BOOKS.
NIEBITHA'S LECTURES ON ANCIENT HISTORY..
THESE Lectures on Ancient History, following the arrangement and observing the limits which Tustin has handed down in his abridgment of Trogus Pompeius, were twice delivered by Niebuhr. It is mainly from notes taken by the students during the latter delivery of the course that Dr. Marcus Niebuhr has edited the German edition. Dr. Schmitz has taken the liberty of rearranging some of the notes, for the sake of clearness ; has generally rounded and polished the sentences; and has added from the previous course statements explanatory of or opposed to the statements in the text. Even under his editorial care, the volumes must be read with the fall recollection that they were not written by their author, but have been compiled, at some distance of time, from notes taken by unprofessional though no doubt practised reporters. This qualifi- cation made, they remain a monument of the attention, interest, and industry of the class which listened to them, almost as re- markable as of the knowledge, zeal, and memory of the accom- plished lecturer ; and remind us, in. sad contrast with the classical and historical classes of our own Universities, how far an able and enthusiastic teacher goes to make diligent and enthusiastic pupils. Enthusiasm, devotion to their subjects, and eager desire to com- municate a knowledge of them to others, are in fact the great wants of our University teachers ; and till these qualities can be found in the professors, along with the learning which many of, them undoubtedly possess, to the degree which is compatible with an unimpassioned pursuit of knowledge, their teaching will con- tinue ineffective ; and the young men under their care will, except in rare exceptional cases, grow up to look upon the learning they have not been taught to enjoy or appreciate, as a bore and an un- reality. We by no means intend to assert that the best Cambridge and Oxford men do not know as much at five-and-twenty as the best German students, but simply that they do not derive as much from their living teachers; and that the average English gentle- man certainly is not so intellectually accomplished a person as the average German gentleman, though no one doubts the natural capacity or quickness of our eminently mixed race. Two consi- derations which, though they hint at defects, are both cheering, as the defects are just those most capable of remedy,—faults of ma- chinery, of social arrangements, rather than want of power or de- ficiency of will A course of lectures embracing not only the whole extent of Greek history to the age of Augustus, but also accounts of all the countries known to the Greeks with the exception of Italy, must necessarily be wanting in the fulness and the detail which are requisite to make history agreeable reading Addressing himself exclusively to students, Niebuhr assumes in his audience a famili- arity with the original authorities, and a habit of dealing with philological and archaeological inquiries, and seldom thinks it ne- cessary to do more than indicate the leading points and give the clue to the solution of a disputed question. Eminently helpful, accordingly, as these volumes will be to students, they will be no godsend to those who want their learning cooked and digested for them ; who have no notion of the value of a book which, to be mastered, requires continual reference to numerous other books ; and whose true purpose is rather to stimulate the intellectual appetite by foretaste of a rich banquet than to satisfy it by reple- tion. On the other hand, for those who like to be sent flying on jonrnies of discovery in all directions, or who have previous know- ledge enough to traverse the fields of ancient history with advan- tage under the guidance of a man who condenses bulky disquisi- tions into a few paragraphs, is perpetually making one age illus- trate another, and uses the amplest resources of learning with the same ease and allusive freedom which characterize the references of ordinary conversation to the occurrences of yesterday—for such these volumes will be rich in instruction, and the more interesting as they complete the round of Niebuhr's speculations on the people of classical antiquity; so that now there is no point connected with the Greeks and Romans, or the nations with whom they came into contact, on which we have not the benefit of his recorded. opin- ion. Everywhere we find him patiently working among the debris of the old world with that critical method which some of our coun- trymen even still obstinately persist in miscalling sceptical,—as if anything could be believed where there is no means of distinguishing between the false and the true. In truth, the school of historical investigators of whom Niebuhr is the type and chief, so far from having destroyed genuine faith in ancient history, were the very persons who showed us how much there was trustworthy and certain in it ; while the real pyrrhonists are those, if any still re- main, who insist upon it that Hercules was an historical knight- errant of Pagan chivalry, and that Lupa suckled Romulus as certainly as Cornelia was the mother of the Gracohi. A person less content with negations than Niebuhr it would be hard to find, or one who felt the past more vividly, had more of the " vision and the faculty" by which men grasp it as a reality and a living scene peopled with beings of like natures and affections with ourselves. Of course, just in proportion as a man has this historical sense will be also his sense of the unreality, of the absurdity, of much that is handed down to us as history ; and he will vehemently protest • Lectures on Ancient History, from the Earliest Times to the Taking of Alex- andria by Octavianus. Comprising the History of the Asiatic Nations, the Egyp- tians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Carthaginians. By B. G. Niebuhr. Translated from the German Edition of Dr. Marcus Niebuhr, by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, F.R.S.E., Rector of the High School of Edinburgh. With Addition; and Corrections from his own MS. Notes. In three volumes. Published by Taylor, Walton, and Moberly. against the lazy uncritical belief which apparently admits every- thing because it has no living consciousness of anything; just as an inanimate vessel will receive anything that is put into it, while a sentient bring can only assimilate that which tends to its nu- trition and growth. The quality that is most striking in these lectures is the power of conveying to the reader a sense of the reality of what is described or narrated, of the identity of the act- ors in the events with ourselves in nature : and this is done, as students of Neibuhr's other works may suppose, not by the ima- gination of the dramatist seizing characters by intuition, and from the riches of his own consciousness giving life to the shadowy re- cords of their actions, but by the almost boundless knowledge of the man, who by analogy and allusion reflects the light of the bright places of history into its obscure chasms, and can besides concentrate upon any one point all the scattered rays of learning. He is philologist, ethnologist, geographer, man of letters, as well as historian, as minutely acquainted with modern politics and as deeply interested in them as in ancient history ; and these are the qualifications that render all his works such storehouses of sugges- tion for the practical man as well as the scholar. It is with a view to illustrate this quality of variety and suggestiveness that we have selected our quotations.
THE MASSAGETE—ACCURACY OF RERODOTITS.
According to the account of Herodotus, the Massagetu were governed by a Queen Tomyris. The description which Herodotus gives of these Massa- getze or Same is, that they were a true Mongol or Tartar race, just as much as the Scythians, who then chiefly occupied the Southern part of Europe, be- longed to the Mongols. They were nomades occupying themselves with the chase, and living mostly on -horseback like the Tartars, among whom the children live on horseback from their earliest infancy, and whose constant companion is the horse. Agriculture is not altogether neglected ; but the flock forme the basis of their existence and their wealth, and their most es- sential occupation is the breeding of cattle. The Massageta3 were a _rude nation of the same kind as the Tartars. The description which Herodotus gives of them is, like all his descriptions of nations, unrivalled, and enables us still to recognize the people very accurately. His statement that copper and gold were common among them, and that iron and silver were unknown to them, has formerly been censured ; but it is quite correct, and is confirmed by the nature of their country. Iron is so rare in those countries, that, as Menander relates, the nations on the Oxue with some affectation showed iron to the Roman ambassadors in order to convince them that they were not al- together without it. The statements of Herodotus are laughed at by men who have indeed some knowledge, but are devoid of judgment,. Such a man is Schloezer, who, notwithstanding his want of taste, might have acquired great merit as an historian, had he not at a later period of his life been care- less, and by an unfortunate polypragmaty in which he had become involved, given up all exertion. In order to gratify his ambition to become a politi- cian and to obtain influence, he neglected his intellectual acquirements ; and being of a lively disposition, he continued to write with great ambition and presumption. He had a decided aversion to the ancients and every- thing that is classiest, but more especially to Herodotus; and he is alto- gether a true barbarian. His reputation as a writer of history might have been great and well deserved ; but he himself has obscured it. He ridicules Herodotus for his distinct assertion that the North was so rich in gold ; but at present the attention of all Europe is directed to the gold-mines in the Ural mountains ; and we see that Herodotus was perfectly right, and that the Norwegian authors who speak of the abundance of gold among the Per- sians, and who are likewise despised by Schloezer, were no less right than Herodotus. Thoee mines have ceased to be worked, or have been forgotten, only in consequence of the barbarous character of the Mongols. The gold of the ancient world came partly from those countries, chiefly from the Ural, and partly from Lydia, Thrace, and Macedonia ; some also came from the mines of Gaul, some was found on the frontiers of Egypt and Nubia, some in Arabia, and a little was brought by way of Carthage from the interior of Africa. The gold which was obtained from these sources in ancient times was so abundant that it was much less precious ; and its value as compared with that of silver was much smaller than at present. The gold stater of Athens, which was worth twenty drachms in antiquity, is at present valued at thirty-two silver drachms. The silver-mines of the ancients were in Spain, Africa, Transylvania, and Dacia ; some gold was already derived from Upper Hungary, which Herodotus calls the country of the Agathyrsi. There were some silver mines also in Armenia. It is properly the province of an- cient geography to furnish such surveys as I have here given, and to point out the sources of the products of which we hear in history. Such particu- lars would form the elements of a perspicuous history of commerce.
INFLUENCE OF MUSCULARITY UPON ANCIENT SCULPTURE.
The Seythians, according to Herodotus, were a Mongol people ; and the description of Hippocrates confirms this still more strongly. The latter says that they were a fat and fleshy people, in whom the articulation and organi- zation of muscles and bones were but very imperfectly seen. This is the very feature which is so striking in Mongol nations : their face and skull are round, and the cut of their eyes is very singular ; but what characterizes them still more strongly is, that their muscles and joints cannot be discerned and disappear on the surface ; their skin is thick and fat, and it covers and disguises the forms of muscles and bones. If we compare the nations of Southern Europe with those of the North, we perceive a great and striking difference between them : in the Southern nations, the Italians and Greeks, and in an almost higher degree in the real Asiatics and the inhabitants of Barbary, the muscles of the arms and legs, for example, are very strikingly marked. This is not the case with the Egyptians, and this circumstance has had the greatest influence upon their sculpture. The other Southern nations which I mentioned before, have their muscles developed and expressed to such an extraordinary degree, that this circumstance alone renders it clear to me, how the ancient sculptors and artists could produce their works without the study of anatomy ; for the artist could see the whole of anatomy, so far as he needed it, in the living body; he did not require the anatomy of the dead body, but was enabled in the living body to observe the play of the mus- cles; and the delicate skin so beautifully extended over them does not conceal them. The great difference between ancient and modern statues does not con- sist so much in the faces, (though here too it shows itself, since the moderns take the matter more easily, and make their faces of a more general character and with less individuality,) as in the play of the muscles. If any one wishes to see the difference in a very striking way, he must ex- amine ancient and modern statues together by torch-light. Such a study affords great pleasure and enjoyment : the ancient statues then seem living, and an endless variety of living muscles appears on the surface. Modern statues do not possess this transparency : they are smooth, and there is no life in them ; they seem dead even when they are the productions of great masters. The bas-reliefs of Thorwaldsen may be placed by the side of those of ancient sculptors, but not so his statues. Among the Egyptians, we do
not find this richness, this development and animation of the muscles, not- withstanding their great strength : hence those things are wanting also in the Egyptian statues ; though this must have arisen in some measure also from the material which they used for statues, having adopted the unfortu- nate custom of using extremely hard stone.
DARIUS TN SCYTHIA.
The expedition of Darius against the Scythians is a remarkable instance of the phsenomenon, that at an age so near to the historical times, so many things which are impossible and inconceivable are related as facts by a man of the greatest intelligence and judgment. If you realize to yourself the account of Herodotus, it amounts to this : the Scythians sent their wives and children into the remotest districts ; divided their men capable of bearing arms into three hosts, one of which was destined to misguide the Persians, and the two others were to march sidewards, so as to draw the Persians into the remotest countries. This was done : the hosts of the Scythian withdrew be- fore the Persians, destroyed the wells, burnt the vegetation of their pastures, and enticed the advancing Persians further and further into the country. In this manner the latter crossed the rivers Dniestr, Dniepr, and Don ; then the Scythian threw themselves upon the nations dwelling behind them, and the Persians followed them from the territory_of Tuldja to the other side of the Don, through the whole country of the Ukraine. In the neighbourhood of Saratow, the Scythians turned to the North, and the Persians marched in a circle; the Scythians constantly retreating from Tuldja, by way of Barstow, Charcow, &c., into Upper Hungary ; and the Persians constantly following them, until in the end the latter were in the greatest distress and difficulty. This course is perfectly impossible, and is one of those tales which we must at once reject as fabulous. The Persians are said to have amounted to 700,000 ; sup- pose that there were only 70,000 in the Ukraine ; there was indeed some agri- culture on the Dniepr, but beyond it there was scarcely any, and how insuf- ficient must have been the agriculture of a people which had no fixed abodes ! how insufficient must it have been for even the tenth part of such an army ! How could 700,000 men on their march from the Danube to the Dniepr find the means of subsistence? And still more, how could they do so afterwards, in countries where there was no agriculture, where they had to march through vast steppes, beginning a few days' march from the Dniepr, and extending to the other side of the Don ? How could the Persians exist there, and escape death by famine ? When Herodotus relates that they came from one people to another, this statement is probably based upon the geographical notion which he had formed of those countries. He conceives the Agathyrsi to have lived much nearer the Tanais than they actually did ; for he imagined the Tanais and later to flow parallel to each other, and the Agathyrsi to live between them on the coast of the later ; he then supposed the Scythians to return by a road parallel with the later, and arrive on its banks before the Persians on their roundabout way could reach it. Such an account was pos- sible only in consequence of a totally erroneous notion of the geography of those countries.
EFFECTS OF ANCIENT EPIDEMICS.
In the mean time, however, the general distress was increased by the fearful plague (Olymp. 87, 2) which visited Athens in the second year of the war, at the moment when the Peloponnesians had invaded Attica a se- cond time. It is surprising that this plague made much more havoc among thAAthenians than among their enemies ; some parts of Peloponnesus were in visited by it, but its effects were not to he compared with the calamity of Athens. Much has been said about thislague : the description in Thu- eydides is excellent. Whatever may be said, no one will be able to form a perfectly clear notion of the nature of the disease, or to say whether it was the real Oriental plague, which now prevails at Odessa and elsewhere, or whe- ther it was only a typhus of the same species. That it was a typhus cannot be doubted. It resembled the yellow fever, inasmuch as it was most violent i in the coast districts. It first appeared in Piraeus; but it spread farther from the sea into the interior, and not along the course of rivers, as is the case with the yellow fever, which from the sea ascends the rivers, and does not seem to be conveyed by the air over soil which is quite dry. This is the great difference between the Attic plague sad the yellow fever. My belief is, that it was neither the Oriental plague nor the yellow fever, but some- thing between the two. Vomiting in which bile is thrown up rarely occurs in the Oriental plague, but is regularly connected with the yellow fever; whereas ulcers are extremely rare in the yellow fever, but general in the Oriental plague. This plague is a remarkable phaenomenon, and an event in the history of the world : it broke the power and the spirit of the Athenians. It was a fearful blow to Athena ; and it is only surprising that the Athenians could overcome its effects as they did, "for in the very same year they rallied and made a fresh expedition against Peloponnesus.'
I shall devote particular care to the history of epidemics. I can prove that time to have been a period of epidemics, which extended over from thirty to forty years : it began in Italy about thirty years before, and there raged fearfully, assuming different forms, and manifesting a truly pestilen- tial character. Afterwards there appeared diseases which were as destruc- tive as the plague, though they were not typhus, but fevers connected with diseases of the eye. The history of diseases is a branch of universal history which has not. yet been investigated, though it is of great importance. Whole periods in are explained by the appearance and disappearance of deadly epidemics. "They exercise the greatest possible influence upon the morality of nations; almost all great epochs of moral degradation are con- nected with great epidemics. Thus at Home, the ancient intellectual culture, a certain highmindednesa, and a noble spirit in art, remained down to the time of M. Antoninus ; but then the great plague spreads from the army of Verus over Italy, and suddenly the whole character IS entirely changed : the death-blow is given to literature and art, especially to the latter, and every- thing noble perishes. In the time of M. Aurelius, we find beautiful histori- cal works of art, though no ideal or characteristic ones, and there was much technical skill ; but immediately after everything becomes wretched. The artist who adorned the arch of Septimiva Severus had lost all knowledge of proportion in drawing. Africa was not visited by that plague ; whence that country continued to be highly flourishing, and a peculiar literature main- tained itself there, of which Tertullian and others are the representatives. Then came the plague under Gallienus, which carried off more than half the population and after it antiquity is entirely gone : a perfectly barbarous period began, in which even the Latin language could no longer preserve its Purity, but became corrupt. During the great plague under Justinian every- thing completely perished ; even the few artificial remnants of antiquity dis- appeared, and what remained was only the dregs. Greek pronunciation and Um whole system of writing became altered ; the long and short syllables were no longer distinguished. In like manner, the plague of the fourteenth century in Italy and in the East marks distinct periods. At Athens, too, the plague marks a new sera. Those who had reached a mature age re- mained what they were if they survived it, but the rising generation was quite different."
Had these lectures appeared in England at the time of their de- livery, more than twenty years ago, they would have exercised upon our views of ancient times a much more stirring influence than they can do now. Their work has been done among us by men of kindred spirit ; and the chief interest of them now is in the copiousness of their illustrations, and the unreserved ea on of the author's personal opinions and sentiments. What these are broadly with reference to Greek history, we may indicate most in- telligibly to the English public by saying that Niebuhr would rank somewhere between Thirlwall and Grote, but nearer to Thirlwall. Athens has all his love and admiration ; and of Athenians, Demos- thenes seems to be his hero, as the great unsullied patriot of a de- generate rem. The democratic innovations of Pericles he considers to have undermined the stability of the state, and Cleon he de- nounces as the Athenian Cobbett—" not, however, such a scoun- drel." Sophooles is his prince of dramatists. Altogether the brightest sera of Athenian society is that between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. It is in these and similar statements that he differs so widely from Grote : but in his utter freedom from any- thing like political or moral indifferentism, in his warm, almost passionate admiration for the noble manifestations of Athenian political life, he oftener reminds us of the banker than the bishop.
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