The Historians' History of the World 02

The fullest details of the wars which grew out of this feud we shall have occasion to examine when we turn to Grecian history; nor can we quite disregard them here. Our chief concern for the moment, however, is with the history of the Medo-Persian empire in its Asiatic and African aspects. It is interesting to reflect that this empire was the greatest in mere geographical extent that the world had ever seen, far greater than Egypt, greater than the Assyrian empire at its widest reach, and greater than any empire that was to succeed it until modern times, except for the brief decade when Alexander the Great held the destinies of the East and the West subject to his master will.

It should be remembered, too, that this empire of the Medes and Persians held sway for a much longer period than is sometimes assumed. Cyrus, the founder of the Medo-Persian empire, came into power in the year 550 B.C., and the battle of Platæa, in which the army of Xerxes was completely overthrown and the last Persian force that ever attempted to invade Europe completely shattered, took place less than three-quarters of a century later. One is prone at first thought to date the fall of the Persian empire from this latter event; but to do so is to take a very narrow or European view of history. The Persians did not again invade Greece, it is true, but Persian money became a disturbing influence in Greek political life and continued such for a century and a half, or as long as Greece maintained independent national existence.

So powerful has been the influence of Greece in an intellectual way that one is prone to forget how insignificant a people the Hellenes were in regard to those matters which are usually made the test of national supremacy. Once, and once only, a united Greece became a mighty factor in international warfare; that exceptional time was the all-essential one, when Greece drove back the Persian invaders. But the territory of Greece remained unchanged after this momentous factor, and neither then nor at any subsequent period had the Greeks any thought of making wide conquests until the day of Agesilaus; and the aspirations of that Spartan chief, who at one time seemed likely to anticipate Alexander in a Persian conquest, were cut short by those suicidal internal dissensions which were the bane of the political life of Greece at all periods of her history. Meantime, while Rome was waxing strong in the West, she had not yet reached the horizon of a world-influence, Persia remained, notwithstanding her defeat on Grecian territory, the undisputed mistress of Asia and therefore the most powerful nation in the world, for more than two centuries after the death of Cyrus. And then it was no Greek, but the conqueror of Greece, the Macedonian Alexander, who wrested the sceptre from the Persian hand.

Two centuries and a half of supremacy! That does not seem a long period when one has the thousands of years of Egyptian history in mind or the other thousands when the plain of Mesopotamia was the centre of the Asiatic world. Yet after all in the narrow view it will be apparent that very few times in the world’s history has a single nation maintained supremacy for a much longer period than two or three centuries. Egyptian history is very far from being a record of unbroken power, and the centre of Mesopotamia shifted from south to north and back again at intervals of a few centuries at longest. When, therefore, one considers the two and a half centuries of unbroken Persian power, and reflects how enormously wide was the extent of that dominant influence, it is clear that he has to do with one of the greatest nations of which history has any record.

[ca. 836-546 B.C.]

Of the very early history of Persia there is almost nothing known. From the obelisk of Shalmaneser II we learn how after successfully invading the land of Namri, the Assyrian king marched into the territory of Parsua (Persia) and received tribute. This was in the year 836 B.C. Again tribute was collected in 830, and in the following year the country was plundered and ravaged by the Assyrian army. About 813 Shamshi-Adad IV paid an unwelcome visit to his province. From these and other references we may conclude that from the time the Indo-Europeans were fairly settled in the land, Parsua was a dependency of the Assyrian empire, regaining its liberties whenever the fortunes of Assyria were at low ebb, and losing them in a corresponding degree when a strong brain and hand held the reins in the capitals on the Upper Tigris. Then, as we have seen, Persia fell into the hands of the Scythian or Median emperor that ruled at Ecbatana, from whom it was delivered by Cyrus the Great.

[ca. 730-550 B.C.]