The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic, but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even the names of the kings as reported by different authors do not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that the same king frequently appears under many different appellations.” Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the times are marked only by the succession of kings, and the transactions are known only by statements always scanty and often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever will examine the process of identification as it appears in Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp. 383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.
[435] Herodot. i, 96-100.
[436] Herodot. i, 97. ὡς δ᾽ ἐγὼ δοκέω, μάλιστα ἔλεγον οἱ τοῦ Δηϊόκεω φίλοι, etc.
[437] Herodot. i, 98, 99, 100. Οἰκοδομηθέντων δὲ πάντων, κόσμον τόνδε Δηϊόκης πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ καταστησάμενος· μήτε ἐσιέναι παρὰ βασιλέα μηδένα, δι᾽ ἀγγέλων δὲ πάντα χρέεσθαι, ὁρᾶσθαι δὲ βασιλέα ὑπὸ μηδενός· πρὸς δὲ τούτοισι ἔτι γελᾷν τε καὶ πτύειν ἄντιον, καὶ ἅπασι εἶναι τοῦτό γε αἰσχρόν, etc. and ... οἱ κατάσκοποί τε καὶ κατήκοοι ἦσαν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν χώρην τῆς ἦρχε.
[438] Herodot. iii, 80-82. Herodotus, while he positively asserts the genuineness of these deliberations, lets drop the intimation that many of his contemporaries regarded them as of Grecian coinage.
[439] Herodot. i, 96. Ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον, ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδας περιῆλθον. Ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖσι Μήδοισι ἐγένετο σοφὸς, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Δηϊόκης.... Οὗτος ὁ Δηϊόκης, ἐρασθεὶς τυραννίδος, ἐποίεε τοιάδε, etc.... Ὁ δὲ δὴ, οἷα μνεώμενος ἀρχὴν, ἰθύς τε καὶ δίκαιος ἦν.
[440] Compare the chapters above referred to in Herodotus with the eighth book of the Cyropædia, wherein Xenophon describes the manner in which the Median despotism was put in effective order and turned to useful account by Cyrus, especially the arrangements for imposing on the imagination of his subjects (καταγοητεύειν, viii, 1, 40)—(it is a small thing, but marks the cognate plan of Herodotus and Xenophon). Dêïokês forbids his subjects to laugh or spit in his presence. Cyrus also directs that no one shall spit, or wipe his nose, or turn round to look at anything, when the king is present (Herodot. i, 99; Xen. Cyrop. viii, 1, 42). Again, viii, 3, 1, about the pompous procession of Cyrus when he rides out,—καὶ γὰρ αὐτῆς τῆς ἐξελάσεως ἡ σεμνότης ἡμῖν δοκεῖ μία τῶν τεχνῶν εἶναι τῶν μεμηχανημένων, τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι—analogous to the Median Dêïokês in Herodotus—Ταῦτα δὲ περὶ ἑωυτὸν ἐσέμνυνε τῶνδε εἵνεκεν, etc. Cyrus—ἐμφανίζων δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὅτι περὶ πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο, μηδένα μήτε φίλον ἀδικεῖν μήτε σύμμαχον, ἀλλὰ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρῶς ὁρῶν (Cyrop. viii, 1, 26). Dêïokês—ἦν τὸ δίκαιον φυλάσσων χαλεπός (Herodot. i, 100). Cyrus provides numerous persons who serve to him as eyes and ears throughout the country (Cyrop. viii, 2, 12), Dêïokês has many κατάσκοποι and κατήκοοι (Herodot. ib.).
[441] When the Roman emperor Claudius sends the young Parthian prince Meherdatês, who had been an hostage at Rome, to occupy the kingdom which the Parthian envoys tendered to him, he gives him some good advice, conceived in the school of Greek and Roman politics: “Addidit præcepta, ut non dominationem ac servos, sed rectorem et cives, cogitaret: clementiamque ac justitiam quanto ignara barbaris, tanto toleratiora, capesseret.” (Tacit, Annal. xii, 11.)
[442] The passage of such nomadic hordes from one government in the East to another, has been always, and is even down to the present day, a frequent cause of dispute between the different governments: they are valuable both as tributaries and as soldiers. The Turcoman Ilats—so these nomadic tribes are now called—in the north-east of Persia frequently pass backwards and forwards, as their convenience suits, from the Persian territory to the Usbeks of Khiva and Bokhara: wars between Persia and Russia have been in like manner occasioned by the transit of the Ilats across the frontier from Persia into Georgia: so also the Kurd tribes near Mount Zagros have caused by their movements quarrels between the Persians and the Turks.
See Morier, Account of the Iliyats, or Wandering Tribes of Persia, in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London, 1837, vol. vii, p. 240, and Carl Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Band ii, Abtheilung ii, Abschnitt ii, sect. 8, p. 387.