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WORLD HISTORY
IiY
HUTTON ^EBSTER, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OK NEBRASKA
" The true object of history is to show us the life of the human nice in its fullness, and to follow up the tale of its continuous and difficult evolution. The conception of the progress of civilization in intelligible sequence, is the greatest achievement of modern thought." — Frederic Harrison, The Meaning of History.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
WEBSTER'S HISTORIES
Webster's Ancient History
From prehistoric times to the Age of Charlemagne
Webster's Medieval and Modern History
From the fall of Rome to the present
Webster's Early European History
From prehistoric times to the seventeenth century
Webster's Modern European History
From the Age of Louis XIV to the present: a year's course
Webster's European History Part I — Ancient Times
Ancient history and civilization
Part II — Medieval and Early Modern Times
From the fall of Rome to the seventeenth century
Part III — Modern Times
From the Age of Louis XIV to the present: a brief course
Webster's World History
From prehistoric times to the present
Webster's Readings in Ancient History
Webster's Readings in Medieval and Modern History
Webster's Historical Source Book
copyright, 1921 by d. c. heath & co.
2KI
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
- M -4 1922 ^CU654111
PREFACE
The scope, character, and purpose of this textbook perhaps require some clarification here. It covers the entire historic field, together with a chapter on prehistoric times; it presents a survey of human progress, rather than a chronological outline of events; it is intended for that large body of students who, for various reasons, do not take more than one year of history in the high school. They ought to gain from such a course, however brief, some conception of social development and some realization of man's upward march from the Stone Age until the present time. Nothing but general or universal history will give them that conception, — that realization. And only a history of the world will enable them to appreciate the contributions made by peoples widely separated in space and time to what is steadily becoming the common civilization of mankind.
About two thirds of the book are devoted to the last three centuries. This period furnishes the immediate historical background of the life of to-day: it is therefore the period ordinarily most interesting and profitable to the student. The chapters dealing with it are reproduced, with some abbrevia- tion, from my Modem European History. The other chapters are based on my Early European History, but they contain much that is new, both in the text and also by way of maps and illustrations.
Teachers will find in the book, as in its predecessors, a variety of aids. The "Suggestions for Further Study" provide extended bibliographies. The "Studies" at the end of each chapter may be used either in the daily recitation or for review after the entire chapter has been read. The "Table of Events and Dates," forming the appendix, should be consulted fre- quently, and pupils should be required to explain and elaborate
iii
iv Preface
the brief statements there given concerning the significance of each dated event. Care ought also to be taken that pupils acquire a correct pronunciation of all proper names mentioned in the text and incorporated in the index and pronouncing vocabulary.
Specific references in footnotes are made to the author's Readings in Ancient History, Readings in Medieval and Modem History, and Historical Source Book. The first two volumes contain sources of a narrative and biographical character; the third volume includes thirty-three documents ranging from Magna Carta to the Covenant of the League of Nations. These collections supply abundant material for outside reading, oral reports in class, and essays.
The author desires once more to thank the cartographers, artists, and printers for their efficient cooperation with him in making this work.
Hutton Webster
Lincoln, Nebraska October, 1921
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations List of Maps .... List of Plates . . . ' . Suggestions for Further Study
PAGE
xi
xv
xviii
II.
CI- IO.
13-
Prehistoric Times i. Introductory 2. Man's Place in Nature
The Old Stone Age
The New Stone Age
The Age of Metals
Races of Man .
Languages of Man 8. Writing and the Alphabet
The Ancient Orient
The Lands of the Near East . The Peoples of the Near East . Social Conditions Economic Conditions Commerce and Commercial Routes
14. Law and Morality . . .
15. Religion
16. Literature and Art .
17. Science
18. Orient and Occident
III. Greece
19.
20.
23-
24.
25-
26.
The Lands of the West The Mediterranean Basin The ^Egeans The Greeks The Greek City-States Colonial Expansion of Greece The Persian Wars, 499-479 b.c Athens, 479-431 B.C. v
15 17
23
29 32 40
44 46
49 52 55 58 62
65 68
7i 73 79 82 84 89
VI
Contents
PAGE
27. Athenian Culture . . . . . . -93
28. Decline of the Greek City-States, 431-338 B.C. . 97
29. Alexander the Great, and the Conquest of Persia 10 1
30. The Hellenistic Age 105
IV.
V.
VI.
Rome
31. Italian Peoples
32. The Romans ..... i
33. The Roman City-State ....
34. Expansion of Rome over Italy, 5oa(?)-264 b.c
35. Expansion of Rome beyond Italy, 264-133 B.C. Rome the Mistress of the Mediterranean Basin Decline of the Roman City-State, 133-31 B.C. The Early Empire, 31 B.C. -284 a.d. The World under Roman Rule Christianity in the Roman World The Later Empire, 284-476 a.d.
36. 37- 38.
39- 40.
4i.
The Middle Ages
42. The Germans ....
43. The Holy Roman Empire
44. The Northmen and the Normans
45. Feudalism .
46. The Byzantine Empire
47. The Arabs and Islam, 622-1058
48. The Crusades, 1095-1291
49. Mongolian Peoples in Europe to 1453
50. National States during the Later Middle Ages
Medieval Civilization
51. The Church
52. The Clergy
53. The Papacy
54 Country Life
Serfdom
City Life
Civic Industry • .
Civic Trade .......
Cathedrals and Universities
National Languages during the Later Middle Ages
55- 56. 57- 58. 59- 60.
VII. The Renaissance
61. Revival of Learning and Art in Italy . .
62. Revival of Learning and Art beyond Italy
112
115 119 121 123 129 132 138 144 149 i53
157 161 166 169 176 180 187 190 194
203, 207 211 214 219 221 225 228 231 236
240 245
■■■■<}
*»./
Contents vii
|
CHAFTEB |
PACE |
||
|
63. |
Geographical Discovery .,„... |
248 |
|
|
64. |
Colonial Umpires .... |
253 |
|
|
65. |
The Old World and the New . |
255 |
|
|
66. |
The Protestant Reformation |
257 |
|
|
67. |
The Protestant Sects |
263 |
|
|
68. |
The Catholic Counter Reformat ion |
266 |
|
|
69. |
The Religious Wars .... |
269 |
|
|
70. |
The European State System |
278 |
|
|
VIII. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Europe |
|||
|
71. |
Absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings |
281 |
|
|
72. |
The Struggle against Stuart Absolutism in England |
282 |
|
|
73- |
The Restoration and the "Glorious Revolution" |
291 |
|
|
74- |
Absolutism of Louis XIV in France, 1643- 1715 |
29S |
|
|
75- |
Russia under Peter the Great, 1689-1725 |
302 |
|
|
76. |
Russia under Catherine II, 1 762-1 796 |
307 |
|
|
77- |
Austria and Maria Theresa, 1 740-1 780 |
309 |
|
|
78. |
Prussia and Frederick the Great, 1 740-1 786 |
3l° |
|
|
79- |
The Partitions of Poland, 1772-1795 |
3H |
IX. Commerce and Colonies during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
80. Mercantilism and Trading Companies . . . 320
81. The Dutch Colonial Empire . . . . .322
82. Rivalry of France and England in India (to 1763) . 325
83. Rivalry of France and England in North America 328
84. The American Revolution, 17 76-1 783 . . . 334
85. Formation of the United States .... 341
86. Progress of Geographical Discovery . . . 342
X. The Old Regime
87. Reform 346
88. The Privileged Classes 347
89. The Unprivileged Classes 349
90. The Church 331
91. Liberal Ideas of Industry and Commerce; the
Economists 354
92. The Scientists 355
93. Liberal Ideas of Religion and Politics; the English
Philosophers 357
94. The French Philosophers 359
95. The Enlightened Despots 362
Vlll
Contents
CHAPTER
XI.
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, i 789-181 5
96. Eve of the French Revolution
97. The Estates-General, 1789
98. Outbreak of the French Revolution .
99. The National Assembly, 1789-1791
100. The First French Republic, 1792
101. The National Convention, 1 792-1 795
102. The Directory and Napoleon, 1795-1799
103. The Consulate, 1799-1804
104. The First French Empire, 1804
105. Napoleon at War with Europe, 1805-1807
106. Napoleon's Reorganization of Europe
107. The Continental System .
108. Revolt of the Nations, 1808-1814
109. Downfall of Napoleon, 1814-1815 . no. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
XII. The Democratic Movement in Europe, 181 5-1 848 in. Modern Democracy
112. The Congress of Vienna
113. Restoration of the Dynasties ....
114. Territorial Readjustments ...
115. "Metternichismus" and the Concert of Europe
116. France and the "July Revolution, " 1830
117. The "July Revolution" in Europe
118. The "February Revolution" and the Second French
Republic, 1848
119. The " February Revolution " in Europe
XIII. The National Movement in Europe, i 848-1 871
120. Modern Nationalism ....
121. Napoleon III and the Second French Empire
122. Disunited Italy
123. Victor Emmanuel II and Cavour
124. United Italy, 1859-1870
125. Disunited Germany
126. William I and Bismarck .
127. United Germany, 1864-1871
XIV. The United Kingdom and the British Empire
128. Parliamentary Reform, 1832
129. Political Democracy, 1832-1867
468 473
Contents
IX
130. Political Democracy, 1867-1918 .
i.-ji. Government of the United Kingdom
132. The Irish Question
133. The British Empire
XV. The Continental Countries
134. The Third French Republic
135. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium
136. Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and
Sweden ........
137. The German Empire, 1871-1918 . . . .
138. The Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918 .
130. The Russian Empire
140. The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan States .
XVI: Colonial Expansion and World Politics
141. Greater Europe
142. The Opening-up of Africa
143. The Partition of Africa
144. The Opening-up and Partition of Asia
145. India ....
146. China ....
147. Japan ....
148. The Opening-up and Partition of Oceania
149. Australia and New Zealand
150. Canada ....
151. Latin America
152. The United States
153. Close of Geographical Discovery
XVII. The Industrial Revolution
154. Modern Industrialism
155. The Great Inventions
156. Effects of the Great Inventions
157. Improvements in Transportation
158. Improved Communications
159. Commerce ....
160. Agriculture and Land Tenure .
161. The Labor Movement
162. Government Regulation of Industry
163. Public Ownership
[64. Socialism ....
[65. Poverty and Progress
PAGE
477 479 486 490
5°5
5io 513 519 521 529
540
542 546 550 553 555 560
563 565 566 568 573 577
58i 583 588 592 597 600 605 609 610 614 616 620
Contents
CHAPTER
XVIII.
Modern Civilization
166. Internationalism .....
167. Social Betterment .....
168. Emancipation of Women and Children
169. Popular Education and the Higher Learning
170. Religious Development ....
171. Science .......
172. Literature . ...
173. Music and the Fine Arts
625 628 632 634 636 641 644 646
XIX. International Relations, 1871-1914
174. The Triple Alliance 650
175. The Dual Alliance and the Triple Entente . . 652
176. Colonial Problems . 656
177. The Eastern Question 658
178. Militarism 661
179. Pan-Germanism 665
XX. The World War, 1914-1918
180. Beginning of the War, 1914
181. The Western Front ....
182. The Eastern Front
183. The Balkan and Italian Fronts
184. The War outside of Europe and on the Sea,
i9J7
185. Intervention of the United States
186. The Russian Revolution ....
187. End of the War, 1918 ....
1914-
669 674 680 682
686 690 697 700
189. 190.
XXI. The World Settlement, 1919-1921 188. The Peace Conference . . Peace with Germany Peace with Austria, Hungary, Turkey . . . . .
191. The New Nations in Central Europe
192. The New Nations in Eastern Europe
193. Democracy and Socialism
194. Economic Reconstruction
195. The League of Nations
Appendix — Table of Events and Dates Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary .
Bulgaria,
and
707 710
7i3 715 717 719 723 725
73i
737
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Heidelberg Lower Jaw . 6 Spy Skull .... 7 Prehistoric Stone Implements 8 A Mammoth . . . . 10 Head of a Girl . . . n Egyptian Neolithic Knives . 12 Carved Menhir ... 13 A Dolmen .... 14 Prehistoric Iron Implements . 16 Race Portraiture of the Egyp- tians ..... 20 Symbolic Picture Writing . 23 Chinese Picture Writing and Later Conventional Charac- ters 24
Cretan Writing ... 26 Egyptian and Babylonian
Writing .... 27 Head of Mummy of Rameses
H 33
A Philistine .... 35 An Assyrian . . . -37
An Assyrian Lion Hunt . . 38
Darius with His Attendants . 30
Court of the Pharaoh . . 41 Tax Collecting in Ancient
Egypt 42
Transport of an Assyrian
Colossus .... 43 Plowing and Sowing in Ancient
Egypt 44
A Phoenician War Galley . 48
The Judgment of the Dead . 40 Babylonian Seal . . .50
Hammurabi and the Sun God 51
An Egyptian Scarab . . 52 Amenotep IV . . . -53
|
PAGE |
||
|
The Deluge Tablet . |
56 |
|
|
Ancient Hebrew Manuscript |
57 |
|
|
An Assyrian Palace (Restored) |
58 |
|
|
Egyptian and Babylonian |
||
|
Numeration |
58 |
|
|
A Babylonian Boundary Stone |
59 |
|
|
Temple of Amon-Ra at Thebes |
||
|
(Restored) . |
61 |
|
|
Hittite Warrior |
63 |
|
|
"Throne of Minos" |
7i |
|
|
A Cretan Girl |
72 |
|
|
The Swastika . |
75 |
|
|
The Discus Thrower |
77 |
|
|
An Athenian Trireme |
83 |
|
|
A Scythian |
85 |
|
|
Persian Archers |
87 |
|
|
An Athenian Inscription |
9i |
|
|
Theater of Dionysus, Athens |
94 |
|
|
An Athenian School |
95 |
|
|
Pericles .... |
96 |
|
|
Demosthenes . |
100 |
|
|
Alexander the Great |
101 |
|
|
The Alexander Mosaic . |
!°3 |
|
|
.A Greek Cameo |
105 |
|
|
Lighthouse of Alexandria |
||
|
(Restored) . |
106 |
|
|
Suovetaurilia . |
117 |
|
|
An Italian Plowman |
117 |
|
|
Early Roman Bar Money |
118 |
|
|
Curule Chair and Fasces |
119 |
|
|
Carthaginian or Roman Hcl |
||
|
met .... |
126 |
|
|
A Slave's Collar |
130 |
|
|
Youth Reading a Papyru |
sRol |
J3i |
|
A Roman Legionary |
i35 |
|
|
A Testudo |
IS<> |
|
|
Roman Pontoon Bridge |
140 |
Xll
List of Illustrations
|
Wall of Hadrian in Britain |
141 |
Cross Section of Amiens |
|
|
The Amphitheater at Aries |
142 |
Cathedral . |
233 |
|
A Roman Freight Ship . |
143 |
A Hornbook . |
234 |
|
Gladiators . |
146 |
Tower of Magdalen College |
|
|
A Roman Aqueduct |
147 |
Oxford |
235 |
|
Interior of the Catacombs |
150 |
A University Lecture |
236 |
|
Charlemagne . |
162 |
Mask of Dante |
241 |
|
Ring Seal of Otto the Great . |
164 |
An Early Printing Press |
242 |
|
A Viking Ship |
167 |
Desiderius Erasmus |
245 |
|
A Scene from the Bayeux |
William Shakespeare |
246 |
|
|
Tapestry . |
168 |
The Santa Maria, Flagship 0: |
|
|
The Tower of London . |
173 |
Columbus . |
252 |
|
Mounted Knight . |
175 |
Martin Luther |
258 |
|
Naval Battle Showing Use o: |
Worms Cathedral . |
260 |
|
|
"Greek Fire" |
178 |
St. Ignatius Loyola |
266 |
|
Mecca .... |
181 |
The Spanish Armada in the |
|
|
The Alhambra |
185 |
English Channel . |
273 |
|
Combat between Crusaders |
Henry IV |
2 74 |
|
|
and Moslems |
188 |
Henry VIII . |
276 |
|
Ef3fig37 of a Knight Templar |
189 |
Hugo Grotius |
278 |
|
Hut-Wagon of the Mongols |
A Puritan Family . |
284 |
|
|
(Reconstruction) |
191 |
Specimen of Cromwell's Hand- |
|
|
A Mongol |
192 |
writing |
287 |
|
Mohammed II |
193 |
Great Seal of Engjand under |
|
|
Coronation Chair, Westmin- |
the Commonwealth |
289 |
|
|
ster Abbey . |
196 |
Hotel des Invalides, Paris |
296 |
|
Religious Music |
205 |
Marlborough |
300 |
|
A Bishop Ordaining a Priest |
207 |
Gibraltar |
301 |
|
Abbey of Saint-Germain des |
Catherine II . |
307 |
|
|
Pres, Paris . |
209 |
Maria Theresa |
310 |
|
Papal Arms . |
211 |
The Partition of Poland . |
3i7 |
|
Sulgrave Manor |
214 |
New Amsterdam in 1655 |
324 |
|
Farm Work in the Fourteenth |
L |
Quebec .... |
333 |
|
Century |
2l8 |
A Stamp of 1765 . |
335 |
|
Serf Warming his Hands |
2 20 |
George III |
336 |
|
House of Jacques Cceur |
Opening Lines of the Declara |
||
|
Bourges |
223 |
tion of Independence . |
• 337 |
|
Belfry of Bruges |
224 |
Signatures of the Treaty 0 |
f |
|
A German Merchant in thf |
Paris, 1783 . |
34o |
|
|
Fourteenth Century . |
. 226 |
John Wesley . |
• 352 |
|
Jacob Fugger . |
229 |
Boys' Sports . |
• 353 |
|
Baptistery, Cathedral, anc |
1 |
Adam Smith . |
• 355 |
|
"Leaning Tower" of Pisa |
• 232 |
Death Maskof Sir Isaac Newtoi |
1 356 |
List of Illustrations
Xlll
|
F VG1 |
|
|
Voltaire |
360 |
|
Rousseau . |
3O1 |
|
Joseph 11 ... . |
3»4 |
|
Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, |
|
|
and the Dauphin |
368 |
|
Turgot |
309 |
|
Costumes of the Orders . |
371 |
|
Mirabeau . . . . |
372 |
|
The Storming of the Bastile |
374 |
|
The Destruction of Feudalism |
376 |
|
An Assignat . |
377 |
|
Robespierre . |
382 |
|
The Lion of Lucerne |
383 |
|
Napoleon's Birthplace, Ajaccic |
388 |
|
Cross of the Legion of Honor |
393 |
|
A Napoleonic Medal |
394 |
|
The Victory . |
395 |
|
The Duke of WeHington |
401 |
|
The Tomb of Napoleon . |
406 |
|
Seal of the French Republic |
407 |
|
Arc de Triomphe, Paris . |
422 |
|
Louis Philippe |
425 |
|
Facsimile of Article VII of the |
|
|
Treaty of 1839 . |
428 |
|
La Madeleine, Paris |
433 |
|
Caricature of Louis Philippe |
434 |
|
Medal in Honor of Kossuth |
436 |
|
The Louvre and the Tuileries |
443 |
|
" France is Tranquil" |
• 445 |
|
Napoleon III and Eugenie |
• 446 |
|
Mazzini .... |
449 |
|
Victor Emmanuel II |
• 45° |
|
"The Right Leg in the Boot a |
t |
|
Last" .... |
• 455 |
|
William I |
• 459 |
|
"VaeVictis" . |
. 466 |
|
The Union Jack |
• 469 |
|
Canvassing for Votes |
• 470 |
|
Queen Victoria |
• 474 |
|
Windsor Castle |
• 475 |
|
[nterior of the House of Com |
|
|
mons .... |
. 481 |
|
House of Commons Mace |
• 483 |
No. 10, Downing Street .
St. Paul's Cathedral, London
Notre Dame, Paris
The Pantheon, Paris
Chamber of Deputies, Paris
The Vatican, Rome
The Reichstagsgebiiude, Berlin
The German National Monu- ment ....
Francis Joseph I
The Kremlin, Moscow .
Nicholas I
Church of the Resurrection o Christ, Petrograd
"What Nicholas Heard in the Shell"
Florence Nightingale
David Livingstone .
Henry M. Stanley .
Cecil Rhodes .
Count Ferdinand de Lesseps
"The Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger"
The Great Wall of China
Empress-Dowager of China
Simon Bolivar
The Christ of the Andes
Robert E. Peary
A Spinning Wheel .
Arkwright's Spinning Wheel
Cart wright's First Power Loom ....
Whitney's Cotton Gin .
An Eighteenth-century Stage coach ....
The Clermont, 1807
The Rocket, 1830 .
A Precursor of the Automobile
Morse's First Telegraph In- strument, 1837 .
The Original Atlantic Cable . First Adhesive Penny Postage Stamp .
597 598
599
XIV
List of Illustrations
|
PAGE |
PAGE |
|||
|
The First Copy of the |
New |
King Albert I |
673 |
|
|
York Sun . |
599 |
British Recruiting Poster |
674 |
|
|
The Stock Exchange, New York 60 1 |
Sir Douglas Haig . |
678 |
||
|
McCormick Reaper, 1834 |
606 |
"Kultur Has Passed Here" . |
679 |
|
|
The Earl of Shaftesbury |
612 |
Hindenburg .... |
680 |
|
|
Robert Owen . |
617 |
The Victoria Cross |
683 |
|
|
Karl Marx |
619 |
The Iron Cross |
683 |
|
|
Spinning and Weaving in |
the |
Eleutherios Venizelos |
684 |
|
|
Middle Ages |
624 |
"The Last Crusade" |
68; |
|
|
"Ridiculous Taste, or |
the |
The Lusitania . . ' . |
690 |
|
|
Ladies' Absurdity" |
626 |
The German Lusitania Medal |
69 |
|
|
Elizabeth Fry |
630 |
The United States Declaration |
||
|
A Lunatic |
630 |
of War . |
692 |
|
|
William Booth |
631 |
Herbert Hoover |
695 |
|
|
Susan B. Anthony . |
633 |
Eric von Ludendorff |
701 |
|
|
Sir Charles Lyell . |
642 |
Ferdinand Foch |
702 |
|
|
Victor Hugo . |
646 |
John J. Pershing |
703 |
|
|
Mozart's Spinet |
647 |
Versailles .... |
708 |
|
|
Ludwig van Beethoven . |
647 |
Signatures of the Peace with |
||
|
"Dropping the Pilot" . |
652 |
Germany .... |
711 |
|
|
"The Blessings of Peace" |
662 |
David Lloyd George |
728 |
|
|
Nicholas II . |
664 |
Woodrow Wilson . |
72Q |
LIST OF MAPS
Europe in the Ice Age
Races of Man .......
Distribution of Semitic and Indo-European Peoples Physical Asia (double page) ....
The Ancient Orient (double page)
Solomon's Kingdom ......
Colonization of the Mediterranean
Physical Features of Europe (double page)
Racial Types in Western Europe ....
The Mediterranean Basin
Greek Conquests and Migrations ....
The Persian Invasions of Greece ....
The Athenian Empire at its Height ....
Growth of Macedonia ......
(i) Empire of Alexander (2) Kingdoms of his Successors
The World according to Ptolemy
The .Etolian and Achaean Leagues (about 229 B.C.) . . . .
Distribution of the Early Inhabitants of Italy .
Rome in Italy ......... Facing
Rome and Carthage at the Beginning of the Second Punic War . Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent (double page)
Between 138 and
St. Paul's Travels
Prefectures of the Roman Empire about 395
Europe at Deposition of Romulus Augustulus, 476 . . Facing
Between 28 and Between 34 and
Facing Between 64 and
Facing
Facing
Facing
Facing
Eleventh Centuries . Facing
Facing
Teutonic Migrations and Conquests Europe in the Age of Charlemagne, 800 Europe in the Age of Otto the Great, 962 The Byzantine Empire during the Tenth and Expansion of Islam .... Asia under the Mongols The British Isles during the Middle Ages
Unification of France during the Middle Ages
Unification of Spain during the Middle Ages
Growth of Christianity from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (double page) ...... Between 204 and
Plan of Ilitchin Manor, Hertfordshire
Trade Routes between Northern and Southern Europe
xv
PAGE
4 19 22 29 35 36 46
65 67
70
74 86 90
99 104 108 109
113 122
125
139 152 155 156 160 162 165 177 184 192
195 198 200
205 215 230
xvi List of Maps
PAGE
Behaim's Globe 250
Portuguese and Spanish Colonial Empires in the Sixteenth Century
(double page) Between 254 and 255
Extent of the Reformation, 1524-1572 ...... 264
The Netherlands at the Truce of 1609 271
Europe at the End of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 . . Facing 278
Acquisitions of Louis XIV and Louis XV 298
Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1 713 .... Facing 300
Growth of Russia to the End of the Eighteenth Century . . . 303
The Ottoman Empire to 1683 Facing 308
Growth of Prussia to the End of the Eighteenth Century . Facing 314
Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795 316
English Trading Companies Facing 322
India 326
North America after the Peace of Paris, 1783 339
Colonial Empires in the Eighteenth Century (double page)
Between 344 and 345
Europe at the Beginning of the French Revolution . . Facing 366
Revolutionary France and Italy ...... Facing 388
First French Empire, 1812 ...... Facing 398
Theater of the Waterloo Campaign 405
Europe after the Congress of Vienna, 18 15 . . . Facing 416
The Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century 427
Poland in the Nineteenth Century 429
Unification of Italy, 1815-1870 454
The Germanic Confederation, 181 5— 1866 .... Facing 45 S
Unification of Germany, 1815-1871 Facing 462
Alsace-Lorraine 465
Ireland 486
Growth of the British Empire . . . ... . Facing 490
The British Empire Between 494 and 495
The Hapsburg Dominions, 12 73-19 14 .... Facing 520 Russia in Europe during the Nineteenth Century . . . .524
The Ottoman Empire, 1683-1914 Facing 530
Balkan States in 1878 and 1913 Facing 538
The World Powers, 181 5 Facing 540
Peoples of Africa v . 543
Religions of Africa 545
Exploration and Partition of Africa (double page) Between 548 and 549
The Peoples of Asia Facing 552
The European Advance in Asia (double page) . Between 554 and 555
Expansion of Buddhism 556
The World Powers (double page) . . . Between 560 and 561
List of Maps
XVII
The Pacific Ocean Facing
Exclusion of Spain and Portugal from South America . Facing
Relief Map of the Panama Canal
North America since 1783 Facing
Discoveries of the Polar Regions
Economic Europe (double page) . . . Between 582 and
Industrial England in the Twentieth Century
Occupations of Mankind • Facing
Commercial Development of the World (double page)
Between 604 and Facing Facing
Facing
Facing
Density of the World's Population
Languages of the World
Religions of the World
Europe in 1871 .
Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway .
Europe in 1914 .
Plan of the Battle of the Marne
The Western Front
The Eastern Front
The Italian Front
German Barred Zone .
North Sea Mine Fields
The World War in 1918
Europe after the Peace Conference at Paris (double page)
Between 714 and The Peoples of Europe at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (double page) ■ . Between 718 and
PAGE
564 57o 575 576 579 583 5«° 592
605 620 626
637 650 658 666 676 677 681 685 689 694 696
7i5 719
LIST OF PLATES
PAGE
Stonehenge Facing 12
Great Pyramid of Gizeh . . . 56
Hermes and Dionysus 80
Temple of Poseidon at Paestum 81
The Acropolis of Athens (Restoration) 94
Acropolis of Athens from the Southwest 95
Julius Caesar 136
Augustus Caesar 136
The Palace of the Caesars 142
The Roman Forum at the Present Time 143
Oriental, Greek, and Roman Coins . . . . . 148
Ancient and Medieval Gems ........ 149
Rheinstein Castle 176
Sancta Sophia, Constantinople 177
St. Peter's, Rome . . .212
Campanile and Doge's Palace, Venice 230
Reims Cathedral . . . . . . . . . .231
Italian Paintings of the Renaissance 244
Philip II 272
Elizabeth „ .273
Oliver Cromwell 286
Louis XIV 302
Peter the Great 303
Frederick the Great 310
Napoleon as First Consul 390
"1807" 391
The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 414
Prince Metternich . . .415
Cavour 452
Garibaldi . 452
Bismarck 460
Moltke 460
Gladstone 476
Disraeli 476
Houses of Parliament, London 482
Choir of Westminster Abbey ........ 483
Thiers . 494
xviii
List of Plates
XIX
Gambetta
The Congress of Berlin, 1878 Constantinople and the Bosporus Benjamin Watt .
Robert Fulton .
Early Passenger Trains
Charles Darwin .
Louis Pasteur
Inimanucl Kant .
Herbert Spencer .
View of Paris from an Airplane
The Peace Conference, 1919
PACK
Facing 404
53" 537 588 588
5«0 644 644 645 645 710 711
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
All serious students of history should have access to the American
Historical Review (N. Y., 1895 to date, quarterly, $4.00 a year). This
. . journal, the organ of the American Historical Association,
contains articles by scholars, critical reviews of all impor- tant works, and notes and news. The Historical Outlook (formerly the History Teacher's Magazine) is edited under the supervision of a com- mittee of the American Historical Association (Philadelphia, 1909 to date, monthly, $2.00 a year). Every well-equipped school library should contain the files of the National Geographic Magazine (Washing- ton, 1890 to date, monthly, $3.50 a year) and of Art and Archaology (Washington, 1914 to date, monthly, $4.00 a year). These two periodi- cals make a special feature of illustrations. Current History (N. Y., 1914 to date, monthly, $4.00 a year) contains many of the valuable articles appearing in the daily edition of the New York Times, as well as much additional matter of contemporary interest.
Useful books for the teacher's library include H. E. Bourne, The Teaching of History and Civics in the Elementary and the Secondary
School (N. Y., 1902, Longmans, Green & Co., $1.90), Works on the Henry Johnson, The Teaching of History (N. Y., 1915, teachingof Macmillan, $1.80), H. B. George, Historical Evidence history (N- Y., 1909, Oxford University Press, American Branch,
$1.80), J. H. Vincent, Historical Research (N. Y., 1911, Holt, $4.00), Frederic Harrison, The Meaning of History and Other His- torical Pieces (new ed., N. Y., 1900, Macmillan, $2.50), J. H. Robinson, The New History (N. Y., 191 2, Macmillan, $2.00), and H. B. George, The Relations of History and Geography (4th ed., N. Y., 1910, Oxford University Press, American Branch, $2.25). The following reports are indispensable :
The Study of History in Schools. Report to the American Historical Association
by the Committee of Seven (N. Y., 1899, Macmillan, $1.00). The Study of History in Secondary Schools. Report to the American Historical
Association by a Committee of Five (N. Y., 1911, Macmillan, $1.00). Historical Sources in Schools. Report to the New England History Teachers'
Association by a Select Committee (N. Y., 1902, out of print). A History Syllabus for Secondary Schools. Report by a Special Committee of the
New England History Teachers' Association (N. Y., 1904, Heath, $1.60).
xx
Suggestions for Further Study xxi
A Bibliography Oj History for Schools and Libraries. Published under the- auspices of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland (jd ed., N. Y ., 1915, Longmans, Green & Co., <>o cents).
For chronology, genealogies, lists of sovereigns, and other data the nii>:U valuable works are Arthur Hassall, European History, 476-1920 (new ed., N. Y., 1920, Macmillan, $4.00), G. P. Putnam, Tabular Vines of Universal History (new ed., N. Y., Dictionaries 1915, Putnam, $3-0°), and K. J. Ploetz, A Handbook of encyci0pedias Universal History, translated by W. H. Tillinghast (new ed., Boston, 1915, Houghton Mifflin Co., $3.75). TheNew International War Book (N. Y., 1907 to date, Dodd, Mead & Co.) is an annual encyclo- pedia and compendium of the world's progress. The Statesman's Year Book (N. Y., Macmillan, $7.50) and the American Year Book (N. Y., Ap- pleton, S5.00) are other annual publications devoted to current history.
An admirable collection of maps for school use is W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas (N. Y\, 191 1, Holt, temporarily out of print), with about two hundred and fifty maps covering the historical field. Other valuable works are E. W. Dow, Atlas of European History (N. Y\, 1907, Holt, $2.50), Ramsay Muir, Hammond's flew Historical Atlas for Students (2d ed., N. Y., 1914, Hammond, S4.00), and C. G. Robertson and J. G. Bartholomew, An Historical Atlas of Modern Europe from 17S9 to 1914 (N. Y., 1915, Oxford Univer- sity Press, American* Branch, $2.50). Much use can be made of the Literary and Historical Atlas of Europe, by J. G. Bartholomew, in " Every- man's Library " (N. Y., 1910, Dutton, $1.00). Other atlases in the same collection are devoted to Asia, Africa and Australasia, and America, respectively. Very valuable, also, is J. G. Bartholomew, An Atlas of Economic Geography (N. Y., 1915, Oxford University Press, American Branch, S3.40) with maps showing temperature, rainfall, population, races, occupations, religions, trade routes, products, etc. A similar though less extensive work is Hammond's Business Atlas of Economic Geography (N. Y., 1920, Llammond, $2.00).
A series of European History maps, forty-four in number, size 48J X 38} inches, has been prepared for ancient history by Hutton Webster and for medieval and modern history by Hutton Webster, D. C. Knowlton, and C. D. Hazen (Chicago, A. J. Ny- ^"charts strom & Co., complete set with tripod stand $86. 00; in spring roller cases $176.00). These maps may also be had separately. The maps in this series are on a very large scale, omit all irrelevant detail, present place names in the modern English form, and deal with cultural as well as with political subjects. A somewhat similar series of wall maps, forty three in Dumber, size 44X32 inches, is the work of *. H. Breasted, C. F. Huth, and S. i>. Harding (Chicago, Dcnoyer- Geppert Co., complete set with tripod stand, $72.00; in spring roller
xxii Suggestions for Further Study
cases, $203.00). The school should also possess good physical wall
maps such as the Sydow-Habenicht or the Kiepert series, both to be
obtained from Rand, McNally & Co. The text is in German. Philip's
Physical Maps and Johnston's New Series of Physical Wall Maps are
obtainable from A. J. Nystrom & Co. The only large charts available
are those prepared by MacCoun for his Historical Geography Charts of
Europe. The two sections, " Ancient and Classical " and "Medieval
and Modern," are sold separately (N. Y., Silver, Burdett & Co., $20.00).
The " Studies " following each chapter of this book include various
exercises for which small outline maps are required. Such maps are
„ ,. sold by D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, New York, Chicago.
Outline maps TT . , , . T. °
Usetui atlases 01 outline maps are also to be had of the
McKinley Publishing Co., Philadelphia ; A. J. Nystrom & Co., Chicago ;
Atkinson, Mentzer & Grover, Chicago, and of other publishers. A
very useful work is Bishop and Robinson, Practical Map Exercises in
Medieval and Modem European History (Boston, Ginn & Co.)
The best photographs of works of art must usually be obtained from
foreign publishers or from their American agents. In addition to
photographs and lantern slides, a collection of stereoscopic Illustrations F. ° . F , . , ... ..'.., ■ , . . /.
views is very helpful in giving vividness and interest to
instruction in history. An admirable series of photographs for the stereoscope is issued by Underwood and Underwood, New York City. The same firm supplies convenient maps and handbooks for use in this connection. The Keystone stereographs, prepared by the Keystone View Company, Meadville, Penn., may also be cordially recommended. Notable collections are Lehmann's Geographical Pictures, Historical Pictures, and Types of Nations, and Cybulski's Historical Pictures (Chicago, A. J. Nystrom & Co., and Denoyer-Geppert Co. ; each picture separately mounted on rollers). The Illustrated Topics for An- cient History and Illustrated Topics for Medieval and Modern History, arranged by D. C. Knowlton (Philadelphia, McKinley Publishing Co., each 65 cents), contain much valuable material in the shape of a syllabus, outline maps, pictures, and other aids.
To vitalize the study of geography and history there is nothing better Works of than the reading of modern books of travel. Among
travel these may be mentioned :
Allinson, F. G., and Allinson, Anne C. E., Greek Lands and Letters (Boston, 1909,
Houghton Mifflin Co., $2.50). An entertaining work of mingled history and
geography. Clark,F.E. TheHoly Land of Asia Minor (N.Y. ,1914, Scribner, $1.25). Popular
sketches. Dwight, H. G. Constantinople, Old and New (N. Y., 1915, Scribner, $5.00). Forman, H. J. The Ideal Italian Tour (Boston, 1911, Houghton Mifflin Co., $3.00).
A brief and attractive volume covering all Italy.
Suggestions for Further Study xxiii
Jackson, V V. W-. Persia, Past and Present (N. Y., 1906, Macmillan, S4.00). Kini.i aki;, A. W. Eotken (,NT. Y., 1844, Dulton, $1.00). Sketches of travel in the
East. Taylor, Bayard. Views A-Foot (N. Y., 1855, Putnam, $1.50). A classic work of
European travel. Warner, C. D. /;; the Levant (N. Y., Harper, 1876, out of print).
The following works of historical fiction comprise only a selection from a very large number of hooks suitable for supplementary reading. For extended bibliographies see E. A. Baker, A Guide to Historical Fiction, and Jonathan Nield, A Guide to the ~ . Best Historical Novels and Talcs. An excellent list of historical stories, especially designed for children, will be found in the Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries, parts viii-ix.
Bl\ck\iore, R. D. Lorna Doone (1869). Monmouth's Rebellion, 1685.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. The Last Days of Pompeii (1834).
Cox, G. W. Tales of Ancient Greece (1868).
Dickens, Charles. The Tale of Two Cities (1859). London and Paris at the time
of the French Revolution. Eliot, George. Romola (1863). Florence in the latter part of the fifteenth
century. Hugo, Victor. Ninety-Three (1872). Insurrection in La Vendee, 1793.
Notre Dame de Paris (1831). Paris, late fifteenth century.
Irving, Washington. The Alhambra (1832). Sketches of the Moors and Span- iards. Kixgsley, Charles. Hypatia (1853). Alexandria, 391 a.d.
Westward Ho! (1855). Voyages of Elizabethan seamen and the struggle
with Spain.
Kipling, Rudyard. Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). Roman occupation of Britain. Lever, Charles. Charles O'Malley (1841). The Peninsular War.
Tom Bourke of "Ours" (1848). French wars of the Consulate and
Empire.
Reade, Charles. The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). Eve of the Ref- ormation. Scott, (Sir) Walter. The Talisman (1825). Reign of Richard I, 1193.
Ivanhoe (1820). Richard I, 1 194.
Shorthouse, J. H. John Inglcsant (1881). Life in England and Italy during the
seventeenth century. Sienkiewicz, Henryk. With Fire and Sword (1884). Poland in the seventeenth
century. Thackeray, W. M. Henry Esmond (1852). England during the reigns of William
III and Queen Anne. Tolstoy, (Count) L. N. War and Peace (1864-1869). Napoleon's campaigns in
Russia.
Sevastopol (1855-1856). Crimean War.
Wallace, Lew. Ben Eur; a Talc of the Christ (1880). Waterloo, Stanley. The Story of Ab (1905). Prehistoric life.
xxiv Suggestions for Further Study
It is unnecessary to emphasize the value, as collateral reading, of Historical historical poems and plays. To the brief list which
poetry follows should be added the material in Katharine Lee
Bates and Katharine Coman, English History told by English Poets.
Brooke, Rupert, The Soldier.
Browning, Elizabeth B. The Cry of the Children, and The Forced Recruit.
Browning, Robert. Pheidippides, Herve Riel, and An Incident of the French
Camp. Burns, Robert. The Battle of Bannockburn. Byron (Lord). Song of Saul before His Last Battle, The Destruction of Sennacherib,
Belshazzar's Feast, The Isles of Greece (Don Juan, canto iii, between stanzas
86-87), "The Eve of Waterloo" (Childe Harold, canto iii, stanzas 21-28), and
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. Campbell, Thomas. Hohenlinden, The Battle of the Baltic, Rule Britannia, and
Ye Mariners of England. Cowper, William. Loss of the "Royal George." Domett, Alfred. A Christmas Hymn. Dryden, John. Alexander's Feast. Halleck, Fitz-Greene. Marco Bozzaris. Hemans, Felicia. The Landing of the Pilgrims. Kipling, Rudyard. Recessional, and The White Man's Burden. Longfellow, H. W. The Skeleton in Armor, The Norman Baron, The Belfry of
Bruges, Nuremberg, and The White Czar. Lowell, J. R. Kossuth, and Villafrajica. Macaulay, T. B. Lays of Ancient Rome, The Armada, The Battle of Ivry, and The
Battle of Naseby. McCeae, John. In Flanders Fields. Markham, Edwin. The Mam with the Hoe. Miller, Joaquin. Columbus. Milton, John. Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, and To the Lord General
Cromwell. Morris, William. The Day is Coming. Norton, Caroline E. S. The Soldier from Bingen. Rossetti, D. G. The White Ship. Schiller, Friedrich. The Maid of Orleans, William Tell, Maria Stuart, and
W aliens tein. Scott, (Sir) Walter. "Flodden Field" {Marmion, canto vi, stanzas 19-27,33-
35)- Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus, Julius Ccesar, Antony and Cleopatra, King
John, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, parts i and ii, Henry the Fifth,
Henry the Sixth, parts i, ii, and iii, Richard the Third, Henry the Eighth, and
The Merchant of Venice. Taylor, Bayard. The Song in Camp. Tennyson, Alfred. Ulysses, Boadicea, St. Telemachus, St. Simeon Stylites, Sir
Galahad, " The Revenge" : A Ballad of the Fleet, Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Defense of Lucknow. Thackeray, W. M. King Canute. Wolfe, Charles. The Burial of Sir John Moore.
Suggestions for Further Study xxv
Full information regarding the best translations of the sources of history may be found in one of the Reports previously cited — Historical Sources in Schools, parts iii-iv. The use of the following collections of extracts from the sources will go far toward remedying the lack of library facilities.
Botsford, G. W., and Botsford, Lillie S. Source Book of Ancient History (N. Y.,
1912, Macmillan, S2.00). Davis, W. S. Readings in Ancient History (Boston, 1912, Allyn & Bacon, 2 vols.,
$2.80). I In. 1 , Mabel. Liberty Documents (N. Y., 1001, out of print). Ogg, F. A. A Source Book of Medieval History (N. Y., 1907,' American Book Co.,
S1.72). ROBINSON, J. H. Readings in European History (abridged cd., Boston, 1906, Ginn,
$2.50). Webster, IIutton. Readings in Ancient History (N. Y., 1913, Heath, $1.60). ■ Readings in Medieval and Modern History (N. Y., 1917, Heath, $1.60).
Historical Source Book (N. Y., 1920, Heath, $1.60).
Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History (N. Y., 1894-1899, Longmans, Green & Co., 6 vols., each $2.00).
Most of the books in the following list are inexpensive, easily procured and well adapted in style and choice of topics to the needs of high-school pupils. Some more advanced and costly works are in- dicated by an asterisk (*). For detailed bibliographies, . often accompanied by critical estimates, see C. K. Adams, A Manual of Historical Literature, and the Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries, parts iii-v.
GENERAL
♦Abbott, W. C. The Expansion of Europe, 1415-17S0 (N. Y., 1918, Holt, 2 vols.,
S8.00). Emphasizes cultural aspects of modern European history. Beard, C. A. Introduction to the English Historians (N. Y., 1906, Macmillan, S3. 50).
A book of selected readings. Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (N. Y.,
1840, Button, Si. 00). Chapin, F. S. An Historical Introduction to Social Economy (N. Y., 1917, Century
Co., S3. 00). An elementary treatment of industrial and social history. Cheyney, E. P. Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England (rev.
ed., N. Y., 1920, Macmillan, $2.60). Cowan, A. R. Master Clues in World History (N. Y., 1914, Longmans, Green &
Co., S2.00). Suggestive reading. CREASY, E. S. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo
(X. V., 1854, Button, Si. 00). Cunningham, William. An Essay on Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects
(Ancient Times) (X. V., 1898, Putnam, $1.35). Cambridge Historical Series.
An E^say on Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects (Medieval and
Modem Times) (N. Y., 1901, Putnam, $1.35). Cambridge Historical Scries.
xxvi Suggestions for Further Study
Day, Clive. A History of Commerce (2d ed., N. Y., 1914, Longmans, Green & Co.,
$2.50). The most scholarly treatment in English. Ellwood, C. A. Sociology and Modern Social Problems (N. Y., iqio, American
Book Co., $1.48). An elementary treatment. Goodyear, W. H. Roman and Medieval Art (2d ed., N. Y., 1897, Macmillan, $2.00).
Renaissance and Modem Art (N. Y., 1894, $2.00).
*Hayes, C. J. H. A Political and Social History of Modern Europe (N. Y., 1916,
Macmillan, 2 vols., $7.75). A college text-book, covering the period 1500-1915 ;
provided with full bibliographies. Herbertson, A. J., and Herbertson, F. D. Man and His Work (3d ed., N. Y.,
1914, Macmillan, $1.28). An introduction to the study of human geography. Herrick, C. A, History of Commerce and Industry (N. Y., 1917, Macmillan, $2.00). Jacobs, Joseph. The Story of Geographical Discovery (N. Y., 1898, Appleton, $1.00). Jenks, Edward. The State and the Nation (N. Y., 1919, Dutton, $2.00). A simply
written work on the historical development of social institutions. Kelsey, Carl. The Physical Basis of Society (N. Y., 1916, Appleton, $2.50). An
interesting introduction to the study of sociology. Kerr, P. H., and Kerr, A. C. The Growth of the British Empire (N. Y., 191 1,
Longmans, Green & Co., $1.00). Libby, Walter. An Introduction to the History of Science (Boston, 1917, Houghton
Mifflin Co., $2.35). Macy, Jesse, and Gannaway, J. W. Comparative Free Government (N. Y., 191 5,
Macmillan, $3.25). Marvin, F. S. The Living Past (2d ed., N. Y., 1915, Oxford University Press,
American Branch, $2.00). Thoughtful survey of intellectual history. *Monroe, Paul. A Textbook in the History of Education (N. Y., 1905, Macmillan,
$3-5o). Myers, P. V. N. History as Past Ethics (Boston, 1913, Ginn, $1.50). Pattison, R. P. D. Leading Figures in European History (N. Y., 1912, Macmillan,
$2.00). Biographical sketches of European statesmen from Charlemagne to
Bismarck. Powers, H. H. Mornings with Masters of Art (N. Y., 1912, out of print). Christian
art from the time of Constantine to the death of Michelangelo. Quennel, Marjorie, and Quennel, C. H. B. A History of Everyday Things in
England (N. Y., 1919, Scribner, 2 vols., each $4.00). Covers the period between
1066 and 1799; a charmingly written and amply illustrated work. Reinach, Salomon. Apollo; an Illustrated Manual of the History of Art throughout
the Ages, translated by Florence Simmonds (last ed., N. Y., 1914, Scribner,
$2.00). The best work on the subject. Seignobos, Charles. History of Ancient Civilization, edited by J. A. James (N. Y.,
igo6, Scribner, $1.48).
History of Medieval and Modern Civilisation, edited by J. A. James (N. Y.,
1907, Scribner, $1.48).
History of Contemporary Civilization, edited by J. A. James (N. Y., 1909,
Scribner, $1.48). *Wells, H. G. The Outline of History (N. Y., 1920, Macmillan, 2 vols., $10.50). *Wilson, Woodrow. The State. Elements of Historical and Practical Politics (2d
ed., N. Y., 1898, Heath, $2.68).
Suggestions for Further Study xxvii
PREHISTORIC TIMES
Clodd, Edward. The Story of Primitive Man (N. Y., 1895, Applcton, 50 cents). .\h res, J. L. The Dawn of History (N. Y., 1912, Holt, 90 cents). Home University
Library. •Osborn, H. F. Men of the Old Stone Age (N. Y., 1915, Scribner, $5.00). An
authoritative, interesting, and amply illustrated work. Sr\RR, FREDERICK. Some First Steps in Human Progress (Chautauqua, N. Y.,
1 895, out of print). A popular introduction to anthropology. Tvlor, (Sir) E. B. Anthropology (N. Y., 1881, Appleton, $3.00). Incorporates
the results of the author's extensive studies.
THE ANCIENT ORIENT
Baikie, James. The Story of the Pharaohs (N. Y., 190S, Macmillan, $4.25). A popular work; well illustrated.
*Brf.asted, J. H. A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (2d ed., N. Y., 1909, Scribner, $7.00). The standard work on Egyptian history.
Clay, A. T. Light on the Old Testament from Babel (4th ed., Philadelphia, 1915, Sunday School Times Co., $2.00).
*Erman, Adolf. Life in Ancient Egypt (N. Y., 1894, out of print).
Grant, Elihu. The Orient in Bible Times (Philadelphia, ig2o, Lippincott, $2.50).
*Hall, H. R. Ancient History of the Near East (N. Y., 1913, Macmillan, S7.00).
Hogarth, D. G. The Ancient East (N. Y., 1915, Holt, 90 cents). Home Uni- versity Library.
*Jastrow, Morris. The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia, 1915, Lippincott, $7.50). A finely illustrated work by a great scholar.
Maspero, (Sir) Gaston. Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria (N. Y., 1892, Apple- ton, $2.50). Fascinating and authoritative.
GREECE AND ROME
Baikie, James. The Sea-Kings of Crete (2d ed., N. Y., 1912, Macmillan, $4.25).
A clear and vivid summary of Cretan archaeology. Botsford, G. W., and Sthler, E. G. Hellenic Civilization (N. Y., 1915, Columbia
University Press, $4.00). Lengthy extracts from the sources, with commentary
and bibliographies. Davis, W. S. The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome (N. Y., 1910, out of print).
An interesting treatment of an important theme. Fowler, W. W. Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero (N. Y., 1909, Macmillan,
$3.00). Gayi.ey, C. M. The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2d ed.,
Boston, 1911, Ginn, $1.92). E, C. B. The Life, of the Ancient Greeks (N. Y., 1902, Appleton, $2.00). Well
illustrated. IIoiM'.KiN, Thomas. The Dynasty of Theodosius (\T. Y., [889, out of print). Popular
lectures summarizing the author's extensive studies. Hopkinson, (Miss) L. W. Greek Lenders (Boston, 1918, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
$1.75). Simple biographies of eleven makers <>f Creek history.
xxviii Suggestions for Further Study
Mahaffy, J. P. What have the Greeks done for Modern Civilization? (N. Y., 1909, Putnam, $2.50).
*Mau, August. Pompeii: Its Life and Art, translated by F. W. Kelsey (N. Y., 1899, out of print).
Oman, Charles. Seven Roman Statesmen of the Later Republic (N. Y., 1902, Long- mans, Green & Co., $2.25). A biographical presentation of Roman history.
Pellison, Maurice. Roman Life in Pliny's Time, translated by Maud Wilkinson (Philadelphia, 1897, out of print).
Powers, H. H. The Message of Greek Art (N. Y., 1913, out of print).
Robinson, C. E. The Days of Alkibiades (N. Y., 1916, Longmans, Green & Co., $2.00). A picture of Greek life and culture in the Age of Pericles.
*Stobart, J. C. The Glory that was Greece: A Survey of Hellenic Culture and Civili- zation (Philadelphia, 191 1, out of print).
* The Grandeur that was Rome. A Survey of Roman Culture and Civilization
(Philadelphia, 191 2, out of print).
Tarbell, F. G. A History of Greek Art (2d ed., N. Y., 1905, Macmillan, $1.60).
Tucker, T. G. Life in Ancient Athens (N. Y., 1906, Macmillan, $2.40). The most attractive treatment of the subject.
Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul (N. Y., 1910, Macmillan,
$3 -So).
Zimmern, A. E. The Greek Commonwealth (N. Y., 191 1, Oxford University Press, American Branch, $3.80).
MIDDLE AGES
Adams, G.B. Civilization during the Middle A ges (2ded., N .Y ., 1914, Scribner, $2.75). Bateson, Mary. Medieval England (N. Y., 1903, Putnam, $2.50). Deals with
economic and social life ; Story of the Nations. *Bryce, James. The Holy Roman Empire (new ed., N. Y., 1921, Macmillan, $3.75).
A famous work, originally published in 1864. Cutts, E. L. Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages (London, 1872, DeLaMore
Press, 7s. 6d.). An almost indispensable book. Davis, H. W. C. Medieval Europe (N. Y., 191 1, Holt, 90 cents). Home Univer- sity Library. Emerton, Ephraim. An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Boston, 1888,
Ginn, $1.92). Of special value to beginners. Foord, Edward. The Byzantine Empire (N. Y., 191 1, out of print). The most
convenient short treatise ; lavishly illustrated. Guerber, H. A. Legends of the Middle Ages (N. Y., 1896, American Book Co.,
$2.00). Haskins, C. H. The Normans in European History (Boston, 1915, Houghton
Mifflin Co., $3.00). Lawrence, W. W. Medieval Story (N. Y., 191 1, Columbia University Press, $2.00).
Discusses the great literary productions of the Middle Ages. *Luchaire, Achille. Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus, translated by
E. B. Krehbiel (London, 1912, Murray, 10s. 6d.). A historical masterpiece. *Munro, D. C, and Sellery, G. C. Medieval Civilization (2d ed., N. Y., 1907,
Century Co., $2.50). Translated selections from standard works by French
and German scholars.
Suggestions for Further Study xxix
Tapean, Eva M. When Knights were Bold (Boston, ion, Houghton Mifflin Co., $300). An economic and social study of the Feudal Age; charmingly written tot young people.
*THOSNDlKE, Lynn. The History of Medieval Europe (Boston, 1Q17, Houghton Mifflin Co., S3. 60). An admirable college text-book.
TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES
BOURNE, E. G. Spain in America, 1450-15S0 (N. Y., 1904, Harper, $2.00). Ameri- can Nation Series.
Cheyntey, E. P. European Background of American History, 1 300-1600 (N. Y., 1004, Harper, S2.00). American Nation Series.
Hudson, W. H. The Story of the Renaissance (N. Y., 191 2, Cassell, $1.50). A well- written volume.
*Htjlmr, E. M. The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in Continental Europe (rev. ed., N. Y., 1915, Century Co., $3.50). The best work on the subject by an American scholar.
Seebohm, Frederic. The Era of the Protestant Revolution (N. Y., 1875, Scribner, $1.75). Epochs of Modern History.
Smith, Preserved. Life and Letters of Martin Luther (Boston, 1910, Houghton Mifflin Co., $3.50). Written from a Protestant standpoint.
THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES Eggleston, Edward. The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the
Seventeenth Century (N. Y., 1902, Appleton, $3.50). Firth, C. H. Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of tlie Puritans in England (N. Y., 1900,
Putnam, S2.50). Heroes of the Nations. Hassall, Arthur. The Balance of Power, 1715-1780 (N. Y., 1896, Macmilhn,
$2.50). Periods of European History. Louis XIV and the Zenith of the French Monarchy (N. Y., 1895, Putnam,
S2. 30). Heroes of the Nations. Lowell, E. J. The Eve of the French Revolution (2d ed., Boston, 1S93, Houghton
Mifflin Co., S3. 00). A satisfactory account of the Old Regime in France. Reddaway, W. F. Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia (N. Y., 1904, Putnam,
$2.50). Heroes of the Nations. Tuwaites, R. G. France in America (N. Y., 1905, Harper, $2.00). American
Nation Series. Tyler, L. G. England in America (N. Y., 1904, Harper, $2.00). American Nation
Series. Wakeman, H. O. The Ascendancy of France, 1508-1715 (4th ed., N. Y., 1914,
Macmillan, $2.75).
THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC ERA *Bournte, II. E. The Revolutionary Period in Europe, 1763-1815 (N. Y., 1914,
Century Co., $3.50). Century Historical Series. Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution (N. Y., 1837, Dutton, 2 vols., each $1.00).
Not a history, but a literary masterpiece. Fisher, Herbert. Napoleon (N. Y., 1913, Holt, 90 cents). Home University
Library.
xxx Suggestions for Further Study
*Henderson, E. F. Symbol and Satire in the French Revolution (N. Y., iqi2,
Putnam, $4.00). Contains 171 illustrations from contemporary prints. Madelin, Louis. The French Revolution (N. Y., 1916, Putnam, $3.50). A popular
work translated from the French. Mathews, Shailer. The French Revolution (N. Y., 1900, Longmans, Green &
Co., $1.35). Ends with the year 1795. Rose, J. H. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 1789-18 15 (2d ed., N. Y., 1895,
Putnam, $1.50). The work of a very competent British scholar ; Cambridge
Historical Series. ♦Stephens, H. M. Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815 (N. Y., 1893, Macmillan,
$2.50). Periods of European History.
THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES *Andrews, C. M. The Historical Development of Modern Europe (N. Y., 1896-
1898, Putnam, two volumes in one, $4.50). Covers the period 1815-1897. Bassett, J. S. Our War with Germany (N. Y., 1920, Knopf, $4.00). A scholarly
history. Davis, W. S., Anderson, William, and Tyler, M. W. The Roots of the War
(N. Y., 191 8, Century Co., $2.50). A non-technical, yet scholarly, history of
Europe, 1870-1914. Gibbins, H. de B. Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century (Edinburgh,
1903, Chambers, 55.). Gibbons, H. A. The New Map of Europe, IQ11-IQ14 (4th ed., N. Y., 1915, Century
Co., $3.00).
The New Map of Asia, iQoo-1919 (N. Y., 1919, Century Co., $3.00).
The New Map of Africa (N. Y., 1918, Century Co., $3.00).
Gooch, G. P. History of Our Time, 1885-1911 (N. Y., 191 1, Holt, 90 cents).
Home University Library. Harris, N. D. Intervention and Colonization in Africa (Boston, 1914, Houghton
Mifflin Co., $2.75). Hayes, C. J. H. A Brief History of the Great War (N. Y., 1920, Macmillan,
$3-So). Hazen, C. D. Modern European History (N. Y., 1917, Holt, $2.40). Chiefly a
political narrative ; American Historical Series. Hearnshaw, F. J. C. Main Currents of European History, 1815-1915 (N. Y., 1917,
Macmillan, $2.60). Illuminating comment; not a continuous historical narra- tive. Hornbeck, S. K. Contemporary Politics in the Far East (N. Y., 1916, Appleton,
$3.So). Johnston, (Sir) H. H. The Opening-Up of Africa (N. Y., 191 1, Holt, 90 cents).
Home University Library. McCarthy, Justin. The Story of tjie People of England in the Nineteenth Century
(N. Y., 1899, Putnam, 2 vols., $5.00). Story of the Nations. Marvin, F. S. The Century of Hope (N. Y., 1919, Oxford University Press, $3.00).
A sketch of intellectual and social history between 1815 and 1914. Moore, E. C. West and East (N. Y., 1920, Scribner, $4.00). An account of the
expansion of European countries in Africa and Asia, with particular reference
to foreign missions.
Suggestions for Further Study xxxi
Oakes, (Sir) Ai gtjstus, and Mowat, 1'.. r>. The Great European Treaties of the • nth Century (N. V., 1018, Oxford University 1'rcss, American Branch,
$3-75). A very useful volume containing both historical summaries and the
texts of treaties. !•'. A. The Governments of Europe (rev. ed., N. V., 1Q20, Macmillan, $4-25).
* Economic Development of Modem Europe (N. Y., 1917, Macmillan, S.v.so).
PHILLIPS, W. A. Modem Europe, 1815-1SQQ (5th ed., N. Y., igis, Macmillan,
$2.50). Periods of European History. *Rosh, J. H. The Development of the European Nations, 1S70-1Q14 (5th ed., N. Y.,
1916, Putnam, two vols, in one, $3.50). Schumro, J. S. Modem and Contemporary European History (Boston, 1018,
Houghton Mifflin Co., Sj.go). An admirable college text-book covering the
period from the French Revolution to the present time. Shepherd, W. R. Latin America (N. Y., 1914, Holt, 90 cents). Home University
Library. Turner, E. R. Europe, 178Q-IQ20 (N. Y., 1921, Doubleday, Page & Co., $3.50).
An interesting and scholarly volume, with many maps. Weir, Archibald. An Introduction to the History oj Modem Europe (Boston, 1907,
out of print). A suggestive book for teachers. Mr. Punch's Ilisttry of the Great War (N. Y., 1919, Cassell, $3.50). Contains many
cartoons reproduced from the English journal Punch.
WORLD HISTORY
CHAPTER I PREHISTORIC TIMES
1. Introductory
History is a narrative of what civilized men have thought or done in past times — whether a day, a year, a century, or a millennium ago. Since men do not live in isolation, Definition of but everywhere in association, history is necessarily history concerned with social groups and especially with states and nations. Just as biography describes the life of individuals, so history relates the rise, progress, and decline of human societies.
History does not limit its attention to a fraction of the com- munity to the exclusion of the rest. It does not deal solely with rulers and warriors, with forms of government, scope of public affairs, and domestic or foreign wars. More history and more, history becomes an account of the entire culture of a people. The historian wants to learn about their houses, furniture, costumes, and food ; what occupations they followed ; what schools they supported ; what beliefs and superstitions they held ; what amusements and festivals they enjoyed. Human progress in invention, science, art, music, literature, morals, religion, and other aspects of civilization is what chiefly interests the historical student of to-day.
Civilization is a recent thing, almost a thing of yesterday.
It began not more than five or six thousand years ago in the
river valleys of Egypt and western Asia. The „
t, • , t, i i • , i • • Civilization
Egyptians and Babylonians by this time were
cultivating the soil, laying out roads and canals, working
mines, building cities, organizing stable governments, and
keeping written records. All the rest of the world was then
i
2 Prehistoric Times
inhabited by savage and barbarous peoples, such as are still found in every continent.
The savage is a mere child of nature. He secures food from wild plants and animals ; he knows nothing of metals, but Savagery makes his tools and weapons of wood, bone, and
and bar- stone ; he wears little or no clothing ; and his
home is merely a cave, a rock shelter, or a rude bark hut. Such miserable folk occupy the interior of South America, Africa, Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and other regions. Barbarism forms a transitional stage be- tween savagery and civilization. The barbarian has gained some control of nature. He has learned to sow and reap the fruits of the earth, instead of depending entirely upon hunting and fishing for a food supply, to domesticate animals, and ordi- narily to use implements of metal. Barbarous tribes at the present time include certain North American Indians, the Pacific Islanders, and most of the African negroes.
The facts collected by modern science make it certain that early man was first a savage and then a barbarian before he Human reached anywhere the stage of civilization. We
progress know this, not on the evidence of written records
— early man made neither inscriptions nor books — but from the things which he left behind him in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe and the Mediterranean region. These include a few of his own bones, many bones of animals killed by him, and a great variety of tools, weapons, and other objects. Systematic study of such remains began during the nineteenth century. The study is still in its infancy, but it has gone far enough to afford some idea of human progress before the rise of civilization.
2. Man's Place in Nature Astronomy and geology present a wonderful picture of the earth in past ages. The astronomer tells us that space is for the most Origin of the Pai"t mere emptiness, that at vast intervals in this earth emptiness are the so-called "fixed stars," — flam-
ing, incandescent masses of matter, — that the sun is such a star,
Man's Place in Nature 3
and that it threw off, one by one, the planets of the solar system. Our earth thus separated from the parent sun probably much more than a hundred million years ago.
The geologist tells us that in process of time the cooling earth gradually raised over its molten interior a thin crust of fire-fused rocks. Then the steam in the atmos- Life on the phere began to condense and, falling upon this earth crust, formed the first rivers, lakes, and seas. The dust and rock particles in the water accumulated in layers, or strata, which hardened into the stratified rocks. They reach to a depth of perhaps twenty-five miles below the surface and contain fossil remains of plants and animals. The fossils show that life began in lowly forms on the earth, and that all existing life has evolved from these earlier, lowlier forms.
Most of geological time since the origin of the earth is divided into three great epochs. The first or Primary epoch saw the appearance of plants, such as seaweeds, mosses, Geological ferns, and finally of huge-stemmed trees, whose time abundant vegetation formed our coal measures. It saw also the appearance of animals, beginning with simple invertebrate creatures which lived in the water and passing to fishes and amphibians. The Secondary epoch was especially the age of enormous reptiles, whose skeletons are shown in museums. During this time bird-like animals developed and became true birds as they grew wings and modified their reptilian scales into feathers. In the third or Tertiary epoch there appeared for the first time a variety and abundance of mammals. Such is the record of the rocks for untold millions of years before the first traces of man.
The Tertiary epoch was characterized by a semi-tropical climate, even in the Arctic region. Toward the close of the Tertiary profound climatic changes began to occur in northern latitudes, producing what is called the Ice Age. An immense ice cap formed in the lands encircling the North Pole and gradually moved southward. North America to the valleys of the Ohio and the Missouri and Europe to the Rhine and the Thames were covered by an
Prehistoric Times
icy mass, estimated to have exceeded a mile in thickness. Great glaciers also arose in the Alps, Pyrenees, and Caucasus and descended from these mountains far into the plains. The Ice Age, despite its name, was not one of uninterrupted cold. There seem to have been four advances and retreats of the ice, resulting in as many more or less warm intervals. The ac- companying map represents Europe in the second glacial stage,
Former Sea Level
Europe in the Ice Age
Discovery sites of Paleolithic man: i, Piltdown; 2, Heidelberg; 3, Neanderthal; 4, Cro- Magnon; 5, Briinn; 6, Furfooz; 7, Ofnet.
the period of the greatest extension of ice fields and glaciers. Guesses about the duration of the Ice Age vary considerably ; one estimate makes it begin about 500,000 years ago. Our own postglacial stage may have begun about 25,000 years ago.
The geography of Europe in the Ice Age was unlike what it is to-day. Considerable areas now submerged beneath the Europe in Atlantic Ocean were, then dry land. Great the Ice Age Britain and Ireland formed part of the Continent, and no North Sea separated them from Scandinavia. The
A Tun's Place in Nature
Mediterranean basin contained two inland seas. Europe was united to both Africa and Asia, where are now the strait of Gibraltar, the island of Sicily, and the Dardanelles. The land bridges thus formed afforded an easy entrance into Europe for the great African and Asiatic mammals, and perhaps for earliest man.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
|
Geological Periods |
Climatic Stages |
Animal Life |
Human Types |
Cultural Epochs |
Ttme Estimates |
|
' |
Modern Animals |
Modern Races |
Later Iron Age |
Europe, 500 B.C. |
|
|
Early Iron Age |
Europe, 1000-500 B.C. Orient, 1800-1000 B.C. |
||||
|
Recent |
Copper-Bronze Age |
Europe, 3000-1000 B.C. Orient, 4OOO-ISOO B.C. |
|||
|
Neolithic or New Stone Age |
Europe, 7000 n.c. |
||||
|
Postglacial |
Reindeer Musk Sheep Elk Steppe Horse Wild Ox (Aurochs) European Bison Cave Bear Woolly Rhinoceros Woolly Mammoth Hippopotamus Elephant Rhinoceros Saber-tooth Tiger Wild Boar Lynx Lion Hyxna |
Cro-Magnon |
Later Palxo- lithic or Old Stone Age |
25,000 B.C. |
|
|
IV. Glacial |
Neanderthal |
Early Paleolithic or Old Stone Age |
50,000 B.C. |
||
|
3. Interglacial |
Piltdown |
150,000 B.C. |
|||
|
III. Glacial |
Eolithic Age |
175,000 B.C. |
|||
|
Ice Age |
2. Interglacial |
Heidelberg |
375,000 B.C. |
||
|
II. Glacial |
400,000 B.C. |
||||
|
1. Interglacial |
475,000 B.C. |
||||
|
I. Glacial |
500,000 B.C. |
The first traces of man in Europe are associated with the Ice Age. In 1907 a human lower jaw was found in a sand pit near Heidelberg, Germany. It lay about eighty Heidelberg feet below the surface, in company with the man remains of various animals, including an elephant and a rhinoc-
Prehistoric Times
The Heidelberg Lower Jaw
About one-half life size. ■
eros. The jaw presents several remarkable features. It is
the largest human jaw known ; it entirely lacks a chin ; and its
narrowness behind
probably did not give
the tongue sufficient
' play for articulate
speech. Heidelberg
man, as we may call
him, must have been
a strange-looking
creature. He has
been assigned to the
second interglacial
stage.
Another important discovery was made in 1911-1912. A
gravel bed at Piltdown, in the English county of Sussex, yielded
„ human remains, consisting of part of a skull, a lower
Piltdown man . , ' , , ■ 1 • r ,
jaw, and several teeth, together with remains of the
hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and other animals. This "find" has excited immense interest, because Piltdown man is the most ancient human type in which the form of the head and the size of the brain are approximately known. The skull is of extraor- dinary thickness, far greater than that of any modern men. Judging from its shape and size, it held a comparatively small brain. The jaw is even less human, especially in the absence of a chin. The teeth likewise exhibit non-human character- istics. We cannot be sure, however, that skull and jaw be- longed to the same individual. Piltdown man is thought to have lived during the third interglacial stage.
The next important discovery of human fossils was made as far back as 1856, but its significance was not at first recog- Neanderthal nized. In that year some workmen, clearing a man small cave in the valley known as the Neander-
thal, Rhenish Prussia, came upon a human skeleton. The cranium and various bones of the body were secured for pur- poses of study. The most striking features of the skull are its thickness, the low, retreating forehead, and the prominent eye-
Man's Place in Nature 7
brow ridges. As long as this skull remained the only one of its
kind, scientists could argue that it belonged to an idiot or to
a diseased person. But during the last half century nearly
thirty other examples have been found, thus proving the
former existence of Neanderthal man in western Europe. In
appearance, he was short (about 5
feet, 3 inches) , thickset, heavy-browed,
heavy- jawed, and with a receding
chin. His body was probably hairy.
His thumb seems to have been less
flexible than that of modern men.
His head, looked at from above, was
very narrow, and he could not walk
absolutely erect. Neanderthal man
lived during the fourth glacial stage, SpY Skull
1 ..i ,i 1 v One of two skulls of the Neander-
along with the cave bear, rave lion, thal type They werc discovcred cave hvama, and other animals now in iSS6, in the cave of Spy, near
extinct Namur, Belgium.
Thousands of years passed before there appeared in Europe another human type, called Cro-Magnon, from the name of a French cave where five skeletons were unearthed Cro-Magnon in 1868. Cro-Magnon man, as we know from man these and other examples, was tall, with a broad face, a prom- inent nose, slightly developed eyebrow ridges, well-developed chin, and a large brain. His physical and mental development places him close to modern man, though he lived during early postglacial times, when the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, reindeer, and wild steppe horse still ranged throughout western Europe.
Western Europe, the scene of so much of later history, is thus unique in providing us with the physical evidence for human evolution. Though the evidence is in- Human complete, we already know that during a period evolution probably several hundred thousand years long, man was slowly working upward from an almost brute-like state. Something about the cultural development of Heidelberg, Piltdown, Nean- derthal, and Cro-Magnon men is also known.
8
Prehistoric Times
3. The Old Stone Age
It takes an effort to visualize the condition of the earliest men. They were naked, tireless, houseless, without tools and Cultural weapons, without even articulate speech, and with
development nothing but their human hands and brains to secure food and protect themselves from the wild animals on every side. There are no living savages so low as this, for all use tools, make fire, construct shelters against rain and wind, speak elaborate languages, and possess other elements of culture.
I 2 3
Prehistoric Stone Implements
i, Eolith; 2, Palaeolithic fist hatchet; 3, Neolithic ax head.
The earliest men started without any culture. They had to acquire it by their own unaided efforts.
Man's first tools and weapons were those that lay ready to his hand. A branch from a tree served as a spear; a thick stick in his strong arms became a club ; while stones picked up at haphazard were thrown as missiles or used as pounders to crack nuts and crush big marrow bones. Eventually, man discovered that a shaped implement was far more serviceable than an unshaped one, and so he began chipping flints into rude hatchets, knives, spearheads, borers, and the like. Such objects are called palseoliths (old- stones), and the period when they were produced is therefore
Implements
The Old Stone Age 9
known as the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age.1 It seems to have begun in the third interglacial stage and probably lasted more than a hundred thousand years.
No slight skill is required to chip a flint along one face or both faces, until it takes a symmetrical form. But practice makes perfect, and the Palaeolithic Age for the improvement most part shows steady progress in manufactur- of implements ing, not only stone implements, but also those of bone, mammoth ivory, and reindeer horn. Many different kinds of imple- ments, adapted to special uses, were gradually produced. In addition to those just mentioned, we find awls, wedges, saws, drills, chisels, barbed harpoons, and even so neat a device as a spear-thrower. Bone and wooden handles were also devised, thus adding immensely to the effectiveness of tools and weapons.
Palaeolithic man learned fire-making. Just how, we cannot
say. Probably he struck a piece of iron pyrites with a flint
and then allowed the sparks to fall into a bed of dry
i o -n 1 1 • t 1 Fire-making
leaves or moss. Some savages still do this, though
more often they produce fire by rubbing two pieces of wood
together. The discovery of fire made it possible for man to
cook food, instead of eating it raw, to smoke meats and thus
preserve them indefinitely, to protect himself at night against
animal enemies, and to make his cave home comfortable. Later,
the use of fire enabled him to bake clay into pottery and to smelt
the metals, but these great steps in progress were not taken in
Palaeolithic times.
The men of the Old Stone Age doubtless passed much of
their time in the open, following the game from place to place,
and, when night came on, camping out under the
n™ 1 .1 , 1 r. , , . . Habitations
stars. They built huts, also. Some of their pic- tures represent rude structures with a central pole and occa-
1 Some authorities hold that an Eolithic (Dawn Stone) Age preceded the Palae- olithic. Eoliths are small, rough stones, one part shaped as if to be held in the hand and the other part edged or pointed as for cutting. Some may be natural productions, but others seem to be of human workmanship. Eoliths have been found as far back as the beginning of the Ice Age and even earlier in the Tertiary eDoch. If man really did make them, they must be regarded as the earliest evidences of his life on the earth.
IO
Prehistoric Times
sionally with props on either side. More commonly they took shelter under rock ledges and in caves, as some savages do to-day. Limestone caverns, often very deep and roomy, are especially numerous in western Europe, where they seem to have been occupied by successive generations for many cen- turies. Huge accumulations of ashes and charcoal, stone implements, bones of animals, and sometimes those of man himself cover the floor of a Palaeolithic cave to a depth of many feet. These objects are often found sealed up tight in stalag- mite deposits formed by lime-burdened water dropping from
A Mammoth
An engraving on a piece of ivory tusk. Found in the rock shelter of La Madeleine, France. Represents a woolly mammoth charging. Comparison with the remains of mammoths com- pletely preserved in the ice of Siberia shows that the Palaeolithic artist accurately delineated the animal's protuberant forehead, hairy covering, and huge, curved tusks.
the roof. What was man's home has thus become a museum, only awaiting investigation by a trained student to reveal its story of the past.
Palaeolithic man at the outset must have lived on what nature supplied in the way of wild berries, nuts, roots, herbs, honey, the eggs of wild fowl, shellfish, and grubs, suppy ^^ ^^ ^e sman animals which he could kill by throwing stones and sticks. As his implements improved and his skill increased, he became a fisher, trapper, and hunter of big game. He killed and ate the woolly mammoth, hippo- potamus, European bison, reindeer, and especially the steppe horse, which at one time roamed in great herds over western Europe. There is a Palaeolithic station in France estimated
The Old Stone Age
ii
Art
to contain the bones of one hundred thousand horses. The pelts of the slain animals were made into covers and clothing, as we know from the discovery of flint skin scrapers and bone needles.
Some of these cave dwellers were talented artists. They decorated stone and bone implements with engravings, modeled figures in clay, made stone and ivory statuettes, and covered the walls of their cavern homes with a variety of paintings in red, yellow, brown, and other vivid colors. The subjects are generally animals, though a few representations of the human form have also been found. The best Palaeolithic pictures are remarkably life- like, far surpassing the efforts of modern savages. The men who made them were evidently close ob- servers of animal life.
The cave dwellers apparently had a rude form of religion. Bodies buried in caves
were sometimes surrounded by offerings of food, implements, and ornaments, which must have been intended for the use of the deceased. Such funeral rites point to a belief in the soul and in its survival after death.
There are other aspects of Palaeolithic culture about which little or nothing can be learned with certainty. We can only
surmise, from what is known of present-dav
• i i i 'i Social life
savages, that even at this remote period people had
begun to cooperate in hunting and for defense against animal
and human foes. Each group must have been small — a few
hundred individuals at the most — for population was scanty.
Religion
Head of a Girl
Musee St.-Germain, Paris A small head of a young girl carved from mammoth ivory. Found at Brassempouy, France, in cave deposits belonging to the Old Stone Age. The hair is arranged somewhat after the early Egyptian fashion. Of the fea- tures the mouth alone is wanting.
12
Prehistoric Times
Government doubtless existed, but whether by chiefs or by the elders of the little community we cannot say. Probably the family had also appeared, and men and women were beginning to live together more or less permanently under some form of marriage. The social life of man is very ancient, as well as his religion, art, and material culture.
4. The New Stone Age
The Neolithic or New Stone Age, when men began to grind and polish Europe in some of their stone imple-
Neoiithic ments after chipping them,
dawned in Europe proba- bly less than ten thousand years ago. The map of Europe in this period presented nearly the same outlines as to-day. Great Britain and Ireland were now separated from the Conti- nent by the shallow waters of the North Sea, English Channel, and Irish Sea. Owing to the sinking of the Mediter- ranean area, Spain and Italy were no longer joined to North Africa by land bridges. The plants which flourished in colder Palaeolithic times gave place to those characteristic of a temperate climate, and vast forests began to cover what had formerly been treeless steppes. The woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, and cave bear became extinct ; the musk sheep and reindeer retreated to Arctic lati- tudes, while the hippopotamus, elephant, and other big mammals found their way to tropical zones. The animals associated with Neolithic men represented species familiar to us, except for some survivals, such as the elk, wild boar, and European bison.
We do not yet know what became of Palaeolithic men. They may have become extinct ; they may have followed the retreat-
Egyptian Neolithic
Knives
Brussels Museum
Discovered in prehistoric tombs
in the Nile Valley. Made of
flint, ripple-flaked on one side
and ground on the other. The
flakes were struck off with such
precision that the ripples or ribs
left on the edge and back are
symmetrically arranged. No
finer work was ever produced
by Stone Age craftsmen.
The New Stone Age
i3
ing ice short and the retreating reindeer toward the northeast into Siberia and Arctic America ; or they may have remained in their old locations and intermingled with the Neolithic invading Neolithic peoples. These newcomers ap- peoples parently came from western Asia and northern Africa, and gradually spread over all Europe. The Neolithic peoples belonged to the White Race. Their blood flows in the veins of modern Europeans, who are chiefly their descendants.
Our knowledge of the Neolithic Age comes, not from deep-lying or sealed-up deposits, such as those Neolithic in Palaeolithic caves, but remains from remains found on or near the surface of the soil or in rubbish heaps and burial places. Along the Baltic coast stretch huge mounds of bones and shells, marking the sites of former camping places. These " kitchen mid- dens," to give them their Danish name, are sometimes a thousand feet long, two to three hundred feet wide, and ten feet high. Implements of stone, bone, and wood, together with pieces of pottery and other things of human workman- ship, are found in the " kitchen middens." Switzerland affords numerous remains of lake dwellers, who, for protection against their enemies, lived over the water in huts resting on sharpened piles driven into the bottom of the lake. The huts have disap- peared, but the mud about the piles contains thousands of ob- jects, including animal bones, seeds of various plants and fruits, implements, shreds of coarse cloth, fragments of pottery, household utensils, and bits of furniture. Neolithic men also erected many stone monuments, either single pillars (menhirs) or groups of pillars (dolmens). The former often marked a grave ; the latter usually served as sepulchers for the dead. They are rude memorials of far-off times and vanished peoples.
Carved Menhir
From Saint Sernin in Aveyron, a department of southern France.
14
Prehistoric Times
The Neolithic Age covered only a brief space of time, as compared with its predecessor, but it was an age of rapid prog- Neolithic ress- Neolithic implements, though still of stone, culture bone, and wood, were often of exceeding beauty and finish, particularly arrowheads (testifying to the invention of the bow), and stone axes with a sharp cutting edge. The men of the " kitchen middens " began to make pottery, chiefly for cooking vessels, and they domesticated the dog. The lake dwellers possessed goats, sheep, and swine, as well as dogs,
A Dolmen
A Neolithic monument in Ireland. The covering stone measures about 75 feet in length and 15 feet in breadth. Its thickness varies from 3 to 5 feet.
plaited baskets, spun and wove textiles, prepared leather, built boats, used wheeled carts, and, most important of all, cultivated some of the cereals, including wheat, barley, and millet. The new sources of food thus opened up enabled Neolithic peoples to abandon the migratory life of hunters and to settle in per- manent villages. Their community life must have been well organized, for the erection of lake dwellings and stone monu- ments required the cooperation of many individuals. In short, Neolithic peoples were not savages; they had passed from savagery to barbarism.
Neolithic culture was not confined to Europe. It also Transition to existed in western Asia, in Egypt, in North Africa, the use of and on the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The en- metals t-re kasm Qf ^g Mediterranean formed a Neolithic center. Here the transition to the use of metals first occurred.
The Age of Metals 15
5. The Age of Metals
Civilization rests on the metals. Stone is not pliable ; it
is very apt to split in use ; it cannot be ground to a sharp edge.
No wonder that in time men began to seek sub-
, r , -iii The metals
stitutes in the soiter and more easily worked
metals — gold, silver, tin, and copper. These are often found in a pure state and not as ores, so that they can be readily ex- tracted and worked cold. The American Indians in this way got pure copper from mines near Lake Superior and made metal spearheads, knives, and hatchets, which were modeled on stone implements. Other barbarous peoples have done the same thing. In fact, hammering the metals generally pre- ceded smelting them.
Credit for the invention of metallurgy belongs to the Egyp- tians. Some of the most ancient graves in Egypt, dating from about 4000 B.C., contain needles and chisels made by smelting the crude copper ore found in the Nile Valley. At a very early period the Egyptians began to work the copper mines on the peninsula of Sinai. The Babylonians probably obtained copper from the same region. Another source of copper was the island of Cyprus, which is rich in that metal. The very name of the island means " copper " (Greek Kiipros). Copper implements gradually spread into Europe, and with their use the Neolithic Age gave way to the Age of Metals.
But copper implements were soft and would not keep an edge. Some ancient smith, more ingenious than his fellows, discovered that the addition of a small quantity of tin to the copper produced the much harder and tougher alloy called bronze. Where this simple but most important discovery took place, we cannot say. Bronze made its appearance in Egypt at least as early as 3000 B.C. and some- what later in Cyprus, Crete, Asia Minor, and the coasts of Greece. Traders subsequently carried the new metal through- out the length and breadth of Europe.
The great durability and hardness of iron must have been
i6
Prehistoric Times
Iron
soon noticed by metallurgists, but, as compared with copper and tin, it was difficult both to mine and to smelt. Hence the introduction of iron occurred at quite a late period, and in some countries after the dawn of history. The Egyptians seem to have made little use of iron before 1500 B.C. They called it the " metal of heaven," as if they obtained it from meteorites. In the first five books of the Bible iron is mentioned only thirteen times, though copper and bronze are referred to forty-four times. In the Homeric poems of the ancient Greeks we find iron considered so valuable that a
Prehistoric Iron Implements
From La Tene, Switzerland 1, Spearpoint; 2, shears; 3, safety pin.
lump of it is one of the chief prizes at athletic games. Western and northern Europe became acquainted with iron only in the last thousand years before Christ.
The superior qualities of iron have secured for it preeminence among the metals. Nevertheless, peoples without any knowl- Diffusion of edge of iron are still met with in remote parts of iron the world. The Australian tribes, for instance,
continue to make stone implements as rude as those of Palae- olithic man in Europe. The South Sea Islands, owing to their peculiar formation, produce no metals. Their inhabitants, when discovered a few centuries ago, were still in the Stone Age, and so ignorant of metal that they planted the first iron nails obtained
Races of Man 17
from Europeans, in the hope of raising a new crop. Among the Malays and the African negroes the knowledge and use of iron also followed immediately upon the Stone Age. The American Indians, before the discovery of the New World, knew nothing of iron. Most of them used stone implements like those of Neolithic Europe, together with unsmelted copper, gold, and silver. In Mexico and Peru, however, smelted copper and bronze were also known. India, Indo-China, and China afford evidence of the regular succession in those regions of copper, bronze, and iron.
6. Races of Man
The different races arose in prehistoric times as man gradually spread throughout the habitable earth. Racial distinctions are based on physical characteristics, especially skin Racial dis- color, head form, and texture of the hair. Thus, tinctions the black-skinned peoples have long, narrow heads and crisp, woolly hair. The yellow-skinned peoples, on the contrary, have short, broad heads and straight, lank hair. Less important racial distinctions are found in the shape of the nose as thin and prominent or large and flat, in the orbit of the eyes as horizontal or oblique (compare the " almond " eyes of Orientals), and in the extent to which the upper and lower jaws project beyond the line of the face. All these physical characteristics reflect the influence of climate and natural surroundings on early man in various parts of the world. They seem to have changed little or not at all during historic times. Five or six thousand years ago they were as marked as now, judging from pictures on old Egyptian monuments and from the examination of ancient skulls.
Three primary varieties of man are distinguished : The Black (Negroid) Race, the Yellow (Mongoloid) Race, and the White (Caucasian) Race. This classification is not alto- classification gether satisfactory. The Australians, among whom of races Negroid traits preponderate, nevertheless resemble Caucasians in some respects, and the Mongoloid Polynesians possess both Caucasian and Negroid resemblances ; while important physical
i8
Prehistoric Times
CLASSIFICATION OF MANKIND
|
Races |
Peoples |
Languages |
|
Black or Necroid |
i. Negroes proper 2. Bantu Negroes 3. Dwarf Negroes or Pygmies 4. Hottentots and Bushmen 5. Dravidians (India) and Veddas (Ceylon) 6. Papuans (in New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands) 7. Australians |
|
|
Yellow or Mongoloid |
1. Mongolians proper (Chinese, Jap- anese, Koreans, Burmans, Siamese, Manchus, Mongols, Tatars, Tibetans, Siberian tribes, Turks, Bulgarians, Mag- yars or Hungarians, Esthoni- ans, Finns, Lapps) 2. Malays (in Formosa, the Philip- pines, Malay Archipelago, Nic- obar Islands, Madagascar) 3. Polynesians (Maori of New Zea- land, Tongans, Samoans, Ha- waiians, etc.) 4. American Indians |
|
|
White or Caucasian |
1. Hamitic (Libyans, Egyptians, East- ern Hamites) 2. Semitic (Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Aramae- ans, Arabs, Abyssinians) 3. Indo-European a. Asiatic (Hindus, Medes, Persians. Hittites, Armenians, Scythians) b. Grasco-Latin (Albanians, Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Walloons, Rumanians) c. Celtic (Bretons, Welsh, Irish, Highland Scots) d. Teutonic (Germans, Frisians, Dutch, Flemings, Danes, Nor- wegians, Swedes, English, Low- land Scots) e. Lettic (Letts, Lithuanians) /. Slavic South Slavs (Serbians, Monte- negrins, Croatians, Slove- nians) West Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles) East Slavs (Great Russians, Little Russians or Ruthe- nians, White Russians) |
differences separate both Malays and American Indians from other members of the Yellow Race. Again, various peoples of Asiatic origin — Ottoman Turks, Bulgarians, Magyars or Hungarians, Esthonians, Finns, and Lapps — have so blended with Caucasian peoples in Europe as to lose almost entirely
Races of Man
19
20
Prehistoric Times
their Mongoloid characteristics. No race, indeed, is pure. Repeated migrations, raids, and conquests brought about racial intermixture almost everywhere.
At the dawn of history each of the three races occupied quite distinct geographical areas. The Black Race held most Distribution of Africa south of the Sahara, southern India, of races New Guinea and the adjacent islands, and Aus-
tralia. The Yellow Race held the north, east, and center of
Race Portraiture of the Egyptians
Paintings on the walls of royal tombs at Thebes. The Egyptians were painted red; the Semites from Palestine, yellow; the flat-nosed, thick-lipped, African negroes, black; and the fair-skinned Libyans, white, with blue eyes and blonde beards. Each racial type is also dis- tinguished by a peculiar dress.
Asia, whence it spread over the Malay Archipelago, the islands of the Pacific, and the New World. The White Race was limited to Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia. The last four centuries have seen a wonderful expansion of the White Race, which now forms the bulk of the population of North America, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Excepting the American negroes, the Black Race is still
Languages of Man 21
in the savage or in the barbarian stage of culture. The same holds true of the Yellow Race, with the important The White exceptions of the Chinese, Indo-Chinese, and Race Japanese. Civilization has been developed and history has been made chiefly by the White Race.
7. Languages of Man
The different types of language also took shape during the prehistoric period. The first languages must have been simple enough. Man doubtless eked out his imperfect Linguistic speech with expressive gestures and cries of alarm distinctions or passion, such as the lower animals make. But all this was very remote. The languages of even the lowest savages to-day are complex in structure and copious in vocabulary, thus indi- cating how far they have developed in the course of ages.
The thousands of languages and dialects now spoken through- out the world belong to one or another of three groups. (1) Agglutinating languages show grammatical rela- classification tions by adding {glueing) sounds and syllables to of languages the main word. Thus the suffix lar in Turkish makes the plural (arkan, rope, arkanlar, ropes) ; the suffix lyk indicates quality (arkanlyk, the best kind of rope) ; and the suffix ly signifies possession (arkanly, with a rope, attached). English uses agglutination to a slight extent ; compare such words &sjust-ly, ■loi-jitst-ly, care-less, care-less-ness. (2) Isolating languages show grammatical relations chiefly by the order of the words. Thus in Chinese the word la means " great," " greatness," " greatly," or " to enlarge," according to its position in the phrase. (3) Inflectional languages regularly employ conjugations and de- clensions tc set forth the relations of words to one another.
These three linguistic groups have a fairly definite asso- ciation with the races of man. Agglutinating languages are most widely diffused, being spoken by the Black Distribution Race and by part of the Yellow Race. Isolating of languages languages are found only in Asia, among Chinese, Indo-Chinese, Tibetans, and Malays. Inflectional languages are confined to the While Race.
2 2
Prehistoric Times
The languages of the White Race belong, with some excep- tions, to one or other of the three families. Least important, Hamitic historically, is the Hamitic family, named after
languages Ham, a son of Noah {Genesis x, i, 6). Hamitic languages are still spoken in northern and eastern Africa, some of them by peoples who have more or less mixed with negroes. Ancient Egyptian was a Hamitic language.
Distribution of
SEMITIC and
INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES
The second family is that of the Semitic languages, so called from Shem, another son of Noah {Genesis, x, i, 22). Semitic- Semitic speaking peoples in antiquity included Baby- languages lonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Arabs. To these must be added the Abyssinians of eastern Africa. The Semites, as the map shows, originally formed. a compact group, but Arabs are now found everywhere in north- ern Africa, while Hebrews (Jews) have spread all over the world.
The third family is that of the Indo-European 1 languages. This name indicates that they are found in both India and Europe. The peoples using Indo-European languages in an-
1 The alternative name "Aryan" is accurately applied only to the languages of the Hindus and the ancient Medes and Persians (Iranians).
Writing and the Alphabet 23
tiquity formed a widely extended group, which reached from India across Asia and Europe to the British Isles and Scandi- navia. Hindus in India, Medes and Persians Indo_ on the plateau of Iran, Greeks and Italians, and European the inhabitants of eastern and western Europe ansuages spoke related tongues. Their likeness is illustrated by the common words for relationship. Terms such as " father," " mother," " brother," and " daughter " occur with slight changes in form in nearly all the Indo-European languages. Thus, " father " in Sanskrit (the old Hindu language) is pilar, in ancient Persian, pidar, in Greek, pater, in Latin, pater, and in German, Voter. There must have been at one time a single speech from which all the Indo-European languages have descended. But where it was spoken, whether in Asia or in Europe, we cannot determine.
8. Writing and the Alphabet
The first steps toward writing are prehistoric. We start with the drawings and paintings made in the Palaeolithic Age. Man, however, could not rest satisfied with simple Picture representations of objects. He wanted to record writing thoughts and actions, and so his pictures tended to become
1 2 3 4 5
Various Signs of Symbolic Picture Writing
x, "war" (Dakota Indian); 2, "morning" (Ojibwa Indian); 3, "nothing" (Ojibwa Indian); 4 and s, "to eat " (Indian, Mexican, Egyptian, etc.). ,
symbols of ideas. The figure of an arrow might be used to in- dicate the idea of an " enemy," and two arrows directed against each other, the idea of a " fight." Many savage and barbarous peoples still have this symbolic picture writing. The American Indians employed it in most elaborate fashion. On rolls of birch bark or the skins of animals they wrote messages, stories, and songs and even preserved tribal annals extending over a century.
24 Prehistoric Times
A new stage in the development of writing was reached when the picture represented not an actual object or an idea, but Sound writ- a sound of the human voice. This difficult but ail- ing; the rebus important step appears to have been taken by means of the rebus. It is a way of expressing words by pic- tures of objects whose names resemble those words or the syllables in them. What makes the rebus possible is the fact that every language contains words having the same sound but different meanings. The old Mexicans, before the Spanish conquest, had gone so far as to write names of persons and places, rebus fashion. They represented the proper name, Itzcoatl, by the picture of a snake (coatl), with a number of
Song (an ear Sun Moon Mountain Tall and a bird) Light
o j) m $ <*A oj)
0 * ^ * *M ft*
Chinese Picture Writing and Later Conventional Characters
It is possible in some cases to recognize the original pictures out of which Chinese writing developed. Thus the sun, originally a large circle with a dot in the center, became a crossed oblong, which the painter found easier to make with his brush. Chinese is the only living language in which such pictures have survived and still denote what they denoted in the beginning.
knives (itz) projecting from its back. The Egyptian words for " sun" and " goose " were so nearly alike that the royal title, " Son of the Sun," could be suggested by grouping the pictures of the sun and a goose. Rebus making is still a common amuse- ment among children, but to early man it was a serious occu- pation.
In the simplest form of sound writing each separate picture or symbol stands for the sound of an entire word ; hence there must be as many signs as there are words in the language. This is the case with Chinese writing. A dictionary of Chinese contains approximately twenty-five thousand words in good usage, every one represented by a separate written sign. No student ever learns them all, of
Writing and the Alphabet 25
course. It is enough for ordinary reading and writing to be familiar with four or five thousand signs. The Chinese seem to have entered upon the phonetic stage of writing in the second millennium B.C., and since then they have never im- proved upon it.
A more developed form of sound writing arises when signs are employed for the sounds of separate syllables. All the
words of a language may then be written with com-
. , . Syllables
paratively few signs. The Babylonians and Assyr- ians possessed in their cuneiform l writing signs for between four and five hundred syllables. Recent discoveries in Crete indicate that the ancient inhabitants of that island had a some- what similar system. The Japanese found it possible to express all the sounds in their language by forty-seven syllables, one standing for ro, another for fa, and so forth. The signs for these syllables were taken from Chinese writing.
The final stage in the development of writing is reached when the separate sounds of the human voice are analyzed so far that each can be represented by a single letter. The Egyptians early made an alphabet. Unfortunately, they never abandoned their older methods of writing and learned to rely upon alphabetic signs alone. Egyp- tian hieroglyphs,2 in consequence, are a curious jumble of object- pictures, symbols of ideas, and signs for entire words, separate syllables, and letters. The writing is a museum of all the steps in the progress of writing from the picture to the letter.
As early, perhaps, as the tenth century B.C., the Phoenicians of western Asia were in possession of an alphabet. It con- sisted of twenty-two letters, each representing a Phoenician consonant. The Phoenicians appear to have alphabet borrowed their alphabetic signs, but whether from the Egyp- tians or the Cretans, or even in part from the Babylonians, remains uncertain. The Greeks, according to their own tradi- tions, imported the alphabet from Phoenicia and added signs
1 Latin cuneus, "wedge."
2 From the Greek words hieros, "holy," and glyphein, "to carve." The Egyp- tians regarded their signs as sacred.
26
Prehistoric Times
fill
yeai
ifflpHiffl
m
mm.
for vowels. The Greek form of the Phoenician alphabet sub- sequently spread to Italy, where the Romans received it, modi- fied some of the letters, and then passed it on to the peoples of western Europe. From them it has reached us.1
Two methods of writing developed in the ancient Orient. The Egyptians traced their hieroglyphic characters with a pen Methods and a dark pigment upon papyrus. This river
of writing reec[ grows plentifully in the Nile marshes. It was cut into strips, which were then glued together at the edges to form a roll.2 From papyros, the Greek name of the
plant, has come our word Jl Ptet }■ ■■) I^tX " paper." Similarly, the Greek biblion, a (papyrus) book, reappears in our word " Bible," as well as in vari- ous words for " library " in European languages, such as the French bibliotheque and the German Bibliothek. The Babylonians impressed their cuneiform signs with a metal instrument on tablets of soft clay. The tablets were then baked hard in an oven.3 The Babylonian method of writing survived for a time in the clay tablets of the Cretans and various Oriental peoples and in the waxen tablets of the Ro- mans. It subsequently disappeared. The Egyptian method of writing still survives in the pen, ink, and paper of modern usage. Before the invention of writing, and particularly of sound writing, men were unable to keep a full and accurate record of
1 Our word "alphabet" comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet — alpha (a) and beta (6).
2 See the illustration on page 57. 3 See the illustration on page 56.
<B
ML
JP::
Sim
Cretan Writing
A large tablet with linear script found in the palace at Gnossus, Crete. There are eight lines of writing, with a total of about twenty words. Notice the upright lines, which appear to mark the termination of each group of signs.
Writing and the Alphabet
27
the past. Such information as they possessed had to be handed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next. Oral tradition, however, soon grows untrustworthy The record and often absolutely false, like a piece of village of the Past gossip that has been many times retold. Writing alone enabled men widely separated in space and time to share a common knowledge and transmit it to future ages. Men now had a
iu "*
% ;v ?£&*!■ A3 fe
^
s
^•H«m<*<fdM«flf*5
[»— .YTY
«fT &Trr«
rjm
it ^ t*&4ig 4<sit aim
Egyptian and Babylonian Writing
Below the pictured hieroglyphs in the first line is the same text in a simpler writing known as hieratic. The two systems, however, were not distinct; they were as identical as our own printed and written characters. The third line illustrates old Babylonian cuneiform, in which the characters, like the hieroglyphs, are rude and broken-down pictures of objects. Derived from them is the later cuncifoim shown in lines four and five.
record of the past which was exact, comprehensive, and ever growing with the growth of civilization. They now had a history.
History, based on written records, begins in different coun- tries at varying dates. Some inscriptions found in Egypt reach back as far as the fourth millennium B.C. The Beginnings annals of Babylonia are probably less ancient. of history Trustworthy records in China and India do not extend beyond 1000 B.C., while those of the Greeks and Romans are still later by several centuries. It was only after the opening of the Christian era that most European peoples began to emerge into the light of history.
28 Prehistoric Times
The whole historic age may be conveniently divided into three periods. Ancient history begins with Oriental peoples, Subdivisions who were the first to develop the arts of civi- of history lization, deals next with the Greeks, and ends with the Romans, who built up an empire embracing most of the civilized world. Medieval history is concerned with the peoples of eastern and western Europe. It includes a period of about a thousand years from the break-up of the Roman Empire at the end of the fifth century to the close of the fifteenth century. Modern history covers the last four hundred years and now embraces almost all mankind. It is no longer a his- tory of Asia or of Europe, but of the world.
Studies
i. Why has history been called the " biography of a society " ? 2. What do you understand by these terms: tribe, nation, rate, state, government? 3. Dis- tinguish between the three stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, and give instances of existing peoples in each stage. 4. Explain the abbreviations B.C. and a.d. In what century was the year 1921 B.C.? the year 1921 a.d? 5. On the map, page 4, trace the farthest descent of ice in Europe during the Ice Age. 6. What is meant by calling man the "tool-making animal"? 7. What stone implements have you ever seen? Who made them? Where were they? 8. Explain the terms Eolithic, Palaeolithic, and Neolithic. 9. Why should the discovery of fire be regarded as more significant than the discovery of steam? 10. Why has the invention of the bow-and-arrow been of greater importance than the invention of gunpowder? 11. How does the presence of few tameable animals in the New World help to account for its tardier development as compared with the Old World? 12. "The history of metals in the hand of man is equivalent to the history of his higher culture." Comment on this statement. 13. Give examples of peoples widely different in blood who nevertheless speak the same language. 14. What is meant by oral tradition ? Why does it grow more and more unreliable in the course of time? 15. On an outline map indicate the areas occupied at the dawn of history by Semitic and Indo-European peoples. 16. Enumerate the most important con- tributions to civilization made in prehistoric times.
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT ORIENT1
9. The Lands of the Near East
The ancient Orient included Asia and that part of Africa, called Egypt, which was formerly considered as belonging to Asia. Our study of Oriental history may, however, The Far omit consideration of the Far East. Wide seas, East extensive mountain ranges, and trackless deserts separated India, China, Indo-China, and Japan from the rest of Asia. India, indeed, did not remain entirely isolated in antiquity, for the northwestern part of the country was conquered first by the Persians and then by the Greeks. Even after the end of foreign rule, India continued to be of importance through its commerce in precious stones, ivory, fine woods, and cotton stuffs. China during ancient times also had some foreign trade and came to be known as the Silk Land (Serica) , from the silken goods which found their way into the markets of western Asia and Europe. But it was not until the nineteenth century of our era that the Far East emerged from age-long seclusion and began to take a really active part in world affairs.
The boundaries of the Near East are the Black and Caspian seas on the north, the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean on the south, the Indus River on the east, and the The Near Mediterranean and the Nile on the west. This part East of Asia consists substantially of three vegetation belts, which are continued on a wider scale across the entire continent. First come the forests in the mountainous districts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Iran (Persia). Next succeed the steppe
'Webster, Readings in Ancient History, chapter i, "Three Oriental Peoples as Described by Herodotus"; chapter ii, "The Founders of the Persian Empire: Cyrus, Cambyscs, and Darius."
29
30 The Ancient Orient
or grass lands, including a large part of the plateaus of Asia Minor, Iran, and Arabia. Finally, as the rainfall diminishes, the steppes become more and more arid and pass into semi- deserts and deserts, such as those of Syria and inner Arabia. The forest belt nourished a migratory, hunting folk. The steppe belt formed the home of nomadic, pastoral tribes. As for the desert belt, that was habitable only in oases. Nowhere could men settle down and adopt an agricultural life except where they were assured of a constant water supply and endur- ing sunlight. They found this assurance in the valleys of the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile.
Two famous rivers rise in the mountains of Armenia — the Tigris and the Euphrates. Flowing southward, they approach T T. . each other to form a common valley, proceed in and the parallel channels for the greater part of their course, Euphrates an(j Qnjy unj|-e shortly before reaching the Persian Gulf. In antiquity each river had a separate mouth. The soil which the Tigris and Euphrates bring down every year fills up the Persian Gulf at the rate of about three miles a century. Hence their delta was much less extensive five or six thousand years ago than it is to-day.
This delta forms a plain anciently about one hundred and
seventy miles long and rarely more than forty miles wide. In
the Old Testament it is called the "land of Shinar"
(Genesis, xi, 2). We know it better as Babylonia,
after Babylon, which became its leading city and capital.
The plain of Babylonia was once wonderfully fertile. The alluvial soil, when properly irrigated, yielded abundant harvests
t> v 1 • of wheat, barley, and millet. The fruit of the date
Babylonia a ' J '
seat of early palm provided a nutritious food. Although there civilization wag nQ stone^ c}ay was everywhere. Molded into
brick and afterwards dried in the sun, the clay became adobe, the cheapest building material imaginable. Nature, indeed, has done much for Babylonia. We can understand, therefore, why from prehistoric times people have been attracted to this region, and why it is here that we find a seat of early civilization.
The Lands of the Near East 31
Phe Nile is the longest of the great African rivers. The White Nile rises in the Nyanza lakes, flows clue north, and receives the waters of the Blue Nile near the modern
.... ^ .... . , The Nile
townoi Khartum, rrom this point the course of the
river is broken by a series of five rocky rapids, misnamed
cataracts, which can be shot by boats. The cataracts cease
near the island of Philae, and Upper Egypt begins. It is a valley
about five hundred miles long and about thirty miles wide.
The strip of cultivable soil on each side of the river averages,
however, only eight miles in width. Not far from modern
Cairo the hills inclosing the valley fall away, the Nile divides
into numerous branches, and the delta of Lower Egypt begins.
The sluggish stream passes through a region of mingled swamp
and plain, and at length by three principal mouths empties into
the Mediterranean.
Egypt owes her existence to the Nile. All Lower Egypt is
a creation of the river by the gradual accumulation of sediment
at its mouths. Upper Egvpt has been dug out of
Egypt
the desert sand and underlying rock by a process
of erosion centuries long. The Nile once filled all the space
between the hills that line its sides. Now it Hows through
a thick layer of mud which has been deposited by the yearly
inundation.
In Egypt, as in Babylonia, every condition made it easy for people to live and thrive. The soil of Egypt, perhaps the mest fertile in the world, produced after irrigation three E crops of grain, flax, and vegetables a year. The of early wonderful date palm was a native tree. The clay civilization of the valley and easily worked stone from the near-by mountains provided building materials. The hot. dry climate enabled the inhabitants to get along with little shelter and clothing. The Xile provided them with a natural highway for domestic trade. Such favoring circumstances allowed the Egyptians to increase in numbers and to gather in populous communities. At a time when their neighbors, even the Babylonians, were still in the darkness of the prehistoric age, the Egyptians had entered the light of history.
32 The Ancient Orient
10. The Peoples of the Near East
The Nile Valley appears to have been inhabited at a remote period by Neolithic men in the barbarian stage of culture. They Prehistoric made beautiful implements of polished flint, era in Egypt fashioned pottery, built in brick and stone, sailed boats on the Nile, introduced such useful animals as the buffalo, ass, and goat, and tilled the soil. In time, they began to smelt copper 1 and to write by means of phonetic signs.2 Both metallurgy and sound writing arose in Egypt earlier than any- where else in the world. Like other barbarous peoples, the Neolithic Egyptians must have lived at first in separate tribes, under the rule of chiefs. As civilization advanced, the tribal organization gave way to city-states, that is, to small, in- dependent communities, each one centering about a town or a city. The city-states by 4000 B.C. had coalesced into two kingdoms, one in the Delta, the other in Upper Egypt. All this progress took place before the dawn of history.
The Egyptians commenced keeping written records about 3400 B.C. The date coincides pretty closely with that of the Dawn of union of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt into a na- history in tional state, under a ruler named Menes. He was gyp thus the founder of that long line of kings, or
"Pharaohs" (as they are called in the Bible), who for nearly three thousand years held sway over Egypt. The Pharaohs ruled at first from Memphis, near the head of the Delta, but later Thebes in Upper Egypt became the Egyptian capital.
A study of the map shows that Egypt occupies an isolated situation, being protected by deserts on each side, by the Medi- The terranean on the north, and by the cataracts of the
Egyptian Nile (impeding navigation) on the south. Thus
ng om sheltered from the inroads of foreign peoples, the Egyptians enjoyed many centuries of quiet and peaceful progress. About 1800 B.C., however, they came for a time under the sway of barbarous Semitic tribes, called Hyksos, who entered Egypt through the isthmus of Suez. After the expulsion
1 See page 15. 2 See page 25.
The Peoples of the Near East
33
of the intruders, the Egyptians themselves began a career of conquest. The Pharaohs raised powerful armies, invaded Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, and extended their rule as far as the middle Euphrates. Even the islands of Cyprus and Crete seem to have become dependencies of Egypt. The conquered territories paid a heavy tribute of the precious metals and merchandise, while the forced labor of thousands of war captives enabled Rameses II (about 1292-1225 B.C.) and other Pharaohs to erect great monuments in every part of their realm. Gradually, how- ever, Egypt declined in warlike energy ; her Asiatic possessions fell away ; and the country itself in the sixth century B.C. became a part of the Persian Empire. The Egyptians re- mained under foreign masters from this time until our own day.
The valley of the Tigris- Euphrates, unlike that of the Nile, was not iso- The Baby_ lated. It opened Ionian King- on extensive moun- om tain and steppe regions, the home of hunting or of pastoral peoples. Their inroads and migrations into the fertile plain of the two rivers formed a constant feature of Babylonian history. The earliest inhabitants of the " land of Shinar," about whom we know anything, were the Sumerians. They entered the country through the passes of the eastern or northern mountains, about four thousand years before Christ, gradually settled down to an agricultural life, and formed a number of independent city-states, each with its king and its patron god. After the Sumerians came Semitic-speaking peoples
Head of Mummy of Rameses II
Museum of Gizeh
The mummy was discovered in 1881 in an underground chamber near the site of Thebes. With it were the coffins and bodies of more than a score of royal personages. Rameses II was over ninety years of age at the time of his death. In spite of the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification, the face of this famous Pharaoh still wears an aspect of maj- esty and pride.
34 The Ancient Orient
from northern Arabia. Under a leader named Sargon (about 2800 b.c) the Semites subdued the Sumerians and began to adopt their civilization. Sargon united all the Sumerian city- states. He also carried his victorious arms as far west as Syria and ruled over "the countries of the sea of the setting sun" (the Mediterranean). Sargon was, in fact, the first of the world conquerors. Many centuries later another great Semitic ruler, Hammurabi (about 2100 b.c), made his native city of Babylon, at first an obscure and unimportant place, the capital of what may hencefoith be called the Babylonian Kingdom.
The region between the Mediterranean and the Arabian
Desert contained in antiquity three small countries: Syria,
Phoenicia, and Palestine. Their situation made
Aro.niiE3.ris
them the great highway of the Near East, and through them ran the caravan routes connecting the Nile with the Euphrates. The inhabitants spoke Semitic languages and probably came from northern Arabia. They are known as Aramaeans or Syrians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews. None of these peoples ever played a leading part in Oriental history, but each made important contributions to Oriental civilization. The Aramaeans were keen business men, who bought and sold throughout western Asia. The language of the Aramaeans in this way became widely diffused and eventually displaced Hebrew as the ordinary speech in Palestine. Some parts of the Old Testament are written in Aramaic. The chief center of the Aramaeans was Damascus, one of the oldest cities in the world and still a thriving place.
The Phoenicians occupied a narrow stretch of coast, about one hundred and twenty miles in length and seldom more than twelve miles in width, between the Lebanon Moun- tains and the sea. This tiny land could not support a large population by farming, so the Phoenicians became a nation of sailors. They found in the cedars of Lebanon a soft, white wood for shipbuilding, and in the Egyptian vessels which had been entering their harbors for centuries a model for their own craft. The great Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre long
The Peoples of the Near East 35
maintained an extensive commerce throughout the Mediter- ranean.1
The Hebrews lived south of the Aramaeans and the Phoenicians. Hebrew history begins with the immigration of The twelve tribes (called Israelites) into Palestine. Hebrews Here they gave up the life of wandering shepherds and became farmers and townsmen. Their twelve tribes at first formed only a loose and weak confederacy. The sole authority was that held by valiant chieftains and law-givers, such as Samson, Gideon, and Samuel, who served as judges between the people and often led them against their foes.
Toward the close of the eleventh century B.C. the Hebrew tribes united into one kingdom, under a The He_ ruler named Saul. His reign brew King- was filled with constant struggles against the warlike Philistines, who occupied the southwestern coast A Philistine
of Palestine. David, Saul's successor, ^ Esyptian Painting-
overthrew the Philistine power. For a capital city David selected the ancient fortress of Jerusalem, which henceforth became for the Hebrews the center of their national life. The reign of David's son, Solomon (about 955-925 B.C.), formed the most splendid period in Hebrew history. Solomon's authority reached from the peninsula of Sinai northward to the Lebanon Mountains and the Euphrates. He married an Egyptian princess, a daughter of the reigning Pharaoh. , He joined with Hiram, king of Tyre, in trading expeditions on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The same monarch supplied him with skilled Phoenician workmen, who built at Jerusalem a splendid temple for the worship of Jehovah.
After Solomon's death the ten northern tribes set Division of up an independent kingdom of Israel, with its capital ^.e Hebrew at Samaria. The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, formed the kingdom of Judea and remained faithful
1 See page 47.
36 The Ancient Orient
to the successors of Solomon. These small states led a troubled existence for several centuries. The Assyrians finally conquered Israel, and the Babylonians, Judea. Both states in the end were added to the Persian Empire.
Solomon's Kingdom
The supposed route of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt through the peninsula of Sinai to the border of Palestine is traced on the map.
North of Babylonia and on each side of the Tigris River lay Assyria. The inhabitants spoke a Semitic language akin to Rise of Babylonian. Their chief city was at first Assur
Assyria (whence the name Assyria), and afterward the larger
and more splendid Nineveh. They were a rough, hardy people, devoted to hunting and warlike exercises. Having adopted
The Peoples of the Near East
37
the horse and military chariot, and later iron weapons, the Assyrians began a series of sweeping conquests. Their power culminated during the eighth and seventh centuries before Christ. The kings who then reigned at Nineveh created a dominion reaching from the neighborhood of the Black and Caspian seas to the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Nile. One of the greatest of these Assyrian monarchs was Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.), whose name is familiar from the references to him in the Old Testament.
Force built up the Assyrian state and only force could hold it to- gether. When, there- Collapse of fore, it declined in Assyria strength, the subject countries made ready to strike a blow for freedom. The storm broke in 606 B.C. In that year the king of Babylon and the king of the Medes and Persians moved upon Nineveh, captured the city, and utterly de- stroyed it.
The victors now divided the spoils. Media secured most of As- syria proper, together Partition of with the long stretch Assyria of mountain country extending from the Persian Gulf to Asia Minor. Babylonia obtained the western part of the Assyrian domains, all the way to the Mediterranean. Under Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.), Babylonia again became a great power in the Orient. It was Nebuchadnezzar who brought the kingdom of Judea to an end, captuted Jerusalem, burned Solomon's Temple, and carried away many Hebrews into cap- tivity. All this story is related in the Old Testament.
Not much earlier than the break-up of Assyria, we find a new and vigorous people pressing into western Asia. They were the Persians, near kinsmen of the Medes, and like them of
An Assyrian
A bas-relief found at Nineveh. The original is colored.
3§
The Ancient Orient
Indo-European speech. The able ruler whom history knows as Cyrus the Great (553-529 B.C.) united the Persians and the Formation Medes under his sway and then conquered the king- of the Per- dom of Lydia in Asia Minor. He also subdued Baby- sian mpire ^on^a> -jhe Hebrew exiles there were now allowed to return to their native land. His son, Cambyses, annexed Egypt. The successor of Cambyses, Darius the Great (521- 485 B.C.), added northwestern India to the Persian dominions, together with some territory in Europe. Not without reason could Darius describe himself in an inscription as "the great king, king of kings, king of countries, king of all men."
An Assyrian Lion Hunt
British Museum, London A bas-relief found in the palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh.
The Persian Empire extended over an enormous area. Its eastern and western frontiers were nearly three thousand miles Extent of apart, or considerably more than the distance be- the Persian tween New York and San Francisco. Its northern mpire and southern boundaries were almost as remote.
With the exception of Arabia, which the Persians never attempted to conquer, the Near East from the Indus to the Danube and the Nile yielded allegiance to the Great King.
It was the work of Darius to establish a stable government, which should preserve what the sword had won. The problem was difficult, for the Persians had conquered many peoples
The Peoples of the Near East
39
unlike in race, language, customs, and religion. Darius did
not try to weld them into unity. As long as his subjects
paid tribute and furnished soldiers, they were al- Organiza-
lowed to manage their affairs with little interfer- ^on ?f the ° . Persian
ence. The entire empire, excluding Persia proper, Empire was divided into about twenty prov- inces, each with governors to collect taxes and command the provincial armies. Darius also provided special agents whose business it was to travel thioughout the empire and investi- gate the conduct of the royal officials. As a further means of holding his dominions together, Darius laid out military roads for the dispatch of troops and supplies. The Royal Road1 from Susa, the Persian capital, to Sardis in Lydia was about sixteen hundred miles long; but government couriers, using relays of fresh horses, could cover the distance within a week. It is interesting to note that the present railroad from Constanti- nople to Bagdad in large part parallels this ancient highway.
Oriental history has now been traced from its beginnings to about 500 B.C. We have seen how the Political
earliest civilized societies deveiop-
ment of the appeared in the valleys of ancient
the Nile and the Tigris- 0rient
Euphrates; how empire building fi
Started J and how at length ncarlv nobles, one carrying the royal fan,
all the Near East came together in the other the royal parasol.
the widespread Persian Empire. This work of unification
was accomplished only at a fearful cost. The recordr. of
1 Sec the map between pages 34~35-
Darius with His Attend- ants
Bas-relief at Persepolis. The monarch's right hand grasps a staff or scepter; his left hand, a bunch of flowers. His head is surmounted by a crown ; his body is enveloped in the long Median mantle. Above the king is a representation of the divinity which guarded and guided
40 The Ancient Orient
Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, not to speak of minor countries, are a terrible story of towns and cities given to the flames, of the devastation of fertile regions, of the slaughter of men, women, and children, of the enslavement of entire populations. Mankind by this time had passed from the petty robbery, murder, and border feuds character- istic of savagery and barbarism to organized warfare, in which state was ranged against state and nation against nation. Peace, indeed, formed the rare exception in the ancient Orient. Consequently, there could be no such thing as international law regulating the relations of one community to another and no conception of international cooperation for human welfare. Each community looked out for itself; each one, if it could, subdued its neighbors and imposed its rule upon them. Never- theless, Oriental peoples made much progress in social and economic conditions, in law and morality, in religion, literature, art, science, and other fields of activity during the first thirty centuries of recorded history.
11. Social Conditions
Nothing like democracy existed in the ancient Orient. The common people never shared in the government as voters and lawmakers ; they knew only monarchical rule. The king, especially in Egypt, was considered to be the earthly representative of the gods. Even in a Pharaoh's lifetime temples were erected to him and offerings were made to his sacred majesty. The belief in the king's divinity led naturally to the conclusion that he deserved the unquestioning obedience of his subjects. The king was therefore an autocrat, exercising absolute, irresponsible authority. He had many duties. He was judge, commander, and high priest, all in one. In time of war, he led his troops and faced the perils of the battle- field. During intervals of peace, he was occupied with a con- stant round of sacrifices, prayers, and processions, which could not be omitted without exciting the anger of the gods. To his courtiers he gave frequent audience, hearing complaints, settling disputes, and issuing commands. A conscientious
Social Conditions
4i
monarch, such as Hammurabi, who describes himself as "a real father to his people," must have been a very busy man.
Oriental monarchs always maintained luxurious courts. The splendor of Rameses II, of Solomon, of Sennacherib, of Nebu- chadnezzar, dazzled their contemporaries. Royal The royal magnificence reached its height with the Great King court of Persia. He lived far removed from the common eye in the recesses of a lordly palace. When he 'gave audience to his nobles, he sat on a gold and ivory throne. When he traveled, even on military expeditions, he carried with him costly fur- niture, gold and silver dishes, and gorgeous robes. About him
Court of the Pharaoh
Wall painting, from a tomb at Thebes. Shows a Pharaoh receiving Asiatic envoys bear- ing tribute. They are introduced by white-robed Egyptian officials. The Asiatics may be distinguished by their gay clothes and black, sharp-pointed beards.
were hundreds of servants, bodyguards, and officials. All who
approached his person prostrated themselves in the dust.
"Whatsoever he commandeth them, they do. If he bid them
make war, the one against the other, they do it ; if he send them
out against his enemies they go, and break down mountains,
walls, and towers. They slay and are slain, and transgress
not the king's commandment." '
The aristocratic or noble class included large landowners,
rich merchants and bankers, and especiallv high
Nobles government officials. These persons were often very
powerful. If the king failed to keep on good terms with them,
1 I Esdras, iv, 3-5.
42
The Ancient Orient
they might at any time rise in revolt and perhaps dethrone him. Oriental history relates many insurrections against the reigning monarch.
The priestly class also exerted much influence. Priests conducted the temple worship and acted as intermediaries between men and the gods. They were likewise scholars, who collected the old traditions and legends and set them down in writing; scientists, who in- vestigated Nature's secrets ; and teachers in the schools con- nected with the temples. The priesthoods accumulated much
Priests
Tax Collecting in Ancient Egypt
On the left three villagers, who have failed to pay their taxes, are being brought in by officers. The latter carry staves. On the right sit the scribes, holding in one hand a sheet of papyrus and in the other hand a pen. The scribes kept records of the amount owed by each taxpayer and issued receipts when the taxes were paid.
property, particularly in Egypt, where about a third of all the tillable land came under their control.
The middle class included chiefly shopkeepers and pro- fessional men such as physicians, notaries, and scribes. Though Middle regarded as inferiors, still there was a chance for
class them to rise in the world. If they became rich, they
might hope to enter the priesthood or even the exalted ranks of the nobility.
No such hope encouraged the day laborer. His lot was poverty and unending toil. The artisan received a wage Artisans and scarcely sufficient to keep him and his family from peasants starvation, while the peasant, after paying ex- cessive rents and taxes on his farm, had left only a bare subsistence.
Social Conditions
43
The slaves occupied the base of the social pyramid. Every Oriental people possessed them. At first, they were prisoners of war, who, instead of being slaughtered, were forced to labor for their masters. Oriental rulers undertook military expeditions for the express purpose of gathering slaves — "like the sand," says an ancient writer. Persons unable to pay their debts often lost their freedom.
Transport of an Assyrian Colossus
British Museum, London
A slab from a gallery of Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. The immense block (an image of a human-headed bull or lion) is being dragged by slaves, who work under the lash.
Criminals, also, were sometimes compelled to enter into ser- vitude. The treatment of slaves depended on the character of their master. A cruel and overbearing master might make life a burden for them. Slaves had plenty to do. They re- paired dikes, dug irrigation ditches, erected temples and palaces, labored in the mines, served as oarsmen in ships, and engaged in many household activities. In Babylonia and Assyria, where the servile class was more numerous than in Egypt, the whole structure of societv rested on the backs of slaves.
44
The Ancient Orient
Agriculture
12. Economic Conditions
Such fruitful, well-watered valleys as those of the Nile and the Euphrates encouraged agricultural life. Wheat, barley, and millet were first domesticated either in Egypt or in Babylonia. There is good reason, indeed, for believing that these most important cereals, together with domesticated cattle, were introduced into Neolithic Europe from the Near East.1 All the methods of farming are pictured for us on Egyptian monuments. We mark the peasant as he breaks up the earth with a hoe or plows a shallow furrow with a sharp-pointed stick. We see the sheep being driven across
Plowing and Sowing in Ancient Egypt
The picture shows from left to right a scribe, two plowmen, one holding the plow and one driving the oxen, a man with a hoe, who breaks up the clods left by the plow, and a sower scattering seed from a bag.
sown fields to trample the seed into the moist soil. We watch the patient laborers as with sickles they gather in the harvest and then with heavy flails separate the chaff from the grain. Although their methods were clumsy, ancient farmers raised immense crops. The soil of Egypt and Babylonia not only supported a dense population, but also supplied food for neigh- boring countries. These two regions were the granaries of the Near East.
Blacksmiths, carpenters, stonecutters, weavers, potters, glass-blowers, and workers in ivory, silver, and gold were found
„ , in every Oriental city. The creations of these
Industry .
ancient craftsmen often exhibit remarkable skill.
Egyptian linens were so wonderfully fine and transparent as
1 See page 14.
Economic Conditions 45
to merit the name of "woven air." Egyptian glass, with its lines of different hues, was much prized. Babylonian tapestries, carpets, and rugs enjoyed a high reputation for beauty of design and coloring. Some of the industrial arts thus practiced thousands of years ago have been revived only in modern times. The development of arts and crafts made it necessary for merchants to collect manufactured products where they could be readilv bought and sold. The cities of Babv-
1 • • • 1 1 1_ • • . 1 Trade
Ionia, in particular, became thriving markets. Partnerships between tradesmen were not uncommon. We even learn of commercial companies not so very unlike our present corporations. Business life in Babylonia wore, indeed, quite a modern look.
Metallic money first circulated in the form of rings and bars. The Egyptians had small pieces of gold — "cow gold" — each of which was simplv the value of a full-
Money
grown cow. Jt was necessary to weigh the metal whenever a purchase took place. A common picture on the Egyptian monuments is that of the weigher with his balance and scales. Then the practice arose of stamping each piece of money with its true value and weight. The next step was coinage proper, where the government guarantees, not only the weight, but also the genuineness of the metal. The honor of inventing coinage belongs to the Lydians of Asia Minor, whose country was well supplied with the precious metals. The kings of Lydia began to coin money as early as the eighth century B.C. The Greek neighbors of Lydia quickly adopted the art of coinage and so introduced it into Europe.1
The use of money as a medium of exchange led naturally to a system of banking. One great banking house, established at Babylon before the time of Sennacherib, carried on operations for several centuries. Hundreds of legal documents belonging to this firm have been discovered in the huge earthenware jars which served as safes. The temples in Babylonia also received money on deposit and loaned it
1 For illustrations of Oriental, Greek, and Roman coins, sec the plate facing page 148.
46 The Ancient Orient
out again, as do our modern banks- Babylonian business usages and credit devices spread through Asia Minor to Greece and thence into other European countries.
13. Commerce and Commercial Routes
Commerce, which has always been a means of enabling different peoples to know and influence one another, was in Beginnings eai"ly times exposed to many dangers. Wild tribes of com- and bands of robbers infested the roads and obliged
the traveler to be ever on guard against their at- tacks. Travel by water had also its drawbacks. Boats were small and easily swamped in rough weather. With a single sail and few oarsmen, progress was very slow. Without compass or chart, the navigator seldom ventured into the open sea. He hugged the coast as closely as possible, keeping always a sharp eye for pirates who might seize his vessel and take him into slavery. In spite of all these risks, the profits of foreign trade were so great that much intercourse existed between Oriental lands.
The Egyptians, pioneers in so many fields of human activity, are believed to have made the first seagoing ships. As Egyptian early as the thirtieth century B.C., they began to commerce venture out into the eastern Mediterranean and to carry on a thriving trade with both Cyprus and Crete, which lay almost opposite the mouths of the Nile. The ships of the Pharaohs also sailed up and down the entire length of the Red Sea.
The cities of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley were admirably situated for commerce, both by sea and land. The shortest Asiatic way by water from India skirted the southern coast
commerce 0f jran anc^ passing up the Persian Gulf, gained the valley of the two rivers. Even more important were the over- land roads for caravan trade from India and China. They converged at Babylon and Nineveh and then radiated west- ward to Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt. All these routes have been arteries of commerce from pre- historic times. Manv of them are in use even to-dav.
Commerce and Commercial Routes 47
A Semitic people, the Phoenicians,1 were the common carriers of the Mediterranean after about 1000 B.C. Phoenician water routes soon extended to Cyprus, only a short dis- Phoenician tance away, then to Crete, then to the islands of the water routes /Egean, and, at least occasionally, to the coasts of the Black Sea. When the Phoenicians were finally driven from these regions by the rising power of the Greek states, they sailed farther westward and established trading posts in Sicily, Sar- dinia, North Africa, and Spain. At length they passed through the strait of Gibraltar into the stormy Atlantic and visited the shores of western Europe and Africa.
The Phoenicians obtained a great variety of products as a result of their commercial voyages. The mines of Spain yielded iron, tin, lead, and silver. Tin, which was Phoenician' especially valuable because of its use in making imports and bronze, seems also to have been brought from south- expor s western Britain (Cornwall), where mines of this metal are still productive. From Africa came ivory, ostrich feathers, and gold; from Arabia, which the Phoenicians also visited, came incense, perfumes, and costly spices. These commodities found a ready sale throughout the Near East. Still other products were imported directly into Phoenicia to provide raw materials for her flourishing manufactures. The fine carpets and glassware, the artistic works in silver and bronze, and the beautiful purple cloths produced in Phoenician factories were exported to every part of the known world.
The Phoenicians were the boldest sailors of antiquity. Some of their long voyages are still on record. We learn from the Old Testament that they made cruises on the Red p. . . Sea and Indian Ocean and brought the gold of Ophir, voyages of "four hundred and twenty talents," to Solomon.2 exPloration There is even a story of certain Phoenicians who, by direction of an Egyptian king, explored the eastern coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and after three years' absence returned to Egypt through the strait of Gibraltar. A much more probable narrative is that of the voyage of Hanno, a Carthaginian
1 See page 34. 2 Sec 1 Kings, ix, 26-28.
48 The Ancient Orient
admiral. We still possess a Greek translation of his interesting log book. It describes an expedition made about 500 B.C. along the western coast of Africa. The explorers seem to have sailed as far as the Gulf of Guinea.1 Nearly two thousand years elapsed before Portuguese navigators undertook a similar voyage to the Dark Continent.
A Phoenician War Galley
From a slab found at Nineveh in the palace of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. The vessel shown is a bireme with two decks. On the upper deck are soldiers with their shields hanging over the side. The oarsmen sit on the lower deck, eight at each side. The crab catching the fish is a humorous touch.
Wherever the Phoenicians went, they established settlements. Most of these were merely trading posts which contained ware- Phoenician houses for the storage of goods. Here the shy settlements natives came to barter their raw materials for the finished products — cloths, tools, weapons, wine, and oil — which the strangers from the east had brought with them. Phcenician settlements sometimes grew into large and flourishing cities. Gades in southern Spain, which was the most distant of their colonies, survives to this day as Cadiz, one of the very oldest cities in Europe. Carthage, founded in North Africa by colonists from Tyre, became the commercial mistress of the western Mediterranean. Carthaginian history, as we shall learn, has many points of contact with that of the Greeks and Romans.
1 See the map, page 10S.
Law and Morality 14. Law and Morality
49
Human activities in the Near East seem to have gone on in orderly fashion much of the time. As far as we can tell, life was fairly safe, property was reasonably secure, and Egyptian people were protected in their occupations. Egypt, law we know, had courts of justice, law books (unfortunately lost), and definite rules relating to contracts, loans, leases, mortgages, partnerships, marriage, and the family. The position of woman
i,wmiiiimniwnii»ii/innifiw»iw^^
The Judgment of the Dead
From a papyrus containing the Book of the Dead. The illustration shows a man and his wife (at the Lft) entering the hall in the spirit world, where sits the god of the dead with forty-two jurors (seen above) as his assistants. The heart of the man, symbolized by a jar, is being weighed in balances by a jackal-headed god against a feather, the symbol of truth. An ibis-headed god records with his pen the verdict of the balances. The monster in the right-hand corner is ready to devour the soul, if the heart proves to be lighter than the feather. This picture is by far the oldest known representation of a judgment scene.
was remarkably high: she had full rights of ownership and inheritance and she could engage in business on her own account. Though polygamy existed, chiefly among the upper classes, the wife was her husband's companion and not merely his domestic servant. The reverence due from children to father and mother was constantly insisted upon, and filial piety for the Egyptians ranked among the highest virtues.
The most enlightening notice of Egyptian moral standards is found in a very ancient work known as the Book oj the Dead. One of the chapters describes the judgment of the soul in the other world. If the soul was to enjoy a blissful immortality,
50 The Ancient Orient
it must be able to recite truthfully before its judges a so-called Negative Confession. These are some of the declarations: "I The Nega- °^ not steal " > ' I did not rnurder " ; "I did not lie'* ; tive Confes- "T did not kill any sacred animals"; "I did not damage any cultivated land"; "I did not do anv witchcraft" ; "I did not blaspheme a god" ; "T did not make false accusations" ; "I did not revile my father" ; "I did not cause a slave to be ill-treated by bis master" ; "I did not make any one weep." After pleading innocence of all the fortv-two sins condemned by Egyptian ethics, the soul added, '"Grant
___ that he may come
v. x-'^i^^ untovou . . . he that hath given bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, and that hath clothed the naked with gar- ments." Some of the clauses of the Negative Confession correspond with some of the Ten Commandments, while the afhrmative statement at the end makes a close approach to Christian morality.
The Babylonians were a very legal-minded people. When a man sold his wheat, bought a slave, married a wife, or made Babylonian a will, the transaction was duly noted on a contract law tablet, which was then hied away in the public
archives. Instead of inscribing his name, a Babylonian stamped his seal on the soft clay of the tablet. Even* one who owned property had to have a seal. A contract tablet was protected from defacement by being placed in a hollow clay case, or envelope.
A recent discovery has provided us with almost the complete text of the laws which Hammurabi, the Babylonian king, or- Code of dered engraved on stone monuments and set up
Hammurabi ^ the chid dtie5 rf ^ realm Hammurabi's
code shows, in general, a keen sense of justice. A man
Babvloxiax Seal
? £ :: -_:- - I — i: rtir^rf a": :u: :::: ;.:
Law and Morality
51
who tries to bribe a witness or a judge is to be severely pun- ished. A farmer who is careless with his dikes and allows the water to run through and flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the ani- mal and had not blunted its horns. On the other hand, the code contains some rude fea- tures, especially its reliance upon retaliation — "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" — as the punishment of injuries. For instance, a son who struck his father was to have his hands cut off. The nature of the punishment de- pended, moreover, on the rank of the aggrieved party. A per- son who had caused the loss of a "gentleman's"' eye was to have his own plucked out ; but if the injury was done to a poor man, the culprit had only to pay a fine. Hammurabi's code thus presents a vivid picture of Babylonian society twenty-one centuries before Christ.
The laws which we find in the earlier part of the Old Testament were ascribed by the Hebrews to Moses. The Bible states that he had received them from Jehovah on Mount Sinai. These laws covered a The Mosiac wide range of subjects. They fixed all religious code ceremonies, required the observance every seventh day of the Sabbath, gave numerous and complicated rules for sacrifices, and even indicated what foods must be avoided as "unclean." No other ancient people possessed so elaborate a legal system.
Hammurabi and the Sun God British Museum, London A shaft of stone, nearly S feet high, contains the code of Hammurabi. The monument was found on the site of Susa in 1901-1902. It is engraved in 44 columns and over 3600 lines. A relief at the top shows the Babylonian king receiving the laws from the sun god, who is seated at the right. Flames rising from the god's shoulders indicate his solar character.
52
The Ancient Orient
The Jews, throughout the world, still follow its precepts. And modern Christendom still recites the Ten Commandments, the noblest summary of the rules of right living that has come down to us from Oriental antiquity.
15. Religion
Oriental ideas of religion, even more than of law and morality, were the gradual outgrowth of beliefs which arose in prehistoric Nature times. Everywhere nature worship prevailed. The
worship vault of heaven, earth and ocean, and sun, moon,
and stars were all regarded as themselves divine or as the abode of divinities. The sun formed an object of particular adoration.
We find a sun god, under different names, throughout the Orient. The Egyptians, very conservative in religious matters, al-
fllgfifl
u^s^^^m
An Egyptian Scarab
Animal worship
ways
The beetle, as a symbol of birth and resurrection, and hence of immortality, enjoyed much reverence in ancient Egypt. A scarab, or image of the beetle, was often worn as a charm and was placed in the mummy as an arti- ficial heart.
tained the animal wor- ship of their barbarous ancestors. Some gods were represented on monuments in partly animal form, one hav- ing a baboon's head, another the head of a lioness, another that of a cat. Such animals as the jackal, bull, ram, hawk, and crocodile also received the utmost reverence, less for them- selves, however, than as symbols of different gods.
In Babylonia and Assyria a belief in the existence of evil spirits formed a prominent feature of the religion. People supposed themselves to be constantly surrounded by a host of demons, who caused insanity, sickness, accidents, and death — all human ills.
To cope with these spiritual enemies the Baby- lonian used magic. He put up an image of a pro- tecting god at the entrance of his home and wore charms upon
Evil spirits
Magic
Religion
53
Divination
Astrology
his person. If he fell ill, he summoned a magician to recite an incantation which would drive out the demon inside him.
The Babylonians had many ways of predicting the future. Soothsayers divined from dreams and from the casting of lots. Omens of prosperity or misfortune were also drawn from the appearance of the entrails of animals slain in sacrifice. For this purpose a sheep's liver was commonly used. Divination by the liver was studied for centuries in the temple schools of Babylonia. The practice afterwards spread to the Greeks and Romans.
Astrology received much attention in Babylonia. The five planets then recognized, as well as comets and eclipses, were thought to exercise an influence for good or evil on the life of man. Babylonian astrology passed to western lands and became popular in much of Europe. When we name the days Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, we are unconscious astrologers, for in old belief the first day belonged to the planet Saturn, the second to the sun, and the third to the moon.1 People who try to read their fate in the stars are really practicing an art of Babylonian origin.
In the midst of so many nature deities, sacred animals, and evil spirits, it was indeed re- Monothe- markable that the belief ism in Egypt in one god should ever have arisen. Nevertheless, some Egyptian thinkers reached the idea of a single supreme stone and undoubtedly a striking
]. . . s\ c ,1 t->i i likeness of the Egyptian king.
divinity. One of the Pharaohs,
Amenhotep IV (about 1375-1358 B.C.), who saw in the sun the source of all life on the earth, ordered his subjects to worship that luminary alone. The names of other gods were erased
Amenhotep IV
A portrait head carved in lime-
1 The names of the other weekdays come from the names of old Teutonic deities. Tuesday i.s the day of Tiu (the Teutonic Mars), Wednesday of Woden (Mercury), Thursday of Thor (Jupiter), and Friday of the goddess Frigg (Venus).
54 The Ancient Orient
from the monuments, their images destroyed, their temples closed, their priests expelled. No such lofty faith had ever appeared before, but it was too abstract and impersonal to win popular favor. After the king's death, the old deities were restored to honor.
The Medes and Persians accepted the religious teachings of Zoroaster, a great prophet whose date is variously placed between Monothe- IOO° anc^ 7°° B-c- According to Zoroaster, Ahura- ism in mazda, the heaven-deity, is the maker and upholder
of the universe. Heisagodof light and order, of truth and purity. Against him stands Ahriman, the personification of darkness and evil. These rival powers are engaged in a ceaseless struggle. Man, by doing right and avoiding wrong, by loving truth and hating falsehood, can help make Good triumph over Evil. In the end Ahuramazda will overcome Ahriman and will reign supreme over a righteous world. Zoroastrianism was the only monotheistic religion developed by an Indo-European people. It still survives in some parts of Persia, though that country is now chiefly Mohammedan, and also among the Parsees (Persians) of Bombay, India.
The Hebrews, a Semitic people, also developed a monotheistic religion. The Old Testament shows how it came about. Hebrew Jehovah was at first regarded by the Hebrews as monotheism simply their own national deity ; they did not deny the existence of the deities of other nations, though they re- fused to worship them. The prophets, from the eighth century onwards, began to transform this narrow, limited conception. For them, Jehovah was the God of the whole earth, the Father of all mankind. After the Hebrews returned to Palestine from captivity in Babylon,1 the sublime faith of the prophets gradually spread through the entire nation, culminating in the doctrine of Jesus that God is a Spirit and that they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The Christian doctrine of God is thus directly an outgrowth of Hebrew monotheism.
The Egyptians, as well as all other ancient peoples, believed that man has a soul which survives the death of the body.
1 See page 38.
Literature and Art 55
They thought it essential, however, to preserve the body from destruction, so that it might remain to the end of time a home for the soul. Hence arose the practice of embalming. The future The embalmed body (mummy) was then placed Ufe in the grave, which the Egyptians called an "eternal dwelling." Later Egyptian thought represented the future as a place of rewards and punishments, where, as we have just learned, the soul underwent the ordeal of a last judgment. As a man lived in this life, so would be his lot in the next. The Babylonians supposed that after death the souls of all men, good and bad alike, passed a cheerless existence in a gloomy underworld. The early Hebrew idea of Sheol, "the land of darkness and the shadow of death," 1 was very similar. Such thoughts of the future life left nothing for either fear or hope. The Hebrews later came to believe in the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment, conceptions afterward taken over by Christianity.
16. Literature and Art
Religion inspired the largest part of Oriental literature. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was already venerable in 2000 B.C. It was a collection of hymns, prayers, and magical The Book of phrases to be recited by the soul on its journey be- the Dead yond the grave and in the spirit land. A chapter from this work usually covered the inner side of the mummy case, or coffin.
Much more interesting are the two Babylonian epics, portions
of which have been found on clay tablets in a royal library at
Nineveh. The epic of the Creation tells how the god
Marduk overcame a terrible dragon, the symbol of , ? a y~
0 J Ionian epics
primeval chaos, and thus established order in the universe. With half of the body of the dead dragon he made a covering for the heavens and set therein the stars. Next, he caused the new moon to shine and made it the ruler of the night. His last work was the creation of man, in order that the service and worship of the gods might be established forever. The second epic contains an account of a Deluge, sent by the gods
1 Job, X, 21.
56
The Ancient Orient
WSlijMMi
The Deluge Tablet
British Museum, London
Contains the Babylonian Deluge narrative as pieced together and published by George Smith in 1872. There are sixteen fragments in the restoration.
to punish sinful man. The rain fell for six days and nights and covered the entire earth. All people were drowned, except
the Babylonian Noah, his family, and his relatives, who safely rode the waters in an ark. This an- cient narrative so closely resembles the Biblical story in Genesis that both must be traced to a com- mon source.
The sacred books of the He- brews, which we call the Old Testament, include nearly every kind of litera- ture. Sober histories, beautiful stories, exquisite poems, wise The Old proverbs, and noble prophecies are found in this Testament collection. The influence of the Old Testament upon the Hebrews, and through them upon the Christian world for nineteen centuries, has been profound. We shall not be wrong in regarding this work as the most important single contribution made by any ancient people to modern civilization.
The wealth and skill of the Egyptians were not lavished in the erection of fine private mansions or splendid public buildings. Egyptian The characteristic works of Egyptian architecture architecture are the tombs of the kings and the temples of the gods. Even the ruins of these structures leave upon the ob- server an impression of peculiar massiveness, solidity, and grandeur. Like the pyramids, they seem built for eternity.
The architecture of the Tigris-Euphrates peoples differed entirely from that of the Egyptians, because brick, and not stone, formed the chief building material. In Babylonia the
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Literature and Art
57
most characteristic structure was the temple. It was a solid,
square tower, rising in stages (usually seven) to the top, where
tlu- shrine of the deity stood. The different stages „
Babylonian were connected by a winding ascent. These tower- andAssyr-
temples must have been very conspicuous objects on lanarchi-
the plain of Shinar. Their presence there gave rise
to the Hebrew story of the "Tower of Babel" (or Babylon).
In Assyria the most characteristic structure was the palace.
The sun-dried bricks,
of which both temples pl^lf)
and palaces were com- *§i|
posed, lacked the dura-
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bility of stone and have |»>*^ ^2fL^$x& lone since dissolved
VnV>£ Vi-ffjjp Y>W>? -full *A>>4YhV)<*> ■'-
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since into shapeless mounds.
The surviving ex- amples of Egyptian sculpture consist of bas-reliefs Oriental and figures sculpture in the round, carved from limestone and granite or cast in bronze. Though many of the statues appear to our eyes very stiff and ungraceful, others are wonderfully life- like.1 Some Assyrian bas-reliefs also show a considerable develop- ment of the artistic sense, especially in the representation of animals.2
Painting did not reach the dignity of an independent art. It was employed solely for decorative purposes. Bas-reliefs and wall surfaces were often brightly colored. The artist had
1 See the illustration on page 53. - See the illustration on page 38.
Ancient Hebrew Manuscript
Cambridge University Library, England
A papyrus of the first century A.D., containing the Ten Commandments. It was discovered in Egypt.
58
The Ancient Orient
no knowledge of perspective and drew all his figures in profile, without any distinction of light and shade. Indeed, Oriental Oriental painting, as well as Oriental sculpture, made small painting pretense to the beautiful. Beauty was born into the world with the art of the Greeks.
An Assyrian Palace (Restored)
The royal residence of Sargon II near Nineveh was placed upon a high platform of brick masonry, the top of which was gained by stairs and an inclined roadway. The palace con- sisted of a series of one-storied rectangular halls and long corridors surrounding inner courts. They were provided with imposing entrances, flanked by colossal human-headed bulls, repre- senting guardian spirits. The entire building covered more than twenty-three acres and contained two hundred apartments. In the rear is seen a tower-temple.
17. Science
Conspicuous advance took place in the exact sciences. A very old Egyptian manuscript contains arithmetical problems with fractions as well as whole numbers, and geometrical
1=1 111111111=9 n=io nnni=i5 no = 20
C=I00 |=I000' 7=10,000
112 e c nnnim = 4434
theorems for computing Mathe- the capacity of matics storehouses and the area of fields. A Babylonian table gives squares and cubes cor- rectly calculated from 1 Egyptian and Babylonian Numeration to 60. The number 12
T=K=ioT>-=ioo <Y>- (10x100) =1000 Tm<T^^rT-<«TTTT=4434r
Si ience
59
Astronomy
was the basis of all reckonings. The division of the circle into degrees, minutes, and seconds (3600, 60', 60") is a device which illustrates tins duodecimal system. Weights and meas- ures were also highly developed among the Babylonians.
The cloudless skies and still, warm nights of the great river valleys early led to astronomical research Before 4000 B.C. the Egyp trans had given up reckoning time by lunar months (the interval between two new moons) and had formed a solar calendar consisting of twelve thirty-day months, with five extra days at the end of the year. This calendar was taken over by the Romans, who added leap years, and from the Romans it has come down to us. The Babylonians made noteworthy progress in some branches of astronomy. They were able to trace the course of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac,1 to distin- guish five of the planets, and to predict eclipses of the sun and of the moon. We do not know what instruments were used by the Babylonians for their re- markable observations.
The art of stone masonry arose in Egypt at the close of the fourth mil- lennium B.C. — earlier than
. Engineering
anywhere else in the world.
It soon produced the Great Pyramid.
the largest stone structure ever erected in ancient or (until recently) in modern times. The Egyptians were also the first people who learned how to raise buildings with vast halls
1 At least seven of the zodiacal signs found in our almanacs — lion, ram, scorpion, crab, fishes, archer, and twins — are of Babylonian origin.
A Babylonian Bound- ary Stoxe
Stones recording the gift or sale of landed property were set up at the boundary of the land as a memorial of the transaction. One side of such a monument bore divine em- blems, among which arc the archer, the scorpion, and other signs later appearing in the zodiac.
60 The Ancient Orient
the roofs of which were supported by rows of columns (colon- nades). An upper story, or clerestory, containing windows, made it possible to light the interior of these halls. The column, the colonnade, and the clerestory, as architectural devices, were adopted by Greek and Roman builders, from whom they descended to medieval and modern Europe. To Baby- lonia Europe owes the round arch and vault, as a means of carrying a wall or roof over a void. In both Egypt and Baby- lonia the transportation of colossal stone monuments exhibits a knowledge of the lever, pulley, and inclined plane.1
The Oriental peoples made some progress in medicine. A medical treatise found in Egypt distinguishes various diseases and notes their symptoms. The curious characters by which apothecaries indicate grains and drams are of Egyptian origin. Even as early as the time of Hammurabi, there were physicians and surgeons in Babylonia. The healing art, however, was always much mixed up with magic, just as astronomy, the scientific study of the heavens, was confused with astrology.
The schools, in both Egypt and Babylonia, were attached to the temples and were conducted by the priests. Reading and Schools and writing formed the chief subjects of study. It took libraries many years to master the cuneiform symbols or the even more difficult hieroglyphs. Having learned to read and write, the pupil was ready to enter upon the career of a scribe.2 When a man wished to send a letter, he had a scribe write it, signing it himself by affixing his seal. When he received a letter, he usually employed a scribe to read it to him. The scribes were also kept busy copying books on the papyrus paper or clay tablets which served as writing materials. Both the Egyptians and the Babylonians possessed libraries, usually as adjuncts to the temples and hence under priestly control.
These schools and libraries were not freely open to the public.
„M . As a rule, only the well-to-do could secure any
Education . J
learning. The common people remained ignorant.
Their ignorance involved their intellectual bondage to the past ;
1 See the illustration on page 43. - See the illustration on page 42.
Science
61
62 The Ancient Orient
they were slow to abandon time-honored superstitions and reluctant to adopt new customs even when clearly better than the old. The absence of popular education, more than anything else, tended to make Oriental civilization unprogressive.
18. Orient and Occident
Our study of the ancient Orient has been confined chiefly to the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys. The Egyptians and „ . . f the Babylonians originated civilization during the Oriental thousand years between 4000 and 3000 B.C., while civilization ^ ^ rest of the worW coritjnue(i either in Neo- lithic barbarism or Palaeolithic savagery. In Egypt and Babylonia men first developed out of the tribal state and began to form cities, states, kingdoms and empires ; here they first passed from hunting, fishing, and herding to the cultivation of the soil, manufacturing, and commerce; here first arose metallurgy, architecture, phonetic writing, mathematics, as- tronomy, medicine, and many other arts and sciences indis- pensable to the higher life of mankind.
After 3000 B.C. civilization began to be diffused from its Egypto-Babylonian centers. Conquest, trade, and travel D.ff . f during the next twenty-five centuries led to increas- Oriental ing contact of peoples. By 500 B.C. the best of civilization what the Egyptians and Babylonians had done be- came the common possession of the Near East.
From the Near East civilization was transmitted to the West. Four peoples, in particular, were agents in this process. Two of Transmis- them used the waterways between the Orient and the Oriental Occident. The Cretans, about whom we shall soon civilization study, for many centuries carried the products and practical arts of both Egypt and Babylonia to the islands of the iEgean and the Greek mainland, and even farther west to south- ern Italy, Sicily, and the coast of Spain. After about 1000 b.c came the Phoenicians ; their influence, as we have already seen, was felt in every country washed by the Mediterranean. The other two peoples made use of land routes. The Hittites, who spoke an Indo-European language, from early times spread
Orient and Occidenl
63
over eastern Asia Minor and northern Syria. There they learned much from their Semitic neighbors and afterward communicated their learning to the Lydians oi" western Asia.
Hittitk Warrior
Bas-relief on a wall at Sinjerli, Asia Minor. The warrior carries a spear, shield, and long dagger or sword. His body and face are in profile, his shoulders in full view. He wears a short tunic, fringed at the bottom, and the conical hat of the Hittites. On his feet are shoes
with turned-up toes.
Minor, whose kingdom formed a fragment of the Hittile Empire. From the Lydians, in turn, various features of Oriental civiliza- tion passed over to the Greeks.
Studies
1. On an outline map of the Orient indicate eight important rivers, two gulfs, tlirie inland seas, the great plateaus and plains, the principal mountain ranges, two important passes, and all the cities mentioned in this chapter. 2. For what were
64 The Ancient Orient
the following places noted : Memphis, Thebes, Nineveh, Babylon, Susa, Sardis, Sidon, Tyre, and Jerusalem? 3. For what were the following persons' famous: Menes, Rameses II, Sargon, Hammurabi, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Darius? 4. Is the influence on civilization of such physical conditions as climate, fertility of soil, rainfall, mountain ranges, and rivers, greater or less to-da3' than in earlier times? 5. Why was Egypt called " the gift of the Nile? " 6. What modern countries are included within the limits of the Persian Empire under Darius? 7. Define and illustrate these terms; tribe, city-state, kingdom, empire, and province. S. What was the origin of the " divine right of kings " ? 9. Explain what is meant by despotism, autocracy, and absolutism. 10. On the map be- tween pages 34-35 trace the principal Asiatic trade routes. 11. On the map facing page 46 locate the most important Phoenician water routes and settlements. 12. Look up in the Old Testament (Ezskiel, xxxvii) an account of Phoenician commerce. 13. Compare the Negative Confession with the Ten Commandments. 14. Define polytheism and monotheism, giving examples of each. 15. From what Oriental people do we get the oldest true arch? the first coined money? the earliest legal code? the most ancient book? 16. Why were the inventions and discoveries of the Egyptians and Babylonians of such great importance in the develop- ment of civilization? 17. Mention some of the defects and limitations of Oriental civilization as noted in this chapter.
CHAPTER III GREECE »
19. The Lands of the West
History, which begins in the Near East, for the last twenty- five centuries has centered in Europe. Modern industry and commerce, modern systems of government, modern Europe in art, literature, and science are very much the hist°ry creation, during this long period, of European peoples. Within the last four hundred years, especially, they have occupied and populated America and Australia and have brought under their control all Asia, except China and Japan, nearly the whole of Africa, and the islands of all the seas. They have introduced into these remote regions their languages, laws, customs, and religion, until to-day the greater part of the world is subject to European influence.
The geographical advantages enjoyed by Europe account, in part, for its historic importance. The sea, which washes only the remote edges of Asia, penetrates deeply Physical into Europe, forming numerous gulfs and bays. Eur°Pe Europe has a longer coast-line than Africa and South America combined. No other continent possesses such opportunities for sea-borne traffic. Again, Europe is well supplied with rivers, which are navigable for long distances. Another feature of European geography is the preponderance of lowlands over
1 Webster, Readings in Ancient History, chapter iii, "Early Greek Society as Pictured in the Homeric Poems"; chapter iv, "Stories from Greek Mythology"; chapter v, "Some Greek Tyrants"; chapter vi, "Spartan Education and Life"; chapter vii, "Xerxes and the Persian Invasion of Greece"; chapter viii, "Episodes from the Peloponnesian War"; chapter ix, "Alcibiades the Athenian"; chapter X, "The Expedition of the Ten Thousand"; chapter xi, "The Trial and Death of Socrates"; chapter xii, "Demosthenes and the Struggle against Philip"; chapter >:iii, " Exploits of Alexander the Great."
65
66 Greece
highlands. Beginning in the west with southern England, the great European plain stretches across northern France, Belgium and Holland (the "Low Countries"), and northern Germany, and broadens eastward into Russia. About two-thirds of the continent are included in this plain. Furthermore, the moun- tains of Europe do not present such barriers to intercourse as those of Asia. The Alps, though very abrupt on the Italian side, slope gradually northward toward Germany. No other high mountains, except the Rockies, have so many easy passes or offer so little impediment to movement across them. More- over, the outspurs of the Alps in central and southeastern Europe are separated by transverse valleys, thus establishing convenient routes of communication from one region to another.
Nearly all Europe lies in the northern half of the North Temperate Zone, that is, within those latitudes most conducive Climatic to the development of a high civilization. No-
Europe where, except beyond the Arctic Circle, does exces-
sive cold stunt body and mind, and nowhere does enervating heat sap human energies. The climate is moderated by the Gulf Stream drift, which reaches the British Isles and Scan- dinavia. Climatic conditions are made still more favorable by the circumstance that Europe lies open to the west, with great inland seas penetrating deeply from the Atlantic, and with the higher mountain ranges extending nearly east and west. The westerly winds, warmed in passing over the Gulf Stream drift, can thus spread far into the interior, bringing with them an abundant rainfall, except in such regions as southern Spain, Italy, Greece, and eastern Russia. Europe, in conse- quence, is the only continent without extensive deserts.
We learned in the first chapter that Europe was inhabited by man during Palaeolithic times and that, with the exception of Racial types certain invading peoples who came from Asia in of Europe antiquity or the Middle Ages, the present inhabit- ants of Europe belong to the White Race.1 They may be separated into three racial types. The Baltic or Nordic (northern) type is found in the Scandinavian countries and
1 See page 13.
The Lands of the West
67
throughout the great European plain : it is characterized by a long or narrow head, tall stature, very light hair, blue eyes, and blond complexion. The Mediterranean (southern) type pre- vails in the peninsulas of southern Europe and the adjoining islands: it is short in stature and brunette in complexion, but is also long-headed. The Alpine (central) type comes midway between the other two in respect to stature and complexion,
Heavy-faced line! 8nflw districts where the race in.li.at.-.l is nf-iwfrT'st-t.xjit.
Racial Types in Western EuRorE
but has a broad head, unlike either of them. Each of these racial types, despite some fusion with the others, still occu- pies a fairly well-defined area of the continent. The Baltic type possibly originated in Europe where it is now found. The Mediterranean and Alpine types are believed to have entered Europe about the beginning of Neolithic times, the one from North Africa, the other from Asia.
About sixty distinct languages are still spoken in Europe. Ancientlv, there were many more. The Turks in the Balkan
68 Greece
Peninsula and the Mongols and Tatars in Russia still keep their Asiatic tongues. The same is true of the Magyars (Hun- Languages garians), Esthonians, and Finns, who in other of Europe respects have been thoroughly Europeanized. The remaining languages of any importance belong to the Indo- European family.1
Racial and linguistic groupings do not necessarily coincide in Europe any more than in other parts of the world. The North Race and Frenchman Is more nearly allied in physical char-
language acteristics to the North German than to the South
in Europe Frenchman ; and the North Italian resembles the South German more closely than the South Italian or Sicilian. A study of the accompanying map will furnish other illustra- tions of the fact that race and language are not convertible terms.
The almost unbroken mountain chain formed by the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkans sharply separates the northern and European central land mass of Europe from the southern peoples part 0f the continent. Twenty- five centuries ago
Europe beyond these mountain barriers had not entered the light of history. Its Celtic, Teutonic, Lettic, and Slavic- speaking inhabitants were still barbarians. During ancient times we hear little of them, except as their occasional migra- tions southward brought them into contact with the civilized Graeco-Latin peoples along the Mediterranean.
20. The Mediterranean Basin
The Mediterranean, about 2200 miles in length and 500 to 600 miles in greatest breadth, is the most extensive inland sea in the Character- world. It washes the shores of three continents — Mediterra- Europe, Asia, and Africa. Nevertheless, its basin nean basin is relatively isolated, being confined within a mountain wall on the north and an almost impassable desert on the south. The climate of the basin falls half-way between tropical conditions and the temperate conditions of central and northern Europe. The sea exercises a moderating in- 1 See the chart on page 18.
The Mediterranean Basin 69
fluence, however, raising the temperature in the rainy season (winter) and lowering h in the dry season (summer). The rainfall is, on the whole, scant}', with the result that the most important trees are the vine and the olive, which offer con- siderable resistance to drought. Their northern and southern limits, together with those of the orange, are shown on the map (p. 70). In respect to both climate and vegetation, the Med- iterranean basin is thus a region of marked individuality, a separate, definite area by itself.
The Mediterranean was well suited for early commerce, because of its long and contracted shape, indented northern shore, and numerous islands. Mariners seldom a " highway had to proceed far from the sight of land or at a of nations " great distance from good harbors. Though its storms are often fierce, they are usually brief, since the narrow strait of Gibraltar shuts out the great waves of the Atlantic. Freedom from high tides also facilitates navigation. Such advantages made the Mediterranean from a remote period an avenue by which everything that the older Eastern world had to offer could be passed on to the younger West. And the various European peoples themselves were able to exchange their prod- ucts and communicate their ideas and customs along this "highway of nations."
The Mediterranean basin divides into two parts. The
boundary between them occurs near the center, where Africa
and Sicily almost touch each other across a narrow •ni.. ,
Divisions of
strait. The western part contains, besides Sicily, the Mediter- the large islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Between ranean asm these islands and the Italian coast lies the wide expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The eastern part includes the Adriatic, Ionian, and ^Egean seas. It was the last of these which had most im- portance in Greek history.
The /Egean forms an almost landlocked body of water. The Balkan 1'eninsula, narrowing toward the Mediterranean into the smaller peninsula of Greece, confines it on the The jEgean west. On the east it meets a boundary in Asia Sea Minor. The southern boundary consists of a chain of islands.
7°
Greece
The only opening northward is found in the Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont), the Sea of Marmora (the ancient Pro- pontis), and the Bosporus.
The islands of the JEge&n are a continuation into the Medi- terranean of the mountain ranges of Europe and Asia. In size The JEgean they vary from tiny Delos, less than three miles in Islands length, to the long and narrow ridge of Crete.
Hundreds of them are sprinkled throughout the ^Egean, making it possible to cross that body of water in almost any direction
without losing sight of land. The islands consequently became "stepping stones" between Greece and Asia Minor.
Greece proper — continental Greece — is a tiny country. Its greatest length is scarcely more than two hundred and fifty miles ; its greatest breadth is only one hundred and eighty miles. Mountain ridges, offshoots of the Balkans, break it up into numberless small valleys and glens, which seldom widen into plains. The coast-line is most irregu- lar — a constant succession of sharp promontories and curving bays. No place in Greece is more than fifty miles from a
Greece
The yEgeans 71
mountain range or more than forty miles from some long arm of the Mediterranean.
The western coast of Asia Minor resembles Greece in its deep indentations, variety of scenery, and mild climate. Western The river valleys and plains of this region, how- Asia ever, are larger, more numerous, and more fertile than those of the Greek mainland.
.21. The jEgeans
The first civilization to arise in Europe was the work of gifted JEgca.11 peoples. They belonged to the dark-skinned, short-statured, long-headed branch of the White Race. This Antiquity of Mediterranean racial Mgean civi- type, as has been noted,
probably originated in North Africa j3&0s?*%^% and spread entirely around the \s wM\
Mediterranean, where its descendants still live to-day. During Neolithic : tlT,-\ 'f0&!% times it was already occupying the ;- ; _ .Egean Islands, the coasts of Greece, and western Asia Minor. Here modern excavations x have revealed centers of civilized life almost as "Throne of Minos"
Venerable as those of Egypt and Excavated by' Sir Arthur Evans -r, , 1 • A 1 , 1 in the palace at Gnossus, Crete.
Babylonia. As early as 3000 B.C. the The material is gypsum. This in.
/Egeans began to give Up Stone im- teresting object dates from about
plements in favor of copper and I5°° BC' bronze. These two metals were doubtless introduced from the Near East. The Copper-Bronze Age lasted in the /Egean for about two thousand years.
/Egean civilization first arose in Crete and developed most highly there. We can understand why. Crete is a Qri . f kind of half-way house between Europe and the JEgean Near East. It lies only a few days' sail from the civilization
1 Especially at Gnossus in Crete, Mycena: and Tiryns in Greece, and Troy in Asia Minor.
72
Greece
mouths of the Nile and the shores of western Asia. The island was consequently in a position early to receive and profit by all the culture of the Orient. From Crete, in turn, cultural in- fluences spread throughout the ^Egean.
iEgean civilization shows several marked characteristics. The people lived in villages and cities, where the frowning
fortress of the chief or king looked
down on the humble
istics of .dwellings of common
^gean men. The monarch,
civilization . .
as in the Orient, was
doubtless a thorough despot, whose subjects toiled to build the great palaces and tombs. If life was hard and cheerless for them, it must have been pleasant enough for court ladies and gentlemen, who occupied luxurious apartments, wore fine clothing and jewelry, and enjoyed such exhibitions as bull- fights and the contests of pugilists. Remarkable progress took place in some of the arts. ^Egean archi- tects raised imposing palaces of hewn and squared stone and arranged them for a life of comfort. The palace at Gnossus in Crete even had tile water-pipes, bath- rooms, and other conveniences which have hitherto been re- garded as of recent origin. Brilliant wall paintings — hunting scenes, landscapes, portraits of men and women — excite our admiration. The costumes of the women, with their flounced skirts, puffed sleeves, low-cut bodices, and gloved hands, were astonishingly modern in appearance. ^Egean artists made porcelain vases and decorated them with plant and animal forms. They carved ivory, engraved gems, and inlaid metals. It was doubtless from these ^Egeans that the later Greeks inherited their artistic genius.
: A Cretan Girl
Museum of Candia, Crete
A fresco painting from the palace of Gnossus. The girl's face is so astonishingly modern in treatment that one can scarcely believe that the picture belongs to the sixteenth century B.C.
Art
The Greeks 73
A form of recording 1 noughts had been secured. The explora- tions in Crete show that its inhabitants had passed from pic- ture writing to sound writing. The palace of Gnossus contained several thousand clay tablets, with inscriptions in a language as yet unread.1 About seventy characters appear to have been in common use. They prob- ably denote syllables and indicate a decided advance over both Egyptian and Babylonian scripts.
.Much commerce existed throughout the Mediterranean
during ^Egean times. Products of Cretan art or imitations of
them are found as far west as Italv, Sicilv, Sar- _
- ' • ' Commerce
dinia, and Spain, and as far east as inland Asia Minor, Syria, and Babylonia. Crete also enjoyed close com- mercial relations with both Egypt and Cyprus. In those ancient days Crete was mistress of the seas, and the merchants of that island preceded the Phoenicians as carriers between the Near East and Europe.2
.Egean civilization did not penetrate deeply into Europe. The interior of Greece remained the home of barbarous tribes, who had not yet learned to build cities, to create DoWnfall of beautiful objects of art, or to traffic on the seas. ^Egean Between about 1500 and 1000 B.C. their destruc- CIVllzaion tive inroads brought about the downfall of /Egean civilization.
22. The Greeks
The invaders who plunged the /Egean region once more into barbarism were a tall, light-complexioned, fair-haired, blue- eyed people, probably of the Baltic (Nordic) racial The Greek type. Their speech was Greek, which belongs to Pe°Ple the Indo-European family of languages. They lived a nomadic life as hunters and herdsmen. When the grasslands became insufficient to support their sheep and cattle, these northerners began to move gradually southward into the Danube Valley and thence through the many passes of the Balkans into Greece. The iron weapons which they possessed doubtless gave them a
1 See the illustration on pag< . - See page 17.
74
Greece
great advantage in conflicts with the bronze-using natives of this region. Sometimes the invaders must have exterminated or enslaved the earlier inhabitants ; more often, perhaps, they settled peacefully in the sunny south. Conquerors and con- quered slowly intermingled, thus producing the one Greek people which is found at the dawn of history.
The Greeks, as we shall now call them, did not stop at the southern limits of Greece. They also occupied Crete and the The other iEgean Islands, together with the western
Greek coast of Asia Minor. Their settlements in Asia
Minor came to be known as vEolia (or ^Eolis) , Ionia, and Doris, after the names of Greek tribes. The entire basin of the iEgean henceforth became the Greek world.
Several hundred years elapsed between the end of ^Egean civilization and the beginning of historic times in the Greek world, about 750 B.C. This period is usually known as the
The Greeks
75
Homeric Age, because various aspects of it are reflected in two epic poems called the Iliad and the Odyssey. The former gives the story of a Greek expedition led by Agamemnon, The Homeric king of Mycenae, against Troy ; the latter relates Ase the wanderings of the Greek hero Odysseus on his return from Troy. The two epics were probably composed in Ionia, and by the Greeks were attributed to a blind bard named Homer. Many modern scholars, however, re- gard them as the work of several generations of poets.
The Iliad and the Odyssey show how rude was the culture of the Homeric Age, as com- Culture of pared with the splendid the Homeric JEgean civilization which ge it displaced. The Greeks at this time had not wholly abandoned the life of shepherds for that of farmers. Wealth still consisted chiefly of flocks and herds. Nearly every freeman, how- ever, owned a little plot of land on which he cultivated grain and cared for his orchard and vineyard. Though iron was now used for weapons and farm implements, bronze continued to be the commoner and cheaper metal. Commerce was little followed. People depended upon Phoenician merchants for articles of luxury which they could not produce themselves. A class of skilled workmen had not arisen. There were no architects who could raise magnificent palaces and no artists who could paint or carve with the skill of their ^Egean predecessors. The back- wardness of the Homeric Greeks is also indicated by their failure to develop a system of writing to replace the old Cretan script which had utterly perished.
Social life was very simple. Princes tended flocks and built houses ; princesses carried water and washed clothes. Agamemnon, Odysseus, and other heroes were not Homeric ashamed to be their own butchers and cooks, society Coined money was unknown. Values were reckoned in oxen
The Swastika
A prehistoric! symbol widely diffused throughout both the Old World and the New. The example here shown is on the cover of a vase found at Troy.
76 Greece
or in lumps of gold and silver. Warfare was constant and cruel. Piracy, flourishing upon the unprotected seas, ranked as an honorable occupation. Murders were frequent. The murderer had to dread, not a public trial and punishment, but rather the private vengeance of the kinsmen of the victim. On the other hand, both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain many charming descriptions of family life. "There is nothing mightier or nobler," sings the poet, "than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house, a grief to their foes, to their friends great joy, but their own hearts know it best." x
The Homeric Greeks and their successors worshiped various gods and goddesses, twelve of whom formed a select council. Ideas of It was supposed to meet on snow-crowned Olympus
the gods m northern Thessaly. Many Olympian deities
appear to have been simply personifications of natural phe- nomena. Zeus, "father of gods and men," as Homer calls him, was a heaven god, who gathered the clouds in storms and hurled the lightning bolt. His brother, Poseidon, ruled the sea. His wife, Hera, presided over the life of women and especially over the sacred rites of marriage. His son, Apollo, a god of light, who warded off darkness and evil, became the ideal of manly beauty and the patron of music, poetry, and the healing art. Athena, a goddess who sprang full-grown from the forehead of Zeus, embodied the ideal of wisdom and all womanly virtues. These and other divinities were really magnified men and women, with human passions and appetites, but with more than human power and endowed with immortality. Morally, they were no better than their worshipers. But Homer, who sometimes represents them as deceitful, dissolute, and cruel, could also say, "Verily the blessed gods love not evil deeds, but they reverence justice and the righteous acts of men." 2
Greek ideas of the future life were dismal to an ex- Ideas of the treme. All men, it was thought, went down after future life death to Hades and passed there a shadowy, joyless existence. The Greek Hades thus closely resembled the Hebrew Sheol and the Babylonian underworld of the dead.3 1 Odyssey, vi, 182-185. 2 Ibid., xiv, 83-84. 3 See page 55.
The Greeks
77
Oracles
The Greeks believed that communications from the gods were received at certain places called oracles. The oldest of ('.reck oracles was that of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus. Here the priests professed to read the divine will in the rustling leaves of an oak tree sacred to Zeus At Delphi in Phocis the god Apollo was supposed to speak through a prophetess. The words which she uttered when thus "possessed" were interpreted by the attendant priests and delivered to inquirers. The fame of the Delphic oracle spread through- out Greece and reached foreign lands. Every year great numbers of people visited Delphi. Statesmen wished to learn the fate of their political schemes ; ambassadors sent by kings and cities asked advice as to weighty matters of peace and war ; and colo- nists sought directions as to the best country in which to settle. The oracle endured for over a thousand years. It was still honored at the close of the fourth century a.d., when a Roman emperor, after the adoption of Christianity, silenced it forever.
The Greeks brought with them from on the Esquiline Hill, Rome. The ,1 • .1 -i . i p statue represents a young man, per-
their northern home a great love of haps an athlete at the 0iympian athletics. Their most ~.
The
famous athletic festivals Olympian
were those in honor of games
Zeus at Olympia in Elis. The Olym
pian games took place every fourth year, in midsummer.1
A sacred truce was proclaimed for an entire month, so that
the thousands of spectators from every part of the Greek
1 The first recorded celebration of the games occurred in 776 B.C., and from this year all Greek dates were reckoned.
The Discus Thrower
Lancelotti Palace, Rome
Marble copy of the bronze origi- nal by Myron, a sculptor of the fifth century b.c Found in 1781
games, who is bending forward to hurl the discus. His body is thrown violently to the left with a twisting action that brings every muscle into play.
7 8 Greece
world might arrive and depart in safety. No one not of Greek blood and no one convicted of crime might be a competitor. The games occupied five days, beginning with contests in running. There was a short-distance dash through the length of the stadium, a quarter-mile race, and also a longer race, probably for two or three miles. Then followed a contest consisting of five events : the long jump, hurling the discus, throwing the javelin, running, and wrestling. Other contests included boxing, horse races, and chariot races.
The Olympian games were religious in character, because the display of manly strength was thought to be a spectacle most Influence of pleasing to the gods. The winning athlete re- tne Olympian ceived only a wreath of wild olive at Olympia, but at home he enjoyed the gifts and veneration of his fellow citizens. The thousands of visitors to the festival gave it the character of a great fair, where merchants set up their shops and money changers their tables. Poets recited their lines before admiring audiences, and artists exhibited their masterpieces. Heralds read treaties recently framed between Greek cities, in order to have them widely known. Orators spoke on subjects of general interest. Until their abolition, along with the Delphic oracle, the Olympian games did much to preserve a sense of fellowship among Greek communities.
The Greek language formed the strongest tie uniting the Greeks. Everywhere they used the same beautiful and ex- Bonds of pressive speech, which still lives in modified form union among on the lips of several million people in modern Greece. Greek literature likewise made for unity. The Iliad and the Odyssey were recited in every Greek village and city for centuries. They formed the principal text-book in the schools ; an Athenian philosopher well calls Homer the "educator" of Greece. Religion provided still another tie, for all Greeks worshiped the same Olympian gods, visited the oracles at Dodona and Delphi, and attended the Olympian games. A common language, literature, and religion were cultural bonds of union ; they did not lead to the political uni- fication of the Greek world.
The Greek City-States 79
23. The Greek City-States
A Greek city grew up about a hill of refuge (acropolis), to which the people of the neighborhood resorted in time of danger. This mount would be crowned with a fortress and the temples of the gods. Not far away was the market-place, where the citizens conducted business, held meetings, and enjoyed social intercourse. The most beautiful buildings in the city were always the temples and other public structures. Private houses, for the most part, were insignifi- cant in appearance, often of only one story, and covered with a flat roof. Judged by modern standards, a Greek city was small. Athens, at the climax of its power, may have had a quarter of a million people ; 1 Thebes, Argos, and Corinth, the next largest places, probably had between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants ; Sparta probably had less than 50,000. These figures include all classes of the population — citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners.
The city included not only the territory within its walls, but also the surrounding district, where many of the citizens lived. Being independent and self-governing, it is properly The called a city-state. Just as a modern state, it city-state could declare war, arrange treaties, and make alliances with its neighbors.
The citizens were very closely associated. They believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor and they shared a common worship of the patron god or The hero who had them under his protection. These citizens ties of supposed kinship and religion made citizenship a privi- lege which a person enjoyed only by birth and which he lost by removal to another city-state. Elsewhere he was only a foreigner lacking legal rights — a man without a country.
The independent city-states which from early times arose in the Near East eventually combined into kingdoms and em- pires under one government.2 The like never happened in the
1 Living not only in Athens itself and its port of Piraeus, but also throughout Attica.
2 See pages 32-34 and 62.
80 Greece
Greek world. Mountain ranges and deep inlets of the sea, by cutting up Greece proper into small, easily defended districts, Civic made it almost impossible for one city-state to
patriotism conquer and hold in subjection neighboring com- munities for any length of time. Many city-states, moreover, were on islands or were scattered along remote coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The result was that the Greeks never came together in one nation. Their city feeling, or civic patriotism, took the place of our love of country.
Religious influences sometimes proved strong enough to produce loose federations of tribes or city-states known as Amphictyo- amphictyonies. The people living around a famous nies sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in
common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. One of these local unions arose on the little island of Delos, the reputed birthplace of Apollo. A still more noteworthy example was the Delphic Amphictyony. It included twelve tribes and cities of central Greece and Thessaly. They established a council which took the temple of Apollo at Delphi under its protection and superintended the athletic games held there in honor of the god. One of the regulations binding on the members reads : "We will not destroy any amphictyonic town; we will not cut off any amphictyonic town from running water." This solemn oath did not always prevent the members of the Delphic Amphictyony from fighting one another and their neighbors; nevertheless, the federation deserves mention as the earliest peace agency known to history.
During the Homeric Age each city-state had a king, "the
shepherd of the people." The king did not possess absolute
. authority, as in the Orient; he was more or less Government J ' '
of the controlled by a council of nobles. They helped
city-state n-m m judgment and sacrifice, followed him to
war, and filled the principal offices. Both king and nobles were obliged to consult the common people on matters of great importance, such as making war or declaring peace. The citizens would then be summoned to meet in the market-place, where they shouted assent to the proposals laid before them
HERMES AND DIONYSUS
Museum of Olympia
An original statue by the great sculptor, Praxiteles. It was found in 1877 at Olympia. Hermes is represented carrying the child Dionysus, whom Zeus had intrusted to his care. The symmetrical body of Hermes is faultlessly modeled; the poise of his head is full of dig- nity; his expression is refined and thoughtful. Manly strength and beauty have never been better embodied than in this work.
"3 .a
The Greek City-States 81
or showed disapproval by silence. This public assembly had little importance in the Homeric Age, but later it became the center of Greek democracy.
After the opening of historic times in Greece many city- states began to change their form of government. In some of them, for example, Thebes and Corinth, the nobles Political became strong enough to abolish the kingship *