Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading. George Park Fisher
times and in every place. The primitive Iranian emigrants were monotheistic in their tendencies. In their western abodes, they came into contact with worshipers of the elements—fire, air, earth, and water. It is thought by many scholars, that the Magian system, with its more defined dualism and sacerdotal sway, was ingrafted on the native religion of the Iranians through the influence of tribes with whom they mingled in Media. The Magi, according to one account, were charged by Darius with corrupting the Zoroastrian faith and worship. Whatever may have been their origin, they became the leaders in worship, and privy-counselors to the sovereign. They were likewise astrologers, and interpreters of dreams. They were not so distinct a class as the priests in India. A hereditary order, they might still bring new members into their ranks. From the Medes, they were introduced among the Persians.
PERSIAN RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS.—Peculiar customs existed among the Medes in disposing of the dead. They were not to be cast into the fire or the water, or buried in the earth, for this would bring pollution to what was sacred; but their bodies were to be exposed in the high rocks, where the beasts and birds could devour them. Sacrifices were offered on hill-tops. Salutations of homage were made to the rising sun. On some occasions, boys were buried alive, as an offering to the divinities. In early times, there were no images of the gods. As far as they were introduced in later times, it was through the influence of surrounding nations. In the supremacy and the final victory, which, in the later form of Zoroastrianism, were accorded to Ormuzd, there was again an approach to monotheism. Hostility to deception of all sorts, and thus to stealing, was a Persian trait. Herodotus says that the Persians taught their children to ride, to shoot the bow, and to speak the truth. To prize the pursuits of agriculture and horticulture, was a part of their religion. They allowed a plurality of wives, and concubines with them; but there was one wife to whom precedence belonged. Voluntary celibacy in man or woman was counted a flagrant sin.
HISTORY.—The first authentic notice that we have of the MEDES shows them under Assyrian power. This is in the time of Shalmaneser II., 840 B.C. Their rise is coincident with the fall of Assyria. Phraortes (647–625 B.C.) began the Median struggle for independence; although the name of Deioces is given by Herodotus as a previous king, and the builder of Ecbatana the capital. It was reserved for Cyaxares (625–585 B.C.), having delivered his land from the Scythian marauders (p. 47), to complete, in conjunction with the Babylonian king, Nabopolassar, the work of breaking down the Assyrian empire (p. 48). He brought under his rule the Bactrians, and the Persians about Pasargadæ and Persepolis, and made the Halys, dividing Asia Minor, the limit of his kingdom. His effeminate son, Astyages, lost what his father had won. The Persian branch of the Iranians gained the supremacy. Cyrus, the leader of the Persian revolt, by whom Astyages was defeated, is described as related to him; but this story, as well as the account of his being rescued from death and brought up among shepherds, is probably a fiction.
CYRUS.—In the sixth century B.C., this famous ruler and conqueror became the founder of an empire which comprised nearly all the civilized nations of Asia. During his reign of thirty years (559–530 B.C.), he annexed to his kingdom the two principal states, LYDIA and BABYLON. The king of Lydia was Croesus, whose story, embellished with romantic details, was long familiar as a signal example of the mutations of fortune. Doomed to be burned after the capture of Sardis, his capital, he was heard, just when the fire was to be kindled, to say something about Solon. In answer to the inquiry of Cyrus, whose curiosity was excited, he related how that Grecian sage, after beholding his treasures, had refused to call him the most fortunate of men, on the ground that "no man can be called happy before his death," because none can tell what disasters may befall him. Cyrus, according to the narrative, touched by the tale, delivered Croesus from death, and thereafter bestowed on him honor and confidence.
There is another form of the tradition, which is deemed by some more probable. Croesus is said to have stood on a pyre, intending to offer himself in the flames, to propitiate the god Sandon, that his people might be saved from destruction; but he was prevented, it is said, by unfavorable auguries.
The subjection of the Greek colonies on the Asia-Minor coast followed upon the subjugation of Lydia. From these colonies, the Phocoeans went forth, and founded Elea in Lower Italy, and Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul. The Asian Greek cities were each allowed its own municipal rulers, but paid tribute to the Persian master. The conquest of Babylon (538 B.C.), as it opened the way for the return to Jerusalem of the Jewish exiles, enabled Cyrus to establish a friendly people in Judaea, as a help in fortifying his sway in Syria, and in opening a path to Egypt. But in 529 he lost his life in a war which he was waging against the Massagetae, a tribe on the Caspian, allied in blood to the Scythians.
There was a tradition that the barbarian queen, Tomyris, enraged that Cyrus had overcome her son by deceit, dipped the slain king's head in a skin-bag of blood, exclaiming, "Drink thy fill of blood, of which thou couldst not have enough in thy lifetime!"
CAMBYSES.—The successor of Cyrus, a man not less warlike than he, but more violent in his passions, reigned but seven years (529–522 B.C.). His most conspicuous achievement was the conquest of EGYPT. One ground or pretext of his hostility, according to the tale of Herodotus, was the fact that Amasis, the predecessor of Psammeticus III., not daring to refuse the demand of his daughter as a wife, to be second in rank to the Persian queen, had fraudulently sent, either to Cambyses, or, before his time, to Cyrus, Nitetis, the daughter of the king who preceded him, Apries. Defeated at Pelusium, and compelled to yield up Memphis after a siege, it is said that Psammeticus, the Psammenitus of Herodotus, the unfortunate successor of the powerful Pharaohs, was obliged to look on the spectacle of his daughters in the garb of working-women, bearing water, and to see his sons, with the principal young nobles, ordered to execution. But this tale lacks confirmation. His cruelties were probably of a later date, and were provoked by the chagrin he felt, and the satisfaction manifested by the people, at the failure of great expeditions which he sent southward for the conquest of Meroe, and westward against the Oasis of Ammon. His armies perished in the Lybian deserts. Even the story of his stabbing the sacred steer (Apis), after these events, although it may be true, is not sanctioned by the Egyptian inscriptions. His attack upon Ammon probably arose, in part at least, from a desire to possess himself of whatever lay between Egypt and the Carthaginian territory. But the Phoenician sailors who manned his fleet refused to sail against their brethren in Carthage. Cambyses assumed the title and character of an Egyptian sovereign. The story of his madness is an invention of the Egyptian priests.
DARIUS (521–485 B.C.).—For a short time, a pretender, a Magian, who called himself Smerdis, and professed to be the brother of Cambyses, usurped the throne. Cambyses is said to have put an end to his own life. After a reign of seven months, during which he kept himself for the most part hidden from view, Smerdis was destroyed by a rising of the leading Persian families. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, of the royal race of the Achaemenidae, succeeded. He married Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus. The countries which composed an Oriental empire were so loosely held together that the death of a despot or the change of a dynasty was very likely to call forth a general insurrection. Darius showed his military prowess in conquering anew various countries, including Babylon, which had revolted. He made Arabia tributary, and spread the bounds of his vast empire as far as India and in North Africa. A mighty expedition which he organized against the Scythians on the Lower Danube failed of the results that were hoped from it. The barbarians wasted their own fields, filled up their wells, drove off their cattle, and fled as the army of Darius advanced. He returned, however, with the bulk of his army intact, although with a loss of prestige, and enrolled "the Scyths beyond the sea" among the subjects of his empire. His armies conquered the tribes of Thrace, so that he pushed his boundaries to the frontiers of Macedonia. The rebellion of the Greek cities on the Asia-Minor coast he suppressed, and harshly avenged. Of his further conflicts with the Greeks on the mainland, more is to be said hereafter. He had built Persepolis, but his principal seat of government appears to have been Susa. He did a great work in organizing his imperial system. The division into satrapies—large districts, each under a satrap, or viceroy—was a part of this work. He thus introduced a more efficient and methodical administration into