y''^^ € % CORNELL UNIVERSITTY-, LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE EN'DO"WMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY . HENRY WILLIAMS SAGEvv Cornell University Library 59.B82 3 1924 027 764 996 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027764996 ANCIENT TIME^ 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. PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY; CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL LANCUAC. T '..' ' V. ' "'• VERSITY OF CHICAGO; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF BERLIN 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 EURpPEAN HISTORY, PART I COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON AND JAMES HENRY BREASTED ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3 '6-7 GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS ■ BOSTON • U.S.A. 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 man in all its manifestations — society, industry, commerce, religion, art, literature. These things are so presented as to make it clear how one age grows out of another, and how each civilization profits by that which has preceded it. The story of each great race or nation is thus clearly disen- gaged and presented in period after period ; but, nevertheless, the 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 Europe, without a serious gap. A symmetrical presentation of the career of man requires adequate space for the origins of civilization and the history of the Orient, as these two subjects have 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 vi Aticient 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 o-reat vividness. This method he has already introduced into the ancient-history chapters of Outlines of European History^ Part / where it has demonstrated its availability. The same method has been employed in illustrating this ancient history. Th 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 fiv 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 thCj 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 g. 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 simplific'ation. 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. viii Ancient Times It will be noticed that some of the author's treatment of the ancient world in Outlines of European History, Fart J, has been retained here. These portions had already been looked over by Mr. A. F. Barnard of the University High School of Chicago, and he has also very kindly read the proofs of the remainder of the volume. The chapters on the Babylonians and Assyrians have been read by Professor D. D. Luckenbill, and that on the Hebrews by Professor J. M. Powis Smith, and to their kindness I am indebted for several suggestions. The sections on early Christianity and the Church have likewise been looked over by my colleague Professor S. J. Case. To all these friends iind colleagues the author would here express his sincere thanks. It has been very gratifying to the author to be able to include in a book of this character the six charming etchings made expressly for the volume by Mr. George T. Plowman. To Mrs. William T. Brewster he is also indebted for the beautiful water color of the Plain of Argos (Plate III). Besides photographs furnished by the Egyptian Expedition of The Uni- versity of Chicago, many illustrations have been contributed by foreign scholars, to whom the author would here express his thanks, especially to Bissing (Munich), Borchardt (Cairo), D^chelette now alas ! a sacrifice of the great war (Roanne), Dorpfeld (Athens and Berlin), Hoemes (Vienna), Koldewey (Babylon), Montelius (Stockholm), Schaefer (Berlin), Schubart (Berlin), Steindorff (Leipzig),-and some others, who have kindly furnished photographs and sketches. The author is also espe- cially indebted to Messrs. Underwood & Underwood, for per- mission to use their unrivaled series of Egyptian, oriental, and Mediterranean photographs as the basis for a number of sketches: Figs. 23, 122, 128, 153, 159, 163, 171, 174, j^j^ 176, 177, 178, 179, 189, 190, 203, 221, 260. No more vivid impressions of the places and scenes where the men of the early world lived and wrought can be obtained than by the use of these photographs in stereoscopic form. Teachers who make the Underwood stereographs a part of their equipment will Preface ix find that their teaching gains enormously in effectiveness. The author desires to thank also Mr. E. K. Robinson of Ginn and Company, without whose experienced assistance and unfailing patience it would have been impossible to complete the unusual and elaborate illustrative scheme of this book. To the pub- lishers, who have unhesitatingly supported this expensive and laborious illustrative equipment and to the remarkably skillful and efificient proofreaders and printers who have solved the numerous and extraordinary typographical difficulties involved in so large an illustrative scheme, the author would also offer his hearty thanks. JAMES HENRY BREASTED CONTENTS PART I. THE EARLIEST EUBlOPEANS CHAPTER PAGE I. Early Mankind in Europe 1. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress i 3. The Early Stone Age . ..... 5 3. The Middle Stone Age .... . . . . 9 4. The Late Stone Age .... . . . 14 PART II. THE ORIENT 11. 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 1 1 . 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 . . . loo 14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and Early S,truggle 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 FAGE VI. The Medo-Persian Empire 21. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion . i?' 22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster 176 23. Rise of the Persian Empire : Cyrus i79 24. The Civilization of the Persian Empire (about 530 to 330 B.C.) 182 25. Persian Documents and the Decipherment 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 32. Decline of Oriental Leadership ; Estimate of Oriental Civilization . . ... . . 213 217 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 . . . . . 22c 35. The yEgean World : the Mainland . . . ,,g 36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World ■> , , • . . ^44 IX. The Greek Conquest of the ^Egean World 37. The Coming of the Greeks .... . _ ^, 38. The Nomad Greeks make the Transition to the Settled ^'^^ ^5^ X. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 39. The jEgean Inheritance and the Spread of Phoenician Commerce f 40. The Phoenicians bring the First Alphabet to Europe 270 41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs 271 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 between 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 35° 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 378 58. Third Peloponnesian War and Destruction of the Athenian Empire 3^5 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 Ancietit Times CHAPTER I'AGE XVIII. The Higher Life of the Greeks from the Death OF Pericles to the Fall of the Greek States 61. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting . • • 4°6 62. Religion, Literature, and Thought 413 XIX. Alexander the Great 63. The Rise of Macedonia _ . . .■ 425 64. Campaigns of Alexander the 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 . 4^^ 69. Inventions and Science ; Libraries and Literature . 466 70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion . . .475 71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of Hellenic-Oriental Civilization; DecUne of Citizenship 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 74. The Early Republic : its Progress and Government . 499 75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic and the Con- quest of Italy . ... 5" XXIII. The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy AND THE Rivalry with Carthage 76. Italy under the Early Roman Republic 77. Rome and Carthage as Commercial Rivals XXIV. The Roman Conquest of the Western Mediter- ranean World 78. The Struggle with Carthage : the Sicilian War, or First Punic War 79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic War) and the Destruction of Carthage 520 524 533 535 549 Contents xv CHAPTER PAGE 1 XXV. World Dominion and Degeneracy So. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean World 8i. Roman Government and Civilization in the Age of Conquest . . . 553 82. Degeneration in City and Country . . . . 563 XXV-I. 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 Caesar . . ... . . 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.-14A.D.) 6oi 88. The Civilization of the A.ugustan 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 Re-\?olution 673 xvi Ancient Times CHAPTER PAGE 97. The Roman Empire an Oriental Despotism . ■ ■ ■ °T1 98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of Christianity ... ^^^ 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. i Restoration of an Egyptian Vase of the Pyramid Age Frontispiece DP- II. Glazed Brick Lion from the Wall of Nebu- chadnezzar's Palace 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 o Map of Europe in the Ice Age ■ ■ Egypt and the Nile Valley to the Second Cataract . 30-37 Egyptian Thebes . . . . ... . • . . 07 The Ancient Oriental World and Neighboring Europe before the Rise of the Greeks . . . iDO-ioi Map of Sumer and Akkad, later called Babylonia 106 Map ofSMineveh '54 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.) 188-189 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 jEgean by the Greeks . . . . 252-353 I. Pre-Greek Civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean World till 1500 B.C. II. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Greek Conquest of the jEgean 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. . . 288-280 Map of the World by Hecatseus (517 B. c.) ,jq 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 (43TH.C.) . . ..... 3^^.3^5 T. 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 ]I. 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 u. 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 li. 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 Canna: .... . . -54° 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.) . 55^-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.) in. Expansion of Roman Power from the End of the Hannibalian Wars to the Beginning of the Revolution (201-T33 B.C.) IV. Expansion of Roman Power from the Beginning of the Revolu- tion to the Death of Csesar (133-44 B.C.) Plan of the Battle of Pharsalus . . 593 Map of Rome under the Emperors 622 XX Ancient 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 Cassar to the End of the Two Centuries of Peace (44 B.C.-J67 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 Mam'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 fention and ever seen an automobile. Their fathers lived during most of acquirement " of 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 enough, we would reach a a™fg"g^ point where no one could build a stagecoach or a wagon, because followed by national 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 life of earliest 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 and 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 elephants, with shaggy hair two feet long (Fig. 10,7), 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 suificient 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. A^'ith 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 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 percussion) 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 edge hy grinding- {Fig. iS,^-) 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 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 ^"dusesto 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 now call the Stone Age, more than fifty thousand years ago. From this point on we can hold in our hands the very stone 9. Career t tools and implements with which early men maintained them- traceabl^ir selves in their long struggle to survive. By the long trail of surviviijg ° °° ^ ° stone impk 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 hand 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 aftpr the other. Section 2. The Early Stone Age Until a short time ago it was supposed that human history 10. Moder was comparatively brief. Moreover, everyone took it for man's'vast' granted that the earlier period of man's past had left no sur- ^s^ ""*^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 Ancient Times and his fist- hatchet II. The Early Stone Agehunter Y\G. 3. A FLINT FlST- 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 o£ 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, .^-j'). 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 centuiy 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 in 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. Limit: went on, this savage hunter of prehistoric Europe continued Early stoi for thousands of years the uncertain struggle for survival. He ^^^ ""^ 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. Comir 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 □ \ nui-E 30 J " Loess I . »- First ^ Descent /'1st of the / Warm ■^'^'^y Interval 2d Warm Interval Human bones found as deep as SO feet below the surface of the earth Third Descent^ 3d of the / Warm Ice^ Interval Earlj .^\% Stone '^^^ Age Fourth Descent ^4th of the / Warm Interval gU Late go ^'°"' Not less ttian 50,000 years Sketch Map of Europe in the Ice Age and DiAGRAur 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 -which 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 IMcn of the Old Stone Age accepts a date over one hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago for the earliest stone tools, which he also places in the third warm interval Early Mankind in Europe 9 the southern edge of the ice is marked by lines of bowlders car- ried and left Aere 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 ei their crown of snow, pushing through the green of his forest stone Age abode and crushing 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 the huge 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 modem 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 cave* (Fig. 4), where he and his Middle Sto descendants continued to live for thousands of years. We can Age man ;t .' new pressu imagine him at the door of his cave, carefully chipping off the chipped edge, and i edge of his flint tools. He has left the rude old fist-hatchet far troduction behind, for the hunter has finally discovered that hy pressure with j^""^ iJJ,pi, a hard piece of bone he can chip off a line of fine flakes along ments the edge of his flint tool and thus produce a rnuch finer cutting edge (Fig. 5) than by chipping ■^Ith 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 pressure-c\ap^&A edges lO It Times were sharp enough to cut and shape even bone, ivory, a"" especially reindeer horn. The mammoth (Fig. lo, 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, 3-5). 16. The Mid- dle Stone Age hunter's new weapons and skin clothing 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- Gaume) 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 *oi rubbish containing human remains, as in Fig. 9. (Drawn from a photograph by Professor Osborn) 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 in Europe II horn or ivory 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 modem 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, d) for food that the bones which they tossed about their camp fires gathered 17. Life oi the Middle Stone Age hunter Fig. 5. Flint Tools and Weapons THE Middle Stone Age 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 pressure. 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 ini- provement over the earliest method by striking (percussion. Figs. 2 and 3) 12 Ancient Times in masses forming a layer in some places six feet thick a covering a space about equal to four modem city lots o fifty by two hundred feet. Among such deposits excavators have found even the bone whistle with which the retummg hunter announced his coming to the hungry family waitmg 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 (i5) 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 td 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, little 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 IwnlAgf ^ Age hunters could already carve (Fig. 7), draw (Fig. 10), and fnglTdr^w^ ^^^"^ P^'"* ^^'^ considerable skill. A Spanish nobleman, in- lnjjs',and vestigating a cavern on his estate in Northern Spain, was at one time digging among the accumulations on the floor of the paintings 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 I toros ! " (" Bulls I bulls I "). 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 with 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 sometinies far m * K 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 .ff f or holding the butt of the spear-shaft, as in Fig. 6. The throwing- stick and the bow were man's earliest devices for propelling his weap- ons with speed 19. Relig and life h after, in t Middle Si Age 14 Ancient Times down at the bottom of the deep accumulations which gathered over them (Fig. 9). 20. Retreat The signs left by the ice, and still observable in Europe, would dawn^of the lead US to think that it slowly withdrew northward to its present LMe Stone 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 Fig. 8. Ivory Needle of the of to-day. They had, Middle Stone Age meantime, maintained Such needles are found still surviving in steady proOTeSS in the the rubbish in the French caverns, where , . r . ■, j the wives of the prehistoric hunters lost Production of tools and them and failed to find them again twenty implements with which thousand years ago. They show that these to carry on their Strug- women were already sewing together the , ^ . , skins of wild animals as clothing S^^ 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.^ Section 4. The Late Stone Age 21. Distribu- The Late Stone Age remains of man's life are discovered in°g°r°emahrr" widely distributed throughout a large part of Europe. In our Age mlnTiT* ^^^^^ °^ ^"'='"' ''emains we must regard Europe as a whole, 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 percussion) 1 Called Paleolithic Aee Middle Stone Age (chipped stone edge made by pressure) t by archa:ologists. Late Stone Age (stone edge made by grinding) | '^^"^^^ffijilo''-'''''^ ^^^ ^^ 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 rocks 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, § 15) above. Five burials were found by the excavators in the layers B, C, If, 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 Fig. 10. 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. /, reindeer and salmon — hunter's and fisherman's talisman; 2, bison bull at bay ; 3, 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 Mankind in Europe 17 ^C2^---^CI^-\ \ ^"V^^i^i^-AtailM^i-uJC^P*^^ p> Q 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. 1 1) 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 were both fishermen and hunters. They 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 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 I r [I (iiTif I" II iiinirf ff(f< K J > ^ ^ tM,X' M fci \ i> , . . mmi t „:li 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 bacic near the spine (see itpper white ring on sl^eleton). 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 fillino- 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, coverintr th,» ot.„i <. .. i , 11 TT 1 r J , ^ Jsh-eieton of the bull. Here he was found some years ago (1905), and with h' were the flint arrowheads that had killed him. His skeleton, still v, ing the marks of the flint arrowheads (A, B, C), was removed and s I up in the Museum at Copenhagen 18 Early Mankind in Etirope 19 Denmark. Each of these shell-heaps is to-day a storehouse of 23. The shell- remains from the life of these earliest Norsemen. The shells Denmark and and bones reveal how extensive was their control over the wild '^}>^]^_ reveia- Ufe about them. The marks of animal teeth on many a bone show us how the jackals of 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, tions 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 24. Indus- shell-heaps, show us that these early Norsemen had already bytheTshen- gained knowledge, probaljly from the South, of the hardening ^^P^ °^, . quality of clay when exposed to fire, and they were now able earliest /«;- to irtake rude kettles of burned clay, which we call pottery, Europe; 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. 20 Ancient Times ■ nrtant achieve- innovations of the Late Stone Age. Another impo^ d'scoverv ment marked the beginning of this age. This was h,ufQfig that the edge of a stone tool might be ground upon ' precisely as we grind a steel tool at the presen y- shell-heaps we find the earliest heavy stone axes mtha. grouna edge (Fig. 1 6, 5). They made the man of the Late Stone Age vastly more successful in his control of the world about him. 25. Tools of His list of tools as he went about his work vi'as now almost ston^ Age 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. 26. Effective- It is a mistake to suppose that such stone tools were wholly ness of stone i i ■ rr • a . . -.^ , . tools crude and ineffective. A recent expenment 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-sLx pine trees eight inches in thickness. Indeed, the entire work of getting out tlie titnber and huildi7ig a house was done by one mechanic zmth stone tools in eighty-one days. It was therefore quite possible for the men of the Late Stone Age to build ZvPtw" f '"^"^' ^""^ '° ^"^''^ ^ degree of civilization far above that of savages. 27. Swiss This step, however, we arp ^^^ ui ■J^-^r'Sr shell-heaps of DenmJr.. ^LZoTV\lT^ ^'""^ ''' Stone Age earliest wooden houses are to be fo / "''^"' ^''^^^^ °f the we must now go. Here the house-buildin ^''''^^'"^^"d' """^'^^^^ Late Stone Age, desiring to make themseWesTaTT '"' °^ ^^ by man and beast, built their villages out over thT s "^ ^**^* They erected their dwellings upon platforms suddoTV*^^" 1 ported 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,/) 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-dweiiers able shelters, and they were furnished with plentiful wooden 22 Ancient Times besides furniture and implements, wooden pitchers and spoons, pottery dishes, bowls, and jars (Fig. ik, 1,2,3)- Although roughly made without the use of the potter's wheel (s o)-< unevenly burned without an oven (Fig. 4^)) pottery added much to the convenience of the house. The waters under the settlement teemed with fish, which were caught 29. Domesti- cation of wild grains "and beginning of agriculture ; flax and weaving 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 S -520) with a bone hook through a trapdoor in the floor of the house, or snared in nets which the possession of flax as shall see, enabled them to make. While he had thus not ceased to be a fisherman and hu the lake-dweller now discovered other sources of food V ' thousands of years the women of these early ages had ered the seeds of wild grasses to be crushed between stones and made into rude cakes. They now gradually lea 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 barley, Sid^ ' wheat in the Late Stone Age Fig. 16. Part of the Equii;ment of a LATfe Stone Age Lake-Dweller This group contains the evidence for three important inventions made or received by the men of the Late Stone Age : first, pottery jars, like 2 and 3, with rude decorations, the oldest baked clay in Europe, and i, 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 earliest 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 were barley, wheat, and some millet.* This 1 Oats and rye, 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, d) 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 litde 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 .werp 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 m the Or.ent than in the Late Stone Age in Europe; but itTs' Ttm a question just how the early Europeans received these things from the Or! 1 (See § 49). orient. 2 The draft horse, one of the most important influences in the historv civilization, came in comparatively late, from the Northern Orient as we v, n see (§247). ' ^"'^ Early Mankind in Etirope 2 5 The strong limbs of the once wijd ox (Fig. 12), however, 33. Earlie; made him well adapted to draw the hoe of Late Stone Age "p^io™""° man across the field — a hoe, to be sure, equipped with two '="""'^^" handles (Fig. 44), which thus became the earliest plow, while the ox 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 ^ J,"^ " ' ' 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 jfff'of°^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, as 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, tween'"""" agricultural life and the wandering, nomad life. The impor- nomads and ^ance of understanding these will be evident when we realize townsmen ^^^^ ^^^ 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 tureln^ate' ^0 leave 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, which did not 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 earliest toWns m in Europe ; Surviving, they prove to us the existence of the earliest towns emnaen^""" Europe. For near every great group of stone tombs there must 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 Fig. 1 7. 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 settlement 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 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 shown by the jjjgjj^ sueffest to US pictures of whole communities issuing from stone build- &b r ingsofLate the towns on feast days and marching to such places as the Stone Age Europe 39. Festivals and athletic contests 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-d silent and solitary, they stretch for miles across the fields f 1 One of the chariots later used on such a course may be seen in Fi? Early Mankind in Europe 29 the French peasants, a kind of voiceless echo of forgotten human joys, of ancient customs and behefs 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 Late stone 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 deerhom 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 deerhom 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 victiin full in the back. It must have been driven by a heavy bow with full force, for it is deeply embedded and doubtless killed the man at once. (Photograph furnished by the great French archaeologist Dechelette, who him- self fell in battle not long after sending this photograph to the author) /v. 0'}, ::i' ''ill I \! < /' ' M O 3° Early Mankind in Europe 31 in the Late Stone Age Exchange and traffic between the communities already existed. 41. Com- This primitive commerce carried far and wide an especially fine intercourse variety of French flint, irecognizable to-day by its color. The amber gathered on the shores of the Baltic was already passing frorri 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 Fig. 21. Avenues of the Late Stone Age in Northern France (Carnac, Brittany) The tall stones mark out avenues nearly 2 J 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 me^tho"dTo£ only exchange of one kind of wares for another kind. In all ^gg^|u°"p Europe there was no writing, nor did the continent of Europe ever 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. 43- Wars of the Late Stone Age 32 Ancient Times But the intercourse between these prehistoric communities was not always peaceful. The earthen walls and wooden stock- adjes 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 FjG. 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 . Early Mankind in Europe 33 no farther. They were still without writing, for making the records of business, government, and tradition ; they were still without metals ^ with which to make tools and to develop indus- tries and manufactures ; and they had no sailing ships in which to carry on commerce. Without these things 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. 100). 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 43. Histori following man's /r^^zjA^nV 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 southeastern Europe about 3000 b. c. and passed like a slow wave, moving gradually westward and northward across Europe. Tt 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 Txiestem 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 nearer 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. s 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 Skction 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 ? Did he have anyone to teach him ? Describe the lite of the Tasmanians in recent times. Desciibe 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 Eariy 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 eariiest settiements 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? :^/'-JK'-».i , .1J> J?i3^ ^^^^^:;' V ,T^^ 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. 46. 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 36 Ancient Times 47. Its soil, shape, and area iiG 23 An Egyptian ^i/^z300^ 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 17 point of the Delta we begin to see the heights on either side 48. The lov of the valley into which the narrow end of the Delta merges. Mgh^desert These heights (Figs. 2 4 and 69) are the plateau of the Sahara Des- pi="eau 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 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. 38 Ancierit Times 49. The ■ Stone Age Egyptians "^^T^^^ As we journey on let us realize that this vaUey can tell us an 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 covenng the graves of the earhest ancestors of the brown men we see in the Delta fields. When wfe 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 sk thou- sand years, and these stone _ tools, , which he used so long ago, tell us that he lived all his life like the Late Stone Age men of Europe, without having known anything about metal. Barley and split wheat ^ are some- times found in the jars around the body (Fig. 25), for the dead were supplied with food by those who buried them. These and fragments of linen found in such graves show us from what country the first grain and flax came into Europe. These ancient Nile peasants were therefore watering their fields of fiax 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 split 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. Fig. 25. Looking down INTO THE Grave of A Late Stone Age Egyptian An oval pit 4 or 5 feet deep, excavated on the margin of the desert (cf. Fig. 38, /). The body is surrounded by pottery jars once containing food and drink for the life hereafter. Implements of stone placed with the body are also found still lying in the grave The Story of Egypt 39 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 fndTaxes^" 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 tile pictorial to the pho- netic stage 53. Second step leading from the pic- torial to the phonetic stage ^ J that it might (Fig. 27), but the exploit is merely so suggested tnat ^ ^ be put into words in a number of different ways. ^^^^, Egyptian kings of six thousand years J^. P^'P^^^^e 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- age." ^ The second step then naturally followed; that for example, became the sign for the syllable it might occur. By the same process \K 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 is, the leaf. ^ " leaf " wherever 1 The author is of course obliged to use English words and svU w and consequently also signs not existing in Egyptian but devised f^ '^^'"f' y1*i*v%/^T^ei-#-T"oi-ir\*\ ^ cms demonstration. The Stor)> of Egypt 41 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, lika ^. The Egyptian scribe gradually learned many groups of such syllable signs. Each group, like 'SM^ %j, represented a word. Writing thus became to hirri a large number of sign- being a word ; and a series of such groups p ^ >& ^^ & 1^ ^ ^g » Fig. 28. Example OF Egyptian Writ- 54. Advan- ING I$r THE PiCTO- *^g? °f. P""^ rial Stage netic signs Interpretation: Above is the falcon, symbol of a king (cf. the fal- con on the shield of Running Antelope in Fig. 27), leading a hu- man head by a cord ; behind thehead are six 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 55. Syllable lake). The whole tells ^'gns and the picture story that ^^"-g™"?^ the falcon king led captive six thousand men of the land of the Harpoon Lake (§51) •groups, each group formed a sentence. 1 See the word " beauty," the last three signs in the inscription over the ship (Fig- 41). 56. Alpha- betic signs, or letters 42 Ancient Times 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. Ihere were twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt = smooth breathing, like h in "honor." As vowel, see below = y (in Greek times it was used as vowel) = guttural, pronounced in back of throat ; not used in English = w Oater H was also used ; I both signs as vowels, see below) = m (later r was also I used for m) = 1 in late times (origi- nally r or rw) ni ^= = cll (like ch in German "ich") = kh (like ch in Scotch " loch " or German "Bach") = s (originally of slightly different soundfrom the preceding) = sh = q (in Greek times also used for k) = ]£ = g = t = th = d ah 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 -write the vowels. This will be clear by a study of Fig. 30. Just as the consonants w and y are sometimes used as vowels in English, so three of the Eevp- tian consonants came to be employe'd as vowels in Greek times The first letter (smooth breathing) was thus used as a or « ; the second' letter [y] as i\ and the fourth (to) as u 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 Jz;§-«-group habit had not been too strong for the scribe, just as the tofer-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 little vegetable gum and then '" ^° P^" ' — ' A/VWV\ AWW\ AVVVV\ 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" (Uterally, "hungry") ; as it de- notes a person, the Egyptian adds a Uttle 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 /-«-; S §5 o ; S E S s «■!* Si*" ^ uj b,-° "a *j ^ K --^ o &g^ 3-SS.^ 54 a «3 < < CO W Oh S w w w £ ^ H o H g w K n <: o "" O (U O " rt ^ uj O CO P Oh c0 o OJ CCJ P . ^ >« ps TJ ^ -* c >> o V en a, u U 13 O ,C ■S 1 -a o H u w H S u 2 H o ^ ccj ^ (U 1 .^ o ; -a 'o « •^ bD i-" ^ 4J -a " C nl 3 M Z B 0) cj .a ^ ■ CCJ • — • ca , u cvj ^ CJ T3 (5 S -3 ., c " s CCI rf! O )U ri '^ cu c 3 O ■M O -^i ^ PJ (U '•^:^l ' -a 13 ^ .V. ^. '^'b ii "« ™ •- - Co "^3 ccj bb_cj ^ ^3 ID . i^l S S B e -a o O 5 rt to ct e -^ C c w U £ C o ' Sa hn^ rS S C J3 U -p T3 ¥ 'S "^ 6 W-2 I I— 1 4-» 1-1 0) o ■[i, "S OJ c ■' & ,3 SmS a -g Id ^ biD 11 ' to .£ s >s ' C^ .5 -i B o 6-73 0) ™ bo m -y ^ V. si S? .S S « 5^ rt ^ S bb" tj t^^ ,0 » OJ S OJ 5 S ^ ?. ft o O to °' 2 lU >< o _i ■" - "^ T3 ^ -5 bO S I H a «J "l^ ■- ^ 5 rt o M (u bo-^ ,2 nJ cA ho 3 C ■ -is. 'S *3 'E >< C i> > rt W fH 4j .tl^-?^. ?, ?T) "_§ ..•^i „rt S U nix >. a ^ (U • " o 3 bO o 13 * ci 6 ^ 'o !>> u •£ J! .. bo CJ a aJ o .Q "5 ^ -, ^y i- ^^-^DOiJNttJaj o oj bo — - .1 " <1 ri .£ ft"" -^ >< ca S o o « bo " a G 3 "^ a o _^ P ^ Tj -5 a to O Ti "-da bo a 2 a td B ■ ^ .2 tu u to 'S « ^ 3 kJ H i to N .^ y a ? n- 11 ft to 3 OJ bOr^ s *" 3 ■!« ta " 4-> -P. B 3 'G pH « ri^ rt 55 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 3000 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, Chephren) (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. It 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 tier 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 i finished. (This scene will be found in color in Outlines of Europ. History, Part I, Plate I) was d cabinet- makers Fig. 49. Early Egyptian Glass Bottles and their distribution from baby- LONIA 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 tomb-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 tornb 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 no 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 heavv 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 6j These people in the gayly painted picture of the market 89. Three place on the chapel wall were the common folk of Egypt in sodety in th the Pyramid Age. Some of them were free men, following Pyramid Ag their own business or industry. Others were slaves, working the fields on the great estates. Neither of these humble classes owned any land. Over themi 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. W^ 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 Ag valley in the Pyramid Age. Here on this chapel wall again '" '^'^ ^ome 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 before 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 thdr 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 91. The The noble drops one hand idly upon the head of his favorite noble's house ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^j^j^ jj^g Q^j^er beckons to the chief gardener and gives directions regarding the new pomegranates which he wishes to tiy 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 b,e 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 tureand his dinner. The lotus blossoms on the handle of his carved spoon, and his wine sparkles in the deep blue calyx of the same flower, which forms the bowl of his wineglass. The 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 we 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 decoration The Story of Egypt 69 Fig. 51. Vii.LA 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 94. Portrait sculpture 93. Painting trained artists. Indeed, we can find, in one comer of the wall, Tn tombs and the picture of the artist who painted the walls in one of the temples 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 difficult ties of depicting, on a flat surface, objects having thickness and roundness. Animal figures are drawn, however, with great; lifelikeness (Figs. 43-46), but perspective is almost entirelyl 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 statues 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 j 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 f) Such an arrangement of roof windows, called a clerestory (dear- story), later passed over to Greece and Rome, and finally sug- gested the nave of the Christian basilica church or cathedral 95. Architec- ture : the earliest clerestory O *. 6 ^ a '-' a •4-) u cq j3 o E b O W o m S 8° H 1) ^ < Q "S § 2 J S ^g V < >i I>^ '~^ rt o C >< 4-> .^ ^ Ph 3 ■M a o J2 *rt < O w p. (U g o 0. Q g M o ^ '? J3 ffi c "2 3 Q ■o 5 -o £ •5 o o - 'O i^ 75 o "-■ S »^ "J iJ >^ ^ " ;^ to 3 ■;: rt c . (U '-' (i>.2 o ti"" 2''? ESS I O Q S O 2 w '-• U 3 S &H O -^ .2 •« I § -G ,^ (u +J .£ > o aj S IJ d 4J o >^ •« +- H4 flJ ? The Story of E.gypt n (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 roicnd col- umns with beauti- ful capitals ; these were ranged in long rows, the earliest colonnades (Fig. S&), dating from the twenty- eighth century b. c. They were pecul- iar to Egypt, for when our study 96. Earliest colonnades fiG. 55. Restoration of the Clere- story Hall in the Valley-Temple of Khafre (of. 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 out 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, i). 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. 54) . 72 Ancient Times ^pys^s^- iz^^^iig^^j ir^'- :J,Va^,y5:^^^-?^ i, 'I 'it^ |l| Fig. s6. Colonnades in the Court of a Pyramid-Temple (Twenty-eighth Century b.c). (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 earhest-known plumbing, was installed in this building (§ 81) 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 was 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. 55). 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, i) and what they finally came to be. Give the date of the Pyramid Age, and tell why it was important. CHAPTER III 98. The Nile voyage begins the story of egypt: the feudal age and the empire Section 8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age 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 An,, 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 Ib.s-headed god stands behind him pen in hand ready to record the verdict of the balances. Behind him is a monster readv to devour the unjust soul, as his heart (symbolized by a tinv ia^^ in tl, i ffv. a scalepan, is weighed over against right and tmth (symbolized bv IfZl ' , . ^"^ right-hand scalepan. The scene is painted in wijr cots on'/ap' s'^'sue^: roll IS sometimes as much as go feet long and filled from betrinnino- 7' ^ -1 magical charms for the use of the dead in the next wodd hI ' f 1° '""^ J'* name for the whole roll, the " Book of the Dead." ' *^ "'°'^*™ 74 The Story of Egypt 75 Fig. 57. 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 chff. 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" (§ loo). 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, carrjnng the steamer at times close under the scarred and weatherworn cliffs (Fig. 69). As we scan the rocks 76 Ancient 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 call feudal. 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. Drama drama of Osiris — a great play in which the life, death, burial, *" P°e "7 and "resurrection of Osiris (§ 69) were pictured at an annual feast in which all the people loved to jain. It is our earliest 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 toard 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 1 5 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 ()f' the Pharaoh's court in greeting to the sovereign with the 78 102. Books of science Ancient Times 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 paraUel Hnes the Hebrew Psalms. It is the Fig. 59- Ancient Egyp- tian Astronomical In- strument example qf this of oldest surviving 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 learned about 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 (5) 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 thdse in geography, have been lost. Along with this higher progress, the Pharaohs of the Feudal 103. Admin- A 1 ■ 1 1 x-- r T istration, and Age much improved the government. Jtvery tew years they irrigation made census lists to be used in taxation, and a few of these ^h?Fcudai 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 Nilfe 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 s.traits 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'^^d as far south as the Second Cataract (see map, p. 36)- ^nd thus end'^'f ttit"'^ added two hundred miles of river to the kingdom of Egypt. 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. Kamak — 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 v^st 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. 81). A walk around the Temple of Kamak 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. \\^e 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 A^e had never seen a horse (§ 80), and this is the first time we 1 These three ages are (i) the Pyramid Age, about ,000 to ,. hons 6-7); (2) the Feudal Age, flourishing 2000 B.C. (Section' .?-'^- ^^"^ Empire, about 1580 to 1150 B.C. (Sections 9-11). "" *) ; (3) the 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 apd 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 standing army made up chiefly of archers and heavy masses of 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 108. Egypt a military empire 82 Ancient Times mean a group of nations subdued and ruled over by the most 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 relief 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 Kamak Temple (Fig. 64), jvhich stood in the once vast 109. The city of Thebes, is like a great historical volume telling us much Qi|en°Hat- of the story of the Egyptian Empire. Behind the great hall shepsut, the (Figs. 66 and 68) towers a huge obelisk, a shaft of granite in a woman in single piece nearly a -hundred feet high (Fig. 65). It was '^'°^ 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 97J 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 Kamak 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 efficient and successful ruler this first great woman was. Fig. 62. Part of the Fleet of Queen Hatshepsut loading IN THE Laxd 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 ebony 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 As we examine the obelisk of Hatshepsut we find around the base the remains of stone masonry with which it was once walled in 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 obhterated, including The 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. 63) was the first great general in history, m. The , XT 1 r -r^ 1 r 1 x-i • campaigns of the Napoleon of Egypt, the greatest of the Egyptian conquerojs. ^ xhutmose ill ' (1501- ,- 1447 B.e.) A B Fig. 63. Portrait of Thutmose III, the Napoleon of Ancient 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 lines) 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 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 carrieti 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 112. Temple architecture 113. The sur- roundings of the Empire \{ temples at Thebes Section 10. The Higher Life of the Empire The wealth which the Pharaohs captured in Asia and Nubia during the Empire brought them power and magnificence un- known to the world before, especiaUy 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 Kamak, 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. 2 7 1 , i"), 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). Such temples as these at Thebes were seen through the deep green of clustering palms, among towering obelisks and colos- sal 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 Kamak Temple at point marked X in plan (p. 8i). We look northwestward across the Temple and the river to the western cliffs (cf. plan, p. 8i). 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 m 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). 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. 5i), but its mate has fallen and broken into pieces. The shaft is SJ 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 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 I I ' I I I "i T T~ ,-M-M^ _Mk 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 7^ 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, i 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 114. Painting the sculptor and the painter. The' colonnades, with flower capi- ?„ the'^tem"'' 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. Fig. 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) b< -^S g o >^.2 O " £ " !Z O t/5 g «« o D t/3 Its ,_, o -S°s H s W H T3 bo CO o isH^ O 5 > u (U 1) " o 1- w U u s u " S S c H O O M > b z ^■"■b " O Q H^ rt o P < m w O u K en u ° ■" -■3 3 re n ci « M- « •" 1^ °-c O. 6 O u 3 C J3 O S OHM g H - — ' s UK'S ^ H 35 OS o H O re " ° S3 § X eu Iz; O u S S ^ " ?; H re ^ HI o c/l (H U ■a 2 o 00 1-1 5 '-' < re o >, „ J W H o c u -- K pq rt ^ bo O 04 -o 1^ S g" (U W l-i S H :s 0) ^ w a 8.S^ CO Pi ii b ^-g-s ^ o ^5 c t> Q t; rt o fl o -s P< M 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. 6g 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 modem 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- us. Tombs rious and splendid of the Egyptian emperors, still stand on mVn onhf 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 veiy furniture which these great men used m their houses was put into their tombs. In a neighboring valley was recently found the tomb of the parents of Amenhotep iU s queen. Their beautiful villa among the Theban gardens was filled with gorgeous furniture which their royal son-m- 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 B.C. 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- hous^ hold, still survives (Fig. 74). The Story of Egypt 91 These tombs show us also how much farther the Egyptian 117. Religion has advanced in religion since the days of the pyramids of '" ^ mpire Gizeh. Each of these great men buried in the Theban cemetery looked forward to a judgment in the next world, where Osiris (§ 6g) was the 'great judge and king. Every 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 {AA] 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 thchame of Thutrnose 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, Ii8. The religious revolution of Amenhotep IV (Ikhnaton) y2 an Ancient Times 120. Ikhni ton's hym: to Aton, tl sole God nd he began a new and remarkable chapter in the reUgious history of Egypt by the attempt to destroy the old gods of /Egypt 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 Aton, 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 Amen'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 "Horizon of Aton." It is now called Amarna (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 th? 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 Empire A new faith like this could not be understood by the common \i2i. ikhna- people of the fourteenth century B.C. The country was full of Chome" "^^ 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 remarkable group of over three hundred letters, part of 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 show 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 northern 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 122. Ikhna- ton's troubles abroad ; the Amama letters 94 Ancient Times 123. Death of Ikhnaton; partial resto- ration of the Egyptian Empire, last great power of Age of Bronze ; coming of 124. Foreign mercenaries in the Egyp- tian army ; invasion of the North- erners ; fall of the Empire 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 III (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 us the history of early Egypt in three epochs: the Pyra- mids of Gizeh and the 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 rock. Taken from here and con- cealed near by, the bodies of many of the Pharaohs, although long ago stripped of their valuables by tomb robbers, have survived and now lie in the National Museum of Egypt at Cairo (Fig. 72) 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 remertiber, however, 126. Final significance of the Nile voyage 96 Jinctent itmes that, preceding these three great chapters of civilization on the Nile, we also fountj here the earlier story of how man passed from Stone Age barbarism to a civilization possessed of metal, writing, ^nd government (§ 66). On the other hand, as we Oval containing name of Ptolemy in hieroglyphics PTOLEMAIOS I linrir r ri rii ruiii; p] (/ and j) = P in both names (^ (//) = T in one name X, J (/// and #) = in both names ^^^~7;^ f/F'and s)=:Jj in both names v\ (V/) = M in one name (V/I) (IX) = AI in one name ^ S in one name Oval containing name of Cleopatra in hieroglyphics KLEOPATRA 1 z 3 i e e 7 8 » A = K in one name = E in one name (6 and 9) = A in two places (7) = T in one name = R in one name 0] (-) - { unpronounced signs placed at end of all feminine names Fig. 76. 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 (§§657,981, 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'^ Egyp- -' 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 Greelc 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 two 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 (Ptoiemaios) and Cleopatra. These Greek spellings (in otir 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 S ought also to be an oblong rectangle. To ChampoUion'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 (III 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. 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 ChampoUion 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). ChampoUion 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 ChampoUion. 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 now much to learn about the Egyptian language and writing, but Champol- lion's marvelous achievement laid the foundations of a new science now caUed Egyptology, which has restored to the world a lost chapter of human history nearly three thousand years in length. Thus the monuments of the NUe 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 teU 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 the extent 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 12. 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 Li What monument did Champollion next use? Describe it (Fig. 207). 131 • Water boundaries of Western Asia; moun- tainous north, desert south CHAPTER IV western asia: babylonia Section 13. The Lands and Races of Western Asia The westernmost extension of Asia is an irregular region roughl)' included within the circuit of waters marked out by tin Caspian and Black seas on the north, bv the Mediterranean and Red seas on the west, and by the Indian Ocean and th' Persian Gulf on the south and east. It is a region consisting chiefly of mountains in the north and desert in the south. Th^ earliest home of men in this great arena of \A'estem Asia is i 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 overtrovvn but thi vegetation soon fades. The dark camel's-hair tents of these wandering shepherd; are easily carried from place to place as they seek new pasturage (S t -ia) The' live on the milk and flesh of the flocks. Western Asia : Babylonia lOl This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the 132. The Fer- open side toward the south, having the west end at the south- betweeif'^'^" 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 comer 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 caiions 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 ,.,..,. . . . ... Arabian des- weeks of ram in rtiidwmter; hence it is a desert very little ertandthe of which is habitable. Its people are and have been from the noSad"^ 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 poHtical, 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, wliom 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 the^ nomad northern wilderness is gone, they have been constantly drifting ^"^tT th^ f'^^" '" 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 I 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 (§1155). 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 Ind'indus-^ keen-eyed desert marauder looks with envy across the hills tpes among . -^ the Semitic 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 own 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 tOi 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 tmged 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 settiing in Palestine, on the western end of the Fertile Crescent, where we find them in possession of walled towns by 2500 B.C. (Fig. 125). These predecessors of the Hebrews in Palestine were a tribe called Canaanites (§§ 293-294) ; farther north setded 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 Phosnicians (§ 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 : Babylonia 105 At the same time we can watch similar movements of the nomads at the eastern end of the Fertile Crescenf, along the lower course of the Tigris and Euphrates (Fig. 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. 77. 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 is the dwelling of the Gftrman Expedition still engaged in excavating Babylon (Fig. 11 1) 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 were 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 playing little or no part in the history of the P E B S IAN GULF 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 fifty 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 107 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 t™e?riy unable to connect the earliest of these mountain peoples with mountaineers any of the great racial groups known to us. We find them shown on monuments of stone as having shaven l^eads 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 3009 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 Century Atlas confines the desert to the right bank of the Euphrates and does not admit it to Mesopotamia I The usually accepted idea's 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. 146. Their material civi- lization 108 Ancient Times 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. 78. Ancient 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 [i). 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 plover, 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 109 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 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 upper 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 scratched in rude pictures (of. Fig. 26) with the tip of a reed to'rkf writing on a flat oval or disk of soft clay. When dried in the sun °"<='3y 148. Trans- formation of Sumerian pic- ture signs into cunei- form signs, and resulting loss of the pictures 1 10 Ancient Times 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 1 ^ ^ 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 II in IV VI rii VIII Foot turned around in ^ r-> ^ t?^ Dunkey U ^^te^ Bird; turned over with feet to the right ^ "H H+f-, which was once a star, or cq^, 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 cuneiform"^ three hundred and fifty signs, but each such sign represented ^j^jlaieti" 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 n, 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- Sumenan scnbe began a new month with every new moon, calendar; and he made his year of twelve of these moon-months, y^^r-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 and 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. 33), 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. x 112 Ancient Times iSi. Sume- The Sumerian system of numerals was not based on tens, andweSSf but had the unit sixty as a b.asis. 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 mina, divided into sixty shekels. The mina had the weight of our pound, and traffie, 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) ceiTter^'Tts'"^ rose a great tower (Fig. 104). It was of baked brick, for there temple-mount ^^g jjq 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 steeple ancient town of Nippur (Fig. 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. 271). 153. The low But the tower was not itself the temple of the god, althoueh temple build- i , j i • o ' a ing beside he had a shnne at the top. Alongside the tower there was a the temple , gj^a^^^ jo^ t&xa^X^ 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 113 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 draSre '"the forming an inclosure surrounded and protected the whole Priesthood ° - '^ and Iheir (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 "nd 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 "ndbelSs^ town, under the court of a house or the floor of a room f°^J^^ (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 s SS "^^^ r 's f jT^I f^^^^^^ \ Fig. 81. An Early Babvlonia.n Burial 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 Imed with sun-dried brick, forming a rough vault. The usual burial was not m a cemetery but was in the house under 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.i Such a town usually stood upon an artificial mound (Fig- 83), which it is important for us to examine. (S^SlcToLZZ '"'' "'" '" ''^'^"'"'^ ""'" *^ ^'^^X'-" Empire Western Asia : Babylonia "S 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. 149), 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, letters, bills, receipts, notes, accounts, etc., \^hich 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 158. The formation of ancient city mounds ■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 160. Con- tents pre- served in such ancient mounds Ii6 Ancient Times buUdings the documents cov.ered 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 pubUc 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 ago (§ 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, stene, 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) "7 ii8 Ancient Times i6i. Early Sumerianart: 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 m 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. to6, A). We caU 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 ovra. 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. 85. Silver Vase of a Sume- rian City-King This vase, the finest piece of metal work from early Babylonia, is adorrted 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- riari 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 Fig. 86. An Early Sumerian Cylinder Seal Instead of signing his name to a clay-tablet document, the early Sumerian rolled over the soft clay a little 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 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 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 City-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 the'^Sumerln marching out at the head of troops heavily armed with shield city-kingdoms ^nd 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 Sumerians 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 i[ oami 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 and Semites (§ 135) early began to settle north of Sumer. This region called Akkad (see map, p. 106), where the Two Rivers are 123 Ancient Times closest together, was on th.e 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). 166. The first Semitic . triumph ; Sargon of Alckad and his line (2750-2550 B.C.) Section i 5 . The First Semitic Triumph : THE Age of Sargon 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 ikkadians once wandering shepherds were obliged to drop their unsettled ^'^°P' Sumenan hie 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 nomads had never before attempted to manage the affairs of setded 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 carriecf^ to a wonderful degree of perfection (Figs. 90, 91, and 106, A). Fig. 89. A Kixg of Akkad storming a Fortress — the Earliest Great Semitic Work of Art (about 2700 b.c4 King Naram-Sin of Akkad (probably one of the sons of Sargoal, § 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 Sumericm art of two centuries earlier (Fig. 87) 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 sumirians"* Norman and English mingled in England. 'On the streets and ^9<^ ^'''=^- m 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. 85), 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 with 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 Sumer and town life which they had adopted, the line of Sargon declined. Akkad (from ^ jj jj^g Sumerian cities of the South were able to recover the twenty- . j j i, u fifth to the control of the country not long after 2500 B.C. Headed by the centli^y b'.c.) ancient city of Ur, three of the old Sumerian 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 ndw began to answer those natural questions regarding life &iiiS- and ^'^'^ death, which always rose in the minds of early men. They Akkad: the finally told of the wonderful adventures of the shepherd Etana, source of ^ Ufe ; the when his flocks were stricken with unfruitf ulness, and no more ana s ory j^^^g ^&x& born. Etana then mounted on the back of an eagle (Fig. gi) 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 str'^nge mystery of death led to the story of the fisher- and eternal . , - ,,,, 1 r-. i . , Ufe : the ™an Adapa. When the South-wmd goddess overturned his Adapa story ^.q^j^ 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,^), Gn'^^in^h failed to gain immortal life. Among all these heroes, indeed, there ^'OT ; the 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. 85), 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 - V, the great deluge (§ 155) in a large ship. Then the gods carried them both away to blessedness. But not even the kings 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. 175. Return of Semitic supremacy ; rise of Babylon 176. Rise of Hammurapi ^nd suprem- acy of Babylon 177. Hammu- rapi, the organizer Section 17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the Age of Hammurapi and After 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 earlieJ his Western Asia : Babylonia 1 29 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 th(3usand 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. thm?dkt'r^' They disclose him to us sitting in the executive office of his *'°" ^""^ 1 -nil ■ , , • preparation 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, nav'igation"^^ 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. I30 Ancient Times l8o. Hammu- rapi's letters : feasts and the calendar l8l. Hammu- 'rapi's letters : delinquents 1S2. Hammu- rapi's letters : justice and religion 183. The code of Hammurapi The king is much interested in his vast flocks of sheep, as if the nomad instinct had not altogether vanished from the 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." But he warns the governor that all taxes otherwise falling due within the next month are not to be deferred 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. Many a petitioner who has not been able to secure justice before the board of judges in his home city is led in before the king, confident of just treatment; and he is not disap- pointed (Fig. 92). The chief of the temple baiters finds that royal orders to look after a religious , feast at Ur will call him 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. With his eye thus upon every corner' of the land, alert, vigorous, and full of decision, the great king finally saw how necessary it was to bring into uniformity all the various and sometimes conflicting laws and business customs of the land. Westeiyi 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 2000 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- H*;„^Pr"p°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) 132 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 ilames 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 att, six hundred years later than Fig. 89. Fig. 93. The Laws of Ham- murapi, THE Oldest Surviv- ing Code of Laws (2100 B.C.)* Westem'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, Sammurapi'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 ^"J™ l^' from town to town, we're able to penetrate far into the sur- Hammurapi's 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 ^nti'nl' °™ of Syria and beyond the passes of the northern mountains. \v°s"f^nAsia 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 Tiines i88. The While the Babylonian merchants were a powerful class and cente'rof*^ 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 oans ^^ ^ 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 in^the A'fe°of Babylonian life, even in religion. The temples, as we have Hammurapi gaid, 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 and Ishtar ... o > 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 (§§ 171-173) 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). ;L'A mShtds ^"'°"S *^ ^^"^^^' g''^"ted by the gods was the ability to of reading foretell the future. This art we call divination, and the Driest the future, or v j.- i -, i. . i-'xn^oi, divination who practiced it was a divmer. The skilled diviner could inter- pret the mysterious signs on the liver of the sheep (Fig. 94) Western Asia : Babylonia I3S 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 w;ere 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 flooj. 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 e.g.) Tlie surface of tlie 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 ipj. Edu- 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 of 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) cation : Babylonian scljoolhouse 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 flat 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 H n r y -- . Fig. 95. An Ancient Babylonian Schoolhouse in the Days OF Hammurapi (about 2100 B.C.) 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 cUy- 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 (C), 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 g feet high make the single wedges neatly enough, the master set him at work on the wedge-groups forming the signs themselves. Lasdy, 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 1 37 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"from°* 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 BabyloniMi 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. Scuip- 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 The decline in art was perhaps a prophecy of what was to come. For the Babylonian nation which Hammurapi had so splendidly organized and started on its way did not survive his death. The mountaineers of the East, whom Hammurapi had driven out of the Sumerian cities (§ 176), again descended upon the Babylonian plain, as the Sumerians had done so long before. They 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 Baby- lonian towns, they led with them a strange animal, for which the Babylonians had. no name. They called it the " ass of the East." 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 eastern highlands triumphed (twentieth century B.C.). Their rule was rude and alinost 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. As we look back over this first chapter of early human 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 I These eastern mountaineers (called by the Babylonians Kassites) who brought the horse into Babylonia did not domesticate him themselves. They received him in trade from the North, 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 } 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 J 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 ? 199. The situation of Assur,, the earliest capital of Assyria CHAPTER V the assyrians and chaldeans Section i8. Early Assyria and her Rivals 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. 1 00), 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 pushed up to the wall from the left. It carries a tower, as high as the city wall, and Assyrian sharpshooters (archers) in the top of the tower are picking off th? defenders of the wall. Within the ram 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 obser- vation tower with a protected 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 200. Climate, much more invigorating than the hot Babylonian plain. It had products of ■many fertile valleys winding up into the eastern and northern Assyria 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 formed the chief draft animals, and the horse was unknown in the beginning, ' just as it was originally unknown in Babylonia (§ 146). Here flourished an agricultural population, little given to other industries or to trade. In this last particular Assyria was again in sharp contrast with Babylonia. Bv ^000 B.C. a Semitic tribe of nomads from the desert-bay 201. Found- -^ -^ . _ - . mg of Assur Fig. 96. The Tigris and the Proji- 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 German Expe- dition which completely excavated the ruins had settled at Assur,' as their kindred of Akkad were doing at (3000 b.c.) the same time in the Plain of Shinar. As Semites they spoke gumerian a Semitic dialect Hke that of the Semites of Babylonia, with influence Fig. 97. The Aramean City of Samal, One of the Western Rivals of Assyria* 142 Assur north and south 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 Babytonil"' from the north and west. There in Asia Minor were the hostile ™<^ *^ TT- • • • r Hittites Hittite communities, some of which were venturing eastward to alternately ; the Two Rivers. .More than once Assur was ruled by Hittite pansionof lords, only to fall back again under the control of Sargon, 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 {D, E, F). These houses built of sun-dried brick have disappeared, but the castle can be restored. Restoration of the Castle (II, I, J, K, 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. 100), received influences both from the Hittites in Asia Minor (§ 353) and from Egypt. The columned porches (/('and L) in front of the palaces were built on a Hittite plan with columns suggested by Egyptian architecture. Hittite art in relief (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 203. The Western rivals of Assyria : Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arameans Assur was still an inland power, much like modem Russia, and 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 Fig. 99. 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- pying Syria. They soon held the entire west end of the Fertile Crescent and cut off Assyria from the sea. After i'2oo 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. loi). Among these Aramean kingdoms of Syria the most powerful was Damascus (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 modem civilized states, although they were not organized as a single nation, they were the great commercial leaders of the age. 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. Aramean Weight found IN Assyria Wide, spread 204. 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 Aramean Aramaic. Fifteen of these Aramean lion commerce weights were found at one place, showing the common presence of Aramean mer- chants in the Assyrian markets (§ 204) 146 Ancient Times 205. The Aramean merchants spread the first alphabet in Asia '■fW . , P=: .4 nt Fig. ioi. 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 tablet, 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 roll 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 ihk. 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 2o'6. Assyrian the citizens of Assyrian speech. When an Aramean received a side by side in cuneiform tablet recording business matters in the Assyrian business and 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. government 148 Ancient Times 207. Com- plete triumph 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 Cr*cent 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. i o i ). 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 Arameansj 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 00 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. 101 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 'r \^ 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 The sacred stories and symbols of the gods which had of Assur 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 basalt 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. 8i). 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 1 5 1 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 of love, 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 fombJofthe vaults were found fragments of massive stone coffins, two ""^"es 'of Assur 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 e.g., Assyria was 212. Con- again pushing her plans of westward expansion. Damascus, westward combined with the other Western kingdoms, made a desperate ^JPf"^" resistance, only to be slowly crushed. When at I^st 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. expansion ria 152 Ancient limes 213. Sar- In the midst of these great Western campaigns of Assyria, Assyriat?^^- ^'^'^^ ^^ ^^® besieging the unhappy Hebrew city of Samaria 705 B.C.) (•§ 206), 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 : !=""K™"., 72.-705 B.C. I r^! ■ • • • 70S-68.B.C. Esarhaddon bii-bf& 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 <=°nq"ered A I.- L 1 r . . ^""Liui. by Assyria 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.) 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 SCALE OF FEET 5 — i3o5 2*K>. ,^00 j^ 5000 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 I'^i The Assyrians and 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 finally 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 femperors 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 - , J • 1. of communi- office. He mamtamed a system of royal messengers, and m 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 ^mpire 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 nlany 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. IS6 Ancient Times "^ /n "V^ '-^^ >r~ Fig. 105. 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 curling waves -j 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 JSi.-i>] F"- 00 a w ." *o 1> vo t .2 c O 0) a o rt 6 3 .S t-i < 3 < o V 00 CO o S2 rt K 5 "5 (0 ■a a a M O 4J- « U-i ^ 3 o 1-. o ^ E O 4j rt 2 ■s bo o Tj o c u rt 1— I B •< u rt -Q rt s ^ ;^ , ^ B rt ^ V ■< J3 rt _W) J3 -C (3 w W rt c +J M-l W 3 U OH !S f^" o 2 •£ o s rt c a bo "o o J3 V J3 CA KH 'K J3 U ^ •a ID C ^ V M-i W 1^ o ■a ,C rt ^ J= o ^ S^ 1 3 V4-I o 3 S [B ^ T3 'i 4) S. 1— ( i-i aj 4J u z , ■ r r ^ ■IS.72ZX (604- emperors, now (604 b.c ) began a reign or over forty years — a 551 B.C.) 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.). 235. Magnifi- In Spite of long and serious wars, the great king found time cent build- j i i i ings of and wealth to devote to the enlargement and beautification of BabJ-lon" 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 1 The- three great chapters of history on the Two Rivers are : i. Early Babylonia (thirty-iirst century to twenty-first century B.C.; Sargon I about 2750 B.C., Hammu.i;api 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 s. fourth period of Semitic supremacy, the triumph of Islam in the seventh century A.D., after the death of Mohammed (§ H54). ' 1 "1 ] i 1 1 r , v*. ' w o < •< C C M E CO C aj oj o « ris "• S -c 'o rt *-* ^ o ^ ^ ■" . Ta v- ^ OJ f oo C ^ -t 1-. o o o ^ ^^ Mm c U OJ 4H ■3 c ''^ rt "" " c/1 cfl O O .5 o rOT3 J3 S m (U 2 ^ cd bi3 u , : !C " CJ !U J;- O '^ N -eg S j3 c u &. _ , 3 [d T3 u . j3 O ho 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. I id), for it was dedicated to this goddess. Behind it lay SCALE OF FEET liJoo 23o« 3o5o 430O 5^ 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, i66 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 splendors of his city. These roof gardens 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 inti- pressed Herodotus (§ 567), Fig. 1 10. The Ishtar Gate of the Palace Quarter of Babylon in THE Chaldean Empire (Sixth Century b.c.) This gfite, 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 Fig. 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 fias become familiar to all Christian peoples as the great city of the Hebrew captivity (Section 31). Of all the glories which made if world renowned in its time, litde now remains. The excavations of the Germans 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 of the German Expedition' (in the foreground) have just uncovered part of the pavement of Nebuchadnezzar's splendid Festival Street, or processional avenue, which connected the palace and the Ishtar Gate (Fig. no) with one of the great temples. Beneath all these works of Chaldean Babylon (Section 20) should lie the remains of old Babylon of Hammurapi's age (Section 17); but Sennacherib's de- struction of the city (§ 214) swept away the older Babylon. Since the first day's work shown above, sixteen years of excavation at Babylon have uncovered almost nothing older than the city of Nebuchadnezzar (Fig. Ill), who have been uncovering the city since 1899, are slowly revealing one building after another, the scanty wreck- age of the ages. To them we owe the recovery of the Festival Street and^-the Ishtar Gate (Fig. no), but the Ishtar Gate is practically the only building in all Babylonia of which any impres- sive remains- survive. Elsewhere the broken fragments of dingy sun-baked-brick walls suggest litde of the brilliant life which once ebbed and flowed through these streets and public places. 1 68 Ancient Times 2yj. Civiii- The Chaldeans seem to have absorbed the civilization of Cha°ide°an 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°a"tro[ogy 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 . . , , , the planets and Satum) were especially regarded as the powers controlling the fortunes of men, and as such t\\€ 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 Oreeks 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 The Assyrians and Chaldeans 169 level of civilization attained by Assyria. Nevertheless, the 240. The Chaldeans themselves fancied that they were restoring the "evlvd of civilization of the old Babylonia of Hammurapi. The scribes the past 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 '^'^^ the 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 2 1). 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 time? 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 earned 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- lonia 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? What 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 German 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 V.I the medo-persian empire Section 21. The Indo-European Peoples and THEIR Dispersion^ 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. 1 1 2). 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 beforcthe fires blazing on these altars. 1 Section 2i 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. 171 172 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 Euro^an"*^"" great white race, which we call Indo-European. We can perhaps and Semitic j^ggj 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 oh 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 settlernents 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, tween the two was largely made up of the struggle between this southern Semitic Eurooean '™^' which issued from the Southern grasslands, and the northern and Semitic Indo-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. 1.12) 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 (U m JJ :3 ho 174 Ancient Times 245. Tri- supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world under the Eur^o^pean''^ Greeks and Romans (Sections 37-98). This triumph was ac- the''i°ido- companied by a long struggle for the mastery between the mem- European bers of the northern line themselves. Among them the victory line , .. moved from the east end to the west end of the nerthem 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. Modem an?thiir°^'^ Study has not 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, mclud- ing, of course, our own English, as we shall see. ation*^of''' Before they dispersed, the parent people were still in the the indo- Stone Age for the most part, though copper was beginning to parentpTopie '^^'"s i"; 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 him not only for riding but also for drawing their wheeled carts. The ox already bore the yoke and drew the plow, for some of the tribes had adopted a settled mode of life and cultivated grain especially barley. Being without writing,' they possessed but little government and organization. But they were the most gifted and the most highly imaginative peopll 01 the ancient world. i^ v^i^v. parent people 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- tlj^indo" °^ toms became more and more marked, until wide differences European 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 Euirope ; 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 y EAST English German Latin Greek Old Persian Tokhar East Indian and AveStan (in Central Asia) (Sansknt) brother bruder frater phrater brata pracar bhrata mother mutter mater meter matar macar mata father vater pater pater pitar pacar pita 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 df 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 eastern wing of the vast Indo-European line as it swings southward and comes into collision with the right wing of the Semitic line, 176 Ancient Times Section 22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster It is how 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- (§ 133)- Ws call them Iranians, and amon^ them were two ^ 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 Eastern 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 tlieir name to tlie 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 Medb-Persian Empire 177 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) . ' Empire the Persians, northwestward in the general line of the mountains threatens to the Black Sea region. The front of the Indo-European east- (Semifc" em wing was thus roughly parallel with the Tigris at this point, ^^''5''°"'^ 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). As 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 I 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. Thus the faith of Zoroaster grew up out of the struggle of 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). Zoroaster went about among the Iranian people, preaching his new religion, and probably for many years found but little 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 fould 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 mf ntioned above, fragments of his teaching have descended to PeSln Mbie 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 No people became more zealou^ followers of Zoroaster than 257. The the group of Iranian tribes known as the Persians. Through th^^p^era?ns* them a knowledge of him has descended to us. At the fall of ^aditi^"''-^"'^ 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 ' . . ,,,.., . r T^i / ofAnshan One of their tribes dweUing in the mountains 01 tlam (see organizes - map, p. 100), a tribe known as Anshan, was organized as a *ibe^''hi^to"a litrie 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 Persian army 260. Cyrus conquers the West The overflowing energies of the new conqueror and his peasant soldiery proved irresistible. The Persian peasants seem to have been remarkable archers. The mass of the Persian army was made up of bowmen (Fig. 113), 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 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 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 The Medo-Persian Empire 1 8 1 eastern sky. Without an instant's delay Cyrus struck at Crcesus 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 litde 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, Babylonia whose name in the Book of Daniel (see Dan. v) is a household (Chaidea) 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 1 82 Ancient Times 262. Collapse of the Semitic East before th^ 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 .^gean, 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 L, :,.:,: .^^'^ colon- ndred royal empty P m - >« J! .tl 5= ■^ ^ ° " ■B " -O ■" ^^s;« rouni near unde lup. ^- , — TJ c/l 13 S ■" o t- o J3 " j; a, w t/1 -S g o " CL, « I.H L^ J3 CrJ "^ o_, ; w 'yrus dy o the dthe in OS u o c n U -es-^^. ii. a ^1) o n .a-ii -a U s ■^ c „ o rt « o w O. B o^^ »A si r ^ E s iM i j; S >> 6 c «o^ o 5 (Z '2 -S ^ X 0) rt +J ■t-' H fM g I. -a V ortant the re exande ordere tf >■ 6.H "^ K bo G ■" J3 c ■B « ^ 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 . , of roads ^nd 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 1 88 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 ■^j*^ Fig. II 8. 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 cliff, 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. 115), 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 Achasmenian 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 ^gean Sea. Thus the Persians brought to Europe the barnyard fowl so familiar to us. , X90 — ^ -; — I The ancient' Elamitd ,wx,agros Mountains 274. Capital (see map, p. 100), was tft ^ ^-.csraence and capital (Fig. 204). r^sldencls 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- lecture 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. 1 1 6) 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- 27<5- The ,„.,_, , , value and zation which they found on the Fertile Crescent has been place of of the greatest scientific importance. It was the documeiTts ^ents"n°he' 1 It is very noticeable that the Persian architects did not adopt the arch from ^^^ ^^ Babylonia. On the contrary, each door in the palace of Darius (Fig. 204) is cuneiform topped with a horizontal block of stone, copied from Egyptian doors. Ancient Times Ionia and Assyria are forgotten 278. Grote- fend recovers the sounds of the first Persian signs '(1802) 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- X When Aramaic had displaced the Babylonian and Assyrian '"'"""^Baby, languages (§ 265), there came a time when no one wrote any more clay tablets or other records in the ancient wedge-writiRg.^ 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. Before 1800 a.d. travelers in Persia had brought back to Europe a number of copies of cuneiform inscriptions which they had found engraved on the ruined walls of the Persian palaces (Fig. 1 1 6). 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. 119). These were the first Persian inscriptions to be read in modem 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. Other scholars, especially in Germany, were able to discover the sounds of nearly all the other signs in the Persian cunei- form alphabet. Meantime a gifted British officer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, while he was stationed in Persia,, had succeeded Jn collecting far more Persian inscriptions than were available in Europe. Among them was the great Beh'istun inscription ' The latest cuneiform document known is dated 68 B.C. : ■ 279. Rawlin- son's de- cipherment of Old Persian cuneiform (1S47) ifT^m £T K> 'Tr t-x>ll x\ III 1\ I-M 11 }\ ^i T KT Vf K- m :M \6n v\ £r K- 'fs- <;< tianity (§ 1064). In matters of religion, as in many other things, the Persian 288. Far- Empire completed the breakdown of national boundaries and competSion 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 2T. 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 tgach ? 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 ancient 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 ? What 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). 'rL"!£'^j:i^ga^ ^'§^jit@ 3g^g^-*Krifeai8iiS^^ ^SEiiii ^ ^ PALESTINE The Ijaiid of the Hehrews SCALE OF MILES 5 i^j 2U 30 40 50 55 lo Assyrian Empire Countriee paying tribute to Assyria Kingdoms of Israel and Judah Philistines PhoenicianB Desert a b i a n 3 e r t \ 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 so-uthern 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 H ebrews 290. Char- acter of Palestine 198 Ancient Times productive. The entire land is without summer rains and Ts 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), but these were early seized by the Phoenicians (Sections 39-40). Palestine tlius 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 end, the Semitic nomads from the desert-bay (reread Section 13) mingled with the dwellers in the northern mountains. The Northerners, chiefly Hittites from Asia Minor (§§ 351-360), left their mark on the Semites of Palestine. The prominent aquiline nose, still considered to be the mark of the Semite, especially 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 ^gean 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 peaceful competition in the markets of Palestine, so the armies of these nations also met there in battle. The situation of 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 expedience of little Belgium in the conflict between Germany and France in 1914. Egypt held Palestine for many centuries (§ 108). Later we recall 291. Mixture of races and civilization in Palestine before the Hebrews possessed it ; Babylonian writing 292. Pales- tine, the great battle- ground of the early Orient 200 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 littie prospect that they would ever long enjoy freedom from foreign oppression. 293. The Hebrew invasion of Palestine (about 140C- 1200 B.C.) Section 28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine and the United Hebrew Kingdom The, Hebrew's were all originally men of the Arabian desert, wandering with their flocks and herds and slowly drifting over into their final home in Pales- 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 were 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. 1 22. Brick Storehouse Rooms thought to have been built by he- BREW Slaves in 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 Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 20 1 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 prodiiced 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. 123. 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 1 225 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 ^-'' ^sf?^'-:^^^^&s^a-.' -\i^"- FiG. 124. 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 are now such mounds as this 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. 296. Foun- Fortunately for the Hebrews, Egypt was now in a state of Hebrew decline (iioo B.C.) (§ 124) and Assyria had not yet conquered "he'fest king' *^ ^^^* (§ 208). But a Mediterranean people caUed Philistines (headpiece, p. 252, and § 379) had at this time migrated from the island of Crete to the aea plain at the southwest comer of The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 203 Palestine (see map, p. 196). By iioo b.c. these Philistines fonjied 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., "^2 ^^:.?3Ka'i.,£^M 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 y.ears 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 sho.w 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 Philis- 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 ^. David ^^^m^^^^^^^S^ ^"^ ^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ (about 1000- ^^SS^^S^S^^wif^^^ff^^m ability of David, one 960 B.C.) BK£iPs2^5^5!S^-Si^s»«i«s6S^Sw| ,, , . i»MBM«iiR^»*«j»uij>s*iaiKiisrwKr3Kc_««!::^ q£ 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 i>Ki?:.rf,,j»w^<*«s- -' - - ---• ^s king of the South, ^Sfi,^ -'•^•^^^/.'■l^ till his valor as a sol- fffT /^ "i -k^fr**^ J '^ victones StL Ji A 'lii^jjixi:*^-*^ on all sides won him Fig. 126. Letter of the Egyptian also the support of Governor of Jerusalem telling of ^^ more prosperous THE , Invasion of Palestine by the North. The Philis- tines were now beaten Hebrews (Fourteenth Century b.c.) The letter is a clay tablet written in Baby- lonian cuneiforni by the terrified Egyptian governor, who begs the Pharaoh for help, saying : " The Khabiru [Hebrews] are talcing' the cities of the king. No ruler remains to the 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) 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. J til IB.'piif 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 arourid 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 divrsir^of^ of the king of Egypt, and he delighted inK)riental luxury and his kingdom display. He removed the portable tent which the Hebrews had 93o°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 t^oJIebrew king- tweenthetwo doms, and sometimes fighting. Israe l, as we call the Northern 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, Judali,_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 w%ys, 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." Hebrew kingdoms 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"nc*of™e the North, had had Naboth, one of his subjects, killed in order °'"^^'' '''^^^ ■' of Yahveh to seize a vmeyard belonging to Naboth, and thus to enlarge 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 pnests of 208 Ancient Times 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 ^he 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 ?iad 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 T:hat 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 Orient '209 We can imagine the surprise of the prosperous Northern 304. Amos Hebrews as they suddenly met this rude shepherd figure clad the corrupt in sheepskin, standing at a street corner addressing a crowd J^orthem** 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 toward 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 ' leam 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 Aramsean 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 town 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 /i 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- ' While the Hebrews had been deeply stirred by their own the^NorVem Conflicts at home, such men as Amos had also perceived and kingdom proclaimed the dangers" coming from abroad, from beyond the by Assyria ^ . * • t i j (722 B.C.) border's of Palestine, especially Assyna. Amos mdeed 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 212). 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. 307. Yahveh, The national hopes of the Hebrews were now centered in Palestine" in the helpless little kingdom of Judah, which struggled on for conflict with ^yg]- g^ century and a quarter more, in the midst of a great of Assyria 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.- 308. Isaiah It was in the midst of somber doubts like these, in the years and the siege , . j_i i • , , ^ of Jerusalem before 7 GO B.C., that the pnncely prophet Isaiah, m one great bj: fennach- Qfation 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 211 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 daundess Isaiah lifted them from despair like the triumphant call of a trumpet. He told them that Yahveh ruled a kingdom far larger Fig. 1 2g. 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 line 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 He, 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 Ancient 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.) Fig. 1 30. 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 thousa,nd 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 while 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"- Je^- melancholy prophet Jeremiah, who had foreseen the commg temple of the destruction of Jerusalem with its temple of Yahveh. He strove in^EOT' 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 Egypt at Elephantine (see map, p. 36, 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- SJ^^j^g^^^f^'^ 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 ^Tgreat unanswered questionings, of which the echo still reaches us : p° phe™f the exile By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea we wept, When we remembered Zion [Jerusalem]. Upon the willows in the midst thereof 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. 313. Mono- Thus had the Hebrew vision of Yahveh slowly grown from reSd by the days of their nomad life, when they had seen him only as a the Hebrews flgj-ge 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. f 1* ii«-i ^^tv/ < ,-'_^ J^.* »«At -AJ'^%,- 'V-i I ■' 'J-V ,>,",<"*?"■"'''' ViSltlX ^Cyi yy.fl,^^',', >,if. 7)^w* pn')'"! "iliJ V-* Z**-^'*' ^'<^''* ^■^'^'<' -^^ i^''^ fi" ^f 't^ 1''} -7S'im'-» »£• jA)« »y«»!V )^m j'-*' IM )«y <• f, ',^^1 yy >jy, ^.C,S ■^.^y. f,,,,C ,^, y^,^ ,( ^^ ^, ^,^^^ ^^^. ^^^ , ^/;^^ ^^^^ H , U**)'/^ ly-t Mf ^i*> M juy/) ^7 -^AiV^' |y*l>/ >i>;/i^ ^oiy yM)^-!^^ ji,#Hi^ ,(y j, 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. 2 11 ) 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 3^4- 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 religious 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, ^^^P"^^ 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). Jt 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 "f jhelndeiS Europe, to which we must now go. Before we do so, however, world (fifth ^ ' ° to fourth cen- let us look back over oriental civilization for a moment and turies e.g.) 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 of'the™?ien? ^ace in the course of this long career ? It gave the world the inventions ^j-gj- 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 of the Orient: masonry, the colonnade, the arch, and the tower or spire. It '^^'^h?'t produced the earliest refined sculpture, from the wonderful sculpture, portrait figures and colossal statues of Egypt to the exquisite literature, seals of early Babylonia. It gave us writing and the earliest science^' alphabet. In literature it brought forth the earliest known government \2\s.& 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 riations. \32i. The Finally, in religion the East developed the earliest belief in achievements 1 /-^ i , , • r 1 , of the Orient: a 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 Tlie Hebrews and the Decline of the Orie7it 219 a voice in the government, and something to say about how 322. Lacft they should be governed. No one had ever gained the idea of freedom ^' a free citizen, a man feeling what we call patriotism, and under democratic . " 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 afction, and they wfere 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. d^JS|Ji°"n Jhe 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 natural 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- . tions caused to do in . government, in thought about the natural world, in by lacic of gaining deeper views of the wonders and beauties of nature, P°tei|ecturi as well as in art, in literature, and in many other lines. This [^^^^"j™^; 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 (§§ 118-120) 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 to 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 E^urope 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 peas^ts 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. 222 Ancient Times 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 wdth ' 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 br ought 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 wo rld.^saidjhe trader, and they bore heavy cargoes across the Mediterranean .'^^^ Jura Mountains D 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 Ancie7tt Times 329. Back- more civilized life in general, the possession of metal did not tite continent enable the peoples of Europe to advance to a high type of of Europe civilization. They still remained without writing, without archi- afterreceiv- ^ , • 1 , ■!• i_- ing metal tecture in hewn-stone masonry, and without large sailing ships loo°°B.c.) 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 European 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 ^gean Sea. From north to south this sea is at no point more than four hundred riiiles 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 Sks .Tear-'^ ^gean world is the region where Europe thrusts forward its ness to the southernmost and easternmost peninsula (Greece), with its island Orient . . , outposts, especially Crete, reachmg far out mto 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 thkt the JEgean 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 JEge&n. Asia Minor with its trade routes was a link which connected the ^gean world with the Fertile Crescent. 333. The We see here, then, that the older oriental civilizations con- Islands out- verged upon the ^gean by two routes : first and earliest by posts of the gjjjp across the Mediterranean from Egypt ; second by land ress of these through Asia Minor from the Euphrates world. Thus the islands and . , , , 1.1 . 1 ,-v . 1 backwardness .Agean islands became a bridge connecting the Orient and land ^ ™^'"' Europe. Already in the Late Stone Age the yEgean 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 ^Egean world .^Egeans. ?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 tween"the^ Mediterranean that one is almost in doubt whether it belongs ^f ^ile'"'^ 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 in a few days. Thus Crete was the link between Egypt on the south and the Mg&a.n Sea on the north (see map, p. 252). The little sun-dried-brick villages, forming the Late Stone 336. Rise of Age setdements of Crete, received copper from the ships of the zation"under Nile by 3000 B.C., as we have seen (§ 326). Somewhat later Egyptian 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 pi-ogress 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. ^ Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete. 2000 B.C.) 337- I^ise of the sea-kings of Crete (2000 B.C.) 228 Ancient Times 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. 170 and 171), 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 fair from the middle of the northern coast (see map, p. 254), there grew up a kingdom which may finally have included a large part of the island. The The Dawn of Etiropean 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 Phsestus, perhaps another residence of the same royal family, or the capital of a second kingdom. Egyptian Cretan Sign of Life Egyptian Cretan 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 castles, for neither they nor 338. Power the towns connected with them possessed any protecting walls. ]j;j,gs ^f 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." ^ T" 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 " jEgean " ; for the term " Mycensean," 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 earlier 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 thao the first), shows how the artists ^of the Grand Age had learned from Egyptian decorative art to take their decorative figures from the natural 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 (E) 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, ^) 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- , ^^.^J-'J^^'^ ■ ^ " ous, and impres- sive decorative art of the early orien- tal world. Indeed'i • 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 I^ypt 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, S) that we seem to hear the wind swaying the stems and giving us Fig. 138. Colonnaded Hall and Stair- case IN THE Cretan Palace of the Grand Age at Cnossus 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 liall, 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. 139 342. Inde- pendence and power of Cretan artists in spite of Egyptian influence 234 Ancient Times " 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. 1 39. 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) itself ; while on the outskirts, or up the valley, dwelt 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 modem 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 so 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 arf-ict iTiti^ tViJc timr ficrnrp The Dawn of European Civilization 235 Or the assembled court (Fig. 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 -^/-''' ''i _ f^n'/*"' , the palace, where they ^ .^^'^^f't^r^, ^ 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 .^Egean could be clearly seen breaking the north- em horizon (see map, p. 252). Here the trading galleys of the Cretan kings were 345. Political and commer- cial position of Crete in and after the Grand Age Fig. 142. Tile Drainpipes from the Cretan Palace of Cnossus These joints of pottery drainpipe (2J 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 earlier than this system at Cnossus spreading 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 (§ in) in the fifteenth century B.C. bore 236 Ancient Times 346. Crete to be regarded as the home of the third great civili- zation in the ancient world the title of " governor of the islands in the midst of the sea," as the Egyptians called the islands of the ^gean (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 347. Cretan civilization reaches the mainland of Greece; the Mycenaean Age .<:^^?TS^~ ,-v^ t Fig. 143. Golden Dish of THE Egyptian Governor of THE .(Egean Islands in the Grand Age This golden dish viras given by the Pharaoh Thutmose III (§ in) to one of his favorite generals, whom he had made governor of the j^Lgean 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 /Egean islands and coasts of Asia Minor and sprang ihto 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 Crete and the .^gean Sea. It is this third great civiliza- tion which forms the link be- tween the civilization of the Orient and the later progress of man in Greece and western Europe. Section 35. The .^gean 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 at The Dazvn of European Civilisation 237 Tiryns (Fig. 1 44) and Mycenae (Fig. 145). The jfEgean princes who built such strongholds a little after 1500 B.C. imported works of Cretan and Egyp- tian art in pottery and metal (Fig. 140). 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 dis- covered (§ 36). But the main- land still lagged be- hind the islands, for Cretan writing seems not to have Fig. 144.' Restoration of the Castle AND Palace of Tiryns. (After Lucken- bach) Unlike the Cretan palaces, this dwelling of an jEgean 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 rii^kt 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 (H), where the excavators found the place of the household altar of the king (§ 423). Behind the forecourt (If) 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 European the foot of the castle hill. The whole formed mainland the nucleus of a city-state (§ 390) in the plain of Argos (see Plate III, p. 276) 348. Con- tinued back- wardness of 238 Ancient Times 349. Asiatic mainland : foundation of Troy (about 30OQ 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 settiements which had advanced but litde 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 litde 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. 2 5 2). Fig. 145. OF THE The Main Castle of Entrance MYCEN/E, 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. 86) The Dawn of European Civilization 239 By 2500 B.C., some centuries after the first metal had been 330. Growth introduced, the rulers of Troy were wealthy commercial kings, ('2500-'' and their, castle was the earliest fortress in the ^gean world, '5°° e.c.) for it was a thousand years older than the fortresses at Mycen^ 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 ^gean, 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, hilk, and mountains of Asia Minor, were the settle- iand°ofthe ments of a great group of white peoples who were kindred of Pittites the ^geans in civilization, though not in blood. We call them Hittites. Although the llarger 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 jEgean 3S3- 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 ^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 J2gean to later Europe, from which it passed to us in the United States as the "American " eagle (Fig. 86). 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) and the Hebrews The Dawn of European Civilization 241 354. Rise of Hittite civili- zation : Baby- lonian writing Fig. 147. numbers to affect the Hebrew type of face. On the west in the same way, Hittite life greatly influenced the cities along the ^gean 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 the -Hittites received the first influences leading to a higher 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 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 wfi^ifg''^ "^ (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, 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. 148 242 Ancient Times still look down upon the passing traveler throughout a great part of Asia Minor from the ^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 European 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 nothern rival was Empire building. the splendid Sixth City, that is, about 1500 B.C., one centu™'E.c of the Hittite kingdoms on the east of the Halys River (see map, p. 100) was gaining great power. It had established century B.C.) yx^^ .-p^-'"''^%-^^% 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 (§ 122), 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 &ea (§ 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 ..^gean (§ 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 .zEgeans. Section 36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World 361. Modem ignorance of jEgean civilisation 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 fe* years ago this story was entirely un- known. Less than fifty years ago no one supposed that civilized people had lived in the ^gean 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 ^gean world. The discoverer of the ^gean civil- ization which we have been studying was Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann was an American citizen of German birth. In his youth before coming to America he had' a romantic busi- ness career. After being shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, he began his business experience there while a mere lad, as a 362. Life of Heinrich Schliemann 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 small 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. 191 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 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 Fig. 1 50. 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 the 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), which 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 SchliemSnn 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 Dawn of European Civilization ~ 247 The sensation aroused by these discoveries among the 364. Schlie- scholars of Europe and America was mild compared with that ratfon^or'^^ which followed when Schliemann, crossing to the mainland of Tiryns and „ , . , .... Mycenaa Greece, began excavatmg the prehistoric fortress or castle of Fig. 151. The Walls of Homeric Troy (built about 1500 b.c.) A section of the outer walls of the Sixth City iii 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 arethe walls built in the days when Mycenas 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 (§ 408). 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 Ancient Times 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 ^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 ^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 arch^ologist, 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. 1 5 2), beginning in the winter of 1906-1907. 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 me. the tite h rt 'SS < 3 ^^ "^ O o j3 X IJ m t! w sa g s •S a ■« H Z 8 .3 ■£ fe U S, 3| s ■i^ -o a Bj o ._ o O CU 1} E>i z 3 B •; S < ... C « " j; B <" 3 « " .t: <« o -g .iS -3 g d Z 1— 1 ■o c S m 1 m ¥ M -S S Si ^ c H ^ i> ■" 1— 1 M J; J. o j3 X ^[o CO H 0) t4 o u -a li r ■£ h O ij 01 O rt C S w ,» 3 in (U O ^2 Z <: " § g M M ^ '-' n! »J-1 2 ^ e^ G H e Hittite Empire arise, and what can you say about its influence? What was the most important^hing which the Hittites contributed to other peoples ? Section 36. Who first discovered remains of people who had oc- cupied the jEgean world before the Greeks ? Tell something of his life. What did he find at Troy? in Greece J 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 dis.covery 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? B-^ISSIMp ^nr^^TS'S^^lIO^ CHAPTER IX 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% 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 The Greek Conquest of the jEgean 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- the Gre^k - looked out upon peninsula the iair pastures of Thessaly, the snowy sumrp-': 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 C't up by mountains and in- lets of the sea into small plains and peninsul?"? sepa- rated from each other either by the sea or the moun- tain ridges. No less than five hundred islands are tered along its deeply indented eastern shores (map, p. 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. .♦• t^■v~i^^^w^ifta^■^■^t»? Fig. 153. Mount Olympus — the Home OF THE Gods 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) 254 Ancient Times 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 yEgean 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 ^gean 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 Achseans) 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 Tiiyns and Mycenae (Figs. 144, 145, and Plate III), 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 ve^meager because the peoples settled here could not yet write, herefore 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 Achseans) as well as the ^gean townsmen, the original inhabitants of the region. vorld ; Dorians in Crete and southern Egean The Greek Conquest of the jEgean World 255 The Dorians did not stop at the southern limits of Greece, 375. The but, learning a little navigation from their ^gean predecessors, pJIs'^sion^of they passed over to Crete, where they must have arrived by fhe ^gean 1400 B. c. Cnossus, unfortified as it was, and without any walled castle (§ 338), must have fallen an easy prey to the invading Dorians, who took possession of the island, and likewise seized the other southern islands of the ^gean. Between 1300 and 1000 B.C. the Greek tribes took possession of the remainingC islands, as well as the coast of Asia Minor — the Dorians in the^''^ south, the lonians in the middle, and the ^olians in the north Here a memorable Greek expedition in the twelfth centur B.C., afte^ 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 jJJ™'^^ ^^^ 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 1200 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 , rrii 1. the well-to-do thus being absorbed by Indo-European peoples, ine result ^geans was that both the ^geans and their Hittite neighbors in Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the advancing Indo-European 2$6 Ancient Times 378. Egyp- tian repulse of the fugi- tive jEgeans I 379. Cretan Philistines find a home in Southern Palestine 380. Fall of /Egean 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 ^gean 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 .^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 battle (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 yEgeans 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 .^Egean 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 ^gean 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 j^igean ships (goose-head on the prow). One jEgean ship (middle, below) has been overturned. The vEgeans are Philistines with feathered headdress (see headpiece, p. 252), and we see here how they passed from Crete to Palestine (§ 379). The i^geans are 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 may be seen standing bound in the Egyptian ships writing, which disappeared after the Greek invasion.. Enough of ^gean 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 ^gean population as had not fled before the incoming Greeks rtiingled with their Greek conquerors, just as 258 Ancient Times we have seen the civilized Canaanites of Palestine mingling with the invading Hebrew nomads (§ 294). This commingling of yEgeans 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. The mingling of Greek and ^gean blood did not result in 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 JEgean language of the region. People continued to call the towns, rivers, and mountains, like Mount Parnassus, by the old yEgean names they found in use, just as we found Indian 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 ^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 ^gean 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) should aid in solving the problem. The Greek Conquest of the ^gean 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 •^ Greeks not and cross the entire ^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 ^gean world, we must again tutTons'of 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 ^gean world. From their old wandering life on the grasslands they carried 385. Tribes, with them the loose groups of families known as tribes, and ^^^ «as.' within each tribe an indefinite number of smaller groups of sen^biy" 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 ^figean cities as Mycenffi (§ 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 settiement 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 setded 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 Aigean 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 vfith the same 389. Lack problems on the Fertile Crescent (§ 167). But for them the along fte 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 ^gean 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 ot the citv-stfltc 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 There were hundreds of such city-states throughout the mainland of Greece and the coasts and islands of the ^gean. Indeed the ^gean world was 'made up of such tiny nations 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 looo 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 settiement and spread in the ^gean world ; in Asia Minor. What was the effect upon the predecessors of the Greeks in the jEgean? in Asia Minor? Men- tion evidence of the flight of the jEgeans. Who were the Philistines and where did they settle ? 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 ^Egean 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. 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- , t - ™-. n ^ni • T • 1 ning of the fortunate than their ^gean predecessors. The iron vsrhich we iron Age have seen spreading in the Orient from the Hittite country J*°"3_c) (§ 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 ^^ilschylus (§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 iEgean 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 ^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 ^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 ^gean 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 vEgean 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 ^Egean peoples (§§ 332-333), we perceive that the Greeks were now exposed to the same oriental influences which had so strongly affected early Greek Civilization in 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 3|- 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 ^geans in their decorative art were abandoned by the early ^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 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 .(Egean predecessors (§ 393) 39S- The wares of the Phoenician merchants 266 Ancient Times 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 Kons 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 stem 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 Phcenicians, 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 ^Egeans. 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 Phcenicians 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 kitdn (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 *iii Nor did the Phoenicians stop with the ^^ilgean world. They sought markets also in the West, and they were the discoverers of the western Mediterranean. They 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- terranean and the most dangerous rival of Rome, as we shall see (Sections 77 f.). For some three centuries after 1000 B.C. they were the greatest merchants in the Mediterranean, and their far- reaching traffic was beginning the slow creation of a great mercan- tile Mediterranean world. They had 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 designs employed in their art were international. Their metal platters (Fig. I'sS) 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 Fhoenicians the earhest explorers of the western Mediter- ranean 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 We remember that it was Phoenician workmen whom the Assyr- ian kings employed to make furniture and metal work for the royal palace (Fig. io8). King Solomon likewise employed Phce- 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 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 (§ 39S), 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 Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 269 own work. Thus the whole range of oriental decorative art entered Greelc 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 Fig. 159. The Ancient Phcenician Harbor of Sidon as it now appears It was from this harbor that the Phcenician colonists sailed forth to establish new cities in the western Mediterranean, especially Carthage (§ 397)- In 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 Phcenician 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 little 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). 270 Ancient Times 400. The Phcenicians 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 Phcenician 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 Phcenicians 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, akph, 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 : "'A is for ' Axe ' ; .5 is for " Bed,' " etc. When the chil- dren of the Phcenician 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 27 1 The Phcenicians seem to have had little literature, but their 402. Phce- merchants kept all their business records in this new and con- bet'firslseen 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 Phcenicians 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 , . J adopt and which, as we shall soon discover, they possessed. 1 hey noticed perfect Phoe- that there were no Phoenician letters standing for vowels-. teTby adding They also noticed in the Phoenician alphabet a few letters ™^^=^(*°"« representing consonants which did not exist in Greek speech. These letters they bega:n to use for the Greek vowels (Fig. i6o;- cf. columns I and II). 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 272 Ancient Times Greeks, not knowing what these strange names meant, altered thern 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. For the Phoenician alphabet spread from Greece to Italy and at last throughout Europe. Indeed, every alphabet of the civilized world has descended from the Phoenician alphabet. I II III IV V < u 7- X < t •A = [3 ii g < K J 2 w K A A A A ^ s a 6 B B 7 1 < CG CG A A A D D ^ 4 6 E E r ^ K FV F.VU =c I I Z n B 8 H E.H @ ® ® TH.PH 1 # <> 1 1 i >l K K.KH 6 •J■^^ U/^ L L "0 ^ r M M . 1 M N N N # 5 I X X ■ 1 1 p p p ^ V M s 9 q> 9 Q Q ^ <1 P R R xV i % S S X 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 Civilisation 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^worfs also brought in with it its oriental names. For the Greeks " p^p^"",',' ^"^ "' Bible " received from abroad the ^0x6. 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 merchants 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 onlSTGrlek Greek warrior waving farewell to his family before the pillared ^T'^'T"^ '"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 Hke 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). 274 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. It was only men of some wealth who possessed a fighting outfit like this. Th,ey were the leading warriors. The ordinary 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. Men delighted to sing of valiant achievements on the field of battle 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 vag^e 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 the Kings 275 recited to the music of the harp. Framed in exalted and 409. The ancient forms of speech, and rolling on in stately measures,'- singers 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- ^^^^^ l^^^^^^^^^k 4'°- Homer 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 themselves later discerned the impossibility of Homer's author- ship of them all, they credited him only with the Iliad,^ the story of the Greek expedition against Troy ; and the Odyssey, 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 1 These were in hexameter ; that is, six feet to a line. This Greek verse is the oldest literary form in Europe. 2 So named after Ilium, the Greek name of Troy. 276 Ancient Times 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. 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 tliat 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, 3 ^ < 3 ° ^ In O T3 O ^ C ti cd rt JH "c fH (U "rt •< ■5 6 6 lO ^ u "o w ^ !>. rj- M ro .£ M« 'u ti W ^ 2 E W (C ^^ C rt 1-1 Q d a H i; c o 6 o o o < ■a c xi ^ ^ o c ^ T3 2 3 U ^f' u Ah 3 C " s-^ J O "S <; ° 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^cu^- 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 Yahweh, whom they brought with them into zeustheSky- the land of Palestine ; and so the Greeks likewise brought ^°^ ™*° *^ , ^ /c-gean world 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- reached the ^Egean world. Here they found the ^Egeans wor- ^gean world shiping the great earth spirit, the Earth-Mother, or the Great ^j^f Gretks^ Mother, who made the earth bring forth her grain and fruit 278 Ancient Times as the food of man (headpiece, p. 221). From the ^geans 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 tffe 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 Gree"^ 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 industiy 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 ^rain of her father Zeus, from whose head she sprang forth fuU-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 invagination 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- had risen to be great gods, each controlling some special Dionysus, ' realm. In a brazen palace deep under the waters, Poseidon ^^™^g' ruled the sea. The ancient Earth-Mother, whom they called Hera, and Aphrodite Demeter, still brought forth the produce of the sou. 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 28o A7icient Times 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 .^Egean 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™?iests"^^ 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. QDESTIOWS Section 39. What important metal came in at the rise of Greek civilization? What had happened to the arts and crafts of the yEgeans? 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. "*>*jVA ^^ 1 ao fJ 0»& J 424. Geo- graphical influences against a union of all Greeks in one nation 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 world showed striking differences from what we have seen 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 tlie 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 ftbQut 70Q 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. Furthermore, 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 agamstpohti- 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 Argos"nd^ 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 finaUy also the land of the Messenians on the west. The two kingdoms of Argos and Sparta thus held a large part of the Peloponnese. 284 Ancient Times In the Attic peninsula, liliewise, 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 Bceotia fell under the leadership of Thebes, but the other Boeotian cities were too strong to be wholly subdued. Bceotia, therefore, did not form a nation but a group of city-states in alliance, with Thebes at the head of the alhance. 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 aboUshed, 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. Poiiti- .... ... _ , . , , . cal *id mili- its neighbonng villages. In order to be near the kmg or taiy power of secure membership in the Council (§ 385) and control the *e eupatrids 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 caUing 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«^^^"'^ 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 rh?Assembiy his fellows from the countryside gathered there — a dingy group, dad 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. It was, however, not alone the people whose rights the nobles were disregarding ; for they also begaji to consider them- selves the equals of the king, whose chief support in war they 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 Jfing 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. 144) 435. Survival was of course vacated. As it fell into decay, the shrines and Intheow'"^^ holy places which it contained (§ 423) were still protected and Palaces 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 men:e°and"" common among 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. 162, ^ and B), the only ones with which they were acquainted. When the Phoenician merchants entered the ./Egean harbors they now found them more and more occupied by Greek ships. Especially important was the traffic between the Greek cities of the Asiatic 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 .^gean 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 . _ , ,. colonies in ishment of the peasants, was an important mfiuence, leadmg the Black Sea the Greek farmers to seek new homes and new lands beyond the .^gean world. Greek merchants were not only trafficking with the northern ^gean, 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 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 E. 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 438. Greek colonies in the East — southern Asia Minor and Cyprus 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 ^Egean 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 writer 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 hedefeated a body of Greeks in Cilicia about 700 B.C., in the earliest collision between the Hellenes and a great power of the oriental world. The Greek colonies of Cyprus long remained The Age of the Nobles 289 the easternmost outposts of the Greek world. In the South they found a friendly reception in Egypt, s^nd 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 theV/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 ^outhem 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. 56,0). The Greek colonists crossed over also to Sicily (Plate VII), 441. Sicily where they drove out the Phoenician trading posts except at par \\est 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 Ancieitt Times as well as the most powerful, city of the Greek world. At Massilia (Marseilles), oh 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 north ^ (Kg. 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 444. influ- We have already noticed the tendencies which kept the ences leading /-. i ^ ^ ^ ■, , , . toward unity: Greek States apart and prevented their umon as a single game'f "^'^'°'^ (§ ^^s). 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 aU the Greeks by'reiiSiu? worshiped. , The different city-states therefore formed several ^"""1^ . ^ ■ -' (amphic- 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 "heredby in our own land a citizen from Maine understands another from 'angi^ge 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 H^eiienes 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 modem times as an international project 292 Ancient Times 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 shpuld 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. 448. Greek The lack of political unity evident in such wars was also very Se ^""^ 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.-"- 449. Archi- In spite of oriental luxuries, like gaudy clothing arid wavy sculpture" Oriental wigs (§ 39.5), 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 eariiest 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 ^if moraf Homer. Men told their children quaint fables, representing the Progress ; 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, ^s 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 literary inter- their own conduct. The old Homeric singers never referred to ^^' '° *^ ^ present 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 ■"3^°^?' under the shadow of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sang of the Europe (7 50- ... 700 B.C.) dreary and hopeless life of the peasant — of his own^xit 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. 'v 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. 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). 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- dried-brick buildings. Great stone buildings such as we have seen on the Nile had been unknovm 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 ttemples 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 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 pla,in stone 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 A B Fig. 167. An Old Egyptian Col- umn AND 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. 116). See also diagram, p. 340 4S6. Sculp- ture A Fig. 168. Early Greek Statue and Egyptian Portrait Statue by which it was influenced The Egyptian portrait {B) is over two thousand years older than the Greek figure {A). The noble (5), one of those whose estate we visited on the Nile (§ 80), 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 The Industrial Revolution 313 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 showed remarkable progress toward free and 314 Ancient Times vigorous action of the human body (Fig. 169). These figures were cast in bronze. Similar progress was made by the painters of the age. Just 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 Egyptian alabaster perfume bottle (see the same shape in glass, Fig. 49). The mistress sits arranging her hair before a hand mirror. Behind her 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 the drawing. It was at this time done in red color on a black background, in contrast with the older method of using black on a red background 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 Revohttion 315 Literature and painting show us that the Greeks of this ap-e-' 488. Grow- were intensely interested in the life of their own time ' In the rfght^a'nd ° first place, they were thinking more deeply than ever before wj'ong; P""- about conduct, and they were better able to distinguish between hereafter right and wrong. Men could no longer believe that the gods led the evil lives pictured in the Homeric songs. Stesichorus (§ 483) had so high an idea of womanly fidelity that he could not accept the tale of the beautiful Helen's faithlessness, and in 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 come to believe that in the world of the dead there was punish- ment 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 4S9. Biess- blessedness for the good in the next world. Accordingly, in hereafter; the temple at Eleusis scenes from the mysterious earth life ""gstenes" 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 tiirned 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 Jts control by the gods. The Ionian cities, long the com- mercial Jeaders 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 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) 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 c ^ « « " i* CO ,hf^ U > U to SO E c _» BE ^2 " ~ « dj (I)" t+j dj o B- p-r; (11 ,-r; ■£ E p, c 5 5;<«S°;-^i3 C CO? .; JS " 5^ o -o .2 ^1 -5 . H g g c>OCo3llJ5 i S ,; ° '«=.>; ■£ ^ j= •s s «• s V 7^ « r^ J3 D-y -a rt en 3 o " -M ^b 3 n u •p *^ V- S o ■£ C J=! u ^"^ S o O ^ ■£ u o s "1 fe > o ^ w w u V V u g ° « S3 e -c I ^ a lis " ^ o o .; 3 J3 ° '5 » E o -S 53 - 1 1(^1 hos ?;l «Jcgg-3u-,c!i Wrt^ilSoic-a 317 318 Ancient Times 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 gf 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 littie later another geographer of Miletus, named Hecatseus, 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). Hecatseus 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 Industrial Revolution 319 Anothei' Ionian thinker, who migrated to southern Italy, was 494. Ionian Pythagoras. He investigated mathematics and natural science, ^j naTurar He or his pupils discovered that the square of the hypotenuse s'^'^n'^^ 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- 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 thfnkerr" 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 _£je ^^n '* ~~t.i ^ ^^ *' ^^w" ^\^ s^ f. / ^3 \ ^ ■ *. ^^"■■W^ 1 "W \ "^ k«N / 'i \ j \ ^^1 I '^ / =^ \ i f > / ^SPAI NE=f^ ^ y^ \ \ aa TMRACEE ^^ HMENIA \ \ Carthage^ ^ siifX /\^=^^ \ \ c^ »7y^»iW¥ ^^ V\\ r ' 1 \J\ « ■^ -^^ ^«- ^j \ \ * ,, "-I '%Yf, / ^ *• '■<} o\ i / / 7 V= —^ IB y '■ ^ Sr .* ->y / J^ a n , ^ ^ Map of the World by Hecat^us (517 b.c.) 320 Ancient Times will forever remain the greatest achievement of the human in- 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 epochs 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? 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 aifect 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 ? When 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. 170 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 ? Jnr^z'^^'''^' CHAPTER XIII THE REPULSE OF PERSIA Section 49. The Coming of the Persians 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 ^galeos 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 limit 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, fl°™rifd*th" the Orient lacked free citizenship, and in place of science the '■«^°" °* *e Orientals felt complete subjection of the mind to religious tradition. Persian supremacy in Greece would therefore have lonians 324 Ancient Times 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, which 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 32s 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. 174. 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 Eubcea (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 q™!^^ 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 505. The battle of Marathon (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 rouaed 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 Platasa 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 suflRcient 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 batde 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 pKie-SchneKter- 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, arid 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 jJIduces^the the news of this operation reached Athens, Themistocles was Athenians to ^ build a fleet 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 ™istocies' 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 33° 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 > II Fig. 176. The Pass of Thermopyl^ 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— 511) Artemisium, on the northern coast of Eubosa. 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 nurnbers, and all day the dauntless The Repulse of Persia 331 Leonidas held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persian gn. The host. Meanti^ne the Persians were executing two flank move- Thermopylae 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 Therrnopylae, 512. Persian the indomitable Themistocles gathered together the Athenian Attk:a'^an'd'° population and carried them in transports to the little islands ^"["'"^ °^ of Salamis and ^gina and to the shores of Argolis (see map, p. 352, and PI. Ill, 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. Fig. 177. Piraeus, 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 Reptdse 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- j^ the East ■ effort to induce Sparta to join with Athens in doing this very p^^°' • 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. \Mth 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 b. c). 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 Themfstocies 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 limes Persians 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 Platsea, 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 shields, and, as at Marathon, the spear proved invincible against the bow. In a heroic but hopeless effort to rally his brolien 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 ? When ? What great oriental power thus advanced to the east side of the jEgean ? ' 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 As the Athenians returned to look out over the ashes of what was once Athens, amid which rose the smoke-blaclcened 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 (ostmcon, § 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 Athens 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 " """''"S <='^s^ 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 sparta and imagination, looked with misgivings upon the larger world S^theiTs^^'^^ 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 r 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/ Aficient Times C<~ ^, |-.J5=™-V='( k ''■n* 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 ihe fortifi- 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 Piraus, 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 ^gean. 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- the DeHan 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 Platsea. 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 Comparative Diagram of the two Leading Greek Styles of Architecture, the Doric (^ and ff) and the Ionic (C and i?) 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 ai*e 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. 378). 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, (.\fter Luckenbach) 340 The Growing Rivalry between 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- S26. Fail of cized (headpiece, p. 336), and at length, on false charges of (472_4;ij3.c.) 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.). I'he overthrow of Cimon was a victory of the people against 528. Over- the nobles. They followed it up by attacking the Council of councU of ^ Elders, once made up only of nobles (§431). It was called theAreopa- ' '^ ■' \ -r-j J gyg . leader- 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 council and passed new laws restricting the power of the Areopagus to the jujig's'''^^"" 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 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'an except AU citizens were permitted to hold the offifce of archon except labormg 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 now all chosen by tot 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 stiifp^slibie choose by lot, and that was the military commander (strategus). Ttratefu^^^^^ ^^^^ important office remained elective and thus open to men 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 ^ _^^^ "-^mmm/^ fi^ juija*a 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 Acropolis 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 S32. Com- mercial su- premacy of the Greeks after the Persian wars ; rise of Pir^us, the new port of Athens After the fall of Cimon there came forward a handsome arid 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. 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 Ather- (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 W fl< 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; 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 merce might be very large. A vessel which reached the north merce and shores of the Black Sea or the pirate-infested Adriatic might '"""^'"y 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- crease in population of Atiiens and Attica 537, Money and prices 538. Cost of government ; salaries, temples, and religious services For nearly thirty years after the Persian wars it was easy to obtain Athenian citizenship. Some thirty thousand strangers 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. As .a result of increased business the volume of money in 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 The Growing Rivalry between 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 tha 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 battleships, 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, taxes the Attic silver mines, however helpful, were far from furnish- ^"j!°™^ ing enough to support the government. The bulk of the State funds had to be raised by taxatioii. 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 state could raise anything like such an annual income. Least 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 Ancieiit 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 rr^erchant 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 S4S- Peace able to retain was the island of ^gina, though at the same Tild pJTsif time she gained control of the large island of Eubcea. 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 hiniself 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. 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. 35° A thens in the Age of Pericles 351 On the other hand, anyone who actually performed manual 547. Athe- labor was looked down upon as without social station. Athens "he"po'or'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 conveniences chimney, and the smoke from the kitchen fire, though intended in the Athe- to drift up through a hole in the roof, choked the room or "'^nho^se 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 equiprfient SSI. 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 prenten- 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 were thrown directly into the street, and there was no system of sewage. When one passed a two-story house he might hear a Central Greece and Athens Athens in 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 modem 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). Fig. 180. Tragic Statue of the 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 The women were less in- clined to give up the old finery, for unhappily they had litde to think about but clothes and housekeeping (Fig. 170). For Greek citizens still kept their wives in the background, and 553- Women 354 Ancient Times 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 froipi 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- ment of citizenship and left school, he was received as a citizen, providing that '"^"' "^ both his parents were of Athenian citizenship. The oath which Fig. i8i. An Athenian School in the Age of Pericles These scenes are painted around the center of a shallow bowl, hence their peculiar 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 Attica 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 boxing, 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 racing, and horseback races made up a program in which all Greek youths were anxious to gain distinction (§ 47'9). 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 d^versioM 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 $61. Coming such dinners meant delightful conversation with their com- sophists panionson 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 For the first time a higher education was thus open to young men who had hitherto thought of httle more than a victory in the Olympic games or a fine appearance when parading with the craclc 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 knowledge limited. This gave him great trouble in the measurement of "f science ° ° 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 rheasured 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 tronomv 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 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 Hecatseus (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 was 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, the Athens in the Age of Pericles 361 circulation of the 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 Hip£ocrates, 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 htstV^ on his history, finally published his great work. It was a history Herod t 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 Gre'ece 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 dollajrs! Tn 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- i™^'' '™"' 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 fitate 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 S70. State feasts equipment of a warship except the hull and spars, though this service may have been compulsory. At national festivals a wealthy 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 Panathenaa, 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 were burdened with the Spartan and Persian wars, the higher life of Athens continued to unfold. Under influences like those we have been discussing, a new vision of the glory of the State, Athens hi 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 ^schylus 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 one of the Persian boats drawn up on the beach, and how a desperate Persian raised his ax and slashed off the hand of the brave Greek. Perhaps among the group of eager listeners he noticed one questioning the veteran carefully and making full notes of all that he could learn from the graybeard. The ques- tioner 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 around which were grouped plain, bare government buildings, for^govern- Here were the assembly rooms of the Areopagus (§ 528) and ment offices 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 meals 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 glory 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 reve'r- 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 oflfices 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, hear the Dipylon Gate in the Potters' Quarter (see plan, p. 352). In the fore- ground is the teniple 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 limes 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 arid 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 eveiy 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 (Z)) by Phidias (§ 577), beyond which at the left is the ancient sanctuary of the Erechtheum (F 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. 1 84. 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 Uly 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. 1 10) ; 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 no longer hardly re- semble 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 Athens 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'SThe''^ 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 ITill recently they lay buried under the rubbish on the slope (Fig. 182). The excavations of the Greek government have recovered them, and they arc now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. 37° 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 Alliens (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 ; jEschylus 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 o a f^ a o. 3 u S en > Tj w K ^ U g P o CU >< (A 3 ^ O ^ < OJ 2 ■e s W rt 43 a -Q T3 H OJ c < ^ rt o o "3 g ho .5 «» H '^ cu CO CO W .£ a ^ tn S 3 < 2 5^ a. b o o H u l-< W <; T3 u N c 43 u 1^ < rt H 5 Ph w (n "i^i S; O lO o H X 2 M 1) a > O 3 H o Si 13 (U . > 1 S 4.^ w "i4|^ M ^ ij^^^^p ■^p i^ "i i^^^^^j Y,^A'\ Fig. 192. Stoxe 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 Artka°" '" 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 Athenian management of the war enabled the nobles to denounce popu- ^'"P"^^ 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 ponneslans"' with money. Indeed, both Athens and Sparta had long been ^^^^^^ 1 On this account the war with Sparta which now followed, lasting nine years (from 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 (41 J 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 "rArgTnusL- won another important victory over a new Peloponnesian fleet ^^i^?"''"" on the coast of Asia Minor by the little islands of Arginusse. 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 613-. Capture competent commanders. The fleet numbering about one hun- nianfleet^at dred and eighty triremes was placed in command of a group *^ ^^vAe. of of officers, each of whom was to lead for a day at a time. The (4°5 ^.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 profilers 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 fleet 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 Pirasus 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 e.g.). 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 ? What disaster overtook Athens? How did this affect the fortunes of Pericles? By what The Struggle between Athens mid 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 ileet? What conditions did Sparta make ? Contrast the beginning and the end of the fifth century in Athenian history. Note. The tailpiece below jhows 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). Si CHAPTER XVII the final conflicts among the greek states Section 59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline OF Democracy 617. Unfit- The long struggle of Athens for the political leadership of forLaderehip '^he Greek world had ignominiously failed. It now- remained of the Greeks jq ^jg gggjj 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 (i^in 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. Struggle racies which had everywhere been hostile to her. In each city andd?"^*^ ^ the Spartans established and supported by military force the '"o'^r^'^y 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- ^eak'nesses did achievements of citizenship under Pericles (Chapter XV) °^ democracy must not blind us to the weaknesses of Athenian democracy. Some of these we have already seen in following the course of the Peloponnesian 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 cMz^n-''ur'^" 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 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-continued 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 Final Conflicts among the Greek States y^f 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 ^^\l ''oTthe 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 compaign 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 get 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 *^°t^a^"'^ 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 de"fine 0/ to recover herself. The farms of Attica had been laid waste so ^p™"^;^"'^ often by the Spartan armies that agriculture never wholly re- of large land- owners covered its former prosperity. There 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 /incieni iimei 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; iDut 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, wljiich 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 sbnaUoMier as formerly. This was especially true in the matter of military ^f^ 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^ntl™'""^ leave private life and casually assume command of an army or leaders ; 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 B.C. 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 Itmes 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 effective 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 of 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 The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 401 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 spart^and territory in Asia Minor. The Spartans, therefore, hired the sur- Persia; and viving two thirds of the Ten Thousand, but the rule of Sparta thianWar had caused such dissatisfaction that her victories in Asia Minor 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. {387 e.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 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 Bceotia. 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 all commanders The Final Conflicts among tJie 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 pressui-e 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 ThebanLeft J bpartanLeJt ISpartant'ei I j_ SpartanBight 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 il^'^'*'^ 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 Spartafi line than his left. At the same time he massed his troops on his left wing, which he made fifty shields 404 Ancient Times 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 yeg.rs 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 story. 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 1 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 ? fp' li >^ -'- » 1 4 j^ ^? 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 artand had Swallowed up the wealth of Athens ; the great and splendid architecture \vorks 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 colonnajje 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 Acropolis 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 corne'rs 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 Minoi: /" 647. Con- trast between sculpture of the Perlclean 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 (Fig. 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 AtMens (§ 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 like to do ourselves. As they stand at ease in attitudes of repose, the grace and balance of the flowing lines give them a splendor o Hi ■a O u 'A z; ;3 3 «> s s rt 3 F ■" W C 5 ij s 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\\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 d49. 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 ApoUodorus now began to notice 650. Discov- that the light usually fell on an object from one side, leaving the p^j," ijght^ ° unlighted side so dark that but litde color showed on that side, shadow and ° , ' 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 4 1 1 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 tlie 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. A B 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 n"v method 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 Ancient Times 652. Vase- painters and other artist- craftsmen 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 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,^). 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). Fig. 199. Athenian Gkavestone 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 bom at about the time of Pericles' 653. The age death found himself in an age of conflict wherever he went : aft^'the ' an age of conflict abroad on the'field of battle as he stood with ^eath of Pencles 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 in himself as 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"r£- and the gods looked, she had pointed to a beautiful vase in his ^^^^^^^^ 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 Panathenaea (§ 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 ana 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 t he better the multitude liked it. These teachings were' re corded in the_ wonderful book of OrpheuSj winch finallv gaine d wide ci rgila- tion among the common people. It came nearer to being the sacred bdoF "oFTKFTIreeks^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 4 1 5 (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'slater teacher behind, and went to hear the lectures of a noted ""<=6r'^'""ss 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, of ^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 I? 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 lines 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 St3.t6 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 abl^ to irficbg" power to dis- nize and determine'wB^r are~\nrtue an? right, truth, beauty and cern the great honest y, and all the o ther great ideas which mean so much to and to shape ' " his conduct 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 every 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. PubHc Greek teachers often opened to him the houses of the rich loSates" and noble. His fame spread far and wide, and when the 4i8 Ancient limes 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- knowledge coverers, as formerly had been the case (§ 564). Our doubt- among the 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 365 J 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 in the same way in which of history 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 poetiy^and 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 Ancient Times 669. Athens The teachers of rhetoric at Athens, the successors of the the center of education the science of government old Sophists (§ 562), became world renowned, and they made Isocrates ■ ^jjg city the 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 affairs of men rather than of naticre 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 Jbrm of government 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, \h.€ science of government. 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 42 1 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 of theS™^"' 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. G™^^ 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 Ancient Times 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. 675. Motives Men in practical life, like Isocrates, clearly understood the isocrateTand situation at this time. Isocrates urged the Greeks to bury their Xenophon 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. 676. Unaiter- Nevertheless, no Greek city was willing to submit to the able disunion 1 j i • j- _ , tiie end of leadership ot another. Local patriotism, like the sectionalism Srdevdoj^'" ^'^^'='^ brought on our Civil War, prevailed, and unalterable dis- sent 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 cultur© 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. Suprem- 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 ^^l\^^:°lx able to prevent, what an incomparably glorious age of Greek collapse civilizatioli 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 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 ApoUodorus 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 ? What 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 ? What 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? What can you say of the life of Plato ? What did he teach about government ? What great question did he fail to perceive ? Whatcivilized 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? f. ~„'i™>'^*' s'^ "jS—*^ "»'<'' '"''' :ia CHAPTER XIX ALEXANDER THE GREAT Section 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 678. The un- cultivated states of the Balkan Pen- insula and the North Note. The above headpiece shows us one of the streets where it was the custom of both the Greeks and Romans (Fig. 212, //, A') 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). 425 426 Ancient Times of Greek civilization began here and there to mask somewhat 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 andhisptircy 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 Macl'doniari ^ number large enough to form a permanent or standing army infantry gf 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 " Macedanian phalanx." 681. Mace- Heretofore horsemen had played but a small part in war in men and Europe. Horses were plentiful in Philip's kingdom, and the binati'n'^T'" '^''^1^^ forming a warrior class had always been accustomed to cavalry and fight on horseback in a loose way, each for himselL Philip now infantry in unified drilled these riders to move about and to attack m a single opera ions j^iass. The charge of such a mass of horsemen was so terrible that it might of itself decide a batde. 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 cavalry, moved and operated as one great unit, an irresistible machine in which every part worked together 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 Greeks. 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 Bost OF Demosthenes 682. Practical advantages of one-man control ; Philip's Northern conquests 683. Two parties at Athens : Isocrates 684. Demos- thenes 428 Ancient Thnes 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 Chseronea (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 batde 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 *^''jl'' ^'^'^^ -' -' , and becomes old a head there was on his young 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 °f ¥^''^f . ° ° ^ against 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 Ancient limes 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 how to do battle against their own Greek countrymen. 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 westeiXLAsia 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 champibn for the next ten years (333-323 B.C.). At this important point, by the Gulf of Issus, 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 Ki'ng 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 after'issus surrounded by a group of the ablest Macedonian youth, who ^^^,^}^?^'^1 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 arid their ardent young king. As he considered the letter of Darius, therefore, his father's 694. The old general ParmeniOT? who had commanded the Macedonian par'menio left wing- in the battle iust won, proffered him serious counsel. J? ^'^.'^^P* " ■' ' ^ _ _ 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 4j2 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;ubut 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 Alexander's ^ J iriction 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 woxk 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 Phcenicia 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 eksy 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,|Anexander re- turned from Egypt to Asia, and, marching along the Fertile Crescent, he crossed the Tigris close by the mormds 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 43S 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 palates 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 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- i^rd'o" t^e derers and sent the body with all respect to the fallen ruler's ancient East 436 Ancient Times 699. Alexan- der captures the Persian royal cities 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 reUef of Naram-Sin (Fig. 8g), 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.i;^-.^^^^'^^"^'^'''''*'*'^'' After touching Ecbatana in the north, and leaving behind 700. Aiex- the trusted Parmenio in charge of the enormous treasure of paigns in gold and silver, accumulated for generations by the Persian ^^ J'?"' kings, Alexander again moved eastward. In the course of the '3242.0.) 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 so^e'^jesuits he had built on the Indus. The return march through desert of his Eastern 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 438 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 with 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. Aiexan- for the conquest of the western Mediterranean. It included pfans"forthe instructions for the buildine; of a fleet of a thousand battieships conquest of ^ ^ the western with which to subdue Italy, Sicily, and Carthage, It also planned Mediter- . . . , , ^ , ranean 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 ? In such a matter Alexander's imagina- Alexander tion was without bounds. He had dreamed of having Mt. Athos ^""^ ''^ '"^If ° 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 siwa— The° awaiting him in Asia, to march with a small following far out ^rASon""^ into the Sahara Desert to the oasis shrine of Amon (§ 657 and 440 Anciejit 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. Alexan- Four years later the young king found that this divinity his deification which ' he claimed lacked outward and visible manifestations, cfti^s'^ofth? There must go with it some outward observances which would dissolved vividly suggest his character as a god to the minds of the world league . - 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 708. Abso- the divine right of kings. Indeed, through Alexander there was archyand transferred to Europe much of the spirit of that Orient which divine right of kings 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 1709. Personal gained at tragic cost to Alexander the Macedonian youth and sufferedTr^ to the group of friends and followers about him (§ 6q^Y Be- Alexander as , . t. . . ,. , 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 tSnarpThcy 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- cution of otas, death, Philotas, son of Parmenio, had learned of a conspiracy phn' against Alexander's life, but his bitterness and estrangement Pa™enio, 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 impUcated, 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 *ti{] I' f'^*^<>'C sSiii Fig. 206. Temple beside the Royal Palace at Babylon WHERE Alexander presented Daily Offerings The German excavations at Babylon (Fig. iii) 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^ O ca .T3 CO o .ti a O P h nj g a:2 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 /(^/z/zVa/ supremacy, which their civilization, as we have seen, had long before attained. Note. The headpiece above shows a view of modem Antioch" in Syria. The great decisive battle among the generals of Alexander the Great at Ipsus in Phrygia in central Asia Minor (301 B.C.) made Seleucu's 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. 445 714. Conse- quences of Alexander's death 446 Ancient limes 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- s""!! campaign lying among his papers, but no man possessed their three (]^g genius to carry them out. These able Macedonian com- realms in ^ ^ _ 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 Em^p'ire of the founder of a dynasty or family of successive kings, whom the Ptolemies ^g ^all the Ptolemies. Ptolemy at once saw that he would be constantiy 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 -^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, entai mon-" They regarded themselves as the successors of the ancient ^f? °? "'^ 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 too 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 ^i8. The Asiatic em- pire of tlae Seleucids 719. The government of the Seleu- cids ; the free cities 720. The government of tlie 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 JEgean 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 DECuxii 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 ™" ?* 'J'^ Macedonian leadership of the Balkan-Greek peninsula a dififi- after Aiexan- der's death- cult imdertaking. 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 gtopg the the Greeks, he was suddenly confronted by a new danger from g^at Galhc ' J J o invasion and the far North and West From France eastward to the lower becomes king 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 left 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 4SO 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. 724. Com- mercial de- cline of Greece 725. Rise of the leagues Section 6"] . The Decline of Greece 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 Achagans 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 Achasan 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 ? 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 4S2 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 67. 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 tailpfece 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, f^^^'^^ ^' 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 {A and B)* 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 728. Im- better equipped than ever before. The citizen's house, if he were hoults and in easy circumstances, might be built of stone masonry. The j"^„^^^^'* 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 ChampoUion 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 [A), 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. 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 N, with the room of the door- keeper on the right [A). At the corner is a shop [B). C, D, and E2xe. for storage and housekeeping. F \s 3. 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, thoughtlessly 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 modem town of four thousand inhabitants The Civilization of the Helleiiistic Age 459 m 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. ^"^^im '> Fig. 211. RaiNS 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 htjusehold 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 a basilica, lighted by roof windows, forming a clerestory and the arch • (Fig. 271), which the Hellenistic architects had seen in Egypt f"o™'^the^'^ (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 little provincial Greek city like Priene possessed such 733. Alex- splendid public buildings, an imperial capital and vast commercial coinmerce city like Alexandria was correspondingly more magnificent. In ^\E^^^ 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 little city when excavated proved to be almost a second Pompeii (Fig. 255), only older. Above A, 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 (/), 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 TV) 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 (0 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 (I) were of well-joined stoiie 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 (K), while along the street outside these gates were the tombs of the ancestors as at Athens (headpiece, p. 425). 462 .TLnLicnt A trfi'ti^ 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 li.c.) a vast stone lighthouse, some 370 feet high (that is, over thirty stones, 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). From the deck of a great merchant ship of over four thou- 734. Palace sand tons the incoming traveler might look cityward beyond ptoiemiest the lighthouse and behold the great war fleet of the Ptolemies °in"?''uh' (§ 716) outlined against the green masses of the magnificent parks 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, jj,"gs of Aiex- and living rooms for the philosophers and men of science who ^i^"* 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 syrvive 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 II, 736. Per- p. 448), another splendid city of this age which grew up §s.wonderful under Athenian influences (Fig. 214). One of the kings of sculpture 464 jnticieiii. 1 tmei 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. Restoration 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 dwellings of the citizens were all lower down, in front of the group of buildings shown here. These pubhc buildings stand on three terraces — lower, middle, and upper. The large lower terrace (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. 2:7). On the middle terrace (5), behind the colonnades, was the famous library of Pergamum, where the stone bases of library shelves still survive. The zi//cr terrace (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 216). 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 The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 46 5 giants (Fig. 217). This vast work extended almost entirely around a colossal altar (Fig. 214) 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 Athefiian 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. Hellexistic Portrait Head in Bronze This magnificent liead 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 466 A7icient Times 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 painter 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- The keen and wide-awake intelligence of this wonderful age ical progress , . , , . „ , , ... and practical was everywhere evident, but especially m the apphcation of inventions 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^.j 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 medes 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 (§ S84) Archimedes was in close correspondence with his friends in Alexandria, who form'ed 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 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 Euclid and famous amone us — that of Euclid. His complete system of Archimedes. ^ ^ ^ Astronomy : 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 sun. 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 cost 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- ^45- Era- raphy. Eratosthenes, a great mathematical astronomer of Alex- computes tiTC S1Z6 or 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 tlie 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 (hne 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 7 \ degrees of the earth's circumference from Alexandria ; that is, the distance between Alexan- dria and the First Cataract was 7^ 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). To 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. Explo- age. At home, in Greece, one geographer undertoolc to meas- ^ard ure the heights of the mountains, though he was without a barometer. Prhe campaigns of Alexander in the Far East had greatly extended the limits where the known world endedA 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. Expio- had passed Gibraltar, and turning southward had probably ward and reached the coast of Guinea, whence they brought back mar- p°th'^as'an^ 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 geogJaphy_ Europe, Asia, and Africa, not only showed the regions grouped makes first 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, .11 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 medicine 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 be channels for the circulation of air from the lungs. Alexandria Map of the World according to Eratosthenes (200 b.c.) 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. 750. Earliest Notwithstanding the popularity of the natural sciences, there state libraries ^ i. i j > of the Greeks; was now also much Study of language and of the great mass of Abx^dnan ^^^^^ 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 e. 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 a'gemenTand philosopher and poet named Callimachus was made a librarian ^ataiogumg \yi. by the first Ptolemy. Callimachus catalogued all the known c^iii^-*' 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 ^^^^^^^ and o^en badly copied works. The copies produced by the ?" '^^^ 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- mption of the people. The old simplicity, purity, and beauty of Roman family life was disappearing, and divorce was 5 64 ^^rt'l^l/i:'H'U 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 gladius, 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 {atnpht) 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 f^ee grain for days, as their share of the plunder from the great con- ^°^^^,^°^' quests. At the same time, as their poverty increased, the free food once furnished them by the wealthy classes far exceeded what private donors were 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 ^f 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 tlie government that ruled the world by bribing the little body of citizen? 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 poiitkal demonstrated his ability and his worthy character in some minor ^j ^3 ^ivii'"'^'' 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 S66 Jinneni i imes 912. Growth of self- interest ; the unrepubhcan character of returned provincial governors 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 office 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 country. 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 landownei^ 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 was 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- starved 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 bom. 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 .(Egean 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 , . revolts and 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 Ancient 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. 517. Hos- During the uprising of the slaves in Sicily the small farm the nch'and" owncrs, free men, went about burning the fine villas of the "'^aiTV^" ■^salthy plantation proprietors. The slave rebellion therefore small farmers was a revelation of the hatred not only among the slaves but also among the poor farming class of freemen — 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- structionof. , . , , .,,. . . ^ -tt ., , ^ 1 farms and lowmg the briUiant Victories of Hannibal and the splendid tn- itaty by^w'ar umph 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 litde 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 bom he no longer found the house that had sheltered bought'up^ his childhood. His family was gone and his htde farm, sold for ''[^ntafi*^ 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. inabilitj willing to settle down to work its fields as of old, he was soon to compete aware that the hordes of slaves now cultivating the great planta- "iJortmf tions around him were producing grain so cheaply, that when he cheap im- , . f . ported grain 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 State 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 robbeines and extortions of the Roman taxgatherers and governors, the continuous slave raids of the ^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 sighs 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 of the Medi- terranean for the empire they had conquered, — a government even as world ; perii- 1 /• T-i ■ 1 T-^ • ^o f^^N 1 • r- -1 *^^s situation good as that of Persia under Darius (§ 236), — 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 of 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"st^ate in the government of city-states, as we have seen (§ 767). But ™P|rnmf 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 government 572 Ancient Times 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. QXJESTIONS 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 life? What were the tastes of the ordinary Roman ? Describe the rise of gladiatorial combats. What can you say about the expenses of a political 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 ^gean 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 all 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 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 suryiving 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 Cffisar (§ 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 Csesar, 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 Cajsar's murder (§ 969). 574 A Century of Revolution 575 threatening to crush the Mediterranean world and its civilization, as the prehistoric Greeks had crushed ^gean civilization (§ 380). The Senate which was to meet this dangerous situation had 928. Short- been in practical control of the Roman government since the theSenate days of the Samnite War. The senators now formed an oligarchy f""^ }^^.°\ * -' b J legal basis for of selfish aristocrats as in the Greek cities (§ 6i8). 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 clajs 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 f°rmers"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 gie 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 sheep on 576 Ancient itmes 930. The absorption of the public 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 of 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 diffi- 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 Revolution ^'/y 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 enforcement 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, gg* '^^ ^ 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.). S78 Ancient Times 934. Unre- liability of popular support 935- "^^^ ^''^ with Jugur- tha, and the appointment of the peo- ple's com- mander against the Senate Section 84. The Rise of One-Man Power : Marius and Sulla The weakness in the reforms of the Gracchus brothers lay chiefly in their unavoidable reliance upon votes ; that is, upon the unstable support of the people at the elections and at the meetings of the popular assembly. It was difficult to hold the interest of the people from election to election. In the Gracchan elections, when wort on the farms was pressing, the country 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 commander. Meantime the blindness and corruption of the Senate offered the people more than one opportunity for gaining power. The misrule of the Senate abroad was now so scandalous that the people seized this opportunity. In a war between Rome and 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 A CenUny of Revohtticn 5 79 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, man of the people, named Marius, who had once been a rough commaTder, plowboy. He was fortunately an able soldier, and he quickly defeats ju- brought the war with Jugurtha to an end, after the Senate's the German 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 Cirjihrians 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 organizer, and he introduced changes in the Roman army which property were epoch-making both in the history of warfare and in the qualification ^ ° J for military political history of Rome. In order to secure sufficient men service; the 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, S8o Ancient Times 938. The cohort as the tactical unit, devised by Marius 939. Failure or 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 Century of Revolution 581 Meantime the struggle between Senate and people was com- 940. Dis- plicated by the increasing discontent of the Italian allies. They ""d'discon'^''' had contributed as many troops to the army which conquered '•="'. °* ''l? 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 ness of the the Italian allies should receive citizenship. Among: 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 and southern- Italy revolted and formed a new state and 582 Ancient itmes 942. War with allies (Social War, 90-88 B.C.); citizenship given to all Italy 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 now 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 now 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 Revokttion 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 peop"e°s^on- fighting in the streets, and the senatorial troops fell upon the '™' '" ^""^'= ^ ^ absence; war new Italian citizens as they voted in the Forum and slew them and murder by hundre^ds. In the midst of these deeds of violence Marius, S 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 the 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 ag^nst^" (see map IV, p. 552). He had prospered by taking advantage of Mithradates 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 S84 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 hatred.s 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.). 948. The people elect Pompey consul and regain po- litical power (70 B.C.) Section 85. The Overthrow of the Republic: Pompey and C^sar 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 military 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 teVrane™^"^'" whole Mediterranean (§ oiO- They even appeared at the andPompey's ^ -^ ^' •' r^ 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 ot the people passed a law giving Pompey supreme command in] the Mediterranean and 'for fifty miles back from its shores. He J 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 Uso. Exter- pirates. He then sailed eastward, and in seven weeks after his Sle"pirates, arrival in the ^gean he had exterminated the Cilician sea/I f^Jji^"^'^"" °^ robbers likewise and burned their docks and strongholds. Band conquests m 1 • , n 1 ■ 1 , 1 , * '" t*>^ Orient ■ 1 he next year his command was enlarged , to mclude also the by Pompey leadership in a new war against Mithradates which had beei/ ^ ' ^ ^'^'' going on with satisfactory results under LucuUus, a R'omari commander of the greatest ability. LucuUus had already broken the power of Mithradates and also of the vast kingdom of Armenia, under its king, Tigranes. Pompey therefore had litde 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 Romarl province. He entered Jerusalem and brought the home of the 586 Ancient itmes 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 Pompey 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 Cassar(Fig. 244), born in the year 100 B.C., and thirty years old in Pornpey's consulate. He had supported all the legislation against the laws of Sulla and in favor ef Pornpey's appointment to his I 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 Cassar. Among Caesar's political friends was a noble named Catiline. He was the leader of a good many undesirable followers, but Caesar was supporting Catiline and another friend, named Mark Antony, for election to the consulship. ^ Popular distrust of Cesar's purposes, and Catiline's evil repu- tation, led to the defeat of Caesar's candidates 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 qf JuHus Csesar are really of uncertain identity A Century of Revolution 587 a new middle-class party from the Italian communities, which 952. The should stand between the Senate and the people, Cicero dreamed cldi'neTnd* of a restoration of the old republic as it had once been. Cati- "^'^ success of the great line, however, 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 effort 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. Cassar, on the other hand, was suspected of connection with the uprising of Catiline. The suspicion was without doubt unjust, but it 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 "^g trlunw- 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 his elected treaty of peace with Mithradates, and a grant of land for his /?" ^"c ) troops. For. two years the Senate refused Pompey these con- cessions. Meantime Caesar stepped forward in Pompey's sup- port, and the two secured the adherence to their plans of a very wealthy Roman noble named Crassus. The plan was that Cassar and Crassus should run for the consulship, and then 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 and Crassus were elected consuls 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 588 /incteni i imci 954. Cassar secures the government of Gaul on both sides of the Alps 955. Csesar'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 what 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. Caesar took charge of his new province early in 58 B.C., and at once showed 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 Caesar 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, A Century of Revolution S89 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. 1^57. Caesar's In Gaul he proved his ability as a brilliant soldier. Was he sUuationas also a great statesman, or was he, like Pompey, merely to seek P statesman 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 whjch 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 l| and , the empire. Herein Caesar showed his superiority as a 1 1 statesman over both Sulla and Cicero. The situation therefore demanded an able and patriotic com- 958. Cassar mander with an army behind him who should make himself account^of'" the undisputed and permanent master of the Roman govern- ^ *^^""^ 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 5 go Ancient 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 its end, his supporters in Rome, instructed by him, were arrang- cause of the ,jj^g f^^ jjjg ggcond 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 niidst 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, Cassar ^""^\^and Pompey, like that of Marius and Sulla a generation earlier. 960. Caesar Cassar endeavored to compromise with the Senate, but on and his army . . , . , of profes- receivmg as their reply a summons to disband his army, he had sional .soldiers ^^ hesitation as to his future action. The professional soldiers A Century of Revolution 591 who now made up a Roman army had no interest in political questions, felt no responsibility as citizens, and were conscious of very httle obligation or attachment to the State. On the other hand, they were usually greatly attached to their com- manding general. The veterans of Ca5sar'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. Cffisar 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 §peak of any great deci- sion as a " crossing of the Rubicon." The swiftness of Csesar's lightning blows was always one -961. c^sar of the greatest reasons for his success. Before the Senate's maneuvers ' message had been an hour in his hands, Caesar's legions had o°"ai!f™d been on the march from the Po valley toward Rome (49 b. C). is elected consul Totally unprepared for so swift a response on Caesars part, the (49B.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 entered 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. Being now in possession of Rome, Caesar, after a brief dictatorship, was elected consul, and could then 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 improvirig every moment to gather and discipline an army with which to crush Caesar. 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 Pornpey'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 Pomp£y 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 Cassar's right wing which it faced, it was expected to cut its way victoriously through, and then, passing around Cassar'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 Century 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 1 1 Hills J . IMMMMM«^^^<«»^««M»»1 VMWMM ^// " Csesar's tx{ Cxsar's Infantry w ^UCflvalry Town , of % 1 ^-el / / / P^B / f Pharsalua / / ,8j oB / 1/ <^«. ( / / J Hills 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. c^sar art, and it never passed beyond the masterful skill of the victor conquesrof ^ of Pharsalus. Pompey, crushed by the first defeat of his life, **= Mediter- ^ -^ ' -' ' ranean world escaped into Egypt, where he was basely murdered. Cassar, (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 Ancient Times advantages of her friendship met a ready response on the part of the great Roman. Here Csesar 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 Cassar without sufficient troops, 'he was attacked by a mob and the great Alexandrian library (§759) 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 " (veni, 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). 966. Cffisar's Caesar used his power with great moderation and humanity, and his own From the first he had taken great pains to show that his position 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. 967. Caesar's Cassar lived only five years (49-44 B.C.) after his first con- reorganization iJTT^l/ s^r,. Of tiie .State quest ot Italy (49 B.C.). Of this period, as we have seen, four and Empire yg^^^g ^gj-g 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 Century of Revolution 59S hundred. Caesar did not abolish the ancient body, but he greatly increasfed its numbers, filled it with his own friends and adher- ents, and even installed former slaves and foreigners among its members. 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. Cesar's magnificent public buildings, and for the alteration of the plan andimprove- 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 ofc!Esar'°" the Parthians east of the Euphrates. But there were still men ^^^f". ^^^^ 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 Csesar — 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. 970. Youth of Ceesar's nephew, Octavian (Augustus) 971. Early career of Octavian Section 86. The Triumph of Augustus and the End of the Civil War 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 Cffisar's A Century of Revolution 597 fortune and gained another election to the consulship. 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 carrying on their wars and establishing themselves, the three began at once a SuUan 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. 245. Portrait of Augus- tus, NOW IN THE Boston Mu- seum OF Fine Arts 598 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 fnd'the'vvest to return to Italy and endeavor to crush the enemies of the (42-35 B.C.) triumvirate in the West. Antony was to jerhain 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 serious Statesman. His prestige was also greatly dimmed by gains 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 Century of Revolution ' 599 the East and the West, met at Actium on the west coast of Greece. The . battle was fought both by land and by sea. Before the end of the battle the soldiers of Antony saw their leader and his oriental queen forsaking them in flight, as Cleo- patra'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. ™Roman^^'' Antony, probably forsaken by Cleopatra, took his own life. ?™™(?n The proud queen was unwilling to undergo the crushing humil- ^"d ends a . . - . ^^ . , . , t- 1 century of lation of gracmg Octavian s triumph at Rome, two of whose revolution rulers had yielded to the power of her beauty and her person- ^^ (rjj- 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 B.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 °* 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 first year of the Christian Era, and hence the two centuries of peace do not correspond eJtactly with the first two centuries of our Christian Era. 6oo ■ Ancient Tithes 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 Gaius 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. What 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 Csesar? 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 Cssar? What was the result of Cassar'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 battle of Philippi. How did Octavian gain the West? Who Was ruler of the East? How did Octavian gain the East? What great worid did he then control ? What kind of power had triumphed at the end of a century of revolution ? What was to follow ? ^.-J- ~ _ L- 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 '''™^™° ^'^' 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 headpiec.e shows a restoration of a magnificent marble in- closure 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 iEneas bring- ing an offering to the temple of the Roman household gods (Penates) whom he carried from Troy to Latium (footnote, p.^S^). 601 ate policy 602 Ancient Times Roman Empire 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 great 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. 97p. Titles of At the Same time the Senate conferred upon him the title of the new ruler ^^ . , ,, , . „ , ,, r^, , . .. , . . 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 cri3r3ctpr of the iiew State; ^ual government of the Senate and of the Princeps, whom we rf fte^SenltT commonly call the emperor. The clever Augustus had done what his great foster father, Julius Cssar, had thought unneces- sary : he had conciliated those Romans who still cherished- the The First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 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 ^i^Ja^™"^ Augustus tended to become a military monarchy, as we shall ni?na^hy; see. All the influences from the Orient were in the same direc- fluences in --, . „ , , , ^ , this direction tion. -ligypt was m no way controlled by the Senate, but re- mained 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 (§ 7,17). 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 tide they at once applied to him. This also had its influence in Rome. -The 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^J^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 Adantic ; 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 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 Den- mark in a line from the southeast to the northwest. But in the attempt to conquer Germany to the Elbe, 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 lenngs of j , 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 Centuries 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 Augustus :° for the Persian Empire (§ 267), when it was even larger than the orgam- 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 s™stemof unlimited power, like that of an absolute monarch, made it im- governors of r^ ' 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 The 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 a"restoration position, as the imperial leader of all the peoples around the °^°'^^ 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 more 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 depa'rtrnent, 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 stilhthe 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 (A), and reached the Forum at the Arch of Augustus (B), and the Temple of the Deified Julius Cajsar (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 (C) planned by Julius C^sar (§ 993). At the upper end of the Forum was the new speaker's platform (//); 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 [L], a place of public records; and on the summit of the Capitol the Temple of Jove {.)/). Julius Cassar extended the Forum northward by laying out his new Forum (A^) behind his Senate House (G). 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. Fig. 246. The Roman Forum and its Public Buildings in the Early Empire. (After Luckenbach)* We" look across the ancient market place {F, § 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, I), 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 (/, y!/) and the arches showing Etruscan influence, the Attic roofs and colonnades and the clerestory windows (D, E) copied from the Hellenistic cities. See complete key on opposite page, footnote ^^n y^.c^'^^m"iH " 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 link uniting the old Roman Forum {F) with the magnificent new buildings of the Campus Martius, 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 ( T 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 Two Centuries of Peace 609 admiration of later Romans. From this ro3'al dwelling on the Palatine arose our English word " palace." A new and sumptu- ous temple of Apollo surrounded by colonnades, in which the emperor installed a large library (§ 1001), 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 rnThe^Fomm palace the magnificent basilica business hall erected by Caesar, ^"^ vicimty 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, Bf). Behind the ground intended by him for the new Senate building, Caesar had buUt a new forum, called the Forum of Caesar (Figs. 246 and 247, A'); 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 Gaesar. * The Senate House of Julius Csesar ( G) and his new Forum (N) extended from the old Forum northward, occupying the ground where once the Assembly of the Roman People had beenaccustomed to meet (Comitium). This northern addition to the old Forum was still further extended in the same direction by the Forum of Augustus (O) {§ 993). The great emperors of the first and second centuries then extended this northern addition in two directions, first on the southeast (P, Q), 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 Xerva inserted his long, narrow Forum ( Q) ; while in the second century A. D. Trajan, going to the other side of the Forum of Augustus (0), built the most magnificent of all the forums (R), with a vast basil- ica {S, called Basilica Ulpia) beside it, and beyond it his t^vo libraries ( V) (§ 105 1), with his wonderful column (T, and Fig. 263) between them. In Trajan's honor Hadrian then built a temple ( W), completing this line of the most magnificent buildings the ancient world ever saw. 6io Ancient limes 994. First theaters and baths; Altar of Peace 995. Influ- ence of Greece and the Orient on Roman architecture 99S. 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 J-l -r-l r— < r* n rt» ^-^ rt 3 P I H e g ^ ^ i •£ < 6u 6l2 Ancient limes 997. Lack 01 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 visitr If Rome was a borrower in art, she was even more so in science. Rome had no such men as Ar chimedes (§ 742) and Eratosthenes (§ 745). When Agrippa, Augustus's powerful Fig. 249. Pyramid-To.mb 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 phyf decide of wide travels mingled with histoiy, and althoiigh it sadly °f 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- w^lJ^oman interest in literature. The greatest of the leading ?„ iTteramre ; Romans displayed in some cases an almost pathetic devotion Romans of to literary studies, even while weighed down with the heaviest culture the .,.,..„ , . T ■ 1 leading culti- responsibilities. Caesar put together a treatise on Latm speech vated men of while crossing the Alps in a palanquin, when his mind must ^OTid""^"^"* 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. Csesar 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 limes 1000. Cicero the type of the highly educated man of the late Republic ; his writings and their enduring influence 1001. 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, ijnd 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 Centuries 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 Latin poetry arose ^'^^ ' H°'^'=^ 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 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. 6l6 /inneni iimes Virgil, the other great poet of the Augustan Age, had from 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 write 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 iEneid, as it is called, /Eneid w^is 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 (§ 68g). 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 ^Eneid 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 Tzvo Centuries 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- deeds left by 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 „" t^e ' line of Augustus descendants of his family, either by blood or adoption, were to rule for more than another half century, 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 ai-e 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- appointm^nt of his successor or for later successors to his succession; position. Any prominent Roman citizen might have aspired Tibenus to the office. 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 6i8 Artcient Times 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 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 ofTfte'rius^" affairs. He gave the provinces wise and efficient governors, (14-37 A.D.) j^jjjj 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 little more than a iiction. 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. Caiig- As Tiberius had lost his son, the choice for his successor fell ula (37-41 r^ • r^ A.D.) upon (jams 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 The First of Two Centuries 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 craved. 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 1010. The of Caligula, found in hiding the trembling figure of a nephew ciaudha" ° of Tiberius and uncle of the dead Caligula, named Claudius. ('*' '^•"■' 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 loii.Achieve- and devoted himself to its affairs. He conducted in person a Claudius: successful campaign in Britain, and for the first time made its g™"^""' "^^ southern portion a province of the Empire. It was this con- lie works; , . _ . , . creation of quest which helped to bnng so much of Latm speech 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 Ancierit Times give the Empire for the first time a group of eflncient ministers, whom we would call the Secretary of the Treasury, ±e Secre- tary of State, and others like them. I0I2. Prob- The inability of Claudius to select wisely and to control those sh!atioTo£ who formed his circle was the probable cause of his death. It Claudius and accession of Nero (54 A.D.) rr-T-'-'-'', %WA'm\x :;i; ^#^lfef-'^' 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 lo 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 se 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, -th^ rule of The First of Two Centwies of Peace 62 1 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 Nero'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 ^^^g ^^^ plan, p. 622). It swept over the Palatine Hill, destroying the N«oCpalace 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 htmself 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 SCALE OF YARDS 400 600 600 \im 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 st^e 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. Tlic First of Two Ciiitim'rs of Praic 623 The dissatisfaction at Rome and Nero's treatment of the 1015. The onl)- able men around him deprived liim of support tliere. Then ^™ry (f,^, the provinces began to chafe under liea\y taxation. When last of the ... Junan line : the discontent m the provinces linally broke out in open tiu- end oi' ,. 1 J ■ 11 1 , . n li " . .-, . the first ii-n revolt, led especially by dalba, a Roman j;-o\'ernor 111 Spain, turv ol peace Nero showed no ability to meet the rcviilt. The rebellious C'**'^-"-) troops marched on Rome. Nero went hito liidini;, and 011 hear- ing that tlie Senate bail \oled his tlealh, he tbealrically stabbed himself, and, atdtudinizinj;- to the last, he passed away uttering- tlie words, "What an artist dies in me I " Thus died in 68 a.d. the last ruler of the line of yVugustus, and with him ended the first century of peace (31 i!.i.'.-6S a.d.); for several Roman commanders now struggled foi- die 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 .\ugustus, the good accomplished in the reigns diu-ing tlie'^^ of Tiberius and t'lauilius could not be wholly undone. Both at ',uif(^^i*e. Rome and in tlie provinces, the gcnernnient had been much deification of the emperor;-. improved. But, as we have seen, the Roman Stale was fast becoming a nionarchv in which the crown was bequeathed from father to son. This pnicess had been hastened by the fact that the Civsars, as the emperors were now called, had gained a jiosition of unique reverence. Ueginning with Julius C;v.sar, the emperors,' like Alexander the (ireat, were deified, and their worsliip was wiilcly practiced throughout die Empire. It was indeed an obligation of citizenship to pay di\ ine homage to the aiiperor. The supreme place which he now occupied was not to be endangered b\- Uie brief struggles which followed the death of Nero, and the wiile rule of the Roman cnijieror, e\en after the fall of Julius (.".-vsar's line, was to maintain another cen- tui-)- of prosperit\- and peace. To this .second cent my of peace in tlie Roman Empire we must devote another chaptt-r. .^ licsides Julius Cft'sar and .\iil;u,sius, (.'l.iiulius was the only emperor of the Julian line who was deified, (-il-terius f.iiled of it In-e-uise M his unpopularity, and Caligula and Nero, of eoui-se. because of their infamous chanielcrs, 624 Ancient Times QUESTIONS Section 87. What kind of a period did the rule of Augustus begin? What was his attitude toward the Republic? What chief offices and powers did lie receive? From what body? What were his titles ? Had the Republic survived ? What body was continuing the power of the Republic ? Was this power likely to survive ? Who was the real ruler? What influences tended to make him a sovereign? ■ What was the pohcy 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 ? Was 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 sai^ 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.) t For about a year after the death of Nero the struggle among the leading military commanders for the throne of the Caesars threatened to involve the Empire in another long civil war. Fortunately the troops of Vespasian, a very able commander 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 1017. Advent of the second century of peace with the triumph of Vespasian (69 A.D.) 626 Ancient ltm.es 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 whole 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. 636). 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 62.J was thus in constant danger of being overwhelmed from the North, just as the splendid -i^gean 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 two sons, 1021. The did much to make the northern frontiers safe. After the mild hig^ofthT and kindly rule of Vespasian's son, Titus (§ 1018), the lattfer's "°rthern brother, Vespasian's second son Domitian, adopted the frontier the Flavian emperors lines laid down' by Augustus and planned their fortification (59-96 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 dajigerous 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 (se'e map I, p. 636). The brief and quiet reign of the seriator Nerva, who was 1022. Trajan selected by the Senate to succeed Domitian (96 a.d.), left the barbarians whole dangerous situation on the lower Danube to be met by ™jj*g'°™^^ 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 Koumania, 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 4iis right hand, from which he is pouring ^ libation upon the alt^ir. 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) virord " Roman.'' Trajan's vigorous policy quieted all trouble along the lower Danube for a long time. 1023. Tra- The military glory of Rome, which had declined since the the ParthTans days of Caesar, revived in splendor under this great- soldier i'ly^A.D.) 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 The Second Century of Peace 629 frontier a large portion of the boundary was formed by the upper Eupiirates River. Rome thus held the western half of the Fertile Crescent, but it had liever 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 -jiM^^^ 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, however, 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. in). .Then a sudden rebellion in his rear forced him 630 Ancient Times to a dangerous retreat WeakeTied 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- : '" „ '^!.' ' '- ' ., •f?^ 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- r? f X*Y-''^i**''-''^^"'^'^-*^^'~^ '"-^^^ a pf UA'*^'t'Ta-cvT-.sM\j::7w ■n^;<^rtv{c,Wl,;• ■', KjxU^V .■>7*^>'^-ni:-, K^-st>..k„f, i , -, '.-TT.^,^ !- .■- . ■ -^rtiT^,^-' ^ . ^,:^|<; ,';|^ Fig. 253. Letter of Apion, a young Sol- dier IN THE Roman Army, to his Father, Epimachos, in Egypt* 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 The Second Century of Peace 63 1 of the 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 sldllfuUy managed organiza- Trafan anc[ tion of the kind which the ancient world had ever seen. Drawn Hadrian from all parts -of the Empire, the army now consisted of all * This Egyptian youth, Apion, having enhsted in the Roman army in company with other boys from his 'little 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 VIII, 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 fronj 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 crumbling 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 limes 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 (cf. 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 somewhere along the frontier line, such a young soldier lived with his comrades in one of the large garrisons maintained at the most imjiortant frontier points, with fine barracks and living quarters for officers The Second Century of Peace 633 and men (Fig. 254). The discipline necessary to lieep 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 1026. Organi- within. The emperors developed a system of government de- effiden"/ partments already foreshadowed in the time of Claudius (§ ion), government . , ^ ' departments To manage them, they appomted Roman 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 taxJaTOemo 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, p^^^g^ of the From being the first citizen of the State like Augustus, ruling emperor and . . , declme of jointly with tlje 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 siiccessor 634 Ancient Times on the death of an emperor, and dangerous conflict miglit 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 th'^i'^™i'^f° ^° ^^"^ '^^'^ 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 siibjects of this vast State pay their taxes of a system . , of law for the into the same treasury, but they were now controlled by the mpire ^^.^^ \z.^%. 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 ^/y-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 Hadriai), maintained that an accused person must be held innocent until proved guilty by the evi- dence, ii principle of law which has descended to us and is The Second Century of Peace 635 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 tiie'prov-" far the large majority of the people lived in towns and cities. "}<^es; sur- 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 rightJo 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 the 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 . • T • T. 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 itmes 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 <;ontrol 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. 1033. The peoples of the Roman Empire 1034. Pom- peii, a pro- vincial city of the early Roman Empire Section 91. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire : the Provinces 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 beerf 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, Ihe 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. 25s). 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 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 public 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 /incieri-i. i iw^ej 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. Som^ 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 fhip°p°ng"'^ was the freedom from the old-time pirates (§ 949). From the splendid har-bor 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 tqke a large and comfortable ship for Spain and land there in a week. The Roman whose son was studying in Athens dispatched a tank draft for the youth's university .expenses, and a. week later the boy could be spending the fnoney. 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 nortiiern 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 64 1 Both business and pleasure now made travel very common, 1039. Fre- and a wide acquaintance with the world was not unusual. The ?ravef but Roman citizen of means and education made his tour of lack of hotels the Mediterranean much Ss 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 servants, 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 In^es^ ''™^" 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 where impressive evidences of the generous interest of the and schools citizens. There were fountains, theaters, music halls, baths, j" ^3^ P"""" gymnasiums, and schools, erected by wealthy men and given to the community. The most famous among such men was 642 Ancient Times -.' .,:Z,un7i?7i'i:^^i;::^!7'^-..,.^,-~- rr^r:^^:;^;--^ 1 ^'/•^~^^;^^^^^,i\ A, .AH -'■:<<,■: ' ' ' ""^' C r^-f -'^.' ^' "^ ^ A' '' "'.'' '^^ '""^'-'"^ , r~^.-rA.C'-:^?^4.,: \ 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 /« Gireii 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 S) ten times, and under it the similar letter A', also ten times. These he followed by the words "turtle" (XEAON A), "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 (Tig. 183,7) 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 b^ Hadrian Tlic 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 eler^n"the^" Wars of Athens, Greece seemed to belong to a distant and ^^i'i P'"^'^'^^ ' . ° and Athens ancient world, of which he had read in the histories of Thu- 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 HeUas in the days of her greatness — a story told in marble eierinthe 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 poUtically, 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 . ^ . , . , ^ , . .^ , , ■ A ' Roman trav- cities of Asia Mmor and Syria, he might feel justmable pride m eier in the what Roman rule was accomplishing. In the western half of MtaVr^nT 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 1045- The Roman trav- eler in the East; Par- thia, Assyria, and Baby- lonia 644 Ancient Times 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, 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 e«end hr''^'^ ^^ ^°'^^^' *^ Roman traveler made no effort to But he^ could'^'^'^""'^ *^ frontier out into these foreign lands, cross over to aT^^ j ^^^^ Roman galley atAntioch and 'exandna, where a still more ancient world The Second CenUiry of Peace 64 s awaited him. In the vast lighthouse (§ 733), over four hun- 1046. The dred years old and visible for hours before he reached the t^aTCkrin harbor, he recognized the model of. the Roman lisfhthouses '^eEast: ° Egypt he had seen. Here our traveler found himself among a group of virealthy 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 ii 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 646 Ancient Times their names on the colossal statues which overshadowed 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- erh France with water from two excellent springs 25 miles distant. It is nearly goo 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 cient civiliza- ti, ■ ■ a j tion in the as tfieir ancient world, long possessed of its own ancient civili- Rominfn" nation, Greek and oriental. There the Roman traveler found the West Greek eveiywhere, and spoke it as he traveled. But when he The Second CenUiry of Peace 647 turned away from the East and entered the western Mediter- ranean, he found a much more modern 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 ™d their 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). Tust as the communities of Roman subjects once girdled the 1049. The ^ J u -u- whole Medi- Mediterranean, so the surviving monuments and buildings terranean which they used, still envelop the great sea from Britain east- ^ghty"' '^^' 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, Loncfon, 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 Century 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. A 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^ome : 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 . . , r 1 1 rr-T "^^ forums grandest buildings of the Empire thus far had grown up. 1 he 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, N, O), 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. 6so Ancient Times that is, a fifth new forum (Fig. 247, K), 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 1052. Roman coucrete : Pantheon and Hadri- an's tomb Fig. 262. The Vast Flavian Amphitheater at Rome now CALLED THE Coi25£E.UM. (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 modern Rome, but litde 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 beaaty, 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 ertiploying 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 Foriim (Fig. 247, R) 6S2 Ancient ximea 1053. Roman sculpture and for several generations was the burial place of the em- perors. It survives as one of the great buildings of Rome. The rtf/2,j^ sculpture adorning all these monuments (Fig. 251) is the greatest of Roman art. The reliefs covering Trajan's 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. 688 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 1 he Second Century of Peace 6S3 perished long ago, are now known to us only in the form of surviving copies made by the Roman sculptors of this ag^ 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 upiform, 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 1054. Roman painting 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 ^Tt'C'i'lirtL' X i.rri.t^^ loss. Leader- Supported by the emperors. Nevertheless, even under these turepassef favorable circumstances not a single genius of great creative from Rome imagination arose. Just as in sculpture and painting, so nov^r in Athens literature, the leaders were content to imitate or copy the great virorks 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 poetiy had declined, prose writers were stiE productive. Sene^c^Taci- Nero's able minister Seneca (§ 1012) wrote very attractive tus, and the essays and letters on personal charac]ter and conduct They 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. PLATii VIII. Onf. of the Oldest Surviving Portrait Paintings* 656 /incieni. ± i.mc^ 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 modem times Pliny's work was, next to Anstode, 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 tite"sdence flourished under Hadrian and the Antonines, was the last of at Aiexan- the famous scientists of the ancient world. He wrote among ana; 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 of the spherical form of the earth as shown by Btolemy and earlier Greek astronomers reached the travelers and navigators of later Europe, and finally led Columbus to The Second Century of Peace 6S7 undertake the voyage to India and the East westward — the voyage which resulted in the discovery of America. The position of educated Greelcs at Rome was very different 1060. Cos- from what it had been under the Republic, when such men Se^o°f 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, settiing 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 limes 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-cityish." 1061. incom- This converging of all the world at Rome was evident in. luxuries"^" 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, formerly 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 centuiy 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 Century 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 S^eSuaUif"'^'' than rice or sugar, but much more important in their influence ^"^ 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 phSosophy 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 'n Europe™ in from the East. Even in Augustus's time the Roman poet TibuUus, absent on a military campaign which sickness 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 ^^S^' 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 Man 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 gteat favorite, and niany 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 Century of Peace 66 1 of the career of the god, especially his submission to death, 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 bring 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. R^manre- Throughout the great Roman world men were longing for l>g;onandthe 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. Little 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 loee. 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 limes 1068. Paul and the foun- dation of the earliest churches ; the New Testament 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 d line of devoted communities stretching from Pales- tine to Rome. Certain letters (of. 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. 126), 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, lofip. Superi- could not offer to their followers the consolation and fellowship tianit°^over'^" of a life so exalted and beautiful, so full of brotherly appeal and *^ "^^"^ , , 1 r t - T^ , oriental re- human sympathy as that of the new Hebrew Teacher. In the ligions 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 1070. Rome not only refusing to sacrifice to the emperor as a god (§ 1016) {he rariy^^ but also openly prophesying the downfall of the Roman Christians 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. * Excavators in the ruins of Egyptian villages like Fig. 2 1 1 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 libellaticics. 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 limes 1071. Organ- Nevertheless, their numbers steadily grew, and each riew Chris- churches and tian group or community organized itself into an assembly of ' o™iar°^ 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 ?i political as well as a religious role. 1072. Begin- ning of de- cline : An- toninus Pius (138-161 A.D.) and Marcus Aurelius (f6i-i8o a.d) 1073. Marcus Aurelius stops the barbarian in- vasion (167- 180 A.D.) Section 94. The End of the Second Century OF Peace In spite of outward prosperity, especially suggested by the magnificent buildings of the Empire, Mediterranean civilization was declining in the second century of peace. The decline be- came noticeable in the reign of Hadrian. The just and kindly Antoninus, who followed Hadrian in 138 a.d., was called by the 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. When the Roman troops returned from this war, they brought back with them a terrible plague which destroyed multitudes of men at the very moment when the Empire most 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 Aurelius iHe 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 Mar9us 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 t.ent 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? How were the laws improved? Tell about the people's interest in public affairs in the provinces. Section 91. Give an imaginary birH'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 modem 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 AureUus 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 Euphrates (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 (§ 166), Babylon (§ 175), Ctesiphon (§ 1094), and, finally, Bagdad (§ 1153). As the author writes (May, 1916), a British expedition, after fighting a battle under the shadow of these ruins of Ctesiphon, has been captured by the Turks. 667 1075. Signs of inner de- cay : former decline of farming continues 668 Anneni, j. i.rn.t>^ 1076. Spread of the orien- tal domain system of landowner- ship ; villas 1077. Rise of coloni Empire which we have been studying, although in a condition seemingly so favorable, w^as suffering from an inner decay, whose symptoms at first hidden were fast becoming more and more evident. In the first place, the decline of farmmg, so noticeable before the fall of the Republic (§§ 918 f.), had gone steadily on. In spite of the heavy taxes imposed upon it, land had con- tinued to pass over into the hands of the rich and powerful. The oriental system of confining landownership to large 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. 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 Revolution 669 captives who had been sold as slaves were no longer obtain- 1078. De- able, and slaves had sfeadily^ diminished in numbers. Their con- slavm^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 coloni, 1079. De- forsook their fields and turned to the city for rehef. Many extent S did this because neglect 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 fenough 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^he7ann- under the plow. Even under the wisest emperors the govern- ^ ^"^ .^ ment was therefore entirely unable to restore to the country bility to re- ,. . _ 1 ■ 1 1 r Store them districts the hardy jeomen, 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 oityhfe of marriages decreased, and the population of the Empire shrank. 670 Ancient limes 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 whoni 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 rnanuf actured in the cities was so seriously lireduced 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 Cenhiry of Revolution 671 Many of the old silver and gold mines around the Mediter- 1084. Lack ranean now seem to have iDeen worked out. Wear in circula- metoiTfor^ tion, loss by shipwreck, private hoards, and considerable sums .)"; Diocletian was a totally diffei-ent one from that which Augustus e*^^™' and the Roman Senate had ruled duve eenturies before, oriental despotism Diocletian depri\ed the shadowy Senate of all power, except for the municipal go\ernment of die city of Rome. The Roman Senate, now i-edueed to a mere City C\uincil, a Board of Alder- men, disappeared fi-om the stage of histon-. The emperor Uius became for the whole Roman world what he had always been in I^pt, — an absolute monarch widi none to limit his power. 678 Ancient limes lOQp. 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 sauthernmost 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 Centuty of Revolution 679 Nicomedia in Asia Minor (see map, p. 676). As a natural con- noi. Diocie- sequence the emperor was unable to give close attention to the [Jf fl,e^East West. Following some earlier examples, and perhaps remem- ^"'^ appoints ^ I- ' r jr 2cci emperor bering the two consuls of the old Republic, Diocletian there- of the West fore appointed another emperor to rule jointly with himseli, 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 iri 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. Diocie- _^ . , . . , , c tian's arrange- of an emperor, Diocletian endeavored to arrange the transfer mentsforthe of power from one emperor to the next. He and his fellow ^"'^'^''ssisn . 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 tha't 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 po possibility of their permanence. In accordance with this' organization, involving four rulers, 1103. Diode , tian's admm- the provinces of the Empire, over a hundred m 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 vicaft 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, thcvicar, and the prefect, and finally to the emperor himself. 1104. Op- The financial burden of this vast organization, begun under pressive taxa- QiQ^ig^i^n 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 wertfour 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. 1105. 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 of both farm- , . , ers and mid- a wandenng beggar, or even to take up a life of robbery and busTnesI violence. The Roman Empire had already lost, and had never ™^ ' racdS" ''^^^ ^^^^ *° restore, its prosperous farming class. It now lost ofoccupa- likewise the enterprising and successful business men of the middle class. Diocletian therefore endeavored to force these A Century of Revolutioji 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 1107. Disap- men' had striven so long, disappeared in Europe, and the once {Jberty and free Roman citizen had no independent life of his own. For ^'^^ 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 toiler for the 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 682 /incieni itmes nop. End of of ancient men in art and literature, as it likewise crushed all rflifghfr^^ progress in business and affairs. In so far as the ancient world civilization in ^^^ Qj^g of proCTess in civilization, its history was ended with the ancient i o . , world ; future the accession of Diocletian. Nevertheless, the Roman iimpire 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. mo. Shift of the center of power from Italy to the Balkan Pen- insula Section 98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of Christianity Under Diocletian Italy had been reduced to the position of a taxed province, and had thus lost the last festige of superiority over the other provinces of the Empire. The dangerous flood 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 lUyrian 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 Athens. 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 Revolution 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 mi. Con- statesman. He chose the ancient Greek town of Byzantium, I^^'I'^^d) ^ makes Con- stantinople his residence and seat of government (330 A.D.) Fig. 268. View across the Bosporus from 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 A.D. (§ 1158). For ages this intercontinental crossing has been the commercial and military link between- Europe and Asia, and as the author writes (May, 1916) the greatest nations of the world are fighting for its possession 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 (§ 1 1 1) ; it was erected here by the Roman emperor TJieodosius ~(§ 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 PlatJEa (§ 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 Byzantiurft became the Eastern capital of Rome (§ nil). 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. A Century of Revolution 685 The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to the east 1112. Con- side of the Ballcan Peninsula was a decided triumph for the and'th^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 '*'? "^^ "' ° _ 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 H14. xhe 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 organization : members and were called the dergy, while the people who made bishops, and up the membership were called the laymen, or the laity. The 686 /inneni -ii-mKi 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. 111$. Chris- The Roman government therefore began to see the useless- on"aYe|ir^'* ness of persecuting the Christians. The struggle to suppress basis with them was one which decidedly weakened the Roman State, at other ren- •' 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 without and the uselessness of the struggle against the Christians within, 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 Nicsea, in northeastern Asia Minor. 1 1 16. Julian The victory of Christianity was not yet final however. After tate"(36i- Constantine's sons and nephews had spent years in fighting 363 A.D.) fQ]. ^.jjg 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 .'' 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 .? 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? 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 g6. 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 Christianity gain legal recognition? When? Tell about Julian the Apostate. CHAPTER XXX 1117. The barbarian danger 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. Since the days of the Stone Age men this 1 This account of the absorption ot 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 above 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. 27i,j), 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 room 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 (§955). 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 riority"and^" number of troops than the barbarians. This was the secret of '^'^'' '"**="" ority to bar- Caesars success agamst 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. By 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 niono- gram of the Sultan have been hung against the walls. at home 690 Ancient Times 1 120. The German peoples in migration and war I121. Admis- sion of wliole German peoples to settle in the Empire and serve in the army They possessed no writing and very little in the way of indus- 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, 6ven 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 Cssar'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 Barbafiatts 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, t^^^^"' also in the North, had long borne an evil repiitation 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 stSssburg^ 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 ce.nturies 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 ,""1!]^;"°"' with civilization but also a respect for it. Their leaders, who writing and Chnstianity 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 /incient limes 1124. West Goths pushed across the Danube by the Huns ; battle of Adrianople (378 A.D.) the begin- ning of a century of continuous barbaric migration 1125. Theo- dosius (379- 395 A.D.) restores the Empire 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 The Tritimph 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 creeceTnd^ king Alaric, the West Goths first pushed down from the i'*'y(4°° '^ A.D.), take Danube into the Balkan Peninsula and advanced plundering Rome (410 into Greece, where they even took Athens. Here the German establish a Stilicho, leading German troops, confronted the German inva- iJl"Gaui" sion and forced it back. Driving their wagons piled high with the plunder of Greece, Alaric led his West Goths into lUyricum, 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 vandai" had crossed the Rhine, and, advancing through Gaul, they had ^"gdoms 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- +5°a.d-) rius as emperor of the West. Not long after their settiement 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. I 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 1129. West- ern Empire loses Britain and dwindles to Ttaly 1130. Italy and the West invaded by the Huns (451^453 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 (§ 11 24). 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 batde at Chalons, in France, Attila was defeated in 45 1 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 Triumph of the Barbarians 695 In Italy, all that was left of the Western Empire, the German 1131. Last of military leaders possessed all the power and made and unmade at'iio'SL^'"'^^ emperors as they pleased. But these seeming emperors of the Romu'us West were now to disappear. By a rema'rkable coincidence the displaced by last to bear the title was called Romulus Augustulus ; that is, feade^Odo- Romuius, " 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 o| an East Goths, whom we call, therefore, the East Goths (Ostro-Goths),' ^0°*!^ j'j"f' ha(} 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- . , lan's partial had been ruled by weaklings. Justmian, however, who was reconquest crowned at Constantinople in 527 a.d., only a generation after of the West His QgS Ancient itmes the rise of Theodoric, was a gifted and energetic ruler. 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 destruction of the East 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- compiie/ 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 temples 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 which the 698 Ancient Times 1 136. Divi- sion of the Church into East and West A *^A V,i« wealth were churches. The vast rrorinfSt -- - .u. a. Constantinople s.l stands to-day, the most magnificent of the early churches of the East (headpiece, p. 688). Tust as this building shows its oriental origin m 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. C 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 ^^'est Goths were threatening the city, and also in other important crises caused by the in- coming of the bafbarians, the bishop of Rome had more than once showed an ability which made him the leading statesman 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 "ntiafmen"" province behind Carthage, where the leading early Christian '" "'ph^^'^L 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 Meditations 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- govemment seemed to totter, Augustine also wrote a great oTood," and treatise which he called "The City of God," meaning the "^^^J^l^fJ^ government of God. Opposed to the governments of this State over ,...,,,.,. the beliefs world and superior to them, he pictured an mvisible kmgdom 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 iimes Church gained complete control over the beliefs of men. This was at the very, same time wrhen the Edict of Theodosius wfas 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. 1 140. Grow- Augustine, moreover, recognized the leadership of the Church Chu?chof° at Rome, and thus added his influence to a tendency already Rome long felt by all (§ 1137). 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. 1141. Rise of As increasing numbers of men withdrew from worldly occu- monks"and pations and gathered in communities, called monasteries, to lead regard for ^°^y '^^^^ °^ *° ^^'P ^arry the Christian faith to the Northern the Roman barbarians, these beliefs regarding the Church of Rome went Church in - t , r-. i the North With them, buch monks, as they were called, taught the bar- barians that the Church also had power over the life here- after. Dreading frightful punishmeftts 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 theni in check. The Church gradually softened and modified the fierce 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'^o£"he had protected Mediterranean, civilization had given way, but Church over ° •" the barbarians 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 bequeathed 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 bishop o/^^' Great, showed himself a statesman of such wisdom and ability ^°TloT~ 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 (" 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 Reme 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 J /~t i -1, the Franlcs among the powerful Franks (§ 11 2 2), a group 01 Crerman tribes a^j the on the lower Rhine. Their king, Clovis, accepted Christianity j^e Pa°ace°" not long before 500 a.d. He succeeded in welding together the Prankish tribes, and the kingdom he left had been stead- ily growing for over a century before Gregory's time. After Gregory's death this Prankish 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 Frankis,h 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 1145. Alli- ance of Charlemagne and the Pope ; Charle- magne's coro- nation by the Pope (800 A.D.) 1146. Church gains literary culture ; pres- ervation of Latin litera- ture by the Church 1147. The basilica church and its oriental ancestor 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 Prankish kingdom, was Charles Martel. He saved Eu- rope from being overrun by the Moslems (732 a.d.) (see § 1154), and his descendants became the greatest kings of the Franks. By combining with the bishop of Rome, whom we may now call the Pope, the new Prankish kings gained the dominion of western Europe. They assisted the Pope by subduing the unruly Lombards in Italy and conquered a large part of modern Germany, besides northern Spain. Charlemagne, the 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 organizatioa, which had been pre- served largely through the influence of the Church. The Church had been founded in the beginning chiefly among the lowly and the ignorant (§ 1069). It had originally been without higher Greek civilization, learning, and art. Grad- ually it gained also these things, as men like Augustine arose. 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 yEneid (§ 1004) are manuscripts written on parchment, preserved in the libraries of the Christian monks. Art was slow to rise among early Christians, and for a thousand years or more there were no Christian painters or sculptors to be compared with those of Greece. On the other hand, the need for places of assembly led to the rise of great 703 704 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 clerestory at the Pyramids of Gizeh 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 andTtsorkn- (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 Forerunners of the Nations of Modern Europe Justinian, whose reign covered the middle years of the sixth 1149. 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 jus^jn^an"^ 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 1150. Inva- sion of the Slavs ; East- ern Empire no longer Roman 1151. 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 stiU 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 live 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. i\2, 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 unwritten, 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 of 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 Fig. 274. A Page of a Manuscript ■' '^ ^ Copy of the Korax, the Bible of Sargon and Hammurapi THE Moslems took over the city This writing has descended from the an- civilization which they cient alphabet of the Phoenicians (Fig. found along the lower , 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 the 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 (§ 1 1 55) in similar books to which the West owes ijiuch y-^./:.:^.^',,^ .,:!Su/Z^^:^ 7IO Ancient limes Euphrates (§ 167), so now in the same region the Moslem Arafis 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 , , ^, , . , , Tower, OR Minaret, IN Spain ^"^^^^ ^l^"^^" Thus beside the ... , , J. 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 7 1 1 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 andAf eastward to the frontiers of India. Westward the Moslems Moslem 111 k r ' 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 (732a.p.) 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 (71'! 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- em 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 '^"'''zatiqn 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 for^ranners- Constantinople, and holding little more than the Balkan Penin- °f ^^dlJ^""' 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 1157. Sur- viving in- fluences of Rome in later Europe 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 Gerfnan 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). Thus Rome left her stamp on the peoples of Europe, still evident, not only in the languages they use, but also in many 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. The 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 line to Augustus, and they ruled as his successors, nopie, and Founded on the site of an. ancient Greek city, lying in the midst 1453 a.d. 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 whoUy 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. hs, 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- ^^'^l^,;; barians, with the result that while Mediterranean civilization zation of , , northern Steadily declined, it nevertheless slowly spread northward, espe- Europe in dally under the influence of the Church, till it transformed the sf2d*e^s 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 shbres of Europe, where 714 Ancient limes 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 oTclvlSfen through thousands of years of Stone Age barbarism, while andbarbansm 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 .i^igean 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 fhe 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 Triumph 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 w^'hrv'lj'fol- fumiture 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 gg. 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? What influences did it leave behind? 7i6 Ancient limes Section 102. Where did mankind first 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 bibliography to mention all of ev^n 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 C9st, 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 $i .50 per volume. Preference is sometimes indicated by double dagger (tt). 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 Hunters. XT^'LO'e., Primitive Culture. tHoERNES, Primitive Man. tMYRES, The Da-wn of History, chaps, i-ii, vii-xi. An excellent little book in which only the traditional Babylonian chronology needs revision. *SiR John Lubbock (Lord Avebdry), Prehistoric Times. *OsBORN, Men of the Old Stone Age. A very valuable and sumptuously illustrated presentation of Early Stone Age life. CHAPTERS II AND III ' Breasted, History of Egypt. IBreasted, History of the Ancient A. Histories Egyptians. *Hali-, The Ancient History of the Near East, chaps, ii-iv, vi-viii. 717 7i8 B. Art and archaeology C. Mythology and rehgion D. Social life E. Excava- tion and discovery F. Original sources in English G. The mon- uments as they are to- day tMASPERO, Art in Egypt. A useful little manual in Ars una — species mille. (Hachette & C«, and Scrlbner's, New York.) *Maspero, Manual of Egyptian Archaiology. (Last edition, 1914. 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 Ancient Egypt. , tERMAN, Life in Ancient Egypt. tEDWARDS, Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers. *Petrie, Ten Years' Digging in Egypt. Weigall, Treasury of the Nile. 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.) ?iXvA Journal of Egyptian Archceology (published by the Egypt Exploration Fund). Both report discoveries in Egypt eis fast as made. *Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vols. I-V. tPETRiE, 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 IBreasted, Egypt through the Stereoscope : a Journey through the Land of the Pharaohs (100 views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See remarks above, p. viii. t(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 Sumer and Akkad and *History of Babylonia. tGooDSPEED, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Recent dis- coveries have greatly altered the chronology. tC. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia (Z-i.xsi!cm&.%& Manuals). *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chaps, v, x, xii. *Olmstead, Sargon of Assyria. *RoGERS, A History of Babylonia and Assyria. There is no handbook corresponding to Maspero's Art in Egypt. *Handcock, Mesopotamian Archceology. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East. »Jastrow, Civilization of the Babylonians and Assyrians. *Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria. See also his Civilization. tSAYCE, Babylonian and Assyrian Life and Customs. »Jastro\s^ Civilization. B. Art and archagology C. Mythology and religion D. Social life Bibliography 719 *ROGERS, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I. There is no journal reporting discoveries in Babylonia and Assyria (like Ancient Egypt above), but see the new journal of the American Archaeological Institute, called Art and Archaology ($2.00 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 Babylonian lAterature. 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 Laws in the World{lA^s of Hammurapi). *KlNG, Letters of Hamnmrapi. 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 F. Original sources in English G. The monuments as they are to-day CHAPTER V tGoODSPEED, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians.- tC. H. W. A. Histories Johns, Ancient Assyria (Cambridge Manuals). *King, Histoiy 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 an& 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 modem history of Persia in English based on the sources, but see especially : t Benjamin, Story of Persia (Story of the Nations Series). Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopedia Britannica. Kaw- LINSON, Five Great Monarchies : Persia. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. xii. '*Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art: Persia. Rawlinson, M071- archies. Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopedia Britannica. Rawlinson, Mon- archies. *Jacijson, Zoroaster. Rawlinson, Monarchies. tjACKSON, Persia, Past and Present. This valuable book is the best introduction to the subject of Persia as a whole, and cojitains much information on all the above subjects. tMiCHAELis, A Century of Archoeological Discovery. A. Histories B. Art and archaeology C. Mythology and religion D. Social life E. Explora- tion 9id discovery 720 ^J.rtt^t'tir^i' X CI' F, 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. S7-S9- 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 *Georce Adam Smith, The Historical Geography 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. tKENT, History of the Hebrew People. fKENT, History of the fewish People. *Hai,l, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. ix. tMACALlSTER, A History of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals). *BuDDE, The Religion of Israel to the Exile. ^Ctl'EYN'E, Jewish Reli- gions Life after the Exile, tj. M. Powis Smith, The Prophet and his Problems (Scribner's). HiLPRECHT, Recent Research in Bible Lands. tMACALlSTER, A His- tory of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals). Current reports •w/ill 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 v!\ 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), Tra7Jeling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope (lOO 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, Guide to Jerusalem. CHAPTER VIII A. Histories tBoTSFORD, Hellenic History, chap. i. tWESTERMANN, Ancient iVaiw»j, pp. 43-50. tG00DSPEED,.4«ae»/ »&)-/(/, pp. 65-71. ttMYRES, Dawn of History, chap. viii. fKiMBALL-BuRY, Students' Greece, chap. i. tBuRY, History of Greece (second e'dition), pp. 1-43. ftRElNACH, • Story of Art, pp. 26-32. ttHAWES, Crete the Forerunner of Greece. tBAlKiE, Sea Kings of Crete. tZiMMERN, Greek Commonwealth, Pt. I (second edition). Bibliography 721 The surviving documents are here almost vpholly archaeological, but B. Sources a few selections bearing on this chapter are to be found in Botsford ^5^ source „., , . r, 7j ■ ^- -,■ ■ 1 .. selections and Sihler s HeiUmc Ctvthzatton, chap. 11. CHAPTER IX 'BoTStOYJ), Hellenic History, «? A^«^/<,«j, chaps, xiv-xv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, 156-169. Kimball-Burv, Stu- dents' Greece, chap. xi. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, chap. xiv. B. Sources and source selections Bibliography 723 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. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, viii-xii. tMoNROE, History of Education, pp. 28-59. Mahafky, Social Life in Greece, chaps, vi ff. Abbott, Pericles, chaps.' xvi-xviii. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth. BoTSFORD and Sihler, chaps, viii-xi. Botsford, Source Book, chap. B. Sources xviii. Plutarch's Pericles. Thallon, Readings, chap. ix. ^""^ source selections CHAPTER XVI '&0T5VO'B.D, Hellenic' History^ Westermann, Ancient A^ations, c\ia.-p. A. Histories xvi. GooDSPEED, Ancient IVorld, 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, Source Book, chap. vii. Plutarch's Lives of Alcibiades, ™,'^ source ^ -^ selections Nicias, Lysander. Thucydides (Jowett), Selections. Thallon, Read- ings, chaps, x-xii. CHAPTER XVn Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. A. Histories xvii. GooDSPEED, Ancient World, pp. 200-215. Kimball-Bury, Sttt- dents' Greece, chaps, xv-xvii. Allcroft, History of Greece, 4.04-362 b.c. Bury, Greece, chaps, xii-xiv. Allcroft, Sicily. Capps, Homer to - Theocritus, pp. 330-338. ISankey, Spattan and Thetan Supremacies,. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xxii-xxiii. ^Xenophon's Anabasis, IV, B. Sources '7ff.; Agesilaos (Dakyns). Nepos' Epaminondas. Plutarch's Lives of ^^f^^°^^^ Pelopidas and Timoleon. Thallon, Readings, chaps, xiii-xiv. CHAPTER XVIH Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 193-198. GooDSPEED, Ancient World, pp. 184-189, 215-220. Bury, Greece (see Index). Allcroft, Histoiy of Greece, 404-362 b.c, chap. xi. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, xv-xvii. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chaps, vi ff. Benn, Ancient Philosophy, chaps, iv-vi. Reinach, Story of Art, pp. 50-58, 66-74. Monroe, History of Education, pp. • 59-72. Tarbell, Greek AH, chap. ix. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, . Lect. III. tTAYLOR, Plato. *Mauthner, Aristotle. A. Histories 724 Ancient Times B, Sources and source selections BoTSFORD and Sihlek, chaps, xii-xv. Fling, Source Book, chap, viii. Thallon, Readings, pp. 513-516, 532-558. XenopAon's Economics (Dakyns). Plato's Apology. Selections from Euripides in tApPLETON, Greek Poets, and in tGoLDWiN Smith, Specimens of Greek Tragedy. Aristophanes' Achamians 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. KlMBALL-BuRY, Students' Greece, chaps, xviii-xx. Allcroft, History of Greece, 362-323 B.C. Bury, Greece, chaps, xvi-xviii. tHOGARTH, Ancient East, pp. 186-217. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. IV. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chap. xiv. tCuRTEIS, Macedonian Empire. tWHEELER, Alexander. BOTSFORD and SiHLER, chap, xvi, passim. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xxiv-xxv. Plutarch's Lives of Demosthenes, Phocion, Alexander. ^Arrian's Anabasis (selections). Justin, History, Bk. IX (Bohn). De- mosthenes' Crown and Third Philippic. Thallon, Readings, chap. xv. Davis, Readings, I, chap. ix. A. Histories j; 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. tSHUCKBURGH, G^r^/^TZ/j/o^y, pp. 235-310. Greenidge, Greek Constitutional History, chap. vii. Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History, chap. ix. JMahaffy, Progress of Hellenism, Lects. II-IV. *Greek Life and Thought, chaps, iii-v, xvi. Justin, .ff'/.itor)/,Bk. IX. Plutarch' s Lives of Aratus, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Agis, Cleomenes, Eumenes. Fl.ING, Source Book, chap. xiii. ^Polybiits' Histories. Shuckrurgh, Selections, especially on the Achaean League. CHAPTER XXI A. Histories BOTSFORD, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxi-xxii. Goodspeed, ^««'ct^ fFor/o', 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; Greek Life and Thought, chaps, i-ii, vi-xv. TAoj^'R.O'E,, History of Education, -p^. T}i-y&. tTucKER, Life in Ancient Athens, chap. ix. Tarbell, Greek Art, chap. ji. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chap, xviii, Bibliography ;25 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, 331-342. -fBRYANT, Short History of Rome, chaps, i-vii. tFowLER, Rome, 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. \VmJKhM., -Oictlines, pp. 45-67. ttABEOTT, Roman Political Institutions, chscp.bi. tCARTER, Religion of Numa. *FranK, Roman Imperialism. BOTSFORD, Story of Rome, chaps, i-iv ; Source Book, chaps, xxix-xxxi. B. Sources MUNRO, Source Book, chaps, i, ii, iv, and v. Plutarch's Lives of Romulus, ^^f source *^ ^ selections Numa, Pyrrhus, Camillus. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 1-40. CHAPTER XXIII BoTSFORD, History of Rome, chap. v. Westermann, 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 Histoiy, pp. 82-97. tLlDDEI.L, Student's Rome, pp. 218- 229. *Greenidge, Roman Public Life, chap. vii. How and Leigh, Rome, pp. 131-148. tSMITH, Carthage and the Carthaginians. Frank, Roman Imperialism. Botsford, Story of Rofne, pp. 101-104; Source Book, chap, xxxii. B. Sources . MuNRO, Source Book, chap. iii. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 41-50. j source CHAPTER XXIV '^O'iS^O'&Xi, History of Rome, Qh2LTf. \. '^Y.'SX'S.YM.Kt^v, Ancient Nations, A. Histories chaps, xxvi-xxvii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 346-354. Fowler, Rome, pp. 84-110. Bryant, Short History, pp. T:i-T) and chaps, ix-xi. How and Leigh, pp. 169-244. Liddell, Rome, pp. 256-320. *Havell, Republican Rome, pp. 156-274. Heitland, Short History, 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, 56-63 ; III, 49-56. \Livy, xxi, 32-38. Plutarch's Lives of Fabius and Mareellus, B. Sources and source selections 726 Ancient Times A. Histories B. Sources and source selections CHAPTER XXV BOTSFORD, History of Rome, pp. 1 16-150. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxix-xl. GooDSPEED, Ancient World, pp. 354-363. 365-392. Bryant, Short History, chaps, xii-xiv. Fowler, Rome, pp. 110-135. tMASOM, Rome, 133-78 B.C., chap. i. tALLCROFT and Masom, Rome, 202-133 n.c., chaps, x-xiv. f Davis, Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, chap. ii. AbbotI', Roman Political Institutions, chap. V. Green IDGE, Roman Public Life, chap, viii; Roman History, Vol. I, chap. i. *DUFF, Literary History of Rome, pp. 92-117. Pel- ham, Outlines, pp. 149-198. Heitland, Short History, pp. 146-248. tAsBOTT, 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. Plutarch^ Lives of Cato the Censor^ Flaminius, yEmilius 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, .ffoffze, pp. 136-186. Heitland, .S^ort jVM^ri', pp. 249-512. IAbbott, 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, Companion 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. Pbttai'ch'' s Lives of Tiberiics and Gaius Grac- chus, Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Cicero, CcEsar, Sertorius. i Ctssar's Gallic War, I, 42-47. Sallusts fugurthine /?■(;)- (Bohn). CHAPTER XXVH A. Histories BoTSFORD, History of Rome, pp. 204-232. WESTERMANN, Ancient Nations, pp. 382-403. Fowler, Rome, pp. 187-21 1. GpoDSPEED, An- cient World, pp. 428-451. «JONES, Roman Empire, chaps, i-iii. tBURY, Student's 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, Augustus. tFowLER, History of Roman Bibliography 72; Literature, Bk. II. ttMACKAiL, Roman Literature, Bk. II, chaps, i-v. ^Tucker, Life in the Roman World, chap. v. BOTSFORD, Story of Rome, chaps, ix-x; Source Book, chaps, xxxviii- B. Sources sxxix. MUNRO, Source Book, chaps, ix and xi. Davis, Source Readings, ^^ source 5p. 163-196. ILaing, Masterpieces of Latin Literature (selections)! ^'^'^""""^ \The Deeds of Augustus (Fairley's translation in the Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints), Vol. V, No. i. Suetonius' Lives of the CtBsars (selections). ^ Tacitus' Annals, XV, 38-45, 60-65. CHAPTER XXVIII BoTSFORD, History of Rome, pp. 232-^266. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories Nations, pp. 403-435. FoWLER, Rome, pp. 211-251. GooDSPEED, An- :itnt World, pp. 451-482. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 509-541. Reinach, Story of Art, pp. 75-83. tPELLlsON, Roman Life in Pliny's Time, chap. ix. i=Mau and Kelsey, Pompeii, chaps, vii-viii, xii-xxii, xlvi-xlviii, Ivi-lix. Tucker, Roman Life, chaps, i-iii, xix-xxi. Greenidge, Roman Public Life, chap. xi. *Hardy, Studies in Roman History, Series I, chaps, i-v. [ones, Roman Empire, chaps, iv-vi. Davis, Influence of Wealth, chaps. ii-vi. '&VKY, Students' Roman Empire. t*CvMONT, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (an epoch-making work). BoTSFORD, Story of Rome, chap, xi; Source Book, chap. xl. Davis, B. Sources Source Readings, II, pp. 196-287. MuNRO, Source Book, pp. 162-171, 176- ^^f source [79. Letters of Pliny (Firth), New Testament, The Acts. CHAPTER XXIX BoTSFORD, History of Ro?ne, chap. xii. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories Vfl^?o«j, chaps, xl-xli. Goodspeed, /?««>«/ World, pp. 483-501 ■ Jones, Voman Empire, chaps, vii-xi. Oman, Byzantine Empire, chap. ii. Vbbott, Roma7i Political Institutions, chap. xvi. *Wright, Palmyra md Zenobia, chaps, xi-xv. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, pp. 332- 146. Davis, Outline History, pp. 130-183. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 77-586. tCuTTS, St. ferome. Jones, Companion to Roman History. CoTTERlLL, Medieval Italy, pp. 21-54. Davis, Influence of Wealth, hap. viii. *Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, ip. 420-479. BoTSFORD, Source Book, chaps, xli-xliii, xlv. Davis, Source Readings, B. Sources I, pp. 287-389. yi\sti-&a. Source Book, pp. \T\-\Ti,. tRoBiNSON, .SfW- ^^^1°™^^ igs in European History, Vol. I, pp. 14-27. The Notitia Dignitatum Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints). 728 Ancient Times A. Histories B. Sources and source selections CHAPTER XXX BOTSFORD, History of Rome, chaps, xiii-xiv. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps. xUi-xlv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 502-521. tOMAN, Byzantine Empire, chaps, hi, 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. tH. 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, Introduction to the Middle Ages. *Morey, Outlines of Roman Law. BOTSFORD, Source Book, chaps, xliv-xlvi. Davis, Source Readings, II, chaps, x-xi. tRoBlNSON, Readings in European Ifistory, Vol. I, pp. 19-27, 97-100 and chaps, iii-vi, Tacitus' Germania. Ccssaf's Gallic War, VI, pp. 21-28. \Eugippus'' Life of St. Severinus (Robinson). Jordanes' 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 OE REFERENCE ON THE GREEK AND HELLENISTIC AGE, TOPICALLY ARRANGED The histories of Greece by Grote, Curtius, Holm, Abbott. tFREE- MAN, Story of Sicily ; ^History of Federal Government. *Deniker, Races of Man. *¥'e.^GX!so-H^ Hellenistic Athens. *li^yKN, House of Seleucus, *Rawlinson, Bactria. *HoGARTH, Philipp and Alexander. *Dodge, Alexander. *GRnNDY, Thucydides and the History of his Age. *Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas. tTlLLYARD, Agathocles. *Mahaffy, Silver Age of the Greek World. *GlLBERT, Greek Constitutional Antiquities. *Phillipson, Interna- tional Law and Custom 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 Ancient Greeks. *GuHi. and KoNER, Life of the Greeks and Romans. tGARDNER, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. tBLUEMNER, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. tDAVIS, A Day in Ancient Athens. *Davidson, Education of the Greek People. *MaHAFFY, What have the Greeks done for Modem Civilization ? *Ball, Sho7t Histoty of Mathematics. *J0NES, Greek Morality. *'^ tXD, 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. tBuLFlNCH, Age'of Fable. *GaRDNER, Ancient Athens ; * Handbook of Greek Sculpture. fFowLER and Wheeler, Greek Archeology. fRlCHARDSON, Vacation Days in Greece. *SchREIBER, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (illustrated). tFowLER, Ancient Greek Literature. fCROlsET, Greek Literattcre. tjEVONS, Creek Literature. *Mackail, 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. ^tltaGH, Attic Theatre. ^'Bvkt, Brief History of Greek Philosophy. X'iAhXO'S., Sketch of Aticient Philosophy. *S ANDYS, Classical Greek Scholarship. There is no cheap 'dictionary of classical antiquities. IHarper, Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiqtcities. *'Whibley, Com- panion to Greek Studies. *Hall, Companion to Classical Texts. tTozER, Ancient Geography. tSHEPHERD, Atlas' of Ancient History. The new series of individual maps of the ancient world by t Murray are very valuable. fPuTZGER, Schulatlas. tSiEGLiN, Schulatlas. A new series of classroom wall maps for ancient history (edited by IBreasted & Huth) is being published by Denoyer and Geppert, Chicago. ■ tMlCHAELls, A Century of Archaological Discoveries. *ScHUCHARDT, Schliemann's Excavations. fBuRROWS, Discoveries in Crete. *Mosso, The Palaces of Crete. *Garstang, Asia Minor. ffHAWES, 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, 77, 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 ' ySrc/Jy/aj (Campbell, verse). /^/^^^^(Easby-Smith). Aristophanes "(Frere; Rogers). Aristotle (Kenyon ; Poste). Demosthenes (Ken- nedy). Euripides (Murray ; Way). Herodotus (Rawlinson). Hesiod (with Callimachus and Theognis, by Banks; with Theognis, Collins; best translation of Hesiod alone, Mair). Homer: Iliad (Lang, Leaf, Myers ; Bryant) ; Odyssey (Butcher and Lang ; Bryant). Isocrates 730 Ancient limes (Freese). Pausanias (Frazer). Pindar (Myers). Plato (Jowett). Plutarch (Clough; selected Lives, by Perrin). Polybius (SHUCK- burgh). Strabo (Hamilton and Falconer). Thucydides\]o^N^TC; Crawley). Xenofhon (Dakyns). A, General and political histories B. Constitu- tional and institutional history C, 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, History of Rome. 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. tSxRACHAN-DAViDSON, Cicero. fBoissiER, Cicero and his Friends. tFowLER, CcEsar. *SlHLER, Julius Ceesar.- *HoLMES, Ccssar's Conquest of Gaul. *Shuckburgh, Augustus. *Tar- VER, Tiberius. *Baking-Gould, Tragedy of the CtBsars. '\CA.re.S, jEarly Empire. *WatS0N, Marcus ' Aurelius. *Bryant, Antoninus Pius. *Gregorovius, Hadrian. *Henderson, Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero. *H0PKINS, Alexander Severus. *Hay, Heliogabalus. *Firth, Constantine. fCuTTS, Constantine. *BoissIER, Roman Africa. tBouCHIER, Life and Letters in Roman Africa ; '"'Roman Spain. *Gl0VER, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century. tTAYLOR, Constitutional and Political History of Rome. *Mattingly, Imperial Civil Service. *BOTSFORD, Roman Assemblies. *Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration. *Reid, Municipalities of the Roman Empire. *Greenidge, Legal Procedure i7i Cicero's'' Time. *Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law. *Fowler, City State of the Greeks and Romans. tBRVCE, 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. tiNGE, Society at Rome under the Ciesars. ■f Johnston, Private Life of the Romans. *Ingram, History of Slavery. *Friedlaender, Roman Life and Manners. tCHURCH, Roman Life in the Days of Cicero. *Oliver, Roman Economic Conditions. \ Roman Farm Managemetft, by a Virginia farmer (Fairfax Harrison). *Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome. *FowLER, Religious Ex- perience of the Roman People. tGRANGER, Worship of the Romans. tGuERBER, Myths of Greece and Rome, t Murray, Manual of Mythology . *Glover, Conflict of Religions. *FlSHER, Beginnings of Christianity. *Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches. *CuMONT, Mysteries of Mithra. Bibliography 731 «E. R. Barker, Buried Herculaneum. *T. B. Platner, Topography and Monuments of Ancient Kome. fC. HuELSEN, The Roman Forum. *H. B. Walters, Art of the Romans. »R. Lanciani, Ruins and Exca- vations of Ancient Rome:, * Pagan and Christiati Rome. *J. Fergusson, History of .Architecture. fRAMSAY and Lanciani, Manual of Roman Antiquities. ttJ.W. Mackail, Latin Literature. *Lawton, Classical Latin Litera- ture. *C. T. Crutweli., History of Roman Literature. *Teuffel and SCHWABE, Histo>y 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. tMlCHAELlS, A Century of Archceological Discoveries. *Mau and Kelsey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. Barker, Buried Herculaneum. *Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Ltaly. LANCIANI, Ruins and Excava- tions of Ancient Rome. The Underwood & Underwood series of stereoscopic photographs of Rome and Italy (edited by Ellison and Egbert), Italy through the Stereoscope (ico views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See above, p. viii. t(A selection of the most useful fifteen views comprises Nos. 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 33, 34, 43, 45, 46, 47, 58, 60, 62, 91.) P.. Art and archaeology F. Literature and philoso- phy G. Explora- tion and dis- covery H. The monuments as they are to-day ROMAN AUTHORS AND OTHER SOURCES FOR ROMAN HISTORY IN TRANSLATION Ammianus Marcellinus (Bohn Ed.). Appian (White). Cmsar {%oVt\ Ed.). Cassidorus' Letters (Hodgkin). Cicero's Letters (Shuckburgh) ; Works (Bohn Ed.). Dio Cassius (Foster or Carey). Eugippus' St. iW/rnxj^ (Robinson). /^era« (Martin ; Lonsdale and Lee; Wick- ham), fordanes (MiEROw). fosephus (Whiston). fnstin, A'epos, and £! 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 (brlt'an), 589, 694, 701 Bronze Age, 222 ff., 227 Brundisium (brmi dish'i um), 487 Brutus (bro'tus), 596, 598 Burgundians (ber gun'dl anz); 693 Byzantium (bi zan'shium), 683 Index 73S Caere (se're), 499, 521 Caesar (se'zar), 586 ff., 613 Calendar, 45, 467, 595 Caligula (ka lig'u lit), 618 f. Callimachus (ka lim'a kus), poet, 473. 475 Callimachus, soldier, 326 Callisthenes (kalis'thenez), 443 Cambyses (kam bl'sez), 182 Canaanites (ka'nanlts), 104, 200 f. CaniiEe (kan'e), 540 f. Capua (kap'u a), 497, 521 f., 543 Carchemish (kar'kem isli), 241 Carthage (kar'thaj), 267, 333, 439, 490, 518, 52c ff., 546 Carthaginian (kar tha jin'i an) civ- ilization, 526 Carthaginians, 489 Cassius (kash'ius), 596, 598 Catiline (kat'ilin), 586 f. Cecilia Metella (se sil'i a me tel'a), 492 Cecrops (se'krops), 407 Censors, 505, 509 Ceres (se'rez), 502 Chseronea (ker 9 ne'a), 428 Chaldean (kal de'ah) Empire, 164 il., 213 Chaldeans (kal de'anz), 162 Chalons (shal6h'), 694 ChampoUion (sham pol'i on) 96 ff., 455 Charlemagne (shar'leman), 702 Charles Martel (martel'), 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'ero), 586 f., 597, 613 f. Cimbrians (sim'bri anz), 597 Cimon (sl'mon), 339, 341, 356 Claudius (kia'dius), 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 (kli'tus), 442 Clovis (klo'vis), 701 Cnidus (ni'dus), 300 Cnossus (nos'us), 233 f. Coloni (kolo'ui), 668 f. Colosseum (kolose'um), 622, 649 Comitia (ko mish'ia), 507 f. Commodus (kom'8 dus), 673 Constantine (kon'stan tin), 683! 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'si ka), 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 CumsE (kU'me), 521 Cuneiform writing, iiof., 1891, 242 Cynocephalae (sin ossef'ale), 550 Cyrene (sire'ne), 415, 525 Cyrus (si'rus) the Great, 179 ff. Cyrus the Younger, 399 f. Dacians (da'shi ans), 627, 630 Damascus (da mas'kiis), 151, 211 Darius (dari'us) the Great, 185, 324 ff. Darius III, 431, 435 David, 204 f. Decelea (desele'a), 3S9 Delian (de'li an) League, 339, 348, 390 De'los, 297, 339, 348 Delphi (del'fi), 315 ff-, 643, 684 Deme'ter, 279, 315, 502 Democracy, 301 ff., 307, 395 f., 406 Demosthenes (de mos'ths nez), 427 f. Demotic (de mot'ik) writmg, 44 Den'mark, 17 ff., 223 Dictator, 506, 531, 539 Diocletian (di 9 kle'shian), 676 if. Dionysius (di 5 nish'i us),- gram marian, 474 f. Dionysius, tyrant, 490 736 Ancient Times Dionysus (di o iii'sus), 279, 310, 362 Dipylon (dip'i 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 (ekbat'ana), 437 Egypt, 35 ff.; Stone Age of, 38; conquered by Assyria, 1 53 f • ; 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 writing, 40 ff., 96 ff. Egyptology, 98 Elephantine (el efan tl'ne), 459 Eleusis (e lu'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 (epim'akos), 630 E pi'rus, 517 Eratosthenes (er a tos'the nez), 459, "469, 47 if. Erechtheum (e rek the'um), 367, 407 E re'tri a, 324 Er go ti'mos, 297 Eskimos (es'kimoz), 12 Etruscans (e trus'kanz), 4S8 f., 495 ff. Euaenetus (ue'netns), 381 Euboea (ube'a), 324 Euclid (u'klid), 469 Eupatrids (ii pat'ridz), 284 Euripides (ii rip'i dez), 372 f., 400, 406 Europe (u'rpp), 3 ff., 221 ff. Fa'bi us, 540 Fabricius (fa brish'i us), 494 Fertile Crescent, 10 1 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 gi-ak'us), 577 Galatia (ga la'shia), 449 Ga le'ri us, 686 Gallic invasion of the East, 449 Gard (gar) River, 646 Gaul (gai), 588 ff. Gelon (je'lon), 333 German barbarians, 579, 588, 626, 664, 674, 682, 688 ff. Gil'gamesh, 127 Gizeh (ge'ze), pyramids of, 49 ff. Gladiators, 564 Glass-making in Egypt, 64 f. Gortyna (g6r ti'na), 304 Goths, 691, 695 Gracchi (grak'I), 576 ff. Granicus (granl'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, 252ft.; social institutions of, 2 59 ; kings of, 260, 286 ; agriculture of, 260 ; supremacy of, 344 ff. ; in Italy, 490 Gregory (greg'o ri), 701 Guinea (gin'i), 4-71, 525 Gylippus (ii lip'us), 387 Hades, 315 Ha'dri an, 630 ff., 636, 650 Hamilcar Barca (ha mil'kar 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'sbt), 83 f. Hebrew (he'bro) civilization, 201 f. Hebrew kingdom, 200 ff. ; divided, 206 ff.; destruction of, 210 ff. Hebrew literature, zo8, 216 Hebrew religion, 214 Hebrew writing, 209 Hebrews, 144 f., 197 f. ; exile of, 213 f. ; religion of, 214; re- stored, 216 Hecatasus (hekate'us), 318 f., 360 Helicon (hel'i 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'es pont), 324, 328, 339 Hephaestion (hefes'ti on), 443 He'ra, 279 Heraclea (herakle'a), 517 Heracleia (her akll'a), 472 Hermes (her'mgz), 279, 502 Herodes Atticus (he rS'dez at'ikus), 642 He rod'p 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 tgz), 361, 375 Hi'ram, 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 (. 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, So f. ; in Baby- lonia, 138, 143 Huns (hunz), 692 Ice Age, 7 f. Ictinus (ik ti'nus), 369 Ikh na'ton, 92 ff. Illyricum (i lir'i kum), 693 Imhotep (emho'tep), 52 In'di a, 437 Indian Ocean, 79, 437 Indo-European peoples, 171 ff. lonians (1 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 (ira'nianz), 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 (Isok'ra tez), 420, 422 Israel (iz'ra el), 206 Issus (is'us), Gulf of, 430 f. Italic tribes, 488 Italy (it'ali), 485ff. Jacob, 208 Jeremiah (jerSmi'a), Jericho (jer'i ko), 203 13 738 Ancient Times Jerusalem (je rb'sa lem), besieged, 2iof. ; destroyed, 213; rebuilt, 216; taken by Sulla, 585; de- stroyed, 626 Jesus, 115, 661 f., 705 Joseph, 208 Judah (jo'da), 206 Judaism, 216, 661 Jugurtha (jB ger'tha), 578 f. Julian (jo'lyan) "the Apostate," 686 f., 691 Juno (jo'no), 502 Jupiter (jb'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-dwellers, 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'shium), 492 ff., 616 Laws, oldest surviving code of, 132 ; earliest, in,Greece, 303 Le on'i das, 330 Lep'i dus, 597 Leuctra (liik'tra), 404 Library, at Alexandria, 472 ff., 594 ; at Rome, 614 Licinius (lisin'ius), 575 f. Lictors, 508 Lilybseum (111 i be'um), 517 Livy (liv'i), 614 f. Lom'bards, 701 LucuUus (lukul'us), 585 Lyceum (lisB'um), 356, 478 Lydians (lid'i ftnz), 322 Lysander (II san'der), 391, 401 f. Lysiades (lisi'adSz), 381 Lysicrates (ll sik'ra tez), 381 Macedon (mas'e don), 426, 550 Macedonia (mas 6 do'ni a), 426 Magi (ma'jl), 661 Magnesia (mag ne'shia), 551 Man ti ne'a, 404 Mar'a thon, 324 ff. Marcellus (mar sel'us), 610 Marcus Aurelius (mar'kus 8.rS'- 11 us), 664 f. Mar do'ni us, 328, 333 f. Marduk (mar'dok), 134, 168 Ma'ri us, 579 ff. Mars, 502 Massilia (ma sll'i a), 290 Mausoleum (mS, so le'um), 408 Mausolus (mS. solus), 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'kfl.ri), 502 ' Mesopotamia (mesopo ta'mi a), 629 V- Messina (messe'na), 528 Metal, Age of, 47 f., 222 f., 486 f. Metaurus (me tj'rus) River, 543 Middle Stone Age, 9 ff. Mlle'tus, 316, 324 Miltiades (mil tl'a dez), 325 f. Mithradates (rnith ra da'tez), 583, 585 Mith'ras, 195, 678 Mitylene (mitile'ne), 383 Mnesicles (ne'siklez), 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 Egypt, 92 f. ; in Palestine, 214 Index ;39 Moors (morz), 710!. Moses (ino'zcz), 200 Moslems (mos'lemz), 702, 707 ff., 711 f. Mycale (luik'a Ig), 334 Mycenae (mi'sS'ng), 237 f., 247 f. Mycericean (mi sS nS'an) Age, 236 ff. • •• Na'hum, 163 Na po'le on, 455 Na ram'sin, 1 23 f. Naucratis (nS,'kratis), 289 Nebuchadnezzar (neb u kad nez'- ftr), 164 ff., 213, 368 Nemausus (nemft'sus), 646 Ne'ro, 620 ff. Ner'va, 627, 634 New Persia (per'sha), 675, 678, 705 New Testament, 662 Nicaea (ni s6'a), 686 Nicias (nish'i as), 384 ff. Nicomedia (nik 5 me'di a), 679 Nile (nil), 37 ff. Nimes (neni), 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 (0 d5 a'ser), 695 Old Testament, 217 Oligarchy, 395 Olympian (S lim'pi an) games, 308, 356 Oracles, 315 Orient, achievements of, 218 ff.; influence on Greece, 264 f. ; re- vival of, 705 ff. Orpheus (6r'fili), 414 O sl'ris, 50, 91 Ostracism, 306 f. Os'tro-Goths, 695 Paestum (pes'tuni), 522 Painted Porch, 363, 365, 497 Pa ler'mo Stone, 46 Palestine (pa.l'es tin), 197 ff., 256 Palmyra (paljni'ra), 676 Panathenaea (pan ath S ng'a), 362 Paper, making of, 43 (., 64 f. Papyrus (pflpi'i-us), 43 f. rarme'nio', 431, 437, 442 Parrhasius (pa ra'shi us), 41 1 Pjir'the non, 367, 369 f. Parthians (piir'thi anz), 590, 595, 628 f., 67 s Pasargadse (pa sar'ga dg), 182, 189 Patesis (pa ta'sgz), 113, 119 Paul, 638, 662, 700 Pausanias (pS, sa'nias), geog- rapher, 655 Pausanias, Spartan general, 334 Peloponnesian (pel 5 po ng'shian) War, First, 348 f. ; Second, 380 ff.; Third, 385 ff. Per'ga mum, 453, 463 f., 472 Per i an'der, 303 Pericles (per'l klez), 344, 348, 35off.,.38iff. Peripatetics (per i pa tet'iks), 477 f. Per sep'p lis, 189 Persian (per'shan) art and archi- tecture, 189 Persian Empire, 182 ff. Persian kings, 194 f. 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'rum), 331 Pharaoh (fa'ro), 53 Pharsalus (far sa'lus), 592 f. Phidias (fid'i as), 367, 369, 382 Philae (fi'lg), 459. Philip, 426 ff. Philippi (fi lip'i), 598 Philistines (filis'tinz), 202 f., 256 Philosophy, 316, 318 ff. Philotas (filo'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, 34S Pi sis'tra tus, 306 Platasa (plate'a), 326, 334, 684 Pla'to, 411, 418, 4201, 428 Plautus (pia'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 (poligno'tus), 363 Pompeii (pompa'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, Praetor (pre'tor), 506 Praxiteles (praksit'elez), 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, 535ff.; Third, 546 f. Pyramid Age, 49 ff. ; agriculture in, 61 ; art 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),^i7 Pythagoras (pi thag'o ras), 319 Pytheas (pith'e as), 471 QuKstors (kwes'torz), 505 Ramses (ram'sez) II, 94 Ramses III, 257 Rawlinson (raiinspn), igo 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. ; civilisation 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), 4948., 500; taken by Gauls, 513; rivalry of, with Carthage, 518, 520 ff. Rom'ij lus and Re'mus, 484 Romulus Augustulus (Sgus'tulus), 69s Rosetta (rO zet'ta) Stone, 97 f., 193. 454 f- Royal tombs of Egypt, 94 f. Sal'amis, 331 f., 3?: Samnites (sam'nits), 514 Sa'mos, 298, 324 Sappho (saf'o), 309, 354 Siir din'i a, 535 Sar'dis, 322 Siir'gon of Ak'kad, 122 f. Sargon II, 152. Sassanians (sa sa'nianz), 675, 678 Saul (s^l), 203 Index 741 Saxons (sak'snz), 694 Schliemann (shle'man), 245 ff. Scipio (sip'i 0), 544 ff. Scopas (sko'pas), 406, 409 Scylax (sl'laks), 186 f. Seleucids (se lu'sidz), 448 Seleucus (se lu'kus), 445 f., 448 Semites (sem'its), loif. ; traffic of, 103; religion of, I03f. ; art of, I23f.; union of, with Sumerians, 126 f.; struggle of, with Indo- Europeans, 172 ff., 524 ff., 706 f. Seneca (sen'e ka), 620 f., 654 Sennacherib (senak'e rib), 152, 210, 212, 288 Senti'num, 514 f., 543 Septim'ius Seve'rus, 673, 675 Se ra'pis, 631 Se sos'tris, 80 Se'ti I, 94 Seven Wise Men, 320 Shadoof (sha d5f' ), 36 Shal ma ne'zer III, 211 Shi'nar, Plain of, 105 f. Sicilian (si sil'ian) expedition,385f. Sicilian War, 533 ff. Sicily (sis'ili), Greek colonists in, 289 f. Sinai (sI'di), 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., 42c f. ^d'o mon, 205 f. So'lpn, 303 ff., 342, 345, 355 Sophia (sofe'a). Saint, 688, 698 Sophists (sof'ists), 357 ff., 370, 372, , Sophocles (sof o klez)j 353, 371 ff. Spain (span), 594 Spar'tii, 283, 307, 336 ff., 347 f., 401; fall of, 402 Spartan leadership, 394 ff. Spar'tan league, 307, 392 Sphinx (sflngks), 50 Stesichorus (ste sik'g rus), 309 f. Stilicho (stil'iko), 692 f. Stoicism (sto'i sizm), 478 f. Stone Age, Early, 5 ff. ; Late, 14 ff., 221 f.j Middle, 9 ff.; in Egypt, 38 ; in Italy, 488 Stonehenge (stSn'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, ni Sumerian houses^ 114! Sumerian religion, 1 1 2 f . Sumerian society, 119 Sumerian writing, 109 ff. Sumerians, 107 ff. ; union of, with Semites, 1 26 f. Susa (so'sa), 189, 437 Swiss lake-villages, 20 f. Syracuse (sir'a kus), 289 f., 344, 38s Syria (sir'i a), 448, 585, 643 Tacitus (tas'itus), 654 Taren'tum, 517, 522 f. Tasmanians (taz ma'ni anz), 2 f. Terence (ter'ens), 562 Tetricus (tet'ri kus), 676 Teutons (til'tonz), 579 Thales (tha'lgz), 316, 318 Theater, Greek, 310 Thebes (thebz), in Egypt, So, 86 f., 92, 94, 375 Thebes, in Greece, 284, 402 ff., 429 Themistocles (the mis'to klez), 32S ff., 338 f., 341 Theocritus (the ok'ri tus), 475, 616 Theodoric (the od'o rik), 695 Theodosius (the 9 do'shi us), 684, 692, 697 ; Edict of, 700 Thermopylae (thermop'ile),329ff. Theseus (the'siis), 367' Thucydides (thu sid'i dez), 419, 61S Thu'le, 471 Thutmose (thotmo'se) III, 84 f., 684 Tibe'rius, emperor, 617 f. Tiberius Gracchus (grak'us), 576 f. Tibullus (ti bul'us), 659 Tigranes (tigra'nez), 5S5 Ti mo'the os, 474 Tiryns (tl'rinz), 237, 247 f. Ti'tus, 627 742 Ancient Times Tombs of the Egyptian kings, 94 f . Tours (tor), 711 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 Ul'fi las, 691 University, of Alexandria, 477; of Athens, 479 ; of Rome, 642 Ur (er), 126 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, no f., 189 f., 242 West Goths, 692 Women, position of, in Greece, 353 f- Writing, phonetic, 41 ff.; pictorial, 40 ; invention of, 45 Writing materials, 43 f. Xenophon (zen'p fpn), 399 ff., 422 Xerxes (zerk'sez), 187, 190, 328 ff. Yahveh (yava'), 206 Za'ma, 544 ff. Ze'no, 479 Ze nS'bi a, 676 Zeus (zils), 277 ff. Zeuxis (zuk'sis), 411 Z5 ro as'ter, 177 ff., 675 ANNOUNCEMENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF WESTERN EUROPE By JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON, Professor of History in Columbia University THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION i2mo, cloth, 714 pages, with maps and illustrations, $1.60 THE TWO-VOLUME EDITION VOLUME I. i2mo, cloth, 368 pages, with maps and illustrations, $1.00 VOLUME II. i2mo, cloth, 364 pages, with maps and illustrations, $1.00 The standard textbook in its field — the history of Europe from 378 A.D. 1899. It is distinctive in omitting all isolated, uncorrelated facts and in plac: the emphasis on movements, customs, institutions, and achievements that h; genuine significance in the history of Western civilization and development, gives due consideration to economic, social, and intellectual questions as well to political changes. It treats with unusual fullness such important matters feudalism, the medieval Church, the French Revolution, and the growth modem European states. 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The Eighteenth Century : The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Period. 362 pages, illustrated, ^1.50. /"OLUME II. Europe since the Congress of Vienna. 448 pages, illustrated, ;^l.6o. An authoritative treatment of recent history, covering the social, economic, and poUtical development of our own age. The more fun- damental economic matters — the Industrial Revolution, commerce and the colonies, the internal reforms of the European states, etc. — have been generously treated. The aim has been to bring the past into relation with the present- — to trace past events, conditions, politics, industries, and intellectual achievements of Europe in such a way that the student will recognize their results as they appear in the Europe of to-day. READINGS IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY Edited by JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON and CHARLES A. BEARD VOLUME I. 410 pages, jii.40. VOLUME II. 541 pages, $1.50. A COLLECTION of extracts from the primary sources to illustrate the chief phases of the development of Europe during the last two centuries. In organization the Readings correspond with the two volumes of " The Development of Modern Europe." The selections include both extracts of a constitutional nature and those of the lively, interesting kind that give the real flavor of the times. Classified bibliographies for further reading are a valuable feature. GINN AND COMPANY Publishers AN AMERICAN HISTORY By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Columbia University 662 pages, illustrated, ^1.50 Muzzey's " American History " is now more widely used than ar other American liistory for high-school and college classes. It is tl product of that rare combination of qualities — sound scholarship, a di criminating sense of historical value and proportion, and a strong, vivi style that makes history as interesting as a story book. 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