The Historians' History of the World 02

It is, perhaps, worthy of note how this extraordinary confusion of names came about. Professor Sayce thus explains it: “When in the generations which succeeded Darius Hystaspes, Cyrus became the founder of the Persian empire, the Medes and the Manda were confounded one with the other. Astyages, the suzerain of Cyrus, was transformed into a Mede, and the city of Ecbatana into the capital of a Median empire. The illusion has lasted down to our own age. There was no reason for doubting the traditional story; neither in the pages of the writers of Greece and Rome, nor in those of the Old Testament, nor even in the great inscription of Darius at Behistun, did there seem to be anything to cast suspicion upon it. It was not until the discovery of the monuments of Nabonidus and Cyrus that the truth at last came to light, and it was found that the history we had so long believed was founded upon a philological mistake.”a

FOOTNOTES

[24] [It is interesting to note that this description tallies very well with what the Assyrian monuments have taught us concerning the Mada or true Medes, whom the Greeks confused so hopelessly with the Manda or Scythians of whom Cyaxares and Astyages were kings.]

[25] [The philological confusion is now complete. Deioces may have been a Median prince, since the political conditions described by Herodotus are precisely those that existed in Media; whereas, so far as we can ascertain from the Babylonian monuments, the Manda had a strong central government ruling at Ecbatana.]

[26] [Professor Sayce in the article “Babylonia and Assyria,” in the New Volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica, says: “Under his [Asshurbanapal’s] successor, Asshur-etil-ilani, the Scythians penetrated into Assyria and made their way as far as the borders of Egypt. Calah was burned, though the strong walls of Nineveh protected the relics of the Assyrian army which had taken refuge behind them.” This occurred about 626 B.C.]

[27] [Of course since the Scythians themselves were besieging Nineveh, this could not be. But it is easy to see how the application of one name to another people could have been responsible for Herodotus’ words.]

[28] Probably the Agusi of the Assyrian texts.

CHAPTER III. THE EARLY ACHÆMENIANS AND THE ELAMITES, CYRUS AND CAMBYSES

When we speak of the political history of Persia, our thoughts turn naturally enough to Greece also. Yet there was a period of Persian history, which was brilliant, even though brief, in which Greece had no share even as a participant or objective point. And indeed the interest which Greece had for the Persian monarchs during the something more than two hundred years of Persian supremacy has no doubt been exaggerated in the minds of subsequent generations, because the whole picture has been seen through the eyes of Greek and not of Persian historians. The first great profane history that was ever written—the history, namely, of Herodotus—had for its main subject the Græco-Persian war.

The earliest pages of this history gave expression to the then current notion that almost from time immemorial there had existed a deadly feud between Greece and Persia, and the realm even of mythology is invaded in the effort to explain the origin of this feud, and to fix the responsibility for it upon an Asiatic nation. Yet, in point of fact, it is probable that no such widely prevalent feeling of antagonism between the representative nations of Asia and Europe had existed for any very great length of time, before the period at which Herodotus wrote. Indeed it is clear that a feud between the Persians, as such, and the Greeks could not have dated earlier than from about the year 550 B.C., since it was only then that the Persian empire came into existence. Nor is there anything to show that the first two rulers of the empire, namely, Cyrus and Cambyses, had turned their attention particularly to the region beyond the Hellespont. Cyrus indeed invaded Asia Minor, and in so doing necessarily came closely into contact with a Greek civilisation; but the express object of this invasion was the conquest of Lydia, which was accomplished through the overthrow of Crœsus, and Cyrus himself then turned back to conquer Babylonia, and whatever plans he may have had looking to the extension of his power in Asia Minor or beyond the Ægean Sea, he did not live to execute them. The short reign of Cambyses was occupied almost exclusively with the Egyptian conquest. Still it was inevitable that a conquering Asiatic power that had extended its bounds to the very walls of the Greek cities of Asia Minor must go farther in the same direction. It was equally certain that Greece must resent the infringement of its territories and thus the feud between the East and West was at once as inevitable and as bitter as if it had been much more ancient in origin than it really was.