General history for colleges and high schools

Preface To Revised Edition

I

The first edition of this work was published seventeen years ago. As that was a shortened edition of the original texts of my "Ancient History" and "Mediaeval and Modern History," so is this volume a shortened edition of the revised and in great part rewritten texts of these two works. In the present issue the book contains several fresh chapters, an entirely new series of colored maps, many new illustrations, and carefully selected lists of books for further reading at the end of each chapter, together with suggested topics for special study. The new text brings the narration of events down to the Peace of Portsmouth and the elections to the first Russian Parliament, and aims to include all the latest important results of discovery and scholarly research in the different historical fields and periods.

College Hill, Ohio April, 1906

The real history of the human race is the history of tendencies which are perceived by the mind, and not of events which are discovered by the senses. — Buckle.

Historical facts should not be a burden to the memory but an illumination of the soul. — Lord Acton.

But history ought surely in some degree, if it is worth anything, to anticipate the lessons of time. We shall all no doubt be wise after the event ; we study history that we may be wise before, the event. — Seeley.

Contents

Page

List of Maps xiv

Chapter

I. General Introduction : Prehistoric Times ....... I

Part I — Ancient History Division I — The Eastern Nations

II. Races and Groups of Peoples at the Dawn of History ... 9

III. Ancient Egypt (from about 5000 to 30 B.C.) 14

1. Political History ....*.. 14

11. Religion, Arts, and General Culture 20

IV. The Early City-States of Babylonia and the Old Babylonian

Empire (from about 5000 to 1 1 B.C.) 30

1. Political History 30

11. Arts and General Culture 34

V. The Assyrian and the Chaldean Empire 42

1. The Assyrian Empire (to 606 B.C.) 42

11. The Chaldean Empire (625-538 B.C.) 47

VI. The Hebrews 49

VII. The Phoenicians 54

VIII. The Persian Empire (558-330 B.C.) 59

1. Political History 59

11. Government, Religion, and Arts 62

IX. India and China . 65

1. India . 65

11. China 67

DIVISION II — GREECE

X. The Land and the People 71

XI. Prehistoric Times according to Greek Accounts 77

XII. The Inheritance of the Historic Greeks 84

vii viii CONTENTS

XIII. The Growth of Sparta 92

XIV. The Age of Colonization and of Tyrannies 98

1. The Age of Colonization (about 750-600 B.C.) . 98

• 11. The Tyrannies (about 650-500 B.C.) 102

XV. The History of Athens up to the Persian Wars .... 105

XVI. The Persian Wars (500-479 B.C.) . . 112

XVII. The Athenian Supremacy 124

1. The Makingof the Athenian Empire (479-445 B.C.) 124

11. The Age of Pericles (445-431 B.C.) 129

XVIII. The Peloponnesian War; the Spartan and the Theban

Supremacy 135

1. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) . . . 135

11. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy . . . 145

XIX. Alexander the Great (336-323 B.C.) M9

XX. The GrEeco-Oriental World from the Death of Alexander

to the Conquest of Greece by the Romans (323-146 B.C.) 157

XXI. Greek Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting . ... . . 162

I. Architecture 162

11. Sculpture 166

hi. Painting 17°

XXII. Greek Literature 172

XXIII. Greek Philosophy and Science 180

XXIV. Social Life of the Greeks 189

DIVISION III — ROME

XXV. Italy and its Early Inhabitants 195

XXVI. Rome as a Kingdom 199

1. Society and Government ........ 199

II. Religion 203

in. Rome under the Kings (753 .'-509 B.C.) .... 206

XXVII. The Early Republic ; Plebeians become Citizens with Full

XXVIII. The Conquest of Italy (367-264 B.C.) 221

CONTENTS i X

XXIX. The Punic Wars 227

I. The First Punic War (264-241 B.C.) .... 227 11. Rome and Carthage between the First and the

Second Punic War (241-218 B.C.) 232

in. The Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) .... 235 IV. Events between the Second and the Third Punic v. The Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.) .... 244

XXX. The Last Century of the Republic (133-31 B.C.) .... 248

XXXI. The Establishment of the Empire and the Reign of

Augustus Caesar (31 b.c.-a.d. 14) 274

XXXII. From Tiberius to the Accession of Diocletian (a.d. 14-284) 281

XXXIII. Diocletian and Constantine the Great 297

1. The Reign of Diocletian (a.d. 284-305) . . . 297

11. Reign of Constantine the Great (a.d. 306-337) . 300

XXXIV. The Last Century of the Empire in the West (a.d. 376-476) 305

XXXV. Architecture, Literature, Law, and Social Life among the

Romans 317

1. Architecture 317

11. Literature, Philosophy, and Law 320

in. Social Life 325

Part II — Medleval And Modern History

XXXVI. Introduction 332

DIVISION I— THE MIDDLE AGES First Period — The Dark Ages

(From the Fall of Rome to the Eleventh Century)

XXXVII. The Barbarian Kingdoms 336

XXXVIII. The Church and its Institutions 341

1. The Conversion of the Barbarians 341

11. The Rise of Monasticism 345

in. The Rise of the Papacy 348

XXXIX. The Fusion of Latin and Teuton 353

XL. The Roman Empire in the East 358 x CONTENTS

XLI. The Rise of Islam 362

XLII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the Empire in the

West 372

XLIII. The Northmen : the Coming of the Vikings 379

Second Period — The Age of Revival

(From the Opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of America by Columbus in 1492)

XLIV. Feudalism and Chivalry 383

1. Feudalism 383

II. Chivalry 392

XLV. The Norman Conquest of England 396

XLVI. The Papacy and the Empire 401

XLVII. The Crusades (1096-1273) 407

XLVIII. Supremacy of the Papacy ; Decline of its Temporal

Power 420

XLIX. Turanian Conquests ; Mongols and Turks 426

L. The Growth of the Towns 431

LI. The Universities and the Schoolmen 439

LII. Growth of the Nations : Formation of National Governments and Literatures 444

1. England 444

II. France 458

in. Spain 463

iv. Germany 466

v. Russia 471

vi. Italy 471

vii. The Northern Countries 473

LI II. The Renaissance 475

DIVISION II — THE MODERN AGE Third Period — The Era of the Reformation

(From the Discovery of America, in 1492, to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648)

LIV. Geographical Discoveries and the Beginnings of Modern

Colonization 486

LV. The Beginnings of the Reformation 497

CONTENTS xi

Chapter Page LVI. The Ascendancy of Spain ; her Relation to the Catholic

Reaction 5 11

I. Reign of the Emperor Charles V (15 19-1556) . 511

11. Spain under Philip II (1 556-1 598) 516

LVII. The Tudors and the English Reformation (1 485-1 603) . . 520

I. Introductory 520

11. The Reign of Henry VII (1485-1 509) .... 522 ill. England severed from the Papacy by Henry VIII

(1509-1547) 523

IV. Changes in Doctrine and Ritual under Edward VI (1 547-1 553) 530

V. Reaction under Mary ( 1 553-1 558) 531

VI. Final Establishment of Protestantism under

LVIII. The Revolt of the Netherlands : Rise of the Dutch Republic (1 572-1609) 541

LIX. The Huguenot Wars in France (1 562-1 629) 550

LX. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) 557

Fourth Period — The Era of the Political Revolution

(From the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, to the Twentieth Century)

The Age of Absolute Monarchy: the Prelude to the Democratic Revolution (1648-1789)

LXI. Introductory : the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings

and the Maxims of the Enlightened Despots 564

LXII. The Ascendancy of France under Louis XIV (1643-1715) . 569

LXIII. The Stuarts and the English Revolution (1 603-1 689) . . . 579

1. The First Two Stuarts 579

11. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate (1649-

1660) 589

in. The Restored Stuarts 595

IV. Reign of William and Mary (1689-1725) . . . 598

LXIV. The Rise of Russia: Peter the Great (1682-1725) .... 601

LXV. The Rise of Prussia: Frederick the Great (1740-1786) . . 609 xii CONTENTS

LXVI. England in the Eighteenth Century 616

I. The Reign of Queen Anne (1702-17 14) . . . 616

11. England under the Earlier Hanoverians . . . 618

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era (1789-18 15)

LXVII. The French Revolution (1 789-1 799) 627

1. Causes of the Revolution ; the States-General

11. The National or Constituent Assembly (June 17, in. The Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791-Sept. 19,

1792) 640

iv. The National Convention (Sept. 20, i79;-Oct. 26,

LXVIII. The Consulate and the Napoleonic Empire (1799-1815) . 658

11. The Napoleonic Empire ; the War of Liberation

(1804-1815) 662

The Restoration of 1815 and the Democratic Reaction: the Sequel to the Revolution (181 5-1 906)

LXIX. The Congress of Vienna and the Holy Alliance .... 679

LXX. France since the Second Restoration (181 5-1906) . . . 683

LXXI. England since the Battle of Waterloo (1815-1906) ... 689

I. Progress towards Democracy 689

11. Extension of the Principle of Religious Equality 695

LXXII. The Liberation and Unification of Italy 699

LXXIII. The Making of the New German Empire 709

LXXIV. Russia since the French Revolution 720

I. Russia's Wars against Turkey and her Allies . 720

II. The Emancipation of the Serfs, and the Liberal

Movement 7 2 4

CONTENTS xiii

LXXV. European Expansion in the Nineteenth Century .... 726 1. Causes and General Phases of the Expansion

Movement 726

11. The Expansion of England ...» 728

in. The Expansion of France 735

iv. The Expansion of Germany 736

v. The Expansion of Russia 738

vi. The Expansion of the United States .... 739 vii. Check to European Expansion and Aggression

in Eastern Asia 741

LXXVI. The World State 747

LIST OF MAPS

COLORED MAPS

Based in the main on Kiepert, Schrader, Droysen, Spruner-Sieglin, Poole, and

Freeman. Many of the maps have been so modified by additions and omissions that as they here appear they are practically new charts.

Page

i. Ancient Egypt 14

2. Assyrian Empire, about 660 B.c 42

3. The Division of Solomon's Kingdom, about 953 B.c 50

4. The Persian Empire under Darius I, about 500 B.c 60

5. General Reference Map of Ancient Greece 72

6. Greece and the Greek Colonies 98

7. The Greek World at the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War,

8. Empire of Alexander the Great, about 323 B.c 152

9. Ancient Italy before the Rise of Rome 196

10. The Mediterranean Lands at the Beginning of the Second Punic

11. The Roman Dominions at the End of the Mithradatic War, 64 B.C. 262

12. The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent (under Trajan, a.d.

98-117) 288

13. The Barbarian Kingdoms, about a.d. 500 336

14. The Saracen Empire, about a.d. 750 366

15. The Western Empire as divided at Verdun, a.d. 843 .... 376

16. Europe and the Orient in 1096 410

17. Angevin Dominions 444

18. Spanish Kingdoms in 1360 464

19. Globe de Martin Behaim, 1492, and Globe Dore vers 1528 . . 488

20. Europe at the Accession of the Emperor Charles V, 151 9 . . . 512

21. Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 560

22. The Baltic Lands, about 1701 604

23. Prussia under Frederick the Great, 1740-1786 612

24. Central Europe in 1801 660

25. Central Europe in 1810 670

26. Central Europe after 1815 680 xiv

LIST OF MAPS XV

Facing Page

28. Southeastern Europe in 1903 722

29. The Partition of Africa 728

30. The Far East 742

SKETCH MAPS

1. The World according to Homer 91

2. Athens and her Long Walls 128

3. The Roman Domain and the Latin Confederacy, about 450 B.C. 213

4. The Roman Empire under Justinian 359

5. The Empire of the Ottoman Turks, about 1464 429

GENERAL HISTORY

Chapter I General Introduction: Prehistoric Times

i. The Antiquity of Man. — We do not know when man first appeared upon the earth. We only know that in ages long past, when both the. climate and the outline of the continents were very different from what they are at present, primitive man roamed over them with animals now extinct; and that, about 5000 B.C., when the historic curtain first rises, in some favored regions, as in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing arts, governments, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth through very long periods of time.

2 . The Prehistoric and the Historic Age. — The uncounted millenniums which lie back of the time when man began to keep written records of what he thought and did and of what befell him, are called the Prehistoric Age.

The comparatively few centuries of human life which are made known to us through written records comprise the Historic Age. In the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates there have been discovered written records which were made at least four or five thousand years before Christ ; so we say that the historic period began in those lands six or seven thousand years ago. In most other regions the historic period began at a much later date. Thus the truly Historic Age did not open in Greece and Italy until about 800 or 700 B.C.

3. Divisions of Prehistoric Times. — The long period of prehistoric times is divided into different ages, which are named from the material which man used in the manufacture of his weapons and tools. The earliest epoch is known as the Paleolithic or Old

PREHISTORIC TIMES

Stone Age; the following one as the Neolithic or New Stone Age ; and the later period as the Age of Metals. The division lines between these ages are not sharply drawn. In most countries the epochs run into and overlap one another, just as in modern times the Age of Steam runs into and overlaps the Age of Electricity.

4. The Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. — In the Old Stone Age man's implements were usually made of stone, and particularly of easily chipped flints, though sometimes bones, horns, tusks, and other material were used in their manufacture. These rude tools and weapons of Paleolithic man, found in gravel beds and in caves,

are the very oldest things in existence shaped by human hands.

The man of the Old Stone Age saw the retreating glaciers of the last great ice age, of which geology tells us.

Among the animals, which lived with him on the continent of Europe — we know most of Paleolithic man there — were the mammoth, the wild horse, and the reindeer ; species now extinct or which are no longer found in the regions where primitive man hunted them.

What we know of Paleolithic man may be summed up as follows : he was a hunter and fisher ; his habitation was a cave or a rock shelter; his implements were in the main roughly shaped flints ; he had no domestic animals save possibly the dog and the reindeer ; and he was practically ignorant of the art of making pottery.

The length of the Old Stone Age no one knows ; we do not attempt to reckon its duration by centuries or millenniums even, but only by geologic epochs. But we do know that the long slow

Fig. 1. — The Earliest Implements of Paleolithic Type

THE NEOLITHIC OR NEW STONE AGE

Fig. 2. — Engkaving of a Reindeer 1 (Old Stone Age)

epochs did not pass away without some progress having been

made by primeval man, a progress prophetic of his great future.

Before the end of the age he had learned the use of fire, as we

know from the traces of fire found in the caves which were his

abode, and had invented

the bow and arrow, as is

evidenced by arrowheads

of flint and of bone which

have been discovered. This

important invention gave

man what was to be one of

his chief weapons in the chase and in war down to and even after

the invention of firearms late in the historic age.

Strange as it may seem, the man of this epoch was in his way an artist. The accompanying cuts (Figs. 2 and 3) are reproductions of celebrated engravings made by Paleolithic man.

5. The Neolithic or New Stone Age The Old Stone Age was

followed by the New. Chipped or hammered stone implements still continued to be used, but what characterizes this period was the use of ground or polished implements. The North American Indians were in this stage of culture at the time of the discovery

of the New World.

Neolithic man in Europe was in many respects much advanced over Paleolithic man.

He had learned to culti- Fig. 3. — Engraving of a Mammoth on vate the soil ; he had the Fragment of a Tusk 1 learned to make pottery,

(Old Stone Age) to spinj and to weav e ;

he had tamed various wild animals ; he built houses ; and he buried his dead in such a manner — with "accompanying gifts" (Fig. 4) — as to show that he had come to believe in a future life.

1 These interesting art objects are from France. They represent the earliest artistic efforts of man of which we have knowledge. In comparison with them, the pictures on the oldest Egyptian monuments are modern.

PREHISTORIC TIMES

Fig. 4. — A Prehistoric Egyptian Tomb

6. The Age of Metals. — Finally the long ages of stone passed into the Age of Metals. This age falls into three subdivisions, — the Age of Copper, the Age of Bronze, and the Age of Iron. Some peoples, like the African negroes, passed directly from the use of stone to the use of iron ; but in most of the countries

of the Orient and of Europe the three metals came into use one after the other and in the order named. 2

The history of metals has been declared to be the history of civilization.

Indeed, it would be almost impossible to overestimate their importance to man.

Man could do very little with stone implements compared with what he could do with metal implements. It was a great labor for primitive man, even with the aid of fire, to fell a tree with a stone ax and to hollow out the trunk for a boat. It was only as the bearer of metal implements and weapons that he began really to subdue the earth and to get dominion over nature.

7. The Origin of the Use of Fire. ; — In this and following paragraphs we shall dwell briefly upon some of the special discoveries and achievements, several of which have already been mentioned, marking important steps in man's progress during the prehistoric ages. Prominent among these was the discovery of fire.

As to the way in which early man came into possession of fire we have no knowledge. Possibly he kindled his first fire from a glowing lava stream or from some burning tree trunk set aflame by the lightning. However this may be, he had in the earliest times learned to produce the vital spark by means of friction. The fire borer is among the oldest of human inventions.

2 The use of copper seems to have begun among the peoples of the Orient before 5000 B.C. It is a soft metal, and tools and weapons made of it were not so greatly superior to the stone ones then in use as to put them out of service. But either by accident or through experiment it was discovered that by mixing about nine parts of copper with one part of tin a new metal, called bronze, much harder than either tin

THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS

Only gradually did primeval man learn the different uses to which fire might be put, just as historic man has only gradually learned the possible uses of electricity. By some happy accident or discovery he learned that it would harden clay, and he became a potter ; that it would smelt ores, and he became a worker in metals ; and that it would aid him in a hundred other ways. " Fire," says Joly, " presided at the birth of nearly every art, or quickened its progress." The place it holds in the development of the family, of religion, and of the industrial arts is revealed by these three significant words, — " the hearth, the altar, the forge." No other agent has contributed more to the progress of civilization. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how without fire primitive man could ever have emerged from the Age of Stone.

Fig. 5. — Primitive Methods of making Fire

8. The Domestication of Animals. — " When we visit a farm at the present day and observe the friendly nature of the life which goes on there, — the horse proudly and obediently bending his neck to his yoke ; the cow offering her streaming udder to the milkmaid ; the woolly flock going forth to the field, accompanied by their trusty protector, the dog, who comes fawning to his master, — this familiar intercourse between man and beast seems so natural that it is scarcely conceivable that things may once have been different.

or copper, could be made. So greatly superior were bronze to stone implements that their introduction caused the use of stone for tools and weapons to be discontinued, and consequently the Age of Bronze constitutes a well-defined and important epoch in the history of culture. Bronze seems to have been used by the first kings of Egypt, about 4500 B.C. From the East the metal was carried into Europe. Iron was already in use among the Oriental peoples about 1500 B.C., and was gradually introduced among the European tribes.

6 PREHISTORIC TIMES

And yet in the picture we see only the final result of thousands and thousands of years of the work of civilization, the enormous importance of which simply escapes our notice because it is by everyday wonders that our amazement is least excited." 8

The most of this work of inducing the animals of the fields and woods to become as it were members or dependents of the human family, to enter into a league of friendship with man and to become his helpers, was done by prehistoric man. When man appears in history, he appears surrounded by almost all the domestic animals known to us to-day. The horse was already his willing servant ; the dog was his faithful companion ; the sheep, the cow, and the goat shared his shelter with him.

The domestication of animals had such a profound effect upon human life and occupation that it marks the opening of a new epoch in history. The hunter became a shepherd, and the hunting stage in culture gave place to the pastoral. 4

9. The Domestication of Plants. — Long before the dawn of history those peoples who were to play great parts in early historic times had advanced from the pastoral to the agricultural stage of culture. Just as the step from the hunting to the pastoral stage had been taken with the aid of a few of the most social species of animals, so had this second upward step been taken by means of the domestication of a few of the innumerable species of the seed grasses and plants growing wild in field and wood. Wheat and barley, two of the most important of the cereals, were probably first domesticated on the plains of Babylonia and from there carried over Asia and Europe.

The domestication of plants and the art of tilling the soil effected a great revolution in prehistoric society. The wandering life of the hunter and the herder now gave way to a settled mode of existence. Population thickened, villages grew into cities, great kingdoms were formed, and the political history of man began, as in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.

3 Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples (London, 1890), p. 259.

4 It is of interest to know that most of the wild stocks whence have come our domestic animals are of Old- World origin. See sec. 690, n. 6.

THE FORMATION OF LANGUAGE 7

10. The Formation of Language. — Another great achievement of primitive man was the making of language, for, as Tylor observes, " the main work of language-making was done in the ages before history." Periods of time like geologic epochs must have been required for the formation, out of the scanty speech of the first men, of the rich and copious languages already upon the lips of the great peoples of antiquity, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and Romans, when they first appear in the morning light of history.

We need not dwell upon the inestimable value to man of the acquisition of language. Without it, so far as we can see, he must have remained forever in an unprogressive and savage or semi-savage state.

11. The Invention of Writing. — Still another achievement of prehistoric man, and after the making of language perhaps his greatest, was the invention of writing. There are two kinds of writing, — picture writing and phonetic or sound writing. In picture writing the characters are in the main rude pictures of material objects. This way of representing ideas seems natural to man. It is a form of writing still in use among some of the American Indians.

In phonetic writing the symbols represent sounds of the human voice. There are three stages. In the first stage each picture or symbol stands for a whole word. In such a system as this there must of course be as many characters or signs as there are words in the language represented. In working out their system of writing the Chinese stuck fast at this point (sec. 102).

In the second stage the symbols are used to represent syllables instead of words. This reduces at once the number of signs needed from many thousands to a few hundreds, since the words of any given language are formed by the combination of a comparatively small number of syllables. With between four and five hundred symbols the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, who used this form of writing, were able to represent all the words of their respective languages (sec. 49).

In the third stage the symbols are used to represent not syllables but elementary sounds of the human voice. Then the symbols

8 PREHISTORIC TIMES

become true letters, a complete collection of which is called an alphabet, and the mode of writing alphabetic. This is the system of writing which we employ.

What people invented the first alphabet is unknown; but as early as the ninth century B.C. we find several Semitic peoples in possession of a true alphabet. Through the agency of traders this alphabet was spread east and west, and became the parent of most of the existing alphabets of the world (sec. 86).

With the invention of phonetic writing and the practice of keeping records, with names of actors and dates of events, the truly historic age for man begins.

12. The Great Bequest. — We of this twentieth century esteem ourselves fortunate in being the heirs of a noble heritage, the heirs of all the past. We are not used to thinking of the men of the first generation of historic times as also the heirs of a great legacy. But even the scanty review we have made of what was discovered and thought out by man during the long epochs before history began cannot fail to have impressed us with the fact that a vast bequest was made by prehistoric to historic man.

If our hasty glance at those far-away times has done nothing more than this, then we shall never again regard history quite as may have been our wont. We shall see the story of man to be more wonderful than we once thought, the path which he has followed to be longer and more toilsome than we ever imagined. But our interest in the traveler will have been deepened through our knowing more of his origin, of his early hard and narrow life, and of his first painful steps in the path of civilization.

References. — Keary, C. F., The Dawn of History. Starr, F., Some First Steps in Human Progress. Tylor, E. B., Anthropology, chaps, iv and vi, " Language " and " Writing " ; and Primitive Culture, 2 vols. Lubbock, J., Prehistoric Times. Mason, O. F., Woman's Share in Pritiiitive Culture. Joly, N., Ma?i Before Metals. Shaler, N. S., Domesticated Animals. Hoffmann, W. J., The Beginnings of Writing. Clodd, E., The Story of the Alphabet. Taylor, I., The Alphabet, z vols. Parts of this work are obsolete ; the theory of the Egyptian origin of the alphabet is now discredited.

Topics for Class Reports. — i. The relation of domesticated animals to man's progress in civilization. See Shaler. 2. The origin of writing.

Part I ANCIENT HISTORY

Division I — The Eastern Nations

Chapter II Races And Groups Of Peoples At The Dawn Of History

13. Subdivisions of the Historic Age. — We begin now our study of the historic age, — a record of about seven thousand years. The story of these millenniums is usually divided into three parts, — Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern History. Ancient History begins with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge through written records, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, a.d. 476. Mediaeval History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, a.d. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the mediaeval period and extends to the present time. 1

14. The Races of Mankind in the Historic Period. — Distinctions in bodily characteristics, such as form, color, and features, divide the human species into three chief types or races, known as the Black or Ethiopian Race, the Yellow or Mongolian Race, and the White or Caucasian Race. 2 But we must not suppose