Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

Accordingly, he opened the tomb; but, instead of money, found only the dead body, and a writing which said:—’Hadst thou not been insatiate of pelf, and careless how thou gottest it, thou wouldst not have broken open the sepulchres of the dead.’”

CUSTOMS OF THE BABYLONIANS.

“Of their customs, whereof I shall now proceed to give an account, the following is in my judgment the wisest. Once a year, in each village, the maidens of age to marry were collected all together into one place; while the men stood round them in a circle. Then a herald called up the damsels one by one, and offered them for sale. He began with the most beautiful. When she was sold for no small sum of money, he offered for sale the one who came next to her in beauty. All of them were sold to be wives.

The richest of the Babylonians who wished to wed, bid against each other for the loveliest maidens; while the humbler wife-seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the more homely damsels with marriage-portions. For the custom was that when the herald had gone through the whole number of the beautiful damsels, he should then call up the ugliest—a cripple, if there chanced to be one—and offer her to the men, asking who would agree to take her with the smallest marriage-portion. And the man who offered to take the smallest sum, had her assigned to him. The marriage-portions were furnished by the money paid for the beautiful damsels, and thus the fairer maidens portioned out the uglier.

No one was allowed to give his daughter in marriage to the man of his choice, nor might any one carry away the damsel whom he had purchased without finding bail really and truly to make her his wife. All who liked might come, even from distant villages, and bid for the women.

The Babylonians have no physicians; but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them. And no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.”—Rawlinson.

Thucydides, on whom the mantle of Herodotus descended, was born in a village of Attica about 471 B.C. We may believe that he received a polite education, and became proficient in military science at an early age. It was in the prime of manhood, if the oft-repeated story is to be credited, that the history of Herodotus, read before an assembled throng, brought tears to his eyes and fired him with a desire to emulate its distinguished author. Greece was then on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, in which the rival states Athens and Sparta figured as chief actors. Thucydides anticipated the impending storm, and discerned his opportunity; this war should be his subject, and even before it began he was busy collecting preliminary information.

Nor did he serve his country merely in the capacity of historian. He engaged actively in the contest, and received as his reward the command of an Athenian squadron. But he committed an unpardonable sin by failing to save a town, which surrendered to the Spartans before he could arrive with assistance. Instigated by Cleon, his countrymen deprived him of his position and cast him forth an exile.

Thucydides retired to Thrace, where he had a valuable interest in certain gold-mines, and there devoted himself to the preparation of his history, narrowly watching the progress of events and gathering intelligence with the utmost care. His exile of twenty years was indeed “the Muses’ blessing;” it enabled him to pursue his studies without interruption. Long after his death, the plane-tree in whose shadow he was accustomed to compose, was pointed out to travellers.

Thucydides traced the Peloponnesian War to the middle of its twenty-first year (411 B.C.), leaving it to be finished by another. Why he did not complete it himself, being in possession of the necessary materials, does not appear. After the Athenian power was broken by Sparta (404 B.C.), the decree of banishment was revoked; but whether Thucydides ever returned to Athens is a matter of doubt. According to one account, he went back to fall the victim of a conspiracy; from another we are led to infer that he died a natural death in Thrace about 391 B.C.