born of royal parentage, six centuries before our era," was brought into the world to satisfy the independence and the ambition of his race, whom he led, not only against the Medes, but against the greater part of the nations on his side the Ægean Sea. The Persians, "terrible as an army with banners," 12 spread over the earth as its later conquerors; and on their supremacy, after as well as before victory, their king relied as the bulwark of his own dominion. Old empires sank, as if built of sand, before the blast which blew tempestuously from the mountain land; and though some fragments of their ancient institutions remained to prove that these had once existed, the monarchy of Iran, thus rising and enlarging in the midst of storms, was at once the single institution of Persia and of the various people reduced to bear the Persian name. The Medes were alone united on more equal terms with their former tributaries; their religion, known by the name of its priests, the Magi, was established amongst the Persians, on whom it had anciently been forced at the time of their subjection; and the warlike discipline which the vigor of Cyrus imparted to the Persians was introduced, in part, at least, amongst the Medes. On the other victims of his conquests Cyrus laid the burden of a more crushing dominion than upon the Medes; and he was meditating plans of universal the account of them and their country which Herodotus attributes to See Cyrus, IX. 122. 11 A. C. 594. His reign began A. C. 559 and lasted till 530. 12 Solomon's Song, VI. 4. empire,13 when he died among barbarians whom he marched afar to vanquish.14 The condition in which the great conqueror left his countrymen and the strangers whom the loyalty as well as the combativeness of the Persians enabled him to subdue, will be better described after we have taken some account of the despotism which Cyrus transmitted to his successors on the throne. It was the chief fruit of his conquests.15 His own name of Cyrus was borrowed from the sun his people worshipped, and to which they would have compared his glory as he traversed the earth in victory. There are testimonies stronger than any names to the absolute authority of the Persian sovereigns. The royal judges, more peculiarly styled the interpreters of the law, informed Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, that the king could do whatever he pleased;" as if the principle of their interpretations lay in submission to his will. Xerxes, whose very name is a sound of pride, bade his nobles, "the princes of Asia," remember, when he called them to council, that they came, not to advise, but to obey him.18 The mother of Artaxerxes, persuading her son to a deed which he had the grace to deny himself, urged him 13 As Diodorus remarks: Taîs πίσι πᾶσαν περιελάμβανε τὴν οἰκονμévny. Reliq., X. 12, ed. Müller. 14 Herod., I. 127, 130, 190 et seq., 214. Ctesias, Fragm. de Reb. Persic., 6. Ctesias, a native of Caria, wrote a history of Persia, at the court of which country he was employed as royal physician about A. C. 400. 15"Le despotisme fut le fruit de la conquête." Condorcet, Prog. de l'Esp. Hum., p. 55. 16 Plut., Artax., 1. 18 Valer. Maximus, IX. 5. § 2 Ext. to despise all laws, inasmuch as "he himself was a law to the Persians, given them by the Deity to be " 19 the judge of right and wrong.' If the laws of the Persians were thus considered to emanate from their king, to whose will there was neither any authority nor any justice to oppose, then, indeed, it were better to close their history at once, in despair of any liberty where such a rule was borne. But if we judge ancient as we would modern times, we may be sure that there is always some influence to temper human despotism. The story of Dejoces is proof of greater evils which could be avoided only by submission to what was certainly an evil, but a less one, namely, unshared authority. A hierocracy, as we have already seen, has its origin in the fear of gods whom an ignorant, particularly if it be also a fanciful, people may be taught or forced to worship with trembling desperation. Its authority is absolute, and its character nearly unalterable, after it has once been founded. But a despotism, warlike or royal, originates in the fear which the mass, if uneducated and unhopeful, will always feel for the few who are stronger, braver, wiser, or in any way more powerful than themselves. It exacts implicit obedience; but neither necessarily militates against the improvement of its subjects, nor condemns them to forced and terrifying services of religion. The despotism of kings is still a monstrous evil; but it was never nearly so hideous in 19 Plut., Artax., 23. ancient times as the despotism of priests, who claimed a divine character for themselves or for their system, and then turned it to more brutal uses than we can now conceive. Even the divine right, urged as the royal title and possession, can never be confounded with the actual divinity to which a hierocracy pretended. The power confessing its humanity, whatever may be its right, is obliged to consult the interests and the sentiments of other classes than that to which it more exclusively belongs; it is conciliatory in some things, though it be ever so arbitrary; it is progressive in some ways, though it be ever so firmly rooted or ever so unwilling to move onwards. Above all, it never necessarily corrupts the hearts of its subjects, however much it is obliged to depend upon their want of knowledge or of energy. These are general positions to mark the progress we may rightly hope to find in Persia, six centuries and less before the Christian era. We are yet groping after freedom; but the worst bondage 20 is broken for mankind. Mere force, like that of the Persian kings, is not nearly so fatal to liberty as force combined with superstition, such as we have witnessed in Egypt and in India. It may seem urging a point too far, but there was certainly this advantage in the government even of a single man, that, although it 20 So Wordsworth, true to all that is holiest in man : "There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 10 Pent in, a tyrant's solitary Thrall: opened but a narrow passage to general freedom, the king himself had the liberty to rule with some honor and gentleness. The ancients, at least, gave credit to the Persians for believing "the greatest good to be obedience" to their sovereign; 22 and in the later poetry 23 of Iran, the bright side again is turned to view: "The happy Feridoun was not an angel; he was not formed of musk or amber: it was by his justice and generosity that he gained good and great ends. Be thou just and generous," adds the poet, "and thou shalt be a Feridoun.' Feridoun was one of the heroes whose virtues may have been confined to legend and song; but his character, though it were wholly fabulous, is sufficient evidence that the Persians knew what was due them from their king. So they who succeeded to Feridoun might have blotted out all poetry from the royal character; yet when once the truth had been revealed, that a king was made of flesh and blood, as well as his subjects, and was concerned with them in one and the same destiny, it would not be forgotten, though he were to pollute himself and them by tyranny. The son of Cyrus, Cambyses, the same who conquered Egypt, was reputed to be the very worst of all his line. He proved the reality and the fatality of despotism as fiercely as though that had been the 21 Xerxes might have remembered this when he offered a reward to those who could invent him a new pleasure, and so had the pleasure of governing his people righteously. 2 Μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν τὸ πειθαρχεῖν pawéra. Xen., Cyrop., VIII. 1. 3. See Plut., Them., 27. 23 Saadi, quoted in Malcolm's History, Vol. I. ch. 1. |