1"^ '^.S" 
 
 y J%:iny^' 
 
 
 ^yo. 
 
 
 v^ 
 
ANCIENT TIMES 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE 
 EARLY WORLD 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
 
 ANCIENT HISTORY AND THE 
 
 CAREER OF EARLY MAN 
 
 BY 
 JAMES HENRY BREASTED, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY; CHAIRMAN 
 
 OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
 ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED 
 
 ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 OUTLINES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, PART I 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON 
 
 AND JAMES HENRY BREASTED 
 
 ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 321-3 
 
 ^61 
 
 ^Sf? 
 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
 PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 
 
t 
 
 /?/ 
 
 ^~ PREFACE 
 
 / ^• 
 
 In the selection of subject matter as well as in style and 
 ,.-^^ diction, it has been the purpose of the author to make this 
 book sufficiently simple to be put into the hands of first-year 
 high-school pupils. A great deal of labor has been devoted 
 to the mere task of clear and simple statement and arrange- 
 ment. While simple enough for first-year high-school work, it 
 nevertheless is planned to interest and stimulate all students 
 of high-school age. In dealing with each civilization a suffi- 
 cient framework of political organization and of historical 
 events has been laid down ; but the bulk of the space has been 
 devoted to the life of ??tan in all its manifestations — society, 
 ■ -dustry, commerce, religion, art, literature. These things are 
 ,0 presented as to make it clear how one age grows out of 
 
 nother, and how each civilization profits by that which has 
 
 receded it. 
 The story of each great race or nation is thus clearly disen- 
 . ;aged and presented in period after period ; but, nevertheless, 
 
 he book purposes to present the career of man as a whole, in 
 a connected story of expanding life and civilization from the 
 days of the rudest stone hatchet to the Christian cathedrals of 
 "^urope, without a serious gap. A symmetrical presentation 
 
 f the career of man requires adequate space for the origins of 
 dlization and the history of the Orient, as these two subjects 
 
 .ave been revealed by the excavations and discoveries of the 
 last two generations, especially the last twenty-five years. The 
 reasons for devoting more than the customary space to these 
 subjects in this book may therefore be briefly noted. 
 
 The length of the career of man discernible by us has been 
 enormously increased at the present day by archaeological 
 
iv Ancient Times 
 
 discovery, carrying back the development of human arts at 
 least fifty, and perhaps two hundred thousand, years. Even a 
 recorded in written documents, modern discovery in the Orier 
 has placed behind the period of human history as formerly 
 known to us another period equally long, thus doubling the 
 length of the historic age. It cannot be said that all this vast 
 new outlook has as yet been surveyed and briefly presented in 
 a form intelligible to younger students as an imposing pano- 
 rama of the expanding human career. The attainment of such 
 a point of view of the career of man has been a slow process. 
 The ancient history written by Sulpicius Severus, about 400 a.d., 
 survived for over a thousand years, and became a respected text- 
 book, which was in use as late as the sixteenth century. It 
 dealt almost exclusively with the history of Rome. A mention 
 of the battle of Marathon was its 07ily reference to Greek history. 
 The Roman colossus bulked so large that nothing earlier could 
 be seen behind it. 
 
 Within the last few years, however, the marvelous genius 
 of the Greeks has finally found full recognition in our histori- 
 cal textbooks. There is another similar step yet to be taken, 
 and that is to discern behind Greece and Rome an additional 
 great and important chapter of the human story and to give it 
 adequate and interesting presentation to young readers. Prob- 
 ably no one outside the arcanum of the traditional classicists 
 would question the assertion that conquests which we owe to 
 the Orient, like the discovery of metal and the invention of 
 alphabetic writing, were achievements of far greater impor- 
 tance than the details of the Peloponnesian Wars, whether 
 estimated by their consequences to the human race or by their 
 value as information in the mind of the modern high-school 
 pupil. Whether such achievements are regarded as falling 
 within the historic epoch or not is a matter of small moment. 
 They belong to the human career^ and as such they should find 
 their place in the picture of that career which is presented to 
 the younger generation. 
 
Preface v 
 
 The intelligent person of to-day desires to be so familiar with 
 such facts as these in the rise of civilization as to possess some 
 moderate acquaintance with the early chapters in the human 
 career. Civilization arose in the Orient, and early Europe ob- 
 tained it there. But the languages of the early Orient perished, 
 and the ability to read them was lost many centuries ago. On 
 the other hand, the languages of Greece and Rome were never 
 lost, like those of the ancient Orient. In modern educational 
 history Greek and Latin have not been suddenly recovered, 
 and we have not had to grow accustomed to their abrupt intro- 
 duction into science and education. The sudden and dramatic 
 recovery of the earlier chapters of the human career, lying 
 behind Greece and Rome, has created a situation to which our 
 histories of the ancient world, as they are found in^ our public 
 schools, have not yet adjusted themselves. The habit of regard- 
 ing ancient history as beginning with Greece has become so 
 fixed that it is not easily to be changed. Furthermore, the 
 monuments and documents left us by the ancient Orient are 
 far larger in extent than those which we have inherited from 
 Greece and Rome together, and their enormous volume, to- 
 gether with their difficult systems of writing, have made it very 
 laborious to recover and arrange the history of the Orient in 
 form and language suitable for the high-school pupil. 
 
 In 1884 Eduard Meyer, the leading ancient historian of this 
 generation, in his History of Antiquity devoted six hundred 
 and nineteen pages to the Orient. In the third edition, still 
 unfinished, which began to appear in 1913, the portion of 
 the Orient thus far issued (less than half) occupies eleven 
 hundred and fifty pages. The remainder, still unpublished, 
 .will easily bring the treatment of the Orient up to twenty- 
 four or twenty-five hundred pages, that is, about four times its 
 former bulk. A textbook which devotes a brief fifty- or sixty- 
 page introduction to the Orient and begins " real history " with 
 the Greeks is not proportioned in accordance with modem 
 knowledge of the ancient world. 
 
vi Ancient Times 
 
 Furthermore, the value of the early oriental monuments as 
 teaching material has as yet hardly been discerned. The highly 
 graphic pictorial monuments and records of the East, when 
 accompanied by proper explanations, may be made to convey 
 to the young student the meaning and character of a contem- 
 porary historical source more vividly than any body of ancient 
 records surviving elsewhere. When adequately explained, such 
 records also serve to dispel that sense of complete unreality 
 which besets the young person in studying the career of ancient 
 man. These materials have not been employed in our schools, 
 because they have not been available to the teacher in the 
 current textbooks. 
 
 Finally, when we recall that the leading religion of the world — 
 the one which still dominates Western civilization to-day — came 
 to us out of the Orient ; when we further remember that before 
 it fell the Roman Empire was completely orientalized, it would 
 appear to be only fair to our schools to give them books furnish- 
 ing an adequate treatment of pre-Greek civilization. This does 
 not mean to question for a moment the undeniable supremacy 
 of Greek culture, or to give it any less space than before. The 
 author believes that no one who reads the chapters on Greece 
 in this survey will gain the impression that Hellas has been sac- 
 rificed to Moloch — in other words, to her oriental predecessors. 
 
 The author is convinced that the surviving monuments of 
 the entire ancient world can be so visualized as to render ancient 
 history a very real story even to young students, and that these 
 monuments may be made to tell their own story with great 
 vividness. This method he has already introduced into the 
 ancient-history chapters of Outlines of European History^ Fart I, 
 where it has demonstrated its availability. The same method 
 has been employed in illustrating this ancient history. The 
 result has been a book somewhat larger than the current text- 
 books on ancient history ; but the excess is due to the series of 
 illustrations. The book actually contains a text of about five 
 hundred pages, with a " picture book " of about two hundred 
 
Preface vii 
 
 and fifteen pages. Teachers will do well to make the illustra- 
 tions and accompanying descriptive matter part of each lesson. 
 The references in the text to the illustrations, and the refer- 
 ences to the text in the descriptive matter under the illustrations, 
 if noted and used, will be found to merge text and illustrations 
 into a unified whole. It should be noted that all references to the 
 text are by paragraph (§) except a few references by " Section." 
 
 An elaborate system of maps has been arranged by the 
 author for the purpose of bringing the successive epochs of 
 history before the pupil in terms of geography. The under- 
 lying principle is the arrangement on the same plate of from 
 two to four maps representing successive historical epochs. 
 It is believed that these composite maps, called by the author 
 sequence maps, will prove a powerful aid to the teacher. 
 
 The author has not found it an easy task to turn from 
 twenty-five years of research in a laboratory of ancient history, 
 extending from a university post in America to the frontiers 
 of the oriental lands, and endeavor to summarize for youthful 
 readers the facts now discernible in the career of ancient 
 man. Under these circumstances the experience of my friend 
 Professor James Harvey Robinson, who has done so much for 
 the study of history in the schools of America, has been 
 invaluable. The book owes a great deal to the inspiration of 
 his unflagging interest and the helpfulness of his long experi- 
 ence in the art of simplification. It may be mentioned here 
 that Professor Robinson's Medieval and Modern Times forms 
 the continuation of this volume on ancient history. To my 
 colleague Professor C. F. Huth also I am indebted for careful 
 reading of the proofs, accompanied by unfailingly valuable 
 counsel. To him, furthermore, I owe the excellent bibliography 
 of Greece and Rome at the end of the volume. Mr. Robert I. 
 Adriance, head of the history department of the East Orange 
 high schools, has kindly read all the proofs. His discerning 
 criticisms and wide knowledge have proved very valuable to the 
 book, and his unfailing interest has been a great encouragement. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I. THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 1. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress i 
 
 2. The Early Stone Age 5 
 
 3. The Middle Stone Age 9 
 
 4. The Late Stone Age • . . . . 14 
 
 PART 11. THE ORIENT 
 
 II. The Story of Egypt: the Earliest Nile-Dwellers 
 AND THE Pyramid Age 
 
 5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants 35 
 
 6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B.C.) 49 
 
 7. Art and Architecture in the Pyramid Age 68 
 
 III. The Story of Egypt : the Feudal Age and the Empire 
 
 8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age 74 
 
 9. The Founding of the Empire 80 
 
 10. The Higher Life of the Empire 86 
 
 11. The Decline and Fall of the Egyptian Empire .... 93 
 
 12. The Decipherment of Egyptian Writing by Champollion 97 
 
 IV. Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 13. The Lands and Races of Western Asia 100 
 
 14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and Early Struggle of 
 
 Sumerian and Semite 107 
 
 15. The First Semitic Triumph: the Age of Sargon . . . 122 
 
 16. Union of Sumerians and Semites : the Kings of Sumer 
 
 and Akkad 126 
 
 17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the Age of Hammurapi 
 
 and After 128 
 
 V. The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 18. Early Assyria and her Rivals 140 
 
 19. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.) 151 
 
 20. The Chaldean Empire : the Last Semitic Empire . . . 164 
 
xii Ancient Times 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VI. The Medo-Persian Empire 
 
 21. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion . . 171 
 
 22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster 176 
 
 23. Rise of the Persian Empire : Cyrus 179 
 
 24. The Civilization of the Persian Empire (about 530 
 
 to 330 B.C.) 182 
 
 25. PersianDocumentsandtheDecipherment of Cuneiform 189 
 
 26. The Results of Persian Rule and its Religious Influence 194 
 
 VII. The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 
 
 27. Palestine and the Predecessors of the Hebrews there 197 
 
 28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine and the 
 
 United Hebrew Kingdom 200 
 
 29. The Two Hebrew Kingdoms 206 
 
 30. The Destruction of the Hebrew Kingdoms by Assyria 
 
 and Chaldea 210 
 
 31. The Hebrews in Exile and their Deliverance by the 
 
 Persians 213 
 
 32. Decline of Oriental Leadership ; Estimate of Oriental 
 
 Civilization 217 
 
 PART III. THE GREEKS 
 
 VIII. The Dawn of' European Civilization and the Rise 
 OF THE Eastern Mediterranean World . 
 
 33. The Dawn of Civilization in Europe 221 
 
 34. The ^gean World : the Islands 225 
 
 35. The ^gean World : the Mainland 236 
 
 36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and 
 
 the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World . . . 244 
 
 IX. The Greek Conquest of the ^^gean World 
 
 37. The Coming of the Greeks 252 
 
 38. The Nomad Greeks make the Transition to the Settled 
 
 Life 259 
 
 X. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 
 
 39. The iEgean Inheritance and the Spread of Phoenician 
 
 Commerce . 263 
 
 40. The Phoenicians bring the First Alphabet to Europe 270 
 
 41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs 273 
 
 42. The Beginnings and Early Development of Greek 
 
 Religion 276 
 
Contents xiii 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. The Age of the Nobles and Greek Expansion in 
 THE Mediterranean 
 
 43. The Disappearance of the Kings and the Leadership 
 
 of the Nobles 282 
 
 44. Greek Expansion in the Age of the Nobles .... 287 
 
 45. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Nobles .... 290 
 
 XII. The Industrial Revolution and the Age of the 
 Tyrants 
 
 46. The Industrial and Commercial Revolution .... 295 
 
 47. Rise of the Democracy and the Age of the Tyrants . 301 
 
 48. Civilization of the Age of the Tyrants 307 
 
 XIII. The Repulse of Persia 
 
 49. The Coming of the Persians .... 322 
 
 50. The Greek Repulse of Persians and Phoenicians . . 328 
 
 XIV. The Growing Rivalry bp:tween Athens and Sparta, 
 
 and the Rise of the Athenian Empire 
 
 51. The Beginnings of the Rivalry between Athens and 
 
 Sparta 336 
 
 52. The Rise of the Athenian Empire and the Triumph 
 
 of Democracy 339 
 
 53. Commercial Development and the Opening of the 
 
 Struggle between Athens and Sparta 344 
 
 XV. Athens in the Age of Pericles 
 
 54. Society, the Home, Education and Training of Young 
 
 Citizens 350 
 
 55. Higher Education, Science, and the Training gained 
 
 by State Service , 357 
 
 56. Art and Literature 362 
 
 XVI. The Struggle between Athens and Sparta and 
 THE Fall of the Athenian Empire 
 
 57. The Tyranny of Athens and the Second Peloponne- 
 
 sian War 37S 
 
 58. Third Peloponnesian War and Destruction of the 
 
 Athenian Empire 385 
 
 XVII. The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 
 
 59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline of Democracy . 394 
 
 60. The Fall of Sparta and the Leadership of Thebes . 402 
 
xiv Ancient Times 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVIII. The Higher Life of the Greeks from the Death 
 OF Pericles to the Fall of the Greek States 
 6t. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting 406 
 
 62. Religion, Literature, and Thought 413 
 
 XIX. Alexander the Great 
 
 63. The Rise of Macedonia . , . . = 425 
 
 64. Campaigns of Alexander th.: Great . . . , . . - ; . 429 
 
 65. International Policy of Alexander : its Personal Con- 
 
 sequences 438 
 
 PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 
 HELLENISTIC AGE AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 
 
 XX. The Heirs of Alexander 
 
 66. The Heirs of Alexander's Empire 445 
 
 67. The Decline of Greece 450 
 
 XXI. The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 
 
 68. Cities, Architecture, and Art 453 
 
 69. Inventions and Science ; Libraries and Literature . 466 
 
 70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion 475 
 
 71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of Hellenic-Oriental 
 
 Civilization; Decline ofCitizenship and the City-State 481 
 
 XXII. The Western Mediterranean World and the 
 Roman Conquest of Italy 
 
 72. The Western Mediterranean World 484 
 
 73. Earliest Rome 492 
 
 74. The Early Republic : its Progress and Government . 499 
 
 75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic and the Con- 
 
 quest of Italy 511 
 
 XXIII. The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 
 
 and the Rivalry with Carthage 
 
 76. Italy under the Early Roman Republic 520 
 
 77. Rome and Carthage as Commercial Rivals .... 524 
 
 XXIV. The Roman Conquest of the Western Mediter- 
 
 ranean World 
 
 78. The Struggle with Carthage : the Sicilian War, or 
 
 First Punic War 533 
 
 79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic War) and the 
 
 Destruction of Carthage , . 535 
 
Contents 
 
 XV 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXV. World Dominion and Degeneracy 
 
 80. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean 
 
 World 549 
 
 81. Roman Government and Civilization in the Age of 
 
 Conquest 553 
 
 82. Degeneration in City and Country 563 
 
 XXVI. A Century of Revolution and the End of the 
 Republic 
 
 83. The Land Situation and the Beginning of the 
 
 Struggle between Senate and People 574 
 
 84. The Rise of One-Man Power: Marius and Sulla . 578 
 
 85. The Overthrow of the Republic : Pompey and 
 
 Cassar 584 
 
 86. The Triumph of Augustus and the End of the 
 
 Civil War 596 
 
 PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 
 
 XXVII. The First of Two Centuries of Peace: the Age 
 OF Augustus and the Successors of his Line 
 
 87. The Rule of Augustus and the Beginning of Two 
 
 Centuries of Peace (30 B.C.-14 A. D.) 601 
 
 88. The Civilization of the Augustan Age 607 
 
 89. The Line of Augustus and the End of the First 
 
 Century of Peace (14 A. D.-68 A.D.) 617 
 
 XXVIII. The Second Century of Peace and the Civiliza- 
 tion of the Early Roman Empire 
 
 90. The Emperors of the Second Century of Peace (be- 
 
 ginning 69 A.D.) 625 
 
 91. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire: the 
 
 Provinces 636 
 
 92. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire : Rome 649 
 
 93. Popularity of Oriental Religions and the Spread of 
 
 Early Christianity 659 
 
 94. The End of the Second Century of Peace .... 664 
 
 XXIX. A Century of Revolution and the Division of 
 THE Empire 
 
 95. Internal Decline of the Roman Empire ..... 667 
 
 96. A Century of Revolution 673 
 
xvi Ancient Times 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 97. The Roman Empire an Oriental Despotism .... 677 
 
 98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of 
 
 Christianity 682 
 
 XXX. The Triumph of the Barbarians and the End of 
 THE Ancient World 
 
 99. The Barbarian Invasions and the Fall of the Western 
 
 Empire 688 
 
 100. The Triumph of the Roman Church and its Power 
 
 over the Western Nations 698 
 
 10 1. The Final Revival of the Orient and the Forerunners 
 
 of the Nations of Modern Europe 705 
 
 102. Retrospect 713 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 717 
 
 INDEX 733 
 
LIST OF COLORED PLATES 
 
 PLATE PAGE 
 
 I. Restoration of an Egyptian Vase of the 
 
 Pyramid Age. (After Borchardt) . Frontispiece 
 
 II. Glazed Brick Lion from the Wall of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's Palace. (After Koldewey) . 164 
 
 III. The Plain of Argos and the Sea viewed 
 
 from the Castle of Tiryns 276 
 
 IV. A Corner of the Parthenon 380 
 
 V. The Temples and Palms of Phil^ .... 444 
 
 VI. Greeks and Persians hunting Lions with 
 
 Alexander the Great 468 
 
 VII. The Greek Theater at Taormina, with its 
 
 Roman Additions 560 
 
 VIII. One of the Oldest Surviving Portrait 
 
 Paintings 654 
 
LIST OF MAPS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Map of Europe in the Ice Age '. . . 8 
 
 Egypt and the Nile Valley to the Second Cataract 36-37 
 
 Egyptian Thebes 81 
 
 The Ancient Oriental World and Neighboring Europe before the 
 
 Rise of the Greeks loo-ioi 
 
 Map of Sumer and Akkad, later called Babylonia 106 
 
 Map of Nineveh ' 154 
 
 Map of Babylon in the Chaldean Age 165 
 
 Sequence Map showing Expansion of the Oriental Empires for a 
 
 Thousand Years (from about 1500 to 500 B.C.) 1S8-189 
 
 I. Egyptian Empire (Fifteenth Century B.C.) 
 II. Assyrian Empire (Seventh Century B.C.) 
 
 III. Median and Chaldean Empires (Sixth Century B.C.) 
 
 IV. Persian Empire (500 B.C.) 
 
 Palestine the Land of the Hebrews 196-197 
 
 Sequence Map of the Eastern Mediterranean World from the 
 Grand Age of Cretan Civilization (about 1500 B.C.) to the Con- 
 quest of the ^gean by the Greeks 252-253 
 
 I. Pre-Greek Civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean World till 
 1500 B.C. 
 II. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Greek Conquest of the ^^gean 
 World (1500-1000 B.C.) and the Spread of Phoenician Commerce 
 after 1200 B.C. 
 
 Greece in the Fifth Century B.c 264-265 
 
 Colonial Expansion of the Greeks and Phoenicians down to the 
 
 Sixth Century B.c 288-289 
 
 Map of the World by Hecataeus (517 B.C.) 319 
 
 Sequence Map showing Western Limits of the Persian Empire 
 and the Greek States from the Persian Wars (beginning 
 490 B.C.) to the Beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War 
 (431 B.C.) 344-345 
 
 I. Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States in the 
 Persian Wars (490-479 B.C.) 
 II. The Athenian Empire and the Greek States at the Opening of the 
 Second Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) 
 xviii 
 
List of Maps xix 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Central Greece and Athens 352-353 
 
 I. Attica and Neighboring States 
 II. Athens 
 
 Map of the World according to Herodotus 360 
 
 Plan of the Siege of Syracuse . 386 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.) 403 
 
 Empire of Alexander the Great 436-437 
 
 Sequence Map showing the Three Empires of Alexander's Suc- 
 cessors from the Third Century B.C. to their Decline at the 
 Coming of the Romans after 200 b. c 448-449 
 
 I. The Three Empires of Alexander's Successors in the Third Cen- 
 tury B.C. 
 II. The Three Empires of Alexander's Successors Early in the Second 
 Century B.C. 
 
 Map of the World according to Eratosthenes (200 B.C.) .... 472 
 Italy and Adjacent Lands before the Supremacy of Rome . 484-485 
 Sketch Map showing Four Rival Peoples of the Western Medi- 
 terranean: Etruscans, Italic Tribes, Greeks, and Carthaginians 489 
 
 Early Latium 493 
 
 Map of Early Rome showing the Successive Stages of its Growth 500 
 
 Four Sketch Maps showing Expansion of Roman Power in Italy 516 
 
 I. Italy at the Beginning of the Roman Republic (about 500 B.C.) 
 
 II. Roman Power during the Samnite Wars (down to 300 B.C.) 
 
 III. Roman Power after the Samnite Wars (290 B.C.) 
 
 IV. Roman Power after the War with Pyrrhus (275 B.C.) 
 
 The Route and Marches of Hannibal, from 218 to 203 B.C. . . . 538 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Cannae 540 
 
 Sequence Map showing the Expansion of the Roman Power from 
 the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 B.C.) to the Death 
 of Caesar (44 B.C.) 552-553 
 
 I. Roman Power at the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage 
 (264 B.C.) 
 II. Expansion of Roman Power between the Sicilian and Hannibalian 
 Wars with Carthage (241-218 b.c.) 
 
 III. Expansion of Roman Power from the End of the Hannibalian Wars 
 
 to the Beginning of the Revolution (201-133 B.C.) 
 
 IV. Expansion of Roman Power from the Beginning of the Revolu- 
 
 tion to the Death of Caesar (133-44 B.C.) 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Pharsalus 593 
 
 Map of Rome under the Emperors , . . . , ^ 62? 
 
XX Aficient Times 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Sequence Map showing Territorial Gains and Losses of the 
 Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar (44 B.C.) to the Death 
 of Diocletian (305 a.d.) , . . 636-637 
 
 I. Expansion of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar to the 
 End of the Two Centuries of Peace (44 B.C.-167 a.d.) 
 II. The Roman Empire under Diocletian (284-305 a.d.) showing the 
 Four Prefectures 
 
 Map of the World by the Astronomer and Geographer Ptolemy 
 
 (Second Century a.d.) 657 
 
 The Roman Empire as organized by Diocletian and Constan- 
 
 tine 676-677 
 
 Migrations of the Germans 692-693 
 
 Europe in the Time of Charlemagne 700-701 
 
 Mohammedan Conquests at their Greatest Extent 709 
 
ANCIENT TIMES 
 
 PART I. THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY MANKIND IN EUROPE 
 
 Section i. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress 
 
 We all know that our fathers and mothers never saw an i. Man's 
 aeroplane when they were children, and very few of them had fentkm and 
 ever seen an automobile. Their fathers lived durins: most of acquirement 
 
 ^ oi the posses- 
 
 their lives without electric lights or telephones in their houses, sions of life 
 
 Their grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, were obliged to 
 
 make all long journeys in stagecoaches drawn by horses, and 
 
 some of them died without ever having seen a locomotive. 
 
 One after another, as they have been invented, such things 
 
 have come and continue to come into the lives of men. 
 
 Each device grew out of earlier inventions, and each would 2. Ancient 
 have been impossible without the inventions which came in story'of^ 
 before it. Thus, if we went back far enous^h, we would reach a ^^"^!^^^ 
 
 ' ° ' achievements 
 
 point where no one could build a stagecoach or a wagon, because followed by- 
 no one had invented a wheel or tamed a wild horse. Earlier rivalries 
 still there were no ships and no travel or commerce by sea. 
 There were no metal tools, for no one had ever seen any 
 metal. Without metal tools for cutting the stone there could 
 be no fine buildings or stone structures. It was impossible to 
 write, for no one had invented writing, and so there were no 
 books nor any knowledge of science. At the same time there 
 were no schools or hospitals or churches, and no laws or 
 government. This book is intended to tell the story of how / 
 
Ancient Times 
 
 3. Man be- 
 gan with 
 nothing and 
 with no one 
 to teach him 
 
 4. Savages 
 of to-day 
 show us the 
 Hfe of earhest 
 man ; the 
 Tasmanians 
 and what 
 they had 
 failed to 
 learn 
 
 5. The 
 Tasmanians 
 and what 
 they had 
 learned 
 
 mankind gained all these things and built up great nations which 
 struggled among themselves for leadership, and then weakened 
 and fell. This story forms what we call ancient history. 
 
 If we go back far enough in the story of man, we reach a 
 time when he possessed nothing whatever but his hands with 
 which to protect himself, satisfy his hunger, and meet all his 
 other needs. He must have been without speech and unable 
 even to build a fire. There was no one to teach him anything. 
 The earliest men who began in this situation had to learn 
 everything for themselves by slow experience and long effort, 
 and every tool, however simple, had to be invented. 
 
 People so completely uncivilized as the earliest men must 
 have been, no longer exist on earth. Nevertheless, the lowest 
 savage tribes found by explorers at the present day are still 
 leading a life very much like that of our early ancestors. 
 For example, the Tasmanians, the people whom the English 
 found on the island of Tasmania a century or so ago, wore 
 no clothing; they had not learned how to build a roofed hut; 
 they did not know how to make a bow and arrows, nor even 
 to fish. They had no goats, sheep, or cows; no horses, not 
 even a dog. They had never heard of sowing seed nor rais- 
 ing a crop of any kind. They did not know that clay would 
 harden in the fire, and so they had no pottery jars, jugs, or 
 dishes for food. 
 
 Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy 
 only a very few of man's needs. Yet that which they had 
 learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest 
 men. They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in 
 cold weather, and over it they cooked their meat. They had 
 learned to construct very good wooden spears, though without 
 metal tips, for they had never heard of metal. These spears, 
 tipped with stone, they could throw with great accuracy, and 
 thus bring down the game they needed for food, or drive away 
 their human enemies. They would take a flat stone and, by 
 chipping off the edges to thin them, they could make a rude 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 knife with which to skin and cut up the game they killed. 
 They were also very deft in weaving cups, vessels, and baskets 
 of bark fiber. Above all, they had a simple language, with 
 words for all the ordinary things they used and. did every day. 
 
 It was only after sev- 
 eral hundred thousand 
 years of savage life arnd 
 slow progress that the 
 earliest prehistoric men 
 of Europe reached and 
 passed beyond a stage 
 of savagery like that 
 of the Tasmanians just 
 described. The Eu- 
 rope which formed the 
 home of these earliest 
 men was very differ- 
 ent from what it is to- 
 day. In the shadow 
 of the lofty primeval 
 forests which fringed 
 the streams and clothed 
 the wide plains, the 
 ponderous hippopota- 
 mus wallowed along 
 the shores of the Euro- 
 pean rivers. The fierce 
 rhinoceros, with a horn 
 three feet in length, 
 charged through the 
 
 heavy tropical growth on their banks, and vast elepha its, with 
 shaggy hair two feet long (Fig. lo, 7), wandered through the 
 jungles behind. Myriads of bison and wild horses grazed on the 
 uplands, and the broken glades sheltered numerous herds of 
 deer. A moist atmosphere, warm and enervating, vibrant with 
 
 6. Prehis- 
 toric Europe 
 its climate 
 and animals 
 
 Fig. I. Fire-making without 
 
 Matches, by Modern Natives 
 
 OF Australia 
 
 The outfit is very simple, consisting merely 
 of a round, dry stick placed upright with 
 the lower end in a hole in a dry tree-trunk 
 lying on the ground. By turning the stick 
 rapidly between both hands the friction 
 finally generates sufficient heat to produce 
 flame (§ 8) 
 
Ancient Times 
 
 7. Life and 
 haunts of the 
 earliest Euro- 
 pean ; his 
 wooden 
 weapons and 
 tools 
 
 the notes of many tropical birds, pervaded this prehistoric 
 European wilderness stretching far across Europe. 
 
 With nothing to 
 cover his naked- 
 ness, the early sav- 
 age of Europe 
 roamed stealthily 
 through these trop- 
 ical forests, seek- 
 ing his daily food 
 among the roots, 
 seeds, and wild 
 fruits wherever he 
 could find them, 
 and listening with 
 keen and eager ear 
 for the sound of 
 small game which 
 he might be able 
 to lay low with his 
 rough wooden club. 
 Doubtless he often 
 fled in terror as he 
 felt the thunderous 
 tread of the giant 
 animals of the for- 
 est or caught dim 
 glimpses of colossal 
 elephants plunging 
 through the deep 
 vistas of the jungle. 
 At night the hunter 
 slept wherever the 
 game had led him, after cutting up the flesh of his prey with 
 a wooden knife and devouring it raw. Not knowing how to 
 
 Fig. 2. A Group of North American 
 
 Indians making Flint Weapons. (After 
 
 Holmes) 
 
 The farthest Indian is prying loose a large 
 flint stone. This is the raw material, which is 
 then taken by the middle Indian, who crashes 
 it down upon a rock and shatters it into frag- 
 ments. One of these fragments is then taken 
 by the nearest Indian, who holds it in his left 
 hand while he strikes it with a stone in his 
 right hand. These blows flake off pieces of 
 flint, and the Indian is so skillful that he can 
 thus shape a flint hatchet. This process of shap- 
 ing the flint by blows (that is, by peixiissioii) 
 was the earliest and rudest method and pro- 
 duced the roughest stone tools. In the course 
 of thousands of years two improvements fol- 
 lowed — chipping the edge hy pressure (Fig. 5) 
 and sharpening the edg&hy grinding {Y\g. 16, j') 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 5 
 
 make a fire to ward off the savage beasts, he lay trembling in 
 the darkness at the roar of the mighty saber-tooth tiger. 
 
 At length, however, he learned to know fire, perhaps finding 8. Man 
 it in his jungle haunts when the lightning kindled a forest fire, kindle fire 
 or fearing it from afar as he viewed the terrible volcanoes ^^^ "^^ ^*°"® 
 along the Mediterranean. It was a great step forward when he 
 at last learned to produce it himself with his whirl-stick (Fig. i). 
 He could then cook his food, warm his body, and harden the 
 tip of his wooden spear in the fire. But his dull wooden knife 
 he could not harden, and he sometimes found a broken stone 
 and used its ragged edge. When he learned to shape the stone 
 to suit his needs (Fig. 2), and thus to produce a rude tool or 
 weapon, he entered what_we_n^_w_^njthe_Siojae_..A^^ more - 
 than fifty thousand years ago. 
 
 From this point on we can hold in our hands the very stone 9. Career of 
 tools and implements with which early men maintained them- traceaSe"in 
 selves in their long strus^gle to survive. By the lone: trail of surviving 
 
 ^ ^° y & stone imple- 
 
 stone implements which they left behind them we can follow ments and 
 them and tell just how far they had advanced in the succes- of his hands 
 sive stages of their upward career ; for these stages are re- 
 vealed to us by their increasing skill in working stone and in 
 other industries which they gradually learned. We can dis- 
 tinguish, in the examples of their handiwork which still survive, 
 three successive ages, which we may call the Early Stone Age, 
 the Middle Stone Age, and the Late Stone Age. Let us now 
 observe man's progress through these three ages, one after 
 the other. 
 
 Section 2. The Early Stone Age 
 
 Until a short time ago it was supposed that human history 10. Modem 
 
 was comparatively brief. Moreover, everyone took it for man's^vast^ 
 
 granted that the earlier period of man's past had left no sur- ^^^ "'^'^'J. 
 
 viving traces. An old letter written in London two hundred ago 
 years ago (17 14) tells how a certain apothecary discovered 
 the bones of an elephant in a gravel-pit near London, and. near 
 
A7icient Times 
 
 II. The 
 
 Early Stone 
 Age hunter 
 and his fist- 
 hatchet 
 
 Fig. 3. A Flint Fist- 
 hatchet OF THE Early 
 Stone Age 
 
 Rough flint flakes older than 
 the fist-hatchet still survive 
 to show us man's earliest 
 efforts at shaping stone. 
 But the fist-hatchet is the 
 earliest well-finished type 
 of tool produced by man. 
 The original is about 9 
 inches long, and the draw 
 ing reduces it to less than 
 one third. Either end might 
 be used as the cutting edge, 
 but it was usually grasped 
 in the fist by the narrower 
 part, and never had any 
 handle. Handles of wood 
 or horn do not appear until 
 much later (cf. Fig. 16, .^-5). 
 Traces of use and wear are 
 sometimes found on such 
 fist-hatchets 
 
 by, the flint head of a spear. Al- 
 though this letter was soon after- 
 ward published, with a drawing of 
 the spearhead, no attention was paid 
 to it and it was quickly forgotten. 
 For over a century similar discov- 
 eries, both in England and on the 
 Continent, met with the same fate. 
 It was not until some fifty years 
 ago, after the evidence had been 
 available for a century and a half, 
 that the eyes of scientific men were 
 at last opened to the fact of the 
 enormously long sojourn of man 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Long-continued excavations, es- 
 pecially in France, have furnished 
 thousands of stone tools which re- 
 veal to us the progress of the Early 
 Stone Age hunter after he had found 
 that he could chip stones. By study- 
 ing the collections of such stone tools 
 now in the museums of Europe we 
 can see how the early man gradually 
 outgrew a variety of rudely chipped 
 stones and finally produced a suc- 
 cessful stone implement (Fig„ 3). 
 This he used for almost everything. 
 It was from eight to ten inches long, 
 narrow above and wider below, and 
 sufficiently sharp to enable him to 
 cut the roots and branches which he 
 used for food, to shape his wooden 
 fire-kindling outfit (Fig. i), and to 
 hew out his heavy wooden club. 
 
Early Mankind ifi Europe 7 
 
 This stone implement we call a '' fist-hatchet," because it was 
 grasped in the fist, usually by the narrow end, for the hunter 
 had not yet discovered how to attach a handle. These fist- 
 hatchets have been found in many places in Europe as well 
 as in other parts of the world. It is the earliest widely made 
 and used human device which has survived to our day. 
 
 Perishing probably in great numbers, as his hazardous life 12. Limita- 
 went on, this savage hunter of prehistoric Europe continued Early °Stone 
 for thousands of years the uncertain struggle for survival. He ^^e man 
 slowly improved his rough stone fist-hatchet, and he probably 
 learned to make additional implements of wood, but these have 
 of course rotted and perished, so that we know nothing of 
 them. Of all the later possessions of man he had not yet one. 
 The wide grainfields and the populous and prosperous com- 
 munities of later Europe were still many thousands of years 
 distant, in a future which it was even more impossible for 
 him to foresee than our own now is for us. Single-handed he 
 waged war upon all animals. There was not a beast which 
 was not his foe. There was as yet no dog, no sheep or fowl, 
 to which he might stretch out a kindly hand. The ancestor of 
 the modern dog was then either the jackal or the fierce wolf of 
 the forest, leaping upon the primitive hunter unawares, and 
 those beasts which were the ancestors of our modern domestic 
 animals were either not yet in existence in Europe or, like the 
 horse, still wandered the forests in a wild state (cf . Fig. 1 2). 
 
 At length the Early Stone Age hunter began to notice that 13. Coming 
 the air of his forest home was losing its tropical warmth. 
 Geologists have not yet found out why, but the climate grew 
 colder, and, as the ages passed, the ice, which all the year round 
 still overlies the region of the North Pole and the summits of 
 the Alps, began to descend. The northern ice crept farther and 
 farther southward until it covered England as far south as the 
 Thames. The glaciers of the Alps moved down the Rhone 
 valley as far as the spot where now the city of Lyons .stands 
 (see map, p. 8). On our own continent of North America 
 
I \ Regions covered by Ice 
 I ■•/:--l " " " ^""8 
 
 Interval 
 
 Human bones found as deep as 
 
 80 feet below the surface 
 
 of the earth 
 
 Not less than 50,000 years 
 
 Sketch Map of Europe in the Ice Age and Diagram 
 SHOWING Four Successive Descents of the Ice 
 
 During the Ice Age the ice advanced and retreated four times; that 
 is, there were four periods of cold, each followed by a long interval of 
 warmth. These periods of cold and warmth are indicated by the fall- 
 ing (cold) and the rising (warmth) of the wavy line in the diagram. We 
 are now living in the fourth warm interval. It is clear that prehistoric 
 men began to make fist-hatchets in one of the warm intervals ; but it 
 has been very difficult for geologists and archaeologists to find out %vhich 
 warm interval. Some think that it was the second, and if so, then men 
 began making stone tools at least two hundred thousand years ago. 
 Most investigators, however, now believe that stone toolmaking be- 
 gan early in the third warm interval ; that is, the warm interval pre- 
 ceding the last advance of the ice. In this case stone toolmaking may 
 have begun as late as fifty thousand years before Christ. But Professor 
 Henry Fairfield Osborn, in his valuable volume Men of the Old Sto?ie Age^ 
 accept? a date over one hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago for 
 the earliest stone tools, which he also places in the third wdixm. interval 
 
Early Mankind m Europe 9 
 
 the southern edge of the ice is marked by lines of bowlders car- 
 ried and left there by the ice. Such lines of bowlders are found, 
 for example, as far south as Long Island, and westward along 
 the valleys of the Ohio and Missouri. 
 
 The hunter saw the glittering blue masses of glacier ice, with 14. The end 
 their crown of snow, pushing through the green of his forest stone Age ^ 
 abode and crvishing down vast trees in many a sheltered glen or 
 favorite hunting-ground. Many of the animals familiar to him re- 
 treated to the warmer South, and he was forced gradually to ac- 
 custom himself to a cold climate. This change ended the Early 
 Stone Age, but the rude fist-hatchet of its hunters, and the bones 
 of theTiug^ animals they slew, were sometimes left lying side 
 by side in the sand and gravel far up on the valley slopes where 
 in these prehistoric ages the rivers of France once flowed, 
 before their deep modern beds had been eroded. And as these 
 long-buried relics are brought forth to-day, they tell us the fas- 
 cinating story of man's earliest progress in gaining control of 
 the world about him. The coming of the ice, strange as it may 
 seem, brought with it a new period of progress, which we call 
 the Middle Stone Age. 
 
 Section 3. The Middle Stone Age 
 
 Unable to build himself a shelter from the cold, the hunter 15. The in- 
 took refuge in the limestone caves (Fig. 4), where he and his Middle stone 
 descendants continued to live for thousands of years. We can ^£^ IJlt^i.^lT 
 
 ■^ ncw prcsouic- 
 
 imagine him at the door of his cave, carefully chipping off the chipped 
 edge of his flint tools. He has left the rude old fist-hatchet far troduction of 
 behind, for the hunter has finally discovered that h^ pressure with iv°"r^?mple- 
 a hard piece of bone he can chip off a line of fine flakes along 
 the edge of his flint tool and thus produce a much finer cutting 
 edge (Fig. 5) than by chipping with blows (or percussion), as 
 he formerly did. This discovery enabled him to produce a con- 
 siderable variety of flint tools — chisels, drills and hammers, 
 polishers and scrapers (Fig. 5). The new /r^j-j-wr^-chipped edges 
 
 ments 
 
lO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 were sharp enough to cut and shape even bone, ivory, and 
 especially reindeer horn. The mammoth (Fig. 10,7) furnished 
 the hunter with ivory, and when he needed horn he found 
 great herds of reindeer,^ driven southward by the ice, grazing 
 before the entrance of his cavern (Fig. 10, J-5). 
 
 Fig. 4. Cliffs in the South of France containing Caverns 
 
 INHABITED BY MiDDLE StONE AGE MaN 
 
 This district is filled with remains of Middle Stone Age man. The 
 dark opening at A is the entrance to a famous cavern (called Font-de- 
 Gatime) containing the finest wall paintings (§ 18) of the Middle Stone 
 Age surviving in France. They are surpassed only by those of Altamira, 
 Spain. On the floor are layers of rubbish containing human remains, 
 as in Fig. 9. (Drawn from a photograph by Professor Osborn) 
 
 16. The Mid- 
 dle Stone 
 Age hunter's 
 new weapons 
 and skin 
 clothing 
 
 Equipped with his new and keener tools, the hunter worked 
 out- barbed ivory spear-points, which he mounted with long 
 wooden shafts. He also discovered the bow and arrows, and 
 he carried at his girdle a sharp flint dagger. For straightening 
 his wooden spear-shafts and arrows he invented an ingenious 
 shaft-straightener of reindeer horn. Another clever device of 
 
 1 The reindeer was so plentiful in this age that French archaeologists often 
 call it the " Reindeer Age." 
 
Early Mankind i7t Europe 
 
 II 
 
 horn or ivoiy was his new throwing-stick, by which he could 
 hurl his long spear much farther and with greater power 
 (Figs. 6 and 7) 
 than he could be- 
 fore. Fine ivory 
 needles (Fig. 8) 
 show that the 
 hunter now pro- 
 tected himself from 
 cold, and from the 
 brambles of the 
 forest wilderness 
 with clothing made 
 by sewing together 
 the skins of the 
 animals he slew. 
 Thus equipped, 
 the hunter of the 
 Middle Stone Age 
 was a much more 
 dangerous foe of 
 the wild creatures 
 than were his an- 
 cestors of the Early 
 Stone Age. In a 
 single cavern in 
 Sicily modern ar- 
 chaeologists have 
 dug out the bones 
 of no less than two 
 thousand hippo- 
 potamuses which 
 these Middle Stone Age hunters killed. In France one group 
 of such men slew so many wild horses (Fig. 10,' <5) for food that 
 the bones which they tossed about their camp fires gathered 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 Flint Tools and Weapons 
 THE Middle Stone Age 
 
 OF 
 
 From right to left they include knives, spear- 
 and arrow-points, scrapers, drills, and various 
 edged tools. They show great skill and preci- 
 sion in flaking. The fine edges have all been 
 produced by chipping off a line of flakes along 
 the margin, seen especially in the long piece at 
 the right. This chipping is done by presstire. 
 The brittleness of flint is such that if a hard 
 piece of bone is pressed firmly against a flint 
 edge, a flake of flint, often reaching far back 
 from the edge, will snap off in response to 
 increasing pressure. This was a great im- 
 provement over the earliest method by striking 
 {percussion., Figs. 2 and 3) 
 
 17. Life of 
 the Middle 
 Stone Age 
 hunter 
 
12 Ancient Times 
 
 in masses forming a layer in some places six feet thick and 
 covering a space about equal to four modern city lots of 
 fifty by two hundred feet Among such deposits excavators 
 have found even the bone whistle with which the returning 
 hunter announced his coming to the hungry family waiting 
 in the cave (Fig. 4). On his arrival there he found his home 
 surrounded by revolting piles of garbage. Amid foul odors 
 
 ^& 
 
 Fig. 6. Modern Eskimo Native hurling a Spear with a 
 Throwing-Stick 
 
 The spear lies in a channel in the throwing-stick {a), which the hunter 
 grasps at one end. At the outer end {b) of the throwing-stick is a hook 
 (cf. Fig. 7, B) against which the butt of the spear lies, and as the hunter 
 throws forward his arm, retaining the throwing-stick in his hand and 
 allowing the spear to go, the throwing-stick acts like an elongation of 
 his arm, giving great sweep and propelling power as the spear is dis- 
 charged. Modern schoolboys would not find it hard to make and use 
 such a throwing-stick (see § 16) 
 
 of decaying flesh this savage European crept into his cave- 
 dwelling at night, litde realizing that, many feet beneath the 
 cavern floor on which he slept, lay the remains of his ancestors 
 in layer upon layer, the accumulations of thousands of years 
 
 (Fig. 9). 
 18. Discov- It is not a little astonishing to find that these Middle Stone 
 
 Stone Age * -^S^ hunters could already carve (Fig. 7), draw (Fig. 10), and 
 art— carv- ^^^^ Ttdiut with considerable skill. A Spanish nobleman, in- 
 
 ings, draw- ^ ^ ^ _ 
 
 ings,and vcstigating a cavern on his estate in Northern Spain, was at 
 pai ings ^^^ ^.^^ digging among the accumulations on the floor of the 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 13 
 
 cave, where he found flint and bone im- 
 plements, when his little daughter, who 
 was playing about in the gloom of 
 the cavern, suddenly shouted, " Toros ! 
 toros ! " C' Bulls I bulls ! "). At the same 
 time she pointed to the ceiling. The 
 startled father, looking up, beheld a 
 never-to-be-forgotten sight which at once 
 interrupted his flint-digging. In a long 
 line stretching far across the ceiling of 
 the cavern was a vast procession of 
 bison bulls painted in well-preserved col- 
 ors on the rock. For at least ten thou- 
 sand years no human eye had beheld 
 these cave paintings of a vanished race 
 of prehistoric men, till the eye of a child 
 rediscovered them. 
 
 Other evidences of higher life among 
 these early men are few indeed. Never- 
 theless, even these ancient men of the 
 Middle Stone Age believed in divine 
 beings ; they already had a crude idea 
 of the life of the soul, or of the de- 
 parted person after death. Dressed in 
 his customary ornaments, equipped at 
 least wdth a few flint implements, and 
 protected by a rough circle of stones, 
 the departed hunter was buried in the 
 cave beneath the hearth where he had 
 so often shared the results of the hunt 
 with his family. Here the bodies of 
 these primitive men are found at the 
 present day, lying in successive strata 
 of refuse which continued to collect for 
 ages, the lowest bodies sometimes far 
 
 \ 
 
 A B 
 
 Fig. 7. A Throwing- 
 Stick once used by 
 A Hunter of the 
 Middle Stone Age 
 
 Two views of the same 
 stick, seen from front 
 [A) and side (B). It is 
 carved of reindeer horn 
 to represent the head 
 and forelegs of an ibex. 
 Observe hook at the top 
 of B for holding the butt 
 of the spear-shaft, as in 
 Fig. 6. The throwing- 
 stick and the bow were 
 man's earhest devices 
 for propelHng his weap- 
 ons with speed 
 
 19. Religion 
 and life here- 
 after, in the 
 Middle Stone 
 Age 
 
14 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 20. Retreat 
 of the ice ; 
 dawn of the 
 Late Stone 
 Age 
 
 down at the bottom of the deep accumulations which gathered 
 over them (Fig. 9). 
 
 The signs left by the ice, and still observable in Europe, would 
 lead us to think that it slowly withdrew northward to its present 
 latitude probably not less than some ten thousand years ago. 
 The retreat of the ice was due to the fact that the climate 
 again grew warmer and became what it is to-day. At this 
 point, therefore, the men of the Middle Stone Age, whose story 
 
 we have been follow- 
 ing in France, entered 
 "^^ upon natural conditions 
 in Europe like those 
 of to-day. They had, 
 meantime, maintained 
 steady progress in the 
 production of tools and 
 implements with which 
 to carry on their strug- 
 gle for existence and 
 to wring subsistence 
 from the world around them. That progress now carried man 
 into the third great period of the Stone Age, which we may 
 call the Late Stone Age.-^ 
 
 Fig. 8. Ivory Needle of the 
 Middle Stone Age 
 
 Such needles are found still surviving in 
 the rubbish in the French caverns, where 
 the wives of the prehistoric hunters lost 
 them and failed to find them again twenty 
 thousand years ago. They show that these 
 women were already sewing together the 
 skins of wild animals as clothing 
 
 Section 4. The Late Stone Age. 
 
 21. Distribu- The Late Stone Age remains of man's life are discovered 
 ing"remahis^ widely distributed throughout a large part of Europe. In our 
 of Late Stone study of such remains we must reo^ard Europe as a whole, 
 
 Age man in -^ J5 r j 
 
 Europe and not confine ourselves to France and its vicinity, as here- 
 
 tofore. Especially beside watercourses, lakes, and inlets of the 
 
 1 The Stone Age periods are as follows : 
 
 Early Stone Age (stone edge made by striking, or peraissioti) 
 Middle Stone Age (chipped stone edge made by pressure) 
 
 Late Stone Age (stone edge made by grinding) 
 
 Called Paleolithic Age 
 by archaeologists. 
 
 Called Neolithic Age by 
 archaeologists. 
 
Fig. 9. A Cross Section showing the Layers of Rubbish 
 
 AND THE Human Remains in a Middle Stone Age Cavern 
 
 (After D^chelette) 
 
 This cavern is at Grimaldi on the Italian coast of the Mediterranean, 
 just outside of France. The entrance is at the left and the back wall 
 at the right. We see the original rock floor at the bottom, and above 
 it the layers of accumulations, 30 feet deep (§ 17). The black lines A 
 to / represent layers of ashes, etc., the remains of nine successive 
 hearth-fires, each of which must have been kept going by the natives 
 for many years. The thicker (lightly shaded) layers consisted of bones 
 of animals, rubbish, and roclcs which had fallen from the roof of the 
 cavern in the course of ages. The lowermost layers (below /) con- 
 tained bones of the rhinoceros (representing a warm climate), while the 
 uppermost layers contained bones of the reindeer (indicating a cold 
 climate). Two periods, the Early and the Middle Stone Age, are thus 
 represented ; the Early Stone Age below, the Middle Stone Age (or 
 Reindeer Age, § 1 5) above. Five burials were found by the excavators 
 in the layers B, C, H, and /; layer C contained the bodies of two 
 children. The lowermost burial (in /) was 25 feet below the surface of 
 the accumulations in the cave. Such prehistoric skulls and bones show 
 that several different races followed each other in Europe during the 
 Stone Age. The space required and the difficulties involved in their 
 discussion have compelled their omission in this volume. Hence the 
 successive culture stages have been presented without reference to race 
 
 15 
 
Fig. io. Carvings in Ivory (i and 3-7) and in Stone of 
 
 Cavern Walls (2), made by the Hunters of the Middle 
 
 Stone Age 
 
 The oldest works of art by man, made ten or fifteen thousand years ago. 
 7, reindeer and salmon — hunter's and fisherman's talisman; 2, bison 
 bull at bay ; j, grazing reindeer ; 4, running reindeer ; 5, head of woman, 
 front view and profile ; <5, head of wild horse whinnying ; 7, mammoth, 
 showing huge tusks and long hair — an animal long since extinct 
 
 16 
 
Early Manki7id in Ei^rope 
 
 17 
 
 sea these early communities throughout most of Europe located 
 their settlements. It is, however, impossible to determine the 
 different races and peoples in various parts of Europe in the 
 Late Stone Age. 
 
 The earliest of such Late Stone 
 Age settlements are found on the 
 shores of Denmark, where the 
 wattle huts (Fig. 11) of the prehis- 
 toric Norsemen stretched in strag- 
 gling lines far along the sea beach. 
 We do not know the race of these 
 earliest Norsemen, but we can see 
 that they w^ere both fislierme^and 
 hunters. Thgy already possessed 
 rude boats from which they were 
 able to secure myriads of oysters 
 near the shore, or even to push 
 timidly out into deep water for 
 other shellfish. On shore the 
 hunter followed the wild boar and 
 the wild bull (Fig. 1 2) in the neigh- 
 boring forests, and brought down 
 the waterfowl in the marshes. The 
 air was keen — possibly a little 
 colder than now. On their return 
 at twilight the hunters and fisher- 
 men, crouching about the fire, de- 
 voured their prey, tossing aside 
 the oyster shells and the bones of 
 deer and wild boar, which formed 
 a circle of very ill-smelling food 
 refuse about the fire. 
 
 This refuse gathered in ridges parallel with the shore-line 
 and hundreds of feet long (Fig. 13), marking the line of 
 fires which once gleamed along the shores of prehistoric 
 
 22. Earliest 
 settlements 
 of the Late 
 Stone Age 
 found in 
 Denmark 
 
 Fig. 1 1 , Plan of Remains 
 
 of^ A Late Stone Age 
 
 Hut 
 
 The circle of stones sur- 
 rounded the base of the walls. 
 Beside the door (at the left) 
 is a rough stone hearth, placed 
 there in order to allow the 
 smoke to escape through the 
 door, chimneys having not 
 yet been devised. The walls 
 were of wattle (interwoven 
 reeds), made tight by daub- 
 ing with clay. The rubbish 
 found in the circle sometimes 
 contains patches of burned 
 clay, bearing on one side the 
 indented pattern of the basket- 
 like wattle and on the other 
 the impression of the human 
 fingers which pressed the clay 
 on the walls thousands of 
 years ago. The fire which 
 destroyed the hut baked the 
 clay plaster to pottery 
 
8 
 
 
 G 
 
 Fig. 12. Skeleton of a Wild Bull bearing the Marks of 
 
 THE Late Stone Age Hunters' Arrows which killed him in 
 
 the Danish Forests some Ten Thousand Years ago 
 
 A Late Stone Age hunter (§ 22) shot him in the back near the spine 
 (see upper white ring on skeleton). The wound healed, leaving a scar 
 on the rib {A^ above). Another hunter later shot him, and this time sev- 
 eral arrows pierced his vitals. One of them, however, struck a rib (see 
 lower white ring on skeleton) and broke off. Both sides of this wound, 
 still unhealed, with the broken flint arrowhead still filling it, are shown 
 above in B and C. While the wounded bull was trying to swim across 
 a neighboring lake he died and his body sank to the bottom, and the 
 pursuing hunter, on reaching the lake, found no trace of him. In the 
 course of thousands of years the lake slowly filled up, and water 10 feet 
 deep was followed by dry peat of the same depth, covering the skeleton 
 of the bull. Here he was found some years ago (1905), and with him 
 were the flint arrowheads that had killed him. His skeleton, still bear- 
 ing the marks of the flint arrowheads {A^ B, C), was removed and set 
 up in the Museum at Copenhagen 
 18 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 19 
 
 remains from the life of these earliest Norsemen. The shells 
 and bones reveal how extensive was their control over the wild 
 
 Denmark. Each of these shell-heaps is to-day a storehouse of 23. The shell- 
 heaps of 
 
 Denmark and 
 their revela- 
 tions 
 
 life about them. The marks of animal teeth on many a bone 
 show us how the jackal s oi the neighboring forest crept up to 
 gnaw the bones along the margin of the heap ; and, slowly 
 growing more and more familiar with their human neighbors, 
 
 ^f\ ftH«,\ 
 
 Fig. 13. Ridge composed of the Food Refuse of Late 
 Stone Age Man on the Coast of Denmark 
 
 The ridge on the top of the hill at the right stretches along the margin 
 of a depression (at the left), which was once a shallow inlet of the sea 
 but is now filled up and has become a hayfield (notice the hay wagon). 
 Such a ridge made up chiefly of oyster shells is sometimes over half a 
 mile long and over thirty paces wide and may contain a hundred thousand 
 stone tools, weapons, and fragments of pottery 
 
 these wild beasts at last remained by the fireside, to become 
 the loyal companions of man, the earliest domestic animal, which 
 to-day we call the dog. 
 
 Bits of burned clay and broken pots, still lying in these 
 shell-heaps, show us that these early Norsemen had already 
 gained knowledge, probably from the South, of the hardening 
 quality of clay when exposed to fire, and they were now able 
 to make rude kettles of burned clay, which we call pottery, 
 the earliest in Europe.-^ This is one of the most important 
 
 1 Pottery was probably invented independently in many different regions of 
 the world. The endeavor to make a water-tight, fireproof kettle by smearing a 
 basket with clay would result in pottery when the attempt was made to heat 
 water in it over a fire. 
 
 24. Indus- 
 tries revealed 
 by the shell- 
 heaps of 
 Denmark : 
 earliest pot- 
 tery in 
 Europe ; 
 ground stone 
 tools 
 
20 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 25. Tools of 
 the Late 
 Stone Age 
 
 26. Effective- 
 ness of stone 
 tools 
 
 27. Swiss 
 lake-villages 
 of the Late 
 Stone Age 
 
 innovations of the Late Stone Age. j^potbeHmportant achieve- 
 ment marked the beginning of this age. This vv^as the discovery 
 that the edge of a stone tool might be ground upon a whetstone, 
 precisely as we grind a steel tool at the present day. In The 
 shell-heaps we find the earliest heavy stone axes with a ground 
 edge (Fig. 16, 5). They made the man of the Late Stone Age 
 vastly more successful in his control of the world about him. 
 
 His list of tools as he went about his work was now almost 
 as complete as that of the modern carpenter. It included, 
 besides the ax, likewise chisels, knives, drills, saws, and whet- 
 stones, made mostly of flint but sometimes of other hard 
 stones. Our ancient craftsman had now learned also to at- 
 tach a wooden handle by lashings around the ax-head, or 
 even to bore a hole in the ax-head and insert the handle 
 (Fig. 16,5). These tools as found to-day often display a polish 
 due to the wear which they have undergone in the hands of 
 the user. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that such stone tools were wholly 
 crude and ineffective. A recent experiment in Denmark has 
 shown that a modern mechanic with a stone ax, although un- 
 accustomed to the use of stone tools, was able, in ten work- 
 ing hours, to cut down and convert into logs twenty-six pine 
 trees eight inches in thickness. Indeed, the entif-e work of 
 getting out the timber and building a house %vas done by one 
 mechanic with stone tools in eighty-one days. It was therefore 
 quite possible for the men of the Late Stone Age to build 
 comfortable dwellings and to attain a degree of civilization far 
 above that of savages. 
 
 This step, however, we are not able to follow among the 
 shell-heaps of Denmark. The most plentiful traces of the 
 earliest wooden houses are to be found in Switzerland, whither 
 we must now go. Here the house-building communities of the 
 Late Stone Age, desiring to make themselves safer from attack 
 by man and beast, built their villages out over the Swiss lakes. 
 They erected their dwellings upon platforms supported over 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 21 
 
 the water by piles which they drove into the lake bottom. In 
 long lines such lake-villages, or groups oi pile-dwellings, as they 
 are called, fringed the shores of the Swiss lakes (Fig. 14). In 
 a few cases they grew to a considerable size. At Wangen not 
 
 Fig. 14. 
 
 Restoration of a Swiss Lake-Dwellers' 
 Settlement 
 
 The lake-dwellers felled trees with their stone axes (Fig. 16,5) and cut 
 them into piles some 20 feet long, sharpened at the lower end. These 
 they drove several feet into the bottom of the lake, in water 8 or 10 feet 
 deep. On a platform supported by these piles they then built their 
 houses. The platform was connected with the shore by a bridge, which 
 may be seen here on the right. A section of it could be removed at 
 night for protection. The fish nets seen drying at the rail, the " dug- 
 out " boat of the hunters who bring in the deer, and many other things 
 have been found on the lake bottom in recent times 
 
 less than fifty thousand piles were driven into the bottom of 
 the lake for the support of the village (see remains of such 
 piles in Fig. 15). 
 
 In so far as we can judge, these lake-dwellers lived a life 28. Life of 
 of enviable peace and prosperity. Their houses were comfort- lake-dwellers 
 able shelters, and they were furnished with plentiful wooden 
 
22 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 furniture and implements, wooden pitchers and spoons, besides 
 pottery dishes, bowls, and jars (Fig. i6, z, 2, j). Although 
 roughly made without the use of the potter's wheel (§ ^:^, and 
 unevenly burned without an oven (Fig. 48), pottery vessels 
 added much to the convenience of the house. The waters 
 under the setdement teemed with fish, which were caught 
 
 Fig. 15. Surviving Remains of a Swiss Lake-Village 
 
 After an unusually dry season the Swiss lakes fell to a very low level 
 in 1854, exposing the lake bottom with the remains of the piles which 
 once supported the lake villages along the shores. They were thus dis- 
 covered for the first time. On the old lake bottom, among the projecting 
 piles, were found great quantities of implements, tools, and furniture, 
 like those in Fig. 16, including the dugouts and nets of Fig. 14, wheat, 
 barley, bones of domestic animals, woven flax, etc. {§ 29). There they 
 had been lying some five thousand years. Sometimes the objects were 
 found in two distinct layers, the lower (earlier) containing only stone 
 tools, and the upper (later) containing bronze tools, which came into the 
 lake-village at a later age and fell into the water on top of the layer 
 of old stone tools already lying on the bottom of the lake (see § 329) 
 
 29. Domesti- 
 cation of wild 
 grains and 
 beginning of 
 agriculture ; 
 flax and 
 weaving 
 
 with a bone hook through a trapdoor in the floor of the 
 house, or snared in nets which the possession of flax, as we 
 shall see, enabled the lake-villagers to make. 
 
 While he had thus not ceased to be a fisherman and hunter, 
 the lake-dweller now discovered other sources of food. For 
 thousands of years the women of these early ages had gath- 
 ered the seeds of wild grasses to be crushed between two 
 stones and made into rude cakes. They now gradually learned 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 23 
 
 that the growth of such wild grasses on the margins of the 
 forest and the shores of the lake might be artificially aided. 
 
 From such beginnings it was but a step to drop the seed 30. Cultiva- 
 into the soil at the proper season, to cultivate it, and to harvest Sey, ^V^' 
 
 wheat in the 
 Late Stone 
 Age 
 
 Fig. 16. Part of the Equipment of a Late Stone Age 
 Lake-Dweller 
 
 This group contains the evidence for three important inventions made 
 or received by the men of the Late Stone Age '.firsts pottery jars, like 
 2 and J, with rude decorations, the oldest baked clay in Europe, and 7, 
 a large kettle in which the lake-dwellers' food was cooked; second^ 
 ground-edged tools like 4, a stone chisel with ground edge (§ 24), 
 mounted in a deerhorn handle like a hatchet, or 5, stone ax with a 
 ground edge, and pierced with a hole for the ax handle (the houses of 
 Fig. 14 were built with such tools) ; and third, weaving, as shown by 6, a 
 spinning "whorl" of baked clay, the earhest spinning wheel. When 
 suspended by a rough thread of flax 18 to 20 inches long, it was given 
 a whirl which made it spin in the air like a top, thus rapidly twisting the 
 thread by which it was hanging. The thread when sufficiently twisted 
 was wound up, and another length of 18 to 20 inches was drawn out 
 from the unspun flax to be similarly twisted. One of these earliest spin- 
 ning wheels has been found in the Swiss lakes with a spool of flaxen 
 thread still attached. (From photograph loaned by Professor Hoernes) 
 
 the yield. When they had learned to do this, the women of 
 these lake-dwellers were already agriculturists. The grains 
 which they planted werebarleyT'wheafcj-aiid stsme millet.^ This 
 
 1 Oats and lye, however, were still unknown, and came in much later. 
 
24 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 31. Social 
 effects of 
 agriculture 
 
 32. Domesti- 
 cation of 
 sheep, goats, 
 and cattle 
 
 new source of food was a plentiful one ; more than a hundred 
 bushels of grain were found by the excavators on the lake bot- 
 tom under the vanished lake-village of Wangen. Up the hillside 
 now stretched also the lake-dweller's little field of flax beside 
 the growing grain. His women sat spinning flax (Fig. 16, 6) 
 before the door, and the rough skin -clothing of their ancestors 
 (Fig, 8) had_given way to garments of. woven stuff. 
 
 These fields were an additional reason for the permanency 
 of the lake-dweller's home. It was necessary for him to remain 
 near the little plantation for which his women had hoed the 
 ground, that they might care for it and gather the grain when 
 it ripened. As each household gradually gained an habitual 
 right to cultivate a particular field, they came to set up a per- 
 petual claim to it, and thus arose the ownership of land. It 
 was to be a frequent source of trouble in the future career of 
 man, and the chief cause of the long struggle between the rich 
 and the poor — a struggle which was earlier unknown, when 
 land was free to all. 
 
 On the green Swiss uplands above the lake-villages were 
 now feeding the descendants of the wild creatures which the 
 Middle Stone Age hunters had pursued through the forests 
 and mountains ; for the mountain sheep and goats and the wild 
 cattle (Fig. 12), like the dog on the shores of Denmark (§ 23), 
 had slowly learned to dwell near man and submit to his con- 
 trol.^ For a long time, however, the Late Stone Age man in 
 Europe was still without any beast of burden. For thousands 
 of years his ancestors of the Middle Stone Age had pursued 
 the wild horse for food (§ 17), but had made no effort to 
 tame and subdue the animal.^ 
 
 1 Domestication of these animals, like the cultivation of grain and flax, was 
 much older in the Orient than in the Late Stone Age in Europe ; but it is still 
 a question just how the early Europeans received these things from the Orient. 
 (See § 49.) 
 
 2 The draft horse, one of the most important influences in the history of 
 civilization, came in comparatively late, from the Northern Orient, as we shall 
 see (§247). 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 2$ 
 
 The strong limbs of the once wild ox (Fig. 1 2), however, 33. Earliest 
 made him well adapted to draw the hoe of Late Stone Age fpfo^'""^^^ 
 man across the field — a hoe, to be sure, equipped with two ^^"•t"'^^" 
 handles (Fig. 44), which thus became the earliest plow, while 
 ihejDx: which was tamed to draw it became the earliest draft 
 animal_of_ Europe. Thus "plow culture" slowly replaced the 
 cruder and more limited " hoe culture " ^ carried on by the 
 women. It was at this point, therefore, that the early European 
 passed far beyond our own North American Indians, who 
 remained until the discovery of America entirely without draft 
 animals, and hence practiced only "hoe culture." 
 
 Agriculture, requiring as it now did the driving and control 34. Social 
 of large draft animals, exceeded the strength of the primitive «piow 
 woman, and the primitive man was obliged to give up more ggttSd aV?^ 
 and more of his hunting freedom and devote himself to the cultural life 
 field. Thus the hunter of thousands of years became an 
 agriculturist, a farmer. By this time a large part of the Late 
 Stone Age Europeans had adopted fixed abodes, following the 
 settled agricultural life in and around villages (§ 38). 
 
 On the other hand, the domestication of grass-eating animals, 35. Flocks 
 feeding on the grasslands, created not only a new industry the wander- 
 but also a second class of men who might still follow a roving j"ff'Jf°he'^ 
 life, leading their flocks about and pasturing them where the shepherd 
 grasslands were too poor for agriculture. Such shepherd people 
 we call nomads, and they still exist to-day. Without any fixed 
 dwelling places, accompanied by their wives and children, they 
 lead a wandering life, driving their flocks from pasture to pas- 
 ture. These nomad peoples took possession of the eastern 
 grasslands stretching from the Danube eastward along the 
 north side of the Black Sea and thence far over into Asia. 
 Their life always remained ruder and less civilized than that 
 of the agriculturalists and townsmen (see § 136). 
 
 1 " Hoe culture " is the term applied to agriculture carried on by hand, 
 without any draft animals; that is, entirely with the hoe, 9,5 contrasted with 
 cultivation by the plow drawn by an animal 
 
26 Ancient Times 
 
 36. Age-long Thus developed side by side two methods of life — the settled, 
 tweei'^'^^' agricultural life and the wandering, nomad life. The impor- 
 nomads and tance of understanding these will be evident when we realize 
 
 townsmen 1 r 
 
 that the grasslands became the home of a numerous unsettled 
 population. Thus such grasslands have become like overfilled 
 reservoirs of nomad peoples, who have periodically overflowed 
 and overwhelmed the towns and the agricultural settlements. 
 Many epochs of human history can be understood only as we 
 bear these facts in mind, especially as we shall see later Europe 
 invaded over and over again by the hordes of intruding nomads 
 from the eastern grasslands (§§ 370-373 and Section 99). 
 
 37. Buildings The settled communities of the Late Stone Age at last began 
 turtln^Late' ^'^ \t.2M& behind them more impressive monuments than pottery 
 Stone Age ^^^ stone tools. In all Europe before this there had existed 
 
 Europe 
 
 only fragile houses and huts. But toward the close of the Late 
 Stone Age the more powerful chiefs in the large settlements 
 learned to erect great tombs, built of enormous blocks of stone. 
 They fringe the western coast of Europe from Spain to the 
 southern Scandinavian shores. There are at the present day no 
 less than thirty-four hundred stone tombs of this age, some 
 of considerable size, on the Danish island of Seeland alone. 
 In France (Fig. 17) they exist in vast numbers and imposing 
 size, and likewise in England. The often enormous blocks in 
 these structures (Figs. 18, 20, and 21) were mostly left in the 
 rough, but if cut at all, it was done with stone chisels. Such 
 structures are not of masonry, that is, of smoothly cut stone 
 laid with mortar. They can hardly be called works of great 
 architecture, — a thing which did not as yet exist in Europe. 
 We shall first meet it in the Orient (§95). 
 
 38. The When we look at such buildings of the Late Stone Age still 
 S Europ°eT^ Surviving, they prove to us the existence of the earliest towns in 
 rise of gov- Europe. For near every great group of stone tombs there must 
 
 ernment ^ ,,,.-, i , m i 1 
 
 have been a town where the people lived who built the tombs. 
 The remains of some of these towns have been discovered, and 
 they have been dug out from the earth covering them. Almost 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 27 
 
 all traces of them had disappeared, but enough remained to show 
 that they had been surrounded by walls of earth, with a ditch 
 on the outside and probably with a wooden stockade along the 
 top of the earth wall. They show us that men were learning to 
 live together in considerable numbers and to work together on 
 
 ,^ ,.^M^-^^^ 
 
 (4^f.c,mm .V ^-^k^^'Pr^-WB^ 
 
 'V:^^::^^^ '^-^i- 
 
 FiG. 17. Late Stone Age Tomb in France 
 
 It was in such tombs that dead chiefs of the Late Stone Age were buried. 
 The stones, weighing even as much as 40 tons apiece, were sometimes 
 dragged many miles from the nearest quarry ; but much heavier ones 
 were also used (see Fig. 18). These blocks were not smoothed but left 
 rough as they came from the mountain side 
 
 a large scale. It required organization and successful manage- 
 ment of men to raise the earth walls of such a town, to 
 drive the fifty thousand piles supporting the lake setdement at 
 Wangen (Switzerland), or to move the enormous blocks of stone 
 for building the chieftain's tomb (Figs. 17, 18, 20, and 21). 
 In such achievements we see the beginnings of government, 
 
28 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 39. Festivals 
 and athletic 
 contests 
 shown by the 
 stone build- 
 ings of Late 
 Stone Age 
 Europe 
 
 organized under a leader. Many little states, each consisting 
 of a fortified town with its surrounding fields, and each under 
 a chieftain, must have grown up in Late Stone Age Europe. 
 Out of such beginnings nations were yet to grow. 
 
 Furthermore, these stone buildings furnish us very interesting 
 glimpses into the life of the Late Stone Age towns. Some of 
 them suggest to us pictures of whole communities issuing from 
 the towns on feast days and marching to such places as the 
 
 Fig. 18. Fallen Memorial Stone of the Late Stone Age 
 IN Northern France 
 
 This vast block once stood upright, having been erected by the men 
 
 of the Late Stone Age as a tombstone. It is almost 65 feet long and 
 
 weighs some 300 tons. The fall has broken it into three pieces 
 
 huge stone circles at Stonehenge (Fig. 20). Here they held 
 memorial contests, chariot races, and athletic games in honor of 
 the dead chief buried within the stone circles. The domestic 
 horse had now reached western Europe, and the straight chariot 
 course, nearly two miles long, still to be seen at Stonehenge, 
 must have resounded with the shouts of the multitudes ■ as the 
 competing chariots thundered down the course.-^ The long 
 processional avenues, marked out by mighty stones, in north- 
 west France (Fig. 21) must have been alive with festival proces- 
 sions and happy multitudes every season for centuries. To-day, 
 silent and solitary, they stretch for miles across the fields of 
 
 ^ One of the chariots later used on such a course may be seen in Fig. 1^1,. 
 
Early Mankind in Europe 
 
 29 
 
 the French peasants, a kind of voiceless echo of forgotten 
 human joys, of ancient customs and beliefs long revered by 
 the vanished races of prehistoric Europe. 
 
 While such monuments show us the Late Stone Age com- 40. Rise of 
 munities at play, other remains reveal them at their work. Each outgoing 
 town was largely a home manufacturer and produced what it A^^e-^minL 
 needed for itself. Men were beginning to adopt trades ; for as a trade 
 example, some men 
 were probably wood- 
 workers, others were 
 potters, and still others 
 were already miners. 
 These early miners 
 burrowed far into. the 
 earth in order to reach 
 the finest deposits of 
 flint for their stone 
 tools. In the under- 
 ground tunnels of the 
 ancient flint mines 
 at Brandon, England, 
 eighty worn picks of 
 deerhorn were found 
 in recent times. At 
 one place the roof 
 had caved in, cutting 
 
 off an ancient gallery of the mine. In this gallery, behind the 
 fallen rocks, modern archaeologists found two more deerhorn 
 picks. These picks bore a coat of chalk dust in which were 
 still visible the marks of the workmen's fingers, left there as 
 they last laid down the implements, many thousands of years 
 ago. In Belgium even the skeleton of one of these ancient 
 miners, who had been crushed by falling rocks, was found in 
 the mine with his deerhorn pick still lying between his hands 
 (Fig. 22). 
 
 Fig. 19. Vertebra of a Late Stone 
 
 Age Man with a Flint Arrowhead 
 
 sticking in it 
 
 The arrowhead {A) struck the victim full in 
 the pit of the stomach. It must have been 
 driven by a heavy bow, for it passed clear 
 through to the vertebra, producing perito- 
 nitis and death. (Photograph furnished by 
 the great French archaeologist Dechelette, 
 who himself fell in battle not long after 
 sending this photograph to the author) 
 
3° 
 
Early Mankind in Europi 
 
 31 
 
 Exchange and traffic between the communities already existed. 
 This primitive commerce carried far and wide an especially fine 
 variety of French flint, recognizable to-day by its color. The 
 amber gathered on the shores of the Baltic was already passing 
 from hand to hand and thus found its way southward. Stone 
 implements found on the islands around Europe show that 
 men of this age lived on such islands, and they must have had 
 boats sufficiently strong to carry them thither. Several of the 
 
 41. Com- 
 merce and 
 intercourse 
 in the Late 
 Stone Age 
 
 ^1 -^^^^m 
 
 Fig. 21. Avenues of the Late Stone Age in Northern 
 France (Carnac, Brittany) 
 
 The tall stones mark out avenues nearly 2^ miles long, containing nearly 
 three thousand stones. These avenues were used for festival proces- 
 sions or for races, as on the course at Stonehenge (Fig. 20 and § 39), 
 at the religious celebrations of the Late Stone Age communities 
 
 dugouts (Fig. 14) of the lake-dwellers have been found lying 
 on the lake bottom among the piles, but vessels with sails had 
 not yet been devised in Europe. 
 
 The business of such an age was of course very primitive. 42. Primi- 
 There were no metals and no money. Buying and selling were methods of 
 only exchange of one kind of wares for another kind. In all ^^^^ |u°"pe 
 Europe therpjyvns no writings nor did the continent of Europe 
 ^z^r devise a system of writing. If credit was given, the trans- 
 action might be recorded in a few strokes scratched in the mud 
 plaster of the wattle house wall (Fig. 11) to aid the memory 
 as to the number of fish or jars of grain to be paid for later. 
 
6^ 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 43. Wars of 
 the Late 
 Stone Age 
 
 But the intercourse between these prehistoric communities 
 was not ahvays peaceful. The earthen walls and wooden stock- 
 ades with which such towns were protected (§ 38) show us 
 that the chieftain's war-horn must often have summoned these 
 people from feasts and athletic games, or from the fields and 
 mines, to expel the invader. Grim evidence of these earliest 
 wars of Europe still survives. A skull taken out of a tomb of 
 this age in Sweden contains a flint arrowhead still sticking in 
 
 Fig. 22. Skeleton of a Miner of the Late Stone Age 
 
 The skeleton of this ancient miner was found lying on the floor of a 
 flint mine in Belgium, under the rocks which had caved in and crushed 
 him. Before him, just as it dropped from his hands at the instant 
 of the cave-in, lies the double-pointed pick of deerhorn (§ 40) with 
 which he was loosening the lumps of flint from their chalk bed, when 
 the rock ceiling fell upon him and he was killed 
 
 44. Late 
 
 Stone Age 
 Europe and 
 the Orient 
 
 one eyehole, while in France more than one human vertebra 
 has been found with a flint arrowhead driven deep into it 
 (Fig. 19). A stone coffin found in a Scottish cairn contained 
 the body of a man of huge size, with one arm almost severed 
 from the shoulder by the stroke of a stone ax. A fragment of 
 stone broken out of the ax blade still remained in the gashed 
 arm bone. 
 
 After fifty thousand years of progress carried on by their 
 own efforts, the men of Stone Age Europe seemed now (about 
 3000 B.C.) to have reached a point where they could advance 
 
cal summary 
 
 Early Mankind in Europe 33 
 
 jio^Jaitheiu^ They were still ^Ni'&iOMt jvriiiu^ for making the 
 records of business, government, and tradition ; they were still 
 without metgJs^ with which to make tools and to develop indus- 
 tries and manufactures ; and they had no sailiiig ships m which 
 to carry on commerce. Without these thinsrs they could go no 
 farther. All these and many other possessions of civilization 
 came to early Europe from the nearer Orient,^ the lands around 
 the eastern end of the""Mediterranean (see map, p. loo). In 
 order to understand the further course of European history, 
 we must therefore turn to the Orient, whence came these 
 indispensable things which made it possible for our European 
 ancestors to gain the civilization we have inherited. 
 
 As we go to the Orient let us remember that we have been 45. Histori- 
 f ollowing man's prehisto7ic progress as it went on for some fifty 
 thousand years after he began making stone implements. In 
 the Orient, during the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 B.C. 
 (see diagram, Fig. 38), men slowly built up a high civilization, 
 forming the beginning of the Historic Epoch.^ Civilization thus 
 began in the Orient^ and it is between five and six thousand 
 years old. There it long flourished and produced great and 
 
 1 Metal was introduced in sozitheastem Europe about 3000 B.C. and passed 
 like a slow wave, moving gradually westward and northward across Europe. It 
 probably did not reach Britain until about 2000 b. c. Hence we have included 
 the great stone monuments of western Europe (like Stonehenge) in our survey 
 of Stone Age Europe. They were erected long after southeastern Europe had 
 received metal, but before metal came into common use in western Europe. 
 
 ^ The word " Orient" is used to-day to include Japan, China, and India. These 
 lands make up 2, farther Orient. There is also a fiearer Orient, consisting of the 
 lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, that is, Egypt and Western 
 Asia, including Asia Minor. We shall use the word ''Orient" in this book to 
 designate the nearer Orient. 
 
 3 We may best describe the Historic Epoch by saying that it is the epoch 
 beginning when written documents were first produced by man — documents 
 which tell us in written words something of man's life and career. All that we 
 know of man in the age previous to the appearance of writing has to be learned 
 from weapons, tools, implements, buildings, and other things (bearing no writing) 
 which he has left behind. These are the things from which we have been learn- 
 ing something of the story of prehistoric Europe in Chapter I. The transition 
 from the Prehistoric to the Historic Epoch was everywhere a slow and gradual 
 one. In the Orient this transition took place in the thousand years between 
 4000 and 3000 B.C. 
 
34 Ancient Times 
 
 powerful nations, while the men of Late Stone Age Europe 
 continued to live without metals or writing. As they gradually 
 acquired these things, civilized leadership both in peace and 
 war shifted slowly from the Orient to Europe. As we turn to 
 watch civilization emerging in the East, with metals, govern- 
 ment, writing, great ships, and many other creations of civiliza- 
 tion, let us realize that its later movement will steadily carry us 
 from east to west as we follow it from the Orient to Europe. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section i . What progress in invention have you noticed in your 
 own lifetime.'* Has every device or convenience man now possesses 
 had to be invented in the same way ? Was there a time when man 
 possessed none of these things t Did he have anyone to teach him } 
 Describe the life of the Tasmanians in recent times. Describe pre- 
 historic Europe and the life of the earliest men there. What three 
 ages ensued.'' 
 
 Section 2. Give examples of the discovery of man's great age 
 on the earth. Describe the earliest stone weapon. About when did 
 the Early Stone Age begin? (See map, p. 8, and read description.) 
 What age did it introduce.'* Describe the life of the Early Stone 
 Age hunter. What great change ended this age? Describe it. 
 
 Section 3. Where did the Middle Stone Age hunters take 
 refuge ? What improvement did they make in their stone tools 
 (Fig. 5)? What new materials came in? What new inventions? 
 Describe the results. Discuss Middle Stone Age art. Draw cross 
 section of a cave with contents and describe (Fig. 9). What great 
 change ended the Middle Stone Age, and when ? 
 
 Section 4. Where were the earliest settlements of the Late 
 Stone Age known to us ? Describe them and their remains. What 
 new inventions came in ? Discuss carpentry with ground stone tools. 
 Describe the lake-villages and life in them. Describe the domestication 
 of grain and its social results. Describe the domestication of animals 
 and the two resulting methods of life. Discuss stone structures and 
 the life they reveal — industries, traffic, and war. What important 
 things did the Late Stone Age in Europe still lack? Is civilization 
 possible without these things ? Where did these things first appear ? 
 
PART II. THE ORIENT 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE EARLIEST NILE-DWELLERS 
 AND THE PYRAMID AGE 
 
 Section 5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants 
 
 We are to begin our study of the early Orient in Egypt. 
 The traveler who visits Egypt at the present day lands in a 
 very modern-looking harbor at Alexandria (see map, p. 36). 
 He is presently seated in a comfortable railway car in which 
 we may accompany him as he is carried rapidly across a low, 
 flat country stretching far away to the sunlit horizon. The 
 wide expanse is dotted with little villages of dark mud-brick 
 huts, and here and there rise groves of graceful date palms. 
 The landscape is carpeted with stretches of bright and vivid 
 green as far as the eye can see, and wandering through this 
 verdure is a network of irrigation canals (Fig. 23). Brown- 
 skinned men of slender build, with dark hair, are seen at inter- 
 vals along the banks of these canals, swaying up and down as 
 they rhythmically lift an irrigation bucket attached to a simple 
 
 Note. The tiara, or diadem, at the top of this page was found resting on the 
 head of an Egyptian princess of the Feudal Age as she lay in her coffin. The 
 diadem had been placed there nearly four thousand years ago. It is in the form 
 of a chaplet, or wreath, of star flowers wrought of gold and set with bright-colored 
 precious stones, and is one of the best examples of the work of the Egyptian gold- 
 smiths and jewelers (Fig. 47 and § 82). -it is shown here lying on a cushion. 
 
 35 
 
 46. Egypt of 
 to-day 
 
36 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 47. Its soil, 
 shape, and 
 area 
 
 Fig. 23. An Egyptian Shadoof, the 
 Oldest of Well Sweeps, irrigat- 
 ing THE Fields 
 
 The man below stands in the water, hold- 
 ing his leather bucket {A). The pole {B) 
 of the sweep is above him, with large ball 
 of dried Nile mud on its lower end (C) 
 as a lifting weight, or counterpoise, seen 
 just behind the supporting post {D). This 
 man lifts the water into a mud basin {E). 
 A second man (in the middle) lifts it 
 from this first basin {E) to a second 
 basin {F) into which he is just empty- 
 ing his bucket; while a third man {G) 
 lifts the water from the middle basin {F) 
 to the uppermost basin, {H) on the top of 
 the bank, where it runs off to the left into 
 trenches spreading over the fields. The 
 low water makes necessary three succes- 
 sive lifts (to E, to F, to H) without ceas- 
 ing night and day for one hundred days 
 
 device (Fig. 23) exactly 
 like the well sweep of 
 our grandfathers in New 
 England. The irrigation 
 trenches are thus kept 
 full of water until the 
 grain ripens. This shows 
 us that Egypt enjoys 
 no rain. 
 
 The black soil we see 
 from the train is unex- 
 celled in fertility, and it 
 is enriched each year by 
 the overflow of the river, 
 whose turbid waters rise 
 above its banks every 
 summer, spread far over 
 the flats (Fig. 24), and 
 stand there long enough 
 to deposit a very thin 
 layer of rich earthy 
 sediment. This sedi- 
 ment has built up the 
 Nile Delta which we 
 are now crossing. The 
 Delta and the valley 
 above, as far as the 
 First Cataract, contain 
 together over ten thou- 
 sand square miles of 
 cultivable soil, or some- 
 what more than the 
 state of Vermont. 
 
 As our train ap- 
 proaches the southern 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 37 
 
 point of the Delta we begin to see the heights on either side 48. The low 
 of the valley into which the narrow end of the Delta merges. h?gh^de"ert ^ 
 These heights (Figs. 2 4 and 69) are the plateau of the Sahara Des- Plateau 
 ert, through which the Nile has cut a vast, deep trench as it winds 
 its way northward from inner Africa. This trench, or valley, is 
 seldom more than thirty miles wide, while the strip of soil on each 
 
 
 ^^^%M&^^^^' 
 
 
 i^'\ 
 
 Fig. 24. The Inundation seen from the Road to the 
 Pyramids of Gizeh 
 
 On the right is the road leading to the pyramids ; at the left the waters 
 of the inundation cover the level floor of the Nile valley. In the distance 
 is the desert plateau on which the pyramids stand. The trees and the 
 small modern village just in front of the pyramids occupy part of the 
 ground where once the royal city of the pyramid-builders stood (§ 75) 
 
 side of the river rarely exceeds ten miles in width. On either 
 edge of the soil strip one steps out of the green fields into the 
 sand of the desert, which has drifted down into the trench ; 
 or if one climbs the cliffs, forming the walls of the trench, he 
 stands looking out over a vast waste of rocky hills and stretches 
 of sand trembling in the heat of the blazing sunshine. 
 
e> 
 
 38 Ancient Times 
 
 49. The As we journey on let us realize that this valley can tell us 
 
 Egyptians ^^^ unbroken story of human progress such as we can find no- 
 where else. We look out upon the sandy margin of the desert, 
 where there are thousands of low, undulating mounds covering 
 the graves of the earliest ancestors 
 ^f^^^^^^J3S'd'SOL of the brown men we see in the 
 Delta fields. When we have dug out 
 such a grave to the bottom, we find 
 lying there the ancient Nile peas- 
 ant, surrounded by pottery jars and 
 stone implements (Fig. 25). There 
 he has been lying for over six thou- 
 sand years, and these stone tools, 
 which he used so long ago, tell us 
 
 _ of generations of Nile-dwellers who. 
 
 Fig. 25. Looking down ... ,1 t . o. a r 
 
 INTO THE Grave of ^'^^ ^^^^ ^ate Stone Age men of 
 
 A Late Stone Age Europe, lived without the use of metal. 
 
 Egyptian Barley and split wheat ^ are some- 
 
 An oval pit 4 or 5 feet deep times found in the jars around the 
 
 (cf. Fig.38, /). The body is body (Fig. 25), for the dead were 
 surrounded by pottery jars jj^^ ^.^j^ ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^ ^^^ 
 
 once containing food and ^^ •' 
 
 drink. A few small objects buried them. These and fragments 
 
 of copper have been found of linen found in such graves show 
 
 even in the earliest of such ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^j^^ ^^^^ j^ 
 
 Lgyptian graves, which • •' ^ 
 
 therefore belong to the end and flax came into Europe. These 
 
 of the. Late Stone Age ancient Nile peasants were therefore 
 
 ^ watering their fields of flax and grain 
 over six thousand years ago, just as the brown men whom the 
 
 traveler sees from the car windows to-day are still doing. 
 
 1 This split wheat is a variety which differs from our common wheat. The 
 kernel is spUt into halves. When threshed, the two halves are still held together 
 by the hull, and a second threshing or hard rubbing is necessary to break off 
 this hull and get out the two half kernels. Split wheat is still raised in parts of 
 Europe, especially for use in making starch, and is often called starch wheat. 
 This was the earliest variety of wheat cultivated by man. It has recently been 
 rediscovered growing in a wild state in Palestine. Barley and split wheat were 
 the two leading grains used by early man in the oriental world. 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 39 
 
 51. Pictorial 
 records 
 
 The villages of low, mud-brick huts which flash by the car 50. Earliest 
 windows furnish us also with an exact picture of those vanished fndYaxes^" 
 prehistoric villages, the homes of the early Nile-dwellers who 
 are still lying in yonder cemeteries on the desert margin. In 
 each such village, six to seven thousand years ago, lived a local 
 chieftain who controlled the irrigation trenches of the district. 
 To him the peasants were obliged to carry every season a share 
 of the grain and flax which they gathered from their fields; 
 otherwise the supply of water for 
 their crops' would be stopped, 
 and they would ^ receive an un- 
 pleasant visit from the chief- 
 tain, demanding instant payment. 
 These were the earliest taxes. 
 
 Such transactions led to 
 scratching a rude picture of 
 the basket grain-measure and a 
 number of strokes on the mud 
 wall of the peasant's hut, in- 
 dicating the number of measures 
 of grain he had paid (cf. § 42). 
 The use of these purely pictorial 
 signs formed the earliest stage 
 in the process of learning to 
 
 write. Such pictorial writing is still in use among the un- 
 civilized peoples in our own land. Thus, the Alaskan natives 
 send messages in pictorial form, scratched on a piece of 
 wood (Fig. 26). The exact words of the message are not 
 represented. Fig. 26 might be read by one man, "No food 
 in the tent," while another might read, '' Lack of meat in the 
 wigwam." Such pictorial signs thus conveyed ideas without 
 expressing the exact words. Among our own Indians the 
 desire of a brave to record his personal exploits also led to 
 pictorial records of them (Fig. 27). It should be noticed 
 again that the exact words are not indicated by this record 
 
 Fig. 26. Pictorial Message 
 
 scratched on wood by 
 
 Alaskan Indians 
 
 A figure with empty hands hang- 
 ing down helplessly, palms down, 
 as an Indian gesture for uncer- 
 tainty, ignorance, emptiness, or 
 nothing, means '' no." A figure 
 with one hand on its mouth 
 means " eating " or " food." It 
 points toward the tent, and this 
 means " in the tent." The whole 
 is a message stating, " (There is) 
 no food in the tent" (§51) 
 
 / 
 
40 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 52. First step 
 leading from 
 the pictorial 
 to the pho- 
 netic stage 
 
 53. Second 
 step leading 
 from the pic- 
 torial to the 
 phonetic 
 stage 
 
 (Fig. 27), but the exploit is merely so suggested that it might 
 be put into words in a number of different ways. The early 
 Egyptian kings of six thousand years ago prepared strikingly 
 
 similar picture records 
 (Fig. 28). 
 
 But this pictorial stage, 
 beyond which native 
 American records never 
 passed, was not real 
 writing. Two steps had 
 to be taken before the 
 picture records could 
 become phonetic writ- 
 ing. First, each object 
 drawn had to gain a 
 fixed form, always the 
 same and always recog- 
 nized as the sign for a 
 particular word denot- 
 ing that object. Thus, 
 it would become a habit 
 that the drawing of a 
 loaf should always be 
 read ''loaf," not ^^ bread" 
 or " food " ; the sign for 
 a leaf would always be 
 read " leaf," not " foli- 
 
 FiG. 27. Pictorial Record of the 
 
 Victory of a Dakota Chief named 
 
 Running Antelope 
 
 This Dakota Indian prepared his autobi- 
 ography in a series of eleven drawings, of 
 which Fig. 27 is but one. It records how 
 he slew five hostile braves in a single day. 
 The hero, Running Antelope, with rifle in 
 hand, is mounted upon a horse. His shield 
 bears a falcon, the animal emblem of his 
 family, while beneath the horse is a running 
 antelope, which is of course intended to in- 
 form you of the hero's name. We see the 
 trail of his horse as he swept round the 
 copse at the left, in which were concealed 
 the five hostile braves whom he slew. Of 
 these, one figure bearing a rifle represents 
 all five, while four other rifles in the act 
 of being discharged indicate the number 
 of braves in the copse 
 
 age. 
 
 The seconi^^^X.^-^ then 
 
 naturally followed ; that 
 is, the leaf ^, for example, became the sign for the syllable 
 "leaf" wherever it might occur. By the same process \M^ 
 
 1 The author is of course obliged to use English words and syllables here, 
 and consequently also signs not existing in Egyptian but devised for this 
 demonstration. 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 41 
 
 
 K 
 
 \\1^^ 
 
 ^% 
 
 M 
 
 i^ 
 
 ["A"^ 
 
 ^BjMi- 
 
 
 ^ Tj 
 
 
 w 
 
 might become the sign for the syllable 
 '' bee '■ wherever found. Having thus a 
 means of writing the syllables '' bee " and 
 '' leaf," the next step was to put them 
 together, thus, \^ %^, and they would 
 then represent the word " belief." No- 
 tice, however, that in the word "belief" 
 the sign ^ has ceased to suggest the 
 idea of an insect. It now represents only 
 the syllable "be." That is to say, ^ has 
 become a phonetic sign. 
 
 If the writing of the Egyptian had 
 remained merely a series of pictures, 
 such words as " belief," " hate," " love," 
 " beauty," and the like could never have 
 been written.^ But when a large number 
 of his pictures had become phonetic signs, 
 each representing a syllable, it was possi- 
 ble for the Egyptian to write any word 
 he knew, whether the word meant a thing 
 of which he could draw a picture or not. 
 This possession of phonetic signs was 
 what made real writing for the first time. 
 It arose among these Nile-dwellers earlier 
 than anywhere else in the ancient world. 
 
 Egyptian writing contained at last over 
 six hundred signs, many of them repre- 
 senting whole syllables, like ^. The 
 Egyptian scribe gradually learned many 
 groups of such syllable signs. Each group, 
 like \^ ^, represented a ivord. Writing 
 thus became to him a large number of sign 
 being a word ; and a series of such groups 
 
 1 See the word '* beauty," the last three signs in the inscription over the ship 
 (Fig. 41). 
 
 net'ic signs 
 
 Fig. 28. Example 
 
 OF Egyptian Writ- 54. Advan- 
 
 ING IN THE PiCTO- ^^S^ ^^. P^^" 
 
 RiAL Stage 
 
 Interpretation: Above 
 is the falcon, symbol 
 of a king (of. the fal- 
 con on the shield of 
 Running Antelope in 
 Fig. 27), leading a hu- 
 man head by a cord ; 
 behind thehead aresix 
 lotus leaves (each the 
 sign for 1000) grow- 
 ing out of the ground 
 to which the head is 
 attached ; below is a 
 single-barbed harpoon 
 head and a little rec- 
 tangle (the sign of a 
 lake). The whole tells 
 the picture story that 
 the falcon king led 
 captive six thousand 
 men of the land of the 
 Harpoon Lake (§51) 
 
 groups, each group 
 formed a sentence. 
 
 55. Syllable 
 signs and 
 sign-groups 
 
42 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 56. Alpha- 
 Letic signs, 
 or letters 
 
 Nevertheless, the Egyptian went still farther, for he finally 
 possessed a series of signs, each representing only a letter \ 
 that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were 
 twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt 
 
 ■^ = smooth breathing, like 
 M h in "honor." As 
 
 R = Ch (like ch in German 
 ^ "ich") 
 
 vowel, see below 
 
 A = y (in Greek times it 
 1 was used as vowel) 
 
 @ =kh (like ch in Scotch 
 
 " loch " or German 
 
 
 "Bach") 
 — •— — s 
 
 in back of throat ; 
 
 
 not used in English 
 
 n = s (originally of slightly 
 different sound from 
 
 ■^ =■ w Oater C\ was also 
 Jl used ; ( both signs 
 
 the preceding) 
 
 as vowels, see below) 
 
 J- 
 
 rTv-i=sh 
 
 
 
 A = q (in Greek times also 
 
 D =p 
 
 used for k) 
 
 
 ^3^=k 
 
 x.=^=f 
 
 
 
 S =g 
 
 ^ = m (later r was also 
 
 -Ms used for m) 
 
 
 ^ =t 
 
 /v^AM^ = n 
 
 
 
 s=^ = th 
 
 <=> = r 
 
 
 
 .:^=d 
 
 <pi^^ = 1 in late times (origi- 
 
 
 ■^^^^ nally r or rw) 
 
 ra =h 
 
 "^ = dh or dsh (like j in 
 
 ( "jug") 
 
 Fig. 29. The Egyptian Alphabet 
 
 Each of these letters represents a consonant. The Egyptians of course 
 pronounced their words with vowels as we do, but they did not rvrite the 
 vowels. This will be clear by a study of Fig. 30. Just as the consonants 
 w and jj/ are sometimes used as vowels in English, so three of the Egyp- 
 tian consonants came to be employed as vowels in Greek times. The 
 first letter (smooth breathing) was thus used as ^ or^; the second letter 
 [y) as z; and the fourth [w) as ti or o (cf. Fig. 76) 
 
 long before 3000 B.C. It was thus the earliest alphabet known. 
 The Egyptian might then have written his language with twenty- 
 four alphabetic letters (Fig. 29) if the sign-grouY) habit had not 
 been too strong for the scribe, just as the /<?//^r-group habit is 
 
The Story of Egypt 43 
 
 strong enough with us to-day to prevent the introduction of a 
 simplified phonetic system of spelling English. If we smile at 
 the Egyptian's cumbrous sign-groups, future generations may 
 as justly smile at our often absurd letter-groups. 
 
 The Egyptian soon devised a convenient equipment for writ- 57- Inven- 
 ing. He found out that he could make an excellent paint or ing materials 
 ink by thickening water with a litde vegetable gum and then ^"^^ and pen 
 
 B 
 
 ' ' AAAA^A 
 
 A/VWVS 
 /VWW\ /VV\AAA 
 
 Fig. 30. An Egyptian Word {A) and Two English 
 Words {B) and (C) written in Hieroglyphic 
 
 The first three signs in word A are ch-q-r (see Fig. 29) ; we do not know 
 the vowels. The word means "pauper" (Hterally, "hungry") ; as it de- 
 notes a person, the Egyptian adds a httle kneeling man at the end. Before 
 him is another man with hand on mouth, an indication of hunger, thirst, 
 or speech. These two are old pictorial signs surviving from the pictorial 
 stage. Such pictorial signs at the end of a word have no phonetic value 
 and are called determinatives. B is an English word spelled for illus- 
 tration in hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the letters/-;/-^ 
 (see Fig. 29), while the three wavy lines form the determinative for 
 " water " ; hence p-n-d spells " pond." C is another English word in 
 hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the letters_/^7«-;z (see Fig. 29), 
 and the last sign is the determinative for "hunger" (see Fig. 30, A)\ 
 hence y^/;z-;z spells "famine." With the alphabet (Fig. 29) and the 
 above determinatives the student can put a number of English words 
 into hieroglyphic ; for example, " man " {m-n and determinative of 
 kneeling man, Fig. 30,^), "drink" {d-r-n-k and determinative of 
 kneeling man with hand on mouth, Fig. 30, C), "speak" {s-p-k and 
 same determinative), or " brook" {b-r-k and determinative for " water," 
 as in " pond," Fig. 30, B) 
 
 mixing in soot from the blackened pots over his fire. Dipping 
 a pointed reed into this mixture, he found he could write 
 very well. 
 
 He also learned that he could split a kind of river reed, 58. inven- 
 called Japyru^ into thin strips, and that he could write on in^materiais: 
 them much better than on bits of pottery, bone, and wood. P^P^"^ 
 Desiring a larger sheet, he hit upon the idea of pasting his 
 
44 Ancient Times 
 
 papyrus strips together with overlapping edges. This gave him 
 a very thin sheet, but by pasting two such sheets together, back 
 to back with the grain crossing at right angles, he produced a 
 smooth, tough, pale-yellow paper (Fig. 58). The Egyptian had 
 thus mad€ the discovery that a thin vegetable membrane offers 
 the most practical surface on which to write, and the world has 
 
 Fig. 31. An Example of Egyptian Hieroglyphic (Upper 
 Line) and its Equivalent in the Rapid Running Hand 
 (Lower Line) written with Pen and Ink on Papyrus and 
 called Hieratic, the Writing of All Ordinary Business 
 
 The daily business of an Egyptian community of course required much 
 writing and thousands of records. Such writing, after it began to be 
 done with pen and ink on papyrus (Fig. 40), soon became very rapid. 
 In course of time therefore there arose a rapid or running hand in which 
 each hieroglyphic sign was much abbreviated. This running hand is 
 called hieratic. It corresponds to our handwriting, while hieroglyphic 
 corresponds to our print. In the above example the signs in the lower 
 row show clearly that they are the result of an effort to make quickly 
 the signs in the hieroglyphic row above (compare sign for sign). We 
 must notice also that the Egyptian wrote from right to left, for this line 
 begins at the right and reads to the left. Vertical lines, that is, down- 
 ward reading, was also employed (Fig. 58). A third still more rapid and 
 abbreviated hand, corresponding in some ways to our shorthand, arose 
 still later (eighth century B.C.). It was called demotic, and one of the 
 versions on the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207) is written in demotic 
 
 since discovered nothing better. In this way arose pen, ink, 
 and paper (see Fig. 40). All three of these devices have 
 descended to us from the Egyptians, and paper still bears its 
 ancient naine, ''papyros,"^ but slightly changed. 
 
 1 The change from " papyros " to " paper " is really a very slight one. For 
 «s is merely the Greek grammatical ending, which must be omitted in English. 
 This leaves us papyr as the ancestor of our word " paper," from which it differs 
 by only one letter. On the other Greek word for " papyrus," from which came 
 our word " Bible," see § 405. On the rapid or running handwriting which resulted 
 from using a pen on paper, see Fig. 31. 
 
TJie Story of Egypt 45 
 
 The invention of writing and of a convenient system of 59. Un- 
 records on paper has had a greater influence in uplifting the SnanceTf 
 human race than any other intellectual achievement in the introduction 
 
 of writing 
 
 career of man. It was more important than all the battles 
 ever fought and all the constitutions ever devised. . 
 
 The Egyptians early found it necessary to measure time. 60. Begin- 
 Like all other early peoples, they used the time from new calSidar^ 
 moon to new moon as a very convenient rough measure. If a 
 man had agreed to pay back some borrowed grain at the end 
 of nine moons, and eight of them had passed, he knew that he 
 had one more moon in which to make the payment. But the 
 moon-month varies in length from twenty-nine to thirty days, 
 and it does not evenly divide the year. The Egyptian soon 
 showed himself much more practical in removing this incon- 
 venience than his neighbors in other lands. 
 
 He decided to use the moon no longer for dividing his year. 61. Egyptian 
 He would have twelve months, and he would make his months IJli^r calendar 
 all of the same length, that is, thirty days each ; then he would g^JIggj*"^"' 
 celebrate five feast days, a kind of holiday week five days long, fixed date 
 at the end of the year. This gave him a year of three hundred 
 and sixty-five days. He was not yet enough of an astronomer 
 to know that every four years he ought to have a leap year of 
 three hundred and sixty-six days, although he discovered this 
 fact later (§ 741). This convenient Egyptian calendar was 
 jdeyi^ed in 4241 B.C., and its introduction is ih^ earliest dated 
 event in history. Furthermore, this calendar is the very one 
 which has descended to us, after more than six thousand years 
 — unfortunately with awkward alterations in the lengths of the 
 months, but for these alterations the Egyptians were not 
 responsible (see § 968). 
 
 At the same time, as documents dated by this convenient 62. Lack of 
 calendar accumulated through many years, it was found that identifying 
 a document like a lease or a note, signed in a certain month, f^vg^tfo^oY' 
 was not sufficiently dated, unless the year was also included, year-names 
 The system of numbering years from some great event, like 
 
46 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 63. Lists of 
 
 year-names, 
 the earliest 
 chronicles ; 
 and lists of 
 kings with 
 numbered 
 years 
 
 1 2\ 3 
 
 our method of numbering them from the birth of Christ, was 
 still unknown. In order to have some means of identifying a 
 year when it was long past, each year was given a name after 
 some prominent event which had happened in it. This method 
 is still in use among our own North American Indians (Fig. 32), 
 
 and even among our- 
 selves, as people in 
 Chicago say " the year 
 of the great fire." We 
 find the earliest written 
 monuments of Egypt 
 dated by means of 
 named years (Fig. -^Z)- 
 Lists of year-names 
 then began to be kept. 
 As each year-name usu- 
 ally mentioned some 
 great event (cf. Fig. 
 2)^, such lists of year- 
 names were thus lists 
 of great events, like 
 historic chronicles. The 
 earliest such year-list 
 in human histor)^ now 
 surviving, called the Pa- 
 lermo Stone (because 
 it is preserved in the 
 museum at Palermo, 
 
 Fig. 32. Part of a Dakota Chief's 
 List of Seventy-one Named Years 
 
 Lone Dog, a Dakota chief, had a buffalo 
 robe with seventy-one named years re- 
 corded on it, beginning in 1800, when he 
 was a child of four. A year when whoop- 
 ing cough was very bad was called the 
 "Whooping-cough Year"; its sign shows 
 a human head violently coughing ! (/) 
 Another year, very plentiful in meteors, 
 was called the Meteor Year, and its 
 sign was a rude drawing of a falling 
 meteor {2). A third year saw "the arrange- 
 ment of peace between the Dakotas and 
 the Crows ; its sign was therefore two 
 Indians, with differing style of hair, indi- 
 cating the two different tribes, exchanging 
 pipes of peace (j). Thus, instead of say- 
 ing, as we do, that a thing happened in 
 the year 1813, the Indian said it happened 
 in the Whooping-cough Year, and by 
 examining his table of years he could tell 
 how far back that year was 
 
 Sicily), begins about 
 
 3400 B.C., and contained when complete the names of some 
 seven hundred years, ending about 2700 B.C. Later the Egyp- 
 tians found it more convenient to number the years of each 
 king's reign, and then to date events in the first year of King- 
 So-and-so or the tenth year of King So-and-so. They finally 
 had lists of past kings, covering many centuries. 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 47 
 
 Meantime the Egyptians were making great progress in other 64. Diseov- 
 matters. It was probably in the peninsula of Sinai (see map, ^^^ ° "^^ ^ 
 
 p. 36) that some Egyptian, wan- 
 dering thither, once happened to 
 bank his camp fire with pieces of 
 copper ore lying on the ground 
 about the camp. The charcoal 
 of his wood fire mingled with the 
 hot fragments of ore piled around 
 to shield the fire, and thus the 
 ore was " reduced," as the miner 
 say3 ; that is, the copper in me- 
 tallic form was released from 
 the lumps of ore. Next morn- 
 ing, as the Egyptian stirred the 
 embers, he discovered a few 
 glittering globules, now hardened 
 into beads of metal. He drew 
 them forth and turned them 
 admiringly as they glittered in 
 the morning sunshine. Before 
 long, as the experience was re- 
 peated, he discovered whence 
 these strange shining beads had 
 come. He produced more of 
 them, at first only to be worn as 
 ornaments by the women. Then 
 he learned to cast the metal into 
 a blade, to replace the flint knife 
 which he carried in Kis girdle. 
 Without knowing it this man 
 
 (at least 
 4000 B.C.) 
 
 Fig. 33. Early Egyptian 
 
 Date by the Name of the 
 
 Year 
 
 This large alabaster jar, now in 
 the Philadelphia Museum, was 
 presented by a primitive king of 
 Egypt to a Sun-temple and bears 
 the date of the presentation in 
 the words, " Year of Fighting 
 and Smiting the Northland," 
 which is the name of the year, 
 given to it because of the victory 
 over the Northland (the Delta) 
 gained in that year. A long 
 series of such year-names fur- 
 nishes us a valuable record of 
 great events, by which the years 
 were named (§ 63) 
 
 stood at the dawning of a new- 
 era, the Age of Metal; and the little bead of shining copper 
 which he drew from the ashes, if this Egyptian wanderer could 
 have seen it, might have reflected to him a vision of steel 
 
 65. The 
 
 dawning of 
 the Age of 
 Metal 
 
48 Ancient Times 
 
 buildings, Brooklyn bridges, huge factories roaring with the noise 
 of thousands of machines of metal, and vast stretches of steel 
 roads along which thunder hosts of rushing locomotives. For 
 these things of our modern world, and all they signify, would 
 never have come to pass but for the little bead of metal which 
 the wondering Egyptian held in his hand for the first time on 
 Jhat eventful day so long ago. Since the discovery of fire over 
 fifty thousand years earlier (§ 8), man had made no conquest 
 of the things of the earth which could compare in importance 
 with this discovery of metal. 
 
 66. The Niie^ At this point we realize that we have followed early man out 
 calTOiume*'^^' of the Stonc Age (where we left him in Europe) into a civili- 
 zation possessed of metal, writing, and government. We also 
 begin to see that dry and rainless Egypt furnishes the conditions 
 for the preservation of such plentiful remains of early man as 
 to make this valley an enormous storehouse of his ancient works 
 and records. These remains are the only link connecting pre- 
 historic man with the historic age of written documents, which 
 we are now to study as we make the voyage up the Nile. We 
 shall read the monuments along the great river like a vast his- 
 torical volume, whose pages will tell us, age after age, the fasci- 
 nating story of ancient man and all that he achieved here so 
 many thousands of years ago, after his discovery of metals 
 and his invention of writing. 
 
 67. The first Such are the thoughts which occupy the mind of the well- 
 fhe"pyramids informed traveler as his train carries him southward across the 
 
 Delta. Perhaps he is pondering on the possible results which 
 the Egyptians were to achieve as he sees them in imagination 
 throwing away their flint chisels and replacing them with those 
 of copper. The train rounds a bend, and through an opening in 
 the palms he is fairly blinded by a burst of blazing sunshine 
 from the western desert, in the midst of which he discovers a 
 group of noble pyramids rising above the glare of the sands. 
 It is his first glimpse of the great pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 24), 
 and it tells him better than any printed page what the Egyptian 
 
The Story of Egypt 49 
 
 builders with the copper chisel in their hands could do. A few- 
 minutes later his train is moving among the modern buildings 
 of Cairo, and the very next day will surely find him taking the 
 seven-mile drive from Cairo out to Gizeh. 
 
 Section 6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 
 2500 B.C.) 
 
 No traveler ever forgets the first drive from Cairo to the 68. The pyra 
 pyramids of Gizeh, as he sees their giant forms rising higher tombs 
 and higher above the crest of the western desert (Fig. 24). 
 A thousand questions arise in the visitor's mind. He has read 
 that these vast buildings he is approaching are tombs, in which 
 
 Fig. 34. Winged Sun-Disk, a Symbol of the Sun-god 
 
 In this form the Sun-god was beheved to be a falcon flying across the 
 
 sky. We shall later see how the other nations of the Orient in Asia 
 
 also adopted this Egyptian symbol (see Figs. 102, 117, and 129) 
 
 the kings of Egypt were buried. Such mighty buildings reveal 
 many things about the men who built them. In the first place, 
 these tombs show that the Egyptians believed in a life after 
 death, and that to obtain such life it was necessary to preserve 
 the body from destruction. They built these tombs to shelter 
 and protect the body after death. From this belief came also the 
 practice of embalmment, by which the body was preserved as 
 a mummy (Fig. 72). It was then placed in the great tomb, in 
 a small room deep under the pyramid masonry. Other tombs 
 of masonry, much smaller in size, cluster about the pyramids in 
 great numbers (Figs. 39 and 42). Here were buried the relatives 
 of the king, and the great men of his court, who assisted him 
 in the government of the land. 
 
so 
 
 A7icie7it Times 
 
 69. The gods 
 of Egypt : Re 
 and Osiris 
 
 70. The prog- 
 ress of the 
 Egyptians be- 
 fore they 
 built stone 
 masonry 
 
 The Egyptians had many gods, but there were two whom 
 they worshiped above all others. The sun, which shines so 
 gloriously in the cloudless Egyptian sky, was their greatest god, 
 and their most splendid temples were erected for his worship. 
 Indeed, the pyramid is a symbol sacred to the Sun-god. (See 
 another symbol in Fig. 34.) They called him .R£_j(pronounced 
 ray). The other great power which they revered was the shinirig;^^ 
 Nile. The great river and the fertile soil he refreshes, and the 
 green life which he brings forth — all these the Egyptian thought 
 of together as a single god, Osiris, the imperishable life of the 
 
 earth, which revives and fades 
 every year with the changes 
 of the seasons (see Fig. 35). 
 It was a beautiful thought to 
 the Egyptian that this same 
 life-giving power which fur- 
 nished him his food in this 
 world would care for him also 
 in the next^ when his body 
 lay out yonder in the great 
 cemetery of Gizeh, which we 
 are approaching.^ 
 But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things 
 besides the religion of the Egyptians. As we look up at the 
 colossal pyramids behind the Sphinx (Fig. 54) we can hardly 
 grasp the fact of the enormous forward stride taken by the 
 Egyptians since the days when they used to be buried with 
 their flint knives in a pit scooped out on the margin of the 
 desert (Fig. 25). It was the use of metal which since then had 
 carried them so far. That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the 
 first bit of metal (§ 65) lived over a thousand years before 
 
 1 There were many other Egyptian gods whose earthly symbols were animals, 
 but the animal worship usually attributed to Egypt was a degeneration belonging 
 to the latest age. The animals were not gods in this early time, but only symbols 
 of the divine beings, just as the winged sun-disk was a symbol of the Sun-god 
 (Fig- 34)- 
 
 Fig. 35. The Dead Osiris 
 embalmed 
 
 From the body of the god stalks 
 of grain have sprouted, a symbol 
 suggesting the imperishable life of 
 the god, by means of which he 
 survived death (§ 69) 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 51 
 
 these pyramids were built. He was buried in a pit like that 
 of the earliest Egyptian peasant (Figs. 25 and 38, i). 
 
 It was a long time before the possession of metal resulted in 
 copper tools which made possible great architecture in stone. 
 Not more than a hundred and fifty years before the Great 
 
 ' ^^-r^^^fei- 
 
 Fig. 36. The Oldest Surviving Building of Stone 
 Masonry (not long after 3000 b.c.) 
 
 This terraced building, often called the step-pyramid, was the tomb of 
 King Zoser (early thirtieth century B.C.). It is about 200 feet high, 
 and is composed of a series of buildings like those in Fig. 42, placed 
 one on top of the other. It thus formed a tapering building (Fig. 38,5), 
 out of which developed the pyramid form at the close of the thirtieth 
 century (on the architect see Fig. 37 and § 71) 
 
 Pyramid of Gizeh, the Egyptians were still building the tombs 
 of their kings out of sun-baked brick. Such a royal tomb was 
 at first merely a chamber in the ground, roofed with wood 
 ^d covered with a mound of sand and gravel (Fig. 38, 2). 
 
 Then some skillful workman among them found out that he 
 could use his copper tools to cut square blocks of limestone 
 and line the chamber with these blocks in place of the soft 
 
52 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 71. The 
 
 earliest stone 
 building, and 
 Imhotep, the 
 first architect 
 in stone 
 
 72. From the 
 earliest stone 
 masonry to 
 the Great 
 Pyramid — a 
 century and a 
 half 
 
 bricks. So far as we know, this was the first piece of stone 
 masonry ever put together (Fig. 38, j). It can hardly be called 
 a building, for, like a cellar wall, it was all below ground. 
 
 The next step, a real building above- 
 ground, was still of brick (Fig. 38, <^). 
 It was soon followed by a terraced 
 structure of stone for the king's 
 .tomb, the earliest surviving building 
 of stone masonry ever erected. We 
 know the name of the royal archi- 
 tect, Imhotep, the earliest architect to 
 put up a building of stone masonry. 
 He flourished just after 3000 B.C., 
 and his name deserves far greater 
 fame and respect than those of the 
 early kings or conquerors them- 
 selves (Fig. 37). 
 
 The erection of Imhotep's ter- 
 raced building was but a step toward 
 the construction of a pyramid. A 
 generation later, so rapid was the 
 progress, the king's architects were 
 building the Great Pyramid of Gizeh 
 (2900 B.C.). From the earliest piece 
 of stone masonry (Fig. 38, j) to the 
 construction of the Great Pyramid 
 (Fig. 38, 7), less than a century and 
 a half elapsed. Most of this advance 
 was made during the thirtieth cen- 
 tury B.C., that is, between 3000 and 
 
 Fig. 37. Imhotep the 
 Wise, the Earliest Ar- 
 chitect of Sto\e Build- 
 ings (nearly 3000 B.C.) 
 
 This architect of the earli- 
 est surviving building of 
 stone (Fig. 36) was grand 
 vizier at the court of King 
 Zoser. He was also a great 
 physician and wise man, and 
 later on he was thought to be 
 a god, until he was finally re- 
 garded as Asclepius {^scu- 
 lapius), the god of medicine 
 among the Greeks and 
 Romans. This little portrait 
 of him is a bronze statuette, 
 now in the Berlin Museum, 
 and shows him reading from 
 a papyrus roll 
 
 i 2900 B.C. (Fig- 38). Such rapid prog- 
 
 ress in control of mechanical powef 
 can be found in no other period of 
 the world's history until the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
The Story of Egypt 5 3 
 
 It helps us to realize this progress when we know that the 73. The vast 
 Great Pyramid covers thirteen acres. It is a solid mass of great Pyra- 
 masonry containing 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each weigh- "^^^ 
 ing on an average two and a half tons ; that is, each block is as 
 heavy as a large wagonload of coal. The sides of the pyramid 
 at the base are 755 feet long,^ that is, about a block and three 
 quarters (counting twelve city blocks to a mile), and the build- 
 ing was nearly 500 feet high. An ancient story tells us that a 
 hundred thousand men were working on this royal tomb for 
 twenty years, and we can well believe it (Fig. 39). 
 
 We perceive at once that it must have required a very 74. Govem- 
 skillful ruler and a great body of officials to manage and to pyj^mid Age 
 feed a hundred thousand workmen around this great building. 
 The king who controlled such vast undertakings was no longer 
 a local chieftain (§ 50), but he now ruled a united Egypt, the 
 earliest great unified nation, comprising several millions of 
 people. The king was so reverenced that the people did not 
 mention him by name, but instead they spoke of the palace 
 in which he lived, that is, the '' Great^House," or, in Egyptian, 
 '' Pharaoh." He had \{\'s> local officials collecting taxes all over 
 Egypt (Fig. 40). It was also their business to try the law cases 
 which arose, and every judge had before him the writteji law,^ 
 which bade him judge justly. 
 
 The king's huge ce?itral offices, occupying low, sun-baked- 
 brick buildings, sheltered an army of clerks with their reed 
 pens and their rolls of papyrus (Fig. 40), keeping the king's 
 records and accounts. The taxes received from the people 
 here were not in money, for coined money did not yet exist. 
 Payments were made in produce — grain, live stock, wine, honey, 
 linen, and the like. With the exception of the cattle, these had 
 to be stored in granaries and storehouses, a vast group of 
 which formed the treasury of the king. 
 
 1 It should be remembered that the pyramid is solid. Compare the length of 
 the Colosseum (about 600 feet), which is built around a hollcnv inclosure. 
 
 2 This Egyptian codcvof laws has unfortunately been lost. 
 
.5 S !^ u, j2 cQ 
 O 
 
 13 0) 1> U 
 
 •S ^ •£ - nj 
 
 >>'a o c - 
 
 >^ 03 ^n 'a C „r-" K o " 
 
 a '^ 
 
 w -y 
 
 
 £ aj w:q Gt! u o 5 hbj 
 2jd Cod slriJ^ u'n°2. 
 
 w 
 
 rt S « 
 
 -c^ S 
 
 S c 
 
 bi'i 
 
 'tf 
 
 2 ^rt'^:Hc «• 
 
 
 htiu 
 
 £^-=^^8 hill 
 
 
 O 
 
 ^2 
 " c 
 
 U2 to 
 O 03 
 
 E S 
 
 < G 
 O 
 m 
 
 J-^^^ 
 
 ^1- 
 
 4J oj bC4 
 
 ^. . >- > 3 ' 
 
 5 O W O T) 
 
 O c/3 ^ (U ' 
 
 *^ ^ Ti ^ "■' tl^ *1^ fl 1 . (-• C 
 
 S4 
 
Pi 
 < 
 
 Q 
 < 
 
 P 
 O 
 
 K 
 
 H 
 o 
 
 ^ 
 
 3 
 
 
 M 
 
 B 
 
 6 
 o 
 
 CS Oh 
 
 'T3 
 
 o 
 
 rt 
 w 
 
 1 
 
 .S -^ 
 
 C 
 
 4_) 
 
 X3 
 
 <u 
 
 
 s 
 
 3 
 
 e 
 
 o 
 
 In 
 
 
 O 
 
 ^^ 
 
 u 
 
 w 
 rt 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 l-H ^ ^ O b£) o 
 
 
 <u 
 
 <U 03 
 
 >^ V ^ ^ 
 
 o (U C 
 
 CX rt 4; 
 
 bJ3^ 
 
 o. 
 
 (U .-^ -I-" 
 
 •2 ,« «'^_2'S-^'4^ c 
 
 
 >^ o 
 
 11 
 
 
 ^ o 
 
 "T -' 03 
 
 O 0) w 
 
 W ^ D 
 
 5 S c o S £ 
 
 O T3 
 
 <U g S 
 
 
 o 3 
 
 O (V 
 3 O 
 
 t P- 
 
 (U CJ ^ 
 
 bJO 
 
 ^ '^ •£ 
 2 t« o 
 
 OJ +-< 
 
 O C 
 
 rt a; rt -a rt bp ^ 
 
 
 bjj-:;:; 
 
 c 
 
 o 
 
 ^ X 
 ^ 
 
 p. K 
 
 H O 
 o .7 
 
 S g^ 
 
 c^ ^ 
 
 <U Z ^'*^ 
 
 b£^ 
 
 o 
 
 B *^ 
 
 bX) C 
 
 c 
 
 6^ 
 
 si 
 
 <u 
 
 
 S -3 
 
 
 ^^ li 
 
 OJ 5 ^ 
 
 V? t« ^ 42 ^ 
 
 .•- f^ •> '^ -d «J 
 
 OJ 
 
 N ^ 
 
 '-5 "C ^ 
 
 
 > s -^ 
 
 ^^ O 
 
 p? 3 h ^ 
 
 
 C3 
 
 C/3 O 
 
 bB -M 
 
 
 
 ^ .ii 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ o 
 o o I > c 
 
 bc--je 
 o o 
 
 g rt 
 
 C/O VJ ^-H 
 
 '^ bJ3 w 'ti 
 
 bfi c« <+. 
 
 -5 ^ 
 
 v-^ "5 
 
 P^ - 
 
 D- O 
 
 
 lU 
 
 
 be S^ 
 
 
 Ji "o -S ^ <u ™ 
 
 ^ O 
 
 
 o ^ 
 
 us 
 
 6 ^ 
 
 w bJD - 
 
 '^ ^ 'B 
 
 ^£ ^ 
 
 (U o <u 
 tJ^ j_, -S 
 
 1^ 2 
 
 o 
 
 ^ <+^ bC 
 S Si c 
 
 s 2 " 
 2 fe'S 
 
 ^ "" fe 
 -^ M I? 
 
 2 -C WD 
 
 1^1 
 
 !- 03 OT O 
 
 bJD S 
 bJD o 
 
 ^ OJ .!-< 
 
 W u u 
 
 bJ3 ^n3 
 
 C V; <u <U 
 
 ■3 *5 e--£ 
 
 03 OJ C 
 
 <u -O > '"^ 
 
 cfl c 1J G 
 
 4_, rt ^3 O 
 
 S^^ 
 ^ ^ 
 
 OJ 
 
 .■y w 
 
 C 
 o 
 
 in bjDT3 
 
 > p-' 
 
 bJD C 
 
 C OS 
 
 
 :H2 S 
 
 2 '^ Z 
 
 ^ 1) 
 
 <-»H 
 
 T3 ;i: 
 
 lU o 
 £ bX) 
 
 ^2^ 
 
 
 B t-i H ci. 
 
 s-> 
 
 o t; 
 
 o -^ £ 
 
 o3 o i-i 
 
 3 -^ ^ 
 
 O OJ rt 
 
 C - 
 
 6 ?. 
 
 55 
 
-Xr 
 
 \ 
 
 Fig. 39. Restoration of the Great Pyramids and Other 
 
 Tomb-Monuments in the Ancient Cemetery of Gizeh, 
 
 Egypt. (After Hoelscher) 
 
 These royal tombs (pyramids) belonged to the leading kings of the 
 Fourth Dynasty, the early part (2900-2750 B.C.) of the Pyramid Age' 
 (about 3006 to 2500 B.C.). The Great Pyramid, the tomb of King Khufu 
 (Greek, Cheops), is on the right (see § 73). Next in size is that of King 
 Khafre (Greek, Chcphre7i) (Fig. 54), on the left. On the east side (front) 
 of each pyramid is a temple (see also Fig. 56), where the food, drink, 
 and clothing were placed for the use of the dead king. These temples, 
 like the pyramids, were built on the desert plateau above, while the 
 royal town was in the valley below (on the right) (see § 75 and Fig. 24). 
 For convenience, therefore, the temple was connected with the town 
 below by a covered gallery, or corridor, of stone, seen here descending 
 in a straight line from the temple of King Khafre and terminating below, 
 just beside the Sphinx, in a large oblong building of stone, called a 
 valley-temple. Tt was a splendid structure of granite (Fig. 55), serving 
 not only as a temple but also as the entrance to the great corridor from 
 the royal city. The pyramids are surrounded by the tombs of the queens 
 and the great lords of the age (see Fig. 42). At the lower left-hand 
 corner is an unfinished pyramid, showing the inclined ascents up which 
 the stone blocks were dragged. These ascents (called ramps) were 
 built of sun-baked brick and were removed after the pyramid was 
 finished. (This scene will be found in color in Outlines of European 
 History, Part I, Plate I) 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 57 
 
 The villas and gardens of the officials who assisted the king 75. The 
 in all this business of government formed a large' part of the ™^^ 
 royal city (Fig. 51). The chief quarter of the city, however, was 
 occupied by the palace of the king and the luxurious parks and 
 gardens which surrounded it. Thus the palace and its grounds, 
 the official villas, and offices of the government made up the 
 capital of Egypt, the royal city which extended along the foot of 
 the pyramid ceme- 
 tery and stretched 
 far away over the 
 low plain, of which 
 there is a fine view 
 from the summit 
 of the pyramid. 
 But the city was 
 all built of sun- 
 baked brick and 
 wood, and it has 
 therefore vanished. 
 It extended far 
 southward from 
 Gizeh and was later 
 xalied Memphis. 
 
 The city of the 
 dead, — .the pyra- 
 mids and the tombs 
 clustering around 
 
 them (Figs. 39 and 42), — being built of stone, has fortunately 
 proved more durable. Hence it is. that from the summit of 
 the Great Pyramid there is a grand view southward, down 
 a straggling but imposing line of pyramids rising dimly as far 
 as one can see on the southern horizon. Each pyramid was 
 a royal tomb, and for us each such tomb means that a king 
 lived, ruled, and died. The line is over sixty miles^long, and 
 its oldest pyramids represent the first great age of Egyptian 
 
 Fig. 40. Collection of Taxes by Local 
 Treasury Officials in the Pyramid Age 
 
 The clerks and scribes are in two rows at the 
 right. All squat, and write on the raised right 
 knee, except the two who have desks. The left 
 hand holds a sheet of papyrus ; the right, the 
 pen. The taxpayers are delinquent village offi- 
 cers brought in (at the left) by deputies with 
 staves under their arms. The inscription above 
 reads, " Seizing the town rulers for a reckon- 
 ing." The clerks had records of the taxpayers' 
 names and how much they owed ; and they 
 issued receipts when the taxes were paid, just 
 as at the present day. Such arrangements did 
 not arise in Europe until far down in the Roman 
 Empire (§§ 1026-1027) 
 
 76. Length 
 and date of 
 the Pyramid 
 Age 
 
58 
 
 A}icie7it Times 
 
 77. Northern 
 commerce 
 and earliest 
 seagoing 
 ships 
 
 civilization after the land was united under one king.^ We may 
 call it thej^ramid Age, and it lasted about five hundred years, 
 from 3000 to 2500 B.C. 
 
 In the Pyramid Kg& the Pharaoh was already powerful 
 enough to begin seeking wealth beyond the boundaries of 
 Egypt. We even possess painted reliefs (Fig. 41) showing 
 
 Fig. 41. Earliest Representation of a Seagoing Ship 
 (Twenty-eighth Century b.c.) 
 
 The scene is carved on the wall of a temple (Fig. 56). The people are 
 all bowing to the king whose figure (now lost) stood on shore (at the 
 left), and they salute him with the words written in a line of hieroglyphs 
 above, meaning : '' Hail to thee ! O Sahure [the king's name], thou god 
 of the living ! We behold thy beauty." Some of these men are bearded 
 Phoenician prisoners brought by this Egyptian ship which with seven 
 others, making a fleet of eight vessels, had therefore crossed the east 
 end of the Mediterranean and returned. The big double mast is un- 
 shipped and lies on supports rising by the three steering oars in the 
 stern. The model and ornaments of these earliest-known ships spread 
 in later times to ships found in all waters from Italy to India 
 
 US the ships which he dared to send beyond the shelter of 
 the Nile mouths far across the end of the Mediterranean to 
 the coast of Phoenicia (see map, p. 100). This was in the 
 
 1 For a long time before this there had been little kingdoms scattered up and 
 down the valley. These finally merged into two leading kingdoms — one includ- 
 ing the Delta, and the other the valley south of it. They long fought together 
 (see Fig. 33), until they were finally united into one kingdom, under a single 
 king. The first king to establish this union permanently was Menes, who united 
 Egypt under his rule about 3400 B.C. But it was not until four centuries or more 
 after Menes that the united kingdom became powerful and wealthy enough to 
 build these royal pyramid-tombs, marking for us the first great age of Egyptian 
 civilization. 
 
The Story of Egypt 59 
 
 middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., and this relief 
 (Fig. 41) contains the oldest known representation of a sea- 
 going ship. Yet at that time the Pharaoh had already been 
 carrying on such over-sea commerce for centuries. 
 
 Besides maintaining his copper mines in Sinai, the king was 78. Southern 
 also already sending caravans of donkeys far up the Nile into and eadkst 
 the Sudan to traffic with the blacks of the south, and to bring f,fj^|^^i°5 
 back ebony, ivory, ostrich feathers, and fragrant gums. The 
 
 on 
 the Red Sea 
 
 t= /4^^::^j0^m, 
 
 Fig. 42. Restoration of a Group of Tombs of the Nobles 
 IN the Pyramid Age 
 
 These tombs are grouped about the royal pyramids, as seen in Fig. 39. 
 They are sometimes of vast size. The square openings in the top are 
 shafts leading down to the burial chambers in the native rock far below 
 the tomb structures. These structures are of stone, surrounding a heap 
 of sand and gravel inside (Fig. 38, 4). The chapel room is in the east 
 side, of which the door can be seen in the front of each tomb. The 
 reliefs shown in Figs. 43-48 adorn the inside walls of these chapels 
 
 officials who, conducted these caravans were the earliest ex- 
 plorers of inner Africa, and in their tombs at the First Cataract 
 they have left interesting records of their exciting adventures 
 among the wild tribes of the south — adventures in which some 
 of them lost their lives.^ The Pharaoh was also sending his 
 ships on expeditions to a land called Punt, at the south end of 
 the Red Sea (see map, p. 36), to procure the same products and 
 to bring them back by water. 
 
 1 The teacher will find it of interest to read these records to the class. See 
 the author's Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, pp. 325-336, 350-374. 
 
6o 
 
 Ajicient Times 
 
 79. The A stroll among the tombs clustering so thickly around the 
 
 ofThe'^Pyra-^ pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 42) is almost like a walk among the 
 f!\^^^se;the busy communities which flourished in this populous valley in 
 reveal the days of the pyramid-builders. We find the door of every 
 
 tomb standing open (Fig. 42), and there is nothing to prevent 
 
 \mAKi 
 o ^ ^'^ ^ 
 
 J [ 
 
 lAldc^^J 
 
 r 
 
 Fig 43 Relief Scene from ihe Chapel of a Noble's 
 Tomb (Fig. 42) in the Pyramid Age 
 
 The tall figure of the noble stands at the right. He is inspecting three 
 lines of cattle and a line of fowl brought before him. Note the two 
 scribes who head the two middle rows. Each is writing with pen on a 
 sheet of papyrus, and one carries two pens behind his ear. Such 
 reliefs after being carved were colored in bright hues by the painter 
 
 (see § 93) 
 
 our entrance. We stand in an oblong room with walls of stone 
 masonry. This is a chapel chamber, to which the Egyptian 
 believed the dead man buried beneath the tomb might return 
 every day. Here he would find food and drink left for him 
 daily by his relatives. He would also find the stone walls of 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 6i 
 
 this room covered from floor to ceiling with carved scenes, beau- 
 tifully painted, picturing the daily life on a great estate (Figs. 40, 
 43-48, and 50). The place is now silent and deserted, or if we 
 hear the voices of the donkey boys talking outside, they are 
 speaking Arabic, for the ancient Egyptian language of the men 
 who built these tombs so many thousand years ago is no longer 
 spoken. But everywhere, in bright and charming colors, we 
 see pictures of the life — the days of toil and pleasure — which 
 these men of nearly five thousand years ago actually lived. 
 
 Fig. 44. Flowing and Sowing in the Pyramid Age 
 
 There are two plowmen, one driving the oxen and one holding the 
 plow. This wooden plow was derived from such a wooden hoe as we 
 see in use in front of the oxen. The handle of the hoe, here grasped 
 by the user, was lengthened 30 that oxen might be yoked to it. The 
 hoe handle thus became the beam of a plow. Two short handles were 
 then attached by which the plowman behind could guide it (§ 33). 
 The man with the hoe breaks up the clods left by the plow, and in 
 front of him is the sower, scattering the seed from the curious sack he 
 carries before him. At the left is a scribe of the estate. The hiero- 
 glyphs at the top in all such scenes explain what is going on. Scene 
 from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 42) 
 
 Dominating all these scenes on the walls is the tall form of 80. Agricul- 
 the noble (Fig. 43), the lord of the estate, who was buried in caSe raising; 
 this tomb. He stands looking out over his fields and inspecting ^^^^^^^^^^ 
 the work going on there. These fields (Fig. 44) are the oldest 
 scene of agriculture known to us. Here, too, are the herds, long 
 lines of sleek, fat cattle grazing in the pasture, while the milch 
 cows are led up and tied to be milked (Figs. 43 and 45). These 
 cattle are also beasts of burden ; we notice the oxen draw- 
 ing the plow. But we find no horses in these tombs of the 
 
62 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 8i. The cop- 
 persmith 
 
 Fig. 45 
 
 Peasant milking 
 Pyramid Age 
 
 THE 
 
 The cow is restive and the ancient cow- 
 herd has tied her hind legs. Behind her 
 another man is holding her calf, which 
 rears and plunges in the effort to reach 
 the milk. Scene from the chapel of a 
 noble's tomb (Fig. 42) 
 
 Pyramid Age, for the horse was still unknown to the Egyprlan. 
 The donkey, however, is everywhere, and it would be impossible 
 
 to harvest the gram 
 ^ ^^mm\ i^xzf^^f^ without him (Fig. 46). 
 
 On the next wall we 
 find again the tall figure 
 of the noble overseeing 
 the booths and yards 
 where the craftsmen of 
 his estate are working. 
 Yonder is the smith. 
 He has never heard of 
 his ancestor who picked 
 up the first bead of 
 copper over a thousand years earlier (§ 65). Much progress 
 has been made since that day. This man could make excellent 
 copper tools of all sorts; but the tool which demanded the 
 greatest skill was the long, 
 flat ripsaw, which the smith 
 knew how to hammer into 
 shape out of a broad strip of 
 copper five or six feet long. 
 Such a saw may be seen in 
 use in Fig. 50. Besides this 
 he knew how to make one 
 that would saw great blocks 
 of stone for the pyramids. 
 Moreover, this coppersmith 
 was already able to deliver 
 orders of considerable size. 
 We know that he could fur- 
 nish thirteen hundred feet 
 
 (about a quarter of a mile) of copper drain piping for a pyra- 
 mid temple (Fig. 56), where recent excavation has found it- 
 the earliest plumbing known to us. 
 
 Fig. 46. Donkey carrying a 
 
 Load of Grain Sheaves in 
 
 THE Pyramid Age 
 
 The foal accompanies its mother 
 while at work. Scene from the 
 chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 42) 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 63 
 
 On the same wall we see the lapidary holding up for the 82. The lapt 
 noble's admiration splendid stone bowls cut from diorite. sm?h^and 
 Although this kind of stone is as hard as steel, the bowl is Jeweler 
 ground to such thinness that the sunlight glows through its 
 dark gray sides (Fig. 134). Other workmen are cutting and 
 grinding tiny pieces of beautiful blue turquoise. These pieces 
 they inlay with remarkable accuracy into recesses in the sur- 
 face of a magnificent golden vase just made ready by the 
 goldsmith (Plate I). 
 The booth of the 
 goldsmith is filled 
 with workmen and 
 apprentices (Fig. 
 47). They hammer 
 and cast, solder and 
 fit together richly 
 wrought jewelry 
 which is hardly sur- 
 passed by the work 
 of the best gold- 
 smiths and jewelers 
 of to-day. 
 
 In the next space 
 on this wall we find 
 the potter no longer 
 building up his jars 
 
 and bowls with his fingers alone, as in the Stone Age. He now 
 sits before a small horizontal wheel (Fig. 48), upon which he 
 deftly shapes the whirling vessel. When the soft clay vessels 
 are ready, they are no longer unevenly burned in an open fire, 
 as among the Late Stone Age potters in the Swiss lake-villages 
 (Fig. 16); but here in the Egyptian potter's yard are long rows 
 of dosed furnaces of clay as tall as a man. When the pottery 
 is packed in these furnaces it is burned evenly, because it is 
 protected from the wind (Fig. 48). On the tomb wall we also 
 
 Fig. 47. Goldsmith's Workshop in the 
 Pyramid Age 
 
 Upper row. At left the chief goldsmith weighs 
 precious stones and a scribe records them; 
 next, six men with blowpipes blow the fire in a 
 small clay furnace ; next, a workman pours out 
 molten metal or paste ; at the right end four 
 men are beating gold leaf. Middle row. Pieces 
 of finished jewelry and a jewel-box in the middle. 
 Lower row. Workmen seated at low benches ^3-^ The pot- 
 are putting together and engraving pieces of and^fumTce ; 
 jewelry. Several of these men are dwarfs. (See the earliest 
 the finished work on Plate I, and headpiece, p. 3 5) glass 
 
64 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 84. The 
 
 weavers and 
 tapestry- 
 makers 
 
 see the craftsman making glass. This art the Egyptians had 
 discovered centuries earlier. The glass was spread on tiles in 
 gorgeous glazes for adorning house and palace walls (Plate II), 
 and later it was wrought into exquisite many-colored glass 
 bottles" and vases, which were widely exported (Fig. 49). 
 
 Yonder the weaving women draw forth from the loom a 
 gossamer fabric of linen. The picture would naturally give us 
 no idea of its fineness, but fortunately pieces of it have sur- 
 vived, wrapped around the mummy of a king of this age. 
 
 Fig. 48. Potter's Wheel and Furnaces 
 
 The potter crouches before his horizontal wheel, which is like a flat 
 round plate, on which rests the jar being shaped. The potter keeps 
 the wheel whirling with one hand, and with the other he shapes the soft 
 clay jar as it whirls on the wheel. This wheel is the ancestor of our 
 lathe. Two men (at the right end) are just filling a tall furnace with 
 bowls and jars, and another furnace (at the left) is already very hot, 
 for the man stirring the fire is holding up his hand to shield his face 
 from the heat 
 
 Paper- 
 
 makers 
 
 These specimens of royal linen are so fine that it requires a 
 magnifying glass to distinguish them from silk, and the best 
 work of the modern machine loom is coarse in comparison 
 with this fabric of the ancient Egyptian ha?id: loom. At one 
 loom a lovely tapestry is being made, for these weavers of 
 Egypt furnished the earliest-known specimens of such work, 
 to be hung on the walls of the Pharaoh's palace or stretched 
 out to shade the roof garden of the noble's villa (Fig. 51). 
 
 In the next space on the wall we find huge bundles of 
 papyrus reeds, which barelegged men are gathering along the 
 
TJie Story of E^ypt 
 
 65 
 
 edge of the Nile marsh. These reeds furnish piles of pale 
 yellow paper in long narrow sheets (§ 58). The ships which we 
 have followed on the Mediterranean (Fig. 41) will in course 
 of time add bales of this Nile paper to their cargoes, and 
 carry it to the 
 European world. 
 
 We seem almost 
 to hear the hubbub 
 of hammers and 
 mauls as we ap- 
 proach the next sec- 
 tion of wall, where 
 we find the ship- 
 builders and cabi- 
 netmakers. Here 
 is a long line of 
 curving hulls, with 
 workmen swarming 
 over them like ants, 
 fitting together the 
 earliest seagoing 
 ships (Fig. 41). 
 Beside them are 
 the busy cabinet- 
 makers (Fig. 50), 
 fashioning luxuri- 
 ous furniture for the noble's villa. The finished chairs and 
 couches for the king or the rich are overlaid with gold and 
 silver, inlaid with ebony and ivory, and upholstered with soft 
 leathern cushions (Fig. 73). 
 
 As we look back over these painted chapel walls we see 
 that the tombs of Gizeh have told us a very vivid story of how 
 these early men learned to make for themselves the things they 
 needed. We should notice how many more such things these 
 men of the Nile could now make than the Stone Age men, who 
 
 Fig. 49. Egyptian Glass Bottles and 
 
 THEIR Distribution from Babylonia to 
 
 Ancient Italy 
 
 A, as found in ancient Egypt ; B, as found in 
 ancient Babylonia ; C, as found in ancient Italy. 
 The shape is in imitation of Egyptian perfume 
 bottles cut out of alabaster. This shape became 
 the common form for perfume and toilet bottles 
 among the Mediterranean peoples in later times 
 (see Fig. 170) 
 
 87. Indus- 
 trial progress 
 of Egypt re- 
 vealed by the 
 tomb-chapels 
 
66 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 88. River 
 
 commerce ; 
 the market 
 place ; traffic 
 in goods ; cir- 
 culation of 
 precious 
 metal 
 
 were still living in the lake-villages and other towns of Europe 
 (Fig. 14) at the very time these tdmb-chapels were built. 
 
 It is easy to picture the bright, sunny river in those ancient 
 days, alive with boats and barges (often depicted on these 
 walls) moving hither and thither, bearing the products of all 
 these industries, to be carried to the treasury of the Pharaoh 
 as taxes or to the market of the town to be bartered for other 
 goods. Here on the wall is the market place itself. We can 
 watch the cobbler offering the baker a pair of sandals as 
 
 Fig. 50. Cabinetmakers in the Pyramid Age 
 
 At the left a man is cutting with a chisel which he taps with a mallet ; 
 next, a man " rips " a board with a copper saw ; next, two men are 
 finishing off a couch, and at the right a man is drilling a hole with a 
 bow-drill. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig 42). Com- 
 pare a finished chair belonging to a wealthy noble of the Empire 
 which was placed in his tomb and thus preserved (Fig. 73) 
 
 payment for a cake, or the carpenter's wife giving the fisherman 
 a little wooden box to pay for a fish ; while the potter's wife 
 proffers the apothecary two bowls fresh from the potter's fur- 
 nace in exchange for a jar of fragrant ointment. We see, there- 
 fore, that the people have 7io coined money to use, and that in 
 the market place trade is actual exchange of goods. Such is the 
 business of the common people. If we could see the large 
 transactions in the palace, we would find there heavy rings 
 of gold of a standard weight, which circulated like money. 
 Rings of copper also served the same purpose. Such rings 
 were the forerunners of coin (§ 458). 
 
The Story of Egypt 6/ 
 
 These people in the gayly painted picture of the market 89. Three 
 place on the chapel wall were the common folk of Egypt in society in the 
 the Pyramid Age. Some of them were free men, following Pyramid Age 
 their own business or industry. Others were slaves, working 
 the fields on the great estates. Neither of these humble 
 classes owned any land. Over them were the landowners, 
 the Pharaoh and his great lords and officials, like the owner 
 of this tomb (Fig. 42). We know many more of them by 
 name, and a walk through this cemetery would enable us to 
 make a directory of the wealthy quarter of the royal city under 
 the kings who were buried in these pyramids of Gizeh. We 
 know the grand viziers and the chief treasurers, the chief judges 
 and the architects, the chamberlains and marshals of the palace, 
 and so on. We can even visit the tomb of the architect who 
 built the Great Pyramid of Gizeh for Khufu. 
 
 We can observe with what pleasure these nobles and officials 90. The 
 presided over this busy industrial and social life of the Nile pyramid Age 
 valley in the Pyramid Age. Here on this chapel wall again ^^ ^^^ ^°"^^ 
 we see its owner seated at ease in his palanquin, a luxurious 
 wheel-less carriage borne upon the shoulders of slaves, as he 
 returns from the inspection of his estate where we have been 
 following him. His bearers carry him into the shady garden 
 befor-e his house (Fig. 51), where they set down the palanquin 
 and cease their song.-^ His wife advances at once to greet him. 
 Her place is always at his side ; she is his sole wife, held in 
 all honor, and enjoys every right which belongs to her husband. 
 This garden is the noble's paradise. Here he may recline for. an 
 hour of leisure with his family and friends' playing at draughts, 
 listening to the music of harp, pipe, and lute, watching his 
 women in the slow and stately dances of the time, while his 
 children are sporting about among the arbors, splashing in the 
 pool as they chase the fish, playing with ball, doll, and jumping 
 jack, or teasing the tame monkey which takes refuge under 
 their father's ivory-legged stool. 
 
 1 Recorded, with other songs, on the tomb-chapel walls. 
 
68 Ancient History 
 
 Section 7. Art and Architecture in the 
 Pyramid Age 
 
 gi. The The noble drops one hand idly upon the head of his favorite 
 
 hound, and with the other beckons to the chief gardener and 
 gives directions regarding the new pomegranates which he 
 wishes to try for dinner. The house (Fig. 51) where this 
 dinner awaits him is large and commodious, built of sun-dried 
 brick and wood. Light and airy, as suits the climate, we find 
 that it has many latticed windows on all sides. The walls of 
 the living rooms are scarcely more than a frame to support 
 gayly colored hangings (§84) which can be let down as a pro- 
 tection against winds and sand storms when necessary. These 
 give the house a very bright and cheerful aspect. The house is 
 a work of art, and we discern in it how naturally the Egyptian 
 demanded beauty in his surroundings. This he secured by 
 making all his useful things beautiful. 
 92. The art Beauty surrounds us on every hand as we follow him in to 
 
 ture and his dinner. The lotus blossoms on the handle of his carved 
 
 decoration spoou, and his wine sparkles in the deep blue calyx of the 
 same flower, which forms the bowl of his wineglass. I'he 
 muscular limbs of the lion or the ox, beautifully carved in 
 ivory, support the chair in which he sits or the couch where 
 he reclines. The painted ceiling over his head is a blue and 
 starry heaven resting upon palm-trunk columns (Fig. 56), each 
 crowned with its graceful tuft of drooping foliage carved in 
 wood and colored in the dark green of the living tree ; or 
 columns in the form of lotus stalks rise from the floor as if 
 to support the azure ceiling upon their swaying blossoms. 
 Doves and butterflies, exquisitely painted, flit across this in- 
 door sky. Beneath our feet w^e find the pavement of the 
 dining hall carpeted in paintings picturing everywhere the 
 deep green of disheveled marsh grasses, with gleaming water 
 between and fish gliding among the swaying reeds. Around 
 the margin, leaping among the rushes, we see the wild ox 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 69 
 
 ^Ss ;«Lrt^W -^U^ 
 
 Fig. 51. Villa of an Egyptian Noble 
 
 The garden is inclosed with a high wall. There are pools on either 
 
 side as one enters, and a long. arbor extends down the middle. The 
 
 house at the rear, embowered in trees, is crowned by a roof garden 
 
 shaded with awnings of tapestry (see § 84) 
 
 tossing his head at the birds twittering on the nodding rush 
 tops, as they vainly strive to frighten away the stealthy weasel 
 creeping up to plunder their nests. 
 
 The Egyptians could not have left us the beautifully painted 
 reliefs in the tomb-chapels we visited unless they had possessed 
 
70 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 93. Painting 
 and relief 
 in tombs and 
 temples 
 
 94. Portrait 
 sculpture 
 
 95. Architec- 
 ture : the 
 earliest 
 clerestory 
 
 trained artists. Indeed, we can find, in one corner of the wall, 
 the picture of the artist who painted the walls in one of the 
 chapels, where he has represented himself enjoying a plentiful 
 feast among other people of the estate. His drawings all around 
 us show that he has not been able to overcome all the difficul- 
 ties of depicting, on a flat surface, objects having thickness and 
 roundness. Animal figures are drav/n, however, with great 
 lifelikeness (Figs. 43-46), but perspective is almost entirely 
 unknown to him, and objects in the background or distance 
 are drawn of almost the same size as those in front. 
 
 The portrait sculptor was the greatest artist of this age. 
 His statue's were carved in stone or wood, and colored in the 
 hues of life ; the eyes were inlaid with rock crystal, and they 
 still shine with the gleam of life (Fig. 53). More lifelike por- 
 traits have never been produced by any age, although they are 
 the earliest portraits in the history of art. Such statues of the 
 kings are often superb (Fig. 52). They were set up in the 
 Pharaoh's pyramid temple (Figs. 55 and 56). In size the most 
 remarkable statue of the Pyramid Age is the Great Sphinx, 
 which stands here in this cemetery of Gizeh (Fig. 54). The 
 head is a portrait of Khafre, the king who built the second 
 pyramid of Gizeh (Fig. 54), and was carved from a promon- 
 tory of rock which overlooked the royal city. It is the largest 
 portrait ever wrought. 
 
 The massive granite piers and walls (Fig. 55) of Khafre's 
 valley temple (Fig. 39) beside the Sphinx reveal to us the 
 impressive architecture in stone which the men of the early 
 part of the Pyramid Age were designing. This splendid hall 
 (Fig. 55) was lighted by a series of oblique slits, which are 
 really low roof windows. They occupied the difference in level 
 between a higher roof over the middle aisle of the hall and 
 a lower roof on each side of the middle (Fig. 271, i). Such 
 an arrangement of roof windows, called a clerestory {clear- 
 story)^ later passed over to Greece and Rome, and finally sug- 
 gested the nave of the Christian basilica church or cathedral 
 
w 
 
 N 
 
 12; 
 
 
 was 
 etal 
 laid 
 
 220) 
 
 O 
 
 
 *. E.S . 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 8 o 0.^ 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 ^ ^ •£ ^ 
 
 
 < 
 
 c< C -^ (U 
 
 lu o ^a 
 
 J 
 
 § 
 
 ^ 5 c '-' 
 
 < 
 
 < 
 
 > 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 2 O CO 
 
 o 
 
 > 
 
 Ph 
 
 
 <5 
 
 o 
 
 W 
 H 
 
 
 Q 
 
 g 
 
 .t: w ^ a> 
 
 
 w c ^ - 
 
 X 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 LO 
 
 
 ^ <u 2 S 
 <" S c ^ 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 »- e « o 
 
 t^ 
 
 
 ^^.2 2 
 
 oj 
 
 
 •sg'^^ 
 
 (z] 
 
 
 Q 
 
 
 'S - o ^ 
 
 J 
 
 a 
 
 ^H " 3 
 - 03.2 ?^ 
 
 B 
 
 pq 
 
 N 
 
 O 
 
 tL, 
 
 <1 
 
 o 
 
 till 
 
 
 Q 
 
 % 
 
 t 
 
 
 5 
 
 o 
 
 Q 
 
 
 
 12; 
 
 o 
 
 
 o 
 
 C/5 
 
 22 -^ "^ S) 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 "-» 
 
 o 
 
 -^ c« o. bO 
 
 o 
 
 
 §§6^ 
 
 
 
 O K<; .-H +J 
 
 f^ 
 
 
 PIH £ ^ 
 

 efl bO 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 >< b 
 
 
 5 3-=: 
 
 w 
 
 S^^ -^ 
 
 Pi 
 
 W CJ ^ 
 
 fe 
 
 w C oj 
 
 
 3 -43 (U 
 
 5 w MD 
 
 fe 
 
 
 o 
 
 3 rt-a 
 
 Q 
 
 r . C3 
 
 
 _aj X 
 
 S 
 
 C ^ <u 
 
 < 
 
 o .ti ^ 
 
 oi 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 Q 
 
 ;? 
 
 <U O 4J 
 
 <; 
 
 a 
 
 2 „<£■ 
 
 w 
 
 Vh ►- 
 
 N 
 
 •^^.^ 
 
 6 
 
 lit 
 
 o 
 
 rt ^-^ 
 
 X 
 
 W)«?'^ 
 
 ;2; 
 
 •0-^^ 
 
 s 
 
 "^3 
 
 cu 
 
 1 u 
 
 ^-1 
 
 
 
 I'- 
 
 byG 
 
 54- 
 
 the 
 Kin] 
 hty 
 
 "S 6 
 1 ^ 
 
 
 u 
 
 C r^ rfi 
 
 g 
 
 .t^ l-i Vj 
 
 i 
 
 cu o 
 
 M CI, 
 
 £ 
 
 < rt 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 71 
 
 (Fig. 271). And so this granite hall of Khafre in the Pyra- 
 mid Age was the ancestor of the leading form of Christian 
 architecture as it 
 developed in Eu- 
 rope three thousand 
 five hundred years 
 later. 
 
 But before a 
 century had passed, 
 such massive gran- 
 deur as we find in 
 this great hall of 
 Khafre (Fig. 55) 
 was being trans- 
 formed by the 
 Egyptian's grow- 
 ing sense of grace 
 and beauty. In- 
 stead of ponder- 
 ous square piers or 
 pillars the archi- 
 tects now began 
 to erect light and 
 graceful round col- 
 umns with beauti- 
 ful capitals ; these 
 were ranged in 
 long rows, the 
 earliest colonnades 
 (Fig. 56), dating 
 from the twenty- 
 eighth century b. c. 
 They were pecul- 
 iar to Ei 
 when 
 
 96. Earliest 
 colonnades 
 
 fcYPt, for 
 our study 
 
 Fig. sS- Restoration of the Clere- 
 story Hall in the Valley-Temple of 
 Khafre (cf. Fig. 39). (After Hoelscher) 
 
 The roof of this hall was supported on two rows 
 of huge stone piers (see Fig. 271, /), each a 
 single block of polished granite weighing 22 
 tons. This view shows only one row of the 
 piers, the other being ©ut of range at the right. 
 At the left above, the light streams in obliquely 
 from the very low clerestory windows (§ 95). 
 Compare the cross section (Fig. 271, /). The 
 statues shown here had been thrown by un- 
 known enemies into a well in a connected hall, 
 where they were found sixty years ago (see 
 head of the finest in Fig. 52) 
 
72 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 •^^aifi^X 
 
 
 '' IK '"fiFT 
 
 Fig. 56. Colonnades in the Court of a Pyramid-TempijE 
 (Twenty-eighth Century e.g.). (After Borchardt) 
 
 Notice the pyramid rising behind the temple (just as in Fig. 39 also). 
 The door in the middle leads to the holy place built against the 
 side of the pyramid, where a false door in the pyramid masonry 
 served as the portal through which the king came forth from the world 
 of the dead into this beautiful temple to enjoy the food and drink 
 placed here for him in magnificent vessels (Plate I) and to share in the 
 splendid feasts celebrated here. The center of the court is open to the 
 sky ; the roof of the porch all around is supported on round columns, 
 the earliest known in the history of architecture. Contrast the square 
 piers without any capital which the architects of Khafre put into his 
 temple-hall (Fig. 55) over a century earlier than these columns. Each 
 column reproduces a palm tree, the capital being the crown of foliage. 
 The whole place was colored in the bright hues of nature, including 
 the painting on the walls behind the columns. Among these paintings 
 was the ship in Fig. 41. Thirteen hundred feet of copper piping, the 
 earliest-known plumbing, was installed in this building (§ 81) 
 
 97. Decline 
 of the Pyra- 
 mid Age 
 
 carries us to eariiest Asia, we shall find that the colonnade 
 was long unknown there (§ 195). 
 
 The Pyramid cemeteries have shown us the grandeur of the 
 civilization gained by the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age. If 
 time permitted, we might find other records here, showing how 
 
The Story of Egypt 73 
 
 the nobles of the age (just such nobles as the one whose 
 estate and home we have in imagination visited) gained more 
 and more power until the Pharaohs could no longer control 
 them. Then in struggles among themselves they destroyed the 
 Pharaoh's government, and the last king of the Pyramid Age 
 fell soon after 2500 b. c. It had lasted some five hundred 
 years. Thus ended the first great civilized age of human his- 
 tory — the age which carried men for the first time out of 
 barbarism into civilization (see Fig. 38). But the Pyramid Age 
 /vas not the end of civilization on the Nile ; other great periods 
 were to follow. The monuments which these later ages left 
 lie farther up the river, and we must make the voyage up the 
 Nile in order to visit them and to recover the wonderful story 
 which they still tell us. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 5. Tell something of the life of the earliest Nile men and 
 how we know about them. Trace the steps by which phonetic writing 
 arose. Where did the first alphabet arise.? Write three words in 
 hieroglyphic (Fig. 30). Discuss the importance of the invention of 
 writing. Describe early methods of measuring time. Describe the 
 probable manner of the discovery of metal. Which metal was it ? 
 
 Section 6. What do the tombs of Egypt tell us of religion ? 
 Describe the effect of the use of metal on architecture. Discuss the 
 first architect in stone. Describe the government of the Pyramid 
 Age. Study Fig. 38 and tell how the Egyptian tombs reveal the 
 transition from barbarism to civilization. Describe the earliest sea- 
 going ships. Make a list of the industries revealed in the tomb-chapel 
 pictures. Discuss trade and commerce. 
 
 Section 7. Describe the house and garden of a noble in the 
 Pyramid Age. Discuss painting and portrait sculpture. Make a 
 sketch of the earliest piers or supports (Fig. ^%). Were they 
 beautiful.? Draw a later pier (column) a hundred years after the 
 Great Pyramid (Fig. 56). Was it beautiful? Describe the roof 
 windows called clerestory windows (Figs. 55 and 271, /) and what 
 they finally came to be. Give the date of the Pyramid Age, and 
 tell why it was important. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE FEUDAL AGE AND 
 THE EMPIRE 
 
 Section 8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age 
 
 98. The 
 
 Nile voyage 
 begins 
 
 As we begin our voyage up the Nile and our steamer moves 
 away from the Cairo dock, we see, stretching far along the 
 western horizon, the long line of pyramids, reminding us again 
 of the splendor and progress of the Pyramid Age which we 
 are now leaving behind. At length they drop down and dis- 
 appear behind the fringe of palm groves. Other great monu- 
 ments are before us. Along the palm-fringed shores far away 
 to the south we shall find the buildings, tombs, and monuments 
 
 Note. At the left we see entering, in white robes, the deceased, a man 
 named Ani, and his wife. Before them are the balances of judgment for weighing 
 the human heart, to determine whether it is just or not. A Jackal-headed god 
 adjusts the scales, while an Ibis-headed god stands behind him, pen in hand, 
 ready to record the verdict of the balances. Behind him is a monster ready to 
 devour the unjust soul, as his heart (symbolized by a tiny jar), in the left-hand 
 scalepan, is weighed over against right and truth (symbolized by a feather) in the 
 right-hand scalepan. The scene is painted in water colors on papyrus. Such a 
 roll is sometimes as much as go feet long and filled from beginning to end with 
 magical charms for the use of the dead in the next world. Hence the modem 
 name for the whole roll, the " Book of the Dead." 
 
 74 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 75 
 
 Fig. SI' Cliff-Tomb of an Egyptian Noble of the 
 Feudal Age 
 
 This tomb is not a masonry structure like the tomb of the Pyramid 
 Age (Fig. 42), but it is cut into the face of the cliff. The chapel 
 entered through this door contains painted reliefs like those of the 
 Pyramid Age (Figs. 43-47) and also many written records. In this 
 chapel the noble tells of his kind treatment of his people ; he says : 
 " There was no citizen's daughter whom I misused ; there was no 
 widow whom I oppressed ; there was no peasant whom I evicted ; there 
 was no shepherd whom I expelled ; . . . there was none wretched 
 in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years 
 of famine came I plowed all the fields of the Oryx barony [his estate] 
 . . . preserving its people alive and furnishing its food so that there 
 was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a 
 husband ; I did not exalt the great above the humble in anything that 
 I gave" (§ 100). All this we can read inscribed in this tomb 
 
 which will tell us of two more great ages on the Nile — the 
 Feudal Age and the Empire. We steam steadily southward, 
 and soon the river begins to wind from side to side of the 
 deep valley, carrying the steamer at times close under the 
 scarred and weatherworn cliffs (Fig. 69). As we scan the rocks 
 
76 
 
 Aiicient Times 
 
 99. The 
 
 tombs of the 
 Feudal Age 
 
 100. Books 
 on kindness 
 and justice 
 
 we look up to many a tomb-door cut in the face of the cliff, 
 and leading to a tomb-chapel excavated in the rock (Fig. 57). 
 
 These cliff-tombs looking down upon the river belonged to 
 the Feudal Age of Egyptian history. The men buried in these 
 cliff-tombs looked back across five centuries to their ancestors 
 of the Pyramid Age, as we look back upon our European 
 ancestors before the discovery of America. But the nobles 
 who made these cliff-tombs succeeded in gaining greater power 
 •than their ancestors. They were granted lands by the king, 
 under arrangements which in later Europe we c all fe udal. 
 They were thus powerful barons, living like little kings on their 
 broad estates, made up of the fertile fields upon which these 
 tomb-doors now look down. This Feudal Age lasted for 
 several centuries and was flourishing by 2000 b^c. Fragments 
 from the libraries of these feudal barons — the oldest libraries 
 in the world — have fortunately been discovered in their tombs. 
 These oldest of all surviving books are in the form of rolls of 
 papyrus, which once were packed in jars, neatly labeled, and 
 ranged in rows on the noble's library shelves. Here are the 
 most ancient storybooks in the world : tales of wanderings and 
 adventures in Asia; tales of shipwreck at the gate of the un- 
 known ocean beyond the Red Sea — the earliest " Sindbad the 
 Sailor " (Fig. 58) ; and tales of wonders wrought by ancient 
 wise men and magicians. 
 
 Some of these stories set forth the sufferings of the poor 
 and the humble, and seek to stir .the rulers to be just and kind 
 in their treatment of the weaker classes. Some describe the 
 wickedness of men and the hopelessness of the future. Others 
 - tell of a righteous ruler who is yet to come, a " good shep- 
 herd " they call him, meaning a good king, who shall bring in 
 justice and happiness for all. We notice here a contrast with 
 the Pyramid Age. With the in-coming of the Pyramid builders 
 we saw a tremendous growth in power, in building, and in art ; 
 but the Feudal Age reveals progress also in a higher realm, 
 that of conduct and character (see description under Fig. 57). 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 77 
 
 Probably a number of rolls were required to contain the loi. Dram; 
 drama of Osiris — a great play in which the life, death, burial, " ^^^ '^ 
 and resurrection of Osiris (§ 69) were pictured at an annual 
 feast in which all the people loved to join. It is our earliest 
 
 3\%'B' 
 
 ^2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4*1^ i*-^ a»^«« ^I^JL^ 
 
 Fig. 58. A Page from the Story of the Shipwrecked 
 
 Sailor, the Earliest Sindbad, as read by the Boys and 
 
 Girls of Egypt Four Thousand Years Ago (One Third of 
 
 Size of Original) 
 
 This page reads : " Those who were on board perished, and not one of 
 them escaped. Then I was cast upon an island by a wave of the great 
 sea. I passed three days alone, with (only) my heart as my companion, 
 .sleeping in the midst of a shelter of trees, till daylight enveloped me. 
 Then I crept out for aught to fill my mouth. I found figs and grapes 
 there and all fine vegetables etc. . . ." The tale then tells of his seizure 
 by an enormous serpent with a long beard, who proves to be the king 
 of this distant island in the Red Sea, at the entrance of the Indian 
 Ocean. He keeps the sailor three months, treats him kindly, and re- 
 turns him with much treasure to Egypt. In form such a book was a 
 single strip of papyrus paper, 5 or 6 to 10 or 12 inches wide, and often 
 15 to 30 or 40 feet long. When not in use this strip was kept rolled up, 
 and thus the earliest books were rolls, looking, when small, like a di- 
 ploma or, when large, like a roll of wall paper 
 
 known drama — a kind of Passion Play ; but the rolls contain- 
 ing it have perished. There were also rolls containing songs 
 and poems, like the beautiful morning hymn sung by the nobles 
 of the Pharaoh's court in greeting to the sovereign with the 
 
78 
 
 A7icient Times 
 
 102. Books 
 of science 
 
 A 
 
 B 
 
 u 
 
 Fig. 59. Ancient Egyp- 
 tian Astronomical In- 
 strument 
 
 return of each new day. Another 
 song in praise of the Pharaoh was 
 arranged to be sung responsively by 
 two groups at the great court festi- 
 vals. It was constructed in parallel 
 verses or lines, like the parallel lines 
 of the Hebrew Psalms. It is the 
 oldest surviving example of this 
 form of poetry. 
 
 Very few rolls were needed to 
 deal with the science of this time. 
 The largest and the most valuable 
 of all contained what they had 
 Jeamed-abont medicine and the or- 
 gans of the human body. This oldest 
 medical book, when unrolled, is to- 
 day about sixty-six feet long and has 
 recipes for all sorts of ailments. 
 Some of them, are still good and call 
 for remedies which, like castor oil, 
 are still in common use ; others rep- 
 resent the ailment as due to demons, 
 which were long believed to be the 
 cause of disease. There are also 
 rolls containing the simpler rules of 
 arithmetic, based on the decimal sys- 
 tem which we still use ; others treat 
 the beginnings of geometry and ele- 
 mentary algebra. Even observations 
 
 The oldest surviving as- 
 tronomical device. It is 
 now in the Berlin Museum. 
 
 One part {A) is simply a plumb line with a handle attached at the top. 
 It enabled the observer to hold the other part [B] directly over a given 
 point on the ground while he sighted through the slot at the top toward 
 some star like the North Star. By sighting over a rod between the 
 observer and the North Star until the rod was exactly in line with the 
 North Star, the astronomer could determine his meridian, observe each 
 star that crossed it, measure time, and secure celestial data of value 
 
The Story of Egypt 79 
 
 of the heavenly bodies, with simple instruments, were made 
 (Fig. 59) ; but these records, like those in geography, have 
 been lost. 
 
 Along with this higher progress, the Pharaohs of the Feudal 103. Admin- 
 Age much improved the government. Every few years they irrigation 
 made census lists to be used in taxation, and a few of these {he^peudal 
 earliest census sheets in the world have survived. They erected Age 
 huge earthen dikes and made vast basins, to store up the Nile 
 waters for irrigation, thus greatly increasing the yield of the 
 feudal lands and estates. They measured the height of the 
 river from year to year, and their marks of the Nile levels are 
 still to be found cut on the rocks at the Second Cataract. Thus 
 nearly four thousand years ago they were already doing on a 
 large scale what our government has only recently begun to do 
 by its irrigation projects among our own arid lands. 
 
 At the same time these rulers of the Feudal Age reached out 104. Pha- 
 by sea for the wealth of other lands. Their fleets sailed over mercebyTea; 
 among the ^gean islands and probably controlled the large ^predecessor 
 island of Crete (§§ 335-345)- They dug a canal from the north Canal four 
 end of the Red Sea westward to the nearest branch of the Nile years ago 
 in the eastern Delta, where the river divides into a number of 
 mouths (see map, p. 36). The Pharaoh's Mediterranean ships 
 could sail up the easternmost mouth of the Nile, then enter the 
 canal and, passing eastward through it, reach the Red Sea. Thus 
 the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea were first connected 
 by this predecessor of the Suez Canal four thousand years ago. 
 Such a connection was as important to the Egyptians as the 
 Panama Canal is to us. Nile ships could likewise now sail from 
 the eastern Delta directly to the land of Punt (§ 78) and to the 
 straits leading to the Indian Ocean. These waters seemed to 
 the sailors of the Feudal Age the end of the world, and their 
 wondrous adventures there delighted many a circle of villagers 
 on the feudal estates (Fig. 58). 
 
 In this age the Pharaoh had organized a small standing army. 
 He could now make his power felt both in north and south, in 
 
8o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 105. Military Palestine and in Nubia. He conquered the territory of Nubia 
 noS^and ^^ far south as the Second Cataract (see map, p. 36), and thus 
 south, and the added two hundred miles of river to the kingdom of Egypt. 
 
 end of the ° ^^ ^ 
 
 Feudal Age Here he erected strong frontier fortresses against the Nubian 
 tribes, and these fortresses still stand. The enlightened rule 
 of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age did much to prepare the 
 way for Egyptian leadership in the early world. Three of these 
 kings bore the name " Sesostris," which became one of the great 
 and illustrious names in Egyptian history. But not long after 
 1800 B.C. the power of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age sud- 
 denly declined and their line disappeared. 
 
 106. The 
 
 Nile voyage 
 — arrival at 
 Thebes 
 
 107. Karnak 
 ■ — arrival of 
 the horse in 
 Egypt 
 
 Section 9. The Founding of the Empire 
 
 The monuments along the river banks have thus far told us 
 the story of two of the three periods^ into which the career of 
 this great Nile people falls. After we have left the tombs of the 
 Feudal Age and have continued our journey over four hundred 
 miles southward from Cairo, all at once we catch glimpses of 
 vast masses of stone masonry and lines of tall columns rising 
 among the palms on the east side of the river. They are the 
 ruins of the once great city_of Thebes, which will tell us the 
 story of the third period, the Empire. 
 
 Here we shall find not only a vast cemetery, but also great 
 temples (see plan, p. 8 1). A walk around the Temple of Karnak 
 at Thebes (Fig. 64) is as instructive to us in studying the Empire 
 as we have found the Gizeh cemetery to be in studying the 
 Pyramid Age. We find the walls of this immense temple covered 
 with enormous sculptures in relief, depicting the wars of the 
 Egyptians in Asia. We see the giant figure of the Pharaoh as 
 he stands in his war chariot, scattering the enemy before his 
 plunging horses (Fig. 60). The Pharaohs of the Pyramid Age 
 had never seen a horse (§ 80), and this is the first time we 
 
 1 These three ages are (i) the Pyramid Age, about 3000 to 2500 B.C. (Sec- 
 tions 6-7); (2) the Feudal Age, flourishing 2000 B.C. (Section 8); (3) the 
 Empire, about 1580 to 1150 B.C. (Sections 9-1 1). 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 8l 
 
 have met the horse on the ancient monuments. After the close 
 of the Feudal Age the animal began to be imported from Asia; 
 the chariot (Fig. 133) came with him, and Egypt, having learned 
 warfare on a scale unknown before, became a military empire. 
 
 Map of Egyptian Thebes 
 
 This map may be compared with the aeroplane view of Karnak (Fig. 64), 
 taken over point marked X , and with the view of the western plain 
 toward the colossal statues of Amenhotep III and the western cliffs 
 (Fig. 69), in and along which lie the tombs of the vast cemetery. Before 
 it, and parallel with the cliffs, stretched a long line of temples facing 
 the great temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east side of the river. 
 The houses of the ancient city have passed away 
 
 The Pharaohs were now great generals with a well-organized 108. Egypt 
 standing army made up chiefly of archers and heavy masses of empire 
 chariots. With these forces the Pharaoh conquered an empire 
 which extended from the Euphrates in Asia to the Fourth Cata- 
 ract of the Nile in Africa (see map I, p. 188). By an empire we 
 
82 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 f mean a group of nations subdued and ruled over by the most 
 
 I powerful among them. Government began with tiny city-states 
 
 (§ 38), which gradually merged together into nations (§ 74)«, 
 
 but the organization of men had now reached the point where 
 
 Fig. 60. A Pharaoh of the Empire fighting in his Chariot 
 
 The tiny figures of the enemy are scattered beneath the Pharaoh's 
 horses. This is one of an enormous series of such scenes, 170 feet 
 long, carved in rehef on the outside of the Great Hall of Karnak 
 (Fig. 68). Such sculpture was brightly colored and served to enhance 
 the architectural effect and to impress the people with the heroism 
 of the Pharaoh. The color has now entirely disappeared, and the 
 sculpture is much battered and weatherworn. This is the cause of 
 the indistinctness in the above sketch 
 
 many nations were combined into an empire including a large 
 part of the early oriental world. This world power of the 
 Pharaohs lasted from the early sixteenth century to the twelfth 
 century b. c. — something over four hundred years. 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 83 
 
 The Karnak Temple (Fig. 64), which stood in the once vast 
 city of Thebes, is like a great historical volume telling us much 
 of the story of the Egyptian Empire. Behind the great hall 
 (Figs, (id and 68) towers a huge obelisk, a shaft of granite in a woman i 
 
 109. The 
 
 reign of 
 Queen Hat- 
 shepsut, the 
 first great 
 
 single piece nearly a hundred feet high (Fig. 65). It was 
 
 history 
 
 Fig. 61. Transportation of Queen Hatshepsut's 350-TON 
 Obelisks down the Nile (Fifteenth Century b.c.) 
 
 The two obelisks are lying base to base on a large Nile barge some 
 300 feet long. The obelisks are each 97I feet long and weigh about 
 350 tons each, the two making a burden of some 700 tons in the barge. 
 It is being towed by thirty tugboats in three rows of ten each. Each 
 tugboat has thirty-two oarsmen, making nine hundred and sixty oars- 
 men in all. Under the 'guidance of the engineers in the other small 
 boats these men towed the obelisks downstream from the granite quar- 
 ries of the First Cataract to Thebes — a distance of about 150 miles. 
 Under each obelisk we can see the sledge on which it was dragged on 
 shore to the place where they were both set up in the KarnaCk Temple 
 (Fig. 64). The scene is restored from a relief on the wall of the queen's 
 temple at Thebes 
 
 erected early in the Empire by the first great woman in history. 
 Queen Hatshepsut. There were once two of these enormous 
 monuments (see Fig. 65), and it was no small task to cut out 
 two such blocks as these from the granite quarries at the 
 First Cataract, transport them on a huge boat down the river 
 (Fig. 61), and erect them in this temple. But the queen did not 
 stop with this achievement. She even dispatched an expedition 
 
84 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 of five ships (Fig. 62) through the Red Sea to Punt (§ 78), to 
 bring back the luxuries of tropical Africa for another beautiful 
 terraced temple which she was erecting against the western 
 cliffs at Thebes (Plan, p. 81). Such achievements show what 
 an efificient and successful ruler this first great woman was. 
 
 Ficj. 62. Part of the Flep:t of Queen Hatshepsut loading 
 IN THE Land of Punt 
 
 Only two of Hatshepsut's fleet of five ships are shown. The sails on 
 the long spars are furled and the vessels are moored. The sailors are 
 carrying the cargo up the gangplanks, and one of them is teasing an 
 ape on the roof of the cabin. The inscriptions above the ships read : 
 " The loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country 
 of Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God's-Land [the East], heaps of 
 myrrh-resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebofiy and pure ivory, with 
 green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds 
 of incense, eye-cosmetic, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins 
 of the southern panther, with natives and their children. Never was 
 brought the like of this for any king who has been since the begin- 
 ning." The scene is carved on the wall of the queen's temple at Thebes, 
 in the garden of which she planted the myrrh trees 
 
 no. The end As we examine the obelisk of Hatshepsut we find around the 
 sut and the base the remains of stone masonry with which it was once walled 
 ThutmoseHi ^^ almost up to the top. This was done by the queen's half- 
 brother and husband, Thutmose III, in order to cover up the 
 records which proclaimed to the world the hated rule of a 
 woman. Thus Thutmose III had the names of the queen and 
 the men who aided her all cut out and obliterated, including 
 
TJie Story of Egypt 
 
 85 
 
 that of the skillful architect and engineer who erected this obe- 
 lisk and its companion. But the masonry covering the obelisk 
 has fallen down, and it still proclaims the fame of Hatshepsut. 
 Thutmose III ^Fig. ^^ was the first great general in history, 
 the Napoleon of Egypt, the greatest of the Egyptian conquerors. 
 
 i 
 
 A B 
 
 Fig. 63. Portrait of Thutmose III, the Napoleon of Ainxient 
 
 Egypt {A), compared with his Mummy [B) 
 
 This portrait [A], carved in granite, can be compared with the actual 
 face of the great conqueror as we have it in his mummy. Such a com- 
 parison is shown in B, where the profile of this granite portrait (out- 
 side hnes) is placed over the profile of Thutmose Ill's mummy (inside 
 lines). The correspondence is very close, showing great accuracy in 
 the portrait art of this age 
 
 III. The 
 
 campaigns of 
 Thutmose III 
 (1501- 
 1447 B.C.) 
 
 He ruled for over fifty years, beginning about 1500 B.C. On 
 the temple walls at Karnak we can read the story of nearly 
 twenty years of warfare, during which Thutmose crushed the 
 cities and kingdoms of Western Asia and welded them into an 
 enduring empire. At the same time his war fleet carried his 
 power even to the ^gean, and one of his generals became 
 governor of the ^.gean islands (Fig. 143 ; see map I, p. 188). 
 
86 Ancient Times 
 
 Section io. The Higher Life of the Empire 
 
 112. Temple The wealth which the Pharaohs captured in Asia and Nubia 
 architecture (^^j-j^g the Empire brought them power and magnificence un- 
 known to the world before, especially as shown in their vast 
 and splendid buildings. A new and impressive chapter in the 
 history of art and architecture was begun. The temple of 
 Karnak, which we have visited, contains the greatest colon- 
 naded hall ever erected by man. The columns of the central 
 aisle (Fig. 68) are sixty-nine feet high. The vast capital form- 
 ing the summit of each column is large enough to contain a 
 group of a hundred men standing crowded upon it at the same 
 time. The clerestory windows (Fig. 68) on each side of these 
 giant columns are no longer low, depressed openings, as in the 
 Pyramid Age (Fig. 5 5 and Fig. 271,7), but they have now become 
 fine, tall windows, showing us the Egyptian clerestory hall on its 
 way to become the basilica church of much later times (Fig. 271). 
 
 113. The sur- Such temples as these at Thebes were seen through the deep 
 the Empire green of clustering palms, among towering obelisks and colos- 
 Th'ebes' ^^ ^^ statues of the Pharaohs (Fig. 69). The whole was bright 
 
 with color, flashing at many a point with gold and silver. 
 Mirrored in the unruffled surface of the temple lake (Fig. 64), 
 it made a picture of such splendor as the ancient world had 
 never seen before. As the visitor entered he found himself 
 
 * This point of view is behind (east of) the great Karnak Temple at 
 point marked x in plan (p. 81). We look northwestward across the 
 Temple and the river to the western cliffs (cf. plan, p. 81). From 
 the rear gate below us (lower right-hand corner of view) to the tall 
 front wall nearest the river, the Temple is nearly a quarter of a mile 
 long, and was nearly two thousand years in course of construction. 
 The oldest portions were built by the kings of the Feudal Age, and the 
 latest, the front wall, by the Greek kings (the Ptolemies, Section 66). 
 The standing obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut (Fig. 65) can be seen rising 
 in the middle of the Temple. Beyond it is the vast colonnaded Hall of 
 Karnak (Figs. 66 and 68), on the outside wall of which are the great war 
 reliefs (Fig. 60). Hidden by the huge front wall is the Avenue of 
 Sphinxes (Fig. 67). On the left we see the pool — all that is left of the 
 sacred lake (§^ 113). 
 
i.^;.^.. ■n « i..wwp|^pi i i i ijiaiM|MM ! IBIil 
 
 .->£^^l 
 
 Fig. 64. The Great Temple of Karnak and the Nile 
 Valley at Thebes seen from an Aeroplane* 
 
 The area included in this view will be found bounded by two diverg- 
 ing dotted lines on the map of Thebes (p. 81). It will be seen that 
 our view includes only a portion of the ancient city, which extended 
 up and down both sides of the river. For description of Karnak, see 
 note on opposite page 
 
From an etching by George T. Plowman 
 
 Fig. 65. The Obelisks of Queen Hatshepsut and her Father 
 
 Thutmose I AT Karnak 
 The further obelisk is that of the queen. It was one of a pair transported 
 from the First Cataract (Fig. 61), but its mate has fallen and broken into 
 pieces. The shaft is 8| feet thick at the base, and the human figure by 
 contrast conveys some idea of the vast size of the monument. Its posi- 
 tion in the temple can be seen from the aeroplane view (Fig. 64) 
 
From a pen etching by Sears Gallagher 
 
 Fig. 66. The Colossal Columns of the Nave in the Great 
 Hall of Karnak 
 
 These are the columns of the middle two rows in Fig. 68. On the top 
 
 of the capital of each one of these columns a hundred men can stand at 
 
 once. These great columns may be seen in the aeroplane view (Fig. 64) 
 
 just at the left of the two obelisks 
 
^'i'h »^ ' ,,6 rffiy^*^<»J -^i^„'-'..t.-.w;ii,.iMai, 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 87 
 
 in a spacious and sunlit court, surrounded by splendid colon- 
 naded porches. Beyond, all was mystery, as he looked into the 
 somber forest of vast columns in the hall behind the court 
 (Figs. 66 and 68). These temples were connected by imposing 
 
 Fig. 68. Restoration of- the Great Hall of Karnak, An- 
 cient Thebes — Largest Building of the Egyptian Empire 
 
 With the wealth taken in Asia the Egyptian conquerors of the Empire 
 enabled their architects to build the greatest colonnaded hall ever 
 erected by man. It is 338 feet wide and 170 feet deep, furnishing a 
 floor area about equal to that of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, 
 although this is only a single room of the Temple. There are one hundred 
 and thirty-six columns in sixteen rows. The nave (three central aisles) 
 is 79 feet high and contains twelve columns in two rows, which the 
 architects have made much higher than the rest, in order to insert 
 lofty clerestory windows on each side. Compare the very low windows 
 of the earliest clerestory (Fig. 55 and Fig. 271, 7 and 2). In this higher 
 form the clerestory passed over to Europe (Fig. 271) 
 
 avenues of sphinxes (Fig. 67), and thus grew up at Thebes 
 the first great '^ monumental city " ever built by man — a city 
 which as a whole was itself a vast and imposing monument.^ 
 Much of the grandeur of Egyptian architecture was due to 
 the sculptor and the painter. The colonnades, with flower capi- 
 tals, were colored to suggest the plants they represented. The P'^^ 
 
 1 City plans which treat a whole city as a symmetrical and harmonious unit 
 are now beginning to be made in America. 
 
 114. Painting 
 and sculpture 
 in the tern- 
 
ON 
 
 88 
 
70. Colossal Portrait Figure of Ramses II at Abu- 
 SiMBEL IN Egyptian Nubia 
 
 Four such statues, 75 feet high, adorn the front of this temple, which, like 
 the statues, is hewn from the sandstone cliffs. The faces are better pre- 
 served than that of the Great Sphinx (Fig. 54) or the portrait statues of 
 Amenhotep III (Fig. 69), and we can here see that such vast figures were 
 portraits. The face of Ramses II here closely resembles that of his 
 mummy (Fig. 123). (From a photograph taken from the top of the crown 
 of one of the statues by The University of Chicago Expedition) 
 

 ^.^t 
 
 X 
 
 ^ o 
 
 
 m 
 
 P^ 
 
 1^1 
 
 rS O 
 
 c"' x) "bi) 
 
 ^ Pi 
 
 o5 
 
 
 
 4) (U ^ O 
 
 t- 
 
 h ^ 4) <u 
 
 O o.u^ 
 
 S H 
 
 O -!->,- "^ 
 
 rj 
 
 Cj w w O 
 
 Is 
 
 
 W ^ 
 
 c« ^ S c 
 
 
 
 
 O "5 > 
 
 fc ^^ 
 
 -Q-" rt « 
 
 O 1— 1 
 
 ^ 'J2 >% 
 
 Q ^ 
 
 rt <u O 
 0) ■= - 
 
 
 
 o^ ci 
 
 6 
 
 0) (U 2 
 
 u^ 
 
 OH bb 
 
 t ^ 
 2 3 
 
 
 H ffi 
 
 «^v2 ^ 
 
 ai H 
 
 
 2§ 
 
 rt <J 2 
 
 rt O X 
 
 W ^ 
 
 g ^ 4> 
 
 ^ H 
 
 < ^ .S2 -^r- 
 
 O tr> 
 
 «>^-§ 
 
 H W 
 
 
 ? C^^ 
 
 Ki O >~, „ 
 
 -I w 
 
 o " ^-- 
 
 
 1^ -O 03 coo 
 
 ,, w 
 
 O C <L> ^^ 
 
 go 
 
 pq rt xj hx) 
 
 ^§1-:^ 
 
 T3 t;5 2 ^ 
 
 Pi H 
 
 (U <u u ^ 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 (U c ^ o 
 
 s ^ 
 
 > ^ (U >. 
 
 W X 
 
 §-s^ 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 fe 
 
 ^-s^^ 
 
 ^' o 
 
 >^e c 
 
 *-Q 
 
 •Ji OS O 
 
 t2 o •-< 
 
 o a 
 
 
 feffi 
 
 P4.i^ a. 
 
The Story of Egypt 89 
 
 vast battle scenes, carved on the temple wall (Fig. 60), were 
 painted in bright colors. The portrait statues of the Pharaohs, 
 set up before these temples, were often so large that they rose 
 above the towers of the temple front itself, — the tallest part of 
 the building, ■ — and they could be seen for miles around (Figs. 
 69 and 70). The sculptors could cut these colossal figures from 
 a single block, although they were sometimes eighty or ninety 
 feet high and weighed as much as a thousand tons. This is 
 a burden equal to the load drawn by a modern freight train, 
 but unlike the trainload it was not cut up into small units of 
 light weight, convenient for handling and loading. Nevertheless, 
 the engineers of the Empire moved many such vast figures for 
 hundreds of miles, using the same methods employed in moving 
 obelisks. It is in works of this massive, monumental character 
 that the art of Egypt excelled (Fig. 70). 
 
 Two enormous portraits of Amenhotep III, the most luxu- 115. Tombs 
 rious and splendid of the Egyptian emperors, still stand on menorthe 
 the western plain of Thebes (Fig. 69), across the river from Empire 
 Kamak. As we approach them we see rising behind them 
 the majestic western cliffs in which are cut hundreds of tomb- 
 chapels belonging to the great men of the Empire. Here were 
 buried the able generals who marched with the Pharaohs on 
 their campaigns in Asia and in Nubia. Here lay the gifted 
 artists and architects who built the vast monuments we have 
 just visited, and made Thebes the first great "monumental city" 
 of the ancient world. Here in these tomb-chapels we may read 
 their names and often long accounts of their lives. Here is the 
 story of the general who saved Thutmose Ill's life, in a great 
 elephant hunt in Asia, by rushing in and cutting off the trunk 
 of an enraged elephant which was pursuing the king. Here is 
 the tomb of the general who captured the city of Joppa in 
 Palestine by concealing his men in panniers loaded on the 
 backs of donkeys, and thus bringing them into the city as 
 merchandise — an adventure which afterward furnished part 
 of the story of ^^ Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." 
 
90 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Ii6. The fur- 
 niture and 
 equipment of 
 the Empire 
 lords as found 
 in their tombs 
 
 The very furniture which these great men used in their 
 houses was put into their tombs. In a neighboring valley was 
 recently found the tomb of the parents of Amenhotep Ill's 
 queen. Their beautiful villa among the Theban gardens 
 was filled with gorgeous furniture which their royal son-in- 
 law, Amenhotep III, 
 had given to them. 
 When this worthy 
 old couple died, the 
 king had them won- 
 derfully embalmed, 
 and much of the 
 furniture which he 
 had given to them 
 (Fig. 73) was car- 
 ried to the cemetery 
 and deposited in 
 their tomb, includ- 
 ing even the gold- 
 covered chariot in 
 which the old couple 
 were accustomed to 
 take their daily air- 
 ing thirty-three hun- 
 dred years ago. 
 Here we find chairs 
 covered with gold 
 and silver and fitted 
 with soft leathern 
 
 Fig. 73. Armchair from the House of 
 AN Egyptian Noble of the Empire 
 
 This chair with other furniture from his house 
 was placed in his tomb at Thebes in the early 
 part of the fourteenth century E.G. There it 
 remained for nearly thirty-three hundred years, 
 till it was discovered in 1905 and removed to 
 the National Museum at Cairo (§ 116) 
 
 cushions, a bed of sumptuous workmanship, jewel boxes, and 
 perfume caskets. They are works of art — real triumphs of 
 the skill of the Empire craftsmen— and almost as well preserved, 
 leather cushion and all, as when first made. Even the shadow 
 clock, which belonged to the furniture of a well-equipped house- 
 hold, still survives (Fig. 74). 
 
The Story of Egypt 9 1 • 
 
 These tombs show us also how much farther the Egyptian 117- Religion 
 has advanced in religion since the days of the pyramids of *" ^ mpue 
 Gizeh. Each of these great men buried in the Theban cemetery 
 looked forward to a judgment in the next world, where Osiris 
 (§69) was the great judge and king. Eyery good man might 
 rise from the dead as Osiris had done, but in the presence 
 of Osiris he would be obliged to see his soul weighed in the 
 
 Fig. 74. The Oldest Clock in the World — an Egyptian 
 Shadow Clock 
 
 In sunny Egypt a shadow clock was a very practical instrument. In the 
 morning the crosspiece {A A) was turned toward the east, and its shadow 
 fell on the long arm {BB), where we see it at the first hour. As the sun 
 rose higher the shadow shortened and its place on the scale showed the 
 hour, which could be read in figures for six hours until noon. At noon 
 the head {AA) was turned around to the west and the lengthening after- 
 noon shadow on the long arm {BB) was measured in the same way. It 
 was from the introduction of such Egyptian clocks that the twelve-hour 
 day reached Europe. This clock bears the name of Thutmose III and 
 is therefore about thirty-four hundred years old. Nearly a thousand 
 years later such clocks were adopted by the Greeks. It is now in the 
 Berlin Museum. The headpiece {AA) is restored after Borchardt 
 
 balances over against the symbol of truth and justice (head- 
 piece, p. 74). The dead man's friends put into his coffin a 
 roll of papyrus containing prayers and magic charms which 
 would aid him in the hereafter, and among these was a picture 
 of the judgment. We now call this roll the ^' Book of the 
 Dead" (headpiece, p. 74). 
 
 When the Empire was about two hundred years old, Amen- 
 hotep Ill's youthful son, Amenhotep IV, became Pharaoh in 
 his father's place. He believed in only one god, the Sun-god, 
 
92 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 Ii8. The 
 
 religious r 
 revolution of 
 Amenhotep 
 IV (Ikhnaton) 
 
 119. Ikhna- 
 ton's new 
 capital, now 
 called 
 Amarna 
 
 120. Ikhna- 
 ton's hymns 
 to A ton, the 
 sole God 
 
 and he began a new and remarkable chapter in the religious 
 history of Egypt by the attempt to destroy the old gods of 
 Eg^y^-pt and to induce the people to adopt the exclusive worship 
 of the Sun-god. He commanded that throughout the great 
 Empire, including its people in both Africa and Asia, only the 
 Sun-god, whom he called A ton, should be worshiped. In order 
 that the people might forget the old gods, he closed all the 
 temples and cast out their priests. Everywhere he also had 
 the names of the gods erased and cut out, especially on all 
 temple walls. He particularly hated Amon, or Amen, the 
 great Theban god of the Empire whose temple we visited at 
 Karnak. His own royal name, Amen-hotep (meaning " Amen 
 rests "), contained this god Ameii's name, and he therefore 
 changed his name Amenhotep to Ikhnaton, which means '' Aton 
 (the Sun-god) is satisfied." 
 
 Ikhnaton, as we must now call him,, finally forsook magnifi- 
 cent Thebes, where there were so many temples of the old 
 gods, and built a new city farther down the river, which he 
 named 'J_Horizon of Aton." It is now called AmarnaJ^see map, 
 p. 36). The city^ was forsaken a few years after Ikhnaton's 
 death, and beneath the rubbish of its ruins to-day we find the 
 lower portions of the walls of the houses and palaces which 
 once adorned it. Recently the ruins of the studio of a sculp- 
 tor were uncovered there and found to contain many beautiful 
 works, which have greatly increased our knowledge of the 
 wonderful sculpture of the age (Fig. 71). The cliffs behind the 
 city still contain the cliff-tombs of the followers whom the young 
 king was able to convert to the new faith, and in them we find 
 engraved on the walls beautifully sculptured scenes picturing 
 the life of the now forgotten city. 
 
 In these Amarna tomb-chapels we may still read on the walls 
 the hymns of praise to the Sun-god, which Ikhnaton himself 
 wrote. They show us the simplicity and beauty of the young 
 king's faith in the sole God. He had gained the belief that 
 one God created not only all the lower creatures but also all 
 
The Story of Egypt 93 
 
 races of men, both Egyptians and foreigners. Moreover, the 
 king saw in his God a kindly Father, who maintained all his 
 creatures by his goodness, so that even the birds in the marshes 
 were aware of his kindness, and uplifted their wings like arms 
 to praise him, as a beautiful line in one of the hymns tells us. 
 In all the progress of men which we have followed through 
 thousands of years, no one had ever before caught such a 
 vision of the great Father of all. Such a belief in one god 
 is called monotheism, which literally means one-god-ism. 
 
 Section i i . The Decline and Fall of the 
 Egyptian F^mpire 
 
 A new faith like this could not be understood by the common 121. ikhna- 
 people of the fourteenth century B.C. The country was full of at home" 
 the discontented priests of the old gods, and equally dissatisfied 
 soldiers of the neglected army. The priests secretly plotted 
 with the troops against the king, and they found willing ears 
 among the idle soldiery. Confusion and disturbance arose in 
 Egypt, and the conquered countries in Asia were preparing 
 to revolt. 
 
 The consequences in Asia have been revealed to us by a 122. ikhna- 
 remarkable group of over three hundred letters, part of the abroad^'the^ 
 royal records stored in one of Ikhnaton's government offices 
 at Amarna. Here they had lain for over three thousand years, 
 when they were found some years ago by native diggers. They 
 are written on clay tablets (§ 147), in Babylonian writing (§ 148). 
 Most of these letters proved to be from the kings of Western 
 Asia to the Pharaoh, and they form the oldest international 
 correspondence in the world (Fig. 126). They shov/ us how 
 these kings were gradually shaking off the rule of the 
 Pharaoh, so that the Egyptian Empire in Asia was rapidly 
 falling to pieces. The Pharaoh's noiihern territory in Syria 
 (see map I, p. 188) was being taken by the Hittites, who came 
 in from Asia Minor (§ 359), while his southern territory in 
 
 Amarna 
 letters 
 
94 
 
 Attcient Times 
 
 123. Death 
 of Ikhnaton; 
 partial resto- 
 ration of the 
 Egyptian 
 Empire, last 
 great power 
 of Age 
 of Bronze ; 
 coming of 
 iron 
 
 124. Foreign 
 mercenaries 
 in the Egyp- 
 tian army ; 
 invasion of 
 the North- 
 erners ; fall of 
 the Empire 
 
 I 
 125. The ' 
 
 bodies of the 
 
 Egyptian 
 
 emperors 
 
 Palestine was being invaded by the Hebrews, who were 
 drifting in from the desert (§ 293). 
 
 In the midst of these troubles at home and abroad the 
 young Ikhnaton died, leaving no son behind him. Although 
 a visionary and an idealist, he was the most remarkable genius 
 of the early oriental world before the Hebrews ; but the faith 
 in one god which he attempted to introduce perished with him. 
 A new line of kings, the greatest of whom were Seti I (Fig. 72) 
 and his son Ramses II (Fig. 123), after desperate efforts were 
 able to restore to some extent the Egyptian Empire. But 
 they were unable to drive the Hittites out of Syria, for these 
 Hittite invaders from Asia Minor possessed iron (§ 360), which 
 they could use for weapons, while the declining Egyptian Empire 
 was the last great power of the Age of Bronze. 
 
 At Thebes the symptoms of the coming fall may be seen 
 even at the present day. If we examine the great war pictures 
 on the Theban temples which we have been visiting, we find 
 in the battle scenes of the later Empire great numbers of 
 foreigners serving in the Egyptian army. This shows that the 
 Egyptians had finally lost their temporary interest in war and 
 were calling in foreigners to fight their battles. Among these 
 strangers are the peoples of the northern Mediterranean whom 
 we left there in the Late Stone Age (§ 44). Here on the 
 Egyptian monuments we find them after they have got from 
 eastern peoples the art of using metal. With huge bronze 
 swords in their hands we see them serving as hired soldiers 
 in the Egyptian army (tailpiece, p. 519). They and other Medi- 
 terranean foreigners (§ 378) finally invaded Egypt in such 
 numbers that the weakened Egyptian Empire fell, in the middle 
 of the twelfth century B. c. 
 
 The great Pharaohs, who maintained themselves for over 
 four hundred years as emperors, were buried here at Thebes. 
 On the other side of the cliffs behind the huge statues of 
 Amenhotep HI (Fig. 69) is a wild and desolate valley formed 
 by a deep depression in the western desert (Fig. 75). Here, in 
 
The Story of Egypt 
 
 95 
 
 over forty vast rock-hewn galleries reaching hundreds of feet 
 into the mountain, the bodies of the Egyptian emperors were 
 laid to rest, only to suffer pillage and robbery after the fall of 
 the Empire. Their weak successors as kings at Thebes hurried 
 the royal bodies from one 
 hiding place to another, and 
 finally concealed them in a 
 secret chamber hewn for this 
 purpose in the western cliffs. 
 Here they lay undisturbed 
 for nearly three thousand 
 years, until, in 1881, they 
 were discovered and removed 
 to the National Museum at 
 Cairo, where they still rest 
 (cf. Fig. 72). Thus we are 
 still able to look into the 
 very faces of these lords of 
 Egypt and Western Asia 
 who lived and ruled from 
 thirty-one hundred to thirty- 
 five hundred years ago. 
 
 Thus ends the story of 
 the Empire at Thebes. The 
 pyramids, tombs, and tem- 
 ples along the Nile have told ^^ ^^^ Pharaohs, although long ago 
 US the history of early Egypt stripped of their valuables by tomb >^ 
 in three epochs : the Pvra- robbers, have survived and now lie ' 
 
 . „ . , , '' , in the National Museum of Egypt at 
 
 mids of Gizeh and the ^^^^^ ^pj^ ^2^ 
 
 neighboring cemeteries of 
 
 Memphis have told us about the Pyramid Age ; the cliff-tombs, 
 which we found on the Nile voyage, have revealed the history'^ 
 of the Feudal Age ; and the temples and cliff -tombs of Thebes ' 
 have given us the story of the Empire. The Nile has become 
 for us a great volume of history, Let us remember, however, 
 
 Fig. 75. Valley at Thebes 
 
 WHERE THE PhARAOHS OF THE 
 
 Empire were buried 
 
 In the Empire (after 1600 B.C.) the 
 Pharaohs had ceased to erect pyra- 
 mids. They excavated their tombs 
 in the cliff walls of this valley (see 
 plan, p. 81), penetrating in long 
 galleries hundreds of feet into the of the Nile 
 rock. Taken from here and con- voyage 
 cealed near by, the bodies of many 
 
 126. Final 
 significance 
 
96 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 that, preceding these three great chapters of civilization on the 
 Nile, we also found here the earlier story of how man passed 
 from Stone Age barbarism to a civilization possessed of metal, 
 writing, and government (§ 66). On the other hand, as we 
 
 Oval containing name of 
 Ptolemy in hieroglyphics 
 
 PTOLEMAIOS 
 
 I 11 111 IV V VI riiriiiix 
 \~\ (/ and jr) =r P in both nam.es 
 r^ (//) = T in one name 
 
 X> I (/// and ^) = in both names 
 
 , (//^and 2) = L in both names 
 = M in one name 
 
 = AI in one name 
 
 rr S in one name 
 
 Oval containing name of 
 Cleopatra in hieroglyphics 
 
 KLEOPATRA 
 
 123 4567 8 
 
 (6 and 9) = A in two places 
 
 K in one name 
 E in one name 
 
 0) 
 
 (7) 
 
 (70) 
 
 : T in one name 
 : R in one name 
 
 unpronounced signs 
 placed at end of 
 all feminine names 
 
 Fig. ']6. Diagram showing the First Steps in Champollion's 
 Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphics* 
 
 look forward, we should remember also that the three great 
 chapters did not end the story ; for Egyptian institutions and 
 civilization continued far down into the Christian Age and 
 greatly influenced later history in Europe (§§ 657, 98 1, and 1063). 
 
The Story of Egypt 97 
 
 Section 12. The Decipherment of Egyptian 
 Writing by Champollion 
 
 Finally, our Nile voyage has also shown us how we gain 127. In mod- 
 knowledge of ancient men and their deeds from the monuments 0^" abjrto *^ 
 and records which they have left behind. We have also noticed ''P^ ^gyp- 
 
 -^ tian writing 
 
 how greatly the use of the earliest written documents aids us before 1822 
 in putting together the story. If we had made our journey up 
 
 * Champollion found an obelisk bearing on its base a GrggJc in- 
 scription, showing that the obelisk belonged to a king Ptolemy and 
 his queen Cleopatra. The obelisk shaft bore an inscription in hiero- 
 glyphics which he therefore thought must somewhere contain the 
 names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Other scholars had shown that the 
 ovals, or ''cartouches" (see opposite page), so common on Egyptian 
 monuments, contained royal names. Examination showed izvo such 
 ovals on the shaft of the obelisk. He concluded that the hieroglyphs 
 in these two ovals spelled the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. He then 
 proceeded to compare them with the Greek spelling of Ptolemy 
 (Piotemaios) and Cleopatra. These Greek spellings (in 02ir letters) 
 will be found in Fig. 76, each paired with its corresponding hiero- 
 glyphic form. All signs and letters in the left pair are numbered 
 with Roman numerals, and in the right pair with Arabic numerals. 
 The first sign (I) in oval A is an oblong rectangle, and if it really is 
 the first letter in Ptolemy's name, it must be the letter P. Now the 
 fifth letter in Cleopatra's name is also a P, and so the fifth sign in 
 the oval B ought also to be an oblong rectangle. To Champollion's 
 delight oval B did not disappoint him, and sign 5 proved to be an 
 oblong rectangle. He was at first troubled by the fact that in his next 
 comparison, II and 7 in the two ovals did not prove to be alike as the 
 sign for T, but he concluded that 7 must be a second form for T, and 
 he was right. The next two signs in oval A (HI and IV) corre- 
 sponded exactly with 4 and 2 in oval B, and showed him that he was 
 certainly on the right road. Although the vowels (e.g. VII and 3) 
 caused him some trouble, he soon saw that Egyptian was inaccurate in 
 writing the vowels, or even omitted them (see Fig. 29). From these 
 two names he had proved that the Egyptians possessed an alphabet 
 and not merely signs for whole syllables or whole words. He had also 
 learned the sounds of twelve of the letters (see table of signs below 
 the names) and laid the foundation for completing the decipherment, 
 by the aid of the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207), which he then for the first 
 time understood how to use, after scholars had been working on it in 
 vain for over twenty years. This was in 1822, and Champollion then 
 announced his discovery to the French Academy in Paris. 
 
98 
 
 Ande?it Times 
 
 128. Cham- 
 pollion's first 
 efforts at 
 decipher- 
 ment 
 
 129. Cham- 
 pollion's 
 successful de- 
 cipherment 
 
 130. Tran- 
 sition to Asia 
 
 the Nile a hundred years ago, however, we would have had no 
 one to tell us what these Egyptian records meant. For the last 
 man who could read Egyptian hieroglyphs died over a thousand 
 years ago. A hundred years ago, therefore, no one understood 
 the curious writing which travelers found covering the great 
 monuments along the Nile. 
 
 For a long time scholars puzzled over the strange Nile 
 records, but made little progress in reading them. Then a 
 young Frenchman named Champollion took up the problem, 
 and after years of discouraging failure he began to make 
 progress. He discovered the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra 
 written in hieroglyphics. He was thus able to determine the 
 sounds of twelve hieroglyphic signs which he proved to be 
 alphabetic (see explanation of Fig. 76). Champollion was then 
 able to read several other royal names, and in 1822, in a famous 
 letter to the French Academy, he announced his discovery and 
 explained the steps he had taken. 
 
 It was not until this point was reached that he was able to 
 make use of the well-known Rosetta Stone, which was there- 
 fore not the first key employed by Champollion. But the 
 Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207) then enabled him rapidly to increase 
 his list of known hieroglyphic signs and to learn the meanings 
 of words and the construction of sentences. When he died, in 
 1832, he had written a little grammar and prepared a small 
 dictionary of hieroglyphic. There remains even nov/ much to 
 learn about the Egyptian language and writing, but Champol- 
 lion's marvelous achievement laid the foundations of a new 
 science now called Egyptology, which has restored to the world 
 a lost chapter of human history nearly three thousand years in 
 length. Thus the monuments of the Nile have gained a voice 
 and have told us their wonderful story of how man gained 
 civilization. 
 
 In a similar way the monuments discovered along the Tigris 
 and Euphrates rivers in Asia have been deciphered and made 
 to tell their story. They show us that, following the Egyptians, 
 
The Story of Egypt 99 
 
 the peoples of Asia emerged from barbarism, gained indus- 
 tries, learned the use of metals, devised a system of writing, 
 and finally rose to the leading position of power in the ancient 
 world. We must therefore turn, in the next chapter, to the 
 story of the early Orient in Asia. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 8. What ages do the monuments up the Nile reveal 
 to us? Describe the rule of a Feudal Age baron. Describe his 
 library. What kind of progress had been made since the Pyramid 
 Age.? Describe the science of the time. What great commercial 
 link between two seas was created? 
 
 Section 9. Write a description of what you see from an aero- 
 plane over the east end of the Temple of Karnak. How did the 
 Pharaohs who built Karnak differ from those who built the pyramids ? 
 Who was the first great woman in history ? Tell something of her 
 reign. Tell about the reign of the greatest Egyptian general. What 
 is an empire? What was theextent of the Egyptian Empire? 
 
 Section 10. What did the Egyptian emperors do with the wealth 
 gained from subject peoples? Describe an empire temple and its 
 surroundings. Describe the great Karnak hall, and tell how the clere- 
 story was improved. Give an account of the Theban cemetery and 
 what it contains. Who tried to introduce the earliest belief in one 
 god? Describe the attempt. 
 
 Section ii. What were the consequences of Ikhnaton's move- 
 ment? Tell about the Amarna letters. What Northerners held 
 Syria, and what new weapons did they have? What do the war 
 pictures at Thebes show us about the Egyptian army ? What 
 foreigners invaded Egypt and aided in destroying the Empire? 
 What happened to the bodies of the emperors ? Summarize the 
 ages we have learned along the Nile from the pyramids to Thebes. 
 
 Section i 2. Why were our great-grandfathers unable to read 
 hieroglyphic ? Who deciphered it, and when ? What Egyptian sign 
 represents the first letter in Ptolemy's name ? What Egyptian sign 
 represents the fifth sign in Cleopatra's name? Compare the fourth 
 Egyptian sign in Ptolemy's name with the second sign in Cleopatra's 
 name. Would you call this an accident or proof that the lion equals Z? 
 What monument did Champollion next use? Describe it (Fig. 207). 
 
->^ 
 
 '^^^^^,,^^*^'^^^'^(^^'^^- 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WESTERN ASIA : BABYLONIA 
 
 Section 13. The Lands and Races of 
 Western Asia 
 
 131. Water 
 boundaries 
 of Western 
 Asia; moun- 
 tainous north, 
 desert south 
 
 The westernmost extension of Asia is an irregular region 
 roughly included within the circuit of waters marked out by the 
 Caspian and Black seas on the north, by the Mediterranean 
 and Red seas on the west, and by the Indian Ocean and the 
 Persian Gulf on the south and east. It is a region consisting 
 chiefly of mountains in the north and desert in the south. The 
 earliest home of men in this great arena of Western Asia is a 
 borderland between the desert and the mountains, a kind of 
 cultivable fringe of the desert, a fertile crescent having the 
 mountains on one side and the desert on the other. 
 
 Note. The above scene shows us the Semitic nomads on the Fertile Cres- 
 cent along the Sea of Galilee. In spring the region is richly overgrown, but the 
 vegetation soon fades. The dark camel's-hair tents of these wandering shepherds 
 are easily carried from place to place as they seek new pasturage (§ 134). They 
 live on the milk and flesh of the flocks. 
 
 100 
 
\ 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia lOI 
 
 This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the 132. The Fer 
 open side toward the south, having the west end at the south- between ^^" 
 east corner of the Mediterranean, the center directly north of 
 Arabia, and the east end at the north end of the Persian Gulf 
 (see map, p. 100). It lies like an army facing south, with one 
 wing stretching along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean 
 and the other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center 
 has its back against the northern mountains. The end of the 
 western wing is Palestine ; Assyria makes up a large part of 
 the center; while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia. 
 
 This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the 133. The 
 Fertile Crescent.-^ It may also be likened to the shores of a 
 desert-bay, upon which the mountains behind look down — a 
 bay not of water but of sandy waste, some five hundred miles 
 across, forming a northern extension of the Arabian desert 
 and sweeping as far north as the latitude of the northeast 
 corner of the Mediterranean. This desert-bay is a limestone 
 plateau of some height — too high indeed to be watered by 
 the Tigris and Euphrates, which have cut canons obliquely 
 across it. Nevertheless, after the meager winter rains, wide 
 tracts of the northern desert-bay are clothed with scanty grass, 
 and spring thus turns the region for a short time into grass- 
 lands. The history of Western Asia may be described as an 
 age-long struggle between the mountain peoples of the north 
 and the desert wanderers of these grasslands — a struggle 
 which is still going on — for the possession of the Fertile 
 Crescent, the shores of the desert-bay. 
 
 Arabia is totally lacking in rivers and enjoys but a few 134. The 
 weeks of rain in midwinter ; hence it is a desert very little ert and the 
 of which is habitable. Its people are and have been from the ^^^^ 
 remotest ages a great white race called Semites. The Semites 
 have always been divided into many tribes and groups, just as 
 
 1 There is no name, either geographical or political, which includes all of this 
 great semicircle (see map, p. loo). Hence we are obliged to coin a term and call 
 it the Fertile Crescent 
 
I02 Ancient Times 
 
 were the American Indians, whom we call Sioux, or Seminoles, 
 or Iroquois. So we shall find many tribal or group names 
 among the Semites. With two of these we are familiar — the 
 Arabs, and the Hebrews whose descendants dwell among us. 
 They all spoke and still speak dialects of the same tongue, of 
 which Hebrew was one. For ages they have moved up and 
 down the habitable portions of the Arabian world, seeking pas- 
 turage for their flocks and herds (headpiece, p. loo). Such 
 wandering shepherds are called nomads, and we remember 
 how their manner ^of life arose after the domestication of 
 sheep and goats (see §§ 35-36). 
 135. Cease- From the earliest times, when the spring grass of the 
 
 thef nomad northern wilderness is gone, they have been constantly drifting 
 erttotheFer- ^^ from the sandy sea upon the shores of the northern desert- 
 tile Crescent bay. If they can secure a footing there, they slowly make the 
 transition from the wandering life of the desert nomad to the 
 settled life of the agricultural peasant (see § 36). This slow 
 shift at times swells into a great tidal wave of migration, when 
 the wild hordes of the wilderness roll in upon the fertile shores 
 of the desert-bay — a human tide from the desert to the towns 
 which they overwhelm. We can see this process going on for 
 thousands of years. Among such movements we are familiar 
 with the passage of the Hebrews from the desert into Pales- 
 tine, as described in the Bible, and some readers will recall the 
 invasions of the Arab hosts which, when converted to Moham- 
 medanism, even reached Europe and threatened to girdle the 
 Mediterranean (§ 1 155). After they had adopted a settled town 
 life, the colonies of the Semites stretched far westward through 
 the Mediterranean, especially in northern Africa, even to south- 
 ern Spain and the Atlantic (see diagram, Fig. 112, and map, 
 p. 288). But it took many centuries for the long line of their 
 settlements to creep slowly westward until it reached the 
 Atlantic, and we must begin with the Semites in the desert. 
 Out on the wide reaches of the desert there are no bound- 
 aries ; the pasturage is free as air to the first comer. No man 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia 103 
 
 of the tribe owns land ; there are no landholding rich and 136. Lack of 
 no landless poor. The men of the desert know no law. The LnVindus- 
 keen-eyed desert marauder looks with envy across the hills ^^g gg^^^^f 
 dotted with the flocks of the neighboring tribe, which may be nomads of 
 his when he has slain the solitary shepherd at the well. But 
 if he does so, he knows that his ow?i family will suffer death or 
 heavy damages, not at the hands of the State, but at the hands 
 of the slain shepherd's family. This custom, known as "blood 
 revenge," has a restraining influence like that of law. Under 
 such conditions there is no State. Writing and records are 
 unknown, industries are practically nonexistent, and the desert 
 tribesmen lead a life of complete freedom. The Turkish gov- 
 ernment owning Arabia to-day is as powerless to control the 
 wandering Arabs of the wilderness as were formerly our own 
 authorities in suppressing the lawlessness of our own herdsmen 
 whom we called cowboys. 
 
 The tribesmen drift with their flocks along the margin of 137. Traffic 
 the Fertile Crescent till they discern a town among the palm caravan 
 groves. Objects of picturesque interest to the curious eyes of 
 the townsmen, they appear in the market place to traffic for 
 the weapons, utensils, and raiment with which the nomad can- 
 not dispense (headpiece, p. 197). They soon learn to carry 
 goods from place to place and thus become not only the 
 common carriers of the settled communities but also traders 
 on their own account, fearlessly leading their caravans across 
 the wastes of the desert-bay, lying like a sea between Syria- 
 Palestine and Babylonia. They became the greatest merchants 
 of the ancient world, as their Hebrew descendants among us 
 still are at the present day. ' 
 
 The wilderness is the nomad's home. Its vast solitudes have 138- Religion 
 
 of the 
 
 tinged his soul with solemnity. His imagmation peoples the nomad . 
 far reaches of the desert with invisible and uncanny creatures, 
 who inhabit every rock and tree, hilltop and spring. These 
 creatures are his gods, whom he believes he can control by the 
 utterance of magic charms — the earliest prayers. He believes 
 
I04 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 139. The 
 
 tribal god of 
 the nomad 
 
 140. The 
 
 nomad's 
 thoughts 
 about his 
 tribal god ; 
 his ideas of 
 right 
 
 141. The 
 
 western 
 Semites on 
 the west end 
 of the Fertile 
 Crescent 
 
 that such charms render these uncanny gods powerless to do 
 him injury and compel them to grant him aid. 
 
 The nomad pictures each one of these beings as controlling 
 only a little comer of the great world, perhaps only a well and 
 its surrounding pastures. At the next well, only a day's march 
 away, there is another god, belonging to the next tribe. For 
 each tribe have a favorite or tribal god, who, as they believe, 
 journeys with them from pasture to pasture, sharing their food 
 and their feasts and receiving as his due from the tribesmen 
 the firstborn of their flocks and herds. 
 
 The thoughts of the desert wanderer about the character of 
 such a god are crude and barbarous, and his religious customs are 
 often savage, even leading him to sacrifice his children to appease 
 the angry god. On the other hand, the nomad has a dawning 
 sense of justice and of right, and he feels some obligations of 
 kindness to his fellows which he believes are the compelling voice 
 of his god. Such feelings at last became lofty moral vision, which 
 made the Semites the religious teachers of the civilized world. 
 
 As early as 3000 B.C. they were drifting in from the desert 
 and settling in Palestine, on the western end of the Fertile 
 Crescent, where we find them in possession of walled towns 
 by 2500 B.C. (Fig. 124). These predecessors of the Hebrews in 
 Palestine were a tribe called Canaanites (§§ 293-294) ; farther 
 north settled a powerful tribe known as Amorites (§175); 
 while along the shores of north Syria (Fig. 159) some of these 
 one-time desert wanderers had taken to the sea, and had be- 
 come the Phoenicians (§ 396). By 2000 B.C. all these settled 
 communities of the western Semites had developed no mean 
 degree of civilization, drawn for the most part from Egypt and 
 Babylonia. Their home along the east end of the Mediter- 
 ranean was on the highway between these two countries, 
 and they were in constant contact with both (map, p. 100). The 
 Phoenicians, however, belonged to the Mediterranean, and we 
 shall take up their story in discussing the history of the 
 eastern Mediterranean (Sections 39 and 40). 
 
Western Asia : Babylo7iia 
 
 lo: 
 
 At the same time we can watch similar movements of the 
 nomads at the eastern end of the Fertile Crescent, along 
 the lower course of the Tigris and Euphrates (Pig. 77), 
 which we shall henceforth speak of as the '' Two Rivers." 
 They rise in the northern mountains (see map, p. 100), whence 
 they issue to cross the Fertile Crescent and to cut obliquely 
 southeastward through the northern bay of the desert. Here 
 
 142. The east 
 end of the 
 Fertile Cres- 
 cent; the 
 Two Rivers 
 and the 
 three great 
 chapters in 
 their history 
 
 Fig. ']']. The Euphrates at Babylon in Winter 
 
 The winter rainfall (§ 144) is so slight that the river shrinks to a very 
 low level and its bed is exposed and dry almost to the middle. In 
 summer the rains and melting -snows in the northern mountains swell 
 the river till it overflows its banks and inundates the Babylonian plain. 
 The house on the right was the dwelling of the archaeological expedition 
 which until 191 7 was engaged in excavating Babylon (Fig. in) 
 
 on these two great rivers of Western Asia developed the earliest 
 civilization known in Asia. Just as on the Nile, so here on the 
 Two Rivers we shall find three great chapters in the story. 
 
 As on the Nile, so also the earliest of the three chapters of 
 Tigris-Euphrates history will be found in the lower valley near 
 the rivers' mouths. This earliest chapter is the story of Baby- 
 lonia.^ As the Two Rivers approach most closely to each other, 
 about one hundred and sixty or seventy miles from the Persian 
 
 1 The other two chapters of Tigris-Euphrates history are Assyria and the 
 Chaldean Empire (Chapter V). 
 
 143. The 
 
 Plain of 
 Shinar (or 
 Babylonia), 
 the scene of 
 the earliest 
 chapter of 
 Tigris- 
 Euphrates 
 history 
 
io6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Gulf,^ they emerge from the desert and enter a low plain of 
 fertile soil, formerly brought down by the rivers. This plain 
 is Babylonia, the 'eastern end of the Fertile Crescent. But 
 during the first thousand years of the known history of this 
 plain the later city of Babylon had not yet arisen, or was a 
 mere village p'.. yixig little or no part in the history of the 
 
 Sketch Map of Sumer and Akkad 
 
 144. Area of 
 the Plain of 
 Shinar; its 
 fertility 
 
 region. The plain was then called Shinar, and Babylonia is 
 a name that properly should not be applied to it until after 
 2100 B.C. (see § 176). 
 
 Rarely more than forty miles wide, the Plain of Shinar con- 
 tained probably less than eight thousand square miles of 
 cultivable soil — roughly equal to the state of New Jersey or the 
 
 1 This distance applies only to ancient Babylonian and Assyrian days. The 
 rivers have since then filled up the Persian Gulf for one hundred and fdty to 
 one hundred and sixty miles, and the gulf is that much shorter at the present 
 day (see note under scale on map, p. 100). 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia lo/ 
 
 area of Wales.^ It lies in the Mediterranean belt of rainy winter 
 and dry summer, but the rainfall is so scanty (less than three 
 inches a year) that irrigation of the fields is required in order 
 to ripen the grain. When properly irrigated the Plain of Shinar 
 is prodigiously fertile, and the chief source of wealth in ancient 
 Shinar was agriculture. This plain was the scene of the most 
 important and long-continued of those frequent struggles be- 
 tween the mountaineer and the nomad, of which we have 
 spoken (§ 133). We are now to follow the story of the first 
 series of those struggles, lasting something like a thousand 
 years, and ending about 2100 B.C. 
 
 Section 14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and 
 Early Struggle of Sumerian and Semite 
 
 The mountaineers were not Semitic and show no relationship 145. Un- 
 to the Semitic nomads of the Arabian desert.^ We are indeed of the early 
 unable to connect the earliest of these mountain peoples with 
 any of the great racial groups known to us. We find them 
 shown on monuments of stone as having shaven heads and 
 wearing shaggy woolen kilts (Fig. 90). While they were still 
 using stone implements, some of these mountaineers, now 
 known as Sumerians, pushed through the passes of the eastern 
 mountains at a very early date. Long before 3000 B.C. they 
 had reclaimed the marshes around the mouths of the Two Rivers. 
 
 1 The current impressions of the cultivable area of Babylonia take no account 
 of the fact that the Babylonian plain was once much shorter than it is now (p. io6, 
 note), nor of the further fact that on the north of it Mesopotamia is a desert which, 
 moreover, does not belong to Babylonia. Only northern Mesopotamia is cultivable 
 (especially the upper valleys of the Balikh and the Khabur rivers). The modem 
 maps do not show this fact; for example, the Centwy Atlas confines the desert 
 to the right bank of the Euphrates and does not admit it to Mesopotamia! The 
 usually accepted ideas of the cultivable area of Babylonia are therefore enor- 
 mously in excess of the actual area reached by irrigation. 
 
 2 On the other hand, although they were certainly white races, the moun- 
 taineers exhibited no relationship to the Indo-European group of peoples who 
 were already spreading through the country north and east of the Caspian at a 
 very early date. The Indo-European peoples, from whom we ourselves have 
 descended, are discussed in Section 21. 
 
 mountameers 
 
108 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 146. Their 
 material civi- 
 lization 
 
 They gradually took possession of the southern section of the 
 Plain of Shinar, and the region they held at length came to be 
 called Sumer (see map, p. 106). 
 
 Their settlements of low mud-brick huts crept gradually north- 
 ward along the Euphrates (see map, p. 106) ; for the banks of 
 the Tigris were too high for convenient irrigation. They learned 
 to control the spring freshets with dikes, to distribute the waters 
 
 Fig. ^Z. AnciExXt Babylonian Seeder, or Machine Planter 
 (After Clay) 
 
 The seeder is drawn by a yoke of oxen, with their driver beside them. 
 Behind the seeder follows a man holding it by two handles. It is very 
 pointed and evidently makes a shallow trench in the soil as it moves. 
 Rising from the frame of the seeder is a vertical tube {a) on the top of 
 which is a funnel {b). A third man walking beside the seeder is shown 
 dropping the grain into this funnel with one hand ; with the other he 
 holds what is probably a sack of seed grain suspended from his shoul- 
 ders. The grain drops down through the tube and falls into the trench 
 made by the seeder. The scene is carved on a small stone seal 
 
 in irrigation trenches, and to reap large harvests of grain (Fig. 78). 
 They had already received barley and split wheat (p. 38, note), 
 which were their two chief grains as in Egypt ; and they Called 
 the split wheat by its Egyptian name. They also already pos- 
 sessed cattle, sheep, and goats. Oxen drew the plow, and 
 donkeys pulled wheeled carts and chariots ; the wheel as a 
 burden-bearing device appeared here for the first time.-^ But 
 
 1 Probably earlier than the wheel in the Swiss lake-villages or on the chariot 
 race courses of the Late Stone Age (§ 39) in the West. 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 1 09 
 
 the horse was still unknown. Traffic with the upper river had 
 also brought in metal, probably from the Nile valley, and the 
 smith learned to fashion utensils of copper. But he had not 
 
 :l 
 
 Fig. 79. Early Sumerian Clay Tablet with Cuneiform 
 Writing (Twenty-eighth Century b.c.) 
 
 This tablet was written toward the close of the early period of the city- 
 kings (§ 162), a generation before the accession of Sargon I (§ 166). 
 It contains business accounts; the numbers can be recognized as 
 circles and other curved signs made with the circular 7ipper end of the 
 scribe's stylus. The picture signs have at this time long since become 
 groups of wedges as shown in Fig. 80. (By permission of Dr. Hussey) 
 
 yet learned to harden the copper into bronze by admixture of 
 tin (§ 336). 
 
 Trade and government taught these people to make records 147. Rise of 
 
 t -1 . -1 . / r -i-^- /-N • 1 1 • r J Sumerian pic- 
 
 scratched m rude pictures (ci. rig. 26) with the tip 01 a reed torial writing 
 on a fiat oval or disk of soft clay. When dried in the sun o^^lay 
 
no 
 
 A7icieiit Times 
 
 148. Trans- 
 formation of 
 Sumerian pic- 
 ture signs 
 into cunei- 
 form signs, 
 and resulting 
 loss of the 
 pictures 
 
 such a clay record became very hard ; and if well baked in an 
 oven, it became an almost imperishable pottery tablet (Fig. 79). 
 
 On the earliest 
 surviving speci- 
 mens of such 
 tablets we can 
 still recognize 
 the original pic- 
 tures (Fig. 80) 
 which made up 
 the writing, just 
 as in Egypt. 
 
 The reed with 
 which the pic- 
 tures were made 
 usually had a 
 blunt, square- 
 tipped end. 
 The tablet was 
 held at an ob- 
 lique angle as 
 the stylus held 
 straight up was 
 applied to the 
 clay. We may 
 see a writer 
 so using it in 
 Fig. 1 01. The 
 writer did not 
 scratch the lines 
 of his picture; 
 but in making 
 a single line he impressed one corner of the square tip of the 
 reed into the soft clay, and then raised it again to impress 
 another line in the same way. Owing to the oblique tilt of the 
 
 11 
 
 III 
 
 JV 
 
 VI 
 
 VII 
 
 VIII 
 
 Foot turned 
 around in 2 
 
 rv 
 
 1^ 
 
 t5!T 
 
 Donkey 
 
 U 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Bird; turned 
 over with feet 
 to the right 
 
 1^ 
 
 "H' 
 
 kT<T5^ 
 
 Fish 
 
 tf 
 
 ^ 
 
 W 
 
 Star 
 
 * 
 
 ^ 
 
 w^ 
 
 Ox ; turned 
 over in 2 
 
 V 
 
 !^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Sun or Day 
 
 o 
 
 r> 
 
 
 Grain ; top of 
 stalk turned 
 
 "^^ 
 
 -^^ 
 
 »» 
 
 ^ 
 
 Fig. 8o. Early Babylonian Signs showing 
 
 THEIR Pictorial Origin. (Chiefly from 
 
 Barton) 
 
 This list of eight signs shows clearly the pictures 
 from which the signs came. The oldest form is in 
 column /; column ^ shows the departure from the 
 picture and the appearance of the signs as the lines 
 began to become wedges. In column j are the later 
 forms, consisting only of wedges and showing no 
 resemblance to the original picture. The original 
 forms of signs V, VI, and PVI, in column /, have not 
 yet been actually found, but they are assumed from 
 the existent forms shown in column 2 
 
Western Asia : BadyConia in 
 
 tablet, each line thus made was wider at one end than at the 
 other, and hence appeared triangular or wedge-shaped, thus >— 
 or y. Every picture or sign thus came to be made up of a 
 group of wedge-shaped lines like h^, which was once a star, 
 or CT-, once a foot (Fig. 80, V, j, and I, j). We therefore call 
 the system cuneiform^ (Latin, cuneus, meaning " wedge "), or 
 wedge-form writing. Pictures made up of these wedge lines 
 became more and more difficult to recognize, especially as 
 speed in writing increased. All resemblance to the earlier 
 pictures finally disappeared. 
 
 The transition from' the picture stage to the phonetic stage 149. Rise 
 (§ 53) was early made. Sumerian writing finally possessed over cuneifonn 
 three hundred and fifty signs, but each such sign represented SaLtkcu- 
 a syllable^ or a word, that is, a group of sounds ; the Sumerian neiform signs 
 system never developed an alphabet of the letters which made 
 up the syllables. That is, there were signs for syllables like kar 
 or ban, but no signs for the letters k or r, b or ;?, which made 
 up such syllables. Hence we cannot insert here an alphabet, as 
 we did in discussing Egypt. 
 
 These clay records show us that in measuring time the 150. The Su- 
 
 ^ . ., , 1-1 merian moon- 
 
 Sumerian scribe began a new month with every new moon, calendar; 
 and he made his year of twelve of these moon-months, year-names 
 We remember (see § 60) that twelve such months fell far 
 short of making up a year. The scribe therefore slipped 
 in an extra month whenever he found that he had reached 
 the end of his calendar year a month or so ahead of the 
 seasons. This inconvenient anc;! inaccurate calendar was in- 
 herited by the Jews and Persians, and is still used by the 
 oriental Jews and the Mohammedans. As in Egypt (Fig. 2>z)^ 
 the years themselves were not numbered, but each year was 
 named after some important event occurring in the course 
 of the year. 
 
 1 The only exceptions were later the vowels and some surviving pictorial 
 signs which served as graphic hints, like the Egyptian determinatives (Fig. 30). 
 On the story of how this writing was deciphered, see Section 25. 
 
112 Ancient Times 
 
 151. Sume- The Sumerian system of numerals was not based on tens, 
 and weights^ but had the unit sixty as a basis. A large number was given 
 
 as so many sixties, just as we employ a score (fourscore, five- 
 score). From this unit of sixty has descended our division of 
 the circle (six sixties) and of the hour and minute. The leading 
 unit of weight which they used was a mi7ia, divided into sixty 
 shekels. The mina had the weight of our pound, and traffic 
 with the East at last brought this measure of weight to us, 
 though under another name. 
 
 152. Nippur Almost in the center of the Plain of Shinar (see map, p. 106) 
 cerTter^-Tts^"^ rose a great tower (Fig. 104). It was of baked brick, for there 
 temple-mount ^^g ^q stone in all Babylonia. This tower was the sacred 
 
 or tower, the -' 
 
 ancestor of mount of Enlil, the great Sumerian god of the air, at the 
 
 our church . . . ^. .^. o \ i i i i i 
 
 steeple ancient town of Nippur (l^ig. 84), a holy place greatly revered 
 
 among all the Sumerian communities. This temple-mount was 
 in shape a building tapering upward somewhat like a pyramid. 
 Around the outside of the square towerlike building was a broad 
 steep footway, which rose as it turned, till it reached the top 
 (see tailpiece, p. 170). The Sumerians erected this building at 
 Nippur, probably in the effort to give their god a home on 
 a mountain top such as he had once occupied, before they left 
 their mountain home to dwell on the Babylonian plain (see 
 § 145). Other towns also adopted the idea, and the temple 
 tower at Babylon in later ages gave rise to the tale of the 
 Tower of Babel (or Babylon), as preserved by the Hebrews. 
 This Babylonian temple tower is the ancestor of our church 
 steeple (Fig. 272). 
 X53. The low But the tower was not itself the temple of the god, although 
 ing bedside he had a shrine at the top. Alongside the tower there was a 
 tower'"^^^ small, low temple building serving as the temple proper. Such 
 sanctuaries have all perished in Babylonia, but enough remains 
 to show the simple character of this lower building (Fig. 206). 
 Approaching from the outside the visitor saw only bare walls 
 of sun-dried brick. These inclosed a court, behind which 
 was the sacred chamber. Indeed, it is clear that this lower 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 1 1 3 
 
 dwelling of the god was simply a dwelling house like those . 
 of the townsmen (Fig. 82). 
 
 Around the temple and its mount were grouped the store- 154. The 
 houses and business offices of the temple, while a massive wall d^Sre-'^th- 
 forming an inclosure surrounded and protected the whole ^"|fheir*^ 
 (Fig. 84). Here ruled a wealthy priesthood. Assisted by a ruler 
 group of scribes (Fig. loi), they rented and cared for the 
 temple lands and property. The king or ruler of the town at 
 their head was really also a priest, called a '' patesi" (pronounced 
 pa-tay'see). His temple duties kept him about as busy as did 
 the task of ruling the community outside of the temple walls. 
 
 At this sanctuary under the shadow of the temple-mount 155. Sume- 
 the peasant brought in his offering, a goat and a jar of water and worship 
 containing a few green palm branches intended to symbolize 
 the vegetable life of the land, which the god maintained by the 
 annual rise of the river. The jar with the green palm branches 
 in it later became '' the tree of life," a symbol often depicted 
 on the monuments of the land (Fig. 102). These gifts the 
 worshiper laid before the gods of earth, of air, of sky, or 
 sea, praying that there might be plentiful waters and gener- 
 ous harvests, but praying also for deliverance from the de- 
 stroying flood which the god had once sent to overwhelm 
 the land. Of this catastrophe the peasant's fathers had told 
 him, and the tradition of this flood finally passed over to 
 the Hebrews. 
 
 In one important matter of religion the Sumerians were very 156. Sume- 
 different from the Egyptians. The dead were buried in the "ndbeliS 
 town, under the court of a house or the floor of a room about the 
 
 hereafter 
 
 (Fig. 81), often without any tomb or coffin or much equip- 
 ment for the life beyond the grave. Of the next world they 
 had only vague and somber impressions, as a forbidding place 
 of darkness and dust beneath the earth, to which all men, 
 both good and bad, descended. Great cemeteries and elaborate 
 tomb equipment, such as those which told us so much of early 
 Egypt, do not help us here in Babylonia. 
 
114 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 157. Sume- 
 rian house 
 and town 
 
 Around the temple inclosure extended the houses of the citi- 
 zens — bare rectangular structures of sun-dried brick (Fig. 82), 
 each with a court on the north side, and on the south side of 
 the court a main chamber from which the other rooms were 
 
 Fig. 81. An Early Babylonian Burial. (After Scheil) 
 
 Two large pottery jars laid with their open ends together served as a 
 coffin. Sometimes the body lay on the bottom of a rectangular grave 
 lined with sun-dried brick, forming a rough vault. The usual burial was 
 not in a cemetery but was in the house undes the floor of the court or 
 some room. Only one small cemetery, containing some thirty burials, 
 has as yet been found in Babylonia. Little, if any, equipment for the 
 hereafter was placed with the body, although some burials were sup- 
 plied with a few jars of pottery or copper and ornaments of silver, 
 gold, copper, or mother-of-pearl, with an occasional weapon or tool 
 
 entered. At first only a few hundred feet across, the town 
 slowly spread out, although it always remained of very limited 
 extent.^ Such a towm usually stood upon an artificial mound 
 (Fig. 83), which it is important for us to examine. 
 
 1 There were no really large cities in Babylonia until the Chaldean Empire 
 (606-538 B.C., Section 20). 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 115 
 
 158. The 
 formation of 
 ancient city 
 mounds 
 
 The ordinary building material of the entire ancient world 
 was sun-baked brick. The houses of the common people in 
 the Orient even at the present day are still built of such brick. 
 The walls of such houses in course of time are slowly eaten 
 away by the rains, till after a heavy rain an old house some- 
 times falls down. When this happens at the present day the 
 rubbish is leveled off and the house is rebuilt on top of it. 
 This modern practice has been going on for thousands of 
 years. It was this 
 kind of a house 
 whose fall Jesus 
 had in mind in his 
 parable (Matt, vii, 
 27). As this proc- 
 ess went on for 
 many centuries it 
 produced a high 
 mound of rubbish, 
 on which the town 
 stood. 
 
 Many a surviv- 
 ing oriental town 
 still stands on such 
 an ancient mound. 
 These mounds are 
 to be found in all 
 the ancient lands, like the mound of Troy (Fig. 1 49), that 
 of Jericho in Palestine (Fig. 124), or Elephantine in Egypt 
 (Fig. 211). Babylonia is to-day full of such great mounds 
 long since forsaken and deserted, and Fig. 83 shows us how 
 they look at the present day. 
 
 The clay tablets (Fig. 79) containing the household records, 160. Con 
 letters, bills, receipts, notes, accounts, etc., which were in the 
 houses when they fell, were often covered by the falling walls, 
 and they still lie in the mound. In the temples and public 
 
 Fig. 82. Restoration of an Early 
 Babylonian House. (After Koldewey) 
 
 The towns of the early Babylonians were small 
 and were chiefly made up of such sun-baked- 
 brick houses as these. Their simple adornment 
 consisted only of vertical panels and a stepped 
 (crenelated) edge at the top of the wall. The 
 doors were crowned by arches in contrast with 
 those of the Egyptians, who knew the arch but 
 preferred a horizontal line above all doorways 
 
 159. Distri- 
 bution of 
 such early 
 mounds 
 to-day 
 
 tents pre- 
 served in 
 such ancient 
 mounds 
 
Il6 Ancient Times 
 
 buildings the documents covered up were often important gov- 
 ernment records ; while in the dwelling or offices of the ruler 
 they were often narratives of wars and conquests. Some- 
 times the ruler placed accounts of his buildings, his victo- 
 ries, and other great deeds deep in the foundations of his 
 buildings in order that later rulers might find them. Besides 
 
 Fig. 83. Mound covering a Portion of the Ancient Baby- 
 lonian City of Nippur 
 
 The bare ground in front of us now showing a scanty growth of desert 
 shrubs once formed a court, or open square, for pubHc business, unload- 
 ing caravans, etc. The great mound beyond contains the chief temple 
 buildings of Nippur, occupying the south corner of the temple inclosure. 
 Its highest portion covers the temple mount (§ 152), of which only the 
 lower parts still survive under the mound. In the buildings covered by 
 these mounds lived the scribes (clerks) and officials who carried on the 
 temple and government business of this town nearly five thousand years 
 ^go (§ 154)- See also Fig. 84 for a view from the top of the temple- 
 mount. (By courtesy of the University Museum, Philadelphia) 
 
 all these written records, many articles of household use or 
 sculptured works of art still lie hidden in such mounds. Here 
 too lie the gaunt and somber remains of the early Babylonian 
 buildings themselves (Fig. 84). But these town buildings have 
 fallen into such ruin that we cannot make them tell us a story 
 such as we found in Egypt. Nevertheless, a city mound is a 
 rich storehouse of ancient Babylonian civilization, the story of 
 which we are now to follow\ 
 
Fig. 84. Excavation of the Ruins of Ancient Nippur 
 
 These ruins were excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Expedi- 
 tion in three campaigns between 1889 and 1900. This view shows the 
 work of excavation going on. The earth (once sun-dried brick) is taken 
 out in baskets and carried away by a long line of native laborers, who 
 empty their baskets at the far end of an ever-growing bank of exca- 
 vated earth. The ruinous buildings, once entirely covered (Fig. 83), 
 are slowly exposed, and among them, often clay tablets or objects of 
 pottery, stone, or metal. Thus are recovered the records and antiquities 
 of ancient Babylonia (§ 161). They lie at different levels, the oldest 
 things nearer the bottom and the later ones higher up. This is a 
 view seen from the top of the highest mound in Fig. 83. Beyond the 
 laborers the view to the horizon gives a good idea of the flat Babylonian 
 plain. Only two generations ago the monuments and records of Baby- 
 lonia and Assyria preserved in Europe could all be contained in a 
 show case only a few feet square. Since 1840, however, archaeological 
 excavation, as we call such digging, has recovered great quantities of 
 antiquities and records. Such work is now slowly recovering for us the 
 story of the ancient world. (Drawn from a photograph furnished by 
 courtesy of the University Museum, Philadelphia) 
 
 117 
 
Ii8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 i6i. Early 
 Sumerian art ; 
 sculpture, 
 seal-cutting, 
 metal work 
 
 At the bottom of these mounds, reaching back to 3000 B.C., 
 lie the works of the Sumerian sculptor in stone. They were in 
 
 the beginning very rough 
 and crude. The demand 
 for personal seals cut in 
 stone (Fig. 86) soon de- 
 veloped a beautiful art 
 of engraving tiny figures 
 on a hard stone surface 
 (Fig. 106, A). We call 
 a craftsman who could 
 do such work a lapidary. 
 The early Sumerian lapi- 
 daries soon became the 
 finest craftsmen of the 
 kind in the ancient ori- 
 ental world, and their 
 work has had an influ- 
 ence on our own deco- 
 rative art which has not 
 yet disappeared (see de- 
 scription, Fig. 85). The 
 Sumerian craftsmen also 
 did skillful work in metal, 
 sometimes beautifully dec- 
 orated (Fig. 85). 
 
 Fig. ZS' Silver Vase of a Sume- 
 rian City-King 
 
 This vase, the finest piece of metal work 
 from early Babylonia, is adorned with 
 two broad bands of engraving extending 
 entirely around it. They furnish an ex- 
 cellent example of early Sumerian decorative art. In the broader band 
 we see a lion-headed eagle clutching the backs of two lions, which in 
 their turn are biting two ibexes. This balanced arrangement of animal 
 figures in violent action was a discovery of Sumerian art about 3000 B.C. 
 The eagle and the lions here form the symbol, or arms, of the Sume- 
 rian city-kingdom of Lagash. Such symbols made up of balanced 
 pairs of animal figures passed over to Europe, where they are still used 
 in decorative art and in the heraldic symbols, or arms, of the kings 
 and nations. The eagle still appears in the arms of Russia, Austria, 
 Prussia, and other European nations, and finally reached us as our 
 "American" eagle, really the eagle of Lagash, five thousand years ago 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 119 
 
 In all these monuments and the writings on clay tablets 
 we find revealed to us the life which once filled the streets 
 of the ancient Babylonian towns now 
 sleeping under the silent mounds. We 
 see a class of free landholding citizens 
 in the town, working their lands with 
 numerous slaves and trading with cara- 
 vans and small boats up and down the 
 river. Over these free, middle-class folk 
 were the officials and priests, the aristo- 
 crats of the town. Such a community, 
 owning the lands for a few miles round 
 about the town, formed the political 
 unit, or state, which we call a city- 
 kingdom. We may therefore call the 
 first three centuries after about 3050 B.C. 
 the Age of the Sumerian City-Kingdoms. 
 The leading Sumerian city-kingdoms 
 formed a group in the South, occupying 
 the land of Sumer (see map, p. 106). 
 These towns are still marked for us by 
 a straggling line of mounds distributed 
 along the Euphrates. In spite of oppres- 
 sive and dishonest taxation, such a com- 
 munity owed much to its ruler, or patesi 
 (§ 154). He was useful in a number of 
 matters, but chiefly in two ways : in war 
 and in irrigation. The irrigation canals 
 
 162. Early 
 Sumerian 
 society and 
 state ; the 
 Age of the 
 City-King- 
 doms (about 
 3050-2750 
 
 B.C.) 
 
 163. The Su 
 
 merian city- 
 kingdoms 
 and their 
 patesis 
 
 Fig. 86. An Early 
 
 Sumerian Cylinder 
 
 Seal 
 
 Instead of signing his 
 7ianie to a clay-tablet 
 
 document, the early Sumerian rolled over the soft clay a litde stone 
 roller, or cylinder, engraved with beautiful pictures (Figs. 90, 91, 
 and 106, A) and sometimes also bearing the owner's name (Fig. 91). 
 The impression left by the roller in the soft clay served as a sig- 
 nature. They have been found in great numbers in the ruins of 
 Babylonia. By a study of these works the growth and decline of Baby- 
 lonian art may be traced for twenty-five hundred years, from about 
 3000 B.C. to about 500 B.C. The picture shows end view and side view 
 
I20 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 and dikes required constant repairs. The planting and harvest- 
 ing of the fields would have stopped and the whole community 
 would have starved if the ruler had ceased his constant over- 
 sight of the dikes and canals and the water supply had stopped. 
 
 Fig. 87. A Sumerian Citv-King leading a Phalanx of his 
 Troops (about 2900 b.c.) 
 
 The king himself, whose face is "broken off from the stone, marches at 
 the right, heading his troops, who follow in a compact group. This is 
 the earliest example of grouping men together in a mass, forming a sin- 
 gle fighting unit, called a phalanx. This must have required a long drill 
 and discipline, after many centuries of loose, irregular, scattered fight- 
 ing (Fig. 88). This was the first chapter in the long history of the art 
 of war, and it took place in Asia. Such discipline was unknown at this 
 time in Egypt. These Sumerian troops have their spears set for the. 
 charge, but they carry no bows. Tall shields cover their entire bodies, 
 and they wear close-fitting helmets, probably of leather. They are 
 marching over dead bodies (symbolical of the overthrow of the enemy). 
 The scene is carved in stone and is a good example of the rude Sume- 
 rian sculpture in Babylonia in the days of the Great Pyramid and the 
 remarkable portrait sculpture of Egypt (contrast with Figs. 52 and 53) 
 
 164. The As to war, we can watch more than one of these city rulers 
 
 tlTe Sumerian niarching out at the head of troops heavily armed with shield 
 
 city-kingdoms ^^^ spear (but without the bow) and marshaled in massive 
 
 phalanx (Fig. 87). We found on the Nile the earliest highly 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 121 
 
 developed arts of peace ; we find here among the Sumeriansi 
 the earliest Highly developed art of war in the history of man. \ 
 When the townspeople heard that a neighboring city-kingdom \ 
 was trying to take possession of a strip of their land, they 
 were glad to follow the patesi's leadership in order to drive 
 out the invaders. As such occurrences were common, the 
 
 ftTOrH;'l%^^*^t:^-"^ ^ (iuiW*HH', I \ 
 
 Fig. 88, Semitic Bowmen of Early Babylonia fighting in 
 Open Order 
 
 The nomads had no organization and no discipline ; each man leaped 
 about in the fray as he pleased, and the fight was a loose group of 
 single combats between two antagonists. This loose rough-and-tumble 
 fighting was the earliest method of warfare, before men learned to train 
 and drill themselves to fight in groups or masses. The Sumerians were 
 the earliest men who took this step (Fig. 87). The disciplined Sume- 
 rian townsmen were therefore long superior to these disorganized 
 nomads of the desert along the Fertile Crescent 
 
 early history of Sumer for some three centuries (about 3050 
 to 2750 B.C.) was largely made up of the ever-changing 
 fortunes of these city-kingdoms in war. 
 
 But while the city-kingdoms of Sumer were thus often fight- 165. Earliest 
 ing among themselves, they were also called upon to meet an sumerians 
 enemy from the outside. The Semitic nomads of the desert ai^d Semites 
 (§ 135) early began to settle north of Sumer. This region 
 called Akkad (see map, p. 106), where the Two Rivers are 
 
122 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 closest together, was on the main road from the Two Rivers to 
 the eastern mountains, and the leading Semitic tribe there bore 
 the name Akkadians. These desert wanderers had never 
 learned discipline and drill in war like the Sumerians. They 
 depended on their skill as archers, and they gave battle there- 
 fore at a distance. Or if they came to close quarters, they 
 fought single-handed, in open order (Fig. 88). Their thin and 
 open line was evidently at first no match for the heavy phalanx 
 of the Sumerians. Thus two hostile races faced each other on 
 the Plain of Shinar : in the • North the half-settled Semitic 
 nomads of Akkad, and in the South the one-time mountaineers 
 of Sumer. The long struggle between them was only one of 
 the many struggles between nomad and mountaineer along the 
 Fertile Crescent (§ 133). 
 
 Section i 5 . The First Semitic Triumph : 
 THE Age of Sargon 
 
 166. The 
 
 first Semitic 
 triumph ; 
 Sargon of 
 Akkad and 
 his line 
 (2750-2550 
 B.C.) 
 
 About 2750, that is, about the middle of the twenty-eighth 
 century B.C., there arose in Akkad a Semitic chieftain named 
 Sargon. So skillful in war was he, that he succeeded in scatter- 
 ing the compact Sumerian spearmen, and making himself lord 
 of all the Plain of Shinar. The old Sumerian city-kings were de- 
 feated and the Sumerian towns down to the mouths of the Two 
 Rivers submitted to him. He led his swift Akkadian archers 
 from the eastern mountains of Elam westward up the Euphrates 
 to the shores of the Mediterranean. There, as we remember, 
 the Pharaoh's galleys (Fig. 41) were already moored in the 
 harbors of the Phoenician cities. Some day chance may dis- 
 close to us the messages, written on clay tablets, which now 
 probably passed between the lord of the Euphrates and the 
 lord of the Nile living in the splendors of his pyramid-city at 
 Gizeh. Sargon was the first great leader in the history of the 
 Semitic race, and he was the first ruler to build up a great 
 nation in Western Asia, reaching from Elam (Fig. 89, and 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia 123 
 
 map, p. 100) to the Mediterranean and far up the Two 
 Rivers northward. His splendid conquests made an impres- 
 sion upon the Tigris-Euphrates world which never faded, and 
 he left them to his sons, one of whom, Naram-Sin, even 
 extended them. 
 
 Sargon's conquests forced his nomad tribesmen (the Akka- 167. The 
 dians) to make a complete change in their manner of life.. The Akkadians 
 once wandering shepherds were obliged to drop their unsettled ^^^^P^ . 
 life and to take up fixed abodes. We may best picture the change civilization 
 if we say that they forsook their tents (headpiece, p. 100) and 
 built houses of sun-dried brick (Fig. 82), which could not be 
 picked up every morning and set up somewhere else at night. 
 At first they did not even know how to write, and they had no 
 industries (§ 136). Some of them now learned to write their 
 Semitic tongue by using the Sumerian wedge-form signs for^, 
 the purpose. Then it was, therefore, that a Semitic language' 
 began to be written for the first time. These former nomad^ 
 had never before attempted to manage the affairs of settled 
 communities, — such business as we call government admin- 
 istration. All this too they were now obliged to learn from 
 the Sumerians. The Semitic Akkadians therefore adopted the 
 Sumerian calendar, weights and measures, system of numerals 
 and business methods. With the arts of peace the Akkadians 
 also gained those of war. They learned to make helmets of 
 leather and copper weighing over two pounds. These are the 
 earliest-known examples of the use of metal as a protection in 
 war. From such beginnings as these were to come the steel-clad 
 battleships and gun turrets of modern times. 
 
 Among other things the Akkadians learned also the art of 168. The 
 sculpture, but they soon far surpassed their Sumerian teachers, f^ of the"Age 
 The relief of Naram-Sin (Fig. 89) belongs among the real ofSargon 
 triumphs of art in the early world — ^especially interesting as 
 the first great work of art produced by the Semitic race. The 
 beautiful Sumerian art of seal-cutting, the Akkadians now carried 
 to a wonderful degree of perfection (Figs. 90, 91, and 106, A). 
 
Fig. 89. A King of Akkad storming a Fortress — the 
 Earliest Great Semitic Work of Art (about 2700 b.c.) 
 
 King Naram-Sin of Akkad (probably one of the sons of Sargon I, § 166) 
 has pursued the enemy into a mountain stronghold in Elam. His heroic 
 figure towers above his pygmy enemies, each one of whom has fixed his 
 eyes on the conqueror, awaiting his signal of mercy. The sculptor, with 
 fine insight, has depicted the dramatic instant when the king lowers his 
 weapon as the sign that he grants the conquered their lives. Compare 
 the superiority of this Semitic sculpture of Akkad over the Sicynerian 
 art of two centuries earlier (Fig. 87) 
 124 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia 
 
 125 
 
 Thus the life of the desert Semite mingled with that of the 169. Com- 
 non-Semitic mountaineer on the Babylonian plain, much as suSfeda^r^ 
 Norman and English mingled in England. On the streets and ^"^ ^^^^' 
 
 ^ <=> o dians 
 
 in the market places of the Euphrates towns, where once the (Semites) 
 bare feet, clean-shaven heads, and beardless faces of the Sume- 
 rian townsmen were the only ones to be seen, there was now a 
 
 Fig. 90. A Semitic Prince and his Sumerian Secretary 
 (Twenty-seventh Century b.c.) 
 
 The third figure (wearing a cap) is that of the prince, Ubil-Ishtar, who 
 is brother of the king. He is a Semite, as his beard shows. Three of his 
 four attendants are also Semites, with beards and long hair; but one of 
 them (just behind the prince) is beardless and shaven-headed (§ 169). 
 He is the noble's secretary, for being a Sumerian he is skilled in writing. 
 His name " Kalki " we learn from the inscription in the corner, which 
 reads, " Ubil-Ishtar, brother of the king ; Kalki, the scribe, thy servant." 
 This inscription is in the Semitic (Akkadian) tongue of the time and 
 illustrates how the Semites have learned the Sumerian signs for writing 
 (§ 167). The scene is engraved on Kalki's personal seal (Fig. 86), and 
 the above drawing shows the impression on the soft clay when the seal 
 was rolled over it. It is a fine example of the Babylonian art of seal- 
 cutting in hard stone (§ 168). The original is in the British Museum 
 
 plentiful sprinkling of sandaled feet, of dark beards, and heavy 
 black locks hanging down over the shoulders of the swarthy 
 Semites of Akkad (Fig. 90). The shaven Sumerian served 
 in the army with shield and lance (Fig. 87) along with his 
 bearded Semitic lord carrying only the bow (Fig. 88). The 
 Semitic noble could not do without the deft Sumerian clerk, 
 for we see the king's brother v\^ith his Semitic attendants, fol- 
 lowed also by his shaven-headed Sumerian secretary (Fig. 90). 
 
126 Ancient Times 
 
 Section i6. Union of Sumerians and Semites : the 
 Kings of Sumer and Akkad 
 
 170. The When at last the Semites of Akkad were enfeebled by the 
 SunS-and town life which they had adopted, the line of Sargon declined. 
 Akkad (from ^ result the Sumerian cities of the South were able to recover 
 
 the twenty- 
 fifth to the control of the country not long after 21:00 B.C. Headed by the 
 
 twenty-third . . , ^^ \ r , i i o ... • j , 
 
 century B.C.) ancient city ot Ur, three 01 the old Sumenan cities gained the 
 leadership one after another. But the Semites of Akkad were 
 henceforth recognized as part of the unified nation on the 
 ancient Plain of Shinar, which now for the first time gained a 
 national name. It was called " Sumer and Akkad." The kings 
 of this age, who called themselves " Kings of Sumer and 
 Akkad," were both Sumerians and Semites. They have left us 
 no great buildings or imposing monuments, but the new United 
 States of Sumer and Akkad prospered greatly and survived for 
 over three centuries. For the first time literature flourished. 
 
 171. Thought In simple stories these men of the Tigris- Euphrates world 
 under the now began to answer those natural questions regarding life 
 
 silnS- and ^^^ death, which always rose in the minds of early men. They 
 finally told of the wonderful adventures of the shepherd Etana, 
 
 Sumer and 
 Akkad: the 
 source of 
 
 Hfe ; the when his flocks were stricken with unfruitfulness, and no more 
 
 ana s oiy iaj^]3s were born. Etana then mounted on the back of an eagle 
 
 (Fig. 91) and rose to the skies in search of the herb in which 
 
 was the source of life. But as he neared his goal he was hurled 
 
 to the earth again. This is the earliest tale of flying by man. 
 
 172. Death The Strange mystery of death led to the story of the fisher- 
 
 Ufer^he^^ i^^i^ Adapa. When the South-wind goddess overturned his 
 
 Adapa story boat, Adapa flew into a rage and broke her wing. Thereupon 
 
 he was summoned to the throne of the Sky-god, whose wrath 
 
 was at length appeased so that he offered to Adapa the bread 
 
 and water of life. This would have made him immortal and 
 
 destroyed death. But suspicious and forewarned of danger, the 
 
 unhappy Adapa refused the food and thus lost both for himself 
 
 and for mankind the treasure of immortal life. 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 127 
 
 In the same way they told how the gigantic hero Gilgamesh, 173. immor- 
 
 after many mighty deeds and strange adventures (Fig. 106,^), Gilgamesh 
 
 failed to 2:ain immortal life. Among all these heroes, indeed, there ^}^yy '■> *^^ 
 
 ^ . . deluge story 
 
 was but one who was granted endless life. Of him there was 
 a strange tale, telling how, together with his wife, he survived 
 
 Fig. 91. The Flight of Etana to the Skies 
 
 At the right Etana sits on the back of the flying eagle (§ 171), with his 
 arm around the bird's neck. Above him is the moon, while below, two 
 dogs look up after him, barking. At the left approaches a goatherd 
 driving three goats ; before them walks a man with an object shaped 
 like an umbrella. All, including the goats, are looking up in amaze- 
 ment at the flight of Etana. Over the goatherd a potter is making jars, 
 and at the right of his jars a squatting baker is making round loaves. 
 The scene is carved on a cylinder seal (Fig. 86), and our drawing shows 
 the impression on the soft clay when the seal is rolled over it. It is a 
 fine specimen of the Babylonian lapidary's skill 
 
 the great deluge (§ 155) in a large ship. Then the gods 
 carried them both away to blessedness. But not even the 
 kifigs of Sumer and Akkad were supposed to enter a blessed 
 hereafter, much less the common people. Many of these stories 
 of creation and flood were afterward known to the Hebrews. 
 
 Mingled with touches from the life of both Sumerian and 
 Semite, these tales now circulated in both the Semitic and 
 
128 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 174. Decline 
 of the 
 Sumerian 
 language ; 
 its survival 
 as a sacred 
 tongue 
 
 Sumerian languages. It was the old Sumerian tongue, however, 
 which was regarded as the more sacred. It later continued in 
 use as a kind of sacred language, like Latin in the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The old Sumerian towns were now rapidly 
 declining (twenty-third century B.C.), but religious stories were 
 written in Sumerian, centuries after it was no longer spoken. 
 
 Section 17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the 
 Age of Hammurapi and After 
 
 175. Return 
 of Semitic 
 supremacy ; 
 rise of 
 Babylon 
 
 176. Rise of 
 Hammurapi 
 and suprem- 
 acy of 
 Babylon 
 
 177. Hammu- 
 rapi, the 
 organizer 
 
 As the " Kings of Sumer and Akkad " slowly weakened, a 
 new tribe of Semites began descending the Euphrates, just as 
 the men of Akkad had done under Sargon (§ 166). These 
 newcomers were the Semitic Amorites of Syria by the Mediter- 
 ranean (§ 141). About a generation before 2200 B.C. this new 
 tribe of western Semites seized the little town of Babylon, which 
 was at that time still an obscure village on the Euphrates. The 
 Amorite kings of Babylon at once began to fight their way 
 toward the leadership of Sumer and Akkad. 
 
 After a century of such warfare there came to the throne 
 as the sixth in the Amorite line of kings at Babylon one 
 Hammurapi, who was flourishing by 2100 B.C. In the now 
 feeble old Sumerian cities of the South, Hammurapi found the 
 warlike Elamites who had come in from Elam in the eastern 
 mountains. They fought him for over thirty years before he 
 succeeded in driving them out and capturing the Sumerian 
 towns. Victorious at last, Hammurapi then made his city of 
 Babylon for the first time supreme throughout the land. It was 
 therefore not until after 2100 B.C. that Babylon finally gained 
 such a position of power and influence that we may call the 
 land " Babylonia." 
 
 Hammurapi survived his triumph twelve years, and in those 
 years of peace, as he had done in war, he proved himself the 
 ablest of his line. He was the second great Semitic ruler, as 
 Sargon had been the first. Only a few generations earlier his 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 129 
 
 ancestors, like those of Sargon, had been drifting about the 
 desert, without any organization. He still betrayed in his 
 shaven upper lip, a desert custom, the evidence of his desert 
 ancestry (Fig. 93). But he now put forth his powerful hand 
 upon the teeming life of the Babylonian towns, and with a 
 touch he brought in order and system such as Babylonia had 
 never seen before. Two chief sources of information have sur- 
 vived over four thousand years to reveal to us the deeds and 
 the character of this great king : these are a group of fifty-five 
 of his letters, and the splendid monument bearing his laws. 
 
 Hammurapi's letters afford us for the first time in history a 178. Hammu- 
 glimpse into the busy life of a powerful oriental ruler in Asia, [hei/dicta-^^ 
 They disclose him to us sitting in the executive office of his p^Ji^radon 
 palace at Babylon with his secretary at his side. In short, clear 
 sentences the king begins dictating his brief letters, conveying 
 his commands to the local governors of the old Sumerian cities 
 which he now rules. The secretary draws a reed stylus (Fig. loi) 
 from a leathern holder at his girdle, and quickly covers the 
 small clay tablet (Fig. 92) with its lines of wedge groups. 
 The writer then sprinkles over the soft wet tablet a handful 
 of dry powdered clay. This is to prevent the clay envelope, 
 which he now deftly wraps about the letter, from adhering 
 to the written surface. On this soft clay envelope he writes 
 the address and sends the letter out to be put into the furnace 
 and baked. 
 
 Messengers constantly hand him similarly closed letters. 179. Hammu 
 This secretary of Hammurapi is a trusted confidential clerk. nXigation 
 He therefore breaks to pieces the hard clay envelopes in the 
 king's presence and reads aloud to him letters from his officials 
 all over the kingdom. The king quickly dictates his replies. 
 The flood has obstructed the Euphrates between Ur and 
 Larsa, and of course a long string of boats have been tied up 
 and are waiting. The king's reply orders the governor of 
 Larsa to clear the channel at the earliest moment and make it 
 navigable again. 
 
130 Ancient Times 
 
 180. Hammu- The king is much interested in his vast flocks of sheep, as 
 feasts an/the i^ the nomad instinct had not altogether vanished from the 
 calendar blood of his line. He orders the officials to appear in Babylon 
 
 to celebrate the spring sheep-shearing as if it were a great 
 feast. The calendar has slipped forward a whole month in 
 advance of the proper season (§ 150), and the king sends out 
 a circular letter to all the governors, saying, " Since the year 
 hath a deficiency, let the month which is now beginning be 
 registered as a second (month of) Elul." 
 
 181. Hammu- But he wanis the governor that all taxes otherwise falling 
 
 rapi's letters : . , . , . i i r i i i • 
 
 delinquents duc Within the iiext month are not to be deterred by this 
 insertion. Delinquent tax gatherers are firmly reminded of 
 their obligations and called upon to settle without delay. 
 Prompt punishment of an official guilty of bribery is author- 
 ized, and we can see the king's face darken as he dictates the 
 order for the arrest of three officials of the palace gate who 
 have fallen under his displeasure. More than once the gov- 
 ernor of Larsa is sharply reminded of the king's orders and 
 bidden to see that they are carried out at once. 
 
 182. Hammu- Many a petitioner who has not been able to secure justice 
 Justice an?^ before the board of judges in his home city is led in before 
 religion ^^^ king, confident of just treatment; and he is^Bot disap- 
 pointed (Fig. 92). The chief of the temple bakers find^v^hat 
 royal orders to look after a religious feast at Ur will call hiflK, 
 away from the capital city just at the time when he has an 
 important lawsuit coming on. He easily obtains an order from 
 the king postponing the lawsuit. The king's interest in the 
 religious feast is here as much concerned as his sense of 
 justice, for many of the letters which he dictates have to 
 do with temple property and temple administration, in which 
 he constantly shows his interest. 
 
 183. The With his eye thus upon every corner of the land, alert, 
 Hammurapi vigorous, and full of decision, the great king finally saw how 
 
 necessary it was to bring into uniformity all the various and 
 sometimes conflicting lav^^s and business customs of the land. 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 131 
 
 He therefore collected all the older written laws and usages 
 of business and social life, and arranged them systematically. 
 He improved them or added 
 
 new laws where his own judg- 
 ment deemed wise, and he 
 then combined them into a 
 great code or body of laws. 
 It was written, not in Sume- 
 rian, as some of the old laws 
 were, but in the Semitic 
 speech of the Akkadians and 
 Amorites. He then had it 
 engraved upon a splendid 
 shaft of stone. At the top 
 was a sculptured scene in 
 which the king was shown 
 receiving the law from the 
 Sun-god (Fig. 93). The new 
 code was then set up in the 
 temple of the great god Mar- 
 duk in Babylon. This shaft 
 has survived to our day, the 
 oldest preserved code of an- 
 cient law. Fragments of other 
 copies on clay tablets, the cop- 
 ies used by the local courts, 
 have also been found. 
 
 Hammurapi's code insists 
 on justice to the widow, the 
 orphan, and the poor; but it 
 also allows many of the old 
 and naive ideas of justice to 
 stand. Especially prominent is 
 the principle that the punish- 
 ment for an injury should 
 
 Fig. 92. A Letter written 
 BY Hammurapi, King of Baby- 
 lonia (about 2100 B.C.) 
 
 One of the fifty-five clay-tablet let- 
 ters of this king (§ 178) which have 
 survived four thousand years. The 
 writing, done while the clay was still 
 soft, shows clear signs of the speed 
 with which the writer, Hammurapi's 
 secretary, took down the king's die- ^?4- Spirit of 
 ,/ _, ^, , , , , Hammurapi's 
 
 tation (§ 178). The tablet has been code; posi- 
 
 baked. It was also inclosed in a tion of woman 
 baked-clay envelope bearing the ad- 
 dress, but this has been broken off 
 and thrown away (§ 179). This 
 letter orders a local governor to 
 hear the appeal of an official who 
 thinks himself unjustly defeated in 
 law (§ 182) 
 
32 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 require the infliction of the same injury on the culprit — the 
 principle of '' an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Injus- 
 tice often resulted. For exam- 
 ple, when a house fell (§ 158) 
 and killed the son of the 
 householder, the guilty builder 
 must also suffer the loss of his 
 son, and the innocent son was 
 therefore condemned to die. 
 Marriage was already a relation 
 requiring legal agreements be- 
 tween the man and his wife, and 
 these are carefully regulated in 
 Hammurapi's code. Indeed the 
 position of women in this early 
 Babylonian world, as in Egypt, 
 was a high one. Women en- 
 gaged in business on their 
 own account, and even became 
 
 * A shaft of stone (diorite) nearly 
 8 feet high, on which the laws are 
 engraved, extending entirely around 
 the shaft and occupying over thirty- 
 six hundred lines. Above is a fine 
 relief showing King Hammurapi 
 standing at the left, receiving the 
 laws from the Sun-god seated at the 
 right. Hammurapi's shaven upper 
 lip proclaiming him a man of the 
 Syrian desert (§ 177) is here in the 
 shadow and cannot be seen. The 
 flames rising from the god's shoul- 
 ders indicate who he is. The flames 
 on the left shoulder are commonly 
 shown in the current textbooks as 
 part of a staff in the god's left hand. 
 This is an error. This scene is an 
 impressive work of Semitic art, six 
 hundred years later than Fig. 89. 
 
 Fig. 93. The Laws of Ham- 
 murapi, THE Oldest Surviv- 
 ing Code of Laws (2100 b.c.)* 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia 133 
 
 professional scribes. They must have attended such a school 
 as that described below (Fig. 95). 
 
 Thus regulated, the busy Babylonian communities prospered 185. indus- 
 as never before. Their products were chiefly agricultural, Hammurapi's 
 especially grain and dates ; but they had also flocks and herds, *'"^^ 
 leather and wool. The weaving of wool was a great in- 
 dustry, for woolen clothing was commonly worn in Western 
 Asia. Copper had been displaced by bronze (§ 146), and 
 one document refers to iron, but this metal was still much 
 too rare to play any part in industry. Iron for common 
 use was still a thousand years in the future in Hammurapi's 
 time (§§360, 392). 
 
 A standing army kept the frontiers safe and quiet, and the 186. Baby- 
 slow donkey caravans of the Babylonian merchants, plodding jjerce in"^' 
 from town to town, were able to penetrate far into the sur- Hammurapi's 
 
 ^ time 
 
 rounding communities. They were so common on the upper 
 Euphrates (map, p. 100) that a town there was called Haran 
 (or Kharan) from the Babylonian word kharanu, meaning 
 ''journey." Many a courtyard was piled high with bales, each 
 bearing a clay seal with the impression of the merchant's 
 name (cf. Fig. 91). These clay seals, broken away as the 
 bales were opened, to-day lie in the rubbish of the Babylonian 
 towns, where the modern excavator picks them up, still dis- 
 playing on one side the merchant's name and on the other 
 the impression of the cord which bound the bale. 
 
 Such seals and the clay-tablet bills which accompanied the 187. Spread 
 bales had to be read by many a local merchant in the towns writing ^^^"^"^ 
 of Syria and beyond the passes of the northern mountains. *!?/'°"S^ , . 
 
 ■' ^ •' ^ Western Asia 
 
 Thus Babylonian cuneiform writing slowly made its way 
 through Western Asia, and the merchants of Syria began to 
 write bills and letters of their own on clay tablets (see § 291 
 and Fig. 126). Hammurapi's commercial influence was widely 
 felt in the West. The memory of his name had not wholly died 
 out in Syria-Palestine in Hebrew days over a thousand years 
 after his death. 
 
134 Ancient Times 
 
 i88. The While the Babylonian merchants were a powerful class and 
 
 center^of ^ were even called the "rulers" in some communities, it was the 
 business temples with their large possessions which were the center of 
 
 business life. They loaned money like banks, dealt in mer- 
 chandise, and controlled extensive lands. 
 
 189. Money There was as yet no coined money, but lumps of silver 
 
 of a given weight circulated so commonly that values were 
 given in weight of silver. Thus a man could say that an 
 ox was worth so many ounces of silver, only he would use 
 "shekels" in place of ounces. Loans were common, though the 
 rate of interest was high: twenty per cent a year, payable in 
 monthly installments. Gold was also in sparing use, for it was 
 fifteen times as valuable as silver. 
 
 190. Babylo- These commercial interests were the leading influences in 
 hi^the A^e^of Babylonian life, even in religion. The temples, as we have 
 Hammurapi g^id^ had a large place in business life ; and religion never pro- 
 claimed the rights of the poor and the humble, nor championed 
 their cause against the rich and powerful. To be sure, the 
 ritual of the temple contained some prayers which indicated 
 a sense of sin and unworthiness. But the advantages of 
 religion consisted in being able to obtain substantial benefits 
 from the gods and to avoid their displeasure. 
 
 191. Marduk The people still worshiped the old Sumerian gods, but the 
 
 political leadership of Babylon had enabled the men of that 
 city to put their Semitic god Marduk at the head of all the 
 gods, and in the old mythical stories (§§ 1 71-173) they in- 
 serted the name Marduk where once the ancient Sumerian god 
 Enlil had played the leading part. At the same time the great 
 Asiatic goddess of love, Ishtar, rose to be the leading goddess 
 of Babylon. She was later to pass over to the Mediterranean 
 to become the Aphrodite of the Greeks (§ 420). 
 
 192. Babylo- Among the benefits granted by the gods was the ability to 
 of reading foretell the future. This art we call divination, and the priest 
 divination' °^ ^^^ practiced it was a diviner. The skilled diviner could inter- 
 pret the mysterious signs on the liver of the sheep (Fig. 94) 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 
 
 135 
 
 slain in sacrifice, and his anxious inquirers believed that he 
 
 could thus reveal the unknown future. He could note the 
 
 positions of the stars 
 
 and the planets, and 
 
 he could thus discern 
 
 the decrees of the 
 
 gods for the future. 
 
 These practices later 
 
 spread westward. We 
 
 shall find the reading 
 
 of the liver a common 
 
 practice in Rome (Fig. 
 
 234), and star-reading 
 
 later developed, under 
 
 the Chaldeans (§ 238), 
 
 into the science of 
 
 astrology, the mother 
 
 of astronomy. It was 
 
 taken up by the Greeks 
 
 and has even survived 
 
 into our own day. 
 
 To train such men 
 and to furnish clerks 
 for business and gov- 
 ernment, schools were 
 necessary. These were 
 usually in or connected 
 with the temple. A 
 schoolhouse of the time 
 of Hammurapi has ac- 
 tually been uncovered 
 (Fig. 95), with the clay-tablet exercises of the boys and girls of 
 four thousand years ago still lying on the floor. They show 
 how the child began his long and difficult task of learning to 
 understand and to write three or four hundred different signs. 
 
 Fig. 94. Ancient Babylonian Divi- 
 ner's Baked-Clay Model of Sheep's 
 Liver (about 2100 b.c.) 
 
 The surface of the model is marked with 
 lines and holes, indicating the places where 
 the diviner must look for the mysterious 
 signs which disclosed the future. These 
 signs were of course the highly varied 
 natural shapes and markings to be observed 
 in any sheep's liver. But the Babylonian 
 believed that these things were signs placed 
 on the liver by the god to whom the sheep 
 had been given, when it was slain as a sac- 
 rifice. The meaning of each part ot the 
 liver is here written in cuneiform in the 
 proper place. The whole forms a kind of 
 map of the surface and shape of the liver 
 with written explanations. Absurd as all 
 this seems to us, the art of reading the 
 future in this way was believed in by millions 
 of people, and finally reached Europe 
 (§ 793 and Fig. 234) 
 
 193. Edu- 
 cation : a 
 Babylonian 
 schoolhouse 
 
136 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 194. Educa- 
 tion : learn- 
 ing to write 
 
 The pupil's slate was a soft clay tablet, on which he could 
 rub out his exercises at any time by smoothing off the surface 
 with a ffet piece of wood or stone. With his reed stylus in his 
 hand, he made long rows of single wedges in three positions, 
 horizontal, vertical, and oblique (see § 148). When he could 
 
 :d 
 
 Fig. 95. An Ancient Babylonian Schoolhouse in the Days 
 OF Hammurapi (about 2100 B.C.). (After Scheil) 
 
 On the right is the ground plan of the schoolhouse, which was about 
 55 feet square. The children went in at the door {A), across the end of 
 the long room {B) where the doorkeeper sat and perhaps kept a clay- 
 tablet tardy-list of the pupils who came late. Then the children entered 
 a court {C) which was open to the sky, and we may suppose that they 
 separated here, the big boys and girls going into their own rooms, 
 while the little ones went into others. Somewhere in the schoolhouse, 
 and probably in the court (6'), was a pile or box of soft clay, where a 
 boy who had already filled his clay-tablet slate with wedge-marks (§ 194) 
 could quickly make himself a new slate by flattening a ball of soft clay. 
 On the left we look through one of the doors of this oldest schoolhouse 
 in the world, as it appeared on the day when it was uncovered by the 
 French in 1894. The native Arab workmen who uncovered it stand in 
 the doorway. The walls of sun-dried brick are still 8 or 9 feet high 
 
 make the single wedges neatly enough, the master set him at 
 work on the wedge-groups forming the signs themselves. 
 Lastly, he was able to undertake words and simple phrases, 
 leading up to sentences and quotations from old documents. 
 One of the tablets found in the schoolhouse contains a proverb 
 which shows how highly the Babylonians valued the art of 
 
Western Asia: Babylonia 137 
 
 writing. It reads : " He who shall excel in tablet-writing shall 
 shine like the sun." Doubtless many a Babylonian lad was 
 encouraged in the long and wearisome task of learning to write, 
 by copying this enthusiastic sentiment. 
 
 Of the higher life of Babylon in this age as expressed in 195. Scanty 
 great works of art and architecture, very little has survived on art"fTom°^ 
 the spot. Indeed, the city of Hammurapi has perished utterly. Hammurapi's 
 Not a single building erected by him now stands. Enough re- tecture 
 mains in other old Babylonian mounds to show us that Western 
 Asia was still without the colonnades already so common on 
 the Nile (Fig. 56). In these Babylonian buildings the arch 
 for the first time assumed a prominent place on the front 
 of a structure. As a result of its early prominence here, 
 the arch traveled slowly westward into Europe (§787 and 
 Fig. 248). The chief architectural creation of early Babylonia 
 was the temple tower, which we have already seen (Fig. 104); 
 but of the temples themselves no surviving example has 
 been excavated.^ 
 
 There seems to have been no painting in Hammurapi's time. 196. Sculp- 
 The sculptured scene in which Hammurapi receives the law Hammurapi's 
 from the Sun-god (Fig. 93) is a work displaying a certain fine '^"^^ 
 dignity and impressiveness. But this scene shows us how 
 Babylonian custom now muffled the human form in heavy 
 woolen garments, so that the sculptor had little opportunity to 
 depict the beauty of the human figure (contrast Fig. 89). 
 Portraiture was scarcely able to distinguish one individual from 
 another. The beautiful art of seal-cutting, the greatest art of 
 the Babylonians, had noticeably declined since the wonderful 
 works of Sargon's age (Fig. 106, A). Although it was commer- 
 cially so successful, yet in art the great age of Hammurapi 
 was already declining. 
 
 1 The common restorations to be found in our current histories of art and 
 architecture, showing us complete early Babylonian temples, rest entirely on 
 imagination, and are pure guesswork. The temples of late Babylonia (Chaldean 
 Empire, Section 20) have been excavated and restored by the German Expedition 
 (Fig. 206). 
 
138 Ancient Times 
 
 197. Earliest! The decline in art was perhaps a prophecy of what was to 
 thr?JmTstic^ come, for the Babylonian nation which Hammurapi had so 
 horse in 1 splendidly organized and started on its way did not survive 
 (2100 B.C.) ; I his death. The mountaineers, whom Hammurapi had driven 
 Hammurapi's lout of the Sumerian cities (§ 176), again descended upon the 
 ^^^^ \ Babylonian plain, as the Sumerians had done so long before. 
 
 They probably brought with them a newcomer even more 
 important than themselves ; for, as they began to appear more 
 and more often on the streets of the Babylonian towns, they 
 seem to have led with them a strange animal, for which the 
 Babylonians had no name. They called it the " animal of the 
 mountains." Thus about four thousand years ago the tamed 
 horse appeared for the first time in a civilized community, 
 and began to play that important part in war and industry 
 which he has played ever since.^ In this continuation of the 
 age-long struggle between nomad and mountaineer on the 
 Babylonian plain, even the line of Hammurapi was swept 
 away, and the horse-breeders of the highlands triumphed 
 (twentieth century B.C.). Their rule was rude and almost 
 barbaric, and their triumph marked the end of old Babylonian 
 progress in civilization. Until its revival under the Chaldeans 
 •: (Section 20) Babylonia relapsed into stagnation so complete 
 that it was rarely interrupted. 
 
 198. Sum- As we look back over this first chapter of early human 
 retrospect progress along the Two Rivers, we see that it lasted about a 
 
 thousand years, beginning a generation or two before 3000 B.C. 
 The Sumerian mountaineers laid the foundations of civilization 
 in Shinar and began a thousand-year struggle with the Semites 
 of the desert. In spite of the ^mingling and union of the two 
 
 1 These mountaineers (called by the Babylonians Kassites) who probably 
 brought the horse into Babylonia did not domesticate him themselves. They 
 received him in trade from the North or from Asia Minor, from tribes of the 
 Indo-Europeans (§ 247), who had long before tamed or domesticated the animal. 
 The chariot courses which show his presence in prehistoric western Europe 
 (§ 39) were probably a little later than this. We recall the appearance of the 
 horse in Egypt about 1700 B.C. (§ 107), some four hundred years later than in 
 Babylonia. 
 
Western Asia : Babylonia 1 39 
 
 races, the Semites triumphed twice under two great leaders, 
 Sargon (2 7 5 o b. c.) and Hammurapi (2 1 00 b. c). The Sumerians 
 then disappeared, and the language of Babylonia became Sem- 
 itic. The reign of Hammurapi, in spite of some weakening in 
 art, marks the highest point and the end of the thousand- 
 year development — the conclusion of the first great chapter 
 of history along the Two Rivers. The scene of the second 
 chapter will carry us up the river valley, just as it did in our 
 study of the Nile. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 13. Describe the Fertile Crescent. How can we sum- 
 marize its history t Discuss its relation to the desert. Who were the 
 inhabitants of the desert .? Describe their life. Into what lands did 
 they shift at the west end of the Fertile Crescent.? at the east end? 
 What rivers cross the east half of the Crescent? Describe the plain 
 they have made. 
 
 Section 14. Who were the early dwellers in the Plain of Shinar? 
 Describe their life. Describe their writing materials and their writ- 
 ing. Summarize their civilization. Describe their buildings and 
 towns. What are such towns like to-day? What do we find in them? 
 Were the Sumerians all united in one nation ? What progress had 
 they made in war ? 
 
 Section 15. What outsiders defeated the Sumerians? Who was 
 the first great Semitic king ? What did the Akkadians learn from the 
 Sumerians? What did the Akkadians accomplish in art? Describe 
 the mingling of Akkadians and Sumerians. 
 
 Section 16. What nation resulted from the mingling of Sume- 
 rians and Akkadians ? How long did it last? Describe its literature. 
 What became of the Sumerian language ? 
 
 Section i 7. Who were the Amorites, and what city in the Plain 
 of Shinar did they seize? Who was their greatest king? Describe 
 his administration as seen in his letters. Tell about his achievements 
 in adjusting the laws of Babylonia. Discuss Babylonian commerce. 
 What did it carry to the peoples along the west of the Fertile Cres- 
 cent? Describe Babylonian divination, education, architecture. What 
 happened at Hammurapi's death ? How long had the first chapter 
 of civilization on the Two Rivers lasted ? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ASSYRIANS AND CHALDEANS 
 
 Section i8. Early Assyria and her Rivals 
 
 199. The 
 
 situation of 
 Assur, the 
 earliest 
 capital of 
 Assyria 
 
 The second chapter of history along the Two Rivers carries us 
 up-river from Babylonia to the northeast corner of the desert- 
 bay. Here, overlooking the Tigris on the east and the desert on 
 the west and south, was an easily defended elevation (Fig. 96), 
 possessing a natural strength unknown to the towns in the flat 
 Plain of Shinar. The place was known as Assur (see map, 
 p. 100), and it later gave its name to the land of Assyria. 
 
 Note. The headpiece shows an Assyrian king attacking a fortified city 
 (ninth century B.C.). A century before the Empire the Assyrians had already 
 developed powerful appliances for destroying a city wall. The city at the right 
 is protected by walls of sun-dried brick like those of Samal (Fig. 97). The de- 
 fending archers on the wall are trying to drive away a huge Assyrian battering- 
 ram, mounted on six wheels, which has been rolled up to the wall from the left. 
 It is an ancient " tank " with its front protected by metal armor plate. It carries 
 a tower as high as the city wall, and Assyrian sharpshooters (archers) in the top 
 of the tower are picking off the defenders of the wall. Within the tank unseen 
 men work the heavy beam of the ram. It is capped with metal and is shown 
 smashing a hole in the city wall, from which the bricks fall out. An observation 
 tower with a metal-covered dome, and holes for peeping out, shields the officer in 
 command as he directs the operation of the machine. In the rear (at the left) 
 is the Assyrian king shooting arrows into the hostile city. He uses a powerful 
 bow, invented in Egypt, which will shoot an arrow with great force from 1000 to 
 1400 feet, and hence he can stand at a safe distance. This scene, carved on a 
 slab of alabaster, is among the earliest Assyrian palace reliefs which have survived 
 (§ 209), and hence the artist's childish representation of men as tall as city walls. 
 
 140 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 141 
 
 The region about Assur was a highland, enjoying a climate 
 much more invigorating than the hot Babylonian plain. It had 
 many fertile valleys winding up into the eastern and northern 
 mountains, where rival cities were already in existence. Here an 
 occasional promontory of rock furnished quarries of limestone, 
 alabaster, and likewise 
 harder stone. Herein 
 Assyria differed greatly 
 from Babylonia, which 
 was without building 
 stone, and had there- 
 fore developed only 
 architecture in brick. 
 These eastern valleys 
 were green with rolling 
 pastures and billowing 
 fields of barley and 
 wheat. Herds of oxen 
 and flocks of sheep and 
 goats dotted the hill- 
 side pastures. Donkeys 
 served as the chief draft 
 animals, and the horse 
 was unknown in the 
 beginning, just as it 
 was originally unknown 
 in Babylonia (§ 146). 
 I Here flourished an 
 
 200. Climate, 
 soil, and 
 products of 
 Assyria 
 
 Fig. 96. The Tigris and the Prom- 
 ontory OF AsSUR AFTER A SNOW- 
 STORM 
 
 The river is at the left, and the fertile plain 
 beyond it soon breaks into hills, leading 
 up to the eastern mountains. The ruins of 
 the ancient city occupy the promontory on 
 the right (§ 199). The buildings in the 
 foreground are those of the archaological 
 expedition which excavated the ruins 
 
 ! agricultural population, little given to other industries or to 
 I trade. In this last particular Assyria was again in sharp 
 \contrast with Babylonia. 
 
 By 3000 B.C. a Semitic tribe of nomads from the desert-bay 
 had settled at Assur, as their kindred of Akkad were doing at 
 the same time in the Plain of Shinar. As Semites they spoke 
 a Semitic dialect like that of the Semites of Babylonia, with 
 
 201. Found- 
 ing of Assur 
 (3000 B.C.) 
 under 
 Sumerian 
 influence 
 
Fig. 07. The Aramean City of Samal, One of the Western 
 
 Rivals of Assyria. (After von Luschan)* 
 
 142 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 143 
 
 differences no greater than we find between the dialects of 
 
 different parts of Germany. The men of Assur at first formed 
 
 a tiny city-kingdom like those of their Sumerian neighbors 
 
 in the South (§ 162). It is evident that they were in close 
 
 contact with the Sumerian towns, whose sculpture and writing 
 
 (Fig. 79) they adopted. They likewise received the Sumerian 
 
 calendar (§ 150) and most of the conveniences of Sumerian 
 
 civilization. There may even have been some Sumerians 
 
 among the early population of the town. 
 
 While the early civilization of Assur thus came from the 202. Assur 
 
 south, the little city-kingdom was equally exposed to influences Baby?onia° 
 
 from the north and west. There in Asia Minor were the hostile ^"^ ^)^^ 
 
 Hittites 
 
 Hittite communities, some of which were venturing eastward to alternately ; 
 the Two Rivers. More than once Assur was ruled by Hittite pansion of 
 lords, only to fall back again under the control of Sargon, anrsouth^ 
 Hammurapi, or some other ruler of Babylonia. Thus obliged 
 for nearly fifteen hundred years after Sargon's reign to defend 
 their uncertain frontiers against their neighbors on both north 
 and south, the Assyrians were toughened by the strain of un- 
 ceasing war. Meantime, too, they introduced the horse (§ 197) ; 
 and added chariots to their army. Then the Assyrian kings 
 
 * Plan (above). The city was nearly half a mile across. It was de- 
 fended by a double wall of sun-dried brick on a heavy stone founda- 
 tion {ABC). The wall was strengthened with towers every 50 feet, 
 entirely round the city, making one hundred towers in all. The castle 
 of the kings of Samal occupied a hill in the middle {G), and the houses 
 of the townsmen filled the space between the city walls and the castle 
 (Z>, E^ F). These houses built of sun-dried brick have disappeared, but 
 the castle can be restored. Restoration of the Castle {H, I, J, IC, L, 
 below). This is the castle, or citadel, marked G in the city plan (above). 
 The walls of sun-dried brick rest on heavy stone foundations widen- 
 ing at the base. Samal in north Syria, midway between the Medi- 
 terranean and the Euphrates (map, p. loo), received influences both 
 from the Hittites in Asia Minor (§353) and from Egypt. The columned 
 porches (A' and L) in front of the palaces were built on a Hittite plan 
 with columns suggested by Egyptian architecture. Hittite art in rehef 
 (Fig. 148) adorned this porch. The Assyrians adopted these Western 
 innovations (Fig. 105). 
 
144 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 began pushing westward, and by 1300 B.C. they crossed the 
 Euphrates and swept back the Hittites from the great river. 
 At the same time they began to descend the Tigris with such 
 power that they even captured and ruled for a time their old 
 conqueror, Babylon, still under the rule of the half-barbaric 
 eastern Kassites, who had brought in the horse (§ 197). 
 
 Fig. 98, General View of Modern Damascus 
 
 Damascus is still the largest city of Syria, having probably three hun- 
 dred thousand inhabitants. When it became the most powerful Ara- 
 mean city-kingdom (§ 203) it must have been surrounded by a wall like 
 that of Samal (Fig. 97), with a splendid royal castle. The ruins of all 
 these ancient Aramean buildings must now lie under those of the 
 modern city, and hence ancient Damascus will never be excavated 
 
 Phoenicians, 
 Hebrews, and 
 Arameans 
 
 203. The Assur was still an inland power, much hke modern Russia, 
 
 of Assyria : ^i^d could not hope to rule Western Asia without access to the 
 Mediterranean. Along the Mediterranean coast new rivals 
 arose to dispute her progress in the West. Here the harbor 
 towns of former Semitic nomads (§ 141) had become a fringe 
 of wealthy Phoenician city-kingdoms carrying on a flourishing 
 commerce by sea (§ 396). These Phoenician cities proved ob- 
 stinate enemies of the Assyrian kings. Meantime a new wave 
 of Semitic nomads had rolled in from the desert-bay (§ 135). 
 By 1400 B.C. they were endeavoring to occupy its western 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 145 
 
 shores, that is, Palestine and Syria, just as the Assyrians had* 
 done at Assur. These Western nomads were the Hebrews in) 
 Palestine, and north of them the Arameans,^ or Syrians, occu-l 
 pying Syria. They soon held the entire west end of the Fertile \ 
 Crescent and cut off Assyria from the sea. After 1200 B.C. the ^ 
 Arameans established a group of flourishing kingdoms in the 
 West. Here, under the influence of Hittite civilization on one 
 side and Egyptian on the 
 other, these Aramean 
 kingdoms of Syria built 
 royal cities (Fig. 97), 
 and luxurious palaces 
 for their kings (Fig. 97, 
 H-L), filled with sumptu- 
 ous furniture (Fig. 100). 
 Among these Aramean 
 kingdoms of Syria the 
 most powerful was 
 J^aoiaseus (Fig. 98). 
 
 The energetic Ara- 
 mean merchants ex- 
 tended their business far 
 beyond their own king- 
 doms. They pushed 
 their caravans all along 
 
 the shores of the desert-bay, even as far north as the sources 
 of the Tigris, and they finally held the commerce of Western 
 Asia. Their bronze weights found in the ruins of Nineveh 
 (Fig. 99) show us how common were the Aramean merchants 
 in the Assyrian market places. Like their kinsmen the Jews in 
 modern civilized states, although they were not organized as a 
 single nation, they were the great commercial leaders of the age. 
 
 Fig. 99. 
 
 Arameajst Weight 
 IN Assyria 
 
 FOUND 
 
 The weight is of bronze, cast in the shape 
 of a lion and equipped with a handle. The 
 inscription on the edge of the base is in 
 Aramaic. Fifteen of these Aramean Hon 
 weights were found at one place, showing 
 the common presence of Aramean mer- 
 chants in the Assyrian markets (§ 204) 
 
 204. 
 
 Wide- 
 spread 
 Aramean 
 commerce 
 
 1 The Arameans are often called Syrians, and the region north of Palestine 
 (see map, p. loo) is commonly called Syria. These two names, Syria and Syrians, 
 are not to be confused with Assyria and Assyrians. 
 
146 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 205. The 
 Aramean 
 merchants 
 spread the 
 first alphabet 
 in Asia 
 
 The Arameans were a highly civilized race. By 1000 b.c. 
 they were using alphabetic writing, which they had borrowed 
 from the Phoenicians (Section 40). It was the earliest system of 
 
 writing known which em- 
 ployed exclusively alpha- 
 betic signs (Fig. 160). 
 Along with the alphabet 
 the Arameans also re- 
 ceived the Egyptian pen 
 and ink, conveniences in- 
 dispensable in the use of 
 the new alphabet (Fig. 
 100). As the Babylonian 
 caravans had in earlier 
 times carried cuneiform 
 tablets throughout West- 
 ern Asia (§187), so the 
 Aramean caravans, with 
 their bills and receipts, 
 began to carry through 
 the same region the 
 alphabet which was to 
 displace cuneiform signs. 
 Thus spread throughout 
 Western Asia the Phoe- 
 nician Aramean alpha- 
 bet. It passed down the 
 Euphrates, to Persia and 
 the inner Asiatic lands, 
 and even to the fron- 
 tiers of India, to furnish 
 
 Fig. 100. An Aramean King of 
 Samal and his Secretary hold- 
 ing AN Egyptian Writing Outfit 
 (Eighth Century b.c.) 
 
 The king sits at the left on a richly carved 
 throne of ebony, ivory, and gold, with a 
 footstool of the same design. Before him 
 stands his secretary, carrying under his left 
 arm something which looks much like a 
 book ; but bound books were still unknown 
 at this time. In his left hand he holds an 
 Egyptian writing case containing pen and 
 ink (cf. Fig. loi). The flat relief in which 
 the entire scene is carved had its origin 
 on the Nile. From Syria, in such cities as 
 Samal, it passed to Assyria, where it was 
 immensely improved (Fig. 107). (From 
 a photograph by von Luschan) 
 
 at length even the East Indian peoples with their alphabet. 
 
 The Aramean merchants of course carried their language 
 (called Aramaic) with them, and Aramaic gradually became very 
 common all around the desert-bay. Indeed, in the old Assyrian 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 147 
 
 
 
 ■J" i 
 
 
 #7 
 
 Fig. 1 01. An Assyrian and an Aramean Scribe recording 
 
 THE Plunder taken from a Captured Asiatic City (Eighth 
 
 Century b.c.) 
 
 The captive women and children ride by in oxcarts on their way to 
 slavery in Assyria, and a shepherd drives off the captured flocks. At the 
 left an Assyrian officer reads from a tablet his notes of the spoil taken 
 in the city. Two scribes write as he reads. The first (in front) holds in 
 his left hand a thick clay tad/ef, from which he has just lifted the stylus 
 grasped in his right hand, as he pauses in his writing. The other scribe 
 holds spread out on his left hand a ro// of papyrus, on which he is 
 busily writing with a pen held in his right hand. He is an Aramean (§ 205), 
 writing Aramaic with pen and ink. We see here, then, the two different 
 methods of writing practiced at this time in Western Asia — the outgoing 
 Asiatic clay tablet and the incoming Egyptian paper, pen, and ink 
 
 communities the people who spoke Aramaic finally outnumbered 206. Assyrian 
 
 . . and Aramaic 
 
 the citizens of Assyrian speech. When an Aramean received a side by side in 
 cuneiform tablet recording business matters in the Assyrian government 
 language, he sometimes took his pen and marked it with memo- 
 randa in Aramaic. Assyrian tablets bearing such notes in 
 Aramaic have been found in the ruins of Assyrian buildings. 
 
148 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 207. Com- 
 plete triumphi 
 of the Ara- ' 
 maic lan- 
 guage along 
 the whole 
 Fertile 
 Crescent 
 
 208. Ara- 
 mean Damas- 
 cus and her 
 Semitic allies 
 along the 
 west end of 
 the Fertile 
 Crescent halt 
 westward 
 expansion 
 of Assyria 
 
 209. Growth 
 of Assyrian 
 civilization 
 before the 
 Empire, 
 under influ- 
 ences from 
 Babylonia and 
 the Hittites 
 
 Indeed public business was finally carried on in both languages, 
 Assyrian and Aramaic. Aramean clerks were appointed to gov- 
 ernment offices, and it was a very common thing for an Ara- 
 mean official of the Assyrian Empire to keep his records on 
 papyrus, writing with pen and ink on a roll, while his Assyrian 
 companion in office wrote with a stylus on a clay tablet (Fig. 1 01). 
 
 Aramaic finally became the language of the entire Fertile 
 Crescent. It even displaced its very similar sister tongue, the 
 Hebrew of Palestine, and thus this merchant tongue of the 
 Arameans, many centuries later, became the language spoken 
 by Jesus and the other Hebrews of his time in Palestine 
 (Fig. 131). In the end this widespread commercial civilization 
 of the Arameans left more lasting influences behind than even 
 the powerful military state of the Assyrians, as we shall see. 
 Unfortunately the Aramean city mounds of Syria, with one ex- 
 ception (Fig. 97), still remain unexcavated ; hence we have 
 recovered but few monuments to tell us of their career. 
 
 As wealthy commercial rulers, the Aramean kings of Damas- 
 cus were long able to make their city so strong as to block 
 further Assyrian advance toward the Mediterranean. One of 
 the best illustrations of the effect of their power is the fact 
 that Damascus long sheltered the feeble little Hebrew king- 
 doms from Assyrian attack (see map, p. 100). The Assyrian 
 army marched westward and looked out upon the Mediterranean 
 by 1 1 GO B.C., but for more than three centuries after this the 
 kings of Assur were unable to conquer and hold this western 
 region against the strong group of Aramean, Phoenician, and 
 Hebrew kingdoms. They held the Assyrian armies at bay 
 until the eighth century B.C. 
 
 As Assyrian power thus seemed to pause at the threshold of 
 the Empire, let us look back for a moment over the long two 
 thousand years of development and see what progress Assur 
 had made in civilization since it had received from the Sume- 
 rians such things as cuneiform writing (§ 201), etc. Assur was 
 near enough to the North and West to feel influences from there 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 149 
 
 also, especially from the Hittites (§ 356), who contributed much 
 both in art and in religion. All these inherited things Assur 
 
 had also cultivated and developed. 
 She had added some two hundred 
 cuneiform signs to the list received 
 from Babylonia. Under influences 
 from the Hittite art of north Syria 
 (Fig. 100) the sculptors of Assur 
 were learning to tell the story of the 
 king's valiant exploits in elaborate 
 stone pictures cut in flat relief on 
 great slabs of alabaster (Figs. loi 
 and 105). These were set up in long 
 rows along the palace walls. This 
 architectural sculpture was an art 
 not practiced in Babylonia. As in 
 sculpture, so also in architecture, 
 the possession of stone enabled the 
 Assyrians to do what had been 
 impossible in stoneless Babylonia. 
 The Assyrian builder could erect 
 heavy foundations of stone under 
 his buildings, as the Hittite and 
 Syrian had long been doing. Above 
 the foundation the Assyrian build- 
 ing itself, however, continued to 
 be made of sun-dried brick, as in 
 Babylonia. 
 
 Above is the winged sun-disk 
 
 of Egypt, the borrowed symbol of the Assyrian Sun-god Assur (§ 210), 
 whom we see shooting his deadly arrows. Below is the beautiful sym- 
 bol of the tree of life, which originated in old Babylonia (see § 155). 
 The early Babylonian worshiper's palm branch in a jar of water (§ 155) 
 had been developed by artists into a decorative palm tree seen here 
 rising like a post in the middle, with its spreading crown of leaves 
 at the top and festooned with tufts of palm leaves like those on the 
 top of the tree. In this form it was later much used by the Greeks 
 
 Fig. 102. Symbol OF THE 
 God Assur surmounting 
 AN Assyrian Represen- 
 tation OF THE Old Baby- 
 lonian Tree of Life 
 
ISO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 210. Religion 
 of Assur 
 
 The sacred stories and symbols of the gods which had 
 grown up among the Babylonian communities (§§ 171-173) 
 were taken over by the men of Assur, who copied and studied 
 
 Fig. 103. Stone Coffin of a King of Assyria a Century 
 before the empire 
 
 In this limestone sarcophagus (coffin) lay the body of an Assyrian king 
 buried here twenty-eight hundred years ago, in the ninth century B.C. 
 Above this sun-dried-brick vault in which he was buried rose the palace 
 of Assur. The German excavators found here five such vaults under 
 the floor of the palace. The dead Assyrian king was thus buried under 
 his dwelling like ordinary Assyrians or Babylonians (Fig. 81). These are 
 the first royal tombs ever found in Assyria. They had been broken open 
 and robbed, the bodies of the kings scattered, and the coffins mostly shat- 
 tered to pieces, over two thousand years ago, by the Parthians (§ 1023), 
 and they were found empty by the excavators 
 
 and revered them (Fig. 102). But the Assyrians clung to 
 their old tribal god Assur, whose name was the same as that 
 of their city and their tribe. He was a fierce god of war, 
 whom they identified with the sun. He led the Assyrian 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 151 
 
 kings on their victorious campaigns, and shot his deadly arrows 
 far and wide among the foe (Fig. 102). As his symbol, the 
 Assyrians borrowed the winged sun-disk from the Hittites of. 
 Syria, who had received it from Egypt (cf. Figs. 34 and 102). 
 Their great goddess was Ishtar^ the. goddess--^ -Jove, whom 
 we have already met in Babylonia. Religion among the warlike 
 Assyrians, as in Babylonia, had little effect upon the conduct 
 of the worshiper. One reason for this was the fact that the 
 Assyrians had much the same notions of the hereafter as the 
 Babylonians, with no belief in a judgment to come. Their 
 burials, as in Babylonia (Fig. 81), were placed under the floor 
 or court of the dead man's house. 
 
 Recent excavations at Assur uncovered a series of brick 211. Dis- 
 vaults under the pavement of the royal palace. In these tomb? of the 
 vaults were found fragments of massive stone coffins, two ^J"|^ 
 of which, however, had not been broken up (Fig. 103). These 
 are the oldest royal burials known in Asia, and the first ever 
 found in Assyria; for in these coffins once lay the bodies of 
 the powerful kings of Assur, who lived and ruled and built 
 there, toward the end of the long two-thousand-year develop- 
 ment which led up to the Assyrian Empire. 
 
 Section 19. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 
 
 606 B.C.) 
 
 By the middle of the eighth century B.C., Assyria was 212. Con- 
 again pushing her plans of westward expansion. Damascus, westward 
 combined with the other Western kingdoms, made a desperate ^f^ss^'ria 
 resistance, only to be slowly crushed. When at last Damascus 
 fell (732 B.C.), the countries of the West were all subdued and 
 made subject kingdoms. Thus the once obscure little city of 
 Assur gained the lordship over Western Asia as head of an 
 empire, a great group of conquered and vassal nations 
 (§ 108). The story of that Empire forms the second great 
 chapter of history along the Two Rivers. 
 
152 Ancient Times 
 
 213. Sar- In the midst of these great Western campaigns of Assyria, 
 A^" rL^/722- while he was besieging the unhappy Hebrew city of Samaria 
 705 B.C.) ^§ 306), one of the leading Assyrian generals usurped the 
 
 throne (722 b. c), and as king he took the name of Sargon, the 
 first great Semite of Babylonia, who had reigned two thousand 
 years earlier (§ 166). The new Sargon raised Assyria to the 
 height of her grandeur and power as a military empire. His 
 descendants were the great emperors of Assyria.^ On the 
 northeast of Nineveh he built a new royal residence on a 
 vaster scale and more magnificent than any Asia had ever 
 seen before. He called it Dur-Sharrukin (Sargonburg). 
 Its inclosure was a mile square, large enough to shelter 
 a community of eighty thousand people, and the palace build- 
 ing itself (Fig. 104) covered twenty-five acres. Babylonia in 
 her greatest days had never possessed a seat of power like 
 this. In no uncertain terms it proclaimed Assyria mistress of 
 Western Asia. 
 
 214. Sennach- The grandeur of Sargon II was even surpassed by his son 
 681 B.C.) Sennacherib, one of the great statesmen of the early Orient. 
 
 Far up in Asia Minor the name of Sennacherib was known 
 and feared, as he plundered Tarsus and the easternmost Ionian 
 Greek strongholds (§ 438) just after 700 B.C. Thence his 
 campaigns swept southward along the Mediterranean to the 
 very borders of Egypt. To be sure, much of Sennacherib's 
 army was destroyed by a pest which smote them from the 
 Delta marshes (§ 309), and hence Sennacherib never crossed 
 the Egyptian frontier. But against Babylon, his other ancient 
 rival, he adopted the severest measures. Exasperated by one 
 revolt after another, Sennacherib completely destroyed the 
 venerable city of Hammurapi and even turned the waters 
 of a canal over the desolate ruins. 
 
 1 The leading kings of the dynasty of Sargon II are as follows : 
 
 Sargon II 722-705 B.C. 
 
 Sennacherib 705-681 b.c. 
 
 Esarhaddon 681-668 b.c. 
 
 Assurbanipal (called Sardanapalus by the Greeks) . . 668-626 b. c. 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 153 
 
 Thus Babylon was annihilated ; but the ancient power on 215. Egypt 
 the Nile remained a continual disturber of Assyrian control. ^°"J"e''e.^ 
 A crushing burden of Assyrian tribute had been laid on all 
 
 Fig. 104. Restoration of the Palace and a Portion of the 
 
 City of Sargonburg, the Royal Residence of Sargon II 
 
 (722-705 B.C.). (After Place) 
 
 The palace stands partly inside and partly outside of the city wall on 
 a vast elevated platform of brick masonry containing about 25 acres. 
 Inclined roadways and stairways rise from the inside of the city wall. 
 The king could thus drive up in his chariot from the streets of the city 
 below to the palace pavement above. The rooms and halls are clustered 
 about a number of courts open to the sky. The main entrance (with 
 stairs before it leading down to the city) is adorned with massive towers 
 and arched doorways (§222) built of richly colored glazed brick (Plate II, 
 p. 164) and embellished with huge human-headed bulls carved of alabaster. 
 The temple tower behind the great court, inherited from Babylonia, was 
 the ancestor of the Christian Church spire (Fig. 272). The streets and 
 houses of the city filled the space below the palace within the city walls, 
 which could accommodate some eighty thousand people (§ 213) 
 
 subject states, and hence Egypt was constantly able to stir 
 revolt among the oppressed Western peoples, who longed to 
 be freed from the payment of this tribute. Assyria perceived 
 

 ^<J 
 
 I i iw-:Sl 
 
 
 SCALE OF FEET 
 
 ISoo 43oo sobo 
 
 m 
 
 s ^ 
 
 eeff</' 
 
 [brought dfiwn by\ 
 
 Khtise^r^B^ver 
 
 the Tigris to >i^, 'MA *"*~* Cli sl P *• 
 
 Sketch Map of Nineveh 
 
 Notice the changes in the course of the Tigris, which formerly flowed 
 along the west wall of the city. This change has been caused by the 
 Khoser River, which has carried down soil and formed a plain between 
 the wall of the city and the Tigris. In Fig. 203 we have a view from a 
 housetop in Mosul, across the river from Nineveh, showing us this plain, 
 with the mound of Kuyunjik just behind it. This mound covers the 
 palaces of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal. A destructive overflow of 
 the Khoser River, which flooded the city and broke down a section of 
 the eastern wall, was one of the chief causes of the fall of Nineveh 
 
 154 
 
The Assyrians mid Chaldeans 155 
 
 that Egypt's interference must be stopped. Sennacherib's son, 
 therefore, appeared before the gates of the eastern Delta forts 
 by 674 B.C. Repulsed at first, he returned to the attack, and 
 although he died before entering the Delta, Egypt at last fell 
 a prey to the Assyrian armies, and Sennacherib's grandson was 
 for a time lord of the lower Nile. 
 
 By 700 B.C. the Assyrian Empire included all of the Fer- 216. Extent 
 tile Crescent. It thus extended entirely around the great Assyrian 
 desert-bay ; but it furthermore included much of the northern Empire 
 mountain country far behind. The conquest of Egypt gave it 
 also the lower Nile valley in the west, though this last was too 
 distant and too detached to be kept long. Built up by irre- 
 sistible and far-reaching military campaigns which went on for.- 
 two generations after Sargon II, the Assyrian conquests finallyj 
 formed the most extensive empire the world had yet seen. 
 
 Sennacherib was not satisfied merely to enlarge the old royal 217. Nineveh 
 residences of his fathers at Assur or at Sargonburg. He de- Assyrian 
 voted himself to the city of Nineveh, north of Assur, and it '^^P^^^ 
 now became the far-famed capital of Assyria. Along the Tigris 
 the vast palaces (Fig. 104) and imposing temple towers of the 
 Assyrian emperors arose, reign after reign. The lofty and 
 massive walls of Nineveh which Sennacherib built stretched 
 two miles and a half along the banks of the Tigris. Here in 
 his gorgeous palace he ruled the western Asiatic world with an 
 iron hand, and collected tribute from all the subject peoples. 
 
 The whole administration centered in the king's business 218. Means 
 office. He maintained a system of royal messengers, and in each cation and 
 of the more important places on the main roads he appointed ^^^^If^^^^' 
 
 an official to attend to the transmission of all royal business. Assyrian 
 
 Empire 
 In this manner all clay-tablet letters or produce and merchan- 
 dise belonging to the royal house were sure of being forwarded. 
 This organization formed the beginnings of a postal system^ 
 which continued for many centuries in the Orient (§ 273). 
 
 1 There are indications that it was already in existence in Asia, under Egyp- 
 tian rule, as far back as 2000 B.C. 
 
1 56 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 
 
 A^^V 
 
 Fig. 105. 
 
 ft^M^S'^i=?=WO^>"^.^,LMy(W 
 
 Assyrian Soldiers pursuing the Fleeing Enemy 
 ACROSS A Stream 
 
 The stream occupies the right half of the scene. As drawn by the 
 Assyrian artist, it may be recognized by the fish and the curhng waves ; 
 also by the bows and quivers full of arrows floating downstream, along 
 with the bodies of two dead horses, one on his back with feet up. Two 
 dead men, with arrows sticking in their bodies, are drifting in mid- 
 stream. Three of the living leap from the bank as their pursuers stab 
 them with spears or shoot them with drawn bow. The Assyrian spear- 
 men carry tall shields, but the archer needs both hands for his bow and 
 carries no shield. The dead are strewn along the shore, occupying the 
 left half of the scene. At the top the vultures are plucking out their 
 eyes ; in the middle an Assyrian is cutting off a head ; beside him an- 
 other plants his foot on a dead man's head and steals his weapons. 
 The vegetation along the river is shown among the bodies 
 
 In this way the emperor received the letters and reports of 
 some sixty governors over districts and provinces, besides 
 many subject kings who were sometimes allowed to continue 
 their rule under Assyrian control. We even have several clay- 
 tablet letters dispatched by Sennacherib himself while he was 
 
li^oM^!*^ 
 
 f >:'^' 
 
 T^\^^: 
 
 .^ 
 
 — ^ 
 
Fig. 107. Assyrian Soldiers of the Empire. (From the 
 Palace Reliefs of Assurbanipal) 
 
 It was the valor of these stalwart archers and spearmen which made 
 Assyria mistress of the East for about a century and a half (§§ 220-221) 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 157 
 
 crown prince, and addressed to his royal father, Sargon. To 
 maintain the army was the chief work of the State. The State 
 was a vast militaiy machine, more terrible than any mankind 
 had ever yet seen (Fig. 105). We shall understand this situa- 
 tion if we imagine that our war department were the central 
 office in Washington, and that our government should devote 
 itself chiefly to supporting it. 
 
 An important new fact aided in bringing about this result. 219. The 
 Through contact with the Hittite west (§360) iron had been EmpSe^and 
 introduced among the Assyrians. The Assyrian forces were *^ ^^°" ^se 
 \}ci^x^iox^^Jhe^^^tSJLlatge^XLr^ with weapons of iron. 
 
 A single arsenal room of Sargori's palace was found to contain 
 two hundred tons of iron implements. To a certain extent the 
 rise and power of the Assyrian Empire were among the results 
 of the incoming of iron. 
 
 The bulk of the Assyrian army was composed of archers, sup- 220. The 
 ported by heavy-armed spearmen and shield bearers (Fig. 107). Assyrians'^ 
 Besides these, the famous horsemen and chariotry of Nineveh 
 (Fig. 106, B) became the scourge of the East. For the first 
 time too the Assyrians employed the battering-ram (head- 
 piece, p. 140) and formidable siege machinery. The sun-dried- 
 brick walls of the Asiatic cities could thus be battered down 
 or pierced, and no fortified place could long repulse the assaults 
 of the fierce Assyrian infantry. 
 
 Besides their iron weapons and their war machines the 221. Ter- 
 Assyrian soldiers displayed a certain inborn ferocity which Assyrian 
 held all Western Asia in abject terror before the thundering ^"""^y 
 squadrons of the Ninevites.^ Wherever the terrible Assyrian 
 armies swept through the land, they left a trail of ruin and 
 desolation behind. Around smoking heaps which had once 
 been towns, stretched lines of tall stakes, on which were stuck 
 the bodies of rebellious rulers flayed alive ; while all around rose 
 mounds and piles of the slaughtered, heaped up to celebrate 
 the great king's triumph and serve as a warning to all revolters. 
 
 1 See Nahum iii, 2-3. 
 
158 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 222. Civili- 
 zation of the 
 Assyrian 
 Empire : 
 architecture 
 
 223. Civili- 
 zation of the 
 Assyrian 
 Empire : 
 sculpture 
 
 Through clouds of dust rising along all the main roads of the 
 Empire the men of the subject kingdoms beheld great herds 
 of cattle, horses, and asses, flocks of goats and sheep, and long 
 lines of camels loaded with gold and silver, the wealth of the 
 conquered, converging upon the palace at Nineveh. Before 
 them marched the chief men of the plundered kingdoms, with 
 the severed heads of their former princes tied about their necks. 
 
 While this plundered wealth was necessary for the support 
 of the army, it also served higher purposes. As we have seen 
 (Fig. 104), the Assyrian palaces were now imposing buildings, 
 suggesting in architecture the far-reaching power of their builder. 
 In the hands of the Assyrian architects the arch, inherited from 
 Babylonia, for the first time became an imposing monumental 
 feature of architecture. The impressive triple arches of the 
 Assyrian palace entrance, faced with glazed brick in gorgeous 
 colors (Plate II), were the ancestor of the Roman triumphal 
 arches (Fig. 248). On either side were vast human-headed 
 bulls wrought in alabaster, and above the whole towered lofty 
 castellated walls of baked brick, visible far across the royal 
 city (Fig. 104). 
 
 Within the palace, as a dado running along the lower portion 
 of the walls, were hundreds of feet of relief pictures cut in 
 alabaster (see Figs. loi, 105,106,^, and 107). They show great 
 improvement over the older work (headpiece, p. 140) a century 
 before the Empire. They display especially the great deeds of 
 the emperor in campaign and hunting field (Figs. 105 and 
 106, B^. The human figures are monotonously alike, hard, cold, 
 and unfeeling. Nowhere is there a human form which shows 
 any trace of feeling, either joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain. The 
 Assyrian sculptor's wild beasts, however, are sometimes mag- 
 nificent in the abandon of animal ferocity which they display 
 (Fig. 106, B^. The tiger was in the blood of the Assyrian, and 
 it came out in the work of his chisel. On the other hand, the 
 pathetic expression of suffering exhibited by some of these won- 
 derful animal forms (Fig. 106, B) was a triumph of art, which the 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 159 
 
 Assyrian sculptor owed to a study of the superb lions and bulls 
 (Fig. 106, ^) on the exquisite old Babylonian seals of the age of 
 Sargon I, two thousand years earlier. The art of portraiture in 
 statue form never got beyond very crude and unskillful efforts. 
 
 The emperors were 
 obliged to depend much 
 on foreign skill, both 
 in art and industries. 
 The art of glazing col- 
 ored brick had been 
 borrowed from Egypt 
 (§ Z:^. All the patterns 
 of Assyrian decorative 
 art likewise came from 
 Egypt, and their furni- 
 ture made by Phoeni- 
 cian workmen, of ebony 
 and ivory, often be- 
 trays Egyptian origin 
 (Fig. 108). Phoenician 
 craftsmen at Nineveh 
 wrought splendidly en- 
 graved bronze platters 
 (Fig. 158). Sennache- 
 rib tells us that he had 
 in his palace " a portal 
 made after the model 
 of a Hittite palace," 
 and his predecessors 
 had long before built similar portals like those they had seen 
 in the Hittite west (Fig. 97). It is in this ability to use foreign 
 resources that we must recognize one of. the greatest traits of 
 the Assyrian emperors. 
 
 In the fine gardens which Sennacherib laid out along the 
 river above and below Nineveh he planted strange trees and 
 
 Fig. 108. Ivory Fragment of an 
 
 Egyptian Winged Sphinx found in 
 
 AN Assyrian Palace 
 
 Such fragments of carved ivory were used 
 in inlaying furniture like that in Fig. 100. 
 They were the work of Phcenician crafts- 
 men in the service of the Assyrian kings 
 (§ 224). These workmen constantly em- 
 ployed Egyptian designs and symbols com- 
 bined with those of Assyria. The winged 
 animal, first found in Egyptian art, passed 
 to the Phoenicians and Hittites in Syria 
 and thence to Assyria, where it finally de- 
 veloped into the huge winged bull-figure 
 adorning the front of the king's palace 
 
 224. Assyrian 
 borrowing 
 from abroad 
 
i6o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 225. Intro- 
 duction of for- 
 eign plants, 
 including 
 earliest 
 cotton 
 
 226. Assur- 
 
 banipal's 
 
 library 
 
 227. Internal 
 decay; eco- 
 nomic and 
 agricultural 
 decline 
 
 plants from all quarters of his great empire. Among them 
 were cotton trees, of which he says, '* The trees that bore wool 
 they clipped and they carded it for garments." These cotton 
 trees came from India. We thus see appearing for the first 
 time in the ancient world the cotton which now furnishes so 
 large a part of our own national wealth.^ 
 
 Higher interests were also cultivated among the Assyrians, 
 and literature flourished. Assurbanipal, grandson of Sennach- 
 erib, and the last great Assyrian emperor, boasts that his 
 father instructed him not only in riding and shooting with bow 
 and arrow but also in writing on clay tablets and in all the 
 wisdom of his time. A great collection _ of twenty-two thou- 
 sand clay tablets was discovered in Assurbanipal's fallen library 
 rooms at Nineveh, where they had been lying on the floor for 
 twenty-five hundred years. They are now in the British 
 Museum. In this library the religious, scientific, and literary 
 works of past ages had been systematically collected by the 
 emperor's orders (Fig. 109). They formed the earliest library 
 known in Asia. The Assyrians were far more advanced in 
 these matters than the Babylonians, and Assyrian civilization 
 was far from being a mere echo of Babylonian culture. 
 
 Like many another later ruler, however, the Assyrian em- 
 perors made a profound mistake in policy. For their wars of 
 conquest led to the destruction of the industrial and wealth- 
 producing population, first within their own territory and then 
 throughout the subject kingdoms. In spite of interest in intro- 
 ducing a new textile like cotton, the Assyrian rulers did not 
 or could not build up industries or commerce like those of 
 Babylonia. The people were chiefly agricultural, and in the 
 old days it had sufficed to call them from their farming for 
 short periods to defend the frontiers. With the expansion of 
 the Empire, however, such temporary bodies of troops were 
 insufficient, and the peasants were permanently taken from the 
 
 1 This cotton tree was doubtless related to the lower-growing cotton plant of 
 our Southern states. 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 i6i 
 
 Fig. 109. Portion of Old Babylonian Story of the Flood 
 
 FROM AsSURBANIPAL'S LIBRARY AT NiNEVEH 
 
 This large flat tablet was part of an Assyrian cuneiform book consist- 
 ing of a series of such tablets. This flood story (§ 155) tells how the 
 hero, Ut-napishtim, built a great ship and thus survived a terrible flood, 
 in which all his countrymen perished. Each of these clay-tablet books, 
 collected in fresh copies by Assurbanipal for his library (§ 226), bore 
 his " bookmark " just like a book in a modern library. To prevent any- 
 one else from taking the book, or writing his name on it, the Assyrian 
 king's bookmark contained the following warning : " Whosoever shall 
 carry off this tablet, or shall inscribe his name upon it side by side with 
 mine own, may Assur and Belit overthrow him in wrath and anger, and 
 may they destroy his name and posterity in the land " 
 
 fields to fill thf^ ranks of an ever-growing standing army. It is 
 not improbable that the ruling class were buying up the small 
 farms to form great estates. We learn of disused canals and 
 
l62 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 228. Foreign 
 
 levies in 
 
 the army ; 
 
 Aramean 
 
 merchants 
 
 controlling 
 
 trade 
 
 229. Assaults 
 from without : 
 the Chal- 
 deans from 
 the desert 
 
 230. Assaults 
 from without : 
 Indo- 
 European 
 peoples 
 from the 
 mountains 
 
 idle fields as we read of Sargon's efforts to restore the old 
 farming communities. Nevertheless, so vast an expansion of the 
 Empire exceeded the power of the standing army to defend it. 
 
 As reports of new revolts came in, the harassed ruler at 
 Nineveh forced the subjects of his foreign vassal kingdoms 
 to enter the army. With an army made up to a dangerous 
 extent of such foreigners, with no industries, with fields lying 
 idle, with the commerce of the country in the hands of the 
 Aramean traders (§ 204), and Aramean speech more com- 
 mon in the cities of the Empire, even in Nineveh, than that of 
 the Assyrians themselves — under these conditions the Assyrian 
 nation fast lost its inner strength. 
 
 In addition to such weakness within, there were the most 
 threatening dangers from without. These came, as of old, 
 from both sides of the Fertile Crescent. Drifting in from the 
 desert, the Aramean hordes were constantly occupying the 
 territory of the Empire. Sennacherib in one campaign took 
 over two hundred thousand captives out of Babylonia, mostly 
 Arameans. At the same time another desert tribe called the 
 " Kaldi," whom we know as the Chaldeans, had been for cen- 
 turies creeping slowly around the head of the Persian Gulf and 
 settling along its shores at the foot of the eastern mountains. 
 They were Semitic nomads, repeating what the Akkadians had 
 done in Akkad (§ 166), the Amorites in Babylon (§ 175), and 
 the Assyrians at Assur (§ 201). 
 
 On the other hand, in the northern mountains the advancing 
 hordes of Indo-European peoples were in full view (see Sec- 
 tion 21), led by the tribes of the Medes and Persians (§ 251). 
 These movements shook the Assyrian State to its foundations. 
 The Chaldeans mastered Babylonia, and then, in combination 
 with the Median hosts from the northeastern mountains, they 
 assailed the walls of Nineveh. 
 
 Weakened by a generation of decline within, and struggling 
 vainly against this combined assault from without, the mighty 
 city of the Assyrian emperors fell (606 B.C.). In the voice 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 163 
 
 of the Hebrew prophet Nahum (ii, 8, 13, and iii entire), we 231. Fall of 
 hear an echo of the exulting shout which resounded from the desmlctLn 
 Caspian to the Nile as the nations discovered that the terrible ?| Nineveh 
 
 ^ (606 B.C.) 
 
 scourge of the East had at last been laid low. Its fall was 
 forever, and when two centuries later Xenophon and his ten 
 thousand Greeks marched past the place (§ 630), the Assyrian 
 nation was but a vague tradition, and Nineveh, its great city, 
 was a vast heap of rubbish as it is to-day (Fig. 203). Even 
 Assyrian speech passed away, and Aramaic became the tongue 
 of the region which had once been Assyria, just as it was also 
 to become the language of Babylonia (§ 265). The second 
 great chapter of history on the Two Rivers was ended, having 
 lasted but a scant century and a half (about 75© to 606 B.C.). 
 
 The fall of Assyria, while dramatically sudden and tragically 232. Progress 
 complete, nevertheless left the nations of Western Asia in a the^Assyrian 
 very different situation from that in which the first Assyrian Empire 
 emperors had found them. The rule of a single sovereign had 
 been enforced upon the whole great group of nations around 
 the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and the methods of 
 organizing such an empire had been much improved. It was 
 really in continuance of this organization that the great Persian 
 Empire was built up (§ 260), sixty years after the fall of Assyria. 
 The Assyrian Empire, especially in its great military organiza- 
 tion, marked a long step forward in that gradual growth of the 
 idea of all-including world power, which culminated at last in 
 the Roman Empire. In spite of its often ferocious harshness, 
 the Assyrian rule had furthered civilization. The building of the 
 magnificent palaces in and near Nineveh formed the first chapter 
 in great architecture in Asia. At the same time Nineveh pos- 
 sessed the first libraries as yet known there. Finally, the Assyrian 
 dominion, as we shall see (§ 307), created the international 
 situation which enabled the Hebrews to gain the loftiest con- 
 ceptions of their own God, as they matched him against the 
 great war god of Assyria — conceptions which have profoundly 
 influenced the entire later history of mankind. 
 
164 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 20. The Chaldean Empire 
 Semitic Empire 
 
 THE Last 
 
 234. Reign of 
 
 Nebuchad- 
 nezzar (604- 
 561 B.C.) 
 
 233. Rise of The Kaldi, or Chaldeans, the new masters of Babylonia, 
 Empire ^^" "ow founded an empire whose brief career formed the third 
 great chapter of history on the Two Rivers.^ They were the 
 "tasTBemitic lords of Babylonia. The Chaldeans made their 
 capital at Babylon, rebuilt after its destruction by Sennacherib 
 (§ 214). They gave their name to the land, so that we now 
 know it as Chaldea (from " Kaldi "). While they left the 
 Medes in possession of the. northern mountains, the empire 
 of the Chaldeans included the entire Fertile Crescent. 
 
 At Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest of the Chaldean 
 emperors, now (604 B.C.) began a reign of over forty years — a 
 reign of such power and magnificence, especially as reflected to 
 us in the Bible, that he has become one of- the great figures of 
 oriental history. Exasperated by the obstinate revolts en- 
 couraged by Egypt in the West, Nebuchadnezzar punished 
 the Western nations, especially the little Hebrew kingdom of 
 Judah. He finally carried away many Hebrews as captives to 
 Babylonia and destroyed Jerusalem, their capital (586 B.C.). 
 
 In spite of long and serious wars, the great king found time 
 and wealth to devote to the enlargement and beautification of 
 Babylon. Copying much from Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar was 
 able to surpass his Assyrian predecessors in the splendor of the 
 great buildings which he now erected. In the large temple 
 quarter in the south of the city he rebuilt the temples of the 
 long-revered Babylonian divinities (Fig. 206). Leading from 
 
 235. Magnifi- 
 cent build- 
 ings of 
 Chaldean 
 Babylon 
 
 1 The three great chapters of history on the Two Rivers are: 
 
 1. Early Babylonia (thirty-first century to twenty-first century B.C.; Sargon I 
 about 2750 B.C., Hammurapi about 2100 B.C.). See Sections 14-17. 
 
 2. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.). See Section 19. 
 
 3. The Chaldean Empire (about 606 to 539 B.C.). See Section 20. 
 
 With the exception of parts of the first, these three epochs were periods of 
 Semitic power. To these we might in later times add 2i fourth period of Semitic 
 supremacy, the triumph of Islam in the seventh century a.d., after the death of 
 Mohammed (§ 1154)- 
 
'*^?^^H^ 
 
 
 .^ 
 
 1 
 ! 
 
 
 ^>>_i 
 
 /V^ 
 
 I! 
 
 1 
 
 
 N 
 
 i\ 
 
 
 v5 5 V- 
 
 -3 
 
 ::i o (U 
 
 Vi 
 
 o 
 
 bJO 
 
 O 
 
 C/2 V3 i^ 
 OJ V3 C 
 
 <u 
 
 w 
 
 (U 
 
 o o ;-^' 
 
 I ?^ c - 
 
 h-I ^ 
 
 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 
 
 165 
 
 these to the palace, he laid out a festival avenue which passed 
 through an imposing gateway called the " Ishtar Gate " (Fig. 
 no), for it was dedicated to this god3^ss. Behind it lay 
 
 SCALE OF FEET 
 
 l300 23oo 3000 4800 53(X) 
 
 Map of Babylon in the Chaldean Age 
 
 the vast imperial palace and the offices of government, while 
 high over all towered the temple-mount which rose by the 
 Marduk temple as a veritable ''Tower of Babel" (see § 152). 
 Masses of rich tropical verdure, rising in terrace upon terrace, 
 
1 66 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 236. Extent 
 and modern 
 excavation of 
 Chaldean 
 Babylon 
 
 forming a lofty garden, crowned the roof of the imperial palace 
 and, overlooking the Ishtar Gate, enhanced the brightness of 
 
 its colors. Here in the cool 
 shade of palms and ferns, 
 inviting to luxurious ease, 
 the great king might enjoy 
 an idle hour with the ladies 
 of his court and look down 
 upon the^^lendors of his 
 city. C These roof gardgn? 
 of Nebuchadnezzar's pal- 
 ace were the mysterious 
 Hanging Gardens of Baby- 
 lon, whose fame spread 
 far into the West until 
 they were numbered by 
 the Greeks among the 
 Seven Wonders of the 
 World. Babylon thus be- 
 came a monumental city 
 like those of Assyria and 
 Egypt (§ 113). 
 
 For the first time Baby- 
 lonia saw a very large city. 
 It was immensely extended 
 by Nebuchadnezzar, and 
 enormous fortified walls 
 were built to protect it, in- 
 cluding one (above the 
 city) that extended entirely 
 across from river to river. 
 It is this Babylon of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar whose marvels 
 over a century later so im- 
 pressed Herodotus (§567), 
 
 
 
 Fig. 1 10. The Ishtar Gate of the 
 
 Palace Quarter of Babylon in 
 
 THE Chaldean Empire (Sixth 
 
 Century b.c.) 
 
 This gate, recently excavated by the 
 Germans (cf. Fig. in), is the most im- 
 portant building still standing in Baby- 
 lon. It is not a restoration like F'ig. 206. 
 The towers rising on either side of the 
 gate are adorned with the figures of 
 animals in splendidly colored glazed 
 tile, as used also in the Assyrian pal- 
 aces (Plate II, p. 164). Behind this gate 
 rose the sumptuous palace of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, crowned by the beautiful 
 roof gardens known as the Hanging 
 Gardens of Babylon (§ 235) 
 
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 167 
 
 as is shown in the description of the city which he has left us. 
 This, too, is the Babylon which has become familiar to all 
 Christian peoples as the great city of the Hebrew captivity 
 (Section 31). Of all the glories which made it world renowned 
 in its time, little now remains. The excavations in the city 
 
 ilf«ilW%H«5J:.l 
 
 ;^»t%JAfrfs^a^#|t^^ 
 
 .v^^UiL 
 
 I 
 
 Fig. III. Beginning of the Excavation of Ancient Babylon 
 ON March 26, 1899 
 
 The mounds shown are the rubbish covering the palace of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar (§ 235). The palms in the background fringe the Euphrates. 
 The Arab workmen in the foreground have just uncovered part of 
 the pavement of Nebuchadnezzar's splendid Festival Street, or pro- 
 cessional avenue, which connected the palace and the Ishtar Gate 
 (Fig. no) with one of the great temples. Beneath all these works of 
 Chaldeaji Babylon (Section 20) should lie the remains of old Babylon 
 of Hammurapi's age (Section 17) ; but Sennacherib's destruction of the 
 city (§ 214) swept away the older Babylon. Since the first day's work 
 shown above, eighteen years of excavation at Babylon have uncovered 
 almost nothing older than the city of Nebuchadnezzar 
 
 (Fig. Ill), which continued from 1899 to 19 17, slowly revealed 
 one building after another, the scanty wreckage of the ages. 
 These excavations revealed the Festival Street and the Ishtar 
 Gate (Fig. 1 1 o), but the Ishtar Gate is almost the only build- 
 ing in all Babylonia of which any impressive remains survive. 
 Elsewhere the broken fragments of dingy sun-baked-brick walls 
 suggest little of the brilliant life which once ebbed and flow^ed 
 through these streets and public places. 
 
1 68 Anciejit Times 
 
 237. Civili- The Chaldeans seem to have absorbed the civilization of 
 Chaldean Babylonia in much the same way as other earlier Semitic 
 Babylon invaders of this ancient plain (§§ 167, 175). Commerce and 
 
 business flourished, the arts and industries were highly devel- 
 . oped, religion and literature were cultivated and their records 
 were put into wedge-writing on clay tablets as of old. 
 
 238. Rise of Science made notable progress in one important branch — 
 and^astrofogy astronomy. The Babylonians continued the ancient practice 
 
 of trying to discover the future in the heavenly bodies (see 
 § 192). This art, which we call " astrology," was now very 
 systematically pursued and was really becoming astronomy. 
 The equator was divided into 360 degrees, and for the first 
 time the Chaldean astrologers laid out the twelve groups of 
 stars which we call the '' Twelve Signs of the Zodiac." Thus 
 for the first time the sky and its worlds were being mapped out. 
 
 239. Origin The five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, 
 
 of names of 1 r> \ • n 1 i 1 n- 
 
 the planets and Saturn) were especially regarded as the powders controUmg 
 the fortunes of men, and as such the five leading Babylonian 
 divinities were identified with these five heavenly bodies. The 
 names of these Babylonian divinities have descended to us as 
 the names of the planets. But on their way to us through 
 Europe, the ancient Babylonian divine names were translated 
 into Roman forms. So the planet of Ishtar, the goddess of 
 love, became Venus, while that of the great god Marduk 
 became Jupiter, and so on. The celestial observations made 
 by these Chaldean " astrologers," as we call them, slowly be- 
 came sufficiently accurate, so that the observers could already 
 foretell an eclipse. These observations when inherited by the 
 Greeks formed the basis of the science of astronomy, which 
 the Greeks carried so much further (§ 492). The practice of 
 astrology has survived to our own day; we still unconsciously 
 recall it in such phrases as " his lucky star " or an " ill-starred 
 undertaking." 
 
 We can discern in the new architecture of Babylon how this 
 Chaldean Age brought Babylonia up to the new and higher 
 
/ de 
 
 V Wi 
 
 T/ie Assyrians mid Chaldeans 169 
 
 level of civilization attained by Assyria. Nevertheless, the 240. The 
 Chaldeans themselves fancied that they were restoring the revlvaf of 
 civilization of the old Babylonia of Hammurapi. The scribes *^^ P^^^ 
 loved to employ an ancient style of writing and out-of-date 
 forms of speech ; the kings tunneled deep under the temple 
 foundations and searched for years that they might find the 
 old foundation records buried (like our comer-stone documents) 
 by kings of ancient days (§ 160). 
 
 This dependence upon the past meant decline. After the 241. Decline 
 death of Nebuchadnezzar (561 B.C.), whose reign was the high- oriental 
 water mark of Chaldean civilization, the old civilized lands of ^^"^^^ 
 
 e Orient seemed to have lost most of their former power to 
 go forward and to make fresh discoveries and new conquests 
 in civilization, such as they had been making during three great 
 ages on the Nile and three similar ages on the Two Rivers. 
 Indeed the leadership of the Semitic peoples in the early world 
 was drawing near its close, and they were about to give way 
 before the advance of new peoples of the Indo-European race 
 (Section 21). The nomads of the southern desert were about 
 to yield to the hardy peoples of the northern and eastern moun- 
 tains, and to these we must now turn. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 18. Where does the second chapter of history on the 
 Two Rivers carry us? Describe the region about Assur. Who 
 founded Assur, and when '^. Whence did they gain the beginnings of 
 civilization .'* Was Assur also exposed to influences from the North ? 
 What was the result? Who were the Western rivals of Assur? Tell 
 about the Arameans and what they accomplished. What important 
 thing did they carry throughout Western Asia? What prevented 
 Assyria from reaching the Mediterranean ? What had Assyrian civili- 
 zation achieved by this tirne t What has recent excavation discovered 
 under the palace of Assur ? 
 
 Section 19. What city had chiefly prevented Assyria from con- 
 quering the West? When was Damascus captured by Assyria? What 
 was the result in the West? Who was the founder of the leading 
 
I/O 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 line of Assyrian emperors? Describe his new city. What was the 
 extent of the Assyrian Empire? How was its government carried 
 on ? What can you say about Assyrian warfare ? about architecture 
 and sculpture ? Was all this of Assyrian origin ? What can you say 
 of the reign of Sennacherib in war, building, or any other important 
 matters ? What can you tell of Assurbanipal ? What dangers within 
 and without caused the fall of Assyria? What peoples destroyed 
 Nineveh, and when ? What became of the ruins of the city ? What 
 progress resulted from the rule of the Assyrian Empire ? 
 
 Section 20. What empire formed the third chapter of history 
 on the Two Rivers ? Who founded it, and when ? Whence did they 
 come ? Who was the greatest Chaldean king ? What did he accom- 
 plish in war? What people did he carry away captive? Describe 
 his buildings at Babylon. Had there been any large cities in Baby- 
 Ionia before his time ? Whence did he borrow much in the architec- 
 ture of his palace? What has become of his buildings? In what 
 science did the Chaldeans make great progress ? What astronomical 
 names have descended to us from them? Could they predict an 
 eclipse? To what race did the Chaldeans belong? W^hat race was 
 to follow them in oriental leadership ? 
 
 Note. The following sketch shows us a temple of the Assyrians at Assur as 
 restored by the excavators. Behind the temple court is the holy of holies, and on 
 each side of it rises a temple tower with a winding ascent, after the old Babylonian 
 manner (§152). It was from such towers that the tower architecture of the 
 early world arose, eventually producing our own church spires, of which the 
 Babylonian temple tower was the ancestor (see Fig. 272). 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE 
 
 Section 21. The Indo-European Peoples and 
 THEIR Dispersion 1 
 
 We have seen that the Arabian desert has been a great 242. The 
 reservoir of unsettled population, which was continually leaving grasslands 
 the grasslands on the margin of the desert and shifting over 
 into the towns to begin a settled life (§ 135). Corresponding 
 to these grasslands of the South ^ there are similar grasslands 
 in the North (Fig. 112). These Northern grasslands stretch from 
 the lower Danube eastward along the north side of the Black 
 Sea through southern Russia and far into Asia north and east 
 
 Note. The headpiece above shows ancient fire altars still surviving in Persia. 
 Nearby are the tombs of the great Persian kings (Fig. ii8) not far from Persep- 
 olis (Fig. 116), the capital of Persia, and these kings doubtless often worshiped 
 before the fires blazing on these altars. 
 
 1 Section 21 should be carefully worked over by the teacher with the class 
 before the class is permitted to study it alone. The diagram (Fig. 112) should 
 be put on the blackboard and explained in detail by the teacher, and the class 
 should then be prepared to put the diagram on the board from memory. This 
 should be done again when the study of the Greeks is begun (§ 370), and a 
 third time when Italy and the Romans are taken up. 
 
1/2 Ancient Times 
 
 of the Caspian (see map, p. 676). In ancient times they always 
 had a wandering shepherd population, and time after time, for 
 thousands of years, these Northern nomads have poured forth 
 over Europe and Western Asia, just as the desert Semites of 
 the South have done over the Fertile Crescent (§ 135). 
 
 243. The two These nomads of the North were from the earliest times a 
 European great white race, which we call Indo-European. We can perhaps 
 and Semitic ^^g^. explain this term by saying that these Indo-Europeans 
 
 were the ancestors of the present peoples of Europe. As our 
 forefathers came from Europe, the Indo-European nomads 
 were also our own ancestors. These nomads of the Northern 
 grasslands, our ancestors, began to migrate in very ancient 
 times, moving out along diverging routes. They at last ex- 
 tended in an imposing line from the frontiers of India on the 
 east, westward across all Europe to the Atlantic, as they do 
 to-day (Fig. 112). This great northern line was confronted on 
 the south by a similar line of Semitic peoples, extending from 
 Babylonia on the east, through Phoenicia and the Hebrews west- 
 ward to Carthage and similar Semitic settlements of Phoenicia 
 in the western Mediterranean (§ 135, and map, p. 288). 
 
 244. The The history of the ancient world, as we are now to follow it, 
 
 struff"2'"lc be* 
 
 tween the two was largely made up of the struggle between this souther?i Semitic 
 European*'^" ^^'^^' ^hich issued from the Southern grasslands, and the northern 
 and Semitic Bido- European line, which came forth from the Northern grass- 
 lands to confront the older civilizations represented in the south- 
 ern line. Thus as we look at the diagram (Fig. 112) we see 
 the two great races facing each other across the Mediterranean 
 like two vast armies stretching from Western Asia westward to 
 the Atlantic. The later wars between Rome and Carthage 
 (Sections 78, 79) represent some of the operations on the 
 Semitic left wing; while the triumph of Persia over Chaldea 
 (Section 23) is a similar outcome on the Semitic right wing. 
 
 The result of the long conflict was the complete triumph of 
 our ancestors, the Indo-European line, which conquered along 
 the center and both wings and finally gained unchallenged 
 
/ 
 
! 
 
Indo-European Line 
 
 Semitic Line 
 
 H s^^i 
 
 173 
 
174 Ancient Times 
 
 245. Tri- supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world under the 
 European Greeks and Romans (Sections 37-98). This triumph was ac- 
 the indo- companied by a long struggle for the mastery between the mem- 
 European bers of the northern line themselves. Among them the victory 
 
 moved from the east end to the west end of the northern line, 
 as first the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans, 
 gained control of the Mediterranean and oriental world. 
 
 246. The Let us now turn back to a time before the Indo-European 
 European people had left their original home on the grasslands. Modern 
 an?their°^ ^ Study has uot yet determined with certainty the region where 
 original home the parent people of the Indo-European nomads had their 
 
 home. The indications now are that this original home was 
 on the great grassy steppe in the region east and northeast of 
 the Caspian Sea. Here, then, probably lived the parent peo- 
 ple of all the later Indo-European race. At the time when they 
 were still one people, they were speaking one and the same 
 tongue. From this tongue have descended all the languages 
 later spoken by the civilized peoples of modern Europe, includ- 
 ing, of course, our own English, as we shall see. 
 
 247. Civili- Before they dispersed, the parent 'people were still in the 
 the Indo- Stone Age for the most part, though copper was beginning to 
 pa^erSpTople ^ome in, and the time must therefore have been not later than 
 
 2500 B.C. Divided into numerous tribes, they wandered at will, 
 seeking pasture for their flocks, for they already possessed 
 domestic animals, including cattle and sheep. But chief among 
 their domesticated beasts was the horse^ which, as we recall, 
 was still entirely unknown to the civilized oriental nations 
 until after Hammurapi's time (see § 197). They employed j 
 " him not only for riding but also for drawing their wheeled 
 carts. The ox already bore the yoke and drew the plow, foi 
 some of the tribes had adopted a settled mode of life, ancj 
 cultivated grain, especially barley. Being without writing, the) | 
 possessed but little government and organization. But thejl 
 were the most gifted and the most highly imaginative peopl< 
 of the ancient world. 
 
The Medo-Persian Empire 175 
 
 As their tribes wandered farther and farther apart they lost 248. The 
 contact with each other. Local peculiarities in speech and cus- the^indo" ° 
 toms became more and more marked, until wide differences European 
 
 ' parent people 
 
 resulted. While at first the different groups could doubtless 
 understand one another when they met, these differences in 
 speech, gradually became so great that the widely scattered 
 tribes, even if they happened to meet, could no longer make 
 themselves understood, and finally they lost all knowledge 
 of their original kinship. This kinship has only been redis- 
 covered in very recent times. The final outcome, in so far as 
 speech was concerned, was the languages of modern civilized 
 Europe ; so that, beginning with England in the West and going 
 eastward, we can trace more than one common word from 
 people to people entirely across Europe into northern India. 
 Note the following : 
 
 WEST >■ EAST 
 
 English German Latin Greek 
 
 brother bruder frater phrater 
 mother mutter mater meter 
 father vater pater pater 
 
 . In the West these wanderers from the Northern grasslands had 
 already crossed the Danube and were far down in the Balkan 
 peninsula by 2000 B.C. Some of them had doubtless already 
 entered Italy by this time (§ 775), illustrating what we learned 
 in studying Stone Age Europe, about the shifting habits of 
 shepherd or nomad peoples, as they drive their flocks from 
 pasture to pasture (§ 35). These Western tribes were, of course, 
 the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans. We shall later join 
 them and follow them in their conquest of the Mediterranean 
 (Sections 37-98). Before doing so, however, we have to watch 
 the easterfi wing of the vast Indo-European line as it swings 
 southward and comes into collision with the right wing of the 
 Semitic line. 
 
 Old Persian 
 and Avestan 
 
 To KHAR 
 
 (in Central Asia) 
 
 East Indian 
 (Sanskrit) 
 
 brata 
 
 pracar 
 
 bhrata 
 
 matar 
 
 macar 
 
 mata 
 
 pitar 
 
 pacar 
 
 pita 
 
176 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian 
 Prophet Zoroaster 
 
 249. The 
 
 Aryans ; the 
 advance of 
 the eastern 
 wing of 
 the Indo- 
 European 
 line 
 
 250. Sanskrit- 
 speaking 
 tribes in 
 India 
 
 251. Medes 
 and Persians 
 further west 
 toward the 
 Fertile 
 Crescent 
 
 It is now an established fact that the easternmost tribes of the 
 Indo-European line, having left the parent people, were pastur- 
 ing their herds in the great steppe on the east of the Caspian by 
 about 2000 B. c. Here they formed a people properly called the 
 Aryans ^ (see Fig. 112), and here they made their home for some 
 time. The Aryan people had no writing, and they have left no 
 monuments. Nevertheless, the beliefs of their descendants show 
 that the Aryan tribes already possessed a high form of religion, 
 which summed up conduct as " good thoughts, good deeds." 
 Fire occupied an important place in this faith, and they had a 
 group of priests whom they called " fire-kindlers." 
 
 When the Aryans broke up, perhaps about 1800 B.C., they 
 separated into two groups. The Eastern tribes wandered south- 
 eastward and eventually arrived in India. In their sacred books, 
 which we call the Vedas, written in Sanskrit, there are echoes 
 of the days of Aryan unity, and they furnish many a hint of the 
 ancient Aryan home on the east of the Caspian. 
 
 The other group, whose tribes kept the name " Aryan " in the 
 form '' Iran," ^ also left this home and pushed westward and 
 southwestward into the mountains bordering our Fertile Crescent 
 (§ ^Z'i)' ^^ ^'^ them Iranians, and among them were two 
 
 1 The Indo-European parent people apparently had no common name for 
 all their tribes as a great group. The term " Aryan " is often popularly applied to 
 the parent people, but this custom is incorrect. "Aryan" (from which "I ran "and 
 " Iranian " are later derivatives) designated a group of tribes, a fragment of the 
 parent people, which detached itself and found a home for some centuries just 
 east of the Caspian Sea. When we hear the term " Aryan " applied to the Indo- 
 European peoples of Europe, or when it is said that we ourselves are descended 
 from the Aryans, we must remember that this use of the word is historically in- 
 correct, though very common. The Aryans, then, were Eastani descendants of 
 the Indo-European parent people, as we are Western descendants of the parent 
 people. The Aryans are our distant cousins but not our ancestors. 
 
 2 They have given their name to the great Iranian plateau, which stretches 
 from the Zagros Mountains eastward to the Indus River. This whole region was 
 known in Greek and Roman days as Ariana, which (like " Iran") is, of course, 
 derived from " Aryan " (see map, p. 436). 
 
The Me do- Persian Empire I'J'J 
 
 powerful tribes, the Medes and the Persians.-^ We recall how, 
 in the days of Assyria's imperial power the Medes descended 
 from the northern mountains against Nineveh (§ 230). This 
 southern advance of the Indo-European eastern wing was thus 
 overwhelming the Semitic right wing (Fig. 112) occupying the 
 Fertile Crescent. 
 
 By 600 B.C., after the fall of Assyria (§ 231), the Medes had 252. The 
 established a powerful Iranian empire in the mountains east of (indo 
 the Tigris. It extended from the Persian Gulf, where it included European) 
 
 o ' Empire 
 
 the Persians, northwestward in the general line of the mountains threatens 
 to the Black Sea region. The front of the Indo-European east- (Semitic) 
 ern wing was thus roughly parallel with the Tigris at this point, ^ ^ ^^^^ 
 but its advance was not to stop here. Nebuchadnezzar (§ 234) 
 and the Chaldean masters of Babylon looked with anxious 
 eyes at this dangerous Median power. The Chaldeans on the 
 Euphrates represented the leadership of men of Semitic blood 
 from the southern pastures. Their leadership was now to be 
 followed by that of men of Indo-European blood from the 
 northern pastures (§ 242). K?> we see the Chaldeans giving 
 way before the Medes and Persians (§ 261), let us bear in 
 mind that we are watching a great racial change, and remember 
 that these new Iranian masters of the East were our kindred ; 
 for both we and they have descended from the same wander- 
 ing shepherd ancestors, the Indo-European parent people, who 
 once dwelt in the far-off pastures of inner Asia, probably five 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 All of these Iranians possessed a beautiful religion inherited 253. The 
 from old Aryan, days (see § 249). Somewhere in the east- the Iranians 
 ern mountains, as far back as 1000 B.C., an Iranian named 
 Zoroaster began to look out upon the life of men in an effort 
 to find a new religion which would meet the needs of man's 
 life. He watched the ceaseless struggle between good and evil 
 
 1 About 2100 B.C., in the age of Hammurapi, long before the Iranians reached 
 the Fertile Crescent, their coming was announced in advance by the arrival of 
 the horse in Babylonia (see § 197). 
 
178 Ancient Times 
 
 which seemed to meet him wherever he turned. To him it 
 seemed to be a struggle between a group of good beings on the 
 one hand and of evil powers on the other. The Good became 
 to him a divine person, whom he called Mazda, or Ahura- 
 mazda, which means " Lord of Wisdom " and whom he re- 
 garded as God. Ahuramazda was surrounded by a group of 
 helpers much like angels, of whom one of the greatest was the 
 Light, called " Mithras." Opposed to Ahuramazda and his 
 helpers it was finally believed there was an evil group led by 
 a great Spirit of Evil named Ahriman. It was he who later 
 was inherited by Jews and Christians as Satan. 
 
 254. judg- Thus the faith of Zoroaster grew up out of the struggle of 
 after " life itself, and became a great power in life. It was one of the 
 
 noblest religions ever founded. It called upon every man to 
 stand on one side or the other; to fill his soul with the Good 
 and the Light or to dwell in the Evil and the Darkness. What- 
 ever course a man pursued, he must expect a judgment here- 
 after. This was the earliest appearance in Asia of belief in a last 
 judgment. Zoroaster maintained the old Aryan veneration of fire 
 (§ 249) as a visible symbol of the Good and the Light, and he 
 preserved the ancient fire-kindling priests (headpiece, p. 171). 
 
 255. Zoroas- Zoroaster went about among the Iranian people, preaching his 
 hlsnSv'^ ^^ new religion, and probably for many years found but little 
 religion response to his efforts. We can discern his hopes and fears 
 
 alike in the little group of hymns he has left, probably the only 
 words of the great prophet which have survived. It is charac- 
 teristic of the horse-loving Iranians that Zoroaster is said to 
 have finally converted one of their great kings by miraculously 
 healing the king's crippled horse. The new faith had gained a 
 firm footing before the prophet's death, however, and before 
 700 B.C. it was the leading religion among the Medes in the 
 mountains along the Fertile Crescent. Thus Zoroaster became 
 the first great founder of a religious faith. 
 
 As in the case of Mohammed, it is probable that Zoroaster 
 could neither read nor write, for the Iranians possessed no 
 
The Medo-Persian Empire 179 
 
 system of writing in his day (see § 266). Besides the hymns 256. The 
 mentioned above, fragments of his teaching have descended to peSan Bible 
 us in'writings put together in the early Christian centuries, over 
 a thousand years after the prophet's death. They form a book 
 known as the Avesta. This we may call the Bible of the Persians. 
 
 Section 23. Rise of the Persian Empire: Cyrus -/- C>^' 
 
 No people became more zealous followers of Zoroaster than 257. The 
 the group of Iranian tribes known as the Persians. Through the i?rsi?ns- 
 ithem a knowledge of him has descended to us. At the fall of trajit^o^s ^"*^ 
 Nineveh (606 B.C.) (§ 231) they were already long settled in 
 the region at the southeastern end of the Zagros Mountains, 
 just north of the Persian Gulf. Its shores are here little better 
 than desert, but the valleys of the mountainous hinterland are 
 rich and fertile. Here the Persians occupied a district some 
 four hundred miles long. They were a rude mountain peasant 
 folk, leading a settled agricultural life, with simple institutions, 
 no art, no writing or literature, but with stirring memories of 
 their past. As they tilled their fields and watched their flocks 
 they told many a tale of their Aryan ancestors and of the 
 ancient prophet whose faith they held. 
 
 They acknowledged themselves vassals of their kinsmen the 
 Medes, who ruled far to the north and northwest of them. 258. Cyrus 
 One of their tribes dwelling in the mountains of Elam (see organizes 
 map, p. 100), a tribe known as Anshan, was organized as a Jribe^^into'a 
 little kingdom. About fifty years after the fall of Nineveh this nation and 
 
 conquers 
 
 little kingdom of Anshan was ruled over by a Persian named the Medes 
 Cyrus. He succeeded in uniting the other tribes of his kindred 
 Persians into a nation. Thereupon Cyrus at once rebelled 
 against the rule of the Medes. He gathered his peasant 
 soldiery, and within three years he defeated the Median king 
 and made himself master of the Median territory. The ex- 
 traordinary career of Cyrus was now a spectacle upon which 
 all eyes in the West were fastened with wonder and alarm. 
 
i8o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 259. The The overflowing energies of the new conqueror and his 
 
 ersian army ^^^^^^^ soldiery proved irresistible. The Persian peasants seem 
 
 to have been remarkable archers. The mass of the Persian 
 
 army was made up 
 
 £1'—^^ -li-~— f^A-— i " — ^— L — ^-T of bowmen (Fig. 1 1 3), 
 
 whose storm of arrows 
 at long range over- 
 whelmed the enemy 
 long before the hand- 
 to-hand fighting be- 
 gan. Bodies of the 
 skillful Persian horse- 
 men, hovering on 
 either wing, then rode 
 in and completed the 
 destruction of the foe. 
 These arrangements 
 were taken by the 
 Persians from the As- 
 syrians, the greatest 
 soldiers the East had 
 
 260. Cyrus 
 conquers 
 the West 
 
 Fig. 113. Persian Soldiers 
 
 Although carrying spears when doing duty 
 as palace guards, these men were chiefly 
 archers (§ 259), as is shown by the size of 
 the large quivers on their backs. The bow 
 hangs on the left shoulder. The royal body- 
 guard may also be seen wielding their spears 
 around the Persian king at the battle of 
 Issus (Fig. 202). Notice the splendid robes 
 worn by these palace guards. The figures 
 are done in brightly colored glazed brick — 
 an art borrowed by the Persians (see Plate II, 
 p. 164) and employed to beautify the palace 
 walls. The restoration in Fig. 204 shows 
 such a frieze of archers in position along 
 the wall of the palace court 
 
 ever seen. 
 
 The great states 
 Babylonia (Chaldea) 
 and Egypt, Lydia un- 
 der King Croesus in 
 western Asia Minor 
 (§ 497), and even 
 Sparta in Greece 
 (§ 426) formed a 
 powerful combination 
 against this sudden 
 menace, which had 
 risen like the flash 
 of a meteor in the 
 
The Medo-Pe7'sia7i Empire 
 
 I8l 
 
 eastern sky. Without an instant's delay Cyrus struck at Croesus 
 of Lydia, the chief author of the hostile combination. One 
 Persian victory followed after another. By 546 B.C. Sardis, 
 the Lydian capital (Fig. 173), had fallen, and Croesus, the 
 Lydian king, was a prisoner in the hands of Cyrus. Cyrus at 
 once gained also the southern coasts of Asia Minor. Within 
 five years the power of the little Persian kingdom in the 
 mountains of Elam had swept across Asia Minor to the Mediter- 
 ranean and had become the leading state in the oriental world. 
 
 Fig. 114. Barrel-Shaped Clay Record of the Capture of 
 Babylon by Cyrus (539 b.c.) 
 
 It tells how "without battle and without fighting Marduk [God of 
 Babylon] made him [Cyrus] enter into his city of Babylon ; he spared 
 Babylon tribulation, and Nabonidus the [Chaldean] king who feared 
 him not, he delivered into his hand." Nabonidus, the Chaldean king of 
 Babylon, was not in favor with the priests, and they assisted in deliver- 
 ing the city to Cyrus 
 
 Turning eastward again, Cyrus had no trouble in defeating 261. Cyrus 
 the Chaldean army led by the young crown prince Belshazzar, Babybnia 
 whose name in the Book of Daniel (see Dan. v) is a household (Chaldea) 
 word throughout the Christian world. In spite of the vast walls 
 erected by Nebuchadnezzar to protect Babylon (§ 236), the 
 Persians entered the great city in 539 B.C., seemingly without 
 resistance (Fig. 114). 
 
 Thus only sixty-seven years after the fall of Nineveh (§ 231) 
 had opened the conflict between the former dwellers in the 
 Northern and the Southern grasslands, the Semitic East 
 
l82 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 262. Collapse 
 of the Semitic 
 East before 
 the Indo- 
 European 
 assault 
 
 263. Cam- 
 byses con- 
 quers Egypt ; 
 Persia rules 
 whole civi- 
 lized East 
 
 completely collapsed before the advance of the Indo-European 
 power. Some ten years later Cyrus fell in battle (528 B.C.) 
 as he was fighting with the nomads in northeastern Iran. His 
 body was reverently laid away in a massive tomb of impressive 
 simplicity at Pasargadae (Fig. 115), where Cyrus himself had 
 established the capital of Persia. Thus passed away the first 
 great conqueror of Indo-European blood. 
 
 All Western Asia was now subject to the Persian king ; but 
 in 525 B.C., only three years after the death of Cyrus, his son 
 Cambyses conquered Egypt. This conquest of the only remain- 
 ing ancient oriental power rounded out the Persian Empire to 
 include the whole civilized East from the Nile Delta, around 
 the entire eastern end of the Mediterranean to the .-Egean, 
 and from this western boundary eastward almost to India. 
 The great task had consumed just twenty-five years since the 
 overthrow of the Medes by Cyrus. It was an achievement for 
 which the Assyrian Empire had prepared the way, and the 
 Persians were now to learn much from the great civilizations 
 which had preceded them. 
 
 264. Persian 
 kings at 
 Babylon 
 absorb civili- 
 zation of the 
 East they 
 rule 
 
 Section 24. The Civilization of the Persian 
 Empire (about 530 to 330 b.c.) 
 
 The Persians found Babylon a great and splendid city, with 
 the vast fortifications of Nebuchadnezzar stretching from river 
 to river and his sumptuous buildings visible far across the Baby- 
 lonian plain (§§ 235-236). The city was the center of the 
 commerce of Western Asia and the greatest market in the early 
 oriental world. Along the Nile the Persian emperors now ruled 
 the splendid cities whose colossal monuments we have visited. 
 These things and the civilized life which the Persians found 
 along the Nile and the Euphrates soon influenced them greatly, 
 as we shall see. 
 
 Aramaic, the speech of the Aramean merchants who filled 
 the busy market places of Babylon, had by that time become 
 
^^^ 
 

 o 
 
 c1> 
 
 CL, 
 
 .-H 
 
 W 
 
 « 5?. 
 
 C/5 
 
 w tiO 
 
 Cti 
 
 ^ 5 
 
 W 
 
 o a, 
 
 Oh 
 
 -^ fi 
 
 
 >^ O 
 
 H 
 
 
 -< 
 
 o c 
 
 1^ ^ 
 
 c/2 
 
 il 
 
 W 
 
 
 J 
 < 
 
 <U ^H O 
 
 bJO rt - 
 
 Cm 
 
 2 52 ti 
 (u c .ir 
 
 ^ 
 
 «n 
 
 < 
 
 Persi 
 
 h as an 
 ich the 
 ust as i 
 
 
 w 
 
 bJD-G •- > 
 
 a: 
 
 :s ^ >; 
 
 H 
 
 ,- M-l .« 
 
 fe 
 
 ^ o^ 
 
 o 
 
 en w "rt 
 
 
 • ^ <u >, 
 
 
 S^ 2 
 
 -< 
 
 c rt m 
 
 o 
 
 rt D-^ 
 
 
 
 Q 
 
 C C >^ 
 
 <U (U rt 
 
 :z; 
 
 .. '^ ^ 
 
 <| 
 
 3i cc (U 
 
 
 X •-; o 
 
 m 
 
 ho ^ 
 
 a 
 
 "2 s^ c: 
 
 
 rt O 
 
The Medo-Persian E-^npire 183 
 
 the language of the whole Fertile Crescent. Business docu- 265. Ara- 
 ments were now written in Aramaic with pen and ink on Se^^angua^? 
 papyrus, and clay tablets bearing cuneiform writing were slowly °^ Persian 
 disappearing. The Persian officials were therefore obliged to tion in the 
 carry on their government business, like the collection of taxes, 
 in the Aramaic tongue throughout the western half of the Per- 
 sian Empire. Even as far as the Nile and western Asia Minor, 
 they sent- out their government documents in Aramaic, this 
 universal language of business (Fig. 131)- 
 
 The government of the Persian kings, like that of the 266. Persians 
 Assyrian Empire, was thus "bilingual" (§ 206), by which we cuneiform 
 mean that it employed two languages — Aramaic and the ^^P^abet 
 old Persian tongue. Even in writing Persian, the Persians 
 often employed Aramaic letters, as we write English with 
 Roman letters. At the same time, having probably gained 
 from Aramaic writing the idea of an alphabet, the Persian 
 scribes devised another alphabet, of thirty-nine cimeiform signs, 
 which they employed for writing Persian on clay tablets. 
 They also used it when they wished to make records on large 
 monuments of stone (Fig. 117). Thus the Persians, who had 
 been so long entirely without writing, began to make enduring 
 written records after they entered the Fertile Crescent. These 
 monuments are the earliest Persian documents which have 
 descended to us. 
 
 * This royal stairway, the finest surviving from the ancient world, 
 was laid out by Darius and finished by Xerxes. A proud inscription of 
 Darius cut in cuneiform on the wall of the stairway looks down upon 
 the visitor. It reads : '' Darius the king saith : ' This land of Persia, 
 which Ahuramazda has entrusted to me, the land that is beautiful, that 
 hath good people and fine horses, — by the will of Ahuramazda and my 
 will, it fears no enemy.' " The terrace wall is from 30 to 50 feet high, 
 but the steps of the grand stairway are so low that a horse may be 
 easily ridden up the steps to the terrace. Leading from the stairway is 
 the magnificent gate built by Xerxes, guarded on either hand by huge 
 winged bulls, an art symbol borrowed by Persia from Assyria. Beyond 
 the gate still rise two splendid columns of the imposing colonnade 
 erected by Xerxes to adorn this entrance. 
 

 Fig. 117. Triumphal Monument of Darius the Great, the 
 RosETTA Stone of Asia, on the Cliff of Behistun 
 
 This impressive monument is the most important historical document 
 surviving in Asia. It is made up of four important parts : the rehef 
 sculptures {A) and the three inscriptions {B, C, B). B is a. great inscrip- 
 tion, in columns some 12 feet high, recording the triumph of Darius over 
 all his enemies in the extensive revolts which followed his coronation. 
 It is in the Persian language, written with the new cuneiform alphabet of 
 thirty-nine letters which the Persians devised (§ 266). The other two in- 
 scriptions (C and B>) are translations of the Persian [B). C therefore 
 contains the same record as the Persian [B] ; but it is in the Babylonian 
 language and is written in Babylonian cuneiform with its several hun- 
 dred wedge-signs (§ 149). Z>, the third inscription, is also cuneiform, 
 in the language of the region of Susa, a'nd hence is called Susian. Thus 
 the Great King published his triumph in the three most important 
 languages of this eastern region and placed the record overlooking a 
 main road at Behistun (see map, p. 436) where the men of the caravans 
 passing between Babylon and the Iranian Plateau would look up 300 feet 
 and see the splendid monument 25 feet high and 50 feet wide. To reach 
 it requires a dangerous climb, and it was on this lofty cliff, at the risk 
 of his life, that Sir Henry Rawlinson copied all three of these cunei- 
 form inscriptions (1835-1847). By the use of these copies Rawlinson 
 succeeded in deciphering the ancient Babylonian cuneiform (§§ 282- 
 283) ; and this great monument of Darius therefore enabled modern 
 historians to recover the lost language and history of Babylonia and 
 Assyria. It did for Western Asia what the Rosetta Stone did for Egypt. 
 (Drawn from photographs of the British Museum Expedition) 
 184 
 
The Medo-Persian Empire 185 
 
 The organization of such a vast empire, stretching from the 267. Organi- 
 Indus River to the ^gean Sea (almost as long as the United Persiln 
 States from east to west) and from the Indian Ocean to the Empire by 
 
 ^ Danus 
 
 deserts of the Caspian, was a colossal task. It demanded an 
 effort of organization on a greater scale than any ruler had ever 
 attempted before. It was much too great an undertaking to be 
 completed by Cyrus. Begun by him, it was carried through by 
 Darius the Great (521-485 B.C.), and his organization remains 
 one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the 
 ancient Orient, if not of the world. The rule of Darius was just, 
 humane, and intelligent, but the subject peoples had of course 
 no voice in government. All that the Great King decreed was 
 law, and all the peoples bowed to his word. Darius says in the 
 Behistun inscription (Fig. 117), " By the grace of Ahuramazda 
 these lands have conformed to my decree ; even as it was com- 
 manded unto them by me, so was it done." Let us therefore 
 notice an important fact here revealed : this system was not 
 only attempting government on a larger scale than the world 
 had ever seen before, but it was government controlled by 07ie 
 7nan. The ancient world never forgot the example of the vast 
 Persian Empire controlled by one-man power. 
 
 Darius did not desire further conquests, but he planned to 268. The 
 maintain the Empire as he had inherited it. He caused himself provincial 
 to be made actual king in Eg).^pt and in Babylonia, but the ^y^^^"* 
 rest of the Empire he divided into twenty provinces, each 
 called a '' satrapy," each province being under a governor 
 called a ''satrap," who was appointed by the Great King, as 
 the Persian sovereign came to be called. These arrangements, 
 while similar to those of the Chaldean, Assyrian, and Egyptian 
 empires, were a further development of provincial rule under 
 governors. Indeed the Persian Empire was the first example 
 of a fully organized group of subject peoples and nations ruled 
 as provinces, an arrangement which we may call a provincial 
 system. The subject nations, or provinces under Persian rule, 
 enjoyed a good deal of independence in local matters of their 
 
1 86 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 269. Landsj 
 tribute, and - 
 coinage 
 
 270. Darius 
 turns to the 
 
 own government, as long as they paid regular tribute and 
 furnished recruits for the Great King's army. To discover and 
 prevent local rebellion, the revolt of a governor or people against 
 the Persian government, the Great King kept officials residing 
 in each subject state, who were called, after an old Egyptian 
 custom, the King's Ears or the King's Eyes, and whose duty 
 was to report all insubordination. Ail this was an advance upon 
 the rule of the Assyrian Empire. 
 
 Farm lands were divided into vast domains held by powerful 
 nobles and other great landowners. There were few small 
 land-owning farmers. All paid dues to help make up the tribute 
 collected from all parts of the Empire. In the East it was paid, 
 as of old, in produce (§§75 and 189). In the West, chiefly Lydia 
 and the Greek settlements in western Asia Minor (§375), the 
 coinage of metal was common by 600 B.C. (§ 458), and there 
 this tribute was paid in coined money. The Eastern countries — 
 Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia herself — were not quick to adopt 
 this new convenience. Darius, however, began the coinage of 
 gold and permitted his satraps to coin silver. The rate was 
 about thirteen to one, that is to say, gold was worth about 
 thirteen times as much as silver. Thus the great commercial 
 convenience of coined money issued by the State began to 
 come into the Orient during the Persian period. 
 
 Nothing shows the wise statesmanship of Darius the Great 
 more clearly than his remarkable efforts to make Persia a 
 great sea power. It was no easy "task for an inland nation 
 of shepherds and peasants like the Persians, separated from 
 the water by desert shores, to gain control of the sea. The 
 endeavors of Darius in this direction may be compared with 
 the policy of the German emperor in building up a strong 
 navy. Unlike Emperor William, however, Darius was obliged 
 to employ foreign navigators. He dispatched a skillful Medi- 
 terranean sailor named Scylax to explore the course of the 
 great Indus River in India. Then Darius ordered him to sail 
 along the coast of Asia from the mouth of the Indus westward 
 
The Medo-Persia?i Empire 187 
 
 to the Isthmus of Suez. Scylax was the first Western sailor 
 known to have sailed along this south coast of Asia, so little 
 known at that time (about 500 B.C.). 
 
 At Suez, Darius restored the ancient but long filled-up canal 271. Darius 
 of the Egyptians connecting the Nile with the Red Sea (§ 104). and \Ve?t'by 
 Along the ancient route of this canal have been found frag- ^ ^"^^ ^^'^^ 
 ments of great stone tablets erected by Darius (see map, p. 36). 
 They bear an account of the restoration of the canal, in which 
 we find the words of Darius : " I commanded to dig this canal, 
 from the stream flowing in Egypt, called the Nile, to the sea 
 [Red Sea] which stretches from Persia. Then this canal was 
 dug as I commanded, and ships sailed from Egypt through this 
 canal to Persia, according to my will." Darius evidently cherished 
 what proved to be a vain hope, that the south coast of Persia 
 might come to share in the now growing commerce between 
 India and the Mediterranean world. As Persia was now lacking 
 in small landowners, so also was she lacking in small and enter- 
 prising merchants, who might have become great promoters 
 of commerce. 
 
 Unlike the Assyrians, Darius treated the Phoenician cities 272. Persia 
 with kindness, and succeeded in organizing a great Phoenician earnest great 
 war fleet. We shall find that Darius' son Xerxes could depend ?ea power 
 
 ^_^ ^ in Asia 
 
 upon many hundreds of ships for warfare and transportation 
 in the eastern Mediterranean (§§ 501, 510). Thus the more 
 enlightened Persian kings accomplished what the Assyrian 
 emperors never achieved, and Persia became the first great 
 sea power in Asia. 
 
 The Persian emperors maintained communication by excel- 273. System 
 lent roads from end to end of the vast Empire. On a smaller communi- 
 scale these roads must have done for the Persian Empire what ^^'^^^^ 
 railroads do for us. Royal messengers maintained a much more 
 complete postal system than had already been introduced under 
 the Assyrian Empire (§ 218). These messengers were surpris- 
 ingly swift, although merchandise required about as much time 
 to go from Susa to the ^gean Sea as we now need for going 
 
i88 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 around the world. A good example of the effect of these roads 
 was the incoming of the domestic fowl, which we commonly 
 call the chicken. Its home was in India and it was unknown 
 
 ^T ..~^---?_^-'^' ^ '■-^■^ 
 
 Fig. ii8. Tombs of the Earlier Kings of Persia a Few 
 Miles from the Ruins of Persepolis 
 
 After Cyrus and his son Cambyses had passed away, the Persian kings, 
 beginning with Darius, excavated their tombs in the face of this chff, 
 about six miles from their palaces at Persepolis (Fig. ii8). Here then 
 are the tombs of Darius I (the Great) (third from the left), Xerxes (at 
 the far end), Darius II and Artaxerxes I (first and second from the left). 
 Of the first six great kings of Persia we thus have the tombs of five 
 (tomb of Cyrus, Fig. 1 15), leaving out Cambyses the conqueror of Egypt, 
 whose tomb has never been found. The remaining three royal tombs 
 belonging to the last three kings of the Achaemenian line (the line of 
 Darius) (Artaxerxes II, Artaxerxes III, and Darius III) are cut in the 
 cliff behind the palaces of Persepolis (Fig. 116). The square above the 
 colonnade in each tomb front shows a sculptured picture of the king wor- 
 shiping Ahuramazda before a fire altar. All of these tombs were broken 
 open and robbed in ancient times, like the tomb of Cyrus (Fig. 115). 
 Inside, in niches, are the massive stone coffins in which Darius, Xerxes, 
 and the other kings and their families were buried 
 
 in the Mediterranean until Persian communications brought it 
 from India to the v^gean Sea. Thus the Persians brought to 
 Europe the barnyard fowl so familiar to us. 
 

 The Medo-Persian Empire 189 
 
 The ancient Elamite city of Susa, in the Zagros Mountains 274. Capital 
 (see map, p. 100), was the chief residence and capital (Fig. 204). residences 
 The mild air of the Babylonian plain, however, attracted the 
 sovereign during the colder months, when he went to dwell in 
 the palaces of the vanished Chaldean Empire at Babylon. In 
 spite of its remoteness the earlier kings had made an effort to 
 live in their old Persian home. Cyrus built a splendid palace near 
 the battlefield where he had defeated the Medes at Pasargadae 
 (see map, p. 436), and Darius also established a magnificent 
 residence at Persepolis (Fig. 1 1 6), some forty miles south of 
 the palace of Cyrus. Near the ruins of these buildings the 
 tombs of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and the other Persian em- 
 perors still stand in their native Persia (Fig. 118). 
 
 The Persian architects had to learn architecture from the 275. Archi- 
 old oriental peoples now subject to Persia. The enormous 
 terraces (Fig. 116) on which the Persian palaces stood were 
 imitated from Babylonia. The winged bulls at the palace 
 gates (Fig. 116) were copied from those of Assyria and the 
 West. The vast colonnades (Fig. 116) stretching along the 
 front and filling the enormous halls — the earliest colonnades 
 of Asia — had grown up over two thousand years earlier on 
 the Nile (Fig. 56). Likewise the gorgeously colored palace 
 walls of enameled brick (Figs. 113, 204, and Plate II, p. 164) 
 reached Persia from the Nile by the way of Assyria and the 
 West.^ Thus the great civilizations which made up the Empire 
 were merged together in the life of the Persian Empire. 
 
 Section 25. Persian Documents and the 
 Decipherment of Cuneiform 
 
 The adoption by the Persians of the mixed oriental civili- 276. The 
 zation which they found on the Fertile Crescent has been place of 
 of the greatest scientific importance. It was the documents me'nts^iifthe' 
 
 1 It is very noticeable that the Persian architects did not adopt the arch from „„_? „r ' 
 Babylonia. On the contrary, each door in the palace of Darius (Fig. 204) is euneiform 
 topped with a horizontal block of stone, copied from Egyptian doors. 
 
190 Ancient Times 
 
 produced by the Persians when they learned to write cuneiform 
 there, which first enabled us to read the cuneiform inscriptions 
 of Western Asia (§ 160). Without the documents left us by 
 the Persians, modern scholars would still be unable to read the 
 thousands of clay tablets which we discussed in our study of 
 Babylonia and Assyria (Figs. 79, 92, 109, and 126). 
 
 277. Cunei- When Aramaic had displaced the Babylonian and Assyrian 
 
 form writing , /r. ^ x i • i 
 
 ceases; Baby- languages (§ 265), there came a time when no one wrote any 
 
 Assyria are I'nore clay tablets or other records in the ancient wedge-writing.^ 
 
 forgotten Nearly two thousand years ago the last man who could read 
 
 a cuneiform tablet had passed away. The history of Babylonia 
 
 and Assyria was consequently lost under the city mounds 
 
 (§§ 158-161) along the Tigris and Euphrates. 
 
 278. Grote- Before 1800 a.d. travelers in Persia had brought back to 
 
 fend recovers „ , ... .. ... ,., 
 
 the sounds Europc a number 01 copies 01 cuneiform inscriptions which 
 Perskn signs ^^^ ^^^ found engraved on the ruined walls of the Persian 
 (1802) palaces (Fig. 116). These inscriptions were observed to con- 
 
 tain a very limited number of cuneiform signs, and hence there 
 seemed to be some possibility of learning their meaning. In 
 1802 a German schoolmaster at Gottingen named Grotefend 
 identified and read the names of Darius and Xerxes and some 
 other words and names in these Persian inscriptions. He was 
 finally able to read two short Persian inscriptions in cuneiform 
 (Fig. 1 1 9). These were the first Persian inscriptions to be 
 read in modern times, but they were so short that they were 
 far from including all the cuneiform signs in the Persian 
 alphabet, and Persian cuneiform writing was still by no 
 means deciphered. 
 
 279. Rawlin- A number of other interested European scholars were able 
 cipherment to discover the sounds of nearly all the other signs in the 
 cunei^o^m^^^" Persian cuneiform alphabet. Meantime a gifted British officer, 
 (1847) Sir Henry Rawlinson, while he was stationed in Persia, had suc- 
 ceeded in collecting far more Persian inscriptions than were avail- 
 able in Europe. Among them was the great Behistun inscription 
 
 1 The latest cuneiform document known is dated 68 b. c. 
 

 Iff m ^y K> >yr<if <? \2«iy ^ m k- ky tTk^ 
 3MH M 3t !!= v4«TT ^ fn tf T<y yf y<- v^«yy « m 
 
 K Y<y ?f K- m ►< m -It! \g«n <( tIt T<- K1 11 K- \ 
 
 yn N^ft <ff f» \}0<K «!T yfr ^T^T K M << n K- ^ii <-< 
 
 K-^Tf-M -M ^=ryr !> ^f -M ^in <y <y7 ::< {^i << 
 
 £" 
 
 l«yy<<Tfm nicy's ^HT(K<viKrK^}iK-^^1^H'^1 
 
 yi= <^«yT ^ m K- Kt yf Y<- \5«n << m y<- y<y yf y<- yTt 
 
 :< yn -yyy \6ff m tf y<r ^12- <:< <y7 << \7«yy 5 yTr K- T<! 
 
 Tr K-<>< K- m \8f? <fT y1 \9<K «ii m -hi K-yf << yfK- ^ 
 
 Fig. 119. The Two Old Persian Inscriptions which were 
 
 FIRST deciphered AND READ (§ 278) 
 
 The Persian scribes separated the words in their inscriptions by insert- 
 ing an oblique wedge between all words. The above Arabic numbers 
 are here added in order to be able to refer to the different words. It will 
 be seen that these numbers (except /) always stand where the oblique 
 wedge shows a new word begins. Grotefend (§ 278) noticed that the 
 same word is repeated a number of times in each of these inscriptions. 
 In E compare Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6, and they will be recognized as the 
 same word. In J^ it occurs also four times (Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 7). As these 
 inscriptions were found above the figures of Persian kings, Grotefend 
 therefore suspected that this frequent word must be the Persian word 
 for " king." Moreover, as it occurs in both inscriptions as No. 2^ the 
 preceding word (No. /) would probably be the name of the king, the 
 two words being arranged thus : " Darius [the] king." Grotefend then 
 found that the words for the titles of the kings of Persia were known 
 in later Persian documents. Guided by the known titles, he attempted 
 the following guess as to the arrangement and meaning of the words : 
 
 1 2 3 4 
 
 unknown name of [the] king [the] great king 
 
 a Persian king 
 
 5 6 7 8 
 
 of kings, of king unknown name of the son 
 
 a Persian king 
 
 etc. (6, 7, and 8 meaning "the son of King So-and-so"). He next ex- 
 perimented with the known names of the kings of Persia, and judg- 
 ing from their length, he found that the probable name for No. i 
 in E was " Darius," and for No. i m. F was " Xerxes." The result 
 may be seen in Fig. 120 
 191 
 
192 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 280. Value 
 of Persian 
 cuneiform in 
 deciphering 
 Babylonian 
 cuneiform 
 
 Kh 
 
 sha 
 
 sha 
 
 «TT X T<-fTT^^TTT 
 
 Fig. 120. 
 
 The Name of Xerxes in Old 
 Persian Cuneiform 
 
 of Darius (Fig. 117). In 1847 Rawlinson published a complete 
 alphabet of the Old Persian cuneiform, containing thirty-nine 
 phonetic signs. Along with this alphabet he published also a 
 
 complete transla- 
 tion of the Persian 
 portion of the long 
 Behistun inscrip- 
 tion (^ in Fig. 117). 
 This showed that 
 he had completed 
 the decipherment 
 of the Old Persian 
 cuneiform — a feat 
 all the more re- 
 markable on the 
 part of Rawlinson 
 because he worked 
 the Orient, al- 
 
 This is the first word in Fig. 119, supposed by 
 Grotefend to be " Xerxes." Now, just as our 
 " Charles " is an imperfect form of the ancient 
 name "Carolus," so the name we call " Xerxes " 
 waspronounced by the old Vt.x^v3Si^Khshayarsha. 
 The above seven signs therefore should be 
 read : Kh-sha-y-a-r-sha-a. Grotefend in this 
 way learned the sounds for which these signs 
 stood. Now some of these signs appear in the 
 word Grotefend thought was " king " in Per- 
 sian. Hence it was now possible for Grotefend 
 to see if he could find out how to pronounce 
 the ancient Persian word for '*king." And the 
 reader can do the same. Let him copy on a slip 
 of paper the first three signs in the word sup- 
 posedly meaning "king"; for example, use 
 word 2 in Fig. 119. Now take these three 
 signs and compare them with the signs in 
 "Xerxes" (Fig. 120). The student will find that 
 the three signs he has copied are the same as 
 the first, second, and seventh signs in the word 
 "Xerxes" (Fig. 120). Let us write down in a 
 row the sounds of these three signs (first, second, 
 and seventh), and we find we have Kh-sha-a. 
 The ancient Persian word for " king " must have 
 begun with the sounds Kh-sha-a. When we 
 compare this with " shah," the title of the 
 present king of Persia, it is evident that Grote- 
 fend was on the right road to decipher Old 
 Persian cuneiform 
 
 in 
 
 most entirely in ig- 
 norance of parallel 
 work by scholars 
 in Europe. 
 
 Scholars • were 
 now able for the 
 first time to read 
 Old Persian inscrip- 
 tions, and much 
 valuable informa- 
 tion was gained, 
 especially from a 
 study of the great 
 Behistun monu- 
 ment (Fig. 117). But the number of Persian inscriptions sur- 
 viving is very small. The chief value of the ability to read 
 ancient Persian cuneiform records lay in the fact that this 
 
The Medo-Persian Empire I93 
 
 Persian writing might form a bridge leading over to an under- 
 standing of ancient Babylonian cuneiform. 
 
 Scholars had early discovered that the inscription C on the 281. Dis- 
 Behistun monument was written with the same cuneiform signs one of the 
 which were also observable on many of the older clay tablets i^scdptions 
 (Figs. 80 and 02) and stone monuments found in Babylonia, was in the 
 Meantime the museums of London and Pans were receivmg guage and 
 great sculptured slabs of alabaster (Figs. loi, 105, and 106) JhosTof^^ 
 from Nineveh and the palace of Sargon (Fig. 104), bearing fj^^^gg'^jg^ 
 many inscriptions, all in the language and writing of inscription 
 C on the Behistun monument (Fig. 117). Scholars therefore 
 perceived that if they could decipher inscription C at Behistun, 
 they would be able to read all the ancient documents of Baby- 
 lonia and Assyria, reaching back to a far greater age than the 
 few surviving Persian inscriptions. 
 
 Every indication led to the conclusion that inscription C at 282. Behis- 
 
 -r.1- -n.11- 1- riT-.- • ^UH monU- 
 
 Behistun was a Babylonian translation 01 the Persian portion, ment, the 
 
 already translated by Rawlinson. The Behistun monument st^n^^of 
 
 might therefore become the Rosetta Stone of Western Asia, Western Asia 
 and enable scholars to read the ancient Babylonian language, 
 as the Rosetta Stone had enabled them to read the ancient 
 
 Egyptian language. We can diagram this situation thus: 1 
 
 Rosetta Stone Behistun Monument 
 
 Containing: Containing: 
 
 1. Egyptian inscription i. Babylonian cuneiform inscrip- 
 deciphered by scholars by tion to be deciphered by scholars 
 comparison with by comparison with 
 
 2. The Greek translation 2. The Persian translation under- 
 understood by scholars stood by scholars (since Rawlin- 
 
 son's translation, § 279) 
 
 Many scholars attacked the problem, but they found it far 283. Rawiin- 
 
 more difficult than the decipherment of the Persian had been ; cipherment 
 
 for the Persian cuneiform had contained only forty signs, while the ?j^^p^^^°"'^" 
 Babylonian was found to use over five hundred (see § 209). 
 
194 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 284. The 
 
 modern 
 science of 
 Assyriology 
 
 It was again Rawlinson, however, who accomplished the task. 
 In 1850 he published his results. They were followed the 
 next year by a full translation of the Babylonia?i portion of 
 the Behistun inscription. 
 
 The city-mounds of Babylonia and Assyria at once began 
 to speak and to tell us, piece by piece, the three great chapters 
 of history along the Two Rivers (Sections 14-20) — some- 
 thing over twenty-five hundred years of the story of man in 
 Western Asia, of which the world before had been entirely 
 ignorant. A group of scholars arose who devoted themselves 
 to the study of the vast body of cuneiform documents on clay 
 and stone which was then coming and still continues to come 
 from the ruined cities of Assyria and Babylonia (Fig. 84). We 
 call such scholars Assyriologists. Thus it happened that we 
 owe to documents left us by the Persian kings the creation of 
 a new and wonderful branch of knowledge and the recovery 
 of the ancient history of Western Asia. 
 
 Section 26. The Results of Persian Rule 
 AND its Religious Influence 
 
 285. Decline 
 of Persia 
 
 286. Charac- 
 ter of the 
 Persian kings 
 and their rule 
 
 For the oriental world as a whole, Persian rule meant 
 about two hundred years of peaceful prosperity (ending about 
 ■^T^T^ B.C.). The Persian kings, however, as time went on, were 
 no longer as strong and skillful as Cyrus and Darius. They 
 loved luxury and ease and left much of the task of ruling to 
 their governors and officials. This meant corrupt and ineffective 
 government ; the result was weakness and decline. 
 
 The later world, especially the Greeks, often represented 
 the Persian rulers as cruel and barbarous oriental tyrants. 
 This unfavorable opinion is not wholly justified. The Persian 
 emperors felt a deep sense of obligation to give just govern- 
 ment to the nations of the earth. Darius the Great in the 
 Behistun Inscription (Fig. 117) says: "On this account Ahu- 
 ramazda brought me help, . . . because I was not wicked, 
 
The Medo-Persian Empire 195 
 
 nor was I a liar, nor was I a tyrant, neither I nor any of my 
 line. I have ruled according to righteousness." There can be 
 no doubt that the Persian Empire, the largest the ancient world 
 had thus far seen, enjoyed a government far more just and 
 humane than any that had preceded it in the East. 
 
 Many such statements as that of Darius just quoted show 287. Spread 
 that the Persian rulers were devoted followers of Zoroaster's religion^" 
 teaching. Their power carried this noble faith throughout 
 Western Asia and especially into Asia Minor. Here Mithras, 
 regarded by Zoroaster as a helper of Ahuramazda (§253), 
 appeared as a hero of light, and finally as a Sun-god, who 
 gradually outshone Ahuramazda himself. PYom Asia Minor 
 Mithras passed into Europe, and, as we shall see, the faith 
 in the mighty Persian god spread far and wide through the 
 Roman Empire, to become a dangerous competitor of Chris- 
 tianity (§ 1064). 
 
 In matters of religion, as in many other things, the Persian 288. Far- 
 Empire completed the breakdown of national boundaries and compSkion 
 the beginning of a long period when the leading religions of among onen- 
 the East were called upon to compete in a great contest for the 
 mastery among all the nations. The most important of the re- 
 ligions which thus found themselves thrown into a world struggle 
 for chief place under the dominion of Persia was the religion 
 of the Hebrews. While we leave the imperial family of Persia 
 to suffer that slow decline which always besets a long royal 
 line in the Orient, we may glance briefly at the little Hebrew 
 kingdom among the Persian vassals in the West, which was 
 destined to influence the history of man more profoundly than 
 any of the great empires of the early world. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 21. What great race inhabited the northern grasslands.? 
 How did their migrations finally distribute them? What rival line 
 confronted them on the south .? Describe the life and dispersion of 
 the Indo-European parent people. Where are their descendants now.'* 
 
196 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 22. From whom did the Aryan people come forth? 
 What became of them when they left their first home ? What great 
 tribes of the Aryans came toward the Fertile Crescent? Who was 
 their great prophet, and what did he teach ? When did he probably 
 live ? 
 
 Section 23. What can you say of the rise and conquests of 
 Cyrus? What race did he subdue on the Fertile Crescent? What 
 race thus became the leaders? What was the extent of the Persian 
 Empire? How long had it taken to conquer it? Give dates. 
 
 Section 24. Did the Persians possess a civilization like those 
 which they found in Babylonia and Egypt ? Describe the organi- 
 zation of the Empire by Darius, and his rule. What was the land 
 system like? What can you say about his plans for commerce by 
 sea and land? Where was the capital? How did Persian architec- 
 ture arise? Give examples. 
 
 Section 25. Can you write the three signs with which the aticient 
 Persians began their word for " king "? What is the modern Persian 
 word for " king " ? What monument became the Rosetta Stone of 
 Western Asia ? Can you explain how ? What was the result ? 
 
 Section 26. How long did the Persian Empire last? Give dates. 
 What can you say about the character of the Persian kings ? W^hat 
 was happening among the religions of the East? What great reli- 
 gion was involved in this struggle ? 
 
 Note. The sketch below shows the ruins of Persepolis (cf. Fig. ii6). 
 
• CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HEBREWS AND THE DECLINE OF THE ORIENT 
 
 Section 27. Palestine and the Predecessors of 
 THE Hebrews there 
 
 The home of the Hebrews was on the west end of the 
 Fertile Crescent (§ 132), in a land now called Palestine.^ It 
 is the region lying along the southeast corner of the Mediter- 
 ranean — a narrow strip between desert and sea ; for while the 
 sea limits it on the west, the wastes of the desert-bay (§ 133) 
 sweep northward, forming the eastern boundary of Palestine 
 (see map, p. 100). It was about one hundred and fifty miles 
 long, and less than ten thousand square miles are included 
 within these limits ; that is, Palestine was somewhat .larger 
 than the state of Vermont. 
 
 Much of this area is unproductive, for the desert intrudes 
 upon southern Palestine and rolls northward in gaunt and 
 arid limestone hills, even surrounding Jerusalem (Fig. 127). 
 The valleys of northern Palestine, however, are rich and 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us a caravan of Canaanites trading in 
 Egypt about 1900 B.C. as they appeared on the estate of a feudal baron in Egypt 
 (§ 99)' The Egyptian noble had this picture of them painted with others in his 
 tomb (Fig. 57), where it still is. Observe the shoes, sandals, and gay woolen 
 clothing, the costume of the Palestinian towns, worn by these Canaanites ; observe 
 also the metal weapons which they carry. The manufacture of these things 
 created industries which had begun to flourish among the towns in Syria and 
 Palestine by this time. Notice also the type of face, with the prominent nose, 
 which shows that Hittite blood was already mixed with the Semitic blood of 
 these early dwellers in Palestine (Fig. 146). 
 
 1 On the origin of the name see § 379. 
 197 
 
 289. Situ- 
 ation and 
 extent of 
 Palestine, the 
 home of the 
 Hebrews 
 
 290. Char- 
 acter of 
 Palestine 
 
198 Ancient Times 
 
 productive. The entire land is without summer rains and is 
 dependent upon a rainy season (the winter) for moisture. 
 There is no opportunity for irrigation, and the harvest is 
 therefore scantier than in lands enjoying summer rains. Only 
 
 Fig. 121. Ancient Egyptian Painting of a Brickyard with 
 
 Asiatic Captives engaged in Brickmaking (Fifteenth 
 
 Century b.c.) 
 
 The Hebrew slaves working in the Egyptian brickyards (see Exod. i, 
 14 and V, 6-19) must have looked like this when Moses led them forth 
 into Asia (§ 293). At the left below, the soft clay is being mixed in 
 two piles; one laborer helps load a basket of clay on the shoulder of 
 another, who carries it to the brick-molder, at the right above. Here a 
 laborer empties the clay from his basket, while the molder before him 
 fills with clay an oblong box, which is the mold. He has already 
 finished three bricks. At the left above, a molder spreads out the 
 soft bricks with spaces between for the circulation of air to make 
 them dry quickly in the sun. The overseer, staff in hand, sits in the 
 upper right-hand corner, and below him we see a workman carrying 
 away the dried bricks, hanging from a yoke on his shoulders. Thus 
 were made the bricks used for thousands of years for the buildings 
 forming so large a part of the cities of the ancient world, from the 
 Orient to Athens and Rome (§ 548) 
 
 the northern end of the Palestinian coast has any. harbors 
 (Fig. 159)5 but these were early seized by the Phoenicians 
 (Sections 39-40). Palestine thus remained cut off from the 
 sea. In natural resources it was too poor (Fig. 129) ever to 
 develop prosperity or political power like its great civilized 
 neighbors on the Nile and Euphrates or in Syria and Phoenicia. 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 199 
 
 Here at the west end of the Fertile Crescent, as at the east 291. Mixture 
 endj the Semitic nomads from the desert-bay (reread Section 13) civilization 
 mingled with the dwellers in the northern mountains. The Jj^fQ^i^the^ 
 Northerners, chiefly Hittites from Asia Minor (§§ 35 1-360), left Hebrews 
 
 . r -r^ 1 . ,-r^i • •!• possessed it ; 
 
 their mark on the Semites of Palestme. The promment aquihne Babylonian 
 nose, still considered to be the mark of the Semite, especially ^'^^^^'^S 
 of the Jew, was really a feature belonging to the (non-Semitic) 
 Hittites, who intermarried with the people of Palestine and 
 gave them this Hittite type of face (see Fig. 146). Strange 
 faces from many a foreign clime therefore crowded the market 
 places of Palestine, amid a babel of various dialects. Here 
 the rich jewelry, bronze dishes, and ivory furniture of the Nile 
 craftsmen (Fig. 73) mingled with the pottery of the JEgean 
 Islands (Fig. 136), the red earthenware of the Hittites, or the 
 gay woolens of Babylonia. The donkeys (headpiece, p. 197), 
 which lifted their complaining voices above the hubbub of the 
 market, had grazed along the shores of both Nile and Euphrates, 
 and their masters had trafficked beneath the Babylonian temple 
 towers (Fig. 104) as well as under the shadow of the Theban 
 obelisks (Fig. 65). We recall how traffic with Babylonia had 
 taught these Western Semites to write the cuneiform hand 
 (§ 187). Palestine was the entrance to the bridge between 
 Asia and Africa — a middle ground where the civilizations of 
 Egypt and Babylonia, of Phoenicia, the ^gean, and Asia Minor, 
 all represented by their wares, met and commingled as they did 
 nowhere else in the early Orient. 
 
 Just as the merchandise of the surrounding nations met in 292. Pales- 
 peaceful competition in the markets of Palestine, so the armies gj-gat battle- 
 of these nations also met there in battle. The situation of fa^r^Orknt^ 
 Palestine, between its powerful neighbors on the Nile and on the 
 Euphrates, made it the battleground where these great nations 
 fought for many centuries (§ 213). Over and over again un- 
 happy Palestine went through the experience of little Belgium 
 in the conflict between Germany and France in 19 14. Egypt 
 held Palestine for many centuries (§ 108). Later we recall 
 
2O0 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 how Assyria conquered it (§§ 212-214). Chaldea also held 
 it (§ 234), and we finally found it in the power of Persia 
 (§ 263). When, therefore, the Hebrews originally took pos- 
 session of the land, there was little prospect that they would 
 ever long enjoy freedom from foreign oppression. 
 
 293. The 
 
 Hebrew 
 invasion of 
 Palestine 
 (about, 
 1200 B.C.) 
 
 
 Section 28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in 
 Palestine and the United Hebrew Kingdom 
 
 The Hebrews were all originally men of the Arabian desert, 
 wandering with their flocks and herds and slowly drifting over 
 
 into their final 
 
 Pales- 
 
 home in 
 tine (read §§133- 
 141). For two 
 centuries (about 
 1400 to 1200 
 B.C.) their move- 
 ment from the 
 desert into Pal- 
 estine continued. 
 Another group of 
 their tribes had 
 been slaves in 
 Egypt, where they 
 had suffered much 
 hardship (Figs. 
 121 and 122) 
 under a cruel Pha- 
 raoh (Fig. 123). 
 They w^re successfully led out of Egypt by their heroic leader 
 Moses, a great national hero whose achievements they never 
 forgot. On entering Palestine the Hebrews found the Ca- 
 naanites (§ 141) already dwelling there in flourishing towns 
 protected by massive walls (Figs. 124 and 125). The Hebrews 
 
 Fig. 122. Brick 
 thought to have 
 BREW Slaves in 
 
 Storehouse Rooms 
 
 BEEN built by He- 
 
 Egypt (Thirteenth 
 
 Century b.c.) 
 
 This storehouse is in the city of Pithom on 
 the east of the Nile Delta. It was built by 
 Ramses II, whose face we see in Fig. 123. 
 The making of the brick for such buildings 
 may be seen in Fig. 121 
 
The Hebreivs and the Decline of the Orient 201 
 
 were able to capture only the weaker Canaanite towns (Fig. 126). 
 As the rough Hebrew shepherds looked across the highlands of 
 north Palestine they beheld their kindred scattered over far- 
 stretching hilltops, with the frowning walls of many a Canaanite 
 stronghold (Fig. 
 127) rising between 
 them. Even Jeru- 
 salem in the Judean 
 highlands (Fig. 127) 
 for centuries defied 
 the assaults of the 
 Hebrew invaders 
 (Fig. 126). 
 
 Let us remember 
 that these uncon- 
 quered Canaanite 
 towns now possessed 
 a civilization fifteen 
 hundred years old, 
 with comfortable 
 houses, government, 
 industries, trade, writ- 
 ing, and religion — 
 a civilization which 
 the rude Hebrew 
 shepherds were soon 
 adopting ; for they 
 could not avoid inter- 
 course with the un- 
 subdued Canaanite 
 
 towns, as trade and business threw them together. This min- 
 gling with the Canaanites produced the most profound changes 
 in the life of the Hebrews. Most of them left their tents (head- 
 piece, p. 100) and began to build houses like those of the Ca- 
 naanites (Fig. 125) ; they put off the rough sheepskin they had 
 
 294. The 
 
 Hebrews 
 adopt 
 Canaanite 
 civilization 
 and acquire 
 Hittite type 
 of face 
 
 / 
 
 Fig. 1 23. Mummy of Ramses II, commonly 
 
 THOUGHT TO BE THE PhARAOH WHO EN- 
 SLAVED THE Hebrews 
 
 See § 125 for account of the preservation of 
 the bodies of the kings of Egypt. Ramses II 
 died about 1225 B.C., that is, over thirty-one hun- 
 dred years ago. He was about ninety years old. 
 It was probably he who treated the Hebrews 
 so cruelly, as told in Exodus v, 6-19 (§ 293) 
 
202 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 295. Differ- 
 ences in life 
 and customs 
 among the 
 Hebrews ; 
 antagonism 
 between ' 
 North and 
 South 
 
 worn in the desert, and they put on fine Canaanite raiment of 
 gayly colored woven wool (headpiece, p. 197). After a time, in 
 appearance, occupation, and manner of life the Hebrews were 
 not to be distinguished from the Canaanites among whom they 
 now lived. In short, they had adopted Canaanite civilization, 
 just as newly arrived immigrants among us soon adopt our 
 clothing and our ways. Indeed, as the Hebrews intermarried 
 with the Canaanites, they received enough Hittite blood to 
 acquire the Hittite type of face (Fig. 146). 
 
 These changes did not proceed everywhere at the same rate. 
 The Hebrews in the less fertile South were more attached to 
 the old desert life, so that many would not give up the tent 
 
 -^->:^^' ^^4^ 
 
 Fig. 1 24. The Long Mound of the Ancient City of Jericho 
 
 The walls of the city and the ruins of the houses (Fig. 125) are buried 
 
 under the rubbish which makes up this mound. ^Many of the ancient 
 
 cities of Palestine, as old as 2500 B.C., are now such m^ounds as this 
 
 296. Foun- 
 dation of the 
 Hebrew 
 nation ; Saul, 
 the first king 
 
 and the old freedom of the desert. The wandering life of the 
 nomad shepherd on the Judean hills could still be seen from 
 the walls of Jerusalem. Here, then, were two differing modes 
 of life among the Hebrews : in the fertile North of Palestine 
 we find the settled life of the town and its outlying fields ; in 
 the South, on the other hand, the wandering life of the nomad 
 still went on. For centuries this difference formed an impor 
 tant cause of discord among the Hebrews. 
 
 Fortunately for the Hebrews, Egypt was now in a state of 
 decline (iioo B.C.) (§ 124) and Assyria had not yet conquered 
 the West (§ 208). But a Mediterranean people called Philistines 
 (headpiece, p. 252, and § 379) had at this time migrated from 
 the island of Crete to the sea plain at the southwest comer of 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 203 
 
 Palestine (see map, p. 196). By 1 100 b.c. these Philistines formed 
 a highly civilized and warlike nation, or group of city-kingdoms. 
 Hard pressed by the Philistines, the Hebrew local leaders, or 
 judges, as they were called, found it hard to unite their people 
 into a nation. About a generation before the year 1000 B.C., 
 
 
 Fig. 125. Ruins of the Houses of Ancient Jericho 
 
 Only the stone foundations of these houses are preserved. The walls 
 were of sun-baked brick, and the rains of over three thousand years have 
 washed them away; for these houses date from about 1500 B.C., and 
 in them lived the Canaanites, whom the Hebrews found in Palestine 
 (§ 293). Here we find the pottery jars, glass, and dishes of the house- 
 hold; also things carved of stone, like seals, amulets, and ornaments 
 of metal. The industries of these people were clearly learned from 
 Egypt (§ 291). Cuneiform tablets of clay found in these ruins show 
 the influence of Babylonian business (§§ 187, and 291) 
 
 however, a popular leader named Saul succeeded in gaining for 
 himself the office of king. The new king was a Southerner who 
 still loved the old nomad customs ; he had no fixed abode and 
 dwelt in a tent. In the fierce struggle to thrust back the Phihs- 
 tines, Saul was disastrously defeated, and, seeing the rout of his 
 army, he fell upon his own sword and so died (about 1000 B.C.). 
 
204 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 297. David 
 (about 1000- 
 
 960 B.C.) 
 
 In a few years the 
 ability of David, one 
 of Saul's daring men 
 at arms whom he had 
 unjustly outlawed, won 
 the support of the 
 South. Seeing the im- 
 portance of possess- 
 ing a strong castle, 
 the sagacious David 
 selected the ancient 
 fortress on the steep 
 hill of Jerusalem (Fig. 
 127), hitherto held by 
 the Canaanites. He 
 therefore gained pos- 
 session of it and made 
 it his residence. Here 
 he ruled for a time 
 as king of the South, 
 till his valor as a sol- 
 dier and his victories 
 on all sides won him 
 also the support of 
 the more prosperous 
 North. The Philis- 
 tines were now beaten 
 
 Fig. 126. Letter of the Egyptian 
 Governor of Jerusalem telling of 
 the Invasion of Palestine by the 
 Hebrews (Fourteenth Century b.c.) 
 
 The letter is a clay tablet written in Baby- 
 lonian cuneiform by the terrified Egyptian 
 governor, who begs the Pharaoh for help 
 [Hebrews] are taking the cities of the king, 
 king, my lord ; all are lost." The king of Egypt to whom he wrote 
 thus was Ikhnaton, at a time when the Egyptian Empire in Asia was 
 falling to pieces (§ 122). This letter is one of a group of three hun- 
 dred such cuneiform letters found in one of the rooms of Ikhnaton's 
 palace at Tell el-Amarna (or Amarna), and called the Amarna Letters 
 the oldest body of international correspondence in the world. We find 
 in them the earliest mention of the Hebrews (cf. Fig. 92 and see § 187) 
 
 saying : " The Khabiru 
 No ruler remains to the 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 205 
 
 off, and David ruled over an extensive Hebrew kingdom. He 
 enjoyed a long and prosperous reign, and his people never forgot 
 his heroic deeds as a warrior nor his skill as a poet and singer. 
 
 Fig. 127. Glimpse of the Walls of Jerusalem from the 
 Low Valley below the Old Canaanite Fortress 
 
 The houses on the right of this valley belong to the modern village of 
 Siloam ; but on the left we see the high walls of Jerusalem where they 
 pass around the ancient place of the temple. Here above us at the left, 
 looking down several hundred feet into this valley, was the Canaanite 
 fortress captured by David (§ 297), but it long ago fell into ruin and 
 disappeared. The wall we see here is of a much later date. The Ca- 
 naanite fortress must have looked very much like the castle of David's 
 northern neighbor, the king of Samal (Fig. 97). (Drawn from photo- 
 graph by Underwood & Underwood) 
 
 David's son, Solomon, became, like Hammurapi, one of the 
 leading merchants of the East. He trafficked in horses and 
 launched a trading fleet in partnership with Hiram, the Phoenician 
 
2o6 Ancient Times 
 
 298. Solo- king of Tyre. His wealth enabled him to marry a daughter 
 S|y"sion of ^ of the king of Egypt, and he delighted in oriental luxury and 
 his kingdom display. He removed the portable tent which the Hebrews had 
 930 B.C.) thus far used as a temple, and with the aid of his friend Hiram, 
 
 who loaned him skilled Phoenician workmen, he built a rich 
 temple of stone in Jerusalem (Fig. 127). Such splendor de- 
 manded a great income, and to secure it he weighed down 
 the Hebrews with heavy taxes. The resulting discontent of his 
 subjects was so great that, under Solomon's son, the Northern 
 tribes withdrew from the nation and set up a king of their 
 own. Thus the Hebrew nation was divided into two kingdoms 
 before it was a century old. 
 
 Section 29. The Two Hebrew Kingdoms 
 
 299. The There was much hard feeling between the two Hebrew king- 
 twee^nthetwo doms, and sometimes fighting. Israel,. as we call the Northern 
 idn^dmiis kingdom, was rich and prosperous ; its market places were filled 
 
 with industry and commerce ; its fertile fields produced plenti- 
 • ful crops. Israel displayed the wealth and success of town 
 
 life. On the other hand, Judah, " the Southern kingdom, was 
 poor; her land was meager (Fig. 128); besides Jerusalem she 
 had no large towns ; many of the people still wandered with 
 their flocks. 
 
 300. The These two methods of life came into conflict in many ways, 
 contrast upon but especially in religion. Every old Canaanite town had for 
 religion centuries its local town god, called its '' baal," or " lord." The 
 
 Hebrew townsmen found it very natural to worship the gods 
 of their neighbors, the Canaanite townsmen. They were thus 
 unfaithful to their old Hebrew God Yahveh (or Jehovah).^ To 
 some devout Hebrews, therefore, and especially to those in the 
 South, the Canaanite gods seemed to be the protectors of the 
 wealthy class in the towns, with their luxury and injustice to 
 
 1 The Hebrews pronounced the name of their God " Yahveh." The pro- 
 nunciation " Jehovah " began less than six hundred years ago and was due to a 
 misunderstanding of the pronunciation of the word " Yahveh." 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 207 
 
 the poor, while Yahveh appeared as the guardian of the sim- 
 pler shepherd life of the desert, and therefore the protector of 
 the poor and needy. 
 
 There was growing reason for such beliefs. Less than a cen- 301. Elijah 
 tury after the separation of the two kingdoms, Ahab, a king of fe^nce^ofThe 
 the North, had had Naboth, one of his subjects, killed in order o!.^5^i^^fs 
 
 •* of Yahveh 
 
 to seize "a vineyard belonging to Naboth, and thus to enlarge 
 
 -:fe^ 
 
 
 Fig. 128. The Stony and Unproductive Fields of Judah 
 
 Judah is largely made up of sterile ridges like this in the background. 
 Note the scantiness of the growing grain in the foreground 
 
 his palace gardens. Reports of such wrongs stirred the anger 
 of Elijah, a Hebrew of old nomad habits, who lived in the 
 desert east of the Jordan.. Still wearing his desert sheepskin, 
 he suddenly appeared before Ahab in the ill-gotten vineyard 
 and denounced the king for his seizure of it. Thus this un- 
 couth figure from the desert proclaimed war between Yahveh 
 and the injustice of town life. Elijah's followers finally slew not 
 only the entire Northern royal family, but also the priests of 
 
2o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 302. The 
 
 earliest 
 historical 
 writing 
 among the 
 Hebrews 
 (about 
 850 B.C.) ; 
 the Unknown 
 Historian 
 
 303. Amos, 
 and the 
 peaceful 
 methods of 
 reformer and 
 prophet 
 (750 B.C.) 
 
 the Canaanite gods (or baals). Such violent methods, however, 
 could not accomplish lasting results. They were the methods 
 of Hebrews who thought of Yahveh only as a war god. 
 
 Besides such violent leaders as these, there were already 
 among the Hebrews more peaceable men, who also chafed 
 under the injustice of town life and turned fondly back to the 
 grand old days of their shepherd wanderings, out on the broad 
 reaches of the desert, where no man *' ground the faces of the 
 poor." It was a gifted Hebrew of this kind who now put 
 together a simple narrative history of the Hebrew forefathers 
 — a glorified picture of their shepherd life. While his original 
 work has perished, much of it still survives in the immortal 
 tales of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Abraham and Isaac, of 
 Jacob and Joseph. These tales belong among the noblest liter- 
 ature which has survived to us from the past (see Gen. xxiv, 
 xxvii, xxviii, xxxvii, xxxix-xlvii, 12). They are the earliest ex- 
 ample of historical writing in prose which we possess among 
 any people, and their nameless author, whom we may call the 
 Unknown Historian, is the earliest historian whom we have 
 found in the ancient world.'^ 
 
 Another century passed, and about 750 B.C. another dingy 
 figure in sheepskin appeared in the streets of Bethel, where the 
 Northern kingdom had an important temple. It was Amos, a 
 shepherd from the hills of Judah in the south. In the solitudes 
 of his shepherd life Amos had learned to see in Yahveh far 
 more than a war god of the desert. To him Yahveh seemed to 
 be a God of fatherly kindness, not demanding bloody butchery 
 like that practiced by Elijah's followers (§ 301), but neverthe- 
 less a God who rebuked the selfish and oppressive wealthy class 
 in the towns. The simple shepherd could not resist the inner 
 impulse to journey to the Northern kingdom and proclaim to 
 the luxurious townsmen there the evils of their manner of life. 
 
 1 Unfortunately the Hebrews themselves early lost all knowledge of his name 
 and identity, and finally associated the surviving fragments of his work with the' 
 name of Moses. 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Onefit 209 
 
 We can imagine the surprise of the prosperous Northern 304. Amos 
 Hebrews as they suddenly met this rude shepherd figure clad th"cormpt 
 in sheepskin, standing at a street corner addressing a crowd living of the 
 of townsmen. He was denouncing their showy clothes, fine kingdom 
 houses, beautiful furniture (Fig. 100), and above all their cor- 
 rupt lives and hard-heartedness toward the poor, whose lands 
 they seized for debt and whose labor they gained by enslaving 
 their fellow Hebrews. These things had been unknown in the 
 desert. By such addresses as these Amos, of course, endangered 
 his life, but he thus became the first social reformer in Asia. 
 We apply the term '' prophet " to such great Hebrew leaders 
 who pointed out the ^way~l:oward unselfish living, brotherly 
 kindness, and a higher type of religion. 
 
 While all this had been going on the Hebrews had been 305. The 
 learning to write, as so many of their nomad predecessors learn^to'write 
 on the Fertile Crescent had done before them (§§ 167 and 
 201). They were now abandoning the clay tablet (Fig. 126), 
 and they wrote on papyrus with the Egyptian pen and ink 
 (Fig. 1 01). They borrowed their alphabet from the Phoeni- 
 cian and Aramaean merchants (§ 205). There is no doubt 
 that our earliest Hebrew historian's admiration for the nomad 
 life (§ 302), although the nomads were without writing, did 
 not prevent him from making use of this new and great con- 
 venience of tow7i life — that is, writing. The rolls containing 
 the Unknown Historian's tales of the patriarchs, or bearing 
 the teachings of such men as Amos, were the first books 
 which the Hebrews produced — their first literature. Such 
 rolls of papyrus were exactly like those which had been in use 
 in Egypt for over two thousand years. The discovery of the 
 household papers of a Hebrew community in Egypt has shown 
 us just how such a page of Hebrew or Aramaic writing looked 
 (Fig. 131). But literature remained the only art the Hebrews 
 possessed. They had no painting, sculpture, or architecture, 
 and if they needed these things they borrowed from their great 
 neighbors, Egypt, Phoenicia (§ 398), Damascus, or Assyria. 
 
2IO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section ^30. The Destruction of the Hebrew 
 Kingdoms by Assyria and Chaldea 
 
 306. De- 
 struction of 
 the Northern 
 kingdom 
 by Assyria 
 (722 B.C.) 
 
 307. Yahveh, 
 the God of 
 Palestine, in 
 conflict with 
 Assur, god 
 of Assyria 
 
 308. Isaiah 
 and the siege 
 of Jerusalem 
 by Sennach- 
 erib 
 
 While the Hebrews had been deeply stirred by their own 
 conflicts at ho?ne, such men as Amos had also perceived and 
 proclaimed the dangers coming from abroad, from beyond the 
 borders of Palestine, especially Assyria. Amos indeed announced 
 the coming destruction of the Northern kingdom by Assyria, 
 because of the evil lives of the people. As Amos had foreseen, 
 Assyria first swept away Damascus (§§ 208 and 2 1 2). The king- 
 dom of Israel, thus left exposed, was the next victim, and Samaria, 
 its capital, was captured by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. (§ 213). 
 Many of the unhappy Northern Hebrews were carried away as 
 captives, and the Northern nation, called Israel, was destroyed 
 after having existed for a little over two centuries. 
 
 The national hopes of the Hebrews were now centered in 
 the helpless little kingdom of Judah, which struggled on for 
 over a century and a quarter more, in the midst of a great 
 world conflict, in which Assyria was the unchallenged cham- 
 pion. Thus far thoughtful Hebrews had been accustomed to 
 think of their God as dwelling and ruling in Palestine only. 
 Did he have power also over the vast world arena where all 
 the great nations were fighting? But if so, was not Assur 
 (Fig. 102), the great god of victorious Assyria, stronger than 
 Yahveh, the God of the Hebrews? And many a despairing 
 Hebrew, as he looked out over the hills of Palestine, wasted 
 by the armies of Assyria (Fig. 129), felt in his heart that 
 Assur, the god of the Assyrians, must indeed be stronger than 
 Yahveh, God of the Hebrews. 
 
 It was in the midst of somber doubts like these, in the years 
 before 700 B.C., that the princely prophet Isaiah, in one great 
 oration after another, addressed the multitudes which filled the 
 streets of Jerusalem. The hosts of Sennacherib were at the 
 gates (Fig. 130), and the terrified throngs in the city were 
 expecting at any moment to hear the thunder of the great 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 2 1 1 
 
 Assyrian war engines (headpiece, p. 140) battering down the 
 crumbling walls of their city, as they had crushed the walls of 
 Damascus and Samaria. Then the bold words of the dauntless 
 Isaiah lifted them from despair like the triumphant call of a 
 trumpet. He told them that Yahveh ruled a kingdom far larger 
 
 
 bArt. Mfe^'ii"'i^5 
 
 ^-1 s 
 
 3^2:. :>_^ KTM' T-^ 1 ^ J 
 
 ^fVn»'Til*;|p4«6i^^^ i^jii'" 111 'a; 
 
 Fig. 129. Hebrews paying Tribute to the King of Assyria 
 
 The Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III, stands at the left, followed by two 
 attendants. Before him hovers the winged sun-disk {§ 210 and Fig. 102). 
 His appearance in the middle of the ninth century B.C., campaigning in 
 the West against Damascus (§ 208), so frightened the Hebrews of the 
 Northern kingdom that their king (Jehu) sent gifts to the Assyrian king 
 by an envoy whom we see here bowing down at the king's feet. Behind 
 the Hebrew envoy are two Assyrian officers who are leading up a hne of 
 thirteen Hebrews (not included here) bearing gifts of silver, gold, etc. 
 Although it was over a century before the Assyrian kings succeeded in 
 capturing Damascus (§§208, 212, and 213), this incident showed the 
 Hebrews what they might expect. The scene is carved on a black stone 
 shaft set up by the Assyrian king in his palace on the Tigris, where the 
 modern excavators found it. It is now in the British Museum 
 
 than Palestine — that He controlled the great world arena, 
 where Ife, and not Assur, was the triumphant champion. If the 
 Assyrians had wasted and plundered Palestine, it was because 
 they were but the lash in the hands of Yahveh, who was using 
 them as a scourge to punish Judah for its wrongdoing. Isaiah 
 made this all clear to the people by vivid oriental illustrations, 
 calling Assyria the " rod " of Yahveh's anger, scourging the 
 Hebrews (Isa. x, 5-15). 
 
212 
 
 Anciejit Times 
 
 309. De- 
 struction of 
 Sennacherib's 
 army and 
 vindication 
 of Isaiah's 
 teaching 
 
 310. De- 
 struction of 
 the Southern 
 kingdom by 
 Chaldea 
 (586 B.C.) 
 
 .V , ./If Si. ' ■'^""'"fj^' *(!,«^''-' 
 
 A\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fig. 130. Sennacherib, King of Assyria, 
 RECEIVING Captive Hebrews 
 
 The artist, endeavoring to sketch the stony 
 hills of southern Palestine, has made the sur- 
 face of the ground look like scales. We see the 
 Assyrian king seated on a throne, while ad- 
 vancing up the hill is a group of Assyrian 
 soldiers headed by the grand vizier, who stands 
 before the king, announcing the coming of the 
 Hebrew captives. At the left, behind the sol- 
 diers, appear three of the captives kneeling on 
 the ground and lifting up their hands to appeal 
 for mercy. The inscription over the vizier's 
 head reads, " Sennacherib, king of the world, 
 king of Assyria, seated himself upon a throne, 
 while the captives of Lachish passed before 
 him." Lachish was a small town of southern 
 Palestine. Sennacherib captured many such 
 Hebrew towns and carried off over two hun- 
 dred thousand captives; but even his own rec- 
 ords make no claim that he captured Jerusalem 
 (cf. § 309). The scene is engraved on a large 
 slab of alabaster, which with many others 
 adorned the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh 
 
 Thus v^^hile * the 
 people were mo- 
 mentarily expecting 
 the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, Isaiah 
 undauntedly pro- 
 claimed a great and 
 glorious future for 
 the Hebrews and 
 speedy disaster for 
 the Assyrians. When 
 at length a pestilence 
 from the marshes 
 of the eastern Nile 
 Delta swept away 
 the army of Sen- 
 nacherib and saved 
 Jerusalem, it seemed 
 to the Hebrews the 
 destroying angel of 
 Yahveh who had 
 smitten the Assyrian 
 host (see 2 Kings 
 xix, 32-37). Some 
 of the Hebrews then 
 began to see that 
 they must think of 
 Yahveh as ruling a 
 larger world than 
 Palestine. 
 
 About a century 
 after the deliverance 
 from Sennacherib 
 they beheld and 
 rejoiced over the 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 213 
 
 destruction of Nineveh (606 B.C., § 231), and they fondly 
 hoped that the fall of Assyria meant final deliverance from 
 foreign oppression. But they had only exchanged one foreign 
 lord for another, and Chaldea followed Assyria in control of 
 Palestine (§ 233). Then their unwillingness to submit brought 
 upon the Hebrews of Judah the same fate which their kindred 
 of Israel had suffered (§ 306). In 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, 
 the Chaldean king, destroyed Jerusalem and carried away the 
 people to exile in Babylonia. The Hebrew nation both North 
 and South was thus wiped out, after having existed about 
 four and a half centuries since the crowning of Saul. 
 
 Section 31, The Hebrews in Exile and their 
 Deliverance by the Persians 
 
 Some of the fugitives fled to Egypt. Among them was the S"- Jere- 
 
 . miah and a 
 
 melancholy prophet Jeremiah, who had foreseen the commg temple of the 
 
 destruction of Jerusalem with its temple of Yahveh. He strove jn^E^w 
 
 to teach his people that each must regard his own heart as a 
 
 temple of Yahveh, which would endure long after His temple 
 
 in Jerusalem had crashed into ruin. Recent excavation has 
 
 restored to us the actual papers of a colony of Hebrews in 
 
 Eg}'pt at Elephantine (see map, p. -^d^ and Fig. 211). These 
 
 papers (Fig. 131) show that the exiled Hebrews in Egypt had 
 
 not yet reached Jeremiah's ideal of a temple of Yahveh in 
 
 every human heart ; for they had built a temple of their own, 
 
 in which they carried on the worship of Yahveh. 
 
 Similarly, the Hebrew exiles in Babylonia were not yet con- 312. Doubts 
 vinced of the truth of the teaching they had heard from their Hebrews in 
 great leaders the prophets. There were at first only grief and fnd^he"great 
 unanswered questionins^s, of which the echo still reaches us : Unknown 
 
 ^ ^ ' Prophet of 
 
 By the rivers of Babylon, 
 There we sat down, yea we wept, 
 When we remembered Zion [Jerusalem]. 
 Upon the willows in the midst thereof 
 
313' Mono- 
 theism 
 reached by 
 the Hebrews 
 in exile 
 
 214 Ancient Times 
 
 We hanged up our harps. 
 
 How shall we sing Yahveh's song 
 In a strange land ? (Psalms 137, 1-4) 
 
 Had they not left Yahveh behind in Palestine? And then 
 arose an unknown voice ^ among the Hebrew exiles, and out 
 of centuries of affliction gave them the answer. In a series of 
 triumphant speeches this greatest of the Hebrews declared 
 Yahveh to be the creator and sole God of the universe. He 
 explained to his fellow exiles that suffering and affliction were 
 the best possible training and discipline to prepare a people 
 for service. He announced therefore that by afflicting them 
 Yahveh was only preparing His suffering people for service to 
 the world and that He would yet restore them and enable them 
 to fulfil a great mission to all men. He greeted the sudden rise 
 of Cyrus the Persian (§ 258) with joy. All kings, he taught, 
 were but instruments in the hands of Yahveh, who through 
 the Persians would overthrow the Chaldeans and return the 
 Hebrews to their land. 
 
 Thus had the Hebrew vision of Yahveh slowly grown from 
 the days of their nomad life, when they had seen him only as a 
 fierce tribal war god, having no power beyond the corner of the 
 desert where they lived, until now when they had come to see 
 that He was a kindly father and a righteous ruler of all the earth. 
 This was monotheism (§ 120), a belief which made Yahveh the 
 sole God. They had reached it only through a long development, 
 which brought them suffering and disaster — a discipline lasting 
 many centuries. Just as the individual to-day, especially a young 
 person, learns from his mistakes, and develops character as he 
 suffers for his own errors, so the suffering. Hebrews had out- 
 grown many imperfect ideas. They thus illustrated the words 
 of the greatest of Hebrew teachers, " First the blade, then the 
 
 1 This unknown voice was that of a great poet-preacher, a prophet of the exile, 
 whose name has been lost. But his addresses to his fellow exiles are preserved 
 in sixteen chapters imbedded in the Old Testament book now bearing the name 
 of Isaiah (chaps, xl-lv, inclusive). We may call him the Unknown Prophet. 
 
sc?: 
 
 *if-?i ^Hi'^'''?.-'?*'^ 7}^w* «ini^i ^^'^^y-^ /"^"^^ ^'^^'''^ -^^"^^^ -^^'^ )*^^ 
 
 MMk^^m aM^^^s___^ ^__ ' ■ 7^^^^ 
 
 Fig. 131. Aramaic Letter written by a Hebrew Community 
 
 IN Egypt to the Persian Governor of Palestine in the 
 
 Fifth Century b.c. 
 
 This remarkable letter was discovered in 1907, with many other similar 
 papers, lying in the ruins of the town of Elephantine (Fig. 211) in Upper 
 Egypt. Here lived a community of some six or seven hundred Hebrews, 
 some of whom had probably migrated to Egypt before Nebuchadnezzar 
 destroyed Jerusalem (§ 310). They had built a temple to Yahveh 
 (Jehovah) on the banks of the Nile. This letter tells how the jealous 
 Egyptian priests formed a mob, burned the Hebrew temple, and plun- 
 dered it of its gold and silver vessels. Thereupon the whole Hebrew 
 community sat down in mourning, and for three years they tried in vain 
 to secure permission to rebuild. Then in 407 B.C. their leaders wrote 
 this letter to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Palestine, begging him to 
 use his influence with the Persian governor of Egypt, to permit them 
 to rebuild their ruined temple. They refer by name to persons in 
 Palestine who are also mentioned in the Old Testament. The letter is 
 written with pen and ink on papyrus, in the Aramaic language (§ 205 
 and Fig. loi), which was now rapidly displacing Hebrew (§ 207). This 
 writing used the Phoenician letters long before adopted throughout 
 Western Asia (§ 205). This beautifully written sheet of papyrus, about 
 10 by 13 inches, bearing the same letters which the Hebrews used 
 (§ 305)1 shows us exactly how a page of their ancient writings in the 
 Old Testament looked. They read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, 
 Jacob, and Joseph (§ 305) from pages like this 
 
 215 
 
2l6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 314. Resto- 
 ration of 
 the exiled 
 Hebrews by 
 the Persian 
 kings 
 
 315. Jewish 
 law and Ju- 
 daism ; the 
 restored 
 Jewish state 
 a church 
 
 316. Editing 
 of Hebrew 
 writings : the 
 Prophets and 
 the Psalms 
 
 ear, then the full grain in the ear." ^ By this rich and wonder- 
 ful experience of the Hebrews in religious progress, the whole 
 world was yet to profit. 
 
 When the victorious Cyrus entered Babylon (§ 261) the 
 Hebrew exiles there greeted him as their deliverer. His 
 triumph gave the Hebrews a Persian ruler. With great 
 humanity the Persian kings allowed the exiles to return to 
 their native land. Some had prospered in Babylonia and did 
 not care to return. But at different times enough of them went 
 back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city on a very modest scale 
 and to restore the temple. 
 
 The authority given by the Persian government to the 
 returned Hebrew leaders enabled them to issue a code of 
 religious law,'^ much of which had come down from earlier 
 days. The religion thus organized by the returned Hebrew 
 leaders, we now call Judaism, the religion of the Jews. Under 
 it the old Hebrew kingship was not revived. In its place a 
 High Priest at Jerusalem became the ruler of the Jews. The 
 Jewish state was thus a religions organization, a church with a 
 priest at its head. 
 
 The leaders of this church devoted themselves to the study of 
 the ancient writings of their race still surviving in their hands. 
 Many of the old writings had been lost. They arranged and 
 copied the orations and addresses of the prophets, the tales 
 of the Unknown Historian (§ 302), and all the old Hebrew 
 writings they possessed. As time went on, the service of the 
 restored temple required songs, and they produced a remark- 
 able book of a hundred and fifty religious songs, the hymn 
 book of the second temple, known to us as the Book of 
 Psalms. For a long time, indeed for centuries, these various 
 Hebrew books, like the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, and 
 others, circulated in separate rolls, and it did not occur to 
 anyone to put them together to form one book. 
 
 1 The words of Jesus ; see Mark iv, 28. 
 
 2 It consisted of the first five books of the Bible. 
 
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 217 
 
 It was not until Christian times that the Jewish leaders put 317. The 
 all these old writings of their fathers together to form one mentand" 
 book. Printed in Hebrew, as they were originally written, JJ^^'^f^ew 
 they form the Bible of the Jews at the present day. These religion 
 Hebrew writings have also become a sacred book of the 
 Christian nations. When translated into English, it is called 
 the Old Testament. It forms to-day the most precious legacy 
 which we have inherited from the older Orient before the 
 coming of Christ (§ 1067). It tells the story of how a rude 
 shepherd folk issued from the wilds of the Arabian desert, to 
 live in Palestine and to go through experiences there which 
 made them the religious teachers of the civilized world. And 
 we should further remember, that, crowning all their history, ^ 
 there came forth from them in due time the founder of the , 
 Christian religion (§1067). One of the most important things 
 that we owe to the Persians, therefore, was their restoration / \ 
 of the Hebrews to Palestine. The Persians thus saved and , 
 aided in transmitting to us the great legacy from Hebrew life/ 
 which we have in the Old Testament, and in the life of the* 
 Founder of Christianity. 
 
 Section 32. Decline of Oriental Leadership; 
 Estimate of Oriental Civilization 
 
 Persia was the last of the great oriental powers and, as its 318. Decline 
 
 decline continued after 400 B.C., it gave way to the Greeks, and end of 
 
 another Indo-European people who arose not in Asia but in of theandeS 
 
 Europe, to which we must now e^o. Before we do so, however, world (fifth 
 
 ^ ' ... to fourth cen- 
 
 let us look back over oriental civilization for a moment and turies b.c.) 
 
 review „what it accomplished in over thirty-five hundred years. 
 
 We recall how it passed from the discovery of metal and the 
 
 invention of writing, through three great chapters of history 
 
 on the Nile (about 3000 to 1150 B.C.), and three more on 
 
 the Two Rivers (thirty-first century to 539 B.C.). When the 
 
 six great chapters were ended, the East finally fell under the 
 
2i8 Ancient Times 
 
 rule of the incoming Indo-Europeans, led by the Persians 
 (from 539 B.C. on). 
 
 319. The What did the Ancient Orient really accomplish for the human 
 oahTodent^ race in the course of this long career .? It gave the world the 
 inventions ^j-g^ highly developed practical arts, like metal work,' weaving, 
 
 glassmaking, paper-making, and many other similar industries. 
 To distribute the products of these industries among other 
 peoples and carry on commerce, it built the earliest seagoing 
 ships. It first was able to move great weights and undertake 
 large building enterprises — large even for us of to-day. The 
 early Orient therefore brought forth a great group of inventions 
 surpassed in importance only by those of the modern world. 
 
 320. The The Orient also gave us the earliest architecture in stone 
 ofthTorient^ masonry, the colonnade, the arch, and the tower or spire. It 
 earliest produced the earliest refined sculpture, from the wonderful 
 
 architecture, ^ ^ ' 
 
 sculpture, portrait figures and colossal statues of Egypt to the exquisite 
 
 alphabet, ^ r ^ -v^ ^ ^ • t •• 11 1- 
 
 literature, seals of early Babylonia. It gave us wntmg and the earliest 
 science'^' alphabet. In literature it brought forth the earliest known 
 government tales in narrative prose, poems, historical works, social dis- 
 cussions, and even a drama. It gave us the calendar we still 
 use. It made a beginning in mathematics, astronomy, and 
 medicine. It first produced government on a large scale, 
 whether of a single great nation or of an empire made up 
 of a group of nations. 
 
 321. The Finally, in religion the East developed the earliest belief in 
 of the Orient: ^ sole God and his fatherly care for all men, and it laid the 
 religion foundations of a religious life from which came forth the 
 
 founder of the leading religion of the civilized world to-day. 
 For these things, accomplished — most of them — while Europe 
 was still undeveloped, our debt to the Orient is enormous. 
 
 Let us see, however, if there were not some important 
 things which the East had not yet gained. The East had 
 always accepted as a matter of course the rule of a king, 
 and believed that his rule should be kindly and just. It had 
 never occurred to anyone there, that the people should have 
 
The Hebrezvs ajid the Decline of the Orient 219 
 
 a voice in the government, and something to say about how 322. Lack 
 they should be governed. No one had ever gained the idea of freSom^^ 
 a free citizen, a man feeline^ what we call patriotism, and under democratic 
 
 ' ° r- 7 government, 
 
 obligations to vote and to share in the government. Liberty as and citizen- 
 we understand it was unknown, and the rule of the people, Ancient 
 which we call '' democracy," was never dreamed of in the "^"^ 
 Orient. Hence the life of the individual man lacked the 
 stimulating responsibilities which come with citizenship. Such 
 responsibilities, — like that of thinking about public questions 
 and then voting, or of serving as a soldier to defend the 
 nation, — these duties quicken the mind and force men to 
 action, and they were among the strongest influences in pro- 
 ducing great men in Greece and Rome. 
 
 Just as the Orientals accepted the rule of kings without 323. Lack of 
 question, so they accepted the rule of the gods. It was a mind from 
 tradition which they and their fathers had always accepted. dkiorTlnthe" 
 This limited their ideas of the world about them. They thought Ancient 
 that every storm was due to the interference of some god, and 
 that every eclipse must be the angry act of a god or demon. 
 Hence the Orientals made little inquiry into the iiattiral causes 
 of such things. In general, then, they suffered from a lack of 
 freedom of the mind — a kind of intellectual bondage to religion 
 and to old ideas. ^ Under these circumstances natural science 
 could not go very far, and religion was much darkened by 
 superstition, while art and literature lacked some of their 
 greatest sources of stimulus and inspiration. 
 
 There were, therefore, still boundless things for mankind 324- Limita- 
 
 , . •Ill 1 111- tions caused 
 
 to do m government, m thought about the natural world, m by lack of 
 gaining deeper views of the wonders and beauties of nature, fi^tellectual 
 as well as in art, in literature, and in many other lines. This freedom; 
 
 •^ transition 
 
 future progress was to be made in Europe — that Europe to Europe 
 
 1 Intellectual freedom from tradition was earliest shown by the great Egyp- 
 tian king Ikhnaton (§§ 1 18-120) and by the Hebrew prophets (§ 304). Perhaps 
 we could also include Zoroaster; but complete intellectual freedom was first 
 attained by the Greeks. 
 
220 Ancient Times 
 
 which we left at the end of our first chapter in the Late Stone 
 Age. To Europe, therefore, we must now turn, to follow across 
 the eastern Mediterranean the course of rising civilization, as 
 it passed from the Orient to our forefathers in early Europe 
 four to five thousand years ago. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 27. Describe the situation and character of the land 
 of the Hebrews. What can you say about the character of its 
 civilization.? Was it likely to offer a tranquil home? Why? 
 
 Section 28. Where was the original home of the Hebrews? 
 Where did some of them suffer bondage? What was the result of 
 their living among the Canaanites ? Did all the Hebrews adopt the 
 settled life? When did they gain their first king and who was he? 
 Who was their leading enemy? Describe the reign of David; of 
 Solomon. What happened t</the kingdom after Solomon? 
 
 Section 29. What were^ the relations between the two Hebrew 
 kingdoms ? Contrast the two kingdoms. How did this contrast 
 affect religion? What work did Elijah do? Were there more peace- 
 ful men of similar opinions? What can you say of the Unknown 
 Historian? Tell the story of Amos. What was the work of a 
 prophet? Whence did the Hebrews learn to write and what were 
 their first books ? 
 
 Section 30. What danger threatened the Hebrews from abroad? 
 What happened to the Northern kingdom? Did the Hebrews be- 
 lieve Yahveh to be stronger than Assur ? What can you say of the 
 work of Isaiah ? Tell about Sennacherib's campaign against Jerusa- 
 lem. Describe the destruction of the Southern kingdom. 
 
 Section 31. What became of the Hebrews of Judah? What 
 did they think about Yahveh? Who taught them better and what 
 was his teaching ? Did the Hebrews reach their highest ideas about 
 Yahveh all at once or were such ideas a gradual growth ? What did 
 the returned Hebrews accomplish and by what authority ? 
 
 Section 32. What were the most important things which the 
 Orient contributed to human life? Did the people there ever have 
 any voice in government ? Were there any citizens ? What was the 
 attitude of the Orientals toward the gods ? What was the effect upon 
 science ? To what region do we now follow the story of early man ? 
 
PART III. THE GREEKS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION AND THE RISE 
 OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 
 
 Section 33. The Dawn of Civilization in Europe 
 
 We have already studied the life of earliest man in Europe, 325. Late 
 where we followed his progress step by step through some fifty Europe and 
 thousand years (Sections 1-4). At that point we were obliged ^^^ future 
 to leave him and to pass over from Europe to the Orient, to 
 watch there the birth and growth of civilization, while all Europe 
 remained in the barbarism of the Late Stone Age. Meantime 
 
 Note. The above drawing shows us the upper part of a stone vase carved 
 by a Cretan sculptor. The lower part is lost. The scene depicts a procession of 
 Cretan peasants with wooden pitchforks over their shoulders. Among them is a 
 chorus of youths with wide-open mouths, lustily singing a harvest song, doubtless 
 in honor of the great Earth Mother (§ 357), to whom the peasants believed 
 they owed the fertility of the earth. The music is led by a priest with head 
 shaven after the Egyptian manner, and he carries upraised before his face a 
 sistrum, a musical rattle which came from Egypt. The work is so wonderfully 
 carved that we seem to feel the forward motion of the procession. 
 
 221 
 
222 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 326. The 
 
 wares dis- 
 tributed in 
 Late Stone 
 Age Europe 
 by traders 
 from the 
 Mediter- 
 
 327. The 
 oriental 
 source of the 
 European 
 trader's wares 
 
 328. Europe 
 hears of the 
 earliest ships 
 in the far- 
 away Nile 
 
 the towns and villages of the Late Stone Age men had stretched 
 far across Europe. The smoke of their settlements rose through 
 the forests and high over the lakes and valleys of Switzerland. 
 Their roofs dotted the plains and nestled in the inlets of the 
 sea, whence they were thickly strewn far up the winding val- 
 leys of the rivers into inner Europe. In southeastern Europe 
 these men had finally reached the dawn of the Age of Metal, 
 about three thousand years before Christ.^ 
 
 The occasional visits of the traders from the coast settle- 
 ments along the Mediterranean were welcome events. Such 
 a trader's wares were eagerly inspected. Some bargained with 
 him for a few decorated jars of pottery, while others pre- 
 ferred glittering blue-glaze beads. Great was the interest, 
 too, when the trader exhibited a few shining beads or neck 
 rings of a strange, heavy, gleaming, reddish substance, so 
 beautiful that the villagers trafficked eagerly for them. Most 
 desired of all, however, was the dagger (Fig. 132) or ax head 
 made of the same unknown substance. Such ax heads, though 
 they were much thinner, did not break like stone axes, and 
 they could be ground to a better edge than the ground stone 
 ax ever gained. 
 
 To the communities of inner Europe, the trader brought also 
 vague rumors of the lands from which his wares had come, 
 of great peoples who dwelt beyond the wide waters of the 
 Mediterranean Sea. Whereupon some of the Late Stone Age 
 villagers of Europe perhaps recalled a dim tradition of their 
 fathers that grain and flax, and even cattle and sheep, first 
 came to them from the same wonderlands of the Far East. 
 
 With rapt attention and awe-struck faces they listened to the 
 trader's tales, telling of huge ships (Fig. 41) which made the 
 rude European dugouts (Fig. 14) look like tiny chips. They 
 
 1 As we shall see, the Stone Age was only very gradually succeeded by the 
 Copper or Bronze Age. Metal reached southeastern Europe not long after 
 3000 B.C., but in western and northern Europe it was almost 2000 B.C. before 
 the beginning of the Copper Age, which soon became the Bronze Age. 
 
The Dawn of European Civilization 
 
 223 
 
 had many oarsmen on each side, and mighty fir trunks were 
 mounted upright in the craft, carrying huge sheets of linen to 
 catch the favoring wind, which thus drove them swiftly from 
 land to land. They came out of the many mouths of the vast 
 river of Egypt, greater than any river in the world, s'aid the 
 trader, and they bore heavy cargoes across the Mediterranean 
 
 Egypt Italy Jura Mountains Denmark 
 
 Fig. 132. Series of Four Dagger Blades of Copper and 
 Bronze, showing Influence from Egypt to Denmark 
 
 The lost handles were of wood, bone, or ivory, and the rivet holes for 
 fastening them can still be seen. We see in this series how the early 
 Egyptian form {A) passed from Egypt across Europe to the Scandina- 
 vian countries. The later swords of western Europe were simply the 
 old Egyptian dagger elongated 
 
 to the islands and coasts of southeastern Europe or neighbor- 
 ing Asia. Thus at the dawn of history, barbarian Europe 
 looked across the Mediterranean to the great civilization of 
 the Nile, as our own North American Indians fixed their 
 wondering eyes on the first Europeans who landed in America, 
 and listened to like strange tales of great and distant peoples. 
 Slowly Europe learned the use of metal (Fig. 133 and p. 222, 
 footnote). In spite of much progress in craftsmanship and a 
 
224 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 329. Back- 
 wardness of 
 the continent 
 of Europe 
 after receiv- 
 ing metal 
 (3000- 
 2000 B.C.) 
 
 more civilized life in general, the possession of metal did not 
 enable the peoples of Europe to advance to a high type of 
 civilization. They still remained without writing, without archi- 
 tecture in hewn-stone masonry, and without large sailing ships 
 for commerce.-^ The failure to make progress in architecture 
 beyond such rough stone structures as Stonehenge (Fig. 20) 
 
 Fig. 133. Chariot made by the Mechanics of Bronze Age 
 
 Europe 
 
 This chariot shows us what good woodwork the Bronze Age craftsmen 
 could do with bronze tools. It is also an evidence of the far-reaching 
 commerce of the Bronze Age ; for it was transported across the 
 Mediterranean to Egypt, where it was placed in a cliff-tomb, to be 
 used by some wealthy Egyptian after death. There it has survived in 
 perfect condition to our day. It is built of elm and ash, with bindings 
 of birch fiber. The birch does not grow south of the Mediterranean, 
 and hence the chariot must have been made on the north of the 
 Mediterranean {§ 329) 
 
 is an illustration of this backwardness of western and northern 
 Europe. It clearly proves the failure of Bronze Age Europe 
 to bring forth a high civilization, such as we have found in 
 the Orient. It was naturally in that portion of Europe nearest 
 Egypt that civilization developed most rapidly ; namely, around 
 the ^gean Sea. 
 
 1 In this matter the Norsemen were the leaders in northern Europe, and 
 seem to have developed considerable skill in navigation by 1500 B.C. 
 
The Dawn of Etiropean Civilization 225 
 
 Section 34. The ^gean World : the Islands 
 
 The ^gean Sea is like a large lake, almost completely en- 330, The 
 circled by the surrounding lands (see map, p. 252). Around its ^f^the^^^ 
 west and north sides stretches the mainland of Europe, on the ^gean world 
 east is Asia Minor, while the long Island of Crete on the south 
 lies like a breakwater, shutting off the Mediterranean from the 
 yEgean Sea, From north to south this sea is at no point more 
 than four hundred miles in length, while its width varies greatly. 
 It is a good deal longer than Lake Michigan, and in places 
 over twice as wide. Its coast is deeply indented with many 
 bays and harbors, and it is so thickly sprinkled with hundreds 
 of islands that it is often possible to sail from one island to 
 another in an hour or two. Indeed it is almost impossible to 
 cross the ^gean without seeing land all the way, and in a 
 number of directions at the same time. Just as Chicago, Mil- 
 waukee, and other towns around Lake Michigan are linked 
 together by modern steamboats, so we shall see incoming civi- 
 lization connecting the shores of the ^gean by sailing ships. 
 This sea, therefore, with its islands and the fringe of shores 
 around it, formed a region by itself, which we may call the 
 ^gean world. 
 
 It enjoys a mild and sunny climate ; for this region of the 331. climate 
 Mediterranean lies in the belt of rainy winters and dry summers, of the^^gean 
 Here and there, along the bold and broken, but picturesque and ^^""^^ 
 beautiful, shores (Plate III, p. 276), river valleys and small 
 plains descend to the water's edge. Here wheat and barley, 
 grapes and olives, may be cultivated without irrigation. Hence 
 bread, wine, and oil were the chief food, as among most Medi- 
 terranean peoples to this day. Wine is their tea and coffee, and 
 oil is their butter. So in the Homeric poems (§§408-411) 
 bread and wine are spoken of as the food of all, even of the 
 children. The wet season clothes the uplands with rich green 
 pastures, where the shepherds may feed the flocks which dot 
 the hillsides far and near.. Few regions of the world are 
 
226 Ancient Times 
 
 better suited to be the home of happy and prosperous com- 
 munities, grateful to the gods for all their plentiful gifts by- 
 land and sea. 
 
 332. The A map of the Mediterranean (p. 676) shows us that the 
 andlS^near- ^gean world is the region where Europe thrusts forward its 
 ness to the southernmost and easternmost peninsula (Greece), with its island 
 
 outposts, especially Crete, reaching far out into the oriental 
 waters so early crossed and recrossed by Egyptian ships 
 (§ 77). The map thus shows us why the earliest high civi- 
 lization on the north side of the Mediterranean appeared on 
 the Island of Crete. At the same time we should notice that 
 the ^Egean world is touched by Asia, which here throws out 
 its westernmost heights (Asia Minor), so that Asia and Europe 
 face each other across the waters of the v^gean. Asia. Minor 
 with its trade routes was a link which connected the yEgean 
 world with the Fertile Crescent. 
 
 333. The We see here, then, that the older oriental civilizations con- 
 islanSout- verged upon the yEgean by two routes: first and earliest by 
 posts of the gj^^p across the Mediterranean from Egypt; second by land 
 ress of these through Asia Minor from the Euphrates world. Thus the 
 
 islands and • , i i i • i • i .^ • 
 
 backwardness ^gean islands became a bridge connecting the Orient and 
 iLn?^"'^'"" Europe. Already in the Late Stone Age the ^gean islands 
 had unavoidably become outposts of the great oriental civili- 
 zations which we have found so early on the Nile and the 
 Euphrates. It was on the ^gean islands and not on the 
 mainland of Europe that the earliest high civilization on 
 the north side of the Mediterranean grew up. 
 
 334. The We call the earliest inhabitants of the ^gean world ^geans. 
 ?Egean world They were inhabiting this region when civilization dawned there 
 
 (about 3000 B.C.), and they continued to live there for many 
 centuries before the race known to us as the Greeks entered 
 the region. These ^geans, the predecessors of the Greeks 
 in the northern Mediterranean, belonged to a great and gifted 
 white race having no connection with the Greeks. -They were, 
 and their descendants still are, widely extended along the 
 
The Dawn of European Civilization 227 
 
 northern shores of the Mediterranean.^ We call them the 
 Mediterranean race, but their origin and their relationships 
 with other peoples are as yet little understood. At a time far 
 earlier than any of our written records, they had occupied not 
 only the mainland of Greece and the islands of the ^gean, but 
 they had also settled on the neighboring shores of Asia Minor. 
 
 From the beginning the leader in this island civilization of 335. Crete 
 the ^geans was Crete. This large island lies so far out in the tweerTthe^' 
 Mediterranean that one is almost in doubt whether it belongs ^^tJI] ^"^ 
 to Europe or to Africa (see map, p. 252). At the dawn of 
 civilization " Crete was as much a part of the East ... as 
 Constantinople is to-day." ^ Even in ancient ships the mariners 
 issuing from the mouths of the Nile and steering northwest- 
 ward would sight the Cretan mountains iiTa few days. Thus 
 Crete was the link between Egypt on the south and the -<r^]gean 
 Sea on the north (see map, p. 252). 
 
 The little sun-dried-brick villages, forming the Late Stone 336. Rise of 
 Age settlements of Crete, received copper from the ships of the zadon"under 
 Nile by 3000 B.C., as we have seen (§ ^26). Somewhat later Egyptian 
 
 ■' \ ^ / influence 
 
 the Cretan metal workers received, probably from mines in the (3000- 
 northern Mediterranean, supplies of copper mixed with tin, 
 giving them the hard mixture we call bronze, which is much 
 harder than copper. Thus began the Bronze Age in Crete 
 after 3000 b.c. For a thousand years afterward their progress 
 was slow, but it gained for them some very important things. 
 While the great pyramids of Egypt were being built, the Cretan 
 craftsmen learned from their Egyptian neighbors the use of the 
 potter's wheel and the closed oven (Fig. 48). They could then 
 shape and bake much finer clay jars and vases. By copying 
 Egyptian stone vessels they learned also to hollow out hard 
 varieties of stone and to make beautifully wrought stone vases, 
 bowls, and jars (Fig. 134). For some time the Cretans had been 
 
 1 It has been thought that this race had its home in North Africa and that 
 they spread entirely around the Mediterranean. The Egyptians and Semites 
 may be branches of it, 2 Burrows, T/te Discoveries in Crete. 
 
228 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 337. Rise of 
 the sea-kings 
 of Crete 
 
 (2000 B.C.) 
 
 employing rude picture records like Figs. 26 and 32. Under 
 the influence of Egypt these picture signs now gradually de- 
 veloped into real phonetic writing (Figs. 135 and 137), the 
 earliest writing in the ^gean world (about 2000 B.C.). 
 
 By 2000 B.C. the Cretans had become a highly civilized 
 people. Near the coast, for convenient access to ships, were 
 
 Egypt Crete 
 
 Fig. 134. Early Stone Vases of Crete and the Egyptian 
 Originals from which they were copied 
 
 The earlier vases from Egypt (on the left) compared with those of Crete 
 
 (on the right) show that the Cretan craftsmen copied the Egyptian forms 
 
 (§ 336) in the latter part of the Pyramid Age (about 2700-2600 B.C.) 
 
 the manufacturing towns, with thriving industries in pottery 
 and metal work, enabling them to trade with other peoples. 
 Farther inland the green valleys of the island must have been 
 filled with prosperous villages cultivating their fields of grain and 
 pasturing their flocks. At Cnossus, not far from the middle of 
 the northern coast (see map, p. 252), there grew up a kingdom 
 which may finally have included a large part of the island. The 
 
The Dawn of European Civilization 
 
 229 
 
 Late Stone Age town at Cnossus had long since fallen to ruin 
 and been forgotten. Over a deep layer of its rubbish a line of 
 splendid Cretan kings now built a fine palace arranged in the 
 Egyptian manner, with a large cluster of rooms around a central 
 court. Farther inland toward the south shore arose another 
 palace at Phaestus, perhaps another residence of the same 
 royal family, or the capital of a second kingdom. 
 
 Egyptian 
 
 Cretan 
 
 Sign of Life 
 
 Egyptian Cretan 
 
 m 
 
 Palace Tower 
 
 Libation Vase Bronze Adze 
 
 Fig. 135. Cretan Hieroglyphs and the Egyptian Signs 
 
 FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN. (AfTER SiR ArTHUR EvANS) 
 
 These examples show us in the first column the Egyptian originals 
 
 from which the Cretan hieroglyphic signs shown in the second column 
 
 were taken (see § 336) 
 
 These palaces were not fortified casdes, for neither they nor 338. Power 
 the towns connected with them possessed any protecting walls. kings^oT^ 
 But the Cretan kings were not without means of defense. They ^^^*^^ 
 already had their palace armories, where brazen armor and 
 weapons were stored. Hundreds of bronze arrowheads, with 
 the charred shafts of the arrows, along with written lists of 
 weapons and armor and chariots, have been found still lying in 
 the ruins of the armory rooms in the palace at Cnossus (§ 340). 
 The troops who used these weapons were of course not lacking. 
 Moreover, the Cretan kings were also learning to use ships in 
 
230 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 339. Expan- 
 sion of Cretan 
 commerce 
 and industry 
 
 340. Devel- 
 opment of 
 Cretan linear 
 writing and 
 records 
 
 warfare, and it has become a modem habit to call them the 
 '' sea-kings of Crete." ^ 
 
 Cretan industries henceforth flourished as never before. The 
 potters of Cnossus began to produce exquisite cups as thin and 
 delicate as modem porcelain teacups. These and their pottery 
 jars and vases they painted in bright colors with decorative de- 
 signs, which made them the most beautiful ware to be had in 
 the East (Fig. 136, A). Such ware was in demand in the houses 
 of the rich as far away as the Nile, just as fine French table 
 porcelain is widely sold outside of France at the present day. 
 The new many-colored Cretan vases were so highly prized by 
 the Egyptian nobles of the Feudal Age that they even placed 
 them in their tombs for use in the next world. In these Egyp- 
 tian tombs modern excavators have recovered them, to tell us 
 the story of the wide popularity of Cretan industrial art in the 
 nineteenth and twentieth centuries b. c. Egyptian ships, common 
 in the eastern Mediterranean since the thirtieth century B.C., 
 must have been frequent visitors in the Cretan harbors. At 
 the same time the prevailing north wind of summer easily car- 
 ried the galleys which the Cretans had learned to build, across 
 to the mouths of the Nile. There were many things in Egypt 
 which the Cretans needed. Hence commerce between Crete 
 and the Nile was constant (see map, p. 252). 
 
 Cretan business now required much greater speed and con- 
 venience in writing than was possible in using the old picture 
 signs (Fig. 135). These pictures were therefore much abbre- 
 viated and reduced to simpler forms, each picture consisting of 
 only a few lines. This more rapid hand, called linear writing 
 (Fig. 137), was scratched on clay tablets. The chests of arms 
 and weapons in the palace armory had each a clay-tablet label 
 hanging in front of it. Great numbers of clay tablets stored in 
 
 1 The sea power of the Cretans has been much exaggerated by recent writers. 
 One of the old Cretan sea kings, according to later tradition, was named Minos. 
 For this reason early Cretan civilization has been called Minoan, and this is now 
 the most common term applied to it. We use the term " ^Egean " ; for the term 
 " Mycenaean," see § 347. 
 
A B 
 
 Fig. 136. Two Cretan Vases showing Progress in the Art 
 OF Decoration 
 
 The first vase {A) is an example of the earher pottery, painted on a 
 dark background with rich designs in " white, orange, crimson, red and 
 yellow." The potters who made such vases were, together with the 
 seal-cutters, the first really gifted decorative artists to arise in Crete. 
 They flourished from 2000 B.C. onward, in the days of the first palace 
 of Cnossus (§ 337). We should notice that their designs do not picture 
 carefully anything in nature, like flowers or animals (even though a 
 hint of a lotus flower appears in the angle of the spiral) ; but the fig- 
 ures are almost purely Imaginative and drawn from Egyptian art. The 
 second vase [B), however (some five hundred years later than the first), 
 shows how the artists of the Grand Age had learned from Egyptian 
 decorative art to take their decorative figures from the 7iaUiral world, 
 for we see that the design consists chiefly of Egyptian lotus flowers 
 (§ 341). Such designs were no longer in many colors; on this jar, 
 indeed, they are molded in relief. This jar {B) is nearly 4 feet high 
 and much larger then the first example {A). Stone and metal vases 
 of the Grand Age were sometimes superbly decorated with carved 
 bands of human figures in action. See the fine examples of this style 
 in Fig. 140, and the headpiece, p. 221 
 231 
 
232 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 341. The 
 Grand Age 
 in Crete and 
 its art (1600- 
 1500 B.C.) 
 
 chests seem to have contained the records, invoices, and book- 
 keeping lists necessary in conducting the affairs of a large royal 
 household. Masses of these have been found covered by the 
 rubbish and ruins of the fallen palace. In spite of much study, 
 scholars are not yet able to read these precious records, the 
 earliest-known writing on the borders of the European world. 
 
 The Cretan kings, how- 
 ever, did not erect 
 large stone monuments 
 engraved with written 
 records of their build- 
 ings, their victories, and 
 their great deeds, like 
 those we have found in 
 the Orient. 
 
 A few centuries of 
 such development as 
 this carried Cretan civ- 
 ilization to its highest 
 level, and the Cretans 
 entered upon what we 
 may call their Grand 
 Age (1600-1500 B.C.). 
 As the older palace of 
 Cnossus gave way to a 
 larger and more splen- 
 did building (Fig. 138), 
 the life of Crete began 
 to unfold in all directions. The new palace itself, with its colon- 
 naded hall, its fine stairways (Fig. 138), and its impressive open 
 areas, represented the first real architecture in the northern 
 Mediterranean. The palace walls were painted with fresh and 
 beautiful scenes from daily life, all aquiver with movement and 
 action ; or by learning the Egyptian art of glassmaking the Cre- 
 tans adorned them with glazed figures attached to the surface 
 
 Fig. 137. Clay Tablet bearing a 
 Record in the Rapid Cretan Hand- 
 writing OFTEN CALLED LiNEAR 
 
 This writing is a later stage of the hiero- 
 glyphs in Fig. 135 (see also § 340) 
 
The Dawn of European Civilization 
 
 233 
 
 of the wall. The pottery painters had by this time given up the 
 use of many colors. They now employed one dark tone on a 
 light background, or they modeled the design in relief. Noble 
 vases (Fig. 136, B) were painted in grand designs drawn from 
 plant life or often from the life of the sea, where the Cretans 
 were now more and more at home. This wonderful pottery 
 shows the most 
 powerful, vigor- 
 ous, and impres- 
 sive decorative art 
 of the early orien- 
 tal world. Indeed, 
 it belongs among 
 the finest works 
 of decorative art 
 ever produced by 
 any people. 
 
 The method of 
 use and the execu- 
 tion of the work 
 everywhere show 
 that this art was 
 developing under 
 suggestion from 
 Egypt ; for exam- 
 ple, walls covered 
 with colored glazed 
 tiles were in use 
 in Egypt nearly two thousand years earlier than in Crete. But 
 in spite of this fact the Cretan artist did not follow slavishly 
 the Egyptian model. A growing plant painted on an Egyp- 
 tian wall seems sometimes so rigid and stiff that it looks as if 
 done with a stencil. The Cretan artist drew the same plant 
 with such free and splendidly curving lines (Fig. 136, ^) that 
 we seem to hear the wind swaying the stems and giving us 
 
 Fig. 138. Colonnaded Hall and Stair- 
 
 342. Inde- 
 pendence 
 and power 
 ^ ^ of Cretan 
 
 CASE IN THE CRETAN PalACE OF THE artists in spite 
 
 Grand Age at Cnossus of Egyptian 
 
 influence 
 The columns and roof of the hall are modern 
 restorations. This hall is in the lower portion 
 of the palace, and the stairway, concealed by 
 the balustrade at the back of the hall, led up by 
 five flights of fifty-two massive steps to the 
 main floor of the palace. On the painted inte- 
 rior decoration of this palace consult § 341 and 
 see Fig. 139 
 
234 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 343. The 
 
 life of the 
 Cretans in 
 the Grand 
 Age : the 
 common folk 
 
 " The soft eye-music of slow-moving boughs " (Wordsworth). 
 The Cretan sculptor in ivory, too, as well as the goldsmith and 
 worker in bronze wrought masterpieces which remain to-day 
 among the world's greatest works of art (Figs. 140 and 141). 
 The palace of Cnossus looked out upon a town of plain, 
 sun-dried-brick houses. Here must have lived the merchants and 
 traders, the potters, metal workers, painters, and other crafts- 
 men, though many of these also lived and worked in the palace 
 
 Fig. 139. Cretan Lords and Ladies of the Grand Age on 
 THE Terraces of the Palace at Cnossus. (After Durm) 
 
 This scene was painted on the walls of the palace as part of the interior 
 wall decoration. It has been somewhat restored, as shown above, but it 
 forms a remarkable example of the Cretan artist's ability to produce 
 the impression of an animated multitude of people seen from a distance 
 and blending into a somewhat confused whole (see also § 341) 
 
 344. The 
 
 nobles about 
 the king 
 
 itself ; while on the outskirts, or up the valley, dw^elt the peas- 
 ants who cultivated the fields. On one occasion we see the 
 peasants marching in joyous procession, probably celebrating a 
 harvest festival (headpiece, p. 221). 
 
 Upon such celebrations of the people there looked down 
 from the palace a company of lords and ladies, who lived an 
 astonishingly free and modem life. The ladies, wearing cos- 
 tumes (Fig. 141) which might tastefully appear in the streets of 
 modern New York or Chicago, crowded the palace terraces and 
 watched their champions struggling in fierce boxing matches, in 
 which the contestants wore heavy metal helmets (Fig. 139). 
 
Fig. 140. Wild Bulls pictured by a Cretan Goldsmith 
 AROUND Two Golden Cups 
 
 These cups were found at Vaphio, near Sparta, whither they were im- 
 ported from Crete. The goldsmith beat out these marvelous designs 
 with a hammer and punch over a mold, and then cut in finer details 
 with a graving tool. His work must be ranked among the greatest 
 works of art produced by any people 
 
Fig. 141. Ivory and Gold Statuette of a Cretan Lady 
 OF the Grand Age. (Boston Museum of Fine Arts) 
 
 The proud little figure stands with shoulders thrown far back and arms 
 extended, each hand grasping a golden serpent, which coils about her 
 arms to the elbow. She wears a high tiara perched daintily on her 
 elaborately curled hair. Her dress consists of a flounced skirt and a 
 tight bodice tapering to her slender waist. The whole forms a costume 
 so surprisingly modern that this little Cretan lady would hardly create 
 any comment if she appeared s6 dressed on one of our crowded city 
 streets of to-day. The figure is carved in ivory, while the flounces are 
 edged with bands of gold and the belt about the waist is of the same 
 metal. She represents either the great Cretan mother goddess or pos- 
 sibly only a graceful snake-charmer of the court. In any case the 
 sculptor has given her the appearance of one of the noble ladies of his 
 time. Even the Greek sculptor never surpassed the vitality and the 
 winsome charm which passed from the fingers of the ancient Cretan 
 artist into this tiny figure 
 
The Dazvn of Ei trope an Civilization 
 
 235 
 
 Or the assembled court (Pig. 139) cheered the plucky bull- 
 fighters tossed on the horns of huge wild bulls (Fig. 140), — 
 the same huge creatures which were hunted by the Late Stone 
 Age men of Europe a thousand years before (Fig. 12). These 
 people lived in com- 
 
 fortable quarters in 
 the palace, where they 
 even had bathrooms 
 and sanitary drainage 
 (Fig. 142). 
 
 From the palace of 
 Cnossus the Cretan 
 king could issue at 
 the North Gate and, 
 mounting his chariot, 
 ride in half an hour 
 to the harbor, three 
 and a half miles away. 
 At the harbor he 
 looked out northward 
 where the nearest 
 islands of the ^Flgean 
 could be clearly seen 
 breaking the north- 
 ern horizon (see map, 
 p. 252). Here the 
 trading galleys of the 
 Cretan kings were 
 
 \>. >"}, 
 
 
 Fig. 142. Tile Drainpipes from the 
 Cretan Palace of Cnossus 
 
 345- 
 
 These joints of pottery drainpipe (2| feet 
 long and 4 to 6 inches across) are part of 
 an elaborate system of drainage in the 
 palace, the oldest drainage system in the 
 European world. The oldest-known system 
 of drainpipe (copper) is in the pyramid- 
 temple of Abusir, Egypt (see Fig. 56), about 
 a thousand years earher than this system 
 
 at Cnossus 
 spreadmg Cretan art 
 
 and industries far and wide through the Mediterranean. These 
 
 Cretan fleets formed the earliest naval power which grew up in 
 
 the northern Mediterranean, and the student should contrast 
 
 the dugouts of the Late Stone Age (Fig. 14). Nevertheless, the 
 
 kings of Crete were now vassals of the Pharaoh. An Egyptian 
 
 general of Thutmose III (§ 1 1 1) in the fifteenth century B.C. bore 
 
 Political 
 and commer- 
 cial position 
 of Crete in 
 and after the 
 Grand Age 
 
236 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 346. Crete to 
 be regarded 
 as the home 
 of the third 
 great civiU- 
 zation in the 
 ancient world 
 
 347. Cretan 
 civilization 
 reaches the 
 mainland of 
 Greece ; the 
 Mycenaean 
 Age 
 
 the title of " governor of the islands in the midst of the sea," 
 as the Egyptians called the islands of the ^Egean (Fig. 143). 
 Here, then, in the island of Crete, there had arisen a new 
 world. The culture of the gifted Cretans, stimulated by the 
 magic touch of riper Egyptian culture, shook off the Late Stone 
 
 Age lethargy of early Europe 
 and sprang into a vigorous life 
 all its own. Beside the two 
 older centers of civilization on 
 the Nile and the two rivers in 
 this age, there thus grew up 
 here in the eastern Mediterra- 
 nean, as a third great civili- 
 zation, this splendid world of 
 J Crete and the vEgean Sea. 
 It is this third great civiliza- 
 tion which forms the link be- 
 tween the civilization of the 
 THE ^GEAN ISLANDS IN THE i Qrient and the later progress 
 Grand Age 
 
 Fig. 143. Golden Dish of 
 the Egyptian Governor of 
 
 This golden dish was given by the 
 Pharaoh Thutmose III (§ iii) to 
 one of his favorite generals, whom 
 he had made governor of the 
 i^igean islands. The dish bears an 
 inscription which calls him " gov- 
 ernor of the islands in the midst 
 of the sea," by which the Egyp- 
 tians meant the ^^gean islands 
 and coasts of Asia Minor 
 
 of man in Greece and western 
 Europe. 
 
 Section 35. The ^Egean 
 World : the Mainland 
 
 As yet, the mainland, both 
 in Europe and in Asia Minor, 
 had continued to lag behind 
 the advanced civilization of the islands. Nevertheless, the fleets 
 of Egypt and of Crete maintained commerce with the main- 
 land of Greece. They naturally entered the southern bays, 
 and especially the Gulf of Argos, which looks southward di- 
 rectly toward Crete (see map, p. 252). In the plain of Argos 
 (Plate III), behind the sheltered inlet, massive strongholds, 
 with heavy stone masonry foundations and walls, arose atf 
 
The Dazvn of European Civilizatioii 
 
 237 
 
 Tiryns (Fig. 1 44) 
 and Mycenae (Fig. 
 145). The T^gean 
 princes who built 
 such strongholds a 
 little after 1500 B.C. 
 imported works of 
 Cretan and Egyp- 
 tian art in pottery 
 and metal (Fig. 1 40). 
 These triumphs of 
 Cretan art, with 
 fragments of Egyp- 
 tian glaze and wall 
 decorations, still sur- 
 viving in the ruins 
 of palaces and 
 tombs, are to-day 
 the earliest tokens 
 of a life of higher 
 refinement on the 
 continent of Europe. 
 This period (about 
 1500 to 1200 B.C.) 
 is commonly known 
 as the Mycenaean 
 Age, after Mycenae, 
 where such civiliza- 
 tion was first discov- 
 ered (Section 36). 
 
 But the main- 
 land still lagged be- 
 hind the islands, 
 for Cretan writing 
 seems not to have 
 
 P^iG. 144. Restoration of the Castle 
 
 AND Palace of Tiryns. (After Lucken- 
 
 bach) 
 
 Unlike the Cretan palaces, this dwelling of 
 an ^gean prince is massively fortified. A 
 rising road {A) leads up to the main gate {B), 
 ■where the great walls are double. An assault- 
 ing party bearing their shields on the left arm 
 must here (C, D) march with the exposed 
 right side toward the city. By the gate [E) 
 the visitor arrives in the large court {F) on 
 which the palace faces. The main entrance 
 of the palace (C) leads to its forecourt (//), 
 where the excavators found the place of the 
 household altar of the king (§ 423). Behind 
 the forecourt (//) is the main hall of the 
 palace (/). This was the earliest castle in 
 Europe with outer walls of stone. The vil- 
 lages of the common people clustered about 
 the foot of the castle hill. The whole formed 
 the nucleus of a city-state (§ 390) in the plain 
 of Argos (see Plate III, p. 276) 
 
 348. Con- 
 tinued back- 
 wardness of 
 the European 
 mainland 
 
238 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 349. Asiatic 
 mainland : 
 foundation of 
 Troy (about 
 3000 B.C.) 
 
 followed Cretan commerce, and there was as yet no writing 
 prevalent on the continent of Europe. Regions of northern 
 
 Greece, such as Thessaly, 
 were covered with scat- 
 tered settlements which 
 had advanced but little be- 
 yond Late Stone Age civil- 
 ization. Metal, although 
 known, was not common 
 in Thessaly until about 
 1500 B.C., and the cul- 
 tured Cretans had little in- 
 fluence here in the north. 
 Along the Asiatic side 
 of the ^gean Sea we find 
 much earlier progress than 
 on the European side, al- 
 though this was but slightly 
 due to the commerce from 
 Crete, which seems to have 
 had little effect along the 
 shores of Asia Minor. In 
 the days when Crete was 
 first receiving metal (after 
 3000 B.C.), there arose at 
 the northwest corner of 
 Asia Minor a shabby little 
 Late Stone Age village 
 known as Troy. It was 
 probably built by traders 
 attracted by the profitable 
 traffic which was already 
 crossing back and forth be- 
 tween Asia and Europe at 
 this point (see map, p. a 5 2). 
 
 Fig. 145. The Main Entrance 
 OF THE Castle of Mycen^, 
 
 CALLED THE LlON GaTE 
 
 This shows us a good example of the 
 heavy stone masonry with which were 
 built the great gates of the two cities 
 of the ^gean Grand Age, Tiryns and 
 Mycenae, on the plain of Argos (§ 347). 
 Above the gate is a large triangular 
 block of stone, carved to represent two 
 lions grouped on either side of a cen- 
 tral column. The whole doubtless 
 formed the emblem of the city, or the 
 arms of its kings. It is of course a 
 descendant of the two Babylonian lions 
 of Lagash, showing a similar balanced 
 arrangement with one on each side of 
 the center (Fig. 85) 
 
The Dawn of Europe mi Civilization 239 
 
 By 2500 B.C., some centuries after the first metal had been 350. Growth 
 introduced, the rulers of Troy were wealthy commercial kings, ^h^Io^] 
 and their castle was the earliest fortress in the ^gean worldj[ iSoob.c.) 
 for it was a thousand years older than the fortresses at Mycenae \ 
 and Tiryns. During this thousand years (2500 to 1500 B.C.) 
 Troy was rebuilt several times (Fig. 150), but it continued 
 to flourish, and it finally must have controlled a kingdom of 
 considerable extent in northwestern Asia Minor. Thus about 
 1500 B.C. the splendid and cultivated city of Troy was a power- 
 ful stronghold (Sixth City), which had grown up as a northern 
 rival of that sumptuous Cnossus we have seen in the south. 
 The two rival cities faced each other from opposite ends of 
 the JEgean, but we infer that Cnossus was superior in civiliza- 
 tion, for it is still uncertain whether the Trojans of this age 
 could write. 
 
 Inland from Troy and the ^gean world, across the far- 351. Asia 
 stretching hills and mountains of Asia Minor, were the settle- land^ofthe 
 ments of a great group of white peoples who were kindred of ^^"ites 
 the ^geans in civilization, though not in blood. We call them 
 Hittites. Although the larger part of their land lay outside of 
 the ^gean world, nevertheless, one end of it formed the eastern 
 shores of the ^gean Sea. Asia Minor, their land, is a vast penin- 
 sula from six hundred and fifty to seven hundred miles long and 
 from three to four hundred miles wide, being about as large as 
 the state of Texas. The interior is a lofty table-land, little better 
 than a desert in its central region. Around most of this table- 
 land rise mountain ridges, fringing both the table-land and the 
 sea. On both sides of the mountain fringe are fertile valleys 
 and plains, producing plentiful crops. The seaward slopes of 
 the mountains, .especially along the Black Sea, are clad with 
 flourishing forests. The northern shores of Asia Minor, east of 
 the Halys River, rise into ridges containing rich deposits of 
 iron. The Hittites thus became the earliest distributors of iron 
 when it began to displace bronze in the Mediterranean world 
 and the East (§219). 
 
240 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 352. The 
 
 Hittites a 
 link between 
 the Fertile 
 Crescent and 
 the vEgean 
 
 353. The 
 
 Hittites in- 
 fluence their 
 neighbors 
 both in east 
 and west 
 
 In discussing oriental influences in the ^]gean, we have 
 already seen (§ 332) how Asia Minor formed a link between 
 the y^gean and the world of the Two Rivers. The people who 
 made it such a link were these Hittites. For at the eastern 
 end of their land they passed easily down the upper Euphrates 
 to the Fertile Crescent, where they merged with the peoples 
 
 there whose his- 
 tory we have 
 already stud- 
 ied. We recall, 
 for example, 
 how they held 
 early Assur, 
 in competition 
 with Babylon 
 (§ 202). We 
 find also that 
 the Hittites 
 early borrowed 
 the old Baby- 
 lonian coat of 
 arms, a lion- 
 headed, or some- 
 times a double- 
 headed, eagle. 
 They handed it 
 on across the 
 ^gean to later Europe, from which it passed to us in the United 
 States as the ''American " eagle (Fig. 85). 
 
 Both in the ^gean and in the Fertile Crescent, that is, at 
 both ends of their land, the Hittites left their mark upon their 
 neighbors. We recall the prominent aquiline nose of the Hit- 
 tite people (Fig. 146). The same feature among the Hebrews 
 shows how the Hittites drifted down the west end of the Fer- 
 tile Crescent, until they reached Palestine (§ 291) in sufficient 
 
 Fig. 146. An Ancient Hittite and his 
 Modern Armenian Descendant 
 
 At the left is the head of an ancient Hittite as 
 carved by an Egyptian sculptor on the wall of a 
 temple at Thebes, Egypt, over three thousand years 
 ago. It strikingly resembles the profile of the Ar- 
 menians still living in the Hittite country, as shown 
 in the modern portrait on the right. The strongly 
 aquiline and prominent nose (§ 146) of the Hittites 
 was also acquired by the neighboring Semites along 
 the eastern end of the Mediterranean, including the 
 Canaanites (see headpiece, p. 197) 
 
The Dazvn of Europe aii Civilization 
 
 241 
 
 numbers to affect the Hebrew type of face. On the west in the 
 same way, Hittite life greatly influenced the cities along the 
 ^Egean coast of Asia Minor, where we shall find that even 
 the later Greeks still bore marks of Hittite influence, especially 
 in important matters of business, like coinage (§ 458), but also 
 in religion and architecture. 
 
 It was from their contact with the Fertile Crescent that 354. Rise of 
 the Hittites received the first influences leading to a higher zation^- Baby- 
 
 civilization. The most 
 important of these was 
 writing. The Babylo- 
 nian caravans, passing 
 up the Euphrates in 
 the days of Hammurapi 
 (§ 187) and earlier, 
 brought into Asia Minor 
 business and traffic, with 
 bills and other commer- 
 cial documents in cunei- 
 form writing on clay 
 tablets (Fig. 79). In 
 this way, like other peo- 
 ples in the West, the 
 
 Ionian writing 
 
 Fig. 147. An Inscription in Hittite 
 Hieroglyphs 
 
 This example shows us the hieroglyphic 
 writing devised by the Hittites in imitation 
 of the Egyptian (§ 335). It was found at 
 Carchemish on the Euphrates. The same 
 writing may also be seen accompanying 
 the scene in Fig. 148 
 
 Hittites learned cuneiform by 2000 B.C. or earlier. Excavation 
 in Asia Minor has even recovered fragments of the clay-tablet 
 dictionaries used by the Hittites in learning to write and spell 
 words in cuneiform. It was probably through the Hittites that 
 the use of the clay tablet passed over to Crete (Fig. 137). 
 
 The Hittites profited by the Egyptian civilization also, as they 355. Hittite 
 received it through the cities of northern Syria, like Samal writhfi^^^'"" 
 (Fig. 97). Here, under the influence of Egyptian hieroglyphic 
 writing, they devised a system of picture signs with phonetic 
 values (Fig. 147). With these hieroglyphic signs they en- 
 graved great stone records like those of Egypt. These records 
 (Fig. 147), cut into the face of rocky cliffs or masonry walls, 
 
242 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 356. Hittite 
 art and archi- 
 
 357. Hittite 
 religio' 
 
 Still look down upon the passing traveler throughout a great 
 part of Asia Minor from the y^gean to the Euphrates, and new 
 ones are constantly being found by excavation. The Hittites 
 thus used two methods of writing — cuneiform and hieroglyphic. 
 Unfortunately, the Hittite records written in hieroglyphs carved 
 on stone are not yet deciphered. Just as this book goes to 
 press the decipherment of the Hittite cuneiform records has 
 been accomplished by Hrozny, an Austrian scholar. When all 
 these records have been read, like those of Egypt, Babylonia, 
 and Persia, they will reveal to us many new and wonderful facts 
 in the story of the ancient world. 
 
 At the same time the Hittites had made progress in building. 
 The king's palace front consisted of a porch in the middle, with 
 its roof supported on two columns, while on either side of the 
 porch was a square tower (Fig. 97, K). It was therefore called 
 a " house of two towers." This was the porch adopted from 
 the Hittites by the great Assyrian emperors (§ 224). It finally 
 reached even the Persians. It was adorned with great sentinel 
 lions carved in stone on either side of the entrance, an idea 
 suggested by the Egyptian sphinx. From the Hittite palaces this 
 idea of protecting beastS on either side of the palace entrance 
 passed also to Assyria. The Hittite palace porch was further- 
 more adorned with a dado, consisting of large flat slabs of stone 
 carved with relief pictures (Fig. 148), probably suggested by 
 similar Egyptian arrangements (Fig. 60). This idea, too, finally 
 passed by way of the Hittites to Assyria, where we recall the 
 long rows of stone pictures adorning the Assyrian palaces 
 (Figs. 105 and 106, B). The Hittite sculptors, however, had 
 little skill with the chisel. The Assyrians far surpassed them, 
 and under Assyrian influence the Hittites improved somewhat. 
 
 In these scenes we find also evidences of religious influences 
 from both Egypt and Babylonia, as we note among them the 
 Babylonian eagle already mentioned and the winged sun-disk 
 from the Nile. We should notice furthermore the devotion of 
 the Hittites to the great Earth-Mother as their chief goddess, 
 
The Dawn of Europe a7i Civilization 
 
 243 
 
 whom we have also found in Crete (headpiece, p. 221), and 
 who later was revered by the Greeks (§ 416). 
 
 In the great days of the Egyptian Empire, while Cnossus 358. Rise of 
 was still in the Grand Age and Troy her northern rival was Empire 
 building the splendid Sixth City, that is, about 1500 B.C., one centurJ^Bc) 
 of the Hittite kingdoms on the east of the Halys River (see 
 map, p. 100) was gaining great power. It had established 
 
 Fig. 148. A Hittite Prince hunting Deer 
 
 The prince accompanied by his driver stands in the moving chariot, 
 shooting with bow and arrow at the fleeing stag. A hound runs beside 
 the horses. Over the scene is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphs 
 {§ 355). The whole is sculptured in stone, and forms a good example 
 of the rather crude Hittite art 
 
 a strong fortified capital at a city called Khatti (map, p. 100). 
 This name is simply an ancient form of the modern name 
 " Hittite." The kings of Khatti erected imposing palaces and 
 temples, and built a great wall about the city (Fig. 152). They 
 succeeded in gaining control of the other Hittite kingdoms and 
 combining them into an empire which included a large part of 
 Asia Minor. 
 
 This Hittite Empire lasted for some two centuries and a half 
 (about 1450 to 1200 B.C.). The Hittites had received the horse, 
 
244 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 359. The 
 
 Hittite Em- 
 pire (about 
 1450- 
 
 1200 B.C.) 
 
 360. The 
 
 Hittites con- 
 tribute the 
 first iron to 
 the ancient 
 world 
 
 perhaps even earlier than the Babylonians (§ 197), and the 
 kings of Khatti were able to muster large and powerful bodies 
 of charioteers. They thus played a vigorous part in the great 
 group of nations around the eastern end of the Mediterranean 
 after Egypt established the first empire there (Section 9). They 
 had much to do with breaking down the Egyptian Empire (§12 2), 
 and they survived to fight fierce battles with the Assyrians. 
 
 One of the most important things we should remember about 
 the Hittites is the fact that they began working the iron mines 
 along the Black Sea (§351). A clay-tablet letter written by one 
 of the Hittite kings tells us that he was about to send a 
 shipment of " pure iron " to Ramses II, who had asked for it, 
 and that meantime a sword of iron was being sent to the Egyp- 
 tian king as a gift (thirteenth century b. c). We shall soon see 
 the Iron Age beginning in the ^Egean (§ 392), and it was 
 from the Hittite iron mines that the metal first became com- 
 mon in the eastern Mediterranean. While the Hittite civiliza- 
 tion was inferior to that of Egypt and Babylonia, it played a 
 very important part in the group of civilizations forming the 
 oriental neighbors of the ^geans. 
 
 361. Modern 
 ignorance 
 of ^gean 
 civilization 
 
 Section 36. Modern Discovery in the Northern 
 
 Mediterranean and the Rise of an Eastern 
 
 Mediterranean World 
 
 We have been putting together the story of the rise and early 
 history of civilization along the north side of the eastern end of 
 the Mediterranean (see map, p. 252), extending from the ^gean 
 world at one end, through the Hittite country to the Two Rivers 
 at the other. Only a few years ago this story was entirely un- 
 known. Less than fifty years ago no one supposed that civilized 
 people had lived in the yEgean world before the Greeks arrived 
 there. Much less did anyone dream that we would ever be 
 able to find the actual handiwork of the predecessors of the 
 
The Dawn of European Civilization 245 
 
 Greeks in the y^^gean world. The discoverer of the ^Egean civil- 
 ization which we have been studying was Heinrich Schliemann. 
 
 Schliemann was an American citizen of German birth. In 362. Life 
 his youth before coming to America he had a romantic busi- schliemann 
 ness career. After being shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, 
 he began his business experience there while a mere lad, as a 
 
 Fig. 149. The Mound containing the Nine Cities of 
 Ancient Troy (Ilium) 
 
 The process by which such artificial mounds grow up is explained in 
 § 158. When Schliemann first visited this mound (see map, p. 254) in 
 1868, it was about 125 feet high, and the Turks were cultivating grain 
 on its summit. In 1870 he excavated a pit like a crater in the top of the 
 hill, passing downward in the course of four years through nine succes- 
 sive cities built each on the ruins of its predecessors. At the bottom of 
 his pit (about 50 feet deep) Schliemann found the original once bare 
 hilltop about 75 feet high, on which the men of the Late Stone Age 
 (§ 349) had established a sifiall settlement of sun-baked brick houses 
 about 3000 B.C. (see Fig. 150). Above the scanty ruins of this Late 
 Stone Age settlement rose, in layer after layer, the ruins of the later 
 cities, with the Roman buildings at the top. The entire depth of 50 feet 
 of ruins represented a period of about thirty-five hundred years from 
 the First City (Late Stone Age) to the Ninth City (Roman) at the top. 
 The Second City (§ 350) contained the earliest copper found in the 
 series; the Sixth City was that of the Trojan War and the Homeric 
 songs (§ 410). Its masonry walls may be seen in Fig. 151 
 
 clerk in a little grocer's shop. In the brief intervals of leisure 
 between dealing out smoked herring and rolls of butter, he 
 taught himself Greek and began to read Homer (§ 410). In 
 the infatuated ears of this enthusiastic boy the shouts of the 
 Greek heroes on the plain of Troy mingled with the jingle of 
 small change and the rustle of wrapping paper in the dingy 
 little Dutch grocery. He had not lost this fascinating vision of 
 
246 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 363. Schlie- 
 mann's exca- 
 vation and 
 discovery 
 of Troy 
 
 the early world, when years afterward he retired from business, 
 after having won a large fortune in Russian petroleum. 
 
 It was therefore as the fulfillment of a dream of his youth 
 that Schliemann led a body of Turkish laborers to begin excava- 
 tions in the great mound of Troy in 1870 (see map, p. 252, and 
 Fig. 149). In less than four years he uncovered the central 
 
 6th City --t==X' 
 
 , 1500B.C - 'Y 
 
 ^ifdestruijcd 12th cent BC.)^ 
 
 ily 2500B.C. .2dvu)m, 
 ■yt f. StoncApeTown .S onmn.^ 
 
 ^< Rock 
 
 . 0/ Hill 
 Temples above =Roman City (in ruins, 500.A.D.) 
 Sixth City. 1500, B. C (Homeric City) 
 
 Second City, 2500. B. C. 
 
 Fig. 150. Diagram of the Mound of Ancient Troy showing 
 
 THE Walls of the Second and Sixth Cities and the Roman 
 
 Temple at the Top (Ninth City) 
 
 This diagram is much too high for its width, as you will see by com- 
 paring the width and height of the mound in Fig. 149. It has been 
 pushed together at the sides and narrowed to include it within the avail- 
 able space. Below is the native rock of th^ hill on which the Late Stone 
 Age settlement was built. Then come the sloping walls of the Second 
 City (shaded). Outside of these and rising much higher are the walls of 
 the Sixth City (black), v/hich may be seen as they are to-day in Fig. 151. 
 The other cities of the nine are less important and have been left out 
 for the sake of clearness. Schliemann never saw the walls of the Sixth 
 City, the real Homeric city, because as he dug down in the middle of 
 the mound inside the ancient walls, he covered the walls of the Sixth 
 City with the rubbish he dug out 
 
 portions of nine successive cities, each built upon the ruins of 
 the next city beneath, which had preceded it (Fig. 150). A 
 towered gateway in the Second City contained a splendid treas- 
 ure of golden jewelry, and Schliemann believed that he had here 
 discovered the Troy of Homer's Greek heroes (§ 408). But 
 we now know that this Second City was built a thousand years 
 before Homer's Troy (the Sixth City (Fig. 150)). 
 
The Daiv7t of Eiiropeajt Civilization 
 
 247 
 
 The sensation aroused by these discoveries among the 364. Schlie- 
 
 scholars of Europe and America was mild compared with that ^tion^of^'^^" 
 
 which followed when Schliemann, crossing to the mainland of l]^^^ ^"^ 
 
 ' ° Mycenae 
 
 Greece, began excavating the prehistoric fortress or casde of 
 
 f*r"4V Yiito 
 
 Fig. 151. The Walls of Homeric Troy (built about 1500 b.c.) 
 
 A section of the outer walls of the Sixth City in the mound of Troy 
 (Fig. 150). The sloping outer surface of the walls faces toward the 
 right ; the inside of the city is on the left. These are the walls built in 
 the days when Mycenae was flourishing — walls which protected the 
 inhabitants of the place from the assaults of the Greeks in a remote war 
 which laid it in ruins after 1200 B.C., a war of which vague traditions 
 and heroic tales have survived in the Homeric poems (§ 40S). These 
 are the walls, scaled by the Greek heroes, which Schliemann never 
 saw (compare description, Fig. 150). The walls of the houses of the 
 Seventh City are visible here resting on those of the Sixth 
 
 Mycenae (Fig. 145). Beneath the pavement of the market place 
 he found a group of stone tomb chambers containing a magnifi- 
 cent series of vessels and ornaments in gold, including an elabo- 
 rate golden crown, indicating the royalty of one of the dead. 
 Again Schliemann thought that these things belonged to the 
 Greek heroes of the Trojan wars (§ 408), but in reality "they 
 
248 
 
 Aiicie^it Times 
 
 365. Excava- 
 tions in Crete 
 since 1900 
 
 366. Excava- 
 tion and dis- 
 covery in 
 Asia Minor, 
 the land of 
 the Hittites 
 
 were older. At the neighboring prehistoric castle of Tiryns 
 (Fig. 144 and § 347) Schliemann made similar discoveries. 
 Thus within a few years an unskilled and untrained excavator 
 disclosed to us a new and entirely unknown world of civilization 
 in the ^gean, which had flourished for centuries before the 
 Greeks appeared there. 
 
 The question of the original home of this early y^gean civili- 
 zation, however, was not settled by Schliemann's work. Since 
 1900 the excavations in Crete have shown this island to have 
 been the place where vF^gean civilization made its start, and the 
 center from which it passed to the other islands and to the 
 mainland of Greece at Tiryns and Mycenas (§ 347). In these 
 discoveries American explorers have had an honorable share ; 
 but they have been due chiefly to the remarkable excavations 
 of Sir Arthur Evans, the English archaeologist, at the city of 
 Cnossus. Here Evans has uncovered the splendid Cretan 
 palaces (Fig. 138), clearing out layer after layer of rubbish 
 containing works of Cretan art and industry, which carry us 
 back age after age to the rubbish of the Late Stone Age settle- 
 ment deep down at the bottom of the mound, over which the 
 first palace was built (§ 337). 
 
 At the same time exploration in Asia Minor has revealed 
 increasing numbers of Hittite monuments. Of these discoveries 
 the most important were those of the German expedition at 
 Khatti (Fig. 152), beginning in the winter of 1 906-1 907. Lying 
 just under the surface of the soil, where it was quite possible to 
 kick them out with the heel of one's boot, the explorers found 
 the clay tablets which once filled the state record chambers in 
 the palace of the Hittite kings at Khatti during the great days 
 of their empire three thousand years ago. Here were letters 
 to and from the kings of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and all the 
 great powers of the oriental world which we have studied. 
 Among them was the letter already mentioned, containing the 
 Hittite king's notice of the coming shipment of iron. Besides 
 recovering the lost records, the German expedition gradually 
 
Q 
 
 me. 
 the 
 tite 
 
 H 
 
 fS-SK 
 
 < 
 
 > 
 < 
 
 o S^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ -13 ^ 
 
 
 ^K ^^ 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 1 s 
 ^ 1 § .? 
 
 »i 
 
 o 
 
 a <u >^5^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 < 
 
 03 g ^ f^ 
 
 J 
 
 u ^ Mi- 
 
 O w -^ 
 
 r^ 
 
 " .tJ ^ u 
 
 
 -^ <U ^ M 
 
 ^ p. ^ 3 
 
 u 
 
 'iz 
 
 >-. <u >^ c 
 
 
 .-y ^ !-^ i> 
 
 
 o +-" c o 
 
 
 TS C ° ^ 
 
 
 i^ > g fi 
 
 
 t« ^ l-l 
 
 £ 
 
 i^rs 
 
 w 
 
 H - - 
 
 ffi 
 
 H 
 
 (U ^ o ^ 
 
 
 •5 N "^ .S 
 
 ta 
 
 O 
 
 
 s^:^ 
 
 H 
 
 
 pH 
 
 <1 
 
 u 
 
 H 
 
 
 /^ 
 
 < 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 (^ 
 
 ^ s^ 
 
 LO 
 
 
 6 
 
 ^ £ >^ 
 
 
 u^ 
 
 H < -G 
 
 249 
 
250 
 
 Antient Times 
 
 ^<5tj. Modern 
 recovery of 
 early civiliza- 
 tion entirely 
 around the 
 eastern end 
 of the Medi- 
 terranean 
 
 368, Rise of 
 an eastern 
 Mediterra- 
 nean world 
 (3000- 
 1500 B.C.) 
 
 369. North- 
 em intruders 
 
 excavated the walls of the ancient city and its chief buildings, 
 and recovered their architecture (cf. Fig. 152). 
 
 Although we are still unable to read the records of the 
 Cretans and are only beginning to read those of the Hittites, 
 the discoveries in their lands have revealed to us the earliest 
 chapter of civilization on the north side of the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean. If we connect these discoveries along the north side of 
 the Mediterranean at its east end with the earlier story of dis- 
 covery in the oriental lands east and south of the Mediterranean, 
 the student will perceive how scholars and explorers have car- 
 ried the work of excavation and discovery entirely around the 
 east end of the Mediterranean, from the low^er Nile valley, 
 through the nations of the Fertile Crescent, to Asia Minor and 
 the ^gean Sea (see map, p. 100). 
 
 These discoveries have begun to show us how the civilized 
 peoples all around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, by 
 their industries and commerce, were gradually creating a civilized 
 world of which the ^gean Sea was merely a northern bay. We 
 recall our first glimpse of this eastern Mediterrane^ world as 
 we journeyed up the Nile and saw the Egyptian ships which 
 crossed the eastern Mediterranean nearly 3000 B.C. (Fig. 41). 
 But now we have studied the peoples on the east and north of 
 the Mediterranean and have seen how, at the close of the 
 Grand Age in Crete, the splendid ^gean civilization had been 
 mingling for centuries with the older oriental civilizations, espe- 
 cially that of the Nile, but also with that of Hittite Asia Minor 
 and through it with the civilization of the Fertile Crescent. 
 
 Into this civilized world of the eastern Mediterranean, with 
 its arts, its industries, and its far-reaching commerce, the uncivil- 
 ized peoples of the North behind the Balkan mountains and the 
 Black Sea were now beginning to intrude. These uncivilized 
 northerners were the Greeks. They were soon to overwhelm 
 the eastern Mediterranean, and with these Northern intruders 
 we must begin a new chapter in the history of the eastern 
 Mediterranean world. 
 
The Dawn of Europea7t Civilization 251 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 33. At what point in their progress did we leave the 
 Europeans when we first passed over to the Orient? What products 
 of the eastern Mediterranean reached the Late Stone Age Euro- 
 peans? How did these things reach Europe? Did the possession 
 of metal raise the Europeans to a high civilization? 
 
 Section 34. Was 'there any part of Europe nearer the Orient 
 than the ^gean world ? By what two ways was it connected with 
 the Orient? What island of the ^^gean is nearest- to Egypt? De- 
 scribe the rise of civilization there. Can you mention some evidences 
 of Egyptian influence there ? Where did the Cretan sea-kings arise ? 
 What survives to tell us of their power ? What industries flourished ? 
 Can you. mention some evidence of Cretan commerce? What now 
 happened to Cretan writing? Tell something of Cretan decorative 
 art in the Grand Age ; of the work of sculptor and goldsmith. Tell 
 something of the Hfe of the palace and of the peasants. Under what 
 foreign power were the Cretans at this time? What three great 
 civilizations now existed? 
 
 Section 35. Had the European mainland advanced as fast as 
 Crete in civilization? Where do we find evidences of the first civi- 
 lization on the continent of Europe, and what are they ? Date them. 
 Was there yet any writing common in Europe? Where and when 
 did civilization arise on the east side of the ^gean ? What led men 
 to this point? What can you say about the history and civilization 
 of Troy? What people occupied most of Asia Minor? Mention 
 some things which they passed on to the West from the East. 
 Recall some evidences of their influence in the East. What influ- 
 ences reached the Hittites from the Fertile Crescent and from Egypt ? 
 When did the Hittite Empire arise, and what can you say about its 
 influence? What was the most important thing which the Hittites 
 contributed to other peoples ? 
 
 Section 36. Who first discovered remains of people who had oc- 
 cupied the yEgean world before the Greeks ? Tell something of his 
 life. What did he find at Troy? in Greece? What has excavation 
 in Crete since shown ? What has excavation in Asia Minor revealed ? 
 With reference to the eastern end of the Mediterranean how far have 
 excavation and discovery been carried ? What kind of a world has dis- 
 covery revealed in the eastern Mediterranean ? What uncivilized 
 Northerners were now intruding into this eastern Mediterranean world? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 370. South- 
 ward advance 
 of the Indo- 
 European 
 line in 
 Europe 
 
 THE GREEK CONQUEST OF THE AEGEAN WORLD 
 
 Section 37. The Coming of the Greeks 
 
 The people whom we call the Greeks were a large group of 
 tribes of Indo-European race. We have already followed the 
 Indo-European parent people until their diverging migrations 
 finally ranged them in a line from the Atlantic Ocean to north- 
 ern India (§ 243 and Fig. 112). While their eastern kindred 
 
 Note, The above headpiece shows a line of captive warriors with their hands 
 shackled before them or pinioned over their heads. They wear a tall feathered 
 headdress, which shows them to be Philistines (§296), a tribe of Cretan war- 
 riors driven out of Crete by the Greeks (§ 379). Some of them, invading 
 Egypt in their flight, were taken captive by Ramses III, the last of the Egyptian 
 emperors, not long after 1200 B.C. He therefore placed this picture of them on 
 the walls of his temple at Thebes, Egypt. Other pictures of them may be seen 
 in Fig. 154, recognizable by their headdress. 
 
 252 
 
\ 
 
i 
 
The Greek Coiiqicest of the y^gean World 253 
 
 were drifting southward on the east side of the Caspian, the 
 Greeks on the west side of the Black Sea were likewise mov- 
 ing southward from their broad pastures along the Danube 
 (see map II, p. 252). 
 
 Driving their herds before them, with their families in rough 371. The 
 carts drawn by horses, the rude Greek tribesmen must have Se^c'reek^^'^ 
 
 looked out upon 
 the fair pastures 
 of Thessaly, the 
 snowy summit of 
 Mount Olympus 
 (Fig- 153)^ and the 
 blue waters of the 
 ^gean not long 
 after 2000 b.c. 
 The Greek penin- 
 sula which they had 
 entered contains 
 about twenty-five 
 thousand square 
 miles.^ It is every- 
 where cut up by 
 mountains and in- 
 lets of the sea into 
 small plains and 
 peninsulas, sepa- 
 rated from each 
 other either by the 
 
 peninsula 
 
 Fig. 153. 
 
 Mount Olympus 
 OF THE Gods 
 
 THE Home 
 
 Although Mount Olympus is on the northern 
 borders of Greece, it can be seen from Attica 
 and the south end of Euboea. It approaches 
 10,000 feet in height, and looks down upon 
 Macedonia on one side and Thessaly on the 
 other (see map, p. 264). As we look at it here 
 from the south, we have a portion of the plain 
 of Thessaly in the foreground, where the first 
 Greeks entered Hellas (§ 371), and where later 
 the earliest Homeric songs of the Greek heroes 
 were composed (§ 408) 
 
 sea or the moun- 
 tain ridges. No less than five hundred islands are scat- 
 tered along its deeply indented eastern shores (map, p. 264, 
 and Plate III). On its climate and products see § 331. 
 
 1 About one sixth smaller than South Carolina — so small that Mount Olympus 
 on the northern boundary of Greece is visible over much of the peninsula. 
 From the mountains of Sparta one can see from Crete to the mountains north of 
 the Corinthian Gulf (see Fig, 163), a distance of two hundred and twenty-five miles. 
 
254 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 372. The bar- 
 barian Greek 
 nomads and 
 the settled 
 ^^gean civili- 
 zation 
 
 373- 
 
 ^^^. The bar- 
 barian Greek 
 nomads on 
 the margin 
 of the great 
 oriental 
 world 
 
 374. Achaean 
 Greeks fol- 
 lowed by 
 Dorian 
 Greeks in 
 Peloponnesus 
 by 1500 BX. 
 
 The wandering shepherds whom we have seen so often in- 
 vading the Fertile Crescent (§§ 135, 167, and 294) to find a set- 
 tled and civilized town life there, furnish us the best possible 
 illustration of the situation of the Greeks as they invaded the 
 ^gean towns and settlements like Tiryns and Mycenae (§ 347). 
 As the newcomers looked out across the waters they could dimly 
 discern the islands, where flourishing towns were carrying on 
 busy industries, especially in pottery and metal, which a thriving 
 commerce was distributing (§§ 339 and 345). 
 
 We can imagine the wonder with which these barbarian 
 Greeks must have looked out upon the white sails that flecked 
 the blue surface of the ^Egean Sea. It was to be long, how- 
 ever, before these inland shepherds would themselves venture 
 timidly out upon the great waters which they were viewing for 
 the first time. Had the gaze of the Greek nomads been able 
 to penetrate beyond the yEgean isles, they would have seen a 
 vast panorama of great and flourishing oriental states. Here on 
 the borders of the great oriental world and under its influences 
 the Greeks were now to go forward toward the development of 
 a civilization higher than any the Orient had yet produced, the 
 highest indeed which ancient man ever attained. 
 
 Gradually their vanguard (called the Achasans) pushed south- 
 ward into the Peloponnesus, and doubtless some of them 
 mingled with the ^Egean dwellers in the villages which were 
 grouped under the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae (Figs. 144, 145, 
 and Plate IH), just as the Hebrew nomads mingled with the 
 Canaanite townsmen (§ 294). Some of the Greek leaders may 
 have captured these ^gean fortresses, just as David took Jeru- 
 salem (§ 297). But our knowledge of the situation in Greece is 
 very meager because the peoples settled here could not yet write, 
 and therefore have left no written documents to tell the story. 
 It is evident, however, that a second wave of Greek nomads 
 (called the Dorians) reached the Peloponnesus by 1500 b.c. 
 and subdued their earlier kinsmen (the Achaeans) as well as the 
 a^gean townsmen, the original inhabitants of the region. 
 
The Greek Conquest of the y^gean World 255 
 
 The Dorians did not stop at the southern limits of Greece, 375. The 
 but, learning a little navigation from their ^gean predecessors, poTs^ession^of 
 they passed over to Crete, where they must have arrived by the ^gean 
 1400 B. c. Cnossus, unfortified as it was, and without any walled Dorians in 
 castle (§ 338), must have fallen an easy prey to the invading southern 
 Dorians, who took possession of the island, and likewise seized ^s^^" 
 the other southern islands of the ^gean. Between 1300 and 
 1000 B.C. the Greek tribes took possession of the remaining 
 islands, as well as the coast of Asia Minor — the Dorians in the 
 south, the lonians in the middle, and the -Cohans in the north. 
 Here a memorable Greek expedition in the twelfth century 
 B.C., after a long siege, captured and burned the prosperous 
 city of Troy (§ 350), a feat which the Greeks never after 
 forgot (§ 408). During the thousand years between 2000 and 
 1000 B.C. the Greeks thus took possession not only of the 
 whole Greek peninsula but likewise of the entire ^gean world. 
 
 The interior of Asia Minor suffered likewise. Other Indo- 376. Phryg- 
 Europeans, kindred of the Greeks, were pushing southward Armenians 
 behind them. Some of these rearward Indo-European tribes ^^^.^^^ ^^'^ 
 
 ^ Minor 
 
 found it easier to cross the Hellespont and invade Asia Minor 
 than to push on into Greece. Probably before 1500 b. c. some 
 of these invaders of Asia Minor had become so numerous 
 among the Hittites, who were not originally Indo- Europeans, 
 that the Hittite communities began to lose their own tongue 
 and to speak the Indo-European language of the newcomers. 
 Thus the Hittite cuneiform tablets (§ 354) are in a language 
 which contains Indo-European words and grammatical forms 
 akin to those in Greek, as the new decipherment (§ 355) has 
 recently shown. By 1 200 b. c. a second wave of Indo-Europeans, 
 especially the Phrygians and the Armenians, were invading the 
 Hittite country in Asia Minor. 
 
 The northern Mediterranean all along its eastern end was 377. Flight of 
 thus being absorbed by Indo-European peoples. The result ^g^ns ° ^ 
 was that both the ^geans and their Hittite neighbors in Asia 
 Minor were overwhelmed by the advancing Indo-European 
 
256 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 378. Egyp- 
 tian repulse 
 of the fugi- 
 tive ^geans 
 
 379. Cretan 
 Philistines 
 find a home 
 in Southern 
 Palestine 
 
 380. Fall of 
 jEgean civili- 
 zation 
 
 line The Hittite Empire (§ 359) completely collapsed. The 
 splendid ^gean civilization which we saw rising so prosper- 
 ously was unable to repel the invaders. Probably few of the 
 common people of the yEgean towns were able to flee. On 
 the other hand, the noble and well-to-do ^gean families, the 
 class to which our elegantly dressed little Cretan lady of the 
 statuette (Fig. 141) belonged, — forming, all told, considerable 
 numbers, — must have taken to the sea and fled. They looked 
 back upon burning towns and villas, and they must have seen 
 the splendid palace of Cnossus, with all its beautiful treasures 
 of Cretan art, going up in smoke and flame. 
 
 By 1200 B.C. the movement of the Greek or Indo-European 
 invasion from the north had thus set in motion before it a wave 
 of fleeing ^E^geans, which crossed the sea and broke upon the 
 shores of the southeastern Mediterranean from the Nile Delta 
 to the harbors of Phoenicia. It was this wave of ^Egean fugi- 
 tives which aided in overturning the tottering Egyptian Empire. 
 An Egyptian relief scene shows us the earliest-known picture 
 of a naval batde (Fig. 154) — a sea fight off the coast of Syria, 
 in which the last of the Egyptian emperors beat off an ^gean 
 fleet (§ 124). 
 
 The only region where the fleeing ^geans were numerous 
 enough to settle and to form a nation was in Southern Pales- 
 tine. Here a tribe of Cretans called Philistines (headpiece, 
 p. 252), although they had been beaten in the sea fight just 
 mentioned, were able to establish themselves and build up a 
 group of prosperous cities, in the twelfth century B.C. We recall 
 how they nearly succeeded in crushing the young Hebrew 
 nation just then emerging (§ 296). Curiously enough, it was 
 these fugitives from the ^gean world who gave to Palestine 
 its present name, for " Palestine " is simply a later form of the 
 name " Philistine." 
 
 The Indo-European invasion of the ^Elgean world thus broke 
 up the prosperous and highly civilized communities which we 
 have seen there, especially in Crete. By 1200 B.C. the splendid 
 
 { 
 
The Greek Conquest of the yEgea7i World 257 
 
 ^gean civilization had been almost submerged by northern bar- 
 barism, little better than the Late Stone Age life which we 
 have already seen in Europe. Some important things in 
 ^gean civilization, perished entirely — among them Cretan 
 
 Fig. 154. Battle between a Fleet of Fleeing ^geans 
 AND AN Egyptian Fleet 
 
 This scene, sculptured on the walls of an Egyptian temple at Thebes 
 (§ 124), is the earliest surviving picture of a naval battle. It shows us 
 the Mediterranean peoples defeated by the last Egyptian emperor, 
 Ramses III, not long after 1200 B.C., somewhere along the Syrian 
 coast (§ 378). Of the nine ships engaged four are Egyptian (lion's head 
 on the prow) — three at the left and one in the lower right-hand corner. 
 The remaining five are ^gean ships (goose-head on the prow). One 
 ^gean ship (middle, below) has been overturned. The v^^.geans are 
 Philistines with feathered headdress (see headpiece, p. 252), and we 
 see here how they passed from Crete to Palestine (§ 379). The ^geans 
 iire armed only with round shields and spears or two-edged swords (§ 776), 
 whereas the Egyptians are chiefly archers, who overwhelm the enemy 
 with archery volleys at long range and then close in, taking Philistine 
 prisoners who m^ay be seen standing bound in the Egyptian ships 
 
 writing, which disappeared after the Greek invasion. Enough 
 of ^vgean industries survived, however, to form an essential part 
 of the foundation upon which the barbarian Greeks were yet 
 to build up the highest civilization of the ancient world. 
 
 Such of the ^Egean population as had not fled before the 
 incoming Greeks mingled with their Greek conquerors, just as 
 
258 Ancient Times 
 
 381. Min- we have seen the civilized Canaanites of Palestine mingling 
 ^ge^s with the invading Hebrew nomads (§ 294). This commingling 
 and Greeks q£ ^geans and Greeks produced a mixed race, the people 
 
 known to us as the Greeks of history. How much ^gean 
 blood may have flowed in their veins we are unable to deter- 
 mine. But the supreme genius of the classical Greeks may 
 well have been due, in some measure, to this admixture of the 
 blood of the gifted Cretans, with their open-mindedness toward 
 influences from abroad and their fine artistic instincts. 
 
 382. Tri- The mingling of Greek and ^Egean blood did not result 
 Greekspeech i^ a similar mixture of speech, as English is made up of 
 
 French and Anglo-Saxon. Greek, the language of the victori- 
 ous invaders, gradually became the language of the ^gean 
 world. At the same time Greek did not blot out every trace 
 of the older yEgean language of the region. People continued 
 to call the towns, rivers, and mountains, like Mount Parnassus, 
 by the old ^gean names they found in use, just as we found 
 Ifidian geographical names in America and continue to call our 
 greatest river by its old Indian name, Mississippi (" Father of 
 Waters "). Such names in Greece are to-day surviving remnants 
 of the lost y^^gean language, now no longer anywhere spoken.^ 
 It is interesting also to notice that a few ^gean words for 
 civilized conveniences, such as the Greek invaders did not 
 possess, likewise survived. So the word "bathtub" in Greek 
 is really an old ^gean word. For of course a race of wander- 
 ing shepherds such as the Greeks had been, had no such 
 luxuries : whereas we have recovered the actual bathtubs of 
 the refined ^geans (§ 344), from whom the Greeks learned 
 the name. Nevertheless, the Greek language was already de- 
 veloping as the richest and most beautiful instrument of speech 
 man has ever possessed. 
 
 1 We do not know to what group of languages the old /Egean speech, now 
 lost, belonged. The still undeciphered Cretan writings (§ 340) may yet reveal this 
 secret. The claim made in America that one variety of Cretan hieroglyphic has 
 been deciphered, and found to be Greek, is without foundation. The recent deci- 
 pherment of Hittite cuneiform (§§ 355 and 376) shovild aid in solving the problem. 
 
The Greek Conquest of the ALgean World 259 
 
 Section 38. The Nomad Greeks make the 
 Transition to the Settled Life 
 
 In tranquil summer days one can pass from island to island 383- Early 
 
 , . ^ ^ r r^ A.,r. Greeks not 
 
 and cross the entire vf^gean Sea from Greece to Asia Minor a maritime 
 in a rowboat. This is why a group of shepherd tribes like the ^^°^ ^ 
 Greeks had been able to cross and take possession of the islands 
 of the ^gean and the coast of neighboring Asia Minor. But 
 we must not conclude that at this early stage of their history 
 they had already taken to the sea and become a people of 
 sailors. Centuries later we find the Greek peasant-poet Hesiod 
 (700 B.C.) looking with shrinking eye upon the sea. Long after 
 they had taken possession of the ^gean world the Greeks re- 
 mained a barbarous people of flocks and herds, without any 
 commerce by sea. 
 
 If we would understand the situation of the Greeks after 384. Earliest 
 their conquest of the civilized ^geian world, we must again tut?ons"oV 
 recall nomad life as we have seen it along the Fertile Crescent ^^^ Greeks 
 in Asia (§ 136). We remember that the nomads possessed no 
 organized government, for there was no public business which 
 demanded it. Even to-day among such people no taxes are 
 collected, for no one owns any land which can be taxed. 
 There are no public officials, there are no cases at law, no legal 
 business, and men are controlled by a few customs like the 
 "blood revenge" (§ 136). Such was exactly the condition 
 of the nomad Greeks when they began a settled life in the 
 yEgean world. 
 
 From their old wandering life on the grasslands they carried 385. Tribes, 
 with them the loose groups of families known as tribes, and and""as- 
 within each tribe an indefinite number of smaller groups of s^mbly" 
 more intimate families called '^ brotherhoods." A " council " 
 of the old men ('' elders ") occasionally decided matters in 
 dispute, or questions of tribal importance, and probably once 
 a year, or at some important feast, an " assembly " of all the 
 weapon-bearing men of the tribe might be held, to express its 
 
26o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 386. Rise of 
 Greek kings 
 
 387. Greeks 
 begin agri- 
 culture 
 
 388. Rise of 
 land owner- 
 ship and its 
 consequences 
 in govern- 
 ment and 
 society 
 
 opinion of a proposed war or migration. These are the germs 
 of later European political institutions and even of our own 
 in the United States to-day.^ 
 
 It was perhaps after they had found kings .over such ^gean 
 cities as Mycenae (§ 347) that the Greeks (like the Hebrews, 
 § 296) began to want kings themselves. Thus the old-time 
 nomad leaders whom they had once followed in war, religion, 
 and the settlement of disputes became rude shepherd kings 
 of the tribes. 
 
 Meantime the Greek shepherds slowly began the cultivation 
 of land. This forced them to give up a wandering life to build 
 houses and live in permanent homes. Nomad instincts and 
 nomad customs were not easily rooted out however. War and 
 the care of flocks continued to be the occupation of the men^ 
 as it had been for centuries on the Northern grasslands ; while 
 the cultivation of the fields was at first left to the- women. 
 Furthermore, flocks and herds continued to make up the chief 
 wealth of the Greeks for centuries after they had taken up 
 agriculture. 
 
 As each Greek tribe settled down and became a group of 
 villages, the surrounding land was divided among the families 
 by lot, though the tribe as a whole long continued to be the 
 only real owner of the land. Nevertheless, private ownership 
 of land by families gradually resulted. As a consequence there 
 arose disputes about boundaries, about inheritances in land 
 (§ 452), and much other legal business, which as it increased 
 required more and more attention by those in authority. The 
 settlement of such business tended to create a government. 
 During the four centuries from 1000 to 600 B.C. we see the 
 Greeks struggling with the problem of learning how to transact 
 the business of settled landholding communities, and how to 
 
 1 Compare the House of Lords ( — the above " council ") and the House of ?, 
 Commons ( = the above " assembly ") in England, or the Senate (derived from 
 the Latin word meaning "old man") and the House of Representatives in the 
 United States. 
 
The Greek Conquest of the y^gean World 261 
 
 adjust the ever-growing friction and strife between the rich 
 and the poor, the social classes created by the holding of 
 land and the settled life (cf. § 31). 
 
 We have seen the Semitic nomads struggling with the same 389. Lack 
 problems on the Fertile Crescent (§ 167). But for them the amonythe 
 situation was in one important particular much easier. They ^^"^'^ Greeks 
 found among their settled predecessors a system of writing 
 which they quickly learned (§ 167). But the old Cretan writing 
 (§ 340), once used by the ^Egean predecessors of the Greeks, 
 had perished. No one had ever yet written a word of the 
 Greek language in this age when the Greeks were adopting 
 the settled agricultural life. This lack of writing greatly in- 
 creased the difficulties to be met as a government arose and its 
 transactions began. There arose in some communities a "re- 
 memberer," whose duty it was to notice carefully the terms of 
 a contract, the amount of a loan, or the conditions of a treaty 
 with a neighboring people, that he might remember these and 
 innumerable other things, which in a more civilized society are 
 recorded in writing. 
 
 In course of time the group of villages forming the nucleus of 390. Rise of 
 a tribe grew together and merged at last into a city. This was ^ ^^ >" ^ 
 the most important process in Greek political development ; for 
 the organized city became the only nation which the Greeks 
 ever knew. Each city-state was a sovereign power ; each had 
 its own laws, its own army and gods, and each citizen felt a 
 patriotic duty toward his own city and no other. Overlooking 
 the city from the heights in its midst was the king's castle 
 (Fig. 144), which we call the "citadel," or "acropolis." Even- 
 tually, the houses and the market below were protected by a 
 wall. The king had now become a revered and powerful ruler 
 of the city, and guardian of the worship of the city gods. King 
 and Council sat all day in the market and adjusted the busi- 
 ness and the disputes between the people. Though crude, cor- 
 rupt, and often unjust, these continuous sessions for the first 
 time created a state and an uninterrupted government. 
 
262 Ancient Times 
 
 391. Riseof There were hundreds of such city-states throughout the 
 
 zation in the mainland of Greece and the coasts and islands of the ^gean. 
 
 Rrngs^/ujoo Ii^deed the ^gean world was made up of such tiny nations 
 
 750 B.C.) after the Greeks had made the transition to the settled life 
 
 there. It was while the Greeks were thus living in these little 
 
 city-kingdoms under kings that Greek civilization arose. While 
 
 there were Greek kings long before 1000 B.C., it is especially 
 
 after that date, during the last two and a half centuries of the 
 
 rule of the kings (1000-750 B.C.), that we are able to follow 
 
 the rise of Greek civilization. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 37. To what race did the Greeks belong.? Had they 
 always lived in Greece? Whence did they come? Were they ac- 
 customed to settled town life? What kind of surroundings as to 
 civilization did they now enter ? Describe their settlement and spread 
 in the ^gean world; in Asia Minor. What was the effect upon the 
 predecessors of the Greeks in the y^gean? in Asia Minor? Men- 
 tion evidence of the flight of the ^geans. Who were the Philistines 
 and where did they setde ? What happened to ^gean civilization ? 
 to architecture ? to industries ? to writing ? What became of the 
 ^geans who remained behind ? Describe the results as to language. 
 
 Section 38. Did the Greeks at once take to the sea? Did they 
 take up town life at once? What other nomad peoples have we 
 found in the same situation? What social institutions did the Greeks 
 bring with them ? What can you say of the social effects of agricul- 
 ture and landownership ? How did the Greeks get along without 
 writing? What became of the villages around each Greek town? 
 Did the Greek towns all unite into one great nation including all the 
 Greeks? What was each Greek nation? Toward what did the 
 Greek feel patriotism ? Describe a Greek city-state. Were there 
 many of them ? Was there a nation including all the .^^gean world ? 
 Who was at the head of each city-state? What was the form of 
 government when Greek civilization arose ? Date the period when 
 we are able to trace the rise of Greek civilization. 
 
^M 
 
 !'^ 
 
 ^i 
 
 
 
 
 :^^-^>< 
 
 t% 
 
 f^^^ 
 
 
 w, 
 
 ri 
 
 «, 
 
 
 
 ^M 
 
 
 ra 
 
 ^K 
 
 lim 
 
 S#J . 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 r^^ 
 
 
 Ii2 '■ 
 
 ^^^j _\ 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GREEK CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF THE KINGS 
 
 Section 39. The ^gean Inheritance and the 
 Spread of Phcenician Commerce 
 
 In one very important matter the Greek invaders were more 392. Begin- 
 fortunate than their ^Egean predecessors. The iron which we iron Age 
 have seen spreading in the Orient from the Hittite country looo^g^) 
 (§ 360) had at the same time (thirteenth century B.C.) also 
 begun to reach the Greeks. It was of course a matter of 
 some centuries before iron tools and weapons entirely displaced 
 those of bronze, just as the automobile will be a long time 
 in entirely banishing the horse from among us. Indeed, after 
 iron had been in common use among the Greeks for over five 
 hundred years, the Greek poet JEschylus (§ 578) called it the 
 " stranger from across the sea," or '' the Chalybean stranger," 
 the Chalybean region being the iron district of Asia Minor (see 
 
 Note. The above headpiece is a Greek vase-painting showing a battle scene 
 from the Trojan War. In the middle is the fallen Achilles, for the possession of 
 whose body a desperate combat is going on (§ 407). Here we see the armor of 
 the early Greek warriors — a round shield on the left arm, a long spear in the 
 right hand. A heavy two-edged sword was also carried, but the bow was not 
 common. Only one warrior here uses it. The face is protected by a heavy helmet 
 crowned by a tall plume of horsehair, and the body is covered by a bronze corse- 
 let, a jacket of metal reaching from the neck to the waist. Below the knees the 
 legs are protected by bronze fronts called greaves. At the extreme left a com- 
 rade binds up a wounded warrior, on whose shield is the bird of his family arms 
 (cf. Fig. 27). Behind him the goddess Athena watches the combat. The paint- 
 ing is done in the older style of black figures on a red ground (contrast Fig, 170). 
 The artist has inserted the names of the warriors, some written from left to right 
 and some in the other direction (cf. headpiece, p. 282). 
 
 263 
 
264 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 393. Mem- 
 ories of 
 ^gean civili- 
 zation, and 
 the dawn 
 of Greek 
 civilization 
 
 394. Oriental 
 influences : 
 clothing 
 
 map, p. 100). By 1000 B.C. iron was common in Greece. The 
 Bronze Age had therefore lasted about two thousand years, 
 that is, about as long as the career of the T^gean civilization. 
 We may say indeed that the period of ^gean civilization coin- 
 cided with the Bronze Age (3000-1000 B.C.), while the civi- 
 lization of the Greeks arose at the incoming of the Iron Age 
 (about 1000 B.C.). 
 
 Long after 1000 B.C. the life of the Greeks continued to be 
 rude and even barbarous. Memories of the old ^gean splendor 
 lingered in the plain of Argos. Above the Greek village at 
 Mycenae still towered the massive stone walls (Fig. 145) of the 
 ancient y^gean princes, who had long before passed away. To 
 these huge walls the Greeks looked up with awe-struck faces 
 and thought that they had been built by vanished giants called 
 Cyclops. Or with wondering admiration they fingered some 
 surviving piece of rich metal work wrought by the skill of the 
 ancient ^Egean craftsmen (Fig. 140). The tradition that Crete 
 was the earliest home of their civilization never died out among 
 the Greeks. Without any skill in craftsmanship, the Greek 
 shepherds and peasants were slow to take up building, indus- 
 tries, and manufacturing on their own account. Their slowness 
 is also evident in the matter of writing, which the Greeks, as we 
 have seen (§ 389), failed to learn from their ^Egean prede- 
 cessors. For a long time even the dwellings of the Greek kings 
 were usually but simple farmhouses of sun-dried brick, where 
 the swine wandered unhindered into the court or slumbered in 
 the sunshine beside the royal doorway. They made a begin- 
 ning at pottery, and the rude paintings with which they deco- 
 rated this rough ware (Fig. 155) show that the same methods 
 employed by the ^gean potters in producing their fine ware 
 in Crete a thousand years earlier (Fig. 136) were still lingering 
 on in a decadent state. 
 
 When we remember the experience of the yEgean peoples 
 (§§ ?)?i'^-ZZZ)^ we perceive that the Greeks were now exposed to 
 the same oriental influences which had so strongly affected early 
 
I 
 
Greek Civilization hi the Age of the Kings 265 
 
 Fig. 155. Primitive Greek Art as 
 SHOWN IN A Painted Vase of the Age 
 
 OF the Kings 
 This very fine specimen, over 3I feet high, 
 one of the few well-preserved primitive 
 Greek vases, was recently acquired by the 
 Metropolitan Museum of New York. It rep- 
 resents Greek art in its beginnings in the 
 eighth century B.C. We see that the beauti- 
 ful flowers, sea plants, and other natural 
 objects employed by the TEgeans in their 
 decorative art were abandoned by the early 
 Greek vase-painters, in favor of bands of 
 
 geometrical designs. The two rows of scenes show a funeral above, with 
 the body lying on a high bier. Below is a procession of warriors with 
 dumb-bell-shaped shields, and four-wheeled chariots each with three 
 horses very rudely drawn. Compare the fine horses painted by the 
 Greeks only a century and a half later (Fig. 164) and the magnificent 
 steeds painted four and a half centuries later (Fig. 202). The practical 
 working method employed in this work by the primitive Greek potter and 
 vase-painter was wholly borrowed from his ^gean predecessors (§ 393) 
 
 ^gean civilization. 
 The Greek towns- 
 men had now put off 
 the shaggy sheepskin 
 of their former nomad 
 life in favor of a shirt- 
 like garment of woven 
 wool. They had no 
 name for it in Greek, 
 but they heard the 
 foreign merchants of 
 whom they bought it 
 calling it in their lan- 
 guage a kiton (ke ton') 
 (Fig. 156). 
 
 To purchase arti- 
 cles like this, which 
 they did not them- 
 selves make, the towns- 
 men often went down 
 to the seashore, where 
 they and their women 
 gathered about a ship 
 drawn up with stern 
 on the beach. Black- 
 bearded traders, who 
 overlooked the crowd 
 from the high stem 
 
 395. The 
 wares of the 
 Phoenician 
 merchants 
 
266 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 396. Ex- 
 pansion of 
 Phoenician 
 commerce 
 
 of the ship, tempted the Greeks with glass or alabaster perfume 
 bottles from Egypt (Fig. 49) and rich blue porcelain dishes. If 
 the women did not bid for these, they were quite unable to 
 resist certain handsome ivory combs carved with lions in open- 
 work (Fig. 157), and polished till they shone in the sun. 
 Wealthy Greeks were attracted by 
 furniture elaborately inlaid with ivory 
 carvings (Fig. 108), and especially by 
 magnificent large round platters of 
 bronze or even of silver, richly en- 
 graved (Fig. 158). Splendid purple 
 robes hanging over the stern of the 
 ship enriched the display of golden 
 jewelry with flashes of brilliant color. 
 Here too were the kitons, as we would 
 have heard these swarthy strangers 
 from the sea calling them. They were 
 Phoenicians, and the word for the new 
 garment adopted by the Greeks was a 
 Phoenician word (see map II, p. 252). 
 We see then that with the fall of the 
 Egyptian Empire (after 1200 b. c.) the 
 ships of Egypt in the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean had disappeared. The same 
 fate had at the same time overtaken 
 the fleets of the ^F^geans. Thus the 
 eastern Mediterranean was left un- 
 occupied by merchant fleets, and by 
 1000 B.C. the Phoenician cities (Fig. 159) were taking advantage 
 of this opportunity. Once dwellers in the desert like the Hebrews, 
 we remember that the Phoenicians had early occupied the towns 
 along the Syrian coast (§ 141), where they became clever navi- 
 gators. The Greek craftsmen were as yet quite unable to pro- 
 duce such wares as the Phoenician merchant offered, and hence 
 these oriental traders did a thriving business wherever they landed. 
 
 Fig. 156. Phcenician 
 
 Garment adopted by 
 
 THE Greeks 
 
 The Greeks called this 
 garment a kito7i (early 
 pronounced ke ton'; later, 
 chiton') (see §§394-395). 
 The garments of women 
 may be seen in Fig. 170 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 267 
 
 Nor did the Phoenicians stop with the ^gean world. They 
 sought markets also in the West, and they were the discoverers 
 of the western Mediterranean. 
 JThey finally planted settlements 
 even as far away as the Atlantic 
 coast of Spain (Fig. 157). Their 
 colony of Carthage (map, p. 288) 
 became the most important com- 
 mercial state in the western Medi- 
 I terranean and the most dangerous 
 rival of Rome, as we shall see 
 ^Sections 77 f.). For some three 
 :enturies after rooo B.C. they 
 ivere the greatest merchants in 
 ;he Mediterranean, and their far- 
 'eaching traffic was beginning the 
 3I0W creation of a great mercan- 
 tile Mediterranean world. They 
 [lad no armies, however, and little 
 political organization. The only 
 Phoenician colony that ever be- 
 came a strong state was Carthage. 
 
 The Phoenicians learned the 
 methods of manufacturing their 
 goods, in almost all cases, from 
 Egypt, There they learned to 
 make glass and porcelain, to 
 weave linen and dye it, to cast 
 and hammer and engrave metal. 
 On the other hand, we find that 
 the desig?is employed in their art 
 
 were international. Their metal platters (Fig. 158) they en- 
 graved with designs which they found in both Egypt and Asia. 
 The art of Phoenicia was thus a kind of oriental composite or 
 combination, drawn chiefly from the Nile and the Two Rivers. 
 
 397. The 
 Phcenicians 
 the eadiest 
 explorers of 
 the western 
 Mediter- 
 
 FiG. 157. Ancient Phoe- 
 nician Comb of Carved 
 Ivory 
 
 Such wares, manufactured at 
 Sidon and Tyre, were dis- 
 tributed by the Phoenician 
 merchants through the Medi- 
 terranean (§ 395) as far west as 
 Spain, where combs like this 
 have been found in ancient 
 graves. The lion adorning this 
 comb is the form that devel- 
 oped in Syria (cf. Plate II). 
 Phoenician craftsmen doing 
 such work were also kept by 
 the Assyrian emperors at Nin- 
 eveh, and pieces of their work 
 have been found there (Fig. 
 108) bearing Phoenican signs 
 
 398. Growth 
 of Phoenician 
 art and indus- 
 tries : their 
 composite 
 international 
 character 
 
268 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 399. Oriental 
 decorative 
 art reaches 
 Europe 
 
 We remember that it was Phoenician workmen whom the Assyr- 
 ian kings employed to make furniture and metal work for the 
 royal palace (Fig. 108). King Solomon likewise employed Phoe- 
 nician work- 
 men to build 
 for him the 
 Hebrew tem- 
 ple at Jerusa- 
 lem (i Kings, 
 v). After 1 000 
 B.C. the Phoe- 
 nicians were 
 thus the artis- 
 tic manufac- 
 turers of a 
 great world ex- 
 tending from 
 Nineveh on 
 the east to 
 Greece on the 
 west. 
 
 On the metal 
 platters and 
 the furniture 
 of carved ivory 
 landed from 
 the Phoenician 
 ships (§ 395), 
 the Greek 
 craftsmen found 
 
 decorations made up of palm trees, lotus flowers, hunting scenes 
 along the Nile, the Assyrian tree of life (Fig. 102), and many 
 other picturesque things, but especially those strange winged 
 creatures of oriental fancy, the sphinx, the gryphon, the winged 
 horse. The Greeks soon began to imitate these things in their 
 
 Fig. 158. Ancient Phcenician Platter of 
 Engraved and Beaten Work 
 
 This silver platter, now in the Berlin Museum, is of 
 beautiful workmanship. A circular stream of water 
 surrounds a rosette in the middle. On the water are 
 four Nile boats (one of them in the form of a swan), 
 outside of which is a circular border of papyrus flowers. 
 The Phoenicians were very skillful in such metal work, 
 which they thus adorned with Egyptian and Assyrian 
 designs. Pieces of it have been found as far west as 
 Spain and as far east as Nineveh, whither they were 
 carried by the Phoenician merchants 
 
Greek Civilization i7i the Age of the Kings 269 
 
 own work. Thus the whole range of oriental decorative art 
 entered Greek life, to fill forever after a large place in the 
 decorative art of all civilized peoples of the West, including our 
 own to-day. At the same time it is highly probable that in the 
 Phoenician workshops in the ^gean islands the Greeks could 
 work side by side with the Phoenician craftsmen and learn how 
 
 >'i*o=C--^^^^'*^ 
 
 ' S^isSlE^Sls 
 
 
 ^...4^^W'-y"^^^ 
 
 i^.:^-^^fc/i^a^^^M 
 
 Fig. 159. The Ancient Phcenician Harbor of Sidon as it 
 now appears 
 
 It was from this harbor that the Phoenician colonists sailed forth to 
 establish new cities in the western Mediterranean, especially Carthage 
 (§397)- I^ the Homeric poems the Phoenicians are often called Sido- 
 nians. The town seen across the harbor is entirely modern, for the 
 ancient city was again and again destroyed and rebuilt. Here the 
 Phoenician ships were loaded with the goods manufactured in the city 
 (Figs. 157 and 158), to be carried to the Greeks and other Mediterranean 
 peoples; and here an alphabet first came into common use (§400) 
 
 to make hollow bronze casts, an art invented in Egypt, and to 
 manufacture many other things which were bringing such 
 commercial success to the Phoenician merchants. Nevertheless, 
 so litde of the refined ^gean art of the Grand Age had sur- 
 vived that there are products of the Greeks in this period that 
 are hardly as good as the work of the Middle Stone Age 
 (compare the horses in Figs. 155 and 10, 6), 
 
2/0 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 400. The 
 Phoenicians 
 devise an 
 alphabet 
 (about 
 1000 B.C.) 
 
 401. The 
 
 Phoenicians 
 arrange their 
 new letters in 
 a fixed order 
 and give 
 them names 
 
 Section 40. The Phcenicians bring the First 
 Alphabet to Europe 
 
 But styles of dress, decorative art, and the practical methods 
 of the craftsman were not the only things which the Phoenician 
 merchants were bringing into Greece. For the Greeks now re- 
 ceived from the Phoenicians a priceless gift, far more valuable 
 than all the manufactured wares of the Orient. Indeed it was 
 the most important contribution that ever reached Europe from 
 abroad. This new gift was an alphabet. By 1000 B.C. the 
 Phoenicians had long since given up the inconvenient clay tablet 
 of Babylonia (Fig. 79). Indeed a century before this date they 
 were already importing great quantities of papyrus paper from 
 Egypt. Then they devised their own system of twenty-two signs 
 (Fig. 160, column I) for writing their own language. It con- 
 tained no signs for syllables, but each sign represented a single 
 consonant. There were no signs for the vowels, which therefore 
 remained unwritten. The Phoenicians were thus the first people 
 to devise a system of writing containing nothing but alpha- 
 betic signs ; that is, true letters. This great achievement of the 
 Phoenicians was largely due to Egyptian influences. 
 
 The Phoenicians arranged their new letters in a convenient 
 order, so that the whole twenty-two might form a fixed list 
 (Fig. 160, column I), easily learned. Such a list could not be 
 learned without giving to each letter a name. They called the 
 first letter of the alphabet ox, because the Phoenician word for 
 ox, that is, aleph, began with the first letter. The second letter 
 of the alphabet they called house, because beth, the Phoenician 
 word for house, began with the second letter, and so on. This 
 was not unlike our old primers, where our parents learned to 
 say : "^ is for ' Axe ' ; ^ is for ' Bed,' " etc. When the chil- 
 dren of the Phoenician merchants learned their letters, and 
 were called upon to repeat the alphabet, they therefore began : 
 "•^ Aleph, beth^^ etc., as if our children were to say: "Axe, Bed," 
 etc., instead of " A, B," etc. 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 271 
 
 The Phoenicians seem to have had little literature, but their 402. Phoe- 
 merchants kept all their business records in this new and con- beTfirst's^l^n 
 venient writing on papyrus. Just as the Arameans carried the ^^ Greeks 
 Phoenician alphabet from the Mediterranean eastward through 
 Asia to India (§ 205), so now the Phoenicians themselves carried 
 it through the Mediterranean westward to Europe. The Greeks 
 whom we have seen crowding around the Phoenician ships often 
 found the Phoenicians handling bits of pale-yellow paper, on 
 which were written bills and lists of merchandise in strange 
 black signs. These the Greeks at first viewed with misgivings, 
 as mysterious and dangerous symbols. One of their ancient 
 songs of this age speaks of them as " baneful signs." Here 
 and there a Greek merchant, thumbing the Phoenician trades- 
 man's papyrus bills, finally learned the alphabet in which they 
 were written, and slowly began to note down Greek words 
 spelled with Phoenician letters. 
 
 Here the Greeks early displayed the mental superiority 403. Greeks 
 which, as we shall soon discover, they possessed. They noticed pe?fect"phoe- 
 that there were no Phoenician letters standing: for vowels. u'"t'^ ^W-^" 
 
 ^ bet by adding 
 
 They also noticed in the Phoenician alphabet a few letters vowels (about 
 
 900 B.C.) 
 
 representing consonants which did not exist in Greek speech. 
 These letters they began to use for the Greek vowels (Fig. 160; 
 of. columns I and H). They thus took the final step in the 
 process of devising a complete system of alphabetic writing. 
 It slowly spread among the Greek states, beginning in Ionia. 
 For a long time it remained only a convenience in business and 
 administration. For centuries the nobles, unable to read or write, 
 continued to regard writing with misgivings. But even the 
 painters of pottery jars had learned to use it by 700 b. c, when 
 we find it on their decorated vases (see headpiece, p. 282). 
 Shortly after this it was common among all classes. Literature 
 nevertheless long remained an oral matter and was much 
 slower than business to resort to writing. 
 
 The Greek children, in learning to read, used for the letters 
 the same names which had been employed in Phoenicia. The 
 
2/2 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 404. Phoe- 
 nician origin 
 of the alpha- 
 bets of the 
 civilized 
 world 
 
 Greeks, not knowing what these strange names meant, altered 
 them somewhat; but the Greek children began to pronounce 
 
 the foreign names 
 of the letters in the 
 fixed order already 
 settled in Phoenicia, 
 saying " Alpha, beta," 
 etc. (instead of 
 ''Aleph, beth,"etc.) 
 (§ 401). As a child 
 of to-day is said 
 to be learning his 
 A B C's, so the 
 Greek child learned 
 his Alpha Beta's, 
 and thus arose our 
 word " alphabet." 
 The word "alpha- 
 bet," therefore, should 
 remind us of the 
 great debt we owe 
 to the Orient, and 
 especially to the 
 Phoenicians, for the ■ 
 priceless gift of 
 alphabetic writing. I 
 For the Phcenician J 
 alphabet spread frorr ! 
 Greece to Italy anc . 
 at last throughou! ; 
 Europe. Indeed 
 every alphabet of th( 
 civilized world ha; 
 descended from th( 
 Phoenician alphabet 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 V 
 
 % 
 
 < 
 
 S 
 
 e 
 
 s 
 Pi 
 
 m 
 
 oil 
 
 < 
 
 X 
 
 
 z 
 
 w 
 
 K 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 5 
 
 S ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 B 
 
 B 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 r 
 
 CG 
 
 C.G 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 D 
 
 D 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 E 
 
 E 
 
 Y 
 
 S 
 
 K 
 
 FV 
 
 F.V.U 
 
 s 
 
 I 
 
 X 
 
 
 Z 
 
 H 
 
 B 
 
 B 
 
 H 
 
 E.H 
 
 © 
 
 ® 
 
 ® 
 
 ... 
 
 TH.PH 
 
 =1 
 
 i 
 
 $ 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 H 
 
 K 
 
 ... 
 
 K.KH 
 
 c 
 
 vm 
 
 U/^ 
 
 L 
 
 L 
 
 "? 
 
 w. 
 
 r 
 
 M 
 
 M 
 
 1 
 
 M 
 
 H 
 
 N 
 
 N 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 p 
 
 P 
 
 p 
 
 ^ 
 
 y 
 
 M 
 
 
 s 
 
 9 
 
 <P 
 
 9 
 
 Q 
 
 Q 
 
 1 
 
 <1 
 
 P 
 
 R 
 
 R 
 
 w 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 S 
 
 S 
 
 y 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
 Fig. 160. Table showing how the 
 
 Phcenician Letters passed through 
 
 Greek and Latin Forms to reach 
 
 their Present English Forms* 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 273 
 
 Along with the alphabet, the equipment for using it — that is, 405. Oriental 
 pen, ink, and paper — for the first time came into Europe. Paper ^he^words 
 also brought in with it its oriental names. For the Greeks )|^^Pf^,"^"^ 
 received from abroad the word papyros, designating the Egyp- 
 tian paper on which they wrote, and we remember that this 
 word has in its English form become ^' paper " (see § 58). 
 Much of the papyrus used by the Greeks was delivered to them 
 by Phoenician m.erchants from Byblos, a famous Phoenician city. 
 Just as we apply the word " china " to a kind of table ware 
 which first, came to us from China, so the Greeks often called 
 papyrus byblos after the Phoenician city from which it came. 
 Thus when they began to write books on rolls of such paper 
 (Fig. 191) they called them biblia. It is from this term that 
 we received our word " Bible " (literally '' book " or " books "). 
 Hence the English word " Bible," once the name of a Phoenician 
 city, is another living evidence of the origin of books and the 
 paper of which they are made in the ancient Orient, from which 
 the Greeks received so much. 
 
 Section 41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs 
 
 The Greek nobles of this age loved war and were devoted 406. The 
 
 to fighting and plundering. It was a frequent sight to see the of^hTcreek 
 
 Greek warrior waving farewell to his family before the pillared J^^^j^^^ "f 
 
 porch of his home, as he mounted the waiting chariot and rode the Kings 
 forth to battle. The vase-painters have often left us pictures 
 
 * Column I contains the Phoenician alphabet made up exclusively of 
 consonants (§ 400). The Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and 
 hence the Greeks at first wrote in the same direction. The names of 
 the warriors in the vase-painting (headpiece, p. 263) are several of them 
 written in this way; hence column II shows letters like B "backward," 
 as we say. The Greeks then gradually changed and wrote from left to 
 right, and the next column (III) shows the letters facing as they do in 
 our present alphabet (see B in column III). The transition from these 
 later forms of the Greek letters (column III) to the Latin forms (col- 
 umn IV) was very easy, and the Latin forms hardly differed from those 
 which we still use (column V). 
 
2/4 Ancient Times 
 
 of such warriors (headpiece, p. 263). While their protective 
 armor was of bronze, their weapons were at this time com- 
 monly of iron, although bronze weapons still lingered on, and 
 in their tales of the great wars of the past the Greeks still told 
 how the heroes of older days fought with bronze weapons. 
 
 407. Battle It was only men of some wealth who possessed a fighting 
 toms of war Outfit like this. They were the leading warriors. The ordinary 
 of the Kmgs troops, lacking armor, were of little consequence in battle, 
 
 which consisted of a series of single combats, each between 
 two heroes. Their individual skill, experience, and daring won 
 the battle, rather than the discipline 'of drilled masses. The 
 victor seized his fallen adversary's armor and weapons; and 
 having fastened the naked body of the vanquished to his 
 chariot, he dragged it triumphantly across the field, only to 
 expose it to be devoured by birds of prey and wild animals. 
 There was thus many a savage struggle to rescue the body of 
 a fallen hero (headpiece, p. 263). When a Greek town was 
 captured, its unhappy people were slaughtered or carried away 
 as slaves, and its houses plundered and burned. There was 
 savage joy in such treatment of the vanquished, and such deeds 
 were thought to increase the fame and glory of the victors. 
 
 408. Rise of Men delighted to sing of valiant achievements on the field of 
 songs batde and to tell of the stirring deeds of mighty heroes. In the 
 
 pastures of Thessaly, where the singer looked up at the cloud- 
 veiled summit of Mount Olympus (Fig. 153), the home of the 
 gods, there early grew up a group of such songs telling many 
 a story of the feats of gods and heroes, the earliest literature 
 of the Greeks. Into these songs were woven also vague memo- 
 ries of remote wars which had actually occurred, especially the 
 war in which the Greeks had captured and destroyed the splen- 
 did city of Troy (§ 375 and Fig. 151). Probably by 1000 B.C. 
 some of these songs had crossed to the coasts and islands of 
 Ionia on the Asiatic side of the ^Egean Sea. 
 
 Here arose a class of professional bards who graced the 
 feasts of king and noble with songs of battle and adventure 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of tJie Kings 275 
 
 recited to the music of the harp. Framed in exalted and 
 ancient forms of speech, and rolling on in stately measures,^ 
 these heroic songs resounded through many a royal hall — the 
 oldest literature born in Europe. After the separate songs had 
 greatly increased in number, they were finally woven together 
 by the bards into a con- 
 nected whole — a great epic 
 cycle especially clustering 
 about the traditions of the 
 Greek expedition against 
 Troy. They were not the 
 work of one man, but a 
 growth of several centuries 
 by generations of singers, 
 some of whom were still 
 living even after 700 B.C. 
 It was then that they were 
 first written down. 
 
 Among these ancient sing- 
 ers there seems to have 
 been one of great fame 
 whose name was Homer 
 (Fig. 161). His reputation 
 was such that the composi- 
 tion of the whole cycle of 
 songs, then much larger than 
 the remnant which has come 
 down to us, was attributed 
 to him. Then as the Greeks 
 
 409. The 
 
 Ionian 
 
 singers 
 
 410. Homer 
 
 Fig. 161 
 
 An Ideal Portrait of 
 Homer 
 
 This head, from the Boston Museum 
 of Fine Arts, is a noble example of 
 the later Greek sculptor's ability to 
 create an ideal portrait of a poet 
 whom he had never seen. Such work 
 was unknown in the archaic days of 
 Greece; it was produced in the 
 Hellenistic Age 
 
 themselves later discerned the impossibility of Homer's author- 
 ship of them <?//, they credited him only with the Iliad, ^ the 
 story of the Greek expedition against Troy ; and the Odyssey, 
 
 1 These were in hexameter ; that is, six feet to a hne. This Greek verse is the 
 oldest Uterary form in Europe. 
 
 2 So named after IHum, the Greek name of Troy. 
 
2/6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 411. The 
 Homeric 
 songs our 
 earliest liter- 
 ary record of 
 the Greeks 
 
 or the tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus on his 
 return from Troy. These are the only two series of songs that 
 have entirely survived, and even the ancient world had its 
 doubts about the Homeric authorship of the Odyssey. 
 
 These ancient bards not only gave the world its greatest epic 
 in the Iliad, but they were, moreover, the earliest Greeks to put 
 into permanent literary form their thoughts regarding the world 
 of gods and men. " At that time the Greeks had no other sacred 
 books, and the Homeric songs became the veritable Bible of 
 Greece. They gave to the disunited Greeks a common litera- 
 ture and the inspiring belief that they had once all taken part 
 in a common war against Asia. 
 
 412. The 
 Homeric 
 songs and 
 Greek re- 
 ligion 
 
 413. Primi- 
 tive Greek 
 religion 
 before the 
 Homeric 
 songs 
 
 Section 42. The Beginnings and Early 
 Development of Greek Religion 
 
 Just as devout Hebrews were taught much about their God 
 by the beautiful tales of Him in the narrative of the great 
 Unknown Historian (§302), so the wonderful Homeric songs 
 brought vividly before the Greeks the life of the gods. Homer 
 became the religious teacher of the Greeks. To us too he reveals 
 a great chapter in the story of Greek religion. For like that of 
 the Hebrews, the religion of the Greeks was a slow growth, 
 passing gradually from a low stage to ever higher and nobler 
 beliefs. There was, therefore, a chapter of Greek religion 
 earlier than the Homeric songs. Let us look for a moment at 
 the religion of Greece before the Homeric songs. 
 
 Every Greek, like all primitive men, once thought that the 
 trees and springs, the stones and hilltops, the birds and beasts, 
 were creatures possessed of strange and uncanny powers. He 
 thought there was such a spirit in the dark recesses of the 
 earth which made the grain sprout and the trees flourish ; in 
 the gloomy depths of the waters also, he believed there dwelt a 
 like spirit which swayed the great sea ; while still another ruled 
 the far sweep of the overhanging sky. As the Greek peasant, 
 
u 
 
 ^ (U 
 
 ? a. 
 i=J2 o 
 
 o .^ 
 
 w O 
 
 o -o 
 ^ d 
 
 O -CI " 
 
 •^ ^ ?d 
 
 C« !U fl 
 
 p >- s 
 
 ^ .2 c 
 
 c -£ >^ 
 ^ <u;- 
 
 rt rt <+^ 
 
 C " ° 
 
 3 Oj W 
 
 o o .Si 
 
 C (u 2 
 
 rt £i i^ 
 
 6 § u 
 
 "^ 3 c 
 a. >^^ 
 
 5 o 
 
 :^ s-^ 
 
 7^ 
 
 ^ o 
 
 -^ O 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 277 
 
 terrified by the jagged lightning and the rolling thunder, or 
 grateful for the gently falling rain, looked up into the misty 
 cloudland of the sky, he often saw the solitary eagle soaring 
 across the vast and lonely expanse. To him the lofty, mysteri- 
 ous bird seemed to be the mighty spirit of the sky, who dwelt 
 there and in his wrath smote the great trees with fire, or in 
 kinder moods sent down the refreshing rain. Thus to some 
 Greeks the sky spirit seemed to be an eagle. 
 
 Each such spirit, friendly or hostile, dwelt in a limited region, 414. The rise 
 and it was believed possible to gain his favor or avoid his anger andTits^cS- 
 by simple gifts, especially food. The earth spirit might be ^°"™^ 
 reached by slaying a sheep and letting the blood flow into the 
 earth; while the sky spirit would be won by burning a thigh 
 of the sheep so that its odor might rise to the sky with the 
 soaring smoke. Thus these spirits of the world around the 
 early Greeks became gods and goddesses, and thus arose 
 worship with its sacred customs and usages. There were no 
 temples or houses of worship, and all the simple usages of 
 religion went on out of doors in a grove or in the open air 
 in the court of the house. 
 
 We remember that the Hebrews never lost their belief in 415. The 
 
 their great God Yahveh, whom they brought with them into zeustheSky- 
 
 the land of Palestine: and so the Greeks likewise brought g^d into the 
 
 ^ /b>gean worla 
 
 into Greece various ideas of the great Sky-god whom they 
 had already worshiped in the old days on the grasslands. He. 
 had different names ; in one valley they called him " Rain- 
 giver," in another ''Thunderbolt" (§ 413). But he was finally 
 known to all as Zeus, which was simply the Greek form of 
 an old word for "sky" in the language of the Indo-European 
 parent people. He became the highest god among all the 
 numerous gods and goddesses revered by the Greeks. 
 
 But Greek religion continued to grow after the Greeks had 416. Divini- 
 
 tiPS oi" the 
 
 reached the ^gean world. Here they found the ^Egeans wor- ^gean world 
 shiping the great earth spirit, the Earth-Mother, or the Great ^^^^^^^ 
 Mother, who made the earth bring forth her grain and fruit 
 
2/8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 417. The 
 
 gods gain 
 human form ; 
 surviving 
 traces of old 
 animal forms 
 
 418. Zeus 
 and the dwell- 
 ing of the 
 gods on 
 Mount 
 Olympus ; 
 Apollo 
 
 as the food of man (headpiece, p. 221). From the ^Egeans the 
 Greeks learned to revere her also, so that she became one of the 
 great goddesses of Greek religion. The Greeks thus accepted 
 the gods and goddesses whom they found in the ^gean world, 
 just as many of the Hebrews accepted the Canaanite Baals 
 which they found already in Palestine (§ 300). 
 
 The Homeric songs, as we have said, reveal to us a second 
 chapter in Greek religion, when the Greeks were gaining higher 
 ideas about their gods. To be sure, even Homer has here and 
 there an ancient reference which betrays their earlier animal 
 forms, as when he speaks of a goddess as " owl-faced " or 
 even '' cow-faced." Likewise the Satyrs, merry spirits of the 
 forest, always had goat's hoofs and horns ; while the Centaurs 
 were men with the bodies of horses. But those nature spirits, 
 which gained a high place as gods and goddesses, appeared in 
 the Homeric songs as entirely human in form and in qualities. 
 Of course they possessed more power than mortals, and at the 
 same time they enjoyed the gift of immortality. 
 
 In the Homeric songs and in the primitive tales about the 
 gods, which we call myths, the Greeks heard how the gods 
 dwelt in veiled splendor among the clouds on the summit of 
 Mount Olympus. There, in his cloud palace, Zeus the. Sky-god, 
 with the lightning in his hand, ruled the gods like an earthly 
 king. Each of the gods controlled as his own a realm of nature 
 or of the affairs of men. Apollo, the Sun-god, whose beams 
 were golden arrows, was the deadly archer of the gods. But 
 he also shielded the flocks of the shepherds and the fields of 
 the plowman, and he was a wondrous musician. Above all he 
 knew the future ordained by Zeus and could, when properly 
 consulted, tell anxious inquirers what the future had in store 
 for them. These qualities gave him a larger place in the hearts 
 of all Greeks than Zeus himself, and in actual worship he 
 became the most beloved god of the Greek world. 
 
 Athena, the greatest goddess of the Greeks, seems in the 
 beginning to have ruled the air, and swayed the destroying 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 279 
 
 tempests that swept the Greek lands. Such power made her 419. Athena, 
 
 a warrior goddess, and the Greeks loved to think of her with of^Greek^^ 
 
 shining weapons, protecting the Greek cities. But she held out ^^"^^^^ 
 
 her protecting hand over them also in times of peace, as the 
 
 potters shaped their jars, the smiths wrought their metal, or 
 
 the women wove their wool. Athena too had brought them 
 
 the olive tree, as they believed, and thus she became the wise 
 
 and gracious protectress of the peaceful life of industry and 
 
 art. Of all her divine companions she was the wisest in 
 
 counsel, and an ancient tale told how she had been born in 
 
 the very brain of her father Zeus, from whose head she sprang 
 
 forth full-armed. As the divine foster mother of all that was 
 
 best in Greek life, she was the loveliest of the protecting 
 
 powers which the quick and sensitive imagination of the 
 
 Greeks felt everywhere watching over the life and work of 
 
 men. These three then, Zeus, Apollo, and' Athena, became 
 
 the leading divinities of the Greek world. 
 
 At the same time a further group of ancient nature spirits 420. Posei- 
 
 , , . , , , „. . , don.Demeter. 
 
 had risen to be great gods, each controllmg some special Dionysus, 
 realm. In a brazen palace deep under the waters, Poseidon Artemis' 
 ruled the sea. The ancient Earth-Mother, whom they called Hera, and 
 
 Aphrodite 
 
 Demeter,. still brought forth the produce of the soil. At the 
 same time they looked also to another earth god, Dionysus, for 
 the fruit of the grapevine, and they rejoiced in the wine which 
 he gave them. An old moon spirit had now become Hermes 
 the messenger of the gods, with winged feet, doing the bidding 
 of the gods, but he was also the patron of the intercourse of 
 men, and hence the god of trade and commerce. Some of the 
 Greeks, however, in the old days, seeing the moon above the 
 forest margin, had believed it to be a goddess, a divine huntress 
 riding through the forests at night. They called her Artemis. 
 Others, however, had fancied the moon to belong in the sky as 
 the wife of Zeus, whom they called Hera, and she became the 
 protectress of marriage. The Semitic goddess of love, whom 
 we have met on the Fertile Crescent as Ishtar (§ 191), had 
 
2«0 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 421. The 
 Greek gods 
 at first show 
 human de- 
 fects of 
 character 
 
 422. Greek 
 beliefs about 
 the dead 
 
 now passed over from the Syrian cities by way of Cyprus, 
 to become likewise the Greek goddess of love, whom the 
 Greeks called Aphrodite. 
 
 All these divinities and some others less important, the 
 Greeks now pictured in human form. It was but natural, too, 
 that they should be thought of as possessing human traits. 
 Homer pictures to us the family quarrels between the august 
 Zeus and his wife Hera, just as such things must have occurred 
 in the household life of the Greeks, and certainly in a manner 
 absurdly undignified for such exalted divinities. The Greeks 
 thought of the gods therefore as showing decidedly human 
 defects of character. They practiced all sorts of deceit and 
 displayed many other human frailties. Such gods were not 
 likely to require anything better in the character of men. 
 Religion was therefore not yet an influence leading to good 
 conduct and right character. In this particular, then, the 
 Greeks were passing through an early stage of an uncom- 
 pleted development, just such as we have found in the civili- 
 zations of the Orient. 
 
 One reason why the Greeks did not yet think that the gods 
 required right conduct of men was their notion of life after 
 death. They believed that all men passed at death into a 
 gloomy kingdom beneath the earth (Hades), where the fate of 
 good men did not differ from that of the wicked. Here ruled 
 Pluto as king, and his wife, the goddess Persephone. As a 
 special favor of the gods, the heroes, men of mighty and god- 
 like deeds, were endowed with immortality and permitted to 
 enjoy a life of endless bliss in the beautiful Elysian Fields, or 
 the Islands of the Blest, somewhere in the Far West, toward 
 the unexplored ocean. The Greeks seem to have brought with 
 them from their earlier wanderings the custom of burning their 
 dead. They continued this custom on reaching Greece, but 
 they adopted also the ^gean usage of preserving the body as 
 in Egypt and burying it. The primitive notion that the dead 
 must be furnished with food and drink still survived. The 
 
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 281 
 
 tombs of the ancestors thus became sacred places where gifts of 
 food and drink were regularly brought and offered to the dead. 
 
 Every household in the little Greek towns felt that the safety 423. Lack of 
 of the house was in the hands of Hestia, the goddess of the o^^riest's 
 hearth. But in the Age of the Kings the symbols of the great 
 gods were set up in every house, while in the dwelling of the 
 king there was a special room which served as a kind of shrine 
 for them. There was also an altar in the forecourt where sacri- 
 fices could be offered under the open sky (Fig. 144). In so far 
 as the gods had any dwellings at all, we see that they were in 
 the houses of men, and there probably were no temples as yet. 
 Here and there in some communities men were to be found 
 who were thought to possess rare knowledge of the desires of 
 the gods. As these men were more and more often consulted 
 by those who felt ignorant of the proper ceremonies of sacri- 
 fice and worship, such men gradually became priests. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 39. What important metal came in at the rise of Greek 
 civilization? What had happened to the arts and crafts of the 
 ^geans? Did the Greeks possess any craftsmen.'* What do you 
 think of the horses on the Greek vase of the Age of the Kings? 
 Compare it with Middle Stone Age carving? From whom did the 
 Greeks chiefly buy manufactured products? What can you tell 
 about this commerce? What did it teach the Greeks? 
 
 Section 40. What else did the Phoenicians bring in besides 
 manufactured goods? Tell about the Phoenician alphabet. How did 
 it reach Greece ? What is the origin of the word " alphabet " ? 
 How far has the Phoenician alphabet spread? 
 
 Section 41. Describe early Greek arms and warfare. What was 
 the relation of valiant deeds and song ? Around what event did such 
 songs cluster? Tell of Homer and the poems attributed to him. 
 
 Section 42. How did the Homeric songs affect religion ? What 
 can you say of Greek religion before the Homeric songs arose? 
 Did the Greeks bring in some gods when they entered Greece? 
 Name the leading Greek divinities, and tell something of each. 
 Discuss Greek beliefs about the dead ; customs and places of worship. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE AGE OF THE NOBLES AND GREEK EXPANSION IN 
 THE MEDITERRANEAN 
 
 Section 43. The Disappearance of the Kings 
 AND THE Leadership of the Nobles 
 
 We have seen Greek civilization beginning under oriental 
 influences. In its political development, however, the Greek 
 
 424. Geo- 
 graphical 
 influences 
 
 against a world showed striking differences from what we have seen 
 
 union 01 all *^ 
 
 Greeks in 
 one nation 
 
 in the Orient. There we watched the early city-states finally 
 
 Note. The headpiece above is of an early Greek sea fight in the days of the 
 kings. This Greek vase-painting shows us the Greek nobles in the days when 
 they were taking to the water as pirates (§ 431). The warriors are armed as on 
 land (see headpiece, p. 263). As to the model of the ships, see Fig. 162. Aris- 
 tonothos, the artist who made this vase-painting, has inserted his name over the 
 standard at the right, in the lower row, where the letters run to the right and drop 
 down. It reads " Aristonothos made it." This is not only the earliest-signed vase, 
 but is likewise the earliest-signed work of art, crude though it may be, in Europe. 
 It shows us that the Greek artist was gaining increasing pride in his work, and 
 it is one of the earliest signs of individuality in Greek history about 700 b. c. 
 
 282 
 
The Age of the Nobles 283 
 
 uniting into two large and powerful nations, one on the Nile 
 and another on the Two Rivers. In Greece, however, there 
 were influences which tended to prevent such a union of the 
 Greeks into one nation. In the first place the country was cut 
 up by mountain ridges and deep bays, so that the different 
 communities were quite separated. The cities of Greece were 
 likewise separated from their kindred in the islands and in 
 Asia Minor. 
 
 P^urthermore, no recollection of their former unity on the 425. Other 
 grasslands survived, even in their oldest traditions. They had operating 
 now lived so long in separated communities that they had ^frm^?t ^°^'*^ 
 developed permanent local habits and local dialects, as differ- 
 ent as those of North and South Germany or even more 
 different than those between our own Louisiana and New 
 England. The various Greek communities thus displayed such 
 intense devotion to their own town and their own local gods 
 that a union of all the Greek city-states into one nation, such 
 as we have seen in the Orient, failed to take place. As a result 
 of these separative influences we find in Greece after 1000 B.C. 
 scores of little city-states such as we have already described 
 (§ 390). Not only did the islands and the Greek city-states 
 of Asia Minor fail to unite, but on the island of Crete alone 
 there were more than fifty such small city-states. 
 
 Four regions on the mainland of Greece, each forming a 426. The 
 pretty clearly outlined geographical whole, like the peninsula Argosand 
 of Laconia or that of Attica (see map, p. 264), permitted the Sparta 
 union of city-states into a larger nation. The oldest of these 
 four nations seems to have been Argos (map, p. 264). In this 
 plain the town of Argos subdued the ancient strongholds of 
 Mycenae and Tiryns (Figs. 144 and 145) and others in the vicin- 
 ity, forming the nation of Argos and giving its name to the plain 
 (Plate III, p. 276). In the same way the kings of Sparta con- 
 quered the two peninsulas on the south of them and finally also 
 the land of the Messehians on the west. The two kingdoms of 
 Argos and Sparta thus held a large part of the Peloponnese. 
 
284 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 427. Athens 
 and Thebes 
 
 428. Internal 
 development 
 of the Greek 
 state con- 
 trasted with 
 the Orient 
 
 429. The 
 
 Greek state 
 and the 
 struggle 
 toward 
 democracy 
 
 430. Rise 
 of a noble 
 class, the 
 eupatrids 
 
 In the Attic peninsula, likewise, the little city-kingdoms were 
 slowly absorbed by Athens, which at last gained control of the 
 entire peninsula. On the northern borders of Attica the region 
 of Boeotia fell under the leadership of Thebes, but the other 
 Boeotian cities were too strong to be wholly subdued. Boeotia, 
 therefore, did not form a nation but a group of city-states in 
 alliance, with Thebes at the head of the. alliance. Elsewhere 
 no large and permanent unions were formed. Sparta and 
 Athens, therefore, led the most important two unions among 
 all the Greeks. Let it be borne in mind that such a nation 
 remained a city-state in spite of its increased territory. The 
 nation occupying the Attic peninsula was called Athens, and 
 every peasant in Attica was called an Athenian. The city 
 government of Athens covered the whole Attic peninsula. 
 
 In the matter of governing such a little city-state the Greeks 
 about 750 B.C. entered upon a new stage of their development, 
 which was again very different from that which we have found 
 in the Orient. However discontented the common people of 
 an oriental state might become, their discontent never accom- 
 plished more than the overthrow of one king and the enthrone- 
 ment of another. The office of king was never abolished, nor 
 did any other form of government than that of monarchy ever 
 arise in the ancient East (§ 322). 
 
 Among the Greeks, too, the common people struggled for 
 centuries to better their lot. As we shall see, this long and 
 bitter struggle finally resulted in giving the people in some 
 Greek states so large a share in governing that the form of 
 the government might be called democracy. This is a word 
 of Greek origin, meaning " the rule of the people," and the 
 Greeks were the first people of the ancient world to gain it. 
 
 The cause of this struggle was not only the corrupt rule 
 of the kings but also the oppression of the nobles. We have 
 watched these men of wealth buying the luxuries of the 
 Phoenician merchants. They now stood in the way, opposing 
 the rights of the peasants. By fraud, unjust seizure of lands, 
 
The Age of the Nobles 285 
 
 union of families in marriage, and many other influences, the 
 strong men of ability and cleverness were able to enlarge their 
 lands. Thus there had arisen a class of hereditary nobles — 
 large landholders and men of wealth, called eupatrids. 
 
 Their fields stretched for some miles around the city and 431. Politi- 
 
 . 1 , . .„ X 1 1 11- ^'^ 3nd mili- 
 
 its neighbonng villages. In order to be near the kmg or tary power of 
 secure membership in the Council (§ 385) and control the ^ ^eupatn s 
 government, these men often left their lands and lived in the 
 city. Such was the power of the eupatrids that the Council 
 finally consisted only of men of this class. Wealthy enough 
 to buy costly weapons, with leisure for continual exercise in 
 the use of arms, these nobles had also become the chief pro- 
 tection of the State in time of war (§ 407). They were also 
 continual marauders on their own account. As they grew 
 more and more accustomed to the sea (headpiece, p. 282), they 
 coasted from harbor to harbor, plundering and burning, and 
 returned home laden with rich spoil. Piracy at last became the 
 common calling of the nobles, and a great source of wealth. 
 
 Thus grew up a sharp distinction between the city com- 432. Misery 
 munity and the peasants living in the country. The country ness of the 
 peasant was obliged to divide the family lands with his brothers. P^^^ants 
 His fields were therefore small, and he was poor. He went 
 about clad in a goatskin, and his labors never ceased. Hence 
 he had no leisure to learn the use of arms, nor any way to 
 meet the expense of purchasing them. He and his neighbors 
 were therefore of small account in war (§ 407). Indeed, he 
 was fortunate if he could struggle on and maintain himself 
 and family from his scanty fields. Many of his neighbors sank 
 into debt, lost their lands to the noble class, and themselves 
 became day laborers for more fortunate men, or, still worse, 
 sold themselves to discharge their debts and thus became 
 slaves. These day laborers and slaves had no political rights 
 and were not permitted to vote in the Assembly. 
 
 If the peasant desired to exert any influence in government, 
 he was obliged to go up to the city and attend the Assembly 
 
286 Ancient Times 
 
 433. The of the people there. When he did so, he found but few of 
 3!ie Assembly ^is fellows from the countryside gathered there — a dingy 
 
 group, clad in their rough goatskins. The powerful Council 
 in beautiful oriental raiment (§§ 394 and 395) was backed by the 
 whole class of wealthy nobles, all trained in war and splendid 
 in their glittering weapons. Intimidated by the powerful nobles, 
 the meager Assembly, which had once been a muster of all the 
 weapon-bearing men of the tribe, became a feeble gathering of 
 a few peasants and lesser townsmen, who could gain no greater 
 recognition of their old-time rights than the poor privilege of 
 voting to concur in the actions already decided upon by the 
 king and the Council. The peasant returned to his little farm 
 and was less and less inclined to attend the Assembly at all. 
 
 434. The It was, however, not alone the people whose rights the 
 drsappea" noblcs were disregarding ; for they also began to consider them- 
 ance of the selvcs the equals of the king, whose chief support in war they 
 650 B.C.) were. The king could not carry on a war without them or 
 
 control the state without their help. By 750 B.C. the office 
 of the king was in some states nothing more than a name. 
 While the king was in some cases violently overthrown, in 
 most states the nobles established from among themselves cer- 
 tain elective officers to take charge of matters formerly con- 
 trolled by the king..- Thus in Athens they appointed a noble to 
 be leader in war, while another noble was chosen as " archon," 
 or ruler, to assist the king in attending to the increasing busi- 
 ness of the State. Thus the Athenian king was gradually but 
 peacefully deprived of his powers, until he became nothing 
 more than the leader of the people in religious matters. In 
 Sparta the power of the king was checked by the appointment 
 of a second king, and on this plan Sparta continued to retain 
 her kings. Elsewhere in the century, between 750 and 650 B.C., 
 the kingship quite generally disappeared, although it lingered 
 on in some states until long after this time. The result of the 
 political and social struggle was thus the triumph of the nobles, 
 who were henceforth in control in many states. 
 
The Age of the Nobles 287 
 
 With the disappearance of the king, the royal castle (Fig. 1 44) 435. Survival 
 was of course vacated. As it fell into decay, the shrines and hi the old "^ 
 holy places which it contained (§ 423) were still protected and P^^^es 
 revered as religious buildings, and, as we shall see in discussing 
 architecture, they became temples. In this way the castle of the 
 ancient Attic kings on the citadel mount, called the Acropolis 
 of Athens (Figs. 182 and 183), was followed by the famous 
 temples there. 
 
 Section 44. Greek Expansion in the Age of 
 THE Nobles 
 
 The Age of the Nobles witnessed another great change in 436. Begin- 
 Greek life. Sea-roving and piracy, as we have seen (§ 43 1), were merce^ancT"^' 
 common amonpf the nobles. At length, as the Greek merchants shipbuilding 
 
 ^ *=> ' among the 
 
 gradually took up sea trade, the demand for ships led the Greek Greeks 
 mechanics to undertake shipbuilding. They built their new craft 
 on Phoenician models (see Fig. 1 62, y^ and B), the only ones with 
 which they were acquainted. When the Phoenician merchants 
 entered the ^gean harbors they now found them more and 
 more occupied by Greek ships. Especially important was the 
 traffic between the Greek cities of the xA.siatic coast on the east 
 and Attica and Euboea on the European side. Among the 
 Asiatic Greeks it was the Ionian cities which led in this com- 
 merce. The ^Fvgean waters gradually grew familiar to the 
 Greek communities, until the sea routes became far easier lines 
 of communication than roads through the same number of 
 miles of forest and mountains (§ 330). 
 
 The oppressive rule of the nobles, and the resulting impover- 437. Greek 
 ishment of the peasants, was an important influence, leading the Black Sea 
 the Greek farmers to seek new homes and new lands beyond 
 the vEgean world. Greek merchants were not only trafficking 
 with the northern vEgean, but their vessels had penetrated the 
 great northern sea, which they called the " Pontus," known to 
 us as the Black Sea (see map, p. 288). Their trading stations 
 
288 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 438. Greek 
 colonies in 
 the East — 
 southern Asia 
 Minor and 
 Cyprus 
 
 among the descendants of the Stone Age peoples in these 
 distant regions offered to the discontented farmers of Greece 
 plenty of land with which to begin life over again. Before 
 600 B. c. they girdled the Black Sea with their towns and settle- 
 ments, reaching the broad grainfields along the lower Danube, 
 and the iron mines of the old Hittite country on the south- 
 eastern coast of the Black Sea (§ 360). But no such de- 
 velopment of Greek genius took place in this harsher climate 
 
 A B 
 
 Fig. 162. An Early Greek Ship and the Phcenician Ship 
 after which it was modeled 
 
 The earliest ships in the Mediterranean, those of Egypt, were turned 
 up at both ends (Fig. 41), and the early ^gean ships were copies of 
 this Egyptian model (Fig. 154). The Phoenicians, however, introduced 
 a change in the model, by giving their ships at the bow a sharp project- 
 ing beak below water. Such a Phoenician ship used by the Assyrian 
 king Sennacherib is shown here in a drawing from one of his palace 
 reliefs {B). The Greeks did not adopt the old ^gean form, turned up 
 at both ends, but took up the Phoenician form with beaked prow, as 
 shown in the vase-paintings, from which the above drawing of an 
 eighth-century Greek ship [A] has been restored 
 
 of the North as we shall find in the ^gean. Not a single great 
 artist or v/riter ever came from the North. Although the Pontus 
 became the granary of Greece, it never contributed anything 
 to the higher life of the Greeks. 
 
 In the East, along the southern coasts of Asia Minor, Greek 
 expansion was stopped by the Assyrian Sennacherib (§ 214) 
 when he defeated a body of Greeks in Cilicia about 700 B.C., in 
 the eariiest collision between the Hellenes and a great power of 
 the oriental world. The Greek colonies of Cyprus long remained 
 
i 
 
The Age of the Nobles 289 
 
 the easternmost outposts of the Greek world. In the South 
 they found a friendly reception in Egypt, and there in the Nile 
 Delta they were permitted to establish a trading city at Naucratis 
 (Mistress of Ships), the predecessor of Alexandria. West of 
 the Delta also they eventually founded Cyrene (map, p. 288). 
 
 It was the unknown West, however, which became the Amer- 439. Dis- 
 ica of the early Greek colonists. Many a Columbus pushed his the v^est 
 ship into this strange region of mysterious dangers on the dis- 
 tant borders of the world, where the heroes were believed to 
 live in the Islands of the Blest. Looking westward from the 
 western coast of Greece the seamen could discover the shores 
 of the heel of Italy, only fifty miles distant. When they had 
 once crossed to it, they coasted around Sicily and far into the 
 West. Here was a new world. Although the Phoenicians were 
 already there (§ 397), its discovery was as momentous for the 
 Greeks as that of America for later Europe (see map, p. 288). 
 
 By 750 B.C. their colonies appeared in this new Western 440. Greek 
 world, and within a century they fringed southern Italy from the^West— 
 the heel to a point well above the instep north of Naples, so southern 
 that this region of southern Italy came to be known as " Great 
 Greece " (see map, p. 484). Here the Greek colonists looked 
 northward to the hills crowned by the rude settlements which 
 were destined to become Rome. They little dreamed that this in- 
 significant town would yet rule the world, making even the proud 
 cities of their homeland its vassals. As the Greeks were superior 
 in civilization to all the other dwellers in Italy, the civilized history 
 of that great peninsula begins with the advent of the Hellenes. 
 They first brought in such things as writing, literature, archi- 
 tecture, and art (Section 76, Fig. 219, and Plate VII, p. 560). 
 
 The Greek colonists crossed over also to Sicily (Plate VII), 441. Sicily 
 where they drove out the Phoenician trading posts except at p^ar West 
 the western end of the island, where the Phoenicians held their 
 own. These Greek colonists in the West shared in the higher 
 life of the homeland ; and Syracuse, at the southeast corner of 
 the Island of Sicily, became at one time the most cultivated, 
 
290 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 442. Racial 
 aspects of 
 ancient colo- 
 nization in 
 the Medi- 
 terranean 
 
 443. Tend- 
 ency toward 
 creation of 
 a Mediter- 
 ranean world ; 
 what civiliza- 
 tion was to 
 conquer it ? 
 
 as well as the most powerful, city of the Greek world. At 
 Massilia (Marseilles), on the coast of later France, the Western 
 Greeks founded a town which controlled the trade up the 
 Rhone valley ; and they reached over even to the Mediterranean 
 coasts of Spain, attracted by the silver mines of Tartessus. 
 
 Thus, under the rule of the nobles, the Greeks expanded till 
 they stretched from the Black Sea along the north shore of the 
 Mediterranean almost to the Atlantic. In this imposing move- 
 ment we recognize a part of the far outstretched western wing 
 of the Indo-European line (see § 243) ; but at the same time we 
 remember that in the Phoenician Empire of Carthage, the Semite 
 has likewise flung out his western wing along the southern 
 Mediterranean, facing the Indo-European peoples on the 7iorth 
 (Fig. 112 and § 397 ; see map, p. 288). 
 
 This wide expansion of Greeks and Phoenicians (§ 397) 
 tended at last to produce a great Mediterranean world. Was 
 the leading civilization in that Mediterranean world to be Greek, 
 springing from the Greeks and their colonies, or was it to be 
 oriental, carried by the Phoenician galleys and spread by their 
 far-reaching settlements ? That was the great question, and its 
 answer was to depend on how Greek civilization succeeded in 
 its growth and development at home in the ^gean, to which 
 we must now turn. 
 
 Section 45. Greek Civilization in the Age 
 OF the Nobles 
 
 athletic 
 games 
 
 444. influ- We have already noticed the tendencies which kept the 
 
 toward ^uni\y^ Greek States apart and prevented their union as a single 
 nation (§ 425). There were now, on the other hand, influ- 
 ences which tended toward unity. Among such influences were 
 the contests in arms and the athletic games, which arose from 
 the early custom of honoring the burial of a hero with such 
 celebrations. In spite of the local rivalries at such contests, 
 a sentiment of unity was greatly encouraged by the celebration 
 
The Age of the Nobles 291 
 
 and common management of these athletic games. They finally 
 came to be practiced at stated seasons in honor of the gods. 
 As early as 776 b.c. such contests were celebrated as public 
 festivals at Olympia.^ Repeated every four years, they finally 
 aroused the interest and participation of all Greece. 
 
 Religion also became a strong influence toward unity, be- 445. Greek 
 cause there were some gods at whose temples all the Greeks by religious 
 worshiped. The different city-states therefore formed several J°^p'jj|c. 
 religious councils, made up of representatives from the various tyonies) 
 Greek cities concerned. They came together at stated periods, 
 and in this way each city had a voice in such joint management 
 of the temples. These councils were among the nearest ap- 
 proaches to representative government ever devised in the an- 
 cient world. The most notable of them were the council for 
 the control of the Olympic games, another for the famous 
 sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (Fig. 172), and also the council 
 for the great annual feast of Apollo in the island of Delos. 
 
 These representatives spoke various Greek dialects at their 446. Greek 
 meetings. They could understand each other, however, just as "hered by 
 in our own land a citizen from Maine understands another from language 
 Louisiana, though they may laugh at each other's oddities of 
 speech. Their common language thus helped to bind together 
 the people of the many different Greek cities. A sentiment of 
 unity also arose under the influence of the Homeric songs 
 (§ 410) with which every Greek was familiar — a common 
 inheritance depicting all the Greeks united against the Asiatic 
 city of Troy (Fig. 151). 
 
 Thus bound together by ties of custom, religion, language, 447. Barba- 
 and common traditions, the Greeks gained a feeling of race Hdfenes 
 unity, which set them apart from other races. They called all 
 men not of Greek blood " barbarians," not originally a term of 
 reproach for the non-Greeks. Then the Greek sense of unity 
 found expression in the first all-inclusive term for themselves. 
 
 1 Every schoolboy knows that these Olympic games have- been revived in 
 modern times as an international project. 
 
292 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 » 
 
 448. Greek 
 unity and 
 trade 
 
 They gradually came to call themselves " Hellenes," and found 
 pleasure in the belief that they had all descended from a com- 
 mon ancestor called Hellen. But it should be clearly understood 
 that this new designation did not represent a Greek nation or 
 state, but only the group of Greek-speaking peoples or states, 
 often at war with one another. 
 
 The lack of political unity evident in such wars was also very 
 noticeable in trade relations. No merchant of one city had any 
 legal rights in another city where he was not a citizen. Even 
 his life was not safe, for no city made any laws protecting the 
 stranger. He could secure protection only by appealing to the 
 old desert custom of '' hospitality," after he had been received 
 by a friendly citizen as a guest. For the reception of any stran- 
 ger who might have no such friend to be his host, a city might 
 appoint a citizen to act as its official host. These primitive 
 arrangements are a revelation of the strong local prejudice of 
 each Greek city. The most fatal defect in Greek character was 
 the inability of the various states to forget their local differ- 
 ences and jealousies and to unite into a common federation or 
 great nation including all Greeks.^ 
 
 In spite of oriental luxuries, like gaudy clothing and wavy 
 oriental wigs (§ 395), Greek life in the Age of the Nobles was 
 still rude and simple. The Greek cities of which we have been 
 talking were groups of dingy sun-dried-brick houses, with nar- 
 row wandering streets which we would call alleys. On the 
 height where the palace or castle of the king had once stood 
 was an oblong building of brick, like the houses of the town 
 below. In front it had a porch with a row of wooden posts, and 
 it was covered by a " peaked " roof with a triangular gable at 
 each end. This rude building was the earliest Greek temple. 
 As for sculpture in this age, the figure of a god consisted merely 
 
 1 We may recall here how slow were the thirteen colonies of America to sup- 
 press local pride sufficiently to adopt a constitution uniting all thirteen into a 
 nation. It was local differences similar to those among the Greeks which after- 
 ward caused our Civil War. 
 
The Age of the Nobles 293 
 
 of a wooden post with a rough-hewn head at the top. When 
 draped with a garment it could be made to serve its purpose. 
 
 While there were still very few who could read, there was 450. Rise of 
 here and there a man who owned and read a written copy of ture; moral 
 Homer. Men told their children quaint fables, representing the P^lotLm 
 animals acting like human creatures, and by means of these tales 
 with a moral made it clear what a man ought or ought not to 
 do. The Greeks were beginning to think about human conduct. 
 The old Greek word for virtue no longer meant merely valor in 
 war, but also kindly and unselfish conduct toward others. Duty 
 towards a man's own country was now beginning to be felt in 
 the sentiment we call patriotism. Right conduct, as it seemed 
 to some, was even required by the gods, and it was finally no 
 longer respectable for the nobles to practice piracy (§ 431). ^^-^^^ 
 
 /Under these circumstances it was natural that a new litera- 451. Trans- 
 ture should arise, as the Greeks began to discuss themselves and nterary inter- 
 their own conduct. The old Homeric singers never referred to ^^^^fj]"^ 
 themselves ; they never spoke of their own lives. They were 
 absorbed in describing the valiant deeds of their heroes who 
 had died long before. The heroic world of glorious achievement 
 in which the vision of these early singers moved had passed 
 away, and with it passed their art. Meanwhile the problems of 
 the present began to press hard upon the minds of men ; the 
 peasant farmer's distressing struggle for existence (see § 432) 
 made men conscious of very present needs. Their own lives 
 became a great and living theme. 
 
 The voices that once chanted the hero songs therefore died 452. Hesiod 
 away, and now men heard the first voice raised in Europe on earliest cry 
 behalf of the poor and the humble. Hesiod, an obscure farmer •^gj^^'^'jj 
 under the shadow of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sang of the Europe (750- 
 
 700 B.C.) 
 
 dreary and hopeless life of the peasant — of his otvn life as 
 he struggled on under a burden too heavy for his shoulders. 
 We even hear how his brother Persis seized the lands left by 
 their father, and then bribed the judges to confirm him in 
 their possession. 
 
294 Ancient Times 
 
 This earliest European protest against the tyrannies of 
 wealthy town life was raised at the very moment when across 
 the corner of the Mediterranean the once nomad Hebrews were 
 passing through the same experience (see §§ 303-304). The 
 voice of Hesiod raising the cry for social justice in Greece 
 sounds like an echo from Palestine. But we should notice that 
 in Palestine the cry for social justice resulted finally in a religioji 
 of brotherly kindness, whereas in Greece it resulted in demo- 
 cratic i/istitiitions, the rule of the people who refused longer to 
 submit to the oppressions of the few and powerful. In the n^xt 
 chapter we shall watch the progress of the struggle by which 
 the rule of the people came about. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 43. Were the geographical influences in Greece favor- 
 able to a political union of all Greeks ? How many important unions 
 arose ? Name them and describe the leading two. How did the polit- 
 ical development of the Orient differ from that of Greece.'* What is 
 a democracy .'' Where did democracies first arise '^ What was the atti- 
 tude of the nobles toward democracy ? Describe their political power ; 
 their military power. What was the situation of the peasants ? What 
 happened to the Assembly? What happened to the kings? What 
 became of the shrines in the palace ? 
 
 SectiOxN 44. On what models did the Greeks build their first 
 ships? Tell about Greek colonization in the North; in the East; 
 in the South ; in the West. What competing race had already col- 
 onized in the West ? To what extent had the world of sea commerce 
 thus expanded? 
 
 Section 45. Discuss athletic games as an influence toward unity. 
 How did religion favor Greek unity? language? What names for 
 Greeks and non-Greeks arose ? What can you say about the attitude 
 of Greek cities toward Greeks who were not citizens ? Describe the 
 earliest Greek temples. Were literature and reading now common ? 
 What thoughts about conduct were arising? As men began to think 
 about themselves rather than the ancient heroes, what was the effect 
 upon literature? Tell about Hesiod. To what struggle were the feel- 
 ings of such men as Hesiod leading ? 
 
%.^^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 IIIIIWI i 
 
 ^^^y'^ ^'^^" "■"]■■■ . r'^'^^^'MWIillj^^: 
 
 •■1 
 
 >^ <• 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE AGE OF 
 THE TYRANTS 
 
 Section 46. The Industrial and Commercial 
 Revolution 
 
 The remarkable colonial expansion of the Greeks, together 453- Growth 
 with the growth of industries in the home cities, led to profound commerce 
 changes. The new colonies not only had needs of their own, ^" ^^ "^ ^ 
 but they also had dealings with the inland, which finally opened 
 up extensive regions of Europe as a market for Greek wares. 
 The home cities at once began to meet this demand for goods 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the ruins of the temple of Hera at 
 Olympia, the oldest temple in Greece. The remains of columns which surrounded 
 the outside of the building (cf. Fig. 185) are of different sizes and proportions ; for 
 they were inserted at different times to replace the old wooden ones with which 
 the temple was first built (§ 449). They are of the Doric style (Fig. 167). The 
 walls were of sun-dried brick (§ 449), and have therefore disappeared. In their 
 fall they covered up the magnificent statue of Hermes by Praxiteles (Fig. 187), 
 which was thus preserved until modem excavators found it. 
 
 295 
 
296 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 of all sorts. The Ionian cities led the way as formerly, but the 
 islands also, and finally the Greek mainland, felt the new im- 
 pulse. Corinth first (Fig. 163), and then Athens, began to share 
 
 Fig. 163. The Isthmus of Corinth, the Link between the 
 Peloponnesus and Northern Greece 
 
 The observer stands on the hills south of ancient Corinth (out of range 
 on the left) and looks northeastward along the isthmus, on both sides 
 of which the sea is visible. On the left (west) we see the tip of the Gulf 
 of Corinth (see map, p. 352), and on the right (east) the Saronic Gulf. 
 The commerce across this isthmus from the Orient to the West made 
 the Gulf of Corinth an important center of traffic westward, and Corinth 
 early became a flourishing commercial city. Through this sole gateway of 
 the Peloponnesus (see map, p. 264) passed back and forth for centuries the 
 leading men of Greece, and especially the armies of Sparta, some 
 60 miles distant (behind the observer). The faint white line in the middle 
 of the isthmus is the modern canal ^- a cut from sea to sea, about 4 miles 
 long and nearly 200 feet deep at the crest of the watershed 
 
 in the increased Greek trade. Ere long the commercial fleets of 
 the Hellenes were threading their way along all the coasts of the 
 northern, western, and southeastern Mediterranean, bearing to 
 
The Industrial Revolution 
 
 297 
 
 distant communities 
 Greek metal work, 
 woven goods, and pot- 
 tery. They brought 
 back either raw ma- 
 terials and foodstuffs, 
 such as grain, fish, 
 and amber, or fin- 
 ished products like 
 the magnificent uten- 
 sils in bronze from 
 the cities of the 
 Etruscans in north- 
 ern Italy (§787 and 
 Fig. 231). At the 
 yearly feast and mar- 
 ket on the island of 
 Delos the Greek 
 householder found 
 the Etruscan bronzes 
 of the West side by 
 side with the gay car- 
 pets of the Orient. 
 
 To satisfy the in- 
 creasing demands of 
 trade, and to meet 
 Phoenician competi- 
 tion, the Greek crafts- 
 men greatly improved 
 their work. During 
 the seventh century 
 Greek industries were 
 still unequal to those 
 of the Orient, but 
 after 600 B.C. the 
 
 mmMMm 
 
 Fig. 164. An Athenian Painted Vase 
 OF THE Early Sixth Century b.c. 
 
 This magnificent work (over 30 inches high) 
 was found in an Etruscan tomb in Italy (see 
 map, p. 484), whither it had been exported by 
 the Athenian makers in the days of Solon 
 (§§ 468 ff.). It is signed by the potter Ergo- 
 timos, who gave the vase its beautiful shape, 
 and also by the painter Clitias, whose skillful 
 hand executed the sumptuous painted scenes 
 extending in bands entirely around the vase. 
 On the wide distribution of the works of these 
 two artists see § 456. These decorations rep- 
 resent the final emancipation of the Greek 
 painter from oriental influences and the 
 triumph of his own imagination in depicting 
 scenes from Greek stories of the gods and 
 heroes. Before the end of this century (the 
 sixth) the vase-painters had begun to blacken 
 the whole vase and then to put on their paint- 
 ings in red on the black background. This 
 enabled them to add details in black within 
 the figures, and greatly improved their work 
 (see Fig. 170). The Greeks were now the best 
 draftsmen in the world. Note the progress 
 in two hundred years (compare above horses 
 and those in Fig. 155) 
 
 454. Greek 
 industry be- 
 gins to shake 
 off oriental 
 influence 
 
298 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 455. Greeks 
 introduce 
 industrial 
 slave labor 
 
 456. Ex- 
 pansion of 
 Athenian 
 commerce 
 
 457. Im- 
 provement 
 and enlarge- 
 ment Q^ ships 
 
 Greeks began to surpass their oriental teachers. In Samos 
 they learned to make hollow bronze castings, like those of the 
 Egyptians, They painted pottery with their own decorative 
 scenes, taken from the lives of gods and men, and these more 
 and more displaced the rows of oriental figures, half animal, 
 half human (Fig. 164). Thus in industry Greece began to 
 emancipate herself from the Orient. 
 
 At the same time, growing trade obliged every Greek crafts- 
 man to enlarge his small shop — once, perhaps, only large 
 enough to supply the wants of a single estate. Unable to find 
 the necessary workmen, the proprietor who had the means 
 bought slaves, trained them to the work, and thus enlarged 
 his litde stall into a factory with a score of hands. Henceforth 
 industrial slave labor became an important part of Greek life. 
 
 Athens entered the field of industry much later than the 
 Ionian cities, but when she did so, she won victories not less 
 decisive than her -later triumphs in art, literature, philosophy, 
 or war. The potters early required an extensive quarter of the 
 town to accommodate their workshops (see plan, p. 352). The 
 Athenian factories must have assumed a size quite unprece- 
 dented in the Greek world, for of the painted Greek vases — 
 discovered by excavation — which are signed by the artist, 
 about half are found to have come from only six factories at 
 Athens. It is not a little impressive at the present day to see 
 the modern excavator opening tombs far toward the interior of 
 Asia Minor and taking out vases bearing the signature of the 
 same Athenian vase-painter whose name you may also read on 
 vases dug out of the Nile Delta in northern Africa, or taken 
 from tombs in the cemeteries of the Etruscan cities of Italy 
 (Fig. 164). We suddenly gain a picture of the Athenian manu- 
 facturer in touch with a vast commercial domain extending far 
 across the ancient world. 
 
 Soon the shipbuilder, responding to the growing commerce, 
 began to build craft far larger than the old '' fifty-oar " gal- 
 leys. The new " merchantmen " were driven only by sails, an 
 
The Industrial Revolution 299 
 
 Egyptian invention of ages before (Fig. 41). They were so large 
 that they could no longer be drawn up on the strand as before. 
 Hence sheltered harbors were necessary, and for the same 
 reason the anchor was now invented. The protection of such 
 merchant ships demanded more effective warships, and the dis- 
 tinction arose between a '' man-o'-war," or battleship, and a 
 '' merchantman." Corinth boasted the production of the first 
 decked warships, a great improvement, giving the warriors 
 above more room and better footing, and protecting the oars- 
 men below. For warships must be independent of the wind, 
 and hence they were still propelled by oars. The oarsmen were 
 arranged in three rows, three men on the same bench, each 
 man wielding an oar, and thus the power of an old " fifty-oar " 
 could be multiplied by three without much increasing the size 
 of the craft. These innovations were all in common use by 
 500 B.C. With their superior equipment on the sea, and the 
 marked improvement of their industries, the Hellenes were 
 soon beating the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean markets. 
 
 Meantime Greek business life had entered upon a new epoch 458. Precious 
 due to the introduction of coined money. From the peoples of ^^nageTn 
 inner Asia Minor the lonians had learned to use the precious ^}^ Orient 
 
 ^ ^ (700 B.C.) 
 
 metals by weight in making business payments after the orien- 
 tal manner (§ 189). The basis of weight was the Babylonian 
 " mina." Sixty such minas (pounds) made a talent, and a 
 talent of silver was worth about $1125. Not long after 700 B.C., 
 the kings of Lydia in Asia Minor (see map, p. 264) began to 
 cut up silver into lumps of a fixed weight, small enough to be 
 of convenient size and value. These they stamped with some 
 symbol of the king or State to show that the State guaranteed 
 their value, and such pieces formed the earliest-known coins 
 (Fig. 165). 
 
 -<, The Ionian cities soon took over this great convenience, and 459. Adop- 
 it quickly passed thence to the islands and the European age by the 
 Greeks. The Athenians divided the mina of silver into a hun- Greeks (early 
 
 ,, seventh cen- 
 
 dred parts. A lump of silver weighing the hundredth part of tury b.c.) 
 
300 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 165. Specimens ILLUSTRATING THE 
 Beginning of Coinage 
 
 a mina was worth from eighteen to 
 twenty cents. This became the ordi- 
 nary small unit of value, and it still 
 survives as such for large sections 
 of Europe in the French franc, 
 Italian li?'a, and Austrian krone, all 
 worth somewhat less than twenty 
 cents (cf. § 790). The Athenians 
 called this coin a drach7na, meaning 
 a '' handful," because it was equal 
 m value to a " handful " of small 
 change consisting of little rods of 
 iron or copper used by the common 
 people, like our cop- 
 per cents. Our Amer- 
 ican dollar is simply 
 five of these drachmas, 
 and the Athenians 
 themselves issued a 
 four-drachma piece 
 (Fig. 165, 4) which 
 served as their dol- 
 lar. The purchasing 
 power of a drachma 
 was in ancient times 
 very much greater 
 than in our day. For 
 example, a sheep cost 
 one drachma, an ox 
 five drachmas, and 
 
 These are rough lumps of silver such as 
 
 were long before used in the Orient (§ 189), 
 
 flattened by the pressure of the stamp. Two 
 
 of the examples (/ and 2) are marked by 
 
 the bench tool which held the lump while 
 
 the stamp was struck upon it. This defect 
 
 was slowly overcome, and the coins became 
 
 round as the stamp itself was made round 
 
 instead of square. 7, both sides of a Lydian 
 
 coin (§ 458) (about 550 B.C.) ; 2, both sides of 
 
 a coin of the Greek island of Chios (500 B.C.), 
 
 showing how the Greeks followed the Lydian model (/) ; j, both sides of 
 
 a Carian coin of Cnidus (650-550 B.C.), an example of the square stamp ; 
 
 4, both sides of a four-drachma piece of Athens (sixth century B.C.), 
 
 bearing head of goddess Athena and an owl with olive branch (square 
 
 stamp). The inscription contains the first three letters of "Athens" 
 
The Industrial Revohition 30 1 
 
 a landowner with an income of five hundred drachmas ($100) 
 a year was considered a wealthy man. 
 
 Greek wealth had formerly consisted of lands and flocks, 460. Rise of 
 but now men began to accumulate capital in money. Loans class' 
 were made and the use of interest came in from the Orient. 
 The usual rate was 18 per cent yearly. Men who could never 
 have hoped for wealth as farmers were now growing rich. For 
 the growing industries and the commercial ventures on the seas 
 rapidly created fortunes among a class before obscure. There 
 arose thus a prosperous industrial and commercial middle class 
 who demanded a voice in the government. They soon became 
 a political power of much influence, and the noble class were 
 obliged to consider them. At the beginning of the sixth century 
 B.C. even a noble like Solon could say, " Money makes the man." 
 
 The prosperity we have sketched was still insufficient to 461. Greek 
 produce large cities as we now have them. Athens and Corinth estates 
 probably had about 25,000 inhabitants each. In spite of com- 
 mercial prosperity the Greeks were still dependent on agricul- 
 ture as their greatest source of income. But here again the 
 farms and estates were from our point of view very small. 
 The largest farms contained not over a hundred acres, while 
 a man who had fifty acres was classed among the rich. 
 
 Section 47. Rise of the Democracy and the 
 Age of the Tyrants 
 
 While the prosperous capitalistic class was thus arising, the 462. Decline 
 condition of the peasant on his lands grew steadily worse. His antry 
 fields were dotted with stones, each the sign of a mortgage, 
 which the Greeks were accustomed to mark in this way. 
 The wealthy creditors were foreclosing these mortgages and 
 taking the lands, and the unhappy owners were being sold 
 into foreign slavery or were fleeing abroad to escape such 
 bonds. The nobles in control did nothing as a class to im- 
 prove the situation; on the contrary, they did all in their 
 
302 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 463. Power 
 of the people 
 increased by 
 prosperity of 
 the commer- 
 cial class and 
 by military 
 changes 
 
 464. Dis- 
 union among 
 nobles and 
 rise of 
 tyrants 
 
 465. The 
 
 tyrant and 
 public opin- 
 ion of his 
 office 
 
 power to take advantage of the helplessness of the peasants 
 and small farmers (see § 432). 
 
 But new enemies now opposed the noble class. In the first 
 place, the new men of fortune (§ 460) were bitterly hostile to 
 the nobles; in the second place, the improvement in Greek 
 industries had so cheapened all work in metal that it was 
 possible for the ordinary man to purchase weapons and a 
 suit of armor. Moreover, the development of tactics under 
 the leadership of the Spartans had produced close masses of 
 spearmen, each mass (phalanx) standing like an unbroken wall 
 throughout the battle (cf. Fig. 87). The war chariot of the 
 individual hero of ancient times could not penetrate such a 
 battle line. The chariot disappeared and was seen only in 
 chariot races. These changes increased the importance of the 
 ordinary citizen in the army and therefore greatly increased the 
 power of the lower classes in the State. 
 
 At the same time the nobles were far from united. Serious 
 feuds between the various noble families often divided them 
 into hostile factions. The leader of such a faction among the 
 nobles often placed himself at the head of the dissatisfied people 
 in real or feigned sympathy with their cause. Both the peasants 
 and the new commercial class of citizens often rallied around 
 such a noble leader. Thus supported, he was able to over- 
 come and expel his rivals among the noble class and to gain 
 undisputed control of the State. In this way he became the 
 ruler of the State. 
 
 Such a ruler was in reality a king, but the new king differed 
 from the kings of old in that he had no royal ancestors and 
 had seized the control of the State by violence. The people 
 did not reverence him as of ancient royal lineage, and while 
 they may have felt gratitude to him, they felt no loyalty. The 
 position of such a ruler always remained insecure. The Greeks 
 called such a man a " tyrant," which was not at that time 
 a term of reproach, as it is with us. The word "tyranny" 
 was merely a term for the high office held by such a ruler. 
 
The Industrial Revoltction 303 
 
 Nevertheless, the instinctive feeling of the Greeks was that 
 they were no longer free under such a prince, and the slayer 
 of a tyrant was regarded as a hero and a savior of the people. 
 
 By 650 B.C. such rulers had begun to appear, but it was es- 466. Age of 
 pecially the sixth century (from 600 to 500 b. c.) which we may (sfxth^cen-^ 
 call the Age of the Tyrants. They arose chiefly in the Ionian tury^.c.) 
 cities of Asia Minor and the islands ; also Euboea, Athens, 
 Corinth, and the colonies of Sicily — that is, in all the progres- 
 sive Greek city-states where the people had gained power by 
 commercial prosperity. Their rise was one of the direct con- 
 sequences of the growing power of the people, and in spite 
 of public opinion about them, they were the first champions 
 of democracy. Such men as Periander of Corinth and Pisis- 
 tratus of Athens looked after the rights of the people, curbed 
 the nobles, gave great attention to public works like harbor 
 improvements, state buildings, and temples, and cultivated art, 
 music, and literature. 
 
 Hitherto all law, so long ago reduced to writing in the 467. Earliest 
 Orient (Fig. 93), had been a matter of oral tradition in Greece. Greek codes 
 It was very easy for a judge to twist oral law to favor the ^^'^^ 
 man who gave him the largest present (§ 452). The people 
 were now demanding that the inherited oral laws be put into 
 writing (Fig. 166). After a long struggle the Athenians se- 
 cured such a written code, arranged by a man named Draco, 
 about 624 B.C. It was an exceedingly severe code — so severe, 
 in fact, that the adjective " Draconic " has passed into our 
 language as a synonym for '^harsh." 
 
 Meantime the situation in Athens was much complicated by 468. Foreign 
 hostilities with neighboring powers. The merchants of Megara of A^hens^"^ 
 had seized the island of Salamis, overlooking the port of 
 Athens (Fig. 177). The loss of Salamis and the failure of the 
 nobles to recover it aroused intense indignation among the Athe- 
 nians. Then a man of the old family to which the ancient kings 
 of Athens had belonged, a noble named Solon, who had gained 
 wealth by many a commercial venture on the seas, roused his 
 
304 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 countrymen by fiery verses, calling upon the Athenians not to 
 endure the shame of such a loss. Salamis was recovered, and 
 Solon gained great popularity with all classes of Athenians. 
 
 
 »4 \^H.. 
 
 
 
 Fig. 1 66. Ruins of the Ancient Courthouse of Gortyna and 
 THE Early Greek Code of Laws engraved on its Walls 
 
 This hall at Gortyna in Crete, dating from the sixth century B.C., was 
 a circular building about 140 feet across, which served as a court- 
 house. If any citizen thought himself unjustly treated, he could appeal 
 to the great code engraved in twelve columns on the inside of the stone 
 wall of the building. It covers the curved surface of the wall for about 
 30 feet, but extends only as high as would permit it to be read easily. 
 It forms the longest Greek inscription now surviving. This code shows 
 a growing sense of justice toward a debtor and forbids a creditor to 
 seize a debtor's tools or furniture for debt ; this illustrates the tendency 
 among the Greeks in the age of Solon (§ 469) 
 
 469. Solon The result was Solon's election as archon (§ 434) in 594 B.C. 
 
 archon; his ^^ ^^^ given full power to improve the evil condition of the 
 
 ^"fomT^ peasants. He declared void all mortgages on land and all 
 
 claims of creditors which endangered the liberty of a citizen. 
 
The Industrial RevohUion 305 
 
 But Solon was a true statesman, and to the demands of the 
 lower classes for a new apportionment of lands held by the 
 nobles he would not yield. He did, however, set a limit to 
 the amount of land which a noble might hold. 
 
 Solon also made a law that anyone who, like Hesiod (§ 452), 470. Solon's 
 had lost a lawsuit, could appeal the case to a jury of citizens of laws 
 over thirty years of age selected by lot. This change and some 
 others greatly improved a citizen's chance of securing justice. 
 Solon's laws were all written, and they formed the first Greek 
 code of laws by which all free men were given equal rights 
 in the courts. Some of these laws have descended to our 
 own time and are still in force. 
 
 Furthermore, Solon proclaimed a new constitution which 471. Solon's 
 gave to all a voice in the control of the State. It made but "ution 
 few changes. It recognized four classes of citizens, graded 
 according to the amount of their income. The wealthy nobles 
 were the only ones who could hold the highest offices, and the 
 peasants were permitted to hold only the lower offices. The 
 government thus remained in the hands of the nobles, but 
 the humblest free citizen could now be assured of the right 
 to vote in the assembly of the people. 
 
 Solon is the first great Greek statesman of whom we obtain 472. Esti- 
 an authentic picture, chiefly through his surviving poems. The "^^ ^ ° 
 leading trait of his character was moderation, combined with 
 unfailing decision. When all expected that he would make 
 himself " tyrant " he laid down his expiring archonship with- 
 out a moment's hesitation and left Athens for several years, 
 to give his constitution a fair chance to work. 
 
 Solon saved Attica from a great social catastrophe, and it 473. Failure 
 was largely due to his wise reforms that Athens achieved her work to"pre- 
 industrial and commercial triumphs. But his constitution gave ^fg^^^g'^f^ 
 the prosperous commercial class no right to hold the leading in Attica 
 offices of government. They continued the struggle for power. 
 Hence Solon's work, though it deferred the humiliation, could 
 not save the Athenian State from subjection to the tyrant. 
 
3o6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 474. Pisis- 
 tratus, tyrant 
 of Athens 
 (540- 
 
 528 B.C.) 
 
 475. Fall of 
 the sons of 
 Pisistratus 
 
 476. The 
 
 reforms of 
 Clisthenes 
 reduce the 
 power of 
 the nobles 
 
 477. Ostra- 
 cism 
 
 Returning from exile, backed by an army of hired soldiers, 
 Pisistratus, a member of one of the powerful noble families, 
 finally held control of the Athenian State. He ruled with 
 great sagacity and success, and many of the Athenians gave 
 him sincere support. Having built a war fleet of probably forty- 
 eight ships, he seized the mouth of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). 
 This control of the gateway to the Black Sea proved of enor- 
 mous value to Athens in later days (§ 616). He carried 
 out many public improvements at Athens, and transferred to 
 the city the old peasant spring feast of Dionysus, from which 
 were yet to come the theater and the great dramas of Athens 
 (§ 484). Athenian manufactures and commerce flourished as 
 never before, and when Pisistratus died (in the same year as 
 Cyrus the Persian, 528 B.C.) he had laid a foundation to which 
 much of the later greatness of Athens was due. 
 
 In spite of their great ability, the sons of Pisistratus, Hip- 
 parchus and Hippias, were unable to overcome the prejudice of 
 the people against a ruler on whom they had not conferred 
 authority. One of the earliest exhibitions of Greek patriotism 
 is the outburst of enthusiasm at Athens when two youths, Har- 
 modius and Aristogiton (Fig. 1 69), at the sacrifice of their own 
 lives, struck down one of the tyrants (Hipparchus). Hippias, 
 the other one, was eventually obliged to flee. Thus, shortly 
 before 500 B.C., Athens was freed from her tyrants. 
 
 The people were now able to gain new power against the 
 nobles by the efforts of Clisthenes, a noble friendly to the lower 
 classes. He broke up the old tribal divisions on the basis of 
 blood relationship, and established purely local lines of division. 
 He thus cut up the old noble clans and assigned the fragments 
 to different local divisions, where they were in the minority. 
 This prevented the nobles from acting together and broke 
 their power. 
 
 In order to avoid the rise of a new tyrant, Clisthenes estab- 
 lished a law that once a year the people might by vote declare 
 any prominent citizen dangerous to the State and banish him 
 
The Industrial Revolution 307 
 
 for ten years. To cast his vote against a man, a citizen had 
 only to pick up one of the pieces of broken pottery lying 
 about the market place, write upon it the name of the citizen 
 to be banished, and deposit it in the voting urn. As such 
 a bit of pottery was called an '' ostracon " (headpiece, p. 336), 
 to " ostracize " a man (literally to '' potsherd " him) meant to 
 interrupt his political career by banishment. Although the 
 nobles were still the only ones to whom the high offices of 
 government were open, the possession of other forms of 
 wealth besides land gave a citizen important political rights, 
 and Athens had thus (about 500 B.C.) gained a form of gov- 
 ernment giving the people a high degree of power. The State 
 was in large measure a democracy. 
 
 Meantime Sparta also had greatly increased in power. The 478. Ex- 
 Spartans had pushed their military successes until they held sparta^foun- 
 over a third of the Peloponnesian peninsula. The result was dation of the 
 
 Spartan 
 
 that long before 500 b.c. the Spartans had forced the neigh- "league" 
 boring states into a combination, the " Spartan league," which 
 included nearly the whole of the Peloponhese. As the leader of 
 this league, Sparta was the most powerful state in Greece. It 
 had no industries, and it therefore did not possess the prosper- 
 ous commercial class which had elsewhere done so much to over- 
 throw the nobles and bring about the rise of the tyrants. For 
 this and other reasons Sparta had escaped the rule of a tyrant. 
 While it had divided the power of its king by appointing two 
 kings to rule jointly, it was opposed to the rule of the people, and 
 it looked with a jealous eye on the rising democracy of Athens. 
 
 Section 48. Civilization of the Age of 
 THE Tyrants 
 
 Although the nobles of Athens had been forced to yield 479. The 
 much of their political power to the people, nevertheless, as we Jlnue^to^be" 
 have seen, they still held the exclusive risrht to be elected to the the social 
 
 ■' ^ leaders; ath 
 
 important offices in the government. They continued also to letic games 
 
3o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 480. Edu- 
 cation 
 
 481. Music, 
 instrumental 
 
 be the leaders in all those matters which we call social. They 
 created the social life of the time, and they were the prominent 
 figures on all public occasions. The multitudes which thronged 
 to the public games looked down at the best-bom youths of 
 Greece contesting for the prizes in the athletic matches (§ 444), 
 and the wealthier nobles put the swiftest horses into the chariot 
 races. To the laurel wreath which w^as granted the winner at 
 the Olympian games Athens added a prize of five hundred 
 drachmas when the winner was an Athenian. He was also 
 entitled to take his meals at tables maintained by the State. 
 Not seldom the greatest poets of the time, especially Pindar 
 (§ 482), celebrated the victors in triumphant verses. 
 
 In the matter of education, noble youths might be found 
 spending the larger part of the day practicing in the public 
 inclosure devoted to athletic exercises. To be sure, writing 
 was now so common that a young man could not afford to 
 be without it, and hence he submitted to some instruction in 
 this art — a discipline which he was probably very reluctant to 
 exchange for the applause of the idlers gathered around the 
 gymnastic training ground. The women had no share in either 
 the education or the social life of the men, and one of the great- 
 est weaknesses of Greek civilization was the very limited part 
 played by women in the life of the nation. 
 
 The education of the time was not complete without some in- 
 struction also in music. It was in the Age of the Tyrants that 
 the music of Greece rose to the level of a real art. A system of 
 writing musical notes, meaning for music what the alphabet meant 
 for literature, now arose. The flute had been brought from 
 Egypt to Crete in early times, and from the Cretans the Greeks 
 had received it. Long a favorite instrument, it was now much 
 more cultivated, and one musician even wrote a composition for 
 the flute which was intended to tell the story of Apollo's fight 
 with the dragon of Delphi. The lyre, which formerly had but 
 four strings, was now made with eight, and compositions for the 
 lyre alone were popular. Either of these instruments might be 
 
The hidicstrial Revolution 309 
 
 played as the accompaniment of song, or both together, with 
 choruses of boys and girls. Here we have the beginnings of 
 orchestral music as the accompaniment of choruses. 
 
 Music had a great influence on the literature of the age, 482. Lyric po- 
 for the poets now began to write verses to be sung with and Sappho'^ 
 the music of the lyre, and hence such verses are called ^' lyric " 
 poetry. From serious discussions like those of Solon (§ 468) 
 the poets passed to songs of momentary moods, longings, 
 dreams, hopes, and fiery storms of passion. Each in his way 
 found a wondrous world within hi?nself, which he thus pic- 
 tured in short songs. Probably the greatest of these poets 
 was Pindar of Thebes. Proud of his noble birth, the friend 
 and intimate of tyrants and nobles, but also their fearless ad- 
 monisher, Pindar gloried both in the pleasures and the respon- 
 sibilities of wealth and rank. He sang in praise of pomp and 
 splendor with a vividness which makes us see the chariots 
 flashing down the course and hear the shouting of the multitude 
 as the proud victor receives the laurel wreath of triumph. In 
 exalted speech, often difficult to understand, Pindar delighted 
 thus to glorify the life and rule of the nobles. At the same 
 time his immortal word pictures of their life and their triumphs 
 are always suffused with the beauty of unquestioning belief in 
 the gods, especially Apollo, for whom Pindar seemed to speak 
 almost as a prophet. He was the last great spokesman of a 
 dying order of society, the rule of the nobles, which was to 
 give way to the rule of the people. Another great lyric singer 
 of the age was the poetess Sappho, the earliest woman to gain 
 undying fame in literature. Indeed, she was perhaps the 
 greatest poetess the world has ever seen. 
 
 A favorite form of song was the chorus, with which the coun- 483. Festival 
 try folk loved to celebrate their rustic feasts (headpiece, p. 221). come drama 
 The poet Stesichorus, who lived in Sicily, began to write 
 choruses which told the stories of the gods as they were found 
 in the old myths. The singers as they marched in rustic pro- 
 cession wore goatskins, and their faces were concealed by masks. 
 
3IO Ancient Times 
 
 Some of the songs were sung responsively by the chorus and 
 their leader. For the diversion of the listening peasants the 
 leader would illustrate with gestures the story told in the song. 
 He thus became to some extent an actor, the forerunner of 
 the actors on our own stage. After Pisistratus introduced 
 the spring feast of Dionysus at Athens (§ /174), this form of 
 presentation made rapid progress. A second leader was intro- 
 duced, and dialogue between the two was then possible, though 
 the chorus continued to recite most of the narrative. Thus 
 arose a form of musical play or drama, the action or narrative 
 of which was carried on by the chorus and two actors. The 
 Greeks called such a play a tragedy, which means " goat's 
 play," probably because of the rustic disguise as goats which 
 the chorus had always worn. 
 
 484. Origin The grassy circle where the chorus danced and sang was 
 
 usually on a slope in the hills, from which the spectators had 
 a fine view of the country and the sea beyond. At Athens the 
 people sat on the slope of the Acropolis, and as they watched the 
 play they could look far across the sea to the heights of Argos. 
 Here, under the southern brow of the Acropolis, where Pisistra- 
 tus laid out the sacred precinct of Dionysus (see plan, p. 352), the 
 theater began to take form and furnished the arrangements which 
 have finally been inherited by us in our theaters (see Fig. 189). 
 
 485. Archi- The tyrants were so devoted to building that architecture 
 
 made very important advances. The Greek cities, including the 
 
 buildings of the government, were still simply groups of sun- i 
 
 dried-brick buildings. Great stone buildings such as we have ' 
 
 seen on the Nile had been unknown in Europe since the time 
 
 of the ^geans (Fig. 145), but now the rough Greek temples 
 
 of sun-dried brick were rebuilt in limestone by the tyrants. 
 
 Indeed, the front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was even 
 
 built of marble. At no other time before or since were so many j 
 
 temples erected as in the Greek world in the Age of the 
 
 Tyrants. In Sicily and southern Italy a number of the noble 
 
 temples of this age still stand to display to us the beauty and 
 
 tecture 
 
The Industrial Revolution 
 
 311 
 
 simplicity of Greek architecture when it was still at an unde- 
 veloped stage (Fig. 219). Instead of the wooden posts of 
 
 the Age of the Nobles 
 
 (§ 449), these temples 
 were surrounded by lines 
 of plain sto7ie columns 
 (colonnades) in a style 
 which we call Doric 
 (Fig. 167). Although the 
 architects of the tyrants 
 borrowed the idea and 
 the form of these colon- 
 nades from Egypt, they 
 improved them until they 
 made them the most 
 beautiful columns ever 
 designed by early archi- 
 tects. Like those on the 
 Nile, these Greek tem- 
 ples were painted in 
 bright colors (see p. 340). 
 Such temples were 
 adorned, in the triangu- 
 lar gable end, with sculp- 
 tured relief figures of 
 the gods, grouped in 
 scenes representing in- 
 cidents in the myths. 
 Although at first very 
 much influenced by ori- 
 ental reliefs, the sculptor 
 soon produced works of 
 real beauty and inde- 
 pendence (Fig. 169). In 
 meeting the demand for 
 
 Fig. 
 
 UMN 
 
 A 
 167. 
 AND 
 
 An Olp Egyptian Col- 
 THE Doric Column de- 
 rived FROM it 
 
 The earliest form of column used by the 
 Greeks was a fluted shaft of stone {B) 
 closely resembling the simplest form {A) 
 which we found in Egypt, dating nearly 
 2000 B.C. (Fig. 57). Not only the whole 
 idea of a rhythmic row of piers but also 
 the form of each shaft was thus taken 
 by the Greeks from Egypt. The Greeks 
 gave this form completeness and in- 
 creased beauty by adding a capital and 
 shaping it with great refinement of line 
 and contour. We should recall that col- 
 onnades were not in use in the Asiatic 
 Orient until the Persians introduced them 
 there (Fig. 1 16). See also diagram, p. 340 
 
 486. Sculp- 
 ture 
 
r- 
 
 
 i 
 
 i" 
 
 W^ 
 
 1 ■ 
 
 ^ .-. .,,.. -. 
 
 
 A U 
 
 Fig. 1 68. Early Greek Statue and Egyptian 
 Statue by which it was influenced 
 
 Portrait 
 
 The Egyptian portrait (B) is over two thousand years older than the 
 Greek figure {A). The noble (B), one of those whose estate we visited 
 on the Nile (§ 8o), stands in the customary posture of such figures in 
 Egyptian art, with the arms hanging down and the left foot thrust 
 forward. The Greek figure (A) stands in the same posture, with the 
 left foot thrust forward. Both look straight ahead, as was customary 
 in undeveloped art. The Greek figure shows clearly the influence 
 of Egyptian sculpture :. 
 312 
 
The Industrial Revolution 3 1 3 
 
 statues of the victors at the games, the Greek sculptors were 
 also much influenced by the Egyptian figures they had seen. 
 Their earliest figures in stone were therefore still stiff and un- 
 graceful (Fig. 168). Moved by patriotic impulses, however, 
 
 Fig. 169. Monument of the Tyrant Slayers of Athens, 
 Harmodius and Aristogiton, from Two Points of View 
 
 On the slopes of the Areopagus (see plan, p. 352, and Fig. 182) over- 
 looking the market place, the Athenians set up this group, depicting 
 at the moment of attack the two heroic youths who lost their lives in an 
 attempt to slay the two sons of Pisistratus and to free Athens from 
 the two tyrants (514 B.C.) (§475). The group was carried off by the 
 Persians after the battle of Salamis ; the Athenians had another made 
 to replace the first one. It was afterward recovered in Persia by 
 Alexander or his successors and restored to its old place where both 
 groups stood side by side. Our illustration is an ancient copy in 
 marble, probably reproducing the later of the two groups 
 
 the Athenian sculptors went still farther and attempted a kind 
 of work which never had arisen in the Orient. They wrought 
 a noble memorial of the two youths who endeavored to free 
 Athens from the sons of Pisistratus. It was in the form of 
 a group depicting the two at the moment of their attack on 
 the tyrants, and although it still displayed some of the old 
 stiffness, it also sliowed remarkable progress toward free and 
 
314 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 vigorous action of the human body (Fig. 169). These figures! 
 were cast in bronze. 
 487. Painting Similar progress was made by the painters of the age. Justi 
 as the poets had begun to call upon their own imagination for 
 subject matter, so the vase-painters now began to depict not 
 only scenes from the myths of the gods and heroes, but also 
 pictures from the everyday life of the times (see the school, 
 
 Fig. 170. Greek Vase-Painting, showing the Home Life 
 OF Women 
 
 A maidservant at the right presents to her mistress an Egyptianr 
 alabaster perfume bottle (see the same shape in glass, Fig. 49). The 
 mistress sits arranging her hair before a hand mirror. Behind hei 
 approaches another woman. At the left a lady is working at an em- 
 broidery frame, while a visitor in street costume watches her work. 
 Behind stands a lady with a basket. Notice the grace and beauty of ther 
 figures, which at this time were in red (the natural color of the terra 
 cotta), showing through a shining black pigment laid on by the artis1» 
 
 Fig. 181). At the same time they improved their method greatly 
 (cf. Fig. 170). They made drawings of the human figure that 
 were more natural and true than early artists had ever before? 
 been able to do. Their skill in depicting limbs shortened by™ 
 being seen from one end was surprising. These problems, called 
 foreshortening and perspective, were first solved by the Greek 
 painters. The vases of this age are a wonderful treasury of 
 beautiful scenes from Greek life (Fig. 170), reminding us of 
 our glimpses into the life of Egypt two thousand five hundred 
 years earlier, in the tomb-chapel scenes of the Nile. 
 
The Industrial Revolution 315 
 
 Literature and painting show us that the Greeks of this age 488. Grow- 
 ivere intensely interested in the life of their own time. In the r"|hrand ° 
 first place, they were thinking more deeply than ever before J^h'J^f'j^'t P^"' 
 about conduct, and they were better able to distinguish between hereafter 
 right and wrong. Men could no longer believe that the gods 
 ied the evil lives pictured in the Homeric songs. Stesichorus 
 '§ 483) had so high an idea of womanly fidelity that he could 
 lot accept the tale of. the beautiful Helen's faithlessness, and 
 m his festival songs he told the ancient story in another way. 
 Men now felt that even Zeus and his Olympian divinities must 
 do the right. Mortals too must do the same, for men had now 
 :ome to believe that in the world of the dead there was punish- 
 tuent for the evildoer. Hades became a place of torment for 
 the wicked, guarded by Cerberus, a monstrous dog, one of those 
 sentinel animals of the Orient of which the Sphinx of Gizeh 
 ^Fig. 54), also guarding the dead, is the oldest example. 
 
 Likewise it was believed that there must be a place of 489. Bless- 
 blessedness for the good in the next world. Accordingly, in hereafter; 
 the temple at Eleusis scenes from the mysterious earth life ''^^^^^^^'' 
 of Demeter and Dionysus, to whom men owed the fruits of 
 the earth, were presented by the priests in dramatic form 
 before the initiated, and he who viewed them mysteriously 
 received immortal life and might be admitted into the Islands 
 of the Blessed, where once none but the ancient heroes could 
 be received. Even the poorest slave was permitted to enter 
 this fellowship and be initiated into the " mysteries," as they 
 were called. 
 
 More than ever, also, men now turned to the gods for a 490- Oracles 
 knowledge of the future in this world. Everywhere it was 
 believed that the oracle voice of Apollo revealed the outcome 
 of every untried venture, and his shrine at Delphi (Figs. 171 
 and 172) became a national religious center, to which the whole 
 Greek world resorted. 
 
 Some thoughtful men, on the other hand, were rejecting 
 the beliefs of older times, especially regarding the world and 
 
3i6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 491. Thales 
 and his pre- 
 diction of 
 an eclipse 
 
 (585 B.C.) 
 
 its control by the gods. The Ionian cities, long the com- 
 mercial leaders of the ^gean, now likewise led the way in 
 
 thinking of these 
 new problems. In 
 constant contact 
 with Egypt and the 
 Phoenician cities, 
 they gained the 
 beginnings of math- 
 ematics and as- 
 tronomy as known 
 in the Orient, and 
 one of the Ionian 
 thinkers had in- 
 deed set up an 
 Egyptian shadow 
 clock (Fig. 74). 
 At Miletus, the 
 leader of these Io- 
 nian cities, there 
 was an able states- 
 man named Thales, 
 who had traveled 
 widely, and re- 
 ceived from Baby- 
 lonia a list of ob- 
 servations of the 
 heavenly bodies. 
 From such lists the 
 Babylonians had al- 
 ready learned that 
 eclipses of the sun 
 occurred at periodic intervals (§ 239). With these lists in his 
 hands Thales could calculate when the next eclipse would 
 occur. He therefore told the people of Miletus that they might 
 
 Fig, 
 
 171. View over the Valley and 
 Ruins of Delphi to the Sea 
 
 This splendid gorge in the slopes of Mount Par- 
 nassus on the north side of the Corinthian Gulf 
 (see map, p. 352) was very early sacred to Apollo, 
 who was said to have slain the dragon Pytho 
 which lived here. The white line of road in the 
 foreground is the highway descending to the 
 distant arm of the Corinthian Gulf. On the left 
 of this road the cliff descends sheer 1000 feet, 
 and above the road (on its right) on the steep 
 slope are the ruins of the sacred buildings of 
 ancient Delphi, excavated by the French in re- 
 cent years. We can see the zigzag road lead- 
 ing up the hill among the ruins just at the right 
 of the main road (cf. also Fig. 172) 
 

 o K 
 
 ^ ^ w 
 
 
 E « C 
 
 OJ > 3 M-i 
 
 o > ^ 
 
 ^ ^^--^ ^ 
 
 ?? rt rt OJ >-; 
 
 . 1) c« <U C 
 
 bJ3 (-; (U > lU W 
 
 <U '-; O bJD Si w J 
 
 Og>.rt^Ccog 
 
 - rt 1^ 3 ^ ^ o 
 
 ^ o o '::i 4 "^ 
 
 rt fe: P. W -^ O CL, 
 
 •i::^ rt > -^ (U ^ -jS 
 
 ^ -^ <- ^ :^ c 
 
 <u 
 
 
 ^ ^ •" b rrt - 
 
 O <o ^ 
 
 •^ < .S "^ 
 
 C^ ^H *^ fll 
 
 rt 0) 
 
 s 
 
 >^ o 
 
 I ^ o ° '^.^•S ^ g 
 
 ^ ^ I '^ s '^ "S) - f§ 
 
 03 rA 
 
 s s 
 
 o 
 
 ■*-" O ^ c« ■' XI 
 
 C o O W)^ -a <y 
 
 « c ^ -^ c •£ ^ 
 
 O 13 ^ 
 
 W ^ <U 
 
 *;; -| c .£ M .> (u rt 
 
 W M JJ ^ !tl 
 > 
 
 <u 
 
 Oh -^ ^ O 
 
 rt ^ 2 ■£ 
 
 ^ a i3 bD 
 
 e S '^ -^n-l £ 
 
 bfi - ^ 
 
 ^ ^ .jS "o <£ -5 
 
 317 
 
3i8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 492. Natural 
 law versus the 
 gods ; rise of 
 science and 
 philosophy 
 among the 
 lonians 
 
 493. Ionian 
 geography 
 and history 
 
 expect an eclipse of the sun before the end of a certain year. 
 When the promised eclipse (585 B.C.) actually occurred as he 
 had predicted, the fame of Thales spread far and wide. 
 
 The prediction of an eclipse, a feat already accomplished by 
 the Babylonians (§ 239), was not so important as the conse- 
 quences which followed in the mind of Thales. Hitherto men 
 had believed that eclipses and all the other strange things that 
 happened in the skies were caused by the momentary angry 
 whim of some god. Now, however, Thales boldly proclaimed 
 that the movements of the heavenly bodies were in accordance 
 with fixed laws. The gods were thus banished from control 
 of the sky-world where the eagle of Zeus had once ruled 
 (§ 413). So also when a Greek traveler like Thales visited the 
 vast buildings of the Orient, like the pyramids of Gizeh, then 
 over two thousand years old, he at once saw that the gods had 
 not been wandering on earth a few generations before his own 
 time. This fact seemed to banish the gods from the past, and 
 from the beginning of the world likewise. 
 
 Hence another citizen of Miletus, perhaps a pupil of Thales, 
 explained the origin of animals by assuming a development of 
 higher forms from the lower ones, in a manner which reminds 
 us of the modern theory of evolution. He studied the forms 
 of the seas and the countries, and he made a map of the world. 
 It is the earliest world map known to us, although maps of a 
 limited region were already in use in Egypt and Babylonia. 
 A little later another geographer of Miletus, named Hecataeus, 
 traveled widely, including a journey up the Nile, and he wrote 
 a geography of the world. In this book, as in the map just 
 mentioned, the Mediterranean Sea was the center, and the 
 lands about it for a short distance back from its shores were 
 all those which were known to the author (see his map, p. 319). 
 Hecataeus also put together a history made up of the mythical 
 stories of early Greece and the tales of the past he had heard 
 in the Orient. After the Unknown Historian of the Hebrews 
 {% 302), he was the first historical writer of the early world. 
 
The hi dus trial Revolution 
 
 319 
 
 Another Ionian thinker, who migrated to southern Italy, was 494. Ionian 
 Pythagoras. He investigated mathematics and natural science, ^nd natural 
 K^e or his pupils discovered that the square of the hypotenuse science 
 equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a right- 
 angled triangle. They also found out that the length of a musi- 
 cal string is in exact mathematical relation to the height of 
 its tone. They 
 
 likewise discov- ,,^x i1^^sL4^ e g 
 
 ered that the 
 earth is a sphere 
 which possesses 
 its own motion. 
 Another of these 
 lonians, in his 
 account of the 
 origin of the 
 earth, called at- 
 tention to the 
 presence of pet- 
 rified sea plants 
 and fish in the 
 rocks, to prove 
 that the sea had 
 at one time cov- 
 ered the land. 
 
 Thus these Ionian thinkers, having gradually abandoned the 495. The 
 old myths, took the natural world out of the hands of the gods, taken by 
 They therefore became the forerunners of natural scientists and J^f^ke^f " 
 philosophers, for they strove to discern what were the natural 
 laws which in the beginning had brought the world into exist- 
 ence, and still continued to control it. At this point in their 
 thinking they entered upon a new world of thought, which we 
 call science and philosophy — a world which had never dawned 
 'upon the greatest minds of the early East. This step, taken 
 by Thales and the great men of the Ionian cities, remains and 
 
 Map of the World by Hecat^us (517 b.c.) 
 
320 Ancient Times 
 
 will forever remain the greatest achievement of the human m 
 tellect — an achievement to call forth the reverence and admi- 
 ration of all time. 
 496. Sum- The Age of the Tyrants was therefore one of the great 
 
 of the Age of cpochs of the world's history. Under the stimulus of the keen 
 the Tyrants struggle for leadership in business, in government, and in 
 society, the minds of the ablest men of the time were wonder- 
 fully quickened, till they threw off the bondage of habit and 
 entered an entirely new world of science and philosophy. The 
 inner power of this vigorous new Greek life flowed out in 
 statesmanship, in literature and religion, in sculpture and 
 painting, in architecture and building. As a group the leaders 
 of this age, many of them tyrants, made an impression which 
 never entirely disappeared, and they were called " the Seven 
 Wise Men." They were the earliest statesmen and thinkers 
 of Greece. The people loved to quote their sayings, such as 
 " Know thyself," a proverb which was carved over the door of 
 the Apollo temple at Delphi (Fig. 172); or Solon's wise maxim, 
 " Overdo nothing." After the overthrow of the sons of Pisis- 
 tratus, however, the tyrants were disappearing, and although a 
 tyrant here and there survived, especially in Asia Minor and 
 Sicily, Greece at this time (about 500 B.C.) passed out of the 
 Age of the Tyrants. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 46. How did the new colonies of the Greeks influence 
 manufacturing at home "i What can you tell of commerce and manu- 
 factures? What step toward freedom from foreign influences did 
 Greek manufactures take ? What evidence have we of the extent of 
 Athenian commerce? Discuss the effect upon shipbuilding. What 
 new business convenience came in from the East? How did coinage 
 arise? What leading coins did Athens possess? How did coinage 
 affect business and the accumulation of wealth ? From our point of 
 view did the Greeks have any large cities or farms ? 
 
 Section 47. What was now happening to the Greek farmers in 
 the matter of wealth? in the matter of military and political power? 
 
The Industrial Revolution 321 
 
 Were the nobles all united? What attitude toward the common 
 people did a leading noble often take? What was the result? How 
 did the Greeks feel toward a tyrant? W^hen may we date the period 
 of the tyrants ? 
 
 In what form had Greek laws thus far existed? What did the 
 people now demand? What code of laws was made at Athens? 
 Who now aroused Athens to meet her foreign difficulties? What 
 did Solon accomplish after he was elected archon? What can you 
 say of his character ? Did his work save Athens from the rule of a 
 tyrant ? 
 
 What did Pisistratus accomplish ? When did he die ? What hap- 
 pened to his sons? How did Clisthenes aid the people? What was 
 ostracism? What was meantime happening in Sparta? How did 
 Sparta feel toward Athens ? 
 
 Section 48. Describe the social position of the nobles in the 
 Age of the Tyrants. What was their attitude toward the athletic 
 games ? What can you say of education in this age ? Discuss instru- 
 mental music ; vocal music. What was lyric poetry ? Who was the 
 leading lyric poet, and what can you say of his poetry ? Of what class 
 was he the spokesman? Who was the greatest poetess? How did 
 festal choruses lead to drama? What was the origin of the theater? 
 
 Had the Greeks any fine buildings in this age? What was the 
 building material? Had they never seen any stone buildings? In 
 what style of architecture were the temples erected ? Where did the 
 form of the Doric column arise? Did the Greeks improve these 
 columns ? Did they color them ? What other adornment of his tem- 
 ples did the Greek architect employ? Under what influences did 
 Greek sculpture arise? What progress does the monument of the 
 tyrant-slayers show? 
 
 Discuss Greek vase-painting in this age. What subjects did the 
 vase-painters select ? Compare the human figures in Fig. 1 70 and 
 those in Fig. 155 and express your opinion of the progress made 
 in two and a half centuries. How was the method of vase-painting 
 improved? What progress was made in ideas of conduct? Discuss 
 the ideas of the hereafter ; oracles. What did Thales do ? Was he 
 the first to make such a calculation ? What conclusions did he make 
 about the gods and their control of the world ? Tell about the first 
 maps of the world. What new world had the Ionian thinkers entered 
 upon ? What can you say of the Age of the Tyrants as a whole ? 
 
/W^ 
 
 1 "li^ 
 
 
 y 
 
 4 
 •i 
 
 Ir 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE REPULSE OF PERSIA 
 
 Section 49. The Coming of the Persians 
 
 497. Rise 
 of Lydia in 
 Asia Minor 
 
 498. Fall of 
 Lydia and 
 advance of 
 Persia to 
 the yEgean 
 
 The leadership gained by the Ionian cities in the Age of the 
 Tyrants was now seriously checked by their neighbors in Asia 
 Minor. Here still lived the descendants of the Hittites (§ 351), 
 mingled with later invaders (§ 376). The kings of Lydia, their 
 leading kingdom, where we have already met Croesus (§ 260), 
 made their capital, Sardis, the strongest city of Asia Minor 
 (Fig. 173). From them the practice of coinage had passed to 
 the Greeks (§ 458). The Lydians had finally conquered all the 
 Greek cities along the ^gean coast of Asia Minor except Miletus, 
 which still resisted capture. 
 
 The Lydians had been strong enough to halt the Medes, but 
 we remember that when Cyrus the Persian invaded Asia Minor, 
 he defeated Croesus and captured Sardis (§ 260). In the midst 
 
 Note. The above headpiece represents a scene sculptured in relief on a door- 
 way in the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis (Fig. ii6). It shows us Xerxes as he 
 was accustomed to appear when enthroned before his nobles, with his attendants 
 and fan-bearers. At Salamis he took his station on the heights of .Egaleos over- 
 looking the bay (§ 513), and as he sat there viewing the battle below him, he must 
 have been enthroned as we see him here. 
 
 322 
 
The Repulse of Persia 
 
 323 
 
 of the most remarkable progress in civilization (§§ 491-496), 
 the Ionian cities thus suddenly lost their liberty and became the 
 subjects of Persia, a despotic oriental power. Moreover, the sud- 
 den advance of Persia to the ^gean made this power at one 
 stroke a close neighbor of the Greek world now arising there. 
 
 ^-%-=^- 
 
 
 Fig. 173. Sardis, the City of Crcesus, in Course of 
 Excavation 
 
 The natural drainage from the mountain slope in the background has 
 covered the ruins of the city with earth. The bank showing the edge 
 of this earth and the hmit of the excavations can be seen behind the 
 columns of the temple rising in the middle. These excavations, which 
 have produced very important results, are an American enterprise 
 under the direction of Professor Howard Crosby Butler, to whose kind- 
 ness the author owes this photograph 
 
 As we have already learned, the Persians represented a high 499. The 
 civilization and an enlightened rule ; but, on the other hand, met and^th^ 
 the Orient lacked free citizenship, and in place of science the Jon'ianf ^^^ 
 Orientals felt complete subjection of the mind to religious 
 tradition. Persian supremacy in Greece would therefore have 
 
324 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 500. First 
 Persian in- 
 vasion of 
 Europe 
 
 501. Second 
 Persian in- 
 
 502. Con- 
 sternation 
 in Athens 
 and Greece 
 
 checked the free development of Greek genius along its own 
 exalted lines. There seemed little prospect that the tiny Greek 
 states, even if they united, could successfully resist the vast 
 oriental empire, controlling as it did all the countries of the 
 ancient East, virhich we have been studying. Nevertheless the 
 Ionian cities revolted against their Persian lords. 
 
 During the struggle with Persia which followed this revolt, 
 the Athenians sent twenty ships to aid their Ionian kindred. 
 This act brought a Persian army of revenge, under Darius, 
 into Europe. The long march across the Hellespont and 
 through Thrace cost the invaders many men, and the fleet 
 which accompanied the Persian advance was wrecked in trying 
 to round the high promontory of Mount Athos (492 B.C.). 
 This advance into Greece was therefore abandoned for a plan 
 of invasion by water across the ^gean. 
 
 In the early summer of 490 B.C. a considerable fleet of 
 transports and warships bearing the Persian host put out from 
 the Island of Samos, sailed straight across the ^gean, and 
 entered the straits between Euboea and Attica (see map I, 
 p. 344, and Fig. 174). The Persians began by burning the 
 little city of Eretria, which had also sent ships to aid the 
 lonians. They then landed on the shores of Attica, in the Bay 
 of Marathon (see map, p. 352, and Fig. 174), intending to 
 march on Athens, the greater offender. They were guided by 
 the aged. Hippias, son of Pisistratus, once tyrant of Athens, 
 who accompanied them with high hopes of regaining control 
 of his native city. 
 
 All was excitement and confusion among the Greek states. 
 The defeat of the revolting Ionian cities, and especially the 
 Persian sack of Miletus, had made a deep impression through- 
 out Greece. An Athenian dramatist had depicted in a play the 
 plunder of the unhappy- city and so incensed the Athenians that 
 they passed weeping from the theater to prosecute and fine the 
 author. Now this Persian foe who had crushed the Ionian 
 cities was camping behind the hills only a few miles northeast 
 
The Repulse of Persia 
 
 325 
 
 of Athens. After dispatching messengers in desperate haste to 
 seek aid in Sparta, the Athenian citizens turned to contem- 
 plate the seemingly hopeless situation of their beloved city. 
 
 Fig. 1 74. The Plain of Marathon 
 
 This view is taken from the hills at the south end of the plain, and we 
 look northeastward across a corner of the Bay of Marathon to the 
 mountains in the background, which are on the large island of Euboea 
 (see map, p. 352). The Persian camp was on the plain at the very shore 
 line, where their ships were moored or drawn up. The Greeks held a 
 position in the hills overlooking the plain (just out of range on the left) 
 and commanding the road to Athens, which is 25 miles distant behind 
 us. When the Persians began to move along the shore road toward 
 the right, the Greeks crossed the plain and attacked. The memorial 
 mound (Fig. 175) is too far away to be visible from this point 
 
 Thinking to find the Athenians unprepared, Darius had not 503. The 
 sent a large army. The Persian forces probably numbered oree?^*^ 
 no more than twenty thousand men, but at the utmost the leadership 
 Athenians could not put more than half this number into the 
 field. Fortunately for them there was among their generals a 
 skilled and experienced commander named Miltiades, a man 
 
326 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 504. The 
 Greek po- 
 sition 
 
 S05. The 
 battle of 
 I\[arathon 
 (490 B.C.) 
 
 of resolution and firmness, who, moreover, had lived on the 
 Hellespont and was familiar with Persian methods of fighting. 
 To his judgment the commander-in-chief, Callimachus, yielded 
 at all points. As the citizen-soldiers of Attica flocked to the 
 city at the call to arms, Miltiades was able to induce the 
 leaders not to await the assault of the Persians at Athens, but 
 to march across the peninsula (see map, p. 352) and block the 
 Persian advance among the hills overlooking the eastern coast 
 and commanding the road to the city. This bold and resolute 
 move roused courage and enthusiasm in the downcast ranks 
 of the Greeks. 
 
 Nevertheless, when they issued between the hills and looked 
 down upon the Persian host encamped upon the Plain of 
 Marathon (Fig. 174), flanked by a fleet of hundreds of vessels, 
 misgiving and despair chilled the hearts of the little Attic army 
 made up as it was of citizen militia without experience in 
 war, and pitted against a Persian army of professional sol- 
 diers of many battles. But Miltiades held the leaders firmly 
 in hand, and the arrival of a thousand Greeks from Plataea. 
 revived the courage of the Athenians. The Greek position 
 overlooked the main road to Athens, and the Persians could 
 not advance without leaving their line of march exposed on 
 one side to the Athenian attack. 
 
 Unable to lure the Greeks from their advantageous position 
 after several days' waiting, the Persians at length attempted to 
 march along the road to Athens, at the same time endeavoring 
 to cover their exposed line of march with a sufficient force 
 thrown out in battle array. Miltiades was familiar with the 
 Persian custom of massing troops in the center. He there- 
 fore massed his own troops on both wings, leaving his center 
 weak. It was a battle between bow and spear. The Athenians 
 undauntedly faced the storm of Persian arrows (§ 259 and 
 Fig. 113), and then both wings pushed boldly forward to the 
 line of shields behind which the Persian archers were kneeling. 
 In the meantime the Persian center, finding the Greek center 
 
The Repulse of Persia 
 
 327 
 
 weak, had pushed it back, while the two Greek wings closed in 
 on either side and thrust back the Persian wings in confusion. 
 The Asiatic army crumbled into a broken multitude between 
 the two advancing lines of Greeks. The Persian bow was use- 
 less, and the Greek spear everywhere spread death and terror. 
 As the Persians fled to their ships they left over six thousand 
 
 "•^'z-.^:,' •n.-S*^" 
 
 ■ MI'S*, 
 
 
 
 
 ^^' ^ 
 
 Fig. 175. Mound raised as a Monument to the Fallen 
 
 Greeks on the Plain at Marathon 
 The mound is nearly 50 feet high. Excavations undertaken in 1890 dis- 
 closed beneath it the bodies of the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian 
 citizens who fell in the battle. Some of their weapons and the funeral 
 vases buried with them were also recovered 
 
 dead upon the field, while the Athenians lost less than two hun- 
 dred men (Fig. 175). When the Persian commander, unwilling 
 to acknowledge defeat, sailed around the Attic peninsula and 
 appeared with his fleet before the port of Athens, he found it 
 unwise to attempt a landing, for the victorious Athenian army 
 was already encamped beside the city. The Persians therefore 
 retired, and we can imagine with what feelings the Athenian 
 citizens watched the Persian ships as they disappeared. 
 
328 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 506. Rise of 
 Themistocles 
 
 507. Xerxes 
 
 inherits the 
 Persian quar- 
 rel with the 
 Greeks 
 
 Section 50. The Greek Repulse of Persians 
 
 AND PhCENICIANS 
 
 Among the men who stood in the Athenian ranks at Mara- 
 thon was Themistocles, the ablest statesman in Greece, a man 
 who had already occupied the office of archon, the head of the 
 Athenian state. He was convinced of the necessity of building 
 up a strong navy — a course already encouraged by Pisistratus 
 (§ 474). As archon, Themistocles had therefore striven to show 
 the Athenians that the only way in which Athens could hope to 
 meet the assault of Persia was by making herself undisputed 
 mistress of the sea. He had failed in his effort. But now the 
 Athenians had seen the Persians cross the ^gean with their 
 fleet and land at Marathon. It was evident that a powerful 
 Athenian navy might have stopped them. They began to listen 
 to the counsels of Themistocles to make Athens the great sea 
 power of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Darius the Great, whose remarkable reign we have studied 
 (§§ 267-273), died without having avenged the defeat of his 
 army at Marathon. His son and successor Xerxes therefore 
 took up the unfinished task. Xerxes planned a far-reaching 
 assault on Greek civilization all along the line from Greece to 
 Sicily. This he could do through his control of the Phoenician 
 cities. The naval policy of his father Darius (§ 270) had given 
 the Persians a huge Phoenician war fleet. In so far as the com- 
 ing attack on Greece was by sea it was chiefly a Semitic assault. 
 At the same time Xerxes induced Phoenician Carthage to attack 
 the Greeks in Sicily. Thus the two wings of the great Semitic 
 line represented by the Phoenicians in east and west (Carthage) 
 were to attack the Indo-European line (Fig. 112) represented in 
 east and west by the Greeks. Xerxes was induced by his general 
 Mardonius to adopt the Hellespont route (map I, p. 344). 
 
 Meantime the Greeks were making ready to meet the coming 
 Persian assault. They soon saw that Xerxes' commanders were 
 cutting a canal behind the promontory of Athos, to secure a 
 
The Repulse of Persia 329 
 
 short cut and thus to avoid all risk of such a wreck as had over- 508. The- 
 taken their former fleet in rounding this dangerous point. When [Uduces^the 
 the news of this operation reached Athens, Themistocles was ^*^i^"'^J^ t° 
 able to induce the Athenian Assembly to build a great fleet of 
 probably a hundred and eighty triremes. The Greeks were 
 then able for the first time to meet the Persian advance by 
 both sea and land (see map I, p. 344). 
 
 Themistocles' masterly plan of campaign corresponded ex- 509. Third 
 actly to the plan of the Persian advance. The Asiatics were vaYion— The- 
 coming in combined land and sea array, with army and fleet "jistocies' 
 moving together down the east coast of the Greek mainland, campaign 
 It was as if the Persian forces had two wings, a sea wing and 
 a land wing, moving side by side. The design of Themistocles 
 was to meet the Persian sea wing first with full force and fight 
 a decisive naval battle as soon as possible. If victorious, the 
 Greek fleet commanding the ^gean would then be able to sail 
 up the eastern coast of Greece and threaten the communica- 
 tions and supplies of the Persian army. There must be no at- 
 tempt of the small Greek army to meet the vast land forces of 
 the Persians, beyond delaying them as long as possible at the 
 narrow northern passes, which could be defended with a few 
 men. An attempt to unite all the Greek states was not success- 
 ful, but Sparta and Athens combined their forces to meet the 
 common danger. Themistocles was able to induce the Spartans 
 to accept his plan only on condition that Sparta be given com- 
 mand of the allied Greek fleets. 
 
 In the summer of 480 B.C. the Asiatic army was approaching 510. Persians 
 the pass of Thermopylae (Fig. 176), just opposite the western- 
 most point of the Island of Euboea (see map, p. 352). Their 
 fleet moved with them. The Asiatic host must have numbered 
 over two hundred thousand men, with probably as many more 
 camp followers, while the enormous fleet contained presumably 
 about a thousand vessels, of which perhaps two thirds were 
 warships. Of these ships, the Persians lost a hundred or two 
 in a storm, leaving probably about five hundred warships 
 
330 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 available for action. The Spartan king Leonidas led some five 
 thousand men to check the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae, 
 while the Greek fleet of less than three hundred triremes was 
 endeavoring to hold together and strike the Persian navy at 
 
 i*V, 
 
 Fig. 176. The Pass of Thermopylae 
 
 In the time of the Persian invasion the mountains to the left dropped 
 steeply to the sea, with barely room between for a narrow road. Since 
 then the rains of twenty-four hundred years have washed down the 
 mountainside, and it is no longer as steep as formerly, while the neigh- 
 boring river has filled in the shore and pushed back the sea several 
 miles. Otherwise we would see it here on the right. The Persians, 
 coming from beyond the mountains toward our point of view, could not 
 spread out in battle array, being hemmed in by the sea on one side and 
 the cliff on the other. It was only when a traitorous Greek led a Persian 
 force by night over the mountain on the left, and they appeared behind 
 the Greeks in the pass, that Leonidas and his Spartans were crushed by 
 the simultaneous attack in front and rear (§§ 510-51 1) 
 
 Artemisium, on the northern coast of Eubcea. Thus the land 
 and sea forces of both contestants were face to face. 
 
 After several days' delay the Persians advanced to attack on 
 both land and sea. The Greek fleet made a skillful and credit- 
 able defense against superior numbers, and all day the dauntless 
 
The Repulse of Persia 331 
 
 Leonidas held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persian 511. The 
 host. Meantime the Persians were executing two flank move- Thermopyis 
 ments by land and by sea — one over the mountains to strike and Arte- 
 
 •' •' misium 
 
 Leonidas in the rear, and the other with two hundred ships 
 around Euboea to take the Greek fleet likewise from behind. 
 A storm destroyed the flanking Persian ships, and a second 
 combat between the two main fleets was indecisive. The flank 
 movement by sea therefore failed ; but the flanking of the pass 
 was successful. Taken in front and rear, the heroic Leonidas 
 died fighting at the head of his small force, which the Persian 
 host completely annihilated. The death of Leonidas stirred all 
 Greece. With the defeat of the Greek land forces and the ad- 
 vance of the Persian army, the Greek fleet, seriously damaged, 
 was obliged to withdraw to the south. It took up its position 
 in the Bay of Salamis (see map, p. 352, and Fig. 177), while 
 the main army of the Spartans and their allies was drawn up on 
 the Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 163), the only point at which the 
 Greek land forces could hope to make another defensive stand. 
 
 As the Persian army moved southward from Thermopylae, 512. Persian 
 the indomitable Themistocles gathered together the Athenian ^^tttc^lnf' 
 population and carried them in transports to the little islands burning of 
 of Salamis and yFlgina and to the shores of Argolis (see map, 
 p. 352, and PL III, p. 276). Meantime the Greek fleet had 
 been repaired, and with reinforcements numbered over three 
 hundred battleships. Nevertheless it shook the courage of many 
 at Salamis as they looked northward, where the far-stretching 
 Persian host darkened the coast road, while in the south they 
 could see the Asiatic fleet drawn up off the old port of Athens 
 at Phalerum (see map, p. 352). High over the Attic hills the 
 flames of the burning Acropolis showed red against the sullen- 
 masses of smoke that obscured the eastern horizon and told 
 them that the homes of the Athenians lay in ashes. With 
 masterly skill Themistocles held together the irresolute Greek 
 leaders, while he induced Xerxes to attack by the false message 
 that the Greek fleet was about to slip out of the bay. 
 
332 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 513. Battle 
 of Salamis 
 (480 B.C.) 
 
 On the heights overlooking the Bay of Salamis the Persian 
 king, seated on his throne (headpiece, p. 322) in the midst of 
 his brilliant oriental court, took up his station to watch the battle. 
 
 7S^ 
 
 Fig. 177. PiR^us, the Port of Athens, and the Strait and 
 Island of Salamis 
 
 The view shows the very modern houses and buildings of this flourish- 
 ing harbor town of Athens (see map, p. 352). The mountains in the 
 background are the heights of the island of Salamis, which extends also 
 far over to the right (north), opposite Eleusis (see map, p. 352). The 
 four steamers at the right are lying at the place where the hottest 
 fighting in the great naval battle here (§ 513) took place. The Persian 
 fleet advanced from the left (south) and could not spread out in a 
 long front to enfold the Greek fleet because of the little island just 
 beyond the four steamers, which was called Psyttaleia. The Greek 
 fleet lying behind Psyttaleia and a long point of Salamis came into 
 action from the right (north), around Psyttaleia, and met the front of 
 the Persian fleet about where the four steamers lie. A body of Persian 
 troops stationed by Xerxes on Psyttaleia were all slain by the Greeks 
 
 The Greek position between the jutting headlands of Salamis 
 and the Attic mainland (see map, p. 352, and Fig. 177) was 
 too cramped for the maneuvers of a large fleet. Crowded and 
 hampered by the narrow sea room, the huge Asiatic fleet soon 
 fell into confusion before the Greek attack. There was no room 
 
The Repulse of Persia 333 
 
 for retreat. The combat lasted the entire day, and when dark- 
 ness settled on the Bay of Salamis the Persian fleet had been 
 almost annihilated. The Athenians were masters of the sea, and 
 it was impossible for the army of Xerxes to operate with the 
 same freedom as before. By the creation of its powerful fleet 
 Athens had saved Greece, and Themistocles had shown himself 
 the greatest of Greek statesmen. 
 
 Xerxes was now troubled lest he should be cut off from Asia 514. Retreat 
 by the victorious Greek fleet. Indeed, Themistocles made every fn the^East • 
 effort to induce Sparta to join with Athens in doing this very ^'^^^ ^^ . 
 thing ; but the cautious Spartans could not be prevailed upon the West 
 to undertake what seemed to them so dangerous an enterprise. 
 Had Themistocles' plan of sending the Greek fleet immediately 
 to the Hellespont been carried out, Greece would have been 
 saved another year of anxious campaigning against the Persian 
 army. With many losses from disease and insufficient supplies, 
 Xerxes retreated to the Hellespont and withdrew into Asia, 
 leaving his able general Mardonius with an army of perhaps 
 fifty thousand men to winter in Thessaly. Meantime the news 
 reached Greece that the army of Carthaginians which had 
 crossed from Africa to Sicily had been completely defeated by 
 the Greeks under the leadership of Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse. 
 Thus the assault of the Asiatics upon the Hellenic world was 
 beaten back in both east and west in the same year (480 e.g.). 
 
 The brilliant statesmanship of Themistocles, so evident to us 515. Reac- 
 of to-day, was not so clear to the Athenians as the winter passed xhemfsTodes 
 and they realized that the victory at Salamis had not relieved 
 Greece of the presence of a Persian army, and that Mardonius 
 would invade Attica with the coming of spring. Themistocles, 
 whose proposed naval expedition to the Hellespont would have 
 forced the Persian army out of Greece, was removed from 
 command by the factions of his ungrateful city. Nevertheless 
 the most tempting offers from Mardonius could not induce the 
 Athenians to forsake the cause of Greek liberty and join hands 
 with Persia. 
 
334 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 516. Persians 
 again in 
 
 Attica 
 
 517. Battle 
 of Plataea ; 
 final defeat 
 of Persia 
 (479 B.C.) 
 
 518. Athe- 
 nian fleet vic- 
 torious in 
 Ionia and 
 the North 
 
 As Mardonius, at the end of the winter rains, led his army 
 again into Attica, the unhappy Athenians were obliged to flee 
 as before, this time chiefly to Salamis. Sparta, always reluctant 
 and slow when the crisis demanded quick and vigorous action, 
 was finally induced to put her army into the field. When Mar- 
 donius in Attica saw the Spartan king Pausanias advancing 
 through the Corinthian Isthmus and threatening his rear, he 
 withdrew northward, having for the second time laid waste 
 Attica far and wide. With the united armies of Sparta, Athens, 
 and other allies behind him, Pausanias was able to lead some 
 thirty thousand heavy-armed Greeks of the phalanx, as he fol- 
 lowed Mardonius into Boeotia. 
 
 In several days of preliminary movements which brought the 
 two armies into contact at Platasa, the clever Persian showed 
 his superiority, out-maneuvering Pausanias and even gaining 
 possession of the southern passes behind the Greeks and cap- 
 turing a train of their supply wagons. But when Mardonius led 
 his archers forward at double-quick, and the Persians, kneeling 
 behind their line of shields, rained deadly volleys of arrows into 
 the compact Greek lines, the Hellenes never flinched, although 
 their comrades were falling on every hand. With the gaps closed 
 up, the massive Greek phalanx pushed through the line of 
 Persian shieldsj and, as at Marathon, the spear proved invincible 
 against the bow. In a heroic but hopeless effort to rally his 
 broken lines, Mardonius himself fell. The Persian cavalry 
 covered the rear of the flying Asiatic army and saved it from 
 destruction. 
 
 Not only European Greece, but Ionia too, was saved from 
 Asiatic despotism ; for the Greek triremes, having meantime 
 crossed to the peninsula of Mycale on the north of Miletus, 
 drove out or destroyed the remnants of the Persian fleet. The 
 Athenians now also captured and occupied Sestus on the Euro- 
 pean side of the Hellespont, and thus held the crossing from 
 Asia into Europe closed against further Persian invasion. Thus 
 
The Repulse of Persia 335 
 
 the grandsons of the men who had seen Persia advance to the 
 ^gean had blocked her further progress in the West and thrust 
 her back from Europe. Indeed, no Persian army ever set foot 
 in European Greece again. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 49. What was the leading kingdom of Asia Minor be- 
 yond the fringe of Greek coast cities ? What had happened to these 
 Greek cities in the middle of the sixth century B.C..'' Who was the 
 last king of Lydia? Who crushed the Lydian kingdom? W^hen? 
 What great oriental power thus advanced to the east side of the 
 yEgean.? What do you think of the prospects for Greek resistance? 
 
 What did the Ionian cities of Asia do? What part did Athens 
 take in their revolt ? How did the Persians respond ? When ? Who 
 was their king? Where did they land in Greece? How far is 
 Marathon from Athens? What did the Athenians do? Discuss the 
 numbers of the two armies. Did the Athenians wait for the Persians 
 at Athens? Who was their leader? What position did the Greeks 
 take up, and what advantages were thus gained ? Describe the battle 
 of Marathon. 
 
 Section 50. What great Greek statesman had fought at Mara- 
 thon? What was his policy for the future defense of Athens? De- 
 scribe the plans of Xerxes for the subjection of Greece. What did 
 the Athenians do ? Describe Themistocles' plan of campaign. What 
 first two battles took place? Describe them. What was the next 
 move of the Persian army? Describe the battle of Salamis. 
 
 What did Xerxes do after the battle of Salamis ? What move did 
 Themistocles urge? What was the result of the Greek failure to 
 accept Themistocles' advice? What victory did the Greeks win in 
 Sicily at the same time? What racial conflict do these victories 
 represent ? What happened to Themistocles ? What did the Persian 
 commander now do ? Who was he ? Where did the final battle take 
 place ? Describe it. What final results were obtained by the Greeks 
 at sea ? 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GROWING RIVALRY BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA, 
 AND THE RISE OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 
 
 Section 51. The Beginnings of the Rivalry 
 BETWEEN Athens and Sparta 
 
 519. Athe- 
 nian feeling 
 after Salamis 
 
 520. Spartan 
 soldier- 
 citizens 
 
 As the Athenians returned *to look out over the ashes of 
 what was once Athens, amid which rose the smoke-blackened 
 heights of the naked Acropolis (Fig. 182), they began to realize 
 the greatness of their deliverance and the magnitude of their 
 achievement. With the not too ready help of Sparta, they had 
 met and crushed the hoary power of Asia. They felt themselves 
 masters of the world. The past seemed narrow and limited. 
 A new and greater Athens dawned upon their vision. 
 
 Of all this the Spartans, on the other hand, felt very little. 
 The Spartan citizens were all soldiers and devoted- themselves 
 exclusively to military training. The State maintained public 
 meals, where each soldier-citizen ate with a group of about fif- 
 teen friends, all men, at the same table every day. Each citizen 
 contributed to the support of these meals, and as long as he 
 paid this contribution he retained his citizenship. His lands 
 
 Note. The above headpiece represents a potsherd bearing the name of 
 Themistocles, which is scratched in the surface of this fragment of a pottery jar 
 {ostracon, § 477). It was written there by some citizen of the six thousand who 
 desired and secured his ostracism in 472 B.C., or may have served a similar pur- 
 pose in the earlier but unsuccessful attempt to ostracize him. 
 
 336 
 
The Growing Rivalry between Atheits and Sparta 337 
 
 were cultivated for him by slaves, and his only occupation was 
 military drill and exercise. The State thus became a military 
 machine. 
 
 The number of such Spartan soldier-citizens was quite limited, 521. Spartan 
 sometimes being all together only a few thousand. As distin- citizens as 
 guished from the large non-voting population of the other towns ^ ruling class 
 in the Laconian peninsula, the citizens of Sparta formed a small 
 superior class. Thus their rule of the larger surrounding popu- 
 lation was the tyranny of a limited military class devoted to 
 war and almost without commerce or any interest in the arts 
 and industries. So old-fashioned were they, and. so confident 
 in their own military power, that they would not surround their 
 city with a wall (Fig. 178). Sparta remained a group of strag- 
 gling villages, not deserving the name of city and entirely with- 
 out fine public buildings or great monuments of any kind. 
 Like a large military club or camp, it lived off its own slave- 
 worked lands and from the taxes it squeezed out of its subject 
 towns without allowing them any vote. In case of war the 
 two kings (§ 478) were still the military leaders. 
 
 We can now understand that the stolid Spartans, wearing 522. Con- 
 the fetters of a rigid military organization, and gifted with no spartaand 
 imagination, looked with misgivings upon the larger world ^"thenT^^^^ 
 which was opening to Greek life. Although they desired to 
 lead Greece in military power, they shrank from assuming the 
 responsibilities of expansion. They represented the past and 
 the privileges of the few. Athens represented the future and 
 the rights of the many. Thus Greece fell into two camps as it 
 were: Sparta (Fig. 178), the bulwark of tradition and limited 
 privileges; Athens (Fig. 182), the champion of progress and 
 the sovereign people. Thus the sentiment of union born in 
 the common struggle for liberty, which might have united the 
 Hellenes into one Greek nation, was followed by an unquench- 
 able rivalry between the two leading states of Hellas, which 
 went on for another century and finally cost the Greeks the 
 supremacy of the ancient world. 
 
338 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 178. The Plain where once Sparta stood 
 
 The olive groves now grow where the Spartans once had their houses. 
 The town was not walled until long after the days of Spartan and 
 Greek power were over. From the mountains (nearly 8000 feet high) 
 behind the plain the visitor can see northeastward far beyond Athens, 
 almost to Euboea; 100 miles northward to the mountains on the north 
 of the Corinthian Gulf (see map, p. 264); and 125 miles southward to 
 the island of Crete. This view shows also how Greece is cut up by 
 such mountains 
 
 523. The- Themistocles was now the soul of Athens and her policy of 
 
 the fortlfi- progress and expansion. He determined that Athens should no 
 
 Athens^^ longer follow Sparta. He cleverly hoodwinked the Spartans and, 
 
 in spite of their objections, completed the erection of strong 
 
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 339 
 
 walls around a new and larger Athens. At the same time he 
 fortified the Piraeus, the Athenian port (see map, p. 352, and 
 Fig. 177). When the Spartans, after the repulse of Persia, 
 relinquished the command of the combined Greek fleets, the 
 powerful Athenian fleet, the creation of Themistocles, was 
 master of the ^'Egean. 
 
 Section 52. The Rise of the Athenian Empire 
 AND THE Triumph of Democracy 
 
 As the Greek cities of Asia still feared the vengeance of the 524. Estab- 
 Persian king, it was easy for the Athenians to form a perma- theDeHan 
 nent defensive league with the cities of their Greek kindred in League (478- 
 
 ^ 477 B.C.) 
 
 Asia and the ^gean islands. The wealthier of these cities con- 
 tributed ships, while others paid a sum of money each year into 
 the treasury of the league. Athens was to have command of 
 the combined fleet and collect the money. She placed in charge 
 of the important task of adjusting all contributions of the league 
 and collecting the tribute money a patriotic citizen named Aris- 
 tides, whose friends called him '' the Just " because of his 
 honesty. He had opposed the naval plans of Themistocles and 
 when defeated had been ostracized, but he had later distin- 
 guished himself at Salamis and Platasa. In spite of his former 
 opposition to Themistocles' plans, he now did important service 
 in vigorously aiding to establish the new naval league. The 
 treasure he collected was placed for protection in the temple 
 of Apollo, on the little island of Delos. Hence the federation 
 was known as the Delian League. It was completed within 
 three years after Salamis. The transformation of such a league 
 into an empire, made up of states subject to Athens, could be 
 foreseen as a very easy step (see map II, p. 344). All this was 
 therefore viewed with increasing jealousy and distrust by Sparta, 
 
 Under the leadership of Cimon, the son of Miltiades the 525. Rise 
 hero of Marathon, the fleet of the league now drove the Per- °^ ^'"'°'^ 
 sians entirely out of the region of the Hellespont. Cimon did not 
 
Frieze (alter- 
 nate metopes 
 and triglyphs) 
 
 Cornice 
 Pediment 
 
 Capital 
 
 Channeled 
 shah (with 
 section cut 
 out to save 
 space) 
 
 Base 
 
 Stylobate 
 
 Comparative Diagram of the two Leading Greek Styles of 
 Architecture, the Doric (A and B) and the Ionic (C and D) 
 
 The little Doric building (B) is the treasury of the Athenians at Delphi 
 (Fig. 172), containing their offerings of gratitude to Apollo. On the low 
 base at the left side of the building were placed the trophies from the 
 battle of Marathon. Over them on the walls are carved hymns to Apollo 
 with musical notes attached, the oldest musical notation surviving. The 
 beautiful Ionic building (D) is a restoration of the Temple of Victory on 
 the Athenian Acropolis (Fig. 183, B, and headpiece, p. ^jS). Contrast the 
 slender columns with the sturdier shafts of the Doric style, and it will be, 
 seen that the Ionic order is a more delicate and graceful style. A and C 
 show details of both styles. (After Luckenbach) 
 340 
 
The Growing Rivalry betweeji Athens and Sparta 341 
 
 understand the importance of Athenian supremacy in Greece, 
 but favored a policy of friendship and alliance with Sparta. 
 Hence political conflict arose at Athens over this question. 
 Noble and wealthy and old-fashioned folk favored Cimon and 
 friendship with Sparta, but progressive and modern Athenians 
 followed Themistocles and his anti-Spartan plans. 
 
 Themistocles was unable to win the Assembly ; he was ostra- 526. Fall of 
 cized (headpiece, p. 336), and at length, on false charges of (472^^7 Ibx^.) 
 treason, he was condemned and obliged to flee for his life. 
 The greatest statesman in Athenian history spent the rest of 
 his life in the service of the Persian king, and he never again 
 saw the city he had saved from the Persians and made mistress 
 of an empire. 
 
 In a final battle Cimon crushed the Persian navy in the west 527. Fall 
 (468 B.C.), and returned to Athens covered with glory. In ^"^ ^ 
 response to a request from the Spartans for help in quelling 
 a revolt among their own subjects, Cimon urged the dispatch 
 of troops to Sparta. Herein Cimon overestimated the good 
 feeling of the Spartans toward Athens ; for in spite of the 
 continuance of the revolt, the Spartans after a time curtly 
 demanded the withdrawal of the very Athenian troops they 
 had asked for. Stung by this rebuff, to which Cimon's friendly 
 policy toward Sparta had exposed them, the Athenians voted 
 to ostracize Cimon (461 B.C.). 
 
 The overthrow of Cimon was a victory of the people against 528. Over- 
 the nobles. They followed it up by attacking the Council of coSncnVf"^ 
 Elders, once made up only of nobles (§4^1). It was called theAreopa- 
 the Areopagus and used to meet on a hill of that name by ship of the 
 the market place (Fig. 182, and plan, p. 352). The people now ?ounciUnd 
 passed new laws restricting the power of the Areopagus to the 
 trial of murder cases and the settlement of questions of state 
 religion, thus completely depriving it of all political power. 
 Meantime a more popular council of five hundred members 
 had grown up and gained the power to conduct most of the 
 government business. This it did by dividing itself into ten 
 
 the citizen- 
 
342 Ancient Times 
 
 groups of fifty each, each group serving a little over a month 
 once a year. At the same time the citizen-juries introduced by 
 Solon as a court of appeal (§ 470) were enlarged until they con- 
 tained six thousand jurors divided into smaller juries, usually 
 of five hundred and one each. Such a jury was really a group 
 or court of temporary judges deciding cases brought before 
 them. The poorest citizens could not afford to leave their work 
 to serve on these juries, and so the people passed laws granting 
 pay for jury service. These citizen-courts were at last so power- 
 ful that they formed the final lawmaking body in the State, and, 
 in cooperation with the Assembly, they made the laws. The 
 people were indeed in control. 
 
 529. Office of Furthermore, the right to hold office was greatly extended. 
 to^aH except All citizens were permitted to hold the office of archon except 
 laboring class members of the laboring class entirely without property. With 
 
 one exception there was no longer any election of the higher 
 officers, but they were nov/ all chosen by lot from the whole 
 body of eligible citizens. The result was that the men holding 
 the once influential positions in the State were now mere chance 
 " nobodies " and hence completely without influence. But at 
 the same time the public services now rendered by so large 
 a number of citizens were a means of education and of very 
 profitable experience. Athens was gaining a more intelligent 
 body of citizens than any other ancient state. 
 
 530. Politi- There was one kind of officer whom it was impossible to 
 Slfpossibie choose by lot, and that was the military commander (strategus). 
 to the elective ^j^jg important office remained elective and thus open to men 
 
 strategus ^ 
 
 of ability and influence, into whose hands the direction of 
 affairs naturally fell. There were ten of these generals, one for 
 each of the ten tribes established by Clisthenes (§ 476), and 
 they not only led the army in war but they also managed the 
 war department of the government, had large control of the gov- 
 ernment treasury and of the Empire, including foreign affairs. 
 The leader, or president, of this body of generals was the most 
 powerful man in the State, and his office was elective. It thus 
 
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 343 
 
 Fig. 179. The Pnyx, the Athenian Place of Assembly 
 
 The speakers' platform with its three steps is immediately in the fore- 
 ground. The listening Athenian citizens of the Assembly sat on the 
 ground now sloping away to the left, but at that time probably level. 
 The ground they occupied was inclosed by a semicircular wall, begin- 
 ning at the further end of the straight wall seen here on the right, 
 extending then to the left, and returning to the straight wall again 
 behind our present point of view (see semicircle on plan, p. 352). 
 This was an open-air House of Commons, where, however, the citizen 
 did not send a representative but came and voted himself as he was 
 influenced from this platform by great Athenian leaders, like Themis- 
 tocles, Pericles, or Demosthenes. Note the AcropoHs and the Parthe- 
 non, to which we look eastward from the Pnyx (see plan, p. 352). The 
 Areopagus is just out of range on the left (see Fig. 182) 
 
 became more and more possible for a noble with military train- 
 ing to make himself a strong and influential leader, and if he 
 was a man of persuasive eloquence, to lay out a definite series of 
 plans for the nation, and by his oratory to induce the Assembly 
 of the Athenian citizens on the Pnyx (Fig. 179) to accept them. 
 
344 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 531. The 
 
 leadership 
 of Pericles 
 
 After the fall of Cimon there came forward a handsome and 
 brilliant young Athenian named Pericles, a descendant of one 
 of the old noble families of the line of Clisthenes. He desired 
 to build up the splendid Athenian Empire of which Themis- 
 tocles had dreamed. He put himself at the head of the party 
 of progress and of increased power of the people. He kept 
 their confidence year after year, and thus secured his con- 
 tinued reelection as strategus. The result was that he became 
 the actual head of the State in power, or, as we might say, 
 he was the undisputed political '' boss " of Athens from about 
 460 B.C. until his untimely death over thirty years later. 
 
 532. Com- 
 mercial su- 
 premacy of 
 the Greeks 
 after the 
 Persian 
 wars ; rise 
 of Piraeus, 
 the new port 
 of Athens 
 
 Section 53. Commercial Development and the Open- 
 ing OF THE Struggle between Athens and Sparta 
 
 A period of commercial prosperity followed the Persian wars, 
 which gave the Greeks a leadership in trade like that of the Eng- 
 lish before the Great War of 19 14. Corinth and the little island 
 of yEgina at the front door of Attica, and visible from Athens 
 (Fig. 177), rapidly became the most flourishing trading cities 
 in Greece. They were at once followed, however, by the little 
 harbor town of Piraeus (Fig. 177), built by the foresight of 
 Themistocles as the port of Athens. Along its busy docks 
 were moored Greek ships from all over the Mediterranean 
 world, for the defeat of the Phoenicians in East and West had 
 broken up their merchant fleets and thrown much of their 
 trade into the hands of the Greeks. Here many a Greek ship 
 from the Black Sea, laden with grain or fish, moored along- 
 side the grain ships of Egypt and the mixed cargoes from 
 Syracuse. For Attica was no longer producing food enough 
 for her own need, and it was necessary to import it. The 
 docks were piled high with goods from the Athenian factories, 
 and long lines of perspiring porters were loading them into 
 ships bound for all the harbors of the Mediterranean. Scores 
 of battleships stretched far along the shores, and the busy 
 
ii 
 
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 345 
 
 shipyards and dry docks were filled with multitudes of workmen 
 and noisy with the sound of many hammers. 
 
 In spite of much progress in navigation, we must not think 533. Limita- 
 
 1 A 1 tions of navi- 
 
 of these ancient ships of Greece as very large. A merchant gation and 
 vessel carrying from two hundred and fifty to three hundred shipbuilding 
 tons was considered large in fifth-century Greece (contrast 
 Fig. 61). Moreover, the Greek ships still clung timidly to 
 the shore, and they rarely ventured to sea in the stormy winter 
 season.' They had no compass or charts, there were no light- 
 houses, and they were often plundered by pirates, so that 
 commerce was still carried on at great risks. Moreover, ships 
 did not last as long as with us, because the Greeks had no oil 
 paint and the Egyptian invention of painting with hot wax was 
 probably too expensive. 
 
 On the other hand, the profits gained from sea-borne com- 534- Profits 
 
 1 1 • 1 111 1 from com- 
 
 merce might be very large. A vessel which reached the north merce and 
 
 shores of the Black Sea or the pirate-infested Adriatic might ^" ^^^^ 
 sell out its cargo so profitably as to bring back to the owner 
 double the first cost of the goods, after paying all expenses. 
 Plenty of men were therefore willing to risk their capital in 
 such ventures, and indeed many borrowed the money to do 
 so. Interest was lower than in Solon's day, and money could 
 be borrowed at 10 and 12 per cent. The returns from manu- 
 facturing industry were also high, even reaching 30 per cent. 
 
 To measure this increased prosperity of Athens we must 535. Wealth 
 not apply the scale of modern business. A fortune of ten 
 thousand dollars was looked upon as considerable, while double 
 that amount was accounted great wealth. The day laborer's 
 wages were from six to ten cents a day, while the skilled 
 craftsman received as much as twenty cents a day. Greek 
 soldiers were ready to furnish their own arms and enter the 
 ranks of any foreign king at five dollars a month. Men of 
 intellect, like an architect, received only from twenty to thirty 
 cents a day, while the tuition for a course in rhetoric lasting 
 several years cost the student from sixty to eighty dollars. 
 
346 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 536. In- For nearly thirty years after the Persian wars it was easy to 
 po^pufajfon obtain Athenian citizenship. Some thirty thousand strangers 
 ancf Attica therefore soon settled in Athens to share in its prosperity. Its 
 
 population rose to above a hundred thousand in the days of 
 Pericles (cf. § 461), while the inhabitants of Attica numbered 
 over two hundred thousand. This included probably eighty 
 thousand slaves, still the cheapest form of labor obtainable. 
 
 537. Money \ As a result of increased business the volume of money in 
 prices Athens had also greatly increased. The silver tribute (§ 524) 
 
 and the Attic silver mines furnished metal for additional coin- 
 age. In all the markets of the Mediterranean, Athenian silver 
 money was the leading coin, and many Persian darics of gold 
 (worth about five dollars) also came in. Just as with us, as 
 money became more plentiful its value decreased, and a given 
 sum would not buy as much as formerly. That is to say, prices 
 went up. A measure of barley cost twice as much, and a sheep 
 five times as much, as in Solon's day (§ 459). Nevertheless 
 living would be called very cheap from our point of view. Even 
 the well-to-do citizen did not spend over ten or twelve cents 
 a day in food for his family, and a man of wealth was very 
 extravagant if he owned furniture to the amount of two 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 Money had now become very necessary in carrying on the 
 government. Formerly service to the State had been with- 
 out pay. This was quite possible in a nation of peasants 
 and shepherds ; but with the incoming of coined money and 
 steady employment in factories, it was no longer possible for a 
 private citizen to give his time to the State for nothing. Many 
 a citizen of Athens bought the bread his family needed for 
 the day with the money he had earned the day before. The 
 daily salaries to thousands of jurymen (§ 528) and to the mem- 
 bers of the Council of Five Hundred, who were also paid, 
 amounted to not less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. 
 Large sums, even sums that would be large to-day, were also 
 required for building the sumptuous marble temples now 
 
 538. Cost of 
 government : 
 salaries, 
 temples, 
 and religious 
 services 
 
The Growing Rivalry betwee^i Athens and Sparta 347 
 
 frequently dedicated to the gods ; while the offerings, feasts, and 
 celebrations at these temples also consumed great sums. 
 
 Greater than all the other expenses of the State, however, 539. Cost of 
 was the cost of war. The cost of arming citizens who could war^*^""^^" ' 
 not undertake this expense themselves and of feeding the 
 army in the field, of course, fell upon the State. The war fleet . 
 was, however, the heaviest of all such expenses. Besides the 
 first cost of building and equipping the batdeships, there was 
 always the further expense of maintaining them. A trireme, 
 manned with about two hundred sailors and oarsmen, receiving 
 daily half a drachma (nearly ten cents) per man, cost nearly six 
 hundred dollars per month. A fleet of two hundred triremes 
 therefore required nearly a hundred and twenty thousand 
 dollars a month for wages. 
 
 The problem of securing the funds for maintaining and de- 540. income 
 fending a nation had become a grave one. As for Athens, mines, taxesj 
 the Attic silver mines, however helpful, were far from furnish- ^uties"^ 
 ing enough to support the government. The bulk of the State 
 funds had to be raised by taxadon. The triumphant democracy 
 disliked periodic taxes, and they assessed taxes only when the 
 treasury was very low, especially in war time. Besides taxes 
 the treasury received a good income from the customs duty on 
 all goods imported or exported through Piraeus. The Athenians 
 kept these duties low, assessing only one per cent of the value 
 of the goods until forced by war expenses to raise them. We 
 have already mentioned the contributions (tribute) of the sub- 
 ject states of the empire (§ 524). The total income of the 
 Athenian State hardly reached three quarters of a million dollars 
 in the days of Pericles. 
 
 Small as this seems to us of modern times, no other Greek 541. Sparta 
 
 . , . ... 1 . T financially 
 
 State could raise anythmg like such an annual income. J^east inferior to 
 of all could Sparta hope to rival such resources. Without the ^^^'^^^ 
 enterprise to enter the new world of commercial competition, 
 Sparta clung to her old ways. She still issued only her ancient 
 iron money and had no silver coins. To be sure, the standing 
 
348 
 
 Anciefit Times 
 
 542. New 
 
 defenses of 
 Athens ; 
 Long Walls 
 
 543. First 
 war between 
 Athens and 
 Sparta (459- 
 446 B.C.) 
 
 544. War 
 
 with Persia ; 
 the Egyptian 
 expedition 
 
 army of Sparta was always ready without expense to the gov- 
 ernment (§ 520); but when she led forth the combined armies 
 of the Peloponnesian League, she could not bear the expense 
 longer than a few weeks. The still greater expense of a large 
 war fleet was quite impossible either for Sparta or her League. 
 In so far as war was a matter of money, the commercial 
 growth of Athens was giving her a constantly growing supe- 
 riority over all other Greek states. We can understand then 
 with what jealousy and fear Sparta viewed Athenian prosperity. 
 
 Pericles had won favor with the people by favoring a policy 
 of hostility to Sparta (§ 525). Foreseeing' the coming struggle 
 with Sparta, Pericles greatly strengthened the defenses of 
 Athens by inducing the people to connect the fortifications of 
 the city with those of the Piraeus harbor by two Long Walls, 
 thus forming a road completely walled in, connecting Athens 
 and her harbor (plan, p. 352). 
 
 Not long after Pericles gained the leadership of the people, 
 the inevitable war with Sparta broke out. It lasted nearly 
 fifteen years, with varying fortunes on both sides. The Athe- 
 nian merchants resented the keen commercial rivalry of ^gina, 
 planted as the flourishing island was at the very front door of 
 Attica (see map, p. 352). They finally captured the island 
 after a long siege. Pericles likewise employed the Athenian 
 navy in blockading for years the merchant fleets of the other 
 great rival of Athens and friend of Sparta, Corinth (Fig. 163), 
 and thus brought financial ruin on its merchants. 
 
 At the same time Athens dispatched a fleet of two hun- 
 dred ships to assist Egypt, which had revolted against Persia. 
 The Athenians were thus fighting both Sparta and Persia 
 for years. The entire Athenian fleet in Egypt was lost. This 
 loss so weakened the Athenian navy that the treasury of the 
 Delian League was no longer safe in the little island of Delos, 
 against a possible sea raid by the Persians. Pericles therefore 
 shifted the treasury from Delos to Athens, an act which made 
 the city more than ever the capital of an Athenian empire. 
 
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 349 
 
 When peace was concluded (445 B.C.) all that Athens was 545. Peace 
 
 arta 
 rsia 
 
 1 
 
 able to retain was the island of ^Egina, though at the same and Persia 
 time she gained control of the large island of Euboea. It was 
 agreed that the peace should continue for thirty years. Thus 
 ended what is often called the First Peloponnesian War with 
 the complete exhaustion of Athens as well as of her enemies in 
 the Peloponnesus. Pericles had not shown himself a great 
 naval or military commander in this war. The Athenians had 
 also arranged a peace with Persia, over forty years after Mara- 
 thon. But the rivalry between Athens and Sparta for the 
 leadership of the Greeks was still unsettled. The struggle 
 was to be continued in another long and weary Peloponnesian 
 War. Before we proceed with the story of this fatal struggle 
 we must glance briefly at the new and glorious Athens now 
 growing up under the leadership of Pericles. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 51. Describe the Spartan State. What can you say of 
 the reasons for rivalry between Athens and Sparta? What did 
 Themistocles now do? 
 
 Section 52. What combination did Athens now make with the 
 eastern Greek cities ? What part did Aristides play ? To what might 
 the Delian League easily lead? What policy did Cimon favor? 
 What was Themistocles' attitude toward Cimon's policy? What 
 then happened to Themistocles? to Cimon? What new victories 
 did the people gain? What new council arose, and how did it 
 govern? How could a statesman still hold the leadership? Who 
 now became the leader of the people's party ? 
 
 Section 53. What happened to Greek business after the Per- 
 sian War ? Discuss navigation ; business profits. What can you say 
 of the scale of values as compared with to-day ? What happened to 
 the population of Athens? How were prices affected? What were 
 the chief expenses of the Athenian State ? its chief sources of in- 
 come ? Could other states raise as much ? Sketch the First Pelopon- 
 nesian War. 
 
«iiri^^ 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ATHENS IN THE AGE OF PERICLES 
 
 Section 54. Society, the Home, Education and 
 Training of Young Citizens 
 
 546. Athe- 
 nian society : 
 the wealthy 
 classes 
 
 As we have seen, the population of Attica was made up of 
 citizens, foreigners, and slaves. In a mixed crowd there would 
 usually be among every ten people about four slaves, one or 
 two foreigners, and the rest free Athenians (see § 536). A large 
 group of wealthy citizens lived at Athens upon the income from 
 their lands. They continued to be the aristocracy of the nation, 
 for land was still the most respectable form of wealth. The 
 wealthy manufacturer hastened to buy land and join the landed 
 aristocracy. The social position of his family might thus become 
 an influential one, but it could not compare with that of a noble. 
 
 Note. The above headpiece gives us a glimpse into the house of a bride the 
 day after the wedding. At the right, leaning against a couch, is the bride. Before 
 her are two young friends, one sitting, the other standing, both playing with a 
 tame bird. Another friend approaches carrying a tall and beautiful painted vase 
 as a wedding gift. At the left a visitor arranges flowers in two painted vases, 
 while another lady, adjusting her garment, is looking on. The walls are hung 
 with festive wreaths. The furniture of such a house was usually of wood, but 
 if the owner's wealth permitted, it was adorned with ivory, silver, and gold. It 
 consisted chiefly of beds, like the couch above, chairs (see also Fig. 170), foot- 
 stools (as at foot of couch above), small individual tables, and clothing chests 
 which took the place of closets. 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 35 1 
 
 On the other hand, anyone who actually performed manual 547. Athe- 
 labor was looked down upon as without social station. Athens the"poor'er^' 
 was a great beehive of skilled craftsmen and small shopkeepers, ^^'^sses 
 These classes were beginning to organize into guilds or unions 
 of masons, carpenters, potters, jewelers, and many others- — 
 organizations somewhat like our labor unions. Below them was 
 an army of unskilled laborers, free men, but little better than 
 slaves, like the army of porters who swarmed along the docks 
 at Piraeus. All these classes contained many citizens. Never- 
 theless the majority of the Athenian citizens were still the 
 farmers and peasants throughout Attica, although the Persian 
 devastation (§§ 512, 516) had seriously reduced the amount of 
 land still cultivated. 
 
 The hasty rebuilding of Athens after the Persians had burned 548. Athe- 
 it did not produce any noticeable changes in the houses, nor 
 were there any of great size or splendor. Since the appearance 
 of the first European houses (§ 26) many thousand years had 
 passed, but there were still no beautiful houses anywhere in 
 Europe, such as we found on the Nile (Fig. 51). The one- 
 story front of even a wealthy man's house was simply a blank 
 wall, usually of sun-dried brick, rarely of broken stone masonry. 
 Often without any windows, it showed no other opening than 
 the door, but a house of two stories might have a small window 
 or two in the upper story. The door led into a court open to 
 the sky and surrounded by a porch with columns. Here in the 
 mild climate of Greece the family could spend much of their 
 time as in a sitting room. In the middle stood an altar of the 
 household Zeus, the protector of the family ; while around the 
 court opened a number of doors leading to a living room, sleep- 
 ing rooms, dining room, storerooms, and also a tiny kitchen. 
 
 This Greek house lacked all conveniences. There was no 549. Lack of 
 
 ,. ^ r 11-1 r 1 1- jj convenicnces 
 
 chimney, and the smoke from the kitchen nre, though mtended in the Athe- 
 to drift up through a hole in the roof, choked the room or "^^^ house 
 floated out the door. In winter gusty drafts filled the house, 
 for many doorways were without doors, and glass in the form 
 
352 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 550. Deco- 
 ration and 
 equipment 
 
 551. Streets 
 of Athens 
 
 of flat panes for the windows was still unknown. In the mild 
 Greek climate, however, a pan of burning charcoal, called a 
 brazier, furnished enough heat to temper the chilly air of a 
 room. Lacking windows, the ground-floor rooms depended en- 
 tirely on the doors opening on the court for light. At night 
 the dim light of an olive-oil lamp was all that was available. 
 There was no plumbing or piping of any kind in the house, 
 no drainage, and consequently no sanitary arrangements. The 
 water supply was brought in jars by slaves from the nearest 
 well or flowing spring. 
 
 The floors were simply of dirt, with a surface of pebbles 
 tramped and beaten hard. There was no oil paint, and a plain 
 water-color wash, such as we call calcimine, might be used on 
 the inside, but if used on the outside would soon wash off, 
 exposing the mud brick. The simplicity and bareness of the 
 house itself were in noticeable contrast with the beautiful furni- 
 ture which the Greek craftsmen were now producing (headpiece, 
 p, 350 ; see also the beautiful chairs in Fig. 170). There were 
 many metal utensils, among which the ladies' hand mirrors of 
 polished bronze were common ; and most numerous of all were 
 lovely painted jars, vases, and dishes, along with less preten- 
 tious pottery forming the household " crockery." For it will 
 be remembered that Greek pottery was the most beautiful ever 
 produced by ancient man (Fig. 164, and headpiece, p. 350). 
 
 The view from the Acropolis over the sea of low flat roofs 
 disclosed not a single chimney, but revealed a much larger city 
 than formerly. Though not laid out in blocks, the city was 
 about ten modem city blocks wide and several more in length. 
 The streets were merely lanes or alleys, narrow and crooked, 
 winding between the bare mud-brick walls of the low houses 
 standing wall to wall. There was no pavement, nor any side- 
 walk, and a stroll through the town after a rain meant wading 
 through the mud. All household rubbish and garbage was 
 thrown directly into the street, and there was no system of 
 sewage. When one passed a two-story house he might hear ^ 
 
■*^ t ^ SCAlE OF Y»RPS ~ 
 
 ' ^^ 6 '2t)0'4fiO 660'860 1()00 
 
 \ [ I Athens before the Persian ' 
 
 "^ I I Additions to the city br 
 
 Themistocles 479 B C 
 Addition to the city by 
 Emperor Hadrian 125 A D 
 
 Central Greece and Athens 
 
Athens hi the Age of Pericles 
 
 353 
 
 warning cry, and spring out of the way barely in time to escape 
 being deluged with sweepings or filth thrown from a second- 
 story window. The few wells and fountains fed by city water 
 pipes did not furnish enough 
 water to flush the streets, and 
 there was no system of street 
 cleaning. During the hot sum- 
 mers of the south, therefore, 
 Athens was not a healthful 
 place of residence. 
 
 All Athens lived out of doors. 
 Athenian life was beautifully 
 simple and unpretentious, es- 
 pecially since richly embroidered 
 and colored oriental garments 
 had passed away. Almost all 
 citizens now appeared in the 
 simple white garments which 
 we of modern times have come 
 to associate with the classical 
 Greeks. Gorgeous costume thus 
 disappeared in Greece, as it did 
 among us in the days of our 
 great great-grandfathers. Never- 
 theless, the man of elegant 
 habits gained a practiced hand 
 in draping his costume, and was 
 proud of the gracefulness and 
 the sweeping lines with which 
 he could arrange its folds 
 (Fig. 1 80). 
 
 The women were less in- 
 
 FiG. 180. Statue of tmk 
 Tragic Poet Sophocles 
 
 The great poet stands in thought- 
 ful repose in an attitude of ease, 
 which incidentally reveals the 
 wonderful beauty of a well-draped 
 Greek costume (§ 552). The figure 
 is probably our most beautiful 
 Greek portrait, and as a work 
 of art illustrates the sculpture of 
 the fourth century B.C., almost a 
 century after Pericles 
 
 552. Cos- 
 tume of men 
 
 553. Women 
 
 clined to give up the old finery, for unhappily they had little 
 to think about but clothes and housekeeping (Fig. 170). For 
 Greek citizens still kept their wives in the background, and 
 
354 
 
 Anciejtt Times 
 
 554. Child- 
 hood and 
 school 
 
 555. Sub- 
 jects taught 
 at school 
 
 they were more than ever mere housekeepers. They had no 
 share in the intellectual life of the men, could not appear at 
 their social meetings, where serious conversation was carried 
 on ; nor were they permitted to witness the athletic games at 
 Olympia. Their position was even worse than in the Age of 
 the Tyrants (§ 480), and a poetess like Sappho never appeared 
 again among the later Greeks. 
 
 The usual house had no garden and the children therefore 
 played in the court, running about with toy cart and dog 
 or enjoying a swing at the hands of the nurse. There were 
 no schools for the girls, but when the boy was old enough 
 he was sent to school in charge of an old slave called a 
 " pedagogue " (paidagogos), which really means '' leader of a 
 child." He carried the boy's books and outfit. There were 
 no schools maintained by the state and no schoolhouses. 
 School was conducted in his own house by some poor citizen, 
 who had perhaps lost his means, or by some other poor per- 
 son, perhaps an old soldier or even a foreigner. In any case 
 the teacher was much looked down upon. He received- his 
 pay from the parents ; but there was a board of state officials 
 appointed to look after the schools and to see that nothing 
 improper was taught. 
 
 Without special education for his work, the teacher merely 
 taught the old-time subjects he had learned in his own youth 
 without change (§ 480). Proficiency in music was regarded 
 very seriously by the Greeks, not merely for entertainment but 
 also and chiefly as an influence toward good conduct. Besides 
 learning to read and write as of old (§480 and Fig. 181), the 
 pupil learned by heart many passages from the old poets, and 
 here and there a boy with a good memory could repeat the en- 
 tire Iliad and Odyssey. On the other hand, the boys still 
 escaped all instruction in mathematics, geography, or natural 
 science. This was doubtless a welcome exemption, for the 
 masters were severe, and the Greek boy hated both school 
 and schoolmaster. 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 
 
 355 
 
 / When the Athenian lad reached the age of eighteen years 556. Attain- 
 aiM left school, he was received as a citizen^ providing that StSen^ship 
 both his parents were of Athenian citizenship, ^he oath which 
 
 Fig. 181. An Athenian School in the Age of Pericles 
 
 These scenes are painted around the center of a shallow bowl, hence 
 their pecuHar shape. In A we see at the left a music teacher seated at 
 his lyre, giving a lesson to the lad seated before him. In the middle sits 
 a teacher of reading and literature, holding an open roll (Fig. 223) from 
 which the boy standing before him is learning a poem. Behind the 
 boy sits a slave (pedagogue) (§ 554) who brought him to school and 
 carried his books. In B we have at the left a singing lesson, aided by 
 the flute to fix the tones. In the middle the master sits correcting an 
 exercise handed him by the boy standing before him, while behind the 
 boy sits the slave (pedagogue) as before 
 
 he took was a solemn reminder of the obligations he now 
 assumed. It had been composed by Solon, and it called upon 
 the youth " never to disgrace his sacred arms ; never to forsake 
 
356 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 557. Incom- 
 ing citizens' 
 military 
 service 
 
 558. Athletic 
 grounds : 
 Academy and 
 Lyceum 
 
 559. The ath- 
 letic events of 
 the Greeks 
 
 his comrade in the ranks, but to fight for the sacred temples 
 and the common welfare, whether alone or with others ; to 
 leave his country not in a worse, but in a better state than he 
 found it ; to obey the magistrates and the laws and to defend 
 them against attack ; finally to hold in honor the religion of 
 his country." 
 
 The youth then spent a year in garrison duty at the harbor 
 of Piraeus, where he was put through military drill. Then at 
 nineteen the young recruits received spear and shield, given to 
 each by the State. Thereupon they marched to the theater and 
 entered the orchestra circle, where they were presented to the 
 citizens of Athens assembled in the theater before the play. 
 Another year of garrison service on the frontier of Attic^ 
 usually completed the young man's military service, although 
 some of the recruits, whose means permitted, joined the small 
 body of select Athenian cavalry. 
 
 On completion of his military service, if the wealth and 
 station of his family permitted, the Athenian youth was more 
 than ever devoted to the new athletic fields in the beautiful 
 open country outside the city walls. On the north of Athens, 
 outside the Dipylon Gate, was the field known as the Academy. 
 It had been adorned by Cimon, who gave great attention to 
 the olive groves, and, with its shady walks and seats for loungers, 
 it became a place where the Athenians loved to spend their idle 
 hours. On the east of the city there was another similar athletic 
 ground known as the Lyceum. The later custom of holding 
 courses of instructive lectures in these places (§ 759) finally 
 resulted in giving to the words '' academy " and " lyceum " the 
 associations which they now possess for us. 
 
 The chief events were boxing, wrestling, running, jump- 
 ing, casting the javelin, and throwing the disk. Omitting 
 the boxiiig, the remaining events formed a fivefold match 
 called the pentathlon, which it was a great honor to win at 
 Olympia. The earliest contest established at Olympia seems 
 to have been a two-hundred-yard dash, which the Greeks 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 357 
 
 called a stadion, that is, six hundred Greek feet. Many other 
 contests were added to this, and in the age of Pericles, box- 
 ing, or boxing and wrestling combined, the pentathlon, chariot i 
 racing, and horseback races made up a program in which all 
 Greek youths were anxious to gain distinction (§ 479). A 
 generation later some of the philosophers severely criticized 
 the Greeks for giving far too much of their time and attention 
 to athletic pursuits. 
 
 But other pastimes less worthy were common. An hour or 560. Social 
 two of gossip with his friends in the market place often preceded diversions 
 the Greek youth's daily visit to the athletic grounds. The after- 
 noon might be passed in dawdling about in the barber shop 
 or dropping in at some drinking resort to shake dice or venture 
 a few drachmas in other games of chance. As the shadows 
 lengthened in the market place he frequently joined a company 
 of young men at dinner at the house of a friend. Often followed 
 by heavy drinking of wine and much singing with the lyre, such 
 a dinner might break up in a drunken carouse leading to harum- 
 scarum escapades upon the streets, that in our time would cause 
 the arrest of the company for disorderly conduct. 
 
 Section 55. Higher Education, Science, and the 
 Training gained by State Service 
 
 On the other hand, there were serious-minded men, to whom 561. Coming 
 such dinners meant delightful conversation with their com- sophists 
 panions on art, literature, music, or personal conduct. Such 
 life among the Athenians had now been quickened by the 
 appearance of more modern private teachers called Sophists, 
 a class of new and clever-witted lecturers who wandered from 
 city to city. Many a bright youth who had finished his music, 
 reading, and writing at the old-fashioned private school (§ 554) 
 annoyed his father by insisting that such schooling was not 
 enough and by demanding money to pay for a course of 
 lectures delivered by one of these new teachers. 
 
358 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 562. Higher 
 education 
 offered by 
 the Sophists 
 
 563. The 
 
 intellectual 
 revolution ; 
 chasm be- 
 tween young 
 and old 
 
 For the first time a higher education was thus open to young 
 men who had hitherto thought of little more than a victory in 
 the Olympic games or a fine appearance when parading with 
 the crack cavalry of Athens. The appearance of these new 
 teachers therefore marked a new age in the history of the 
 Greeks, but especially in that of Athens. In the first place, 
 the Sophists recognized the importance of effective public 
 speaking in addressing the large citizen juries (§ 528) or in 
 speaking before the Assembly of the people. The Sophists 
 therefore taught rhetoric and oratory with great success, and 
 many a father who had no gift of speech had the pleasure of 
 seeing his son a practiced public speaker. It was through the 
 teaching of the Sophists also that the first successful writing 
 of Greek prose began. At the same time they really founded 
 the study of language, which was yet to become grammar 
 (§ 753). They also taught mathematics and astronomy, and 
 the young men of Athens for the first time began to learn a 
 little natural science. Thus the truths which Greek philosophers 
 had begun to observe in the days of Thales (§§ 492-493) were, 
 after a century and a half, beginning to spread among the 
 people. 
 
 In these new ideas the fathers were unable to follow their 
 sons. When a father of that day found in the hands of his son 
 a book by one of the great Sophists, which began with a state- 
 ment doubting the existence of the gods, the new teachings 
 seemed impious. The old-fashioned citizen could at least vote 
 for the banishment of such impious teachers and the burning 
 of their books, although he heard that they were read aloud in 
 the houses of the greatest men of Athens. Indeed, some of the 
 leading Sophists were friends of Pericles, who stepped in and 
 tried to help them when they were prosecuted for their teach- 
 ings. The revolution which had taken place in the mind of 
 Thales (§ 495) was now taking place in the minds of ever- 
 increasing numbers of Greeks, and the situation was yet to 
 grow decidedly worse in the opinion of old-fashioned folk. 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 359 
 
 In spite of the spread of knowledge due to the Sophists, the 564. Lack 
 average Athenian's acquaintance with science was still very knowle^dge 
 limited. This gave him s^reat trouble in the measurement of of science 
 
 c» c shown in time 
 
 time. He still called the middle of the forenoon the " time of measurement 
 full market," and the Egyptian shadow clock in the market 
 place had not yet led him to speak of an hour of the day by 
 number^ as the Egyptians had been doing for a thousand years. 
 When it was necessary to limit the length of a citizen's speech 
 before the law-court, it was done by allowing him to speak as 
 long as it took a given measure of water to run out of a jar 
 with a small hole in it. The Greeks still used the moon-months, 
 and they were accustomed to insert an extra month every third, 
 fifth, and eighth year (§ 150). To be sure, they had often seen 
 on the Pnyx, where the Assembly met (Fig. 179), a strange- 
 looking tablet bearing a new calendar, set up by a builder and 
 engineer named Meton. This man had computed the length of 
 the year with only half an hour's error. He had then devised 
 his new calendar with a year still made up of moon-months, but 
 so cleverly arranged that the last day of the last moon-month in 
 every nineteenth year would also be the last day of the year as 
 measured by the sun. But all this was quite beyond the average 
 citizen's puzzled mind. The archons too shook their heads at 
 it and would have nothing to do with it. The old inconvenient, 
 inaccurate moon-month calendar, with three thirteen-month 
 years in every eight years, was quite good enough for them 
 and continued in use. 
 
 Individual scientists continued to make important discoveries. 565. Prog- 
 One of them now taught that the sun was a glowing mass of [ronomy^and 
 stone '■ larger than the Peloponnesus." He maintained also geography 
 that the moon received its light from the sun, that it had 
 mountains and valleys like the earth, and that it was inhabited 
 by living creatures. Travel was difficult, for there were no 
 passenger ships. Except rough carts or wagons, there were 
 no conveyances by land. The roads were bad, and the 
 traveler went on foot or rode a horse. Nevertheless, Greeks 
 
36o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 i't 
 
 with means were now beginning to travel more frequently. 
 This, however, was for information ; travel for pleasure was 
 still a century and a half in the future. From long journeys 
 in Egypt, and other Eastern countries, Herodotus returned with 
 much information regarding these lands. His map (p. 360) 
 showed that the Red Sea connected with the Indian Ocean, 
 a fact unknown to his predecessor Hecataeus (see map, p. 319). 
 
 Map of the World according to Herodotus 
 
 566. Prog- 
 ress in 
 medicine 
 
 The scientists were still much puzzled by the cold of the north 
 and the warmth of the south, a curious difference which they 
 could not yet explain. 
 
 Although without the microscope or the assistance of chemis- 
 try, medicine nevertheless made progress. In the first place, the 
 Greek physicians rejected the older belief that disease wasi 
 caused by evil demons, and endeavored to find the natural 
 causes of the ailment. To do this they sought to understand^ 
 the organs of the body. They had already discovered that the^ 
 brain was the organ of thought, but the arterial system, thej 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 361 
 
 circulation of tlie blood, and the nervous system were still en- 
 tirely unknown. Without a knowledge of the circulation of the 
 blood, surgery was unable to attempt amputation, but other- 
 wise it made much progress. The greatest physician of the 
 time was Hippocrates, and he became the founder of scientific 
 medicine. The fame of Greek medicine was such that the 
 Persian king called a Greek physician to his court. 
 
 Just at the close of Pericles' life, in the midst of national 567. Prog- 
 calamities, the historian Herodotus, who had long been at work history 
 on his histoiy, finally published his great work. It was a history Herodotus 
 of the world so told that the glorious leadership of Athens 
 would be clear to all Greeks and would show them that to her 
 the Hellenes owed their deliverance from Persia. Throughout 
 Greece it created a deep impression, and so tremendous was its 
 effect in Athens that, in spite of the financial drain of war, the 
 Athenians voted Herodotus a reward of ten talents, some 
 twelve thousand dollars. In this earliest history of the world 
 which has come down to us, Herodotus traced the course of 
 events as he believed them to be directed by the will of the 
 gods, and as prophesied in their divine oracles. There was 
 little or no effort to explain historical events as the result of 
 natural processes. 
 
 Besides the instruction received from the Sophists by many 568. Edu- 
 young men, their constant share in public affairs was giving discipline 
 them an experience which greatly assisted in producing an in- Itete ser^ce 
 telligent body of citizens. In the Council of Five Hundred, citi- 
 zens learned to carry on the daily business of the government. 
 On some days also as many as six thousand citizens might be 
 serving as jurors (§ 528). This service alone meant that one 
 citizen in five was engaged in duties which sharpened his wits 
 and gave him some training in legal and business affairs. At 
 the same time such duties kept constantly in the citizen's mind 
 his obligations toward the State and community. 
 
 This led many citizens to surprisingly generous contributions. 
 It was not uncommon for a citizen to undertake the entire 
 
362 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 569. Volun- 
 tary contri- 
 butions by 
 citizens 
 
 570. 
 feast 
 
 State 
 t easts 
 
 equipment of a warship except the hull and spars, though this 
 service may have been compulsory. i\t national festivals a 
 v^ealthy man would sometimes furnish a costly dinner for all the 
 members of his " tribe." The choruses for public performances, 
 especially at the theater, were organized by private citizens, who 
 paid for their training and for their costumes at great expense 
 (Fig. 190). We know of one citizen who spent in the voluntary 
 support of feasts and choruses in nine years no less than four- 
 teen thousand dollars, a considerable fortune in those days. 
 
 Public festivals maintained by the State also played an im- 
 portant part in the lives of all Athenians. Every spring at the 
 ancient Feast of Dionysus (§ 483) the greatest play-writers each 
 submitted three tragedies and a comedy to be played in the 
 theater for a prize given by the State. All Athens streamed to 
 the theater to see them. Many other State festivals, celebrated 
 with music and gayety, filled the year with holidays so numerous 
 that they fell every six or seven days. The great State feast, 
 called the Paftathencea , occurred every four years. A brilliant 
 procession made up of the smart young Athenian cavalry, 
 groups of dignified government officials, priests and sacrificial 
 animals, marched with music and rejoicing across the market 
 place, carrying a beautiful new robe embroidered by the women 
 of Athens for the goddess Athena. The procession marched to 
 the Acropolis, where the robe was delivered to the goddess 
 amid splendid sacrifices and impressive ceremonies. Contests 
 in music and in athletic games, war dances and a regatta in 
 the channel off Salamis, served to furnish entertainment for the 
 multitude which flocked to Athens for the great feast. 
 
 571. The 
 
 higher life 
 of imperial 
 Athens ; the 
 glorified 
 State 
 
 Section 56. Art and Literature | 
 
 Although the first fifteen years of the leadership of Pericles I 
 were burdened with the Spartan and Persian wars, the higher j 
 life of Athens continued to unfold. Under influences like those 
 we have been discussing, a new vision of the glory of the State. 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 363 
 
 discerned nowhere else in the world before this age, caught the 
 imagination of poet and painter, of sculptor and architect ; and 
 not of these alone, but also of the humblest artisan and trades- 
 man, as all classes alike took part in the common life of the 
 community. Music, the drama, art, and architecture were pro- 
 foundly inspired by this new and exalted vision of the State, and 
 the citizen found great works of art so inspired thrust into the 
 foreground of his life. 
 
 We can still follow the Athenian citizen and note a few of 572. Painting 
 the noble monuments that met his eye as he went about the 
 new Athens which Pericles was creating. When he wandered 
 into the market place and stood chatting -with his friends under 
 the shade of the plane trees, he found at several points colon- 
 naded porches looking out upon the market. One of these, ! 
 which had been presented to the city by Cimon's family, was 
 called the " Painted Porch " ; for the wall behind the columns 
 bore paintings by Polygnotus, an artist from one of the is- 
 land possessions of Athens, a gift of the painter to the Athe- 
 nians, depicting their glorious victory at Marathon. Here in 
 splendid panorama was a vision of the heroic devotion of the 
 fathers. In the thick of the fray the citizen might pick out the 
 figure of Themistocles, of Miltiades, of Callimachus, who fell 
 in the battle, of ^Eschylus the great tragic poet. He could see 
 the host of the fleeing Persians and perhaps hear some old 
 man tell how the brother of ^schylus seized and tried to stop 
 3ne of the Persian boats drawn up on the beach, and how a 
 desperate Persian raised his ax and slashed off the hand of the 
 Drave Greek. Perhaps among the group of eager listeners he 
 noticed one questioning the veteran carefully and making full 
 lotes of all that he could learn from the graybeard. The ques- 
 :ioner was Herodotus, collecting from survivors the tale of the 
 Persian wars for his great history (§ 567). 
 
 Behind the citizen rose a low hill, known as " Market Hill," 573. Lack of 
 iround which were grouped plain, bare government buildings. for^govern°^^ 
 Here were the assembly rooms of the Areopagus (§ 528) and ment offices 
 
,J5- 
 
 .^ 
 
 ff: 
 
 
 
 '"Si 
 
 "'i.iii : ^1 
 
 364 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 365 
 
 the Council of Five Hundred. The Council's Committee of 
 Fifty (§ 528), carrying on the current business of the govern- 
 ment, also had its offices here. The citizen recalled how, as a 
 member of this Council, he had lived here for over a month 
 while serving on that committee and had taken his nieals in 
 the building before him, at the expense of the State, along 
 with the Athenian victors in the Olympic games and other 
 deserving citizens who were thus pensioned by the govern- 
 ment. In spite of the growing sentiment for the gioiy of the 
 State, these plain buildings, like the Athenian houses, were all 
 built of sun-dried mud brick or, at most, of rough rubble. The 
 idea of great and beautiful buildings for the offices of the 
 government was still unknown in the Mediterranean world, 
 and no such building yet existed in Europe. 
 
 The sentiment toward the State was so mingled with rever- 574. The 
 ence for the gods who protected the State that patriotism buildings 
 was itself a deeply religious feeling. Hence the great public ^"^^ temples 
 buildings of Greece were temples and not quarters for the 
 offices of the government. As the citizen turned from the 
 Painted Porch, therefore, he might observe crossing the market 
 
 * In this view we stand inside the wall of Themistocles, near the 
 Dipylon Gate in the Potters' Quarter (see plan, p. 352). In the fore- 
 ground is the temple of Theseus, the legendary unifier of Attica, whom 
 all Athenians honored as a god and to whom this temple was long 
 supposed (perhaps wrongly) to have been erected. It is built of Pen- 
 telic marble and was finished a few years after the death of Pericles; 
 but now, after twenty-three hundred years or more, it is still the best 
 preserved of all ancient Greek buildings. Above the houses, at the ex- 
 treme right, may be seen one corner of the hill called the Areopagus 
 (see plan, p. 352), often called Mars' Hill. It was probably here that the 
 apostle Paul (§ 1068) preached in Athens (see Acts xvii). The buildings 
 we see on the Acropolis are all ruins of the structures erected after the 
 place had been laid waste by the Persians (§ 512). The Parthenon (§ 576), 
 in the middle of the hill (see Fig. 183), shows the gaping hole caused 
 by the explosion of a Turkish powder magazine ignited by a Venetian 
 shell in 1687, when the entire central portion of the building was blown 
 out. The space between the temple of Theseus, the Areopagus, and 
 the Acropolis was largely occupied by the market place of Athens 
 (§ 572, and plan, p. 352). 
 
366 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 575. Plans 
 ■of Pericles 
 for the resto- 
 ration of the 
 Acropolis 
 
 576. The 
 
 entrance to 
 the Acropolis 
 and the 
 Parthenon 
 
 many a creaking wagon, heavily loaded with white blocks 
 of marble for a new and still unfinished temple of Theseus 
 (Fig. .182), the hero-god, who, as the Athenians thought, had 
 once united Attica into a single nation. 
 
 Above him towers the height of the Acropolis, about one 
 thousand feet in length, two of our city blocks (Figs. 182 and 
 183). There, on its summit, had always been the dwelling 
 place of Athena, whose arm was ever stretched out in protec- 
 tion over her beloved Athens. But for long years after the re- 
 pulse of the Persians, the Acropolis rose smoke-blackened over 
 the rebuilt houses of the city, and no temple of Athena ap- 
 peared to replace the old building of Pisistratus, which the 
 Persians had burned. Now at last Pericles has undertaken the 
 restoration of the ancient shrines on a scale of magnificence 
 and beauty before unknown anywhere in the Greek world. His 
 sumptuous plans have demanded an expense of about two 
 and a quarter millions of dollars, a sum far exceeding any 
 such public outlay ever heard of among the Greeks. As he 
 passes the Market Hill, where the Areopagus meets, the citizen 
 remembers the discontented mutterings of the old men in this 
 ancient Council as they heard of these vast expenses, and he 
 smiles in satisfaction as he reflects that this unprogressive old 
 body, once so powerful in Athenian affairs, has been deprived 
 of all power to obstruct the will of the people. From here he 
 also catches a glimpse of the Pnyx (Fig. 179), where he has 
 heard Pericles make one eloquent speech after another in sup- 
 port of his new building plans before the assembly of the 
 people, and he recalls with what enthusiasm the citizens voted 
 to adopt them. 
 
 As he looks up at the gleaming marble shafts, he feels that 
 the architectural splendor now crowning the Acropolis is the 
 work of the Athenian people^ a world of new beauty in the 
 creation of which every Athenian citizen has had a voice. 
 Here before him rise the imposing marble colonnades of the 
 magnificent monumental entrance to the Acropolis (Fig. 183). 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 
 
 367 
 
 Fig. 183. Restoration of the Athenian Acropolis 
 
 The lower entrance {A) is of Roman date. Beyond it we have on the 
 right the graceful little Temple of Victory {B, and see headpiece, p. 378), 
 while before us rises the colonnaded entrance building {C) designed 
 by Mnesicles {§ 576). As we pass through it we stand beside the colossal 
 bronze statue of Athena {D) by Phidias (§ 577), beyond which at the 
 left is the ancient sanctuary of the Erechtheum (/'and § 644). To the 
 right, along the south edge of the hill, is the wonderful temple of the 
 Parthenon {E) (Fig. 185, and Plate IV, p. 380). Its farther corner looks 
 down upon the theater {H) (Fig. 189). The other theater-like building (/) 
 in the foreground is a concert hall, built by Herodes Atticus, a wealthy 
 citizen, in Roman times (second century A.D.). G is the foundation of an 
 ancient temple (now destroyed) older than the present Parthenon 
 
 It is Still unfinished, and the architect Mnesicles, with a roll of 
 plans under his arm, is perhaps at the moment directing a group 
 of workmen to their task. He is beginning to employ a new 
 style of column, called the Ionic (Fig. 184); it is lighter and 
 more ornate than the stately Doric. The tinkle of many distant 
 

 Fig. 184. The Ionic Column and its Oriental Predecessors 
 (After Puchstein) 
 
 A is a. column of wood as used in houses and shrines in Egypt (fifteenth 
 century B.C.); notice at the top of ^ the lily with the ends of the petals 
 rolled over in spirals called volutes. B is part of a wall with beauti- 
 fully decorative designs in colored glazed brick from the throne room 
 of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon (Fig. no); on this wall we see the same 
 lily design appearing twice. D shows us a capital used in the begin- 
 nings of Greek architecture in Asia Minor, with the lily petals forming 
 the volutes rolled further over but still showing its relationship with A. 
 This process is carried so far in F, a capital dug up on the Acropolis 
 of Athens, that we lose sight of the lily. H finally shows us the fully 
 developed Ionic column, in which the volutes hardly resemble any 
 longer the lily from which they came. This column {H) is taken from 
 the colonnade of the Temple of Victory on the Acropolis of Athens 
 (headpiece, p. 378). Examples of this style of column are now common 
 in our own public buildings 
 
 368 
 
A thefts in the Age of Pericles 369 
 
 hammers from the height above tells where the stonecutters are 
 shaping the marble blocks for the still unfinished Parthenon, a 
 noble temple dedicated to Athena (Figs. 183, 185, and Plate IV, 
 p. 380) ; and there, too, the people often see Pericles intently- 
 inspecting the building, as Phidias the sculptor and Ictinus the 
 architect of the building pace up and down the inclosure, ex- 
 plaining to him the progress of the work. In these wondrous 
 Greek buildings architect and sculptor work hand in hand. 
 
 Phidias is the greatest of the sculptors at Athens. In a long 577. Phidias 
 band of carved marble extending entirely around the four sides ^ures of^the^ 
 of the Parthenon, at the top inside the colonnades (Plate IV, Parthenon 
 p. 380), Phidias and his pupils have portrayed, as in a glorified 
 vision, the sovereign people of Athens moving in the stately 
 procession (Fig. 186) of the Pan-Athenaic festival (§ 570). 
 To be sure, these are not individual portraits of actual Athenian 
 folk, but only types which lived in the exalted vision of the 
 sculptor, and not on the streets of Athens. But such sculpture 
 had never been seen before. How different is the supreme 
 beauty of these perfect human forms from the cruder figures 
 which adorned the temple burned by the Persians. The citizen 
 has seen the shattered fragments of these older works cleared 
 away and covered with rubbish when the architects leveled off 
 the summit of the Acropolis.^ Inside the new temple gleams 
 the colossal figure of Athena, wrought by the cunning hand of 
 Phidias in gold and ivory. Even from the city below the citizen 
 can discern, touched with bright colors, the heroic figures of 
 the gods with which Phidias has filled the triangular gable ends 
 of the building (Fig. 185). Out in the open area behind the 
 colonnaded entrance rises another great work of Phidias, a 
 colossal bronze statue of Athena, seventy feet high as it stands 
 on its tall base (Fig. 183, D). With shield and spear the goddess 
 stands, the gracious protectress of Athens, and the glittering 
 
 1 Till recently they lay buried under the rubbish on the slope (Fig. 182). 
 The excavations of the Greek government have recovered them, and they are 
 now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. 
 
370 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 point of her gilded spear can be seen shining like a beacon 
 far across the land, even by the sailors as they round the 
 southern tip of Attica (see map, p. 352) and sail homeward. 
 
 Fig. 185. Restoration of the Parthenon, as it was in the 
 Fifth Century b.c. (After Thiersch and Michaelis) 
 
 This is the noble temple of Athena erected on the Acropolis of Athens 
 (Fig. 183, E) by Pericles with the architect Ictinus and the sculptor 
 Phidias (§ 576). The restoration shows us the wonderful beauty of 
 the Doric colonnades as they were when they left the hands of the 
 builders. In Plate IV, p. 380, we gain a glimpse of the same colon- 
 nades as they are to-day, after the explosion of the Turkish powder 
 magazine, the effect of which can be seen in Fig. 182. The gable 
 ends each contained a triangular group of sculpture depicting the 
 birth of Athena and her struggle with Poseidon, god of the sea, for 
 possession of Attica. The wonderful frieze of Phidias (Fig. 186 and 
 § 577) extended around the building inside the colonnades at the top 
 of the wall 
 
 578. The 
 drama ; 
 iEschylus 
 
 In Spite of the Sophists (§ 563), these are the gods to whom 
 the faith of the Athenian people still reverently looks up. Have 
 not Athena and these gods raised the power of Athens to the 
 
''''*^'^mmaM^^mM«m'mmn!)</Mm,M^ 
 
Fig. 187. Praxiteles' Figure of Hermes playing with the 
 Child Dionysus 
 This wonderful statue was discovered in the ruins of the Hera temple at 
 Olvmnia (headpiece, p. 295), and is one of the few original works of the 
 ^e'a7Griek S^^^ in Greece. Nearly all . such Greek orgina^ 
 
 have perished, and we know them only in Roman copies (§ 1053)- In ^^^ up 
 lifted right hand (now broken off) the god probably held a bunch of grapes, 
 with which he was amusing the child (^ 04^) 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 371 
 
 imperial position which she now occupies? Do not all the 
 citizens recall ^schylus' drama " The Persians " ? It told 
 the story of the glorious victory of Salamis, and in it the 
 memories of the great deliverance from Persian conquest were 
 enshrined. How that tremendous day of Salamis was made 
 to live again in the imposing picture which the poet's genius 
 brought before them, disclosing the mighty purpose of the gods 
 to save Hellas ! 
 
 As he skirts the sheer precipice of the Acropolis the citizen 579. Theater 
 reaches the theater (see plan, p. 352, and Fig. 183, ZT), where 
 he finds the people are already entering, for the Feast of Diony- 
 sus (§ 570) has arrived. Only yesterday he and his neighbors 
 received from the State treasury the money for their admission. 
 It is natural that they should feel that the theater and all that 
 is done there belong to the people, and not the less as the 
 citizen looks down upon the orchestra circle and recognizes 
 his friends and neighbors and their sons in the chorus for 
 that day's performance. The seats are of wood, and they 
 occupy the slope at the foot of the Acropolis. Hence they 
 are not elevated on timbers, and there is no danger of their 
 falling and killing the spectators as they once did when the 
 theater was a temporary structure in the market place, in the 
 days of the citizen's grandfather. All the citizens have turned 
 out, including some less worthy and intelligent, who do not 
 hesitate to indulge in cat-calls, or pelt the actors with food, if 
 the play displeases them. The play would seem strange enough 
 to us, for there is little or no scenery; and the actors, who are 
 always men, wear grotesque masks, a survival of old days 
 (§ 483). The narrative is largely carried on in song by the 
 chorus (§ 483), but this is varied by the dialogue of the actors, 
 and the whole is not unlike an opera. 
 
 A play of Sophocles (Fig. 180) is on, and the citizen's neigh- 580. Sopho- 
 bor in the next seat leans over to tell him how as a lad many 
 years ago he stood on the shore of Salamis, whither his family 
 had fled (§51 2), and as they looked down upon the destruction 
 
372 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 581. 
 
 des 
 
 Euripi- 
 
 of the Persian fleet this same Sophocles, a boy of sixteen, was 
 in the crowd looking on with the rest. How deeply must the 
 events of that tragic day have sunk into the poet's soul ! For 
 does he not see the will of the gods in all that happens to men ? 
 Does he not celebrate the stern decree of Zeus everywhere 
 hanging over human life, at the same time that he uplifts his 
 
 audience to adore the splen- 
 dor of Zeus, however dark 
 the destiny he lays upon 
 men ? For Sophocles still 
 believes in the gods, and is 
 no friend of the Sophists. 
 Hence the citizen feels that 
 Sophocles is a veritable voice 
 of the people, exalting the 
 old gods in the new time. 
 Moreover, in place of the 
 former two, Sophocles has 
 t/wee actors in his plays, a 
 change which makes them 
 more interesting and full of 
 action. Even old ^schylus 
 yielded to this innovation 
 once before he died. Yet too 
 much innovation is also un- 
 welcome to the citizen. 
 The citizen feels this es- 
 pecially if it is one of the new sensational plays of Euripides 
 which is presented. Euripides (Fig. 188) is the son of a farmer 
 who lives over on the island of Salamis (Fig. 177). He has for 
 some time been presenting plays at the spring competition 
 (§ 570). He is a friend and companion of the Sophists, and 
 in matters of religion his mind is shadowed with doubts. 
 His new plays are all inwrought with problems and mental 
 struggle regarding the gods, and they have raised a great 
 
 Fig. 
 
 188. Portrait of 
 Euripides 
 
 The name of the poet (§ 581) is en- 
 graved in Greek letters along the 
 lower edge of the bust 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 373 
 
 many questions and doubts which the citizen has never been 
 able to banish from bis own mind since he heard them. 
 The citizen determines that he will use all the influence he has 
 to prevent the plays of Euripides from winning the prize. In- 
 deed, Sophocles suits all the old-fashioned folk, and it is very 
 rarely that Euripides has been able to carry off the prize, in 
 spite of his great ability. The citizen feels some anxiety as he 
 realizes that his own son and most of the other young men of 
 his set are enthusiastic admirers of Euripides. They constantly 
 read his plays and talk them over with the Sophists. 
 
 The great tragedies were given in the morning, and in the 582. Com 
 afternoon the people were ready for less serious entertainment, 
 such as the comedy offered. Out of the old-time masques and 
 burlesque frolics of the village communities at country feasts 
 the comedy had developed into a stage performance, with all 
 the uproarious antics of the unbridled comedian. The play- 
 writer did not hesitate to introduce the greatest dignitaries of 
 the State. Even Pericles was not spared, and great philosophers, 
 or serious-minded wTiters like Euripides, were shown in absurd 
 caricatures and made irresistibly ridiculous on the stage, while the 
 multitudes of Athens vented their delight in roars of laughter 
 mingled with shouts and cheers. Parodies on great passages of 
 literature, too, were sure of a quick response, so keen was the 
 wit of the Athenians and so widespread the acquaintance of the 
 people with the literature which they had inherited. 
 
 When all was over they must wait until the next spring feast 583. Con- 
 of Dionysus before they were privileged to see any more plays, widespread 
 But meantime they were greatly interested in the decision of "^terest in 
 the jury of citizens awarding prizes for tragedy, for comedy, literature 
 and for the best chorus a bronze tripod to the citizen who had 
 equipped and trained it (Fig. 190). Moreover, the interest in 
 drama and the theater continued, for the next competition 
 soon demanded that probably two thousand men and boys 
 of Athens should put all their leisure time into learning their 
 parts written out for them on sheets of papyrus and into 
 
^^m- 
 
 :t~ 
 
 4^^ 
 
 ^:^^^^j^f70]tHi',^^M 
 
 WS^^^^-^^^ ' 
 
 ^^ / 
 
 
 Fig. 189. The Theater of Athens 
 
 This theater was the center of the growth and development of Greek 
 drama, which began as a part of the celebration of the spring feast of 
 Dionysus, god of the vine and the fruitfulness of the earth (§ 420). 
 The temple of the god stood here, just at the left. Long before any- 
 one knew of such a thing as a theater, the people gathered at this 
 place to watch the celebration of the god's spring feast, where they 
 formed a circle about the chorus, which narrated in song the stories of 
 the gods (§ 483). This circle (called the orchestra) was finally marked 
 out permanently, seats of wood for the spectators were erected in a 
 semicircle on one side, but the singing and action all took place in the 
 circle on the level of the ground. On the side opposite the public was 
 a booth, or tent (Greek, sk^ne, " scene "), for the actors, and out of this 
 finally developed the stage. Here we see the circle, or orchestra, 
 with the stage cutting off the back part of the circle. The seats are of 
 stone and accommodated possibly seventeen thousand people. The 
 fine marble seats in the front row were reserved for the leading men of 
 Athens. The old wooden seats were still in use in the days when 
 iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides presented their dramas here 
 (§§ 578-582). From the seats the citizens had a grand view of the sea, 
 with the island of ^gina, their old-time rival (§ 543) ; and even the 
 heights of Argolis, 40 miles away, were visible ; for orchestra and seats 
 continued roofless, and a Greek theater was always open to the sky. 
 In Roman times a colonnaded porch across the back of the stage 
 was introduced, and such columns of Roman date may be seen in 
 Plate VII, p. 560. For the best-preserved early Greek theater, see 
 tailpiece, p. 393 
 
 374 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 375 
 
 training and rehearsals for the various choruses. Thousands 
 of citizens too were reading the old plays that had already 
 been presented. 
 
 For now at length books too had come to take an important 584. Books 
 place in the life of Athens. Rows of baskets of cylindrical 
 shape held the books which filled the shelves in our Athenian 
 citizen's libraiy. Homer and the works of the old classic poets 
 were now written on long rolls of papyrus, as much as a hun- 
 dred and fifty or sixty feet in length. To one of these rolls the 
 educated Greek sat down as the Egyptian had so long before 
 been accustomed to do (Fig. 191). For lack of good artificial 
 light, reading was necessarily done mostly by day, but studious 
 Greeks also ventured to try their eyes in reading by the dim 
 olive-oil lamp. Besides literary works, all sorts of books of in- 
 struction began to appear. The sculptors wrote of their art, 
 and Ictinus produced a book on his design of the Parthenon 
 (§ 576). There was a large group of books on medicine, bear- 
 ing the name of Hippocrates. Textbooks on mathematics and 
 rhetoric circulated, and the Athenian housekeeper could even 
 find a cookbook at the bookshop. 
 
 In our voyage up the Nile (§ 115), we found that far back 585 Con- 
 in the Egyptian Empire, a thousand years before the days of Athens an/ 
 Pericles, there was a group of gifted men who created at Thebes SPu*^^^" 
 a grand and imperial city of noble architecture. But that group 
 of great Egyptians was not made up of citizens^ nor had the 
 multitudes of Thebes any share in government or in the 
 creation of the magnificent city. It was very different in the 
 Athens of Pericles. Here had grown up a whole community 
 of intelligent men, who were the product of the most active 
 interest in the life and government of the community, con- 
 stantly sharing in its tasks and problems, in daily contact 
 with the greatest works of art in literature, drama, painting, 
 architecture, and sculpture — such a wonderful community 
 indeed as the ancient world, Greek or oriental, had never 
 seen before. 
 
3/6 Ancient Times 
 
 586. The old Not only was it totally different from any that we have found 
 the new^" ^'^ ^^ ancient Orient, but we see also how very different from 
 the Athens of the old days before the Persian Wars was this 
 imperial Athens of Pericles ! — throbbing with new life and 
 astir with a thousand questions eagerly discussed at every 
 corner. Keenly awake to the demands of the greater State and 
 the sovereign people, the men of the new Athens were deeply 
 pondering also the duties and privileges of the individual, who 
 felt new and larger visions of himself conflicting with the exac- 
 tions of the State and the old faith. Troubled by serious doubts, 
 they were, nevertheless, clinging with wistful apprehension to 
 the old gods and the old truths. Under Pericles Athens was 
 becoming as he desired it should, the teacher of the Greek 
 world. It now remained to be seen whether the people^ in 
 sovereign control of the State, could guide her wisely and 
 maintain her new power. As we watch the citizens of Athens 
 endeavoring to furnish her with wise and successful guidance, 
 we shall find another and a sadly different side of the life of 
 this wonderful community. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 54. What can you say of the population of Attica as to 
 social classes.? Discuss the rich and the poor. Were there any 
 beautiful houses in Europe in Pericles' time .? Describe an Athenian 
 house of this age ; its conveniences ; its equipment ; its decoration. 
 What were the streets of Athens like ? Describe Greek costume in 
 this age. What was now the position of women? Describe the 
 usual school and its teacher. What subjects were taught .-^ What did 
 a boy do when he left school ? What oath of citizenship did he take ? 
 Tell about his military service; his athletic training. What were 
 the chief events in athletics 1 
 
 Section ^^. What new private teachers now began to appear.? 
 What did these men teach ? Did a boy learn from them anything 
 which his father had not been taught ? What did the fathers think 
 about the teaching of the Sophists ? Was there any general knowl- 
 edge of science ? How was the time of day designated ? How was 
 time measured within the day? within the year? What were the 
 
Athens in the Age of Pericles 
 
 377 
 
 difficulties? What discoveries were made in astronomy? in geog- 
 raphy? What progress was made in medicine? in history-writing? 
 How did government business train the citizens of Athens? Tell 
 about voluntary contributions by the citizens. What can you say 
 about official State feasts at Athens? 
 
 Section 56. How did warmth of patriotic feeling affect music, 
 the drama, art, and architecture ? Discuss the painting of Marathon 
 in the Athenian market place. Do you see any connection between 
 art and patriotism in such a work ? Were there any fine government 
 office buildings in Athens under Pericles ? What was the material of 
 such buildings ? What were the beautiful public buildings of Greece 
 at this time ? How did the Athenian Acropolis look after the Persian 
 Wars? What did Pericles do about it? Who opposed him? Was 
 there a majority of Athenian citizens who wanted such great works 
 as Pericles planned ? How then did he put his plan through ? Who 
 assisted Pericles in carrying out the actual work on the Acropolis? 
 What buildings did they erect? Describe the sculpture of Phidias. 
 
 What play did yEschylus write about the war with Persia? Do 
 you see any connection between literature and patriotism in such a 
 work? Describe the theater where such plays were presented at 
 Athens. Did a citizen pay for his own ticket? Describe a play in 
 such a theater. Who was Sophocles ? What did he think about the 
 gods and the Sophists? How many actors did he have? 
 
 What did Euripides think about the gods? To which of these 
 two men did the Athenians vote the most prizes ? What did an old- 
 fashioned citizen think about having his son read the plays of Eurip- 
 ides? Tell about the comedies played at Athens. How did the 
 Athenians take part in drama and music ? What did a book look like 
 in this age? What books could a citizen find at the bookshop? 
 Contrast Athens and Egyptian Thebes. In what ways was the 
 Athens of Pericles different from that of Solon? 
 
 Note. 
 
 The sketch below shows us vase-paintings of Greek children at play. 
 
,^g@^-A4\ 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA AND 
 THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 
 
 Section 57. The Tyranny of Athens and the 
 Second Peloponnesian War 
 
 587. States of 
 the Athenian 
 Empire be- 
 come help- 
 less subjects 
 
 While Athens under the guiding hand of Pericles had thus 
 made herself the chief center of refined and civilized life in the 
 Greek world, her political situation was in a number of ways 
 becoming a serious one both within and without her empire. 
 When the danger from Persia had long passed and some of 
 the island states of the Empire wished to withdraw, Athens 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the lovely little Temple of Victory, still 
 standing on the Acropolis (B in Fig. 183). It was demolished by the Turks, who 
 built a battery out of its blocks. When the Turkish works were cleared away in 
 1835, *h^ fragments of the temple were discovered and it was put together again. 
 The roof, however, is still lacking (but see Z?in restoration, p. 340). It was prob- 
 ably built, or at least begun, in the latter part of the leadership of Pericles. The 
 columns display the incoming Ionic form (Fig. 184) and are among the most 
 beautiful examples of this style, or, as it is commonly calkd, " Qrder," 
 
 378 
 
The Struggle betwee7t Athens and Sparta 379 
 
 would not permit them to do so. She sent out her war fleet, 
 conquered the rebellious islands, and forced them to pay 
 money tribute instead of contributing ships. Often many of 
 their citizens were driven out and their lands were divided 
 among the Athenian settlers. A section of the Athenian fleet 
 was on constant duty to sail about in the ^gean and collect 
 the tribute money by force (see map II, p. 344). These funds 
 were used by Athens as she pleased, and the magnificent build- 
 ings of Pericles were paid for out of this tribute. 
 
 Moreover, the democracy of Athens was most undemocratic 588. Change 
 
 . , . . r 1 i" the policy 
 
 in its treatment of these outsiders m the other cities ot the of Athens 
 Empire. For, about the middle of the century the Athenians, citfSnsWp 
 led by Pericles, abolished the former liberal policy of granting 
 citizenship to outsiders (§536) and passed a very strict law limit- 
 ing Athenian citizenship to those whose parents were themselves 
 citizens of Athens. This law kept the people of the Empire 
 really foreigners and deprived Athens of the large body of 
 loyal citizens which she might have gained from among the 
 subject cities. 
 
 At the same time Athens forced the people of the Empire 589. Tyranny 
 to come there to settle their legal differences before her citizen- and discon- 
 juries. For this purpose the people of distant island states Empj^e^^'^ 
 were often obliged to make the expensive and inconvenient 
 journey to Athens. There was no feeling of unity within the 
 Empire, for the Council of representatives from the states of 
 the Empire, which once guided its affairs, no longer held any 
 meetings. Athens was in complete control and governed them 
 as she liked. They saw how much easier were the conditions 
 under which the members of the Spartan League lived, and 
 more than one of them sent secret messages to Sparta, with 
 the purpose of throwing off Athenian control and going over 
 to Sparta. 
 
 While such was the state of affairs within the Athenian 590. Hos- 
 
 _ . . rr^, tility of the 
 
 Empire, conditions outside were even more serious. I he out- rivals of 
 ward splendor of Athens, her commercial prosperity, the visible ^^'^^"^ 
 
38o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 591. Open- 
 ing of Second 
 Pelopon- 
 nesian War 
 (431 B.C.) 
 and Pericles' 
 plan of cam- 
 paign 
 
 growth of her power, her not very conciliatory attitude toward 
 her rivals, and the example she offered of the seeming success 
 of triumphant democracy — all these things were causes of 
 jealousy to a backward and conservative military State like 
 Sparta, where most of the citizens were still unable to read, 
 iron money continued in use, and the town remained an open 
 settlement without walls or defenses (Fig. 178). Moreover, 
 this feeling of unfriendliness toward Athens was not confined 
 to Sparta but was quite general throughout Greece. The mer- 
 chants of Corinth (Fig. 163) found Athenian competition a con- 
 tinuous vexation, and when Athenian possessions in the north 
 ^gean revolted and received support from Corinth and Sparta, 
 the fact that hardly half of the thirty years' term of peace 
 (§ 545) had expired did not prevent the outbreak of war. 
 
 It seemed as if all European Greece not included in the 
 Athenian Empire had united against Athens, for Sparta con- 
 trolled the entire Peloponnesus except Argos, and north of 
 Attica, Boeotia led by Thebes, as well as its neighbors on the 
 west, were hostile to Athens. The support of Athens consisted 
 of the ^gean cities which made up her empire and a few out- 
 lying allies of little power. She began the struggle with a large 
 war treasury and a fleet which made her undisputed mistress 
 of the sea. But she could not hope to cope with the land 
 forces of the enemy, which, some thirty thousand strong, had 
 planned to meet in the Isthmus in the spring of 431 B.C. 
 Accordingly, Pericles' plan for the war was to throw all the 
 resources of Athens into naval enterprises and make no effort 
 to defend Attica by land. When the Peloponnesian army 
 entered Attica the country communities were directed by 
 Pericles to leave their homes and take refuge in the open 
 markets and squares of Athens, the sanctuaries, and especially 
 between the Long Walls leading to the Piraeus. Here they 
 were safe behind the strong defenses of Athens and her port. 
 To offset the devastation of Attica by the Spartan army, all 
 that Athens could do was to organize destructive sea raids and 
 
Plate \V. A Corner of the Parthenon 
 
 Looking through the Doric colonnades as they are to-day, at the southeast 
 corner of the building, to the distant hills of Hymettus. On the left is the 
 base of the wall of the interior, destroyed by the explosion (p. 365, footnote). 
 At the top of this wall was the frieze of Phidias (Fig. 1S6 and § 577) 
 
The Struggle betiveeii Athens and Sparta 381 
 
 inflict as much damage 
 Peloponnesus or blockade 
 of old (map II, p. 344). 
 
 The masses of people 
 crowded within the walls 
 of Athens under the 
 unsanitary conditions w^e 
 have already described 
 (§ 551), exposed the city 
 to disease; a plague, 
 brought in from the 
 Orient, raged with inter- 
 missions for several sea- 
 sons. It carried off ■ 
 probably a third of the 
 population, and from 
 this unforeseen disaster 
 Athens never recovered. 
 Constantly under arms 
 for the defense of the 
 walls, deprived of any 
 opportunity to strike the 
 enemy, forced to sit still 
 and see their land rav- 
 aged, the citizens at last 
 broke out in discontent. 
 
 Even before the be- 
 ginning of the war there 
 had been signs that the 
 power of Pericles was 
 waning. He was a 
 thoroughly modern man, 
 associated openly with 
 the Sophists, and very 
 evidently held their views. 
 
 as possible along the coasts of the 
 and destroy Corinthian commerce as 
 
 592. The 
 
 plague in 
 Athens 
 
 Fig. 190. Monument commemorat- 
 ing THE Triumph of an Athenian 
 
 Citizen in Music 
 An entire street of Athens was filled 
 with such monuments (§ 583). We learn 
 the name of the citizen, Lysicrates, who 
 erected this beautiful monument, from 
 the inscription it still bears, which reads: 
 " Lysicrates . . . was choragus [leader of 
 the chorus] when the boy-chorus of the 
 tribe of Akamantis won the prize; Theon 
 was a flute-player, Lysiades of Athens 
 trained the choir. Euaenetus was archon." 
 The archon's name dates the erection of 
 the monument for us in 335 to 334 B.C. 
 Beyond the monument we look west- 
 ward to the back of the Acropolis (see 
 plan, p. 352) 
 
 593. Decline 
 and fall of 
 Pericles 
 
382 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 594. Restora- 
 tion, and death 
 of Pericles 
 (429 B.C.) 
 
 We can understand what this meant 10 the people, if we 
 imagine one of our own political leaders of to-day declaring 
 
 himself an infidel.-^ One of 
 Pericles' particular friends 
 among the Sophists had 
 been prosecuted by the 
 people for irreligious views 
 (§ 563)' He was legally 
 condemned for his infidel- 
 ity and, in spite of all that 
 Pericles could do, was 
 obliged to flee from Athens. 
 At the same time a popu- 
 lar attack on the honesty 
 of Pericles' friend Phidias, 
 the great cculptor, resulted 
 in his being thrown into 
 prison, where he died. Fi 
 nally, Pericles himself lost 
 control, was tried for mis- 
 appropriation of funds, 
 and fined. 
 
 The absence of his 
 steadying hand and power- 
 ful leadership was at once 
 felt by the people, for 
 there was no one to take 
 his place, although a swarm 
 of small politicians were 
 contending for control of 
 the Assembly. Realizing 
 their helplessness the peo- 
 ple soon turned to Pericles again and elected him strategus. 
 
 1 Those who remember Robert G. Ingersoll will recall that he sacrificed a 
 political career because of his religious views. 
 
 Fig. 191. Greek 
 
 FROM A 
 
 Youth reading 
 Roll 
 
 It will be seen that the young man 
 holds the roll so that he rolls up a por- 
 tion of it with one hand as he unrolls 
 another portion with the other. He 
 soon has a roll in each hand, while he 
 holds smoothly stretched out between 
 the two rolls the exposed portion from 
 which he reads a column of writing 
 like that which we see photographed 
 from the oldest-preserved Greek book 
 (roll), in Fig. 223. Such a column 
 formed for him a page, but when it was 
 read, instead of turning a page as we 
 do, he rolled it away to the left side, 
 and brought into view a new column 
 from the other roll on the right side 
 
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 383 
 
 But the great days of his leadership were over. His two 
 sons died of the plague. Then he was himself stricken with 
 it and died soon after his return to power (429 b.c). Great 
 statesman as he was, he had left Athens with a system of 
 government which did not provide for the continuation of such 
 leadership as he had furnished, and without such leadership 
 the Athenian Empire was doomed. 
 
 Men of the prosperous manufacturing class now came to 595. Lack of 
 the fore. They possessed neither the high station in life, the death^of 
 ability as statesmen, nor the qualities of leadership to win the' ^^"^1^^ 
 confidence and respect of the people. Moreover, these new 
 leaders were not soldiers and could not command the fleet 
 or the army as Pericles had done. The most notable exception 
 was Alcibiades, a brilliant young man, a relative of Pericles 
 and brought up in his house. The two legal sons of Pericles 
 (there was another son by an illegal marriage, § 614) having 
 died, Alcibiades, if he had enjoyed the guidance of his foster 
 father a few years longer, might have become the savior of 
 Athens and of Greece. As it happened, however, this young 
 leader was more largely responsible than anyone else for the 
 destruction of the Athenian Empire and the downfall of Greece. 
 
 Lacking the steadying hand of a statesman whose well- 596. Unsta- 
 formed plans and continuous policy might. furnish a firm and ship ?f die 
 guiding influence, the management of Athenian affairs fell into Assembly 
 confusion. Wavering and changeableness were rarely interrupted 
 by any display of stability, firmness, and wisdom ; the leaders 
 drifted from one policy to another, and usually from bad to 
 worse. It seemed impossible to regain stable leadership. The 
 youthful Aristophanes (§ 659) pictured the rudderless condition 
 of the ship of State in one clever comedy after another, in 
 which he ridiculed in irresistible satire the pretense to states- 
 manship of such " men of the people " as Cleon the tanner. 
 
 A typical example of the ill-considered actions of the As- 597. inci- 
 sembly was their treatment of the revolting citizens of Mitylene. M^yiene 
 When the men of Mitylene were finally subdued, the Assembly 
 
384 Ancient Times 
 
 on the Pnyx (Fig. 179) voted that they should all be put to 
 death, and a ship departed with these orders. It was with 
 great difficulty that a more moderate group in the Assembly 
 secured a rehearing of the question and succeeded in inducing 
 the people to modify their barbarous action to the condemna- 
 tion and execution of the ringleaders only. A second ship then 
 overtook the first barely in time to save from death the entire 
 body of the citizens of Mitylene. 
 
 598. Cleon In spite of such revolts Athenian naval supremacy continued; 
 
 but as the war dragged on, the payment of army and fleet re- 
 duced Athenian funds to a very low state. Cleon the tanner 
 was a man of much energy and a good deal of financial ability. 
 He succeeded in having an income tax introduced, and later on. 
 the tribute of the ^gean cities was raised. But having always 
 been a manufacturer, he lacked all military experience. For 
 years the operations on both sides were in most cases utterly 
 insignificant. This is best seen in Cleon's siege and capture of 
 four hundred Spartans on one of the islands on the west coast 
 of Greece — a disaster which made a great impression and, in 
 view of some other reverses, led the Spartans to sue for peace ! 
 Later in an absurdly mismanaged expedition on the northern 
 coast of the ^gean, Cleon lost his army of fifteen hundred 
 men and his own life. 
 
 599. The first The attack of the allies on Athens did not succeed in break- 
 the war'^^and ^^^g ^P ^^^ empire and overthrowing her leadership of the 
 *^^^^?^^ ^gean cities. It was the devastation wrought by the plague 
 (421 B.C.) which had seriously affected her. Athens and the whole Greek 
 
 world were demoralized and weakened. The contest had in 
 it no longer the inspiration of a noble struggle such as the 
 Greeks had maintained against Persia. Unprecedented brutality, 
 like that at first adopted toward Mitylene, gave the struggle 
 a savagery and a lack of respect for the enemy which com- 
 pletely obscured all finer issues, if there were any such involved 
 in the war. With Cleon gone, Athenian leadership fell into the 
 hands of a wealthv and noble citizen named Nicias, a man of 
 
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 385 
 
 no ability. When ten years of indecisive warfare had passed, 
 Nicias arranged a peace to be kept for fifty years. Each con- 
 testant agreed to give up all new conquests and to retain only 
 old possessions or subject cities (see map II, p. 344). 
 
 Section 58. Third Peloponnesian War and 
 Destruction of the Athenian Empire 
 
 Meantime serious difficulties arose in carrying out the con- 600. Diffi- 
 ditions of the peace. One of the northern subject cities of maintaining 
 Athens which had gone over to Sparta refused to return to the new peace 
 Athenian allegiance. Athens took the questionable ground that 
 Sparta should force the unwilling city to obey the terms of 
 peace. It was at this juncture that Athens especially needed 
 such guidance as a statesman like Pericles could have fur- 
 nished. She was obliged to depend upon the feeble leadership 
 of Nicias and the energetic but unprincipled Alcibiades. 
 
 Nicias continued to urge a conciliatory attitude toward 601. Alci- 
 Sparta, but he failed of election as strategus. On the other onvraragam 
 hand, the gifted and reckless Alcibiades, seeing a great oppor- 
 tunity for a brilliant career, did all that he could to excite the 
 war party^ in Athens. He was elected strategus, and, in spite 
 of the fact that troubles at home had forced Sparta into a 
 treaty of alliance with Athens, Alcibiades was able to carry 
 the Assembly with him. He then involved Athens in an alliance 
 with Argos against Sparta. In this way Attica, exhausted with 
 plague and ten years of warfare, was enticed into a life-and- 
 death struggle which was to prove final. 
 
 Several years of ill-planned military and naval operations 602. Third 
 followed the fruitless peace of Nicias. The Spartans did not nesian^War- 
 at once respond with hostilities and sent no army into Attica. Sicilian ex- 
 
 ^ J pedition 
 
 Alcibiades at length persuaded the Athenians to plan a great 
 joint expedition of army and navy against Sicily, where the 
 mighty city of Syracuse, founded as a colony of Corinth, was 
 leading in the oppression of certain Western cities in alliance 
 
386 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 603. Arrest 
 of Alcibiades 
 and his flight 
 to Sparta 
 
 with Athens. The Athenians placed Alcibiades and Nicias 
 in command of the expedition. 
 
 Just as the fleet was about to sail, certain sacred images in 
 Athens were impiously mutilated, and the deed was attributed 
 to Alcibiades. In spite of his demand for an immediate trial, 
 the Athenians postponed the case until his return from Sicily. 
 
 i 
 
 Athenian Walls Finished. .. 
 Athenian Walls Unfinished.. 
 Syracusan Wall 
 
 Plan of the Siege of Syracuse 
 
 When the fleet reached Italy, however, the Athenian people, 
 with their usual inability to follow any consistent plan and also 
 desiring to take Alcibiades at a great disadvantage, suddenly 
 recalled him for trial. This procedure not only deprived the 
 expedition of its only able leader but also gave Alcibiades an 
 opportunity to desert to the Spartans, which he promptly did. 
 His advice to the Spartans now proved fatal to the Athenians. 
 
The Struggle between AtJiens and Sparta 387 
 
 The appearance of the huge Athenian fleet off their coast 604. incom- 
 struck dismay into the hearts of the Syracusans, but Nicias N^das^ ° 
 entirely failed to see the importance of immediate attack before 
 the Syracusans could recover and make preparations for the 
 defense of their city. He wasted the early days of the cam- 
 paign in ill-planned maneuvers, only winning a barren victory 
 over the Syracusan land forces. When Nicias was finally in- 
 duced by the second general in command to begin the siege 
 of the city, courage had returned to the Syracusans, and their 
 defense was well organized. 
 
 The Athenians now built a siege wall behind Syracuse nearly 605. Athe- 
 across the point of land on which the city was situated, in order urTsuccefsful 
 to cut it entirely off from the outside world. The spirit of the 
 Syracusans was much depressed, and surrender seemed not far 
 off. Just at this point Gylippus, a Spartan leader and his troops, 
 sent by the advice of Alcibiades, succeeded in passing the Athe- 
 nian lines and gained entrance to the city. The courage of the 
 Syracusans was at once restored. The Athenians were thrown 
 upon the defensive. Meantime the Syracusans had also organ- 
 ized a fleet. The Athenian fleet had entered the harbor, and 
 in these narrow quarters they were unable to maneuver or to 
 take advantage of their superior seamanship. After some 
 Athenian success at first, the fleet of Syracuse was victorious. 
 
 There was now no prospect of the capture of the city, and 606. Re- 
 Nicias would have withdrawn, but the leaders at home would Athenians 
 not allow it. In spite of renewed Spartan invasion, the blinded repulsed 
 democratic leaders sent out another fleet and more land forces 
 to reinforce Nicias. No Greek state had ever mustered such 
 power and sent it far across the waters. All Greece watched 
 the spectacle with amazen\ent. A night assault by the rein- 
 forced Athenians failed with large losses, and the position of 
 the whole expedition at once became a dangerous one. 
 
 With disaster staring them in the face there was nothing for 
 the Athenians to do but withdraw. But just at this point, an 
 eclipse of the moon occurred, and the superstitious Nicias 
 
388 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 607. Capture 
 of Athenian 
 fleet and 
 army before 
 Syracuse 
 (413 B.C.) 
 
 insisted on waiting for another more favorable moon. This 
 month's delay was fatal to the Athenians. The Syracusans 
 blockaded the channel to the sea and completely shut up the 
 Athenian fleet within the harbor, so that an attempt to break 
 through and escape disastrously failed. The desperate Athenian 
 
 Fig. 192. Stone Quarries of Syracuse in which the Athe- 
 nians WERE Imprisoned 
 
 We look across the deep quarry and the Small Harbor to the ancient 
 island of Ortygia (see map, p. 386). It is now a cape, occupied by the 
 modern city of which we can see the buildings. The quarries are over- 
 grown with ivy and masked with beautiful green foliage. Here the seven 
 thousand Athenians captured by the Syracusans (§ 607) were imprisoned 
 without sufficient water and provisions, and here most of them died 
 
 army, abandoning sick and wounded, too late endeavored to. 
 escape into the interior, but was overtaken and forced to sur- 
 render. The Syracusans treated the captured Athenians with 
 savage barbarity. After executing the commanding generals, 
 they took the prisoners, seven thousand in number, and sold 
 them into slavery or threw them into the stone quarries of the 
 city (Fig. 192), where most of them miserably perished. Thus 
 
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 389 
 
 the Athenian expedition was completely destroyed (413 B.C.). 
 This disaster, together with the earlier ravages of the plague, 
 brought Athens near the end of her resources. 
 
 Heretofore Sparta had stood more or less aloof, seemingly 608. Spartan 
 unwilling to break the peace of Nicias, and had not invaded iukr" *" 
 Attica. But now seeing the unprotected condition of Athens, 
 after the dispatch of the Sicilian expedition, Sparta again in- 
 vaded Attica and, on the advice of Alcibiades, occupied the town 
 of Decelea,^ almost within sight of Athens. Here the Spartans 
 established a permanent fort held by a strong garrison, and thus 
 placed Athens in a state of perpetual siege. All agriculture 
 ceased, and the Athenians lived on imported grain. The people 
 now understood the folly of having sent away on a distant ex- 
 pedition the ships and the men that should have been kept at 
 home to repel the attacks of a powerful and still uncrippled foe. 
 
 After these disasters the Athenian Empire began to show 609. internal 
 signs of breaking up. The failure of the democracy in the the\tlfenian 
 management of the war enabled the nobles to denounce popu- Empire 
 lar rule as unsuccessful. The nobles regained power for a time; 
 violence and bloodshed within were added to the dangerous 
 assaults of the enemy from without. The finances were in a 
 desperate condition. The tribute, already raised to the breaking 
 point, was abolished and a customs duty of five per cent was 
 levied on all goods exported or imported. The plan was a suc- 
 cess and brought in a larger income than the tribute. But the 
 measure did not unite nor quiet the discontented communities 
 of which the Empire was made up. One after another they fell 
 away. Spartan warships sailed about in the ^gean, aiding the 
 rebels, who had of course dared to revolt only on promise of 
 such assistance from Sparta. 
 
 To add to the Athenian distress, the powerful Persian satrap 610. Persia 
 in western Asia Minor was supporting the Spartan fleet ponnes1ans°* 
 with money. Indeed, both Athens and Sparta had long been ^^f"^^ 
 
 1 On this account the war with Sparta which now followed, lasting nine years 
 (fr.om 413 to 404 B.C.), is often called the " Decelean War " (see map, p. 352). 
 
390 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 6ii. Alcibia- 
 des recovers 
 command of 
 the Athe- 
 nian fleet 
 (411 B.C.) 
 
 612. Resto- 
 ration of 
 Alcibiades 
 (407 B.C.) 
 
 613. Fall and 
 death of 
 Alcibiades 
 
 negotiating with Persia for aid, and Sparta had recognized Per- 
 sian rule over the Greek cities of Asia. The Greek islands 
 and the cities of Asia Minor which had once united in the 
 Delian League with Athens to throw off Persian rule were now 
 combining with Sparta and Persia against Athens. Thus the 
 former union of the Greeks in a heroic struggle against the 
 Asiatic enemy had given way to a disgraceful scramble for 
 Persian support and favor. 
 
 Meantime Alcibiades, under the protection of the Persian 
 satrap, had himself encouraged the revolters against Athens, 
 hoping that her distress would finally oblige her to recall him 
 and seek his aid. He was not disappointed. The small fleet 
 which the Athenians were still able to put into the fight called 
 upon Alcibiades for help, and finally put itself under his com- 
 mand, without any authorization from Athens. In several con- 
 flicts, chiefly through the skill of Alcibiades, the Peloponnesian 
 fleet was finally completely destroyed, and Athens regained the 
 command of the sea. 
 
 Sparta now made offers of peace, but Alcibiades skillfully 
 used the war sentiment in the fleet against their acceptance, 
 and the democratic leaders in power at Athens also refused to 
 make peace. Alcibiades was then (407 B.C.) elected strategus 
 and legally gained command of the fleet which he had already- 
 been leading for four years. At the head of a triumphant pro- 
 cession he entered Athens again for the first time since he had 
 left it for Sicily eight years before. He was solemnly purified 
 from the religious curse which rested upon him , and his for- 
 tune, which had been confiscated, was returned to him. 
 
 It now needed only the abilities of such a leader as Alcibi- 
 ades to accomplish the union of the distracted Greek states, 
 and the foundation of a great Greek nation. At this supreme 
 moment, however, Alcibiades lacked the courage to seize the 
 government, and the opportunity never returned again. When 
 he put to sea again a slight defeat, inflicted on a part of his 
 fleet when he was not present, cost him the favor of the fickle 
 
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 391 
 
 Athenians. When they failed to reelect him strategus he retired 
 to a castle which he had kept in readiness on the Hellespont. 
 He never saw his native land again and died in exile, the victim 
 of a Persian dagger. 
 
 The Athenians had now lost their ablest leader again, but 614. Athe- 
 they continued the war on the sea as best they could. They ofArginusLi 
 won another important victory over a new Peloponnesian fleet of^^he^^f^JJ^. 
 on the coast of Asia Minor by the little islands of Arginusae. manders 
 
 (406 B.C.) 
 
 As the battle ended a storm arose which prevented the com- 
 manders from saving the Athenian survivors clinging to the 
 wreckage. For this accident the Athenian commanders were 
 accused of criminal neglect before the Assembly and con- 
 demned to death. In spite of all that could be done, six of the 
 eight naval commanders were executed, including the young 
 Pericles, a son of the great statesman. The other two com- 
 manders had been wise enough to flee from such justice as 
 they might expect at the hands of the Athenian democracy. 
 
 Athens now suffered worse than ever before for lack of 615. Capture 
 competent commanders. The fleet numbering about one hun- ^ian fleet at 
 dred and eighty triremes was placed in command of a group ^J;5 ^^"^^ °^. 
 
 ^ J ^ , Agospotami 
 
 of officers, each of whom was to lead for a day at a time. The (405 ^.c.) 
 democratic leaders who had made this absurd arrangement 
 watched the fleet sail out to continue a war which they them- 
 selves were prolonging by again refusing Spartan proffers of 
 peace. For several days in succession the Athenians sailed out 
 from their station near the river called ^gospotami on the 
 Hellespont, and offered battle to the Peloponnesian fleet lying 
 in a neighboring harbor. But the Peloponnesians refused 
 battle. On their return from these maneuvers each day, the 
 Athenians left their ships along the beach and themselves went 
 ashore. Alcibiades from his neighboring castle, where he still 
 was, came down and pointed out to the Athenian commanders 
 the great danger they ran in leaving the fleet in this condition 
 so near the enemy. His advice received no attention. The 
 able Spartan, Lysander, the commander of the Peloponnesian 
 
392 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 6i6. Sur- 
 render of 
 Athens and 
 fall of the 
 Athenian 
 Empire 
 (404 B.C.) 
 
 fleet, seeing this daily procedure, waited until the Athenians had 
 gone ashore and left their ships as usual. Then, sailing over, 
 he surprised and captured practically the whole Athenian fleet. 
 At last, twenty-seven years after Pericles had provoked the 
 war with Sparta, the resources of Athens were exhausted. Not 
 a man slept on the night when the terrible news of final ruin 
 reached Athens. It was soon confirmed by the appearance of 
 Lysander's fle.et blockading the Piraeus. The grain ships from 
 the Black Sea could no longer reach the port of Athens. The 
 Spartan king pitched his camp in the grove of the Academy 
 (§ 558) and called on the city to surrender. For some months 
 the stubborn democratic leaders refused to accept terms of peace 
 which meant the complete destruction of Athenian power. But 
 the pinch of hunger finally convinced the Assembly, and the 
 city surrendered. The Long Walls and the fortifications of the 
 Piraeus were torn down, the remnant of the fleet was handed' 
 over to Sparta, all foreign possessions were given up, and 
 Athens was forced to enter the Spartan League. These hard 
 conditions saved the city from the complete destruction de- 
 manded by Corinth. Thus the century which had begun so 
 gloriously for Athens with the repulse of Persia, the century 
 which under the leadership of such men as Themistocles and 
 Pericles had seen her rise to supremacy in all that was best 
 and noblest in Greek life, closed with the annihilation of the 
 Athenian Empire (404 B.C.). 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 57. How did Athens treat the subject states of her 
 Empire? What was now her policy regarding citizenship.? regard- 
 ing lawsuits in the subject states.'* How did these states now feel 
 toward Athens? How did the states outside the Athenian Empire 
 feel? What was the result? Who were the enemies of Athens in 
 this war? What were her resources? 
 
 What was Pericles' plan of campaign ? W^hat disaster overtook 
 Athens? How did this affect the fortunes of Pericles? By what 
 
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 393 
 
 associations had he displeased the people? What was the result? 
 What young leader now came forward? What kind of leadership 
 did the Assembly now furnish? Give an example. What business 
 man now tried to lead the nation? How did he succeed? Were 
 the military operations of the war on a large scale? What was the 
 result of ten years' war ? Who arranged the peace ? When ? 
 
 Section 58, Who was chiefly responsible for the reopening of 
 the war ? What great expedition did the Athenians plan ? Who were 
 the commanders ? What prevented Alcibiades from going ? Tell the 
 story of the expedition and its end. What did Sparta now do? 
 What was now the internal condition of the Athenian Empire? 
 What part did Persia play in the war? What can you state of the 
 restoration of Alcibiades to office? What was the result? How did 
 the Athenians treat their naval commanders? What was the re- 
 sult? What was the situation of Athens after the loss of her fleet? 
 W^hat conditions did Sparta make ? Contrast the beginning and the 
 end of the fifth century in Athenian history. 
 
 Note. The tailpiece below shows us the theater of Epidaurus, which is un- 
 usually instructive because it is the best preserved of the Greek theaters. 
 Although it was built late in the fourth century B.C., we see that the orchestra 
 circle is still complete and has not been cut into by later stage arrangements 
 behind it as at Athens (Fig. 189). 
 
 -^ - ^ ^^ \^ m, 
 
 
 
 
 k -^ 
 
 yfe r 
 
 
^^»* 
 
 v-S?^^, 
 
 ^^.v^. > > 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE FINAL CONFLICTS AMONG THE GREEK STATES 
 
 Section 59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline 
 OF Democracy 
 
 617. Unfit- 
 ness of Sparta 
 for leadership 
 of the Greeks 
 
 The long struggle of Athens for the political leadership of 
 the Greek world had ignominiously failed. It now remained 
 to be seen whether her victorious rival, Sparta, was any better 
 suited to undertake such leadership. No nation which devotes 
 itself exclusively to the development of military power, as 
 Sparta had done, is fitted to control successfully the affairs of 
 its neighbors. Military garrisons commanded by Spartan offi- 
 cers were now placed in many of the Greek cities, and Spartan 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the lovely Porch of the Maidens built to 
 adorn the temple on the Acropolis known as the Erechtheum (Fin Fig. 183). This 
 was a very ancient sanctuary of Athena, supposed to have gained its name because 
 it was originally a shrine in the castle of the prehistoric king Erechtheus on the 
 Acropolis. It was believed to stand on the spot where Athena overcame Poseidon 
 in her battle with him for the possession of Attica, and here was the mark of the 
 Sea-god's trident which he struck into the earth. Here also grew the original olive 
 tree which Athena summoned from the earth as a gift to the Athenians (§ 654). 
 The building was erected during the last Peloponnesian war, in spite of the finan- 
 cial distress of Athens at that time. It is one of the most beautiful architectural 
 works left us by the Greeks. 
 
 394 
 
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 395 
 
 control was maintained in a much more offensive form than 
 was the old tyranny of Athens. 
 
 By such violent means Sparta was able to repress the democ- 618. Sti^iggle 
 racies which had everywhere been hostile to her. In each city ^nd d?^^ ^ 
 the Spartans established and supported by military force the "^ocracy 
 rule of a small group of men from the noble or upper class. 
 Such rule of a small group was called oligarchy, a Greek 
 term meaning " rule of a few." The oligarchs were guilty of 
 the worst excesses, murdering and banishing their political 
 opponents and confiscating their fortunes. When the people 
 regained power, they retaliated in the same way and drove the 
 oligarchs from the city. As this kind of conflict went on, both 
 parties banished so many that a large number of the leading 
 Athenian citizens constantly lived in exile. From their foreign 
 homes they plotted against their banishers and formed a 
 constant danger from abroad. 
 
 In spite of the failure of oligarchy, thoughtful men every- 619. Dis- 
 where regarded popular rule also as an open failure. The splen- weaknesses 
 did achievements of citizenship under Pericles (Chapter XV) of democracy 
 must not blind us to the weaknesses of Athenian democracy. 
 Some of these we have already seen in following the course 
 of the Pelpponnesian Wars ; but the same weaknesses were 
 evident in the people's control of the internal affairs of Athens. 
 Let us examine some of the leading matters in which popular 
 control had failed and continued to fail. 
 
 Nowhere were the mistakes of democracy more evident than 620. Corrup- 
 in the Athenian law courts. The payment of the large citizen- prejudice of 
 juries (§ 538) often exhausted the treasury. When there was ^klz^n-^uSs'' 
 no money in the treasury with which to pay the juries, the jury- 
 men, who preferred such service to hard work, found it very 
 easy to fill the treasury again by fining any accused citizen 
 brought before them, whether he was guilty or innocent. More 
 than one lawyer of the time urged the court to confiscate the 
 fortune of an accused citizen, in order that the jurymen to whom 
 the lawyer was talking might thus receive their pay. It became 
 
396 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 621. Evils of 
 one-sided 
 class rule 
 
 622. Unwise 
 financial pol- 
 icy of the 
 democracy 
 
 623. Expen- 
 sive means of 
 collecting 
 taxes 
 
 a profitable trade to bring accusations and suits against wealthy 
 men on all sorts of trumped-up charges. A man thus threat- 
 ened usually preferred to buy off his accusers, in order to avoid 
 going before five hundred poor and ignorant jurors. 
 
 In the days of Solon we remember that the rule of the upper 
 classes over the lower was so oppressive that it almost resulted 
 in the destruction of the State (§ 473). In the course of less 
 than two hundred years the lower classes had gained complete 
 control, and their rule, as we have just seen (§ 620), became so 
 corruptly oppressive toward the upper classes that the final situ- 
 ation was again one-sided class rule, as bad as any that Athens 
 had ever seen. To Athenian misfortunes in foreign wars were 
 thus added the constant violence of weakening inner struggles 
 between classes. 
 
 Another weakness of popular rule was its unwise financial 
 policy, which continually exhausted the treasury of Athens. Her 
 empty treasury was due to a number of causes, chiefly three. 
 First, the payment of large numbers of citizens for services to 
 the State, especially the thousands of citizen-jurors ; second, the 
 payment to all citizens of " show-money " (§ 579), a heavy drain 
 on the treasury ; and third, the long-cgntinued expenses and 
 losses of war (§ 539). 
 
 To these we might add the expensive means of collecting 
 taxes employed by both parties. Unlike the great oriental gov- 
 ernments we have studied (Fig. 40), no Greek state possessed 
 any officials to undertake the task of collecting taxes. It there- 
 fore sold its tax claims to the highest bidder, who then had the 
 right to collect the taxes. In order to secure the large sums 
 necessary for making such bids, a number of men of money 
 would form themselves into a company. These companies 
 by secretly combining gained a monopoly in the business of tax 
 collecting. Their bid was always far less than the amount of 
 the tax claims to be collected. Thus the people paid far more 
 taxes than the State received from the collectors, into whose 
 pockets the difference went. Consequently, the rate of taxation 
 
The Fifial Conflicts among the Greek States 397 
 
 at Athens was now high, being at least from one to two per 
 cent of a man's fortune and sometimes much higher. 
 
 The Athenians had early begun to use the treasure which 624. Exhaus- 
 had accumulated in the temple of Athena. The obligation to temple treas- 
 pay back this borrowed treasure was engraved upon a stone ruptcy^oTihe 
 tablet set up on the Acropolis. To this day the surviving frag- Greek states 
 ments of this broken stone bear witness to the unpaid debt to 
 Athena and the bankruptcy of Athens. After the long struggle 
 between Athens and Sparta was over, all the Greek states 
 were practically bankrupt. An admiral or a general of this time 
 often found himself facing the enemy without the money to pay 
 his forces or to feed them. At the same time, if he failed in 
 his campaign he would be punished for his failure by the democ- 
 racy at home. There were times when the Athenian courts 
 ceased to hold any sessions, for lack of funds to pay the citizen- 
 juries, and a man with an important lawsuit on his hands could 
 not g^l it tried. 
 
 Under these circumstances the Mediterranean states for the 625. Begin- 
 first time began to study the methods and theory of raising financial 
 money for government expenses. A beginning was thus made in ^^^"J^^^"^ 
 the science of national finances and political economy. Neverthe- economy 
 less, the method of collection of the taxes continued to be that 
 of '' farming " out the undertaking to the highest bidder. In 
 this matter the Orient still remained far in advance of the north- 
 ern Mediterranean states (§-74). From now on the finances of 
 a nation became more and more a matter of special training, 
 and it became more difficult for the average citizen without 
 experience to manage the financial offices of the government. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great losses in property and in men 626. Begin- 
 during the long Peloponnesian Wars, Athens at length began decUne of^ 
 to recover herself. The farms of Attica had been laid waste so fa™i"g> ^nd 
 
 appearance 
 
 often by the Spartan armies that agriculture never wholly re- of large land- 
 
 . owners 
 
 covered its former prosperity. Ihere was a tendency among 
 farmers to sell their land and to undertake some form of manu- 
 facturing in the city. This was a natural thing to do, for the 
 
398 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 627. Growth 
 of manufac- 
 turing and 
 rise of banks 
 
 628. Rise of 
 prices ; grow- 
 ing luxury 
 
 industries of Athens offered attractive opportunities to make a 
 fortune. At the same time, men who had already gained wealth 
 in manufactures bought one farm after another. This was a 
 process which would finally concentrate the lands of Attica in 
 the hands of a few large city landlords who were not farmers, 
 but worked their great estates, each made up of many farms, 
 with slaves under superintendents. The landowning farmers 
 who worked their own lands and lived on them tended to 
 disappear. In their place the great estates common in neigh- 
 boring Asia Minor under the Persians (§ 269) were also 
 appearing among the Greeks. 
 
 Athens was still the leading business center and the greatest 
 city in the Mediterranean world. While manufacturing business 
 was not often conducted by companies, groups of wealthy men, 
 as we have seen, united to furnish the large sums necessary to 
 bid for the contract to collect the taxes. Such combinations 
 formed one of the evils of Athenian business life, as they have 
 sometimes done in our own time. Other men combined their 
 capital to form the first banks. The Greeks no longer left their 
 accumulated money in a temple treasury-, for safe-keeping, but 
 gave it to such a bank that it might be loaned out, used in 
 business, and earn interest. Athens thus became the financial 
 center of the ancient world, as New York and London are to- 
 day, and her bankers became the proverbially wealthy men of 
 the time. The most successful among them was Pasion, a 
 former slave, who had been able to purchase his liberty because 
 of his great business ability. 
 
 As the banking system resulted in keeping more money in 
 circulation the old increase in prices (§ 537) went on, and the 
 expenses for government were consequently higher ; but the 
 democracy continued to pay itself vast sums for jury service 
 and show-money. There was a freer use of money in private 
 life among the well-to-do classes. The houses of such people 
 began to display rooms with painted wall decorations and 
 adorned with rugs and hangings. An orator of the time 
 
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 399 
 
 condemns such luxurious houses, which he says were unknown 
 in the days of Miltiades and the Persian War, just as some 
 criticize our own modern fine houses and contrast them with 
 the simplicity of George Washington and Revolutionary days. 
 
 Men were now becoming more and more interested in their 629. Rise of 
 own careers, and they were no longer so devoted to the State slon?fsoWier 
 as formerly. This was especially true in the matter of military ^^ a result of 
 service. Except in Sparta, a Greek had heretofore left his occu- nesian Wars 
 pation for a brief space to bear arms for a single short cam- 
 paign, and then returned to his occupation. Such men made 
 up a citizen militia, no more devoted to arms than our own 
 modern militia. But the long Peloponnesian Wars had kept 
 large numbers of Greeks so long under arms that many of 
 them permanently adopted military life and became professional 
 soldiers, serving for pay wherever they could find opportunity. 
 Such soldiers serving a foreign state for pay are called " mer- 
 cenaries." There were few unoccupied lands to which a young 
 Greek could migrate as in the colonizing age ; and Persia blocked 
 all such enterprises in the East. The Greek youths who could 
 find no opportunities at home were therefore enlisting as soldiers 
 in Egypt, in Asia Minor, and in Persia, and the best young blood 
 of Greece was being spent to strengthen foreign states instead 
 of building up the power of the Greeks. 
 
 During the Peloponnesian Wars military leadership had also 630. Rise of 
 become a profession. It was no longer possible for a citizen to m^^fta^^^^"^^ 
 leave private life and casually assume command of an army or leaders; 
 
 n A 1 1111 r r . Xenophon 
 
 a fleet. Athens produced a whole group of professional military and the Ten 
 
 leaders whose romantic exploits made them famous throughout 
 
 the ancient world. The most talented among these was the 
 
 Athenian, Xenophon. About 400 e.g. he took service in Asia 
 
 Minor with Cyrus, a young Persian prince, who was planning 
 
 to overthrow his brother, the Persian king. With ten thousand 
 
 Greek mercenaries Cyrus marched entirely across Asia Minor 
 
 to the Euphrates, and down the river almost to Babylon. Here 
 
 the Greeks defeated the army of the Persian king ; but Cyrus 
 
400 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 631. Rise 
 of military 
 science ; 
 " Anabasis " 
 and other 
 military- 
 treatises 
 
 632. Greeks 
 learn use of 
 siege machin- 
 ery and larger 
 warships 
 
 was killed, and the Greeks were therefore obliged to retreat. 
 Xenophon led them up the Tigris past the ruins of Nineveh 
 (Fig. 203), and after months of fighting in dangerous moun- 
 tain passes, suffering from cold and hunger, the survivors 
 struggled on until they reached the Black Sea and finally gained 
 Byzantium in safety. 
 
 Of this extraordinary raid into the Persian Empire Xenophon 
 has left a modest account called the "Anabasis" ("up-going"), 
 one of the great books which have descended to us from ancient 
 times. He explains the military operations involved, and the 
 book thus became one of the treatises on military science which 
 now began to appear. Such leaders were discussing the theory 
 of operations in the field, methods of strategy, and the best 
 kinds of weapons. Even Euripides, in his tragedy of Hercules, 
 pictured the comparative effectiveness of bow and spear. 
 Xenophon tells of an officer of Cyrus who divided his men into 
 two parties and armed one party with clods and the other with 
 clubs. After the two parties had fought it out, all agreed that 
 the club in the hand at close quarters was more eff^ective than 
 missiles (that is, the clods) hurled from a distance. This was 
 to demonstrate the effectiveness of the spear at close quarters 
 over the arrows o-f distant archers. 
 
 We recall that in Pericles^ time the Spartans made no 
 attempt to attack the walls of Athens, because the Greeks at 
 that time knew nothing about methods of attacking fortifica- 
 tions. The Phoenician Carthaginians, however, had carried the 
 Assyrian siege devices (p. 140) to the west, where the west- 
 ern Greeks had now learned to use them in Sicily. From Sicily 
 the use of battering-rams, movable towers, and the like was car- 
 ried to Greece itself, and against attack with such equipment 
 Athens would no longer have been safe. The Mediterranean, 
 which had so long ago received the arts of peace from the 
 Orient, was now also learning to use war machinery from the 
 same source. At the same time larger warships were con- 
 structed, some having as many as five banks of oars ; and the 
 
TJie Final Conflicts among the Greek States 40 1 
 
 old triremes with three banks could no longer stand against such 
 powerful ships. All such equipment made war more expensive 
 than before. 
 
 The remarkable feat of Xenophon's Ten Thousand (§ 630) 633. War 
 finally stirred Spartan ambition to undertake conquest in Persian sparfa and 
 territory in Asia Minor. The Spartans, therefore, hired the sur- Persia ; and 
 
 -^ r J 5 ^Yi& Corin- 
 
 viving two thirds of the Ten Thousand, but the rule of Sparta thianWar 
 had caused such dissatisfaction that her victories in Asia Minor ^^^^~^ 7^-c.) 
 were offset by revolts in Greece. In one of these Lysander 
 was killed. The outcome of these rebellions was a league of 
 Athens and Thebes against Sparta. Even Corinth, the old-time 
 enemy of Athens, joined this league, and Argos also came in. 
 Behind this combination was Persia, whose agents had brought 
 it about in order to weaken Sparta. It was one of the ironies 
 of the whole deplorable situation that a fleet of Athens made 
 common cause with the Persians and helped to fasten Persian 
 despotism on the Greek cities of Asia. The Greeks had learned 
 nothing by their long and unhappy experience of fruitless fight- 
 ing, and thus began an eight years' struggle, called the Corinthian 
 War. The Athenians had been able to rebuild a fleet, with which 
 they now destroyed the fleet of Sparta. They were then in a 
 position to erect the Long Walls again. 
 
 At length the Persians began to fear lest Athens should again 634. King's 
 be strong enough to endanger Persian control in Asia Minor, (^g; b.c.) 
 The Spartans, therefore, found it easy to arrange a peace with 
 Persia. The Greek states fighting Sparta were equally willing 
 to come to terms, and when peace was at last established in 
 Greece, it was under the humiliating terms of a treaty accepted 
 by Hellas at the hands of the Persian king. It is known as the 
 King's Peace (387 B.C.). It did not end the leadership of Sparta 
 over the Greek states, and the Greek cities of Asia Minor were 
 shamefully abandoned to Persia. The period following the 
 King's Peace brought only added discontent with Sparta's illegal 
 and tyrannical control, and no satisfactory solution of the prob- 
 lem of the relations of the Greek states among themselves. 
 
402 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 6o. The Fall of Sparta and the 
 Leadership of Thebes 
 
 635. Thebes 
 
 and a new 
 
 Athenian 
 
 league 
 
 against 
 
 Sparta 
 
 (378 B.C.) 
 
 636. Peace 
 congress of 
 the Greek 
 states at 
 Sparta 
 
 637. Spartan 
 
 military 
 
 tactics 
 
 For twenty-five years since the last Peloponnesian war, the 
 Spartans had been endeavoring to maintain control of the 
 Greek world. Men like Lysander had been unable to trans- 
 form the rigid Spartan system into a government which should 
 sympathetically include and direct the activities of the whole 
 Greek world. The Spartans were therefore more hated than 
 Athens had ever been. A group of fearless and patriotic 
 citizens at Thebes succeeded in slaying the oligarchs, the 
 Spartan garrison surrendered and a democracy was set up, 
 which gained the leadership of all Boeotia. At the same time 
 Athens, which on the whole had been greatly strengthened by 
 the terms of the King's Peace, was able to begin the formation 
 of a second naval alliance like the original league from which 
 the Athenian Empire had sprung. The combination included 
 Thebes and so many of the other Greek cities that Sparta was 
 greatly disturbed. The Spartans met disaster on land, and 
 when this was followed by the defeat of their fleet by Athens, 
 they were ready for peace. 
 
 To arrange this peace all the Greek states met at Sparta, 
 and such meetings gave them experience in the united manage- 
 ment of their common affairs for the welfare of all Hellas. 
 Spartan leadership might have held the Greek states together, 
 and by giving them all a voice in the control of Hellas, Sparta 
 might still have finally united the Greeks into a great nation. 
 But this was not to be. When the conditions of peace were 
 all agreed upon, the Spartans refused to allow Thebes to speak 
 for the whole of Boeotia. The Thebans refused to enter the 
 compact on any other terms, and the peace was concluded with- 
 out them. This left Sparta and Thebes still in a state of war. 
 
 All Greece now expected to see the Thebans crushed by the 
 heavy Spartan phalanx, which had so long proved irresistible. 
 The Spartan plan of battle hitherto followed by aU commanders 
 
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 403 
 
 consisted in making the phalanx of the right wing very heavy 
 and massive, by arraying it many warriors deep. The custom- 
 ary depth was eight men. The onset of a well-drilled phalanx 
 produced a pressure so terrible that the opposing lines gave 
 way and the unbroken phalanx pushed through. The effect 
 was that of a heavy mass play in American football, only we 
 must picture the phalanx as carrying out the operation on a 
 large scale. Having broken through at the first onset, the 
 
 Theban Right 
 
 Theban Center 
 
 TJiebanLeft 
 
 SpartanRight 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Leuctra (371 b.c.) 
 
 
 victorious phalanx could then cut down singly the scattered 
 soldiers who had given way before them. 
 
 The Spartans had, as it were, but one " play " in their list ; 638. New 
 but they were accustomed to see it automatically successful. Epaminon- 
 The Theban commander, a gifted and patriotic citizen named i^^'ij^^ 
 Epaminondas, consequently knew in advance the only '' play " 
 which the Spartans had ever used. He therefore devised an 
 altogether novel arrangement of his troops, such that it would 
 meet and more than offset the fearful pressure of the heavy 
 Spartan right. He drew up his line so that it was not parallel 
 with that of the Spartans, his right wing being much further 
 from the Spartan line than his left. At the same time he 
 massed his troops on his left wing, which he made fifty shields 
 
404 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 639. Battle 
 of Leuctra 
 and fall of 
 Sparta 
 (371 B.C.) 
 
 640. Leader- 
 ship and 
 speedy 
 collapse 
 of Thebes 
 
 641. Final 
 political pros- 
 tration of 
 the whole 
 Greek world 
 
 642. Prog- 
 ress of the 
 Greeks in the 
 higher life 
 
 deep. This great mass was to meet the shock of the heavy 
 Spartan right wing (see plan, p. 403). 
 
 The battle took place at Leuctra, in southern Boeotia (see 
 map, p. 352). As the lines moved into action the battle did not 
 begin along the whole front at once ; but the massive Theban 
 left wing, being furthest advanced, met the Spartan line first and 
 was at first engaged alone. Its onset proved so heavy that the 
 Spartan right opposing it was soon crushed, and the rest of 
 the Spartan line also gave way as the Theban center and right 
 came into action. Over half of the Spartans engaged were 
 slain and with them their king. The long-invincible Spartan 
 army was at last defeated, and the charm of Spartan prestige 
 was finally broken. After more than thirty years of leadership 
 (since 404 B.C.) Spartan power was ended (371 B.C.) 
 
 The two rival leaders of the Greeks, Athens and Sparta, had 
 now both failed in the effort to weld the Greek states together 
 as a nation. A third Greek state was now victorious on land, 
 and it remained to be seen whether Thebes could accomplish 
 what Athens and Sparta had failed in doing. Under Epami- 
 nondas' leadership Thebes likewise created "a navy, and having 
 greatly weakened Athens at sea, Thebes gained the leadership 
 of Greece. But it was a supremacy based upon the genius of 
 a single man, and when Epaminondas fell in a final battle with 
 Sparta at Mantinea (362 B.C.), the power of Thebes by land 
 and sea collapsed. 
 
 Thus the only powerful Greek states, which might have 
 developed a federation of the Hellenic world, having crushed 
 each other, Hellas was ready to fall helplessly before a con- 
 queror from the outside. The Greek world, whose civilization 
 was everywhere supreme, was politically prostrate and helpless. 
 
 It was less than two generations since the death of Pericles, 
 and there were still old men living who had seen him in their 
 childhood days. We have been following the political fortunes 
 of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes during these two generations, 
 but our narrative has been very far from telling the whole 
 
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 405 
 
 stoiy. For in spite of their political decline during the two 
 generations since Pericles, the Greeks, and especially the Athe- 
 nians, had been achieving things in their higher life, in art, 
 architecture, literature, and thought, which made this period per- 
 haps the greatest in the history of man. To these achievements 
 since the death of Pericles we must now turn back. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 59. Why was Sparta unfitted to control the Greek 
 states ? What was her method of control ? What is an oligarchy ? 
 How did it succeed ? Had democracy succeeded any better ? Describe 
 the abuses practiced by the citizen-juries. Was class rule by the poor 
 any better than class rule by the rich? What practices kept the 
 Athenian treasury empty ? What was the Athenian method of collect- 
 ing taxes? Why was it unprofitable for the State? Describe the 
 effects of lack of money on the work of government. What did the 
 Greeks do in order to understand the national finances ? 
 
 What was happening to small farm owners ? Discuss business and 
 finance at this time. How had the long Peloponnesian Wars affected 
 the citizen soldiers of Greece ? How was military leadership develop- 
 ing ? Tell the story of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. How has 
 this story come down to us ? What science was now arising ? Where 
 did the Greeks learn the use of siege machinery ? What did the raid 
 of the Ten Thousand lead Sparta to do? Sketch the Corinthian 
 War. What was the result ? 
 
 Section 60. What combination was formed to overthrow the 
 leadership of Sparta ? What did the Thebans do ? What happened 
 at the peace conference ? In the resulting war between Sparta and 
 Thebes what result was to be anticipated? Describe Spartan military 
 tactics. How did Epaminondas plan to meet the Spartan tactics? 
 Where and when did the armies meet ? What was the result ? How 
 did Thebes succeed in leading the Greek states ? In what condition 
 politically was the whole Greek world ? 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE HIGHER LIFE OF THE GREEKS FROM THE DEATH OF 
 PERICLES TO THE FALL OF THE GREEK STATES 
 
 Section 6i. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting 
 
 643. Decline The long wars and the demands of the democracy (§ 622) 
 port of art and had swallowcd up the wealth of Athens ; the great and splendid 
 architecture v^orks of the Age of Pericles were therefore no longer possible. 
 At the same time Athens was obliged to rebuild her fortifications, 
 erect war arsenals, and build sheds for her battleships. The old 
 temporary wooden seats of the theater (§ 579) were replaced 
 by a permanent structure of stone (Fig. 189). Here and there 
 other Greek cities also were building durable stone theaters 
 
 Note. The above headpiece is a restoration by Adler of the famous tomb of 
 King Mausolus of Caria, called after him the Mausoleum (§ 646). We now call 
 any splendid tomb a mausoleum, thus preserving the old Hittite name of this 
 king. It was when first built (in the middle of the fourth century B.C.) the most 
 magnificent tomb on the north side of the Mediterranean, and it was because of 
 its widespread fame that its name was preserved. Upon a high rectangular base 
 a fine Ionic colonnade supported a step pyramid, upon which, crowning the 
 whole monument, rose a splendid four-horse chariot bearing the king and queen. 
 The work was designed and built by the architect and sculptor Pythius, and 
 adorned with sculpture by Scopas and other Athenian sculptors whom the queen 
 (§ 646) called to Caria for the purpose. 
 
 406 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 
 
 407 
 
 like that at Athens. Permanent stadiums for races were like- 
 wise erected by some communities (Fig. 212, 0. The mainte- 
 nance of art and architecture in this age was, however, largely 
 in the hands of individual artists, not 
 supported by the State but produc- 
 ing works of art for private buyers. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Erechtheum {F 
 in Fig. 183), one of the most beautiful 
 buildings ever erected, a temple which 
 had been begun before Pericles' death, 
 was continued and, for the most part, 
 completed during the unhappy days 
 of the last Peloponnesian war. It 
 was built in the Ionic style (p. 340), 
 adorned with colonnades of wonder- 
 ful refinement and beauty, and at one 
 corner, over the grave of the legend- 
 ary king Cecrops, the architects raised 
 an exquisite porch, with its roof sup- 
 ported by lovely marble figures of 
 Athenian maidens, watching over 
 the burial place of the ancient king 
 (headpiece, p. 394). 
 
 Egyptian architects, as we remem- 
 ber, had long before crowned their 
 columns with a capital representing 
 growing flowers or palm-tree tops 
 (Fig. 56). The Greek architects 
 now profited by this hint (see head- 
 piece and note, p. 453). Perceiving 
 the great beauty of their own 
 acanthus plant, they now designed a 
 capital adorned with a double row 
 of acanthus leaves (Fig. 193). This 
 new capital was richer and more 
 
 644. The 
 Erechtheum 
 on the 
 Athenian 
 AcropoHs 
 
 Fig. 193. A Corin- 
 thian Capital 
 
 The shaft of this column 
 has been cut out in the draw- 
 ing between the base and 
 the capital to save space. 
 Like the capitals of Egypt 
 (§ 92), this one represents 
 a plant, the leaves of the 
 acanthus, alternating in two 
 rows around the capital and 
 crowned by volutes rising 
 to the four corners of a 
 flat block upon which the 
 supported stone above 
 rests. The effect of this 
 capital is peculiarly rich 
 and ornate (§ 645) 
 
 645. Rise of 
 the Corin- 
 thian style of 
 architecture 
 
4o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 646. The 
 
 Mausoleum 
 in Asia Minor 
 
 647. Con- 
 trast between 
 sculpture of 
 the Periclean 
 Age and the 
 later work 
 
 648. The 
 
 sculpture of 
 Praxiteles 
 and Scopas 
 
 sumptuous than the simpler Doric and Ionic forms (p. 340). 
 Although our earliest example of such columns still survives 
 at Athens (Fi*. 190), they are now called Corinthian columns. 
 
 While Athens no longer possessed the means to erect great 
 state temples, other Greek states were not all so financially ex- 
 hausted. In Asia Minor the widowed queen of the wealthy king 
 of the Carians, Mausolus, so revered the memory of her royal 
 husband that she devoted vast riches to the erection of a mag- 
 nificent marble tomb for him, so splendid that it became one 
 of the most famous monuments of the ancient world (head- 
 piece, p, 406). While imposing as a monument of architecture, 
 the Mausoleum (so named after Mausolus ; see note, p. 406) 
 was most impressive because of the rich and remarkable sculp- 
 ture with which it was adorned. To do this work the widowed 
 queen called in the greatest sculptors of the Greeks. 
 
 Sculpture had made great progress since the days of Pericles. 
 Phidias and his pupils depicted the gods, whom they wrought 
 in marble, as lofty, majestic, unapproachable beings, lifted high 
 above human weaknesses and human feeling. We remember 
 that even the human figures of Phidias were not the everyday 
 men and women, youths and maidens whom we might have 
 met on the streets of Athens (§ 577). When Phidias and his 
 pupils had passed away, the sculptors who followed them began 
 to put more of the feeling and the experience of daily human 
 life into their work and thus brought their subjects nearer to 
 us. Among them we must give a high place, perhaps the high- 
 est place, to the great Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. 
 
 His native city being without the money for great monu- 
 mental works, Praxiteles wrought individual figures of life size, 
 and most of these for foreign states. Unlike the majestic and 
 exalted figures of Phidias, the gods of Praxiteles seem near to 
 us. They at once appeal to us as being human like ourselves, 
 interested in a life like ours, and doing things which we would 
 lik^ to do ourselves. As they stand at ease in attitudes of repose, 
 the grace and balance of the flowing lines give them a splendor 
 
0) _W 
 
 j:3 H 
 
 C3 O 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 OJ 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 *-i 
 
 O 
 
 >^ 
 
 
 c/o 
 
 o 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 U 
 
 
 <u 
 
 03 
 
 OJ 
 
 
 J 
 
 rt 
 
 p 
 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 OJ 
 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 < 
 
 T3 
 
 rt 
 
 "^ 
 
 H 
 
 
 « 
 
 (U 
 
 Cfl 
 
 On 
 
 
 
 Ph 
 
 w 
 
 03 
 
 
 ^_^ 
 
 
 
 "o 
 
 
 LO 
 
 
 P3 
 
 
 o 
 
 bb 
 
 ON 
 
 _ 
 
 
 
 
 
 bi) 
 
 CO 
 
 Q 
 
 03 
 O 
 
 ^ 
 
 £ 
 
 v^ 
 
 
 o 
 
 <; 
 
 u 
 
 >^ 
 
 o3 
 
 .5 
 
 
 .S 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 r5 
 
 w 
 
 c« 
 
 
 )-l 
 
 
 
 
 OJ 
 
 (U 
 
 o 
 
 <-i-i 
 
 M-l 
 
 Ol 
 
 
 c 
 
 M-l 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 <; 
 
 bJO 
 
 o 
 
 to 
 
 OJ 
 
 s^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 C/5 
 
 q:: 
 
 
 o 
 
 13 
 
 o 
 
 Q 
 
 O 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 'a; 
 
 
 B 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 1 
 
 03 
 
 C 
 
 
 -0 
 
 
 o 
 > 
 
 H 
 
 to 
 
 bX) 
 
 a; 
 o 
 
 <v 
 
 XI 
 w 
 
 OS 
 OJ 
 
 '5 
 cr 
 
 Q 
 
 C 
 
 > 
 
 
 oT 
 
 03 
 
 
 (U 
 
 OS 
 OJ 
 
 bjO 
 c 
 
 .2 
 
 bD 
 
 
 _ 
 
 bJO 
 
 o 
 03 
 
 .s 
 
 
 c/5 
 
 o 
 
 C 
 
 3 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 03 
 
 
 O 
 
 a, 
 
 OJ 
 
 
 
 
 (U 
 
 3 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 (U 
 
 OJ 
 
 ,i:3 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 C 
 
 fi 
 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 03 
 
 S 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 _N 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 u 
 
 
> 
 
 2^«+H Oh C 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 409 
 
 of beauty unattained by any earlier sculpture of the Greeks 
 (Figs. 187, 194, and 195). In great contrast with the work 
 of Praxiteles was that of Scopas, who did much of the sculpture 
 of the Mausoleum. He loved to fashion figures not in tranquil 
 moods, but in violent action, in moments of passionate excite- 
 ment, like that of warriors in battle (Fig. 196). T\\^ faces sculp- 
 tured by Praxiteles and Scopas were no longer expressionless, 
 as in earlier sculpture (Figs. 168 and 169); but the artists began 
 to put into them some of their own inner feeling. The artist's 
 own individual life thus began to find expression in his work. 
 In many ways the sculpture of this age was much influenced 
 by the work of the painters, who really led the way. 
 
 The introduction of portable paintings on wooden tablets 649. Rise of 
 made it more easy for the painters to follow their own individ- ^ood"^^ °^ 
 ual feelings, for they were thus freed from the necessity of 
 painting large scenes on the walls of State buildings (§ 572). 
 As we have already learned (§ 550), no oil colors were known 
 in the ancient world, but the Greek painters now adopted the 
 Egyptian method of mixing their colors in melted wax and 
 then applying the fluid wax with a brush to a wooden tablet 
 (Plate VIII, p. 654). The painter could then work in his own 
 studio to please his own fancy, and could sell his paintings to 
 any private purchaser who wished to buy. It thus became cus- 
 tomary for people of wealth to set up paintings in their own 
 houses, and in this way private support of art was much fur- 
 thered, and painting made great progress. 
 
 An Athenian painter named Apollodorus now began to notice 650. Discov- 
 that the light usually fell on an object from one side, leaving the p^^nt light, ° 
 unlighted side so dark that but little color showed on that side, shadow, and 
 
 y ' perspective 
 
 while on the lighted side the colors came out very brightly. 
 When he painted a woman's arm in this way, lo, it looked round 
 and seemed to stand out from the surface of the painting 
 (Fig. 197) ; whereas up in the Painted Porch all the human limbs 
 in the old painting of Marathon (§ 572) looked perfectly flat. 
 By representing figures in the background of his paintings, as 
 
4IO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 197. A Wall-Painting at Pompeii showing the Sacri- 
 fice OF Iphigenia 
 
 The works of the great fourth-century artists {§651) have all perished, 
 but it is supposed that the later house decorators and wall-painters of 
 Italy copied the old masterpieces. Hence the scene here shown prob- 
 ably conveys some impression of old Greek painting. The scene shows 
 us the maid Iphigenia as she is carried away to be slain as a sacrifice. 
 The figure at the left, standing with veiled face, suggests, as often in 
 modern art, the dreadfulness of a coming catastrophe, which human 
 eyes are unwilling to behold. Note the skill with which human limbs 
 are made to show thickness and roundness (§ 650) 
 
 smaller than those in front Apollodorus also introduced what we 
 now call perspective. As a result, his paintings had an appear- 
 ance of depth, and when he painted the interior of a house one 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 
 
 411 
 
 seemed to be looking into the very room itself. He was called 
 by the Athenians the '' shadow painter," and the good old- 
 fashioned folk shook their heads at his work, preferring the 
 old style. Even the great philosopher Plato (§ 671) con- 
 demned this new method of painting as employing devices 
 and creating illusions of depth which were really deception. 
 
 ^iwiiiiiiii^^ 
 
 A n 
 
 Fig. 198. Greek Boy pulling out a Thorn {A) and a Later 
 
 Caricature of the Thorn Puller {B) 
 
 The graceful figure of the slender boy so seriously striving to remove 
 the thorn was probably wrought not long after the Persian Wars. It 
 was very popular in antiquity, as it has also been in modern times. The 
 comical caricature [B] in clay (terra cotta), though it has lost one foot, 
 is a delightful example of Greek humor expressed in parody (§ 652) 
 
 Nevertheless, the new method triumphed, and the younger 651. Tri- 
 painters who adopted it produced work which was the talk of neWmethod 
 the town. People gossiped about it and told how a painter of painting 
 named Zeuxis, in order to outdo his rival Parrhasius, had painted 
 grapes so naturally that the birds flew up to the painting and 
 pecked at them. Thereupon Parrhasius invited Zeuxis over to 
 his studio to inspect a painting of his. Zeuxis found it covered 
 
412 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 652. Vase- 
 painters and 
 other artist- 
 craftsmen 
 
 J 
 
 with a curtain which he attempted to draw aside. But his hand 
 
 fell on a painted surface and he discovered to his confusion that 
 
 the curtain was no more real than his own painted grapes had 
 
 ; - , been. Unfortunately, all 
 
 .->^^^ such Greek paintings 
 
 i ' have perished, and we 
 
 have only later copies 
 (Fig. 197) at Pompeii. 
 The vase-painters of 
 the time likewise often 
 copied the famous works 
 of the leading sculptors 
 and painters. But after 
 a wonderful revival in 
 the last Peloponnesian 
 
 war, the art of vase- 
 painting passed into a 
 melancholy decline from 
 which it never recovered. 
 At the same time, in 
 order to meet the rising 
 desire for objects of art 
 among the people, small 
 artists began to furnish 
 delightful miniature cop- 
 ies of famous classic 
 works, or again they 
 made delicious carica- 
 tures of such well-known 
 classics (Fig. 198, B). At 
 the same time even stone- 
 cutters wrought tomb- 
 stones, bearing reliefs done with a soft and melancholy beauty, 
 breathing the wistful uncertainty with which the Greeks of this 
 age were beginning to look out into the shadow world (Fig. 199;. 
 
 LJi 
 
 Fig. 199. Athenian Gravestone 
 SHOWING A Daughter saying Fare- 
 well TO her Parents 
 
 This tombstone of a young girl shows us 
 the fine feeling of which even a grave- 
 yard stonecutter was capable. He has 
 depicted the last farewell of the parents, 
 as their daughter is carried away by death. 
 The mother, seated at the left, grasps the 
 young girl's hand, while the father stands 
 with his fingers in his beard in somber 
 and meditative reconciliation 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 413 
 
 Section 62. Religion, Literature, and Thought 
 
 Any young Athenian born at about the time of Pericles' 653. The age 
 death found himself in an age of conflict wherever he went : after the 
 an age of conflict abroad on the field of battle as he stood with pg^icies 
 spear and shield in the Athenian ranks in the long years of 
 warfare between Athens, Sparta, and Thebes; an age of 
 conflict at home in Athens amid the excited shouting and 
 applause of the turbulent Assembly or the tumult and even 
 bloodshed of the streets and markets of the city as the common 
 people, the democracy, struggled with the nobles for the leader- 
 ship of the State ; and finally in an age of conflict i7i himself z.^ 
 he felt his once confident faith in old things struggling to 
 maintain itself against new views. 
 
 He recalled the childhood tales of the gods, which he had 654. The 
 heard at his nurse's knee. When he had asked her how Athena citizen's re- 
 and the gods looked, she had pointed to a beautiful vase in his efj-'lTli^e^ 
 father's house, bearing graceful paintings of Athena presenting 
 the olive tree to the Athenians, and of the angry Sea-god 
 striking his trident into the ground and leaving a mark which 
 the lad's nurse had shown him at the Erechtheum on the 
 Acropolis (p. 394). There were the gods on the vase in human 
 form, and so he had long thought of them as people like those 
 of Athens. He had learned, too, that they were near by, for 
 he had seen his father present gifts to them at household 
 feasts. Later when he went to school and memorized long 
 passages of the Homeric poems, he had learned more about 
 their adventures on earth. Then he had stood on the edge of 
 the crowd with his parents watching the magnificent State 
 feasts, like the Panathensea (§ 570), supported at great expense, 
 in order to honor the gods and keep them favorable to Athens. 
 Hence everyone seemed to him to believe that the gods had 
 all power over Athens. On such occasions he vaguely felt the 
 majesty and grandeur of the great gods, but when he looked 
 upon figures of them, sculptured by such artists as Praxiteles 
 
414 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 655. Religion 
 and conduct 
 
 656. The re- 
 ligion of the 
 multitude 
 
 657. The 
 foreign gods 
 from the 
 Orient 
 
 (Fig. 194), the gods again appeared very much like earthly 
 folk, as he had seen them on the vase in his childhood. 
 
 He never had any religious instruction, for there was nothing 
 like a church, a clergy, or any religious teachers. There was no 
 sacred book revered by all, like our Bible. He had not been 
 taught that the gods had any interest in him or his conduct, or 
 that they required him to be either good or bad. As long as he 
 did not neglect any of the ceremonies desired by the gods, 
 he knew he need have no fear of them. At the same time if 
 he lived an evil life, he realized that he might be condemned to 
 enter at death a dark and gruesome dwelling place beneath 
 the earth (§ 488). On the other hand, a good life might bring 
 him at last to the beautiful Elysian fields (§ 489). 
 
 One of the ways of reaching this place of blessedness was by 
 initiation into the mysteries at Eleusis (§ 489). Another way 
 was to follow the teachings of the beggar-priests and sooth- 
 sayers of Orpheus. These wandering teachers, like traveling 
 revival preachers of to-day, went about in all Greece, followed 
 by hordes of the poor and ignorant, who eagerly accepted their 
 mysterious teachings, promising every blessing to those who 
 listened and obeyed. The more mysterious it all was the better 
 the multitude liked it. These teachings were recorded in the 
 wonderful book of Orpheus, which finally gained wide circula- 
 tion among the common people. It came nearer to being the 
 sacred book of the Greeks than any that ever arose among 
 them. All the lower classes believed in magic and were deeply 
 impressed by the mysterious '' stunts " of the magicians and 
 soothsayers whom they constantly consulted on all the ordinary 
 acts of life. 
 
 Down at Piraeus, the harbor town, the Athenian citizen 
 found the busy streets crowded with foreign merchants from 
 Egypt, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor. They, too, had their assur- 
 ances of divine help and blessedness, and they brought with 
 them their strange gods : the Great Mother from Asia Minor, 
 Isis from her lovely temple at the First Cataract of the Nile 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 415 
 
 (Plate V, p. 444), and Egyptian Amon from his mysterious 
 shrine far away in the Sahara (Fig. 205), behind the Greek 
 city of Cyrene (see map, p. 436). The famous Greek poet 
 Pindar had written a poem in his honor, and erected a statue 
 of the great Egyptian god. As a deliverer of oracles reveal- - 
 ing the future, Amon had now become as great a favorite 
 among the Greeks themselves as Apollo of Delphi (§ 490). 
 There was an Athenian ship which regularly plied between 
 the Piraeus and Cyrene, carrying the Greeks to Amon's dis- 
 tant Sahara shrine. Egyptian symbols too were common 
 on Greek tombstones. 
 
 Some of these foreign beliefs had once greatly impressed our 658. The 
 citizen in his younger days. Then when he left his boyhood citizen's later 
 teacher behind, and went to hear the lectures of a noted uncertainties 
 Sophist (§ 561), he found that no one knew with any certainty 
 whether the gods even existed ; much less did anyone know 
 what they were like. He now looked with some pity at the 
 crowds of pilgrims who filled the sacred road leading to the 
 hall of the mysteries at Eleusis. He had only contempt for 
 the mob which filled the processions of the strange oriental 
 gods, and almost every day marched with tumult and flute- 
 playing through the streets of Athens. While he could not 
 follow such superstitions of the ignorant poor, he found, never- 
 theless, that he was not yet quite ready to throw away the gods 
 and reject them altogether, as some of his educated neighbors 
 were doing. 
 
 He recalled the days of his youth, when he had detested 659. The 
 
 victory of 
 
 these very doubts which he had now taken up. With great doubt and 
 enjoyment he had once beheld the caricatures of Aristophanes, o^^Euripides 
 the greatest of the comedy writers (§ 582). Our citizen had 
 shouted with delight at Aristophanes' mockery of the doubts 
 and mental struggles of Euripides (§ 581), or the ridicule which 
 the clever comedy heaped upon the Sophists. Since then, 
 however, had come the new light which he had gained from the 
 Sophists. Whatever the gods might be like, he was sure that 
 
4i6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 660. Aris- 
 tophanes and 
 Socrates 
 
 they were not such beings as he found pictured among his 
 heroic forefathers in the Homeric poems. Now he had long 
 since cast aside his Homer. In spite of Aristophanes, he and 
 
 his educated friends were all read- 
 ing the splendid tragedies of 
 Euripides (§ 581), with their un- 
 certainties, struggles, and doubts 
 about life and the gods. Euripides, 
 the victim of Aristophanes' ridi- 
 cule, to whom the Athenians had 
 rarely voted a victory during his 
 lifetime (§ 581), had now tri- 
 umphed , but his triumph meant 
 the defeat of the old, the victory 
 of doubt, the overthrow of the 
 gods, and the incoming of a new 
 age in thought and belief. But 
 the old died hard, and the struggle 
 was a tragic one. 
 
 The citizen remembered well 
 another comedy of Aristophanes, 
 which had likewise found a ready 
 response from the Athenian audi- 
 ence. It had placed upon the 
 stage the rude and comical figure 
 of a poor Athenian named Soc- 
 rates, whom Aristophanes had 
 represented as a dangerous man, 
 to be shunned or even chastised 
 by good Athenians. He was the 
 son of a stonecutter, or small 
 sculptor. The ill-clothed figure and ugly face (Fig. 200) of 
 Socrates had become familiar in the streets to all the folk of 
 Athens since the outbreak of the second war with Sparta. He 
 was accustomed to stand about the market place all day long. 
 
 Fig. 200. Portrait of 
 Socrates 
 
 This is not the best of the 
 numerous surviving portraits 
 of Socrates, but it is especially- 
 interesting because it bears 
 under the philosopher's name 
 nine inscribed Hnes contain- 
 ing a portion of his public de- 
 fense as reported by Plato in 
 his Apology 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 417 
 
 engaging in conversation anyone he met, and asking a great 
 many questions. Our citizen recalled that Socrates' questions 
 left him in a very confused state of mind, for he seemed to call 
 in question everything which the citizen had once regarded 
 as settled. 
 
 Yet this familiar and homely figure of the stonecutter's son 661. The 
 was the personification of the best and highest in Greek genius, chief interest 
 Without desire for office or a political career, Socrates' supreme *^^ Socrates 
 interest nevertheless was the State. He believed that the State, 
 made up as it was of citizens, could be purified and saved only 
 by the improvement of the individual citizen through the educa- 
 tion of his mind to recognize virtue and right. 
 
 Herein lies the supreme achievement of Socrates ; namely, 662, His be- 
 his unshakable conviction that the human mind is able to recog- power to dis •• 
 nize and determine what are virtue and right, truth, beauty and t^JJJis^ag^ud! 
 honesty, and all the other great ideas which mean so much to and to shape 
 human life. To him these ideas had reality. He taught that by them 
 by keen questioning and discussion it is possible to reject error 
 and discern these realities. Inspired by this impregnable belief, 
 Socrates went about in Athens, engaging all his fellow citizens 
 in such discussion, convinced that he might thus lead each 
 citizen in turn to a knowledge of the leading and compelling 
 virtues. Furthermore, he firmly believed that the citizen who 
 had once recognized these virtues would shape eveiy action and 
 all his life by them. Socrates thus revealed the power of virtue 
 and of similar ideas by argument and logic, but he made no 
 appeal to religion as an influence toward good conduct. Never- 
 theless, he showed himself a deeply religious man, believing with 
 devout heart in the gods, although they were not exactly those 
 of the fathers, and even feeling, like the Hebrew prophets, 
 that there was a divine voice within him, calling him to his 
 high mission. 
 
 The simple but powerful personality of this greatest of 663. Public 
 Greek teachers often opened to him the houses of the rich socrates*^ 
 and noble. His fame spread far and wide, and when the 
 
Ancient Times 
 
 664. The trial 
 and death of 
 Socrates 
 (399 B.C.) 
 
 665. The in- 
 fluence of 
 Socrates 
 after his 
 death 
 
 Delphian oracle (§ 490) was asked who was the wisest of the 
 living, it responded with the name of Socrates. A group of 
 pupils gathered about him, among whom the most famous 
 was Plato. But his aims and his noble efforts on behalf of the 
 Athenian State were misunderstood. His keen questions seemed 
 to throw doubt upon all the old beliefs. The Athenians had 
 already vented their displeasure on more than one leading 
 Sophist who had rejected the old faith and teaching (§ 593). 
 
 So the Athenians summoned Socrates to trial for corrupting 
 the youth with all sorts of doubts and impious teachings. Such 
 examples as Alcibiades, who had. been his pupil, seemed con- 
 vincing illustrations of the viciousness of his teaching; many 
 had seen and still more had read with growing resentment 
 the comedy of Aristophanes which held him up to contempt 
 and execration. Socrates might easily have left Athens when 
 the complaint was lodged against him. Nevertheless he appeared 
 for trial, made a powerful and dignified defense, and, when the 
 court voted the death penalty, passed his last days in tranquil 
 conversation with his friends and pupils, in whose presence 
 he then quietly drank the fatal hemlock (399 B.C.). Thus the 
 Athenian democracy, which had so fatally mismanaged the 
 affairs of the nation in war, brought upon itself much greater 
 reproach in condemning to death, even though in accordance 
 with law, the greatest and purest soul among its citizens 
 (headpiece, p. 425). 
 
 The undisturbed serenity of Socrates in his last hours, as 
 pictured to us in Plato's idealized version of the scene, pro- 
 foundly affected the whole Greek world and still forms one of 
 the most precious possessions of humanity. He was the great- 
 est Greek, and in him Greek civilization reached its highest 
 level. But the glorified figure of Socrates, as he appears in the 
 writings of his pupils, was to prove more powerful even than 
 the living teacher. 
 
 Meantime there had been growing up a body of scientific 
 knowledge about the visible world, which men had never 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 419 
 
 possessed before. Moreover this new scientific knowledge was 666. Spread 
 no longer confined to the few philosophers who were its dis- knowiTdge^ 
 coverers, as formerly had been the case (§ 564). Our doubt- ^^^"f ^^^ 
 ing citizen had at home a whole shelf of books on natural 
 science. It included a treatise on mathematics, an astronomy 
 in which the year was at last stated to contain 365I days, 
 a zoology and a botany. There was also a mineralogy, a pam- 
 phlet on foretelling the weather, and a treatise on the calendar, 
 besides several geographies with maps of the world then known. 
 There were also practical books of guidance and instruction on 
 drawing, war, farming, raising horses, or even cooking. 
 
 There was in our citizen's library also a remarkable history, 667. Scien- 
 treating the fortunes of nations iji the same way in which ofhirtory^^ 
 natural science was treated. Its author was Thucydides, the 
 first scientific writer of history. A generation earlier Herodo- 
 tus' history (§ 567) had ascribed the fortunes of nations to 
 the will of the gods, but Thucydides, with an insight like that 
 of modern historians, traced historical events to their earthly 
 causes in the world of men where they occur. There stood the 
 two books, Herodotus and Thucydides, side by side in the citi- 
 zen's library. There were only thirty years or so between them, 
 but how different the beliefs of the two historians, the old and 
 the new ! Thucydides was one of the greatest writers of simple 
 and beautiful prose that ever lived. His book which told the 
 story of the long wars resulting in the fall of the Athenian 
 Empire was received by the Greeks with enthusiastic approval. 
 It has been one of the world's great classics ever since. 
 
 The success of Thucydides' work in prose shows that the 668. The 
 interest of the Athenians was no longer in poetry but in the poet'iy^nd 
 new and more youthful art of prose. Poetry, including play- ^^J^ triumph 
 writing, noticeably declined. A successful public speech was 
 now written down beforehand, and the demand for such ad- 
 dresses in the Assembly, and especially before the citizen-juries, 
 was a constant motive for the cultivation of skillful prose 
 writing and public speaking. 
 
420 A7icie7it Times 
 
 669. Athens The teachers of rhetoric at Athens, the successors of the 
 lducSo?;° old Sophists (§ 562), became world renowned, and they made 
 isocrates ^^ ^j^-y ^^ center of education for the whole Greek world. 
 
 The leader among them was Isocrates, the son of a well-to-do 
 flute manufacturer. Having lost his father's fortune in the 
 Peloponnesian Wars, he turned for a living to the teaching of 
 rhetoric, in which he soon showed great ability. He chose as 
 his theme the great political questions of his time. He was not 
 a good speaker, and he therefore devoted himself especially 
 to the writing of his speeches, which he then published as 
 political essays. Throughout Greece these remarkable essays 
 were read, and Isocrates finally became the political spokesman 
 of Athens, if not of all Greece. 
 
 670. Rise of Notwithstanding the new interest in natural science, the 
 government' affairs of men rather than of nature were the burning questions 
 
 at Athens. How should the governmental affairs of a commu- 
 nity of men be conducted ? — what should be the proper form 
 of a free state ? — these were the problems which Athenian 
 experience and the efforts of Socrates toward an enlightened 
 citizenship had thrust into the foreground. What should be the 
 form of the ideal state ? The Orient had already had its social 
 idealism. In the Orient, however, it had never occurred to the 
 social dreamers to discuss the for?n of govei'nment of the ideal 
 state. They accepted as a matter of course the monarchy under 
 which they lived as the obvious form for the State. But in 
 Greece the question of the form of government, whether a king- 
 dom, a republic, or an aristocracy, was now earnestly discussed. 
 Thus there arose a new science, the science of governmejit. 
 
 671. Plato Plato, the most gifted pupil of Socrates, published much of 
 
 his beloved master's teaching in the form of dialogues, sup- 
 posedly reproducing the discussions of the great teacher him- 
 self. Then after extensive travels in Egypt and the west he 
 returned to Athens, where he set up his school in the grove 
 of the Academy (§ 558). Convinced of the hopelessness of 
 democracy in Athens, he reluctantly gave up all thought of a 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 421 
 
 career as a statesman, to which he had been strongly drawn, 
 and settled down at Athens to devote himself to teaching. 
 
 Plato was both philosopher and poet. The ideas which 672. Plato's 
 Socrates maintained the human mind could discern, became oflhe'so^^"^ 
 for Plato eternal realities, having an existence independent of ^"^^^^^ ^^^^^ 
 man and his mind. The human soul, he taught, had always 
 existed, and in an earlier state had beheld the great ideas of 
 goodness, beauty, evil, and the like, and had gained an intuitive 
 vision of them which in this earthly life the soul now recalled 
 and recognized again. The elect souls, gifted with such vision, 
 were the ones to control the ideal state, for they would neces- 
 sarily act in accordance with the ideas of virtue and justice 
 which they had discerned. It was possible by education, thought 
 Plato, to lead the souls of men to a clear vision of these ideas. 
 
 In a noble essay entitled The Republic Plato presented a 673. Plato's 
 lofty vision of his ideal state. Here live the enlightened souls 
 governing society in righteousness and justice. They do no 
 work, but depend on craftsmen and slaves for all menial labor. 
 And yet the comforts and leisure which they enjoy are the 
 product of that very world of industry and commerce in a 
 Greek city which Plato so thoroughly despises. The plan 
 places far too much dependence on education and takes no 
 account of the dignity and importance of labor in human 
 society. Moreover, Plato's ideal state is the self-contained, self- 
 controlling city-state as it had in times past supposedly existed 
 in Greece. He failed to perceive that the vital question for 
 Greece was now the relation of these city-states to each other. 
 He did not discern that the life of a cultivated state unavoid- 
 ably expands beyond its borders, and by its needs and its 
 contributions affects the life of surrounding states. It cannot 
 be confined within its political borders, for its commercial borders 
 lie as far distant as its galleys can carry its produce. 
 
 Thus boundary lines cannot separate nations ; their life over- 674. Growth 
 laps and interfuses with the life round about them. It was so ized world 
 within Greece, and it was so far beyond the borders of Greek 
 
422 
 
 A7tcie7it Times 
 
 675. Motives 
 toward unity: 
 I Socrates and 
 Xenophon 
 
 676. Unalter- 
 able disunion 
 the end of 
 Greek politi- 
 cal develop- 
 ment 
 
 territory. There had grown up a civilized world which was 
 reading Greek books, using Greek utensils, fitting up its houses 
 with Greek furniture, decorating its house interiors with Greek 
 paintings, building Greek theaters, learning Greek tactics in 
 war — a great Mediterranean and oriental world bound to- 
 gether by lines of commerce, travel, and common economic 
 interests. For this world, as a coming political unity, the lofty 
 idealist Plato, in spite of his travels, had no eyes. To this 
 world, once dominated by oriental culture, the Greeks had 
 given the noblest and sanest ideas .yet attained by the mind 
 of civilized man, and to this world likewise the Greeks should 
 have given political leadership. 
 
 Men in practical life, like Isocrates, clearly understood the 
 situation at this time. Isocrates urged the Greeks to bury their 
 petty differences and expand their purely sectional patriotism 
 into loyalty toward a great nation which should unite the whole 
 Greek world. He told his countrymen that, so united, they 
 could easily overthrow the decaying Persian Empire and make 
 themselves lords of the world, whereas now, while they con- 
 tinued to fight among themselves, the king of Persia could do 
 as he pleased with them. In an inspiring address distributed to 
 the Greeks at the Olympic games, he said : " Anyone coming 
 from abroad and observing the present situation of Greece 
 would regard us as great fools struggling among ourselves 
 about trifles, and destroying our own land, when without dan- 
 ger we might conquer Asia." To all Greeks who had read 
 Xenophon 's story of the march of his Ten Thousand, the 
 weakness of the Persian Empire was obvious. Every motive 
 toward unity was present. 
 
 Nevertheless, no Greek city was willing to submit to the 
 leadership of another. Local patriotism, like the sectionalism 
 which brought on our Civil War, prevailed, and unalterable dis- 
 union was the end of Greek political development. As a result 
 the Greeks were now to be subjected by an outside power, 
 which had never had any share in advancing Greek culture 
 
The Higher Life of the Greeks 423 
 
 (§ 678). Thus the fine theories of the ideal form of the state 
 so warmly discussed at Athens were now to be met by the 
 hard fact of irresistible power in the hands of a single ruler — 
 the form of power which the Greek republics had in vain striven 
 to destroy. 
 
 But in spite of this final and melancholy collapse of Greek 677. Siiprem- 
 political power, which even the wealth and splendor of the west- genius in 
 ern Greek cities in Italy and Sicily, like Syracuse, had not been po^tj^f^i 
 able to prevent, what an incomparably glorious age of Greek collapse 
 civilization was this which we have been sketching ! The rival- 
 ries which proved so fatal to the political leadership of the 
 Greeks had been a constant incentive spurring them all on, as 
 each city strove to surpass its rivals in art and literature and all 
 the finest things in civilization. Great as the age of Pericles 
 had been, the age that followed was still greater. The tiny 
 Athenian state, with a population not larger than that of our 
 little state of Delaware in 19 10, and having at best twenty-five 
 or thirty thousand citizens, had furnished in this period a group 
 of great names in all lines of human achievement, such as never 
 in all the history of the world arose in an area and a population 
 so limited. In a book like this we have been able to offer only 
 a few hints of all that these men of Athens accomplished. 
 Their names to-day are among the most illustrious in human 
 history, and the achievements which we link with them form 
 the greatest chapter in the higher life of man. Furthermore, 
 Greek genius was to go on to many another future triumph, 
 in spite of the loss of that political leadership which we are now 
 to see passing into other hands. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 61. Was Athens now able to support great works of art 
 as in the days of Pericles.'^ What was the effect upon art? What 
 lovely building was nevertheless erected on the Acropolis? What 
 new style of architecture was coming in ? How did it differ from the 
 older Doric and Ionic styles ? Describe the Mausoleum, How did 
 
424 Ancient Times 
 
 the sculpture of Praxiteles differ from that of Phidias ? What kind 
 of figures did Scopas love to carve ? What new process of producing 
 portable paintings came in ? What new method of painting did 
 Apollodorus introduce ? What popular stories about the feats of the 
 new shadow painters arose? Have any of these paintings survived? 
 How do we know how they looked? What kind of small works did 
 the lesser artists produce ? 
 
 Section 62. In what respects was the age following Pericles one 
 of conflict ? W^hat did an Athenian child of this time learn about the 
 gods at home ? at school ? at public celebrations ? from great works 
 of art? Had he had any religious instruction? What did he believe 
 about his own conduct and the relation of the gods to it? What did 
 the common people believe? What teachers did they follow? Did 
 they show intelligence or superstition in religious matters? 
 
 What foreign divinities were coming in ? Tell about them. What 
 did the educated citizen think about the beliefs of the common 
 people? What had once been his feeling about religious doubt? 
 Whose comedies had mocked such doubt? From whom did such 
 a citizen himself learn to doubt? Whose tragedies were he and 
 his friends reading? Did this mean the suppression or the triumph 
 of doubt? 
 
 How did one of the comedies of Aristophanes represent Socrates? 
 How did Socrates spend most of his time? What was his purpose 
 in doing this ? Can you sum up his teachings ? Was he then an evil 
 man ? Was he irreligious ? What was the general opinion about his 
 wisdom ? about his character ? What did the Athenians finally do in 
 order to silence Socrates? Tell about his trial and death. Did his 
 influence cease at his death ? 
 
 W^hat was the condition of scientific knowledge at Athens ? How 
 did the history of Thucydides differ from that of Herodotus? How 
 much time had elapsed between them ? What can you say of prose 
 and poetry in this age? Who was the leading teacher of rhetoric 
 and prose writing at Athens ? What can you say of his own writing ? 
 What new science was arising? W^hat can you say of the life of 
 Plato ? What did he teach about government ? W^hat great question 
 did he fail to perceive ? What civilized world was growing up ? Why 
 had not the Greeks given this world of Greek culture also political 
 unity? How did practical men like Isocrates feel about this prob- 
 lem ? Did the Greeks follow his advice ? What was to be the result ? 
 

 «/SluwSS 
 
 \ . j^2^'^' Mm'" '' ^t^'^ 
 
 ■^^^^l^iM^SM 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 SkcTioN 63. The Rise of Macedonia 
 
 On the northern frontiers in the mountains of the Balkan Pen- 
 insula Greek civilization gradually faded and disappeared, merg- 
 ing into the barbarism which had descended from Stone Age 
 Europe. These backward Northerners, such as the Thracians, 
 spoke Indo-European tongues akin to Greek, but their Greek 
 kindred of the South could not understand them. A veneer 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us one of the streets where it was the' 
 custom of both the Greeks and Romans (Fig. 212, H, K) to bury their dead. 
 It was outside the Dipylon Gate (plan, p. 352), on the sacred way leading to 
 Eleusis, both sides of which were lined for some distance with marble tomb- 
 stones, of which Fig. 199 is an example. The Roman Sulla (§ 945), in his Eastern 
 war, while besieging Athens, piled up earth as a causeway leading to the top of 
 the wall of Athens (see plan, p. 352) at this point. The part of the cemetery which 
 he covered with earth was thus preserved, to be dug out in modem times — the 
 only surviving portion of such an ancient Greek street of tombs. In this ceme- 
 tery the Athenians of Socrates' day were buried. The monument at the left shows 
 a brave Athenian youth on horseback, charging the fallen enemy. He was slain 
 in the Corinthian War (§ 633) and buried here a few years after the death of 
 Socrates (§ 664). 
 
 425 
 
 678. The un- 
 cultivated 
 states of the 
 Balkan Pen- 
 insula and 
 the North 
 
426 Ancient Times 
 
 of Greek civilization began here and there to mask soraewhat 
 the rough and uncultivated life of the peasant population of 
 Macedonia. The Macedonian kings began to cultivate Greek 
 literature and art. The mother of Philip of Macedon was 
 grateful that she had been able to learn to write in her old age. 
 
 679. Philip Philip himself had enjoyed a Greek education, and when he 
 and his policy gained the power over Macedonia, in 360 B.C., he understood 
 of expansion perfectly the situation of the disunited Greek world. He 
 
 planned to make himself its master, and he began his task with 
 the ability both of a skilled statesman and an able soldier. With 
 clear recognition of the necessary means, he first created the 
 indispensable military power. As a hostage at Thebes he had 
 learned to lead an army under the eye of no less a master than 
 Epaminondas himself, the conqueror of the Spartans. But 
 Philip surpassed his teacher. 
 
 680. Philip From the peasant population of his kingdom Philip drew off 
 Mace^donian ^ number large enough to form a permanent or standing army 
 infantry Qf professional soldiers who never expected again to return to 
 
 the flocks and fields. These men he armed as heavy infantry of 
 the phalanx, as he had seen it in Greece ; only he made the pha- 
 lanx deeper and more massive and gave his men longer spears. 
 They soon became famous as the " Macedonian phalanx." 
 
 681. Mace- Heretofore horsemen had played but a small part in war in 
 men and Europe. Horscs were plentiful in Philip's kingdom, and the 
 Philip's com- nobles f orminej a warrior class had always been accustomed to 
 
 bmation oi ° ■' 
 
 cavalry and fight onhorseback in a loose way, each for himself. Philip now 
 unified drilled these riders to move about and to attack in a single 
 
 operations niass. The charge of such a mass of horsemen was so terrible 
 that it might of itself decide a battle. Philip then further im- 
 proved the art of war by a final step, the most important of all. 
 He so combined his heavy phalanx in the center^ with the disci- 
 plined masses of horsemen on each wing^ that the whole com- 
 bined force, infantry and cavalrv, moved and operated as one 
 great unit, an irresistible machine in which every part worked 
 t09:ether with all the others. 
 
Alexander the Great 
 
 427 
 
 This new chapter in the art of warfare was possible only 
 because a single mind was in unhampered control of the situ- 
 ation. The Greeks were now to witness the practical effective- 
 ness of one-man control as exercised by a skillful leader for 
 many years. With statesmanlike insight Philip first began his 
 conquests in the region where he might expect the least resist- 
 ance. He steadily extended the territory of his kingdom east- 
 ward and northward until it reached the Danube and the 
 Hellespont. 
 
 His progress on the north of 
 the ^gean soon brought him 
 into conflict with the interests of 
 the Greek states, which owned 
 cities in this northern region. 
 Philip's conquests were viewed 
 with mixed feelings at Athens, 
 toward which the Macedonian 
 king himself felt very friendly, 
 for he had the greatest admira- 
 tion for the Gr-eeks. Two parties 
 therefore arose at Athens. One 
 of them was quite willing to 
 accept Philip's proffered friend- 
 ship, and recognized in him the 
 uniter and savior of the Greek 
 
 world. The leader of this party was Isocrates (§ 675), now an 
 aged man. The other party, on the contrary, denounced Philip 
 as a barbarous tyrant who was endeavoring to enslave the 
 free Greek cities. 
 
 The leader of this anti-Macedonian party was the great orator 
 Demosthenes (Fig. 201). In one passionate appeal after another 
 he addressed the Athenian people, as he strove to arouse them 
 to the growing danger threatening the Greek states with every 
 added triumph of Philip's powerful army. By the whirlwind of 
 his marvelous eloquence he carried the Athenian Assembly with 
 
 Fig. 201. Portrait Bust 
 OF Demosthenes 
 
 682. Practical 
 
 advantages 
 
 of one-man 
 
 control ; 
 
 Philip's 
 
 Northern 
 
 conquests 
 
 683. Two 
 parties at 
 Athens : 
 I Socrates 
 
 684. Demos- 
 thenes 
 
428 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 685. Philip 
 gains the 
 leadership 
 of the Greeks 
 
 (338 B.C.) 
 
 686. The 
 
 successors 
 of Philip of 
 Macedon 
 
 687. Educa- 
 tion and 
 character of 
 Alexander 
 the Great 
 
 him. His '' Philippics," as his denunciations of King Philip are 
 called, are among the greatest specimens of Greek eloquence, 
 and have become traditional among us as noble examples of 
 oratorical power inspired by high and patriotic motives. But 
 they were very immoderate in their abuse and denunciation of 
 his opponents in Athens, nor can it be said that they display a 
 statesmanlike understanding of the hopelessly disunited condi- 
 tion of the ever-warring Greek states. 
 
 The outcome of the struggle which unavoidably came on 
 between Philip and the Greek states showed that the views 
 of Isocrates, while less ideally attractive, were far more saga- 
 cious and statesmanlike than those of Demosthenes. After a 
 long series of hostilities Philip defeated the Greek forces in 
 a final battle at Chaeronea (338 B.C.), and firmly established 
 his position as head of a league of all the Greek states except 
 Sparta, which still held out against him. He had begun oper- 
 ations in Asia Minor for the freedom of the Greek cities there, 
 when two years after the battle of Chaeronea he was stabbed 
 by conspirators during the revelries at the wedding of his 
 daughter (336 B.C.). 
 
 The power passed into the hands of his son Alexander, a 
 youth of only twenty years. Fortunately Philip also left behind 
 him in the Macedonians of his court a group of remarkable 
 men, of imperial abilities. They were devoted to the royal 
 house, and Alexander's early successes were in no small 
 measure due to them. But their very devotion and ability, 
 as we shall see, later brought the young king into a personal 
 conflict which contained all the elements of a tremendous 
 tragedy (§ 709). 
 
 When Alexander was thirteen years of age his father had 
 summoned to the Macedonian court the great philosopher 
 Aristotle (§ 760), a former pupil of Plato, to be the teacher 
 of the young prince. Under his instruction the lad learned to 
 know and love the masterpieces of Greek literature, especially 
 the Homeric songs. The deeds of the ancient heroes touched 
 
Alexander the Great 429 
 
 and kindled his youthful imagination and lent a heroic tinge 
 to his whole character. As he grew older and his mind ripened, 
 his whole personality was imbued with the splendor of Greek 
 genius and Hellenic culture. 
 
 Section 64. Campaigns of Alexander the Great 
 
 The Greek states were still unwilling to submit to Mace- 688. Alex- 
 donian leadership, and they fancied they could overthrow so gateYthe^" 
 youthful a ruler as Alexander. They were soon to learn how <^ reek states 
 
 ^ -^ and becomes 
 
 old a head there was on his youno^ shoulders. When Thebes head of a 
 
 Greek 
 
 revolted against Macedonia for the second time after Philip's league 
 death, Alexander, knowing that he must take up the struggle 
 with Persia, realized that it would not be safe for him to march 
 into Asia without giving the Greek states a lesson which they 
 would not soon forget. He therefore captured and completely 
 destroyed the ancient city of Thebes, sparing' only the house of 
 the great poet Pindar. All Greece was thus taught to fear and 
 respect his power, but learned at the same time to recognize 
 his reverence for Greek genius. Feeling him to be their natural 
 leader, therefore, the Greek states, with the exception of Sparta, 
 formed a league and elected Alexander as its leader and general. 
 As a result they all sent troops to increase his army. 
 
 The Asiatic campaign which Alexander now planned was to 689. Alex- 
 vindicate his position as the champion of Hellas against Asia, champion 
 He thought to lead the united Greeks against the Persian lord ^^ Hellas 
 
 ^ ^ _ agamst Asia 
 
 of Asia, as the Hellenes had once made common cause against 
 Asiatic Troy (§ 411). Leading his army of Macedonians and 
 allied Greeks into Asia Minor, he therefore stopped at Troy 
 and camped upon the plain (Fig. 151, and map, p. 436) where 
 the Greek heroes of the Homeric songs had once fought. Here 
 he worshiped in the temple of Athena, and prayed for the suc- 
 cess of his cause against Persia. He thus contrived to throw 
 around himself the heroic atmosphere of the Trojan War, 
 till all Hellas beheld the dauntless figure of the Macedonian 
 
430 
 
 Aficient Times 
 
 690. Battle of 
 the Granicus 
 (334 B.C.) 
 and conquest 
 of Asia Minor 
 
 691. Alexan- 
 der's march 
 through Asia 
 Minor 
 
 youth, as it were, against the background of that glorious age 
 which in their belief had so long ago united Greek arms 
 against Asia (§411). 
 
 Meantime the Great King had hired thousands of Greek 
 heavy-armed infantry', and they were now to do battle against 
 their own Greek countr)^men. At the river Granicus, in his first 
 critical battle, Alexander had no difficulty in scattering the forces 
 of the western Persian satraps. Following the Macedonian 
 custom, the young king, then but twenty-two years of age, led 
 his troops into the thick of the fray and exposed his royal 
 person without hesitation. But for the timely support of Clitus, 
 the brother of his childhood nurse, who bravely pushed in before 
 him at a critical moment, the impetuous young king would have 
 lost his life in the action on the Granicus. Marching southward, 
 he took the Greek cities one by one and freed all western Asia 
 Minor forever from the Persian yoke. 
 
 Meantime a huge Persian fleet was master of the Mediter- 
 ranean. It was at this juncture that the young Macedonian, 
 little more than a boy in years, began to display his mastery 
 of a military situation which demanded the completest under- 
 standing of the art of war. He had left a strong force at home, 
 and he believed that the lesson of his destruction of Thebes 
 would prevent the Persian fleet in the ^gean from arousing 
 Hellas to rebellion against him during his absence. He there- 
 fore pushed boldly eastward. Following the route of the Ten 
 Thousand, Alexander led his army safely through the diffi- 
 cult pass, called the Cilician Gates (see map, p. 436), and 
 rounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. Here, 
 as he looked out upon the Fertile Crescent, there was spread 
 out before him the vast Asiatic world of forty million souls, 
 where the family of the Great King had been supreme for two 
 hundred years. In this great arena he was to be the champion 
 for the next ten years {ZZZ-2)^Z B.C.). 
 
 At this important point, by the Gulf of Issue, Alexander met 
 the main army of Persia, under the personal command of the 
 
Alexander the Great 431 
 
 Great King, Darius III, the last of the Persian line. The tac- 692. Defeat 
 tics of his father Philip and Epaminondas, always to be the at the battle 
 attacking party, were now adopted by Alexander, in spite of ^^ ^^^"^ 
 the enemy's strong defensive position behind a stream. His 
 attack was on the old plan of the oblique battle line (§ 638), 
 with the cavalry forming the right wing nearest the enemy. 
 Heading this cavalry charge himself, Alexander led his Mace- 
 donian horsemen across the stream in such a fierce assault 
 (Fig. 202) that the opposing Persian wing gave way. Along 
 the center and the other wing, the battle was hotly fought and 
 indecisive. But as Alexander's victorious horsemen of the right 
 wing turned and attacked the exposed Persian center in the 
 flank, the Macedonians swept the Asiatics from the field, and 
 the disorderly retreat of Darius never stopped until it had crossed 
 the Euphrates. The Great King then sent a letter to Alexander 
 desiring terms of peace and offering to accept the Euphrates as 
 a boundary between them, all Asia west of that river to be 
 handed over to the Macedonians. 
 
 It was a dramatic picture, the figure of the young king, 693. The 
 standing with this letter in his hand. As he pondered it he was aftefissus 
 surrounded by a group of the ablest Macedonian youth, who and Alexan- 
 
 . der's friends 
 
 had grown up around him as his closest friends ; but likewise 
 by old and trusted counselors upon whom his father before him 
 had leaned. The hazards of battle and of march, and the daily 
 associations of camp and bivouac, had wrought the closest bonds 
 of love and friendship and intimate influence between these 
 loyal Macedonians and their ardent young king. 
 
 As he considered the letter of Darius, therefore, his father's 694. The 
 old general Parmenio, who had commanded the Macedonian Parmenio 
 left wins: in the battle lust won, proffered him serious counsel. *° accept 
 
 *^ ^ ^ Persian terms 
 
 We can almost see the old man leaning familiarly over the after issus 
 shoulder of this imperious boy of twenty-three and pointing out 
 across the Mediterranean, as he bade Alexander remember the 
 Persian fleet operating there in his rear and likely to stir up 
 revolt against him in Greece. He said too that with Darius 
 
432 
 
Alexander the Great 433 
 
 behind the Euphrates, as proposed in the letter, Persia would 
 be at a safe distance from Europe and the Greek world. The 
 campaign against the Great King, he urged, had secured all 
 that could reasonably be expected. Undoubtedly he added that 
 Philip himself, the young king's father, had at the utmost no 
 further plans against Persia than those already successfully 
 carried out. There was nothing to do, said Parmenio, but to 
 accept the terms offered by the Great King. 
 
 In this critical decision lay the parting of the ways. Before 695. The de- 
 the kindling eyes of the young Alexander . there rose a vision issus| and^ 
 of world empire dominated by Greek civilization — a vision to ^jcdon^with 
 which the duller eyes about him were entirely closed. He his friends 
 waved aside his father's old counselors and decided to advance 
 to the conquest of the whole Persian Empire. In this far- 
 reaching decision he disclosed at once the powerful personality 
 which represented a new age. Thus arose the conflict which 
 never ends — the conflict between the new age and the old, 
 
 * The artist who designed this great work has selected the supreme 
 moment when the Persians (at the right) are endeavoring to rescue their 
 king from the onset of the Macedonians (at the left). Alexander, the 
 bareheaded figure on horseback at the left, charges furiously against 
 the Persian king (Darius III), who stands in his chariot (at the right). 
 The Macedonian attack is so impetuous that the Persian king's life is 
 endangered. A Persian noble dismounts and offers his riderless horse, 
 that the king may quickly mount and escape. Devoted Persian nobles 
 heroically ride in between their king and the Macedonian onset, to give 
 Darius an opportunity to mount. But Alexander's spear has passed 
 entirely through the body of one of these Persian nobles, who has thus 
 given his life for his king. Darius throws out his hand in grief and 
 horror at the awful death of his noble friend. The driver of the royal 
 chariot (behind the king) lashes his three horses, endeavoring to carry 
 Darius from the field in flight (§ 692). This magnificent battle scene is 
 put together from bits of colored glass (mosaic) forming a floor pave- 
 ment, discovered in 1831 at the Roman town of Pompeii (Fig. 255). It 
 has been injured in places, especially at the left, where parts of the 
 figures of Alexander and his horse have disappeared. It was originally 
 laid at Alexandria and suffered this damage in being moved to Italy. 
 It is a copy of an older Hellenistic work, a painting done at Alexandria 
 (§ 738)- It is one of the greatest scenes of heroism in battle ever 
 painted, and illustrates the splendor of Hellenistic art. 
 
434 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 696. Con- 
 quest of 
 Phoenicia 
 and Egypt ; 
 dispersion 
 of the Per- 
 sian fleet 
 
 697. Alexan- 
 der's march 
 to Persia : 
 battle of 
 Arbela 
 (331 B-C.) 
 
 just as we have seen it at Athens (§ 653). Never has it been 
 more dramatically staged than as we find it here in the daily 
 growing friction between Alexander and that group of devoted, 
 if less gifted, Macedonians who were now drawn by him into 
 the labors of Heracles — the conquest of the world. 
 
 The danger from the Persian fleet was now carefully and 
 deliberately met by a march southward along the eastern end 
 of the Mediterranean. All the Phoenician seaports on the way 
 were captured. Here Alexander's whole campaign would have 
 collapsed but for the siege machinery, the use of which his 
 father had learned from the western Greeks. Against the walls 
 of Tyre, Alexander employed machines which had been devised 
 in the Orient (headpiece, p. 140), and which he was now bring- 
 ing back thither with Greek improvements. Feeble Egypt, 
 so long a Persian province, then fell an easy prey to the 
 Macedonian arms. The Persian fleet, thus deprived of all its 
 home harbors and cut off from its home government, soon 
 scattered and disappeared. 
 
 Having thus cut off the enemy in his rear, Alexander re- 
 turned from Eg)'pt to Asia, and, marching along the Fertile 
 Crescent, he crossed the Tigris close by the mounds which had 
 long covered the ruins of Nineveh (Fig. 203). Here, near 
 Arbela, the Great King had gathered his forces for a last 
 stand. The Persians had not studied the progress in the art 
 of war made by the Greeks and the Macedonians (§ 681), and 
 they were as hopelessly behind the times as China was in her 
 war with Japan. They had prepared one new device, a body 
 of chariots with scythes fastened to the axles and projecting 
 on each side. But the device failed to save the Persian army. 
 Although greatly outnumbered, the Macedonians crushed the 
 Asiatic army and forced the Great King into ignominious flight. 
 In a few days Alexander was established in the winter palace 
 of Persia in Babylon (§ 274). 
 
 As Darius fled into the eastern mountains he was stabbed 
 by his own treacherous attendants (330 B.C.). Alexander rode 
 
Alexander the Great 
 
 435 
 
 Fig. 203. View across the Ruins of Nineveh to the Plain 
 
 WHERE Alexander the Great overthrew the Last Army 
 
 OF THE Persian Empire 
 
 We are supposed to be standing on the roof of a house in the modern 
 town of Mosul (see plan, p. 154) and looking eastward across the Tigris 
 to the ruins of Nineveh, with mound of Kuyunjik, containing the palaces 
 of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, directly before us. Past this mound 
 (compare plan, p. 154) runs the road from Mosul to Arbela, about 
 30 miles east. These ruins must have been much like this when Alex- 
 ander marched past them, less than three hundred years after the city 
 was destroyed. Somewhere in the plain toward Arbela, Alexander won 
 his last battle with the Persians (§ 697). Although no systematic clear- 
 ance of all the chief buildings, such as the French and Germans have 
 accomplished at Sargonburg (Khorsabad), Assur, and Babylon, has ever 
 been done here, a great many important monuments have been dug 
 out, like the library of Assurbanipal (§ 226) 
 
 Up with a few of his officers in time to look upon the body of 698. Death 
 
 , , r I r f . 1 of Darius III 
 
 the last of the Persian emperors, the lord of Asia, whose vast (330 b.c.) ; 
 
 realm had now passed into his hands. He punished the mur- jord^ofthe 
 
 derers and sent the body with all respect to the fallen ruler's ancient East 
 
43^ 
 
 Ancie7tt Times 
 
 699. Alexan- 
 der captures 
 the Persian 
 royal cities 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 ^' 
 
 f''*'ica 
 
 
 
 # 
 
 T 
 
 ■'1 --■;■ 
 
 M 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 * 
 
 «k^ ^"^ 
 
 1 
 
 ^^K 
 
 ^.'^ < 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 i^ 
 
 ^H 
 
 
 
 
 
 s 
 
 i^^M 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 l|i//ij|)ii'^P 
 
 ^^ mil 1 i 
 
 tl 
 
 WmmM 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 i^^H 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■ W'/0'V 
 
 
 ■■' 
 
 11^^^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 K^ 
 
 m M, ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 Ejf 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 l^^s 
 
 
 3 
 
 '^^^^ 
 
 ^^^y^m^ 
 
 m& 
 
 H 
 
 
 P 
 
 
 m^m 
 
 M 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 "'^" 
 
 
 m 
 
 Fig. 204. A Corner of the Court of 
 THE Palace of Darius I at Susa, cap- 
 tured BY Alexander the Great (as 
 
 RESTORED BY PiLLET) 
 
 The remarkable French excavations at Susa 
 discovered the wonderful relief of Naram-Sin 
 (Fig. 89), and the shaft bearing the code of 
 Hammurapi (Fig. 93). At the same time the 
 French uncovered the ruins of the palace 
 built by Darius I in the days of Marathon 
 and finished later under Xerxes at the time 
 of Salamis, a hundred and fifty years before 
 Alexander captured Susa. The French archi- 
 tect's restoration shows the Persian em- 
 peror and his attendants coming forth into a 
 court of the palace. We see the gorgeous 
 glazed-brick decorations along the base of 
 the wall, showing lines of Persian soldiers, as 
 in Fig. 113. It must have looked just as we 
 see it here, when Alexander entered it for 
 the first time, to take possession of the dead 
 Persian emperor's magnificent residence 
 
 mother and sister, to 
 whom he had extended 
 protection and hospi- 
 tality. Thus at last 
 both the valley of the 
 Nile and the Fertile 
 Crescent, the homes 
 of the earliest two 
 civilizations, whose 
 long and productive 
 careers we have al- 
 ready sketched, were 
 now in the hands of 
 a European power 
 and under the control 
 of a newer and higher 
 civilization. Less than 
 five years had passed 
 since the young Mace- 
 donian had entered 
 Asia. 
 
 Although the Mace- 
 donians had nothing 
 more to fear from the 
 Persian arms, there 
 still remained much 
 for Alexander to do in 
 order to establish his 
 empire in Asia. On 
 he marched through 
 the original little king- 
 dom of the Persian 
 kings, whence Cyrus, 
 the founder of the 
 Persian Empire, had 
 
Alexander the Great 437 
 
 victoriously issued over two hundred years before (see § 258). 
 He stopped at Susa (Fig. 204) and then passed on to visit the 
 tomb of Cyrus (Fig. 115), near Persepolis. Here he gave a 
 dramatic evidence of his supremacy in Asia by setting fire to 
 the Persian palace (Fig. 116) with his own hand, as the Persians 
 had once done to Miletus and to the temples on the Athenian 
 Acropolis. It was but a symbolical act, and Alexander ordered 
 the flames extinguished before serious damage was done. 
 
 After touching Ecbatana in the north, and leaving behind 700. Alex- 
 the trusted Parmenio in charge of the enormous treasure of paigns^in^^" 
 gold and silver, accumulated for generations by the Persian t!?^ ^^^ 
 kings, Alexander again moved eastward. In the course of the 324 b.c.) 
 next five years, while the Greek world looked on in amaze- 
 ment, the young Macedonian seemed to disappear in the mists 
 on the far-off fringes of the known world. He marched his 
 army in one vast loop after another through the heart of the 
 Iranian plateau (see map, p. 436), northward across the Oxus 
 and the Jaxartes rivers, southward across the Indus and the 
 frontiers of India, into the valley of the Ganges, where at last 
 the murmurs of his intrepid army forced him to turn back. 
 
 He descended the Indus, and even sailed the waters of the 701. Alexan- 
 Indian Ocean. Then he began his westward march again along to Babylon 
 the shores of the Indian Ocean, accompanied by a fleet which ^^^ ^'^-^ \ 
 he had built on the Indus. The return march through desert of his Eastern 
 
 T 11- 1-11 • • -i campaigns 
 
 wastes cost many lives as the thirsty and ill-provisioned troops 
 dropped by the way. Over seven years after he had left the 
 great city of Babylon, Alexander entered it again. He had 
 been less than twelve years in Asia, and he had carried Greek 
 civilization into the very heart of the continent. At important 
 points along his line of march he had founded Greek cities 
 bearing his name and had set up kingdoms which were to be 
 centers of Greek influence on the frontiers of India. From 
 such centers Greek art entered India, to become the source of 
 the art which still survives there ; and the Greek works of art, 
 especially coins, from Alexander's communities in these remote 
 
433 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 regions of the East penetrated even to China, to contribute to 
 the later art of China and Japan. Never before had East and 
 West so interpenetrated as in these amazing marches and cam- 
 paigns of Alexander. 
 
 702. Alexan- 
 der's scientific 
 enterprises 
 
 703. His 
 endeavor 
 to merge 
 European 
 and Asiatic 
 civilization 
 
 Section 65. International Policy of Alexander: 
 ITS Personal Consequences 
 
 During all these unparalleled achievements the mind of this 
 young Hercules never ceased to busy itself with a thousand 
 problems on every side. He dispatched an exploring expedition 
 up the Nile to ascertain the causes of the annual overflow of 
 the river, and another to the shores of the Caspian Sea to build 
 a fleet and circumnavigate that sea, the northern end of which 
 was still unknown. He brought a number of scientific men 
 with him from Greece, and with their aid he sent hundreds of 
 natural-history specimens home to Greece to his old teacher 
 Aristotle, then teaching in Athens. 
 
 Meantime he applied himself with diligence to the organiza- 
 tion and administration of his vast conquests. Such problems 
 must have kept him v/earily bending over many a huge pile 
 of state papers, or dictating his great plans to his secretaries 
 and officers. He believed implicitly in the power and superiority 
 of Greek culture. He was determined to Hellenize the world 
 and to merge Asia w^ith Europe by transplanting colonies of 
 Greeks and Macedonians. In his army, Macedonians, Greeks, 
 and Asiatics stood side by side. He also felt that he could not 
 rule the world as a Macedonian, but must make concessions to 
 the Persian world (Plate VI, p. 468). He married Roxana, an 
 Asiatic princess, and at a gorgeous wedding festival he obliged 
 his officers and friends also to marry the daughters of Asiatic 
 nobles. Thousands of Macedonians in the army followed the 
 example of their king and took Asiatic wives. He appointed 
 Persians to high offices and set them over provinces as satraps. 
 He even adopted Persian raiment in part. 
 
Alexander the Great 439 
 
 Amid all this he carefully worked out a plan of campaign 704. Alexan- 
 for the conquest of the western Mediterranean. It included pfans^for the 
 instructions for the building of a fleet of a thousand battleships conquest of 
 
 ° ^ the western 
 
 with which to subdue Italy, Sicily, and Carthage. It also planned Mediter- 
 the construction of a vast roadway along the northern coast 
 of Africa, to be built at an appalling expense and to furnish a 
 highway for his army from Egypt to Carthage and the Pillars of 
 Hercules (Gibraltar). It is here that Alexander's statesmanship 
 may be criticized. All this should have been done immediately 
 after the destruction of Persia. But Alexander seems not to 
 have perceived that he could convert the Mediterranean shores 
 into a unified empire under a single ruler much more effectively 
 than he could unite and control the scattered and far-reaching 
 lands of the remote Orient. 
 
 What was to be his own position in this colossal world-state 705. Deifi- 
 of which he dreamed t In such a matter Alexander's imagina- Alexander 
 tion was without bounds. He had dreamed of bavins: Mt. Athos ^"^ '^^ ^^?^' 
 
 ^ cal necessity 
 
 carved into a vast statue of himself, with a town of ten thousand 
 people in his right hand ! And now he planned divinity for 
 himself. The will of a god, in so far as a Greek might believe 
 in him at all, was still a thing to which he bowed without ques- 
 tion and with no feeling that he was being subjected to tyranny. 
 Alexander found in this attitude of the Greek mind the solution 
 of the question of his own position. Many a great Greek had 
 come to be recognized as a god, and there was in Greek belief 
 no sharp line dividing gods from men. He would have himself 
 lifted to the realm of the gods, where he might impose his will 
 upon the Greek cities without offense. This solution was the 
 more easy because it had for ages been customary to regard 
 the king as divine in Egypt, where he was a son of the Sun- 
 god, and the idea was a common one in the Orient. 
 
 In Egypt therefore, seven years before, he had deliberately 706. Alexan- 
 taken the time, while a still unconquered Persian army was sS^a— The^ 
 awaiting him in Asia, to march with a small following far out desert shrine 
 into the Sahara Desert to the oasis shrine of Amon (§ 657 and 
 
440 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 205). Here in the vast solitude Alexander entered the 
 holy place alone. No one knew what took place there; but 
 when he issued again he was greeted by the high priest of the 
 temple as the son of Zeus-Amon. Alexander took good care 
 that all Greece should hear of this remarkable occurrence, but 
 
 Fig. 205. Oasis of Siwa in the Sahara 
 
 In this oasis was the famous temple of the Egyptian god Amon (or 
 Ammon) (§ 657). Alexander marched hither from the coast, a. distance 
 of some 200 miles, and thence back to the Nile at Memphis, some 350 
 miles (see map, p. 436)- A modern caravan requires twenty-one days to 
 go from the Nile to this oasis. Such an oasis is a deep depression in 
 the desert plateau; the level of the plateau is seen at the tops of the 
 cliffs on the right. Its fertility is due to many springs and flowing wells 
 
 the Hellenes had to wait some years before they learned what 
 
 it all meant. 
 707. Aiexan- Four years later the young king found that this divinity 
 his deification which he claimed lacked outward and visible manifestations. 
 
 by the Greek 
 cities of the 
 dissolved 
 league 
 
 There must go with it some outward observances which would 
 vividly suggest his character as a god to the minds of the world 
 which he ruled. He adopted oriental usages, among which was 
 the requirement that all who approached him on official occa- 
 sions should bow down to the earth and kiss his feet. He also 
 
Alexander the Great 441 
 
 sent formal notification to all the Greek cities that the league 
 of which he had been head was dissolved, that he was hence- 
 forth to be officially numbered among the gods of each city, 
 and that as such he was to receive the State offerings which 
 each city presented. 
 
 Thus were introduced into Europe absolute monarchy and 1708. Abso 
 the divine right of kings. Indeed, through Alexander there was archv"and 
 transferred to. Europe much of the spirit of that Orient which divine right 
 had been repulsed at Marathon and Salamis. But these meas- 
 ures of Alexander were not the efforts of a weak mind to gratify 
 a vanity so drunk with power that it could be satisfied only 
 with superhuman honors. They were carefully devised political 
 measures dictated by State policy and systematically developed 
 step by step for years. 
 
 This superhuman station of the world-king Alexander was 709. Personal 
 gained at tragic cost to Alexander the Macedonian youth and sufferedTy^^ 
 to the srroup of friends and followers about him (§ 6q^\ Be- Alexander as 
 
 ° ^ ^ ^^^ a result of his 
 
 neath the Persian robes of the State-god Alexander beat the deification 
 
 warm heart of a young Macedonian. He had lifted himself to tionaTpdicy 
 
 an exalted and lonely eminence whither those devoted friends 
 
 who had followed him to the ends of the earth could follow 
 
 him no longer. Neither could they comprehend the necessity 
 
 for measures which thus strained or snapped entirely those 
 
 bonds of friendship which linked together comrades in arms. 
 
 And then there were the Persian intruders treated like the 
 
 equals of his personal friends (Plate VI, p. 468), or even placed 
 
 over them ! The tragic consequences of such a situation were 
 
 inevitable. 
 
 Early in those tremendous marches eastward, after Darius's 710. Exe- 
 death, Philotas, son of Parmenio, had learned of a conspiracy phiiatas 
 against Alexander's life, but his bitterness and estrangement Pa™emo, 
 
 , and their 
 
 were such that he failed to report his guilty knowledge to the friends 
 king. The conspirators were all given a fair and legal trial, and 
 Alexander himself suffered the bitterness of seeing a whole 
 group of his former friends and companions, including Philotas, 
 
442 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 condemned and executed in the presence of the army. The 
 trusted Parmenio, father of Philotas, still guarding the Persian 
 treasure at Ecbatana, was also implicated, and a messenger 
 was sent back with orders for the old general's immediate exe- 
 cution. This was but the beginning of the ordeal through which 
 
 ^-^<^> 
 
 «*1 
 
 Mm^§- 
 
 
 *'" -^"^"-ix 
 
 Fig. 206. Temple beside the Royal Palace at Babylon 
 WHERE Alexander presented Daily Offerings 
 
 The German excavations at Babylon (Fig. 11 1) have found the ruins of 
 a temple at the door of the great palace (plan, p. 165), and the director 
 of the work, Professor Koldewey, has drawn the above restoration. The 
 ancient accounts tell us that Alexander was wont to sacrifice every day 
 at this temple on an altar, seen here before the door. He was restoring 
 the ruined buildings of Babylon, especially the fallen temple tower, when 
 he died. Koldewey found vast masses of earth which Alexander moved 
 
 711. Alexan- 
 der slays his 
 friend Clitus 
 
 the man Alexander was to pass, in order that the world-king 
 Alexander might mount the throne of a god. 
 
 Clitus also, who had saved his life at the Granicus, was filled 
 with grief and indignation at Alexander's political course. At 
 a royal feast, where these matters came up in conversation, 
 Clitus was guilty of unguarded criticisms of his lord and then, 
 entirely losing his self-mastery, he finally heaped such unbridled 
 
Alexander the Great 443 
 
 reproaches upon the king that Alexander, rising in uncontrol- 
 lable rage, seized a spear from a guard and thrust it through 
 the bosom of the man to whom he owed his life. As we see 
 the young king thereupon sitting for three days in his tent, 
 speechless with grief and remorse, refusing all food, and pre- 
 vented only by his officers from taking his own life, we gather 
 some slight impression of the terrible personal cost of Alex- 
 ander's state policy. 
 
 Similarly the demand that all should prostrate themselves 712. Exe- 
 and kiss his feet on entering his presence cost him the friend- Caiusthenes 
 ship of the historian Callisthenes. For, not long afterward, this 
 friend was likewise found criminally guilty toward the king in 
 connection with a conspiracy of the noble Macedonian pages 
 who served Alexander, and he was put to death. He was a 
 nephew of the king's old teacher, Aristotle, and thus the friend- 
 ship between master and royal pupil was transformed into 
 bitter enmity. 
 
 On his return to Babylon (Fig. 206), Alexander was over- 713. Death 
 come with grief at the loss of his dearest friend Hephasstion, (323 bS 
 who had just died. He arranged for his dead friend one of 
 the most magnificent funerals ever celebrated. Then, as he was 
 preparing for a campaign to subjugate the Arabian peninsula 
 and leave him free to carry out his great plans for the conquest 
 of the western Mediterranean, Alexander himself fell sick, prob- 
 ably as the result of a drunken debauch, and after a few days 
 he died (323 B.C.). He was thirty-three years of age and had 
 reigned thirteen years. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 63. What was the policy of Philip of Macedon? What 
 new developments in the art of warfare did he introduce ? What did 
 the Athenians think about his plans.? Who were the two party 
 leaders? What can you say of Demosthenes? What was the out- 
 come of Philip's struggle with the Greeks? Who succeeded Philip? 
 How was Philip's successor educated? 
 
444 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 64. Discuss Alexander's relations with the Greeks. 
 What was the outcome of their rebellion against him? As whose 
 champion did he contrive to make himself appear ? Describe his con- 
 quest of Asia Minor. Where and when did he meet the main Persian 
 army? What was the result? What proposal did the Persian king 
 make? What advice did Alexander receive? What did he do? 
 What conflict arose? How did he dispose of the Phoenician fleet? 
 
 Where did Alexander go after conquering Egypt? Describe his 
 next encounter with the Persians. What happened to Darius III? 
 What had thus become of Egypt and Western Asia ? To what great 
 cities of the Persian Empire did Alexander then go ? What happened 
 there ? Describe the remote marches which he now undertook. Can 
 you trace them on the map ? What was the result of these marches ? 
 
 Section 6$. What scientific enterprises did Alexander under- 
 take? Discuss his plans for merging Greek and Asiatic civilization. 
 What further great plans of conquest did he have ? What was to be 
 his own position in the new empire? How had he prepared for this 
 position while he was in Egypt? How did he require his new 
 position to be recognized? What effect had all this upon his friends? 
 What happened to Parmenio? to Clitus? to Callisthenes ? Where, 
 when, and how did Alexander die? 
 
 Note. The sketch below shows us the lion erected by the Thebans on the 
 battlefield of Chaeronea in memory of their fallen citizens. Excavation has dis- 
 closed bodies and remains of the great funeral fire. 
 
>ih^M^"^--*' ;% 
 
PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN 
 
 WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE 
 
 AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE HEIRS OF ALEXANDER 
 
 Section 66. The Heirs of Alexander's Empire 
 
 Alexander has been well termed *' the Great." Few men of 
 genius, and certainly none in so brief a career, have left so in- 
 delible a mark upon the course of human affairs. By his remark- 
 able conquests, he gained for the Greeks that /^////r^/ supremacy, 
 which their civilization^ as we have seen, had long before attained. 
 
 Note. The headpiece above shows a view of modern Antioch in Syria. The 
 great decisive battle among tlie generals of Alexander the Great at Ipsus in 
 Phrygia in central Asia Minor (301 B.C.) made Seleucus lord of Asia (§ 718). 
 He then founded this city of Antioch named after his father, Antiochus (§ 718). 
 It finally became a great commercial center (§ 718), a magnificent city of several 
 hundred thousand inhabitants. Many appalling earthquakes have destroyed the 
 ancient city, and the modem town shown above has less than thirty thousand 
 inhabitants. 
 
 44S 
 
 714. Conse- 
 quences of 
 Alexander's 
 death 
 
44^ Ancient Times 
 
 His death in the midst of his colossal designs was a fearful 
 calamity, for it made impossible forever the unification of Hellas 
 and of the world by the power of that gifted race which was now 
 civilizing the world. Of his line there remained in Macedonia a 
 demented half brother and, erelong, Alexander II, the son of 
 Roxana, born in Asia after Alexander the Great's death. Con- 
 flicts among the leaders at home swept away all these members 
 of Alexander's family, even including his mother. 
 
 715. The sue- His generals in Babylonia found the plans for his great West- 
 Alexander • ^^^ campaign lying among his papers, but no man" possessed 
 their three ^^ genius to carry them out. These able Macedonian com- 
 
 realms m ^ •' ^ 
 
 Europe, Asia, manders were soon involved among themselves in a long and 
 tremendous struggle, which slumbered only to break out anew. 
 The ablest of them was Alexander's great general, Antigonus, 
 who determined to gain control of all the great Macedonian's 
 vast empire. Then followed a generation of exhausting wars 
 by land and sea, involving the greatest battles thus far fought 
 by European armies. Antigonus was killed, and Alexander's 
 empire fell into three main parts, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 
 with one of his generals or one of their successors at the head 
 of each. In Europe, Macedonia was in the hands of Antigonus, 
 grandson of Alexander's great commander of the same name. 
 He endeavored to maintain control of Greece ; in Asia most 
 of the territory of the former Persian Empire, was under the 
 rule of Alexander's general, Seleucus ; while in Africa, Egypt 
 was held by Ptolemy, one of the cleverest of Alexander's 
 Macedonian leaders (see map I, p. 448). 
 
 716. The In Egypt, Ptolemy gradually made himself king, and became 
 Enmire of ^^^ founder of a dynasty or family of successive kings, whom 
 the Ptolemies ^^ ^^ ^j^g Ptolcmies. Ptolemy at once saw that he would be 
 
 constantly obliged to draw Greek mercenary troops from Greece. 
 With statesmanlike judgment he therefore built up a fleet which 
 gave him the mastery of the Mediterranean. He took up his 
 residence at the great harbor city of Alexandria, the city which 
 Alexander had founded in the western Nile Delta. As a result 
 
The Heirs of Alexander 447 
 
 it became the greatest commercial port on the Mediterranean. 
 Indeed, for nearly a century (roughly the third century B.C.) 
 the eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Syria and from the 
 ^4^gean to the Nile Delta was an Egyptian sea. As a barrier 
 against their Asiatic rivals, the Ptolemies also took possession of 
 Palestine and southern Syria. Thus arose an Egyptian empire 
 in the eastern Mediterranean like that which we found nearly 
 a thousand years earlier in our voyage up the Nile as we visited 
 the great buildings of Thebes. Following the example of the 
 Pharaohs (Fig. 62), the Ptolemies reached out also into the Red 
 Sea with their fleets, and from the Indian Ocean to the Helles- 
 pont, from Sicily to Syria, the Egyptian fleets dotted the seas, 
 bringing great wealth into the treasury of the ruler (map I, p. 448). 
 
 Although these new Hellenistic rulers of Egypt were Euro- . 717. The 
 peans, they did not set up a Greek or European form of state, ental mon- 
 They regarded themselves as the successors of the ancient pto^g^L?^ 
 Pharaohs, and like them they ruled over the kingdom of the 
 Nile in absolute and unlimited power. To three Greek cities 
 on the Nile, one of which was Alexandria, they granted the 
 right to manage their own local affairs, like a city of Greece. 
 Otherwise there were no voting citizens among the people of 
 Egypt, and just as in ancient oriental days they had nothing 
 whatever to say about the government or the acts of the ruler. 
 The chief purpose of the ruler's government was to secure 
 from the country as large receipts for his treasury as possible^ 
 in order that he might meet the expenses of his great war fleet 
 and his army of Greek mercenaries. For thousands of years 
 Egypt had been operating a great organization of local officials, 
 trained to carry on the business of assessing and collecting 
 taxes (Fig. 40), The Greek states possessed no such organiza- 
 tion, but the Ptolemies found it ioo useful to be interfered with. 
 The tiniest group of mud huts along the river was ruled and 
 controlled by such officials. Thus the Macedonians ruling on 
 the Nile were continuing an ancient oriental absolute monarchy. 
 The example of this ancient form of state, thus preserved, was 
 
448 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 718. The 
 Asiatic em- 
 pire of the 
 Seleucids 
 
 719. The 
 
 government 
 of the Seleu- 
 cids : the 
 free cities 
 
 720. The 
 
 government 
 of the Seleu- 
 cids : the 
 kingship 
 
 of far-reaching influence throughout the Mediterranean world, 
 and finally displaced the democracies of the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 Although they were not as powerful as the Ptolemies, the 
 Seleucids, as we call Seleucus and his descendants, were the 
 chief heirs of Alexander, for they held the larger part of his 
 empire, extending from the ^gean to the frontiers of India. 
 Its boundaries were not fixed, and its enormous extent made it 
 very difficult to govern and maintain. The fleet of the Ptole- 
 mies hampered the commercial development and prosperity of 
 the Seleucids, who therefore found it difficult to reach Greece 
 for trade, troops, or colonists. They gave special attention to 
 the region around the northeast comer of the Mediterranean 
 reaching to the Euphrates, and here the Seleucids endeavored 
 to develop another Macedonia. Their empire is often called 
 Syria, after this region. Here on the lower Orontes, Seleucus 
 founded the great city which he called Antioch (after his father, 
 Antiochus). It finally enjoyed great prosperity and became the 
 commercial rival of Alexandria and the greatest seat of com- 
 merce in the northern Mediterranean (headpiece, p. 445). 
 
 In government the Seleucids adopted a very different plan 
 from that of the Ptolemies. Seleucus was in hearty sympathy 
 with Alexander's plan of transplanting Greeks to Asia and thus 
 of mingling Greeks and Asiatics. He and his son Antiochus I 
 founded scores of new Greek cities through Asia Minor, Syria, 
 down the Two Rivers, in Persia, and far over on the borders 
 of India. These cities were given self-government on the old 
 Greek plan ; that is, each city formed a little republic, with its 
 local affairs controlled by its own citizens. The great Seleucid 
 Empire was thickly dotted with these little free communities. 
 
 To be sure they were under the king, and each such free 
 city paid him tribute or taxes. The form which the royal 
 authority took was the one, so ancient in the Orient, which 
 Alexander had already adopted. The ruler was regarded as 
 a god to whom each community owed divine reverence and 
 hence obedience. This homage they paid without offense to 
 
Sequence Map showing the Three Empires of Alexander's Suc- 
 cessors FROM THE Third Century b.c. to their Decline at the 
 Coming of the Romans after 200 b.c. 
 
The Heirs of Alexander 449 
 
 their feelings as free citizens. Greek life, with all the noble 
 and beautiful things we have learned it possessed, took root 
 throughout Western Asia and was carried far into the heart 
 of the great continent (see map I, p. 448). 
 
 Compared with her two great rivals in Egypt and Asia, 721. The 
 Macedonia in Europe seemed small indeed. The tradition of Empire: re- 
 independence still cherished by the Greek states made the Q^eek^stSes 
 Macedonian leadership of the Balkan-Greek peninsula a diffi- after Alexan- 
 
 der's death 
 
 cult undertaking. Fighting for their liberty after Alexander's 
 death, they had proved too weak to maintain themselves against 
 the Macedonian army ; they were forced to submit, and the 
 dauntless Demosthenes (§ 684), whose surrender along with 
 other democratic leaders was demanded by the Macedonians, 
 took his own life (see map I, p. 448). 
 
 While the second Antigonus, grandson of Alexander's general, 722. Antig- 
 was struggling to establish himself as lord of Macedonia and st" ps the 
 the Greeks, he was suddenly confronted by a new danoer from great Galhc 
 
 ' J J ^ invasion and 
 
 the far North and West. From France eastward to the lower becomes king 
 
 . of Macedonia 
 
 Danube, Europe was now occupied by a vast group of Indo- (277 b.c.) 
 European barbarians whom we call Celts, or Gauls. They had 
 penetrated into Italy after 400 B.C. (§ 813), and a century later 
 they were pushing far down into the Balkan Peninsula. By 
 280 B.C. they broke through the northern mountains, and 
 having devastated Macedonia, they even invaded Greece and 
 reached the sacred oracle of the Greeks at Delphi. The bar- 
 barian torrent overflowed also into Asia Minor, where a body 
 of the invaders settled and gave their name to a region after- 
 wards called Galatia. Antigonus II completely defeated the 
 barbarians in Thrace and drove them out of Macedonia, of 
 which he then became king (277 B.C.). This overwhelming 
 flood of northern barbarians deeply impressed the Greeks, and 
 le c its mark even on the art of the age, as we shall see (§736). 
 After the repulse of the Gauls, Antigonus II took up the 
 problem of restoring his empire and establishing his power. 
 The Egyptian fleet held complete command of the ^gean and 
 
450 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 723. The 
 
 struggle for 
 control of 
 the eastern 
 Mediter- 
 ranean 
 
 thwarted him in every effort to control Greece. As Antiochus 
 in Asia was suffering from the Egyptian fleet in the same way 
 (§ 718), the two rulers, Antigonus and Antiochus, formed an 
 alliance against Egypt. The energetic Antigonus built a war 
 fleet at vast expense. In a long naval war with the Ptolemies, 
 which went on at intervals for fifteen years, Antigonus twice 
 defeated the Egyptian fleet. As the lax descendants of the 
 earlier Ptolemies did not rebuild the Egyptian fleet, both 
 Macedonia and Asia profited by this freedom of the eastern 
 Mediterranean. But not long after these Macedonian naval 
 victories, trouble arose in Greece, which involved Macedonia in 
 another long war with the Greek states. 
 
 Section 6^ . The Decline of Greece 
 
 724. Com- 
 mercial de- 
 cline of 
 Greece 
 
 725. Rise of 
 the leagues 
 
 Greece was no longer commercial leader of the Mediter- 
 ranean. The victories of Alexander the Great had opened the 
 vast Persian Empire to Greek commercial colonists, who poured 
 into all the favorable centers of trade. Not only did Greece 
 decline in population, but commercial prosperity and the leader- 
 ship in trade passed eastward, especially to Alexandria and 
 Antioch, and also to the enterprising people of Rhodes and 
 the merchants of Ephesus. As the Greek cities lost their 
 wealth they could no longer support fleets or mercenary 
 armies, and they soon became too feeble to protect themselves. 
 
 They naturally began to combine in alliances or federations 
 for mutual protection. Not long after 300 B.C. two such 
 leagues were already in existence, one on each side of the 
 Corinthian Gulf. On the south side of the gulf was the 
 Achaean League and on the north side that of the ^tolians. 
 Such a league was in some ways a kind of tiny United States. 
 The league had its general, elected each year and commanding 
 the combined army of all the cities ; it had also its other officials, 
 who attended to all matters of defense and to all relations with 
 foreign states outside the league. Each city, however, took care 
 
and Athens 
 
 The Heirs of Alexander 451 
 
 of its own local affairs, like the levying and collecting of taxes. 
 But the two leagues were mostly hostile to each other, and while 
 they were successful for a time in throwing off Macedonian 
 leadership, it was too late for a general federation of all the 
 Greek states, and a United States of the Greeks never existed. 
 
 One reason for this was that Sparta and Athens refused to 726. Sparta 
 join these leagues. The Achaeans endeavored to force Sparta 
 into their league, but the gifted Spartan king Cleomenes de- 
 feated them in one battle after another. His victories and his 
 reorganization of the State restored to Sparta some of her old- 
 time vigor. The Achaeans were obliged to call on Macedonia 
 for help, and in this way Cleomenes was defeated and the 
 Spartans were finally crushed. But the Achaean League was 
 thereafter subject to Macedonia and never enjoyed liberty 
 again. Henceforth the Macedonians were lords of all Greece 
 except the ^tolian League. Meantime, while keeping out of 
 the leagues, Athens preserved her self-government by securing 
 recognition of her neutrality and liberty by the great powers, 
 first by Egypt and later by Rome (§884). In spite of her 
 political feebleness, Athens was still the home of those high 
 and noble things in Greek civilization of which we have already 
 learned something and to the further study of which we 
 must now turn. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 66. What were the most important consequences of 
 Alexander's death? What survivors of his line were there.? What 
 did his generals do ? What was the result of a generation of fighting 
 among them ? Into what main divisions did Alexander's empire fall 1 
 Who ruled these divisions ? What was the policy of the first Ptolemy? 
 What was the result? What was at first the extent of Ptolemaic 
 power? What kind of government did the Ptolemies establish in 
 Egypt ? Would you describe it as oriental or Greek ? Was it finan- 
 cially better organized than the Greek states? In what respect? 
 
 What was the extent of the Seleucid Empire at first? How were 
 the Seleucids hampered in the Mediterranean ? To what region did 
 
452 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 they give special attention ? What great city did they found there ? 
 What kind of a government did the Seleucids establish ? What can 
 you. say of their Greek cities? Were such cities after all as free 
 as Athens had once been? What form did the authority of the 
 Seleucids take? 
 
 What was the first serious obstacle in the way of Macedonian 
 leadership of the Balkan-Greek peninsula? What did Antigonus II 
 accomplish by land? by sea? What was the extent of the Macedo- 
 nian Empire (see map I, p. 448)? 
 
 Section d'j. What were now the leading commercial cities of the 
 Mediterranean ? In what direction had commercial leadership shifted? 
 What was the reason ? What did the Greeks do ? What happened 
 to Greece commercially? politically? Did a federation of all the 
 Greeks arise? 
 
 Note. The tailpiece below (on the right) is a pleasing example of the Alex- 
 andrian art of mosaic — the art of putting together brightly colored bits of glass 
 or stone and forming figures or designs with them, as a child puts together a 
 puzzle picture. It was an old Egyptian art, which was carried much further by 
 the Greeks at Alexandria, where they seem to have learned it, and used it in 
 making beautiful pavements (§ 738). They even copied many old Egyptian 
 designs, such as this cat (seen below, at right), which was taken from an old 
 Egyptian painting (seen below, at left) showing a cat with a bird in her mouth 
 and also two more under her forepaws and hindpaws. The greatest example 
 of mosaic is the copy of the painting of the battle of Issus (Fig. 202). 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 THE CIVILIZATION OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE 
 
 Section 68. Cities, Architecture, and Art 
 
 The three centuries following the death of Alexander we call 727. The 
 the Hellenistic Age, meaning the period in which Greek civili- Age— su- 
 zation spread throughout the ancient world, especially the Orient, ^^l^^^^^^ 
 and was itself much modified by the culture of the Orient, language 
 Alexander's conquests placed Asia and Egypt in the hands of 
 Macedonian rulers who were in civilization essentially Greek. 
 Their language was the Greek spoken in Attica. The Orientals 
 found the affairs of government carried on in the Greek lan- 
 guage (Fig. 207) ; they transacted business with multitudes of 
 Greek merchants; they found many Greek books, attracting 
 them to read. Attic Greek became the tongue of which every 
 man of education must be master. Thus the strong Jewish com- 
 munity living at Alexandria now found it necessary to translate 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the old palm-tree capital (on the left), 
 with which we are familiar on the Nile (Fig. 56). The Egyptians were the first 
 to take the patterns of their decorative art from the forms of plant life. Their 
 example has influenced decorative art ever since. Thus this palm-tree column (on 
 the right) was borrowed from Egypt by the Hellenistic architects of Pergamum. 
 Such an example shows clearly that the idea of taking decorative architectural 
 forms from the vegetable world was acquired by the Greeks from abroad, and the 
 Corinthian column (Fig, 193) was doubtless suggested in the same way. 
 
 453 
 
454 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, in 
 order that their educated men might read them. While the 
 country people of the East might learn it imperfectly, Attic 
 
 Fig. 207. The Rosetta Stone, bearing the Same Inscription 
 IN Greek (C) and Egyptian (^ and BY 
 
 Greek became, nevertheless, the daily language of the great 
 cities and of an enormous world stretching from Sicily (Fig. 257) 
 and southern Italy eastward on both sides of the Mediterranean 
 and thence far into the Orient, 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 455 
 
 Civilized life in the cities was attended with more comfort and 
 better equipped than ever before. The citizen's house, if he were 
 in easy circumstances, might be built of stone masonry. The 
 old central court was now often surrounded on all four sides 
 by a pleasing colonnaded porch (Fig. 208). Most of the rooms 
 were still small and bare, but the large living room, lighted 
 from the court, might be floored with a bright mosaic pavement 
 (tailpiece, p. 452), while the walls were plastered and adorned 
 with decorative paintings, or even veneered with marble if the 
 owner's wealth permitted. The furniture was more elaborate 
 and artistic; there might be carpets and hangings; and the 
 house now for the first time possessed its own water supply. 
 
 * This famous inscription is in two languages. It was written in Greek 
 because the language of the government was Greek and also because 
 there were so many Greek-speaking people in Egypt (§ 727). At the 
 same time, as the stone was to be a public record, it was necessary that 
 it should be read by Egyptians, who knew no Greek, just as in some 
 New England factory towns notices are now put up in both English and 
 Italian. The document was therefore first written out with pen and ink, 
 just as we would do it, in ordinary Egyptian handwriting, called by the 
 Egyptians demotic (see Fig. 31 for explanation). This demotic copy was 
 then cut on the stone where it occupies the middle {B). The priests 
 also wrote out the document in the ancient sacred hieroglyphics, and 
 they put this hieroglyphic form in the place of honor at the top of the 
 stone {A), where the two corners have since been broken off and lost. 
 Both of these two forms, then, are Egyptian — the^upper {A) correspond- 
 ing to our print, the lower [B) corresponding to our handwriting. The 
 Greek translation of the Egyptian we see at the bottom {C). The stone 
 was intended as a public record of certain honors which the Egyptian 
 priests were extending to the Greek king, one of the Ptolemies, in 
 195 B.C. After it fell down and was broken, the stone had been buried 
 in rubbish for many centuries, when the soldiers of Napoleon accident- 
 ally found it while digging trenches near the Rosetta mouth of the 
 Nile in 1799. Hence it is called the Rosetta Stone. It was afterward 
 captured by the British and is now in the British Museum. After 
 Champollion had learned the signs in the names of Cleopatra, Ptolemy, 
 and some others (Fig. 76), he was finally able to read also the hiero- 
 glyphic form of this Rosetta document (^), because the Greek trans- 
 lation told him what the hieroglyphic form meant. It was in this way 
 that the Rosetta Stone became the key by which Egyptian hieroglyphic 
 was deciphered. The stone is a thick slab of black basalt, 2 feet 4^ inches 
 wide and 3 feet 9 inches high. 
 
 728. Im- 
 proved 
 houses and 
 increased 
 luxury 
 
456 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 729. House- 
 hold and 
 business 
 papers pre- 
 served in 
 Egypt 
 
 The streets also were equipped with drainage channels or pipes, 
 a thing unknown in the days of Pericles. 
 
 The daily life of the time has been revealed to us, as it' went on 
 in Egypt, in a vast quantity of surviving household documents. 
 
 Fig. 208. Plan of a House of a Wealthy Greek in the 
 Hellenistic Age 
 
 The rooms are arranged around a central court {M) which is open to the 
 sky. A roofed porch with columns (called a peristyle) surrounds the 
 court (cf. Fig. 56). The main entrance is at yV, with the room of the door- 
 keeper on the right {A). At the corner is a shop {B). C, Z>, and ^are 
 for storage and housekeeping. 7^ is a back-door entry through which 
 supplies were delivered ; it contained a stairway to the second floor. 
 G was used as a small living room. It had a built-in divan, and the 
 entire side toward the peristyle was open. The finest room in the house 
 was H, measuring about 16 by 26 feet, with a mosaic floor (tailpiece, 
 p. 452), in seven colors, and richly decorated walls. It was lighted by a 
 large door and two windows. A' was a little sleeping room, with a large 
 marble bath tub ; otherwise the sleeping rooms were all on the second 
 floor, which cannot now be reconstructed. / was a second tiny shop. 
 This house was excavated by the French on the island of Delos 
 
 Among the common people ordinary receipts and other busi- 
 ness memoranda were scribbled with ink on bits of broken 
 pottery (Fig. 209), which cost nothing. For more important 
 documents, however, a piece of papyrus paper was used 
 (Fig. 253). Such papers accumulated in the house, just as our 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 457 
 
 old letters and papers do. In the rainless climate of Egypt 
 they have survived in great numbers in the rubbish heaps now 
 covering the remains of 
 the houses of this age 
 (§ 158 and Fig. 211). 
 We can read a father's 
 or a mother's invitation 
 to the wedding of a 
 daughter; the letter of 
 a father to a worthy son 
 absent at school ; the 
 repentant confessions of 
 a wayward son who has 
 run away from home ; 
 the assurances of sym- 
 pathy from a friend 
 when a family has lost a 
 son, a father, a mother, 
 or a brother. Indeed, 
 these documents disclose 
 to us the daily intercourse 
 between friends and rela- 
 tives, just as such matters 
 are revealed by letters 
 which pass between our- 
 selves at the present 
 day. Such word-pictures, 
 thoughdessly penned by 
 long-vanished fingers, 
 make the distant life of 
 this far-off age seem 
 surprisingly near and 
 real (Figs. 210 and 253). 
 
 The numerous new cities which this great Hellenistic Age 
 brought forth were laid out on a very systematic plan, with the 
 
 Fig. 209. Potsherd Document from 
 THE Ruins of an Egyptian Town 
 
 Thousands of personal documents of the 
 Hellenistic Age have survived in Egypt, 
 written with pen and ink on fragments 
 of broken pottery, which cost nothing 
 (§ 729). This specimen records a receipt 
 for land rent and closes thus : " Eumelos, 
 the son of Hermulos, being asked to do 
 so, wrote for him, because he himself 
 writes too slowly." The giver of the 
 receipt probably could not write at all 
 and, to avoid this humiliating confession, 
 says that he wrote " too slowly " ! The hand 
 which Eumelos wrote for him is the rapid- 
 running business hand written by the 
 Greeks of this age, very different from 
 the capital letters which the Greek pottery 
 painters made five centuries earlier (head- 
 piece, p. 282). A modern college student, 
 even though very familiar with printed 
 Greek, would be unable to read it 
 
458 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 730. Equip- 
 ment of Hel- 
 lenistic cities; 
 rise of secu- 
 lar public 
 buildings 
 
 731. The 
 public build- 
 ings of a 
 Hellenistic 
 city 
 
 streets at right angles and the buildings in rectangular blocks 
 (Fig. 212), Recent excavation has uncovered as many as eleven 
 metal water pipes side by side crossing a street under the pave- 
 ment. But there never was any system of public-street lighting 
 in the ancient world. In the public buildings also a great change 
 had taken place. In Pericles' time the great state buildings were 
 the temples (§ 573). But now the architects of the Hellenistic 
 Age began to design large and splendid buildings to house the 
 offices of the government. 
 
 These fine public buildings occupied the center of the city 
 where in early Greek and oriental cities the castle of the king 
 
 Fig. 210. A Papyrus Letter rolled up and sealed for 
 Delivery 
 
 Large numbers of such letters have been found in the rubbish of the 
 
 ancient towns of Egypt (Fig. 253). Their appearance when unrolled 
 
 may be seen in Fig. 253, and the remarkable glimpses into ancient life 
 
 which they afford are well illustrated by the same letter 
 
 had once stood. Near by was the spacious market square, sur- 
 rounded by long colonnades ; for the Greeks were now making 
 large use of this airy and beautiful form of architecture con- 
 tributed by Egypt. Here much private business of the citizens 
 was transacted. There was, furthermore, a handsome building 
 containing an audience room with seats arranged like a theater. 
 The Assembly no longer met in the open air (Fig. 179), but 
 held its sessions here, as did the Council also. The architects 
 had also to provide gymnasiums and baths, a race track, and 
 a theater. Even a small city of only four thousand people, like 
 Priene in Asia Minor, possessed all these buildings (Fig. 212), 
 besides several temples, one of which was erected by Alexander 
 himself. It is very instructive to compare such a little Hellenistic 
 city as Priene with a modern town of four thousand inhabitants 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 459 
 
 in America. Our modern houses are much more roomy and 
 comfortable, but our ordinary public buildings, like our court- 
 houses and town halls, make but a poor showing as com- 
 pared with those of little Priene over two thousand years ago. 
 
 Fig. 2[i. Ruins of the Ancient Town of Elephantine on 
 AN Island of the Same Name in the Nile 
 
 This island is at the foot of the First Cataract, 5 miles below Philse (Plate 
 V, p. 444). When the sun-dried-brick houses which we see here fell 
 down (§ 158), they covered the owner's household papers, which in the 
 rainless climate of Egypt have been remarkably well preserved (see 
 especially Fig. 131). Some of these houses are as old as the twenty- 
 seventh century B.C., and the oldest papyrus documents dug out here 
 are therefore as old as the Pyramid Age (Fig. 40). Others are much 
 later, like the Aramaic papers of the Hebrew colony (Fig. 131). Most 
 of the documents found here, however, are from the Hellenistic Age 
 or later, and are therefore in Greek, like the young soldier's letter 
 (Fig. 253), which was found at another place like this one, or the certifi- 
 cate shown in Fig. 267. Near here was Eratosthenes' well (§ 745) 
 
 On one side of the market there opened a building called 732. The 
 
 clerestory 
 
 a basilica, lighted by roof windows, forming a clerestory and the arch 
 
 (Fig. 271), which the Hellenistic architects had seen in Egypt from'th? 
 
 (Fig. 68). At the same time they had become acquainted with Orient 
 the arch in Asia Minor, whither it had passed from the Fertile 
 
460 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 46 1 
 
 Crescent (Figs. 82 and 206). They began occasionally to intro- 
 duce arches into their buildings (Fig. 224), although we recall 
 that Greek buildings had never before employed the arch. 
 Thus the Orient, which had contributed the colonnade to Greek 
 architecture (Fig. 167), now furnished two more great forms, 
 the clerestory and the arch, but the Greeks never made great 
 use of the arch. 
 
 If a litde provincial Greek city like Priene possessed such 733. Alex- 
 splendid public buildings, an imperial capital and vast commercial commerce^ 
 city like Alexandria was correspondingly more magnificent. In ^"^th^^^^^ 
 numbers, wealth, commerce, power, and in all the arts of civili- 
 zation, it was now the greatest city of the whole ancient world. 
 Along the harbors stretched extensive docks, where ships which 
 had braved the Atlantic storms along the coasts of Spain and 
 Africa moored beside oriental craft which had penetrated the 
 
 * This litde city when excavated proved to be almost a second Pompeii 
 (Fig. 255), only older. Above y^, on the top of the cliff, was the citadel 
 with a path leading up to it {B). C shows the masonry flume which 
 brought the mountain water down into the town. Entering the town one 
 passed through the gate at K, and up a straight street to the little pro- 
 vision-market square (Z). Just above the market was the temple of 
 Athena (7), built by Alexander himself. Then one entered the spacious 
 business market {agora) [M), surrounded by fine colonnades, with shops 
 behind them, except on one side (under N) where there was a stately 
 hall for business and festive occasions, like the basilica halls which were 
 coming in at this time among the Greeks (Fig. 271, 3). Beyond (at N) 
 were the offices of the city government, the hall in which the Council 
 and Assembly met, and the theater [E). At G was the temple of Isis 
 (§ 657), and in the foreground were the gymnasium {P) and the sta- 
 dium [Q). The wash-room here still contains- the marble basins and the 
 lion-headed spouts from which the water flowed. An attached open hall 
 was used for school instruction and lectures (Fig. 224). Above the seats 
 of the stadium [Q) was a beautiful colonnade 600 feet long, for pleasure- 
 strolling between the athletic events, to enjoy the grand view of the sea 
 upon which the audience looked down. The houses fronting directly on 
 the street were mostly like the one in Fig. 208 ; but the finer ones 
 in the region of the theater [E) and the temple of Athena (7) were of 
 well-joined stone masonry and had no shops in front. Around the 
 whole city was a strong wall of masonry, with a gate at east {H) and 
 west [IC), while along the street outside these gates were the tombs of 
 the ancestors as at Athens (headpiece, p. 425). 
 
462 
 
 Aficient Times 
 
 gates of the Indian Ocean (§ 104) and gathered the wares of 
 the vast oriental world beyond. Side by side on these docks 
 lay bars of tin from the British Isles with bolts of silk from 
 
 Fig. 213. The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria 
 IN the Hellenistic Age. (After Thiersch) 
 
 The harbor of Alexandria (see corner map, p. 436) was protected by 
 an island called Pharos, which was connected with the city by a cause- 
 way of stone. On the island, and bearing its name (Pharos), was built 
 (after 300 B.C.) a vast stone lighthouse, some 370 feet high (that is, over 
 thirty stories, like those of a modern skyscraper). It shows how vast 
 was the commerce and wealth of Alexandria only a generation after it 
 was founded by Alexander the Great, when it became the New York or 
 Liverpool of the ancient world, the greatest port on the Mediterranean 
 (§ 733)- The Pharos tower, the first of its kind, was influenced in design 
 by oriental architecture, and in its turn it furnished the model for the 
 earliest church spires, and also for the minarets of the Mohammedan 
 mosques (Fig. 272). It stood for about sixteen hundred years, the 
 greatest lighthouse in the world, and did not fall until 1326 a.d. 
 
 China and rolls of cotton goods from India. The growing com- 
 merce of the city even required the establishment of government 
 banks. From far across the sea the mariners approaching at 
 night could catch the gleaming of a lofty beacon shining from 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 463 
 
 a gigantic lighthouse tower (Fig. 213) which marked the 
 entrance of the harbor of Alexandria. This wonderful tower, 
 the tallest building ever erected by a Hellenistic engineer, was 
 a descendant of the old Babylonian temple tower (tailpiece, 
 p. 170), with which it was closely related (Fig. 272). 
 
 PYom the deck of a great merchant ship of over four thou- 734. Palace 
 sand tons the incoming traveler might look cityward beyond ptolemiest 
 the lighthouse and behold the 2:reat war fleet of the Ptolemies °^'^"*/l <^"' 
 
 *=" ^ gin 01 such 
 
 (§ 716) outlined against the green masses of the magnificent P^rks 
 royal gardens. Here, embowered in rich tropical verdure, rose 
 the marble residence of the Ptolemies, occupying a point of 
 land which extended out into the sea and formed the east side 
 of the harbor (see map, p. 436). From the royal parks of the 
 Persian kings and the villa gardens of the Egyptians (Fig. 51) 
 the Hellenistic rulers and their architects had learned to appre- 
 ciate the beauty of parks and gardens artistically laid out and 
 adorned with tropical trees, lakes, fountains, and sculptured mon- 
 uments. Thus the art of landscape gardening, combined with a 
 systematically planned city, — an art long familiar to the archi- 
 tects of the Orient, — was also being cultivated by Europeans. 
 
 At the other end of the park from the palace were grouped 
 the marble buildings of the Royal Museum, with its great 735. The 
 library, lecture halls, exhibition rooms, courts and porticoes, E,"gsofAlex- 
 and living rooms for the philosophers and men of science who ^"^"^ 
 resided in the institution. In the vicinity was the vast temple of 
 Serapis, the new State god (§ 764), and further in the city were 
 the magnificent public buildings, such as gymnasiums, baths, sta- 
 diums, assembly hall, concert hall, market places, and basilicas, 
 all surrounded by the residence quarters of the citizens. Unfor- 
 tunately, not one of these splendid buildings still stands. Even 
 the scanty ruins which survive cannot be recovered, because in 
 most cases the modern city of Alexandria is built over them. 
 
 We are more fortunate in the case of Pergamum (map H, 736. Per- 
 p. 448), another splendid city of this age which grew up i^tswonderftl 
 under Athenian influences (Fig. 214). One of the kings of sculpture 
 
464 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Pergamum defeated and beat off the hordes of Gauls coming 
 in from Europe (§ 722). This achievement greatly affected the 
 art which Attic sculptors, supported by the kings of Pergamum, 
 were creating there. They wrought heroic marble figures of 
 
 Fig. 214. Restoratiox of the Public Buildings of Pergamum, 
 A Hellenistic City of Asia Minor. (After Thiersch) 
 
 Pergamum, on the west coast of Asia Minor (see map II, p. 448) became 
 a flourishing city-kingdom in the third century B.C. under the successors 
 of Alexander the Great (§ 736). The dwelHngs of the citizens were all 
 lower down, in front of the group of buildings shown here. These public 
 buildings stand on three terraces — lower, middle, and upper. The 
 large lower \.&xx2iC& {A) was the main market place, adorned with a vast 
 square marble altar of Zeus, having colonnades on three sides, beneath 
 which was a long sculptured band (frieze) of warring gods and giants 
 (Fig. 217). On the middle terrace (^9), behind the colonnades, was the 
 famous library of Pergamum, where the stone bases of library shelves 
 still survive. The jcpp er t^rrzce. [C) once contained the palace of the 
 king; the temple now there was built by the Roman Emperor Trajan 
 in the second century a.d. 
 
 the Northern barbarians in the tragic moment of death in battle 
 with a dramatic impressiveness which has never been surpassed 
 (Figs. 215 and 2 1 6). Reminiscences of this same struggle with 
 the Gauls were also suggested by an enormous band of relief 
 sculpture depicting the mythical battle between the gods and the 
 
Fig. 215. A Gallic Chieftain in Defeat slaying his Wife 
 AND Himself 
 
 With one hand he supports his dying wife, and casting a terrible glance 
 at the pursuing enemy, he plunges his sword into his own breast. The 
 tremendous power of the barbarian's muscular figure is in startling con- 
 trast with the helpless limbs of the woman. The beholder feels both 
 terror at the wild impetuosity of the Northern barbarian, and at the 
 same time involuntary sympathy with his unconquerable courage, which 
 prefers death, for himself and his loved one, to shameful captivity 
 among the victors {§ 736) 
 
Figs. 216 and 217. Sculptures of Hellenistic Pergamum 
 
 Above (Fig. 216) is a Gallic trumpeter, as he sinks in death with his 
 trumpet at his feet (§ 736). Below (Fig. 217) is a part of the frieze 
 around the great altar of Zeus at Pergamum (Fig. 214). It pictures the 
 mythical struggle between gods and giants. A giant at the left, whose 
 limbs end in serpents, raises over his head a great stone to hurl it at 
 the goddess on the right (§ 736) 
 
Fig. 2 1 8. The Death of Laocoon and his Two Sons 
 
 This famous group was wrought some time in the first century B.C. by 
 Agesander of Rhodes and two other sculptors, perhaps his sons. It shows 
 the priest Laocoon sinking down upon the altar, by which he had been 
 ministering, in a last agonizing struggle with the deadly serpents which 
 enfold him and his two sons. It is one of the most marvelous representa- 
 tions of human suffering (§ 737) ever created by art, but it does not move 
 us with such sympathy as the death of the Gallic chieftain (Fig. 215). 
 We should place with these works (Figs. 215-218) the sarcophagus reliefs 
 of Alexander (Plate VI, p. 468) and the mosaic picture of the battle of 
 Issus (Fig. 202) as the supreme creations of ancient art 
 
rS -5 S* 
 
 w 'S — 
 
 6 
 
 W O r" '-^ 
 
 1) »-. S CO 
 CO bo " rr 
 
 ^ ^ « '^ -g 
 
 Oi . <U a; >-j 
 
 K 'S "^ -^ ^ 
 
 p o c '-' 1^ 
 O '> ^ -a r'^ 
 
 ^ III" 
 
 ^ -^^ C^ 5 e 
 
 C/2 t'k (U . (U 
 
 O 
 
 US 
 
 w 
 
 ^ c <u o 
 
 Q 4-" g- CO 
 
 o 
 
 (U ^ o 
 
 ■ — - c/3 rn 
 
 ;3 5 
 
 W Ji 0) 
 Ph -5 ^ 
 
 CO 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 465 
 
 giants (Fig. 217). This vast work extended almost entirely 
 around a colossal altar (Fig. 2 1 4) erected by the kings of Per- 
 gamum in honor of Zeus, to adorn the market place of the city. 
 
 It was the works of the Athenian sculptors which had in- 
 spired compositions of such tragic and overwhelming power, 
 of such violent and thrill- 
 ing action, at Pergamum. 
 Some of these Athenian 
 works have survived. 
 They are best illustrated 
 by the reliefs on a wonder- 
 ful marble sarcophagus, 
 showing Alexander the 
 Great winning the battle 
 of Issus, and again en- 
 gaged in a lion hunt 
 (Plate VI, p. 468). This 
 sculpture of vigorous ac- 
 tion in supremely tragic 
 moments was also very 
 beautifully followed out 
 by a group of eminent 
 sculptors on the island 
 of Rhodes, which was a 
 prosperous republic in the 
 Hellenistic Age (§ 724). 
 Most of their works have 
 perished, but those which 
 have survived are among 
 the most famous works of sculpture from the ancient world. 
 One of them depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two 
 sons as they are crushed to death in the folds of two deadly 
 serpents (Fig. 218). 
 
 The great Greek painters of this age show the same tenden- 
 cies as does the sculpture. They loved to depict dramatic and 
 
 737. Athe- 
 nian sculp- 
 ture: the 
 Alexander 
 sarcophagus; 
 Rhodian 
 sculpture ; 
 Laocoon 
 
 Fig. 220. Hellenistic Portrait 
 Head in Bronze 
 
 This magnificent head of an unknown 
 man, with wonderful representation 
 of the hair, was recovered from the 
 bottom of the sea. The eyes are in- 
 laid as in the old Egyptian bronze 
 head (Fig. 53). It is now in the 
 Museum of Athens 
 
 738. Painting 
 and mosaic 
 
466 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 739. Por- 
 traiture 
 
 tragic incidents at the supreme moment. Their original works 
 have all perished, but copies of some of them have survived, 
 painted on the walls as interior decorations of fine houses or 
 wrought in mosaic as floor pavement. It is the art of mosaic 
 which has preserved to us the wonderful painting of Alexander 
 charging on the Persian king at Issus, by an unknown Alex- 
 andrian painter of the Hellenistic Age (Fig. 202). 
 
 Both the sculptors and painters of this age made wonderful 
 progress in portraiture, and their surviving works now begin to 
 furnish us a continuous stream of portraits which show us how 
 the great men of the age really looked (Fig. 220). Unfortu- 
 nately these portraits are all works of the sculptors in stone or 
 metal, either as statues and busts or as reliefs, especially on 
 medallions and coins ; the portraits executed by the paiiiter 
 in colors on wooden tablets have all perished. Alexander's 
 favorite painter was Apelles. In one of his portraits of Alex- 
 ander, the horse which the king was riding was said to have 
 been painted with such lifelikeness that on one occasion a 
 passing horse trotted up to it and whinnied. Later examples 
 of this art of portrait painting have survived attached to 
 mummies in Egypt (Plate VIII, p. 654). 
 
 Section 69. Inventions and Science ; Libraries 
 AND Literature 
 
 740. Mechan- 
 ical progress 
 and practical 
 inventions 
 
 The keen and wide-awake intelligence of this wonderful age 
 was everywhere evident, but especially in the application of 
 science to the work and needs of daily life. It was an age 
 of inventions, like our own. An up-to-date man would install an 
 automatic door opener for the doorkeeper of his house, and a 
 washing machine which delivered water and mineral soap as 
 needed. On his estate olive oil was produced by a press oper- 
 ating with screw pressure. Outside the temples the priests set 
 up automatic dispensers of holy water, while a water sprinkler 
 operating by water pressure reduced the danger of fire. The 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 467 
 
 application of levers, cranks, screws, and cogwheels to daily 
 work brought forth cable roads for use in lowering stone from 
 lofty quarries, or water wheels for drawing water on a large 
 scale. A similar endless-chain apparatus was used for quickly 
 raising heavy stone missiles to be discharged from huge missile- 
 hurling war machines, some of which even operated by air 
 pressure. As we go to see the " movies," so the people 
 crowded to the market place to view the automatic theater, in 
 which a clever mechanician presented an old Greek tragedy of 
 the Trojan War in five scenes, displaying shipbuilding, the 
 launch of the fleet, the voyage, with the dolphins playing in 
 the water about the vessels, and finally a storm at sea, with 
 thunder and lightning, amid which the Greek heroes promptly 
 went to the bottom. Housekeepers told stories of the simpler 
 days of their grandmothers, when there was no running water 
 in the house and they actually had to go out and fetch it a long 
 way from the nearest spring. 
 
 A public clock, either a shadow clock, such as the Egyptian 741. Time 
 had had in his house for over a thousand years (Fig. 74), or a calendar 
 water clock of Greek invention (Fig. 221), stood in the market 
 place and furnished all the good townspeople with the hour of 
 the day. The Ptolemies or the priests under them attempted 
 to improve the calendar by the insertion every fourth year of a 
 leap year with an additional day, but the people could not be 
 roused out of the rut into which usage had fallen, and every- 
 where they continued to use the inconvenient moon month of 
 the Greeks. There was no system for the numbering of the 
 years anywhere except in Syria, where the Seleucids gave each 
 year a number reckoned from the beginning of their sway. 
 
 The most remarkable man of science of the time was prob- 742. Archi- 
 ably Archimedes. He lived in Syracuse, and one of his famous "^^ 
 feats was the arrangement of a series of pulleys and levers, 
 which so multiplied power that the king was able by turning a 
 light crank to move a large three-masted ship standing fully 
 loaded on the dock, and to launch it into the water. After 
 
468 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 743- The 
 
 Alexandrian 
 scientists 
 
 witnessing such feats as this the people easily believed his 
 proud boast, " Give me a place to stand on and I will move the 
 earth." He devised such powerful and dangerous war machines 
 that he greatly aided in defending his native city from capture by 
 
 the Romans (§ 868). 
 But Archimedes was 
 far more than an 
 inventor of practical 
 appliances. He was 
 a scientific investiga- 
 tor of the first rank. 
 He was able to prove 
 to the king that one 
 of the monarch's gold 
 crowns was not of 
 pure metal, because 
 he had discovered the 
 principle of determin- 
 ing the proportion of 
 loss of weight when 
 an object is immersed 
 in water. He was 
 thus the discoverer 
 of what science now 
 calls specific gravity. 
 Besides his skill in 
 physics he was also 
 the greatest of an- 
 cient mathematicians 
 (§ 744)- 
 
 Fig. 221. The Town Clock OF Athens 
 IN THE Hellenistic Age 
 
 This tower, commonly called the " Tower 
 of the Winds," now stands among modern 
 houses, but once looked out on the Athenian 
 market place (§ 564). The arches at the left 
 support part of an ancient channel which 
 supplied the water for the operation of a 
 water clock in the tower. Such clocks were 
 more or less like hourglasses, the flowing 
 water filling a given measure in a given time, 
 like the sand in the hourglass. This tower 
 was built in the last century B.C., when Athens 
 was under the control of Rome (§ 884) 
 
 Archimedes was in close correspondence with his friends in 
 Alexandria, who formed the greatest body of scientists in the 
 ancient world. They lived together at the Museum, where they 
 were paid salaries and supported by the Ptolemies. They 
 formed the first scientific institution founded and supported by 
 
^j u o o 
 
 G rt r' «+-( 
 
 § £•- ° 
 
 ^ c I g 
 
 <u C c o 
 
 a JJ To ^ 
 
 C O r-' 
 
 !^ 
 
 W (U 
 
 ^-r:^ 
 
 o 
 > 
 
 != T> 2 ^ ii 
 
 ■" c •£ ^ s 
 
 "6 ^^^^ 
 
 ^ aj 03 ^ o; 
 
 g - ^ '^'^ 
 
 o ^ ^ ^ '"" 
 
 flj OT f-1 (-1 of 
 
 <u 
 
 c ^ ^ ^ 
 
 < 'i •£ -o 
 
 <u 
 
 o 
 
 o « ".2 
 
 « O ^ T, 
 
 +-" C — HH H 
 
 i!2 o <u o 
 
 S < 1^ I g 
 
 <" C rt 
 
 M 
 
 3 
 
 
 c« 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 469 
 
 a government Without financial anxieties they could devote 
 themselves to research, for which the halls, laboratories, and 
 library of the institution were equipped. Thus the scientists 
 of the Hellenistic Age, especially this remarkable group at 
 Alexandria, became the founders of systematic scientific re- 
 search, and their books formed the sum or body of scientific 
 knowledge for nearly two thousand years, until the revival of 
 science in modern times. 
 
 The very first generation of scientists at the Alexandrian 744. Mathe- 
 Museum boasted a great name in mathematics which is still EucTid'and 
 famous among us — that of Euclid. His complete system of Archimedes, 
 geometry was so logically built up, that in modern England Aristarchus 
 Euclid's geometry is still used as a schoolbook — the oldest 
 schoolbook in use to-day. Archimedes then, for the first time, 
 developed what is now called higher mathematics — certain 
 difficult and advanced mathematical processes the knowledge 
 of which having in the meantime been lost had to be redis- 
 covered in modern times. Along with mathematics much prog- 
 ress was also made in astronomy. The Ptolemies built an 
 astronomical observatory at Alexandria, and although it was, of 
 course, without telescopes, important observations and discov- 
 eries were made. An astronomer of little fame named Aristar- 
 chus, who lived on the island of Samos, made the greatest of 
 the discoveries of this age. He demonstrated that the earth 
 and the planets revolve around the sufi. Almost no one adopted 
 his conclusion, however, and both the Hellenistic Greeks and all 
 ancient scientists of later days wrongly believed that the earth 
 was the center around which the sun and the planets revolved 
 (§1059). One Hellenistic astronomer at the co'st of immense 
 labor, made a catalogue of eight or nine hundred fixed stars, to 
 serve as a basis for determining any future changes that might 
 take place in the skies. 
 
 Astronomy had now greatly aided in the progress of geog- 745- Era- 
 raphy. Eratosthenes, a great mathematical astronomer of Alex- computes 
 andria, very cleverly computed the size of the earth by observing the earth 
 
470 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 222. Diagram roughly indicating how the Size of 
 THE Earth was first calculated 
 
 The sun standing at noon directly over the First Cataract (line AB) was 
 of course visible also at Alexandria. The result was just the same as if 
 someone had stood at the First Cataract holding vertically upright a 
 surveyor's pole tall enough to be seen from Alexandria. For Eratosthenes 
 at Alexandria the sun was like the top of the pole. With his instruments 
 set up at Alexandria, therefore, Eratosthenes found that the sun over 
 the First Cataract (line AB) was 7^ degrees south of the zenith of his 
 instrument at Alexandria (line AC). The lines AB and AC diverge 
 7^ degrees at all points, whether in the skies or on earth. Hence Era- 
 tosthenes knew that the First Cataract was 7i degrees of the earth's 
 circumference from Alexandria ; that is, the distance between Alexan- 
 dria and the First Cataract was i\ degrees of the earth's circumference, 
 or one fiftieth of its total circumference of 360 degrees. Now the actual 
 distance between Alexandria and the First Cataract was supposed to be 
 a little less than 500 miles. This distance (500 miles) then was one fiftieth 
 of the earth's circumference, giving a few hundred less than 25,000 miles 
 for the total circumference of the earth ; and for its diameter about 
 7850 miles, which is within 50 miles of being correct 
 
 that when the summer sun, shifting steadily northward, reached 
 its farthest north, it shone at noonday straight down to the 
 bottom of a well at the First Cataract of the Nile (Fig. 211). 
 Tp this notion of the size of the earth, much information had 
 been added regarding the extent and the character of the 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 47 1 
 
 inhabited regions reached by navigation and exploration in this 746. Expio- 
 age. At home, in Greece, one geographer undertook to meas- ward"^ 
 ure the heights of the mountains, though he was without a 
 barometer. The campaigns of Alexander in the Far East had 
 greatly extended the limits where the known world ended. Bold 
 Alexandrian merchants had sailed to India and around its south- 
 ern tip to Ceylon and the eastern coast of India, where they 
 heard fabulous tales of the Chinese coast beyond. 
 
 In the Far West as early as 500 B.C. Phoenician navigators 747. Explo- 
 had passed Gibraltar, and turning southward had probably ward and 
 reached the coast of Guinea, whence they brought back mar- p°t5J^ar*n(i 
 velous stories of the hairy men whom the interpreters called the tides 
 "Gorillas"! A trained astronomer of Marseilles named Pytheas 
 fitted out a ship at his own expense and coasted northward 
 from Gibraltar. He discovered the triangular shape of the 
 island of Britannia, and penetrating far into the North Sea 
 he was the first civilized man to hear tales of the frozen 
 sea beyond and the mysterious island of Thule (Iceland) on 
 its margin. He discovered the influence of the full moon on 
 the immense spring tides, and he brought back reports of such 
 surprising things that he was generally regarded as a sensational 
 fable monger. 
 
 With a greater mass of facts and reports than anyone before 748. Era- 
 him had ever had, Eratosthenes was able to write a very full founder of 
 geography. His map of the known world (p. 472), including geography, 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa, not only showed the regions grouped makes first 
 
 ■' 11 "^^P ^*th 
 
 about the Mediterranean with fair correctness, but he was the latitude and 
 first geographer who was able to lay out on his map a cross-net °"^^ " 
 of lines indicating latitude and longitude. He thus became the 
 founder of scientific geography. 
 
 In the study of animal and vegetable life Aristotle and his 749. Botany, 
 
 zoology, 
 
 pupils remained the leaders, and the ancient world never out- anatomy, and 
 grew their observations. While their knowledge of botany, '"^ ^^^"^ 
 acquired without a microscope, was of course limited and con- 
 tained errors, a large mass of new facts was observed and 
 
472 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 arranged. For the study of anatomy there was a laboratory in 
 Alexandria, at the Museum, which the Ptolemies furnished with 
 condemned criminals on whom vivisection was practiced. In 
 this way the nerves were discovered to be the lines along which 
 messages of pain and pleasure pass to the brain. The brain 
 was thus shown to be the center of the nervous system. 
 Although such research came very near to discovering the cir- 
 culation of the blood, the arteries were still misunderstood to 
 De channels for the circulation of air from the lungs. Alexandria 
 
 ^^=^^%-; , ^ 
 
 ^^^^^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ri. 'Rt^>"3u=5.^^ — 'A 
 
 ^- = 
 
 ■ 
 
 ''^'" ' 'j> = 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 '"^^^ •" ^ 
 
 ^^E 
 
 u 4 L 
 
 
 ^-1=,. t ' 
 
 
 ^^E^Q ^^■§tf^-- 
 
 
 ^v V— -— 
 
 7 -yS -I '^ — -0 
 
 g -' ^■- — ---^ 
 
 -s* ^ 
 
 V \ V"^ E 
 
 ^^ ■?^^^535 ' ^7 — ^ 
 
 Ln i^-'. 
 
 
 ^^^^, 
 
 ^P=-s_^^^^^^^^^S} 
 
 
 
 F— — irr 
 
 ^^CarthagV'T;;^;^^ 
 
 PfelylonV 
 
 
 / \^ ^Se 
 
 Ganacs ^ ,^^ 
 
 ' ' XL I B Y A \ 
 
 g'^-^ 
 
 
 ■1 INDIA 1^^ 
 
 ^AFRICA) ^r 
 
 ^i^/.^^^pL. 
 
 ^ 
 
 •5 ^ ^j 
 
 '^S, ^V 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
 ::...J 
 
 • ' 
 
 
 
 
 Map of the World according to Eratosthenes (200 b.c.) 
 
 750. Earliest 
 state libraries 
 of the Greeks; 
 Alexandrian 
 library 
 
 became the greatest center of medical research in the ancient 
 world, and here young men went through long studies to train 
 themselves as physicians, just as they do at the present day. 
 
 Notwithstanding the popularity of the natural sciences, there 
 was now also much study of language and of the great mass of 
 older literature. Although the ancient Orient had long before 
 known royal libraries (§ 226), the first library founded and sup- 
 ported by a Greek government had been formed by the city of 
 Heracleia, on the Black Sea, during the childhood of Alexander 
 the Great (not long before 350 b. c). Later the kings of Perga- 
 mum also founded a very notable library (Fig. 214). All these 
 efforts were far surpassed by the Ptolemies at Alexandria. 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 473 
 
 Across the park from their palace they built a library for the 
 Museum, where they had finally over half a million rolls. 
 
 The art of cataloguing and managing such a great collection 751. Rise of 
 of books had to be taken up from the beginning. A gifted agemenTand 
 philosopher and poet named Callimachus was made a librarian cataloguing 
 by the first Ptolemy. Callimachus catalogued all the known 
 books of value, both by titles and authors, and this first great 
 book catalogue filled one hundred and twenty books or sec- 
 tions. As the founder of library management he introduced 
 many improvements. One of his sayings was, " A big book is 
 a big nuisance," by which he probably meant that a book in a 
 single long and bulky roll was very inconvenient to handle 
 (cf. Fig. 191). Hence he introduced the method of cutting up 
 a work into a series of rolls, each roll called a " book," mean- 
 ing a ^' part." Thus arose the division of the Homeric poems, 
 the history of Herodotus, and other works into " books." 
 
 The immense amount of hand copying required to secure 752. Great 
 good and accurate editions of famous works for this library the Aiexan- 
 gradually created the new science of publishing correctly old ^n edking'^ 
 and often badly copied works. The copies produced by the ?nd publish- 
 librarians and scholars of Alexandria became the standard edi- copies) 
 tions on which other ancient libraries and copyists depended. 
 The Hellenistic world was everywhere supplied with '' Alexan- 
 drian editions," and from these are descended most of the 
 manuscripts now preserved in the libraries of Europe, from 
 which, in turn, have been copied our printed editions of Homer, 
 Xenophon, and other great Greek authors. Unfortunately the 
 library of Alexandria perished (§ 965), and the earliest example 
 of a Greek book which has survived to us is a roll which was 
 found in an Egyptian tomb by modern excavators only a few 
 years ago (Fig. 223). 
 
 The new art of editing and arranging the text of books natu- 753. Lan- 
 rally required much language study. Where two old copies dif- ds?of^dk-^' 
 fered, the question would often arise, which one was correct, g^^^^^^^^ 
 Many strange and old words needed explan^tionj just as when 
 
474 Ancient Times 
 
 we read Chaucer, and there were constant questions of spell- 
 ing. The Alexandrian scholars therefore began to make diction- 
 aries. At the same time grammatical questions demanded more 
 
 
 /J^^AvK 
 
 
 Fig. 2 ''.3, A Page from the Earliest Surviving Greek Book 
 
 This book was found lying beside the body of a man buried in an Egyp- 
 tian cemetery, and because of the rainless climate of Egypt it has been 
 preserved, in spite of its being written on perishable papyrus paper 
 (cf. Figs. 58, 131, 253, and 267). What we have called z.page is really a 
 column of writing, and the book consisted of a series of such columns 
 side by side on the roll (see Fig. 191). This book contains a poem called 
 The Pet'siafts, by the Greek poet Timotheos, who died 357 B.C. His 
 name (Timotheos) may be seen in the third line from the bottom, at 
 the beginning of the line. The poem tells the story of the battle of 
 Salamis. This copy of the work was written in the lifetime of Alexander 
 the Great. The column shown here is like those on the rolls which once 
 filled the Alexandrian library, and shows us how the pages looked over 
 which the great men of science there so industriously pored (§ 753) 
 
 and more attention. At last in 120 B.C. a scholar named Diony- 
 sius wrote the first Greek grammar. It contained the leading 
 grammatical terms, like the names of the parts of speech, which 
 
The Civilisatio7i of the Hellenistic Age 475 
 
 we still use. As all these terms were explained and conveniently 
 arranged in the grammar of Dionysius, his book was used for 
 centuries and thus became the foundation of all later grammars 
 of the languages of civilized peoples, including our own. Such a 
 term as our " subjunctive mode " is simply a translation of the 
 corresponding Greek term created by the Hellenistic scholars. 
 
 Literature was to a large extent in the hands of such learned 754. Litera- 
 men as those of Alexandria. The great librarian Callimachus 
 was a famous poet of the age. These scholars no longer chose 
 great and dramatic themes, like war, fate, and catastrophe, as 
 the subjects of their writing. They loved to picture such scenes 
 as the shepherd at the spring, listening to the music of over- 
 hanging boughs, lazily watching his flocks, and dreaming the 
 while of some winsome village maid who has scorned his devo- 
 tion. Such pictures of country life set in the simplicity and 
 beauty of peaceful hillsides, and wrought into melodious verse, 
 delighted the cultivated circles of a great world-city like Alexan- 
 dria more than even the revered classics of an older day. In 
 such verse the greatest literary artist of the age was a Sicilian 
 named Theocritus, whose idyls have taken a permanent place 
 in the world's hterature for two thousand years. At the same 
 time the everyday life of the age was also pictured at the 
 theater in a modern form of play, known as the "new comedy." 
 With many amusing incidents the townsmen saw their faults 
 and weaknesses of character here depicted on the stage, and 
 Menander at Athens, the ablest of such play-writers, gained a 
 great reputation for his keen knowledge of men and his ability 
 to hit them off wittily in clever comedies. 
 
 Section 70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion 
 
 In such a cultivated world of fine cities, beautiful homes, 755. Educa- 
 sumptuous public buildings, noble works of art, state libraries Jan! school!"' 
 and scientific research, it was natural that education should ^P^ gymna- 
 
 ^ Slums 
 
 have made much progress. The elementary schools, oxio.^ private, 
 
476 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 756. Influ- 
 ence of 
 gymnasium 
 toward 
 higher 
 studies 
 
 were now often supported by the State. When the lad had fin- 
 ished at the elementary school, his father allowed him to attend 
 lectures on rhetoric, science, philosophy, and mathematics in the 
 lecture rooms of the gymnasium building. The wall of such a 
 
 hall at Priene (Fig. 224) 
 
 is still scribbled all over 
 with the names of the 
 boys of more than two 
 thousand years ago, who 
 thus recorded their per- 
 manent claims to certain 
 seats near the wall. 
 
 The gymnasium thus 
 became a place of help- 
 ful intellectual stimulus. 
 When the fathers were 
 no longer nimble enough 
 for athletic games they 
 often sat about in the 
 colonnades watching the 
 contests, or idling in 
 groups, discussing the 
 last lecture in science or 
 the latest discovery in 
 the laboratory of the 
 Museum. Here many an 
 argument in science or 
 philosophy might be 
 overheard by the young 
 fellows, fresh from the gymnasium baths, as they wandered 
 out to greet their waiting fathers and wend their way home- 
 ward. Such an atmosphere was one to create great interest 
 in science and philosophy, and often a youth besought his 
 father to give him a few years' higher study at the Museum 
 or at Athens. 
 
 Fig. 224. Wall of a Gymnasium 
 Lecture Hall at Priene, still 
 
 COVERED with ScHOOLBOYS' NAMES 
 
 This lecture hall opened on the colon- 
 nades around the court of the gymnasium 
 at Priene (Fig. 2 1 2, P). The smooth blocks 
 of marble are scratched with the names of 
 hundreds of schoolboys, who heard lec- 
 tures and classes here twenty-two hun- 
 dred years ago. In order to set up a 
 permanent claim to his seat, a boy would 
 scratch into the wall the words, " Seat of 
 Cleon, the son of Clearchos." When the 
 wall was entirely filled with these names, 
 the boys evidently mounted on the benches 
 and then on the backs of comrades to 
 find enough room to write their claims 
 
The Civilizatio7i of the Hellenistic Age 477 
 
 Furthermore, in the pursuit of a profession, a special training 757. Pro- 
 had now become indispensable to a young man's success. Like scientific ^" 
 the medical student, the architect now studied his profession and specialization 
 bent industriously over books that told him how to erect an 
 arch that would be safe and secure, and what were the proper 
 proportions for a column. Young fellows who wished to be- 
 come engineers studied a host of things in mechanics, like 
 bridge-building and devices for moving heavy bodies. It was 
 an age of technical training. This specialization in the profes- 
 sions was also to be found among the scientists, who now 
 specialized each in a particular branch, like astronomy, or mathe- 
 matics, or geography. The youth who wished to study science 
 turned to the great scientific specialists at the Alexandrian 
 Museum. 
 
 As he strolled for the first time through the beautiful gardens 758. The 
 and into the Museum building, he found going on there lectures Museum"s"a 
 on astronomy, geography, physics, mathematics, botany, zoology, university 
 anatomy, medicine, or rhetoric, grammar, and literature. When 
 he was sufficiently familiar with the kiiotvn facts about these 
 subjects, he could share in the endeavor to discover new facts 
 about them. He might cross the court to the halls where the 
 cries of suffering animals told him that vivisection was going 
 on ; he might climb the tower of the astronomical observatory, 
 and sit there night after night at the elbow of some eminent 
 astronomer, or assist Eratosthenes at noonday in taking an ob- 
 servation of the sun for his computation of the earth's size 
 (§ 745). Or he might withdraw to the quiet library rooms and 
 assist in making up the lists of famous old books, to be put 
 together in Callimachus' great catalogue. If he showed ability 
 enough, he might later be permitted to lecture to students him- 
 self, and finally become one of its group of famous scientific men. 
 
 On the other hand, Alexandria was not at first interested in 759. The 
 philosophy, out of which science had grown (§ 494). Athens t^g Peripa- 
 was still the leading home of philosophy. The youth who went ^f J^thens^^ 
 there to take up philosophical studies found the successors of 
 
478 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 Plato still continuing his teaching in the quiet grove of the 
 Academy (§ 671), where his memory was greatly revered. 
 Plato's pupil Aristotle, however, had not been able to accept 
 his master's teachings. After the education of the young Alex- 
 ander (§ 687), Aristotle had returned to Athens and established 
 a school of his own at the Lyceum (§ 558), where he occupied 
 a terrace called the " Walk " "(Greek, peripatos). Here, he 
 directed one group of advanced students after another in the 
 arrangement and study of the different sciences, like anatomy, 
 botany, zoology. All of these groups collected great masses of 
 scientific observations, which were arranged under Aristotle's 
 guidance. The result was a veritable encyclopedia of old 
 and new facts. The work was never completed, and many 
 of the essays and treatises which it included have been lost. 
 When Aristotle died, soon after the death of Alexander, his 
 school declined. 
 
 Aristotle's works formed the greatest attempt ever made in 
 ancient times to collect and to state in a clear way the whole 
 mass of human knowledge. They never lost their importance 
 and they justly gave him the reputation of having possessed the 
 ♦ greatest mind produced by the ancient world. His works finally 
 gained such unquestioned authority in later Europe that in 
 medieval times men turned to Aristotle's books for the answer 
 to every scientific question. Instead of endeavoring to discover 
 new facts in nature for themselves, they turned to Aristotle 
 for the solution of every scientific problem. The writings 
 of no other man have ever enjoyed such widespread and 
 unquestioned authority.^ 
 
 But many Greeks found little satisfaction in the learned 
 researches of Plato's Academy and of Aristotle's Peripatetic 
 school (from peripatos^ " walk "). They desired some teaching 
 Epicureanism which would lead them to a happy and contented frame of mind 
 in living, and enable one to live successfully. To meet this 
 growing desire two more schools of philosophy arose at Athens. 
 
 1 See Robinson, Medieval and Modem Times ^ pp. 252 ff. 
 
 760. Unri- 
 valed au- 
 thority of 
 Aristotle's 
 works 
 
 761. Two 
 
 philosophies 
 of practical 
 living : Sto- 
 icism and 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 479 
 
 The first was founded by an Oriental, a Semite named Zeno, 
 born in Cyprus. He taught in the famous old "Painted Porch" 
 in the market place of Athens (§ 572). Such a porch was 
 called a Stoa^ and Zeno's school was therefore called the Stoic 
 school. Zeno taught that there was but one good and that was 
 virtue, and but one evil and that was moral wrong. The great 
 aim of life should be a tranquillity of soul, which comes from 
 virtue, and is indifferent both to pleasure and to pain. His fol- 
 lowers were famous for their fortitude, and hence our common 
 use of the word ''stoicism" to indicate indifference to suffering. 
 The Stoic school was very popular and finally became the great- 
 est of the schools of philosophy. The last school, founded by 
 Epicurus in his own garden at Athens, taught that the highest 
 good was pleasure, both of body and of mind, but always in 
 accordance with virtue. Hence we still call a man devoted 
 to pleasure, especially in eating, an " epicure." The school of 
 Epicurus, too, flourished and attracted many disciples. Men 
 later distorted his teachings into a justification for a life of sen- 
 sual pleasure. The oriental proverb, '' Eat, drink, and be merry, 
 for to-morrow we die," has therefore been commonly applied 
 to them. 
 
 These schools lived on the income of property left them by 762. The 
 wealthy pupils and friends. The head of the school, with his ASiens^and* 
 assistants and followers, lived together in quarters with rooms its historic 
 for lectures, books, .and study. The most successful of these 
 organizations was that of Aristotle, at least as long as he lived. 
 The Museum of Alexandria was modeled on these Athenian or- 
 ganizations, and they have also become the model of academies 
 of science and of universities ever since. We may regard 
 Hellenistic Athens then as possessing a university made up 
 of four departments: the Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the 
 Garden of Epicurus. Thus in the day when her political power 
 had vanished, Athens had become even more than Pericles had 
 hoped she might be. She was not only the teacher of all Greece, 
 but she drew her pupils from all parts of the civilized world. 
 
480 Ancient Times 
 
 763. The fall For such highly educated men the beliefs of Stoicism or 
 Greek gods Epicureanism served as their religion. The gods had for such 
 
 men usually ceased to exist, or were explained as merely glori- 
 fied human beings. A romance writer of the day, a man named 
 Euhemerus, wrote an attractive tale of an imaginary journey 
 which he made to the Indian Ocean, where he found a group 
 of mysterious islands. There, in a temple of Zeus, he found a 
 golden tablet inscribed with a story telling how the great gods 
 worshiped by the Greeks were once powerful kings who had 
 done much for the civilization of mankind, and when they died 
 they had been deified. This story of a novelist of the Hellenistic 
 Age was widely believed, but these gods no longer attracted the 
 reverence of religiously minded men. Moreover, there was now 
 little pressure on any man to keep silence about his beliefs 
 regarding the gods. There was great freedom of conscience 
 — far more freedom than the Christian rulers of later Europe 
 granted their subjects. The teachings of Socrates would no 
 longer have caused his condemnation by his Athenian neighbors, 
 
 764. In- The great multitude of the people had not the education 
 uiarkyof°^ to understand philosophy, nor the means to attend the philo- 
 onentalgods gophical schools. Yet gods in some form they must have. 
 
 With the weakening of faith in the old gods, those of the 
 Orient, which we have already seen invading Greek life 
 (§ 657), became more and more popular. So the Ptolemies 
 introduced as their great State god an oriental deity named 
 Serapis, and they built for him a magnificent temple at Alex- 
 andria. From Babylonia the mysterious lore of the Chaldean 
 astrologers (§§ 238, 239) was spreading widely through the 
 Mediterranean. It was received and accepted in Egypt, and 
 even Greek science did not escape its influence. Oriental be- 
 liefs and oriental symbols were everywhere. Men had long 
 since grown accustomed to foreign gods, and they no longer 
 looked askance at strange usages in religion. It was in such 
 an age as this that Christianity, an oriental religion, passed 
 easily from land to land (§ T069). 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 48 1 
 
 Section 71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of 
 
 Hellenic-Oriental Civilization ; Decline of 
 
 Citizenship and the City-State 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that Marathon and Salamis 765. Con^ 
 once and for all banished the influence of the Orient from the trusfon^of 
 Mediterranean, as an impenetrable dam keeps back a body of oriental m- 
 
 ' ^ r ^ fluences m 
 
 water. While Alexander's victories and conquests destroyed the the eastern 
 
 Mediter- 
 
 military power of the Orient, the daily life and the civilization of ranean 
 the people of the Orient continued to be a permanent force exert- 
 ing a steady pressure upon the life of the eastern Mediterranean 
 world, in commerce, in form of government, in customs and 
 usages, in art, industry, literature, and religion. When Christi- 
 anity issued from Palestine, therefore, as we shall see (§ 1067), 
 it found itself but one among many other influences from 
 the Orient which were passing westward. Thus while Greek 
 civilization, with its language, its art, its literature, its theaters 
 and gymnasiums, was Hellenizing the Orient, the Orient in the 
 same way was exercising a powerful influence on the West 
 and was orientalizing the eastern Mediterranean world. In 
 this way there was gradually formed an eastern Mediterranean 
 world of Hellenic-oriental civilization. 
 
 In this larger world the old Greek dty-citizen, who had made 766. The 
 Greek civilization what it was, played but a small part. He felt world"of the 
 himself an individual belonging in an international world, a far ?^stem Med- 
 
 ^ ^ ' iterranean 
 
 larger world than the city in which he lived. But this larger and its lack 
 
 world brought home no sense of citizenship in it. For in the 
 
 great Hellenistic states there was no such thing as national 
 
 citizenship. The city-citizen had no share in guiding the affairs 
 
 of the great nation or empire of which his city-state was a part. 
 
 It was as if a citizen of Chicago might vote at the election of 
 
 a mayor of the city but had no right to vote at the election of 
 
 a president of the United States. There was not even a name 
 
 for the empire of the Seleucids, and their subjects, wherever 
 
482 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 767. The con- 
 tributions of. 
 the city-state 
 and the end 
 of its use- 
 fulness 
 
 768. Hellen- 
 istic world of 
 the eastern 
 Mediterra- 
 nean under 
 the power 
 of the west- 
 ern Mediter- 
 ranean 
 
 they went, bore the names of their home cities or countries.^ 
 The conception of " native land " in the national sense was 
 wanting, and patriotism did not exist. 
 
 The centers of power and progress in Greek civilization had 
 been the city-states, but the finest and most influential forces 
 operating within the city-state had now disappeared. So, for 
 example, the old city gods were gone. Likewise the citizen- 
 soldier who defended his city had long ago given way, even 
 in Greece, to the professional soldier who came from abroad 
 and fought for hire. The Greek no longer stood weapon in 
 hand ready to defend his home and his city-community against 
 every assault. He found the holding of city offices becoming 
 a profession, as that of the soldier had long been. Losing 
 his interest in the State, he turned to his personal affairs, 
 the cultivation of himself. The patriotic sense of respon- 
 sibility for the welfare of the city-state which he loved, and 
 the fine moral earnestness which this responsibility roused, 
 no longer animated the Greek mind nor quickened it to the 
 loftiest achievements in politics, in art, in architecture, in liter- 
 ature, and in original thought. The Greek city-states, ifi com- 
 petition among themselves, had developed the highest type of 
 civilization which the world had ever seen, but in this process 
 the city-states themselves had politically perished. In many 
 Greek cities only a discouraged remnant of the citizens was 
 left after the emigration to Asia (§ 724). The cattle often 
 browsed on the grass in the public square before the town 
 hall in such cities of the Greeks. Not even their own Hellas 
 was a unified nation. 
 
 A larger world had engulfed the old Greek city-states. But 
 this Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean had by 
 200 B.C. reached a point in its own wars and rivalries when 
 it was to feel the iron hand of a great new military power from 
 the distant world of the wester?i Mediterranean. At this point, 
 
 1 It was as if the citizens of the United States were termed Bostonians, New 
 Yorkers, Philadelphians, Chicagoans, etc. 
 
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 483 
 
 therefore (200 b.c), we shall be unable to understand the 
 further story of the eastern Mediterranean, until we have 
 turned back and taken up the career of the western Mediter- 
 ranean world. There in the West for some three centuries the 
 city of Rome had been developing a power which was to unite 
 both the East and the West into a vast empire including the 
 ivhole Mediterranean. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 68. What was the prevalent language of the Hellenistic 
 Age.'* How is the Rosetta Stone an example of this fact? Describe 
 the improvements in houses. What written documents tell us of this 
 age, and how have they been preserved? Describe the new Hellenistic 
 cities, especially Priene. What new forms of architecture came in? 
 Describe the commerce of Alexandria ; its parks and public buildings. 
 Describe the important examples of the sculpture of tragic and 
 violent action. What can you say of such subjects in painting? 
 
 Section 69. What can you say of inventions in the Hellenistic 
 Age? of improvements in time measurement? of the achievements 
 of Archimedes? Tell about the life of the Alexandrian scientists. 
 Which of them wrote a geometry that is still in use? What great 
 truth did Aristarchus discover? How did Eratosthenes compute the 
 size of the earth? Describe the growth of geographical knowledge; 
 the world map of Eratosthenes ; the study of animal life and medi- 
 cine. What can you say of the rise of libraries ? Who was the first 
 great librarian, and what did he do ? What effect had the libraries on 
 publishing ? on language study ? Discuss the changes in literature. 
 
 Section 70. Discuss the gymnasium as a source of education. 
 What professions could a boy study? How could he take up scien- 
 tific study and research? Where did a youth study philosophy? 
 What two philosophical schools first arose at Athens? What did 
 Aristode do ? What can you say about his rank as a thinker ? Name 
 the two later schools of philosophy at Athens. What was their pur- 
 pose ? What had happened to the old gods ? 
 
 Section 71. What kind of a world had now grown up in the 
 eastern Mediterranean? What can you say of cidzenship there? 
 Under what form of state had Greek civilization chiefly developed? 
 What had now become of the Greek city-state? What was now to 
 become of the Hellenisdc eastern Mediterranean world ? 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 769. The 
 
 Mediterra- 
 nean and its 
 shore lands 
 form the 
 main part 
 of the ancient 
 world 
 
 THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND THE 
 ROMAN CONQUEST OF ITALY 
 
 Section 72. The Western Mediterranean World 
 
 While we have been following the history of the eastern 
 Mediterranean and the peoples grouped about it, the story of 
 its western shores has largely dropped out of sight. Before 
 we turn to this Western world, however, let us endeavor to 
 gain a picture of the Mediterranean world as a whole. This 
 sea is a very large body of water, almost as long as Europe 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows an ancient bronze wolf (sixth century b. c), 
 wrought by Greek artists in Italy (§ 831), and illustrates the influence of Greek 
 civilization in Rome even before 500 b. c. The two infants nourished by the she- 
 wolf are later additions put there in accordance with the tradition at Rome that 
 the city was founded by these twin brothers named Romulus and Remus. Their 
 ancestor, so said the tradition, was ^Eneas (§ 1003), one of the Trojan heroes, who 
 had fled from Troy after its destruction (§ 375), and after many adventures had 
 arrived in Italy. His son founded and became king of Alba Longa (§ 783). In the 
 midst of a family feud among his descendants, these twin boys, the sons of 
 the War-god, Mars, were born, and after they had been set adrift in the Tiber by 
 the ruling king, they gently ran aground at the base of the Palatine Hill, where 
 a she-wolf found and nourished them. When they grew up they returned home 
 to Alba Longa, claimed their rights, and eventually founded Rome. Similar 
 legends formed all that the Romans knew of their early history through the 
 period of the kings (see p. 497, footnote) and far down into the Republic ^ 
 
 484 
 

 7 
 
 
 °?s 
 
 °^ 
 
 
 -1 
 
 / 
 
 o 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 o ■§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 S j^ ^ 
 
 
 . "u 
 
 
 -^ 
 
 5 
 
 UJ 
 
 
 
 ^A^ 
 
 r " J. 
 
 iS% ^-- 
 
 
 
 to 
 
 
 '_: -_^ 
 
 =^- 
 
 ^v^r^ 
 
 \ ;^^-| 
 
 — T- 
 
 
 
 
 ^-' -kll^/ 
 
 >-^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 :^ A, 1^ 12 V 
 
 
 
 
 X. ^ ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^1 lYi^'^ 
 
 
 
 
 »^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 4C^ 
 
 ». 
 
 
 
 JjS^^ 
 
 ^ fi 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 ^# — 
 
 2Q 
 ^ 
 
 
 • ( 
 
 ^^/ 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 .2 
 
 >■ ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 °1 1 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 cS 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 
 
 
 \ 
 
 Jy < 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 B 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 tf 'a^ n 
 
 
 
 
 Ij 
 
 
 
 
 
 T ^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 ft^ 
 
 
 
 /> 
 
 ^ ll) 
 
 \^ 
 
 / 
 
 Q 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 .^^^<^^ ^ 
 
 
 
 
 k^\ 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 ^.Kti 
 
 V^ 
 
 ? 
 
 ^ 
 
 \ \ 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 
 Y^ 
 
 ) ~7 
 
 n 
 
 ^ 
 
 \ \ 
 
 ^1 
 
 '^ 
 
 
 
 ) ) C"^-)^^ 
 
 k^:^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 \^ 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (1 
 
 \~ 
 
 'io 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 °s 
 
 °% 
 
 
 
 
I 
 
The Western Mediterranemt World 485 
 
 itself. Its length is about twenty-four hundred miles, and laid 
 out across the United States, it would reach from New York 
 over into California. It is important for us to bear in mind 
 that the ancient world was largely made up of the lands sur- 
 rounding the Mediterranean. To these shore lands we have 
 chiefly to add the Black Sea and the oriental lands on the east. 
 The stage of ancient history was then, to a large extent, the 
 Mediterranean and its shores. 
 
 Now the Mediterranean is not a single compact body of 770. Division 
 water, like one of our Great Lakes. A land bridge made up terranean 
 of Italy and Sicily extends almost across this great sea and e^°andT^*' 
 divides it into two parts, an eastern and a western basin, western basin 
 There are no accepted geographical names for these two 
 basins, but we may call them, for convenience, the eastern 
 and the western Mediterranean worlds. We have been follow- 
 ing the story of civilized men in the eastern Mediterranean 
 world; we must now turn back and take up the story of the 
 western Mediterranean world also. 
 
 The story of civilization in the easte?m Mediterranean world 771. Spread 
 began very early under the leadership of the Orient. On the iromth&east- 
 other hand, the peoples. of the western Mediterranean world were ^grra^ean 
 too far away to receive from the Orient such strong influences world to the 
 
 backward 
 
 toward civilization. Hence the West had lagged far behind, western Med- 
 
 and much of it had made little advance in civilization since the 
 
 Stone Age life of the Swiss lake-villages. But a study of the 
 
 map (p. 288) shows us that the western Mediterranean world 
 
 is not wholly separated from the eastern, which, with its Greek 
 
 and Hellenistic civilization, overlapped at its western end with 
 
 the western Mediterranean world. Here then, in southern Italy 
 
 and Sicily, we shall see the eastern Mediterranean civilizing 
 
 the western. 
 
 The most important land in the western Mediterranean world 773. Italy : 
 in early times was Italy. It slopes westward in the main ; it an/cHmate ^ 
 thus faces and belongs to the western Mediterranean world. 
 The Italian peninsula, thrusting far out into the sea (see map, 
 
486 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 773. Earliest 
 migrations 
 into Italy 
 
 774. Earliest 
 metal in Italy 
 and its ori- 
 ental names 
 
 p. 484), is nearly six hundred miles long; that is, about half 
 again as long as the peninsula of Florida. Italy ^ is not only 
 four times as large as Greece, but, unlike Greece, it is not cut 
 up by a tangle of mountains into tortuous valleys and tiny 
 plains. The main chain of the Apennines, though crossing 
 the peninsula obliquely in the north, is nearly parallel with the 
 coasts, and many of its outlying ridges are quite so. There are 
 larger plains for the cultivation of grain than we find anywhere 
 in Greece ; at the same time there is much more room for 
 upland pasturage of flocks and herds. A considerably larger 
 population can be supported in the plains of Italy than in 
 Greece. At the same time the coast is not so cut up and in- 
 dented as in Greece; there are fewer good harbors. Hence 
 agriculture and live stock developed much earlier than trade. 
 
 The fertile plains and forest-clad slopes of Italy have always 
 attracted the peoples of northern Europe to forsake their own 
 bleak and wintry lands and migrate to this warm and sunny 
 peninsula in the southern sea. By 2000 B.C. the lake-dwellers 
 of Late Stone Age Switzerland (§§ 27-34) pushed southward 
 through the Alpine passes and occupied the lakes of northern 
 Italy. The remains of over a hundredof their pile-supported 
 settlements (Fig. 225) have also been found under the soil of 
 the Po valley, once a vast morass, which these people reclaimed 
 by erecting their pile dwellings further and further out in it. 
 The city of Venice, still standing on piles, although it is built 
 mostly of stone, is a surviving example of the way the lake- 
 dwellers once built their little wooden houses on piles in the 
 same region. They had their influence on the later Romans, 
 who afterward made their military camps on a plan exactly 
 like that of the Po valley pile villages (Fig. 225). 
 
 When these people reached the Po valley, they had already 
 received metal, which is found in all their settlements. The 
 oriental source of this metal is still evident in the names which 
 
 1 The area of Italy is about 110,000 square miles, about twice as large as 
 Illinois, and not quite four times the area of South Carolina. 
 
The Western Mediterranemt World 
 
 487 
 
 copper and bronze brought with them from the East into Italy. 
 
 Our word " copper " had the form cuprum in Italy, from the 
 
 name of the island 
 
 of Cyprus (ancient 
 
 Cuprus) (see map, 
 
 p. 288), whose rich 
 
 mines supplied the 
 
 Mediterranean lands 
 
 with copper from very 
 
 early times. Our word 
 
 " bronze " is probably 
 
 derived from the first 
 
 part of the name of 
 
 the city of Brondesium 
 
 (later Brundisium, now 
 
 called Brindisi) at the 
 
 back of the heel of 
 
 Italy, where it was so 
 
 near the ^gean that 
 
 it very early received 
 
 bronze from there 
 
 (§ 336). 
 
 While the pile vil- 
 lagers were settling 
 in the Po valley, the 
 tribes forming the 
 western end of the 
 Indo-European migra- 
 tion (Fig. 112) began 
 to feel the attractive- 
 ness of the warm and 
 verdant hills of Italy. 
 
 Probably not long after the Greeks had pushed southward into the 
 Greek peninsula (§ 371), the western tribes of Indo-European 
 blood had entered the beautiful western Mediterranean world. 
 
 300 400 
 
 the Indo- 
 Europeans 
 enters Italy 
 
 Fig. 225. Ground Plan of a Prehis- 
 toric Pile Village in Northern Italy 
 
 The settlement was surrounded by a moat 775. West- 
 {A) nearly 100 feet across, filled with water ^^" ^mg of 
 from a connected river (C). Inside the moat 
 was an earth wall {B) about 50 feet thick 
 at the base. The village thus inclosed 
 was about 2000 feet long; that is, four city 
 blocks. The whole village, being in the 
 marshes of the Po valley, was supported 
 on piles, like the lake-villages (Fig. 15). 
 The plan and arrangement of streets are 
 those of the Roman military camp later 
 derived from it 
 
488 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 776. Uncivi- 
 lized state 
 of Italy and 
 the West 
 
 777. The 
 three Western 
 rivals con- 
 fronting the 
 Italic tribes: 
 first, the 
 Etruscans 
 
 into which the Italian peninsula extends. They came in succes- 
 sive migrations, but the most important group who settled in 
 the central and southern parts of the peninsula were the Italic 
 tribes, the earliest Italians, Their name, first applied by the 
 Greeks to the South, was finally extended to the whole pen- 
 insula ; hence the name " Italy." Probably within a few cen- 
 turies they had also overflowed into Sicily. 
 
 We remember that the Greeks, in conquering the ^gean, 
 took possession of a highly civilized region on the borders of 
 the Orient. This was not the case with the Indo-European in- 
 vaders of Italy. They found the western Mediterranean world 
 still without civilization. It had no architecture, no fine build- 
 ings, no fortified cities, only the rudest arts and industries, no 
 writing, and no literature. As the Italic tribes fought their way 
 into the country the earlier dwellers in Italy must have taken to 
 flight before them, as the ^geans fled before the on-coming 
 Greeks. Pictures of these early Westerners, the descendants of 
 Stone Age Europe, are preserved on the Egyptian monuments 
 of the thirteenth century b. c. They took service in the Egyptian 
 army and were perhaps the very fugitives who were driven out 
 before the Italic invasion of the West. Their weapons were 
 huge bronze swords, which were simply enlarged Egyptian dag- 
 gers (see tailpiece, p. 519) such as they had long imported. 
 Thus these prehistoric Westerners had enough skill in working 
 metals to invent the sword,^ which Europe still continues to use. 
 
 Besides the Italic invaders there were in the western Mediter- 
 ranean world three rival peoples, all of whom came from the 
 eastern. Mediterranean world. While fighting among themselves, 
 the Italic peoples suddenly saw landing on the western coast 
 of Italy a bold race of sea rovers whom we call the Etrus- 
 cans. They were a people whose origin is still uncertain ; they 
 probably had an earlier home in western Asia Minor, and the 
 
 1 A curved blade, of one edge only, was known in the Egyptian Empire and 
 also in the Assyrian Empire, but it was little used and never became one of the 
 recognized arms of an oriental army. The ^7f/(7-edged sword, the descendant of the 
 dagger, as used by the Roman army, was of Western origin. 
 
The Western Mediterranemt World 
 
 489 
 
 Egyptian monuments tell us of their sea raids on the coast of 
 the Delta as far back as the thirteenth century B.C., at a time 
 when they were perhaps leaving Asia Minor in search of a 
 new home in Italy. In any case the Etruscans were settled 
 in Italy by 1000 B.C. They thrust back the Indo-European 
 tribes, and finally gained control of the west coast of Italy 
 from the Bay of Naples almost to Genoa, including much of 
 
 The Four Rival Peoples of the Western Mediterranean: 
 Etruscans, Italic Tribes, Greeks, and Carthaginians 
 
 the inland countiy as far back as the Apennines and even into 
 the Po valley. They seemed destined to become the final lords 
 of Italy, and they continued as an important people of the 
 West far down into Roman historVj as we shall see. 
 
 The Carthaginians were the second of the three rivals of 778. Second, 
 the Italic tribes. During their great mercantile prosperity 
 after 1000 B.C., the Phoenicians carried their commerce far 
 into the western Mediterranean, as we have already stated 
 (§ 397)- On the African coast opposite Sicily they established 
 
 the Cartha- 
 ginians 
 
490 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 779. Third, 
 the Greeks 
 
 780. The 
 Greeks re- 
 pulse the 
 Carthaginians 
 from Sicily 
 and the 
 Etruscans 
 from Great 
 Greece 
 
 781. Empire 
 of Dionysius 
 of Syracuse 
 and its fall 
 
 a flourishing commercial city called Carthage, which was before 
 long the leading harbor in the western Mediterranean (Fig. 239). 
 The Carthaginians soon held the northern coast of Africa west- 
 ward to the Atlantic. Besides gaining southern Spain, they 
 were also absorbing the islands of the western Mediterranean, 
 especially Sicily. 
 
 The Carthaginians were endeavoring. to make the western 
 Mediterranean their own, when the Italic peoples saw their 
 third rivals invading the West. They were the Greeks. We 
 have already followed the expansion of the Greeks as they 
 founded their city-states along the coast of southern Italy and 
 in Sicily in the eighth century B.C. (§§ 437-443). The strife 
 among these city-states made the Greeks of the West as unable 
 to unite into a Greek nation as Greece itself had been. The 
 strongest of all the western Greek cities was Syracuse, which 
 took the lead more than once. We recall how the Athenians 
 tried to conquer the West by capturing Syracuse (§ 602). 
 
 Although we have spoken of these three peoples — Etrus- 
 cans, Carthaginians, and Greeks — as the three rivals of the 
 Italic tribes in the West, these Italic tribes were at first so 
 insignificant that the rivalry was long a three-cornered one, with 
 the Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy maintaining themselves 
 on two fronts against both Carthaginians and Etruscans. We 
 remember how in the famous year of Salamis the Greeks of 
 Syracuse won a great batde against the Carthaginians (§514) 
 and saved Sicily from being conquered by them (480 B.C.). 
 Only a few years later it was also Syracuse which met the bold 
 Etruscan sea robbers as their fleets appeared in the South, and 
 totally defeated them (Fig. 226). The western Greeks therefore 
 played an important part in the political situation, first by long 
 preventing the Carthaginians from seizing Sicily and southern 
 Italy, and second by breaking the sea power of the Etruscans. 
 
 By 400 B.C. Dionysius, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse, was 
 building up a powerful empire in Sicily and southern Italy, 
 which looked like a permanent union of the western Greeks 
 
The Western Mediterranea?i World 
 
 491 
 
 as a nation. But the successors of Dionysius were not as effi- 
 cient as he. They called in the great philosopher Plato, and 
 they attempted to carry out some of his idealistic theories of 
 government (§673), but the result was a disastrous collapse of 
 the young Syracusan Empire (357-354 B.C.). Plato himself 
 expressed the fear that the Greek 
 language was then about to die 
 out in Sicily, and that the Car- 
 thaginians or one of the rising 
 Indo-European tribes of Italy 
 would triuniph in Sicily. 
 
 Although the western Greeks, 
 like the homeland, failed to unite 
 in a strong and permanent state, 
 the influence of their civilization 
 in the West was all the more 
 important. Their civilization was 
 essentially the same as that which 
 we have already studied (Chapters 
 XI-XXI). At the very time when 
 Syracuse was victoriously beat- 
 ing back the Carthaginians and 
 Etruscans on two fronts, some of 
 the noblest monuments of Greek 
 architecture were rising in these 
 Western cities (Fig. 219, and Plate 
 VII, p. 560). In such wonderful 
 buildings as these, great architec- 
 ture made its first appearance in the western Mediterranean. 
 The same was true of many other contributions of Greek culture 
 with which we are now familiar. Thus fifteen hundred years 
 after the Italic tribes had first settled in Italy, theie grew up 
 on the south of them a wonderful world of civilization, which 
 went on growing and developing to reach its highest in that 
 Hellenistic culture which brought forth an Archimedes at 
 
 Fig. 226. Etruscan Helmet 
 captured by the greeks 
 OF Syracuse in their Vic- 
 tory OVER THE Etruscans 
 
 AT CUM^ in 474 B.C. 
 
 Hiero, the Greek tyrant of Syra- 
 cuse, dedicated this helmet at 
 Olympia as part of the spoil 
 which he took from the Etrus- 
 cans in his great naval victory 
 of Cumae (§ 780). It is now in 
 the British Museum, and it still 
 bears the dedicatory inscription 
 placed upon it by the Syracusan 
 tyrant nearly twenty-four hun- 
 dred years ago 
 
 782. Western 
 Greek cities 
 bring civili- 
 zation into 
 the western 
 Mediterra- 
 nean world 
 
49' 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 783. The 
 tribes of 
 Latium, 
 and Alba 
 Longa the 
 leading 
 Latin town 
 
 Syracuse (§ 742). Let us now turn back to follow the career 
 of the barbarous Italic tribes of central Italy under the leader- 
 ship of Rome, and watch them slowly gaining organization and 
 power, and finally civilization, as they are dominated first by the 
 Etruscan and then by the Greek culture which we have been 
 recalling. 
 
 Section 73. Earliest Rome 
 
 On the south or east bank of the Tiber, which flows into the 
 sea in the middle of the west coast of Italy (see map, p. 484), 
 there was a group of Italic tribes known as the Latins. In the 
 
 ^M 
 
 
 
 
 Fig. 227. A Glimpse across the Plaix of Latium and the 
 Appiax Way to the Distant Alban Mountains 
 
 In the foreground is a short stretch of the Appian Way, the eadiest 
 fine road built by the Romans. It extended from Rome southward to 
 Capua, and was finally extended to Brundisium. The large round tower 
 is a famous tomb, built for a noble Roman lady named Cecilia Metella 
 
 days when the Etruscan sea-raiders first landed on the shores 
 north of the Tiber, these Latin tribes had occupied a plain 
 (Fig. 227) less than thirty by forty miles,^ that is, smaller than 
 many an American county. They called it '' Latium," whence 
 
 1 Latium probably contained something over seven hundred square miles. 
 
The Western Mediterrajieaji World 
 
 493 
 
 their own name, '' Latins." Like their Italic neighbors they 
 lived, scattered in small communities, cultivating grain and pas- 
 turing flocks on the upland. Their land was not very fertile, 
 and the battle for existence developed hardy and tenacious chil- 
 dren of the soil. Once a year they went up to the Alban Mount 
 (Fig. 227), where all the Latin tribes united in a feast of their 
 
 Early Latium 
 
 chief god, Jupiter, whose rude mud-brick sanctuary was on the 
 mount. Close by was a small town called Alba Longa, whose 
 leadership the Latin tribes followed when they were obliged, as 
 they very often were, to unite and repel the attacks of their 
 hostile neighbors on all sides. They watched very anxiously 
 the growth of the flourishing Etruscan towns on the other side 
 of the Tiber, and they did what they could to keep the Etrus- 
 cans from crossing to the Latin side. 
 
494 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 784. The When these Latin peasants needed weapons or tools, the}) 
 
 e^fy^Rome^^ were obliged to carry up a little grain or an ox to a trading 
 post on the south side of the Tiber, just above the coast 
 marshes, which extended some ten or twelve miles inland from 
 the river's mouth. Shallow water at this point, and an island 
 (Fig. 228), made an easy crossing of the river, and the metal 
 tools of the early settlers had enabled them to build a stanch 
 
 Fig. 228. The Tiber and its Island at Rome 
 
 The Tiber is not a large river, but when swollen by the spring freshets, 
 it still sometimes floods a large portion of Rome, doing serious damage. 
 The houses which we see on the island are some of them old, but not 
 as old as the ancient Rome we are to study. The bridges, however, are 
 very old. The one on the right of the island was built of massive stone 
 masonry by L. Fabricius in 62 B.C. It has been' standing for over two 
 thousand years. Many great Romans, like Julius Caesar, whose names 
 are familiar to us, must have crossed this bridge often 
 
 bridge here. Overlooking the bridge was a bold hill called the 
 Palatine, and a square stronghold crowning the hill guarded the 
 river crossing. Several neighboring hills bore straggling villages, 
 but the stronghold on the Palatine was their leader. Here, 
 stopped by the shoals and the bridge, moored now and then 
 an Etruscan ship which had sailed up the Tiber, the only navi- 
 gable river in Italy. On the low marshy ground, encircled by the 
 hills, was an open-air market, beside an old cemetery belonging 
 
The Western Mediterranea?i World 
 
 495 
 
 to the villages (Fig. 229). Here in the Forum, as they called 
 this valley market by the cemetery, our Latin peasant could 
 meet the Etruscan traders and exchange his grain or his ox for 
 the metal tools or weapons which he needed. These were now 
 of iron, but he remembered the stories of his fathers, telling 
 how all their tools and weapons were formerly of bronze. The 
 population of the villages was very mixed — some Latin 
 families who had 
 taken to trading 
 or owned fields 
 near by, Etruscan 
 traders and land- 
 owners, and a few 
 oversea strangers 
 of various nation- 
 alities, with many 
 outcasts and refu- 
 gees from outly- 
 ing communities. 
 Such must have 
 been the condition 
 of the group of vil- 
 lages called Rome 
 probably as early 
 as 1000 B.C. (but 
 of. Fig. 229). 
 
 The fears of 
 the Latin tribes 
 regarding an invasion of the Etruscans were finally realized. 
 The Etruscan towns after 800 B.C. stretched far across north- 
 ern Italy — a great group of allied city-kingdom, s, each with 
 its fortified city. Perhaps as early as 750 B.C. one of their 
 princes crossed the Tiber, drove out the last of the line of 
 Latin chieftains, and took possession of the stronghold on the 
 Palatine. From this place as his castle and palace he gained 
 
 Fig. 229. Grave of Prehistoric Vil- 
 lager FOUND UNDER THE FORUM AT ROME 
 
 Excavations under the Forum (plan, p. 500) 
 have disclosed a cemetery of graves like this. 
 The skeleton which we see here is that of one 
 of the prehistoric men who lived in the vil- 
 lages on the summits of the neighboring hills, 
 later united to form Rome {§ 7S5). The tools, 
 weapons, and pottery found in these graves show 
 that these people lived not many generations 
 after 1000 e.g., in the days when bronze was 
 giving way to iron (§ 7S4) 
 
 785. Rome 
 seized by 
 Etruscans 
 (about 
 750 B.C.) 
 
496 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 control of the villages on the hills above the Tiber, which then 
 gradually merged into the city of Rome. These Etruscan kings 
 soon extended their power over the Latin tribes of the Plain of 
 
 Fig. 230. A Street of Etruscan Tombs at Ancient Cere 
 NOT FAR North of Rome 
 
 The tomb-chamber, or sometimes several such chambers within, con- 
 tained a sarcophagus in which the body was laid. It was often accom- 
 panied with jewelry of gold and silver, furniture, implements, and 
 weapons (Fig. 231), besides beautiful vases (Fig. 164). The walls of the 
 chambers were often painted with decorative scenes from the life of 
 the Etruscans and from scenes of Greek mythology, learned by the 
 Etruscans from their intercourse with the Greeks. The Etruscans 
 buried here lived in a strong walled town of which the ruins lie near 
 by. Their manufactures, especially in bronze, flourished, and they 
 carried on profitable commerce through their harbor town, only a few 
 miles below their city. In one of these tombs the name of the de- 
 ceased is inscribed on the wall as " Tarkhnas," which can be nothing 
 else than Tarquinius, the name preserved in Roman tradition as that of 
 the latest kings of Rome 
 
 Latium, and the town of Alba Longa by the Alban Mount, 
 which once led the Latins, disappeared. Thus Rome became a 
 city-kingdom under an Etruscan king, like the other Etruscan 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 
 
 497 
 
 cities which stretched from Capua far north to the harbor of 
 Genoa. And such it remained for two centuries and a half. 
 Although Rome was ruled by a line of Etruscan kings, it must 
 be borne in mind 
 that the population 
 of Latium which 
 the Etruscan kings 
 governed contin- 
 ued to be Latin 
 and to speak the 
 Latin tongue.^ 
 
 Etruscan ships 
 had known Greek 
 
 1 The above pres- 
 entation makes . the 
 line of early kings at 
 Rome (about 750 to 
 about 500 B.C.) exclu- 
 sively Etruscan. The 
 traditional founding of 
 Rome not long before 
 750 B.C. would then 
 correspond to its cap- 
 ture and establishment 
 as a strong kingdom 
 by the Etruscans. We 
 possess no written doc- 
 uments of Rome for 
 this early period. We 
 are obliged to make 
 our conclusions largely 
 on the basis of a study 
 of archaeological re- 
 mains surviving in 
 Rome and Latium and 
 vicinity. Had these remains, together with the important elements of Etruscan 
 civilization adopted b)^ the Romans, "formed our only evidence, no one would 
 ever have suggested any other theory than that the kings of Rome were Etrus- 
 can. The later Romans themselves, however, with evident disinclination to be- 
 lieve that their early kings had been outsiders, cherished a tradition that their 
 kings were native Romans. This tradition, with many picturesque and pleasing 
 incidents (headpiece, p. 484), has found a place in literature, and is still widely 
 believed. It is possible that there may be some slight measure of truth in this 
 tradition, but it is not very probable in view of all the known evidence. 
 
 Fig. 231. Etruscan Chariot of Bronze 
 
 This magnificent Mrork is the finest surviving 
 product of Etruscan skill in bronze (§ 787). It 
 was found in an Etruscan tomb (Fig. 230) and 
 is now in the possession of the Metropolitan 
 Museum of New York. It probably dates from 
 the sixth century B.C. 
 
 / 
 
498 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 waters since Mycenaean days, and the Etruscans were con- 
 stantly trafficking in the Greek harbors. There they learned to 
 write their language with Greek letters. Many tombs (Fig. 230) 
 containing such inscriptions still survive in Italy. . Although we 
 know the letters and can pronounce the Etruscan words, 
 
 787. Etrus- 
 cans learn 
 Greek indus- 
 tries, art, and 
 architecture 
 
 Fig. 232. 
 
 A View of the Tiber with the Aventine Hill 
 AND the Etruscan Drain 
 
 As we look down the Tiber in this view, we stand not far from our 
 former position looking up the river (Fig. 228) (cf. map, p. 500). The 
 Aventine Hill is at the left. Along its foot, at the water's edge, ex- 
 tend the houses of modern Rome. At this end of this row of houses we 
 see the arched opening of the ancient Etruscan sewer, or drain (§ 788), 
 which served to drain the Forum under which it passed. The Romans 
 called it the Cloaca Maxinia (chief sewer). Although much altered in 
 later times, its most ancient portions are probably the oldest surviving 
 masonry at Rome 
 
 scholars are still unable to understand them ; nor can the race 
 of the Etruscans as yet be determined from them. 
 
 This intercourse with Greece brought in beautiful Greek 
 pottery (Fig. 164), and the Etruscans quickly learned to make 
 similar decorative paintings. Many such paintings still cover 
 the walls of Etruscan tombs and show us how the Etruscans 
 looked, the clothing they wore, and the weapons they carried. 
 
The Western Mediterraneajt World 499 
 
 Having learned to mine copper, they early produced such fine 
 work in bronze (Fig. 231) that it even excelled the metal work 
 of the Greeks for a time, and they developed a flourishing com- 
 merce in this industry. They likewise borrowed a great deal . 
 from Grecian architecture, but unlike the Greeks they made 
 plentiful use of the arch, with which they had probably become 
 acquainted in Asia Minor (Fig. 224). It was the Etruscans 
 who introduced the arch into Italy. Their architecture was 
 the earliest known in the city of Rome, and always had a 
 great influence upon the architecture of the Romans. 
 
 The Etruscan kings introduced great improvements into 788. Rule of 
 Rome. The Forum, the low market valley, was often flooded can kings of 
 in the rainy season, and they built a heavy masonry drain Rome and 
 arched at the top, which carried off the water to the river and sion (about 
 m.ade the city much more healthful. This ancient sewer drain 
 still survives (Fig. 232). On the hill called the Capitol, between 
 the Forum and the Tiber, they built a temple to Jupiter, the 
 State god, which survived for centuries. But the cruelty and 
 tyranny of the Etruscan rulers finally caused a revolt, led prob- 
 ably by the Etruscan nobles themselves, and the kings of Rome 
 were driven out. The fugitive king and his followers fled north- 
 ward to their kinsmen, to Caere, where Etruscan tombs which 
 probably belonged to them still survive (Fig. 230). Thus about 
 500 B.C. the career of Rome under kings came to an end ; but 
 the two and a half centuries of Etruscan rule left their mark 
 on Rome, always afterward discernible in architecture, religion, 
 tribal organization, and some other things. 
 
 Section 74. The Early Republic : its Progress 
 AND Government 
 
 During this Etruscan period, Greek influences were equally im- 789. Greek 
 portant in Latium. Down at the dock below the Tiber bridge, adoptedSn 
 ships from the Greek cities of the south were becoming more ^°™^ 
 and more common. Long before the Etruscan kings were 
 
500 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 driven out, the Roman trader had gradually learned to pick 
 out the names of familiar objects of trade in the bills handed 
 him by the Greek merchants. Erelong the Roman traders too 
 were scribbling memoranda of their own with the same Greek 
 
 4 000 800 1000 
 C y Wall 
 pt mont um 
 'Ay Serv an Wall 
 
 Map of Early Rome showing the Successive Stages 
 OF ITS Growth 
 
 letters, which thus became likewise the Roman alphabet, slightly 
 changed to suit the Latin language. Thus the oriental alphabet 
 was carried one step further in the long westward journey 
 which finally made it the alphabet with which this book is 
 printed. In the hands of the Carthaginians and Romans 
 in the west, and the Arameans (§ 205) on the east, the 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 
 
 501 
 
 Phoenician alphabet and its descendent alphabets now stretched 
 from India to the Atlantic (Fig. 160). 
 
 There had been no Roman ships at the Tiber docks at first, 790. Greek 
 
 but as time passed a Roman mechanic here and there learned sWpbuiidin"g. 
 
 to build a ship like those of the Greeks alon2:side it. As Roman business, 
 
 ° money, and 
 
 traffic thus grew, it was found very inconvenient to pay bills measures 
 
 in Rome 
 
 Fig. 233. Specimens of Early Roman Copper Money 
 
 In the time of Alexander the Great (second half of the fourth century B.C.), 
 the Romans found it too inconvenient to continue paying their debts in 
 goods, especially in cattle (§ 784). They therefore cast copper in blocks, 
 each block with the figure of an ox upon it (see A, above), to indicate 
 its value. The Roman word for cattle {pectis) was the origin of their 
 frequent word for property {feainid) and has descended to us in our 
 common word " pecuniary." These blocks were unwieldy, and influenced 
 by the Greeks, the Romans then cast large disks of copper {B, above), 
 which also were very ponderous, each weighing nearly a pound 
 Troy. Hence this coin, called an as^ was divided into twelve smaller 
 coins, each called an ounce (Roman uncia), and there were copper 
 coins of two, three, four, and six icncias. "When two generations later 
 (268 B.C.) the Romans began to coin silver (see Fig. 235), copper was 
 no longer used for large payments and the as was reduced in size 
 to one sixth its former weight 
 
 with grain and oxen while the Greek merchant at the dock paid 
 his bills with copper and silver coins. For a long time instead 
 of the oxen themselves, rough bars of copper were used, each 
 bearing the figure of an ox (Fig. 233, A). It was not until 
 over a hundred and fifty years after the Etruscan kings had 
 been driven out that the Romans issued actual copper coins 
 (P^ig. 233, ^). Later, as contact with the Greek cities increased, 
 
502 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 791. Traces 
 of Greek 
 speech in 
 Rome and 
 Latium 
 
 792. Greek 
 influences — 
 religion 
 
 793. Oracles 
 
 the Romans also began to issue silver coins, using as a basis 
 the Attic drachma (§ 832). In the same way, too, the Romans 
 gradually adopted the oriental measures of length and of 
 bulk with which the Greeks measured out to them the things 
 they bought. 
 
 Greek speech too began to leave its traces in the Latin speech 
 of Rome. The Latin townsmen and peasants learned the Greek 
 words for the clothing offered to them for sale, or for household 
 utensils and pottery and other things brought in by the Greeks. 
 So the Phoenician garment which the Greek merchants called 
 kiton (§ 394), the Latin peasants pronounced ktfln (ktoon), and 
 in course of time they gave it a Latin ending ic and dropped 
 the k^ so that it became our familiar word " tunic." 
 
 But the Greeks also brought in things which could not be 
 weighed and measured like produce, from a realm of which 
 the Roman was beginning to catch fleeting glimpses. For the 
 peasant heard of strange gods of the Greeks, and he was told 
 that they were the counterparts or the originals of his own 
 gods. For him there was a god over each realm in nature and 
 each field of human life : Jupiter was the great Sky-god and 
 king of all the gods ; Mars, the patron of all warriors ; Venus, 
 the queen of love ; Juno, an ancient Sky-goddess, was protect- 
 ress of women, of birth and marriage, while Vesta, too, watched 
 over the household life, with its hearth fire surviving from the 
 nomad days of the fathers on the Asiatic steppe two thousand 
 years before (§ 249) ; Ceres was the goddess who maintained 
 the fruitfulness of the earth, and especially the grainfields 
 (cf. English " cereal ") ; and Mercury was the messenger of 
 the gods who protected intercourse and merchain.d\smg, as his 
 name shows. The streets were full of Greek stories regarding 
 the heroic adventures of these divinities when they were on 
 earth. The Roman learned that Venus was the Greek Aphrodite, 
 Mercury was Hermes, Ceres was Demeter, and so on. 
 
 This process was aided by the influence of Greek oracles. 
 The oracles delivered by the Greek Sibyl, the prophetess of 
 
The Western MediteiTanean World 
 
 503 
 
 Apollo of Delphi (Fig. 172), were deeply reverenced iii Italy. 
 Gathered in the Sibylline Books, they were regarded by the 
 Romans as mysterious revelations of the future. Another 
 method of reading the future was brought in by the Etruscans, 
 who were able to discover in the liver (Fig. 234) of a sheep 
 killed for sacrifice signs which they believed revealed the future. 
 This art had been received by the Etruscans from the 
 
 Fig. 234. Bronze Model of a Liver used by the Etruscans 
 FOR Divination, after the Old Babylonian Manner 
 
 The surface of the model is divided by lines into sections, forming a 
 kind of guiding diagram like the model livers of baked clay employed by 
 the Babylonians (Fig. 94). The Etruscans must have received the art 
 in the East, presumably in Asia Minor, before they migrated to Italy 
 
 Babylonians (Fig. 94) by way of Asia Minor, whence the 
 Etruscans brought it to Italy. 
 
 An art like this appealed to the rather coldly calculating 794. Mechan- 
 mind of the Roman. As he looked toward his gods he felt no of^Roman ^ 
 doubts or problems, like, those which troubled the spirit of [he^Roman'^ 
 Euripides (§ 581). He lacked the warm and vivid imagination mind 
 of the Greeks, which had created the beautiful Greek mythology. 
 He was inclined to regard acts of worship as the mere fulfill- 
 ment of a contract by which the gods must bestow favors if 
 the worshiper was faithful in the performance of his duties. 
 In religion, therefore, the Roman saw only a list of mechanical 
 
504 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 795. Practi- 
 cal sagacity 
 of the 
 Romans 
 
 796. Elective 
 consuls re- 
 place the 
 kings ; the 
 Roman 
 Republic is 
 established 
 
 duties, such as the presentation of offerings, the sacrifice of 
 animals, and the like, and such duties were easily fulfilled. 
 In accordance with this rather legal conception of religion, he 
 was fitted for great achievements in political and legal organ- 
 ization, but not for new and original developments in religion, 
 art, literature, or discoveries in science. 
 
 Hence it is that in sketching the beginnings of Rome we 
 have found no Homer to picture to us in noble verse the heroic 
 days of her early struggles. Although less gifted than the 
 Greeks, the Romans nevertheless possessed a remarkable abil- 
 ity in applying sober and practical common sense, enlightened 
 by experience^ to every problem they met. As we shall see, 
 the Romans so contrived their government that it was led 
 and guided by the combined experience of the ripest and 
 most skilled leaders among them. Thus the Roman State was 
 never exposed to the momentary whims of an inexperienced 
 multitude as in Athens. It was this wisdom and sagacity of 
 the Romans in practical affairs which gave them marked 
 superiority over the Greeks in such matters. Let us now 
 see how Roman political wisdom developed the invincible 
 Roman State. 
 
 When the Etruscan kings were driven out of Rome, about 
 500 B.C., the nobles, called patricians^ who had been chiefly 
 instrumental in expelling them, were in control of the govern- 
 ment. But none of their number was able to make himself 
 king. Perhaps by compromise with the people, the patricians 
 agreed that two of their number should be elected as heads of 
 the State. These two magistrates, called consuls^ were both 
 to have the same powers, were to serve for a year only and 
 ihen give way to two others. To choose them, annual elections 
 were held in an assembly of the weapon-bearing men, largely 
 under the control of the patricians. Nevertheless, we must call 
 this new state a republic, of which the consuls were the presi- 
 dents ; for the people had a voice in electing them. But as 
 only patricians could serve as consuls, their government was 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 505 
 
 very oppressive. The people, called the plebs (compare our 
 " plebeian "), especially among the Latin tribes, refused to 
 submit to such oppression. 
 
 The patricians were unable to get on without the help of the 797- The 
 peasants as soldiers in their frequent wars. They therefore fenders of 
 agreed to give the people a larger share in the government, by ^ ^ P^°P ^ 
 allowing them in their own assembly to elect a group of new 
 officials, called tribunes. The tribunes had the right to veto the 
 action of any officer of the government — even that of the 
 consuls themselves. When any citizen was treated unjustly by 
 a consul he had only to appeal to the tribunes, and they could 
 rescind the consul's unjust action and even save a citizen from 
 sentence of death. The tribunes therefore gained great in- 
 fluence, because they could stop the enforcement of any law 
 they thought unjust. Later, as government business increased, 
 their number was also increased. 
 
 In the beginning it would seem that almost all the business 798. inability 
 of government was in the hands of the consuls. They were the to attend to 
 commanding generals of the army in war, they had charge of busines^"^^^^ 
 the public funds in the treasury, and they were the judges in 
 all cases at law. It was difficult to combine all these duties. 
 The consuls were often obliged to be absent from Rome for 
 long periods while leading the army, and at such times they 
 were of course unable to give any attention to cases at law, 
 and two citizens having a lawsuit might be obliged to wait until 
 the war was over. Much other ordinary business, like that of 
 the treasury, demanded more time than the consuls could pos- 
 sibly give it. They found it difficult to carry on the volume of 
 business which the government required. 
 
 This situation made it necessary to create new officers for 799. Grow- 
 various kinds of business. To take care of the government ^^o^emment 
 funds, treasury officials called qucestors were appointed. Two ^^^^^^^ 
 public officers called censors were required to keep lists of 
 the people, to assess the amount of taxes each citizen owed, 
 to determine voting rights, and to look after the daily conduct 
 
5o6 Ancient Times 
 
 of the people and see that nothing improper was permitted. 
 Our own use of the word " censor " is derived from these 
 Roman officials. For the decision of legal cases a judge called 
 a prcetor was appointed to assist the consul, and the number 
 of such judges slowly increased. In times of great national 
 danger it was customary to appoint some revered and trust- 
 worthy leader as the supreme ruler of the State. He was called 
 the Dictator, and he could hold his power but a brief period. 
 800. Public But a government is called upon to do some other things of 
 
 ?he^controi" great importance besides attending to administrative, financial, 
 hng power of ^^^ \^gv\ business. Important public questions arise which are 
 
 the patncians ^ r r -1 
 
 not mere items of routine business. Examples of such questions 
 are declaring war, restoring peace, and making new laws of all 
 sorts. The consuls had great power and influence in all such 
 matters, but they were much influenced by a council of patri- 
 cians called the Senate (from ILatin senex, meaning "old man"), 
 which had existed even as far back as the Etruscan kings, who 
 used to call upon the Senate for advice. Now the patricians 
 enjoyed the exclusive right to serve as consuls, to sit in the 
 Senate, and to hold almost all of the offices created to carry 
 on the business of government (§ 799). The power which the 
 patricians held, therefore, quite unfairly exceeded that of the 
 plebeians. 
 8oi. The The tribunes, as we have seen (§ 797), could protect the 
 
 the piebs and people from some injustices, and save their lives if they were 
 patricians illegally condemned to death. But they could not secure to the 
 citizen all his rights. The tribunes could not recover for the 
 cattle of the people the vanished grass in the public pastures, 
 when they had been nipped clean by the great herds of the 
 patricians. The tribunes could not secure for a citizen the right 
 to be elected as consul, or to become a senator, or to marry a 
 patrician's daughter. The struggle which had resulted in the 
 appointment of the tribunes, therefore, went on — a struggle 
 of the common people to win their rights from the wealthy and 
 powerful. It was a struggle like that which we have followed 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 507 
 
 in Athens and the other Greek states, but at Rome it reached 
 a much wiser and more successful settlement. The citizens of 
 Rome manfully stood forth for their rights, and without fight- 
 ing, civil war, or bloodshed they secured them to a large 
 extent in the course of the first two centuries after the found- 
 ing of the Republic. 
 
 They insisted upon a record of the existing laws in writing, 802. The old 
 in order that they might know by what laws they were being to^writingand 
 judged. About fifty years after the establishment of the Republic, o^^new^hw" 
 the earliest Roman laws were reduced to writing and engraved 
 upon twelve tablets of bronze (450 B.C.). But at the same time 
 the people demanded the right to share in the making of fiew 
 laws, and to possess an assembly of the people, which might 
 pass new laws. 
 
 Far back in the days of the kings the people had enjoyed 803. The 
 the right to a limited share in the government. To express Roman 
 their opinion they gathered in an assembly called the Comitia. b!fbrother. 
 It was made up of groups of families or brotherhoods (like the ^oo^s 
 Greek brotherhoods, § 385), each called a curia. Hence this aoiata) 
 assembly was called the Comitia ciiriata. Each such brother- 
 hood assembled and voted by itself, and its decision then counted 
 as one vote. A majority of the brotherhoods decided a question. 
 
 In the early days of the Republic, when the frequent wars 804. The 
 
 . ^ • ^ • n y assembly 
 
 kept the people much together m camp, arrayed m their tight- by centuries 
 ing hundreds, or " centuries," it easily became customary to call fj^lllata) 
 them together by centuries. Thus a new assembly by centuries 
 arose, called for this reason the Comitia centiiriata. Owing to 
 the expense of arms and equipment, the men of wealth and 
 influence in the centuries far outnumbered the poorer classes. 
 The assembly by centuries was therefore controlled by the 
 wealthy and noble classes ; they were soon electing the consuls, 
 and erelong they had deprived the old assembly by brotherhoods 
 of all its power. 
 
 At the same time another assembly of the people arose, 
 intended to give them an opportunity to transact their own 
 
5o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 805. The 
 
 tribal 
 
 assembly 
 
 {Comitia 
 
 iributa) 
 
 806. Law- 
 making 
 power of the 
 assemblies 
 and resulting 
 laws making 
 for equality 
 of plebs with 
 patricians 
 
 807. The 
 
 new nobility 
 of former 
 magistrates 
 
 plebeian public business concerning solely the common people. 
 This third assembly came together by tribes, and it was there- 
 fore called the Coviitia tributa, or tribal assembly. In this body 
 every man's vote was as good as another's, and as it was pre- 
 sided over by the tribunes, elected to protect the people, the 
 decisions of this assembly really expressed the will of the people. 
 
 Having shaken off the legal power of the Senate to control 
 their action, these two assemblies, the centuriate and the tribal, 
 became the lawmaking bodies of the Roman State. Eventually 
 the people were also given voting rights in the centuriate assembly 
 equal to those of the patricians and the wealthy. As a result the 
 people were able to pass laws by which they, especially the last 
 two assemblies, gained the right to make laws, and in this 
 way the people gradually secured a fairer share of the public 
 lands and further social rights. Finally, and most important 
 of all, these new laws increased the rights of the people to 
 hold office. In the end Roman citizens elected their plebeian 
 neighbors as censors and quaestors, as judges and at last 
 even as consuls, and they saw men of the people sitting in 
 the Senate. 
 
 This progress of the people in power brought with it im- 
 portant new developments affecting both society and govern- 
 ment. Roman citizens had a deep respect for government and 
 for its officials. The Roman consul appeared in public attended 
 by twelve men called lidors, bearing the symbols of State 
 authority. Each man carried a bundle of rods, suggesting the 
 consul's power to scourge the condemned ; and from the midst 
 of the rods rose an ax, symbolizing the consul's legal right to 
 inflict the death penalty. The other officials of high rank were 
 likewise attended by a smaller group of lictors. The consuls 
 and all the higher officials wore white robes edged with purple, 
 a costume which only these men had the right to wear. When 
 a magistrate went out of office he might assume his official 
 garment from time to time on feast days. There soon grew up 
 a group of once plebeian families, thus distinguished by the 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 509 
 
 public service of its members, to whom the Roman citizens 
 looked up with great respect. When the voters were called 
 upon to select their candidates, they preferred members of 
 these eminent families, especially for the consulship. A new 
 nobility was thus formed, made up of such illustrious families 
 and the old patricians. 
 
 Tliis situation directly affected the Senate, the members of 808. The 
 which had formerly been appointed from among the patricians gains^con- 
 by the consuls. A new law, however, authorized the censors to ^ °^ °^ ^^^ 
 
 ■' ' _ ' Senate 
 
 make out the lists of senators, giving the preference to those 
 who had been magistrates. Thus the new nobility of ex- 
 magistrates, formerly plebeians, entered the Senate, bringing 
 in fresh blood from the ranks of the people. 
 
 As a result of these changes the Senate was made up of the 809. The 
 three hundred men of Rome who had gained the most experi- ^hTkaS"^ 
 ence in government and in public affairs. When the herald's ^,^^P °^^^', 
 
 ° ^ the consul 
 
 trumpet echoed from the Forum, and the senators, responding to 
 the call, crowded into the modest assembly hall beside the 
 Forum and took their seats, the consul called them to order. 
 He was president of the Senate, and he and his colleague, the 
 other consul, were the heads of the State, with more power 
 than any senator possessed. From his chair on the platform the 
 consul looked down into the strong faces of wise and sagacious 
 men, many of whom had already held his high office and knew 
 far more about its duties than he did. Moreover, while he was 
 in office for only a year, the men confronting him held their 
 seats in the Senate for life, and most of them had been conduct- 
 ing public business there for years. The result was that their 
 combined influence, operating steadily for many years, was too 
 strong for the consul. Instead of telling the senators of his 
 own plans and of the laws he desired, he found himself listening 
 to the proposals of the Senate and carrying out the will of the 
 senators. As a result the consul became a kind of senatorial 
 minister, carrying on the government according to instructions 
 from the Senate. 
 
5IO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 8io. The 
 
 Senate gains 
 control of 
 lawmaking 
 
 8ii. The 
 Roman 
 Senate the 
 supreme 
 leader of 
 the State 
 
 In the matter of lawmaking a similar growth of the Senate's 
 influence took place. Although the popular assemblies (§§ 803- 
 805) had the right to make laws, it was not in their power to 
 propose a new law. They could vote upon it only after it 
 had been proposed by a ?nagistmte, especially by one of the 
 tribunes, who were the presiding officers of the tribal as- 
 sembly. The influence of the Senate on the magistrates was 
 such that the magistrates discussed with the senators every 
 law to be brought before the assemblies for adoption. The 
 tribunes could stop the operation of any law, and hence 
 the Senate had become accustomed to consult with them 
 before a law was passed. The result was that the tribunes 
 were given membership and seats in the Senate, and so 
 added to the power and influence of that already powerful 
 body. 
 
 By far the larger part of the Roman citizens lived too far 
 away to come up to the city and vote. The small minority 
 living in Rome, who could be present and vote at the meetings 
 of the assemblies, were familiar with the faces of the senators 
 and they well knew the wisdom, skill, and experience of these 
 old statesmen. They also knew that there was a strong feeling 
 of patriotism among the senators, and standing at the open 
 doors of the Senate hall they had heard the voice of many 
 a gray-haired ex-consul whom they revered, as it rang through 
 the Forum, in eloquent support of some patriotic measure 
 or in earnest summons to national defense. Feeling too their 
 own ignorance of public affairs, the Roman citizens were not 
 unwilling that important public questions should be settled by 
 the Senate. Thus the Roman Senate became a large com- 
 mittee of experienced statesmen, guiding and controlling the 
 Roman State. They formed the greatest council of rulers 
 which ever grew up in the ancient world, or perhaps in any 
 age. They were a body of aristocrats, and their control of 
 Rome made it an aristocratic state, in spite of its republican 
 form. We are now to watch the steady development and 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 511 
 
 progress of Roman power (see. map, p. 516) under the wise and 
 stable leadership of the Senate. We should bear in mind, how- 
 ever, that the Senate's power was a slow growth, continuing 
 during the wars and conquests which we are now to follow. 
 
 Section 75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic 
 AND THE Conquest of Italy 
 
 •It was a tiny nation which began its uncertain career after 812. The 
 the expulsion of the Etruscan kings. The territory of the ^^d^hetrSty 
 Roman Republic was the mere city with the adjacent fields ^^*^^ ^°"^^ 
 for a very few miles around. On the other side of the Tiber 
 lived the dreaded Etruscans, and on the Roman side of the 
 river, all around the little republic, lay the lands of the Latin 
 tribes (§ 783), who had combined in what was called the Latin 
 League (see map, p. 516). The league was independent and 
 did not acknowledge itself subject to Rome. But in their own 
 struggle with 'their enemies, the Latin tribes found- the leader- 
 ship of the city indispensable. The Latin League therefore 
 made a perpetual treaty with Rome — a treaty uniting the 
 league and the city in a conibinatiori? for mutual defense ''under 
 the leadership of Rome. But this arrangemient produced only 
 a loose union, not yet forming a unified nation. Nevertheless, 
 the Roman Senate gave to the- citizens of Latium privileges in 
 Rome about equal to those of Roman citizens, and the Latins 
 were therefore ready to fight for the defense of the city whose 
 leadership they followed. 
 
 For two generations the new republic struggled for the 813. Early 
 preservation of its mere existence. This struggle against the^^pub- 
 threatening- enemies on all its frontiers, especially the Etrus- ^truscanT' 
 cans, was the motive power which stirred the little nation and italic 
 
 Tr 1 1 T^ neighbors 
 
 to constant effort, to vigorous life, and to steady growth. Fortu- 
 nately for the Romans, within a generation after the founda- 
 tion of the Republic the fleet of Syracuse utterly destroyed 
 the Etruscan fleet (474 b.c.) (Fig. 226). Later the Etruscans. 
 
512 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 814. Agri- 
 cultural colo- 
 nization and 
 expansion 
 the Roman 
 policy 
 
 were attacked in the rear by the Gauls (§722 and Fig. 215), 
 who were at this time pouring over the Alpine passes into the 
 valley of the Po and laying waste the Etruscan cities of the 
 North. This weakening of the Etruscans at the hands of their 
 enemies on both north and south probably saved Rome from 
 destruction. It enabled the Romans to maintain a ten years' 
 siege of Veil, a strong southern fortress of the Etruscans only 
 eight miles from Rome, till they captured and destroyed it 
 (396 B.C.). At the same time the Italic tribes surrounding 
 Latium on the south, east, and north were .constantly invading 
 and plundering the fields and pastures of the Latin tribes and 
 dircatcning the city. Rome beat off these marauders, and by 
 establishing a group of colonies along the coast south of the 
 Tiber, formed a buffer against such invasions from the South. 
 By 400 B.C. or a little after, the Romans had conquered and 
 taken possession of a fringe of new territory on all sides, which 
 protected them from their enemies. 
 
 In the new territory thus gained the Romans planted colonies 
 of citizens, or they granted citizenship or other valuable privi- 
 leges to the absorbed population. Roman peasants, obligated to 
 bear Roman arms and having a voice in the government, thus 
 pushed out into the expanding borders of* Roman territory. 
 This policy of agrimltural expansion steadily and consistently 
 followed by the Senate was irresistible, for it gave to Rome 
 an ever-increasing body of brave and hardy citizen-soldiers, 
 cultivating their own lands, and ready at all times to take up 
 the sword in defense of the State which shielded them. The 
 Roman policy was thus in striking contrast with the narrow 
 methods of the Greek republics, which jealously prevented out- 
 siders from gaining citizenship. It was the steady expansion of 
 Rome under this policy which in a little over two centuries after 
 the expulsion of the Etruscan kings made the little republic on 
 the Tiber mistress of all Italy (see map, p. 5 1 6). 
 
 The second century of Roman expansion opened with a fear- 
 ful catastrophe, which very nearly accomplished the complete 
 
The Western Mediten-anean World 5 1 3 
 
 destruction of the nation, in the first two decades after 815. Capture 
 400 B.C. the barbarian Gauls, who had been overrunning the Jhe Gauls ^ 
 territor)' of the Etruscans (§813), finally reached the lower (382 b.c.) 
 Tiber, and the Roman army which went out to meet them was 
 completely defeated. The city, still undefended by walls, was 
 entirely at their mercy. They entered at once (382 B.C.), 
 plundering and burning. Only the citadel on the Capitol hill 
 held out against the barbarians. Long afterward Roman tradi- 
 tion told how even the citadel was being surprised at night by 
 a party of Gauls who clambered up the heights, when the 
 sacred geese, kept in a temple close by, aroused the garrison 
 by their cackling, and the storming party was repulsed. Wearied 
 by a long siege of the citadel the Gauls at length agreed to 
 accept a ransom of gold and to return northward, where they 
 settled in the valley of the Po. But they still remained a 
 serious danger to the Romans. 
 
 As Rome recovered from this disaster, it was evident that 816. Subju- 
 the city needed fortifications, and for the first time masonry Latin^tribes 
 walls (plan, p. 500) were built around it. This gave the city a of^^e^Lau^n 
 strength it had not before possessed. It gained the southern League 
 territory of the Etruscans, now much weakened by the inroads 
 of the Gauls, and it also seized new possessions in the Cam- 
 panian plain. The high-handed manner in which Rome was 
 now taking new lands seems to have alarmed even the Latin 
 tribes, and they endeavored to break away from the control of 
 the powerful walled city. In the two years' war which resulted 
 the city was completely victorious, and the Roman Senate 
 forced the defeated Latin tribes to break up the Latin League 
 (338 B.C.). The Roman Senate then proceeded to make sepa- 
 rate treaties with each of the Latin tribes, and did not grant 
 them as many privileges as formerly. Rome thus gained the 
 undisputed leadership of the Latin tribes, which was at last 
 to bring her the leadership of Italy. 
 
 The year 2)2>^ b.c, in which this important event took 
 place, is a date to be well remembered, for it also witnessed 
 
514 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 817. The 
 leadership 
 of Greeks 
 and Latins 
 decided in the 
 same year 
 
 (338 B.C.) 
 
 818. The 
 
 new Samnite 
 enemy and 
 the opening 
 of hostiUties 
 
 819. The 
 Samnite 
 Wars (325- 
 290 B.C.) and 
 the battle 
 of Sentinum 
 (295 B.C.) 
 
 the defeat of the Greek cities at the hands of Philip of 
 Macedon (§ 685). In the same year, therefore, both the 
 Greeks and the Latins saw themselves conquered and falling 
 under the leadership of a single state — the Greeks under that 
 of Macedonia, the Latins under that of Rome. But in Greece 
 that leadership was in the hands of one man who might and 
 did perish ; while in Italy the leadership of the Latins was in 
 the hands of a whole body of wise leaders, the Roman Senate. 
 In .sixty-five years they were now to gain the leadership of 
 all Italy (see maps II, III, and IV, p. 516). 
 
 Meantime another formidable foe, a group of Italic tribes 
 called the Samnites, had been gaining possession of the moun- 
 tains which form the backbone of the Italian peninsula inland , 
 from Rome. They had gained some civilization from the 
 Greek cities of the South, and they were able to muster a 
 large army of hardy peasants, very dangerous in war. But 
 they lacked the steadying and continuous leadership of a gov- 
 erning city like Rome. Some of them drifted down into the 
 plains of Campania (see map, p. 484), where they captured 
 Capua, one of the southern outposts of the Etruscans. Within 
 forty years after the expulsion of the Gauls, the Samnites were 
 in hostile collision with Rome. By 325 B.C. a fierce war broke 
 out, which lasted with interruptions for a generation. The 
 Romans lost several battles, and in one case were subjected 
 by the Samnites to the ordeal of marching '' under the yoke," 
 a humiliation which the Romans never forgot.^ 
 
 But the resources of the Roman Senate were not confined 
 to fighting. They gained lands and established Roman colonies 
 on the east of the Apennines and in the plain of Campania. 
 From these new possessions they were able to attack the Sam- 
 nites from both sides of the mountains (see map II, p. 516). The 
 Samnites attempted a combination of Rome's enemies against 
 her. They succeeded in shifting their army northward and 
 
 1 The defeated troops in token of their submission marched under a lance 
 supported horizontally on two upright lances and called a " yoke." 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 515 
 
 joining forces with both the Etruscans and the Gauls. All cen- 
 tral and much of northern Italy was now involved in the war. 
 In the mountains midway between the upper Tiber and the 
 eastern shores of Italy the Roman army met and crushed the 
 combined forces of the allies in a terrible battle at Sentinum 
 (295 B.C.). This battle decided the future of Italy for over 
 two thousand years. It not only gave the Romans possession 
 of central Italy, but it made them the leading power in the 
 whole peninsula (see map III, p. 516). 
 
 Henceforth the Etruscans were unable to maintain them- 820. Rome 
 selves as a leading power. One by one their cities were taken of central 
 by the Romans, or they entered into alliance with Rome. The ^^^^ "tTthT 
 Gallic barbarians were beaten off, and the stream of Gallic in- Amus River 
 vasion which was thus forced back in northern Italy by Rome tinum 
 flowed over eastward and southward into the Balkan Peninsula, 
 as we have seen (§ 722). The settled Gauls, however, continued 
 to hold the Po valley, and the northern boundary of the Roman 
 conquests was along the Arnus River, south of the Apennines. 
 Southward the resistance of the Samnites was easily crushed 
 within five years after the battle at Sentinum. They and the 
 other leading peoples of southern Italy, with the exception of 
 the Greeks there, were forced to enter the Roman alliance. 
 The Romans were supreme from the Arnus to the Greek cities 
 of southern Italy (see map III, p. 516). 
 
 The great rivals in the Western world were now the Romans, 821. En- 
 the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. As for the home cities of the western 
 the Greeks, they were under the successors of Alexander, fight- ^nTte^Snst 
 ing among themselves for possession of the fragments of his Rome 
 empire (Chap. XX), while Rome was gaining the leadership 
 of Italy. As for the western Greek colonies (§§ 440-441) four 
 centuries of conflict among themselves had left them still a 
 disunited group of cities fringing southern Italy and Sicily. 
 They had long been fighting with the Italic tribes and other 
 peoples of southern Italy, and a number of the Greek cities 
 of the re<Tion had fallen. The survivors, alarmed at the 
 
I. Italy at the 
 Beginning of the 
 Roman Republic 
 
 (about 500 B.C.) 
 
 e^hage 
 
 
 Roman Territory 
 
 6 "^ lOO 150 
 X-'/////^ Remap Territory 
 
 Syracuse 
 
 rV. Roman Power 
 
 after the War with 
 
 V V ^ e Pyrrhus (275 B.C.) 
 
 
 <jti LATIU 
 
 Roman Territory 
 
 Cartjfkge 
 
 Expansion of Roman Power in Italy 
 
 5^6 
 
The Western Mediterranean World 517 
 
 threatening expansion of Roman power, now made another 
 endeavor to unite, and called in help from the outside. 
 
 The leading city of the Greeks in southern Italy was Taren- 822. Pyrrhus 
 tum. Unable to secure effective aid from the now declining ancfhis^pkn 
 home cities of Greece, the men of Tarentum sent an appeal of forming 
 
 ^^ an empire of 
 
 to Pyrrhus, the vigorous and able king of Epirus, just across the western 
 
 (j recks 
 
 from the heel qf Italy. Pyrrhus fully understood the highly 
 developed art of war as it had grown up with Epaminondas 
 (§ 638) and Philip of Macedon (§ 681). Besides Thessalian 
 horsemen, the best cavalry in the world, he had secured from 
 the Orient a formidable innovation in the form of fighting 
 elephants. With an army of w^ell-trained Greek infantry of 
 the phalanx besides, and his well-known talent as a soldier, 
 Pyrrhus was a highly dangerous foe. His purpose was to 
 form a great nation of the western Greeks in Sicily and Italy. 
 Such a nation would have proved a formidable rival of both 
 Rome and Carthage. 
 
 On the arrival of Pyrrhus he completely defeated the 823. Thewai 
 Romans at Heraclea in 280 B.C., and in the following year ('280-'^'^'^ "^ 
 they were routed again. Pyrrhus proceeded in triumph to ^^^ ^-^-^ ' 
 Sicily, where he gained the whole island except the Cartha- defeats at 
 ginian colony on the outermost western end (Lilybaeum), (28oB.c.)and 
 which he could not capture for lack of a fleet. He seemed 
 about to succeed in his effort to establish a powerful western 
 Greek empire, when he met with serious difficulties. The 
 Carthaginians, who saw a dangerous rival rising only a few 
 hours' sail from their home harbor, sent a fleet to assist the 
 Romans against Pyrrhus. When the ambassador of Pyrrhus 
 arrived at Rome with proposals of peace, the Carthaginian fleet 
 was at the mouth of the Tiber, and the Roman Senate reso- 
 lutely refused to make peace while the army of Pyrrhus occu- 
 pied Italian soil. At the same time the Greeks disagreed among 
 themselves, as they always did at critical times. Pyrrhus then 
 withdrew from Sicily, and finding himself unable to inflict a 
 decisive defeat on the Romans, he returned to Epirus. 
 
 Asculum 
 (279 B.C.) 
 
5i« 
 
 Ancie7tt Times 
 
 824. Rome 
 in possession 
 of the entire 
 Italian pen- 
 insula; result- 
 ing rivalry 
 between 
 Rome and 
 Carthage 
 
 One by one the helpless Greek cities now surrendered to the 
 Roman army, and they had no choice but to accept alliance 
 with the Romans (see map IV, p. 5 1 6). Thus ended all hope 
 of a great Greek nation in the West. In two centuries and 
 a quarter (500-275 B.C.) the tiny republic on the Tiber had 
 gained the mastery of the entire Italian peninsula south of the 
 Po valley (see map IV, p. 516). There were now but two rivals 
 in the western Mediterranean world — Rome and Carthage. In 
 following the inevitable struggle of these two for the mastery 
 of the western Mediterranean world during the next two gen- 
 erations, we shall be watching the final conflict between the 
 western wings of the two great racial lines, the Semitic and 
 the Indo-European (Fig. 112). But before we take up this 
 struggle we must learn more about the character and the civili- 
 zation of the great Roman power which thus grew up in Italy. 
 These men who won the supremacy of Italy for the little 
 republic on the Tiber were the first generation of Romans 
 about whom sufficient information has survived to make us 
 well acquainted with them. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 72. Into what divisions does the Mediterranean fall? 
 In which did civilization arise.? Why? Describe Italy. Tell about 
 the earliest migrations into Italy and the incoming of metal. W^hat 
 Indo-European tribes came into Italy, and when? Did they find, 
 civilization there? What weapon had the western Mediterranean 
 peoples devised? What three rivals of the Italic tribes came in? 
 Tell about their coming. What did the Greeks accomplish against 
 the Carthaginians and Etruscans? Did the western Greeks unite 
 into a nation ? What did they bring into Italy ? 
 
 Section 73. Describe Latium. What tribes setded there? 
 What town first led them? Where was the market of the Latins? 
 Who traded there ? Describe the place. What was it called ? Who 
 seized it in the eighth century B.C.? What line of kings arose? 
 Describe their rule and civilization. 
 
 Section 74. Whence did the Romans gain their alphabet? What 
 other Greek influences can you mention? What oriental mode of 
 
The Western Medite'rranean World 
 
 519 
 
 divination did the Etruscans and the Romans practice? What can 
 you say of the religious ideas of the Romans ? Who succeeded the 
 Etruscan kings as rulers of Rome ? What magistrates did the people 
 elect for their own protection? What great council arose? Who 
 had the exclusive right to serve as consuls and to sit in the Senate ? 
 Describe the assemblies of the people. Who had the power to make 
 laws? What new nobility arose? How did they gain control of the 
 Senate ? How did the Senate gain the leadership of the State ? What 
 can you say of this leadership ? 
 
 Section 75. What was the relation between Rome and the Latin 
 tribes around it? What was happening to the Etruscans after 
 500 B.C.? Describe the colonial policy of the Roman Senate. Tell 
 about the coming of the Gauls. What happened to the Latin League 
 in 338 B.C.? What happened in Greece the same year? Who were 
 the Samnites? Tell the story of the Roman struggle with them. 
 What battle ended it? When? Were the western Greeks able to 
 unite against Rome? What did Tarentum do? Recount the war 
 with Pyrrhus. What happened to the Greeks of Italy after the retire- 
 ment of Pyrrhus? How long had it taken Rome to gain the leader- 
 ship of Italy ? 
 
 Note. The tailpiece below shows us the prehistoric warriors of the western 
 Mediterranean in the thirteenth century b.c. Notice the heavy bronze swords 
 carried with point up. They are simply elongated Egyptian daggers (Fig. 132 
 and § 776). The scene is engraved on the walls of the temple of Abu Simbel in 
 Egypt (Fig. 70), built by Ramses II, in whose army these Westerners were 
 serving. 
 
 ■r 
 
 
 
 X'J 
 
 f 
 
 
 ^^o ->*-> 
 

 li^ 
 
 
 CORNELIV'j LVCIVS KiPlOBAREATVSCNAIVOOPATRt 
 P R OCWAT V 5 _F OAT 1 5 VIR _SA P ! E^N^ GVC - .QVaVi f OR /Vl A yiRTVip PA S IS V W 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC IN ITALY AND 
 THE RIVALRY WITH CARTHAGE 
 
 Section ^6. Italy under the Early Roman 
 Republic 
 
 825. The 
 problem of 
 making Italy 
 
 826. Self- 
 governing 
 local com- 
 munities 
 made allies 
 
 After the leadership of Italy had been gained by Rome, there 
 were men still living who could remember the Latin war (ended 
 338 B.C.), when Rome had lost even the surrounding fields of 
 little Latium. Now, sixty-five years later, the city on the Tiber 
 was mistress of all Italy. The new power over a large group 
 of cities and states, thus gained within a single lifetime, was 
 exercised by the Roman Senate with the greatest skill and 
 success. Had Rome annexed all the conquered lands, and en- 
 deavored to rule them from Rome, the population of Italy 
 would have been dissatisfied, and constant revolts would have 
 followed. How, then, was Italy to become a nation, controlled 
 by Rome 1 
 
 The Romans began by granting the defeated cities a kind 
 of citizenship. It entitled them to all the protection of the 
 Roman State in carrying on commerce and business, to all 
 
 Note. The above headpiece represents the beautiful stone sarcophagus of 
 one of the early Scipios, found in the family tomb on the Appian Way (Fig. 227). 
 It is adorned with details of Greek architecture, which clearly show that it was 
 done by a Greek artist (§ 831). Verses in early Latin, on the side of the sar- 
 cophagus, contain praises of the departed Scipio. 
 
 520 
 
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic ijt Italy 521 
 
 the rights of every Roman citizen in the law courts, and, at the 
 same time, to social privileges like that of intermarriage. But 
 this citizenship did not entitle them to vote. In distant com- 
 munities, however, no one felt the lack of this privilege, for in 
 order to vote it was necessary to go to Rome. Cities and com- 
 munities controlled by Rome in this way were called " allies." 
 The protection of the powerful Roman State in canying on 
 business and commerce was of itself a veiy valuable advan- 
 tage to the allies. They were therefore willing to place their 
 troops entirely at the disposal of Rome, and also all their deal- 
 ings with foreign peoples; for they still had full control of their 
 own local internal affairs, except those of the army. In all this 
 Rome wisely granted ^he different cities very different rights, 
 and laid upon them highly varied restrictions. Thus no two 
 cities were likely to feel the same grievances or make common 
 cause against Roman rule of Italy. 
 
 Rome had, however, gradually annexed a good deal of terri- 827. Com- 
 tory to pay her war expenses and to supply her increasing num- enjoying full 
 bers of citizens with land. Her own full citizens thus occupied ^°^^" '^**^' 
 about one sixth of the territory of Italy. It consisted chiefly of 
 the region between the Apennine Mountains and the sea, from 
 Caere on the north to Capua and Cumae on the south (see 
 map, p. 484). It likewise included some important areas in 
 the Apennines and on the Adriatic coast. It was furthermore 
 Rome's policy to sprinkle Roman colonies through the territory 
 of the allies. All Italy was thus more or less dotted with com- 
 munities of Roman citizens. By these wise measures Rome 
 gained and kept control of Italy. 
 
 Rome thus brought into a kind of unity what we may gco- 828. Lack 
 graphically call Italy \ but an examination of its population will °n-Jy in Italy: 
 readily show us how far Italy really was from beins: a nation, diversity of 
 
 •' -^ -^ o ' language 
 
 even though controlled by Rome. Besides the Gauls, whose 
 territory in the Po valley had not yet been taken over by the 
 Romans, were the conquered Etruscans, who occupied a large 
 part of northern Italy, In the central region were the Latins 
 
522 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 829. Lack 
 of national 
 unity in Italy; 
 no common 
 traditions 
 
 830. Italy 
 to become 
 Latin in 
 speech, 
 Greek in 
 civilization 
 
 and the other Italic tribes. These tribes all spoke related dia 
 lects, which were, however, so different that no one tribe could 
 understand any of the others. Finally, in the South were the 
 Greek cities. There was therefore no common language in 
 Italy, even among the Indo-Europeans, and this created a situ- 
 ation very different from that in Greece. 
 
 Neither did the peoples of Italy possess any common literary 
 inheritance such as the Greeks had in the Homeric poems. 
 Nothing in their history, like the Trojan War in that of the 
 Greeks (§ 411), had ever given them common traditions. 
 Roman organization had created a kind of United States of 
 Italy, which might after a long time slowly merge into a nation. 
 Meantime these peoples, of course, had no feeling of patriotism 
 toward Rome. Speaking different languages, so that they did 
 not understand one another when they met, they long remained 
 quite distinct. 
 
 In language the future nation was to be Latin, the tongue 
 of the ruling city ; geographically it comprised Italy ; politically 
 it was Roman.^ Whefi we consider Rome from the point of 
 view of civilization^ however, we are obliged to add a fourth 
 name. For as time went on, Italy was to become in civilization 
 more and more Greek. The Greek cities extended as far north 
 as the plains of Campania, where Rome had early taken Capua, 
 in size the second city of Italy. In the days of the war with 
 Pyrrhus and after, the Roman soldiers had beheld with wonder 
 and admiration the beautiful Greek temples in such cities as 
 Paestum.(Fig. 219) and Tarentum. Here for the first time they 
 saw also fine theaters, and they must have attended Greek plays, 
 of which they understood little or nothing. But the races and 
 athletic games in the handsome stadium of such a Greek city 
 required no interpretation in order to be understood by the 
 sturdy Roman soldiers. 
 
 1 Compare the similar application of three names to our own country. Politi- 
 cally we are the United States, geographically we are commonly called America, 
 while our language is English. ' ~ ' 
 
The Sitpretnacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 523 
 
 In southern Italy the Romans had taken possession of the 
 western fringe of the great Hellenistic world, whose wonderful 
 civilization we have already studied (Chap. XXI). The Romans 
 at once felt the superiority of this new world of cultivated life, 
 which they had entered in southern Italy. When a highborn 
 Roman family like that of the Scipios wished to have carved a 
 beautiful sarcophagus (stone coffin) for their father, they em- 
 ployed a Greek sculptor from the South (headpiece, p. 520). At 
 the same time 
 the temples of 
 Rome began to 
 be laid out on 
 ?Lr\ oblo7ig ground 
 plan, like those 
 of the Greeks, 
 and no longer on 
 a square ground 
 plan like those 
 of the Etruscans. 
 As Roman power 
 expands we shall 
 see this conquest 
 of the Romans 
 by Greek civilization making greater and greater progress. 
 
 It was as yet chiefly in commerce and in business that Greek 
 influences were evident. Greek merchants from' the Southern 
 cities now enjoyed Roman protection when they traded in 
 Rome. Greek silver money appeared in greater quantities after 
 the capture of the Greek cities. Copper coins were no longer 
 sufficient for Roman business, and not long after the fall of 
 Tarentum, in 268 B.C. (§ 824), Rome issued her first silver coin 
 (Fig. 235). Just as Athens had once done (§ 460), so Rome 
 now began to feel the influence of money, and a moneyed class, 
 largely merchants, arose. They were not manufacturers, as at 
 Athens, and Rome never became a great industrial center. 
 
 831. Early 
 evidences of 
 Greek art and 
 architecture 
 in Rome 
 
 Fig. 235. A Roman Denarius of Silver 
 
 After the capture of the Greek cities of southern 
 Italy, the Romans began the coinage of silver 
 (268 B.C.) (see § 832). The large and inconvenient 
 as (Fig. 233, B) was no longer necessary for large 
 payments, and it was thereafter reduced in size 
 to one sixth. Silver was then used for all large 
 transactions. On the value of this coin see § 832 
 
 832. Greek 
 influence on 
 commerce 
 and coinage 
 of silver at 
 Rome ; rise 
 of moneyed 
 class 
 
524 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 833. Com- 
 mercial 
 expansion 
 of Rome 
 seaward 
 
 834. Early 
 mercantile 
 successes of 
 the Semites, 
 and the foun- 
 dation of 
 Carthage 
 
 Section yy. Rome and Carthage as 
 Commercial Rivals 
 
 The old policy of agricultural expansion (§ 814) had slowly 
 brought Rome the leadership withifi Italy. A new policy of 
 commercial expansion was to bring her into, conflict with the 
 Mediterranean world outside of Italy. The farmers had looked 
 no farther than the shores of Italy, but the transactions of the 
 Roman merchants reached out beyond those shores. Roman 
 ships issuing from the Tiber entered a triangular inclosure of 
 the Mediterranean, called the Etruscan Sea. The sides of the 
 triangle were formed by Corsica and Sardinia on the west and 
 Italy on the east, while on the south the bottom of the triangle 
 was formed by Sicily and the Carthaginian coast of Africa. A 
 glance at the map (I, p. 552) shows us how Rome and Carthage 
 faced each other across this triangular sea, w^here both were 
 now carrying on extensive business. 
 
 It was indeed a dangerous rival which now confronted RomiC 
 across the Etruscan Sea. In the veins of the Carthaginians 
 flowed the blood of those hardy desert mariners of Arabia, the 
 Semitic caravaneers (§ 137) who had made the market places 
 of Babylon the center of ancient Eastern trade two thousand 
 years before Rome ever owned a ship. The fleets of their 
 Phoenician ancestors had coursed the Mediterranean in the 
 days when the Stone Age barbarians of Italy were eagerl\ 
 looking for the merchant of the East and his metal implements 
 (§ 328). While Rome was an obscure trading village on the 
 Tiber, and before the Greeks ever entered these waters, the 
 Phoenician merchants, the earliest explorers of the western 
 Mediterranean, had perceived the advantageous position of the 
 commanding projection where the African coast thrusts out 
 toward Sicily. Here, on the northern edge of the region now 
 called Tunis, they had planted the city which had become the 
 commercial queen of the western Mediterranean and the most 
 powerful rival of Rome (map I, p. 552). 
 
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic iu Italy 525 
 
 This advantageous situation gave Carthage unrivaled com- 835. Cartha- 
 mercial opportunities. Gradually, as her trade carried her in pan^sionln 
 both directions, she had gained the coast on both sides — Africa and 
 
 ' '^ Spam 
 
 eastward to the frontiers of the Greek city of Gyrene, and 
 westward to the Atlantic. Her merchants absorbed southern 
 Spain, with its profitable silver mines, and they gained control 
 of the import of British tin by way of the Strait of Gibraltar. 
 Outside of this strait their settlements extended northward 
 along the coast of Spain and southward along the Atlantic 
 coast of Africa to the edge of the Sahara. In this direction 
 Hanno, one of their fearless captains, explored the coast of 
 Africa as far as Guinea (§ 747, and map I, p. 552). 
 
 It was only the incoming of the Greeks (§§ 440-441) which 836. Cartha- 
 had prevented the Carthaginians from taking possession of the f/on^>lthe^" 
 Mediterranean islands upon which their splendid harbor looked JJgrranean^^^' 
 out. They usually held a large part of Sicily, the west end of islands 
 which was almost visible from the housetops of Carthage. 
 They planted their colonies in the islands of Sardinia and 
 Corsica, and they had ports in the Balearic Islands, between 
 Sardinia and Spain. They closed the Strait of Gibraltar and 
 the ports of the islands to ships froin all other cities. Foreign 
 ships intruding in these waters were promptly rammed and 
 sunk by Carthaginian warships. 
 
 Unlike Rome, the military power of Carthage, supported by 837. Lack 
 the profits from trade, was built up entirely on a basis of money, soldiers at 
 with which, as long as she prospered, she could support a large ^o^^^gfcial 
 mercenary army. She had no. farmers cultivating their own prosperity 
 
 and a mer- 
 
 land, from whom she could draw an army of citizen-soldiers as cenary army 
 did Rome. The rich and fertile region of Tunis just south of 
 Carthage had indeed been taken by the Carthaginians from its 
 native owners. Here the merchant princes of the city developed 
 large and beautiful estates, worked by slaves ; but such lands, 
 supporting no small farmers, furnished no troops for the army. 
 
 This was a serious weakness in the organization of the Car- 838. Cartha- 
 thaginian state. The rulers of the city never trusted the army, ^^"'^" 
 
526 Aficient Times 
 
 made up as it was of foreigners, and they always felt some dis- 
 trust even toward their own generals, although they were, of 
 course, bom Carthaginians. The fear lest the generals should 
 endeavor to make themselves kings of Carthage caused much 
 friction between the government and the Carthaginian com- 
 manders, and was frequently a cause of weakness to the nation. 
 Although there were two elective magistrates called Judges 
 at the head of the State, Carthage was really governed by a 
 group of merchant nobles, a wealthy aristocracy whose mem- 
 bers formed a Council in complete control. They were what 
 the Greeks called an oligarchy (§ 618); but they were energetic 
 and statesmanlike rulers. Centuries of shrewd guidance on their 
 part made Carthage a great state, far exceeding in power any 
 of the Greek states that ever arose, not excluding Athens. 
 
 839. Car- But Carthage remained in civilization an oriental power. 
 civUizadon Wherever her works of art are dug up to-day, they show all 
 
 the earlier limitations of oriental art, and seem to have been 
 little influenced by the Greeks. Only in Sicily did Carthaginian 
 merchants yield to Greek influence, take up coinage, and issue 
 silver money. In Carthage herself they retained the old oriental 
 commercial use of bars of precious metal (§ 189). As her busi- 
 ness grew, however, her merchants found it necessary to have 
 some convenient medium of exchange, and they issued leathern 
 money, the earliest predecessor of paper money, stamped with 
 the seal of the State, guaranteeing its value. In literature their 
 great explorer Hanno (§ 835) wrote an account of his explo- 
 ration of the Atlantic coast of Africa ; and Mago, one of their 
 statesmen, who organized and developed the great farming dis- 
 trict of Tunis, wrote a treatise on agriculture, which the Roman 
 Senate had translated into Latin. It became the standard book 
 on agriculture in Italy. 
 
 840. The city In matters of household equipment and city building the 
 
 age Carthaginians were quite the equals of the Greeks. The city 
 of Carthage itself was large and splendid (Fig. 239). It was in 
 area three times as large as Rome. Behind wide docks and 
 
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 527 
 
 extensive piers of masonry, teeming with ships and merchan- 
 dise, the city spread far inland, with spacious markets and busy 
 manufacturing quarters humming with industry. Beyond the 
 dwellings of the poorer craftsmen and artisans rose the stately 
 houses of the wealthy merchants, with rich and sumptuous trop- 
 ical gardens. Around the whole swept imposing walls and 
 massive fortifications, inclosing the entire city and making its 
 capture almost an impossibility. Behind the great city, outside 
 the walls, stretched a wide expanse of waving palm groves and 
 tropical plantations, dotted with the luxurious country houses 
 of the splendid commercial lords of Carthage, who were to lead 
 the coming struggle with Rome. 
 
 Back in the days of the Latin war (ended 338 B.C.), or a 841. Early 
 little before, when the Roman merchants were still doing a tSies'^and 
 small business, they had been willing that the Senate should J^^ growing 
 make a treaty with Carthage, drawing lines which the ships of between 
 neither side should cross. Indeed, about the middle of the Sam- and Rome 
 nite Wars the Roman Senate had made a second treaty with 
 Carthage (306 B.C.), in which it was agreed that no Roman 
 ships would enter the harbors of Sicily and no Carthaginian 
 ships should trade in the ports of Italy. The capture of the 
 Greek cities of Italy by the Romans had left the Greeks of 
 Sicily to face the power of Carthage entirely alone. In times 
 past they had done this with great success (§ 780), but now, 
 unable to unite against Carthage, they were slowly yielding, 
 and the Carthaginians were steadily pushing eastward and ab- 
 sorbing Sicily. The merchants of Italy looked over at the busy 
 harbors of Sicily, where so much profitable trade w^as going 
 on, and it filled them with growing impatience that they 
 were not permitted to do business there. With increasing vex- 
 ation they realized that Rome had gained the supremacy of 
 Italy and pushed her frontiers to the southernmost tip of 
 the peninsula, only to look across and find that the merchant 
 princes of Carthage had made the western " Mediterranean a 
 Carthaginian sea. 
 
528 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 842. Danger 
 to Rome in 
 the threat- 
 ened loss of 
 the Strait 
 of Messina 
 
 843. War 
 
 strength of 
 the Romans 
 
 844. Roman 
 improve- 
 ments in 
 arms and 
 tactics 
 
 Indeed, Carthage was gaining a position which might cut off 
 Rome from communication with even her own ports on the 
 Adriatic side of Italy. To reach them, Roman ships must pass 
 through the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. The 
 advance of Carthage in Sicily might enable her at any time to 
 seize the Sicilian city of Messina and close this strait to Roman 
 ships. We can understand the dread with which Italian mer- 
 chants looked southward, thinking of the day when Cartha- 
 ginian warships in the harbor at Messina would stop all traffic 
 between the west coast of Italy and the Adriatic. 
 
 The Roman Senate without doubt shared these apprehen- 
 sions. Many a Roman senator must have asked himself the 
 question, What would be Rome's chances of success in a 
 struggle with the mighty North-African commercial empire? 
 Rome had little or no navy. The Roman army had been 
 barely able to maintain itself against a modern Hellenistic 
 commander like Pyrrhus. The ancient regulation drawing the 
 soldiers only from among the owners of land had formerly 
 limited the size of the army, but it was greatly increased in size 
 by the admission of the new class of men having property in 
 money (§ 832). The introduction of pay for citizens in the army 
 had also increased the possible length of military service among 
 a people still chiefly made up of farmers obliged to return home 
 to plow, sow, and reap. The Romans could thus put a citizen 
 army of over three hundred thousand men into the field. Besides 
 the troops made up of Roman citizens, the principle was adopted 
 of having each army include also about an equal number of 
 troops drawn from the allies. This plan, therefore, doubled 
 the number of available troops. The Roman army conse- 
 quently far exceeded in size any army ever organized in the 
 Mediten-anean world. 
 
 In arms and tactics the Romans had been able to make 
 some improvements in the Hellenistic art of war (§ 681). 
 The spear was now employed by the Romans only as the 
 battle opened, when it was hurled into the ranks of the enemy 
 
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 5 29 
 
 at short range. After this the battle 
 was fought by the Romans with 
 short swords, which were much 
 more easily handled at close quar- 
 ters than long spears (Fig. 236). 
 At the same time the Romans had 
 likewise improved the phalanx, 
 which we remember had thus far 
 been a massive unit, possessing as 
 a whole no flexibility (§ 637). It 
 had no joints. The Romans gave 
 it joints and flexibility by cutting 
 it up in both directions ; that is, 
 lengthwise and crosswise. 
 
 They divided the phalanx length- 
 wise into three divisions, one form- 
 ing the front, one the middle, and 
 one the rear (Fig. 237). Each divi- 
 sion was about six men deep, and 
 there was only a narrow space be- 
 tween the divisions. The front divi- 
 sion was made up of the young and 
 vigorous troops, while the older men 
 were placed in the other two divi- 
 sions. If the steady old troops be- 
 hind saw that a gap was being 
 made in the front division, it was 
 the business of the second division 
 to advance at once and fill the 
 gap. This made it necessary to 
 cut up the divisions crosswise, into 
 short sections, so that a section 
 could advance without carrying the 
 whole division forward. Such a 
 section of a division had a front 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fig. 236. A Roman Sol- 
 dier OF THE Legion 
 
 The figure of the soldier is 
 carved upon a tombstone, 
 erected in his memory by 
 his brother. His offensive 
 weapons are hisspear{//7z^w), 
 which he holds in his extended 
 right hand with point upward, 
 and his heavy short sword 
 {gladius), which he wears 
 girded high on his right side 
 (see § 844). As defensive 
 equipment he has a helmet, 
 a leathern corselet stopping 
 midway between the waist and 
 knees, and a shield {scutum) 
 
 845. The 
 Romans 
 cut up the 
 phalanx into 
 divisions and 
 maniples 
 
530 Ancieiit Times 
 
 about twenty men long, and being, as we have said, six men 
 deep, there were a hundred and twenty men in each section 
 of a division. These sections were called 7naniples. Each 
 maniple in advancing to fill a gap before it was like a foot- 
 ball " back " when he springs forward to stop a gap in the 
 line before him. But it is important to notice that thus far 
 all three divisions of the phalanx were invariably kept to- 
 gether ; they were inseparable. The middle and rear divisions 
 
 A Maniple of the Front Division 
 
 Bear 
 
 Rear Division t=ZD cm en czn cm 
 Middle Division i 1 1 1 1 1 1 
 
 Front Diviiif^n i 11 1 1 1 1 1 c 
 
 Front 
 
 Fig. 237. Plan of a Roman Threefold Line of Battle with 
 Detail of a Single Maniple above it 
 
 Here we see the once solid and indivisible phalanx of the Greeks 
 broken up into three divisions lengthwise (lower diagram), — a front, 
 middle, and rear division, — and likewise cut up crosswise into short sec- 
 tions (maniples). In the front and middle divisions these maniples were 
 six men deep and twenty men long (see upper diagram) and half as long 
 in the rear division. The^e sections (maniples) were so placed that the 
 openings between them did not coincide, but the maniples of the middle 
 division covered the openings, or joints, in the front division (§ 845) 
 
 were always only supports of the front division i?nmediately be- 
 fore them. It had not yet occurred to the Romans to shift the 
 middle or rear division, as football backs are shifted, to fight fac- 
 ing in another direction, or to post them in another part of the 
 field, leaving the first division to fight unsupported (Fig. 237). 
 When a great Roman, during the struggle with Carthage, discov- 
 ered the possibility of thus shifting the middle and rear divisions 
 (§874), a new chapter in the art of war began. 
 
 For purposes of mustering and feeding an army, the Romans 
 divided it into larger bodies, called legions^ each containing 
 
The Siiprentacy of the Roman Reptiblic in Italy 531 
 
 usually forty-five hundred men, of whom three hundred were 846. Legions 
 cavalry, twelve hundred were light-armed troops, while the turionT 
 three thousand forming the body of the legion were the heavy- 
 armed men making up the three divisions just described. Each 
 maniple of one hundred and twenty men was divided into two 
 centuries of sixty men each, for a " centuiy " soon ceased 
 always to contain a hundred men. Each century had a com- 
 mander called a centurion. A centurion and his century 
 roughly corresponded to our captain and his company. 
 
 Notwithstanding these improvements, the Romans did not 847. Lack of 
 at first see the importance of a commander in chief of long commandfng 
 experience — a man who made warfare his calling and had g^^^^^^^s 
 become a professional military leader like the Hellenistic com- 
 manders (§ 630). Hence the Romans intrusted their armies 
 without hesitation to the command of their consuls, who as 
 presidents of the republic had often never had any experience 
 in militaiy leadership. Moreover, the consuls might be leading 
 their troops just on the eve of battle, and find themselves 
 deprived of command by the expiration of their term of office. 
 In the Samnite Wars this difficulty had shown the Romans the 
 necessity of extending a consul's military power under such 
 circumstances. When this was done he was called a proconsul. 
 But the Romans were still without professional generals like 
 Xenophon (§ 630). At the same time the introduction of pay 
 for officers and soldiers had made extended service possible, 
 and an experienced body of lower officers such as the centu- 
 rions had grown up. 
 
 In military discipline the Romans surpassed all other peoples 848. Roman 
 of ancient times ; for even among the Greek troops there was arfd\heTorti- 
 great lack of discipline. We hear of a Roman father who ^^^ ^^™P 
 ordered his son to be executed in the presence of the army, 
 because the young man had, in disobedience of orders, accepted 
 single combat with an enemy and slain him. -Even an ex-consul, 
 having won a victory after receiving orders from the Dictator 
 not to give battle, was condemned to death by the Dictator as 
 
532 Ancient Times 
 
 the legal consequence of disobedience to a superior. It was 
 only with the greatest difficulty that he was saved by his influ- 
 ential friends. In accordance with the strict system maintained 
 in all their operations it was the invariable practice of a Roman 
 army when it halted to construct a square fortified camp, sur- 
 rounded by a ridge of earth bearing a stockade of wooden posts 
 driven into the crest of the ridge. This camp was a descendant 
 of the old prehistoric pile village of northern Italy (Fig. 225). 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 'jd. How much time elapsed from the final subjection 
 of Latium to Roman leadership of all Italy? How did Rome govern 
 the defeated cities of Italy.? How much Italian territory was occu- 
 pied by Roman citizens.? Where was it.? Where did Rome place 
 her colonies .? Was Italy a unified nation ? Why not ? Mention the 
 races and languages of Italy. What was the future language to be? 
 Mention some early influences of Greek art and architecture in Italy ; 
 of Greek business methods in Italy. What financial changes took 
 place at Rome as a result ? 
 
 Section ']'^. Had agriculture carried the Romans outside of 
 Italy? Was commerce now to do so? Into what triangular sea does 
 the Tiber flow? What great commercial rival of Rome lay on the 
 same sea? Who were the ancestors of the Carthaginians? What 
 had they achieved in business? What region did Carthage com- 
 mercially control? How did she treat ships of other peoples in this 
 region? Describe the military organization of Carthage. Had she 
 any citizen-soldiers? What was the character of the Carthaginian 
 State ? of Carthaginian civilization ? Describe the city and surround- 
 ings. What was happening to the Greeks of Sicily? In whose 
 hands was the western Mediterranean commercially? Describe the 
 danger at Messina. 
 
 Tell about the war strength of the Romans by land,- Describe 
 their improvement of the phalanx. What was the purpose of the 
 legion? How large was it? What was a centurion ? Had the Romans 
 any commanding generals of long experience? Did they have any 
 professional soldiers? What can you say about the discipline of 
 a Roman army? What did the Romans do when they camped? 
 Where had the plan of the Roman camp originated ? 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF THE WESTERN 
 MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 
 
 Section yS. The Struggle with Carthage : the 
 ^ Sicilian War, or First Punic War 
 
 Whatever might be the risks involved in a struggle with 849. Open- 
 Carthage, the Romans were soon convinced that it could not siciHanWar 
 be avoided. During a siesre of Messina at the hands of the i^^^!^ Punic 
 
 ^ _ ^ War) with 
 
 Syracusans, one party in the besieged place called in the aid Carthage at 
 of the Romans, while another party appealed to Carthage. (264 b.c.) 
 The result was that a Carthaginian garrison quickly occupied 
 the citadel of Messina, and the Carthaginians were then in 
 command of the Strait of Messina. The Romans had long 
 hesitated, but now they took the memorable step, and a Roman 
 army, responding to the appeal of Messina, left the soil of 
 
 Note. The above fragment of a wall-painting at Pompeii shows us a Roman 
 warship, seemingly in battle, for the wreck of another warship is visible at the 
 left. Notice the two steering oa7's at each side of the stern — a device found on 
 Nile ships three thousand years earlier (Fig. 41). The rudder had not yet devel- 
 oped from these steering oars. The Romans ascribed their success, in spite of 
 inexperience, against the Carthaginians to a new boarding grappler, which they 
 invented and called a "crow" {corvus). It consisted of a heavy upright timber, 
 which was made to fall over with the end on the enemy's rail, where an iron hook 
 attached to the end of the "crow" grappled and held the opposing craft until the 
 Romans coOld climb over into it. In the hand-to-hand fighting which followed, 
 the sturdy Romans more than made up for their inexperience in seamanship. 
 
 533 
 
534 Ancient Times 
 
 Italy and crossed the sea for the first time in Roman history. 
 The struggle with Carthage had begun (264 B.C.). 
 
 850. The An alliance with Syracuse soon gave the Romans possession 
 build a fleet of eastern Sicily, but they were long unable to make much 
 
 progress into the central and western portion of the island. 
 The chief reason for this was the lack of a strong war fleet. 
 The Romans, therefore, adopting a naval policy like that of 
 Themistocles (§ 506), determined to build a fleet. The Senate 
 rapidly pushed the building of the new fleet, and in the fifth 
 year of the war it put to sea for the first time. It numbered 
 a hundred and twenty battleships, of which a full hundred 
 were large, powerful vessels with five banks of oars. 
 
 851. Roman In spitc of inexperience, the Roman fleet was victorious in 
 disaSrTtsea two successive battles off the coast of Italy. It looked as if 
 
 the war would be quickly over. The Senate, however, finding 
 that the legions made little progress in Sicily, determined to 
 invade Africa and strike Carthage at home. The invasion was 
 at first very successful, but its progress was unwisely interfered 
 with by the Senate, who recalled one of the consuls with many 
 of the troops. The result was that the remaining consul, with 
 his reduced army, was disastrously defeated. Then one Roman 
 fleet after another was destroyed by heavy storms at sea, and 
 one of them was badly defeated by the Carthaginians. The 
 Romans thus lost their newly won command of the sea, and 
 were long unable to make any progress in the war. 
 
 852. Final Year after year the struggle dragged on, while Hamilcar 
 of ^he^*^ ^'^ Barca, the Carthaginian commander, was plundering the coasts 
 ^°Tb"c^ of Italy with his fleet. The treasury at Rome was empty, 
 
 and the Romans were at the end of their resources ; but by 
 private contributions they succeeded in building another fleet, 
 which put to sea in 242 B.C. with two hundred battleships 
 of five banks of oars. The Carthaginian fleet was defeated 
 and broken up (241 B.C.), and as a result the Carthaginians 
 found themselves unable to send reenforcements across the 
 sea to their army in Sicily. 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 535 
 
 ■ They were therefore at last obliged to accept hard terms of 853. Peace at 
 peace at the hands of the Romans. The Carthaginians were sicUkn Wa/ 
 to give up Sicily and the neighboring islands to Rome, and ^^^'^ ^"^'^ 
 to pay the Romans as war damages the sum of thirty-two 
 hundred talents, over three and a half million dollars, within 
 ten years. Thus in 241 B.C., after more than twenty-three years 
 of fighting, the first period of the struggle between Rome and 
 Carthage ended with the victory of Rome. 
 
 The struggle had been carried on till both contestants were 854. Some 
 completely exhausted. Both had learned much in the art of Sicilian War 
 war, and Rome for the first time had become a sea power. 
 At the same time she had taken a step which forever changed 
 her future and altered her destiny ; for the first time she held 
 territory outside of Italy, and from this step she was never 
 able to withdraw. It has been compared with the action of 
 the United States in taking Porto Rico and the Philippines; 
 for in gaining interests and responsibilities across the sea, a 
 nation is at once thrown into conflict with other powers having 
 similar interests, and this conflict of interests never reaches an 
 end, but leads from one war to another. 
 
 Section 79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic 
 War) and the Destruction of Carthage 
 
 Both the rivals now devoted themselves to increasing their 855. Roman 
 strength, nor did Rome hesitate to do so at the expense of sa?dhfiaand 
 Carthage. Taking advantage of a revolt among the hired Car- ^^^j^qj^'^^^^^'J^f 
 thaginian troops in Sardinia, the Romans accepted an invitation the Po valley 
 from these mercenaries to invade both Sardinia and Corsica; 
 and in spite of protests from Carthage, only three years after 
 the settlement of peace Rome took possession of these two 
 islands. Rome now possessed three island outposts against 
 Carthage. Some years later the Romans were involved in a 
 serious war by an invasion of the Gauls from the Po valley. 
 The Gauls were disastrously defeated, and their territory was 
 
536 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 856. New 
 Carthaginian 
 conquests in 
 Spain and 
 the rise of 
 Hannibal 
 
 857. Hanni- 
 balic War is 
 provoked by 
 a frontier 
 quarrel in 
 Spain 
 (219 B.C.) 
 
 858. Open- 
 ing of the 
 Hannibalic 
 War (218- 
 202 B.C.) ; 
 Hannibal's 
 reasons for 
 invading 
 Italy by 
 land from 
 the north 
 
 seized by the Romans without granting the Gauls any form of 
 citizenship. Thus Roman power was extended northward to 
 the foot of the Alps, and the entire peninsula from the Alps 
 southward was held by Rome (map II, p. 552). 
 
 To offset this increase of Roman power and to compensate 
 for the loss of the three large islands, the Carthaginian leaders 
 turned toward Spain. Here still dwelt the hardy descendants 
 of the Late Stone Age Europeans of the West (§ 325). Hamil- 
 car, the Carthaginian general, planned to secure the wealth of 
 their silver mines, to enlist the natives in the army, and thus 
 to build up a power able to meet that of Rome. He died 
 before the completion of his plans, but they were taken up 
 by his gifted son Hannibal, who extended Carthaginian rule 
 in Spain as far north as the Ebro River (map II, p. 552). 
 Although only twenty-four years of age, Hannibal was already 
 forming colossal plans for a bold surprise of Rome in her own 
 territory, which by its unexpectedness and audacity should crush 
 Roman power in Italy. 
 
 Rome, busily occupied in overdirowing the Gauls, had been 
 unable to interfere with the Spanish enterprises of Carthage. 
 She had, however, secured an agreement that Carthage should 
 not advance northward beyond the Ebro River. To so bold 
 and resolute a leader as Hannibal such a stipulation was only 
 an opportunity for a frontier quarrel with Rome in Spain. In 
 the tremendous struggle which followed he was the genius 
 and the dominating spirit. It was a colossal contest between 
 the nation Rome and the 7nan Hannibal. We may therefore 
 well call it the Hannibalic War. 
 
 While the Roman Senate was demanding that the leaders at 
 Carthage disavow his hostile acts, Hannibal, with a strong and 
 well-drilled army of about forty thousand men, was already 
 marching northward along the east coast of Spain (map, p. 538). 
 Several reasons led him to this course. He knew that since the 
 Sicilian war the defeated Carthaginian fleet would be unable to 
 protect his army if he tried to cross by water from Carthage and 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 537 
 
 to land in southern Italy. Moreover, his cavalry, over six thou- 
 sand strong, was much too numerous to be transported by sea. 
 In southern Italy, furthermore, he would have been met at once 
 by a hostile population, whereas in northern Italy there were the 
 newly conquered Gauls, burning for revenge on the Romans, 
 their conquerors. Hannibal intended to offer them an oppor- 
 tunity for that revenge by enlistment in his ranks. Moreover, 
 he had reports of dissatisfaction among the allies of Rome also, 
 and he believed that by an early victory in northern Italy he 
 could induce the allies to forsake Rome and join him in a war 
 for independence which would destroy Roman leadership in 
 Italy. For these reasons, while the Roman Senate was planning 
 to invade Spain and Africa, they found their own land suddenly 
 invaded by Hannibal from the north. 
 
 By clever maneuvering at the Rhone, Hannibal avoided the 859. Hanni- 
 Roman army, which had arrived there on its way to Spain. The the R^oinans 
 crossing of the Rhone, a wide, deep, and swift river, with ele- ^* ?f Rhone 
 
 ° T 1 ft 1 and leads his 
 
 phants and cavalry and the long detour to avoid the Romans army across 
 so delayed Hannibal that it was late autumn when he reached (218 b.c.) 
 
 the Alps (218 B.C.). Overwhelmed by snowstorms; struggling 
 
 over a steep and dangerous trail, sometimes so narrow that the 
 rocks had to be cut away to make room for the elephants ; 
 looking down over dizzy precipices, or up to snow-covered 
 heights where hostile natives rolled great stones down upon 
 them, the discouraged army of Hannibal toiled on day after day, 
 exhausted, cold, and hungry. At every point along the strag- 
 gling line, where help was most needed, the young Carthaginian 
 was always present, encouraging and guiding his men. But 
 when they issued from the Alpine pass, perhaps Mt. Cenis, 
 into the upper valley of the Po, they had suffered such losses 
 that they were reduced to some thirty-four thousand men. 
 
 With this little army the dauntless Carthaginian youth had 860. inferior 
 , , . p , ... r 1 • s^^^ of Han- 
 
 entered the territory of the strongest military power 01 the time nibal's army 
 
 — a nation which could now call to her defense over seven hun- w^Jh^Ro^an 
 dred thousand men, citizens and allies. From this vast number resources 
 
538 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 86i. Supe- 
 riority of 
 Hannibal's 
 military 
 knowledge 
 over that of 
 the Roman 
 consuls 
 
 Rome could recruit army after army ; but Hannibal, on the other 
 hand, as long as Carthage did not control the sea, could expect 
 no reenforcements from home except through Spain. A military 
 success was necessary at once in order to arouse the hopes of 
 the Gauls and secure recruits from among them. 
 
 Hannibal, who was in close contact with a number of Greeks, 
 was thoroughly acquainted with the most highly developed 
 
 The Route and Marches of Hannibal from 218 to 203 b.c. 
 
 The dates indicate the progress of the march. During Hannibal's long 
 
 stay in southern Italy, he made many marches and local movements 
 
 not indicated in the above sketch. Indeed, we know very little about 
 
 many of his operations in this region 
 
 methods of warfare. The exploits of Alexander, who had died 
 a little over a century before Hannibal's invasion of Italy, were 
 familiar to him, and it is not impossible that the fascinating story 
 of Alexander's campaigns was read to the young Carthaginian 
 as he lay with his Greek companions around the camp fires in 
 Italy. Furthermore, we recall that Roman consuls, command- 
 ing the Roman armies, were simply magistrates like our mayors 
 or presidents, often without much more knowledge of handling 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterrajiean 539 
 
 an army than has a city mayor in our time. Gifted with little 
 imagination, blunt and straightforward, brave and eager to meet 
 the enemy at once, the Roman consuls were no match for the 
 crafty young Carthaginian. 
 
 By skillful use of his cavalry, in which the Romans were 862. Hanni- 
 weak, Hannibal at once won two engagements in the Po valley, three vic- 
 The Gauls began to flock to his standards, but they were raw, ^*^"^^ 
 undisciplined troops. He was still outside the barrier of Roman 
 fortresses defending the Apennines, and this he must not fail 
 to pierce without delay. By early spring, therefore (217 B.C.), 
 amid fearful difficulties which would have broken the courage 
 of most commanders, Hannibal successfully passed the belt of 
 Roman strongholds blocking the roads through the Apennines. 
 Even after he had crossed the Arnus, the Roman consul Flamin- 
 ius had no notion of the Carthaginian advance, though he soon 
 learned that the Carthaginians were between him and Rome. 
 Nevertheless, on the shores of Lake Trasimene, Hannibal easily 
 surprised the army of the unsuspecting consul on the march, 
 ambushed the legions both in front and rear, and cut to pieces 
 the entire Roman army, so that only a handful escaped and the 
 consul himself fell. But a few days' march from Rome, Hannibal 
 might now have advanced directly against the city ; but he had 
 no siege machinery (headpiece, p. 1 40), and his forces were not 
 numerous enough for the siege of so strong a fortress. More- 
 over, his cavalry, in which he was superior to the Romans, 
 would have been useless in a siege. He therefore desired an- 
 other victory in the hope that the allies of Rome would revolt 
 and join him in attacking the city. 
 
 Hannibal therefore marched eastward to the Adriatic coast, 863. A year 
 where he secured numerous horses, much needed by his cavalry, preparation 
 and also found plentiful provisions, besides an opportunity to ^^^^7- 
 drill his Gallic recruits. At this dangerous crisis the Romans 
 appointed a Dictator, a stable old citizen named Fabius, whose 
 policy was to wear out Hannibal by refusing to give battle and 
 by using every opportunity to harass the Carthaginians. This 
 
540 Ancient Times 
 
 policy of caution and delay did not meet with popular favor at 
 Rome. The people called Fabius the Laggard (^Cundator), a 
 name which ever afterward clung to him ; and the new consuls 
 elected for 216 b. c. were urged to take action and destroy the 
 Carthaginian army without more delay. They therefore re- 
 cruited an army of nearly sevent}^ thousand men and pushed 
 southward toward the heel of the Italian peninsula to meet 
 Hannibal. The Carthaginian deftly outwitted them and, march- 
 ing to Cannae, captured the Roman supplies. The consuls 
 were then obliged to give battle or retire for more supplies. 
 
 Heavy Infantry Cenier 
 
 I = ' 1 Cavalry 
 
 Cavalry | | Cav alry § ^g/g^^^^^^ 
 
 Cavalry ■ Heavy Infantry Center ■ Cavalry o T'lB^^l^l^^^^^^lFIS 
 
 ■ Heavy Infantry Center ■ 
 
 B BOMAy CE^rrKR- fl 
 
 OH 
 
 Heavy Infantry Center '• j 
 
 6000 €000 Former Former 
 
 African African Position Position 
 
 Infantry A Infantry of Africans B ofAfricans 
 
 Position of the two armies as the Roman center surrounded after 
 
 battle began the Roman cavalry was routed 
 
 black = Carthaginians and the two African divisions 
 shaded = Romans were pushed forward 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Cann^ (§§ 864-865) 
 
 864. The With their fifty-five thousand heavy-armed infantry the consuls 
 
 at\h?battie were almost twice as strong as Hannibal, who had but thirty- 
 of Cannae ^^^^ thousand such troops. On the other hand, Hannibal had 
 about ten thousand horse against six thousand of the Roman 
 cavalry, while both armies were about equally strong in light- 
 armed troops. Varro, the Roman consul, had been merely a 
 successful business man at Rome. He drew up his heavy-armed 
 troops in a deep mass in the center, with a short front. Had 
 he spread them out, so that their superior numbers might 
 form a longer front than that of Hannibal, they might have 
 enfolded and outflanked the Carthaginian army. Both armies 
 divided their cavalry, that it might form the two wings. Instead 
 of massing all his heavy-armed troops in the center to meet the 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterra7iean 541 
 
 great mass of the Roman center, Hannibal took out some twelve 
 thousand of his heavy-armed African infantry in two bodies of 
 six thousand each and stationed them in a deep column behind 
 each of his cavalry wings (plan A^ p. 540). 
 
 Hannibal's stronger cavalry put to flight the Roman horse 865. Hanni- 
 forming both wings. Then as his well-trained horsemen turned ia^tes"he ^' 
 back to attack the heavy mass of the Roman center in the Roman army 
 
 •' at the battle 
 
 rear, he knew that it was too late for the Romans, perceiving of Cannse 
 their danger, to retreat and escape, for they were caught be- 
 tween the Carthaginian center before them and the Carthagin- 
 ian cavalry behind them. Only the sides of the trap were open. 
 Then came a great moment in ^ 
 
 the young Carthaginian's life. 
 With unerring judgment, just at 
 the proper instant, he gave the 
 orders which closed up the sides J 
 of the trap he had so cleverly p 
 prepared. The two bodies of | 
 Africans which he had posted '' 
 
 behind the cavalry wins^s, on „ o r- 
 
 ^ ^ ' Fig. 238. Carthaginian 
 
 each side, pushed quietly forward helmet picked up on the 
 till they occupied positions on Battlefield at Cann^ 
 each side of the fifty-five thou- 
 sand brave Romans of the center, who were thus inclosed on 
 all sides (plan B, p. 540). What ensued was simply a slaughter 
 of the doomed Romans, lasting all the rest of the day. When 
 night closed in the Roman army was annihilated. Ex-consuls, 
 senators, nobles, thousands of the best citizens of Rome had 
 fallen in this frightful battle. Every family in Rome was in 
 mourning. Of the gold rings worn by Roman knights as an 
 indication of their rank, Hannibal is reported to have sent a 
 bushel to Carthage. Even in modern times pieces of armor 
 have been picked up on the battlefield (Fig. 238). 
 
 Thus this masterful young Carthaginian, the greatest of 
 Semite generals, within two years after his arrival in Italy and 
 
542 
 
 Ancieiit Times 
 
 866. Hanni- 
 bal organizes 
 the revolting 
 Roman allies 
 against Rome 
 and calls in 
 the Mace- 
 donians 
 
 867. Hanni- 
 bal's states- 
 manship and 
 the diffi- 
 culties of 
 his position 
 
 868. Roman 
 diplomacy 
 checkmates 
 Macedonia 
 and Roman 
 determina- 
 tion recovers 
 the revolting 
 cities 
 
 before he was thirty years of age, had defeated his giant an- 
 tagonist in four battles and destroyed three of the opposing 
 armies. He might now count upon a revolt among the Roman 
 allies. Within a few years southern Italy, including the Greek 
 cities, and even Syracuse in Sicily forsook Rome and joined 
 Hannibal. Only some of the southern Latin colonies held out 
 against him. To make matters worse for Rome, immediately 
 after Cannae, Hannibal sent messengers to Macedonia, and one 
 of the later Philips then reigning there agreed to send help to 
 the Carthaginians in Italy. 
 
 In all this Hannibal was displaying the judgment and insight 
 of a statesman combined with amazing ability to meet the 
 incessant demands of the military situation. This required him 
 to lay out campaigns, to drill the inexperienced new recruits, to 
 insure supplies of food and fresh horses for his army, while at 
 the same time he was forced also to find the money with which 
 to pay his turbulent and dissatisfied mercenaries. In carrying out 
 all this work he was untiring, and his eye was everywhere. It 
 was no uncommon thing for some private soldier to wake in 
 the morning and find his young general sleeping on the ground 
 by his side. There was a consuming fire of desire in his soul 
 to save Carthage ; and now his glorious victories were drawing 
 together the foes of Rome in a great combination which he 
 believed would bring about the destruction of his country's 
 hated antagonist. 
 
 But opposing the burning zeal of a single gifted soul were 
 the dogged resolution, the ripe statesmanship, the unshaken 
 organization, and the seemingly inexhaustible numbers of the 
 Romans. It was a battle of giants for the mastery of the world ; 
 for the victor in this struggle would without any question be 
 the greatest power in the Mediterranean. Had the successors 
 of Alexander in the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean discerned 
 the nature of this gigantic struggle in Italy, and been able to 
 combine against Rome, they might now have crushed her for- 
 ever (see map I, p. 448). But the Roman Senate, with clever 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterrajiean 543 
 
 statesmanship, made an alliance with the Greeks, thus stirring i 
 
 up a revolt in Greece against the Macedonians and preventing 
 
 them from furnishing help to Hannibal In spite of Hannibal's 
 
 victories, the steadiness and fine leadership of the Roman Senate 
 
 held central Italy loyal to Rome. Although the Romans were 
 
 finally compelled to place arms in the hands of slaves and mere 
 
 boys, new armies were formed. With these forces the Romans 
 
 proceeded to besiege and capture the revolting allied cities one 
 
 after another. Even the clever devices of Archimedes during 
 
 a desperate siege (§ 742) did not save Syracuse from being 
 
 recaptured by the Romans (212 b.c). 
 
 Capua likewise, the second city of Italy, which had gone 869. Hanni- 
 over to his cause, was besieged by the Romans in spite of all advance tV^* 
 Hannibal's efforts to drive them away. As a last hope he Rome and 
 
 •^ *■ the recapture 
 
 marched upon Rome itself, and with his bodyguard rode up to of Capua by 
 
 . , f -i -1 1 the Romans 
 
 one of the gates 01 the great city, whose power seemed so un- (211 b.c.) 
 broken. For a brief time the two antagonists faced each other, 
 and many a Roman senator must have looked over the walls 
 at the figure of the tremendous young Carthaginian who had 
 shaken all Italy as with an earthquake. But they were not to 
 be frightened into offers of peace in this way, nor did they 
 send out any message to him. His army was not large enough 
 to lay siege to the greatest city of Italy, nor had he been able to 
 secure any siege machinery (§ 632), and he was obliged to 
 retreat without accomplishing anything. Capua was thereupon 
 captured by the Romans and punished without mercy. 
 
 The hitherto dauntless spirit of the young Carthaginian at 870. Hanni- 
 last began to feel the crushing weight of Roman confidence, forcements 
 When he had finally been ten years in Italy, he realized that intercepted 
 
 -^ -^ •' \ ^ and destroyed 
 
 unless powerful reenforcenents could reach him, his cause was (207 b.c.) 
 hopeless. His brother Hasdrubal in Spain had gathered an 
 army and was now marching into Italy to aid him. At the 
 Metaurus River, in the region of Sentinum, where the fate 
 of Rome had once before been settled (§ 819), Hasdrubal 
 was met by a Roman army. He was completely defeated and 
 
544 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 871. The 
 decline of 
 Hannibal's 
 power in 
 Italy and 
 the rise of 
 Scipio 
 
 872. Scipio 
 and Hanni- 
 bal meet 
 at Zama 
 (202 B.C.) ; 
 the tactics 
 of Hannibal 
 
 slain (207 B.C.). To the senators waiting in keenest anticipation 
 at Rome the news of the victory meant the salvation of Italy 
 and the final defeat of an enemy who had all but accomplished 
 the destruction of Roman power. To Hannibal, anxiously await- 
 ing tidings of his brother and of the needed reenforcements, 
 the first announcement of the disaster and the crushing of his 
 hopes was the head of Hasdrubal hurled into the Carthaginian 
 camp by a Roman messenger. 
 
 For a few years more Hannibal struggled on in the southern 
 tip of Italy, the only territory remaining of all that he had cap- 
 tured. Meantime the Romans, taught by sad experience, had 
 given the command of their forces in Spain to Scipio, one of 
 the ablest of their younger leaders. He had routed the Car- 
 thaginians and driven them entirely out of Spain, thus cutting 
 off their chief supply both of money and of troops. In Scipio 
 the Romans had at last found a general, with the masterful qual- 
 ities which make a great military leader. He demanded of the 
 Senate that he be sent to Africa to invade the dominions of 
 Carthage as Hannibal had invaded those of Rome. 
 
 By 203 B.C. Scipio had twice defeated the Carthaginian forces 
 in Africa, and Carthage was forced to call Hannibal home. He 
 had spent fifteen years on the soil of Italy, and the great strug- 
 gle between the almost exhausted rivals was now to be decided 
 in Africa. At Zama, inland from Carthage, the final battle 
 of the war took place. Hannibal, having insufficient cavalry, 
 foresaw that his weak cavalry wings would be defeated by 
 Scipio's opposing heavy bodies of horsemen. When, as he ex- 
 pected, the Roman cavalry wings disappeared in pursuit of his 
 own fleeing horsemen, the wings of both armies were cleared 
 away for one of those unexpected but carefully planned maneu- 
 vers by which the great Carthaginian had destroyed the Roman 
 army at Cannae. From behind his line Hannibal moved out two 
 divisions in opposite directions, elongating his own line beyond 
 the ends of the Roman line, which he intended to inclose on 
 either side. In football language, Hannibal had Qr<^?red his 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 545 
 
 backs to spread out and to execute a play around both the 
 Roman ends at once. The fate of two empires was trembling 
 in the balance as Hannibal's steel trap thus extended its jaws 
 on either side to enfold the Roman army. 
 
 But behind the Roman army there was a mind like that of 873. The 
 Hannibal. The keen eye of the Roman commander discovered moves of 
 the flash of movins: steel behind the Carthaginian lines. He |'^'P*^ hxxxig 
 
 o ° Roman vic- 
 
 understood the movement and at once grasped the danger which toiy at Zama 
 threatened his army. As a result of Cannse, Scipio had long 
 before abandoned all Roman tradition, and had taught his 
 front division to fight without the support of the rear divisions 
 behind them (§ 845). In football language again, he too had 
 learned to shift his backs and had taught the line to hold with- 
 out them. The shrewd young Roman commander therefore 
 gave his orders without hesitation. For the first time in history 
 the rear divisions behind the front of a Roman center left the 
 front division to fight alone. As quietly as on a parade march 
 they parted to the left and right and, marching behind the fight- 
 ing line in opposite directions, they took up their posts, extend- 
 ing the Roman front at either end where at first the cavalry 
 wings had been. When Hannibal's spreading divisions pushed 
 out beyond the Roman ends, where they were expected to carry 
 out their "around-the-end" movements, they found facing them 
 a Roman wall of steel, and the batde continued in two parallel 
 lines longer than before. The great Carthaginian had been 
 foiled at his own game by an equally great Roman. When the 
 Roman cavalry returned from their pursuit and fell on the 
 Carthaginian flank, Hannibal beheld his lines crumbling and 
 giving way in final and complete defeat. 
 
 In this great battle we see the conclusion of a long and re- 874. The 
 markable development in the art of war, from the wild disorder ^^^ . divi- 
 of entirely undisciplined fighting (Fig. 88) to the formation ^'°" tactics 
 of a heavy phalanx of disciplined men, the earliest trained- 
 fighting team as it appeared in the Orient (Fig. 87). Then 
 in Europe, after Philip and Alexander, the deep phalanx as 
 
54^ /^ ;/«>;// Times 
 
 used by the Greeks was no longer regarded by the >Romans 
 as a rigid, indivisible fighting unit, but it was broken up into a 
 fighting line in front and a group of shifting backs behind. 
 On the field of Zama, Scipio and Hannibal had advanced to a 
 new stage in the art of warfare, and had created what is now 
 known as " division tactics " — the art of manipulating an army 
 on the field in divisions shifted behind the line of battle as a 
 skillful football leader shifts his backs, trusting to the line to 
 hold while he does so. 
 
 875. The The victory of Rome over Carthage made Rome the leading 
 thTHamii-"^ power in the whole ancient world. In the treaty which followed 
 bahc War ^^ battle of Zama, the Romans forced Carthage to pay ten 
 
 thousand talents (over $11,000,000) in fifty years and to sur- 
 render all her warships but ten triremes. But what was worse 
 she lost her independence as a nation, and according to the 
 treaty she could not make war anywhere without the consent 
 of the Romans. Although the Romans did not annex her 
 territory in Africa, Carthage had become a vassal state. 
 
 876. The fate Hannibal had escaped after his lost battle at Zama. Although 
 
 we learn of his deeds chiefly through his enemies, the story 
 of his dauntless struggle to save his native country, begun 
 when he was only twenty-four and continued for twenty years, 
 reveals him as one of the greatest and most gifted leaders in 
 all history — a lion-hearted man, so strong of purpose that 
 only a great nation like Rome could have crushed him. Indeed, 
 Rome now compelled the Carthaginians to expel Hannibal, and, 
 a man of fifty, he went into exile in the East, where we shall 
 find him stirring up the successors of Alexander to combine 
 against Rome. 
 
 877. The de- Such was the commercial ability of the Carthaginians that 
 Carthage ° ^^^7 continued to prosper even while paying the heavy tribute 
 ^l^^ ?'^''* "• with which Rome had burdened them. Meantime, the new mis- 
 
 fhird Punic 
 
 War tress of the western Mediterranean kept an anxious eye on her 
 
 old rival. Even the stalwart Romans remembered with uneasi- 
 ness the invasion of Hannibal. Cato, a famous old-fashioned 
 
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 547 
 
 senator, was so convinced that Carthage was still a danger to 
 Rome that he concluded all his speeches in the Senate with the 
 words, " Carthage must be destroyed." For over fifty years 
 more the merchants of Carthage were permitted to traffic in 
 the western Mediterranean, and then the iron hand of Rome 
 was laid upon the doomed city for the last time. To defend 
 herself against the Numidians behind her, Carthage was 
 finally obliged to begin war against them. This step, which 
 
 Fig. 239. The Harbors of Carthage as they are To-day 
 
 Of the city destroyed by the Romans almost nothing has survived. It 
 was rebuilt under Julius Caesar, but, as we see here, very little of this 
 later city has survived. Thorough and systematic excavation would 
 probably recover many valuable remains of ancient Carthaginian civili- 
 zation, of which we know so little 
 
 the Romans had long been desiring, was a violation of the 
 treaty with Rome. The Senate seized the opportunity at 
 once and Carthage was called to account. In the three years' 
 war (Third Punic War) which followed, the beautiful city was 
 captured and completely destroyed (146 B.C.) (see Fig. 239). 
 Its territory was taken by Rome and called the Province of 
 Africa. A struggle of nearly one hundred and twenty years 
 had resulted in the annihilation of Rome's only remaining 
 rival in the West (see map III, p. 552). 
 
548 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 878. Rome, 
 supreme in 
 the West, 
 turns cast- 
 ward 
 
 Thus the fourfold rivalry in the western Mediterranean, 
 which had long included the Etruscans and Carthaginians, the 
 Greeks and the Romans, had ended with the triumph of the 
 once insignificant village above the prehistoric market on 
 the Tiber (§ 784). Racially, the western wing of the Indo- 
 European line had proved victorious over that of the Semite 
 line (Fig. 112). The western Mediterranean world was now 
 under the leadership of a single great nation, the Romans, as 
 the eastern Mediterranean world had once been under the 
 leadership of the Macedonians. We must now turn back and 
 follow the dealings of Rome with the Hellenistic-oriental world 
 of the eastern Mediterranean, which we left (Chap. XXI) 
 after it had attained the most highly refined civilization ever 
 achieved by ancient man (see map II, p. 448). 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 78. At what point did Rome and Carthage come into 
 conflict? How.? When.? Had the Romans any sea power.?- How- 
 did they get it ? Give a brief statement of the course of the Sicilian 
 War. What were the main results ? 
 
 Section 79. What territory did the Romans gain shortly after 
 the Sicilian War.? Whither did Carthage go for new resources.? 
 Who provoked the ensuing war ? Describe Hannibal's plan of cam- 
 paign in full. Recount his march into Italy. How did his numbers 
 compare with those of Rome.? W^hat can you say of his military 
 knowledge? Describe his first three encounters with the Romans. 
 Where did he then go ? What did the Romans do ? Draw two plans, 
 and tell the story of the battle of Cannae. What political moves did 
 Hannibal then make? How did the Romans meet them? What 
 course did Rome follow toward her revolting allies ? What happened 
 at Capua? What did Hannibal's brother do? 
 
 What were the Romans meantime doing in Spain ? Who was the 
 Roman leader there ? Recount the battle of Zama. What advance 
 in the art of warfare was shown there ? What were the main results 
 of the Hannibalic War? What became of Hannibal? Recount the 
 destruction of Carthage, How long had the struggle between Rome 
 and Carthage lasted ? Who was now leader of the West ? 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WORLD DOMINION AND DEGENERACY 
 
 Section 8o. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern 
 Mediterranean World 
 
 While the heirs of Alexander were carrying on their cease- 
 less feuds, plots, wars, and alliances in the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean, as we have seen them doing down to about 200 B.C. 
 (Chap. XX), the vast power of Rome had been slowly rising 
 in the West. The serious consequences of Rome's growth, and, 
 especially of her expansion beyond the sea, were now evident. 
 The Roman Senate could not allow any state on the Mediter- 
 ranean to develop such strength as to endanger Rome in the 
 way Carthage had done during the Hannibalic War. For this 
 and other reasons the western giant was now to overshadow 
 the whole Hellenistic world of the East, and finally to draw the 
 
 Note. The relief above, found in the Theater of Marcelkis, built by Augustus 
 (§ 994), gives us a very vivacious glimpse of a battle between gladiators and wild 
 beasts, just as the Romans saw it. The gladiators in this combat wear only a 
 tunic and have no defensive armor except a helmet and a shield. Note the ex- 
 pression of pain on the face of the gladiator at the left, whose arm is being 
 lacerated by the lion. 
 
 549 
 
 879. Coming 
 conflict be- 
 tween the 
 western and 
 the eastern 
 (Hellenistic) 
 Mediterra- 
 nean world 
 
of the Roman 
 war with 
 Macedon 
 
 550 Ancient Times 
 
 three great states of Alexander's heirs into his grasp. I^et us see 
 what the reasons for the first collision were (see map II, p. 448). 
 
 880. Causes Hannibal had induced Macedonia to combine with him 
 against Rom^e (§ 866). This hostile step could not be over- 
 looked by the Romans after the Hannibalic War. Philip, the 
 
 Macedonian king, was a gifted ruler and an able military com- 
 mander like his great ancestor, the father of Alexander the 
 Great, a hundred and fifty years earlier. The further plans 
 of this later Philip filled the Senate with anxiety. For he 
 had arranged a combination between himself and Antiochus 
 the Great (the third of the name), the Seleucid king of Syria. 
 By this alliance the two were to divide the dominions of Egypt 
 between them. Because of what he had already done, and 
 also because of what he would do if allowed to go on and 
 gain greatly increased power, the Romans were now obliged to 
 turn eastward and crush Philip of Macedon (map II, p. 448). 
 
 881. Battle of The Greek states had no reason to support the rule of 
 (i^"°Bx.^;^^ Macedonia over them; Antiochus was too busy seizing the 
 ^ssal^T ^ Asiatic territory of Egypt to send any help to Macedonia ; and 
 Rome hence a year after the close of the Hannibalic War, Philip 
 
 found himself without strong allies, face to face with a Roman 
 army. By his unusual skill as a commander he evaded the 
 Roman force for some time. But in the end the massive Mace- 
 donian phalanx, bristling with long spears, was obliged to meet 
 the onset of the Roman legions, with their deadly short swords 
 and the puzzling divisions behind the lines shifting into unex- 
 pected positions which the phalanx was not flexible enough 
 to meet. On the field of Cynoscephalae (dog's heads), in 
 197 B.C., the Macedonian army was disastrously routed, and 
 the ancient realm of Alexander the Great became a vassal state 
 under Rome. As allies of Rome, the Greek states were then 
 granted their freedom by the Romans. 
 
 This war with Macedon brought the Romans into conflict 
 with Antiochus the Great, the Seleucid king, who held a large 
 part of the vast empire of Persia in Asia. For Antiochus now 
 
World Dominioji and Degeneracy 5 5 1 
 
 endeavored to profit by Philip's defeat and to seize some of 882. Roman 
 Philip's former possessions which the Romans had declared theSdeudd 
 free. A war with this powerful Asiatic empire was not a matter Empire, re- 
 
 ^ ^ sultmg from 
 
 which the Romans could view without great anxiety. Moreover, the conquest 
 Hannibal, expelled from Carthage (§ 876), was now in Greece 
 with Antiochus, advising him. In spite of the warnings and 
 urgent counsels of Hannibal, Antiochus threw away his oppor- 
 tunities in Greece until the Roman legions maneuvered him 
 back into Asia Minor, whither the Romans followed him, and 
 there the great power of the West for the first time confronted 
 the motley forces of the ancient Orient as marshaled by the 
 successor of Persia in Asia (see map H, p. 448). 
 
 The conqueror of Hannibal at Zama was with the Roman 883. The 
 army to counsel his brother, another Scipio, consul for the year, Amiochus ° 
 and therefore in command of the legions. There was no hope 'f- Magnesia 
 
 ^ ^ (190 B.C.) and 
 
 for the undisciplined troops of the Orient when confronted by the voluntary 
 
 ^ 11 r 1 • T vassalship 
 
 a Roman army under such masters 01 the new tactics as these of Egypt 
 two Scipios. At Magnesia, the West led by Rome overthrew ^^ ^'^^ . 
 the East led by the dilatory Antiochus (190 B.C.), and the lands 
 of Asia Minor eastward to the Halys River submitted to Roman 
 control. Under the ensuing treaty Antiochus was not permitted 
 to cross the Halys River westward or to send a warship west 
 of the same longitude. Within twelve years (200 to 189 b.c.) 
 Roman arms had reduced to the condition of vassal states two 
 of the three great empires which succeeded Alexander in the 
 East — Macedonia and Syria (see map IH, p. 448). As for 
 Egypt, the third, friendship had from the beginning existed 
 between her and Rome. A little over thirty years after a 
 Roman army had first appeared in the Hellenistic world, Egypt 
 acknowledged herself a vassal of Rome (168 B.C.). 
 
 Although defeated, the eastern Mediterranean world long 884. Anni- 
 continued to give the Romans much trouble. The quarrels of Macedon 
 the eastern states amons^ themselves were constantly carried . and the sub- 
 
 ^ ■' jection of 
 
 to Rome for settlement. It became necessary to destroy Mace- the Greeks 
 donia as a kingdom and to make her a Roman province. At 
 
552 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 885. The 
 rapidity of 
 the Roman 
 conquests 
 
 886. Rome's 
 great task 
 of imperial 
 organization 
 
 the same time Greek sympathy for Macedonia was made the 
 pretext for greater severity toward the Greeks. Many were 
 carried off to Italy as hostages, and among them no less than 
 a thousand noble and educated Achseans were brought to Rome. 
 When in spite of this the Achaean League (§ 725) rashly brought 
 on a war with Rome, the Romans applied the same methods 
 which they were using against Carthage. The same year 
 which saw the destruction of Carthage witnessed the burn- 
 ing of Corinth also (146 B.C.). Greek liberty was of course 
 ended, and while a city of such revered memories as Athens 
 might be given greater freedom (§ 726), those Greek states 
 whose careers of glorious achievement in civilization we have 
 followed, were reduced to the condition of Roman vassals. 
 
 It was little more than three generations since the Republic 
 on the Tiber took the fateful step of beginning the conflict with 
 Carthage for the leadership of the West. That struggle had led 
 her into a similar conflict for the leadership of the East. There 
 w^ere old men still living who had talked with veterans of the 
 Sicilian War with Carthage, and the grandsons of the Romans 
 who had fought with Hannibal had burned Carthage and 
 Corinth at the end of the great wars. For nearly a century 
 and a quarter (beginning 264 B.C.) one great war had followed 
 another, and the Roman republic, beginning these struggles as 
 mistress of Italy only, had in this short space of time (from great- 
 grandfather to great-grandson) gained the political leadership of 
 the civilized world (cf. maps I, II, and III, p. 552). 
 
 The Roman Senate had shown eminent ability in conduct- 
 ing the great wars, but now, having gained the supremacy 
 of the Mediterranean world, Rome was faced by the problem 
 of devising successful government for the vast dominions which 
 she had so quickly conquered. In extent they would have 
 reached entirely across the United States. To organize such 
 an empire was a task like that which had been so successfully 
 accomplished by Darius, the organizer of the Persian Empire 
 (§ 267). We shall find that the Roman Senate utterly failed 
 
Longitude j^ V0° J^^eA 
 
 40° 50° 
 
 \ Map in 
 
 Expansion of Roman Power 
 
 from the End of the Hannibalian War 
 
 to the Beginning of the Revolution 
 
 (201-133 B.C.) 
 Scale of Miles 
 
 500 \(o 
 
 Sequence Map showing the Expansion of the Roman Powe 
 
 TO THE Death < 
 
Greenwich 40° 
 
 J \ Map 11 
 
 Expansion of Roman Power 
 
 between the Sicilian and Hannibalian 
 
 Wars with Carthage (241-218 B.C.) 
 
 Scale of Miles 
 100 300 500 
 
 •ROM THE Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 b.c.) 
 
 Z!iESAR (44 B.C.) 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 553 
 
 in the effort to organize the new dominions. The failure had 
 a most disastrous influence on the Romans themselves and, 
 together with the ruinous effects of the long wars on Italy, 
 finally overthrew the Roman republic — an overthrow in which 
 Rome as a nation almost perished. Let us now glance at the 
 efforts of Rome to govern her new dominions and then 
 observe the effect of the long wars and of world power on 
 the Romans and their life. 
 
 Section 81. Roman Government and Civilization 
 IN THE Age of Conquest 
 
 The Romans had at first no experience in governing their 887. Estab- 
 conquered lands, as the United States had none when it took of R^man 
 possession of the Philippines. Most of the conquered coun- P^'o^inces 
 tries the Romans organized as provinces, somewhat after the 
 manner of the provinces of the old Persian Empire. The peo- 
 ple of a province were not permitted to maintain an army, 
 but they were obliged to pay taxes and, lastly, to submit to 
 the uncontrolled rule of a Roman magistrate who was gov- 
 ernor of the province. It was chiefly the presence and power 
 of this governor which made the condition of the provinces 
 beyond the sea so different from that of the Roman possessions 
 in Italy. The regulations for the rule of the provinces were 
 made in each case by the Roman Senate, and on the whole 
 they were not oppressive. But the Senate made no provisions 
 for compelling the Roman governor to obey these regulations. 
 
 Such a governor, enjoying unlimited power like that of an 888. The 
 oriental sovereign, found himself far from home with Roman pow^rTnd 
 troops at his elbow awaiting^ his slightest command. He had corruption of 
 
 ^ . t> & the Roman 
 
 complete control of all the taxes of the province, and he could provincial 
 take what he needed from its people to support his troops and 
 the expenses of his government. He usually held office for^a 
 single year and was generally without experience in provincial 
 government. His eagerness to gain a fortune in his short term 
 
554 
 
 A^tcient Times 
 
 889. The 
 
 new wealth 
 of Rome 
 
 890. Growth 
 of commerce 
 and the rise 
 of banking 
 
 of office and his complete ignorance of the needs of his prov- 
 ince frequently reduced his government to a mere system of 
 looting and robbery. The Senate soon found it necessary to 
 have laws passed for the punishment of such abuses ; but these 
 laws were found to be of little use in improving the situation. 
 
 The effects of this situation were soon apparent in Italy. In 
 the first place, the income of the Roman government was so 
 enormously increased that it was no longer necessary to collect 
 direct taxes from Roman citizens. This new wealth was not 
 confined to the State. The spoils from the wars were usually 
 taken by the victorious commanders and their troops. At the 
 same time the provinces were soon filled with Roman business 
 men. There were contractors called publicans, who were allowed 
 to collect the taxes for the State at a great profit (§ 623), or 
 gained the right to work State lands. We remember the common 
 references to these publicans in the New Testament, where they 
 are regularly classified with " sinners." With them came Roman 
 money-lenders, who enriched themselves by loaning money at 
 high rates of interest to the numerous provincials who were 
 obliged to borrow to pay the extortionate taxes claimed by 
 the Roman governors. The publicans were themselves money- 
 lenders, and all these men of money plundered the provinces 
 worse than the greedy Roman governors themselves. As these 
 people returned to Italy, there grew up a wealthy class such 
 as had been unknown there before. 
 
 Their ability to buy resulted in a vast import trade to supply 
 the demand. From the Bay of Naples to the mouth of the 
 Tiber the sea was white with Roman ships converging on the 
 docks of Rome. The men who controlled all this traffic be- 
 came wealthy merchants. To handle all the money in circula- 
 tion, banks were required. During the Hannibalic War the 
 first banks appeared at Rome occupying a line of booths on 
 each side of the Forum. After 200 b.c. these booths gave 
 way to a fine basilica (§ 732) like those which had appeared in 
 the Hellenistic cities (Fig. 271,3). Here the new wealthy class 
 
World Domi7iion and Degeneracy 
 
 555 
 
 met to transact financial business, and here large companies 
 were formed for the collection of taxes and for taking govern- 
 ment contracts to build roads and bridges or to erect public build- 
 ino's. Shares in such companies were daily sold, and a business 
 like that of a modern 
 stock exchange devel- 
 oped in the Forum. 
 
 Under these influ- 
 ences Rome greatly 
 changed. With in- 
 creasing wealth and 
 growing population, 
 there was a great 
 increase in the de- 
 mand for dwellings. 
 Rents at once rose, 
 and land in the city 
 greatly increased in 
 value. A good form 
 of paying investment 
 was apartments for 
 rent, and as the value 
 of property rose, a 
 larger return in rents 
 could be secured by 
 increasing the number 
 of floors. Hence own- 
 ers began to erect 
 tall buildings with 
 several stories, though these ancient '' skyscrapers " were 
 never as tall as ours. It became necessary to limit their height 
 by law, as we do, and when badly built, as they sometimes were, 
 they fell down, as they have been known to do in our own cities. 
 
 When a returned governor of Africa put up a showy new 
 house, the citizen across the way who still lived in his father's 
 
 Fig. 240. An 
 
 Old Roman 
 House 
 
 Atrium- 
 
 There was no attempt at beautiful archi- 
 tecture, and the bare front showed no adorn- 
 ment whatever. The opening in the roof, 
 which lighted the atrium {§ 892), received 
 the rainfall of a section of the roof sloping 
 toward it, and this water collected in a pool 
 built to receive it in the floor of the atrium 
 below (Fig. 241, B), The tiny area, or garden, 
 shown in the rear was not common. It was 
 here that the later Romans added the Hel- 
 lenistic peristyle (Fig. 242) 
 
 891. Rome 
 becomes a 
 profitable 
 real-estate 
 center 
 
556 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 892. The old- 
 fashioned 
 Roman 
 house 
 
 Fig. 241 
 
 OF A Roman 
 Peristyle 
 
 House 
 
 old house began to be dissatisfied with it. It was built of sun- 
 dried brick, and, like the old setder's cabin of early America, it 
 had but one room. In this room all the household life centered. 
 The stool and spinning outfit of the wife and the bed of the 
 
 citizen were each 
 assigned to a comer, 
 while the kitchen 
 was simply another 
 corner where the 
 family meals were 
 cooked over an open 
 fire. There was no 
 chimney, and the 
 smoke passed out 
 of a square hole in 
 the middle of the 
 roof. The whole 
 place was so be- 
 grimed by smoke 
 that the room was 
 called the atrium^ 
 a word perhaps 
 connected with the 
 Latin word for 
 ^'black"(Fig. 240). 
 Here, then, the fam- 
 ily took their meals, 
 here they slept, and 
 here in full view of 
 pots and ketdes, 
 beds and tables, the master of the house received his friends 
 and transacted his affairs with business or official callers. 
 
 The Roman citizen of the new age had walked the streets of 
 the Hellenistic cities. Indeed, he had long before been familiar 
 with the comfort, luxury, and beauty with which the Greek 
 
 The earliest Roman house had consisted of a 
 single room, the atrium {A), with the pool for the 
 rain water [B). Then a small alcove, or lean-to, 
 was erected at the rear (C), as a room for the 
 master of the house. Later the bedrooms on 
 each side of the atrium were added. Finally, 
 under the influence of Greek life (§ 893), the 
 garden court {D and Fig. 242) with its surround- 
 ing colonnaded porch (peristyle) (Fig. 208) and 
 a fountain in the middle {E) was built at the 
 rear. Then a dining room, sitting room, and 
 bedrooms were added, which opened on this 
 court, and being without windows, they were 
 lighted from the court through the doors. In 
 town houses it was quite easy to partition off 
 a shop, or even a whole row of shops, along 
 the front or side of the house, as in the Hel- 
 lenistic house (Fig. 208). The houses of Pom- 
 peii (Fig. 255) were almost ^11 built in this way 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 
 
 557 
 
 houses of Capua and Naples were filled (§§ 728 and 738). At 893. The 
 
 . , . 1 r 1 • • 1 wealthy 
 
 first he added bedrooms on either side of his atrium and an Roman's 
 additional small room at its rear, as the master's office and pri- JJ^^s^"^^""^ 
 vate room. Soon, however, even the enlarged atrium-house 
 
 Fig. 242. Peristyle of a Pompeian House 
 We must imagine ourselves standing with our backs toward the atrium 
 (having immediately behind us the room C in Fig. 241). We look out 
 into the court, the garden of the house (Fig. 241, Z>). The marble 
 tables and statues and the marble fountain basin in the middle 
 (Fig. 241, E), just as we see them here in the drawing, were all found by 
 the excavators in their places, as they were covered by volcanic ashes 
 over eighteen hundred years ago (Fig. 255). Here centered the family 
 life, and here the children played about the court, brightened with 
 flowers and the tinkling music of the fountains 
 
 (Fig. 240) was not large enough, and behind it was added the 
 Hellenistic court surrounded by its colonnaded porch (Figs. 241 
 and 242), from which opened bedrooms, a dining room, a 
 library, rest rooms, and at the rear the kitchen. As luxury in- 
 creased a second story might be added to receive the bedrooms 
 
558 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 894. The 
 
 luxurious 
 furnishings 
 and adorn- 
 ment of the 
 wealthy Ro- 
 man's house 
 
 895. The 
 
 new conven- 
 iences and 
 luxuries of 
 the wealthy 
 Roman 
 household 
 
 and perhaps the dining room also. The atrium then became a 
 large and stately reception hall where the master of the house 
 could display his wealth in statues, paintings, and other works 
 of art — the trophies of war from the East. 
 
 The old Roman houses had been unadorned and had con- 
 tained nothing but the bare necessities. Carthaginian ambassa- 
 dors had been much amused to recognize at successive dinners in 
 Rome the same silver dishes which had been loaned around from 
 house to house. Not long before the Carthaginian wars an ex- 
 consul had been fined for having more than ten pounds' weight 
 of silverware in his house. A generation later a wealthy Roman 
 was using in his household silverware which weighed some ten 
 thousand pounds. One of the Roman conquerors of Macedonia 
 entered Rome with two hundred and fifty wagonloads of Greek 
 statues and paintings. The general who crushed the ^^.tolians 
 carried off over five hundred bronze and marble statues, while 
 the destroyer of Carthage filled all Rome with Greek sculptures. 
 A wealthy citizen in even so small a city as Pompeii paved a 
 dining alcove with a magnificent mosaic picture of Alexander in 
 battle (Fig. 202), which had once formed a floor in a splendid 
 Hellenistic house in Alexandria. In the same way the finest 
 furniture, hangings, and carpets of the East now began to adorn 
 the houses of the wealthy in Rome. 
 
 All those conveniences which we have found in the Hellenistic 
 dwellings (§ 728) were likewise quickly introduced, such as pipes 
 for mnning water, baths, and sanitary conveniences. The more 
 elaborate houses were finally equipped with tile pipes conduct- 
 ing hot air for warming the important rooms, the earliest sys- 
 tem of hot-air heating yet found. The kitchen was furnished 
 with beautiful bronze utensils, far better than those commonly 
 found in our own kitchens (Fig. 243). On social occasions the 
 food on the table included imported delicacies and luxuries, pur- 
 chased at enormous expense. A jar of salted fish from the Black 
 Sea cost seventy-five or eighty dollars, and the old-fashioned sena- 
 tor Cato, in a speech in the Senate, protested against such 
 
World Dominion and Degejieracy 
 
 559 
 
 luxury, stating that " Rome was the only city in the world 
 where such a jar of fish cost more than a yoke of oxen." 
 
 Such luxury required a great body of household servants. 896. Numer- 
 There was a doorkeeper at the front door (he was called '' jani- hoid^s^^tnts 
 tor" from the Latin word ja/ma, meaning ''door"), and from chiefly slaves 
 
 Fig. 243. Bronze Kitchen Utensils excavated at Pompeii 
 
 This kitchen ware used by the cooks of Pompeii was found still lying 
 in the kitchens of the houses as they were uncovered by the excavators. 
 The pieces have been lettered, and the student will find it interesting to 
 make a list of them by name, identifying them by letter and indicating 
 their use as far as possible 
 
 the front door inward there was a servant for every small duty 
 in the house, even to the attendant who rubbed down the mas- 
 ter of the house after his bath. Almost all these menials were 
 slaves, but it was not always possible to secure a slave as cook, 
 and a wealthy Roman would pay as much as five thousand 
 dollars a year for a really good cook. 
 
56o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 897. Works 
 of Greek art 
 in Rome and 
 their refining 
 influence 
 
 898. Helle- 
 nistic archi- 
 tecture in 
 Rome; the 
 basilica and 
 the theater 
 
 899. Andro- 
 nicus and his 
 translations 
 of Greek 
 literature into 
 Latin (240- 
 207 B.C.) 
 
 While the effect of all this luxury introduced from the East 
 was on the whole very bad, nevertheless the former plain, 
 matter-of-fact, prosaic life of the Roman citizen was stimulated 
 and refined both at home and in the Senate hall by the most 
 beautiful creations of Greek genius. Even while eating his 
 dinner, the commonplace citizen of Pompeii sat looking at the 
 heroic death of the Persian nobles of Darius (Fig. 202). But 
 there were never any Roman artists capable of producing such 
 works as these. 
 
 A Roman senator returning from Alexandria could not but 
 feel that Rome, in spite of some new and modern buildings, 
 was very plain and unattractive, with its simple temples and 
 old public buildings ; and he realized that Alexandria was the 
 greatest and most splendid city in the world. Roman emula- 
 tion was aroused and forms of Hellenistic architecture, like the 
 basilica on the Forum (§ 890), were beginning to appear in 
 Rome. It was not long, too, before a Greek theater appeared, 
 improved by the Romans with awnings to keep out the hot 
 sunshine, a curtain in front of the stage, like ours, and seats 
 in the orchestra circle where once the Greek chorus had sung 
 (Plate VII, p. 560). 
 
 At the close of the Sicilian War (241 B.C.) a Greek slave 
 named Andronicus, who had been taken as a lad by the Romans 
 when they captured the Greek city of Tarentum (§ 824), was 
 given his freedom by his master at Rome. Seeing the interest 
 of the Romans in Greek literature, he translated the Odyssey 
 (§ 410) into Latin as a schoolbook for Roman children. For 
 their elders he likewise rendered into Latin the classic trage- 
 dies which we have seen in Athens (§ 579), and also a 
 number of Attic comedies (§ 582). This worthy Greek, An- 
 dronicus, was the first literary man in history to attempt 
 artistic translations possessing literaiy finish. He was, there- 
 fore, the founder of the art of literary translation. Through 
 his work the materials and the forms of Greek literature 
 began to enter Roman life. 
 

 _^ 
 
 c oj ^ 
 
 
 ^I^ 
 
 :^ ^ o 
 
 
 CO 
 
 1? s 
 
 
 
 -V <U VM 
 
 
 — 
 
 Z^ "" 
 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 2 c 
 
 •-'Co 
 
 y. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 G^i^ ^ 
 
 
 
 a ui ■>-> 
 
 ,,<i 
 
 X 
 
 rt (U > 
 
 
 "o 
 
 ^-^^ 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 ,^ 
 
 (U c "1 
 
 --^ 
 
 — 
 
 ^ - u 
 
 ::: 
 
 Q 
 
 ^ ii ^ 
 
 
 
 ^ -z; o 
 
 ^ 
 
 3 
 
 
 X 
 
 VJ 
 
 O) •" Hi 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 — 
 
 -1-' 
 
 ^ j:: .22 
 
 - 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ M ^ 
 
 ■p. 
 
 X 
 
 2 ^ "^ 
 
 <f 
 
 $■ 
 
 
 y. 
 
 1 
 
 i3 C/2 >^ 
 
 lr> ^ J^ 
 
 <; 
 
 
 
 cfl oj — 
 
 r"' 
 
 ^r; 
 
 ^ 
 
 ." 
 
 
 3 
 
 ^ ■" ^^ 
 
 ;^ 
 
 ~ 
 
 s "^ '§) 
 
 Ei; 
 
 £ 
 
 OS c^ "S 
 
 -r 
 
 ~-' 
 
 — 
 
 p 
 
 ■^ ■> «J, 
 
 -r 
 
 ' r- 
 
 c« 
 
 ,tj 
 
 j^; 
 
 P "^ 
 
 '> 
 
 (U 
 
 
 
 
 1) 
 
 — 
 
 5 <u 
 
 bJO 
 
 
 
 •" -G 
 
 G 
 
 
 : — ' 
 
 
 o 
 
 .^ 
 
 ^ --W 
 
 o 
 
 12 
 
 £ o 
 
 03 
 
 o 
 
 :^ 
 
 2 i5 
 
 c« 
 
 z 
 
 .~ 
 
 3 Co 
 
 7i V 
 
 13 
 
 >. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 :_ 72 
 
 > 
 
 "u 
 
 'f^ 
 
 3 -S 
 
 <u 
 
 03 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 (U 
 
 
 1—1 
 
 - — - 
 
 bJD 
 
 
 
 ?£ 
 
 c^ 
 
 o3 
 
 ^ 
 
 M 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 "£:'" 
 
 (U 
 
 W 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 £^1 
 
 T3 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 Ir- 
 
 o •> 
 
 IH 
 
 03 
 
 £ 
 
 0-3 
 
 
 
 
 1) """ 
 
 <u 
 
 > 
 
 
 •2^ ?i 
 
 03 
 
 o 
 
 
 o^ 
 
 C 
 
 to 
 
 
 
 
 "c? 
 
 s 
 
 
 ^ J" 
 
 o 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 561 
 
 The Romans had been accustomed to do very little in the 900. The old 
 way of educating their children. There were no schools at first, Ronlan^ 
 but the good old Roman custom had been for the father to in- schools 
 struct his own children. Even when schools arose, there was 
 no literature for the Roman lads to learn, as Greek boys had 
 learned Homer and the other poets (§ 555). The Roman 
 father's respect for law and order led him to have his son taught 
 the "Twelve Tables" of the law, and recite them to the school- 
 master, as English-speaking children are taught the Ten Com- 
 mandments. Such schools had been very poorly equipped; 
 some of them, indeed, were held in the open air in a side 
 street or a corner of the Forum. At best they had met in 
 a bare room belonging to a dwelling house, and there were no 
 schoolhouses. 
 
 Gradually parents began to send their children to the schools 901. Greek 
 which the freed Greek slaves of Rome were beginning to open jn the new 
 there. Moreover, there was here and there a household which p^ucation 
 
 ' in Kome 
 
 possessed an educated Greek slave, like. Andronicus, who might 
 become the tutor of the children, giving regular instruction and 
 teaching his pupils to read from the new primer of Andronicus, 
 as we may call his Latin translation of Homer. Now and then 
 Greek teachers of renown appeared and lectured in Rome. 
 Young Roman nobles thus gained the opportunity of studying . 
 rhetoric and public speaking, which they knew to be of great 
 practical use in the career of public office to which they all 
 aspired. Indeed, it was not uncommon for a young Roman of 
 station to complete his higher education in Athens itself (§ 762). 
 
 As Rome gained control of Greece, the mingling of Greek 902. The 
 and Roman life was increasingly intimate. When a thousand cultivated 
 of the leading Achaeans were brought to Rome as hostages ^^^g!^" 
 (§ 884), there was among them a Greek statesman of great Polybius 
 refinement and literary culture named Polybius. He was taken 
 into the family of the Scipios, traveled about with them on their 
 great campaigns, and occupied a position of dignity and re- 
 spect. He witnessed the destruction of both Carthage and 
 
562 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 903. Greek 
 
 foundations 
 of Latin 
 literature 
 
 904. Rise 
 of Latin 
 literature 
 
 Corinth, and finally wrote an immortal history, in Greek, of 
 the great Roman wars. Such cultivated Greeks had a great 
 influence on the finer Romans like the Scipios. Polybius tells 
 how he stood with the younger Scipio and watched the burn- 
 ing of Carthage, while his young Roman lord burst into tears 
 and quoted Homer's noble lines regarding the destruction 
 of Troy. 
 
 Such familiarity with the only literature known to the Romans, 
 such daily and hourly intimacy with cultivated Greeks, aroused 
 the impulse toward literary expression among the Romans 
 themselves. To be sure, the Latins, like all peasant peoples, 
 had had their folk songs and their simple forms of verse, but 
 these natural products of the soil of Latium soon disappeared 
 as the men of Latin speech felt the influence of an already 
 highly finished literature. Latin literature, therefore, did not 
 develop along its own lines from native beginnings, as did 
 Greek literature, but it grew up on the basis of a great inherit- 
 ance from abroad. Indeed, we now see, as the Roman poet 
 Horace said, that Rome, the conqueror, was herself conquered 
 by the civilization of the Greeks. 
 
 Poets and writers of history now arose in Italy, and educated 
 Romans could read of the great deeds of their ancestors in long 
 epic poems modeled on those of Homer. In such literature were 
 gradually recorded the picturesque legends of early Rome, like 
 the story of Romulus and Remus and similar tales (p. 484, note), 
 extending down through the early kings (p. 497, note). It is 
 from these sources, now no longer regarded as history, that the 
 early history of Rome used to be drawn. The Greek comedies 
 of Menander (§ 754) attracted the Romans greatly; imitat- 
 ing these, the new Latin play writers, especially Eiautus (died 
 about 184 B.C.) and Terence (died about 159 B.C.), produced 
 very clever comedies caricaturing the society of Rome, to which 
 the Romans listened with uproarious delight. Their production 
 on the stage led to the highly developed theater buildings which 
 we have already mentioned (§ 898). 
 
World Dominioji and Degeneracy 563 
 
 As the new Latin literature grew, papyrus rolls bearing Latin 905. Publish- 
 works were more and more common in Rome. Then publish- ^nd the^eTu- 
 ers, in back rooms filled with slave copyists, began to appear ^^^^^ ^^^*^ 
 in the city. One of the Roman conquerors of Macedon brought 
 back the books of the Macedonian king, and founded the first 
 private library in Rome. Wealthy Romans were now pro- 
 viding library rooms in their houses. A group of literary 
 men arose, including the finest of the Roman leaders, and no 
 man could claim to belong to this cultivated world without 
 acquaintance with a well-stocked library of Greek and Latin 
 books. Such Romans spoke Greek almost if not quite as well 
 as Latin. These educated men were finally in sharp contrast 
 with the uneducated mass of the Roman people, and there 
 thus arose the two classes, educated and uneducated — a 
 distinction unknown in the days of the early farmer republic. 
 
 Section 82. Degeneration in City and Country 
 
 The new life of Greek culture and luxury brought with it 906. Corrupt- 
 many evils. Even the younger Scipio, an ardent friend of Greek [Jf^the new^^^ 
 literature and art, expressed his pained surprise at finding ^"^V'^^ laws 
 Roman boys in a Greek dancing school, learning unwholesome travagance 
 dances, just as many worthy people among us disapprove of 
 the new dances now widely cultivated in America. Cato, one 
 of the hardiest of the old-fashioned Romans, denounced the new 
 culture and the luxury which had come in with it (§ 895). As 
 censor he had the power to stop many of the luxurious new 
 practices, and he spread terror among the showy young dandies 
 and ladies of fashion in Rome. He and other Romans like him 
 succeeded in passing law after law against expensive habits of 
 many kinds, like the growing love of showy jewelry among 
 the women, or their use of carriages where they formerly 
 went on foot. But such laws could not prevent the slow cor- 
 ruption of the people. The old simplicity, purity, and beauty 
 of Roman family life was disappearing, and divorce was 
 
564 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 907. Inability 
 of the masses 
 to appreciate 
 Greek 
 literature 
 
 908. Gladi- 
 atorial com- 
 bats as a 
 political 
 influence 
 
 909. Amphi- 
 theater for 
 gladiatorial 
 combats, and 
 circuses for 
 chariot races 
 
 becoming common. The greatest days of Roman character 
 were past, and Roman power was to go on growing, without 
 the restraining influence of old Roman virtue. 
 
 This was especially evident in the lives of the uneducated and 
 poorer classes also. To them, as indeed to the vast majority of 
 all classes, Greek civilization was chiefly attractive because of 
 the numerous luxuries of Hellenistic life. The common people 
 had no comprehension of Greek civilization. At the destruction 
 of Corinth, Polybius saw Roman soldiers shaking dice on a won- 
 derful old Greek painting which they had torn down from the 
 wall and spread out on the ground like an old piece of awning. 
 When a cultivated Roman thought to gain popular favor by 
 arranging a program of Greek instrumental music at a pub- 
 lic entertainment, the audience stopped the performance and 
 shouted to the musicians to throw down their instruments and 
 begin a boxing match ! Contrast this with the Athenian public 
 in the days of Pericles 1 
 
 It was to Roman citizens with tastes like these that the 
 leaders of the new age were obliged to turn for votes and for 
 support in order to gain office. To such tastes, therefore, the 
 Roman nobles began to appeal. Early in the Sicilian War with 
 Carthage there had been introduced the old Etruscan custom 
 of single combats between condemned criminals or slaves, who 
 slew each other to honor the funeral of some great Roman. 
 These combatants came to be called gladiators, from a Latin 
 word gladiiis, meaning " sword." The delight of the Roman 
 people in these bloody displays was such that the officials in 
 charge of the various public feasts, without waiting for a 
 funeral, used to arrange a long program of such combats in 
 the hope of pleasing the people, and thus gaining their votes 
 and securing election to future higher offices. 
 
 These barbarous and bloody spectacles took place at first 
 within a temporary circle of seats, which finally became a great 
 stone structure especially built for the purpose. It was called 
 an amphitheater, because it was formed by placing two {amphi) 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 565 
 
 theaters face to face (Fig. 262). Soon afterward combats be- 
 tween gladiators and wild beasts were introduced (headpiece, 
 p. 549). The athletic contests which had so interested the 
 Greeks were far too tame for the appetite of the Roman public. 
 The chariot race, however, did appeal to the Romans, and they 
 began to build enormous courses surrounded by seats for vast 
 numbers of spectators. These buildings they called circuses. 
 
 The common people of Rome were thus gradually debased 910. Distri- 
 and taught to expect such public spectacles, sometimes lasting fr"e grain 
 for days, as their share of the plunder from the great con- ^^^^uo^^'^' 
 quests. At the same time, as their poverty increased, the free 
 food once furnished them by the wealthy classes far exceeded 
 what private donors w^ere able to give. It was therefore taken 
 up by the State, which arranged regular distributions of grain 
 to the populace. Vicious as this custom was, it was far from 
 being so great an evil as the bribery which the candidates for 
 office now secretly practiced. Laws passed to prevent the 
 practice were of slight effect. The only Roman citizens who 
 could vote were those who attended the assemblies at Rome, 
 and henceforth we have only too often the spectacle of a 
 Roman candidate controlling the government that ruled the 
 world by bribing the little body of citizens who attended the 
 Roman assemblies. 
 
 All these practices enormously increased the expenses of a 911. Ex- 
 political career. The young Roman, who formerly might have a poHtlcai 
 demonstrated his ability and his worthy character in some minor 
 office as a claim upon the votes of the community, was now service 
 obliged to borrow money to pay for a long program of gladia- 
 torial games. In secret he might also spend a large sum in 
 bribing voters. If elected he received no salary, and in carry- 
 ing on the business of his office he was again obliged to meet 
 heavy expenses. For the Roman government had never been 
 properly equipped with clerks, bookkeepers, and accountants; 
 that is, the staff of public servants whom we call the '' civil 
 service." The newly elected official, therefore, had to supply 
 
 career; lack 
 of a civil 
 
566 
 
 Aficient Times 
 
 912. Growth 
 of self- 
 interest; the 
 unrepubhcan 
 character of 
 returned 
 provincial 
 ffovemors 
 
 913. Growth 
 of great es- 
 tates ; decline 
 of the small 
 farms 
 
 914. Cap- 
 tives of war 
 as slaves 
 
 a staff of clerks at his own expense. Even a consul sat at 
 home in a household room turned into an ofHce and carried 
 on government business with his own clerks and accountants, 
 of whom one was usually a Greek. 
 
 The Roman politician now sought office, in order that through 
 it he might gain the influence which would bring him the governor- 
 ship of a rich province. If he finally gained his object, he often 
 reached his province burdened with debts incurred in winning 
 elections in Rome. But the prize of a large province was worth 
 all it cost. Indeed, the consulship itself was finally regarded as 
 merely a stepping-stone to a provincial governorship. When a 
 retired provincial governor returned to Rome, he was no longer 
 the simple Roman of the good old days. He lived like a prince 
 and, as we have seen, he surrounded himself with royal luxury. 
 These men of self-interest, who had held the supreme power 
 in a province, were a menace to the republic, for they had 
 tasted the power of kings without the restraints of Roman law 
 and Roman republican institutions to hamper them. 
 
 But the evils of the new wealth were not less evident in the 
 coimtry. It was not thought proper for a Roman senator or 
 noble to undertake commercial enterprises or to engage in any 
 business. The most respectable form of wealth was lands. 
 Hence the successful Roman noble bought farm after farm, 
 which he combined into a great estate or plantation. The capi- 
 talists who had plundered the provinces did the same. Look- 
 ing northward from Rome, the old Etruscan country was now 
 made up of extensive estates belonging to wealthy Romans of 
 the city. Only here and there were still to be found the little 
 farms of the good old Roman days. Large portions of Italy 
 were in this condition. The small farm seemed in a fair way 
 to disappear as it had done in Greece (§ 626). 
 
 It was impossible for a wealthy landowner to work these 
 great estates with free, hired labor. Nor was he obliged to 
 do so. From the close of the Hannibalic War onward the 
 Roman conquests had brought to Italy great numbers of 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 567 
 
 captives of war from Carthage, Spain, Gaul, Macedonia, Greece, 
 and Asia Minor. These unhappy prisoners were sold as slaves. 
 The coast of the Adriatic opposite Italy alone yielded one 
 hundred and fifty thousand captives. An ordinary day laborer 
 would bring about three hundred dollars at auction, a crafts- 
 man or a good clerk was much more valuable, and a young 
 woman who could play the lyre would bring a thousand dollars. 
 The sale of such captives was thus enormously profitable. We 
 have already seen such slaves in the households at Rome. The 
 estates of Italy were now filled with them. 
 
 Household slavery w^as usually not attended with much hard- 915. Brutal 
 ship, but the life of the slaves on the great plantations was plantation^ 
 little better than that of beasts. Worthy and free-born men ^^^^^^ 
 from the eastern Mediterranean were branded with a hot iron 
 like oxen, to identify them forever. They were herded at night 
 in cellar barracks, and in the morning were driven like half- 
 stai-ved beasts of burden to work in the fields. The. green 
 fields of Italy, where sturdy farmers once watched the grow- 
 ing grain sown and cultivated by their own hands, were now 
 worked by wretched and hopeless creatures who wished they 
 had never been born. When the supply of captives from the 
 wars failed, the Roman government winked at the practices 
 of slave pirates, who carried on wholesale kidnaping in the 
 ^gean and eastern Mediterranean for years. They sold the 
 victims in the slave market at Delos, whence they were brought 
 by Roman merchants to Italy. 
 
 Thus Italy and Sicily were fairly flooded with slaves. The 916. Slave 
 brutal treatment which they received was so unbearable that at disorders 
 various places in Italy they finally rose against their masters. 
 Even , when they did not revolt, they were a grave danger to 
 public safety. The lonelier roads of Italy were infested by 
 slave herdsmen, lawless ancient cowboys who robbed and slew 
 and in many districts made it unsafe to live in the country or 
 travel the country roads. The conditions in Sicily were worse 
 than in Italy. In central and southern Sicily the revolting 
 
568 Ajiciefit Times 
 
 slaves gathered some sixty thousand in number, slew their 
 masters, captured towns, and set up a kingdom. It required 
 a Roman consul at the head of an army and a war lasting 
 several years to subdue them. 
 
 917. Hos- During the uprising of the slaves in Sicily the small farm 
 the nch and" owners, free men, went about burning the fine villas of the 
 the poor es- wealthy plantation proprietors. The slave rebellion therefore 
 small farmers vvas a revelation of the hatred not only among the slaves but 
 
 also among the poor farming class of freeme?i — the hatred 
 toward the rich landowners felt by all the lower classes in the 
 country, slave or free. The great conquests and the wealth 
 they brought in had made the rich so much richer and the 
 poor so much poorer that the two classes were completely 
 thrust apart and they no longer had any common life. Italy 
 was divided into two great social classes dangerously hostile to 
 each other. The bulk of the population of Italy had formerly 
 been small farmers, as we have seen. Let us examine the effect 
 of the great wars on the small farmers. 
 
 918. De- War seemed a great and glorious thing when we were fol- 
 farms and lowing the brilliant victories of Hannibal and the splendid tri- 
 itaiv bv^var ^mph of Scipio at Zama. But now we are to see the other side 
 
 of the picture. Never has there been an age in which the ter- 
 rible and desolating results of war^have so tragically revealed 
 the awful cost of such glory. The happy and industrious fami- 
 lies cultivating the little farms which dotted the green hills and 
 plains of Italy had now been helplessly scattered by the storms 
 of war, as the wind drives the autumn leaves. The campaigns 
 of Hannibal left southern Italy desolate far and wide, and 
 much of central Italy was in little better condition. These 
 devastated districts left lying waste were never again cultivated, 
 and slowly became pasture lands. In regions untouched by 
 invasion, fathers and elder sons had been absent from home 
 for years holding their posts in the legion, fighting the battles 
 which brought Rome her great position as mistress of the 
 world. If the soldier returned he often found the monotonous 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 569 
 
 round of farm duties much too tedious after his adventurous 
 life of war abroad. Leaving the plow, therefore, he returned 
 to his place in the legion to resume the exciting life of war and 
 plunder under some great leader whom he loved. Home life 
 and wholesome country influences were undermined and broken 
 up. The mothers, left to bring up the younger children alone, 
 saw the family scattered and drifting away from the little farm, 
 till it was left forsaken. 
 
 Too often as the returning soldier approached the spot where 919. The 
 he was born he no longer found the house that had sheltered bought^up' 
 his childhood. His family was gone and his little farm, sold for ^| wealthy 
 debt, had been bought up by some wealthy Roman of the city owners 
 and absorbed into a great plantation like those which the 
 Romans had found surrounding Carthage (§ 837). His neigh- 
 bors, too, had disappeared and their farms had likewise gone 
 to enlarge the rich man's great estate. Across the hills on a 
 sunny eminence he saw the stately villa, the home of the 
 Roman noble, who now owned the farms of all the surround- 
 ing country. He cursed the wealth which had done all this, 
 and wandered up to the great city to look for free grain from 
 the government, to enjoy the games and circuses, and to in- 
 crease the poor class already there. 
 
 Or if he found his home and his little farm uninjured, and was 920. Inability 
 willing to settle down to work its fields as of old, he was soon JJ, compeS 
 aware that the hordes of slaves now cultivating the great planta- J^^^j-l^^^ 
 tions around him were producing grain so cheaply, that when he cheap im- 
 had sold his harvest he had not received enough for it to enable 
 him and his family to live. At the same time the markets of 
 Italy were filled with cheap grain from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt- 
 With this imported grain often given away by the government, 
 he could not compete, and slowly he fell behind ; he borrowed 
 money, and his debts increased. Forced to sell the little farm 
 at last, he too wandered into Rome, where he found thousands 
 upon thousands of his kind, homeless, embittered, and dependent 
 upon the St^te for food, 
 
570 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 921. Degen- 
 eration and 
 discontent 
 in Italy 
 
 922. Eco- 
 nomic and 
 agricultural 
 decline in 
 Greece 
 
 923. Decline 
 of Hellenistic 
 civilization 
 
 The sturdy farmer-citizens who had made up the bulk of 
 the citizenship of Rome, the yeomanry from whom she had 
 drawn her splendid armies, — these men who had formed the 
 very substance of the power upon which the Roman Senate 
 had built up its world empire, were now perishing. After the 
 Macedonian wars the census returns showed a steady decline in 
 the number of citizens of the republic in Italy. At the same time 
 there was serious discontent among the cities of the allies in 
 Italy because they had never been given full citizenship. They 
 saw the government of a world empire in the hands of a corrupt 
 Senate and a small body of more and more brutalized citizens 
 at Rome, and they demanded their share in the control of the 
 great empire to whose armies they had contributed as many 
 troops as the citizens of the Republic had done. 
 
 The wealth and power which Roman world dominion had 
 gained had thus brought Rome and Italy to the verge of de- 
 struction. Nor was the situation any better in the most civi- 
 lized portions of the empire outside of Italy, and especially in 
 Greece. Under the large plantation system, introduced from 
 Asia Minor, where it had grown up under the Persians (§ 269), 
 the Greek farmers had disappeared (§ 626), as those of Italy 
 were now beginning to do. Add to this condition the robberies 
 and extortions of the Roman taxgatherers and governors, the 
 continuous slave raids of the a^gean pirates, whose pillaging 
 and kidnaping the Roman Republic criminally failed to prevent, 
 the shift of Greek commerce eastward (§ 724), and we have 
 reasons enough for the destruction of business, of agriculture, 
 and of prosperity in the Greek world. 
 
 But that wondrous development of higher civilization which 
 we found in the Hellenistic world (Chap. XXI) was likewise 
 showing signs of decline. The sumptuous buildings forming 
 the great home of science in Alexandria (§ 743) now repre- 
 sented little more than the high aims once cherished and sup- 
 ported by the Macedonian kings of Egypt. For when such 
 State support failed, with its salaries and pensions to scientists 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 571 
 
 and philosophers, the line of scientists failed too. Hence we 
 see how largely science in the Hellenistic Age was rooted in 
 the treasuries of the Hellenistic kings, rather than in the minds 
 of the Greek race as it had been of old, when for sheer love of 
 knowledge the Greek philosopher carried on his studies without 
 such support. 
 
 The Mediterranean was now the home of Greek civilization 924. Failure 
 in the East and of Roman civilization in the West, but the fail- government 
 ure of the Roman Senate to organize a successful government J^grraneaif ^^ 
 for the empire they had conquered, — a government even as world ; peril- 
 
 1 -rx • /c \ I- r M ous situation 
 
 good as that of Persia under Darius (§ 286), — this failure had of civilization 
 
 brought the whole world of Mediterranean civilization perilously 
 
 near destruction. In the European background beyond the 
 
 Alpine frontiers, there were rumblings of vast movements 
 
 among the northern barbarians, threatening to descend as ol 
 
 old and completely overwhelm the civilization which for over 
 
 three thousand years had been slowly built up by Orientals and 
 
 Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean world. It now 
 
 looked very much as if the Roman State was about to perish, 
 
 and with it the civilization which had been growing for so many 
 
 centuries. Was civilized man indeed to perish from the earth ? 
 
 Or would the Roman State be. able to survive and to preserve 
 
 civilization from destruction ? 
 
 Rome was a city-state. The finest fruits of civilization in 925. The 
 art, literature, science, and thought had been produced under city-state in 
 the government of city-states, as we have seen (§ 767). But ^"^^^rnme t 
 among the Greeks this very limited form of state had out- 
 lived its usefulness and had over and over again proved its 
 inability to organize and control successfully a larger world, 
 that is, an empire. The city-state of the Roman Republic 
 had now also demonstrated that its limited machinery of 
 government was quite unfitted to rule successfully the vast 
 Mediterranean world which it was now endeavoring to con- 
 trol. Would it be able to transform itself into a great im- 
 perial State, with all the many offices necessary to give 
 
57' 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 926. The re- 
 sponsibility 
 of Rome to 
 organize and 
 defend the 
 civilization 
 of the Medi- 
 terranean 
 world 
 
 successful government to the peoples and nations surrounding 
 the Mediterranean ? Would it then be able to do for the Medi- 
 terranean world what the oriental empires had once done for a 
 world equally large in Western Asia and Egypt ? 
 
 We stand at the point where the civilization of the Hellen- 
 istic world began to decline, after the destruction of Carthage 
 and Corinth (146 B.C.). We are now to watch the Roman 
 people in the deadly internal struggle which we have seen 
 impending between rich and poor. They had at the same time 
 to continue their rule of the Mediterranean world as best they 
 could, while the dangerous internal transformation was going 
 on. In the midst of these grave responsibilities they had also 
 to face the barbarian hordes of the North. In spite of all these 
 threatening dangers, we shall see them gaining the needed 
 imperial organization which enabled the Roman State to hurl 
 back the Northern barbarians, to hold the northern frontiers for 
 five hundred years, and thus to preserve the civilization which 
 had cost mankind so many centuries of slow progress — the 
 civilization which, because it was so preserved, has become our 
 own inheritance to-day. This achievement of Rome we are now 
 to follow in the final chapters of the story of the ancient world. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 80, As mistress of the western Mediterranean world, 
 what was to be Rome's attitude toward the other nations of the Med- 
 iterranean? Why was Rome bound to subdue Philip of Macedon.? 
 Describe the struggle between Rome and Macedon. By extending 
 her power over Macedon, with what other eastern empire was Rome 
 in contact? Describe the struggle between Rome and the Seleucid 
 Empire. What then happened to Macedon ? to the Greeks ? What 
 two splendid cities were destroyed in the same year by the Romans? 
 What can you say of the rapidity of the Roman conquests ? Describe 
 the task of government now confronting Rome. 
 
 Section 81. Had the Romans any experience in governing prov- 
 inces ? Describe the rule of the usual Roman governor. What can 
 you say of the increase of Roman wealth ? What was the effect on 
 
World Dominion and Degeneracy 
 
 573 
 
 business at Rome ? What kind of a house had the Roman formerly 
 lived in? What kind did he now build? How was it furnished, and 
 whence did its luxuries often come ? How did this compare with the 
 situation before the Carthaginian wars ? What can you say of the serv- 
 ants in a wealthy household ? Describe the effect of Greek works 
 of art in Rome. Were there any Roman artists equal to those in 
 Greece? Tell how Greek literature became known in Rome, De- 
 scribe the old Roman schools. How did educated Greeks affect 
 teaching in Rome? Tell about Polybius. How did Latin literature 
 arise ? What can you say of libraries and the educated class ? 
 
 Section 82. How was the new luxury affecting Roman Hfe? 
 What were the tastes of the ordinary Roman? Describe the rise of 
 gladiatorial combats. What can you say about the expenses of a 
 pohtical career? What was happening to the small farms ? Describe 
 slavery on the large estates ; slave revolts. Describe the effect of the 
 wars on the small farmers ; the effect of the large estates and cheap 
 grain. Describe the situation of Italy as a whole; of Greece and 
 ■ the yEgean world. What was the situation of Hellenistic civilization 
 as a whole? How then had Roman leadership of the Mediterranean 
 world succeeded thus far? Did a city-state possess the organization 
 fitted to rule a great empire? What three great tasks faced the 
 Roman government : first in Italy, second in the whole Mediterra- 
 nean world, and third on the northern and eastern frontiers ? 
 
 Note. The sketch below shows us a comer of a Roman library. The books 
 are ail in the form of rolls (Fig. 191), arranged in large pigeonhole sections like 
 rolls of wall paper, with the ends pointing outward and bearing tags containing 
 the titles of the books. Thus the librarian was quickly able to find a given book 
 or to return it to the shelves at the proper place, as he is engaged in doing in 
 this relief. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION AND THE END OF 
 THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Section 83. The Land Situation and the Beginning 
 OF THE Struggle between Senate and People 
 
 927. The 
 
 dangerous 
 situation to 
 be met by 
 the Senate 
 
 We must now recall the problems noticed at the close of 
 the last chapter, demanding settlement by the Roman Senate. 
 In Italy there was in the first place the perilous condition of 
 the surviving farmers and the need of increasing in some way 
 their numbers and their farms. Equally dangerous was the 
 discontent of the Italian allies, who had never been given the 
 vote or the right to hold office. The problems outside of Italy 
 were not less pressing. They were, likewise, two in number. 
 There was first the thoroughgoing reform of provincial govern- 
 ment and the creation of a system of honest and successful 
 administration of the great Roman Empire. And second there 
 was the settlement of the frontier boundaries of the Em- 
 pire and the repulse of the invading barbarians who were 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the two sides of a coin issued by 
 Brutus, one of the leading assassins of Julius Caesar (§ 969). On one side the 
 coin bears the head of Brutus, accompanied by his name and the title Imperator 
 (abbreviated to IMP). On the other side are two daggers, intended to recall the 
 assassination of Caesar, and between them appears the cap of liberty, to suggest 
 the liberty which the Romans supposedly gained by his murder. In order that 
 the meaning of all this might be perfectly clear, there appears, below, the inscrip- 
 tion EID MAR, which means the Ides of March (the Roman term for the 
 fifteenth of March), the date of Caesar's murder (§ 969). 
 
 574 
 
A Century of Revolution 575 
 
 threatening to crush the Mediterranean world and its civilization, 
 as the prehistoric Greeks had crushed yEgean civilization (§ 380). 
 
 The Senate which was to meet this dangerous situation had 928. Short- 
 been in practical control of the Roman government since the the"senate 
 days of the Samnite War. The senators now formed an oligarchy f"^ ]^^^.^\^ 
 
 ^ ■' legal basis for 
 
 of selfish aristocrats as in the Greek cities (§ 618). Yet there their power 
 were no laws which had created the undisputed power of the 
 Senate. It was merely by their great prestige and their com- 
 bined influence as leading men and former magistrates (§ 811) 
 that they maintained the control of the State. The legal power 
 of the Roman State really rested in the hands of the Roman 
 people, as they gathered in their assemblies (§ 806), and this 
 power had never been surrendered to the Senate by any vote 
 or any law. 
 
 The crying needs of the farming class in Italy failed to pro- 929. The 
 duce any effect upon the blinded and selfish aristocrats of the of new farms 
 Senate as a whole. Even before the Hannibalic War the need farme?s?nd 
 
 of newly distributed farm lands was sorely felt. Led by the the opening 
 -^ -^ -^ of the Strug- 
 
 brave Flaminius, who afterward as consul fell at the head of gle between 
 
 his army in Hannibal's ambush at Trasimene (§ 862), the people ^'^ 
 Assembly had passed a law in defiance of the Senate, pro- 
 viding for a distribution of public lands which the senators 
 desired for themselves and their friends of the noble class. 
 As a result Flaminius was always hated by the senatorial party, 
 and ever after was regarded as the popular leader who opened 
 the struggle between people and Senate, and having thus shown 
 the people their power, had begun the dangerous policy of 
 allowing the unstable populace to control the government. 
 The conflict between Senate and people had subsided during 
 the Hannibalic War, but when this great danger had passed, 
 it would seem that a tribune named Licinius, who understood 
 the needs of the people, had succeeded in having a law passed 
 by the Assembly, which forbade any wealthy citizen from 
 holding over five hundred acres of the public lands, or pas- 
 turing more than a hundred cattle or five hundred shoep on 
 
5/6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 930. The 
 
 absorption 
 of the pubHc 
 lands by the 
 nobles 
 
 931. Tiberius 
 Gracchus, 
 tribune 
 (133 B.C.) 
 
 these lands. Such was the power of the senatorial party, how- 
 ever, that these Licinian laws had become a dead letter.^ 
 
 In gaining control ot Italy, Rome had finally annexed about 
 half of the peninsula, and no more land could now be taken 
 without seizing that of the Italian' allies. About a decade 
 before the destruction of Carthage and Corinth the last 
 Roman colony had been founded. The only way to' secure 
 new farms for assignment to landless farmers was by making 
 the Licinian laws effective, that is, by taking and assigning 
 to farmers the public lands already belonging to the State — 
 what we call " government lands" in the United States. But for 
 generations these lands had been largely held under all sorts 
 of arrangements by wealthy men, and it was sometimes dif^- 
 cult to decide whether a noble's estate was his legal property 
 or merely public land which he was using. Under these cir- 
 cumstances we can easily imagine with what stubbornness and 
 anger great landholders of the senatorial party would oppose 
 any effort to redistribute the public lands on a basis fair to all. 
 
 Flaminius had taught the people their power (§ 929). Since 
 then they had lacked a skillful leader. The unselfish patriot who 
 undertook to become the leader of the people and to save Italy 
 from destruction by restoring the farmer class was a noble named 
 Tiberius Gracchus. He was a grandson of the elder Scipio, 
 the hero of Zama, and his sister had married the younger 
 Scipio. Elected tribune (133 B.C.), he used to address the 
 people with passionate eloquence and tell them of their wrongs : 
 " The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking 
 places, where they may make their beds. You who fight and die 
 for Italy enjoy only the blessings of air and light. These alone 
 are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro 
 with your wives and children. . . . You fight and die to give 
 wealth and luxury to others. You are called the masters of the 
 world ; yet there is no clod of earth that you can call your own." 
 
 1 The usually accepted earlier date for the Licinian laws (376 B.C.) is quite 
 impossible ; nor is the date above suggested at all certain. 
 
A Century of RevoUitio7i S77 
 
 As tribune, Tiberius Gracchus submitted to the Assembly 932. Land 
 a law for the reassignment of public lands and the protection Tiberius 
 and support of the farming class. It was a statesmanlike and Gracchus, 
 
 ^ ^ ^ and his death 
 
 moderate law. ,It called for little, if anything, more than what (132 b.c.) 
 was already demanded by the Licinian laws. It was an 
 endeavor to do for Italy what Solon had done for Attica 
 (§ 469), and was decidedly more moderate than the legis- 
 lation of Solon. After a tragic struggle in which the new tribune 
 resorted to methods not strictly legal, he succeeded in passing 
 his law. In the effort to secure reelection, that he might insure 
 the e?ifo7'cement of his law, Gracchus was slain by a mob of 
 senators, who rushed out of the Senate house and attacked 
 the tribune and his supporters. This was the first murder- 
 ous deed introducing a century of revolution and civil war 
 (133-31 B.C.), which terminated in the destruction of the 
 Roman Republic. 
 
 Ten years after the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, his 933. Struggle 
 younger brother Gaius gained the same office (123 B.C.). He Gracchus 
 not only took up the struggle on behalf of the landless farmers, g ^* *^^ , 
 
 but he made it his definite object to attack and weaken the his death 
 
 (123- 
 Senate. He endeavored to enlist on the side of the people 121 b.c.) 
 
 every possible enemy of the Senate. He therefore organized 
 the capitalists and men of large business affairs, who, of course, 
 were not senators. Because of their wealth they had always 
 furnished their own horses and served in the army as horse- 
 men. They were therefore called knights ; or, as a group, the 
 equestrian order. Gaius Gracchus secured the support of these 
 men by obtaining for them the right to collect the taxes in 
 Asia, and he gave them great power by founding a court made 
 up of knights for the trial of dishonest and extortionate Roman 
 governors appointed by the Senate. At the same time he pro- 
 posed to give to the Italian allies the long-desired full citizen- 
 ship — a proposal which angered the people as much as it did 
 the Senate. His efforts finally resulted in a riot in which Gaius 
 Gracchus was killed, as his brother had been (121 B.C.). 
 
5/8 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 84. The Rise of One-Man Power : 
 Marius and Sulla 
 
 934. Unre- The weakness in the reforms of the Gracchus brothers lay 
 popuS ° chiefly in their unavoidable reliance upon votes ; that is, upon 
 support |-|^g unstable support of the people at the elections and at the 
 
 meetings of the popular assembly. It was diflicult to hold the 
 interest of the people from election to election. In the Gracchan 
 elections, when work on the farms was pressing, the countr}-- 
 people around Rome would not take the time to go up to the 
 city and vote, although they were the very ones to be bene- 
 fited by the Gracchan laws. The work of Flaminius, and 
 especially of the Gracchi, had taught the people to look 
 up to a leader. This tendency was the beginning of one- 
 man power. But the leader to whom the people now turned 
 was not a magistrate, as the Gracchi had been, but a military 
 w?n?na?ider. 
 
 935. The war Meantime the blindness and corruption of the Senate offered 
 tha, ancf the the people more than one opportunity for gaining power. The 
 appointment rnisrule of the Senate abroad was now so scandalous that the 
 
 of the peo- 
 ple's com- people seized this opportunity. In a war between Rome and 
 
 against the Jugurtha, ruler of the great kingdom of Numidia beside Carthage 
 in North Africa, the African king, knowing the weakness of the 
 Romans of this age, succeeded in bribing the consul, and thus 
 inflicted a crushing defeat on the Roman army. The war then 
 dragged disgracefully on. These events so incensed the people 
 of Rome, that in spite of the fact that the Senate's commander, 
 an able and honest consul named Metellus, had finally met and 
 defeated Jugurtha, the Assembly passed a law appointing their 
 own general to supersede Metellus. The people thus assumed 
 charge of a great foreign enterprise, and, what was more im- 
 portant, the people by this action seized control of the army. The 
 Senate was unable to prevent the Assembly's action from go- 
 ing into effect. The interests of the people were no longer 
 dependent wholly upon civil magistrates, changing from election 
 
 Senate 
 
A Century of Revolution '579 
 
 to election, but upon military force under a leader who might 
 be given a long command. 
 
 The commander on whom the people relied was himself a 936. Marius, 
 
 111 1 u the people's 
 
 man of the people, named Marius, who had once been a rough commander, 
 plowboy. He was fortunately an able soldier, and he quickly g^rtha'an'd 
 brought the war with Jugurtha to an end, after the Senate's the German 
 
 c> u3.rD3.ri3.ns 
 
 leaders had allowed the war to drift on for six years. When 
 ■the news of his victory reached Rome the people promptly 
 elected him consul for the second time, before his return. In 
 104 B.C. he returned to Rome, and the people beheld the cap- 
 tive Numidian king led through the streets in chains. Meantime 
 the two powerful tribes of German barbarians, the Cimbrians 
 and the Teutons, combined with Gauls, had been shifting south- 
 ward and crossing the northern frontiers of Rome. In Gaul 
 and on the Gallic frontiers six Roman armies, one after another, 
 had been disastrously defeated. It looked as if the Roman 
 legions had at last met their match. There was great anxiety in 
 Rome, and the people determined to reelect Marius consul and 
 send him against the terrible northern barbarians. Meeting the 
 Teutons in southern Gaul, the people's hero not only defeated but 
 practically destroyed the first German host (102 B.C.). Shortly 
 afterward, when the Cimbrians had finally succeeded in cross- 
 ing the Alps into the Po valley, Marius met and crushed them 
 also. A soldier of the people had saved Rome. 
 
 Marius was not only an able soldier, but he was also a great 937. Marius 
 
 u- u abohshes 
 
 organizer, and he introduced changes in the Roman army which property 
 were epoch-making both in the history of warfare and in the "^"^f'^^^^l^y 
 political history of Rome. In order to secure sufficient men ^fj^^^^^^^^^ 
 for the legions, he abolished the old custom of allowing only professional 
 citizens of property to serve in the army, and he took in the ^™^ 
 poor and the penniless. Such men soon became professional 
 soldiers. As once in Greece (§ 629), so now in Rome, the day 
 of the citizen-soldier had passed. The long wars had made many 
 a Roman citizen practically a professional soldier, as we have 
 noticed. The army of Marius was largely a professional army, 
 
58o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 938. The 
 
 cohort as the 
 tactical unit, 
 devised by 
 Marius 
 
 939. Failure 
 of Marius as 
 a statesman ; 
 the Senate 
 regains 
 leadership 
 
 and although the obligation to serve in the army still rested on 
 every Roman citizen, it was less and less rigidly enforced. 
 
 The youths who permanently took up the life of the soldier 
 could be so well drilled that they were able to carry out maneu- 
 vers impossible for an army made up of citizens serving for 
 a limited time. Marius therefore completely reorganized the 
 legion. He raised its numbers from forty-five hundred to six 
 thousand. He divided each six thousand into ten groups of 
 six hundred each. Such a body of six hundred was called a 
 cohort. It formed the unit in the shifting maneuvers, which, as 
 we have seen, meant victory or defeat in battle (§874). So 
 perfectly drilled and so fearless were these units, that the 
 cohorts would move about the field with the precision of clock- 
 work and with complete confidence in the plan of the com- 
 mander, just as the individuals in a perfectly trained football 
 squad respond almost automatically to the signal. The pro- 
 duction of the cohort, as we shall see, made it possible to 
 complete the final chapter in the development of the art of. 
 warfare in ancient times. 
 
 But in spite of his ability as a soldier and as an army organ- 
 izer, Marius was not a statesman. Having risen from the ranks, 
 he was at heart a rough Roman peasant. He hated the aristo- 
 crats of the city ; he did not know how to deal with them, nor 
 did he understand the leadership of the popular party which had 
 given him his great military commands. Elected consul for the 
 sixth time in the year 100 B.C., he failed utterly to control the 
 leaders of his party in the political struggles in Rome. They went 
 to such excesses that two of them were slain in a riot. Moderate 
 men were estranged from the cause of the people, and the Sen- 
 ate gained the upper hand again. Marius retired in disgrace, but 
 his leadership had revealed to the people how they might gain 
 control over the Senate by combining on a military leader, 
 whose power, therefore, did not consist in the peaceful enforce- 
 ment of the laws and usages of the Roman State, but in the 
 illegal application of military force, 
 
A Centtiry of Revolution 581 
 
 Meantime the struggle between Senate and people was com- 940. Dis- 
 plicated by the increasing discontent of the Italian allies. They and°discon-^^^ 
 had contributed as many troops to the army which conquered *-^"*. *^^ *5l? 
 the Empire as had Rome herself, and now they were refused 
 any voice in the control of that Empire or any share in the 
 immense wealth which they saw the Romans drawing from it. 
 The wise and liberal policy of the ancient Senate in freely 
 granting citizenship to communities in newly acquired Italian 
 territory (§ 814) had been long abandoned, reminding us of 
 the Athenians in the later years of Pericles (§ 588). Before 
 the different communities of Italy had had time to merge into 
 a nation (§ 828), they had been forced into a long series of 
 foreign wars which had built up the Empire. But the posses- 
 sion of this Empire had corrupted and blinded the Senate and 
 the governing community at Rome. By this sudden wealth and 
 power Rome had been raised above all feeling of fellowship 
 with the other communities of Italy. The great peninsula was 
 still filled with disunited communities (§ 829), and there now 
 rested upon Rome the obligation to make Italy a nation. 
 
 There were, happily, some Roman leaders with the insight of 941. Blind 
 statesmen, who perceived this great need and who planned that nessVf\he 
 the Italian allies should receive citizenship. Amons: them was Romans and 
 
 ^ ^ assassination 
 
 a wealthy, popular, and unselfish noble named Drusus, who of Drusus 
 gained election as tribune and began measures leading to the 
 enfranchisement of the Italian allies. But so fierce and savage 
 was the opposition aroused, that this great Roman statesman 
 was stabbed in the street. The opposition to Drusus and his 
 plans was by no means confined to the Senate. The common 
 people of Rome were likewise jealous of their ancient privileges, 
 and the wealthy men of the new equestrian order were equally 
 unwilling to share their opportunities of plundering the prov- 
 inces. The Italian allies therefore soon saw the hopelessness 
 of an appeal to Rome for their rights. Immediately after the 
 assassination of Drusus the leading Italian peoples of central 
 ^nd southern Italy revolted and formed . a new state and 
 
582 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 943- Rise 
 of Sulla ; a 
 consul sus- 
 tains the 
 Senate and 
 defeats the 
 will of the 
 people with 
 an army 
 
 government of their own, with a capital at a central town 
 which they impressively renamed Italica (90 B.C.). 
 
 In the war which followed, the army of Rome was at first 
 completely defeated, and although this reverse was in a measure 
 retrieved, the strength of the allies could not be broken. Seeing 
 the seriousness of the situation, the Roman politicians tardily 
 took action and granted the desired citizenship. The Italian 
 alliance then broke up, and the Italian communities reentered 
 the Roman State. Yet they entered it as distant wards of the 
 city on the Tiber. The citizens residing in these distant wards 
 could not vote or take any part in the government unless they 
 journeyed to Rome to do so. This situation was of course an 
 absurdity, and again illustrated the inability of an ancient 
 city-state to furnish the machinery of government for a large 
 nation, not to mention a world empire. Nevertheless, Italy was 
 on the way to become a nation unified in government and 
 in speech. 
 
 A very threatening war was now breaking out in Asia Minor. 
 Wealthy senators and other Romans of the moneyed class who 
 ruled Rome had many financial interests in this region, and 
 this led them to dread a war there, and to stop it as soon as 
 possible. Among the officers of Marius there had been a very 
 successful soldier named Sulla, who was chosen consul for the 
 year after the war with the allies. The Senate now selected him 
 to command in Asia Minor. But the leaders of the people would 
 not accept the Senate's appointment, and just as in the war 
 against Jugurtha, they passed a law electing Marius to command 
 in the coming Asia Minor war. Now Marius had no army at 
 the moment, but Sulla was still at the head of the army he 
 had been leading against the Italian allies. He therefore ignored 
 the law passed by the people, and marched on Rome with his 
 troops. For the first time a Roman consul took possession of 
 the city by force. The Senate was now putting through its will 
 with an army, as the Assembly had before done. Sulla forced 
 through a new law by which the Assembly would always be 
 
A Century of Revolution 583 
 
 obliged to secure the consent of the Senate before it could vote 
 on any measure. Having thus destroyed the power of the 
 people legally to oppose the will of the Senate, Sulla marched 
 off to his command in Asia Minor. 
 
 The Senate had triumphed, but with the departure of Sulla 944. Resto- 
 and his legions the people refused to submit. There was peip^e's con- 
 fighting in the streets, and the senatorial troops fell upon the ^y°^ ^" Sulla's 
 
 ° ° ' ir ir absence; war 
 
 new Italian citizens as they voted in the Forum and slew them and murder 
 
 in the streets 
 
 by hundreds. In the midst of these deeds of violence Marius, of Rome 
 who had escaped to Africa, returned at the head of a body of 
 cavalry. He joined the popular leaders, and, entering Rome, he 
 began a frightful massacre of the leading men of the senatorial 
 party. The Senate, the first to sow seeds of violence in the 
 murder of Tiberius Gracchus (§ 932), now reaped a fearful 
 harvest. Marius was elected consul for the seventh time, but 
 he died a few days after his election (86 B.C.). Meantime tke 
 people ruled in Rome until the day of reckoning which was 
 sure to come on the return of Sulla. 
 
 The war which had called Sulla to Asia Minor was due to 945. Sulla's 
 the genius of Mithradates, the gifted young king of Pontus against^" 
 (see map IV, p. 552). He had prospered by taking advantage of 
 Roman misrule in the East. He had rapidly extended his king- 
 dom to include a large part of Asia Minor, and such was the 
 deep-seated discontent of the Greek cities under Roman rule 
 that he was able to induce the Greek states of Asia Minor and 
 some in Greece to join him in a war against Rome. Even 
 Athens, which had suffered least, supported him. The Romans, 
 busily occupied with civil war at home, were thus suddenly 
 confronted by a foe in the East who seemed as dangerous as 
 Carthage had once been. Sulla besieged Athens (see descrip- 
 tion of cut, p. 425), recovered European Greece, and drove the 
 troops of Mithradates back into Asia. Thereupon crossing to 
 Asia Minor he finally concluded a peace with Mithradates. He 
 laid an enormous indemnity of twenty thousand talents on the 
 Greek cities of Asia Minor. Then leaving them to the tender 
 
 Mithradates 
 
 k 
 
584 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 946. Sulla 
 defeats the 
 armies of 
 the Roman 
 people and 
 is made Dic- 
 tator (82 B.C.) 
 
 947. Sulla 
 deprives the 
 people of po- 
 litical power 
 and gives 
 the Senate 
 supreme 
 leadership 
 (82-79 B.C.) 
 
 mercies of the Roman money-lenders and to the barbarous 
 raids of the eastern pirates, Sulla returned to Rome. 
 
 On the way thither the Roman army of Sulla defeated the 
 Roman armies of the people, one after another. Finally, out- 
 side the gates of the city, Sulla overthrew the last army of the 
 people and entered Rome as master of the State, without any 
 legal power to exercise such mastery. By means of his army, 
 however, he forced his own appointment as Dictator, with far 
 greater powers than any Dictator had ever before possessed 
 (82 B.C.). His first action was to begin the systematic slaughter 
 of the leaders of the people's party and the confiscation of their 
 property. Rome passed through another reign of terror like 
 that which followed Marius's return. The hatreds and the many 
 debts of revenge which Sulla's barbarities left behind were 
 later a frequent source of disturbance and danger to the 
 State (§951). 
 
 Then Sulla forced the passage of a whole series of new laws 
 which deprived the Assembly of the people and the tribunes of 
 their power, and gave the supreme leadership of the State to 
 the Senate, the body which had already so disastrously failed 
 to guide Rome wisely since the great conquests. Some lesser 
 reforms of value Sulla did introduce, but a policy based on the 
 supremacy of the Senate was doomed to failure. To Sulla's 
 great credit he made no attempt to gain permanent control of 
 the State, but on the completion of his legislation he retired to 
 private life (79 B.C.). 
 
 Section 85. The Overthrow of the Republic 
 pompey and c^sar 
 
 948. The 
 people elect 
 Pompey 
 consul and 
 regain po- 
 litical power 
 (70 B.C.) 
 
 Following the death of Sulla a year after his retirement, 
 agitation for the repeal of his hateful laws, which bound the 
 people and the tribunes hand and foot, at once began. To 
 accomplish this the people had now learned that they must 
 make use of a military leader. The Senate had been ruling 
 
A Century of Revolution 585 
 
 nine years in accordance with Sulla's laws when the popular 
 leaders found the militaiy commander whom they needed. He 
 was a former officer of Sulla, named Pompey, who had recently 
 won distinction in Spain, where he had been sent by the Senate 
 to overthrow a still unsubdued supporter of Marius. He was 
 elected consul (70 B.C.) chiefly because he agreed to repeal the 
 obnoxious laws of Sulla, and he did not fail to carry out his 
 promise. This service to the people now secured to Pompey a 
 military command of supreme importance. 
 
 Such was the neglect of the Senate to protect shipping that 949. Pirates 
 the pirates of the East, chiefly from Cilicia, had overrun the ^eVrane^n '^'' 
 whole Mediterranean (§qic;). They even appeared at the andPomp^y's 
 
 ^ -^ ^ ' J i J^ appointment 
 
 mouth of the Tiber, robbing and burning. They kidnaped against them 
 
 Roman officials on the Appian Way, but a few miles from 
 
 Rome, and they finally captured the grain supplies coming in to 
 
 Rome from Egypt and Africa. In 67 B.C. the Assembly of 
 
 the people passed a law giving Pompey supreme command in 
 
 the Mediterranean and for fifty miles back from its shores. He 
 
 was assigned two hundred ships and allowed to make his army 
 
 as large as he thought necessary. No Roman commander had 
 
 ever before held such far-reaching and unrepublican power. 
 
 In forty days Pompey cleared the western Mediterranean of 950. Exter- 
 pirates. He then sailed eastward, and in seven weeks after his the"pirates, 
 arrival in the ^gean he had exterminated the Cilician sea Mkhradate? 
 robbers likewise and burned their docks and strongholds, and conquests 
 
 rr^i 1 • 1 1 1 • 1 1 1 1 ^'^ *^h^ Orient 
 
 1 he next year his command was enlarged to mclude also the by Pompey 
 leadership in a new war against Mithradates which had been ^ "^ ^ ^'^'' 
 going on with satisfactory results under Lucullus, a Roman 
 commander of the greatest ability. Lucullus had already broken 
 the power of Mithradates and also of the vast kingdom of 
 Armenia, under its king, Tigranes. Pompey therefore had little 
 difficulty in subduing Mithradates, and had only to accept the 
 voluntary submission of Tigranes. He crushed the remnant of 
 the kingdom of the Seleucids (§ 718) and made Syria a Roman 
 province. He entered Jerusalem and brought the home of the 
 
586 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 951. Rise of 
 Caesar and 
 his support 
 of Catiline 
 and Antony 
 
 Jews under Roman control. Before he turned back, the legions 
 under his leadership had marched along the Euphrates and had 
 looked down upon the Caspian. There had been no such con- 
 quests in the Orient since the Macedonian campaigns, and to 
 the popular imagination Pompcy seemed a new Alexander 
 
 marching in triumph through 
 the East. 
 
 Meantime a new popular 
 hero had arisen at Rome. He 
 was a nephew of Marius, 
 named Julius Caesar (Eig. 244), 
 born in the year 100 B.C., and 
 thirty years old in Pompey's 
 consulate. He had supported 
 all the legislation against the 
 laws of- Sulla and in favor of 
 Pom.pey's appointment to his 
 great command. He took up 
 the cause of Marius, and ex- 
 alted his memory in public 
 speeches so that he quickly 
 gained a foremost place among 
 the leaders of the people. The 
 hatreds aroused by Sulla's ex- 
 ecutions and confiscations had 
 left a great number of revenge- 
 ful and dissatisfied men, who to no small extent made up the fol- 
 lowing of Caesar. Among Caesar's political friends was a noble 
 named Catiline. He was the leader of a good many undesirable 
 followers, but Caesar was supporting him and another friend 
 for election to the consulship. 
 
 Popular distrust of Caesar's purposes, and Catiline's evil 
 reputation, led to the defeat of Catiline and to the election 
 of Cicero, a comparatively new man, but the ablest orator and 
 the most gifted literary man of the age. By the formation of 
 
 Fig. 244. Bust said to be a 
 Portrait of Julius C^sar 
 
 The ancient portraits commonly- 
 accepted as those of Julius Caesar 
 are really of uncertain identity 
 
A Century of Revohttion 587 
 
 a new middle-class party from the Italian communities, which 952. The 
 should stand between the Senate and the people, Cicero dreamed Catiline^and 
 of a restoration of the old republic as it had once been. Cati- the success 
 
 ^ of the great 
 
 line, meantime, burdened with debts and rendered desperate by orator Cicero 
 
 the loss of the election, gathered about him all the dissatisfied 
 
 bankrupts, landless peasants, Sullan veterans, outlaws, and slaves, 
 
 the debased and lawless elements of Italy seeking an opportunity 
 
 to rid themselves of debt or to better their situation. Foiled by 
 
 Cicero in an attempt to seize violent control of the government, 
 
 the reckless Catiline died fighting at the head of his motley 
 
 following. Cicero's overthrow of Catiline brought him great 
 
 power and influence and made his consulship (63 B.C.) one of 
 
 brilliant success. Caesar, on the other hand, was suspected 
 
 of connection with the uprising of Catiline. This suspicion, 
 
 whether just or unjust, proved to be a serious setback in his 
 
 political career. 
 
 Just at this juncture Pompey returned to Italy clothed in 953. Return 
 
 splendor as the great conqueror of the Orient. He made no JJ^^ triumvi- 
 
 attempt to influence the political situation by means of his rate — Pom- 
 ^ , pey, Caesar, 
 
 army, the command of which he relinquished ; but he needed and Crassus ; 
 
 political influence to secure the Senate's formal approval of elected 
 his arrangements in Asia Minor, and a grant of land for 
 his troops. For two years the Senate refused Pompey these 
 concessions. Meantime Caesar stepped forward in Pompey's 
 support, and the two secured for their plans the support 
 of a very wealthy Roman noble named Crassus. The plan 
 was that Caesar should run for the consulship and, if suc- 
 cessful, secure the two things which we have seen Pompey 
 needed. This private alliance of these three powerful men 
 (called a '' triumvirate ") gave them the control of the 
 situation. As a result Caesar was elected consul for the year 
 59 B.C. 
 
 The consulship was but a step in Caesar's plans. Having 
 secured for Pompey the measures which he desired, Caesar 
 fearlessly put through new land laws for the benefit of the 
 
 consul 
 (59 B.C.) 
 
588 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 954. Caesar 
 secures the 
 government 
 of Gaul on 
 both sides 
 of the Alps 
 
 955. Caesar's 
 military skill 
 and general 
 plan of oper- 
 ations in Gaul 
 
 956. Caesar's 
 conquest 
 of Gaul 
 (58-50 B.C.) 
 
 people, and then provided for his own future career. It was 
 clear to him that he must have an important military command 
 in order to gain an army. He saw a great opportunity in the 
 West, like that which had been given Pompey in the Orient. 
 Rome still held no more than a comparatively narrow strip of 
 land along the coast of w^hat is now southern France. On its 
 north was a vast country occupied by the Gauls, and this region 
 of Gaul was now sought by Caesar. He had no difficulty in 
 securing the passage of a law which made him for five years 
 governor of Illyria and of Gaul on both sides of the Alps, that 
 is, the valley of the Po in northern Italy, which we remember 
 had been occupied by the Gauls (§ 815), and also of further 
 Gaul beyond the Alps, as just described. 
 
 Cassar took charge of his new province early in 58 B.C., and 
 at once show^ed himself a military commander of surpassing 
 skill. Not only did he possess the keenest insight into the 
 tactical maneuvers which win victory on the field of battle 
 itself, but he also understood at a glance the resources and 
 abilities of a people and their armies. He knew that the 
 greatest problem facing a commander was to keep his army 
 in supplies and to guard against moving it to a point where it 
 was impossible either to carry with it the supplies for feeding 
 it or to find them on the spot. So efficient was his own great 
 organization that he knew he could carry such supplies more 
 successfully than could the barbarian Gauls. He perceived that 
 no great barbarian host could be kept long together in one place, 
 because they did not possess the organization for carrying with 
 them, or securing later, enough food to maintain them long. 
 When the necessity of finding provisions had forced them to 
 separate into smaller armies, then Cassar swiftly advanced and 
 defeated these smaller divisions. 
 
 By this general plan of operations in eight years of march 
 and battle he subdued the Gauls and conquered their territory 
 from the ocean and the English Channel eastward to' the Rhine. 
 He drove out a dangerous invasion of Gaul by the Germans, 
 
view of the 
 situation as 
 a statesman 
 
 A Cent7iry of Revohition 5S9 
 
 and astonishing them by the skill and speed with which he built 
 a bridge over the Rhine, he invaded their country and estab- 
 lished the frontier of the new Gallic province at the Rhine. 
 He even crossed the Channel and carried an invasion of Britain 
 as far as the Thames. He added a vast dominion to the 
 Roman Empire, comprising in general the territory of modern 
 France and Belgium. We should not forget that his conquest 
 brought Latin into France, as the ancestor from which French 
 speech has descended (see map IV, p. 552). 
 
 Caesar had shown himself at Rome a successful politician. 957. Caesar's 
 In Gaul he proved his ability as a brilliant soldier. Was he 
 also a great statesman, or was he, like Pompey, merely to seek 
 a succession of military commands and to accomplish nothing 
 to deliver Rome from being a cat's-paw of one military com- 
 mander after another? Caesar's understanding of the situation 
 at Rome was perfectly clear and had been so from the begin- 
 ning. He was convinced that the foreign wars and the rule of 
 the provinces had introduced into Roman government the ever- 
 returning opportunity for a man of ability to gain military 
 power which could not be controlled by the State. It was 
 of no use to bring in a new political party, as Cicero hoped 
 to do, and to pit mere votes against the flashing swords of the 
 legions. For the old machinery of government furnished by 
 the republic possessed no means of preventing the rise of one 
 ambitious general after another to fight for control of the State 
 as Marius and Sulla had done. The republic could therefore 
 never again restore order and stable government for Italy 
 and the empire. Herein Caesar showed his superiority as a 
 statesman over both Sulla and Cicero. 
 
 The situation therefore demanded an able and patriotic com- 958. Caesar 
 mander with an army behind him who should make himself account^of^'^ 
 the undisputed and permanent master of the Roman govern- ^ G2\\\c 
 ment and subdue all other competitors. Consistently and stead- 
 ily Caesar pursued this aim, and it is no reflection upon him to 
 say that it satisfied his ambition to do so. One of his cleverest 
 
590 Anciejit limes 
 
 moves was the publication of the story of his Gallic campaigns, 
 which he found time to write even in the midst of dangerous 
 marches and critical battles. The tale is narrated with the most 
 unpretentious simplicity. Although it is one of the greatest 
 works of Latin prose, the book was really a political pamphlet, 
 intended to convey to the Roman people an indelible impression 
 of the vast conquests and other services which they owed to 
 their governor in Gaul. It did not fail of its purpose. At 
 present it is the best-known Latin reading book for beginners 
 in that language in the whole civilized world. 
 
 959. Pompey When Caesar's second term as governor of Gaul drew near 
 takes up the i^s end, his supporters in Rome, instructed by him, were arrang- 
 cause of the jj^g £qj. j^jg second election to the consulship. The Senate was 
 
 dreading his return to Italy and was putting forth every effort 
 to prevent his reelection as consul. The experience in the time 
 of Marius had taught the Senate what to fear when a victorious 
 commander returned to Rome to avenge their opposition to the 
 people. They must have a military leader like Sulla again. 
 Meantime Crassus, the wealthy member of the triumvirate 
 (§ 953), had been slain in a disastrous war against the Par- 
 thians, beyond the Euphrates, and the group had broken up, 
 thus freeing Pompey. In the midst of great confusion and 
 political conflict in Rome, the leading senators now made offers 
 to Pompey, in spite of the fact that he had received his great 
 command from the Assembly of the people and had been a 
 leader of the popular party. He was no statesman and had no 
 plans for the future of the State. He was simply looking for 
 a command. The result was that he undertook to defend the 
 cause of the Senate and support the enemies of the people. 
 What should have been a lawful political contest, again became 
 a military struggle between two commanding generals, Caesar 
 and Pompey, like that of Marius and Sulla a generation earlier. 
 
 960. Csesar Caesar endeavored . to compromise with the Senate, but on 
 of profes!^"^^ receiving as their reply a summons to disband his army, he had 
 sionai soldiers ^^ hesitation as to his future action. The professional soldiers 
 
A Century of Revolution 59 1 
 
 who now made up a Roman army had no interest in political 
 questions, felt no responsibility as citizens, and were conscious 
 of very little obligation or attachment to the State. On the 
 other hand, they were usually greatly attached to their com- 
 manding general. The veterans of Caesar's Gallic campaigns 
 were unswervingly devoted to him. When he gave the word, 
 therefore, his troops followed him on the march to Rome with- 
 out a moment's hesitation, to draw their swords against their 
 fellow Romans forming the army of the Senate under Pompey. 
 Caesar and his troops at once crossed the Rubicon, the little 
 stream which formed the boundary of his province toward 
 Rome. Beyond this boundary Caesar had no legal right to lead 
 his forces, and in crossing it he had taken a step which became 
 so memorable that we still proverbially speak of any great deci- 
 sion as a " crossing of the Rubicon." 
 
 The swiftness of Caesar's lightning blows was always one 961. C^sar 
 of the greatest reasons for his success. Before the Senate's maneuvere^' 
 message had been an hour in his hands, Caesar's legions had ^r^JJ^f^ °"j 
 been on the march from the Po valley toward Rome (49 B.C.). is elected 
 Totally unprepared for so swift a response on Caesar's part, the (49 b.c.) 
 Senate turned to Pompey, who informed them that the forces 
 at his command could not hold Rome against Caesar. Indeed, 
 there was at the moment no army in the Empire capable of 
 meeting Caesar's veteran legions with any hope of victory. 
 Pompey retreated, and as Caesar approached Rome, the majority 
 of the senators and a large number of nobles fled with Pompey 
 and his army. By skillful maneuvers Caesar forced Pompey and 
 his followers to forsake Italy and cross over to Greece. Caesar's 
 possession of Rome made it possible for him to be elected 
 consul, and then to assume the role of lawful defender of 
 Rome against the Senate and the army of Pompey. 
 
 His position, however, was not yet secure. Pompey, in the 
 eyes of the Orient, was the greatest man in Rome. He could 
 muster all the peoples and kingdoms of the East against Caesar. 
 Furthermore, he now held the great fleet with which he had 
 
592 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 962. Pom- 
 pey's power. 
 Caesar cap- 
 tures Pom- 
 pey's army 
 in Spain 
 (summer of 
 49 B.C.) 
 
 963. Csesar 
 surprises the 
 senatorial 
 party by 
 crossing 
 to Greece 
 (winter of 
 49-48 B.C.) 
 
 964. Battle 
 of Pharsalus 
 (48 B.C.) 
 
 suppressed the pirates, and he was thus master of the sea. 
 With all the East at his back, he was improving every moment 
 to gather and discipline an army with which to crush Cassar. 
 Furthermore, Pompey's officers still held Spain since his recov- 
 ery of it from the followers of Marius. Csesar was therefore 
 obliged to reckon with the followers of Pompey on both sides, 
 East and West. He determined to deal with the West first. 
 With his customary swiftness he was in Spain by June (49 B.C.). 
 Here he met the army of Pompey's commanders with maneuvers 
 of such surprising cleverness that in a few weeks he cut off 
 their supplies, surrounded them and forced them to surrender 
 without fighting a battle. 
 
 Having heard of Caesar's departure into Spain, Pompey and 
 his great group of senators and nobles had been preparing at 
 their leisure to cross over and take possession of Italy. Before 
 they could even begin the crossing, Caesar had returned from 
 Spain victorious, and to their amazement, in spite of the fact 
 that they controlled the sea, he embarked at Brundisium, 
 evaded their warships, and landed his army on the coast of 
 Epirus. Forced by lack of supplies to divide his army, a part 
 of his troops suffered a dangerous reverse. In the end, how- 
 ever, in spite of his inferior numbers, he accepted battle with 
 Pompey at Pharsalus, in Thessaly (48 B.C.). 
 
 Pompey's plan for the battle was skillfully made, but it was 
 not clever enough to outwit the greatest commander of the age. 
 It consisted in drawing up his line so that a small stream would 
 protect his right wing, in order that he might throw all his cav- 
 alry to the left wing. Probably twice as strong as Caesar's right 
 wing which it faced, it was expected to cut its way victoriously 
 through, and then, passing around Caesar's right -end, to attack 
 his legions in the rear. As the two armies approached each 
 other, Caesar perceived Pompey's plan of battle. He at once 
 shifted six of his best cohorts, over three thousand men, to his 
 right end, where they were screened by his cavalry from dis- 
 covery by the enemy (plan, p. 593). The position of these six 
 
A CenUiry of Revolution 
 
 593 
 
 cohorts may be compared to that of an unobserved football 
 player crouching on the right side lines to receive the ball. 
 Caesar then ordered his cavalry, mostly Gauls and Germans, 
 to retreat as Pompey's horsemen attacked them. As they re- 
 treated, Pompey's unsuspecting cavalry followed and pushed 
 forward into Caesar's cleverly devised trap. For when Caesar's 
 six cohorts swiftly dropped in behind them, Pompey's horsemen 
 were caught between the six cohorts behind and Caesar's cav- 
 alry in front, and they were quickly cut to pieces. Caesar's 
 cavalry then swept swiftly around the enemy's now undefended 
 
 
 Pompey's 
 
 Pompey 's Infantry Cavalry 
 
 \ Hills 
 
 /> 
 
 y/////////M///////M/////^^^^ V////////////////A 
 
 1 
 
 s/ 
 
 Caesar's 
 
 / Town 
 
 Hills 
 
 / 
 
 Caesar 's Infantry ^ « MCavalry 
 
 ill ( 
 
 Plan of the Battle of Pharsalus (§ 964) 
 
 left end and attacked Pompey's legions in the rear. As Caesar 
 threw in his reserves against the hostile center at the same 
 moment, the whole senatorial army was driven off the field in 
 flight. Its remnants surrendered the next morning. 
 
 This battle represented the highest development of military 965. Caesar 
 art, and it never passed beyond the masterful skill of the victor conquest of 
 of Pharsalus. Pompey, crushed by the first defeat of his life, ^ane^n world 
 escaped into Egypt, where he was basely murdered. Caesar, (48-45 b.c) 
 following Pompey to Egypt, found ruling there the beautiful 
 Cleopatra, the seventh of the name, and the last of the Ptole- 
 mies. The charms of this remarkable queen and the political 
 
594 
 
 Ancieiit Times 
 
 966. Caesar's 
 moderation 
 and his own 
 position 
 
 967. Csesar's 
 reorganization 
 of the State 
 and Empire 
 
 advantages of her friendship met a ready response on the part 
 of the great Roman. Here Caesar displayed probably the most 
 serious weakness in his career, as he tarried in Alexandria, dally- 
 ing with this beautiful and gifted woman for three-quarters of 
 a year (from October, 48, to June, 47 B.C.). In a dangerous 
 outbreak which found Caesar without sufficient troops, he was 
 attacked by a mob and the great Alexandrian library (§ 750) 
 was burned. We know little of the operations and battles by 
 which Caesar overthrew his opponents in Asia Minor. It was 
 from there that he sent his famous report to the Senate : " I 
 came, I saw, I conquered " {ve7ii^ vidi, vici). He was equally 
 triumphant in the African province behind Carthage, and finally 
 also in Spain. These, the only obstacles to Caesar's complete 
 control of the empire of the world, were all disposed of by 
 March, 45 B.C., a little over four years after he had first taken 
 possession of Italy with his army (map IV, p. 552). 
 
 Caesar used his power with great moderation and humanity. 
 From the first he had taken great pains to show that his 
 methods were not those of the bloody Sulla. He gratified no 
 personal revenge, and he preserved the life of the gifted Cicero 
 (§ 952), in spite of his hostility. It is clear that he intended 
 his own position to be that of a Hellenistic sovereign like Alex- 
 ander the Great. Nevertheless, he was too wise a statesman to 
 abolish at once the outward forms of the Republic. He pos- 
 sessed all the real power, and the Republic was doomed, for 
 there was no one in Rome to gainsay this mightiest of the 
 Romans. He had himself made Dictator for life, and assumed 
 also the powers of the other leading offices of the State. 
 
 Caesar lived only five years (49-44 B.C.) after his first con- 
 quest of Italy (49 B.C.). Of this period, as we have seen, four 
 years were almost wholly occupied by campaigns. He was 
 therefore left but little time for the colossal task of reshaping 
 the Roman State and organizing the vast Roman Empire, the 
 task in which the Roman Senate had so completely failed. Sulla 
 had raised the membership of the Senate from three to six 
 
A Ce7iUiry of Revolutio7i 595 
 
 hundred. Caesar did not abolish the ancient body, but he greatly 
 increased its numbers, filled it with his own friends and adher- 
 ents, and even installed former slaves and foreigners among its 
 menibers. He thus destroyed the public respect for it, and it 
 was entirely ready to do his bidding. The new Senate could 
 not obstruct him and hence the whole projected administration 
 of the provinces centered in him and was permanently responsi- 
 ble to him. The election of the officials of the Republic went 
 on as before, but he began far-reaching reforms of the corrupt 
 Roman administration. In all this he was launching the Roman 
 Empire. He was in fact its first emperor, and only his untimely 
 death continued the death struggles of the Republic for fifteen 
 years more. 
 
 He sketched vast plans for the rebuilding of Rome, for 968. Caesar's 
 magnificent public buildings, and for the alteration of the plan 3^^ improve- 
 of the city, including even a change in the course of the Tiber. "^^"^^ 
 He laid out great roads along the important lines of com- 
 munication, and he planned to cut a sea canal through the 
 Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 163). He completely reformed the 
 government of cities. He put an end to centuries of incon- 
 venience with the Greco-Roman moon-calendar (§ 564) by in- 
 troducing into Europe the practical Egyptian calendar (§ 61), 
 which we are still using, though with inconvenient Roman 
 alterations. The imperial sweep of his plans included far- 
 reaching conquests into new lands, like the subjugation of 
 the Germans. Had he carried out these plans, the language of 
 the Germans to-day would be a descendant of Latin, like the 
 speech of the French and the Spanish. 
 
 The eighteenth of March, 44 B.C., was set as the date for 969. The 
 Caesar's departure for the Orient on a great campaign against o?SsaV°" 
 the Parthians east of the Euphrates. But there were still men (March 15 
 
 ^ ^ 44 B.C.) and 
 
 in Rome who were not ready to submit to the rule of one man. its results 
 On the fifteenth of March, three days before the date arranged 
 for his departure, and only a year after he had quelled the last 
 disturbance in Spain, these men struck down the greatest of 
 
596 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 the Romans. If some of the murderers of this just and kindly 
 statesman, who was for the first time giving the unhappy peoples 
 of the Mediterranean world a government alike just, honest, and 
 efficient, — if some of his murderers, like Brutus and Cassius 
 (headpiece, p. 574), fancied themselves patriots overthrowing a 
 tyrant, they little understood how vain were all such efforts 
 to restore the ancient Republic. World dominion and its mili- 
 tary power had forever demolished the Roman Republic, and 
 the 'murder of Caesar again plunged Italy and the Empire into 
 civil war. The death of Alexander the Great interrupted in 
 mid-career the conquest of a world empire stretching from the 
 frontiers of India to the Atlantic Ocean. The bloody deed 
 of the Ides of March, 44 B.C., stopped a similar conquest 
 by Julius Caesar — a conquest which would have subjected 
 Orient and Occident to the rule of a single sovereign. A like 
 opportunity never arose again, and Caesar's successor had 
 no such aims. 
 
 Section 86. The Triumph of Augustus and the 
 End oe the Civil War 
 
 970. Youth 
 of Caesar's 
 nephew, 
 Octavian 
 (Augustus) 
 
 971. Early- 
 career of 
 Octavian 
 
 Over in Illyria the terrible news from Rome found the mur- 
 dered statesman's grand-nephew Octavian (Fig. 245), a youth 
 of eighteen, quietly pursuing his studies. A letter from his 
 mother, brought by a secret messenger, bade him flee far away 
 eastward without delay, in order to escape all danger at the 
 hands of his uncle's murderers. The youth's reply was to pro- 
 ceed without a moment's hesitation to Rome. This statesman- 
 like decision of character reveals the quality of the young man 
 both as he then showed it and for years to follow. 
 
 On his arrival in Italy Octavian learned that he had been 
 legally adopted by Caesar and also made his sole heir. His 
 bold claim to his legal rights was met with refusal by Mark 
 Antony, Caesar's fellow consul and one of his closest friends 
 and supporters (§ 951), who had taken possession of Caesar's 
 
A Century of RevoliLtion 
 
 597 
 
 fortune and as consul could not be easily forced. By such 
 men Octavian was treated with patronizing indulgence at first 
 
 a fact to which he owed his life. He was too young to be 
 
 regarded as dangerous. But his young shoulders carried a 
 very old head. He slowly gathered the threads of the tangled 
 situation in his clever fingers, not forgetting the lessons of his 
 adoptive father's career. The 
 most obvious lesson was the 
 necessity of military power. 
 He therefore rallied a force 
 of Caesar's veterans, and two 
 legions of Antony's troops 
 also came over to him. Then 
 playing the game of politics, 
 with military power at his 
 back and none too scrupulous 
 a conscience, he showed him- 
 self a statesman no longer to 
 be ignored. 
 
 By skillful improvement of 
 the situation at Rome, Oc- 
 tavian forced his own election 
 as consul when only twenty 
 years of age (43 B.C.). He 
 was then able to form an 
 alliance composed of himself and the other two most powerful 
 leaders, Antony, Caesar's old follower, and Lepidus. This 
 second triumvirate (three-man-alliance) was officially recognized 
 by vote of the people. To obtain the money for carr)'ing on 
 their wars and establishing themselves, the three began at once 
 a Sullan reign of terror, with confiscation of property and mur- 
 der of their enemies. Among them the great orator Cicero, 
 who had endeavored to preserve the old Republic, was slain 
 by Antony's brutal soldiers. He was -the last of the orator- 
 statesmen of Rome, as had been Demosthenes of Athens 
 
 Fig. 
 
 TUS, 
 
 245. Portrait of Augus- 
 Now IN THE Boston Mu- 
 seum OF Fine Arts 
 
59^ Ancient Times 
 
 (§721). But the Republic was still supported by the two lead- 
 ing murderers of Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius. They were at 
 the head of a powerful eastern army, like that of Pompey, 
 and were encamped at Philippi in Macedonia. As soon as 
 they could leave Rome, Octavian and Antony moved against 
 Brutus and Cassius, and in a great battle at Philippi the 
 last defenders of the Republic were completely defeated 
 (42 B.C.). 
 
 973. Octavian- The two victors then divided their domains : Octavian was 
 ancTthe^Vest to return to Italy and endeavor to crush the enemies of the 
 (42-35 B.C.) triumvirate in the West. Antony was to remain in the East 
 
 and bring it again under full subjection to Rome. In the West 
 a rebellious son of Pompey, who seized Sicily and held control 
 of the sea with his fleet, was finally crushed by Octavian ; and 
 soon after Lepidus, who had been given the province of Africa 
 behind Carthage, was also overthrown. Within ten years after 
 Caesar's assassination, and though only twenty-eight, Octavian 
 had gained complete control of Italy and the West. 
 
 974. Octavian Antony had meantime showed that he had no ability as a 
 Antony^and scrious Statesman. His prestige was also greatly dimmed by 
 gams the ^ disastrous campaign against the Parthians. Dazzled by the 
 
 attractions of Cleopatra, he was now living in Alexandria and 
 Antioch, where he ruled the East as far as the Euphrates like 
 an oriental sovereign. With Cleopatra as his queen, he main- 
 tained a court of sumptuous splendor like that of the Persian 
 kings in the days of their empire. Cleopatra, who had once 
 hoped to rule Rome as Caesar's queen, was now cherishing 
 similar hopes as the favorite of Antony. The tales of all this 
 made their way to Rome and did not help Antony's cause in 
 the eyes of the Roman Senate. Octavian easily induced the 
 Senate for this and other reasons to declare war on Cleopatra, 
 and thus he was able to advance against Antony. As the 
 legions of Caesar and Pompey, representing the East and the 
 West, had once before faced each other on a battlefield in 
 Greece (§ 964), so now Octavian and Antony, the leaders of 
 
A Ce7ittiry of RevoliUio7i 599 
 
 the East and the West, met at Actium on the west coast of 
 Greece. A naval battle was fought, with the land forces as 
 spectators. Before the end of the battle the soldiers of Antony 
 saw their leader and his oriental queen forsaking them in flight, 
 as Cleopatra's gorgeous galley, followed by her splendid royal 
 flotilla, swept out to sea carrying the cowardly Antony to Egypt. 
 The outcome was a sweeping victory for the heir of Caesar. 
 
 The next year Octavian landed in Egypt without resistance 975. Octavian 
 worth mentioning and took possession of the ancient land. ^Ro^man^^'^' 
 Antony, probably forsaken by Cleopatra, took his own life. F^vince 
 The proud queen was unwilling to undergo the crushing humil- and ends a 
 iation of gracing Octavian 's triumph at Rome, two of whose revolution 
 rulers had yielded to the power of her beauty and her person- ^"^ T\\\- 
 ality, and she too died by her own hand. She was the last of 3ob.c.) 
 the Ptolemies (§ 716), the rulers of Egypt for nearly three 
 hundred years, since Alexander the Great. Octavian there- 
 fore made Egypt Roman territory (30 B.C.). To the West, 
 which he already controlled, Octavian had now added also the 
 East. The lands under his control girdled the Mediterranean, 
 and the entire Mediterranean world was under the power of a 
 single ruler. Thus at last the unity of the Roman dominions 
 was restored and an entire century of revolution and civil war, 
 which had begun in the days of the Gracchi (133 i:. c), was 
 ended (30 B.C.). 
 
 Octavian's success marked the final triumph of one-man 976. The 
 power in the entire ancient world, as it had long ago triumphed two^centuries 
 in the Orient. The century of strife which Octavian's victory o^P^^^^ 
 ended, was now followed by two centuries of profound peace, 
 broken by only one serious interruption. These were the first 
 two centuries of the Roman Empire, beginning in 30 b.c.^ We 
 shall now take up the two centuries of peace in the two following 
 chapters. 
 
 1 It should be noticed that these two centuries of peace did not begin with 
 the Christian Era. They began thirty years before the lirst year of the Christian 
 Era, and hence the two centuries of peace do not correspond exactly with the 
 first two centuries of our Christian Era, 
 
6oO Ancient Times 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 83. What problems beset the Roman State in Italy? 
 outside of Italy ? What can you say of the ability and the legal right 
 of the Senate to meet these problems ? Who began the struggle for 
 farm lands on behalf of the people? How did the Licinian laws 
 attempt to aid the people? What was the condition of the govern- 
 ment lands? What did Tiberius Gracchus tell the people? Describe 
 his efforts to aid the people, and the result. Recount the work of 
 Gains Gracchus, and the result. 
 
 Section 84. What was the chief reason for the failure of the 
 Gracchus brothers? Toward what kind of power did their leader- 
 ship tend ? How did the people gain control of the army in the war 
 with Jugurtha? Recount the victories of Marius against Jugurtha 
 and the Northern barbarians. Give an account of his new military 
 measures, How did Marius succeed as a statesman ? What was now 
 the feeling of the Italian allies toward Rome? What can you say of 
 Drusus? What happened on the death of Drusus? What was the 
 result of the war with the allies? Describe the rise of Sulla. How 
 did he defeat the will of the people ? Was his action legal ? What 
 happened in Rome after Sulla went to Asia Minor ? Recount Sulla's 
 campaign against Mithradates. W^hat happened on Sulla's return to 
 Italy? What was the policy of Sulla, and how did he put it through ? 
 
 Section 85. How did the people succeed in throwing off the 
 rule of the Senate ? What great command did they give to Pompey ? 
 Recount his operations against the pirates and in the Orient. Tell 
 about the rise of Julius Caesar. Recount the rise of Cicero and his 
 defeat of Catiline. How did this prove a setback to Caesar? How 
 did Caesar secure election as consul ? Recount his campaigns in 
 Gaul. What was his view of the political situation of Rome ? What 
 did the Senate do to thwart Caesar ? What was the result of Caesar's 
 advance on Rome? Recount his operations in Spain, and his in- 
 vasion of Epirus. Describe the battle of Pharsalus. Recount briefly 
 the achievements of Caesar after his triumph. Tell the story of his 
 death and its results. 
 
 Section 86. Tell the story of Octavian until the batde of Philippi. 
 How did Octavian gain the West? Who was ruler of the East? 
 How did Octavian gain the East? What great world did he then 
 control ? What kind of power had triumphed at the end of a century 
 of revolution ? What was to follow ? 
 

 PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE FIRST OF TWO CENTURIES OF PEACE: THE AGE OF 
 AUGUSTUS AND THE SUCCESSORS OF HIS LINE 
 
 Section 87. The Rule of Augustus and the Begin- 
 ning OF Two Centuries of Peace (30 B.C.-14 a.d.) 
 
 When Octavian returned to Italy he was received with the 977. Octa- 
 greatest enthusiasm. A veritable hymn of thanksgiving arose ^te policy 
 among all classes at the termination of a century of revolution, 
 civil war, and devastation. The great majority of Romans now 
 felt that an individual ruler was necessary for the control of 
 the vast Roman dominions. Octavian therefore entered upon 
 forty-four years of peaceful and devoted effort to give to the 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows a restoration of a magnificent marble in- 
 closurfe containing the " Altar of Augustan Peace," erected by order of the Sen- 
 ate in honor of Augustus. The inclosure was open to the sky, and its surrounding 
 walls, of which portions still exist, are covered below by a broad band of orna- 
 mental plant spirals, very sumptuous in effect. Above it is a series of reliefs, of 
 which the one on the right of the door pictures the legendary hero ^^.neas bring- 
 ing an offering to the temple of the Roman household gods (^P^nates) whom 
 he carried from Troy to Latium (footnote, p. 484). 
 
 601 
 
6o2 Ancient Times 
 
 Roman P^mpire the organization and government which it had 
 so long lacked. His most difficult task was to alter the old form 
 of government so as to make a legal place for the power he 
 had taken by military force. Unlike Caesar, Octavian felt a sin- 
 cere respect for the institutions of the Roman Republic and 
 did not wish to destroy them nor to gain for himself the throne 
 of an oriental sovereign. During his struggle for the mastery 
 heretofore, he had preserved the forms of the Republic and had 
 been duly elected to his grea position. 
 
 978. Organi- Accordingly, on returning to Rome, Octavian did not disturb 
 Roman State the Senate, but did much to strengthen it and improve its 
 by Octavian membership. Indeed, he voluntarily handed over his powers 
 
 to the Senate and the Roman people in January, 27 B.C. The 
 Senate thereupon, realizing by past experience its own helpless- 
 ness, and knowing that it did not possess the organization for 
 ruling the great Roman world successfully, gave him officially 
 the command of the army and the control of the most important 
 frontier provinces. Besides these vast powers, he held also the 
 important rights of a tribune (§§ 797, 810), and on this last 
 office he chiefly based his legal claim to his power in the State. 
 
 979. Titles of At the same time the Senate conferred upon him the title of 
 ^" ^ "Augustus," that is, "the august." The chief name of his 
 
 office was " Princeps," that is, " the first," meaning the first of 
 the citizens. Another title given the head of the Roman Empire 
 was an old word for director or commander ; namely, " Impera- 
 tor," from which our word " emperor " is derived. Augustus, 
 as we may now call him, regarded his position as that of an 
 official of the Roman Republic, appointed by the Senate. 
 Indeed, his appointment was not permanent, but for a term of 
 years, after which he was reappointed. 
 
 980. Dual The Roman Empire, which here emerges, was thus under a 
 therTew^State- ^^^^ government of the Senate and of the Princeps, whom we 
 
 ^^^"/"gpo^^'" commonlv call the emperor. The clever Aus^ustus had done 
 of the Senate ■' ^ ^ 
 
 what his great foster father, Julius Caesar, had thought unneces- 
 sary : he had conciliated those Romans who still cherished the 
 
TJie First of Two Centuries of Peaee 603 
 
 old Republic. The new arrangement was officially a restoration 
 of the Republic. But this dual state in which Augustus endeav- 
 ored to preserve the old Republic was not well balanced. The 
 Princeps held too much power to remain a mere appointive 
 official. His powers were more than once increased by the 
 Senate during the life of Augustus ; not on his demand, for he 
 always showed the Senate the most ceremonious respect, but 
 because the Senate could not dispense with his assistance. At 
 the same time the old powers of the Senate could not be main- 
 tained reign after reign, when the Senate controlled no army. 
 
 The Princeps was the real ruler, because the legions were 981. Tend- 
 behind him, and the so-called republican State created by mUrtaiT^^'^ 
 Augustus tended to become a military monarchy, as we shall monarchy; 
 see. All the influences from the Orient were in the same direc- fluences in 
 
 -.^ . 11 1 T 1 r^, 1 this direction 
 
 tion. l.gypt was m no way controlled by the Senate, but re- 
 ,nained a private domain of the emperor. In this the oldest 
 State on the Mediterranean the emperor was king, in the ori- 
 ental sense. He collected its huge revenues and ruled there as 
 the Pharaohs and Ptolemies had done (§ 717). His position 
 as absolute monarch in Egypt influenced his position as emperor 
 and his methods of government everywhere. Indeed, the East 
 as a whole could only understand the position of Augustus as 
 that of a king, and this title they at once applied to him. This 
 also had its influence in Rome. 
 
 'i'he Empire which Rome now ruled consisted of the entire 982. Peace 
 Mediterranean world, or a fringe of states extending entirely Augustus, 
 around the Mediterranean and including all its shores (map I, f^jjj^j^^g 
 p. 636). But the frontier boundaries, left almost entirely unsettled 
 by the Republic, were a pressing question. There was a natural 
 boundary in the south, the Sahara, and also in the west, the 
 Atlantic ; but on the north and east further conquests might be 
 made. In the main Augustus adopted the policy of organ- 
 izing and consolidating the Empire as he found it, without 
 making further conquests. In the east his boundary thus be- 
 came the Euphrates, and in the north the Danube and the 
 
6o4 Ancient Times 
 
 Rhine. The angle made by the Rhine and the Danube was 
 not favorable for defense of the border, and late in his reign 
 Augustus seems to have made an effort to push forward to the 
 Elbe (see map I, p. 636). This would have given the Empire 
 a more nearly straight boundary, extending from the Black Sea 
 to Denmark in a line from the southeast to the northwest. 
 But whatever the intentions of Augustus may have been, the 
 Roman army was terribly defeated by the barbarous German 
 tribes, and the effort was abandoned. The northern boundary 
 of the Empire was then made a line of provinces west of the 
 Rhine and south of the Danube, extending from the North 
 Sea to the Black Sea.^ 
 
 983. The For the defense of these vast frontiers it was necessary to 
 ^""^ maintain a large standing army. Nevertheless the army, now 
 
 carefully reorganized by Augustus, was not as large as the 
 armies which had grown up in the civil wars. Augustus first 
 reduced it to eighteen legions, but later raised it to twenty-five. 
 It probably contained, on the average, about two hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand men. The army was now recruited chiefly 
 from the provinces, and the foreign soldier who entered the 
 ranks received citizenship in return for his service. Thus the 
 fiction that the army was made up of citizens was maintained. 
 But the tramp of the legions was heard no more in Italy. Hence- 
 forth they were posted far out on the frontiers, and the citizens 
 at home saw nothing of the troops who defended them. 
 
 984. The suf- At the accession of Augustus the Roman Empire from Rome 
 the provinces outward to the very frontiers of the provinces was sadly in 
 
 need of restoration and opportunity to recuperate. The cost of 
 the civil wars had been borne by the provinces. The eastern 
 dominions, especially Greece, where the most important fighting 
 of the long civil war had occurred, had suffered severely. For 
 a century and a half before the great battles of the civil war, 
 the provinces had been oppressed, excessively overtaxed or 
 
 1 Recent study of this question is leading some historians also to the view 
 that Augustus never really intended or attempted to conquer to the Elbe. 
 
The First of Two C en U tries of Peace 605 
 
 tacitly plundered (§ 888). Barbarian invaders had seized the 
 undefended cities of Greece and even established robber states 
 for plundering purposes. Greece herself never recovered from 
 the wounds then suffered, and, in general, the eastern Mediter- 
 ranean had been greatly demoralized. The civilized world was 
 longing for peace. 
 
 Augustus therefore now undertook to do for the Mediter- 985. The 
 ranean world what five hundred years earlier Darius had done Augus*m^:*^^ 
 for the Persian Empire (§ 267), when it was even larger than the organi- 
 
 ^ ^ ' ^ ° zation of the 
 
 the Roman Empire. But the task of Augustus demanded the provinces 
 organization of a much more highly civilized world than that of 
 the Persian Empire, including a vast network of commerce in 
 the Mediterranean such as no earlier age had ever seen. Great 
 peoples and nations had to be officially taken into the Empire 
 and given honest and efficient government. Some of them had 
 old and successful systems of government ; others had no gov- 
 ernment at all. Egypt, for example, had long before possessed 
 the most highly organized administration in the ancient world, 
 but regions of the West, like Gaul, had not yet been given a 
 system of government. All this Augustus endeavored to do. 
 
 Under the Republic the governor of a province not only 986. The 
 served for a short term but was also without experience. His sySem of 
 
 unlimited power, like that of an absolute monarch, made it im- governors of 
 ^ ' ' the provinces 
 
 possible for the consuls changing every year at home to control 
 
 him. The governor of a province was now appointed by the 
 permanent ruler at Rome, and such a governor knew that he 
 was responsible to that ruler for wise and honest government 
 of his province. He also knew that if he proved successful he 
 could hold his post for years, or be promoted to a better one. 
 There thus grew up under the permanent control of Augustus 
 and his successors a body of provincial governors of experience 
 and efficiency. The small group of less important provinces 
 still under the control of the Senate, although they continued to 
 suffer to some extent under the old system, also felt the influ- 
 ence of the improved methods. 
 
6o6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 987. Augus- 
 tus for the 
 first time 
 regulates the 
 finances of 
 the Empire 
 
 988. Bene- 
 ficial effect 
 of the new 
 efficient 
 government 
 
 989. The 
 
 Mediterra- 
 nean world 
 on the way 
 to become a 
 Mediterra- 
 nean nation 
 
 In the days of the Republic no one had ever tried to settle 
 how much money was needed to carry on the government, and 
 how much of this sum each province ought justly to pay in the 
 form of taxes. Augustus proceeded to put together huge census 
 lists and property assessments, by which to determine the popu- 
 lation and the total value of the property in each province. 
 When this great piece of work was done he could determine 
 just how much taxes each province should justly pay. He de- 
 creed that the inhabitants of the provinces were to pay two 
 kinds of direct taxes, one on land and one on personal prop- 
 erty, besides customs duties and various internal revenue taxes. 
 Augustus had complete control of the vast sums which he thus 
 received in taxes, and his use of them was wise and just. Much 
 of this money went back to the provinces to pay for necessary 
 public works, like roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public build- 
 ings. In making all these financial arrangements Augustus 
 learned much from Egypt. 
 
 Thus at last two centuries of Roman mismanagement of the 
 provinces ended, and the obligation of Rome to give good 
 government to her dependencies was finally fulfilled. The 
 establishment of just, stable, and efficient control by the gov- 
 ernment at once produced a profound change, visible in many 
 ways as we shall see (§§ 991-1004), but especially in business. 
 Men of capital no longer kept their money timidly out of sight, 
 but put it at once into business ventures. The rate of interest 
 under the last years of the Republic had been twelve per cent. 
 But as money now became more plentiful, the interest rate 
 quickly sank to four per cent. 
 
 The great Mediterranean world under the control of Rome 
 now entered upon a new age of prosperity and development, 
 unknown before, when the nations along its shores were still 
 fighting each other in war after war. A process of unification 
 began which was to make the Mediterranean world a Mediter- 
 ranean nation. The national threads of our historical narrative 
 have heretofore been numerous, as we have followed the stories 
 
TJie First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 607 
 
 of the oriental nations, of Athens, Sparta, Macedonia, Rome, 
 Carthage, and others. For a long time we have followed these 
 narratives separately like individual strands ; but now they are 
 to be twisted together into a single thread of national history, 
 that of the Roman Empire. The great exceptions are the Ger- 
 man barbarians in the north, and the unconquered Orient east 
 of the Euphrates. 
 
 Section 88. The Civilization of the Augustan Age 
 
 In the new Mediterranean nation thus growing up, it was 990. Augus- 
 the purpose of Augustus that Italy should occupy a superior 
 position, as the imperial leader of all the peoples around the 
 
 a restoration 
 of old Roman 
 life, and plans 
 
 Mediterranean. Italy was not to sink to the level of these preeminence 
 peoples nor to be merely one of them. We have seen the 
 sturdy virtues of earlier Roman character undermined and 
 corrupted by sudden wealth and power (§§ 906-922), before 
 Italy had had a chance to become a nation. Augustus made a 
 remarkable effort to undo all this damage and restore the fine 
 old days of rustic Roman virtue, the good old Roman customs, 
 the beliefs of the fathers. To meet increasing divorce, laws to 
 protect the sanctity of marriage were passed. The oriental gods, 
 so common for centuries in Greece (§ 657), and long wide- 
 spread in Italy, were to be banished. The people were urged 
 to awaken their declining interest in the religion of their fathers, 
 and the old religious feasts were celebrated with increased splen- 
 dor and impressiveness. At the same time the State temples, 
 which had frequently fallen into decay, were repaired ; new 
 ones were built, especially in Rome, and the services and usages 
 of Roman State religion were everywhere revived. 
 
 Tendencies like those which had changed the Roman people 991. The 
 lie too deep in the life and the nature of men to be much "^^ °™^ 
 altered by the power of a government or the pressure of new 
 laws. It was a new world in which the Romans of the Augustan 
 Age were living. The pnore Augustus applied his own power 
 
6o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 992. Rome 
 the greatest 
 center of art 
 the Palatine 
 buildings of 
 Augustus 
 
 to modify the situation, the more noticeable became the con- 
 trast between the Augustan Age and the old days before 
 one-man power arose. Under Augustus, Rome for the first 
 time received organized police, a fire department, a water 
 department, and a fully organized office for the government 
 sale of grain. Augustus himself boasted that he found Rome 
 a city of brick and left it a city of marble. To the visitor at 
 Rome, therefore, the new age proclaimed itself in imposing new 
 buildings. For republican Rome had lacked the magnificent 
 monumental theaters and gymnasia, libraries and music halls, 
 which had long adorned the greater Hellenistic cities. It had 
 also, of course, possessed no royal palace, like that at Alexandria. 
 Architecturally, Alexandria was still the most splendid city of 
 the ancient world. 
 
 The great architectural works which Augustus now began, 
 made Rome the leading art center of the ancient world. His 
 building plans were in the main those which his adoptive 
 father, the Great Dictator, had himself either laid out or al- 
 ready begun. On the Palatine Hill, Augustus united several 
 dwelling houses, already there, into a palace for his residence. 
 It was very simple, and the quiet taste of his sleeping room, 
 which long survived the rest of the building (§ 1014), was the 
 
 * The Sacred Way (plan, p. 622) passed the little circular temple of 
 Vesta (^), and reached the Forum at the Arch of Augustus {B), and 
 the Temple of the Deified Julius Caesar (C). On the right was the old 
 Basilica of ^milius {D) (§ 890), and on the left the magnificent new 
 Basilica of Julius Caesar {E) (§ 993). Opposite this, across the old 
 Forum market place {F), was the new Senate House {G) planned by 
 Julius Caesar (§ 993). At the upper end of the Forum was the new 
 speaker's platform {H); near it Septimius Severus later erected his 
 crude arch (/). Beyond rises the Capitol, with the Temple of Saturn 
 {/) and the Temple of Concord {K) at its base ; above on its slope is 
 the Tabularium (Z), a place of public records; and on the summit of 
 the Capitol the Temple of Jove {M). Julius Caesar extended the Forum 
 northward by laying out his new Forum {N) behind his Senate House 
 (6"). The subsequent growth of the emperors' Forums on this side may 
 be seen in the next figure (Fig. 247), where the same lettering is repeated 
 and continued 
 
^i 
 
 y,^\^M 
 
 # 
 
 ."^ 
 
 ■m' 
 
 ' t 
 
 
 Q 
 
 Fig. 246. The Roman Forum and its Public Buildings in the 
 Early Empire. (After Luckenbach)* 
 
 We look across the ancient market place (/% § 784) to the Tiber with its 
 ships at the head of navigation. On each side of the market place, where 
 we see the buildings {E, J, and D, G, /), were once rows of little wooden 
 booths for selling meat, fish, and other merchandise. Especially after the 
 beginning of the Carthaginian wars, these were displaced by fine buildings, 
 like the basilica hall D, built not long after 200 B.C. Note the square 
 ground plans (/, I\I) and the arches showing Etruscan influence, the Attic 
 roofs and colonnades and the clerestory windows (Z), E) copied from the 
 Hellenistic cities. See complete key on opposite page, footnote 
 
Fig. 247. The Forums of the Emperors continuing the View 
 OF the Old Forum in Fig. 246. After L. Levy (Luckenbach)* 
 
 The plan (p. 622) shows how the Forums of the emperors formed a 
 connecting Hnk uniting the old Roman Forum (F) with the magnificent 
 new buildings of the Campus Martins, like the Theater of Pompey, 
 Baths of Agrippa, Pantheon, etc. In order to make this connection, 
 Trajan cut away the ridge joining the Capitol Hill and the Quirinal Hill 
 to a depth of 100 feet. The summit of his column (7^ above and Fig. 263) 
 still marks the former height of the ridge. Little now remains of all 
 this magnificence ; see the ruined colonnades around the column of 
 Trajan (Fig. 263). See discussion of buildings on opposite page, footnote 
 
The First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 609 
 
 admiration of later Romans. From this royal dwelling on the 
 Palatifie arose our English word " palace." A new and sumptu- 
 ous temple of Apollo surrounded by colonnades, in which the 
 emperor installed a large library (§ looi), was erected within 
 easy reach of his palace doors. 
 
 The palace looked down upon an imposing array of new 993. The 
 marble buildings surrounding the ancient Forum. Nearest the Tn the^Forum 
 palace the magnificent basilica business hall erected by Caesar, ^"'^ vicinity 
 left unfinished and then damaged by fire, was now restored and 
 completed by Augustus (Fig. 246, E). He also erected a new 
 Senate building, planned but never built by Caesar, opposite the 
 new basilica (Fig. 246, G). Facing the end of the Forum the em- 
 peror now built a temple for the worship of his deified foster 
 father, known as the temple of the Divine Julius (Fig. 246, C), 
 and facing it, at the opposite end of the Forum, Augustus 
 placed a magnificent speaker's platform of marble (Fig. 246, H). 
 Behind the ground intended by him for the new Senate 
 building, Cassar had built a new forum, called the Forum 
 of Caesar (Figs. 246 and 247, iV); but the growing business of 
 the city led Augustus to build a third forum, known as 
 the Forum of Augustus (Fig. 247, O)^ which he placed next 
 to that of Caesar. 
 
 * The Senate House of Julius Caesar {G) and his new Forum {N) 
 extended from the old Forum northward, occupying the ground where 
 once the Assembly of the Roman People had been accustomed to meet 
 [Comitium). This northern addition to the old Forum was still further 
 extended in the same direction by the Forum of Augustus (6>) (§ 993). 
 The great emperors of the first and second centuries then extended 
 this northern addition in two directions, first on the southeast [P, 0, 
 and then on the northwest [R, S, T, U, V, W, and plan, p. 622). In the 
 first century Vespasian built the beautiful Forum of Peace [P), and the 
 aged Nerva inserted his long, narrow Forum { Q) ; while in the second 
 century a. d. Trajan, going to the other side of the Forum of Augustus 
 ((9), built the most magnificent of all the forums {R), with a vast basil- 
 ica [S, called Basilica Ulpia) beside it, and beyond it his two libraries 
 (^. ^) (§ 105 0> with his wonderful column {T, and Fig. 263) between 
 them. In Trajan's honor Hadrian then built a temple {JV), completing 
 this line of the most magnificent buildings the ancient world ever saw. 
 
6io 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 994. First 
 theaters and 
 baths; Altar 
 of Peace 
 
 995. Influ- 
 ence of 
 Greece and 
 the Orient 
 on Roman 
 architecture 
 
 996. Com- 
 plete lack 
 of initiative 
 in sculpture 
 and painting 
 at Rome 
 
 The first stone theater in Rome had been built by Pompey 
 about twenty-five years before the accession of Augustus (plan, 
 p. 622). The emperor, therefore, erected a large and magnifi- 
 cent theater, which he named the Theater of Marcellus (§ 1007), 
 after his deceased son-in-law Marcellus. At the same time 
 Agrippa, the ablest of the generals and ministers of Augustus, 
 erected the first fine public baths in Rome, for which he was 
 given space in the Field of Mars, an old drill ground (plan, 
 p. 622). In connection with it were other splendid public build- 
 ings added by Agrippa, and a spacious open square for the 
 Assembly of the People. At the same time the Senate showed 
 its appreciation of the new era of peace by erecting a large 
 and beautiful marble Altar of Peace (headpiece, p. 601). 
 
 In this new architecture of Rome, Greek models were 
 the controlling influence. Nevertheless, oriental influences also 
 were very prominent. Greek architecture did not employ the 
 arch so long used in the Orient, but the architects of Rome 
 now gave it a place of prominence along with the colonnade, 
 as the two leading features of their buildings. It was through 
 these Roman buildings that the arch gained its important place 
 in our own modern architecture. Augustus seems to have been 
 much interested in the monuments of the ancient oriental world, 
 which he more than once visited. His triumphal arch was ar- 
 ranged with three gates like the Assyrian palace front (Fig. 248). 
 He carried away from the Nile a number of Egyptian obelisks 
 and set them up in Rome, and in building his own family tomb 
 he selected a design from the Orient. One of the noble families 
 of Rome even built a pyramid as a tomb, and it still stands on 
 the outskirts of the city (Fig. 249). 
 
 While architecture flourished in Rome, sculpture was less 
 cultivated. Beautiful sculpture, following old models, might still 
 be produced ; but there were no creative sculptors in Rome like 
 those whom we have met in Athens. Painting as an independ- 
 ent art had ceased to be practiced. There was not a single 
 great painter in Rome, and the painting which was practiced 
 
(U j_, r^ "Z! "^^ ^ 
 ^ .ti 05 (U 
 
 Ri C <" '^ 
 
 m u *^ '^ x^ 
 
 ^2^ "J fit 
 
 6ii 
 
6l2 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 997. Lack 
 of science 
 at Rome; 
 Agrippa's 
 map 
 
 was merely that of wall decoration, as we see it in the houses 
 of Pompeii (Fig. 197), which we are yet to visit. 
 
 If Rome was a borrower in art, she was even more so in 
 science. Rome had no such men as Archimedes (§ 742) and 
 Eratosthenes (§ 745). When Agrippa, Augustus's powerful 
 
 Fig. 249. Pyramid-Tomb of a Roman Noble named Cestius 
 
 Wealthy Romans familiar with the East {§ 1046) might erect a tomb of 
 oriental form, as the family of this noble Cestius did. His pyramid- 
 tomb when built (in the reign of Augustus) stood outside of the city; 
 but nearly three hundred years later it was included in the wall erected 
 around the city by Aurelian (270-275 a. D.) for the protection of 
 Rome against the barbarian invasions (§ 1096). Here we see a portion 
 of the wall of Aurelian on each side of the pyramid 
 
 minister, drew up a great map of the world, all he had in view 
 was the practical use of the map by Roman governors going 
 out to their provinces or by merchants traveling with goods. 
 Hence the roads were elaborately laid out, not on a fixed scale 
 but so that there would be space enough along each road for 
 the names of all the towns situated along it, and for all the 
 
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 613 
 
 distances in miles between towns, which were inserted in figures 
 on the map. Such a map was without doubt convenient, but 
 it entirely lacked the network of latitude and longitude so 
 carefully worked out by Eratosthenes (§ 748), and for this 
 reason the shapes of the countries and seas were so distorted 
 that none of the readers of this book would be able to find 
 anything or recognize familiar countries. 
 
 The leading geography of the time was written by a Greek 998. Strabo 
 living in Rome, named Strabo. It was a delightful narrative phyfdecfine 
 of wide travels mingled with history, and although it sadly °^ science 
 lacked in scientific method, it was for many centuries the 
 world's standard geography and may still be read with great 
 pleasure and profit as an ancient book of travel. The work 
 of Strabo, however, is a landmark disclosing the decline of 
 ancient science and the end of that great line of scientists 
 whose achievements made the Hellenistic Age the greatest 
 age of science in the early world. 
 
 Indifference to science at Rome was in marked contrast 999. Enthusi- 
 
 with Roman interest in literature. The greatest of the leading fn^TteraSre- 
 
 Romans displayed in some cases an almost pathetic devotion Romans of 
 
 ^ ■' ^ Greco Roman 
 
 to literary studies, even while weighed down with the heaviest culture the 
 
 .,.,..„ , . T • 1 leading culti- 
 
 responsibilities. Caesar put togetner a treatise on Latm speech vatedmenof 
 
 while crossing the Alps in a palanquin, when his mind must Jvorld"^'^'^^ 
 
 have been filled with the problems of his great wars in Gaul. 
 
 He dedicated the essay to Cicero, the greatest master of Latin 
 
 prose. Such men as these had studied in Athens or Rhodes, 
 
 and were deeply versed in the finest works of Greek learning 
 
 and literature. Caesar and Cicero and the men of their class 
 
 spoke Greek every day among themselves, perhaps more than 
 
 they did Latin. In these men Hellenistic civilization and Roman 
 
 character had mingled to produce the most cultivated minds 
 
 of the ancient world. Among the educated men in the declining 
 
 Greek communities of the East, none could rival these finest 
 
 of the Romans in cultivation or in power of mind. Indeed, 
 
 Greece never produced men of just this type, who exhibited 
 
6i4 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1000. Cicero 
 the type of 
 the highly 
 educated man 
 of the late 
 Republic ; 
 his writings 
 and their 
 enduring 
 influence 
 
 lOOl. Augus- 
 tan Age and 
 literature : 
 Livy 
 
 such a combination of gifts — the highest ability both in public 
 leadership and in literary achievement. 
 
 Of literary studies Cicero said : " Such studies profit youth 
 and rejoice old age ; while they increase happiness in good 
 fortune, they are in affliction a consolation and a refuge ; they 
 give us joy at home and they do not hamper us abroad ; they 
 tarry with us at night time and they go forth with us to 
 the countryside." Thus spoke the most cultivated man Rome 
 ever produced, and the ideals of the educated man which he 
 himself personified have never ceased to exert a powerful in- 
 fluence upon educated men in all lands. When he failed as a 
 statesman, a career for which he did not possess the necessary 
 firmness and practical insight (§957), he devoted himself to 
 his literary pursuits. As the greatest orator in Roman history, 
 he had already done much to perfect and beautify Latin prose 
 in the orations which he delivered in the course of his career 
 as a lawyer and a statesman. But after his retirement he pro- 
 duced a group of remarkable essays on oratory, a series of 
 treatises on conduct — such matters as friendship, old age, and 
 the like ; and he left behind also several hundred letters which 
 were preserved by his friends. As one of the last sacrifices of 
 the civil wars, Cicero had fallen by the hands of Antony's brutal 
 soldiery (§ 972) ; but his writings were to exert an undying influ- 
 ence. They made Latin speech one of the most beautiful instru- 
 ments of human expression, and as an example of the finest 
 literary style they have influenced the best writing in all the 
 languages of civilization ever since. 
 
 Augustus and a number of the leading men about him had 
 known Cicero. For them that commingling of Greek and 
 Roman civilization, which might well be called Ciceronian, 
 became the leading cultivated influence in their lives. The 
 Ciceronian culture of the last days of the dying Republic thus 
 became the ideal of the early Empire and the Augustan Age. 
 Augustus had early established two libraries in Rome, and one 
 of them contained the greatest collection of both Greek and 
 
The First of Tzvo Ceftturies of Peace 615 
 
 Latin books in the ancient world. Men steeped in this Greco- 
 Roman culture now began to feel the influence of the great 
 events which had built up the vast Roman Empire. As at 
 Athens in the days of the greatest Athenian power, so the 
 vision of the greatness of the State stirred the imagination of 
 thinking men. Livy wrote an enormous history of Rome from 
 the earliest times, that is to say, from the Trojan War to the 
 reign of Augustus, in one hundred and forty-two rolls (§ 751) 
 — a work which cost him forty years of labor. While it was 
 beautiful literature, and the fragments which survive still form 
 fascinating reading, it was very inaccurate history. The careful 
 historical method that had made Thucydides (§667) the greatest 
 of ancient historians had disappeared. 
 
 In the last days of the Republic, in spite of turbulence and 1002. Rise 
 civil war, Cicero and the men of his time had perfected Latin the Augustan 
 prose. On the other hand, the greatest of \.2i\jm. poetry arose ^^^' Horace 
 under the inspiration of the early Empire and the universal 
 peace established by Augustus. Horace, the leading poet of 
 the time, had been a friend of the assassins of Caesar, and 
 he had faced the future Augustus on the battlefield of Philippi. 
 After a dangerous struggle he had saved himself and at last 
 found security in the era of peace. Having lived through many 
 dangers, to rejoice in the general peace, he gained the forgive- 
 ness and friendship of Augustus. In his youth, although only 
 the son of a freedman of unknown race, he had studied in 
 Greece, and he knew the old Greek lyric poets (§ 482) who 
 had suffered danger and disaster as he himself had done. With / 
 
 the haunting echoes of old Greek poetry in his soul, he now / 
 
 found his own voice. Then he began to write of the men and I 
 
 the life of his own time in a body of verse which forms for 
 us an undying picture of the Romans in the days of Augustus. 
 The poems of Horace will always remain one of the greatest 
 legacies from the ancient world — a treasury of Roman life as 
 pictured by a ripe and cultivated mind, unsurpassed even in 
 the highly developed literature of the Greeks. 
 
6i6 Ancient Times 
 
 1003. Virgil Virgil, the other great poet of the Augustan Age, had from 
 iEneid the beginning been a warm admirer of the great Caesar and 
 
 the young Octavian. When the civil war had deprived Virgil 
 of his ancestral farm under the shadow of the Alps in the 
 North, it was restored to him by Augustus. Here, as he looked 
 out upon his own fields, the poet began to v/rite verses like 
 those of Theocritus (§ 754), reflecting to us in all its poetic 
 beauty the rustic life of his time on the green hillsides of Italy. 
 But these imitations of Greek models would never have given 
 Virgil his place as one of the greatest poets of the world. As 
 time passed he gained an exalted vision of the mission of Rome, 
 and especially of Augustus, as the restorer of world peace. 
 More than one Latin epic was already in circulation (§ 904), 
 but in order to give voice to his vision, Virgil now undertook 
 the creation of another epic, in which he pictured the wander- 
 ings of the Trojan hero ^^neas from Asia Minor to Italy, where 
 in the course of many heroic adventures he founded the royal 
 line of Latium (headpiece, p. 484). From him, according to 
 the story, were descended the Julian family, the Caesars, whose 
 latest leader Augustus had saved Rome and established a 
 world peace. 
 
 1004. Char- Unlike the Homeric epics, Virgil's ^Eneid, as it is called, 
 ^neid was not the outgrowth of an heroic age. It was a tribute to 
 
 Augustus, whom the poem artistically placed against a glorious 
 background of heroic achievement in the Trojan Age, just as 
 Alexander the Great contrived to do the same for himself 
 (§ 689). The ^neid was therefore the product of a self- 
 conscious, literary age — the highly finished work of a literary 
 artist who now took his place with Horace as one of the great 
 interpreters of his age. Hardly so penetrating a mind as his 
 friend Horace, Virgil was perhaps an even greater master of 
 Latin verse. Deeply admired by the age that produced it, the 
 yf^neid has ever since been one of the leading schoolbooks of 
 the civilized world, and has had an abiding influence on the best 
 literature of later times. 
 
The First of Two CeiiUiries of Peace 617 
 
 Augustus himself also left an account of his deeds. When 1005. Ac- 
 he was over seventy-five years old, as he felt his end approach- deedlkftby 
 
 ing, he put together a narrative of his career, which was en- Augustus in 
 
 the Ancyra 
 graved on bronze tablets and set up before his tomb. In the monument 
 
 simple dignity of this impressive story we see the career of 
 Augustus unfolding before us in one grand achievement after 
 another, rising like a panorama of successive mountain peaks, 
 in a vision of such grandeur as to make the document prob- 
 ably the most impressive brief record of a great man's life which 
 has survived to us from the ancient world. Almost with his 
 last breath Augustus penned the closing lines of this remark- 
 able document, and on the nineteenth of August, the month 
 which bears his name, in the year 14 a.d., the first of the 
 Roman emperors died. 
 
 Section 89. The Line of Augustus and the End of 
 THE First Century of Peace (14 A.D.-68 a.d.) 
 
 Augustus had been in supreme control of the great Roman 1006. The 
 world for forty-four years ; that is, nearly half a century. Four s^rs of ^h?" 
 descendants of his family, either by blood or adoption, were to JP* °^ 
 rule for more than another half centuiy, and thus to fill out the (14-68 a.d.) 
 first century of peace. The prejudice against one-man power 
 was still so strong that the writers of this age and their suc- 
 cessors have transmitted to us very unfair accounts of these 
 four rulers. Two of them were indeed deserving of the con- 
 tempt in which they are still held; but the other two were 
 in many respects able rulers, who did much to improve the 
 developing government of the Empire. 
 
 Augustus had never put forward a law providing for the 1007. Ques- 
 appointment of his successor or for later successors to his succession; 
 position. Any prominent Roman citizen might have aspired 
 to the oflfice. Augustus left no son, and one after another his 
 male heirs had died, among them his grandsons, the sons of 
 his daughter Julia. He had finally been obliged to ask the 
 
 Tiberius 
 
6i8 Ancient Tunes 
 
 Senate to associate with him his stepson Tiberius, his wife's 
 son by an earlier marriage. Before the death of Augustus, 
 >-- Tiberius had therefore been given joint command of the army 
 
 i^- and also the tribune's power. The Senate, therefore, at once 
 
 appointed him to all his stepfather's powers, and without any 
 limit as to time. 
 
 1008. The Tiberius was an able soldier and an experienced man of 
 ofrSerfu?" affairs. He gave the provinces wise and efficient governors, 
 (14-37 A. D.) ^j^(j showed himself a skilled and successful ruler. He did not, 
 
 however, possess his stepfather's tact and respect for the old 
 institutions. He found it very vexatious to carry on joint rule 
 with a Senate whose power was in reality litde more than a 
 fiction. He felt only contempt for the Roman nobles who 
 publicly did him homage and secretly slandered him or plotted 
 his downfall. He likewise despised the Roman populace. Under 
 Augustus they had continued to go through the form of electing 
 magistrates and passing laws as in the days of the Republic, but 
 of course both the magistrates they elected and the laws they 
 passed had been those proposed to the assemblies by Augustus. 
 Tiberius, however, no longer allowed the Roman rabble to go 
 through the farce of voting on what the emperor had already 
 decided, and even the appearance of a government by the 
 Roman people thus finally disappeared forever. To complete 
 his unpopularity in Rome, Tiberius also practiced strict economy 
 in government and much reduced the funds devoted to public 
 shows for the amusement of the people. Universally hated in 
 Rome, greatly afflicted also by bereavements and disappoint- 
 ments in his private life, Tiberius left the city and spent his last 
 years in a group of magnificent villas on the lofty island of 
 Capri, overlooking the Bay of Naples, where he died a disap- 
 pointed man (37 a. d.). 
 
 1009. Calig- As Tiberius had lost his son, the choice for his successor fell 
 upon Gaius Caesar, a great-grandson of Augustus, nicknamed 
 Caligula ('' little boot ") by the soldiers among whom he was 
 brought up. A young man of only twenty-five years, and at 
 
 ula {^n-. 
 
 A.D.) 
 
The First of Tzvo Centimes of Peace 619 
 
 first very popular in Rome, Caligula was so transformed by his 
 sense of vast power and by long-continued dissipation that his 
 mind was crazed. He made his horse a consul, and the enor- 
 mous wealth saved for the State by Tiberius he squandered in 
 reckless debauchery and absurd building enterprises. In the 
 midst of confiscation and murder, this mockery of a reign was 
 brought to a sudden close by Caligula's own officers, who put 
 an end to his life in his palace on the Palatine after he had 
 reigned only four years. 
 
 The imperial guards, ransacking the palace after the death loio. The 
 of Caligula, found in hiding the trembling figure of a nephew ciaudTu" ^ 
 of Tiberius and uncle of the dead Caligula, named Claudius, ^^i a.d.) 
 He had always been merely tolerated by his family as a man 
 both physically and mentally inferior. He was now fifty years 
 old, and there is no doubt that he was weak-kneed both in 
 body and in character. But the guards hailed him as emperor, 
 and the Senate was obliged to consent. Claudius was a great 
 improvement upon Caligula, although he was easily influenced 
 by the women of his family and the freedmen officials whom 
 he had around him. The palace therefore soon became a nest 
 of plots and intrigues, in which slander, banishment, and poison 
 played their evil parts. 
 
 Nevertheless Claudius accomplished much for the Empire lon.Achieve- 
 and devoted himself to its affairs. He conducted in person a Claudius: 
 successful campaign in Britain, and for the first time made its ^j.^^^^^^ °ub- 
 southern portion a province of the Empire. It was this con- He works; 
 
 1-1111 1- irx- '\ • 1 creation of 
 
 quest which helped to bnng so much 01 Latm speecn mto the ministers of 
 English language, for Britain remained a Roman province for ^.d?) ^^"^"^ 
 three and a half centuries. At Rome Claudius was greatly in- 
 terested in buildings and practical improvements. He built two 
 vast new aqueducts, together nearly a hundred miles in length, 
 furnishing Rome with a plentiful supply of fresh water from 
 the mountains (Fig. 250). At the same time his own officials, 
 chiefly able Greek freedmen who were aiding him in his duties, 
 were beginning to form a kind of cabinet destined finally to 
 
620 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 X0I2. Prob- 
 able assas- 
 sination of 
 Claudius and 
 accession of 
 Nero (54 
 A.D.) 
 
 give the Empire for the first time a group of efficient ministers, 
 whom we would call the Secretary of the lYeasur}', the Secre- 
 tary of State, and others like them. 
 
 The inability of Claudius to select wisely and to control those 
 who formed his circle was the probable cause of his death. It 
 
 Fig. 250. The Aqueduct of the Emperor Claudius 
 
 This wonderful aqueduct, built by the Emperor Claudius about the 
 middle of the first century A. D., is over 40 miles long. About three 
 fourths of it is subterranean, but the last 10 miles consists of tall arches 
 of massive masonry, as seen here, supporting the channel in which the 
 water flowed, till it reached the palace of the emperor on the Palatine 
 (plan, p. 622). Such ancient Roman aqueducts were so well built that 
 four of them are still in use at Rome, and they convey to the city a more 
 plentiful supply of water than any great modern city elsewhere receives 
 
 was also the reason why Agrippina, the last of his wives, was 
 able to push aside the son of Claudius and gain the throne for 
 her own son Nero, as the successor of Claudius. Not only on 
 his mother's side, but also on his father's, Nero was descended 
 from the family of Augustus. His mother had intrusted his 
 education to the philosopher Seneca, and for the first five years 
 of his reign, while Seneca was his chief minister, the rule of 
 
The Fi7'st of Two Centimes of Peace 621 
 
 Nero was wise and successful. When palace plots and intrigues, 
 in which Seneca was not without blame, had removed this able 
 minister from the court and had also banished Nero's strong- 
 minded mother, Agrippina, he cast aside all restraint and fol- 
 lowed his own evil nature in a career of such vice and cruelty 
 that the name of Nero has ever since been regarded as one of 
 the blackest in all history. 
 
 Nero was devoted to art and wished personally to practice it. 1013. The 
 While the favorites of the palace carried on the government, he Ner^s reign 
 toured the principal cities of Greece as a musical composer, 
 competing for prizes in dancing, singing, and chariot races. As 
 the companion of actors, sportsmen, and prize fighters, he even 
 took part in gladiatorial exhibitions. Becoming more and more 
 entangled in the meshes of court plots, his cowardly and sus- 
 picious nature led him to condemn his old teacher, Seneca, to 
 death, to cause the assassination of the son of Claudius and of 
 many other innocent and deserving men. In the same way 
 he was persuaded to take the life of his wife, and to crown his 
 infamy even had his own mother assassinated. At the same 
 time his wild extravagance, his excessive taxation in some of 
 the provinces, and his murders among the rich and noble were 
 stirring up dangerous dissatisfaction, which was to result in 
 his fall. 
 
 A great disaster, meantime, took place in Rome. A fire broke 1014. The 
 out among the cheap wooden buildings around the circus (see Rome (I/^ 
 plan, p. 622). It swept over the Palatine Hill, destroying the ^•^•^,'^"^, 
 palace of Augustus, leaving only his sleeping room (§ 992), and 
 then passed on through the city. It burned for a week, wiping 
 out a large portion of the city, and then breaking out again, 
 increased the damage. Dark rumors ran through the streets 
 that Nero himself had set fire to the city that he might rebuild 
 it more splendidly, and gossip told how he sat watching the 
 conflagration while giving a musical performance of his own on 
 the destruction of Troy. There is no evidence to support these 
 rumors. Under the circumstances, Nero himself welcomed 
 
622 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 another version, which accused the Christians of having started 
 the fire, and he executed a large number of them with horrible 
 tortures. At vast expense, to which much of his excessive taxa- 
 tion was due, he undertook the rebuilding of the city, and he 
 erected an enormous palace for himself called the " Golden 
 
 '^f^JI SCALE OF YARPS 
 
 '"'^ 6,. ,200 400 60O 800 1000 
 
 Map of Rome under the Emperors 
 
 House," extending across the ground where the Colosseum 
 now stands, from the east end of the Forum eastward and 
 northeastward across the Esquiline Hill and over a large section 
 of the city. At the entrance was a colossal bronze statue of 
 himself over a hundred feet high (Fig. 262). There can be no 
 doubt that Nero's interest in art was sincere and that he really 
 desired to make Rome a beautiful city. 
 
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 623 
 
 The dissatisfaction at Rome and Nero's treatment of the 1015. The 
 
 death of 
 Nero, the 
 
 only able men around him deprived him of support there. Then 
 
 the provinces began to chafe under heavy taxation. When last of the 
 
 IT -1 • n ^^ ^ -i JuHan Hnc ; 
 
 the discontent m the provmces finally broke out in open the end of 
 revolt, led especially by Galba, a Roman governor in Spain, L^^of pelce 
 Nero showed no ability to meet the revolt. The rebellious ^^^ ^'^'^ 
 troops marched on Rome. Nero went into hiding, and on hear- 
 ing that the Senate had voted his death, he theatrically stabbed 
 himself, and, attitudinizing to the last, he passed away uttering 
 the words, "What an artist dies in me ! " Thus died in 68 a.d. 
 the last ruler of the line of Augustus, and with him ended the 
 first century of peace (31 B.C.-68 a.d.); for several Roman 
 commanders now struggled for the throne and threatened to 
 involve the Empire in another long civil war. 
 
 In spite of the misrule which had attended the reigns of two 1016. Last- 
 of the line of Augustus, the good accomplished in the reigns du^mg^fhe'^ 
 of Tiberius and Claudius could not be wholly undone. Both at j^Han^ *^^ 
 
 the emperors 
 
 line ; 
 
 Rome and in the provinces, the government had been much i^^^^f^i°" ^} 
 improved. But, as we have seen, the Roman State was fast 
 becoming a monarchy in which the crown was bequeathed 
 from father to son. This process had been hastened by the 
 fact that the Caesars, as the emperors were now called, had 
 gained a position of unique reverence. Beginning with Julius 
 Caesar, the emperors,^ like Alexander the Great, were deified, 
 and their worship was widely practiced throughout the Empire. 
 It was indeed an obligation of citizenship to pay divine homage 
 to the emperor. The supreme place which he now occupied was 
 not to be endangered by the brief struggles which followed the 
 death of Nero, and the wide rule of the Roman emperor, even 
 after the fall of Julius Caesar's line, was to maintain another cen- 
 tury of prosperity and peace. To this second century of peace 
 in the Roman Empire we must devote another chapter. 
 
 1 Besides Julius Caesar and Augustus, Claudius was the only emperor of the 
 Julian line who was deified. Tiberius failed of it because of his unpopularity, and 
 Caligula and Nero, of course, because of their infamous characters. 
 
624 Ancient Times 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section %']. What kind of a period did the rule of Augustus 
 begin? What was his attitude toward the Repubhc? What chief 
 offices and powers did he receive? From what body? What were 
 his tides? Had the Republic survived? What body was continuing 
 the power of the Republic ? Was this power likely to survive ? Who 
 was the real ruler ? W^hat influences tended to make him a sovereign ? 
 What was the policy of Augustus on the frontiers ? What did he do 
 with the army? How had the provinces, especially Greece, suffered? 
 What did Augustus attempt to do about it ? How did Augustus im- 
 prove the rule of the provinces ? Describe his financial improvements. 
 What beneficial effects in business were observable ? W^as the Medi- 
 terranean world about to become a nation ? 
 
 Section 88. What kind of life did Augustus desire for Italy? 
 What did he want the position of Italy to be? How had Rome be- 
 come a new world ? What improvements did Augustus introduce in 
 the city? on the Palatine? in the Forum? What other buildings 
 were erected ? What architectural influences prevailed ? Were there 
 any creative artists in sculpture and painting ? What can you say of 
 science in Rome ? What work did Strabo produce ? Tell about the 
 attitude of educated Romans toward literature. What was Cicero's 
 feeling about literature, and what did he write ? What has been the 
 influence of his writing? What was his influence in the Augustan 
 Age? What was Rome's position in literature? What can you say 
 of Livy? of Horace? of Virgil? Discuss the leading work of Virgil. 
 What remarkable narrative did Augustus himself write ? 
 
 Section 89. How long were Augustus and the four following 
 rulers of his line in power ? Who succeeded Augustus ? Describe his 
 rule. What became of the old power of the people under Tiberius ? 
 Who succeeded Tiberius, and what can you say of his reign ? De- 
 scribe the accession of Claudius. What did he accomplish? Who 
 succeeded Claudius? How had Nero been educated? Describe his 
 reign and character. What catastrophe overtook Rome? Describe 
 his end and its causes. What period closed with his death? Give its 
 date. What can you say of the results of the rule of the Julian line? 
 What exalted station was given to the Roman emperors? What 
 period followed the disappearance of the Julian line? 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE SECOND CENTURY OF PEACE AND THE CIVILIZATION 
 OF THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Section 90. The Emperors of the Second Century 
 OF Peace (beginning 69 a.d.) 
 
 For about a year after the death of Nero the struggle among 1017. Advent 
 the leading military commanders for the throne of the Caesars century of 
 threatened to involve the Empire in another long; civil war. peace with 
 
 ^ ° the triumph 
 
 Fortunately the troops of Vespasian, a very able commander of Vespasian 
 in the East, were so strong that he was easily victorious, and 
 in 69 A.D, he was declared emperor by the Senate. With him, 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the body of a citizen of Pompeii who 
 perished when the city was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 a.d. 
 (§ 1034). The fine volcanic ashes settled around the man's body, and these rain- 
 soaked ashes made a cast of his figure before it had perished. After the body 
 had perished it left in the hardened mass of ashes a hollow mold, which the 
 modern excavators poured full of plaster, and thus secured a cast of the figure 
 of the unfortunate man just as he lay smothered by the deadly ashes which 
 overwhelmed him over eighteen hundred years ago. 
 
 625 
 
626 
 
 Aficient Times 
 
 1018. Rebel- 
 lion of the 
 Jews and de- 
 struction of 
 Jerusalem 
 (70A.D.) 
 
 1019. Two 
 
 great tasks 
 of the em- 
 perors : fron- 
 tier defenses 
 and efficient 
 government 
 organization 
 
 1020. The 
 Roman Em- 
 pire, the 
 bulwark of 
 Mediterra- 
 nean civiliza- 
 tion against 
 northern 
 barbarism 
 
 therefore, began a second century of peace under a line of 
 able emperors who brought the Empire to the highest level of 
 prosperity and happiness. We shall first sketch the political 
 and military activities of these emperors and then turn to the 
 life and civilization of the Empire as a v^hole during the second 
 century of peace. 
 
 Even though remote wars broke out on the frontiers or in 
 distant provinces, they did not disturb the peace of the Empire 
 as a whole. Before his election as emperor, Vespasian had been 
 engaged in crushing a revolt of the fanatical Jews in Palestine, 
 and the next year his able son Titus captured and destroyed 
 Jerusalem amid frightful massacres which exterminated large 
 numbers of the rebellious Jews (70 a.d.). It was later found 
 necessary to forbid all Jews from entering their beloved city, 
 consecrated by so many sacred memories ; and it was made a 
 Roman colony under a different name. Judea at the same time 
 became a Roman province. 
 
 Two great tasks were accomplished by the emperors of the 
 age we are discussing: first, that of perfecting the system of 
 defenses on the frontiers, and second, that of more fully devel- 
 oping the government and administration of the Empire. Let 
 us look first at the frontiers. On the south the Empire was 
 protected by the Sahara and on the west by the Atlantic ; but 
 on the north and east it was open to attack. The shifting Ger- 
 man tribes constantly threatened the northern frontiers; while 
 in the east the frontier on the Euphrates was made chronically 
 unsafe by the Parthians, the only civilized power still uncon- 
 quered by Rome (see map I, p. d^^^- 
 
 The pressure of the barbarians on the northern frontiers, 
 which we recall in the time of Marius (§ 936), was the continu- 
 ance of the vast movement with which we are already ac- 
 quainted — the tide of migration which long before had swept 
 the Indo-European peoples to the Mediterranean (see diagram, 
 Fig. 112) and had carried the Greeks and the Romans into 
 their two Mediterranean peninsulas. Mediterranean civilization 
 
The Second Century of Peace 627 
 
 was thus in constant danger of being overwhelmed from the 
 North, just as the splendid ^Egean civilization was once sub- 
 merged by the incoming of the Greeks (Chap. IX). The 
 great problem for future humanity was whether the Roman 
 emperors would be able to hold off the barbarians long enough 
 so that in course of time these rude Northerners might gain 
 enough of Mediterranean civilization to respect it, and to pre- 
 serve at least some of it for mankind in the future. 
 
 The Flavian family, as we call Vespasian and his tAvo sons, 1021. The 
 did much to make the northern frontiers safe. After the mild ^ng^of^tfTe" 
 and kindly rule of Vespasian's son, Titus (§ 10 18), the latter's "orthem 
 brother, Vespasian's second son Domitian, adopted the frontier the Flavian 
 lines laid down by Augustus and planned their fortification (69-96 a. d.) 
 with walls wherever necessary. He began the protection of the 
 exposed border between the upper Rhine and the upper 
 Danube. In Britain, Domitian even pushed the frontier further 
 northward and then erected a line of defenses. But on the 
 lower Danube he failed to meet the dangerous power of the 
 growing kingdom of Dacia. He even sent gifts to the Dacian 
 king, intended to keep him quiet and satisfied. By this unwise 
 policy Domitian created a difficult problem in this region, to be 
 solved by his successors (see map I, p. 636). 
 
 The brief and quiet reign of the senator Nerva, who was 1022. Trajan 
 selected by the Senate to succeed Domitian (96 a.d.), left the barbaSns^ 
 whole dangerous situation on the lower Danube to be met by ^^ ^'^^ \ov)t.x 
 
 ° ■^ Danube and 
 
 the brilliant soldier Trajan, who followed Nerva in 98 a.d. conquers 
 He quickly discerned that there would be no safety for the 106 a.d.) 
 Empire along the Danube frontier, except by crossing the river 
 and crushing the Dacian kingdom. Bridging the Danube with 
 boats and hewing his way through wild forests, Trajan led his 
 army through obstacles never before overcome by Roman 
 troops. He captured one stronghold of the Dacians after an- 
 other, and in two wars finally destroyed their capital. There- 
 upon the Dacian king and his leading men took their own lives. 
 Trajan built a massive stone bridge (Fig. 251), across the 
 
 .■-^. 
 
628 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Danube, made Dacia a Roman province, and sprinkled plenti- 
 ful Roman colonies on the north side of the great river. The 
 descendants of these colonists in the same region still call them- 
 selves Roumanians and their land Roumajiia^ a form of the 
 
 
 
 
 Fig. 251. The Emperor Trajan sacrificing at his New 
 Bridge across the Danube 
 
 In the background we see the heavy stone piers of the bridge, support- 
 ing the wooden upper structure, built with strong -railings. In the fore- 
 ground is the altar, toward which the emperor advances from the 
 right, with a flat dish in his right hand, from which he is pouring a 
 libation upon the altar. At the left of the altar stands a priest, naked to 
 the waist and leading an ox to be slain for the sacrifice. A group of the 
 emperor's officers approach from the left, bearing army standards. 
 The scene is sculptured with many others on the column of Trajan at 
 Rome (Fig. 263), and is one of the best examples of Roman relief 
 sculpture of the second century (§ 1053) 
 
 word '' Roman."' Trajan's vigorous policy quieted all trouble 
 along the lower Danube for a long time. 
 1033. Tra- The military glory of Rome, which had declined since the 
 
 th^'parthTans ^^Y^ of Caesar, revived in splendor under this great soldier 
 emperor. Trajan then turned his attention to the eastern 
 frontier, extending from the east end of the Black Sea south- 
 ward to the Peninsula of Sinai. In the northern section of this 
 
 (115- 
 
 117 A.D.) 
 
The Second Centnry of Peace 
 
 629 
 
 frontier a large portion of the boundary was formed by the 
 upper Euphrates River. Rome thus held the western half of 
 the Fertile Crescent, but it had never conquered the eastern 
 half, with Assyria and Babylonia (see map I, p. 636). Here the 
 powerful kingdom of the Parthians, kindred of the Persians, 
 had maintained itself with ups and downs since the days of 
 the early Seleucids, for three hundred and fifty years. Twice 
 
 Fig. 252, Restoration of the Roman Fortified Wall on 
 THE German Frontier 
 
 This masonry wall, some three hundred miles long, protected the north- 
 ern boundary of the Roman Empire between the upper Rhine and the 
 upper Danube, where it was most exposed to German attack. At short 
 intervals there were blockhouses along the wall, and at points of great 
 danger strongholds and barracks (Fig. 254) for the shelter of garrisons 
 
 before they had defeated Roman expeditions against them. 
 Trajan, how^ever, dreamed of a great oriental empire like that of 
 Alexander. He led an army against the Parthians and defeated 
 them. He added Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria to the 
 Empire as new provinces. He visited the ruins of Babylon to 
 behold the spot where, four hundred and forty years before, 
 Alexander had died ; but he said he '' saw nothing worthy of 
 such fame, but only heaps of rubbish, stones, and ruins" 
 (Fig. III). Then a sudden rebellion in his rear forced him 
 
630 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1024. Ha- 
 drian (117- 
 
 138 A.D.) 
 
 completes 
 the frontier 
 defenses 
 
 
 
 ^.K.. 
 
 J. ^^ ^l>(.oT ^ C^'^orn iofp|c-'.xf tTlATk! 
 
 J 
 
 
 -Ti- 
 
 to a dangerous retreat Weakened by sickness and bitterly 
 realizing that his great expedition was a failure, he died 
 in Asia Minor while returning to Rome (117 a.d.). 
 
 Trajan's succes- 
 •^ sor, Hadrian, was 
 another able sol- 
 dier, but he had 
 also the judgment 
 of a statesman. 
 He made no effort 
 to continue Tra- 
 jan's conquests in 
 the East. On the 
 contrary, he wisely 
 gave them all up 
 except the Penin- 
 sula of Sinai (see 
 map I, p. 636) and 
 brought the fron- 
 tier back to the 
 Euphrates. But 
 he retained Dacia 
 and strengthened 
 the whole northern 
 frontier, especially 
 the long barrier 
 reaching from the 
 Rhine to the Dan- 
 ube, where the 
 completion of the continuous wall (Fig. 252) was largely due 
 to him. He built a similar wall along the northern boundary 
 across Britain. The line of both these walls is still visible. 
 As a result of these wise measures and the impressive victories 
 of Trajan, the frontiers were safe and quiet for a long time. 
 Nor was there any serious disturbance until a great overflow 
 
 
 
 
 M^ 
 
 
 v.v.x.{SKa'^-*-V 
 
 'HiCTv 
 
 Vg,V 
 
 \.c->.w7-U^i{ 
 
 Fig. 253. Letter of Apion, a young Sol- 
 
 piER IN THE Roman Army, to his Father, 
 
 Epimachos, in Egypt* 
 
The Second Century of Peace 63 1 
 
 of tha northern barbarians (167 a.d.) in the reign of Marcus 
 Aurelius brought to an end the second century of peace. 
 
 Under Trajan and Hadrian the army which defended these 1025. The 
 frontiers was the greatest and most skillfully managed organiza- Tmj^n and^ 
 tion of the kind which the ancient world had ever seen. Drawn ^^^^1^" 
 from all parts of the Empire, the army now consisted of all 
 
 * This iLgyptian youth, Apion, having enlisted in the Roman army 
 in company with other boys from his Httle village in Egypt, bade his 
 family good-by and embarked on a great government ship from Alex- 
 andria for Italy. After a dangerous voyage he arrived safely at Mise- 
 num, the Roman war harbor near Naples, and hastened ashore in his 
 new uniform to have a small portrait of himself painted (§,1054 and 
 Plate Vin, p. 654) and to send his father the letter on the opposite page. 
 It was written for him in Greek, on papyrus, in a beautiful hand by a 
 hired public letter writer, and reads as follows (with the present author's 
 explanations in brackets) : " Apion to Epimachos his father and lord, 
 many good wishes ! First of all I hope that you are in good health, 
 and that all goes well with you and with my sister .and her daughter 
 and my brother always. I thank the lord Serapis [a great Egyptian 
 god] that he saved me at once when I was in danger in the sea. When 
 I arrived at Misenum, I received from the emperor three gold pieces 
 [about fifteen dollars] as road money, and I am getting on fine. I beg 
 of you, my lord father, write me a line, first about your own well-being, 
 second about that of my brother and sister, and third in order that 
 I may devotedly greet your hand, because you brought me up well 
 and I may therefore hope for rapid promotion, the gods willing. Give 
 my regards to Capiton [some friend], and my brother and sister, and 
 Serenilla and my friends. I send you by Euktemon my little portrait. 
 My [new Roman] name is Antonius Maximus. I hope that it may go 
 well with you." On the left margin, where we see two vertical lines 
 inserted, just as we are accustomed to insert them, Apion's chums (the 
 other village boys who enlisted with him) sent home their regards. 
 Folded and sealed as in Fig. 210, the letter went by the great Roman 
 military post, arrived safely, and was read by the young soldier's waiting 
 father and family in the little village on the Nile over seventeen hun- 
 dred years ago (§ 1025). Then years later, after the old father had died, 
 it was lost in the household rubbish, and there the modern excavators 
 found it among the crumbUng walls of the house (cf. Fig. 211). The 
 ancient letter had some holes in it, but with it was another letter written 
 by our soldier to his sister years later, after he had long been stationed 
 somewhere on the Roman frontier (§ 1025) and had a wife and children 
 of his own. And that is all that the rubbish heaps of the village on the 
 Nile have preserved of this lad who entered the army of the great 
 Roman Empire in the second century a.d. 
 
632 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 possible nationalities, like the British army in the Great European 
 War. A legion of Spaniards might be stationed on the Euphrates, 
 or a group of youths from the Nile might spend many years in 
 sentry duty on the wall that barred out the Germans. Although 
 far from home, such young men were enabled to communicate 
 easily with their friends at home by a very efficient military 
 
 Fig. 254. Glimpses of a Roman Frontier Stronghold 
 (Restored after Waltze-Schulze) 
 
 Above, at the left, the main gate of the fort ; the other three views show 
 the barracks (of. Fig. 251) 
 
 postal system covering the whole Empire like a vast network. 
 We are still able to hold in our hands the actual letters written 
 from a northern post by a young Egyptian recruit in the Roman 
 army to his father and sister in a distant little village on the 
 Nile (Fig. 253). When not on sentry duty sqmewhere along 
 the frontier line, such a young soldiei: lived with his comrades 
 in one of the large garrisons maintained at the most important 
 frontier points, with fine barracks and living quarters for officers 
 
The Second Century of Peace 633 
 
 and men (Fig. 254). The discipline necessary to keep the troops 
 always ready to meet the barbarians outside the walls was never 
 relaxed. Besides regular drill, the troops were also employed in 
 making roads, building bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings 
 or in repairing the frontier walls. 
 
 Meantime the Empire had been undergoing important changes io26.0rgani- 
 within. The emperors developed a system of government 'de- effiden/ 
 partments alre.ady foreshadowed in the time of Claudius (§ ion), government 
 To manage them, they appointed Rom^n knights. There thus 
 grew up a body of experienced administrators as heads of de- 
 partments and their helpers, who carried on the government of 
 the Empire. It was the wise and efficient Hadrian who accom- 
 plished the most in perfecting this organization of the govern- 
 ment business. Thus after Rome had been for more than three 
 centuries in control of the Mediterranean world, it finally pos- 
 sessed a well-developed government organization such as had 
 been in operation in the Orient since the days of the pyramid 
 builders (§§ 74-75)- 
 
 Among many changes, one of the most important was the 1027. Change 
 abolition of the system of " farming " taxes, to be collected by taxTanners to 
 private individuals — a system which had caused both the government 
 
 ^ ■' tax collectors 
 
 Greeks (§ 623) and the Romans (§ 889) much trouble. Gov- 
 ernment tax collectors now gathered in the taxes of the great 
 Mediterranean world. It is interesting to recall that such a 
 system had been fully organized on the Nile over three thou- 
 sand years before the Romans possessed it (§ 74 and Fig. 40). 
 
 With the complete control of these departments entirely in 1028. In- 
 his own hands, the power of the emperor had much increased. powe?1)f the 
 From being the first citizen of the State like Augustus, ruling emperor and 
 
 ° o ' o (jechne of 
 
 jointly with the Senate, the emperor had thus become a sover- the Senate 
 eign, whose power was so little limited by the Senate that he 
 was not far from being an absolute monarch. Furthermore, the 
 emperors of the second century of peace secured laws and 
 regulations which made the rule of the emperor legal, although 
 they unfortunately passed no laws providing for a successor 
 
634 Ancient Thnes 
 
 on the death of an emperor, and dangerous conflict might ensue 
 whenever an emperor died. 
 
 1029. Italy At the same time an important change in the position of 
 leadership Italy was taking place. The condition of the farmers was now 
 the levefof^ SO bad that there was danger of the complete disappearance of 
 the provinces free population in the country districts of Italy. Two of the 
 
 emperors, Nerva and Trajan, even set aside large sums as capi- 
 tal to be loaned at a low rate of interest to farmers needing 
 money. This interest was to be used to support poor free 
 children in the towns of Italy in the hope that a new body 
 of free country population might be thus built up. This re- 
 markable effort, one of the earliest known State charities, was, 
 however, not successful. As Italy was furthermore not a manu- 
 facturing country, its citizenship declined. Meantime a larger 
 idea of the Empire had displaced the conception of Augustus, 
 who had desired to see the Empire a group of states led and 
 dominated by Italy. Whole provinces, especially in the West, 
 had been granted citizenship, or a modified form of it, by the 
 emperors. Influential citizens in the provinces were often given 
 high rank and office at Rome. As a result there had now 
 grown up a Mediterranean nation, as we have seen it fore- 
 shadowed even in the time of Augustus, and Italy dropped to 
 a level with the provinces. 
 
 1030. Rise Not only did the subjects of this vast State pay their taxes 
 of raw'for"the into the same treasury, but they were now controlled by the 
 woe Empire g^j^g laws. The lawyers of Rome under the emperors we are 
 
 now discussing were the most gifted legal minds the world had 
 ever seen. They expanded the narrow ^Vv-law of Rome that it 
 might meet the needs of the whole Mediterranean world. They 
 laid the foundations for a vast imperial code of laws, the great- 
 est work of Roman genius. In spirit, these laws of the Empire 
 were most fair, just, and humane. Antoninus Pius, the kindly 
 emperor who followed Hadrian, maintained that an accused 
 person must be held innocent until proved guilty by the evi- 
 dence, a principle of law which has descended to us and is 
 
The Second Century of Peace 63 5 
 
 still part of our own law. In the same spirit was the protection 
 of wives and children from the arbitrary cruelty of the father 
 of the house, who in earlier centuries held the legal right to 
 treat the members of his family like slaves. Even slaves now 
 enjoyed the protection of the law, and the slave could not be 
 put to death by the master as formerly, although we should 
 notice that in some important matters the Roman law treated 
 a citizen according to his social rank, showing partiality to the 
 noble in preference to the common citizen. These laws did 
 much to unify the peoples of the Mediterranean world into a 
 single nation ; for they were now regarded by the law not as 
 different nations but as subjects of the same great State, which 
 extended to them all, the same protection of justice, law, and 
 order. At the same time the earlier laws long developed by the 
 older city-states were not interfered with by Rome, where they 
 did not conflict with the interests of the Empire. 
 
 The Empire as a whole was still organized in provinces, 1031. Gov- 
 which steadily increased in number. Within each province by the'prov-^ 
 far the large majority of the people lived in towns and cities, inces; sm- 
 Such a city and its outlying communities formed a city-state people's 
 like that which we found in early Greece. Each city had the public affairs 
 right to elect its own governing officials and to carry on its own 
 local affairs. The people still took an interest in local affairs, 
 and there was a good deal of rivalry for election to the public 
 offices. On the walls at Pompeii (Fig. 255) we still find the 
 appeals of rival candidates for votes. At the same time each 
 city was under the sovereignty of the Roman Empire and the 
 control of the Roman governor of the province. 
 
 Able and conscientious governors were now controlling affairs 1032. Close 
 all over the Empire. The letters written to Trajan by the ^^e provinces 
 younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, regarding '^\^'^^^ ^^^ 
 the interests of his province reveal to us both his own faithful- decline of the 
 
 • •II- 1 • 1 people's 
 
 ness and the enormous amount of provmcial busmess which interest 
 received the emperor's personal attention. Fig. 253 shows us 
 how such a letter looked. Such attention by emperors like 
 
636 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Trajan and Hadrian relieved the communities of much responsi- 
 bility for their own affairs. Hadrian traveled for years among 
 the provinces and became very familiar with their needs. 
 Hence the local communities inclined more and more to depend 
 upon the emperor, and interest in public affairs declined. Along 
 with growing imperial control of the provinces, there thus began 
 a decline in the sense of responsibility for public welfare. This 
 was eventually a serious cause of general decay, as we shall see. 
 
 Section 91. The Civilization of the Early Roman 
 Empire : the Provinces 
 
 1033. The 
 
 peoples of 
 the Roman 
 Empire 
 
 1034. Pom- 
 peii, a pro- 
 vincial city 
 of the early 
 Roman 
 Empire 
 
 Here was a world of sixty-five to a hundred million souls 
 girdling the entire Mediterranean. Had human vision been able 
 to penetrate so far, we might have stood at the Strait of Gibral- 
 tar and followed these .peoples as our eyes swept along the 
 Mediterranean coasts through Africa, Asia, and Europe, and 
 thus back to the Strait again. On our right in Africa would 
 have been Moors, North Africans, and Egyptians; in the east- 
 ern background, Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Armenians, 
 and Hittites ; and as our eyes returned through Europe, 
 Greeks, Italians, Gauls, and Iberians (Spaniards) ; while north 
 of these were the Britons and some Germans within the 
 frontier lines. All these people were of course very different 
 from one another in native manners, clothing, and customs, 
 but they all enjoyed Roman protection and rejoiced in the far- 
 reaching Roman peace. For the most part, as we have seen, 
 they lived in cities, and the life of the age was prevailingly a 
 city life, even though many of the cities were small. 
 
 Fortunately one of the provincial cities has been preserved 
 to us with much that we might have seen there if we could 
 have visited it nearly two thousand years ago. The little city 
 of Pompeii, covered with volcanic' ashes in the brief reign of 
 Titus (79 A.D.), still shows us the very streets and houses, the 
 forum and the public buildings, the shops and the markets, 
 
The Second Century of Peace 
 
 637 
 
 and a host of other things very much as we might have found 
 them if we had been able to visit the place before the disaster 
 (Fig. 255). We can look down long streets, where the chariot 
 wheels have worn deep ruts in the pavement; we can enter 
 dining rooms with charming paintings still on the walls 
 
 *\* 
 
 :<\^^''%-^. 
 
 1^ r^^ ^-^^ 
 
 iit^''' 
 
 
 i. 
 
 ■\ -X 
 
 ■^-^ --—'"«» 
 
 ^>..ir/"-*.<^'^,n1»^n^,, ^.., fttf- -^■^'^^ - 
 
 Fig. 255. A Street in Ancient Pompeii as it appears To-day 
 
 The pavement and sidewalk are in perfect condition, as when they 
 were first covered by the falling ashes (§ 1034). At the left is a pubHc 
 fountain, and in the foreground is a street crossing. Of the buildings 
 on this street only half a story still stands, except at the left, where we 
 see the entrances of two shops, with the tops of the doors in position 
 and the walls preserved to the level of the second floor above 
 
 (Fig. 197) ; we can look into the bakers' shops with the charred 
 bread still in the ovens and the flour mills standing silent 
 and deserted (Fig. 256); or we can peep into kitchens with 
 the cooking utensils still scattered about (Fig. 243) and the 
 cooking hearth in perfect order for building another fire. The 
 very life of the people in the early Roman Empire seems to 
 
638 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1035. Im- 
 proved 
 means of 
 intercourse : 
 Roman roads 
 and bridges 
 
 1036. Traffic 
 on a Roman 
 highway- 
 
 rise before us as we tread the now silent streets (Fig. 255) of 
 this wonderfully preserved place. 
 
 Pompeii was close beside the Greek cities of southern Italy, 
 and we at once discover that the place was essentially Hellen- 
 istic in its life and art. Indeed, from southern Italy eastward 
 we should have found the life of the world controlled by Rome 
 to be simply the natural outgrowth of Hellenistic life and civili- 
 zation. In some matters there had been great progress. This 
 was especially true of intercourse and rapid communication. 
 Everywhere the magnificent Roman roads, massively paved 
 with smooth stone, like a town street (Fig. 255), led straight 
 over the hills and across the rivers by imposing bridges. Some 
 of these bridges still stand and are in use to-day (Fig. 260). 
 Near the cities there was much traffic on such a highway. 
 
 One met the ponderous coach of the Roman governor, per- 
 haps returning from his province to Rome. The curtains are 
 drawn and the great man is comfortably reading or dictating 
 to his stenographer. Behind him trots a peddler on a donkey, 
 which he quickly draws to one side to make room for a cohort 
 of Roman legionaries marching with swinging stride, their 
 weapons gleaming through a cloud of dust. Following them 
 rides an officer accompanied by a shackled prisoner going up 
 to Rome for trial. He is a Christian teacher named Paul 
 (§ 1068). A young dandy exhibiting the paces of his fine horse 
 to two ladies riding in a palanquin, grudgingly vacates the road 
 before a rider of the imperial post who comes clattering down 
 the next hill at high speed. Often the road is cumbered with 
 long lines of donkeys laden with bales of goods or caravans of 
 heavy wagons creaking and groaning under their heavy loads 
 of merchandise — 'the freight trains of the Roman Empire. 
 As for passenger trains, the traveler must resort to the horse 
 coach or small special carriage or ride his own horse. The 
 speed of travel and communication was fully as high as that 
 maintained in Europe and America a century ago, before the 
 introduction of the steam railway, and the roads were better. 
 
The Second Century of Peace 
 
 639 
 
 Indeed, the good Roman roads were a great advance over 1037. Navi- 
 the Hellenistic Age. By sea, however, the chief difference fhi^p"ng"^ 
 was the freedom from the old-time pirates (§ 949). From the 
 splendid harbor laid out at the mouth of the Tiber by Claudius, 
 
 Fig. 256. Bakery with Millstones still in Position at 
 Pompeii 
 
 In a court beside the bakery we see the mills for grinding the baker's 
 flour. Each mill is an hourglass-shaped stone, which is hollow, the 
 upper part forming a funnel-shaped hopper into which the grain is 
 poured. The lower part of the stone is an inverted funnel placed over 
 a cone-shaped stone inside it. The grain drops between the inner stone 
 and the outer, and when the outer stone is turned by a long timber 
 inserted in its side, the grain is ground between the two 
 
 the traveler could take a large and comfortable ship for Spain 
 and land there in a week. The Roman whose son was studying 
 in Athens dispatched a bank draft for the youth's university 
 expenses, and a week later the boy could be spending the 
 money. A Roman merchant could send a letter to his agent 
 
640 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1038. Com- 
 merce from 
 the Atlantic 
 to India and 
 from the 
 Baltic to the 
 Mediter- 
 ranean 
 
 in Alexandria in ten days. The huge government corn ships 
 that plied regularly between the Roman harbors and Alexandria 
 were stately vessels carrying several thousand tons. They could 
 accommodate an Egyptian obelisk weighing from three to four 
 hundred tons which the emperor desired to erect in Rome 
 (§ 995), besides a large cargo of grain and several hundred 
 passengers. Good harbors had everywhere been equipped with 
 docks, and lighthouses modeled on that at Alexandria guided 
 the mariners into every harbor. In winter, however, sea 
 traffic stopped. 
 
 Under these circumstances business flourished as never be- 
 fore. The good roads led merchants to trade beyond the 
 frontiers and to find new markets. Goods found their way 
 from Italy even to the northern shores of Europe and Britain, 
 whence great quantities of tin passed up the Seine and down 
 the Rhone to Marseilles. At the other end of the Empire the 
 discovery of the seasonal winds in the Indian Ocean led to a 
 great increase of trade with India, and there was a fleet of a 
 hundred and twenty ships plying regularly across the Indian 
 Ocean between the Red Sea and the harbors of India. The 
 wares which they brought crossed the desert by caravan from 
 the Red Sea to the Nile and were then shipped west from the 
 docks of Alexandria, which still remained the greatest commer- 
 cial city on the Mediterranean, the Liverpool of the Roman 
 Empire. It shipped besides East Indian luxuries (§ 733) 
 Egyptian paper (papyrus), linen, rich embroideries, the finest 
 of glassware (§ 83), great quantities of grain for Rome, and 
 a host of other things. There was a proverb that you could 
 get everything at Alexandria except snow. Along the northern 
 roads of the Eastern world was the caravan connection with 
 China which continued to bring silk goods to the Mediter- 
 ranean. It will be seen then that a vast network of commerce 
 covered the ancient world from the frontiers of China and the 
 coast of India on the east to Britain and the harbors of the 
 Atlantic on the west. 
 
The Second Century of Peace 641 
 
 Both business and pleasure now made travel very common, 1039. Fre- 
 and a wide acquaintance with the world was not unusual. The 2-avd but^ 
 Roman citizen of means and education made his tour of lack of hotels 
 the Mediterranean much as the modern sight-seer does. Having 
 arrived in the provincial town, however, he found no good 
 hotels, and if he did not sleep in his own roomy coach or a 
 tent carried by his sei-vants, he was obliged to pass the night 
 in untidy rooms over some shop, the keeper of which enter- 
 tained travelers. More often, however, the traveler of birth 
 and means brought with him letters of introduction, which 
 •procured him entertainment at some wealthy private house. 
 
 For even in the provincial town the traveler found a group 1040. Society 
 of successful men of business and public affairs who had gained Snces^ ^^^^ 
 wealth and had been given the rank of Roman knights. 
 Among them now and again was one of especial prominence 
 who had been given senatorial rank by the emperor. Below 
 the Senators and knights there was a free population of 
 merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and craftsmen. Following 
 a custom as old as the end of the Athenian Empire, these men 
 were organized into numerous guilds, societies, and clubs, each 
 trade or calling by itself. These societies were in some ways 
 much like our labor unions. They were chiefly intended for 
 mutual benefit of the members in their occupations ; some of 
 them also aided in social life, in the celebration of popular 
 holidays, and the society treasury paid the funeral expenses 
 when a member died, just as some societies among us do. As 
 likely as not the richest and most influential man of the place 
 was a freedman. There was in every large town a great 
 number of freedmen, and they carried on an important share 
 of the business of the Empire. 
 
 As the traveler walked about such a town he found every- 1041. Public 
 
 - , • . ^ r a.1- benefactions 
 
 where impressive evidences of the generous interest ot the and schools 
 citizens. There were fountains, theaters, music halls, baths, JJJ^^g^g^ P''°^' 
 gymnasiums, and schools, erected by wealthy men and given 
 to the community. The most famous among such men was 
 
642 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 ■i 
 
 Fig. 257. ScRiBBLiNGS OF Sicilian 
 
 Schoolboys on a Brick in the 
 
 Days of the Roman Empire 
 
 In passing a brickyard, these schoolboys 
 of seventeen hundred years ago amused 
 themselves in scribbling school exercises 
 in Greek on the soft clay bricks before 
 they were baked. At the top a little boy 
 who was still making capitals carefully 
 wrote the capital letter S (Greek 2) ten 
 times, and under it the similar letter K, also 
 ten times. These he followed by the words 
 "turtle" (XEAQNA), "mill" (MTAA), and 
 "pail" (KAAOS), all in capitals. Then an 
 older boy, who could do more than write 
 capitals, has pushed the little chap aside 
 and proudly demonstrated his superiority 
 by writing in two lines an exercise in tongue 
 gymnastics (like '' Peter Piper picked a peck 
 of pickled peppers," etc.) which in our let- 
 ters is as follows : 
 
 Nai neai nea naia neoi temon, hos neoi ha naus 
 This means : " Boys cut new planks for a 
 new ship, that the ship might float." A 
 third boy then added two lines at the bot- 
 tom. The brick illustrates the spread of 
 Greek (§ 727) as well as provincial educa- 
 tion under the Roman Empire (§ 1041) 
 
 Herodes Atticus, who 
 built a magnificent con- 
 cert hall (Fig. 183, /) for 
 Athens. He has been 
 called the " Andrew 
 Carnegie " of his time. 
 In the market place 
 were statues of such 
 donors, with inscrip- 
 tions expressing the 
 gratitude of the people. 
 The boys and girls of 
 these towns found open 
 to them schools with 
 teachers paid by the 
 government, where all 
 those ordinary branches 
 of study which we have 
 found in the Hellen- 
 istic Age were taught 
 (Fig. 257). The boy 
 who turned to business 
 could engage a stenog- 
 rapher to teach him 
 shorthand, and the 
 young man who wished 
 higher instruction could 
 still find university 
 teachers at Alexandria 
 and Athens, and also 
 at a number of younger 
 universities in both 
 East and West, espe- 
 cially the new university 
 established by Hadrian 
 
The Second Century of Peace 643 
 
 at Rome and called the Athenaeum. Thus the cultivated 
 traveler found men of education and literary culture wher- 
 ever he went. 
 
 To such a traveler wandering in Greece and looking back 1042. The 
 some six hundred years to the Age of Pericles or the Persian deHn^th?"" 
 Wars of Athens, Greece seemed to belonsr to a distant and ^^f^- 9^^^^^ 
 
 ° and Athens 
 
 ancient world, of which he had read in the histories of Thur 
 cydides and Herodotus (§§ 567, 667). Dreaming of those 
 ancient days when Rome was a little market town on the Tiber, 
 he might wander along the foot of the Acropolis and catch a 
 vision of vanished greatness as it was in the days of Themis- 
 tocles and Pericles. He could stroll through the porch of the 
 Stoics (§ 761) and renew pleasant memories of his own student 
 days when as a youth his father had permitted him to study 
 there ; or he might take a walk out to the Academy, where 
 he had once listened to the teachings of Plato's successors. 
 
 At Delphi too he found a vivid story of the victories of 1043. The 
 Hellas in the days of her greatness — a story told in marble eieMn^th?^* 
 treasuries and votive monuments, the thanksgiving gifts of the ^^^^'' Delphi 
 Greeks to Apollo (§ 490 and Fig. 172). As the Roman visitor 
 stood there among the thickly clustered monuments, he noticed 
 many an empty pedestal, and he recalled how the villas of his 
 friends at home were now adorned with the statues which had 
 once occupied those empty pedestals. The Greek cities which 
 had brought forth such things were now poor and helpless, 
 commercially and politically, in spite of the rich heritage of 
 civilization which they had bequeathed to the Romans. 
 
 As the traveler passed eastward through the flourishing 1044. The 
 cities of Asia Minor and Syria, he might feel justifiable pride in eler in the 
 what Roman rule was accomplishing. In the western half of M^^VranT 
 the Fertile Crescent, especially on the east of the Jordan, where Syria 
 there had formerly been only a nomad wilderness (§ 135), there 
 were now prosperous towns, with long aqueducts, with baths, 
 theaters, basilicas, and imposing public buildings, of which 
 the ruins even at the present day are astonishing. All 
 
644 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1045. The 
 Roman trav- 
 eler in the 
 East: Par- 
 
 thia, Assyria, 
 and Baby- 
 lonia 
 
 these towns were not only linked together by the fine roads we 
 have mentioned, but they were likewise connected with Rome 
 by other fine roads leading entirely across Asia Minor and the 
 Balkan Peninsula. 
 
 Beyond the desert behind these towns lay the troublesome 
 Parthian Empire. The educated Roman had read how over five 
 hundred years earlier Xenophon, and later Alexander the Great, 
 
 m. 
 
 \ 
 
 u 
 
 !SPP 
 
 U f '^ f f 
 
 T^v.; 
 
 iiilr^ 
 
 
 Fig. 258. Roman Amphitheater seen across the Huts of a 
 Modern North African Village 
 
 The town which once supported a public place of amusement like this 
 
 has given way to a squalid village, and the whole region west of Carthage 
 
 has to a large extent relapsed into barbarism 
 
 had passed by the heaps of ruins which were once Nineveh 
 out yonder on the Tigris (Fig. 203), and he knew from several 
 Greek histories and the report of Trajan (§ 1023) that the ruin- 
 ous buildings of Babylon lay still farther down toward the sea 
 on the Euphrates. Trajan's effort to conquer all that country 
 having failed (§ 1023), the Roman traveler made no effort to 
 extend his tour beyond the frontier out into these foreign lands. 
 But he could take a great Roman galley at Antioch and 
 cross over to Alexandria, where a still more ancient world 
 
The Second Centtiry of Pt 
 
 eace 
 
 645 
 
 awaited him. In the vast lighthouse (§ 733), over four hun- 1046. The 
 dred years old and visible for hours before he reached the t^rA^?e"rin 
 harbor, he recognized the model of the Roman lig:hthouses ^^^ ^^^^ '• 
 
 Egypt 
 
 he had seen. Here our traveler found himself among a 
 group of wealthy Greek and Roman tourists on the Nile. 
 As they left the magnificent buildings of Hellenistic Alex- 
 andria, their voyage up the river carried them at once into 
 
 Fig. 259. Ruins of Roman Baths at Bath, England 
 
 There are hot springs at Bath, England, and here the Roman colonists 
 in Britain developed a fashionable watering place. In recent years 
 the soil and rubbish which, through, the centuries, had collected over 
 the old Roman buildings have been removed, and we can get some 
 idea of how they were arranged. The picture represents a model of 
 a part of the ruins. To the right is a large quadrangular pool, 83 by 
 40 feet in size, and to the left a circular bath. Over the whole a fine 
 hall was built, with recesses on either side of the big pool where one 
 might sit and talk with his friends 
 
 the midst of an earlier world — the earliest world of which 
 they knew. All about them were buildings which were thou- 
 sands of years old before Rome was founded. Like our 
 modern fellow citizens touring the same land, many of them 
 were merely curious idlers of the fashionable world. They 
 berated the slow mails, languidly discussed the latest news 
 from Rome, while with indolent curiosity they visited the 
 Pyramids of Gizeh, lounged along the temple lakes and 
 fed the sacred crocodiles, or spent a lazy afternoon carving 
 
 i 
 
646 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 their names on the colossal statues which overshadowe'd the 
 plain of Egyptian Thebes (Fig. 69), where Hadrian himself 
 listened to the divine voice which issued from one of the statues 
 every morning when the sun smote upon it. And here we still 
 find their scribblings at the present day. But the thoughtful 
 Roman, while he found not a little pleasure in the sights, took 
 
 Fig. 260. Roman Bridge and Aqueduct at Nimes, France 
 
 This structure was built by the Romans about the year 20 A. D. to 
 supply the Roman colony of Nemausus (now called Nimes) in south- 
 ern France with water from two excellent springs 25 miles distant. 
 It is nearly 900 feet long and 160 feet high, and carried the water over 
 the valley of the river Gard. The channel for the water is at the very 
 top, and one can still walk through it. The miles of aqueduct on either 
 side of this bridge and leading to it have almost disappeared 
 
 note also that this land of ancient wonders was filled as of old 
 
 with flocks and herds and vast stretches of luxuriant grainfields, 
 
 which made it the granary of Rome and an inexhaustible 
 
 source of wealth for the emperor's private purse. 
 
 1047. An- The eastern Mediterranean then was regarded by the Romans 
 
 tion in the^ ^s their ancient world, long possessed of its own ancient civili- 
 
 East; later zation, Greek and oriental. There the Roman traveler found 
 
 Roman in ' 
 
 the West Greek everywhere, and spoke it as he traveled. But when he 
 
The Second Ce^itury of Peace 647 
 
 turned away from the East and entered the western Mediter- 
 ranean, he found a much more modem world, with vast regions 
 where civilization was a recent matter, just as it is in America. 
 Thus throughout North Africa, west of Carthage, throughout 
 Spain, Gaul, and Britain, the Romans had at first found only 
 rough settlements, but no cities and no real architecture. Indeed, 
 these Western lands, the America of the ancients, when first 
 conquered by Rome had not much advanced beyond the stage 
 of the Late Stone Age settlements of several thousand years 
 earlier (§ 325), except here and there, where they had come 
 into contact with the Greeks or Carthaginians. 
 
 Seneca, one of the wisest of the Romans, said, " Wherever 1048. The 
 a Roman has conquered, there he also lives." This was espe- of^the^WesT' 
 cially true of the West. Roman merchants and Roman officials ^""^ ^^5"' 
 
 •' surviving 
 
 were everywhere, and many of the cities were Roman colonies, buildings 
 The language of civilized intercourse in all the West was Latin, 
 the language of Rome, whereas east of Sicily the traveler heard 
 only Greek. In this age western Europe had for the first time 
 been building cities ; but it was under the guidance of Roman 
 architects, and their buildings looked like those at Rome. In 
 North Africa between the desert and the sea, west of Carthage, 
 the ruins of whole cities with magnificent public buildings still 
 survive (Fig. 258) to show us how Roman civilization reclaimed 
 regions little better than barbarous before the Roman conquest. 
 Similar imposing remains survive in western Europe, especially 
 southern France. We can still visit and study massive bridges, 
 spacious theaters, imposing public monuments, sumptuous villas, 
 and luxurious public baths — a line of ruins stretching from 
 Britain through southern France and Germany to the northern 
 Balkans (Figs. 259-261). 
 
 Just as the communities of Roman subjects once girdled the 1049. The 
 
 ,, ,. , . . 1 1 -1 T whole Medi- 
 
 Mediterranean, so the survivmg monuments and buildmgs terranean 
 
 which they used, still envelop the great sea from Britain east- ^g^fy^^ '""^^ 
 
 ward to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem westward to Morocco, civilized 
 They reveal to us the fact that as a result of all the ages of 
 
648 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Fig. 261. Restoration of Roman Triumphal Arch at 
 Orange, France 
 
 Having once adopted this form of monument (Fig. 248), the Romans 
 built many such handsome arches to commemorate important victories. 
 There were a number at Rome, naturally (see Fig. 246, B and /) ; of 
 those built in the chief cities of the Empire, several still remain. The 
 one pictured above was built at the Roman colony of Arausio (now 
 called Orange), on the river Rhone, to celebrate a victory over the 
 Gauls in 21 a. d. Modern cities have erected similar arches; for ex- 
 ample, Paris, Berlin, London, and New York 
 
 human development which we have studied, the whole Mediter- 
 ranean world, West as well as East, had now gained a high 
 civilization. Such was the picture which the Roman traveler 
 gained of that great world which his countrymen ruled : in the 
 center the vast midland sea, and around it a fringe of civilized 
 
The Second Centiiry of Peace 649 
 
 countries surrounded and protected by the encircling line of 
 legions. They too stretched from Britain to Jerusalem, and 
 from Jerusalem to Morocco, like a dike restraining the stormy 
 sea of barbarians outside, which would otherwise have poured 
 in and overwhelmed the results of centuries of civilized devel- 
 opment. Meantime we must return from the provinces to the 
 great controlling center of this Mediterranean world, to Rome 
 itself, and endeavor to learn what had been the course of civili- 
 zation there since the Augustan Age — that is, for the last three 
 quarters of the two centuries of peace. 
 
 Section 92. The Civilization of the Early 
 Roman Empire : Rome 
 
 The visitor in Rome at the close of the reign of Hadrian 1050. Public 
 found it the most magnificent monumental city in the world of R^Jme^^the 
 that day. It had by that time quite surpassed Alexandria in Colosseum 
 size and in the number and splendor of its public buildings. 
 At the eastern end of the Forum, on ground once occupied by 
 Nero's Golden House (§ 1014), Vespasian erected a vast amphi 
 theater for gladiatorial combats, now known as the Colosseum 
 (Fig. 262). It was completed and dedicated by his son Titus, 
 who arranged for the forty-five thousand spectators which it 
 held, a series of bloody spectacles lasting a hundred days. 
 Although now much damaged, it still stands as one of the 
 greatest buildings in the world. At the same time Vespasian 
 completed the rebuilding of the city, after the great fire- of 
 Nero's reign (§ 1014). 
 
 It was especially in and alongside the old Forum that the 1051. The 
 grandest buildings of the Empire thus far had grown up. The of the em- 
 business of the great world capital led Vespasian and Nerva to P^''^^^ 
 erect two more magnificent forums (Fig. 247, -P, 0. These two, 
 with the two of Caesar and Augustus (Fig. 247, iV, (9), formed a 
 group of four new forums along the north side of the old Forum. 
 At the northwest end of this group of four Trajan built another, 
 
650 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1052. Roman 
 concrete : 
 Pantheon 
 and Hadri- 
 an's tomb 
 
 that is, a fifth new forum (Fig. 247, R)^ which surpassed in 
 magnificence anything which the Mediterranean world had ever 
 seen before. On one side was a vast new business basilica, 
 and beyond this rose a mighty column (Fig. 263) richly carved 
 with scenes picturing Trajan's brilliant campaigns (Fig. 251). 
 On each side of the column was a library building, one for 
 
 liiiiiiiil 
 
 Fig. 262. The Vast Flavian Amphitheater at Rome now 
 
 CALLED THE COLOSSEUM. (RESTORED AFTER LuCKENBACH) 
 
 This enormous building, one of the greatest in the world, was an oval 
 arena surrounded by the rising tiers of seats, accommodating nearly 
 fifty thousand people. We see here only the outside wall, as restored. 
 It was built by the emperors Vespasian and Titus, and was completed 
 in 80 A.D. (§ 1050). At the left is the colossal bronze statue of Nero, 
 about 100 feet high, which originally stood in this vicinity, near the en- 
 trance of his famous " Golden House," just east of the Forum (§ 1014) 
 
 Greek and one for Latin literature. The column still stands 
 beside one of the busy streets of modem Rome, but little of 
 the other magnificent buildings has survived. 
 
 In the buildings of Trajan and Hadrian the architecture of 
 Rome reached its highest level both of splendor and beauty, and 
 also of workmanship. Sometime in the Hellenistic Age archi- 
 tects had begun to employ increasing quantities of cement 
 
The Second Century of Peace 
 
 651 
 
 concrete, though it is still uncertain where or by whom the harden- 
 ing properties of cement were discovered. Under Hadrian and 
 his successors the 
 Roman builders com- 
 pletely mastered the 
 art of making colos- 
 sal casts of concrete. 
 The domed roof of 
 Hadrian's Pantheon 
 (Fig. 264) is a single 
 enormous concrete 
 cast, over a hundred 
 and forty feet across. 
 The Romans, there- 
 fore, eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago were 
 employing concrete 
 on a scale which we 
 have only recently 
 learned to imitate, 
 and after all this 
 lapse of time the 
 roof of the Pantheon 
 seems to be as safe 
 and stanch as it 
 was when Hadri- 
 an's architects first 
 knocked away the 
 posts which sup- 
 ported the wooden 
 form for the great 
 cast. The mauso- 
 leum erected by Ha- 
 drian is the greatest 
 of all Roman tombs 
 
 Fig. 263. The Column of Trajan 
 
 This remarkable monument was erected be- 
 yond Trajan's Forum in the court between his 
 two libraries (Fig. 247, T). It is of Parian 
 marble and stands 100 feet high. Around it 
 winds a spiral band of one hundred and fifty- 
 four relief scenes, passing twenty-two times 
 around the shaft. This band contains twenty- 
 five hundred human figures, and if it could be 
 unrolled it would be over 650 feet long. An 
 examination of one of these reliefs (Fig. 251) 
 shows us that they are very interesting works 
 of art, wrought with much skill. They record 
 Trajan's great campaigns (§ 1022). The broken 
 columns belonged to the magnificent Basilica 
 Ulpia (Fig. 247, S), next to Trajan's Forum 
 (Fig. 247, R) 
 
652 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 and for several generations was the burial place of the em- 
 perors. It survives as one of the great buildings of Rome. 
 1053. Roman The r^//<?/* sculpture adorning all these monuments (Fig. 251) 
 is the greatest of Roman art. The reliefs covering Trajan's 
 
 sculpture 
 
 Fig. 264. Interior View of the Dome of the Pantheon 
 BUILT AT Rome by Agrippa and Hadrian 
 
 The first building on this spot was erected by Agrippa, Augustus's great 
 minister. But it was completely rebuilt, as we see it here, by Hadrian. 
 The circular hole in the ceiling is 30 feet across; it is 142 feet above 
 the pavement, and the diameter of the huge dome is also 142 feet. 
 This is the only ancient building in Rome which is still standing with 
 walls and roof in a perfectly preserved state. It is thus a remarkable 
 example of Roman skill in the use of concrete (§ 1052). At the same 
 time it is one of the most beautiful and impressive domed interiors 
 ever designed. Compare the church of St. Sophia, p. 68S 
 
 column are a wonderful picture book of his campaigns, display- 
 ing greater power of invention than Roman art ever showed 
 elsewhere. Of statue sculpture, however, the vast majority of 
 the works now produced were copies of the masterpieces of the 
 great Greek sculptors. Many such famous Greek works, which 
 
TJie Second Cent? try of Peace 
 
 653 
 
 perished long ago, are now known to us only in the form of 
 surviving copies made by the Roman sculptors of this age 
 and discovered in modern excavations in Italy (Fig. 218). 
 The portrait sculptors followed the tendencies which they had 
 inherited from the Hellenistic Age. Their portraits of the 
 leading Romans are among 
 the finest works of the kind 
 ever wrought (Fig. 265). 
 
 In painting, the wall deco- 
 rators were almost the only 
 surviving practicers of the 
 art. They merely copied the 
 works of the great Greek 
 masters of the Hellenistic 
 Age over and over again on 
 the walls of Roman houses 
 (Fig. 197). Portrait painting, 
 however, flourished, and the 
 hack portrait painter at the 
 street comer, who did your 
 portrait quickly for you on a 
 tablet of wood, was almost 
 as common as our own por- 
 trait photographer. A young 
 soldier in the Roman army, 
 proud of his new uniform, 
 would for a few cents have 
 his portrait painted to send 
 home in a letter to his parents 
 in Egypt (Fig. 253, descriptive matter), and perfectly preserved 
 examples of such work have been excavated in the Nile 
 valley (Plate VIII, p. 654). 
 
 There was now a larger educated public at Rome than ever 
 before, and the splendid libraries maintained by the State were 
 open to all. Authors and literary men were also liberally 
 
 Fig. 265. Portrait of an 
 Unknown Roman 
 
 This terra-cotta head is one of the 
 finest portraits ever made. It rep- 
 resents one of the masterful 
 Roman lords of the world, and 
 shows clearly in the features those 
 qualities of power and leadership 
 which so long maintained the su- 
 premacy of the Roman Empire 
 
654 Ancient Times 
 
 1035. Leader- Supported by the emperors. Nevertheless, even under these 
 
 ture passer^ favorable circumstances not a single genius of great creative 
 
 from Rome imagination arose. Just as in sculpture and painting, so now in 
 
 Athens literature, the leaders were content to imitate or copy the great 
 
 works of the past. Real progress in literature therefore ceased. 
 
 The leadership in such matters, held for a brief time by Rome 
 
 in the Augustan Age, had now returned to Athens, where the 
 
 emperors had endowed the four schools of philosophy (§ 762) 
 
 as a government university. Nevertheless, Rome was still a 
 
 great influence in literature ; the leading literary men of the 
 
 Empire desired to play a part there, and when a philosopher or 
 
 teacher of rhetoric published his lectures in book form, he was 
 
 proud to place under the title the words, " delivered at Rome." 
 
 1056. Latin While poetry had declined, prose writers were still productive. 
 
 sSieca,"raci- Nero's able minister Seneca (§ 1012) wrote very attractive 
 
 tus, and the essays and letters on personal character and conduct. They 
 
 younger j r j 
 
 Pliny show SO fine an appreciation of the noblest human traits that 
 
 many have thought he had secretly adopted Christianity. His 
 style became so influential that it displaced that of Cicero for a 
 long time. The new freedom of speech which arose under the 
 liberal emperors after the death of Domitian permitted Tacitus 
 to write a frank history of the Empire from the death of Augus- 
 tus to the death of Domitian (from 14 a. d. down to 96 a.d.). 
 Although he allowed his personal prejudices to sway him, so that 
 he has given us a very dark picture of the Julian emperors, his 
 tremendous power as a writer resulted in the greatest history 
 ever put together by a Roman. Among his other writings was 
 
 * Quite a number of such portraits have been preserved in Egypt 
 attached to mummies of the second century a.d. The portrait was 
 painted on a thin board, laid over the face of the mummy, and bound 
 down with the wrappings. The method of painting is interesting. No 
 oil colors were known in the ancient world. The painter mixed his 
 colors in melted wax, which he then applied while hot to the board. 
 While this method was old Egyptian, the artist's skill in painting light 
 was Greek (§ 650; cf. Fig. 197). It was common in Italy, and even 
 poor people had their portraits painted in this way. The portrait of 
 Apion, the young Roman soldier (§ 1054), must have looked like this. 
 
Plate VIII. One of the Oldest Surviving 
 Portrait Paintings* 
 
The Second Century of Peace 655 
 
 a brief account of Germany, which furnishes us our first full 
 glimpse into the life of the peoples of northern Europe. The 
 letters which at this time passed between the younger Pliny 
 and the emperor Trajan (§ 1032) are among the most interesting 
 literature of the ancient world. They remind us of the letters 
 of Hammurapi of Babylon some twenty-two hundred years 
 earlier (§§ 178-182). 
 
 With these writers in Latin we should also associate several 1057. Greek 
 immortal works by Greeks of the same age, though they did p'iutarch ^Ar-" 
 not live at Rome. In the little village of Chaeronea in Boeotia, !^^"' ^".^ 
 
 ^ ' Pausanias 
 
 where Philip of Macedon crushed the Greeks (§ 685), Plutarch 
 at this time wrote his remarkable series of lives of the greatest 
 men of Greece and Rome, placing them in pairs, a Greek and 
 a Roman together, and comparing them. Although they contain 
 much that belongs in the world of romance, they form an im- 
 perishable gallery of heroes which has held the interest and the 
 admiration of the world for eighteen centuries. At the same 
 time another Greek, named Arrian, who was serving as a Roman 
 governor in Asia Minor, collected the surviving accounts of the 
 life of Alexander the Great. He called his book the Anabasis 
 of Alexander, after the Anabasis of Xenophon (§ 631), whom 
 he was imitating in accordance with the imitative spirit of the 
 age. Arrian was only a passable writer of prose and certainly 
 not a great historian, but without his compilation we would 
 know very little about Alexander the Great. A huge guidebook 
 through Greece, telling the reader all about the buildings and 
 monuments still standing at that time in the leading Greek 
 towns, like Athens, Delphi, and Olympia, was now put together 
 by Pausanias. It furnishes us an immortal picture book in words 
 of ancient Greece in all its splendor of statues and temples, 
 theaters and public buildings. 
 
 ■ In science the Romans continued to be collectors of the 1058. Lack 
 knowledge gained by the Greeks. Duiing a long and success- attainments 
 ful official career the elder Pliny devoted himself with incredible pij^yv^Natu- 
 industry to scientific studies. He made a vast collection of the ral History" 
 
656 Ancient Times 
 
 facts then known in science, to be found in books, chiefly 
 Greek. He put them all together in a huge work which he 
 called *' Natural History" — really an encyclopedia. He was 
 so deeply interested in science that he lost his life in the great 
 eruption of Vesuvius, as he was trying both to study the tremen- 
 dous event at short range, and (as admiral of the fleet) to save 
 the fleeing people of Pompeii (§ 1034). But Pliny's "Natural 
 History " did not contain any new facts of importance discovered 
 by the author himself, and it was marred by many errors in 
 matters which Pliny misunderstood. Nevertheless, for hun- 
 dreds of years, until the revival of science in modern times 
 Pliny's work was, next to Aristotle, the standard authority 
 referred to by all educated Europeans. Thus men fell into an 
 indolent attitude of mind and were satisfied merely to learn 
 what earlier discoverers had found out. This attitude never 
 would have led to the discovery of the size of the earth as 
 determined by Eratosthenes (§ 745), or in modem times to 
 X-ray photographs or wireless telegraphy. 
 1059. End A great astronomer and geographer of Alexandria, who" 
 
 tiU"Jden?e' flourished under Hadrian and the Antonines, was the last of 
 at Alexan- ^^^ famous scientists of the ancient world. He wrote among 
 
 dria; Ptolemy 
 
 other works a handbook on astronomy, for the most part a 
 compilation from the works of earlier astronomers. In it he 
 unfortunately adopted the conclusion that the sun revolved 
 around the earth as a center. His book became a standard 
 work, and hence this mistaken view of the solar system, called 
 the Ptolemaic system, was everywhere accepted by the later 
 world. It was not until four hundred years ago that the real 
 truth, already long before discovered by the Greek astronomer 
 Aristarchus of Samos (§ 744), was rediscovered by the Polish 
 astronomer Copernicus. It was a further sign of the decline of 
 science that Ptolemy even wrote a book on Babylonian astrology 
 (§ 192). Knowledge or the spherical form of the earth as shown 
 by Ptolemy and earlier Gieek astronomers reached the travelers 
 and navigators of later Europe, and finally led Columbus to 
 
The Second Century of Peace 
 
 657 
 
 the 
 
 undertake the voyage to India and the East westward - 
 voyage which resulted in the discovery of America. 
 
 The position of educated Greeks at Rome was very different 1060. Cos- 
 from what it had been under the Republic, when such men Se^of Rome 
 were slaves or teachers in private households. Now they were 
 holding important positions in the government or as teachers 
 and professors paid by the government. The city was no 
 longer Roman or Italian ; it had become Mediterranean, and 
 
 Map of the World by the Astronomer and Geographer 
 Ptolemy (Second Century a.d.) 
 
 many worthy families from the provinces, settling in Rome, 
 had greatly bettered the decadent society of the city. Leading 
 men whose homes in youth had looked out from the hills of 
 Spain upon the Atlantic mingled at Rome with influential citi- 
 zens who had been born within a stone's throw of the Euphrates. 
 Men of all the world elbowed each other and talked business 
 in the banks and countinghouses of the magnificent new forums; 
 they filled the public offices and administrative departments of 
 the government, and discussed the hand-copied daily paper 
 
658 Ancient Times 
 
 published by the State ; they sat in the libraries and lecture halls 
 of the university and they crowded the lounging places of the pub- 
 lic baths and the vast amphitheater. They largely made up the 
 brilliant social life which ebbed and flowed through the streets, 
 as the wealthy and the wise gathered at sumptuous dinners and 
 convivial winter evenings in the city itself, or indolently killed 
 time loafing about the statue-filled gardens and magnificent 
 country villas overlooking the Bay of Naples, where the 
 wealthy Romans spent their summer leisure. We call such 
 all-inclusive, widely representative life "cosmopolitan" — a 
 word of Greek origin meaning " world-city ish." 
 1061. incom- This converging of all the world at Rome was evident in 
 luxurier^^" ^ the luxuries now enjoyed by the rich. The outward life, houses, 
 and costumes of the wealthy were on the whole not much 
 changed from that which we found toward the close of the 
 Republic (§§ 889-898). Luxury and display had somewhat 
 increased, and in this direction oriental rarities now played 
 a noticeable part (§ 1038). Roman ladies were decked with 
 diamonds, pearls, and rubies from India, and they robed them< 
 selves in shining silks from China. The tables of the rich were 
 bright with peaches and apricots, now appearing for the first 
 time in the Roman world. Roman cooks learned to prepare 
 rice, forjnerly a delicacy required only by the sick. Horace 
 had amusingly pictured the distress of a miserly Roman when 
 he learned the price of a dish of rice prescribed by his phy- 
 sician. Instead of sweetening their dishes with honey as for- 
 merly, Roman households began to find a new product in the 
 market place known as " sakari " ; for so the report of a ven- 
 turesome oriental sailor of the first century a. d. calls the sirup 
 of sugar cane, which he brought by water from India into the 
 Mediterranean for the first time. This is the earliest mention 
 of sugar in history. These new things from the Orient were 
 beginning to appear in Roman life just as the potatoes, tobacco, 
 and Indian corn of America found their way into Europe after 
 the voyages of Columbus had disclosed a new Western world. 
 
The Second Centnry of Peace 659 
 
 Section 93. Popularity of Oriental Religions 
 AND the Spread of Early Christianity 
 
 The life of the Orient was at the same time continuing to 1062. De- 
 bring into the Mediterranean other things less easily traced f^^ ^y"*^^^ 
 than rice or sugar, but much more important in their influence 3"<? Roman 
 on the Roman world. The intellectual life of the Empire was 
 steadily declining, as we have seen indicated by literature and 
 science. Philosophy was no longer occupied with new thoughts 
 and the discovery of new truths. Such philosophy had given 
 way to the semireligious systems of living and ideas of right 
 conduct taught by the Stoics and Epicureans (§ 761). Thought- 
 ful Romans read Greek philosophy of this kind in the charm- 
 ing treatises of Cicero (§ 1000) or the discussions of Seneca 
 (§ 1056). Such readers had given up the old Roman gods and 
 accepted these philosophical precepts of daily conduct as their 
 religion. But such teaching was only for the highly educated 
 and the intellectual class. 
 
 Nevertheless, such men sometimes followed the multitude 1063. Egyp- 
 and yielded to the fascination of the mysterious religions coming [Jf Em-ope^" 
 in from the East. Even in Augustus's time the Roman poet 
 Tibullus, absent on a military campaign which srckness had 
 interrupted, wrote to his fiancee Delia in Rome : " What does 
 your Isis for me now, Delia ? What avail me those brazen 
 sistra ^ of hers, so often shaken by your hand .''... Now, 
 now, goddess, help me ; for it is proved by many a picture 
 in thy temples that man may be healed by thee." Tibullus 
 and his fiancee belonged to the most cultivated class, but they 
 had taken refuge in the faith of the Egyptian Isis. When 
 Hadrian's handsome young Greek friend Antinoiis was drowned 
 in the Nile, the emperor erected an obelisk at Rome in his 
 memory, with a hieroglyphic inscription announcing the beauti- 
 ful youth's divinity and his union with Osiris. Attached to 
 
 1 Egyptian musical instruments played by shaking in the hand. 
 
66o 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Hadrian's magnificent villa near Rome was an Egyptian gar- 
 den, chiefly sacred to Isis and Osiris and filled with their 
 monuments. Plutarch wrote an essay on Isis and Osiris which 
 he dedicated to a priestess of Isis at Delphi. Since the days 
 of the early Empire, multitudes had taken up this Egyptian 
 faith, and temples of Isis were to be found in all the larger 
 
 Fig. 266. The Temple of Isis at Pompeii 
 
 Even the little town of Pompeii had its temple of Isis (§ 1063), as did 
 
 also the little Hellenistic city of Priene (Fig. 212). It has here been 
 
 restored after Mau 
 
 1064. The 
 Great Mother 
 goddess of 
 Asia Minor; 
 Persian Mith- 
 ras; popular- 
 ity of the 
 oriental 
 " mysteries " 
 
 cities (Fig. 266). To-day tiny statuettes and other symbols of 
 the Egyptian goddess are found even along the Seine, the 
 Rhine, and the Danube. 
 
 The Great Mother goddess of Asia Minor (§ 357), with her 
 consort Attis, gained the devotion of many Romans, also. In 
 the army the Persian Mithras, a god of light (§ 287), was a 
 great favorite, and many a legion had its underground chapel 
 where its members celebrated his triumph. All these faiths had 
 their " mysteries," consisting chiefly of dramatic presentations 
 
The Second Cenhiry of Peace 66 1 
 
 of the career of the god, especially his submission to deaths 
 his triumph over it, and ascent to everlasting life (§ 117). 
 It was believed that to witness these things and to undergo 
 certain holy ceremonies of initiation would brin^ to those in- 
 itiated deliverance from evil, the power to share in the endless 
 life of the god and to dwell with him forever. 
 
 The old Roman faith had little to do with conduct and held 1065. De- 
 out to the worshiper no such hopes of future blessedness. Rom^^re- 
 Throughout the great Roman world men were longing for ligjon and the 
 some assurance regarding the life beyond the grave, and in 
 the. midst of the trials and burdens of this life they wistfully 
 sought the support and strength of a divine protector. Litde 
 wonder that the multitudes were irresistibly attracted by the 
 comforting assurances of these oriental faiths and the blessed 
 future insured by their " mysteries." At the same time it was 
 believed possible to learn the future of every individual by the 
 use of Babylonian astrology (§ 192). Even the astronomer 
 Ptolemy wrote a book on it (§ 1059). The Orientals who prac- 
 ticed it were called Chaldeans (§ 238), or Magi, whence our. 
 words "magic" and "magician," and everyone consulted them. 
 
 The Jews too, now that their temple in Jerusalem had been 1066. Juda- 
 destroyed by the Romans (§ 1018), were to be found in increas- 
 ing numbers in all the larger cities. Strabo, the geographer, 
 said of them, "This people has already made its way into every 
 city, and it would be hard to find a place in the habitable world 
 which has not admitted this race and been dominated by it." 
 The Roman world was becoming accustomed to their syna- 
 gogues ; but the Jews refused to acknowledge any god besides 
 their own, and their exclusiveness brought them disfavor and 
 trouble with the government (cf. Fig. 267). 
 
 Among all these faiths of the East, the common people were 1067. Rise of 
 more and more inclining toward one, whose teachers told how 
 their Master, Jesus, a Hebrew, was born in Palestine, the land 
 of the Jews, in the days of Augustus. Everywhere they told 
 the people of his vision of human brotherhood and of divine 
 
662 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1068. Paul 
 and the foun- 
 dation of the 
 earliest 
 churches ; 
 the New 
 festament 
 
 
 :^-q,->.~. 
 
 
 fatherhood, surpassing even that which the Hebrew prophets 
 had once discerned (§ 304). This faith he had preached for 
 
 - - - a few years in the Aramaic language 
 
 of his countrymen .(§ 207) — till he 
 incurred their hatred, and in the 
 reign of Tiberius, they had put him 
 to death. 
 
 A Jewish tentmaker of Tarsus 
 named Paul, a man of passionate 
 eloquence and unquenchable love for 
 his Master, passed far and wide 
 through the cities of Asia Minor and 
 Greece, and even to Rome (§ 1036), 
 proclaiming his Master's teaching. 
 He left behind him a line of devoted 
 communities stretching from Pales- 
 tine to Rome. Certain letters (cf. 
 Fig. 253) which he wrote in Greek 
 to his followers were circulating 
 widely among them and were read 
 with eagerness. At the same time a 
 narrative of the Master's life had also 
 been written in Aramaic (Fig. 131), the 
 language in which he had preached. 
 This perished, but Greek accounts 
 drawing upon the Aramaic narrative 
 also appeared, and were now widely 
 read by the common people. There 
 were finally four leading biographies 
 of Jesus in Greek, which came to 
 be regarded as authoritative, and 
 these we call the Four Gospels. 
 Along with the letters of Paul and some other writings they 
 were later put together in a Greek book now known in the 
 English translation as the New Testament. 
 
 
 Fig. 267. Certificate 
 showing that a 
 Roman Citizen had 
 sacrificed to the 
 Emperor as a God* 
 
The Second Century of Peace 
 
 663 
 
 The other oriental faiths, in spite of their attractiveness, 
 could not offer to their followers the consolation and fellowship 
 of a life so exalted and beautiful, so full of brotherly appeal and 
 human sympathy as that of the new Hebrew Teacher. In the 
 hearts of the toiling millions of the Roman Empire his simple 
 summons, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden," proved a mightier power than all the edicts of the 
 Roman emperors. The slave and the freedman, the artisan 
 and craftsman, the humble and the despised in the huge bar- 
 racks which sheltered the poor in Rome, listened to this new 
 '' mystery " from the East, as they thought it to be, and as time 
 passed, multitudes responded and found joy in the hopes which 
 it awakened. In the second century of peace it was rapidly 
 outstripping the other religions of the Roman Empire. 
 
 The officers of government often found these early converts 
 not only refusing to sacrifice to the emperor as a god (§ 1016) 
 but also openly prophesying the downfall of the Roman 
 State. The early Christians were therefore more than once 
 called upon to endure cruel persecution (Fig. 267). Their 
 religion seemed incompatible with good citizenship, since it 
 forbade them to show the usual respect for the emperor 
 and the government. 
 
 1069. Superi- 
 ority of Chris- 
 tianity over 
 the other 
 oriental re- 
 ligions 
 
 1070. Rome 
 persecutes 
 the early 
 Christians 
 
 * Excavators in the ruins of Egyptian village^ like Fig. 211 have dis- 
 covered over a score of such certificates, each written on a strip of 
 papyrus. This specimen states that a citizen named Aurelius Horion, 
 living in the village of Theadelphia in Egypt, appeared before a gov- 
 ernment commission, and not only affirmed that he had always been 
 faithful in the worship of the gods but that he also in the presence of 
 the commission and of witnesses offered sacrifice (a slaughtered animal), 
 presented a drink offering, and likewise consumed a portion of these 
 offerings. In the middle we see the heavy black signature of the pre- 
 siding official, and at the bottom in four lines the date, corresponding 
 to our 250 A. D. Every Roman citizen at this time, no matter what his 
 religion might be, was obliged to possess such a certificate and to show 
 it on demand. It was called a libellus, and the owner of it was called 
 a libellatictis. A Christian who would resort to such a means of escap- 
 ing persecution by the government was greatly despised by the faithful, 
 who refused to comply. Compare our word " libel." 
 
664 Ancient Times 
 
 1071. Organ- Nevertheless, their numbers steadily grew, and each new Chris- 
 churches and tian group or community organized itself into an assembly of 
 ^ o^^u?ar°^ members called an " ecclesia," or as we say, a church. '' Ecclesia " 
 leadership was the old Greek word for Assembly of the People, and in 
 these new assemblies, or churches, men of ability were now be- 
 ginning to find those opportunities for leadership and power 
 which the decline of citizenship in the old city republics no 
 longer offered. The leaders of the churches were soon to be 
 the strong men of the people, and to play 2i political as well as 
 a religious role. 
 
 Section 94. The End of the Second Century 
 OF Peace 
 
 1072. Begin- In Spite of outward prosperity, especially suggested by the 
 dkS^An- magnificent buildings of the Empire, Mediterranean civilization 
 O^S-^er^^^ was declining in the second century of peace. The decline be- 
 A.D.) and came noticeable in the reign of Hadrian. The just and kindly 
 Aurelius Antoninus, who followed Hadrian in 138 a.d., was called by 
 (161-1 oA.D) ^^ Romans "the Pius," but he hardly showed energy enough 
 
 to maintain the foreign prestige of the Empire, even though 
 he strengthened the northern frontier walls. His successor, the 
 noble Marcus Aurelius, therefore had to face a very serious 
 situation (161 a.d.).» The Parthians, encouraged by the easy- 
 going reign of Antoninus Pius, made trouble on the eastern 
 frontier, and Marcus Aurelius was obliged to fight them in a 
 four years' war before the frontier was safe again. 
 
 1073. Marcus When the Roman troops returned from this war, they 
 stops the brought back with them a terrible plague which destroyed 
 vasion (167^- "^^^^itudes of men at the very moment when the Empire most 
 180 A.D.) needed them. For at this juncture the barbarian hordes in the 
 
 German North broke through the frontier defenses (Fig. 252), 
 and for the first time in two centuries they poured down into 
 Italy (167 A.D.). The two centuries of peace were ended. At 
 the same time the finances of the Empire were so low that 
 
The Second Century of Peace 665 
 
 the emperor was obliged to sell the crown jewels to raise the 
 money necessary for equipping and supporting the army. 
 With little intermission, until his death in 180 a.d., Marcus 
 Aurelius maintained the struggle against the Germans in the 
 region later forming Bohemia. Indeed, death overtook him 
 while still engaged in the war. But in spite of victory over the 
 barbarians, Marcus Aurelius was unable to sweep them entirely 
 out of the northern regions of the Empire. He finally took the 
 very dangerous step of allowing some of them to remain as 
 farmer colonists on lands assigned to them inside of the fron- 
 tier. This policy later resulted in very serious consequences to 
 the Empire. 
 
 Nevertheless, the 'ability and enlightened statesmanship of 1074, Char- 
 Marcus Aurelius are undoubted. Indeed, they were only Marcus 
 equaled by the purity and beauty . of his personal life. He ^""^^""^ 
 regarded his exalted office as a sacred trust to which he must 
 be true, in spite of the fact that he would have greatly pre- 
 ferred to devote himself to reading, study, and philosophy, 
 which he deeply loved. Amid the growing anxieties of his 
 position, even as he sat in his tent and guided the operations 
 of the legions among the forests of Bohemia in the heart of the 
 barbarous North, he found time to record his thoughts and 
 leave to the world a little volume of meditations written in 
 Greek. As the aspirations of a gentle and chivalrous heart 
 toward pure and noble living, these meditations are among the 
 most precious legacies of the past. Marcus Aurelius was the 
 last of a noble succession, the finest spirit among all the Roman 
 emperors, and there was never another like him on the imperial 
 throne. But no ruler, however pure and unselfish his pur- 
 poses, could stop the processes of decline going on in the 
 midst of the great Roman world. Following the two centuries 
 of peace, therefore, was to come a fearful century of revolu- 
 tion, civil war, and anarchy, from which a very different 
 Roman world was to emerge. 
 
666 Ancient Times 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 90. Did the struggle at the death of Nero long en- 
 danger the peace of the Empire ? Who triumphed ? What were the 
 two great tasks awaiting the emperors? Describe the dangers on 
 the frontiers. What did Domitian do for the frontiers? Recount 
 the achievements of Trajan on the lower Danube; in the Orient. 
 How did Hadrian treat the conquests of Trajan ? What can you say 
 of the Roman army under Trajan and Hadrian? How was the 
 management of the government improved? How did this affect tax 
 collecting? What can you say of agricultural conditions in Italy? 
 Hov/ were the laws improved ? Tell about the people's interest in 
 public affairs in the provinces. 
 
 Section 91. Give an imaginary bird's-eye view of the Roman 
 Empire from Gibraltar. Describe Pompeii. Describe Roman roads 
 and their traffic. Tell something of sea travel ; of commerce ; of 
 hotels ; of society in the provinces. What did a Roman traveler find 
 in Athens and Delphi? in Asia Minor and Syria? in Egypt? Where 
 did the Roman's ancient world lie ? Where was his modern world ? 
 What can you say of Roman buildings surviving in the West ? 
 
 Section 92. How had Rome now improved? Describe the 
 Colosseum; the forums of the emperors. What can you say of 
 Roman use of cement in architecture? of Roman sculpture? of 
 Roman painting? What had happened to literature in Rome since 
 Augustus ? Tell about the Latin prose writers ; the Greek prose 
 writers. What can you say of science at Rome? at Alexandria? 
 Tell about the cosmopolitan life of Rome. What can you say of 
 incoming luxuries of the Orient ? 
 
 Section 93. What can you say of intellectual life at Rome? of 
 religious life? of incoming oriental religions? What was the feeling 
 of the common people toward the oriental religions ? What can you 
 say of the Jews at this time? Describe the rise of Christianity 
 and the work of Paul. What can you say of the superiority of 
 Christianity? What practical difficulty did the Christians meet in 
 their relations with the Roman government? What certificate did 
 a citizen have 'to possess? 
 
 Section 94. What people first caused Marcus Aurelius trouble ? 
 What event ended the second century of peace? What did Marcus 
 Aurelius do to subdue the barbarians? What can you say of the 
 mind and character of Marcus Aurelius? 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION AND THE DIVISION 
 OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 Section 95. Internal Decline of the 
 Roman Empire 
 
 We have seen good government, fine buildings, education, 
 and other evidences of civilization more widespread in the sec- 
 ond century of peace than ever before. Nevertheless, the great 
 
 Note. The above headpiece shows us the surviving ruins of the royal palace 
 at Ctesiphon on the Tigris (see map, p. 709), once the capital of New Persia. 
 The tiny human figure in one doorway will indicate to us the vast size of the 
 building. The huge vault on the right was built over the enormous hall below, 
 without any supporting timbers during the course of construction. It is 84 feet 
 across and is the largest masonry vault of its age still standing in Asia. Here the 
 magnificent kings of New Persia held their splendid court, imitated by the weak 
 Roman emperors at Constantinople (§ 1099). Note the situation of Babylon 
 as a river station on the great highway between Asia Minor and the East (map, 
 p. 436). Ctesiphon, situated almost within sight of Babylon, was but one in a 
 succession of powerful capitals, occupying this great river crossing: Akkad 
 (§ t66), Babylon (§ 175), Ctesiphon (§ 1094), and, finally, Bagdad (§ 1153). A 
 British expedition, after fighting several battles under the shadow of these 
 ruins of Ctesiphon, captured Bagdad in 191 7. 
 
 667 
 
 1075. Signs 
 of inner de- 
 cay : former 
 decline of 
 farming 
 continues 
 
 I 
 
668 Ancient Times 
 
 Empire which we have been studying, although in a condition 
 seemingly so favorable, was suffering from an inner decay, whose 
 symptoms at first hidden were fast becoming more and more 
 evident. In the first place, the decline of farming, so noticeable 
 before the fall of the Republic (§§ 918 f.), had gone steadily on. 
 
 1076. Spread In Spite of the heavy taxes imposed upon it, land had con- 
 tel domain"" tinned to pass over into the hands of the rich and powerful. 
 system of 'pj^g Oriental system of confining landownership to large 
 ship; villas domains held by the State and a few individuals had also 
 
 a strong influence. From Asia Minor, where it was wide- 
 spread under the Persians, this system had passed to Greece 
 (§ 626). The Romans had found it also in Africa, the prov- 
 ince behind Carthage. Already in Nero's time half of this 
 province was made up of six domains, held by only six great 
 landlords. Such a great estate was called a villa^ and the sys- 
 tem of villa estates, having destroyed the small farmers of Italy 
 (§§ 918-920), was likewise now destroying them in the prov- 
 inces also. Villas now covered not only Italy but also Gaul, 
 Britain, Spain, and other leading provinces. 
 
 1077. Rise Unable to compete with the great villas, and finding the 
 
 burden of taxes unbearable, most of the small farmers gave up 
 the struggle. Such a man would often enter upon an arrange- 
 ment which made him the colonus of some wealthy villa owner. 
 By this arrangement the farmer and his descendants were for- 
 ever bound by law to the land which they worked, and they 
 passed with it from owner to owner when it changed hands. 
 While not actually slaves, they were not free to leave or go 
 where they pleased; and without any prospect of bettering 
 themselves, or any opportunity for their children ever to pos- 
 sess their own lands, these men lost all energy and independ- 
 ence and were very different from the hardy farmers of early 
 Rome. As we shall see, many Northern barbarians also became 
 coloni within the frontiers of the Empire. 
 
 The great villas once worked by slaves were now cultivated 
 chiefly by these coloni. With the end of the long wars the 
 
A Century of Revohition 669 
 
 captives who had been sold as slaves were no longer obtain- 1078. De- 
 able, and slaves had steadily diminished in numbers. Their con- slave^^and 
 dition had also much improved, and the law now protected improvement 
 
 ^ in the con- 
 
 them from the worst forms of cruelty once inflicted upon dition of 
 them (§ 915). We have already noticed the growing practice 
 of freeing slaves, which made freedmen so common through- 
 out the Empire that they were playing an important part in 
 manufactures and business (§ 1040). 
 
 Multitudes of the country people, unwilling to become colonic 1079. De- 
 forsook their fields and turned to the city for relief. Many eSenlof 
 did this because neo^lect of fertilization and long-continued culti- cultivated 
 
 ° , ^ lands and 
 
 vation had exhausted their land and it would no longer produce diminishing 
 crops. Great stretches of unworked and weed-grown fields 
 were no uncommon sight. As a result the amount of land 
 under cultivation continually decreased, and the ancient world 
 was no longer raising enough food to feed itself properly. The 
 scarcity was felt most severely in the great centers of popu- 
 lation like Rome, where prices had rapidly gone up. Our own 
 generation, afflicted in the same way, is not the first to com- 
 plain of the *' high cost of living." " 
 
 ■ Offers by the emperor to give land to anyone who would 1080. Dis- 
 undertake to cultivate it failed to increase the amount of land of ?hrfarm- 
 under the plow. Even under the wisest emperors the govern- ^ ^"f . 
 ment was therefore entirely unable to restore to the country bility to re- 
 districts the hardy yeomen, the brave and independent farmers, 
 who had once formed the basis of Italian prosperity — the 
 men who, in the ranks of the legion, had laid the foundation 
 of Roman power. The destruction of the small farmers and 
 the inability of Rome to restore them formed the leading cause 
 among a "whole group of causes which brought about the 
 decline and fall of this great Empire. 
 
 The country people who moved to Rome were only bring- 1081. Be- 
 ing about their own extermination as a class. The large families fluences of 
 which country life favors were no longer reared, the number city life 
 of marriages decreased, and the population of the Empire shrank. 
 
6/0 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1082. De- 
 cline of citi- 
 zenship in 
 the cities 
 
 1083. De- 
 cline of 
 business 
 
 Debased by the life of the city, the former sturdy yeoman 
 lost his independence in an eager scramble for a place in the 
 waiting line of city poor, to whom the government distributed 
 free grain, wine, and meat. The time which should have 
 been spent in breadwinning was worse than wasted among 
 the cheering multitudes at the chariot races, bloody games, 
 and barbarous spectacles. Notwithstanding the fine families 
 who moved to Rome from the provinces under the liberal 
 emperors of the second century a.d., the city became a great 
 hive of shiftless population supported by the State, with 
 money which the struggling agriculturist was taxed to pro- 
 vide. The same situation was in the main to be found in 
 all the leading cities. 
 
 In spite of outward splendor, therefore, these cities too were 
 declining. They had now learned to depend upon Rome to care 
 for them even in their own local affairs, and their citizens had 
 rapidly lost all sense of public responsibility. The helpful rivalry 
 between neighboring city-states too had long ago ceased. Every- 
 where the leading men of the cities were indifferently turning 
 away from public life. -Moreover, Rome was beginning to lay 
 financial obligations upon the leading men of such cities, and 
 it was becoming increasingly difficult to find men willing to 
 assume these burdens. Responsible citizenship, which does so 
 much to develop the best among the citizens, in any community 
 and which had earlier so sadly declined in Greece (§ 767), was 
 passing away, never to reappear in the ancient world. 
 
 At the same time the financial and business life of the cities 
 was also declining. The country communities no longer pos- 
 sessed a numerous purchasing population. Hence the country 
 market for the goods manufactured in the cities was So seriously 
 reduced that city industries could no longer dispose of their 
 products. They rapidly declined. The industrial classes were 
 thrown out of work and went to increase the multitudes of the 
 city poor. City business was also much hurt by a serious lack 
 of precious metals for coining money. 
 
A Century of Revolution 67 1 
 
 Many of the old silver and gold mines around the Mediter- 1084. Lack 
 ranean now seem to have been worked out. Wear in circula- metalTfor 
 tion, loss by shipwreck, private hoards, and considerable sums coinage and 
 
 debasement 
 
 which went to pay for goods in India and China, or as gifts to of coins 
 the German barbarians, — all these causes aided in diminishing 
 the supply of the precious metals. The government was there- 
 fore unable to secure enough to coin the money necessary for 
 the transaction of business. The emperors were obliged to be- 
 gin mixing in an increasing amount of less valuable metals and 
 coining this cheaper alloy. The Roman coin collections in the 
 European museums show us that the coins of Augustus were 
 pure, while those of Marcus Aurelius contain twenty-five per 
 cent of alloy. Two generations after Marcus Aurelius there 
 was only five per cent of silver in a government coin. A dena- 
 rius^ the common small coin worth nearly twenty cents under 
 Augustus, a century after the death of Marcus Aurelius was 
 worth only half a cent. 
 
 Even Marcus Aurelius had trouble in finding enough money 1085. De- 
 
 ,. , i>Tn-ii •• cline of the 
 
 to pay his army. As soon as this diinculty became serious it army; the 
 paralyzed the government and demoralized the army. It was Sonsbeojme 
 impossible to maintain a paid army without money. As it be- 
 came quite impossible to collect taxes in money, the govern- 
 ment was obliged to accept grain and produce as payment 
 of taxes, and great granaries and storehouses began to take the 
 place of the treasury as in ancient Egypt (§ 75). Here and 
 there the army was paid in grain. On the frontiers, for lack of 
 other pay the troops were assigned lands, which of course did 
 them no good unless they could cultivate them. Then they 
 were allowed to marry and to live with their families in little 
 huts on their lands near the frontier. Called out only occa- 
 sionally for drill or to repel a barbarian raid, they soon lost all 
 discipline, became merely feeble militia, called by the Roman 
 government " frontiersmen " (liniitanei). 
 
 Even under Marcus Aurelius, a governor of a province 
 had started a serious rebellion. Hence the emperor was now 
 
 militia 
 
6/2 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1086. Stand- 
 ing army in 
 Italy, and its 
 decline 
 
 1087. De- 
 moralization 
 of army and 
 State caused 
 by lack of 
 a law of 
 succession 
 
 1088. Rise 
 of the prov- 
 inces to a 
 level with 
 Italy and 
 resulting 
 competition 
 
 obliged to keep a standing army in Italy. These legions had 
 become much smaller, and they were made up increasingly of 
 barbarians, especially Germans and the uncivilized natives of 
 the northern Balkan, among whom the Illyrians took the lead. 
 The Roman citizen was now a rarity in the ranks, and it soon 
 became necessary to allow the barbarians to fight in their own 
 massed formations, to which they were accustomed (§ 11 20). 
 The discipline of the legion, and the legion itself, disappeared, 
 and with it the superior military power of Rome was gone. 
 The native ferocity and reckless bravery of uncivilized hordes, 
 before which the unmilitary Roman townsmen trembled, were 
 now the power upon which the Empire relied for its protection. 
 
 This degeneration of the army was much hastened by a serious 
 imperfection in the organization of the Roman State, left there 
 by Augustus. This was the lack of a legal and long-practiced 
 method of choosing a new emperor and transferring the power 
 from one emperor to the next and thus maintaining from reign 
 to reign without a break the supreme authority in the Roman 
 State. The troops found that they could make a new emperor 
 whenever the old emperor's death gave them an opportunity. 
 For an emperor so made they had very little respect, and if he 
 attempted to enforce discipline among them, they put him out 
 of the way and appointed another. Rude and barbarous merce- 
 nary soldiery thus became the highest authority in the State. 
 
 Finally, the spread of civilization to the provinces had made 
 them feel that they were the equals of Rome and Italy itself. 
 Even under the Republic there was much foreign blood in the 
 peninsula. Horace himself had been the son of a freedman, 
 of nobody-knows-what race. Italy was now largely foreign in 
 population. Trajan and Hadrian had been Spaniards, and more 
 than one province furnished the Empire with its ruler. When, 
 in 212 A.D., citizenship was granted to all free men within the 
 Empire, in whatever province they lived, the leveling of dis- 
 tinctions gave the provinces more and more opportunity to 
 compete for leadership. 
 
A Century of Revolution 673 
 
 Section 96. A Century of Revolution 
 
 These forces of decline were bringing swiftly on a century 1089. Begin- 
 of revolution which was to shipwreck the civilization of the centurlof 
 early world. This fatal century be2:an with the death of revolution; 
 
 •^ , , y o decline undei 
 
 Marcus Aurelius in 180 a.d. The assassination of his un- Septimius 
 worthy son Commodus, who reminds us of Nero, was the 2^rA"D.) ^' 
 opportunity for a struggle among a group of military usurpers. 
 From this struggle a rough but successful soldier named 
 Septimius Severus emerged triumphant. It was he who found 
 himself obliged to settle the frontier troops on their own lands, 
 with resulting demoralization of the arm^y (§ 1085). He system- 
 atically filled the highest posts in the government with military 
 leaders of low origin. Thus, both in the army (§ 1086) and in 
 the government, the ignorant and often foreign masses were 
 gaining control. Nevertheless, the energy of Severus was such 
 that he led his forces with success against the Parthians in the 
 East, and even recovered Mesopotamia. But the arch which 
 he erected to commemorate his victories, and which still stands 
 in the Forum at Rome (Fig. 246, z), reveals in its barbarous 
 sculptures the fearful decline of culture in Italy. The Roman 
 artists who wrought these rude reliefs were the grandsons of 
 the men who had so skillfully sculptured the column of Trajan 
 (Fig. 251). 
 
 The family of Septimius Severus maintained itself for a time, 1090. End 
 and it was his son Caracalla who conferred citizenship on all ofSeverul 
 freemen in the Empire in 212 a.d. (§ 1088). But when the line ^^^l^^"^^ 
 of Severus ended (23c a.d.), the storm broke. The barbaric suing civil 
 
 . " . wars among 
 
 troops m one provmce after another set up their puppet provincial 
 emperors to fight among themselves for the throne of the ^"^P^''°''^ 
 Mediterranean world. The proclamation of a new emperor 
 would be followed again and again by news of his assassina- 
 tion. From the leaders of the barbaric soldier class, after the 
 death of Commodus, the Roman Empire received eighty rulers 
 in ninety years. One of these rulers of a day, in 248 a.d., went 
 
674 
 
 A?icient Times 
 
 1091. Fifty 
 years of an- 
 archy and 
 the collapse 
 of higher 
 civilization 
 
 1092. Bar- 
 barian raids 
 
 1093. Tem- 
 porary inde- 
 pendence of 
 Gaul and 
 evidences of 
 rebuilding 
 of its cities 
 
 through the mockery of celebrating the thousand years' jubilee 
 of the traditional founding of Rome. 
 
 Most of these so-called emperors were not unlike the revolu- 
 tionary bandits who proclaim themselves presidents of Mexico. 
 For fifty years there was no public order, as the plundering 
 troops tossed the scepter of Rome from one soldier emperor 
 to another. Life and property were nowhere safe ; turbulence, 
 robbery, and murder were everywhere. The tumult and fight- 
 ing between rival emperors hastened the ruin of all business, 
 and as the affairs of the nation passed from bad to worse, 
 national bankruptcy ensued. In this tempest of anarchy during 
 the third century a. d. the civilization of the ancient world 
 suffered final collapse. The supremacy of mind and of scien- 
 tific knowledge won by the Greeks in the third century b.c. 
 (§ 743) yielded to the reign of ignorance and superstition in 
 these social disasters of the third century a.d. 
 
 As the Roman army weakened, the Northern barbarians were 
 quick to perceive the helplessness of the Empire (§ 1086). In 
 the East the Goths, one of the strongest German tribes, took 
 to the water, and their fleet passed out of the Black Sea into 
 the Mediterranean. While they devastated the coast cities far 
 and wide, other bands pushed down through the Balkan Penin- 
 sula and laid waste Greece as far as the Peloponnese. Even 
 Athens was plundered. The barbarians penetrated far into 
 Italy ; in the West they overran Gaul and Spain, and some 
 of them even crossed to Africa. In Gaul they burned city 
 after city, and their leaders stood by and laughed in exultation 
 as they saw the flames devouring the beautiful buildings of the 
 Roman cities (Figs. 258-261). 
 
 Under these circumstances, when the people of the plundered 
 lands saw that the Empire could no longer defend them, they 
 organized for their own defense. In this way Gaul, for exam- 
 ple, became an independent nation under its own rulers for 
 years in this terrible century. Its people repulsed the barbarians 
 and slowly rebuilt their burned cities. They dared not spread 
 
A Century of Revolution 675 
 
 out the city, as before, but grouping all the buildings dose to- 
 gether, the town was built compactly and surrounded by a 
 massive wall, made largely of blackened blocks of stone taken 
 from the ruined buildings burned by the barbarians. In no less 
 than sixty cities of France to-day sections of these heavy walls, 
 when taken down to make room for modern improvements, 
 are found to contain these smoke-blackened blocks. Far out- 
 side the city walls containing these blocks, excavation has re- 
 vealed to us the foundations of the splendid Roman structures 
 from which the blocks came and which formed the once larger 
 city destroyed by the barbarians. 
 
 At the same time a new danger had arisen in the East. A 1094. Rise of 
 revival of patriotism among the old Persian population had (^26 Zd!)^^ 
 resulted in a vigorous restoration of their national life. Their "n^erher 
 
 ^ Sassanian 
 
 leaders, a family called Sassanians (or Sassanids), overthrew the kings 
 Parthians (226 a.d.) and furnished a new line of enlightened 
 Persian kings. As they took possession of the Fertile Crescent 
 and established their capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, not far 
 north of Babylon, a new Orient arose on the ruins of seemingly 
 dead and forgotten ages. Fine buildings of Persian architec- 
 ture (headpiece, p. 667), though influenced by Greek art, again 
 looked down upon the Tigris and Euphrates, beautiful works 
 of the Persian artist and craftsman again began to appear, and 
 the revered religion of Zoroaster took on new life. We have 
 in this movement a last revival of that old Iranian race which 
 produced the religion of Zoroaster and built up the vast Persian 
 Empire. The Sassanian kings organized a much more powerful 
 State than that of the Parthians which they overthrew, and they 
 regarded themselves as the rivals of the Romans for the Empire 
 of the world. The old rivalry between the Orient and the 
 West, as in the days of Greece and Persia, was now con- 
 tinued, with Rome as the champion of the West, and this New 
 Persia as the leader of the East (see map II, p. (iz^)._ 
 
 Just as the family of Severus was declining, this empire of 
 New Persia rose into power as a dangerous foe of the Roman 
 
 A 
 
676 
 
 Ancie^it Thnes 
 
 1095. P^^' 
 
 myra a buffer 
 state against 
 New Persia ; 
 Zenobia 
 
 1096. Aure- 
 lian (270- 
 275 A.D.) 
 recovers 
 the East 
 and Gaul ; 
 Diocletian 
 restores order 
 (284 A.D.) 
 
 Empire on the eastern frontier. From this time on the Empire 
 was seriously threatened on two fronts, on north and east. As 
 in Gaul, so in the East, the rise of a usurper within the Roman 
 Empire for a time saved the region from absorption by the 
 outside enemy. One of the eastern governors, using Palmyra 
 as a center, gained his independence and defended the eastern 
 frontier on his own account. After his death his widow, the 
 beautiful Zenobia, ruled at Palmyra as queen of the East, over 
 a realm which included Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Her 
 kingdom served for a time as a buffer state, protecting the 
 Roman Empire from attack by New Persia. 
 
 With a powerful oriental state under Zenobia holding the east- 
 ern Mediterranean lands, and an able senator named Tetricus, 
 master of Gaul, Britain, and northern Spain, ruling the West 
 as an independent emperor (§ 1093), it looked as if the Roman 
 Empire were about to fall to pieces. The anarchy which we 
 have already noticed within the Empire was at its worst, when 
 one of the soldier emperors, named Aurelian (270 to 275 a.d.), 
 advanced against Zenobia, defeated her army, captured Pal- 
 myra and took the queen prisoner. Similar success in Gaul 
 enabled him to celebrate a gorgeous triumph in Rome, with 
 Zenobia and Tetricus led through the streets of the city along 
 with the other captives who adorned his triumph. Aurelian 
 restored some measure of order and safety. But, in order to 
 protect Rome from the future raids of the barbarians, he built 
 entirely around the great city the massive wall (Fig. 249, and 
 plan, p. 622) which still stands, — a confession of the dangerous 
 situation of Rome in the third century a. d. It was a little over 
 a century after the death of Marcus Aurelius, when the emperor 
 Diocletian restored what looked like a lasting peace (284 a.d.). 
 
 If at this point we look back some four hundred years over 
 the history of Rome since she became mistress of the world, 
 we discern three great periods.^ With the foundation of the 
 
 1 Periods of history do not end or begin abruptly. There is always a gradual 
 transition from one to the next, and the dates in this paragraph merely suggest 
 the points at which the transition was very evident. 
 
I 
 
AS ORGANIZED BY DIOCLETIAN and CONSTANTINE ^^^^-^ 
 
 30° Boundary Line of the Empire 
 
 ROMAN EMPIRE 
 ) BY DIOCLETIAN and 
 
 try Line of the Empire 
 
 Line of Division between the Eastern and Western Empires 
 
 I Prefecture of the Orient 
 I Prefecture of Illyricum 
 I Prefecture of Italy 
 I Prefecture of Gaul 
 
 I 
 
 Scale of Statute Miles 
 100 200 300 400 500 
 
^ 
 
A Century of Revolution Gyj 
 
 Empire by Augustus there began two centuries of peace, and 1097. Sum- 
 this period of peace was both preceded and followed by a cen- Snutrie/oy 
 tury of revolution. We have thus had a century of revolution, Ro^^n im- 
 
 ■^ penalism 
 
 two centuries of peace, and then a second century of revolu- culminating 
 tion. The first century of revolution led from the Gracchus (284a.dV^" 
 brothers to the triumph of one-man power and the foundation 
 of the Empire by Augustus (that is, about 133 to 30 B.C.). 
 The two centuries of peace beginning with the foundation of 
 the Empire by Augustus continued into the reign of Marcus 
 Aurelius (that is, about 30 B.C. to nearly 170 a.d.). The sec- 
 ond century of revolution led from the enlightened reign of 
 Marcus Aurelius to oriental despotism under Diocletian (that 
 is, about 180 to about 284 a.d.). Thus four centuries of 
 Roman imperialism, after bringing forth such masterful men 
 as Sulla and Julius Caesar, had passed through various stages 
 of one-man power, to end in despotism. We are now first to 
 examine that despotism and then to see how it was over- 
 whelmed by two centuries of barbarian invasions from the 
 North, while at the same time it was also crushed by the 
 reviving power of the Orient, whose assaults were to last 
 many centuries more (study map, p. 676). 
 
 Section 97. The Roman Empire an Oriental 
 Despotism 
 
 The world which issued from the disasters of this second 1098. Diode- 
 revolution toward the end of the third century a.d. under 3o"a d!) ; 
 Diocletian was a totally different one from that which Augustus Em^?e"?n 
 and the Roman Senate had ruled three centuries before, oriental 
 
 despotism 
 
 Diocletian deprived the shadowy Senate of all power, except 
 for the municipal government of the city of Rome. The Roman 
 Senate, now reduced to a mere City Council, a Board of Alder- 
 men, disappeared from the stage of history. The emperor thus 
 became for the whole Roman world what he had always been 
 in Egypt, — an absolute monarch with none to limit his power. 
 
6/8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1099. New 
 Persian in- 
 fluence ; tri- 
 umph of 
 oriental 
 influences 
 
 1 100. Em- 
 peror an 
 oriental Sun- 
 god ; triumph 
 of despotism, 
 end of de- 
 mocracy 
 
 The State had been completely militarized and orientalized. 
 With the unlimited power of the oriental despot the emperor 
 now assumed also its outward symbols — the diadem, the gor- 
 geous robe embroidered with pearls and precious stones, the 
 throne and footstool, before which all who came into his 
 presence must bow down to the dust. 
 
 Recent discovery has shown that the gorgeous costume in 
 which the Roman emperor now decked himself was copied 
 from that of the Sassanian kings of New Persia. 'The Roman 
 leaders had seen much of this new empire of the East for two 
 generations, and from its brilliant oriental court these outward 
 matters of royal costume, court symbols, and customs were 
 adopted. Oriental influence on Roman beliefs, such as we 
 have seen in the spread of the worship of the Persian god 
 Mithras (§ 1064), was now also affecting the notion of the 
 divinity of the emperor (§1016). In these things we recog- 
 nize a further stage in that commingling of the East and 
 West, begun by Alexander the Great over six hundred years be- 
 fore (§ 703). Indeed, the Roman Empire had now become like 
 a vast sponge absorbing the life and civilization of the Orient. 
 
 As a divinity, the emperor had now become an oriental Sun- 
 god and he was officially called the " Invincible Sun." His 
 birthday was on the twenty-fifth of December; that is, about 
 the date when the sun each year begins to turn northward 
 after he has reached his southernmost limit. The inhabitants 
 of each province might revere their particular gods, undis- 
 turbed by the government, but all were obliged as good citi- 
 zens to join in the official sacrifices to the head of the State as 
 a god. With the incoming of this oriental attitude toward the 
 emperor, the long struggle for democracy, which we have fol- 
 lowed through so many centuries of the history of early man, 
 ended in the triumph of oriental despotism. 
 
 The necessity of leading the army against New Persia, the 
 new oriental enemy, carried the emperor much to the East. 
 The result was that Diocletian resided most of the time at 
 
A Century of Revolutio7i 679 
 
 Nicomedia in Asia Minor (see map, p. 676). As a natural con- noi. Diode, 
 sequence the emperor was unable to give close attention to the iJf th^East 
 West. Following some earlier examples, and perhaps remem- ^"^ appoints 
 
 ^ ^ an emperor 
 
 bering the two consuls of the old Republic, Diocletian there- of the West 
 
 fore appointed another emperor to rule jointly with himself, to 
 
 give his attention to the West. The second emperor was to 
 
 live at Milan in the Po valley, really the most important region 
 
 of Italy. All government edicts, whether issued in the East or 
 
 the West, were signed by both emperors, and it was not 
 
 Diocletian's intention to divide the Roman Empire, any more 
 
 than it had been the purpose to divide the Republic in electing 
 
 two consuls. The final result was nevertheless the division of 
 
 the Roman Empire into East and West, just as it had once 
 
 been divided by the war between Caesar in the West and 
 
 Pompey in the East, or the similar conflict between Octavian 
 
 in the West and Antony in the East. 
 
 In order to avoid the recurrence of civil war at the death 1102. Diocle- 
 of an emperor, Diocletian endeavored to arrange the transfer ments^fo^the 
 of power from one emperor to the next. He and his fellow succession 
 emperor each bore the title of Augustus. The two Augustuses 
 appointed two subordinates, to be called Caesars. There were 
 thus two emperors, or Augustuses, and two subordinate emper- 
 ors, or Caesars, intended to be something like vice presidents. 
 For it was provided that at the death or resignation of either 
 Augustus one of the Caesars should at once take his place 
 as Augustus, and another Caesar was then to be appointed. 
 These arrangements display litde statesmanship, and there was 
 no possibility of their permanence. 
 
 In accordance with this organization, involving four rulers, 1103. Diode 
 the provinces of the Empire, over a hundred in number, were istrative 
 divided into four great groups, or prefectures (see map, p. 676), organization 
 with a prefect over each. Still smaller groups of provinces, 
 twelve in number, were called dioceses^ mostly ruled by vicars^ 
 the subordinates of the prefects ; while under the vicars were 
 the governors of the separate provinces. The business of each 
 
68o Ancient Times 
 
 province was organized in the hands of a great number of local 
 officials graded into many successive ranks and classes from 
 high to low. There was an unbroken chain of connection from 
 the lowest of these up through various ranks to the governor, 
 the vicar, and the prefect, and finally to the emperor himself. 
 
 1104. Op- The financial burden of this vast organization, begun under 
 tion ^ "^ Diocletian and completed under his successors, was enormous. 
 
 For this multitude of government officials and the clamorous 
 army had all to be paid and supported. It was a great expense 
 also to maintain the luxurious oriental court of the emperor, 
 surrounded by his innumerable palace officials and servants. 
 But now there were/^z/r such imperial courts, instead of one. 
 At the same time it was still necessary to supply '' bread and 
 circuses" for the populace of the towns (§1081). In regard to 
 taxation, the situation had grown steadily worse since the reign 
 of Marcus Aurelius. The amount of a citizen's taxes therefore 
 continued to increase, and finally little that he possessed was 
 free from taxation. 
 
 1 105. Bad When the scarcity of coin forced the government to accept 
 tax collection grain and produce from the delinquent taxpayer, taxes had 
 
 become a mere share in the yield of the lands. The Roman 
 Empire thus sank to a primitive system of taxation already 
 thousands of years old in the Orient. It was now customary 
 to oblige a group of wealthy men in each city to become respon- 
 sible for the payment of the entire taxes of the district each 
 year, and if there was a deficit, these men were forced to make 
 up the lacking balance out of their own wealth. The penalty of 
 wealth seemed to be ruin, and there was no motive for success 
 in business when such prosperity meant ruinous overtaxation. 
 
 1106. Loss Many a worthy man secretly fled from his lands to become 
 ers and m^S" ^ wandering beggar, or even to take up a life of robbery and 
 busTn^ss violence. The Roman Empire had already lost, and had never 
 men ; obiiga- been able to restore, its prosperous farmins: class. It now lost 
 
 toiy practice vi • i r- r j d 
 
 ofoccupa- hkewise the enterprising and successful business men of the 
 middle class. Diocletian therefore endeavored to force these 
 
A Century of Revolution 68 1 
 
 classes to continue their occupations. He enacted laws for- 
 bidding any man to forsake his lands or occupation. The 
 societies, guilds, and unions in which the men of various occu- 
 pations had long been organized (§ 1040) were now gradually 
 made obligatory, so that no one could follow any calling or 
 occupation without belonging to such a society. Once a 
 member he must always remain in the occupation it implied. 
 
 Thus under this oriental despotism the liberty, for which H07. Disap 
 men had striven so long, disappeared in Europe, and the once Hberty and^ 
 free Roman citizen had no independent life of his own. For ^"j^.^ citizen- 
 the will of the emperor had now become law, and as such his 
 decrees were dispatched throughout the length and breadth of 
 the Roman dominions. Even the citizen's wages and the prices 
 of the goods he bought or sold were as far as possible fixed for 
 him by the State. The emperor's innumerable officials kept an 
 eye upon even the humblest citizen. They watched the grain 
 dealers, butchers, and bakers, and saw to it that they properly 
 supplied the public and never deserted their occupation. In 
 some cases the State even forced the son to follow the profes- 
 sion of his father. In a word, the Roman government now 
 attempted to regulate almost every interest in life, and where- 
 ever the citizen turned he felt the control and oppression of 
 the State. 
 
 Staggering under his crushing burden of taxes, in a State 1108. The 
 which was practically bankrupt, the citizen of every class had ^^-^^^^ f^j. ^he 
 now become a mere cog in the vast machinery of the govern- ^^^^^ 
 ment. He had no other function than to toil for the State, 
 which exacted so much of the fruit of his labor that he was 
 fortunate if it proved barely possible for him to survive on what 
 was left. As a mere toiler for the State, he was finally where 
 the peasant on the Nile had been for thousands of years. The 
 emperor had become a Pharaoh, and the Roman Empire a 
 colossal Egypt of ancient days. 
 
 The century of revolution which ended in the despotic reor- 
 ganization by Diocletian completely destroyed the creative ability 
 
 'A 
 
682 Ancient Times 
 
 1109. End of of ancient men in art and literature, as it likewise crushed all 
 of^hFghfr^^ progress in business and affairs. In so far as the ancient world 
 civilization in ^g^g Qj^g q{ progress in civilization, its history was ended with 
 
 the ancient r o •> j 
 
 world ; future the acccssion of Diocletian. Nevertheless, the Roman Empire 
 Rome had still a great mission before it, in the preservation of at least 
 
 something of the heritage of civilization, which it was to hand 
 down the centuries to us of to-day. Moreover, it was out of the 
 fragments of the Roman Empire that the nations of modern 
 Europe grew up. We are now to watch it then as it falls to 
 pieces, still mechanically maintaining its hold upon its mighty 
 heritage from the past, and furnishing the materials, as it were, 
 out of which our world of to-day has been built up. 
 
 Section 98. The Division of the Empire and the 
 Triumph of Christianity 
 
 mo. Shift of Under Diocletian Italy had been reduced to the position of a 
 power"from taxed province, and had thus lost the last vestige of superiority 
 Balkan' Pen *~'^^^ ^^ Other provinccs of the Empire. The dangerous flood 
 insula of German barbarians along the lower Danube and the threat- 
 
 ening rise of New Persia had drawn the emperor into the 
 northeast corner of the Empire. During the century of revo- 
 lution just past, the Illyrian soldiers of the Balkan Peninsula 
 had filled the army with the best troops and furnished more 
 than one emperor. An emperor who had risen from the ranks 
 of provincial troops in the Balkans felt little attachment to 
 Rome. Rome had not only ceased to be the residence of an 
 emperor, but the center of power had clearly shifted from Italy 
 to the Balkan Peninsula. The movement was the outcome of 
 a reviving respect for the East and a long growing interest 
 in the Balkan Peninsula, observable even as early as Hadrian, 
 who spent vast sums in the beautification of xA.thens. After 
 the struggles following Diocletian's death, — struggles which his 
 arrangements for the succession (§ 1 102) failed to prevent, — the 
 emperor Constantine the Great emerged victorious (324 a.d.). 
 
A Century of Revohition 
 
 683 
 
 He did not hesitate to turn to the eastern edge of the Balkan 
 Peninsula and establish there a New Rome as his residence. 
 
 The spot which he selected showed him to be a far-seeing 
 statesman. He chose the ancient Greek town of Byzantium, 
 
 Fig. 268. View across the Bosporus 1 rom Europe to Asia 
 
 This view places us on the European shore of the Bosporus, and we 
 look eastward to the Asiatic shore, with the mountains behind, rising to 
 the table-land of central Asia Minor (§ 351). Just south of us (at the 
 right) on the same shore is Constantinople ; a little to the north (the 
 left) is the place where Darius the Great probably built his bridge 
 when he first invaded Europe to conquer the Scythians (§ 500). The 
 towers and walls before us are part of a fortress built by the Turkish 
 conquerors when they crossed from Asia for the conquest of Constan- 
 tinople in 1453 -'^•D- (§ 1 158)- For ages this intercontinental crossing has 
 been the commercial and military link between Europe and Asia, and 
 as the author writes (May, 19 16) the greatest nations of the world are 
 fighting for its possession 
 
 mi. Con- 
 
 stantine (324 
 -337 A.D.) 
 makes Con- 
 stantinople 
 his residence 
 and seat of 
 government 
 (330 A.D.) 
 
 on the European side of the Bosporus (Fig. 268), — a magnifi- 
 cent situation overlooking both Europe and Asia, and fitted to 
 be a center of power in both. In placing his new capital here, 
 Constantine established a city, the importance of which was 
 only equaled by the foundation of Alexandria in Egypt. The 
 
684 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 emperor stripped many an ancient city of its great monuments 
 in order to secure materials for the beautification of his splendid 
 residence (Fig. 269). By 330 a. d. the new capital on the 
 
 Fig. 269. Ancient Monuments in Constantinople 
 
 The obelisk in the foreground (nearly 100 feet high) was first set up in 
 Thebes, Egypt, by the conqueror Thutmose III (§111); it was erected 
 here by the Roman emperor Theodosius (§1125). The small spiral 
 column at the right is the base of a bronze tripod set up by the Greeks 
 at Delphi (Fig. 172) in commemoration of their victory over the Persians 
 at Plataea (§ 517). The names of thirty-one Greek cities which took 
 part in the battle are still to be read, engraved on this base. These 
 monuments of ancient oriental and Greek supremacy stand in what was 
 the Roman horse-race course when the earlier Greek city of Byzantium 
 became the Eastern capital of Rome (§ 1 1 11). Finally, the great mosque 
 behind the obelisk, with its slender minarets, represents the triumph of 
 Islam under the Turks, who took the city in 1453 a.d. 
 
 Bosporus was a magnificent monumental city,, worthy to be 
 the successor of Rome as the seat of the Mediterranean 
 Empire. It was named Constantinople (" Constantine's city ") 
 after its founder. 
 
I 
 
 A Century of Revolution 685 
 
 The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to the east 1112. Con- 
 side of the Balkan Peninsula- was a decided triumph for the and^the^sepa- 
 older civilization of the eastern Mediterranean. But it meant ration of East 
 
 , . . - and West ; 
 
 the separation of east and west — the cutting of the Roman continuance 
 Empire in two. Although the separation did not take place °^^^''^'"^ 
 abruptly, yet within a generation after Constantinople was 
 founded, the Roman Empire had in fact if not in name become 
 two states, and they were never more than temporarily united 
 again. Thus the founding of Constantinople sealed the doom 
 of Rome and the western Mediterranean lands of the Empire. 
 For a time the eastern half of the Empire, ruled by Constanti- 
 nople, was greatly strengthened by Diocletian's reorganization. 
 Nevertheless, it too was doomed to steady decline. We have 
 seen that citizenship in the Roman Empire no longer meant a 
 share in the control of public affairs. Able men of affairs were 
 no longer arising among such citizens, except as the army raised 
 one of its commanders to the position of emperor. Peaceful 
 civil life was no longer producing statesmen to control govern- 
 ment affairs as in the days of the Roman and Greek republics. 
 
 In this situation, as the Christian churches steadily increased 1113. The 
 in numbers, and their influence grew, they more and more newarena^for 
 
 needed the guidance of able men. The management of the ^!^f "^^ ^^ 
 ^ ^ able men 
 
 great Christian communities and their churches called for in- 
 creasing ability and experience. Public discussion and disputes 
 in the Church assemblies enabled gifted men to stand forth, and 
 their ability brought them position and influence. The Chris- 
 tian Church thus became a new arena for the development of 
 statesmanship, and Church statesmen were soon to be the lead- 
 ing influential men of the age, when civil democracy had long 
 since ceased to produce such men. 
 
 These officers of the Church gradually devoted themselves 1114. The 
 more and more to Church duties until they had no time for any- powerful 
 thing else. They thus came to be distinguished from the other ° J^^s^^'"" ' 
 members and were called the clergy, while the people who made bishops, and 
 
 „ , , , 17- rnu archbishops 
 
 up the membership were called the laymen, or the laity, Ihe 
 
686 Ancient Times 
 
 old men who cared for the smaller country congregations were 
 finally called merely presbyters^ a Greek word meaning " old 
 men," and our word '' priest " is derived from this Greek term. 
 Over the group of churches in each city, a leading priest gained 
 authority as bishop. In the larger cities these bishops had such 
 influence that they became archbishops, or head bishops, hav- 
 ing authority over the bishops in the surrounding cities of the 
 province. These church arrangements were modeled to a large 
 extent on those of the Roman government, from which such 
 terms as " diocese "(§ 1103) were borrowed. Thus Christianity, 
 once the faith of the weak and the despised, became a power- 
 ful organization, strong enough to cope with the government. 
 
 1115. Chris- The Roman government therefore began to see the useless- 
 on"a?egar^ ncss of persecuting the Christians. The struggle to suppress 
 basis with them w^as one which decidedly weakened the Roman State, at 
 
 other reh- -^ ' 
 
 gions a time when the long disorders of the century of revolution 
 
 made the emperors feel their weakness. In the time of Diocle- 
 tian, his " Caesar " Galerius, feeling the dangers threatening 
 Rome from withoict and the uselessness of the struggle against 
 the Christians tvithin^ issued a decree, in 311 a.d., by which 
 Christianity was legally recognized. Its followers received the 
 same legal position granted to the worshipers of the old gods. 
 This decree was also maintained by Constantine, and under his 
 direction the first great assembly, or council, of all the churches 
 of the Roman world was held at Nicaea, in northeastern Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 1116. juUan The victory of Christianity was not yet final however. After 
 tate^' (361^- Constantine's sons and nephews had spent years in fighting 
 363 A.D.) fgj- ^Q crown, which one of the sons held for a time, the sur- 
 vivor among the group was Constantine's nephew Julian, the 
 ablest emperor since the second century of peace. Like Marcus 
 Aurelius, he was a philosopher on the throne ; for he was 
 devoted to the old literature and philosophy of the Greeks. 
 He therefore renounced Christianity and did all that he could 
 to retard its progress and to restore Hellenistic religion and 
 
A Century of Revolution 68/ 
 
 civilization. He was an able general also. He defeated the 
 German barbarians in the West, but while leading his army in 
 the East against the New Persians he died. The Church called 
 him Julian " the Apostate " ; he was the last of the Roman 
 emperors to oppose Christianity. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 95. In spite of seeming prosperity, what was now the 
 real condition of the Roman Empire 1 What can you say of the de- 
 cline of farming.? Describe the system of coloni. What was now 
 the condition of slavery? What can you say of the extent of culti- 
 vated lands and the food supply 1 What was happening to the farm- 
 ing class .-^ Discuss city life; the decline of business. Discuss the 
 supply of precious metals and money. How did this difficulty affect 
 the army.f* What was the effect of the lack of a law of succession 
 on the army.? What was now Italy's situation in the Empire? 
 
 Section 96. Tell what happened after the death of Marcus 
 Aurelius. Describe the conditions following the time of the family 
 of Septimius Severus. What did the Northern barbarians do ? What 
 happened in Gaul? Describe the rise of New Persia. Tell about 
 Palmyra and Zenobia. How were Gaul and Palmyra subdued ? How 
 did Aurelian protect Rome? Who ended the century of revolution, 
 and when? How can we summarize the four centuries of Roman 
 imperialism which ended with the advent of Diocletian (284 B.C.)? 
 
 Section 97. How did Diocletian treat the Roman Senate? What 
 did the Roman emperor become? What influences triumphed? 
 What became of democracy ? What can you say about the emperor's 
 place of residence? What arrangements for the succession did 
 Diocletian make ? Tell about his administrative organization. What 
 can you say of taxation under Diocletian ? How did this affect men of 
 means? What two classes of men had the Empire now lost ? What 
 can you say of liberty and free citizenship ? What was the result ? 
 
 Section 98. Where had the center of power shifted? Who tri- 
 umphed in the struggles following Diocletian's death? Where did 
 he establish the new eastern Rome ? What was the effect upon old 
 Rome ? upon the Empire ? What can you say of the opportunities 
 offered by the Church to able men? Tell about its organization. 
 How did Chrisdanity gain legal recognition? When? Tell about 
 Julian the Apostate. 
 

 sSj^*' -fe^ V« ^^ 
 
 
 1 1 17. The 
 
 barbarian 
 danger 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF THE BARBARIANS AND THE END OF 
 THE ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 Section 99. The Barbarian Invasions and the 
 Fall of the Western Empire ^ 
 
 We have often met the Indo-European barbarians who occu- 
 pied northern Europe, behind the civilized belt on the north of 
 the Mediterranean. wSince the days of the Stone Age men this 
 
 1 This account of the absorption of the western part of the ancient world by 
 the barbarians is here necessarily very brief. A fuller presentation of this period 
 will be found in Robinson's Medieval and Modem Times (chaps, ii-v), a book 
 which continues this Ancient Times. 
 
 Note. The abo\'e headpiece shows us the interior of the famous church of 
 St. Sophia, built at Constantinople by Justinian from 532 to 537 a-.d. (§ 1149). The 
 first church on this spot was of the usual basilica form (Fig. 271,3) , but Justinian's 
 architects preferred an oriental dome. They therefore roofed the great church 
 with a gigantic dome 183 feet high at the center, sweeping clear across the audi- 
 ence jroprn and producing the most imposing vaulted interior now surviving from 
 
 688 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 689 
 
 northern region had never advanced to a high civilization. Its 
 
 barbarian peoples had been a frequent danger to the fringe of 
 
 civilized nations along the Mediterranean. We recall how the 
 
 Gauls overwhelmed northern Italy, even capturing Rome, and 
 
 how they then overflowed into the Balkan Peninsula and Asia 
 
 Minor (§§ 722,813,815). We remember the terror at Rome when 
 
 the Germans first came down, and how they were only defeated 
 
 by a supreme effort under the skillful soldier Marius (§ 936). 
 
 By superior organization the Romans had been able to feed ms. Former 
 
 and to keep together at a given point for a long time a larger dority"anr 
 
 number of troops than the barbarians. This was the secret of '^^^^ '"f^"- 
 
 onty to bar- 
 Caesar s success against them (§ 955). During the century of barian armies 
 
 revolution after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Roman army 
 organization had gone to pieces and the barbarians raided the 
 lands of the Empire without hindrance. After such raids the bar- 
 barians commonly withdrew. J^y the time of Diocletian, however, 
 the barbarians were beginning to form permanent settlements 
 within the limits of the Empire, and there followed two centu- 
 ries of barbarian migration, in the course of which they took 
 possession of the entire western Mediterranean world. 
 
 The Germans were a fair-haired, blue-eyed race of men of 1119. The 
 towering stature and terrible strength. In their native forests peo^e" 
 of the North each German people or nation occupied a very ^^^^"^^ 
 limited area, probably not over forty miles across, and in num- 
 bers such a people had not usually more than twenty-five or 
 thirty thousand souls. They lived in villages, each of about a 
 hundred families, and there was a head man over each village. 
 Their homes were but slight huts, easily moved. They had 
 little interest in farming the fringe of fields around the village, 
 much preferring their herds, and they shifted their homes often. 
 
 the ancient world. Justinian is said to have expended i8 tons of gold and the 
 labor of ten thousand men in the erection of the building. Since the capture of 
 Constantinople by the Turks (1453 A.D.), the vast church has served as a Moham- 
 medan mosque. The Turks have whitewashed the gorgeous mosaics with which 
 the magnificent interior is adorned, and large circular shields bearing the mono- 
 gram of the Sultan have been hung against tin- walls. 
 
 / 
 
690 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1 120. The 
 
 German 
 peoples in 
 migration 
 and war 
 
 1121. Admis- 
 sion of whole 
 German 
 peoples to 
 settle in the 
 Empire and 
 serve in the 
 army 
 
 They possessed no writing and very little in the way of indu& 
 tries, manufactures, or commerce. A group of noble families 
 furnished the leaders (dukes) or sometimes kings, governing 
 the whole people. 
 
 Hardened to wind and weather in their raw Northern climate, 
 their native fearlessness and love of war and plunder often led 
 them to wander, followed by their wives and families in heavy 
 wagons. An entire people might comprise some fifty villages, 
 but each village group remained together, protected by its body 
 of about a hundred warriors, the heads of the village families. 
 When combined, these hundreds made up an army of five to 
 six thousand men. Each hundred held together in battle, as a 
 fighting unit. They all knew each other ; the village head man, 
 the leader of the group, had always lived with them ; the warrior 
 in the tumult of battle saw all about him his friends and rela- 
 tives, the sons of his brothers, the husbands of his daughters. 
 In spite of lack of discipline, these fighting groups of a hundred 
 men, united by such ties of blood and daily association, formed 
 battle units as terrible as any ever seen in the ancient world. 
 Their eager joy in battle and the untamed fierceness of their 
 onset made them irresistible. 
 
 The highly organized and carefully disciplined Roman legions, 
 which had gained for Rome the leadership of the world, were 
 now no more. Legions made up of the peace-softened towns- 
 men of Diocletian's time, even if they had existed, would have 
 given way before the German fighting groups, as chaff is driven 
 before the wind. Hopeless of being able to drive the Germans 
 back, the emperors had allowed them to settle within the fron- 
 tiers (§ 1073). Even Augustus had permitted this. Indeed, the 
 lack of men for the army had long since led the emperors to 
 hire the Germans as soldiers, and Julius Caesar's cavalry had 
 been largely barbarian. A more serious step was the admission 
 of entire German peoples to live in the Empire in their accus- 
 tomed manner. The men were then received into the Roman 
 army, but they remained under their own German leaders 
 
The Triumph of the Barbafians 691 
 
 and they fought in their old village units. For it was only 
 as the Roman army was made up of the German fighting 
 units that it had any effectiveness. Barbarian life, customs, 
 and manners were thus introduced into the Empire, and the 
 Roman army as a whole was barbarian. At the same time 
 the German leaders of such troops were recognized as 
 Roman officers. 
 
 Along the lower Rhine there lived under a king a powerful 1122. The 
 group of German peoples, called the Franks. The Vandals, ^an^p^t^' 
 also in the North, had long borne an evil reputation for their P'^^; Julian's 
 
 ^ ^ defeat of 
 
 destructive raids. South of them, the Alemanni had frequently Franks and 
 moved over the frontiers, and on the lower Danube the Goths stSssWg^ 
 were a constant danger. Constantine's nephew Julian (§ 11 16) ^357 a.d.) 
 had gained a fierce battle against the Germans at Strassburg 
 (357 A.D.), and had thus stopped the Franks and Alemanni at 
 the Rhine. He established his headquarters at Paris, where 
 he still continued to read his beloved books in the midst of the 
 campaign. The philosopher emperor's stay at Paris fifteen and 
 a half centuries ago, for the first time brought clearly into 
 history that important city of future Europe. 
 
 This constant commingling of the German peoples with the 1123. Ger- 
 civilized communities of the Empire was gradually softening gain some ^^ 
 their Northern wildness and giving them not only familiarity JiJcludlnff"' 
 with civilization but also a respect for it. Their leaders, who writing and 
 
 ^ , Christianity 
 
 held office under the Roman government, came to have friends 
 among highborn Romans. Such leaders sometimes married 
 educated Roman women of rank, even close relations of the 
 emperors. Some of them too were converted to Christianity. 
 An educated German of the Goths, a man named Ulfilas, 
 translated the New Testament into Gothic, a dialect akin to 
 German. As the Germanic peoples possessed no writing, he was 
 obliged to devise an alphabet from Greek and Latin for writing 
 Gothic. He thus produced the earliest surviving example of a 
 written Germanic tongue and aided in converting the Northern 
 peoples to Christianity. 
 
692 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 At this juncture barbarians of another race, having no Indo- 
 European blood in their veins, had been penetrating Europe 
 from Asia. These people were the Huns. They were the most 
 destructive of all the barbarian invaders. They pushed down 
 upon the lower Danube, and the West Goths (often called 
 Visigoths), fleeing before them, begged the Romans for per- 
 mission to cross the Danube and settle in the Empire. Valens, 
 who had followed Julian as emperor of the East, gave them 
 permission to do so. Thereupon friction between them and the 
 Roman officials caused them to revolt. In the battle which 
 ensued at Adrianople (378 a.d.), although the Goths could not 
 have had an army of over fifteen thousand men, the Romans, 
 or rather the Germans fighting for them, were defeated, and 
 the emperor Valens himself was killed. Henceforth the helpless- 
 ness of the Roman Empire was evident to all the world. This 
 movement of the West Goths and the battle of Adrianople were 
 the beginning of a century of continuous migration in which the 
 Western Empire was slowly absorbed by the barbarians and 
 broken up into German kingdoms under German military leaders. 
 
 Theodosius, who succeeded Valens at Constantinople, was 
 the last of the great emperors to unite and rule the whole 
 Roman Empire. He came to an understanding with the West 
 Goths, allowing them to settle where they were, taking them 
 into his army, and giving their leaders important posts in the 
 government. But it was only by using the able and energetic 
 Germans themselves as his ministers and commanders that he 
 was able to maintain his empire. He even gave his niece in 
 marriage to his leading military commander, a Vandal named 
 Stilicho, and at his death, in 395 a.d., Theodosius intrusted to 
 this able German the care of his two young sons Honorius 
 and Arcadius. 
 
 Theodosius divided the Empire between these two youths, 
 giving to Arcadius the East and to Honorius the West. The 
 Empire was never to be united again. Indeed, after the 
 appearance of these two young emperors, the dismemberment 
 

 j:XRLAliATIONi. 
 
 LIMITS OF ATTILA»J 
 EMPIRE ABOUT 450 
 
 ■.!?^*' 
 
 ^ 
 
 VANDALS 
 WEST GOTHS 
 EAST GOTHS 
 FRANKS 
 " SAXONS AND'^NG-UES 
 
 G 
 
The Triiimph of the Barbarians 693 
 
 of the Western Empire went rapidly forward, and in two 
 generations resulted in the disappearance of both the Western 
 emperor and his empire (see map, p. 676). 
 
 From both the Danube and the Rhine the movement of the 1127. West 
 barbarians southward and westward went on. Led by their creece^^d^ 
 kins: Alaric, the West doths first pushed down from the ^^aly (400 
 
 ^ ^ A.D.), take 
 
 Danube into the Balkan Peninsula and advanced plundering Rome (410 
 into Greece, where they even took Athens. Here the German estab)iisha 
 Stilicho, leading German troops, confronted the German inva- in^caur 
 sion and forced it back. Driving their wagons piled high with 
 the plunder of Greece, Alaric led his West Goths into Illyricum, 
 where Arcadius made him official commander. When the faith- 
 ful Stilicho had been executed on a charge of treason by Hono- 
 rius, there was no one to oppose Alaric in his invasion of Italy. 
 In 410 A.D. the emperor of the West was thus obliged to look 
 on helplessly while the Gothic host captured and plundered 
 Rome itself.-^ Indeed, when the West Goths, after the death of 
 Alaric, retired from Italy into southwestern Gaul, and later into 
 Spain, Honorius was obliged to recognize the West Gothic 
 kingdom which they set up there (see map, p. 692). 
 
 While these movements of the West Goths were going on 1128. Estab- 
 after 400 a.d., the Vandals and two other German peoples vandaf 
 had crossed the Rhine, and, advancing through Gaul, they had kingdoms 
 penetrated into Spain, where these three peoples set up three and Africa ; 
 German kingdoms. These kingdoms, like that of the West in Gaul (400- 
 Goths in Gaul, acknowledged that they were vassals of Hono- 45° a.d.) 
 rius as emperor of the West. Not long after their settlement 
 in Spain, the Vandals sailed across the Strait of Gibraltar and 
 seized the Roman province of Africa (429 a.d.). The African 
 kingdom of the Vandals was likewise recognized by the West- 
 em emperor. A little later the German Burgundians had 
 pushed in beside the West Goths and set up a kingdom in 
 southeastern Gaul. 
 
 1 Not long after 400 B. c. Rome was captured by the Gauls (§815), and a few 
 years after 400 A. D. it was captured by the Goths. 
 
694 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1 129. West- 
 ern Empire 
 loses Britain 
 and dwindles 
 to Italy 
 
 I 130. Italy 
 and the West 
 invaded by 
 the Huns 
 
 (450-453 
 A.D.) ; Rome 
 taken by 
 the Vandals 
 (455 A.D.) 
 
 Meantime German peoples located along the North Sea had 
 taken to the water and were landing in the Island of Britain. 
 While Alaric was sacking Rome, the last Roman soldiers were 
 being withdrawn from the island, and within a generation after- 
 ward the German tribes of the Angles and Saxons were setting 
 up kingdoms there, which did not acknowledge the sovereignty 
 of Rome. A rival emperor in Gaul was obliged to let the 
 island go, nor could the feeble emperor of the West, in Italy, 
 ever recover it. He was equally helpless as far as any real 
 power over the western German kingdoms was concerned. 
 Within a generation after 400 a. d. the Western Empire had 
 therefore dwindled to Italy itself, and even there the emperor 
 of the West was entirely in the hands of his German officials 
 and commanders. 
 
 In this condition of weakness Italy was subjected to two 
 more serious invasions. The Eastern Empire had not been able 
 to control the Huns who had forced the West Goths across the 
 Danube (§ 1124). For two generations since then the kingdom 
 of the Huns had steadily grown in power, until their king 
 Attila governed an empire extending from southern Russia to 
 the Rhine. He laid the Eastern Empire under tribute, and by 
 450 A.D. he and his terrible barbarian host were sweeping 
 down upon Italy in the most destructive invasion which the 
 South ever suffered. The West Goths, with other western 
 Germans, however, rallied to the assistance of the Western 
 emperor against the common enemy, and in a terrible battle 
 at Chalons, in France, Attila was defeated in 451 a.d. He 
 retreated eastward, and two years later, as he was invading 
 Italy, he died. The Hunnish empire fell to pieces, never to 
 trouble Europe again. Hardly had Rome thus escaped when 
 the Vandals crossed over from Carthage to Sicily and Italy, 
 and in 455 a.d. they captured Rome. Although they carried 
 off great quantities of spoil, they spared the magnificent build- 
 ings of the city, as Alaric and his West Goths had also done 
 forty-five years earlier (see map, p. 692). 
 
The Trhimph of the Barbarians 695 
 
 In Italy, all that was left of the Western Empire, the German 1131. Last of 
 rfi'ilitary leaders possessed all the power and made and unmade at R^oTe^'^°'^^ 
 emperors as they pleased. But these seeming emperors of the Romulus 
 West were now to disappear. By a remarkable coincidence the dispbceYby 
 last to bear the title was called Romulus Augustulus ; that is, reSer^Odo- 
 Romulus, " the little Augustus." He thus bore the names both acer(476A.D.) 
 of the legendary founder of Rome itself and of the founder of 
 the Roman Empire. He was quietly set aside by the German 
 soldiery, who put Odoacer, one of their number, in his place. 
 Thus in 476 a.d., two generations after Theodosius, the last of 
 the Western emperors disappeared. The line of emperors at 
 Rome thus ended a little over five hundred years after it had 
 been established by Augustus. The German leaders in Italy 
 sent word to the Eastern emperor at Constantinople that they 
 acknowledged the sovereignty of the Eastern emperor, who 
 then authorized Odoacer to rule with the title of " patrician." 
 
 Meantime another great migration of the barbarians again 1132. Estab- 
 altered the situation in the West. An eastern branch of the of an East 
 Goths, whom we call, therefore, the East Goths (Ostro-Goths), J^^^!^ '[^"p 
 had remained along the Danube for two generations after their byTheodoric 
 kindred, the West Goths, had departed (§ 1 1 24). Then they also ^^^ 
 shifted westward and southward into Italy, where, in 493 a.d., 
 their king Theodoric the Great displaced Odoacer and made 
 himself king of a strong East Gothic kingdom in Italy. Although 
 he was unable even to read, Theodoric was a wise and highly 
 civilized ruler, and under him Italy began to recover from her 
 misfortunes. His power finally included, besides Italy and Sicily, 
 part of Gaul and Spain, and it at one time seemed that the 
 "Western Empire was about to be restored under a German 
 emperor. This restoration of the West was prevented, however, 
 by the rise of Justinian, the last great emperor of the East at 
 Constantinople. 
 
 After the death of Theodosius (395 a.d.) the Eastern Empire 1133. justin- 
 had been ruled by weaklings. Justinian, however, who was reconquest 
 crowned at Constantinople in 527 a.d., only a generation after of the West 
 
696 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 the rise of Theodoric, was a gifted and energetic ruler. His 
 dream was the restoration of the united Empire. Under his able 
 
 general Belisarius, 
 he therefore en- 
 deavored to recon- 
 quer the West. 
 Belisarius overthrew 
 the Vandal king- 
 dom in the prov- 
 ince of Africa and 
 then passed over 
 into Italy, where he 
 finally crushed the 
 kingdom of the East 
 Goths. Although 
 disturbed by a seri- 
 ous revolt in Italy, 
 the Eastern emper- 
 or's authority was 
 restored in Italy, 
 Sicily, Africa, and 
 southern Spain. But 
 Justinian showed 
 very poor judgment 
 in supposing that 
 the Eastern Empire 
 
 Fig. 270. Hall of an Egyptian Temple 
 
 ALTERED INTO A CHRISTIAN ChURCH 
 
 Over fifteen hundred years ago, in the reign of 
 Theodosius (379-395 A.D.), not many years be- 
 fore 400 A.D., the temples of the old gods all 
 around the Mediterranean were closed by edict 
 of the emperor. They were then gradually 
 forsaken, as we find them now, or the huts and 
 
 sun-dried-brick hovels of the poor crowded into them. In some cases a 
 temple hall, once devoted to the worship of the gods, was then con- 
 verted into a Christian church. In such a hall of the Luxor Temple at 
 Thebes in Egypt, the arched niche we see here was cut into the wall 
 for the pulpit of the preacher, and Greek columns were set up to sup- 
 port a canopy over his head. The pagan relief scenes on the walls were 
 covered with plaster on which Christian saints were painted. This 
 Christian plaster, visible just at the left of the left-hand column, has now 
 largely fallen off and revealed the old pagan pictures, as we see them 
 here still further to the left, where the pictures of the old Egyptian 
 gods have emerged again, to find their former worshipers all vanished 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 697 
 
 possessed the power again to rule the whole Mediterranean 
 world. His destmction of the P2ast Gothic kingdom in Italy 
 left the peninsula helpless before the next wave of barbaric 
 migration, nor were his successors able to maintain his conquests. 
 
 But if political unity failed, the emperor's large plans did 1134. Justin- 
 succeed in establishing a great judicial or legal unity. He em- compHed^ 
 ployed a veiy able lawyer named Tribonian to gather together 
 all the numerous laws which had grown up in the career of 
 Rome since the age of the Twelve Tablets (§ 802) a thousand 
 years before. Justinian was the Hammurapi of the Roman 
 Empire, and the vast body of laws which he collected repre- 
 sented the administrative experience of the most successful 
 rulers of the ancient world. Almost every situation and every 
 difficulty arising in social life, in business transactions, or in 
 legal proceedings had been met and settled by Roman judges. 
 The collection of their decisions arranged by Justinian in brief 
 form was called a digest. Justinian's Digest became the foun- 
 dation of law for later ages, and still remains so to a large 
 extent in the government of the civilized peoples of to-day. 
 
 Under Justinian Constantinople enjoyed wide recognition and 1135. End 
 the emperor gave lavishly for its beautification. But it was no tempos 
 longer for building the old temples of the gods or basilicas and 
 amphitheaters that the ruler gave his wealth. The old world of 
 Greek civilization had received its last support from Julian, two 
 centuries earlier (§ 11 16). Theodosius, the last emperor to rule 
 the entire Empire, had forbidden the worship of the old gods 
 and issued a decree closing all their temples. Since 400 a. d. 
 the splendid temples of the gods, which fringed the Mediter- 
 ranean (Fig. 219) and extended far up the Nile (Fig. 64), were 
 left more and more forsaken by their worshipers, till finally they 
 were deserted and desolate as they are to-day, or they were 
 altered for use as Christian churches (Fig. 270). The last blow 
 to what the Church regarded as Greek paganism was now 
 struck by Justinian, who closed the schools of philosophy form- 
 ing the university at Athens. The buildings to wMch the 
 
698 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1x36. Divi- 
 sion of the 
 Church into 
 East and 
 West 
 
 emperor now devoted his wealth were churches. The vast 
 church of Saint Sophia which he built at Constantinople still 
 stands to-day, the most magnificent of the early churches of 
 the East (headpiece, p. 688). 
 
 Just as this building shows its oriental origin in its architec- 
 ture, so did the teachings of the Church in the Eastern Empire. 
 The efforts of Justinian to unite East and West failed to a large 
 extent because of the jealousy of the oriental churches and 
 the power of the Western Church. A division was therefore 
 steadily developing between the Eastern (Greek) Church and 
 the Western (Latin) Church. For while the dismemberment of 
 the Western Empire, which we have followed, was still going 
 on, there was arising at Rome an emperor of the Church, who 
 was in no small degree the heir to the lost power of the West- 
 ern emperor. As there had been an Empire of the East and 
 an Empire of the West, so there were to be also a Church of 
 the East and a Church of the West. To the Western Church 
 we must now turn. 
 
 Section 100. The Triumph of the Roman Church 
 AND ITS Power over the Western Nations 
 
 1137. Unique 
 position of 
 Rome, and 
 the bishop 
 of Rome 
 
 The venerable city of Rome, with its long centuries as mis- 
 tress of the world behind it, had gained a position of unique 
 respect and veneration, even among the barbarians. The Goths 
 and the Vandals had stood in awe and reverence under the 
 shadow of its magnificent public buildings. They had left them 
 uninjured, and in all its monumental splendor, Rome was still 
 the greatest city of the world, rivaled only by Constantinople 
 and Alexandria, the two other imperial cities. It was natural 
 that the bishop of Rome should occupy a position of unusual 
 power and respect. When the West Goths were threatening 
 the city, and also in other important crises caused by the in- 
 coming of the barbarians, the bishop of Rome had more than 
 once showed an ability which made him the leading .statesmaa 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 699 
 
 of Italy, if not of the West. There is no doubt that his influence 
 had much to do with the respect which the West Goths and the 
 Vandals had shown toward the city in sparing its buildings. 
 
 At the same time the Church throughout the West had early 1138. Early 
 produced able men. This was especially true in Africa, the enda° men"" 
 province behind Carthage, where the leading early Christian ^"*^ph^^"u. 
 writers had appeared. The bishop of Carthage was soon a Augustine 
 serious rival of the bishop of Rome, and their rivalry in Chris- 430 a. d.) 
 tian times curiously reminds us of the long past struggle between 
 the two cities. Here in Africa in the days of Theodosius, 
 Augustine, the greatest of the thinkers of the early Church, 
 had arisen. Not at first a Christian, the young Augustine had 
 been devoted to Greek philosophy and learning. At the same 
 time he gave way to evil habits and uncontrolled self-indulgence. 
 As he gained a vision of spiritual self-denial, his faithful Chris- 
 tian mother, Monica, followed him through all the tremendous 
 struggle and distress of mind, from which he emerged at last 
 into a triumphant conquest of his lower nature, and the devo- 
 tion of his whole soul to Christianity. In a volume of " Confes- 
 sions " he told the story, which soon became the never-failing 
 guide of the tempted in the Christian Church. Along with the 
 Meditatiotis of Marcus Aurelius, it belongs among the most 
 precious revelations of the inner life of a great man which we 
 have inherited. 
 
 In the days after Alaric had plundered Rome, and earthly 1139. Augus- 
 government seemed to totter, Augustine also wrote a great o?God,"and 
 treatise which he called ''The City of God," meaning the g^^^P^jf^^^^"^ 
 government of God. Opposed to the governments of this State over 
 
 in 1 . 1 1 • T • • -ui 1 • J the beliefs 
 
 world and superior to them, he pictured an invisible kingdom of men 
 of God, to which all Christian believers belonged. But this in- 
 visible kingdom was after all hardly distinguished by Augustine 
 from the visible organized Church with its bishops' and priests. 
 To the authority of this eternal kingdom — that is, to the authority 
 of the Church — all believers were urged by Augustine to submit 
 without reservation. In the teaching of Augustine, therefore, the 
 
700 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1 140. Grow- 
 ing power of 
 Church of 
 Rome 
 
 1141. Rise of 
 missionary 
 monks and 
 spread of 
 regard for 
 the Roman 
 Church in 
 the North 
 
 Church gained complete control over the beliefs of men. This 
 was at the very same time when the Edict of Theodosius was 
 closing the temples of the old gods. The State was thus assum- 
 ing the power to suppress all other beliefs, and henceforth it 
 maintained its power over both the bodies and the minds of 
 its subjects. In accordance with this idea Justinian had closed 
 the university at Athens in order to stop freedom of thought 
 and the teaching of the old philosophy (§ 1135). To the author- 
 ity of the State over the beliefs of its people, Augustine added 
 the authority of the Church. Thus ended all intellectual liberty 
 in the ancient world. 
 
 Augustine, moreover, recognized the leadership of the Church 
 at Rome, and thus added his influence to a tendency already 
 long felt by all (§ 1 137). For it was widely believed that Christ had 
 conferred great power in the Church upon the Apostle Peter. 
 Although it was known that Paul had also worked in Rome, 
 early tradition told how Peter had founded the Church at Rome 
 and become bishop there. It was also widely held that Peter 
 had transferred his authority to his successors as bishops at 
 Rome. Tradition thus aided in establishing the supremacy of 
 the bishop of Rome. 
 
 As increasing numbers of men withdrew from worldly occu- 
 pations and gathered in communities, called monasteries, to lead 
 holy lives or to help carry the Christian faith to the Northern 
 barbarians, these beliefs regarding the Church of Rome went 
 with them. Such monks, as they were called, taught the bar- 
 barians that the Church also had power over the life here- 
 after. Dreading frightful punishments beyond the grave, the 
 superstitious peoples of the North submitted readily to such 
 influences, and the Church gained enormous power over the 
 barbarians. It was a power wielded more and more exclusively 
 by the bishop of Rome. 
 
 When the power of the Roman Empire was no longer able 
 to restrain the barbarians, the influence of the Church held them 
 in check. The Church gradually softened and modified the fierce 
 
EUROPE ^ 
 
 in the time of j. 
 
 ^ CHARLEMAGIN^E ^^"^ 
 
 A. D. 814 / ^ 
 
 Original Possessions 
 1 i Conquest by Charlemagne 
 
 100 200 300 lOO 
 
 Scale otMiles 
 
 Longitude East 2( 
 
30 
 
 40 60 60 60 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ( e^i 
 
 \^)A\^^^ \ ^ \ 
 
 
 
 :>^^^ 
 
 \X--'^'^r\ \ \ 
 
 
 
 
 ^o-goi''^ ^^\"^^ ^'"'''■^-xV^ \ 
 
 i"^ 
 
 
 « v.^ 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 ^1 
 
 \C a\c ) \ ( / \ K^ 
 
 
 
 Ms 
 
 ) ^ 
 
 
 
 
 viefloV.^ ''^--^ \ r ^^^'^iv. t^ 
 
 > 
 
 
 \ '"X. 
 
 "n^^-Or f \j 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 "^, i,™."-^] ^CK sj;^ r\ r— N 
 
 
 « 
 
 
 P ricoiiium° .^--0 VJ1\ *^^"'''^/ ^ 
 
 
 30 
 
 ^^^=:^ 
 
 
 
 -1 iv 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ) F 
 
 — — -Tr\ Ji \ 
 
 BUFTALi). 
 
 
 )m Greenwich 
 
 30 40 
 
 
 
 
over 
 the barbarians 
 
 The Triumph of the Barbarians 701 
 
 instincts of barbarian kings ruling over barbarian peoples. The 1142. Value 
 barrier of Roman organization and of Roman legions which ence of"the' 
 had protected Mediterranean civilization had given way, but ^^^^^■^ 
 the Church, taking its place, made possible the transference of 
 power from the Roman Empire to the barbarians in the West, 
 without the complete destruction of our heritage of civilization 
 
 queathed us by Greece and Rome. 
 
 Less than a generation after the death of Justinian, a gifted 1143. Greg- 
 bishop of Rome named Gregory, commonly called Gregory the bShop o/^^ ' 
 Great, showed himself a statesman of such wisdom and ability ^q^^^\°~ 
 that he firmly established the leadership of the Roman Church. 
 Italy, left defenseless by Justinian's destruction of the East 
 Gothic kingdom (§ 1133), was thereupon invaded by the Lom- 
 bards C' Longbeards "), the least civilized of all the German 
 barbarians, who easily took possession of the Po valley. The 
 Lombards were divided into small and rather weak communities. 
 Thus the fallen Western Empire was not followed by a powerful 
 and enduring nation in Italy, and this gave to the bishops of 
 Rome the opportunity so well used by Gregory, to make them- 
 selves the leaders of Italy. It was this great Church ruler who 
 also sent missionary monks to Britain, and thus established 
 Christianity in England two centuries after the Roman legions 
 had left it. 
 
 The influence of the Roman Church was likewise extended 1144. Rise of 
 among the powerful Franks (§ 1 122), a group of German tribes ^nd the 
 on the lower Rhine. Their king, Clovis, accepted Christianity ^^e See''" 
 not long before 500 a.d. He succeeded in welding together 
 the Frankish tribes, and the kingdom he left had been stead- - 
 ily growing for over a century before Gregory's time. After 
 Gregory's death this Frankish kingdom included a large part 
 of western Europe, embracing, besides western Germany, the 
 countries which we now call Holland, Belgium, and France. By 
 the middle of the sixth century the Frankish kings had fallen 
 under the influence of a family of their own powerful house- 
 hold stewards called "Mayors of the Palace," who at last 
 
702 ' Ancient Times 
 
 really held the ruling power, though in the name of the king. 
 After 700 A.D. the Mayor of the Palace, who actually governed 
 the great Frankish kingdom, was Charles Martel. He saved Eu- 
 rope from being overrun by the Moslems (732 a.d.) (see § 1 154), 
 and his descendants became the greatest kings of the Franks. 
 
 1145. Alii- By combining with the bishop of Rome, whom we may now 
 ChTrlemagne ^"^ ^he Pope, the new Frankish kings gained the dominion of 
 and the Pope; western Europe. They assisted the Pope by subduing the 
 magne'scoro- unruly Lombards in Italy and conquered a large part of 
 Pope (800 modern Germany, besides northern Spain. Charlemagne, the 
 A.D.) grandson of Charles Martel, ruled an empire consisting of 
 
 western Germany, France, Italy, and northern Spain. He was 
 the most powerful European sovereign of his time, and in 
 800 A.D. he was crowned by the Pope at Rome as Roman 
 emperor, theoretically supposed to succeed the line of emperors 
 headed by Augustus. The emperor Charlemagne was an en- 
 lightened ruler who desired to do all that he could for the 
 education and well-being of his people. The civilization which 
 he tried to spread, although it was very limited, was what was 
 left of old Roman life and organization, which had been pre- 
 served largely through the influence of the Church. 
 
 1146. Church The Church had been founded in the beginning chiefly 
 culture ;^pr2- among the lowly and the ignorant (§ 1069). It had originally 
 ervation of been without hio^her Greek civilization, learnino^, and art. Grad- 
 
 Latm htera- ° ' fc>' 
 
 ture by the ually it gained also these things, as men like Augustine arose. 
 
 Church 
 
 It is chiefly to the libraries of the monks in the monasteries, 
 
 and to their practice of copying ancient literary works, that we 
 
 owe the preservation of such Latin literature as has survived. 
 
 To-day our oldest and most important copies of such things as 
 
 Virgil's ^neid (§ 1004) are manuscripts written on parchment, 
 
 preserved in the libraries of the Christian monks. 
 
 1147. The Art was slow to rise among early Christians, and for a 
 
 church and thousand years or more there were no Christian painters or 
 
 ancestor^' sculptors to be compared with those of Greece. On the other 
 
 hand, the need for places of assembly led to the rise of great 
 

 " 
 
 lllf^li 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■k-4 
 
 =^ 
 
 ¥^ 1 1 
 
 WJ ,- III 
 
 •^ 
 
 §fn ^1 
 
 u — i 
 
 ^ 8 
 
 — CO 
 
 03 J^^ 
 
 2 bJD 
 CO td 
 
 Xi rT3 c; •™ <u 
 
 
 T3 (U 
 
 
 % 
 
 <u 
 
 a 
 
 'x, 
 o 
 
 c3 
 
 
 ^ OS 
 
 "o 
 
 
 
 .2 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 bJ3 
 
 
 CO 
 
 O 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 u 
 
 w 
 
 OJ 
 
 
 rt 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 H 
 
 o a; 
 
 Ki 
 
 r-^ 
 
 3 
 
 l>^ 
 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 f ) 
 
 T1 
 
 C3 O 
 
 
 
 
 o; 
 
 <r' 
 
 ^ o 
 
 
 m 
 
 rl 
 
 a 
 
 
 >> u 
 
 
 •a 
 
 
 o 
 
 hJ 
 
 O Vh 
 
 u 
 
 
 d 
 
 o; 
 
 < 
 
 <U P 
 
 >H o 
 
 i) 
 
 C 
 
 > 
 
 H 
 
 w 
 
 rG 
 
 >^ 
 
 >^ 
 
 XJ 
 
 (U "-^ 
 
 Vi 
 
 Ph 
 
 (U 
 
 
 
 O (U 
 
 
 
 
 p^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 , , 
 
 
 :S 
 
 (U 
 
 O 
 
 rt "t! 
 
 OJ 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 en 
 
 
 rt 
 
 
 
 s - ^ Si 
 
 <U O O jj 
 
 -s «-^ 
 
 is HJ - — • 
 o Ifc V.H 
 
 -,-, _ <A Si 
 H; rt W r; 
 
 ^ > SS -^-' 
 
 w <u "^ 
 
 S ^ o 
 
 TO TO o 
 
 S -c o 
 
 o <^ 
 
 S <u S 
 
 5 S' 1^ X 
 
 ._. 
 
 
 
 w to i2 «5 
 
 s-i aj 
 
 ;=; .5 TO ^ 
 
 aj W r- "^ 
 
 hl-i X5 ^ C 
 
 3 J- « -t 
 
 _• ^ ■£ ^' 
 bJO 
 
 <" . S 
 
 ^ ^^ 
 
 •5 -c ^ 
 
 O TO 
 <4_ »-; (U Q 
 <^ 2 • 
 
 -^ " "5 >^ 
 
 -^ OJ C -M 
 
 , E TO o 
 
 •=. ^.'^- 
 
 CO z: TO 
 
 ^1 <U 
 ■~' > 
 c« O 
 ^ <+. 
 
 o o 
 
 T3 O 
 
 
 •^ ^ 
 
 
 TO cj 
 
 S ^ 
 
 w 
 
 :;:: TO 
 3 a; 
 
 O 
 
 C >^ 
 
 (U 
 
 o c 
 <u -C 
 
 ^ 55 ^ o 
 
 TO w ^ <U 
 
 ^ £ - c 
 
 CO ^ OJ U 
 
 o f^ . 
 
 dj ." T3 CO 
 
 CO 1^ (U lU 
 
 •" ^ J^ -^ 
 
 X o3 73 o 
 
 c ^ 3 a 
 
 >..! 
 
 fe o 
 
 
 vo 
 
 £^ 
 
 
 <U '^ -^3 ^ 
 
 'S (2 
 
 o 
 
 3 
 
 > 
 
 3 
 O 
 (J 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 CO 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 W 
 
 TO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■•-( 
 
 <1J 
 
 ro 
 
 (U 
 
 ?o 
 
 x: 
 
 O 
 
 3 
 
 aj 
 
 oS 
 
 J-i 
 
 X, 
 
 )L. 
 
 o 
 
 <J 
 
 o 
 
 /ii > ^ 0) 
 
 73 
 
 CO c" r- 
 
 TO C <U 
 
 
 •^ o . rt C a; .;:: 
 
 • '-^ wS CO 3 '-' "L) 
 
 — . o •— ' "75 , CO 
 
 -TO O <^ ^ 
 
 3 
 
 03 
 
 s|l 
 
 ES 2:^ O 
 rt 3 li 
 
 703 
 
»o 
 
 a c -ri 
 
 
 ^1 rrti ^ 
 
 
 ^^ ' lU r-i 1> 
 
 OJ O ^H «i ^ 
 
 >^■C 
 
 >^ :^ 
 
 0) c3 
 
 >H JD 
 
 >-, <U JD ^ <U ■ 
 
 O 
 
 g J^ o 
 
 
 rt w o Z3 •*-' H ~ ^ 
 
 Ml^l^sg- 
 
 c •£ 
 
 fcX) 
 
 OS 
 
 a; OS ^ -^ 
 
 4J 
 
 t>. ;s" ^ 
 
 
 O OS c^ ^ rt 
 
 cT o 
 
 
 few ^ ^ ^ C ^ 
 
 e- ^ -^ c ° +- o 
 £■5 
 
 i3 oj 2^ 
 
 Oh -•-" (1) rr' 
 
 ^ Q 
 
 C " 
 
 o B 
 
 « o o ^-^I^ "^ ^ ^-S ^ > Si 
 
 rt Ti r^ W O -*-' Jli 
 
 - ^ c 
 
 (U w w ri 3^ '^'S'rt'S-S «^"?^ 
 
 
 e i3 ^ -^ ^ 5 .s .s s^ o .^ 
 
 o rt " 03 i< « ' ^ ■■ ■" " ^ Tl T3 
 
 ^ -^ ^ •: : i ^ ^ "s - 2 ^ -' g 
 
 u 
 
 o ^ S^ 
 
 ^ a 
 
 c <u j3 
 
 rt ^ ro 
 
 x; ^ c '^ tJ .5 "^ 
 o '55 o 
 
 « 5l i^ld r-- -S 
 
 > o o ^ "5^x2 ^ ■ 
 
 H coo cj'tjii;;^ ^--^-M.s.ti o o 
 
 bo .. 
 
 704 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 705 
 
 architects among the early Christians. Influenced chiefly by 
 the old business basilica, they devised noble and impressive 
 assembly rooms for the early congregations in the days of 
 Constantine. We still call such a church a basilica, to indicate 
 its form. In the basilica churches we find the outcome of that 
 long architectural development of thirty-five hundred years, 
 from the earliest known clerestoiy at the Pyramids of (xizeh 
 to the Christian cathedral (Fig. 271). 
 
 The church tower also, at first not a part of the church 1148. The 
 building, was a descendant of the old Babylonian temple tower and its orrery 
 (Fig. 272). Thus the faith of Jesus, an oriental teacher, was tal ancestor 
 sheltered in beautiful buildings which likewise showed their 
 oriental ancestry. These Christian buildings, the church and 
 its tower, like the faith they sheltered, are a striking example 
 of how the world of later Europe reached back into that early 
 Orient with which we began the story of civilization, when 
 Europe was still in the Stone Age. And that ancient Orient, 
 whose civilization thus survived in the life of Europe, was yet 
 to rise once more, to dominate the Mediterranean as it had 
 so often done before. To this final revival of the Orient we 
 must now turn. 
 
 Section ioi. The Final Revival of the Orient 
 
 AND THE F^'oRERUNNERS OF THE NATIONS OF MODERN 
 
 Europe 
 Justinian, whose reign covered the middle years of the sixth 1149. The 
 
 •^ 1 1 • 1 1 1 1 decline of the 
 
 century a.d., was, as we have already said, the last great ruler Eastern Em- 
 of the Eastern Empire. His endeavors to reunite the Empire Ju^tinjan^ 
 and to adorn his capital both proved very disastrous. He spent 
 the strength of his Empire in trying to regain the West, when 
 he needed all his resources to defend himself against the New 
 Persians, who assailed the eastern frontier in war after war. 
 His great buildings, especially the magnificent church of Saint 
 Sophia (headpiece, p. 688), required so much money that his 
 
7o6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1 150. Inva- 
 sion of the 
 Slavs ; East- 
 ern Empire 
 no longer 
 Roman 
 
 1 151. Mo- 
 hammed 
 (570-632 
 A.D.) and 
 the founding 
 of Islam 
 
 treasury was emptied and the government was bankrupt. From 
 the mistakes of Justinian the Eastern Empire never recovered, 
 and at his death it entered upon an age of steady decline. 
 
 Meantime a new invasion of barbarians was bringing in the 
 Slavs, a non-German group of Indo-European peoples. They 
 poured into the Balkan Peninsula to the gates of Constantinople 
 and even down into Greece. They were soon holding the terri- 
 tory in these regions which they still occupy. Under these cir- 
 cumstances the Eastern Empire at Constantinople, although it 
 was without interruption the direct descendant of the Roman 
 Empire, was no longer Roman, any more than was the Empire 
 of Charlemagne in the West. The Eastern Empire became 
 what it was in .population and civilization, a mixed Greek-Slavic- 
 Oriental State. 
 
 Moreover, a vast section of the Eastern emperor's dominions 
 lay in the Orient. Of these eastern dominions a large part was 
 now about to be invaded and seized by a great Semitic migra- 
 tion like those which we have repeatedly seen as the nomads of 
 the Arabian desert were led by Sargon or the rulers of Ham- 
 murapi's line into Babylonia ; or as the Hebrews swept in from 
 the desert and seized the towns of Palestine (§§ 135, 166, 175, 
 293). The last and the greatest movement of the Semitic bar- 
 barians was now about to take place. Not long after the death 
 of Justinian, there was born in Mecca (Fig. 273) in Arabia a 
 remarkably gifted lad named Mohammed. As he grew up he 
 believed, like so many Semitic teachers, that a commanding 
 voice spoke within him as he wandered in the wilderness. This 
 voice within him brought him messages which he felt compelled 
 to communicate to his people as teachings from God, whom he 
 called Allah. After much persecution and great danger to his 
 life, he gathered a group of faithful followers about him, and 
 when he died, in 632 a. d., he had established a new religion 
 among the Arabs, which he had called Islam, meaning "recon- 
 ciliation"; that" is, reconciliation to Allah, the sole God. The 
 new believers he had called Muslims, or, as we spell it, 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 
 
 707 
 
 Moslems, meaning "the reconciled." By us they are often 
 called Mohammedans, after their prophet. After Mohammed's 
 death the Moslem leaders gathered together his teachings, till 
 
 Fig. 273. A Bird's-eye View of Mecca and its Mosque 
 
 Mecca is one of the few towns in the barren Arabian peninsula ; for by 
 far the great majority of the Arabs hve as roving shepherds (§ 134) 
 and not in towns. Mecca had been a sacred place long before the time 
 of Mohammed, and the people had been accustomed to come there as 
 pilgrims, to do homage to a sacred black stone called the Kaaba. 
 Mohammed did not interfere with these customs. After his death the 
 Moslems built a large court modeled on a colonnaded Greek market 
 place (Fig. 212, M), around the Kaaba. Such a structure was the sim- 
 plest form of a mosque. Over the Kaaba they erected a square shelter, 
 which we see in the middle of the mosque court. To this place the 
 Moslem believers still come in great numbers as pilgrims every year. 
 Our sketch shows an exaggerated representation of the procession of 
 pilgrims. In his later years Mohammed lived at Medina, over 200 miles 
 north of Mecca, and the pilgrims also visit his tomb there 
 
 then uncollected, and copied them to form a book called the 
 Koran (Fig. 274), now the Bible of the Moslems. 
 
 The Moslem leaders who inherited Mohammed's power were 1152. Rise of 
 called caliphs, a word meaning " substitute." As rulers, they Empire^o? 
 proved to be men of the greatest ability. They organized the ^^^ Moslems 
 untamed desert nomads, who now added a. burning religious 
 
7o8 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 1153. The 
 
 nomad Arabs 
 learn city civi- 
 lization along 
 the Fertile 
 Crescent 
 
 zeal to the wild courage of barbarian Arabs. This combination 
 made the Arab armies of the caliphs irresistible. Within a few 
 years after Mohammed's death they took Egypt and Syria from 
 
 the feeble successors of 
 Justinian at Constanti- 
 nople. They thus reduced 
 the Eastern Empire to 
 little more than the Bal- 
 kan Peninsula and Asia 
 Minor. At the same 
 time the Arabs crushed 
 the empire of the New 
 Persians and brought the 
 Sassanian line of kings 
 to an end (640 a.d.), 
 after it had lasted a little 
 over four hundred years. 
 Thus the Moslems built 
 up a great oriental em- 
 pire, with its center at 
 the east end of the 
 Fertile Crescent. 
 
 Just as the people of 
 Sargon and Hammurapi 
 took over the city 
 civilization which they 
 
 Fig. 274. A Page of a Manuscript 
 
 Copy of the Koran, the Bible of 
 
 THE Moslems 
 
 found alone: the lower 
 
 This writing has descended from the an- 
 cient alphabet of the Phoenicians (Fig. 
 160), and, like the Phoenician writing, it 
 is still written and read from right to left. The Arab writers love to 
 give it decorative flourishes, producing a handsome page. The rich, 
 decorative border is a good example of Moslem art. The whole page 
 was done by hand. In such hand-written books as these the educated 
 Moslems wrote out translations of the books of the great Greek phi- 
 losophers and scientists, like Aristotle ; for example, one of the most 
 valuable of ithe books ^of Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer (§ 1059), we 
 now possess only in an Arabic translation. At the same time the 
 Moslems wrote their own treatises on algebra, astronomy, grammar, 
 and other sciences (§ 11 55) insimilarbooksto which the West owes much 
 
709 
 
7IO 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Euphrates (§ 167), so now in the same region the Moslem Arabs 
 of the desert took over the city civilization of the New Persians. 
 
 With the ruins of Babylon look- 
 ing down upon them, the Mos- 
 lems built their splendid capital 
 at Bagdad beside the New Per- 
 sian royal residence of Ctesiphon 
 (headpiece, p. 667). They built 
 of course under the influence of 
 the ancient structures of Egypt, 
 Babylon, Persia, and Assyria. 
 The Babylonian temple towers 
 or Christian-church towers of 
 similar character showed them 
 the first models of the minarets 
 (Fig. 272, 2) with which they 
 adorned their mosques, as the 
 Moslem houses of prayer are 
 called. Here, as Sargon's people 
 and as the Persians had so long 
 before done, the once wander- 
 ing Arabs learned to read and 
 write, and could thus put the 
 Koran into writing. Here too 
 they learned the business of 
 
 government and became experi- 
 FiG. 275. Moorish Mosque , , ^. , • i ,, 
 
 T- \ a/tt ,„^^ x.Tc^.rxr enced rulers, thus beside the 
 
 Tower, or Minaret, in Spain 
 
 , ., , , ^ shapeless mounds of the older 
 
 It was built, not long before ^ 
 
 1200 A.D., out of the ruins of 
 
 Roman and West Gothic buildings found here by the Moors, and 
 
 blocks bearing Latin inscriptions are to be seen in a number of places 
 
 in its walls. The Moors erected it as the minaret of their finest mosque 
 
 at Seville, Spain. After extensive alterations at the top by Christian 
 
 architects, it was converted into the bell tower of a Christian church. 
 
 While the Christian-church towers in the Orient strongly influenced 
 
 the Moslem minarets, we see how the reverse was the case in some 
 
 buildings of the West where Moslem minarets became church spires 
 
The Triumph of the Barbarians 711 
 
 capitals, Akkad, Babylon, and Ctesiphon, the power and civili- 
 zation of the Orient rose into new life again for the last time. 
 
 Bagdad became the finest city of the East and one of the 1154. Ca- 
 most splendid in the world. The caliphs extended their power dad'and^hf 
 eastward to the frontiers of India. Westward the Moslems Moslem 
 
 advance to 
 
 pushed along the African coast of the Mediterranean, as their the West; 
 Phoenician kindred had done before them (§ 397). It was the of Tours^ 
 Moslem overthrow of Carthage and its bishop, which now (732 a.d.) 
 relieved the bishop of Rome (the Pope) of his only dangerous 
 rival in the West. Only two generations after the death of 
 Mohammed the Arabs crossed over from Africa into Spain 
 (711 A.D.), As they moved on into France they threatened to 
 girdle the entire Mediterranean. At the battle of Tours 
 (732 A.D.), however, just a hundred years after the death of 
 Mohammed, the Moslems were unable to crush the Frankish 
 army under Charles Martel (§ 11 44). They withdrew perma- 
 nently from France into Spain, where they established a west- 
 ern Moslem kingdom, which we call Moorish. The magnificent 
 buildings which it left behind are the most splendid in Spain 
 to-day (Fig. 275). 
 
 The Moorish kingdom developed a civilization far higher 1155. Lead- 
 than that of the Franks, and indeed the highest in Europe of Moslem 
 that age. Thus while Europe was sinking into the ignorance civilization 
 of the Middle Ages, the Moslems were the leading students 
 of science, astronomy, mathematics, and grammar. There was 
 soon much greater knowledge of these matters among the 
 Moslems than in Christian Europe. Such Arabic words as 
 algebra and our numerals, which we received from the Arabs, 
 suggest to us how much we owe to them. 
 
 As we look out over this final world situation, we see lying 1156. Emer- 
 in the middle the remnant of the Roman Empire ruled by foTerunners^ 
 Constantinople, and holding little more than the Balkan Penin- ^f mJdem""' 
 sula and Asia Minor; while on one side was the lost West, Europe 
 made up of the German kingdoms of the former Northern 
 barbarians ; and on the other side was the lost East, now part 
 
712 Ancient Times 
 
 of the great oriental empire of the caliphs of Bagdad. Looking 
 at Europe without the East, we discover that there was at its 
 western end a Moslem oriental kingdom (the Moors), while at its 
 eastern end there was a Christian oriental state (Constantinople). 
 Between these lay chiefly the German Empire of Charlemagne, 
 with vast masses of Slavs on the east of it, and detached 
 German peoples in the outlying island of Britain. Out of 
 these fragments of the Roman Empire and the newly formed 
 nations of the North, the nations of modern Europe came forth. 
 In France, and the two southern peninsulas of Spain and Italy, 
 Latin speech survived among the people, to become French, 
 Spanish, and Italian. While in the island of Britain the German 
 language spoken by the invading Angles and Saxons (§ 1129), 
 mingled with much Latin and French to form our own English 
 speech, written with Roman letters inherited from Greece, 
 Phoenicia, and Egypt (Fig. 160). 
 1157. Sur- Thus Rome left her stamp on the peoples of Europe, still 
 
 fluences"of evident, not only in the languages they use, but also in many 
 u"^E^" other important matters of life, and especially in law and 
 
 government. In Roman law, still a power in modern govern- 
 ment, we have the great creation of Roman genius, which has 
 more profoundly affected the later world than any other Roman 
 institution. Another great achievement of Rome was the uni- 
 versal spread of that international civilization brought forth by 
 Greece under contact with the Orient. Rome gave to that civ- 
 ilization the far-reaching organization which under the Greeks it 
 had lacked. That organization, though completely transformed 
 into oriental despotism, endured for five centuries and long 
 withstood the barbarian invasions from the North, which would 
 otherwise have overwhelmed the disorganized Greek world 
 long before. The Roman State was the last bulwark of civiliza- 
 tion intrenched on the Mediterranean against the Indo-European 
 barbarians. But the bulwark, though shaken, did not fall be- 
 cause of hostile assaults from without. It fell because of 
 decay within. 
 
Tlie Triumph of the Barbarians 713 
 
 Nor did it fall everywhere. For, as we have seen, a fragment 1158. Sur- 
 of the vast Empire still survived in the East. The emperors fragment of 
 ruling at Constantinople traced their predecessors back in an ^^^ Empire 
 
 at Constanti- 
 
 unbroken Ime to Augustus, and they ruled as his successors, nople, and 
 Founded on the site of an ancient Greek city, lying in the midst 1453^.0.* 
 of the Greek East, Constantinople had always been Greek in 
 both language and civilization. But at the same time, as we 
 have seen, it was largely oriental also. Notwithstanding this, it 
 never wholly lost the tradition of old Greek culture. Learning, 
 even though of a mechanical type, never died out there, as it 
 did so completely in the West; nor did art ever fall so low. 
 As Rome declined, Constantinople became the greatest and 
 most splendid city of Europe, exciting the admiration and sur- 
 prise of all visitors from the less civilized West. Thus the last 
 surviving fragment of the Empire, which by right of succession 
 might still continue to call itself Roman, lived on for a thou- 
 sand years after the Germans had completely conquered the 
 West. Nor did the Germans ever gain Constantinople, but in 
 1453 this last remnant of the Roman Empire fell into the hands 
 of the Turks, who have held it ever since. 
 
 Section 102. Retrospect 
 
 Besides the internal decay of Rome and the triumph of the 1159. From 
 (Christian Church, the other great outstanding feature of the last hatchet to 
 centuries of the Roman Empire was the incoming of the bar- ^h^ ^.^"[j?' 
 barians, with the result that while Mediterranean civilization zationof 
 steadily declined, it nevertheless slowly spread northward, espe- Europe in 
 cially under the influence of the Church, till it transformed the ffSd years 
 ruder life of the North. At this point then we have returned to* 
 the region of western and northern Europe, where we first took 
 up the career of man, and there, among the crumbling monu- 
 ments of the Stone Age, Christian churches now began to rise. 
 Books and civilized government, once found only along the 
 Mediterranean, reached the northern shores of Europe, where 
 
714 Anciejtt Times 
 
 grass and great forest trees were growing over the shell heaps 
 of the Stone Age Norsemen (Fig. 13). What a vast sweep of 
 the human career rises before our imagination as we picture the 
 first church spires among the massive tombs of Stone Age man 
 (Fig. 20)! 
 1160. The We have watched the men of Europe struggling upward 
 
 of"5vnLa?£n through thousands of years of Stone Age barbarism, while 
 and barbarism toward the end of that struggle, civilization was arising in the 
 Orient. Then on the borders of the Orient we saw the Stone 
 Age Europeans of the ^gean receiving civilization from the 
 Nile and thus developing a wonderful civilized world of their 
 own. This remarkable ^gean civilization, the earliest in Europe, 
 was overwhelmed and destroyed by the incoming of those 
 Indo-European barbarians whom we call the Greeks (§ 380). 
 Writing, art, architecture, and shipbuilding, which had arisen 
 on the borders of southeastern Europe, passed away, and civili- 
 zation in Europe perished at the hands of the Greek nomads 
 from the Danube. Civilization would have been lost entirely, 
 had not the Orient, where it was born, now preserved it. South- 
 eastern Europe, controlled by the Greeks, was therefore able to 
 make another start, and from the Orient it again received writ- 
 ing, art, architecture, shipbuilding, and many other things 
 which make up civilization. After having thus halted civilization 
 in Europe for over a thousand years, the Greeks left behind 
 their early barbarism (cf. Fig. 155), and, developing a noble and 
 beautiful culture of their own, they carried civilization to the 
 highest level it ever attained. Then, as the Indo-European bar- 
 barians from the North again descended to the Mediterranean 
 (Section 99), Roman organization prevented civilization from 
 ■ being destroyed for the second time. Thus enough of the 
 civilization which the Orient and the Greeks had built up 
 was preserved, so that after long delay it rose again in 
 Europe to become what we find it to-day. Such has been 
 the long struggle of civilization and barbarism which we have 
 been following. 
 
The Tritimph of the Barbarians 715 
 
 To-day, marking the various stages of that long career, the 1161. The 
 stone fist-hatchets lie deep in the river gravels of France ; the ^fhrv^j'fol- 
 furniture of the pile-villages sleeps at the bottom of the Swiss '^^^^ ^^ '■^- 
 
 . . cover ancient 
 
 lakes ; the majestic pyramids and temples announcing the dawn history 
 of civilization rise along the Nile ; the silent and deserted city- 
 mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates shelter their myriads of 
 clay tablets ; the palaces of Crete look out toward the sea they 
 once ruled; the noble temples and sculptures of Greece still 
 proclaim the new world of beauty and freedom first revealed 
 by the Greeks ; the splendid Roman roads and aqueducts 
 assert the supremacy and organized control of Rome; and 
 the Christian churches proclaim the new ideal of human 
 brotherhood. These things still reveal the fascinating trail 
 along which our ancestors came, and in following that trail 
 we have recovered the earliest chapters in the wonderful 
 human story which we call Ancient History. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Section 99. Describe the German peoples at home ; in migra- 
 tion and war. Describe the incoming of the West Goths and the 
 results. What chief movements of the barbarians took place after 
 the death of Theodosius.? What was the effect upon the Western 
 Empire? Describe the two great barbarian invasions of Italy in the 
 middle of the fifth century a.d. and the end of the line of emperors 
 at Rome. Describe Justinian's Digest, What had happened to the 
 old religions.^ What did Justinian do about Greek philosophy? 
 Describe the division of the Church. 
 
 Section 100. Tell about Augustine and his writings. Describe 
 the growing power of the Church at Rome. Sketch the story of the 
 Franks and their alliance with the bishop of Rome. What elements 
 of culture had the church now gained ? What forms did early church 
 architecture have, and whence did they come ? 
 
 Section ioi. Tell the story of Mohammed. What did his suc- 
 cessors accomplish in civilization ? in conquest ? Describe briefly the 
 world situation which resulted. How long did the Roman Empire 
 last ? V/hat influences did it leave behind ? 
 
yi6 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Section 102. Where did mankind fy-st gain civilization? Where 
 did civilization first arise in Europe? What happened when the 
 Greeks came in? Where was civilization then preserved? Who 
 carried it to its highest level ? By whom was it almost destroyed for 
 the second time ? What organization saved it for the second time ? 
 
 Note. The scene below shows us the condition of Europe at least fifty 
 thousand years ago, in the Early Stone Age (§§6-12), when man began the 
 long upward climb which carried him through all the ages of developing and 
 declining civilization which we have been following. 
 
 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 It is not the aim of this bibUography to mention all of even the im- 
 portant books in various languages that relate to the periods in ques- 
 tion. The writer is well aware that teachers are busy people, and that 
 high-school libraries and local public libraries usually furnish at best 
 only a few historical works. It is therefore most important that those 
 books should be given prominence in this list which the teacher has 
 some chance of procuring and finding the time to use. It not infre- 
 quently happens that the best account of a particular period or topic is 
 in a foreign language or in a rare publication, such as a doctor's dis- 
 sertation, which could only be found in one of our largest libraries. All 
 such titles, however valuable, are omitted from this list. They can be 
 found mentioned in all the more scholarly works in the various fields. 
 
 A small high-school library on the ancient world, of moderate cost, 
 including a standard book or two on each main period or topic, has been 
 indicated in the following list by a dagger (t) before each title. From 
 these a selection can be made. The price will average not more than $1.50 
 per volume. Preference is sometimes indicated by double dagger (ft). 
 All books with a star (*) are suited chiefly for the teacher and are 
 rather advanced for the high-school student. Where a book is referred 
 . to often, the star or dagger usually appears only with the first mention. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 *SoLLAS, Ancient Htinters. \T\'LO'ii, Primitive Culture. fHoERNES, 
 Primitive Man. fMvRES, The Dawn of History, chaps, i-ii, vii-xi. An 
 excellent little book in which only the traditional Babylonian chronology 
 needs revision. *SiR John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Prehistoric 
 Times. *Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age. A very valuable and 
 sumptuously illustrated presentation of Early Stone Age life. 
 
 CHAPTERS H AND HI 
 
 Breasted, History of Egypt. IBreasted, History of the Aneient A. Histories 
 Egyptians. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chaps, ii-iv, 
 vi-viii. 
 
718 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 B. Art and 
 archaeology 
 
 C. Mythology 
 and religion 
 
 D. Social life 
 
 E. Excava- 
 tion and 
 discovery 
 
 F. Original 
 sources in 
 English 
 
 G. The mon- 
 uments as 
 they are to- 
 day 
 
 IMaspero, Art in Egypt. A useful little manual in Ars una — species 
 inille. (Hachette & C'«, and Scribner's, New York.) *Maspero, Manual 
 of Egyptian Archceology. (Last edition, 191 4. Putnam's.) tHEDWiG 
 Fechheimer, Die Plastik der Aegypter (156 beautiful plates showing 
 the finest examples of Egyptian sculpture. The best series to be had, 
 and very low priced). 
 
 *Breasted, The Development of Religion and Thought in A^icient 
 Egypt. 
 
 tERMAN, Life in Ancient Egypt. 
 
 t Edwards, Pharaohs, Eellahs^atid Explorers. *Petrie, Ten Years^ 
 Digging in Egypt. Weigall, Treasury of the AHle. Two quarterly 
 journals begun in 1914, called Ancient Egypt (edited by Petrie ; ^2.00 a 
 year; subscriptions taken by Dr. W. C. Winslow, 525 Beacon Street, 
 Boston, Mass.) and fournal of Egyptiati Archceology (published by the 
 Egypt Exploration Fund). Both report discoveries in Egypt as fast as 
 made. 
 
 *Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vols. I-V. fPETRlE, Egyptian 
 Tales. tMASPERO, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (translated from 
 the French by Mrs. C. H. W. Johns). 
 
 The Underwood & Underwood series of Egyptian views, edited by 
 tBREASTED, Egypt through the Stereoscope : a fotirney through the Land 
 of the Pharaohs (100 views with explanatory volume and set of maps). 
 See remarks above, p. viii. f (Selected views, with explanations printed 
 on the backs, may be secured at moderate cost. The most useful fifteen 
 on Egypt are Nos. 17, 27, 29, 30, 31, 42, 48, 52, 57, 60, 62, 69, 82, 89, 97.) 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A. Histories *KiNG, History of Stuner and Akkad and ^History of Babylonia. 
 
 tGooDSPEED, History of the Babyloniajts and Assyrians. Recent dis- 
 coveries have greatly altered the chronology. fC. H. W. Johns, 
 Ancient Babylonia {Csimhridge Manuals). *Hall, The Ancient History 
 of the Near East, chaps, v, x, xii. *Olmstead, Sargon of Assyria, 
 *RoGERS, A History of Babylonia and Assyria. 
 
 B. Art and There is no handbook corresponding to Maspero's Art in Egypt. 
 archaeology *Handcock, Mesopotamian Archceology. *Hall, The Ancient History 
 
 of the Near East. *Jastrow, Civilization of the Babylonians and 
 Assyrians. 
 
 C. Mythology *Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and 
 and religion Assyria. See also his Civilization. 
 
 D. Social life tSAYCE, Babylonian and Assyrian Life and Customs. *Jastrow, 
 
 Civilizatio7i. 
 
Bibliography 
 
 719 
 
 *ROGERS, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. T. There is no 
 journal reporting discoveries in Babylonia and Assyria (like Ancient 
 Egypt above), but see the new journal of the American Archaological 
 Institute, called Art and Archeology {$z.oo a year; subscriptions taken 
 by The Macmillan Company, 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York), which 
 reports discovery in the whole field of ancient man. 
 
 *R. F. Harper (Ed.), Assyrian and Babylojiian Literature. tBoTS- 
 FORD, A Source Book of Ancient History, chap. iii. *Sayce (Ed.), 
 Records of the Past (First Series, 12 vols.; Second Series, 6 vols.). 
 tC H. W. Johns, Oldest Code of Lazvs in the World {ha-ws of Hammurapi). 
 *KlNG, Letters of Hammtirapi. 
 
 The buildings surviving in Babylonia and Assyria are in a very ruin- 
 ous state. Photographs are now available in the excellent series by 
 Underwood & Underwood on Mesopotamia. 
 
 E. Excava- 
 tion and 
 discovery 
 
 P. Original 
 sources in 
 English 
 
 G. The 
 
 monuments 
 as they are 
 to-day 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 tGooDSPEED, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians. fC. H. W. A. Histories 
 Johns, Ancient Assyria (Cambridge Manuals). *King, History of 
 Babylonia. *Hall, Ancient History of the Near East. *Olmstead, 
 Sargon of Assyria. *RoGERS, A History of Babylonia and Assyria. 
 
 There is no handbook of Assyrian art. The Patterson-Kleinmann B. Art and 
 series of photographs contains the most important Assyrian sculptures, archaeology 
 See also *Jastrow, Civilization. 
 
 On religion, social life, excavation and discovery, and original sources, 
 see the books mentioned under Chapter IV, above. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 There is no good modern history of Persia in English based on the 
 sources, but see especially : f Benjamin, Story of Persia (Story of the 
 Nations Series). Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopcedia Britannica. Raw- 
 LINSON, Five Great Monarchies : Persia. *Hall, The Ancient History 
 of the Near East, chap. xii. 
 
 *Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art: Persia. Rawlinson, Mon- 
 archies. 
 
 Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopcedia Britannica. Rawlinson, Mon- 
 archies. 
 
 *Jackson, Zoroaster. Rawlinson, Monarchies. 
 
 t Jackson, Persia, Past and Present. This valuable book is the best 
 introduction to the subject of Persia as a whole, and contains much 
 information on all the above subjects. tMlCHAELls, A Century of 
 Archceological Discovery, 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Art and 
 archaeology 
 
 C. Mythology 
 and religion 
 
 D. Social life 
 
 E. Explora- 
 tion and 
 discovery 
 
720 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 p. Original 
 sources in 
 English 
 
 tToLMAN, The Behistan Inscription of King Darius. The Persian 
 monuments are not numerous, and this inscription of Behistun is the 
 most important. A considerable part of it will be found quoted in 
 BoTSFORD, A Source Book of Ancient History, pp. 57-59. The Avesta 
 will be found in the series called Sacred Books of the East. 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Mythology 
 and religion 
 
 C, Excava- 
 tion and 
 discovery 
 
 D. Social life 
 
 E. Original 
 sources in 
 English 
 
 F. Palestine, 
 its people and 
 monuments 
 as they are 
 to-day 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 *George Adam Smith, The Historical Geogj-aphy of the Holy Land. 
 The most valuable of the many books on Palestine, but a little advanced 
 for high-school pupils. *Henry Preserved Smith, Old Testament 
 History. *Cornill, History of the People of Israel. IKent, Hisfory of 
 the Hebrew People. jKent, History of the fewish People. *Hall, The 
 Ancient History of the Near East, chap. ix. IMacalister, A History 
 of Civilizatioji in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals). 
 
 *BuDDE, The Religiojt of Israel to the Exile. *CHEYNE,/^efzj-/i Reli- 
 giotis Life after the Exile, tj. M. Powis Smith, The Prophet and his 
 Problems (Scribner's). 
 
 HiLPRECHT, Recent Research in Bible Lands. fMACALlSTER, A His- 
 tory of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals). Current reports 
 will be found in Journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and in Art 
 and Archceology (see above). 
 
 Day, Social Life of the Hebrews. 
 
 The Old Testament in the Revised Version. tMooRE, The Literature 
 of the Old Testament. *Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Books of 
 the Old Testament. *Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament. 
 tBoTSFORD, A Source Book of Ancient History, chap. iv. 
 
 The Underwood & Underwood stereoscopic photographs (edited by 
 Hurlbut), Traveling ifi the Holy Land through the Stereoscope (100 
 views with guidebook and maps). t(A selection of the best ten would 
 include Nos. 8, 9, 18, 25, 39, 40, 41, 47, 61, 71.) Smith, George Adam, 
 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Paton, Gtiide to Jerusalem. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A. Histories fBoTSFORD, Hellenic Histor\>, chap. i. fWESTERMANN, Ancient 
 Nations, ^^. \-T^-^o. iGoOBSYEED, Ancient IVorld, pp. 6^-71. tfMYRES, 
 Dawn of History, chap. viii. fKiMBALL-BuRY, Students^ Greece, chap. i. 
 tBURY, History of Greece (second edition), pp. 1-43. ttREiNACH, 
 Story of Art, pp. 26-32. ttHAWES, Crete the Foreninner of Greece. 
 tBAiKiE, Sea Kings of Crete. fZiMMERN, Greek Commonwealth, Pt. I 
 (second edition). 
 
Bibliography 
 
 721 
 
 The surviving documents are here almost wholly archseological, but B. Sources 
 a few selections bearing on this chapter are to be found in Botsford ^"^ source 
 and Sihler's Hellenic Civilization, chap. ii. selections 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BoTSFORD, Hellenic History, chap. ii. Westermann, A?icient Nations, 
 chap. vii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 65-77. Myres, Dawn, chap, 
 ix. KiMBALL-BuRY, Students' Greece, chap. ii. Bury, Greece, chap. i. 
 *Hall, Ancietit History of the Near East, pp. 31-72. Hawes, Crete. 
 Baikie, Sea Kings. *Mosso, Daw?i of Mediterranean Civilization. 
 
 See note under preceding chapter, also fBoTSFORD, Source Book of 
 Ancie7tt History, chap. vii. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 BoTSFORD, Hellenic History, chap. iii. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories 
 Nations, chap, viii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 83-87, 91-99. 
 KiMBALL-BuRY, Students* Greece, chap. ii. Bury, Greece, chap. i. 
 tGREENiDGE, Greek Constitutional History, chap. ii. tfCAPPS, Homer 
 to Theocritus, "^"^.1^-12%. \Y^YAAJ^Vi, Homeric Life. *S>'EYM0\5'R, Home?ic 
 Age. ZiMMERN, Greek Commonwealth. 
 
 ttBoTSFORD and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, chap. ii. Botsford, 
 Source Book of Ancient History, chaps, viii-ix. IThallon, Readings in 
 Greek History, chap. i. Selections from the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selection 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic Histoy, chap. iv. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories 
 Nations, chap. ix. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 79-82, 87-92, 100- ' 
 loi. KiMBALL-BuRY, Students' Greece, chap. iii. Bury, Greece, chap. ii. 
 fALLCROFT, History of Sicily, chaps, i-ii. Greenidge, Greek Constitu- 
 tional History, chaps, ii-iii. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, pp. 129-140. 
 Keller, Colonization, pp. 26-50. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth. 
 
 Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, chap. iii. Botsford, B. Sources 
 Source Book, c\i2i^.y:\. j%r^fl'^/?/'j-(RAWLiNSON), IV, 150-159. Hesiodand and source 
 Theognis (Collins). Hesiod (Mair). Thallon, Readings, chaps, ii-iv. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic History, chaps, vi-ix. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories 
 A-ations, chap. x. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 101-108, 115- 
 125. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, pp. 79-89, and chaps, v-vi. 
 
722 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 Greenidge, Greek Constitutional Histofj, pp. 135-187. BuRY, Greece^ 
 pp. 144-162 and chaps, iv-v. Capps, Homer to Theocritus , chaps, 
 vi-vii. ttBENN, Ancient Philosophy, chaps, i-ii. Reinach, Story of 
 Art, pp. 33-41. IMahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chaps, iv-v. Zim- 
 MERN, Greek Commonwealth. 
 
 BoTSFORD and Sihler, chap. iv. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, x, 
 xii-xiv. \ Aristotle'' s Constitutio7i of Athens (Kenyon or Poste), 
 chaps, i-xxii. ^ Plutarch' s Lives of Theseus and Solon. Mferodotus, I, 
 29-33, 59~64 ; III, 39-46, 1 20-1 25. Thallon, Readings, chaps, iv and vi. 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic Histojy, chaps, x-xi. Westermann, Ancient 
 Nations, Q)cvz.-^.yX\. Goodsfey-B, Ancient IVorld, pp. 126-144. KiMBALL- 
 Bury, Students' Greece, chaps, vii-viii. Allcroft, History of Sicily, 
 chaps, iiiff. Bury, Greece, chaps, vi-vii. Hall, Near East, chap. xii. 
 tHoGARTH, Ancient East, pp. 1 20-186. *Abbott, Pericles, chap. iii. 
 *Grundy, Great Persian War. 
 
 Botsford and Sihler, pp. 162-172. IFling, Source Book of Greek 
 History, chap. v. BoTSFORD, Soiirce Bock, chaps, xv-xvi. Herodotus, 
 Bks. VI-IX, especially VII, 140-233. Plutarch's Lives of Aristides, 
 Themistocles, Pausanias. ^^schylus'' Persians, especially lines 355-520. 
 Thallon, Readings^ chaps, vii-viii. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A. Histories BoTSFORD, Hellenic IListoiy. Westermann, Ancient Natioits, chaps, 
 xi and xiii. Goodspeed, /^wc.v;// World, pp. 109-115, 144-155, 168-173. 
 KiMBALL-BuRY, Students' Gj'eece, pp. 64-74 and chaps, ix-x. Bury, 
 Greece, pp. 120-143 and chap. viii. ISeignobos, Ancient Civilization, 
 chap. xi. Greenidge, Greek Constitutional History, pp. 78-120, 189- 
 207. t Grant, Greece in the Age of Pericles, chaps, v-vii. * Abbott, 
 Pericles, chaps, iv-viii. Zimmern, Greek Commo?iwealth. 
 
 Botsford and Sihler, chaps, vi-vii. Botsford, Source Book, chap, 
 xvii. Plutarch s Lives of Aristides, Cimon, Lycurgics. Xenophon's State 
 of the Lacedcemonians. Aristotle's Athenian Constitution, chaps, xxiii- 
 xxvii. t Thucydides (Jowett), I, 98-103, 127-139. Thallon, Readings, 
 chaps. V and ix. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A. Histories BoTSFORD, Hellenic History. WESTERMANN, Ancient Nations, chaps, 
 xiv-xv. GOODSPEED, Ancient World, 156-169. KiMBALL-BURY, Stu- 
 dents' Greece, chap. xi. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, chap. xiv. 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
Bibliography 
 
 7^1 
 
 I 
 
 Bury, Greece, chap. ix. Grant, Age of Pericles, chaps, vii-x, xii. Benn, 
 Ancient Philosophy, chap. iii. ttTARBELL, History of Greek Art, chaps, 
 iii, vii, and viii. Cw-ps, Homer to 7^/^<?(7<rr/'/?^j, chaps, viii-xii. tMoNROE, 
 History of Education, pp. 28-59. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, 
 chaps, vi ff. Abbott, Pericles, chaps, xvi-xviii. Zimmern, Greek 
 CommonTvealth . 
 
 BoTSFORD and Sihler, chaps, viii-xi. Botsford, Source Book, chap, 
 xviii. Plutarch's Pericles. ThalLON, Readings, chap. ix. 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. A. Histories 
 xvi. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 174-199. Kimball-Bury, Stu- 
 dents^ Greece, chaps, xii and xiv. Bury, Greece, chaps, x-xi. Allcroft, 
 Sicily. Grant, Age of Pericles, chap. xi. Abbott, Pericles, chaps, 
 xiv-xv. ^Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. II. *Whibley, Political 
 Parties in Athens. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth. • 
 
 Botsford and Sihler, chap. vi. Botsford, Source Book, chaps. B. Sources 
 
 xix-xx. Fling, Soztrce Book, chap. vii. Plutarch's Lives of Alcibiades, ^"^ source 
 
 selections 
 Nicias, Lysander. Thucydides (Jowett), Selections. Thallon, Read- 
 ings, chaps, x-xii. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic Histoiy. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. A. Histories 
 xvii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 200-215. Kimball-Bury, Stu- 
 dents' Greece, chaps, xv-xvii. Allcroft, History of Greece, ^04-362 b.c. 
 Bury, Greece, chaps, xii-xiv. Allcroft, Sicily. Capps, Homer to 
 Theocritus, pp. 330-338. ISankey, Spaitan and Theban Supremacies. 
 
 Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xxii-xxiii. ^Xenophon's Anabasis, IV, B. Sources 
 7ff. ; Agesilaos (Dakyns). Nepos' Epa?ninondas. Plutarch's Lives of gelect^on'^^ 
 Pelopidas and Timoleon. Thallon, Readings, chaps, xiii-xiv. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. A. Histories 
 193-198. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 184-189, 215-220. Bury, 
 Greece (see Index). Allcroft, Histoiy of Greece, 404-362 k.c, chap. xi. 
 Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, xv-xvii. Mahaffy, Social Life in 
 Greece^ chaps, viff, Benn, Ancient Philosophy, chaps, iv-vi. Reinach, 
 Story of Art, pp. 50-58, 66-74. MoNROE, History of Education, pp. 
 59-72. Tarbell, Greek Art, chap. ix. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism.^ 
 Lect. III. t Taylor, Plato. *Mauthner, Aristotle. 
 
724 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 BoTSFORD and Sihler, chaps, xii-xv. Fling, Source Book, chap, 
 viii. Thallon, Readings, pp. 513-516, 532-558. Xenophon' s Economics 
 (Dakyns). Plato's Apology. Selections from Etcripides in fApPLETON, 
 Greek Poets, and in fGoLDWiN Smith, Specimens of Greek Tragedy. 
 Aristophanes'' Acharnians and Birds (Frere in Everyman's). 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BoTSFORD, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 
 187-193 and chap. xix. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 220-247. 
 KiMBALL-BuRY, Students'' Greece, chaps, xviii-xx. Allcroft, Histoty 
 of Greece, 362-323 b.c. Bury, Greece, chaps, xvi-xviii. IHogarth, 
 Ancient East, pp. 186-217. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. IV. 
 Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chap. xiv. fCuRTEiS, Macedonian E^npire. 
 t Wheeler, Alexander. 
 
 Botsford and Sihler, chap, xvi, passim. Botsford, Source Book, 
 chaps, xxiv-xxv. PhitarcK's Lives of Demosthenes, Phocion, Alexander. 
 \Arrian''s Anabasis (selections). Justin, History, Bk. IX (Bohn). De- 
 mosthenes' Cj'own and Third Philippic. Thallon, Readings, chap, xv. 
 Davis, Readings, I, chap. ix. 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. 
 XX. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 248-256, 258-269. *Gardner, 
 New Chapters in Greek History, chap. xv. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, 
 Lects. V-VII. tSnucKBURGH, G'n'^X'7¥7>/^;j, pp. 235-310. Greenidge, 
 Greek Constitutional Histo?y, chap. vii. Mahaffy, Problei7is in Greek 
 History, chap. ix. IMahaffy, Progress of Hellenis^n, Lects. II-IV. 
 * Greek Life and Thought, chaps, iii-v, xvi. 
 
 Justin, History, Bk. IX. Phttarch'' s Lives ofAratus, Demetrius, PyiThus, 
 Agis, Cleomenes, Eumenes. Fling, Sou?re Book, chap. xiii. ^Polybius' 
 Histories. Shuckburgh, Selections, especially on the Achaean League. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A. Histories Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps. 
 xxi-xxii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 256-262, 265-267. Hogarth, 
 Ancient East, pp. 218-251. Mahaffy, Alexander's Empire, chaps, xiv, 
 XX, and xxiii; Progress of Hellenism, Lect. V; G7'eek Life and Thought, 
 chaps, i-ii, vi-xv. Monroe, History of Educatioji, pp. 73-78. tTucKER, 
 Life in Ancient Athens, chap. ix. Tarbell, Greek Art, chap. x. Capps, 
 Homer to Theocritus, chap, xviii. 
 
Bibliography 
 
 725 
 
 1 
 
 BoTSFORD and Sihler, chaps, xvi-xix. Botsford, Source Book, B. Sources 
 chaps, xxvi-xxvii. t Davis, Readings, I, chap. x. and source 
 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Botsford, History of Rome, chaps, i-iv. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories 
 Nations, chaps, xxiii-xxv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 276-325, 
 33^^-342. t Bryant, Short History of Rome, chaps, i-vii. tFowLER, 
 Ro?ne, pp. 7-54. ttMYRES, Dawn, chap. x. Mosso, Dawn of Civiliza- 
 tion, chaps, xxi-xxii, xxiv-xxv. Jones, Companion to Roman History, 
 pp. 1-12. iHeitland, Short History of the Roman Republic, pp. 1-82. 
 tHow and Leigh, History of Rome, pp. 1-131. fPELHAM, Otctlines, 
 pp. 45-67. ttABBOTT, Rotnan Political Institutions, c\vz.^.\\. tCARTER, 
 Religion of Numa. *Frank, Roman Imperialism. 
 
 Botsford, Story of Rome, chaps, i-iv ; Sotirce Book, chaps, xxix-xxxi. B. Sources 
 
 MUNRO, Source Book, chaps, i, ii, iv, and v. Plutarch's Lives of Romulus, *"^ source 
 ,^ „ , ^ •* selections 
 
 Mima, Pyrrhus, Camilhcs. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 1-40. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 ^oi'&YO'KD, History of Rome, c\i2i-^.v. ^^ST^^uxmi, Ancient Nations, A. Histories 
 pp. 275-276, 279-284. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 326-331, 343- 
 346. Bryant, Short History, pp. 67-74. Fowler, Rome, pp. 55-83. 
 Heitland, Short History, pp. 82-97. fLiDDELL, Stitdenfs Rome, pp. 218- 
 229. *Greenidge, Rojnan Public Life, chap. vii. How and Leigh, 
 Ro?ne,^'p. 131-148. ISmith, Cai'thage and the Carthaginians. Frank, 
 Roman Imperialism. 
 
 Botsford, Story of Rome, pp. 101-104; Source Book, chap, xxxii. B. Sources 
 Munro, Source Book, chap. iii. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 41-50. selec^t?onr 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 'BOTSVORD, Histor)' of Rojne,c\ia:p.v. Westekma^N, Ancient Nations, A. Histories 
 chaps, xxvi-xxvii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 346-354. Fowler, 
 Ro7ne, pp. 84-110. Bryant, ShoH History, pp. 73-79 and chaps, ix-xi. 
 How and Leigh, pp. 169-244. Liddell, Rome, pp. 256-320. *Havell, 
 Republican Rome, pp. 156-274. Heitland, Short Histoiy, pp. 98-145. 
 *MoRRIS, Hannibal. Frank, Roman Imperialism. 
 
 Botsford, Story of Rome, pp. 104-124; Source Book, chap, xxxiii. 
 Munro, Source Book, chap. vi. Davis, Source Readings, II, chap. iii. 
 Polybius, I, 56-62; III, 49-56. \Livy, xxi, 32-38. Plutarch's Lives of 
 Fabius and Marcellus. 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
y26 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 BoTSFORD, History of Rofne, pp. 1 16-150. Westermann, Ancient 
 Nations, chaps, xxix-xl. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 354-363, 
 365-392. Bryant, Short Histofy, chaps, xii-xiv. Fowler, Rome, 
 pp. 1 10-135. tMASOM, Rome, 133-78 b.c, chap. i. tALLCROFT and 
 Masom, Rome, 202-133 b.c., chaps, x-xiv. t Davis, Influence of Wealth 
 in Imperial Rome, chap. ii. Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, 
 chap. V. Greenidge, Roman Public Life, chap, viii; Roman History, 
 Vol. I, chap. i. *DuFF, Literary History of Rojne, pp. 92-117. Pel- 
 ham, Outlines, pp. 149-198. Heitland, Short Histoiy, pp. 146-248. 
 tABBOTT, Society and Politics in Ancient Rome, pp. 22-40. 
 
 Botsford, Story of Rome, pp. 125-126 and chap, vi; Source Book, 
 chaps, xxxiv-xxxv. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 85-104. Munro, 
 Source Book, chaps, vii and xii. Livy, xxxiv, 1-8; xlv, 10-12. Phitarch's 
 Lives of Cato the Censor, Flaminitis, ^milius Paulus. 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Botsford, History of Rome, chaps, vii-viii. Westermann, Ancient 
 Nations, chaps, xxxi-xxxiv and pp. 379-382. Goodspeed, Ancient 
 World, pp. 392-428. Bryant, Short History, chaps, xv-xxvi. Fowler, 
 Rome, pp. 136-186. Heitland, Short History, pp. 249-512. jAbbott, 
 Common People of Ancient Rome, pp. 235-286. Pelham, Outlines, 
 pp. 201-258, 398-469. Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, chaps, 
 vi-vii. How and Leigh, Rome, pp. 331-551. tPRESTON and Dodge, 
 Private Life of the Romans, chap. v. tALLCROFT, Rome, 78-31 b.c. 
 Frank, Roman Imperialism. *Jones, Co?npanion to Roman History. 
 
 Botsford, Story of Rome, chaps, vii-viii; Source Book, chaps, xxxvi- 
 xxxvii. Munro, Source Book, pp. 180-185 and chap. viii. Davis, Source 
 Readings, II, pp. 105-162. Plutarch's Lives of Tiberius and Gains Grac- 
 chus, Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Cicero, Ccesar, Sertorius. t Ccesar's 
 Gallic War, I, 42-47. Sallust''s Jugurthine ^^r (Bohn). 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 A. Histories BoTSFORD, History of Rome, pp. 204-232. Westermann, Ancient 
 Natio?ts, pp. 382-403. Fowler, Rome, pp. 187-2 11. Goodspeed, An- 
 cient World, pp. 428-451. *JONES, Roman Empire, chaps, i-iii. fBuRY, 
 Studenfs Roman Empire, chaps, i-xii. Abbott, Roman Political Insti- 
 tutions, chap. xii. Davis, Influence of Wealth, chap. vii. Pelham, Out- 
 lines, pp. 357-509. *FiRTH, Aupistus. t Fowler, History of Roman 
 
Bibliography 
 
 727 
 
 Literature, Bk. II. [fMACKAiL, Roman Literature, Bk. II, chaps, i-v. 
 tTuCKER, Life in the Roman World, chap. v. 
 
 BOTSFORD, story of Rome, chaps, ix-x ; Source Book, chaps, xxxviii- B. Sources 
 xxxix. MuNRO, Source Book, chaps, ix and xi. Davis, Source Readings, ^^^ ^9"''^^ 
 pp. 163-196. ILaing, Masterpieces of Latin Literatitre (selections); 
 \The Deeds of Augustus (Fairley's translation in the Pennsylvania 
 Translations and Reprints), Vol. V, No. i. Suetonius'' Lives of the 
 CcEsars (selections). ^Tacitus' Annals, XV, 38-45, 60-65. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BoTSFORD, History of Rome, pp. 232-266. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories 
 yV^«//^«j, pp. 403-435. Fowler, yv^(7w^, pp. 211-251. Goodspeed, ^«- 
 cient World, pp. 451-482. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 509-541. Reinach, 
 St07y of An, pp. 75-83. IPellison, Roman Life in Pliny's Time, chap. ix. 
 *Mau and Kelsey, Pompeii, chaps, vii-viii, xii-xxii, xlvi-xlviii, Ivi-lix. 
 Tucker, Romaii Life, chaps, i-iii, xix-xxi. Greenidge, Rofnan Public 
 Life, chap. xi. *Hardy, Studies in Roman History, Series I, chaps, i-v. 
 Jones, Roman Empire, chaps, iv-vi. Davis, Influejice of Wealth, chaps, 
 iii-vi. '^Xi^Y, Students'' Roman Empire. *Cumont, Oriental Religions i7i 
 Roman Paganism (an epoch-making work). 
 
 BoTSFORD, Stoiy of Rome, chap, xi; Sou7-ce Book, chap. xl. Davis, 
 Source Readings, II, pp. 196-287. Munro, Sou7-ce Book, pp. 162-171, 176- 
 179. Letter's of Pliny (Firth). New Testament, The Acts. 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 BoTSFORD, History of Rome, chap. xii. Westermann, Ancietit A. Histories 
 Nations, chaps. xl-xU. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 483-501. Jones, 
 Roman Empire, chaps, vii-xi. Oman, Byzantine Empire, chap. ii. 
 Abbott, Roman Political Lnstitutions, chap. xvi. *Wright, Palmyra 
 and Zenobia, chaps, xi-xv. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, pp. 332- 
 346. Davis, OtUline History, pp. 130-183. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 
 577-586. tCuTTS, St. ferome. Jones, Companion to Roman Histoiy. 
 *Cotterill, Medieval Ltaly, pp. 21-54. Davis, Lnfuence of Wealthy 
 chap. viii. *Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity ivith Heatheitism, 
 
 pp. 420-479- 
 
 BoTSFORD, Source Book, chaps, xli-xliii, xlv. Davis, Source Readings, B. Sources 
 II, pp. 287-389. MuNRO, Source Book, pp. I7i-I74- tRoBlNSON, Read- ^^^^l^^^^ 
 ings in European History, Vol. I, pp. 14-27- The Notitia Dignitatum 
 {Pennsylvania T^-anslations ajid Reprifits). 
 
728 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 A. Histories 
 
 B. Sources 
 and source 
 selections 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 BoTSFORD, History of Rome, chaps, xiii-xiv. Westermann, /^««V«/ 
 Nations, chaps. xUi-xlv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 502-521. 
 fOMAN, Byzantine Empire, chaps, iii, vi, ix, xi-xii. Cotterill, Medieval 
 Italy, pp. 55-116, 159-185, 194, 205, 251-283. tHoDGKiN, Dynasty of 
 Theodosius, pp. 55-72, 134-203. fH. W. C. Davis, Medieval Europe, 
 chap. i. Reinach, Story of Art, pp. 84-91. Jones, Roman Empire, 
 pp. 410-446. *HuTTON, Church and the Barbarians, chaps, iv-x. 
 *Emerton, Introductiofi to the Middle Ages. *MoREY, Outlines of 
 Roman Law. 
 
 BoTSFORD, Sou7xe Book, chaps, xliv-xlvi. Davis, Source Readings, II, 
 chaps, x-xi. fRoBlNSON, Readings in European Histojy, Vol. I, pp. 
 19-27, 97-100 and chaps, iii-vi. Tacitus^ Germania. Ccesa'>''s Gallic War, 
 VI, pp. 21-28. ^Eugippus" Life of St. Severinus (Robinson), fordanes^ 
 Gothic History (Mierow). English Correspondence of St. Boniface 
 (Kylie). 
 
 A. General 
 and political 
 histories 
 
 B. Constitu- 
 tional and 
 institutional 
 history 
 
 C. Life and 
 
 society 
 
 ADDITIONAL WORKS OF REFERENCE ON THE GREEK 
 AND HELLENISTIC AGE, TOPICALLY ARRANGED 
 
 The histories of Greece by Grote, Curtius, Holm, Abbott. IFree- 
 MAN, Story of Sicily ; ^History of Federal Government. *Deniker, Races 
 of Man. *Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens. *Bevan, House of Seleucus, 
 *Rawlinson, Bactria. *Hogarth, Philipp and Alexander. *Dodge, 
 Alexander. ^Gkv^HY, Thttcydides and the Histofy of his Age. *Tarn, 
 Antigonos Gonatas. ^Ti'Li.\AKii, Agathocles. *M AH affy, Silver Age of 
 the Greek World. 
 
 *GiLBERT, Greek Constitutional Antiquities. *Phillipson, Interna- 
 tional Law and Ctcstom of Ancient Greece and Rome. tCALHOUN, 
 Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation. *ToD, International Arbitra- 
 tion amongst the Greeks. *Whibley, Greek Oligarchies. fHAMMOND, 
 Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks. 
 
 ttGuLiCK, Life of the Anciejit Greeks. *GuHL and Koner, Life of the 
 Greeks and Romans. jGardner, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. 
 tBLUEMNER, Ho7ne Life of the Ancient Greeks. fDAVIS, A Day in 
 Ancient Athens. ^'Dayidsq-h, Education of the Greek People. *Mahaffy, 
 What have the Greeks done for Modem Civilization ? *Ball, ShoJt 
 History of Mathematics. *]o^'E.s, Greek Morality. *V^AKT), The Ancient 
 Lowly. tDoNALDsoN, Woman ; her Position and Influence in Greece 
 and Rome. *Abrahams, Greek Dress. 
 
Bibliography 
 
 729 
 
 ♦Farnell, Higher Aspects of Greek Religion. *Murray, Four Stages 
 in Greek Religion. *Harrison, Religion of Ancient Greece. *Adam, 
 Religious Teachers of Greece. *Halliday, Greek Divination. *Fair- 
 BANKS, Mythology of the Greeks and Romans. fBuLFiNCH, Age of Fable. 
 
 *Gardner, Ancient Athens ; * Handbook of Greek Sculpture. tFoWLER 
 and Wheeler, Greek Archceology. fRiCHARDSON, Vacation Days in 
 Greece. *Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (illustrated). 
 
 tFowLER, Ancient Greek Literature. tCROlSET, Greek Literature. 
 ^]YNO'iiS, Greek Literature. *MACViAi'Ly Lectures on Greek Poetry. *Jebb, 
 Greek Literature \ * Classical Greek Poetry \ * Attic Orators. *Lang, 
 Homer and the Epic. *MURRAY, Rise of the Greek Epic. *MoULTON, 
 Ancient Classical Drama. *Haigh, Attic Theatre. tBuRT, Brief History 
 of Greek Philosophy, f Mayor, Sketch of Ancient Philosophy. *S ANDYS, 
 Classical Greek Scholarship. 
 
 There is no cheap dictionary of classical antiquities, t Harper, 
 Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. *Whibley, Com- 
 panion to G7'eek Studies . *Hall, Companion to Classical Texts. fTozER, 
 Ancient Geography, f Shepherd, Atlas of Ancient History. The new 
 series of individual maps of the ancient world by | Murray are very 
 valuable. tPuTZGER, Schulatlas. tSlECLiN, Schulatlas. A new series 
 of classroom wall maps for ancient history (edited by fBREASTED & 
 Huth) is being published by the Denoyer Geppert Company, Chicago. 
 
 tMlCHAELlS, A Century of Archceological Discoveries. *SCHUCHARDT, 
 Schliemann' s Excavations. tBuRROWS, Discoveries ijz Crete. *Mosso, 
 The Palaces of Crete. *Garstang, Asia Minor, ft H awes, Crete the 
 Forerunner of Greece. 
 
 The Underwood & Underwood series of stereoscopic photographs of 
 Greece and its monuments (edited by Richardson), Greece through the 
 Stereoscope (100 views with guidebook and maps). A short description 
 is also printed on the back of each view. See remarks above, p. viii. 
 t(A selection of fifteen of the most useful views comprises Nos. i, 8, 
 21, 35» 39» 42, 48, 54, 62, 64, T], 80, 87, 96, 97.) 
 
 D. Religion 
 and mythol- 
 ogy 
 
 E. Art and 
 archaeology 
 
 F. Literature 
 and philoso- 
 phy 
 
 G. Hand- 
 books, 
 atlases, etc. 
 
 H. Explora- 
 tion and dis- 
 covery 
 
 GREEK AUTHORS IN TRANSLATION 
 
 ^^chylus (Campbell, verse). Alcceus (Easby-Smith). Aristophanes 
 (Frere; Rogers). Aristotle (Kenyon ; Poste). Demosthenes (Ken- 
 nedy). Euripides {Uv'Bi'SiW \ Way). Herodotus {KAV^-Liiiso^). Hesiod 
 (with Callimachus and Theognis, by Banks; with Theognis, Collins; 
 best translation of Hesiod alone, Mair). Homer: Lliad (Lang, Leaf, 
 Myers; Bryant); (9^.rJ0' (Butcher and Lang ; Bryant). Lsocrates 
 
730 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 (Freese). Pausanias (Frazer). Pindar (Myers). Plato (Jowett). 
 Plutarch (Clough ; selected Lives, by Perrin). Polybius (Shuck- 
 burgh). Strabo (Hamilton and Falconer). Thucydides (Jowett; 
 Crawley). Xenophon (Dakyns). 
 
 A. General 
 and political 
 histories 
 
 B. Constitu- 
 tional and 
 institutional 
 history 
 
 ( ■. Life and 
 society 
 
 D. Religion 
 and mythol- 
 ogy 
 
 ADDITIONAL WORKS OF REFERENCE ON THE 
 ROMAN AGE, TOPICALLY ARRANGED 
 
 For a detailed criticism of the tradition about earliest Rome (p. 497, 
 note), see tlHNE, Historyi of Rovie. Other more extended and valuable 
 histories are those of Mommsen, Heitland, Duruy, Long, Ferrero, 
 Merivale, Gibbons. See also *Mommsen, Provinces. *Bussell, Roman 
 Empire. Other special works are *Dodge, Hannibal. *How, Han- 
 nibal and the Great War. tSTRACHAN-DAViDSON, Cicero. fBoiSSlER, 
 Cicero and his Friends. tFowLER, Ccesar. *SiHLER, Jitlius Ccesar. 
 *HoLMES, Ccesar's Conquest of Gaul. *Shuckburgh, Augtistus. *Tar- 
 VER, Tiberius. *Baring-Gould, Tragedy of the Ccesars. \Q KY'SJS,, Early 
 Empire. *Watson, Marcus Aurelius. *Bryant, Antoninus Pius. 
 *Gregorovius, Hadrian. *Henderson, Life and Principate of the 
 Emperor Nero. *HoPKlNS, Alexander Severus. *Hay, Heliogabalus. 
 *FlRTH, Constantine. fCuTTS, Constantine. *BoissiER, Roman Africa. 
 tBoucHlER, Life and Letters in Roman Africa; * Roman Spain. 
 *Glover, Life and Letters in the E'ourth Century. 
 
 tTAYLOR, Constitutional and Political History of Rome. *Mattingly, 
 Imperial Civil Service. *BoTSFORD, Roman Assemblies. * Arnold, 
 Roman Provincial Administration. *Reid, Mtmicipalities of the Roman 
 Empire. *Greenidge, Legal Procedure in Cicero''s Time. *Hadley, 
 Introduction to Roman Laiv. *Fowler, City State of the Greeks and 
 Romans. tBRYCE, The Roman and British Empires. 
 
 *DlLL, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius; * Roman Society 
 in the Last Century of the Western Empire. IBecker, Gallus. *BuCK- 
 LAND, Roman Law of Slavery . flNGE, Society at Rome under the Ccesars. 
 t Johnston, Private Life of the Romans. *Ingram, History of Slavery. 
 *Friedlaender, Roman Life and Manners. tCHURCH, Roman Life 
 in the Days of Cicero. *Oltver, Roman Economic Conditions. ^ Roman 
 Farm Management, by a Virginia farmer (Fairfax Harrison). 
 
 *Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome. *P'owler, Religious Ex- 
 perience of the Roman People. fGRANGER, Worship of the Romans. 
 tGuERBER, Myths of Greece and Rome, t Murray, Manual of Mythology. 
 *Glover, Conflict of Religions. *FiSHER, Beginnings of Christianity. 
 *Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches. *Cumont, 
 Mysteries of Mithra, 
 
Bibliography j 3 1 
 
 *E. R. Barker, Bicried Herculaneum. *T. B. Platner, Topography E. Art and 
 and Afonnments of Ancient Rome. fC. Huelsen, The Roman Forum, archaeology 
 *H. B. Walters, Art of the Romans. *R. Lanciani, Ruins and Exca- 
 vations of Ancient Rome\ * Pagan and Christian Rome. *J. Fergusson, 
 History of Architecture, t Ramsay and Lanciani, Manual of Roman 
 Antiquities. 
 
 ttj. W. Mackail, Latin Literature. *Lawton, Classical Latin Litera- F. Literature 
 ture. *C. T. Crutwell, History of Roman Literature. *Teuffel and and philoso- 
 Schwabe, Histoiy of Roman Literature. *W. Sellar, Roman Poets of ^ ^ 
 the Republic; * Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. *E. V. Arnold, 
 Roman Stoicism. See works on ancient philosophy under Greece. 
 
 tMiCHAELis, A Century of Aixhczological Discoveries. *Mau and G. Explora- 
 
 Kelsey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. Barker, Buried Herculaneum. *'^" ^"*^ ^'^' 
 
 covcrv 
 *Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. Lanciani, Ruins and Excava- 
 tions of Ancient Rome. 
 
 The Underwood & Underwood series of stereoscopic photographs of H. The 
 Rome and Italy (edited by Ellison and Egbert), Italy through the monuments 
 Stereoscope (loo views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See to-day 
 above, p. viii. t(A selection of the most useful fifteen views comprises 
 Nos. 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 12,, 34, 43, 45, 46, 47, 58, 60, 62, 91.) 
 
 ROMAN AUTHORS AND OTHER SOURCES FOR 
 ROMAN HISTORY IN TRANSLATION 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus (Bohn Ed.). Appian (White). G?j^«r (Bohn 
 Ed.). Cassidorus' Letters (Hodgkin). Cicero's Letters (Shuckburgh) ; 
 Works (Bohn Ed.). Dio Cassius (Foster or Carey). Eugippus' St. 
 Severinus (Robinson). Horace (Martin; Lonsdale and Lee; Wick- 
 ham), fordanes (Mierow). Josephus (Whiston). fustin, Nepos, and 
 Eutropius {Bohn'Ed.). fuvenal {GiYYOKD). Z/?7y (Spillan; Brodribb). 
 Lucretius (M.\JT^Ko). Marcus Aurelius (Rendall or Long). Monumen- 
 tum Ancyranum (Fairley). Ovid (Riley). Plifty's Letters (Firth). 
 Propertius (Moore). Sallust, with Florus and Paterciclus (Bohn Ed.). 
 Strabo (Falconer). Suetonius (Forester). Tacitus (Church and 
 Brodribb). Fzr^// (Bryce ; Crane). 
 
i 
 
INDEX 
 
 KEY TO PRONUNCIATION 
 
 a as in fat 
 a as in errand 
 a as in face 
 a as in surface 
 a as in far 
 a as in fall 
 a as in ask 
 a as in sofa 
 
 e as in met 
 e as in prudent 
 e as in be 
 e as in begin 
 e as in her 
 i as in pin 
 1 as in pine 
 
 o as in bonnet 
 o as in valor 
 o as in bone 
 9 as in obey 
 o as in move 
 o like u in Jude'a 
 6 as in nor 
 oi as in oil 
 
 u as m must 
 u as in muse 
 u as in musician 
 ii as in nature 
 u as in piiU 
 g as in get 
 h as in French boh 
 th as in thin 
 
 A'bra ham, 208 
 Abusir (aboser'), 235 
 Academy, 356, 420, 477 f. 
 Achaean (a ke'an) League, 450 f. 
 Achaeans (a ke'anz), 254 
 AcropoHs (a krop'o lis), 261, 343, 
 
 364, 366 f. 
 Actium (ak'shi um), 599 
 Adrianople (ad ri an o'pl), 692 
 Adriatic (a dri at'ik), 345 
 ^galeos (ega'le os), 322 
 JEgean (e je'an) world, 225 ff.; 
 
 oriental influences in, 240 f. ; 
 
 fall of, 255 ff. 
 ^gina (eji'na), 331, 344 
 /Egospotami (e gos pot'a ml), 391 
 ^neas (e ne'as), 601, 616 
 iE^neid (e ne'id), the, 616 
 ^schylus (es'ki lus), 363, 371 
 ^tolian (e to'li an) League, 45 
 ^tolians (e to'li anz), 450 
 Agriculture in Late Stone Age, 
 
 22 ff. ; social effects of, 24 
 Agrippa (agrip'a), 610, 612 
 Agrippina (agripi'na), 620 
 Ahuramazda (a ho ra maz'da), 185 
 Ak'kad, 121, 124 f. 
 Alaric (ararik), 693 
 Alba Longa (al'ba long'ga), 492 ff. 
 Alcibiades (al si bi'a dez), 383, 
 
 385 f., 390 
 
 the 
 
 446, 
 
 Alemanni (al e man'i), 691 
 
 Alexander (al eg zan'der) 
 Great, 425 ff., 445 f. 
 
 Alexandria (al eg zan'dri a), 
 450, 461 ff. ; ]evfs at, 453 
 
 Alexandrian (al eg zan'dri an) edu- 
 cation, 475 ff. 
 
 Alexandrian library, 472 ff., 594 
 
 Alexandrian literature, 475 
 
 Alexandrian Museum, 477 
 
 Alexandrian scientists, 468 ff. 
 
 Ali Baba (a'le ba'ba), 89 
 
 Alphabet, Egyptian, 42, 96 f., 
 Phoenician, 270 ff., 501 ; Greek, 
 
 ..27 If., 499 f. 
 
 A mar'na, tombs at, 92 f., 204 ; 
 
 _ letters at, 93 f. 
 
 A men ho'tep III, 89 
 
 Amenhotep IV, 91 ff. 
 
 Am'pn, 415, 439 
 
 Amorites (am'o rits), 104, 128 
 
 A'mos, 208 f. 
 
 Amphictyonies(amfik'ti oniz),29i 
 
 Amphitheater, 644, 650 
 
 Ancyra (ansfra), 617 
 
 Andronicus (an dro ni'kus), 560 
 
 Angles (ang'glz), 694 
 
 Animals of prehistoric Europe, 
 3 f. ; domestication of, 24 
 
 An tig'o nus, 446 
 
 Antigonus II, 449 
 
 733 
 
734 
 
 Ancie7it Times 
 
 Antioch (an'ti ok), 448, 450 
 Antiochus (antrokus), 445, 448 
 Antiochus the Great, 55of. 
 Antoninus Pius (an to ni'nus 
 
 pi'us), 634, 664 
 Antony (an'toni), 586 f., 596 ff. 
 Apelles (apei'ez), 466 
 Aphrodite (af ro di'te), 279, 502 
 Apollo (a pors), 315 f. 
 ApoUodorus (a pel do'rus), 409 
 A ra'bi a, loi f. 
 Ar'abs, 708 ff. 
 Aramaic (arama'ik), 146 f.; 
 
 triumph of, 148, 183, 190 
 Arameans (ar a me'anz), 144 ff., 
 
 162 
 Ar be'la, 435 
 
 Arcadius (ar ka'di us), 692 f. 
 Archimedes (ar ki me'dez), 467 f. 
 Areop'agus, 313, 341, 363 
 Arginusae (arjinu'se), 391 
 Ar'go lis, 331 
 Ar'gos, 283 
 A ri a'na, 176 
 
 Aristarchus (ar istar'kus), 469,656 
 Aristogiton (aris to ji'ton), 306, 
 
 Aristophanes (ar is tof'a nez), 383, 
 
 416 
 Aristotle (ar'istotl), 428, 471, 478 
 'i\rmenians (arme'ni aiiz), 255, 629 
 Arrian (ar'i an), 655 
 Ar'te mis, 279 
 
 Artemisium (ar te mish'ium), 330 f. 
 Aryans (ar'yanzj, 176 ff. 
 Asculum (as'kuium), 517 
 Asia (a'shia), 86, 89 
 Asia Minor (mrnor), 226, 248 f., 
 
 643 
 
 Assur (as'or), 140 f., i5of. 
 
 Assurbanipal (a sor ba'ni pal), 160 
 
 Assyria (asir'la), 140 ff., 148 f., 
 210 ff., 629 
 
 Assyrian (asir'ian) art and sculp- 
 ture, 158 f. 
 
 Assyrian civilization, 158 
 
 Assyrian Empire, 151 ff., iSSff-, 
 160 ff. ' 
 
 Assyriology, 194 
 
 Astrology, 168 
 
 A the'na, 279, 362, 369 
 
 Ath e ne'um, 643 
 
 A the'ni an art and literature, 362 ff, 
 Athenian Empire, 339 ff., 378 ff. 
 Athenian government, 303 ff., 
 
 341 f., 361, 363 f., 379 
 Athenian law, 303, 305 
 Athenian money and prices, 346 
 Athenian society, 350 f. 
 Athenian war, cost of, 347 
 Athens (ath'enz), 284, 296, 298, 
 
 336 ff., 344 ff., 420, 613 
 Athletic games, 290 f., 307 f. 
 Ath'os, Mount, 324, 328, 439 
 Attica (at'i ka), 283, 324, 346 
 Attila (at'i la), 694 
 Augustan (a gus'tan) Age, 607 ff. 
 Augustine (a giis'tin), 699 f. 
 Augustus (agus'tus), 596 ff. 
 Aurelian (§, re'lyan), 676 
 Australia (§,stra'lia), 3 
 A ves'ta, 179 
 
 Ba'bel, Tower of, 112 
 
 Babylon (bab'i Ion), 128, 133, I52f., 
 
 164 ff. 
 Babylonia (bab i lo'ni a), 105 f, 
 Babylonian (bab i lo'ni an) art and 
 
 architecture, 137 
 Babylonian astrology, 168, 661 
 Babylonian divination, 134, 503 
 Babylonian education, 135 f. 
 Babylonian religion, 134 
 Bag dad', 710 
 
 Balearic (bal e ar'ik) Islands, 525 
 Barbarian invasions, 688 ff. 
 Basilica (ba sil'i ka) church, 702 ff. 
 Behistun (be his ton') inscription, 
 
 184 f., 190 ff., 194 
 Bel i sa'ri us, 696 
 Belshazzar (bel shaz'ar), 181 
 Black Sea, 344 
 Boeotia (be o'shia), 284, 334, 402, 
 
 404 
 Boghaz-Koi (bo'ghaz ke'e), 249 
 Book of the Dead, 91 
 Bos'po rus, 683 
 Brindisi (bren'de se), 487 
 Britain (brit'an), 589, 694, 701 
 Bronze Age, 222 ff., 227 
 Brundisium (brun disli'i um), 487 
 Brutus (bro'tus), 596, 598 
 Burgundians (ber gun'di anz), 693 
 Byzantium (bi zan'shi um), 683 
 
hidex 
 
 735 
 
 Caere (se're), 499, 521 
 Caesar (se'zar), 586 ff., 613 
 Calendar, 45, 467, 595 
 Caligula (ka lig'u la), 618 f. 
 Callimachus (ka lim'a kus), poet, 
 
 . 473' 475 
 
 Callimachus, soldier, 326 
 
 Callisthenes (kalis'the nez), 443 
 
 Cambyses (kain bi'sez), 182 
 
 Canaanites (ka'nanits), 104, 200 f. 
 
 Cannae (kan'e), 540 f. 
 
 Capua (kap'u a), 497, 521 f., 543 
 
 Carchemish (kar'kem ish), 241 
 
 Carthage (kar'thaj), 267, 333, 439, 
 490, 518, 520 ff., 546 
 
 Carthaginian (kar tha jin'i an) civ- 
 ilization, 526 ^ 
 
 Carthaginians, 489 
 
 Cassius (kashius), 596, 598 
 
 Catiline (kat'i I'm), 586 f. 
 
 Cecilia Metella (se sil'i a me tera), 
 492 
 
 Cecrops (se'krops), 407 
 
 Censors, 505, 509 
 
 Ceres (se'rez), 502 
 
 Chaeronea (ker ne'a), 428 
 
 Chaldean (kal de'an) Empire, 
 164 ff., 213 
 
 Chaldeans (kal de'anz), 162 
 
 Chalons (shaloii'), 694 
 
 Champollion (sham poFi 011) 96 ff., 
 
 455 
 Charlemagne (shar'le man), 702 
 Charles Martel (mar tel'), 702 
 Cheops (ke'ops), 56 
 Chephren (kef ren), 56 
 Chios (ki'os), 300 
 Christianity, 663 f., 682 ff. 
 Church, African, 699 ; Eastern, 
 
 698 ff. ; Western, 698 ff. 
 Cicero (sis'e ro), 586 f., 597, 613 f. 
 Cimbrians (sim'bri anz), 597 
 Cimon (sfmon), 339, 341, 356 
 Claudius (kl^'di us), 619 f. 
 Cleomenes (kle om'e nez), 451 
 Cleon (kle'on), 383 f. 
 Cleopatra (kle o pa'tra), 455, 593 f., 
 
 598 f. 
 Clerestory, 70 f. 
 Clisthenes (klis'the nez), 306 f., 
 
 342 
 Clitus (kirtus), 442 
 
 Clovis (klo'vis), 701 
 
 Cnidus (ni'dus), 300 
 
 Cnossus (nos'us), 233 f. 
 
 Coloni (ko lo'ni), 668 f. 
 
 Colosseum (kolose'um), 622, 649 
 
 Comitia (ko mish'ia), 507 f. 
 
 Commodus (kom'odus), 673 
 
 Constantine (kon'stan tin), 683 f. 
 
 Constantinople (kon stan ti no'pl), 
 683 f. 
 
 Consuls, 504 f., 509 
 
 Copper Age, 222 f. 
 
 Cor'inth, 296, 331, 344, 348, 552 
 
 Corinthian War, 401 ; architec- 
 ture, 407 f . 
 
 Corsica (kor'sika), 535 
 
 Council of Five Hundred, 361, 
 
 365 
 Crassus, 587, 590 
 Crete (kret), 227 ff., 235 f., 248 
 Croesus (kre'sus), 180 f. 
 Ctesiphon (tes'ifon), 667, 675 
 Cumae (ku'me), 521 
 Cuneiform writing, iiof., 189 f., 
 
 242 
 Cynocephalae (sin os sef a le), 550 
 Cyrene (si re'ne), 415, 525 
 Cyrus (si'rus) the Great, 179 ff. 
 Cyrus the Younger, 399 f. 
 
 Dacians (da'shi ans), 627, 630 
 Damascus (da mas'kus), 151, 211 
 Darius (darfus) the Great, 185, 
 
 324 ff. 
 Darius III, 431, 435 
 David, 204 f. 
 Decelea (desele'a), 389 
 Delian (de'li an) League, 339, 348, 
 
 390 
 De'los, 297, 339, 348 
 Delphi (del'fi), 315 ff., 643, 684 
 De me'ter, 279, 315, 502 
 Democracy, 301 ff., 307, 395 f., 406 
 Demosthenes (de mos'the nez), 
 
 427 f. 
 Demotic (de mot'ik) writing, 44 
 Den'mark, 17 ff., 223 
 Dictator, 506, 531, 539 
 Diocletian (dl kle'shian), 676ff. 
 Dionysius (di 5 nish'i us), gram 
 
 marian, 474 f. 
 Dionysius, tyrant, 490 
 
736 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 , 
 
 Dionysus (dlonrsus), 279, 310, 
 
 362 
 Dipylon (dipl Ion) Gate, 365 
 Domitian (do mish'ian), 627 
 Dorians (do'ri anz), 254 f. 
 Dor'ic column, 311, 340, 367, 370 
 Draco (dra'ko), 303 
 Dru'sus, 581 
 Dur-Sharrukin (dor-shar ro ken'), 
 
 152 
 
 Early Stone Age, 5 ff. 
 Ecbatana (ek bat'a na), 437 
 Egypt, 35 ff.; Stone Age of, 38; 
 
 conquered by Assyria, I53f. ; 
 
 conquered by Alexander, 434 ; 
 
 a Roman province, 599 
 Egyptian art and architecture, 
 
 68 ff., 87 ff. 
 Egyptian classes of society, 67 
 Egyptian emperors, burial place 
 
 of, 94 f. 
 Egyptian Empire, 80 ff. ; higher 
 
 life of, 86 ff. ; religion in, 91 ff., 
 
 659 ; fall of, 93 ff. 
 Egyptian gods, 50 
 Egyptian industrial progress, 62 ff. 
 Egyptian pyramids, 49 ff. 
 Egyptian science, 78 
 Egyptian slaves, 67 
 Egyptian tombs, 49 ff. 
 Egyptian vi^riting, 40 ff., 96 ff. 
 Egyptology, 98 
 
 Elephantine (el e fan ti'ne), 459 
 Eleusis (e lii'sis), 315, 415 
 Elijah (e li'ja), 207 
 Embalming, 49 
 E pam i non'das, 403 f. 
 Ephesus (ef'e sus), 450 
 Epicureanism, 478 
 Epimachos (e pim'akos), 630 
 Epi'rus, 517 
 Eratosthenes (er a tos'the nez), 
 
 459, 469, 471 f. 
 Erechtheum (e rek the'um), 367, 
 
 407 
 E re'tri a, 324 
 Er go ti'mos, 297 
 Eskimos (es'ki moz), 12 
 Etruscans (e trus'kanz), 488 f., 
 
 495 ff- 
 Euaenetus (ue'netus), 381 
 
 Euboea (u. be'a), 324 
 Euclid (u'klid), 469 
 Eupatrids (u pat'ridz), 284 
 Euripides (ii rip'i dez), 372 f., 400, 
 
 406 
 Europe (ti'rop), 3 ff., 221 ff. 
 
 Fa'bi us, 540 
 
 Fabricius (fa brish'i us), 494 
 
 Fertile Crescent, loi 
 
 Feudal Age in Egypt, 74 ff. ; tombs 
 
 of, 76; administration in, 79; 
 
 commerce of, 79 ; decline of, 
 
 80 
 Fire-making, 3, 5 
 Fla min'i us, 539, 575 f. 
 Fla'vi an emperors, 627 
 Flint implements, 10 f. 
 Forum, 495, 509, 609 
 Franks, 691, 701 
 
 Gaius Gracchus (ga'yus grak'us), 
 
 577 
 Galatia (ga la'shia), 449 
 Ga le'ri us, 686 
 
 Gallic invasion of the East, 449 
 Gard (gar) River, 646 
 Gaul (gal), 588 ff. 
 Gelon (je'lon), 333 
 German barbarians, 579, 588, 626, 
 
 664, 674, 682, 688 ff. 
 Girga mesh, 127 
 Gizeh (ge'2;e), pyramids of, 49 ff. 
 Gladiators, 564 
 Glass-making in Egypt, 64 f . 
 Gortyna (gor ti'na), 304 
 Goths, 691, 695 
 Gracchi (grak'I), 576 ff. 
 Granicus (grani'kus), 430 
 Great Mother, 414 
 Greek architecture and sculpture, 
 
 292, 310 ff., 406 ff. 
 Greek colonies, 287 ff. 
 Greek commerce, 287, 295 ff. 
 Greek education, 308 
 Greek games, 290 f., 307 f. 
 Greek genius, 423 
 Greek gods, 278 ff. 
 Greek language, spread of, 453 
 Greek literature, 293, 315 
 Greek music, 308 f. 
 Greek painting, 314 f., 406 ff. 
 
Index 
 
 717 
 
 Greek religion, 276 ff., 315, 480 
 
 Greek sciences, 359 f., 419 
 
 Greek slaves, 298 
 
 Greek theater, 371, 374 
 
 Greek vases, 314 
 
 Greeks, 217, 250, 252 ff.; social 
 
 institutions of, 259; kings of, 
 
 260, 286 ; agriculture of, 260 ; 
 
 supremacy of, 344 ff. ; in Italy, 
 
 490 
 Gregory (greg'o ri), 701 
 Guinea (gin'i), 471, 525 
 Gylippus (ii lip'us), 387 
 
 Hades, 315 
 
 Ha'dri an, 630 ff., 636, 650 
 
 Hamilcar Barca (ha mirkar 
 bar'ka), 534 
 
 Hammurapi (hammora'pe), i28ff.; 
 code of, 130 ff. 
 
 Hannibal (han'i bal), 535 ff. 
 
 Har mo'di us, 306, 313 
 
 Hasdrubal (has'dro bal), 543 f. 
 
 Hatshepsut (hat shep'sot), 83 f. 
 
 Hebrew (he'bro) civilization, 201 f. 
 
 Hebrew kingdom, 200 ff. ; divided, 
 206 ff.; destruction of, 210 ff. 
 
 Hebrew literature, 208, 216 
 
 Hebrew religion, 214 
 
 Hebrew writing, 209 
 
 Hebrews, 144 f., 197 f.; exile of, 
 213 f. ; religion of, 214; re- 
 stored, 216 
 
 Hecataeus (hek a te'us), 318 f., 
 360 
 
 Helicon (heri kon), Mount, 293 
 
 Hellenes (hel'enz), 291 f. 
 
 Hellenistic (hel e nist'ik) Age, 
 
 453 ff- 
 Hellenistic architecture, 560 
 Hellenistic world, 481 ff. 
 Hellespont (hel'espont), 324, 328, 
 
 339 
 Hephaestion (he f es'ti on), 443 
 He'ra, 279 
 
 Heraclea (herakle'a), 517 
 Heracleia (herakli'a), 472 
 Hermes (her'mez), 279, 502 
 Herodes Atticus (he ro'dez 
 
 at'i kits), 642 
 He rod'o tus, 360 f., 363, 419 
 He'si od, 293 
 
 Hieratic (hi e rat'ik) writing, 44 
 Hieroglyphics, 44 f.; deciphered, 
 
 96 ff.; in Crete, 229; Hittite 
 
 (hit'it), 241 
 Hipparchus (hi par'kus), 306 
 Hippias (hip'i as), 306, 324 
 Hippocrates (hi pok'ra tez), 361, 
 
 375 
 
 HTram, 205 f. 
 
 Hittite (hit'it) art and architec- 
 ture, 242 
 
 Hittite Empire, 243 f. ; fall of, 255 f. 
 
 Hittite influence, 240 ff., 248 ff. 
 
 Hittite religion, 242 f. 
 
 Hittite writing, 241 f. 
 
 Hittites, 93 f., 143, 149, 199, 202, 
 239 f. 
 
 Ho'mer, 275 f., 375 
 
 Ho no'ri us, 692 f. 
 
 Horace (hor'as), 615 f. 
 
 Horse, in Egypt, 80 f. ; in Baby- 
 lonia, 138, 143 
 
 Huns (hunz), 692 
 
 Ice Age, 7 f. 
 
 Ictinus (iktrnus), 369 
 
 Ikh na'ton, 92 ff. 
 
 Illyricum (i lir'i kum), 693 
 
 Imhotep (em ho'tep), 52 
 
 In'di a, 437 
 
 Indian Ocean, 79, 437 
 
 Indo-European peoples, 171 ff. 
 
 lonians (i o'ni anz), 316, 318 ff., 
 
 322 ff. 
 Ionic (i on'ik) column, 340, 367 f. 
 Iphigenia (if i je ni'a), 410 
 Iran (e ran'), 176 
 Iranians (i ra'ni anz), 176 ff. 
 Iron Age, 157, 263 
 Isaac (i'zak), 208 
 Isaiah (i za'ya), 210 f. 
 Ish'tar, 134, 151, 168 
 Is'lam, 706 
 
 Isocrates (I sok'ra tez), 420, 422 
 Israel (iz'ra el), 206 
 Issus (is'usj. Gulf of, 430 f. 
 Italic tribes, 488 
 Italy (it'ali), 485 ff. 
 
 Jacob, 208 
 
 Jeremiah (jeremi'a), 213 
 
 Jericho (jer'i ko), 203 
 
738 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Jerusalem (je ro'sa lem), besieged, 
 2iof. ; destroyed, 213; rebuilt, 
 216; taken by Sulla, 585; de- 
 stroyed, 626 
 
 Jesus, 115, 66i f., 705 
 
 Joseph, 208 
 
 Judah (jo'da), 206 
 
 Judaism, 216, 661 
 
 Jugurtha (jo ger'tha), 578 f. 
 
 Julian (jo'lyan) "the Apostate," 
 686 f., 691 
 
 Juno (jo'no), 502 
 
 Jupiter (jo'pi ter), 502 
 
 Jus tin'i an, 695 ff., 705 f . ; code of, 
 697 
 
 Kaldi (kal'de), 162 
 Kar'nak, 80 ff. 
 Kassites (kas'Its), 144 
 Khafre (kaf ra), 56, 70 f. 
 Khufu (ko'fo), 54, 56 
 King's Peace, 401 
 Ko'ran, 707 
 Kuyunjik (koyonjek'), 435 
 
 Laconia (la ko'ni a), 283 
 Lake-dweliers, Swiss, 21 f. 
 Laocoon (la ok'o on), 465 
 Late Stone Age, 14 ff. ; tools in, 
 20 ; architecture in, 26 ; festivals 
 and athletic contests in, 28 ; 
 trades in, 29 ; commerce in, 31 ; 
 wars in, 32 ; in Italy, 486 
 Latin League, 511, 513 
 Latin literature, 562 f. 
 Latin war, 520 
 Latins, 492 f. 
 
 Latium (la'sliium), 492 ff., 616 
 Laws, oldest surviving code of, 
 
 132 ; earliest, in Greece, 303 
 Le on'i das, 330 
 Lep'i dus, 597 
 Leuctra (luk'tra), 404 
 Library, at Alexandria, 472 ff., 594 ; 
 
 at Rome, 614 
 Licinius (lisin'ius), 575 f. 
 Lictors, 508 
 
 Lilybaeum (111 i be'iim), 517 
 Livy (liv'i), 614 f. 
 Lom'bards, 701 
 Lucullus (lukul'us), 585 
 Lyceum (lise'uni), 356, 478 
 
 Lydians (lid'i anz), 322 
 Lysander (li san'der), 391, 401 f. 
 Lysiades (li sfa dez), 381 
 Lysicrates (li siVra tez), 381 
 
 Macedon (mas'e don), 426, 550 
 Macedonia (mas e do'ni a), 426 
 Magi (ma'ji), 661 
 Magnesia (mag ne'shia), 551 
 Man ti ne'a, 404 
 Mar'a thon, 324 ff. 
 Marcellus (marserus), 610 
 Marcus Aurelius (mar'kus are' 
 
 li us), 664 f. 
 Mar do'ni us, 328, -^y^ f. 
 Marduk (mar'dok), 134, 168 
 Ma'ri us, 579 ff. 
 Mars, 502 
 
 Massilia (ma sili a), 290 
 Mausoleum (masSle'um), 408 
 Mausolus (ma so'lus), 406 
 Mayors of the Palace, 701 
 Mecca (mek'a), 706 f. 
 Medes (medzj and Persians (per'- 
 
 shanz), 162, 177 
 Median Empire, 177 
 Meg'a ra, 303 
 Memphis (mem'fis), 57 
 Me nan'der, 562 
 Menes (me'nez), 58 
 Mercury (mer'ku ri), 502 
 Mesopotamia (mes o po ta'mi a), 
 
 629 
 Messina (messe'na), 528 
 Metal, Age of, 47 f., 222 f., 486 f. 
 Metaurus (me ta'rus) River, 543 
 Middle Stone Age, 9 ff. 
 Ml le'tus, 316, 324 
 Miltiades (mil ti'a dez), 325 f. 
 Mithradates (mith ra da'tez), 583, 
 
 585 
 Mith'ras, 195, 678 
 Mitylene (mit 1 le'ne), 383 
 Mnesicles (ne'sik lez), 367 
 Mohammed (mo ham'ed), 706 ff. 
 Mohammedan conquests, 709 
 Money, in Athens, 346; in Greece, 
 299 ff.; in the Orient, 186, 299 f. 
 Monica (mon'i ka), 699 
 Monks, 700, 702 
 
 Monotheism, in Kgypt, 92 f.; in 
 Palestine, 214 
 
Index 
 
 739 
 
 Moors (morz), yiof. 
 Moses (ino'zez), 200 
 Moslems (uios'leiiiz), 702, 707 ft"., 
 
 711 f. 
 Mycale (mik'a le), 334 
 Mycenae (mrse'ne), 237 f., 247 f. 
 Mycenaean (mi se ne'an) Age, 
 
 236 ff. 
 
 Na'hum, 163 
 Na po'le on, 455 
 Na ram'sin, 123 f. 
 Naucratis (na'kratis), 289 
 Nebuchadnezzar (neb u kad nez'- 
 
 ar), 164 ff., 213, 368 
 Nemausus (nema'siis), 646 
 Ne'ro, 620 ff. 
 Ner'va, 627, 634 
 
 New Persia (per'sha), 675, 678, 705 
 New Testament, 662 
 Nicaea (nl se'a), 686 
 Nicias (nish'i as), 384 ff. 
 Nicomedia (iiik o me'di a), 679 
 Nile (nil), 37 ff. 
 Nimes (nem), 646 
 Nineveh (nin'e ve), 154 f., 163, 213 
 Nippur (nip por'), 112, 116, 117 
 Nobles,Greek, leadership of, 283 ff. 
 Nomads, 25 f. 
 
 North American Indians, 4, 40 
 Nu'bi a, 86, 89 
 
 Octavian (ok ta'vi an), 596 ff. 
 
 Odoacer (o do a'ser), 695 
 
 Old Testament, 217 
 
 Oligarchy, 395 
 
 Olympian (o lim'pi an) games, 308, 
 
 356 
 
 Oracles, 315 
 
 Orient, achievements of, 218 ff.; 
 influence on Greece, 264 f. ; re- 
 vival of, 705 ff. 
 
 Orpheus (or'fus), 414 
 
 O si'ris, 50, 91 
 
 Ostracism, 306 f. 
 
 Os'tro-Goths, 695 
 
 Paestum (pes'tum), 522 
 Painted Porch, 363, 365, 497 
 Pa ler'mo Stone, 46 
 Palestine (paKestin), 197 ff., 256 
 Palmyra (pal mi'ra), 676 
 
 Panathenaea (pan atli e iie'a), 362 
 
 Paper, making of, 43 f., 64 f. 
 
 Papyrus (papi'rus), 43 f. 
 
 Par me'ni 6, 431, 437, 442 
 
 Parrhasius (pa ra'shi us), 41 1 
 
 Par'the non, 367, 369 f. 
 
 Parthians (par'thi anz), 590, 595, 
 628 f., 675 
 
 Pasargadae (pa sar'ga de), 182, 189 
 
 Patesis (pa ta'sez), 113, 119 
 
 Paul, 638, 662, 700 
 
 Pausanias (pa sa'ni as), geog- 
 rapher, 655 
 
 Pausanias, Spartan general, 334 
 
 Peloponnesian (pel o po ne'shian) 
 War, First, 348 "f.; Second, 
 380 ff.; Third, 385 ff. 
 
 Per'ga mum, 453, 463 f., 472 
 
 Per i an'der, 303 
 
 Pericles (perl klez), 344, 348, 
 350 ff., 381 ff. 
 
 Peripatetics (per i pa tet'iks), 477 f. 
 
 Per sep'o lis, 189 
 
 Persian (per'shan) art and archi- 
 tecture, 189 
 
 Persian Empire, 182 ff. 
 
 Persian kings, 194! 
 
 Persian religion, 195 
 
 Persian roads and communica- 
 tions, 187 f. 
 
 Persian sea power, 187 
 
 Persian War, Athens in, 348 
 
 Persian writing, 183 
 
 Persians, 179 ff., 322 ff., 389 f. 
 
 Peter, 700 
 
 Phalerum (fale'riim), 331 
 
 Pharaoh (fa'ro), 53 
 
 Pharsalus (farsa'lus), 592 f. 
 
 Phidias (fid'ias), 367, 369, ^82 
 
 Philae (fi'le), 459 
 
 Philip, 426 ff. 
 
 Philippi (filip'i), 598 
 
 Philistines (fi lis'tinz), 202 f., 256 
 
 Philosophy, 316, 318 ff. 
 
 Philotas (lilo'tas), 441 
 
 Phoenicia (fe nish'a), 58 
 
 Phoenicians (fe nish'anz), 144 f., 
 265 ff., 290, 328, 471; alphabet 
 of, 270 
 
 Phonetic writing, 40 ff. 
 
 Phrygians (frij'i anz), 255 
 
 Pictorial records, 39 ff. 
 
740 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Pin'dar, 309, 415, 429 
 
 Piraeus (pi re'us), 332, 339, 344, 
 
 348 
 Pi sis'tra tus, 306 
 Plataea (plate'a), 326, 334, 684 
 Pla'to, 411, 418, 420 f., 428 
 Plautus (pla'tus), 562 
 Plebs, 506 
 
 Pliny (plin'i), the elder, 655 f. 
 Pliny, the younger, 635, 654 f. 
 Plow culture, 25 
 Plutarch (plo'tark), 655 
 Pnyx (niks), 343, 366 
 Polybius (po lib'i us), 561 f. 
 Polygnotus (pel ig no'tus), 363 
 Pompeii (pom pa'ye), 410, 557, 
 
 559, 636 f., 639 
 Pompey (pom'pi), 584 ff., 590 ff. 
 Poseidon (po si'don), 279 
 Pottery, in Egypt, 63 ; in Europe, 
 
 19 
 Praetor (pre'tor), 506 
 Praxiteles (praks it'e lez), 408 
 Prehistoric Europe, 3 ff. 
 Prie'ne, 458, 460 f., 476 
 Psyttaleia (sit'ali'a), 332 
 Ptolemies (td'e miz), 86, 446 f., 
 
 593 
 
 Ptolemy (td'e mi), astronomer, 
 656 f. 
 
 Punic War, First, 533 ff. ; Second, 
 535 ff.; Third, 546 f. 
 
 Pyramid Age, 49 ff. ; agriculture 
 in, 61 ; '^rt and architecture in, 
 68 ff.; cattle raising in, 61 f. ; 
 classes of society in, 67; com- 
 merce in, 58 f.; government in, 
 53 ff.; length and date of, 57 f. ; 
 occupations in, 62 ff. 
 
 Pyrrhus (pir'us), 517 
 
 Pythagoras (pi thag'o ras), 319 
 
 Pytheas (pith'e as), 471 
 
 Quaestors (kwes'torz), 505 
 
 Ramses (ram'sez) II, 94 
 
 Ramses III, 257 
 
 Rawlinson (ra'linson), 190 ff. 
 
 Re (ra), 50 
 
 Red Sea, 59 
 
 Rhetoricians, 420 
 
 Rhodes (rodz), 450, 465, 613 
 
 Roman amusements, 564 f. 
 
 Roman army, 528 ff. 
 
 Roman art and architecture, 523, 
 
 608, 610 
 Roman Church, 698 ff. 
 Roman colonization, 512 
 Roman commerce and banking, 
 
 554 f., 640 
 Roman conquests, 552 ff. 
 Roman degeneration, 570, 669 
 Roman Empire, 601 ff. ; civilization 
 
 of the early Empire, 649 ff. ; 
 
 decline of, 667 ff. ; division of, 
 
 682 ff., 692 
 Roman government, 504 ff., 520 ff. 
 Roman house, 556 ff. 
 Roman imperial organization, 
 
 552 ff. 
 Roman money, 501 f., 523, 671 
 Roman painting, 653 
 Roman provinces, 553 ff., 604 ff., 
 
 636 ff., 641 
 Roman religion, 502 ff., 659 ff. 
 Roman Republic, 504, 507, 511; 
 
 end of, 574 ff. 
 Roman roads and bridges, 638 f. 
 Roman schools, 561 
 Roman sculpture, 652 
 Roman Senate, 506, 509, 574 ff. 
 Roman ships, 501, 534 
 Roman slaves, 566 ff., 669 
 Roman theaters, 610 
 Rome (rom), 494 ff., 500; taken 
 
 by Gauls, 513; rivalry of, with 
 
 Carthage, 518, 520 ff. 
 Rom'u lus and Re'mus, 484 
 Romulus Augustulus {% giis'tu lus), 
 
 695 
 Rosetta (ro zet'ta) Stone, 97 f., 
 
 193' 454 f. 
 Royal tombs of Egypt, 94 f. 
 
 Sal'a mis, 331 f., 371 
 
 Samnites (sam'nits), 514 
 
 Sa'mos, 298, 324 
 
 Sappho (saf o), 309, 354 
 
 Sar din'i a, 535 
 
 Sar'dis, 322 
 
 Sar^gon of Ak'kad, 122 f. 
 
 Sargon II, 152 
 
 Sassanians (sasa'ni anz), 675, 678 
 
 Saul (sai), 203 
 
 1 
 
Index 
 
 741 
 
 Saxons (sak'snz), 694 
 
 Schliemann (shle'man), 245 f¥. 
 
 Scipio (sip'i o), 544 ff. 
 
 Scopas (sko'pas), 406, 409 
 
 Scylax (si'laks), 186 f. 
 
 Seleucids (se lu'sidz), 448 
 
 Seleucus (se lu'kus), 445 f., 448 
 
 Semites (sem'its), loi f. ; traffic of, 
 103; religion of, 103 f.; art of, 
 1 23 f.; union of, with Sumerians, 
 I26f. ; struggle of, with Indo- 
 Europeans, 172 ff., 524 ff., 706 f. 
 
 Seneca (sen'e ka), 620 f., 654 
 
 Sennacherib (se nak'e rib), 1 52, 
 210, 212, 288 
 
 Sen ti'num, 5i4f., 543 
 
 Sep tim'i us Se ve'rus, 673, 675 
 
 Se ra'pis, 631 
 
 Se sos'tris, 80 
 
 Se'ti I, 94 
 
 Seven Wise Men, 320 
 
 Shadoof (sha dof ), 36 
 
 Shal ma ne'zer III, 211 
 
 Shf nar, Plain of, 105 f. 
 
 Sicilian (si sil'ian) expedition,385f. 
 
 Sicilian War, 533 ff. 
 
 Sicily (sis'i li), Greek colonists in, 
 289 f. 
 
 Sinai (si'm), 50, 59 
 
 Slavery, in Egypt, 67 ; in Greece, 
 298 ; in Rome, 566 ff., 669 
 
 Slavs (slavz), 706 
 
 Social War, 582 
 
 Socrates (sok'ra tez), 416 ff., 420 f. 
 
 SoKo mon, 205 f. 
 
 So'lpn, 303 ff., 342, 345, 355 
 
 Sophia (so fe'a), Saint, 688, 698 
 
 Sophists (sof ists), 357 ff., 370, 372, 
 
 415 
 Sophocles (sof'o klez), 353, 371 ff. 
 Spain (span), 594 
 Spar'ta, 283, 307, 336 ff., 347 U 
 
 401 ; fall of, 402 
 Spartan leadership, 394 ff. 
 Spar'tan league, 307, 392 
 Sphinx (sfingks), 50 
 Stesichorus (ste sik'o rus), 309 f. 
 Stilicho (stil'i ko), 692 f. 
 Stoicism (sto'i sizm), 478 f. 
 Stone Age, Early, 5 ff. ; Late, 14 ff., 
 
 221 f.; Middle, 9 ff.; in Egypt, 
 
 38 ; in Italy, 488 
 
 Stonehenge (ston'henj), 30 
 Stra'bo, 613, 661 
 Sudan (so dan'), 59 
 Sulla (sul'a), 425, 582 ff. 
 Su'mer, 108 
 
 Su me'ri an agriculture, 108 
 Sumerian art, 118 
 Sumerian calendar, in 
 Sumerian houses, 114 f. 
 Sumerian religion, ii2f. 
 Sumerian society, 119 
 Sumerian writing, 109 ff. 
 Sumerians, 107 ff.; union of, with 
 
 Semites, 126 f. 
 Sus^(so'sa), 189, 437 
 Swiss lake-villages, 20 f. 
 Syracuse (sir'a kus), 289 f., 344, 
 
 385 
 Syria (sir'i a), 448, 585, 643 
 
 Tacitus (tas'i tus), 654 
 Taren'tum, 517, 522f. ' . 
 Tasmanians (taz ma'ni anz), 2 f. , 
 Terence (terpens), 562 
 Tetricus (tet'ri kus), 676 
 Teutons (tu'tonz), 579 
 Thales (tha'l6z), 316, 318 
 Theater, Greek, 310 
 Thebes (thebz), in Egypt, 80, 86 f., 
 
 92, 94» 375 
 Thebes, in Greece, 284, 402 ff., 
 
 429 
 Themistocles (the mis'to klez), 
 
 328 ff., 338 f., 341 
 Theocritus (the ok'ri tus), 475, 616 
 Theodoric (the od'o rik), 695 
 Theodosius (the p do'shi us), 684, 
 
 692, 697 ; Edict of, 700 
 Thermopylae (ther mop'i 16), 329 ff. 
 Theseus (the'sus), 367 
 Thucydides (thusid'i dez), 419, 
 
 615 
 Thu'le, 471 
 Thutmose (thot mo'se) III, 84 f., 
 
 684 
 Ti be'ri us, emperor, 617 f. 
 Tiberius Gracchus (grak'us),576f. 
 Tibullus (ti bul'us), 659 
 Tigranes (tigra'nez), 585 
 Ti mo'the os, 474 
 Tiryns (ti'rinz), 237, 247 f. 
 Tl'tus, 627 
 
742 
 
 Ancient Times 
 
 Tombs of the Egyptian kings, 94 f . 
 Tours (tor), 7 1 1 
 Tower of Babel, 1 1 2 
 Towns, earliest, 26 f. 
 Tra'jan, 627 ff., 634 ff., 650 f. 
 Trasimene (tras'i men). Lake, 539 
 Tri bo'ni an, 697 
 Tribunes (trib'unz), 505 
 Triumvirate (tri um'vi rat), 587 
 Troy (troi), 239, 245 ff., 429 
 Turks, 713 
 
 Tyrants, Age of, 301 ff. ; civiliza- 
 tion of, 307 ff., 320 
 Tyre (tir), 434 
 
 Urfi las, 69 1 
 
 University, of Alexandria, 477; 
 
 Athens, 479 ; of Rome, 642 
 Ur (er), 126 
 
 of 
 
 Valens (va'lenz), 692 
 Vandals (van'dalz), 691, 693 
 Ve'nus, 502 
 
 Vespasian (ves pa'zhian), 609, 
 625 f. 
 
 Ves'ta, 502 
 
 Virgil (ver'jil), 616, 702 
 
 Visigoths (viz'i goths), 692 
 
 Wedge-form writing, 1 10 f., 189 f., 
 
 242 
 West Goths, 692 
 i.Women, position of, in Greece, 
 
 353 f- 
 Writing, phonetic, 41 ff.; pictorial, 
 
 40 ; invention of, 45 
 Writing materials, 43 f. 
 
 Xenophon (zen'o fon), 399 ff., 422 
 Xerxes (zerk'sez), 187, 190, 328 ff. 
 
 Yahveh (yava'), 206 
 
 Za'ma, 544 ff. 
 Ze'no, 479 
 Ze no'bi a, 676 
 Zeus (zus), 277 ff. 
 Zeuxis (zuk'sis), 411 
 Zo ro as'ter, 177 ff., 675 
 
 I 
 
! 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
A NEW HISTORY SERIES 
 
 By James Harvey Robinson and 
 James Henry Breasted 
 
 The old saying that '* a book reflects its maker's personality " 
 was never applied with greater truth than in the case of these new 
 histories by James Harvey Robinson and James Henry Breasted. 
 Never before has a course of this scope been offered for high schools 
 which, in addition to those essential qualities demanded of a text- 
 book, possessed in so large a measure such attractiveness of style, 
 such grasp of historical perspective, such farseeing breadth of vision 
 and scholarly thoroughness as is found in these two volumes for 
 high schools. 
 
 ANCIENT TIMES 
 
 By James Henry Breasted, xx + 742 pages 
 
 For the first year of high-school history. In subject matter as well 
 as in style the author's constant aim has been to make this book simple 
 enough to be put into the hands of first-year classes. It is nevertheless 
 planned to stimulate and interest all pupils of high-school age. The 
 book aims to present the career of man from the Early Stone Age to 
 the break-up of the Roman Empire in a connected story of expanding 
 life and civilization. The story is always as graphic and picturesque 
 as it is scholarly, and is enriched at every point by the results of the 
 most recent excavations and discoveries. The elaborate system of 
 maps and the full illustrative material, comprising eight full-page color 
 plates and over three hundred black-and-white cuts, set a new standard 
 for textbook illustration. 
 
 MEDIEVAL AND MODERN TIMES 
 
 By James Harvey Robinson. xii + 7go + xxxi pages 
 
 " Medieval and Modern Times," for the second year of high school, 
 which covers the history of western Europe from the fall of the Roman 
 Empire to the present, has been revised to bring the narrative down to 
 the close of the Great War. It places emphasis on the conditions and 
 institutions Mrhich characterized the life of their times rather than upon 
 events. Thus the student, instead of retaining a confused memory of 
 names and dates, is given a general knowledge of world history invalu- 
 able to him in interpredng the present. The exceptional full-page 
 plates and colored illustrations and the multitude of cuts from draw- 
 ings and rare photographs parallel the text in power to visualize the 
 scene and to interest the student. 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY Publishers 
 
REFERENCE BQOKS IN 
 HISTORY 
 
 Abbott : Roman Political Institutions 
 
 Asser : Life of King Alfred 
 
 Brigham : From Trail to Railway through the Appalachians 
 
 Brigham : Geographic Influences in American History 
 
 Callender : Economic History of the United States, 1765-1860 
 
 Cannon : Reading References for English History 
 
 Channing, Hart, and Turner: Guide to the Study and Reading 
 
 of American History (Revised and Augmented Edition) 
 Cheyney : Readings in English History 
 Dealey : Growth of American State Constitutions 
 Fess : History of Political Theory and Party Organization in the 
 
 United States 
 Hayes : British Social Politics 
 Hitchcock : The Louisiana Purchase 
 Keller : Colonization 
 Muzzey : Readings in American History 
 Myers : History as Past Ethics 
 Priest : Germany since 1740 
 
 Reinsch : Readings on American Federal Government 
 Reinsch : Readings on American State Government 
 Richardson, Ford, Durfee, and Lutz : Syllabus of Continental 
 
 European History (Revised Edition) 
 Riggs : Studies in United States History 
 Robinson : Readings in European History, Volume I 
 
 Volume II 
 
 Abridged Edition 
 Robinson and Beard : Readings in Modern European History 
 
 Volume I 
 
 Volume II 
 Thallon : Readings in Greek History 
 Tuell and Hatch : Selected Readings in English History 
 Webster : General History of Commerce (Revised Edition) 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY Publishej 
 
 I 
 
AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE 
 SPIRIT OF TODAY 
 
 The Revised Edition of Muzzey's " American History " is of im- 
 portance in that it marks the bringing to date of a book which for a 
 number of years has been more widely used than any other American 
 history for high-school and college classes. It is the product of that 
 rare combination of qualities, — sound scholarship, a discriminating 
 sense of historical value and proportion, and a strong, vivid style that 
 makes history as interesting as a storybook. It presents the facts of 
 our history in a lively and continuous narrative without prejudice or 
 favor, and it is distinctly modern in tone and outlook. 
 
 Features of this book are its emphasis on the westward-moving 
 frontier as the most constant and potent force in our history and 
 the unusually large amount of space devoted to the history of our 
 country since the Civil War. Special emphasis is placed on political 
 development and on those factors in our national growth which are 
 most vital from the standpoint of today. 
 
 Professor Muzzey shows in the trends of yesterday the early devel- 
 opment of our national problems of today. The events of the World 
 War and the period since the armistice are treated with the author's 
 usual keen sense of proportion. The text is brought down to 1920. 
 
 By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Columbia University 
 X + 537 -f xlvi pages, illustrated. 
 
 READINGS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 One hundred and twenty-five selections, comprising extracts from 
 state papers, private journals and letters, and early chronicles, the 
 speeches and writings of public men, and newspaper narrative and 
 comment. A unique feature is the frequent presentation of several 
 extracts on a single topic. 
 
 Edited by DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY 
 xxvii + 594 pages. 
 
 JINN AND COMPANY Publishers 
 
GUIDE TO THE STUDY AND READ- 
 ING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 (Revised and Augmented Edition) 
 
 By Edward Channing, Albert Bushnell Hart, and Frederick 
 Jackson Turner, Harvard University 
 
 izmo, cloth, xvi + 650 pages 
 
 In the revision of this standard manual for teachers and librarians, 
 the authors have made substantial additions to the original material 
 and have brought the bibliographies down to date. The arrangement 
 adopted in the previous edition has been retained and differentiates 
 three main fields of information : Parts I and III, suggestions on the 
 reading and teaching of history; Part II, select lists of books and 
 other materials, classified under bibliographical aids, general works, 
 geography, sources, and illustrative works ; and Parts IV-V, one 
 hundred eighty topics in American history with specific references. 
 
 Parts IV-V have been enlarged to include Western and other 
 sectional developments, social and economic history in general, and 
 historical developments from the Civil War down to the present. 
 The scholarship and accuracy of the Guide make it invaluable. 
 
 READING REFERENCES FOR 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 By Henry Lewin Cannon, Leland Stanford Junior University 
 i2mo, cloth^ 559 pages 
 
 Exact references to some two thousand of the most useful and 
 accessible works on English history will be found in this book. The 
 plan of the work includes : first, a bibliography of all the books 
 referred to ; second, topics with specific references covering the whole 
 field of English history, chronologically divided into sections, with 
 special sections for colonial history. Each section contains references 
 to accessible sources, to modern works of a nature especially suitable 
 for high-school students, and to modern works of a more advanced 
 character; a summary of subtopics; and bibliographical references 
 to facilitate further reading. Two appendixes give references to 
 historical fiction and to poetry. 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY Publishers 
 
 riAR -0 !3/,.3 
 
p 
 
 r