Cyrus the Great by Jacob Abbott (warren buffett book recommendations .txt) 📖
- Author: Jacob Abbott
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The awkward squad.
Cyrus and all the company laughed very heartily at these mischances of greediness and discontent; and then other stories, of a somewhat similar character, were told by other guests. One officer said that a few days previous he was drilling a part of his troops, and he had before him on the plain what is called, in military language, a squad of men, whom he was teaching to march. When he gave the order to advance, one, who was at the head of the file, marched forward with great alacrity, but all the rest stood still. "I asked him," continued the officer, "what he was doing. 'Marching,' said he, 'as you ordered me to do.' 'It was not you alone that I ordered to march,' said I, 'but all.' So I sent him back to his place, and then gave the command again. Upon this they all advanced promiscuously and in disorder toward me, each one acting for himself, without regard to the others, and leaving the file-leader, who ought to have been at the head, altogether behind. The file-leader said, 'Keep back! keep back!' Upon this the men were offended, and asked what they were to do about such contradictory orders. 'One commands us to advance, and another to keep back!' said they; 'how are we to know which to obey?'"
Cyrus and his guests were so much amused at the awkwardness of these recruits, and the ridiculous predicament in which the officer was placed by it, that the narrative of the speaker was here interrupted by universal and long-continued laughter.
"Finally," continued the officer, "I sent the men all back to their places, and explained to them that, when a command was given, they were not to obey it in confusion and unseemly haste, but regularly and in order, each one following the man who stood before him. 'You must regulate your proceeding,' said I, 'by the action of the file-leader; when he advances, you must advance, following him in a line, and governing your movements in all respects by his.'
"Just at this moment," continued the officer, "a man came to me for a letter which was to go to Persia, and which I had left in my tent. I directed the file-leader to run to my tent and bring the letter to me. He immediately set off, and the rest, obeying literally the directions which I had just been giving them, all followed, running behind him in a line like a troop of savages, so that I had the whole squad of twenty men running in a body off the field to fetch a letter!"
When the general hilarity which these recitals occasioned had a little subsided, Cyrus said he thought that they could not complain of the character of the soldiers whom they had to command, for they were certainly, according to these accounts, sufficiently ready to obey the orders they received. Upon this, a certain one of the guests who was present, named Aglaitadas, a gloomy and austere-looking man, who had not joined at all in the merriment which the conversation had caused, asked Cyrus if he believed those stories to be true.
"Why?" asked Cyrus; "what do you think of them?"
"I think," said Aglaitadas, "that these officers invented them to make the company laugh. It is evident that they were not telling the truth, since they related the stories in such a vain and arrogant way."
"Arrogant!" said Cyrus; "you ought not to call them arrogant; for, even if they invented their narrations, it was not to gain any selfish ends of their own, but only to amuse us and promote our enjoyment. Such persons should be called polite and agreeable rather than arrogant."
"If, Aglaitadas," said one of the officers who had related the anecdotes, "we had told you melancholy stories to make you gloomy and wretched, you might have been justly displeased; but you certainly ought not to complain of us for making you merry."
"Yes," said Aglaitadas, "I think I may. To make a man laugh is a very insignificant and useless thing. It is far better to make him weep. Such thoughts and such conversation as makes us serious, thoughtful, and sad, and even moves us to tears, are the most salutary and the best."
"Well," replied the officer, "if you will take my advice, you will lay out all your powers of inspiring gloom, and melancholy, and of bringing tears, upon our enemies, and bestow the mirth and laughter upon us. There must be a prodigious deal of laughter in you, for none ever comes out. You neither use nor expend it yourself, nor do you afford it to your friends."
"Then," said Aglaitadas, "why do you attempt to draw it from me?"
"It is preposterous!" said another of the company; "for one could more easily strike fire out of Aglaitadas than get a laugh from him!"
Aglaitadas could not help smiling at this comparison; upon which Cyrus, with an air of counterfeited gravity, reproved the person who had spoken, saying that he had corrupted the most sober man in the company by making him smile, and that to disturb such gravity as that of Aglaitadas was carrying the spirit of mirth and merriment altogether too far.
These specimens will suffice. They serve to give a more distinct idea of the Cyropædia of Xenophon than any general description could afford. The book is a drama, of which the principal elements are such narratives as the story of Panthea, and such conversations as those contained in this chapter, intermingled with long discussions on the principles of government, and on the discipline and management of armies. The principles and the sentiments which the work inculcates and explains are now of little value, being no longer applicable to the affairs of mankind in the altered circumstances of the present day. The book, however, retains its rank among men on account of a certain beautiful and simple magnificence characterizing the style and language in which it is written, which, however, can not be appreciated except by those who read the narrative in the original tongue.
Chapter XII. The Death of Cyrus.B.C. 530
After having made the conquest of the Babylonian empire, Cyrus found himself the sovereign of nearly all of Asia, so far as it was then known. Beyond his dominions there lay, on every side, according to the opinions which then prevailed, vast tracts of uninhabitable territory, desolate and impassable. These wildernesses were rendered unfit for man, sometimes by excessive heat, sometimes by excessive cold, sometimes from being parched by perpetual drought, which produced bare and desolate deserts, and sometimes by incessant rains, which drenched the country and filled it with morasses and fens. On the north was the great Caspian Sea, then almost wholly unexplored, and extending, as the ancients believed, to the Polar Ocean.
The Scythians.
Their warlike character.
On the west side of the Caspian Sea were the Caucasian Mountains, which were supposed, in those days, to be the highest on the globe. In the neighborhood of these mountains there was a country, inhabited by a wild and half-savage people, who were called Scythians. This was, in fact, a sort of generic term, which was applied, in those days, to almost all the aboriginal tribes beyond the confines of civilization. The Scythians, however, if such they can properly be called, who lived on the borders of the Caspian Sea, were not wholly uncivilized. They possessed many of those mechanical arts which are the first to be matured among warlike nations. They had no iron or steel, but they were accustomed to work other metals, particularly gold and brass. They tipped their spears and javelins with brass, and made brazen plates for defensive armor, both for themselves and for their horses. They made, also, many ornaments and decorations of gold. These they attached to their helmets, their belts, and their banners. They were very formidable in war, being, like all other northern nations, perfectly desperate and reckless in battle. They were excellent horsemen, and had an abundance of horses with which to exercise their skill; so that their armies consisted, like those of the Cossacks of modern times, of great bodies of cavalry.
The various campaigns and conquests by which Cyrus obtained possession of his extended dominions occupied an interval of about thirty years. It was near the close of this interval, when he was, in fact, advancing toward a late period of life, that he formed the plan of penetrating into these northern regions, with a view of adding them also to his domains.
His queen.
He had two sons, Cambyses and Smerdis. His wife is said to have been a daughter of Astyages, and that he married her soon after his conquest of the kingdom of Media, in order to reconcile the Medians more easily to his sway, by making a Median princess their queen. Among the western nations of Europe such a marriage would be abhorred, Astyages having been Cyrus's grandfather; but among the Orientals, in those days, alliances of this nature were not uncommon. It would seem that this queen was not living at the time that the events occurred which are to be related in this chapter. Her sons had grown up to maturity, and were now princes of great distinction.
Queen Tomyris.
Spargapizes.
One of the Scythian or northern nations to which we have referred were called the Massagetæ. They formed a very extensive and powerful realm. They were governed, at this time, by a queen named Tomyris. She was a widow, past middle life. She had a son named Spargapizes, who had, like the sons of Cyrus, attained maturity, and was the heir to the throne. Spargapizes was, moreover, the commander-in-chief of the armies of the queen.
The first plan which Cyrus formed for the annexation of the realm of the Massagetæ to his own dominions was by a matrimonial alliance. He accordingly raised an army and commenced a movement toward the north, sending, at the same time, embassadors before him into the country of the Massagetæ, with offers of marriage to the queen. The queen knew very well that it was her dominions, and not herself, that constituted the great attraction for Cyrus, and, besides, she was of an age when ambition is a stronger passion than love. She refused the offers, and sent back word to Cyrus forbidding his approach.
Cyrus, however, continued to move on. The boundary between his dominions and those of the queen was at the River Araxes, a stream flowing from west to east, through the central parts of Asia, toward the Caspian Sea. As Cyrus advanced, he found the country growing more and more wild and desolate. It was inhabited by savage tribes, who lived on roots and herbs, and who were elevated very little, in any respect, above the wild beasts that roamed in the forests around them. They had one very singular custom, according to Herodotus. It seems that there was a plant which grew among them, that bore a fruit, whose fumes, when it was roasting on a fire, had an exhilarating effect, like that produced by wine.
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