Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

unbridled; as in Persia from the strength of a nobility, or, as in the Grecian tyrannies, from the character of a people. The Persian nobles have perhaps been described as well as they can be with our meagre means, in the preceding pages. They were especially the members of the Persian court, and, in time, of the Persian priesthood, the freemen of the nation, according to Oriental rules. Below them were the various classes of husbandmen, artisans, and slaves, of whom the last were not, however, considered as natives of Persia, though born upon Persian soil. The first two were the retainers of the nobility at home and their followers in war, and though by no means free with respect either to their superiors or to the sovereign, yet, in comparison with the subject nations of the empire, they were, as will immediately appear, an independent and a favored race. It is difficult, however, to measure the Persian spirit generally by any decided standard, on account of the vicissitudes to which it was exposed. In conflict and in intercourse with more polished nations, the conquerors under Cyrus and his successors would learn, with as much speed as they had used in their

34 There was an early tradition, that Djemsheed, one of the herokings, divided his people into four classes: :- -1. Priests and Teachers; 2. Registers and Writers; 3. Soldiers; 4. Husbandmen, Artisans, and Tradesmen. Malcolm's Persia, Vol. I. ch. 2. It is not necessary to make any details here, like those we were obliged to enter upon with

regard to Egypt and India, because, though there were classes, there were no castes, in Persia. See, however, the account which Herodotus gives (I. 125) of the three agricultural and the three nomadic tribes, and compare the description of the classes in the Zend-Avesta ; Anquetil, Tom. I. ptie. 2, pp. 141, 389 et seq.

marches, to imitate the labors and the luxuries they beheld around them. Three periods may nevertheless be distinguished in their history: the first being the period of the mountaineers, the second of the warriors, and the third of the masters, which, under Darius Hystaspis, was actually arrived. The Persians, peasants as well as nobles, were all affected by the change from one to another period. Life upon mountains was very different from life upon battlefields; nor could the simple though boisterous people that Cyrus led preserve the qualities on which he had relied, when they became the superior nation of a thickly and a variously peopled empire. Their love of freedom, strange as it may appear, declined with the love of war, in whose fervors their glory as a race began and in whose ashes it expired.

The fair side of such a history was necessarily of narrow extent, compared with its darker side. But on crossing the line which divides Persia from its provinces, there is scarcely a ray of light athwart the deeper gloom. The Persians, for instance, were bound to no tribute; 35 but of the twenty provinces annexed to the land of the victors, on the principle that all Asia belonged to it, each had its tributes to pay and its grinding services to perform. 37 The

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

" 39

penalties of the conquered for not having been able to protect themselves against their conquerors were heavy throughout the empire. Amyntas, king of Egypt, was transported, with six thousand Egyptians, to Susa, by order of the savage Cambyses. Even Cyrus, who has the credit of much greater humanity, would have made the Lydians slaves, if their king, Croesus, had not persuaded his victor to content himself with the surrender of their arms and the change of their education, so that they "would be turned," as the historian remarks, "from men into women.' Such examples would not fail of imitation. A whole people might be hunted down, murdered,40 or punished, but they bore it because it was their destiny, as the vanquished, to bear with any thing which was done against them; and though the sun shone full upon the provinces, their inhabitants were slaves as entirely as though they had lived in one vast dungeon. They paid, they served, and they obeyed; and the lists preserved of Xerxes's army 42 bear witness that the obedience, the service, and the

mon tributes and services. "I have heard," says Socrates, in one of Plato's dialogues, "a trustworthy man, one who had been an ambassador to Persia, say, that he had travelled for nearly a whole day over a vast and fertile country which the inhabitants call the Queen's Girdle; that there is another called her Veil; and that there are many more fair and fruitful provinces whose revenues are applied to the wardrobe of the queen, and which bear the re

spective names of the articles they
severally supply." Plato, Alcib., I.
38 Ctes., De Reb. Pers., 9. Cf. the
fate of the Barcans under Darius.
Herod., IV. 202–204.

39 Herod., I. 155, 156.
40 Ibid., VI. 31.
41 Ibid., VI. 32.

42 Ibid., VII. 59 et seq. One is
reminded of a line in Ferdousi, in
which the poet speaks of
"Suppliant crowds, vast as the spreading sea."
Champion's translation, p. 209.

tribute of the provinces were the life-blood of the empire.

Darius Hystaspis was called the Trader King, 43 as if in ridicule of the taxes he laid, the labors he required, or the government he organized. But the policy of the Persian institutions was not the work of Darius alone; he may have carried it out, but it had been begun before him, when the first arrow was shot from the mountains or the first host descended into the plains. Yet the system he pursued, however begun, would have been more tolerable, had not each of its burdens and vexations been magnified by the governments dependent upon the central one in Persia. Every province had its governor or satrap; and every satrap governed his province for himself as well as for his king. Thus doubly severe, the rule of Persia was as fatal to itself as to the vanquished. It was impossible that contributions of enormous amount should be secured without much difficulty and violence; it was just as impossible that even violence should overcome the difficulty, unless the satrap at a distance from the court was abundantly able to use swiftness and severity in his government. To him the civil and the military authority of one, or sometimes of more than one, province was exclusively committed; and the people were ruled as if they had been a potter's vessel, to be emptied and crushed and repaired at the satrap's

43 Herod., III. 89. Kárnλos. The taxation he established is described by the same old historian, III. 90 et

seq. He was the first of the Persian monarchs to coin money. Herod., IV. 166.

will. Their debasement reacted in two ways upon the empire. It weakened their attachment and their submission, on one side; and on the other, so swelled the power and the spirit of their governors, that the king would fear the satrap as a servant over whom he had no possible control. In a review of the liberty consistent with the Persian institutions, it can only be said that the despotism of the satraps was far worse than the despotism of the kings. And as the strength of the monarchy began to decline, it was observable that the change came over its better features in consequence of the very conquests which had once appeared to constitute its majesty and its dominion.

It need not be said that we have already proceeded farther than the time of Darius Hystaspis without mentioning the names succeeding his amongst the Persian kings, those of the Xerxeses, the Artaxerxeses, and the Dariuses of later years, which have no associations with freedom, - none, at least, in their own empire. 44 But we must return to the reign of Darius, in order to learn something of the Persian religion, and of the reforms which are believed 45 to have been introduced at that period. The history of Zoroaster is not merely the history of the reformer. It shows forth, more openly than any other man's now can, at once the spirit which was not of impracticable development under the Persian despot

44 None after Darius, says Plato, was truly great, except in name: Οὐδεὶς πω μέγας γέγονεν ἀληθῶς πλήν ye óvóμati. Laws, Lib. III.

ron and Kleuker, the one the French, the other the German, translator of the Zend-Avesta. A note to Chap. VIII. of Gibbon's Decline and 45 According to Anquetil du Per- Fall contains the various authorities.

« НазадПродовжити »