The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 - Various
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THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS
VOLUME II
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
1905
BINDING
Vol. II
The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original on exhibition
in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
It was executed by the Royal Binder, Clovis Eve, for Marie de' Medicis,
Queen Consort of Henry IV of France. She was a great lover of fine arts,
and especially of rich bindings. The one here shown was her special
pride. It shows her arms--the arms of France and Tuscany--surrounded
with the cordeliere, the sign of her widowhood, accompanied by the
monogram M.M. (Marie Medicis). She was exiled by Cardinal Richelieu in
1631.
CONTENTS
VOLUME II
An Outline Narrative of the Great Events,
CHARLES F. HORNE
Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome (B.C. 450),
HENRY G. LIDDELL
Pericles Rules in Athens (B.C. 444),
PLUTARCH
Great Plague at Athens (B.C. 430),
GEORGE GROTE
Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse (B.C. 413),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks (B.C. 401-399),
XENOPHON
Condemnation and Death of Socrates (B.C. 399),
PLATO
Brennus Burns Rome (B.C. 388),
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
Tartar Invasion of China by Meha (B.C. 341),
DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER
Alexander Reduces Tyre, Later Founds Alexandria (B.C. 332),
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Battle of Arbela (B.C. 331),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
First Battle Between Greeks and Romans (B.C. 280-279),
PLUTARCH
The Punic Wars (B.C. 264-219-149),
FLORUS
Battle of the Metaurus (B.C. 2O7),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and Subjugates Carthage (B.C.
202),
LIVY
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea (B.C. 165-141),
JOSEPHUS
The Gracchi and Their Reforms (B.C. 133),
THEODOR MOMMSEN
Caesar Conquers Gaul (B.C. 58-50),
NAPOLEON III
Roman Invasion and Conquest of Britain (B.C. 55-A.D. 79),
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony (B.C. 51-30),
JOHN P. MAHAFFY
Assassination of Caesar (B.C. 44),
NIEBUHR
PLUTARCH
Rome Becomes a Monarchy
Death of Antony and Cleopatra (B.C. 44-30),
HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL
Germans under Arminius Revolt Against Rome (A.D. 9),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
Universal Chronology (B.C. 450-A.D. 12),
JOHN RUDD
ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME II
Blind Appius Claudius led into the Roman Senate Chamber to vote on the
proposition of peace or war with Pyrrhus (page 174),
Painting by Prof, A. Maccari.
Oracle of Delphi,
Painting by Claudius Harper.
Death of Alexander the Great after a prolonged debauch,
Painting by Carl von Piloty.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE GREAT EVENTS
(FROM THE RISE OF GREECE TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA)
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
Earth's upward struggle has been baffled by so many stumbles that
critics have not been lacking to suggest that we do not advance at all,
but only swing in circles, like a squirrel in its cage. Certain it is
that each ancient civilization seemed to bear in itself the seeds of its
own destruction. Yet it may be held with equal truth that each new
power, rising above the ruins of the last, held something nobler, was
borne upward by some truth its rival could not reach.
At no period is this more evident than in the five centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era. Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, each in
turn was with some justice proclaimed lord of the world; each in turn
felt the impulse of her glory and advanced rapidly in culture and
knowledge of the arts; and each in turn succumbed to the temptations
that beset unlimited success. They degenerated not only in physical
strength, but in moral honesty.
Let us recognize, however, that the term "world-ruler" as applied to
even the greatest of these nations has but a restricted sense. When the
Persian monarch called himself lord of the sun and moon, he only meant
in a figurative way that he was acquainted with no other king so
powerful as himself; that beyond his own dominions he heard only of
feeble colonies, and beyond those the wilderness. Alexander, when he
sighed for more worlds to conquer, had in reality made himself lord of
less than a quarter of Asia and of about one-sixtieth part of Europe.
No man and no nation has ever yet been intrusted with the government of
the entire globe. None has proved sufficiently fitted for the giant
task. Each empire has been, as it were, but an experiment; and beyond
the border line of seas and deserts which ringed each boastful
conqueror, there were always other races developing along slower, and it
may be surer, lines.
In those old days our world was in truth too big for conquest. Armies
marched on foot. Provisions could not be carried in any quantity, unless
a general clung to the sea-shore and depended on his ships. What
Alexander might with more truth have sighed for, was some modern means
of swift transportation, possessed of which he might still have enjoyed
many interesting, bloody battles in more distant lands.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS
Taking the idea "world power" in the restricted sense suggested, Persia
lost it to Greece at Salamis. As the Asiatic hordes fled behind their
panic-stricken king, the Greeks, looking round their limited horizon,
could see no power that might vie with them. The idea of pressing home
their success and overthrowing the entire unwieldy Persian empire was at
once conceived.
But the Greeks were of all races least like to weld earth into one
dominion. They could not even unite among themselves. In short it cannot
be too emphatically pointed out that the work of Greece was not to
consolidate, but to separate, to teach the value of each individual man.
Asia had made monarchies in plenty. King after king had passed in
splendid, glittering pomp across her plains, circled by a crowd of
obsequious courtiers, trampling on a nameless multitude of slaves.
Europe was to make democracies, or at least to try her hand at them.
It has been well said that a democracy is the strongest government for
defence, the weakest for attack. Every little Greek city clung jealously
to its own freedom, and to its equally obvious right to dominate its
neighbors. The supreme danger of the Persian invasion united them for a
moment; but as soon as safety was assured, they recommenced their
bickering. Sparta with her record of ancient leadership, Athens with her
new-won glory against the common foe, each tried to draw the other
cities in her train. There was no one man who could dominate them all
and concentrate their strength against the enemy. So for a time Persia
continued to exist; she even by degrees regained something of her former
influence over the divided cities.
Among these Athens held the foremost rank. She was, as we have
previously seen, far more truly representative of the Greek spirit than
her rival. Sparta was aristocratic and conservative; Athens democratic
and progressive. The genius of her leaders gathered the lesser towns
into a great naval league, in which she grew ever more powerful. Her
allies sank to be dependent and unwilling vassals, forced to contribute
large sums to the treasury of their overlord.
This was the age of Pericles.[1] As Athens became wealthy, her citizens
became cultured. Statues, temples, theatres made the city beautiful.
Dramatists, orators, and poets made her intellectually renowned. A
marvellous outburst, this of Athens! Displaying for the first time in
history the full capacity of the human mind! Had there been similar
flowerings of genius amid forgotten Asiatic times? One doubts it; doubts
if such brilliancy could ever anywhere have passed, and left no clearer
record of its triumphs.
[Footnote 1: See _Pericles Rules in Athens_, page 12.]
Amid such splendor it seems captious to point out the flaw. Yet Athenian
and all Greek civilization did ultimately decline. It represented
intellectual, but not moral culture. The Greeks delighted intensely in
the purely physical life about them; they had small conception of
anything beyond. To enjoy, to be successful, that was all their goal;
the means scarce counted. The Athenians called Aristides the Just; but
so little did they honor his high rectitude that they banished him for a
decade. His title, or it may have been his insistence on the subject,
bored them.
His rival, Themistocles, was more suited to their taste, a clever scamp,
who must always be dealing with both sides in every quarrel, and
outwitting both. Athens was driven to banish him also at last, at his
too flagrant treachery. But he was not dismissed with the scathing scorn
our modern age would heap upon a traitor. He was sent regretfully, as
one turns from a charming but too persistently lawless friend. The
banishment was only for ten years, and he had his nest already prepared
with the Persian King. If you would understand the Greek spirit in its
fullest perfection, study Themistocles. Rampant individualism, seeking
personal pleasure, clamorous for the admiration of its fellows, but not
restrained from secret falsity by any strong moral sense--that was what
the Greeks developed in the end.
Neither must Athens be regarded as a democracy in the modern sense. She
was only so by contrast with Persia or with Sparta. Not every man in the
beautiful city voted, or enjoyed the riches that flowed into her
coffers, and could thus afford, free from pecuniary care, to devote
himself to art. Athens probably had never more than thirty thousand
"citizens." The rest of the adult male population, vastly outnumbering
these, were slaves, or foreigners attracted by the city's splendor.
But those thirty thousand were certainly men. "There were giants in
those days." One sometimes stands in wonder at their boldness. What all
Greece could not do, what Persia had completely failed in, they
undertook. Athens alone should conquer the world. By force of arms they
would found an empire of intellect. They fought Persia and Sparta, both
at once. Plague swept their city, yet they would not yield.[2] Their own
subject allies turned against them; and they fought those too. They sent
fleets and armies against Syracuse, the mightiest power of the West. It
was Athens against all mankind!
[Footnote 2: See _Great Plague at Athens_, page 34.]
She was unequal to the task, superbly unequal to it. The destruction of
her army at Syracuse[3] was only the foremost of a series of inevitable
disasters, which left her helpless. After that, Sparta, and then Thebes,
became the leading city of Greece. Athens slowly regained her fighting
strength; her intellectual supremacy she had not lost. Socrates,[4]
greatest of her sons, endeavored to teach a morality higher than earth
had yet received, higher than his contemporaries could grasp. Plato gave
to thought a scientific basis.
[Footnote 3: See _Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse_, page 48.]
[Footnote 4: See _Condemnation and Death of Socrates_, page 87.]
Then Macedonia, a border kingdom of ancient kinship to the Greeks, but
not recognized as belonging among them, began to obtrude herself in
their affairs, and at length won that leadership for which they had all
contended. A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the Greeks had
stood united against Persia. During all that time their strength had
been turned against themselves. Now at last the internecine wars were
checked, and all the power of the sturdy race was directed by one man,
Alexander, King of Macedon. Democracy had made the Greeks intellectually
glorious, but politically weak. Monarchy rose from the ruin they had
wrought.
As though that ancient invasion of Xerxes had been a crime of yesterday,
Alexander proclaimed his intention of avenging it; and the Greeks
applauded. They understood Persia now far better than in the elder days;
they saw what a feeble mass the huge heterogeneous empire had become.
Its people were slaves, its soldiers mercenaries. The Greeks themselves
had been hired to suppress more than one Persian rebellion,[5] and to
foment these also. They had learned the enormous advantage their
stronger personality gave them against the masses of sheeplike Asiatics.
[Footnote 5: See _Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks_, page 68.]
So it was in holiday mood that they followed Alexander, and in schoolboy
roughness that they trampled on the civilization of the East. In fact,
it is worth noting that the most vigorous resistance they encountered
was not from the Persians, but from a remnant of the Semites, the
merchants of the Phoenician city of Tyre.[6] In less than eight years,
B.C. 331-323, Alexander overran the whole known world of the East,[7]
only stopping when, on the border of India, his soldiers broke into open
revolt, not against fighting, but against further wandering.
[Footnote 6: See _Alexander Reduces Tyre_, page 133.]
[Footnote 7: See _The Battle of Arbela_, page 141.]
If this invasion had been the mere outcome of one man's ambition, it
might scarce be worth recording. But Alexander was only the topmost wave
in the surging of a long imminent, inevitable racial movement. Its
effect upon civilization, upon the world, was incalculably vast.
Alexander and his successors were city-builders, administrators. As such
they spread Greek culture, the Greek idea of individualism, over all
their world.
How deep was the change, made upon the imbruted Asiatics, we may perhaps
question. Our own age has seen how much of education may be lavished on
an inferior race without materially altering the brute instincts within.
The building-up of the soul in man is not a matter of individuals, but
of centuries. Yet in at least a superficial way Greek thought became the
thought of all mankind. We may dismiss Alexander's savage conquests with
a sigh of pity; but we cannot deny him recognition as a most potent
teacher of the world.
His empire did not last. It was in too obvious opposition to all that we
have recognized as the Grecian spirit. At his death the same impulse
seems to have stirred each one of his subordinates, to snatch for
himself a kingdom from the confusion. Instead of one there were soon
three, four, and then a dozen semi-Grecian states in Asia. The Greek
element in each grew very faint.
From this time onward Asia takes a less prominent place in world
affairs. Her ancient leadership in the march of civilization had long
been yielded to the Greeks. Now her semblance of military power
disappeared as well. Only two further happenings in all Asia seem worth
noting, down to the birth of Christ. One of these was the Tartar
conquest of China, an event which coalesced the Tartars, helped make
them a nation.[8] It was thus fraught with most disastrous consequences
for the Europe of the future. The other was the revolt of the Hebrews
under Judas Maccabaeus, against their Grecian rulers. This was a
religious revolt, a religious war. Here for the first time we find a
people who will believe, who can believe, in no god but their own, who
will die sooner than give worship to another. We approach the borders of
an age where the spirit is more valued than the body, where the mental
is stronger than the physical, where facts are dominated by ideas.[9]
[Footnote 8: See _Tartar Invasion of China_, page 126.]
[Footnote 9: See _Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea_, page 245.]
Had Alexander even at the moment of his greatest strength directed his
forces westward instead of east, he would have found a different world
and encountered a sturdier resistance. He himself recognized this, and
during his last years was gathering all the resources of his unwieldy
empire, to hurl them against Carthage and against Italy. What the issue
might have been no man can say. Alexander's death ended forever the
impossible attempt to unite his race. Once more and until the end,
Grecian strength was wasted against itself.
This gave opportunity to the growing powers of the West. Alexander is
scarce gone ere we hear Carthage boasting that the Mediterranean is but
a private lake in her possession. She rules all Western Africa and
Spain, Sardinia and Corsica. She masters the Greeks of Sicily, against
whom Athens failed. Rome is compelled to sign treaties with her as an
inferior.
THE GROWTH OF ROME
Rome was only husbanding her strength; the little republic of B.C. 510
had grown much during the two centuries of Grecian splendor. Her people
had become far better fitted for conquest than their eastern kinsmen. It
is presumable that here too it was the difference of surroundings which
had differentiated the race. The ancient Etrurian (non-Aryan)
civilization on which the Latins intruded, was apparently more advanced
than their own. For centuries their utmost prowess scarce sufficed to
maintain their independence. Thus it was not possible for them to become
too self-satisfied, to stand afar off and look down on their neighbors
with Grecian scorn. The _ego_ was less prominently developed; the
necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught.
Their records display less of brilliancy, but more of patient
persistency, than those of Greece, less of spectacular individualism,
more of truly patriotic self-suppression. In Rome, even more than in
Sparta, the "State" was everything. During the early days men found
their highest glory in making their city glorious; their proudest boast
was to be "citizens of Rome."
To trace the slow steps by which the tiny republic grew to be mistress
of all Italy would take too long. She settled her internal difficulties
as all such difficulties must be settled, if the race is to progress;
that is, she became more democratic.[10] As the lower classes advanced
in knowledge and intelligence they insisted on a share of the
government. They fought their way to it. They united Rome, mastered the
other Latin cities, and admitted them to partnership in her power. She
conquered the Etruscans and the Samnites. For a moment we find her
almost overwhelmed by an inroad of the wild Celtic tribes from the
forests of Central Europe;[11] but, fortunately for her, the other
Italian states were equally crushed. It was weakness against weakness,
and the Romans retained their foremost place.
[Footnote 10: See _Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome_,
page 1.]
[Footnote 11: See _Brennus Burns Rome_, page 110.]
Not till more than a century later were they brought into serious
conflict with the Greeks. In the year B.C. 280, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus,
who had won a temporary leadership over a portion of the Grecian land,
undertook the conquest of the West.[12] Fifty years before, Alexander
with far greater power might have been victorious over a feebler Rome.
Pyrrhus failed completely. If the Romans had less dash and a less wide
experience of varied warfare than his followers, they had far more of
true, heroic endurance. The Greeks had reached that stage of individual
culture where they were much too selfishly intelligent to be willing to
die in battle. Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy. Grecian brilliancy was
helpless against Roman strength of union.
[Footnote 12: See _First Battle between Greeks and Romans_, page 166.]
Then came the far more serious contest between Rome and Carthage.[13]
Carthage was a Phoenician, a Semite state; and hers was the last, the
most gigantic struggle made by Semitism to recover its waning
superiority, to dominate the ancient world. Three times in three
tremendous wars did she and Rome put forth their utmost strength against
each other. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest military genius who ever
lived, fought upon the side of Carthage. At one time Rome seemed
crushed, helpless before him.[14] Yet in the end Rome won.[15] It was
not by the brilliancy of her commanders, not by the superiority of her
resources. It was the grim, cool courage of the Aryan mind, showing
strongest and calmest when face to face with ruin.
[Footnote 13: See _The Punic Wars_, page 179.]
[Footnote 14: See _Battle of the Metaurus_, page 195.]
[Footnote 15: See _Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and
Subjugates Carthage_, page 224.]
Our modern philosophers, being Aryan, assure us that the victory of
Carthage would have been an irretrievable disaster to mankind; that her
falsity, her narrow selfishness, her bloody inhumanity, would have
stifled all progress; that her dominion would have been the tyranny of a
few heartless masters over a world of tortured slaves. On the other
hand, Rome up to this point had certainly been a generous mistress to
her subjects. She had left them peace and prosperity among themselves;
she had given them as much political freedom as was consistent with her
sovereignty; she had wellnigh succeeded in welding all Italy into a
Roman nation. It is noteworthy that the large majority of the Italian
cities clung to her, even in the darkest straits to which she was
reduced by Hannibal.
Yet when the fall of her last great rival left Rome irresistible abroad,
her methods changed. It is hard to see how even Carthaginians could have
been more cruel, more grasping, more corrupt than the Roman rulers of
the provinces. Having conquered the governments of the world, Rome had
to face outbreak after outbreak from the unarmed, unsheltered masses of
the people. Her barbarity drove them to mad despair. "Servile" wars,
slave outbreaks are dotted over all the last century of the Roman
Republic.
The good, if there was any good, that Roman dominion brought the world
at that period was the spreading of Greek culture across the western
half of the world. As Rome mastered the Greek states one by one, their
genius won a subtler triumph over the conqueror. Her generals recognized
and admired a culture superior to their own. They carried off the
statues of Greece for the adornment of their villas, and with equal
eagerness they appropriated her manners and her thought, her literature
and her gods.
But this superficial culture could not save the Roman Republic from the
dry-rot that sapped her vitals from within. As a mere matter of numbers,
the actual citizens of Rome or even of the semi-Roman districts close
around her were too few to continue fighting over all the vast empire
they controlled. The sturdy peasant population of Italy slowly
disappeared. The actual inhabitants of the capital came to consist of a
few thousand vastly wealthy families, who held all the power, a few
thousand more of poorer citizens dependent on the rich, and then a vast
swarm of slaves and foreigners, feeders on the crumbs of the Roman
table.
In the battles against Carthage, the mass of Rome's armies had consisted
of her own citizens or of allies closely united to them in blood and
fortune. Her later victories were won by hired troops, men gathered from
every clime and every race. Roman generals still might lead them, Roman
laws environ them, Roman gold employ them. Yet the fact remained, that
in these armies lay the strength of the Republic, no longer within her
own walls, no longer in the stout hearts of her citizens.
Perhaps the world itself was slow in seeing this degeneration. The
Gracchi brothers tried to stem the tide, and they were slain, sacrificed
by the nation they sought to save.[16] Cornelius Sulla was the man who
completed, and at the same time made plain to all, the change that had
been growing up. Having bitter grievances against his enemies in the
capital, he appealed for redress, not to the Roman senate, not to the
votes of the populace, but to the swords of the legions he commanded.
Twice he marched his soldiers against Rome. He brushed aside the feeble
resistance that was offered, and entered the city like a conqueror. The
blood of those who had opposed his wishes flowed in streams. Three
thousand senators and knights, the flower of the Roman aristocracy, were
slain at his nod. Of the common folk and of the Italians throughout the
peninsula, the slaughter was immeasurable. And when his bloody vengeance
was at last glutted, Sulla ruled as an extravagant, conscienceless,
licentious dictator. Rome had found a fitting master.
[Footnote 16: See _The Gracchi and Their Reforms_, page 259.]
THE STRUGGLE OF INDIVIDUALS FOR SUPREMACY
The Roman people, the mighty race who had defied a Hannibal at their
gates, were clearly come to an end. Sulla had proved the power of the
Republic to be an empty shell. After his death, men used the empty forms
awhile; but the surviving aristocrats had learned their awful lesson.
They put no further faith in the strength of the city; they watched the
armies and the generals; they intrigued for the various commands. It was
an exciting game. Life and fortune were the stakes they risked; the
prize--the mastery of a helpless world, waiting to be plundered.