THE PASSING OF 'LEM EMPIRES.* WITH this volume — the
third of the series — Professor Maspero completes what Professor Sayce rightly describes as his "monumental work" on the Empires of the East.
• The Passing of the Empires, 850 B.C. to 330 B.C. By G. Ilaspern. Edited by A. H. Sayre. Translated by M. L. McClure. London [253.]
That it will be final we can hardly suppose. It would be unsafe to call any book final. Still, such histories as those of Grote and Mommeen are likely to hold their place for a long time, simply because there is little or no probability of any revolutionary discoveries in the Greek and Roman fields. The future of Eastern exploration is much more indefinite. Within the last decade both Egypt and the Babylonian plain have yielded results that have profoundly modified the opinions previously held. However this may be, ancient history has been much enriched by Professor Maspero's contributions. No account so complete, and on the whole so satisfactory, exists elsewhere of the great suc- cession of Powers which began in a remote past which we are able almost every year to trace further back, and ended with Alexander's conquest of Persia.
The first sensation that the reader experiences as he struggles through one of these massive volumes is one of bewilderment. The gigantic figures of Kings and conquerors are seen to stalk across the stage, but their motives, their aims, their policy, seem to defy all our efforts to realise them. By degrees we are able to realise their personality, thanks to the intelligent help which Professor Maspero never fails to supply when the materials are such as to make it possible. Some of the characters of the drama assume a human character. Among the most distinct of these is Tiglath- pileser III. His name is known, of course, as the con- queror who made the first great deportation of the Israelites, in the reign of Pekab. But the Hebrew records do not help us to distinguish him from other conquering invaders from the same region. This we have to do from other ,sources. He seems to have been an example of a class often occurring in the history of military Empires, the successful soldier who raises himself to power by taking up the work to which the legitimate Sovereign has shown himself unequal. The dynasty which Tiglath-pileser overthrew had had its zenith in the period of sixty years included in the reigns of Assar- Nazi-pal and Shalmaneser III (884-824). From this time it began to decline. In 745 it came to an end at the hands of a usurper, who probably had made himself respected by the army. One of the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser brought him into contact with the two Hebrew Kingdoms at a crisis which is illuminated for us by the genius of Isaiah. The alliance of Syria and Israel against Judah, the dismay of the Court of Jerusalem, and the deliverance wrought by the Assyrian conqueror, when Ahaz saw the land that he abhorred "forsaken of both her Kings," have a special interest for us, but there were other achievements of Tiglath- pileser which may have seemed to his contemporaries even more important. He finally broke the power of Urartu (Armenia), a State which had for many years been aggrandising itself at the expense 'of Assyria, and he made himself master of Babylon. This last success was achieved without a battle, and the conqueror had the wisdom to conciliate his new subjects. The two rival States, Assyria and Babylon, were united by the crown of a common Monarch. His Babylonian name was the sobriquet of Pala or Pul. In Chron. v. 26 Pul and Tiglath-pileser seem to be spoken of as two distinct Kings, though the historian proceeds in the singular number. "He carried them away," &c. Professor Maspero writes : " He divided himself, as it were, into two persons, one of whom reigned in Calab, while the other reigned in Kurdumash, and his Chaldwan subjects took care to invest this dual role—based on a fiction so soothing to their pride—with every appearance of reality." Political sagacity seems to have been his great characteristic. He was a great administrator as well as a great soldier, and his methods of government outlived his dynasty. One of these methods seems to have anticipated the/system adopted by Rome, the most durable of the conquering States of antiquity. He did not plant Assyrian colonists in the provinces which he added to the Empire. That coarse would.soon have depleted the region on which he had, in the last resort, to rely. He occupied one conquered country with the deported inhabitants of another, just as Rome made subject tribes " lend their lives to support a foreign rule," as the Caledonian chieftain put it. The revenue of the Empire seems to have been organised with equal skill. Professor Maspero thus sums up the general result of his eighteen years of rule : —" Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyria the character by which it was known during tke
most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the Oriental genius that it survived the fall of Nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the Macedonian era, and even beyond it."
Somewhat more than a century later we come across a great name already well known to us. By this time the centre of political power has been shifted again. Nineveh bad perished by the assault of a Median and Babylonian alliance, and a Neo-Chaldean dynasty was dominant in the East. Of this Nebnchadrezzar is the most prominent repre- sentative. The Hebrew writers were evidently impressed by the great personality of the man. His wisdom and magna- nimity, taught, according to the story which we find in Daniel, by a terrible affliction, are contrasted with the folly and pettiness of an inferior successor. The picture is filled in with some interesting details from other sources. " Nebuchadrezzar was, after all, not so much a warrior as a man of peace, whether so constituted by nature, or rendered so by political necessity in its proper sense, and he took advantage of the long intervals of quiet between his cam- paigns to complete the extensive works which more than anything else have won for him his renown." He restored the great navigation system of the Babylonian plain, while le strengthened the defences of the capital against possible nvasion. Nebnchadrezzar died in 562, after a reign of more than forty years. Six years afterwards his dynasty :ame to an end. The throne was filled by the nominee of he military party, chosen, it would seem, not for his ability, but for his character, that made him the tool of others. Nabonidus, the crowned archologist, who, while his Empire was tumbling about his ears, found an inexhaustible interest iu unearthing the records of remote predecessors, is surely one of the most eccentric figures of history. Louis XVI., busying himself with his locks while the storm of revolution was gathering round his palace, reminds us of him.
We have now reached well-known ground, for the last of the Empires whose passing Professor Maspero has set him- self to relate was that of Persia. As it. was the last, so it had the least portion of the elements of greatness. It produced one great ruler, and, it would seem, no more. Cyrus was a bold and skilful soldier, and Xenophon's romance has somehow magnified the historical figure, but the really commanding personality was that of Darius. It was well for the world that he was less effectively served by his lieutenants than he may be said to have deserved. If any one battle can ,be said to have been really decisive, it was Marathon, and Marathon might have been a defeat for Greece if the Persian generals had been equal to their master. In 490 Darius, who had been more than thirty years on the throne, was too old to take the command himself. The Monarchs after him had little other ability than for con- ducting a somewhat shifty diplomacy. The last of them, whether or no he belonged to the old Achaemenid line, was, by a not uncommon irony of fate, the best of the whole. But it was time for the last of the conquering Empires to give way to a Power more fitted to advance the progress of the world.
Professor Maspero's work requires the closest attention by the reader who would follow it with satisfaction to himself. Whether it could have been more conveniently arranged it would be something like presumption to say. We will not go further than saying that we have often wished that it had been broken up into shorter chapters. That it is a book of great learning skilfully used no one, we think, will venture to deny.
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