 Section 12 of The Great Events of Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 1. Edited by Charles F. Horn, Rossiter Johnson, and John Rood. Building of the Temple at Jerusalem, B.C. 1017, by Henry Hart Milman. After many weary years of travail and fighting in the wilderness and the land of Canaan, the Jews had at last founded their kingdom with Jerusalem as the capital. Saul was proclaimed the first king, afterward followed David, the lion of the tribe of Judah. During the many wars in which the Israelites had been engaged, the Ark of the Covenant was the one thing in which their faith was bound. No undertaking could fail while they retained possession of it. In their wanderings, the tabernacle enclosing the precious ark was first erected before the dwellings for the people. It had been captured by the Philistines, then restored to the Hebrews, and became of greater veneration than before. It will be remembered that, among other things, it contained the rod of Aaron which budded and was the cause of his selection as High Priest. It also contained the tables of stone which bore the Ten Commandments. David desired to build a fitting shrine, a temple in which to place the Ark of the Covenant. It should be a place wherein the people could worship, a center of religion in which the Ark should have paid it, the distinction do it as the seat of tremendous majesty. But David had been a man of war. This temple was a place of peace. Blood must not stain its walls. No shedder of gore could be its architect. Yet David collected stone, timber and precious metals for its erection. And not being allowed to erect the temple himself was permitted to depute that office to his son and successor, Solomon the Wise. At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered. The country was at peace. The domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any other time before or afterward. It was the fitting time for the erection of a great shrine to enclose the sacred Ark. Nobly was this done, and no human work of ancient or modern times has so impressed mankind as the building of Solomon's temple. Solomon succeeded to the Hebrew kingdom at the age of twenty. He was environed by designing bold and dangerous enemies. The pretensions of Adonijah still commanded a powerful party. Abba Athar swayed the priesthood. Joab the army. The singular connection in public opinion between the title to the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's harem is well understood. Adonijah, in making a request for Abishag, a youthful concubine taken by David in his old age, was considered as insidiously renewing his claims to the sovereignty. Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's dying admonition. He seized the opportunity of crushing all future opposition and all danger of a civil war. He caused Adonijah to be put to death, suspended Abba Athar from his office, and banished him from Jerusalem, and though Joab fled to the altar, he commanded him to be slain for the two murders of which he had been guilty, those of Abner and Amasa. Shimei, another dangerous man, was commanded to reside in Jerusalem on pain of death if he should quit the city. Three years afterward he was detected in a suspicious journey to Gath on the Philistine border and, having violated the compact, he suffered the penalty. Thus secured by the policy of his father from internal enemies, by the terror of his victories from foreign invasion, Solomon commenced his peaceful reign, during which Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba. This peace was broken only by a revolt of the Edomites. Haddad, of the royal race, after the exterminating war waged by David and by Joab, had fled to Egypt where he married the sister of the king's wife. No sooner had he heard of the death of David and of Joab than he returned and seems to have kept up a kind of predatory warfare during the reign of Solomon. Another adventurer, Rezon, a subject of Haddadazer, king of Zoba, seized on Damascus and maintained a great part of Syria in hostility to Solomon. Solomon's conquest of Hamath Zoba in a later part of his reign, after which he built Tadmor in the wilderness and raised a line of fortresses along his frontier to the Euphrates, is probably connected with these hostilities. The justice of Solomon was proverbial. Among his first acts after his accession, it is related that when he had offered a costly sacrifice at Gibeon, the place where the tabernacle remained, God had appeared to him in a dream and offered him whatever gift he chose. The wise king requested an understanding heart to judge the people. God not merely assented to his prayer, but added the gift of honour and riches. His judicial wisdom was displayed in the memorable history of the two women who contested the right to a child. Solomon, in the wild spirit of Oriental justice, commanded the infant to be divided before their faces. The heart of the real mother was struck with terror and abhorrence, while a false one consented to the horrible partition, and by this appeal to nature the cause was instantaneously decided. The internal government of his extensive dominions next demanded the attention of Solomon. Besides the local and municipal governors, he divided the kingdom into twelve districts. Over each of these he appointed a purveyor for the collection of the royal tribute, which was received in kind, and thus the growing capital and the immense establishments of Solomon were abundantly furnished with provisions. Each purveyor supplied the court for a month. The daily consumption of his household was three hundred bushels of finer flower, six hundred of a coarser sort, ten fatted twenty other oxen, one hundred sheep, besides poultry, and various kinds of venison. Provinder was furnished for forty thousand horses and a great number of dromedaries. Yet the population of the country did not, at first at least, feel these burdens. Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry. The foreign treaties of Solomon were as wisely directed to secure the profound piece of his dominions. He entered into a matrimonial alliance with the royal family of Egypt, whose daughter he received with great magnificence, and he renewed the important alliance with the king of Tyre. The friendship of this monarch was of the highest value in contributing to the great royal and national work, the building of the temple. The cedar timber could only be obtained from the forests of Lebanon. The Sedonian artisans, celebrated in the Homeric poems, were the most skillful workmen in every kind of manufacture, particularly in the precious metals. Solomon entered into a regular treaty by which he bound himself to supply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn, receiving in return their timber, which was floated down to Joppa, and a large body of artificers. The timber was cut by his own subjects, of whom he raised a body of thirty thousand, ten thousand employed at a time, and relieving each other every month, so that to one month of labor they had two of rest. He raised two other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of burdens, the other of eighty thousand hewers of stone, who were employed in the quarries among the mountains. All these labors were thrown not on the Israelites, but on the strangers, who, chiefly of Canaanite-ish descent, had been permitted to inhabit the country. These preparations, in addition to those of King David being completed, the work began. The eminence of Moriah, the Mount of Vision, i.e. the height, seen afar from the adjacent country, which tradition pointed out as the spot where Abraham had offered his son, where recently the plague had been stayed, by the altar built in the threshing floor of Ornan, or Arona, the Jebusite, rose on the east side of the city. Its rugged top was levelled with immense labour. Its sides, which to the east and south were precipitous, were faced with a wall of stone, built up perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, so as to appear to those who looked down of most terrific height. A work of prodigious skill and labour, as the immense stones were strongly mortised together and wedged into the rock. Around the whole area, or Esplanade, an irregular quadrangle was a solid wall of considerable height and strength. Within this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were either from the first or subsequently admitted. A second wall encompassed another quadrangle, called the Court of the Israelites. Along this wall, on the inside, ran a portico, or cloister, over which were chambers for different sacred purposes. Within this again, another, probably a lower wall, separated the court of the priests from that of the Israelites. To each court, the ascent was by steps, so that the platform of the inner court was on a higher level than that of the outer. The temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth than the architectural skill and science of the people. It was a wonder of the world from the splendour of its materials, more than the grace, boldness, or majesty of its height and dimensions. It had neither the colossal magnitude of the Egyptian, the simple dignity and perfect proportional harmony of the Grecian, nor perhaps the fantastic grace and likeness of later Oriental architecture. Some writers, calling to their assistants the visionary temple of Ezekiel, have erected a most superb edifice, to which there is this fatal objection, that if the dimensions of the prophet are taken as they stand in the text, the area of the temple and its courts would not only have covered the whole of Mount Moriah, but almost all Jerusalem. In fact, our accounts of the temple of Solomon are altogether unsatisfactory. The details, as they now stand in the books of kings and chronicles, the only safe authorities, are unscientific, and, what is worse, contradictory. Josephus has evidently blended together the three temples and attributed to the earlier all the subsequent additions and alterations. The temple on the whole was an enlargement of the tabernacle, built of more costly and durable materials. Like its model, it retained the ground plan and disposition of the Egyptian, or rather of almost all the sacred edifices of antiquity. Even its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It consisted of a propelion, a temple, and a sanctuary, called respectively the porch, the holy place, and the holy of holies. Yet, in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the temple must rather have resembled the form of a simple Gothic church. In the front to the east stood the porch, a tall tower, rising to the height of 210 feet. Either within, or like the Egyptian obelisks, before the porch, stood two pillars of brass, by one account, 27, by another, above 60 feet high. The latter statement probably including their capitals and bases. These were called jaquine and boyes, durability and strength. The capitals of these were of the richest workmanship, with network, chain work, and pomegranates. The porch was the same width with the temple, 35 feet, its depth, 17 and 1 half. The length of the main building, including the holy place, 70 feet, and the holy of holies, 35, was in the whole, 105 feet, the height, 52 and 1 half feet. Josephus carries the whole building up to the height of the porch, but this is out of all proportion, making the height twice the length and six times the width. Along each side, and perhaps at the back of the main building, ran an aisle, divided into three stories of small chambers. The wall of the temple being thicker at the bottom left a rest to support the beams of these chambers, which were not let into the wall. These aisles, the chambers created as vestieres, treasuries, and for other sacred purposes, seem to have reached about halfway up the main wall of what we may call the nave and choir. The windows into the latter were probably above them. These were narrow, but widened inward. If the dimensions of the temple appear by no means imposing, it must be remembered that but a small part of the religious teachings took place within the walls. The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the High Priest alone. It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of the Divinity. The Holy Place, the body of the temple, admitted only the officiating priests. The courts, called in popular language the temple or rather the inner quadrangle, were in fact the great place of divine worship. Here under the open air were celebrated the great public and national rites, the processions, the offerings, the sacrifices. Here stood the great tank for evolution and the high altar for burnt offerings. But the costliness of the materials, the richness and variety of the details amply compensated for the moderate dimensions of the ceiling. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveler might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was richly carved with nosps and flowers. The ceiling was of fir tree. But in every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion. Within and without, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short the whole house is described as overlaid with gold. The finest and purest that of Parvayam by some supposed to be Cylon was reserved for the sanctuary. Here the cherubim which stood upon the covering of the ark with their wings touching each wall were entirely covered with gold. The sumptuous veil of the richest materials and brightest colors which divided the holy of holies from the holy place was suspended on chains of gold. Cherubim, palm trees and flowers, the favorite ornaments everywhere covered with gilding were wrought in almost all parts. The altar within the temple and the table of shoe bread were likewise covered with the same precious metal. The vessels, the ten candlesticks, five hundred basins and all the rest of the sacrificial and other utensils were of solid gold. Yet the Hebrew writers seemed to dwell with the greatest astonishment and admiration on the works which were founded in brass by Huram, a man of Jewish extraction who had learned his art at tire. Besides the lofty pillars above mentioned there was a great tank called a sea of molten brass supported on twelve oxen three turned each way. This was seventeen and one half feet in diameter. There was also a great altar and ten large vessels for the purpose of ablution called lavers, standing on bases for pedestals the rims of which were richly ornamented with a border on which were wrought figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim. The bases below were formed of four wheels like those of a chariot. All the works in brass were cast in a place near the Jordan where the soil was of a stiff clay suited to the purpose. For seven years and a half the fabric arose in silence. All the timbers, the stones even of the most enormous size measuring seventeen and eighteen feet were hewn and fitted so as to be put together without the sound of any tool whatever. As it has been expressed with great poetical beauty like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew. At the end of this period the temple and its courts being completed the solemn dedication took place with the greatest magnificence which the king and the nation could display. All the chieftains of the different tribes and all of every order who could be brought together assembled. David had already organized the priesthood and the Levites and assigned to the thirty-eight thousand of the latter tribe each his particular office. Twenty-four thousand were appointed for the common duties six thousand as officers four thousand as guards and porters four thousand as singers and musicians. On this great occasion the dedication of the temple all the tribe of Levi without regard to their courses the whole priestly order of every class attended. Around the great brazen altar which rose in the court of the priests and the door of the temple stood in front the sacrifices all around the whole choir arrayed in white linen. One hundred and twenty of these were trumpeters the rest had cymbals harps and salteries Solomon himself took his place on an elevated scaffold or raised throne of brass. The whole assembled nation crowded the spacious courts beyond. The ceremony began with the preparation of burnt offerings so numerous that they could not be counted. At an appointed signal commenced the more important part of the scene the removal of the ark the installation of the god of Israel in his new and appropriate dwelling to the sound of all the voices and all the instruments chanting some of those splendid words the 47th 97th 98th and 107th Psalms the ark advanced born by the Levites to the open portals of the temple it can scarcely be doubted that the 24th Psalm even if composed before was adopted and used on this occasion. The singers as it drew near the gate broke out in these words lift up your heads oh ye gates and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in it was answered from the other part of the choir who is the king of glory the whole choir responded the lord of hosts he is the king of glory when the procession arrived the gates flew open when it reached the holy of holies the veil was drawn back the ark took its place under the extended wings of the cherubim which might seem to fold over and receive it under their protection at that instant all the trumpeters and singers were at once to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the lord and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music and praised the lord saying for he is good for his mercy endureth forever the house was filled with a cloud even the house of the lord so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud for the glory of the lord had filled the house of god thus the divinity took possession of his sacred edifice the king then rose upon the brazen scaffold knelt down and spreading his hands toward heaven uttered the prayer of consecration the prayer was of unexampled sublimity while it implored the perpetual presence of the almighty as the two-tiller deity and sovereign of the israelites it recognized his spiritual and illimitable nature but will god in very deed dwell with men on the earth behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee how much less this house which I have built it then recapitulated the principles of the hebrew theocracy the dependence of the national prosperity and happiness on the national conformity to the civil and religious law as the king concluded in these emphatic terms now therefore arise oh lord god into thy resting place thou and the ark of thy strength let thy priests oh lord god be clothed with salvation and thy saints rejoice in goodness oh lord god turn not away the face of thine anointed remember the mercies of david thy servant thou which had rested over the holy of holies grew brighter and more dazzling fire broke out and consumed all the sacrifices the priests stood without awestruck by the insupportable splendor the whole people fell on their faces and worshipped and praised the lord for he is good for his mercy is forever which was the greater magnificence or the moral sublimity of this scene was it the temple situated on its commanding eminence with all its courts the dazzling splendor of its materials the innumerable multitudes the priesthood in their gorgeous attire the king with all the insignia of royalty on his throne of burnished brass the music the radiant cloud filling the temple the sudden fire flashing upon the altar the whole nation upon their knees was it not rather the religious grandeur of the hymns and of the prayer the exalted and rational views of the divine nature the union of a whole people in the adoration of the one great incomprehensible almighty everlasting creator this extraordinary festival which took place at the time of that of the tabernacles lasted for two weeks twice the usual time during this period 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep were sacrificed every individual probably contributing to this great propitiatory right and the whole people feasting on those parts of the sacrifices which were not set apart for holy uses though the chief magnificence of Solomon was lavished on the temple of God yet the sumptuous palaces which he erected for his own residence display and opulence and profusion which may vie with the older monarchs of Egypt or Syria the great palace stood in Jerusalem it occupied 13 years in building a causeway bridged the deep ravine and leading directly to the temple united the part either of Akra or Sion on which the palace stood with Mount Moriah in this palace was a vast hall for public business from its cedar pillars called the house of the forest of Lebanon it was 175 feet long half that measurement in width above 50 feet high four rows of cedar columns supported a roof made of beams of the same wood there were three rows of windows on each side facing each other besides this great hall there were two others called porches of smaller dimensions in one of which the throne of justice was placed the harem or women's apartments adjoined to these buildings with other piles of vast extent for different purposes particularly if we may credit Josephus a great banqueting hall the same author informs us that the whole was surrounded with spacious and luxuriant gardens and adds a less credible fact ornamented with sculptures and paintings another palace was built in a romantic part of the country in the valleys at the foot of Lebanon for his wife the daughter of the king of Egypt in the luxurious gardens of which we may lay the scene of that poetical epithelium or collection of idols the song of Solomon the splendid works of Solomon were not confined to royal magnificence and display they condescended to usefulness to Solomon are traced at least the first channels and courses of the natural and artificial water supply which has always enabled Jerusalem to maintain its thousands of worshipers at different periods and to endure long and obstinate sieges the descriptions in the Greek writers of the Persian courts in Sousa and Ekbatana the tales of the early travelers in the east about the kings of Samarkand or Cathay and even the imagination of the Oriental romancers and poets have scarcely conceived a more splendid pageant than Solomon seated on his throne of ivory receiving the homage of distant princes who came to admire his magnificence and put to the test his noted wisdom this throne was of pure ivory covered with gold six steps led up to the seat and on each side of the steps stood twelve lions all the vessels of his palace of pure gold silver was thought to mean his armory was furnished with gold two hundred targets and three hundred shields of beaten gold were suspended in the house of Lebanon Josephus mentions a body of archers who escorted him from the city to his country palace clad in dresses of tyrian purple and their hair powdered with gold dust but enormous as this wealth appears the statement of his expenditure on the temple and of his annual revenue so passes all credibility that any attempt at forming a calculation on the uncertain data we possess may at once be abandoned as a hopeless task no better proof can be given of the uncertainty of our authorities of our imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew weights of money and above all of our total ignorance of the relative value which the precious metals bore to the commodities of life than the estimate made by Dr. Prido of the treasures left by David amounting to eight hundred millions nearly the capital of our national debt our inquiry into the sources of the vast wealth which Solomon undoubtedly possessed may lead to more satisfactory though still imperfect results the treasures of David were accumulated rather by conquest than by traffic some of the nations he subdued particularly the Itomites were wealthy all the tribes seem to have worn a great deal of gold and silver in their ornaments and their armor their idols were often of gold and the treasuries of their temples perhaps contained considerable wealth but during the reign of Solomon almost the whole commerce of the world passed into his territories the treaty with Tyre was of the utmost importance nor is there any instance in which two neighboring nations so clearly saw and so steadily pursued without jealousy or mistrust their mutual and inseparable interests on one occasion only when Solomon presented to Hyrum twenty inland cities which he had conquered Hyrum expressed great dissatisfaction and called the territory by the opprobrious name of Kabul the Tyrean had perhaps cast a wistful eye on the noble bay and harbor of Akko or Tolomayus which the prudent Hebrew either would not or could not since it was part of the promised land deceiver from his dominions so strict was the confederacy that Tyre may be considered the port of Palestine Palestine the granary of Tyre Tyre furnished the shipbuilders and mariners the fruitful plains of Palestine victualed the fleets and supplied the manufacturers and merchants of the Phoenician League with all the necessaries of life End of Section 12 Recording by Linda Johnson Section 13 of The Great Events Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Great Events by famous historians Volume 1 edited by Charles F. Horn Rosseter Johnson and John Rude Rise and Fall of Assyria Destruction of Nineveh B.C. 789 F. Lenormand N.E. Chevalier Mesopotamia for many centuries was the field of battle for the opposing hosts of Babylonia and Assyria each striving for mastery over the other At first each city had its own prince but at length these petty kingdoms absorbed the rest and Nineveh became the capital of a united Assyria Babylonia had her own kings but they were little more than hereditary satraps receiving investiture from Nineveh From about B.C. 1060 to 1020 Babylon seems to have recovered the upper hand Her victories put an end to what is known as the first Assyrian Empire After a few generations a new family ascended the throne and ultimately founded the second Assyrian Empire The first princes whose figured monuments have come down to us belonged to those days The oldest of all was Assernizerpal The base reliefs with which his palace was decorated are now in the British Museum and the Louvre, most of them in the former His son, Shalmanisair III and later Shalmanisair IV made many campaigns against the neighboring peoples and Assyria became rapidly a great and powerful nation The effeminate Sardinopolis was the last of the dynasty The capital of Assyria was Nineveh one of the most famous of cities It was remarkable for extent, wealth and architectural grandeur Diodorus Sicula says its walls were 60 miles around and 100 feet high Three chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its walls which were defended by 1500 bastions each of them 200 feet in height These dimensions may be exaggerated but the Hebrew scriptures and recent excavations at the ancient leave no doubt as to the splendor of the Assyrian palaces and the greatness of the city of Nineveh in population wealth and power In historical times it was destroyed by the midis under King Syaxares and by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar about BC 607 We are indebted to the monuments, tablets and books recently discovered for the history of Assyria and other ancient oriental nations Leyard unearthed the greater portion on the site of ancient Nineveh of the Assyrian books for so are named the tablets of clay, sometimes enameled and others only sundried or burnt The writing on these books is the cuneiform and was done by impressing this style on the clay while in a wax-like condition Many of the tablets were broken when Leyard and Rawlinson gave them over to the British Museum The reconstruction of these tablets was undertaken by George Smith an English Assyriologist of the British Museum who displayed great skill and earnest application in the deciphering of the cuneiform text In each reign the history of the king and the acts was written by a poet or historian detailed to that office The books were collected and kept in great libraries the largest of these being made by Sardinopoulos The greater part of the expeditions of Chalmanisir IV succeeding each other year after year were directed like those of his father sometimes to the north into Armenia and Pontus and east into Medea never completely subdued sometimes to the south into Chaldea where revolts were of constant occurrence and finally westward towards Syria and the region of Amanos In this direction he advanced farther than his predecessors and came into contact with some personages mentioned in Bible history The part of his annals relating to the campaigns that brought him into collision with the kings of Damascus and Israel possesses peculiar interest for us much greater than that attaching to the narrative of any other wars The 16th campaign of Chalmanisir IV BC 890 commenced a new series of wars The king crossed the Zabb to make war on the mountain people of Upper Medea and afterward of the Scythian tribes around the Caspian sea He did not however abandon the western countries where he soon found himself opposed by the new king whom the revolution arising from the influence of Elisha the prophet had placed on the throne of Damascus in the room of Ben Hidayi In my 18th campaign 886 we read on the Nimrud obelisk I crossed the Euphrates for the 16th time Haseil king of Damascus came toward me to give battle I took from him 1121 chariots and 470 horsemen with his camp In my 19th campaign 885 I crossed the Euphrates for the 18th time I marched toward Mount Amanus and there cut beams of cedar In my 21st campaign 883 I crossed the Euphrates for the 22nd time I marched to the cities of Haseil of Damascus I received tribute from Tyre Sidon and Biblos It evidently was at the end of this campaign that Jehu king of Israel whose territory Haseil had ravaged appealed to Shalmanisir for help against his powerful enemy The inscription on the obelisk says that the Assyrian king received tribute from Jehu whom it names son of Omri for the great renown of the founder of Samaria had made the Assyrians consider all the kings of Israel as his descendants One of the base reliefs of the same monument represents Jehu prostrating himself before Shalmanisir as if acknowledging himself a vassal The annals of Shalmanisir say no more after this either of the king of Damascus or of Israel They record as his 27th campaign a great war in Armenia that brought about the submission of all the districts of that country that still resisted the Assyrian monarch In the 31st campaign 873 the last mentioned on the obelisk the king sent the general in chief of his armies Tartan again into Armenia where he gave up to pillage 50 cities among them van and during this time he himself went into Medea subjected part of the northern districts of that country which were in a state of rebellion where he colonized the people in the neighborhood of Mount Elwand where in after times Ekbatana was built and finally made war on the Scythians of the Caspian Sea The official chronology of the Assyrians dates the termination of the reign of Shalmanisir the 4th in 870 the period of his death but during the last two years his power was entirely lost he was reduced to the possession of two cities Nineveh and Kala his second son Ashurdhaninpal in consequence of circumstances unknown to us raised the standard of revolt against his father assumed the royal title and was supported by 27 of the most important cities in the empire one of the monuments has preserved a list of these cities and among them we find Arapka capital of the province of Arapakitis Amida now Diyarbakir Arbela Elasar and all the towns of the banks of the Tigris War broke out between the father and his rebellious son the army embraced the cause of the latter he was recognized by all the provinces and kept Shalmanisir until his death shut up and closely blockaded in his capital Shalmanisir died in BC 870 his son Shamashbin continued the legitimate line he succeeded in repressing the revolt of his brother Ashurdhaninpal and in depriving him of the authority he had usurped the monument recording the exploits of his first years and the tales however of the civil war it merely records after enumerating the cities that had joined the revolt of Ashurdhaninpal with the aid of the great gods my masters I subjected them to my scepter the usurpation of the second son of Shalmanisir and a civil war of five years had introduced many disorders into the empire and shaken the fidelity of the provinces the early years of Shamashbin were occupied in reducing the whole to order in the narrative which has been preserved extending only to his fourth year we find that the king overran and chastised with terrible severity Ashron or Aramaean Mesopotamia where the people had been in rebellion and reduced to obedience the mountainous districts where are the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates and finally Armenia proper in his fourth year he marched against Marduk Balatirib king of Babylon who had taken advantage of the disorders in Assyria to assert his independence and who was supported by the Susianians or Elamites he completely defeated him and compelled him to fly to the desert killed very many of his army in the battle took 200 war chariots and made 7000 prisoners of whom 5000 were put to death on the field of battle as an example unfortunately our information ceases at that period and we know absolutely nothing of the greater part of the reign of Shamashbin or of the expeditions to the west of Asia Syria and Palestine that must have been made after the termination of the campaigns by which the royal authority was re-established in all the ancient provinces of the empire this king remained on the throne until 857 in 859 and 858 he had to repress a great revolt in Babylon and Chaldea Bin Lichish Nairari III the next king reigned 29 years from 857 to 828 an inscription of his engraved in the first years of his reign describing the extent of the empire says that he governed on one side from the land of Siluna toward the rising sun the countries of Elam Albania at the foot of Caucasus Kharkhar Arasiyash Misu Medea Giratbunda a portion of Atropatin frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions the lands of Muna Parsua Parthia Alabria Herkania Abdadana Hecatompila Iranian or Scythian people whose country is far off the whole of the mountainous country as far as the sea of the rising sun the Caspian sea on the other side from the Euphrates Syria all Phoenicia the land of Tyre of Sidon the land of Omri Samaria Edom the Philistines on all these countries he says that he imposed tribute I marched he says again against the land of Syria and I took Marech king of Syria in Damascus the city of his kingdom the great dread of Asur my master persuaded him he embraced my knees and made submission Minlihish the third was a war-like prince every year of his reign was marked by an expedition we have a summary of these in a chronological tablet in the British Museum containing a fragment from the end of the reign of Shamash Bin to that of Tiglath Peleser the second of a canon of eponyms mentioning the principal events year by year they nearly all occurred in southern Armenia and in the land of Van where obedience was only maintained by recent military demonstrations and subsequently in the countries to the north of Medea as far as the Caspian Sea other expeditions were also made as far as Parthia toward Ariana and the various countries that to the Assyrians were the extreme east we do not however know what that region was called by them as it is always designated by a group of ideographic characters of unknown pronunciation by the defeat of Marech the king of Damascus the submission of the western provinces was secured for the remainder of this reign for there is no record of any other campaign there the year 849 was marked by a great plague in Assyria 834 by a religious festival of which unfortunately no particulars are known and lastly 833 by the column inauguration of a new temple to the god Nebo in the capital but the most interesting monument of the reign of Bin Likish the third is the statue of Nebo one of the great gods of Babylon discovered by Mr. Loftus and now in the British Museum the inscription on the base of the statue mentions the wife of the king and calls her the queen Samuramaat this is the only historical Samiramas the one mentioned by Herodotus he places her correctly about a century and a half before Nitochris the wife of Nabopoulasar king of Babylon Samiramas says the father of history raised magnificent embankments to restrain the river Euphrates which till then used to overflow and flood the whole country around Babylon but why did Herodotus and the Babylonian tradition he has so faithfully reported attribute these useful works to the queen and not to her husband Bin Likish it was once supposed as a solution of this problem that Samuramaat had governed alone for some time as queen regnant after the death of her husband but this conjecture is absolutely contradicted by the table of eponyms in the British Museum where it can be seen that Samuramaat never reigned alone in our opinion the only possible explanation will be found in regarding Bin Likish and Samuramaat as the Ferdinand and Isabella of Mesopotamia the restless desire of Babylonia and Chaldea to form a state separate from Assyria grew more decided as time went on in the time of Bin Likish he already gained great strength and the day was not far distant when the separation was definitely to take place and to occasion the utter ruin of Nineveh in this position of affairs it was natural for a king of Assyria to seek to strengthen his authority in Chaldea by a marriage with a daughter of the royal line of that country who were his vassals and thus in the opinion of the people of Babylon acquire a legitimate right to the possession of the country by means of his wife as well as the advantages to be derived from the attachment of the people to their own legitimate sovereign we shall therefore consider Samuramaat as a Babylonian princess married by Bin Likish and as reigning nominally at Babylon while her husband occupied the throne at Nineveh and as being the only sovereign registered by the Babylonians in their national annals in fact her position must have been a peculiar one she must have been considered the rightful queen in one part of the empire to have been named as queen and in the same rank as the king in such an official document as the inscription on the statue of the god Nebo she is the only princess mentioned in any of the Assyrian texts as we might naturally suppose for unless under such very exceptional circumstances as we imagine in the case of Samuramaat there can have been no queens but only favorite concubines under the organization of harem life such as it was under the Assyrian kings and as it still is in our days the exaggerated development of the Assyrian empire was quite unnatural the kings of Nineveh had never succeeded in welding into one nation the numerous tribes whom they subdued by force of arms or in checking in them the spirit of independence they had not even attempted to do so the empire was absolutely without cohesion the administrative system was so imperfect the bond attaching the various provinces to each other and to the center of the monarchy was so weak that at the commencement of almost every reign a revolt broke out sometimes at one point sometimes at another it was therefore easy to foresee that so soon as the reigns of government were no longer in a really strong hand so soon as the king of Assyria should cease to be an active and warlike king always in the field always at the head of his troops previously built up by his predecessors of the 10th and 9th centuries would collapse and the immense fabric of empire would vanish like smoke with such rapidity as to astonish the world and this is exactly what occurred after the death of Bin Likkish III the tablet in the British Museum allows us to follow year by year the events and the progress of the dissolution of the empire under Shalmanisir V who reigned from B.C. 828 to 818 some foreign expeditions were still made as for instance to Damascus in B.C. 819 but the forces of the empire were especially engaged during many following years in attempting to hold countries already subdued such as Armenia then in a chronic state of revolt the wars in one and the same province were constant and occupied some six successive campaigns the Armenian war was from B.C. 827 to 822 proving that no decisive results were obtained under Ashur Edil Ilani II who reigned from B.C. 818 to 800 we do not see any new conquests insurrections constantly broke out and were no longer confined to the extremities of the empire they encroached on the heart of the country and gradually approached nearer to Nineveh the revolutionary spirit increased in the provinces a great insurrection became imminent and was ready to break out on the slightest excuse at this period B.C. 804 British Museum Tablet Registers is a memorable fact in the column of events peace in the land two great plagues are also mentioned under this reign in 811 and 805 and on the 13th of June B.C. 809 30 Sivan in the eponymous of Bur El Salki an almost total eclipse of the sun visible at Nineveh the revolution was not long in coming Asur Likish ascended the throne in B.C. 800 and fixed his residence at Nineveh instead of Elisar where his predecessor had lived after quitting Nineveh he is the Sardinopolis of the Greeks the ever famous prototype of the voluptuous and effeminate prince the Tablet in the British Museum only mentions two expeditions in his reign both of small importance in 795 and 794 to all the other years the only notice is in the country proving that nothing was done and that all thought of war was abandoned Sardinopolis had entirely given himself up to the orgies of his harem and never left his palace walls entirely renouncing all manly and warlike habits of life he had reigned thus for seven years and discontent continued to increase the desire for independence was spreading in the subject provinces the bond of their obedience each year relaxed still more and was nearer breaking when Arbassis who commanded the Median contingent of the army and was himself a maid chanced to see in the palace at Nineveh the king with his female dress spindle in hand hiding in the retirement of the harem his slothful cowardice and voluptuous life he considered that it would be easy to deal with a prince so degraded who would be unable to renew the valorous traditions of his ancestors the time seemed to him to have come when the provinces held only by force of arms might finally throw off the Syrian yoke Arbassis communicated his ideas and projects to the prince then entrusted with the government of Babylon the childean ful palia surnamed Balazu the terrible a name the Greeks have made into bellices he entered into the plot with the willingness to be expected from a Babylonian one of a nation so frequently rising in revolt Arbassis and Balazu consulted with other chiefs who commanded contingents of foreign troops and with the vassal kings of those countries that aspired to independence and they all formed the resolution of overthrowing sardinopolis Arbassis engaged to raise the midis and persians while Balazu set on foot the insurrection in Babylon and Chaldea at the end of a year the chiefs assembled their soldiers to the number of 40,000 in Assyria under the pretext of relieving according to custom the troops who had served the former year when once there the soldiers broke into open rebellion the tablet in the British Museum tells us that the insurrection commenced at Cala in BC 792 immediately after this the confusion became so great that from this year there was no nomination of an eponym sardinopolis rudely interrupted in his debaucheries by a danger he had not been able to foresee showed himself suddenly inspired with activity and courage he put himself at the head of the native Assyrian troops who remained faithful to him met the rebels to complete victories over them the Confederates already began to despair of success when fool calling in the aid of superstition to a cause that seemed lost declared to them that if they would hold together for five days more the gods whose will he had ascertained by consulting the stars would undoubtedly give them the victory in fact three days afterward a large body of troops whom the king had summoned to his assistance from the provinces near the Caspian Sea went over on their arrival to the side of the insurgents and gained them a victory sardinopolis then shut himself up in Nineveh and determined to defend himself to the last the siege continued two years for the walls of the city the battering machines of the enemy who were compelled to trust to reducing it by famine sardinopolis was under no apprehension confiding in an oracle declaring that Nineveh should never be taken until the river became its enemy but in the third year rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty studies then the king convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of escape to avoid falling alive into the enemy's hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes and then shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in the midst of the battle disappeared in the flames Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers but this tardy submission did not save the proud city it was pillaged and burned and then raised to the ground so completely as to evidence the implacable hatred and kindled in the minds of subject nations by the fierce and cruel Assyrian government the midis and Babylonians were in the ramparts, palaces temples or houses of the city that for two centuries had been dominant over all western Asia so complete was the destruction that the excavations of modern explorers on the site of Nineveh have not yet found one single wall slab earlier than the capture of the city by our bosses in Balazoo all we possess of the first Nineveh is one broken statue history has no other example of so complete a destruction the Assyrian empire was like the capital overthrown and the people who had taken part in the revolt formed independent states the midis under our bosses the Babylonians under Ful or Balazoo and the Susianians under Shutruk Nakunta Assyria reduced to the enslaved state in which she had so long held other countries remained for some time a dependency of Babylon this great event occurred in the year BC 789 when the noble sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud had been first uncovered it was natural to suppose that they marked the real site of ancient Nineveh a passage of Strabo that was later of Ptolemy lent confirmation to this theory shortly afterward a rival claimant started up in the region farther to the north quote after a while an attempt was made to reconcile the rival claims by a theory the grandeur of which gained it acceptance despite its improbability it was suggested that the various ruins which had hitherto disputed the name all included within the circuit of the ancient Nineveh which was described as a rectangle or odd long square 18 miles long and 12 broad the remains at Korsabad Koyunjik, Nimrud and Karamlis marked the four corners of this vast quadrangle which contained an area of 216 square miles about 10 times that of London in confirmation of this view was urged first the description in Diodorus derived probably from Tessius which corresponded it was said both with the proportions and with the actual distances and next the statements contained in the book of Jonah which it was argued implied a city of some such dimensions the parallel of Babylon according to the description given by Herodotus have been cited as a further argument since it might have seemed reasonable to suppose that there was no great difference of size between the chief cities of the two kindred empires end quote end of section 13 recording by Linda Johnson section 14 of the great events volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information please visit LibriVox.org the great events by famous historians volume 1 edited by Charles F. Horn Rosseter Johnson and John Rudd the foundation of Rome BC 753 by Bartold Georg Niebuhr part 1 Rome occupies a unique position in the history of the world the whole Mediterranean basin was at one time merely a Roman lake and the adjacent countries were Roman in letters, law, religion and the practice of war Roman roads crossed the continents east and west and penetrated to the depths of Asia and Africa Roman garrisons were stationed in every important city of the provinces and when the great city on the banks of the Tiber at last fell before successive eruptions of northeasterly barbarians and Roman power was at its extreme ebb the spirit of Roman institutions was revived in the civilization of Spain, France, Italy, Britain even in Greece and Asia Roman law had become the code of the world Iberian, Gaul and Italian had modified in varying degree their native dialects in conformity with the more copious and logical idiom of Latium a group of legends gathers around the birthplace of the eternal city it is Aeneas who escapes from Troy and brings into the land Italian Latinus, his native gods his son, Ascanius conquers and slays Byzantius in a battle between Latins and Etruscans and eleven kings of Alba all surnamed Sylveus succeeded him on the throne the last king of Alba Longa is Procus whose usurping son Emuleus drives his eldest brother, Numator, from the throne Numator's daughter Sylvia becomes the mother of the immortal twins Romulus and Remus by Mamers the god of war and the children are exposed by Crulemuleus suckled by a wolf and become founders of Rome such as the outline of the poem or rather tissue of poetry in which the founding of Rome is embalmed the critical acumen of Nibor may have dispelled some of the clouds and contradictions in which early historians and poets have wrapped the record of this great event but no critic can ever destroy the beauty and charm of the old Latin chronicles or diminish the glory of the day that saw the first walls rise about the seven hills of the most important of ancient European cities I believe that few persons when Alba is mentioned can get rid of the idea to which I too adhered for a long time that the history of Alba is lost to such an extent that we can speak of it only in reference to the Trojan time and the preceding period all the statements made concerning it by the Romans were based upon fancy and error and that accordingly it must be afaced from the pages of history altogether it is true that what we read concerning the foundation of Alba by Ascanius and the wonderful signs accompanying it as well as the whole series of the Albin kings with the years of their reigns the story of Numitur and Amulius and the story of the destruction of the city do not belong to history but the historical existence of Alba is not at all doubtful on that account nor of the ancients ever doubted it the Sacralbana and the Albani Tumuli Atquelucci which existed as late as the time of Cicero are proofs of its early existence ruins indeed no longer exist but the situation of the city in the valley of Gratiferata may still be recognized between the lake and the long chain of hills near the monastery Palazzuolo when still sees the rock cut steep down toward the lake evidently the work of man which rendered it impossible to attack the city on that side the summit on the other side formed the arcs that the albans were in possession of the sovereignty of Ladium is a tradition which we may believe to be founded on good authority as it is traced to Cincias afterward the latins became the masters of the district and the temple of Jupiter further the statement that Alba shared the flesh of the victim on the alban mount with the thirty towns and that after the fall of Alba the latins chose their own magistrates are glimpses of real history the ancient tunnel made for discharging the water of the alban lake still exists and through its vault a canal was made called Fossa Cluilia this vault which is still visible is a work of earlier construction than any roman one instead of Alba and the latins at that time is that Alba was the capital exercising the sovereignty over Ladium that its temple of Jupiter was the rallying point of the people who were governed by it and that the gen Silvia was the ruling clan it cannot be doubted that the number of latin towns was actually thirty just that of the albensian demi this number afterward occurs again in the later thirty latin towns and in the thirty roman tribes and it is moreover indicated by the story of the foundation of Lavinium by thirty families in which we may recognize the union of the two tribes the statement that Lavinium was a trojan colony and was afterward abandoned but restored by Alba and further that the sanctuary could not be transferred from it to Alba is only an accommodation to the trojan and native tradition however much it may bear the appearance of antiquity for Lavinium is nothing else than a general name for Ladium just as Panionium is for Ionia Latinus, Slavinus and Lavicus being one in the same name as is recognized even by Servius Lavinium was the central point of the pre-Sci Latinae and there is no doubt that in the early period before Alba ruled over Lavinium worship was offered mutually at Alba and at Lavinium as was afterward the case at Rome the temple of Diana on the Aventine and at the festivals of the Romans and Latins on the Alba mount the personages of the trojan legend therefore present themselves to us in the following light Ternus is nothing else but Turenus in Dionysus Greek Turenus Lavinia the fair maiden is the name of the Latin people which may perhaps be so distinguished that the inhabitants of the coast were called Terenians or either inland, Latins since after the battle of Lake Regulus the Latins are mentioned in the treaty with Rome as forming thirty towns there can be no doubt that the towns over which Alba had the supremacy in the earliest times were likewise thirty in number but the Confederacy did not at all times contain the same towns as some may afterward have perished and others may have been added in such political developments that work an instinctive tendency to fill up that which has become vacant and this instinct acts as long as people proceed unconsciously according to the ancient forms and not in accordance with actual wants such also was the case in the twelve Achaean towns and in the seven Friesian maritime communities for as soon as one disappeared another, dividing itself into two supplied its place wherever there is a fixed number that is kept up even when one part dies away and it ever continues to be renewed we may add that the state of the Latins lost in the west but gained in the east we must therefore I repeat it conceive on the one hand Alba with its thirty Demi and on the other the thirty Latin towns the latter at first forming a state allied with Alba and at a later time under its supremacy according to an important statement in the Cato preserved in Dionysus the ancient towns of the Aborigines were small places scattered over the mountains one town of this kind was situated on the Palatine Hill and bore the name of Roma which is most certainly Greek not far from it there occurs several other places with Greek names such as Piergi and Alsium for the people inhabiting those districts were closely akin to the Greeks and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture that Teresina was formally called Greek Troshane or the rough place on a rock Formae must be connected with Greek Hormos a roadstead or place for casting anchor as certain as Piergi signifies towers so certainly does Roma signify strength and I believe those are quite right who consider that the name Roma in this sense is not accidental this Roma is described as a palasgium place in which Evander the introducer of scientific culture resided According to tradition the first foundation of civilization was laid by Saturn in the Golden Age of Mankind the tradition in Virgil who was extremely learned in matters of antiquity that the first men were created out of trees must be taken quite literally for as in Greece the Greek Mermiches were metamorphosed into the Mermidons and the stones thrown by Ducalian and Pira into men and women so in Italy trees by some divine power were changed into human beings these beings at first only half human gradually acquired a civilization which they owed to Saturn but the real intellectual culture was traced to Evander who must not be regarded as a person who had come from Arcadia but as the good man as the teacher of the alphabet of mental culture which man gradually works out for himself the Romans clung to the conviction that Romulus, the founder of Rome was the son of a virgin by a god that his life was marvelously preserved that he was saved from the floods of the river and was reared by a she-wolf that this poem is very ancient cannot be doubted but did the legend at all times describe Romulus as the son of Ria Silvia or Ilya Perisonius was the first who remarked against Rightius that Ria Ilya never occurs together and that Ria Silvia was the daughter of Numitor while Ilya is called the daughter of Aeneas he is perfectly right Neveus and Aeneas called Romulus a son of Ilya the daughter of Aeneas as is attested by Servius on Virgil and Porphyrio on Horus but it cannot be hence inferred that this was the national opinion of the Romans themselves for the poets who were familiar with the Greeks might accommodate their stories to Greek poems the ancient Romans on the other hand could not possibly look upon the mother of the founder of their city as a daughter of Aeneas who was believed to have lived three hundred and thirty-three or three hundred and sixty years earlier Dionysus says that his account which is that of Fabius occurred in the sacred songs and it is in itself perfectly consistent Fabius cannot have taken it as Plutarch asserts from Diocles a miserable unknown Greek author the statue of the she-wolf was erected in the year A.U.457 long before Diocles wrote and at least a hundred years before Fabius this tradition therefore is certainly the more ancient Roman one and it puts Rome in connection with Alba a monument lately has been discovered at Bovile is an altar which the Gentiles Giuliae erected Lege Albana and therefore expresses a religious relation of a Roman Gens to Alba the connection of the two towns continues down to the founder of Rome and the well-known tradition with its ancient poetical details many of which Livy and Dionysus omitted from their histories lest they should seem to deal too much in the marvelous runs as follows Numitor and Amulius intending for the throne of Alba Amulius took possession of the throne and made Ria Silvia the daughter of Numitor a Vestal Virgin in order that the Silvian house might become extinct this part of the story was composed without any insight into political laws for a daughter could not have transmitted any Gentilesian rights the name Ria Silvia is ancient but Ria is only a surname Riafemina often occurs in Boccaccio and is used to this day in Tuscany to designate a woman whose reputation is blighted a priestess Ria is described by Virgil as having been overpowered by Hercules while Ria was fetching water in a grove for a sacrifice the sun became eclipsed and she took refuge from a wolf in a cave where she was overpowered by Mars when she was delivered the sun was again eclipsed and the statue of Vesta covered its eyes Livy has here abandoned the marvellous the tyrant threw Ria with her infants into the river Anio she lost her life in the waves but the god of the river took her soul and changed it into an immortal goddess whom he married this story has been softened down into the tale of her imprisonment which is unpoetical enough to be a later invention the river Anio carried the cradle like a boat into the Tiber and the latter conveyed it to the foot of the Palatine the water having overflowed the country and the cradle was upset at the root of a fig tree a she-wolf carried the babies away and suckled them Mars sent a woodpecker which provided the children with food and the bird para which protected them from insects these statements are gathered from various quarters for the historians got rid of the marvellous as much as possible Faustulis, the legend continues found the boys feeding on the milk of the huge wild beast he brought them up with his twelve sons and they became the staunchest of all being at the head of the shepherds on Mount Palatine they became involved in a quarrel with the shepherds of Numitor on the avatine the Palatine and the avatine are always hostile to each other Remus being taken prisoner was led to Alba but Romulus rescued him and their descent from Numitor being discovered the latter was restored to the throne and the two young men obtained permission to form a settlement at the foot of Mount Palatine where they had been saved out of this beautiful poem the falsifiers endeavour to make some credible story even the unprejudiced and poetical Livy tried to avoid the most marvellous points as much as he could but the falsifiers want to step farther in the days when men had all together ceased to believe in the ancient gods attempts were made to find something intelligible in the old legends and thus a history was made up which Plutarch fondly embraced and Dionysus did not reject though he also relates the ancient tradition in a mutilated form he says that many people believe in demons and that such a demon might have been the father of Romulus but he himself is very far from believing it and rather thinks that Amulius himself in disguise violated Rheosylvia amid thunder and lightning produced by Artifice this he is said to have done in order to have a pretext for getting rid of her but being entreated by his daughter not to drown her he imprisoned her for life the children were saved by the shepherd who was commissioned to expose them at the request of Numitor and two other boys were put in their place Numitor's grandsons were taken to a friend at Gabyae who caused them to be educated according to their rank and to be instructed in Greek literature attempts have actually been made to introduce this stupid forgery into history and some portions of it have been adopted in the narrative of our historians for example that the ancient Alban nobility migrated with the two brothers to Rome but if this had been the case there would have been no need of opening an asylum or would it have been necessary to obtain by force the Canubium with other nations but of more historical importance is the difference of opinion between the two brothers respecting the building of the city and its site according to the ancient tradition both were kings and equal heads of the colony Romulus is universally said to have wished to build on the Palatine while Remus, according to some preferred the Aventine according to others the hill Remuria Plutarch states that the latter is a hill three miles south of Rome and cannot have been any other than the hill nearly opposite St. Paul which is the more credible since this hill, though situated in an otherwise unhealthy district has an extremely fine air a very important point in investigations respecting the ancient Latin towns for it may be taken for certain that where the air is now healthy it was so in those times also and that where it is now decidedly unhealthy it was anciently no better the legend now goes on to say a dispute arose between Romulus and Remus as to which of them should give the name to the town and also as to where it was to be built a town Remuria therefore undoubtedly existed on that hill though subsequently we find the name transferred to the Aventine as is the case so frequently according to the common tradition the auguries were to decide between the brothers Romulus took his stand on the Palatine Remus on the Aventine the latter observed the whole night but saw nothing until about sunrise when he saw six vultures flying from north to south and sent word of it to Romulus but at that very time the latter annoyed at not having seen any sign fraudulently sent a messenger to say that he had seen twelve vultures and at the very moment the messenger arrived there did appear twelve vultures to which Romulus appealed this account is impossible for the Palatine and the Aventine are so near each other that as every Roman well knew whatever a person on one of the two hills saw high in the air could not escape the observation of anyone who was watching on the other this part of the story therefore cannot be ancient and can be saved only by substituting the Remuria for the Aventine as the Palatine was the seat of the noblest patrician tribe and the Aventine the special town of the plebeians there existed between the two a perpetual feud and thus it came to pass that in after times the story relating to the Remuria which was far away from the city was transferred to the Aventine according to Enneas Romulus made his observations on the Aventine in this case Remus must certainly have been on the Remuria and it is said that when Romulus obtained the augury he threw his spear toward the Palatine this is the ancient legend which was neglected by the later writers Romulus took possession of the Palatine the spear taking root in becoming a tree which existed down to the time of Nero is a symbol of the eternity of the new city and of the protection of the gods the statement that Romulus tried to deceive his brother is a later edition and the beautiful poem of Enneas quoted by Cicero knows nothing of this circumstance the conclusion which must be drawn from all this is that in the earliest times there were two towns Roma and Remuria the latter being far distant from the city and from the Palatine Romulus now fixed the boundary of his town but Remus scornfully leaped across the ditch for which he was slain by Celer a hint that no one should cross the fortifications of Rome with impunity but Romulus fell into a state of melancholy by the death of Remus he instituted festivals to honour him and ordered an empty throne to be put up by the side of his own thus we have a double kingdom which ends with the defeat of Remuria the question now is what were these two towns of Roma and Remuria they were evidently Palasgian places the ancient tradition states that Cicilus migrated from Rome southward to the Palasgians that is, the Tyrrhenian Palasgians were pushed forward to the Margates a kindred nation in Lucania and in Sicily among the Greeks it was as Dionysus states a general opinion that Rome was a Palasgian that is a Tyrrhenian city but the authorities from whom he learned this are no longer extant there is however a fragment in which it is stated that Rome was a sister city of Antium and Ardia here too we must apply the statement from the Chronicle of Cumay that Evander who as an Arcadian was likewise a Palasgian had his Palatium on the Palatine to us he appears of less importance than in the legend for in the latter he is one of the benefactors of nations and introduced among the Palasgians in Italy the use of the alphabet and other arts just as Damaratus did among the Tyrrhenians in Etruria in this sense therefore he was certainly a Latin town and had not a mixed but a purely Tyrheno-Palasgian population the subsequent vicissitudes of this settlement may be gathered from the allegories Romulus now found the number of his fellow settlers too small the number of three thousand foot and three hundred horse which Livy gives from the commentaries of the Pontiffs is worth nothing for it is only an outline of the later transfer to the earliest times according to the ancient tradition Romulus's band was too small and he opened an asylum on the capitaline hill this asylum the old description states contained only a very small space a proof of how little these things were understood historically all manner of people thieves, murderers and vagabonds of every kind flocked thither this is the simple view taken from the origin of the clients in the bitterness with which the estates subsequently looked upon one another it was made a matter of reproach to the patricians that their earliest ancestors had been vagabonds though it was a common opinion that the patricians were descended from the free companions of Romulus and that those who took refuge in the asylum placed themselves as clients under the protection of the real free citizens but now they wanted women and attempts were made to obtain nubium with neighboring towns especially perhaps with Entemne which was only four miles distant from Rome with the Sabines and others this being refused Romulus had recourse to a stratagem proclaiming that he had discovered the altar of Consus the god of councils an allegory of his cunning in general in the midst of these solemnities the Sabine maidens thirty in number were carried off from whom the curiae received names this is the genuine ancient legend and it proves how small ancient Rome was conceived to have been in later times the number was thought too small it was supposed that these thirty had been chosen by lot for the purpose of naming the curiae after them and Valerius Antius fixed the number of the women who had been carried off at five hundred and twenty-seven the rape is placed in the fourth month of the city because the consulalia fall in August and the festival commemorating the foundation of the city in April later writers such as Ganius Jelius extended this period to four years and Dionysus found this of course far more credible from this rape there arose wars first with the neighboring towns which were defeated one after another and at last with the Sabines the ancient legend contains not a trace of this war having been of long continuance but in later times it was necessarily supposed to have lasted for a considerable time since matters were then measured by a different standard. Lucomo and Cilius came to the assistance of Romulus an allusion to the expedition of Cilius Fibena which however belongs to a much later period. The Sabine king Tadius was induced by treachery to settle on the hill which is called the Tarpean arcs between the Palatine and Rock a battle was fought in which neither party gained a decisive victory until the Sabine women threw themselves between the combatants who agreed that henceforth the sovereignty should be divided between the Romans and the Sabines. According to the annals this happened in the fourth year of Rome. But this arrangement lasted only a short time. Tadius was slain during a sacrifice at Lavinium and his vacant throne was not filled up. In common reign each king had a senate of one hundred members and the two senates after consulting separately used to meet and this was called Commitium. Romulus during the remainder of his life ruled alone. The ancient legend knows nothing of his having been a tyrant. According to Enius he continued on the contrary to be a mild and benevolent king while Tadius was a tyrant. The ancient tradition contained nothing but the beginning and the end of the reign of Romulus. All that lies between these points the war with the Vientines, Fidedates and so on is a foolish invention of later annals. The poem itself is beautiful but this inserted narrative is highly absurd as for example the statement that Romulus slew ten thousand Vientines with his own hand. The ancient poem passed on at once to the time when Romulus completed his earthly career and Jupiter fulfilled his promise to Mars that Romulus was the only man whom he would introduce to the gods. According to this ancient legend the king was reviewing his army near the marsh of Capri when as at the moment of his conception there occurred an eclipse of the sun and at the same time a hurricane during which Mars descended in a fiery chariot and took his son up to heaven. Out of this beautiful poem the most wretched stories have been manufactured. Romulus it is said while in the midst of his senators was knocked down, cut into pieces and thus carried away by them under their togas. This stupid story was generally adopted and that a cause for so horrible a deed might not be wanting it was related that in his latter years Romulus had become a tyrant and that the senators took revenge by murdering him. Romulus the Romans and the people of Tadius quarreled for a long time with each other. The Sabines wishing that one of their nations should be raised to the throne while the Romans claimed that the new king should be chosen from among them. At length they agreed, it is said that the one nation should choose a king from the other. End of section 14