century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of
supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations
around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it
is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden
underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join
forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to
overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent
servitude. Should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the
presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of
profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making
any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks.
They tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which
even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier
war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious
sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded
ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be scenes of bloody
conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of
petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that
the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than,
from an invasion. There will be no truce to their struggles until they
all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval
between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their
history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations.

From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described,
and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldæa, Egypt,
Assyria, and Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia
and the empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay
hold of it. By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most
of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later