“Until quite recently the most obscure chapter in the world’s history was that which related to ancient Babylonia. With the exception of the Biblical notices regarding the kingdom of Nimrod, and the confederates of Chedor-laomer, there was nothing authentic to satisfy, or even to guide research.... The materials accumulated during the last few years, in consequence of the excavations which have been made upon the sites of the ruined cities of Babylonia and Chaldæa, have gone far to clear up doubts upon the general question. Each succeeding discovery has tended to authenticate the chronology of Berosus, and to throw discredit upon the tales of Ctesias and his followers.... The chronology which we obtain from the cuneiform inscriptions in this early empire, harmonises perfectly with the numbers given in the scheme of Berosus.... It is evident that the chronological scheme of Berosus ... is, in a general way, remarkably supported and confirmed.... As to the chronology of Ctesias, it is irreconcileable with Scripture, at variance with the monuments, and contradictory to the native historian, Berosus, whose chronological statements have recently received such abundant confirmation from the course of cuneiform discovery.... It may therefore be discarded as a pure and absolute fiction; and the shorter chronology of Herodotus and Berosus may be followed. The scheme of these writers is in tolerable harmony with the Jewish records, and agrees also sufficiently well with the results at present derivable from the inscriptions.”
Our object here is not to determine disputable points in ancient history, but merely to exhibit, in its several parts, the method, or process, of historic proof. With this view, only, before us, we need not do more than bring forward these samples of this method, in its several kinds. It would be easy, if useful, to go on—from book to book of the History of Herodotus—finding confirmations or corrections of his narratives and descriptions, and much that would be pertinent, derived from the pages of modern travellers, or from the contents of museums. But to do so would lead us far, and indeed would fill bulky volumes. The facts, thus far briefly adduced, furnish the intelligent and studious reader with suggestions for prosecuting inquiries, on this ground, to any extent to which his taste or his purposes may lead him onward.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. Two vols. quarto, 1821.
CHAPTER XXI.
INFERENTIAL HISTORIC MATERIALS.
A book may come into my hand which contains no narrative of events—no allusion to the persons or transactions of the author’s times—in a word, nothing, from the first page to the last, which in a direct manner should enable me to assign a date to it. Nevertheless, such a book may actually possess much historic significance, and it may take its place among those materials of which a writer of history will eagerly avail himself. This assertion may need some explanation; as thus:—
Each nation, as distinguished from other nations, its contemporaries, and each period in the world’s history, as compared with periods anterior to it and subsequent, has its characteristics, its moral tone, its intellectual range, and its tastes; it has its principles, its modes of reasoning, and especially its condition as a season, either of progress and expansion, or of decay and decline. Now these characteristics are important in themselves, and they are often highly so, in clearing up historic problems.
Nevertheless historians seldom afford direct information illustrative either of the moral or the intellectual condition of ancient nations; nor indeed is this deficiency much to be regretted, for such subjects are too indefinite to be treated in the style proper to history; and when historians philosophise, they bring the simplicity of their testimony into just suspicion. Besides, the mental condition of a people can be fairly estimated only by being placed in comparison with that of others; and few writers, how extensive soever may be their acquaintance with facts, are qualified to arbitrate between their contemporaries, and their predecessors, or between their own countrymen and their neighbours.
Yet although information of this sort may not present itself on the pages of historians, it may be derivable from other sources; for when the literary monuments of an ancient people are in existence, the knowledge we are in search of may be collected with a high degree of certainty therefrom. Yet the process may be nice and difficult, inasmuch as the indications from which it is to be gathered are more or less recondite. For this very reason the conclusions we obtain by a course of inferences and comparisons, may be the more exempt from suspicion. The pages of historians may be swelled with descriptions of the resources, the foreign influence, the population, and the polity of empires; meantime an intelligent inquirer may obtain—from the casual hints and allusions of writers of a less pretentious class, a true knowledge of the taste and the morals of a people.
It is obvious that we are not to attach much value, in this sense, to the embittered sarcasms of misanthropes, or to the epigrams of satirists, who hold up to view the two corrupted extremes of a social system—namely, the pampered favourites, and the desperate outcasts of fortune. Nor should we listen, without caution, either to the dreams of poets, from whose pictures the ills of reality have been discharged, or to the averments of philosophers, who are often less true to nature than even the poets.