[102] My friend Colonel Lawrence tells me that the movement among the Arabs is somewhat as follows: (1) the sessile village cultivators are pushed out by over-population into the desert—very reluctantly; (2) they wander in the desert for a thousand years or so—as a stick pushed into the water gets carried about for a long way; (3) they are pushed again out of the desert, back again into sessile life by starvation—very reluctantly (they have learned to love the desert); and when they come back into sessile life they are on the other side—i.e. having started in west Arabia, they land in Mesopotamia. Thus they wander a thousand years or so, and end up thousands of miles from where they started.—E. B.

[103] Sir H. H. Johnston is inclined to believe that a common late Neolithic and early bronze culture spread widely in this primitive world. He links the Dravidian languages of India—some of which group are to be found in Beluchistan and the eastern fringe of Persia—with certain languages in the Caucasian Mountains, and these again with Basque. He would bring the Sumerians, the early Cretans, and the early peoples of Asia Minor into this early “brown” or dark white culture before the Aryans, Semites, or Hamites developed their language cultures and thrust across this band of primordial civilization. He connects these “class and prefix” languages with the creation of the African Bantu, but that is a speculation beyond the scope of this present work. A series of articles on this subject by the Rev. W. Crabtree will be found in the Journal of the African Society. The connection of Sumerian and Bantu was first suggested by Sir Richard Burton in 1885. These views are in complete accordance with Elliot Smith’s suggestion of a widespread heliolithic culture already dealt with in chap. xiii, § 4, p. 146

[104] Excavations conducted at Eridu by Capt. R. Campbell Thompson during the recent war have revealed an early Neolithic agricultural stage, before the invention of writing or the use of bronze, beneath the earliest Sumerian foundations. The crops were cut by sickles of earthenware. Capt. Thompson thinks that these pre-Sumerian people were not of Sumerian race, but proto-Elamites. Entirely similar Neolithic remains have been found at Susa, once the chief city of Elam.

[105] Sayce, in Babylonian and Assyrian Life, estimates that in 6500 B.C. Eridu was on the seacoast.

[106] Authorities vary upon this date. Some put back Sargon I to 3750 B.C. This latter was his traditional date based on Babylonian records.

[107] Of unknown language and race, “neither Sumerians nor Semites,” says Sayce. Their central city was Susa. Their archæology is still largely an unworked mine. They are believed by some, says Sir H. H. Johnston, to have been negroid in type. There is a strong negroid strain in the modern people of Elam.

[108] For most of these dates here Winckler in Helmolt’s World History has been followed.

[109] II. Kings xv. 29, and xvi. 7 et seq.

[110] II. Kings xvii. 3.

[111] To be murdered by his sons.

[112] Winckler (Craig), History of Babylonia and Assyria.

[113] “The original home or centre of development of this ‘Dynastic’ Egyptian type seems to have been in southern or south-western Arabia. This region of south-western and southern Arabia, ten to fifteen thousand years ago, was probably an even better favoured province than it is at the present day, when it still bears the Roman designation of Arabia Felix—so much of the rest of this gaunt, lava-covered, sand-strewn peninsula being decidedly ‘infelix.’ It has high mountains—a certain degree of rainfall on them, and was anciently clothed in rich forests before the camels, goats, and sheep of Neolithic and Bronze Age man nibbled away much of this verdure. Above all there grew trees oozing with delicious-scented resins or gums. These, when civilization dawned on the world, became very precious and an offering of sweet savour to the civilized man’s gods, because so grateful to his own nostrils.” Africa, by Sir H. H. Johnston.

[114] 3733 B.C., Wallis Budge.

[115] But compare the citation of Beowulf in Chap. XV, § 2.—R. L. C.

[116] The great pyramid is 450 feet high and its side 700 feet long. It is calculated (says Wallis Budge) to weigh 4,883,000 tons. All this stone was lugged into place chiefly by human muscle.

[117] There are variants to these names, and to most Egyptian names, for few self-respecting Egyptologists will tolerate the spelling of their colleagues. One may find, for instance, Thethmosis, Thoutmosis, Tahutmes, Thutmose, or Thethmosis; Amunothph, Amenhotep or Amenothes. A pleasing variation is to break up the name, as, for instance, Amen Hetep. This particular little constellation of variants is given here not only because it is amusing, but because it is desirable that the reader should know such variations exist. For most names the rule of this book has been to follow whatever usage has established itself in English literature, regardless of the possible contemporary pronunciation. Amenophis, for example, has been so written in English books for two centuries. It came into the language by indirect routes, but it is now as fairly established as is Damascus as the English name of a Syrian town. Nevertheless, there are limits to this classicism. The writer, after some vacillation, has abandoned Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson in the case of “Peisistratus” and “Keltic,” which were formerly spelt “Pisistratus” and “Celtic.”

[118] China and the League of Nations, a pamphlet by Mr. Liang-Chi-Chao. (Pekin Leader Office.)

[119] Here we touch on highly controversial matters. The reader interested in the question of the separate origin of the American civilization should consult Nature, Jan. 27, 1916, Spinden and Elliot Smith in discussion.

[120] F. Ratzel, History of Mankind.

[121] Sayce.

[122] Mosso, The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization.—R. L. G.

[123] Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships.

[124] See Evans’ Prehistoric Tombs of Cnossos.

[125] This is, I think, too dogmatic about Helen. True, raids on women were a real cause of war, but they were also a very favourite ficelle of fiction. A war with Troy might easily arise by the carrying off of a woman. But why was Troy destroyed six several times? It looks to me as if there was some strong motive for building just there, and an equally strong motive for great confederacies destroying the city when built.—G. M.

Walter Leaf in his Homer and History is in agreement with G. M. on this point.—G. Wh.

[126] There were no domesticated camels in Africa until after the Persian conquest of Egypt. This must have greatly restricted the desert routes. (See Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, note to Chap. VIII.) But the Sahara desert of 3000 or 2000 years ago was less parched and sterile than it is to-day. From rock engravings we may deduce the theory that the desert was crossed from oasis to oasis by riding oxen and by ox-carts: perhaps, also, on horses and asses. The camel as a beast of transport was seemingly not introduced into North Africa till the Arab invasions of the seventh century A.D. The fossil remains of camels are found in Algeria, and wild camels may have lingered in the wastes of the Sahara and Somaliland till the domesticated camel was introduced. The Nubian wild ass also seems to have extended its range to the Sahara.—H. H. J.

[127] There was Sumerian trade organized round the temples before the Semites got into Babylonia. See Hall and King, Archæological Discoveries in Western Asia.—E. B.

[128] Iron bars of fixed weight were used for coin in Britain. Cæsar, De Bello Gallico.—G. Wh.

[129] The earliest coinage of the west coast of Asia Minor was in electrum, a mixture of gold and silver, and there is an interesting controversy as to whether the first issues were stamped by cities, temples, or private bankers.—P. G.

[130] Small change was in existence before the time of Alexander. The Athenians had a range of exceedingly small silver coins running almost down to the size of a pinhead, which were generally carried in the mouth; a character in Aristophanes was suddenly assaulted, and swallowed his change in consequence.—P. G.

[131] There is an inn-keeper in Aristophanes, but it may be inferred from the circumstance that she is represented as letting lodgings in hell that the early inn left much to be desired.—P. G.

[132] See the Encyclopædia Brit., Article China, p. 218.

[133] The writer’s friend, Mr. L. Y. Chen, thinks that this is only partially true. He thinks that the emperors insisted upon a minute and rigorous study of the set classics in order to check intellectual innovation. This was especially the case with the Ming emperors, the first of whom, when reorganizing the examination system on a narrower basis, said definitely, “This will bring all the intellectuals of the world into my trap.” The Five Classics and the Four Books have imprisoned the mind of China.

[134] The Libyan alphabet survived in North Africa until a century ago, and was still used then for correspondence. It was supposed to be extinct, but in 1897 Sir Arthur Evans and Mr. J. L. Myres saw what looked like ancient Cretan lettering on some dyed skins from the Sahara in the bazaar at Tripoli. It was the ancient alphabet still in use for commercial signs.—E. B.

[135] The Sumerians allowed much more freedom and authority to women than the Semites. They had priestess-queens, and one of their great divinities was a goddess, Ishtar.

[136] See Johnson’s Byeways of British Archæology.

[137] Many Christian churches, almost all, indeed, built between the fifth century and the Renaissance, are oriented to the east. St. Peter’s at Rome is oriented east and west.

[138] In his Dawn of Astronomy.

[139] Legrain’s Le Temps des Rois d’Ur (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes) was useful here.

[140] Cp. Moses and the Egyptian Magicians.

[141] According to Winckler, Sargon II, unlike his son, was pro-priest, and his usurpation of the throne was the result of an intrigue of the Babylonian priests against the feudal Assyrian military system of Tiglath Pileser III.

[142] See the last two verses of the Second Book of Chronicles, and Ezra, ch. i.

[143] A book of the utmost interest and value here is Breasted’s Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt.

[144] See S. Sharpe’s Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity.

[145] Akhnaton lost some or all his father’s Syrian conquests.—G. W. B.

[146] Many authorities regard Alexander as a man with the ideas of a pushful nineteenth-century (A.D.) monarch, and consider this visit to Jupiter Ammon as a master-stroke of policy. He was, we are asked to believe, deliberately and cynically acquiring divinity as a “unifying idea.” The writer is totally unable to accept anything of the sort. For a discussion of the question, see Ferguson’s Greek Imperialism.

[147] “His reforming zeal made him unpopular with the upper classes. Schoolmen and pedants held up to the admiration of the people the heroes of the feudal times and the advantages of the system they administered. Seeing in this propaganda danger to the state, Shi Hwang-ti determined to break once and for all with the past. To this end he ordered the destruction of all books having reference to the past history of the empire, and many scholars were put to death for failing in obedience to it.”—The late Sir R. K. Douglas in the Encyclopædia Brit., article China.

Mr. L. Y. Chen does not agree with Sir R. K. Douglas here. He thinks that the motives of Shi Hwang-ti were obscurantist. His object was the intellectual slavery of the people. He collected a library for his own use.

[148] There were literary expressions of social discontent in Egypt before 2000 B.C. See “Social Forces and Religion” in Breasted’s Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt for some of the earliest complaints of the common man under the ancient civilizations.

[149] The student should compare with this J. J. Atkinson’s account (in his Primal Law) of the significance of marriage by capture and his theory of the origin of marriage.

[150] See also his shorter Social Life of the Babylonians and Assyrians.

[151] See Mary Austin, The Flock.

[152] J. L. M. says this is the view of a Londoner. In a village or small town where everyone knows everyone, long credits are possible with barter. In Asia Minor there is much reckoning with quite imaginary money of account.

[153] From casta, a word of Portuguese origin; the Indian word is varna, colour.

[154] In the time of Confucius classes were much more fixed than later. Under the Han Dynasty the competitive examination system was not yet established. Scholars were recommended for appointments by local dignitaries, etc.—L. Y. C.

[155] The Grand Canal of China, the longer portion of which was made in the sixth century A.D., has a total length of nearly 900 miles. It was begun in the fifth century B.C. “Between Su-chow and Chin-kiang the canal is often 100 feet wide and its sides are, in many places, faced with stone. It is spanned by fine stone bridges, and near its banks are many memorial arches and lofty pagodas.” The Great Wall of China, which was begun in the third century B.C., was built originally to defend China against the Huns. It is about 1500 miles long; its average height is between 20 and 30 feet, and every 200 yards there are towers 40 feet high.

[156] Damascus was already making Damask, and “Damascening” steel.

[157] The Encyclopædia Biblica has been of great use here.

[158] This is probably much too early an estimate. The Book of Daniel was not written until 167-5 B.C. Ecclesiastes and several Psalms are later than Alexander.—G. W. B.

[159] See also G. B. Gray, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament.

[160] This may seem to contradict Genesis xx. 15, and xxi. and xxvi. various verses, but compare with this the Encyclopædia Biblica article Philistines.

[161] So this name should be spelt in English. It is now the fashion among the learned and among the sceptical to spell it Yahwe or Jahveh or Jahve, or in some such fashion. There is a justification for this in the fact that at first only the consonants were written in Hebrew, and then, for reasons into which we will not enter here, the wrong vowels were inserted in this name. But ever since the days of Tyndale’s Bible, Jehovah has been established in English literature as the name of the God of Israel, and it is not to be lightly altered. There is at present a deplorable tendency to strange spelling among historians. Attention has already been called to the confusion that is being accumulated in people’s minds by the variable spelling of Egyptologists, but the tendency is now almost universal among historical writers. In an otherwise admirable little book, The Opening-up of Africa, by Sir H. H. Johnston, for example, one finds him spelling Saul as Sha’ul and Solomon as Shelomoh; Jerusalem becomes Yerusalim and the Hebrews, Habiru or Ibrim. Historians do not realize how the mind of the general reader is distressed and discouraged by these constantly fluctuating attempts to achieve phonetic exactitude. This treatment of old forms has much the same effect as the dazzle-painting of ships that went on during the submarine warfare. It is dazzle-spelling. The ordinary educated man is so confused that he fails altogether to recognize even his oldest friends under their modern disguises. He loses his way in the story hopelessly. The old events occur to novel names in unfamiliar places. He conceives a disgust for history in which no record seems to tally with any other record. Still more maddening and confusing is the variable spelling of Chinese names. A large part of the popular indifference to Chinese history may be due to the impossibility of holding on to the thread of a story in which one narrator talks of T’sin and another of Sin, and both forms mix themselves with Chin and T’chin. A boldly Europeanized name, such as Confucius, is far more readily grasped. Modern writers in their zeal for phonetics seem to have lost their sense of proportion. It is of far more importance not merely to civilization, but to the welfare, respect, and endowment of historians, that the general community should form clear and sound ideas of historical processes, than that it should pronounce the name Jehovah exactly as this or that learned gentleman believes it was pronounced by the Hebrews of the days of Ezra. A day may come in the future for one final, conclusive reform in the spelling of historical names. Meanwhile, it will probably save school teachers of history from endless confusion and muddle if they adhere firmly to the time-established spelling. Yet we have attempted no pedantic classicalism. The reader will find Peisistratus for Goldsmith’s Pisistratus, the Arabic spelling of Muhammad, Kelt for Celt, and Habsburg taking the place of the older Hapsburg.

[162] Figures certainly exaggerated.—G. M.

[163] That is, where is the glory?

[164] But upon the question whether its “Centralization” was the work of Solomon or a much later idea, cp. S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy (Int. Crit. Commentary).—G. W. B.

[165] Estimates of the cubit vary. The greatest is 44 inches. This would extend the width to seventy-odd feet.

[166] But one version of the Creation story and the Eden story, though originally from Babylon, seem to have been known to the Hebrews before the Exile.—G. W. B.

[167] For early Egyptian anticipations of the idea of a Messiah and of the prophetic style, see Breasted’s Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt. A very good book on the Hebrew prophets is W. A. C. Allen’s Old Testament Prophets.

[168] Fletcher H. Swift’s Education in Ancient Israel from Earliest Times to A.D. 70 is an interesting account of the way in which the Jewish religion, because it was a literature-sustained religion, led to the first efforts to provide elementary education for all the children in the community.

[169] Ridgeway’s Early History of Greece has been used here, and Gilbert Murray’s Rise of the Greek Epic.

[170] Roger Pocock’s Horses is a good and readable book on these questions.

[171] This is a little misleading. I may quote from C. D. Buch, Introduction to the Study of Greek Dialects (a) “The great majority of the dialects play no rôle whatever in literature” (p. 14); (b) “In the course of literary development the dialects” (in a mixed and artificial form, e.g. the “epic” dialect) “came to be characteristic of certain classes of literature; and their rôle once established, the choice usually depended upon this factor, rather than upon the native dialect of the author.” (p. 12.) Speaking generally, each class of literature preserved the dialect of the region where it was first cultivated.

The following work is a most illuminating one on this subject: A. Meillet, Aperçu d’une Histoire de la Langue Grecque (Paris, 1913).—H. L. J.

[172] Vowels were less necessary for the expression of a Semitic language. In the early Semitic alphabets only A, I, and U were provided with symbols, but for such a language as Greek, in which many of the inflectional endings are vowels, a variety of vowel signs was indispensable.

[173] See Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth, Bury’s History of Greece, and Barker’s Greek Political Theory.

[174] “For them the state did not exist.” This needs qualification. Cephalus, at whose house the conversation of Plato’s Republic is placed, was a resident alien. He was a wealthy man in the best society, and taken as a type of the “happy man.” His son, Lysias, was a leading orator. Even in the matter of the slaves: the Old Oligarch, in the “Constitution of Athens,” complains that the Athenian slaves had no distinctive dress or manners, and so a gentleman could not even push one of them! In the Republic itself there is a description of the Democratic State, in which the slaves push you off the pavement. Moreover, even during the Peloponnesian War, there was no persecution of aliens and no expulsion of aliens from Athens. They were evidently a loyal and contented class. True, in time of food shortage, the claims of everybody to true citizenship were scrutinized more and more closely; but that was unavoidable.—G. M.

[175] I do not agree with “hereditary barristers” or “fee-hunting.” The Athenian dicasts were not barristers, but judges: they sat in panels (sometimes a panel of some hundreds) and judged. They had to be paid for attendance as judges (don’t we pay jurymen?) because it took them away from their work as potters, dyers, and stone-masons. Pay was a genuine and good democratic institution; it was just what made possible the ordinary citizen’s co-operation in the life of the state, and stopped its business from being the perquisite of the rich. I feel strongly that the text is unjust to Athens.—E. B.

See Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth, and Barker’s Greek Political Theory, pp. 29-30.

[176] From ostrakon, a tile; the voter wrote the name on a tile or shell.

[177] 776 B.C. is the year of the First Olympiad, a valuable starting-point in Greek chronology.

[178] It is, at least, doubtful whether any change of climate expelled either lion or elephant from southeast Europe and Asia Minor; the cause of their gradual disappearance was—I think—nothing but Man, increasingly well armed for the chase. Lions lingered in the Balkan peninsula till about the fourth century B.C., if not later. Elephants had perhaps disappeared from western Asia by the eighth century B.C. The lion (much bigger than the existing form) stayed on in southern Germany till the Neolithic period. The panther inhabited Greece, southern Italy, and southern Spain likewise till the beginning of the historical period (say 1000 B.C.).—H. H. J.

[179] But a thousand years earlier the Hittites seem to have had paved high roads running across their country.

[180] But cp. Bury’s History of Greece, ch. vi., § 5.

[181] Winckler, in Helmolt’s Universal History.

[182] See in relation to this chapter, Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth. A very handy book for the student in this section is Abbott’s Skeleton Outline of Greek History.

[183] Ancient Greek Literature, by Gilbert Murray (Heinemann, 1911).

[184] Plutarch.

[185] For an account of his views, see Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers is also a good book for this section.

[186] “But it was not only against the lives, properties, and liberties of Athenian citizens that the Thirty made war. They were not less solicitous to extinguish the intellectual force and education of the city, a project so perfectly in harmony both with the sentiment and practice of Sparta, that they counted on the support of their foreign allies. Among the ordinances which they promulgated was one, expressly forbidding any one ‘to teach the art of words.’ The edict of the Thirty was, in fact, a general suppression of the higher class of teachers or professors, above the rank of the elementary (teacher of letters or) grammatist. If such an edict could have been maintained in force for a generation, combined with the other mandates of the Thirty—the city out of which Sophocles and Euripides had just died, and in which Plato and Isocrates were in vigorous age, would have been degraded to the intellectual level of the meanest community in Greece. It was not uncommon for a Grecian despot to suppress all those assemblies wherein youths came together for the purpose of common training, either intellectual or gymnastic, as well as the public banquets and clubs or associations, as being dangerous to his authority, tending to elevation of courage, and to a consciousness of political rights among the citizens.”—Grote’s History of Greece.

[187] A very good and useful account of this great literature for the reader who is not a classical student is Norwood’s Greek Tragedy.

[188] Mahaffy.

[189] There is not a single sentence in praise of Alexander, no dedication, no compliments, in all Aristotle. On the other hand, he never mentions Demosthenes nor quotes him in the Rhetoric.—G. M.

[190] Wheeler.

[191] Bauer, in Vom Griechentum zum Christentum, says that Alexander sent a mission of exploration to Abyssinia to enable Aristotle to settle the question of the cause of the Nile inundations (melting of mountain snows), and that he also had tropical flora and other material collected for him—E. B.

[192] Ancient Greek Literature.

[193] Jung in his Psychology of the Unconscious is very good in his chapter I on the differences between ancient (pre-Athenian) thought and modern thought. The former he calls Undirected Thinking, the latter Directed Thinking. The former was a thinking in images, akin to dreaming; the latter a thinking in words. Science is an organization of directed thinking. The Antique spirit (before the Greek thinkers, i.e.) created not science but mythology. The ancient human world was a world of subjective fantasies like the world of children and uneducated young people to-day, and like the world of savages and dreams. Infantile thought and dreams are a re-echo of the prehistoric and savage. Myths are the mass dreams of peoples, and dreams the myths of individuals. The work of hard and disciplined thinking by means of carefully analyzed words and statements which was begun by the Greek thinkers and resumed by the scholastic philosophers of whom we shall tell in the middle ages, was a necessary preliminary to the development of modern science.

[194] “For the proper administration of justice and for the distribution of authority it is necessary that the citizens be acquainted with each other’s characters, so that, where this cannot be, much mischief ensues, both in the use of authority and in the administration of justice; for it is not just to decide arbitrarily, as must be the case with excessive population.” Aristotle’s Politics, quoted by Wheeler, who adds, “Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the natural ‘limit to the size of the state must be found in the capability of being easily taken in at a glance.’” But Murray notes that the word Eusunopton means also “capable of being comprehended as a unity”—a very different and wider idea.

[195] Benjamin Ide Wheeler’s Alexander the Great and G. D. Hogarth’s Philip and Alexander have been very useful here.

[196] To the common Athenians, that is. But to many thoughtful Greeks the rôle of Macedonia in their future was a matter of earnest speculation. Herodotus (viii. 137) tells a long story of a prophecy by which the inheritance of Perdiccas, the ancestor of the Macedonian kings, was to embrace at last the whole round world. This was written a hundred years before Philip and Alexander.

[197] Goldsmith’s History of Greece. The picturesque disposition of the novelist rather than the austere method of the historian, is apparent here.