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THE DECLINE AND FALL
CHAP.
VIH.
In the more early ages of the world, whilstthe forests that covered Europe afforded a retreatto a few wandering savages, the inhabitants ofAsia were already collected into populous cities,and reduced under extensive empires, the seatof the arts, of luxury, and of despotism. TheAssyrians reigned over the East, a till the scep-tre of Ninus and Semiramis droptfrom the baudsof their enervated successors. The Medes andthe Babylonians divided their power, and werethemselves swallowed up in the monarchy of thePersians , whose arms could not be confinedwithin the narrow limits of Asia . Followed, asit is said, by two millions of men, Xerxes , thedescendant of Cyrus, invaded Greece . Thirtythousand soldiers, under the command of Alex-ander, the son of Philip, who was intrusted bythe Greeks with their glory and revenge, weresufficient to subdue Persia . The princes of thehouse of Seleucus usurped and lost the Mace-donian command over the East. About thesame time that, by an ignominious treaty, theyresigned to the Romans the country on this sideMount Taurus, they were driven by the Par-thians, an obscure horde of Scythian origin,from all the provinces of Upper Asia . The for-
a An ancient chronologist, quoted by Velleius Paterculus (I. i, c. 6)observes, that the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians , and the Ma-cedonians, reigned over Asia one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years, from the accession of Ninus to the defeat of Antiochus bythe Romans. As the latter of these great events happened 189 yearsbefore Christ, the former may be placed 2184 years before the same era.The astronomical observations, found at Babylon by Alexander, wentfifty years higher.