Xerxes by Jacob Abbott (ink book reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Jacob Abbott
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The immediate destination of this vast horde was Abydos; for it was between Sestos, on the European shore, and Abydos, on the Asiatic, that the bridge had been built. To reach Abydos, the route was north, through the province of Mysia. In their progress the guides of the army kept well inland, so as to avoid the indentations of the coast, and the various small rivers which here flow westward toward the sea. Thus advancing, the army passed to the right of Mount Ida, and arrived at last on the bank of the Scamander. Here they encamped. They were upon the plain of Troy.
The world was filled, in those days, with the glory of the military exploits which had been performed, some ages before, in the siege and capture of Troy; and it was the custom for every military hero who passed the site of the city to pause in his march and spend some time amid the scenes of those ancient conflicts, that he might inspirit and invigorate his own ambition by the associations of the spot, and also render suitable honors to the memories of those that fell there. Xerxes did this. Alexander subsequently did it. Xerxes examined the various localities, ascended the ruins of the citadel of Priam, walked over the ancient battle fields, and at length, when his curiosity had thus been satisfied, he ordered a grand sacrifice of a thousand oxen to be made, and a libation of corresponding magnitude to be offered, in honor of the shades of the dead heroes whose deeds had consecrated the spot.
Mode of enlistment.
Condition of the soldiers.
Privations and hardships.
Whatever excitement and exhilaration, however, Xerxes himself may have felt, in approaching, under these circumstances, the transit of the stream, where the real labors and dangers of his expedition were to commence, his miserable and helpless soldiers did not share them. Their condition and prospects were wretched in the extreme. In the first place, none of them went willingly. In modern times, at least in England and America, armies are recruited by enticing the depraved and the miserable to enlist, by tendering them a bounty, as it is called, that is, a sum of ready money, which, as a means of temporary and often vicious pleasure, presents a temptation they can not resist. The act of enlistment is, however, in a sense voluntary, so that those who have homes, and friends, and useful pursuits in which they are peacefully engaged, are not disturbed. It was not so with the soldiers of Xerxes. They were slaves, and had been torn from their rural homes all over the empire by a merciless conscription, from which there was no possible escape. Their life in camp, too, was comfortless and wretched. At the present day, when it is so much more difficult than it then was to obtain soldiers, and when so much more time and attention are required to train them to their work in the modern art of war, soldiers must be taken care of when obtained; but in Xerxes's day it was much easier to get new supplies of recruits than to incur any great expense in providing for the health and comfort of those already in the service. The arms and trappings, it is true, of such troops as were in immediate attendance on the king, were very splendid and gay, though this was only decoration, after all, and the king's decoration too, not theirs. In respect, however, to every thing like personal comfort, whether of food and of clothing, or the means of shelter and repose, the common soldiers were utterly destitute and wretched. They felt no interest in the campaign; they had nothing to hope for from its success, but a continuance, if their lives were spared, of the same miserable bondage which they had always endured. There was, however, little probability even of this; for whether, in the case of such an invasion, the aggressor was to succeed or to fail, the destiny of the soldiers personally was almost inevitable destruction. The mass of Xerxes's army was thus a mere herd of slaves, driven along by the whips of their officers, reluctant, wretched, and despairing.
This helpless mass was overtaken one night, among the gloomy and rugged defiles and passes of Mount Ida, by a dreadful storm of wind and rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning. Unprovided as they were with the means of protection against such tempests, they were thrown into confusion, and spent the night in terror. Great numbers perished, struck by the lightning, or exhausted by the cold and exposure; and afterward, when they encamped on the plains of Troy, near the Scamander, the whole of the water of the stream was not enough to supply the wants of the soldiers and the immense herds of beasts of burden, so that many thousands suffered severely from thirst.
All these things conspired greatly to depress the spirits of the men, so that, at last, when they arrived in the vicinity of Abydos, the whole army was in a state of extreme dejection and despair. This, however, was of little consequence. The repose of a master so despotic and lofty as Xerxes is very little disturbed by the mental sorrows of his slaves. Xerxes reached Abydos, and prepared to make the passage of the strait in a manner worthy of the grandeur of the occasion.
The first thing was to make arrangements for a great parade of his forces, not, apparently, for the purpose of accomplishing any useful end of military organization in the arrangement of the troops, but to gratify the pride and pleasure of the sovereign with an opportunity of surveying them. A great white throne of marble was accordingly erected on an eminence not far from the shore of the Hellespont, from which Xerxes looked down with great complacency and pleasure, on the one hand, upon the long lines of troops, the countless squadrons of horsemen, the ranges of tents, and the vast herds of beasts of burden which were assembled on the land, and, on the other hand, upon the fleets of ships, and boats, and galleys at anchor upon the sea; while the shores of Europe were smiling in the distance, and the long and magnificent roadway which he had made lay floating upon the water, all ready to take his enormous armament across whenever he should issue the command.
The reason of it.
Any deep emotion of the human soul, in persons of a sensitive physical organization, tends to tears; and Xerxes's heart, being filled with exultation and pride, and with a sense of inexpressible grandeur and sublimity as he looked upon this scene, was softened by the pleasurable excitements of the hour, and though, at first his countenance was beaming with satisfaction and pleasure, his uncle Artabanus, who stood by his side, soon perceived that tears were standing in his eyes. Artabanus asked him what this meant. It made him sad, Xerxes replied, to reflect that, immensely vast as the countless multitude before him was, in one hundred years from that time not one of them all would be alive.
Remarks of Artabanus.
The tender-heartedness which Xerxes manifested on this occasion, taken in connection with the stern and unrelenting tyranny which he was exercising over the mighty mass of humanity whose mortality he mourned, has drawn forth a great variety of comments from writers of every age who have repeated the story. Artabanus replied to it on the spot by saying that he did not think that the king ought to give himself too much uneasiness on the subject of human liability to death, for it happened, in a vast number of cases, that the privations and sufferings of men were so great, that often, in the course of their lives, they rather wished to die than to live; and that death was, consequently, in some respects, to be regarded, not as in itself a woe, but rather as the relief and remedy for woe.
There is no doubt that this theory of Artabanus, so far as it applied to the unhappy soldiers of Xerxes, all marshaled before him when he uttered it, was eminently true.
He renews his warnings.
Xerxes admitted that what his uncle said was just, but it was, he said, a melancholy subject, and so he changed the conversation. He asked his uncle whether he still entertained the same doubts and fears in respect to the expedition that he had expressed at Susa when the plan was first proposed in the council. Artabanus replied that he most sincerely hoped that the prognostications of the vision would prove true, but that he had still great apprehensions of the result. "I have been reflecting," continued he, "with great care on the whole subject, and it seems to me that there are two dangers of very serious character to which your expedition will be imminently exposed."
Xerxes wished to know what they were.
"They both arise," said Artabanus, "from the immense magnitude of your operations. In the first place, you have so large a number of ships, galleys, and transports in your fleet, that I do not see how, when you have gone down upon the Greek coast, if a storm should arise, you are going to find shelter for them. There are no harbors there large enough to afford anchorage ground for such an immense number of vessels."
"And what is the other danger?" asked Xerxes.
"The other is the difficulty of finding food for such a vast multitude of men as you have brought together in your armies. The quantity of food necessary to supply such countless numbers is almost incalculable. Your granaries and magazines will soon be exhausted, and then, as no country whatever that you can pass through will have resources of food adequate for such a multitude of mouths, it seems to me that your march must inevitably end in a famine. The less resistance you meet with, and the further you consequently advance, the worse it will be for you. I do not see how this fatal result can possibly be avoided; and so uneasy and anxious am I on the subject, that I have no rest or peace."
"I admit," said Xerxes, in reply, "that what you say is not wholly unreasonable; but in great undertakings it will never do to take counsel wholly of our fears. I am willing to submit to a very large portion of the evils to which I expose myself on this expedition, rather than not accomplish the end which I have in view. Besides, the most prudent and cautious counsels are not always the best. He who hazards nothing gains nothing. I have always observed that in all the affairs of human life, those who exhibit some enterprise and courage in what they undertake are far more likely to be successful than those who weigh every thing and consider every thing, and will not advance where they can see any remote prospect of danger. If my predecessors had acted on the principles which you recommend, the Persian empire would never have acquired the greatness to which it has now attained. In continuing to act on the same principles which governed them, I confidently expect the same success. We shall conquer Europe, and then return in peace, I feel assured, without encountering the famine which you dread so much, or any other great calamity."
On hearing these words, and observing how fixed and settled the determinations of Xerxes were, Artabanus said no more on the general subject, but on one point he
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