The Historians' History of the World 02

We have followed the political history of the Old Orient and have now seen it swallowed up in Alexander’s empire. Before we turn to the new races that are to demand our attention, let us take a final look at the countries which were the scene of the history of the early world, and see what they had become. On the south, on the ancient frontier of the Semitic races, Elam was divided into the mountainous district, and the district of the plains, and the history of these two districts was quite distinct one from another. For the people of the Oxus mountains, the Elamites and the Kossæans, retained their independence and made raids on the neighbouring territories from their unassailable haunts, whilst the people of the plains gladly submitted to the Persian yoke and readily accepted any ruler that appeared.

The favourable situation of Susa or Shushan had early attracted the attention of the Achæmenians; and the old palace of the Elamites, built upon an artificial elevation and cooled in the summer by the mountain breezes, and warmed in winter by the soft air from the Persian Gulf, became their favourite residence. Darius, son of Hystaspes, finding it too small for him, had it rebuilt and it was burnt in the reign of Artaxerxes I, and restored by Artaxerxes II.

The nations of the tableland of Asia Minor, and the mountains of the Tigris and Euphrates, those of Urartu and Van, Mushke [Moschi], Tubal, and the neighbouring peoples of northern Assyria, being decimated by the Scythian invasions, had submitted to the younger, less tried races. The Mushke and Tubal nations were divided into two branches, many of their tribes, with probably the rest of the Cimmerians, remained in the deep defiles of the Taurus; and the others having pushed towards the north, dwelt with other tribes at the time of Herodotus, on the mountains bordering the Black Sea.

When the Median conqueror arrived in those parts which are known as Cappadocia, he only found there Leuco-Syrians, the rest of the Hittites, and a new people called Armenians. The Armenians, who had come from Phrygia towards the end of the seventh century, settled at first in the districts adjoining their own country, then they gradually arrived at the source of the Halys, and in the time of Herodotus they were in possession of the districts on the east of the Euphrates (the Asia Minor of Roman geographers), and the western side of the Arsanias. They formed a satrapy of their own (the thirteenth), whilst the people of Urartu, the Alarodians, were included in the eighteenth. During the troubles which followed the campaign of Greece, the aspect of the country changed once more. The Moschi separated themselves from the Tibareni and joined the Colchians in the basin of the Phasis. The Alarodians, pushed back towards the north, joined the half savage races of the Caucasus. The Armenians, driven further to the east, gradually took possession of the imposing mountainous district between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea, and came down into the plains of the Araxes. At the time of Alexander’s appearance in Asia, they were settled in their new district, having subjugated, or destroyed all the aborigines who had not emigrated, and their princes exercised a truly royal authority under the modest title of satrap.

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.