CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE
The Persians were the first Aryans to achieve a great world empire within historic times. With them the Aryan race became dominant in the Western world, and it has so continued to the present time. The Persians themselves maintained first place among the nations only for about two centuries, or from the time of Cyrus until the Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great. And the sceptre which they laid down was taken up by Western nations akin to them in speech, and passed on from one to another people of the same great Indo-Germanic race throughout the two and a half millenniums which separate the time of Cyrus from our own. But it is not only because of their kinship with European nations that the Persians are of interest. Their history has intrinsic importance. Theirs was unquestionably the mightiest empire the world had seen since secure history began. It extended from India on the east, to the extreme confines of Asia on the west and the northwest, and beyond them to include Egypt. It even threatened at one time, through the subjugation of Greece, to invade Europe as well, and numberless writers have moralised on the great change of destiny that would have fallen to the lot of Western civilisation, had this threat been made effective. All such moralising of course is but guess-work, and it may be questioned whether most of it has any validity whatever. For the truth seems to be that the Persians were much more nearly akin to the European intellect than a study of their descendants of recent generations would lead one to suppose. It is everywhere conceded that they sprang from the same stock, and their most fundamental traits show many points of close resemblance. Thus it is matter of record that the Persians differed widely from the Hamitic or Semitic conquerors, both in their methods of warfare and in their treatment of conquered enemies. The Semites, in particular, were notoriously cruel and unimaginative in their treatment of fallen foes. The word “unimaginative” is here used advisedly, for it would seem as if nothing but curiously defective imagination could permit one human being to treat another in the atrocious manner which characterised the conquerors of the Semitic race—not merely the Babylonians and Assyrians, but the Hebrews as well, as the history of David only too amply illustrates.
The paragraph in which David’s treatment of the people of the conquered city of Rabbah, as recorded, is a fair sample of the usual fortunes of war that fell to the lot of the victims of a Semitic nation.
“And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kilns, and thus he did unto all the children of Ammon.”
But the Persians, on the other hand, be it recorded to their credit, did not as a rule resort to such atrocities. Such rules as this must indeed always be taken with certain qualifications, for there were, unfortunately, cases in which the Persian conqueror inflicted upon an enemy a vengeance almost comparable to the Semitic type. But this was rare, except in the case of rebels; and not usual even with these, and it must be remembered on the other hand, that the records of Western nations are not altogether free from similar charges of cruelty. On the whole, the conduct of such great Persian leaders as Cyrus the Great and Darius I, will perhaps compare favourably with that of any European conqueror.
Another very essential point in which the Persians of the early day bore a close resemblance to Europeans of the later generation, is in regard to their religion. It is admitted on all hands that in its original or uncorrupted form the religion of the Persians was of a very high type. It was embodied in a creed at a very early day, possibly not later than 1000 B.C., by the great prophet Zoroaster. Like the other great religions, it grew by accretion, and came to have linked with it a set of myths and fables that are difficult to ascribe to their particular periods of origin. We are not even sure within perhaps five hundred years of the exact time when Zoroaster lived, but this is of comparatively little consequence when one reflects that a great religion is always a slow growth, and that any particular religious teacher to whom it may be ascribed, after all, has done nothing more than focalise the national tendency, or form a centre about which the ideas and tendencies of an epoch may crystallise.
In the case of the Zoroastrian religion, it was finally given tangible and permanent expression in the pages of the Zendavesta or sacred book of the Persians. The national spirit given expression is, as has been said, in many ways of a high order. It has sometimes been doubted whether any religion in its last analysis is ever otherwise than monotheistic. Be that as it may, it seems quite clear that the early religion of the Persians was almost a pure monotheism, nor did it in its later stages depart more widely from the monotheistic type than has been the case, at some stage of its development, with every other great religion of which we have any knowledge. Thus the Zoroastrian system admits a sun-god, Mithra, who is the creator of the god of Light, Ormuzd, and of the god of Darkness, Ahriman. Here, at first glance, there seems to be clearly a trinity of gods of practically equal power. But when we try to get close to the thought of this creed, we find that Ormuzd is regarded as equal to Mithra, even though created by him, and that, on the other hand, Ahriman is supposed ultimately to be conquered by the God of Light, notwithstanding the ages of time throughout which he wields malevolent power.
If we consider dispassionately the fundamental character of the creeds of Christendom, there must be apparent a strange similarity to this Zoroastrian creed. To a Persian who should attempt to gain an insight into this creed of the Western world, the conception of an omnipotent father creating a son, who, after all, is said to be co-eternal with the father, must seem in closest possible analogy with his own Mithra and Ormuzd, while nothing could be clearer than that a Satan of such godlike power as to be able to combat successfully against the powers of good, age after age, must be no other than Ahriman or his counterpart. To this Zoroastrian investigator, then, it must seem clear,—even though he were to take no note of the third member of the orthodox trinity and of the saints, who must seem minor gods to a foreign intelligence,—that this Western religion is a polytheism closely similar to the creed of Zoroaster, and, like that, despite its galaxy of deities, showing evidence of a basal conception of monotheism. Indeed, in whatever candid view the subject is considered, it must be clear that this early Aryan faith of which we have any present record is closely similar in its fundamentals to the faith which the main body of Aryans of the Western world profess to this day; and this fact, as has been said, furnishes a close link between Persian and European, and gives an added interest to the history of this great people.
RACIAL AND DYNASTIC ORIGINS
As to the origin of the Medo-Persians, nothing need be added beyond what has already been said of the origin of the Indians. There must have been a time, probably at a relatively late period, when the ancestors of the Indians and the ancestors of the Persians formed a single colony or group of colonies, which had its seat, it may reasonably be inferred, somewhere in the region which was afterwards known as Bactria. Thence the tide of migration swept to the southeast, as we have seen, into India, and to the southwest across the tableland of Iran, or, as we more generally term it, Persia. The vast territory of Iran came early to be divided between two peoples of this same stock, of which the one inhabiting the northeastern part of the territory was called by Greek writers the Medes, although recent investigation has tended to establish the fact that the so-called Median nation was really that of the Scythians and not that of the Medes, who lived farther to the west. Nevertheless, it seems advisable to retain the phrase Medo-Persian empire. The other, or the southeastern nation, had the name of Persian. The Scythians first gained world-historic importance and entered the field of secure history by their share in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire, in which enterprise, as we have seen, they were associated with the Babylonians. For a short period after this, the Scythians divided with the Babylonians the honours of world imperialism; then their power was snatched from them by their kindred on the south and west, and the great Medo-Persian empire came into existence.
The builder of this empire was the mighty Cyrus, one of the most powerful, and, if tradition is to be credited, one of the best of the great conquerors of history. He was an Elamite prince, but is more familiar to history as the king of Persia, which land he added to his domains early in his career of conquest. When Cyrus was born, Persia was an insignificant territory, the name of which had not yet impressed itself upon history; and before Cyrus died he had made himself absolute master of all southern Asia west of the Ganges, and the name of the minor border country, Persia, had been given to the greatest empire in the world. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, extended the sway of this empire over Egypt, and his successor and kinsman, Darius, crossed the Hellespont and precipitated that conflict between the East and the West which for two centuries continued to be perhaps the most important factor in world history. But before we turn to the specific incidents of this great drama, we must see something more in detail of this parent land of Aryan civilisation and its gifted people. [a]
THE LAND
The centre of the Iranian tableland consists of a great salt steppe, destitute alike of vegetation and fresh water, torrid and almost impassable by the foot of man in summer. The only spots fit for permanent habitation and agriculture are where the rainfall from lofty mountain ranges collects to form short watercourses, as in the provinces of Kerman and Jezd, and where, in the northeast, the rivers that flow down from the Hindu Kush, the Etymander (Helmund) and many like it, carry life farther into the interior, until they end in the shallow and swampy lake (Zireh or Hamun) in the land of the Drangians. With these exceptions, no more than the borders of Iran are habitable. It is hemmed in by lofty mountain ranges to the north and south, and from the Hindu Kush to the snow-clad heights of Mount Elburz to the south of the Caspian Sea, extends the hill country of Chorasan, in ancient times the abode of the Hyrcanian, Parthian, Aryan, and Drangian tribes. It forms the watershed of numerous rivers, which flow down on either side, making oases in the central desert and the Turanian lowlands, until they succumb in the struggle with the waste of sand. Chorasan constitutes the bridge between the mountain country of Bactria and Sogdiana, in the east, the region about the Oxus and Jaxartes, and Media in the west, where the ranges that run up from the south approach more and more closely to the mountains of the northern frontier, enclosing fertile highlands, rich in lakes and watercourses, where the summer is temperate and the winter severe. Here, in conflict with the Assyrians the Iranians first evolved their political system. From Media the Zagros Mountains run southeast to the Persian Gulf.
The Iranian shores of this arm of the sea present an aspect no less dreary than the Arabian. Navigation is impeded by reefs and shoals, the coast is low, and ill-provided with harbours. Torrid sunshine beats down upon it, making it almost uninhabitable for man and beast; nothing but the palm tree flourishes. In the rainy season the torrent brooks that descend from the highlands merely hurry their more copious supply of water to the sea, and serve no purpose of irrigation or navigation. In the east, on the coast of Mekran, a poverty-stricken fishing population (the Ichthyophagi) ekes out a scanty livelihood, while even the higher land of the interior, Gedrosia, which extends to the regions about the Etymander (Baluchistan) is absolutely desert except for a few well-watered and fertile valleys, and lies so remote from all civilised nations that hardly a single European has trodden it from the time of Alexander to the present century. It is the haunt of nomadic tribes like the Mykians and Parikanians, some of whom are not even of Iranian descent, but are more nearly akin to the earliest inhabitants of India, the progenitors of the Brahuis of to-day, to whom the Greeks sometimes applied the name of Ethiopians.
The west, the land of the Persians, is of a different type. At the distance of a few miles from the coast the spurs of the Zagros Mountains rise one above the other, and the valleys and plains between them, having an elevation of fifteen hundred to two thousand metres above sea-level, enjoy a more temperate climate and a more copious rainfall. “Here a mild climate prevails,” says Nearchus, “the land is rich in herbs and well-watered pastures, it produces abundance of wine and of all other fruits except the olive. Therein are flourishing pleasure grounds; rivers of clear water and lakes, well stocked with water-fowl, irrigate the country. The breeding of horses and beasts of burden prospers; forests full of wild animals are plentiful.” The forests are gone from the mountains; the brooks and rose gardens of Shiraz look wretched enough to the traveller from a more bounteous clime, but the Persian poets are never weary of praising the loveliness of their native land, and King Darius boasts that it is “a fair land of excellent horses and excellent men, which by Ahuramazda’s protection and mine, trembles before no foe.” Persia is bounded on the south by the sea, on the east and north by the desert; the northwest is its only door of communication with other nations. The road leads by mountain passes down to Elam (Susiana) and Babylon; and along the Zagros Mountains lies the way, almost impracticable in the snow-storms of winter, through the rugged highlands of Paretacena (near Ispahan), which already count as a part of Media (Herod. I. 101), to Ecbatana.
THE PEOPLE
The leading tribes of Persia were the Pasargadæ, the Maraphians, and the Maspians, who clustered about the κοιλὴ Πέρσις, that is, the wide and fertile valleys of the Araxes (the Kur or Bendamir) and its principal tributary the Medos or Cyros (Palwar)—a fine and vigorous type of humanity, living by agriculture and cattle rearing and skilled in the use of the spear and bow. Horse breeding, on which the tribes of Iran prided themselves, was assiduously pursued, and hunts in the mountains offered rich gains and hardened the sinews of men for war. Other agricultural tribes were the Panthialæans and the Derusiæans, who probably dwelt farther to the east, the Germanians or Karmanians in the highlands of Kerman. The wilder parts of the mountains and the steppes and deserts of the coast were occupied by predatory nomads, some of them very barbaric, the majority of whom must be ranked under the head of Persians. Such were the Mardans, the neighbours of the Elymæans [Elamites], Uxians (Persian Uvadza, now Chuzistan) and the Kossæans in the Zagros; the Sagartians (Persian Asagarta) in the central desert, the Utians (Persian Jutija) in the Karmanian coast districts, and the Dropicians; the name Dahæ, or “robbers,” is also found here, as in the Turanian steppe. These tribes no more constituted a political unity than did those of Media; divided amongst various districts, the peasants lived in patriarchal conditions under hereditary princes, and were continually at war with the robbers and nomads, while they were protected by the “household gods” who sheltered them from sterility and foes. The influence of Babylonian culture had certainly already penetrated through Susa [Shushan] into the mountain lands of Persia; but that of the kindred race of the Medes was far more powerful. The tribes may have reached their abodes in remote antiquity by the Parætakenian mountain road. By this same route came to them the religion of Zarathustra [Zoroaster], which is the property of all stationary tribes of Iran. In Media the Mazda teaching had already won the mastery as early as the eighth century and perhaps long before; presumably roving priests of the Median priestly caste of the Magi brought it thence to the Persians. Consequently we find the Magian names amongst the Persians in opposition to the “fire kindlers,” (athravan) of the East. In Persia the Magi observed many usages prescribed by the religion which had been borrowed from the Persian people, as the extermination of all unclean beasts and the barbarous custom of allowing corpses to be consumed by dogs and birds of prey. The Persian kings, on the other hand, had their bodies buried.
CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE OF THE ACHÆMENIDES
Our estimate of the significance of the empire of the Achæmenides in the history of the world has been greatly impaired by its being contrasted mainly with Greece and measured by Greek civilisation, not by the earlier and later kingdoms of the East. To this is added the circumstance that our information is often scanty and uncertain, and derived in great part from the period of decadence. An impartial eye cannot fail to perceive that the Persian empire was a great civilised state. This agrees with the profound impression which it made on its contemporaries and enemies like Æschylus, Herodotus, and Xenophon. A sickly despot like Cambyses might allow himself to be carried away by savage whims,—Persian tradition condemns his actions sharply enough, although never forgetting that he was the hereditary sovereign,—but still the Persians always remained faithful to the example of the great founder of the empire. They conducted their wars in an energetic but not blood-thirsty fashion, and although they occasionally dragged conquered foes away from their own countries, yet, down to the time of Artaxerxes III their name was never stained by the annihilation of a great centre of civilisation, though towns like Sardis, Memphis, Babylon, and Shushan repeatedly revolted; the burning of the deserted city of Athens was a political and military necessity, not to be avoided in time of war. The empire of the Achæmenides is distinguished by a breadth of view, a great and humane spirit. Under its rule Anterior Asia was able to enjoy, for more than a century, a peace which was almost undisturbed (save by a few frontier wars like the struggles with the Greeks and the risings in Egypt), a benevolent and just government, and a secure prosperity; and the disintegration of the empire which then began was not brought about by the revolts of subjects but by the quarrels amongst the rulers themselves and the effect of the superior civilisation and military power of the Greeks.
The empire of the Achæmenides is the first of all the states with which history is acquainted, to advance a claim to a universal character. “To be ruler far over this great earth, him the one, to be the lord over many,” “to be king over many lands and tongues,” “over the mountains and plains this side and beyond the sea, this side and beyond the desert,” to this had Ahuramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, appointed the Persian king. He may call himself “the lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset.” All the nations whose representatives are pictured on the seat of his throne obey him, bring him tribute, and yield him military service.
At the same time it is said that the empire is sensible of being a civilised state. The king has to perform the task which Ahuramazda has laid on him, to exercise justice, to punish injustice and falsehood, to reward friends, to chastise enemies, and “under the shelter of Ahuramazda to impose his laws on the countries.” “King of the countries” (Khshajathija dahjunam, Bab sar matati) is his most characteristic title. Still more usual is “king of kings,” although with the exception of the king of Cilicia, he has no vassals properly so-called; for the town princes and tribal chiefs, of whom there is no lack amongst the subjects of the Persian empire, stand so far below him that they give no true meaning to the title. It may therefore be that the designation which, as is well known, has remained the regular appellation of the Persian king, is not of Median origin at all (the Assyrians and Babylonians were also unacquainted with it); but it would rather seem to express the summit of royalty, like the Greek appellation Basileus without the article, which gives expression to the idea that this conception has only one representative in the world. For this very reason the partition of the empire amongst the sons of a king, so frequent in other ages, could not take place here; and the attempt of Cyrus to give his younger son a position of his own by investing him with several provinces under the suzerainty of the elder, was not again repeated in the same fashion, after its unfortunate results. The universal empire was a united state and knew only one master.
Regarded from the standpoint of the East, universality attained a similar range through the conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses as in the imperial dominion of Rome. If on the borders of the earth there dwelt turbulent peoples at a lower level of civilisation or one which was incomprehensible to that of the East, that was of no more importance to the Persian empire than the independence of the Germans and Getæ or of the Parthian kingdom was to the Roman Orbis terrarum. All the civilised peoples of the East were joined together to form one state. From the time of the restoration of the unity of the empire by Darius the dominion of the Achæmenides ceases to be a conquering state: all that was left to subsequent ages was the task of organising and completing and maintaining what had been acquired.
In the civilised states that they had subdued, the Persian kings had as far as possible preserved the ancient forms which had been consecrated by a tradition preserved for thousands of years. Cyrus in Babylon and Cambyses in Egypt appeared as the divinely appointed successors of the native rulers, and nominally the two kingdoms still continued to exist under their successors. It is true that this was no more than a form; the kingdoms annexed had neither privileges nor a special administration; and Persian governors resided at Babylon and Memphis as in every other province of the empire. In Western Asia there is no trace of a similar spirit of concession nor is there in Lydia. On the other hand much greater consideration was shown to the Medes [Scythians] and the rest of the Iranian peoples. It was through the treachery of Median magnates and by the desertion of the Median army of Astyages that Cyrus’ victory was rendered possible. So in the empire the Medians take rank next to the Persians. “Persia, Media, and the other countries,” so Darius calls his empire; and in Babylon Xerxes is referred to as “King of Persia and Media.”[23]
The kernel of the army consisted of Persians and Medes, the imperial officials were drawn from them, and under Cyrus and Darius the Medes appear in the highest places of trust at the head of the army. The royal apparel and the order of the court was taken by Cyrus from the Medes, and Ecbatana was one of the residences of the Great King. Thus the Median kingdom continues to exist, not like Babylonia and Egypt, as the shadow of a once independent state, but transformed into the Persian empire. Those at a distance were scarcely aware of the internal changes in face of the continued subsistence of a powerful Iranian empire: consequently the Greeks, like other nations, transferred the Median names to the Persian empire.
The other Iranian peoples, who had been in part already subject to the Medes, in part only subdued by Cyrus, were in a similar position to the rest of the Iranian tribes. They were now all united in one kingdom; the rising of the Medes, Sagartians, Parthians, Hyrcanians, Margians, Sattagydes, and of a part of the Persians after the assassination of the Magian, was the last attempt to maintain the ancient independence of the race. All stationary and many nomadic Iranian, or as they call themselves, Aryan tribes, speak the same Aryan language, varying little in dialect, serve the same pure and true god Ahuramazda, “the god of the Aryans,” as the Susan translation of the Behistun inscription calls him.
The list of the subject districts which Darius enumerates, shows how much more his interests were directed to these nations than to his subjects in the west. In the inscription on his tomb he calls himself with pride, not only a Persian but also “an Aryan of Aryan race.” It is remarkable that the Babylonian translation omits this addition while the Susan retains the Persian words: he boasts that he was the first to draw up Aryan inscriptions and to send them into all countries [only retained in the Susan]. Thus the tribal distinctions were not yet abolished, but were repressed; the empire of the Achæmenides was not, like that of the Sassanides, the “empire of Iran and Extra-Iran”; but it had paved the way for the event that the Aryans of Iran, unlike their brothers in India, were to become a united nation.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[23] [See Chap. II.]
Bas-relief from the Palace at Persepolis
