Persian Invasion of Greece. 349 



a state of great degradation. The cftects of conquests of this 

 kind are commonly rendered less rigorous, because the victors, 

 yielding to the ascendency of civilization, adopt the manners 

 and customs of the vanquished. In Egypt, such a union could 

 not take place. The Persians, whose religion rested upon the 

 docti'ine of the two principles, were in this respect evidently 

 superior to the Egyptians, and they moreover held the religion 

 of that people in abhorrence, on account of the honours which 

 they rendered to images. They therefore persecuted them 

 cruelly. 



The same reasons rendered their yoke heavy upon the Greek 

 colonies of Asia Minor, when Cambyses's successor Darius con- 

 quered them. Oppression there arrested the progress of the 

 arts and of poetry, as in Egypt it had stifled the philosophical 

 and religious doctrines. The conquest of Darius threw upon 

 central Greece a multitude of emigrants, who carried there the 

 knowledge which they had acquired in Egypt ; for, as soon as 

 the gates of that country had been opened by Psammeticus, 

 Thales, Pythagoras, and several other sages, hastened thither 

 to be instructed in the school of the Egyptian priests. It may 

 therefore be said, that if the successes of the Persians disquiet- 

 ed Greece, so far from retarding its progress toward civiliza- 

 tion, they even contributed to accelerate it. 



Xerxes, who reigned after Darius, attacked central Greece ; 

 but he was repulsed : and it is at this time that the most bril- 

 liant epoch of that country commences. In fact, philosophy, 

 cultivated at first in the colonies of Asia Minor, and then in the 

 Italian colonies, at length concentrated itself at Athens, and 

 there, in a few years, arrived at a high degree of perfection. 



The Greek philosophy did not originate from a single stem. 

 It did not possess uniformity, because it was not confided to a 

 single learned body. It was derived, it is true, by diflerent 

 channels, from the ancient Egyptian philosophy ; but the sages 

 who went to drink at this source, each in his own manner, mo- 

 dified the doctrines which were communicated to them, and 

 formed different schools. 



(To be continued.) 



