the king. The taxes were collected by the local authorities, and the satrap accounted to the king for the full sum charged to his districts. Some things relating to the primary organization of society are known, polygamy and slavery were everywhere and at all times allowed. Surplus males were consumed in wars or converted into eunuchs for domestic service. The families and dependents of the rich were very numerous. Abraham's household as described in the Bible is doubtless typical of ancient as of modern patriarchal families. It is not to be understood, however, that all the people were included as members of such establishments. Babylon and Nineveh were very great cities. In order to maintain their vast multitudes of people, agriculture was carried on with great industry and success. Manufacturing flourished, and trade was extended to distant lands. The descriptions we have of the people of Babylon indicate that it had a vast combination of good and evil, like every other great city. That the people were industrious, skillful and intelligent is abundantly proved by history and the ruins still remaining. That they were fond of luxurious living and addicted to many vices hardly differentiates them from the dwellers in modern cities, yet some of their customs certainly appear most abominable.

The recent discovery of the Code of Hammurabi affords us a copy of the written law of Babylon promulgated about 2250 years B.C. (A full summary of its provisions is given in the Appendix.) There is no better index of the state of the civilization of a people than the code of laws under which they live. It indicates their industrial and business activities, their vices, their superstitions and their views of social duty. How long this code remained in force we are not informed. It was probably 1800 years later when Herodotus visited Babylon and many changes had taken place.

He tells us that once in each year in each village the maidens of age to marry were collected all together in one place, while the men stood around them in a circle. The women were then sold for wives separately to the highest bidder. The rich Babylonians had to bid against each other for the

favorite ones, each going to the highest bidder. When all the beauties were sold and the men ceased to bid, the ugly ones were sold to those who would take them with the least marriage portion, which was made up from the prices received from the sale of the loveliest. He mentions this as an excellent custom, but says it had fallen into disuse in his time, and that instead, the poor of the common people raised their daughters to be courtesans. This he attributes to the oppression of the rulers. He relates what he terms a most shameful custom connected with the worship of the Babylonian Venus. "Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus and there consort with a stranger." Seated in the enclosure of the temple with wreaths of strings about her head she must wait till a stranger throws her a coin and says "The goddess Mylitta prosper thee." She must then go with him whoever he be. He adds, that when this religious rite has been performed, no gift however great will prevail with her. This hardly seems a fair statement after reading what is said of the prevalence of prostitution.

It seems reasonably certain that public morals were low at and after the time of which Herodotus wrote, and very probable that they were never high. The Old Testament is filled with narrations of the vile customs of the early Israelites as well as of the people with whom they came in contact, of whom apparently the Egyptians were the best, yet pure domestic life was not wholly unknown. Away from the cities and perhaps also within them the village system prevailed. The people lived under great diversity of conditions.

Xenophon describes an Armenian village with houses underground entered by a well, with passage into them for their cattle, goats, sheep and fowls. There was a head man of the village. Seventeen colts bred as a tribute for the king, and provisions in plenty and considerable variety were found. In his march from the scene of the battle in which Cyrus was killed to Colchis, Xenophon mentions the villages of the Medes, Carducians and Armenians, but nowhere isolated dwellings. The Persians had some idea of established law

beyond mere custom, and of the steady adherence to fixed rules for the determination of rights. Their laws were promulgated by the king recorded by scribes and proclaimed throughout the empire. There were judges appointed by the king. Herodotus says that Cambyses, wishing to marry his sister, a thing contrary to Persian custom,

"Called together the regal judges and put it to them 'whether there was any law which allowed a brother, if he wished, to marry his sister.' Now the royal judges are certain picked men among the Persians, who hold their office for life, or until they are found guilty of some misconduct. By them justice is administered in Persia and they are the interpreters of the old laws, all disputes being referred to their decision. When Cambyses therefore put this question to these judges, they gave him an answer which was at once true and safe, "they did not find any law," they said, "allowing a brother to take his sister to wife, but they found a law that the king of the Persians might do whatever he pleased."

While the Persian system was loose and imposed but little restraint on the satraps, either in the exercise of their authority over the people under them or in organizing a revolt, there were some regulations tending to efficiency and stability of the government. Royal commissioners were sometimes sent to inspect the workings of the government throughout the empire, and a system of posts was maintained by which dispatches were forwarded rapidly. The garrisons in the citadels, as well as the army in general, were under the command of officers appointed by the king and not subject to the satraps. As all histories deal so much with wars and so little with peaceful conditions, we have to infer what took place in times of peace from the conditions described during times of war. In the perspective war occupies a greatly exaggerated space and creates the impression that the people were engaged in little else than fighting, when in fact peace was the rule. The earliest Babylonians were temple builders and devoted to their gods. Strong religious tendencies have ever been characteristic of the people of all the portion of Asia of which we are now treating. The idea of government seems to have

persistently adhered to a single unlimited monarch. With the grosser forms of religious worship and with the corrupted organizations which profess the purer ones, form and ceremonial always fill a great space. These forms, to be impressive, must be marked out and defined by fixed rules, to which the people become accustomed. Revenues to maintain the priesthood and the temples must be derived by a system of tributes, paid really to the priests, but exacted in the name. of the deities. The alliance between the sovereign and the priesthood was necessarily close and, during much of the time, the king was the spiritual as well as the temporal head. In ancient Assyria the laws were promulgated in the name of Asshur, the head of their pantheon, as the Jews used the name of Jehovah to give sanction to theirs. The temples of the Assyrian and Babylonian gods required the attendance of a numerous priesthood, withdrawn partly and often entirely both from participation in military operations and ordinary callings. The system of irrigation by the aid of artificial canals, under which the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates were brought to a high state of cultivation, evidences settled. social order for a considerable period prior to the time of Hammurabi. The cities themselves could only come into existence under conditions of order and security to person and property.

Recent researches have thrown much light on ancient Babylonian institutions, and many ancient tablets on which were written deeds and contracts of various kinds have been exhumed and interpreted. Judicial functions were exercised by the priesthood, who also acted in the capacity of notaries and witnesses of written contracts, and the parties took an oath to perform the contract, the whole being attested by the priest and other witnesses. A deed to property seems to have been generally treated as a mortgage, which could be discharged on repayment of the purchase price, unless the vendor expressly renounced the right to redeem, in the deed. Even this did not cut off the right of his heir to recover the land by paying back the price. Sometimes the heirs joined in the deed in order to cut off the right of redemption. Mort

gages were familiar, the earliest form being that in which the use of land was transferred to the lender for the use of the money, rent being set off against interest. When the money was repaid the land was returned. Mortgages of lands and chattels were common. The business of banking was well developed and seems to have been largely in the hands of the priesthood. Interest was allowed and bottomy bonds, bearing a high rate but under which the lender got nothing in case of loss of the property by shipwreck, were common, as also were contracts of hiring, lease, partnership and other business transactions, and were executed with that freedom which always obtains in a great commercial city.

In religion these people were polytheists, and their pantheon was as well stocked as that of the imaginative Greeks. The personal qualities attributed to their several gods were so similar in many instances as to suggest identity. The genius for city building moved from the valleys of these rivers to the countries bordering on the Euxine and Mediterranean seas and afterward spread wherever the Greeks became dominant. But, so far as we know, the genius for popular government in cities was never developed in Asia, except in the Greek cities near the coast. Among the rural population, dwelling in their villages, tilling the soil and rearing domestic animals, there was a degree of independence. Herodotus speaks of the Medes revolting from the Assyrians and gaining their freedom, after having been subject to the latter for 520 years, and then tells how Duoces by playing the part of an upright judge succeeded in gaining kingly power. Herodotus saw through Greek eyes. Though Medes and Persians were fond of liberty perhaps in their early history, they had no genius for the establishment of any form of government other than that of an arbitrary despotism.

JUDEA

The Jews afford us through the Bible a later and more complete system of written laws than that of Hammurabi. Some of it was similar to and borrowed from Egypt's older civilization. Some of it was drawn from Babylon. All their