and to regard and treat the entire mass of their Asiatic subjects as
mere slaves. Alexander had placed Persian satraps over most of the
provinces, attaching to them Greek or Macedonian commandants as checks.
Seloucus divided his empire into seventy-two satrapies; but among his
satraps not one was an Asiatic--all were either Macedonians or Greeks.
Asiatics, indeed, formed the bulk of his standing army, and so far were
admitted to employment; they might also, no doubt, be tax-gatherers,
couriers, scribes, constables, and officials of that mean stamp; but
they were as carefully excluded from all honorable and lucrative offices
as the natives of Hindustan under the rule of the East India Company.
The standing army of the Seleucidae was wholly officered, just as was
that of our own Sepoys, by Europeans; Europeans thronged the court,
and filled every important post under the government. There cannot be
a doubt that such a high-spirited and indeed arrogant people as the
Persians must have fretted and chafed under this treatment, and have
detested the nation and dynasty which had thrust them down from their
pre-eminence and converted them from masters into slaves. It would
scarcely much tend to mitigate the painfulness of their feelings that
they could not but confess their conquerors to be a civilized
people--as civilized, perhaps more civilized than themselves--since the
civilization was of a type and character which did not please them
or command their approval. There is an essential antagonism between
European and Asiatic ideas and modes of thought, such as seemingly
to preclude the possibility of Asiatics appreciating a European
civilization. The Persians must have felt towards the Greco-Macedonians
much as the Mohammedans of India feel towards ourselves--they may have
feared and even respected them--but they must have very bitterly hated
them. Nor was the rule of the Seleucidae such as to overcome by its
justice or its wisdom the original antipathy of the dispossessed lords
of Asia towards those by whom they had been ousted. The satrapial