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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The religion of the Greeks, which was so intimately associated with almost all their social pleasures and their most important affairs, had never lost its hold on the great body of the nation. We hear much of the change wrought in the state of religious feeling by the speculations of the sophists, and the later kindred philosophical schools, by the frequent examples of sacrilegious violence, by the progress of luxury, and the growing corruption of manners. But the effect seems to have been confined to a not very large circle of the higher classes. With the common people paganism continued, probably as long as it subsisted at all, to be not a mere hereditary usage, but a personal, living, breathing, and active faith. In the age of the Antonines the Attic husbandmen still believed in the potent agency of their hero Marathon, as the Arcadian herdsmen fancied that they could hear the piping of Pan on the top of Mænalus. The national misfortunes, as they led the Greeks to cling the more fondly to their recollections of the past, tended to strengthen the influence of the old religion, and rendered them the less disposed to admit a new faith which shocked their patriotic pride and dispelled many pleasing illusions, while it ran counter to all their tastes and habits, and deprived them of their principal enjoyments. Accordingly, it seems that Christianity, notwithstanding the consolations it offered for all that it took away, made very slow progress beyond the cities in which it was first planted; and its ascendency was not firmly established long before the beginning of a period in which a series of new calamities threatened the very existence of the nation.
The result of the Persian invasion in the mind of the victorious people had been a feeling of exulting self-confidence, which fostered the development of all its powers and resources. The terror of the Celtic inroad was followed by a sense of security earned in a great measure by an honourable struggle. Far different was the impression left by the irruption of Alaric, when Greece was at length delivered from his presence. The progress of the barbarians had been stopped by no resistance before they reached the utmost limits of the land. They retreated indeed before Stilicho, but not broken or discomfited, carrying off all their booty to take undisturbed possession of another, not a distant province. It was long indeed before the Greeks experienced a repetition of this calamity, but henceforth they lived in the consciousness that they were continually exposed to it. They neither had strength to defend themselves, nor could rely on their rulers for protection.
The safety of Greece was one of the last objects which occupied the attention of the court of Constantinople. In the utter uncertainty how soon a fresh invader might tread in the steps of Alaric, every rumour of the movements of the hordes which successively crossed the Danube, might well spread alarm, even in the remotest corners of Peloponnesus. The direction which they might take could be as little calculated as the course of lightning. Who could have foreseen that Attila and Theodoric would be diverted from their career to fall upon other prey—that Genseric after his repulse before Tænarus would not renew his invasion—that the Bulgarians would be so long detained by the plunder of the northern provinces? In the reign of Justinian the advances of the barbarians became more and more threatening, and in the year 540 northern Greece was again devastated by a mixed swarm of Huns and other equally ferocious spoilers, chiefly of the Slavonic race.
The strengthened fortifications of the Isthmus indeed withstood this flood, though they could not shelter the Peloponnesians from the earthquakes and the pestilence, which during this unhappy period were constantly wasting the scanty remains of the Hellenic population which had escaped or survived the inroads of the barbarians. Justinian’s enormous line of fortresses revealed the imminence of the danger, but could not long avert it. In the course of the seventh and eighth centuries the worst forebodings were realised; after many transient incursions the country was permanently occupied by Slavonic settlers. The extent of the transformation which ensued is most clearly proved by the number of the new names which succeeded to those of the ancient geography. But it is also described by historians in terms which have suggested the belief that the native population was utterly swept away, and that the modern Greeks are the descendants of barbarous tribes which subsequently became subject to the empire, and received the language and religion which they have since retained from Byzantine missionaries and Anatolian colonists; and such is the obscurity which hangs over the final destiny of the most renowned nation of the earth, that it is much easier to show the weakness of the grounds on which this hypothesis has been reared, than to prove that it is very wide of the truth.d
CHAPTER LXV. THE KINGDOM OF THE SELEUCIDÆ
[323-312 B.C.]
In the final tripartite division of Alexander’s empire, the largest part, geographically speaking, fell to Seleucus, known as Nicator, or the Conqueror, who gave his name to the kingdom which was destined for many generations to play a more or less important part in Asiatic history. Seleucus had his capital first at Babylon and re-established the power of Grecian or Macedonian arms over a large part of the Asiatic territory of Alexander’s empire. Subsequently the seat of the kingdom was shifted to the newly founded city of Antioch on the coast of Asia Minor, which became one of the most important capitals in the world, at times almost rivalling Alexandria. The territory and power of the Seleucidæ were early curtailed owing to the advance of outlying nations, notably the Parthians, and gradually disintegrated rather by slow stages than by the sudden shock of a single conquest. Chiefly because of the shifting of progress far to the west, it was not destined to play any really important part in the building of world history. In name, at least, the kingdom continued in independent existence long after Greece proper had been overthrown; but the Parthians and Sassanians in turn had largely shorn it of its glory, and it was these powers, rather than the Seleucidæ proper, that came into rivalry and conflict with the Roman might when that new mistress of the world extended her influence to the eastward. We must think therefore of the kingdom of the Seleucidæ rather as a link in time and place between great powers, than as a thing of really intrinsic importance. A brief summary of its history is, therefore, all that need detain us. Here again for the sake of clearness—if clearness be possible in this chaotic period—some repetition is unavoidable.a
The kingdom of Syria was not confined to that country alone, but also comprehended those vast and fertile provinces of upper Asia, which formed the Persian empire; being, in its full extent, bounded by the Mediterranean on one side, and the river Indus on the other. These wide-spreading dominions are commonly called the kingdom of Syria, because Seleucus, the first of the Syro-Macedonian kings, having built the city of Antioch in that province, chose it, as did likewise his successors, for the usual place of his residence. Here his descendants, from him styled Seleucidæ, reigned, according to Eusebius, for the space of 251 years, that is, from the 117th Olympiad, when Seleucus recovered Babylon, to the third year of the 180th, when Antiochus Asiaticus, the last of the race of Seleucus, was driven out by Pompey, and Syria reduced to a Roman province. Before we proceed to the history of the Seleucidæ, we shall exhibit a series of the kings of that race, with the years of their respective reigns.