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Title: The Martyrdom of Man
Author: Winwood Reade




NOTE


Reade's full name was William Winwood Reade: on the Martrydom, and on
his last book, The Outcast, it stands as Winwood Reade, his literary
choice. A nephew of Charles Reade, he was born at Murrayfield, near
Crieff, on 26 December, 1838, and died at Wimbledon, on 24th April,
1875. (These are the dates of Mr. Legge, who seems, however, not to have
finally correlated them.) He published in 1859 Charlotte and Myra; in
1860 Liberty Hall Oxon (his college was Magdalen, then known as
Hertford); in 1860 The Veil of Isis, an attack on Catholicism. His first
visit to Africa was in 1862. In 1865 he published See-Saw; in 1868 he
again went to Africa, and in 1873 appeared his African Sketch Book,
which is in part an abridgment of his Savage Africa (1863). The
Martyrdom of Man was published in 1872. In 1873 he made his third trip
to Africa, as Times correspondent in the Ashanti War, which he saw
through, being the only civilian present at the taking of Coomassie; and
in 1874 appeared his Story of the Ashanti Campaign, embodying, with
criticism, his Times letters. In his last illness he wrote The Outcast
(1875) setting forth in fiction form the fate of persecution attaching
to the aggressive profession of "unbelief." Orthodox writers have
stressed the fact that, while he again professes his disbelief in
immortality, he does not profess to "know." The Outcast reached a third
edition in the year of its issue, but does not appear to have been since
reprinted until its publication by Watts & Co., in the Thinker's Library
series in 1933.



AUTHOR'S PREFACE


In 1862-3 I made a tour in Western Africa, and afterwards desired to
revisit that strange country with the view of opening up new ground and
of studying religion and morality among the natives. I was, however,
unable to bear a second time the great expenses of African travel, and
had almost given up the hope of becoming an explorer when I was
introduced by Mr. Bates, the well known Amazon traveller and Secretary
of the Royal Geographical Society, to one of its Associates, Mr. Andrew
Swanzy, who had long desired to do something in the cause of African
discovery. He placed unlimited means at my disposal, and left me free to
choose my own route. I travelled in Africa for two years (1868-70) and
made a journey which is mentioned in the test. The narrative of my
travels will be published in due course; I allude to them now in order
to show that I have had some personal experience of savages. I wish also
to take the first opportunity of thanking Mr. Swanzy for his assistance,
which was given not only in the most generous but also in the most
graceful manner.

With respect to the present work, I began it intending to prove that
"Negroland" or Inner Africa is not cut off from the main-stream of
events, as writers of philosophical history have always maintained, but
connected by means of Islam with the lands of the East; and also that it
has, by means of the slave-trade, powerfully influenced the moral
history of Europe and the political history of the United States. But I
was gradually led from writing the history of Africa into writing the
history of the world. I could not describe the Negroland of ancient
times without describing Egypt and Carthage. From Egypt I was drawn to
Asia and to Greece; from Carthage I was drawn to Rome. That is the first
chapter.

Next, having to relate the progress of the Mohammedans in Central
Africa, it was necessary for me to explain the nature and origin of
Islam, but that religion cannot be understood without a previous study
of Christianity and of Judaism, and those religions cannot be understood
without a study of religion among savages. That is the second chapter.

Thirdly, I sketched the history of the slave-trade, which took me back
to the discoveries of the Portuguese, the glories of Venetian commerce,
the revival of the arts, the Dark Ages, and the invasion of the Germans.
Thus finding that my outline of universal history was almost complete, I
determined in the last chapter to give a brief summary of the whole,
filling up the parts omitted, and adding to it the materials of another
work suggested several years ago by The Origin of Species.

One of my reasons for revisiting Africa was to collect materials for
this work, which I had intended to call The Origin of Mind. However, Mr.
Darwin's Descent of Man has left little for me to say respecting the
birth and infancy of the faculties and affections. I therefore merely
follow in his footsteps, not from blind veneration for a great master,
but because I find that his conclusions are confirmed by the phenomena
of savage life.

On certain minor points I venture to dissent from Mr. Darwin's views, as
I shall show in my personal narrative, and there is probably much in
this work of which Mr. Darwin will disapprove. He must therefore not be
made responsible for all the opinions of his disciple.

I had intended to give my authorities in full with notes and
elucidations, but am prevented from doing so by want of space, this
volume being already larger than it should be. I wish therefore to
impress upon the reader that there is scarcely anything in this work
which I can claim as my own. I have taken not only facts and ideas, but
phrases and even paragraphs, from other writers. I cannot pay all my
debts in full, but I must at least do myself the pleasure of mentioning
those authors who have been my chief guides. On Egypt they are
Wilkinson, Herodotus (Rawlinson's edition), Bunsen; Ethiopia or
Abyssinia, Bruce, Baker, Lepsius; Carthage, Heeren (African Nations),
Niebuhr, ommsen; East Africa, Vincent (Periplus), Guillain, Hakluyt
Society's Publications; Moslem Africa (Central), Park, Caillie, Denham
and Clapperton, Lander, Barth, Ibn Batuta, Leo Africanus; Guinea and
South Africa, Azurara, Barros, Major, Hakluyt, Purchas, Livingstone;
Assyria, Sir H. Rawlinson, Layard; India, Max Muller, Weber; Persia,
Heeren (Asiatic Nations); Central Asia, Burnes, Wolff, Vambery; Arabia,
Niebuhr, Caussin de Perceval,

Sprenger, Deutsch, Muir, Burckhardt, Burton, Palgrave; Palestine, Dean
Stanley, Renan, Dollinger, Spinoza, Robinson, Neander; Greece, Grote, O.
Muller, Curtius, Heeren, Lewes, Taine, About, Becker (Charicles); Rome,
Gibbon, Macaulay, Becker (Gallus); Dark Ages, Hallam, Guizot, Robertson,
Prescott, Irving; Philosophy of History, Herder, Buckle Comte, Lecky,
Mill, Draper; Science, Darwin, Lyell, Herbert, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall,
Chambers (Vestiges of Creation), Wallace, Tylor, and Lubbock. All of the
works of the above named authors deserve to be carefully read by the
students of universal history, and in them he will find references to
the original authorities, and to all writers of importance on the
various subjects treated of in this work.

As for my religious sentiments, they are expressed in opposition to the
advice and wishes of several literary friends, and of the publisher, who
have urged me to alter certain passages which they do not like, and
which they believe will provoke against me the anger of the public. Now,
as a literary workman I am thankful to be guided by the knowledge of
experts, and I bow to the decisions of the great public, for whom alone
I write, whom alone I care to please, and in whose broad unbiased
judgment I place implicit trust. But in the matter of religion I listen
to no remonstrance; I acknowledge no decision save that of the divine
monitor within me. My conscience is my adviser, my audience, and my
judge. It bade me write as I have written, without evasion, without
disguise; it bids me to go on as I have begun, whatever the result may
be. If therefore my religious opinions should be condemned, without a
single exception, by every reader of the book, it will not make me
regret having expressed them, and it will not prevent me from expressing
then again. It is my earnest and sincere conviction that those opinions
are not only true, but also that they tend to elevate and purify the
mind. One thing at all events I know--that it has done me good to write
this book, and therefore I do not think that it can injure those by whom
it will be read.



CHAPTER I: WAR


Egypt


The land of Egypt is six hundred miles long, and is bounded by two
ranges of naked limestone hills which sometimes approach and sometimes
retire from each other, leaving between them an average breadth of seven
miles. On the north they widen and disappear, giving place to a marshy
meadow plain which extends to the Mediterranean coast. On the south they
are no longer of limestone, but of granite; they narrow to a point; they
close in till they almost touch; and through the mountain gate thus
formed the river Nile leaps with a roar into the valley, and runs north
towards the sea.

In the winter and spring it rolls a languid stream through a dry and
dusty plain. But in the summer an extraordinary thing happens. The river
grows troubled and swift; it turns red as blood, and then green; it
rises, it swells, till at length, overflowing its banks, it covers the
adjoining lands to the base of the hills on either side. The whole
valley becomes a lake from which the villages rise like islands, for
they are built on artificial mounds.

This catastrophe was welcomed by the Egyptians with religious gratitude
and noisy mirth. When their fields had entirely disappeared they thanked
the gods and kept their harvest-home. The tax gatherers measured the
water as if it were grain, and announced what the crops and the budget
of the next year would be. Gay barges with painted sails conveyed the
merry husbandmen from village to village and from fair to fair. It was
then that they had their boat tournaments, their wrestling matches,
their bouts at single-stick and other athletic sports. It was then that
the thimble-riggers and jack-puddings, blind harpers and nigger
minstrels from Central Africa, amused the holiday-hearted crowd. It was
then that the old people sat over draughts and dice-box in the cosy
shade, while the boys played at mora, or at pitch and toss, and the
girls at a game of ball, with forfeits for the one who missed a catch.
It was then that the house-father bought new dolls for the children,
and amulets or gold ear-rings or necklaces of porcelain bugles for the
wife. It was then that the market stalls abounded with joints of beef
and venison, and with geese hanging down in long rows, and with chickens
hatched by thousands under heaps of dung. Salted quails, smoked fish,
date sweetmeats, doura cakes, and cheese; leeks, garlic cucumbers, and
onions; lotus seeds mashed in milk, roasted stalks of papyrus, jars of
barley beer and palm wine, with many other kinds of food, were sold in
unusual plenty at that festive time.

It was then also that the white-robed priests, bearing the image of a
god and singing hymns, marched with solemn procession to the waterside,
and cast in a sacrifice of gold. For the water which had thus risen was
their life. Egypt is by nature a rainless desert which the Nile and the
Nile only, converts into a garden every year.

Far, far away in the distant regions of the south, in the deep heart of
Africa, lie two inland seas. These are the headwaters of the Nile; its
sources are in the sky. For the clouds, laden with waters collected out
of many seas, sail to the African equator, and there pour down a ten
months' rain. This ocean of falling water is received on a region
sloping towards the north, and is conveyed by a thousand channels to the
vast rocky cisterns which form the Speke and Baker Lakes. [Lakes
Victoria and Albert] They, filled and bursting, cast forth the Nile, and
drive it from them through a terrible and thirsty land. The hot air lies
on the stream and laps it as it flows. The parched soil swallows it with
open pores, but ton after ton of water is supplied from the gigantic
reservoirs behind, and so it is enabled to cross that vast desert which
spreads from the latitude of Lake Tchad to the borders of the
Mediterranean Sea.

The existence of the Nile is due to the Nyanza Lakes alone, but the
inundation of the river has a distinct and separate cause. In that
phenomenon the lakes are not concerned.

Between the Nile and the mouth of the Arabian Gulf are situated the
highlands of Abyssinia, rising many thousand feet above the level of the
sea, and intercepting the clouds of the Indian Ocean in their flight
towards the north. From these mountains, as soon as the rainy season has
set in, two great rivers come thundering down their dried-up beds, and
rush into the Nile. The main stream is now forced impetuously along; in
the Nubian desert its swelling waters are held in between walls of rock;
as soon as it reaches the low lying lands of Egypt it naturally
overflows.

The Abyssinian tributaries do even more than this. The waters of the
White Nile are transparent and pure; but the Atbara and Blue Nile bring
down from their native land a black silt which the flood strews over the
whole valley as a kind of top-dressing or manure. On that rich and
unctuous mud, as soon as the waters have retired, the natives cast their
seed. Then their labours are completed; no changes of weather need
afterwards be feared; no anxious looks are turned towards the sky;
sunshine only is required to fulfil the crop, and in Egypt the sun is
never covered by a cloud.

Thus, were it not for the White Nile, the Abyssinian rivers would be
drunk up by the desert; and were it not for the Abyssinian rivers, the
White Nile would be a barren stream. The river is created by the rains
of the equator; the land by the tropical rains condensed in one spot by
the Abyssinian mountain pile.

In that fair Egyptian valley, fattened by a foreign soil, brightened by
eternal sunshine, watered by terrestrial rain, the natives were able to
obtain a year's food in return for a few days' toil, and so were
provided with that wealth of time which is essential for a nation's
growth.

A people can never rise from low estate as long as they are engrossed in
the painful struggle for daily bread. On the other hand, leisure alone
is not sufficient to effect the self-promotion of men. The savage of the
primeval forest burns down a few trees every year; his women raise an
easy crop from the ashes which mingle with the soil. He basks all day in
the sunshine, or prostrates himself in his canoe with his arms behind
his head and a fishing-line tied to his big toe. When the meat-hunger
comes upon him he takes up bow and arrow and goes for a few days into
the bush. His life is one long torpor, with spasms of activity. Century
follows century, but he does not change. Again, the shepherd tribes roam
from pasture to pasture; their flocks and herds yield them food and
dress and "houses of hair," as they call their tents. They have little
work to do; their time is almost entirely their own. They pass long
hours in slow conversation, in gazing at the heavens, in the sensuous,
passive oriental reverie. The intellectual capacities of such men are by
no means to be despised, as those who have lived among them are aware.
They are skilful interpreters of nature's language and of the human
heart; they compose beautiful poems; their religion is simple and
sublime; yet time passes on, and they do not advance. The Arab sheikh of
the present day lives precisely as Abraham did three thousand years ago;
the Tartars of Central Asia are the Scythians whom Herodotus described.

It is the first and indispensable condition of human progress that a
people shall be married to a single land; that they shall wander no more
from one region to another, but remain fixed and faithful to their soil.
Then, if the Earth-wife be fruitful, she will bear them children by
hundreds and by thousands; and then calamity will come and teach them by
torture to invent.

The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand
and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its
fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been
able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the
semi-savage state.

It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for
there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and
so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the
ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a
harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders
of the desert thick groves of date-palms, which love a neutral soil,
embowered the villages, and formed live granaries of fruit.

But however plentiful food may be in any country, the population of that
country, as Malthus discovered, will outstrip it in the long run. If
food is unusually cheap, population will increase at an unusually rapid
rate, and there is not limit to its ratio of increase--no limit, that
is to say, except disease and death. On the other hand, there is a limit
to the amount of food that can be raised, for the basis of food is land,
and land is a fixed quantity. Unless some discovery is made by means of
which provisions may be manufactured with as much facility as children,
the whole earth will some day be placed in the same predicament as the
island in which we live, which has outgrown its food-producing power,
and is preserved from starvation only by means of foreign corn.

At the time we speak of, Egypt was irrigated by the Nile in a natural
and therefore imperfect manner. Certain tracts were overflooded; others
were left completely dry. The valley was filled with people to the brim.
When it was a good Nile, every ear of corn, every bunch of dates, every
papyrus stalk and lotus root was pre-engaged. There was no waste and no
surplus store. But sometimes a bad Nile came.

The bread of the people depended on the amount of inundation, and that
depended on the tropical rains, which vary more than is usually
supposed. If the rainfall in the Abyssinian highlands happened to be
slight, the river could not pay its full tribute of earth and water to
the valley below; and if the rainfall was unusually severe, houses were
swept away, cattle were drowned, and the water, instead of returning at
the usual time, became stagnant on the fields. In either case famine and
pestilence invariably ensued. The plenty of ordinary years, like a
baited trap, had produced a luxuriance of human life, and the massacre
was proportionally severe. Encompassed by the wilderness, the
unfortunate natives were unable to escape. They died in heaps; the
valley resembled a field of battle; each village became a charnel-house;
skeletons sat grinning at street corners, and the winds clattered among
dead men's bones. A few survivors lingered miserably through the year,
browsing on the thorny shrubs of the desert, and sharing with the
vultures their horrible repast.

"God made all men equal" is a fine sounding phrase, and has also done
good service in its day, but it is not a scientific fact. On the
contrary, there is nothing so certain as the natural inequality of men.
Those who outlive hardships and sufferings which fall on all alike owe
their existence to some superiority, not only of body but of mind. It
will easily be conceived that among such superior-minded men there would
be some who, stimulated by the memory of that which was past and by the
fear of that which might return, would strain to the utmost their
ingenuity to control and guide the fickle river which had hitherto
sported with their lives.

We shall not attempt to trace out their inventions step by step. Humble
in its beginnings, slow in its improvements, the art or science of
hydraulics was finally mastered by the Egyptians. They devised a system
of dikes, reservoirs, and lock-canals, by means of which the excessive
waters of a violent Nile were turned from the fields and stored up to
supply the wants of a dry year. Thus also the precious fluid was
conveyed to tracts of land lying above the level of the river, and was
distributed over the whole valley with such precision that each lot or
farm received a just and equal share. Next, as the inundation destroyed
all landmarks, surveying became a necessary art in order to settle the
disputes which broke out every year. And, as the rising of the waters
was more and more carefully observed, it was found that its beginning
coincided with certain aspects of the stars. This led to the study of
astronomy and the discovery of the solar year. Agriculture became a
mathematical art. It was ascertained that so many feet of water would
yield so many quarters of corn, and thus, before a single seed was sown,
they could count up the harvest as correctly as if it had been already
gathered in.

A natural consequence of all this was the separation of the inventor
class, who became at first the counsellors and afterwards the rulers of
the people. But while the men of mind were battling with the forces of
Nature, a contest of another kind was also going on. Those who dwell on
the rich banks of a river flowing through desert lands are always liable
to be attacked by the wandering shepherd hordes who resort to the
waterside in summer, when the wilderness pasture is dried up. There is
nothing such tribes desire better than to conquer the corn-growing
people of the river lands, and to make them pay a tribute of grain when
the crops are taken in. The Egyptians, as soon as they had won their
harvests from the flood, were obliged to defend them against the robbers
of the desert, and out of such wars arose a military caste. These allied
themselves with the intellectual caste, who were also priests, for among
the primitive nations religion and science were invariably combined. In
this manner the bravest and wisest of the Egyptians rose above the
vulgar crowd, and the nation was divided into two great classes, the
rulers and the ruled.

Then oppression continued the work which war and famine had begun. The
priests announced, and the armies executed, the divine decrees. The
people were reduced to servitude. The soldiers discovered the gold and
emerald mines of the adjoining hills, and filled their dark recesses
with chained slaves and savage overseers. They became invaders; they
explored distant lands with the spear. Communications with Syria and the
fragrant countries at the mouth of the Red Sea, first opened by means of
war, were continued by means of commerce. Foreign produce became an
element of Egyptian life. The privileged classes found it necessary to
be rich. Formerly the priests had merely salted the bodies of the dead;
now a fashionable corpse must be embalmed, at an expense of two hundred
and fifty pounds, with asphalt from the Dead Sea and spices from the
Somali groves; costly incense must be burnt on the altars of the gods;
aristocratic heads must recline on ivory stools; fine ladies must
glitter with gold ornaments and precious stones, and must be served by
waiting-maids and pages with woolly hair and velvety black skins. War
and agriculture were no longer sufficient to supply these patrician
wants. It was no longer sufficient that the people should feed on dates
and the coarse doura-bread, while the wheat which they raised was sold
by their masters for gewgaws and perfumes. Manufactures were
established; slaves laboured at a thousand looms; the linen goods of
Egypt became celebrated throughout the world. Laboratories were opened;
remarkable discoveries were made. The Egyptian priests distilled brandy
and sweet waters. They used the blow-pipe, and were far advanced in the
chemical processes of art. They fabricated glass mosaics, and
counterfeited precious stones and porcelain of exquisite transparency
and delicately blended hues. With the fruits of these inventions they
adorned their daily life, and attracted into Egypt the riches of other
lands.

Thus, when Nature selects a people to endow them with glory and with
wealth, her first proceeding is to massacre their bodies, her second to
debauch their minds. She begins with famine, pestilence and war; next,
force and rapacity above, chains and slavery below. She uses evil as the
raw material of good; though her aim is always noble, her earliest means
are base and cruel. But as soon as a certain point is reached she washes
her black and bloody hands, and uses agents of a higher kind. Having
converted the animal instinct of self-defence into the ravenous lust of
wealth and power, that also she transforms into ambition of a pure and
lofty kind. At first knowledge is sought only for the things which it
will buy--the daily bread indispensable to life, and those trinkets of
body and mind which vanity demands. Yet those low desires do not always
and entirely possess the human soul. Wisdom is like the heiress of the
novel who is at first courted only for her wealth, but whom the
fortune-hunter learns afterwards to love for herself alone.

At first sight there seems little in the arts and sciences of Egypt
which cannot be traced to the enlightened selfishness of the priestly
caste. For in the earlier times it was necessary for the priests to
labour unceasingly to preserve the power which they had usurped. It was
necessary to overawe not only the people who worked in the fields, but
their own dangerous allies, the military class; to make religion not
only mysterious but magnificent; not only to predict the precise hour of
the rising of the waters, or the eclipses of the moon, but also to adopt
and nurture the fine arts, to dazzle the public with temples, monuments,
and paintings. Above all, it was necessary to prepare a system of
government which should keep the labouring classes in subjection and yet
stimulate them to labour indefatigably for the state; which should strip
them of all the rewards of industry and yet keep that industry alive.
Expediency will therefore account for much that the Egyptian intellect
produced, but it certainly will not account for all. The invention of
hieroglyphics is alone sufficient to prove that higher motives were at
work than mere political calculation and the appetite of gold. For
writing was an invention which at no time could have added in a palpable
manner to the wealth or power of the upper classes, and which yet could
not have been finished to a system without a vast expenditure of time
and toil. It could not have been the work of a single man, but of
several men labouring in the same direction, and in its early beginnings
must have appeared as unpractical, as truly scientific to them, as the
study of solar chemistry and the observation of the double stars to us.
Besides, the intense and faithful labour which is conspicuous in all the
Egyptian works of art could only have been inspired by that enthusiasm
which belongs to noble minds.

We may fairly presume that Egypt once possessed its chivalry of the
intellect, its heroic age, and that the violent activity of thought
generated by the love of life and developed by the love of power was
raised to its full zenith by the passion for art and science, for the
beautiful and the true.

At first the Nile valley was divided into a number of independent
states, each possessing its own corporation of priests and soldiers, its
own laws and system of taxation, its own tutelary god and shrine, but
each a member of one body, united by the belief in one religion, and
assembling from time to time to worship the national gods in an
appointed place. There, according to general agreement ratified by
solemn oaths, all feuds were suspended, all weapons laid aside. There
also, under the shelter of the sanctuary, property was secure, and the
surplus commodities of the various districts could be conveniently
interchanged. In such a place, frequented by vast crowds of pilgrims and
traders, a great city would naturally arise, and such it seems probable
was the origin of Thebes.

But Egypt, which possesses a simple undivided form, and which is
nourished by one great arterial stream, appears destined to be
surmounted by a single head, and we perceive in the dim dawn of history
a revolution taking place, and Menes, the Egyptian Charlemagne, founding
an empire upon the ruins of local governments, and inspiring the various
tribes with the sentiment of nationality. Thebes remained the sacred
city, but a new capital, Memphis, was built at the other end of the
valley, not far from the spot where Cairo now stands.

By degrees the Egyptian empire assumed a consolidated form. A regular
constitution was established and a ritual prescribed. The classes were
organised in a more effective manner, and were not at first too strictly
fixed. All were at liberty to intermarry, excepting only the swineherds,
who were regarded as unclean. The system of government became masterly,
and the servitude of the people became complete. Designs of imperial
magnitude were accomplished, some of them gigantic but useless, mere
exploits of naked human strength, others structures of true grandeur and
utility. The valley was adorned with splendid monuments and temples;
colossal statues were erected, which rose above the houses like the
towers and spires of our cathedral towns. An army of labourers was
employed against the Nile. The course of the mighty stream was altered;
its waters were snatched from its bosom and stored up in Lake Moeris, an
artificial basin hollowed out of an extensive swamp, and thence were
conducted by a system of canals into the neighbouring desert, which they
changed to smiling fields. For the Sahara can always be revived. It is
barren only because it receives no rain.

The Empire consisted of three estates--the Monarch, the Army, and the
Church. There were in theory no limits to the power of the king. His
authority was derived directly from the gods. He was called "the Sun";
he was the head of the religion and the state; he was the supreme judge
and lawgiver; he commanded the army and led it to war. But in reality
his power was controlled and reduced to mere pageantry by a parliament
of priests. He was elected by the military class, but as soon as he was
crowned he was initiated into the mysteries and subjected to the severe
discipline of the holy order. No slave or hireling might approach his
person: the lords in waiting, with the state parasol and the
ostrich-feather fans, were princes of the blood; his other attendants
were invariably priests. The royal time was filled and measured by
routine: laws were laid down in the holy books for the order and nature
of the king's occupations. At daybreak he examined and dispatched his
correspondence; he then put on his robes and attended divine service in
the temple. Extracts were read from those holy books which contained the
sayings and actions of distinguished men, and these were followed by a
sermon from the High Priest. He extolled the virtues of the reigning
sovereign, but criticised severely the lives of those who had preceded
him--a post-mortem examination to which the king knew that he would be
subjected in his turn.

He was forbidden to commit any kind of excess: he was restricted to a
plain diet of veal and goose, and to a measured quantity of wine. The
laws hung over him day and night; they governed his public and private
action: they followed him even to the recesses of his chamber, and
appointed a set time for the embraces of his queen. He could not punish
a single person except in accordance with the code; the judges took oath
before the king that they would disobey the king if he ordered them to
do anything contrary to law. The ministry were responsible for the
actions of their master, and they guarded their own safety. They made it
impossible for him to forfeit that reverence and affection which the
ignorant and the religious always entertain for their anointed king. He
was adored as a god when living, and when he died he was mourned by the
whole nation as if each man had lost a well-beloved child. During
seventy-two days the temples were closed; lamentations filled the air;
and the people fasted, abstaining from flesh and wine, cooked food,
ointments, baths, and the company of their wives. The Army appears to
have been severely disciplined. To run twenty miles before breakfast was
part of the ordinary drill. The amusements of the soldiers were athletic
sports and martial games. Yet they were not merely fighting men. They
were also farmers. Each warrior received from the state twelve acres of
choice land; these gave him a solid interest in the prosperity of the
fatherland and in the maintenance of civil peace.

The most powerful of the three estates was undoubtedly the Church. In
the priesthood were included not only the ministers of religion, but
also the whole civil service and the liberal professions. Priests were
the royal chroniclers and keepers of the records, the engravers of
inscriptions, physicians of the sick and embalmers of the dead, lawyers
and lawgivers, sculptors and musicians. Most of the skilled labour of
the country was under their control. In their hands were the linen
manufactories and the quarries between the Cataracts. Even those posts
in the Army which required a knowledge of arithmetic and penmanship were
supplied by them: every general was attended by young priest scribes,
with papyrus rolls in their hands and reed pencils behind their ears.
The clergy preserved the monopoly of the arts which they had invented;
the whole intellectual life of Egypt was in them. It was they who, with
the nilometers, took the measure of the waters, and proclaimed good
harvests to the people or bade them prepare for hungry days. It was they
who studied the diseases of the country, compiled a pharmacopoeia, and
invented the signs which are used in our prescriptions at the present
day. It was they who judged the living and the dead, who enacted laws
which extended beyond the grave, who issued passports to paradise, or
condemned to eternal infamy the memories of men that were no more.

Their power was immense, but it was exercised with justice and
discretion: they issued admirable laws, and taught the people to obey
them by the example of their own humble, self-denying lives.

Under the tutelage of these pious and enlightened men, the Egyptians
became a prosperous and also a highly moral people. The monumental
paintings reveal their whole life, but we read in them no brutal or
licentious scenes. Their great rivals, the Assyrians, even at a later
period, were accustomed to impale and flay alive their prisoners of war.
The Egyptians granted honours to those who fought gallantly against
them. The penalty for the murder of a slave was death; this law exists
without parallel in the dark slavery annals both of ancient and of
modern times. The pardoning power in cases of capital offence was a
cherished prerogative of royalty with them as with us; and with them,
also as with us, when a pregnant woman was condemned to death the
execution was postponed until after the birth of the guiltless child. It
is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the
soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private
citizens did not carry them at all. Women were treated with much regard.
They were allowed to join their husbands in the sacrifices to the gods;
the bodies of man and wife were united in the tomb. When a party was
given the guests were received by the host and hostess seated side by
side in a large armchair. In the paintings their mutual affection is
portrayed. Their fond manners, their gestures of endearment, the
caresses which they lavish on their children, form sweet and touching
scenes of domestic life.

Crimes could not be compounded, as in so many other ancient lands, by
the payment of a fine. The man who witnessed a crime without attempting
to prevent it was punished as partaker. The civil laws were administered
in such a manner that the poor could have recourse to them as well as
the rich. The judges received large salaries that they might be placed
above the temptation of bribery, and might never disgrace the image of
Truth which they wore round their necks suspended on a golden chain.

But most powerful of all, to preserve the morality of the people by
giving a tangible force to public opinion, and by impeaching those sins
against society which no legal code can touch, was that sublime police
institution the "Trial of the Dead."

When the corpse had been brought back from the embalming house it was
encased in a sycamore coffin covered with flowers, placed in a sledge,
and drawn by oxen to the sacred lake. The hearse was followed by the
relations of the deceased, the men unshorn and casting dust upon their
heads, the women beating their breasts and singing mournful hymns. On
the banks of the lake sat forty-two judges in the shape of a crescent; a
great crowd was assembled; in the water floated a canoe, and within it
stood Charon the ferryman, awaiting the sentence of the chief judge. On
the other side of the lake lay a sandy plain, and beyond it a range of
long, low hills, in which might be discerned the black mouths of the
caverns of the dead.

It was in the power of any man to step forward and accuse the departed
before the body could be borne across. If the charge was held to be
proved, the body was denied burial in the consecrated ground, and the
crowd silently dispersed. If a verdict of not guilty was returned, the
accuser suffered the penalty of the crime alleged, and the ceremony took
its course. The relatives began to sing with praises the biography of
the deceased; they sang in what manner he had been brought up from a
child till he came to man's estate, how pious he had been towards the
gods, how righteous he had been towards men. And if this was true, if
the man's life had indeed been good, the crowd joined in chorus,
clapping their hands, and sang back in return that he would be received
into the glory of the just. Then the coffin was laid in the canoe, the
silent ferryman plied his oar, a priest read the service of the dead,
and the body was deposited in the cemetery caves. If he was a man of
rank he was laid in a chamber of his own, and the sacred artists painted
on the walls an illustrated catalogue of his possessions, the principal
occupations of his life, and scenes of the society in which he moved.
For the priests taught that, since life is short and death is long,
man's dwelling-house is but a lodging, and his eternal habitation is the
tomb. Thus the family vault of the Egyptian was his picture gallery, and
thus the manners and customs of this singular people have, like their
bodies, been preserved through long ages by means of religious art.

There are also still existing on the walls of the temples, and in the
grotto tombs, grand historical paintings which illuminate the terse
chronicles engraved upon the granite. Among these may be remarked one
subject in particular which appears to have been a favourite with the
artist and the public, for it again and again recurs. The Egyptians,
distinguished always by their smooth faces and shaven heads, are
pursuing an enemy with long beards and flowing robes, who are surrounded
by flocks and herds. The Egyptians here show no mercy; they appear alive
with fury and revenge. Sometimes the victor is depicted with a scornful
air, his foot placed upon the neck of a prostrate foe; sometimes he is
piercing the body through and through with a spear. Certain sandals have
also been discovered in which the figure of the same enemy is painted on
the inner sole, so that the foot trod upon the portrait when the sandal
was put on.

Those bearded men had inflicted on Egypt long years of dreadful disaster
and disgrace. They were the Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula, a
pastoral race who wandered eternally in a burning land, each tribe or
clan within an orbit of its own. When they met they fought, the women
uttering savage cries and cursing their husbands if they retreated from
the foe. Accustomed to struggle to the death for a handful of withered
grass or for a little muddy water at the bottom of a well, what a rich
harvest must Egypt have appeared to them! In order to obtain it they
were able to suspend all feuds, to take an oath of alliance, and to
unite into a single horde. They descended upon their prey and seized it
at the first swoop. There does not appear to have been even one great
battle, and this can be explained if, as is probable enough, the
Egyptians before that invasion had never seen a horse.

The Arab horse, or rather mare, lived in her master's tent and supped
from the calabash of milk, and lay down to sleep with the other members
of the family. She was the playmate of the children; on her the cruel,
the savage Bedouin lavished the one tender feeling of his heart. He
treasured up in his mind her pedigree as carefully as his own; he
composed songs in honour of his beloved steed--his friend, his
companion, his ally. He sang to her of the gazelles which they had
hunted down, and of the battles which they had fought together--for the
Arab horse was essentially a beast of war. When the signal was given for
the charge, when the rider, loudly yelling, couched his spear, she
snorted and panted and bounded in the air. With tail raised and
spreading to the wind, with neck beautifully arched, mane flapping, red
nostrils dilating, and eyes glaring, she rushed like an arrow into the
midst of the melee. Though covered with wounds, she would never turn
restive or try to escape, but if her master was compelled to take to
flight she would carry him till she dropped down dead.

It is quite possible that when the mounted army appeared in the river
plain the inhabitants were paralysed with fright, and believed them to
be fabulous animals, winged men. Be that as it may, the conquest was
speedy and complete; the imperial Memphis was taken, Egypt was enslaved,
and the king and his family and court were compelled to seek a new home
across the sandy seas.

On the south side of the Nubian desert was the land of Ethiopia, the
modern Sudan, which had been conquered by the Egyptians, and which they
used as an emporium in their caravan trade with Central Africa and the
shores of the Red Sea. But it could be reached only by means of a
journey which is not without danger at the present day, and which must
have been inexpressibly arduous at a time when the camel had not been
introduced.

The Nile, it is true, flows through this desert, and joins Ethiopia to
Egypt with a silver chain. But from the time of its leaving the Sudan
until it reaches the black granite gate which marks the Egyptian
frontier, it is confined within a narrow, crooked, hollow way.
Navigation is impossible, for its bed is continually broken up by rocks
and the stream is walled in; it cannot overflow its banks. The reign of
the Sahara is uninterrupted, undisturbed. On all sides is the desert,
the brown, shining desert, the implacable waste. Above is a ball of fire
ascending and descending in a steel blue sky; below, a dry and scorching
sea which the wind ripples into gloomy waves. The air is a cloud which
rains fire, for it is dim with perpetual dust--each molecule a spark.
The eye is pained and dazzled; it can find no rest. The ear is startled;
it can find no sound. In the soft and yielding sand the footstep
perishes unheard; nothing murmurs, nothing rustles, nothing sings. This
silence is terrible, for it conveys the idea of death, and all know that
in the desert death is not far off. When the elements become active they
assume peculiar and portentous forms. If the wind blows hard a strange
storm arises; the atmosphere is pervaded by a dull and lurid glare;
pillars of sand spring up as if by magic, and whirl round and round in a
ghastly and fantastic dance. Then a mountain appearing on the horizon
spreads upward in the sky, and a darkness more dark than night falls
suddenly upon the earth. To those who gasp with swelled tongues and
blackened lips in the last agonies of thirst, the mirage, like a mocking
stream, exhibits lakes of transparent water and shady trees. But the
wells of this desert are scanty, and the waters found in them are salt.

The fugitives concealed the images of the gods, and taking with them the
sacred animals, embarked upon their voyage of suffering and woe. After
many weary days they again sighted land; they arrived on the shores of
Ethiopia, the country of the blacks. Once more their eyes were refreshed
with green pastures; once more they listened to the rustling of the
palms, and drank the sweet waters of the Nile. Yet soon they discovered
that it was not their own dear river, it was not their own beloved land.
In Egypt Nature was a gentle handmaid; here she was a cruel and
capricious queen. The sky flashed and bellowed against them;
the rain fell in torrents, and battered down the houses of the
Ethiopians--wretched huts like hay-ricks, round in body with a
cone-shaped roof, built of grass and mud. The lowlands changed beneath
the flood, not into meadows of flowers and fields of waving corn, but
into a pestilential morass. At the rising of the dog-star came a
terrible fly which drove even the wild beasts from the river banks and
destroyed all flocks and herds. At that evil season the Egyptian
colonists were forced to migrate to the forests of the interior, which
were filled with savage tribes. Here were the Troglodytes who lived
under ground. An ointment was their only dress; their language resembled
the hissing of serpents and the whistling of bats. Every month they
indulged in a carouse; every month they opened the veins of their sheep
and drank of the warm and gurgling blood as if it had been delicious
wine. They made merry when they buried their dead, and, roaring with
laughter, cast stones upon the corpse until it was concealed from view.
Here were the root-eaters, the twig-eaters and the seed-eaters, who
lived entirely on such wretched kinds of food. Here were the
elephant-eaters, who, sitting on the tops of trees like birds, watched
the roads, and when they had sighted a herd crept after it, and hovered
round it till the sleepy hour of noon arrived. Then they selected a
victim, stole up to it snake-like from behind, hamstrung the enormous
creature with a dexterous cut from a sharp sword, and as it lay helpless
on the ground feasted upon morsels of its live and palpitating flesh.
Here were the locust-eaters, whose harvest was a passing swarm, for they
lit a smoky fire underneath, which made the insects fall like withered
leaves; they roasted them, pounded them, and made them into cakes with
salt. The fish-eaters dwelt by the coral-line borders of the Red Sea;
they lived in wigwams thatched with seaweed, with ribs of whales for the
rafters and the walls. The richest men were those who possessed the
largest bones. There was no fresh water near the shore where they hunted
for their food. At stated times they went in herds like cattle to the
distant river-side, and singing to one another discordant songs, lay
flat on their bellies and drank till they were gorged.

Such was the land to which the Pharaohs were exiled. In the meantime the
Bedouins established a dynasty which ruled a considerable time, and is
known as that of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings.

But those barbarians were not domiciled in Egypt. They could not breathe
inside houses, and could not understand how the walls remained upright.
The camp was their true fatherland. They lived aloof from the Egyptians;
they did not ally themselves with the country gods; they did not teach
the people whom they had conquered to regard them as the successors of
the Pharaohs. Their art of government began and ended with the
collection of a tax. The Shepherd Kings were associated in the minds of
the Egyptian fellahin, not with their ancient and revered religion, not
with the laws by which they were still governed under their local
chiefs, but only with the tribute of corn which was extorted from them
every harvest by the whip. The idea of revolution was always present in
their minds. Misfortune bestowed upon them the ferocious virtues of the
desert, while the vice of cities crept into the Bedouin camp. The
invaders became corrupted by luxurious indolence and sensual excess,
till at length a descendant of the Pharaohs raised an army in Ethiopia
and invaded Egypt. The uprising was general, and the Arabs were driven
back into their own harsh and meagre land.

The period which followed the Restoration is the most brilliant in
Egyptian history. The expulsion of the Bedouins excited an enthusiasm
which could not be contained within the narrow valley of the Nile. Egypt
became not only an independent but a conquering power. Her armies
overran Asia to the shores of the Euxine and of the Caspian Sea. Her
fleets swept over the Indian Ocean to the mud-stained shallows at the
Indus mouth. On the monuments we may read the proud annals of those
campaigns. We see the Egyptian army, with its companies of archers
shooting from the ear like the Englishmen of old; we see their squadrons
of light and heavy chariots of war, which skilfully skirmished or
heavily charged the dense masses of the foe; we see their remarkable
engines for besieging fortified towns, their scaling ladders, their
movable towers, and their shield-covered rams. We see the Pharaoh
returning in triumph, his car drawn by captive kings, and a long
procession of prisoners bearing the productions of their respective
lands. The nature and variety of those trophies sufficiently prove how
wide and distant the Egyptian conquests must have been, for among the
animals that figure in the triumph are the brown bear, the baboon, the
Indian elephant, and the giraffe. Among the prisoners are negroes of the
Sudan in aprons of bulls' hides, or in wild-beast skins with the tails
hanging down behind. They carry ebony, ivory, and gold; their chiefs are
adorned with leopard robes and ostrich feathers, as they are at the
present day. We see also men from some cold country of the North, with
blue eyes and yellow hair, wearing light dresses and long-fingered
gloves, while others clothed like Indians are bearing beautiful vases,
rich stuffs, and strings of precious stones.

When the kings came back from their campaigns, they built temples of the
yellow and rose-tinted sandstone, with obelisks of green granite and
long avenues of sphinxes, to commemorate their victories and immortalise
their names. They employed prisoners of war to erect these memorials of
war; it became the fashion to boast that a great structure had been
raised without a single Egyptian being doomed to work. By means of these
victories the servitude of the lower classes was mitigated for a time,
and the wealth of the upper classes was enormously increased. The
conquests it is true, were not permanent; they were merely raids on a
large scale. But in very ancient times, when seclusion and suspicion
formed the foreign policy of states, and when national intercourse was
scarcely known, invasion was often the pioneer of trade. The wealth of
Egypt was not derived from military spoil--which soon dissolves, however
large it may appear--but from the new markets opened for her linen
goods.

It is certain that the riches contained in the country were immense. The
house of an Egyptian gentleman was furnished in an elegant and costly
style. The cabinets, tables, and chairs were beautifully carved, and
were made entirely of foreign woods--of ebony from Ethiopia, of a kind
of mahogany from India, of deal from Syria, or of cedar from the heights
of Lebanon. The walls and ceilings were painted in gorgeous patterns
similar to those which are now woven into carpets. Every sitting room
was adorned with a vase of perfumes, a flower-stand, and an altar for
unburnt offerings. The house was usually one storey high, but the roof
was itself an apartment, sometimes covered, but always open at the
sides. There the house-master would ascent in the evening to breathe the
cool wind, and to watch the city waking into life when the heat was
past. The streets swarmed and hummed with men; the river was covered
with gilded gondolas gliding by. And when the sudden night had fallen,
lamps flashed and danced below; from the house-yards came sounds of
laughter and the tinkling of castanets; from the stream came the wailing
music of the boatmen and the soft splashing of the lazy oar.

The Egyptian grandee had also his villa or country house. Its large
walled garden was watered by a canal communicating with the Nile. One
side of the canal was laid out in a walk shaded by trees--the leafy
sycamore, the acacia with its yellow blossoms, and the doum or Theban
palm. In the centre of the garden was a vineyard, the branches being
trained over trellis-work so as to form a boudoir of green leaves, with
clusters of red grapes glowing like pictures on the walls. Beyond the
vineyard, at the further end of the garden, stood a summer house or
kiosk; in front of it a pond which was covered with the broad leaves and
blue flowers of the lotus, and in which waterfowl played. It was also
stocked with fish which the owner amused himself by spearing: or
sometimes he angled for them as he sat on his camp-stool. Adjoining this
garden were the stables and coach-houses, and a large park in which
gazelles were preserved for coursing. The Egyptian gentry were ardent
lovers of the chase. They killed wild ducks with throw-sticks, made use
of decoys, and trained cats to retrieve. They harpooned hippopotami in
the Nile; they went out hunting in the desert with lions trained like
dogs. They were enthusiastic pigeon fanciers, and had many different
breeds of dogs. Their social enjoyments were not unlike our own. Young
ladies in Egypt had no croquet, but the gentle sport of archery was
known among them. They had also boating parties on the Nile, and water
picnics beneath the shady foliage of the Egyptian bean. They gave
dinners, to which, as in all civilised countries, the fair sex were
invited. The guests arrived for the most part in palanquins, but the
young men of fashion drove up to the door in their cabs, and usually
arrived rather late. Each guest was received by a cluster of servants,
who took off his sandals, gave him water to wash his hands, anointed and
perfumed him, presented him with a bouquet, and offered him some raw
cabbage to increase his appetite for wine, a glass of which was taken
before dinner--the sherry and bitters of antiquity.

The gentlemen wore wigs and false beards, and their hands were loaded
with rings. The ladies wore their own hair plaited in a most elaborate
manner, the result of many hours between their little bronze mirrors and
the skilful fingers of their slaves. Their eyelashes were pencilled with
the antimonial powder, their finger-nails tinged with the henna's golden
juice--fashions older than the Pyramids which still govern the women of
the East.

The guests met in the dining-room, and grace was said before they sat
down. They were crowned with garlands of the lotus, the violet, and the
rose--the florists of Egypt were afterwards famous in Rome. A band of
musicians played during the repast on the harp, the lyre, the flute, and
the guitar. Some of the servants carried round glass decanters of wine
encircled with flowers, and various dishes upon trays. Others fanned the
porous earth-jars which contained the almond-flavoured water of the
Nile. Others burnt Arabian incense or flakes of sweet-scented wood to
perfume the air. Others changed the garlands of the guests as soon as
they began to fade. Between the courses dwarfs and deformed persons
skipped about before the company with marvellous antics and contortions;
jugglers and gymnasts exhibited many extraordinary feats; girls jumped
through hoops, tossed several balls into the air after the manner of the
East, and performed dances after the manner of the West. Strange as it
may appear, the pirouette was known to the Egyptians three thousand
years ago, and stranger still, their ballet-girls danced it in lighter
clothing than is worn by those who now grace the operatic boards. At the
beginning of the repast a mummy, richly painted and gilded, was carried
round by a servant, who showed it to each guest in turn and said, "Look
on this, drink and enjoy thyself, for such as it is now, so thou shalt
be when thou art dead." So solemn an injunction was not disregarded, and
the dinner often ended as might be expected from the manner in which it
was begun. The Hogarths of the period have painted the young dandy being
carried home by his footman without his wig, while the lady in her own
apartment is showing unmistakable signs of the same disorder.

But we must leave these pleasant strolls in the bypaths of history and
return to the broad and beaten road. The vast wealth and soft luxury of
the New Empire undermined its strength. It became apparent to the
Egyptians themselves that the nation was enervated and corrupt, a
swollen, pampered body from which all energy and vigour had for ever
fled. A certain Pharaoh commanded a curse to be inscribed in one of the
temples against the name of Menes, who had first seduced the Egyptians
from the wholesome simplicity of early times. Filled with a spirit of
prophecy, the king foresaw his country's ruin, which indeed was near at
hand, for though he himself was buried in peace, his son and successor
was compelled to hide in the marshes from a foreign foe.

To the same cause may be traced the ruin and the fall, not only of
Egypt, but of all the powers of the ancient world; of Nineveh and
Babylon and Persia; of the Macedonian kingdom and the Western Empire. As
soon as those nations became rich they began to decay. If this were the
fifth century, and we were writing history in the silent and melancholy
streets of Rome, we should probably propound a theory entirely false,
yet justified at that time by the universal experience of mankind. We
should declare that nations are mortal like the individuals of which
they are composed; that wealth is the poison, luxury the disease, which
shortens their existence and dooms them to an early death. We should
point to the gigantic ruins around--to that vast and mouldering body
from which the soul had fled--moralise about Lucullus and his thrushes,
recount the enormous sums that had been paid for a dress, a table or a
child, and assure our Gothic pupils that national life and health are
only to be preserved by contented poverty and simple fare.

But what has been the history of those barbarians? In the Dark Ages
there was no luxury in Europe. It was a miserable continent inhabited by
robbers, fetishmen, and slaves. Even the Italians of the eleventh
century wore clothes of unlined leather, and had no taste except for
horses and for shining arms, no pride except that of building strong
towers for their lairs. Man and wife grabbled for their supper from the
same plate, while a squalid boy stood by them with a torch to light
their greasy fingers to their mouths. Then the India trade was opened;
the New World was discovered; Europe became rich, luxurious, and
enlightened. The sunshine of wealth began first to beam upon the costs
of the Mediterranean Sea, and gradually spread towards the North. In the
England of Elizabeth it was declared from the pulpit that the
introduction of forks would demoralise the people and provoke divine
wrath. But in spite of sermons and sumptuary laws, Italian luxuries
continued to pour in, and national prosperity continued to increase. At
the present day the income of a nation affords a fair criterion of its
intellect and also of its strength. It may safely be asserted that the
art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and
credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm. As for
luxury, a small tradesman at the present day is more luxurious than a
king in ancient times. It has been wisely and wittily remarked that
Augustus Caesar had neither glass panes to his windows nor a shirt to
his back, and the luxury of the Roman senators may without exaggeration
be compared with that of the West Indian creoles in the eighteenth
century. The gentleman and his lady glittered with jewels; the table and
sideboard blazed with plate; but the house itself was little better than
a barn, and the attendants a crowd of dirty, half-naked slaves who
jostled the guests as they performed the service of the table, and sat
down in the verandah over the remnants of the soup before they would
condescend to go to the kitchen for the fish.

In the modern world we find luxury the harbinger of progress, in the
ancient world the omen of decline. But how can this be? Nature does not
contradict herself; the laws which govern the movements of society are
as regular and unchangeable as those which govern the movements of the
stars.

Wealth is in reality as indispensable to mankind for purposes of growth
as water to the soil. It is not the fault of the water if its natural
circulation is interfered with, if certain portions of the land are
drowned while others are left completely dry. Wealth in all countries of
the ancient world was artificially confined to a certain class. More
than half the area of the Greek and Roman world was shut off by slavery
from the fertilising stream. This single fact is sufficient to explain
how that old civilisation, in some respects so splendid, was yet so
one-sided and incomplete.

But the civilisation of Egypt was less developed still, for that country
was enthralled by institutions from which Greece and Rome, happily for
them, were free.

It has been shown that the instinct for self-preservation, the struggle
for bare life against hostile nature, first aroused the mental activity
of the Egyptian priests, while the constant attacks of the desert tribes
developed the martial energies of the military men. Next, the ambition
of power produced an equally good effect. The priests invented, the
warriors campaigned; mines were opened, manufactories were founded; a
system of foreign commerce was established; sloth was abolished by whip
and chain; the lower classes were saddled, the upper classes were
spurred; the nation careered gallantly along. Finally, chivalrous
ardour, intellectual passion, inspired heart and brain; war was loved
for glory's sake; the philosopher sought only to discover, the artist to
perfect.

And then there came a race of men who, like those that inherit great
estates, had no incentive to continue the work which had been so
splendidly begun. In one generation the genius of Egypt slumbered, in
the next it died. Its painters and sculptors were no longer possessed of
that fruitful faculty with which kindred spirits contemplate each
other's works; which not only takes, but gives; which produces from
whatever it receives; which embraces to wrestle, and wrestles to
embrace; which is sometimes sympathy, sometimes jealousy, sometimes
hatred, sometimes love, but which always causes the heart to flutter,
and the face to flush, and the mind to swell with the desire to rival
and surpass; which is sometimes as the emulative awe with which
Michaelangelo surveyed the dome that yet gladdens the eyes of those who
sit on the height of fair Fiesole, or who wander afar off in silver
Arno's vale; which is sometimes as that rapture of admiring wrath which
incited the genius of Byron when his great rival was pouring forth
masterpiece on masterpiece with invention more varied, though perhaps
less lofty, and with fancy more luxuriant even than his own.

The creative period passed away, and the critical age set in. Instead of
working, the artists were content to talk. Their admiration was sterile,
yet still it was discerning. But the next period was lower still. It was
that of blind worship and indiscriminating awe. The past became sacred,
and all that it had produced, good and bad, was reverenced alike. This
kind of idolatry invariably springs up in that interval of languor and
reaction which succeeds an epoch of production. In the mind-history of
every land there is a time when slavish imitation is inculcated as a
duty, and novelty regarded as a crime. But in Egypt the arts and
sciences were entangled with religion. The result will easily be
guessed. Egypt stood still, and theology turned her into stone.
Conventionality was admired, then enforced. The development of the mind
was arrested; it was forbidden to do any new thing.

In primitive times it is perhaps expedient that rational knowledge
should be united with religion. It is only by means of superstition that
a rude people can be induced to support, and a robber soldiery to
respect, an intellectual class. But after a certain time this alliance
must be ended, or harm will surely come. The boy must leave the
apartments of the women when he arrives at a certain age. Theology is an
excellent nurse, but a bad mistress for grown-up minds. The essence of
religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the
function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to
improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either
science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the
religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.

The religious ideas of the Egyptians became associated with a certain
style. It was enacted that the human figure should be drawn always in
the same manner, with the same colours, contour, and proportions. Thus
the artist was degraded to an artisan, and originality was strangled in
its birth.

The physicians were compelled to prescribe for their patients according
to the rules set down in the standard works. If they adopted a treatment
of their own and the patient did not recover, they were put to death.
Thus even in desperate cases heroic remedies could not be tried, and
experiment, the first condition of discovery, was disallowed.

A censorship of literature was not required, for literature in the
proper sense of the term did not exist. Writing, it is true, was widely
spread. Cattle, clothes, and workmen's tools were marked with the
owners' names. The walls of the temples were covered and adorned with
that beautiful picture character, more like drawing than writing, which
cold delight the eyes of those who were unable to penetrate its sense.
Hieroglyphics may be found on everything in Egypt, from the colossal
statue to the amulet and gem. But the art was practised only by the
priests, as the painted history plainly declares. No books are to be
seen in the furniture of houses; no female is depicted in the act of
reading; the papyrus scroll and pencil never appear except in connection
with some official act.

The library at Thebes was much admired. It had a blue ceiling speckled
with golden stars. Allegorical pictures of a religious character and
portraits of the sacred animals were painted on the walls. Above the
door were inscribed these words, "The Balsam of the Soul." Yet this
magnificent building contained merely a collection of prayer books and
ancient hymns, some astronomical almanacs, some works on religious
philosophy, medicine, music, and geometry, and the historical archives,
which were probably little else than a register of the names of kings,
with the dates of certain inventions and a scanty outline of events.

Even these books, so few in number, were not open to all the members of
the learned class. They were the manuals of the various departments or
professions, and each profession stood apart; each profession was even
sub-divided within itself. In medicine and surgery there were no general
practitioners. There were oculists, aurists, dentists, doctors of the
head, doctors of the stomach, etc., and each was forbidden to invade the
territory of his colleagues. This specialist arrangement has been highly
praised, but it has nothing in common with that which has arisen in
modern times.

It is one of the first axioms of medical science that no one is
competent to treat the disease of a single organ unless he is competent
to treat the diseases of the whole frame. The folly of dividing the
diseases of such organs as the head and stomach, between which the most
intimate sympathy exists, is evident even to the unlearned. But the
whole structure is united by delicate white threads, and by innumerable
pipes of blood. It is scarcely possible for any complaint to influence
one part alone. The Egyptian, however, was marked off like a chess board
into little squares, and whenever the pain made a move a fresh doctor
had to be called in.

This arrangement was part of a system founded on an excellent principle,
but carried to absurd excess. It is needless to explain that division of
labour is highly potent in developing skill and economising time. It is
also clearly of advantage that in an early stage of society the son
should follow the occupation of the father. It is possible that
hereditary skill or tastes come into play; it is certain that
apprenticeship at home is more natural and more efficient than
apprenticeship abroad. The father will take more pains to teach, the boy
will take more pains to learn, than will be the case when master and
pupil are strangers to each other.

The founders of Egyptian civilisation were acquainted with these facts.
Hence they established customs which their successors petrified into
unchanging laws. They did it no doubt with the best of motives. They
adored the grand and noble wisdom of their fathers; whatever came from
them must be cherished and preserved. They must not presume to depart
from the guidance of those god-like men. They must paint as they
painted, physic as they physicked, pray as they prayed. The separation
of classes which they had made must be rendered rigid and eternal.

And so the arts and sciences were ordered to stand still, and society
was divided and sub-divided into functions and professions, trades and
crafts. Every man was doomed to follow the occupation of his father, to
marry within his own class, to die as he was born. Hope was torn out of
the human life. Egypt was no longer a nation, but an assemblage of
torpid castes isolated from one another and breeding in and in. It was
no longer a body animated by the same heart, fed by the same blood, but
an automaton neatly pieced together, of which the head was the
priesthood, the arms were the army, and the feet the working-class. In
quiescence it was a perfect image of the living form, but a touch came
from without, and the arms broke asunder at the joints and fell upon the
ground.

The colony founded in the Sudan by the exiled Pharaohs became after the
restoration an important province. When the new empire began to decline
a governor-general rebelled, and the kingdom of Ethiopia was
established. It was a medley dominion composed of brown men and black
men, shepherds and savages, half-caste Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers, and
negroes, ruled over by a king and a college of priests. It was enriched
by annual slave hunts into the Black Country, and by the caravan trade
in ivory, gold dust, and gum. It also received East India goods and
Arabian produce through its ports on the Red Sea. Meroe, its capital,
attained the reputation of a great city; it possessed its temples and
its pyramids like those of Egypt, but on a smaller scale. The Ethiopian
empire in its best days might have comprised the modern Egyptian
provinces of Kordofan and Sennaar, with the mountain kingdom of
Abyssinia as it existed under Theodore. Of all the classical countries
it was the most romantic and the most remote. It was situated, according
to the Greeks, on the extreme limits of the world; its inhabitants were
the most just of men, and Jupiter dined with them twice a year. They
bathed in the waters of a violet-scented spring which endowed them with
long life, noble bodies, and glossy skins. They chained their prisoners
with golden fetters; they had bows which none but themselves could bend.
It is at least certain that Ethiopia took its place among the powers of
the ancient world. It is mentioned in the Jewish records and in the
Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions.

So far had Egypt fallen that now it was conquered by its ancient
province. Sabaco of Ethiopia seized the throne and sat upon it many
years. But he was frightened by a dream; he believed that a misfortune
impended over him in Egypt. He abdicated in haste and fled back to his
native land.

His departure was followed by uproar and confusion, a complete
disruption of Egyptian society, usurpation, and civil war.

But why should this have been? Sabaco was an Egyptian by descent, though
his blood had been darkened on the female side. He had governed in the
Egyptian manner. He had abolished capital punishment, but in no other
way had altered the ancient laws. He had improved the public works. He
had taken the country rather as a native usurper than as a foreign foe.
His reign was merely a change of dynasty, and Egyptian history is
numbered by dynasties as English history is numbered by kings.

But indirectly the Ethiopian conquest had prepared a revolution. Between
the two services, the Army and the Church, there had existed a constant
and perhaps wholesome rivalry since the days of Menes, the first king.
It was a victory of the warrior class which established the regal power.
It was a victory of the priests which assigned to themselves the right
hand, to the officers the left hand, of the sovereign when seated on his
throne. It was an evident compromise between the two that the king
should be elected from the army, and that he should be ordained as soon
as he was crowned. During the brilliant campaigns of the Restoration the
military had been in power, but a long period of inaction had intervened
since then. The discipline of the soldiers was relaxed; their dignity
was lowered; they no longer tilled their own land--that was done by
foreign slaves. Their rivals possessed the affection and reverence of
the common people, while these soldiers, who had never seen a battle,
were detested as idle drones who lived upon what they had not earned.
Under the new dynasty their position became insecure. In Ethiopia there
was no military caste. The army of Sabaco had been levied from the
pastoral tribes on the outskirts of the desert, from the Abyssinian
mountaineers and the negroes of the river plain. The king of Ethiopia
was a priest, elected by his peers. He therefore regarded the soldier
aristocracy with no friendly eye. He did not formally invade their
prescriptive rights, but he must have disarmed them or in some way have
taken out their sting. For as soon as he was gone the priests were able
to form an alliance with the people, and to place one of their own caste
upon the throne. This king deprived the soldiers of their lands, and the
triumph of the hierarchy was complete.

But in such a country as Egypt Disestablishment is a dangerous thing.
During long centuries the people had been taught to associate innovation
with impiety. That venerable structure the Egyptian constitution had
been raised by no human hands. As the gods had appointed certain animals
to swim in the water, and others to fly in the air, and others to move
upon the earth, so they had decreed that one man should be a priest, and
that another should be a soldier, and that another should till the
ground. There are times when every man feels discontented with his lot.
But it is evident that if men were able to change their occupation
whenever they chose, there would be a continual passing to and fro.
Nobody would have patience to learn a trade; nobody would settle down in
life. In a short time the land would become a desert, and society would
be dissolved. To provide against this the gods had ordained that each
man should do his duty in that state of life into which he had been
called, and woe be to him that disobeys the gods! Their laws are eternal
and can never change. Their vengeance is speedy and can never fail.

Such, no doubt, was the teaching of the Egyptian Church, and now the
Church had shown it to be false. The revolution had been begun, and, as
usually happens, it could not be made to stop half way. As soon as the
first precedent was unloosed, down came the whole fabric with a crash.
The priest-king Sethos reigned in peace, but as soon as he died the
central government succumbed; the old local interests which had been
lying dormant for ages raised their heads; the empire broke up into
twelve states, each governed by a petty king.

We now approach the event which first brought Egypt into contact with
the European world. Psammiticus, one of the twelve princes, received as
his allotment the swampy district which adjoined the sea-coast and the
mouths of the Nile. His fortune, as we shall see, was made by this
position.

The commerce of Egypt had hitherto been conducted entirely by means of
caravans. From Arabia Felix came a long train of camels laden with the
gums of that aromatic land, and with the more precious produce of
countries far beyond--with the pearls of the Persian Gulf and the
carpets of Babylon, the pepper and ginger of Malagar, the shawls of
Kashmir, the cinnamon of Ceylon, the fine muslins of Bengal, the
calicoes of Coromandel, the nutmegs and camphor and cloves of the Indian
Archipelago, and even silk and musk from the distant Chinese shores.
From Syria came other caravans with the balm of Gilead, so precious in
medicine, asphalt from the Dead Sea for embalming, cedar from Lebanon,
and enormous quantities of wine and olive oil in earthen jars. Meroe
contributed the spices of the Somali country, ebony, ivory, ostrich
feathers, slaves, and gold in twisted rings; the four latter products
were also imported direct from Darfour, and by another route which
connected Egypt through Fezzan with Carthage, Morocco, and the regions
beyond the desert in the neighbourhood of Timbuktu. In return, the
beautiful glass wares of the Egyptians and other artistic manufactures
were exported to Hindustan; the linen goods of Memphis were carried into
the very heart of Africa as Manchester goods are now; and then, as now,
a girdle of beads was the essential part of an African young lady's
dress.

On the side of the Mediterranean Egypt was a closed land, and this
Chinese policy had not been adopted from superstitious motives. The
first ships which sailed that sea were pirates who had kidnapped and
plundered the dwellers on the coast. The government had therefore in
self-defence placed a garrison at Rhacotis harbour, with orders to kill
or enslave any stranger who should land. When the Phoenicians from
pirates had become merchants they were allowed to trade with Egypt by
way of the land, and with this they were content. It was left for
another people to open up the trade by sea.

Ionia was the fairest province of Asiatic Greece. It lay opposite to
Athens, its motherland. The same soft blue waters, the same fragrant
breezes caressed their shores by turn. It was celebrated by the poets as
one of the gardens of the world. There the black soil granted a rich
harvest and the fruit hung heavily on the branches. It was the
birth-place of poetry, of history, of philosophy, and of art. It was
there that the Homeric poems were composed. It was there that men first
cast off the chains of authority and sought in Nature the materials of a
creed.

It was, however, as a seafaring and commercial people that the Ionians
first obtained renown. They served on board Phoenician vessels and
laboured in the dockyards of Tyre and Sidon until they learnt how to
build the "sea-horses" for themselves, and how to navigate by that small
but constant star which the Tyrians had discovered in the constellation
of the Little Bear. They took to the sea on their own account, and in
Egypt they found a good market. The wine and oil of Palestine, which the
Phoenicians imported, were expensive luxuries; the lower classes drank
only the fermented sap of the palm-tree and barley beer, and had only
castor oil, with which they rubbed their bodies, but with which, for
obvious reasons, they could not cook their food. The Ionians were able
to sell red wine and sweet oil at a much lower price, for in the first
place they had vineyards and olive groves of their own, and secondly
such bulky wares could be brought by sea more cheaply than by land.

The Greeks first appeared on the Egyptian coast as pirates clad in
bronze, next as smugglers, welcomed by the people, but in opposition to
the laws, and lastly as allies and honoured friends. They took advantage
of the confusion which followed the departure of Sabaco to push up the
Nile with thirty vessels, each of fifty oars, and established factories
upon its banks. They negotiated with Psammiticus, who ascertained that
their country produced not only oil but men. He ordered a cargo, and
transports arrived with troops. Europeans for the first time entered the
valley of the Nile. Their gallantry and discipline were irresistible,
and the empire of the Pharaohs was restored. But now commenced a new
regime. There succeeded to the throne a series of kings who were not
related to the ancient Pharaohs, who were not always men of noble birth,
who were not even good Egyptians. They were called Phil-Hellenes, or
Lovers of the Greeks. Of these Psammiticus was the founder and the
first. He moved Egypt towards the sea. He placed his capital near the
mouth of the river, that the Greek ships might anchor beneath its walls.
This new city of Sais, being distant from the quarries, was built of
bricks from the black mud of the Nile, but it was adorned with spoils
from the forsaken Memphis. Chapels, obelisks, and sphinxes were brought
down on rafts. There was also a kind of Renaissance under the new kings;
for a short time the arts again became alive. Psammiticus retained the
soldiers who had fought his battles, and sent children to the camp to be
taught Greek. Hence rose a class who acted as brokers, interpreters, and
ciceroni to the travellers who soon crowded into Egypt. The king
encouraged such visits, and gave safe-conducts to those who desired to
pass into the interior.

All this was a cause of deep offence to the people of the land. They
regarded their country as a temple, and all strangers as impure. And now
they saw men whose swords had been reddened with Egyptian blood
swaggering as conquerors through the streets, pointing with derision at
the sacred animals, eating things strangled and unclean. The warriors
were those who suffered most. As a caste they still survived, but all
their power and prestige were gone. In battle the foreigners were
assigned the post of honour--the right wing. In times of peace the
foreigners were the favourite regiments--the household troops, the
Guards. While the royals lived merrily at Sais crowned with garlands of
the papyrus, and revelling at banquets to the music of the flute, the
native troops were stationed on the hot and dismal frontiers of the
desert; year followed year, and they were not relieved. Such a state of
things was no longer to be borne. One king had robbed them of their
lands, and now another had robbed them of their honour. They were no
longer soldiers, they were slaves; they determined to leave the country
in which they were despised, and to seek a better fortune in the Sudan.
In number two hundred thousand, they gathered themselves together and
began their march.

They were soon overtaken by envoys from the king, who had no desire to
lose an army. The soldiers were entreated to return and not to desert
their fatherland. They cried out, beating their shields and shaking
their spears, that they would soon get another fatherland. Then the
messengers began to speak of their wives and little ones at home. Would
they leave them also, and go wifeless and childless to a savage land?
But one of the soldiers explained, with a coarse gesture, that they had
the means of producing families wherever they might go. This ended the
conference. Psammiticus pursued them with his Ionians, but could not
overtake them. In the wastes of Nubia there may yet be seen a colossal
statue, on the right leg of which is an inscription in Greek announcing
that it was there they gave up the chase. The Egyptian soldiers arrived
at Meroe in safety; the king presented them with a province which had
rebelled. They drove out the men, married the women, and did much to
civilise the native tribes. In the meantime Psammiticus and his
successors opened wider and wider the gloomy portals of the land. The
town of Naucratis was set apart, like Canton, for the foreign trade.
Nine independent Greek cities had their separate establishments within
that town, and their magistrates and consuls, who administered their
respective laws. The merchants met in the Hellenion, which was half
temple, half exchange, to transact their business and offer sacrifices
to the gods. Naucratis was in all respects a European town. There the
garlic-chewing sailors, when they came on shore, could enjoy a holiday
in the true Greek style. They could stroll in the market-place, where
the money-changers sat before their tables and the wine merchants ran
about with sample flasks under their arms, and where garlands of
flowers, strange-looking fish, and heaps of purple dates were set out
for sale. They could resort to the barbers' shops and gather the gossip
of the day, or to taverns where quail fighting was always going on. Nor
were the chief ornaments of sea-port society wanting to grace the scene.
No Egyptian girl, as Herodotus discovered, would kiss a Greek. But
certain benevolent and enterprising men had imported a number of Heterae
or "lady-friends," the most famous of whom was Rhodopis, "the
rosy-faced," with whom Sappho's brother fell in love, and whom the
poetess lampooned.

The foreign policy of Egypt was now completely changed. A long period of
seclusion had followed the conquests of the new empire. But the
battle-pieces of the ancient time still glowed upon the temple walls.
With their vivid colours and animated scenes they seemed to incite the
modern Pharaohs to heroic deeds. The throne was surrounded by warlike
and restless men. It was determined that Egypt should become a naval
power. For this, timber was indispensable, and the forests of Lebanon
must be seized. War was carried to the continent. Syria was reduced. A
garrison was planted on the banks of the Euphrates. A navy was erected
in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Tyrians were defeated in a great
sea-battle. The Suez Canal was opened for the first time, and an
exploring expedition circumnavigated Africa.

Yet, for all that and all that, the Egyptian people were not content.
The victories won by mercenary troops excited little patriotic pride,
and the least reverse occasioned the most gloomy forebodings, the most
serious discontent. The Egyptians indeed had good cause to be
alarmed--the Phil-Hellenes were playing at a dangerous game. Times had
changed since Sesostris overran Asia. A great power had arisen on the
banks of the Tigris; a greater power still on the banks of the
Euphrates. They had narrowly escaped Sennacherib when Nineveh was in its
glory, and now Babylon had arisen and Nebuchadnezzar had drawn the
sword. For a long time Chaldea and Egypt fought over Syria, their
battle-ground and their prey. At last came the decisive day of
Carchemish. The Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Jews obtained new
masters; the Egyptians were driven out of Asia.

Yet even then the kings were not cured of their taste for war. An
expedition was sent against Cyrene, a Greek kingdom on the northern
coast of Africa. It was unsuccessful, and the sullen disaffection which
had so long smouldered burst forth into flame. The king was killed, and
Amasis, a man of the people, was placed upon the throne.

This monarch did not go to war, and he contrived to favour the Greeks
without offending the prejudices of his fellow-countrymen. He was,
however, a true Phil-Hellene; he encircled himself with a bodyguard of
Greeks; he married a princess of Cyrene; he gave a handsome subscription
to the fund for rebuilding the temple at Delphi; he extended the
commerce of Egypt and improved its manufactures. The liberal policy in
trade which he pursued had the most satisfactory results. Never had
Egypt been so rich as she was then. But she was defenceless; she had
lost her arms. It is probable that under Amasis she was a vassal of
Babylon, paying tribute every year; and now a time was coming when gold
could no longer purchase repose, when the horrified people would see
their temples stripped, their idols dashed to pieces, their sacred
animals murdered, their priests scourged, and the embalmed body of their
king snatched from its last resting-place and flung upon the flames.

A vast wilderness extends from the centre of Africa to the jungles of
Bengal. It consists of rugged mountain and of sandy wastes; it is
traversed by three river basins or valley plains.

In its centre is the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. On its east is
the basin of the Indus; on its west is the basin of the Nile. Each of
these river systems is enclosed by deserts. The whole region may be
pictured to the mind as a broad yellow field with three green streaks
running north and south.

Egypt, Babylonia, and India proper, or the Punjab, are the primeval
countries of the ancient world. In these three desert-bound,
river-watered valleys we find, in the earliest dawn of history,
civilisation growing wild. Each in a similar manner had been fostered
and tortured by Nature into progress; in each existed a people skilled
in the management of land, acquainted with manufactures, and possessing
some knowledge of practical science and of art. The civilisation of
India was the youngest of the three, yet Egypt and Chaldea were
commercially its vassals and dependents. India offered for sale articles
not elsewhere to be found--the shining warts of the oyster; glass-like
stones dug up out of the bowels of the earth, or gathered in the beds of
dried-up brooks; linen which was plucked as a blossom from a tree, and
manufactured into cloth as white as snow; transparent fabrics, 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.


Western Asia


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 shop-keeping, 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
by the waters of Babylon and sang of the Holy City that was no more.

In the twinkling of an eye all this was changed. A band of hardy
mountaineers rushed out of the recesses of Persia and swept like a wind
across the plains. They were dressed in leather from top to toe; they
had never tasted fruit or wine; they had never seen a market; they knew
not how to buy or sell. They were taught only three things--to ride on
horseback, to hurl the javelin, and to speak the truth.


The Persians


All Asia was covered with blood and flames. The allied kingdoms fell at
once. India and Egypt were soon afterwards added to this empire, the
greatest that the world had ever seen. The Persians used to boast that
they ruled from the land of uninhabitable heat to the land of
uninhabitable cold; that their dominion began in regions where the sun
frizzled the hair and blackened the faces of the natives, and ended in a
land where the air was filled with snow like feathers and the earth was
hard as stone. The Persian empire was in reality bounded by the deserts
which divided Egypt from Ethiopia on the south and from Carthage on the
west; by the desert which divided the Punjab from Bengal; by the steppes
which lay on the other side of the Jaxartes; by the Mediterranean, the
Caspian, and the Black Sea.

Darius, the third emperor, invented a system of provincial government
which, though imperfect when viewed by the wisdom of modern times, was
far superior to any that had preceded it in Asia. He appointed satraps
or pashas to administer the conquered provinces. Each of these viceroys
received with his commission a map of his province engraved on brass. He
was at once the civil governor and commander of the troops, but his
power was checked and supervised by a secretary or clerk of the
accounts, and the province was visited by royal commissioners once a
year. The troops in each province were of two kinds; some garrisoned the
cities; others, for the most part cavalry, lived, like the Roman
legions, always in a camp; it was their office to keep down brigands,
and to convey the royal treasure from place to place. The troops were
subsisted by the conquered people; this formed part of the tribute, and
was collected at the point of the sword. There was also a fixed tax in
money and in kind, which was received by the clerk of the accounts and
dispatched to the capital every year. The Great King still preserved in
his habits something of the nomad chief. He wintered at Babylon, but in
the summer the heat was terrible in that region; the citizens retired to
their cellars, and the king went to Susa, which was situated on the
hills, or to Ecbatana, the ancient capital of the Medes, or to
Persepolis, the true hearth and home of the Persian race. When he
approached one of these cities the magi came forth to meet him, dressed
all in white and singing hymns. The road was strewn with myrtle boughs
and roses, and silver altars with blazing frankincense were placed by
the wayside.

His palaces were built of precious woods, but the naked wood was never
permitted to be seen: the walls were covered with golden plates, the
roof with silver tiles. The courts were adorned with white, green, and
blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen to pillars of marble by
silver rings. The gardens were filled with rare and exotic plants; from
the cold bosom of the snow-white stone fountains sprang upwards,
sparkling in the air; birds of gorgeous plumage flashed from tree to
tree, resembling flowers where they perched. And as the sun sank low in
the heavens and the shadows on the earth grew deep, the voice of the
nightingale was heard in the thicket, and the low cooing of the dove.
Sounds of laughter proceeded from the house; lattices were opened;
ponderous doors swung back, and out poured a troop of houris which a
Persian poet alone would venture to describe. For there might be seen
the fair Circassian, with cheeks like the apple in its rosy bloom; and
the Abyssinian damsel, with warm brown skin and voluptuous drowsy eyes;
the Hindu girl, with lithe and undulating form and fingers which seemed
created to caress; the Syrian, with aquiline and haughty look; the Greek
with features brightened by intellect and vivacity; and the home-born
beauty prepared expressly for the harem, with a complexion as white as
the milk on which she had been fed, and a face in form and expression
resembling the full moon.

All these dear charmers belonged to the king, and no doubt he often
wished half of them away. For if he felt a serious passion rising in his
breast, etiquette compelled him to put it down. Inconstancy was enjoined
on him by law. He was subjected to a rotation of kisses by the regulated
science of the harem. Ceremony interdicted affection and caprice. He
suffered from unvarying variety and the monotony of eternal change. The
whole empire belonged to him, and all its inhabitants were his slaves.
If he happened to be struck to the heart by a look cast from under a
pair of black-edged eyelids, if he became enamoured of a high-bosomed
virgin, with a form like the oriental willow, he had only to say the
word; she was at once taken to the apartments of the women, and her
parents received the congratulations of their friends. But then he was
not allowed to see his beloved for a twelve-month: six months she must
be prepared with the oil of myrrh, six months with the sweet odours,
before she was sufficiently purified and perfumed to receive the august
embraces of the king, and to soothe a passion which meanwhile had ample
time to cool.

The Great King slept on a splendid couch, overspread by a vine of
branching gold, with clusters of rubies representing grapes. He wore a
dress of purple and white, with scarlet trousers, a girdle like that of
a woman, and a high tiara encircled by a sky-blue turban. He lived in a
prison of rich metal and dazzling stone. Around him stood the courtiers
with their hands wrapped in their robes, and covering their mouths lest
he should be polluted by their base-born breath. Those who desired to
speak to his majesty prostrated themselves before him on the ground. If
any one entered uncalled, a hundred sabres gleamed in the air, and
unless the king stretched out his sceptre the intruder would be killed.

An army sat down to dinner in the palace every day, and every day a herd
of oxen was killed for them to eat. These were only the household
troops. But when the Great King went to war, the provinces sent in their
contingents, and then might be seen, as in some great exhibition, a
collection of warriors from the four quarters of the earth. Then might
be seen the Immortals, or Persian life-guards; their arms were of gold
and silver, their standards were of silk. Then might be seen the
heavy-armed Egyptian troops, with long wooden shields reaching to the
ground; the Greeks from Ionia, with crested helmets and breastplates of
bronze; the fur-clad Tartars of the steppes, who "raised hair" like the
Red Indians, a people probably belonging to the same race; the
Ethiopians of Africa, with fleecy locks, clad in the skins of lions and
armed with throw-sticks and with stakes, the points of which had been
hardened in the fire, or tipped with horn or stone; the Berbers in their
four-horse chariots; the camel cavalry of Arabia, each camel being
mounted by two archers sitting back to back, and thus prepared for the
enemy on either side; the wild horsemen of the Persian hills who caught
the enemy with their lassos; the black-skinned but straight-haired
aborigines of India, with their bows of the bamboo and their shields
made of the skins of cranes; and above all the Hindus, dressed in white
muslin and seated on the necks of elephants, which were clothed in
Indian steel and which looked like moving mountains with snakes for
hands. Towers were erected on their backs, in which sat bowmen, who
shot down the foe with unerring aim, while the elephants were taught to
charge, to trample down the opposing ranks in heaps, and to take up
armed men in their trunks and hand them to their riders. Sometimes huge
scythes were fastened to their trunks, and they mowed down regiments as
they marched along. The army was also attended by packs of enormous
blood-hounds to hunt the fugitives when a victory had been gained, and
by falcons which were trained to fly at the eyes of the enemy to baffle
them, or even blind them as they were fighting.

When this enormous army began to march it devoured the whole land over
which it passed. At night the camp-fires reddened the sky as if a great
city was in flames. In the morning, a little after daybreak, a trumpet
sounded, and the image of the sun, cased in crystal and made of
burnished gold, was raised on the top of the king's pavilion, which was
built of wood, covered with cashmere shawls, and supported on silver
poles. As soon as the ball caught the first rays of the rising sun the
march began. First went the chariot with the altar and the sacred fire,
drawn by eight milk-white horses driven by charioteers, who walked by
the side with golden wands. The chariot was followed by a horse of
extraordinary magnitude, which was called the "Charger of the Sun." The
king followed with the ten thousand Immortals, and with his wives in
covered carriages drawn by mules, or in cages upon camels. Then came the
army without order or precision, and there rose a dust which resembled a
white cloud, and which could be seen across the plain for miles. The
enemy, when this cloud drew near, could distinguish within it the
gleaming of brazen armour, and they could hear the sound of the lash,
which was always part of the military music of the Persians. When a
battle was fought, the king took his seat on a golden throne, surrounded
by his secretaries, who took notes during the engagement and recorded
every word which fell from the royal lips.

This army was frequently required by the Persians. They were a restless
people, always lusting after war. Vast as their empire was, it was not
large enough for them. The courtiers used to assure an enterprising
monarch that he was greater than all the kings that were dead, and
greater than those that were yet unborn; that it was his mission to
extend the Persian territory as far as God's heaven reached, in order
that the sun might shine on no land beyond their borders. Hyperbole
apart, it was the aim and desire of the kings to annex the plains of
Southern Russia, and so to make the Black Sea a lake in the interior of
Persia; and to conquer Greece, the only land in Europe which really
merited their arms. In both these attempts they completely failed. The
Russian Tartars, who had no fixed abode and whose houses were on wheels,
decoyed the Persian army far into the interior, eluded it in pursuit,
harassed and almost destroyed it in retreat. The Greeks defeated them in
pitched battles on Greek soil, and defeated their fleets in Greek
waters.

This contest, which lasted many years, to the Greeks was a matter of
life and death, but it was merely an episode in Persian history. The
defeats of Plataea and Salamis caused the Great King much annoyance, and
cost him a shred of land and sea. But they did not directly affect the
prosperity of his empire. What was the loss of a few thousand slaves,
and of a few hundred Phoenician and Egyptian and Ionian ships, to him?
Indirectly, indeed, it decided the fate of Persia by developing the
power of the Greeks, but ruined in any case that empire must have been,
like all others of its kind. The causes of its fall must be sought for
within and not without. In the natural course of events it would have
become the prey of some people like the Parthian highlanders or the
wandering Turks. The Greek wars had this result; the empire was
conquered at an earlier period than would otherwise have been the case,
and it was conquered by a European instead of an Asiatic power.


The Greeks


There is no problem in history so interesting as the unparalleled
development of Greece. How was it that so small a country could exert so
remarkable an influence on the course of events and on the intellectual
progress of mankind? The Greeks, as the science of language clearly
proves, belonged to the same race as the Persians themselves. Many
centuries before history begins a people migrated from the highlands of
Central Asia and overspread Europe on the one side, on the other side
Hindustan. Celts and Germans, Russians and Poles, Romans and Greeks,
Persians and Hindus, all sprang from the loins of a shepherd tribe
inhabiting the tableland of the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and
are quite distinct from the Assyrians, the Arabs, and Phoenicians, whose
ancestors descended into the plains of Western Asia from the tableland
of the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is also inferred from the
evidence of language that at some remote period the Egyptians belonged
to the same stock as the mountaineers of Armenia, the Chinese to the same
stock as the highlanders of Central Asia, and that at a period still
more remote the Turanian or Chinese Tartar, the Aryan or Indo-European,
and the Semitic races and languages were one. Upon this last point
philologists are not agreed, though the balance of authority is in
favour of the view expressed. But as regards the descent of the English
and Hindus from the same tribe of Asiatic mountaineers, that is now as
much a fact of history as the common descent of the English and the
Normans from the same race of pirates on the Baltic shores. The Celts
migrated first into Europe; they were followed by the Graeco-Italian
people, and then by the German-Slavonians, the Persians and Hindus
remaining longest in their primeval homes. The great difference between
the various breeds of the Indo-European race is partly due to their
intermixture with the natives of the countries which they colonised and
conquered. In India the Aryans found a black race which yet exist in the
hills and jungles of that country, and who yet speak languages of their
own which have nothing in common with the noble Sanskrit. Europe was
inhabited by a people of Tartar origin who still exist as the Basques of
the Pyrenees, and as the Finns and Lapps of Scandinavia. It is probable
that these people also were intruders of comparatively recent date, and
that a yet more primeval race existed on the gloomy banks of the Danube
and the Rhine, in huts built on stakes in the shallow waters of the
Swiss lakes, and in the mountain caverns of France and Spain. The
Aryans, who migrated into India, certainly intermarried with the blacks,
and there can be no reasonable doubt that the Celts who first migrated
into Europe took the wives as well as the lands of the natives. The
aborigines were therefore largely absorbed by the Celts, to the
detriment of that race, before the arrival of the Germans, whose blood
remained comparatively pure.

We may freely use the doctrine of intermarriage to explain the
difference in colour between the sepoy and his officer. We may apply
it--though with less confidence--to explain the difference in character
and aspect between the Irish and the English, but we do not think that
the doctrine will help us much towards expounding the genius of Greece.
And if the superiority of that people was not dependent in any way on
race distinction, inherent or acquired, it must have been in some way
connected with locality and other incidents of life.

A glance at the map is sufficient to explain how it was that Greece
became civilised before the other European lands. It is nearest to those
countries in which civilisation first arose. It is the borderland of
East and West. The western coast of Asia and the eastern coast of Greece
lie side by side; the sea between them is narrow, with the islands like
stepping-stones across a brook. On the other hand, a mountain wall
extends in the form of an arc from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and
shuts off Europe from Greece, which is thus compelled to grow towards
Asia as a tree grows towards the light. Its coasts are indented in a
peculiar manner by the sea. Deep bays and snug coves, forming hospitable
ports, abound. The character of the Aegean is mild and humane; its
atmosphere is clear and favourable for those who navigate by the eye
from island to island and from point to point. The purple shell-fish, so
much in request with the Phoenicians for their manufactures, was found
upon the coasts of Greece. A trade was opened up between the two lands,
and with trade there came arithmetic and letters to assist the trade,
and from these a desire on the part of the Greeks for more luxury and
more knowledge. All this was natural enough. But how was it that
whatever came into the hands of the Greeks was used merely as raw
material--that whatever they touched was transmuted into gold? How was
it that Asia was only their dame's school, and that they discovered the
higher branches of knowledge for themselves? How was it that they who
were taught by the Babylonians to divide the day into twelve hours
afterwards exalted astronomy to the rank of an exact science? How was it
that they who received from Egypt the canon of proportions and the first
ideas of the portraiture of the human form, afterwards soared into the
regions of the ideal, and created in marble a beauty more exquisite than
can be found on earth--a vision, as it were, of some unknown yet not
unimagined world?

The mountains of Greece are disposed in a peculiar manner, so as to
enclose extensive tracts of land which assume the appearance of large
basins or circular hollows, level as the ocean and consisting of rich
alluvial soil through which rise steep insulated rocks. The plain
subsisted a numerous population; the rock became the Acropolis or
citadel of the chief town, and the mountains were barriers against
invasion. Other districts were parcelled out by water in the same
manner; their frontiers were swift streaming rivers or estuaries of the
sea. Each of these cantons became an independent city-state, and the
natives of each canton became warmly attached to their fatherland.
Nature had given them ramparts which they knew how to use. They defended
with obstinacy the river and the pass; if those were forced the citadel
became a place of refuge and resistance, and if the worst came to the
worst they could escape to inaccessible mountain caves.

Each of these states possessed a constitution of its own, and each was
home-made and differed slightly from the rest. It may be imagined what a
variety of ideas must have risen in the process of their manufacture.
The laws were debated in a general assembly of the citizens; each
community within itself was full of intellectual activity.

Self-development and independence are too often accompanied by
isolation, and nations, like individuals, become torpid when they retire
from the world. But this was not the case with Greece. Though its people
were divided into separate states, they all spoke the same language and
worshipped the same gods, and there existed certain institutions which
at appointed times assembled them together as a nation.

Greece is a country which possesses the most extraordinary climate in
the world. Within two degrees of latitude it ranges from the beech to
the palm. In the morning the traveller may be shivering in a snow-storm,
and viewing a winter landscape of naked trees; in the afternoon he may
be sweltering beneath a tropical sun, with oleanders blooming around him
and oranges shining in the green foliage like balls of gold. From this
variety of climate resulted a variety of produce which stimulated the
natives to barter and exchange. A central spot was chosen as the
market-place, and it was made, for the common protection, a sanctuary of
Apollo. The people, when they met for the purposes of trade, performed
at the same time religious rites, and also amused themselves, in the rude
manner of the age, with boxing, wrestling, running races, and throwing
the spear; or they listened to the minstrels, who sang the ballads of
ancient times, and to the prophets or inspired politicians, who chanted
predictions in hexameters. That sanctuary became in time the famous
oracle of Delphi, and those sports expanded into the Olympian Games. To
the great fair came Greeks from all parts of the land, and when chariot
races were introduced it became necessary to make good roads from state
to state, and to build bridges across the streams. The administration of
the sanctuary, the laws and regulations of the games, and the management
of the public fund subscribed for the expenses of the fair, could only
be arranged by means of a national council composed of deputies from all
the states. This congress was called the Amphictyonic League, which,
soon extending its powers, enacted national laws, and as a supreme court
of arbitration decided all questions that arose between state and state.

At Olympia the inhabitants of the coast displayed the scarlet cloth and
the rich trinkets which they had obtained from Phoenician ships. At
Olympia those who had been kidnapped into slavery, and had afterwards
been ransomed by their friends at home, related to an eager crowd the
wonders which they had seen in the enchanted regions of the East.

And then throughout all Greece there was an inward stirring and a
hankering after the unknown, and a desire to achieve great deeds. It
began with the expedition of Jason--an exploring voyage to the Black
Sea; it culminated in the siege of Troy.

In such countries as the Grecian states, where the area is small, the
community flourishing, and the frontier inexorably defined, the law of
population operates with unusual force. The mountain walls of the Greek
cantons, like the deserts which surrounded Egypt, not only kept out the
enemy but also kept in the natives; they were not only fortresses but
prisons. In order to exist, the Greeks were obliged to cultivate every
inch of soil. But when this had been done the population still continued
to increase, and now the land could no longer be increased. In those
early days they had no manufactures, mines, or foreign commerce by means
of which they could supply themselves, as we do, with food from other
lands. In such an emergency the government, if it acts at all, has only
two methods to pursue. It must either strangle or bleed the population;
it must organise infanticide or emigration.

The first method was practised to some extent, but happily the last was
now within their power. The Trojan war had made them acquainted with the
Asiatic coast, and overcrowded states began to send forth colonies by
public act. The emigrants consisted chiefly, as may be supposed, of the
poor, the dangerous, and the discontented classes. They took with them
no women; they went forth, like the buccaneers, sword in hand. They
swooped down on the Ionian coast--there was at that time no power in
Asia Minor which was able to resist them. They obtained wives, sometimes
by force, sometimes by peaceable arrangement with the natives. In course
of time the coast of Asia Minor was lined with rich and flourishing
towns. The mother country continued to pour forth colonies, and colonies
also founded colonies. The Greeks sailed and settled in every direction.
They braved the dark mists and the inclement seasons of the Black Sea,
and took up their abode among a people whose faces were almost concealed
in furs, who dwelt at the mouths of great rivers and cultivated
boundless plains of wheat. This wheat the Greeks exported to the mother
country, with barrels of the salted tunny-fish, and the gold of Ural,
and even the rich products of the Oriental trade which were brought
across Asia from India or China by the waters of the Oxus to the Aral
Sea, from the Aral to the Caspian Sea by land, from the Caspian to
the Black Sea by the Volga and the Don.

But where Italy dipped her arched and lovely foot in the blue waters of
an untroubled sea, beneath the blue roof of an unclouded sky--where the
flowers never perished, where eternal summer smiled, where mere
existence was voluptuous and life itself a sensual joy--there the Greek
cities clustered richly together--cities shining with marble and built
in fairy forms, before them the deep tranquil harbour, behind them
violet valleys, myrtle groves, and green lakes of waving corn.

When a bank of emigrants went forth they took with them fire kindled on
the city hearth. Although each colony was independent, it regarded with
reverence the mother state, and all considered themselves with pride not
foreigners but Greeks; for Greece was not a country but a people;
wherever the Greek language was spoken, that was Greece.

They all spoke the same grand and harmonious language--although the
dialects might differ; they had the same bible, for Homer was in all
their hearts, and the memory of their youthful glory was associated in
their minds with the union of Greek warriors beneath the walls of Troy.
The chief colonial states were represented at the meetings of the
Amphictyonic League, and any Greek from the Crimea to Marseilles might
contend at the Olympian Games with the full rights of a Spartan or
Athenian, a privilege which the Great King could by no means have
obtained.

The intense enthusiasm which was excited by the Olympian Games was the
chief cause of the remarkable development of Greece. The man who won the
olive garland on that celebrated course was famous for ever afterwards.
His statue was erected in the public hall at Delphi; he was received by
his native city with all the honours of a formal triumph; he was not
allowed to enter by the gates--a part of the city wall was beaten down.
The city itself became during five years the talk of Greece, and
wherever its people travelled they were welcomed with congratulations
and esteem.

The passion for praise is innate in the human mind. It is only natural
that throughout the whole Greek world a spirit of eager rivalry and
emulation should prevail. In every city was established a gymnasium
where crowds of young men exercised themselves naked. This institution
was originally intended for those only who were in training for the
Olympian Games, but afterwards it became a part of daily life, and the
Greeks went to the gymnasium with the same regularity as the Romans went
to the bath.

At first the national prizes were only for athletes, but at a later
period the principle of competition was extended to books and musical
compositions, paintings and statues. There was also a competition in
rich and elegant display. The carriages and retinues which were
exhibited upon the course excited a desire to obtain wealth, and gave a
useful impulse to foreign commerce, manufactures, and mining operations.

The Greek world was composed of municipal aristocracies--societies of
gentlemen living in towns, with their farms in the neighbourhood, and
having all their work done for them by slaves. They themselves had
nothing to do but to cultivate their bodies by exercise in the
gymnasium, and their minds by conversation in the market-place. They
lived out of doors while their wives remained shut up at home. In Greece
a lady could only enter society by adopting a mode of life which in
England usually facilitates her exit. The Greeks spent little money on
their wives, their houses, or their food: the rich men were expected to
give dramatic entertainments, and to contribute a company or a
man-of-war for the protection of the city. The market-place was the
Greek club. There the merchants talked their business--the labours of
the desk were then unknown. The philosopher instructed his pupils under
the shade of a plane-tree, or strolling up and down a garden path.
Mingling with the song of the cicada from the boughs might be heard the
chipping of the chisel from the workshop of the sculptor, and the
laughter and shouts from the gymnasium. And sometimes the tinkle of a
harp would be heard; a crowd would be collected, and a rhapsodist would
recite a scene from the Iliad, every word of which his audience knew by
heart, as an audience at Naples or Milan knows every bar of the opera
which is about to be performed. Sometimes a citizen would announce that
his guest, who had just arrived from the sea of Azov or the Pillars of
Hercules, would read a paper on the manners and customs of the
barbarians. It was in the city that the book was first read and the
statue exhibited--the rehearsal and the private view; it was in Olympia
that they were published to the nation. When the public murmured in
delight around a picture of Xeuxis or a statue of Praxiteles, when they
thundered in applause to an ode by Pindar or a lecture by Herodotus, how
many hundreds of young men must have gone home with burning brows and
throbbing hearts, devoured by the love of fame! And when we consider
that though the geographical Greece is a small country, the true
Greece--that is to say, the land inhabited by the Greeks--was in reality a
large country; when we consider with what an immense number of ideas
they must have been brought in contact on the shores of the Black Sea,
in Asia Minor, in Southern Italy, in Southern France, in Egypt, and in
Northern Africa; when we consider that, owing to those noble contests of
Olympia, city was every contending against city, and within the city man
against man, there is surely no longer anything mysterious in the
exceptional development of that people.

Education in Greece was not a monopoly; it was the precious privilege of
all the free. The business of religion was divided among three classes.
The priests were merely the sacrificers and guardians of the sanctuary;
they were elected, like the mayors of our towns, by their fellow
citizens for a limited time only, and without their being withdrawn from
the business of ordinary life. The poets revealed the nature, and
portrayed the character, and related the biography of the gods. The
philosophers undertook the education of the young, and were also the
teachers and preachers of morality. If a man wished to obtain the favour
of the gods, or to take divine advice, he went to a priest; if he
desired to turn his mind to another, though scarcely a better world, he
took up his Homer or his Hesiod; and if he suffered from sickness or
mental affliction he sent for a philosopher.

It will presently be shown that the philosophers invaded the territory
of the poets, who were defended by the government and by the mob, and
that a religious persecution was the result. But the fine arts were
free; and the custom which came into vogue of erecting statues to the
gods, to the victors of the games, and to other illustrious men favoured
the progress of sculpture, which was also aided by the manners of the
land. The gymnasium was a school of art. The eyes of the sculptor
revelled on the naked form--not purchased, as in London, at
eighteenpence an hour, but visible in marvellous perfection at all times
and in every pose. Thus ever present to the eye of the artist, it was
ever present to his brain, and flowed forth from his fingers in lovely
forms. As art was fed by nature, so nature was fed by art. The Greek
women placed statues of Apollo or Narcissus in their bedrooms, that they
might bear children as beautiful as those on whom they gazed. Such
children they prayed the gods to give them, for the Greeks loved beauty
to distraction, and regarded ugliness as sin. They had exhibitions of
beauty at which prizes were given by celebrated artists who were
appointed to the judgment-seat. There were towns in which the most
beautiful men were elected to the priesthood. There were connoisseurs
who formed companies of soldiers composed exclusively of comely young
men, and who could plead for the life of a beautiful youth amidst the
wrath and confusion of the battlefield.

The Persian wars gave a mighty impulse to the intellect of Greece.
Indeed, before that period Greek art had been uncouth; it was then that
the Age of Marble really began, and that Phidias moulded the ideas of
Homer into noble forms. It was then that Athens, having commanded the
Greeks in the War of Independence, retained the supremacy and became the
centre of the nation. Athens had died for Greece; it had been burnt by
the Persians to the ground, and from those glorious ashes arose the
Athens of history--the City of the Violet Crown. To Athens were summoned
the great artists: to Athens came every young man who had talent and
ambition: to Athens every Greek who could afford it sent his boys to
school. The Academy was planted with wide-spreading plane-trees and
olive groves, laid out in walks with fountains, and surrounded by a
wall. A theatre was built entirely of masts which had been taken from
the enemy. A splendid harbour was constructed--a harbour which was in
itself a town. All that fancy could create, all that money could
command, was lavished upon the city and its environs--the very
milestones on the roads were works of art.

The Persians assisted the growth of Greece, not only by those invasions
which had favoured the union, aroused the ardour, multiplied the
desires, and ennobled the ambition of the Greek people, but also by
their own conquests. Their failure in Europe and their success in Asia
were equally profitable to the Greeks. Trade and travel were much
facilitated by their extensive rule. A government postal service had
been established: royal couriers might by seen every day galloping at
full speed along the splendid roads which united the provinces of the
Punjab and Afghanistan and Bokhara on one side of the Euphrates, and of
Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt on the other side of that river, with the
imperial palaces at Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, and Persepolis.
Caravanserais were fitted up for the reception of travellers in lonely
places where no other houses were to be found. Troops of mounted police
patrolled the roads. In desert tracts thousands of earthen jars, filled
with water and planted up to their necks in sand, supplied the want of
wells. The old system of national isolation and closed ports was
battered down. The Greeks were no longer forbidden to enter the
Phoenician ports, or compelled to trade exclusively at one Egyptian
town. Greek merchants were able to join in the caravan trade of Central
Asia, 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 ten 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 were
distributed among the citizens of Athens as payment for attending the
law courts, the parliament, and the theatre. It was also ordered that
all cases of importance would be tried at Athens, and judicial decisions
then as now were looked upon at Athens as saleable articles belonging to
the court. The Greeks soon discovered that the Athenians were harder
masters than the Persians. They began to envy the fate of the Ionian
cities, whose municipal rights were undisturbed. They rose up against
their tyrant; long wars ensued; and finally the ships of Athens were
burnt and its walls beaten down to the music of flutes. Then Sparta
became supreme, also tyrannised, and also fell; and then Thebes followed
its example, till at last all the states of Greece were so exhausted
that the ambition of supremacy died away, and each city cared only for
its own life.

The jealousy and distrust which prevented the union of the Greeks, and
the constant wars in which they were engaged, sufficiently explain how
it was that they did not conquer Persian, and by this time Persia had
discovered how to conquer them. When Xerxes was on his famous march he
was told by a Greek that if he chose to bribe the orators of Greece he
could do with that country what he pleased, but that he would never
conquer it by force. This method of making war was now adopted by the
king. When Agesilaus the Spartan had already begun the conquest of the
Persian empire, ten thousand golden coins marked with the effigy of a
bowman were sent to the demagogues of Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. Those
cities at once made war upon Sparta, and Agesilaus was recalled--driven
out of Asia, as he used to say, by ten thousand of the king's archers.
In this manner the Greek orators, who were often very eloquent men but
who never refused a bribe, kept their country continually at war, till
at last it was in such an enfeebled state that the Persian had no longer
anything to fear, and even used his influence in making peace. The land
which might have been the mistress of the East passed under the
protection of an empire in its decay.

It was now that a new power sprang into life. Macedonia was a hilly
country on the northern boundaries of Greece; a Greek colony having
settled there in ancient times, the reigning house and the language of
the courts were Hellenic; the mass of the people were barbarians. It was
an old head placed on young shoulders--the intellect of the Greek united
with the strength and sinews of wild and courageous mountaineers.

The celebrated Philip, when a young man, had passed some time in Greece;
he had seen what could be done with money in that country; he
conjectured what might be done if the money were sustained by arms. When
he became king of Macedon, he made himself president of the Greek
confederation, obtaining by force and skilful address, by bribery and
intrigue, the position which Athens and Sparta had once possessed. He
was preparing to conquer Persia and to avenge the ancient wrongs of
Greece when he was murdered, and Alexander, like Frederick the Great,
inherited an army disciplined to perfection and the great design for
which that army had been prepared.

Alexander reduced and garrisoned the rebellious Greeks, passed over into
Asia Minor, defeated a Persian army at the Granicus, marched along the
Ionian coast, and crossed over the snowy range of Taurus, which the
Persians neglected to defend. He heard that the Great King was behind
him with his army entangled in the mountains. He went back, won the
battle of Issus, and took prisoner the mother and wife and daughter of
Darius. He passed into Syria and laid siege to Tyre, the Cherbourg of
the Persians, and took it after several months; this gave him possession
of the Mediterranean Sea. He passed down the Syrian coast, crossed the
desert--a three days' journey--which separates Palestine from Egypt,
received the submission of that satrapy and made arrangements for its
administration, visited the oracle of Jupiter Ammon in The Sahara, and
returned to Tyre. Thence making a long detour to avoid the sandy deserts
of Arabia, he entered the plains of Mesopotami, inhabited only by the
ostrich and the wild ass, and marched towards the ruins of Nineveh, near
which he fought his third and last great battle with the Persians. He
proceeded to Babylon, which at once opened its vast gates. He restored
the Chaldean priesthood and the old idolatry of Belus. He took Susa,
Ecbatana, and Persepolis, the other three palatial cities, reducing the
highlanders who had so long levied blackmail on the Persian monarchs.
He pursued Darius to the moist, forest-covered shores of the Caspian
Sea, and inflicted a terrible death on the assassins of that ill-fated
king. The Persian histories relate that Alexander discovered Darius
apparently dead upon the ground. He alighted from his horse; he raised
his enemy's head upon his knees; he shed tears and kissed the expiring
monarch who opened his eyes and said, "The world has a thousand doors
through which its tenants continually enter and pass away." "I swear to
you," cried Alexander, "I never wished a day like this. I desired not
to see your royal head in the dust, nor that blood should stain these
cheeks." The legend is a fiction, but it illustrates the character of
Alexander. Such legends are not related of Genghis Khan or of Tamerlane
by the people whom they conquered.

Alexander now marched by way of Mushed, Herat, and the reedy shores of
Lake Zurrah to Kandahar and Kabul. He entered that delightful land in
which the magpies fluttering from tree to tree, and the white daisies
shining in the meadow grass, reminded the soldiers of their home.
Turning again towards the north, he climbed over the lofty back of the
Hindu Kush, where the people are kept inside their houses half the year
by snow, and descended into the province of Bactria, a land of low,
waving hills, destitute of trees and covered only with a dry kind of
grass. But as he passed on, crossing the muddy waters of the Oxus, he
arrived at the oases of Bokhara and Samarkand, regions of garden-land
with smiling orchards of fruit trees and poplars rustling their silvery
leaves. Finally he reached the banks of the Jaxartes, the frontier of
the Persian empire. Beyond that river was an ocean of salt and sandy
plains, inhabited by wild Tartar or Turkish tribes who boasted that they
reposed beneath the shade neither of a tree nor of a king, who lived by
rapine like beasts of prey, and whose wives rode forth to attack a
passing caravan if their husbands happened to be robbing elsewhere--a
practice which gave rise to the romantic stories of the Amazons. These
people came down to the banks of the river near Khojend and challenged
Alexander to come across and fight. He inflated the soldiers' tents,
which were made of skins, formed them into rafts, paddled across and
gave the Tartars as much as they desired. He returned to Afghanistan and
marched through the western passes into the open plains of the Punjab,
where perhaps at some future day hordes of drilled Mongols and Hindu
sepoys will fight under Russian and English officers for the empire of
the Asiatic world. He built a fleet on the Indus, sailed down it to its
mouth, and dispatched his general Nearchus to the Persian Gulf by sea,
while he himself marched back through the terrific deserts which
separate Persian from the Indus.

So ended Alexander's journey of conquest, which was marked not only by
heaps of bones on battlefields and by the blackened ashes of ruined
towns, but also by cities and colonies which he planted as he passed.
The memory of that extraordinary man has never perished in the East. The
Turkomans still speak of his deeds of war as if they had been performed
a few years ago. In the tea booths of Bokhara it is yet the custom to
read aloud the biography in verse of Secunder Rooni--by some believed to
be a prophet, by others one of the believing genii. There are still
existing chiefs in the valleys of the Oxus and the Indus who claim to be
heirs of his royal person, and tribes who boast that their ancestors
were soldiers of his army, and who refuse to give their children in
marriage to those who are not of the same descent.

He returned to Babylon, and there found ambassadors from all parts of
the world waiting to offer him the homage of their masters. His success
was incredible; it had not met with a single check. The only men who had
ever given him cause to be alarmed were his own countrymen and soldiers,
but these also he had mastered by his skill and strength of mind.


The Macedonians


The Macedonians had expected that he would adhere to the constitution
and customs of their own country, which gave the king small power in
time of peace and allowed full liberty and even licence of speech on the
part of the nobles round the throne. But Alexander now considered
himself not king of Macedonia but emperor of Asia, and successor of
Darius, the King of Kings. They had supposed that he would give them the
continent to plunder as a carcass; that they would have nothing to do
but plunder and enjoy. There were disappointed and alarmed when they
found that he was reappointing Persian gentlemen as satraps, everywhere
treating the conquered people with indulgence, everywhere levying native
troops. They were disgusted and alarmed when they saw him put on the
tiara of the Great King, and the woman's girdle, and the white and
purple robe, and they burst into fierce wrath when he ordered that the
ceremony of prostration should be performed in his presence as it had
been in that of the Persian king.

In all this they saw only the presumption of a man intoxicated by
success. But Alexander knew well that he could only govern an empire so
immense by securing the allegiance of the Persian nobles; he knew that
they would not respect him unless they were made to humble themselves
before him after the manner of their country, and this they certainly
would not do unless his own officers did the same. He therefore
attempted to obtain the prostration of the Macedonians, and alleged as a
pretext for so extraordinary a demand the oracle of Ammon--that he was
the son of Jove.

It is possible, indeed, that he believed this himself, for his vanity
amounted to madness. He could not endure a candid word, and was subject
under wine and contradiction to fits of ungovernable rage. At Samarkand
he murdered Clitus, who had insulted him grossly but who was his friend
and associate, and who had saved his life. It was a drunken action, and
his repentance was as violent as his wrath. For Alexander was a man of
extremes: his magnanimity and his cruelty were without bounds. If he
forgave it was right royally; if he punished he pounded to the dust and
scattered to the winds. Yet with all his faults it is certain that he
had some conception of the art of governing a great empire. Mr. Grote
complains that "he had none of that sense of correlative right and
obligation which characterised the free Greeks," but Mr. Grote describes
Alexander too much from the Athenian point of view. In all
municipalities, in all aristocratic bodies, in all corporate assemblies,
in all robber communities, in all savage families or clans, the
privileged members have a sense of correlative right and obligation. The
real question is, how far and to what extent this feeling prevails
outside the little circle of selfish reciprocity and mutual admiration.
The Athenians did not include their slaves in their ideas of correlative
right and obligation; nor their prisoners of war, when they passed a
public decree to cut off all their thumbs, so that they might not be
able to handle the pike, but might still be able to handle the oar; nor
their allies, when they took their money and spent it all upon
themselves. Alexander committed some criminal and despotic acts, but it
was his noble idea to blot out the word "barbarian" from the vocabulary
of the Greeks, and to amalgamate them with the Persians.

Mr. Grote declares that Alexander intended to make Greece Persian, not
Persia Greek. Alexander certainly intended to make Greece a satrapy, as
it was afterwards made a Roman province. And where would have been the
loss? The independence of the various Greek cities had at one time
assisted the progress of the nation. But that time was past. Of late
they had made use of their freedom only to indulge in civil war. All
that was worthy of being preserved in Greece was its language and its
culture, and to that Alexander was not indifferent. He sent thirty
thousand Persian boys to school, and so laid the foundations of the
sovereignty of Greek ideas. He behaved towards the conquered people not
as a robber but as a sovereign. The wisdom of his policy is clearly
proved by the praises of the Oriental writers and by the blame of the
Greeks, who looked upon barbarians as a people destined by nature to be
slaves. But had Alexander governed Persia as they desired, the land
would have been in a continual state of insurrection, and it would have
been impossible for him, even had he lived, to have undertaken new
designs.

The story that he wept because there were no more worlds for him to
conquer would seem to imply that after the conquest of the Persian
empire there was nothing left for him in the way of war but to go out
savage-hunting in the forests of Europe, the steppes of Tartary, or the
deserts of Central Africa. However, there still remained a number of
powerful and attractive states, even if we place China entirely aside as
a land which could not be touched by the stream of events, however
widely they might overflow.

Alexander no doubt often reflected to himself that after all he had only
walked in the footsteps of other men. It was the genius of his father
which had given him possession of Greece; it was the genius of the
Persians which had planted the Asia that he had gathered. It is true
that he had conquered the Persian empire more thoroughly than the
Persians had ever been able to conquer it themselves. He had not left
behind him a single rock fortress or forest den uncarried, a single
tribe untamed. Yet still he had not been able to pass the frontiers
which they had fixed. He had once attempted to do so and had failed.
When he had reached the eastern river of the Punjab, or "Land of the
Five Streams," he stood on the brink of the empire with the Himalayas on
his left and before him a wide expanse of sand. Beyond that desert was a
country which the Persians had never reached. There a river as mighty as
the Indus took its course towards the sea through a land of surpassing
beauty and enormous wealth. There ruled a king who rode on a white
elephant, and who wore a mail coat composed entirely of precious stone;
whose wives slept on a thousand silken mattresses and a thousand golden
beds. The imagination of Alexander was inflamed by these glowing tales.
He yearned to discover a new world, to descend upon a distant and
unknown people like a god, to enter the land of diamonds and rubies, of
gleaming and transparent robes--the India of the Indies, the romantic,
and half-fabulous Bengal. But the soldiers were weary of collecting
plunder which they could not carry, and refused to march. Alexander
spent three days in his tent in an agony of anger and distress. He
established garrisons on the banks of the Indus; there could be little
doubt that some day or other he would resume his lost design.

There was one country which had sent him no ambassadors. It was Arabia
Felix, situated at the mouth of the Red Sea, abounding in forests of
those tearful trees which shed a yellow, fragrant gum grateful to the
gods, burnt in their honour on all the altars of the world. Arabia was
also enriched by the monopoly of the trade between Egypt and the coast
of Malabar. It was filled with rich cities. It had never paid tribute to
the Persians. On the land side it was protected by deserts and by
wandering hordes who drank from hidden wells. But it could easily be
approached by sea.

On the opposite side of the Arabian gulf lay Ethiopia, reputed to be the
native land of gold, but chiefly attractive to a vain-glorious and
emulative man from the fact that a Persian emperor had attempted its
conquest and had failed. There was also Carthage, the great republic of
the West, and there were rich silver-mines in Spain.

And can it be supposed that Alexander would remain content when he had
not yet made the circuit of the Grecian world? Was there not Sicily,
which Athens had attempted to conquer, and in vain? Rome had not yet
become great, but the Italian city-states were already famed in war.
Alexander's uncle had invaded that country and had been beaten back. He
declared that Alexander had fallen on the chamber of the women and he on
the chamber of the men. This sarcasm followed the conqueror into Central
Asia, and was flung in his teeth by Clitus on that night of drunkenness
and blood, every incident of which must have been continually present to
his mind.

We might therefore fairly infer, even if we had no evidence to guide us,
that Alexander did not consider his career accomplished. But in point of
fact we do know that he had given orders to fit out a thousand
ships-of-war; that he intended one fleet to attack Arabia from the
Mediterranean Sea. He had already arranged a plan for connecting Egypt
with his North African possession that were to be, and had he lived a
few years longer the features of the world might have been changed. The
Italians were unconquerable if united, but there was at that time no
supreme city to unite them as they were afterwards united against
Pyrrhus. It is at least not impossible that Alexander might have
conquered Italy; that the peninsula might have become a land of
independent cultivated cities like the Venice and Genoa and Florence of
the Middle Ages; that Greek might have been established as the reigning
language, and Latin remained a rustic dialect and finally died away. It
is at all events certain that in a few more years Alexander would have
made Carthage Greek, and that event alone would have profoundly
influenced the career of Rome.

However, this was not to be. Alexander went out in a boat among the
marshes in the neighbourhood of Babylon and caught a fever, the first
symptoms of which appeared after a banquet which had been kept up all
the night and the whole of the following day. At that time the Arabian
expedition was prepared, and Nearchus the admiral was under sailing
orders. Day after day the king continued to send for his officers to
give orders, and to converse about his future plans. But the fever
gradually increased, and while yet in the possession of his sense he was
deprived of the power of speech. The physicians announced that there was
no longer any hope.

And then were forgotten all the crimes and follies of which he had been
guilty--his assumption of the honours of a god, the murder of his bosom
friend. The Macedonian soldiers came in to him weeping to bid him the
last farewell. He sat up and saluted them man by man as they marched
past his bedside. When this last duty had been discharged he threw back
his weary frame. He expired on the evening of the next day.

The night, the dark, murky night, came on. None dared light a lamp; the
fires were extinguished. By the glimmering of the stars and the faint
beams of the horned moon, the young nobles of the household were seen
wandering like maniacs through the town. On the roofs of their houses
the Babylonians stood grave and silent, with folded hands and eyes
turned towards heaven as if awaiting a supernatural event. High aloft in
the air the trees of the hanging gardens waved their moaning boughs, and
the daughters of Babylon sang the dirge of the dead. In that sorrowful
hour the conquerors could not be distinguished from the conquered; the
Persians lamented their just and merciful master; the Macedonians their
greatest, bravest king. In an apartment of the palace an aged woman was
lying on the ground; her hair was torn and dishevelled; a golden crown
had fallen from her head. "Ah! Who will now protect my girls?" she said.
Then, veiling her face and turning from her grand-daughters, who wept at
her feet, she stubbornly refused both food and light. She who had
survived Darius was unable to survive Alexander. In famine and darkness
she sat, and on the fifth day she died.

Alexander's body lay cold and stiff. The Egyptian and Chaldean embalmers
were commanded to do their work. Yet long they gazed upon that awful
corpse before they could venture to touch it with their hands. Placed in
a golden coffin, shrouded in a bed of fragrant herbs, it remained two
years at Babylon, and was then carried to Egypt to be buried in the
oasis of Ammon. But Ptolemy stopped it on the road, and interred it at
Alexandria in a magnificent temple, which he built for the purpose and
surrounded with groves for the celebration of funereal rites and
military games. Long afterwards, when the dominion of the Macedonians
had passed away, there came Roman emperors who gazed upon that tomb with
reverence and awe. The golden coffin had been sold by a degenerate
Ptolemy, and had been changed for one of glass through which the body
could be seen. Augustus placed upon it a nosegay and crown. Septimus
Severus had the coffin sealed up in a vault. Then came the savage
Caracalla, who had massacred half Alexandria because he did not like the
town. He ordered the vault to be opened and the coffin to be exposed,
and all feared that some act of sacrilege would be committed. But those
august remains could touch the better feelings which existed even in a
monster's heart. He took off his purple robe, his imperial ornaments,
all that he had of value on his person, and laid them reverently upon
the tomb.

The empire of Alexander was partitioned into three great kingdoms--that
of Egypt and Cyrene, that of Macedonia, including Greece, and that of
Asia, the capital of which was at first on the banks of the Euphrates,
but was afterwards unwisely transferred to Antioch. In these three
kingdoms, and in their numerous dependencies, Greek became the language
of government and trade. It was spoken all over the world--on the shores
of Malabar, in the harbours of Ceylon, among the Abyssinian mountains,
in distant Mozambique. The shepherds of the Tartar steppes loved to
listen to recitations of Greek poetry, and Greek tragedies were
performed to Brahmin "houses" by the waters of the Indus. The history of
the Greeks of Inner Asia, however soon comes to an end. Sandracottus,
the Rajah of Bengal, conquered the Greek province of the Punjab. The
rise of the Parthian power cut off the Greek kingdom of Bokhara from the
Western world, and it was destroyed, according to the Chinese
historians, by a powerful horde of Tartars a hundred and thirty years
after its foundation.


Alexandria


We can now return to African soil, and we find that a city of
incomparable splendour has arisen, founded by Alexander and bearing his
name. For as he was on his way to the oasis of Ammon, travelling along
the sea-coast, he came to a place a little west of the Nile's mouth where
an island close to the shore, and the peculiar formation of the land,
formed a natural harbour, while a little way inland was a large lagoon
communicating with the Nile. A few houses were scattered about, and
this, he was told, was the village of Rhacotis, where in the old days
the Pharaohs stationed a garrison to prevent the Greek pirates from
coming on shore. He saw that the spot was well adapted for a city, and
with his usual impetuosity went to work at once to mark it out. When he
returned from the oasis, the building of the city had begun, and in a few
years it had become the residence of Ptolemy and the capital of Egypt.

It filled up the space between the sea and the lagoon. On the one side
its harbour was filled with ships which came from Italy and Greece and
the lands of the Atlantic with amber, timber, tin, wine, and oil. On the
other side were the cargo boats that came from the Nile with the
precious stones, the spices, and the beautiful fabrics of the East. The
island on which stood the famous lighthouse was connected with the
mainland by means of a gigantic mole furnished with drawbridges and
forts. It is on this mole that the modern city stands--the site of the
old Alexandria is sand.

When Ptolemy the First, one of Alexander's generals, mounted the throne
he applied himself with much caution and dexterity to that difficult
problem the government of Egypt. Had the Greeks been the first
conquerors of the country, it is doubtful whether the wisest policy
would have kept its natives quiet and content. For they were like the
Jews, a proud, ignorant, narrow-minded, religious race who looked upon
themselves as the chosen people of the gods, and upon all foreigners as
unclean things. But they had been taught wisdom by misfortune; they had
felt the bitterness of an Oriental yoke; the feet of the Persians had
been placed upon their necks. On the other hand, the Greeks had lived
for centuries among them, and had assisted them in all their revolts
against the Persian king. During their interlude of independence the
towns had been garrisoned partly by Egyptian and partly by Greek
soldiers: the two nations had grown accustomed to each other. Persia had
finally re-enslaved them, and Alexander had been welcomed as the saviour
of their country. The golden chain of the Pharaohs was broken. It was
impossible to restore the line of ancient kings. The Egyptians therefore
cheerfully submitted to the Ptolemies, who reciprocated this kindly
feeling to the full. They patronised the Egyptian religion, they built
many temples in the ancient style, they went to the city of Memphis to
be crowned, they sacrificed to the Nile at the rising of the waters, and
they assumed the divine titles of the Pharaohs. The priests were
content, and in Egypt the people were always guided by the priests. The
Rosetta Stone, that remarkable monument which, with its inscription in
Greek, in the Egyptian vernacular, and in the sacred hieroglyphics, has
afforded the means of deciphering the mysterious language of the Nile,
was a memorial of gratitude from the Egyptian priests to a Greek king,
to whom in return for favours conferred they erected an image and a
golden shrine.

But while the Ptolemies were Pharaohs to the Egyptians, they were Greeks
to the colonists of Alexandria, and they founded or favoured that school
of thought upon which modern science is established.

There is a great enterprise in which men have always been unconsciously
engaged, but which they will pursue with method as a vocation and an
art, and which they will devoutly adopt as a religious faith as soon as
they realise its glory. It is the conquest of the planet on which we
dwell, the destruction or domestication of the savage forces by which we
are tormented and enslaved. An episode of this war occurring in ancient
Egypt has been described; the war itself began with the rise of our
ancestors into the human state, and when, drawing fire from wood or
stone, they made it serve them night and day the first great victory was
won. But we can conquer Nature only by obeying her laws, and in order to
obey those laws we must first learn what they are.

Storms and tides, thunder and lightning and eclipse, the movements of
the heavenly bodies, the changing aspects of the earth, were among all
ancient people regarded as divine phenomena. In the Greek world there
was no despotic caste, but the people clung fondly to their faith, and
the study of Nature, which began in Ionia, was at first regarded with
abhorrence and dismay. The popular religion was supported by the genius
of Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey were regarded not only as epic poems
but as sacred writ; even the geography had been inspired. However, when
the Greeks began to travel, the old legends could no longer be received.
It was soon discovered that the places visited by Ulysses did not exist,
that there was no River Ocean which ran round the earth, and that the
earth was not shaped like a round saucer with the oracle of Delphi in
its centre. The Egyptians laughed in the faces of the Greeks, and called
them children when they talked of their gods of yesterday, and so well
did their pupils profit by their lesson that they soon laughed at the
Egyptians for believing in the gods at all. Xenophanes declaimed against
the Egyptian myth of an earth-walking, dying resuscitated god. He said
that if Osiris was a man they should not worship him, and that if he was
a god they need not lament his sufferings. This remarkable man was the
Voltaire of Greece; there had been free-thinkers before his time, but
they had reserved their opinions for their disciples.

Xenophanes declared that the truth should be made known to all. He
lived, like Voltaire, to a great age; he poured forth a multitude of
controversial works; he made it his business to attack Homer, and
reviled him bitterly for having endowed the gods of his poems with the
passions and propensities of men; he denied the old theory of the Golden
Age, and maintained that civilisation was the work of time and of man's
own toil. His views were no doubt distasteful to the vulgar crowd by
whom he was surrounded, and even to cultivated and imaginative minds
which were sunk in sentimental idolatry, blinded by the splendour of the
Homeric poems. He was, however, in no way interfered with; religious
persecution was unknown in the Greek world except at Athens. In that
city free thought was especially unpopular because it was imported from
abroad. It was the doctrine of those talented Ionians who streamed into
Athens after the Persian wars. When one of these philosophers announced,
in his open-air sermon in the market-place, that the sun which the
common people believed to be alive--the bountiful god Helios which shone
both on mortals and immortals--was nothing but a mass of red-hot iron;
when he declared that those celestial spirits the stars were only
revolving stones; when he asserted that Jupiter, and Venus and Apollo,
Mars, Juno, and Minerva, were mere creatures of the poet's fancy, and
that if they really existed they ought to be despised; when he said that
over all there reigned, not blind Fate, but a supreme, all seeing Mind,
great wrath was excited among the people. A prophet went about uttering
oracles in a shrill voice, and procured the passing of a decree that
all who denied the religion of the city or who philosophised in matters
appertaining to the gods should be indicted as state criminals. This law
was soon put in force. Damon and Anaxagoras were banished; Aspasia was
impeached for blasphemy, and the tears of Pericles alone saved her;
Socrates was put to death; Plato was obliged to reserve pure reason for
a chosen few, and to adulterate it with revelation for the generality of
his disciples; Aristotle fled from Athens for his life, and became the
tutor of Alexander. Alexander had a passion for the Iliad. His edition
had been corrected by Aristotle; he kept it in a precious casket which
he had taken from the Persian king, and it was afterwards known as the
"edition of the casket." When he invaded Asia he landed on the plains of
Troy, that he might see the ruins of that celebrated town and hang a
garland upon the tomb of Achilles. But it was not poetry alone that he
esteemed; he had imbibed his master's universal tastes. When staying at
Ephesus he used to spend hours in the studio of Apelles, sitting down
among the boys who ground colours for the great painter. He delighted in
everything that was new and rare. He invented exploration. He gave a
large sum of money to Aristotle to assist him in composing the history
of animals, and employed a number of men to collect for him in Asia. He
sent him a copy of the astronomical records of the Babylonians, although
by that time they had quarrelled--like Dionysius and Plato, Frederick
and Voltaire. It is taken for granted that Alexander was the one to
blame, as if philosophers were immaculate and private tutors never in
the wrong.

The Ptolemies were not unworthy followers of Alexander. They established
the Museum, which was a kind of college, with a hall where the
professors dined together, with corridors for promenading lectures, and
a theatre for scholastic festivals and public disputation. Attached to
it also was the Botanical Garden, filled with medicinal and exotic
plants; a menagerie of wild beasts and rare birds; and the famous
Library, where 700,000 volumes were arranged on cedar shelves, and where
hundreds of clerks were continually at work copying from scroll to
scroll, gluing the separate strips of papyrus together, smoothing with
pumice-stone and blackening the edges, writing the titles on red labels,
and fastening ivory tops on the sticks round which the rolls were
wrapped.

All the eminent men of the day were invited to take up their abode at
the Museum, and persons were dispatched into all countries to collect
books. It was dangerous to bring original manuscripts into Egypt--they
were at once seized and copied, the originals being retained. The city
of Athens lent the autograph editions of its dramatists to one of the
Ptolemies, and saw them no more. It was even said that philosophers were
sometimes detained in the same manner.

Soon after the wars of Alexander, the "barbarians" were seized with a
desire to make known to their conquerors the history of their native
lands. Berosus, a priest of Babylon, compiled a history of Chaldea;
Menander, and Phoenician, a history of Tyre; and Manetho wrote in Greek,
but from Egyptian sources, a history which Egyptology has confirmed. It
was at the Museum also that the Old Testament was translated under royal
patronage into Greek, and at the same time the Zoroastrian Bible or
Zend-Avesta.

There was some good work done at the Museum. Among works of imagination
the pastorals of Theocritus have alone obtained the approbation of
posterity. But it was in Alexandria that 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 coarse 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 Phoenicians


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 inland trade. They were the first to overcome the exclusiveness of
Egypt, and were permitted to settle in Memphis itself. Their quarter was
called the Syrian camp; it was built round a grove and chapel sacred to
Astarte. Their caravan routes extended in every direction towards the
treasure countries of the East. Wandering Arabs were their sailors, and
camels were their ships. They made voyages by sand, more dangerous than
those by sea, to Babylon through Palmyra or Tadmor on the skirts of the
desert; to Arabia Felix and the market city of Petra; and to Gerrha, a
city built entirely of salt on the rainless shores of the Persian Gulf.

Phoenicia itself was a narrow, undulating plain about a hundred miles in
length, and at the most not more than a morning's ride in breadth. It
was walled in by the mountains on the north and east. To those who
sailed along its coast it appeared to be one great city interspersed
with gardens and fields. On the lower slopes of the hills beyond gleamed
the green vineyard patches and the villas of the merchants. The offing
was whitened with sails, and in every harbour was a grove of masts. But
it was Tyre which of all the cities was the queen. It covered an island
which lay at anchor off the shore. The Greek poet Nonnus has prettily
described the mingling around it of the sylvan and marine. "The sailor
furrows the sea with his oar," he says, "and the ploughman the soil; the
lowing of oxen and the singing of birds answer the deep roar of the
main; the wood nymph under the tall trees hears the voice of the
sea-nymph calling to her from the waves; the breeze from the Lebanon,
while it cools the rustic at his midday labour, speeds the mariner who
is outward bound."

These Canaanitish men are fairly entitled to our gratitude and esteem,
for they taught our intellectual ancestors to read and write. Wherever a
factory trade is carried on it is found convenient to employ natives as
subordinate agents and clerks. And thus it was that the Greeks received
the rudiments of education. That the alphabet was invented by the
Phoenicians is improbable in the extreme, but it is certain that they
introduced it into Europe. They were intent only on making money, it is
true; they were not a literary or artistic people; they spread knowledge
by accident like birds dropping seeds. But they were gallant, hardy,
enterprising men. Those were true heroes who first sailed through the
sea-valley of Gibraltar into the vast ocean and breasted its enormous
waves. Their unceasing activity kept the world alive. They offered to
every country something which it did not possess. They roused the savage
Briton from his torpor with a rag of scarlet cloth, and stirred him to
sweat in the dark bowels of the earth. They brought to the satiated
Indian prince the luscious wines of Syria and the Grecian
amber-gatherers of the Baltic mud to the nutmeg-growers of the
equatorial groves, from the mulberry plantations of the Celestial Empire
to the tin-mines of Cornwall and the silver-mines of Spain, emulation
was excited, new wants were created, and whole nations were stimulated
to industry by the agency of the Phoenicians.

Shipbuilding and navigation were their inventions, and for a long time
were entirely in their hands. Phoenician shipwrights were employed to
build the fleet of Sennacherib: Phoenician mariners were employed by
Necho to sail round Africa. But they could not forever monopolise the
sea. The Greeks built ships on the Phoenician model, and soon showed
their masters that kidnapping and piracy was a game at which two could
play. The merchant kings who possessed the whole commercial world were
too wise to stake their prosperity on a single province. They had no
wish to tempt a siege of Tyre which might resemble the siege of Troy.
They quickly retired from Greece and its islands, and the western coast
of Asia Minor and the margin of the Black Sea. They allowed the Greeks
to take the foot of Italy and the eastern half of Sicily, and did not
molest their isolated colonies of Cyrene in Africa and Marseilles in
Southern Gaul.

But in spite of all their prudence and precautions, the Greeks
supplanted them entirely. The Phoenicians, like the Jews, were vassals
of necessity and by position: they lived half-way between two empires.
They found it cheaper to pay tribute than to go to war, and submitted to
the emperor of Syria for the time being, sending their money with equal
indifference to Nineveh or Memphis.

But when the empire was disputed, as in the days of Nebuchadnezzar and
of Necho, they were compelled to choose a side. Like the Jews, they
chose the wrong one, and the old Tyre and Jerusalem were demolished at
the same time.

From that day the Phoenicians began to go down the hill, and under the
Persians their ships and sailors were forced to do service in the royal
navy. This was the hardest kind of tribute that they could be made to
pay, for it deprived them not only of their profits but of the means by
which those profits were obtained. In the Macedonian war they went wrong
again; they chose the side of the Persians although they had so often
rebelled against them and Tyre was severely handled by its conqueror.
But it was the foundation of Alexandria which ruined the Phoenician
cities, as it ruined Athens. Form that time Athens ceased to be
commercial and became a university. Tyre also ceased to be commercial,
but remained a celebrated manufactory. Under the Roman empire it enjoyed
the monopoly of the sacred purple, which was afterwards adopted by the
popes. It prospered under the caliphs; its manufactories in the Middle
Ages were conducted by the Jews; but it fell before the artillery of the
Turks to rise no more. The secret of the famous dye was lost, and the
Vatican changed the colour of its robes.

But while Phoenicia was declining in the East its great colony,
Carthage, was rising in the West. This city had been founded by
malcontents from Tyre. But they kindly cherished the memories of their
motherland, and, like the Pilgrim Fathers, always spoke of the country
which had cast them forth as "Home." And after a time all the old wrongs
were forgotten, all angry feelings died away. Every year the
Carthaginians sent to the national temple a tenth part of their revenues
as a free-will offering. During the great Persian wars, when on all
sides empires and kingdoms were falling to the ground, the Phoenicians
refused to lend their fleet to the Great King to make war upon Carthage.
When Tyre was besieged by Alexander the nobles sent their wives and
children to Carthage, where they were tenderly received.

The Africa of the ancients--the modern Barbary--lies between the Sahara
and the Mediterranean Sea. It is protected from the ever-encroaching
waves of the sandy ocean by the Atlas range. In its western parts this
mountain wall is high and broad and covered with eternal snow. It
becomes lower as it runs towards the east, also drawing nearer to the
sea, and dwindles and dwindles till finally it disappears, leaving a
wide, unprotected region between Barbary and Egypt. Over this the Sahara
flows, forming a desert barrier tract to all intents and purposes itself
a sea, dividing the two lands from each other as completely as the
Mediterranean divides Italy and Greece. This land of North Africa is in
reality a part of Spain; the Atlas is the southern boundary of Europe.
Grey cork-trees clothe the lower sides of those magnificent mountains;
their summits are covered with pines, among which the cross-bill
flutters, and in which the European bear may still be found. The flora
of the range, as Dr. Hooker has lately shown, is of a Spanish type; the
Straits of Gibraltar is merely an accident; there is nothing in Morocco
to distinguish it from Andalusia. The African animals which are there
found are desert-haunting species--the antelope and gazelle, the lion,
the jackal, the hyena, [spelt hyaena in original text] and certain
species of the monkey tribe; and these might easily have found their way
across the Sahara from oasis to oasis. It is true that in the
Carthaginian days the elephant abounded in the forests of the Atlas, and
it could not have come across from central Africa, for the Sahara,
before it was a desert, was a sea. It is probable that the elephant of
Barbary belonged to the same species as the small elephant of Europe,
the bones of which have been discovered in Malta and in certain caves of
Spain, and that it outlived the European kind on account of its isolated
position in the Atlas, which was thinly inhabited by savage tribes. But
it did not long withstand the power of the Romans. Pliny mentions that
in his time the forests of Morocco were being ransacked for ivory, and
Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century observes that "there are no
longer any elephants in Mauritania."

In Morocco the Phoenicians were settled only on the coast. The Regency
of Tunis and part of Algeria is the scene on which the tragedy of
Carthage was performed.

In that part of Africa the habitable country must be divided into three
regions; first a corn region, lying between the Atlas and the sea,
exceedingly fertile but narrow in extent; secondly the Atlas itself,
with its timber stores and elephant preserves; and thirdly a plateau
region of poor sandy soil, affording a meagre pasture, interspersed with
orchards of date-trees, abounding in ostriches, lions, and gazelles, and
gradually fading away into the desert.

Africa belonged to a race of man whom we shall call Berbers or Moors,
but who were known as the ancients under many names, and who still exist
as the Kabyles or Algeria, the Shilluhs of the Atlas, and the Tuaricks
or tawny Moors of the Sahara. Their habits depended on the locality in
which they dwelt. Those who lived in the Tell or region of the coast
cultivated the soil and lived in towns, some of which appear to have
been of considerable size. Those who inhabited the plateau region led a
free Bedouin life, wandering from place to place with flocks and herds,
and camping under oblong huts which the Romans compared to boats turned
upside down. In holes and caverns of the mountains dwelt a miserable
black race, apparently the aborigines of the country, and represented to
this day by the Rock Tibboos. They were also found on the outskirts of
the desert, and were hunted by the Berbers in four-horse chariots,
caught alive, and taken to the Carthage market to be sold.

The Phoenician settlements were at first independent of one another, but
Carthage gradually obtained the supremacy as Tyre had obtained it in
Phoenicia. The position of Utica towards Carthage was precisely that of
Sidon towards Tyre. It was the more ancient city of the two, and it
preserved a certain kind of position without actual power. Carthage and
Utica, like Tyre and Sidon, were at one time always spoken of together.

The Carthaginians began by paying a quit-rent or custom to the natives,
but that did not last very long; they made war, and exacted tribute from
the original possessors of the soil. When Carthage suffered from
over-population, colonies were dispatched out west along the coast, and
down south into the interior. These colonies were more on the Roman than
the Greek pattern; the emigrants built cities and intermarried freely
with the Berbers, for there was no difference of colour between them,
and little difference of race. In course of time the whole of the
habitable region was subdued; the Tyrian factory became a mighty empire.
Many of the roving tribes were broken in; the others were driven into
the desert or into wild Morocco. A line of fortified posts and
block-houses protected the cultivated land. The desire to obtain red
cloth and amber and blue beads secured the allegiance of many
unconquerable desert tribes, and by their means, although the camel had
not yet been introduced, a trade was opened up between Carthage and
Timbuktu. Negro slaves, bearing tusks of ivory on their shoulders and
tied to one another so as to form a chain of flesh and blood, were
driven across the terrible desert--a caravan of death, the route of
which was marked by bones bleaching in the sun. Gold dust also was
brought over from those regions of the Niger, and the Carthaginian
traders reached the same land by sea. For they were not content, like
the Tyrians, to trade only on the Morocco coast as far as Mogadore. By
good fortune there has been preserved the log-book of an expedition
which sailed to the wood-covered shores of Guinea; saw the hills covered
with fire, as they always are in the dry season when the grass is being
burnt; heard the music of the natives in the night; and brought home the
skins of three chimpanzees which they probably killed near Sierra Leone.

When Phoenicia died, Carthage inherited its settlements on the coasts of
Sicily and Spain and on the adjoining isles. Not only were these islands
valuable possessions in themselves--Malta as a cotton plantation, Elba
as an iron-mine, Majorca and Minorca as a recruiting ground for slingers;
they were also useful as naval stations to preserve the monopoly of the
Western waters.

The foreign policy of Carthage was very different from that of the
motherland. The Phoenicians had maintained an army of mercenaries, but
had used them only to protect their country from the robber kings of
Damascus and Jerusalem. They had many ships of war, but had used them
only to convoy their round-bellied ships of trade and to keep off the
attacks of the Greek and Etruscan pirates. Their settlements were merely
fortified factories; they made no attempt to reduce the natives of the
land. If their settlements grew into colonies, they let them go. But
Carthage founded many colonies and never lost a single one. Situated
among them, and possessing a large fleet, she was able both to punish
and protect. She defended them in time of war; she controlled them in
time of peace.

A policy of concession had not saved the Phoenicians from the Greeks,
and now these same Greeks were settling in the West and displaying
immense activity. The Carthaginians saw that they must resist or be
ruined, and they went to war as a matter of business. They first put
down the Etruscan rovers, in which undertaking they were assisted by the
events which occurred on the Italian main. They next put a stop to the
spread of the Greek power in Africa itself.

Half-way between Algeria and Egypt, in the midst of the dividing sea of
sand, is a coast oasis formed by a tableland of sufficient height to
condense the vapours which float over from the sea, and to chill them
into rain. There was a hole in the sky above it, as the natives used to
say. To this island-tract came a band of Greeks directed thither by the
oracle at Delphi, where geography was studied as a part of the system.
They established a city and called it Cyrene.

The land was remarkably fertile, and afforded them three harvests in the
course of the year. One was gathered on the coast meadows, which were
watered by the streams that flowed down from the hills; a second on the
hill-sides; a third on the surface of the plateau, [spelt pleateau in
the original text] which was about two thousand feet above the level of
the sea. Cyrenaica produced the silphium, or asafoetida, which, like the
balm of Gilead, was one of the specifics of antiquity, and which is
really a medicine of value. It was found in many parts of the world--for
instance, in certain districts of Asia Minor, and on the summit of the
Hindu Kush. But the asafoetida of Cyrene was the most esteemed. Its
juice, when dried, was worth its weight in gold; its leaves fattened
cattle and cured them of all diseases.

Some singular pits or chasms existed in the lower part of the Cyrene
hills. Their sides were perpendicular walls of rock: it appeared
impossible to descend to the bottom of the precipice, and yet, when the
traveller peeped over the brink, he saw to his astonishment that the
abyss beneath had been sown with herbs and corn. Hence rose the legend
of the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Cyrene was renowned as the second medical school of the Greek world. It
produced a noted free-thinker, who was a companion of Socrates and the
founder of a school. It was also famous for its barbs, which won more
than one prize in the chariot races of the Grecian games. It obtained
the honour of more than one Pindaric ode. But owing to internal
dissension it never became great. It was conquered by Persia, it
submitted to Alexander, and Carthage speedily checked its growth towards
the west by taking the desert which lay between them, and which it then
garrisoned with nomad tribes.

The Carthaginians hitherto had never paid tribute, and they had never
suffered a serious reverse. Alcibiades talked much of invading them when
he had done with Sicily, and the young men of his set were at one time
always drawing plans of Carthage in the dust of the market-place at
Athens; but the Sicilian expedition failed. The affection of the Tyrians
preserved them from Cambyses. Alexander opportunely died. Pyrrhus in
Sicily began to collect ships to sail across, but he who tried to take
up Italy with one hand and Carthage with the other, and who also excited
the enmity of the Sicilian Greeks, was not a very dangerous foe.
Agathocles of Syracuse invaded Africa, but it was the action of a
desperate and defeated man and bore no result.

Sicily was long the battlefield of the Carthaginians, and ultimately
proved their ruin. Its western side belonged to them: its eastern side
was held by a number of independent Greek cities which were often at war
with one another. Of these Syracuse was the most important: its ambition
was the same as that of Carthage--to conquer the whole island, and then
to extend its rule over the flourishing Greek towns on the south Italian
coast. Hence followed wars generation after generation, till at length
the Carthaginians obtained the upper hand. Already they were looking on
the island as their own when a new power stepped upon the scene.

The ancient Tuscans or Etruscans had a language and certain arts
peculiar to themselves, and Northern Italy was occupied by Celtic Gauls.
But the greater part of the peninsula was inhabited by a people akin to
the Greeks, though differing much from them in character, dwelling in
city-states, using a form of the Phoenician alphabet, and educating
their children in public schools. The Greek cities on the coast diffused
a certain amount of culture through the land.

A rabble of outlaws and runaway slaves banded together, built a town,
fortified it strongly, and offered it as an asylum to all fugitives. To
Rome fled the over-beaten slave, the thief with his booty, the murdered
with blood-red hands. This city of refuge became a war-town--to use an
African phrase--its citizens alternately fought and farmed; it became
the dread and torment of the neighbourhood. However, it contained no
women, and it was hoped that in course of time the generation of robbers
would die out. The Romans offered their hands and hearts to the daughters
of a neighbouring Sabine city. The Sabines declined, and told them that
they had better make their city an asylum for runaway women. The Romans
took the Sabine girls by force; a war ensued, but the relationship had
been established; the women reconciled their fathers to their husbands,
and the tribes were united in the same city.

The hospitality which Rome had offered in its early days in order to
sustain its life became a custom and a policy. The Romans possessed the
art of converting their conquered enemies into allies, and this was done
by means of concessions which cities of respectable origin would have
been too proud to make.

Their military career was very different from that of the Persians, who
swept over the continent in a few months. The Romans spent three
centuries in establishing their rule within a circle of a hundred miles
round the city. Whatever they won by the sword they secured by the
plough. After every successful war they demanded a tract of land, and on
this they planted a colony of Roman farmers. The municipal governments
of the conquered cities were left undisturbed. The Romans aimed to
establish, at least in appearance, a federation of states, a united
Italy. At the time of the first Punic War this design had nearly been
accomplished. Wild tribes of Celtic shepherds still roamed over the rich
plains at the foot of the Alps, but the Italian boroughs had
acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. The Greek cities on the southern
coast had, a few years before, called over Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, a
soldier of fortune and the first general of the day. But the legion
broke the Macedonian phalanx, and the broadsword vanquished the
Macedonian spear. The Greek cities were no longer independent except in
name. Pyrrhus returned to Greece, and prophesied of Sicily, as he left
its shores, that it would become the arena of the Punic and the Roman
arms.

In the last war that was ever waged between the Syracusans and the
Carthaginians, the former had employed some mercenary troops belonging
to the Mamertines, an Italian tribe. When the war was ended these
soldiers were paid off and began to march home. They passed through the
Greek town of Messina on their road, were hospitably received by the
citizens, and provided with quarters for the night. In the middle of the
night they rose up and massacred the men, married the widows, and
settled down as rulers of Messina, each soldier beneath another man's
vine and fig-tree. A Roman regiment stationed at Rhegium, a Greek town
on the Italian side of the straits, heard of this exploit, considered it
an excellent idea, and did the same. The Romans marched upon Rhegium,
took it by storm, and executed four hundred of the soldiers in the
Forum. The king of Syracuse, who held the same position in eastern
Sicily as did Rome on the peninsula, marched against Messina. The
Mamertine bandits became alarmed; one party sent to the Carthaginians
for assistance; another party sent to Rome, declaring that they were
kinsmen and desired to enter the Italian league.

The Roman Senate rejected this request on account of its "manifest
absurdity." They had just punished their soldiers for imitating the
Mamertines; how then could they interfere with the punishment of the
Mamertines? But in Rome the people possessed the sovereign power of
making peace or war. There was a scarcity of money at that time; a raid
on Sicily would yield plunder, and troops were accordingly ordered to
Messina. For the first time Romans went outside Italy--the vanguard of
an army which subdued the world. The Carthaginians were already in
Messina: the Romans drove them out, and the war began. The Syracusans
were defeated in the first battle, and then went over to the Roman side.
It became a war between Asiatics and Europeans.


Carthage and Rome


The two great republics were already well acquainted with each other. In
the apartment of the Aediles in the Capitol was preserved a commercial
treaty between Carthage and Rome, inscribed on tables of brass in old
Latin; in the time of Polybius it could scarcely be understood, for it
had been drawn up twenty eight years before Xerxes invaded Greece. When
Pyrrhus invaded Italy the Carthaginians had taken the Roman side, for
the Greeks were their hereditary enemies. There were Carthaginian shops
in the streets of Rome, a city in beauty and splendour far inferior to
Carthage, which was called the metropolis of the Western world. The
Romans were a people of warriors and small farmers, quaint in their
habits and simple in their tastes. Some Carthaginian ambassadors were
much amused at the odd fashion of their banquets, where the guests sang
old ballads in turn while the piper played, and they discovered that
there was only one service of plate in Rome, and that each senator
borrowed it when he gave a dinner. Yet there were already signs that
Rome was inhabited by a giant race. The vast aqueducts had been
constructed; the tunnel-like sewers had been hollowed out; the streets
were paved with smooth and massive slabs. There were many temples and
statues to be seen; each temple was the monument of a great victory;
each statue was the memorial of a hero who had died for Rome.

The Carthaginian army was composed entirely of mercenary troops. Africa,
Spain and Gaul were their recruiting grounds, an inexhaustible treasury
of warriors as long as the money lasted which they received as pay. The
Berbers were a splendid Cossack cavalry; they rode without saddle or
bridle, a weapon in each hand; on foot they were merely a horde or
savages with elephant-hide shields, long spears, and bear-skins floating
from their shoulders. The troops of Spain were the best infantry that
the Carthaginians possessed; they wore a white uniform with purple
facings; they fought with pointed swords. The Gauls were brave troops
but were badly armed; they were naked to the waist; their cutlasses were
made of soft iron and had to be straightened after every blow. The
Balearic Islands supplied a regiment of slingers whose balls of hardened
clay whizzed through the air like bullets, broke armour, and shot men
dead. We read much of the Sacred Legion in the Sicilian wars. It was
composed of young nobles, who wore dazzling white shields and
breast-plates which were works of art; who even in the camp never drank
except from goblets of silver and of gold. But this corps had apparently
become extinct, and the Carthaginians only officered their troops, who
they looked upon as ammunition, and to whom their orders were delivered
through interpreters. The various regiments of the Carthaginian army had
therefore nothing in common with one another or with those by whom they
were led. They rushed to battle in confusion, "with sounds, discordant
as their various tribes," and with no higher feeling than the hope of
plunder or the excitement which the act of fighting arouses in the brave
soldier.

In Rome the army was the nation: no citizen could take office unless he
had served in ten campaigns. All spoke the same language, all were
inspired by the same ambition. The officers were often small farmers
like the men, but this civil equality produced no ill effects; the
discipline was most severe. It was a maxim that the soldier should fear
his officer more than he feared his foe. The drill was unremitting; when
they were in winter quarters they erected sheds in which the soldiers
fenced with swords cased in leather with buttons at the point and hurled
javelins, also buttoned, at one another. These foils were double the
weight of the weapons that were actually used. When the day's march was
over they took pick-axe and spade, and built their camp like a town with
a twelve-foot stockade around it, and a ditch twelve feet deep and
twelve feet broad. When the red mantle was hung before the general's
tent each soldier said to himself, "Perhaps to-day I may win the golden
crown." Laughing and jesting they rubbed their limbs with oil, and took
out of their cases the bright helmets and the polished shields which
they used only on the battle-day. As they stood ready to advance upon
the foe, the general would address them in a vigorous speech; he
would tell them that the greatest honour which could befall a Roman was
to die for his country on the field, and that glorious was the sorrow,
enviable the woe of the matron who gave a husband or a son to Rome. Then
the trumpets pealed, and the soldiers charged, first firing a volley of
javelins and then coming to close quarters with the solid steel. The
chief fault of the Roman military system at that time was in the
arrangement of the chief command. There were two commanders-in-chief,
possessing equal powers, and it sometimes happened that they were both
present on the same spot, that they commanded on alternate days, and
that their tactics differed. They were appointed only for the year, and
when the term drew near its end a consul would often fight a battle at a
disadvantage, or negotiate a premature peace, that he might prevent his
successor from reaping the fruits of his twelve month's toil. The
Carthaginian generals had thereby an advantage, but they also were
liable to be recalled when too successful by the jealous and distrustful
government at home.

The wealth of Carthage was much greater than that of Rome, but her
method of making war was more costly, and a great deal of money was
stolen and wasted by the men in power. In Carthage the highest offices
of state were openly bought from a greedy and dangerous populace, just
as in Pompey's time tables were set out in the streets of Rome at which
candidates for office paid the people for their votes. But at this time
bribery was a capital offence at Rome. It was a happy period in Roman
history, the interlude between two aristocracies. There had been a time
when a system of hereditary castes prevailed; when the plebeians were
excluded from all share in the public lands and the higher offices of
state; when they were often chained in the dungeons of the nobles, and
marked with scars upon their backs: when Romans drew swords on Romans
and the tents of the people whitened the Sacred Hill. But the Licinian
Laws were carried; the orders were reconciled; plebeian consuls were
elected; and two centuries of prosperity, harmony, and victory prepared
Rome for the prodigious contest in which she was now engaged.

To her subject people Carthage acted as a tyrant. She had even deprived
the old Phoenician cities of their liberty of trade. She would not allow
them to build walls for fear they should rebel, loaded them with heavy
burdens grievous to be borne, treated the colonial provinces as
conquered lands, and sent decayed nobles as governors to wring out of
the people all they could. If the enemies of Carthage invaded Africa
they would meet with no resistance except from Carthage herself, and
they would be joined by thousands of Berbers who longed to be revenged
on their oppressors. But if the enemies of Rome invaded Italy they would
find everywhere walled cities ready to defend their liberties and having
liberties to defend. No tribute was taken by Rome from her allies except
that of military service, which service was rewarded with a share of the
harvest that the war brought in.

The Carthaginians were at a greater distance from the seat of war than
the Romans, who had only to sail across a narrow strait. However, this
was counterbalanced by the superiority of the Punic fleet. At that time
the Carthaginians were completely masters of the sea; they boasted that
no man could wash his hands in the salt water without their permission.
The Romans had not a single decked vessel, and in order to transport
their troops across the straits they were obliged to borrow triremes
from the Italian-Greeks. But their marvellous resolution and the absolute
necessities of the case overmastered their deficiencies and their
singular dislike of the sea. The wreck of a Carthaginian man-of-war
served them as a model; they ranged benches along the beach and drilled
sailors who had just come from the plough's tail to the service of the
oar. The vessels were rudely built and the men clumsy at their work, and,
when the hostile fleets first met, the Carthaginians burst into loud
guffaws. Without taking order of battle they flew down upon the Romans,
the admiral leading the van in a seven-decker that had belonged to
Pyrrhus. On they went, each ship in a bed of creamy foam, flags flying,
trumpets blowing, and the negroes singing and clanking their chains as
they laboured at the oar. But presently they perceived some odd-looking
machines on the forecastles of the Roman ships; they had never seen such
things before, and this made them hesitate a little. But when they saw
in what a lubberly fashion the ships were worked their confidence
returned; they dashed in among the Roman vessels, which they tried to
rip up with their aquiline prows. As soon as they came to close quarters
the machines fell down upon them with a crash, tore open their decks,
and grappled them tightly in their iron jaws, forming at the same time a
gangway over which the Roman soldiers poured. The sea fight was made a
land fight, and only a few ships with beaks all bent and broken
succeeded in making their escape. They entered the harbour of Carthage
with their bows covered with skins, the signal of defeat.

However, by means of skilful manoeuvring the invention of Duilius was
made of no avail, and the Carthaginians for many years remained the
masters of the sea. Twice the Roman fleet was entirely destroyed, and
their treasury was now exhausted. But the undaunted people fitted out a
fleet by private subscription, and so rapidly was this done that the
trees, as Florus said, were transformed into ships. Two hundred
five-deckers were ready before the enemy knew that they had begun to
build, and so the Carthaginian fleet was one day surprised by the Romans
in no fighting condition, for the vessels were laden to the gunwales
with corn, and only sailors were on board; the whole fleet was taken or
sunk, and the war was at an end. Yet when all was added up it was found
that the Romans had lost two hundred vessels more than the
Carthaginians. But Rome, even without large ships, could always
reinforce Sicily, while the Carthaginians, without a full fleet, were
completely cut off from the seat of war, and they were unable to rebuild
in the manner of the Romans.

The war in Sicily had been a drawn game. Hamilcar Barca, although
unconquered, received orders to negotiate for peace. The Romans demanded
a large indemnity to pay for the expenses of the war, and took the
Sicilian settlements which Carthage had held for four hundred years.

Peace was made, and the mercenary troops were sent back to Carthage.
Their pay was in arrear, and there was no money left. Matters were so
badly managed that the soldiers were allowed to retain their arms. They
burst into mutiny, ravaged the country, and besieged the capital. The
veterans of Hamilcar could only be conquered by Hamilcar himself. He
saved Carthage, but the struggle was severe. Venerable senators, ladies
of gentle birth, innocent children, had fallen into the hands of the
brutal mutineers, and had been crucified, torn to pieces, tortured to
death in a hundred ways. During those awful orgies of Spendius and Matho,
the Roman war had almost been forgotten; the disasters over which men
had mourned became by comparison happiness and peace. The destruction of
the fleet was viewed as a slight calamity when death was howling at the
city gates. At last Hamilcar triumphed, and the rebels were cast to the
elephants, who kneaded their bodies with their feet and gored them with
their tusks; and Carthage, exhausted, faint from loss of blood,
attempted to repose.

But all was not yet over. The troops that were stationed in Sardinia
rebelled, and Hamilcar prepared to sail with an armament against them.

The Romans had acted in the noblest manner towards the Carthaginians
during the civil war. The Italian merchants had been allowed to supply
Carthage with provisions, and had been forbidden to communicate with the
rebels. When the Sardinian troops mutinied they offered the island to
Rome; the city of Utica had also offered itself to Rome, but the Senate
had refused both applications. And now all of a sudden, as if possessed
by an evil spirit, they pretended that the Carthaginian armament had
been prepared against Rome, and declared war. When Carthage, in the last
stage of misery and prostration, prayed for peace in the name of all the
pitiful gods, it was granted. But Rome had been put to some expense on
account of this intended war; they must therefore pay an additional
indemnity, and surrender Corsica and Sardinia. Poor Carthage was made to
bite the dust indeed.

Hamilcar Barca was appointed commander-in-chief. He was the favourite of
the people. He had to the last remained unconquered in Sicily. He had
saved the city from the mutineers. His honour was unstained, his
patriotism was pure.

In that hour of calamity and shame, when the city was hung with black,
when the spacious docks were empty and bare, when there was woe in every
face and the memory of death in every house, faction was forced to be
silent, and the people were permitted to be heard, and those who loved
their country more than their party rejoiced to see a Man at the head of
affairs. But Hamilcar knew well that he was hated by the leaders of the
government, the politicians by profession, those men who had devoured
the gold which was the very heart of Carthage, and had brought upon her
by their dishonesty this last distressing war; those men who by their
miserable suspicions and intrigues had ever deprived their best generals
of their commands as soon as they began to succeed, and appointed
generals whom they--and the enemy--had no cause to fear. To him was
entrusted by the patriots the office of regenerating Carthage. But how
was it to be done? Without money he was powerless; without money he
could not keep his army together; without money he could not even retain
his command. He had been given it by the people, but the people were
accustomed to be bribed. Gold they must have from the men in power; if
he had none to give they would go to those who had. His enemies he knew
would be able to employ the state revenues against him. What could he
do? Where was the money to be found? He saw before him nothing but
defeat, disgrace, and even an ignominious death--for in Carthage they
sometimes crucified their generals. Often he thought that it would be
better to give up public life, to abandon the corrupt and ruined city,
and to sail to those sweet islands which the Carthaginians had
discovered in the Atlantic Sea. There the earth was always verdant, the
sky was always pure. No fiery sirocco blew, and no cold rain fell in
that delicious land. Odoriferous balm dripped from the branches of the
trees; canary birds sang among the leaves; streams of silver water
rippled downwards to the sea. There Nature was a calm and gentle mother:
there the turmoils of the world might be forgotten; there the weary
heart might be at rest.

Yet how could he desert his fatherland in its affliction? To him the
nation turned its sorrowful eyes; on him the people called as men call
upon their gods. At this feet lay the poor, torn, and wounded
Carthage--the Carthage once so beautiful and so strong, the Carthage who
had fed him from her full breast with riches and with power, the
Carthage who had made him what he was. And should he, who had never
turned his back upon her enemies, desert her now?

Then a glorious idea flashed in upon his brain. He saw a way of
restoring Carthage to her ancient glory, of making her stronger than she
had ever been, of making her a match for Rome. He announced to the
senate that he intended to take the army to Tangiers to reduce a native
tribe which had caused some trouble in the neighbourhood. He quickly
made all arrangements for the march. A few vessels had been prepared for
the expedition to Sardinia. These were commanded by his brother, and he
ordered that they should be sailed along the coast side by side with the
army as it marched. It might have appeared strange to some persons that
he should require ships to make war against a tribe of Moors on land.
But there was no fear of his enemies suspecting his design. It was so
strange and wild that when it had been actually accomplished they could
scarcely believe that it was real.

The night before he marched he went to the Great Temple to offer the
sacrifice of propitiation and entreaty. He took with him his son, a boy
nine years of age. When the libations and other rites were ended and the
victim lay divided on the altar, he ordered the attendants to withdraw.
He remained alone with his son.

The temple of Baal was a magnificent building supported by enormous
columns, covered with gold, or formed of a glass-like substance which
began to glitter and sparkle in a curious manner as the night came on.
Around the temple walls were idols representing the Phoenician gods;
prominent among them was the hideous statue of Moloch, with its
downward-sloping hands and the fiery furnace at its feet. There also
might be seen beautiful Greek statues, trophies of the Sicilian
Wars--especially the Diana which the Carthaginians had taken from
Segesta, which was afterwards restored to that city by the Romans, which
Verres placed in his celebrated gallery and Cicero in his celebrated
speech. There also might be seen the famous brazen bull which an
Athenian invented for the amusement of Phalaris. Human beings were put
inside, a fire was lit underneath, and the throat was so contrived that
the shrieks and groans of the victims made the bull bellow as if he was
alive. The first experiment was made by King Phalaris upon the artist,
and the last by the people upon King Phalaris.

Hamilcar caressed his son and asked him if he would like to go to the
war; when the boy said yes, and showed much delight, Hamilcar took his
little hands and placed them upon the altar, and made him swear that he
would hate the Romans to his dying day. Long years afterwards, when that
boy was an exile in a foreign land--the most glorious, the most
unfortunate of men--he was accused by his royal host of secretly
intriguing with the Romans. He then related this circumstance, and asked
if it was likely that he would ever be a friend to Rome.

Hamilcar marched. The politicians supposed that he was merely engaged in
a third-rate war, and were quite easy in their minds. But one day there
came a courier from Tangiers. He brought tidings which plunged the whole
city in a tumult of wonder and excitement. The three great streets which
led to the market-place were filled with streaming crowds. A multitude
collected round the city hall, in which sat the senators anxiously
deliberating. Women appeared on the roofs of the houses and bent eagerly
over the parapets, while men ran along bawling out the news. Hamilcar
Barca had gone clean off. He was no longer in Africa. He had crossed the
sea. The Tangier expedition was a trick. He had taken the army right
over into Spain, and was fighting with the native chiefs who had always
been the friends and allies of Carthage.

By a strange fortuity, Spain was the Peru of the ancient world. The
horrors of the mines in South America, the sufferings of the Indians,
were copied, so to speak, from the early history of the people who
inflicted them. When the Phoenicians first entered the harbours of
Andalusia they found themselves in a land where silver was used as iron.
They loaded their vessel with the precious metal to the water's edge,
cast away their wooden lead-weighted anchor, and substituted a lump of
pure silver in its stead. Afterwards factories were established,
arrangements were made with the chiefs for the supply of labour, and the
mining was conducted on scientific principles. The Carthaginians
succeeded the Phoenicians, and remained, like them, only on the coast.

It was Hamilcar's design to conquer the whole country, to exact tribute
from the inhabitants, to create a Spanish army. His success was splendid
and complete. The peninsula of Spain became almost entirely a Punic
province. Hamilcar built a city which he called New Carthage--the
Carthagena of modern times--and discovered in its neighbourhood rich
mines of silver-lead which have lately been reopened. He acquired a
private fortune, formed a native army, fed his party at Carthage, and
enriched the treasury of the state. He administered the province nine
years, and then dying, was succeeded by his brother, who, after
governing or reigning a few years, also died. Hannibal, the son of
Hamilcar, became Viceroy of Spain.

It appears strange that Rome should so tamely have allowed the
Carthaginians to take Spain. The truth was that the Romans just then had
enough to do to look after their own affairs. The Gauls of Lombardy had
furiously attacked the Italian cities, and had called to their aid the
Gauls who lived beyond the Alps. Before the Romans had beaten off the
barbarians the conquest in Spain had been accomplished. The Romans
therefore accepted the fact, and contented themselves with a treaty by
which the government of Carthage pledged itself not to pass beyond the
Ebro.

But Hannibal cared nothing about treaties made at Carthage. As Hamilcar
without orders had invaded Spain, so he without orders invaded Italy.
The expedition of the Gauls had shown him that it was possible to cross
the Alps, and he chose that extraordinary route. The Roman army was
about to embark for Spain, which it was supposed would be the seat or
war, when the news arrived that Hannibal had alighted in Italy with
elephants and cavalry, like a man descending from the clouds.

If wars were always decided by individual exploits and pitched battles,
Hannibal would have conquered Italy. He defeated the Romans so often and
so thoroughly that at last they found it their best policy not to fight
with him at all. He could do nothing then but sweep over the country
with his Cossack cavalry, plunder, and destroy. It was impossible for
him to take Rome, which was protected by walls strong as rocks and by
rocks steep as walls. When he did march on Rome, encamping within three
miles of the city and raising a panic during an afternoon, it was done
merely as a ruse to draw away the Roman army from the siege of Capua.
But it did not have even that effect. The army before Capua remained
where it was, and another army appeared as if by magic to defend the
city. Rome appeared to be inexhaustible, and so in reality it was.

Hannibal knew well that Italy could be conquered only by Italians. So
great a general could never have supposed that with a handful of cavalry
he could subdue a country which had a million armed men to bring into
the field. He had taken it for granted that if he could gain some
success at first he would be joined by the subject cities. But in spite
of his great victories they remained true to Rome. Nothing shows so
clearly the immense resources of the Italian Republic as that second
Punic War. Hannibal was in their country, but they employed against him
only a portion of their troops. A second army was in Sicily waging war
against his Greek allies; a third army was in Spain, attacking his
operations at the base, pulling Carthage out of Europe by the roots.
Added to which, it was now the Romans who ruled the sea. When Scipio had
taken New Carthage and conquered Spain, he crossed over into Africa, and
Hannibal was of necessity recalled. He met on the field of Zama a
general whose genius was little inferior to his own, and who possessed
an infinitely better army. Hannibal lost the day, and the fate of
Carthage was decided. It was not the battle which did that; it was the
nature and constitution of the state. In itself the battle of Zama was
not a more ruinous defeat than the battle of Cannae. But Carthage was
made of different stuff from that of Rome. How could a war between those
two people have ended otherwise than as it did? Rome was an armed nation
fighting in Italy for hearth and home, in Africa for glory and revenge.
Carthage was a city of merchants, who paid men to fight for them, and
whose army was dissolved as soon as the exchequer was exhausted. Rome
could fight to its last man; Carthage could fight only to its last
dollar. At the beginning of both wars the Carthaginians did wonders, but
as they became poor they became feeble; their strength dribbled out with
their gold; the refusal of Alexandria to negotiate a loan perhaps
injured them more deeply than the victory of Scipio.

The fall of the Carthaginian empire is not a matter for regret. Outside
the walls of the city existed hopeless slavery on the part of the
subject, shameless extortion on the part of the officials. Throughout
Africa Carthage was never named without a curse. In the time of the
mercenary war the Moorish women, taking oath to keep nothing back,
stripped off their gold ornaments and brought them all to the men who
were resisting their oppressors. That city, that Carthage, fed like a
vulture upon the land. A corrupt and grasping aristocracy, a corrupt and
turbulent populace, divided between them the prey. The Carthaginian
customs were barbarous in the extreme. When a battle had been won they
sacrificed their handsomest prisoners to the gods; when a battle had
been lost the children of their noblest families were cast into the
furnace. Their Asiatic character was strongly marked. They were a people
false and sweet-worded, effeminate and cruel, tyrannical and servile,
devout and licentious, merciless in triumph, faint-hearted in danger,
divinely heroic in despair.

Let us therefore admit that, as an imperial city, Carthage merited her
fate. But henceforth we must regard her from a different point of view.
In order to obtain peace she had given up her colonies abroad, her
provinces at home, her vessels and elephants of war. The empire was
reduced to a municipality. Nothing was left but the city and a piece of
ground. The merchant princes took off their crowns and went back into
the glass and purple business. It was only as a town of manufacture and
trade that Carthage continued to exist, and as such her existence was of
unmixed service to the world.

Hannibal was made prime minister, and at once set to work to reform the
constitution. The aristocratic party informed the Romans that he was
secretly stirring up the people to war. The Romans demanded that he
should be surrendered; he escaped to the court of Antiochus, the Greek
king in Asia Minor, and there he did attempt to raise war against Rome.
The senate were justified in expelling him from Carthage, for he was
really a dangerous man. But the persecution to which he was afterwards
subjected was not very creditable to their good fame. Driven from place
to place, he at last took refuge in Bithynia, on the desolate shores of
the Black Sea, and a Roman consul, who wished to obtain some notoriety by
taking home the great Carthaginian as a show, commanded the prince under
whose protection he was living to give him up. When Hannibal heard of
this he took poison, saying, "Let me deliver the Romans from their cares
and anxieties since they think it too tedious and too dangerous to wait
for the death of a poor, hated old man." The news of this occurrence
excited anger in Rome, but it was the presage of a greater crime which
was soon to be committed in the Roman name.

There was a Berber chief named Masinissa who had been deprived of his
estates, and who during the war had rendered important services to Rome.
He was made king of Numidia, and it was stipulated in the treaty that
the Carthaginians should restore the lands and cities which had belonged
to him and to his ancestors. The lands which they had taken from him
were accordingly surrendered, and then Masinissa sent in a claim for
certain lands which he said had been taken from his ancestors. The
wording of the treaty was ambiguous. He might easily declare that the
whole of the sea-coast had belonged to his family in ancient times, and
who could disprove the evidence of a tradition? He made no secret of his
design; it was to drive the Phoenician strangers out of Africa and to
reign at Carthage in their stead. He soon showed that he was worthy to
be called the King of Numidia and the Friend of Rome. He drilled his
bandits into soldiers; he taught his wandering shepherds to till the
ground. He made his capital, Constantine, a great city; he opened
schools in which the sons of native chiefs were taught to read and write
in the Punic tongue. He allied himself with the powers of Morocco and
the Atlas. He reminded the Berbers that it was to them the soil
belonged, that the Phoenicians were intruders who had come with presents
in their hands and with promises in their mouths, declaring that they
had met with trouble in their own country, and praying for a place where
they might repose from the weary sea. Their fathers had trusted them;
their fathers had been bitterly deceived. By force and by fraud the
Carthaginians had taken all the lands which they possessed; they had
stolen the ground on which their city stood.

In the meantime Rome advanced into the East. As soon as the battle of
Zama had been fought Alexandria demanded her protection. This brought
the Romans into contact with the Graeco-Asiatic world; they found it in
much the same condition as the English found Hindustan, and they
conquered it in much the same manner.

Time went on. The generation of Hannibal had almost become extinct. In
Carthage war had become a tradition of the past. The business of that
city was again as flourishing as it had ever been. Again ships sailed to
the coasts of Cornwall and Guinea; again the streets were lined with the
workshops of industrious artisans. Such is the vis medicatrix, the
restoring power of a widely extended commerce, combined with active
manufactures and the skilful management of soil, that the city soon
regained its ancient wealth. The Romans had imposed an enormous
indemnity which was to be paid off by instalments extending over a
series of years. The Carthaginians paid it off at once.

But in the midst of all their prosperity and happiness there were grave
and anxious hearts. They saw ever before them the menacing figure of
Masinissa. The very slowness of his movements was portentous. He was in
all things deliberate, gradual, and calm. From time to time he demanded
a tract of land; if it was not given up at once he took it by force.
Then, waiting as if to digest it, he left them for a while in peace.

They were bound by treaty not to make war against the Friend of Rome.
They therefore petitioned the Senate that commissioners should be sent
and the boundary definitely settled. But the Senate had no desire that
Carthage should be left in peace. The commissioners were instructed to
report in such a manner that Masinissa might be encouraged to continue
his depredations. They brought back astonishing accounts of the
magnificence and activity of the African metropolis; and among these
commissioners there was one man who never ceased to declare that the
country was in danger, and who never rose to speak in the House without
saying before he sat down: "And it is my opinion, fathers, that Carthage
must be destroyed."

Cato the censor has been called the last of the old Romans. That class
of patriot farmers had been extinguished by Hannibal's invasion. In
order to live during the long war they had been obliged to borrow money
on their lands. When the war was over the prices of everything rose to
an unnatural height; the farmers could not recover themselves, and the
Roman law of debt was severe. They were ejected by thousands--it was the
favourite method to turn the women and children out of doors while the
poor man was working in the fields. Italy was converted into a
plantation; slaves in chains tilled the land. No change was made in the
letter of the constitution, but the commonwealth ceased to exist.
Society was now composed of the nobles, the money-merchants or city men,
and a mob like that of Carthage, which lived on saleable votes, sometimes
raging for agrarian laws, and which was afterwards fed at government
expense like a wild beast every day.

At this time a few refined and intellectual men began to cultivate a
taste for Greek literature and the fine arts. They collected libraries,
and adorned them with busts of celebrated men and with antiques of
Corinthian bronze. Crowds of imitators soon arose, and the conquests in
the East awakened new ideas. In the days of old the Romans had been
content to decorate their door-posts with trophies obtained in single
combat, and their halls with the waxen portraits of their ancestors. The
only spoils which they could then display were flocks and herds, wagons
of rude structure, and heaps of spears and helmets. But now the arts of
Greece and the riches of Asia adorned the triumphs of their generals,
and the reign of taste and luxury commenced. A race of dandies appeared
who wore semi-transparent robes, and who were always passing their hands
in an affected manner through their hair--who lounged with the languor
of the Sybarite, and spoke with the lisp of Alcibiades. The wives of
senators and bankers became genteel, kept a herd of ladies' maids,
passed hours before their full-length silver mirrors, bathed in asses'
milk, rouged their cheeks and dyed their hair, never went out except in
palanquins, gabbled Greek phrases, and called their slaves by Greek
names even when they happened to be of Latin birth. The houses of the
great were paved with mosaic floors, and the painted walls were works of
art: sideboards were covered with gold and silver plate, with vessels of
amber and of the tinted Alexandrine glass. The bathrooms were of marble,
with the water issuing from silver tubes.

New amusements were invented, and new customs began to reign. An academy
was established, in which five hundred boys and girls were taught
castanet dances of anything but a decorous kind. The dinner hour was
made later, and instead of sitting at table they adopted the style of
lying down to eat on sofas inlaid with tortoiseshell and gold. It was
chiefly in the luxuries of the cuisine that the Romans exhibited their
wealth. Prodigious prices were paid for a good Greek cook. Every
patrician villa was a castle of gastronomical delight: it was provided
with its salt-water tank for fish and oysters, and an aviary which was
filled with field-fares, ortolans, nightingales, and thrushes; a white
dove-cot, like a tower, stood beside the house, and beneath it was a
dark dungeon for fattening the birds; there was also a poultry ground,
with pea-fowl, guinea-fowl, and pink feathered flamingoes imported from
the East, while an orchard of fig-trees, honey-apples, and other fruits,
and a garden in which the trees of cypress and yew were clipped into
fantastic shapes, conferred an aspect of rural beauty on the scene. The
hills round the Bay of Naples were covered with these villas; and to
that charming region it became the fashion to resort at a certain season
of the year. In such places gambling, drinking, and lovemaking shook off
all restraints. Black-eyed soubrettes tripped perpetually about with
billets-doux in Greek; the rattle of the ivory dice-box could be heard
in the streets, like the click of billiard balls in the Parisian
boulevards; and many a boat with purple sails and with garlands of roses
twined round its mast floated softly along the water, laughter and sweet
music sounding from the prow.

Happily for Cato's peace of mind, he died before the casino with its
cachucha--or cancan, or whatever it might have been--was introduced, and
before the fashions of Asia had been added to those of Greece. But he
lived long enough to see the Graeco-maniacs triumphant. In earlier and
happier days he had been able to expel two philosophers from Rome, but
now he saw them swarming in the streets with their ragged cloaks and
greasy beards, and everywhere obtaining seats as domestic chaplains at
the tables of the rich. He could now do no more than protest in his
bitter and extravagant style against the corruption of the age. He
prophesied that as soon as Rome had thoroughly imbibed the Greek
philosophy she would lose the empire of the world; he declared that
Socrates was a prating, seditious fellow who well deserved his fate; and
he warned his son to beware of the Greek physicians, for the Greeks had
laid a plot to kill all the Romans, and the doctors had been deputed to
put it into execution with their medicines.

Cato was a man of an iron body which was covered with honourable scars,
a loud, harsh voice, greenish-grey eyes, foxy hair, and enormous teeth
resembling tusks. His face was so hideous and forbidding that, according
to one of the hundred epigrams that were composed against him, he would
wander for ever on the banks of the Styx, for hell itself would be
afraid to let him in. He was distinguished as a general, as an orator,
and as an author, but he pretended that it was his chief ambition to be
considered a good farmer. He lived in a little cottage on his Sabine
estate, and went in the morning to practise as an advocate in the
neighbouring town. When he came home he stripped to the skin and worked
in the fields with his slaves, drinking as they did the vinegar-water or
the thin, sour wine. In the evening he used to boil the turnips for his
supper while his wife made the bread. Although he cared so little about
external things, if he gave an entertainment and the slaves had not
cooked it or waited to his liking, he used to chastise them with leather
thongs. It was one of his maxims to sell his slaves when they grew
old--the worst cruelty that a slave-owner can commit. "For my part,"
says Plutarch, "I should never have the heart to sell an ox that had
grown old in my service, still less my aged slave."

Cato's old-fashioned virtue paid very well. He gratified his personal
antipathies and obtained the character of the people's friend. He was
always impeaching the great men of his country, and was himself
impeached nearly fifty times. The man who sets up as being much better
than his age is always to be suspected, and Cato is perhaps the best
specimen of the rugged hypocrite and austere charlatan that history can
produce. This censor of morals bred slaves for sale. He made laws
against usury and then turned usurer himself. He was always preaching
about the vanity of riches, and wrote an excellent work on the best way
of getting rich. He degraded a Roman knight for kissing his wife in the
day-time in the presence of his daughter, and he himself, while he was
living under his daughter-in-law's roof, bestowed his favours on one of
the servant girls of the establishment, and allowed her to be impudent
to her young mistress. "Old age," he once said to a grey-headed
debauchee, "has deformities enough of its own. Do not add to it the
deformity of vice." At the time of the amorous affair above mentioned
Cato was nearly eighty years of age.

On the other hand, he was a most faithful servant to his country; he was
a truly religious man, and his god was the Commonwealth of Rome. Nor was
he destitute of the domestic virtues, though sadly deficient in that
respect. He used to say that those who beat their wives and children
laid their sacrilegious hands on the holiest things in the world. He
educated his son himself, taught him to box, to ride, and to swim, and
wrote out for him a history of Rome in large pothook characters, that he
might become acquainted at an early age with the great actions of the
ancient Romans. He was as careful in what he said before the child as if
he had been in the presence of the vestal virgins.

This Cato was the man on whom rests chiefly the guilt of the murder
which we must now relate. In public and in private, by direct
denunciation, by skilful innuendo, by appealing to the fears of some and
to the interests of others, he laboured incessantly towards his end.
Once, after he had made a speech against Carthage in the senate, he
shook the skirt of his robe as if by accident, and some African figs
fell upon the ground. When all had looked and wondered at their size and
beauty he observed that the place where they grew was only three days'
sail from Rome.

It is possible that Cato was sincere in his alarms, for he was one of
the few survivors of the second Punic War. He had felt the arm of
Carthage in its strength. He could remember that day when even Romans
had turned pale; when the old men covered their faces with their
mantles; when the young men clambered on the walls; when the women ran
wailing round the temples of the gods, praying for protection and
sweeping the shrines with their hair; when a cry went forth that
Hannibal was at the gates; when a panic seized the city; when the
people, collecting on the roofs, flung tiles at Roman soldiers,
believing them to be the enemy already in the town; when all over the
Campagna could be seen the smoke of ricks and farmhouses mounting in the
air, and the wild Berber horsemen driving herds of cattle to the Punic
camp.

Besides, it was his theory that the annihilation of foreign powers was
the building up of Rome. He used to boast that in his Peninsular
campaign he had demolished a Spanish town a day. There were in the
Senate many enlightened men who denied that the prosperity of Rome could
be assisted by the destruction of trading cities, and Carthage was
defended by the Scipio party. But the influence of the banker class was
employed on Cato's side. They wanted every penny that was spent in the
Mediterranean world to pass through their books. Carthage and Corinth
were rival firms which it was to their profit to destroy. These
money-mongers possessed great power in the senate and the state, and at
last they carried the day. It was privately resolved that Carthage
should be attacked as soon as an opportunity occurred.

Thus in Africa and in Italy Masinissa and Cato prepared the minds of men
for the deed of blood. It was as if the Furies of the slaughtered dead
had entered the bodies of those two old men and kept them alive beyond
their natural term. Cato had done his share. It was now Masinissa's
turn. As soon as he was assured that he would be supported by the Romans,
he struck again and again the wretched people, who were afraid to resist
and yet who soon saw that it would be folly to submit. It was evident
that Rome would not interfere. If Masinissa was not checked he would
strip them of their cornfields; he would starve them to death. The war
party at last prevailed; the city was fortified and armed. Masinissa
descended on their villas, their gardens, and their farms. Driven to
despair, the Carthaginians went forth to defend the crops which their
own hands had sown. A great battle was fought, and Masinissa was
victorious.

On a hill near the battlefield sat a young Roman officer, Scipio
Aemilianus, a relative of the man who had defeated Hannibal. He had been
sent over from Spain for a squadron of elephants, and arrived in
Masinissa's camp at this interesting crisis. The news of the battle was
soon despatched by him to Rome. The treaty had now been broken, and the
Senate declared war.

The Carthaginians fell into an agony of alarm. They were now so broken
down that a vassal of Rome could defeat them in the open field. What had
they to expect in a war with Rome? Ambassadors were at once dispatched
with full powers to obtain peace--peace at any price--from the terrible
Republic. The envoys presented themselves before the Senate; they
offered the submission of the Carthaginians, who formally disowned the
act of war, who had put the two leaders of the war-party to death, and
who desired nothing but the alliance and goodwill of Rome. The answer
which they received was this: "Since the Carthaginians are so well
advised, the senate returns them their country, their laws, their
sepulchres, their liberties, and their estates, if they will surrender
three hundred sons of their senators as hostages, and obey the orders of
the consuls."

The Roman army had already disembarked. When the consuls landed on the
coast no resistance was made. They demanded provisions. Then the city
gates were opened, and long trains of bullocks and mules laden with corn
were driven to the Roman camp. The hostages were demanded. Then the
senators brought forth their children and gave them to the city; the
city gave them to the Romans; the Romans placed them on board the
galleys, which at once spread their sails and departed from the coast.
The roofs of the palaces of Carthage were crowded with women who watched
these receding sails with straining eyes and outstretched arms. Never
more would they see their beloved ones. Yet they would not perhaps have
grieved so much at the children leaving Carthage had they known what was
to come.

The city gates again opened. The Senate sent its council to the Roman
camp. A company of venerable men clad in purple, with golden chains,
presented themselves at headquarters and requested to know what were the
"orders of the consuls." They were told that Carthage must disarm. They
returned to the city and at once sent out to the camp all their
fleet material and artillery, all the military stores in the public
magazines, and all the arms that could be found in the possession of
private individuals. Three thousand catapults and two hundred thousand
sets of armour were given up.

They again came out to the camp. The military council was assembled to
receive them. The old men saluted the Roman ensigns, and bowed low to
the consuls, placing their hands upon their breasts. The orders of the
consuls, they said, had been obeyed. Was there anything more that their
lords had to command?

The senior consul rose up and said that there was something more. He was
instructed by the Roman Senate to inform the senators of Carthage that
the city must be destroyed, but that in accordance with the promise of
the Roman Senate their country, their laws, their sepulchres, their
liberties, and their estates would be preserved, and they might build
another city. Only it must be without walls, and at a distance of at
least ten miles from the sea.

The Carthaginians cast themselves upon the ground, and the whole
assembly fell into confusion. The consul explained that he could
exercise no choice: he had received his orders, and they must be carried
out. He requested them to return and apprise their fellow-townsmen. Some
of the senators remained in the Roman camp; others ventured to go back.
When they drew near the city the people came running out to meet them,
and asked them the news. They answered only by weeping and beating their
foreheads, and stretching out their hands and calling on the gods. They
went on to the senate house; the members were summoned; an enormous
crowd gathered in the market-place. Presently the doors opened; the
senators came forth, and the orders of the consuls were announced.

And then there rose in the air a fierce, despairing shriek, a yell of
agony and rage. The mob rushed through the city and tore limb from limb
the Italians who were living in the town. With one voice it was resolved
that the city should be defended to the last. They would not so tamely
give up their beautiful Carthage, their dear and venerable home beside
the sea. If it was to be burnt to ashes, their ashes should be mingled
with it, and their enemies' as well.

All the slaves were set free. Old and young, rich and poor, worked
together day and night forging arms. The public buildings were pulled
down to procure timber and metal. The women cut off their hair to make
strings for the catapults. A humble message was sent in true Oriental
style to the consul, praying for a little time. Days passed, and
Carthage gave no signs of life. Tired of waiting, the consul marched
towards the city, which he expected to enter like an open village. He
found, to his horror, the gates closed, and the battlements bristling
with artillery.

Carthage was strongly fortified, and it was held by men who had
abandoned hope. The siege lasted more than three years. Cato did not
live to see his darling wish fulfilled. Masinissa also died while the
siege was going on, and bitter was his end. The policy of the Romans had
been death to all his hopes. His dream of a great African empire was
dissolved. He sullenly refused to co-operate with the Romans--it was
his Carthage which they had decreed should be levelled to the ground.

There was a time when it seemed as if the great city would prove itself
to be impregnable; the siege was conducted with small skill or vigour by
the Roman generals. More than one reputation found its grave before the
walls of Carthage. But when Scipio Aemilianus obtained the command, he at
once displayed the genius of his house. Perceiving that it would be
impossible to subdue the city as long as smuggling traders could run
into the port with provisions, he constructed a stone mole across the
mouth of the harbour. Having thus cut off the city from the sea, he
pitched his camp on the neck of the isthmus--for Carthage was built on a
peninsula--and so cut it off completely from the land. For the first
time in the siege the blockade was complete: the city was enclosed in a
stone and iron cage. The Carthaginians in their fury brought forth the
prisoners whom they had taken in their sallies, and hurled them headlong
from the walls. There were many in the city who protested against this
outrage. They were denounced as traitors; a reign of terror commenced;
the men of the moderate party were crucified in the streets. The hideous
idol of Moloch found victims in that day; children were placed on its
outstretched and downward-sloping hands and rolled off them into the
fiery furnace which was burning at its feet. Nor were there wanting
patriots who sacrificed themselves upon the altars that the gods might
have compassion upon those who survived. But among these pestilence and
famine had begun to work, and the sentinels could scarcely stand to
their duty on the walls. Gangs of robbers went from house to house and
tortured people to make them give up their food; mothers fed upon their
children; a terrible disease broke out; corpses lay scattered in the
streets; men who were burying the dead fell dead upon them; others dug
their own graves and lay down in them to die; houses in which all had
perished were used as public sepulchres, and were quickly filled.

And then, as if the birds of the air had carried the news, it became
known all over Northern Africa that Carthage was about to fall. And then
from the dark and dismal corners of the land, from the wasted frontiers
of the desert, from the snow lairs, and caverns of the Atlas, there came
creeping and crawling to the coast the most abject of the human
race--black, naked, withered beings, their bodies covered with red
paint, their hair cut in strange fashions, their language composed of
muttering and whistling sounds. By day they prowled round the camp and
fought with the dogs for the offal and the bones. If they found a skin
they roasted it on ashes and danced round it in glee, wriggling their
bodies and uttering abominable cries. When the feast was over they
cowered together on their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes upon the
city, and expanded their blubber lips, and showed their white fangs.

At last the day came. The harbour walls were carried by assault, and the
Roman soldiers pressed into the narrow streets which led down to the
water side. The houses were six or seven storeys high, and each house
was a fortress which had to be stormed. Lean and haggard creatures, with
eyes of flame, defended their homesteads from room to room, onwards,
upwards, to the death struggle on the broad, flat roof.

Day followed day, and still that horrible music did not cease--the
shouts and songs of the besiegers, the yells and shrieks of the
besieged, the moans of the wounded, the feeble cries of children divided
by the sword. Night followed night, and still the deadly work went on;
there was no sleep and no darkness; the Romans lighted houses that they
might see to kill.

Six days passed thus, and only the citadel was left. It was a steep rock
in the middle of the town; a temple of the God of Healing crowned its
summit.

The rock was covered with people, who could be seen extending their arms
to heaven and uniting with one another in the last embrace. Their
piteous lamentations, like the cries of wounded animals, ascended in the
air, and behind the iron circle which enclosed them could be heard the
crackling of the fire and the dull boom of falling beams.

The soldiers were weary with smiting: they were filled with blood.
Nine-tenths of the inhabitants had been already killed. The people on the
rock were offered their lives; they descended with bare hands and passed
under the yoke. Some of them ended their days in prison; the greater
part were sold as slaves.

But in the temple on the summit of the rocky hill nine hundred Roman
deserters, for whom there could be no pardon, stood at bay. The trumpets
sounded; the soldiers, clashing their bucklers with their swords and
uttering the war-cry alala! alala! Advanced to the attack. Of a sudden
the sea of steel recoiled, the standards reeled; a long tongue of flame
sprang forth upon them through the temple door. The deserters had set
the building on fire that they might escape the ignominious death of
martial law.

A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive branch in
his hand. This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the
Robespierre of the reign of terror. His life was given him; he would do
for the triumph. And as he bowed the knee before the consul a woman
appeared on the roof of the temple with two children in her arms. She
poured forth some scornful words upon her husband, and then plunged with
her children into the flames.

Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed. Then the
plough was passed over the soil to put an end in legal form to the
existence of the city. House might never again be built, corn might
never again be sown, upon the ground where it had stood. A hundred years
afterwards Julius Caesar founded another Carthage and planted a Roman
colony therein. But it was not built upon the same spot. The old site
remained accursed; it was a browsing ground for cattle, a field of
blood. When recently the remains of the city walls were disinterred they
were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet
deep. Filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and
projectiles.

The possessions of the Carthaginians were formed into a Roman province
which was called Africa. The governor resided at Utica, which with the
other old Phoenician towns received municipal rights, but paid a fixed
stipend to the state exchequer. The territory of Carthage itself became
Roman domain land, and was let on lease. Italian merchants flocked to
Utica in great numbers and reopened the inland trade, but the famous sea
trade was not revived. The Britons of Cornwall might in vain gather on
high places and strain their eyes towards the west. The ships which had
brought them beads and purple cloth would come again no more.

A descendant of Masinissa, who inherited his genius, defied the Roman
power in a long war. He was finally conquered by Sylla and Marius,
caught, and carried off to Rome. Apparelled in barbaric splendour, he
was paraded through the streets. But when the triumph was over his
guards rushed upon him and struggled for the finery in which he had been
dressed. They tore the rings from his ears with such force that the
flesh came away; they cast him naked into a dungeon under ground. "O
Romans, you give me a cold bath!" were the last words of the valiant
Jugurtha.

The next Numidian prince who appeared at a triumph was the young Juba,
who had taken the side of Pompey against Caesar. "It proved to be a
happy captivity for him," says Plutarch, "for from a barbarous and
unlettered Numidian he became an historian worthy to be numbered amongst
the learned men of Greece."

When the empire became established the kingdoms of Numidia, of Cyrene,
and of Egypt were swept away. Africa was divided into seven fruitful
provinces ranging along the coast from Tripoli to Tangiers. Egypt was
made a province, with the tropical line for its southern frontier. The
oasis of Cyrene, with its fields of asafoetida, was a middle station
between the two. But still the history of Northern Africa and the
history of Egypt remain distinct. The Roman empire, though held together
for a time by strong and skilful hands, was divided by customs and modes
of thought arising out of language into the Greek and Latin worlds. In
the countries which had been civilised by the Romans Latin had been
introduced. In the countries which before the Roman conquest had been
conquered by Alexander, the Greek language maintained its ground.
Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene belonged to the
Greek world; Italy Gaul, Spain, and Africa belonged to the Latin world.
Greek was never spoken in Roman Carthage except by a few merchants and
learned men. Latin was never spoken in Alexandria except in the law
courts and at Government House. Whenever there was a partition of the
empire Egypt was assigned to one emperor, Carthage to the other. In the
Church history of Africa the same phenomenon may be observed. The Church
of Africa was the daughter of the Church of Rome, and was chiefly
occupied with questions of discipline and law. The Church of Egypt was
essentially a Greek church; it was occupied entirely with definitions of
the undefinable and solutions of problems in theology.

In one respect, however, the histories of Egypt and Africa are the same.
They were both of them cornfields, and both of them were ruined by the
Romans. In the early days of the empire there was a noble reform in
provincial affairs resembling that which Clive accomplished in British
India when he visited that country for the last time. There was then an
end to that tyrant of prey who under the republic had contrived in a few
years to extort an enormous fortune from his proconsulate, and who was
often accompanied by a wife more rapacious than himself; who returned to
Rome with herds of slaves and cargoes of bullion and of works of art.
Governors were appointed with fixed salaries; the Roman law was
everywhere introduced; vast sums of money were expended on the public
works.

Unhappily this did not last. Rome was devoured by a population of mean
whites, the result of foreign slavery, which invariably degrades labour.
This vast rabble was maintained by the state; rations of bread and oil
were served out to it every day. When the evil time came and the
exchequer was exhausted, the governors of Africa and Egypt were required
to send the usual quantity of grain all the same, and to obtain their
percentage as best they could. They were transformed into satraps or
pashas. The great landowners were accused of conspiracy, and their
estates escheated to the crown. The agriculturists were reduced to
serfdom. There might be a scarcity of food in Africa, but there must be
none in Rome. Every year were to be seen the huge ships lying in the
harbours of Alexandria and Carthage, and the mountains of corn piled
high upon the quays. When the seat of empire was transferred to the
Bosphorus the evil became greater still. Each province was forced to do
double work. There was now a populace in Constantinople which was fed
entirely by Egypt, and Africa supported the populace of Rome. While the
Egyptian fellah and the Moorish peasant were labouring in the fields,
the sturdy beggars of Byzantium and Rome were amusing themselves at the
circus or basking on marble in the sun.

But Africa was not only a plantation of corn and oil for their imperial
majesties the Italian lazzaroni. It also contained the preserves of
Rome. The lion was a royal beast; it was licensed to feed upon the flock
of the shepherds, and upon the shepherd himself if it preferred him. The
unfortunate Moor could not defend his life without a violation of the
game laws, which were quite as ferocious as the lion. It will easily be
imagined that the Roman rule was not agreeable to the native population.
They had fallen beneath a power compared with which that of the
Carthaginians was feeble and kind; which possessed the strength of
civilisation without its mercy. But when that power began to decline
they lifted up their heads and joined the foreign invaders as soon as
they appeared, as their fathers had joined the Romans in the ancient
days.

These invaders were the Vandals, a tribe of Germans from the North who
had conquered Spain and who, now pouring over the Gibraltar Straits,
took Carthage and ruled there a hundred years. The Romans struggled hard
to regain their cornfields, and the old duel of Rome and Carthage was
resumed. This time it was Carthage that was triumphant. It repelled the
Romans when they invaded Africa. It became a naval power, scoured the
Mediterranean, re-conquered Sicily and Sardinia, plundered the shores of
Italy, and encamped beneath the mouldering walls of Rome. The gates of
the city were opened, and the bishop of Rome, attended by his clergy,
came forth in solemn procession to offer the submission of Rome, and to
pray for mercy to the churches and their captives. Doubtless in that
army of Germans and Moors by whom they were received there were men of
Phoenician descent who had read in history of a similar scene. Rome was
more fortunate than ancient Carthage: the city was sacked, but it was
not destroyed. Not long afterwards it was taken by the Goths. Kings
dressed in furs sat opposite each other on the thrones of Carthage and
of Rome.

The Emperor of the East sent the celebrated Belisarius against the
Carthaginian Vandals, who had become corrupted by luxury and whom he
speedily subdued. Thus Africa was restored to Rome, but it was a Greek
speaking Rome, and the citizens of Carthage still felt themselves to be
under foreign rule. Besides, the war had reduced the country to a
wilderness. One might travel for days without meeting a human being in
those fair coast lands which had once been filled with olive groves, and
vineyards, and fields of waving corn. The savage Berber tribes pressed
more and more fiercely on the cultivated territory which still remained.
It is probable that if the Arabs had not come the Moors would have
driven the Byzantines out of the land, or at least have forced them to
remain as prisoners behind their walls.

With the invasion of the Arabs the proper history of Africa begins. It
is now that we are able for the first time to leave the coasts of the
Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile, and to penetrate into that vast
and mysterious world of which the ancient geographers had but a faint
and incorrect idea.

It is evident enough from the facts which have been adduced in the
foregoing sketch that Egypt and Carthage contributed much to human
progress--Egypt by instructing Greece, Carthage by drawing forth Rome to
the conquest of the world.

But these countries did little for Africa itself. The ambition of Egypt
was with good reason turned towards Asia, that of Carthage towards
Europe. The influence of Carthage on the regions of the Niger was
similar to that of Egypt on the negro regions of the Nile. In each case
it became the fashion for the native chiefs to wear Egyptian linen or
the Tyrian purple, and to decorate their wives with beads which are
often discovered by the negroes of the present day in ancient and
forgotten graves. Elephants were hunted and gold pits were dug in
Central Africa, that these luxuries might be procured; but the chief
article of export was the slave, and this commodity was obtained by
means of war. The negroes have often been accused of rejecting the
civilisation of the Egyptians and Carthaginians, but they were never
brought into contact with those people. The intercourse between them was
conducted by the intermediate Berber tribes.

Those Berber tribes who inhabited the regions adjoining Egypt and Cyrene
appear to have been in some degree improved. But they were a roving
people, and civilisation can never ripen under tents. Something,
however, was accomplished among those who were settled in cities or the
regions of the coast. That the Berber race possesses a remarkable
capacity for culture has been amply proved. It is probable that Terence
was a Moor. It is certain that Juba, whose works have been unfortunately
lost, was of unmixed Berber blood. Reading and writing were common among
them, and they used a character of their own. When the Romans took
Carthage they gave the public library and archives to the Berber chiefs.
At one time it seemed as if Barbary was destined to become a civilised
province after the pattern of Spain and Gaul. Numidian princes adopted
the culture of the Greeks, and Juba was placed on his ancestral throne
that he might tame his wild subjects into Roman citizens. But this
movement soon perished, and the Moorish chiefs fell back into their
bandit life.


Roman Africa


The African Church has obtained imperishable fame. In the days of
suffering it brought forth martyrs whose fiery ardour and serene
endurance have never been surpassed. In the days of victory it brought
forth minds by whose imperial writings thousands of cultivated men have
been enslaved. But this church was for the most part confined to
the walled cities on the coast, to the farming villages in which the
Punic speech was still preserved, and to a few Moorish tribes who lived
under Roman rule. In the days of St. Augustine Christianity was in its
zenith, and St. Augustine complains that there were hundreds of Berber
chiefs who had never heard the name of Christ. Even in Roman Africa the
triumph of Christianity was not complete. In Carthage itself Astarte and
Moloch were still adored, and a bare-footed monk could not show himself
in the streets without being pelted by the populace. At a later date the
Moorish tribes became an heretical and hostile sect; the religious
persecutions of the Arian Vandals were succeeded by the persecutions of
the Byzantine Greeks. Christianity was divided and almost dead when the
Arabs appeared, and the Church which had withstood ten imperial
persecutions succumbed to the tax which the conquerors imposed on "the
people of the book."


The Arabs


The failure of Christianity in Africa was owing to the imperfection of
the Roman conquest. Their occupation was of a purely military kind, and
it did not embrace an extensive area. The Romans were entirely distinct
from the natives in manners and ideas. It was natural that the Berbers
should reject the religion of a people whose language they did not
understand, whose tyranny they detested, and whose power most of them
defied. But the Arabs were accustomed to deserts; they did not settle,
like the Romans and the Carthaginians, on the coast; they covered the
whole land; they penetrated into the recesses of the Atlas; they pursued
their enemies into the depths of the Sahara. But they also mingled
persuasion with force. They believed that the Berbers were Arabs like
themselves, and invited them as kinsmen to accept the mission of the
prophet. They married the daughters of the land; they gathered round
their standards the warriors whom they had defeated, and led them to the
glorious conquest of Spain. The two peoples became one; the language and
religion of the Arabs were accepted by the Moors.

With this event the biography of ancient Africa is closed, and the
history of Asiatic Africa begins. But I have in this work a twofold
story to unfold. I have to describe the Dark Continent: to show in what
way it is connected with universal history; what it has received and
what it has contributed to the development of man. And I have also to
sketch in broad outline the human history itself. This task has been
forced upon me in the course of my inquiries. It is impossible to
measure a tributary and to estimate its value with precision except by
comparing it with the other affluents, and by carefully mapping the main
stream. In writing a history of Africa I am compelled to write the
history of the world, in order that Africa's true position may be
defined.

And now, passing to the general questions discussed in this chapter, it
will be observed that war is the chief agent of civilisation in the
period which I have attempted to portray. It was war which drove the
Egyptians into those frightful deserts in the midst of which their Happy
Valley was discovered. It was war which under the Persians opened lands
which had been either closed against foreigners or jealously held ajar.
It was war which colonised Syria and Asia Minor with Greek ideas, and
which planted in Alexandria the experimental philosophy which will win
for us in time the dominion of the earth. It was war which united the
Greek and Latin worlds into a splendid harmony of empire. And when that
ancient world had been overcome by languor and had fallen into Oriental
sleep; when nothing was taught in the schools which had not been taught
a hundred years before; when the rapacity of tyrants had extinguished
the ambition of the rich and the industry of the poor; when the Church
also had become inert, and roused itself only to be cruel--then again
came war across the Rhine and the Danube and the Alps, and laid the
foundations of European life among the ruins of the Latin world. In the
same manner Asia awoke as if by magic, and won back from Europe the
lands which she had lost. But this latter conquest, though effected by
means of war, was preserved by means of religion, an element of history
which must be analysed with scientific care. In the next chapter I shall
explain the origin of the religious sentiment and theory in savage life.
I shall sketch the early career of the three great Semitic creeds and
the characters of three men--Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed--who, whatever
may have been their faults, are entitled to the eternal gratitude of the
human race. Then, resuming the history of Africa, I shall follow the
course of Islam over the Great Desert into the Sudan, and shall describe
its progress in that country by means of the sword and of the school,
something of which I have seen and studied under both forms.



CHAPTER II: RELIGION


The Natural History of Religion


When the poet invokes in his splendid frenzy the shining spheres of
heaven, the murmuring fountains, and the rushing streams; when he calls
upon the earth to hearken, and bids the wild sea listen to his song;
when he communes with the sweet secluded valleys and the haughty-headed
hills as if those inanimate objects were alive, as if those masses of
brute matter were endowed with sense and thought, we do not smile, we do
not sneer, we do not reason, but we feel. A secret chord is touched
within us: a slumbering sympathy is awakened into life. Who has not felt
an impulse of hatred, and perhaps expressed it in a senseless curse,
against a fiery stroke of sunlight or a sudden gust of wind? Who has not
felt a pang of pity for a flower torn and trampled in the dust, a shell
dashed to fragments by the waves? Such emotions or ideas last only for a
moment; they do not belong to us; they are the fossil fancies of a
bygone age; they are a heritage of thought from the childhood of our
race. For there was a time when they possessed the human mind. There was
a time when the phrases of modern poetry were the facts of ordinary
life. There was a time when man lived in fellowship with nature,
believing that all things which moved or changed had minds and bodies
kindred to his own.

To those primeval people the sun was a great being who brightened them
in his pleasure and who scorched then in his wrath. The earth was a
sleeping monster: sometimes it rose a little and turned itself in bed.
They walked upon its back when living; they were put into its belly when
they died. Fire was a savage animal which bit when it was touched. The
birds and beasts were foreigners possessing languages and customs of
their own. The plants were dumb creatures with characters good or bad,
sometimes gloomy in aspect, malignant in their fruit, sometimes
dispensing wholesome food and pleasant shade.

These various forms of nature they treated precisely as if they had been
men. They sometimes adorned a handsome tree with bracelets like a girl;
they offered up prayers to the fruit trees, and made them presents to
coax them to a liberal return. They forbade the destruction of certain
animals which they revered on account of their wisdom, or feared on
account of their fierceness, or valued on account of their utility. They
submitted to the tyranny of the more formidable beasts of prey, never
venturing to attack them for fear the nation or species should
retaliate, but making them propitiatory gifts. In the same manner they
offered sacrifices to avert the fury of the elements, or in gratitude
for blessings which had been bestowed. But often a courageous people,
when invaded, would go to war, not only with the tiger and the bear but
with powers which to them were not less human-like and real. They would
cut with their swords at the hot wind of the desert, hurl their spears
into the swollen river, stab the earth, flog the sea, shoot their arrows
at the flashing clouds, and build up towers to carry heaven by assault.

But when through the operation of the law of growth the intellectual
faculties of men become improved, they begin to observe their own
nature, and in course of time a curious discovery is made. They
ascertain that there is something which resides within them entirely
independent and distinct from the body in which it is contained. They
perceive that it is this mind, or soul, or genius, or spirit, which
thinks and desires and decides. It commands the body as the chief
commands the slave. While the body is asleep it is busy weaving thoughts
in the sleeper's brain, or wanders into other lands and converses with
people whom he, while awake, has never seen. They hear words of wisdom
issuing from the toothless mouth of a decrepit old man. It is evident
that this soul does not grow old, and therefore it does not die. The
body, it is clear, is only a garment which is in time destroyed, and
then where does its inmate go?

When a loved one has been taken she haunts the memory of him who weeps
till the image imprinted on the heart is reflected on the curtain of the
eye. Her vision appears not when he is quite asleep, as in an ordinary
dream, but as he is passing into sleep. He meets her in the twilight
land which divides the world of darkness from the world of day. He sees
her form distinctly; he clasps it in his arms; he hears the accents of
her sweet and gentle voice; he feels the pressure of her lips upon his
own. He awakes, and the illusion is dispelled; yet with some it is so
complete that they firmly believe it was a spirit whom they saw.

Among savages it is not love which can thus excite the imagination and
deceive the sense, but reverence and fear. The great chief is dead. His
vision appears in a half-waking dream: it threatens and it speaks. The
dreamer believes that the form and the voice are real, and therefore he
believes that the great chief still exists. It is thus that the grand
idea is born. There is life after death. When the house or garment of
the body is destroyed the soul wanders forth into the air. Like the wind
it is unseen; like the wind it can be soft and kind; like the wind it
can be terrible and cruel. The savage then believes that the pains of
sickness are inflicted by the hand which so often inflicted pain upon
him when it was in the flesh, and he also believes that in battle the
departed warrior is still fighting with unseen weapons at the head of
his own clan. In order to obtain the goodwill of the father-spirit,
prayers are offered up to him and food is placed beside his grave. He
is, in fact, still recognised as king, and to such phantom monarchs the
distinctive title of god is assigned. Each chief is deified and
worshipped when he dies. The offerings and prayers are established by
rule; the reigning chief becomes the family priest; he pretends to
receive communications from the dead, and issues laws in their name. The
deeds of valour which the chiefs performed in their lifetime are set to
song; their biographies descend from generation to generation, changing
in their course, and thus a regular religion and mythology are formed.

It is the nature of man to reason from himself outwards. The savage now
ascribes to the various forms of matter souls or spirits such as he
imagines that he has discovered in himself. The food which he places at
the grave has a soul or essence, and it is this which is eaten by the
spirit of the dead, while the body of the food remains unchanged. The
river is not mere water which may dry up and perish, but there dwells
within it a soul which never dies; and so with everything that lives and
moves, from the blade of grass which shivers in the wind to the star
which slowly moves across the sky. But as men become more and more
capable of general ideas, of classing facts into systems and of
arranging phenomena into groups, they believe in a god of the forests, a
god of the waters, and a god of the sky, instead of ascribing a separate
god to every tree, to every river, and to every star. Nature is placed
under the dominion of a federation of deities. In some cases the
ancestor gods are identified with these; in others their worship is kept
distinct. The trees and the animals, which were once worshipped for
themselves from love or fear, are now supposed to be objects of
affection to the gods, and are held sacred for their sake.

These gods are looked upon as kings. Their characters are human, and are
reflected from the minds of those who have created them. Whatever the
arithmetical arrangement of the gods may be--single or triune, dual or
plural--they are in all countries and in all times made by man in his
own image. In the plural period some of the gods are good and some are
bad, just as there are good and evil kings. The wicked gods can be
softened by flattery and presents, the good ones can be made fierce by
neglect. The wicked gods obtain the largest offerings and the longest
prayers, just as in despotic countries the wicked kings obtain the most
liberal presents--which are merely taxes in disguise.

The savage has been led by indigestion and by dreams to believe in the
existence of the soul after death--or, using simpler language, to
believe in ghosts. At first these souls or ghosts have no fixed abode;
they live among the graves. At a later period the savage invents a world
to which the ghosts depart and in which they reside. It is situated
underground. In that world the ghosts live precisely as they lived on
earth. There is no retribution and no reward for the actions of the
earthly life; that life is merely continued in another region of the
world. Death is in fact regarded as a migration in which, as in all
migrations, the emigrants preserve their relative positions. When a man
of importance dies his family furnish him with an outfit of slaves and
wives, and pack up in his grave his arms and ornaments and clothes, that
he may make his appearance in the under-world in a manner befitting his
rank and fortune. It is believed that the souls of the clothes, as well
as of the persons sacrificed, accompany him there, and it is sometimes
believed that all the clothes which he has worn in his life will then
have their resurrection day.

The under-world and the upper-world are governed by the same gods or
unseen kings. Man's life in the upper-world is short: his life in the
under-world is long. But as regards the existence of the worlds
themselves, both are eternal, without beginning and without end. This
idea is not a creation of the ripened intellect, as is usually supposed.
It is a product of limited experience, and expression of a seeming fact.
The savage did not see the world begin; therefore it had no beginning.
He has not seen it grow older; therefore it will have no end.

The two worlds adjoin each other, and the frontier between them is very
faintly marked. The gods often dress themselves in flesh and blood and
visit the earth to do evil or to do good--to make love to women, to
torment their enemies, to converse with their favourites and friends. On
the other hand there are men who possess the power of leaving their
bodies in their beds and of passing into the other world to obtain
divine poisons which they malignantly employ. The ghosts of the dead
often come and sit by their old firesides and eat what is set apart for
them. Sometimes a departed spirit will re-enter the family, assuming a
body which resembles in its features the one he previously wore.
Distinguished heroes and prophets are often supposed to be hybrids or
mulattoes, the result of a union between a woman and a god. Sometimes it
is believed that a god has come down on earth out of love for a certain
nation, to offer himself up as a sacrifice, and so to quench the
blood-thirst of some sullen and revengeful god who has that nation in
his power. Sometimes a savage people believe that their kings are gods
who have deigned to take upon them a perishable body for a time, and
there are countries in which a still more remarkable superstition
prevails. The royal body even is immortal. The king never eats, never
sleeps, and never dies. This kind of monarch is visible only to his
priests. When the people wish to present a petition he gives them
audience seated behind a curtain, from beneath which he thrusts out his
foot in token of assent. When he dies he is secretly buried by the
priests, and a new puppet is elected in his stead.

The savage lives in a strange world, a world of special providences and
divine interpositions, not happening at long intervals and for some
great end, but every day and almost at every hour. A pain, a dream, a
sensation of any kind, a stroke of good or bad luck--whatever, in short,
does not proceed from man, whatever we ascribe, for want of a better
word, to chance--is by him ascribed to the direct interference of the
gods. He knows nothing about the laws of nature. Death itself is not a
natural event. Sooner or later men make the gods angry and are killed.

It is difficult for those who have not lived among savages perfectly to
realise their faith. When told that his gods do not exist the savage
merely laughs in mild wonder at such an extraordinary observation being
made. It seems quite natural to him that his gods should be as his
parents and grandparents have described; he believes as he breathes,
without an effort; he feels that what he has been taught is true. His
creed is in harmony with his intellect, and cannot be changed until his
intellect is changed. If a god in a dream, or through the priests, has
made him a promise and the promise is broken, he does not on that
account doubt the existence of the god. He merely supposes that the god
has told a lie. Nor does it seem strange to him that a god should tell a
lie. His god is only a gigantic man, a sensual, despotic king who orders
his subjects to give him the first fruits of the fields, the firstlings
of the flock, virgins for his harem, human bodies for his cannibal
repasts. As for himself, he is the slave of that god or king; he prays,
that is to say, he begs; he sings hymns, that is to say, he flatters; he
sacrifices, that is to say, he pays tribute, chiefly out of fear, but
partly in the hope of getting something better in return--long life,
riches, and fruitful wives. He is usually afraid to say of the gods what
he thinks, or even to utter their real name. But sometimes he gives vent
to the hatred which is burning in his heart. Writhing on a bed of
sickness, he heaps curses on the god who he declares is "eating his
inside"; and when he is converted prematurely to a higher creed his god
is still to him the invisible but human king. "O Allah!" a Somali woman
was heard to say, "O Allah! May thy teeth ache like mine! O Allah! May
thy gums be sore as mine!" That Christian monarch the late King Peppel
once exclaimed, when he thought of his approaching end, that if he could
see God he would kill him at once because he made men die.

The arithmetical arrangement of the gods depends entirely upon the
intellectual faculties of the people concerned. In the period of
thing-worship, as it may be termed, every brook, tree, hill, and star is
itself a living creature, benevolent or malignant, asleep or awake. In
the next stage every object and phenomenon is inhabited or presided over
by a genius or spirit, and with some nations the virtues and the vices
are also endowed with personality. As the reasoning powers of men expand
their gods diminish in number and rule over larger areas, till finally
it is perceived that there is unity in nature, that everything which
exists is a part of one harmonious whole. It is then asserted that one
being manufactured the world and rules over it supreme. But at first the
Great Being is distant and indifferent, "a god sitting outside the
universe"; and the old gods become viceroys to whom he has deputed the
government of the world. They are afterwards degraded to the rank of
messengers or angels, and it is believed that God is everywhere present;
that he fills the earth and sky; that from him directly proceeds both
the evil and the good. In some systems of belief, however, he is
believed to be the author of good alone, and the dominion of evil is
assigned to a rebellious angel or a rival god.

So far as we have gone at present, there has been no question of
morality. All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the
government of man by superior being, and his destiny after death, are
conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many
adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed
religion." They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men
have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised
men believe that they believe. These doctrines are not in themselves of
any moral value. It is of no consequence, morally speaking, whether a
man believes that the world has been made by one god or by twenty. A
savage is not of necessity a better man because he believes that he
lives under the dominion of invisible tyrants who will compel him some
day or other to migrate to another land.

There is a moral sentiment in the human breast which, like intelligence,
is born of obscure instincts, and which gradually becomes developed.
Since the gods of men are the reflected images of men, it is evident
that as men become developed in morality the character of their gods
will also be improved. The king of a savage land punishes only offences
against himself and his dependents. But when that people become more
civilised the king is regarded as the representative of public law. In
the same manner the gods of a savage people demand nothing from their
subjects but taxes and homage. They punish only heresy, which is
equivalent to treason; blasphemy, which is equivalent to insult; and the
withholding of tribute and adoration, which is equivalent to rebellion.
And these are the offences which even among civilised nations the gods
are supposed to punish most severely. But the civilised gods also
require that men shall act justly to one another. They are still
despots, for they order men to flatter them and to give them money. But
they are not mere selfish despots; they will reward those who do good,
they will punish those who do evil to their fellow-men.

That vice should be sometimes triumphant and virtue sometimes in
distress creates no difficulty to the savage mind. If a good man meets
with misfortune it is supposed that he is being punished for the sins of
an ancestor or a relation. In a certain stage of barbarism society is
composed not of individuals but of families. If a murder is committed
the avengers of blood kill the first man they meet belonging to the
guilty clan. If the life cannot be obtained in that generation the feud
passes on, for the family never dies. It is considered just and proper
that children should be punished for the sins of their fathers unto the
third and fourth generation.

In a higher state of society this family system disappears;
individualism becomes established. And as soon as this point is reached
the human mind takes a vast stride. It is discovered that the moral
government of this world is defective, and it is supposed that poetical
justice will be administered in the next. The doctrine of rewards and
punishments in a future state comes into vogue. The world of ghosts is
now divided into two compartments. One is the abode of malignant
spirits, the kingdom of darkness and of pain to which are condemned the
blasphemers and the rebels, the murderers and the thieves. The other is
the habitation of the gods, the kingdom of joy and light, to which
angels welcome the obedient and the good. They are dressed in white
robes and adorned with golden crowns; they dwell eternally in the royal
presence, gazing upon his lustrous countenance and singing his praises
in chorus round the throne.

To the active European mind such a prospect is not by any means
inviting; but heaven was invented in the East, and in the East to be a
courtier has always been regarded as the supreme felicity. The feelings
of men towards their god in the period at which we have now arrived are
precisely those of an Eastern subject towards his king. The Oriental
king is the lord of all the land; his subjects are his children and his
slaves. The man who is doomed to death kisses the fatal firman and
submits with reverence to his fate. The man who is robbed by the king of
all that he has earned will fold his hands and say "The king gave and
the king taketh away. Blessed be the name of the king!" The man who
lives in a distant province, who knows the king only by means of the
taxes which are collected in his name, will snatch up his arms if he
hears that his sacred person is in danger, and will defend him as he
defends his children and his home. He will sacrifice his life for one
whom he has never seen, and who has never done him anything but harm.

This kind of devotion is called loyalty when exhibited towards a king,
piety when exhibited towards a god. But in either case the sentiment is
precisely the same. It cannot be too often repeated that god is only a
special name for king; that religion is a form of government, its
precepts a code of laws; that priests are gatherers of divine taxes,
officers of divine police; that men resort to churches to fall on their
knees and to sing hymns from the same servile propensity which makes the
Oriental delight in prostrating himself before the throne; that the
noble enthusiasm which inspires men to devote themselves to the service
of their god, and to suffer death rather than deny his name, is
identical with the devotion of the faithful subject who, to serve his
royal master, gives up his fortune or his life without the faintest
prospect of reward. The religious sentiment, about which so much has
been said, has nothing distinctive in itself. Love and fear, self-denial
and devotion, existed before those phantoms were created which men call
gods, and men have merely applied to invisible kings the sentiments
which they had previously felt towards their earthly kings. If they are
a people in a savage state they hate both kings and gods within their
hearts, and obey them only out of fear. If they are a people in a higher
state love is mingled with their fear, producing an affectionate awe
which in itself is pleasing to the mind. That the worship of the unseen
king should survive the worship of the earthly king is natural enough,
but even that will not endure for ever; the time is coming when the
crowned idea will be cast aside and the despotic shadow disappear.

By thus translating, or by re-translating, god into king, piety into
loyalty, and so on; by bearing in mind that the gods were not abstract
ideas to our ancestors as they are to us, but bona fide men differing
only from men on earth in their invisibility and other magic powers; by
noting that the moral disposition of a god is an image of the moral
sense of those who worship him--their beau-ideal of what a king should
be; by observing that the number and arrangement of the gods depend
exclusively on the intellectual faculties of the people concerned, on
their knowledge of nature, and perhaps to some extent on the political
forms of government under which they live: above all by remembering that
there is a gradual development in supernatural ideas, the student of
comparative religion will be able to sift and classify with ease and
clearness dense masses of mythology. But he must understand that the
various stages overlap. Just as sailing vessels and four-horse coaches
are still used in this age of steam, and as stone implements were still
to be found in use long after the age of iron had set in, so in the
early period of god-belief thing-worship still to a certain extent
endured. In a treaty between Hannibal and Philip of Macedonia which
Polybius preserved, the contracting parties take oath with one another
"n the presence of Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo; in the presence of the
deity of the Carthaginians and of Hercules and of Iolaus; in the
presence of Mars, Triton, and Neptune; in the presence of all the gods
who are with us in the camp; and of the sun, the moon, and the earth;
the rivers, the lakes, and the waters." In the time of Socrates the
Athenians regarded the sun as an individual. Alexander, according to
Arian, sacrificed not only to the gods of the sea but "the sea itself
was honoured with is munificence." Even in Job, the purest of all
monotheistic works, the stars are supposed to be live creatures which
sing around the heavenly throne.

Again, in those countries where two distinct classes of men exist, the
one intellectual and learned, the other illiterate and degraded, there
will be in reality two religions, though nominally there may be only
one. Among the ancient Sabaeans the one class adored spirits who
inhabited the stars, the other class adored the stars themselves. Among
the worshippers of fire that element to one class was merely an emblem,
to the other an actual person. Wherever idols or images are used the
same phenomenon occurs. These idols are intended by the priests as aids
to devotion, as books for those who cannot read. But the savage believes
that his god inhabits the image, or even regards the image as itself a
god. His feelings towards it are those of a child towards her doll. She
knows that it is filled with sawdust and made of painted wood, and yet
she loves it as if it were alive. Such is precisely the illusion of the
savage, for he possesses the imagination of a child. He talks to his
idol fondly and washes its face with oil or rum, beats it if it will not
give him what he asks, and hides it in his waistcloth if he is going to
do something which he does not wish it to see.

There is one other point which it is necessary to observe. A god's moral
disposition, his ideas of right and wrong, are those of the people by
whom he is created. Wandering tribes do not as a rule consider it wrong
to rob outside the circle of their clan: their god is therefore a robber
like themselves. If they settle in a fertile country, pass into the
agricultural state, build towns, and become peaceful citizens with
property of their own they change their views respecting theft, and
accordingly their god forbids it in his laws. But it sometimes happens
that the sayings and doings of the tent-god are preserved in writings
which are accepted as revelation by the people of a later and better
age. Then may be observed the curious and by no means pleasing spectacle
of a people outgrowing their religion, and believing that their god
performed actions which would be punished with the gallows if they were
done by men.

The mind of an ordinary man is in so imperfect a condition that it
requires a creed--that is to say, a theory concerning the unknown and
the unknowable in which it may place its deluded faith and be at rest.
But whatever the creed may be, it should be one which is on a level with
the intellect, and which inquiry will strengthen not destroy.

As for minds of the highest order, they must ever remain in suspension
of judgement and in doubt. Not only do they reflect the absurd
traditions of the Jews, but also the most ingenious attempts which have
been made to explain on rational and moral grounds the origin and
purpose of the universe. Intense and long-continued labour reveals to
them this alone, that there are regions of thought so subtle and so
sublime that the human mine is unable therein to expand its wings, to
exercise its strength. But there is a wide speculative field in which
man is permitted to toil with the hope of rich reward, in which
observation and experience can supply materials to his imagination and
his reason. In this field two great discoveries have been already made.
First, that there is a unity of plan in nature, that the universe
resembles a body in which all the limbs and organs are connected with
one another; and second, that all phenomena, physical and moral, are
subject to laws as invariable as those which regulate the rising and
setting of the sun. It is in reality as foolish to pray for rain or a
fair wind as it would be to pray that the sun should set in the middle
of the day. It is as foolish to pray for the healing of a disease or for
daily bread as it is to pray for rain or a fair wind. It is as foolish
to pray for a pure heart or for mental repose as it is to pray for help
in sickness or misfortune. All the events which occur upon the earth
result from law: even those actions which are entirely dependent on the
caprices of the memory or the impulse of the passions are shown by
statistics to be, when taken in the gross entirely independent of the
human will. As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a
mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species
the offspring of necessity.

The unity of the universe is a scientific fact. To assert that it is the
operation of a single mind is a conjecture based upon analogy, and
analogy may be a deceptive guide. It is the most reasonable guess that
can be made, but still it is no more than a guess, and it is one by
which nothing after all is really gained. It tells us that the earth
rests upon the tortoise: it does not tell us on what the tortoise rests.
God issued the laws which manufactured the universe and which rule it in
its growth. But who made God? Theologians declare that he made himself,
materialists declare that matter made itself, and both utter barren
phrases, idle words. The whole subject is beyond the powers of the human
intellect in its present state. All that we can ascertain is this: that
we are governed by physical laws which it is our duty as scholars of
Nature to investigate, and by moral laws which it is our duty as
citizens of Nature to obey.

The dogma of a single deity who created the heavens and the earth may
therefore be regarded as an imperfect method of expressing an undoubted
truth. Of all religious creeds it is the least objectionable from a
scientific point of view. Yet it was not a Greek who first discovered or
invented the one god, but the wild Bedouin of the desert. At first sight
this appears a very extraordinary fact. How, in a matter which depended
entirely upon the intellect, could these barbarians have preceded the
Greeks, so far their superiors in every other respect? The anomaly,
however, can be easily explained. In the first theological epoch every
object and every phenomenon of Nature was supposed to be a creature, in
the second epoch the dwelling or expression of a god. It is evident that
the more numerous the objects and phenomena, the more numerous would be
the gods, the more difficult it would be to unravel Nature, to detect
the connection between phenomena, to discover the unity which underlies
them all. In Greece there is a remarkable variety of climate and
contour; hills, groves, and streams diversify the scene; rugged,
snow-covered peaks and warm coast lands with waving palms lie side by
side. But in the land of the Bedouins, Nature may be seen in the nude.
The sky is uncovered; the earth is stripped and bare. It is as difficult
for the inhabitants of such a country to believe that there are many
gods as for the people of such a land as Greece to believe that there is
only one. The earth and the wells and some uncouth stones, the sun, the
moon, and the stars are almost the only materials of superstition that
the Bedouin can employ; and that they were so employed we know. Stone
worship and star idolatry, with the adoration of ancestral shades,
prevailed within Arabia in ancient times, and even now are not extinct.
"The servant of the sun" was one of the titles of their ancient kings.
Certain honours are yet paid to the morning star. But in that country
the one-god belief was always that of the higher class of minds, at
least within historic time; it is therefore not incorrect to term it the
Arabian creed. We shall now proceed to show in what manner that belief,
having mingled with foreign elements, became a national religion, and
how from that religion sprang two other religions which overspread the
world.

Long after the building of the Pyramids, but before the dawn of Greek
and Roman life, a Bedouin sheikh named Abraham, accompanied by his
nephew Lot, migrated from the plains which lie between the Tigris and
Euphrates, crossed over the Syro-Arabian desert, and entered Canaan, a
country about the size of Wales lying below Phoenicia between the desert
and the Mediterranean Sea. They found it inhabited by a people of
farmers and vine-dressers, living in walled cities and subsisting on the
produce of the soil. But only a portion of the country was under
cultivation: they discovered wide pastoral regions unoccupied by men,
and wandered at their pleasure from pasture to pasture and from plain to
plain. Their flocks and herds were nourished to the full, and multiplied
so fast that the Malthusian Law came into force; the herdsmen of Abraham
and Lot began to struggle for existence; the land could no longer bear
them both. It was therefore agreed that each should select a region for
himself. A similar arrangement was repeated more than once in the
lifetime of the patriarch. When his illegitimate sons grew up to man's
estate he gave them cattle and sent them off in the direction of the
east.

At certain seasons of the year he encamped beneath the walls of cities,
and exchanged the wool of his flocks for flour, oil, and wine. He
established friendships with the native kings, and joined them in their
wars. He was honoured by them as a prince, for he could bring three
hundred armed slaves into the field, and his circle of tents might
fairly be regarded as a town. Before their canvas doors sat the women
spinning wool and singing the Mesopotamian airs, while the aged
patriarch in the Great Tent, which served as the forum and the
guesthouse, measured out the rations for the day, gave orders to the
young men about the stock, and sat in judgment on the cases which were
brought before him, as king and father to decide.

He bought from the people of the land a field and a cave, in which he
buried his wife and in which he was afterwards himself interred. He was
succeeded by Isaac as head of the family. Esau and Jacob, the two sons
of Isaac, appear to have been equally powerful and rich.


The Israelites


Up to this time the children of Abraham were Bedouin Arabs--nothing
more. They worshipped Eloah or Allah, sometimes erecting to him a rude
altar on which they sacrificed a ram or kid; sometimes a stone pillar on
which they poured a drink, and then smeared it with oil to his honour
and glory. Sometimes they planted a sacred tree. The life which they led
was precisely that of the wandering Arabs who pasture their flocks on
the outskirts of Palestine at the present day. Not only Ishmael, but
also Lot, Esau, and various Abrahamites of lesser note became the
fathers of Arabian tribes. The Beni-Israel did not differ in manners and
religion from the Beni-Ishmael and Beni-Esau, and Beni-Lot. It was the
settlement of the clan in a foreign country, the influence of foreign
institutions, which made the Israelites a peculiar people. It was the
sale of the shepherd boy--at first a house-slave, then a prisoner, then
a favourite of the Pharaoh--which created a destiny for the House of
Jacob, separated it from the Arab tribes, and educated it into a
nationality. When Joseph became a great man he obtained permission to
send for his father and his brethren. The clan of seventy persons, with
their women and their slaves, came across the desert by the route of the
Syrian caravan. The old Arab, in his coarse woollen gown and with his
staff in his hand, was ushered into the royal presence. He gave the king
his blessing in the solemn manner of the East, and after a short
conversation was dismissed with a splendid gift of land. When Jacob died
his embalmed corpse was carried up to Canaan with an Egyptian escort and
buried in the cave which Abraham had bought. Joseph had married the
daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, but his two sons did not become
Egyptians; they were formally admitted into the family by Jacob himself
before he died.

When Joseph also died the connection between the Israelites and the
court came to an end. They led the life of shepherds in the fertile
pasturelands which had been bestowed upon them by the king. In course of
time the twelve families expanded into twelve tribes, and the tribe
itself became a nation. The government of Memphis observed the rapid
increase of this people with alarm. The Israelites belonged to the same
race as the hated Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. With their long beards and
flowing robes they reminded the Egyptians of the old oppressors. It was
argued that the Bedouins might again invade Egypt, and in that case the
Israelites would take their side. By way of precaution the Israelites
were treated as prisoners of war, disarmed, and employed on the public
works. And as they still continued to increase it was ordered that all
their male children should be killed. It was doubtless the intention of
the government to marry the girls as they grew up to Egyptians, and so
to exterminate the race.

One day the king's daughter, as she went down with her girls to the Nile
to bathe, found a Hebrew child exposed on the waters in obedience to the
new decree. She adopted the boy and gave him an Egyptian name. He was
educated as a priest, and became a member of the University of
Heliopolis. But although his face was shaved and he wore the surplice,
Moses remained a Hebrew in his heart. He was so overcome by passion when
he saw an Egyptian ill-using an Israelite that he killed the man upon
the spot. The crime became known: there was a hue and cry; he escaped to
the peninsula of Sinai, and entered the family of an Arab sheikh.

The peninsula of Sinai lies clasped between two arms of the Red Sea. It
is a wilderness of mountains covered with a thin, almost transparent
coating of vegetation which serves as pasture to the Bedouin flocks.
There is one spot only--the oasis of Feiran--where the traveller can
tread on black, soft earth and hear the warbling of birds among the
trees, which stand so thickly together that he is obliged as he walks to
part the branches from his face. The peninsula had not escaped the
Egyptian arms; tablets may yet be seen on which are recorded in
paintings and hieroglyphics five thousand years old the victories of the
Pharaohs over the people of the land. They also worked mines of copper
in the mountains, and heaps of slag still remain. But most curious of all
are the Sinaitic inscriptions, as they are called--figures of animals
rudely scrawled on the upright surface of the black rocks and mysterious
sentences in an undeciphered tongue.

Among the hills which crown the high plateau there is one which at that
time was called the Mount of God. It was holy ground to the Egyptians,
and also to the Arabs, who ascended it as pilgrims and drew off their
sandals when they reached the top. Nor is it strange that Sinai should
have excited reverence and dread; it is indeed a weird and awful land.
Vast and stern stand the mountains, with their five granite peaks
pointing to the sky; avalanches like those of the Alps, but of sand, not
of snow, rush down their naked sides with a clear and tinkling sound
resembling convent bells; a peculiar property resides in the air; the
human voice can be heard at a surprising distance, and swells out into a
reverberating roar; and sometimes there rises from among the hills a
dull booming sound like the distant firing of heavy guns.

Let us attempt to realise what Moses must have felt when he was driven
out of Egypt into such a harsh and rugged land. Imagine this man, the
adopted son of a royal personage, the initiated priest, sometimes
turning the astrolabe towards the sky, perusing the papyrus scroll, or
watching the crucible and the alembic; sometimes at the great metropolis
enjoying the busy turmoil of the street, the splendid pageants of the
court, reclining in a carpeted gondola or staying with a noble at his
country house. In a moment all is changed. He is alone on the
mountain-side, a shepherd's crook in his hand. He is a man dwelling in a
tent; he is married to the daughter of a barbarian; his career is at an
end. Never more will he enter that palace where once he was received
with honour, where now his name is uttered only with contempt. Never
more will he discourse with grave and learned men in the peaceful
college gardens, beneath the willows that hang over the Fountain of the
Sun. Never more will he see the people of his tribe whom he loves so
dearly, and for whom he endures this miserable fate. They will suffer,
but he will not see them; they will mourn, but he will not hear them--or
only in his dreams. In his dreams he hears them and sees them, alas, too
well. He hears the whistling of the lash and the convulsive sobs and
groans. He sees the poor slaves toiling in the field, their hands brown
with the clammy clay. He sees the daughters of Israel carried off to the
harem with struggling arms and streaming hair, and then--O lamentable
sight!--the chamber of the woman in labour--the seated shuddering,
writhing form--the mother struggling against maternity--the tortured one
dreading her release--for the king's officer is standing by the door,
and as soon as the male child is born its life is at an end.

The Arabs with whom he was living were also children of Abraham, and
they related to him legends of the ancient days. They told him of the
patriarchs who lay buried in Canaan with their wives; they told him of
Eloah, whom his fathers had adored. Then, as one who returns to a long
lost home, the Egyptian priest returned to the simple faith of the
desert, to the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. As he wandered on
the mountain heights he looked to the west and he saw a desert: beyond
it lay Egypt, the house of captivity, the land of bondage. He looked to
the east and he saw a desert: beyond it lay Canaan, the home of his
ancestors, a land of peace and soon to be a land of hope. For now new
ideas rose tumultuously within him. He began to see visions and to dream
dreams. He heard voices and beheld no form; he saw trees which blazed
with fire and yet were not consumed. He became a prophet; he entered the
ecstatic state.

Meanwhile the king had died; a new Pharaoh had mounted on the throne;
Moses was able to return to Egypt and to carry out the great design
which he had formed. He announced to the elders of the people, to the
heads of houses and the sheikhs of tribes, that Eloah, the God of
Abraham, had appeared to him in Sinai and had revealed his true name--it
was Jehovah--and had sent him to Egypt to bring away his people, to
carry them to Canaan. The elders believed in his mission and accepted
him as their chief. He went to Pharaoh and delivered the message of
Jehovah: the king received it as he would have received the message of
an Arab chief--gods were plentiful in Egypt. But whenever a public
calamity occurred Moses declared that Jehovah was its author, and there
were Egyptians who said that their own gods were angry with them for
detaining a people who were irreligious, filthy in their habits, and
affected with unpleasant diseases of the skin. The king gave them
permission to go and offer a sacrifice to their desert god. The
Israelites stole away, taking with them the mummy of Joseph and some
jewellery belonging to their masters. Guides marched in front bearing a
lighted apparatus like that which was used in Alexander's camp, which
gave a pillar of smoke by day and a flame by night. Moses led them by
way of Suez into Asia, and then along the weed-strewn, shell-strewn
shore of the Red Sea to the wilderness of Sinai and the Mount of God.
There with many solemn and imposing rites he delivered laws which he
said had been issued to him from the clouds. He assembled the elders to
represent the people, and drew up a contract between them and Jehovah.
It was agreed that they should obey the laws of Jehovah, and pay the
taxes which he might impose, while he engaged on his part to protect
them from danger in their march through the desert and to give them
possession of the Promised Land. An ark or chest of acacia-wood was made
in the Egyptian style, and the agreement was deposited therein with the
ten fundamental laws which Moses had engraved on stone. A tent of dyed
skins was prepared and fitted with church furniture by voluntary
subscription, partly out of stolen goods. This became the temple of the
people and the residence of Jehovah, who left his own dwelling above the
vaulted sky that he might be able to protect them on the way. Moses
appointed his brother Aaron and his sons to serve as priests; they wore
the surplice, but to distinguish them from Egyptian priests they were
ordered not to shave their heads. The men of Levi, to which tribe Moses
himself belonged, were set apart for the service of the sacred tent.
They were in reality his bodyguard, and by their means he put down a
mutiny at Sinai, slaughtering three thousand men.

When thus the nation had been organised the march began. At daybreak two
silver trumpets were blown, the tents were struck, the tribes assembled
under their respective banners, and the men who bore the ark went first
with the guides to show the road and to choose an encampment for the
night. The Israelites crossed a stony desert, suffering much on the way.
Water was scarce; they had no provisions, and were forced to subsist on
manna or angel's bread, a gummy substance which exudes from a desert
shrub and is a pleasant syrup and a mild purge, but not a nourishing
article of food.

As they drew near the land of Canaan the trees of the desert, the palm
and the acacia, disappeared. But the earth became carpeted with green
plants and spotted with red anemones like drops of blood. Here and there
might be seen a patch of corn, and at last in the distance rounded hills
with trees standing against the sky. They encamped, and a man from each
tribe was deputed to spy the land. In six weeks they returned bringing
with them a load of grapes. Two scouts only were in favour of invasion.
The other ten declared that the land was a good land, as the
fruits showed--a land flowing with milk and honey; but the people were
like giants; their cities were walled and very great; the Israelites
were as grasshoppers in comparison, and would not be able to prevail
against them.

This opinion was undoubtedly correct. The children of Israel were a
rabble of field slaves who had never taken a weapon in their hands. The
business before them was by no means to their taste, and it was not what
Moses had led them to expect. He had agreed on the part of Jehovah to
give them a land. They had expected to find it unoccupied and prepared
for their reception like a new house. They did not require a prophet to
inform them that a country should be theirs if they were strong enough
to take it by the sword, and this it was clear they could not do. So
they poured forth the vials of their anger and their grief. They lifted
up their voice and cried; they wept all the night. Would to God they had
died in the wilderness! Would to God they had died in Egypt! Jehovah had
brought them there that they might fall by the sword, and that their
wives and little ones might be a prey. They would choose another
captain; they would go back to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts
who had recommended invasion, tried to cheer them up, and were nearly
stoned to death for their pains. Next day the people of Canaan marched
out against them: a skirmish took place and the Israelites were
defeated. They went back to the desert, and wandered forty years in the
shepherd or Bedouin state.

And then there was an end of that miserable race who were always whining
under hardship, hankering after the fleshpots of the old slave life. In
their stead rose up a new generation--genuine children of the desert--
who could live on a few dates soaked in butter and a mouthful of milk a
day; who were practised from their childhood in predatory wars; to whom
rapine was a business, and massacre a sport. The conquest of Canaan was
an idea which they had imbibed at their mothers' breasts, and they were
now quite ready for the work. Moses before his death drew up a second
agreement between Jehovah and the people. It was to the same effect as
the covenant of Sinai. Loyalty and taxes were demanded by Jehovah; long
life, success in war, and fruitful crops were promised in return. Within
this contract was included a code of laws which Moses had enacted from
time to time, in addition to the ten commandments; and this second
agreement was binding not only on those who were present but on their
posterity as well.

Moses died; Joshua was made commander-in-chief, and the Israelites began
their march of war. This time they approached the land not from the
south but from the east.

The river Jordan rises in the Lebanon mountains, half way between Tyre
and Damascus; it runs due south, and ends its curling, twisting course
in the dismal waters of the Dead Sea. Its basin belongs to the desert,
for it does not overflow its banks.

Along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, parallel to the valley of the
Jordan, lies a fertile strip of land without good harbours, but
otherwise resembling Phoenicia, from which it is divided by two large
promontories, the Tyrian Ladder and the White Cape.

And thirdly, between the naked valley of the Jordan and this
corn-producing line of coast there rises a tableland of limestone
formation, honeycombed with caves, watered by running streams of no
great size, and intersected by ravines and also by flat, extensive
valley plains.

The coast belonged to the Philistines, the basin of the Jordan and the
pastoral regions on the south to roving Arab tribes; the tableland was
inhabited by farmers whose towns and villages were always perched on the
tops of hills, and who cultivated the vine on terraces, each vineyard
being guarded by a watch tower and a wall; the valley plains were
inhabited by Canaanites or lowlanders, who possessed cavalry and iron
chariots of war.

The Israelites differed from other Bedouin tribes in one respect--they
were not mounted, and they were unable to stand their ground against the
horsemen of the plain. The Philistines, a warlike people probably of the
Aryan race, also retained their independence. The conquests of the
Israelites were confined to the land of the south, the Jordan valley and
the mountain regions, though even in the highlands the conquest under
Joshua was not complete.

However, the greater part of Palestine was taken and partitioned among
the Israelitish tribes. Some of these inclined to the pastoral and
others to the agricultural condition, and each was governed by its own
sheikh. During four hundred years Ephraim remained the dominant tribe,
and with Ephraim the high priest took up his abode. At a place called
Shiloh there was erected an enclosure of low stone walls over which the
sacred tent was drawn. This was the oracle establishment, or House of
God, to which all the tribes resorted three times a year to celebrate
the holy feasts with prayer and sacrifice, and psalmody, and the sacred
dance.

The Levites had no political power and no share in civil life, but they
had cities of their own, and they also travelled about like mendicant
friars from place to place performing certain functions of religion, and
supported by the alms of the devout.

It was owing to these two institutions, the oracle and the monkish
order, that the nationality of Israel was preserved. Yet though it
escaped extinction it did not retain its unity and strength. So far from
extending their conquests, after their first inroad under Joshua the
Israelites constantly lost ground. They were divided into twelve petty
states, always jealous of one another and often engaged in civil war.
The natives took advantage of these dissensions, and subdued them one by
one. Now and then a hero would arise, rouse them to a war of
independence, and rule over them as judge for a few years. Then again
they would fall apart, and again be conquered, sometimes paying tribute
as vassals, sometimes hiding in the mountain caves. However, at last
there came a change. The temporal and spiritual powers, united in the
hands of Moses, were divided at his death. Joshua became the general of
Jehovah; the high priest became his grand vizier. Joshua could do
nothing of importance without consulting the high priest, who read the
commands of the Divine Sheikh in the light and play of Urim and Thummim,
the oracular shining stones. On the other hand, the high priest could
not issue laws; he could only give decisions and replies. But now a
Nazarite or servant of the Church, named Samuel, usurped the office, or
at all events the powers, of high priest which belonged to the family of
Aaron, and also obtained the dignity of president or judge. He professed
to be the recipient of private instructions from Jehovah, issued laws in
his name, and went round on circuit judging the twelve tribes.

In his old age he delegated this office to his sons, who gave false
judgments and took bribes. The elders of the people came to Samuel and
asked him to appoint them a king.

Samuel had established a papacy, intending to make it hereditary in his
house, and now the evil conduct of his sons frustrated all his hopes. He
protested in the name of Jehovah against this change in the
constitution; he appealed to his own blameless life; he drew a vivid
picture of the horrors of despotism; but in vain. The people persisted
in their demand; they were at that time in the vassal state, and their
liege lords, the Philistines, did not permit them to have smiths lest
they should make weapons and rebel. Samuel himself had united the
tribes, and had inspired them with the sentiments of nationality. They
yearned to be free, and they observed that they lost battles because
their enemies were better officered than themselves. They saw that they
needed a military chief who would himself lead them to the charge,
instead of sacrificing a sucking lamb or kneeling on a neighbouring hill
with his hands up in the air.

Samuel, still protesting, elected Saul to the royal office. The young
man was gladly accepted by the people on account of his personal beauty,
and as he belonged to the poorest family of the poorest tribe in Israel,
Samuel hoped that he would be able to preserve the real power in his own
hands. But it so happened that Saul was not only a brave soldier and a
good general; he was also at times a "god-intoxicated man," and did not
require a third person to bring him the instructions of Jehovah. He made
himself the head of the Church, as well as of the state, and Samuel was
compelled to retire into private life. It is for this reason that Saul's
character has been so bitterly attacked by the priest-historians of the
Jews. For what after all are the crimes of which he was guilty? He
administered the battle-offering himself, and he spared the life of a
man whom Samuel had commanded him to kill as a human sacrifice to
Jehovah. Saul was by no means faultless, but his character was pure as
snow when compared with that of his successor. David was undoubtedly the
greater general of the two, yet it was Saul who laid the foundations of
the Jewish kingdom. It was Saul who conquered the Philistines and won
freedom for the nation with no better weapons than their mattocks and
their axes and their sharpened goads. Saul's persecution of David is the
worst stain upon his life, yet if it is true that David had been in
Saul's lifetime privately anointed king, he was guilty of treason and
deserved to die. But that story of the anointing might have been
invented afterwards to justify his succession to the throne.

At first David took refuge with the Philistines and fought against his
own countrymen. Next he turned brigand, and was joined by all the
criminals and outlaws of the land. The cave of Adullam was his lair,
whence he sallied forth to levy blackmail on the rich farmers and
graziers of the neighbourhood, cutting their throats when they refused
to pay. At the same time, he was a very religious man, and never went on
a plundering expedition without consulting a little image which revealed
to him the orders and wishes of Jehovah, just as the Bedouins always
pray to Allah before they commit a crime, and thank him for his
assistance when it has been successfully performed.

Saul was succeeded by his son Ishbosheth, who was accepted by eleven
tribes. But David, supported by his own tribe and by his band of
well-trained robbers, defied the nation and made war upon his lawful
king. He had not the shadow of a claim; however, with the help of
treason and assassination he finally obtained the crown. His military
genius had then full scope. He took Jerusalem, a pagan stronghold which
during four hundred years had maintained its independence. He conquered
the coast of the Philistines, the plains of Canaan, the great city of
Damascus, and the tribes of the desert far and near. He garrisoned
Arabia Petraea. He ruled from Euphrates to the Red Sea.

This man after God's own heart had a well-stocked harem, and the usual
intrigues took place. He disinherited his eldest son and left the
kingdom to the son of his favourite wife--a woman for whom he had
committed a crime which had offended the not over-delicate Jehovah. The
nation seemed taken by surprise, and Solomon, in order to preserve the
undivided affections of his people, at once killed his brother and his
party--a coronation ceremony not uncommon in the East.

The wisdom of Solomon has become proverbial. But whatever his
intellectual attainments may have been, he did not possess that kind of
wisdom which alone is worthy of a king. He did not attempt to make his
monarchy enduring, his people prosperous and content. He was a true
Oriental sultan, sleek and sensual, luxurious and magnificent,
short-sighted and unscrupulous, cutting down the tree to eat the fruit.
The capital of a despot is always favoured, and with the citizens of
Jerusalem he was popular enough. They were in a measure his guests and
companions, the inmates of his house. They saw their city encircled with
enormous walls, and paved with slabs of black and shining stone. Their
eyes were dazzled and their vanity delighted with the splendid buildings
which he raised--the ivory palace, the cedar palace, and the temple. The
pilgrims who thronged to the sanctuary from all quarters of the land,
and the travellers who came for the purposes of trade, brought wealth
into the city. Foreign commerce was a court monopoly, but the city was a
part of the court. Outside the city walls, however, or at least beyond
the circle of the city lands, it was a very different affair. The rural
districts were severely taxed, especially those at a distance from the
capital. The tribes of Israel, which but a few years before had been on
terms of complete equality among themselves, were now trampled underfoot
by this upstart of the House of Judah. The tribe of Ephraim, which had
so long enjoyed supremacy, became restless beneath the yoke. While
Solomon yet reigned the standard of revolt was raised; as soon as he
died this empire of a day dissolved. Damascus became again an
independent state. The Arabs cut the road to the Red Sea. The king of
Egypt, who had probably been Solomon's liege lord, dispatched an army to
fetch away the treasures of the temple and the palace. The ten tribes
seceded, and two distinct kingdoms were established.

The ten tribes of Israel, or the Kingdom of the North, extended over the
lands of Samaria and Galilee. Its capital was Shechem, its sanctuary
Mount Gerizim.


The Jews


Judah and Benjamin, the royal tribes, occupied the highlands of Judea.
Jerusalem was their capital; its temple was their sanctuary, and the
Levites, whom the Israelites had discarded, were their priests. It is
needless to relate the wars which were almost incessantly being waged
between these two miserable kingdoms. When the empire of the Tigris took
the place of Egypt as suzerain of Syria both Israel and Judah sent their
tribute to Nineveh; and as the cuneiform history relates, both of them
afterwards rebelled. Sennacherib marched against them and carried off
the ten tribes into captivity. Judea was more mountainous, and on that
account more difficult to conquer than the land of the North. The Jews,
as they may now be called, defended themselves stoutly, and a camp
plague broke up the army before Jerusalem. By this occurrence Egypt also
was preserved from conquest. At that time Sethos, the priest, was king,
and the soldiers, whose lands he had taken, refused to fight. Both the
Egyptians and the Jews ascribed their escape to a miracle performed by
their respective gods.

Great events now took place. The Assyrian empire fell to pieces, and
Nineveh was destroyed. The Medes inherited its power on the east of the
Euphrates; the Chaldeans inherited its power on the west. Egypt under
the Phil-Hellenes was again spreading into Asia, and a terrific duel
took place between the two powers. The Jews managed so well that when
the Egyptian star was in the ascendant they took the side of Babylon;
and when the Babylonians had won the battle of Carchemish the Jews
intrigued with the fallen nation. Nebuchadnezzar gave them repeated
warnings, but at last his patience was exhausted and he levelled the
rebellious city to the ground. Some of the citizens escaped to Egypt;
the aristocracy and priesthood were carried off to Babylon; the peasants
alone were left to cultivate the soil.

At Babylon there was a collection of captive kings, each of whom was
assigned his daily allowance and his throne. In this palace of shadows
the unfortunate Jehoiachin ended his days. But the Jewish people were
not treated as captives or as slaves, and they soon began to thrive.

When the ten tribes seceded they virtually abandoned their religion.
They withdrew from the temple which they had once acknowledged as the
dwelling of Jehovah; they had no hereditary priesthood; they had no holy
books; and so as soon as they ceased to possess a country they ceased to
exist as a race. But the Jews preserved their nationality intact.

Moses had been an Egyptian priest, and the unity of God was a
fundamental article of that religion. The unity of God was also the
tenet of the more intelligent Arabs of the desert. Whether therefore we
regard that great man as an Egyptian or as an Arab, it can scarcely be
doubted that the views which he held of the Deity were as truly
unitarian as those of Mohammed and Abdul-Wahhab. It is, however, quite
certain that to the people whom he led Jehovah was merely an invisible
Bedouin chief who travelled with them in a tent, who walked about the
camp at night and wanted it kept clean, who manoeuvred the troops in
battle, who delighted in massacres and human sacrifice, who murdered
people in sudden fits of rage, who changed his mind, who enjoyed petty
larceny and employed angels to tell lies--who, in short, possessed all
the vices of the Arab character. He also possessed their ideal virtues,
for he prohibited immorality and commanded them to be hospitable to the
stranger, to be charitable to the poor, and to treat with kindness the
domestic beast and the captive wife.

It was impossible for Moses to raise their minds to a nobler conception
of the Deity; it would have been as easy to make them see Roman noses
when they looked into a mirror. He therefore made use of their
superstition in order to rule them for their own good, and descended to
trumpetings and fire-tricks which chamber moralists may condemn with
virtuous indignation, but which those who have known what it is to
command a savage mob will not be inclined to criticise severely.

When the settlement in Canaan took place the course of events gave rise
to a theory about Jehovah which not only the Israelites held but also
the Philistines. It was believed that he was a mountain god and could
not fight on level ground. He was unlike the pagan gods in one respect,
namely, that he ordered his people to destroy the groves and idols of
his rivals, and threatened to punish them if they worshipped any god but
him. However, as might be supposed, although the Israelites were very
loyal on the mountains, they worshipped other gods when they fought upon
the plains. Whenever they won a battle they sang a song in honour of
Jehovah and declared that he was "a man of war," but when they lost a
battle they supposed that Baal or Dagon had trodden Jehovah under foot.
The result of this was a mixed religion: they worshipped Jehovah, but
they worshipped other gods as well. Solomon declared when he opened the
temple that Jehovah filled the sky, that there were no other gods but
he. But this was merely Oriental flattery. Solomon must have believed
that there were other gods because he worshipped other gods.

His temple was in fact a Pantheon, and altars were raised on the Mount
of Olives to Moloch and Astarte. After the reign of Solomon, however,
the Jews became a civilised people; a literary class arose. Jerusalem,
situated on the highway between the Euphrates and the Nile, obtained a
place in the Asiatic world. The minds of the citizens became elevated
and refined, and that reflection of their minds which they called
Jehovah assumed a pure and noble form: he was recognised as the one God,
the Creator of the world.

During all these years Moses had been forgotten, but now his code of
laws (so runs the legend) was discovered in a corner of the temple, and
laws of a higher kind adapted to a civilised people were issued under
his name. The idols were broken, the foreign priests were expelled. It
was in the midst of this great religious revival that Jerusalem was
destroyed, and it may well be that the law which forbade the Jews to
render homage to a foreign king was the chief cause of their contumacy
and their dispersal. It was certainly the cause of all their subsequent
calamities: it was their loyalty to Jehovah which provoked the
destruction of the city by the Romans: it was their fidelity to the law
which brought down upon them all the curses of the law.

The reformation in the first period had been by no means complete: there
had been many relapses and backslidings, and they therefore readily
believed that the captivity was a judgment upon them for their sins. By
the waters of Babylon they repented with bitter tears; in a strange land
they returned to the god of their fathers and never deserted him again.
Henceforth religion was their patriotism. Education became general:
divine worship was organised: schools and synagogues were established
wherever Jews were to be found.

And soon they were to be found in all the cities of the Eastern world.
They had no land, and therefore adopted commerce as their pursuit; they
became a trading and a travelling people, and the financial abilities
which they displayed obtained them employment in the households and
treasuries of kings.

The dispersion of the Jews must be dated from this period and not from
the second destruction of the city. When Cyrus conquered Babylon he
restored to the Jews their golden candlesticks and holy vessels, allowed
them to return home, and rendered them assistance partly from religious
sympathy--for the Jews made him believe that his coming had been
predicted by their prophets--and partly from motives of policy.
Palestine was the key to Egypt, against which Cyrus had designs, and it
was wise to plant in Palestine a people on whom he could rely. But not
all the Jews availed themselves of his decree. The merchants and
officials who were now making their fortunes by the waters of Babylon
were not inclined to return to the modest farmer life of Judea. Their
piety was warm and sincere, but it was no longer combined with a passion
for the soil. They began to regard Jerusalem as the Mohammedans regard
Mecca. The people who did return were chiefly the fanatics, the clergy,
and the paupers. The harvest, as we shall find was worthy of the seed.

Beneath the Persian yoke the Jews of Judea were content, and paid their
tribute with fidelity. They could do so without scruple, for they
identified Ormuzd with Jehovah, took lessons in theology from the
doctors of the Zend-Avesta, and recognised the Great King as God's
viceroy on earth. But when the Persian empire was broken up Palestine
was again tossed upon the waves. The Greek kings of Alexandria and
Antioch repeated the wars of Nebuchadnezzar and Necho. Again Egypt was
worsted, and Syria became a province of the Graeco-Asiatic empire. The
government encouraged emigration into the newly conquered lands, and
soon Palestine was covered with Greek towns and filled with Greek
settlers. Judea alone remained like an island in the flood. European
culture was detested by the doctors of the law, who inflicted the same
penalty for learning Greek as for eating pork. They therefore resisted
the spread of civilisation, and Jerusalem was closed against the Greeks.

In the Hellenic world toleration was the universal rule. An oracle at
Delphi had expressed the opinion of all when it declared that the proper
religion for each man was the religion of his fatherland. Governments,
therefore, did not interfere with the religious opinions of the people,
but on the other hand the religious opinions of the people did not
interfere with their civil duties. We allow the inhabitants of the holy
city of Benares to celebrate the rites of their pilgrimage in their own
manner, and to torture themselves in moderation, but we should at once
begin what they would call a religious persecution if they were to
purify the town by destroying the shops of the beef-butchers and
other institutions which are an abomination in their eyes. Antiochus
Epiphanes was by nature a humane and enlightened prince; he attempted to
Europeanise Jerusalem; he could do this only by abolishing the Jewish
laws; he could abolish their laws only by destroying their religion; and
thus he was gradually drawn into barbarous and useless crimes of which
he afterwards repented, but which have gained him the reputation of a
Nero.

At first, however, it appeared as if he would succeed. The aristocratic
party of Jerusalem were won over to the cause. A gymnasium was erected,
and Jews with artificial foreskins appeared naked in the arena. Riots
broke out. Then royal edicts were issued forbidding circumcision, and
keeping of the Sabbath, and the use of the law. A pagan altar was set up
in the Holy of Holies, and swine were sacrificed upon it to the Olympian
Jove. The riots increased. Then a Greek regiment garrisoned the city;
all new-born children that were found to be circumcised were hurled with
their mothers from the walls; altar pork was offered as a test of
loyalty to the elders of the Church, and those who refused to eat were
put to death with tortures too horrible to be described. And now the
Jews no longer raised riots: they rebelled. The empire was at that time
in a state of weakness and disorder, and under the gallant Maccabees the
independence of Judea was achieved. Yet it is only in adversity that the
Jews can be admired. As soon as they obtained the power of
self-government they showed themselves unworthy to possess it, and in the
midst of a civil war they were enveloped by the Roman power, which had
extended them its protection in the period of the Maccabees. The Senate
placed Herod the great, an Arab price, upon the throne.

Herod was a man of the world, and his policy resembled that of the
Ptolemies in Egypt. He built the Temple at Jerusalem and a theatre at
Caesarea, in which city he preferred to dwell. The kingdom at his death
was divided between his three sons: they were merely rajahs under the
rule of Rome, and the one who governed Judea having been removed for
misbehaviour, that country was attached to the pro-consulate of Syria. A
lieutenant-governor was appointed to reside in the turbulent district to
collect the revenues and maintain order. The position of the first
commandant whom Russia sends to garrison Bokhara will resemble that of
the procurator who took up his winter quarters at Jerusalem.

Those Jews of Judea, those Hebrews of the Hebrews, regarded all the
Gentiles as enemies of God; they considered it a sin to live abroad, or
to speak a foreign language, or to rub their limbs with foreign oil. Of
all the trees, the Lord had chosen but one vine; and of all the flowers
but one lily; and of all the birds but one dove; and of all the cattle
but one lamb; and of all the builded cities only Sion; and among all the
multitude of peoples he had elected the Jews as a peculiar treasure, and
had made them a nation of priests and holy men. For their sake God had
made the world. On their account alone empires rose and fell. Babylon
had triumphed because God was angry with his people; Babylon had fallen
because he had forgiven them. It may be imagined that it was not easy to
govern such a race. They acknowledged no king but Jehovah, no laws but
the precepts of their holy books. In paying tribute they yielded to
absolute necessity, but the tax-gatherers were looked upon as unclean
creatures; no respectable men would eat with them or pray with them;
their evidence was not accepted in the courts of justice.

Their own government consisted of a Sanhedrin or Council of Elders,
presided over by the High Priest. They had power to administer their own
laws, but could not inflict the punishment of death without the
permission of the procurator. All persons of consideration devoted
themselves to the study of the law. Hebrew had become a dead language,
and some learning was therefore requisite for the exercise of this
profession, which was not the prerogative of a single class. It was a
rabbinical axiom that the crown of the kingdom was deposited in Judah,
and the crown of the priesthood in the seed of Aaron, but that the crown
of the law was common to all Israel. Those who gained distinction as
expounders of the sacred books were saluted with the title of rabbi, and
were called scribes and doctors of the law. The people were ruled by the
scribes, but the scribes were recruited from the people. It was not an
idle caste--an established Church--but an order which was filled and
refilled with the pious, the earnest, and the ambitious members of the
nation.

There were two great religious sects which were also political parties,
as must always be the case where law and religion are combined. The
Sadducees were the rich, the indolent, and the passive aristocrats; they
were the descendants of those who had belonged to the Greek party in the
reign of Antiochus, and it was said that they themselves were tainted
with the Greek philosophy. They professed, however, to belong to the
conservative Scripture and original Mosaic school. As the Protestants
reject the traditions of the ancient Church, some of which have
doubtless descended viva voce from apostolic times, so all traditions,
good and bad, were rejected by the Sadducees. As Protestants always
inquire respecting a custom or doctrine, "Is it in the Bible?" so the
Sadducees would accept nothing that could not be shown them in the law.
They did not believe in heaven and hell because there was nothing about
heaven and hell in the books of Moses. The morality which their doctors
preached was cold and pure, and adapted only for enlightened minds. They
taught that men should be virtuous without the fear of punishment and
without the hope of reward, and that such virtue alone is of any worth.

The Pharisees were mostly persons of low birth. They were the prominent
representatives of the popular belief, zealots in patriotism as well as
in religion--the teaching, the preaching, and the proselytising party.
Among them were to be found two kinds of men. Those Puritans of the
Commonwealth with lank hair and sour visage and upturned eyes, who wore
sombre garments, sniffled through their noses, and garnished their
discourse with Scripture texts, were an exact reproduction, so far as
the difference of place and period would allow, of certain Jerusalem
Pharisees who veiled their faces when they went abroad lest they should
behold a woman or some unclean thing; who strained the water which they
drank for fear they should swallow the forbidden gnat; who gave alms to
the sound of trumpet, and uttered long prayers in a loud voice; who wore
texts embroidered on their robes and bound upon their brows; who
followed minutely the observances of the ceremonial law; who added to it
with their traditions; who lengthened the hours and deepened the gloom
of the Sabbath day, and increased the taxes which it had been ordered
should be paid upon the altar.

On the other hand, there had been among the Puritans many men of pure
and gentle lives, and a similar class existed among the Pharisees. The
good Pharisee, says the Talmud, is he who obeys the law because he loves
the Lord. They addressed their god by the name of "Father" when they
prayed. "Do unto others as you would be done by" was an adage often on
their lips. That is the law, they said; all the rest is mere commentary.
To the Pharisees belonged all that was best and all that was worst in
the Hebrew religious life.

The traditions of the Pharisees related partly to ceremonial matters
which in the written law were already diffuse and intricate enough. But
it must also be remembered that without traditions the Hebrew theology
was barbarous and incomplete. Before the captivity the doctrine of
rewards and punishments in a future state had not been known. The Sheol
of the Jews was a land of shades in which there was neither joy nor
sorrow, in which all ghosts or souls dwelt promiscuously together. When
the Jews came in contact with the Persian priests they were made
acquainted with the heaven and hell of the Zend-Avesta. It is probable,
indeed, that without foreign assistance they would in time have
developed a similar doctrine for themselves. Already in the Psalms and
Book of Job are signs that the Hebrew mind was in a transition state.
When Ezekiel declared that the son should not be responsible for the
iniquity of the father nor the father for the iniquity of the son, that
the righteousness of the righteous should be upon him, and that the
wickedness of the wicked should be upon him, he was preparing the way
for a new system of ideas in regard to retribution. But as it was, the
Jews were indebted to the Zend-Avesta for their traditional theory of a
future life, and they also adopted the Persian ideas of the resurrection
of the body, the rivalry of the evil spirit, and the approaching
destruction and renovation of the world.

The Satan of Job is not a rebellious angel, still less a contending god:
he is merely a mischievous and malignant sprite. But the Satan of the
restored Jews was a powerful prince who went about like a roaring lion,
and to whom this world belonged. He was copied from Ahriman, the God of
Darkness, who was ever contending with Ormuzd, the God of Light. The
Persians believed that Ormuzd would finally triumph, and that a prophet
would be sent to announce the gospel or good tidings of his approaching
victory. Terrible calamities would then take place; the stars would fall
down from heaven; the earth itself would be destroyed. After which it
would come forth new from the hands of the Creator; a kind of Millennium
would be established; there would be one law, one language, and one
government for men, and universal peace would reign.

This theory became blended in the Jewish minds with certain expectations
of their own. In the days of captivity their prophets had predicted that
a Messiah or anointed king would be sent, that the kingdom of David
would be restored, and that Jerusalem would become the headquarters of
God on earth. All the nations would come to Jerusalem to keep the feast
of tabernacles and to worship God. Those who did not come should have no
rain; and as the Egyptians could do without rain, if they did not come
they should have the plague. The Jewish people would become one vast
priesthood, and all nations would pay them tithe. Their seed would
inherit the Gentiles. They would suck the milk of the Gentiles. They
would eat the riches of the Gentiles. These same unfortunate Gentiles
would be their ploughmen and their vine-dressers. Bowing down would come
those that afflicted Jerusalem, and would lick the dust off her feet.
Strangers would build up her walls, and kings would minister unto her.
Many people and strong nations would come to see the Lord of Hosts in
Jerusalem. Ten men in that day would lay hold of the skirt of a Jew
saying, "We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."
It was an idea worthy of the Jews that they should keep the Creator to
themselves in Jerusalem, and make their fortunes out of the monopoly.

In the meantime these prophecies had not been fulfilled, and the Jews
were in daily expectation of the Messiah--as they are still, and as they
are likely to be for some time to come. It was the belief of the vulgar
that this Messiah would be a man belonging to the family of David, who
would liberate them from the Romans and become their king; so they were
always on the watch, and whenever a remarkable man appeared they
concluded that he was the son of David, the Holy One of Israel, and were
ready at once to proclaim him king and to burst into rebellion. This
illusion gave rise to repeated riots or revolts, and at last brought
about the destruction of the city.

But among the higher class of minds the expectation of the Messiah,
though not less ardent, was of a more spiritual kind. They believed that
the Messiah was that prophet, often called the Son of Man who would be
send by God to proclaim the defeat of Satan and the renovation of the
world. They interpreted the prophets after a manner of their own: the
kingdom foretold was the kingdom of heaven, and the new Jerusalem was
not a Jerusalem on earth but a celestial city built of precious stones
and watered by the Stream of Life.

Such were the hopes of the Jews. The whole nation trembled with
excitement and suspense; the mob of Judea awaiting the Messiah or king
who should lead them to the conquest of the world; the more noble-minded
Jews of Palestine, and especially the foreign Jews, awaiting
the Messiah or Son of Man who should proclaim the approach of the most
terrible of all events. There were many pious men and women who withdrew
entirely from the cares of ordinary life, and passed their days in
watching and in prayer.

The Neo-Jewish or Persian-Hebrew religion, with its sublime theory of a
single god, with its clearly defined doctrine of rewards and
punishments, with its one grand duty of faith or allegiance to a divine
king, was so attractive to the mind on account of its simplicity that it
could not fail to conquer the discordant and jarring creeds of the pagan
world as soon as it should be propagated in the right manner. There is a
kind of natural selection in religion; the creed which is best adapted
to the mental world will invariably prevail, and the mental world is
being gradually prepared for the reception of higher and higher forms of
religious life. At this period Europe was ready for the reception of the
one-god species of belief, but it existed only in the Jewish area, and
was there confined by artificial checks. The Jews held the doctrine that
none but Jews could be saved, and most of them looked forward to the
eternal torture of Greek and Roman souls with equanimity, if not with
satisfaction. They were not in the least desirous to redeem them; they
hoarded up their religion as they did their money, and considered it a
heritage, a patrimony, a kind of entailed estate. There were some Jews
in foreign parts who esteemed it a work of piety to bring the Gentiles
to a knowledge of the true God, and as it was one of the popular
amusements of the Romans to attend the service at the synagogue a
convert was occasionally made. But such cases were very rare, for in
order to embrace the Jewish religion it was necessary to undergo a
dangerous operation and to abstain from eating with the pagans--in
short, to become a Jew. It was therefore indispensable for the success
of the Hebrew religion that it should be divested of its local customs.
But however much the Pharisees and Sadducees might differ on matters of
tradition, they were perfectly agreed on this point, that the ceremonial
laws were necessary for salvation. These laws could never be given up by
Jews unless they first became heretics, and this was what eventually
occurred. A schism arose among the Jews: the sectarians were defeated
and expelled. Foiled in their first object, they cast aside the law of
Moses and offered the Hebrew religion without the Hebrew ceremonies to
the Greek and Roman world. We shall now sketch the character of the man
who prepared the way for this remarkable event.

It was a custom in Israel for the members of each family to meet
together once a year that they might celebrate a sacred feast. A lamb
roasted whole was placed upon the table, and a cup of wine was filled.
Then the eldest son said, "Father, what is the meaning of this feast?"
And the father replied that it was held in memory of the sufferings of
their ancestors, and of the mercy of the Lord their God. For while they
were weeping and bleeding in the land of Egypt there came his voice unto
Moses and said that each father of a family should select a lamb without
blemish from his flock, and should kill it on the tenth day of the month
Abib, at the time of the setting of the sun; and should put the blood in
a basin, and should take a sprig of hyssop and sprinkle the door-posts
and lintel with the blood; and should then roast the lamb and eat it
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They should eat it as if in
haste, each one standing with his loins girt, his sandals on his feet,
and his staff in his hand. That night the angel of the Lord slew the
first born of the Egyptians, and that night Israel was delivered from her
bonds.

When the father had thus spoken the lamb was eaten, and four cups of
wine were drunk, and the family sang a hymn. At this beautiful and
solemn festival all persons of the same kin endeavoured to meet
together, and Hebrew pilgrims from all parts of the world journeyed to
Jerusalem. When they came within sight of the Holy City and saw the
Temple shining in the distance like a mountain of snow, some clamoured
with cries of joy, some uttered low and painful sobs. Drawing closer
together, they advanced towards the gates singing the Psalms of David,
and offering up prayers for the restoration of Israel.

At this time the subscriptions from the various churches abroad were
brought to Jerusalem, and were carried to the Temple treasury in solemn
state; and at this time also the citizens of Jerusalem witnessed a
procession which they did not like so well. A company of Roman soldiers
escorted the lieutenant-governor, who came up from Caesarea for the
festival that he might give out the vestments of the High Priest, which,
being the insignia of government, the Romans kept under lock and key.

It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Pontius
Pilate had taken up his quarters in the city, and the time of the
Passover was at hand. Not only Jerusalem, but also the neighbouring
villages, were filled with pilgrims, and many were obliged to encamp in
tents outside the walls.

It happened one day that a sound of shouting was heard; the men ran up
to the roofs of their houses, and the maidens peeped through their
latticed windows. A young man mounted on a donkey was riding towards the
city. A crowd streamed out to meet him, and a crowd followed him behind.
The people cast their mantles on the road before him, and also covered
it with green boughs. He rode through the city gates straight to the
Temple, dismounted, and entered the holy building.

In the outer courts there was a kind of bazaar in connection with the
Temple worship. Pure white lambs, pigeons, and other animals of the
requisite age and appearance were there sold, and money merchants,
sitting at their tables, changed the foreign coin with which the
pilgrims were provided. The young man at once proceeded to upset the
tables and to drive their astonished owners from the Temple, while the
crowd shouted and the little gamins, who were not the least active in
the riot, cried out, "Hurrah for the son of David!" Then people
suffering from diseases were brought to him, and he laid his hands upon
them and told them to have faith and they would be healed. When
strangers inquired the meaning of this disturbance they were told that
it was Joshua--or--as the Greek Jews called him, Jesus--the Prophet of
Nazareth. It was believed by the common people that he was the Messiah.
But the Pharisees did not acknowledge his mission. For Jesus belonged to
Galilee, and the natives of that country spoke a vile patois, and their
orthodoxy was in bad repute. "Out of Galilee," said the Pharisees with
scorn, "out of Galilee there cometh no prophet."

All persons of imaginative minds know what it is to be startled by a
thought; they know how ideas flash into the mind as if from without, and
what physical excitement they can at times produce. They also know what
it is to be possessed by a presentiment, a deep, overpowering conviction
of things to come. They know how often such presentiments are true, and
also how often they are false.


The Prophets


The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers which have not
been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind often
present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding sights and
sounds. As one in a dream he hears voices and sees forms; his whole mien
is that of a man who is possessed; his face sometimes becomes
transfigured and appears to glow with light; but usually the symptoms
are of a more painful kind, such as foaming of the mouth, writhing of
the limbs, and a bubbling ebullition of the voice. He is sometimes
seized by these violent ideas against his will. But he can to a certain
extent produce them by long fasting and by long prayer, or in other
words by the continued concentration of the mind upon a single point; by
music, dancing, and fumigations. The disease is contagious, as is shown
by the anecdote of Saul among the prophets, and similar scenes have been
frequently witnessed by travellers in the East.

Prophets have existed in all countries and at all times, but the gift
becomes rare in the same proportion as people learn to read and write.
Second sight in the Highlands disappeared before the school, and so it
has been in other lands. Prophets were numerous in ancient Greece. In
the Homeric period they opposed the royal power and constituted another
authority by the grace of God. Herodotus alludes to men who went about
prophesying in hexameters. Thucydides says that while the Peloponnesians
were ravaging the lands of Athens there were prophets within the city
uttering all kinds of oracles, some for going out and some for remaining
in. It was a prophet who obtained the passing of that law under which
Socrates was afterwards condemned to death. In Greece, Egypt, and in
Israel the priests adopted and localised the prophetic power. The
oracles of Amon, Delphi, and Shiloh bore the same relation to individual
prophets as an Established Church to itinerant preachers. Syria was
especially fertile in prophets. Marius kept a Syrian prophetess named
Martha, who attended him in all his campaigns. It matters nothing what
the Syrian religion might be; the same phenomenon again and again
recurs. Balaam was a prophet before Israel was established. Then came
the prophets of the Jews, and they again have been succeeded by the
Christian cave saint and the Moslem dervish, whom the Arabs have always
regarded with equal veneration. But it was among the Jews from the time
of Samuel to the captivity that prophets or dervishes were most
abundant. They were then as plentiful as politicians--and politicians in
fact they were, and prophesied against each other. Some would be for
peace and some would be for war: some were partisans of Egypt, others
were partisans of Babylon. The prophetic ideas differ in no respect from
those of ordinary men except in the sublime or ridiculous effect which
they produce on the prophetic mind and body. Sometimes the predictions
of the Jewish prophets were fulfilled, and sometimes they were not. To
use the Greek phrase, their oracles were often of base metal, and in
such a case the unfortunate dervish was jeered at as a false prophet,
and would in his turn reproach the Lord for having made him a fool
before men.

The Jewish prophet was an extraordinary being. He was something more and
something less than a man. He spoke like an angel; he acted like a
beast. As soon as he received his mission he ceased to wash. He often
retired to the mountains, where he might be seen skipping from rock to
rock like a goat; or he wandered in the desert with a leather girdle
round his loins, eating roots and wild honey, or sometimes browsing on
grass and flowers. He always adapted his actions to the idea which he
desired to convey. He not only taught in parables but performed them.
For instance, Isaiah walked naked through the streets to show that the
Lord would strip Jerusalem, and make her bare. Ezekiel cut off his hair
and beard and weighed it in the scales: a third part he burnt with fire,
a third part he strewed about with a knife, and a third part he
scattered to the wind. This was also intended to illustrate the
calamities which would befall the Jews. Moreover he wore a rotten girdle
as a sign that their city would decay, and buttered his bread in a
manner we would rather not describe, as a sign that they would eat
defiled bread among the Gentiles. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke as a sign
that they should be taken into captivity. As a sign that the Jews were
guilty of wantonness in worshipping idols, Hosea cohabited three years
with a woman of the town; and as a sign that they committed adultery in
turning from the Lord their God, he went and lived with another man's
wife.

Such is the ludicrous side of Jewish prophecy; yet it has also its
serious and noble side. The prophets were always the tribunes of the
people, the protectors of the poor. As the tyrant revelled in his palace
on the taxes extorted from industrious peasants, a strange figure would
descend from the mountains and, stalking to the throne, would stretch
forth a lean and swarthy arm and denounce him in the name of Jehovah,
and bid him repent, or the Lord's wrath should fall upon him and dogs
should drink his blood. In the first period of the Jewish life the
prophets exercised these functions of censor and of tribune, and
preached loyalty to the god who had brought them up out of Egypt with a
strong hand. They were also intensely fanatical, and published Jehovah's
wrath not only against the king who was guilty of idolatry and vice, but
also against the king who took a census, or imported horses, or made
treaties of friendship with his neighbours. In the second period the
prophets declared the unity of God and exposed the folly of
idol-worship. They did even more than this. They opposed the ceremonial
law, and preached the religion of the heart. They declared that God did
not care for their Sabbaths and their festivals, and their new moons,
and their prayers and church services and ablutions, and their
sacrifices of meat and oil and of incense from Arabia and of the sweet
cane from a far country. "Cease to do evil," said they; "learn to do
well; relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow."
It is certain that the doctrines of the great prophets were heretical.
Jeremiah flatly declared that in the day that God brought them from the
land of Egypt he did not command them concerning burnt offerings or
sacrifices, and this statement would be of historical value if prophets
always spoke the truth.

They were bitter adversaries of the kings and priests, and the consolers
of the oppressed. "The Lord hath appointed me," says one whose oracles
have been edited with those of Isaiah, but whose period was later and
whose true name is not known, "the Lord hath appointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek; he that sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, to give unto them that mourn beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for lamentation, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness."

The aristocracy who lived by the altar did not receive these attacks in
a spirit of submission. There was a law ascribed to Moses--like all the
other Jewish laws, but undoubtedly enacted by the priest party under the
kings--that false prophets should be put to death; and though it was
dangerous to touch prophets on account of the people, who were always on
their side, they were frequently subjected to persecution. Urijah fled
from King Jehoiakim to Egypt; armed men were sent after him; he was
arrested, brought back and killed. Zachariah was stoned to death in the
courts of the Temple. Jeremiah was formally tried and was acquitted, but
he had a narrow escape: he was led, as he remarked, like a sheep to the
slaughter. At another time he was imprisoned; at another time he was let
down by ropes into a dry well; and there is a tradition that he was
stoned to death by the Jews in Egypt after all. The nominal Isaiah
chants the requiem of such a martyr in a poem of exquisite beauty and
grandeur. The prophet is described as one of hideous appearance, so that
people hid their faces from him. "His visage was marred more than any
man, and his form more than the sons of men." The people rejected his
mission and refused to acknowledge him as a prophet. "He was despised
and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He was
arraigned on a charge of false prophecy; he made no defence, and he was
put to death. "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth: he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from the
prison to the judgment; he was cut off from the land of the living." It
was believed by the Jews that the death of such a man was accepted by
God as a human sacrifice, an atonement for the sins of the people, just
as the priest in the olden time heaped the sins of the people on the
scapegoat and sent him out into the wilderness. "He bare the sins of
many, and made intercession for the transgressors. The Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all. Surely he hath borne our griefs and hath
carried our sorrows. His soul was made an offering for sin. He was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, and
with his stripes we are healed."

There are many worthy people who think it a very extraordinary thing
that this poem can be used almost word for word to describe the rejected
mission and martyrdom of Jesus. But as the Hebrew prophets resembled one
another, and were tried before the same tribunal under the same law, the
coincidence is not surprising. A poetical description, in vague and
general terms, of the rebellion of the English people and the execution
of Charles the First would apply equally well to the rebellion of the
French people and the execution of the Louis the Sixteenth.


The Character of Jesus


The Prophet of Nazareth did not differ in temperament and character from
the noble prophets of the ancient period. He preached, as they did, the
religion of the heart; he attacked, as they did, the ceremonial laws; he
offered, as they did, consolation to the poor; he poured forth, as they
did, invectives against the rulers and the rich. But his predictions
were entirely different from theirs, for he lived, theologically
speaking, in another world. The old prophets could only urge men to do
good that the Lord might make them prosperous on earth, or at the most
that they might obtain an everlasting name. They could only promise to
the people the restoration of Jerusalem and the good things of the
Gentiles; the reconciliation of Judah and Ephraim, and the gathering of
the dispersed. The morality which Jesus preached was also supported by
promises and threats, but by promises and threats of a more exalted
kind: it was also based upon self-interest, but upon self-interest
applied to a future life. For this he was indebted to the age in which
he lived. He was superior as a prophet to Isaiah, as Newton as an
astronomer was superior to Kepler, Kepler to Copernicus, Copernicus to
Ptolemy, Ptolemy to Hipparchus, and Hipparchus to the unknown Egyptian
or Chaldean priest who first began to register eclipses and to catalogue
the stars. Jesus was a carpenter by trade, and was urged by a prophetic
call to leave his workshop and to go forth into the world, preaching the
gospel which he had received. The current fancies respecting the
approaching destruction of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power,
and the reign of God had fermented in his mind, and had made him the
subject of a remarkable hallucination. He believed that he was the
promised Messiah or Son of Man, who would be sent to prepare the world
for the kingdom of God, and who would be appointed to judge the souls of
men and to reign over them on earth. He was a man of the people, a
rustic and an artisan: he was also an imitator of the ancient prophets,
whose works he studied and whose words were always on his lips. Thus he
was led as man and prophet to take the part of the poor. He sympathised
deeply with the outcasts, the afflicted, and the oppressed. To children
and to women; to all who suffered and shed tears; to all from whom men
turned with loathing and contempt; to the girl of evil life who bemoaned
her shame; to the tax-gatherer who crouched before his God in humility
and woe; to the sorrowful in spirit and the weak in heart; to the weary
and the heavy laden, Jesus appeared as a shining angel with words sweet
as the honeycomb and bright as the golden day. He laid his hands on the
heads of the lowly; he bade the sorrowful be of good cheer, for the day
of their deliverance and their glory was at hand.

If we regard Jesus only in his relations with those whose brief and
bitter lives he purified from evil and illumined with ideal joys, we
might believe him to have been the perfect type of a meek and suffering
saint. But his character had two sides, and we must look at both. Such
is the imperfection of human nature that extreme love is counterbalanced
by extreme hate; every virtue has its attendant vice, which is excited
by the same stimulants, which is nourished by the same food. Martyrs and
persecutors resemble one another; their minds are composed of the same
materials. The man who will suffer death for his religious faith will
endeavour to enforce it even unto death. In fact, if Christianity were
true religious persecution would become a pious and charitable duty: if
God designs to punish men for their opinions it would be an act of mercy
to mankind to extinguish such opinions. By burning the bodies of those
who diffuse them many souls would be saved that would otherwise be lost,
and so there would be an economy of torment in the long run. It is
therefore not surprising that enthusiasts should be intolerant. Jesus
was not able to display the spirit of a persecutor in his deeds, but he
displayed it in his words. Believing that it was in his power to condemn
his fellow-creatures to eternal torture, he did so condemn by
anticipation all the rich and almost all the learned men among the Jews.
It was his belief that God reigned in heaven but that Satan reigned on
earth. In a few years God would invade and subdue the earth. It was
therefore his prayer, "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done in earth as it
is in heaven." God's will was not at that time done on earth, which was
in the possession of the Prince of Darkness. It was evident, therefore,
that all prosperous men were favourites of Satan, and that the
unfortunate were favourites of God. Those would go with their master to
eternal pain: these would be rewarded by their master with eternal joy.

He did not say that Dives was bad or that Lazarus was good, but merely
that Dives had received his good things on earth and Lazarus his evil
things on earth, that afterwards Lazarus was rewarded and Dives
tormented. Dives might have been as virtuous as the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who is also clothed in fine linen and who fares sumptuously
every day; Lazarus might have been as vicious as the Lambeth pauper who
prowls round the palace gates, and whose mind, like his body, is full of
sores. Not only the inoffensive rich were doomed by Jesus to hell-fire,
but also all those who did anything to merit the esteem of their
fellow-men. Even those that were happy and enjoyed life--unless it was
in his own company--were lost souls. "Woe unto you that are rich," said
he, "for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full,
for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and
weep. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did
their fathers of the false prophets." He also pronounced eternal
punishment on all those who refused to join him. "He that believeth
and is baptised," said he, "shall be saved. He that believeth not shall
be damned."

He supposed that when the kingdom of God was established on earth he
would reign over it as viceroy. Those who wished to live under him in
that kingdom must renounce all the pleasures of Satan's world. They must
sell their property and give the proceeds to the poor, discard all
domestic ties, cultivate self-abasement, and do nothing which could
possibly raise them in the esteem of other people. For they could not
serve two masters: they could not be rewarded in the kingdom of this
world, which was ruled by Satan, and also in the new kingdom, which
would be ruled by God. If they gave a dinner they were not to ask their
rich friends lest they should be asked back to dinner, and thus lose
their reward. They must ask only the poor, and for that benevolent
action they would be recompensed thereafter. They were not to give alms
in public or to pray in public, and when they fasted, they were to
pretend to feast; for if it was perceived that they were devout men and
were praised for their devotion, they would lose their reward. Robbery
and violence they were not to resist. If a man smote them on one cheek
they were to offer him the other also; if he took their coat they were
to give him their shirt; if he forced them to go with him one mile they
were to go with him two. They were to love their enemies, to do good to
them that did them evil. And why? Not because it was good so to do, but
that they might be paid for the same with compound interest in a future
state.

It might be supposed that as in the philosophy of Jesus poverty was
equivalent to virtue and misery a passport to eternal bliss, sickness
would be also a beatific state. But Jesus, like the other Jews, believed
that disease proceeded from sin. In Palestine it was always held that a
priest or a prophet was the best physician, and prayer, with the laying
on of hands, the most efficacious of all medicines. Among the sins of
Asa it is mentioned that, having sore feet, he went to a doctor instead
of to the Lord. Jesus informed those on whom he laid his hands that
their sins were forgiven them, and warned those he healed to sin no more
lest a worse thing should come upon them. Such theological practitioners
have always existed in the East, and exist there at the present day. A
text from the Koran written on a board and washed off into a cup of
water is considered God's own physic; and as the patient believes in it,
and as the mind can sometimes influence the body, the disease is
occasionally healed upon the spot. The exploits of the miracle doctor
are exaggerated in his lifetime, and after his death it is declared that
he restored sight to men that were born blind, cleansed the lepers, made
the lame to walk, cured the incurable, and raised the dead to life.

In Jerusalem the scribe had succeeded to the seer. The Jews had already
a proverb, "A scholar is greater than a prophet." The supernatural gift
was regarded with suspicion, and if successful with the vulgar excited
envy and indignation. In the East at the present day there is a
permanent hostility between the Mullah, or doctor of the law, and the
dervish, or illiterate "man of God." Jesus was, in point of fact, a
dervish, and the learned Pharisees were not inclined to admit the
authority of one who spoke a rustic patois and misplaced the aspirate,
and who was no doubt, like other prophets, uncouth in his appearance and
uncleanly in his garb. At Jerusalem Jesus completely failed, and this
failure appears to have stung him into bitter abuse of his successful
rivals the missionary Pharisees, and into the wildest extravagance of
speech. He called the learned doctors a generation of vipers, whited
sepulchres, and serpents; he declared that they should not escape the
damnation of hell. Because they had made the washing of hands before
dinner a religious ablution, Jesus, with equal bigotry, would not wash
his hands at all, though people eat with the hand in the East, and dip
their hands in the same dish. He told his disciples that if a man called
another a fool he would be in danger of hell-fire; and whoever spoke
against the Holy Ghost, it would not be forgiven him "neither in this
world nor in the world to come." He said that if a man had done anything
wrong with his hand or his eye, it were better for him to cut off his
guilty hand, or to pluck out his guilty eye, rather than to go with this
whole body into hell. He cursed a fig-tree because it bore no fruit,
although it was not the season of fruit--an action as rational as that
of Xerxes, who flogged the sea. He retorted to those who accused him of
breaking the Sabbath that he was above the Sabbath.

It is evident that a man who talked in such a manner--who believed that
it was in his power to abrogate the laws of the land, to forgive sins,
to bestow eternal happiness upon his friends, and to send all those who
differed from him to everlasting flames--would lay himself open to a
charge of blasphemy, and it is also evident that the "generation of
vipers" would not hesitate to take advantage of the circumstance. But
whatever share personal enmity might have had in the charges that were
made against him, he was lawfully condemned according to Bible law. He
declared in open court that they would see him descending in the clouds
at the right hand of the power of God. The High Priest tore his robes in
horror; false prophecy and blasphemy had been uttered to his face.


The Christians


After the execution of Jesus his disciples did not return to Galilee:
they waited at Jerusalem for his second coming. They believed that he
had died as a human sacrifice for the sins of the people, and that he
would speedily return with an army of angels to establish the kingdom of
God on earth. Already in his lifetime these simple creatures had begun
to dispute about the dignities which they should hold at court, and
Jesus, who was not less simple than themselves, had promised that they
should sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. He had
assured them again and again, in the most positive language, that this
event would take place in their own lifetime. "Verily, verily," he said,
"there are some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see
the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." They therefore remained at
Jerusalem and scrupulously followed his commands. They established a
community of goods, or at least gave away their superfluities to the
poorer members of the Church, and had charitable arrangements for
relieving the sick. They admitted proselytes with the ceremony of
baptism. At the evening repast which they held together they broke bread
and drank wine in a certain solemn manner, as Jesus had been wont to do,
and as they especially remembered he did at the Last Supper. But in all
respects they were Jews, just as Jesus himself had been a Jew. They
attended divine service in the temple; they offered up the customary
sacrifices; they kept the Sabbath; they abstained from forbidden meats.
They held merely the one dogma that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he
would return in power and glory to judge the earth.

Jerusalem was frequented at the time of the pilgrimage by thousands of
Jews from the great cities of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor.
These pilgrims were of a very different class from the fishermen of
Galilee. They were Jews in religion but they were scarcely Jews in
nationality. They were members of great and flourishing municipalities;
they enjoyed political liberty and civil rights. They prayed in Greek
and read the Bible in a Greek translation. Their doctrine was tolerant
and latitudinarian. At Alexandria there was a school of Jews who had
mingled the metaphysics of Plato with their own theology. Many of these
Greek Jews became converted, and it is to them that Jesus owes his
reputation, Christianity its existence. The Palestine Jews desired to
reserve the Gospel to the Jews. They had no taste or sympathy for the
Gentiles, from whom they lived entirely apart, and who were associated
in their minds with the abominations of idolatry, the payment of taxes,
and the persecution of Antiochus. But these same Gentiles, these poor
benighted Greeks and Romans, were the compatriots and fellow-citizens of
the Hellenic Jews, who therefore entertained more liberal ideas upon the
subject. Two parties accordingly arose--the conservative or Jewish
party, who would receive no converts except according to the custom of
the orthodox Jews in such cases, and the Greek party, who agitated for
complete freedom from the law of Moses. The latter were headed by Paul,
an enthusiastic and ambitious man who refused to place himself under the
rule of the twelve apostles, but claimed a special revelation. A
conference was held at Jerusalem, and a compromise was arranged to the
effect that pagan converts should not be subjected to the rite of
circumcision, but that they should abstain from pork and oysters and
should eat no animals which had not been killed by the knife.

But the compromise did not last. The Church diverged in discipline and
dogma more and more widely from its ancient form, till in the second
century the Christians of Judea, who had faithfully followed the customs
and tenets of the twelve apostles, were informed that they were
heretics. During that interval a new religion had arisen. Christianity
had conquered paganism, and paganism had corrupted Christianity. The
legends which belonged to Osiris and Apollo had been applied to the life
of Jesus. The single Deity of the Jews had been exchanged for the
Trinity, which the Egyptians had invented and which Plato had idealised
into a philosophic system. The man who had said "Why callest thou me
good? There is none good but one, that is God," had now himself been
made a god--or the third part of one. The Hebrew element, however, had
not been entirely cast off. With some little inconsistency, the Jewish
sacred books were said to be inspired, and nearly all the injunctions
contained in them were disobeyed. It was heresy to deny that the Jews
were the chosen people, and it was heresy to assert that the Jews would
be saved.

The Christian religion was at first spread by Jews who, either as
missionaries or in the course of their ordinary avocations, made the
circuit of the Mediterranean world. In all large towns there was a
Ghetto or Jews' quarter, in which the traveller was received by the
people of his own race. There was no regular clergy among the Jews, and
it was their custom to allow, and even to invite, the stranger to preach
in their synagogue. Doctrines were not strictly defined, and they
listened without anger, and perhaps with some hope, to the statement
that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and that he would shortly return
to establish his kingdom upon earth. But when these Christians began to
preach that the eating of pork was not a deadly sin, and that God was
better pleased with a sprinkle than a slash, they were speedily
stigmatised as heretics, and all the Jewries in the world were closed
against them.

Those strange religious and commercial communities, those landless
colonies which an Oriental people had established all over the world,
from the Rhone and the Rhine to the Oxus and Jaxartes--which
corresponded regularly among themselves, and whose members recognised
each other, wherever they might be and in whatever garb, by the solemn
phrase, "Hear, Israel, there is one God!"--afforded a model for the
Christian churches of the early days. The primitive Christians did not
indeed live together in one quarter like the Jews, but they gathered
together for purposes of worship and administration in set places at
appointed times. They did not establish commercial relations with the
Christians in other towns, but they kept up an active social
correspondence, and hospitably entertained the foreign brother who
brought letters of introduction as credentials of his creed. Travelling,
though not always free from danger, was unobstructed in those days:
coasters sailed frequently from port to port, and the large towns were
connected by paved roads with a posting-house at every six-mile stage.
All inn-keepers spoke Greek: it was not necessary to learn Latin even in
order to reside at Rome.

And now we return to that magnificent city which was adorned with the
spoils of a hundred lands, into which streamed all the wealth, the
energy, and the ambition of East and West. Ostia-on-the-Sea, where the
ancient citizens had boiled their salt was now a great port in which the
grain from Egypt and Carthage was stored up in huge buildings, and to
which in the summer and autumn came ships from all parts of the world.
The road to Rome was fifteen miles in length, and was lined with villas
and with lofty tombs. Outside the city, on the neighbouring hills, were
gardens open to the public; and from these hills were conducted streams,
by subterranean pipes, into the town, where they were trained to run
like rivulets, making everywhere a pleasant murmur, here and there
reposing in artificial grottoes or dancing as fountains in the air. The
streets were narrow, and the tall houses buried them in deep shade. They
were lined with statues; there was a population of marble men. Flowers
glittered on roofs and balconies. Vast palaces of green and white and
golden tinted marble were surrounded by venerable trees. The Via Sacra
was the Regent Street of Rome, and was bordered with stalls where the
silks and spices of the East, the wool of Spain, the glass wares of
Alexandria, the smoked fish of the Black Sea, the wines of the Greek
isles, Cretan apples, Alpine cheese, the oysters of Britain, and the
veined wood of the Atlas were exposed for sale. In that splendid
thoroughfare a hundred languages might be heard at once, and as many
costumes were displayed as if the universe had been invited to a
fancy-dress ball. Sometimes a squadron of the Imperial Guard would ride
by--flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Germans covered with shining steel. Then a
procession of pale-faces, shaven Egyptian priests, bearing a statue of
Isis and singing melancholy hymns. A Greek philosopher would next pass
along with abstracted eyes and ragged cloak, followed by a boy with a
pile of books. Men from the East might be seen with white turbans and
flowing robes, or in sheep-skin mantles with high black caps; and
perhaps beside them a tattooed Briton gaping at the shops. Then would
come a palanquin with curtains half drawn, carried along at a swinging
pace by sturdy Cappadocian slaves, and within it the fashionable lady
with supercilious, half-closed eyes, holding a crystal ball between her
hands to keep them cool. Next a senator in white and purple robe,
receiving as he walked along the greetings and kisses of his friends and
clients, not always of the cleanest kind.

So crowded were the streets that carriages were not allowed to pass
through them in the day-time. The only vehicles that appeared were the
carts employed in the public works; and as they came rolling and
grinding along, bearing huge beams and blocks of stone, the driver
cracked his whip and pushed people against the wall, and there was much
squeezing and confusion, during which pickpockets, elegantly dressed,
their hands covered with rings, were busy at their work, pretending to
assist the ladies in the crowd. People from the country passed towards
the market, their mules or asses laden with panniers in which purple
grapes and golden fruits were piled up in profusion, and refreshed the
eye, which was dazzled by the stony glare. Hawkers went about offering
matches in exchange for broken glass, and the keepers of the cook-shops
called out in cheerful tones, "Smoking sausages!" "Sweet boiled peas!"
"Honey wine, O honey wine!" And then there was the crowd itself--the
bright-eyed, dark-browed Roman people, who played in the shade at dice
or mora like the old Egyptians; who lounged through the temples, which
were also the museums, to look at the curiosities; or who stood in
groups reading the advertisements on the walls, and the programmes which
announced that on such and such a day there would be a grand performance
in the circus and that all would be done in the best style. A blue
awning, with white stars in imitation of the sky, would shade them from
the sun; trees would be transplanted, and a forest would appear upon the
stage; giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions, ostriches, stags, and wild
boars would be hunted down and killed; armies of gladiators would
contend; and by way of after-piece the arena would be filled with water,
and a naval battle would be performed--ships, soldiers, wounds, agony,
and death being admirably real.

So passed the Roman street-life day, and with the first hours of
darkness the noise and the turmoil did not cease; for then the
travelling carriages rattled towards the gates, and carts filled with
dung--the only export of the city. The music of serenades rose softly in
the air, and sounds of laughter from the tavern. The night watch made
their rounds, their armour rattling as they passed. Lights were
extinguished, householders put up their shutters, to which bells were
fastened--for burglaries frequently occurred. And then for a time the
city would be almost still. Dogs, hated by the Romans, prowled about
sniffing for their food. Men or prey from the Pontine Marshes crept
stealthily along the black side of the street signalling to one another
with sharp whistles or hissing sounds. Sometimes torches would flash
against the walls as a knot of young gallants reeled home from a
debauch, breaking the noses of the street statues on their way. And at
such an hour there were men and women who stole forth from their various
houses, and with mantles covering their faces hastened to a lonely spot
in the suburbs, and entered the mouth of a dark cave. They passed
through long galleries, moist with damp and odorous of death--for
coffins were ranged on either side in tiers one above the other. But
soon sweet music sounded from the depths of the abyss; an open chamber
came to view, and a tomb covered with flowers, laid out with a repast,
encircled by men and women who were apparelled in white robes, and who
sang a psalm of joy. It was in the catacombs of Rome, where the dead had
been buried in the ancient times, that the Christians met to discourse
on the progress of the faith; to recount the trials which they suffered
in their homes; to confess to one another their sins and doubts, their
carnal presumption, or their lack of faith; and also to relate their
sweet visions of the night, the answers to their earnest prayers. They
listened to the exhortations of their elders, and perhaps to a letter
from one of the apostles. They then supped together as Jesus had supped
with his disciples, and kissed one another when the love feast was
concluded. At these meetings there was no distinction of rank; the
high-born lady embraced the slave whom she had once scarcely regarded as a
man. Humility and submission were the cardinal virtues of the early
Christians; slavery had not been forbidden by the apostles because it
was the doctrine of Jesus that those who were lowest in this world would
be highest in the next, his theory of heaven being earth turned upside
down. Slavery therefore was esteemed a state of grace, and some
Christians appear to have rejected the freeman's cap on religious
grounds, for Paul exhorts such persons to become free if they can
--advice which slaves do not usually require.

As time passed on, the belief of the first Christians that the end of
the world was near at hand became fainter and gradually died away. It
was then declared that God had favoured the earth with a respite of one
thousand years. In the meantime the gospel or good tidings which the
Christians announced was this. There was one God, the Creator of the
world. He had long been angry with men because they were what he had
made them. But he sent his only begotten son into a corner of Syria, and
because his son had been murdered his wrath had been partly appeased. He
would not torture to eternity all the souls that he had made; he would
spare at least one in every million that were born. Peace unto earth and
goodwill unto men if they would act in a certain manner; if not, fire
and brimstone and the noisome pit. He was the emperor of heaven, the
tyrant of the skies; the pagan gods were rebels, with whom he was at
war, although he was all-powerful, and whom he allowed to seduce the
souls of men although he was all-merciful. Those who joined the army of
the cross might entertain some hopes of being saved; those who followed
the faith of their fathers would follow their fathers to hell-fire. This
creed with the early Christians was not a matter of half-belief and
metaphysical debate, as it is at the present day, when Catholics and
Protestants discuss hell-fire with courtesy and comfort over filberts
and port wine. To those credulous and imaginative minds God was a live
king, hell a place in which real bodies were burnt with real flames,
which was filled with the sickening stench of roasted flesh, which
resounded with agonising shrieks. They saw their fathers and mothers,
their sisters and their dearest friends, hurrying onward to that fearful
pit unconscious of danger, laughing and singing, lured on by the fiends
whom they called the gods. They felt as we should feel were we to see a
blind man walking towards a river bank. Who would have the heart to turn
aside and say it was the business of the police to interfere? But what
was death, a mere momentary pain, compared with tortures that would have
no end? Who that could hope to save a soul by tears and supplications
would remain quiescent as men do now, shrugging their shoulders and
saying that it is not good taste to argue on religion, and that
conversion is the office of the clergy? The Christians of that period
felt more and did more than those of the present day, not because they
were better men but because they believed more; and they believed more
because they knew less. Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage
never doubts at all.

In that age the Christians believed much, and their lives were rendered
beautiful by sympathy and love. The dark, deep river did not exist--it
was only a fancy of the brain: yet the impulse was not less real. The
heart-throb, the imploring cry, the swift leap, the trembling hand
out-reached to save; the transport of delight, the ecstasy of tears, the
sweet, calm joy that a man had been wrested from the jaws of death--are
these less beautiful, are these less real, because it afterwards
appeared that the man had been in no danger after all?

In that age every Christian was a missionary. The soldiers sought to win
recruits for the heavenly host; the prisoner of war discoursed to his
Persian jailer; the slave girl whispered the gospel in the ears of her
mistress as she built up the mass of towered hair; there stood men in
cloak and beard at street corners who, when the people, according to the
manners of the day, invited them to speak, preached not the doctrines of
the Painted Porch but the words of a new and strange philosophy; the
young wife threw her arms round her husband's neck and made him agree to
be baptised, that their souls might not be parted after death. How awful
were the threats of the heavenly despot; how sweet were the promises of
a life beyond the grave! The man who strove to obey the law which was
written on his heart, yet often fell for want of support, was now
promised a rich reward if he would persevere. The disconsolate woman
whose age of beauty and triumph had passed away was taught that if she
became a Christian her body in all the splendour of its youth would rise
again. The poor slave who sickened from weariness of a life in which
there was for him no hope, received the assurance of another life in
which he would find luxury and pleasure when death released him from his
woe.

Ah, sweet fallacious hopes of a barbarous and poetic age! Illusion still
cherished, for mankind is yet in its romantic youth! How easy it would
be to endure without repining the toils and troubles of this miserable
life if indeed we could believe that when its brief period was past we
should be united to those whom we have loved, to those whom death has
snatched away; or whom fate has parted from us by barriers cold and deep
and hopeless as the grave. If we could believe this the shortness of
life would comfort us--how quickly the time flies by!--and we should
welcome death. But we do not believe it, and so we cling to our tortured
lives, dreading the dark nothingness, dreading the dispersal of our
elements into cold, unconscious space. As drops in the ocean of water,
as atoms in the ocean of air, as sparks in the ocean of fire within the
earth, our minds do their appointed work and serve to build up the
strength and beauty of the one great human mind which grows from century
to century and from age to age, and is perhaps itself a mere molecule
within some higher mind.

Soon it was whispered that there was in Rome a secret society which
worshipped an unknown god. Its members wore no garlands on their brows;
they never entered the temples; they were governed by laws which strange
and fearful oaths bound them ever to obey; their speech was not as the
speech of ordinary men; they buried instead of burning the bodies of the
dead; they married, they educated their children after a manner of their
own. The politicians who regarded the established Church as essential to
the safety of the state became alarmed. Secret societies were forbidden
by law, and here was a society in which the tutelary gods of Rome were
denounced as rebels and usurpers. The Christians, it is true, preached
passive obedience and the divine right of kings, but they proclaimed
that all men were equal before God--a dangerous doctrine in a community
where more than half the men were slaves. The idle and superstitious
lazzaroni did not love the gods, but they believed in them, and they
feared lest the "atheists," as they called the Christians, would provoke
the vengeance of the whole divine federation against the city, and that
all would be involved in the common ruin. Soon there came a time when
every public calamity--an epidemic, a fire, a famine, or a flood--was
ascribed to the anger of the offended gods. And then arose imperial
edicts, popular commotions, and the terrible street-cry of Christiani ad
leones!

But the persecutions thus provoked were fitful and brief, and served
only to fan the flame. For to those who believed in heaven--not as men
now believe, with a slight tincture of perhaps unconscious doubt, but as
men believe in things which they see and hear and feel and know--death
was merely a surgical operation with the absolute certainty of
consequent release from pain and of entrance into unutterable bliss. The
Christians therefore encountered it with joy, and the sight of their
cheerful countenances as they were being led to execution induced many
to inquire what this belief might be which could thus rob death of its
dreadfulness and its despair.

But the great moralists and thinkers of the empire looked coldly down
upon this new religion. In their pure and noble writings they either
allude to Christianity with scorn or do not allude to it at all. This
circumstance has occasioned much surprise: it can, however, be easily
explained. The success of Christianity among the people, and its want of
success among the philosophers, were due to the same cause--the
superstition of the Christian teachers.

Among the missionaries of the present day there are many men who in
earnestness and self-devotion are not inferior to those of the apostolic
times. Yet they almost invariably fail--they are too enlightened for
their congregations. With respect to their own religion, indeed, that
charge cannot be justly brought against them. Set them talking on the
forbidden apple, Noah's ark, the sun standing still to facilitate
murder, the donkey preaching to its master, the whale swallowing and
ejecting Jonah, the miraculous conception, the water turned to wine, the
fig-tree withered by a curse, and they will reason like children, or in
other words they will not reason at all; they will merely repeat what
they have been taught by their mammas. But when they discourse to the
savage concerning his belief they use the logic of Voltaire, and deride
witches and men possessed in a style which Jesus and the twelve
apostles, the fathers of the Church, the popes of the Middle Ages, and
Martin Luther himself would have accounted blasphemous and contrary to
Scripture. Now it is impossible to persuade an adult savage that his
gods do not exist, and he considers those who deny their existence to be
ignorant foreigners unacquainted with the divine constitution of his
country. Hence he laughs in his sleeve at all that the missionaries say.
But the primitive Christians believed in gods and goddesses, satyrs and
nymphs, as implicitly as the pagans themselves. They did not deny and
they did not disbelieve the miracles performed in pagan temples. They
allowed that the gods had great power upon earth, but asserted that they
would have it only for a time; that it ceased beyond the grave; that
they were rebels, and that God was the rightful king. Here then were two
classes of men whose intellects were precisely on the same level. Each
had a theory, and the Christian theory was the better of the two. It had
definite promises and threats, and without being too high for the vulgar
comprehension, it reduced the scheme of the universe to order and
harmony, resembling that of the great empire under which they lived.

But to the philosophers of that period it was merely a new and noisy
form of superstition. Experience has amply proved that minds of the
highest order are sometimes unable to shake off the ideas which they
imbibed when they were children; but to those of whom we speak
Christianity was offered when their powers of reflection were matured,
and it was naturally rejected with contempt. They knew that the pagan
gods did not exist. Was it likely that they would sit at the feet of
those who still believed in them? They had long ago abandoned the
religious legends of their own country; they had shaken off the spell
which Homer with his splendid poetry had laid upon their minds. Was it
likely that they would believe in the old Arab traditions, or in these
tales of a god who took upon him the semblance of a Jew, and suffered
death upon the gallows for the redemption of mankind? They had obtained
by means of intellectual research a partial perception of the great
truth that events result from secondary laws. Was it likely that they
would join a crew of devotees who prayed to God to make the wind blow
this way or that way, to give them a dinner, or to cure them of a pain?
When the Tiber overflowed its banks the pagans declared that it was
owing to the wrath of the gods against the Christians: the Christians
retorted that it was owing to the wrath of God against the idolaters. To
a man like Pliny, who studied the phenomena with his notebook in his
hand, where was the difference between the two?

In the Greek world Christianity became a system of metaphysics as
abstract and abstruse as any son of Hellas could desire. But in the
Latin world it was never the religion of a scholar and a gentleman. It
was the creed of the uneducated people, who flung themselves into it
with passion. It was something which belonged to them and to them alone.
They were not acquainted with Cicero or Seneca: they had never tasted
intellectual delights, for the philosophers scorned to instruct the
vulgar crowd. And now the vulgar crowd found teachers who interpreted to
them the Jewish books, who composed for them a magnificent literature of
sermons and epistles and controversial treatises, a literature of
enthusiasts and martyrs written in blood and fire. The people had no
share in the politics of the empire, but now they had politics of their
own. The lower orders were enfranchised; women and slaves were not
excluded. The barbers gossiped theologically. Children played at church
in the streets. The Christians were no longer citizens of Rome. God was
their emperor, heaven was their fatherland. They despised the pleasures
of this life; they were as emigrants gathered on the shore waiting for a
wind to waft them to another world. They rendered unto Caesar the things
that were Caesar's, for so it was written they should do. They honoured
the king, for such had been the teaching of St. Paul. They regarded the
emperor as God's vice-regent upon earth, and disobeyed him only when his
commands were contrary to those of God. But this limitation, which it
was the business of the bishops to define, made the Christians a
dangerous party in the state. The Emperor Constantine, whose title was
unsound, entered into alliance with this powerful corporation. He made
Christianity the religion of the state and the bishops peers of the
realm.

In the days of tribulation it had often been predicted that when the
empire became Christian war would cease, and men would dwell in
brotherhood together. The Christian religion united the slave and his
master at the same table and in the same embrace. On the pavement of the
basilica men of all races and of all ranks knelt side by side. If any
one were in sickness and affliction it was sufficient for him to declare
himself a Christian: money was at once pressed into his hands:
compassionate matrons hastened to his bedside. Even at the time when the
pagans regarded the new sect with most abhorrence they were forced to
exclaim, "See how these Christians love one another!" It was reasonable
to suppose that the victory of this religion would be the victory of
love and peace. But what was the actual result? Shortly after the
establishment of Christianity as a state religion there was uproar and
dissension in every city of the Empire; then savage persecutions and
bloody wars, until a pagan historian could observe to the polished and
intellectual coterie for whom alone he wrote that now the hatred of the
Christians against one another surpassed the fury of savage beasts
against man.

It is evident that the virtues exhibited by those who gallantly fight
against desperate odds for an idea will not be invariably displayed by
those who when the idea is realised enjoy the spoil. It is evident that
bishops who possess large incomes and great authority will not always
possess the same qualities of mind as those spiritual peers who had no
distinction to expect except that of being burnt alive. In all great
movements of the mind there can be but one heroic age, and the heroic
age of Christianity was past. The Church became the state concubine;
Christianity lost its democratic character. The bishops who should have
been the tribunes of the people became the creatures of the Crown. Their
lives were not always of the most creditable kind, but their virtues
were perhaps more injurious to society than their vices. The mischief
was done not so much by those who intrigued for places and rioted on
tithes at Constantinople as by those who, often with the best
intentions, endeavoured to make all men think alike "according to the
law."

It was the Christian theory that God was a king, and that he enacted
laws for the government of men on earth. Those laws were contained in
the Jewish books, but some of them had been repealed and some of them
were exceedingly obscure. Some were to be understood in a literal sense,
others were only metaphorical. Many cases might arise to which no text
or precept could be with any degree of certainty applied. What then was
to be done? How was God's will to be ascertained? The early Christians
were taught that by means of prayer and faith their questions would be
answered, their difficulties would be solved. They must pray earnestly
to God for help: and the ideas which came into their heads after prayer
would be emanations from the Holy Ghost.

In the first age of Christianity the Church was a republic. There was no
distinction between clergymen and laymen. Each member of the
congregation had a right to preach, and each consulted God on his own
account. The spiritus privatus everywhere prevailed. A committee of
presbyters or elders, with a bishop or chairman, administered the
affairs of the community.

The second period was marked by an important change. The bishop and
presbyters, though still elected by the congregation, had begun to
monopolise the pulpit; the distinction of clergy and laity was already
made. The bishops of various churches met together at councils or synods
to discuss questions of discipline and dogma, and to pass laws, but they
went as representatives of their respective congregations.

In the third period the change was more important still. The
congregation might now be appropriately termed a flock; the spiritus
privatus was extinct; the priests were possessed of traditions which
they did not impart to the laymen; the Water of Life was kept in a
sealed vessel; there was no salvation outside the Church: no man could
have God for a father unless he had also the Church for a mother, as
even Bossuet long afterwards declared; ex-communication was a sentence
of eternal death. Henceforth disputes were only between bishops and
bishops, the laymen following their spiritual leaders and often using
material weapons on their behalf. In the synods the bishops now met as
princes of their congregations, and under the influence of the Holy
Ghost [spiritu sancto suggerente] issued imperial decrees. The penalties
inflicted were of the most terrible nature to those who believed that
hell-fire and purgatory were at the disposal of the priesthood, while
those who entertained doubts upon the subject allowed themselves to be
cursed and damned with equanimity. But when the Church became united
with the state, the secular arm was at its disposal, and was vigorously
used.

The bishops were all of them ignorant and superstitious men, but they
could not all of them think alike. And as if to ensure dissent they
proceeded to define that which had never existed, and which if it had
existed could never be defined. They described the topography of heaven.
They dissected the godhead and expounded the miraculous conception,
giving lectures on celestial impregnations and miraculous obstetrics.
They not only said that 3 was 1, and that 1 was 3: they professed to
explain how that curious arithmetical combination had been brought
about. The indivisible had been divided and yet was not divided: it was
divisible and yet it was indivisible; black was white and white was
black, and yet there were not two colours, but one colour; and whoever
did not believe it would be damned. In the midst of all this subtle
stuff, the dregs and rinsings of the Platonic school, Arius thundered
out the common-sense but heretical assertion that the Father had existed
before the Son. Two great parties were at once formed. A council of
bishops was convened at Nicaea to consult the Holy Ghost. The chair was
taken by a man who wore a wig of many colours and a silken robe
embroidered with golden thread. This was Constantine the great, patron
of Christianity, Nero of the Bosphorus, murderer of his wife and son.
The discussion was noisy and abusive, and the Arians lost the day. Yet
the matter did not end there. Constantius took up the Arian side. Arian
missionaries converted the Vandals and the Goths. Other emperors took up
the Catholics, and they converted the Franks. The court was divided by
spiritual eunuchs and theological intrigues: the provinces were laid
waste by theological wars which lasted three hundred years. What a world
of woe and desolation, what a deluge of blood, because the Greeks had a
taste for metaphysics!

The Arian difference did not stand alone; every province had its own
schism. Caste sympathy induced the emperors to protect the pagan
aristocracy from the fury of the bishops, but the heretics belonged
chiefly to the subject nationalities. The Nestorians were men of the
Semitic race, the Jacobites were Egyptians, the Donatists were Berbers.
Of such a nature was the treatment which these people received that they
were ready at any time to join the enemies of the empire, whoever they
might be. Difference of nationality occasioned difference in mode of
thought. Difference in mode of thought occasioned difference in
religious creed. Difference in religious creed occasioned controversy,
riots and persecution. Persecution intensified distinctions of
nationality. Such then was the state of religion in the Grecian world.
In the West the Church, overwhelmed by the barbarians, was displaying
virtues in adversity, and was laying the foundations of a majestic
kingdom. But as for the East, Christianity had lived in vain. In
Constantinople and in Greece it had done no good. In Asia, Barbary, and
Egypt it had done harm. Its peace was apathy: its activity was war.
Instead of healing the old wounds of conquest it opened them afresh. It
was not enough that the peasants of the ancient race, once masters of
the soil, should be crushed with taxes; a new instrument of torture was
invented; their priests were taken from them; their altars were
overthrown. But the day of vengeance was at hand. Soon they would enjoy,
under rulers of a different religion but of the same race, that freedom
of conscience which a Christian government refused.

The Byzantine empire in the seventh century included Greece and the
islands, with a part of Italy. In Asia and Africa its possessions were
those of the Turkish Empire before the cession of Algiers. There was a
Greek viceroy of Egypt: there were Greek governors in Egypt and Asia
Minor, Carthage, and Cyrene. The capital was fed with Egyptian corn and
enriched by silken manufactures--for two Nestorian monks had brought the
eggs of the silkworm from China in hollow canes. These eggs had been
hatched under lukewarm dung, and the culture of the cocoon had been
established for the first time on European soil. The eastern boundary of
the empire was sometimes the Tigris, sometimes the Euphrates; the land
of Mesopotamia, which lay between the rivers, was the subject of
continual war between the Byzantines and the Persians.

Alexander the Great had not been long dead before the Parthians, a race
of hardy mountaineers, occupied the lands to the east of the Euphrates,
made themselves famous in their wars with Rome, and established a wide
empire. In the third century it was broken up into petty principalities,
and a private citizen who claimed to be heir-at-law of the old Persian
kings headed a party, seized the crown, restored the Zoroastrian
religion, and raised the empire to a state of power and magnificence
scarcely inferior to that of the Great Kings. But the Greeks were still
in Asia Minor and Egypt, and it became the hereditary ambition of the
Persians to drive them back into their own country. In the seventh
century Chosroes the Second accomplished this idea, and restored the
frontiers of Cambyses and the first Darius. He conquered Asia Minor,
Syria, and Egypt. He carried his arms to Cryene, and extinguished the
last glimmer of culture in that ancient colony. Heraclius, the Byzantine
emperor, was in despair. While the Persians overran his provinces in
Asia a horde or Cossacks threatened him in Europe. Constantinople, he
feared, would soon be surrounded, and it already suffered famine from
the loss of Egypt, as Rome had formerly suffered when the Vandals
plundered it of Africa. He determined to migrate to Carthage, and had
already prepared to depart when the Patriarch persuaded him to change
his mind. He obtained peace from Persia by sending earth and water in
the old style, and by promising to pay as tribute a thousand talents of
gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand
horses, and a thousand virgins. But instead of collecting these
commodities he collected an army, and suddenly dashed into the heart of
Persia. Chosroes recalled his troops from the newly conquered lands, but
was defeated by the Greeks, and was in his turn compelled to sue for
ignominious peace. In the midst of the triumphs which Heraclius
celebrated at Constantinople and Jerusalem, an obscure town on the
confines of Syria was pillaged by a band of Arab horsemen, who cut in
pieces some troops which advanced to its relief. This appeared a
trifling event, but it was the beginning of a mighty revolution. In the
last eight years of his reign Heraclius lost to the Saracens the
provinces which he had recovered from the Persians.


Arabia


The peninsula of Arabia is almost as large as Hindustan, but does not
contain a single navigable river. It is for the most part a sterile
tableland furrowed by channels which in winter roar with violent and
muddy streams, and which in summer are completely dry. In these
stream-beds at a little depth below the surface there is sometimes a
stratum of water which, breaking out here and there into springs,
creates a habitable island in the waste. Such a fruitful wadi or oasis
is sometimes extensive enough to form a town, and each town is in itself
a kingdom. This stony, green-spotted land was divided into Arabia
Petraea on the north and Arabia Deserta on the south. The north supplied
Constantinople, and the south supplied Persia, with mercenary troops;
the leaders, on receiving their pay, established courts at home, and
rendered homage to their imperial masters. The princes of Arabia Deserta
ruled in the name of the Chosroes. The princes of Arabia Petraea were
proud to be called the lieutenants of the Caesars.

In the south-west corner of the peninsula there is a range of hills
sufficiently high to intercept the passing clouds and rain them down as
streams to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. This was the land of Yemen
or Sabaea, renowned for its groves of frankincense and for the wealth of
its merchant kings. Its forests in ancient times were inhabited by
squalid negro tribes who lived on platforms in the trees, and whose
savage stupor was ascribed to the drowsy influence of the scented air.
The country was afterwards colonised by men of the Arab race, who built
ships and established factories on the east coast of Africa, on the
coast of Malabar, and in the island of Ceylon. They did not navigate the
Red Sea, but dispatched the Indian goods, the African ivory and gold
dust, and their own fragrant produce by camel caravan to Egypt or to
Petra, a great market city in the north.

The Pharaohs and the Persian kings did not interfere with the merchant
princes of Yemen. In the days of the Ptolemies a few Greek ships made
the Indian voyage, but could not compete with the Arabs who had so long
been established in the trade. But the Roman occupation of Alexandria
ruined them completely. The just and moderate government of Augustus,
and the demand for Oriental luxuries at Rome, excited the enterprise of
the Alexandrine traders, and a Greek named Hippalus made a remarkable
discovery. He observed that the winds or monsoons of the Indian Ocean
regularly blew during six months from east to west and during six months
from west to east. He was bold enough to do what the Phoenicians
themselves had never done. He left the land and sailed right across the
ocean to the Indian shore with one monsoon, returning with the next to
the mouth of the Red Sea. By means of this ocean route the India voyage
could be made in half the time. The goods were thereby cheapened, the
demand was thereby increased, the Indian Ocean was covered with Greek
vessels, a commercial revolution was created, the coasting and caravan
trade of the Arabs came to an end, the Romans destroyed Aden, and Yemen
withered up and remained independent only because it was obscure.

Arabia had always been a land of refuge, for in its terrible deserts
security might always be found. To Arabia had fled the Priests of the Sun
after the victories of Alexander and the restoration of Babylonian
idolatry. To Arabia had fled thousands of Jews after the second
destruction of Jerusalem. To Arabia had fled thousands of Christians who
had been persecuted by pagan and still more by Christian emperors. The
land was divided among independent princes--many of them were
Christians and many of them were Jews. There is nothing more conducive
to an enlightened scepticism, and its attendant spirit toleration, than
the spectacle of various religious creeds each maintained by intelligent
and pious men. A king of Arabia, Felix, in the fourth century received an
embassy from the Byzantine emperor, with a request that Christians might
be allowed to settle in his kingdom, and also that he would make
Christianity the religion of the state. He assented to the first
proposition. With reference to the second he replied "I reign over men's
bodies, not over their opinions. I exact from my subjects obedience to
the government; as to their religious doctrine, the judge of that is the
great Creator."

But it came to pass that a king of the Jewish persuasion succeeded to
the throne: he persecuted his Christian subjects and made war on
Christian kings, burning houses, men, and gospels wherever he could find
them. A Christian Arab made his escape, travelled to Constantinople,
and, holding up a charred Testament before the throne, demanded help in
the name of the Redeemer. The emperor at once prepared for war, and
dispatched an envoy to his faithful ally the Negus of Abyssinia.

The old kingdom of Ethiopia had escaped Cambyses and Alexander, and had
lost its independence to the Ptolemies only for a time. The Romans made
an Abyssinian expedition with complete success, but withdrew from the
savage country in disdain. Ethiopia was left to its own devices, which
soon became of an Africanising nature. The priests kept the king shut up
in his palace and when it suited their convenience sent him word, in the
African style, that he must be tired and that it would be good for him
to sleep; upon which he migrated to the lower world with his favourite
wives and slaves. But there was once a king named Ergamenes who had
improved his mind by the study of Greek philosophy, and who, when he
received the message of the priests, soon gave them a proof that they
were quite mistaken, and that so far from being sleepy he was wide
awake. He ordered them to collect in the Golden Chapel, and then,
marching in with his guards, he put them all to death. From that time
Abyssinia became a military kingdom. As the princes of Numidia had used
elephants after the destruction of the Carthaginian republic, so the
Abyssinians used them in pageantry and war long after the days of the
Ptolemies, who had first shown them how the huge beasts might be
entrapped. Hindus were probably employed by the Ptolemies, as they were
by the Carthaginians, for the management of the elephantine stud. In the
fourth century two shipwrecked Christians converted the king and his
people to the new religion--a beneficial event, for thus they were
brought into connection with the Roman Empire. The Patriarch of
Alexandria was the Abyssinian pope, as he is at the present day, and
during all these years he has never ceased to send them their aboona or
archbishop. This ecclesiastic is regarded with much reverence; he costs
six thousand dollars; he is never allowed to smoke; and by way of
blessing he spits upon his congregation, who believe that the episcopal
virtue resides in the saliva, and not, as we think, in the fingers' ends.

Abyssinia had still its ancient seaport in Annesley Bay, and sent
trading vessels to the India coast. The Byzantine emperor, having made
his proposals through the Patriarch of Alexandria, and having received
from the Negus a favourable reply, dispatched a fleet of transports down
the Red Sea; the king filled them with his brigand troops; Yemen was
invaded and subdued, and now it was the Christians who began to
persecute. Another Arab prince ran off for help, and he went to the
Persian king, who at first refused to take the country as a gift, saying
it was too distant and too poor. However, at last he ordered the prisons
to be opened, and placed all the able-bodied convicts they contained at
the disposal of the prince. The Abyssinians were driven out, but they
returned and re-conquered the land. Chosroes then sent a regular army
with orders to kill all the men with black skins and curly hair. Thus
Yemen became a Persian province, and no less than three great
religions--that of Zoroaster, that of Moses, and that of Jesus--were
represented in Arabia.

Midway between Yemen and Egypt is a sandy valley two miles in length,
surrounded on all sides by naked hills. No gardens or fields are to be
seen; no trees except some low brushwood and the acacia of the desert.
On all sides are barren and sunburnt rocks. But in the midst of this
valley is a wonderful well. It is not that the water is unusually cool
and sweet--connoisseurs pronounce it "heavy" to the taste--but it
affords an inexhaustible supply. No matter what quantity may be drawn
up, the water in the well remains always at the same height. It is
probably fed by a perennial stream below.

This valley, on account of its well, was made the halting-place of the
India caravans, and there the goods changed carriers--the south
delivered them over to the north. As the north and south were frequently
at war, the valley was hallowed with solemn oaths for the protection of
the trade. A sanctuary was established; the well Zemzem became sacred;
its fame spread, and it was visited from all parts of the land by the
diseased and the devout. The tents of the valley tribe became a city of
importance, enriched by the customs receipts and dues of protection, and
by the carrier hire of the caravans. When the navigation of the Red Sea
put an end to the carrying trade by land the city was deserted; its
inhabitants returned to the wandering Bedouin life. In the fifth
century, however, it was restored by an enterprising man, and the shrine
was rebuilt. Mecca was no longer a wealthy town; it was no longer
situated on one of the highways of the world; but it manufactured a
celebrated leather, and sent out two caravans a year--one to Syria and
one to Abyssinia. Some of the Meccans were rich men; Byzantine gold
pieces and Persian copper coins circulated in abundance; the ladies
dressed themselves in silk, had Chinese looking-glasses, wore shoes of
perfumed leather, and made themselves odorous of musk. It was the fame
of Mecca as a holy place which brought this wealth into the town. The
citizens lived upon the pilgrims. However, they esteemed it a pious duty
to give hospitality if it was required to the "guests of God, who came
from distant cities on their lean and jaded camels, fatigued and
harassed with the dirt and squalor of the way." The poor pilgrims were
provided during six days with pottage of meat and bread and dates;
leather cisterns filled with water were also placed at their disposal.


Mecca


During four months of the year there was a Truce of God, and the Arab
tribes, suspending their hostilities, journeyed towards Mecca. As soon
as they entered the Sacred Valley they put on their palmers' weeds,
proceeded at once to the Caaba or house of God, walked round it naked
seven times, kissed the black stone and drank of the waters of the
famous well. Then a kind of Eisteddfod was held. The young men combated
in martial games; poems were recited, and those which gained the prize
were copied with illuminated characters and hung up on the Caaba before
the golden-plated door.

There was no regular government in the holy city, no laws that could be
enforced, no compulsory courts of justice, and no public treasury. The
city was composed of several families or clans belonging to the tribe of
the Corayshites, by whom New Mecca had been founded. Each family
inhabited a cluster of houses surrounding a courtyard and well, the
whole enclosed by solid walls. Each family was able to go to war and to
sustain a siege. If a murder was committed the injured family took the
law into its own hands; sometimes it would accept a pecuniary
compensation--there was a regular tariff--but more frequently the money
was refused. They had a belief that if blood was not avenged by blood a
small winged insect issued from the skull of the murdered person and
fled screeching through the sky. It was also a point of honour on the
part of the guilty clan to protect the murderer and to adopt his cause.
Thus blood feuds rose easily and died hard.

The head of the family was a despot, and enjoyed the power of life and
death over the members of his own house. But he had also severe
responsibilities. It was his duty to protect those who dwelt within the
circle of his yard; all its inmates called him father; to all of them he
owed the duties of a parent. If his son was little better than a slave,
on the other hand his slave was almost equal to a son. It sometimes
happened that masterless men, travellers, or outcasts required his
protection. If it was granted, the stranger entered the family, and the
father was accountable for his debts, delicts, and torts. The body of
the delinquent might be tendered in lieu of fine or feud, but this
practice was condemned by public opinion, and in all semi-savage
communities public opinion has considerable power.

There was a town hall in which councils were held to discuss questions
relating to the common welfare of the federated families, but the
minority were not bound by the voice of the majority. If, for instance,
it was decided to make war, a single family could hold aloof. In this
town hall marriages were celebrated, circumcisions were performed, and
young girls were invested with the dress of womanhood. It was the
starting place of the militia and the caravans. It was near the Caaba
and opened towards it: in Mecca the Church was closely united to the
state.

Throughout all time Mecca had preserved its independence and its
religion; the ancient idolatry had there a sacred home. The Meccans
recognised a single creator, Allah Taala, the Most High God, who
Abraham, and others before Abraham, had adored. But they believed that
the stars were live beings, daughters of the Deity, who acted as
intercessors on behalf of men; and to propitiate their favour idols were
made to represent them. Within the Caaba or around it were also images
of foreign deities and of celebrated men; a picture of Mary with the
child Jesus in her lap was painted on a column, and a portrait of
Abraham with a bundle of divining arrows in his hands upon the wall.

Among the Meccans there were many who regarded that idolatry with
abhorrence and contempt; yet to that idolatry their town owed all that
it possessed, its wealth and its glory, which extended round a crescent
of a thousand miles. They were therefore obliged as good citizens to
content themselves with seeking a simpler religion for themselves, and
those who did protest against the Caaba gods were persuaded to silence
by their families, or, if they would not be silent, were banished from
the town under penalty of death if they returned.

But there rose up a man whose convictions were too strong to be hushed
by the love of family or to be quelled by the fear of death. Partly
owing to his age and dignified position and unblemished name, partly
owing to the chivalrous nature of his patriarch or patron, he was
protected against his enemies, his life was saved. Had there been a
government at Mecca, he would unquestionably have been put to death, and
as it was he narrowly escaped.


The Character of Mohammed


Mohammed was a poor lad subject to a nervous disease which made him at
first unfit for anything except the despised occupation of the shepherd.

When he grew up he became a commercial traveller, acted as agent for a
rich widow twenty-five years older than himself, and obtained her hand.
They lived happily together for many years. They were both of them
exceedingly religious people, and in the Ramadan, a month held sacred by
the ancient Arabs, they used to live in a cave outside the town, passing
the time in prayer and meditation.

The disease of his childhood returned upon him in his middle age; it
affected his mind in a strange manner, and produced illusions of his
senses. He thought that he was haunted, that his body was the house of an
evil spirit. "I see a light," he said to his wife, "and I hear a sound.
I fear that I am one of the possessed." This idea was most distressing
to a pious man. He became pale and haggard; he wandered about on the
hill near Mecca, crying out to God for help. More than once he drew near
the edge of a cliff, and was tempted to hurl himself down and so put an
end to his misery at once.

And then a new idea possessed his mind. He lived much in the open air,
gazing on the stars, watching the dry ground grown green beneath the
gentle rain, surveying the firmly rooted mountains and the broad
expanded plain. He pondered also on the religious legends of the Jews
which he had heard related on his journeys, at noonday beneath the
palm-tree by the well mouth, at night by the camp fire; and as he looked
and thought, the darkness was dispelled, the clouds dispersed, and the
vision of God in solitary grandeur rose up within his mind. And there
came upon him an impulse to speak of God; there came upon him a belief
that he was a messenger of God sent on earth to restore the religion of
Abraham which the pagan Arabs had polluted with their idolatry, the
Christians in making Jesus a divinity, the Jews in corrupting their holy
books.

In the brain of a poet stanzas will sometimes arise fully formed without
a conscious effort of the will, as once happened to Coleridge in a
dream; and so into Mohammed's half-dreaming mind there flew
golden-winged verses echoing to one another in harmonious sound. At the
same time he heard a Voice; and sometimes he saw a human figure; and
sometimes he felt a noise in his ears like the tinkling of bells, or a
low, deep hum as if bees were swarming round his head. At this period of
his life every chapter of the Koran was delivered in throes of pain. The
paroxysm was preceded by depression of spirits; his face became clouded;
his extremities turned cold; he shook like a man in an ague and called
for a covering. His face assumed an expression horrible to see; the vein
between his eyebrows became distended; his eyes were fixed; his head
moved to and fro, as if he was conversing; and then he gave forth the
oracle or sudra. Sometimes he would fall like a man intoxicated to the
ground, but the ordinary conclusion of the fit was a profuse
perspiration, by which he appeared to be relieved. His sufferings were
at times unusually severe--he used often to speak of the three terrific
sudras which had given him grey hairs.

His friends were alarmed at his state of mind. Some ascribed it to the
eccentricities of poetical genius; others declared that he was possessed
of an evil spirit; others said he was insane. When he began to preach
against the idols of the Caaba, the practice of female infanticide, and
other evil customs of the town; when he declared that there was no
divine being but God, and that he was the messenger of God; when he
related the ancient legends of the prophets which he said had been told
him by the angel Gabriel, there was a general outburst of merriment and
scorn. They said he had picked it all up from a Christian who kept a
jeweller's shop in the town. They requested him to perform miracles; the
poets composed comic ballads which the people sang when he began to
preach; the women pointed at him with the finger; it became an amusement
of the children to pelt Mohammed. This was perhaps the hardest season of
his life--ridicule is the most terrible of all weapons. But his wife
encouraged him to persevere, and so did the Voice, which came to him and
sang: "By the brightness of the morn that rises, and by the darkness of
the night that descends, thy God hath not forsaken thee, Mohammed. For
know that there is a life beyond the grave, and it will be better for
thee than thy present life; and thy Lord will give thee a rich reward.
Did he not find thee an orphan, and did he not care for thee? Did he not
find thee wandering in error, and hath he not guided thee to truth? Did
he not find thee needy, and hath he not enriched thee? Wherefore oppress
not the orphan, neither repulse the beggar, but declare the goodness of
the Lord."

This Voice was the echo of Mohammed's conscience and the expression of
his ideas. Owing to his peculiar constitution his thoughts became
audible as soon as they became intense. So long as his mind remained
pure, the Voice was that of a good angel; when afterwards guilty wishes
entered his heart, the voice became that of Mephistopheles.

Mohammed's family did not accept his mission: his converts were at first
chiefly made among the slaves. But soon these converts became so
numerous among all classes that the Meccans ceased to ridicule Mohammed
and began to hate him. Nor did he attempt to ingratiate himself in their
affections. "He called the living fools, the dead denizens of
hell-fire." The heads of families took counsel together. They went to
Abu Talib, the patriarch of the house to which Mohammed belonged, and
offered the price of blood, and then double the price of blood, and then
a stalwart young man for Mohammed's life, and then, being always
refused, went off declaring that there would be war. Abu Talib adjured
Mohammed not to ruin the family. The prophet's lip quivered: he burst
into tears, but he said he must go on. Abu Talib hinted that his
protection might be withdrawn. Then Mohammed declared that if the sun
came down on his right hand and the moon on his left he would not swerve
from the work which God had given him to do. Abu Talib, finding him
inflexible, assured him that his protection should never be withdrawn.
In the meantime the patriarchs returned and said, "What is it that you
want, Mohammed? Do you wish for riches? We will make you rich. Do you
wish for honour? We will make you the mayor of the town." Mohammed
replied with a chapter of the Koran. They then assembled in the town
hall and entered into a solemn league and covenant to keep apart from
the family of Abu Talib. It was sent to Coventry. None would buy with
them nor sell with them, eat with them nor drink with them. This lasted
for three years, but when as people passed by the house they heard the
cries of the starving children from behind the walls, they relented and
sold them grain. There was one member of the family, Abu Laheb, who
withdrew from it at that juncture and became Mohammed's most inveterate
foe.

Each family agreed also to punish its own Mohammedans. Many were exposed
to the glow of the midday sun on the scorching gravel outside the town,
and to the torments of thirst. A mulatto slave was tortured by a great
stone being placed on his chest, the while he cried out continually,
"There is only one God! There is only one God!" Mohammed recommended his
disciples to escape to Abyssinia, "a land of righteousness, a land where
none was wronged." They were kindly received by the Negus, who refused
to give them up in spite of the envoys with presents of red leather who
were sent to him from Mecca with that request.

During the period of the sacred months Mohammed used often to visit the
encampments of the pilgrims outside the town. He announced to them his
mission; he preached on the unity of God and on the terrors of the
judgment-day. "God has no daughters," said he, "for how can he have
daughters when he has no spouse? He begetteth not, neither is he
begotten. There is none but he. O beware, ye idolators, of the time that
is to come, when the sun shall be folded up, when the stars shall fall,
when the mountains shall be made to pass away, when the children's hair
shall grow white with anguish, when souls like locust swarms shall rise
from their graves, when the girl who hath been buried alive shall be
asked for what crime she was put to death, when the books shall be laid
open, when every soul shall know what it hath wrought! O the striking,
the striking, when men shall be scattered as moths in the wind! And then
Allah shall cry to Hell, Art thou filled full? And Hell shall cry to
Allah, More, give me more!"

But there followed him everywhere a squint-eyed man, fat, with flowing
locks on both sides of his head, and clothed in raiment of fine Aden
stuff. When Mohammed had finished his sermon he would say, "This
fellow's object is to draw you away from the gods to his fanciful ideas;
wherefore follow him not, O my brothers, neither listen to him." And who
should this be but his uncle, Abu Laheb! Whereupon the strangers would
reply, "Your own kinsmen ought to know you best. Why do they not believe
you if what you say is true?" In return for these kind offices Mohammed
promised his uncle that he should go down to be burned in flaming fire,
and that his wife should go too, bearing a load of wood, with a cord of
twisted palm fibres round her neck.

And now two great sorrows fell upon Mohammed. He lost almost at the same
time his beloved wife and the noble-hearted parent of his clan. The
successor of Abu Talib continued the protection, yet Mohammed felt
insecure. His religion also made but small progress. The fact is that he
failed at Mecca as Jesus had failed at Jerusalem. He had made a few
ardent disciples who spent the day at his feet, or in reading snatches
of the Koran scrawled on date leaves, shoulder-blades of sheep, camel
bones, scraps of parchment, or tablets of smooth white stone. But he had
not so much as shaken the ruling idolatry, which was firmly based on
custom and self-interest. No doubt his disciples would in course of time
have diffused his religion throughout Arabia. Islam was formed; Islam
was alive; but Mohammed himself would never have witnessed its triumph
had it not been for a curious accident which now occurred. The Arabs
belonging to that city which was afterwards called Medina had conquered
a tribe of Jews. These had consoled themselves for the bitterness of
their defeat by declaring that a great prophet, the Messiah, would soon
appear, and would avenge them upon all their foes. The Arabs believed
them and trembled, for they stood in great dread of the book which the
Jews possessed, and which they supposed to be a magical composition. So,
when certain pilgrims from Medina heard Mohammed announce that he was a
messenger from God, they took it for granted that he was the man, and
determined to steal a march upon the Jews by securing him for
themselves. At their request he sent a missionary to Medina; the
townsmen were converted, and invited him to come and live among them. In
a dark ravine near Mecca, at the midnight hour, his patriarch or father
delivered him solemnly into their hands. Mohammed was now no longer a
citizen of Mecca; he was no longer "protected"; he had changed his
nationality, and he was hunted like a deer before he arrived safely in
his new home.

Had Mohammed been killed in that celebrated flight he would have been
classed by historians among the glorious martyrs and the gentle saints.
His character before the Hegira resembled the character of Jesus. In
both of them we find the same sublime insanity, compounded of loyalty to
God, love for man, and inordinate self-conceit; both were subject to
savage fits of wrath, and having no weapons but their tongues, consigned
souls by wholesale to hell-fire. Both also humbled themselves before
God, preaching the religion of the heart, led pure, unblemished lives,
devoted themselves to a noble cause, and uttered maxims of charity and
love at strange variance with their occasional invectives. Of the life
of Jesus it is needless to speak; if he had any vices they have not been
recorded. But the conduct of Mohammed at Mecca was apparently not less
pure. He was married to an old woman; polygamy was a custom of the land;
his passions were strong, as was afterwards too plainly shown; yet he
did not take a second wife as long as his dear Khadijah was alive. He
never frequented the wine-shop or looked at the dancing girls or talked
abroad in the bazaars. He was more modest than a virgin behind the
curtain. When he met children he would stop and pat their cheeks; he
followed the bier that passed him in the street; he visited the sick; he
was kind to his inferiors; he would accept the invitation of a slave to
dinner; he was never the first to withdraw his hand when he shook hands;
he was humble, gentle, and kind; he waited always on himself, mending
his own clothes, milking his own goats; he never struck any one in his
life. When once asked to curse someone he said, "I have not been sent to
curse but to be a mercy to mankind." He reproached himself in the Koran
for having behaved unkindly to a beggar, and so immortalised his own
offence. He issued a text, "Use no violence in religion."

But this text, with many others, he afterwards expunged. When he arrived
at Medina he found himself at the head of a small army, and he began to
publish his gospel of the sword. Henceforth we may admire the statesman
or the general; the prophet is no more. It will hence be inferred that
Mohammed was hypocritical, or at least inconstant. But he was constant
throughout his life to the one object which he had in view--the spread
of his religion. At Mecca it could best be spread by means of the gentle
virtues; he therefore ordered his disciples to abstain from violence
which would only do them harm. At Medina he saw that the Caaba idolatry
could not be destroyed except by force; he therefore felt it his duty to
make use of force. He obeyed his conscience both at Mecca and Medina,
for the conscience is merely an organ of the intellect, and is altered,
improved, or vitiated according to the education which it receives and
the incidents which act upon it.

And now Mohammed's glory expanded, and at the same time his virtue
declined. He broke the Truce of God: he was not always true to his
plighted word. As Moses forbade the Israelites to marry with the pagans
and then took unto himself an Ethiopian wife, so Mohammed, broke his own
marriage laws, beginning the career of a voluptuary at fifty years of
age. His Koran sudras were now official manifestoes, legal regulations,
delivered in an extravagant and stilted style differing much from that
of his fervid oracles at Mecca. But whatever may have been his private
defects, when we regard him as a ruler and lawgiver we can only wonder
and admire. He established for the first time in history a united
Arabia. In the moral life of his countrymen he effected a remarkable
reform. He abolished drunkenness and gambling--vices to which the Arabs
had been specially addicted. He abolished the practice of infanticide,
and also succeeded in rendering its memory detestable. It is said that
Omar, the fierce apostle of Islam, shed but one tear in his life, and
that was when he remembered how in the days of darkness his child had
beat the dust off his beard with her little hand as he was laying her in
the grave. Polygamy and slavery he did not prohibit, but whatever laws
he made respecting women and slaves were made with the view of improving
their condition. He removed that facility of divorce by means of which
an Arab could at any time repudiate his wife: he enacted that no Moslem
should be made a slave, that the children of a slave girl by her master
should be free. Instead of repining that Mohammed did no more, we have
reason to be astonished that he did so much. His career is the best
example that can be given of the influence of the individual in human
history. That single man created the glory of his nation and spread his
language over half the earth. The words which he preached to jeering
crowds twelve hundred years ago are now being studied by scholars or by
devotees in London and Paris and Berlin; in Mecca, where he laboured, in
Medina, where he died; in Constantinople, in Cairo, in Fez, in Timbuktu,
in Jerusalem, in Damascus, in Basra, in Baghdad, in Bokhara, in Kabul,
in Calcutta, in Pekin; on the steppes of Central Asia, in the islands of
the Indian Archipelago, in lands which are as yet unmarked upon our
maps, in the oases of thirsty deserts, in obscure villages situated by
unknown streams. It was Mohammed who did all this, for he uttered the
book which carried the language, and he prepared the army which carried
the book. His disciples and successors were not mad fanatics but
resolute and sagacious men, who made shrewd friendship with the
malcontent Christians among the Greeks and with the persecuted Jews in
Spain, and who in a few years created an empire which extended from the
Pyrenees to the Hindu Kush.

This empire, it is true, was soon divided, and soon became weak in all
its parts. The Arabs could conquer, but they could not govern. Separate
sovereignties or caliphates were established in Babylonia, Egypt, and
Spain, while provinces such as Morocco or Bokhara frequently obtained
independence by rebellion. It is needless to describe at length the
history of the Caliphs and their successors--it is only the twice-told
tale of the Euphrates and the Nile. The caliphs were at first Commanders
of the Faithful in reality, but they were soon degraded both in Cairo
and Baghdad to the position of the Roman Pope at the present time. The
government was seized by the Praetorian Guards, who in Baghdad were
descended from Turkish prisoners or negroes imported from Zanzibar, and
in Egypt from Mamelukes or European slaves, brought in their boyhood
from the wild countries surrounding the Black Sea, and trained up from
tender years to the practice of arms--the sons of Christian parents, but
branded with a cross on the soles of their feet that they might never
cease to tread upon the emblem of their native creed.

However, by means of the Arab conquest the East was united as it had
never been before. The Euphrates was no longer a line of partition
between two worlds. Arab traders established their factories on both
sides of the Indian Ocean and along the Asiatic shores of the Pacific.
Men from all countries met at Mecca once a year. The religion of the
Arabs conquered nations whom the Arabs themselves had never seen. When
the Mohammedan Turks of Central Asia took Constantinople and reduced the
caliphates to provinces, although the people of Mohammed were driven
back to their wilderness the strength and glory of his religion was
increased. In the same manner the conquest of Hindustan was an
achievement of Islam in which the Arabs bore no part, and in Africa also
we shall find that the Koran reigns over extensive regions which the
Arabs visit only as travellers and merchants.

Once upon a time Morocco and Spain were one country, and Europe extended
to the Atlas mountains, which stood upon the shores of a great salt sea.
Beyond that ocean, to the south, lay the Dark Continent, surrounded on
all sides by water except on the north-east, where it was joined to Asia
near Aden by an isthmus. A geological revolution converted the African
ocean into a sandy plain, and the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and
Gibraltar were torn open by the retreating waves. But the Sahara, though
no longer under water, is still in reality a sea; the true Africa begins
on its southern coast, and is entirely distinct from the European-like
countries between the Mediterranean and the Atlas, and from the strip of
garden land which is cast down every year in the desert by the Nile. The
Black Africa or Sudan is a gigantic tableland; its sides are built of
granite mountains which surround it with a parapet or brim, and which
send down rivers on the outside towards the sea, on the inside into the
plateau. The outside rivers are brief and swift: the inside rivers are
long and sluggish in their course, winding in all directions, collecting
into enormous lakes, and sometimes flowing forth through gaps in the
parapet to the Sahara or the sea.


Description of Africa


A tableland is seldom so uniform and smooth as the word denotes. The
African plateau is intersected by mountain ranges and ravines, juts into
volcanic isolated cones, and varies much in its climate, its aspect, its
productions, and its altitude above the sea. It may be divided into
platforms or river basins which are true geographical provinces, and
each of which should be labelled with the names of its explorers. There
is the platform of Abyssinai, which belongs to Bruce; the platform of
the White Nile, including the Lakes of Burton (Tanganyika), of Speke
(Victoria Nyanza), and of Baker (Albert Nyanza); the platform of the
Zambezi, with its lakes Nyasa and Ngami, discovered by Livingstone, the
greatest of African explorers; the platform of the Congo, including the
regions of Western Equatorial Africa, hitherto unexplored; the platform
of South Africa (below 20º S.), which enjoys an Australian climate, and
also Australian wealth in its treasure-filled mountains and its
wool-abounding plains; and lastly the platform of the Niger, which
deserves a place, as will be shown, in universal history. The
discoverers of the Niger in its upper are Park (who first saw the
Niger), Caillie, and myself: in its central and eastern parts Laing, who
first reached Timbuktu; Caillie, who first returned from it; Denham,
Clapperton, Lander, and Barth.

The original inhabitants of Africa were the Hottentots or Bushmen, a
dwarfish race who have restless, rambling, ape-like eyes, a click in
their speech, and bodies which are the wonder of anatomists. They are
now found only on the South African platform, or perhaps here and there
on the platform of the Congo. They have been driven southward by the
negroes, as the Eskimos in America were driven north by the Red Indians
and the Finns in Europe by the Celtic tribes, while the negroes
themselves have yielded in some parts of Africa to Asiatic tribes, as
the Celts in Gaul and Britain yielded to the Germans.

These negroes are sometimes of so deep a brown that the skin appears to
be quite black; sometimes their skin is as light as a mulatto's. The
average tint is a rich deep bronze. Their eyes are dark, though blue
eyes are occasionally seen; their hair is black, though sometimes of
rusty red, and is always of a woolly texture. To this rule there are no
exceptions--it is the one constant character, the one infallible sign by
which the race may be detected. Their lips are not invariably thick;
their noses are frequently well formed. In physical appearance they
differ widely from one another. The inhabitants of the swamps, the dark
forests and the mountains are flat-nosed, long armed, and thin-calved,
with mouths like mussles, broad splay feet, and projecting heels. It was
for the most part from this class that the American slave markets were
supplied; the negroes of the States and the West Indies represent the
African in the same manner as the people of the Pontine Marshes
represent the inhabitants of Italy. The negroes of South Africa stand at
the opposite extreme. Enjoying an excellent climate and a wholesome
supply of food, they are superior to most other people of their race.
Yet it is certain that they are negroes, for they have woolly hair, and
they do not differ in language or manners from the inhabitants of the
other platforms. When the Portuguese first traded on the African coasts
they gave the name Caffres (or pagans) to the negroes of Guinea, as well
as to those of the Cape and Mozambique. It is quite an accident that the
name has been retained for the latter tribes alone, yet such is the
power of a name that the Caffres and negroes are universally supposed to
be distinct. It is impossible, however, to draw any line between the
two. Pure negroes are born on the coast of Guinea and in the interior
with complexions as light, with limbs as symmetrical, and with features
as near to the European standard as can be found in all Caffraria.
Between the hideous being of the Nile and Niger deltas and the robust
shepherds of the south, or the aristocratic chieftains of the west,
there is a wide difference, no doubt but intermediate gradations exist.

There is also much variety among the negroes in respect to manners,
mental condition, political government, and mode of life. Some tribes
live only on the fruit of net and spear, eked out with insects and
berries and shells. Property is ill defined among them; if a man makes a
canoe the others use it when they please; if he builds a better house
than his neighbours they pull it down. Others, though still in the
hunting condition, have gardens of plantains and cassada. In this
condition the headman of the village has little power, but property is
secured by law. Other tribes are pastoral, and resemble the Arabs in
their laws and customs; the patriarchal system prevails among them.
There are regions in which the federal system prevails; many villages
are leagued together; and the headmen, acting as deputies of their
respective boroughs, meet in congress to debate questions of foreign
policy and to enact laws. Large empires exist in the Sudan. In some of
these the king is a despot who possesses a powerful bodyguard equivalent
to a standing army, a court with its regulations of etiquette, and a
well-ordered system of patronage and surveillance. In others he is
merely an instrument in the hands of priests or military nobles, and is
kept concealed, giving audience from behind a curtain to excite the
veneration of the vulgar. There are also thousands of large walled
cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of ancient
Greece, or of Italy before the supremacy of Rome, encircled by pastures
and by arable estates, and by farming villages to which the citizens
repair at harvest-time to superintend the labour of their slaves. But
such cities, with their villeggiatura, their municipal government, their
agora or forum, their fortified houses, their feuds and street frays of
Capulet and Montague, are not indigenous in Africa; their existence is
comparatively modern and is due to the influence of religion.

An African village (old style) is usually a street of huts, with walls
like hurdles, and the thatch projecting so that its owner may sit
beneath it in sun or rain. The door is low--one has to crawl in order to
go in. There are no windows. The house is a single room. In its midst
burns a fire which is never suffered to go out, for it is a light in
darkness, a servant, a companion, and a guardian angel; it purifies the
miasmatic air. The roof and walls are smoke-dried but clean; in one
corner is a pile of wood neatly cut up into billets, and in another is a
large earthen jar filled with water on which floats a gourd or calabash,
a vegetable bowl. Spears, bows, quivers, and nets hang from pegs upon
the walls. Let us suppose that it is night; four or five black forms are
lying in a circle with their feet toward the fire, and two dogs with
pricked-up ears creep close to the ashes which are becoming grey and
cold.

The day dawns; a dim light appears through the crevices and crannies of
the walls. The sleepers rise and roll up their mats, which are their
beds, and place on one side the round logs of wood which are their
pillows. The man takes down his bow and arrows from the wall, fastens
wooden rattles round his dogs' necks, and goes out into the bush. The
women replenish the fire, and lift up an inverted basket whence sally
forth a hen and her chickens which make at once for the open door to
find their daily bread for themselves outside. The women take hoes and
go to the plantation, or they take pitchers to fill at the brook. They
wear round the waist, before and behind, two little aprons made from a
certain bark, soaked and beaten until it is as flexible as leather.
Every man has a plantation of these cloth-trees round his hut. The
unmarried girls wear no clothes at all, but they are allowed to decorate
themselves with bracelets and anklets of iron, flowers in their ears,
necklaces of red berries like coral, girdles of white shells, hair oiled
and padded out with the chignon, and sometimes white ashes along the
parting.

The ladies fill their pitchers and take their morning bath, discussing
the merits or demerits of their husbands. The air is damp and cold, and
the trees and grass are heavy with dew; but presently the sun begins to
shine, the dewdrops fall heavy and large as drops of rain; the birds
chirp; the flowers expand their drowsy leaves and receive the morning
calls of butterflies and bees. The forest begins to buzz and hum like a
great factory awaking to its work.

When the sun is high, boys come from the bush with vegetable bottles
frothing over with palm wine. The cellar of the African, and his glass
and china shop, and his clothing warehouse, are in the trees. In the
midst of the village is a kind of shed, a roof supported on bare poles.
It is the palaver-house, in which at this hour the old men sit and
debate the affairs of state or decide lawsuits, each orator holding a
spear when he is speaking, and planting it in the ground before him as
he resumes his seat. Oratory is the African's one fine art. His delivery
is fluent; his harangues, though diffuse, are adorned with phrases of
wild poetry. That building is also the club house of the elders, and
there, when business is over, they pass the heat of the day, seated on
logs which are smooth and shiny from use. At the hour of noon their
wives or children bring them palm wine, and present it on their knees,
clapping their hands in a token of respect. And then all is still; it is
the hour of silence and tranquillity, the hour which the Portuguese call
"the calm." The sun sits enthroned on the summit of the sky; its white
light is poured upon the earth; the straw thatch shines like snow. The
forest is silent; all nature sleeps.

Then down, down, down sinks the sun, and its rays shoot slantwise
through the trees. The hunters return, and their friends run out and
greet them as if they had been gone for years, murmuring to them in a
kind of baby language, calling them by their names of love, shaking
their right hands, caressing their faces, patting them upon their
breasts, embracing them in all ways except with the lips--for the kiss
is unknown among the Africans. And so they toy and babble and laugh with
one another till the sun turns red, and the air turns dusky, and the
giant trees cast deep shadows across the street. Strange perfumes arise
from the earth; fireflies sparkle; grey parrots come forth from the
forest, and fly screaming round intending to roost in the neighbourhood
of man. The women bring their husbands the gourd dish of boiled
plantains or bush yams, made hot with red pepper, seasoned with fish or
venison sauce. And when this simple meal is ended, boom! boom! Goes the
big drum; the sweet reed flute pipes forth; the girls and lads
begin to sing. In a broad, clean-swept place they gather together,
jumping up and down with glee; the young men form in one row, the women
in another, and dance in two long lines, retreating and advancing with
graceful undulations of their bodies and arms waving in the air. And now
there is a squealing, wailing, unearthly sound, and out of the wood,
with a hop, skip, and jump, comes Mumbo Jumbo, a hideous mask on his
face and a scourge in his hand. Woe to the wife who would not cook her
husband's dinner, or who gave him saucy words, for Mumbo Jumbo is the
censor of female morals. Well the guilty ones know him as they run
screaming to their huts. Then again the dance goes on, and if there is a
moon it does not cease throughout the night.

Such is the picturesque part of savage life. But it is not savage
life--it merely lies upon the surface as paint lies upon the skin. Let
us take a walk through that same village on another day. Here in a hut
is a young man with one leg in the stocks, and with his right hand bound
to his neck by a cord. The palm wine, and the midnight dance, and the
furtive caresses of Asua overpowered his discretion; he was detected,
and now he is "put in log." If his relations do not pay the fine he will
be sold as a slave; or if there is no demand for slaves in that country
he will be killed. His friends reprove him for trying to steal what the
husband was willing to sell; and might he not have guessed that Asua was
a decoy?

Another day the palaver-house has the aspect of a Crockford's. An old
man who is one of the village grandees is spinning nuts for high stakes,
and has drunk too much to see that he is overmatched. He loses his mats,
his weapons, his goats, his fowls, his plantation, his house, his slaves
whom he took prisoners in his young and warlike days, his wives, his
children, and his aged mother who fed him at her breast--all are lost,
all are gone. And then, with flushed eyes and trembling hand, he begins
to gamble for himself. He stakes his right leg and loses it. He may not
move it until he has won it back or until it is redeemed. He loses both
legs; he stakes his body and loses that also, and becomes a
bond-servant, or is sold as a slave.

Let us give another scene. A young man of family has died; the whole
village is convulsed with grief and fear. It does not appear natural to
them that a man should die before he has grown old. Some malignant power
is at work among them. Is it an evil spirit whom they have unwittingly
offended and who is taking its revenge, or is it a witch? The great
fetish-man has been sent for, and soon he arrives, followed by his
disciples. He wears a cap waving with feathers and a parti-coloured
garment covered with charms--horns of gazelles, shells of snails, and a
piece of leopard's liver wrapped up in the leaves of a poison-giving
tree. His face is stained with the white juice from a dead man's brain.
He rings an iron bell as he enters the town, and at the same time the
drum begins to beat. The drum has its language, so that those who are
distant from the village understand what it is saying. With short,
lively sounds it summons to the dance; it thunders forth the alarm of
fire or war, loudly and quickly with no interval between the beats; and
now it tolls the hour of judgment and the day of death. The fetish-man
examines the dead man and says it is the work of a witch. He casts lots
with knotted cords; he mutters incantations; he passes round the
villagers and points out the guilty person, who is usually some old
woman whom popular opinion has previously suspected and is ready to
condemn. She is, however, allowed the benefit of an ordeal: a gourd
filled with the "red water" is given her to drink. If she is innocent it
acts as an emetic; if she is guilty it makes her fall senseless to the
ground. She is then put to death with a variety of tortures--burnt alive
or torn limb from limb; tied on the beach at low water to be drowned by
the rising tide; rubbed with honey and laid out in the sun; or buried in
an ant-hill, the most horrible death of all.

These examples are sufficient to show that the life of the savage is not
a happy one, and the existence of each clan or tribe is precarious in
the extreme. They are like the wild animals, engaged from day to night
in seeking food, and ever watchful against the foes by whom they are
surrounded. The men who go out hunting, the girls who go with their
pitchers to the village brook, are never sure that they will return, for
there is always war with some neighbouring village, and their method of
making war is by ambuscade. But besides these real and ordinary dangers,
the savage believes himself to be encompassed by evil spirits who may at
any moment spring upon him in the guise of a leopard, or cast down upon
him the dead branch of a tree. In order to propitiate these invisible
beings, his life is entangled with intricate rites; it is turned this
way and that way as oracles are delivered or as omens appear. It is
impossible to describe, or even to imagine, the tremulous condition of
the savage mind, yet the traveller can see from their aspect and manners
that they dwell in a state of never-ceasing dread.

Let us now suppose that a hundred years have passed, and let us visit
the village again. The place itself and the whole country around have
been transformed. The forest has disappeared, and in its stead are
fields covered with the glossy blades of the young rice, with the tall
red-tufted maize, with the millet and the Guinea corn, with the yellow
flowers of the tobacco plant growing in wide fields, and with large
shrubberies of cotton, the snowy wool peeping forth from the expanding
leaves. Before us stands a great town surrounded by walls of red clay
flanked by towers, and with heavy wooden gates. Day dawns, and the women
come forth to the brook decorously dressed in blue cotton robes passed
over the hair as a hood. Men ride forth on horseback, wearing white
turbans and swords suspended on their right shoulders by a crimson sash.
They are the unmixed descendants of the forest savage; their faces are
those of pure negroes, but the expression is not the same. Their manners
are grave and composed; they salute one another, saying in the Arabic
"Peace be with you." The palaver-house or town hall is also the mosque;
the parliamentary debates and the law trials which are there held have
all the dignity of a religious service; they are opened with prayer, and
the name of the creator is often solemnly invoked by the orator or
advocate, while all the elders touch their foreheads with their hands
and murmur in response, Amina! Amina! (Amen! Amen!). The town is
pervaded by a bovine smell, sweet to the nostrils of those who have
travelled long in the beefless lands of the people of the forest. Sounds
of industry may also be heard--not only the clinking of the blacksmith's
hammer, but also the rattling of the loom, the thumping of the
cloth-maker, and the song of the cordwainer as he sits cross-legged
making saddles or shoes. The women, with bow and distaff and spindle,
are turning the soft tree-wool into thread; the work in the fields is
done by slaves. The elders smoke or take snuff in their verandahs, and
sometimes study a page of the Koran. When the evening draws on there is
no sound of flute and drum. A bonfire of brushwood is lighted in the
market-place, and the boys of the town collect around it with wooden
boards in their hands, and bawl their lessons, swaying their bodies to
and fro, by which movement they imagine the memory is assisted. Then
rises a long, loud, harmonious cry, "Come to prayers, come to prayers!
Come to security! God is great! He liveth and he dieth not! Come to
prayers! O thou Bountiful!"

La ilah illa Allah: Mohammed Rasul Allah. Alahu Akbaru. Alahu Akbar.

Such towns as these may be less interesting to the traveller than the
pagan villages--he finds them merely a second-hand copy of Eastern life.
But though they are not so picturesque, their inhabitants are happier
and better men. Violent and dishonest deeds are no longer arranged by
pecuniary compensation. Husbands can no longer set wife-traps for their
friends; adultery is treated as a criminal offence. Men can no longer
squander away their relations at the gaming table, and stake their own
bodies on a throw. Men can no longer be tempted to vice and crime under
the influence of palm wine. Women can no longer be married by a great
chief in herds, and treated like beasts of burden and like slaves. Each
wife has an equal part of her husband's love by law; it is not permitted
to forsake and degrade the old wife for the sake of the young. Each wife
has her own house, and the husband may not enter until he has knocked at
the door and received the answer, Bismillah! [In the name of God!] Every
boy is taught to read and write in Arabic, which is the religious and
official language in the Sudan, as Latin was in Europe in the Middle
Ages; he also writes his own language with the Arabic character, as
we write ours with the Roman letter. In such countries the policy of
isolation is at an end; they are open to all the Moslems in the world,
and are thus connected with the lands of the East. Here there is a
remarkable change, and one that deserves a place in history. It is a
movement the more interesting since it is still actively going on. The
Mohammedan religion has already overspread a region of Negroland as
large as Europe. It is firmly established not only in the Africa of the
Mediterranean and the Nile and in the oases of the Sahara, but also
throughout that part of the continent which we have termed the platform
of the Niger.

In 1797 Mungo Park discovered the Niger in the heart of Africa, at a
point where it is as broad as the Thames at Westminster; in 1817 Rene
Caillie crossed it at a point considerably higher up; in 1822 Major
Laing attempted to reach it by striking inland from Sierra Leone, but
was forced by the natives to return when he was only fifty miles distant
from the river; and in 1869 I made the same attempt, was turned back at
the same place, but made a fresh expedition, and reached the river at a
higher point than Caillie and Park. But my success also was incomplete,
for native wars made it impossible for me to reach the source, though it
was near at hand; and that still remains a splendid prize for one who will
walk in my footsteps as I walked in those of Laing. The source of the
Niger, as given in the maps; was fixed by Laing from native information
which I ascertained to be correct. There is no doubt that this river
rises in the backwoods of Sierra Leone, at a distance of only two
hundred miles from the coast. It runs for some time as a foaming
hill-torrent bearing obscure and barbarous names, and at the point where
I found it glides into the broad, calm breast of the plateau, and
receives its illustrious name of the Joliba, or Great River.

It flows north-east, and enters the Sahara as if intending, like the
Nile, to pour its waters into the Mediterranean Sea. But suddenly it
turns towards the east, so that Herodotus, who heard of it when he was
at Memphis, supposed that it joined the Nile; and such was the
prevailing opinion not only among the Greeks but also among the Arabs in
the Middle Ages. They did not know that the eccentric river again wheels
round, flows towards the sea near which it rose, passes through the
latitude of its birth, and, having thus described three quarters of a
circle, debouches by many mouths into the Bight of Benin. So singular a
course might well baffle the speculations of geographers and the
investigations of explorers. The people who dwell on the banks of the
river do not know where it ends. I was told by some that it went to
Mecca, by others that it went to Jerusalem. Mungo Park's own theory was
ludicrously incorrect--he believed that the Congo was its mouth. Others
declared that it never reached the sea at all. It was Lander who
discovered the mouth of the Niger, at one time as mysterious as the
sources of the Nile, and so established the hypothesis which Reichard
had advanced and which Mannert had declared to be "contrary to nature."

The Niger platform or basin is flat, with here and there a line of
rolling hills containing gold. The vegetation consists of high, coarse
grass and trees of small stature, except on the banks of streams, where
they grow to a larger size. The palm-oil tree is not found on this
plateau, but the shea-butter or tallow tree abounds in natural
plantations which will some day prove a source of enormous wealth. As
the river flows on, these trees disappear; the plains widen and are
smoothed out, and the country assumes the character of the Sahara.

The negroes who inhabited the platform of the Niger lived chiefly on the
banks of the river, subsisting on lotus root and fish. Like all savages,
they were jealous and distrustful; their intercourse was that of war.
But nature, by means of a curious contrivance, has rendered it
impossible for men to remain eternally apart. Common salt is one of the
mineral constituents of the human body, and savages, who live chiefly on
vegetable food, are dependent upon it for their life. In Africa children
may be seen sucking it like sugar. "Come and eat with us today," says
the hospitable African; "we are going to have salt for dinner." It is
not in all countries that this mineral food is to be found, but the
saltless lands in the Sudan contain gold dust, ivory, and slaves, and so
a system of barter is arranged, and isolated tribes are brought into
contact with one another.

The two great magazines are the desert and the ocean. At the present day
the white, powdery English salt is carried on donkeys and slaves to the
upper waters of the Niger, and is driving back the crystalline salt of
the Sahara. In the ancient days the salt of the plateau came entirely
from the mines of Bilma and Toudeyni, in the desert, which were occupied
and worked by negro tribes. But at a period far remote, before the
foundations of Carthage were laid, a Berber nation, now called the
Tuaricks, overspread the desert and conquered the oases and the mines.
This terrible people are yet the scourge of the peaceful farmer and the
passing caravan. They camp in leather tents; they are armed with lance
and sword, and with shields on which is painted the image of a cross.
The Arabs call them "the muffled ones," for their mouths and noses are
covered with a bandage, sometimes black, sometimes white, above which
sit in deep sockets, like ant-lions in their pits, a pair of dark,
cruel, sinister looking eyes. They levy tolls on all travellers, and
murder those who have the reputation of unusual wealth--as they did Miss
Tinne, whose iron water tanks they imagined to be filled with gold. When
they poured down on the Sahara they were soon attracted by the rich
pastures and alluvial plains of the black country. In course of time
their raids were converted into conquests, and they established a line
of kingdoms from the Niger to the Nile, in the borderland between the
Sahara and the parallel 10º N. Timbuktu, Haoussa, Bornu, Bagirmi, Waday,
Darfur, and Kordofan were the names of these kingdoms; in all of them
Islam is now the religion of the state; all of them belong to the
Asiatic world.

The Tuaricks of the Sudan were merely the ruling castes, and were much
darkened by harem blood, but they communicated freely with their
brethren of the desert, who had dealings with the Berbers beyond the
Atlas. When the Andalusia of the Arabs became a polite civilised land
crowds of ingenious artisans, descended from the old Roman craftsmen or
from the Greek emigrants, or from their Arab apprentices, took
architecture over to North Africa. The city of Morocco was filled with
magnificent palaces and mosques; it became the metropolis of an
independent kingdom; it was called the Baghdad of the west; its doctors
were as learned as the doctors of Cordova, its musicians as skilful as
the musicians of Seville. A wealthy and powerful Morocco could not exist
without its influence being felt across the desert; the position of
Timbuktu in reference to Morocco was precisely that of Meroe to Memphis
or to Thebes. The Sahara, it is true, is much wider across from Morocco
to Timbuktu than from Egypt to Ethiopia, but the introduction of camels
brought the Atlas and the Niger near to one another. The Tuaricks, who
had previously lived on horses, under whose bellies they tied
water-bottles of leather when they went on a long journey, had been able
to cross the desert only at certain seasons of the year; but now, with the
aid of the camel, which they at once adopted and from which they bred
the famous Mehara strain, they could cross the Sahara at its widest part
in a few days. A regular trade was established between the two
countries, and was conducted by the Berbers. Arab merchants, desirous of
seeing with their own eyes the wondrous land of ivory and gold, took
passage in the caravans, crossed the yellow seas, sprang from their
camels upon the green shores of the Sudan, and kneeling on the banks of
the Niger with their faces turned towards Mecca, dipped their hands in
its waters and praised the name of the Lord. They journeyed from city to
city and from court to court, and composed works of travel which were
read with eager delight all over the Moslem world, from Spain to
Hindustan.

The Arabs thronged to this newly discovered world. They built factories;
they established schools; they converted dynasties. They covered the
river with masted vessels; they built majestic temples with graceful
minaret and swelling dome. Theological colleges and public libraries
were founded; camels came across the desert laden with books; the
negroes swarmed to the lectures of the mullahs; Plato and Aristotle were
studied by the banks of the Niger, and the glories of Granada were
reflected at Timbuktu. That city became the refuge of political
fugitives and criminals from Morocco. In the sixteenth century the
Emperor dispatched across the desert a company of harquebusiers who,
with their strange, terrible weapons, everywhere triumphed like the
soldiers of Cortes and Pizarro in Mexico and Peru. These musketeers made
enormous conquests not for their master but for themselves. They
established an oligarchy of their own; it was afterwards dethroned by
the natives, but there yet exist men who, as Barth informs us, are
called the descendants of the musketeers and who wear a distinctive
dress. But that imperial expedition was the last exploit of the Moors.
After the conquest of Granada by the Christians and of Algeria by the
Turks, Morocco, encompassed by enemies, became a savage and isolated
land; Timbuktu, its commercial dependent, fell into decay, and is now
chiefly celebrated as a cathedral town.

The Arabs carried cotton and the art of its manufacture into the Sudan,
which is one of the largest cotton-growing areas in the world. Its
Manchester is Kano, which manufactures blue cloth and coloured plaids,
clothes a vast negro population, and even exports its goods to the lands
of the Mediterranean Sea. Denham and Clapperton, who first reached the
lands of Haoussa and Bornu, were astonished to find among the negroes
magnificent courts; regiments of cavalry, the horses caparisoned in silk
for gala days and clad in coats of mail for war; long trains of camels
laden with salt and natron and corn and cloth and cowrie shells--which
form the currency--and kola nuts, which the Arabs call "the coffee of
the negroes." They attended with wonder the gigantic fairs at which the
cotton goods of Manchester, the red cloth of Saxony, double-barrelled
guns, razors, tea and sugar, Nuremberg ware and writing-paper were
exhibited for sale. They also found merchants who offered to cash their
bills upon houses at Tripoli, and scholars acquainted with Avicenna,
Averroes, and the Greek philosophers.


The Mohammedans in Central Africa


The Mohammedan religion was spread in Central Africa to a great extent
by the travelling Arab merchants, who were welcomed everywhere at the
negro or semi-negro courts, and who frequently converted the pagan kings
by working miracles--that is to say, by means of events which
accidentally followed their solemn prayers, such as the healing of a
disease, rain in the midst of drought, or a victory in war. But the
chief instrument of conversion was the school. It is much to the credit
of the negroes that they keenly appreciate the advantages of education;
they appear to possess an instinctive veneration and affection for the
book. Wherever Mohammedans settled, the sons of chiefs were placed under
their tuition. A Mohammedan quarter was established; it was governed by
its own laws; its sheikh rivalled in power and finally surpassed the
native kings. The machinery of the old pagan court might still go on;
the negro chief might receive the magnificent title of sultan; he might
be surrounded by albinos and dwarfs and big-headed men and buffoons; he
might sit in a cage, or behind a curtain in a palace with seven gates,
and receive the ceremonial visits of his nobles, who stripped off a
garment at each gate and came into his presence naked, and cowered on
the ground, and clapped their hands, and sprinkled their heads with
dust, and then turned round and sat with their backs presented in
reverence towards him, as if they were unable to bear the sight of his
countenance shining like a well-blacked boot. But the Arab or Moorish
sheikh would be in reality the king, deciding all questions of foreign
policy, of peace and war, of laws and taxes and commercial regulations,
holding a position resembling that of the Gothic generals who placed
Libius Severus and Augustulus upon the throne--of the mayors of the
palace beside the Merovingian princes, of the Company's servants at the
court of the great Mogul. And when the Mohammedans had become numerous,
and a fitting season had arrived, the sheikh would point out a
well-known Koran text and would proclaim war against the surrounding
pagan kings. And so the movement which had been begun by the school
would be continued by the sword.

It may, however, be doubted whether the Arab merchants alone would have
spread Islam over the Niger plateau. On the east coast of Africa they
have possessed settlements from time immemorial. Before the Greeks of
Alexandria sailed into the Indian Ocean, before the Tyrian vessels, with
Jewish supercargoes, passed through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, the
Arabs of Yemen had established factories in Mozambique and on the
opposite coast of Malabar, and had carried on a trade between the two
lands, selling to the Indians ivory, ebony, slaves, bees-wax, and
gold dust brought down in quills from the interior by the negroes, to
whom they sold in return the sugar beads, and blue cotton goods of
Hindustan. In the period of the caliphs these settlements were
strengthened and increased, in consequence of civil war, by fugitive
tribes from Oman and other parts of the Arabian peninsula. The emigrants
made Africa their home; they built large towns which they surrounded
with orchards of the orange-tree and plantations of the date; they
introduced the culture of tobacco, sugar cane and cotton. They were
loved and revered by the negroes; they made long journeys into the
interior for the purposes of trade. Yet their religion has made no
progress, and they do not attempt to convert the blacks. Their towns
resemble those of the Europeans; they dwell apart from the natives, and
above them.

The Mohammedans who entered the Niger regions were not only the Arab
merchants but also the Berbers of the desert, who, driven by war or
instigated by ambition, poured into the Sudan by tribes, seized lands
and women, and formed mulatto nationalities. Of these the Fulahs are the
most famous. They were originally natives of Northern Africa; having
intermarried during many generations with the natives, they have often
the appearance of pure negroes, but they always call themselves white
men, however black their skins may seem to be. In the last century they
were dispersed in small and puny tribes. Some wandered as gipsies
selling wooden bowls; others were roaming shepherd clans, paying tribute
to the native kings and suffering much ill-treatment. In other parts
they lived a bandit life. Sometimes, but rarely, they resided in towns
which they had conquered, pursued commerce, and tilled the soil. Yet in
war they were far superior to the negroes: if only they could be united
the most powerful kingdoms would be unable to withstand them. And
finally their day arrived. A man of their own race returned from Mecca,
a pilgrim and a prophet, gathered them like wolves beneath his standard,
and poured them forth on the Sudan.

The pilgrimage to Mecca is incumbent only on those who can afford it,
but hundreds of devout negroes every year put on their shrouds and beg
their way across the continent to Massowah. There, taking out a few
grains of gold dust cunningly concealed between the leaves of their
Korans, they pay their passage across the Red Sea and tramp it from
Jidda to Mecca, feeding as they go on the bodies of the camels that have
been left to die, and whose meat is lawful if the throat is cut before
the animal expires. As soon as the negroes--or Takrouri, as they are
called--arrive in the Holy City they at once set to work, some as
porters and some as carriers of water in leather skins; others
manufacture baskets and mats of date leaves; others establish a market
for firewood, which they collect in the neighbouring hills. They inhabit
miserable huts or ruined houses in the quarter of the lower classes,
where the sellers of charcoal dwell and where locusts are sold by the
measure. Some of these poor and industrious creatures spread
their mats in the cloisters of the great Mosque, and stay all the time
beneath that sacred and hospitable roof. They are subject to the
exclamatory fits and pious convulsions so common among the negroes of
the Southern States. Often they may be seen prostrate on the pavement,
beating their foreheads against the stones, weeping bitterly, and
pouring forth the wildest ejaculations.

The Great Mosque at Mecca is a spacious square surrounded by a
colonnade. In the midst of the quadrangle is the small building called
the Caaba. It has no windows; its door, which is seldom opened, is
coated with silver; its padlock, once of pure gold, is now of silver
gilt. On its threshold are placed every night various small wax candles
and perfuming pans filled with aloeswood and musk. The walls of the
building are covered with a veil of black silk, tucked up on one side,
so as to leave exposed the famous Black Stone which is niched in the
wall outside. The veil is not fastened close to the building, so that
the least breath of air causes it to wave in slow, undulating movements,
hailed with prayer by the kneeling crowd around. They believe that it is
caused by the wings of guardian angels who will transport the Caaba to
paradise when the last trumpet sounds.

At a little distance from this building is the Zemzem well, and while
some of the pilgrims are standing by its mouth waiting to be served, or
walking round the Caaba, or stooping to kiss the stone, other scenes may
be observed in the cloisters and the square; and, as in the Temple at
Jerusalem, these are not all of the most edifying nature. Children are
playing at games, or feeding the wild pigeons whom long immunity has
rendered tame. Numerous schools are going on, the boys chanting in a
loud voice, and the master's baton sometimes falling on their backs. In
another corner a religious lecture is being delivered. Men of all
nations are clustered in separate groups--the Persian heretics, with
their caps mounting to heaven and their beards descending to the earth;
the Tartar, with oblique eyes and rounded limbs and light silk
handkerchief tied round his brow; Turks with shaven faces and in red
caps; the lean Indian pauper, begging with a miserable whine; and one or
two wealthy Hindu merchants not guiltless of dinners given to infidels,
and of iced champagne. At the same time an active business is being done
in sacred keepsakes--rosaries made of camel bone, bottles of Zemzem
water, dust collected from behind the veil, tooth-sticks made of a
fibrous root such as that which Mohammed himself was wont to use, and
coarsely executed pictures of the Caaba. Mecca itself, like most cities
frequented by strangers, whether pilgrims or mariners, is not an abode
of righteousness and virtue. As the Tartars say of it, "The Torch is
dark at its foot," and many a pilgrim might exclaim with the Arabian
Ovid; "I set out in the hopes of lightening my sins, And returned,
bringing home with me a fresh load of transgressions."

But the very wickedness of a holy city deepens real enthusiasm into
severity and wrath. When Abd-ul-Wahhab saw taverns opened in Mecca
itself, and the inhabitants alluring the pilgrims to every kind of vice;
when he found that the sacred places were made a show, that the mosque
was inhabited by guides and officials who were as greedy as beasts of
prey, that wealth, not piety, was the chief object of consideration in a
pilgrim, he felt as Luther felt at Rome. The disgust which was excited
in his mind by the manners of the day was extended also to the doctrines
that were in vogue. The prayers that were offered up to Mohammed and the
saints resembled the prayers that were once offered up to the Daughters
of Heaven, the intercessors of the ancient Arabs. The pilgrimages that
were made to the tombs of holy men were the old journeys to the
ancestral graves. The worship of one God, which Mohammed had been sent
to restore, had again become obscured; the days of darkness had
returned. He preached a Unitarian revival; he held up as his standard
and his guide the Koran, and nothing but the Koran; he founded a puritan
sect which is now a hundred years of age, and still remains an element
of power and disturbance in the East.

Othman Dan Fodio, the Black Prophet, also went out of Mecca, his soul
burning with zeal. He determined to reform the Sudan. He forbade, like
Abd-ul-Wahhab, the smoking of tobacco, the wearing of ornaments and
finery. But he had to contend with more gross abuses still. In many
negro lands which professed Islam, palm wine and millet beer were
largely consumed; the women did not veil their faces nor even their
bosoms; immodest dances were performed to the profane music of the drum;
learned men gained a livelihood by writing charms, the code of the Koran
was often supplanted by the old customary laws. Dan Fodio sent letters
to the great kings of Timbuktu, Haoussa, and Bornu, commanding them to
reform their own lives and those of their subjects, or he would chastise
them in the name of God. They received these instructions from an
unknown man, as the King of Kings received the letter of Mohammed, and
their fate resembled his. Dan Fodio united the Fulah tribes into an army
which he inspired with his own spirit. Thirsting for plunder and
paradise, the Fulahs swept over the Sudan; they marched into battle with
shouts of frenzied joy, singing hymns and waving their green flags on
which texts of the Koran were embroidered in letters of gold. The empire
which they established at the beginning of this century is now crumbling
away, but the fire is still burning on the frontiers. Wherever the
Fulahs are settled in the neighbourhood of pagan tribes they are
extending their power, and although the immediate effects are
disastrous--villa