Egypt typifies all the early nations. In its rise, progress, and fall, the course of the others may be traced. First there is a band of hardy men whose prowess renders them irresistible. They are inured to toil; they practise all the manly virtues; they are trained to labor with their hands; they are taught to speak the truth. They lay the foundations of the State in industry[E16] and prudence; their children develop its resources; their children’s children, through many generations, gradually accumulate wealth. The arts flourish, and luxuries are multiplied. There are many great estates, and those who inherit them cease to labor, and, ceasing to labor, they become a charge upon the public; for the value of an estate created one hundred years ago, or one year ago, can be maintained in no other way than by the labor of to-day.[77] The idlers increase in number, and the struggle for existence, of the workers, becomes more intense. Idleness breeds vice, and the public morals are debauched.[E17] We see this class at the feast of Belshazzar and at the dinner of the Egyptian bon vivant. On the wall of every such banqueting room there is an ominous handwriting, provided, only, that there is a Daniel to interpret it. It means that the nation that degrades labor, tolerates idleness, and deifies vice, is ripe for annihilation. If, now, there is on the frontier of the effete nation a virile people, it is only a question of time and opportunity, when they will make slaves of the revellers, and spoil of their inherited estates. The worn-out, exhausted nation disappears in blood and flames. The rich idler, the poor sycophant, the rulers and the ruled, the slave and his master, the priest, the soldier, the merchant, and the laborer, all go to destruction together.
[77] “It is not equitable that what one man hath done for the public should discharge another of what it has a right to expect from him; for one, standing indebted in himself to society, cannot substitute anything in the room of his personal service. The father cannot transmit to his son the right of being useless to his fellow-creatures.... The man who earns not his subsistence, but eats the bread of idleness, is no better than a thief.... To labor, then, is the indispensable duty of social or political man. Rich or poor, strong or weak, every idle citizen is a knave.”—“Emilius and Sophia,” Vol. II., pp. 92, 93. By J. J. Rousseau. London: 1767.
In the ancient nations there was always force and rapacity above, and chains and slavery below. Education was confined to a small class, and consisted of selfish maxims for the government of the many, and government was only another name for the appropriation of the products of their labor. Selfishness bred injustice, and the practice of injustice undermined the State. Whether the State survived or fell was a matter of indifference to the slave. A slave he remained in any event—if not of the Egyptian then of the Persian. But the importance of labor is shown by those bloody revolutions. The battles of antiquity were contests for the possession of the labor class. Which nationality—the Egyptian or the Persian—should drive the toilers to their daily tasks; which should reap the fruit of the sweat of their brows; which should buy and sell them; which scourge them to their dungeons? These were the questions which agitated the minds of ancient rulers. They were the questions which agitated the mind of Xerxes when he invaded Greece, with millions of followers, to encounter defeat at the hands of a few thousand men of a superior type.
The Greek civilization sprung from mythology and ended in anarchy. In the East the Greeks were called the people of youth. Their religion was of the savage type. Their gods were immortalized men; they loved and hated, transgressed and suffered; they resorted to stratagems to compass their ends; they were a kind of exalted but unscrupulous aristocracy.
Greek patriotism was narrow; each city was politically independent, and the citizen of one city was an alien and a stranger in the territory of every other. The Greeks were superstitious. If the omens were unfavorable the general refused to give battle; the plague was a visible sign of the wrath of the gods; the priests sacrificed perpetually; the oracle of Apollo outlived Grecian independence hundreds of years.[E18]
Grecian national festivals were childish, consisting of wrestling, boxing, running, jumping, and chariot-racing. But the victor in those games conferred everlasting glory upon his family and his country, and was rewarded with distinguished honors.
Like savages, the Greeks were treacherous. The destiny of Greece was controlled by renegades. There was disloyalty in every camp, a Greek deserter in every opposing army, and a traitor, or a band of traitors, in every besieged Greek city.[E19] They were cruel; of their captives they butchered the men and enslaved the women, and they stripped and robbed the bodies of the slain, on the battle-field. Like savages they assassinated ambassadors, and like savages surrendered prisoners to their personal enemies to be massacred.[E20] Their sense of honor was dull. Xenophon, after winning imperishable renown, in conducting the famous retreat of the “Ten Thousand,” led a detachment of them on a pillaging expedition, and so amassed a fortune. “My patriotism,” says Alcibiades, “I keep not at a time when I am being wronged.” “For there was neither promise that could be depended on, nor oath that struck them with fear,” exclaims Thucydides.[78]
[78] “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” Vol. I., p. 210. London: George Bell & Sons.
Venality was the predominating trait in Greek character, and venality unrestrained is savagery. In the Greek Pantheon the highest niche was reserved for the God of Gain. The early Greeks were pirates; they plundered one another; they sometimes actually sold themselves into slavery, so great was their lust of gold. The richest cities ruled the poor cities. Pericles boasted that he could not be bribed, but he robbed all Greece to embellish Athens, and was accused of peculation, tried, convicted, and fined. The Athenians declared that the Spartans were taught to steal, and the Spartans retorted that the best Athenians were invariably thieves. When Persia could no longer fight she defended her territory against Greek invasion with gold coins.
The Greek orators never refused a bribe, and oratory ruled Greece.[E21] Greek oratory was very persuasive. A discriminating writer declares that, with their fine phrases and rhetorical expressions, the Greek orators swindled history, obtaining a vast amount of admiration under false pretences.[79]