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THE
UNSEENHAND
IN HISTORY
ls there definite design
and purpose behind human
history? Or is history
a meaningless series of
random events?
by
Keith W. Stump
M
ANY
have wondered.
rs history simply an
arb itrary success ion
of events, a meaningless
patchwork of random inci–
dents, devoid of purpose?
Or is there sorne sort of over–
all design or recurring pattern
in history?
The rise and fall of empires and
nations is a dominant feature of his–
tory. One power rises to promi–
nence, only to decline and eventual–
!
y be s upplanted by another.
Why?
For centuries, liistorians and phi–
losophers have pondered t his inex–
orable progression of civilizations.
What does it al/ mean?
One After Another
T o illustrate, consider the fall of
ancient Babylon.
In October, 539 B.C., Babylon–
the greatest c ity of the ancient
world- fe ll to a Medo-Persian
army under Cyrus the Great.
Less than half a century earlier,
the famed city had reached the
height of its power and splendor
under King Nebuc hadnezzar,
January 1982
bui lder of the magnificent lshtar
Gate and the world-renowned
Hanging Gardens, one of the sev–
en wonders of the ancient
world.
After Nebuchadnezzar's death,
Babylonian power declined rapidly.
By 539 B.C., the stage was set for
collapse.
Greek historians Herodotus and
Xenophon record that Cyrus
achieved entry into the heavily for–
tified capital by cleverly diverting
the waters of the Euphrates River,
which flowed under the city's htlge
brass gates and through the length
of the metropol is.
Upstream, according to the
account, Cyrus' army dug a chan–
nel to lead off the water into a huge
abandoned reservoir near the river.
The leve! of the river soon began to
s ink. Cyrus' army, under cover of
darkness, slipped quietly down into
the now knee-deep water and
waded under t he gates into the
unsuspecting city. The Babylonians
were taken by surpr ise, and the city
fell with little bloodshed.
The fall of Babylon was one of
the decisive events of antiquity,
marking the end of an era. What
did it mean ?
The once-great Babylonian
realm was absorbed into the Per–
s ian Empire, which soon included
all of the Near East from the
Aegean Sea to the Indus River.
Eventually, however, the great Per–
sian Empire foll owed in the foot–
steps of its predecessor,_falling to
the armies of Alexander the Great
sorne 200 years later.
And likewise, the legions of
Rome ultimately swallowed up the
one-time domains of Alexander.
Again, what did it a ll mean?
The ancients themselves pon–
dered this r ecur ring pattern
through history. The Greek histori–
an Polybius recounts how the great
Roma n commander Scipio the
Younger, while watching the city
of Carthage going up in flames in
146 B.C., remarked to him: "A glo–
rious moment, Polybius; but 1 havc
a dread forebodi ng that sorne day
the same doom will be pronounced
upon my own country.... [For
thus it had] happened to 11-
lium ... and to the empires of
Assyria, Media and Persia, the
greatest of their time...." Scipio
the Younger was right. History did
repeat. Why?
Differing Vlew s
The belief that it is possible to dis–
cern in the course of human history
sorne all-encompassi ng pattern or
general scheme is very old. Many
widely varying theories have been
advanced attempting to give mean–
ing to the events of history.
Oswald Spengler, the early
20th-century German philosopher,
drew an analogy between the life
cycles of civilizat ions and those of
biological organ isms. He main–
tained that all civilizations pass
inevitably
through a four-period
life cycle of birth , maturity, decay
and death.
Karl Marx and Friedrich En–
gels- the fathers of commu–
nism- saw an endless class strug–
gle between the oppressed and the
oppressors as the mainspring and
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