CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS, GENERAL EDITOR ANCIENT HISTORY TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE BY WILLIS MASON WEST ALLYN AND BACON Boston and Chicago Educat 619.02.872 HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION May. 14 192 8 ALLYN AND BACON'S SERIES OF SCHOOL HISTORIES 12mo, half leather, numerous maps, plans, and illustrations ANCIENT HISTORY. By Willis M. West of the University of Minnesota. MODERN HISTORY, By Willis M. West. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. University. By Charles M. Andrews of Yale A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Charles M. Andrews. HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Charles K. Adams, and William P. Trent of Columbia University. THE ANCIENT WORLD. By Willis M. West. Also in two volumes: PART I: GREECE AND THE EAST. PART II ROME AND THE WEST. PREFACE. THE study of history in secondary schools offers many problems. Foremost in demanding decision stands always the question of the proper distribution of time. The old oneyear course in universal history is confessedly inadequate, unattractive, and destitute of disciplinary value. No possible series of courses on single countries can be sufficiently comprehensive. Some compromise is inevitable. The most promising plan yet proposed is the one outlined in the memorable Report of the Committee of Seven to the National Historical Association in 1899.1 In accordance with that plan, the series of school histories of which this book is the first will give two volumes to a general survey of the world's history. The present volume deals with the early development of those historic elements whose interworkings have since produced our modern world. As is explained more fully in the opening pages of the text, it deals with those Oriental peoples who were to contribute directly to European civilization, and, more in detail, with Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, whose life in each case was to be taken up, almost as a whole, into our modern life; and the story is traced until these formative elements have been brought together and until their fusion is well under way in the empire of Charlemagne. A second book will treat the subsequent working of these forces in "Modern History." The present volume, however, may be followed instead by the study of England, France, or Germany, or by intensive topic study; it is designed for the first year's work in history in high schools, but, by expanding or contracting the suggestions for topical reports and for library work, it may be adapted to older or younger students and to courses of varying length. 1 The Study of History in Schools, The Macmillan Co., $0.50. In selecting subject-matter within the wide limits of "Ancient History," I have desired especially to emphasize the unity in historical development and to bring out the value of the past in explaining the present. The expansion of civilized life is followed from the early patches in the Nile and Euphrates valleys, first over Western Asia, then around the Mediterranean coasts, and, finally, into the British Isles and the German forests; and at each new advance an attempt is made to show something of the reaction of the environment upon the older germs. To do these things effectively calls for rigid economy in the use of space. Two particulars may be mentioned: a. Wars receive little attention. Military history is valua ble, no doubt, if one really studies strategy; but compromises that tell the story and leave out the strategy are not valuable as history, whatever they may be as literature. Of course, "civilization has come riding on a gun-carriage; " but this truth can be taught better by compact treatments of conditions preceding a war and of the results that followed it, than by lengthy, but necessarily imperfect or misleading, stories of battles and sieges. This sentiment may have a familiar sound, but its radical application in this volume justifies its repetition. Thus, twenty-eight pages are given to the Athenian Empire and less than four to the Peloponnesian War,these four, too, mainly to the internal revolution in Athens; two pages contain Alexander's wars, while five are given to his constructive work and twenty more to the results in the widespread Hellenic civilization that followed; and of the fourteen pages allotted to Caesar, two suffice for his campaigns. b. Critics have long regretted that our school courses dwell upon the legendary or romantic early periods of Greek and Roman life to the strange neglect of the later periods, more complex, but so much richer in historical teaching. More important than the semibarbarous Spartan camp is the great Hellenic world after Alexander, with its suggestive experiments in federal government and with its political and social conditions so like the modern world; more valuable even than the ill-understood quarrels between plebeians and patricians is the Roman imperial world, on which later European life is so directly based. I have intended the present volume to do somewhat toward remedying this neglect, especially in the case of the Roman Empire. Here, too, a space-saving device has been adopted. A fundamental difficulty has always been the many imperial reigns with the wearisome repetition of like details. This volume groups the outlines of the reigns, by periods, into some four pages of tables, for reference, and so secures ninety pages for topical treatment of organic movements and of the growth of institutions. As a rule, the emperor's individuality was but a trifling factor in determining the trend of development in the complex society of which he was a part; and it is manifestly unwise to sacrifice a simple and logical arrangement for an arbitrary and confusing one, depending upon accidents to single lives. On the other hand, the biographical element is sometimes an essential part of historical explanation, and, with right, it is attractive to students. Even a book of this kind permits and demands a few individual portraits; and I have hoped, in particular, to give a vivid impression of the personality, as well as the work, of Themistocles, Pericles, Socrates, Epaminondas, Philip, Alexander, the Gracchi brothers, Sulla, Caesar, Augustus, Constantine, Theodoric, Clovis, and Charlemagne. A text-book in history for high schools should assist the teacher in securing that training which history alone in the high school curriculum can give. I trust that my several years' experience in teaching the subject in high schools has not been without profit here. Attention is called to a few features in which this volume is designed to be helpful. a. It aims to help teach the use of a library, by giving specific references upon many topics, and by naming many topics to be looked up from more general references. The teacher, |