The greatest story in the world, period 1 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

Spartan mercenaries

Notice particularly those Spartans. Sparta was the southern state of Greece, and this is the first appearance of Greece in our story. It is very notable. These great nations of the East already thought so well of the fighting qualities of the Greek soldiers, and especially of the Spartan soldiers, that it was worth their while to bring them over and pay them to fight for them. There seems to be little doubt that they were mercenaries, that is to say, soldiers who were paid to fight and who fought for pay. But the alliance was of no avail. Within the space of a few months, in the summer of 546 B.C., the whole of Asia Minor was in the Persian hands, right away to the Mediterranean shore. It was not until six years later that Cyrus had leisure to attend to Babylon itself; but when he did attend to it the resistance was not great. The Babylonian king's allies had been broken. Cyrus took Syria and Palestine also in his own reign, and after his death his son Cambyses pressed on down into Egypt and conquered that ancient land likewise. The victorious career of the Persians was only checked when they came against the Ethiopians and Nubians in farther Africa.

The Persian conquest

Even the shore of the Mediterranean did not stay their progress. They won many of the Greek islands, including Cyprus and Samos. The empires of Egypt and of Babylonia had been great, but this was greater than both of them together. And those two had been rivals. This of Persia seemed to be without a rival. It is little wonder that the Persian ruler assumed the title of King of Kings. He ruled right away into India. He ruled all that seemed to matter or to count for anything; and it had all been accomplished in not much more than twenty years from the time of the first revolt of Cyrus against the lordship of the Medes. How was it done?

That is a question which must be answered in different ways. No one answer is enough. There were several causes which worked together for this astounding success of the Persians. But one of the chief causes, if not the chief of all, was Cyrus. We cannot doubt that. Throughout the whole of this greatest of great stories which I am trying to tell you we shall not meet with an actor bigger and more glorious than this Cyrus. I doubt whether we meet with another quite as big. For not only were the extent of country and the power of the nations that he conquered extraordinarily great, but he made a very extraordinary use of his conquests. He must have been a great leader of men, a man whom others were ready to obey and follow; and he must have been a great general, according to the ideas of what generalship and the manœuvring of armies meant at that time; but besides all that he must have been a very wise man and a very good man. There can be little doubt that he was far more merciful to the people that he conquered than any other conqueror that has come into our story yet. He treated them with far greater kindness. That is proof of his goodness.

Then he was very content to leave them their own institutions, including their religions, so long as they were obedient to him as their over-lord. That shows his wisdom, for it meant that the people he conquered were content to be under him. Under Cyrus, the Jews who were in exile at Babylon were allowed to go back to Jerusalem, and he gave orders which helped them to the re-building of the Temple there. It is thought that it was partly by the help of these Jews in Babylon that he was able to take that strong city, as he did, without a fight. But it is said that he had to divert part of the stream of the Euphrates in order to do so; and it is certain that he had already broken the Babylonian power before he took the capital.

He was able to show this kindness and consideration for the religion of other peoples, because his own religion and that of his Persians was a very enlightened one. I think we shall not do wrong in calling it the most enlightened religion of all that we find before Christ came. It was the religion called Zoroastrianism, from the name of its founder, Zoroaster, who is also called Zarathustra. It was the religion of those Indo-European people of whom we have seen one part pressing down south into India and another part pressing westward. Zoroaster is thought to have been the author of the most ancient portions of what is called the Zend-Avesta, which means the Avesta, or Sacred Writings, written in the language of Zend. Zend belongs to the Aryan group of the Indo-European family of languages, from another branch of which our own native English language has been derived.

Zoroaster

Zoroaster taught that there is one great and good god, Ormuzd, but that there is also another supernatural being, Ahriman, the spirit of evil. It is accordingly as men do the will of Ormuzd, that is to say, do good acts, that they will have a happy life after death. If the good acts a man has done in life here are more in number and importance than his bad acts he will go to paradise; if the bad acts are more than the good he will go to hell and suffer everlasting punishment. Justice, acting justly, was what Zoroaster recognised as the most important thing of all.

You will see at once how near this very ancient belief comes to that which we hold now, and how much more enlightened it is than other religions which we have noticed. It contains the idea of one god supreme over all the universe—not only supreme for a single nation or for one portion of the earth.