Cappadocia was divided into two provinces, Cappadocia Proper, and Pontus, of which the hereditary governors, connected with the Achæmenian family, only waited an opportunity for declaring themselves kings. The old dynasties, names and races, and the warlike, barbarous world that the Assyrian conquerors had known between the plain of Mesopotamia and the Black Sea were now extinct, and the three kingdoms evolved from the ruins had even effaced the memory of it. In the domain proper of the Semitic races, between the coasts of the Mediterranean and the last abutment of the plain of Iran, the decadence was less general and apparent. Half of the old races, such as the Ruthennu and the Hittites, had disappeared with the cities of Carchemish, Arpad, and Kadesh, and although Batnæ, Hamath, and Damascus, escaped destruction, they fell into obscurity, and whole districts lapsed into desert land for want of hands to till them.
Phœnicia, impoverished by the destruction of Tyre and Sidon, had trouble to repair her losses; all her colonies were gone, and the little kingdoms of Cyprus with the towns of Citium and Amathus, had enough to do to defend their independence against the Greeks.
Assyria herself was only a vague memory of the past. The district between the Tigris and Euphrates was almost deserted. Some places, as Nisibis, still retained some of their old importance, and existed as well as they could on their own resources, but towards the south the numberless cities discovered in former times by the Ninevite conquerors, as they marched toward Syria, were now only heaps of ruins. On the banks of the Tigris the people were neither plentiful nor prosperous. The Assyrian exiles, liberated by Cyrus after the fall of Babylon, had rebuilt Asshur and enriched themselves by the cultivation of the land, and by commerce, but the district between the Upper and Lower Zabs was quite deserted, while Assyria Proper had not recovered from her ruin.
Calah was inhabited: “Its walls 25 feet wide and 100 long and two parasangs in circumference, were built of brick upon a substratum of stone 20 feet high.” The pyramidal tower of the goat temple, still in existence, “was in stone and one plethrum broad and two high.”
Two hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the death of Saracus [Sin-shar-ishkun] when Xenophon travelled through the country, and the people of the neighbouring small towns were already ignorant of the names of the ruined Calah and Nineveh by which they were living. They called the first Larissa, and the second Mespila, and the historians themselves were not much better informed; for the long line of terrible conquerors, beginning with Tukulti-Ninib and ending with Asshurbanapal, was summed up under the mythical names of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. Semiramis was credited with the victories and conquests, and Sardanapalus with the refined and intellectual qualities of the race. Everything Assyrian was attributed to one or other of these two.
In Babylonia, Ur was now only an insignificant town, but Erech was the seat of a school of theology and science, as celebrated throughout the East as that of Borsippa. Babylon by itself was regarded as the whole of Chaldea by the majority of travellers. Babylon was in fact the second capital of the Persian empire. The court resided there part of the year, as it was the centre of commerce and industry which was wanting in Susa. The city made several attempts during the first century after the conquest to restore her national dynasty, but after she was sacked by Xerxes seems to have submitted to her subjugation. But even in her abjection the city was a source of many surprises to the traveller. Unlike Greek cities, it was built on a regular plan, by which the streets crossed each other at right angles, some parallel, and others at right angles to the Euphrates; and the latter terminated at a gate of brass, which opened on to the works of the quay, and gave access to the river. The street throngs numbered specimens of every Asiatic race brought hither by the demands of commerce, and the natives of the place were distinguished by their elegant dress, consisting of a linen tunic reaching to the feet and surmounted with another tunic made of wool, with a sort of white tippet.
When the Persian rule succeeded the Chaldean, the Aramæan language did not lose its importance. It became the official language of all the western provinces and it is found on the coins of Asia Minor, upon the papyrus and steles of Egypt, in the edicts and correspondence of the satraps, and even on those of the Great King.
From Nisibis to Raphia, and along the banks of the Gulf of Persia to the shores of the Red Sea, it supplanted all languages, Semitic or otherwise, hitherto in use.
The Phœnician language, however, held its own with some success at first, and it was used for a long time on the coast and in the island of Cyprus; but Hebrew, which had begun to fall into disuse during the captivity, gradually disappeared as it came in contact with the dialects spoken by the races near Jerusalem. It existed as the “noble language” of the aristocracy, faithful to the discipline of Judah and then when Aramæan robbed it of this last service, it remained as the literary liturgical language.[e]