Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/159

Rh MACEDONIAN EMPIRE 141 to the native gods, as lie had done elsewhere, and this admixture of the religions of all countries largely influenced the later phases of heathenism. The priests recognized the Greek kings, and the later cuneiform inscriptions com memorate Seleucus and Antiochus. When Euemerus s view spread, that the gods were only deified men, a fusion of religions became still easier. The worship of the Sun- god and of Osiris, the god of ths dead (especially under his Grecized form at Sinope as Serapis), extended far and wide. In administering these countries, Alexander separated the civil, military, and financial functions, and, where natives were left in office, entrusted taxation and military command to. Macedonians. The great power of - the satraps had weakened the central government of Persia, and Alexander adopted a wiser plan, but his generals restored the old system after his death. The Persian treasures, dispersed by the conquest, gave a fresh stimulus to commerce, especially as Persia was rich in gold, which was scarce in the West. Alexander had already prepared the way for a universal currency by coining silver didrachms and tetradrachms after the Attic standard, which became current coinage over most of the East ; the Ptolemies, however, adopted the Phoenician standard for Egypt. Up to this point the countries conquered admitted of being more or less assimilated and Hellenized; but, when Alexander penetrated through the passes that led up to Perscpolis in Persia, and thence to Ecbatana in Media, and again north to secure the defiles that led down to the Caspian, and so skirting the southern flank of the range of Elburz to Hecatompylus in Parthia, the centre of the roads leading to Hyrcania (at the south-east of the Caspian), to Bactria, and to Ariana, and then from Kandahar northwards t j Cabul, and through the mighty range of the Hindu- Rush to Bactria (Balkh) south of the Oxus, and Sogdiana (Bokhara) between that river and the Jaxartes, and at last 9,3 far as the Indus and the Punjab, bis route lay through tribes that still possessed their native strength and power of resistance to foreign influence, though for the moment overborne by the superiority of the Western arms. Alexander saw the danger, and met it by settling Greek colonists in new cities which were to serve as military posts, depots of commerce, and centres from which to Hellenize the country districts ; and many of them are still important points in the East, though the desert has spread, and robber hordes have stopped some of the old caravan routes. Such places are Merv, Herat, Kandahar, Cabul, Samarkand, Khojend. Bactria and Sogdiana were to serve as a frontier against the wild hordes of the north, and thus Alexander s measures determined the fortune of Transoxiana for centuries. Some native rulers also were left to form a sort of barrier in front of the empire to the north and east. Alexander laid the main stress on securing the great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Oxus and Jaxartes, the Indus and Hydaspes. In Greece itself the Macedonian kings upheld tyrants or oligarchies, but here freer municipal constitutions were allowed to attract colonists. Alexander further planned to fuse the noble Persian race with the Greeks by intermarriage, and by giving the Persians equal rights in the army and the administration. Common service in these was the best means for Helleniz- ing the natives. This was a more generous plan than Aristotle s advice as to the way of ruling barbarians would have led to ; but Alexander saw that the Eastern peoples were not barbarians like the Illyrians. The culture of Egypt reached far back ; the astronomy and art of Babylon could not be despised ; the religions of Persia and India afforded matter of interest to Greek inquiry. These lands of ancient civilization might teach as well as learn some thing from Greece. The Eastern nation s responded to the ttmeh, and Persian legend to this day preserves the name of Iskander among the names of their national heroes. Alexander s conquests were to be justified by the result, by the union of East and West, and the diffusion of Western civilization over Asia. Even India should feel something of the new influence. Alexander would have made the nations into one. An old writer says, &quot; The elements of the nations lives were mixed together as in a love cup, and the nations drank of the same cup, and forgot their old enmity and their own weakness &quot; (Plut., De Fort. Alex,, i. G). There is, it is true, a reverse to the picture. The oppressive conduct of many of the Macedonians thus suddenly put into power was an evil omen of what might happen if their chief was removed ; and, if the East was becoming Hellenized, yet Alexander became in turn Orientalized. Could he remain a Western king and also an Oriental despot? a Greek and a Persian? It might be good policy, but Philip s old generals could not help show ing their disgust, and Clitus and others paid for it with their lives. The Greek states also felt the difference. Just before his death Alexander required them to worship him as a god, and, without any regard to the rules agreed on at the congress of Corinth, forbade the federal meetings of the Ach0eans and Arcadians, and issued a decree restoring all exiles to the various states. Greece became practically a province of the Eastern empire, and the patriots who had maintained the fight for freedom were more than justified by the rum that came on Greece through Alexander s successors. Even if he himself had not beea. spoilt by success and absolute power, yet he was but a lucky accident. And, though the Hellenizing influence spread over much of the East in a way to which there has been but one parallel, the mixture of German and Roman elements when the barbarians invaded the empire, yet Alexander s conquests, while they Hellenized Asia, tended to Asiatize Hellas ; they put an end to the genuine Hellenic spirit, to its productive genius and consummate literary and artistic excellence, as well as to its political freedom. The New Comedy shows how national life and public interests had died out ; with all its fine psychological analysis it does but dwell on the characters and situations of daily life and purely domestic feelings. But the braggart soldier is now a common character in the play, and slavery plays a greater part than ever. Last of all, Alexander inarched along the Cabul river, and through the pass of Jellalabad to the passage of the Indus by Attock ; but when he reached the Hyphasis (Sutlej) the weary troops refused to cross it and press on to the Ganges. He then sent Nearchus down the Indus, to sail round to the mouth of the Euphrates, and explore a route for traffic across the Indian Ocean. Nearchus profited by the monsoons, which thus became known to the Greek sailors. The king himself went down the river to see the great southern ocean with its strange tides, and he planned that an Alexandria on the Indus should communicate with the Alexandria of the Nile valley by an intermediate harbour on the Euphrates. He further planned the circumnavigation of Arabia, if not of Africa also, and a voyage to the north of the Caspian. At the same time Pytheas of Marseilles was exploring the British and Baltic seas. This enlarged and systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased means of communication among its inhabitants, was beneficial to civilization, if we may define growth in civilization as growth in the amount of services rendered to each other in civil society. The record kept by Alexander s quarter masters (bematista;) of the length of his marches gave succeeding geographers important information ; and it was more useful to Eratosthenes than the vague descriptions in the historians, who were striving after literary effect, and some of whose accounts were very legendary, for legends soon clustered round the name of the great con-