the king of Babylon became the mediator, and a marriage united the rival princes.

During the reign of Astyages, the successor of Cyaxares, the tribes of the Persians, a nation, in religion, laws, and manners, closely resembling the Medes, and who dwelt, partly stationary, partly nomadic, in the lands between the Persian Gulf and the mountains of Bactria, were united under Cyrus their native prince, and gained the dominion over the Medes. Cyrus was grandson to Astyages; but his early history is related differently by the Grecian historians. Cyrus led to war the mass of the Persian tribes, united with the more warlike portion of the Medes, and by his conquests founded the Persian empire. He first subdued the nations of the east, next turned his arms against the Sacians and other freebooting hordes of Caucasus, then led his mingled host against Crœsus, king of Lydia, who had reduced the Greeks of the coast, who so long had bid defiance to his predecessors. Croesus was defeated and taken prisoner, but treated with kindness by the conqueror, whose friend and adviser he ever after continued. The whole of Lesser Asia, including the Grecian cities, submitted to Cyrus. Babylonia had been in alliance with Croesus: B. C. its capital shared the fate of that of Lydia. Here Cyrus 553. found the Jews who had been transplanted thither when Jerusalem was taken and plundered. Similarity of religious faith, humanity, and policy, co-operated to procure them permission to return and rebuild their city. Cyrus, it is possible, now meditated the conquest of Egypt. Judea was the key to that country, and a grateful people might favour the operations of the Persian troops. The ancient cities of Persia, Pasagarda and Persepolis, where the treasures and chronicles of the empire were kept, and the kings crowned and interred, were considered too remote to be the seat of so extensive an empire as was that of Persia. Babylon was well adapted for that purpose; but a Persian monarch should reside in Persia, and Cyrus founded Susa on the Persian soil, at a convenient distance from Babylon. The last

B. C.

expedition Cyrus undertook was against the Scythians 529. or Turks, and in an engagement with their tribes he lost his life. Cyrus possessed all the qualities of a great prince: his memory was long held in honour throughout the East, and his virtues drew forth the praises of the sages of Greece.

Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who invaded and conquered Egypt, aided by the Phoenicians, jealous of the favour shown by the last Egyptian kings to the Greeks. Cambyses attempted farther conquests; but his troops were driven back by the Æthiopians, and an army sent to take possession of the oasis of Hammon perished in the sands of the desert. He died by a wound from his own sword-a divine judgment, according to the Egyptians, for violating their sacred ox Apis — as he was about to return to Persia, where a Magian had, under the name of his brother Smerdis, seized on the throne. A conspiracy of seven nobles put an end to the life and 521. reign of the Magian, and Darius Hystaspes, one of their number, related to the royal family, was made king.

Under the reign of Darius, Persia flourished, religion was reformed and purified, the empire divided into a certain number of provinces, and fixed imposts established. Babylon had rebelled: the loyalty and treachery of Zopyrus, a Persian noble, reduced it to subjection. The Persian governor of Egypt attempted to conquer the Grecian states of Barce and Cyrene; but Grecian valour daunted the troops of Persia. The monarch in person led an army over the Hellespont against the Scythians; but their steppes fought for them, and he only conquered Thrace. Master of all the coast of Lesser Asia, Darius sought to bring under his sway the islands and the continent of Greece: his fleet was shattered, and the plain of Marathon witnessed the overthrow of 490. the first Persian host that trod the soil of Hellas. He was preparing another expedition against Greece; but family-feuds, and a rebellion in Egypt, occupied his 485. thoughts, and death finally surprised him. No Persian

monarch, save the great Cyrus, stands on a line with Darius.

Xerxes, the haughty son of a haughty mother, Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, determined to wash away the disgrace the Persian arms had sustained in Greece. At the head of countless myriads, drawn from all the provinces of his empire, he passed the Hellespont. At B. C. Salamis he witnessed the destruction of his fleet: his 480. land troops, no longer supplied with provisions, perished with want and disease. The monarch, leaving a portion of his army in Boeotia under Mardonius, fled to Susa, and abandoned himself to pleasure. The next year saw at Platea the total defeat of Mardonius, and the Grecian fleet, after the victory at Mycale, sailing in triumph along the coast of Asia. Cruelties exercised on his nearest relatives disgraced the latter days of Xerxes, and he perished, assassinated by his friends and guards, 467. Artabanus and Spamitres. The assassins accused of the murder Darius, the eldest son of the king, and he was put to death by order of his youngest brother, Artaxerxes, who mounted the throne.

Artaxerxes soon discovered the true murderers of his father. Artabanus atoned for his treason with his life. A rebellion raised by his sons was crushed by Megabyzus, the brother-in-law of the king, who also defeated an elder brother of the king, who was governor of Bactria, and had taken arms to assert his claims to the throne. Rebellion still raged in Egypt: an army sent thither by Xerxes, under his brother Achæmenes, had been cut to pieces, and Megabyzus was now despatched to reduce that country. He effected his object by negotiation; but the obedience of the Egyptians was not durable, and during 100 years we read of kings of Egypt. This prince, surnamed Long-armed, was a monarch who possessed many great and amiable qualities. He died after a long reign, 424. and the history of Persia presents from this, or rather an earlier period, the usual scenes of cruelty, treachery, fraud, and faction, characteristic of oriental despotism. Brothers murdered by brothers, queens exercising every

species of cruelty on their rivals and their friends, eunuchs disposing of the throne, assassinating their sovereign, and perishing in their turn by justice or by 8. c. similar treachery, are ordinary events, till, in the reign of 331. the virtuous and ill-fated Darius Codomanus, the Persian colossus was thrown to the earth by the arms of Greece.

For when Artaxerxes II. mounted the throne, his younger brother Cyrus, who was governor of Lydia, Phrygia, and Ionia, under pretence of quelling some disturbances in Cilicia and Pisidia, collected an army in which were 10,000 Greeks, and with it marched against 401. him. The armies met at Cunaxa, in the neighbourhood of Babylon, and victory declared for Artaxerxes, as Cyrus fell in the action. The Greeks had on their side been conquerors: they were now deserted by their Persian confederates, deprived of their leaders by treachery; yet without guides, they, through the midst of a hostile nation, barbarous tribes, mountains, defiles, and deserts, reached with trifling loss the coast of the Euxine. This, when known in Greece, betrayed the internal weakness of the Persian empire. Agesilaus the great Spartan had collected a Grecian army in Lesser Asia, the axe was apparently laid to the root of the Persian monarchy, when Persian gold effected what Persian steel could not: bribery armed a confederacy in Greece against Sparta, Agesilaus was recalled to the defence of his country, and the fate of Persia was delayed for a season.

The Persian dominions at the period of their greatest extent embraced India west of the Indus, and all the country between it and the Mediterranean, Lesser Asia, Thrace, Palestine, and Egypt: Arabia paid tribute; the mountain-tribes of Caucasus and the Turkish borderers were numbered among its subjects. Yet, as the instance of the Carduchians or Koords proves, there were many tribes in the very heart of the empire who yielded but a nominal submission, maintaining nearly total independence. Under Cyrus, each subject state was left its own form of government, only bound to acknowledge the sovereign by tribute and attendance in war. Darius, by at

tempting to establish an uniformity of administration throughout his dominions, deprived his subjects of all love of independence. They ate, drank, ploughed, and wove, heedless of who ruled over them; were dragged at times away from their homes to share in wars they took no interest in; passive machines, they paid their taxes, or carried arms; like a flock of sheep on fertile pastures, they fed heedlessly till they became the prey of wolves. They bowed as submissively beneath the sceptre of the Macedonian hero and his successors as under that of the descendants of Cyrus.

CHAP. III.

GREECE.

Early State of Greece.

IMPENETRABLE obscurity covers the early times of Greece. Were we to believe ancient tradition, corroborated by the testimony of geology, a country named Lectonia once covered a great portion of the space now occupied by the Ægean Sea. An extensive sea was spread over the plain of Scythia, which burst the Bosporus, and poured into the Mediterranean, submerging Lectonia, and overflowing a large part of Greece. Hence this country was long under the dominion of water. The tradition of the fertile vales of Thessaly and Boeotia having been lakes was long preserved.

Buildings of gigantic dimensions still to be seen in Greece testify for its having been in a very remote period the seat of a civilised race. These ruins are long anterior to history: they are mentioned in the Homeric poems. Tradition ascribes the erection of them to the Cyclopes, possibly the name of that ancient people. It is probable these aboriginal colonists were, like the nations of Asia, under the government of a sacerdotal order,