Increase of the means of commu. nication between various parts of the world. lenic population, whom he considered worthless'. Greek social habits, festivals, and legends, passed with the Hellenic settlers into Asia; all becoming amalgamated and transformed so as to suit a new Asiatic abode. Important social and political consequences turned upon the diffusion of the language, and upon the establishment of such a common medium of communication throughout Western Asia. But after all, the hellenized Asiatic was not so much a Greek as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, and superficial manifestations; distinguished fundamentally from those Greek citizens with whom the present history has been concerned. So he would have been considered by Sophokles, by Thucydides, by Sokrates. Thus much is necessary, in order to understand the bearing of Alexander's conquests, not only upon the Hellenic population, but upon Hellenic attributes and peculiarities. While crushing the Greeks as communities at home, these conquests opened a wider range to the Greeks as individuals abroad; 1 Strabo, xvii. p. 797. ὁ γοῦν Πολύβιος, γεγονὼς ἐν τῇ πόλει (Alexandria), βδελύττεται τὴν ταύτῃ κατάστασιν, &c. The Museum of Alexandria (with its library) must be carefully distinguished from the city and the people. It was an artificial institution, which took its rise altogether from the personal taste and munificence of the earlier Ptolemies, especially the second. It was one of the noblest and most useful institutions recorded in history, and forms the most honourable monument of what Droysen calls the hellenistic period, between the death of Alexander and the extension of the Roman empire into Asia. But this Museum, though situated at Alexandria, had no peculiar connexion with the city or its population; it was a College of literary Fellows (if we may employ a modern word) congregated out of various Grecian towns. Eratosthenes, Kallimachus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, were not natives of Alexandria. CHAP. XCIV.] INCREASED COMMUNICATION. 367 and produced-perhaps the best of all their effects -a great increase of intercommunication, multiplication of roads, extension of commercial dealing, and enlarged facilities for the acquisition of geographical knowledge. There already existed in the Persian empire an easy and convenient royal road (established by Darius son of Hystaspes and described as well as admired by Herodotus) for the three months' journey between Sardis and Susa; and there must have been another regular road from Susa and Ekbatana to Baktria, Sogdiana, and India. Alexander, had he lived, would doubtless have multiplied on a still larger scale the communications both by sea and land between the various parts of his world-empire. We read that among the gigantic projects which he was contemplating when surprised by death, one was, the construction of a road all along the northern coast of Africa, as far as the Pillars of Herakles'. He had intended to found a new maritime city on the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and to incur much outlay for regulating the flow of water in its lower course. The river would probably have been thus made again to afford the same conveniences, both for navigation and irrigation, as it appears to have furnished in earlier times under the ancient Baby 1 Diodor. xviii. 4. Pausanias (ii. 1, 5) observes that Alexander wished to cut through Mount Mimas (in Asia Minor), but that this was "So the only one, among all his undertakings, which did not succeed. difficult is it (he goes on) to put force upon the divine arrangements," Tà θεῖα βιάσασθαι· He wished to cut through the isthmus between Teos and Klazomenæ, so as to avoid the navigation round the cliffs of Mimas (σкóжEλov иóevra Miμavтos-Aristophan. Nub. 274) between Chios and Erythræ. Probably this was among the projects suggested to Alexander, in the last year of his life. We have no other information about it. lonian kings. Orders had been also given for constructing a fleet to explore the Caspian Sea. Alexander believed that sea to be connected with the Eastern Ocean', and intended to make it his point of departure for circumnavigating the eastern limits of Asia, which country yet remained for him to conquer. The voyage already performed by Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, was in those days a splendid maritime achievement; to which another still greater was on the point of being added-the circumnavigation of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea; though here we must remark, that this same voyage (from the mouth of the Indus round Arabia into the Red Sea) had been performed in thirty months, a century and a half before, by Skylax of Karyanda, under the orders of Darius son of Hystaspes; yet, though recorded by Herodotus, forgotten (as it would appear) by Alexander and his contemporaries. This enlarged and systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased means of communication among its inhabitants, is the main feature in Alexander's career which presents itself as promising real consequences beneficial to humanity. 1 Arrian, v. 26, 2. 2 Herodot. iv. 44: compare iii. 102. That Arrian had not present to his memory this narrative of Herodotus, is plain from the last chapter of his Indica; though in his history of Alexander he alludes several times to Herodotus. Some authors have concluded from Arrian's silence that he disbelieved the fact: if he had disbelieved it, I think that he would have mentioned the statement of Herodotus nevertheless, with an intimation that he did not think it worthy of credit. Moreover, Arrian's disbelief (even granting that such was the state of his mind) is not to be held as a conclusive disproof of the story. I confess that I see no sufficient reason for discrediting the narrative of Herodotus-though some eminent modern writers are of an oposite oppinion. CHAP. XCIV.] INTELLECTUAL TURN OF ALEXANDER. 369 Alexander ture-not We read that Alexander felt so much interest in Interest of the extension of science, that he gave to Aristotle in science the immense sum of 800 talents in money, placing and literaunder his directions several thousand men, for the great. purpose of prosecuting zoological researches1. These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the early part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation-from esteem towards him personally, rather than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the Iliad especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Eschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Phlistus2. 1 1 Pliny, H. N. viii. 17; Athenæus, ix. p. 398. See Schneider's Preface to his edition of Aristotle's Historia De Animalibus, p. xxxix seq. 2 Plutarch, Alexand. 8. 2 B VOL. XII. 370 Grecian CHAPTER XCV. GRECIAN AFFAIRS FROM THE LANDING OF ALEXANDER State of the EVEN in 334 B.C., when Alexander first entered world when upon his Asiatic campaigns, the Grecian cities, crossed the great as well as small, had been robbed of all their Hellespont. free agency, and existed only as appendages of the Alexander kingdom of Macedonia. Several of them were occupied by Macedonian garrisons, or governed by local despots who leaned upon such armed force for support. There existed among them no common idea or public sentiment, formally proclaimed and acted on, except such as it suited Alexander's purpose to encourage. The miso-Persian sentiment-once a genuine expression of Hellenic patriotism, to the recollection of which Demosthenes was wont to appeal, in animating the Athenians to action against Macedonia, but now extinct and supplanted by nearer apprehensions-had been converted by Alexander to his own purposes, as a pretext for headship, and a help for ensuring submission during his absence in Asia. Greece had become a province of Macedonia; the affairs of the Greeks (observes Aristotle in illustrating a philosophical discussion) are "in the hands of the king'". A public synod of the Greeks sat from time to time at Corinth; but it represented only philo-Macedonian 1 Aristot. Physic. iv. 3. p. 210 a. 21. eri is èv ẞaoideî rà tŵv Ἑλλήνων, καὶ ὅλως ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ κινητικῷ. |