Isaurians

“ Asia Minor, after the submission of the Isaurians, remained without enemies and without fortifications. Those bold savages, who had disdained to be the subjects of Gallienus, persisted two hundred and thirty years in a life of independence and rapine. The most successful princes respected the strength of the mountains and the despair of the natives; their fierce spirit was sometimes soothed with gifts, and sometimes restrained by terror; and a military count, with three legions, fixed his permanent and ignominious station in the heart of the Roman provinces. ”

“ See AMERICA: A. D. 1493-1496. ISANDLANA, The English disaster at (1879) . See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1877-1879. ISASZEG, Battle of (1849) . See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849. ISAURIAN DYNASTY, The. See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 717-797. ISAURIANS, The. The Isaurians were a fierce and savage race of mountaineers, who occupied anciently a district in Asia Minor, between Cilicia and Pamphylia on the south and Phrygia on the north. They were persistently a nation of robbers, living upon the spoils taken from their neighbors, who were never able to punish them justly in their mountain fastnesses. ”

“ For the Isaurians also, a people who were accustomed to frequent alternations of peace, and of turbulence which threw everything into confusion with sudden outbreaks—impunity having fostered their growing audacity and encouraged it to evil—broke out in a formidable war. Being especially excited, as they gave out by this indignity, that some of their allies, having been taken prisoners, were in an unprecedented manner exposed to wild beasts, and in the games of the amphitheatre, at Iconium, a town of Pisidia. ”

“ Asia Minor and Armenia and Egypt and Northern Arabia and Western Persia and Babylonia became Assyrian provinces. They were ruled by Assyrian governors, who collected the taxes and forced all the young men to serve as soldiers in the Assyrian armies and who made themselves thoroughly hated and despised both for their greed and their cruelty.
Fortunately the Assyrian Empire at its greatest height did not last very long. It was like a ship with too many masts and sails and too small a hull. There were too many soldiers and not enough farmers--too many generals and not enough business men. ”

“ The struggle against the tribes of these mountains, in the Zagrus and in the region of the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and the stubborn resistance of these tribes appears to have strengthened the warlike powers of the Assyrians, and these ceaseless campaigns trained them to that military excellence which finally, after a period of exercise which lasted for centuries, won for them the preponderance over Mesopotamia and Syria, over Babylonia and Elam, no less than over Egypt. ”

“ Where Isaiah felt the Assyrians, we are confronted by the evolution of nature and history, and the material forces into which it sometimes looks ominously like as if these could be analysed. Everything that has come forcibly and gloriously to the front of things, every drift that appears to dominate history, all that asserts its claim on our wonder, and offers its own simple and strong solution of our life—is our Assyria. ”

“ At the beginning of our knowledge of this region Assyria was only a province, a northern province, of Babylonia, and was ruled from Babylon. But the Assyrians became very strong and revolted, and conquered those who had been their masters, and it was during this victorious period that they made those incursions into Palestine of which the Bible tells us. But at length the Babylonians, their old masters, rose up against them and got the mastery over them again, and after this blaze of glory Assyria sinks back into its old place as a province of Babylon, in the northern part of the empire. ”

“ Assyria was the foremost kingdom of the East, and indeed of the whole world, and the hegemony which she exercised over all the countries within her reach cannot be accounted for solely by her military superiority. Not only did she excel in the art of conquest, as many before her had done—Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites, and Egyptians—but she did what none of them had been able to accomplish ”

“ The Assyrian People.—The Assyrians were a race of hunters and soldiers. Their bas-reliefs ordinarily represent them armed with bow and lance, often on horseback. They were good knights—alert, brave, clever in skirmish and battle; also bombastic, deceitful, and sanguinary. For six centuries they harassed Asia, issuing from their mountains to hurl themselves on their neighbors, and returning with entire peoples reduced to slavery. They apparently made war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging, and pillaging. No people ever exhibited greater ferocity. ”

“ We now enter upon the last and most brilliant phase of Assyrian civilization--the period of the Third or New Empire during which flourished Tiglath-pileser IV, the mighty conqueror; the Shalmaneser of the Bible; "Sargon the Later", who transported the "lost ten tribes" of Israel; Sennacherib, the destroyer of Babylon, and Esarhaddon, who made Lower Egypt an Assyrian province. We also meet with notable figures of Biblical fame, including Ahaz, Hezekiah, Isaiah, and the idolatrous Manasseh. ”

“ The Assyrian colossus which bestrid the west Asiatic world has failed and collapsed, and the Medes and the Chaldaeans--these two clouds no bigger than a man's hand which had lain on Assyria's horizon--fill her seat and her room. As we look back on it now, the political revolution is complete; but had we lived in the year 600 at Asshur or Damascus or Tyre or Tarsus, it might have impressed us less. A new master in the East did not and does not always mean either a new earth or a new heaven. ”

“ The language of the inscriptions of Assyria differs from those of the Babylonian inscriptions, as one dialect from another; [Pg 48] the system of writing is the same. The population of Assyria transferred their language and writing, their religious conceptions and modes of worship, from the Lower Euphrates to the Upper Tigris. If the princes of Erech, Nipur and Babylon had to repel the attacks of Elam, the Assyrian land, a region of moderate extent, lay under the spurs of the Armenian table-land, under the ranges of the Zagrus. ”

“ In 742, Uzziah of Judah is cursed by Tiglath-pileser as an arch-enemy; Samaria and Damascus are recorded as faithful tributaries. Seven years later Ahaz of Judah offers tribute to the Assyrian king, and Damascus and Samaria are invaded by the Assyrian armies. What a world it was, and what politics! A world of petty clans, with no idea of a common humanity, and with no motive for union except fear; politics without a noble thought or long purpose in them, the politics of peoples at bay—the last flicker of dying nationalities,—stumps of smoking firebrands, as Isaiah described two of them. ”

“ The Phœnician proverb says: ‘Better barley in the granary than gold in the desert.’ Should Egypt feel very weak she might prefer Sinai and Palestine to a war with Assyria. But this is what sets me to thinking: Not Egypt, but Assyria, is easy to conquer. Assyria has a quarrel on the northwest; Assyria has few troops, and those of poor quality. Were Egypt to attack she would destroy Assyria, seize immense treasures in Babylon and Nineveh, and establish her authority in Asia at once and securely—”
“Such a treaty cannot exist, as thou seest,” interrupted Rameses. ”

“ Isaias Chapter 31
The folly of trusting to Egypt, and forgetting God. He will fight for his people against the Assyrians.
31:1. Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, trusting in horses, and putting their confidence in chariots, because they are many: and in horsemen, because they are very strong: and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, and have not sought after the Lord.
31:2. But he that is the wise one hath brought evil, and hath not removed his words: and he will rise up against the house of the wicked, and against the aid of them that work iniquity. ”

“ To the Assyrians of Nineveh (as has been already mentioned) is ascribed in early times a very extensive empire, covering much of Upper Asia, as well as Mesopotamia or the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Respecting this empire,—its commencement, its extent, or even the mode in which it was put down,—nothing certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable that many great and flourishing cities,—and a population inferior in enterprise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians,—were to be found on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olympiad. ”

“ The Christian states of the East, which caused the religion of the cross to flourish in Asia, and formed the bulwark of the West against the invasions of the Saracens, are reduced to the cities of Tyre, Antioch, and Tripoli. We have seen, according to the expression of Isaiah, the Lord extending his hand and its inflictions from the Euphrates to the torrent of Egypt. The inhabitants of forty cities have been driven from their homes, despoiled of their wealth, and are now wandering with their weeping families among the nations of Asia, without finding a stone whereon to lay their heads. ”

“ The hardy mountaineers from Isauria and other parts of Asia Minor still held to the Puritan-like thoughts of their ancestors. They hated images. Then an Isaurian general seized the throne. In addition to hating images, he realized that image worship greatly increased the power of the monks and priests who were now just about as strong as the emperor. ”

“ While the Oriental Jew has a spare form and a weak muscular development, the Assyrian, like the modern Chaldaean, is robust, broad-shouldered, and large-limbed. Nowhere have we a race represented to us monumentally of a stronger or more muscular type than the ancient Assyrian. The great brawny limbs are too large for beauty; but they indicate a physical power which we may well believe to have belonged to this nation—the Romans of Asia—the resolute and sturdy people which succeeded in imposing its yoke upon all its neighbors. ”

“ The far more realistic and historical sense of the Assyrians is stamped in their monuments and inscriptions. As they allow us to see, year by year, the activity, the untiring perseverance, and warlike skill of the Assyrian nation and its princes, even though they magnify their successes—so too the reverse side of these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. The kings constantly boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once to exaggerate them. ”

“ These kings of Assyria thought themselves the greatest and strongest beings in the world; they thought that their might was right, and that they might conquer, and ravage, and plunder and oppress every country round them for thousands of miles, without being punished. They thought that they could overcome the true God of Judæa, as they had conquered the empty idols and false gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva. But Isaiah saw that they were wrong. He told his countrymen: “These Assyrian kings are strong, but there is a stronger King than they, Jehovah the Lord of all the earth. ”

“ The expedition against Ashdod took place in B.C. 711, during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and is the one referred to in the twentieth chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet denounces the conduct of Egypt. The way in which Isaiah speaks of the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, in this and other chapters, is remarkably justified by the account given in the Assyrian inscriptions. Egypt is described in the annals of Sargon as a weak power, always stirring up revolts against Assyria, and unable to help or shield the revolters. ”

“ Then the politicians of Judah, looking through their darkened glass at life, said, Life is simply a war in which the strongest prevail, a game which the most cunning win. So they made fast their alliances, and were ready to meet the Assyrian, or they fled in panic before him, according as Egypt or he seemed the stronger. Isaiah saw that with Assyrian and Jew another Power was present—the real reason of every change in politics, collapse or crash in either of the empires—the active righteousness of God. ”

“ Assyria became dominant in Asia; its empire stretched from Media on the east to the Mediterranean on the west. But it was an empire which was without organisation or permanency. [pg 220] Every year a new campaign was needed to suppress the revolts which broke out as soon as the Assyrian army was out of sight, or to supply the treasury with fresh spoil. The campaigns were in most cases raids rather than the instruments of deliberately planned conquest. Hence it was that the Assyrian monarch found himself checked in the west by the petty kings of Damascus and the neighbouring states. ”

“ The Assyrian came, the mightiest power of the world; he plundered her Temple and led her people into captivity. How long was it before his empire was a dream, his dynasty extinguished in blood, and an enemy on his throne? The Persian came; from her protector he turned into her oppressor, and his empire was swept away like the dust of the desert! The Syrian smote her; the smiter died in agonies of remorse, and where is his kingdom now? The Egyptian smote her, and who now sits on the throne of the Ptolemies? ”

“ It was no mere conglomeration of tribes, nor a state of minor importance, but an actual empire, nearly as large as that of Assyria itself, and almost as solidly welded together. It extended from the Turnat and the mountains of Blam to the Arabian desert and the Nâr-Marratûtn, and even though the Cossæans, Elamites, Kaldâ, Sumerians, Akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in a state of chronic discord, they all agreed—in theory, at any rate—in recognising the common suzerainty of Babylon. ”

“ No kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of Assyria in the days succeeding its triumphs over Blam and Arabia: precisely at this point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors a little breathing-space. ”