seen animals which, compared with those of
Europe, were not only strange, but colossal--the rhinoceros, the
hippopotamus, the camel, the crocodiles of the Nile and the Ganges.
They had encountered men of many complexions and many costumes:
the swarthy Syrian, the olive-colored Persian. the black African. Even
of Alexander himself it is related that on his death-bed he caused his
admiral, Nearchus, to sit by his side, and found consolation in listening
to the adventures of that sailor--the story of his voyage from the Indus
up the Persian Gulf. The conqueror had seen with astonishment the
ebbing and flowing of the tides. He had built ships for the exploration
of the Caspian, supposing that it and the Black Sea might be gulfs of a
great ocean, such as Nearchus had discovered the Persian and Red Seas
to be. He had formed a resolution that his fleet should attempt the
circumnavigation of Africa, and come into the Mediterranean through
the Pillars of Hercules--a feat which, it was affirmed, had once been
accomplished by the Pharaohs.
INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Not only her greatest
soldiers, but also her greatest philosophers, found in the conquered
empire much that might excite the admiration of Greece. Callisthenes
obtained in Babylon a series of Chaldean astronomical observations
ranging back through 1,903 years; these he sent to Aristotle. Perhaps,
since they were on burnt bricks, duplicates of them may be recovered
by modern research in the clay libraries of the Assyrian kings. Ptolemy,
the Egyptian astronomer, possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses,
going back 747 years before our era. Long-continued and close
observations were necessary, before some of these astronomical results
that have reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus the
Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropical year within twenty-five
seconds of the truth; their estimate of the sidereal year was barely two
minutes in excess. They had detected the precession of the equinoxes.
They knew the causes of eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle called
Saros, could predict them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle,
which is more than 6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes
of the truth.
INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Such facts furnish
incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy
had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate
instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These
old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac
into twelve signs; they had parted the day into twelve hours, the night
into twelve. They had, as Alistotle says, for a long time devoted
themselves to observations of star-occultations by the moon. They had
correct views of the structure of the solar system, and knew the order of
the emplacement of the planets. They constructed sundials, clepsydras,
astrolabes, gnomons.
Not without interest do we still look on specimens of their method of
printing. Upon a revolving roller they engraved, in cuneiform letters,
their records, and, running this over plastic clay formed into blocks,
produced ineffaceable proofs. From their tile-libraries we are still to
reap a literary and historical harvest. They were not without some
knowledge of optics. The convex lens found at Nimroud shows that
they were not unacquainted with magnifying instruments. In arithmetic
they had detected the value of position in the digits, though they missed
the grand Indian invention of the cipher.
What a spectacle for the conquering Greeks, who, up to this time, had
neither experimented nor observed! They had contented themselves
with mere meditation and useless speculation.
ITS RELIGIOUS CONDITION. But Greek intellectual development,
due thus in part to a more extended view of Nature, was powerfully
aided by the knowledge then acquired of the religion of the conquered
country. The idolatry of Greece had always been a horror to Persia,
who, in her invasions, had never failed to destroy the temples and insult
the fanes of the bestial gods. The impunity with which these sacrileges
had been perpetrated had made a profound impression, and did no little
to undermine Hellenic faith. But now the worshiper of the vile
Olympian divinities, whose obscene lives must have been shocking to
every pious man, was brought in contact with a grand, a solemn, a
consistent religious system having its foundation on a philosophical
basis. Persia, as is the case with all empires of long duration, had
passed through many changes of religion. She had followed the
Monotheism of Zoroaster; had then accepted Dualism, and exchanged
that for Magianism. At the time of the Macedonian expedition, she
recognized one universal Intelligence, the Creator, Preserver, and
Governor of all things, the most holy essence of truth, the giver of all
good. He was not to be represented by any image, or any graven form.
And, since, in every thing here below,
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