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
Read free book Β«The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) πΒ» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Winwood Reade
- Performer: -
Read book online Β«The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) πΒ». Author - Winwood Reade
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 cornfileds, 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, reconquered 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
progressβEgypt 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.
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 βthe
people of the book.β
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
Comments (0)