoicings and seasons of festivity, and were designed to divert people at their leisure hours; but should by no means interfere with the affairs of the public, nor the necessary expenses of the government."

After all, says Plutarch, in the pa.s.sage which I have already cited, of what utility have these tragedies been to Athens, though so much boasted by the people, and admired by the rest of the world? I find that the prudence of Themistocles enclosed the city with strong walls; that the fine taste and magnificence of Pericles improved and adorned it; that the n.o.ble fort.i.tude of Miltiades preserved its liberty; and that the moderate conduct of Cimon acquired it the empire and government of all Greece. If the wise and learned poetry of Euripides, the sublime diction of Sophocles, the lofty buskin of aeschylus, have obtained equal advantages for the city of Athens, by delivering it from impending calamities, or by adding to its glory, I am willing (he goes on) that dramatic pieces should be placed in compet.i.tion with trophies of victory, the poetic theatre with the field of battle, and the compositions of the poets with the great exploits of the generals. But what a comparison would this be? On the one side would be seen a few writers, crowned with wreaths of ivy, and dragging a goat or an ox after them, the rewards and victims a.s.signed them for excelling in tragic poetry: on the other, a train of ill.u.s.trious captains, surrounded by the colonies which they founded, the cities which they captured, and the nations which they subjected. It is not to perpetuate the victories of aeschylus and Sophocles, but in remembrance of the glorious battles of Marathon, Salamis, Eurymedon, and many others, that so many feasts are celebrated every month with such pomp by the Grecians.

The inference which Plutarch draws from hence, in which we ought to agree with him, is,(220) that it was the highest imprudence in the Athenians thus to prefer pleasure to duty, fondness for the theatre to the love of their country, trivial shows to application to public business, and to consume, in useless expenses and dramatic entertainments, the funds intended for the support of fleets and armies. Macedon, till then obscure and inconsiderable, well knew how to take advantage of the Athenian indolence and effeminacy;(221) and Philip, instructed by the Greeks themselves, amongst whom he had for several years applied himself successfully to the art of war, was not long before he gave Greece a master, and subjected it to the yoke, as we shall see in the sequel.

I am now to open an entirely new scene to the reader's view, not unworthy his curiosity and attention. We have seen two states of no great consideration, Media and Persia, extend themselves far and wide, under the conduct of Cyrus, like a torrent or a conflagration; and, with amazing rapidity, conquer and subdue many provinces and kingdoms. We shall see now that vast empire setting the nations under its dominion in motion, the Persians, Medes, Phnicians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians, and many others; and falling, with all the forces of Asia and the East upon a little country, of very small extent, and dest.i.tute of all foreign a.s.sistance; I mean Greece. When, on the one hand, we behold so many nations united together, such preparations of war made for several years with so much diligence; innumerable armies by sea and land, and such fleets as the sea could hardly contain; and, on the other hand, two weak cities, Athens and Lacedaemon, abandoned by all their allies, and left almost entirely to themselves; have we not reason to believe, that these two little cities are going to be utterly destroyed and swallowed up by so formidable an enemy; and that no footsteps of them will be left remaining?

And yet we shall find that they will prove victorious; and by their invincible courage, and the several battles they gain, both by sea and land, will make the Persian empire lay aside all thoughts of ever again turning their arms against Greece.

The history of the war between the Persians and the Greeks will ill.u.s.trate the truth of this maxim, that it is not the number, but the valour of the troops, and the conduct of the generals, on which depends the success of military expeditions. The reader will admire the surprising courage and intrepidity of the great men at the head of the Grecian affairs, whom neither all the world in motion against them could deject, nor the greatest misfortunes disconcert; who undertook, with an handful of men, to make head against innumerable armies; who, notwithstanding such a prodigious inequality of forces, dared to hope for success; who even compelled victory to declare on the side of merit and virtue; and taught all succeeding generations what infinite resources are to be found in prudence, valour, and experience; in a zeal for liberty and our country; in the love of our duty; and in all the sentiments of n.o.ble and generous souls.

This war of the Persians against the Grecians will be followed by another amongst the Greeks themselves, but of a very different kind from the former. In the latter, there will scarce be any actions, but what in appearance are of little consequence, and seemingly unworthy of a reader's curiosity who is fond of great events; in this he will meet with little besides private quarrels between certain cities, or some small commonwealths; some inconsiderable sieges, (excepting that of Syracuse, one of the most important related in ancient history,) though several of these sieges were of no short duration; some battles between armies, where the numbers were small, and but little blood shed. What is it, then, that has rendered these wars so famous in history? Sall.u.s.t informs us in these words: "The actions of the Athenians doubtless were great; and yet I believe they were somewhat less than fame will have us conceive of them.

But because Athens abounded in n.o.ble writers, the acts of that republic are celebrated throughout the whole world as most glorious; and the gallantry of those heroes who performed them, has had the good fortune to be thought as transcendent as the eloquence of those who have described them."(222)

Sall.u.s.t, though jealous enough of the glory the Romans had acquired by a series of distinguished actions, with which their history abounds, yet does justice in this pa.s.sage to the Grecians, by acknowledging, that their exploits were truly great and ill.u.s.trious, though somewhat inferior, in his opinion, to their fame. What is then this foreign and borrowed l.u.s.tre, which the Athenian actions have derived from the eloquence of their historians? It is, that the whole universe agrees in looking upon them as the greatest and most glorious that ever were performed: _Per terrarum orbem Atheniensium facta_ PRO MAXIMIS CELEBRANTUR. All nations, seduced and enchanted as it were with the beauties of the Greek authors, think that people's exploits superior to any thing that was ever done by any other nation. This, according to Sall.u.s.t, is the service which the Greek authors have done the Athenians, by their excellent manner of describing their actions; and very unhappy it is for us, that our history, for want of similar a.s.sistance, has left a thousand brilliant actions and fine sayings unrecorded, which would have been put in the strongest light by the writers of antiquity, and have done great honour to our country.

But, be this as it may, it must be confessed, that we are not always to judge of the value of an action, or the merit of the persons who shared in it, by the importance of the event. It is rather in such sieges and engagements as we find recorded in the history of the Peloponnesian war, that the conduct and abilities of a general are truly conspicuous.

Accordingly, it is observed, that it was chiefly at the head of small armies, and in countries of no great extent, that our best generals of the last age displayed their great capacity, and showed themselves not inferior to the most celebrated captains of antiquity. In actions of this sort chance has no share, and does not cover any oversights that are committed. Every thing is conducted and carried on by the prudence of the general. He is truly the soul of the forces, which neither act nor move but by his direction. He sees every thing, and is present every where.

Nothing escapes his vigilance and attention. Orders are seasonably given, and seasonably executed. Contrivances, stratagems, false marches, real or feigned attacks, encampments, decampments; in a word, every thing depends upon him alone.

On this account, the reading of the Greek historians, such as Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius, is of infinite service to young officers; because those historians, who were also excellent commanders, enter into all the particulars of the events which they relate, and lead the readers, as it were by the hand, through all the sieges and battles they describe; showing them, by the example of the greatest generals of antiquity, and by a kind of antic.i.p.ated experience, in what manner war is to be carried on.

Nor is it only with regard to military exploits, that the Grecian history affords us such excellent models. We shall there find celebrated legislators, able politicians, magistrates born for government, men that have excelled in all arts and sciences, philosophers that carried their inquiries as far as was possible in those early ages, and who have left us such maxims of morality, as might put many Christians to the blush.

If the virtues of those who are celebrated in history may serve us for models in the conduct of our lives; their vices and failings, on the other hand, are no less proper to caution and instruct us; and the strict regard which an historian is obliged to pay to truth will not allow him to dissemble the latter, through fear of eclipsing the l.u.s.tre of the former.

Nor does what I here advance contradict the rule laid down by Plutarch, on the same subject, in his preface to the life of _Cimon_.(223) He requires, that the ill.u.s.trious actions of great men be represented in their full light; but as to the faults, which may sometimes escape them through pa.s.sion or surprise, or into which they may be drawn by the necessity of affairs, considering them rather as a certain degree of perfection wanting to their virtue,(224) than as vices or crimes that proceed from any corruption of the heart; such imperfections as these, he would have the historian, out of compa.s.sion to the weakness of human nature, which produces nothing entirely perfect, content himself with touching very lightly; in the same manner as an able painter, when he has a fine face to draw, in which he finds some little blemish or defect, does neither entirely suppress it, nor think himself obliged to represent it with a strict exactness, because the one would spoil the beauty of the picture, and the other would destroy the likeness. The very comparison Plutarch uses, shows, that he speaks only of slight and excusable faults. But as to actions of injustice, violence, and brutality, they ought not to be concealed or disguised on any pretence; nor can we suppose, that the same privilege should be allowed in history as is in painting, which invented the profile, to represent the side-face of a prince who had lost an eye, and by that means ingeniously concealed so disagreeable a deformity.(225) History, the most essential rule of which is sincerity, will by no means admit of such indulgences, as indeed would deprive it of its greatest advantage.

Shame, reproach, infamy, hatred, and the execrations of the public, which are the inseparable attendants on criminal and brutal actions, are no less proper to excite a horror for vice, than the glory, which perpetually attends good actions, is to inspire us with the love of virtue. And these, according to Tacitus, are the two ends which every historian ought to propose to himself, by making a judicious choice of what is most extraordinary both in good and evil, in order to occasion that public homage to be paid to virtue, which is justly due to it, and to create the greater abhorrence for vice, on account of that eternal infamy that attends it.(226)

The history which I am writing furnishes but too many examples of the latter sort. With respect to the Persians, it will appear, by what is said of their kings, that those princes, whose power has no other bounds than those of their will, often abandon themselves to all their pa.s.sions; that nothing is more difficult than to resist the illusions of a man's own greatness, and the flatteries of those that surround him; that the liberty of gratifying all one's desires, and of doing evil with impunity, is a dangerous situation; that the best dispositions can hardly withstand such a temptation; that even after having begun their career favourably, they are insensibly corrupted by softness and effeminacy, by pride, and their aversion to sincere counsels; and that it rarely happens they are wise enough to consider, that, when they find themselves exalted above all laws and restraints, they stand then most in need of moderation and wisdom, both in regard to themselves and others; and that in such a situation they ought to be doubly wise, and doubly strong, in order to set bounds within, by their reason, to a power that has none without.

With respect to the Grecians, the Peloponnesian war will show the miserable effects of their intestine divisions, and the fatal excesses into which they were led by their thirst of dominion: scenes of injustice, ingrat.i.tude, and perfidy, together with the open violation of treaties, or mean artifices and unworthy tricks to elude their execution. It will show, how scandalously the Lacedaemonians and Athenians debased themselves to the barbarians, in order to beg aids of money from them: how shamefully the great deliverers of Greece renounced the glory of all their past labours and exploits, by stooping and making their court to haughty and insolent satrapae, and by going successively, with a kind of emulation, to implore the protection of the common enemy, whom they had so often conquered; and in what manner they employed the succours they obtained from them, in oppressing their ancient allies, and extending their own territories by unjust and violent methods.

On both sides, and sometimes in the same person, we shall find a surprising mixture of good and bad, of virtues and vices, of glorious actions and mean sentiments; and sometimes, perhaps, we shall be ready to ask ourselves, whether these can be the same persons and the same people, of whom such different things are related: and whether it be possible, that such a bright and shining light, and such thick clouds of smoke and darkness, can proceed from the same source?

The Persian history includes the s.p.a.ce of one hundred and seventeen years, during the reigns of six kings of Persia: Darius, the first of the name, the son of Hystaspes; Xerxes the first; Artaxerxes, surnamed Longima.n.u.s; Xerxes the second; Sogdia.n.u.s (these two last reigned but a very little time); and Darius the second, commonly called Darius Nothus. This history begins at the year of the world 3483, and extends to the year 3600. As this whole period naturally divides itself into two parts, I shall also divide it into two distinct books.

The first part, which consists of ninety years, extends from the beginning of the reign of Darius the first, to the forty-second year of Artaxerxes, the same year in which the Peloponnesian war began; that is, from the year of the world 3483, to the year 3573. This part chiefly contains the different enterprises and expeditions of the Persians against Greece, which never produced more great men and great events, nor ever displayed more conspicuous or more solid virtues. Here will be seen the famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataeae, Mycale, Eurymedon, &c. Here the most eminent commanders of Greece signalized their courage; Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pausanias, Pericles, Thucydides, &c.

To enable the reader the more easily to recollect what pa.s.sed within this s.p.a.ce of time among the Jews, and also among the Romans, the history of both which nations is entirely foreign to that of the Persians and Greeks, I shall here set down in few words the princ.i.p.al epochas relating to them.

Epochas of the Jewish History.

The people of G.o.d were at this time returned from their Babylonish captivity to Jerusalem, under the conduct of Zorobabel. Usher is of opinion, that the history of Esther ought to be placed in the reign of Darius. The Israelites, under the shadow of this prince's protection, and animated by the earnest exhortations of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, did at last finish the building of the temple, which had been interrupted for many years by the cabals of their enemies. Artaxerxes was no less favourable to the Jews than Darius: he first of all sent Ezra to Jerusalem, who restored the public worship, and the observation of the law; then Nehemiah, who caused walls to be built round the city, and fortified it against the attacks of their neighbours, who were jealous of its reviving greatness. It is thought that Malachi, the last of the prophets, was contemporary with Nehemiah, or that he prophesied not long after him.

This interval of the sacred history extends from the reign of Darius I. to the beginning of the reign of Darius Nothus; that is to say, from the year of the world 3485, to the year 3581. After which the Scripture is entirely silent, till the time of the Maccabees.