History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science | Page 8

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