History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science | Page 6

Incessant domestic wars between the rival states checked her
advancement. She was poor, her leading men had become corrupt.
They were ever ready to barter patriotic considerations for foreign gold,
to sell themselves for Persian bribes. Possessing a perception of the
beautiful as manifested in sculpture and architecture to a degree never
attained elsewhere either before or since, Greece had lost a practical
appreciation of the Good and the True.
While European Greece, full of ideas of liberty and independence,
rejected the sovereignty of Persia, Asiatic Greece acknowledged it
without reluctance. At that time the Persian Empire in territorial extent
was equal to half of modern Europe. It touched the waters of the
Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black, the Caspian, the Indian, the

Persian, the Red Seas. Through its territories there flowed six of the
grandest rivers in the world--the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the
Jaxartes, the Oxus, the Nile, each more than a thousand miles in length.
Its surface reached from thirteen hundred feet below the sea-level to
twenty thousand feet above. It yielded, therefore, every agricultural
product. Its mineral wealth was boundless. It inherited the prestige of
the Median, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean Empires,
whose annals reached back through more than twenty centuries.
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. Persia had always looked upon European
Greece as politically insignificant, for it had scarcely half the territorial
extent of one of her satrapies. Her expeditions for compelling its
obedience had, however, taught her the military qualities of its people.
In her forces were incorporated Greek mercenaries, esteemed the very
best of her troops. She did not hesitate sometimes to give the command
of her armies to Greek generals, of her fleets to Greek captains. In the
political convulsions through which she had passed, Greek soldiers had
often been used by her contending chiefs. These military operations
were attended by a momentous result. They revealed, to the quick eye
of these warlike mercenaries, the political weakness of the empire and
the possibility of reaching its centre. After the death of Cyrus on the
battle-field of Cunaxa, it was demonstrated, by the immortal retreat of
the ten thousand under Xenophon, that a Greek army could force its
way to and from the heart of Persia.
That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic generals, so
profoundly impressed on the Greeks by such engineering exploits as
the bridging of the Hellespont, and the cutting of the isthmus at Mount
Athos by Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis, Platea, Mycale. To
plunder rich Persian provinces had become an irresistible temptation.
Such was the expedition of Agesilaus, the Spartan king, whose brilliant
successes were, however, checked by the Persian government resorting
to its time-proved policy of bribing the neighbors of Sparta to attack
her. "I have been conquered by thirty thousand Persian archers,"
bitterly exclaimed Agesilaus, as he re-embarked, alluding to the Persian
coin, the Daric, which was stamped with the image of an archer.

THE INVASION OF PERSIA BY GREECE. At length Philip, the
King of Macedon, projected a renewal of these attempts, under a far
more formidable organization, and with a grander object. He managed
to have himself appointed captain-general of all Greece not for the
purpose of a mere foray into the Asiatic satrapies, but for the overthrow
of the Persian dynasty in the very centre of its power. Assassinated
while his preparations were incomplete, he was succeeded by his son
Alexander, then a youth. A general assembly of Greeks at Corinth had
unanimously elected him in his father's stead. There were some
disturbances in Illyria; Alexander had to march his army as far north as
the Danube to quell them. During his absence the Thebans with some
others conspired against him. On his return he took Thebes by assault.
He massacred six thousand of its inhabitants, sold thirty thousand for
slaves, and utterly demolished the city. The military wisdom of this
severity was apparent in his Asiatic campaign. He was not troubled by
any revolt in his rear.
THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN. In the spring B.C. 334 Alexander
crossed the Hellespont into Asia. His army consisted of thirty-four
thousand foot and four thousand horse. He had with him only seventy
talents in money. He marched directly on the Persian army, which,
vastly exceeding him in strength, was holding the line of the Granicus.
He forced the passage of the river, routed the enemy, and the
possession of all Asia Minor, with its treasures, was the fruit of the
victory. The remainder of that year he spent in the military organization
of the conquered provinces. Meantime Darius, the Persian king, had
advanced an army of six hundred thousand men to prevent the passage
of the Macedonians into Syria. In a battle that ensued among the
mountain-defiles at Issus, the Persians were again overthrown. So