“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.
“And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
“Now when Pharaoh heard this, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian.”
This Pharaoh was not the father of Moses’ foster mother, who was now dead. It is said that this king was afraid Moses would drive him from the throne and become Pharaoh himself.
For forty long years the exiled prince lived in Midian, studying, planning, and writing. It was during this time that he made the great decision of his life. He resolved to save his own people, the million Hebrews who were slaves to the Egyptians.
At last, Moses and his brother Aaron appeared before the Pharaoh, and announced that God had demanded that the king should let the children of Israel go free. It was a hard thing to ask, for the Egyptians still needed the great army of slave men to build great pyramids and temples.
The king refused, and consented, and refused again, until plague after plague was sent upon the land of Egypt. At last, when the king’s son, and the oldest child of every Egyptian family in the whole country had died in one night, the terrified and heartbroken king called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go.”
“And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.”
This going out of the Hebrew people bound for the Promised Land, nearly four thousand years ago, is called “the Exodus.” To this day it is celebrated by the Jews every year as the Passover.
When the Pharaoh realized that the great stone temples and pyramids of Egypt might never be finished, he was afraid because he had let the slave people go. So he ordered out his horses and chariots and drove hard after them till he caught them in camp beside the Red Sea. The frightened Hebrews began to cry and accuse Moses of deceiving them and leading them out into a great trap, to be killed like a million helpless sheep, by Pharaoh’s army.
But Moses told the wailing crowds not to be afraid. Before the king’s horses and men caught up with them a strong east wind came up and kept the tide from running in, thus leaving a bare sand bar right in front of them across that arm of the Red Sea. Moses commanded the people to march over as on dry land, an order which they lost no time in obeying. Then the Pharaoh and his horsemen came up behind and drove hard after them upon the sand bar. But the heavy chariots stuck in the mud beneath the sand, and when the Egyptians reached the middle the wind changed, and the tide, which had been held back so long, rushed in and drowned Pharaoh and his army. Then Miriam and Moses and Aaron led these million freed slaves in a grand victory chorus of song about their hairbreadth escape.
But the people were always scolding and complaining against Moses, the dear, gentle leader who had saved them from their cruel bondage. It was his patient love for his thankless people, while through forty years they wandered in the wilderness, that gave Moses the name of being the meekest man that ever lived.
At Mount Sinai Moses received from God and gave to the people the Ten Commandments, written on two tablets of stone. He spent his time during the long years of wandering in the wilderness in planning the laws and religion for his beloved people. He himself never entered the Promised Land, but died in the wilderness, somewhere on a mountain called Nebo. The Bible makes this statement of his death:
“So Moses the servant of the Lord died there. And he buried him in a valley, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”
DAVID, THE GIANT-KILLER KING
NEARLY three thousand years ago a bright, handsome Hebrew lad was playing a harp while watching his father’s sheep on the hills of Bethlehem.
One dark night there was a great stir among the sheep, and David saw a bear making off with one of the lambs. There were no guns in those days, but David had a sling, and he could fling a pebble almost as swift and straight as a boy can shoot a bullet to-day. So David ran and killed the bear by driving a stone through the big brute’s eye into its brain. When he took the trembling lamb back to its mother, what should he see but a lion starting off with a sheep in his huge jaws. There was no time to gather pebbles. Grabbing a jagged rock in one hand, David seized the great beast by the mane with the other, and aimed quick blows at the lion’s eyes, breaking his skull before the lion could drop his prey and fight back.
That was a great night’s work for one lone lad. After quieting his frightened flock, David took his harp and made up a song of thanks to the God of Israel for saving him alive from the jaws of the lion and the paws of the bear.
Not long after this, David’s old father sent out to the hills for him. When the youth came down to the house, he found Samuel, Prophet of God and Judge of Israel, waiting for him. David’s seven older brothers stood around eyeing him strangely, as the prophet said, “This is he,” and baptized him by pouring oil on his head.
“What did the prophet anoint me for?” David asked his father.
“To be king of Israel instead of Saul.”
“But I am only a boy, and King Saul is so big and strong—head and shoulders taller than other men. Why did not the prophet anoint our Eliab? He is almost as tall as the king himself.”
“The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
After that David went back and herded his father’s sheep, but his brothers were jealous of him because he had been anointed to be king.
As had often happened in the days of the Judges, the heathen Philistines came up and made war against the people of Israel, and the eldest three of David’s brothers were in the king’s army. Many weeks went by, but no word came from the camp. So the father sent David down with provisions for the brothers and a present for their captain.
The shepherd boy found the two armies in camps opposite each other, across a narrow valley. Every one was excited over Goliath, a giant who came down every day into the valley from the army of the Philistines and challenged the king of Israel and all his men. Goliath was nearly eleven feet tall. He wore a bronze helmet about as big as a bushel measure, and his spear was like a weaver’s beam. Even King Saul and David’s tall brother Eliab were much too small to fight with the Philistine giant.
David could not bear to hear Goliath calling the king and his soldiers cowards and repeating wicked words about the God of Israel. So he went and told Saul he would like the chance to go down and fight the insulting giant.
The soldiers laughed at this, and Eliab told his young brother to go home and mind his “few sheep in the wilderness.” But David would not be put off. He told how God had helped him kill a lion and a bear in one night. The lad was so earnest that the king consented to let him try.
The only weapons David took were his staff and his sling. On his way to meet the giant he stopped at the brook and picked up five smooth pebbles. Both armies looked on breathless at the strange combat. Great Goliath laughed at little David, as if the king of Israel were playing a joke on him. He cursed David by all the gods of the Philistines, and yelled:
“Am I a dog, that thou shouldst come to fight me with a stick? For this I will feed thy little carcass to the birds.”
Then David shouted back to Goliath, “I come in the name of the God of Israel whom thou hast defied.”
All the Israelites and Philistines saw the boy make a quick motion with his sling, and heard a thud. The giant dropped his heavy spear, threw up his huge hands and fell, with a groan and a great clatter of armor, face downward on the ground.
David’s first pebble had done the work. It had gone swift and straight through the eye-hole in Goliath’s brass helmet and sunk deep into his low, brutal forehead, killing him almost instantly.
“And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead they arose and fled. The children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines, and they spoiled (looted) their tents.”
King Saul was so thankful that his own life had been saved, and that the people were spared from being slaves to the Philistines, that he made David come and live in his palace as a younger brother to his son, Jonathan. This prince was not jealous like David’s own brothers. David and Jonathan became such good friends that, though this happened nearly three thousand years ago, people say yet that two boys or men who are very friendly with each other are “like David and Jonathan.”
After a time Saul and Jonathan were both killed in a battle with the Philistines. Then David became king of Israel. He proved to be one of the best of rulers. He wrote many of the Bible Psalms and played on his harp as he sang them. He planned to build a great house of worship for the God of Israel in Jerusalem, but, because he had been a man of war, he felt unworthy to do such sacred work. So he left the temple to be built by his son Solomon, the wisest king that ever ruled over Israel.
HOMER, THE HERO POET OF ANCIENT GREECE
LONG, long ago, when the world was young, and before men began to write books, a kind of men called “bards” used to wander about the land of Greece, from town to town and from court to court, playing the harp and singing of the deeds of the heroes of Greece. As years went on there came to be very many such tales sung by the bards, and handed down from father to son. At last, there came a day when men learned to write. Then the person whom we call Homer, the earliest and greatest poet in the history of the world, gathered together these hero tales and wrote them in beautiful poetry. This work of collecting these scattered stories of the exploits and adventures of the
Homer, the blind poet, was led from place to place by a young boy when he went to sing his songs and recite his wonderful poems of ancient Greece.
Greek gods and heroes and making them into one great hero poem, called an “epic,” was done nearly three thousand years ago.
Although nobody really knows anything surely about the life of this ancient Homer, the story goes that he was blind, and that he was very poor, as poets often are. After his death, when his two great poems had made him famous, seven different cities in Greece claimed each to have been his home. But the facts of his life matter very little when compared with the wonderful stories that he left for all the world to read. His epics were imitated by the greatest poets of Rome, Italy, and England, and have been translated many times into both poetry and prose.
There were two of these epics—the “Iliad,” picturing the siege and downfall of ancient Ilium, or Troy; and the “Odyssey,” describing the ten years’ wanderings of Odysseus, or Ulysses, on his way back home after the destroying of Troy by the Greeks.
The war against Troy, which lasted ten years, was started because Paris, son of Priam, the old king of Troy, carried off from her home, Helen, the lovely wife of one of the Grecian kings. The “Iliad” tells of the bold deeds of many heroes on both sides. The strongest fighter in Troy was Hector, another son of King Priam. Achilles was the greatest hero on the side of the Greeks. One of the most beautiful scenes in art as well as in poetry is that of Hector saying good-bye to his wife and baby boy, and one of the best known examples of friendship is that of Achilles for his friend Patroclus.
The great gods and goddesses—for the early Greeks believed in many gods—all took sides in the struggle for Troy. Apollo, Minerva, and Juno helped the Greeks; Mars and Venus helped the Trojans. They chose the side of the people who had especially served and worshiped them, using their mighty power to help and direct in the long war.
After nine years the Greeks pretended that they were going to give up the struggle and sail away to their homes. They built a huge wooden horse to leave as a peace offering, telling the Trojans that it was a gift for them to offer to their gods. The Trojans were only too willing to think that the Greeks were giving up the fight. They would not listen to the princess Cassandra, who warned them of danger, saying, “I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.” In spite of her words the city fathers accepted the strange present and trundled the big horse within their walls. That night some Greek soldiers who were hidden inside the hollow wooden figure jumped out of their hiding place, opened the six gates of Troy, and let in the Grecian army. The great warriors waiting outside swarmed in and soon captured the city.
Helen, the stolen queen, sailed back home and lived there in her little Grecian kingdom for many years after her rescue by her royal husband and his brother, another king, with the help of the Greek heroes and the gods who sided with them.
Among the Greeks who fought at Troy was Ulysses. His journeyings on the way from Troy to Ithaca, the rocky island where he was king, form a wonder story of ancient life and travel. Ulysses’ ships were driven about to many strange places. First he came to the land of the lotus eaters, where some of his men ate the lotus flowers and forgot their homes and friends. The rest of them came next to the country of the Cyclops, giant monsters with only one eye in the middle of their foreheads. The chief Cyclops caught the Greeks, shut them up in the cave where he kept his sheep, and ate two of them for his supper every day. Ulysses was clever enough to think of a way by which he and his men might escape. While the giant was out of the cave he sharpened a stake by burning it in the coals, and when the Cyclops fell asleep after his hearty supper, Ulysses and four of his men drove this sharp stake into his one eye, blinding him. Then the leader tied each of his men under one of the Cyclops’ sheep, and himself clung to the long hair beneath the largest ram. When the sheep crowded out of the cave the giant did not know that they were carrying his prisoners with them. Before he discovered the trick the Greeks were safe on their ship.
After another voyage, Ulysses and his men landed on the island of Circe, a beautiful witch who turned the men all into swine and made them stay with her a long time. But Apollo and Minerva helped Ulysses undo the spell of the charmer. Circe warned Ulysses against the Sirens, who would tempt them by their singing only to destroy them all, and against Scylla and Charybdis—a risky place for a ship to pass, between a great rock and a dangerous whirlpool.
The wife of Ulysses also was beset with many trials and dangers. She was surrounded by neighboring princes, each of whom wished to marry her and become king of Ithaca. She kept on with her weaving, putting these suitors off by telling them she would give them her answer when she finished her weaving—but each night she unraveled all the weaving she had done in the daytime.
During the twenty long years of Ulysses’ absence, Penelope’s young son grew to manhood and started out to find his father. He reached home, after a vain search, just at the time when Ulysses came back. The king of Ithaca was disguised by the goddess Minerva as an old beggar, so that no one recognized him but his good old dog.
Ulysses arrived at his palace at the very moment when, the suitors having become too urgent, Penelope brought out Ulysses’ bow and agreed to marry the man who could bend it and shoot an arrow through six rings placed in a long line, as her heroic husband had been known to do. The feeble looking beggar was allowed to look on while the princes tried frantically to win the hand and the throne of the fair Penelope. One after another failed in the desperate attempt. Then the seemingly aged stranger asked them to let him try to bend the great, stiff bow and shoot the heavy arrow. They laughed at and insulted him, but he took the bow, bent it with ease, and shot the long arrow straight through all the rings, just as Ulysses used to do.
Penelope gave a cry of joy, for she knew then that the stranger was none other than her long-lost husband. Ulysses’s disguise suddenly disappeared, and with his son’s aid he shot the impudent suitors who had tormented his wife all those years.
SOCRATES, THE “GRAND OLD MAN” OF GREECE
SOCRATES was the son of a sculptor of Athens in the days of Pericles, a ruler who encouraged art and culture and made his city famous for its learning and beauty. As a boy, Socrates was taught by his father to carve statues. Nearly a thousand years afterward, a traveler in Greece described a group of figures, called “The Graces,” carved by the youthful Socrates. But the young man was not satisfied with being a sculptor. While he was working at his carving, his active mind kept trying to find out the reason for everything.
In Athens at this time there were not only many painters and sculptors, but numbers of men called philosophers, who gave all their time to thinking out the meaning of what they saw in the world around them, and trying to teach that meaning to such people as would listen to them. These philosophers differed widely from one another in their views. Some of the things they thought would seem very queer to us to-day, but they were doing their best to find out the truth.
A group of philosophers who held the same views was called a “school.” The schools of philosophy were not like the schools of to-day. They were simply gathering places, in some one’s house, or on a street corner, or in a public porch, or in a grove, where men who liked to think came together for talk and debate. Instead of children sitting quietly at desks, a school was made up of grown men walking about and talking a great deal.
Socrates found that he was much more interested in listening to what the philosophers thought than he was in carving statues. So he gave up his work with his father and went out to visit the schools. But as he went from one school to another, he could see that no one of them was right in every way. He decided that he could not learn the real truth from them. So he resolved to walk the streets and ask questions of the people he met there. He was so anxious to know that he could learn from anyone he talked with, whether man, woman, or child. He met many men who thought they were philosophers when they were not, for it was considered a great thing to be known as a famous thinker, and all men aimed at it.
When Socrates met a man who claimed to be wise, he would ask questions as if he himself did not know anything, and he would thus lead on from one thing to another till sometimes he made the man say the very opposite of what he had said before, making him ashamed of himself. This way of drawing out the truth by questions and proving the wrongness of some ways of reasoning is known to-day as the “Socratic method.”
The Greeks were great believers in beauty. They thought whatever is beautiful must be right. But Socrates saw handsome men and beautiful women leading wrong lives, and he made such people angry by saying so. Socrates himself was far from handsome. He was short and thick-set. His head was bald and his eyes bulged out in a comical way. His nose was broad and flat; his lips were thick and his ears stood out, making him look like the clowns the Greeks laughed at in their great out-door theaters.
More than this, Socrates was poor. He had learned, while a young man, that those who had most of the so-called good things of life were the most unhappy. So he made up his mind that the best kind of wealth lay in not wanting much. He did not care for good things to eat. He went barefoot, and wore the same thin garment both summer and winter.
The Greeks were fond of art for the sake of art. But Socrates believed in right living, and loved art only for heart’s sake—for the sake of doing good and making people happy. He also believed that to know is to live, and that in order to live right one must first know what is right. He claimed to have a certain force or voice within which showed him what was right. He was the first of all the wise men of the heathen world to believe that this inner light should be a correct moral guide to right living.
Even the gods the Greeks worshiped did things of the worst kind; they were spiteful, cruel, and wicked. So the people did not think it wrong to act as their gods did. They did not understand what Socrates meant when he said he had a voice within himself which told him what he should or should not do. So they thought he was trying to make them believe in a strange god, when they had too many already.
Socrates was a great lover of his country. When the Greeks went to war he went in the ranks as a private soldier, and fought like a hero. In one battle he saved the life of a rich, handsome, brilliant young man who was very popular in Athens. This youth soon learned to love the homely old philosopher and studied with him. Two other great men were pupils of Socrates. One of these became one of the greatest historians and the other a great philosopher. They were both authors, and they wrote all that is known to-day about Socrates, who did not leave any writings to show what he believed and taught.
Of course, most people failed to understand Socrates, and so they made him the laughing stock of the town. Yet many young men, led by the youth whose life Socrates had saved, came to him to learn how to live and be useful and happy.
But the people who were jealous of his influence over the young men of the city accused the old philosopher of teaching them of other gods and thus corrupting their minds. They had him arrested, but his students followed him to the prison, where he kept on teaching them the right way to live. Socrates was tried by a law-court of citizen judges and defended himself very ably. The story of his bold defense is told in a book called the “Apology of Socrates,” by a famous Greek writer named Plato. He spoke of his aim to show people how little they knew so that they might learn more, and told his judges that he intended to go on in the same way if they spared his life. He was condemned to die, however, and thirty days after the trial they gave him a cup of poison called hemlock to drink. After he had taken this he went on talking to his students of the hope of a happier life beyond the grave. This was four hundred years before the birth of Christ. Socrates came nearer the Christian belief than any other philosopher of that ancient time who had no knowledge of the Bible and its teachings.
ALEXANDER, THE BOY WHO CONQUERED THE WORLD
ALEXANDER was the son of Philip, king of Macedon, a country to the north of Greece. His father was a great general as well as a king. Young Alexander was a strong, active, handsome lad. A story is told of his “breaking” a wild horse which had been presented to Philip by a neighboring king. This horse was named Bucephalus—the Greek word for “Bullheaded.” He reared, bit, snorted, and pawed the air, if any one tried to mount him. King Philip was indignant at being given such a present, and was about to send back the “bullheaded beast,” as too dangerous to the life or limb of anyone who attempted to ride him. But Alexander noticed that the horse was frightened even at his own shadow. He begged his father to let him conquer such a splendid animal. The lad was so much in earnest that the king decided to let him try.
The young prince showed no fear as he walked up beside Bucephalus and patted him on the neck. He wanted to keep the horse from being frightened, as his fright was the cause of his wildness. By degrees the boy managed to turn the great brute’s head toward the sun so that he could not see his shadow. Throwing off his velvet mantle, Alexander suddenly sprang on the horse’s back. Instead of trying to restrain or guide the frightened steed, the boy let him go as fast as he would across the plain. When Bucephalus grew tired, the shrewd rider began to turn his head this way and that, while speaking kindly and patting him soothingly. When they returned from their long run, Bucephalus obeyed the prince’s word and touch as a gentle, well-trained horse should. It is said that the huge beast learned to kneel for Prince Alexander to mount, and that he carried his young master proudly through many a battle.
The king was so pleased with the courage and wisdom Alexander displayed in conquering Bucephalus that he said to his son, “You should have a larger kingdom than Macedon to rule.”
As if to fulfill this wish, Philip went to war with several of the neighboring kings and left his sixteen-year-old son to rule over Macedon while he was absent. Then Alexander was allowed to command certain companies of the Macedonian army; in this he showed wonderful courage and wisdom.
Philip was murdered when Alexander was twenty. Then the kings whom the father had conquered tried to throw off the rule of Macedon. They said, “This new king is only a boy.” But Alexander answered when he heard it, “They think I am a boy; I will show them that I am a man.” And he did—not only by defeating the kings and armies his father had beaten, but by conquering the other states around Macedon whose kings had turned in to help Alexander’s enemies.
At this time the greatest monarch in Asia was Darius, king of the Persians. He sent several nobles of his realm to seek the friendship of Alexander, king of Macedon. These men were surprised when they saw that the young ruler was not interested in their stories of the wealth and splendor of the vast countries of Darius. Instead, Alexander wished to hear about the extent of their kingdom, about its different peoples, and about the location of the rivers, roads, and cities. The men from Persia said to members of the court of Macedon, “Our old king is rich; but your young king is great.”
Alexander, both king and general, had a strange thirst for power. He left a true friend to control his kingdom in Europe and started east, with only a small army, to conquer the vast countries on the continent of Asia. King Darius laughed at the very idea of “a mere boy,” with so few soldiers, coming to conquer him and the greatest and richest empire in the world. He came to meet the Macedonian army with an armed host about ten times as large as Alexander’s. “That boy” soon routed and scattered the hosts of the Persians, and King Darius had to fly for his life, leaving his wife and her mother behind, as Alexander’s prisoners. The young conqueror was kind to these and to all other prisoners of war. This was wholly different from the custom then; for ancient conquerors killed or made slaves of those whom they defeated in battle. Alexander gained two great victories over Darius and captured other kingdoms and walled cities after long sieges and hard-fought battles.
While in Asia he came to a temple where there was a puzzle which no one had solved. This was a strange knot in a long leather strip. This knot, it had been prophesied for centuries, could never be undone except by the one who was to conquer Asia. Alexander felt that he must unloose this terrible tangle in some way or other. So, when he was brought into the temple, which was at a place named Gordium, he took his sword and cut the strangely knotted thong in pieces! Ever since then when any one meets and solves in a surprising way what seems to be an impossible problem, he is said to have “cut the Gordian knot,” as Alexander did in the temple at Gordium.
The young conqueror marched down into Africa, and not only took possession of Egypt, the greatest kingdom of
that vast region, but built, near one of the mouths of the wide river Nile, a city to which he gave his own name. That city, Alexandria, is still one of the largest cities on the continent of Africa.
It became necessary for Alexander to lead his army farther eastward into Asia. After his great successes he began to indulge his appetites, in eating and drinking and in other harmful ways. Once, in a fit of drunken anger, he killed his best friend. This made him ashamed and sad when he came to himself and realized what he had done.
Because of his many victories Alexander is called “the Great.” When he was only twenty-six, he had conquered all the important nations in the world of his day. It was because he had now nothing to strive after that he gave way to evil passions. He is said to have “wept because there were no more worlds to conquer.” He became ill and died as a result of his excesses, leaving no child or relative to rule over the great kingdoms he had acquired.
Although Alexander the Great had conquered the world, he could not govern himself. Hundreds of years before his day, Solomon, the wise, rich king, wrote in his Proverbs:
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”
FOUR FAMILIAR SAYINGS OF JULIUS CÆSAR
JULIUS CÆSAR was born at Rome more than two thousand years ago, about one hundred years before Christ. His family belonged to a noble clan of the patricians. The people of Rome were divided into three classes. Of these the patricians were highest in rank and fewest in number. There were many more in the middle class, which at that time was largely made up of free men who could vote and hold office. The lowest class and by far the largest number were the slaves.
More than half of the Roman slaves were white, many having blonde hair and blue eyes. These had been brought as captives from the northern countries and sold in Rome. Some of the slaves, especially those who came from the Greek lands in the East, were more refined than the ignorant, brutal Roman masters for whom they had to do the hardest and dirtiest kinds of work. Worse than this, the Roman law allowed cruel masters to whip, torture, and even kill these educated men and women.
By right of the might of her wonderful armies, Rome made herself “Mistress of the World.” So the patricians and the freemen looked with contempt upon other nations and said to themselves, “To be a Roman is greater than to be a king.” The patricians were the proudest Romans, and the Cæsars were among the haughtiest patricians. Their family belonged to the rich, ruling class when little Julius was born.
Of course, there was no such thing as the Christian religion in Julius Cæsar’s day. The only believers in the one true God were the Jews, who lived in the little, far-off country now called the Holy Land. The best educated Romans believed in Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Venus, and many other deities who, they imagined, were ruling over them, and who were as selfish and cruel as the Romans themselves.
There were no public schools for children in Rome. Instead of millions of printed books, there were a few rolls of parchment on which Latin words were printed very slowly by hand. Instead of using paper to write on, the Romans scratched their letters and messages on tablets of wax with large needles. As there were no newspapers then, the people learned what was going on in the world by word of mouth from speakers in the Forum, an open city square with a stone platform, around which crowded thousands of listeners.
The highest ambition of the youthful Julius Cæsar was to speak well to the people in the Forum and to win their friendship. He grew to be a tall, handsome, brilliant young man. He was not rich, and while his friends led lives of ease and pleasure, this young Cæsar studied hard. He learned to read and speak Greek, because then the greatest poems, orations, and plays were in that language. He traveled thousands of miles, to Greece and Asia Minor, to learn to be a good speaker and writer. And though he was a patrician, his real sympathy lay with the poor and the middle class, whose side he took almost from boyhood.
The Romans governed themselves, in some ways, as the people of the United States do to-day. That is, their consuls, or governors, were elected by the patricians and the free men. Sometimes the patricians were in power; at other times, the people of the middle class succeeded in electing their leaders. But in those cruel times the winning party sometimes killed the chiefs on the other side, and treated them all as if they were enemies at war. The uncle of Julius Cæsar had been one of the chiefs overthrown in such a civil war, and the young man inherited his uncle’s love for the cause of the common people.
The first deed of Cæsar that brought him into public notice took place while he was traveling in the East. A crew of pirates, or sea robbers, captured him and held him prisoner until a large sum of money, or a ransom, should be paid. Julius Cæsar succeeded in raising the amount and paid it to them to set him free. But before he left the pirates he told them that if he ever caught them he would have his revenge. Then he went and collected men and ships, caught his former captors, won back his ransom money, and ordered the ring-leaders crucified. Crucifixion was the Roman penalty for pirates and other thieves.
From the time Julius Cæsar was thirty years old, he was constantly in one office or another in the Roman republic. One early position was that of director of shows and sports. The Romans had theaters, with seats of stone rising one behind another from the central space, like the seats in a circus or college stadium. Here thousands of people could see and hear actors, poets, orators, and debaters. One of these theaters was so large that eighty thousand people could witness the games at one time. Instead of football and baseball, the Romans had running races and wrestling matches by athletes and fighters who came from all parts of the world. Most of them were slaves. Among them were men called gladiators, who fought each other with swords until one or the other was killed. The cruel Romans liked this part of the sport best.
Julius Cæsar provided such splendid shows and games that he made himself very popular with the people. He was elected to one office after another; and finally, after being sent as a kind of governor to Spain, was chosen one of the two consuls. The office of consul was the highest in Rome, and was somewhat similar to our president. When his term expired, Cæsar was made governor over the Gauls, a half savage people who lived in the country that is now northern Italy, Switzerland, and France.
During the nine years while Cæsar was in Gaul, he had to fight many battles and conquer many dangerous tribes. Besides that, he crossed to the island of Britain, now called England. But Cæsar was kind to his enemies and prisoners. His “Journal,” which tells of his wars in Gaul, is read to-day as one of the simplest and best books ever written.
His wonderful victories and great kindnesses made Cæsar the idol of the people. But he had enemies at home, and a rival, another great general named Pompey. The Senate were on the side of Pompey, and at last they decreed that if Cæsar did not give up his command and dismiss his army by a certain day, he would be called an enemy of the country. Pompey and the Senate were against the poorer classes, and Cæsar knew that if he yielded to this command, the common people, whose friend he was, would lose their freedom. So instead of disbanding his army he marched it to the borders of Italy. He stopped on the bank of a little river called the Rubicon. Anyone who crossed that river with an army was considered an enemy of Rome. When Cæsar decided to cross the river and advance with his army against the city, he exclaimed, “The die is cast!” His words meant that he could no more go back than a die, once thrown out of the dice-box, can be taken back. Nowadays, when a man decides to do something which may bring great loss to him if he does not win, and from which he cannot draw back, once he has begun, he is said to have “crossed the Rubicon.”
Cæsar’s fortunes, however, did not desert him, and he succeeded in driving Pompey away and finally conquering him. Within three years, after many victorious battles in Greece and Egypt and Asia Minor, he returned to Rome in triumph. By this time the Senate were willing to do anything for him that he wanted, and the adoring people chose him Dictator for ten years. That meant that although he was not called king he had almost the same power as a king.
Two of Cæsar’s sayings are often quoted. Once, when he was pursuing Pompey, he started on a voyage when a storm seemed to be coming up. The sailors were afraid to cross the sea, but he said to them, “You carry Cæsar and his fortunes!” They set sail at once and reached the other side in safety. At another time he caught an escaping army in Asia. He announced this victory in three words: “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” the meaning of which was, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
By his policy of kindness to the people as dictator, Cæsar so won their love that they came even to worship him as one of their gods. The month in the year in which he was born was at this time named in his honor, for our word July is a shortened form of Julius. He governed Rome well and made many useful changes. One thing that he did was to arrange the calendar, which before this time was very clumsy. It was he who divided the year into months of so many days each, very much as it is divided now.
The climax of Cæsar’s popularity was reached when he was offered a crown, to show that the people of Rome wished him to be their king. He refused this honor three times in public. But not all the men of Rome shared in this admiration of Cæsar, for one party, some of whom had been his friends, felt that his growing power was not good for Rome. They wanted their country to be a republic, and not to be ruled by a king. So they began to plot against Cæsar.
On the fifteenth of March, 44 B. C., just as Cæsar was about to take his seat in the presence of the Roman Senate, a group of men gathered round and began plunging their daggers into his body. Among them was Marcus Brutus, for whom Cæsar had done many kindnesses. When Cæsar saw Brutus with his dagger raised to stab him to the heart, he exclaimed with a sad smile, “And thou too, Brutus!” Then, covering his face with his mantle, he fell down and died. Of the twenty-three knife wounds that were found in Cæsar’s body, Shakespeare wrote that the stab of Brutus was “the most unkindest cut of all.”
Although Cæsar was murdered to keep him from bearing the name of king, the mightiest monarchs of modern times took the name of Cæsar as the highest title a king could have—as the “Kaiser” of Germany and the “C-zar” of Russia. When these two recent Cæsars were put down, there remained no ruler in Europe who believed in governing by the cruel Roman law that “Might makes Right.”
HEROES OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THE CHRISTMAS CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE
ABOUT twelve hundred years ago, thousands of Saracens, who were among the followers of Mohammed, crossed the narrow strait from Africa into Spain. The world was then coming out of those centuries of ignorance and fear which are known as the Dark Ages. The dark-skinned people—Arabs and Africans—who followed Mohammed, went about converting people by making them prostrate themselves with their faces turned toward the East and repeat the Mohammedan creed. Those who refused to bow down and repeat this creed were killed. Of course everyone was very much afraid of missionaries who used such methods as these, and large parts of Asia and Africa had come under Mohammedan control. When they reached the shores of Spain, they thought they were going to convert and conquer Europe, too.
The Saracens marched north through Spain and into the country of the Franks, whose great-great-great-grandchildren are the French people of to-day. Here the victory of the invaders ceased to be so easy, for they were met by a certain Duke Charles, who beat them in a great battle near Tours and drove them back. For his bravery in saving Europe from these dark-skinned enemies, Duke Charles was named Martel, the Franks’ word for “hammer.”
Charles the Hammer had a son, Pepin, who was called the Short, because he was not a tall man. But though he was small, Pepin had a big, brave heart. He fought for his country against the Lombards, a savage people in North Italy, and he was rewarded for his valor and success by being made king of the Franks.
When Pepin was crowned by the Pope, he had a son Charles, twelve years old. This Charles was so ambitious that, even while a boy, he began to dream of conquering other nations, and becoming king not only of France but of other lands as well. All through his boyhood he dreamed of what he would do if he were king. It was not many years after his father’s death, when he became king in fact, before Charles Martel’s grandson had conquered so many nations in the south and so many savage tribes in the north of Europe that he became a king of kings, or emperor, and received the title of Charlemagne, which means Charles the Great.
Perhaps the best thing that Charlemagne ever did was to keep Alcuin, a scholar from Britain, at his court as a trusted friend and teacher. In those days such men in other kings’ palaces were merely chaplains or religious teachers, but Alcuin taught the king, the queen, and the princes grammar, spelling, arithmetic, and other common branches. This Palace School proved to be such a good thing that the emperor ordered that not only any child of a nobleman, but even of the poorest peasant, could come to it if the boy showed talent for learning. The books in the Palace School were printed very slowly with a pen, sometimes in bright inks and gold. As there were no public libraries in those days, Alcuin searched the world for books for his pupils. These parchments were rare and very costly. Instead of Charles’s children going to school, the Palace School went with the children, as the emperor moved from place to place and from palace to palace.
Charlemagne’s armies were led by brave knights called paladins. The foremost of these paladins were Roland and Oliver, who fought in combats and tournaments. They were both of heroic size, eight feet tall, and performed the same feats, so that one could not be distinguished from the other. A story is told of these two having fought five days on an island in the River Rhine without either of them gaining the least advantage over the other; so now, when two men are equal in some great struggle, people exclaim—“A Roland for an Oliver!”
Roland, also called Orlando, was the chief hero, and Oliver seems to have been his reflection or shadow. Roland was a nephew of Charlemagne. He is described in the “Song of Roland” as having a wonderful horse, a miraculous saber, and a magic horn, which he blew so that it could be heard thirty miles. The greatest story told of him is that he commanded the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army as they were returning from Spain through a pass in the Pyrenees Mountains. Set upon by 100,000 Saracens, Roland blew his magic horn so that his uncle the emperor heard it eight miles away.
In the advancing guard with Charlemagne, however, lurked an evil genius, who told the anxious emperor that Roland’s horn was not a signal of distress, but that his nephew was hunting stags in the mountains. Roland fought until the 100,000 Saracens were slain, and he had only fifty of his 20,000 soldiers left. Then 50,000 more Saracens came out of the mountains and killed the brave paladin and his fifty men. While Roland was dying of his wounds, this legend goes on, he threw his magic sword into