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

the immortal

works of the preceding ages were edited and arranged, and it was there

that language was first studied for itself, and that lexicons and grammars

were first compiled. It was only in the Museum that anatomists could

sometimes obtain the corpse of a criminal to dissect; elsewhere they were

forced to content themselves with monkeys. There Eratosthenes, the

“Inspector of the Earth,” elevated geography to a science, and Euclid

produced that work which, as Macaulay would say, “every schoolboy

knows.” There the stars were carefully catalogued and mapped, and

chemical experiments were made. Expeditions were sent to Abyssinia to

ascertain the cause of the inundation of the Nile. The Greek intellect had

hitherto despised the realities of life: it had been considered by Plato

unworthy of a mathematician to apply his knowledge to so vulgar a

business as mechanics. But this notion was corrected at Alexandria by

the practical tendencies of Egyptian science. The Suez Canal was

reopened, and Archimedes taught the Alexandrians to apply his famous

screw to the irrigation of their fields. These Egyptian pumps, as they

were then called, were afterwards used by the Romans to pump out the

water from their silver-mines in Spain.

 

No doubt most of the Museum professors were pitiful “Graeculi”—

narrow-minded pedants such as are always to be found where patronage

exists, parasites of great libraries who spend their lives in learning the

wrong things. No doubt much of the astronomy was astrological, much

of the medicine was magical, much of the geography was mythical, and

much of the chemistry was alchemical—for they had already begun to

attempt the transmutation of metals and to search for the elixir vitae and

the philosopher’s stone. No doubt physics were much too metaphysical,

in spite of the example which Aristotle had given of founding philosophy

on experiment and fact; and the alliance between science and labour,

which is the true secret of modern civilisation, could be but faintly carried

out in a land which was under the fatal ban of slavery. Yet with all this it

should be remembered that from Alexandria came the science which the

Arabs restored to Europe, with some additions, after the Crusades. It was

in Alexandria that were composed those works which enabled Copernicus

to lay the keystone of astronomy, and which emboldened Columbus to

sail across the Western seas.

 

The history of the nation under the Ptolemies resembles its history under

the Phil-Hellenes, Egypt and Asia were again rivals, and again contested

for the vineyards of Palestine and the forests of Lebanon. Alexander had

organised a brigade of elephants for his army of the Indus, and these

animals were afterwards invariably used by the Greeks in war. Pyrrhus

took them to Italy, and the Carthaginians adopted the idea from him. The

elephants of the Asiatic Greeks were brought from Hindustan. The

Ptolemies, like the Carthaginians, had elephant forests at their own doors.

Shooting-boxes were built on the shores of the Red Sea: elephant hunting

became a royal sport. The younger members of the herd were entrapped

in large pits, or driven into enclosures cunningly contrived; were then

tamed by starvation, shipped off to Egypt, and drilled into beasts of war.

On the field of battle the African elephants, distinguished by their huge,

flapping ears and their convex brows, fought against the elephants of

India, twisting their trunks together and endeavouring to gore one another

with their tusks. The Indian species is unanimously described as the

larger animal and the better soldier of the two.

 

The third Ptolemy made two brilliant campaigns. In one he overran

Greek Asia and brought back the sacred images and vessels which had

been carried off by the Persians centuries before; in the other he made an

Abyssinian expedition resembling the achievement of Napier. He landed

his troops in Annesley Bay, which he selected as his base of operations,

and completely subdued the mountaineers of the plateau, carrying the

Egyptian arms, as he boasted, where the Pharaohs themselves had never

been. But the policy of the Ptolemies was on the whole a policy of peace.

Their wars were chiefly waged for the purpose of obtaining timber for

their fleet, and of keeping open their commercial routes. They

encouraged manufactures and trade, and it was afterwards observed that

Alexandria was the most industrious city in the world. “Idle people were

there unknown. Some were employed in the blowing of glass, others in

the weaving of linen, others in the manufacture of the Papyrus. Even the

blind and the lame had occupations suited to their condition.”

 

The glorious reigns of the three first Ptolemies extended over nearly a

century, and then Egypt began again to decline. Such must always be the

case where a despotic government prevails, and where everything

depends on the taste and temper of a single man. As long as a good king

sits upon the throne all is well. A gallant service, an intellectual

production, merit of every kind is recognised at once. Corrupt tax-gatherers and judges are swiftly punished. The enemies of the people are

the enemies of the king. His palace is a court of justice always open to

his children; he will not refuse a petition from the meanest hand. But

sooner or later in the natural course of events the sceptre is handed to a

weak and vicious prince, who empties the treasury of its accumulated

wealth; who plunders the courtiers, allowing them to indemnify

themselves at the expense of those that are beneath them; who dies,

leaving behind him a legacy of wickedness which his successors are

forced to accept. Oppression has now become a custom, and custom is

the tyrant of kings. In Egypt the prosperity of the land depended entirely

on the government. Unless the public works were kept in good order half

the land was wasted, half the revenue was lost, half the inhabitants

perished of starvation. But the dikes could not be repaired and the screw

pumps could not be worked without expense, and so if the treasury was

empty the inland revenue ceased to flow in. The king could still live in

luxury on the receipts of the foreign trade, but the life of the people was

devoured, and the ruin of the country was at hand. The Ptolemies became

invariably tyrants and debauchees—perhaps the incestuous marriages

practised in that family had something to do with the degeneration of the

race. The Greeks of Alexandria became half Orientals, and were

regarded by their brethren of Europe with aversion and contempt. One by

one the possessions of Egypt abroad were lost. The condition of the land

became deplorable. The empire which had excited the envy of the world

became deficient in agriculture, and was fed by foreign corn. Alexandria

glittered with wealth which it was no longer able to defend. The Greeks

of Asia began to fix their eyes on the corrupt and prostrate land. Armies

gathered on the horizon like dark clouds; then was seen the flashing of

arms; then was heard the rattling of distant drums.

 

The reigning Ptolemy had but one resource. In that same year a great

battle had been fought, a great empire had fallen on the African soil. For

the first time in history the sun was seen rising in the West. Towards the

West ambassadors from Egypt went forth with silks and spices and

precious stones. They returned bringing with them an ivory chair, a

course garment of purple, and a quantity of copper coin. These humble

presents were received in a delirium of joy. The Roman senate accorded

its protection, and Alexandria was saved. But its independence was

forfeited, its individuality became extinct. Here endeth the history of

Egypt. Let us travel to another shore.

 

There was a time when the waters of the Mediterranean were silent and

bare; when nothing disturbed the solitude of that blue and tideless sea but

the weed which floated on its surface and the gull which touched it with

its wing.

 

A tribe of Canaanites, or people of the plain, driven hard by their foes,

fled over the Lebanon and took possession of a narrow strip of land shut

off by itself between the mountains and the sea.

 

The agricultural resources of the little country were soon outgrown, and

the Phoenicians were forced to gather a harvest from the water. They

invented the fishing-line and net, and when the fish could no longer be

caught from the shore they had to follow them out to sea or starve. They

hollowed trunks of trees with axe and fire into canoes; they bound logs of

wood together to form a raft, with a bush stuck in it for a sail. The

Lebanon mountains supplied them with timber; in time they discovered

how to make boats with keels, and to sheathe them with copper, which

also they found in their mountains. From those heights of Lebanon the

island of Cyprus could plainly be seen, and the current assisted them

across. They colonised the island; it supplied them with pitch, timber,

copper, and hemp—everything that was required in the architecture of a

ship. With smacks and cutters they followed the tunny-fish in their

migrations; they discovered villages on other coasts, pillaged them, and

carried off their inhabitants as slaves. Some of these, when they had

learnt the language, offered to pay a ransom for their release; the

arrangement was accomplished under oath, and presents as tokens of

goodwill were afterwards exchanged. Each party was pleased to obtain

something which his own country did not produce, and thus arose a

system of barter and exchange.

 

The Phoenicians from fishermen became pirates, and from pirates traders:

from simple traders they became also manufacturers. Purple was always

the fashionable colour in the East, and they discovered two kinds of

shell-fish which yielded a handsome dye. One species was found on

rocks, the other under water. These shells they collected by means of

divers and pointer dogs. When the supply on their own coast was

exhausted they obtained them from foreign coasts, and as the shell

yielded but a small quantity of fluid, and therefore was inconvenient to

transport, they preferred to extract the dyeing material on the spot where

the shells were found. This led to the establishment of factories abroad,

and permanent settlements were made. Obtaining wool from the Arabs

and other shepherd tribes, they manufactured woven goods and dyed

them with such skill that they found a ready market in Babylonia and

Egypt. In this manner they purchased from those countries the produce

and manufactures of the East, and these they sold at a great profit to the

inhabitants of Europe.

 

When they sailed along the shores of that savage continent and came to a

place where they intended to trade, they lighted a fire to attract the

natives, pitched tents on shore, and held a six days’ fair, exhibiting in

their bazaar the toys and trinkets manufactured at Tyre expressly for their

naked customers, with purple robes and works of art in tinted ivory and

gold for those who, like the Greeks, were more advanced. At the end of

the week they went away, sometimes kidnapping a few women and

children to “fill up”. But in the best trading localities the factory system

prevailed, and their establishments were planted in the Grecian

Archipelago and in Greece itself, on the marshy shores of the Black Sea,

in Italy, in Sicily, on the African coast and in Spain.

 

Then, becoming bolder and more skilful, they would no longer be

imprisoned within the lake-like waters of the land-locked sea. They

sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar and beheld the awful

phenomenon of tides. They sailed on the left hand to Morocco for ivory

and gold dust, on the right hand for amber and tin to the ice-creeks of the

Baltic and the foaming waters of the British Isles. They also opened up

an