Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/769

Rh We have seen in our own day and in these very regions the revival of the Assyrian system of deportation. We have learned how terribly effective and how wasteful it all was and is. Revolt was stamped out by separating leaders and led, and by placing the former under such conditions as colonists that they secured only the hatred of the peoples among whom they were settled. Thus they were forced to look for protection to the very power which had dragged them across the empire. The Assyrian peace was indeed a very welcome change from the petty wars which were destroying the life of the east, and the Aramaean and Phoenician merchants were not slow to seize the opportunities which the Assyrian noble scorned. Thought followed trade along roads formerly taken by armies, and the deportations increased the cultural unification of the empire. For those who believe in cultural unification, the value of the system is obvious. There are those, however, who believe that smaller nations have their rights and their value to history. What would it have meant to the world, to take but a single illustration, if Ashur and the king had succeeded in reducing to a subordinate position Yahweh in his own temple at Jerusalem?

Then, too, the losses in deportation were enormous. Not all the women and children, the old men and the young, whom the sculptures show us marching into captivity, reached their goal. When mountaineers of Asia Minor were settled in the fever-laden swamps of Babylonia, few can have survived. And the deported were not the rank and file but the political leaders and the cultural as well, an Ezekiel as well as a Jehoiachin, to illustrate from the Chaldaean period. The breakdown of industry and trade, the lapsing of lands from cultivation, the loss of capital, the discouragement of further effort, all heavily discounted the Assyrian peace. Only the crushing taxation was needed to complete the dissolution of the Assyrian world.

The Chaldaeans followed the example of their Assyrian predecessors, but with the Persian Empire we have a difference. The very first ruler, Cyrus, shows in his dealings with Babylonians and Jews a desire to pacify the subject peoples, a marked toleration which was quite unlike the attitude of the Assyrians. A Darius might emphasize the supreme position of Ahuramazda, but he also cherished officially Apollo, and there was no worship of Persia and of the king. The empire was much larger, but instead of increasing the number of the provinces, their size was enlarged until some were little inferior to the old Assyrian empire in size, wealth, and population. The larger size of the provinces and the greater distance from