WHEN the Achaeans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about conditions in Greece.
Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their disastrous1 war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily2 clever man by the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly3 good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before.
Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging4 the destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers.
Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached India. In the meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king—he had overthrown5 the Persian empire he had given orders to rebuild Babylon—he had led his troops into the heart of the Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a Macedonian province and dependency. Then he stopped and announced even more ambitious plans.
The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek language—they must live in cities built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master. The military camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the newly imported Greek civilisation6. Higher and higher did the flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when suddenly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.
Then the waters receded7. But they left behind the fertile clay of a higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish ambitions and his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable service. His Empire did not long survive him. A number of ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves. But they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world brotherhood8 of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge.
They maintained their independence until the Romans added western Asia and Egypt to their other domains9. The strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the Roman conquerors10. During the following centuries, it got such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel its influence in our own lives this very day.
A SUMMARY
A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20
THUS far, from the top of our high tower we have been looking eastward11. But from this time on, the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must take you to study the western landscape.
Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to ourselves what we have seen.
First of all I showed you prehistoric12 man—a creature very simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I told you how he was the most defenceless of the many animals that roamed through the early wilderness13 of the five continents, but being possessed14 of a larger and better brain, he managed to hold his own.
Then came the glaciers15 and the many centuries of cold weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished to survive. Since, however, that "wish to survive" was (and is) the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt16 to the last gasp17 of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy18 people manage to exist through the long cold spells which killed many ferocious19 animals, but when the earth became warm and comfortable once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of things which gave him such great advantages over his less intelligent neighbors that the danger of extinction20 (a very serious one during the first half million years of man's residence upon this planet) became a very remote one.
I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly plodding21 along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not well understood) the people who lived in the valley of the Nile rushed ahead and almost over night, created the first centre of civilisation.
Then I showed you Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," which was the second great school of the human race. And I made you a map of the little island bridges of the AEgean Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of the old east to the young west, where lived the Greeks.
Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hellenes, who thousands of years before had left the heart of Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who, since then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told you the story of the little Greek cities that were really states, where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured (that is a big word, but you can "figure out" what it means) into something quite new, something that was much nobler and finer than anything that had gone before.
When you look at the map you will see how by this time civilisation has described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt, and by way of Mesopotamia and the AEgean Islands it moves westward22 until it reaches the European continent. The first four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peoples) have carried the torch that was to illuminate23 the world. They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who become the teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean24 just when the eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) possession.
This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises the victorious25 Roman Empire, which is to take this Egyptian-Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost corners of the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon which our modern society is based.
I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold of these few principles, the rest of our history will become a great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go back to our story and give you an account of the famous war between Carthage and Rome.
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1
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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4
avenging
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| adj.报仇的，复仇的v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 )；为…报复 | |
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5
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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7
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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domains
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| n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产 | |
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conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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13
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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14
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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15
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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16
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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17
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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18
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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19
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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20
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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21
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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23
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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24
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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