The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

It was in this campaign that Crœsus, that figure of pathetic magnificence, destined later to cast both light and shadow on the historical records of the Greek, first came into prominence. The mingled admiration and commiseration of after-time exaggerated his personality into the very type of human fortune and misfortune; and the picture of his life as drawn by Herodotus is probably no more than a truthful reproduction of the impression of him which prevailed a century after his death. Nevertheless the thread of fact runs unbroken through the maze of fiction, and it is possible to reconstruct his history with more reliability than can be claimed for the records of his predecessors.

CRŒUS. LYDIAN CIVILIZATION.

As a youth he had incurred the displeasure of his father Alyattes by his extravagance, and had imperilled his chances of succession by the distrust which his conduct excited among an influential section of the population, composed probably of staid merchants, who would be unlikely to sympathize with irresponsible and expensive frivolity. The danger brought him to his senses; and he apparently made up his mind that the Carian war afforded him an opportunity of winning a good opinion he had never tried to earn. How he succeeded is not known. He did succeed; for the fortunate issue of the war was largely attributed to his exertions and ability. He was just in time to save the situation for himself, since the years of his father’s life were numbered. About B.C. 561,[2] Alyattes died, not before he had raised the Lydian kingdom to a greatness beyond what it hitherto had known.

It stood, indeed, on the same level as the great contemporary monarchies of the East, while as yet the Mede had not succeeded to the full heritage of that Assyria which he had helped to destroy. It absorbed for the time the attention of the Greek, when he gave his attention to anything beyond his home affairs. Its very splendour became a barrier of light which the Greek eye could not pierce so far as to see clearly what was going on in the region beyond, so that even the great Cyrus came not within the field of Hellenic vision until he had emerged from the comparative darkness of the lands beyond the Halys.

Archæological discovery within Lydia itself has done far more than the meagre records of contemporary history towards disclosing the characteristics of the civilization which was thus brought into strong contrast with that of the Hellenic lands and cities. It would be out of place in a work of this kind to enter into details with regard to it; yet the possibilities of the future were at the moment of Crœsus’ accession so significant, and of such world-wide importance, that it is impossible to pass over in silence the main features of a social system whose influence upon the Hellenic world must have been very great, and might have been much greater.

The Lydians, a people of undeniable genius, seem to have built upon an indigenous foundation a composite civilization, made up largely of elements drawn from foreign lands. Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt all contributed to its formation; and the influence of the Greek of the Asian coast and of Europe is unmistakable, especially in the last years of its independent existence. It was, indeed, in the main a “civilization of intercourse,” due to the important trading relations of the kingdom with the various nations which lay within its reach. Its main characteristics in the sixth century are Oriental, though the tendency towards its hellenization, fostered greatly by its rulers, is strikingly apparent. It must, indeed, on the other hand, have influenced the social life of the Greek cities within the borders of the kingdom; and it is difficult to say how far this influence might have affected the civilization of the West, had not the process of infiltration been brought to a sudden standstill.

It was, as might be expected from the variety of its origin, a strange compound of good and evil. From his very vocation the Lydian trader evolved a system of cosmopolitan humanity, rare in those ages, rare, indeed, in any age in eastern lands. Living at ease himself, he was naturally inclined to live and let live. The width of his trade connections, and the necessity of securing safe passage through foreign countries, would tend to make him cultivate friendly relations with the people around him. One thing that he evolved from the necessities of his mode of life has had as much influence upon the history of the world as any single invention of man before or since. The awkwardness of exchange and barter to a merchant whose trade had distant roots, and who had to make long overland journeys in the course of his business, led him to invent and gradually adopt one medium of exchange, which all peoples, however various their home products, would appreciate. LYDIAN INFLUENCE ON THE GREEKS. It required but little education in taste to make even the rudest of races set value on the most beautiful of all the metals; and the gold and silver which Lydia produced so freely was stamped into the first currency of which there is record in history. Greek and Persian alike lost but little time in adopting so magnificent an invention.

The Lydian works of art which have survived show that the nation had attained to considerable skill in that respect.

But if the virtues of this civilization were great, its vices were equally so. The grossest form of immorality, that pest which the East seems to inherit like a moral leprosy, was prevalent. Certain tales in Herodotus show this to have been the case. The Greek did not escape the disease, and it may be that it was from the Lydian that he first caught it. Wholesale immorality of another kind was not merely prevalent, but received a religious sanction in the guise of that Aphrodite worship which in various forms sapped the vigour of the East. The town populations of Greece, especially those which, like the Corinthians, had closest intercourse with the Asian coast, caught this infection also.

It would have been contrary to the very nature of things had the Greeks,—a race peculiarly apt to learn both evil and good,—escaped altogether the influence of this Oriental social system at their doors. It is fortunate for posterity that its influence was short-lived. The very excellence of the general relations between the Lydia of Crœsus and the Greeks as a body made the Lydian influence the more dangerous. It was the bitter hostility which sprang up in after times between the Greeks and the representatives of that new Orientalism which was superimposed upon the Lydian form, which saved the Greek civilization from becoming itself orientalized. The danger which Greece ran in the great war of 480–479 was as nothing compared with the danger Hellenism would have run had the war never taken place. The bitter, lasting hostility which it roused was far less dangerous than friendly intercourse with a great empire, the heir of all the ages of a world-old civilization, which might have made a moral conquest of the Hellene, had it refrained from attempting a physical one. It was the war itself, rather than its issue, which proved the salvation of Greece.