from the commencement of the Persian war. While he aimed at independence as a sovereign, he had too much good sense to embroil himself with the disputes of the other governors, but applied himself with earnestness and success to the establishment of his own authority, and the advancement of the happiness of his people. Perdiccas judged that he would find in Ptolemy the chief obstacle to his ambitious views; and he therefore turned his attention first to the reduction of Egypt. In this enterprise he had the authority of the kings, on the plausible pretext, that Ptolemy had revolted from their sovereignty, and made himself an independent monarch. But the attempt was unsuccessful; he found it impracticable to make impression on the Egyptian frontier, which Ptolemy defended with a powerful army; his troops, disgusted with the severe and haughty manner of their leader, and exasperated with their ill success, mutinied, and assassinated him; and transferred their services and allegiance to the governor of Egypt. Ptolemy, whose reputation was enhanced by the defeat of this enterprise, might now have succeeded to the power and authority of Perdiccas, as regent, under Aridæus and the infant prince; but he wisely declined that dangerous dignity, which could add nothing to his real power; and, on his refusal, it fell to Antipater, the governor of Macedonia. A new division was now made of the empire; and Babylon and Assyria were assigned to Seleucus. But Egypt still remained under Ptolemy, who had established his authority in that quarter upon a solid basis. ' Eumenes, the governor of Cappadocia, a man of great merit, and firmly attached to the family of Alexander, was, from those circumstances, regarded with a jealous eye by the rest of his colleagues. Antipater, in the quality of Regent, proclaimed war against him, and he was betrayed and delivered up to Antigonus, the governor of Phrygia and Lydia, who put him to death, and seized upon his states. Antigonus, thus acquiring the command of a great part of the Asiatic provinces, began to aspire to the universal empire of Asia. He attacked and ravaged the dominions of the conterminous governors. Seleucus, the governor of Babylon, unable to make head against him in the field, fled into Egypt, and humbly sought the aid and protection of Ptolemy; who, alarmed at the designs of Antigonus, supported the fugitive with a powerful army, and reinstated him in his government of Babylon. Seleucus was beloved by his subjects, and the time of his return to Babylon became a common epoch through all the Asiatic nations. It is called the era of the Seleucida, and is fixed 312 years before the birth of Christ. It is made use of all over the East, by Jews, Christians, and Mahometans. The Jews call it the era of contracts; because, when subject to the Syro-Macedonian princes, they were obliged to employ it in all contracts and civil deeds. The Arabians term it the era of the two-horned; a denomination taken from the coins or medals of Seleucus, in which he is represented with horns, like those of a ram. In the book of the Maccabees it is called the era of the kingdom of the Greeks. Antigonus, however, persisted in his schemes of ambition. He sent his son, Demetrius, with a fleet against Ptolemy, which was victorious in an engagement with that of the Egyptians. It was on this occasion that Antigonus and Demetrius assumed to themselves the title of kings, in which they were imitated by all the other governors. A league was now formed against Antigonus and Demetrius, by Ptolemy and Seleucus, in which they were joined by Cassander, the son of Antipater, and Lysimachus; the former, governor of Macedonia, and the latter of Thrace. The battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia, decided the contest. Antigonus was killed, Dernetrius fled with the shattered remains of his army, and the conquerors made a partition of their dominions. Ptolemy, in addition to Egypt and Lybia, had Arabia, Colosyria, and Palestine; and Cassander had Macedonia and Greece. The share of Lysimachus was Thrace, Bithynia, and some other provinces beyond the Hellespont. Seleucus had all the rest of Asia, to the river Indus. This last kingdom, the most powerful and splendid of the whole, was called the kingdom of Syria; of which the capital, Antioch, was built by Seleucus, and was the residence of the line of monarchs descended from him. CHAPTER V. Flourishing state of Egypt under the Ptolemies-Greece after the death of Alexander-Achaian league-Revolution at Lacedæmon-Ambitious designs of Philip II. of Macedon draw on him the vengeance of the Romans-Their aid solicited by the Etolians-Macedon conquered-Greece becomes a Roman province. We have remarked, that under the first Ptolemy, surnamed Soter, the kingdom of Egypt was extremely flourishing. This prince, a true patriot and wise politician, considered the happiness of his people as the first object of government. A lover himself of the arts and sciences, they attained, during his reign, to a degree of splendor which rivalled their state in the most illumin ated days of Greece. It is remarkable that Greece, which owed her first dawning of literature and the arts to the Egyptians, should Ptole now contribute to polish and instruct her ancient masters. my Soter founded the famous library of Alexandria,* that immense treasury of literature, which, in the time of his son Ptolemy Phila delphus, † contained above 100,000 volumes. It was still enlarged by the succeeding monarchs of the same race, till it amounted, at length, as Strabo informs us, to 700,000 volumes; a collection quite prodigious, when we consider the comparative labor and expense of amassing books before the invention of printing, and since that era. This immense library was burnt to ashes in the war which Julius Cæsar waged with the inhabitants of Alexandria. Adjoining to this was a smaller library, which escaped the conflagration at that time, and which became, in the course of ages, very considerable; but, as if fate had opposed the progress and continuance of Egyptian literature, this second library of Alexandria was burnt, about 800 years afterwards, when the Saracens took possession of Egypt. The books were taken out by order of the Caliph Omar, and used, for six months, in supplying the fires of the public baths. "If these books," said Omar,"contain nothing but what is in the Alcoran, they are of no use; if they contain any thing not in it, they are of no consequence to salvation; and if any thing contrary to it, they are damnable, and ought not to be suffered." Ptolemy Philadelphus, the son of Soter, inherited the talents. and many of the good qualities of his father, though stained with considerable blemishes; it was by the orders of this prince, who wished to understand the laws and the history of the Jews, and enrich his library with a copy of the Books of Moses, that that translation called the Septuagint, as being the work of seventytwo interpreters, was made from the Hebrew into Greek. Egypt * Ptolemy Soter was, himself, a man of letters, and wrote a history of the wars of Alexander, which was greatly esteemed, but has not come down to posterity. † He was so named, ironically, for having put two of his brothers to death, from a jealousy of their popularity with his subjects. These seventy-two interpreters are said to have been native Jews, six of the most learned men being chosen from each of the twelve tribes, and sent to Egypt by Eleazar, the high priest, at the request of Ptolemy, who had conciliated his good will, by releasing all the Jewish captives in Egypt. This account has been disputed upon no better ground than that a smaller number would have served the purpose as well as the larger. See Prideaux. For four hundred years the Septuagint translation was held in such esteem by the Jews themselves, that it was read in many of the synagogues of Judæ in preference to the original. But when they saw that the Christians esteemed it equally, they then became desirous of exploding its credit; and in the second century, Aquila, an apostate Christian, was employed to make a new Greek version, in which he designedly perverted the sense of all the passages most directly applicable to our Saviour. Other translations were likewise made by Symmachus and Theodotion. The original version, by the carelessness of transcribers, also became very erroneous; so that, in the third century, Origen, in the view of forming a correct copy of the Scriptures, published first one edition in four columns (thence called the Tetrapla), containing the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, along with the Hebrew text; and afterwards a second edition, called Hexapla, in which two continued still to flourish under the succeeding prince, Ptolemy Euergetes, who attained that glorious surname (the Beneficent) from his successful promotion of the prosperity and happiness of his people. In the beginning of his reign, he waged war with Antiochus of Syria, for the recovery of part of the Asiatic provinces which belonged to his hereditary kingdom; and, being successful in that enterprise, he brought home immense spoils, among which were a great number of paintings and statues, with which he enriched his capital of Alexandria. On returning by Jerusalem, Josephus informs us that he offered sacrifice in the temple to the God of Israel, in thanksgiving for the victories he had gained over his enemies. It has been supposed that the Jews, to court his favor, showed to him the Prophecies of Daniel, in which his conquests appeared to be predicted. The Alexandrian library owed a great increase of its literary treasures to this prince. The descendants of the first Ptolemy continued to fill the throne of Egypt for two hundred and ninety-two years. In the three first of these reigns the Egyptians were probably a greater, and certainly a much happier people, than they had ever been in those remote periods which historians have mentioned with poetical exaggeration. In the preceding brief notices of the monarchies which rose from the ruins of the empire of Alexander, we have anticipated somewhat in the order of time. We must now recall our attention to the affairs of Greece posterior to the death of that monarch; and we shall very shortly trace the outlines of her history, till she becomes a province of the now extended empire; a melancholy period, enlivened by few of those scenes or events which either animate the feelings or engage the imagination. During the period of the conquests of Alexander, the Grecian republics remained for the most part in a state of torpid inactivity. One feeble effort for their emancipation from the Macedonian yoke was made in Peloponnesus, by the Spartans, which was speedily repressed by Antipater, who, in one battle, put an end to all resistance. Some years after, while Alexander was on his expedition to India, Harpalus, whom he had appointed governor of Babylon, having amassed, by tyranny and extortion, the immense sum of five thousand talents, apprehensive that the conqueror, on his return, would bring him to a severe reckoning, passed over into other versions, the one found at Nicopolis, the other at Jericho, were added to the former. From a comparison of all these translations, Origen laudably endeavored to settle the text of a genuine and complete translation of the Scriptures. The best modern edition of the Septuagint is that of Dr. Grabe, published in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Septuagint translation was in use in the time of our Saviour, and is that out of which most of the citations in the New Testament from the Old are taken. It was likewise the canonical translation used by all the Christian churches from the earliest ages Greece, where he employed his money in corrupting the orators of Athens and the chief men of that republic, in the view of establishing an independent power under his own authority and control. But he found, in the incorruptible virtue of Phocion, an insuperable obstacle to his designs. This venerable man acted on the same unshaken principles he had all along maintained; he could not consider Alexander as lawfully the master or sovereign of Greece; but he saw with regret that the era of Grecian liberty had long passed away, along with the virtuous manners of former times, and that a people thoroughly corrupted and degenerate were incapable of recovering their lost freedom, or maintaining it, though gained for a season. He wished, therefore, to preserve at least the peace and tranquillity of his country. But if we judge thus of the politics of Phocion, we cannot impute it for blame to his great rival, Demosthenes, that he cherished different views and that as he had constantly opposed the ambitious designs of Philip, so he persevered in denying the sovereignty of Alexander. The enemies of Demosthenes attempted to bring his integrity under suspicion, by propagating a slanderous report, that he had accepted bribes from Harpalus, and entered into the views of that ambitious and bad man. But this accusation, which gained such Edit at the time as to procure the banishment of Demostlienes, has, upon the most scrupulous inquiry, being deemed a calumny. The principal agent of Harpalus being put to the torture, to force a confession of the names of those Athenians who had accepted bribes from that traitor, solemnly acquitted Demosthenes of that dishonorable charge. A single hint from Alexander of his intention to revisit Greece, was sufficient to defeat the schemes of Harpalus, and to procure his expulsion from Athens. On intelligence of Alexander's death, a wonderful change was operated on the public mind in Greece. Liberty was now the universal cry. The people of Athens expressed the most tumultuous joy, and the Ecclesia resounded with the harangues of the orators and shouts of the applauding populace. Demosthenes, though in exile, engaged several of the states to join with the Athenians, and to equip a fleet of two hundred and forty galleys. The Spartans, dispirited by their late defeat by the arms of Antipater, refused to join the league for independence. Phocion, ever prudent and circumspect, advised the confederate states to wait the opportunity of those dissensions which he foresaw must infallibly arise among the different governors. But the counsel of Demosthenes, who proposed an immediate commencement of hostilities, suited better with the ardor of their present feelings. The advice of Phocion was justified by the event. Antipater, after some severe checks from the troops of the confederate states, finally defeated them, and reduced all to submission. In punishment of the offence of Athens, he abolished the democratic government, and established in its room an aristocracy, of which he VOL. I. 26 |