Success among nations
Reich, Emil, 1854-1910
.^ v-d «fc-*. a»'C'<«<^ CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 23 have little in their physical surroundings to recommend them. In every instance their inhabitants have either had immense natural difficulties to overcome, or, at least, great natural drawbacks to put up with. It is out of this constant wrestle with disadvantages that they have emerged with the temper of steel, and the hardened energy capable of carrying them irresistibljr ahmg^ the^ath^of the^^^^^ t^eirjife of struggles has helped them^ to conceive. It is invariably in spite of Nature that they have made themselves a place in the world. The most important events and institutions of history have been, directly or indirectly, inaugurated by Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Florence, Paris, and London. No place in the world would seem less fitted to become a centre of intellectual activity than Jerusalem. Standing high upon a narrow and precipitous limestone plateau, ill-watered, and with only here and there a patch of green fertility in the neighbourhood, little oases just broad enough to support their own small communities, no town could appear more unlikely to become the heart of all the religious ideas of modern times. Jerusalem was the one bond of union which knit together the scattered units of Israel. Here they had their common sanctuary and their common God, under whose protection all the tribes fought. Israel was the centre of a ring of enemies, and all her history is the record of a continuous struggle against them. It is, first, the victory of Ehu over the Moabites, then of Barak over the Canaanites, of Gideon over the Midianites, of Jephthah over the Ammonites, and of Samson over the Philistines. It is after half a century (TL/iCs. ©--w^ 24 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS of varying struggle against the Philistines, under Saul (1055 (?) B.a) and David (1025(?) b.c.), that Hebrew ^ religious poetry, culminating in the Psalms, attained \ its glory. -' The physical conditions under which Greek civilization grew up are particularly suggestive of reflection. Some of the contrasts which we encounter within the narrow limits of Greece are also especially instructive. In Attica, Nature had not been lavish of her gifts ; but albeit nowhere spontaneous in her bounty, she is always ready to give intelligent labour its reward. Perhaps no country was^ever better fitted^ to_call forth m^^^^^^^ energies. The valleys and plains of Attica, as is so often the case in mountainous countries, are exceedingly fertile, but the lowlands of Marathon and Eleusis, however generous their crops, could never cope with the food demands of the capital. Attica was forbidden from the outset to become a great corn-producing country. Cattle raising on an extensive scale was equally out of the question. But the olive gardens were rich, and the vineyards productive ; both entail the application of considerable skill. Wine and oil are not the staff of life, and the Athenians very soon found it necessary to barter their surplus supply of these commodities against the more imperative neces- sities of every day. Their natural outlet was towards the sea, the only real communication by land opening into Boeotia, whose markets were already overstocked. The rudiments of commerce Athens, no doubt, acquired from Phoenician traders ; but the rise of Athenian greatness coincides with the decadence of Phoenician Tyre and Sidon, which had fallen to Assyria, and CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 25 Athenian ships soon took the place of their predecessors on the high seas. The Athenian who stood on the heights of the Acropolis of his beautiful town and scanned the wide view thence over the Saronic Gulf must have felt the call of the sea. The regular alter- nation of westerly morning winds, which would carry him in a few hours among the Cyclades, and the evening breeze from the eastward to bring him home again, simplified the difficulties of navigation. But Athens won nothing save at the cost of toil and struggle, although that struggle was not always of too severe a nature. Her rising prosperity led her to appreciate at their value many of the possibilities of the home country. The silver mines at Laurium, close to Athens, which found labour for 20,000 men in the days of Athenian greatness, were turned to account. Sugar was as yet unknown, and wine required the admixture of honey for its good keeping. The hives of Hymettus were another valuable asset in the island commerce. The estimates of the ancient population of Attica are practically valueless, so wide are the discrepancies between the figures advanced by even the most competent authorities, but in so small a compass there was probably rarely, in the old world, so great a diversity of pursuits. Athenian^ agriculture was necessarilxin the hands of small holders ; large slave- plantations remained unknown jeven in the days of decadence, jind slavery at Athens always retained a grea't deal of that patriarchal element which com- pensated to some extent for its evils. Athens never experienced those formidable revolts, even when she would have been too weak to stamp them out, which so 26 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS often threatened the very existence of Eome and^ Sparta. In Athens aloney of all cities, there was, in the public market-place, an altar of Pity. The co-existence of men of so many interests in^o narrow a space (Attica is hardly the size of a small English county) cannot have failed to quicken the intelligence. On the Athenian agora (market-place) the common ground of the shepherd, farmer, and merchant, there must have been a constant give and take of ideas. Already the early Athenian's mental horizon must have been far wider than that of his fellow-beings in Egypt or Babylonia. Then, as Athenian vessels spread over the more distant seas, there must have been a constant influx of new conceptions. The foreigner was always tolerated in Athens, even fostered, and anything of value he may have brought from his native land among his intellectual baggage soon became absorbed into the general wealth of his adopted city, there to flourish and bear fruit. Caste restrictions^ were jmkno wn ; each^„ citizen was free to choose his own calling. No priest- craft existed to monopolize the intelligent thought of the nation. Rapidly prospering business drew capital into the country, and a class grew up which was not compelled to seek its subsistence by continual toil. They had mental cravings and higher aspirations to satisfy, and with what success they applied themselves to this task we shall see in the following chapters. As we turn away from Athens, from its port, the Peirseus, with its motley throng of traders and chaf- ferers from every quarter of the then known world, towards Boeotia, the contrast is striking. Here the CENTEES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 27 overflow of the Cephisus, recurring with the constant regularity of the Nile, has reproduced the condition of Egypt; ag^ricultural prosperity has drawn intellectual impotence in its tram, and throughout Greek history the Boeotian muses are unheard, save when the silence is broken by the voices of Hesiod and Pindar, the latter of whom could only sing beyond the stultifying atmo- sphere of his own land. In the moulding of Athenian destinies a yet more powerful agent was at work. On all sides Attica was open to attack. The hostility of the neighbouring countries, if not always active, needed but little to be- come so. Jealousy of the Athenian hegemony, envy of her affluence and of her colonial dominions, had taken a deep hold upon them. The allies of Athens were seldom loyal for long, and their friendship, based on interested motives, inspired but little confidence. They had con- templated with equanimity the devastation of Attica and the burning of Athens at the hands of the Persians (480 B.C.), little dreaming how soon she would rise with greater glory than ever from her ruins. The Persians were hardly disposed of, when Athens was plunged into wars at home, marked by the battles of Tanagra (457) and Coronea (447). During the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War the Athenian citizen was compelled to watch from the walls the wasting of his crops, until the almost annual inroads of his enemies gave place to the establishment of a permanent hostile garrison at Decelea, in Attica (413-404), within striking distance of the city gates. This constant exposure to danger, the mere fact that he must be constantly on the alert to ward off a sudden onslaught, did not allow the 28 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS Athenian to sink into a condition of mental coma. It? was only by the exercise of all his ingenuity, the strain-^ ing of every nerve and muscle, that he could make up for the losses suffered at home. His enterprise abroad received new impulse. The sea must be kept open at all costs ; once the Bosphorus was closed and the Black Sea corn ships cut off, Athens must inevitably succumb. War^is the parent of all things^ oncesaidjerhaps the greatest of _ Greek _^^ and in that short apophthegm of Heraclitus there lies more of the secret of Greek intellectual success than in all the elucubra- tions of subsequent theorizers put together. Not only Athens, but almost every other Greek state of impor- tance, owed its all to the constant struggles in which it was involved. The enemy hammering at the city gates, no matter whether he was an Asiatic barbarian or fellow-Greek, caused every inhabitant of the state to feel to the full his citizen nationality and his own importance as a national unit. InJ^he^few y^ears_of jhe so-called thirtyyears' jeace, which onl^ l5^*l^ frona 445-431, Athens reached those heights of axt and letters which have never been surpassed. Sophocles, the great dramatist, took part in the dances offered to the gods for the immense victory over the Persians at Salamis. He himself bore a hand in carrying out the Periclean policy, and in 443-442 filled the important office of Hellenotamias, being thus closely associated with Athenian colonial ideas. Euripides, the dramatist, was born on the day of the victory of Salamis (480), and was brought up amid fresh memories of the Persian war ; he saw the fall of Themistocles, lived through the years when Pericles and Cimon were battling for political (Z CENTEES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 29 supremacy, and went through all the hope and despair of the Poloponnesian War. ^schylus, the first of the great Athenian dramatists, fought at Salamis. Some of the greatest masterpieces of Athenian drama were staged when the war was at its height. The OEdipus Coloneus appeared about 430 B.C., the Philoctetes in 409 B.C., and the Orestes of Euripides in 408. The life of Athens was peculiarly calculated to encourage intel- lectual activity. The distinction between rich and poor raised up no social barrier, and the needy were always welcomed by their more fortunate countrymen if they only displayed some slight signs of intelligence. From morning to night everybody was out of doors, and it was in the street and public places that there was a constant interchange of ideas. The dialogues of Plato show how keen was speculation in every department, how fervent was the thirst for knowledge. These were the times when Protagoras and Gorgias came to Athens and held debates with Socrates, the culminating figure of the age of Pericles. We shall have occasion to speak later of the great artistic works with which Athens was filled at this time. Could we look back three hundred years and see the spot on which Eome now stands, there would be little in the sight which would lead us to suspect that we were contemplating the future capital of the world. A low group of hills, round which the yellow Tiber sweeps with a bend some fifteen miles before reaching the sea, and about their foot a sodden swamp from which the fever-laden miasma cannot have failed to work havoc in the ranks of the early settlers. Such is no site to allure the wanderer seeking for a home, 30 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS and we can well imagine that the primitive inhabitant did not take up his abode thereon as the outcome of his own untrammelled choice. For the lowlander, harried from the plains by the forays of his predatory neighbours, it is an ideal haven of refuge to which to fly in stress of need, and an ideal coign of vantage, whence his eye might scan the undulating campagna, and from which he could swoop down to exact reprisals. The origin of Rome is wrapped about in the same fog of uncertainties which veils the beginnings of Athens, yet we cannot doubt that the Eternal City was of humble parentage. In the passion for discipline and the stern law which she created, can we not yet discern the strict and severe order which had to crush out all dissension in a banditti fastness ? Why seek to disprove the legend which tells of the asylum opened on the Palatine Hill to harbour the persecuted stranger, whether innocent or criminal ? Already in the prehistoric days Rome was building up those ideals which were to make her mistress of the Western world. We shall see how different were her ideals from those which animated the cities of Greece. Unfavourable as the position at first glance might appear to be, it yet contained the elements of success. As the Greek colonists along the western and southern Italian coasts began to extend their relations into their hinterland, carrying their products into Etruria, the main trade-route would naturally seek to cross the Tiber somewhere near Rome. We know the importance which attached to bridge-building among the ancient Romans ; the name has survived in the pontifical title, if the thought thereof has been lost. Caravans of CENTEES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 31 merchandise must have been unceasingly on the come and go across the Pons Sublicius on their way to and from Caere, the commercial city of Etruria. The in- hospitable sea-coast would render the land route prefer- able to any other, even should it be more costly. Later, no doubt, light vessels would adventure them- selves across the sand-bar of Ostia and up the Tiber. A non-peasant population, principally aliens, soon settled at Rome. The increasing opulence of Rome, and her cramped position, hemmed in by a number of Latin cities, whose hostility was now embittered by jealousy, initiated the struggle which made her the mistress of Italy. Thenceforth the intervals of peace were to be few and far between. Already Rome had grasped her ideal of Empire-building, and was beginning to assimi- late her conquests with a completeness and rapidity which is stupendous. In . the short interval between the Italian wars and the opening of the struggle against Carthage, every- thing that we regard as essentially Roman is in full development. The foundations of Roman law were laid which were to remain unshaken till this very day ; ^e great colonizing policy^ far-seeing^ severe when severity was^ called for, and mild when expedient, was tested and found good. In art, letters, and science Rome never approached Greece. In all these spheres of thought the Roman was unimaginative. Roman art must be sought in her great roads of morticed stone, in adamantine buildings, and, above all, in the arch which Rome created, if not for beauty, yet for utility. Roman art must be sought for in her laws and institutions ; here it is that the vigour and initiative of the Roman mind is felt. 32 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS Eome did not remain insensible to the higher, if not always practical, flights of human intellect. Greek art was studied and assimilated with fervour, but never carried further. We have Eoman statues which are equal to the Greek in lightness of touch and technical execution, but the inspiration is Greek. It is imitation, not originality. No doubt the encounter with Greek art, which had reached perfection before Eome had emerged from barbarism, must have had a paralyzing effect upon the would-be Eoman artist. Latin literature, which was gradually beginning to flow slowly in channels of its own, is parched up at the outset, and Greek letters take its place. Eome never developed a middle class in the sense that such a class existed in Greece. The early Jnflux of slave labour and the innate ^contempt of the Eoman for handicraft had^ much to do with the absence of a l)ourgeoisie j^ioi^eTy^ and we have seen that it is from this class that art has always sprung. A slave-born art is impossible. It is a striking fact that, with barely an exception, not one of the names of honour in the annals of Eoman literature is that of a native Eoman. All her authors, except Caesar and Lucretius, are provincials, so that we may with justice speak rather of a Latin than a Eoman literature. The first Latin literary works are those of a Greek slave transplanted to Eome after the capture of Tarentum. But Eome was impatient of unofiicial initiative. The great personalities of early Eome are her magis- trates, her consuls, her praetors, her quaestors. What particular family name that magistrate may have borne is not material. Such a man was consul; not a particular CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 33 member of a particular gens^ however distinguished that gens might be. He impersonated some state prerogative, and with that his own initiative was merged. Outside these state personalities, individuality wa^ not encouraged. It wasl&etter for the Eoman burgess to be as like his fellow-burgess as possible. Rome was organized upon a military system which shows in striking contrast with that of Greece, where all is overflowing with exuberant vitality coming from unofl&cial or private sources. Florence is the chief centre from which the blaze of the Renaissance radiated over all Europe, yet the physical surroundings of the city do not mark her out as destined to play the principal rdle in the regenera- tion of humanity. She was, indeed, little indebted to nature. Her beautiful position on the Arno, backed by the Apennines, lent lustre to her glory, but did little in helping her to acquire pre-eminence. The plains were no doubt fertile, but her inhabitants never turned the soil to full account, and when some of the richer capitalists, in the days of the city's incipient decline, invested their money in land and essayed farming on a considerable scale, the enterprise either ended in failure or was early abandoned. Florence did not enjoy the sanitary advantages of modern times ; malaria, miliary fever, typhoid did not encourage the citizen to settle in the plains rather than on the more salubrious heights of Fiesole. The plague visited Florence in 1347 with even more disastrous effect than other towns of Northern Italy. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are estimated to have perished. A famous Florentine doctor of the eighteenth century, T. Targioni Tozetti, D 34 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS expresses his sorrow, from the health point of view, that the design of destroying Florence (in 1760) was not carried into effect, and the inhabitants were not transplanted to Empoli. The mean temperature is exceedingly high and liable to sudden and extreme variations. The Florentine has not the sturdy build of the Siennese or Milanese. Well on into the beginning of the Middle Ages the historical rdle of Florence was insignificant. Under the Eoman Empire, Fiesole (Fsesulse) was the only place of importance. After the fall of Eome the route from north to south changed. The Eoman had been accustomed to pass by way of Ancona, but in the Middle Ages the armies of invasion crossed the Apennines at Florence and marched by way of Siena and Viterbo upon Eome. The geographical position of Florence became in consequence one of first-rate importance. As a commercial centre its development was rapid. The continual going and coming of foreigners of many nations suggested to the Florentine new vistas of business ambition. He originated new systems of busi- ness methods, and began to feel the force of capital and to inaugurate a new era thereby in industrial production. The opulence to which Florence rose in a very short space of time could not but raise her a swarm of foes, while she herself was not insensible to the desire of extending her power at the expense of her economic rivals. Hence these interminable struggles with Pisa, with Lucca, with Siena, Arezzo, San Miniato and Fiesole. Many points of resemblance with Athenian history will at once strike the most casual observer. The banditti of the neighbouring regions had to be CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 35 disciplined by force and compelled to take up their abode in Florence. Hardly for a year together was the city quit of intestine dissensions. At one time it was the massacre of the Paterini (1240), at another the secular struggle of Guelph against Ghibelline. The predominant faction drives its rival into exile, until the vanquished, gathering forces abroad, find means of re-establishing themselves and reversing the process. Artisan riots, often very serious afi*airs like that of the Ciompi (1378), are not of rare occurrence. We can imagine what the everyday life of Florence must have been when eleven years of comparative tranquillity are considered as something abnormal (1379-1390). The struggles of Guelph and Ghibelline attained their maximum of fury during the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; yet it was precisely at this, epoch that Florence stood at the height of artistic glory. Dante took part in several expeditions against the Ghibellines of Pisa, Arezzo, and Bologna. His gallantry at the battle of Campaldino (1289), in which the Arezzo Ghibellines were crushed, was con- spicuous, and he bore himself with valour at the assault of Caprona (1290), when that city was wrested from Pisa. The quarrels of the Guelphs among themselves, the struggle of the Bianchi against the Neri, drove him abroad (1302). It is impossible to describe in detail the part played by many another great Florentine in the fortunes of his mother city, but let dates speak for themselves. Cimabue the painter lived from 1240 to 1302; Giotto the painter (1276-1336) was the friend of Dante, w^ho devotes several stanzas of the Divina 36 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS Commedia to his praises ; not to mention many others who belong to this period. In Florence feudal ideas of nobility met with little respect. Work was the order of the day, and enterprise in business brought esteem and honour. Growing affluence created a leisured bourgeoisie. Of this class came Boccaccio, who was the son of a merchant, and was himself put to work in counting-houses at Florence, Naples, and Paris. And how many another great man of the Florentine school of art and letters went through the same training. It was under free institutions that Florence attained the maximum of her grandeur. The impulse of those times still produced many great men under the Medici. We need only mention Lionardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo, but from that time the glory of Florence began to wane. Of Paris little need be said, save that its position was none of the most favourable for the founding of a great city. Throughout the early Middle Ages Paris remained a town of comparatively small importance, and it was not until the royal power began to assert itself over the surrounding feudal nobility that the city began to raise its head. Henceforth Paris was to share the good or evil fortune of the King of France, and it is when the monarchical power, after long years of strife, succeeded in establishing its supreme right, that Paris became the focus of French thought and civilization. Naturally Paris is not at all the centre of France, the true central point lying in the neighbourhood of Bourges. One salient mark of intellectual inferiority character- izes almost every one of the nations of whose material success we spoke in the last chapter. The want of an CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 37 alphabetical system of writing was as fatal to their intellectual progress as its absence was the stamp of their intellectual stagnation. Of all these nations, the Egyptians came nearest to a complete phonetic system, and it appears almost inconceivable that they should have hovered for thousands of years upon the brink of that momentous discovery without ever achieving it. They were within a step of realizing an alphabet, but that step they were never able to make. The hiero- glyphic script, which shows but little advance through all the known periods, was even in its highest develop- ment only a conglomeration of ideographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements. The difficulties which are entailed in mastering so complicated a contrivance must have always caused it to remain the prerogative of an extremely limited section of the community, and it was consequently wholly unavailable as a medium of general culture. Many of the symbols which we employ to-day are no doubt descendants, battered out of all shape and recognition by the wear and tear of centuries, of some of the ancient ideograms of Egypt and Chaldaea. The erudite labours of German philologists have succeeded in establishing in many instances a practically unbroken genealogical tree of our modern characters, but this philological method of research is liable to lead to serious misapprehensions. It is quite unjustifiable to conclude that, because one or two of the signs are Egyptian, therefore the alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Whence the symbols were borrowed is absolutely immaterial. The fact remains that the Egyptian was never able thoroughly to realize the restricted number of sounds in speech. He was 38 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS quite unable to grasp that the whole gamut of ele- mentary sounds which his tongue articulated did not outnumber thirty at the most. This brilliant generali- zation was to be made by the Phoenicians, and their traditional claim to this high honour has never been seriously shaken, in spite of the learned disquisitions of Dr. Hugo Winckler. A homely comparison will perhaps help to enforce the absurdity of ascribing the invention of the alphabet to the Egyptians. It is well known that prisoners in convict establishments, no matter of what country, are able to communicate with one another by a series of preconcerted tapping signals. For instance, any arbitrary combination of short and long raps, such as ^ ^ - ", might express some particular meaning according to pre-arranged plan. It would be, however, quite ridiculous to conclude from this that our convict was the originator of the Morse system of electric telegraphy, because in that system, as is well known, letters are signalled in the same manner by a succession of long or short raps. It would be difficult to overrate the importance of the Phoenician discovery. At one bound man was given the most perfect instrument for recording his thought. The Egyptians must have had every oppor- tunity of profiting by the Phoenician invention, but the extent to which conservatism and conventionalism had taken hold of them is shown by the fact that they never adopted a truly alphabetical writing. Egyptian hiero- glyphs were, however, an immeasurable advance upon cuneiform writing, and in comparison with both the Mexican picture records were absolutely primitive. We have nothing to show that the Mexican had ever CENTRES OF NATIONAL SUCCESS 39 reached even the first stage of phonetic writing. His pictures bore an arbitrary and conventional ideographic sense which was in no way related to the sound. The practice of such a contrivance necessitated years of labour with an excellent memory to boot, and had not very much to recommend it above oral tradition. Many great authorities assert that it would be impossible to adapt any alphabetical system to the requirements of Chinese ; if that is the case, the Chinese nation has an insuperable barrier in the way of its future progress. A system of writing which entails not only a good memory and skilful hand, but also compels a man to spend the best years, or at least the most receptive years, of his life in its acquisition, can never serve as the medium of a high culture. It need hardly be men- tioned that the quipu or Peruvian thread writing, if writing it may be called, though its secret has been lost, can have been little better than a memoria technica. CHAPTER III SUCCESS IN IMPERIALISM. — I Some nations succeed in bringing a greater or lesser number of people under their rule. Such are the Persians, the Mongols, the Macedonians, the Romans. Distinction between these nations : (a) some (examples) mere brute conquerors, establishing tyrannies, not states ; (6) others (examples) establishing not mere conquests, but states proper. The next variety of success coming under our consider- ation is political, or rather the success experienced by some nations in bringing a lesser or greater number of other nations under their dominion. When the number of nations subdued is large, or when the territory acquired is extensive, it is generally customary to give these conquests the title of Empire. We shall have occasion to observe that empires have differed widely not only in quantity but in quality, and with this object we shall select some of the most typical examples of empire-building, it being impossible within so narrow a compass to enter into exhaustive descriptions of all the imperial states which have risen into eminence and fallen into decline during the world's history. The selection of a few salient types cannot fail to be more profitable and instructive. At the very outset we cannot help being profoundly SUCCESS IN IMPERIALISM 41 struck by certain general features which invariably characterize the growth of these empires, and, amongst other things, we cannot help wondering at the facility and comparative rapidity with which these vast territorial acquisitions have been accumulated when compared with the slow and painful steps by which the governing nation has often attained its own national unity. It has been a matter of far greater difficulty to weld together a few small but highly individualized tribes or nations, such, for instance, as constitute the countries of modern Europe, than to pile together an immense agglomeration of land, peopled by races whose con- science of their national entity is either undeveloped or degenerated. The whole of the Roman Empire was constructed within the short space of a couple of centuries, whilst the nnitj of modern Italy has only been reached after fifteen centuries of struggle, and at the price of untold misery and J3loodsh^. When we know the history of one Oriental dynasty, a slight change of names will allow us to reconstruct the history of any other with almost mathematical precision. In every case some warlike, courageous chief puts himself at the head of a needy but no less coura- geous tribe, and hurls himself against the already decadent structure of the empire to which he is nominally a subject. The empire promptly collapses, aad the insurgent chieftain possesses himself of the inheritance of his sometime masters, and becomes the founder of a new empire, which in its turn is doomed to a similar end. Such is the history of Cyrus and of the rise of the Persian dominion. Of the early doings 42 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS of Cyrus we know but little, save that at the head of the malcontent Persians, who chafed under the yoke of the Medes, he defeated these latter in a couple of battles, and possessed himself of the Medic Empire (544). Carried on by the impetus of his success, he proceeded next to demolish the kingdom of Lydia. Croesus was beaten in the Thymbrsean plains and taken alive at Sardis (544), Babylon was the next to fall (538), and with it all its possessions passed under Persian rule. Macedonia was far behind the rest of Greece in point of view of intellectual culture, and, politically speaking, the part played by the country is insignificant down to the time of King Philip 11. , in the fourth century B.C. It was through the personality of Philip alone that Macedonia came to the forefront of Hellenic afiairs. In a short reign of twenty-three years, by dint of sheer political genius, he raised his country to the position of arbiter, or rather dictator, over the whole of Greece, with the exception of Sparta. As Philip had possessed political ability of the first order, his son Alexander had pre-eminent military talent, and we shall see that, as the regeneration of Macedonia was entirely the personal achievement of Philip, so the conquest of a vast oriental dominion by Alexander was exclusively the outcome of that monarch's individual ambition. Alexander is in no way a personification of Greek or Macedonian aspirations. Philip had grasped one fact of immeasurable impor- tance, and upon that fact he had based the whole of his far-reaching policy. This fact was the absolute incapability of the Greek states for concerted action. The grandiose raid of the ten thousand Greeks right into SUCCESS IN IMPERIALISM 43 the heart of the Persian dominions had revealed the impotence of the Persian Empire. This was the lesson which Alexander took to heart. It is not at all in- credible that Philip may have conceived the plan of overthrowing the power of Persia. At all events, Alexander had learnt the lesson well before he had reached his twentieth year. After disposing of a few insurrectionary movements at home, he hastened to put his plan to the test. In little more than twelve years Alexander had built up an empire in which the domin- ions of Persia were only the major part. Leaving Pella in the spring of 334, at the head of an army of 30,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry, Alex- ander marched by way of Thrace and the Chersonese to the Hellespont, which he crossed at Eleontes. Thence the route lay along the coast of Asia Minor, via Abydos and Lampsacus. The Persian army which sought to dispute his passage of the Granicus was utterly defeated (May or June, 334) in the battle of that name. In two years the whole of Asia Minor, as far as Cappadocia and Cilicia, lay at the feet of Alexander, and he was in a position to push forward. The Persians had again occupied an important strategic point, where the road lay squeezed between mountain and sea at Issus. This time the Persian army, reinforced by Greek mercenaries, who alone considerably outnumbered the force of Alexander, was commanded by the Persian King Darius in person. It was again routed (October, 333), and Alexander's road lay clear into Syria and Phoenicia. Tyre fell after a desperate resistance of seven months ; the siege of Gaza occupied two more months (November, 332) ; and 44 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS Alexander, after thus mastering Palestine, was enabled to proceed to the annexation of Egypt, which oflfered no great difficulties. At this time took place the foundation of Alexandria. On his return from Egypt, and having, by the conquest of Western Asia, assured his base and communications, Alexander turned to the heart of the Persian Empire. Not far from Nineveh, at Gaugamela, he again encountered Darius at the head of overwhelming numbers. Alexanders consummate strategy and disciplined troops once more secured him a crushing victory (October 1, 331), and Darius fled to the mountains, to be butchered by the revolted satrap Bessus. Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, next fell to the conqueror, and the latter city was burnt to the ground. Alexander, moving with an incredible rapidity, secured all the provinces of the Persian Empire from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. He penetrated into the depths of Russian Turkestan, where he founded Alexandria Eschate. By this time the mutinous atti- tude of the troops was growing more and more menac- ing ; but Alexander, still hankering for fresh conquests, pushed on towards India. On the Indus he defeated King Porus, the ruler of a great kingdom occupying what is now known as the Punjaub. Alexander was now bent on reaching the Ganges, and the Sutlej was already behind him, when his men categorically declined to move a step further, and he was compelled, bitterly unwilling, to retire to the delta of the Indus (325), whence half his army were shipped by sea to the mouth of the Tigris, while he himself returned by land to Babylon. In the early summer of 323 Alexander fell a victim SUCCESS IN IMPERIALISM 45 to an attack of fever, and his plans of fresh conquest perished with him ; and as he left no successor, the empire which he had built up fell a prey to internal dissension, and in no long time collapsed. It is a widely prevalent opinion that to Alexander is due the Hellenization of Asia, so far as Hellenization ever did lay hold of Asia. To Alexander also have been attributed, on what authority it is difficult to divine, the most elaborate projects of interior adminis- tration. It would be hard to find in the life of Alexander anything that could justify us in the hypo- thesis that he was contemplating anything like an organized government of his unwieldy dominions. Had he survived, we can only suppose that he would have endeavoured to indefinitely extend the sphere of his conquests. At the moment of his death he was pre- paring for the subjugation of Arabia, and, from his private correspondence with Crater us, we learn that he had really conceived the ideal of universal dominion. It seems most unlikely that he would have materially interfered with the old system of things which had existed under the Persian rule, except in so far as his iron hand would have ensured him a greater degree of respect and obedience upon the part of the frequently too independent satraps. Alexander regarded his newly acquired possessions as important only so long as they were capable of supplying him with fresh treasures of money and fresh bodies of recruits wherewith to prosecute his grandiose designs. His whole govern- ment was an efficient tax-levying machine. It does not appear that Alexander was any fervent admirer of Hellenic institutions, and we have no reason 46 SUCCESS AMONG NATIONS to suppose that lie was at all set upon introducing such institutions into Eastern dominions. He, on the con- trary, assumed oriental habits of life himself, and, as far as we can see, endeavoured to induce his principal oflEicers to follow suit. On the authority of Plutarch, we learn that Alexander consulted Aristotle upon the best methods to follow in colonizing his new empire; but this was, no doubt, early in his career, as we know the deep hatred which he conceived for Aristotle later in life. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the Roman conception of empire building and the achievements of Alexander the Great, hi^ the forma- tion of^he Eoman Em^ireJndJviduaJ^^^^^^ had very little share ; Rome was fortunate from time to time in the possession of military genius of the first order ; but the Roman dominions continued to extend with amazing rapidity, no matter who was at the head of the Roman armies. No country has ever carried out an imperial ambition with such thoroughness, for in the Roman Empire our admiration is not excited by the marvellous strategic combinations^ by which it was acg[uired, so much as by the rapidity with which the newly won provinces were absorbed_and Romanized. The Roman provincial very soon became more Roman than if he had been born within the circle of the seven hills. All the great empires of the East have suc- cumbed, leaving scarcely a trace upon the countries which they embrace. The Eoman language is still spoken from the iBlack Sea to the Atlantic, and all the invasions of barbaric hordes, Slav, Teutonic, or Turanian, have not succeeded in materially reducing its domain. SUCCESS IN IMPERIALISM 47 Surely it is a striking fact that the Greek, who was intellectually far and away the superior of the Roman, has not succeeded in imposing his tongue upon a single non -Hellenic nation, while Spain within the second century of its conquest was adding such names as Seneca, Lucan, Martial, and Pomponius Mela, to the list of Eoman writers. We cannot explain Roman success by the superior military organization of the Roman army. As a matter of historic fact, every one nation of antiquity had the honour and glory of having signally defeated Roman armies in more than one sanguinary battle. We should far rather seek a solution of the problem in the history of the peoples which Rome had overcome. Much light will be shed upon the subject if we compare the position of the Romans as conquerors of Europe and Asia with that of the English invaders of India. In very many countries which the Romans absorbed there was, after 149 B.C., no attempt at really serious op- position. The inhabitants had become nationally ^effete after centuries of struggle for independence followed by a period of pressing and tyrannical misrule. 