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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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In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though the mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all the circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable nor predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a large body of collateral antipathies did not readily call it forth against any individual; that the more liberal and generous dispositions, which deadened its malignity, were of steady efficacy, not easily overborne; and that the condemnation ought to count as one of the least gloomy items in an essentially gloomy catalogue.
Let us add, that as Socrates himself did not account his own condemnation and death, at his age, to be any misfortune, but rather a favourable dispensation of the gods, who removed him just in time to escape that painful consciousness of intellectual decline, which induced Democritus to prepare the poison for himself—so his friend Xenophon goes a step further, and while protesting against the verdict of guilty, extols the manner of death as a subject of triumph; as the happiest, most honourable, and most gracious way, in which the gods could set the seal upon an useful and exalted life.
It is asserted by Diodorus, and repeated with exaggerations by other later authors, that after the death of Socrates the Athenians bitterly repented of the manner in which they had treated him, and that they even went so far as to put his accusers to death without trial. I know not upon what authority this statement is made, and I disbelieve it altogether. From the tone of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, there is every reason to presume that the memory of Socrates still continued to be unpopular at Athens when that collection was composed. Plato, too, left Athens immediately after the death of his master, and remained absent for a long series of years: indirectly, I think, this affords a presumption that no such reaction took place in Athenian sentiment as that which Diodorus alleges; and the same presumption is countenanced by the manner in which the orator Æschines speaks of the condemnation, half a century afterwards. I see no reason to believe that the Athenian dicasts, who doubtless felt themselves justified, and more than justified, in condemning Socrates after his own speech, retracted that sentiment after his decease.d
Ruins of a Temple of Zeus
CHAPTER XL. THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND
In the latter years of the Peloponnesian War the affairs of Greece became more than formerly implicated with those of Persia; and, during the short calm which succeeded the long troubles of the former country, some events in the latter will require attention. The detail will lead far from Greece; but, beside involving information of Grecian affairs not found elsewhere, it has a very important connection with Grecian history through the insight it affords into circumstances which prepared a revolution effected by Grecian arms, one of the greatest occurring in the annals of the world.
THE AFFAIRS OF PERSIA
By the event of the Peloponnesian War the Asian Greeks changed the dominion of Athens, not for that of Lacedæmon, the conquering Grecian power, but of a foreign, a barbarian master, the king of Persia, then the ally of Lacedæmon. Towards the end of the same year in which a conclusion was put to the war, by the taking of Athens, Darius, king of Persia, the second of the name, died. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Artaxerxes, also the second of his name, and, for his extraordinary memory, distinguished among the Greeks by the addition of Mnemon, “the Mindful.” The old king, in his last illness, desirous to see once more his favourite son Cyrus, sent for him from his government in Lydia. The prince, in obeying his father’s requisition, travelled in the usual manner of the Eastern great, with a train amounting almost to an army; and, to exhibit in his guard the new magnificence of troops so much heard of in the upper provinces, but never yet seen, he engaged by large pay the attendance of three hundred heavy-armed Greeks, under the command of Xenias of Parrhasia in Arcadia. As a friend and counsellor, he took with him Tissaphernes, satrap of Caria.
[404-401 B.C.]
On the decease of Darius, which followed shortly, a jealousy, scarcely separable from a despotic throne, but said to have been fomented by the unprincipled Tissaphernes, induced the new monarch to imprison his brother; whose death, it was supposed, in course would have followed, but for the powerful intercession of the queen-mother, Parysatis. Restored, through her influence, not only to liberty but to the great command entrusted to him by his indulgent father, Cyrus nevertheless resented highly the indignity he had suffered.
He seems indeed to have owed little to his brother’s kindness. Jealous of the abilities and popular character of Cyrus, apprehensive of his revenge, and perhaps not unreasonably also of his ambition, Artaxerxes practised that wretched oriental policy of exciting civil war between the commanders of his provinces, to disable them for making war against the throne. Orontes, a person related to the royal family, governor of the citadel of Sardis, was encouraged by the monarch’s councils to rebel against that superior officer, under whose immediate authority, by those very councils, he was placed, and ostensibly still required to act. Cyrus subdued and forgave him. A second opportunity occurring, Orontes again rebelled; again found himself, notwithstanding the secret patronage of the court, unable to support his rebellion; and, soliciting pardon, obtained from the generosity of Cyrus, not pardon only, but favour. But according to report, to which Xenophon gave credit, the queen-mother herself, Parysatis, whether urged by the known enmity of Artaxerxes to Cyrus, or by whatever other cause, incited her younger son to seek the throne and life of the elder. Thus much, however, appears certain, that, very soon after his return into Asia Minor, Cyrus began preparations with that criminal view. For a pretence, it must be allowed, he seems not to have been totally without what the right of self-defence might afford; yet his principal motives evidently were ambition and revenge.
The disjointed, tottering, and crumbling state of that empire, which, under the first Darius, appeared so well compacted, and really was so powerful and flourishing, favoured his views. Egypt, whose lasting revolt had been suppressed by the first Artaxerxes, was again in rebellion, and the fidelity of other distant provinces was more than suspected. Within his own extensive vice-royalty, the large province of Paphlagonia, governed by its own tributary prince, paid but a precarious obedience to the Persian throne; the Mysian and Pisidian mountaineers made open war upon the more peaceful subjects of the plains; and the Lycaonians, possessing themselves of the fortified places, held even the level country in independency, and refused the accustomed tribute. A large part of Lesser Asia was thus in rebellion, more or less avowed. Hence, on one hand, the attention of the king’s councils and the exertion of his troops were engaged; on the other, an undeniable pretence was ready for Cyrus to increase the military force under his immediate authority.