The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
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 des
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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 βbarbarianβ 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 βLand of the Five Streams,β 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 robesβthe 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.
Alexanderβs 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 changer 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
guiltyβhis 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. βAh! Who will now protect my girls?β 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.
Alexanderβs 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
monsterβs 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 kingdomsβthat
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 worldβon 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 βhousesβ by the waters of the Indus. The history of the Greeks
of Inner Asia, however soon comes to an end. Sandracottus, the Rajah
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