CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE
The Persians were the first Aryans to achieve a great world empire within historic times. With them the Aryan race became dominant in the Western world, and it has so continued to the present time. The Persians themselves maintained first place among the nations only for about two centuries, or from the time of Cyrus until the Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great. And the sceptre which they laid down was taken up by Western nations akin to them in speech, and passed on from one to another people of the same great Indo-Germanic race throughout the two and a half millenniums which separate the time of Cyrus from our own. But it is not only because of their kinship with European nations that the Persians are of interest. Their history has intrinsic importance. Theirs was unquestionably the mightiest empire the world had seen since secure history began. It extended from India on the east, to the extreme confines of Asia on the west and the northwest, and beyond them to include Egypt. It even threatened at one time, through the subjugation of Greece, to invade Europe as well, and numberless writers have moralised on the great change of destiny that would have fallen to the lot of Western civilisation, had this threat been made effective. All such moralising of course is but guess-work, and it may be questioned whether most of it has any validity whatever. For the truth seems to be that the Persians were much more nearly akin to the European intellect than a study of their descendants of recent generations would lead one to suppose. It is everywhere conceded that they sprang from the same stock, and their most fundamental traits show many points of close resemblance. Thus it is matter of record that the Persians differed widely from the Hamitic or Semitic conquerors, both in their methods of warfare and in their treatment of conquered enemies. The Semites, in particular, were notoriously cruel and unimaginative in their treatment of fallen foes. The word “unimaginative” is here used advisedly, for it would seem as if nothing but curiously defective imagination could permit one human being to treat another in the atrocious manner which characterised the conquerors of the Semitic race—not merely the Babylonians and Assyrians, but the Hebrews as well, as the history of David only too amply illustrates.
The paragraph in which David’s treatment of the people of the conquered city of Rabbah, as recorded, is a fair sample of the usual fortunes of war that fell to the lot of the victims of a Semitic nation.
“And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kilns, and thus he did unto all the children of Ammon.”
But the Persians, on the other hand, be it recorded to their credit, did not as a rule resort to such atrocities. Such rules as this must indeed always be taken with certain qualifications, for there were, unfortunately, cases in which the Persian conqueror inflicted upon an enemy a vengeance almost comparable to the Semitic type. But this was rare, except in the case of rebels; and not usual even with these, and it must be remembered on the other hand, that the records of Western nations are not altogether free from similar charges of cruelty. On the whole, the conduct of such great Persian leaders as Cyrus the Great and Darius I, will perhaps compare favourably with that of any European conqueror.
Another very essential point in which the Persians of the early day bore a close resemblance to Europeans of the later generation, is in regard to their religion. It is admitted on all hands that in its original or uncorrupted form the religion of the Persians was of a very high type. It was embodied in a creed at a very early day, possibly not later than 1000 B.C., by the great prophet Zoroaster. Like the other great religions, it grew by accretion, and came to have linked with it a set of myths and fables that are difficult to ascribe to their particular periods of origin. We are not even sure within perhaps five hundred years of the exact time when Zoroaster lived, but this is of comparatively little consequence when one reflects that a great religion is always a slow growth, and that any particular religious teacher to whom it may be ascribed, after all, has done nothing more than focalise the national tendency, or form a centre about which the ideas and tendencies of an epoch may crystallise.