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67. Detail from Trajan's Column: Trajan sacrificing at the Bridge over the Danube

68. A Section of the Pantheon as at Present

69. The Coliseum To-day

70. Arch of Constantine To-day

71. Trajan's Column To-day

72. Plan of a Basilica

73. Interior of Trajan's Basilica as restored by Canina 74. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

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408

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412

A bust now in the Louvre

75. Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius. A bust now in the Louvre

418

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76. Hall of the Baths of Diocletian. Now the Church of St. Mary of the Angel

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77. A Dolmen of the Ancient Germans

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78. Battle-ax and Mace: arms of Teutonic chieftains in an early period

460

79. Basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna (time of Theodoric the

ANCIENT HISTORY.

INTRODUCTION.

I. WHAT HISTORY SHALL WE STUDY?

The whole series of human generations should be regarded as one man, ever living and ever learning. — PASCAL.

Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

- TENNYSON.

1. Prehistoric Life excluded. The first steps toward civilization must have been uncertain and slow. No doubt these beginnings took long periods of time, but we can know little about them, for no people leaves records that the historian can use until it has advanced a long way from primitive savagery. To be sure, there are tribes still in primitive stages; and, by comparing them with what can be gleaned from traditions, customs, words, and early records of our own civilization, scholars have learned something of how our forefathers must have lived before Homer and before the oldest inscriptions upon Egyptian stone. But this study of early cultures, fascinating though it be, is not properly history. History is based always upon records, and these older stages in human life we call prehistoric.

Still, it is well for us to remember that our imposing and varied civilization rests upon this unrecorded work of prehistoric man through slow, uncounted ages. The development of language; the invention of the bow, of making fire, of pottery

to stand the fire; the domestication of the dog and cow; the learning to live together, not in droves, but in families and tribes; the rude beginnings of agriculture; the smelting of metals to replace stone tools; - these are steps any of which are infinitely more important than the discovery of electricity or the growth of federal government: but all this, and much

THREE STAGES IN FIRE-MAKING.

more, had become the common property of many races before history began anywhere.

2. Some Historic Races excluded. Even when limited so in time, the history of all the civilizations of the world is too vast and complex for our study. We must narrow the field. Now, we care chiefly to know of those peoples whose life has borne

fruit for ours. We study that part of the recorded past which explains our present. This principle gives oneness to history, and, at the same time, simplifies it by shutting out vast areas. In this hemisphere we can neglect the Aztec and Inca civilizations; likewise in the Old World we can omit the isolated Hindoos and Chinese, though these two peoples were among the first to emerge from barbarism and though they still count half the population of the globe. Nor are we concerned, until modern times at least, with many peoples, like the Russians, who have been drawn only recently into the current of our development.

Thus we bound our

3. The Field selected and the Periods. study in space as well as in time. Until long after Columbus, our interest centers in Europe, and mostly in Western Europe. The life of man there, through all historic time, is the soil out of which grows our life to-day. And when we look for the early peoples who have shaped this European life, we see three -Greeks, Romans, and Teutons-towering above all others." We shall group our study around these three life-directing centers. But the civilization of the Greeks and Romans was not wholly original. It was modified by certain older civilizations outside Europe, near the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; and the history of these Oriental states makes the dim ante-room through which we pass to European history.

1 The Hindoo Buddha (sixth century B.C.) is perhaps second only to Christ in greatness and purity among the founders of religions, and the Chinese Confucius of the same century must rank among the great moral teachers of the world; but our Western thought has not been influenced by either of them to any considerable degree. It now seems probable that these countries will affect our civilization in the future, but in the past the only important contribution which we can trace to them, positively, is the "Arabic" notation from the Hindoos.

2 The inhabitants of ancient France, Spain, Britain, and of southern and eastern Germany are not included. It is true that they constituted a large part of European life, but that life was given its peculiar characteristics largely by the three elements named. The reason that the Jews are not mentioned, despite their great influence, will appear in later chapters.

Now we can answer the question that heads this chapter. As the panorama unfolds, we see civilizations, already old, in the fertile river-valleys of Egypt and of Western Asia. Their story is Oriental History. It covered thousands of years, but we view only fragments of it, and this by way of introduction to European history.

About 600 B.c. the proper history of our civilization begins, in the far southeast of Europe, when the Greeks take over the work and shift the scene west in patches along the Mediterranean. They make marvelous advance in art, literature, philosophy, and in some sciences. Their chief contributions are intellectual; but after about three hundred years, under Alexander the Great, they suddenly conquer the East and form a Graeco-Oriental world. This mingling of East and West gives the first basis for modern civilization.

The

Two centuries later, political leadership has passed to the next peninsula west. There the Romans supplement the Greek work by peculiar contributions in law and government, gathering together, too, whatever has been preserved from the older civilizations. By conquest, the Romans unite under one sway all the historic peoples of the East, and extend civilization over the barbarians of the West, so that at the birth of Christ they have organized the fringe of the three continents bordering the Mediterranean into one fairly uniform Graeco-Roman society. This is the second basis for modern civilization. Eastern world, largely Greek, was to be lost again for a time, later on, but the development of the West was to be continuous to the present day. This Roman Empire is the central "lake in which all the streams of ancient history lose themselves, and which all the streams of modern history flow out of." The Graeco-Oriental world of Alexander, upon the conqueror's death, broke up politically into fragments, but the Roman dominion maintains its political unity for five centuries. The combined period of Greek and Roman history, from 600 B.C. to 400 A.D., is Classical History.

Toward the close of this thousand years the Romanized