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

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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