The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

and to traffic on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

Philosophers, taking with them a venture of oil to pay expenses, could

now visit the learned countries of the East with more profit than had

previously been the case. Since that country was deprived of its

independence, the priests were inclined to encourage the cultivated

curiosity of their new scholars.

 

Egypt from the earliest times had been the university of Greece. It had

been visited, according to tradition, by Orpheus and Homer: there Solon

had studied law-making, there the rules and principles of the Pythagorean

order had been obtained, there Thales had taken lessons in geometry,

there Democritus had laughed and Xenophanes had sneered. And now

every intellectual Greek made the voyage to that country; it was regarded

as a part of education, as a pilgrimage to the cradle-land of their

mythology. To us Egypt is a land of surpassing interest, but nevertheless

merely a charnel-house, a museum, a valley of ruins and dry bones. The

Greeks saw it alive. They saw with their own eyes the solemn and absurd

rites of the temple—the cat solemnly enthroned, the tame crocodiles

being fed, ibis mummies being packed up in red jars, scribes carving the

animal language upon the granite. They wandered in the mazes of the

Labyrinth: they gazed on the mighty Sphinx couched on the yellow sands

with a temple between its paws: they entered the great hall of Carnac,

filled with columns like a forest and paved with acres of solid stone. In

that country Herodotus resided several years and took notes on his

wooden tablets of everything that he saw, ascertained the existence of the

Niger, made inquiries about the sources of the Nile, collated the traditions

of the priests of Memphis with those of Thebes. To Egypt came the

divine Plato, and drank long and deeply of its ancient lore. The house in

which he lived at Heliopolis was afterwards shown to travellers—it was

one of the sights of Egypt in Strabo’s day. There are some who ascribe

the whole civilisation of Greece, and the rapid growth of Greek literature,

to the free trade which existed between the two lands. Greece imported

all its paper from Egypt, and without paper there would have been few

books. The skins of animals were too rare, and their preparation too

expensive, to permit the growth of a literature for the people.

 

Gradually the Greeks become dispersed over the whole Asiatic world,

and such was the influence of their superiority that countries in which

they had no political power adopted much of their culture and their

manners. They surpassed the inhabitants of Asia as much in the arts of

war as in those of peace. They served as mercenaries in every land;

wherever the kettledrum was beaten they assembled in crowds.

 

It soon became evident to keen observers that the Greeks were destined to

inherit the Persian world. That vast empire was beginning to decay. The

character of the ruling people had completely changed. It is said that the

Lombards of the fourth generation were terrified when they looked at the

portraits of their savage ancestors who, with their hair shaved behind and

hanging down over their mouths in front, had issued from the dark forests

of Central Europe, and had streamed down from the Alps upon the green

Italian plains. The Persians soon ceased to be the rude and simple

mountaineers who had scratched their heads with wonder at the sight of a

silk dress, and who had been unable to understand the object of changing

one thing for another. It was remarked that no people adopted more

readily the customs of other nations. Whenever they heard of a new

luxury they made it their own. They soon became distinguished for that

exquisite and refined politeness which they retain at the present day; their

language cast off its guttural sounds and became melodious to the ear.

Time went on, and their old virtues entirely departed. They made use of

gloves and umbrellas when they walked out in the sun; they no longer

hunted except in battues, slaughtering without danger or fatigue the lean,

mangy creatures of the parks. They painted their faces and pencilled their

eyebrows and wore bracelets and collars, and dined on a variety of

entrees, tasting a little here and a little there, drank deep, yawned half the

day in their harems, and had valets de chambre to help them out of bed.

Their actions were like water, and their words were like the wind. Once a

Persian’s right hand had been a pledge which was never broken; now no

one could rely on his most solemn oath.

 

A country in which polygamy prevails can never enjoy a well-ordered

constitution. There is always an uncertainty about succession. The

kingdom does not descend by rule to the eldest son, but to the son of the

favourite wife; it is not determined beforehand by a national law, constant

and unchangeable, given forth from the throne and ratified by the estates;

it may be decided suddenly and at any moment in that hour when men are

weak and yielding, women sovereign and strong—when right is often

strangled by a fond embrace and reason kissed to sleep by rosy lips. The

fatal “Yes”! is uttered and cannot be revoked. The heir is appointed and

an injustice has been done. But the rival mother has yet a hope—the

appointed heir may die. Then the seraglio becomes a nursery of treason;

the harem administration is stirred by dark whispers; the cabinet of

women and eunuchs is cajoled and bribed. A crime is committed and is

revenged. The whole palace smells of blood. The king trembles on his

throne. He himself is never safe; he is always encircled by soldiers; he

never sleeps twice in the same place; his dinner is served in sealed trays;

a man stands at his left hand who tastes from the cup before he dares to

raise it to his lips.

 

The satrap form of government is far superior to that of vassal kings. As

long as the system of inspection is kept up there is no comparison

between the two. But if once the satrapies are allowed to become

hereditary there is no difference between the two. In the latter days of the

Persian empire the satraps were no longer supervised by royal visitors

and clerks of the accounts. Each of these viceroys had his bodyguard of

Persians and his army of mercenary Greeks. Sometimes they fought

against each other; sometimes they even contested for the throne. As for

the subject nations, they were by no means idle; revolts broke out in all

directions. Egypt enjoyed a long interlude of independence, though

afterwards she was again reduced to servitude. The Indians appear to

have shaken themselves free, and to have attained the position of allies.

Many provinces still recognised the emperor as their suzerain and lord,

but did not pay him any tribute. When he travelled from Susa to

Persepolis he had to go through a rocky pass where he paid a toll. The

King of Persia could not enter Persia proper without buying the

permission of a little shepherd tribe.

 

A remarkable event now occurred. A pretender to the throne hired a

Greek army, led it to Babylon, and defeated the Great King at the gates of

his palace. The empire was won, but the pretender had fallen in the

battle; his Persian adherents went over to the other side; the Greeks were

left without a commander and without a cause. They were in the heart of

Asia, cut off from their home by swift streaming rivers and burning plains

of sand. They were only then thousand strong, yet in spite of their

desperate condition they cut their way back to the sea. That glorious

victory, that still more glorious retreat, exposed the true state of affairs to

public view, and it became known all over Greece that the Persian empire

could be overcome.

 

But Greece unhappily was subject to vices and abuses of its own, and was

not in a position to take advantage of the weakness of its neighbour.

 

The intellectual achievements of the Greeks have been magnificently

praised. And when we consider what the world was when they found it,

and what it was when they left it, when we review their productions in

connection with the time and the circumstances under which they were

composed, we are forced to acknowledge that it would be difficult to

exaggerate their excellence. But the splendour of their just renown must

not blind us to their moral defects, and to their exceeding narrowness as

politicians.

 

In the arts and letters they were one nation, and their jealousy of one

another only served to stimulate their inventiveness and industry. But in

politics this envious spirit had a very different effect; it divided them, it

weakened them; the Ionian cities were enslaved again and again because

they could not combine. And one reason of their not being able to

combine was this: they never trusted one another. It was their inveterate

dishonesty, their want of faith, their disregards for the sanctity of oaths,

their hankering after money, which had much to do with their disunion

even in the face of danger. There are some who desire to persuade us

that the Greeks whom the Romans described were entirely a different

race from the Greeks of the Persian wars. But an unprejudiced study of

original authorities gives no support to such a theory. From the pirates to

the orators, from the heroic and treacherous Ulysses to the patriotic and

venal Demosthenes, we find almost all their best men tainted with the

same disease. Polybius complains that the Greek statesmen would never

keep their hands out of the till. In Xenophon’s Retreat of the Ten

Thousand a little banter is exchanged between a Spartan and an Athenian

which illustrates the state of public opinion in Greece. They have come

to a country where it is necessary to rob the natives in order to provide

themselves with food. The Athenian says that, as the Spartans are taught

to steal, now is the time for them to show that they have profited by their

education. The Spartan replies that the Athenians will no doubt be able to

do their share, as the Athenians appoint their best men to govern the state,

and their best men are invariably thieves. The same kind of pleasantry,

no doubt, goes on in Greece at the present day; to rob a foreigner in the

mountains, or to filch the money from the public chest, are looked upon

in that country as “little affairs” which are not disgraceful so long as they

are not found out. But the modern Greeks are degenerate in every way.

The ancient Greeks surpassed them not only in sculpture and in

metaphysics but also in duplicity. With their fine phrases and rhetorical

expressions, they have even swindled history, and obtained a vast amount

of admiration under false pretences.

 

The narrowness of the Greeks was not less strongly marked. When

Athens obtained the supremacy a wise and just policy might have formed

the Greeks into a nation. But Pericles had no sympathies beyond the city

walls: he was a good Athenian but a bad Greek. He removed the federal

treasury from Delphi to Athens, where it was speedily emptied on the

public works. Since Athens had now become the university and capital

of Greece, it appears not unjust that it should have been beautiful at the

expense of Greece. But it must be remembered that the Athenians

considered themselves the only pure Greeks, and no Athenian was

allowed to marry a Greek who was not also an Athenian. Heavy taxes

were laid on the allies, and were not spent entirely on works of art.

Besides the money that was purloined by government officials, large

sums