The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers (part 3 of 9)

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE RACES OF MANKIND

DISTRIBUTION OF THE CAUCASIAN OR WHITE DIVISION OF MANKIND

ORIGINAL HOME.--North Africa between Sahara and the Mediterranean.

EARLY EXPANSION.--To Europe, the Eurasian Steppes between the Carpathians and the Pamir, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Iran, or Persia, India, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Polynesia.

LATER EXPANSIONS.--The Caucasian race has now spread, through colonization, over the whole world, but its proper region is Europe, western Asia, and the northern strip of Africa Nine-tenths of the people of Europe belong to the Caucasian family, the other tenth consisting of the Turks, the Magyars (in Hungary), the Finns, the Laplanders, and the tribe called Samoieds in the extreme northeast of European Russia. In Asia, the Caucasians include the Arabs, the Persians, the Afghans, and the Hindus. In Africa, the Caucasians are spread over the whole north, from the Mediterranean to the south of the Sahara Desert, and to the farthest border of Abyssinia as well as to the greater portion of South Africa. In North and South America three-fourths of the people are now Caucasian. In Australia and New Zealand the Caucasian colonists have almost extinguished the native races.

RELIGION.--The Caucasian race now supports various forms of Christianity in Europe, America, and their Colonies; Buddhism in India; Mohammedanism in Central Asia, Siberia, Turkey, Arabia, North Africa, Irania, India, Malaysia. Originally nature-worship was more pronounced than the cult of ancestor-worship. The Egyptians did not worship but embalmed the dead. The chief gods of the Semites were those of the sun and moon; and those of the Aryans were Dyaus, Indra, Zeus, Jupiter, Apollo, Saturn, etc., all personified elements of the upper regions which later became the basis of extensive systems of mythology. Later these forces were symbolized in wood or stone, which led to idolatry--that is, the worship of the image itself, which still persists among the uneducated in some parts of Christendom. The belief in magic, demons, witchcraft, omens, ghosts and allied superstitions was also very prevalent.

Out of the general polytheism were slowly evolved various shades of monotheism, whence arose the historical religions of the West, such as Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, while crass polytheism persisted in the East--Brahmanism in India, degraded forms of Buddhism in Ceylon and elsewhere. Intermediate between monotheism and polytheism was the Persian religion, which refers light and all good to Ormuzd and his host of angels, night and all evil to Ahriman and his host of demons. Although already denounced by Isaiah, whose Jehovah is the one source of all things, this twofold principle no doubt found its way into the early Christian teachings.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE MONGOLIC OR YELLOW DIVISION

ORIGINAL DOMAIN.--Probably the Tibetan tableland.

EARLY EXPANSION.--Mongolia, Siberia, China, Indo-China, Malaysia, Mesopotamia (?). The earlier Mongolians were extremely migratory, but the more settled tribes developed into the later Japanese, Chinese. Burmese, Siamese, and other peoples in the southeast and east of Asia; and the native tribes of the Siberian plains. The wandering tribes developed into the Turks, Magyars (Hungarians), Finns, Laplanders, and Samoeids, of Europe, and the Esquimaux of America.

RELIGION.--Animism in the widest sense is the dominant note of Mongolian religions. The worship of spirits extended both to the disembodied human soul (ancestor-worship, which is now perhaps the most prevalent form) and to the innumerable spirits, bad and good, which people earth, air, water, the celestial and underground regions. Although nominal Buddhists, the Chinese, Indo-Chinese, and Mongols live in terror of malevolent spirits, and the Annamese scrupulously observe “Roast-pig Day,” as they call their All-Souls Day, by littering the graves of the dead with scraps of victuals. Among the Siberians this spirit-cult takes the form of Shamanism, in which the Shaman (wizard or medicine man) is the “paid medium” of communication between his dupes and the invisible good or evil genii. In Tibet demonology still survives beneath the official Lamaism; the Eastern Siberians are Bear-worshipers; and the Polynesians have deified both the living and dead members of their dynasties.

The historical religions are largely a question of race, the Mongols proper, Manchus, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Indo-Chinese, and Tibetans being at least nominal Buddhists. The Turks, Tartars, and most Malays are Mohammedans; and the Finns, Lapps, and Magyars now Christians. Other so-called state religions--Confucianism and Taoism in China, Shintoism and Bushidoism in Japan are other ethical codes fostered and upheld for political purposes.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE NEGRO, OR BLACK RACE

ORIGINAL DOMAIN.--The Eastern, or Oceanic, Section had its home in Malaysia, Andamans, Philippines, New Guinea, Melanesia, Australia, Tasmania; with no later expansion. The Western, or African, Section lived in Africa south of the Sahara.

LATER EXPANSION.--Subsequently the Africans spread, either voluntarily or were taken as slaves to Madagascar, north Africa, southern United States, West Indies, and Latin America.

Religion.--Spirit-worship very prevalent among native Negro races, and totemism in Australia. The Melanesian system is distinctly animistic, distinguishing between pure spirits, that is, supernatural beings that never were in a human body, and ghosts--that is, men’s disembodied spirits revisiting their former abodes. There are prayer, sacrifice, divination, omens, death and burial rites, a Hades too, with trees and houses, as on earth, also a ghostly ruler, but no supreme being. There is little or nothing of all this in Australia or New Guinea, where the religious sentiment is so little developed that many close observers have failed to detect it.

Among African tribes, though religion is animistic, ancestor-worship seems much more prevalent than nature-worship. There is no supreme being anywhere. The chief deities are Munkulunkulu, with many variants along the eastern seaboard, and Nzambi, also with many variants on the west side, both intermingling in the interior. Witchcraft, omens, and ordeals are very prevalent; pure fetishism and human sacrifices prevail in Upper Guinea, in Uganda and other parts.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE AMERICAN, OR RED DIVISION

Original Domain.--The New World. The chief sub-divisions were as follows:

(1) NORTH AMERICAN: Eskimo, Athabascan (Chippewaian, Taculli, Hupa, Apache, Navajo); Algonquian (Cree, Chippewa, Mohican, Delaware, Shawnee, Cheyenne, Illinois, etc.); Iroquoian (Erie, Huron, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cherokee, etc.); Siouan (Dakota, Assinaboin, Missouri, Iowa, Winnebago, Mandan, Tutelo, Catawba); Muskhogean (Seminole, Choktaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Alibamu, Apalachi); Salish; Shoshone; Pawnee; Pueblo (Zuñi, Hopi, Tegua).

(2) CENTRAL AMERICAN: Opata-Pima (Yuma, Cora, Tarahumara, Tepeguana); Nahuan (Aztec, Huichol, Pipil, Niquiran); Maya-Quiché (Huaxtec, Maya, Lacandon, Quiché, Pocoman, Zendal, Chol, Zotzil, Cachiquel, Mamé); Zapotec; Mixtec (Mixé); Lencan (Chontal, Wulwa, Rama, Guatusa); Bribri; Cuna.

(3) SOUTH AMERICAN: Chibcha; Choco; Quichua (Inca, Chanca); Aymara (Colla, Calchaqui); Antisuyu; Jivaro; Zaparo; Pano; Ticuna; Chuncho; Carib (Macusi, Akawai, Bakairi, Arecuna); Arawak; (Atorai, Wapisiana, Naypure, Parexi); Warrau; Chiquito; Bororo; Botocudo; Tupi-Guarani (Chiriguana, Caribuna, Goajira, Omogua, Mundrucu); Payagua; Mataco; Toba; Araucan; Puelche, Tehuelche (Patagonian); Fuegian (Ona, Yahgan, Alakaluf.)

PRESENT RESTRICTED DOMAIN.--The Arctic seaboard, Greenland, Alaska; numerous reservations and some unsettled parts of the United States and Canada; most tribes of Mexico, Central and South America are partly intermingled with the whites and blacks and still partly in the tribal state. By far the greater part of the native tribes never progressed beyond the savage state, except in the United States and Canada, where during the past quarter century, and particularly during the last decade, the Indians have rapidly advanced in civilization.

RELIGION.--Shamanism was widely diffused among the North America aborigines. But still more prevalent is the cult of the aërial gods, who support the four quarters of the heavens, and of animals (bear, wolf, raven, jaguar) which has given rise to strange wehrwolf superstitions, and to totemistic systems similar to those of the Australian natives.

Solar worship prevailed in Peru, while the cultured peoples of Mexico (Aztecs, Mayas, Zapotecs and others) had developed a complete pantheon of ferocious deities, such as Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, whose thirst for human blood was insatiable. Thus arose an established order of priests, who sacrificed human victims on solemn occasions, and presided over other sanguinary rites often accompanied by unutterable horrors. Aztec women cast their infants into the Mexican lagoons to propitiate the Rain-god Tlaloc.

Some modern races, like the Zuñis, have an elaborate and highly mystical ritual, to the exhibitions of which none but the initiated are admissible. The snake-dance of the Moquis of Arizona is a most curious ceremonial and attracts many visitors. The ritual of the Roman Catholic Church has strong attractions for the Indian; and the less elaborate service of the Episcopalians has in several instances helped to win over to Christianity tribes which had long rejected the teachings of missionaries of other denominations.

THE CAUCASIAN THE REAL HISTORIC RACE

Of all these races the only one whose history is important for us is the Caucasian or white race, to which we ourselves belong. This race is “historical” because it displays the most highly civilized type of mankind,--that type whose progress and achievements are the true province of history.

THREE DIVISIONS OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE

This grand stock--the Caucasian race--has been classified into three main branches,--(1) the Aryan or Indo-European; (2) the Semitic; (3) the Hamitic.

The Hamitic branch is named from Ham, the son of Noah, and ancestor of some of its peoples, most notable of which was the ancient empire in Egypt. Accounts of their conquests, under great dynasties of kings, have come down to us in hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Egyptians became highly civilized at a very early time, and exerted a marked influence on the civilization of succeeding ages.

The Semitic branch is so called from Shem, also a son of Noah, described in the Bible as ancestor of some of the nations which it includes. Its chief historical representatives are the Hebrews, Phœnicians, Assyrians, Arabs, and Babylonians. The early Semitic race conquered Chaldea, united Sumer and Accad, and have similarly left us records of their early civilization in cuneiform inscriptions and tablets. It is distinguished in religious history, because from it originated the three faiths whose main doctrine is that there is but one God; namely, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan. Apart from this, and with the special exception of the ancient Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the Semitic nations have not been generally distinguished for progress and enterprise, but have mainly kept to their old home between the Mediterranean, the river Tigris, and the Red Sea.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE ARYANS IN HISTORY

The leading part in the history of the world has been, and is still, played by the Aryan nations. The Caucasian presents us with the highest type among the five families of man; the Aryan branch of the Caucasian family presents us with the noblest pattern of that highest type.

The Aryan branch includes nearly all the present and past nations of Europe, the Greeks, Latins, Teutons or Germans, Celts and Slavonians; as well as three Asiatic peoples,--the Hindus, the Persians, and the Afghans and the modern Americans. It is the Aryans that have been the parents of new nations, and that have reached the highest point of intellectual development, as shown in their political freedom, and in their science, literature, and art.

The term Aryan is derived either from one ancient word implying that they were “cultivators of the soil,” or from another meaning “worthy, noble.” There was a time when these ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians, the Hindus, and of nearly all the European nations, were living together, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic race. Their earliest known home was the high tableland of central Asia, north and northwest of the Himalaya Mountains, near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers.

Through pressure of numbers, and spurred on by their own enterprising nature, these Aryan peoples for ages moved mainly westward, from their ancestral seats. A branch went southward across the Himalayas, and peopled Hindustan, Persia, and the intervening lands; another branch at different times and long intervals moved westward into Europe.

The Celts were the first European emigrants and spread themselves over a great part of the continent; as a distinct people they are now only found in parts of the British Isles and France. Later came the Italic (Latin) tribes who possessed the peninsula now known as Italy; the Hellenic (or Grecian) tribes, who occupied the peninsula of Greece; the Teutonic tribes, who replaced the Celts in central Europe, and finally also occupied Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula (Sweden and Norway). The last of the Aryans were the Slavonians, now spread over Russia, Poland, and Bohemia, and the Lithuanians, settled on the Baltic coast, partly in Prussia, partly in Russia. Thus was Europe gradually overspread by successive waves of Aryan settlement.

ARYAN CIVILIZATION BEFORE THE MIGRATION

The study of the early Aryan languages tells us what progress had been made by this race, before the time arrived for starting south and west, to possess the Western world. Whatever words are alike in these Aryan tongues must be the names of implements, or institutions, or ideas, used or conceived before the first wave of migration made its way. We thus learn that, at that far distant time, the Aryans had houses, plowed the earth, and ground their corn in mills. The family life was settled--basis as it is of all society and law--and had risen far above the savage state. The Aryans had sheep, cattle, horses, dogs, goats, and bees; drank a beverage made of honey; could work in copper, silver, gold; fought with the sword and bow; and had the beginnings of kingly rule which subsequently became the central element of the state.

DICTIONARY OF THE HISTORICAL RACE GROUPS

=Albanian= (al-bā´ni-an).--The native and aboriginal race or people of Albania, unlike most of the so-called European “races,” is a distinct race physically and not merely in language. It resembles most the Celtic race, but the type is taller: the northern Albanians, like the Montenegrins, rival the Scotch and the Norwegians in stature.

The Albanians are today a mixed race, as is every European people. They are brave, but turbulent in spirit--warriors rather than workers. Even their own tribes are at enmity among themselves and tribal and family feuds are common. It is the most backward in cultivation of all; and therefore not surprising that the rate of illiteracy is one of the highest in Europe.

In religion the Albanians are about equally divided among the Mohammedan, the Catholic, and the Greek faiths.

The Albanians go under many different names. Skipetar and Arnaut are equivalents of Albanian. All mean “highlander.” Until about the fifteenth century they were called Illyrians, or Macedonians. From them came the name of the ancient Roman province of Illyricum, embracing Epirus and parts of Macedonia. All the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula made their settlements during the middle ages. The Albanians, or Illyrians proper, previously occupied the entire country north to the Danube.

=Arabian= (a-rā´bi-än).--One of the three great groups of the Semitic branch of the Caucasian race. The Arabians are related to the Hebrews and include Arabs proper and the wandering Bedouin tribes of the desert. They have long since spread out from the country that bears their name and settled in distant portions of Africa and Asia, as well as penetrated into Europe. They have given their language, through the Koran, to the vaster populations of Mohammedan faith. They are not to be confounded with the Turks who are Mongolian, Tartar, in origin and speech, rather than Caucasian. Neither are they closely related to the Syrians who are Christians and Aryans, not Semites; nor even to the Berbers and the modern Moors of north Africa, who are Hamitic rather than Semitic in origin. Yet Syrians and Moors alike have long used the Arabic tongue.

=Armenian= (är-mē´ni-an) or =Haik=.--The Aryan race, or people of Armenia, in Asiatic Turkey. In language they are more European than are the Magyars, the Finns, or the Basques of Europe. The nearest relatives of the Armenic tongue are the Persian, the Hindu, and the Gypsy. In religion the Armenians differ from all the above-named peoples excepting the Syrians in that they are Christian. They boast a church as old as that of Rome.

Only a fraction of the Armenians are found in their own country, Armenia; perhaps one-eighth. Over 1,000,000 live in Russia; 400,000 in European Turkey; 100,000 in Persia; about 15,000 in or near Hungary; and 6000 in India and Africa. About half their number still live in different parts of the Turkish dominions. Large numbers have migrated because of the persecutions of the Turks and Kurds directed against them.

=Assyrians= (a-sir´i-äns).--The Assyrian is an ancient language extinct for at least two thousand years. No people today can claim pure physical descent from this stock. The arid region occupied by the early Assyrian empire has been swept by one civilization after another. Their ancient Hamitic speech was largely replaced by that of conquering Medes and Persians and, later, of Mohammedan hosts. It finally disappeared after the Babylonians and Chaldeans, who used a Semitic tongue replaced the Assyrians in Mesopotamia. Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, and Arabian blood has been added to the ancestral stock of the modern Assyrians. Reclus says: “The Assyrians and Chaldeans were either exterminated or else absorbed in the victorious races, forfeiting name, speech, and the very consciousness of their race.”

=Babylonians= (bab-i-lō´ni-äns).--Babylonia has always been a land of mixed races and tongues. The earliest of the inscriptions has revealed that the first population was a people belonging to the Mongolian family. The linguistic connection was afterwards confirmed by the discovery by de Sarzec of statues of these primitive inhabitants which present an undoubted Tartar type of features. The skull is that of the Mongolian race with high cheek-bones, curly black hair, the eyes oblique and bright; the type being ethnically related to the Elamites of Susiana and the first Medean stock to which we find this early race linguistically related.

These people were not aboriginal to the plains of Chaldea, but came, as their traditions indicate, from the mountains to the northeast, and brought with them the already fairly advanced elements of civilization which they planted in Chaldea. At a very early period in the history of Babylonia the Semites appear as an element in the population, their type being clearly indicated in the sculptures connecting them with the Hebrew and northern Arabs, while the same relationship is linguistically established. From time to time, by war or commerce, other elements were introduced into the population, until almost every nation finds its representative in the “mixed crowd of nations” inhabiting the plains of Chaldea.

The Semites, having once obtained a footing in Babylonia, soon assimilated themselves to the more advanced culture of their Sumero-Accadian masters. They borrowed the cuneiform mode of writing, the religion, mythology, and much of the science of that inventive people, and so rapidly increased in numbers and power, that as early as about 3800 B. C. we find a dynasty of Semitic kings under Sargon of Accad and his son Naram-Sin, ruling in northern Babylonia.

=THE WANDERING ARAB LOVES THE DESERT SANDS=

=Basques= (bȧskz).--A race inhabiting the Basque provinces and other parts of Spain in the neighborhood of the Pyrenees, and part of the adjacent territory in France. They were formerly Iberian as to language, the sole non-Aryan language of western Europe. But few now live in the old province of southwestern France, Gascony, formerly called “Vasconia,” after them; about 500,000 still remain in northwestern Spain. They are a fragment, perhaps the only distinct remnant, of the pre-Aryan race of Europe. Recent researches connect them, not with the Mongolian Finns as formerly, but with the Hamitic (Caucasian) Berbers of northern Africa. They are not now easily distinguished in physical appearance from their Spanish or French neighbors, although many still speak the strange Basque tongue. The latter is not inflected, like most European (Aryan) languages, but agglutinative, like the typical languages of northern Asia.

=Berbers= (bér´bérz).--A race of people constituting, with the Cushites, the Hamitic family, which is found scattered over North Africa and the Sahara, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. The complexion of the Berbers varies from white to dark brown; their features remind one of the Egyptian type; their stature is medium. They have occupied their present habitat since the dawn of history. Never have their indomitable tribes become entirely subject to a foreign master, or lost their racial and linguistic characteristics, in spite of Punic, Roman, Germanic, Arabic, and Saracen conquests. In the mountains they are agricultural; in the Sahara, nomadic. For centuries they have been the middlemen between the Mediterranean coast and the Negro states of the Sudan. In religion the Berbers are nominally Mohammedan. A few tribes have adopted the Arabic, and so have a few Arabs adopted Berber dialects. The Berber languages are often called Libyan. They number at least 7,000,000 in Morocco and Algeria and 500,000 in Tunis and Tripoli.

=Bulgarians= (bul-gā´ri-anz).--The people of Bulgaria are supposed to be Finnic (Mongolian) in origin, are also the most numerous people in European Turkey. The Bulgarians and their neighbors on the north, the Roumanians, are among the rare races that are physically of one stock and linguistically of another. Both possess adopted languages. While the Bulgarians appear to be Asiatics by origin who have adopted a Slavic speech, the Roumanians are Slavs who have adopted a Latin language. While the Bulgarians adopted the language of the Slavs, whom they conquered and organized politically, they were themselves swallowed up in the Slavic population. They lost not only their ancient language but their physical type. While they are the most truly Asiatic in origin of all the Slavs, they are Europeanized in appearance and character. In some respects their life is more civilized and settled than that of some of the Slavs farther west, as in Montenegro and Dalmatia. They are not only less warriors in spirit than these, but are more settled as agriculturists. Yet they seem to feel that they do not belong to the civilization of Europe, properly speaking, for they say of one who visits the countries farther west that he “goes to Europe.”

There would appear to be little doubt that the Bulgars came through southern Russia to their present home in the time of the early migrations of the middle ages. Some records locate them in the second century on the river Volga, from which they appear to have taken their name. In fact, a country called “Greater Bulgaria” was known there as late as the tenth century. If the common supposition be correct, the Bulgarians are most nearly related in origin to the Magyars of Hungary and the Finns of northern Russia. After these they are nearest of kin to the Turks, who have long lived among them as rulers. But Turks and Finns alike are but branches of the great Ural-Altaic family, which had its origin in northern Asia, probably in Mongolia.

=Carthaginians.=--See Phœnicians.

=Celts=, or =Kelts= (kelts).--The peoples which speak languages akin to those of Wales, Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, and Britanny, and constitute a branch or principal division of the Indo-European families. Formerly these peoples occupied, partly or wholly, France, Spain, northern Italy, the western parts of Germany, and the British Islands. Of the remaining Celtic languages and peoples there are two chief divisions, viz., the GAELIC, comprising the Highlanders of Scotland, the Irish, and the Manx, and the CYMRIC, comprising the Welsh and Bretons.

Irish, because of its more extensive literature and greater antiquity, is considered to be the chief branch of the Gaelic group. Modern Erse or Scotch is thought to be a more recent dialect of Irish. Manx is the dialect spoken by a small number of persons in the Isle of Man. Welsh is the best preserved of the Cymric group. It has a literature nearly if not quite as rich as that of Irish, and is spoken by a larger population than any other Celtic language found in the British Isles. Low Breton, or Armorican, is the speech found in Lower Brittany, in France. It is spoken by nearly two-thirds as many persons as are all other Celtic dialects combined.

This “Celtic” race seems to have had its main center of dissemination in the highlands of the Alps of midwestern Europe. While all Celtic-speaking peoples are mixed races, those of the British Isles are distinctly long-headed and tall, in fact, are among the tallest of all Europe. It is almost impossible to give the population of the Celtic race--that is, of those whose ancestral language was Celtic--since most of its members now speak English or French only.

=Chaldean.=--See Babylonian.

=Chinese= (chī-nēs´ or -nēz´).--The race or people inhabiting China proper. Linguistically, one of the Sinitic groups of the Mongolian or Asiatic race. The name Chinese is also applied, erroneously from an ethnical standpoint, to all the natives of the Chinese Empire, including China proper; that is, to the entire Sibiric group. These are, on the northeast the Manchus, on the north the Mongols, on the west the tribes of Turkestan and of Thibet. The name does not properly apply to the other Sinitic peoples--the Cochin-Chinese and the Annamese of the French colonies and the Burmese of the British colonies, all of whom border on China on the south and southwest. The people of Manchuria and of Mongolia are not so nearly related linguistically to the Chinese as they are to the Japanese. All these “Sibiric” peoples have agglutinative languages, while the Chinese is monosyllabic, being more nearly related to the languages stretching from Thibet southeast to the Malay Peninsula.

The Chinese physical type is well known--yellowish in color, with slanting eyes, high cheek bones, black hair, and a flat face. The eye is more properly described as having the “Mongolic fold” at the inner angle. This mark is found to some extent in all Mongolian peoples, in the Japanese, and now and then in individuals of the European branches of this race in Russia and Austria-Hungary.

=Egyptian= (ē-jipt´ē-ăn).--The ancient race or people of Egypt, best represented to-day by the Copts or Fellahs, although those are generally of mixed stock. In a political sense, any native of Egypt.

The origin of the Egyptians is still a matter of dispute. It is quite probable that they were Hamitic and belonged to the Berber type. They have no real negroid trace about them, though probably there is a strain from intermarrying; thus it is likely that they may have been a fair-skinned indigenous race, mixed also with people of Asiatic origin, and a certain amount of negro blood. The earliest types, as pictured by themselves on monuments, show men of fine build with no trace of the negroid type; the males are painted red-brown and the females a light yellowish tint.

The fellah (Arabic for ploughman) forms the bulk of the peasantry. They are chiefly Mohammedan in faith, though the Copts, also natives of Egypt, have kept their Christian belief.

The fellah is a hard-working and industrious person, of big build, with a fine, oval face, smooth black hair (the head is usually shaved), and well formed features. The women are often of great beauty, both in form and figure, though they lose their youth early. The Copts are racially the purest descendants of the ancient Egyptians. The coloring of the fellah varies from a fair yellowish shade in Lower Egypt to a deeper tone in Middle Egypt, and in Upper Egypt the majority are a deep bronze. The Arab portion of the population are of two classes: the Arabic speaking tribes who come from the deserts, and the Hamitic tribes who speak a language of their own. The Nubians are chiefly mixed with Arab blood. The foreigners are mainly Greeks, Turks, Italians, British, French, Syrians, Levantines, and Persians.

=Etrurians= (ē-tru´ri-anz), or =Etruscans= (ē-trus´-kanz).--The ancient inhabitants of Etruria, the modern Tuscany. The Etrurians are the most mysterious people of antiquity. According to ancient tradition, they came from Lydia in prehistoric times, and colonized Latium. Certain details of their costumes and customs appear to be identical with those of Lydia, and the legend is probably based upon fact.

The Etruscans were proverbially a religious people. Their tombs bear witness to a belief in a future life, and a dread of the malignant power of their deities.

=Greeks.=--The ancient Greeks belonged to Aryan or Indo-European race. They entered Greece from the North, and as they moved south in separate tribes, the foremost tribes were impelled forward by the pressure of those behind. Even when the whole of the peninsula had been for some time filled and fully occupied, a fresh wave of immigrants swept over the whole country, disturbing everything. Such a wave was the “Return of the Heraclidæ,” or the Dorian Invasion. The result was to drive emigrants on to and over the isles of Greece, and to plant Greek cities and Greek culture on the coasts of Asia Minor. At later times Sicily, the Black Sea, Libya, etc., were dotted with Greek colonies, the ancient Greeks were pre-eminent in philosophy and science, leaders in the civilization of their own day, and laid the foundations of modern civilization.

The modern Greek race or people is that which has descended, with considerable foreign admixture, from the ancient Greeks. While the stock has changed much, physically and otherwise, the modern language is more nearly like the ancient Greek than Italian, for instance, is like the ancient Latin.

The Greek race of today is intensely proud of its language and its history, and naturally wishes to be considered as genuinely Hellenic. The official title of the country is now the “Kingdom of Hellas,” and any citizen, however mixed in race, styles himself a Hellene. The people are wide-awake on political questions, are avid readers of newspapers, and, like the Greek of older times, eager to learn some new thing. Generally speaking, in customs, superstitions, and folklore, the modern race is a continuation of the ancient.

It may not be commonly known that the greater part of the Greeks live outside of Greece, probably twice as numerous as those in Greece. Ripley says that they form a third of the total population of the Balkan States. On the other hand, von Hellwald says that of the population of Greece itself only about 1,300,000 are truly Greek in race.

=Gypsies= (jip´sēz).--A peculiar wandering race which appeared in eastern Europe in the fourteenth century and is now found in every country of Europe, as well as in parts of Asia, Africa, and America. The Gypsies are distinguishable from the peoples among whom they rove by their bodily appearance and by their language. Their forms are generally light, lithe, and agile; skin of a tawny color; eyes large, black and brilliant; hair long, coal black, and often ringleted; mouth well shaped; and teeth very white. Ethnologists generally concur in regarding the Gypsies as descendants of some obscure Hindu tribe. They pursue various nomadic occupations, being tinkers, basket-makers, fortune-tellers, dealers in horses, etc.; are often expert musicians; and are credited with thievish propensities. They appear to be destitute of any system of religion, but traces of various forms of paganism are found in their language and customs.

The Gypsy calls himself “Rom,” whence comes Romany as a name for the language. Special names are applied to Gypsies in the different countries where they are found. Some of these relate to the supposed origin of this singular people, as Gypsy or Egyptian in the British Isles, Bohémien in France, Gitano (Egyptian) in Spain, and Tatare in Scandinavia. In some countries they are known, by a term of contempt, as Heiden (heathen) in Holland, Harami (robbers) in Egypt, and Tinklers in Scotland, but in most parts of Europe a local form of the word Zingani is used to designate them, as Zigeuner in Germany, Cygany in Hungary, and Zingari in Spain.

Intermarriage with other peoples is becoming more frequent. Through loss of language, the assumption of a sedentary life, and intermarriage, Gypsies are decreasing in numbers and seem everywhere doomed to extinction by absorption.

Of the total population of Gypsies in the world, three-fourths are in Europe. There are 200,000 in Roumania, 100,000 each in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula, 50,000 each in Spain, Russia and Servia, and 50,000 in Germany and Italy combined. The number in the British Isles is variously estimated at from 5,000 to 20,000. There are thought to be 100,000 in Asia and 25,000 in Africa. Only a few thousand are found in the Americas.

=Hebrews= (hē´bruz), =Jewish= or =Israelite=.--The race or people that originally spoke the Hebrew language. They were primarily of Semitic origin, and according to tradition, descended from Heber, the great-grandson of Shem, in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are scattered throughout Europe, especially in Russia, yet preserve their own individuality to a marked degree. Linguistically, the nearest relatives of the ancient Hebrew are the Syriac, Assyrian, and Arabic languages. While the Hebrew is not so nearly a dead language as the related Syrian, Aramaic, or the ancient Assyrian, its use in most Jewish communities is confined mainly to religious exercises. The Jews have adopted the languages of the peoples with whom they have long been associated. More speak Yiddish, called in Europe “Judeo-German,” than any other language, since the largest modern population of Jews borders on eastern Germany and has been longest under German influence.

Physically the Hebrew is a mixed race. In every country, however, they are found to approach in type the people among whom they have long resided. The two chief divisions of the Jewish people are the northern type, and the Spanish or southern type. The latter are now found mainly in the countries southeast of Austria. They consider themselves to be of purer race than the northern Jews and in some countries refuse to intermarry or worship with the latter. Their features are more truly Semitic.

The social solidarity of the Jews is chiefly a product of religion and tradition. Taking all factors into account, and especially their type of civilization, the Jews of today are more truly European than Asiatic or Semitic.

The Jews are endowed with the most varied qualities, as shown by the whole course of their checkered history. Originally pure nomads, the Israelites became excellent husbandmen after the settlement in Canaan, and since then they have given proof of the highest capacity for poetry, letters, erudition of all kinds, philosophy, finance, music, and diplomacy. The reputation of the medieval Arabs as restorers of learning is largely due to their wise tolerance of the enlightened Jewish communities in their midst.

In late years the persecutions, especially in Russia and Roumania, have caused a fresh exodus, and flourishing agricultural settlements have been founded in Argentina and Palestine.

Jewish immigrants usually, however, settle in the cities. New York City, for example, has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, now estimated by some at about 1,000,000, or nearly one-fourth of the total population. About 50,000 more are added annually. Among large cities, Warsaw and Odessa have a still larger ratio of Jewish population, namely, one-third. In London, on the contrary, only one-fiftieth of the population is Hebrew. The Jewish population of the entire United States is less than 2,000,000.

=Hindus= (hin´duz), or =Hindoos=.--The native race in India descended from the Aryan conquerors. Their purest representatives belong to the two great historic castes of Brahmans and Rajputs. Many of the non-Aryan inhabitants of India have been largely Hinduized. More loosely the name includes also the non-Aryan inhabitants of India.

It is not generally realized how great a number of races and tribes there are in India, many of them extremely low in civilization and approaching the Negro in physical characteristics. Such are some of the Dravidas and Mundas, who occupy all of southern India. In greatest contrast with these are the Aryan Hindus of the north, more closely related in language, if not in physical appearance, to the northern Europeans than are the Turks, Magyars, and various peoples of eastern Russia.

Hindi and Hindustani are the most widely spread modern languages or group of dialects of India. Hindustani is generally understood to be the polite speech of all India, and especially of Hindustan. Hindi, in the wider sense of the term, is spoken by 97,000,000 of people, mainly of northern India. The darker non-Aryans and Mongolians alone of India nearly equal the population of the United States. There are one hundred and forty-seven peoples or tribes speaking different languages.

=Indians= (in´di-anz).--The aboriginal inhabitants of North America were so named on the supposition that the lands discovered by the early navigators were parts of India. This erroneous name has continued in use ever since, notwithstanding attempts at its correction. The Indians were not nomadic until after the arrival of Europeans, who drove many tribes from their established seats to those occupied by other tribes. From the same Europeans they procured the horse and firearms, both of which were necessary to a nomadic life under the existing conditions.

Explorers and early settlers gave fanciful names to many of the groups of Indians which they encountered. Efforts to reproduce native tribal names (unpronounceable in foreign tongues) in the traveler’s own language, resulted in many different names for the same tribes. Several thousand names for Indian tribes or groups are found in the English and European writings of the last three hundred years.

Recent ethnological study tends to recognize possibly two marked types of North American Indians, (1) those facing the Pacific and the Asiatic Continent with its broad-headed Mongolic races; and (2) those found chiefly on the Eastern Slope, looking toward Africa and Europe. They incline to the view, also, that the race is not traceable to a “single origin, but that immigrants came by many routes from many regions.” While a similarity in the new environment tended to bring the fragments of the old populations into similarity of physical type, likenesses in language, are accepted as the sound basis for classification of Indian tribes and groups.

Major J. W. Powell, in 1891, recognized “fifty-eight linguistic families,” and mapped the geographic distribution of these great stocks over the continent. The Pacific coast has a multiplicity of small linguistic families; while the more populous central and eastern parts have comparatively fewer linguistic stocks. Dr. McGee, in 1896 estimated the number of Indian tribes belonging to various linguistic families at 782--the largest number of these, tribes of little importance, numerically or historically. Some of the principal linguistic families are:

1. THE ALGONQUIAN (including thirty-six tribes) originally distributed along the Atlantic Coast from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as far south as North Carolina, and throughout the middle portion of the continent from Tennessee, northward throughout the main part of Canada. Among them were the tribes found in New England and Virginia by the earliest settlers from Europe,--the Abnaki, Delawares, Narragansetts, Pequots, Powhatans, Mohegans, Ottawas, Illinois, Objibwa (Chippewa), Cheyennes, Siksika and Arapaoes, with the now largely civilized and dispersed Potawatomi.

2. THE ATHABASCAN (fifty-three tribes) chiefly found now in Northwestern Canada, but including also the large Southwestern tribe of about 30,000 Navahoes, in Arizona and New Mexico; the Apaches and the Mescaleros, with a few small tribal groups on the coast of central and northern California.

3. THE IROQUOIAN (thirteen tribes) among which were the famous “Five Nations” of New York, including the Cayugas, Oneidas, Senecas, Onondagas, Tuscaroras, Mohawks, the numerous Cherokees, and the Hurons, nearly annihilated in 1650 by the Iroquois.

=TWO INSTRUCTIVE VIEWS OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN=

4. THE SIOUAN (sixty-eight tribes) including the great Dakota (Sioux) tribes, with their numerous sub-divisions; the Omahas, Poncas, Osages, the Winnebagos, Iowas, Crows; and the Catawbas in Carolina, who perhaps mark the original eastern habitat from which Siouan tribes moved northwest.

5. THE SHOSHONEAN (twelve tribes) including the Comanches, Utes, Hopis, and Shoshone.

6. THE MUSKHOGEAN (nine tribes) including the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles.

7. THE ESKIMAUAN family (seventy tribes) scattered through Greenland and the Arctic Coast and islands of Central and North America and Alaska.

8. THE PUEBLO, including the Zuñi, Hopi and Tegna.

On the continent of North America, north of Mexico, three or four hundred years ago, there were probably about 1,150,000 Indians. Of these, perhaps 850,000 were on territory now that of the United States proper; 220,000 in British America; 72,000 in Alaska; and 10,000 in Greenland. Numerous and prolonged intertribal wars, ravages of tuberculosis, and fevers, are known to have swept off entire populations of large districts, before contact with Whites had greatly accelerated the death-rate of the American Indians. Smallpox, introduced by the Whites, has nearly extinguished entire tribes, time after time. Whiskey, and attendant dissipation, sexual diseases brought in by Whites, and the lowered vitality which results from changed conditions of life, with tuberculosis, rendered much more deadly in the conditions of life forced upon Indians by the Whites, had largely reduced the Indian population before 1800, and have steadily tended toward the extermination of Indians since that date, although intermarriages and enrolment of mixed-bloods have kept up the numbers on tribal rolls.

The most interesting groups of Indians in Central and South America have been the (a) Aztecs, (b) Pipils, making the Nahuatlan group; and the (a) Mayas, (b) Quichés, (c) Pocomans, making the Huastecan group.

THE AZTECS were the dominant race in Mexico prior to their conquest by Spaniards. Although the name is usually extended to all the semi-civilized tribes of Nahuatlan (Aztlan, “heron clan”) stock, it properly belongs only to a small group of seven related clans. The principal tribe had its capital at Tenochtitlan, now the city of Mexico. They developed a form of astronomy which was mainly astrological, and could take accurate observations, not only of lunations, but also of the periods of Venus. They divided the solar year into eighteen months of twenty days each and named each day by consecutive hieroglyphics. Their writing system was mainly pictorial. The Aztec monuments, however, or pyramids surmounted by temples, were not to be compared with those of Yucatan, while the finest in Mexico itself (Teotihuacan, Colula, Papantla) were the work of their Toltec predecessors.

Possessed of a high degree of culture, the Aztecs were also notorious for their cruelty and the barbarous character of their religious rites. Some of their descendants, comparatively pure in blood and retaining the ancient language, are still to be found in the neighborhood of the city of Mexico.

INCAS (ing´käz).--The reigning and aristocratic order in ancient Peru from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. They were originally a tribe or family of the Quichés who inhabited certain valleys near Cuzco and first became dominant under Manco Capac about 1240. Their own traditions described Manco Capac as a child of the Sun. From him descended the twelve other historical sovereigns of Peru, the last reigning one being Huascar, though the lineage was preserved long after. These sovereigns (the Incas in a restricted sense) always married their own sisters, and the throne was inherited, in general, by the oldest son proceeding from this marriage. Children by their other wives could not, by custom or law, receive the crown, though this rule was broken when Atahualpa inherited a part of the empire in 1523. The rule of the Incas was absolute, but very mild. They had attained to a high state of civilization before the arrival of the Spaniards. They cultivated many of the arts, and had some knowledge of astronomy. They had domesticated the llamas and alpacas, had brought under cultivation maize, potatoes and other edible roots, understood mining and the working of metals, and excelled as masons, weavers, potters, and farmers. They brought the science of government to a high pitch of perfection. The Incas composed songs and dramas; and as soldiers their skill and prowess enabled them to conquer and consolidate a vast empire. Three centuries of oppression under Spanish rule have deteriorated the character of the Inca Indian, but he is still industrious and honest, and retains some of the virtues of his ancestors.

=Israelites.=--See Hebrews.

=Japanese.=--The Japanese and Koreans form the easternmost group of the great Sibiric branch, which, with the Sinitic branch (Chinese, etc.,) constitutes the Mongolian race. The Japanese and Koreans stand much nearer than the Chinese to the Finns, Lapps, Magyars, and Turks of Europe, who are the westernmost descendants of the Mongolian race. The languages of all these peoples belong to the agglutinative family, while Chinese is monosyllabic.

Although many people may mistake a Japanese face for Chinese, the Mongolian traits are much less pronounced. The skin is much less yellow, the eyes less oblique. The hair, however, is true Mongolian, black and round in section, and the nose is small. These physical differences no doubt indicate that the Japanese are of mixed origin. In the south there is probably a later Malay admixture. In some respects their early culture resembles that of the Philippines of today.

Then there is an undoubted white strain in Japan. The Ainos, the earliest inhabitants of Japan, are one of the most truly Caucasian-like people in appearance in eastern Asia. They have dwindled away to less than 20,000 under the pressure of the Mongolian invasion from the mainland, but they have left their impress upon the Japanese race. The “fine” type of the aristocracy, the Japanese ideal, as distinct from the “coarse” type recognized by students of the Japanese of today, is perhaps due to the Aino.

The race, as a whole, is physically under-developed, the men being small, and harsh in feature, while the women lose their good looks after the first bloom of youth is over. The girls, with their rosy cheeks, fascinating manners, and exquisitely tasteful dress, are, however, particularly attractive, and the children are bright and comely, being allowed full liberty to enjoy themselves--indeed Japan is the paradise of children.

The Japanese have many excellent qualities, they are kindly, courteous, law-abiding, cleanly in their habits, frugal, and possessed of a high sense of personal honor which makes sordidness unknown. This is associated, moreover, with an ardent patriotic spirit, quite removed from factiousness. On the other hand the people are deficient in moral earnestness and courage, which leads to corruption in social life and institutions.

The town costume of the Japanese gentleman consists of a loose silk robe extending from the neck to the ankles, but gathered in at the waist, round which is fastened a girdle of brocaded silk. Over this is worn a loose, wide-sleeved jacket, decorated with the wearer’s armorial device. White cotton socks, cleft at the great toes, and wooden pattens complete the attire. European costume has been prescribed by government as the official dress, and the empress and her suite have recently adopted foreign costume, being followed to a certain extent by the fashionable ladies of the capital. Hats are not generally worn, except by those who follow European fashions or in the heat of summer.

The women wear a loose robe, overlapping in front and fastened with a broad heavy girdle of silk (obi), often of great value. In winter a succession of these robes are worn, one over the other. The formerly universal chignon coiffure of the women, stiff with pomatum, which was done up by the hair-dresser once or twice a week, is rapidly yielding to the simpler Grecian knot.

MODE OF LIVING.--Japanese houses are slight constructions of wood. In the northern districts at least two sides of the house are closed in with walls of mud plastered on wicker-work. The floors are covered with thick soft straw mats, measuring six by three feet, and the accommodation of the houses is reckoned by the number of these mats. On them the inmates sit, eat and sleep, the bed-clothes--heavily padded quilts--being kept during the day in adjoining closets. Rice is the staple food of the people, but in the poorer mountainous regions millet often takes its place. Fish, seaweed, and beans in all forms are served with the rice, especially in the soups, which likewise contain bean curd, eggs, and vegetables. Chestnuts and hazel-nuts are also largely eaten, and the walnut is made into a sweetmeat. Shōyu (soy), a sauce made of beans and wheat, is the universal condiment. Fowls are now pretty widely used for the table, and pork and beef, as well as bread, are increasingly eaten.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.--The social position of women is more favorable than in most non-Christian countries, but still leaves much to be desired. Marriages are arranged through an intermediary, and both sexes marry at an early age. As the continuance of families is a point of great importance, adoption is largely resorted to in order to prevent families dying out. Great respect is paid to the dead, and posthumous names are conferred after death, some of the most celebrated names in Japanese history being posthumous titles. Heavy sums are lavished on funerals.

Until lately the only vehicles in Japan were two kinds of palanquin; but in all the more level districts these have now been superseded by the jinrikĭsha (man-power-carriage), a sort of two-wheeled perambulator drawn by a man who runs between the shafts. In many of the more mountainous regions the roads are impracticable even for the jinrikĭsha.

The Japanese are essentially a pleasure-loving people, and spend comparatively large sums upon amusements. The theater, though formerly despised by the samurai class, who refused to enter its doors, forms one of the chief national resorts. The time of greatest festivity is the New Year, now held contemporaneously with our own, when pinetrees are planted before the doors, the houses are gay with decoration, and presents are lavishly made. The favorite game at this season is oyobane, a kind of battledore and shuttlecock. January is the kite season; the smaller kites are of various fantastic shapes, while the larger and more powerful ones are usually rectangular. Wrestling, juggling, and archery are favorite sports.

RELIGIONS OF JAPAN.--There are two prevailing religions in Japan--Shintoism (The way of the gods), the indigenous faith; and Buddhism, introduced from China in 552.

The characteristics of Shintoism in its pure form are the absence of an ethical and doctrinal code, of idol-worship, of priestcraft, and of any teachings concerning a future state, and the deification of heroes, emperors, and great men, together with the worship of certain forces and objects in nature.

Of Buddhists there are no fewer than thirty-five sects. The monks have assumed the functions of priests, and Japanese Buddhist worship presents striking resemblances to that of the Roman Catholic Church. Notwithstanding the increased patronage recently bestowed upon Shintoism by the government, Buddhism is still the dominant religion among the people.

Japan is a land of temples, but many are now falling into decay, while others are turned into schoolhouses. Every grove has its shrine and torii, a structure in wood or stone, consisting of two upright pillars joined at the top by two transverse beams or slabs; metal torii are also not unknown. The Buddhist monasteries in the Japanese middle ages were undoubtedly wonderful centers of civilization, and the priests for long commanded reverence by their self-denial.

=Latins=, or =Latini= (la-tī´ni), or =Romans=.--The ancient Latins inhabited Latium, on the west coast of central Italy, before the existence of Rome. It would seem that they had branched off from the Aryan stem next after the Celts, and upon entering Italy soon united with the primitive Liguirians, later forming a confederation or league of which Alba Longa became the head.

Out of the Latins, Etruscans (which see) and Sabines (another primal stock), the Roman people were originally formed, each speaking a most marked variety of the original Italic mother-tongue. The principal element was Latin, as the language shows. The next in importance was the Sabine, and the third, in order both of time and of influence, was the Etruscan. But with the spread of the Roman arms (the Romans were Latins), all were absorbed by the Latin variety, which still lives in its modern progeny--Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Langue d’Oc (South France), Langue d’Oïl (North or Standard French), Roumanian, Walloon of Belgium, Rumansch or Ladin and Vaudois of Switzerland. Thus half of Europe has been Latinized, while the different nationalities still retain their distinctive physical and mental characters.

=Malays= (mālāz´).--Blumenbach, the father of ethnology, regarded the Malays as one of the five grand divisions of mankind; but the weight of modern authorities is in favor of considering them as a branch of the Mongolian race. They are distinguished in color by a variety of shades of brown, and are native to the Malay Archipelago and Peninsula and the Island of Madagascar, with perhaps a few related remnants of tribes in Indo-China. The Malay Archipelago includes the Philippines, but not New Guinea on the east. Within this archipelago there is no other native race with the exception of the small groups of pigmy Negroes called Negritos distantly related to the Papuan of New Guinea, if not to the Australian.

All the languages spoken by the Malay race belong to the great Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, which are found everywhere among Polynesians; that is, as far east as the waters of South America and northward to include the Hawaiian Islands. The term Malay is also applied in a narrower sense to that part of the Malay race called the “true Malay” or “Orang Malaya,” that is, the section speaking the standard Malay tongue and which lived originally in and about the Malay Peninsula.

While linguistically the Malays are radically distinct from the Mongolians, physically they approach them more nearly than any other great race. The lighter brown color found in some sections approaches the yellow of the Chinese, and the slanting eye or “Mongol fold” of the upper lid is frequently found where no intermixture can be assumed. The appearance of the face and head is also somewhat similar in these races. In temperament and native civilization, however, the Malay is quite distinct. He has primitive, cruel instincts more like those of the American Indian. He has nowhere accepted the Mongolian type of civilization so much as the Caucasian type. The Filipinos are far in advance of any other Malay people in the latter respect, although the earlier Malayan civilization was most highly developed in Java. Buddhism has here been replaced by Mohammedanism, which has extended even into the southern Philippines.

The question of their origin has been much discussed, some fixing the cradle of the race on the Asiatic mainland, others in Sumatra.

The Malay intellect is of a low order, and the race has never developed a native culture, their civilization being entirely due to foreign influences, chiefly Hindu and Arab.

=Mongolian= (mon-gō´li-än).--The second in Blumenbach’s classification of the races of mankind. The chief characteristics are broad cheekbones, low, retreating forehead, short and broad nose, and yellowish complexion. It included the Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Tartars, Indo-Chinese, Lapps, etc. The Mongolian and the Caucasian are the two largest races, or divisions, of mankind,--the latter being somewhat the larger because it includes the greater part of the population of India.

Just as the Caucasian race extends into southwestern and southern Asia, so the Mongolian race extends far into Europe, embracing not only the Lapps of Scandinavia, the Finns, Cossacks, and many other peoples of Russia, and the Turks of southern Europe, but even the Magyars of Hungary, the most advanced of all the Europeans of Mongolian origin. The main western branches of the Mongolians, although Europeanized in blood as well as in culture, still possess a Mongolian speech.

Brinton divides the Mongolian race into two great branches, the Sinitic and the Sibiric.

The word “Sinitic” is derived from the late Latin Sina, China. It comprises that branch of the Mongolian race of which the Chinese, Indo-Chinese, and Tibetan groups are the chief representatives.

The Sibiric branch of the Mongolian race comprises the Japanese, Arctic, Tungusic, Finnic, Tataric, and Mongolic groups, and therefore all the Mongolian peoples which have invaded Europe, such as the Finns, Lapps, Magyars, and Osmanlis or Turks.

=Moor= is a term applied to very different peoples of northwestern Africa. In Roman history it is applied to inhabitants of Mauretania (Morocco and Algeria), who were in part Phoenician colonists. In Spanish history the “Moors” and “Moriscos” were mainly Berbers rather than, as commonly supposed, Arabs. Today the word is wrongly applied to the Riffs of Morocco and to the town dwellers of Algeria and Tunis. The latter call themselves generally “Arabs,” although often in part of Berber blood. The Moors, in a stricter racial sense, are the mixed Trarza and other tribes on the western coast, from Morocco to the Senegal, mainly of nomadic habits. They are of mixed Berber, Arab, and often Negro blood. Many speak Arabic.

=Negro.=--The only negroes to whom practically all ethnologists are willing to apply the term are those inhabiting the central and western third of Africa, excluding even the Bantus, who occupy practically all Africa south of the Equator. The Bantus, well typified by the Zulu subdivision, are lighter in color than the true negroes, never sooty black, but of a reddish-brown. From the negroes proper of the Sudan have descended most American negroes.

To some extent the northern Negro stock has become intermixed with the African Caucasian, especially about the Upper Nile, in Abyssinia, and in Gallaland and Somaliland farther east. Keane’s theory is that the Australians and Africans represent the earliest offshoots of the precursors of man who inhabited the continent now submerged in the Indian Ocean. In line with this theory is the claim that the Veddahs and Dravidians of India are still more divergent branches toward the north which have become more affected by Caucasian or, perhaps, Mongolian elements.

The Papuans and Nigritos of Australasia, having all or most of the characteristics of the African negroes, are classed with them.

There is a bewildering confusion in the terms used to indicate the different mixtures of white and dark races in America. Thus, all natives of Cuba, whether colored or white, are called “creoles,” as this word is loosely used in the United States; but creole, as more strictly defined, applies only to those who are native-born but of pure European descent. This is the use of the word in Mexico. In Brazil and Peru, on the contrary, it is applied to those possessing colored blood in some proportion; in Brazil to Negroes of pure descent; and in Peru to the issue of whites and mestizos. “Mestizo” is the Spanish word applied to half-breeds (white and Indian.)

SLAVE TRAFFIC IN AMERICA.--The importation of Negroes into America has been going on steadily since the early years of the sixteenth century, when it was begun by the Spaniards, even the good Las Casas recommending it in the interest of the native Indians. Both Queen Elizabeth and King James I. issued patents to English slave-trading companies operating between the coast of Guinea and the American colonies. Britain, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, engaged to carry out the contract of the old French Guinea Company, and to import into the New World one hundred and thirty thousand slaves in the course of the next thirty years, and is said to have more than made good the engagement.

In the United States the traffic was open and active until the passage of the Act of 1794 prohibiting the importation of slaves into any of the federal ports. Long after this it continued to be a brisk business in the West Indies and South America. As late as 1840 there were seventy-five ships plying constantly between Brazilian ports and the African coast, bringing cargoes of three or four hundred slaves at each trip. The principal points at which the slaves were obtained were along the coast of Guinea, especially on what was known as the Slave Coast, between the rivers Lagos and Assinie, where were the crowded marts of Waidah and Anamaboe, and again along the Angola coast. In these two regions the traders encountered two quite different branches of the African race, and their human wares in America show that they were derived from different sources. Along the Guinea coast, whence most of the slaves brought to the United States were derived, the population belongs to the true negro type.

In Brazil and other parts of South America the preponderance of importations was from the negroid stock of the equator, whose dialects and physical traits are allied to those of the Kaffirs and Zulus of the east coast (Bantus). The slaves in all parts, however, being from mixed stocks, their descendants do not present any well-marked peculiarities inside those of the race. As a rule, they are in strength equal to the whites, and in endurance of exposure and labor under a tropical sun are superior to all other immigrants.

It is usually held that the negro is not naturally industrious; but this seems to some extent answered by the severe field labor of many tribes, both men and women, in their native continent, and by the official reports of the United States government showing a greater acreage of land under cultivation in the former slave states and a larger crop of cotton than before the Civil War. When under the control of a strong social organization, and with obvious motives for industry and economy before his eyes, the American negro is both industrious and provident, and the instances are numerous where members of the race have accumulated fortunes of respectable size. Their vitality appears on the whole to be about the same as the whites, except in the more northern states, where it is unquestionably much less. In New England and Canada negroes gradually but surely perish.

NEGRO CHARACTERISTICS.--The negro is a tireless talker and story-teller. Many of them reveal a high stage of the art of story-telling, as the Georgia tales collected from the southern states by various writers attest. Many of them belong to the class of “beast-fables,” similar to some which have been collected among the American Indians and the natives of the African continent, and such as were favorite staples of amusement in Europe during the middle ages.

One of the principal figures is the rabbit--the “brer rabbit” of the “Uncle Remus” tales. He figures conspicuously not only in the southern United States, but in the West Indies and on the Amazons, and in the folklore of the Venezuelan negroes.

Along with story-telling, singing and music are favorite diversions of the colored population. This tendency is a direct inheritance from their African ancestry, as throughout that continent the natives are passionately fond of these diversions. In Central America the negroes still employ the marimba, a native African instrument with wooden keys placed over jars or gourds, the keys being struck with a stick. In the United States the violin, the fife, and the guitar are used, but the favorite is the banjo, an instrument of African derivation, modified from the guitars with grass strings still in use on the Guinea coast. With these simple means they produce music of pleasant though not artistic character. In individual instances (as Blind Tom, born in Georgia in 1849) members of the race have attained remarkable skill on the piano and organ, rendering the most difficult compositions with spirit. No negro composer, however, has attained wide celebrity. Their songs are numerous, many of them of a religious character, others turning on the incidents of daily life. They are generally defective in prosody and without merit, being often little more than words strung together to carry an air.

=Persians= (per´shanz).--The natives or inhabitants of ancient or of modern Persia. The Persian race or people is quite different from the Persian nationality. The latter includes several very different peoples, as will presently be seen. Linguistically the Persian is the chief race of Persia speaking an Iranic language, that is, one of the Aryan tongues most nearly related to the Hindi. Physically, the race is of mixed Caucasian stock. It is almost entirely composed of Tajiks. The small section known as “Parsis” or, incorrectly, “Fire worshipers,” have for the most part emigrated to India. The Armenians are so closely related to the Persians as to be put with them by some into the Iranic branch. The Kurds, the Beluchis, and the Afghans also belong to the latter.

Of the 9,500,000 estimated population of Persia about two-thirds are true Persian or “Tajik.” The other third is also Caucasian for the most part, including Kurds (400,000), Armenians (150,000), and other Iranians (820,000), and the non-Aryan Arabs (350,000). There are 550,000 Turks and 300,000 Mongols in the Empire. The only Christians are the Armenians and a small group of 25,000 “Chaldeans,” “Assyrians,” or “Nestorians,” really eastern Syrians, about Lake Urmia, on the northwestern border.

In intellect, if not in civilization the Persian is perhaps more nearly a European than is the pure Turk. He is more alert and accessible to innovation. Yet he is rather brilliant and poetical than solid in temperament. Like the Hindu he is more eager to secure the semblance than the substance of modern civilization.

=Slavs= (slȧvz).--Peoples widely spread in eastern, southeastern, and central Europe. The Russian and Polish are its leading tongues. The Slavs are divided into two sections--the southeastern and the western. The former section comprises the Russians, Bulgarians, Serbo-Croatians, and Slovenes; the latter, the Poles, Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Wends, etc.

Physically, and perhaps temperamentally, the Slavs approach the Asiatic, or particularly the Tartar, more closely than do the peoples of western Europe. In language they are as truly Aryan as ourselves. Of course, languages do not fuse by interbreeding; physical races do. There is some truth in the old saying, “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar,” especially if he come from southern Russia, where once lived the Mongol conquerors of the Russians.

Yet the common conception of the Slav as dreamy and impractical does not seem to fit with the greatness of the new nation which impresses the imagination of the beholder more than any other in Europe. The fact is that we do not know the Slav. Unfortunately the unlikeness of the language to those of western Europe, perhaps even the unfamiliarity of the alphabet used, has delayed the study of what must soon be regarded as one of the great languages and literatures of civilization. Its spread, like that of the Russian Empire, has been more rapid than that of any other in the present century.

If the Slav be still backward in western ideas, appliances, and form of government, it is nevertheless conceivable that the time is not far distant when he will stand in the lead. The race is still young. Its history is shorter than that of any other important people of Europe.

Turning to the physical characteristics of the Slavs, it is found that there is not, properly speaking, a Slavic race. Deniker says that no fewer than five European races are represented among the Slavs, besides Turkic and Ugric or Mongolian elements. These are the fair, but broad-headed and short races, in Poland and White Russia especially; the dark, very broad-headed, and short peoples among the Little Russians of the south, the Slovaks, and some Great Russians; and the taller, but still dark and broad-headed races among the southwestern Slavs or Serbo-Croatians and some Czechs and Ruthenians. In the northwest the Russians have been modified by the blond or Teutonized Finns, in the northeast by the dark Finns, and in the southeast by the Tartars; but all such alike are broad-headed Mongolians in origin. With the exception of these Asiatic remnants and the related Magyars and Turks, and the Greeks, all of Europe east of Germany is filled with Slavs. They occupy more than one-half of the continent of Europe, and their presence has been a fertile source of political and governmental dissensions for many centuries, particularly in the Balkan countries. Indeed the scourge of war which has been ravaging all Europe, since 1914, is traceable in no small degree to this admixture of racial elements.

=Teutonic.=--This great branch of the Aryan family of languages and “races,” includes all those of northwestern Europe excepting the Celtic. The Teutonic was the second Aryan swarm in Western Europe, that which came after the Celts, and is the one with whose history we are more concerned than with that of any other; for it is the branch of the Aryan family to which we ourselves belong. The Teutons were the forefathers of the Germans and the English, and of the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians in Northern Europe. They do not appear in history till a much later time than the Celts, and then we find them lying immediately to the east of the Celts, chiefly in the land which is now called Germany. From this they spread themselves into many of the countries of Europe; but in most cases they were absorbed into the earlier inhabitants, and learned, like them, to speak the language of the Romans. The chief parts of Europe where Teutonic languages are now spoken are Germany, England and Scandinavia.

In Scandinavia we cannot doubt that the present Teutonic inhabitants were the first Aryan settlers; for they found a Mongolian people there, some of whom still remain, by the name of Lapps and Finns, in the extreme north of Sweden and Norway and on the eastern coast of the Baltic. But in most places the Teutons, as the second wave, came into land where other Aryan settlers had been before them. Sometimes they may have simply come in the wake of the Celts as they were pressing westward; but, sometimes they found the Celts in the land and drove them out, as was specially the case in Britain. Of the first coming of the Teutons into Europe we can say nothing from written history, any more than of the first coming of the Celts.

The Teutonic stock of nations, as they exist at the present day, is divided into two principal branches: (1) The Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders; and (2) the Germanic, which includes, besides the German-speaking inhabitants of Germany proper and Switzerland, also the population of the Netherlands (the Dutch), the Flemings of Belgium, and the descendants of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in Great Britain, together with their offspring in North America, Australia, and other British colonies--the English-speaking peoples of the world. It is necessary in this case, as in all similar cases, to guard against making language the sole test of race. In many parts of Germany, where German now prevails, Slavic dialects were spoken down to recent times, and in some places are not yet quite extinct. And in Great Britain it is unreasonable to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon invaders exterminated the native Celtic population, or even drove more than a tithe of them into Wales and the Highlands.

THE TEUTONIC RACIAL GROUP

{ { { {Icelandic. { {W. {Old {W. Dalecarlian. { {Branch. {Norwegian.{Jämetlandish. { { { {Faroic. { { { { { {Bornholm. {NORSE. { {Danish. {Normanno-Jutish. { { { {Dano-Jutish. { {E. { { {Branch. { {E. Dalecarlian. { { {Swedish. {Gothic. { { { {Scanian. { { { { { {W. Fr. Groningen. { { {E. Fr. Saterland. { { Frisic. {N. Fr. Helgoland, { { {Sylt, etc. { { { { {Old Saxon of the LOW GERMAN. { { {“Heliand.” { { Conti- {Westphalian. { { nental {Hanoverian. { { Saxon. {Brunswick. { { {Pomeranian, etc. {NIEDER- { {DEUTSCH. { {Anglisc {Northumbrian. { { {(North- {Lowland Scotch. { { {ern). {Shetland, etc. { { { { {Anglo- { {Lincoln. { {Saxon {Midland. {Yorkshire. { {(En- { {Derby, etc. { {glish). { { { { {Cornish. { { {Saxon {Somerset. { { {(South- {Dorset. { { {ern). {Kent, etc.

{ {Salic Frankish (extinct). { { { { {Rhenish. { {Riparian {E. Frankish. { {Frankish.{Hessian. {MITTEL- { {DEUTSCH. { {Upper Saxon. { {Thuring- {Erzgebirge. { {ian. {Transylvanian. { { {Meissen. { { { {Bernese. HIGH GERMAN. { {Bur- Swiss. {Hazli. { {gundian. {Appenzell. { { { { {Neuhochdeutsch { { {(literary standard). {OBER- {Alemanno-{Alsatian. {DEUTSCH. {Suabian. {Wurtemberg. { { {Baden. { { { { {Tyrolese.{Styrian. { {Bavarian.{Austrian.{Carinthian. { { { {Zips, etc.

=Turks= (tèrks) or =Ottomans=, the race now dominant in Turkey, lived originally in central Asia. They belong to the Sibiric or Tartar division of the Mongolian race, and reached Europe, probably in straggling bands, before the Christian Era (See Mongolian). To the same race division belong the European Finns, Lapps, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Basques. Physically and in culture the Turks have become Europeanized, though to a less degree than the related Finns and Magyars. Instead of becoming blond, as the Finns, they have approached the brunette type of southern Europe, probably in part through their frequent intermarriages with the Circassian and other Mohammedan peoples of the Caucasus. In fact, today they are not so much Turkish by blood as Arabian, Circassian, Persian, Armenian, Greek, and Slavic. They prefer to be considered as Arabo-Persian in culture rather than as Turkish. In religion they are almost universally Mohammedan.

The Turks are in the minority in their own country, especially in the European part of Turkey, where the Turks, Greeks, Albanians, and “Slavs” (Bulgarians and Servians) are to be found in nearly equal parts. The first three named have been estimated to constitute seventy per cent of the population. No census of Turkey has ever been taken. The following estimates are compiled from various sources. The entire Ottoman Empire, excluding states practically independent, has a population of about 24,000,000. Of these 10,000,000 are Turks. In European Turkey, 1,500,000 out of a population of 6,000,000 are Turks. Here they are without doubt decreasing in numbers. In Macedonia the Turks number about 500,000 out of a population of 2,200,000. Of the latter number, however, only about 1,300,000 are Christians. In the capital itself, Constantinople, the Turks constitute only about one-half of the population of 1,200,000. In Turkey in Asia, on the other hand, the Turkish race is in the majority. The Mohammedans number perhaps 10,000,000 in a total population of 13,000,000 in Asiatic Turkey and Armenia. There are about 500,000 Turks in Bulgaria out of a total population of 4,000,000. The Mohammedan population of Bosnia and Herzegovina--550,000 out of a total of 1,600,000--is mainly Slavic rather than Turkish.

=COMPARATIVE CLASSIFICATION OF RACES AND PEOPLES=

Showing also the latest estimated population of the various subdivisions throughout the world, together with a view of the numerous races entering into the population of the United States.

+----------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+-----------+ | =Race= | =Stock= | =Group= | =Peoples and | =Estimated | =Races | | | | | Tribes= | Total |Represented| | | | | | Population= | in the | | | | | | | United | | | | | | | States= | +----------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+-----------+ | |{ |{Egyptians |{Copts | 800,000 |} 500 | | |{ |{ |{Fellaheen | 5,000,000()|} | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Berbers | 7,500,000 | ... | | |{ |{ |{(modern) | | | | |{Hamitic |{Lybians |{Etruscans | | | | |{ |{ |{Assyrians | | | | |{ |{ |{(early) | | | | |{ |{ |{Hittites | | | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{East | Somalis | 1,000,000 | ... | | |{ |{Africans | | | | | |{ | | | | | | |{ |{Arabians |{Arabs |} 5,000,000 | 500 | | |{ |{ |{Bedouins |} | | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Abyssini- | Ethiopians | 9,000,000 | ... | | |{ |{ans | | | | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{Semitic |{ |{Assyrians | | | | |{ |{ |{(later) | | | | |{ |{ |{Babylonians| | | | |{ |{Chaldean |{Hebrews | 11,000,000 | 2,050,000 | | |{ |{ |{Arameans | 2,000,000 | 50,000 | | |{ |{ |{(Syrians) | | | | |{ |{ |{Samaritans | | | | |{ | | | | | | |{ |{ |{Hindus |225,000,000 | 10,000 | | |{ |{Iranic, or|{Medes | | | | |{ |{Persic |{Persians | 6,500,000 | 300 | | |{ |{ |{Gypsies | 800,000 | 4,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Armenic | Armenians | 4,000,000 | 30,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Britons |}Celtic popu-|Scotch: | | |{ |{ |{Scotch (part)|}lation of | 660,000 | | |{ |{ |{Irish (part) |}Europe, |Irish: | | |{ |{Celtic |{Welsh |} 3,200,000; | 4,600,000 | | |{ |{ |{Gauls |}of the |Welsh: | |=Caucasian|{ |{ |{Picts |}world, | 250,000 | | Race= |{ |{ |{ |} 9,200,000 | | | (White) |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Latins | | | | |{ |{ |{(Romans) | | | | |{ |{ |{Italians | 38,000,000 | 2,100,000 | | |{ |{Italic |{(part) | | | | |{Aryan |{ |{Roumanians | 10,000,000 | 90,000 | | |{ |{ |{Spanish | 50,000,000 | 1,375,000 | | |{ |{ |{Portuguese | 5,000,000 | 115,000 | | |{ |{ |{French | 45,000,000 | 300,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Hellenic | Greeks | 6,000,000 | 110,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Illyric |Albanian | 1,500,000 | 3,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Scandinavian | 13,000,000 | ... | | |{ |{ |{ Danish | 2,800,000 | 450,000 | | |{ |{ |{ Norwegian | 3,000,000 | 1,010,000 | | |{ |{ |{ Swedish | 5,500,000 | 1,450,000 | | |{ |{ |{German | 85,000,000 | 8,300,000 | | |{ |{Teutonic |{Dutch | 6,300,000 | 300,000 | | |{ |{ |{English |126,000,000 | 2,250,000 | | |{ |{ |{(part) | | | | |{ |{ |{Flemish | 4,000,000 | 100,000 | | |{ |{ |{Swiss (part) | 2,300,000 | 300,000 | | |{ |{ |{Austrians | 10,000,000 | 2,000,000 | | |{ |{ |{(part) | | | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Lettic | Lithuanians | 4,000,000 | 225,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Russians | 84,000,000 | 100,000 | | |{ |{ |{Polish | 17,000,000 | 1,725,000 | | |{ |{ |{Czech: | | | | |{ |{ |{ Bohemian | 4,000,000 |} 550,000 | | |{ |{Slavonic |{ Moravian | 2,000,000 |} | | |{ |{ |{Serbs, Croa- | 10,000,000 | 125,000 | | |{ |{ |{tians (Servia, Montenegro, Bosnia, | | |{ |{ |{Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Herzego- | | |{ |{ |{vina) | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Caucasic |{Georgians | 1,200,000 | ... | | |{ |{ |{Circassians | 500,000 | ... | | | | | | | | | |{ |{ |{Finns | 6,000,000 | 200,000 | | |{ |{ |{Lapps | 30,000 | ... | | |{ |{Finnic |{Magyar | 8,500,000 | 700,000 | | |{ |{ |{(Hungarian) | | | | |{ |{ |{Bulgarian | 5,000,000 | 25,000 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Turks | 10,000,000 | 125,000 | | |{Sibiric |{Tartaric |{Cossacks | 4,000,000 | ... | | |{ |{ |{Kalmucks | 200,000 | 500 | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Iberian | Basques (in | 800,000 | ... | | |{ |{ | Spain) | | | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{Japanese |{Japanese | 48,000,000 | 75,000 | | |{ |{ |{Korean | 10,000,000 | ... | | |{ |{ | | | | |=Mongolian|{ | |{Chinese |305,000,000 | 75,000 | | Race= |{Sinitic | Chinese |{Indo-Chinese | 35,000,000 | ... | | (Yellow |{ | |{ Siamese | 1,600,000 | ... | |and Brown)|{ | |{ Burmese | 10,000,000 | ... | | |{ | | | | | | |{ |{ |{New Zealand | 45,000 | ... | | |{ |{ |{(Maoris) | | | | |{ |{ |{Philippines | 7,600,000 | 7,600,000 | | |{ |{Polynesian|{(part) | | | | |{ |{ |{Hawaiians | 40,000 | 40,000 | | |{ |{ |{(part) | | | | |{ |{ |{Samoans | 40,000 |} 500 | | |{Malay |{ |{Javanese | 25,000,000 |} | | |{ |{ | | | | | |{ |{ |{Dravidians | 65,000,000 |} | | |{ |{ |{Madagascar | 2,000,000 |} | | |{ |{East |{(part) | |} 10,000 | | |{ |{Indian |{Sumatra | 3,000,000 |} | | |{ |{ |{(part) | |} | | |{ |{ |{Borneo (part)| 1,500,000 |} | +----------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+-----------+ | |{Tribes and peoples whose real homes|{(1) | | | =Negro |{are (1) Central and Southern |{180,000,000 | ... | | Race= |{Africa; (2) Malay Peninsula, Anda- |{(2) | | | (Black) |{mans, parts of the Eastern Archi- |{ 5,000,000 | ... | | |{pelago and Philippines, New Guinea,|{(3) | | | |{Australia; (3)America |{ 25,000,000 | 9,850,000 | +----------+------------------------------------+-------------+-----------+ |=American |{Tribes comprising: (1) North Ameri-|(1) 500,000 | 270,000 | | or |{can Indians; (2) South American In-|(2)6,000,000 | ... | | Indians= |{dians; (3) Central American Indi- |(3)7,500,000 | ... | | (Red) |{ans; (4) Patagonians; (5) Eskimo |(4) 190,000 | ... | | | |(5) 40,000 | ... | +----------+------------------------------------+-------------+-----------+

N.B.--Races in italic are either now non-existent or have merged with later peoples thus forming mixed races.

THE BOOK OF NATIONS

Geographical, Historical, Descriptive

EXTINCT NATIONS OF THE PAST

CHIEF HISTORICAL PEOPLES: EGYPTIANS -- BABYLONIANS -- ASSYRIANS -- HEBREWS -- PHŒNICIANS -- MEDES AND PERSIANS -- HINDUS -- GREEKS -- ROMANS

PROGRESS OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND DISCOVERY, B.C. 3800 TO THE PRESENT, WITH 16 MAPS

THE WORLD’S GREATEST EXPLORERS, B.C. 1400 TO 1917 A.D.

COMPARATIVE OUTLINE HISTORY OF ANCIENT NATIONS, B.C. 5000 TO 843 A.D.

DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT:

THE SPELL OF EGYPT: ANCIENT AND MODERN

THE BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN EMPIRES

THE HEBREWS AND THE HOLY LAND

THE PHŒNICIANS: FIRST NATION OF COLONIZERS

THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE

THE GREEKS: GLORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

ROME: MISTRESS OF THE WORLD

THE SARACEN EMPIRE: ITS FANATICISM, ART AND LEARNING

THE GERMANIC EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE

LIVING NATIONS OF TO-DAY

COMPARATIVE OUTLINE HISTORY OF MODERN NATIONS

TRANSITION PERIOD FROM THE ANCIENT TO THE MODERN

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT POWERS: GREAT BRITAIN -- FRANCE -- GERMANY -- ITALY -- AUSTRIA-HUNGARY -- RUSSIA -- UNITED STATES -- JAPAN

THE LESSER MODERN NATIONS: IN EUROPE, Spain and Portugal -- Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) -- The Netherlands -- Switzerland -- The Balkan States (Bulgaria, Roumania, Turkey, Greece, Servia); IN ASIA, China, Persia, Turkey; IN AMERICA, Brazil -- Argentina -- Chile -- Mexico -- Canada

DICTIONARY OF HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT, including Great Wars, Great Battles, Dynasties, Rulers, Historic and Literary Shrines, Allusions, etc.

HISTORICAL CHARTS AND TABLES, MAPS AND PLANS

THE BOOK OF NATIONS

We shall perhaps gain the best idea of the gradual expansion of the world to-day if we go back to the earliest times of which we have any definite historical records, and from that as a starting point, picture to ourselves the world at important epochs as it was divided among the more civilized nations. In spite of revolutions and the rise and fall of nations, the course of history has been continuous. The periods of history are not separated by gaps or breaks, but really merge gradually one into another. Bearing this in mind, the general history of the world may be viewed in two great divisions--ancient and modern. Ancient history begins with the dawn of civilization, and traces the progress of mankind among those nations which have now ceased to exist--or at least have ceased to contribute anything to the world’s progress. Modern history, on the other hand, deals with the origin and growth of those nations which still exist and are working out the problems and ideals peculiar to their own national life.

THE ANCIENT EXTINCT NATIONS

In the Oriental world we see the beginnings of civilized life--the first successful efforts of man to subdue the earth and to utilize the resources of nature; the beginnings of science and of a well-defined written language; the first evidences of architectural skill in the construction of great buildings; and the first marked tendency in the direction of great empires and of centralized governments. The chief nations may be summarized as follows:

EGYPTIANS.--One of the earliest civilized nations--the great representative of the Hamitic race--developed apart--were not a conquering or aggressive people--wonderful builders in the massive style--made great progress in mechanical arts, and some advances in science--government a monarchy restricted in authority by law, custom, and powerful priesthood--religion a nature-worship--popular worship the adoration of animals--an artistic, industrious and peculiar nation--always wonderful and interesting to foreigners---did not greatly influence others.

BABYLONIANS.--As ancient a race in civilization as the Egyptians--partially of Tartar race, mainly Semitic--made great progress at an early date in science--reached a high pitch of power and civilization--known to us, in great measure, from ruins with inscriptions in cuneiform writing--invented permanent system of weights and measures--great in astronomy--the Chaldæan priests developed into a caste of learned men, continuing (in the later Babylonian and Persian empires) long after extinction of their own nation as an independent power.

ASSYRIANS.--A Semitic people--warlike and conquering race--great in architecture and sculpture--very wealthy and luxurious--empire extended over Asia Minor (east of river Halys), Syria, Phœnicia, Palestine, most of Egypt, Media, and countries on Tigris and Euphrates to Persian Gulf--artistic workers in glass, metals, gems--rule despotic over loosely connected nations.

BABYLONIANS (Later kingdom).--A Semitic people--as a political power ruled for only eighty-seven years, 625-538 B.C., from end of Assyrian power to conquest by Persians under Cyrus--were a commercial and luxurious race--city of Babylon emporium for trade between eastern Asia and western Asia, Egypt and Europe--great in manufactures of woven stuffs and gem-engraving.

HEBREWS.--A pure Semitic race--little influence on political history of antiquity--distinguished by their worship of one God, and for the Scriptures transmitted to future ages--a great monarchy under David and Solomon, then declined--a non-artistic, unscientific nation in ancient history.

PHŒNICIANS.--A pure Semitic people--greatest commercial and colonizing race of early times--distinguished as transmitters of civilization from East to West--never formed one great independent state--several independent cities, sometimes in alliance, sometimes hostile--Tyre and Sidon famous for dyes, glass-making, embroideries, brass-work, weaving of cloth in linen and cotton, ship-building, mining--developers of alphabet still used by modern nations--religion a sensual worship--a crafty, money-making people--Carthage was the greatest of all the Phœnician colonies.

MEDES AND PERSIANS.--Pure Aryans in race--warlike people, great in cavalry and as archers--Median monarchy ended 558 B.C., then Persian monarchy arose--Persians a lively, brave, poetical people, simple in life at first, after their great conquests degenerated into luxury--more like Europeans in civilization than any other Asiatics--were the great ruling power in Asia from time of Cyrus to conquest by Alexander the Great (558-331 B.C.)--first Asiatics that tried to conquer in Europe--signally failed--empire extended over all western Asia, and over Egypt--religion recognized two principles, a good and a bad spirit--had taste in architecture--no literature of importance.

HINDUS.--Until recent times almost isolated from the western world--unwarlike, dreamy specimens of Aryan stock--early advance in civilization--a rich and remarkable religious and poetical literature in Sanscrit, one of the oldest of the Indo-European tongues--first known in real history on invasion by Alexander the Great, 327 B.C.--progress greatly checked by rigid system of castes--government of native princes thoroughly despotic--no free aspirations or political instincts in the people--popular religion grossly superstitious--Brahminism (a philosophic deism), creed of the educated, along with Mohammedanism, introduced by conquest in thirteenth century A.D.--skilled at an early period in mathematics, manufactures, architecture--a tasteful, intelligent, but unpractical, non-historical people.

GREEKS.--In the Greek world we see a finer type of humanity: a versatile intellect, expressed in exalted works of philosophy and literature; a refined æsthetic taste embodied in the most beautiful specimens of architecture and sculpture; and a strong love of freedom, shown in the development of democratic institutions.

ROMANS.--In the Roman world we see a more practical genius and a more vigorous manhood; a great capacity for military and political organization; a broad sense of civil justice, expressed in an enduring system of law; a wide cosmopolitan spirit, capable of appropriating the ideas of other peoples--in short, a civilization which expressed the highest unity and broadest culture of the ancient world.

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND DISCOVERY

No intelligent knowledge of the historical nations is possible without a corresponding knowledge of their geography. The first and most important question that geography answers for us is where. Historical Geography answers both where and when? Where is Rome located? Where and when did the Babylonian Empire exist?

History not only answers the questions when and who but, in addition, gives us a consecutive account of the doings of civilized mankind in their progress toward the most valued and elevating of social and political blessings. It deals rather with the life of nations than with races of men; and its special function is to sketch the career and describe the conditions of those great nations whose ideas and institutions, or whose achievements in politics, war, literature, art and science, were remarkable in their own epoch, or, by influencing other nations, helped to make the civilized world what it is now.

WHERE THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS BEGAN

The first scenes in the drama of human history are laid in two remarkable river valleys--the one formed by the Euphrates and the Tigris in western Asia, and the other formed by the river Nile in northeastern Africa. The Euphrates and the Tigris poured their waters into the Persian Gulf, the Nile flowed north into the Mediterranean Sea. Both these valleys were possessed of a rich, alluvial soil, that favored the early development of industrial life among their dwellers. Along the lower courses of the Asiatic rivers were the Babylonians, and later, by conquest, the Chaldeans. In the upper reaches were the Assyrians. On the banks of the Nile were the Egyptians. Such, according to our present knowledge, is the first historic zone in which the real history of the civilized world began.

In the basins of the Tigris and the Euphrates were several distinct territories: Armenia, or the mountainous region between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea; Assyria proper, between the Tigris and the Zagros Mountains; Babylonia, the great plain between the lower courses of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, and extending westward to the Syrian Desert; Chaldæa (in the narrower sense, as a province of the Babylonian Empire), west of the Euphrates, at the head of the Persian Gulf; Mesopotamia, between the middle courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates; Elam or Susiana, east of the Tigris, and at the head of the Persian Gulf.

THE REGION WEST OF THE EUPHRATES

West of the Euphrates we have the peninsula of Asia Minor which later contained the important Lydian nation, and many Greek colonies connected with later history; Syria, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, divided into three distinct parts,--Syria proper; Phœnicia, or the strip of coast between Mount Lebanon and the sea; and Palestine, south of Phœnicia; the peninsula of Arabia, extending southeastward, and having little to do with ancient history.

THE HISTORIC PLATEAU OF IRAN

East of the Zagros Mountains lay Media and Persia proper,--Media, northeastward, towards the Caspian Sea; and Persia, on the tableland of Iran stretching southward to the Persian Gulf. The latter absorbed the great monarchies of Babylonia and Assyria in the sixth century B. C., and extended almost from the Indus to the Mediterranean, Ægean, Euxine, and Caspian Seas, when it had reached the summit of its power.

THE FAR DISTANT ORIENT

Farthest to the east was ancient China, drained by two great rivers, the Hoang and the Yangtze. Its remote situation and the barriers on the west formed by the spurs of the Himalayas, combined to make this land the most isolated of the civilized lands of the Old World.

To the west of China lies India, also drained by two great rivers, the Indus and the Ganges, which rise among the slopes of the Himalayas and flow in different directions to the sea. These two countries--China and India--stood nearly alone in ancient times, separated from the peoples of western Asia by the wide, dry plateau of Iran, and hence these countries did not exercise a great influence upon the ancient world, or come into historical view until much later.

EGYPT WAS A GIFT TO MANKIND FROM THE NILE

The Nile is one of the longest rivers of the world; rising in the distant lakes of central Africa, it pursues a course of about four thousand miles on its way to the sea. But the part of the valley occupied by the Egyptian people extended only about six hundred miles from the mouth of the river--to the rapids called the “first cataract,” on the borders of Ethiopia. The valley is inclosed on either side by low ranges of mountains, which furnish stone suitable for building; and it should be noticed that this abundant supply of stone gave to the Egyptians a great advantage over the Babylonians, who were obliged to use the less durable materials, clay and brick, for building.

The valley of the Nile is only about seven or eight miles in width--except at the delta, where it spreads out into an open plain. Not only has this valley been cut by the Nile, but its fertility was anciently due to the annual overflow of the river, for the climate is dry and rain rarely falls. This river was also the great highway of Egypt, affording a ready means of communication from one part of the country to another. The fertile soil of Egypt was especially suitable for the raising of vegetables and grain. Rice, oats, barley, and wheat grew there in great abundance, so that the country became the granary of the ancient world.

THE DIVISIONS OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT

Egypt may be divided into two principal parts. (1) The lower, or northern, part includes the extended plain about the delta, where the soil is most fertile, and where the earliest civilization was developed. It was here that the first empire was established, with its center at Memphis. (2) The upper, or southern, part includes the remainder of the valley as far as the “first cataract.” This formed a second area of civilization, with its center at Thebes. In either direction from these two centers the banks of the Nile became dotted with a multitude of towns and villages, each one of which was a seat of industry and art.

THE MOST HISTORIC SEA IN THE WORLD

But the most important center of ancient civilization was the Mediterranean Sea. This body of water formed the world’s greatest highway, and was possessed successively by the Phœnicians, the Greeks, and the Romans, who made it an important factor in the development of a wider world commerce and a higher world culture.

=Known World about B. C. 450.=--About this period the decadence of the great Persian Empire had already begun. Greece was becoming a strong power, and had flourishing colonies all round the Mediterranean and Black Seas, at Syracuse in Sicily, on the southern shores of Italy, at Massilia (the present Marseilles), on the coast of Spain, at Cyrene in North Africa, at Cypress, at Byzantium (Constantinople), and at many points between these.

Carthage had already risen from its condition of a colony to that of a great independent state, which held practically all the north African coast. The Carthaginians had come in contact with the Greeks in Sicily, and in their first trial of strength the Carthaginian army under Hamilcar had been defeated. Rome had been founded for perhaps three hundred years. Already the Romans had taken the lead in Latium, and the Republic was in constant warfare with its neighbors on all sides--the southern Etruscans, the Volscians, and the Æqui.

Thus the great events of this period were clustered round the Mediterranean shores. As yet the unknown peoples of the west and north beyond these were vaguely called the Hyperboreans by the Greeks, “the dwellers behind the north wind;” and eastward, beyond Persia and the Indies, Herodotus could only mark “unknown deserts” on his map.

=World About B. C. 325.=--This little map represents the short-lived Macedonian empire of Alexander, at the date of his return to Persia, when his power was at its height. To his victorious career the world owed a vast increase of geographical knowledge; all eastern Asia had been unveiled, and the road to India, with its boundless wealth, was disclosed to Europeans.

Westward also, about Alexander’s time, the geography of the Greeks was greatly extended by Pytheas, a bold navigator of the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), who, from Gadiera (Cadiz), coasted Iberia and the country of the Celts (France), and reached Britain. He followed the southern and eastern shores of the islands, and, after six days’ sail from the Orcades (Orkney Islands), discovered Thule, a land of fogs in the north, which has been variously identified as the Shetland Islands, the Norwegian coast, or even Iceland.

In Italy the Romans were continuing their struggles with the neighboring nations. The whole of southern Etruria had yielded to their supremacy, and was kept in check by Roman garrisons; while towards the south, at this time, a terrible conflict was in progress with the heroic Samnite highlanders. Of Sicily the Carthaginians held the western, the Greek colonists the eastern half, a brief lull having taken place in the fierce wars which had been waging between these powers for the possession of the island, during which the prosperity of the great fortified city and seaport of Syracuse was rapidly reviving.

=World About A. D. 300.=--Almost six hundred years has elapsed, and the Great Roman Empire is already in its decline. A special map of the Roman Empire at its height will be found later on. This little map represents the empire in the time of Constantine.

Under Constantine the Great two great changes took place--the introduction of Christianity as the religion of the State, and the transference of the seat of government from Rome to Byzantium (A. D. 330), which was re-named after the emperor, Constantinople.

Persia at this time, under the Sassanian dynasty, attained a height of prosperity and power such as it had never before reached, and against it even the veteran Roman legions could gain no lasting laurels.

In China authentic history begins with the Chow dynasty (1122-255 B. C.) when Confucius and Mincius flourished (600 B. C). In the next (Tsin) dynasty Shih Hwang Ti (221-209 B. C.) reduced the independent petty states, and built the Great Wall as a protection against the barbarous Hiong-non (Huns) or Tartars of the north. Shortly after the beginning of the Christian era the Chinese seem to have begun intercourse with the Parthians and to have known the Roman Empire as Ta-tsin; and about the time of Constantine’s establishment of his new capital the Chinese emperor’s court was fixed at Nanking, the southern capital.

The increase of geographical knowledge during the period in which Rome was spreading out its power in all directions could not fail to be very considerable. Already in the latter part of the first century B. C., a general survey of the Roman Empire had been begun by the collection and arrangement of the itineraries of the roads to places in the empire. One of these traces the main roads of all the region stretching from Britain to the mouth of the Ganges in India.

=World About A. D. 500.=--For more than two centuries prior to this map, the whole of northern Europe, had begun to pour forth wave after wave of barbarian hordes, against the Roman Empire. By the invasions of the tribes of Goths, Franks, Vandals, etc., the western emperors lost their power outside of Italy, and the empire itself ceases to exist in 476, when it is nominally joined to the Eastern Empire. The Vandals had established their rule along north Africa; the Visigoths ruled in Spain; the Ostrogothic monarchy of Theodoric the Great extended over Italy, France, and all the countries round the Alps as far as the middle Danube; and the Franks, under Clovis, had possession of the whole of Gaul between the Loire and Somme.

Persia, still under the energetic Sassanian dynasty, not only maintained its integrity as an empire, but had begun to repel the Roman or Byzantine power in Asia, and had added part of Armenia. Westward, however, the arms of the Byzantine Empire were triumphant, the reign of the Emperor Justinian having been rendered famous by the expedition of his great general Belisarius to Africa, where, after a campaign of two years, he completely overthrew the Vandals and led their king captive to Constantinople. In a second war, Belisarius wrested all southern Italy from the Ostrogoths, pursuing them northward to Rome and Ravenna, and thus began the re-conquest of the peninsula, which was completed by his successor, the imperial general Narses, after which the Ostrogoths disappear as a distinct nation.

At this time, under Khosru, the greatest of the great monarchs of the Sassanian dynasty, the Persian Empire stretched from the Red Sea to the Indus, and from Arabia far into central Asia.

=World About A. D. 800.=--The end of this century finds three great empires in Europe and eastern Asia: the Mohammedan or Saracenic Empire, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, and the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne. The Mohammedan Empire had spread itself out to central Asia and to Spain, and had already passed the zenith of its greatness. The dynasty of the Ommiades of Damascus had given place to that of the Abassides in the east, though a branch from it had set up an independent Califate at Cordova, in Spain. The Abbaside Haroun-al-Rashid, whose praises are sung by eastern poets, had his capital at Bagdad, on the Tigris, a city which had been founded by his predecessor in 762.

Charlemagne had consolidated and extended the Frankish Empire, received the ambassadors sent from the court of Bagdad to salute him, and had been crowned by the Pope at Rome. Irene, the mother of the Byzantine emperor, Constantine VI., had conceived the bold plan of uniting the east and west of Europe in one great empire, by marrying the Frankish emperor, a scheme which was frustrated by her overthrow and her banishment to the Isle Lesbos in the Ægean Sea (802).

Britain, so far as occupied by the Angles and Saxons, was divided into seven (or eight) little kingdoms, known as the Saxon Heptarchy.

=World About A. D. 1000.=--Germany, or the Eastern Franks, becomes at this time the greatest power in Europe, uniting to itself Upper Italy and Lotharingia.

France, or the Western Franks, early in this century is invaded by the Norsemen or Normans,--bold seafaring adventurers from Denmark and other northern lands, from whom the name Normandy is derived. The kingdom of France, however, began in 987.

The Saracen Empire was divided at the beginning of this century into no less than seven independent califates, of which the most distinguished was that of the Fatimites. The Saracenic civilization in Spain is now at its height. By the end of the century the power of the Saracens in the East is of but little account politically.

The Magyars, or Hungarians, before the end of the century have established a strong kingdom in the southeast of Europe; and to the north the Slavonic states of Poland and Bohemia are planted.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are powerful kingdoms by the close of this century and England, now one kingdom, is engaged in struggles with the Danes.

The hardy Scandinavian seamen had pushed back the clouds of ignorance over the vast region of the north Atlantic, and had reached the shores of the American continent nearly five centuries before Columbus. About the year 994 an expedition under Leif, son of Erik the Red, set sail for this new country. The regions discovered were named Helluland (Slateland), supposed to be Labrador; Markland, or Woodland, probably Southern Labrador; and Vinland, a country named from the wild vine growing there, which some identify with Newfoundland, while others transfer it to the New England coast, opposite the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

=World About A. D. 1300.=--Before the middle of the thirteenth century the vast Mongol Empire, under Ghengis Khan, had stretched out from China to Poland and Hungary, over all Asia except India and Asia Minor--an empire which far surpassed in extent any that had yet been known on the surface of the globe.

The great Mongol expansion forced the removal of the Ottoman Turks, who retreated from the steppes east of the Caspian to the mountains of Armenia. Othman or Osman, a chief of the tribe, on the destruction of the Seljuk power, obtained possession of Bithynia, attacked the Asiatic portion of the sinking Byzantine empire with success and founded there (1299) the subsequently great empire of the Ottoman or Osmanli Turks, as they are named from him.

In the course of his conquest Genghiz Khan had carried off multitudes of western Asiatics as slaves. Twelve thousand of these, mostly Turks and Circassians, were bought by the Sultan of Egypt (a successor of Saladin), who formed them into a body of troops. From being servants these well-armed slaves rose to be masters in Egypt, and placed one of their own number in the sultanate (1254), thus founding the Mameluke (or slave) dynasty in Egypt, which lasted for nearly three centuries, bringing the country again into great prosperity and power.

Thus, about the year 1300 the once great Mohammedan Empire had been restricted to its original seat, and to the western region of north Africa, all else having fallen into the hands of the Turks. The Calif of Bagdad had taken refuge under the protection of the Mamelukes of Egypt, retaining his spiritual power only; the Ommiade califate in Spain had long fallen.

The English, under Edward I., had incorporated Wales after ten years’ contest; Scotland was fighting for independence, led by Wallace and Bruce; and long wars engaged England and France, leading finally to a great increase in French territory and power. Denmark, Sweden and Norway were separate states. In central Europe, Poland and Hungary had been brought to the verge of ruin by the Mongol invasions, which had swept away for the time the divided principalities of Russia. In the south, the old Greek Empire was fast sinking through the assaults on it by the Turks.

The German Empire in this century both loses and gains territory, without material change.

Italy is still divided into independent commonwealths, which more and more fall under the power of princely families or tyrants.

In the Spanish Peninsula there are few geographical changes in this century, but Spain is steadily consolidating into a great power.

The Venetian, Marco Polo, the greatest of medieval travelers, passed seventeen years in exploring the kingdoms of Asia, and opened up to accurate knowledge not only the vast region of the central Asiatic continent, but also the disclosure of the existence of Japan, which he called Zipangu. While Venice opened up new paths to commerce towards the east, Genoa looked westward, sought to open up a new road to India by sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar and round the southern extremity of Africa. It was Genoese who first, in modern times, ventured upon the Atlantic; discovered the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores; and who first felt their way along the west coast of Africa.

=World About A. D. 1500.=--Previous to this century the nations with which we have been concerned has been restricted to Europe, a little of western Asia, and a small part of northern Africa. An immense enlargement of these bounds now suddenly occurs in consequence of the application of the compass to navigation. From this time dates the period of greatest maritime enterprise and discoveries.

The Portuguese took the lead in bold projects of adventure by sea. The Cape of Good Hope was discovered and doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1487, and in 1498 the feat of reaching India by water was accomplished by Vasco da Gama, who, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reached Calicut in Malabar.

The general excitement about maritime discovery among the Portuguese suggested to Columbus the bold plan of reaching India, not by way of Africa, but by steering to the west across the Atlantic. The result of his voyage was the final discovery of the American continents. India he did not reach, but discovered instead, the island of Guanahani or San Salvador, in 1492, the main continent being discovered a few years later (June 24, 1497) by John Caboto, or Cabot, a Venetian sailor.

In the far east China had recovered its independence under the Ming dynasty, and its supremacy was acknowledged over Mongolia and eastern Turkestan, though the states of Tonquin and Cochin China, in the southern peninsula beyond India, had assumed a political independence. Western Asia had been reconquered by Timur, or Tamerlane, of western Turkestan. The Ottoman Turks had extended their European territory to its widest limit over the ruins of the Greek Empire; and Russia had become a united kingdom under Ivan the Great, and threw off the Tartar yoke.

In western Europe, the Swiss mountaineers had secured their independence. France was recovering from the calamities inflicted on it by the English, who had all but lost their hold on the land. In the south the reaction of Christendom against Mohammedanism had begun. The Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal had driven back the Moors across the Straits into Africa, and had consolidated their strength over the whole Peninsula. The Moors in turn settled along the north African coast. Morocco at this time had been formed into a monarchy, and enjoyed great prosperity.

=World About A. D. 1600.=--Spain is the chief power at this time. Besides vast continental dominions in the New World, its European possessions comprised the whole of the Spanish Peninsula, the Netherlands and other lands of the House of Austria, the Sicilies, Sardinia, and Milan. But, by the revolt of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Spain loses a considerable portion of her territory before the end of the century.

The German Empire continues, but more as a dignity than as an independent power. The emperors are uniformly chosen from the princes of the House of Austria, which now by its hereditary possession becomes one of the chief powers of Europe. In the person of the Emperor Charles V., who united the crown of Spain with the sovereignty of Austria, the imperial power reached its greatest extent.

France is engaged in wars civil and religious and foreign, but without much change of territory, except in America, where some colonies were established. England makes some attempts at colonization in America during this century, but the real settlements begin in the next.

Italy, during this period, is a battle-field of contention among the rival princes of Europe. The peninsula was made up of principalities and commonwealths, some of which were independent, but the most of which, during the greater part of this century, were under the dominant influence of Austria and of Spain. The northern provinces of the Netherlands throw off the yoke of Spain, and are united in a federal commonwealth. The union of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ceases in the early part of this century, by the independence of Sweden, which now plays an important part in European history. Poland is an important state in this century, with extensive possessions.

The Turkish or Ottoman Empire is largely extended in this century by the annexation of Syria, Egypt, a great part of the northern coast of Africa, and the conquest of a large part of Hungary.

In Asia the Chinese Empire remained unshaken; Persia had again become an independent empire; the Mohammedan Moguls had begun to reign in northern India; the once great Tartar empire had been reduced to the states east of the Caspian. In the north, Russia was spreading eastward over Asia, and had come in contact with the Ottoman Empire, now expanding to its greatest extent in the South, and with Sweden in the northwest. The great Reformation had passed over Europe, separating its Catholic states of the south from the Protestants of the north, and giving rise to fierce wars and many political changes. Maritime discovery and adventure and commerce were being eagerly extended by the nations of western Europe. Four times the world had been circumnavigated--by the Portuguese Magellan, by the English Drake and Cavendish, and lastly by the Dutchman Van Noort. Spain had extended her conquests to Mexico, Peru, and Chile, which were now ruled by Spanish viceroys. The Portuguese had established themselves firmly on the African shores; their possessions and settlements in the East Indies included the Malabar coast of India, Ceylon and Malacca; and their traffic reached to all the islands of the Asiatic archipelago, to China and Japan.

The English and Dutch, after vainly seeking an independent highway to the northeast or northwest through the ice-fields of the Arctic region, had become formidable rivals of the Spaniards and Portuguese in their own lines, both in the West Indies and round the Cape of Good Hope to the eastward.

=World About A. D. 1700.=--In Europe, France under Louis XIV., now becomes the leading power, and makes great accessions of territory. England also becomes one of the important nations, and, besides being engaged in civil and foreign wars, was planting colonies in America and in India. Austria had increased her power in Italy and Hungary. The Spanish monarchy is broken up, and Spain sinks to an inferior position. Prussia has risen into prominence under the great elector, Frederick William. The United Provinces held a high place and had been engaged in a long struggle with France. Italy had fallen to a low condition. Savoy was slowly gaining in power, and Venice was engaged in wars with the Turks. Sweden was at the height of its power and possessions. Russia is rapidly rising, and Poland is declining. The Turks press forward into Austria, from which they are driven out, and make some important conquests in other parts; but their power is on the decline.

In Asia, this was the period at which the Mohammedan Empire in India was raised to its highest point of splendor and greatness by Shah Jehan, the “King of the World,” and by his son, the famous Aurungzeb, the crafty and ambitious “reviver of religion.” It was during these reigns that the English began to gain a hold on India.

Outside of Europe it cannot fail to be observed how completely the spread of knowledge on the outer borders of the known world was controlled by events which took place in western Europe. Chief of these was the gradual crippling and decay of the maritime supremacy of Spain and Portugal, and the rise of that of the Dutch and British into strength. Maritime enterprise had passed to Holland, England, and France.

In America the British dominion was extended by the formation of the Hudson Bay Company. In 1690 this fur company had built several forts and factories on the coasts, whence from time to time their operations extended inland.

The French also, after La Salle first descended (1682) the great river, Mississippi, “the father of waters,” invaded Spanish claims by settling in Louisiana, about the mouth of the great river, in 1699.

=World About A. D. 1800.=--In Europe France holds about the same position till near the close of the century, when the Revolution breaks out, and the republic makes large accessions of territory in the Austrian Netherlands, Savoy, Piedmont, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Through the very enormity of the excesses of the revolutionary period, the form of government soon gave way to a new constitution, known as the Directory, under which Napoleon Bonaparte came to the front as the central figure in the affairs of Europe. During these last years of the century the French Republic was engaged in constant wars with the various coalitions formed against it by the other powers. In the year 1799 the Directory came to an end, and the supreme control was vested in the hands of Napoleon, who was made First Consul.

Great Britain is engaged in foreign wars, and has lost a large part of her American colonies, which win their independence in 1783. The British dominion in India is greatly extended during this period. The scattered settlements of British merchants and of the East India Company, now became firmly established by the military achievements of Clive. The French and native troops were overthrown, and one after another the provinces of India were brought under English control. Spain rises very considerably in importance. The United Provinces become in the last years of the seventeenth century a dependency of France. The Turkish dominion, though with occasional successes, is on the decline. Prussia becomes an important European state under Frederick the Great. Austria is engaged in frequent wars, with somewhat diminishing power. The German Empire, though still in existence, is more a dignity than a power, its functions being wielded chiefly by the great kingdoms of Austria and Prussia. Russia, under Peter the Great, rises to a front rank among the states of Europe and makes large gains of territory.

In the latter part of the seventeenth century Poland disappears from the map of Europe, the territory being divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria; and in 1795 Poland, as a kingdom, ceased to exist.

In America, the United States of America come into being as an independent nation in 1783.

France, at the beginning of the nineteenth century under Napoleon I., was the chief power in Europe. The battle of Waterloo finally overthrew the empire of Napoleon, and brought to an end the succession of wars which had lasted with little interruption for twenty-three years. By the terms of peace agreed upon by the Allies, the conquests of France were given up, and the boundaries of the European states re-established.

From the starting-point of this re-arrangement of the map of Europe we may now follow rapidly the subsequent changes of territory in each of the leading states of Europe which have given them the limits they occupy at the present day.

England rises to the front rank of European states, by her part in the Napoleonic wars. In the nineteenth century she made some small acquisitions of territory in Europe, and greatly extended her colonial empire.

The marked feature of the political movements in Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the tendency to consolidate the petty and weak states, into which a great part of the Continent had been broken up, into strong central governments. This tendency is shown specially in the confederation of the smaller German states under the leadership of Prussia, and the formation of the present German Empire which has become the first military power in Europe. The old German Empire came to an end in 1806. In Italy the same tendency has shown itself in the establishment of the new kingdom of Italy, with Rome for its capital.

Austria was entirely separated from Germany, and united into one state with Hungary. Russia has become one of the greatest European powers. Denmark lost considerable territory, taken from her by Prussia. The new kingdom of Belgium has been formed. Spain loses Mexico and the republics of Central America. Greece secured its independence, and became a kingdom. The power of Turkey is still declining.

In America, the United States were greatly increased by the addition of new States and Territories. The attempt at secession of the southern States in 1861 proved abortive; and the restored Union, freed from the disturbing element of slavery, advanced in wealth, power, and the arts of peace, at a rate of progress never equalled in past history.

Mexico, which had belonged to Spain, revolted and became an independent republic.

In Asia, Japan renounced its former isolation, opened her ports to foreign trade, and changes of almost startling rapidity were adopted in the country. The whole political constitution of the empire was remodeled; and Japan took rank with the great powers of the world.

The continent of South America was apportioned among the various present-day countries; Africa has been colonized and divided among the European powers; and the commonwealths of Canada, Australia and New Zealand have taken a foremost place among the colonies of Great Britain.

=World About A. D. 1915.=--In the realm of geographical discovery the supreme events were the attainment of the North Pole by Admiral Peary, and that of the South Pole by Captain Roald Amundsen.

The geographical changes resulting from the great European War are noted in connection with the nations and colonies directly affected.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST EXPLORERS

=Explanation of Abbreviations.=--Arab., Arabian; Brit., British; Carthag., Carthaginian; Dan., Danish; Dut., Dutch; Egypt., Egyptian; Eng., English; Fr., French; Gen., Genoese; Ger., German; Ital., Italian; Norw., Norwegian; Port., Portuguese; Rus., Russian; Scot., Scotch; Span., Spanish: Swed., Swedish; U. S., United States; Ven., Venetian.

B.C.1400-1250.--Egyptians make invasions of Habesh, Arabia, Phœnicia, Syria.

B.C.1350(?).--Greeks undertake Argonautic expedition to Colchis.

B.C.1000.--Phœnicians voyage to Ophir, Gades, Britain.

B.C.750.--Greeks extend colonies in the Mediterranean and Pontus Euxinus.

B.C.700.--Samians discover Spain (Tartessus) for the Greeks.

B.C.600.--Phœnicians circumnavigate Africa by order of Necho.

B.C.--Himilco (Carthag.) visits Atlantic coast of Europe, Sargasso Sea. Said to have visited Britain.

B.C.500.--Anaximander (of Miletus) makes the first maps.

B.C.500.--Hecatæus (of Miletus) writes the first geography.

B.C.470.--Hanno (Carthag.) coasts west Africa as far as Cape Palmas.

B.C.330.--Pytheas of Massilia sails to Thule, North Sea, Scandinavia.

B.C.330.--Nearchus (Macedon.) sails from the Indus to Red Sea.

B.C.329-325.--Alexander the Great makes expedition to Iran, Turan and India.

B.C.290.--Egyptians navigate the east coast of Africa.

B.C.218.--Hannibal crosses the Alps.

B.C.120 (about).--Eudoxus of Cyzicus attempts circumnavigation of Africa.

B.C.61-58.--Romans, under Julius Cæsar in Gaul, Germany, and Britain.

B.C.30 (since).--Romans extend their geographical knowledge and commerce as far as central Asia.

B.C.20--Strabo (Greek) describes Roman Empire and first mentions Thule and Ireland.

B.C.15.--Tiberius discovers the Lake of Constance; Drusus, the Brenner Pass.

A.D.84.--Roman general, Agricola, circumnavigates Britain.

150.--Claudius Ptolemy (Egypt.) constructs his geography and atlas.

518-21.--Hoei-sing (Chinese) visits Pamirs and Punjab.

671-95.--I-tsing (Chinese) visits Java, Sumatra and India.

861.--Norsemen discover the Faroe Islands. North Cape of Europe rounded.

865.--Naddod (Norse) discovers Iceland. Visited by Irish monks about 795.

876.--Gunnbjörn (Norse) reaches Greenland coast. Rediscovered by Erik the Red (983).

985.--Erik the Red (Norse) colonizes Greenland.

1000(?).--Lief Erikson (son of Erik the Red) discovers Newfoundland (Helluland), Nova Scotia (Markland), and coast of New England (Vinland)[?].

1154.--Edrisi (Sicily), geographer to King of Sicily, produces his geography.

1200 (about)--Arabian trading merchants discover Siberia.

1253.--Ruysbroek reaches Karakorum, the ancient seat of the Mongol Empire.

1271-95.--Marco Polo (Venet.) travels in central Asia, China, India, Persia.

1290.--Genoese reach the Canaries, Azores, etc.

1325-52.--Ibn Batuta (Arab.) travels through the whole Mohammedan world, northern Africa, eastern Africa, southern Russia, Arabia, India and China.

1327.--Sir John Mandeville (Eng.) travels in India.

1415-60.--Prince Henry (Port.) gives an impetus to Portuguese voyages of discovery.

1419-20.--J. Gonzales and Martin Vaz (Port.) discover Porto Santo and Madeira.

1442.--Nuno Tristao (Port.) reaches Cape Verde, etc.

1460(?).--Cintra and Costa (Port.) sail to coast of Guinea.

1474.--Toscanelli (Ital.) sends Columbus his map showing the western route to Cathay (China).

1485.--Diego Cam (Port.) reaches the mouth of the Congo river.

1487.--Bartholomew Diaz (Port.) rounds Cape of Good Hope.

1492-98.--Columbus (Gen.) discovers America, West Indies, Trinidad, Cuba, etc.

1497-98.--John Cabot (Anglo-Ven.) sails along eastern coast of America from Labrador as far as Florida.

1498.--Vasco da Gama (Port.) finds route to India by Cape of Good Hope.

1499.--Amerigo Vespucci (Ital.) discovers Venezuela, and that America was not “part of Asia.”

1499.--Pinzon (Span.) discovers mouth of Amazon river and Cape St. Roque.

1500.--G. Cortereal (Port.) reaches entrance of Hudson Strait, called by him Strait of Anian.

1500.--Alvarez Cabral (Port.) coasts Brazil (named by him Ilha da Vera Cruz, being southern part of Bahia State).

1502.--Columbus (Gen.) reaches central America on his fourth voyage.

1512.--Ponce de Leon (Span.) reaches Florida.

1513.--Portuguese reach the Moluccas.

1513.--Balboa (Span.) crosses Isthmus of Panama and discovers Pacific Ocean.

1516.--Solis (Span.) reaches La Plata.

1517.--Sebastian Cabot (Eng.) discovers Hudson Strait.

1519-21.--Cortez (Span.).--conquers Mexico.

1519-21.--Magellan (Span.) first to circumnavigate the globe. Passes through the Strait of Magellan, crosses the Pacific, and discovers the Philippines.

1534.--Pizarro (Span.) completes the conquest of Peru.

1535.--Diego d’Almagro (Span.) conquers Chili.

1535-42.--Jacques Cartier (Fr.) finds Gulf of St. Lawrence. Ascends river to Hochelaga (Montreal).

1539.--Francesco de Ulloa (Span.) explores Gulf of California.

1540 (about).--French continent of Australia seen by French sailors.

1541.--Pizarro and Orellana (Span.) discover Amazon river.

1542.--Antonio de Mota first reaches Japan.

1542.--Ruy Lopez de Villalobos (Span.) discovers Pelew Islands, and takes possession of Philippine Islands for Spain.

1542.--Pinto (Port.)--visits Japan,

1553.--Sir H. Willoughby (Eng.) reaches Nova Zembla.

1576.--Frobisher (Eng.) coasts Labrador and Baffin Land.

1577-80.--Sir F. Drake (Eng.) made second circumnavigation of the globe, and first saw Cape Horn. Explored western coast of North America nearly as far as Vancouver Archipelago.

1587.--J. Davis (Eng.) finds Davis Strait.

1596.--Barentz and Heemskerk (Dut.) discover Spitzbergen, Bear Islands, etc.

1598.--Mendaña (Span.) discovers Marquesas Islands.

1606.--Quiros (Span.) reaches Tahiti (Sagittaria), and other South Sea Islands.

1606.--Torres (Span.) discovers Torres Strait. Dutch reach Australia.

1608.--Champlain (Fr.) discovers Lake Ontario.

1610.--H. Hudson (Eng.) reaches Hudson Bay and makes discoveries in North America.

1614-17.--Spillbergen (Dut.) circumnavigated the globe.

1616.--W. Baffin (Eng.) enters Baffin Bay.

1616.--La Maire and Schouten (Dut.) round Cape Horn.

1616.--Dirk Hartog (Dut.) sails up west coast of Australia.

1618.--G. Thompson (Eng.) sails up Gambia.

1642.--Abel Tasman (Dut.) discovers Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and New Zealand.

1643.--Vries (Dut.) explores eastern coast of Japan, Saghalien, and Kurile Island.

1645.--Deshnev (Cossack) rounds east cape of Asia from the Kolyma to the Anadyr.

1660.--French discover the lake region of the St. Lawrence.

1673.--Marquette and Joliet (Fr.) explore the Mississippi from the north.

1725-43.--Russians explore the coasts of Siberia.

1728 and 1741.--Bering (Dan.) and Tishirikov (Rus.) explore Bering Strait and the northwestern coast of America.

1768-79.--Capt. Cook (Eng.) voyages round the world. Surveys the Society Islands, Sandwich Islands, eastern coast of Australia, Cook Strait in New Zealand, Antarctic Ocean, northwestern coast of America, etc.

1770.--James Bruce (Scot.) discovers sources of the Blue Nile.

1770.--Liakhov (Rus.) discovers New Siberian Islands.

1785-88.--La Perouse (Fr.) explores north of Japan, Saghalien, etc.

1789.--A. Mackenzie (Scot.) explore the Mackenzie river.

1792.--Vancouver (Eng.) visits Vancouver Island, discovered by Perez, 1774. Exploration of the northwestern coast of America.

1795-1806.--Mungo Park (Scot.) journeys to and explores the Niger districts.

1799-1804.--Alex, von Humboldt (Ger.) makes explorations in South America and writes “Cosmos.”

1801-1804.--Flinders (Eng.) explores southern coasts of Australia.

1803-6.--Krusenstern (Rus.) surveys in Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk, Saghalien, etc.

1804-6.--Lewis and Clark make extensive explorations in northwestern United States from the Mississippi to the Columbia river.

1805-9.--Salt (Eng.) makes visit to Abyssinia.

1807-8.--Klaproth (Ger.) makes exploration of the Caucasus.

1819.--Long (U.S.) makes exploration of Rocky Mountains.

1819.--Wm. Smith (Eng.) explores South Orkney Islands and South Shetlands. Visited by Weddell in 1822.

1823.--Wrangel (Rus.) discovers Wrangel Land.

1823.--Denham and Clapperton (Eng.) discover Lake Chad.

1825-26.--A. G. Laing (Scot.) reached Timbuktu from Tripoli, Africa.

1827-8.--René Caillie (Fr.) made journey from Kakandy to Timbuktu and Morocco, Africa.

1830-32.--Biscoe (Eng.) discovers Enderby Land and Graham Land.

1831.--Sir J. C. Ross (Eng.) finds magnetic North Pole.

1832.--Laird and Oldfield (Scot.) explore the Niger and Benué rivers.

1835.--Sir F. Schomburgk (Ger.) makes explorations in Guiana, South America.

1837.--Wood (Eng.) discovers sources of the Oxus.

1840.--Trümmer discovers remains of ancient Nineveh.

1841.--Sir James C. Ross (Eng.) discovers Victoria Land, with volcanoes Erebus and Terror.

1841-73.--D. Livingstone (Scot.) spends thirty years’ travel in central South Africa.

1845.--Sir John Franklin (Eng.) sails on his last voyage never to return.

1848.--Rebmann and Krapf (Ger.) discover Mt. Kilima-njaro. Sighted Mt. Kenia.

1849-55.--Richardson and Barth (Eng.-Ger.) explore western Sudan and Sahara.

1850.--Sir R. M’Clure (Irish) discovers Northwest Passage.

1852-4, 1861.--Sir C. R. Markham (Eng.) makes explorations in Peru.

1856-59.--Du Chaillu (Fr.) explores basin of Ogowé river, west Africa.

1858.--Sir R. Burton (Scot.) discovers Lake Tanganyika.

1858.--Speke and Grant (Brit.) discover Victoria Nyanza.

1860.--Sir S. Baker (Eng.) explores Upper Nile. Discovers Albert Nyanza, 1864.

1867-72.--Richthofen (Ger.) makes extensive explorations in China.

1869.--G. Nachtigal (Ger.) makes explorations in Lake Chad region and central Sudan, Africa.

1870-1886.--Prejevalsky (Rus.) journeys in Mongolia, Tibet, etc.

1872.--Payer and Weyprecht (Austrian) explore Franz Josef Land.

1872-76.--“Challenger” Expedition (Brit.) explores the depths of the oceans.

1874-75.--Lieut. Cameron (Eng.) crosses equatorial Africa.

1876-90.--H. M. Stanley (Eng.) explores Congo Basin; Mt. Ruwenzori; Forests on the Aruwimi, etc. Africa.

1878-79.--Nordenskjold (Swed.) finds northeast passage.

1878-89.--Thomson (Scot.) journeys through Masai Land, British South Africa, Sokoto, Morocco, etc.

1878-85.--Major Serpa Pinto (Port.) twice crosses Africa.

1878-92.--Emin Pasha (Ger.) travels and surveys in Equatorial Africa.

1879.--Moustier and Zweifel (Swiss) find sources of the Niger.

1881-85.--Greely (U. S.) discovers Grinnell Land and northwestern coast of Greenland.

1885.--Wiesmann (Ger.) journeys across Africa from west coast, Congo Basin.

1886.--Peary (U. S.) explores North Greenland.

1887.--Capt. Younghusband (Eng.) travels from Pekin to Kashmir.

1893-96.--Nansen (Norw.) reached his “Farthest North” in lat. 86° 13′ 6′′ N.

1897.--Jackson (Scot.) makes surveys and explorations in Franz Josef Land.

1893-97.--Sven Hedin (Swed.) makes explorations in north central Asia.

1895-96.--Pr. Henri d’Orléans travels in Tonkin and China.

1897.--Andrée (Swed.) attempts to cross over the North Pole in a balloon, with fatal results.

1898-99.--De Gerlache (Belgian) attempts to reach the South Pole with the “Belgica,” first ship to winter within Antarctic circle.

1899.--Major Gibbons makes explorations in Congo and Zambezi headwaters.

1900.--Borchgrevink (Brit. Ex.) reached lat. 78° 50′ S. via Victoria Land.

1900.--Duke of Abruzzi (Ital.) reached lat. 86° 33′ N. via Franz Josef Land.

1900-02.--Sven Hedin (Swed.) made important journey in central Asia.

1908.--F. A. Cook (U. S.) claims to have reached the North Pole, April 21.

1909.--R. E. Peary (U. S.) reached the North Pole, April 6.

1911.--Roald Amundsen (Norw.) reached the South Pole, December 14.

1912.--Capt. Scott (Eng.) reached the South Pole, but perished before returning.

COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF NATIONS

Showing their Origin, Chief Events, Changes or Extinction, from the Earliest Period to the Present

I. [1]FROM EARLIEST HISTORIC RECORDS TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM, X-2250 B. C.

[1] All dates down to the First Olympiad, 776 B. C., are almost wholly conjectural. Dates here given, however, are from the latest and best authorities.

The earliest history of mankind, so far as we now know, begins with the peoples known as Semites. Northern Arabia is generally accepted as their primitive home. Issuing thence, they conquered or settled Babylonia and Egypt, and through amalgamations with the native races (of which we know very little), became the earliest historic Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. Historians sometimes assume that the native races were Mongolians, traces of which still persist in China, Thibet, Finland, The Caucasus, and perhaps, among the American Indians.

II. FROM THE AGE OF ABRAHAM TO THE RISE OF ASSYRIA, 2250-1100, B.C.

GREAT EVENTS OF PERIOD. Abraham becomes first great leader of the Hebrews. Egyptian revolt from the Shepherd Kings. New Egyptian empire. Rise of Assyria--originally settled by emigrants from Babylonia. Wars with Babylonia. Sidon, a Phœnician city, at its zenith. Phœnician colonies established round the Mediterranean. Advanced civilization in Crete. Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt under Moses. Hittites rise to great power, contending equally with Egypt and Assyria.

III. FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE TO THE TIME OF XERXES THE GREAT, 1100-485 B. C.

GREAT EVENTS OF PERIOD. 1100-1000: Heroic age of Greece; Hebrews reach their highest point of national power. Beginning of the Medo-Persian nations. Celts disperse over western Europe and into British Isles. 1000-900: Homeric age. Celts already in Britain, with bronze in use. Phœnician trade extended from Senegal to India. 900-800: Decline of Phœnician cities. 800-700: Ethiopian supremacy in Egypt. Assyrian conquests continue; Tiglath-Pileser III.; Sargon; Babylonia rises to height of its power. 700-600: Zenith and fall of Nineveh, and Assyrian empire. Media rises to power. Perhaps last migrations from the Aryan center--Teutonic and Slav races. 600-500: Zenith and fall of Babylon. Long reign of Nebuchadnezzar; he ravages Egypt. The seventy years’ captivity of Judah. Rise of Persia. Founding of the Roman republic. Establishment of democracy in Athens.

IV. FROM THE ACCESSION OF XERXES THE GREAT TO THE PERIOD OF THE PUNIC WARS, 485-264, B. C.

GREAT EVENTS OF THE PERIOD. 500-400: Zenith of Persia; and glorious century of Greece. Struggles of Patricians and Plebeians at Rome. 400-300: Decline and fall of Persia before Alexander the Great; Greek language and Greek civilization extended all through the Levant. Roman wars with the Samnites. Internal quarrels of the Romans diminish. 300-200: Semi-Greek Kingdoms built on the ruins of the Persian Empire; in Egypt the Ptolemies; in Syria, the Antiochi. Many Jews at Alexandria.

V. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PUNIC OR CARTHAGINIAN WARS TO THE FOUNDING OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 264-30, B. C.

GREAT EVENTS OF PERIOD. 300-200: Rome mistress of Italy; then, victorious over Carthage, extends her influence to Greece and Spain. Peasant proprietors replaced by slaves in Italy. 200-100: Greece, Macedonia, Carthage, and Spain under Roman rule; decline of the Roman Oligarchy; the Gracchi begin the democratic revolution which ends in the empire. Eastern luxury introduced among the Romans. 100-1: The Romans govern all the countries around the Mediterranean. Roman Oligarchy is followed by establishment of the empire.

VI. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER AUGUSTUS TO ITS PERMANENT DIVISION, B. C. 30-395, A. D.

GREAT EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: Rome mistress of the world. The Augustan Age. Golden Age of Roman literature. 1-100, A. D.: Christianity founded amid persecutions. Parthia a powerful state but unequal rival of Rome. 100-200: Zenith of Roman Empire. The good emperors. Persecutions of the Christians continue. 200-300: Emperors chosen by the army. Germanic tribes on Roman borders. Persecutions continue. 300-400: Constantine moves the capital of the empire to Constantinople, and professes Christianity. Rise of Christian Monasticism. Great church disputes. Germanic incursions and settlements. The Roman Empire reaches its greatest territorial extent.

VII. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE FORMATION OF THE MOHAMMEDAN EMPIRE, 395-622 A. D.

GREAT EVENTS OF PERIOD. Invasion of the Germanic Tribes. Middle Ages begin. Anglo-Invasion of Britain. 400-500: Fall of the Roman Empire. Beginning of new states. 500-600: Great disorders in the West. Beginnings of Feudalism; power of the clergy increases. In the East the great reign of Justinian. 600-700: Rise and wonderful spread of Mohammedanism from Arabia to Siude on the east, and Carthage on the west. Christianizing of Germany.

VIII. FROM THE BEGINNING OF MOHAMMEDAN POWER TO THE TREATY OF VERDUN, 622-843 A. D.

GREAT EVENTS OF PERIOD. 700-800: Christianizing of Germany continues. Hostile caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. Mohammedan advance in the West checked by Charlemagne, who nominally restores the Western Roman Empire. Norman ravages begin. 800-900: Norman ravages continue. Private wars. Charlemagne’s Empire falls to pieces.

=NOTE: The comparative outline of the History of Nations is continued by Table IX.=

=EXTINCT NATIONS OF THE PAST=

THE SPELL OF EGYPT: ANCIENT AND MODERN

For hoary antiquity, for the massive and sublime, for the quaintly picturesque, Egypt stands unrivalled in the world,--the region where the Pharaohs reigned, where Moses grew from birth to manhood, where Joseph came forth from a dungeon to rule in wisdom at the king’s right hand, and whence the chosen people of God went out into the wilderness towards the promised land.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE OLDEST CIVILIZATION

When the Egyptians first appear on the page of history they are already possessed of a marvelously advanced civilization, extending back thousands of years before the even remote period of the pyramid builders. Long before the chosen people, the Hebrews, came into possession of the promised land of Canaan, Egypt had kings, priests, cities, armies; laws, temples, learning; arts and sciences and books. Egypt is, beyond all other lands, the land of ruins, surpassing all in gigantic and stately monumental remains, the result of immense human labor.

HOMELAND OF THE EGYPTIANS

Egypt proper occupies little more than twelve thousand square miles. Including the oases in the Libyan Desert, the region between the Nile and the Red Sea, and El-Arish in Syria, but excluding the Sudan, the area is about four hundred thousand square miles.

In ancient as in modern times Egypt was always divided into the Upper and Lower, or the Southern and the Northern country; and at a very early period it was further sub-divided into a number of nomes, or departments, varying in different ages. It is practically confined to the bed of the flooded Nile, a groove formed by its waters in the desert; and the bordering desert and the southern provinces of Nubia, Khartum and others, toward the equator form no part of the Egypt of nature or of history, though from time to time they have been politically joined to it. Without the Nile Egypt would never have existed; and therefore a brief account of this wonderful river is very important.

THE LIFE GIVING RIVER NILE

Though the longest river in Africa, the Nile has little historic interest above Khartum, where the White Nile and Blue Nile unite their waters. Below Khartum navigation is rendered extremely dangerous by the cataracts which obstruct the bed of the river, the sixth occurring not far north of Khartum, the first near Assuan, in Egypt. The Nile enters the Mediterranean by a delta which separates into two main channels, the Rosetta and the Damietta, which are intersected with canals. The valley of Upper Egypt is narrow, and the fringe of mountains on either side are of no great height, so that the landscape varies but little and might appear to be monotonous but for the rich and wondrous coloring of all the scenery, the vivid green of the fields, the rich red-brown of the river, the bright yellow of the rocks, with overhead a deep blue sky and brilliant sunshine. The river flows into Egypt proper north of the second cataract, a little south of Wadi-Halfa. The Blue Nile joins the river at Khartum; this stream brings down an immense quantity of red mud. The cataracts are six in number.

THE NILE’S ANNUAL OVERFLOW

The important feature of the river is its annual inundation. At the end of May the river is at its lowest level, it rises gradually in June and continues rising until the middle of September; it then remains stationary from two to three weeks, rising again until the end of October; it is then at its highest level and begins gradually to fall, until by May it is once more at its lowest. The river rises from twenty-one to twenty-eight feet; when it did not reach this level the crops failed, and when it exceeded it, the land was overflowed and ruin faced the people. Nowhere in the world is there such a large population depending solely on the produce of the soil.

THE RISE OF IRRIGATION BEGINS WITH THE NILE

As the climate is exceedingly dry, irrigation became as early as the second dynasty (about 4514 B. C.) an object of national importance. All through the ages can be marked the tireless persistence and mechanical ingenuity employed in the problems of irrigation. During the nineteenth century, Mehemet Ali Pasha began a gigantic system of canals and locks and weirs. A French engineer of great ability, Mougel Bey, was employed to carry out this difficult task; his great barrage across the Nile, at the apex of the delta, is still a very impressive work; unfortunately the system was a failure. Later British engineers undertook the management of irrigation, and in 1902 the Nile dam, at the head of the first cataract above Assuan, was completed. The dam is such a height that the beautiful temples on the islet of Philæ are partially submerged; and during several months of the year the ruins are no longer visible.

EGYPTIAN LAKES, CLIMATE AND OASES

The chief lakes of Egypt, from west to east are Mareotis, Edku, Burlus, and Menzala; these lie only a few miles from the coast and are shallow and brackish. The seven famous natron lakes lie in a valley in the desert, eighty miles from Cairo. In the province of the Fayum is the Birket-el-Kerum, thirty miles long and five miles wide, forming the remains of the ancient Lake Moeris, which Herodotus believed to have been artificially constructed.

The climate is extremely dry. Egypt lies in an almost rainless area. The days are warm and the nights are cool. January is the coolest month. On the coast rain falls during the winter months, but snow is unknown. In Sinai, snow occasionally falls during the winter, and heavy storms of rain occur, which occasionally flood the rocky ravines. One interesting feature of the climate is the continuous north wind, which blows throughout the year, and the sailing boats are thus able to ascend the Nile against the strong current. During the spring the Kamsin occurs, a hot, dry south wind laden with sand, forming a yellow stifling fog almost obscuring the sun; it lasts from one to three days.

There are five large oases or fertile places in the western desert--Siwa, Baharia, Kharga, Dakla, and Farafra. These have been occupied since 1600 B. C. Kharga possesses a temple of Ammon, built by the Persian conqueror, Darius I., and also other interesting ruins of the time of the Ptolemies. Siwa contains the oracle temple of Jupiter Ammon, consulted by Alexander the Great. The town is built on the rocks and has the appearance of a fortress.

ANCIENT POPULATION OF EGYPT

The population of the country must have been large at the earliest period, as one hundred thousand men were employed in the construction of the Great Pyramid alone during the fourth dynasty, nearly 3600 years B. C. It has been placed at seven million under the Pharaohs, distributed in eighteen hundred towns, which had increased to two thousand under Amasis (525 B. C.), and upwards of three thousand under the Ptolemies. In the reign of Nero it amounted to seven million eight hundred thousand. In 1707 it was eleven million, one hundred and forty thousand in Egypt proper, or, including Nubia and other dependencies nearly twenty millions.

HOW WE KNOW THE HISTORY OF EGYPT

Until the last century, what we knew about ancient Egypt was mainly obtained from Greek and Roman historians. At the present time our knowledge of the “land of pyramids and priests” has been greatly increased by the deciphering of the inscriptions on the monuments, and by extended observation of the countless sculptures in which the olden Egyptians have recorded their ways of life, their arts, arms, sciences, religion and customs. In carving or in painting, the obelisks, the temple walls, and temple columns, the inner walls of tombs, the coffins of the dead, artistic objects--all are covered with the strange characters known as hieroglyphics.

THE STORY OF THE HIEROGLYPHICS

This word, of Greek extraction, means “sacred carvings,” given to the sculptures in the supposition that all such characters were of religious import, and known only to the priests of ancient Egypt. The meaning of the characters had been lost for hundreds of years, and the word “hieroglyphics” had long become proverbial for mysteries and undecipherable puzzles, when a keen-eyed Frenchman put into the hands of scholars the clew to their translation.

DISCOVERY OF THE ROSETTA STONE

An artillery officer of Napoleon’s army in Egypt, named Bouchart, discovered near Rosetta, in 1799, an oblong slab of stone engraved with three inscriptions, one under the other. The upper one (half of which was broken off) was in hieroglyphics, the lowest one was in Greek, and the middle one was stated in the Greek to be in the written characters of the country. The Greek inscription told scholars that all three inscriptions expressed a decree of the Egyptian priests, sitting in synod at Memphis, in honor of King Ptolemy V.

Hieroglyphs are representations on stone, wood, or papyrus, of objects or parts of objects, including heavenly bodies, human beings in various attitudes, parts of the human body, quadrupeds and parts of quadrupeds, birds and parts of birds, fishes, reptiles, etc., geometric and fantastic forms, amounting in all to about a thousand different symbols.

More than six hundred are ideographic (idea-writing); i. e., the engraved or painted figure, either directly or figuratively conveys an idea which we express by a word composed of alphabetic signs. Thus, directly, the figure of a man means “man;” figuratively the same figure means “power.”

PHONETIC HIEROGLYPHICS

About one hundred and thirty of the hieroglyphs are phonetic (sound-conveying); i. e., represent words (which are nothing but sound with a meaning attached thereto) of which the first letter is to be taken as an alphabetic sign, and thus phonetic hieroglyphs answer the same end as our letters of the alphabet. For example: in ideographic writing, a bird, a mason, a nest, mean “birds build nests;” in phonetic hieroglyphic the figures of a _b_ull, _i_mp, _r_ope, _d_oor and _s_hip would give the word “birds,” and the words “build” and “nests” would be expressed in the same round-about and clumsy fashion.

THE HISTORY OF EGYPT

From the old Greek writers and from records of the monuments we have a fairly complete story of this wonderful country and people.

FIRST MONARCH OF THE OLD KINGDOM

The first king of Egypt, Menes, whose date is set at 3400 years before Christ, is said to have founded the city of Memphis, near the site of the modern Cairo, which became the capital of Egypt; Thebes, in Upper (or Southern) Egypt, afterwards taking this position.

The building of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, near Cairo, is ascribed to a king named Cheops (kē´ops) by Herodotus, otherwise called Khufu (kōō´fōō), according to the hieroglyphic royal name found inside the structure. He is believed to have reigned about the twenty-eighth century before Christ. Cheops was the second and most celebrated monarch in the fourth of the dynasties which ruled at Memphis. The third king in this list, Khafra (khaf´rä) also founded a pyramid, as did the fourth, Menkaura (men-kȧ-rä´) or Nycerinus, a sovereign beloved and praised in poetry for his goodness. His mummified remains are in the British Museum. In the sixth dynasty was a female sovereign noted for her beauty, named Nitocris, who built a pyramid and reigned at Memphis. The monarchy then was for some time divided, the chief power being held by the kings ruling at Thebes, in Upper Egypt, who developed great power, and constructed many notable works.

THE INVASION AND RULE OF THE SHEPHERD-KINGS

About 1800 B. C. the Hyksos or Shepherd-kings, said to be of Arabian race, conquered Lower Egypt, and then subdued the kingdom of Thebes, ruling the whole land down to 1580 B. C. Probably to this period the story of Joseph in Egypt belongs. The shepherd-kings were expelled with the aid of the Ethiopians from the south, and then came the great period of Egyptian history. During this time, Egypt was a great empire with Thebes for its capital. Under Thutmose III., Amenhotep III. and IV., and Seti I., Egypt rose to great heights of development and art.

GREAT EPOCH OF RAMESES II.

The greatest monarch of this, or perhaps of any, age of Egypt’s history was Rameses the Great (called by the Greeks, Sesostris). To him have been attributed many of the monuments and pictures which represent triumphal processions and captives. Rameses the Great reigned for nearly seventy years in the fourteenth century before Christ. Among his many monuments two are chiefly remarkable, the Memnonium or palace-temple at Thebes, and the great rock-cut temple of Abu-Simbel in Nubia. These architectural works possess an interest more historical than that of the pyramids. He is said to have subdued Ethiopia, carried his arms beyond the Euphrates eastward, and among the Thracians in southeast Europe. The monumental sculptures and paintings tell us of war-galleys of Egypt in the Indian seas, and of Ethiopian tribute paid in ebony and ivory and gold, in apes and birds of prey, and even in giraffes from inner Africa. Other sculptures display the Egyptians fighting with success against Asiatic foes. To this monarch was due a vast system of irrigation by canals for conveying the waters of the Nile to every part of the country.

The next sovereign of note was Sheshanq (Shi´shak), who, in the latter part of the tenth century before Christ, took and plundered Jerusalem. The empire continued to decline, and was entirely reduced by Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, and became for a time tributary to the Assyrian monarchs. In the early part of the reign of the king Psametik I. (653-610 B. C.)

IMPORTANT REIGN OF PSAMETIK FOLLOWS AN AGE OF DECAY

We find Egypt in connection, for the first time in its history, with foreign countries, otherwise than as conquering or conquered. Psametik I. (653-610 B. C.) had in his pay a body of Greek mercenaries, and sought to introduce the Greek language among his subjects. In jealousy at this, the great military caste of Egypt emigrated into Ethiopia, and left the king dependent on his foreign troops, with whom he successfully warred in Syria and Phœnicia, and likewise succeeded in making Egypt independent of Assyria.

Neku, son of Psametik (610-595 B. C.), was an enterprising prince, who built fleets on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and strove to join the Nile, by a canal, with the Red Sea. Africa was circumnavigated by Phœnicians in his service, who sailed from the Arabian Gulf, and passed round by the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouths of the Nile. He was the king who defeated Josiah, king of Judah, sustaining afterward defeat from Nebuchadnezzar II., king of Babylon, at Carchemish.

In 590 B. C., came Apries (the Pharaoh-Hophra of Scripture), who conquered Sidon, and was an ally of Zedekiah, king of Judah, against Nebuchadnezzar. After being repulsed with severe loss in an attack on the Greek colony of Cyrene, west of Egypt, Apries was dethroned by Aahmes II., who reigned from 570 to 526 B. C. His prosperous rule was marked by a closer intercourse with the Greeks.

EGYPT IS CONQUERED BY PERSIA

Psametik III., son of Aahmes, inherited a quarrel of his father with Cambyses, king of Persia, who invaded and conquered Egypt in 525 B. C. For nearly two centuries afterwards the history of Egypt is marked, disastrously, by constant struggles between the people and their Persian conquerors, and, in a more favorable and interesting way, by the growing intercourse between the land of the Nile and the Greeks. Greek historians and philosophers--Herodotus and Anaxagoras and Plato--visited the country, and took back stores of information on its wonders, its culture, and its faith.

CONQUERED BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND PASSES UNDER GREEK RULE

In 332 B. C., Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great; and its new capital, the great Alexandria, destined to a lasting literary and commercial renown, was founded. Subsequently it passed under Greek rule, and the language of the government, and the administration and philosophy, became essentially Greek. The court of the Ptolemies became the center of learning and philosophy; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, successful in his external wars, built the Museum, founded the library of Alexandria. He purchased the most valuable manuscripts, engaged the most celebrated professors, and had the Septuagint translation made of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Egyptian history of Manetho drawn up. His successor, Euergetes, pushed the southern limits of his empire to Axum. Philopator (221-204 B. C.) warred with Antiochus, persecuted the Jews, and encouraged learning. Epphanes, (204-180 B. C.) encountered repeated rebellions and was succeeded by Philometor (180-145 B. C.) and Euergetes II. (145-116 B. C.), by Soter II. and Cleopatra till 106 B. C., and by Alexander (87 B. C.), under whom Thebes rebelled; then by Cleopatra, Berenice, Alexander II. (80 B. C.), and Neos Dionysus (51 B. C.) and finally by the famous Cleopatra who maintained her power only through her personal influence with Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony.

EGYPT BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE

On the defeat of Mark Antony by Augustus, B. C. 30, Egypt became a province of Rome. It was still a Greek state, and Alexandria was the chief seat of Greek learning and science. On the spread of Christianity the old Egyptian doctrines lost their sway. Now arose in Alexandria the Christian catechetical school, which produced Clemens and Origen. The sects of Gnostics united astrology and magic with religion. The school of Alexandrian Platonics produced Plotinus and Proclus. Monasteries were built all over Egypt; Christian monks took the place of the pagan hermits, and the Bible was translated into Coptic.

PASSES UNDER MOHAMMEDAN RULE

On the division of the great Roman Empire (A. D. 395), in the time of Theodosius, into the Western and Eastern Empires, Egypt became a province of the latter, and sank deeper and deeper in barbarism and weakness. It was conquered in 640 A. D. by the Saracens under Caliph Omar. As a province of the caliphs it was under the government of the celebrated Abbasides--Haroun-al-Rashid and Al-Mamun--and that of the heroic Sultan Saladin. The last dynasty was, however, overthrown by the Mamelukes (1250); and the Mamelukes in their turn were conquered by the Turks (1516-17). The Mamelukes made repeated attempts to cast off the Turkish yoke, and had virtually done so by the end of the eighteenth century, when the French conquered Egypt and held it till 1801, when they were driven out by the British.

BECOMES A PAWN OF TURKEY, FRANCE AND ENGLAND

On the expulsion of the French a Turkish force under Mehemet Ali Bey took possession of the country. Mehemet Ali was made pasha, and being a man of great ability, administered the country vigorously and greatly extended the Egyptian territories. At length he broke with the Porte, and after gaining a decisive victory over the Ottoman troops in Syria in 1839 he was acknowledged by the sultan as viceroy of Egypt, with the right of succession in his family.

By the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 France formally recognized the predominant position of Great Britain, and agreed in no way to obstruct British action in the government of Egypt. The European War of 1914-1916 has again thrown Egypt into the balance, and its political future seems to be entirely a matter of the fortunes of war and diplomacy.

EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT AND CIVILIZATION

At an early period the form of government in Egypt became an hereditary monarchy, of a peculiar kind. The power of the king was restricted by rigid law and antique custom, and by the extraordinary influence of the priestly class. The soil was held by the priests, the warriors, and the king.

=Their Kings.=--The Egyptian monarchs appear to have used their authority well and wisely; we rarely hear of insurrection or rebellion, and many received divine honors after death for their beneficence and regal virtues. The common title “Pharaoh” is derived from the Egyptian word “Phra,” the sun.

=Social Castes.=--The body of the people were divided into castes, not rigidly separated, as in India. The members of the different orders might intermarry, and the children pass from one caste to another by change of the hereditary occupation. The castes were: (1) priests; (2) soldiers; (3) husbandmen; (4) artificers and tradesmen; (5) a miscellaneous class of herdsmen, fishermen and servants. The priests and warriors ranked far above the rest in dignity and privilege.

=The Priests.=--The hierarchy in Egypt was the highest order in power, influence and wealth. To the priestly caste, however, many persons belonged who were not engaged in religious offices. They were a landowning class, and the solely learned class. In their possession were all the literature and science of the country, and all employments dependent, for their practice, on that knowledge. The priesthood thus included the poets, historians, lawyers, physicians, and the magicians who did wonders before Moses. They paid no taxes, had large landed possessions, exercised immense influence over the minds of the people, and put no slight check even on the king.

=Soldiers and Warriors.=--Egypt had an army of over four hundred thousand men, mainly composed of a militia supported by a fixed portion of land (six acres per man), free from all taxation. The chariots and horses were famous: the foot-soldiers were variously armed with helmet, spear, coat of mail, shield, battle-axe, club, javelin and dagger, for close fighting in dense array; and with bows, arrows and slings for skirmishing and conflict in open order. The soldier was allowed to cultivate his own land when he was not under arms, but he could follow no other occupation.

=The Lower Castes.=--The castes below the warriors and priests had no political rights, and could not hold land; to-wit, The husbandmen who tilled the soil paid rent in produce to the king or to the priests who owned it; and the artisan class, which included masons and the usual tradesmen, whose occupations are recorded upon the monuments. The herdsmen were the lowest class, and of these the swineherds were treated as outcasts, not permitted to enter the temples, or to marry, except among themselves.

RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS

In Egypt, life was the thing sacred. Hence all that had life, all that produced and all that ended life, was in a way divine. Hence death, too, was sacred. The Egyptian lived in the contemplation of death. His coffin was made in his lifetime; his ancestors were embalmed. The sovereign’s tomb was built to last for, not centuries, but thousands of years.

The highest form of the religious belief of the Egyptians included the idea that the soul was immortal. In the religion of Egypt were united the worship of Nature, and of the spirit which underlies and animates Nature.

=The Egyptian Gods.=--Having depended on the Nile and the Sun for the vegetation needed for their food, the people conceived human forms for them, and for the prolific Earth, as deities; namely, Osiris as the Nile and the Sun, and Isis as the Earth. These were the only divinities that were worshiped throughout Egypt. In later times they came to be regarded as divinities of the sun and the moon.

Another god, Anubis, worshiped in the form of a human being with the head of a dog, is represented as an Egyptian Hermes.

Whatever higher religious ideas may have been held by learned priests, the worship of the common people was chiefly adoration of animals. The sacred bull, called Apis, was worshiped at Memphis with the highest honors. All Egypt rejoiced on his annual birthday festival, and there was a public mourning when he died. The dog, the hawk, the white ibis, and the cat, were also specially revered. The sparrow-hawk, with human head and outspread wings, denoted the soul flying through space, to animate a new body. Thus we find mingled, in the religion of Egypt, gross superstition in the masses of the people, along with the spiritual conceptions of cultivated minds.

=The Future Life.=--In a papyrus-book, discovered in the royal tombs of Thebes, called the Book of the Dead, we read in pictured writing of a second life, and of a Hall of Judgment, where the god Osiris sits, provided with a balance, a secretary, and forty-two attendant-judges. In the balance the soul is weighed against a statue of divine justice, placed in the other scale, which is guarded by the god Anubis. The assistant-judges give separate decisions, after the person on trial has pleaded his cause before them. The soul rejected as unworthy of the Egyptian heaven was believed to be driven off to some dark realm, to assume the form of a beast, in accordance with a low character and sensual nature. An acquitted soul joined the throng of the blest.

=Embalming.=--The religion of the people was connected with the practice of embalming the bodies of the dead. This art seems to have derived its origin from the idea that the preservation of the body was necessary for the return of the soul to the human form after it had completed its cycle of existence of three or ten thousand years. The art appears as old as 4000 B. C., at least, for the bodies of Cheops, Mycerinus, and others of the age of the fourth dynasty, were embalmed.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE

The chief feature of Egyptian architecture is its colossal, massive grandeur, from the use of enormous blocks of masonry, and from the vast extent of the buildings, which produce in the beholder an unequalled impression of sublimity and awe. The approaches to the palaces and temples were paved roads, lined with obelisks and sphinxes; and the temples and the palaces themselves surpassed in size, and in elaborate ornament of sculpture and of painting, all other works of man.

=The Pyramids.=--Of about forty pyramids now left standing in Middle Egypt, the most remarkable are the group of nine at Gizeh, near the site of ancient Memphis. The removal of the vast blocks of stone from distant quarries, and their elevation to heights, which have sorely puzzled modern engineers, were effected, not by the ingenuity of mechanical contrivance, but by the lavish use of human labor. Thousands of men were employed for months in moving single stones.

=The Temple Columns.=--Egyptian columns were formed by their architects on the model of the palm-tree, whose feathery crown of foliage was ever before their eyes, or of the full-blown or budding papyrus. We find constantly in the mural decorations the figure of the famous lotus-plant, or lily of the Nile, beheld by the Egyptians with veneration, and used in sculpture and in painting as no mere ornament, but as a religious symbol. This water-lily of Egypt was consecrated to Isis and Osiris, and typified the creation of the world from water. It also symbolized the rise of the Nile and the return of the sun in his full power.

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

Egyptian sculpture displays size, simplicity, stiffness, and little of what modern art calls taste or beauty. Neither did the Egyptians become true artists of the pictorial class. They used simple colors of brilliant hue; but of light and shade only little was known; and of perspective, nothing.

Their monuments prove, however, that they practiced the same mechanic arts, and used the same variety of tools, as the moderns. They were adepts at the finest work in every species of handicraft. We have here ample proof that the ancient Egyptians were a highly ingenious, artistic, tasteful, and industrious race.

CITIES AND HISTORIC MONUMENTS

The land of Egypt, teeming with population, abounded in cities and towns. Of these the greatest were Thebes, in Upper Egypt, and Memphis, in Middle Egypt, whose site was near the modern Cairo.

=Abu-Simbel= (ä´bōō-sim´bel) on the Nile, in Lower Nubia is the site of two very remarkable rockcut temples, among the most perfect and noble specimens of Egyptian architecture. Here there is no exterior and constructed part; the rock out of which they have been excavated rises too near the river. Still the temples have their façade, as richly decorated and as monumental in its character as those of the most sumptuous edifices of Thebes.

The colossal statues here, instead of being isolated monoliths, are a part of the façade itself, hewn out of the rock, though still forming part of it. The façade of the smaller temple, that of Hathor, is eighty-eight feet long and thirty-nine feet high. It has six colossal figures, about thirty-two feet high, of which four represent Rameses, and the other two his wife, Nefert-Ari. The façade of the great temple is larger, being one hundred and twenty-six feet long and ninety-three feet high.

Most striking are the four colossal figures of Rameses, two to the right, two to the left of the door. These are the largest figures of Egyptian sculpture, being sixty-six feet high. Everywhere are pictures like those at Luxor and Karnak, representing the battles and triumphs of Rameses.

=Abydos= (a-bī´dos), next to Thebes the most important city in the ancient kingdom of Upper Egypt. Here was found, 1817, in a corridor of the temple of Seti I. a very important tablet giving a succession of sixty-five kings beginning with Menes, covering a period of about 2,200 years. A similar tablet containing eighteen names, found in the temple of Rameses in 1818, was removed by the French consul-general, sent to Paris, and finally purchased for the British Museum.

=Alexandria=, the third capital of Egypt, was founded by Alexander the Great in the autumn of the year 332 B. C. It was situated originally on the low tract of land which separates the lake Marcotis from the Mediterranean, about fourteen miles west of the Canopic mouth of the Nile. Before the city, in the Mediterranean, lay an island, upon which stood the famous lighthouse, the Pharos, built in the time of Ptolemy I. in the third century B. C, and said to have been four hundred feet high. The island was connected with the mainland by a mole, thus forming the two harbors.

The most magnificent quarter of the city, called the Brucheion, contained the palaces of the Ptolemies, the Museum, for centuries the focus of the intellectual life of the world, and the famous library; the mausoleum of Alexander the Great and of the Ptolemies, the temple of Poseidon, and the great theater.

To the south was the beautiful gymnasium. The Serapeum, or temple of Serapis, stood in the Egyptian quarter.

Much of the space under the houses was occupied by vaulted subterranean cisterns, which were capable of containing a sufficient quantity of water to supply the whole population of the city for a year.

From the time of its foundation, Alexandria was the Greek capital of Egypt. Its population in the time of its prosperity, amounted to about three hundred thousand free citizens, and probably a larger number of slaves. This population consisted mostly of Greeks, Jews and Egyptians, together with settlers from all nations of the known world.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Alexandria became the residence of the Ptolemies. They made it, next to Rome and Antioch, the most magnificent city of antiquity, as well as the chief seat of Greek learning and literature.

Alexandria had reached its greatest splendor when, on the death of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, in 30 B. C, it came into the possession of the Romans. Its glory was long unaffected, and it was the emporium of the world’s commerce.

In the reign of Caracalla, however, it suffered severely. The strife between Christianity and heathenism in the third century--powerfully described in Kingsley’s Hypatia--gave rise to bloody contests in Alexandria. The rise of Constantinople only served to hasten its fall. The choice of Cairo as capital of the Egyptian caliphs hastened the now rapid decay of the city; the discovery of America, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, very much diminished its trade; and when, in 1517, the Turks took the place, the remains of its former splendor wholly vanished.

Under Mehemet Ali, however, the tide turned, and the city recovered rapidly. It is now again one of the most important commercial places on the Mediterranean with a population of about three hundred and fifty thousand. The Suez Canal diverted part of its trade; but this was more than compensated by the general impetus given to Egyptian prosperity.

Of the few remaining objects of antiquity the most prominent is Pompey’s Pillar, as it is erroneously called. Of the so-called Cleopatra’s Needles--two obelisks of the sixteenth century B. C. which long stood here--one was taken to England and erected on the Thames Embankment, London, 1878; and the other, presented by the khedive to the United States, was set up at New York in 1881.

=Assuan= or =Assouan= (äs-swän), the ancient Syene is the southernmost city of Egypt proper, on the right bank of the Nile, and beside the first or lowest cataract. It is noted for its granite, and was the place of banishment of Juvenal, the Roman poet. Here also is the great Nile irrigation system, begun in 1898, including a dam at Assuan and another at Assiout (two hundred and fifty miles nearer Cairo). The Assuan dam, finished in 1902 was designed to raise the level of the Nile for one hundred and forty miles above the first cataract. Its total length is one and one-quarter miles, the maximum height from the foundation about one hundred and thirty feet and the total weight of masonry over one million tons.

The difference of level of the water above and below is sixty-seven feet, and navigation is provided for by a series of four locks, each two hundred and sixty feet by thirty-two feet. The dam is pierced with one hundred and eighty openings, twenty feet by six feet, capable of discharging fifteen thousand tons of water per second. The reservoir, when opened, held something over one thousand million tons of water.

In 1907 the level was raised by twenty-three feet, steps being taken to preserve (as far as is consistent with partial submersion) the ruins of the temples on the island of Philæ within the area of the dam. Barrages at Zifteh and at Esneh help to regulate the flow.

=Cairo= (kī´rō).--The present capital of Egypt, is situated one mile east of the Nile. It has important transit trade, and is the starting-point for tours to neighboring pyramids, the sites of Memphis and Heliopolis, and the upper Nile. Its chief suburb is Bulak. It was founded by the Fatimite caliphs about 970, and made the capital. It was taken by the Turks in 1517, was held by the French 1798-1801, and was occupied by the British in 1882. It was the scene of the massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811.

There are about four hundred Mosques, some having six minarets, and adorned with beautiful granite columns, brought from Heliopolis and Memphis. About twenty deserve notice as works of art. The largest mosque is El Azhar, at the center of the city, regarded as a University for all Islam. The next in size is that of Sultan Hasan, in the Roumeyleh square, the finest structure in modern Egypt, and extremely light and elegant. It is built in the form of a parallelogram, and has a deep frieze running round all the wall, adorned with Gothic and Arabesque sculpture.

Other noticeable Mosques are the Tomb-Mosque of Kait Bey, built about 1470, one of the finest pieces of architecture in Cairo; and the Mosque of Amra, the oldest mosque in Egypt (founded 643 A. D.), and a remarkable Mohammedan monument.

The Citadel, or fortified Palace, erected by Saladin in 1176, was the only place of defence in the city; it fell into ruin, but was thoroughly repaired by a late pasha. Formerly it included a magnificent hall, Saladin’s Hall, environed with twelve columns of granite, of prodigious height and thickness, brought from the ruins of Alexandria. These supported an open dome, under which Saladin distributed justice to his subjects.

The view embraces the city, and above thirty miles along the Nile, including the ruins of Old Cairo, site of Memphis, great Pyramids, Obelisk of Heliopolis, and Pyramids of Sakkara. The Khedive resides at the Abdin and Kubbeh Palaces.

The street scenes of Cairo are of inexhaustible interest and amusement; civilization and semi-barbarism constantly jostle, the garb of the east perpetually comparing, in the season, with the toilettes of London, Berlin and Paris; refinement and coarseness, culture and ignorance, Mohammedanism, paganism, Christianity, every tint of skin, all conceivable phases of existence, present themselves in the throng of a Cairo street.

=Gizeh= or =Ghizeh= (gē´ze) is situated on the Nile about three miles west-southwest of Cairo. The Gizeh group consists of the Great Pyramid, the second and third pyramids, and eight small pyramids.

THE GREAT PYRAMIDS is the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), of the fourth dynasty. Its original height was four hundred and eighty-one feet (present height, four hundred and fifty-one), and the original length of the sides at the base, seven hundred and fifty-five. It is built of solid masonry in large blocks, closely fitted, with use of mortar. The exterior forms a series of steps, which were originally filled with blocks of limestone accurately cut to form a smooth slope. The entrance, originally concealed, is on the north side, forty-five feet above the base and twenty-four feet to one side of the center. The passage slants downward for three hundred and six feet; but the corridor, slanting upward to the true sepulchral chambers, soon branches off from it. A horizontal branch leads to the queen’s chamber, about eighteen feet square, in the center of the pyramid, and the slanting corridor continues in the Great Gallery, one hundred and fifty-one feet long, twenty-eight feet high, and seven feet wide, to the vestibule of the king’s chamber, which is thirty-four and one-half feet long, and seventeen feet wide, and nineteen feet high, and one hundred and forty-one feet above the base of the pyramid. It contains a plain, empty sarcophagus.

THE SECOND PYRAMID, or pyramid of Chephren (Khafra), was originally four hundred and seventy-two feet high and seven hundred and six feet in base-measurement. It has two entrances, and interior passages and chambers similar to those of the Great Pyramid. It retains at the top, part of its smooth exterior casing.

THE THIRD PYRAMID, that of Menkaura, was two hundred and fifteen feet high, and three hundred and forty-six feet to a side at the base. The entrance-passages and sepulchral chambers are similar to those of the other pyramids. All three were built by the fourth dynasty. Temples, now ruined, stand before the eastern faces of the second and third pyramids.

SPHINX (sfingks).--This celebrated figure is a quarter of a mile southeast of the Great Pyramid. According to present opinion, it is older than any of the pyramids. It consists of an enormous figure of a crouching sphinx of the usual Egyptian type, hewn from the natural rock, with the flaws and cavities filled in with masonry. The body is one hundred and forty feet long; the head measures about thirty feet from the top of the forehead to the chin, and is fourteen feet wide. Except the head and shoulders, the figure has for ages generally been buried in the desert sand.

Between the paws were found an altar, a crouching lion with fragments of others, and three large inscribed tablets, one, fourteen feet high, against the Sphinx’s breast, and the two others extending from it on each side, thus forming a sort of shrine. The Sphinx was a local personification of the sun-god.

=Heliopolis= (hē-li-op´ō-lis) the City of the Sun, or On--the oldest, perhaps, in this land of antiquities--was a sort of sacerdotal and university town, where Herodotus sought the wisest men in Egypt. Here Plato is said to have graduated. Here also lived Potiphar, who bought Joseph the patriarch. It consisted for the most part of temples and colleges; of which nothing now remains but a few isolated mounds, and one extremely ancient Obelisk. At the village of Metariyeh is reputed to be the place where the Virgin, St. Joseph and the infant Jesus stopped, under a sycamore.

=Memphis= (mĕm´fis) after the fall of Thebes, became the capital of Egypt, and kept its importance till the conquest by Cambyses. It was built by Menes on the western bank of the Nile, south of Cairo. It suffered from the Hyksos, and was captured by the Assyrians and stormed by Cambyses. It continued to exist under the Roman Empire, but was gradually abandoned and ruined after the Mohammedan conquest in the seventh century A. D. The ruins of Sakkara are near it. The desert sands have overwhelmed its famous avenue of sphinxes; and the great Pyramids of Gizeh, and the colossal Sphinx, are the chief memorials of the past in its vicinity.

Although various opinions have prevailed as to their use, the Pyramids were really nothing more than the tombs of monarchs of Egypt who flourished from the first to the twelfth dynasty. With the exception of some very late pyramids in Nubia, none were constructed after the twelfth dynasty; the later kings were buried at Abydos, Thebes, and other places, in tombs of a totally different construction.

=Thebes= (thēbz) is the No or No Ammon of Scripture, and is situated on the Nile opposite Karnak and Luxor. It was at the height of its splendor, as capital of Egypt from about 1600 to 1100 B. C. Its vastness is shown by the existing remains, known (from the names of modern villages) as the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, etc. They consist of obelisks, sphinxes, colossal statues, temples, and tombs cut in the rock,--mighty monuments, with their countless sculptured details and inscriptions, themselves the historians of the Egyptian Empire of three thousand years ago. It was enriched by the spoils of Asia and the tributes of Ethiopia, and its fame and reputation had reached the early Greeks. At the Persian conquest in the sixth century B. C. Cambyses destroyed many of its noblest monuments.

At the present day the glory of Thebes consists in its ancient temples. Of these the best known are the El Kurna, the Rameseum and Medinet-Abu temples, founded by Seti I., Rameses II., and Rameses III. respectively. To Amenhotep III. are ascribed two temples on the west side of the city, as also the well-known temple at Luxor.

LUXOR (luk´sor).--The present front of the latter temple was preceded, at the end of a great dromos of sphinxes leading to Karnak, by two beautiful obelisks of red granite, one of which still remains, and the other stands in the Place de la Concorde, Paris.

Before the large double gateway of the court are two colossal seated statues. The court is surrounded by a double range of columns. Beyond, the avenue to the buildings of Amenhotep makes a sharp angle and meets the gateway of the court, which is surrounded by a double colonnade. The buildings behind the court contain a great number of chambers and an isolated sanctuary, all profusely sculptured and colored.

KARNAK (kär´nak).--The temple here originally founded in the twelfth dynasty, owes much of its magnificence to later kings. The Great Temple extends to a length of about twelve hundred feet from west to east, and is comparatively regular in plan. The double gateway of the great court is about three hundred and seventy feet wide; the court is colonnaded at the sides, and has an avenue of columns in the middle.

A second gateway follows, and opens on the famous hall, one hundred and seventy by three hundred and twenty-nine feet, with central avenue of twelve columns sixty-two feet high and eleven and one-half feet in diameter, and one hundred and twenty-two columns forty-two and one-half feet high at the sides. A narrow court follows, ornamented with figures and containing two obelisks.

Behind this building is another large open court, at the back of which stands the edifice of Thothmes III., an extensive building containing a large hall and many comparatively small halls and chambers.

The mural sculptures are vast in quantity, and highly interesting in character, particularly those which portray the racial characteristics of various conquered Asiatic peoples.

=Suez= (sōō-ez´).--A seaport of Egypt, situated at the head of the Gulf of Suez, is best known as the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It was the ancient Arsinoë and the terminus of an ancient canal built by the Egyptian king, Rameses II., between the Nile delta and the Red Sea. This, having been allowed to fill up and become disused, was reopened by Darius I. of Persia. It was once more cleared and made serviceable for the passage of boats by Arab conquerors of Egypt.

In 1841 the French diplomat Lesseps set himself to study the isthmus of Suez thoroughly, and in 1854 he managed to enlist the interest of Said Pasha, khedive of Egypt, in his scheme for connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

Two years later the Porte granted its permission and the Universal Company of the Maritime Suez Canal was formed, receiving important concessions from the ruler of Egypt. The work was begun in 1859, and in 1869, the canal was duly opened for vessels. Between 1885 and 1889 the canal was enlarged and improved, and altogether over one hundred million dollars were spent in its construction. The total length is one hundred miles; the width of the water-surface was at first one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet, the width at the bottom seventy-two feet, and the minimum depth twenty-six feet. At Port Said two strong breakwaters, six thousand nine hundred and forty and six thousand and twenty feet long respectively, were run out into the Mediterranean; at Suez another substantial mole was constructed.

The making of the canal was facilitated by the existence of three or four valleys or depressions (formerly lakes), which, when the water reached them, became converted into lakes. Immediately south of Port Said the canal crosses Lake Menzaleh (twenty-eight miles long); and three more--Lake Ballah, Lake Timsah (five miles long), and the Bitter Lakes (twenty-three miles) are traversed to the south of it. The highest point or elevation that was cut through does not exceed fifty feet above sea-level. At intervals of five or six miles sidings or side-basins are provided to enable vessels to pass one another. By 1890 the canal had been deepened to twenty-eight feet, and widened between Port Said and the Bitter Lakes to one hundred and forty-four feet, and from the Bitter Lakes to Suez to two hundred and thirteen feet.

In 1875 Lord Beaconsfield, Prime Minister of England bought for the British Government the khedive’s shares--nearly half the canal stock--for $20,500,000. They are now valued at about $150,000,000, and bring in over $5,000,000 annual revenue.

From Suez there is a tourist route to Mount Sinai, near the coast, under the range called Jebel-et-Tih past Elim, Pharaoh’s Quarries, and Rephi-dim. The Sinai District comprises Mount Horeb, the Valley of Jethro, Church of the Burning Bush, Chapel of Elijah, and other historical sites. Thence it leads to Akabah, and up the deep pass of Wady Moosa, to Mount Hor (or Petra), Zoar, and Mount Seir, Beersheba and Hebron. (See Holy Land).

BABYLONIA--ASSYRIA

In the very first ages of the world, Babylonia, with Egypt, led the way as the pioneers of mankind in the arts of civilization. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile industry, all had their origin in one or other of these two countries.

GEOGRAPHY AND PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE REGION

The ancient kingdom of Babylonia was bounded on the east by Elam or Susiana; on the south by the Persian Gulf; on the west by the deserts of Arabia; and on the north by Assyria. It was watered by two streams, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and it was intersected by a number of canals, branching out from these great rivers, and dug in order to save the country from the effects of the annual inundations.

From the head waters of the Tigris and Euphrates to the Persian Gulf is a distance of about eight hundred miles. The land included between the two rivers divides itself naturally into two parts.

The northern one of these, Assyria, is a great plain of limestone and selenite, in area almost equal to England. The northern and western portions of this plain are broken by mountains and are of a fertile character, as is also that part of Assyria which lies east of the Tigris.

The southern of the two principal parts, Babylonia, is of alluvial character, and in ancient times was about equal in area to the combined territory of Holland and Belgium or to the southern half of Louisiana, the latter a region to which it has been likened in character. On the east of the Tigris, the Babylonian plain stretches away for a distance of some thirty to fifty miles, to the mountains of Elam. On the west it merges into the Arabian desert, twenty or thirty miles from the Euphrates, where the low hills check the overflow of the river.

EARLY DIVISIONS AND FAMOUS CITIES OF BABYLONIA

Babylonia appears to have been divided into the two large provinces of Sumer or Shinar (South Babylonia), and Accad or north Babylonia. The capital of this latter province was, like Babylon, built on both banks of the Euphrates, the larger half being called Sippara of Samas, the sungod (the modern Abu Habba), and the smaller half Accad or Agade. The latter was afterwards named “Sippara of the moon-goddess.” The greater part of Babylonia is now included in the modern Turkish province of Bagdad.

Ancient Babylonia also contained a number of other large cities and there was a succession of famous capitals: Babylon, of the Babylonian Empire, and afterwards of the Persian; Seleucia, founded by Seleucus, king of Syria, after the death of Alexander the Great; Ctesiphon, capital of the Parthian Empire; in modern times, Bagdad.

=Babylon=, on the Euphrates, is first mentioned in a tablet of 3800 B. C. From 2250 B. C. it became the capital of Babylonia and the holy city of western Asia. The name Babylonia is the Greek form of Babel, meaning “The Gate of the God.” Its Persian name was Babirus. It was according to the accounts of Greek writers, the greatest city of antiquity.

Nebuchadnezzar, who took more pride in the buildings constructed under his auspices than in his victorious campaigns, concentrated all his care upon the adorning and beautifying the city. To this end he completed the fortification of the city begun by his father Nabopolassar, consisting in a double inclosure of mighty walls which were strengthened by two hundred and fifty towers and pierced by one hundred gates of brass. The city itself was adorned with numerous temples, chief among them Esagila (“the high-towering house”), temple of the city and of the national god Merodach (Babylonian Marduk) with his spouse Zirpanit. In the neighborhood of it was the royal palace, the site of which was identified with the ruins of Al-Kasr. Sloping toward the river were the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders, the location of which is in the northern mound of ruins, Babel.

THE TOWER OF BABEL, which is supposed to be the temple of Nebo in Borsippa, not far from Babylon, represents the most imposing ruin of Babylonia. It is termed in the inscriptions Ezida (“the eternal house”), an ancient sanctuary of Nebo, and was restored with great splendor by Nebuchadnezzar. It represents in its construction a sort of pyramid built in seven stages, whence it is sometimes called “temple of the seven spheres of heaven and earth,” and it is assumed that the narrative of the “Tower of Babel” which the builders intended to carry up to heaven, was connected with this temple.

In the conquest of Cyrus, 538 B. C., the city of Babylon was spared. Darius Hystaspis razed its walls and towers. Xerxes (486-465 B. C.) despoiled the temples of their golden statues and treasures. Alexander the Great wished to restore the city, but was prevented by his early death. The decay of Babylon was hastened by the foundation in its neighborhood of Selencia, 300 B. C., which was built from the ruins of Babylon. The last who calls himself in an inscription “King of Babylon” was Antiochus the Great (223-187 B. C.)

EARLY HISTORY RIVALS THAT OF EGYPT

It is now evident, from the monuments and inscriptions which have been obtained from the traditionally oldest cities, that the civilization of the ancient people of Babylonia has an antiquity rivaling that of ancient Egypt. The American discoveries at Nippur in 1888-90 carry back Babylonian civilization to about 7000 B. C.

The early struggles for supremacy among the city states seem to have been confined to the lower valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; but about 4000 B. C. a mighty conqueror, Lugalzaggisi of Uruk, made expeditions to the Mediterranean and to the mountains at the north of Mesopotamia. He styled himself “King of Uruk,” “King of the Totality.”

Very early, however, a Semitic invasion must have taken place, for the date of two Semitic kings, namely, Sargon I. and Naram-Sin, of Accad, is placed, according to the testimony of the later Babylonians themselves, at about B. C. 3800 and 3750 respectively. Gudea, the priest-king, and a famous builder, was the chief ruler about 2800 B. C.

GREAT PERIOD OF HAMMURABI

About B. C. 2250 Hammurabi sat upon the throne of Babylon, the name of which now first appears in cuneiform records, although it may have been founded centuries before. This great monarch, Hammurabi, has left records of his enlightened efforts for the agricultural development of the land, and a great law code, cut in the enduring rock, which carries our knowledge of the history of law back a thousand years before the age of Moses. As yet no inscription has been discovered giving the details of his wars; but it is evident that he destroyed the Elamite power in Babylonia, and his assumption of the ancient titles “King of Sumer and Accad,” “King of the Four Quarters of the World,” seems to indicate that his power extended far. In Larsa and Sippar he erected temples to the sun-god, and at Babylon and Borsippa he enlarged those already standing. His great canal running down through the heart of Babylonia made the bordering territory fertile; and the granary built at Babylon stored the increased crops of grain. It may be that Lugalzaggisi and Sargon I. exceeded Hammurabi in the extent of their sway, but Hammurabi made Babylon the center of culture for southwestern Asia during millenniums.

After him we know little of the history until Burnaburiash, a Hassite king who was on the throne about 1400 B. C., exchanged letters with Amenhotep III. of Egypt as recorded in the Tel-el-Amarna Letters.

About 1250 B. C. Babylonia was conquered by Assyria, and, though it soon regained its independence and was again ruled by native kings, it remained a politically subordinate power, and was repeatedly conquered by its more powerful neighbor, until the fall of Nineveh, consequently we must now consider Assyria, as the successor of the first Babylonian Empire, and go back a little into its history up to the time of Tiglath Pileser I., the conqueror of old Babylon.

II. THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

Assyria proper, as heretofore stated, was a table-land, bounded on the north by part of Armenia; on the east by that part of Media which lies towards Mt. Zagros; on the south by Elam or Susiana and part of Babylonia; and on the west by the river Tigris, or later by the Chaboras, a branch of the Euphrates. The greater part of the ancient kingdom of Assyria is now contained in the modern province of Kurdistan. In size it may be compared to Great Britain.

DIVISIONS AND CITIES OF ASSYRIA

It was divided into seven provinces, and contained many great cities, of which the chief after Nineveh, the capital, were Asshur, which alone stood on the west bank of the Tigris, Calah, Dur-Sargon, Arbela, Tarbisi. The ruins of many cities are grouped around Nineveh; while lower down the Tigris is exhibited an almost unbroken line of ruins from Tekrit to Bagdad.

=Nineveh= was situated on the eastern bank of the upper Tigris opposite the modern Mosul, two hundred and thirty miles northwest of Bagdad. The ruins of the original capital, Asshur, now called Kalah Sherghat, are some sixty miles south. Nineveh, Calah (Nimrud), and Dur-Sargon (Khorsabad), ultimately supplanted it in importance. When Nineveh itself fell, the whole Assyrian empire--essentially a military power--perished with it. It was not until the excavations of Botta in 1842 and Layard in 1845 that the remains, first of Dur-Sargon, then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the world.

As a result of these excavations, the general outline of the city, the remains of four palaces and numerous sculptures, and thousands of tablets (principally from the so-called library of Ashurbanipal) were discovered. The greater part of these is now in the British museum. The city had a circumference of from seven to eight miles, the ruins of the walls showing a height in some parts of fifty feet. Shalmaneser I. built a palace at Nineveh and made it the city of his residence. Samsi-ramman III. decorated and restored the temple of Ishtar, famous for a special phase of the cult of the goddess. For a time Nineveh was neglected, but Sennacherib (705-681 B. C.), was a special patron of Nineveh. He surrounded it with a wall, replaced the small palace at the northeast wall by a large one, built another palace which he filled with cedar wood and adorned with colossal bulls and lions, and beautified the city with a park. Esarhaddon finished a temple, widened the streets, and beautified the city, forcing the kings whom he conquered to furnish materials for adorning the city and palaces. Nineveh succumbed to the combined attack of the Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians under Nabopolassar in 608 B. C.

In its times of prosperity, Assyria extended its borders on every side; and the Greeks and Romans often included the whole of Syria and of the regions watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris under the name.

Assyria and the neighboring provinces were celebrated for their great fertility; they were the original home of wheat and barley, and the date-palm grew there to perfection. The irrigation of the crops was ensured by the annual overflow of the Tigris.

EARLY ASSYRIAN HISTORY SHOWN BY THE INSCRIPTIONS

The Assyrian kingdom first began to be powerful about 1350. Shalmaneser I. had become so powerful that he invaded and captured Babylon about 1250 B. C. His descendant in the direct line of kings was Tiglath-Pileser I., about 1100 B. C., the real founder of the first Assyrian empire, whose reign forms the zenith of the early empire. He spread the dominion of Assyria over all western Asia, from the frontiers of Elam to the shores of the Mediterranean, and from the slopes of the mountains of Armenia to the shores of the Persian Gulf. He captured Babylon, Sippara, and reduced Babylonia to the position of a tributary state. On the west he advanced as far as Khilikhi (Cilicia), defeated the Hittites, captured their stronghold Carchemish, and received the homage of the people of Arvad and the cities of northern Phœnicia.

SECOND IMPORTANT DYNASTY ESTABLISHED

In 960 B. C. a new dynasty was founded by Assur-dân II., whose son Rimmon-nirari II., and great-grandson Asshur-nasirpal, by a long series of cruel wars once again extended the power of Assyria. The extensive trade carried on by Phœnician merchants in Assyria at this time is largely illustrated by the Phœnician bronzes and ivories disinterred in the palace of Asshur-nasirpal at Nimrud.

His son, Shalmaneser II., was successful in war against the monarch of Babylon, Benhadad, king of Damascus, the rulers of Tyre and Sidon, and Jehu, king of Israel. In 745 B. C., Tiglath-Pileser II. became king of Assyria, made himself master of Babylon, and had great successes in war against Syria and Armenia, extending the empire greatly.

REIGN OF SARGON THE ASSYRIAN

Sargon (722-705 B. C.) was engaged in war against Samaria, which he captured, carrying the people into captivity; against King Sabako of Egypt, whom he defeated; and the revolted Armenians, whom he thoroughly subdued. He then turned against Merodach-Baladan, king of Babylonia, and drove him from his throne, and, after extensive internal reforms, was succeeded by his son, the famous Sennacherib.

ASSYRIA BEGINS PERIOD OF GREATEST SPLENDOR

This warlike monarch marched into Syria in 701 B. C., captured Sidon and Askelon, defeated the forces of Hezekiah, king of Judah, with his Egyptian and Ethiopian allies, and made Hezekiah pay tribute. In 700 B. C. Sennacherib marched into Arabia, there defeated Tirhakah, king of Egypt and Ethiopia, and then his army perished before Libnah, in the south of Judah, by the catastrophe recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. Sennacherib was engaged, on his return to Assyria, in crushing rebellions of the Babylonians, constructing canals and aqueducts, and greatly adding to the size and splendor of Nineveh.

In 681 he was murdered by two of his sons, and another son, Esarhaddon, became king in 680. Esarhaddon made successful expeditions into Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and as far as the Caucasus Mountains, and after the erection of splendid buildings at Nimrud and other cities, was succeeded in 668 by his son Asshur-banipal (the origin of the Greek “Sardanapalus”).

GREAT EXTENT OF THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT

The Assyrian Empire was at its height of power under the kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanipal. The states nominally subject to the Assyrian king, paying tribute and homage, extended from the river Halys, in Asia Minor, and the seaboard of Syria, on the west, to the Persian Desert on the east; and from the Caspian and the Armenian Mountains, on the north, to Arabia and the Persian Gulf, on the south; and latterly included Egypt.

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE EMPIRE

Ashurbanipal inherited Egypt as part of his dominions, but his power was not firmly established in that country until he led an expedition there, and sacked the city of Thebes. He erected splendid buildings at Nineveh and Babylon, and did much for literature and the arts; so that under him there was a great development of luxury and splendor. He died in 625 B. C.; and soon afterwards Babylonia, for the last time, and with success, revolted. The Babylonians marched from the south against Nineveh, under their governor Nabopolassar; and the now powerful Medes, from the north, came against it under their king, Cyaxares. Nineveh was taken and given to the flames, which have left behind them in the mounds the calcined stone, charred wood, and statues split by the heat, that furnish silent and convincing proof of the catastrophe. Thus, about 625 B. C., warlike, splendid, proud Assyria fell, after which it became a Median province.

III. LATER BABYLONIAN EMPIRE

The founder of the later Babylonian Empire (625 B. C. and ending 538, with its subjection to Persia) was Nabopolassar, who joined the Medes in the destruction of the Assyrian power. Babylon then became an independent kingdom, extending from the valley of the Lower Euphrates to Mount Taurus, and partly over Syria, Phœnicia, and Palestine.

THE FAMOUS REIGN OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR

Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar (604 to 561 B. C.), who carried his arms with success against the cities of Jerusalem and Tyre, and even into Egypt. The empire was at its height of power and glory under him, and extended from the Euphrates to Egypt, and from the deserts of Arabia on the south to the Armenian Mountains on the north.

The carrying into captivity of the Jews by Nebuchadnezzar and the pride of his heart,--his image of gold in the plain of Dura, his fiery furnace, his strange madness, recovery, and repentance,--are well known from the account in the Hebrew Scriptures by the prophet Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach, the friend of Jehoiachin, captive King of Judah. He was followed by Neriglassar, a successful conspirator against his power and life; and he in turn, after some years, was defeated and slain in battle against the Medes and Persians. The assassination, after a few months, of the tyrant Laborosoarchod brought the last Babylonian monarch, Nabonidus, to the throne, in 555 B. C.

FALL OF BABYLON UNDER BELSHAZZAR

The Medes and Persians to the north had now become a formidable power, and in 540 the Persian king, Cyrus, marched against Babylon, and under its walls defeated Nabonidus, who fled to Borsippa, south of Babylon. The capital was held by a son of Nabonidus, who had been made co-king with his father,--Belshazzar. The revelries of this sovereign during the siege, the handwriting on the wall, and his death the same night, are given in the scriptural narrative of Daniel. The Babylonian Empire fell in 538 B. C., and became a province of the Persian Empire. The site of the great city of Babylon is now a marsh, formed by inundations of the river, due to the destruction of the embankments and the choking up of the canals.

IV. CIVILIZATION IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES.--The Babylonians were a commercial and luxurious people; the Assyrians were pre-eminently warlike. The position of the great city of Babylon on the Lower Euphrates, near to the Persian Gulf, made it a great emporium for the trade between India and eastern Asia and western Asia, with the nearest parts of Africa and Europe. From Ceylon came ivory, cinnamon and ebony; spices from the eastern islands; myrrh and frankincense from Arabia; cotton, pearls, and valuable timber, both for ship-building and ornament, from the islands in the Persian Gulf. There was also a great caravan trade with northern India and adjacent lands, whence came gold, dyes, jewels, and fine wool.

MANUFACTURES.--The wealth of Babylon became prodigious and proverbial, and her commerce was, in large measure, due to ingenious and splendid manufactures. Carpets, curtains, and fine muslins, skilfully woven and brilliantly dyed, of elegant pattern and varied hue, were famous wherever luxury was known. The Babylonian gems in the British Museum display art of the highest order in cutting precious stones.

GOVERNMENT AND LEARNING.--The system of government was a pure despotism, with viceroys ruling the provinces under the monarch, who dwelt in luxurious seclusion from his people. The priests and learned men of Babylon were mainly Chaldæans.

There were astronomers or, more properly, astrologers, in several of the cities; and the towers, such as that of Babel, were probably both temples and observatories. The clearness of the sky and the levelness of the horizon on all sides favored the study of the stars, which was more closely connected with religion than any form of science. The Chaldæans worshipped the heavenly bodies. When Babylon was taken by Alexander the Great, in 331 B. C., there was found in the city a series of observations of the stars dating from 2234 B. C.

ARCHITECTURE AND ART.--Assyrian art must be considered great in architecture and sculpture. The emblematic figures of the gods show dignity and grandeur. The scenes from real life, of war, and of the chase, are bold and vivid; and in succeeding ages marked progress is shown in the acquirement of a more free, natural, life-like and varied execution, though the artists never learned perspective and proportion.

The Assyrians constructed arches, tunnels, and aqueducts; were skilled in engraving gems, and in the arts of enamelling and inlaying; made porcelain, transparent and colored glass, and even lenses; ornaments of bronze and ivory, bells, and golden bracelets and earrings of good design and workmanship, were all produced. In mechanics, and for measuring time, they used the pulley, the lever, the water-clock, and the sun-dial.

IMPLEMENTS AND METHOD OF WARFARE.--The implements and methods used in war, as the monuments show, included swords, spears, maces, and bows and arrows, as weapons of offence; cavalry and chariots for charging; movable towers and battering-rams for sieges; and circular intrenched camps as quarters for a military force.

RELIGION.--In common with all Semites, the Babylonians were exceedingly religious, and were consequently greatly in the power of their priests, through whom tithes and offerings to their numerous gods were made.

Their earliest chief divinity was apparently the god Ea, lord of the deep, possessor of unsearchable wisdom, and creator of all things. When, however, Babylon became the chief of the city states of Babylonia, Merodach, the god of that city, assumed the first place. He was a reflection of the sun, or the light of day, and was worshiped as he who constantly sought to do good to mankind. His chief title was Bel, (Baal of the Bible) “the Lord”; and his vast temples were maintained by the Babylonian kings with pride. The priests attached to this temple were richly endowed, and the maintenance of the worship involved a great outlay. The impression made by this temple and its worship on the Jews during their captivity is reflected in the account of Bel and the Dragon in the Old Testament.

The other gods of Babylonia would seem to have been the same as those of Assyria, which borrowed its religion, as well as its other culture, from Babylonia. Asshur was the chief god, and is always named first in the invocations of the kings. Sin was the moon-god, Shamash the sun-god, Anum the god of the sky, Bel the god of the earth, and Ea the god of the abyss and of profound wisdom. Rammanu (the Biblical Rimmon) was the ruler of the weather, Ishtar (the Biblical Ashtoreth) the goddess of love, Nebo the god of learning, and Nergal the god of war and hunting. The Assyrian temples always contained statues of the gods or goddesses, and sometimes a particular statue was held in special veneration, as the Ihstar of Nineveh, or the Ihstar of Arbela; only two statues of a god have been discovered in modern times, namely the two limestone figures of Nebo, disinterred in a temple at Nimrud, and dating from the eighth century B. C. With regard to public worship, we know that constant sacrifices and libations were offered to the gods, images were carried in procession, and a highly organized and richly endowed priesthood existed. The building and maintenance of temples were among the chief functions of the king, who himself boasted of the title of high priest.

THE HEBREWS AND THE HOLY LAND--PALESTINE

The history and characteristics of the Hebrews are fully dealt with in the Old Testament, the important parts of which should be familiar to everyone.

They were a pure Semitic race, akin to the Phœnicians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. The founder of the nation was Abraham, who, about the twenty-third century before Christ, removed from the plains of Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan, on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This land has since been variously named Palestine, Canaan, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land, and was the scene of most of the great events of the Bible. Just as the old name Canaan denoted originally the low-lying country along the coast, so Palestine means literally “Land of the Philistines,” and was not used of the inland districts before the time of the Romans.

THE UNIQUE SITUATION AND IMPORTANCE OF THE HOLY LAND

The whole region is practically an isolated oasis, with a productive climate due to proximity to the sea.

All communication between the Babylonians, the Chaldeans and the Assyrians on the one hand, and the Egyptians on the other, was by the way of Palestine. Thus the Holy Land was at the very center of the ancient world. It is this position with its fundamental significance in history which renders it unique among the lands of the earth. It has always been the refuge of the drifting populations of Arabia. Never sought for itself alone, except by the Crusaders, it has been over-run constantly by invaders from the north seeking Egypt, or by the return attack. Thus the Hittites, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Scythians, Parthians, Persians, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols in turn devastated it. Alexander passed through to Egypt in 322 B. C.; the wars of the Seleucids and Ptolemies passed over it; Pompey in 65 B. C. brought it under the Roman Empire; the Crusaders established themselves there from 1098 to 1187; Napoleon in 1799 abandoned his first ambition on its soil. Yet its destiny was typified by the Arab conquest in 634 A. D.; there is everything to attract the desert tribes, but nothing for others except the religious sentiment of Christians.

HISTORY OF THE HEBREWS OR ISRAELITES

The ancestors of the Israelites were certain of the pastoral tribes having their abode in the wild tracts to the south and east of Palestine. Their nearest kinsmen were Edom, Ammon, and Moab. About 2200 B. C. they migrated under their tribal chief, Abraham, from Haran in Mesopotamia into the land of Canaan. Here the tribes continued to lead a pastoral life, and ultimately, in the time of Jacob, a famine in the land of Canaan led to a fresh migration into Egypt. This movement is especially associated with the name of Joseph.

ISRAELITES UNDER THE EGYPTIANS

Here they obtained leave from Pharaoh to dwell in the land of Goshen, where their continued adherence to their own customs and pastoral life led them to be accounted barbarians by the cultured Egyptians. In Egypt a time of great oppression came upon the Hebrews, and they were subjected to the harshest treatment and repressive measures, induced by a fear lest they should ally themselves with Egypt’s foes. Then there arose the figure of Moses, the great founder of both the religion and the law of Israel.

THE EXODUS UNDER MOSES

Moses was the son-in-law of a priest of Midian, and at Horeb (i. e. Sinai), the mountain of God, he heard the call of Yahweh (Jehovah), his father’s God, to deliver Israel from the bondage of Egypt. He had much difficulty in rousing the enthusiasm of those he was sent to save, but ultimately the work was accomplished by means of the miracles wrought by Yahweh on behalf of his people. Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai, and here a covenant was solemnly made with Yahweh, and the new religion of Israel was inaugurated, a religion that may rightly be called new, because based upon a conception of the Deity, more spiritual than any which had yet been conceived. From Sinai they passed to the work of conquering Canaan for which they had set out. An attempt made at Kadesh on the southern frontier was unsuccessful, and they returned to the wilderness, for a time which according to the Biblical narrative made the whole period forty years.

THEY ENTER THE LAND OF CANAAN

During this time Moses died, and it was under Joshua that the entry into Palestine was finally made. The Canaanites were put down, but intermarriage between Hebrews and Canaanites was frequent. Hence came the ills of idolatry. The Israelites now settled down to an agricultural and commercial life, entering in many cases into treaties of friendship with their Canaanite neighbors. This weakened the bonds of union between the various tribes and might well have led to the ultimate fusion of the two races; but it was prevented by the rise from time to time of the Judges, who roused the dying ardor of the tribes and led them to the extermination of the enemies of Yahweh.

PERIOD OF THE JUDGES

Fifteen such heroes are named in the Book of Judges, from which book it will be seen how various were the enemies with which they had to contend. Their period shows a regular alternation of sin, punishment, and salvation. After Joshua, comes a long period of falling away, followed by the rise of Othniel who delivers Israel from the oppressions of Cushan of Mesopotamia, into whose hands they had been given. On his death, Israel again sins and is punished by Eglon, king of Moab. This time salvation comes through Ehud, but his death is followed by another relapse into idolatry, and so things continue. Among the rest of the “Judges,” the most famous are Deborah the prophetess, and Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and the prophet Samuel.

During this period Israel does not come at all into contact with the great kingdoms of the East. At the time of the Hebrew settlement in Palestine, the country was under the suzerainty of the Pharaohs, but it is probable that by this time the suzerainty was little more than a name. The conflicts were rather with their own kinsmen, the Moabites, Ammonites, and also the Midianites.

THE POWERFUL PHILISTINE TRIBES

The Philistines were among the most powerful opponents of Israel, and the story of Samson relates particularly to them. It was while suffering under defeat from this race that the Israelites cried for a king, not only that by this centralization of authority more head might be made against the invaders, but also that they might be like “all the other nations.” Samuel the prophet, who was at that time their leader, reluctantly consented to accede to their desires and chose as their king Saul, the son of Kish.

HEBREW MONARCHY, UNDER SAUL, DAVID AND SOLOMON

The sole monarchy occupied three reigns, those of Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul reigned for nearly forty years, and, after wars with the neighboring Moabites, Edomites, Amalekites, and others, was defeated and driven to suicide by the powerful Philistines.

Saul’s son-in-law, David, the son of Jesse, reigned also about forty years, and, having conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites (1048 B. C.) made it the capital of his kingdom, the seat of the national government and religion. David was a warlike monarch, and conquered the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, and Syrians, extending his power from the Red Sea to the Euphrates.

THE MAGNIFICENT REIGN OF SOLOMON

His son, Solomon, succeeded him, and also reigned forty years (977-937 B. C.). Then the Hebrew nation attained the height of its power, and he confirmed and extended the conquests of David. Solomon married a daughter of a Pharaoh, king of Egypt, formed an alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre, built the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, and made his kingdom the supreme monarchy in western Asia.

An extensive commerce was carried on by land and sea. Solomon’s ships, manned by Phœnician sailors, traded to the farthest parts of the Mediterranean westward, and from ports on the Red Sea to southern Arabia, Ethiopia, and perhaps India. From Egypt came horses, chariots, and linen; ivory, gold, silver, peacocks and apes from Tarshish or Tartessus, a district in the south of Spain; and gold, spices, and jewels from Ophir, variously regarded as in southern Arabia, India, and eastern Africa, south of the Red Sea. The corn, wine and oil of Judæa were exchanged by Solomon for the cedars of Lebanon supplied by Hiram, king of Tyre.

DECLINE AND DIVISION OF THE MONARCHY

On the death of Solomon, in 975 B. C., the temporal glory of the Hebrews was eclipsed. Ten of the twelve tribes revolted against Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam, and formed a separate kingdom of Israel, with Samaria as capital; while the tribes of Judah and Benjamin made up the kingdom of Judah, having Jerusalem for the chief city. The Syrian possessions were lost; the Ammonites became independent; commerce declined; idolatry crept in and grew; the prophets of God threatened and warned in vain; gleams of success against neighboring nations were mingled with defeat and disgrace suffered from the Edomites, Philistines, and Syrians, until, in 740 B. C., Tiglath-pileser II., king of Assyria, carried into captivity in Media the tribes east, and partly west, of the Jordan.

FALL AND CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL

In 721 B. C., Sargon, king of Assyria, took Samaria, and carried away the people of Israel as captives beyond the Euphrates. The kingdom of Israel thus came to an end after a duration of about two hundred and fifty years.

In 713 B. C., Judah, under King Hezekiah, was attacked by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and relieved by the destruction of the Assyrian army. A time of peace and prosperity followed, but in 677 the Assyrians again invaded the country, and carried off King Manasseh to Babylon.

FALL OF JUDAH AND BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY

In 624 B. C., the good king Josiah repaired the temple and put down idolatry, but was defeated and slain by the Egyptian king Pharaoh-Necho, in 610. In 606 B. C., Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took Jerusalem, and made the king, Jehoiakim, tributary; on his revolt, Jerusalem was again taken, and ten thousand captives of the higher class were carried off to Babylon, with the treasures of the palace and temple. In 593 B. C., the Jewish king Zedekiah revolted from Nebuchadnezzar, who now determined to put an end to the rebellious nation. In 588 B. C., Jerusalem was taken and plundered; the walls were destroyed; the city and temple burned, and nearly the whole nation was carried away as prisoners to Babylon. For over fifty years the land lay desolate, and the history of the Hebrew nation is transferred to the land where they mourned in exile. Then were raised the voices of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah, in their definite predictions of the Messiah.

The history of the Jews during the Babylonish captivity.

RETURN OF THE HEBREWS TO JERUSALEM

In 537 B. C., Cyrus the Great became monarch of the Persian Empire. He issued an edict in 536 B. C., by which the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Nearly fifty thousand Jews, chiefly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, went to the old home of their race under the command of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, taking with them many of the vessels of silver and gold carried away by Nebuchadnezzar. Zerubbabel was appointed governor of the land, now a dependency of the Persian Empire. In 519 B. C., the Persian king Darius Hystaspis confirmed the edict of Cyrus, and in 515 the Temple was completed and dedicated. The ten tribes disappeared at this time from history, such of them as returned to their land having united themselves with the tribe of Judah, and henceforth the Hebrews are called Jews and their country Judea.

THE JEWS UNDER EZRA AND NEHEMIAH

In the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes more of the Jews emigrated from Babylonia to Judea under the command of Ezra, 458 B. C., and Ezra was governor of the land until 445.

Nehemiah was governor (with an interval) from 445 to 420, and under him the walls and towers of Jerusalem were rebuilt, and the city acquired something of its ancient importance. With 420 B. C. the history of the Jews ends, as far as the Scriptural narrative goes.

JUDEA BECOMES SUBJECT TO PERSIA

From 420 to 332, Judea continued subject to Persia, paying a yearly tribute, and being governed by the high priest, under the Satrap of Syria. In 332 B. C., Alexander the Great, then engaged in the conquest of the Persian Empire, visited Jerusalem, and showed respect to the high priest and the sacred rites of the Temple. In 330 the Persian Empire fell under the arms of Alexander, who died at Babylon in 323 B. C. Judea was taken possession of by Alexander’s general, Ptolemy Lagus, and from 300 to 202 B. C. was governed by the dynasty of the Ptolemies, ruling Egypt, Petra and southern Syria. The government was administered by the high priests under the Ptolemies, whose capital was at the new city of Alexandria in Egypt. Now the Jews began to spread themselves over the world, the Greek language became common in Judea, and the Septuagint (or Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures) was written during this and the following century.

In 202 B. C., Antiochus the Great, king of Syria (including in its empire Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, etc.), conquered Judea from Ptolemy V. Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the sons and successors of the great Antiochus, drove the Jews to rebellion by persecution and profanation of their Temple and religion.

STRUGGLE UNDER THE MACCABEES AND HYRCANUS

Under the great patriot and hero Judas Maccabeus, the Jews asserted their religious freedom in 166 B. C. Antiochus Epiphanes died in 164, and Maccabeus fought with success against the Idumeans, Syrians, Phœnicians and others, who had formed a league for the destruction of the Jews. In 163, Judas Maccabeus became governor of Judea under the King of Syria, but fell in battle, in 161, while he was resisting an invasion of his country by the troops of Demetrius Soter, new ruler of the empire. His brother, Jonathan Maccabeus, ruled from 161 to 143 B. C., amidst many troubles from Syria, and was succeeded by his brother, Simon Maccabeus, who strengthened the land by fortifications, was recognized by the Romans as high priest and ruler of Judea, and fell by assassination in 136 B. C.

His son, John Hyrcanus, threw off at last the yoke of Syria, and made himself master of all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, reigning then in peace till 106 B. C., when the line of the greater Maccabean princes ended. A miserable time of civil wars and religious and political faction followed.

THE CONQUEST BY ROME

These ended in the interference of Rome; and in 63 B. C. Pompey took Jerusalem, after a siege of three months, and entered the “Holy of holies” in the Temple, with a profanation before unheard of in Jewish history. From this time the Jewish state was virtually subject to Rome, and became, in the end, a part of the Roman province of Syria.

The turbulence of the Jews under Roman rule is well known, and a general rebellion ended, after fearful bloodshed and misery, in the capture and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A. D. 70. The history, as a separate political body, of the Hebrews thus ends with the dispersion of their remnant over the face of the civilized world.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND

The area of the Holy Land is about eleven thousand square miles--nearly as large as Belgium; its greatest length, from Beyrout to the southern point of the Dead Sea, being one hundred and eighty miles, and its greatest breadth, east to west, about sixty-five miles. It has a nearly straight western coast-line, with but two indentations--the Bay of Sidon, and the Bay of Acre. Though the Sinaitic Peninsula is not a geographical part of the Holy Land, its history is really one with it, and is so considered in this article.

Notwithstanding its narrow limits, Palestine presents a remarkable variety of surface, scenery, and climate. The central portion consists of an undulating tableland (the “hills” or “hill-country”), separated from Lebanon on the north by the fertile Plain of Esdraelon (Jezreel). It has a gentle slope towards the west, but descends abruptly to the Jordan valley, the surface gradually rising, as it extends southward, till it reaches its greatest elevation (about 3,300 feet) in the neighborhood of Hebron, beyond which, near Beersheba, it sinks into the Idumæan Desert. The northern part of this tract is more fertile than that towards the south, the least productive district being the country round Jerusalem; but even there, the vine is grown with success, and the barren aspect of the plateau is relieved in many places by gardens of olives and figs and luxuriant cornfields.

To the west of the central tableland and the Lebanon ranges, there runs a strip of low seaboard, which expands into the plain of Philistia; to the north is the Valley of Sharon, once the Garden of Palestine, but now for the most part a marshy or sandy wilderness. The maritime plain is intersected by deep gullies, traversed in some cases by perennial streams. Oranges, lemons, citrons, bananas and melons grow luxuriantly, especially in the gardens of Jaffa and Ascalon.

East of the central tableland is a deep fissure, increasing in width from five to thirteen miles, down which flows the Jordan. Beyond Jordan is another upland district, forming a prolongation of the Anti-Libanus ranges, with an elevation of two to three thousand feet, succeeded on the east by a plateau which stretches away to the Arabian Desert. This region contains wide tracts of excellent pasture.

The highest point in Palestine is Jebel Jermuk (three thousand nine hundred and thirty-four feet). The height of Carmel--a northwestern spur of the uplands terminating in a promontory--one thousand seven hundred and forty feet.

MOUNT NEBO, a summit of Abarim, Moab (two thousand six hundred and forty-three feet), seven miles northeast of the Dead Sea, was the place of the death of Moses.

MOUNT TABOR (tā´bor), a wooded mountain in Palestine, six miles east of Nazareth, on the border of the plain of Esdraelon, according to a tradition, was the scene of the Transfiguration; and in the monastic ages it was peopled with hermits. Height, about one thousand eight hundred feet.

MOUNT SINAI (sī´nī or sī-nā-ī) and the SINAITIC (sī-nȧ-it´ik) PENINSULA. This peninsula, which, since 1907, has been included within the boundaries of Egypt, is situated between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akaba. In the north of the peninsula is the desert Paran, a desolate limestone plateau, bounded on the south by a tract of low sandstone mountains, ravines, and valleys rich in minerals which had been worked as early as 3000 B. C. Then rises the barren, rugged, and majestic triangle of the Sinai Mountain (also called Horeb) on which, tradition asserts, the Law was given to Moses.

From very early times it seems to have been regarded as a sacred mountain, perhaps as dedicated to the Babylonian moon-god Sin. These peaks are over six thousand feet high. At the base is a broad plain where the Israelites may easily have encamped. In a valley on the northeast of the same mountain, stands the famous convent of St. Catharine, with its beautiful gardens, which was originally founded by the Emperor Justinian (527-565). It became celebrated in recent years by the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus (the Greek version of the Old Testament and the Greek New Testament), made in it by Tischendorf in 1844. There are two other valleys in the same vicinity, both of which are comparatively fertile and well-watered. The rocks of this region are steep and jagged and richly colored. They are composed of granite, porphyry, diorite, and gneiss. A path of stone steps leads up from the convent to the summit. Holy places marked by crosses cover the mountain. Near the top of Jebel Musa stands a chapel dedicated to Elijah.

RIVERS, LAKES AND OTHER HISTORIC WATERS

The principal river of Palestine is the Jordan, which rises in Anti-Libanus in several streams, that unite to flow through Lake Merom, and then through the Sea of Tiberias, or Galilee, running due south into the Dead Sea. Several other streams flow into the Dead Sea, of which the best known is the Kedron, that rises near Jerusalem. A similar series of small rivers flows through the coast plains into the Mediterranean, the principal being the Kishon and Leontes.

THE JORDAN (meaning “the descender”).--The highest source of the Jordan is seventeen hundred feet above sea-level on the west of Mt. Hermon, near the village of Hasbeya. The most important feature in its course between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is the rocky cleft known as the Ghor, some sixty-five miles long and from three to twelve miles in breadth, through which it passes. It then falls into the Dead Sea at a point twelve hundred and ninety-two feet below the level of the Mediterranean. The course of the Jordan is extremely tortuous, its total length being about two hundred miles.

The upper reaches are much obstructed by growths of reeds and shrubs, and though narrow it is deep, and can only be passed by the fords, of which there are many, the most famous being that of Bethabaca, near Jericho.

During its annual swelling it was miraculously crossed by the Israelites, probably at the ford above mentioned. In its waters Naaman was healed and an iron axehead made to swim. In it our Saviour was baptized.

GALILEE, SEA OF, called also in the New Testament the Lake of Gennesaret and the Sea of Tiberias, is a large lake in the north of Palestine. Lying six hundred and eighty-two feet below sea-level, it is thirteen miles long by six broad, and more than eight hundred feet deep. It occupies a great basin, and is of volcanic origin. Although the Jordan runs into it red and turbid from the north, and many warm and brackish springs also find their way thither, its waters are cool, clear and sweet. In the time of Jesus the region round about the lake was the most densely populated in Galilee.

DEAD SEA, scripturally called “Salt Sea,” “Sea of the Plains,” “Sea of the Arabah,” is near the southern extremity of Palestine. Its length is forty-six miles and its greatest breadth is nine and one-half (average eight and one-half) miles. The long oval of the lake is unequally divided by the El Lizan peninsula, of loose calcareous formation. North of the peninsula the greatest depth is twelve hundred and seventy-eight feet, south of that it is only three to twelve feet. It receives the Jordan and six other rivers, but has no outlet, the surplus water being carried off by evaporation. The water is intensely salt, with a specific gravity one-sixth greater than water. Fish cannot live in the lake but it has a healing reputation for lepers, and the inhabitants on the banks are quite healthy. It is surrounded by high cliffs of bare limestone, and masses of sulphur exposed by periodically occurring earthquakes lie on its borders.

CHIEF TOWNS AND INDUSTRIES

Modern Palestine forms part of the “pashalic” of Syria, under the Turkish Government, the chief towns of importance in modern times include: Jerusalem, with a population of about sixty thousand consisting of Moslems, Jews, and Christians; Damascus, with a population of two hundred thousand, has a trade in silk and cotton stuffs, jewelry, saddlery, and sword blades; Acre, a seaport, twelve thousand; Beyrout, one hundred and twenty thousand, considered to be the port of Damascus; Joppa, or Jaffa, a seaport, fifty-five thousand. The country is mainly agricultural, the crops consisting of wheat, barley, maize, vines and olives. The land is naturally fertile, but it suffered centuries of neglect.

JERUSALEM (signifying probably “abode of peace”), the “Holy City,” central point of Hebrew worship and Christian tradition, was founded by the ancient Canaanite inhabitants upon a spur of the limestone ridge that forms the watershed of this part of Palestine. Standing at an elevation of twenty-six hundred feet upon a plateau about half a mile square and cutoff by the deep valleys of Gihon on the west, Hinnon on the south, and Jehoshaphat east, the city held an almost impregnable position, and was only wrested from the Jebusites by David, who made it the base of his military and political enterprises. The modern city proper is surrounded by a wall of hewn stones, two and one-half miles in circumference, and probably built by the Sultan Solyman the Magnificent. This wall is surmounted by thirty-eight towers and pierced by eight gates. The inner city is divided into four quarters--the Armenian in the southwest, the Jewish in the southeast, the Moslem in the northeast, and the Christian in the northwest. Since 1858 extensions have been made towards the north and west. In the older part the streets are narrow, dull, and dirty. The Mosque of Omar, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Jews’ Wailing Place, are among the more interesting places.

It has always been a sacred city. Its drama of events included the reigns of David and Solomon; the sieges of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian hosts; the Greek conquest; the heroism of the Maccabees; the events of the Roman dominion; our Saviour’s appearance and crucifixion; the siege of Titus and its destruction, A. D. 70; its rebuilding by Hadrian, A. D. 120; the Crusades, and its capture by Godfrey of Bouillon (first Christian King of Jerusalem), Richard Cœur de Lion, and its final capture by the Ottoman Turks in 1516.

The later-built additions extend much beyond the walls of Our Lord’s time, and beyond the reputed site of Calvary (He “suffered without the Gate”), which is now in the middle of the city. Of the eight gates, one is called St. Stephen’s, or Bâb Sitti Maryam (Lady Mary Gate), at the end of the via Dolorosa, leading to Gethsemane, Mount of Olives (where He beheld the city and wept over it), and Bethany. The Golden Gate, which He entered on Palm Sunday, is walled up. The relics of the old city are buried twenty to forty feet below the present site.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the northwest quarter of the city is so called because alleged to contain under its roof the very grave in which the Saviour lay. This church, which was built by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, is remarkable for the richness of its decorations and the number of pilgrims by whom it is visited.

On Mount Moriah, Solomon is supposed to have built his famous temple, where a rectangular walled space called the Harâm at present encloses the Mosque of Omar and the El Aksa Mosque, once, perhaps, a Christian church. Recent explorers believe that they found traces of Solomon’s masonry here, and the foundations of the existing walls are more safely identified with those of the sacred building as reconstructed by Hadrian.

According to the Jews, Abraham sacrificed here, the intended offering of Isaac was here, and Jacob anointed the rock. The Order of Knights Templar was founded in this Mosque. Just outside the extreme northeast corner of the Harâm, to be seen from the windows in north wall, down in a ravine, is the Pool of Bethesda, rarely containing water, half filled with rubbish.

North of the Harâm is a huge rocky platform, where the residence of the Turkish governor marks the site of the Court of Pontius Pilate.

The Golgotha Chapels on Mount Calvary are off the south side of the east end of the Church of the Crusaders. Steps lead up to them, their elevation being fourteen and one-half feet above the main building. Just beyond the top of the steps is a silver lined opening where the Cross was inserted in the rock; at a distance of about five feet the spots of the thieves’ crosses are indicated--some searches are satisfied that the cross of the penitent thief would be the one to the north.

GETHSEMANE is at the base of Mount Olivet, and near it is the traditional Grotto of the Agony, with the spot where Judas betrayed his Master. This grotto is held in great veneration, and near it is the Church of St. Salvatore, said to have been erected by the mother of Constantine, containing the tombs of St. James, St. Ann, and St. Joseph.

THE VIA DOLOROSA, or Way of the Cross, possesses a number of places of much interest, even if partly legendary. Among them the place where Christ is said to have pronounced the words “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me.” Where the Virgin is said to have fainted on meeting her Son. At a truncated column where Jesus fainted under the Cross, and they called on Simon of Cyrene to help him. The house of Dives, and the stone on which Lazarus sat. The Gate of Judgment, formerly marking the limits of the town, and the Calvary itself, now inclosed within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

MOUNT ZION (though used in the Scriptures as identical with Jerusalem) is just outside the southwest corner of the city wall. There were Christian churches erected here at very early dates over the spot where the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles, but there followed so many destructions, mutilations, and confusions, that little certainty attaches to the cluster of buildings now standing. Here is reputed to be the tomb of David, and the Room of the Last Supper, once part of a Christian Church.

THE MOUNT OF OLIVES is a range of eminences and slight depressions on the east side of Jerusalem, parallel with the hill of the Temple, but on higher ground. Here is the Tomb of the Virgin within a subterranean church, where she lay until her “assumption.” A few yards from the Tomb, off the south side of the road, is the Garden of Gethsemane. The Chapel of the Ascension marks the tradition of the Ascension of Christ from this spot.

=Bethlehem= (beth´lē-em), (Heb., “house of bread”), is six miles south of Jerusalem. It was the birthplace of David, the scene of Ruth’s story, and, most important of all (according to Matthew, Luke and John), the birthplace of Christ. The Church of St. Mary, at Bethlehem, is built over the birthplace of Christ. The Chapel of the Nativity is in the crypt of the church, under the great choir; here in the pavement is a star and the words “Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est” (Here Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary); opposite the Chapel of the Nativity is the Chapel of the Manger.

=Hebron= (hē´bron) is situated on a hill among the mountains of Judah, about seven hours south of Jerusalem. It is one of the oldest existing biblical towns and was the home and burial-place of the patriarchs. Afterward it became an important city in the territory of Judah. David resided here the first seven years of his reign. Later it was taken possession of by the Idumeans, from whom Judas Maccabeus recaptured it. Upon the traditional site of the burial-place of the patriarchs, Machpelah, a magnificent mosque is erected.

=Cana of Galilee=, a decayed town near Nazareth, is celebrated in Scripture as the scene of our Saviour’s first miracle, where He turned water into wine. Near it is the Mount of Beatitudes, the supposed scene of the Sermon on the Mount.

=Damascus= (da-mas´kus) formerly the capital and most important city of Syria, is situated in a fertile valley east of the Anti-Lebanon, on the edge of the desert. On account of its beautiful fertile surroundings, its lofty position, and its richness in fresh water, Damascus had been praised in antiquity and in modern times as the “paradise of the earth,” “the eye of the desert,” and “the pearl of the Orient.” Originally a Hittite city, it became the capital of Syria, and a great part of the country was called by its name.

In the Old Testament the name of Damascus occurs as early as the history of Abraham. After the time of David, Damascus often came into sharp collision with Israel. In the New Testament Damascus is known especially from the history of Paul.

Its chief modern glory is the Omayyad Mosque, and the ever changing color and variety of the street traffic, the costumes and the animation of the bazaars. The mosque was the subject of extravagant description by Arabian writers. In 1069 fire destroyed part of the building, and again in 1893 immense injury was done by fire; it has been restored, though it has not its ancient magnificence.

=Jericho= (jer´i-kō), situated west of the Jordan and fourteen miles east-northeast of Jerusalem, was destroyed by Joshua and rebuilt by Ahab. It was the residence of Herod the Great; was destroyed by Vespasian, rebuilt by Hadrian, and again destroyed by the Crusaders.

=Nazareth= (naz´a-reth) is celebrated as the dwelling-place of Jesus during his childhood and early manhood. The Church of the Annunciation here was founded by the empress Helena, but ruined in the middle ages, and rebuilt later. It is well proportioned, and, while much of the architecture is new, it preserves interesting memorials of the past. In the crypt is the traditional place of the Annunciation.

=Petra= (pē´trä).--On the northwest edge of the Arabian desert, about midway between the Gulf of Okabah and the Dead Sea, among desolate mountains, stand the remains of the rock-hewn city of Petra, best reached from Jerusalem. These ruins probably date from the time of Roman rule in 105 A. D., though some of the magnificent monuments were built by the Edomites who dwelt here before the Greeks and Romans.

This wonderful city is approached through a narrow gorge called the Sik, a kind of gateway in the rocks, like the entrance to a Roman amphitheatre.

Here one is confronted by a temple cut in the rock, with the most exquisite Corinthian columns, and entering the doorway he finds himself in the heart of the hill, surrounded by subterranean architecture of the most elaborate beauty of form and workmanship. This is called the Khaznet or Treasury of Pharaoh, which is rightly regarded as one of the wonders of the East. It is attributed to the Emperor Hadrian, who visited the place in A. D. 131, and erected here a temple to Isis. The rock wall from which it is hewn is an exquisite rose-pink. It is in a state of remarkable preservation. The imposing facade shows two rows each of six majestic columns, one row above the other, with niches in which are rock-hewn equestrian and other statues, the whole terminating above in a miniature temple crowned by a huge urn, the entire height being one hundred and two feet. Within is a bare lofty room and some chambers. The urn is said to contain treasures of Pharaoh. Neither the Coliseum at Rome, grand and interesting as it is, nor the ruins of the Acropolis at Athens, nor the Pyramids, nor the mighty temples of the Nile, present a more marvelous spectacle.

But this is only an introduction to the marvels behind. The gorge opens out into a narrow valley, some three miles in circumference, everywhere sunk deep beneath the enclosing mountains, and the walls of this valley are filled with the remains of other rock-cut temples, tombs and dwelling places. In one place are the remains of an open air theatre, the workmanship of which is Greek. Some of the structures, cut in the face of the rock, are several stories in height, while their architectural details excite the wondering admiration of the beholder. A stairway of many hundreds of steps leads to the largest of the ruins, El Deir, or Convent. In design it somewhat resembles the Treasury of Pharaoh.

The cliffs that enclose the valley are simply dotted all over with the handiwork of artists of a bygone age. Here is a portion of a heathen temple, there the remains of a palace, yonder a column, and beyond, again, a stately portico or pediment. They stand at varying elevations. Most of them are conspicuous, while others are hidden in the mountain recesses. There are tombs by the hundred, and on the mountain tops many places of sacrifice, where strange religious ceremonies were enacted. They challenge admiration by the variety of styles they embody, and by the exquisite hues of the sandstone from which they are hewn, varying from the prevailing purplish-red of the mountains and cliffs to a delicate pink and rose.

Until quite recently, this ancient city built out of rocks was seldom visited and almost unknown. Now, however, by means of the new Damascus to Mecca Railway, they are within easy reach. The journey from Jerusalem to Maan may be made in less than a day. From the latter place the ruins can be reached in six to eight hours by horseback.

=Palmyra= (pal-mī´ra), or =Tadmor= (tad´môr), a famous ancient city situated on an oasis in the desert east of Syria, is said to have been built by Solomon. After the decline of Petra in 105 A. D., Palmyra took its place as the chief commercial center in northern Arabia. Its merchant aristocracy reaped great advantage from the long-protracted wars between Rome and Parthia by acknowledging the supremacy of Rome. One of its chiefs, Odænathus, husband of the more famous Zenobia, extended his power over most of the adjoining countries, from Egypt to Asia Minor. Aurelian at length crushed in 272 the attempt of the Palmyrenes to found an independent empire. After the Roman empire became Christian, Palmyra was made a bishopric. When the Moslems conquered Syria, Palmyra also submitted to them. From the fifteenth century it began to sink into decay, along with the rest of the Orient. Magnificent remains of the ancient city still exist, chief among them being the great temple of the Sun (or Baal); the great colonnade, nearly one mile long, and consisting originally of some fifteen hundred Corinthian columns; and sepulchral towers, overlooking the city.

=Jaffa=, is a maritime city in Palestine, Syria, fifty-four miles by rail northwest of Jerusalem, of which it was the port in King David’s time. Extensive fruit and orange orchards surround the city. Its fortifications were destroyed by Saladin in 1188, and, during the Crusades, Richard the Lion-Hearted was confined here by sickness. In 1722 it was attacked by the Arabs, and in 1799 by Napoleon. The principal exports are oranges, wheat, soap, hides, olive oil, wool, and barley.

THE PHŒNICIANS

Phœnicia was a narrow strip of country on the southeastern coast of the great inland sea of antiquity, lying chiefly between Mount Libanus (Lebanon) and the Mediterranean shore, and extending for about one hundred and twenty miles north of Mount Carmel. Here lay the cities Tyre and Sidon, Byblus and Berytus, Tripolis and Ptolemais. The land was fertile, and rich in timber trees and fruits, such as the pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, and cedar; figs, olives, dates, pomegranates, citrons, almonds. Here was material for trade abroad, and comfort and prosperity at home, and the coast was so thickly studded with towns as almost to make one continuous populated line.

HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF PHOENICIA

The history of Phœnicia is peculiarly a history of separate cities and colonies, never united into one great independent state, though now and then alliances existed between several cities in order to repel a common danger. Each city of Phœnicia was governed by a king or petty chief, under or with whom an aristocracy, and at times elective magistrates, appear to have held sway. But the genius of the race cared little for political development; they devoted themselves almost exclusively to commercial pursuits.

THE GREAT CITIES OF SIDON AND TYRE

Sidon was probably the more ancient of the Phœnician cities. Its richly embroidered robes are mentioned in the Homeric poems. It was the greatest maritime city of the ancient world until its colony, Tyre, surpassed it, and it seems to have been subject to Tyre in the time of David and Solomon. About 700 B. C., it became independent again, but was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, about 600 B. C., and became subject to Persia about 500 B. C. Under the Persian rule, it was a great and populous city, and, coming into the hands of Alexander the Great in 333 B. C., helped him with a fleet in his siege of Tyre. Its history ends with submission to Roman power, 63 B. C.

Tyre was a powerful city as early as 1200 B. C. The friendship of its king, Hiram, with Solomon is well known from the Hebrew Scriptures; and at this time the commerce of Tyre was foremost in the Mediterranean, and its ships sailed into the Indian Ocean from the port of Elath on the Red Sea. Tyre is celebrated for its obstinate resistance to enemies. Sargon, king of Assyria, besieged the city in vain for five years (721-717 B. C). Nebuchadnezzar took thirteen years (598-585 B. C.) to capture it only partially, and it was taken by Alexander the Great after a seven months’ siege, in 332 B. C. The old glory of Tyre departed with the transfer of its chief trade to the newly created city of Alexandria, though the indomitable energy of the Phœnicians again, in Roman times, made it a great seat of trade.

PHOENICIAN MARINERS FOUND CARTHAGE

Phœnicia was at the height of prosperity from the eleventh to the sixth centuries B. C. As a colonizing country it preceded the Greeks on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, and sent ships to regions that the Greeks knew nothing of, save by report of the bold mariners of Tyre. Until the rise of Alexandria about 300 B. C., the sea trade of Phœnicia was rivaled only by that of Carthage, its own colony; and Phœnician merchants still kept up their great land trade by caravans with Arabia, central Asia and northern India, Scythia and the Caucasian countries.

By far the most renowned of all Phœnician colonies--famous in history for Hannibal’s heroic hate of Rome and warlike skill--was Carthage, in the center of the northern coast of Africa. The date of its foundation is put about 850 B. C. At Utica and Tunis, to the north and south, Phœnician settlements were already existing.

VAST EXTENT OF PHOENICIAN COMMERCE

The trade of Tyre and her sister cities reached almost throughout the world as then known. They imported the spices--notably the myrrh and frankincense--of Arabia; the ivory, ebony, and cotton goods of India; linen yarn and corn from Egypt; wool and wine from Damascus; embroideries from Babylon and Nineveh; pottery, in the days of Grecian art, from Attica; horses and chariots from Armenia; copper from the shores of the Euxine Sea; lead from Spain; tin from Cornwall. Phœnicia exported not only these articles of food and use and luxury, but the rich purple dyes made from the murex (a kind of shell-fish) of its own coast, the famous hue of Tyre, with which were tinged the silken costly robes of the despots. From Sidon went the famous glass produced in part from fine white sand, found plenteously near Mount Carmel. There was gold from Ophir, and interchange of cedar, sent by Hiram, king of Tyre, for building Solomon’s Temple, in barter for the wheat and balm and oil of Israel’s fertile land.

So important was the trade by caravans through Babylon with the interior of Asia that the great town Palmyra (or “Tadmor in the desert”) was founded or enlarged by Solomon to serve the traffic on its route through Syria to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.

THEIR ARTS OF CIVILIZATION INCLUDED OUR ALPHABET

As a money-making race the Phœnicians were skilled in arts by which the grand aim of its life could be attained. Great as they were at the dyeing vat and loom, adepts in working brass and other metals, and in fabricating glass, they were also the best ship builders and the most famous miners of their time. Their greatest service to civilization seems rather to have been in appropriating, developing, and spreading the ideas of others, especially in forming an alphabet for the Western world.

While the mythical story about Cadmus, taking his sixteen letters from Phœnicia into Greece, must be rejected, the European world owes to this race of traders the alphabetic symbols now in use. The gradual change of shape is easily traced in most of the signs as here given. The simple and ingenious device by which each sign stands for one elementary sound of human speech is largely due to the Phœnician people, as an improvement on the cumbrous hieroglyphics of Egypt. Of literature they have left nothing whatever recognized as really theirs.

THEIR CHARACTER AND RELIGION

They had a name for craftiness in trade, and wealth led to worse than luxury,--to flagrant vice. Their religion was a kind of nature worship closely related to that of the Babylonians. They adored the sun and moon and five planets, the chief deities being the male Baal, and the female Ashtoreth or Astarte. At Tyre a deity was worshiped with the attributes of the Greek god Hercules. There was also the worship of Adonis, under the name of Thammuz, in the coast towns; and this included a commemoration of his death, a funeral festival, at which the women gave way to extravagant lamentations. It was Phœnician women that allured Solomon to their form of religion; it was a princess of Phœnicia, Jezebel, that brought Ahab, her husband, king of Israel, to ruin; that slew the prophets of God, and left a name proverbial of infamy in life, and for ignominious horror in her death. The work done by Phœnicia in the cause of human progress was chiefly important and interesting in material or practical things.

THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE

With the Persian Empire we first enter on continuous history. A multiplicity of histories first met and commingled in that of Persia. The Persian Empire extended itself over the whole of western Asia, and into Europe and Africa; it drew together Bactria, Parthia, Media, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Phœnicia, Asia Minor, Armenia, Thrace, Egypt, and the Cyrenaica. The voice of the Great King was law from the Indus on the east to the Ægean Sea and Syrian Gulf on the west, from the Danube and the Caucasus on the north to the Indian Ocean and the deserts of Arabia and Nubia on the south.

The empire of the Medes and Persians, commonly known as “the Persian Empire,” absorbed all the territories of Western and Southwestern Asia (except Arabia), as well as Egypt and a small portion of Europe. The Medes and the Persians are treated of together, because of their intimate connection in race and the fact that Media was conquered by and included in Persia, as the latter empire rose into power and importance in the western Asiatic world.

GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION OF MEDIA AND PERSIA

The map shows the position of Media on the tableland south of the Caspian Sea, east of Armenia and the Zagros Mountains, and north and west of the mountains of Persia proper and the great rainless Persian desert, or desert of Iran. The mountain ranges enclosed fertile valleys, rich in corn and fruits; and the Zagros Mountains had on their pastures splendid horses, which supplied the chargers of the king and nobles of Persia.

Persis, or Persia proper, was a mountainous district between the desert of Iran and the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf. The country contained, among its hills, fertile plains and valleys abounding in corn, pasture and fruits.

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE MEDES

The close connection of the Medes, in origin and institutions, with the Persians, is shown in the famous expression, “The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” The people migrated into Media at an early period, from the original abode of the Aryan race. By degrees they overcame the Scythian races whom they found in possession of the land. The Medes were a warlike race, strong in cavalry and archers. Their language was a dialect of the Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, and their religion was the Magian.

Probably about 800 B. C. the Medes had established themselves in their new home. About 710 B. C., Sargon, king of Assyria, conquered some part of Media, and made settlements of Israelites taken captive by him from the cities of Samaria; but the Assyrians could never conquer the Medes, who at last grew into a powerful kingdom under native princes.

MEDIAN POWER FIRST ESTABLISHED BY CAYAXARES

The monarchy was founded by Cyaxares about 633 B. C. He extended the Median Empire westward, by conquest, through Armenia to the river Halys in Asia Minor. His great achievement was the capture of Nineveh, about 620 B. C., in alliance with the revolted Babylonians, and the consequent overthrow of the Assyrian Empire. Cyaxares reigned forty years, and died about 593 B. C.

He was succeeded by his son Astyages (as-ty´a-jēz), who reigned for over thirty years,--a despot of quiet life and peaceful disposition. The end of the Median monarchy came in 558 B. C., with his dethronement by Cyrus of Persia.

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE PERSIANS

The Persians, in race, language, and religion, were closely connected with the Medes. They appear first in human records as hardy and warlike mountaineers, noble specimens of the great Aryan race,--simple in their ways of life, noted for truthfulness, keen-witted, generous, and quick-tempered. The language which they brought with them when they migrated is known as the Zend, closely allied to the Sanscrit, and now only existing in the sacred books of the Zendavesta, containing the doctrine of Zoroaster (Persian name, Zarathustra), the founder of the Magian religion.

The Persians were, in their early history, subject to the Medes, but governed by their native princes. The Median supremacy passed to the Persians with the dethronement of Astyages, king of Media, by Cyrus.

FOUNDING OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE BY CYRUS

Master of Media, Cyrus came next into collision with the great kingdom of Lydia,[2] in Asia Minor. Crœsus was king of Lydia when Cyrus met his attack and conquered him, in 546 B. C. The rising empire of Persia was thus extended to the western seaboard of Asia Minor. The Greek colonies on the coast next fell a prey to the arms of Cyrus, and in 538 B. C. he captured Babylon, as we have seen, and added the provinces of the later Babylonian Empire to the Persian. Before this he had conquered the territory eastwards between Media and the Indus, and restored the Jews from captivity. His power and life ended in his expedition against the Scythian people, by whom he was defeated and killed, in 529 B. C. Cyrus, the greatest as a king and the best as a man among all the Persian monarchs, had spread the Persian sway from the Hellespont on the west to the Indus on the east.

[2] Lydia, with its capital at Sardis, and extending from the coast of the Ægean Sea eastward to the river Halys, was easily one of the most powerful monarchies of the second class in Asiatic history. The Lydians were a highly civilized, wealthy, and energetic people, great in agriculture, manufactures, commerce and the arts. In music and metallurgy their names are famous as inventors or improvers; they were proverbial in the ancient world for luxury and the softer vices that attend it.

He was succeeded by his son Cambyses who is distinguished by his conquest of Egypt in 525. He died in 522, on his march from Egypt against a Magian pretender to the throne. The usurper reigned for a few months, and was then dethroned and slain in an insurrection headed by Darius, son of Hystaspes, a noble, who succeeded to the throne.

THE GREAT REIGN OF DARIUS

Darius Hystaspis, or Darius I, reigned from 521 to 485 B. C., and was a great and able monarch. He finished the work which Cyrus had begun, by setting in order the affairs of the vast empire which Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered.

Darius is credited with the establishment of highroads and swift postal communication between the provinces and the court. The kings of Persia resided in the winter at Susa, a warm place in the plain east of the Lower Tigris; in the summer at Ecbatana, in Media, by the mountains; and Babylon was a third capital of occasional residence in winter. From these different centers of power the Persian monarchs, according to their measure of energy and resolution, controlled the conduct of the satraps in every quarter of their widespread dominions.

ATTEMPT TO INVADE EUROPE, AND WAR WITH THE GREEKS

About 508 B. C. Darius invaded Scythia, and, crossing the Danube, marched far into the territory which is now European Russia; but the expedition ended in a retreat without encountering the enemy, and with great loss of men from famine. On his return his generals subdued Thrace and Macedonia, north of Greece, and added them to the Persian Empire.

His famous war with the Greeks arose out of the revolt of the Ionian Greek cities in Asia Minor in 501, and the burning of the city of Sardis by their Athenian allies. An expedition sent against Greece under the general Mardonius, in 492 B. C., was defeated by the Thracians on land, and frustrated by a storm in the Ægean Sea. In 490 a great armament was sent by Darius under Datis and Artaphernes, and then was fought the decisive battle of Marathon. Darius’s proposed and long-prepared revenge upon the Greeks was baffled by a rebellion in Egypt; and he died in 485, leaving the task to his son and successor, Xerxes.

REIGN OF XERXES THE GREAT

Xerxes reigned from 485-465 B. C., and he began with the suppression of the Egyptian revolt in 484, devoting the next four years to preparations against Greece. The grand effort made in 480 has been ever famous in history for the magnitude of the host of men and ships employed, for the heroism of the resistance on the one side, and the completeness of the final disaster on the other, as will be seen in the history of Greece. Xerxes returned to Sardis, after the destruction of his fleet at Salamis, toward the end of the year 480. The defeat of his general Mardonius at Platæa ended the war in Greece, and the Persians lost their last foothold in Europe by the capture of Sestos on the Hellespont.

ARTAXERXES II. AND THE “RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS”

Artaxerxes II., reigned 405-359. At the beginning occurred the revolt of his younger brother Cyrus, satrap in Western Asia, who marched against Babylon, and fell in the battle of Cunaxa, 401 B. C. He was supported by a body of Greek mercenaries, whose retiring march to the Black Sea over the mountains of Kurdistan has been immortalized by Xenophon’s description in his Anabasis, and is known as the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks.” After many conflicts between the Persians and Greeks, the peace of Antalcidas, concluded in 387 B. C., gave to the Persians all the Greek cities in Asia Minor. The Persian Empire, however, was now going to decay. Artaxerxes failed to recover revolted Egypt, and was constantly at war with tributary princes and satraps. The want of cohesion in the unwieldy, ill-assorted aggregate of “peoples, nations, and languages,” was being severely felt.

DARIUS III. LAST OF THE PERSIAN EMPERORS

In 336 B. C., the last king of the Persian Empire, Darius III., surnamed Codomannus, succeeded to power. With the great battle in the plains of Gaugamela, in Assyria, known as the battle of Arbela, from a town fifty miles distant, where Darius had his headquarters before the struggle, the Persian Empire came to an end in October, 331 B. C. The defeat of Darius was decisive; and in 330 he was murdered in Parthia by Bessus, one of his satraps. Asiatic Aryans had succumbed at last to their kinsmen of Europe, who, after repelling Oriental assaults upon the home of a new civilization, had carried the arms of avenging ambition into Asia, and struck a blow to the heart of the older system.

SCIENCE AND THE ARTS IN PERSIA

In science, art, and learning, the Persians developed nothing that was new, except in architecture. In the conquest of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phœnicians, and Egyptians, the Persian kings and nobles came into possession alike of the scientific acquirements and learning of those peoples, and of the products of their mechanical arts. The Persians were soldiers, and not craftsmen, and had no need to be producers, when they could be purchasers, of the carpets and muslins of Babylon and Sardis, the fine linen of Egypt, and the rich variety of wares that Phœnician commerce spread throughout the empire.

ARCHITECTURE.--In architecture, they were at first pupils of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The splendid palaces and temples of Nineveh and Babylon had existed for centuries before the Persians were anything more than a hardy tribe of warriors, and it was only after the acquirement of imperial sway that they began to erect great and elegant buildings for themselves. When that time came, the Persians showed that they could produce, by adaptation of older models, an architectural style of their own. This style was one that comes between the sombre, massive grandeur of Assyrian and Egyptian edifices and the perfect symmetry and beauty of the achievements of Greek art.

PALACES AND TOMBS, not temples, were the masterpieces of Persian building. The ruins of the city of Persepolis, in the province of Persis, are the most famous remains of Persian architecture. Here, on a terraced platform, stood vast and splendid palaces, the doorways adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs. The great double staircase leading up to the “Palace of Forty Pillars” is especially rich in sculptured human figures. The columns are beautiful in form, sixty feet in total height, with the shaft finely fluted, and the pedestal in the form of the cup and leaves of a pendent lotus. Throughout the ruins a love of ornament and display is visible. In the bas-reliefs are profuse decorations of fretwork fringes, borders of sculptured bulls and lions, and stone-work of carved roses.

PERSIAN CITIES

=Babylon= has been already described.

=Ecbatana=, formerly the capital of the Median Empire, was a very ancient city, surrounded by seven walls, each overtopping the one outside it, and surmounted by battlements painted in five different colors, the innermost two being overlaid with silver and with gold. The strong citadel inside all was the royal treasury.

=Susa= was a square-built city unprotected by walls, but having strongly fortified citadel, containing a royal palace and treasury. The only remains of the place are extensive mounds, on which are found fragments of bricks and broken pottery with cuneiform inscriptions.

=Persepolis= was one of the two burial-places of the Persian kings, and also a royal treasury. Darius I. and Xerxes greatly enlarged and adorned the city, which retained its splendor till it was partially burned by Alexander the Great. The tomb of Cyrus and a colossal bas-relief sculpture of the great founder of the monarchy, was at Murghab, northeast of Persepolis.

=Sardis=, in western Asia Minor, once the capital of the Lydian monarchy, was an almost impregnable citadel, and the residence of the satrap of Lydia, and is often mentioned in connection with the Persian kings.

PERSIAN LIFE

The splendor of Persian life at court and abroad is known to us from many sources. The sculptures of Persepolis show something of the state and ceremony attendant on a Persian king. In the Book of Esther we read of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) entertaining all “the nobles and princes of the provinces” for “a hundred and fourscore days,” of his making a feast for seven days “in the court of the garden of the king’s palace” for all the people of Susa; of pillars of marble, silver curtain rings, beds of gold and silver, pavements of marble that was red, and blue, and white, and black; of drinking vessels of gold diverse in shape and size, and “royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king”; of garments of purple and fine linen; and of the absolute power of a Persian despot in his caprices and his wrath, with his “seven chamberlains that served in his presence,” and with the lives of men and women of all ranks held in the hollow of his hand.

THE MAGI.--The priests or Magi had great power, from the reverence of the people for them. The great objects of worship were the heavenly bodies. This national priesthood, like the Chaldeans in the Babylonian Empire, formed a caste to whom belonged all mental culture and legislation. The modern term “magic,” in its superstitious sense, is connected with their professions and practices.

THE GREEKS: GLORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

The interest of the great story of ancient Greece is inexhaustible. Of all histories of which we know so much, this is the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The Greeks are the most remarkable people who have yet existed. This high claim is justly made on the grounds of the power and efforts that were required for them to achieve what they did for themselves and for mankind. With the exception of Christianity, they were the originators of most of the great things of which the modern world can boast. The period from the permanent settlements in Greece until its final reduction to a Roman province covers about two thousand years.

The name Greece was almost unknown by the people whom we call Greeks, and was never used by them for their own country. It has come to us from the Romans, being really the name of a tribe in Epirus, northwest of Greece, the part of the country first known to them.

THE LAND OF HELLAS AND THE HELLENES

The Greek writers and people called their land Hellas, the term meaning all territory in which their own people, the Hellenes, were settled. Hellas included not only the Greek peninsula, but many of the islands of the Ægean Sea, and the coast settlements and colonies above referred to. The peninsula, much indented by bays, was broken up into many small divisions, connected by the sea. There were numerous mountains in ridges, offshoots, and groups; there were plains, valleys and small rivers. All was diversified. The position and conformation of the country undoubtedly helped to render the Greeks the earliest civilized people in Europe, both by developing, in a life of struggle with nature on land and sea, their special and innate character, and by bringing them into contact with the older civilizations, in Egypt and Phœnicia, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The mountains that divided the country into small isolated districts had a great political importance in giving rise to many separate and independent states, the rivalries and conflicts of which favored the working-out of political problems and the growth of political freedom.

GREAT DIVISIONS OF GREECE

Greece naturally divides itself into Northern, Central and Southern. Northern Greece contained two principal countries, Thessalia and Epirus, though the Greeks themselves did not regard the inhabitants of Epirus (the Epirots) as being of real Hellenic race. It was only in later times that Macedonia, north of Thessalia, was considered a part of Hellas.

Central Greece had nine separate states, the most important of which was Attica, the peninsula jutting out southeastward, and renowned forever through its possession of the city of Athens.

Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus (meaning “island of Pelops,” a mythical king), contained seven principal states, Laconia being the most important, and sharing the fame of Attica because it contained the city of Sparta.

THE FAMOUS GRECIAN ISLANDS

The largest of the islands on the coast was Eubœa, about ninety miles in length, noted for good pasturage and corn. On the west coast was the group known to modern geography as the “Ionian Isles.” To the south lay Crete, one hundred and sixty miles in length, noted for the skill of its archers. In the Ægean Sea were the two groups called the Cyclades and Sporades. The Cyclades (or “circling isles,” the chief being Delos) are clearly shown upon the map. The Sporades (or “scattered isles”) lay to the east off the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Northward in the Ægean, in mid-sea, or on the Asiatic coast, were Lemnos, Scyros, Lesbos, Chios and Samos.

THE EFFECT OF GREEK COLONIZATION

The establishment of so many colonies in countries pre-eminently favored by nature in productions and climate, and so situated as to prompt the inhabitants to navigation and commerce, gave a great impulse to the civilization of the Hellenic race, and may be regarded as the main cause of its rapid progress.

HISTORY OF THE GREEKS

I. THE PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.--This period includes the mythical accounts of the origin of the Greeks, the Trojan war, the more certain story of the excavations, and the establishment of the peculiar Greek institutions under the so-called rule of the half-mythical kings. Down to the time of the Trojan war very considerable progress had already been made, and civilization among the Greeks had received its first important impulse. The oracles at Delphi and Dodona had been established; the mysteries at Eleusis; the four sacred games; the court of Areopagus at Athens; and the celebrated Amphictyonic Council. The arts and sciences likewise received considerable attention. Letters had been introduced by Cadmus. The accounts of the siege of Thebes and that of Troy show that progress had been made in the various arts pertaining to war, but the history of the period as a whole exhibits that singular mixture of barbarism with cultivation, of savage customs with chivalrous adventures, which marks what is called an heroic age.

According to the Greek historians, the earliest inhabitants of Hellas were the so-called Pelasgians, but the information afforded by the ancients on the subject is scant and vague.[3] For our knowledge of the inhabitants and civilization of prehistoric Greece, we are therefore dependent on the more certain witness of the excavations, which, in recent years, have yielded very important results.

[3] Many of the early myths and legends, as narrated by Homer and preserved by Hesiod (in his Theogony), were gathered into somewhat systematic form to explain the genealogy of the Hellenic tribes, their subdivisions, and the origin of the Greek cities. The foundation of Athens, for example, was ascribed to Cecrops, regarded by some as a native of Egypt; he is said to have introduced into Attica the arts of civilized life, and from him the Acropolis was first called Cecropia. Argos was believed to have been founded by another Egyptian, named Danaus, who fled to Greece with his fifty daughters, and who was elected by the people as their king, and from whom some of the Greeks received the name of Danaï. Thebes, in Bœotia, looked to Cadmus, a Phœnician, as its founder; he was believed to have brought into Greece the art of writing, and from him the citadel of Thebes received the name of Cadmea. The Peloponnesus was said to have been settled by, and to have received its name from Pelops, a man from Phrygia in Asia; he became the king of Mycenæ, and was the father of Atreus, and the grandfather of Agamemnon and Menelaus; chieftains in the Trojan war. Such traditions as these show that the early Greeks had some notion of their dependence upon the Eastern nations.

LEGENDS OF EARLY NATIONAL EXPLOITS.--The legends are not only grouped about particular places and individual heroes, but have for their subjects national deeds, marked by courage and fortitude.

One of these stories describes the so-called “Argonautic expedition”--an adventurous voyage of fifty heroes, who set sail from Bœotia under the leadership of Jason, in the ship Argo, for the purpose of recovering a “golden fleece” which had been carried away to Colchis, a far distant land on the shores of the Euxine.

Another legend--the “Seven against Thebes”--narrates the tragic story of Œdipus, who unwittingly slew his own father and married his own mother and was banished from Thebes for his crimes, after having been made king; and whose sons quarreled for the vacant throne, one of them with the aid of other chieftains making war upon his native city.

But the most famous of the legendary stories of Greece was that which described the Trojan war--the military expedition of the Greeks to Troy, in order to rescue Helen, who was the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and who had been stolen away by Paris, son of the Trojan king. The details of this story--the wrath of Achilles, the battles of the Greeks and the Trojans, the destruction of Troy, and the return of the Grecian heroes--are the subject of the great epic poems ascribed to Homer. All these legends, whether derived from a foreign source, or produced upon native soil, received the impress of the Greek mind. They form one of the legacies from the prehistoric age, and reveal some of the features of the early Greek character.

THE MINOAN AGE

Excavations at Knossus in Crete have revealed to us the civilization of the Minoan age of Greek history. This civilization is the oldest of which we have knowledge. It flourished about 2000 B. C. Prehistoric Knossus was a city of massive structure in which the fine arts flourished and had reached a remarkably high stage of development (specimens of Minoan pottery are of exceptional beauty and grace) and in which the art of writing was known. This last fact is of great importance, as until recently the art of writing in Greece was supposed to be post-Homeric.

THE MYCENEAN AGE

The next age of Greek civilization on which archæology has concentrated its searchlight is the Mycenean (fl. c. 1600-1100 B. C.). The Mycenean civilization is revealed to us by excavations in the sites of Mycenæ, Tiryns, etc. The characteristic features of these splendid cities is their massiveness and solidity. Pausanias relates that tradition attributed the building of Tiryns and Mycenæ to the Cyclopes (hence the expression “Cyclopean walls” used to denote structures of this massive type), thus testifying to the gigantic edifices of prehistoric times as contrasted with the masonry of a later date. The jewelry, pottery and weapons excavated from these ancient cities are of rare beauty. Iron was practically unknown in the Mycenean age. Its use is more extensive in the Homeric age, and therefore Homeric civilization is probably post-Mycenean.

THE SO-CALLED DORIAN INVASION

But vast invasions swept over Greece, and a ruder civilization displaced this early culture. In the latter half of the eleventh century B. C., the Dorians ravaged Greece. They were a coarser, hardier stock than the peoples they conquered, but they brought to Greece a new vigor and a new robustness, which when toned and harmonized by the finer influences of the land, produced that civilization which is the world’s marvel for all time.

II. PERIOD OF MIGRATIONS AND FORMATION OF STATES.--The first governments of Greece were small monarchies, and they continued such until after the Trojan war. Soon after this we find the country involved in fatal civil wars, in which the people, under a number of petty chieftains hostile to each other, suffered extremely from calamity and oppression. These evils led to change in the form of government, and the substitution of the popular instead of the regal system. The same evils also probably contributed to the spirit of emigration, which so strikingly marks the period. During this period of colonization we notice the origin of the four principal dialects in the Greek language. In this period two of the Grecian states are chiefly conspicuous--Athens and Sparta, whose special effort was to provide themselves with a suitable political constitution, civil code and government.

These great migrations which swept over Greece created a congestion of the population which was eventually relieved by widespread colonization on the west coast of Asia Minor and in the neighboring islands of the Ægean Sea. These colonies were settled by the three races, the Æolians, Ionians and Dorians. The Æolians colonized the northwestern part, the coast of Mysia, and the island of Lesbos. The Ionians settled in the central part, on the coast of Lydia, and in the islands of Chios and Samos. The Dorians occupied the southwest corner of Asia Minor (the coast of Caria) and the adjacent islands. Of all these by far the most important, wealthy and powerful were the Ionians.

OTHER GREEK COLONIES

The Greeks gradually spread themselves in settlements along the northern coast of the Ægean Sea and the Propontis, in Macedonia and Thrace, so that the whole Ægean became encircled with Greek colonies, and its islands were covered with them. The tide of emigration flowed westward also in great strength.

The coasts of Southern Italy were occupied by Dorians, Achæans, and Ionians in settlements which grew to such importance that the region took the name of Magna Græcia, or Greater Greece. The cities of Tarentum, Croton and Sybaris became famous for their wealth, the latter giving rise to the proverbial name for a luxurious liver.

On the southwestern coast of Italy was Rhegium, and farther north came Pæstum, Cumæ, and Neapolis (Naples). In Sicily flourishing Greek settlements abounded, the chief being Messana, Syracuse, Leontini, Catana, Gela, Selinus, and Agrigentum. Farther west still a colony from Phocæa, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Massilia, now Marseilles. On the southern coast of the Mediterranean, westwards from Egypt, the Greek colony of Cyrene became the chief town of a flourishing district called Cyrenaica.

The establishment of the later of these colonies brings us down well within authentic historical times, and the whole period of Greek colonization extends from about 1100 to 600 B. C., the colonies being, in many cases, offshoots of colonies previously established and risen to wealth and over-population. In all these movements and settlements, the enterprise and ability of the Greeks made them great commercial rivals to, and successors of, the Phœnicians.

CONTRAST BETWEEN IONIANS AND DORIANS

The two leading races of Greece were the Ionians and the Dorians, and they stand to each other in a strong contrast of character which largely affected Greek political history. These prominent points of difference run through the whole historical career of the two chief states, Ionian Athens and Dorian Sparta, and were the cause of the strong antagonism that we find so often in action between them. The Dorian was distinguished by severity, bluntness, simplicity of life, conservative ways, and oligarchic tendency in politics; the Ionian was equally marked by vivacity, excitability, refinement, love of change, taste in the arts, commercial enterprise, and attachment to democracy. The Dorian, in the best times of his history, reverenced age, ancient usage, and religion; the Ionian, at all periods of his career, loved enjoyment, novelty and enterprise.

THE EARLY CAREER OF SPARTA

The Spartans, or the people of Lacedæmon, properly the southern half of Laconia, first became the dominant nation in that part of Greece. Of Spartan doings and fortunes we know almost nothing until the time of the great Legislator Lycurgus, who is said to have organized, about 850 B. C. the famous Spartan constitution. The probable account is that he altered and reformed existing usages, and that the reverence of after ages ascribed to him the promulgation and establishment of a full grown, brand new set of institutions, which must have been, in many points, of gradual growth.

THE FAMOUS LAWS OF LYCURGUS

The government was that of an aristocratic republic under the form of a monarchy. There were two kings, whose powers were nominally those of high priests, judges, and leaders in war, but in the two latter capacities their functions were in time greatly restricted and almost superseded. The chief legislative and judicial and much of the executive, power lay with the Senate, or council of twenty-eight elders. No citizen could be a member of this body until he had become sixty years of age, and the office was held for life. The popular assembly, open to every Spartan citizen over thirty years old, really handed over its powers to a board of five commissioners, officers called Ephors (“overseers”), whom it annually elected. These high officials had a secret and irresponsible control over the executive power, both at home and abroad; and in military enterprises, where the kings were the nominal leaders, the two Ephors who accompanied the army exercised much influence. The whole body of Spartan citizens was an aristocracy, and among themselves entire political equality existed.

TRAINING OF THE SPARTAN CITIZEN

The object of the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy over the subject population. It was necessary for safety that the small body of men, surrounded by enemies in their own land, should be ready at all points, against every attempt at opposition or rebellion, and against the outside world as well.

As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the cradle to the grave. From the age of seven the body was cultivated, and every means was used to give the instrument the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it to the sharpest edge. Such training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, for election to the Senate, or “assembly of old men,” above described.

The girls were trained in athletic exercises like those of the youths, and everything was done to produce vigorous and stern women, prepared to gladly see their sons die on the battle-field for Sparta.

The result of all was that the Spartans became a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a state distinguished in the history of Greece for the display of a domineering arrogance, a rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little to its downfall. However, the Spartan institutions were very successful in giving the state security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle it presented of constancy to fixed maxims of policy gave it a great ascendancy over the Hellenic mind.

EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS. THESEUS

The Athenians became by far the most famous, in political ascendancy and in artistic and intellectual eminence, of all the Ionian race, to which they belonged.

At first they were under kings like the other Hellenes; but about 1050 B. C. the title of king became changed to that of archon (“ruler”), though the office was still held for life, and continued in the same family. The archon was responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence; and down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the supreme office, the archonship, was confined to one family; and members of the chief court of justice, called Areopagus (lit. “hill of Ares,” the place of its assembly at Athens), were elected only from the noble houses.

IMPORTANCE OF THE OLYMPIADS IN GREEK CHRONOLOGY

We come, in the year 776 B. C., to the era when the chronology of Grecian history becomes consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These were the periods of four years each which elapsed between the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor of the Olympian Zeus (the chief Greek deity) in the plain of Olympia in Elis (in Peloponnesus). The First Olympiad began at midsummer, 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer, 772 B. C., and so on--any event being dated by a particular year of a specified Olympiad.

THE UNPOPULAR LAWS OF DRACO

Down to the year 621 B. C. the people were still without a substantial share in the government, and popular discontent demanded a written code. Consequently Draco, one of the archons, drew up laws, the severity of which has become proverbial, and which were intended, by their rigor, to check the growth of the democracy that was clamoring for a change. The penalty of death was assigned to all offenses, great or small, to enable the nobles to get rid of dangerous leaders of the people; but such a system did not long continue.

Anarchy prevailed in Attica, owing to the various factions of the oligarchs, the democrats, and a middle party (the moderates).

SOLON REFORMS THE LAWS

A wise reformer was found in Solon, chosen as an archon in 594 B. C., and invested by his fellow citizens, for the special purpose of restoring tranquility, with unlimited power to change the laws. He was already distinguished as a poet and as a general in the war of Athens against her neighbor, Megara. His great object was to remove the oppressive and excessive power of the aristocracy without introducing pure democracy.

Solon began with the abolition of Draco’s code, but retained the penalty of death for murder. His celebrated disburdening ordinance for the relief of debtors won the complete confidence of the people. This had the immediate effect of mitigating the oppressions caused by the old laws of debt: in future neither the person, family, nor estate of the debtor might be pledged in security for the loan. A further democratic character was given at the outset to the constitution of Solon by the division of the people into four classes, according to property, which was now substituted for birth as a qualification for the higher offices of state.

A council of state, or senate, called the Boule (council) was chosen annually by lot, to prepare measures for submission to the popular assembly, or Ecclesia, in which the citizens of the fourth or lowest class (who could hold no state office) had the right of voting. The Ecclesia included all classes of the citizens, who there legislated, elected the magistrates, decided on peace or war, and other matters sent down to it from the Boule.

For the courts of justice below the Areopagus, a body of six thousand jurors was to be annually selected by lot from the popular assembly, and the causes were tried by divisions of the whole body.

Solon was also the author of many laws which regulated private life and rights, public amusements, slavery, marriage, and other matters. Among his miscellaneous enactments may be noted that which legalized the export of olive oil only, that which obliged the father to teach his son a trade, that which penalized a citizen for remaining neutral on the outbreak of civil strife, and that which empowered a man who died childless to dispose of his property by will.

SOLON’S CONSTITUTION OVERTHROWN BY PISISTRATUS

During Solon’s absence on a tour of travel a renewal of factions followed and their struggles ended in the seizure of power by Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. He was one of the class of rulers called “Tyrants” by the Greeks, who held power in Greek states during this and the preceding century.

The Greek Tyrants were aristocratic adventurers who took advantage of their position and of special circumstances to make themselves masters of the government in their respective states.

It is to Pisistratus, however, that the world owes the preservation in their present form of the poems of Homer, which he caused to be collected and edited in a complete written text. He was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, as joint rulers; but the severity of Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus) caused his expulsion by the people, and the end of the despotism at Athens, 510 B. C.

ATHENS A PURE DEMOCRACY UNDER CLEISTHENES

The government at Athens now (507 B. C.) became a pure democracy, under the auspices of Cleisthenes. At the head of the popular party he effected important changes in the constitution. The public offices of power were thrown open to all the citizens, the whole people was divided into ten tribes or wards, and the senate (Boule) now consisted of five hundred members, fifty from each ward or tribe.

POLITICAL OSTRACISM.--Cleisthenes introduced the ostracism (from ostrakon, the oyster-shell, on which the vote was written), by which the citizens could banish for ten years, by a majority of votes, any citizen whose removal from the state might seem desirable. This device was intended to secure a fair trial for the new constitution by checking the power of individuals who might be dangerous to popular liberties, and by putting a stop to quarrels between rival politicians.

Athens had at last secured a government of the thoroughly democratic type, and from this time began to assume a new and ever-growing importance in Greece, and was soon regarded as the chief of the Ionian States. The people, through the Ecclesia, became thoroughly versed in public affairs, and practically, as well as legally, supreme in the state.

GROWTH AND IMPORTANCE OF SPARTA

As Athens had Draco and Solon as its great lawgivers, so Sparta found in Lycurgus her lawgiver. His institutions gave a permanent cast to the Spartan character, and were not abolished until the last ages of Greece. The system of Lycurgus, meanwhile, had made Sparta a thoroughly military state, and in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) it conquered its neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reducing them to the condition of the Helots, and appropriating their land. By this and by successful war against its northern neighbors, the people of Argos, Sparta acquired the supremacy and became the leading Dorian state of Peloponnesus and of the Grecian world. These two great states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, now were (about 500 B. C.) with the rest of Greece to encounter Persia; and Europe, with united Greece for her champion and representative, was to triumph over the older civilization and prowess of Asia.

III. PERIOD OF PERSIAN WARS AND MILITARY GLORY.--To this age the Greeks ever after looked back with pride, and from its history orators of every nation have drawn their favorite examples of valor and patriotism. The Persian invasion called forth the highest energies of the people, and gave an astonishing impulse to Grecian mind. The design of subjugating Greece originated in the ambition of Darius the Persian king, the second in succession from Cyrus the Great. He found a pretext and occasion for the attempt in a revolt of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor, in which Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was pillaged and burned. The war was carried on by three successive kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, but on neither of them did it confer any glory; while the battles of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Mycale, and Platæa, secured immortal honor to the Greeks. A succession of splendid names adorns the history of Athens during this period. Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, acted distinguished parts in the brilliant scene. Sparta also justly gloried in the self-sacrifice of Leonidas and his three hundred brave companions. The period of the Persian war was the age of the highest elevation of the national character of the Greeks. Before it, there existed little union comparatively between the different states, and it was not till Athens had alone and successfully resisted the strength of Persia at the battle of Marathon, that other states were aroused to effort against the common enemy. In the confederation which followed, Sparta was the nominal head, but the talents, which actually controlled the public affairs, were found in the statesmen of Athens. To Athens, therefore, the supremacy was necessarily transferred, and before the close of the war this state stood, as it were, the mistress of Greece.

Persia at this time was the chief power of the world, and, by the conquest of the Lydian kingdom, had become master of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. In 500 B. C. a general revolt of these Ionian cities took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and soldiers to help their kinsmen. The united Ionians and Athenians took and burned Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 499, but, after a six years’ struggle, the power of Darius conquered the whole seaboard of Ionia, and left Persia free to punish the Athenians for interfering between the great Eastern empire and her revolted subjects. In 490 B. C. a great Persian force, under Datis and Artaphernes, was sent across the Ægean, and the fleet landed the Persian army near Marathon, on the east coast of Attica, with a view to an advance upon Athens.

THE FAMOUS BATTLE OF MARATHON

The first and most important battle of the Persian War, and one of the most momentous in history, was that of Marathon. At the plain of Marathon, near Athens, a small Athenian force of about ten thousand men (with the help of six hundred men from Platæa), under the famous general Miltiades, routed a Persian army of perhaps one hundred and ten thousand, in 490 B. C. This memorable battle, resulting as it did in the defeat of the power which had conquered the greater part of the known world, first taught the Greeks their own strength and gave Athens a position in Greece which it had never yet held. The leading men in Athens at this time were Themistocles and Aristides.

The death of Darius, in 485 B. C., prevented him from renewing the Persian attack on Greek liberties, and the task was bequeathed to his son Xerxes. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes took place ten years after the battle of Marathon with an immense force by sea and land (two million five hundred thousand men according to Herodotus).

STAND OF THE THREE HUNDRED AT THERMOPYLAE

Then was fought the memorable battle of Thermopylæ (gates of the hot springs, from hot springs situated there), in which the Spartan Leonidas with a mere handful of men held the whole Persian army at bay in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ; but, a way around the pass being shown the Persians by a treacherous Greek, they were able to attack Leonidas in the rear. Part of the Greek forces retreated on learning of this movement of the Persians, but Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians refused to retreat, and, advancing against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, sold their lives as dearly as possible.

This little remnant of the Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they were afterwards buried.

GREEK VICTORY AT SALAMIS

Xerxes, having taken the pass of Thermopylæ, moved towards Athens, when the inhabitants had fled, taking refuge in their ships, according to their interpretation of a decree of the oracle that they must seek safety in their “wooden walls.” The Persians burned Athens, and the fate of Greece was then decided by the naval battle of Salamis (480 B. C.), which resulted in a complete victory for the Greeks.

The battle of Salamis, with the battles of Platæa and Mycale, in the next year, decided the war, and the Persians were driven out of Greece forever, and finally, after several years, were driven wholly out of Europe. The arbitrary rule of an irresponsible despot was overcome by the spirit of voluntary obedience to law, the freedom of Greece was maintained, and the future civilization of Europe was secured.

IV. AGE OF PERICLES AND GREEK LUXURY.--This period includes the portion from the close of the Persian war to the Supremacy of Philip, B. C. 337. At the beginning of this period the general affairs of Greece were in a highly prosperous condition, and Athens was unrivaled in wealth and magnificence under the influence of Pericles. But a spirit of luxurious refinement soon took the place of the disinterested patriotism of the preceding age, and the manners of all classes became signally marked by corruption and licentiousness. The events of most prominent interest were: (1) the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta; (2) the accusation of Socrates, disgraceful to the city and all concerned; (3) the expedition of Cyrus the Younger which involved the Greeks in another war with Persia; (4) the successive downfall of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and the rise of Macedon.

The half-century following the battle of Salamis (480-430 B. C.) forms the most brilliant period of Athenian history, and one of the greatest eras in the history of the world.

ATHENS UNDER CIMON

After the fall of the great Athenian Themistocles,--who was banished by ostracism in 469 B. C., at the instance of the aristocratic party,--the rich, able, and popular Cimon, son of Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, was at the head of affairs. In 466 B. C. he gained a great victory, by land and sea, over the Persians, at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, on the south coast of Asia Minor. A part of the value of the plunder taken was devoted to the adornment of the city of Athens, which Themistocles had rebuilt and fortified. Cimon spent large sums of his own on the city, and under his direction the defenses of the famous Acropolis (the citadel of Athens) were completed. In 461 B. C. the democratic party at Athens banished Cimon by the ostracism, and the illustrious Pericles, for some years his rival, came to the front.

PERICLES AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS

Pericles began to be distinguished in Athenian politics about 470 B. C. as leader of the democratic party.

In the constitution of Athens a wide scope was given for the development of great political characters, because the system not only allowed the display of a man’s powers, but summoned every man to use those powers for the general welfare. At the same time, no member of the community could obtain influence unless he had the means of satisfying the intellect, taste, and judgment, as well as the excitable and volatile feelings, of a highly cultivated people.

Such a man was Pericles. From the force of his personality, and his majestic oratory, he was called “the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens.” For over thirty years (461 to 429 B. C.) this great man swayed the policy of Athens. Pericles was at once a statesman, a general, a man of learning, and a patron of the fine arts. He recovered for Athens (445 B. C.) the revolted island of Eubœa; he was the friend of the famous sculptor Phidias, and in his age the great dramatic compositions of Sophocles were presented on the Athenian stage. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylæa, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his rule industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that prosperity was universal in Attica.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

The supremacy over the other states of Greece which Athens attained after the Persian War, and maintained during the Age of Pericles, with her constant prosperity and unparalleled growth, raised up jealousy and hatred against her, and during that brilliant period were sown the seeds of a civil warfare which was destined to destroy the power and splendor of Greece. After the death of Pericles, Athens had trusted to unworthy demagogues, of whom the most notorious was Cleon.

The other leading state of Greece was Sparta, and there was a general gravitation in the different cities to these two centers of Grecian life, those in which democratic sentiments prevailed looking to Athens for leadership, the rest (those in which the aristocratic or oligarchical element prevailed) regarding themselves as the natural allies of Sparta. The conflict between these two opposing principles, democracy and oligarchy, broke out in 431 B. C., and is known as the Peloponnesian War. Athens was the stronger by sea, Sparta by land.

CHIEF LEADERS IN THE WAR

The chief generals on the Athenian side were Demosthenes (not the great orator of a later time) and Nicias; the Spartan chief was the famous Brasidas, who had much success against the Athenian colonies on the coast of Thrace. The brilliant Alcibiades began to display his powers as a statesman at Athens. In 422 B. C. a battle near Amphipolis, on the coast of Thrace, ended in the defeat of the Athenians, and the deaths of Cleon and of Brasidas, the latter an irreparable loss to Sparta. In the place of Cleon, the mild Nicias became one of the leading statesmen at Athens, and his efforts resulted in a truce between Athens and Sparta, in 421 B. C.

SECOND PERIOD OF WAR

Questions as to keeping the truce, and the mutual distrust and jealousy between these states increased their antagonism. Athens, now mistress of the sea, had the ambition, under the incitement of the great Alcibiades, to acquire complete sway in the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the most important and decisive event of the war was an attack made (415 B. C.) by Athens upon Syracuse in Sicily, when the Spartans helped the Syracusans, and which resulted in the total failure of the expedition (413 B. C.), and great damage to the power of Athens. The Athenians had sent a more powerful armament against Sicily than had ever before been turned out in the history of Greece. The consequences of the defeat of this force were felt all over Greece, the enemies of Athens were stimulated to much greater activity, and thought that the fate of that city was sealed.

THIRD AND LAST PERIOD

Henceforward Athens could only fight for her life as an independent state. In 412 B. C. many of her subject states revolted, including the wealthy Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor, and the islands of Chios and Rhodes. Sparta formed an alliance with Persia, and used Eastern gold to furnish ships and mercenaries against Athens. Alcibiades, having quarreled with the Spartans, rejoined his country, and conducted her war, in some of its closing years, with brilliant success. In 411 B. C. a revolution took place in Athens which really swept away the democratic constitution of Solon, and substituted an oligarchical faction in power.

DOWNFALL OF ATHENS

The war was chiefly carried on in Asia Minor, where Alcibiades and others defeated the Spartans and their allies by land and sea; but in 405 B. C. the tide of success for Athens turned again, and the Athenian fleet was captured by the Spartan admiral Lysander, at Ægospotami, in the Hellespont, the Athenian galleys being seized, by surprise, on the beach. In 404 B. C. Athens, blockaded by the Spartans both by land and sea, surrendered to Lysander after a four months’ siege, and the war ended in the downfall of Athens, and the formal abolition of the great Athenian democracy.

RESULT OF PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Henceforward Athens was a subordinate power. Sparta was, for a time, supreme; a Spartan garrison held the Acropolis; Alcibiades, who might have restored Athens, was assassinated in Persia through the influence of Lysander; and though, after a brief period of rule by the Thirty Tyrants, set up by Lysander, a counter-revolution restored, in part, the constitution of Solon, the political greatness of Athens had departed.

Even the disastrous Peloponnesian War, which lasted twenty-seven years, did not destroy the impulse given to the Greek intellect during the preceding age, and literature, oratory, and philosophy flourished.

SOCRATES AND THE SHAME OF ATHENS

Socrates, the great and good Athenian philosopher, lived (469-399 B. C.) during a period covering much of the age of Pericles, and the whole time of the Peloponnesian war. Though opposed to the oligarchical tyranny of the Four Hundred and the Thirty, Socrates was even more adverse to the unmixed democracy, with its election by lot and its payment for political services. Accordingly, on the triumph of the demagogues, he was in 399 B. C. accused of denying the gods and corrupting the young, and being convicted by an overwhelming majority of the jury, was sentenced to death. He passed thirty days before execution in the noble discourses on the immortality of the soul, which are recorded in Plato’s Phædo, drank the cup of hemlock, and died.

SUPREMACY OF SPARTA AND THEBES

Sparta was now at the head of Greece, and for thirty-four years (405-371 B. C.) wielded power over the Greek states. Her sway was harsh and despotic.

RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND

After the Peloponnesian War, some of the Greeks were hired by Cyrus, the Persian prince, to help him in an attempt to wrest the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes. The attempt failed, and the memorable retreat (400 B. C.) homeward of the Greeks is famous as the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand.”

THE RISE OF MACEDONIA

Macedonia, north of Thessaly, was not considered by the Hellenes as a part of Hellas, and had no political importance till now. Yet the peoples had elements in common, being Thracians and Illyrians, with a large mixture of Dorian settlers among them.

KING PHILIP OF MACEDON

The line of Macedonian kings being of Hellenic descent, Greek civilization had been cultivated by some of them.

Philip of Macedon was a prince of great ability, educated at Thebes during the Theban supremacy, and trained in war by Epaminondas, on whose tactics he founded his famous invention, the “Macedonian phalanx.” His fame has been overshadowed by that of his illustrious son, but he made Macedonia the leading power in Greece, and gave Alexander the basis for his great achievements. He was a man of unscrupulous character, determined will, prompt action, and patient purpose; and when he became King of Macedon, in 359 B. C., he designed making his country supreme in the Hellenic world, as Athens, Sparta and Thebes had successively been.

THE FIRST SACRED WAR

From 356 B. C. to 346 B. C. the Phocian or First Sacred War was waged between the Thebans and the Phocians, with allies on each side, the origin of the war being a dispute about a bit of ground devoted for religious reasons to lying perpetually fallow. Philip of Macedon was called in to settle matters, and thereby his ambition secured a firm foothold in Greece. He possessed himself by force of the Athenian cities Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidæa, and Olynthus, being vigorously opposed throughout by the great Athenian orator and patriot Demosthenes, who strove to rouse his countrymen against Philip’s dangerous encroachments, in the famous speeches known as the Olynthiac and Philippic orations.

THE GREATEST PERIOD OF GREEK ORATORY

This was the most brilliant time of Greek oratory, which reached its perfection in the contest between Æschines, who advocated the cause of Macedonia, and Demosthenes, who opposed the designs of Philip. It was also a period of great mental activity in the region of scientific inquiry and speculative thought. Plato, whose birth fell in the preceding century, founded the Academic school, which took its name from the groves of Academus in the vicinity of Athens, where the philosopher was accustomed to lecture. Aristotle (called the Stagyrite, from his birthplace, Stagyra, in Macedonia) was the instructor of Alexander the Great, and founded, at the Lyceum in Athens, what is known as the Peripatetic school, from his habit of walking about while conversing with his disciples.

After the battle of Chæronea, Philip, having made Greece subject to his power, planned to unite all the forces of that country in an aggressive war against the great power of Persia, but was murdered in 336 B. C.

V. MACEDONIAN PERIOD AND EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--This period extends from the supremacy of Philip, gained by the battle of Chæronea, to the capture of Corinth, 146 B. C. By the disastrous defeat at Chæronea the genuine fire of the Grecian spirit was extinguished, and the subsequent history exhibits little else than the steps by which the country was reduced to a dependent province. Alexander, who succeeded his father Philip, as king of Macedon, and autocrat of Greece, cast an imperishable glory on the first years of this period by his extensive conquests reaching from the Hellespont to the Granicus, to Issus, to Tyre, to the Nile, to the desert of Libya, to the Euphrates, and the Indus. For twenty years after Alexander’s death the vast empire he had formed was agitated by the quarrels among his generals. By the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, B. C. 301, these contests were terminated, and the empire was then divided into practically four kingdoms. To the first of these the Grecian states belonged. Patriotic individuals sought to arouse their countrymen to cast off the Macedonian yoke; but jealousy between the states and the universal corruption of morals rendered their exertions fruitless. All that is really memorable in the affairs of Greeks at this later time, is found in the history of the Achæan league.

After the assassination of Philip, the task of subjugating the Persian Empire was left for his son Alexander, who subsequently proved himself one of the greatest commanders of any age. Alexander’s exploits were all performed in the short rule of thirteen years (336-323 B. C.). Coming to the throne of Macedon at the age of twenty, he put down rebellion in his own kingdom, marched into Greece and overawed Thebes, which had been intriguing against him, and in a congress of Greek states at Corinth he was appointed to command the great expedition against Persia.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THEBES

In 335 B. C. he made a successful expedition against the Thracians, Getæ, and Illyrians, and on his return found Thebes in revolt. He took Thebes by storm; the inhabitants were all slain or sold as slaves; and all the buildings, except the temples and the house which had been that of Pindar the poet, were razed. This capital had defied Alexander, and ceased to exist.

ALEXANDER’S INVASION OF PERSIA

In 334 B. C. Alexander crossed the Hellespont with an army of thirty thousand foot-soldiers and five thousand cavalry, and first met the foe at the river Granicus, in Mysia. The result was a Persian defeat, which cleared the way through Asia Minor, and brought the Macedonians to the borders of Syria. The second, a great battle (333 B. C.), was fought at Issus, in the southeast of Cilicia. There Alexander met the King of Persia himself, Darius III., and gained a complete victory over a vastly superior force. Darius fled, leaving his wife and mother prisoners in the conqueror’s hands, by whom they were treated with the greatest courtesy and kindness.

SYRIAN AND EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGNS

The Persian resistance thus disposed of for a time, Alexander turned southward, left behind him nothing unsubdued before his advance into the interior of Asia, and made an easy conquest of the cities of Phœnicia, except Tyre, which resisted obstinately for seven months, and was taken in the summer of 332 B. C. After taking Gaza, Alexander marched into Egypt, which received him gladly, from hatred of her Persian rulers. Early in 331 B. C. the Macedonian king handed down his name to future ages by founding, at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile, the city of Alexandria, which was destined to become so famous for commerce, wealth, literature, and learning.

ALEXANDER’S SECOND INVASION OF PERSIA

In the spring of 331 B. C. Alexander set out again for Persia, where Darius had been gathering an immense force with which to make a last struggle for the empire of the world. After traversing Phœnicia and Northern Syria, Alexander crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, and came out on the plain near the little village of Gaugamela, to the southeast of the ruins of Nineveh. Then took place the great and decisive battle of Arbela, with the Persians, October, 331 B. C.

After receiving the surrender of the other two capitals, Susa and Persepolis, Alexander spent the year 330 B. C. in conquering the northern provinces of the Persian Empire, between the Caspian Sea and the Indus. In 329 B. C. he marched into Bactria, over the mountains now called the Hindu Kush, caught and slew the traitor Bessus, who murdered Darius, and advanced even beyond the river Jaxartes. In 328 he was engaged in the conquest of Sogdiana, between the Oxus and Jaxartes, the country of which the capital was Maracanda, the modern Samarcand.

HIS INVASION OF NORTHERN INDIA

In the spring of 327 B. C., Alexander marched through what is now Afghanistan, crossed the Indus, and defeated an Indian king, Porus, on the banks of the Hydaspes (the Jhelum). On his way to the Indus he stormed the capital of an Indian tribe, now Mooltan, and was himself severely wounded. In 326 he sailed in a fleet, built on the spot, down the Indus, into the ocean; despatched a part of the army on board the ships, under his admiral Nearchus, by sea coastwise into the Persian Gulf, and marched himself with the rest through what is now Beluchistan, reaching Susa early in 325 B. C.

ALEXANDER SETTLES IN BABYLON

During the rest which the troops took here, Alexander, many of his generals, and many thousands of his soldiers, married Asiatic women, and, with the same view of bringing Europe and Asia into one form of civilization, great numbers of Asiatics were enrolled in the victorious army, and trained in the European fashion. For the improvement of commerce, the Tigris and Euphrates were cleared of obstructions. From Susa, in the autumn of 325 B. C., Alexander visited Ecbatana (in Media) and thence proceeded to Babylon, which he entered again in the spring of 324 B. C.

It was the intention of Alexander to make Babylon the capital of the empire, as the best medium of communication between east and west; and he is said to have meditated the conquests of Arabia, Carthage, Italy, and of Western Europe. For commercial and agricultural purposes he intended to explore the Caspian Sea, and to improve the irrigation of the Babylonian plain. All his plans were made vain by his sudden death by fever at Babylon, in the summer of 323 B. C.

ESTABLISHMENT OF VARIOUS GREEK KINGDOMS

Alexander the Great left no heir to his immense empire. In Bactria (the modern Bokhara), Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, Babylonia, and above all in Egypt, Greek kingdoms were established as centers of science, art, and learning, from which Greek light radiated into the world around them. In Europe, besides that of Macedon, a kingdom of Thrace, stretching beyond the Danube, another in Illyria, and another in Epirus, were under the rule of Greek princes. To Alexander the world owed, among other great cities built by him or his successors, Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria.

LASTING INFLUENCE OF GREEK THOUGHT IN ASIA

The Greek language became the tongue of all government and literature throughout many countries where the people were not Greek by birth. Throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt the Hellenic character that was thus imparted remained in full vigor down to the time of the Mohammedan conquests; and the early growth and progress of Christianity were aided by that diffusion of the Greek language and civilization.

Beyond the Euphrates, Grecian influences largely modified Hindu science and philosophy and the later Persian literature. The intellectual influence of ancient Greece, poured on the Eastern world by Alexander’s victories, was brought back to bear on Mediæval Europe through the Saracenic conquests. The learning and science of the Arabians, communicated at that epoch to the western parts of Europe, were merely the reproduction, in an altered form, of the Greek philosophy and the Greek learning acquired by the Saracenic conquerors along with the territory of the provinces which Alexander had subjugated, nearly a thousand years before the armed disciples of Mohammed began their career in the East.

ALEXANDER’S SUCCESSORS

On the death of Alexander, in 323 B. C., a struggle of more than twenty years’ duration ensued among his principal generals and their heirs--Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Antigonus, his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, Cassander, Seleucus, and others. At last, in 301 B. C., a decisive battle was fought at Ipsus, in Phrygia, between Antigonus (with his son Demetrius) and a confederacy of his rivals. The result was to distribute the provinces of Alexander’s empire in the following way: To Lysimachus, nearly the whole of Asia Minor; Cassander, Greece and Macedon; Seleucus, Syria and the East; Ptolemy had Egypt and Palestine. The two most important kingdoms were that of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and that of the Seleucids[4] in the East. (See further under Comparative Outlines, and Egypt.)

[4] The Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidæ began in 312 B. C. with Seleucus I. (surnamed Nicator), one of Alexander’s generals, and under him was extended over much of Asia Minor, including the whole of Syria from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and the territory eastwards from the Euphrates to the banks of the Oxus and the Indus. Seleucus I. was an able and energetic monarch, and sedulously carried out the plans of Alexander the Great. He died in 280 B. C., having founded the city of Antioch in Syria as the capital of the kingdom. His successors, the dynasty known as the Seleucidæ (or “descendants of Seleucus”), ruled for about two centuries. The most notable of these monarchs were named Antiochus.

The third of the name, Antiochus the Great (223 to 187 B. C.), was the monarch at whose court Hannibal, the great Carthaginian, took refuge. Antiochus invaded Greece in 192 B. C., and there the Romans defeated him both by land and sea, and compelled him to yield a large part of his dominions in Asia Minor. Much of the eastern territory had been lost before this time, as well as Phœnicia, Palestine, and Western Syria, conquered by Ptolemy Philopator, king of Egypt.

Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B. C.) oppressed the Jews to introduce the worship of the Greek divinities. Against him the brave Maccabees rose in rebellion. The Syrian kingdom ended in 65 B. C., conquered by the Romans under Pompey.

LATER HISTORY OF MACEDONIA AND GREECE

The last period in the history of Greece presents us with long wars among different successors of Alexander for the sovereignty of the Greek states, and factions and intrigue rife in and between the different communities. From time to time great and patriotic men arise, making a struggle glorious but vain for the restoration of political freedom and the spirit of the olden time. We find “leagues” and confederations formed in order to resist the coming doom of political extinction.

THE FATAL LAMIAN WAR

A great effort to free Greece from the Macedonian supremacy was headed by Athens in 323 B. C. The renowned Athenian orators Demosthenes and Hyperides were its political heroes, opposed by Phocion, a man of pure character, but who despaired of a successful rising against Antipater, ruler of Macedonia before and after Alexander the Great’s death. Athens was joined by most of the states in Central and Northern Greece; and the war derives its name from Lamia in Thessaly, where Antipater, after being defeated by the confederates, was besieged for some months. The war ended in 322 B. C., by Antipater’s complete victory at the battle of Crannon in Thessaly. Demosthenes ended his life by poison in the same year; Hyperides was killed by Antipater’s orders; Phocion died by the hemlock at Athens, in 317 B. C., on a charge of treason.

HEROIC EFFORTS OF DEMETRIUS

The distinguished Demetrius Poliorcetes (besieger of cities) was king of Macedonia from 294 to 287 B. C. His life was passed in fighting with varied success and he was driven from the throne at last by a combination of enemies, including the famous Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Demetrius was a man of wonderful abilities and resources, deriving his surname from the enormous machines which he constructed for the siege of Rhodes, one of his warlike enterprises. He freed Athens for a time from Macedonian domination before he became ruler of Macedon.

A famous personage was Pyrrhus, the warlike king of Epirus, the territory in the northwest of Greece, inhabited by descendants of the old Pelasgians and Illyrians. The first king of the whole country was Alexander, the brother of Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. He ruled from 336 to 326 B. C.

THE WARRIOR PYRRHUS, KING OF EPIRUS

Pyrrhus (295 to 272 B. C.) is renowned as the greatest warrior of his age. He had been driven by his subjects from Epirus, but, assisted with a fleet and army by Ptolemy I. of Egypt, returned thither and began his actual reign in 295 B. C. His first efforts were turned against Macedonia; but, after much fighting, he lost his hold there, in 286 B. C. It was in 280 B. C. that he began his great enterprise by crossing over into Italy, to aid the Tarentines against the Romans. In his first campaign he defeated the Romans in the battle of Heraclea in Lucania. His skill was aided by a force of armored elephants, and by the Macedonian formation of the phalanx, both novelties to the Romans. In the second campaign (279 B. C.) Pyrrhus gained a second dearly bought victory over the Romans at Asculum, in Apulia, yet with no decisive result; in 278 B. C. he crossed into Sicily, to help the Greeks there against the Carthaginians.

REPULSES AND DEATH OF PYRRHUS

At first he was very successful and defeated the Carthaginians, taking the town of Eryx; but he failed in other operations, and returned to Italy in 276 B. C., again to assist the Tarentines against the Romans. In 275 B. C. his career in Italy was closed by a great defeat, inflicted by the Romans at the battle of Beneventum, and Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with the remnant of his army. In 273 B. C. he invaded Macedonia with such success as to become king, and his restless spirit then drove him to war in Peloponnesus. He was repulsed in an attack on Sparta, and, after entering the city of Argos to assist one of its factions, was knocked from his horse by a heavy tile hurled from a house-top by a woman’s hand, and killed by the enemy’s soldiers. Thus died Pyrrhus, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign,--a man of the highest military skill, capable of great enterprises, but without the steady resolution and the practical wisdom to bring them to a successful issue.

GALLIC INVASION OF GREECE

The Gauls invaded Greece in 280 B. C. After penetrating through Macedonia and Thessaly they were defeated under their leader Brennus (namesake of the captor of Rome a century earlier), near Delphi in Phocis. Some of the Gauls in this irruption made their way into Asia Minor, and ultimately gave their name to the province Galatia, adopting the Greek customs and religion, but keeping their own language.

THE CELEBRATED ACHAEAN LEAGUE

The Achæan League was founded, in its new form, in 280 B. C., consisting of the towns in Achæa, and afterwards including Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and many other Greek cities, so that it became the chief political power in Greece. In 245 B. C. Aratus (sometimes called the “last of the Greeks”) became head of the league, and much extended its influence by skillful diplomacy. Philopœmen, another distinguished man of this period, general of the league in 208 B. C., and again in 201 and 192 B. C., was successful in battle against the Spartans when they assailed the League, and in 188 B. C. took Sparta, leveled the fortifications, and replaced the institutions of Lycurgus by the Achæan laws.

Greece from this time forward was greatly distracted; Greek power, Greek energy, Greek genius, might now be found indeed anywhere rather than in Greece. The Achæan League from time to time made spasmodic efforts, but Rome constantly interfered in Greek affairs. Domestic faction helped Roman intrigues, and the battle of Pydna (in Macedonia), gained by the Romans in 168 B. C. over Perseus, the last king of Macedon, formally ended the dominion established by Phillip II., nearly two centuries before. Macedonia was made a Roman province in 147 B. C.

GREECE BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE

The Achæan League had gradually languished and in 150 B. C. war with Rome began, as a last effort on behalf of Greece. It ended in the defeat of the forces of the League by the Roman general Mummius, and the capture of Corinth (146 B. C.), which was plundered, and burned to the ground; the Achæan League was formally dissolved, and Greece was made into the Roman province Achaia, in 146 B. C. The city of Athens was allowed to retain a kind of freedom, and became, along with Alexandria, a university town of the civilized world, in which students of art, philosophy and literature found the best models, the best instruction, and the highest inspirations.

THE GREEKS UNDER FOREIGN RULE UNTIL 1832

Under the Romans Greece was at first treated fairly well, and much of the old municipal life was left. Hellenic culture fascinated the conquerors. Greek teachers poured into Rome, and Athens became the university for wealthy Roman youths. Little by little, however, the government became more oppressive. In the Mithradatic War the Greeks rose in a revolt which led to a devastating march of Sulla across the country and to the storming of Athens and the massacre of its inhabitants. Greece was then exposed to the exactions of the Roman officials on the one hand, and to the ravages of pirates on the other. In 267 B. C. the Goths swept across the land, destroyed many towns, and captured Athens, from which they were dislodged by the forces of the historian Dexippus.

In internal affairs the tendency during the following centuries was to more and more centralize rule on the part of the Romans. The Emperor Hadrian attempted to improve the condition of the Greeks by giving them rights equal to those of Roman citizens, by reforming the administration of justice, and by paying attention to roads and buildings. Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, took the important step of changing the capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he solemnly dedicated in 333 A. D. and called, after himself, Constantinople. The Emperor, having been the political head of the pagan religion, naturally assumed the same direction of the Christian faith, and, in the opposition of the orthodox Church to the Arianism of the first Christian Emperors the people found a vent for the national feeling which chafed against the despotism of an alien court. Theodosius the Great (378-395) first established Christianity as the religion of the state. His sons, Arcadius and Honorius divided the Roman dominions between themselves, and Constantinople became the capital only of the Eastern Empire. At this time a great danger threatened Greece from Alaric, king of the West Goths, who invaded Greece in 396 and occupied Athens. Though the city and country were pillaged by the Goths, Alaric strictly protected the honor of Greek women and religious edifices.

GREECE UNDER THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

On the division of the Roman Empire, Greece fell of course to the eastern or Byzantine half. In 1204 the Crusaders and Venetians captured Constantinople, and divided the Empire--an act which has been taken as the end of “the Byzantine Empire.” Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was elected Emperor of Roumania, and reigned at Constantinople. Many new states sprang out of the partition, and new empires were founded at Nicæa, Trebizond, and Thessalonica. The feudal system was established in Greece. Athens became a fief of Roumania, governed by dukes; a great part of the Peloponnesus was kept first by Franks and then by Neapolitans, as the Principality of Achæa. The Venetians obtained possession of most of the islands.

Of all the confused and crowded events of these times probably the most important, was the capture of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael Palæologus, Emperor of Nicæa, but no attempt to hold Greece could long endure in the face of the Ottoman Turks who soon began to threaten from the East. In 1453 the Sultan Mohammed II. took Constantinople. The Venetians finally surrendered all claim to most of their Greek possessions by the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718.

UNDER TURKISH RULE DOWN TO THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE

During the rule of the Turks the Greeks endured many hardships, including a curious tribute of children, who were educated by Mohammedans and trained for service in the corps of Janissaries. It was, however, to the interest of the Sultans for the sake of their revenues to encourage Greek commerce, and so there were wealthy classes with culture enough to make a fruitful soil for the teaching of the French Revolution. The spirit thus implanted led to the War of Greek Independence in 1821--memorable for the generous sympathy of Byron, for the long siege of Missolonghi, and for the accident which led to the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Navarino in 1827 by English, French, and Russian vessels.

From this period down to the present the history of Greece belongs to the modern kingdom.

ROME: MISTRESS OF THE WORLD

IMPORTANCE OF ROMAN HISTORY

The greatness of Roman history lies in the fact that it is, in a large sense, the history of the world from the time of Rome’s supremacy. Out of the Roman Empire arose the modern state system of Europe; and the Roman language, law and institutions are still, in changed forms, alive and active in the modern world. The influence of Christianity, and of Greek art and literature, have to a great extent been preserved and transmitted to us through Rome. Rome brought all the civilized peoples of the West, including Western Asia, under one dominion and one bondage; and the culture which was thus gathered up into one vast reservoir was given off in streams that, in due season, fertilized the mental soil of the rude and restless nations which succeeded the fallen empire.

GEOGRAPHICAL CENTER OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The study of Roman history properly begins with the geography of Italy, because it was in Italy that the Roman people had their origin, and it was here that they began their great career. It was only when the Romans had conquered and organized Italy that they were able to conquer and govern the world.

FAVORABLE SITUATION OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA

The position of the Italian peninsula was favorable to the growth of the Roman power. It was situated almost in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, on the shores of which had flourished the great nations of antiquity--Egypt, Phœnicia, Carthage and Greece. By conquering Italy, Rome thus obtained a commanding position among the nations of the ancient world. As the peninsula projects southward into the Mediterranean it bends toward the east, so that its southern coasts afforded an easy access to the civilized peoples of Greece. The eastern shores of the peninsula, washed by the Adriatic Sea, with few bays and harbors, were not favorable to the early progress of the people; while the western coasts, bordering upon the Tyrrhenian Sea, with their numerous indentations afforded greater opportunities for commerce and a civilized life.

THE MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS OF ITALY

There are two important mountain chains which belong to Italy, the Alps and the Apennines. The Alps form a semicircular boundary on the north and afford a formidable barrier against the neighboring countries of Europe. Starting from the sea at its western extremity, this chain stretches toward the north for about one hundred and fifty miles, when it rises in the lofty peak of Mt. Blanc, fifteen thousand feet in height; and then continues its course in an easterly direction for about three hundred and thirty miles, approaching the head of the Adriatic Sea, and disappearing along its coast. It is crossed by several passes, through which foreign peoples have sometimes found their way into the peninsula.

The Apennines, beginning at the western extremity of the Alps, extend through the whole length of the peninsula, forming the backbone of Italy.

IMPORTANT DIVISIONS OF THE PENINSULA

Central Italy comprised the northern part of the peninsula proper, that is, the territory between the line just drawn from the Macra to the Rubicon, and another line drawn from the Silarus on the west to the Frento on the east. This territory contained six countries, namely, three on the western coast,--Etruria, Latium (la´shi-um), and Campania; and three on the eastern coast and along the Apennines,--Umbria, Picenum, and what we call the Sabellian country, which included many mountain tribes, chief among which were the Sabines and the Samnites.

Southern Italy comprised the rest of the peninsula and contained four countries, namely, two on the western coast, Lucania and Brutium, extending into the toe of Italy; and two on the eastern coast, Apulia and Calabria (or Iapygia), extending into the heel of Italy.

EARLY INHABITANTS OF SICILY

Sicily was inhabited in the west by a race of unknown origin called the Sikanians: the Sikels, who gave their name to the island, were closely connected in race with the Latins. Sicily was fought for by the Carthaginians, and, Greek cities having been founded in Sicily, in the end the island became almost wholly Greek in speech and usages.

THE GAULS OF NORTHERN ITALY

If the Greeks in the extreme south were the most civilized people of Italy, the Gauls or Celts, in the extreme north, were the most barbarous. Crossing the Alps from western Europe, they had pushed back the Etruscans and occupied the plains of the Po; hence this region received the name which it long held, Cisalpine Gaul. From this land the Gauls made frequent incursions toward the south, and were for a long time a terror to the other peoples of Italy.

HISTORY OF THE ROMANS

I. MYTHICAL PERIOD.--The history of Rome extends through a space of more than twelve hundred years, which may be divided into six periods. The first period includes the time from the building of the city, B. C. 752, to the expulsion of Tarquin, B. C. 509. It may be called the period of the kings, or of Regal Power.

The Roman historians have left a particular account of this period, beginning with the very founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, whose descent is traced from Æneas the hero of Virgil. To review them briefly here will be all that is necessary.

Æneas, fleeing from Troy after the fall of that city, came, in the course of his wanderings and after many adventures, to the shores of Italy. Settling here, he married the daughter of the king Latinus, and after a fierce war with Turnus, his rival for the hand of Lavinia, he established himself in Latium. The capital of that country, Alba Longa, was founded by his son, Ascanius, and for three centuries the descendants of Æneas ruled the country.

In the eighth century B. C., Amulius usurped the throne but failed to kill his grand-nephews Romulus and Remus, who, by the fortuitous aid of the gods, were rescued from death. Growing to manhood, they destroyed the usurper and restored their grandfather, Numitor. Romulus then founded the city of Rome in 753 B. C., populated it by means of inviting all the discontented to come unto him, and gave them wives from the Sabine tribes, which incident has passed into history as the Rape of the Sabines. To this same incident in Roman mythology belongs the legend connected with the Tarpeian Rock. Romulus finally was taken to the gods by his father, Mars, and is henceforward worshiped by the Romans as the god Quirinus.

THE GOOD KING NUMA

The reign of the second king, Numa, is remembered, on account of his influence on the affairs of religion. He instituted many of the religious ceremonies and several classes of priests, and was regarded as the founder of the religious institutions of Rome.

During the reign of the third king, Tullus Hostilius, a war was carried on with Alba Longa. The issue of this war was decided, so the story goes, by a combat between the three Horatii, champions of the Romans, and the three Curiatii, champions of Alba--resulting in the triumph of the Romans and the submission of Alba to the Roman power.

The fourth king, Ancus Marcius, was a Sabine, the grandson of Numa. He too was a man of peace, but was drawn into a war with several of the Latin cities. Having subdued them, he transferred their inhabitants to the Aventine hill.

LEGENDS OF THE LATER KINGS

The three later kings of Rome are represented as having been Etruscans. The first of these was Tarquinius Priscus, who migrated to Rome from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii. He strengthened his position as king by adopting the royal insignia of the Etruscans--a crown of gold, a scepter, an ivory chair, a purple toga, etc. He carried on war with the Latins and Sabines, drained the city, laid out the forum, and dedicated a temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline hill.

The next of the later kings was Servius Tullius, the son of a slave woman of the king’s household. He united Rome and the Latin cities in a league; reorganized the government, and erected a new wall inclosing the seven hills.

Tarquin the Proud, the last king, was engaged in the siege of an enemy’s city only sixteen miles from Rome, when his son committed the outrage upon the person of Lucretia, which led to the banishment of the family and the overthrow of the regal government.

II. PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC, 510-264 B. C.--The second period extends from the expulsion of the kings to the beginning of the Punic wars. During this period the Plebeians were admitted to the offices of state, about 300 B. C. At the beginning of this period the government was a thorough aristocracy, but at the close of it has become a full democracy. It included about two hundred and fifty years, and may be designated the period of the Plebeian and Patrician contests, and the conquest of Italy.

When, at the close of the sixth century (509 B. C.), Rome ceased to be under kingly rule, it became a republic. Instead of a king, two magistrates called Consuls were elected every year. In other respects the constitution remained as before. The first consuls were Brutus and Collatinus.

As the city increased by immigration, and the admission of allies or incorporation of subjects, two principal classes of the citizens developed--the Patricians and Plebeians. The Patricians were probably those descended from the original citizens of the united Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan town, and the Plebeians the descendants of those afterwards admitted.

The internal history of Rome for several hundred years consists mainly of the account of struggles between these two orders. The Patricians alone were at first admissible to the great governing body, the Senate, and they kept in their hands all the high offices of state, the higher degrees of the priesthood, and the ownership of the public lands. The two orders were not allowed to intermarry, and the Plebeians, though they were free and personally independent (excepting compulsory service in war) had no political rights.

CAUSES OF STRUGGLES BETWEEN PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS

The struggles between the Patricians and Plebeians began about 500 B. C. The Plebeians fought the battles of Rome, and, in doing so, had to neglect the tillage of the soil by which they lived. Hence came poverty, made worse still by a severe law of debt, and by a high rate of interest extorted by the Patricians, who advanced money. The taxation of the state was paid solely by the Plebeians, as the Patricians had ceased to pay their rent to the treasury for the public lands which they held. At the same time, the Plebeians (which body included many men of birth and wealth) were entirely excluded from public offices. Such a state of things could only end in an outbreak, which occurred in 493 B. C.

FIRST WITHDRAWAL OF PLEBEIANS TO MONS SACER

The oppression of the debtors (who were imprisoned and flogged on failure to pay) caused a withdrawal of the Plebeians in a body to Mons Sacer (Holy Hill), outside the Roman territory, three miles from Rome. Their purpose was to erect a new town, and dwell apart, with equal rights. The Patricians, left helpless against foreign enemies, as usual in such cases, made concessions when forced to terms. It was agreed that two officials should be appointed (to offset the two consuls, who were Patrician magistrates) for the defense of the commoners against the cruel exercise of the law of debtor and creditor.

TRIBUNI PLEBIS

These new magistrates were called Tribuni Plebis (Tribunes of the Commons), and the title became very famous. They acted as champions of the subordinate class against all oppression, and pleaded in the law-courts on their behalf. The person of a Tribune was sacred and inviolable, and, in the exercise of his yearly office, he could forbid the execution of the order of any official, or of any decree of the senate; he could pardon offenses, and called to account all enemies of the commons under his charge.

FIRST OF THE AGRARIAN LAWS

In 486 B. C. Spurius Cassius (afterward tried for treason and put to death by the Patricians) carried the first of the famous Agrarian Laws, for limiting the amount of public land held by the Patricians, compelling them to pay tithe or rent for the land they held, and dividing surplus lands among the Plebeians. The law was not enforced, through the violence and injustice of the Patricians. The Plebeians exercised some check from time to time, by the refusal to serve as soldiers.

THE FAMOUS PUBLILIAN LAW

In 471 B. C. the Plebeians succeeded in carrying the famous Publilian Law (proposed by the tribune Publilius Volero), that the tribunes should in future be chosen only at the (popular) Comitia Tributa, instead of in the (patrician) Comitia Centuriata. The Comitia Tributa also received the right of deliberating and deciding upon all matters that were open to discussion and settlement in the Comitia Centuriata. The struggle continued, and the commons found it a great disadvantage that there was no written law to control the chief Patrician magistrates (the consuls) in their dealings with the Plebeians.

FIRST GREAT CODE OF ROMAN LAW

After violent opposition, and the increase of the number of tribunes to ten, the Plebeians carried a law (about 452 B. C.) that ten commissioners (Decemviri) should draw up a code to bind all classes of Romans alike. The ultimate result was the compilation (and engraving on thick sheets of brass) of the first and only code of law in the Roman republic--the Laws of the Twelve Tables. These laws made the Comitia Tributa into a really national legislature, embodying Patricians and Plebeians alike. The Plebeians, however, were still kept out of a share in the lands which they conquered in war, and a time of trouble came in the usurpation and violence of the Decemviri.

SECOND WITHDRAWAL OF PLEBEIANS TO MONS SACER

In 448 B. C. the Plebs, for the second time, seceded to the Mons Sacer, and the Decemviri were obliged to give way. Tribunes were re-appointed, and the new consuls were Valerius and Horatius. By them, in the Comitia Centuriata the great Valerian and Horatian Laws were passed, the first great charter of Roman freedom, and the power of the Plebeians was much increased. The Comitia Tributa was now on a level with the Comitia Centuriata, so that a Plebis-citum, or decree of the people’s assembly, had henceforth the same force as one passed by the Comitia Centuriata, and became law for the whole nation. The struggle between the two orders, Patricians and Plebeians, continued. In 445 B. C. the Lex Canuleia, proposed by the tribune Canuleius, was passed, sanctioning intermarriage between Patricians and Plebeians.

MILITARY TRIBUNES WITH CONSULAR POWER

The Patricians, foreseeing that the time would come when the Plebeians must be admitted to the high offices of the state, divided the powers of the consulship, and, in 444 B. C., caused the appointment of Military Tribunes with consular power, officers who might be elected from either order, as commanders of the army, while the civil powers of the consuls were kept by the Patricians in their own hands. In 443 B. C. the office of the Censors was established, with the proviso that they should be appointed only from the Patricians, and only by their assembly, the Comitia Curiata. In this the Patricians undoubtedly gained an accession of power.

FURTHER STRUGGLES BETWEEN PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS

The power of the Plebeians grew by degrees through the exertion of the prerogatives of the Tribunes, and about 400 B. C. the office of the Military Tribunes became open to the Plebeians, and four out of the six were chosen from that order. After the capture of Rome by the Gauls (390 B. C.), fresh troubles for the Plebeians arose. Their lands near Rome had been laid waste, cattle killed, and implements of agriculture destroyed. Heavy taxes were imposed to make up for the loss of public treasure carried off by the Gauls, and soon the old trouble of debt arose, and consequent oppression by the Patrician creditors.

EQUALITY AND FREEDOM ACHIEVED UNDER THE TRIBUNES LICINIUS AND SEXTIUS

The distress of the Commons increased until a great remedy was found by two patriotic tribunes of the Plebs, Caius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius, the authors of the great Roman charter of equality and freedom. These able, determined men, after a tremendous struggle, fought with constitutional arms alone,--in which the Romans showed that respect for law and authority which, in their best days, so honorably distinguished them,--carried their point. The victory was won through the use of the power of the tribunes to stop the whole machinery of government. Year after year, for ten successive years, Licinius and Sextius were chosen tribunes, and, while the Patricians gained over the eight other tribunes, and prevented the popular bills being put to the vote in the Comitia Tributa, the two tribunes prevented the election of the Consular Tribunes (save in 371 B. C., for a war with the Latins), and other high officials, and would have no troops levied at all.

TERMS OF THE LICINIAN LAWS

At last, in 366 B. C., the famous Licinian Laws were carried, to-wit: (1) That the interest already paid by debtors should be deducted from the capital of the debt, and the remainder paid off in three equal annual instalments; (2) That no one should hold above five hundred jugera (about two hundred and eighty acres) of the public land, the surplus to be divided among the poorer Plebeians; (3) That the military tribunate with consular power should be abolished, and the consulship restored; but one Consul, at least, henceforward, should be a Plebeian. Sextius was himself elected, in 366 B. C., as the first Plebeian consul. All the other offices, dictatorship, censorship, prætorship, etc., were soon thrown open to the Commons,--so that at last, after the long struggle, perfect political equality was established.

FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY

For a century and a half since the expulsion of the kings, Rome had been a republic, but an aristocratic republic; it was now truly a government of the people. From this time begins the golden age of Roman politics. Civil concord, to which a temple was dedicated, brought with it a period of civic virtue and heroic greatness.

THE CONQUEST OF ITALY

During this period, so harassed by internal contests, Rome was also engaged in frequent wars. These wars were with (1) their immediate relatives the Latins; with (2) their more distant relatives, the various other Italian nationalities; with (3) the Greek settlements in Southern Italy aided by Pyrrhus, king of Epirus; with (4) the Gauls in Northern Italy.

MEANING OF THESE WARS

These Roman wars meant a great deal to the future of this remarkable nation. Before Rome could play its grand part in the history of the world’s civilization it was necessary, first of all, that it should become a great Nation. A great nation needs an extensive stage on which to play its part. Now the wars by which the Romans put down the various small and obstructive nationalities of Italy were the clearing of the stage, preliminary to the oncoming of that imperial figure, the “Mistress of the World.”

WARS WITH THE SAMNITES IN SOUTHERN ITALY

The series of wars against Etruscans, Latins, Samnites, and Gauls, sometimes singly and sometimes in combination, is usually known in Roman history by the general designation of the “Latin wars” and the “Samnite wars.” These wars filled the greater part of the half-century between 343 and 290 B. C.; and the Samnites were the leaders in this onset of the nations on Rome, the issue of which was to determine whether Rome or Samnium should govern Italy. The Romans were completely successful; and extricating themselves by their valor from this confused conflict of nations, the Romans found themselves masters of Central Italy (290 B. C.),--Samnites, Latins, etc., all their subjects.

WAR WITH THE GREEK KING PYRRHUS

The “Samnite wars” were succeeded by a short but brisk war, designated in Roman history “the war with Pyrrhus and the Greeks in Italy.” Pyrrhus was an able and enterprising Greek prince whom the Greek towns of Southern Italy--fearful of being overwhelmed by what they called the “conquering barbarians of the Tiber”--had invited over from his native country to help them as champion of a Greek city.

Pyrrhus came over with a force of twenty-five thousand troops and twenty elephants. In the first battle (Pandosia, 280 B. C.) the Romans fought stoutly, until what they conceived to be gigantic gray oxen (the elephants) came thundering down upon them; so that the victory remained with Pyrrhus. In the next contest also (Asculum, 279 B. C.) Pyrrhus was successful; but the Romans made him pay so dearly for his triumph that he is said to have exclaimed, “Another such victory and I am undone!” Not having succeeded in his main object, Pyrrhus quitted Italy and went to Sicily; but soon after he returned, renewed the contest with the Romans, and was utterly overthrown at Beneventum, in 275 B.C.

The subjugation of Southern Italy--of all that part called Great Greece--soon followed, and at the close of the year B. C. 266 Rome reigned supreme over the length and breadth of the peninsula of Italy, from the southern boundary of Cisalpine Gaul to the Sicilian Straits, and from the Tyrrhenian, or Tuscan, Sea to the Adriatic.

NATURE OF THE ROMAN STATE UNDER THE REPUBLIC.

The real governing power in Rome was the Roman people,--populus Romanus,--that is to say, the body of free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory proper, together with a considerable number of persons in other parts of Italy who, either from being colonists of Roman descent or from having had Roman citizenship conferred on them, had the privilege of going to Rome and voting at the Comitia, or Assembly. The possessors of the suffrage thus formed a comparatively small body of men, such as might be assembled with ease in any public square or park, and these by their votes decided on the affairs of the commonwealth, controlling thus the destinies of the whole population of Italy, estimated at this time at above five million.

In addition to the populus Romanus there were two other classes,--the Italians and the Latins. The Italians, or socii, were the inhabitants of the allied and dependent Italian states that had submitted to Rome. These communities were almost all permitted to retain their own laws, judges, municipal arrangements, etc.; but they did not possess the Roman franchise, and hence had no share in the political affairs of the republic. The Latins were those who belonged to cities having the “Latin franchise,” as it was called, from its having first been given to the cities of Latium when conquered. This did not give full Roman citizenship, but made it easier to obtain it.

SUMMARY OF ROMAN GOVERNMENT

Rome wisely left self-government to all the dependent and allied states, while she secured her sovereignty by three rights which she reserved to herself: (1) She alone made peace or declared war; (2) She alone might receive embassies; (3) She alone might coin money. Altogether it was an admirable system, vastly superior to the loosely related Grecian states. It was a system that made possible for the first time in the world’s history a great, as well as a free, nation.

It is a striking fact that there was not yet even a dawning Roman literature; in art, science, philosophy, Rome had done--absolutely nothing. But, in fact, it was in the art of governing mankind that Roman genius was to appear; and it was this that showed itself in these early years,--it was their valor, their probity, their patriotism, their political tact, and not speculation or literary culture, that distinguished them.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE GREAT ROMAN ROADS

The famous Roman roads are to be found not only throughout Italy, where they were constructed in various directions from the capital, but in every land once conquered by Rome and stamped by her, as she stamped all her conquests, with ineffaceable marks of her possession and her power. These great roads were first made with the military purpose of providing a way that should be solid at all seasons of the year, for the march of legions and their heavy baggage through districts subdued by Roman arms. They were wonderful pieces of determined practical engineering, and in order to carry them straight to the points aimed at, marshes and hollows were filled up, or spanned with viaducts; mountains were tunneled, streams were bridged; no labor, time, or money was spared.

THE APPIAN WAY AND OTHER FAMOUS ROADS

The first and greatest of the Italian roads was the famous Appian Way (Via Appia, called Regina Viarum, “Queen of Roads”), which was begun by Appius Claudius, Censor in 312 B. C. The struggle with the Samnites was at its height when this great causeway, built with large, square stones on a raised platform, was made direct from the gates of Rome to Capua, in Campania. The Via Appia was afterwards extended, through Samnium and Apulia, to Brundusium (on the lower Adriatic), the port of embarkment for Greece. Parts of the original stonework are existing at this day. Other great roads of Italy were the Via Aurelia--the great coast-road northward, by Genua (Genoa), into Transalpine Gaul; the Via Flaminia, through Umbria to Ariminum; and the Via Æmilia, from Ariminum, through Cisalpine Gaul to Placentia.

III. EPOCH OF THE PUNIC WARS, 264-146 B. C.--The third period in Roman history extends from the final triumph of the Plebeians to the capture of Carthage, B. C. 146. Rome had hitherto been distracted with intestine feuds and dissensions, and had extended her dominion over but a small extent of territory. The admission of Plebeians to all the high offices of trust and distinction promoted the consolidation and strength of the republic, and the career of conquest was soon begun.

We now see Rome engage in the greatest conflict of her history,--that with the powerful maritime state, Carthage,--a struggle which, when it was fully developed, became for Rome a fight for national existence, in which her enemy was at the height of her power and resources, with Spain and Africa at her back, and with the first general of the age to command her armies.

RACES OPPOSED IN THE PUNIC WARS

The interest of the Punic wars (as they are called from the word Punicus, the Latin equivalent of Phœnician, and, in a limited sense, Carthaginian) is great and enduring. These wars were fought out to determine which of the two races, the Indo-Germanic, or Aryan, or the Semitic, should have the dominion of the world. On the one side--the Aryan--was the genius for war, government, and legislation; on the other--the Semitic--the spirit of industry, navigation and commerce. The skill and valor, the determination and resource, displayed on both sides, have caused these wars of Rome and Carthage to remain most vividly impressed upon the memories of men.

CHARACTER OF THE CARTHAGINIAN STATE AND PEOPLE

Carthage had become, by the political and commercial energy of her citizens, the leading Phœnician state, ruling over Utica, Hippo, Leptis, and other cities of Phœnician origin in northern Africa. The Carthaginians paid also great attention to agriculture, and the whole of their territory was cultivated like a garden, supplying the population with abundance of food. This fact, taken with the wealth derived from her commerce, explains how it was that a city with no large extent of territory was enabled to hold out so long against the utmost efforts of Rome, and at one period to bring her, as it seemed, to the verge of ruin.

The political constitution of Carthage was that of an oligarchical republic, and her aristocracy is famed for the number of able men that came from its ranks. On the other hand, she was weakened by being dependent on mercenary troops in her wars, subject to revolts at home among the native populations whom she oppressed, and hampered by the factious spirit prevalent among her leading men.

She had a great commercial genius, but no gift for assimilating conquered peoples, or for establishing an empire on a solid and enduring basis, and therefore, in the end, she succumbed to Rome, whose aim it was to bring the nations under one wide, enduring sway. The struggle of Carthage against Rome became, in fact, the contest of a man of the greatest abilities--Hannibal--against a nation of the utmost energy and determination, and the nation, in the long run, won the day.

FIRST PUNIC WAR, 264-241 B. C.

The Carthaginians held Corsica, Sardinia, and various colonies in Spain and possessions in Sicily. It was in Sicily that the cause of quarrel between Rome and Carthage was found, and Rome picked the quarrel by interference in a local matter at Messana. Hiero, king of Syracuse, as we have seen, had come over to the Romans, who, after defeating the Carthaginian army and taking Agrigentum (262 B. C.), determined to make themselves masters of Sicily. For this a fleet was needed, and with Roman energy they soon built one. Twice their squadrons were destroyed, but in 260 B. C. the consul Duilius gained a great naval victory at Mylæ, on the northeast coast of Sicily, and, from this time, Rome became more and more nearly a match for Carthage on her element, the sea. The Romans invaded Africa without success (255 B. C.), but were generally victorious in Sicily.

In 247 B. C. the great Hamilcar Barca (father of Hannibal and Hasdrubal) was appointed to the Carthaginian command in Sicily, and maintained himself there with great patience and skill against all the Roman efforts. But, in 241 B. C., the Roman commander Lutatius Catulus utterly defeated the Carthaginian fleet off the Ægates Islands, on the west coast of Sicily, and the Carthaginians then gave in. All Sicily, except the territory of Rome’s faithful alley, Hiero of Syracuse, thus became (241 B. C.) the first Roman province.

CONQUEST OF SARDINIA, CORSICA, AND CISALPINE GAUL

The Romans, with gross ill-faith and injustice, took advantage of a revolt against Carthage by her mercenary troops to deprive her of Sardinia and Corsica (238 B. C.), and Sardinia was made into a province. Their next exploit was the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, which was completed 222 B. C., and the Roman hold upon the new territory was confirmed by the establishment of military colonies at Placentia and Cremona.

THE CARTHAGINIANS UNDER HAMILCAR IN SPAIN

Carthage had resolved upon revenge for past defeats and injuries from Rome, and intrusted her cause to the great Hamilcar Barca. He sought to create for his country a new empire in Spain, which might be used as a base of operations against the foe for whom he had a deadly hate. From 237 to 229 B. C. (when he fell in battle) he was engaged in reducing a large part of Spain to submission.

In 221 B. C. his son, the illustrious Hannibal, took the Spanish command, and he soon brought on a new conflict with Rome by his capture of her ally, the city of Saguntum, on the northeast coast of Spain.

HANNIBAL AND THE SECOND PUNIC WAR, 218-202 B. C.

The hero of the Second Punic War is Hannibal, one of the purest and noblest characters in history. In 218 B. C. the Carthaginian general crossed the Alps, after a five months’ march from Spain, and descended with a storm of war upon the Romans. With a force of twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse he encountered the consular armies, and defeated them at the rivers Ticinus and Trebia (218 B. C.), in Cisalpine Gaul, the Trasimene Lake in Etruria (217 B. C.), and most decisively, and with immense slaughter, at Cannæ, in Apulia, in 216 B. C. For fifteen years (218 to 202 B. C.) Hannibal maintained his ground in Italy, defeating the Romans again and again, opposed by the cautious Fabius Maximus and the daring Marcellus (the conqueror of Syracuse), but unable to capture Rome, or to subdue Roman steadfastness and courage.

CAUSES OF HANNIBAL’S DEFEAT

The chief causes of the ultimate failure of Hannibal, besides the doggedness of Rome’s resistance, were the faithfulness of many of Rome’s allies, especially the Latins, in Italy, the success of Roman armies, under Publius Scipio, in Spain (temporarily subdued 205 B. C.), and the want of due support by Carthage to her great leader. The crisis came in 207 B. C., when Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal, crossed the Alps into Italy with a powerful army which, joined with Hannibal’s in Southern Italy, would probably have effected the conquest of Rome, now almost exhausted. This was not to be. Hasdrubal was defeated, and slain by the Romans at the decisive battle of the Metaurus (a river in Umbria), one of the great critical contests of history. The junction of the forces thus prevented, Rome was saved, and, in order to be rid of Hannibal, the war was carried now into the enemy’s country.

DEFEAT OF HANNIBAL BY SCIPIO AFRICANUS AT ZAMA

Publius Scipio, so successful in Spain, crossed from Sicily to Africa in 204 B. C., and did so well for Rome that Hannibal was recalled. The Second Punic War ended with the defeat of Hannibal by Scipio at Zama (five days’ journey from Carthage), in 202 B. C. The conqueror gained the surname of Africanus. Hannibal lost his army, but not his fame. Rome was certain now to rule the world. The terms of peace with Carthage made her for the time a mere dependency of Rome. All her foreign possessions were given up; her fleet was reduced to ten ships; she was to make no war without Rome’s permission; and an enormous war indemnity was exacted.

SUBJUGATION OF MACEDON BY ROME

In 213 B. C. Rome attacked Philip V., king of Macedon, because he had made a treaty with Carthage, and, after making an alliance with the Ætolians, the Romans gained some successes over Philip in the First Macedonian War, ending in 205. The Second Macedonian War (200-197 B. C.) put an end to Macedon’s supremacy in Greece, by the victory of the ex-consul Flamininus at Cynoscephalæ, in Thessaly, 197 B. C.

ROMAN ARMS ARE CARRIED INTO ASIA

Antiochus the Great, of Syria, who had irritated Rome by meddling in the affairs of Greece, which he invaded in 192 B. C., was beaten by the Roman armies in Greece and Asia Minor, and in 188 B. C. made peace on terms that left Roman influence supreme in Asia Minor as far as Syria.

THE FINAL FATE OF HANNIBAL

The great Carthaginian, even after Zama, had not despaired of himself or of his country. He set vigorously to work at internal reforms in Carthage with a view to renewing the contest with Rome; but, being thwarted by jealous and unpatriotic rivals, who also intrigued for his surrender to the Romans, he fled to the court of Antiochus the Great, of Syria, in 194 B. C. In rejecting her greatest man, Carthage had lost her last chance of regaining any real power. Hannibal was driven from his shelter with Antiochus by the Roman demand for his surrender, and took refuge with Prusias, king of Bithynia, for some years; but Roman dread of his abilities pursued him, and hopeless of escape, he poisoned himself about 183 B. C., leaving Rome free at last to pursue her victorious career.

ROMAN CONQUEST OF THE GREEK STATES

A Third Macedonian War, begun in 171 B. C., was waged by the Romans against King Perseus, son of Philip V., and ended with a great Roman victory at Pydna, in 168 B. C., and the extinction of Macedon as a kingdom. After a revolt, called the Fourth Macedonian War, and a war against the forces of the Achæan League, Corinth was taken by Mummius, and Macedonia and Greece became Roman provinces (147 and 146 B. C.)

THIRD PUNIC WAR AND DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE

There was a powerful party in Rome (headed by the stern censor Porcius Cato) who relentlessly insisted on the destruction of Carthage. Her warlike neighbor, Masinissa, king of Numidia, was encouraged by the Romans in harassing attacks, and in 149 B. C. Rome found a pretext for war. Her forces could not be resisted, and Carthage offered a complete submission, seeking the preservation of her commerce and her capital by a surrender of arms, war-ships, and her internal independence.

When Rome insisted on the destruction of the city of Carthage itself, and the removal of the inhabitants to inland abodes, the Carthaginians took counsel of despair, and resolved to stand a siege within their strong fortifications. Scipio Africanus Minor conducted the three years’ siege of the great commercial city and her citadel, and Roman determination, as usual, carried its point. After fearful house-to-house fighting the remnant of seven hundred thousand people surrendered; the place was set on fire, and burned for seventeen days; the ruins were leveled with the ground, and Carthage the proud city, alike with Carthage the commercial state, ceased to exist, in 146 B. C., the year of the final conquest of Greece. Part of the territory was given to Masinissa of Numidia, Rome’s ally; part became the Roman province of Africa.

GRANDEUR OF ROME AFTER HER FOREIGN CONQUESTS

At the beginning of the period of conquest (266-133 B. C.), the Roman dominion was confined to the peninsula of Italy; at its close it extended over the whole of southern Europe from the shores of the Atlantic to the straits of Constantinople, over the chief Mediterranean islands, and over a portion of North Africa, while farther east, in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, its influence was paramount. At the beginning Rome was merely one of the “Great Powers” of the world as it then was,--that is, she ranked with Carthage, Macedonia, and the kingdom of the Seleucidæ; at its close she was clearly the sole Great Power left.

THE ORIGIN OF PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

The addition of the conquered countries resulted in a new feature of Roman rule called Provincial government. Retaining their native habits, religion, laws, etc., the inhabitants of every province were governed by a military president, sent from Rome, with a staff of officials. The provincials were required to pay taxes in money and kind; and these taxes were farmed out by the censors to Roman citizens, who, under the name of Publicans, settled in the various districts of the provinces. Thus, like a network proceeding from a center, the political system of the Romans pervaded the mass of millions of human beings inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean; and a vast population of various races and languages were all bound together by the cohesive power of Roman rule.

ROME AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS GRANDEUR

The luster of the Roman power and glory of the Roman name were now at their height. The eyes of all the world were now on Italy, the young republic of the West. Into Rome all talents, all riches, flowed. What a grand thing in those days to be a Roman citizen; so that, wherever one walked,--in Spain, in Africa, even in once proud Athens, he was followed, feasted, flattered! What a career was opened to those who wished for wealth or aspired to fame! But in the very sunburst of Rome’s glory, the germs of decay were ripening.

On the Romans themselves the effect of their foreign conquests were both good and bad; but perhaps the evil outweighed the good.

ERA OF GREAT PUBLIC WORKS

The wealth poured into Rome by the conquest of Carthage, of Greece, and the East, and the considerable revenue derived from the permanent taxation of the provinces, enabled the Romans to carry out a great system of public works. Throughout Italy splendid military roads which remain to this day were built, the provinces were traversed by imperial highways, and fine stone bridges were thrown across the Tiber. In Rome splendid public buildings were erected, the city was sewered, the streets were paved (174 B. C.), two new aqueducts (the Marcian, built in 144 B. C., at a cost of ten million dollars) were constructed; and it may be noted that the Consul P. Scipio Nasica, in 159 B. C., set up in Rome a public clepsydra, or water clock, the citizens having for six centuries gone on without any accurate means of knowing the time by night as well as day.

INFLUENCE OF GREEK CULTURE ON ROME

The effect on Rome of the conquest of Greece and the Hellenized East was very marked. Greek rhetoricians, scholars, tragedians, musicians and philosophers in large numbers took up their abode in Rome. The city swarmed with Greek schoolmasters. Greek tutors and philosophers, who, even if they were not slaves, were as a rule accounted as servants, were now permanent inmates in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is a statement that the sum of two hundred thousand sesterces (ten thousand dollars) was paid for a Greek literary slave of the first class.

RISE OF NATIVE ROMAN LITERATURE

The stimulus of Greek literary culture led to native production, and in the second century, B. C., we have the beginning of that Latin literature which we still read. Though the great period of Roman letters did not come till a century after this time (age of Augustus), yet there arose a number of writers of no ordinary power. Among these should be mentioned Ennius, the father of Roman poetry; Plautus, his contemporary, a man of rich poetic genius; the elder Cato, the first prose writer of note; and Terence, the most famous of the comic poets.

While the Romans were in some respects benefited by contact with the superior though decaying culture of Greece, they also learned a great deal that was debasing. They became effeminate, luxurious, and corrupt in morals; marriage was not respected; the old Roman faith waned, and it was said that two augurs could not meet in the street without laughing in each other’s face.

GROWTH OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CORRUPTION

The political system of Rome now began to lead to a dreadful state of public corruption. The Roman government was devised for the rule of a city: all power was in the hands of the civic voters, and when there came to be great prizes, in the way of great offices at home and abroad, the voters began to find that their votes were worth something, and unblushing bribery and corruption became common.

The demands of the large planters and merchants led to a great extension of the slave-trade. All lands and all nations were laid under contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor. It is probable that at the period at which we have now arrived (middle of the second century B. C.) there were twelve million slaves against five million free inhabitants in the Italian peninsula,--a most lamentable state of things!

In addition to the slaves, Italy became filled up with a motley parasitic population from Asia and Africa and all the conquered lands,--and the result of this intermixture soon appeared in a marked degeneracy in the Roman race itself.

THE NEW ROMAN CONTRASTED WITH THE OLD

The decay of old Roman virtue became at the same time apparent in the great increase of luxury. This displayed itself in houses, villas, pleasure gardens, fish ponds, dress, food and drink. Extravagant prices--as much as one hundred thousand sesterces (five thousand dollars)--were paid for an exquisite cook. Costly foreign delicacies and wines were affected, and the Romans in their banquets vied with one another in displaying their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of musicians, their dancing girls, their purple hangings, their carpets glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, and their rich silver plate.

In the midst of the system there were not wanting some noble patterns of the old Roman type, among whom should be named Cato, who kept up a constant protest all his life against the growing luxury of his countrymen, and died declaring that they were a degenerate race. Such men were, however, rare exceptions; and we shall hereafter see that the evil system already operative in the second century went on increasing, till finally, a century afterwards, it resulted in the total subversion of the republic.

The picture just given of the state of Roman society in the last half of the second century B. C. prepares us for the period of civil strife on which we now enter.

IV. EPOCH OF THE CIVIL WARS, 146-31 B. C.--The fourth period extends from the capture of Carthage and Corinth to the establishment of the Imperial Government by the battle of Actium, B. C. 31. During this whole time the Roman history is a continued tale of domestic disturbances. From the fall of Carthage to the battle of Actium, it presents but a melancholy picture, a blood-stained record of sedition, conspiracy, and civil war.

A number of causes had resulted in the growth of an aristocracy founded purely on wealth; the old division of society into patricians and plebeians had ceased, and there arose a still worse division into classes,--the rich and the poor.

THE GRACCHI ESPOUSE THE CAUSE OF THE POOR

The cause of the poor against the rich was taken up by a noble young tribune of the people named Tiberius Gracchus. Tiberius and his afterwards distinguished younger brother Caius (the two being known in history as the Gracchi) were sons of a noble Roman matron, Cornelia, daughter of the great Scipio Africanus.

Tiberius Gracchus proposed a land-law (agrarian law), which would limit the amount of public land that could be held by any one individual and provided for the distribution of the rest in small homesteads. The aristocracy immediately raised a storm, and induced another tribune to veto the measure. Now, according to the Roman code, no proposal could become law unless all the tribunes were unanimous. Gracchus then secured a popular vote expelling his colleague from the tribuneship, and the land-law was passed by the people, 133 B. C. In the meantime, however, Gracchus’s year of office expired, and he came up for re-election. The nobles resolved to prevent this by violence.

MURDER OF THE TRIBUNE, TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

Gracchus, learning this, bade his friends arm themselves with staves; and when the people began to inquire the cause of this, he put his hand to his head, intimating that his life was in danger. Some of his enemies ran to the senate and reported that Tiberius openly demanded a crown. A body of the aristocrats with their clients and dependents then rushed among the unarmed crowd, and murdered Gracchus with three hundred of his adherents,--133 B. C.

Tiberius Gracchus was dead, but his work remained; that is to say, the measure which he had proposed was law, and the commissioners intrusted with the task of allotting the lands prosecuted their labors for two or three years. The nobles, however, obstructed the work as much as possible, so that between them and the champions of the people there was a continuous struggle.

THE STRUGGLES AND DEATH OF THE YOUNGER GRACCHUS

This struggle became still more fierce when Caius Gracchus, ten years after the death of his brother, claimed and obtained the tribuneship, and then took up that brother’s work. The agitation for the agrarian law was renewed, an enactment was made for a monthly distribution of corn to the city poor, and various other reforms were proposed by him. After holding the tribuneship for two years, however, he lost the office through the intrigues of his opponents. The nobles were determined to crush Gracchus; accordingly, at one of the public assemblies they attacked the partisans of the popular leader, and there ensued a bloody combat (121 B. C.) in which three thousand of his adherents were slain. Gracchus himself fled into a wood across the Tiber; but, being pursued, he chose to die by the hands of a faithful slave rather than fall into the power of his enemies.

RISE OF MARIUS AND SULLA

The ill-will between the nobles and the people continued just as bitter after the death of Gracchus; and matters finally shaped themselves in such a way that the nobles, or senatorial party, came to be represented by a leader named Sulla, and the democracy, or Commons, by another, called Marius. These men came to prominence in the course of two or three wars in which Rome was engaged for twenty-five or thirty years after the time of which we have been speaking; and finally they acquired such power as to bring on a civil strife that deluged Italy with blood.

The wars just referred to were: the Jugurthine war (111-106 B. C.), the war against the Cimbri (113-101 B. C.), and the Social war (90-89 B. C.), with the details of which we need not concern ourselves; but the fourth contest was of more moment, and needs notice here. This was the Mithridatic war.

BOLD DESIGN OF MITHRIDATES AGAINST ROME

Mithridates, king of Pontus, a bold and able soldier, formed the design of uniting the Asiatic states and Greece in a vast confederacy against the Roman dominion. He began by causing about eighty thousand Romans who dwelt in the cities of Asia Minor to be massacred in one day (88 B. C.). He then invaded Greece.

The command in this important war was eagerly sought by both Marius and Sulla. Sulla prevailed; he was elected consul and put in command. Marius, being chagrined at this, succeeded in having the popular party set aside Sulla. But the aristocratic general marched to Rome and compelled Marius to flee into Africa. Sulla then set out for Greece, all of which submitted to him, the army of Mithridates being defeated (86-84 B. C.)

HORRIBLE MASSACRES ATTEND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN MARIUS AND SULLA

During the absence of Sulla, Marius returned to Italy. Entering Rome in 86 B. C., he filled the entire city with slaughter, and in particular he caused the murder of the leading senators that had supported his rival. Marius then caused himself to be proclaimed consul without going through an election; but a fortnight later he died.

Notwithstanding the death of Marius, the Marian party still continued in power. Sulla, hearing of their successes, hastily concluded a peace with Mithridates, and hurried to Italy (83 B. C.). After a severe struggle, Sulla utterly overthrew the Marians. The blood of massacre then flowed a second time,--in a yet greater stream. Lists of proscribed persons, embracing all who belonged to the people’s party, were published every day, and the porch of Sulla’s house was full of heads.

Having put down all his enemies, Sulla caused himself to be proclaimed dictator for an unlimited time (81 B. C.). He then proceeded to re-organize the government wholly in the interest of the aristocratic party; but to the great surprise of every one he three years afterward resigned his power and retired to private life. Sulla died in 78 B. C.; he was honored with a magnificent funeral, and a monument with the following epitaph written by himself:

“I am Sulla the Fortunate, who in the course of my life have surpassed both friends and enemies; the former by the good, the latter by the evil, I have done them.”

RISE OF POMPEY THE GREAT

After the death of Sulla, the most prominent figure among all the men of the aristocratic party was Cneius Pompey, who had distinguished himself as a lieutenant of Sulla, and afterwards won renown by his management of several important matters in which Rome was engaged--especially in the suppression of a formidable revolution in Spain under a very able leader named Sertorius (77-72 B. C.), and in stamping out a fire of revolt kindled by Spartacus, the leader of a band of gladiators, who, joined by a large force of discontented spirits, kept Italy in alarm for two or three years (73-71 B. C.). These exploits made Pompey a popular favorite, and in the year 70 B. C. he was rewarded by being made consul along with a rich senator named Crassus.

HIS MILITARY EXPLOITS IN THE EAST

At the expiration of his year of office he retired to private life, but was soon called upon to suppress a formidable combination of pirates who infested the Mediterranean Sea and had their headquarters in Cilicia (in Asia Minor). This task he accomplished in three months. These triumphs, aided by his political influence, enabled Pompey to procure the command in the war against Mithridates, who had renewed his scheme of conquering the Eastern Roman provinces. He was given powers such as never had been delegated to any Roman general. This war lasted for two years (66-64 B. C.), and was marked by a series of brilliant triumphs for Pompey. He utterly crushed Mithridates (who died by self-administered poison), as well as his son-in-law Tigranes, subdued Phœnicia, made Syria a Roman province, and took Jerusalem. Thus with the glory of having subjugated and settled the East he returned to Rome (62 B. C.), where a magnificent triumph awaited him.

FAMOUS STRUGGLES OF THE FOUR FACTIONS

Meanwhile there seem to have grown up, after the death of Sulla, four factions in Rome: the “oligarchical faction,” consisting of the small number of families the chiefs of which directed the senate, and in fact governed the republic; the “aristocratic faction,” comprising the mass of the senators anxious to obtain the power usurped by a few of their colleagues; the “Marian party,” including all those whose families had been prosecuted by Sulla, and who now began to rally, and aspire to power; the “military faction,” embracing a crowd of old officers of Sulla, who, having squandered the fortunes they had gained under him, were eager for some revolution that might give them the opportunity to improve their condition.

THE GREAT LEADERS OF THE FACTIONS--POMPEY, CICERO, CRASSUS, CAESAR AND CATILINE

At the head of the oligarchical faction was Pompey; but during his absence in Asia its representative was Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 106 B. C.), who had established his reputation as the first orator in Rome. He had risen through various offices to the prætorship, and at the time Pompey left for the East aspired to be consul. He did not himself belong to a noble family, but still he made himself the champion of the oligarchy. Though vain and boastful, he was a virtuous and patriotic man.

The leader of the aristocratic faction was Crassus, formerly the colleague of Pompey in the consulship, now his personal rival. He was a man of no great ability, but his position and his immense wealth made him influential. (After prodigious expenditures, he died worth ten million dollars.)

The leader of the third, or Marian party, was a man six years younger than Pompey or Cicero, who, distinguished in youth for his accomplishments and his extravagance, rose in the year 65 B. C. to the office of edile. This was Caius Julius Cæsar,--a man of pre-eminent ability, one of the greatest that ever lived. He was the nephew of Marius, and now stood forward as the leader of the Marian party. He was of an old patrician family, and took up the cause of the people to serve his own ends.

CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE

The leader of the military faction was Catiline, who had been one of the ablest and most ferocious of Sulla’s officers. He had a large following of debauched young patricians and ruined military men, who thought they would better their fortunes by making Catiline consul. Cicero was his rival, and, receiving the support of the senators, was elected. Enraged at his defeat, Catiline formed a conspiracy of which the murder of Cicero and the burning of Rome were parts. A woman betrayed the plot to Cicero, who denounced Catiline with such fiery eloquence that he had to flee from Rome. With a band of confederates he attempted to reach Gaul; but he was overtaken in Etruria and slain, 62 B. C.

THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE: CAESAR, POMPEY AND CRASSUS

Cæsar and Pompey, now finding that they agreed in many of their views, resolved to unite their forces. To cement their union more closely, Cæsar gave his only daughter, Julia, in marriage to Pompey. For various reasons it was found desirable to admit Crassus to their political partnership, and thus was formed (60 B. C.) that famous coalition known in Roman history as the “First Triumvirate.” The object of Cæsar and Pompey was to thwart the senatorial party in every way, and wield all the power themselves.

The formation of the triumvirate was followed by the election of Cæsar to the consulship (59 B. C.); and when his year of office expired he obtained for himself the government of Gaul for five years, and then for another five. This was probably the great object of Cæsar’s desires. No doubt he was already brooding over the design of making himself master of Rome; and for this purpose he would need an army.

During the years 58-50 B. C. Cæsar made eight campaigns in Gaul, forming the remarkable series of operations which he afterwards described with such pointed style in his Commentaries.

The result of his eight years’ campaigning was that, in the spring of 50 B. C., Cæsar was able to take up his residence in Cisalpine Gaul, leaving the three hundred tribes beyond the Alps, which he had conquered by such bloody means, not only pacified, but even attached to himself personally. His army, which included many Gauls and Germans, was so devoted to him that it would have marched to the end of the world in his service.

DOWNFALL OF CRASSUS AND RIVALRY OF CAESAR AND POMPEY

During Cæsar’s campaigns in Gaul (where his government was prolonged for a second five-year term), Crassus disappeared from the triumvirate. After holding the consulship with Pompey, in 55 B. C., he went as proconsul to the province of Syria, in 54 B. C. His greed of wealth, and desire for the military fame which he envied in Cæsar and Pompey, brought him to ruin, by inducing him to attack the kingdom of Parthia,[5] where he was soon afterward murdered. So that the triumvirate became a duumvirate, or league of two men,--Cæsar and Pompey.

[5] Parthia had the rare distinction of being a country the prowess of whose warriors baffled the efforts of Rome for her subjection. The Parthian kingdom, southeast of the Caspian Sea, came into existence about 250 B. C., by revolt from the Seleucids, the monarchs of Syria, and became a powerful realm after the death of Alexander the Great. It included Parthia proper, Hyrcania, and afterwards (130 B. C.) Bactria, so that at last its dominions stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus, and from the river Oxus to the Indian Ocean. The Parthians adopted the Greek religion, manners, and customs, which had been introduced into that part of Asia by Alexander’s conquests.

The renowned cavalry of Parthia seem to have been all-powerful only on their own soil, for their invasions of the Roman province of Syria in 39 and 38 B.C. were utterly defeated, while the invasion of Parthia by the great Roman general and triumvir, Mark Antony, in 36, was repulsed with loss of a great part of his army. In 20 B. C. the Parthian king Phraates restored, chiefly as a friendly concession, the standards and prisoners taken from Crassus and Antonius, and this is the event commemorated by the Roman poets of the day as equivalent to a submission by Parthia. Under the Roman emperors the Parthians sometimes courted and were sometimes at war with Rome, and were partially conquered for a time under Trajan. The Parthian kings encouraged Christianity. In A. D. 226 a revolt of the Persians put an end to the Parthian kingdom, revived the religion of Zoroaster, stopped the eastward progress of Christianity in Asia, and began modern history in Persia.

Now between these two men there had for some time been a growing coldness. It was said that Cæsar was a man who could brook no equal, and Pompey a man who could suffer no superior. A feeling of rivalry having once arisen, naturally grew till Cæsar and Pompey became the bitterest enemies. Pompey went over to the aristocratic party to which he had originally belonged, and having been made sole consul for the year 52 B. C., he began to exert his great influence against Cæsar. In this he was supported by the nobles, who dreaded Cæsar’s immense power.

FINAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN CAESAR AND POMPEY

As the period of Cæsar’s command would expire in the year 49 B. C., he had determined to obtain the consulship for the year 48 B. C., since otherwise he would become a private citizen. Accordingly he demanded, though absent, to be permitted to put himself in the lists for the consulate. But it was proposed, through the influence of Pompey, that Cæsar should lay down his command by the thirteenth of November, 50 B. C. This was an unreasonable demand; for his term of government over Gaul had another year to run, and if he had gone to Rome as a private citizen to sue for the consulship, there can be no doubt that his life would have been sacrificed. Cæsar, still anxious to keep the peace, offered, at the beginning of the year 49 B. C., to lay down his command if Pompey would do the same; but this the senate refused to accede to, and a motion was passed that Cæsar should disband his army by a certain day, and that if he did not do so, he should be regarded as an enemy of the state.

THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON

Cæsar promptly took his resolve: he would appeal to the arbitrament of arms. He had the enthusiastic devotion of his soldiers, the great mass of whom, being provincials or foreigners, cared very little for the country whose name they bore. Accordingly, in January, 49 B. C., he advanced from his headquarters at Ravenna to the little stream, the Rubicon, which separated his own province and command from Italy. The crossing of this river was in reality a declaration of war against the republic; and it is related that, upon arriving at the Rubicon, Cæsar long hesitated whether he should take this irrevocable step. After pondering many hours he at length exclaimed, “The die is cast!” and plunged into the river.

Pompey concluded not to attempt to defend Italy, but to retire upon the East, where he would gather a great army and then return to overwhelm the “usurper.” Accordingly he retreated to Greece.

CAESAR MASTER OF ITALY AND DICTATOR OF ROME

In sixty days Cæsar made himself master of all Italy. Then marching to Rome he had himself appointed dictator and consul for the year 48 B. C. He showed masterly statesmanship, and soon brought the general current of opinion completely over to his side.

BATTLE OF PHARSALIA AND DEATH OF POMPEY

Meantime, Pompey had gathered a powerful army in Thessaly, and thither Cæsar with his legions proceeded against him. The decisive battle between the two mighty rivals was fought at Pharsalia, in 48 B. C. It resulted in the utter defeat of Pompey; and as it left Cæsar the foremost man in the Roman world, it must be regarded as one of the great decisive battles of history.

Pompey, after his defeat, sought refuge in Egypt; but he was assassinated by the orders of Ptolemy, when seeking to land on the coast of that country. Cæsar, who followed in pursuit, did not hear of his death until his arrival in Alexandria, where messengers from Ptolemy brought him Pompey’s head. Cæsar, who was both a generous man and a compassionate foe, turned with horror from the spectacle, and with tears in his eyes gave orders that the head should be consumed with the costliest spices.

CAESAR, CLEOPATRA AND THE CONQUEST OF THE EAST

At Alexandria Cæsar became enamored of Cleopatra, the young, beautiful, and fascinating queen of Egypt. He even mixed himself up with a quarrel that was going on between her and her younger brother Ptolemy, to whom, according to the custom of the country, she was married, and with whom she shared the throne. This intermeddling led Cæsar, who had but a small force with him, into conflict with the troops of the king. A fierce battle was fought in the city. Cæsar succeeded in firing the Egyptian fleet; but unfortunately the flames extended to the celebrated Library of the city of Alexandria, and the greater part of the magnificent collection of manuscripts was burnt. Cæsar was finally successful: Ptolemy was killed, and Cleopatra was made queen of Egypt. From Alexandria Cæsar marched into Pontus to attack Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, whom he subdued so quickly that he described the campaign in the most laconic dispatch ever penned: Veni, vidi, vici,--“I came, I saw, I conquered.”

CAESAR’S FINAL VICTORY AND TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO ROME

Pompey’s forces that escaped from Pharsalia had established themselves in the Roman province of Africa. They were commanded by Scipio and Cato. Cæsar having settled matters in the East, now proceeded against this force, which he utterly destroyed at Thapsus, early in the year 46 B. C. Scipio and Cato killed themselves. One more rally the Pompeians made in Spain, but they were defeated by Cæsar in the decisive battle of Munda (March, 45 B. C).

Cæsar returned to Rome after the battle of Thapsus, the master of the Roman dominion. The republic went out when Cato fell upon his sword at Utica; the monarchy came in with the triumphal entry of Cæsar into Rome in the summer of 46 B. C. It is true Cæsar was not king (rex) in name, but he was so in substance. His position as chief of the state was this: he was invested with the dictatorship for ten years,--an arrangement changed soon afterwards to perpetual dictator,--and was hailed with the title of Imperator for life. The latter title, Imperator (meaning commander), was one which belonged under the republic to the victorious general; but it was a temporary title, always laid aside with the surrender of military command. Cæsar was allowed to use it in a special way and permanently, and in his case it had much the meaning of the term Emperor,--a word which is simply Imperator cut short.

FEELINGS OF THE ROMANS TOWARD CAESAR

There can be no doubt that the Romans were well satisfied to be under the rule of Cæsar. The republic was a mere name, for liberty had expired when the Gracchi were murdered, and subsequent dissensions were merely contests for power between different factions. Hence the Roman people, weary of revolution, were quite content to find peace under the just though absolute rule of one master.

It is important to recognize this as the real state of public feeling, because we shall now have to see that Cæsar fell a victim to assassination, and it might be thought that his overthrow was the people’s revolt from monarchical rule. But it was the act of a small knot of conspirators who, with the cry of “Liberty and the Republic” in their mouths, did away with the Imperator to serve their own ends.

THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST CAESAR AND HIS ASSASSINATION

The chiefs of the conspiracy were Caius Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus. Both had received great favors from Cæsar; but they thought they had not been honored enough, and they were intensely jealous of the dictator’s greatness. These were joined by other malcontents, and the plotters swelled their ranks by representing that Cæsar designed to assume the diadem and the title of king; so that the conspiracy finally included about sixty senators.

It is not certainly known whether or not Cæsar thought of taking the name of king. It is known, however, that the consul, Mark Antony, entered in the public acts, “that by the command of the people, he, as consul, had offered the name of king to Cæsar, perpetual dictator; and that Cæsar would not accept of it.”

The plot ripened into a determination to assassinate Cæsar, and the conspirators fixed on the Ides (i. e. 15th) of March as the time of putting the design into execution. Rumors of the plot got abroad, and Cæsar was strongly urged not to attend the senate. But he disregarded the warnings which were given him. As soon as Cæsar had taken his place, he was surrounded by the senatorial conspirators, one of whom, pretending to urge some request, seized his toga with both hands and pulled it violently over his arms. Then Casca, who was behind, drew a weapon and grazed his shoulder with an ill-directed stroke. Cæsar disengaged one hand and snatched at the hilt, exclaiming, “Cursed Casca, what means this?” “Help!” cried Casca, and at the same moment the conspirators aimed each his dagger at the victim. Cæsar for an instant defended himself; but when he perceived the steel flashing in the hand of Brutus (Marcus Junius), he exclaimed “What! thou too, Brutus!” (Et tu Brute!) and drawing his robe over his face he made no further resistance. The assassins stabbed him through and through; and, pierced with twenty-three wounds, Cæsar fell dead at the foot of the statue of his great rival, Pompey.

Julius Cæsar was in his fifty-sixth year, when, on the fifteenth of March, B. C. 44, he was stricken down.

EFFECT OF CAESAR’S DEATH AND THE ORATION OF ANTONY

It is said that “revolutions never go backwards.” Brutus and his fellow-conspirators struck down Cæsar in the name of liberty; but the blow that leveled the master of Rome did not bring back the republic,--it only insured the appearance of new claimants for supreme power, and consequently new civil wars.

On the occasion of Cæsar’s funeral the consul, Mark Antony, delivered an oration over the dictator’s body, and to such a height did the feeling of the Romans against the plotters rise, that Brutus and Cassius were obliged to escape forthwith from the city to avoid destruction.

The condition of affairs left Mark Antony in some respect the representative of Cæsarean principles; but a more direct claimant to the succession appeared in Cæsar’s great-nephew, Caius Octavius, then a youth nineteen years old. The dictator had adopted Octavius as his son; so his name became Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus. Octavius had all the old soldiers on his side, and raised the standard of Cæsar’s vengeance.

TRIUMVIRATE OF ANTONY, OCTAVIUS AND LEPIDUS

At first Antony and Octavius were at strife; but finally they became reconciled, and associating with them Lepidus, the “master of the horse,” the three formed the Second Triumvirate (43 B. C.), and concerted a plan to divide among themselves the supreme authority. In order to do this it was necessary utterly to crush both their personal enemies and the forces of the republic.

To accomplish the first object, they began a system of proscription more ruthless and bloody than that of Marius and Sulla. It is recorded that three hundred senators, two thousand knights, and many thousands of citizens were sacrificed. The most illustrious of the victims was the famous orator Cicero, whose severe invectives against Antony had procured him the relentless hatred of the triumvir. The aged patriot, while escaping from Rome in a litter, was assassinated.

BATTLE OF PHILIPPI AND DIVISION OF THE ROMAN WORLD

The second object was the destruction of the republican forces. Now Brutus and Cassius, finding their position in Italy to be desperate, had retired to the East, where in Thrace they gathered an army of about one hundred thousand men. Antony and Octavius pursued them with a still larger force, and the two armies met at Philippi. The republican army was totally defeated (November, 42 B. C.); both Brutus and Cassius killed themselves.

The victors now divided the Roman world among themselves,--Antony taking the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus the province of Africa. But the Roman world was scarcely theirs before they began to quarrel over it. The feeble Lepidus never possessed much influence, and was soon robbed of his share. After this it was quite certain that a contest between Antony and Octavius could not long be delayed, and each began to intrigue against the other.

ANTONY’S TRAGIC ASSOCIATION WITH CLEOPATRA

Antony made the headquarters of his half of the Roman dominion at Alexandria. Here he came under the fascinations of Cleopatra, and he lost all regard to his character or his interests in her company. He even went so far as to divorce his wife Octavia, the sister of Octavius, and, having married the voluptuous Egyptian queen, he bestowed Roman provinces on her.

This conduct was treasonable, and furnished Octavius with a decent pretext for declaring war. The young Cæsar had been gaining great popularity in Italy; he had consolidated his power and had his legions in fine training. The fleets and armies of the rivals assembled at the opposite sides of the Gulf of Ambracia. After considerable delay, Antony, instigated by Cleopatra, who was present with her Egyptian fleet, determined to decide the contest by a naval battle. The contest took place off the promontory of Actium (on the west coast of Greece), while the hostile armies, drawn up on the shore, were simple spectators. In the midst of the conflict Cleopatra tacked about, and with the Egyptian squadron of sixty sail drew out of the fight. Antony, regardless of his honor, followed after her, and the pair fled to Alexandria. Both the fleet and the force of Antony surrendered to Octavius, 31 B. C.

Some months afterwards Octavius advanced to besiege Alexandria. Antony attempted to defend it; but he was abandoned by his troops. Cleopatra retired to a monument she had erected, and caused a report to be spread of her death. Upon this news Antony attempted to commit suicide, and inflicted on himself a mortal wound: hearing, however, in the midst of his agonies, that Cleopatra still lived, he caused himself to be carried to her monument, and expired in her presence (30 B. C.).

DEATH OF CLEOPATRA BY SUICIDE AND FALL OF EGYPT

The end of Cleopatra was even more tragic. The Egyptian queen seems at first to have thought that she would be able to bewitch the young Cæsar; but having in vain essayed her arts on the cold, calculating Octavius, she, sooner than be led in chains to adorn the triumph of the victor, and glut the eyes of the populace of Rome with the sight of the daughter and last of the Ptolemies, preceding the chariot of the adopted son of him who had done homage to her charms, gave herself voluntary death by the bite of an asp, or the scratch of a poisoned needle. Egypt now became a Roman province in 30 B. C., and Rome’s dominion in the Mediterranean basin became formally, as it had long been virtually, complete.

The Roman Empire, replacing the Roman Republic, founded by Julius Cæsar, after the battle of Pharsalia, was consolidated by Octavianus in the following year.

V. PERIOD OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO CONSTANTINE, 31 B.C.-306 A.D.--The fifth period begins with the establishment of the Imperial Government under Augustus Cæsar to the reign of Constantine, A.D. 306. As Christianity was introduced into the world in this period, and was opposed until the end of it by the Roman government, it is often designated as the period of Pagan Emperors.

The reign of Augustus, the name taken by the first Emperor Octavius, has become proverbial for an age flourishing in peace, literature, and the arts. It is distinguished, also, for the birth of Jesus Christ; as the next reign, that of Tiberius, is, for his crucifixion and death.--The four reigns succeeding, viz.: those of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, are chiefly memorable for the tyranny of the Emperors, and the profligacy of their families and favorites.

On the death of Nero, A.D. 69, follows a year of dissension and bloodshed, in which Galba, Otho, and Vitellius successively gained the empire and lost their lives.--The Flavian family, Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian, next in order receive the supreme power. Titus is celebrated as the final conqueror of the Jews, whose obstinacy provoked him to destroy the city of Jerusalem. Domitian, the last emperor of the family, provokes his own assassination, A.D. 96.

Passing the reigns of the feeble Nerva, the martial Trajan, and the peaceful Hadrian, we arrive at a brilliant age in the imperial history, the age of Antonines, extending from A.D. 138 to 180, a space of about forty years. Literature and the arts of peace revived under their benign influence.

After the death of Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 180, there follows a whole century of disorder, profligacy, conspiracy and assassination. The army assumes the absolute disposal of the imperial crown, which is even sold at public auction to the highest bidder. Within the last fifty years of the time, nearly fifty emperors are successively proclaimed, and deposed or murdered.--In the year 284, Diocletian began to reign, and attempted a new system of administration.

Ten special persecutions of Christians are recorded and described, the first under Nero, A.D. 64, and the last under Diocletian, commencing A.D. 303, and continuing ten years, unto A.D. 313. But, notwithstanding these repeated efforts to hinder the progress of Christianity, it was spread during this period throughout the whole Roman Empire.

ROME IN THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD

When Augustus Cæsar at the age of thirty-six became master of the Roman world, there was no open establishment of a monarchical government. On the contrary, most of the old republican forms were kept up; but they were mere forms. The Senate still sat, but it did little more than vote what Augustus wished; the people still met in their assemblies and elected consuls and magistrates, but only such persons were elected as had been proposed or recommended by the Emperor. Augustus, however, assumed nothing of the outward pomp of a monarch: he was satisfied with the substance of supreme rule.

THE THREE CIVILIZATIONS WITHIN THE EMPIRE

Within the circuit of the Roman dominion there were what we may call three civilizations: the Latin, the Greek, and the Oriental. Latin civilization took in the countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Adriatic; Greek civilization, from the Adriatic to Mount Taurus; Oriental civilization, the lands beyond to the Euphrates.

THE LATIN.--The area of Latin civilization embraced the peninsula of Italy (its native seat) and all western Europe, where the Romans appeared not only as a conquering but also as a civilizing people. Thus in the three provinces of Spain (Hispania), in the four provinces of Transalpine Gaul (corresponding nearly with the modern France), as well as in the North African provinces, especially Carthage (which was restored by Cæsar as a Roman colony), the Latin language took firm root, and the manners and customs, and indeed the whole civilization, of those lands became Roman.

THE GREEK.--Greek civilization was spread over Greece and all those parts of Europe and Asia that had been Hellenized by Grecian colonists or by the Macedonian conquerors. In manners, customs, language, and culture these lands remained Greek, while politically they were Roman.

THE ORIENTAL.--Oriental civilization was diffused over the Eastern provinces, especially Egypt and Syria. These countries had, under the rule of Alexander’s successors, become to some degree Hellenized; but this influence was on the whole superficial. The peoples of those Oriental lands had never given up their own languages or religious ideas or ways of thinking. Now these peoples, it should be said, did not become Latinized either,--they did not adopt the language and civilization of Rome.

HOW ROME WAS GOVERNED UNDER THE EMPIRE

Within the limits of the Roman Empire under Augustus there may have been in all one hundred millions of human beings. Not less than one-half were in a condition of slavery; and of the rest, only that small proportion who, under the envied name of Roman citizen (civis Romanus), inhabited Italy, enjoyed political independence, or had the smallest share in the government. The various lands and peoples were under Roman legates (half of these appointed by Augustus and the other half by the Senate), who held supreme military command. To the provinces were left, however, their independent municipal constitutions and officers. In Rome and Italy the public peace was preserved by the pretorian cohorts,--bodies of soldiers of tried valor, to whom Augustus gave double pay. Throughout the provinces the people were kept in check by the regular troops,--numbering three hundred and fifty thousand men.

THE CAPITAL CITY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Of this vast empire Rome was the metropolis, now a city of innumerable streets and buildings, and containing, it is calculated, a population of about two millions and a half. It was in this period that Rome became truly a splendid city. Augustus was able to boast that “he found the city brick and left it marble.”

ITS EXTENT AND CHIEF BUILDINGS.--In the days of its greatest prosperity the circumference of Rome enclosed by walls was about twenty miles; but there were also very extensive suburbs. The walls were pierced by thirty gates. The most remarkable objects were the Coliseum, the Capitol with its temples, the Senate-House, and the Forum.

The great circus, or Circus Maximus, a place reserved for public games, races and shows, was one of the most magnificent structures of Rome. It was capable of containing two hundred thousand spectators.

The Flavian Amphitheater, whose massive ruins are known as the Coliseum, could seat from eighty to one hundred thousand persons. In the arena were exhibited the fights of gladiators, in which the Romans took such savage delight, together with races, combats of wild beasts, etc. Theaters, public baths, etc., were erected by the emperors, who seemed anxious to compensate the people for their loss of liberty by the magnificence of their public shows and entertainments.

THE ANCIENT ROMAN FORUM.--In the valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills was the Forum, or place of public assembly, and the great market. It was surrounded with temples, halls for the administration of justice (called basilicæ), and public offices; it was also adorned with statues erected in honor of eminent warriors and statesmen, and with various trophies from conquered nations.

TEMPLE OF JANUS.--In the Forum was the celebrated Temple of Janus, built entirely of bronze and dating back to the early kingly period. From some early circumstance the custom was established of closing the gates of this temple during peace; but so incessant were the wars of the Romans, that during eight centuries the gates of the Temple of Janus were closed only three times.

CAMPUS MARTIUS.--The elections of magistrates, reviews of troops, and the census or registration of citizens, were held in the Campus Martius, which was also the favorite exercise-ground of the young nobles. It was surrounded by several splendid edifices; ornamental trees and shrubs were planted in different parts, and porticoes erected under which the citizens might continue their exercise in rainy weather. Nearby was the celebrated Pantheon, or Temple of All the Gods (erected in the reign of Augustus), the most perfect and splendid monument of ancient Rome that has survived the ravages of time.

THE ROMAN AQUEDUCTS.--The Aqueducts were among the most remarkable Roman structures. Pure streams were sought at a great distance, and conveyed in these artificial channels, supported by arches, many of which were more than a hundred feet high. Under the emperors, not fewer than twenty of these stupendous and useful structures were raised; and they brought such an abundant supply of water to the metropolis, that rivers seemed to flow through the streets and sewers.

COMPARED WITH ATHENS.--Rome was inferior to Athens in architectural beauty, but it far surpassed the Grecian city in works of public utility. To enumerate all the notable edifices would be impossible here; but the “Eternal City” in the zenith of its glory contained four hundred and twenty temples, five regular theaters, two amphitheaters, and seven circuses of vast extent. There were sixteen public baths, built of marble, and furnished with every convenience that could be desired. From the aqueducts a prodigious number of fountains was supplied, many of which were remarkable for their architectural beauty. The palaces, public halls, columns, porticoes, and obelisks were without number, and to these must be added the triumphal arches erected by the later emperors.

AS A CENTER OF LITERATURE

As the peace of the Roman world was maintained by the strong hand of power, it was at this time that many of those arts that grow best during seasons of national order and prosperity made their greatest progress. Thus many of the best-known Latin writers lived at this time.

Augustus himself was a great patron of literary men and artists, and so was his minister, Caius Cilinius Mæcenas. They honored and rewarded eminent writers; and though we must not forget that many of the distinguished men whose writings add luster to the “Augustan Age” had grown up under the republic, still Augustus deserves credit for fostering letters. Nothing will make up for the loss of political freedom; but it is something that in Rome, when liberty was lost, literature at least flourished.

Among the distinguished writers of this age or the times immediately preceding it are the poets Virgil, Horace, Lucretina and Catullus; and the historian, Sallust.

THE BIRTH OF CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIAN ERA

Under the rule of Augustus the greatest event of the world’s spiritual history occurred in Bethlehem of Judæa--the birth of Jesus Christ. This really took place in the year 4 B.C., but the erroneous calculation has, for the sake of convenience, been allowed to stand, and the chronology passes from B.C. to A.D., when Augustus had held sway, according to the wrong reckoning, for twenty-seven years.

GREAT IMPORTANCE OF THE ROMAN DEFEAT BY THE GERMANS

The great secular fact of Rome’s history under Augustus Cæsar was the destruction of the Roman general Varus and his legions in Germany by the celebrated Arminius,--the great national hero Herman,--in whose honor a colossal statue has been erected in the northwest of Germany, near the scene of his patriotic and momentous achievement. He was the chief of the Cherusci, a powerful tribe dwelling on both sides of the river Visurgis (Weser), and closely akin to the Angles and Saxons who conquered the island of Britain.

If Arminius had not done what he did against Rome, Germany might have been thoroughly subdued; the Latin language might have extinguished the Teutonic; the Teutonic tribes might have been overwhelmed; the Teutonic influence over modern Europe, and as an element of the English race, might never have been exerted, and Europe and the world would have had a widely different development from that which they have actually undergone.

LEGIONS OF VARUS VANQUISHED BY ARMINIUS

Arminius, as chief of the Cherusci, headed a confederacy of German tribes to expel from northern Germany the invaders and partial conquerors of the fatherland. The Roman governor, Quintilius Varus, and his officers and troops, had provoked the German outbreak by their licentious behavior, and the vengeance wreaked on the offenders was complete in itself, and effectual for the preservation of German freedom.

The German hero, when his plans were formed, tempted Varus and his three legions, by a revolt of the tribes near the Weser and the Ems, to march into the difficult country now called the Teutoburger Wald, a woody and hilly region near the sources of the Lippe and the Ems. When the Roman force was thoroughly entangled amidst the forests and hills, and had been further imperiled by the rashness of the incompetent tyrant Varus in the order of his march, then Arminius and the Germans fell on the hated foe; the Roman column was broken, and its cavalry fled, but was pursued and utterly destroyed.

Varus slew himself in despair. His infantry was overpowered and slain almost to the last man. All the efforts of Rome thereafter never secured her a permanent foothold on German soil. This great deliverance of Germany, so full of chagrin to Augustus and so momentous in European history, occurred in A.D. 9.

DEATH OF AUGUSTUS.--Augustus died in 14 A.D.; so that, counting from his formal accession to title, 27 B.C., he ruled over the Roman dominion for forty-one years.

The following table gives a list of the Roman Emperors, with the dates of their reigns and other facts. Many of them were quite insignificant in personality and in their influence upon history. The greater rulers call for more extended notice in their proper historical place in the Outline of Universal History, as well as in the Dictionary of Biography.

=THE EMPERORS OF ROME=

---------------------------------------------+--------+-------+------- =Name, Lineage or Basis of Accession and | =Period|=Birth=|=Death= Cause of Death= |of Rule=| | ---------------------------------------------+--------+-------+------- THE CÆSARS | | | | | | Octavianus Cæsar, “Augustus” (majesty).--A |B.C. 27-|B.C.63 |A.D.19 title conferred by the Senate; died August 19|A.D. 14 | | | | | Tiberius (Claudius Nero).--Stepson of |A.D. 14-| 42 | 37 Augustus; murdered by a tribune |37 | | | | | Caius Caligula.--Youngest son of Germanicus, | 37- 41 | 12 | 41 nephew of Tiberius; poisoned by his wife, | | | Agrippina, to make way for | | | | | | Claudius I. (Tiberius Drusus).--Grandson of | 41- 54 | 10 | 54 Tiberius | | | | | | Claudius Nero.--Son of Domitius Ahenobarbus; | 54- 68 |A.D.37 | 68 deposed; kills himself | | | | | | Servius Sulpicius Galba.--Proclaimed Emperor;| 68- 69 |B.C. 3 | 69 slain by the prætorians | | | | | | M. Salvius Otho.--Proclaimed Emperor; stabbed| 69- |A.D.32 | 69 himself | | | | | | Aulus Vitellius.--Proclaimed Emperor; deposed| 69- 69 | 15 | 69 by Vespasian, and put to death | | | | | | Titus Flavius Vespasian.--Proclaimed Emperor | 70- 79 | 9 | 79 | | | Titus (Vespasian).--Son of Vespasian | 79- 81 | 41 | 81 | | | Titus Flavius Domitian.--Brother of Titus, | 81- 96 | 51 | 96 second son of Vespasian; last of the twelve| | | Cæsars | | | | | | THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS | | | | | | Cocceius Nerva.--Proclaimed Emperor | 96- 98 | 32 | 98 | | | Trajan (M. Ulpius Crinitus).--Adopted son of | 98-117 | 53 | 117 Nerva | | | | | | Hadrian (Publius Ælius).--Nephew of Trajan |117-138 | 76 | 138 | | | Antoninus Titus, surnamed Pius.--Adopted son |138-161 | 86 | 161 of Hadrian | | | | | | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.--Nephew of |161-180 | 121 | 180 Antoninus Pius | | | | | | THE PERIOD OF MILITARY DESPOTISM | | | | | | Commodus (L. Aurelius Antoninus).--Son of |180-193 | 161 | 192 Marcus Aurelius; poisoned by his favorite | | | mistress, Martia, December 31 | | | | | | Publius Helvius Pertinax.--Proclaimed |193- | 126 | 193 Emperor; killed by prætorian band | | | | | | Didius Julianus.--Proclaimed Emperor |193- | ... | 193 | | | Lucius Septimus Severus.--Proclaimed Emperor;|193-212?| 146 | 211 died at York, in Britain | | | | | | M. Aurelius Caracalla and Septimius Geta.-- |212-217 | 188 | 217 Son of Septimius Severus; Caracalla murders | | | Geta, 212; is slain by his successors | | | | | | M. Opilius Macrinus, prefect of the guards; |217-218 | 164 | 218 beheaded in a mutiny | | | | | | Heliogabalus (M. Aurelius Antoninus), a youth|218-222 | 205?| 222 (Elagabalus).--First cousin of Caracalla; put| | | to death for enormities | | | | | | Alexander Severus.--Cousin of Heliogabalus, |222-235 | 205 | 235 by whom he was adopted; assassinated by | | | soldiers corrupted by Maximinus | | | | | | Caius Julius Verus Maximinus.--Elevated by |235-238 | 173 | 238 soldiers; assassinated in his tent | | | | | | M. Antonius Gordianus and his son; the latter|238-238 | ... | {238 falling in battle with partisans of | | | {238 Maximinus, the father strangled himself in | | | despair, at Carthage, in his eightieth year. | | | --Appointed by the Senate | | | | | | Gordian II.--Grandson of Gordian I.; |238-244 | 224 | 244 assassinated by guards, instigated by Philip | | | the Arabian | | | | | | Philip the Arabian.--Murdered Gordian and |244-249 | ... | 249 usurped the throne; assassinated by his | | | soldiers | | | | | | Metius Decius.--Proclaimed Emperor by the |249-251 | ... | 251 army; he perished in battle with Goths | | | | | | Gallus Hostilius, and his son Volusianus.-- |251-254 | ... | 254 Elected Emperor by Senate and soldiers; both | | | slain by soldiers | | | | | | Æmilianus.--Elected Emperor by Senate and |254- | 208?| 254? soldiers; put to death after reign of four | | | months | | | | | | Valerian.--Elected Emperor by Senate and |254-260 | ... | 260 soldiers; taken prisoner by Sapor, king of | | | Persia, and flayed alive | | | | | | Gallienus |260-268 | ... | 268 | | | Flavius Claudius |268-270 | 214 | 270 | | | Aurelian.--Designated by Claudius; |270-275 | 212 | 275 assassinated by soldiers on march against | | | Persia | | | | | | Tacitus.--Elected by Senate and soldiers; |275-276 | 200 | 276 died at Tarsus, in Cilicia | | | | | | Florian.--Proclaimed Emperor; not recognized |276-276 | ... | ? by Senate | | | | | | M. Aurelius Probus.--Choice of the army; |277-282 | ... | 282 assassinated by troops at Sirmium | | | | | | M. Aurelius Carus.--Elevated to throne by |282-283 | 222 | 283 soldiers; killed at Ctesiphon by lightning | | | | | | Carinus--Elder son of Carus} | | | and }both assassinated|284-284 | ... | 285 Numerian.--Son of Carus } | | | | | | Diocletian.--Proclaimed Emperor by the army} | |{ 245 | 313 and } |284-305 |{ | Maximian.--Made Cæsar by Diocletian } | |{ ... | 310 | | | Constantius} | |{ 250 | 306 and }Created Cæsar |305-306 |{ | Galerius } | |{ ... | 311 | | | Constantine the Great.--Eldest son of |306-336 | 272 | 337 Augustus Constantius Chlorus | | | | | | Constantius II.--Third son of Constantine the|336-361 | 317 | 361 Great | | | | | | Julian the Apostate.--Son of Julius |361-363 | 331 | 363 Constantius; mortally wounded in battle with | | | Persians | | | | | | Jovian.--Elevated to the throne by the army |363-364 | 332 | 364 | | | ROMAN EMPERORS OF THE WEST | | | | | | Valentinian I.--Proclaimed Emperor by the |364-375 | 321 | 375 army | | | | | | Gratian.--Son of Valentinian I |375-383 | 359 | 383 | | | Maximus--Made Emperor by the legions in |383? | ? | 398 Britain | | | | | | Valentinian II.--Son of Valentinian I |383?-388| 371 | 392 | | | Eugenius.--Proclaimed Emperor |388-394 | ... | ... | | | Theodosius the Great.--Son of Theodosius, a |394-395 | 346 | 395 Roman general | | | | | | Honorius.--Second son of Theodosius |395-423 | 384 | 423 | | | Valentinian III.--Son of Constantius |423-455 | 419 | 455 | | | Maximus Petronius.--Proclaimed Emperor |455- | 395?| 455 | | | Avitus.--Assumed the purple |455-457 | ... | 457 | | | Majorian or Majorien.--Elected by Ricimer |457-461 | ... | ? | | | Severus.--Raised to imperial dignity by |461-467 | ... | 465-7? Ricimer | | | | | | Anthemius.--Son-in-law of Emperor Marcian |467-472 | ... | ? | | | Olybrius.--Made Emperor through influence of |472-473 | ... | ? Ricimer | | | | | | Glycerus.--Proclaimed Emperor (or Genseric) |473- | ... | ? | | | Nepos.--Proclaimed Emperor by order of Leo X.|473-475 | ... | 480 | | | Romulus Augustulus.--Son of Orestes |475-476 | ... | 476 | | | Augustus is deposed and banished by Odoácer, | | | who thus puts an end to the Western Empire of| | | Rome. | | | ---------------------------------------------+--------+-------+-------

(See Chronology of the more important events under Rome in Comparative Outlines of Universal History.)

VI. FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE FALL OF ROME, 306-476 A.D.--The sixth period includes the remainder of Roman history, extending from the reign of Constantine to the Fall of Rome, when captured by the Heruli, A.D. 476. The reign of Constantine the Great imparts splendor to the commencement of this period. He embraced the Christian faith himself, and patronized it in the Empire, as did also most of his successors; on which account this may be called the period of the Christian Emperors.

One of the most important events of his reign, and one which had a great influence on the subsequent affairs of Rome, was the removal of the Government to a new seat. He selected Byzantium for his capital, and removed there with his court, giving it the name of Constantinople, which it still bears. He left his empire to five princes, three sons and two nephews; the youngest son, Constantius, soon grasps the whole, A.D. 360. By the death of Constantius, his cousin Julian received the purple, which he was already on his march from Gaul to seize by force. The reign of Julian, styled the Apostate, is memorable for his artful and persevering attempts to destroy the Christian religion, and his unsuccessful efforts to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, with the express purpose of casting discredit on the predictions of the Bible.

From the death of Julian, A.D. 363, to the reign of Theodosius the Great, A.D. 379, the history presents little that is important to be noticed, except the jealousies between the eastern and western portions of the Empire, which grew out of the removal of the court to Constantinople. Theodosius was the last emperor who ruled over both. In 395 he died, leaving to his sons Arcadius and Honorius separately the east and west. From this time the Eastern portion remained distinct, and its history no longer belongs to that of Rome.

The western portion languishes under ten successive emperors, who are scarcely able to defend themselves against the repeated attacks of barbarian invaders. At length, under Augustulus, the eleventh from Theodosius, Rome is taken by Odoácer, leader of the Heruli, and the history of ancient Rome is terminated, A. D. 476.

The whole of the period from Constantine to Augustulus is marked by the continued inroads of barbarous hordes from the north and the east. But the greatest annoyance was suffered in the latter part of the time, from three tribes, under three celebrated leaders; the Goths, under Alaric; the Vandals, under Genseric; and the Huns, under Attila. The two former actually carried their victorious arms to Rome itself (A.D. 410 and 455), and laid prostrate at their feet the haughty mistress of the world; and the latter was persuaded to turn back his forces (A. D. 453) only by ignoble concessions and immense gifts.

By A.D. 300 great changes had passed over the empire. Its population had become largely barbarized; the armies contained great numbers of Goths, Vandals, and Sarmathians (from territory now the west and south of Russia). Germans were spread through the empire more than any other nationality. The former distinction as to Roman citizenship having been lost, the distinction between the “Roman legions” and the “allies” was now effaced, and the last visible record of Rome’s conquest was obliterated.

PERIOD OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

Diocletian’s resignation in A.D. 305 was followed by a period of confusion and civil war, which ended in the establishment of Constantine as sole emperor in A.D. 323. He was son of one of the co-emperors and the Empress Helena. Constantine made an important change in the government by separating the military power from the civil authority. The influence of the Legati (provincial viceroys) was thus reduced, and the fact that the emperor alone held both the civil and military power gave him a great predominance.

CONSTANTINE MAKES BYZANTIUM THE CAPITAL

In A.D. 324 Christianity was established by Constantine as the religion of the State, and in 330 he made Byzantium the capital of the empire. This city on the Thracian Bosporus, founded by Greek colonists in 658 B.C., had early become a great commercial center. After being held successively by the Athenians, Lacedæmonians, and Macedonians, it came into Roman possession, and the new or reconstructed city Byzantium was afterwards called Constantinópolis (“City of Constantine”) and remained the capital of the Eastern Empire of Rome till A. D. 1453.

CONSTANTINE GIVES A NEW IMPETUS TO CHRISTIANITY

In religion, Constantine showed marks of his former Paganism even after his conversion to Christianity. He was an able general and statesman, whose real character has been obscured by historical excesses, both of panegyric and of detraction, and around whose name, in connection with Christianity, interesting and picturesque legends are associated, like that of the apparition of the Cross and the words (in Greek), “By this sign, conquer.” He died in 337, leaving the empire to confusion and civil war under his sons.

Apart from its effects upon the morals, the new religion greatly and beneficially stirred the mind of the age. Political speculation and discussion were impossible under a despotism, and active minds turned to theology, and soon showed that the intellectual power of the time was to be found within the ranks of Christianity.

Among these early writers and rules of the church, known as the “Christian Fathers,” the following are the chief, Tertullian, Ambrose, Cyprian, Lactantius, Jerome, and Augustine being Latin Fathers; Origen, Gregory, Basil, Chrysostom, and Athanasius being Greek Fathers.

THE IGNOBLE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

The last Roman Emperor of the West was a child, called, as if in derision, Romulus Augustulus, the one name being that of the city’s mythical founder, the other (“Augustus the little”) a parody of the style of him who organized the empire. Augustulus became nominal ruler in A.D. 475, and in 476 was overthrown by the invasion of some German tribes, of which the chief were the Heruli. Their leader, Odoácer, took the title of “King of Italy,” and the Western Empire came thus ignobly to an end.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ROMAN SWAY TO THE WORLD

The chief benefits derived by the world from Rome’s imperial sway were the spread of the Greek culture, the transmission of the greatest productions of the Greek mind, and the clear course made for the progress of Christianity.

THE DARK AND MIDDLE AGES

Modern history, in a comprehensive sense, begins with the downfall of the Western Roman Empire; for with that event the volume of ancient history was closed: new actors then appeared on the stage, and a new civilization arose.

THE ROMAN WORLD SUCCEEDED BY THE GERMANIC

The development of the German world begins, kindled by foreign culture, religion, polity, and legislation. These new elements were taken up by the Teutonic tribes, and amalgamated with their own national life.

THE HISTORIC DARK AGES

In many respects this period seemed a relapse into barbarism, and the interval from the fifth to the eleventh century is sometimes called specifically the Dark Ages. But in a juster view it was the germinating season: the seeds of modern civilization, cast into the soil, were quickening in new institutions and new nations; so that when we see modern society in the fifteenth and sixteenth nations; so that when we see modern society in the fifteenths and sixteenth centuries assuming the fixed shape which it still wears, we must remember that it grew into that shape in the antecedent thousand years.

REAL NATURE OF THIS PERIOD

The most important historic features of the Middle Ages were certain peculiar forms of society, rather than the development of great nations. Indeed, the modern nations as such were only in their beginnings, and these characteristic social peculiarities were common to all of them. Thus, all the nations of Europe were under that peculiar form of society called feudalism; all bore certain relations to the papal power; all participated in the Crusades and in the spirit of Chivalry; and all passed through the period named the Dark Ages, and shared in the intellectual revival which marked the latter part of the Middle Ages.

THE EASTERN OR BYZANTINE EMPIRE.--This Empire, called also the Greek Empire, was sustained under various fortunes, for a period of almost one thousand years after the overthrow of the Western or Roman Empire. After the fall of Rome nearly sixty different emperors had occupied the throne at Constantinople, when, A.D. 1202, that city was taken by the crusaders from France and Venice. By this event the Greek emperors were forced to establish their court at Nicæa in Asia Minor. After the lapse of sixty years, their former capital was recovered; and, subsequent to this, eight different emperors held the scepter there, until the empire was gradually reduced in strength and extent, and it consisted of but a little corner of Europe. Its existence was prolonged to A.D. 1453, when Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, who have retained it to the present day.

While the new nationalities and the new civilization of Western Europe were being developed under the influence of German vigor, the emperors at Constantinople, though they ruled dominions where the language and civilization were mainly Greek, still claimed to be Roman emperors, and under their sway the laws and official forms of imperial Rome were maintained.

The Patriarch of Constantinople was the head of the Christian Church in the East, as the Bishop of Rome was in the West, while the latter, as the successor of St. Peter, was the head of the universal Church.

NOTABLE REIGN AND SERVICE OF JUSTINIAN

The Eastern Empire attained its acme in the sixth century, during the reign of Justinian, A.D. 527-565. It was he who built the great Church of Saint Sophia at Constantinople, now a Mohammedan mosque. His chief service to mankind, however, was the codification of the laws in the great system of Roman jurisprudence called the Civil Law, forming the basis of the law in European states at the present day.

CONQUESTS OF THE FAMOUS GENERAL BELISARIUS

In the East, the famous Belisarius, an Illyrian of plebeian birth, fought for Justinian against the Persian king Chosroes I. (or Nushirvan), who reigned A.D. 531-579. Justinian purchased peace by payment of tribute to this Oriental despot, whose empire extended from the Red Sea to the Indus.

In the West, Justinian’s arms had great success. In 534 the Vandal kingdom in Africa was brought to an end by the victories of Belisarius. In 535 Belisarius conquered Sicily, and from 535-540, and again from 541-544, fought the Goths in Italy, until the jealousy of his master recalled him.

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The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers (part 3 of 9)