Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic generals, so
profoundly impressed on the Greeks by such engineering exploits
as the bridging of the Hellespont, and the cutting of the isthmus
at Mount Athos by Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis,
Platea, Mycale. To plunder rich Persian provinces had become an
irresistible temptation. Such was the expedition of Agesilaus,
the Spartan king, whose brilliant successes were, however,
checked by the Persian government resorting to its time-proved
policy of bribing the neighbors of Sparta to attack her. "I have
been conquered by thirty thousand Persian archers," bitterly
exclaimed Agesilaus, as he re-embarked, alluding to the Persian
coin, the Daric, which was stamped with the image of an archer.

THE INVASION OF PERSIA BY GREECE. At length Philip, the King of
Macedon, projected a renewal of these attempts, under a far more
formidable organization, and with a grander object. He managed to
have himself appointed captain-general of all Greece not for the
purpose of a mere foray into the Asiatic satrapies, but for the
overthrow of the Persian dynasty in the very centre of its power.
Assassinated while his preparations were incomplete, he was
succeeded by his son Alexander, then a youth. A general assembly
of Greeks at Corinth had unanimously elected him in his father's
stead. There were some disturbances in Illyria; Alexander had to
march his army as far north as the Danube to quell them. During
his absence the Thebans with some others conspired against him.
On his return he took Thebes by assault. He massacred six
thousand of its inhabitants, sold thirty thousand for slaves, and
utterly demolished the city. The military wisdom of this severity
was apparent in his Asiatic campaign. He was not troubled by any
revolt in his rear.

THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGN. In the spring B.C. 334 Alexander crossed
the Hellespont into Asia. His army consisted of thirty-four
thousand foot and four thousand horse. He had with him only
seventy talents in money. He marched directly on the Persian
army, which, vastly exceeding him in strength, was holding the
line of the Granicus. He forced the passage of the river, routed
the enemy, and the possession of all Asia Minor, with its
treasures, was the fruit of the victory. The remainder of that
year he spent in the military organization of the conquered
provinces. Meantime Darius, the Persian king, had advanced an
army of six hundred thousand men to prevent the passage of the
Macedonians into Syria. In a battle that ensued among the
mountain-defiles at Issus, the Persians were again overthrown. So
great was the slaughter that Alexander, and Ptolemy, one of his
generals, crossed over a ravine choked with dead bodies. It was
estimated that the Persian loss was not less than ninety thousand
foot and ten thousand horse. The royal pavilion fell into the
conqueror's hands, and with it the wife and several of the
children of Darius. Syria was thus added to the Greek conquests.
In Damascus were found many of the concubines of Darius and his
chief officers, together with a vast treasure.

Before venturing into the plains of Mesopotamia for the final
struggle, Alexander, to secure his rear and preserve his
communications with the sea, marched southward down the
Mediterranean coast, reducing the cities in his way. In his
speech before the council of war after Issus, he told his
generals that they must not pursue Darius with Tyre unsubdued,
and Persia in possession of Egypt and Cyprus, for, if Persia
should regain her seaports, she would transfer the war into
Greece, and that it was absolutely necessary for him to be
sovereign at sea. With Cyprus and Egypt in his possession he felt
no solicitude about Greece. The siege of Tyre cost him more than
half a year. In revenge for this delay, he crucified, it is said,
two thousand of his prisoners. Jerusalem voluntarily surrendered,
and therefore was treated leniently: but the passage of the
Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza, the Persian
governor of which, Betis, made a most obstinate defense, that
place, after a siege of two months, was carried by assault, ten
thousand of its men were massacred, and the rest, with their
wives and children, sold into slavery. Betis himself was dragged
alive round the city at the chariot-wheels of the conqueror.
There was now no further obstacle. The Egyptians, who detested
the Persian rule, received their invader with open arms. He
organized the country in his own interest, intrusting all its
military commands to Macedonian officers, and leaving the civil
government in the hands of native Egyptians.

CONQUEST OF EGYPT. While preparations for the final campaign were
being made, he undertook a journey to the temple of Jupiter
Ammon, which was situated in an oasis of the Libyan Desert, at a
distance of two hundred miles. The oracle declared him to be a
son of that god who, under the form of a serpent, had beguiled
Olympias, his mother. Immaculate conceptions and celestial
descents were so currently received in those days, that whoever
had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was
thought to be of supernatural lineage. Even in Rome, centuries
later, no one could with safety have denied that the city owed
its founder, Romulus, to an accidental meeting of the god Mars
with the virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for
water to the spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have
looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that
Perictione, the mother of that great philosopher, a pure virgin,
had suffered an immaculate conception through the influences of
Apollo, and that the god had declared to Ariston, to whom she was
betrothed, the parentage of the child. When Alexander issued his
letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself "King Alexander,
the son of Jupiter Ammon," they came to the inhabitants of Egypt
and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be realized. The
free- thinking Greeks, however, put on such a supernatural
pedigree its proper value. Olympias, who, of course, better than
all others knew the facts of the case, used jestingly to say,
that "she wished Alexander would cease from incessantly
embroiling her with Jupiter's wife." Arrian, the historian of the
Macedonian expedition, observes, "I cannot condemn him for
endeavoring to draw his subjects into the belief of his divine
origin, nor can I be induced to think it any great crime, for it
is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no more by it than
merely to procure the greater authority among his soldiers."

GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA. All things being thus secured in his
rear, Alexander, having returned into Syria, directed the march
of his army, now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, eastward.
After crossing the Euphrates, he kept close to the Masian hills,
to avoid the intense heat of the more southerly Mesopotamian
plains; more abundant forage could also thus be procured for the
cavalry. On the left bank of the Tigris, near Arbela, he
encountered the great army of eleven hundred thousand men brought
up by Darius from Babylon. The death of the Persian monarch,
which soon followed the defeat he suffered, left the Macedonian
general master of all the countries from the Danube to the Indus.
Eventually he extended his conquest to the Ganges. The treasures
he seized are almost beyond belief. At Susa alone he found--so
Arrian says--fifty thousand talents in money.

EVENTS OF THE CAMPAIGNS. The modern military student cannot look
upon these wonderful campaigns without admiration. The passage of
the Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the winter spent in
a political organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of
the right wing and centre of the army along the Syrian
Mediterranean coast; the engineering difficulties overcome at the
siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the isolation of Persia from
Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from the
Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with
or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to
with success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in
the political organization of that venerable country; the
convergence of the whole army from the Black and Red Seas toward
the nitre- covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring;
the passage of the Euphrates fringed with its weeping- willows at
the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing of the Tigris; the
nocturnal reconnaissance before the great and memorable battle of
Arbela; the oblique movement on the field; the piercing of the
enemy's centre--a manoeuvre destined to be repeated many
centuries subsequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit of
the Persian monarch; these are exploits not surpassed by any
soldier of later times.

A prodigious stimulus was thus given to Greek intellectual
activity. There were men who had marched with the Macedonian army
from the Danube to the Nile, from the Nile to the Ganges. They
had felt the hyperborean blasts of the countries beyond the Black
Sea, the simooms and sand-tempests of the Egyptian deserts. They
had seen the Pyramids which had already stood for twenty
centuries, the hieroglyph-covered obelisks of Luxor, avenues of
silent and mysterious sphinxes, colossi of monarchs who reigned
in the morning of the world. In the halls of Esar-haddon they had
stood before the thrones of grim old Assyrian kings, guarded by
winged bulls. In Babylon there still remained its walls, once
more than sixty miles in compass, and, after the ravages of three
centuries and three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in
height; there were still the ruins of the temple of cloud
encompassed Bel, on its top was planted the observatory wherein
the weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal communion with
the stars; still there were vestiges of the two palaces with
their hanging gardens in which were great trees growing in
mid-air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had
supplied them with water from the river. Into the artificial lake
with its vast apparatus of aqueducts and sluices the melted snows
of the Armenian mountains found their way, and were confined in
their course through the city by the embankments of the
Euphrates. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, was the tunnel under
the river-bed.

EFFECT ON THE GREEK ARMY. If Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, presented
stupendous and venerable antiquities reaching far back into the
night of time, Persia was not without her wonders of a later
date. The pillared halls of Persepolis were filled with miracles
of art--carvings, sculptures, enamels, alabaster libraries,
obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls. Ecbatana, the cool summer
retreat of the Persian kings, was defended by seven encircling
walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in
succession of increasing height, and of different colors, in
astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was
roofed with silver tiles, its beams were plated with gold. At
midnight, in its halls the sunlight was rivaled by many a row of
naphtha cressets. A paradise--that luxury of the monarchs of the
East--was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian Empire,
from the Hellespont to the Indus, was truly the garden of the
world.

EFFECTS ON THE GREEK ARMY. I have devoted a few pages to the
story of these marvelous campaigns, for the military talent they
fostered led to the establishment of the mathematical and
practical schools of Alexandria, the true origin of science. We
trace back all our exact knowledge to the Macedonian campaigns.
Humboldt has well observed that an introduction to new and grand
objects of Nature enlarges the human mind. The soldiers of
Alexander and the hosts of his camp-followers encountered at
every march unexpected and picturesque scenery. Of all men, the
Greeks were the most observant, the most readily and profoundly
impressed. Here there were interminable sandy plains, there
mountains whose peaks were lost above the clouds. In the deserts
were mirages, on the hill-sides shadows of fleeting clouds
sweeping over the forests. They were in a land of amber-colored
date-palms and cypresses, of tamarisks, green myrtles, and
oleanders. At Arbela they had fought against Indian elephants; in
the thickets of the Caspian they had roused from his lair the
lurking royal tiger. They had seen animals which, compared with
those of Europe, were not only strange, but colossal--the
rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camel, the crocodiles of the
Nile and the Ganges. They had encountered men of many complexions
and many costumes: the swarthy Syrian, the olive-colored Persian.
the black African. Even of Alexander himself it is related that
on his death-bed he caused his admiral, Nearchus, to sit by his
side, and found consolation in listening to the adventures of
that sailor--the story of his voyage from the Indus up the
Persian Gulf. The conqueror had seen with astonishment the ebbing
and flowing of the tides. He had built ships for the exploration
of the Caspian, supposing that it and the Black Sea might be
gulfs of a great ocean, such as Nearchus had discovered the
Persian and Red Seas to be. He had formed a resolution that his
fleet should attempt the circumnavigation of Africa, and come
into the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules--a feat
which, it was affirmed, had once been accomplished by the
Pharaohs.

INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Not only her greatest soldiers,
but also her greatest philosophers, found in the conquered empire
much that might excite the admiration of Greece. Callisthenes
obtained in Babylon a series of Chaldean astronomical
observations ranging back through 1,903 years; these he sent to
Aristotle. Perhaps, since they were on burnt bricks, duplicates
of them may be recovered by modern research in the clay libraries
of the Assyrian kings. Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer,
possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses, going back 747 years
before our era. Long-continued and close observations were
necessary, before some of these astronomical results that have
reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus the
Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropical year within
twenty-five seconds of the truth; their estimate of the sidereal
year was barely two minutes in excess. They had detected the
precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes of eclipses,
and, by the aid of their cycle called Saros, could predict them.
Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than
6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth.

INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. Such facts furnish
incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which
astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very
inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable
perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the
stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted
the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as
Alistotle says, for a long time devoted themselves to
observations of star-occultations by the moon. They had correct
views of the structure of the solar system, and knew the order of
the emplacement of the planets. They constructed sundials,
clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons.

Not without interest do we still look on specimens of their
method of printing. Upon a revolving roller they engraved, in
cuneiform letters, their records, and, running this over plastic
clay formed into blocks, produced ineffaceable proofs. From their
tile-libraries we are still to reap a literary and historical
harvest. They were not without some knowledge of optics. The
convex lens found at Nimroud shows that they were not
unacquainted with magnifying instruments. In arithmetic they had
detected the value of position in the digits, though they missed
the grand Indian invention of the cipher.

What a spectacle for the conquering Greeks, who, up to this time,
had neither experimented nor observed! They had contented
themselves with mere meditation and useless speculation.

ITS RELIGIOUS CONDITION. But Greek intellectual development, due
thus in part to a more extended view of Nature, was powerfully
aided by the knowledge then acquired of the religion of the
conquered country. The idolatry of Greece had always been a
horror to Persia, who, in her invasions, had never failed to
destroy the temples and insult the fanes of the bestial gods. The
impunity with which these sacrileges had been perpetrated had
made a profound impression, and did no little to undermine
Hellenic faith. But now the worshiper of the vile Olympian
divinities, whose obscene lives must have been shocking to every
pious man, was brought in contact with a grand, a solemn, a
consistent religious system having its foundation on a
philosophical basis. Persia, as is the case with all empires of
long duration, had passed through many changes of religion. She
had followed the Monotheism of Zoroaster; had then accepted
Dualism, and exchanged that for Magianism. At the time of the
Macedonian expedition, she recognized one universal Intelligence,
the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, the most holy
essence of truth, the giver of all good. He was not to be
represented by any image, or any graven form. And, since, in
every thing here below, we see the resultant of two opposing
forces, under him were two coequal and coeternal principles,
represented by the imagery of Light and Darkness. These
principles are in never-ending conflict. The world is their
battle-ground, man is their prize.

In the old legends of Dualism, the Evil Spirit was said to have
sent a serpent to ruin the paradise which the Good Spirit had
made. These legends became known to the Jews during their
Babylonian captivity.

The existence of a principle of evil is the necessary incident of
the existence of a principle of good, as a shadow is the
necessary incident of the presence of light. In this manner could
be explained the occurrence of evil in a world, the maker and
ruler of which is supremely good. Each of the personified
principles of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, had his
subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It is the duty of
a good man to cultivate truth, purity, and industry. He may look
forward, when this life is over, to a life in another world, and
trust to a resurrection of the body, the immortality of the soul,
and a conscious future existence.

In the later years of the empire, the principles of Magianism had
gradually prevailed more and more over those of Zoroaster.
Magianism was essentially a worship of the elements. Of these,
fire was considered as the most worthy representative of the
Supreme Being. On altars erected, not in temples, but under the
blue canopy of the sky, perpetual fires were kept burning, and
the rising sun was regarded as the noblest object of human
adoration. In the society of Asia, nothing is visible but the
monarch; in the expanse of heaven, all objects vanish in presence
of the sun.

DEATH OF ALEXANDER. Prematurely cut off in the midst of many
great projects Alexander died at Babylon before he had completed
his thirty-third year (B.C. 323). There was a suspicion that he
had been poisoned. His temper had become so unbridled, his
passion so ferocious, that his generals and even his intimate
friends lived in continual dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he
in a moment of fury had stabbed to the heart. Callisthenes, the
intermedium between himself and Aristotle, he had caused to be
hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who knew the
facts, had had him put upon the rack and then crucified. It may
have been in self-defense that the conspirators resolved on his
assassination. But surely it was a calumny to associate the name
of Aristotle with this transaction. He would have rather borne
the worst that Alexander could inflict, than have joined in the
perpetration of so great a crime.

A scene of confusion and bloodshed lasting many years ensued, nor
did it cease even after the Macedonian generals had divided the
empire. Among its vicissitudes one incident mainly claims our
attention. Ptolemy, who was a son of King Philip by Arsinoe, a
beautiful concubine, and who in his boyhood had been driven into
exile with Alexander, when they incurred their father's
displeasure, who had been Alexander's comrade in many of his
battles and all his campaigns, became governor and eventually
king of Egypt.

FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDER. At the siege of Rhodes, Ptolemy had been
of such signal service to its citizens that in gratitude they
paid divine honors to him, and saluted him with the title of
Soter (the Savior). By that designation--Ptolemy Soter--he is
distinguished from succeeding kings of the Macedonian dynasty in
Egypt.

He established his seat of government not in any of the old
capitals of the country, but in Alexandria. At the time of the
expedition to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, the Macedonian
conqueror had caused the foundations of that city to be laid,
foreseeing that it might be made the commercial entrepot between
Asia and Europe. It is to be particularly remarked that not only
did Alexander himself deport many Jews from Palestine to people
the city, and not only did Ptolemy Soter bring one hundred
thousand more after his siege of Jerusalem, but Philadelphus, his
successor, redeemed from slavery one hundred and ninety-eight
thousand of that people, paying their Egyptian owners a just
money equivalent for each. To all these Jews the same privileges
were accorded as to the Macedonians. In consequence of this
considerate treatment, vast numbers of their compatriots and many
Syrians voluntarily came into Egypt. To them the designation of
Hellenistical Jews was given. In like manner, tempted by the
benign government of Soter, multitudes of Greeks sought refuge in
the country, and the invasions of Perdiccas and Antigonus showed
that Greek soldiers would desert from other Macedonian generals
to join is armies.

The population of Alexandria was therefore of three distinct
nationalities: 1. Native Egyptians 2. Greeks; 3. Jews--a fact
that has left an impress on the religious faith of modern Europe.

Greek architects and Greek engineers had made Alexandria the most
beautiful city of the ancient world. They had filled it with
magnificent palaces, temples, theatres. In its centre, at the
intersection of its two grand avenues, which crossed each other
at right angles, and in the midst of gardens, fountains,
obelisks, stood the mausoleum, in which, embalmed after the
manner of the Egyptians, rested the body of Alexander. In a
funereal journey of two years it had been brought with great pomp
from Babylon. At first the coffin was of pure gold, but this
having led to a violation of the tomb, it was replaced by one of
alabaster. But not these, not even the great light-house, Pharos,
built of blocks of white marble and so high that the fire
continually burning on its top could be seen many miles off at
sea--the Pharos counted as one of the seven wonders of the
world--it is not these magnificent achievements of architecture
that arrest our attention; the true, the most glorious monument
of the Macedonian kings of Egypt is the Museum. Its influences
will last when even the Pyramids have passed away.

THE ALEXANDRIAN MUSEUM. The Alexandrian Museum was commenced by
Ptolemy Soter, and was completed by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus.
It was situated in the Bruchion, the aristocratic quarter of the
city, adjoining the king's palace. Built of marble, it was
surrounded with a piazza, in which the residents might walk and
converse together. Its sculptured apartments contained the
Philadelphian library, and were crowded with the choicest statues
and pictures. This library eventually comprised four hundred
thousand volumes. In the course of time, probably on account of
inadequate accommodation for so many books, an additional library
was established in the adjacent quarter Rhacotis, and placed in
the Serapion or temple of Serapis. The number of volumes in this
library, which was called the Daughter of that in the Museum, was
eventually three hundred thousand. There were, therefore, seven
hundred thousand volumes in these royal collections.

Alexandria was not merely the capital of Egypt, it was the
intellectual metropolis of the world. Here it was truly said the
Genius of the East met the Genius of the West, and this Paris of
antiquity became a focus of fashionable dissipation and universal
skepticism. In the allurements of its bewitching society even the
Jews forgot their patriotism. They abandoned the language of
their forefathers, and adopted Greek.

In the establishment of the Museum, Ptolemy Soter and his son
Philadelphus had three objects in view: 1. The perpetuation of
such knowledge as was then in the world; 2. Its increase; 3. Its
diffusion.

1. For the perpetuation of knowledge. Orders were given to the
chief librarian to buy at the king's expense whatever books he
could. A body of transcribers was maintained in the Museum, whose
duty it was to make correct copies of such works as their owners
were not disposed to sell. Any books brought by foreigners into
Egypt were taken at once to the Museum, and, when correct copies
had been made, the transcript was given to the owner, and the
original placed in the library. Often a very large pecuniary
indemnity was paid. Thus it is said of Ptolemy Euergetes that,
having obtained from Athens the works of Euripides, Sophocles,
and Aeschylus, he sent to their owners transcripts, together with
about fifteen thousand dollars, as an indemnity. On his return
from the Syrian expedition he carried back in triumph all the
Egyptian monuments from Ecbatana and Susa, which Cambyses and
other invaders had removed from Egypt. These he replaced in their
original seats, or added as adornments to his museums. When works
were translated as well as transcribed, sums which we should
consider as almost incredible were paid, as was the case with the
Septuagint translation of the Bible, ordered by Ptolemy
Philadelphus.

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