no trouble; no second attempt was made to shake off the alien yoke, which may indeed have galled, but which was felt to be inevitable. In the final struggle of Persia against Alexander, the Parthians were faithful to their masters. They fought on the Persian side at Arbela;1 and though they submitted to Alexander somewhat tamely when he invaded their country, yet, as Darius was then dead, and no successor had declared himself, they cannot be taxed with desertion. Probably they felt little interest in the event of the struggle. Habit and circumstance caused them to send their contingent to Arbela at the call of the Great King; but when the Persian cause was evidently lost, they felt it needless to make further sacrifices. Having no hope of establishing their independence, they thought it unnecessary to prolong the contest. They might not gain, but they could scarcely lose, by a change of masters. 1 Arrian, iii. 8; Q. Curt. iv. 12. CHAPTER III. Condition of Western Asia under the earlier Seleucida. Revolts of Bactria and Parthia. Conflicting accounts of the establishment of the Parthian Kingdom. First War with Syria. Τὸ ἔθνος Μακεδόνων ἀπέστησαν, καὶ καθ ̓ ἑαυτοὺς ἦρξαν, καὶ ἐπὶ μέγα δυνάμεως hλaσav.-Arrian, Fr. 1. THE attempt of Alexander the Great to unite the whole civilised world in a single vast empire might perhaps have been a success if the mind which conceived the end, and which had to a considerable extent elaborated the means, had been spared to watch over its own work, and conduct it past the perilous period of infancy and adolescence. But the premature decease of the great Macedonian in the thirty-third year of his age, when his plans of fusion and amalgamation were only just beginning to develop themselves, and the unfortunate fact that among his 'Successors' there was not one who inherited either his grandeur of conception or his powers of execution, caused his scheme at once to collapse; and the effort to unite and consolidate led only to division and disintegration. In lieu of Europe being fused with Asia, Asia itself was split up. For nearly a thousand years, from the formation of the great Assyrian empire to the death of Darius Codomannus, Western Asia, from the Mediterranean to Affghanistan, or even to India, had been united under one head, had acknowledged one sovereign. Assyria, Media, Persia, had successively held the position of dominant power; and the last of the three had given union, and consequently peace, to a wider stretch of country and a vaster diversity of peoples than either of her predecessors. Under the mild yoke of the Achæmenian princes had been held together for two centuries, not only all the nations of Western Asia, from the Indian and Thibetan deserts to the Egean and the Mediterranean, but a great part of Africa also, that is to say, Egypt, north-eastern Libya, and the Greek settlements of Cyrene and Barca. The practical effect of the conquests of Alexander was to break up this unity, to introduce in the place of a single consolidated empire, a multitude of separate and contending kingdoms. The result was thus the direct opposite of the great conqueror's design, and forms a remarkable instance of the contradiction which so often subsists between the propositions of man and the dispositions of an overruling Providence. The struggle for power which broke out almost immediately after his death among the successors of Alexander may be regarded as having been brought to a close by the battle of Ipsus. The period of fermentation was then concluded, and something like a settled condition of things brought about. A quadripartite division of Alexander's dominions was recognised, Macedonia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria (or south-western Asia) becoming thenceforth distinct political entities. Asia Minor, the kingdom of Lysimachus, had indeed less of unity than the other three states. It was already disintegrated, the kingdoms of Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia, subsisting side by side with that of Lysimachus, which was thus limited to western and southwestern Asia Minor. After the death of Lysimachus further changes occurred; but the state of Pergamus, which sprang up at this time, may be regarded as the continuation of Lysimachus's kingdom, and as constituting from the time of Eumenes I. (B.c. 263) a fourth power in the various political movements and combinations of the Græco-Oriental world. Of the four powers thus established, the most important, and that with which we are here especially concerned, was the kingdom of Syria (as it was called), or that ruled for 247 years by the Seleucida. Seleucus Nicator, the founder of this kingdom, was one of Alexander's officers, but served without much distinction through the various campaigns by which the conquest of the East was effected. At the first distribution of provinces (B.c. 323) among Alexander's generals after his death, he received no share; 2 and it was not until B.C. 320, when upon the death of Perdiccas a fresh distribution was made at Triparadisus, that his merits were recognised, and he was given the satrapy of Babylon. In this position he acquired a character for mildness and liberality, and made himself generally beloved, both by his soldiers and by those who were under his government. In the struggle between Antigonus and Eumenes (B.c. 317-316), he embraced the side of the former, and did him some good service; but this, instead of evoking gratitude, appears to have only roused in Antigonus a spirit of jealousy. The ambitious aspirant after universal dominion, seeing in the popular satrap a possible, and far from a contemptible, rival, thought it politic to sweep him out of his way; and the career of Seleucus would have been cut short, had he not perceived his peril in time, and by a precipitate flight secured his safety. Accompanied by Seleucus is rarely mentioned by Arrian. His rame occurs only in v. 13, 16; vii. 4 and 26. 2 See Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. vii. pp. 139, 140; Grote, Hist. 3 Thirlwall, vol. vii. p. 245. a body of no more than fifty horsemen, he took the road for Egypt, escaped the pursuit of a detachment sent to overtake him, and threw himself on the protection of Ptolemy. This event, untoward in appearance, proved the turning-point in Seleucus's fortunes. It threw him into irreconcilable hostility with Antigonus, while it brought him forward before the eyes of men as one whom Antigonus feared. It gave him an opportunity of showing his military talents in the West, and of obtaining favour with Ptolemy, and with all those by whom Antigonus was dreaded. When the great struggle came between the confederate monarchs and the aspirant after universal dominion, it placed him on the side of the allies. Having recovered Babylon (B.c. 312), Seleucus led the flower of the eastern provinces to the field of Ipsus (B.C. 301), and contributed largely to the victory, thus winning himself a position among the foremost potentates of the day. By the terms of the agreement made after Ipsus, Seleucus was recognised as monarch of all the Greek conquests in Asia, with the sole exceptions of Lower Syria and Asia Minor.' The monarchy thus established extended from the Holy Land and the Mediterranean on the west, to the Indus valley and the Bolor mountain-chain upon the east, and from the Caspian and Jaxartes towards the north, to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean towards the south. It comprised Upper Syria, Mesopotamia, parts of Cappadocia and Phrygia, Armenia," Assyria, 1 Thirlwall, vol. vii. p. 401; Grote, vol. viii. p. 576. 2 Bishop Thirlwall notes that Armenia, shortly before the battle of Ipsus, was independent under Ardoates, a native king (vol. vii. p. 402, and compare Diod. Sic. xxxi. 19, § 5), and suggests that after Ipsus Seleucus was too much engaged with other affairs to bring Armenia under. But either Seleucus or one of his early successors must have reconquered Armenia, for it did not permanently establish its independence till B.C. 190. (Strab. xi. 14, § 5.) |