either existed no longer or had
sunk into their dotage. They had worn each other out in the centuries
of their prime, Chaldaeans and Assyrians fighting against Cossaeans or
Elamites, Egyptians against Ethiopians and against Hittites, Urartians,
Armaeans, the peoples of Lebanon and of Damascus, the Phoenicians,
Canaanites and Jews, until at last, with impoverished blood and flagging
energies, they were thrown into conflict with younger and more vigorous
nations. The Medes had swept away all that still remained of Assyria
and Urartu; the Persians had overthrown the Medes, the Lydians, and the
Chaldaeans, till Egypt alone remained and was struck down by them in her
turn. What had become of these conquered nations during the period
of nearly two hundred years that the Achaemenians had ruled over them?
First, as regards Elam, one of the oldest and formerly the most powerful
of them all. She had been rent into two halves, each of them destined
to have a different fate. In the mountains, the Uxians, Mardians,
Elymasans, and Cossaeans--tribes who had formerly been the backbone of
the nation--had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather,
while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization and
refinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adhering
obstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harried
the Chaldaeans or Assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried the
Persians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived on
the proceeds of their forays, successfully resisting all attempts made
to dislodge them. The people of the plains, on the other hand, kept in
check from the outset by the presence of the court at Susa, not only
promptly resigned themselves to their fate, but even took pleasure in
it, and came to look upon themselves as in some sort the masters of
Asia. Was it not to their country, to the very spot occupied by the
palace of their king, that, for nearly two hundred years, satraps,
vassal kings, the legates of foreign races, ambassadors of Greek
republics--in a word, all the great ones of this world--came every year
to render homage, and had not the treasures which these visitors brought
with them been expended, in part at any rate, on their country? The
memory of their former prosperity paled before the splendours of their
new destiny, and the glory of their ancestors suffered eclipse. The
names of the national kings, the story of their Chaldaean and