Columbia (Hnitiem'tp

THE LIBRARIES
o <

< I
— ui

2 2

o u
c <
 4> 73
73
73
.- «! rt Q

i- " I .^ I 111
•s 2 -a

4} O (U -O

o ^ ii ^ C
T-l »-• 11 TO

-M '-^ ,-\ >

•S S ^ S ^
 OUTLINES OF
EUROPEAN HISTORY
PART I

EARLIEST MAN
THE ORIENT, GREECE, AND ROME
BY

JAMES HENRY BREASTED

PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY AND ORIENTAL HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

EUROPE FROM THE BREAK-UP OF THE

ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE OPENING
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
BY

JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

GINN AND COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1914, IJY JAMES HARVEY ROlilXSON
AND JAMES HENRY BREASTED
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

V.
514-10

1 4-1

^f

\n

GINN AND COMPANY- PRO-

PRIETORS •BOSTON • U.S.A.
 PREFACE

General European history is one of the most perplexing sub-

jects to deal with in the high school. It seems essential that
boys and girls should have some knowledge of the whole past
of mankind ; without that they can have no real understanding .
of the world in which they live, for the simple reason that the
present can only be explained by the past. The older historical
manuals were, in the main, short accounts of past eve?its\ but
it is really past conditions and past institutions that are best
worth knowing about. The older books tended, moreover, to
give too much attention to the remote past and too little in-
formation inregard to recent history, so that there was little
chance of the pupil's realizing the vital bearing of the past on
the present.
The aim of the " Outlines of European History " is to avoid
these defects of the older books, first, by frankly subordinating
the mere happenings of the past to a clear statement of the con-
ditions under which men lived for long periods and of the ideas
which they held ; and, secondly, by devoting about half of the
work, namely. Part II, to the past hundred and fifty or two
hundred years, which concern us most immediately.
The arrangement of the volumes is novel in a number of
respects. Each chapter is divided into several topical sections,
as will be seen by consulting the Table of Contents. The topics
are, of course, arranged with strict attention to chronology, but the
writers have always before them a particular subject which they
aim to make plain under each section heading. In short, each
section is a discussible topic and not a fragme7it of chronology.
The authors hope that this plan of presentation will serve to
make the books more useful and teachable than the older
method of arrangement.
iv Outlmes of European History

In the preparation of Chapters XlI-XXVIIl the writer has

made free use of the corresponding matter in his Ititroduciion
to the History of Western Europe. But a good deal in the older
book has been omitted, new matter has been introduced, many
fundamental readjustments have been made, and the method
of presentation has been reconsidered from beginning to end.
Great attention has been given to the illustrations, especially
in Part I, where the vastness of the field to be covered and the
necessary brevity of the text render it absolutely essential to
reenforce the written word by reproductions of the actual ves-
tiges of the past. Not only have the illustrations been carefully
chosen with a view of corroborating and vivifying the text but
under each picture a sufficiently detailed legend is given to ex-
plain its significance, and these often add materially to the in-
formation given in the letterpress. The pictures consequently
give a sort of parallel narrative and furnish a helpful supple-
ment and corrective to the text itself. Everything which does
not obviously bear upon the chief matters under consideration
is sedulously excluded.
These volumes meet the growing demand for a t7ao-yesir
course in European history in the high school and the prepara-
tory schools. The great achievements of the oriental peoples
and of the Greek and Roman periods are brought into immediate
relation with later European development, without devoting a
whole year's study to them. English history, if somewhat briefly
treated, is given its proper association with that of the neigh-
boring nations on the Continent. By devoting the whole second
year to the history of the last two centuries, the student will be
in a position to grasp the more immediate causes of the con-
ditions in the midst of which we live.
In the preparation of Part I the authors have received great
aid from Professor David S. Muzzey in the difficult task of pre-
senting the development of Greece in a brief form ; valuable
suggestions and emendations have also been contributed by
Dr. Carl F. Huth and Mr. A. F. Barnard of Chicago. To
 Preface v

Dr. Huth's kindness is also due the valuable bibliography for

Chapters V-XI, for which the authors are greatly indebted to him.
Hearty thanks are due to Mr. E. R. Smith of the Avery
Library and to the publishers for their hearty cooperation in
solving the complicated problems involved in the selection and
reproduction of the illustrations. To Mrs. William T. Brewster
we are indebted for the delightful water-color sketch of the plain
of Argos from the citadel of ancient Tiryms (Plate II, p. 124).
Besides photographs furnished by the University of Chicago
Eg)'-ptian Expedition, many illustrations in Chapters I-XI have
been contributed by a number of foreign scholars, to whom the
authors w^ould here express their thanks, especially to Bissing
(Munich), Borchardt (Cairo), Dechelette (Roanne), Dorpfeld
(Athens and Berlin), Hoernes (Vienna), Koldewey (Babylon),
Montelius (Stockholm), Schaefer (Berlin), Steindorff (Leipzig),
and some others, who have kindly furnished photographs and
sketches. In these chapters (I-XI) the authors are also especially
indebted to Messrs. L'nderwood & L'nderwood for permission to
use their unrivaled series of Egyptian, oriental, and Mediter-
ranean photographs as the basis for a number of sketches :
Figs. 9, 10, 54, 57, 69, 72, 76, 80, 81, ^2,, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90,
94, 103, 109, 117, also tailpiece, p. no. In no other way can
impressions of the places and scenes where the men of the
early world lived and wrought be obtained so vividly as by the
use of these L^nderwood photographs in stereoscopic form.
Teachers who make the Underwood stereographs, from which
the above list of figures is taken, a part of their equipment
will find that their teaching gains enormously in effectiveness.

J. H. R.
J. H. B.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Early Mankind in Europe

1. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress i

2. The Early Stone Age 3
3. The Middle Stone Age 6
4. The Late Stone Age 10
5. Late Stone Age Europe and the Orient 14

II. The Story of Egypt

6. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants 17
7. The Pyramid Age 27
8. The Feudal Age 42
9. The Empire 44

III. Western Asia: Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea

10. The Lands and Races of Western Asia 56
11. The Earliest Babylonians 61
12. The Age of Hammurapi and after 67
13. Early Assyria and her Rivals 70
14. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.) 71
15. The Chaldean Empire: the Last Semitic Empire ... 80

IV. Western Asia: the Medo-Persian Empire and the

Hebrews
16. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion ... 86
17. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster 91
18. The Persian Empire 95
19. The Hebrews lo.i

V. The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks

20. The Mgean Civilization iii
21. The Early Greeks 123
22. The Greek City-States under Kings 127

VI. The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece

23. Civilization in the Age of the Nobles 136
24. Greek Expansion in the Age of the Nobles 146
vii
viii Outlines of Einvpcan History
CHAPTER PAGE

25. The Industrial and Commercial Revolution .... 148

26. Rise of the Democracy and the Age of the Tyrants . 153
27. Civilization in the Age of the Tyrants 159

VII. The Repulse of Persia and the Athenian Empire

28. The Struggle with Persia 166
29. The Rise of the Athenian Empire 178
30. Civilization of Imperial Athens in the Age of Pericles . 184

VIII. The Destruction of the Athenian Empire and the

End of Greek Power
31. The Second Peloponnesian War and the Fall of Athens 1 96
32. The Higher Life of Athens after Pericles 203
33. The Age of Spartan Leadership 208
34. The Leadership of Thebes 212

IX. Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age

35. The Rise of Macedonia 215
36. Campaigns of Alexander the Great 217
37. International Policy of Alexander: its Personal Con-
sequences 224
38. The Heirs of Alexander's Empire 229
39. The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 232

X. The Western World and Rome to the Fall of the

Republic
40. The Western Mediterranean World and Early Italy . 241
41. Earliest Rome 247
42. The Expansion of the Roman Republic 254
43. The Carthaginian Wars 258
44. W^orld Dominion and Civil War 261

XL The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity

45. The Reign of Augustus 271
46. Civilization after Augustus and its Decline 282
47. Popularity of Oriental Religions and the Spread of
Early Christianity 296
48. Internal Revolution and the Collapse of Ancient Civi-
lization 301
49. The Triumph of Christianity 306
50. Retrospect 310
 Contents ix
CHAPTER PAGE

XII. The German Invasions and the Break-up of the

Roman Empire
51. Founding of Kingdoms by Barbarian Chiefs . ... 315
52. Kingdom of the Franks 325
53. Results of the Barbarian Invasions 329
XIII. The Rise of the Papacy
54. The Christian Church 334
55. Origin of the Power of the Popes 340

XIV. The Monks and their Missionary Work; the

Mohammedans
56. Monks and Monasteries 348
57. Missionary Work of the Monks 355
58. Mohammed and his ReHgion 358
59. Conquests of the Mohammedans ; the Caliphate . . 364

XV. Charlemagne and his Empire

60. Conquests of Charlemagne 369
61. Establishment of a Line of Emperors in the West . 376
62. How Charlemagne carried on his Government . . . ^-jj
XVI. The Age of Disorder; Feudalism
63. The Disruption of Charlemagne's Empire .... 381
64. The Medieval Castle 387
65. The Serfs and the Manor 394
66. The Feudal System 397
67. Neighborhood Warfare in the Middle Ages .... 401
XVII. England in the Middle Ages
68. The Norman Conquest 405
69. Henry II and the Plantagenets 411
70. The Great Charter and the Beginnings of Parliament 419
71. Wales and Scotland 422
72. The Hundred Years' War 426
XVIII. Popes and Emperors
73. Origin of the Holy Roman Empire 438
74. The Church and its Property 440
75. Powers claimed by the Popes 446
76. Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV 447
77. The Hohenstaufen Emperors and the Popes . . . 452
X Outlines of European History
CHAPTER PAGE

XIX. The Crusades

78. Origin of the Crusades 460
79. The First Crusade 464
80. Religious Orders of the Hospitalers and Templars . 468
81. The Second and Later Crusades 470
82. Chief Results of the Crusades 472

XX. The Medieval Church at its Height

83. Organization and Powers of the Church 475
84. The Heretics and the Inquisition 481
85. The Franciscans and Dominicans 484
86. Church and State 489

XXI. Medieval Towns — their Business and Buildings

87. The Towns and Guilds 497
88. Business in the Later Middle Ages 502
89. Gothic Architecture 509
90. The Italian Cities of the Renaissance 516
91. Early Geographical Discoveries 526

XXII. Books and Science in the Middle Ages

92. How the Modern Languages originated 533
93. The Troubadours and Chivalry 538
94. Medieval Science 541
95. Medieval Universities and Studies 544
96. Beginnings of Modern Inventions 549
97. The Art of the Renaissance 558

XXIII. Emperor Charles V and his Vast Realms

98. Emperor Maximilian and the Hapsburg Marriages . 562
99. How Italy became the Battleground of the European
Powers 568
100. Condition of Germany when Charles V became
Emperor 574

XXIV. Martin Luther and the Revolt of Germany

against the Papacy
loi. The Question of Reforming the Church: Erasmus . 578
102. How Martin Luther revolted against the Papacy . . 582
103. The Diet at Worms, 1 520-1 521 593
 Contents xi
CHAPTER PAGE

104. The Revolt against the Papacy begins in Germany 596

105. Division of Germany into Catholic and Protestant
Countries 600

XXV. The Protestant Revolt in Switzerland and

England
106. Zwingli and Calvin 605
107. How England fell away from the Papacy .... 608
108. England becomes Protestant 614

XXVI. The Wars of Religion

109. The Council of Trent ; the Jesuits 619
no. Philip II and the Revolt of the Netherlands , . 625
111. The Huguenot Wars in France 631
112. England under Queen Elizabeth 639
113. The Thirty Years' War 646
114. The Beginnings of our Scientific Age 652

XXVII. Struggle in England between King and Par-

liament
115. James I and the Divine Right of Kings .... 659
116. How Charles I got along without Parliament . . 662
117. How Charles I lost his Head 667
118. Oliver Cromwell : England a Commonwealth . . 670
119. The Restoration 676
120. The Revolution of 1688 678

XXVIII. France under Louis XIV

121. Position and Character of Louis XIV 681
122. How Louis encouraged Art and Literature . . . 685
I 23. Louis XIV attacks his Neighbors 688
124. Louis XIV and his Protestant Subjects .... 690
125. War of the Spanish Succession 692

BIBLIOGRAPHY 697
INDEX 713
 LIST OF COLORED PLATES
Plate I page
RESTORATION OF THE GREAT PYRAMIDS AND OTHER
TOMB MONUMENTS IN THE ANCIENT CEMETERY OF
GiZEH, EGYPT Frontispiecc

Plate II
THE PLAIN OF ARGOS FROM THE CASTLE OF TIRYNS 1 24

Plate III
THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS FROM THE WEST . . 180

Plate IV
A CORNER OF THE PARTHENON 1 92

Plate V
GREEKS AND PERSIANS HUNTING LIONS WITH ALEX-
ANDER THE GREAT 224

Plate VI
STREET SCENE IN CAIRO 362

Plate VII
SCENES FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 408

Plate VIII
PAGE FROM A BOOK OF HOURS, FIFTEENTH CENTURY 552
 LIST OF MAPS
PAGE

The Ancient Orient 56-57

The Chaldean Empire ; Medo-Persian Empire 80-81
Palestine, the Land of the Hebrews 102-103
The Ancient Greek World 146-147
Plan of Athens and its Harbor of Piraeus 173
Ancient Italy, Sicily, and Carthage 245
Plan of Rome under the Emperors 250
The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent 276-277
Migrations of the Germans 318-319
Europe in the Time of Theodoric 323
Dominions of the Franks under the Merovingians 328
The Mohammedan Conquests at their Greatest Extent .... 365
Europe in the Time of Charlemagne 374-375
Treaty of Mersen 382
Plantagenet Possessions in England and France 415
The British Isles . 422-423
Europe about a.d. iooo 440-441
Italian Towns in the Twelfth Century 454
Routes of the Crusaders 464-465
Crusaders' States in Syria 466
Commercial Towns and Made Routes, Thirteenth and Four-
teenth Centuries 504-505
The Voyages of Discovery 527
The Malay Archipelago 529
Behaim's Globe, 1492 530-531
Europe about the Middle of the Sixteenth Century .... 572-573
The Swiss Confederation 606
Europe when Louis XIV began his Personal Government . 682-683
Europe after the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt .... 694-695
 OUTLINES OF
EUROPEAN HISTORY

CHAPTER I

EARLY MANKIND IN EUROPE

Section i. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress

A new-born child placed in the wilds of a tropical forest and Nature does
left there alone would of course die. If, however, we can imag- wkh*^knowr
ine him possessinej
r o the strens^th
o to survive until he reached
^ the ^^s^ °^.
civilization
age of ten years, he would know none of the many things which
a boy of ten in your town or city now knows. Hunger would
have led him to eat the nuts, fruits, and digestible roots and
tubers which he would find in the forest. But if you should
show him a chair, he would not know what its use might be. If
you placed him in front of a door, he would not know how to
open it. He would possess no tools or weapons or implements
of any kind, nor any clothing. He would probably never have
seen a fire ; or, if so, he would not know how to make one or
realize that his food might be cooked. Finally, he would not even
know how to speak, or that there was such a thing as speech.
All these things every child among us learns from others. Earliest man
But the earliest men had no one to teach them these things, everything
and by slow experience and long effort they had to learn them
for themselves. Everything had to be found out; every tool,
however simple, had to be invented ; and, above all, the earliest
man had to discover that he could express his feelings and
ideas by making sounds with his throat and mouth. At first
thought the men who began such discoveries seem to us to be
 Outlines of European Histor)'

mere animals. Nevertheless the earliest man possessed, among

other advantages, three things which lifted him high above the
animals. He had a larger and a more powerful brain than any
animal ; he had a pair of wonderful hands such as no other
creature possessed, and with these he could make tools and im-
plementsfinally,
; he had a throat and vocal organs such that
in the course of ages he would learn to speak.
Condition of At first man must have roamed the tropical forests without
earliest man
any clothing, without huts or shelter of any kind, with no tools
or weapons, eating roots, fruit or berries where he found them.
Occasionally he may have found a dead bird or animal killed
by some other creature, and thus learning the taste of flesh he
would be led to pursue the less dangerous animals and to lay
them low with a stone or a club. His food was of course all
raw, for he could not even make a fire, nor did he know that
roasted fiesh was better food.
Condition Men so completely uncivilized as this no longer exist on
of the
Tasmanians earth. The most savage tribes found by explorers have learned
of modern
times how useful fire is and they understand how to make it. The
people whom the English found on the island of Tasmania a
century or so ago were among the lowest savages known to us.
They wore no clothing ; they had not learned how to build a
hut ; they did not know how to make a bow and arrows, nor
even to fish. They had no goats, sheep, or cows, no horses,
nor even a dog. They had never heard of sowing seed nor
raising a crop of any kind. They did not know that clay will
harden in the fire, and so they had no pottery jars, jugs, or
dishes for food.
Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy
only a very few of man's needs. Yet that which they had
learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest men.
They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in cold weather,
and over it they cooked their meat. In order to secure this
meat they had learned to construct very good spears, though
without metal tips, for they had never heard of metal. These
 Early Mankind in Europe 3

spears they could throw with great accuracy and thus bring
down the game they needed for food, or drive away their
human enemies. They could take a flat stone, and by chipping
off its edges to thin them they could produce a rude knife
with which to skin and cut up the game they killed. They were
also very deft in making cups, vessels, and baskets of bark
fiber. Above all, they had a simple language, with words for all
the things they used, and this language served for everything
they needed to say.
It is certain that man has existed on the earth for several Progress of
hundred thousand years at least. We cannot now trace all the ^rTceable\y
different stages in his progress, which brought him at last as "s a^fter he be-
far as the savage Tasmanians had come. We do not know all stone tools
the various steps which finally enabled him to speak. With fire
he would become acquainted from the forest fires kindled by
lightning, or from the floods of molten lava descending the
slopes of the fiery mountains along the Mediterranean. The
wooden clubs and other weapons or tools of wood which he
made in this stage of his career have, of course, long ago per-
ished. As soon as he began to make stone tools, however, he was
producing something which might last for untold thousands of
years. This art he first learned in Europe some fifty thousand
years ago. After that he left behind him a trail of stone tools,
and by these we can follow him through the different stages of
his upward progress, as they show us his increasing skill in such
matters. We thus find that he passed through three stages : the
Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Late Stone Age.

Section 2. The Early Stone Age

A few rough and irregular fragments of flint still survive to Early Stone
show us man's earliest attempts to make weapons or tools of Age tools
stone. The form which he finally adopted as his first successful
tool, however, is a roughly shaped piece of flint as long as a
man's hand, which we call a fist-hatchet (Fig. i). Its ragged
 Outlines of European History

edge was sufficiently sharp so that its owner could cut and
chop with it. Its maker had not learned to attach a handle, but
he grasped it firmly in his fist. The
,y^^..
first of these fist-hatchets discovered in
modern times was found in England
two hundred years ago, but at that
time no one understood its enormous
age, or guessed who had made it. For
the last fifty years such fist-hatchets
have been found in large numbers
deeply buried under the sand and
soil that has gathered since their
owners used them along the rivers
of France, Belgium, and England.
They are found side by side with
the bones of tropical animals of vast
size, showing that the men who
made these stone tools lived in a
much warmer climate than that of
Fig. I. A Flint Fist- Europe to-day.
hatchet OF THE Early
We may call the period of the
Stone Age
fist-hatchets the Early Stone Age.
The earliest finished tool
The man of that day, some fifty
produced by man, chipped
from a great flake of flint thousand years ago, led the life of
some fifty thousand years a hunter, roaming about in the
ago. The original is about
nine inches long, and the
shadows of the lofty forests which
drawing reduces it to less fringed the streams and covered the
than one third. It was wide plains of western Europe. The
grasped in the fist by the
upper (narrower) part, and
ponderous hippopotamus wallowed
never had any handle. Han- along the banks oY the rivers. The
dles of wood or horn do fierce rhinoceros with a horn three
not appear until much later
(compare Fig. 7)
feet long charged through the jungles
of what is now France and England.
The hunter fleeing before them caught dim glimpses of moun-
tainous elephants plunging through the thick tropical growth.
 Eaj'ly Mankind in Europe 5
Herds of bison and wild horses grazed on the uplands and
the glades resounded far and wide with the notes of tropical
birds which settled in swarms upon the tree tops. At night the
hunter slept where the chase found him, trembling in the
darkness at the roar of the lion or the mighty saber-tooth
tiger.
For thousands of years the life of the hunter went on with The
of thecoming
ice
litde change. He slowly improved his rough stone fist-hatchet,
and he probably learned to make additional implements of
wood, but of these last we know nothing. Then he began to
notice that the air of his forest home was losing its tropical'
warmth. Geologists have not yet found out why, but as the
centuries passed, the ice which all the year round still overlies
the region of the North Pole and the summits of the Alps be-
gan to descend. The northern ice crept further and further
southward until it covered England as far south as the Thames.
The glaciers of the Alps pushed down the Rhone valley as far
as the spot where the city of Lyons now stands. On our own
continent of North America the southern edge of the ice is
marked by lines of bowlders carried and left there by the ice.
Such lines of bowlders are found, for example, as far south as
Long Island and westward along the valleys of the Ohio and
the Missouri.^ The hunter saw the glittering blue masses of ice
with their crown of snow, pushing through the green of his forest
abode and crushing down vast trees in many a sheltered glen or
favorite hunting ground. Gradually these savage men of early
F.urope were forced to accustom themselves to a cold climate,
but many of the animals familiar to the hunter retreated to the
warmer south, never to return.

1 Geologists have now shown that the ice advanced southward and retreated
to the north again, no less than four times. Following each advance of the ice
a warm interval caused its retreat. There were four warm intervals, and we are
now living in the fourth. The evidence now indicates that man began to 'make
stone implements in the third warm interval. The last advance of the ice there-
fore took place between us and them. It is perhaps some thirty thousand years
ago that the ice began to come south for the last time.
 Outlines of European Histofy

Section 3. The Middle Stone Age

Remains of Unable to build himself a shelter from the cold, the hunter
Middle Stone
Age man in took refuge in the limestone caves, where he and his descend-
caverns
ants continued to live for thousands of years, during the next
or " Middle Stone

Age." Archaeolo-
gists now find in
the caverns of
France, Spain, and
Italy numerous
objects used by
these cave men
during their long
sojourn in the
caverns. Rubbish,
once even as
much as forty feet
deep, accumulated
on the cavern
floor, as century
after century the
Fig. 2. Selection of Flint Tools of sand and earth
Middle Stone Age Man
blew in, and frag-
These tools are not only more highly varied than ments of rock fell
man possessed before (see Fig. i) but they are
much more finely finished, especially along the
from the ceiling.
edges, where you can see that tiny flakes have To-day we find
been chipped off in a long row, producing a
among all this also
sharp cutting edge. Many thousands of years
elapsed from the time of Fig. i to that of Fig. 2 many layers of
ashes and char-
coal from the cave dwellers' fire, besides numerous tools,
weapons, and implements which he used. These things dis-
close, step after step, his slow progress and show us that man
had now left the old fist-hatchet far behind and become a real
craftsman.
 Early Mankind i7i Europe J

We see him at the door of his cave, carefully chipping off the The indus-
edge of his flint tools and producing such a fine cutting edge that MTdd?e Stone
he can use it to shape bone, ivory, and especially reindeer horn. ^^^ "^^"
The mammoth furnishes him with ivory, and great herds of rein-
deer which had come southward with the ice are grazing before
the mouth of the cavern. The hunter has a considerable list of
tools from which he can select. We see at his elbow knives,
chisels, drills and hammers, polishers and scrapers, all of flint
(Fig. 2) ; while with these he works out pins, needles, spoons,
and ladles, all of ivory or bone, and carves them with pictures of
the animals he hunts in
the forest (Fig. 4). He o>
now fashions a keen, Fig. 3. Ivory Needle of the
barbed ivory spear Middle Stone Age
point, which he mounts with such needles and with tendons as
on a long wooden shaft. thread the skin clothing of the Middle
He has also discovered by the Age
^^^^^^ hunters
earliest was sewedof together
seamstresses Europe,
the bow and arrow and twenty or twenty-five thousand years ago
carries at his girdle a
sharp flint dagger. The fine ivory needles (Fig. 3) show that
the hunter's body is now protected from cold and the brambles
of the trackless forest by clothing sewed together out of the
skins of the animals he has slain.
Thus equipped the hunter of the Middle Stone Age was a Life of the
much more dangerous foe of the wild creatures than his ancestors ^ge hunter"^
of the Early Stone Age. In a single cavern in Sicily archaeolo-
gists have dug out the bones of no less than two thousand hippo-
potami which these Middle Stone Age hunters killed. Here
too lay even the bone whistle with which the returning hunter
announced his coming to the hungry family waiting in the cave.
Surrounded by revolting piles of garbage and amid foul odors
of decaying flesh our savage European ancestor crept into his
cave dwelling at night, little realizing that many feet beneath the
cavern floor on which he slept lay the remains of his ancestors
in layer upon layer, the accumulations of thousands of years.
 8 Outlijics of European History

Middle Stone It is not a little astonishing to find that these Middle Stone
Age art
Age hunters could draw and even paint with the greatest skill.
In the caverns of southern F" ranee and northern Spain their

Fig. 4. Drawings carved by Middle Stone Age Man

ox Ivory
/, marching line of reindeer with salmon in the spaces — probably a talis-
man to bring the hunter and fisherman good hick (see p. 9) ; ^, a bison
bull at bay (not on ivory but incised in the rock of a cavern wall ; over
one hundred fifty caverns containing such paintings and carvings are
known in France and Spain) ; j>, a grazing reindeer ; ^, a running rein-
deer. These carvings are the oldest works of art by man, made fifteen
or twenty thousand years ago. The work was done with the pointed
and edged tools of flint shown in Fig. 2

paintings have been found in surprising numbers in recent years.

Long lines of bison, deer, or wild horses cover the walls and ceil-
ings of these caves. They arc startling in their lifelikeness and
 Ea^dy Mankind in Europe 9

vigor. Sometimes they are carved in the rock wall of the

cavern (Fig. 4, 2) ; again the ancient hunter employed colored
earth mixed with grease, and thus produced paintings which still
survive on the cavern wall. We may suppose that the hunter
believed the presence of this pictured game filling his cavern

Fig. 5. Restoration of a Swass Lake-Dwellers'

Settlement

The lake-dwellers felled trees with their stone axes (Fig. 7, 5) ana cut
them into piles some twenty feet long, sharpened at the lower eud.
These they drove several feet into the bottom of the lake, in water
eight or ten feet deep. On a platform supported by these piles they
then built their houses. The platform was connected with the shore by
a bridge, which may be seen here on the right. A section of it could
be removed at night for protection. The fish nets seen drying at the
rail, the " dug-out " boat of the hunters who bring in the deer, and
many other things have been found on the lake bottom in recent times

would work magically to aid him in filling it with the real game
which he daily sought to bring in there. For the same reason also
he decorated the ivory and bone weapons which he used with
the figures of the animals, he pursued (Fig. 4, 7, j, 4). This is
the earliest art in the whole career of man, in so far as we know.
lO Outlines of European History

Section 4. The Late Stone Age

The signs left by the ice, and still observable in Europe, would
lead us to think that it withdrew northward for the last time
probably some ten thousand years ago. The climate again grew
warmer and became what it is to-day. Men were soon after mak-
ing rapid advances. They had now learned that it was possible

f^j ■'7j'>;'TOf,^^^§^'Hi»s>>-'v .-'S;.-- ^J^^l

Fig. 6. Surviving Remains of a Swiss Lake-Village

After an unusually dry season the Swiss lakes fell to a very low level
in 1854, exposing the lake bottom with the remains of the piles which
once supported the lake villages along the shores. They were thus dis-
covered for the first time. On the old lake bottom, among the projecting
piles, were found great quantities of implements, tools, and furniture,
like those in Fig. 7, including the dug-outs and nets of Fig. 5, wheat,
barley, bones of domestic animals, woven flax, etc. (see p. 12). There
they had been lying some five thousand years. Sometimes the objects
were found in two distinct layers, the lower (earlier) containing only stone
tools, and the upper (later) containing b7'onze tools, which came into the
lake village at a later age and fell into the water on top of the layer
of old stone tools already lying on the bottom of the lake (see p. 114)

to g7i7id the edge of a stone ax or chisel (Fig. 7) as we now do

with tools of metal. They were also able to drill a hole in the
stone ax head and insert a handle (Fig. 7). With such an ax they
could fell trees and build houses. The common use of the ground
stone ax brings in the Late Stone Age. From the forests of
southern Sweden southward to Sicily and the heel of Italy, from
the marshes of Ireland and the harbors of Spain eastward to the
 Early Mankind in Europe II

Greek islands and the shores of the Black Sea, the villages ot
Late Stone Age man stretched far across Europe. The smoke
of his settlements rose through the forests and high over the

Fig. 7. Part of the Equipment of a Late Stone Age

Lake Dweller
This group contains the evidence for three important inventions made
or received by the men of the Late Stone Age : first, pottery jars,
like 2 and j, with rude decorations, the oldest baked clay in Europe,
and /, a large kettle in which the lake-dwellers' food was cooked;
second, ground-edged tools like 4, stone chisel with ground edge (p. 10),
mounted in a deerhorn handle like a hatchet, or 5, stone ax with a'
ground edge, and pierced with a hole for the ax handle (the houses of
Fig. 5 were built with such tools) ; and third, weaving, as shown by 6, a
spinning " whorl " of baked clay, the earliest spinning wheel. When
suspended by a rough thread of flax eighteen to twenty inches long, it
was given a whirl which made it spin in the air like a top, thus rapidly
twisting the thread by which it was hanging. The thread when suffi-
ciently twisted was wound up, and another length of eighteen or twenty
inches was drawn out from the unspun flax to be similarly twisted.
One of these earliest spinning wheels has been found in the Swiss
lakes with a spool of flaxen thread still attached. (From photograph
loaned by Professor Hoernes)

lakes and valleys of Switzerland and northern Italy, where his

villages of pile dwellings (Fig. 5) fringed the shores of the lakes.
His roofs dotted the plains and nestled in the inlets of the sea,
 12
Outlines of European History

whence they were strewn far up the winding valleys of the rivers

Civilization
into the interior of P".urope.
of the Late The wooden dwellings of the Late Stone Age are the earliest
Stone Age ; such shelters found in Europe. Sunken fragments of these houses
wooden
dwellings are found all along the shores of the Swiss lakes, lying at the
and wooden
furniture bottom, among the piles which supported the houses of the village
(Fig. 6). Pieces of stools, chests, carved dippers, spoons, and
the like, all of wood, show that these houses were equipped with
Discovery of convenient wooden furniture. The householder now knows that
burned clay
and appear- clay will harden in the fire, and he makes handy jars, bowls, and
ance of earli-
est pottery dishes of burned clay (Fig. 7). Although roughly made without
the use of the potter's wheel and unevenly burned without an
oven, they add much to the equipment of his dwelling. Before
Flax and his door the women spin their flax, and the rough skin clothing
woven
clothing of his ancestors has given way to garments of woven stuff. Up
the hillside stretches the field of flax, and beside it another of
Seed-bearing wheat or of barley. The seeds which their ancestors once gath-
wild grasses
become do- ered from the scattered tufts of the wild grasses, these Late Stone
mesticated
grain Age men have slowly learned may be planted near the dwelling
in ground prepared for the purpose. Thus wild grain is domes-
ticated, and agriculture has been mtroduced.
Domestica- On the green uplands above are now feeding the creatures
tion of cattle,
sheep, and which the Middle Stone Age man once pursued through the
goats wilds, for the mountain sheep and goats and the wild cattle
have now learned to dwell near man and submit to his control.
Indeed, the wild ox bows his neck to the yoke and draws the
plow across the forest-girt field where he once wandered in
Earliest carts untrammeled freedom. Fragments of wooden wheels in the
lake-villages show that he is also drawing the wheeled cart, the
earliest in Europe. Groups of massive tombs still surviving,
built of enormous blocks of stone (Fig. 8), requiring the united
efforts of large numbers of men, disclose to us the beginnings
Communities of cooperation and social unity. The driving of fifty thousand
organized
piles for the lake-village at Wangen shows that men were
learning to work together in communities, but a flint arrowhead
 Early Mankind in Europe

\-.^>^:^'/^vA.^

/I

M 1 |. %
^:;

Fig. 8. Late Stone Age Tomb in France

These tombs are found in great numbers, especially along the Atlantic
coast of Europe (but also in north Africa) from Gibraltar to the Norse
peninsulas, where they still stand by thousands. One Danish island
alone contains thirty-four hundred of them. It was in such a tomb that
a dead chief of the Late Stone Age was buried. The stones, weighing
even as much as forty tons apiece, were sometimes dragged by his
people many miles from the nearest quarry

War
found still sticking in the eyehole of a .skull reminds us that
these communities were often at war with one another ; while
amber from the north and the wide distribution of a certain Commerce
kind of flint found in only one mine of France tell us of
the commerce which wandered from one community to another.
Such mines reveal very vividly the industries of this remote
age. A mine opened by archaeologists in England still contained
eighty much-worn picks of deerhorn used by the flint miners ;
while in Belgium a fall of rock from the ceiling covered and
preserved to us even the body of one of these ancient miners.
 14

Outlines of European History

Section 5. Late Stone Age Europe and the Orient

The pre- There are certain traders whose wares these Late Stone Age
historic
traders villagers inspect with eagerness. They come from the coast and
they are already threading the Alpine passes leading northward
from southern Europe — roads which are yet to become the
great highways of the early world. These traders entertain the
villagers of the European interior with the tales which circulate
Ships of the among the coast settlements, telling how huge ships (Fig. 14)
Nile in the
far-away East — which make their own rude dugouts (Fig. 5) look like tiny
chips — ply back and forth in the eastern waters of the Medi-
terranean. Such ships have many oarsmen on each side and
mighty fir trunks mounted upright in the craft, carrying huge
sheets of linen to catch the favoring wind which drives them
swiftly, without oars, from land to land. They come out of the
many mouths of the vast river of Eg}'pt, greater than any river
The traders"
oriental
in the world, says the tale, and they bear crowded cargoes of
goods, espe- beautiful stone vases, strings of shining blue-glazed beads (see
cially their
copper axes cut, p. 1 6), bolts of fine linen, and, above all, axes and daggers of a
and daggers
strange, heavy, shining substance, for which these European vil-
lagers have no name. They listen with awe-struck faces and
rapt attention ; and in their traffic they desire above all else the
new axes and daggers of metal which take a keener edge than
any they can fashion of stone.
Strings of Eg}'ptian blue-glazed beads, ^ brought in by traders,
wandered from hand to hand and people to people in western
Europe ; and we find them now lying in graves among the orna-
ments once worn by the men of the Late Stone or early Copper
Age in England. In the East the people of a Late Stone Age
village on the low hill in northwestern Asia Minor where later
rose the walls of Troy (p. 117); likewise the people of another
settlement of the same age near the north shore of the Island
of Crete, yet to become the flourishing city of Cnossus (p. 120);

1 Examples of these blue-glazed Egj'ptian beads discovered in prehistoric

graves of England will be found in the drawing at the end of Chapter I (p. i6)-
 Early Mankind in Europe 15

and other communities scattered through the yEgean islands, —

these eastern people have even seen those marvelous ships of
the Nile with their huge spars and wide sails and have trafficked
with them on the seashore.
Thus at the dawn of history, barbarian Europe looked across Stone Age

the Mediterranean to the great civilization of the Nile, as our own the'^cmiized
North American Indians fixed their wondering^ eves J on the first toO''^^'^'
2000 (3°°°
B.C.)
Europeans who landed in America and listened to like strange
tales of great and distant peoples. But these Late Stone Age
men had now (about 2500 B.C.) reached the limit of their re-
sources. Without writing (for the records of business, govern-
ment, and tradition) ; without metals (save the trader's copper
ax and dagger) ; without stanch ships in which to develop com-
merce,— they could go no further. Perhaps the Late Stone Age
villagers recalled a dim tradition of their fathers that grain and
flax, cattle and sheep, first came to them from the same wonder-
land of the far East, whence now came the copper ax and the
blue-glazed beads. It was after receiving such contributions as
these from the Orient, that Europe went forward to the develop-
ment of a higher civilization, and in order to understand the
further course of European history, we must turn to the Orient
whence came these things by which the life of our European
ancestors entered upon a new epoch.
Let us remember as we go to the Orient that the age of man's Summary
prehisto7'ic career ^ lasted some fifty thousand years, and that in
the Orient he began to enter upon a high civilization in the his-
toric epoch during the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 b.c.^
(in eastern Europe a thousand years later). '■^ Civilization is thus
between five and six thousand years old. It arose in the Orient,
in the eastern Mediterranean region, and civilized supremacy
both in peace and war shifted slowly from the Orient west-
ward. It was not till about 500 B.C. that the Greeks became the
leaders in matters of civilization. They, with the rest of the
1 That is, before he began to leave any written traces of his existence.
2 In western Europe not until after 500 B.C. or even much later.
16 Outlines of E2iropea7i History

Mediterranean world, were gradually subdued by the Romans,

until Roman power was supreme and practically universal not
long after 200 b.c. We have therefore first to trace the career
of the Orient, and then to follow civilization as it developed
among the Greeks and Romans.

QUESTIONS
Section i . How did early man learn to do things ? Was there any
one to tell him ? Describe the probable condition of the earliest men.
What men have actually been found in a state almost as low as this ?
Describe their possessions. Hovv\ long has man existed on earth?
At what point can we begin to trace his progress ?
Sectiox 2. Describe man's earliest tools. How did he live, and
what was Europe then like .^ What do we call this age t What great
change brought it to an end ?
Section 3. Where did man then take refuge ? Describe his prog-
ress ;his home. What art did he possess ?
Section 4. When did the ice withdraw for the last time .'* What
new treatment of his edged tools did man now discover.? Make a
list of his new possessions in this age. W' hat remains and evidences
of the existence of towns and communities still survive t
Section 5. What wares did the traders bring into the Late Stone
Age setdements of inland Europe? How were they brought across
the Mediterranean? What great people already had ships? Where
did high civilization first arise ?
 CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF EGYPT

Section 6. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants to-day

The traveler who visits Egypt at the present day lands in a

very modern looking harbor at Alexandria. He is presently Egypt of

seated in a comfortable railway car in which we may accom-

pany him as he is carried rapidly across a low fiat country, stretch-
ing far away to the sunlit horizon. The wide expanse is dotted
with little villages of dark, mud-brick huts, and here and there
rise groves of graceful palms. The landscape is carpeted with
stretches of bright and vivid green as far as the eye can see,
and wandering through this verdure is a network of irrigation
canals (Fig. lo). Brown-skinned men of slender build, with dark
hair, are seen at intervals along the banks of these canals, sway-
ing up and down as they rhythmically lift an irrigation bucket
attached to a simple device (Fig. 9), exactly like the " well sweep "
of our grandfathers in New England. It is kept going day and
night, as one man relieves another, and the irrigation trenches,
branching all over the field, are thus kept full of water for about
a hundred days until the grain ripens. It is the best of evidence
that Egypt enjoys no rain.
The black soil we see from the train is unexcelled in fertility, Its soil and
area
and it is enriched each year by the overflow of the river, whose
turbid waters rise above its banks every summer, spread far
over the flats (Fig. 10) and stand there long enough to deposit
a very thin layer of rich earthy sediment. All this plain over
which the train moves southward consists of such sediment,
which the river has brought down from its sources far away
in Africa. In the course of ages it has filled up the ancient
I 17
i8 Outlines of European History

triangular gulf of the

Mediterranean which
we call the Delta, and
which we are now
crossing. Lying with
its point to the south,
this Delta is connected
with the Nile valley be-
yond as a flower is at-
tached to its stem, the
Delta being the flower
and the long valley on
the south the stem (see
map, p. 56). The Delta
and the valley together
as far as the First
Cataract contain over
ten thousand square
miles of cultivable soil,
Fig. 9. An Egyptian Shadoof, the or somewhat more than
Oldest of Well Sweeps, irrigat- the state of Vermont.
ing THE Fields
As our train ap-
The man below stands in the water, hold- proaches the southern
ing his leather bucket. The pole of the
sweep is above him, with large ball of point of the Delta, about
dried Nile mud on its lower end as a lifting a hundred and twenty-
weight, or counterpoise, seen just behind five miles from the sea,
the supporting post. This man lifts the
water into a mud basin just at his left
we begin to see the
elbow behind the supporting post. A heights on either side
second man (in the middle) lifts it from of the valley into which
this first (lower) basin to a second (middle) the narrow end of the
basin into which he is just emptying his
bucket; while a third man (above) lifts Delta merges. These
the water from the middle basin to the heights (Figs. 10, 29)
uppermost basin on the top of the bank, are the plateau of the
where it runs off to the left into trenches
spreading over the fields. The low water Sahara Desert through
makes three successive hfts necessary which the Nile has cut
 The Stor)' of Egypt

a vast, deep trench as it winds its way northward from in-

ner Africa. This trench, or valley, is seldom more than thirty
miles vdde, while the strip of soil on each side of the river
rarely exceeds ten miles in width. On either edge of the soil
strip, one steps out of
the green fields into
the sand of the desert,
which has drifted into
the trench ; or if one

rC
climbs the cliffs form-
ing the walls of the ^i\^^\^
^^
^^K
s^^
-^^%:
trench, he stands look-
ing out over a vast
waste of rocky hills
and stretches of sand
— -^ ^ ^ r^^^
trembling in the heat ,
of the blazing sun-
shine, which flames
far across the desert.
Then one realizes that
Fig. 10. View across the Nile Val-
Egypt is simply a lovv^ ley FROM the Top of the Great
narroW| winding line Pyramid
of green (see map, Our point of view is from an elevation on
p. 56), watered by the the plateau of the western (Sahara) desert,
Nile, in the midst of looking eastward to the corresponding cliffs,
a rainless desert or heights (p. 19), which limit the great
trench of the Nile valley on the other (east)
plateau which looks side. At the left (north) expands the vast
down upon it from plain of the Delta (p. 18). We can see the
either side. irrigation canals below, and nearer, just along
the margin of the desert, once stretched the
As we journey on royal city of the kings buried in the pyramids
let us realize also that of Gizeh (Plate I)
this valley can tell an
unbroken story of human progress such as we can find nowhere
else. The earliest chapter of the story must be sought in the
oldest cemeteries in the world. We look out upon the sandy
 20
Ontlitics of European Histoiy

The Stone margin of the desert where there are thousands of low undulat-
Age
tians Egyp- ing mounds, covering the graves of the earliest ancestors of the
brown men we see in the Delta fields. \Mien we have dug out
such a grave to the bottom we find the ancient Nile peasant
lying there, surrounded by pottery jars and stone implements
(Fig. ii). There he has been lying
for over six thousand years, and the
stone tools which he used so long
ago tell us that he lived all his life
without having known anything about
metal. Occasional grains of wheat,
barley, or millet, however, show that
his women were already cultivating
grain — the grain that later passed
to Europe (p. 12). A fragment of
Fig 1 1 . Looking down linen in such a grave shows us also
INTO THE Grave of where Europe derived its flax. The
A Late Stone Age peasant at the bottom of this grave
Egyptian
was therefore watering his fields of
An oval pit four or five flax and grain down on the fertile
feet deep, excavated on the soil of the valley over six thousand
margin of the desert. The
body is surrounded by pot- years ago, just as the brown men
tery jars once containing whom the traveler sees from the car
food and drink for the hfe
windows to-day are still doing.
hereafter. Implements of
stone placed with the bodyThe villages of low mud-brick huts
which flash by the car windows fur-
are also found still lying in
the grave nish us also with an exact picture of
those vanished prehistoric villages,
Earliest the homes of the early Nile dwellers who are still lying in
government
and taxes yonder cemeteries on the desert margin.* In such a village
six to seven thousand years ago, lived the local chieftain who
controlled the irrigation canal trenches of the dtstrfctw To
him the peasant was required to carry every season a share
of the grain and flax which he gathered from his field ; other-
wise the supply of water for his crops would stop, and he would
 TJic Story of Egypt 21

receive an unpleasant visit from the chieftain, demanding instant

payment. These were the earliest taxes. Such transactions led
to scratching a number of strokes on the mud wall of the
peasant's hut, indicating the number of
measures of grain he had paid. At length
a rude picture of the basket grain-measure
was also scratched there, to make it clear
to what the strokes referred. In this and
many other ways the peasant's dealings
with his neighbors or with the chieftain
led him to make picture records (Fig. 12),
and these are the earliest writing known,
Gradually each picture which he em-
ployed came to have a fixed form, and Fig. 12. Example
each picture always indicated the same OF THE Earliest-
word. Let us imagine for convenience that Known Egyptian
Writing
" Egyptian " contained the English word
leaf." It would be written thus Interpretation — above,
The Egyptian would in course of time the falcon (symbol of
come to look upon the leaf as the sign a king) leading a hu-
man head by a cord ;
for the S3dlable " leaf," wherever it might behind the head, six
occur. By the same process j^ might lotus leaves (each the
sign for 1000) grow-
become the sign for the syllable " bee " ing out of the ground
wherever found. Having thus a means to which the head is
^.
attached; below, a sin-
of writing the syllables " bee " and '' leaf,"
gle-barbed harpoon
the next step was to put them together head and a little rec-
thus, '\^ %>, and they would together tangle (the sign of a
lake). The whole tells
represent the word " belief." Notice, how-
the picture story that
ever, that in the word " belief " the sign the falcon king led
\^ has ceased to suggest the idea of a captive six thousand
men of the land of the
bee but only the syllable " be." That is to
say, y^ has become a pho7ietic sign. Harpoon Lake

In this way early man could write many names of things of

which you cannot make a picture. It is impossible to make a
picture of " belief," as you can of a jar or a knife.
 22 Outlines of European History

Advantage If the writing of the Egyptian had remained merely a series

of phonetic
signs of pictures, such words as " belief," " hate," " love," " beauty,"
and the like could never have been written.^ But when a large
number of his pictures had become phonetic signs, each repre-
senting a syllable, it was possible for the Egyptian to write any
word he knew, whether the word meant a thing of which he
could draw a picture or not. This possession of phonetic signs
is what makes real writing for the first time. It arose among
these Nile dwellers *earlier than anywhere else in the ancient
The earliest
world. Indeed, the Egyptian went still further, for he finally
alphabet
possessed a series of signs, each representing only 07ie letter,
that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were
twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt
long before 3000 B.C. It was thus the earliest alphabet known.
Invention The inconvenience of scratching this writing on mud walls,
of writing
materials pieces of bone, or broken pottery soon led the Egyptian to a
more practical equipment for writing. He found out that he
Ink could make an excellent paint or ink by thickening water with
a little vegetable gum, and then mixing in a little soot from
Pen the blackened pots over his fire. Dipping a pointed reed into
this mixture he found he could write very well. He had also
Paper learned that he could split a kind of river reed, called papyrus^
into thin strips, and that when these were dried he could write
on them much better than on the bits of pottery, bone, and
wood which he had thus far used. Desiring a larger sheet
on which to write, the Egyptian hit upon the idea of pasting his
papyrus strips together with overlapping edges. This gave him
a thin sheet. Then by pasting two such sheets together, back
to back with the grain crossing at right angles, he produced a
smooth, tough, pale yellow paper. The Egyptian had thus made
the discovery that a thin vegetable membrane offers the most
practical surface on which to write, and the world has since dis-
covered nothing better. In this way arose pen, ink, and paper

1 See the word " beauty," the last three signs in the inscription over the ship
(Fig. 14).
 The Story of Egypt 23

(see Fig. 16). All three of these devices have descended to

us from the Egyptians, and paper still bears its ancient name,
■" papyros," ^ but slightly changed.
The invention of writing and of a convenient system of rec-
ords on paper has had a greater influence in uplifting the human
race than any other intellectual achievement in the career of man.
It was more important than all the battles ever fought and all
the constitutions ever devised. As a result of it the early Egyp-
tian peasants, now lying in the thickly clustered graves on the
margin of the desert, went rapidly forward to new achievements
in civilization.
They had early found it necessary to measure time, for the Beginnings
peasant needed to know when he ought to go into the town for
the next religious feast, or how many days still remained before
he must pay his neighbor the grain he borrowed last year. Like
all other early peoples he found the time from new moon to
new moon a very convenient rough measure. If he agreed to
pay the grain he borrowed in nine moons and eight of them
had passed, he knew that he had one more moon in which to
make "the payment. But the moon-month varies in length from
twenty-nine to thirty days, and it does not evenly divide the
year. The Egyptian scribe early discovered this inconvenience,
and soon showed himself much more practical in this respect
than his neighbors in other lands.
He decided to use the moon no longer for dividing his year. Egyptian
He would have twelve months and he would make his months our calendar,
all of th^ same length, that is, thirty days each; then he would ^^^^ ^•^■
celebrate five feast days, a kind of holiday week five days long,
at the end of the year. This gave him a year of 365 days. He
was not yet enough of an astronomer to know that every four
years he ought to have a leap year, of 366 days, although he
1 The change from " papyros " to " paper " is really a very slight one. For
OS is merely the Greek grammatical ending, which must be omitted in English.
This leaves us papyr as the ancestor of our word " paper," from which it differs
by only one letter. On the other Greek word for " papyrus," from which came
our word " Bible," see page 140,
 24 Outlines of European History

discovered this fact later (p. 236). This convenient Egyptian

calendar was devised in 4241 B.C., and its introduction is the
earliest-dated event in history. Furthermore, it is the very calen-
dar which has descended to us, after more than six thousand
years — unfortunately with awkward alterations in the lengths
of the months ; but for these alterations the Egyptians were
not responsible (see p. 268).
Discovery of It was probably in the Peninsula of Sinai (see map, p. 56)
^oo?Bx*)^^^^ that some Egyptian wandering thither, once banked his camp
fire with pieces of copper ore lying on the ground about the
camp. The charcoal of his wood fire mingled with the hot
fragments of ore piled around to- shield the fire, and thus the
ore was " reduced " as the miner says ; that is, the copper in me-
tallic form was released from the dark recesses of the lumps of
ore. Next morning as the Egyptian stirs the embers, he discovers
a few glittering globules, now hardened into beads of metal. He
draws them forth and turns them admiringly as they glitter in
the morning sunshine. Before long, as the experience is repeated,
he discovers whence these strange shining beads have come.
He produces more of them, at first only to be worn as ornaments
by his women, then to be cast into a blade and to replace the
flint knife which he carries in his girdle.
The dawning Without knowing it this man stands at the dawning of a new
\\l\l\ ' ^^ ° era, the Age of Metal ; and the little disk of shining copper
which he draws from the ashes, if this Egyptian wanderer could
but^see it, might reflect to him a vision of steel buildings, Brook-
lyn bridges, huge factories roaring with the noise of thousands
of machines of metal, and vast stretches of steel roads along
which thunder hosts of rushing locomotives. For these things
of our modern world, and all they signify, would never have
come to pass but for the little bead of metal which the Egyptian
held in his hand for the first time on that eventful day so long
ago. Since the discovery of fire over fifty thousand years
earlier (p. 3) man had made no conquest of the things of the
earth which could compare with this in importance.
 03 Q
^ o
^(U •£
js <i^ ®
>- S
i- OJ OS
_
'S "^ •" 2 So"
<
u Q
U 3

^ :2

<U U V3
u H
W
u
•- :5 tj 3 S
(1) <3J (-

i2 i ^ "S .^
« rt Cw '-H -^

- u s ^ ii
-n "+- — - O "T-

ID

-5 ^ -C ?r 3
^ g s I
03 rt
e c O CJ* y '' (U

T3 ^
. -tii sb srt
t3■^ 03an i3g >^
rt ;■«
Oo

r" ^
-'I ^> y '-'

<L) '-'
gag X ^~,

•13 l^_ 'rt TS ^^

g - .4^d MH -^ ^

O £
J ^ C 13
<u u

25

o w o aj

<< ^ 03 +:
 26 Outlines of European History

The Nile a At this point vve realize that we have folbwed early man out
volime*°"''^^ of the Stone Age (where we left him in Europe) into a civili-
zation possessed of metal, writing, and government. We begin
to see that diy and rainless Egypt furnishes the conditions for
the preservation of such plentiful remains of early man as to
make this valley an enormous storehouse of his ancient works
and records. These are the only link connecting prehistoric man
with the historic age of written documents, which we are now
to study, as we make the voyage up the Nile and learn to read
the monuments along the great river like a vast historical vol-
ume, whose pages will tell us age after age the fascinating story
of ancient man and all that he achieved here so many thousands
of years ago. The wonderful achievements of the earliest Egyp-
tians we have recalled as we journeyed across the Delta ; but
now as the journey up the river proceeds we shall be able to
watch the continuous progress of the Egyptian In the long
centuries after his discovery of metals and writings
The first Such are the thoughts which occupy the mind of the well-
fhe"^pyramids informed traveler as his train carries him southward across the
Delta, Perhaps he is pondering on the possible results which
the Egyptians would achieve as he sees them in imagination
throwing away their flint chisels and replacing them with those
of copper. The train rounds a bend, and through an opening in
the palms the traveler is fairly blinded by a burst of blazing
sunshine from the western desert, in the midst of which he dis-
covers a group of noble pyramids rising above the glare of the
sands. It is his first glimpse of the great pyramids of Gizeh,
and it tells him better than any printed page what the Egyptian
builder with the copper chisel in his hand could do. A few
minutes later his train is moving among the modern buildings
of Cairo, and the very next day will surely find him taking the
seven-mile drive from Cairo out to Gizeh.
 The Story of Egypt 2J

Section 7. The Pyramid Age^

No traveler ever forgets the first drive to the Pyramids of The pyramids
Gizeh, as he sees their giant forms rising higher and higher tombr
above the crest of the western d^esert (Plate I). A thou-
sand questions arise in the visitor's mind. He has read that
these vast buildings he is approaching are tombs, in which the
kings of Egypt were buried. Such mighty buildings reveal
many things about the men who built them. In the first place,
these tombs show that the Egyptians believed in a life after
death and that to obtain such life it was necessary to preserve
the body from destruction. They built these tombs to shelter
and protect the body after death. Hence, also, came the prac-
tice of " embalmment " by which the body was preserved as a
mummy (Fig. 32). It was then placed in the great tomb, in
a small but massive room deep in the heart of the pyramid
masonry. Other tombs of masonry, much smaller in size,
cluster about the pyramids in great numbers (Frontispiece).
Here were buried the relatives of the king, and the great men
of his court, who assisted him in the government of the land
(Fig. 15)-
These people had many gods, but there were two whom they The gods of
worshiped above all others. The Sun, which shines so gloriously and^Osiris^
in the cloudless Egyptian sky, was their greatest god, and their
most splendid temples were erected for his worship. Indeed,
the pyramid is a symbol sacred to the Sun-god. They called
him Re (pron. raj). The other great power which they revered
as a god was likewise a visible force in their daily lives. The
shining Nile which the traveler has just crossed on his way to
the pyramids gives life to the fields and brings forth the har-
vest. So the Nile, and the fertile soil he refreshes, and the green
life which he brings forth — all these the Egyptian thought of
together as a single god, Osiris, the imperishable life of the earth
which revives and fades every year with the changes of the
seasons. It was a beautiful thought to the Egyptian that this
 28 Outlines of Europeaji History

same life-giving power which furnished him his food in this world
would care for him also in the next^ when his body lay out yonder
in the great cemetery which we are approaching.
The progress But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things
of the Egyp-
tians before besides the religion of tl^e Egyptians. As we look up at the
they built
stone colossal pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) we can hardly grasp the
masonry fact of the enormous stride forward which the Egyptians have
taken since the days when they used to be buried with their flint
knives in a pit scooped out on the margin of the desert (Fig. 1 1).
It is the use of metal which has since then carried them so far.
That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the first bit of metal (p. 24)
lived over a thousand years before these pyramids were built.
He was buried in a pit like that of the earliest Egyptian peasant
(Fig. 11).
It was a long time before his discovery of metal resulted in
copper tools which made possible great architecture in stone.
Not more than a hundred and fifty years before the Great Pyra-
mid of Gizeh, the Egyptians were still building the tombs of
their kings of sun-baked brick. Such a royal tomb was merely a
chamber in the ground, roofed with wood (Fig. 13, 7).
From the Then some skillful workman among them found out that he
earliest stone
masonry to could use his copper tools to cut square blocks of limestone and
the Great
Pyramid — a
line the chamber with these blocks in place of the soft bricks.
century and This was the first piece of stone masonry ever put together in
a half
so fair as we know (Fig. 13, 2). It was built not long before
3000 B.C., and less than a century and a half later, that is, by
2900 B.C., the king's architect was building the Great Pyramid
of Gizeh (Fig. 13, 6). What a contrast between the sun-
baked brick chamber and the Great Pyramid of Gizeh only a
century and a half later! Most of this progress was made
during the thirtieth century B.C. ; that is, between 3000 and
2900 B.C. (Fig. 13). Such rapid progress in control of mechani-
cal power can be found in no other period of the world's history
until the nineteenth century, which closed not long before many
of the readers of this book were born.
 The Story of Egypt 29

It helps us to grasp the extent of the Egyptian's progress The vast size
when
It is awesolid
know
massthatof the Great containing
masonry Pyramid covers thirteen
2,300,000 acres.
blocks of Pyramid'^^^^
limestone, each weighing on an average two and a half tons ;
that is, each block is as heavy as an ordinary wagon load of coal.
The sides of the pyramid at the base are 755 feet long ; that is,
about a block and three quarters (counting twelve city blocks
to a mile), and the building was nearly five hundred feet high.
An ancient story tells us that a hundred thousand men were
working on this royal tomb for twenty years, and we can well
believe it (see Plate I).
We can also learn much about the progress of the Egyptian Government
in government from this cemetery of Gizeh. We perceive at midAge^"^^
once that it must have required a very skillful ruler and a great
body of officials to manage and to feed a hundred thousand
workmen around this great building. The king who controlled
such vast undertakings was no longer a local chieftain (p. 20),
but he now ruled all Egypt. He was so reverenced that the
people did not mention the king by name, but instead they
spoke of the palace in which he lived ; that is, the " Great
House," or, in Egyptian, " Pharaoh." ^ He had his local officials
collecting taxes all over Egypt. They were also trying cases at
law wherever they arose, and every judge had before him the
written law which bade him judge justly. A large office with its city

corps of officials was also keeping the irrigation canals (Fig. i o)

in order.
The king's huge central offices occupying low sun-baked brick and
The the
treasury
royal
buildings sheltered an army of clerks with their reed pens and
their rolls of papyrus (p. 22), keeping the king's records and
accounts. The tax payments received from the people here
were not in money, for coined money did not yet exist. Such
payments were made in produce : grain, livestock, wine, honey,
linen, and the like. With the exception of the cattle, these had
to be stored in granaries and storehouses, a vast group of which
1 This word is a title, not the name of any particular king.
 Outlines of European History

30
formed the treasury of the king. The villas (Fig. 21) of the
officials who assisted the king in all this business of government,
with their gardens, formed a large part of the royal city^
The greatest quarter, however, was occupied by the palace of
the king and the luxurious parks and gardens which surrounded
it. Thus the palace and its grounds, the official villas, and offices
of the government made up the capital of Egypt, the royal city
which extended along the foot of the pyramid cemetery and

Fig. 14. Earliest Represextatiox of a Seagoing Ship

(Twenty-eighth Century b.c.)
The people are all bowing to the king whose figure (now lost) stood on
shore (at the left), and they salute him with the words written in a line
of hieroglyphs above, meaning : " Hail to thee ! O Sahure [the king's
name], thou god of the living ! We behold thy beauty. " Some of these
men are bearded Phoenician prisoners, showing that this Egyptian ship
has crossed the east end of the Mediterranean and returned. The big
double mast is unshipped and lies on supports rising by the three
steering oars in the stern ^

Stretched far away over the plain, of which there is a fine view
from the summit of the pyramid (Fig. 10). But the city was all
built of sun-baked brick and wood, and it has therefore vanished.
Length and The city of the dead, the pyramids and the tombs clustering
Pyramid Age around them, being built of stone, have fortunately proved more
durable and they have much to tell us still. The weary climb to
the summit of the Great Pyramid (Fig. i o) gives us a view south-
ward, down a straggling but imposing line of pyramids rising
dimly as far as we can see on the southern horizon. The line
is over sixty miles long, and its oldest p}Tamids represent the
 The Story of Egypt

first great age of Egyptian civilization after the land was united
under one king.^ We may call it the Pyramid Age and it lasted
about five hundred years, from 3000 to 2500 B.C. It was an
age of great prosperity and splendour Otherwise it would have
been impossible to erect buildings of such grandeur as these in
the Gizeh cemetery. 31
In the Pyramid Age the Pharaoh was powerful enough to seek
wealth beyond the boundaries of Egypt. A few surviving blocks

Fig. 15. Restoration of a Group of Tombs of the Nobles

IN THE Pyramid Age

These tombs are grouped about the royal pyramids, as seen in

Plate I. They are sometimes of vast size. The square openings in
the top are shafts leading down to the burial chambers in the native
rock far below the tomb structures. These structures are solid except
for a chapel in the east side, of which the door can be seen in the
front of each tomb. The reliefs in Figs. 16-20 adorn the inside
walls of these chapels

from a fallen pyramid-temple (Fig. 22) south of Gizeh bear carved Northern
and painted reliefs (Fig. 1 4) showing us the ships which he dared a^d earliest
to send beyond the shelter of the Nile mouths far across the end Ss '"^
of the Mediterranean to the coast of Phoenicia (see map, p. 56).
This was in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., and
1 Before this, little kingdoms scattered up and down the valley had long existed
but were finally united into one kingdom, under a single king. The first king to
establish this union permanently was Menes, who united Egypt under his rule
about 3400 B.C. But it was four centuries or more after Menes that the united
kingdom became powerful and wealthy enough to build these royal pyramid-
tombs, marking for us the fiirst great age of Egyptian civilization.
 Outlines of European History

this32relief (Fig. 14) contains the oldest-l^nown representation of

a seagoing ship. Yet the Pharaoh had already been carrying on
such over-sea commerce for centuries at this time, and an ancient
record tells us that he sent forty ships to Phoenicia to bring back
cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the thirtieth century B.C.,
two centuries before
our earliest picture
of such an ancient
salt-water vessel.
These are the ships
which carried metal
and other products
of civilization to the

peoples who lived on

the Mediterranean
shores of Europe in
the Late Stone Age
Fig. 16. Relief Scene from the Chapel
OF A Noble's Tomb (Fig. 15) in the (p. 14).
Pyramid Age The king was
also already sending
The tall figure of the noble stands at the right.
A piece has fallen out of the wall, carrying caravans of donkeys
away part of his face and figure. He is in- far up the Nile into
specting three rows of cattle and a row of fowl the Sudan to traffic
brought before him. Note the two scribes who
head the two middle rows. Each is writing with the blacks of
with pen on a sheet of papyrus, and one car- the south, and to
ries two pens behind his ear. Such reliefs bring back ebony,
after being carved were colored in bright hues
by the painter (see p. 33)
ivory, ostrich feath-
ers, and fragrant
gums. The officials who conducted these caravans were the
earliest explorers of inner Africa, and in their tombs at the First
Cataract they have left interesting records of their exciting ad-
ventures among the wild tribes of the south — adventures in
which some of them lost their lives.^ Expeditions to the south
1 The teacher will find it of interest to read these records to the class. See
Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt ^ Vol. I, pp. 325-336, 350-374.
 The Story of Egypt 33

end of the Red Sea to procure the same products early led to
the excavation of a canal connecting the easternmost Nile branch
in the Delta with the Red Sea. This predecessor of the Suez
Canal was dug about 4000 years ago.
A stroll among the tombs clustering so thickly around the The tomb-
pyramids of Gizeh is almost like a walk among the busy com- the^yramid
munities which flourished in this populous valley in the days of i^fl^^'j^g*^^
the pyramid builders. We find the door of every tomb standing reveal
open (Fig. 15), and there is nothing to prevent our entrance. We
stand in an oblong room with walls of stone masonry. This is a

Fig. 17. Plowing and Sowing in the Pyramid Age

There are two plowmen, one driving the oxen and one holding the
plow. The man with the curious hoe breaks up the clods left by the
plow, and in front of him is the sower, scattering the seed from
the sack he carries before him. At the left is a scribe of the estate.
The hieroglyphs above in all such scenes explain what is going on.
Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 15)

chapel-chamber to which the Egyptian believed the dead man

buried beneath the tomb might return every day. Here he
would find food and drink left for him daily by his relatives. He
would also find the stone walls of this room covered from floor
to ceiling with carved scenes, beautifully painted, picturing the
daily life on the great estate of which he was lord (Figs. 16-20).
The place is now silent and deserted, or if we hear the voices
of the donkey boys talking outside, they are speaking Arabic ;
for the ancient language of the men who built these tombs
so many thousand years ago is no longer spoken. But every-
where, in bright and charming colors, we see looking down
 34 Outlines of Europe ati Histor)'

upon us from these walls the life which these men of nearly five
thousand years ago actually lived.
Agriculture Dominating all these scenes on the walls is the tall form of
and cattle-
raising ; the noble (Fig. i6\ the lord of the estate, as he stands looking
beasts of
burden out over his fields and inspecting the work going on there.
These fields where the oxen draw the plow, and the sowers scatter
the seed (Fig. 17), are the oldest scene of agriculture knowTi to
us. Here too are the herds, long lines of sleek fat cattle grazing
in the pasture, while the milch cows are led up and tied to be
milked (Figs. 16, 18). These cattle are also beasts of burden;
. we have noticed the
oxen drawing the plow.
l^f^*®: '-^.<l But we find no horses
in these tombs of the

Fig. 1 8. Peasant milking in the Pyramid Age, for the

Pyramid Age horse was then un-
known to the Eg\'ptian,
The cow is restive and the ancient cow-
herd has tied her hind legs. Behind her but the donkey is every-
another man is holding her calf, which where, and it would be
rears and plunges in the effort to reach impossible to harvest
the milk. Scene from the chapel of a
noble's tomb (Fig. 15)
the grain without him
(Fig. 19).
The copper- On the next wall we find again the tall figure of the noble
smith and the
appearance overseeing the booths and yards where toil the craftsmen of his
of bronze estate. We can almost hear the sounds of hammer and anvil
and the hum of industrv^ as we look here upon these artisans of
the early oriental world at their busy tasks. Yonder is the smith.
He has never heard of his ancestor who picked up the first bead
of copper probably over a thousand years earlier (p. 24). This
man has made progress how^ever. He is now able to harden his
tools by the addition of a small amount of tin to the molten
metal, which then cools into a much harder state than that of
pure copper. We call this mixture bronze.^ This harder metal
1 The origin of bronze is probably natural. Professor J. L. Myres of Oxford
informs me of the recent discovery of ore containing both copper and tin in the
northern Mediterranean. The metal yielded by such ore would itself be bronze.
 The Story of Egypt 11

here in the Age of Copper gives the workman the same advan-
tage obtained in the Age of Iron by the invention of steel.
On the same wall we see the lapidarv' holding up for the noble's The lapidan-,
admiration splendid stone bowls, cut from diorite, a stone as fnd jeweler
hard as steel. Nevertheless the bowl is ground to such thinness
that the sunlight glows through its dark gray sides. Other work-
men are cutting and grinding tiny pieces of beautiful blue tur-
quoise. These pieces they inlay with remarkable accuracy into
recesses in the surface of a magnificent golden vase, just made
ready by the goldsmith. The booth of the goldsmith is filled with
workmen and apprentices,
weighing gold and costly
stones, hammering and cast-
ing, soldering and fitting to-
gether richly wrought jewelry^ ^
which can hardly be surpassed
by the best goldsmiths and
jewelers of to-day.
In the next space on this Fig. 19. Donkey carryixg a
wall we find the potter no Load of Grain Sheaves in
longer building up his jars and THE Pyramid Age

bowls with his fingers alone, The foal accompanies its mother
while at work. Scene from the
as in the Stone Age. He now
sits before a small horizontal chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 15)

wheel, which he keeps whirling with one hand. Upon this

potter's wheel, the ancestor of the lathe, he deftly shapes the
vessel as it whirls round and round under his fingers. \Mien The potter's
the soft clay vessels are ready, they are no longer unevenly fl^mace^the
burned in an open fire, as the Late Stone Age potter in the earhest glass
Swiss lake-villages managed it (Fig. 7) ; but here in the Egyp-
tian potter's yard are long rows of closed furnaces of clay as

1 Among the marvelous works of the ancient Eg>-ptian goldsmith one of the
best pieces now sur\iving is a beautiful golden tiara in the form of a chaplet of
flowers, found on the brow of an Eg}-ptian princess just as it was put there in
the Feudal Age nearly four thousand years ago. It may be seen drawn as rest-
ing on a cushion at the end of Chapter II (p. 55).
 Outlines of European History

6 a man, where the pottery is packed in, protected from

tall 3as
the wind and evenly burned. These two inventions, the potter's
wheel and the potter's furnace, were carried over to Stone Age
Europe like many other contributions from the Orient. Indeed,
we discover in the next booth also the source of those bright
blue-glazed beads ^ which found their way from Egypt to far-
off England in the Late Stone or early Bronze Age (p. 14).
This is the earliest-known glass. The Egyptians were making
it for centuries before the Pyramid Age. It was spread on tiles

Fig. 20. Cabinetmakers in the Pyramid Age

At the left, a man is cutting with a chisel which he taps with a nfiallet ;
next, a man " rips " a board with a copper saw ; next, two men are finish-
ing off a couch, and at the right a man is drilling a hole with a bow-drill.
Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 15). Compare a finished
chair belonging to a wealthy noble of the Empire (Fig. 33)

in gorgeous glazes for adorning house and palace walls, or

wrought into exquisite many-colored glass bottles and vases,
which were widely exported (Fig. 48).
The weavers
Yonder the weaving women draw forth from the loom a gos-
and tapestry-
makers samer fabric of linen. The picture on this wall could not tell us
of its fineness, but fortunately pieces of it have survived, wrapped
around the mummy of a king of this age. These specimens of
royal linen are so fine that it requires a magnifying glass to dis-
tinguish them from silk, and the best work of the modern machine
loom is coarse in comparison with this fabric of the ancient
1 The tailpiece of Chapter I (p. i6) shows blue- and green-glazed Egyptian
beads found in prehistoric graves of England. Compare page 14.
 The Story of Egypt 37

Egyptian hand loom. At one loom there issues a lovely tapestry,

for these weavers of Egypt furnished the earliest-known speci-
mens of such work, to be hung on the walls of the Pharaoh's
palace or stretched to shade the roof garden of the noble's villa.
Into the back door of the next booth pass huge bundles of Paper-
papyrus reeds, which we see barelegged men gathering along "^^ ^"^^
the edge of the Nile marsh. These reeds furnish piles of pale
yellow paper in long sheets (p. 22). The ships which we have
followed on the Mediterranean (p. 31) will yet add bales of this
Nile paper to their cargoes, and carry it to the European world.
For fifteen hundred years these papyrus booths along the Nile
were the world's paper mills, until the libraries of wealthy Greeks
and Romans (p. 1 40) were filled with papyrus books. Thus these
papyrus marshes of the Nile were exhausted and the papyrus
plant at last became extinct in Egypt. The modern traveler
looks for it in vain as he journeys up the river.
We can easily imagine the hubbub of hammers and mauls as shipbuilders,
we approach the next section of wall, where we find the ship- anTcabSet-
builders and cabinetmakers. Here is a long line of curving hulls, makers
with workmen swarming over them like ants, fitting together
the earliest seagoing ships (Fig. 14). Beside them are the busy
cabinetmakers, fashioning luxurious furniture for the noble's
villa. The finished chairs and couches for the king or the rich
are overlaid with gold and silver, inlaid with ebony and ivory,
and upholstered with soft leathern cushions (Figs. 20, 2ii)- As
we look back over these painted chapel walls, we see that the
tombs of Gizeh have told us a very vivid story of how early men
learned to make for themselves all the most important things
they needed. We should notice how many more such things
these men of the Nile could now make than the Stone Age men,
who were living in the lake-villages of Europe (Fig. 5) at the
very time these tomb-chapels were built.
It is easy to picture the bright sunny river in those ancient
days, alive with boats and barges moving hither and thither,
and often depicted on these walls, bearing the products of all
 38 Outlines of European His tor}'

River com- these industries, to be carried to the treasury of the Pharaoh as

marketplace- taxes or to the market of the town for traffic. Here on the wall
traffic in jg the market place itself. We can watch the cobbler offering" the
goods ; cir- ^
cuiation of baker a pair of sandals as payment for a cake, or the carpenter's
preaous ^.^^ giving the fisherman a little wooden box for a fish ; while
the potter's wife proffers the apothecary two bowls fresh from
the potter's furnace in exchange for a jar of fragrant ointment.
We see therefore that the people have no coined money to use,
and that in the market place trade is actual exchange of goods.
Such is the business of the common people. If we could see
the large transactions in the palace, we would find there heavy
rings of gold of a recognized weight, which circulated like money.
Rings of copper also served the same purpose. Such rings were
the forerunners of coin (p. 152).
Three classes These people in the gayly painted market place on the chapel

the^Pyramid wall are the common folk of Egypt in the Pyramid Age. Some
^^^ of them were free men, following their own business or in-
dustry. Others were slaves working the fields on the great
estates like the one which is pictured on these walls. Over both
these humbler classes were the great officials of the Pharaoh's
government, like the owner of. this tomb whose tall form
(Fig. 16) we find so often shown upon these chapel walls. We
know many more of them by name, and a walk through this
cemetery would enable us to make a directory of the wealthy
quarter of the royal city under the kings who were buried in
these pyramids of Gizeh. It would be a kind of social Blue
Book of the capital of Egypt in the Pyramid Age. We know
the grand viziers and the chief treasurers, the chief judges and
the architects, the chamberlains and marshals of the palace, and
so on. We can even visit the tomb of the architect who built
the Great Pyramid of Gizeh for Khufu.
The noble of We can observe with what vast satisfaction these nobles and

Age in^hS^ officials presided over this busy industrial and social life of the
home jvj-jg y^lley in the Pyramid Age. Here on this chapel wall again
we see its owner seated at ease in his palanquin, a luxurious
 39
The Ston' of Egypt

T;^f .^^-"^ f"}^-^^!^.

Fig. 21. Villa of an Egyptian Noble

The garden is inclosed with a high wall. There are pools on either
side as one enters, and a long arbor extends down the middle. The
house at the rear, embowered in trees, is crowned by a roof garden
shaded with awnings of tapestry (see p. 37)

wheel-less carriage, borne upon the shoulders of slaves, as he

returns from the inspection of his estate where we have been
following him. As he is carried through the gate of his garden
he retires into a veritable paradise (Fig. 21). The slaves set
down the palanquin in the shade and their master steps out to
 Outlines of European History
40
recline by the cool waters of the fishpool, where he watches
the slow and stately dances of his women or the pranks of his
children as they romp about the pool. The villa (Fig. 21) which
peeps through the verdure is light and airy and gay with brightly

Fig. 22. Colonnades in the Court of a Pyramid-Temple

(Twenty-eighth Century b.c.)
Notice the pyramid rising behind the temple (just as in the Frontis-
piece also). The door in the middle leads to the holy place built
against the side of the pyramid, where a false door in the pyramid
masonry serves as the portal through which the king comes forth from
the world of the dead into this beautiful temple to enjoy the food and
drink placed here for him and to share in the splendid feasts celebrated
here. The center of the court is open to the sky ; the roof of the porch
all around is supported on columns, the earliest known in the history
of architecture. Each column reproduces a palm tree, the capital being
the crown of foliage. The whole place was colored in the bright hues
of nature, including the painting on the walls behind the columns.
Among these paintings was the ship in Fig. 14

colored tapestry hangings. It is a work of art, bright in all its

decorations with the beauty of the outdoor world which the
Egyptian so much loved. His lady comes forth to greet him in
a long closely fitting robe of spotless white linen. She is in every
Fig. 23. Head of Statue of King Khafre, Builder of the
Second Pvra.mid of Gizeh (Twenty-ninth Century b.c.)
The king wears a linen headdress, and a false beard hanging from his
chin. A falcon, symbol of the king (see Fig. 12), hovers protectingly
over his head. The material is diorite, a stone so intensely hard that no
modern sculptor would try to use it. Found in Khafre's valley temple
by the Sphinx at Gizeh (Plate I)
Fig. 14. The Colossal Columns of the Nave in the Great
Hall of Karxak
These are the columns of the middle two rows in Fig. 28. The tiny
human figures below show by contrast the vast dimensions of the col-
umns towering above them (p. 46)
 The Story of Egypt 41

way his equal, his sole wife, his constant companion, enjoying
every right possessed by her husband.
The Egyptians could not have left us this beautifully painted Art of the
and sculptured room (the tomb-chapel) unless they had possessed Age^— paint-
trained artists. Indeed, we can find the artist who painted ^ these ^"S ^"^
walls, where he has represented himself enjoying a plentiful feast
among other people of the estate in one corner of the wall. Here
he has written his name over his head, and we read in handsome
hieroglyphs, " Nenekheptah, the artist." His drawings all around
us show that he has not been able to overcome all the difficul-
ties of placing objects having thickness and roundness on a flat
surface. Animal figures are drawn, however, with great beauty
and lifelikeness (Figs. 16-20), but "perspective" is entirely
unknown to him, and objects in the background or distance are
drawn of the same size as those in front.
The sculptor was the greatest artist of this age. In a secret Art of the
chamber alongside this chapel there is a portrait statue of the Age^— por-
dead lord whose tomb we have visited. A multitude of these trait sculpture
statues have been found in this cemetery. They were thought to
furnish the dead with an additional body, in case the mummied
body should perish. These are the earliest portraits in the history
of art. They were colored in the hues of life ; the eyes were
inlaid of rock crystal, and they still shine with the gleam of life. ^
More lifelike portraits have never been produced by any age. ^
Such statues of the kings are often superb (Fig. 23). They were
set up in the temples which the Pharaoh erected. In size, the most
remarkable statue of the Pyramid Age is the Great Sphinx, which
stands here in this cemetery of Gizeh. The head is a portrait of
Khafre, the king who built the second pyramid of Gizeh (see
Frontispiece), and was carved from a promontory of rock which
overlooked the royal city. It is the largest portrait ever wrought.^
1 Wonderfully colored ducks and geese from an Egyptian tomb painting of
the Pyramid Age will be found as headpiece of Chapter II (p. i7)-
2 The art of the age of course also included architecture. Its most important
achievement in the Pyramid Age was the colonnade, of which a good example
will be found in the court of a pyramid-temple in Fig. 22.
 42 Outlines of European History

Section 8. The Feudal Age

The Nile Probably there is no journey more interesting than the voy-
thetombsl)! ^ge "P the Nile with all its revelations of the story of the Nile
the Feudal dwellers. As the river swinofs from cliff to cliff the steamer in
Age °
which the traveler leaves Cairo is carried under many a tomb
door cut in the face of the cliff and giving entrance to a tomb
excavated in the rock ^Fig. 25). Here are the tombs of the
nobles of some 2000 b.c. Their ancestors were officials of the
Pharaohs in the Pyramid Age. But the nobles who made these
later tombs have succeeded in gaining greater power than their
ancestors. They no longer live at the court of the king, nor
build their tombs around the pyramid of the Pharaoh. They are
barons holding large estates, which they bequeath to their sons,
and the Pharaoh has only a very loose control over them, by ar-
rangements which in later ages are called feudal (Chapter XVI).
We therefore call this the P^udal Age, in Egyptian history. It
lasted for several centuries and was flourishing by 2000 B.C.
The kindly These feudal barons ruled the people on their great domains
feudal with much kindness. The age made great progress in the realm
barons ; their
libraries of conduct and kindly treatment of one's neighbors and espe-
cially of those over whom one had power (Fig. 25). In the story
of man we find here the earliest chapter in human kindness.
The evidence for it is not lacking in the cemetery^ but in the
Feudal Age our story is not drawn from the tomb records only,
as in the Pyramid Age. Fortunately fragments from the libraries
of these feudal barons — the oldest libraries in the world — have
been discovered in their tombs. These oldest of all books are
in the form of rolls of papyrus which once were packed in jars,
neatly labeled and ranged in rows on the noble's library shelves.
Here are the oldest storybooks in the world : tales of wander-
ings and adventures in Asia ; tales of shipwreck at the gate of
the unknown ocean beyond the Red Sea — the earliest Sind-
bad the Sailor ; and tales of wonders wrought by ancient wise
men and magicians.
 The Story of Egypt 43

Some of these stories set forth the sufferings of the poor Books on
and the humble and seek to stir the rulers to just and kind andjlfsrice
treatment of the weaker classes. Some picture the wickedness

Fig. 25. Cliff-Tomb of an Egyptian Noble of the

Feudal Age
The chapel entered through this door contains painted reliefs like those
of the Pyramid x\ge (Figs. 16-20) and also many written records. In
this chapel the noble tells of his kind treatment of his people ; he
says : " There was no citizen's daughter whom I misused ; there was
no widow whom I oppressed ; there was no peasant whom I evicted ;
there was no shepherd whom I expelled ; . . . there was none wretched
in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years
of famine came I plowed all the fields of the Oryx barony [his estate]
. . . preserving its people alive and furnishing its food so that there
was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a
husband ; I did not exalt the great above the humble in anything that
I gave" (p. 44)

of men and the hopelessness of the future. Others tell of a

righteous ruler who is yet to come, a "good shepherd" they
call him, meaning a good king who shall bring in justice and
44 Outlines of Europe ati History

happiness for all. We notice here a contrast with the Pyramid

Age. With the in-coming of the pyramid-builders we saw a
tremendous growth in power, in building, and in art ; but the
Feudal Age reveals progress in a higher realm, that of conduct
and character (see description under Fig. 25).
Very few rolls were needed to contain the science of this time.
The largest and the most valuable roll of all contains what they
had learned about medicine and the organs of the human body.
This oldest medical book when unrolled is about sixty-six feet
long and has recipes for all sorts of ailments. Some of them
call for remedies, like castor oil, which are still in common use ;
many represent the ailment as due to demons, which were long
believed to be the cause of disease. Other rolls contain the
simpler rules of arithmetic, geometry, and elementary algebra.
Even observations of the heavenly bodies with crude instruments
were made ; but these records, like those in geography, have
been lost.

Section 9. The Empire

As we continue our Nile journey southward, the course of

the river swings sharply eastward toward the Red Sea, and we
round a great bend in the stream (see map, p. 56). All at once, as
we look toward the east bank through the thick palm groves, we
catch glimpses of vast masses of stone masonry and lines of tall
columns. They are the ruins of the once great city of Thebes.
Our voyage up the river has now carried us through many cen-
turies. The monuments along its banks have told us the story
of two of the three periods ^ into which the career of this great
people of the Nile falls. At Thebes we reach the Empire, the
third of those periods.
A walk around the temple of Karnak ^ here is as instructive
for this period as we have found the Gizeh cemetery to be for
1 These three ages are (i) Pyramid Age, about 3000 to 2500 b.c. (section 7) ;
(2) Feudal Age, flourishing 2000 B.C. (section 8) ; (3) The Empire, about 1580 to
1 1 50 B.C. (section 9).
2 Karnak is a tiny modem village by the greatest temple at Thebes.
 The Story of Egypt 45

the Pyramid Age. As we pass along the north wall of this vast Kamak — be-
temple we find it covered with enormous sculptures in relief,
^ fhe"Ernptre-
horse in
depicting the wars of the Egyptians in Asia. We see the 2:iant arrival of the
figure of the Pharaoh as he stands in his war chariot, towering Egypt

Fig. 26. A Pharaoh of the Empire in Battle

The Pharaoh stands in his chariot with the reins of his galloping horses
fastened about his waist. His colossal figure towers above the form of
the opposing chief below, who throws up his hands as the Pharaoh lifts
a curved sword to strike him down. The tiny figures of the enemy are
scattered beneath the Pharaoh's horses. This is one of an enormous
series of such scenes, one hundred seventy feet long, carved in relief on
the outside of the Great Hall of Karnak (Fig. 24). Such sculpture was
brightly colored and served to enhance the architectural effect and to
impress the people with the heroism of the Pharaoh

above all his fleeing foes, whom he drives before his plunging
horses (Fig. 26). This is the first time we have met the horse
on the ancient monuments. The animal has been imported
from Asia, the chariot has come with him, and Egypt has learned
 Outlines of European History

The Empire 46 on a scale unknown before. The Pharaohs are now

warfare
(1580-1150
B.C.) great generals, who lead their armies into Asia and establish
an empire which extends from the
Euphrates in Asia to the Fourth Cata-
ract of the Nile in Africa.
This world-power of the Pharaohs
lasted from the early sixteenth century
to the twelfth century B.C., something
over four hundred years. The great-
est of the conquerors during all this
period was Thutmose III, who ruled
for over fifty years, beginning about
1500 B.C. We may call him the Napo-
leon of Egypt, for' he was the first
great general in history, and he carried
on wars in Asia for nearly twenty years,
Fig. 27. Portrait of
THE Napoleon of during which he led no less than
Ancient Egypt, Thut- seventeen campaigns there. His em-
mose III (Fifteenth pire was slowly lost under the less
Century b.c.) powerful rule of Ramses II and his
Carved in granite and successors.
showing the great con- The wealth which the Pharaohs cap-
queror (p. 46) wearing tured in Asia and Nubia during the
the tall crown of Upper
Egypt, with the sacred Empire enabled them to live in such
asp forming a serpent-
crest above his forehead
power and magnificence as the world
had never seen before. The battle
(see also Fig. 130). Such
portraits in the Empire scenes we have just found (Fig. 26)
can be compared with are carved on the walls of a hall of the
the actual faces of these
Egyptian emperors as temple of Karnak — a hall so large
we have them in their that you could put into it the whole
mummies (Fig. 32), and cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
they are thus shown to The columns of the central aisle are
be good likenesses
sixty-nine feet high. The vast capital
forming the summit of each column is large enough to contain
a group of a hundred men standing upon it at the same time.
 'in bfi
(U
u

rt c
2i o
■^ C3

ffl 00 rt ^
^-, c
H
>
flj

§■5
V- +j O o, OfJ ^
T)

I-c
0)
t/)
•£ ^ -^ V
-c roc
dj l-i -I-'
H
w f- ii (u -r
>^*" .2
G X -
o
W^ a;
£ lu Q
15 ^

a;
" C i3
OJ o
lu a, ^

o
28 H-S 2
•^ c

" d >-■ 2
IB
o 8

.tl !U .

o c
TO (U 2 2
w £ 03

^ o ^ "t! >>Zo 2:
Q, 1)
dj o

O w

47
 Outlines of European History

As 48will be seen in Fig. 28, these central columns are taller

than those on each side, and the resulting difference in the level
of the roof permits the insertion of a row of windows on each
side of the central aisle. Such an arrangement of the roof is
called a clerestory (" clear story "), and the aisle with its columns
and windows is termed a " nave." It is found in simpler form
as far back as the Pyramid Age. Later it passed over to Europe,
where it finally appeared as the leading form of Christian archi-
tecture— the cathedral church, whose nave, side aisles, and
clerestory windows^ (Fig. 170) have descended to us from the
colonnaded temple halls of Egypt. These buildings of the
Empire form the leading chapter in the early history of great
architecture, though we should not forget that the columns em-
ployed here were already in use in the Pyramid Age (Fig. 22).
The splendor Such temples as these at Thebes were seen through the deep
of the Em-
pire temples green of clustering palms, among towering obelisks, and colossal
at Thebes
statues of the Pharaohs (Fig. 29). The whole was bright with
color, flashing at many a point with gold and silver, and, mir-
rored in the unruffled surface of the temple lake, it made a
picture of such splendor as the ancient world had never seen
before. These temples and their surrounding monuments were
connected by imposing avenues of sphinxes, and thus grew up
at Thebes the first great monumental city ever built by man —
a city which as a whole was itself a vast and imposing monument.
Painting and Much of the grandeur of Egyptian architecture was due to
sculpture in
the temples the sculptor and the painter. We have already viewed the vast
battle scenes carved on the temple wall (Fig. 26). These scenes,
like the rest of the temple, were painted in bright colors. Portrait
statues of the Pharaoh also were set up before these temples ;
they were often so large that they rose above the towers of the
temple front itself, — the tallest part of the building, — and they
could be seen for miles around (Fig. 29). The sculptors cut
these colossal figures from a single block, although they were
1 These things were borrowed by the Christian architects from the Roman
basilica, which in turn was derived from Greece, whither it had gone from Egypt,
Fig. 30. Colossal Portrait Figure of Ramses II at Abu Simbel
IN Egyptian Nubia ,
Four such statues, seventy-five feet high, adorn the front of this temple.
They are better preserved than those in Fig. 29, and show us that such
vast figures were portraits. The face of Ramses II here closely re-
sembles that of his mummy. Grand view of the Nubian Nile, on which the
statues have looked down for thirty-two hundred years (see p. 49). View
taken from the top of the crown of one of the statues and never before
published. (Photograph by The University of Chicago Expedition)
 49
The Story of Egypt

sometimes eighty or ninety feet high and weighed as much as

a thousand tons. This is a burden equivalent to the load drawn
by a modern freight train, but it was not cut up into small units
of light weight convenient for handling and loading like the
train load. Nevertheless the engineers of the Empire moved
many such vast figures for
hundreds of miles. They
generally dragged the statue
on a huge sledge to the river,
and then transported it in a
large boat. It is in works of
this massive monumental
character that the art of
Egypt excelled (Fig. 30).
Two of these enormous
portraits of the Pharaoh
still stand on the western
plain of Thebes (Fig. 29). Fig. 31. Valley at Thebes
A splendid temple, now WHERE THE PhARAOHS OF THE
vanished, once rose behind Empire were buried
them. In the background In the Empire (after 1600 B.C.) the
we see the majestic cliffs of Pharaohs had ceased to erect pyra-
mids. They excavated their tombs
the western valley wall. Be- in the mountains of this valley, pen-
hind these cliffs is a lonely etrating in long galleries hundreds
valley (Fig. 31) where the of feet into the rock. Taken from
here and concealed near by, the
Pharaohs of the Empire were
bodies of many of the Pharaohs,
buried in tombs reached by although long ago stripped of their
long galleries cut far into valuables by tomb robbers, have sur-
the mountain. Some of their vived and now lie in the National
Museum of Egypt at Cairo (Fig. 32)
bodies have been preserved,
and we are able to look into the very faces of these great em- The ceme-
ter\'
Thebesof ; the
perors who lived as much as thirty-four hundred years ago
tombs of the
(Fig. 32). the royal and
Pharaohs
In these cliffs (Fig. 29), which look down upon the Theban bodies
plain, are cut hundreds of tomb-chapels belonging to the great
 Outlines of European History
Tombs of the menso of the Empire. Here were buried the able generals who
great men of
the Empire marched with the Pharaoh on his campaigns in Asia and in
Nubia. Here lay the gifted artists and architects who furnished
a new chapter in the history of art — the men who were in
charge of erecting the vast buildings and sculptured monuments
(Fig. 30) of Thebes —
the men whose genius
made it the first great
monumental city of the
ancient world, so that
its ruins are, as we
have seen, the marvel
of a host of modern
visitors. We can enter
these chapels and read
the names of these men
on their walls — and
not only their names
but long accounts of
Fig. 32. LiOlA- OF SeTI 1 AS HE LIES their lives and the
IN HIS Coffin in the National
Museum at Cairo great deeds which they
wrought. Here is the
This king lived in the Empire in the four-
teenth century B.C. He was buried in the story of the general
valley shown in Fig. 31. His successors who saved Thutmose
being unable to protect his body and those nPs life in a great
of other emperors from tomb robbers, hid
them all in a large secret chamber exca-
elephant hunt in Asia,
vated near the valley in the eleventh cen-
by rushing in and cut-
tury B.C. Here the bodies lay unmolested
ting off the trunk of an
for about three thousand years, until they
enraged elephant which
were discovered and brought forth in 1881
was pursuing the king.
Here is the tomb of the general who captured the city of Joppa
in Palestine by concealing his men in panniers loaded on the
backs of donkeys, thus bringing them into the city as mer-
chandise — an adventure which afterward furnished part of the
story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
 The Story of Egypt

The very furniture which these great men used m their houses The furniture
and equip-
was put into these tombs. Many beautiful things, like chairs ment of tlie
Empire
covered with gold and silver and fitted with soft leathern cush- tombs
ions (Fig. 33), beds of sumptuous workmanship, jewel boxes
and perfume caskets of the ladies (Fig. 34), or even the
gold-covered chariot 51
in which the Theban
noble took his after-
noon airing, thirty-
three or thirty-four
hundred years ago,
have been found in
these tombs and
may now be seen
in the National
Museum at Cairo.
This city of Thebes
with its majestic
temples and monu-
ments and its vast
cemetery is thus a 5^
great chapter in that
vast historical vol- Fig. 33. Armchair from the House of
ume of the Nile AN Egyptian Noble of the Empire
which we are read- This chair with other furniture from his house
ing — it is the was placed in his tomb, at Thebes in the early
chapter which tells part of the fourteenth century B.C. There it
remained for nearly thirty-three hundred years,
us the impressive till it was discovered in 1905 and removed to
story of the Egyp- the National Museum at Cairo (p. 51)
tian Empire.
This cemetery discloses to us also how much further the Egyp- Religion
the in
Empire
tian has advanced in his religion since the days of the pyramids
of Gizeh. Each of these great men buried in the Theban ceme-
tery looked forward to a judgment in the hereafter — a judg-
ment at which he would be called upon to answer for the
 Outlines of Eiwopcan History

52
character of his life on earth and to show whether it had been
good or bad. Osiris was the great judge and king in the next
world, for he himself had suffered death but had triumphed
over it and had risen from the dead (p. 27). Every good man
might rise from the dead as Osiris had done ; but in the pres-
ence of Osiris he would
be obliged to see his
soul weighed in the
balances over against
the symbol of truth and
justice (Fig. 35). The
dead man's friends al-
ways put into his coffin
a roll of papyrus con-
taining prayers and
magic charms which
would aid him in the
hereafter, and among
these was a picture of
Fig. 34. Jewel Casket from the the judgment. We now
House of a Noble Egyptian Lady
OF THE Empire call this roll the " Book

This lady was the wife of the owner of the of ItthewasDead."

in these great
chair (Fig. 33), and the casket was placed
in the same tomb where both the noble days of the Empire that
and his wife were buried. The casket is some of the leading
overlaid with red and blue incrustation of
glaze in the brightest tones. The inscrip- Egyptians gained the
tions contain the name of the king who belief in a single god to
gave the casket to the lady the exclusion of all
others. Such a belief
we call monotheism (see p. 108). Ikhnaton, the greatest of their
kings, endeavored to make this faith in one god the religion
of the Empire, but the opposition of the priests and the people
was too strong, and he perished in the attempt.
But these monuments of Thebes do not tell us of the Egyp-
tians alone. \\\ find also in the temple-sculptures and the
 TJie Story of Egypt 53

tomb-chapel paintings many a scene which shows us the tne

The end of
age Nile
and the
peoples of the northern Mediterranean whom we left in 1 the voy-

Late Stone As^e.°On these Egyptian

°-' ^ monuments we find them Sl°^^ ?^ ^^^
Egyptian
after they have received metal With huge metal swords in their Empire
hands (Fig. 1 06) we
see them serving
as hired soldiers in
the Egyptian army.
These northern-
ers finally entered
Egypt in such
numbers that in
the twelfth cen-
tury B.C. the w^eak-
ened Egyptian Fig. 35. Judgment Scene from the
Book of the Dead
Empire fell and
never agam At the left we see entering, in white robes, the
covered her old deceased, a man named Ani, and his wife. Be-
re- fore them are the balances of judgment for
leadership, But
weighing the human heart, to determine whether
the civilization of
it is just or not. A jackal-headed god adjusts
Egypt did not the scales, while an Ibis-headed god stands be-
hind him, pen in hand, ready to record the ver-
perish with the dict of the balances. Behind him is a monster
fall of the E with head of a crocodile, fore quarters of a lion,
Its
tian Empire fe-yp- and hind quarters of a hippopotamus, ready to
culture survived devour the unjust soul. The small figure of a
man at the left of the scales is the god of des-
far down into the tiny, and behind him are two goddesses of
Christian Age and birth. These three who presided over Ani's ar-
rival in this world now stand by to watch the
greatly influenced result of his life, as his heart (symbolized by a
later history, con- tiny jar), in the left scalepan, is weighed over
tributing many against right and truth (symbolized by a feather)
in the right-hand scalepan. The scene is
things to Europe, painted in water colors on papyrus. Such a roll
as, for example, is sometimes as much as ninety feet long and
the ancient calen- filled from beginning to end with magical
charms for the use of the dead in the next
dar of the Nile world. Hence the modern name for the whole
dwellers (p. 23). roll, the " Book of the Dead "
 54 Oiit lines of European History

The voyage up the Nile has told us, age by age, the story of
Egypt and disclosed to us early man advancing out of the Late
Stone Age to the discovery of metal, and then going on to
develop a high civilization of far-reaching power and influence.
Our Nile journey has also showed us how we gain knowledge of
ancient men and their deeds, through the monuments and records
which they have left behind. Such monuments and records have
also been discovered along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in
Asia. They show us that, following the Egyptians, the Asiatic
peoples rose to the leading position of power in the ancient
world, and we must therefore turn in the next chapter to the
story of the early Orient in Asia.

QUESTIONS
Section 6. Where is Egypt.? Describe the modern traveler's
journey into the country. Whence came the soil of Egypt '^. What
are the shape and character of the country .? Give its area. Describe
Jts climate. What is the adjoining country like.-^
What remains have the Stone Age Egyptians left behind.? De-
scribe their life, industries, and government. How did they originate
writing? writing materials? Is there any more important achieve-
ment of civilization than the invention of writing?
Describe the origin of the calendar and its final form in Egypt.
Whence came our calendar ? Describe the probable manner of the
discovery of copper. What great ages of the career of man do
Egyptian remains link together for us ? Have we any such link any-
where else ? Do the monuments along the Nile continue for us the
story of man after the discovery of metal, writing, etc. ? Why may
we call the Nile valley a historical volume ?
Section 7. What was the purpose of a pyramid? What do such
buildings reveal to us about Egyptian religious beliefs ? Give an
account of the gods of Egypt. What does the cemetery of Gizeh
reveal to us about the early Egyptian's progress in building?
How long before the Gizeh pyramids was he still building royal
tombs of sun-baked brick ? Draw the line of surviving tomb buildings
in which we can follow the Egyptian's progress from sun-baked brick
 The Story of Egypt 55
to stone masonry (Fig. 13). How much time was needed for this
progress ? In what century did most of it fall ?
With what other century may we compare it in such matters?
What do such buildings reveal to us about government in the Pyra-
mid Age ? Give the date and length of the Pyramid Age. Date and
describe the earliest-known seagoing ships.
Discuss foreign commerce in the Pyramid Age. Describe a tomb-
chapel in the Pyramid Age. Write an account of the industries and
the social life revealed in the tomb-chapels of the Pyramid Age.
Describe the art of the Pyramid Age.
Section 8. How does the Nile voyage continue the story of the
Egyptians ? Discuss the Feudal Age. Give its date. Give an account
of the feudal barons. Catalogue the contents of a library of this age.
W^hat kind of progress was being made.''
Section 9. Through what ages has the voyage up the Nile carried
us ? What great age do we find revealed at Thebes, and what is its out-
standing character .'' Give the date and extent of the Egyptian Empire.
Who was its greatest conqueror t Describe the great buildings of the
Empire. Describe a clerestory, and draw a diagram representing a
cross section of one.
Compare it with a cross section of a Christian cathedral (Fig. 182).
Describe the painting and sculpture in the Empire temples. Give an
account of the cemetery at Thebes. How do the tombs differ from
those of the Pyramid Age ?
Recount some of the stories of the great men of the Empire which
the Theban tomb-chapels tell us. What do they reveal of Egyptian
progress in religion? What foreigners do the Theban monuments
reveal to us ? Did Egyptian civilization continue after the fall of the
Empire? Give an example of its later influence.
 '^-'5^

^f! ^i
^

^«^^ ^^^jg^j4ffliiisi>*^^

CHAPTER III

WESTERN ASIA : BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA, AND CHALDEA

Section io. The Lands and Races of

Western Asia

Water The westernmost reach of Asia is an irregular region roughly

boundaries of
western Asia included within the circuit of waters marked out by the Caspian
and Black seas on the north, by the Mediterranean and the Red
seas on the west, and by the Indian Ocean and the Persian
Mountainous Gulf on the south and east. It is a region consisting chiefly
north : desert
south of mountains on the north and desert on the south. The earli-
est home of men in this great arena of western Asia is a
borderland between desert and mountains — a kind of culti-
vable fringe of the desert — a fertile crescent having the moun-
tains on one side and the desert on the other.
The fertile This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the
crescent
between open side toward the south, having the west end at the southeast
comer of the Mediterranean, the center directly north of Arabia,
and the east end at the north end of the Persian Gulf (see
map, p. 56). It lies like an army facing south, with one wing
stretching along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the
other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center has its
 Western Asia: Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 57

back against the northern mountains. The end of the western

wing is Palestine, Assyria makes up a large part of the center,
while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia.
This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the The desert-
fertile crescent.^ It may also be likened to the shores of a ^^^
desert-bay, upon which the mountains behind look down — a
bay, not of water but of sandy waste, some five hundred miles
across, forming a northern extension of the Arabian desert, and
sweeping as far north as the latitude of the northeast corner of
the Mediterranean. After the meager winter rains much of the
northern desert-bay is clothed with scanty grass, and spring thus
turns the region for a short time into grasslands. Much of the
history of western Asia may be described as an age-long struggle
between the mountain peoples of the north and the desert wan-
derers of these grasslands — a struggle which is still going on — '
for the possession of the fertile crescent, the shores of the
desert-bay.
Arabia is totally lacking in rivers and enjoys but a few weeks The Arabian
of rain in midwinter; hence it is a desert very little of which is fhes^emhlc
habitable. Its people are and have been from the remotest ages "on^^d
a great white race called Semites, with two of whose tribes we
are familiar, the Arabs, and the Hebrews whose descendants
dwell among us. They all spoke and still speak dialects of the
same tongue, of which Hebrew was one. For ages they have
moved up and down the habitable portions of the Arabian
world, seeking pasturage for their flocks and herds. Such
wandering shepherds are called nomads.
From the earliest times, when the spring grass of the northern Ceaseless
wilderness is gone, they have been constantly drifting in from nomad^rom
the sandy sea upon the shores of the northern desert-bay. If ^"^^ ^^s^'"* ^°
.u
they can secure a rlootmg • there,
, , slowly
they 11 make ,1 -^ . .
the transition the fertile
crescent
from the wandering life of the desert nomad to the settled life

1 There is no name, either geographical or political, which includes all of this

great semicircle (see map, p. 56) . Hence we are obliged to coin a term and call
it the "fertile crescent."
 Outlines of Eicivpean History

58 agricultural peasant. This slow shift at times swells into

of the
a great tidal wave of migration, when the wild hordes of the
wilderness roll in upon the fertile shores of the desert-bay — a
human tide from the desert to the towns which they overwhelm.
We can see this process going on for thousands of years.
Among such movements we are familiar with the passage of
the Hebrews from the desert into Palestine, as described in the

Fig. 36. The Euphrates at Babylon in Winter

The winter rainfall (p. 61) is so slight that the river shrinks to a very
low level and its bed is exposed and dry almost to the middle. In
summer the rains and melting snows in the northern mountains swell
the river till it overflows its banks and inundates the Babylonian plain.
The house on the right is the dwelling of the German Expedition still
engaged in excavating Babylon

Bible ; and we shall later learn (Chapter XIV) of the invasions

of the Arab hosts of Islam, which even reached Europe. After
they had adopted a settled town life the colonies of the Semites
stretched far westward through the Mediterranean, especially in
northern Africa, even to southern Spain and the Atlantic (see
diagram, Fig. 49). But it took many centuries for the long line
of their settlements to creep slowly westward until it reached the
Atlantic, and we must begin with the Semites in the desert.
 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 59

The life of the wandering Semites in the desert is very simple. Life on the
They possess only scanty, movable property, chiefly flocks and
herds. They hold no land, they know no law, they are unable
to write. They are practically without industries, and thus the
desert tribesmen lead a life of untrammeled freedom. Their
needs oblige them to traffic now and then in the towns, and Traffic and
through such connections with the townsmen these desert wan- ^ caravan
derers often become the common carriers of the settled com-
munities, fearlessly leading their caravans across the wastes of
the desert sea, especially between Syria-Palestine and Babylonia.
The wilderness is the nomad's home. His imagination peoples Religion of
the far reaches of the desert with invisible and uncanny crea-
tures, who inhabit every rock and tree, hilltop and spring. These
creatures are his gods. Each one of these beings controls only
a litde corner of the great world ; he becomes the nomad's
tribal god and journeys with him from pasture to pasture,
sharing his food and his feasts and receiving as his due from
the tribesman the first-born of the flocks and herds. The thoughts
of the desert wanderer about such a god are crude and barbarous,
and his religious customs are often savage, even leading him to
sacrifice his children to appease the angr)^ god. On the other
hand, the nomad has a dawning sense of justice and of right,
and he feels obligations, of kindness to his fellows which he be-
lieves are the compelling voice of his god. Such lofty moral
vision made the Semites the religious teachers of the civilized
world. At the same time these Semites had practical gifts which
made them the greatest merchants of the ancient world, as their
Hebrew descendants among us still are at the present day.
As early as 3000 b.c. or a little after, they were drifting in The western
Semites
from the desert and settling in Palestine, where we find them
in possession of walled towns by 2500 B.C. (Fig. 55). These
predecessors of the Hebrews in Palestine were a tribe called
Canaanites (p. 102); further north settled a powerful tribe known
as Amorites (p. 67) ; while along the shores of north Syria
some of these one-time desert wanderers had taken to the sea,
6o Outlines of European History

and had become the Phcrnicians (p. 137). Ijy 2000 B.C. all these
settled communities of the Semites had developed no mean
degree of civilization, drawn
for the most part from Egypt
and Babylonia.
At the same time we can
^i'V"c:r watch similar movements of
the nomads at the eastern
end of our fertile crescent
(p. 56), along the lower
course of the Tigris and
Euphrates (Fig. 36). These
/ two rivers rise in the north-
ern mountains (see map,
/
p. 56), whence they issue to
cross the fertile crescent and
Fig. 37. Early Sumerian jWedge-
f
Writing, THE Earliest Writing to cut obliquely southeast-
OF Babylonia (about 2900 b.c.) ward through the northern
Such archaic examples (3000 to 2500
bay of the desert (p. 57),
B.C.) were written in short vertical As the rivers approach most
lines read downward. Each sign was
closely to each other, about
a picture. Pressing the corner of a
square reed-tip into the soft clay for
one hundred and sixty or
each line of the picture tended to seventy miles from the
produce a wedge-shaped line, and
each picture thus became a group of
Persian Cjulf,^ they emerge
from the desert and enter
wedge-shaped lines. These signs were
also employed engraved on stone. a low plain of fertile soil,
The above inscription is on a frag- formerly brought down by
ment of a stone mortar and records
a Sumerian king's dedication of the the rivers to fill a prehis-
mortar to a goddess. Among other toric bay like the Delta
things the king prays to the goddess, of the Nile. This plain is
" May the king of Kish not seize it
[the mortar]," showing the dangers Babylonia, the eastern end
of this Age of the City-States (p. 64) of the fertile crescent.
1 This distance applies only to ancient Babylonian and Assyrian days. The
rivers have since then filled up the Persian Gulf for one hundred and fifty to
one hundred and sixty miles, and the gulf is that much shorter at the present
day (see note under scale on map, p. 56).
 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Ckaldea 6l

Rarely more than forty miles wide, this plain contained prob- Area of the
ably less than eight thousand square miles of cultivable soil — plain °"'^"
roughl}' equal to the state of New Jersey or the territory of
Wales. It lies in the Mediterranean belt of rainy winter and
dry summer, but the rainfall is so scanty (less than three inches
a year) that irrigation of the fields is required in order to ripen
the grain. When properly irrigated the plain is prodigiously its fertility
fertile, and the chief source of wealth in Babylonia was agri-
culture. This plain was the scene of the most important and
long-continued of those frequent struggles between the moun-
taineer and the nomad, of which we have spoken.

Section ii. The Earliest Babylonians

The mountaineers were not Semitic and show no relationship Race of the
to the Semitic nomads of the Arabian desert.^ We are indeed ^ans ""^^'
unable to connect the earliest of these mountain peoples with
any of the great racial groups known to us. We find them
shown on monuments of stone, as having shaven heads and
wearing heavy woolen kilts (Fig. 41). While they were still using Sumerians
stone implements, some of these mountaineers, now known as Babylonian
Sumerians, pushed through the passes of the eastern mountains P^^^'^
at a very early date. Long before 3000 B.C. they had reclaimed
the marshes around the mouths of the two rivers of Babylonia.
Their settlements of low mud-brick huts soon creep northward Their
along the river banks. They learn to control the spring freshets civilization
with dikes and to distribute the waters in irrigation trenches.
They already possess cattle, sheep, and goats. The ox draws the
plow, and the ass pulls wheeled o.djX.'s, and chariots, and the wheel
as a burden-bearing device emerges here for the first time.^ But
1 On the other hand, although they were certainly white races, the moun-
taineers exhibited no relationship to the Indo-European group of peoples who
were already spreading through the country north and east of the Caspian at a
very early date. The Indo-European peoples, from whom we ourselves have
descended, are discussed in section 16.
2 Probably earlier than the wheel in the Swiss lake-villages of the Late Stone
Age (p. 12).
 62 Outlines of European History

the horse is still unknown. Traffic with the upper river brings
in metal from the Nile valley, and the smith learns to fashion
utensils of copper. But he has not yet learned to harden the
copper into bronze by admixture of tin.
Sumerian Traffic and government have taught these people to make
wedge-
writing and records, scratched in rude pictures with the tip of a reed on a
calendar

"TT
fiat piece of soft clay. Speed in writing simplified these pictures
into groups of wedge-shaped marks, once the lines of the picture

ii 1
(Fig. 37). Hence
these signs are called
cuneiform, mean-
11 t1
1^
3t
r<T ing "wedge-form,"

l. in .ii
^gas ' ' 1j 1 !' 1§ - i writing (Latin, cu-
Sis^* neus^ " wedge ").
This writing was
phonetic, but did
not possess alpha-
Fig. 38. Restoration of an Early betic signs. In
Babylonian House. (After Koldewey) order to date events
The towns of the early Babylonians were small in a given year,
and were chiefly made of such sun-baked brick each year received
houses as these. Their simple adornment con-
sisted only of vertical panels and a stepped a name, after some
("crenelated") edge at the top of the wall. important event
The doors were crowned by arches in contrast
which had hap-
with the Egyptians, who knew the arch but
preferred a horizontal line above all doorways pened in it. The
year was composed
of moon-months, twelve of which fall very far short of making
up a solar year. An extra month must be inserted every three
years or so. This inconvenient calendar was also employed by
later peoples of the Mediterranean, until it was replaced by that
of Egypt (pp. 23 and 268), which we now use.^
Sumerian In the midst of their most sacred town we see rising a tall
religion
pyramidal mount of brick (compare Fig. 43) which serves as the
1 The moon-month calendar is still in use among the oriental Jews and
Mohammedans.
 Western Asia : Babylo7iia, Assyria, and Chaldea 63

dwelling of Enlil, their great god of the air. It is an artificial

mountain, built in memory of an ancient temple on a hilltop in
their former mountain home. It was such a temple-tower in
Babylon which later gave rise to the story of the " Tower of
Babel "' among the Hebrews. Such " nature gods " as Enlil
form the center of their life ; the temple in each community

<^ IS^- .^^•^.

^^

**^ *^ *m ^^ Pi^K. %^.

■.m^r%
Fig. 39. A Sumerian Line of Battle
The troops of a Sumerian city-king, marching into battle, about 2900
B.C. The king himself, whose face is broken off from the stone,
marches at the right, heading his troops, who follow in a close phalanx,
with spears set for the charge. Tall shields cover their entire bodies,
and they wear close-fitting helmets, probably of leather. They are
marching over dead bodies (symbolical of the overthrow of the enemy).
The scene is carved in stone. It is a good example of the rude Sume-
rian sculpture in Babylonia in the days of the Great Pyramid in Egypt
(contrast with Figs. 23 and 40)

is the center of the town, around which the sun-baked brick

houses (Fig, 38) of the townsmen spread out for a few hun-
dred feet. These houses, of which only the foundations now Society
remain, tell us little of the life which once moved in these
streets, and the meager story is not enlivened by beautiful
scenes on the walls of tomb-chapels, such as we find in Egypt.
 64

Outlines of F.uropean History

Hence we cannot visit the country and make its monuments

tell us its story as we have done in Egypt. The Sumerians
built no such tombs, nor had they any belief in a blessed here-
after. Their business documents, written on clay tablets, reveal
to us a class of free, landholding citizens, working their lands
with slaves, who form a large part of the population, and trad-
ing with caravans and small boats up and down the river.
The Sumerian Over both these classes, free and slave, there is a numerous
city-state
body of officials and priests — the aristocrats of the town. They
are ruled, along with all the rest, by a priest-king. Such a com-
munity, forming a town or city kingdom and owning the lands
for a few miles round about the town, is the political unit, or
state. Babylonia as a whole consisted of a number of such
small city-kingdoms, and this earliest Sumerian period may be
Wars of the
called the Age of the City-States. These early city-states were
city-states
more skilled in war (Fig. 39) than the Eg)^ptians and were con-
stantly fighting each with its neighbors. Such struggles among
themselves seriously w^eakened the Sumerians and made them
less able to resist the incoming men of the desert.
The desert The tribesmen from the desert had early begun to filter into
Semites like-
wise invade the Euphrates valley. They were finally settled in such numbers
the plain
along the narrow strip of land where the two rivers approach
each other most closely that they took possession of northern
Babylonia. By the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C.
they had established a kingdom there known as Akkad. These
Sargon of Akkadians, under a bold and able leader named Sargon, de-
Akkad —
earliest scended the Euphrates and overthrew the Sumerians far and
Semitic
supremacy wide. Thus arose the first Semitic kingdom of importance in
history, and Sargon I, its founder, is the first great name in the
history of the Semitic race.
Semites These one-time wanderers of the desert learned to write the
receive
Sumerian Sumerian wedge-writing, and it was now that a Semitic language
civilization
was written for the first time. Sargon and his people gained
Sumerian civilization. Their own vigorous life, fresh as the breath
of the desert, also contributed much, especially in art (Fig. 40),
 Fig. 40. A King of Akkad storming a Fortress — the
Earliest Great Semitic Work of Art (about 2700 b.c.)
King Naram-Sin of Akkad (son of Sargon I, p. 64) has pursued the
enemy into a mountain stronghold. His heroic figure towers above his
pygmy enemies, each one of whom has fixed 65 his eyes on the conqueror,
awaiting his signal of mercy. The sculptor, with fine insight, has depicted
the dramatic instant when the king lowers his weapon as the sign that
he grants the conquered their lives. Compare the superiority of this
Semitic sculpture of Akkad over the Sumerian art of two centuries
earher (Fig. 39)
 66 Outlines of Ejiropean Histoiy

in which they far surpassed their Sumerian teachers. Thus the

life and qualities of the desert Semite and those of the non-
Mingling of Semitic mountaineer now mingle on the Babylonian plain, as
Sumerian
and Semite Norman and English later mingled in Merry England. On the
streets and in the market places of the Euphrates towns, where

Fig. 41. A Semitic Noble axd his Sumerian Secretary

(Twenty-seventh Century b.c.)
The third figure (wearing a cap) is that of the noble, UbilTshtar, who
is brother of the king. He is a Semite, as his beard shows. Three of his
four attendants are also Semites, with beards and long hair; but one of
them (just behind the noble) is beardless and shaven-headed. He is the
noble's secretary, for being a Sumerian he is skilled in writing. His
name " Kalki" we learn from the inscription in the corner, which reads,
" Ubil-Ishtar, brother of the king ; Kalki, the scribe, thy servant." This
inscription is in the Semitic (Akkadian) tongue of the time and illus-
trates how the Semites have learned the Sumerian signs for writing.
The scene is engraved on Kalki's personal seal, of which the above is a
drawing. It is a fine example of the Babylonian art of seal-cutting in
hard stone. The original is in the British Museum

once the bare feet, clean-shaven heads, and beardless faces of

the Sumerian townsmen were the only ones to be seen, there is
now a plentiful sprinkling of sandaled feet, of dark beards, and
of heavy black locks hanging down over the shoulders of the
swarthy Semites of Akkad (Fig. 41).
 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, ajid CJialdca 6/

Section 12. The Age of Hammurapi and after

[jl^encuries of struggle between the Sumerians and Semites Hammu-

ensue. A tribe of Amorites from the west (p. 59) gains control second^ ^
of the little town of Babylon. •^ Hammurapi,^ one of their kins's,
^
Semitic
supremacy
fights for thirty years and conquers all Babylonia (about 2 100 b.c).
Again the desert wins, as this second great Semitic ruler, Ham-
murapi, raises Babylon, thus far a small and unimportant town,
to be the leading place in the plain which we may now more
properly call " Babylonia."
Hammurapi survived his triumph twelve years. It is not a Civilization
little interesting to watch this great man, still betraying in his Hammurapi
shaven upper lip (a desert custom) the evidence of his desert
ancestry, as he puts forth his powerful hand upon the teeming life
of Babylonia, and with a touch brings in order and system where
before all had been confusion. He collects all the older laws and The laws of

customs of business, legal, and social life and issues these in a mmurapi
great legal code. Engraved upon a splendid shaft of diorite, these
laws have survived to our day, the oldest-preserved code of
ancient law (Fig. 42). On the whole it is a surprisingly just code
and shows much consideration for the poor and defenseless classesTJ
Thus regulated, Babylonia prospers as never before, and her Expansion of
merchants penetrate far and wide into the surrounding countries, commerce
The clay-tablet invoices in Babylonian writing which accompany
their heavily loaded caravans have to be read by many a merchant
in the towns of Syria and behind the northern mountains. Thus
the wedge-writing of Babylonia gradually makes its way through
western Asia. There is as yet no coined money, but lumps of
silver of a given weight circulate so commonly (p. 98) that values
are given in weight of silver. Thus a man may say an ox is
worth so many ounces of silver, only he would use " shekels "
(the name of a weight) in place of ounces. Loans are common,
and the rate of interest is twenty per cent. Babylonian civiliza-
tion is above all things mercantile. Merchandising is the chief
occupation and even invades the temples.
68 Outlines of European History

The temples are trading centers, owning vast properties, carry-

ing on banking, and controlling much of the business of the
people. Nevertheless there are
some indications of higher de-
sires. The ritual of the temples
contains a small group of prayers
which indicate a deep sense of
sin ; but the chief teachings of
religion show a man how to
obtain prosperity from the gods
and how to avoid their dis-
pleasure. Among such teach-
ings are methods of foretelling
the future by reading the stars.
This art, now called " astrology,"
formed the beginnings of as-
tronomy (p.^^).
A journey through Babylonia
to-day could not tell us such a
* A shaft of stone (diorite) nearly
eight feet high, on which the laws are
engraved, extending entirely around
the shaft and occupying over
twenty-six hundred lines. Above is
a fine relief showing King Ham-
murapi standing at the left, receiv-
ing the laws from the Sun-god seated
at the right. Hammurapi's shaven
upper lip proclaiming him a man of
the Syrian desert (p. 67) is here in
the shadow and cannot be seen. The
flames rising from the god's shoulders
indicate who he is. The flames on
the left shoulder are commonly
shown in the current textbooks as

Fig. 42. The Laws of Ham- part of a staff in the god's left hand.
This is an error. This scene is an
MURAPI, THE Oldest-Surviv- impressive work of Semitic art, six
ING Code of Laws (2 1 00 b.c.)* hundred years later than Fig. 40
 Westerti Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, ajid Clialdea . 69

story as we read among the monuments on our voyage up the

Nile. To-day the Babylon of Hammurapi has perished utterly.
The meager remains of his age do not reveal a bright and sunny
outlook upon life, which felt deeply the beauty of the world and
clothed with that beauty all the surroundings of house, furniture,
and garden (Fig. 38). There is no painting; the sculpture of Art
the Semites is in one instance (Fig. 40) powerful and dramatic,
but portraiture is scarcely able to distinguish one individual from
another. Of architecture little remains. There were no colon-
nades and no columns, though brick supports were employed.
The chief architectural creation is the temple tower (as in Fig.
43), but of the temples no example has survived. The beauti-
ful art of gem-cutting, as we find it in their seals, was the great-
est art of the Babylonians (Fig. 41).
We may summarize the history of Babylonia as a thousand Summary of
years of developing civilization and of struggle, during which history"'^"
Sumerian and Semite each rose and fell twice — a thousand
years reaching its highest point and its end in the reign of
Hammurapi. Thenceforth the barbarians from the mountains
poured into the Babylonian plain. They brought with them the
horse^ which now appears for the first time in Babylonia. They
divided and then destroyed the kingdom of Hammurapi. After
him there followed more than a thousand years of complete stag-
nation. Henceforth Babylonia plays but a minor part in the
history of the East, until in the seventh century B.C. a new line
of desert nomads, the Chaldeans (see p. 80), established that
Empire made famous by the name of Nebuchadnezzar and the
Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews. The influence of the ven-
erable Babylonian civilization lived on, especially in writing, re-
ligion, and literature. The old Sumerian tongue — though no
longer spoken — was employed in religious documents as a
sacred language, which only the priests understood, as Latin has
survived in the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

1 It was a few centuries later that the horse entered Egypt, as we have seen
(p. 45). We shall soon learn (p. 90) whence these Babylonian horses came.
 Ouilmes of Europe a7i History

Section 13. Early Assyria and her Rivals

The history of our great fertile crescent (see p. 58 j did not

end, however, with this decline of Babylonia. We find its story
continuing among other settlements of the desert nomads ex-
tending all along the shores of the northern desert-bay. In the
northeast corner of the desert-bay, in the days when Sargon I
and his line were ruling in Babylonia, a Hittite chief (Fig. 60)
from the mountains of Asia Minor had built his castle. It was
really a mountain outpost within the desert-bay, whose rolling
hills enveloped it on all sides. Seeking the northern pas-
tures, a tribe of desert nomads who called themselves Assur
(whence Assyria) seized this stronghold and its outlying vil-
lages. Thus arose the little kingdom of Assur, like a dozen
others along this desert margin. It was nearer the middle of
the great crescent than Babylonia and held a position better
suited to rule the shores of the desert-bay.
In climate more invigorating than the hot Babylonian plain,
Assur had many fertile valleys and an agricultural population.
The Assyrians early learned cuneiform writing (p. 62), and their
language was the same as that of Semitic Babylonia, with slight
differences in dialect. In the days when Hammurapi's ancestors
had seized Babylon (2225 B.C.) (p. 67), Assur was already strong
enough to dispute the boundary line with them. Constantly
obliged to defend their uncertain frontiers and settlements, both
against their kindred of the desert and against the mountaineers,
the Assyrians were toughened by the strain of unceasing war.
By HOC B.C. their peasant militia had beaten the western kings
in Syria and looked down upon the Mediterranean, where the
Egyptian Empire had collapsed two generations before (p. 53).
Thrown back at this time, they reached it again in the ninth
century B.C., and likewise made their power felt through a wide
region of the northern mountains, around which they passed in a
march of a thousand miles. At the same time the Assyrian kings
more than once occupied and ruled Babylonia.
 Western Asia: Babylonia, Assyria, and C/talc/ea Ji

Meanwhile a new wave of Semitic nomads had rolled in from The Ara-
the desert-bay and by 1 400 B.C. occupied its western shores ; Damascus
that is, Palestine and Syria. These were the Hebrews in Pales-
tine, and somewhat later the Arameans, who founded a power-
ful kingdom at Damascus. The expansion of Assyria was stopped
in the west by the Aramean kings of Damascus, who were
wealthy commercial rulers. Indeed, these Arameans persistently
pushed their caravans and settlements ^1 along the shores of
the desert-bay, and after the decline of Babylonia they held the
commerce of western Asia. They received alphabetic writing
from the Phoenicians, the earliest system of writing known
which employed only alphabetic signs (p. 139). The Aramaic
language of this merchant people of Damascus finally dis-
placed that of the Hebrews, and Aramaic became the tongue
spoken by Jesus and the other Hebrews of his time in Pal-
estine. It is called Aramaic because it was spoken by the
Arameans, and it is a Semitic dialect differing but little from
Hebrew.

Section 14. The Assyrian Empire (about 750

TO 606 B.C.)

By the middle of the eighth century b.c, however, Assyria Sargon 11

resumed her plans of westward expansion. We can follow her ° ^^^"^
irresistible western campaigns not only in the clay-tablet records
of her kings but also in the warnings and appeals of the Hebrew
prophets, as they talked to their people. But .they were unable
to prevent the advance of the Assyrians as they beheld Damas-
cus, the only defense between them and the armies of Assyria,
slowly giving way. In the midst of these great western cam-
paigns of Assyria one of the leading Assyrian generals usurped
the throne (7 2 2 e.g.) while he was besieging the unhappy Hebrew
city of Samaria (p. 106). He was a very skillful soldier, and as king
he took the name of Sargon, the first great Semite of Babylonia,
who had reigned two thousand years earlier (p. 64). The new
 72 Outlines of European History

Sargon (Fig. 43) and his line ^ raised Assyria to the height of
Fall of her grandeur and power as a military empire. Damascus at
Damascus
last fell, and the two little Hebrew kingdoms of Israel and
Judah were then helpless before their terrible assailant (p. 1 06).
At the same time the prosperous Phoenician cities of the coast
were all humiliated and made subject kingdoms.
Sennacherib
Far up into Asia Minor the name of Sargon's son Sen-
nacherib was known and feared, as he plundered Tarsus and
the easternmost Ionian Greek strongholds (p. 146) just after
700 B.C. A crushing burden of tribute was laid on all subject
states, and hence Egypt, fearing Assyrian invasion, was con-
stantly able to stir revolt among the oppressed western peoples.
Perceiving that Egypt's interference must be stopped, Sennach-
Egypt con-by erib's son was knocking at the gates of the eastern Delta de-
quered
Assyria fenses by674 B.C. Repulsed at first, he returned to the attack,
and Egypt at last fell a prey to the Assyrian armies.
Extent of By the middle of the seventh century B.C. the Assyrian
the Assyrian
Empire Empire included all of the fertile crescent (p. 58). It thus
extended entirely around the great desert-bay, including also
the mountain country far behind. It also held the lower Nile
valley in the west, though this last was too distant and detached
to be kept long. Built up by a centur)^ of irresistible and far-
reaching military campaigns, the Assyrian conquests formed
the most extensive empire the world had yet seen.
Nineveh Along the Tigris the vast palaces (Fig. 43) and imposing
temple towers of the Assyrian emperors arose, reign after
reign. Sennacherib devoted himself to the city of Nineveh,
just north of Assur, and it became the far-famed capital of
Assyria. The lofty and massive walls of the city which he built
stretched two miles and a half along the banks of the Tigris.
Here in his gorgeous palace he ruled the western Asiatic world
1 The dynasty of Sargon II is as /ollows :
Sargon II 722-705 b.c.
Sennacherib 705-681 B.C.
Esarhaddon . . • 681-668 b.c
Ashurbanipal (called Sardanapalus by the Greeks) . 668-626 b.c
 VVester?i Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea / 0

with an iron hand, and collected tribute from all the subject
peoples. The whole administration centered in the king's busi-
ness o'^ice, where he received the letters and reports of some

Fig. 43. Restoration of the Palace of Sargux II (jf

Assyria (722-705 b.c.)
The palace stands partly inside and partly outside of the city wall on a
vast elevated platform of brick masonrj^ to which inclined roadways and
stairways rise from the inside of the city wall. The king could thus drive
up in his chariot from the streets of the city below to the palace pave-
ment above. The rooms and halls are clustered about a number of courts
open to the sky. The main entrance (with stairs before it leading down
to the city) is adorned with massive towers and arched doorways built
of richly colored glazed brick, and embellished with huge human-headed
bulls carved of alabaster (see cut, p. 85, also Figs. 44 and 45). The
pyramidal tower behind the great court was inherited from Babylonia
(p. 63). It is a sacred dwelling place of the god, and his temple (with
two others) stands just at the foot of the tower on the left

sixty governors, besides many subject kings who were some- Organization
times allowed to rule under Assyrian control. The Emperor Assyrian
lived in dazzling splendor, surrounded by an imposing array "^'I'^ary state
of courtiers and officials who were his assistants in the work
of administration.
 ::tS.r

Fig. 44. Assyrian Soldiers pursuing the Fleeing Enemy

ACROSS A Stream

The stream occupies the right half of the scene. As drawn by the
Assyrian artist, it may be recognized by the fish and the curHng waves ;
also ^y the bows and quivers full of arrows floating downstream, along
with the bodies of two dead horses, one on his back with feet up. Two
dead men, with arrows sticking in their bodies, are drifting in mid-
stream. Three of the living leap from the bank as their pursuers stab
them with spears or shoot them with drawn bow. The Assyrian spear-
men carry tall shields, but the archer needs both hands for his bow and
carries no shield. The dead are strewn along the shore, occupying the
left half of the scene. At the top the vultures are plucking out their
eyes; in the middle an Assyrian is cutting off a head; beside him an-
other plants his foot on a dead man's head and plunders him of his
weapons. The vegetation along the river is shown among the bodies.
As art, compare this sculpture with Semitic relief two thousand years
older (Fig. 40 and see p. 77)

74
 Weste7'n Asia : Babylonia, Assj'7'ia, and CJialdea 75
Amid this outward magnificence we discern the army as the The army
center of the Emperor's power, and indeed of the state itself.
The state is a vast military machine, more terrible than any
such agency mankind Iiad ever yet seen (Fig. 44). An important
new fact aided in bringing about this result. The Assyrian forces First large
were the first large armies to bear weapons of iron, replacing weapons
the older armament of bronze, as borne for example by the 0^1^°"
armies of the Egyptian Empire (p. 53). A single arsenal room
of Sargon's palace contained two hundred tons of iron imple-
ments when uncovered by modern excavators. The bulk of
the army was composed of archers, supported by heavy-armed
spearmen and shield bearers (Fig. 44), and the famous horsemen
and chariotry of Nineveh (Fig. 45 and headpiece, p. 56).
Besides their iron weapons the Assyrian soldiers possessed a Terrors of
certain inborn ferocity which held all western Asia in abject army ^^^"^'^
terror before the thundering squadrons of the Ninevite.-^ The
reigns of the Assyrian emperors were each one long war on all
frontiers. Wherever their terrible armies swept through the
land, they left a trail of ruin and desolation behind. Around
smoking heaps which had once been towns, stretched lines of
tall stakes on which were stuck the bodies of revolting rulers
flayed alive ; while all around rose mounds and piles of the
slaughtered, heaped up to celebrate the great king's power and
serve as a warning to all revolters. Through clouds of dust
arising along all the main roads of the Empire the men of the
subject kingdoms behold great herds of cattle, horses, and asses,
flocks of goats and sheep, and long lines of camels loaded with
gold and silver, the wealth of the conquered, converging upon
the palace at Nineveh. Before them march the chief men of the
plundered kingdoms, with the bloody and severed heads of their
former princes tied about their necks. Thus a vast and relendess
system organized for plunder was absorbing the wealth of the East.
While this plundered wealth was necessary for the support of
the army it also served high purposes. We behold magnificent
1 See Nahum iii, 2-3.
 0?it lines of European History

76 fctes and banquets at which all the nobles and officers

Civilization of palacc

Empir?"^" of the court are present, to celebrate the completion of some

huge royal castle ; or we see the Emperor amid music and
sacrifice receiving the good wishes of his lords as he returns
Architecture from a succcssful lion hunt (Fig. 45). The Assyrian palaces
are now imposing buildings (Fig. 43), suggesting in architecture

Fig. 45. Ax Assyrian King hunting Lions

The king stands in the chariot, and while his driver urges the horses
(notice loose reins and whip) at full gallop, he draws his bow to the
arrowhead and discharges arrows full into the face of an enraged lion
just leaping into the chariot. Three foot soldiers follow behind, and an-
other lion with body full of arrows sinks down to die. A fine example
of the Assyrian sculptor's skill in drawing animals. Such scenes as this
and Fig. 44 (also cut, p. 85) were carved on large slabs of stone (ala-
baster) and in long bands they stretched along the base of the walls of
halls and corridors of an Assyrian palace (Fig. 43) for hundreds of feet.
They display both the art of Assyria and the terrible ferocity of her
soldiers (Fig. 44 and p. 77)

something of the far-reaching power of their builder. His archi-

tects appreciate the beauty of the arch, and we must number
among great works of architecture the impressive arches of the
palace entrance, faced with glazed brick in gorgeous colors (cut,
p. 86). On either side are vast human-headed bulls wrought in
alabaster,^ and above the whole tower lofty castellated walls of
baked brick, visible far across the royal city.
1 One of these gigantic sculptures may be seen at the end of Chapter III
(p. 85).
 Western Asia: Babylonia^ Assyria, ajid Chaldea 'JJ
Within, as a dado along the lower portion of the walls of Sculpture
corridors and halls, are hundreds of yards of reliefs ^ cut in ala-
baster, displaying the brave deeds of the Emperor in campaign
and hunting field (Figs. 44, 45). The human figures are monot-
onously alike, hard and cold, but those of wild beasts are some-
times splendid in the abandon of animal ferocity which they
display. The tiger was in the blood of the Assyrian and it
here comes out in the work of his chisel. There was no art of
portraiture in statue form as in Egypt.
To be sure, these great works were largely executed by foreign Assyrian
labor, for the emperors w^ere obliged to depend not a little on fr^'iJJ'abroad
foreign skill both in art and industries. With one exception all
the patterns of their decorative art came from Egypt, and the
finer work of their palace adornment and their furniture in
ebony and ivory clearly betray Egyptian origin. The art of
glazing the colored brick for the palace front, and all work in
glass likewise, had been borrowed from Egypt (Fig. 48). Sen-
nacherib frankly confesses that his craftsmen were very unskilled
in making large bronze casts needed for his palace in Nineveh,
and boasts that he himself personally overcame the difficulties.
It is in this ability to use foreign resources that we must rec-
ognize one of the greatest traits of the Assyrian emperors.
Thus Sennacherib tells us that he had in his palace " a portal
made after the model of a Hittite palace."
In the great gardens which he laid out along the river above Palace
and below Nineveh he planted unknown trees and strange plants ^^^
from all quarters of his great empire. Among them were cotton Earliest
trees,- of which he says, " The trees that bore wool they clipped
and they carded it for garments." In this enterprise of an
Assyrian king we thus see appearing for the first time in civili-
zation the cotton which now furnishes so large a part of our
own national wealth. Nor was such insight as the king showed
J A further example of such relief sculpture of the Assyrians shows us
Assyrian horsemen hunting. See the headpiece of Chapter III (p. 56).
2 This cotton tree was doubtless related to the lower-growing cotton plant of
our Southern states.
 Outliiics of European History
8 matter wholly devoted to mere wealth, for higher inter-
in 7this
ests were also cultivated and literature flourished.
Ashurbani- Modern excavation has uncovered the buildings of Ashurbani-
pal's library
pal, Sennacherib's grandson at Nineveh, and here was found a
great library of clay tablets. In this library the religious, scien-
tific, and literary documents of past ages had been systematically
collected by the Emperor's orders. His agents passed around
among the ancient cities with authorization to take all the old
writings they could find. These thousands on thousands of clay
tablets arrayed on shelves formed the earliest library known in
Asia, and represented an idea quite in advance of Babylonian
Assyrian
civilization civilization described above. The usual impression that Assyr-
not a mere ian civilization was but an echo of Babylonian culture is very
echo of
Babylonia misleading. The Assyrians were far more advanced in these
matters than the Babylonians.
The fall of
Like many another later ruler, however, the Assyrian em-
Assyria
perors made a profound mistake in policy. They destroyed the
Internal
decay
industrial and wealth-producing population, first within their own
territory and then throughout the subject kingdoms.^ In spite
of interest in introducing a new textile like cotton, the Emperor
did not or could not build up industries or commerce like those
Economic of Babylonia. The people were chiefly agricultural, and in the
decline
old days it had sufficed to call out levies of peasant militia to
defend the frontiers. With the expansion of the Empire, how-
ever, such temporary bodies of troops were insufficient, and the
peasants \m^xq pennanently called away from the fields to fill the
ranks of an ever-growing standing army. We discern disused
canals and idle fields as we read of Sargon's efforts to re-
store the old farming communities. But even so the vast expan-
sion of the Empire exceeds the power of the standing army to

1 The fact that industries, agriculture, commerce, and wealth are historical
forces of the first rank was first discerned by historians in the nineteenth cen-
tury. The importance of these things in the career of a nation, however, was
understood by some rulers as far back as the Egyptian Empire. It is therefore
the more remarkable that historians should have been so long in discovering the
power of such forces,
 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and CJialdea 79
•
defend it. As reports of new revolts come in the harassed ruler Foreign
at Nineveh commands the enforced service of militia from among the army
the subjects of the foreign vassal kingdoms. To a larger and
larger degree the imperial army thus becomes a medley of for-
eigners. With an army made up of foreigners to a dangerous
extent, with no industries, wdth fields lying idle, and with the
commerce of the country in the hands of the Aramean traders
(p. 71), the Assyrian state fast loses its inner strength.
In addition to such weakness within, there were the most Fall of
threatening dangers from without. These came, as of old, from assaultsassauUs from
without
both sides of the fertile crescent. Drifting in from the desert, as
we have seen, the Aramean hordes were constantly absorbing
the territory of the Empire. Sennacherib in one campaign took
over two hundred thousand captives out of Babylonia, mostly
Arameans. At the same time another desert tribe called the
" Kaldi," whom we know as the Chaldeans, had been for cen- Chaldeans
turies creeping slowly around the head of the Persian Gulf and
settling along its shores at the foot of the eastern mountains.
On the other hand, in the northern mountains the advancing indo-
hordes of Indo-European peoples are in full view (see pp. 86 ff.). peoples :
Their eastern wing, which has moved down the east side of ^rlTsT^hians
the Caspian, fills the northeastern mountains, especially south of
the Caspian ; its leaders are the tribes of the Medes and Per- Pcrsi3.ris
Medes and
sians (see p. 92). These movements shake the Assyrian state
to its foundations. The Chaldeans master Babylonia, and when
in combination with the Median hosts from the northeastern
mountains they assail the walls of Nineveh, the mighty city falls. Destruction
In the voice of the Hebrew prophet Nahum^ we hear an echo of
the exulting shout which resounds from the Caspian to the Nile
as the nations discover that the terrible scourge of the East has at
last been laid low. Its fall was forever, and when two centuries
later Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks marched past the
place (p. 211) the Assyrian nation was but a vague tradition, and
Nineveh, its great city, was a vast heap of rubbish as it is to-day.
1 Especially ii, 8-13, and iii entire.
 8o Outlines of Eiuvpcaii History

Section 15. The Chaldean Empire: the Last

Semitic Empire
Chaldeans With the fall of Nineveh (606 B.C.) we enter upon the third
and Medes
divide the
and final period of Semite power in western Asia^ — a power
Assyrian
Empire which had begun over two thousand years earlier under Sargon
of Akkad. The Kaldi, or Chaldeans, the new group of desert
wanderers, now held possession of Babylonia. They made
Babylon their capital and gave their name to the land, so that
we now know it as " Chaldea " (from Kaldi). The whole moun-
tain region of the north and on the east of the Tigris was at
the same time in possession of the Medes (p. 93). The Chal-
deans were therefore obliged to divide the Assyrian Empire
with the Medes, and the Chaldean share was the south and
west. But in order to hold their western possessions the Chal-
deans were obliged to fight Eg}'pt. The Chaldean crown prince
Nebuchad-
nezzar de- Nebuchadnezzar ^ beat off Eg)^pt, and thus Assyria was followed
feats Eg}'pt by Chaldean Babylon as lord of Syria and Palestine (605 B.C.).
Reign of At Babylon Nebuchadnezzar now began a reign of over forty
Nebuchad-
years — a reign of such power and magnificence, especially as
reflected to us in the Bible, that he has become one of the great
figures of oriental history. Exasperated by the obstinate revolts
prompted by Egypt in the west, Nebuchadnezzar punished the
western nations, especially the little Hebrew kingdom of Judah.
He finally carried away many Hebrews as captives to Babylonia
and destroyed Jerusalem, their capital (586 B.C.), having pre-
viously defeated the Eg}'ptian army of relief, on which the
Hebrews had depended.

1 The three great ages of Semite power in western Asia are :

1. Early Babylonia (Sargon I about 2750 b.c, Hammurapi about 2100 B.C. ;
there was an interval of Sumerian power between these two great Semitic kings).
2. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 b.c).
3. The Chaldean Empire (about 606 to 539 b.c).
We might add zfoiirih period of Semite supremacy, the triumph of Islam in
the seventh century a.d., after the death of Mohammed (sections 58-59).
2 The monuments show that the real spelling of this name was " Nebuchad-
rezzar," but to avoid confusion the old Biblical spelling has been retained.
 Boundaries of Persian Empire

Boundaries of Alexander's Empire CHALDEAIs I

— * -Route of Alexander
SCALE MEDO-PEKSI ^
0 50 100 200 300 400 600 miles
A>D CONQUESTS OF ALl i!
Longitude 45 East r?
 Trop

IMPIRE
i E3IPIKE
XDER THE GREAT
Dm 50 Greenwich 55
 Western Asia: Babylonia, Assyiia, and Chaldea 81

In spite of long and serious wars the great king found time Civilization
and wealth to devote to the enlargement and beautification of Babylon Hts
Babylon. Profiting by the example of the imperial architecture magnificent
which had once adorned Nineveh (p. 76), Nebuchadnezzar was
able to surpass his Assyrian predecessors in the splendor of the
great buildings which he now erected. In the large temple
quarter in the south of the city he rebuilt the temples of the

Fig. 46. Reconstruction of a Temple of Babylon in the

Chaldean Empire. (After Koldewey)
The building was of sun-baked brick ; as the dwelling of a god, it shows
the same architecture as the dwelling of man, and there was no advance
over the architecture of the old Babylonian house (Fig. 38) of two
thousand years earlier. In contrast with the Egyptian temples, it em-
ployed the arch over all doors and contained no colonnades. No such
temple now stands in Babylon, and the drawing is a restoration

long-revered Babylonian divinities (Fig. 46). Leading from these

to the palace he laid out a festival avenue^ which passed through
an imposing gateway called the " Gate of Ishtar " (Fig. 47), for
it was dedicated to this goddess. Behind it lay the vast imperial
palace and the offices of government, while high over all towered
the temple-mount which rose by the Marduk temple as a veri-
table "Tower of Babel " (see p. 63). Masses of rich tropical
verdure, rising in terrace upon terrace, forming a lofty garden,
1 A'lion of brilliant blue-glazed brick, discovered by the Germans in the Festi-
val Street of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, will be found at the head of Chapter
IV (p. 86).
I
82 Outlines of Europcaji History

crowned the roof of the imperial palace and, overlooking the

Ishtar Gate, enhanced the brightness of its colors. Here in
the cool shade of palms and
ferns, inviting to voluptuous
r; ease, the great king might
enjoy an idle hour with the
ladies of his court and look
down upon the splendors of
his city. These roof gardens
of Nebuchadnezzar's palace
are the mysterious " Hang-
ing Gardens " of Babylon,
whose fame spread far into
the west until they were
numbered by the Greeks
among the Seven Wonders
of the World.
It is this Babylon of Nebu-
chadnezzar whose marvels
over a century later so im-
pressed Herodotus (p. i88),
Fig. 47. The Ishtar Gate of the as is shown in the descrip-
tion of it which he has left
Palace Quarter of Babylon in
THE Chaldean Empire (Sixth us. This, too, is the Babylon
Century b.c.) which has become familiar
This gate, recently excavated by the to all Christian peoples as
Germans, is the most important build- the great city of the Hebrew
ing still standing in Babylon. It is not
a restoration like Fig. 46. The towers captivity (p. 107). Of all the
rising on either side of the gate are glories which made it world
adorned with the figures of animals renowned in its time, little
(see cut, p. 86) in splendidly colored
glazed tile, as used also in the Assyrian now remains. The excava-
palaces (Fig. 43). Behind this gate tions of the Germans, who
rose the sumptuous palace of Nebu- have been uncovering the
chadnezzar, crowned by the beautiful
roof gardens known as the " Hanging
city since 1899, are slowly
Gardens " of Babylon (p. 82) revealing one building after
 Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and CJialdca 8

another, the scanty wreckage of the ages. To them we owe the

recovery of the Festival Street and the Ishtar Gate (Fig. 47), but
the Ishrar Gate is prac-
tically the only build- ^^^^ W^^')
ing in all Babylonia of
which any impressive
remains survive. Else-
where the broken frag-
ments ofdingy sun-baked
brick walls suggest
little of the brilliant
life which once ebbed
and flowed through
these streets and public
places.
The Chaldeans seem
to have absorbed the
civilization of Babylonia
in much the same way
as other earlier Semitic
invaders of this ancient
plain. Commerce and
Fig. 48. Glass of the Sixth Century
business flourished, the B.C. FouxD IN Chaldean Babylon
arts and industries were
The art of glazing and glassmaking, so
highly developed, re- extensively used in adorning Assyrian and
ligion and literature Chaldean buildings, was not native to Asia,
were cultivated and but arose far earlier on the Nile (see p. 36,
and cut, p. 16). Thus, for example, the glass
their records were put bottle shown here is of a shape and pattern
into wedge-writing on borrowed by the Babylonians from Egypt.
At this time exactly the same pattern of
clay tablets as of old.
bottle was being used also in north Italy,
Science made notable which likewise received it from Egypt
progress in one impor-
tant branch — astronomy. Still with the practical purpose of
reading the future rather than of furthering science, the Baby-
lonians continued the ancient art of discovering, the future in
 84

Outlijics of EiLT'opeaii History

the heavenly bodies (see p. 68). The art was now very syste-
matically pursued and was really becoming astronomy. The
equator was divided into 360 degrees, and for the first time
they laid out and mapped the twelve groups of stars which we
call the " Twelve Signs of the Zodiac." Thus for the first time
the sky and its worlds were mapped out into a system.
The five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn) were especially regarded as the powers controlling the
fortunes of men, and as such the five leading Babylonian divinities
were identified with these five heavenly bodies. It is the names of
these Babylonian divinities which, in Roman translation, have de-
scended to us as the names of these five planets. So the planet of
Ishtar, the goddess of love, became Venus, while that of the great
god Marduk became Jupiter, and so on. The celestial observations
made by these Chaldean "astrologers," as we call them, slowly be-
came sufficiently accurate, so that when inherited by the Greeks
they formed the basis of the science of astronomy, which the
Greeks carried so much further (p. 162). The practice of " astrol-
ogy" has survived to our own day; we still unconsciously recall it in
such phrases as " his lucky star " or an " ill-starred undertaking."
This Chaldean age is in many respects, an effort to restore
the civilization of the earlier Babylonia of Hammurapi's day (pp.
67-69). The scribes now love to employ an ancient style of writ-
ing and out-of-date forms of speech ; the kings tunnel deep under
the temple foundations and search for years that they may find
the old foundation records buried (like our corner-stone docu-
ments) bykings of ancient days. Likewise in Egypt and among
the Hebrews, as well as in Babylonia, the men of the East are
deeply conscious of the distant past through which their ancestors
have come down through the ages. The oriental world is grow-
ing old, and men are looking back upon her far-away youth with
wistful endeavors to restore it to the earth again. Indeed, the
leadership of the Semitic peoples in the early world is drawing
near its close, and they are about to give way before the ad-
vance of the Indo-European race, to which we must now turn.
 iVesttnt Asia : Ihibyloiiia, Assyria^ and Chaldea 85

QUESTIONS
Section 10. Give the water boundaries of westernmost Asia.
Where do desert and mountains chiefly lie ? What hes between them ?
Summarize the history of the fertile crescent. Make a sketch map
showing its situation. What land occupied its east end } its west end .^
What is a '^ nomad " 1 Mention some Semitic peoples. Whither
does the wandering desert tribe often shift ? Do you recall any Sem-
ites who have so shifted.? Describe the nomads' life; their religion.
Describe the Babylonian plain, giving size, climate, and products.
Sfxtiox II. Describe Sumerian civilization and invasion of the

Babylonian plain. W^hat do we call the earliest age of Sumerian history.?

Who were the earliest Semites in Babylonia ? Give an account of
their first great leader. How did these Semites gain their earliest
civilization, for example, writing ? Did Sumerian and Semite mingle ?
Section i 2. Who was Hammurapi .? Give an account of his laws.
Describe Babylonian commerce in his age. How can we summarize
Babylonian history .?
Section 13. Locate Assyria on the fertile crescent. Whence did its
people receive their civilization .? What stopped early Assyrian expan-
sion westward ? Who were the Arameans ? W^here was their capital 1
Section 14. What did the Assyrian Empire at its largest chiefly
include .? Describe the Assyrian state ; the army. Give some account
of Assyrian civilization. Outline the causes of the fall of Assyria.
Section 15. Who were the Chaldeans.? Who were the Medes.?
How did they divide the East between them.? Describe Chaldean
Babylon ; its chief buildings. Discuss Chaldean astronomy.
 ■mm .m'miwmmm j

imhiitnm»itiiiiuiuiiintm'vaaun\u\

CHAPTER IV

WESTERN ASIA: THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE,

THE HEBREWS

Section i6. The Indo-European Peoples and

THEIR Dispersion ^

We have seen that the Arabian desert has been a great reser-
voir of unsettled population, which was continually leaving the
grasslands on the margin of the desert and shifting over into the
towns to begin a settled life (pp. 57 f.). Corresponding to these
grasslands of the so/it/i, there are similar grasslands in the norf/i
(Fig. 49), behind the mountains of western Asia and southern
Europe (see map, p. 80). These northern grasslands stretch
from central Europe, behind the Balkans, eastward along the
north side of the Black Sea through southern Russia and far
into Asia north and east of the Caspian. They have always
had a wandering shepherd population, and time after time, for
1 Section i6 deals with a series of racial movements which anticipate a large
part of ancient history. They are at first not easy for a young student to visual-
ize. They should therefore be carefully worked over by the teacher with the
class before the class is permitted to study this section alone. The diagram
(Fig. 49) should be put on the blackboard and explained in detail by the teacher,
and the class should then be prepared to put the diagram on the board from
memory. This should be done again when the study of the Greeks is begun
(p. 123), and a third time when Italy and the Romans are taken up.
86
 Western Asia: The Me do-Persian Empire 8/

thousands of years, these northern nomads have poured forth

over Europe and western Asia, just as the desert Semites of
the south have done over the fertile crescent (pp. 59 ff.).
These nomads of the north were from the earliest times a The two

great white race, which we call Indo-European. We can perhaps Eu^ropean °"
best explain this term by saying that the present peoples of ^"^ Semitic
Europe are almost all Indo-European, and as most of us are of
the same stock their ancestors were also ours, as we shall see.
These nomads of the northern grasslands, our ancestors, began
to migrate in very ancient times, moving out along diverging
routes. They at last extended in an imposing line from the
frontiers of India on the east, westward across all Europe to the
Atlantic, as they do to-day (Fig. 49). This great northern line was
confronted on the south by a similar line of Semitic peoples,
extending from Babylonia on the east, through Phoenicia and the
Hebrews westward to Carthage and similar Semitic settlements
of Phoenicia in the western Mediterranean.
The history of the ancient world, as we are now to follow it,
is largely made up of the struggle between this sontherii Semitic
line which issued from the southern grasslands, and the fiorthern
Indo-Eiu'opean line which came forth from the northern grass-
lands to confront the older civilizations represented in the south-
ern line. Thus as we look at the diagram (Fig. 49) we see the
two great races facing each other across the Mediterranean like
two vast armies stretching from western Asia westward to
the Atlantic. The later wars between Rome and Carthage
(pp. 258 ff.) represent some of the operations on the Semitic
left wing; while the triumph of Persia over Chaldea (p. 97) is
a similar outcome on the Semitic right wing.
The result of the imposing struggle was the complete triumph Triumph of
of our ancestors, the Indo-European line, which conquered along g^d ^^^"^^^^
the center and both wings and gained unchallenged supremacy Jj'^ ^"'^^"
throughout the Mediterranean world under the Greeks and line
Romans (pp. 123 ff.). This triumph was accompanied by a long
struggle for the mastery between the members of the northern
 88 Outlines of European History

line themselves, as first the Persians, then the Greeks, and

finally the Romans, gained control of the Mediterranean and
oriental world. The great civilized peoples of Europe at the
present day are, as we have said, the offspring of the victorious
Indo-European line. These Indo-European peoples are also the
forefathers of the American colonists, who with later immigrants
now make up the people of the United States.-^
The indo- Let US now turn back to a time before the Indo-European
parerSi?eople People had left their grasslands and see if we can find their
and
inal their
home ong- original
°home. Modern
_ study-^
has not ^vet determined with cer-
tainty the exact region where the parent people of the Indo-
European nomads had their home. The indications now are
that this original home was on the great grassy steppe in the
region east and northeast of the Caspian Sea.^ Here, then,
probably lived the parent people of all the later Indo-European
race. At the time when they were still one people, they were
speaking one and the same tongue. From this tongue have
descended all the languages later spoken by the civilized peoples
of modern Europe, including, of course, our own English, as we
shall see.
The parent people were still in the Stone Age for the most
part, though copper was beginning to come in, and the time

1 Although our Indo-European ancestors gained full control of the Mediter-

ranean world, we shall find that the final result was nevertheless a mixed civil-
ization, containing many things of Semitic and oriental origin. Especially was
this true in religion, for the great religions of the modem world, especially
Christianity, are of oriental origin.
2 There has been great difference of opinion regarding the original home of
this parent people, from whom we ourselves have descended. The whole ques-
tion was opened only fifty years ago, when scholars mostly maintained that the
central Asiatic plateau was the earliest home of the parent people. Later re-
searches led most scholars to believe in a central or northern European home of
these people. This is still the prevailing opinion. But the recent discovery of
documents in the Tokhar language, spoken by the tribes of old Tokharistan
along the upper valley of the Jaxartes River far east of the Caspian Sea, has
shown that Tokhar was an Indo-European language. This discovery of an Indo-
European language so far east has made the theorv of a European home of the
parent people almost impossible and an Asiatic home much more probable. Its
exact situation in Asia is, however, still uncertain.
 .^
Indo-Europeau Line 1^1
Semitic Line c/:!
C3

si tJ5 O
ii! £ O 4-. O
o W LO
, ,
:/: .- "^ rt
;-i

X o -u
-^ w «

o <7 5
p-.
OJ ^ w
o

Pi
d
< aj . ,

^ stort
o
si S"" .s «
D -^ a>
w
C^
6
?s
0) s
Q
"" C rC
X. -
bC/2
o
1^ a
^;
< H •-
x; CO *^
c
1v£o -5<us
^ OS

u
"5 -c:

c
i
CO
<u o
O I-

<u u ^
c
flj "
z
' •" TO
^ 2
o
Q
2
c o c
t-H ^ rt ^ ■^ .1. o

1 ^
S dJ ^
rt r-!
H 13 S

Is"
w .S §
K
H
ZOJ a-2
>^ " ii •^

i
CN S
K •"
-^ O
<l> - <u biO<^ ^«
5 o "Sa
c/:
V § X c -"S

s?
Si o -^

i^ 5 sc sE ^c ^ - '-/3
11 « y

TS
o
89 3

£ 13 -^-
6 O
i2 5s -^ ■'^ c
^6

Cn
 Outlines of ILnropcan History

90 therefore have been not later than 2500 B.C. Divided

must
into numerous tribes, they wandered at will, seeking pasture
for their flocks, for they already possessed domestic animals,
including cattle and sheep. But chief among their domesticated
beasts was the ho7'se, which, as we recall, was still entirely un-
known to the civilized oriental nations until after Hammurapi's
time (see p. 69). They employed him not only for riding but
also for drawing their wheeled carts, and from these northern
nomads has descended the widespread story of the chariot and
the horses of the sun. The ox already bore the yoke and drew
the plow, for some of the tribes had adopted a settled mode of
life and possessed fields in which they cultivated grain, especially
barley. Being without writing, they possessed but little govern-
ment and organization. But they were the most gifted and the
most highly imaginative people of the ancient world.
As their tribes wandered farther and farther apart they lost
contact with each other. Local peculiarities in speech and cus-
toms became more and more marked, until wide differences
resulted. While at first the different groups could doubtless
understand one another when they met, these differences in
speech gradually became so great that the widely scattered
tribes, even if they happened to meet, could no longer make
themselves understood, and finally all knowledge of their origi-
nal kinship was totally lost. This kinship has only been redis-
covered in very recent times. The final outcome, in so far as
speech was concerned, was the languages of modern civilized
Europe ; so that, beginning with England, we can trace many a
word from people to people entirely across Europe and east-
ward into northern India. Note the following :

TOKHAR
English German Latin Greek Old Persian East Indian
(in Central Asia)
and AvESTAN (See footnote, p. 88) (Sanskrit)

brother bruder frater phrater brata bhrata

mother -mutter m.ater meter matar macar mata
pracar
father vater pater pater pitar

pacar

pita
 Western Asia: The Me do- Persian Ejupire 91

In the west these wanderers from the northern grasslands had

alread}' crossed the Danube and were far down in the Balkan
peninsula by 2000 B.C. Some of them had doubtless already en-
tered Italy by this time. These western tribes were, of course,
the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans. We shall yet join them
and follow them in their conquest of the Mediterranean (pp. 1 23 ff .).
Before doing so, however, we have to watch the eastern wing
of the vast Indo-European line as it swings southward and
comes into collision with the right wing of the Semitic line.

Section 17. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian

Prophet Zoroaster

It is now an established fact that the easternmost tribes of The Aryans ;

the Indo-European line were by 2000 B.C. already pasturing of^the east-^
their herds in the great steppe on the east of the Caspian. ^™ ^^^s °f
Here they formed a people properly called the Aryans ^ (see European
Fig. 49) and here they made their home for some time. The
Aryan people had no writing, and they have left no monuments.
Nevertheless the beliefs of their descendants show that the Religion
Aryan tribes already possessed a high form of religion, which
summed up conduct as " good thoughts, good deeds." Fire
occupied an important place in this faith, and they had a group
of priests whom they called " fire-kindlers."
When the Ar)-ans broke up, perhaps about 1800 B.C., they rate Ar>-ans
mto sepa-
two
separated into two parts. The eastern tribes wandered south-
groups
eastward and eventually arrived in India. In their sacred books,
1 The Indo-European parent people apparently had no common name appli-
cable to all their tribes as a great group. The term " Aryan " is often popularly
applied to the parent people, but this custom is incorrect. Arj'an (from which
Iran and Iranian are later derivatives) designated a group of tribes, a fragment
of the parent people, which detached itself and found a home for some centuries
just east of the Caspian Sea. When we hear the term " Ar>'an " applied to the Indo-
European peoples of Europe, or when it is said that we ourselves are descended
from the Aryans, we must remember that this use of the word is historically in-
correct, though very common. The Aryajis, then, were casteyti descendants of
the Indo-European parent people as we are wesier7i descendants of the parent
people. The Aryans are our distant cousins but not our ancestors.
 Outlijies of Europcaii History

92 we call the " Vedas," written in Sanskrit, there are echoes

which
of the days of Aryan unity, and they furnish many a hint of the
ancient Aryan home on the east of the Caspian. The other group,
whose tribes have kept the name " Aryan " in the form " Iran," ^
also left this home and pushed westward and southwestward into
the mountains bordering our fertile crescent (p. 58). Among
them were two powerful tribes, the Medes and the Persians.

Fig. 50. Fire Altars of Ancient Fire Worshipers still

SURVIVING IN Modern Persia

About 2100 B.C., in the age of Hammurapi, long before they

reached the fertile crescent, their coming was announced in
advance by the arrival of the horse in Babylonia (see p. 69).
We recall how in the days of Assyria's imperial power, nearly
fifteen hundred years later, the Medes descended from the north-
ern mountains against Nineveh (p. 79). This southern advance
of the Indo-European eastern wing was thus overwhelming
the Semitic right wing (Fig. 49), occupying the fertile crescent.

1 They have given their name to the great Iranian plateau, which stretches
from the Zagros Mountains eastward to the Indus River. This whole region was
known in Greek and Roman days as Ariana, which (like Iran) is, of course,
derived from " Aryan."
 Western Asia : The Me do- Persian Empire 93

By 600 B.C. the Medes had established a powerful Iranian Theiropean)

Median
•eatens

Empire in the mountains east of the Tigris. It extended from Eur^*^

the Persian Gulf, where it included the Persians, northwestward threatens
Empire
npire
ido-
in the general line of the mountains to the Black Sea region. The Chaldean
front of the Indo-European eastern wing is thus roughly parallel Baby^ioma
with the Tigris at this point, but its advance is not to stop here.
Nebuchadnezzar (p. 80) and the Chaldean masters of Babylon
look with anxious eyes at this dangerous Median power. The
Chaldeans on the Euphrates represent the leadership of men
of Semitic blood from the southern pastures. Their leadership
is now to be followed by that of the men of Indo-European
blood from the 7iorthern pastures. As we see the Chaldeans
giving way before the Medes and Persians (p. 97), let us bear
in mind that we are watching a great racial change, and remem-
ber that these new Persian masters of the Far East are our
kindred ; for both we and they have descended from the same
wandering shepherd ancestors, the Indo-European parent people,
who once dwelt in the far-off pastures of inner Asia, probably
five thousand years ago.
All of these Iranians possessed a beautiful religion inherited The religion
from old Aryan days (see p. 91). Somewhere in the east- ira^niLs
ern mountains, as far back as 1000 b.c, an Iranian named
Zoroaster ^ began to look out upon the life of men in an effort Zoroaster
to find a religion which would meet its needs. He watched the
ceaseless struggle between good and evil which seemed to meet
him wherever he turned. To him it seemed to be a struggle
between a group of good beings on the one hand and of evil
beings on the other. The Good became to him a divine person,
1 The Greek form of the name ; it is taken from the Persian form Zara-
tJmshtra. Some scholars support a date for Zoroaster several centuries later than
1000 B.C., among them Professor A. V. W. Jackson, in his very valuable book on
Zoroaster ; but two proper names of certain royal Medes, occurring in the records
of the Assyrian Sargon (722-705 B.C.), have the form " Mazdaka," containing the
name of Zoroaster's god. His teaching had therefore been taken up by the
Median royal house long before 700 B.C., and Zoroaster himself must therefore
have lived far earlier than this. The date 1000 B.C. is a rough estimate by
Eduard Meyer.
94 Outlines of Europeaji History

whom he called Mazda, or Ahuramazda, and whom he regarded

as God. Ahuramazda was surrounded by a group of helpers
much like angels, of whom one of the greatest was the Light,
called " Mithras." Opposed to Ahuramazda and his helpers
was the evil group, among whom the Spirit of Evil and another
of Darkness were prominent.
Thus the faith of Zoroaster grew up out of the struggle of
life itself, and became a great power in life. It called upon
every man to stand on one side or the other ; to fill his soul with
the Good and the Light, or to dwell in the Evil and the Dark-
ness. Whatever course a man pursued he must expect a judg-
ment hereafter. As a visible symbol of the Good and the Light,
Zoroaster maintained the old Aryan veneration of fire (Eig. 50),
and he preserved the ancient fire-kindling priests.
Zoroaster went about among the Iranian people preaching his
new religion, and probably for many years found but sluggish
response to his efforts. We can discern his hopes and fears
alike in the little group of hymns he has left, probably the only
words of the great prophet which have survived. It is charac-
teristic of the horse-loving Iranians that Zoroaster is said to
have finally converted one of their great kings by miraculously
healing the king's crippled horse. The new faith had gained a
firm footing before the prophet's death, however, and before
700 B.C. it was the leading religion among the Medes in the
mountains along the fertile crescent. Thus Zoroaster became the
first great founder of a religious faith.
As in the case of Mohammed, it is probable that Zoroaster
could neither read nor write, for the Iranians seem to have
possessed no system of writing in his day (see p. 91). With
"the exception of the hymns mentioned above, we possess
none of his original words ; but his teaching has descended to us
in certain fragments of older writings put together in the early
Christian centuries, over one thousand years after the prophet^s
death. They form a book known as the Avesta. This we may
call the Bible of the Persians, in whose tongue the book is written.
 Western Asia: The Medo- Persian Empire 95

Section 18. The Persian Empire

No people became more zealous followers of Zoroaster than The emer-

the Persians. Through them a knowledge of him has de- fersfans'^^
scended to us. At the fall of Nineveh (606 B.C.) (p. 79) they
were already long
settled in the region
at the southeastern
end of the Zagros
Mountains, just north
of the Persian Gulf.
The northern shores
of the Persian Gulf
are little better than
desert, but the valleys
of the mountainous
hinterland are rich
and fertile. Here
the group of Iranian
tribes known as the
Persians occupied a
district some four
hundred miles long.
They were a' rude imMTiiiL. j:
mountain peasant
Fig. 51. Persian Soldiers
folk, leading a settled
agricultural life, with Although carrying spears when doing duty
as palace guards, these men .were chiefly
simple institutions, no archers (p. 96), as is shown by the size of the
art, no writing or large quivers on their backs for containing
literature, but with the supply of arrows. The bow hangs on the
left shoulder. The royal bodyguard may
stirring memories of also be seen wielding their spears around
their past, including the Persian king at the battle of Issus
some grand sagas (Fig. 99). Notice the splendid robes worn
which had come down by these palace guards. The figures are done
in brightly colored glazed brick — an art bor-
from the distant rowed by the Persians (see Fig. 48)
 Outlines of Eiiropean History

96 days. As they tilled their fields and watched their flocks

Atyan
they told many a tale of the ancient prophet who had died four
hundred years before, and whose faith they held.
They acknowledged themselves vassals of their kinsmen the
Medes, who ruled far to the north and northwest of them. One
of their tribes dwelling in the mountains of Elam (see map,
p. 56), a tribe known as Anshan, was organized as a little
kingdom. About fifty years after the fall of Nineveh, this little
kingdom was ruled over by a Persian named Cyrus. He suc-
ceeded in uniting the other tribes of his kindred Persians into
a nation. Thereupon Cyrus at once rebelled against the rule of
the Medes. He gathered his peasant soldiery, and within three
years he defeated the Median king and made himself master of
the Median territory. The extraordinary career of Cyrus was
now a spectacle upon which all eyes in the west were fastened
with wonder and alarm. The overflowing energies of the new
conqueror and his peasant soldiery, fresh and unspent for cen-
turies among their eastern hills, proved irresistible. The Persian
peasants seem to have been remarkable archers, and the mass
of the Persian army was made up of bowmen (Fig. 51) whose
storm of arrows at long range overwhelmed the enemy long
before the hand-to-hand fighting began. Bodies of the skillful
Persian horsemen, hovering on either wing, then rode in and
completed the destruction of the foe.
The great states Babylonia (Chaldea), Egypt, Lydia under
King Croesus in western Asia Minor, and even Sparta in Greece
formed a powerful combination against this sudden menace,
which had risen like the flash of a meteor in the eastern sky.
Without an instant's delay Cyrus struck at Croesus of Lydia, the
chief author of the hostile combination. One Persian victory fol-
lowed after another. By 546 B.C. Sardis, the Lydian capital, had
fallen and Croesus, the Lydian king, was a prisoner in the hands
of Cyrus. Cyrus at once gained also the southern coasts of Asia
Minor. Within five years the powder of the little Persian kingdom
in the mountains of Elam had swept across Asia Minor to the
 Westefii Asia : The Medo-Persimi Empire 97

Mediterranean, becoming the leading state in the oriental world.

Turning eastward again, Cyrus had no trouble in defeating Cyrus
the army of Babylonia led by the young Belshazzar, whose name BTbybnia
in the Book of Daniel is a household word throughout the (Chaldea)
Christian world. In 539 B.C. the Persians entered the great city of
Babylon seemingly
without resistance.
Thus only sixty-
five years after the
fall of Nineveh
(p. 7 9) had opened
the conflict be-
tween the former
dwellers in the
northern and the
southern grass-
lands, the Semitic
East completely
collapsed before
the advance of
the Indo-European
power. Some ten
years later Cyrus
fell in battle (528
B.C.) as he was Fig. 52. Colonnades of the Persian
fighting with the Palace at Persepolis
nomads in north- This sumptuous and ornate architecture of the
eastern Iran. Persians is made up of patterns borrowed from
other peoples and combined (see p. 99)
All western Asia
was now subject to the Persian king; but in 525 B.C., only
three years after the death of Cyrus, his son Cambyses con- Cambyses
r , , . ■ • conquers
quered Egypt. Phis conquest of the only remainmg ancient Egypt
oriental power rounded out the Persian Empire to include the
whole civilized East. The great task had consumed just twenty-
five years since the overthrow of the Medes by Cyrus.
 Outlines of Ejiropean Histoiy

The Persian 98 rude simplicity of the Persian kings now rapidly gave way
The
Empire
(about 530 to to the more civilized life of the conquered states. The Persian
330 B.C.) scribes were soon writing their own language with Babylonian
cuneiform (p. 62), from which they adopted thirty-six signs as
Persians an alphabet. Darius recorded his triumph over all his foes at
adopt cunei-
form and home and abroad in a vast inscription in cuneiform on the great
Aramean
writing cliff of Behistun looking down upon the ancient highway leading
from Babylon to Ecbatana ; but the king's office documents were
written on parchment with the Aramean alphabet (see p. 71).
Organization The organization of such a vast empire, stretching from the
of the Persian
Empire by Indus to the ^gean Sea, had been too big a task to be com-
Darius
pleted byCyrus. It was carried through by Darius the Great
(521-485 B.C.). He did not desire further conquests, but he
planned to maintain the Empire as he had inherited it. He
caused himself to be made actual king in Egypt and in Baby-
lonia, but the rest of the Empire he divided into twenty provinces,
each called a " satrapy," each being under a governor called a
" satrap," w^ho was appointed by the Great King. The Persian
rule was just, humane, and intelligent, but of course tribute was
collected from all parts of the Empire.
Coinage In the West, chiefly Lydia and the Greek settlements in w^estern
A.sia Minor (p. 127), where the coinage of metal was common by
600 B.C. (p. 152), this tribute was paid in coined money. The
eastern countries — Eg)'pt, Babylonia, and Persia herself — were
not quick to adopt this new convenience. Here during most of
the Persian period commerce was content to employ gold and
silver in bars which could be cut up and weighed out at each
payment (p. 67). Darius, however, began the coinage of gold
and permitted his satraps to coin silver. The rate was about
thirteen to one, that is to say, gold was worth about thirteen
times as much as silver. Thus the great commercial convenience
of coined money issued by the State began to come into the
Orient during the Persian period.
The Persian kings fostered business and commerce, main-
tained excellent roads from end to end of the great Empire, and
 Western Asia : The Me do- Persian Empire 99

introduced royal messengers along these roads, who formed the Commerce,
beginnings of a postal system. These roads converged upon the postal
royal residence in the ancient Elamite city of Susa, in the Zagros system
Mountains, where the king lived much of the time. The mild air Royal
of the Babylonian plain attracted him during the colder months,
when he went to dwell among the palaces of the vanished Chal-
dean Empire at Babylon. The old Persian home of the Great
King lay too far from the centers of oriental civilization for
him to spend much time in Persia. But Cyrus built a splendid
palace near the battle field where he had defeated the Medes
at Pasargadae, and Darius also established a new residence at
Persepolis (Fig. 52), some twenty miles south of the palace of
Cyrus. Near the ruins of these buildings the tombs of Cyrus, Tombs of the

Darius, and other great Persian kings still stand (Fig. 53). The ^^^^^" ^"^^
art of these buildings is made up of elements borrowed from
the great oriental civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria.
The enormous terraces on which they stood suggested Babylonia ; Architecture
the vast colonnades which swept along the front were more rich
and sumptuous than the East had ever seen before, but they
showed the influence of Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Asia
Minor. The great civilizations which made up the Empire were
thus merged together in Persian art.
The later world often represents the Persian kings as cruel character of
and barbarous oriental tyrants. This unfavorable opinion goes ^ings
too far. Such impressions have descended to us from the Greeks,
who thrust back the Persians from Europe (p. 177). The Persian
kings were fully conscious of their great mission as civilizing
rulers. This is shown when Darius finds Scylax, a skillful sea
captain who had learned navigation along the shores of Asia
Minor, and dispatches him to explore the course of the great
Indus River in India. Then he is ordered to sail along the coast
of Asia from the mouth of the Indus westward to the Isthmus
of Suez. Here Darius restores the ancient but long filled-up
canal of the Egyptians connecting the Nile with the Red Sea
(p. T^'^. It was thus possible in Persian times for Mediterranean
lOO Outlines of European History

commerce to pass up the Nile and through the Red Sea to India.
Darius also cherished what proved to be a vain hope, that the
south coast of Persia might come to share in the now growing
commerce between India and the Mediterranean world. Although
proud of their master}^ of the world, the Persian kings felt a deep
sense of obligation to rule the nations of the earth in accordance
with the Good and the Right which Ahuramazda personified.

IC^-'^^r^H,

Fig. 53. The Tombs of the Persian Kings

The fronts of the tombs are carved in the cliffs at the left. They begin
with the tomb of Darius, about 500 B.C. The tomb of Cyrus (in the
vicinity) is a detached stone structure not shown here. The detached
building on the right has nothing to do with the tombs

Unfortunately, as time passed, the Persian kings grew more and

more inefficient and unsuccessful as rulers.
The Persian rulers were devoted followers of Zoroaster's
teaching and felt keenly the sharp line which that faith drew
between good and bad. The Persian power carried this noble
faith throughout western Asia and especially into Asia Minor.
It had here the form which it gradually came to take under the
later Persian kings. In this form Mithras, made by Zoroaster a
helper of Ahuramazda (p. 94), appears as a hero of light, and
 Western Asia : The Helnrivs lOi

finally a sun god, who gradually outshines Ahuramazda himself.

From Asia Minor Mithras passed into Europe, and, as we shall
see, the faith in the mighty Persian god spread far and wide
through the Roman Empire, to become a dangerous competitor
of Christianity (p. 298).
In matters of religion the Persian Empire marked the break- Far-reaching
down of national boundaries and the beginning of a long period among orien-
when, the leading religions of the East were called upon to com- ^' religions
pete in a great contest for the mastery among all the nations.
The most important of the religions which thus found themselves
thrown into a world struggle for chief place under the dominion
of Persia was the religion of the Hebrews. While we leave the
imperial family of Persia to suffer that slow decline which always
besets a long royal line in the Orient, we may glance briefly at
the little Hebrew kingdom among the Persian vassals in the
West, which was destined to influence the history of the world
more profoundly than any of the great imperial powers of the
early world.

Section 19. The Hebrews

iThe Hebrews were all originally men of the Arabian desert,^ The Hebrew
wandering with their flocks and herds and slowly drifting over Palestine"
into their final home in Palestine, ' 1200 1400
at the west end of the fertile to(about B.C.)
crescent (p. 56). For two centuries their movement into Pales-
tine continued (about 1400 to 1200 B.C.). When they entered
it as nomad shepherds (see p. 59), the Hebrews possessed
very little civilization. A southern group of their tribes had
been slaves in Egypt,^ but had been induced to flee by their
1 The student should here carefully reread the account of the Arabian desert
and the Semitic nomads, their life, customs, and religion, on pages 57-60. It
was from this desert and its life that the Hebrews all originally came.
2 The familiar Bible stories of the oppression of the Hebrews in Egypt and
the making of brick, which they did there, are interestingly illustrated by the brick
storehouse rooms still standing in the eastern Nile Delta in the city of Pithom,
which the Hebrews are said to have built (Exod. i, 12). They are shown at the
end of Chapter IV (p. no).
:o2
Outlines of liu7'opcan History

heroic leader Moses, who led them to Palestine. Here they found
flourishing towns of the Canaanites (p. 59), who had long been
setded in Palestine. The Canaanites also had once come from
the desert ; they spoke a language hardly differing from Hebrew.
But they had so long led a settled life that tbeir towns were
protected by massive walls (Figs. 55, 56). The camel cara-
vans which entered their gates brought in merchandise both
from the Nile and the Euphrates. There was here, therefore, a

Fig. 54. The Central Ridge of Palestine seen from the

Plain of Jericho
Palestine is much cut up by such bare and sterile ridges of hmestone,
which produce nothing. Locate on map, p. 102 ; see Fig. 55

jumble of civilization from both these rivers. The Canaanites

had learned from Eg)'pt the manufacture of many valuable arti-
cles of commerce ; from Babylonia the caravans had brought in
bills and lists on clay tablets, and the Canaanites had thus learned
to use Babylonian cuneiform writing (p. 62). The Hebrews were
unable to destroy the Canaanites and their walled towns. They
settled on the land around such towns and slowly mingled with
the Canaanites until the two peoples, Hebrew and Canaanite,
had become one. This process was of great advantage to the
Hebrews, who thus gained the civilization of the CanaanitesTj
 ]Vester?i Asia : The Hebrezvs 103

The situation of Palestine, with Eg]y^pt on one side and Assyria Rise of the
Hebrew
and Babylonia on the other, was a dangerous one. These great kingdom
powers would not allow another strong nation to grow up in ^^0^°"^ g°(,^5
Palestine. Fortunately for the Hebrews, Eg)^pt, as we have
learned, fell into a state of feebleness by 1 150 B.C. (p. 53) ; and,
on the other side, the Aramean kingdom of Damascus was a
protection against the advance of Assyria (p. 71). Thus the Saul and the
Hebrews were permitted to grow into a nation, and before
1 000 B.C. we find them under their first king, Saul. But immi-
grants from Crete in the Mediterranean — a people called

Fig. 55. The Long Mound of the Ancient City of Jericho

The walls of the city and the ruins of the houses (Fig. 56) are buried
under the rubbish which makes up this mound. Many of the ancient
cities of Palestine are now such mounds as this

"Philistines" (Fig. 70) — had recently settled on the coast of

Palestine (see map, p. 102). From their new home they greatly
troubled the Hebrews. They slew Saul and in one war after
another they nearly destroyed the young Hebrew nation.
The old nomad customs were still strong, for Saul, the first David
king, had no fixed home but dwelt in a tent. His successor,
David, saw the importance of a strong castle as the king's
permanent home. He therefore seized the old Canaanite for-
tress of Jerusalem. The Hebrews had been dwelling under its
shadow for centuries, unable to take it from the Canaanites.
From Jerusalem, as his residence, David extended his power far
and wide and made the Hebrews a strong nation. His people
never forgot his heroic deeds as a warrior nor his skill as a
poet and singer, and centuries later they revered him as the
author of many of their religious songs or " psalms."
I04 Outlines of European History

Solomon, David's son, delighted in oriental luxury and showy

display. He weighed down the Hebrews with heavy taxes. The
discontent was so great that, under Solomon's son, Rehoboam,
the ten northern tribes withdrew from the nation and set up
a king of their own. Thus the Hebrew kingdom was divided
before it was a century old. Solomon's son continued to rule
at Jerusalem over a little kingdom of southern Palestine known
as Judah. The Hebrews of the northern tribes were far more
numerous, their land was much more fertile, and they formed
a much stronger kingdom, called Israel. Their capital, after
some changes, was finally Samaria (see map, p. 102).
There was much hard feeling between the two Hebrew king-
doms, and sometimes fighting. Israel was rich and prosperous ;
its market places were filled with industry and commerce ; its
fields produced plentiful crops. Israel displayed the wealth and
success of town life. Judah, on the other hand, was poor, her
land was meager (Fig. 57), she had few large and powerful
towns. Many of the people still wandered with their flocks. The
south thus remained largely nomad. Here are two different
ideals of life : a settled life of wealth, luxury, and oppression of
the poor ; and a wandering life of simplicity, where each was
glad to share his prosperity with all the brethren of the tribe,
and equality reigned. These two methods of life came into
conflict in many ways, but especially in religion. Ever}' old
Canaanite town had for centuries worshiped its baal, or lord,
as its local god was called. These had never died out. Many
Hebrews accepted the baals as the gods of the rich and the
prosperous in the towns. The Hebrew God Yahweh (or Jeho-
vah ^), on the other hand, as the god of the nomad and the
desert, was felt to be the protector of the poor and needy.
Thoughtful Hebrews then began to think of him as a god of
fatherly kindness, who rebuked the wealthy class in the towns.

1 The Hebrews pronounced the name of their God " Yahweh." The pronun-
ciation Jehovah
" " began less than four hundred years ago and was due to a
misunderstanding of the pronunciation of the word " Yahweh."
 Western Asia : The Hebreivs

Their showy clothes, fine houses, beautiful furniture, and their The earliest
hard-heartedness toward the poor were things unknown in the /eigh"h'^
desert. Men who chafed under such injustices of town life century b.c.)
turned 'fondly back to the grand old days of their shepherd
wanderings out yonder on the broad reaches of the desert,

Fig. 56. Ruixs of the Houses of Ancient Jericho

Only the stone foundations of these houses are preserved. The walls
were of sun-baked brick, and the rains of over three thousand years have
washed them away; for these houses date from about 1500 B.C., and
in them lived the Canaanites, whom the Hebrews found in Palestine
(p. 102). Here we find the furniture of these houses, in so far as it con-
sisted of things durable enough to survive, like the pottery jars, glass,
and dishes of the household ; also things carved of stone, like seals,
amulets, and ornaments of metal

where no man 'Aground the faces of the poor." It was a man

with such admiration for the nomad life of the fathers who be-
came the earliest-known historian^ and told the immortal tales
of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and
1 Unfortunately we do not know his name, for the Hebrews themselves early
lost all knowledge of his name and identity, and finally associated the surviving
fragments of his work with the name of Moses.
io6 Outlines of Eu7vpcaii History

Joseph. These tales, preserved to us in the Old Testament, are

among the noblest literature which has survived from the past.^
Other men were not content merely to tell tales of the good
old days. Amos, a simple herdsman, w^ho came from the south,
entered the towns of the wealthy north and denounced their
luxury and corruption. The God whom the people once thought
of only as a leader in the fierce tribal wars of the wilderness^
Amos now announced as a God of mercy and kindness in the
social struggles of the town. Hius these social and religious
reformers, like Amos, whom we call prophets, were gaining a
larger vision of God as they watched the struggles of men.
By this time the Hebrews had learned to write. They were
now abandoning the clay tablet which the Canaanites had re-
ceived from Babylonia (p. 67), and they wrote on sheepskin and
papyrus (p. 22) in long strips, which were rolled up when not
in use. They used the Egyptian pen and ink, and the alpha-
bet they employed came to them from the Phoenician merchants
(p. 139). The "rolls" containing the tales of the patriarchs
and the teachings of such men as Amos were the first books
which the Hebrews produced — their first literature. Litera-
ture was the only art the Hebrew possessed. He had no
painting, sculpture, or architecture, and if he needed these
things he borrowed from his great neighbors, Eg)^pt, Phoenicia,
Damascus, or Assyria.
While the Hebrews were deeply stirred by their own affairs
at home, they were now rudely aroused to dangers coming from
beyond their own borders. Assyria first swept away Damascus
(p. 72). The kingdom of Israel, thus left exposed, was the
next victim, and Samaria, its capital, was taken by the Assyrians
in 722 B.C. (p. 72). Many of the unhappy people were carried
away as captives. The feeble little kingdom of Judah survived for
something over a century and a quarter more. During this time
it beheld and rejoiced over the destruction of Nineveh (p. 79).
1 The student should read these tales, especially Gen. xxiv, xxvii, xxviii,
xxxvii, xxxix-xlvii, 12.
 Wester7i Asia : TJie Hebreivs 107

But it had only exchanged one foreign lord for another, and
Chaldea followed Assyria in control of Palestine (p. 80). Then
their unwillingness to submit brought upon the men of Judah the
same fate which their kindred of Israel had suffered. In 586 B.C.
Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean king of Babylonia, destroyed
Jerusalem and carried away the people to exile in Babylonia.^

,H

4yM4'iL^ ' ^. \*i

^^hiw^. ^r^
u. ■:::x J- -"^ "
■^^^ ^--a^g^iiin'

Fig. SI- The Stony and Unproductive Fields of Judah

Judah is largely made up of sterile ridges like this in the background.
Note the scantiness of the growing grain in the foreground (p. 104)

Forced to dwell in strange lands the Hebrews were now^ The exiled
faced by the great question : " Does Yahweh dwell and rule in theismg^in mono-
Palestine only, as we have always thought ; or is he also ruler
of all nations, and does he dwell with us in our exile in a strange
land ? " Like all nomads, they had at first believed that their
God had no power beyond the corner of the desert where they
lived (p. 59) ; next they believed him to be lord of Palestine
1 The headpiece of this chapter shows a lion of blue-glazed brick from the
buildings of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon.
 io8 Oiitlmes of European History

only ; now, in exile, they perceived for the first time that he
was king of all the earth and righteous ruler of all the nations.
We call belief in such a god monotheism, which is a Greek
word meaning " one- god-ism." This belief denies the existence of
all other gods. To reach the belief in such a god the Hebrews
had passed through a long development and discipline, lasting
many centuries, during which they had outgrown many imper-
fect ideas, thus illustrating the words of the greatest of Hebrew
teachers, " First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in

The Hebrews the ear." ^

after the
While the Hebrews were exiles in Babylonia, the victories of
Exile; the Cyrus (p. 96) overthrew their Chaldean lords and gave to the
Old Testa-
Hebrews Persian masters instead. With great humanity the
Persian kings allowed the Hebrew exiles to return to Palestine,
their native land. At different times enough of them went back
to Jerusalem to rebuild the city on a very modest scale. Their
leaders restored the temple, and the old worship there w^as
resumed. These men arranged and copied the ancient writings
of their fathers, such as the stories of the patriarchs or the
speeches of Amos (p. 1 06). They also added other writings of
their own. All these writings, in Hebrew, form the Bible of the
Jews at the present day. They have also become a sacred book
for all Christians and translated into English, they are called the
Old Testament. They form the most precious legacy which we
have inherited from the older Orient before the coming of
Christ Tp. 300).
Decline of
Persia ; end It should be remembered, then, that one of the most impor-
of poHtical tant things which we owe to the Persians was their restoration
supremacy
of the Orient of the Hebrews to Palestine. For the oriental world as a
(333 B.C.) whole, Persian rule meant about two hundred years of peaceful
prosperity (ending about 333 B.C.). The Persian kings, how-
ever, as time went on, were no longer as strong and skillful as
Cyrus and Darius. They loved luxury and ease and left the
task of government to their governors and officials. The result
^ The words of Jesus ; see Mark iv, 28.
 Western Asia : The Me do- Persian Empire 109

was weakness and decline, until the final fall of Persia and the
surrender of political leadership of the Orient to the men of
Europe, whose career in the eastern Mediterranean we must
now take up.

QUESTIONS
Section 16. What is the extent of the northern grasslands?
Trace them on the map on page 56. As a source of migrating popu-
lation how do they resemble the southern grasslands ? Diagram the
two racial lines, Indo-European and Semitic.
What is the relation of these two lines in the history of the ancient
world ? From which line are we descended ? Give some account of
the Indo-European parent people. Discuss their dispersion. What
proof of the relationship between their modern descendants still
exists? Where are the two ends of the Indo-European line in the
Old World now? of the Semitic line?
Section 17. Locate the Aryan tribes on the map on page 80
(they are not marked) and give some account of them. Into what
two groups did they separate ? What became of the eastern group ?
Where did the western group settle ?
What were its two leading peoples? What Indo-European people
first invaded the fertile crescent, and when ? Who overthrew Assyria,
and when ? Who was Zoroaster ? What did he teach ? Whom did
he convert? What peoples adopted the religion he taught? What
is the A vesta}
Section i 8. Who were the Persians ? Who was Cyrus ? Where
did his people live ? Whom did he first conquer ? Where were his
next great conquests? Describe Persian methods of fighting. What
great ancient city did Cyrus finally conquer? What race then con-
trolled the fertile crescent?
What other ancient land did the son of Cyrus conquer ? What
was then the extent of the Persian Empire? Who organized it?
Describe Persian rule . Where did the Persian kings live ? What
was their character ? Whither did Persian religion spread ?

I
Section 19. What kind of a life did the Hebrews originally lead
and whence did they come? Where is Palestine? Whom did the
Hebrews find there? What was the final result of the Hebrew inva-
sion? Tell the story of the Hebrew kingdom. Did it remain united?
no Oiitlhics of European History

What kind of great men arose under the two kingdoms r What
were their ideas of God? What happened to the two kingdoms?
What happened to the surviving Hebrews? What was their idea
of God? Who allowed some of the exiles to return to Palestine?
What did the returned exiles do? What is the Hebrew Bible or
Old Testament?
 CHAPTER V
THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND THE EARLY GREEKS

Section 20. The ^gean Civilization

1 The Mediterranean Sea was the ocean where the ancient The Medi-
world carried on its commerce by ship, its explorations of un-
known shores, and the settlement of colonies in newly discovered
regions, just as later, men of Europe explored and colonized
the shores of the Atlantic. The Mediterranean is, moreover, a
body of water so vast that it bounds a large part of Europe on
the south. It is about twenty-four hundred miles long and, laid
out across the United States, would reach from New York over
into California. Nowhere else on the globe is there a great Its shores
landlocked inland sea with a coast so irregular and indented as
to produce a whole series of smaller seas and sheltered basins.

All this, as we have seen, favored the early rise of seagoing'

ships and made the Mediterranean the earliest home of naviga-
tion, which is far earlier than historians formerly supposed.
Nor have the current books yet taken knowledge of the fact that
large fleets sailed the Mediterranean in the thirtieth century B.C.
These earliest vessels transformed the Mediterranean from a
separating barrier into a connecting link, joining together the
surrounding lands which made up the ancient world.
The food of the Mediterranean peoples to-day is chiefly bread,
wine, and oil ; wine is their tea, and oil their butter. It was
III
 112 Outlines of European History

Food prod- equally so in ancient times. In the Homeric poems bread and
ucts and
climate of wine are the chief food of all, even of the children ; and Eu-
the Medi-
terranean ripides praises bread and wine as the earliest gifts of the gods
to men. In spite of the dry summer heat, the grapevine and
the olive tree grow and ripen their fruit without irrigation. This
is a condition in the Mediterranean countries, then, voxy different

Fig. 58. The Mound of Ancient Troy (Ilium)

When Schliemann first visited this mound (see map, p. 146) in 1868, it
was about one hundred and twenty-five feet high, and the Turks were
cultivating grain on its summit. He excavated a pit like a crater in the
top of the hill, passing downward through nine successive cities built
each on the ruins of its predecessors. At the bottom of his pit (about
fifty feet deep) Schliemann found the original once bare hilltop about
seventy-five feet high, on which the men of the Late Stone Age (p. 14)
had established a small settlement of sun-baked brick houses about 3000
B.C. (First City). Above the scanty ruins of this Late Stone Age settle-
ment rose, in layer after layer, the ruins of the later cities, with the
Roman buildings at the top. The entire depth of fifty feet of ruins rep-
resented a period of about thirty-five hundred years from the First
City (Late Stone Age) to the Ninth City (Roman) at the top. The
Second City (p. 117) contained the earliest copper found in the series;
the Sixth City was that of the Trojan War and the Homeric songs
(p. 142). Its masonry walls may be seen in Fig. 71

from what we have found in Eg}^pt and Babylonia. The shores of

the northern Mediterranean are on the whole so cut up by steep
Flocks and and rugged mountains that they are well suited to flocks and herds,
herds
but agriculture and gardening also flourish where river valleys and
shore plains, as in Italy, offer a wider stretch of moist and culti-
vable soil. A mild climate with a ^xy summer and a rainy season
during winter makes the conditions of life easy and favorable. J
^ > i'l'^ , i
 Outli)ies of European History

Europe As early as three thousand years before the Christian Era

learns the use
of metal
Egyptian seagoing ships ^ (p. 32 and Fig. 14) began to issue
from the Nile and cross the Mediterranean northward. The
copper which these ships brought into the ^gean (p. i\) then
slowly spread, through the Mediterranean, from people to people.
It finally crossed Europe as the trader carried it with his pack
trains up the Rhone and the Danube, or over the Alpine passes

Fig. 60. A Hittite Prince hunting Deer

The prince accompanied by his driver stands in the moving chariot,

shooting with bow and arrow at the fleeing stag. A hound runs beside
the horses. Over the scene is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphs
(p. 118). The whole is sculptured in stone, and forms a good example of
the rather crude Hittite art, greatly influenced by that of Egypt and
Babylonia from which it gained much

into the valley of the Elbe and there shifted his cargo to river
boats, in which he floated downstream to the northern seas —
where by 2000 B.C. copper became common as far north as
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In return the trader carried
back amber to the Mediterranean ports.
Stone implements had, however, by no means disappeared in
Europe, but the northern craftsman, pleased with the form of

1 The student should here reread pp. 14 f.

 The M edit err aiieaji World and the Early Greeks 115

copper ax or dagger, imitated the metal shapes in stone with

brilliant success. So long as he was obliged to depend entirely
upon imported metal he was slow to learn the new art of shaping
it. At last the knowledge that metal might be found in mountain
Europe be-
ores reached him, and he sought and found the precious veins gins to mine
tin
copper and
of metal in his own mountains. In the British Isles the galleries
which the ancient miner pushed into the mountain side, although
they have sometimes caved in, still contain the stone pickaxes
which he used there ; while in the Austrian Alps we find the
remains of his rude equipment for getting out the ore, with
even his ore-crushers and smelting furnaces still preserved. The
lens-shaped disks of copper which came from these furnaces
still show us the form of the raw metal as it went from the smelt-
ing furnaces to the craftsman. Such miners also discovered the
tin mines of Portugal and of Cornwall in England, and with this
they were able to harden copper into bronze (see p. 34), which
was common in the Norse countries as early as 2000 b.c.-^
Failure of
Notwithstanding the fact that they now possessed metal, the
Europe to
peoples of western and northern Europe still failed to advance adv'ance to

to a high type of civilization. As we have seen, they learned to tion after

high civiHza-
build vast structures of rough stone all along the shores of the introduction
of metal
Atlantic (p. 12 and Fig. 8), like the great stone circles at Stone-
henge ; but they w^ere unable to advance to real architecture in

1 For a long time stone and metal were used side by side. In one of the
lake-villages of Switzerland, preser\^ed in a peat bog, three successive towns lie
one over the other. Stone implements are found in all three, but the upper two,
that is the later two, contain also objects of copper along with those of stone.
wSlowly stone gave way before metal, and the ancient art of chipping fhnt gradu-
ally disappeared as metal became more plentiful. We should remember, however,
that some races still surviving, like the Bushmen of South Africa and the Aus-
tralians and Tasmanians (p. 2), continue at the present day in the use of stone,
and have not yet learned to work metal nor to make metal tools. Indeed, even
in Europe certain stone implements lingered on in use among the peasants of
the north of Sweden as late as the nineteenth century, nearly four thousand
years after metal was introduced in^ the Norse countries. A vague tradition of
the Stone Age survived even into Roman times, although by that time the world
at large had forgotten this long chapter in the story of their ancestors, and the
stone axes which the peasants picked up now and then in the fields, they fancied
were thunderbolts of the sky god.
 ii6 Outlines of lluropcaii History

Stone, and this failure to make further progress in architecture

illustrates their backwardness in all the arts of civilization. The
advance to a high civilization
in Europe after the introduc-
tion of metal — such an ad-
_| '_'';2f^^ Vv' m-
% vance as we may call real
historical progress — was
made in the eastern Medi-
terranean, in the ^f^>gean
lands, under the influence
of oriental culture. It was
this oriental stimulus which
carried Europe forward to
the development of the civi-
lization which we have in-
herited.
The ^gean world con-
sists of the islands of the
y^gean Sea and the lands
which surround this sea in

neighboring Asia and Eu-

rope, which here face each
Fig. 61. One of the Large Dec- other across its waters. For
orated Cretan Jars, nearly
Four Feet high, found at the ^gean world is the
Ancient Cnossus region where Asia thrusts
for^vard its westernmost
A fine example of the originality,
power, and beauty of Cretan decora- heights (Asia Minor) and
tive art ; although the leading design,
the lotus flower, is drawn from Egypt,
Europe throws out its south-
ernmost and easternmost
it is treated in the masterly Cretan
manner (see p. 120) peninsula (Greece) into the
waters so early crossed and
The iEgean recrossed by Egyptian ships (p. 31). At the same time the east
world ; its
geographical and west valleys of Asia Minor furnished roads for the early
connections
with the trade which linked the ^gean world with the Euphrates and
Orient
Babylonia. Thus the Stone Age settlements of the ^gean
 The Mediterranean Wo7'ld and the Early Greeks

region naturally became the outposts of the great oriental civi-

lizations which we have found so early on the Nile and the
Euphrates. From these centers the AlgQdcn world, at first slow
and backward like western and northern Europe, received con-
tinual impulses toward
a higher civilization —
impulses felt in trade,
metal-working, pottery,
house-building, and in
many other ways.
At the northwest cor-
ner of Asia Minor, con-
trolling the profitable
trade crossing from
Asia to Europe at this
point, stood the ancient
and highly prosperous
y-Egean city of Troy.
By 2500 B.C., some
centuries after it had
received the first met-
als, its rulers had erected Fig. 62. An Example of the still
a strong citadel of sun- Undeciphered Early Cretan Writ-
baked brick, with mas- ing INCISED ON Clay (pp. 118, 119)
sive stone foundations,
the earliest fortress in the yEgean world (the Second City, .^gean

Fig. -58). Here they carried on industries in pottery, metal- Trojans

Hittites and
working, and textiles, which show wide foreign-trade connections. peoples —
Their kindred and neighbors on the east were the Hittites. In
the later days of the Egyptian Empire the Hittites themselves
held a great empire in central and eastern Asia Minor (Figs. 59,
60). They gave Egypt much trouble in Syria, and they early
invaded Babylonia and Assyria also (p. 70).
Toward the east, then, the population of Asia Minor merged
gradually with the Tigris- Euphrates world, whose history we have
 i8 Outlines of Ruropcan Ilistory

TEgean
followed (pp. 56 ff.) ; while in the west other .^'.gean kindred of
peoples —
summary these Trojan and Hittite peoples had their homes in the /Kgean
islands, even as far as Crete. Some of them, too, formed the
population of Greece, where they were the predecessors of the
people known to
us as the Greeks.
These predeces-
sors of the Greeks
in the ^^>gean
world belonged
to a great and
gifted white race,
whose origin and
relationships with
other peoples are
still quite undeter-
mined. We shall
call this race the
/Egeans.
All of these
^gean peoples
were so long with-
Fig. 63. Ruins of the Main Entranxe to out writing, that
THE Cretan Palace at Cnossus, built
ABOUT 1800 B.C. they at first left
no wTitten monu-
It is on the north side, facing the harbor three ments to tell us
and a half miles away, from which a road leads
up to this entrance. Notice the heavy masonry
their story; hence
of stone — the only portion of the palace built the difficulty in
for defense, the rest being of sun-baked brick the disentangling
of their relation-
Our igno-
rance of ships. Some time after 2000 B.C. the Hittites invented a system
Asia Minor of hieroglyphic writing (Fig. 60) showing Egyptian influence,
Hittite writ-
ing and its which we find inscribed on stone monuments widely scattered
decipher-
ment through Asia Minor and northern Syria. Later they also found
that their commerce with Babylonia brought into their hands
 The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 1 19

bills and business documents written in cuneiform (wedge-

writing), on clay tablets (Fig. 37). They therefore began to
write the Babylonian cuneiform also. Their capital in central
Asia Minor (Fig. 59), recently excavated, has furnished great
numbers of such clay tablets, but they cannot yet be read.
\\'hen
secrets they
of have
this been deciphered we shall learn many of the
great world of Asia
Minor, which links
the ^gean with
the Asiatic Orient.
As Asia Minor
was the link be-
tween the ^gean
on the west and the
Euphrates world
on the east, so
Crete was the link
between Egypt on
the south and the Fig. 64. A Colonnaded Hall and Stair-
^gean Sea on the case IN THE Cretan Palace at Cnossus
north. This large The columns and roof of the hall are modern
island lies so far restoration. The hall is in the lower portion of
out in the Medi- the palace, and the stairway, concealed by the
balustrade at the back of the hall, led up, by five
terranean that one
flights of fifty-two massive steps, to the main
is almost in doubt floor of the palace
whether it belongs
to Europe or Africa. Even in ancient ships the mariners issu- importance
ing from the mouths of the Nile and steering northwestward ^\q^ of^Cret(
would sight the Cretan mountains in a few days. Excavations in
this island since 1900 have uncovered the ruins of palace after
palace and revealed a new chapter in the story of the ancient world.
For a thousand years after Crete had received copper her Advance of
people showed but little sign of progress. While the great pyra- [n^crete°by
mids of Egypt were being built (p. 29), the Cretan craftsman ^°°° ^•^•
 I20 Ontlijics of liuropcan History

learned from his Eg}'ptian neighbor the use of the potter's

wheel and the closed oven (p. 35) for shaping and firing his
clay vases (Fig. 61). About 2000 B.C. the Cretans began a dis-
tinct forward movement under the influence of the great na-
tion on the Nile. Commerce between the two countries was

Fig. 65. Ax Opex-Air Theatral Area beside the

Cretax Palace at Cxossus
This area is about thirty by forty feet, and on two sides rise tiers of
seats, accommodating four or five hundred spectators. Open-air athletic
spectacles, like boxing matches, probably took place here to divert
select groups of Cretan lords and ladies ; the area is not large enough
for the bullfights in which the Cretans took great delight (compare
the exciting bull-hunt at head of Chapter V, p. 1 1 1 , and footnote, p. 121)

constant. Egyptian craft (Fig. 14) were a common sight in the

Cretan harbors, while the prevailing north wind of summer
easily carried the galleys, which the Cretans learned to build
on Egyptian models, across to the Nile Delta.
Cnossus At Cnossus, near the middle of the northern coast of Crete,
arose a prosperous city, whose ruler was able to build a palace
arranged in the Eg)^ptian manner, with a large cluster of rooms
 The Meditcrra7iean World and the Early Greeks 12 1

about a central court. A similar palace also arose at Phsestus

in southern Crete, perhaps another residence of the same royal
family. These palaces were not castles, for neither they nor the
towns connected with them were fortified. Several indications,
like the statue of an Eg}'ptian official found under the pave-
ment of the oldest palace at Cnossus, suggest that the Eg)'ptian Egyptian
Pharaohs of the Feudal Age (p. 42) may have exercised polit- jn Crete
ical power as well as commercial and cultural influence over
the men of Crete. In the storerooms of the palace at Cnossus
writing
invoices scratched on clay tablets have been found in great
numbers. This writing is a kind of hieroglyphic clearly show- Cretan
ing the influence of Eg\'ptian wTiting ; but much study has not
yet enabled scholars to decipher and read these precious records,
the earliest-known writing in the European world (Fig. 62).
As the older palace of Cnossus gave way to a more splendid Rise of
Cretan art
building (about 1800 B.C.), the life of Crete began to unfold in all
directions (Figs. 61-66). Noble pottery (Fig. 61) was painted or
molded in grand designs drawn often from the life of the sea,
where Cretan power was already expanding. This painted pot-
tery shows the most powerful, vigorous, and impressive decorative
art of the early oriental world. The palace walls were also painted
with fresh and beautiful scenes from daily life, all aquiver with
movement and action ; or they were adorned with glazed por-
celain figures incrusted upon the surface of the wall.-^ The
method of use and the execution of the work everywhere show
that this new art was due to suggestion from Egypt; but in
spite of this fact the powerful individuality of the Cretan artist
did not permit him to follow slavishly the Egyptian model. His
work is alive with his own vigor and his own character.
Cretan civilization culminated in the centur^^ frorn 1600 to
1500 B.C., when the sea power of the Cretan rulers was carrying
1 The Cretans produced also the most magnificent metal work ; see the bull-
hunt wrought in a band around a golden goblet (at head of Chapter V, p. iii).
Nothing could be more vigorous than the charging bull, goring his pursuers (at the
left). Two such golden goblets were found at Vaphio, near Sparta, showing how
Cretan art at its highest reached the southern mainland of Greece (see p. 123).
 122 Outlines of European History

Culmination their influence and their art far and wide through the Mediterra-
of Cretan
civilization nean. At the highest level of their civilized development, however,
(1600-
1500 B.C.)
the kings of Crete were vassals of the Pharaoh, and the Cretan
cities were not free. An Egyptian general of Thutmose III (p. 46)
bore the title of "gov-
ernor of the islands in

7. ' r . the midst of the sea,"

as the Egyptians called
the islands of the
y^gean. Here, a new
world, shaking off the
old Stone Age lethargy
of early Europe, under
the magic touch of
riper Egyptian culture,
sprang into vigorous
life. Beside the two
older centers of civi-
lization on the Nile and
^
the Euphrates in this
Fig. 66. Tile Drainpipes from the
Cretan Palace of Cnossus age, there thus arose
here in the eastern
These joints of pottery drainpipe (two and Mediterranean, as a
one half feet long and four to six inches
third great civilization,
across) are part of an elaborate system of
drainage in the palace, the oldest drainage this splendid world of
system in the European world. The oldest- Crete and the ^4^gean
known system of drainpipe (copper) is in
Sea, to carry us from
the pyramid-temple of Abusir, Egypt (see
Fig. 22), about a thousand years earlier
the Orient to Greece
than this system at Cnossus
and later to Europe.^
1 An interesting evidence of the transmission of oriental civilization from the
Nile to Crete and Europe will be found in a scene carved on a stone vase in
Crete, about 1800 B.C. (see cut, p. 135). It depicts a harvest festival procession
in Crete, the men marching with wooden pitchforks over their shoulders, and a
chorus of open-mouthed singing youths, led by a shaven-headed Egyptian priest
with a sistrum (an Egyptian musical rattle) in his hand.
 The Mediterrmiean World and tJie Early Greeks 123

Section 21. The Early Greeks

Thus far the islands had been leading the civilization of the The Greek
^gean world, but the fleets of Egypt and Crete carried a bSorelhe
constant flow of commerce from the islands to the mainland of ">"!•"& ;ofthethe
Greeks
Greece. Massive strongholds, with heavy stone masonry foun- Mycenaean
dations, have been excavated at Tiryns (Fig. 67) and Mycenae
(Fig. 68) in southern Greece.^ The ^^gean princes who built
these strongholds a little after 1500 B.C. imported works of
Cretan and Egyptian art in potter)^ and metal.-^ These things,
with fragments of Eg)^ptian glaze, still lying in the ruins, are the
earliest tokens of a life of higher refinement as it displaced the
barbarism of the Stone Age on the continent of Europe.^ But
the mainland still lagged behind the islands, for Cretan writing
seems not to have followed Cretan commerce, and there was
as yet no writing on the continent of Europe. Regions on the
north of Greece, such as Thessaly, were covered with scattered
settlements w^hich had advanced but little beyond the Late Stone
Age civilization of the rest of Europe. Metal was not common
in Thessaly until about 1500 B.C. The cultured Cretans had
little influence here in the north, where a hostile race w^as
already appearing. As far back as 2000 B.C. we see these in-
vaders appearing behind the passes of the Balkan Mountains.
These newcomers and not the gifted Cretans and their ^T^gean
kindred were to possess the Greek peninsula.'*
The people whom we call the Greeks were a large group of
tribes of the Indo-European race. We have already followed
1 Also at Troy, the Sixth City, the Homeric Troy (Fig. 71).
2 See the relief on the golden goblet, a work of Cretan art, found at \''aphio,
near Sparta, in southern Greece (p. iii).
'i The discoveries of Schliemann at Mycenae were among the first revela-
tions of pre-Greek art and civilization in the .Egean world. The discoveries in
Crete had not yet been made, and the Cretan source of Mycenaean art was un-
known. Hence this pre-Greek civilization of the zEgean is still commonly called
" Mycenaean," although, as we have seen, Mycenae represents only a late and
declining stage of the high .Egean civilization attained by Crete.
4 The student should here carefully reread pp. 86-SS.
 124
Outlines of European History
the scattered tribes
of the Indo-F^uro-
pean parent people
until their diverging
migrations finally
ranged them in a
line from the Atlan-
tic Ocean to north-
ern India (p. 87
and Fig. 49). While
their eastern kin-
dred were drifting
southward on the
east side of the Cas-
pian toward India,
the Greeks on the
west side of the
Black Sea were like-
Fig. 67. Restoration of the Castle wise moving south-
AND Palace of ENBACH)
Tiryns. (After Luck-
ward from their
broad pastures along
the Danube.
Unlike the Cretan palaces, this dwelling of
an /Egean prince is massively fortified. A ris- Driving their
ing road {A) leads up to the main gate {B), herds before them,
where the great walls are double. An assault- with their families in
ing party bearing their shields on the left arm
must here (C, D) march with the exposed right rough carts drawn
side toward the city. By the gate [E) the visi-
tor arrives in the large court {F) on which the by horses, the rude
Greek tribesmen
palace faces. The main entrance of the pal-
ace [G) leads to its forecourt [H), where th^ must have looked
excavators found the place of the household
out upon the fair
altar of the king (p. 144). Behind the forecourt
{H) is the main hall of the palace (/). This pastures of Thes-
was the earliest castle in Europe with outer walls
saly, the snowy sum-
of stone. The villages of the common people mit of Olympus
clustered about the foot of the castle hill. The
whole formed the nucleus of a city-state (p. 130) (Fig. 69), and the
in the plain of Argos (see Plate 11, p. 180) blue waters of the
»
 The Mediterranea7i World and the Early Greeks 125

^gean not long after 200 o B.C. The Greek peninsula which
they had entered contains about twenty-five thousand square
miles.^ It is everywhere
_ i
cut up by mountains and
inlets of the sea into small 7 :(^ ^ ^-^^
plains and peninsulas, sepa-
rated from each other
either by the sea or the
mountain ridges (Fig. 87).
The Greeks found the
Thessalian plains dotted
with the settlements of
mud-plastered wattle huts,
the agricultural villages of
the Europeans of the Late
Stone Age (p. 123), while
the islands which the new-
comers could dimly discern
across the waters were al-
ready carrying on busy in-
dustries in pottery and Fig. 68. The Main Entrance of
metal, which a thriving com- THE Castle of Mycen^, called
merce was distributing. THE " Lion Gate "
With a wonder like that A good example of the masonry of the
of the North American In- two Mycenaean cities in the plain of
Argos (Plate II and map, p. 146). The
dians as they beheld the
gate is surmounted by a large triangu-
first European ships, these lar relief showing two lions grouped
earliest Greeks must have on either side of a central column, the
whole doubtless forming the emblem
looked out upon the white
sails that flecked the blue of the city, or the " arms " of its kings

surface of the ^.gean Sea. It was to be long, however, before

1 It is about one sixth smaller than the state of South Carolina. The very
limited extent of Greece will be evident if the student notes that Mount Olympus
on the northern boundary of Greece can be seen over a large part of the peninsula.
From the mountains of Sparta one can see from Crete to the mountains north
of the Corinthian Gulf (see Fig. 87), a distance of two hundred twenty-five miles.
 126 Outlhies of EnropeiDi History

these inland shepherds should themselves venture timidly out

upon the great waters which they were viewing for the first time.
Achaeans in
Gradually their vanguard (called the Achaeans) pushed south-
Pelopon-
nesus ward into Peloponnesus, and doubtless some of them mingled
with the dwellers in the villages which were grouped under the
walls of Tiryns and
Mycenae (Figs. 67,
68, Plate II). Some
-- ,- of their leaders
may have captured

^
' m"- these yF^gean for-
tresses.-^ But our
m.^,^^^ know^ledge of the
'^
i^
;^
P,i^^^
' - ^5. ^v^ situation in Greece
^^-r _/_;^4^-- ^
^^^a is very meager be-
cause the peoples
B*. Wfi^A'-'fJW^ ^^
^^^s^^^^^s^^THE
here could not yet
Fig. 69. Mount Olympus - Home write, and have left
OF THE Gods no written docu-
stor}\ ments to tell the
Although Mount Olympus is on the northern
borders of Greece, it can be seen from Attica
and the south end of Euboea. It approaches It is evident,
ten thousand feet in height, and looks down
upon Macedonia on one side and Thessaly on
however, that a
the other (see map, p. 146). As we look at it here second wave of
from the south, we have a portion of the plain of Greek nomads
Thessaly in the foreground, where the first
Greeks entered Hellas (p. 124), and where laterthe (called the Dori-
earliest Homeric songs were composed (p. 142) ans) reached the
Peloponnesus by
Dorians in 1500 B.C. and subdued their earlier kinsmen (the Achaeans) as
Pelopon-
nesus well as the yEgean townsmen, the original inhabitants of the
region. The ^geans slowly mingled with their Greek conquer-
ors, producing a mixed race, the people who are known to us
henceforth as the Greeks of history. In the names of towns,
1 The student will recall a similar situation, as the incoming Hebrew nornads
took the strongholds of their predecessors in Palestine (p. 102).
 TJie Alediterranean World ajid the Early G^reks 127

rivers, mountains, and plants, the old language of the ^geans

left its traces in the Greek tongue ; and doubtless much of the
supreme genius of the classical Greeks was due to this admixture
of the blood of the gifted Cretans, with their open-mindedness
toward influences from abroad and their fine artistic instincts.
The Dorians did not stop at the southern limits of Greece, The Greeks
but, learning a litde navigation from their .^gean predecessors, s?on o?the^'
they passed over to Crete, where they must have arrived by ^Egean world
1 400 B.C. Cnossus, unfortified as it was, and without any walled
castle (p. 121), must have fallen an easy prey of the invading Dorians in
Dorians, who took possession of the island, and likewise seized som^hem
the other southern islands of the ^Zgean. Between 1300 and ^^gean
1000 B.C. the Greek tribes took possession of the remaining
islands, as well as the coast of Asia Minor, the Cohans in the ^olians and
north, the lonians in the middle, and the Dorians in the south, funher north
Thus during the thousand years between 2000 and 1000 B.C.
the Greeks took possession of the entire ^gean outpost of the
Orient, including the islands of the ^gean Sea, the coasts of
Asia Minor, and the easternmost peninsula of Europe.
Driven from their native harbors by the Greeks, the ^Egean Effect on
mariners fled and their fleets appeared in great numbers along
the coasts of Syria and Eg}'pt, where they assisted in inflicting
the deathblow on the Eg>'ptian Empire in the twelfth centur}'
B.C. (see p. 53). Some of them, expelled from Crete, took refuge
on the coast of Palestine, and we have already met them as the
Philistines (Fig. 70 and p. 103). Thus the effect of the advance PhiUstines
of the Indo-European line to the Mediterranean along its north-
ern shores was felt by the older civilizations of the Orient on
its other shores.

Section 22. The Greek Citv-States under Kings

In spite of their seaward expansion the Greeks were still a The nomad
barbarous people of flocks and herds. As a race they had not ^ settled ufe"
yet taken to the water, and even as late as 700 B.C. we find their
128 Outli)ics of European History

peasant-poet Hesiod looking with shrinking eye upon the sea.

As they took possession of the more fertile districts of the
peninsula, the Greek shepherds slowly began the cultivation of
land. This forced them to give up a wandering life and live in

Fig. 70. Philistine Warriors — a Cretan Trite driven

out by the greeks

These men with tall, feathered headdress are depicted among the cap-
tives taken by Ramses III, the last of the Egyptian emperors in the
twelfth century B.C., at a time when he was desperately striving to repel
an invasion of Egypt by Mediterranean peoples, who were being dis-
placed by the incoming Greeks and therefore sought new homes in
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt (see p. 53 and map, p. 56)

permanent homes, to watch over the fields and gather the

harvests. War and care of the flocks long continued to be
the occupation of the men., who at first left the cultivation of the
field to the womeji, a condition still found in later times in the
remote vallevs of inner Greece. Furthermore, flocks and herds
 The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 1 29

made up the chief wealth of the Greeks for many centuries

after they had begun agriculture.
Nomad life as we have seen it along the fertile crescent in Earliest

Asia (p. 59) possesses no state government, for there is no fnd^socSy

public business which demands it. No taxes are collected, there g^J)"^ *^^
are no officials, there are no cases at law, no legal business, and Greeks
society is controlled by a few customs like the " blood revenge,"
which places the punishment of the murderer in the hands of the
injured family. Such was exactly the condition of the nomad
Greeks when they began a settled life in the ^gean world.
From their old wandering life on the grasslands they carried
with them the loose groups of families known as tribes, and
within each tribe an indefinite number of smaller groups of
more intimate families called " brotherhoods."
A " council " of the old men (" elders ") occasionally decided Council and
matters in dispute, or questions of tribal importance, and prob- ^^^"^ ^
ably once a year, or at some important feast, an " assembly " of
all the weapon-bearing men of the tribe might be held, to express
its opinion of a proposed war or migration. These are the
germs of later European political institutions and even of our
own in the United States to-day.^ At some stage in their early
career the old-time nomad leader in war, religion, and the settle-
ment of disputes had become a rude shepherd king of the
tribe. Each tribe seems to have gained such a king, although King
a whole group of tribes might occasionally be found under the
rule of one king.
During the four centuries from 1000 to 600 B.C. we see the Lack of
Greeks entangled in the problem of learning how to transact ^^^
the business of settled landholding communities, and how to
adjust the ever-growing friction and strife between the rich and
the poor, the social classes created by the holding of land and the
settled life. We gain some idea of the difficulties to be met as
1 Compare the House of Lords(=r the above "council") and the House of
Commons (= the above "assembly") in England, or the Senate (derived from
the Latin word meaning "old man") and the House of Representatives in the
United States.
 130 Outlines of European History

a government grows up slowly out of the old wandering life on

the grasslands, when w^e recall that the transition had to be
made without writing. There arose in some communities a
" rememberer," whose duty it was to notice carefully the terms
of a contract, the amount of a loan, or the conditions of a treacy
with a neighboring people, that he might remember these and
innumerable other things, which in a more civilized society are
recorded in wTiting.
Rise of the In course of time the group of villages forming the nucleus
city-state r ■^ i 1 1 ■ • r„, . . ,
01 a tribe grew and merged at last into a city. I his is the
most important process in Greek political development ; for the
organized city became the only nation w^hich the Greeks knew.
Each city-state was a sovereign power ; each had its own laws,
its own army and gods, and each citizen felt a patriotic duty
toward his own city and no other. Overlooking the city from
the heights in its midst is the king's castle (Fig. 67), which we
call the "citadel," or "acropolis," and around the houses and the
market below extends the city wall. The king has now become
a revered and powerful ruler of the city, and guardian of the
worship of the city gods. King and Council sit all day in the
market and adjust the business and the disputes between
the people. These continuous sessions for the first time create a
state and an uninterrupted government. To be sure it is crude,
corrupt, and often unjust.
Rise of the By fraud, oppression, unjust seizure of lands, union of fami-
"eupatrids" li^s in marriage, and many other influences, the strong man of
ability and cleverness was able to enlarge his lands. Thus there
arose a class of large landholders and men of wealth. Their
fields stretched for some miles around the city and its neighbor-
ing villages. In order to be near the king or secure member-
ship in the Council and control the government, these men often
left their lands and lived in the city. After a time they formed
a class of hereditary nobles called " eupatrids." Such was the
power of the eupatrids that the Council finally consisted only of
men of this class. Wealthy enough to buy costly weapons, with
 The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 131

leisure for continual exercise in the use of arms, these nobles

became also the chief protection of the state in time of war.
Thus grew up a sharp distinction between the city community Conflict of
and the peasants living in the country — a division altogether coumry
unknown in the old wandering life on the grasslands, where

'oii^li^^

slffa ^^m^
Fig. 71. The Walls of Homeric Troy, built about 1500 b.c.
A section of the outer walls of the Sixth City in the mound of Troy
(Fig. 58). The sloping outer surface of the walls faces toward the right;
the inside of the city is on the left. These are the walls built in the
days when Mycenae was flourishing — walls which protected the old
/Rgean inhabitants of the place from the assaults of the Greeks in a
remote war which laid it in ruins after 1200 B.C., a war of which vague
traditions and heroic tales have survived in the Homeric poems (p. 142).
Schliemann never saw this Sixth City, the real Homeric city, which
was not excavated until after his death. The walls of the houses of the
Seventh City are visible here resting on those of the Sixth

there were no towns. The country peasant was obliged to divide

the family lands with his brothers. His fields were therefore 'Jhe peasant
small and he was poor. He went about clad in a goatskin, and
his labors never ceased. Hence he had no leisure to learn the
use of arms, nor any way to meet the expense of purchasing
 132 Otitlijies of European History

them. He and his neighbors were of small account in war.

When he attended the Assembly of the people in the city, he
found but few of his fellows from the countryside gathered there
— a dingy group, clad in their rough goatskins. The powerful
Council in beautiful oriental raiment was backed by the whole
class of wealthy nobles, all trained in war and splendid in their
glittering weapons.
The Intimidated by the powerful nobles, the meager Assembly,
Assembly
cowed by
the nobles
which had once been a muster of all the w^eapon-bearing men
of the tribe, became a feeble gathering of a few peasants and
lesser townsmen, who could gain no greater recognition of their
old-time right of self-government than the poor privilege of vot-
ing to concur in the actions already decided upon by the king
and the Council. The peasant returned to his little farm and
was less and less inclined to attend the Assembly at all. Indeed,
he was fortunate if he could struggle on and maintain himself
The struggle and family from his scanty fields. Many of his neighbors sank
of the
peasant class into debt, lost their lands to the noble class, and themselves be-
came day laborers for more fortunate men, or, still worse, sold
themselves to discharge their debts and thus became slaves.
These day laborers and slaves had no political rights and were
not permitted to vote in the Assembly.
Disunion of
There were hundreds of such city-states in Greece, and, of
the city-states
course, the more powerful endeavored to seize the land of the
weaker — a tendency resulting in frequent petty wars, some of
which continued for a thousand years of intermittent hostilities
down into Roman days. The country was so cut up by moun-
tains and deep bays that the various state communities were
quite separated. They thus developed local habits and local
dialects as different as those of North and South Germany, or
Brittany and Provence, or even more different than those of
our own Louisiana and New England. Such differences made
Two unions union difficult. Only two complete and permanent unions were
under Sparta
and Athens effected among the various groups of Greek city-states : one
under the leadership of Sparta in Laconica and the other in
 The Medtterrajiea7i World and the Early Gi'eeks 1 33
Attica under the control of Athens. Both of these states, of
course, made various endeavors at expansion, as we shall see.
Loose groups of city-states elsewhere, as in Thessaly, arose here
and there, but these alliances did not prove stable or permanent.
Although no political union into a single Greek nation was Motives

possible, religion andIn commerce furnished motives toward inti- ^^^"^

mate relationships. order that all might have a voice in the
management of great temples or holy places revered by all the
Greeks, the different city-states concerned formed several religious Religious
councils, called " amphictyonies," in the membership of which each ^°"""^' ^
state had representatives. The most notable of these were the
council for the control of the Olympic Games, another for the
famous sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, and also the council for
the great annual feast of Apollo in the Island of Delos.
For the adjustment of trade between the states there were only Trade
the most primitive arrangements. A stranger sojourning abroad
had no legal rights in a foreign city, and could only secure pro-
tection byappealing to the old desert custom of " hospitality,"
after he had been received by a friendly citizen as a guest. For
the reception of a foreigner who might have no friend to be his
host, a citizen was sometimes appointed to act as official host
representing the city. A sentiment of unity also arose under the Language
influence of the Homeric songs (p. 142) with which every Greek toward unity
was familiar — a common inheritance depicting all the Greeks
united against the Asiatic city of Troy (Fig. 71).
Such influences as these led the Greeks to regard themselves Barbarians
as a distinct body of people closely bound together by ties of
, race, language, customs, common traditions, religion, and trade.
They called all men not of Greek blood " barbarians," a word
not originally a term of reproach for the non-Greeks. Then the
Greek sense of unity found expression in the first all-inclusive
term for themselves. They gradually came to call themselves
" Hellenes," and found pleasure in the belief that they had all
descended from a common ancestor called Hellen. But it
should be clearly understood that this new designation did not
1 34 Outliiics of European History

define a political nation of the Greeks, but only the group of

Greek-speaking peoples or states, often at war with one another
as hostile nations. The most fatal defect in Greek character
was the inability of these states to forget their local differences
and jealousies and to unite into a common federation or great
nation including all Greeks,^

QUESTIONS
Section 20. Give an account of the Mediterranean : its shores,
extent, climate, and the early food products. Discuss the incoming
of metal in Europe, and the outgoing Stone Age. Did Europe as a
tuhole at once advance to high civilization .? Where did the advance
begin and under what influences.'' Give an account of the early
.^gean and Asia Minor peoples. Who were the Hittites.'* Where
was their home? their capital (Fig. 59).?
Who were the Trojans and where was'their city.'' Did the main-
land or the islands lead the way in the first great advance of /Egean
civilization.? Where is Crete (read explanation of Fig. 87).? Under
what influences did Cretan civilization advance "l Mention some ex-
amples of this influence. What do you know of Cretan art .'' Was it
mere imitation of Egypt ? When did Cretan civilization culminate ?
Section 21. Where did Cretan civilization begin on the main-
land.'' Did it spread throughout Greece.'' Give some account of
civilization on the mainland of Greece v/hen the Greeks came in.
To what great race do the Greeks belong .'' Whence did their ances-
tors come? How did they enter Greece? Were they nomads or
townsmen ? Who were two of the earliest Greek peoples in Greece ?
What became of the old pre-Greek ^gean people of Greece?
Have we found such a situation anywhere else? Whither did the
Greeks next go? What now happened to Crete? Who were the
Philistines? What ^gean lands did the Greeks finally hold?
Section 22. Describe the transition of the Greeks from nomad
to settled life. Describe their government and its different institu-
tions. What problems did their new setded life create ? What about
writing among them ?

1 We may recall here how slow were the thirteen colonies of America to
suppress local pride sufficiently to adopt a constitution uniting all thirteen into a
nation. It was local differences similar to those among the Greeks which after-
ward caused our Civil War,
 The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 135

Describe the rise of the Greek city. What is a city-state ? Who

were the eupatrids? How did they gain power? What then happened
to the peasant in the city-state? How did he and the Assembly lose
power? What were the relations of these city-states to each other?
What two unions early took place ? What were the influences toward
a union of all Greek city-states ? Did a feeling of union result in a
single political nation uniting all Greeks?
 CHAPTER VI
THE AGE OF THE NOBLES AND THE TYRANTS
IN GREECE

Section 23. Civilization in the Age of the Nobles

The over- We have seen how the noble class and the Council which it
throw of
the kings controlled had finally shorn the popular Assembly of its power.
The same nobles not only thus crushed the people below but
they also slowly undermined the power of the ki?tg above. In
the century between 750 and 650 B.C. the kingship quite gen-
erally disappeared, and the leader of the State became an elective
officer chosen for a year.^ At Athens he was termed " archon,"
The old royal
citadel be- or " ruler." With the disappearance of the king the royal castle
comes the (Fig. 67) was vacated. As it fell into decay the old holy places
place of the
State temples and shrines which it protected were still cherished, but they

1 A noticeable exception, however, was Sparta, where the Assembly of the

people still retained its power. The voting citizens forming the Assembly be-
came a military class, controlling a large body of slaves and other nonvoters in
neighboring communities. Thus the whole body of voting citizens became a
superior class, who were really nobles. This class did not depose the king but
checked'his power by maintaining Uvo kings at once, and by the appointm.ent
of administrative officers who held some of the privileges formerly enjoyed by
the king.
136
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece 137

were gradually transformed into temples. Thus on the citadel

at Athens, there had been a palace of the old king Erechtheus.
The little shrine of Athena in this palace later became a temple
of the goddess, called the " Erechtheum," ^ after the old king.
In this way the castle of the ancient Attic kings was followed
by the famous temples of Athens on the citadel mount. Acrop-
olis (Fig. 91 and Plate III).
During the centuries of social and political ferment which Beginnings
brought forth a noble class and placed them in power, the civiliza- igation\nT
tion of the ^gean world had undergone great changes. The commerce
open-minded and clever Greek had meantime learned from his
^-Egean predecessors many of the arts which had so highly devel-
oped in the days of Cretan splendor. Iron had become common
after 1000 b.c. and had deeply influenced all industry. The
^^gean waters gradually grew familiar to the Greek communi-
ties, until they proved a far easier line of communication than
a road through the same number of miles of forest and mountain.
Especially important and rich was the traffic between the Greek
cities of the Asiatic coast on the east and Attica and Euboea
on the European side. Among the Asiatic Greeks it was the Commercial
Ionian cities which led in this commerce. The ships used by j^e lonians°
all were open, undecked craft accommodating about fifty oarsmen.
The Greek trader was met by sharp competition in the hands
of Phoenician mariners and merchants, who were common in Phoenicians
these waters since Cretan days. Once dwellers in the desert,
like the Hebrews and other Semites, the Phoenician townsmen
along the Syrian coast (see Fig. 72 and map, p. 56) early took
to the sea and became clever navigators. They gained a foot-
hold in Cyprus and thence sailed into the ^gean. The Phoeni-
cian craftsman of Tyre or Sidon was a clever imitator. He
received the patterns and the methods of the older oriental civi-
lizations, especially Egypt and Assyria, and easily employed them
1 The porch of the Erechtheum, supported by figures of beautiful maid-
ens, will be found as headpiece of this chapter. The situation of the building
on the Acropolis may be seen in Fig. 91, at the extreme left (east) end of the
Parthenon.
138 Outlines of European History

for his own gains. Great Phoenician platters of metal with rich
Eg\'ptian designs/ fine linens and purple raiment, Egyptian glass
and porcelain, — all things which the Greek craftsman could
not yet equal, — these made the Phoenician galley a welcome
sight in ever\^ harbor of Greece. As Crete once kept the

Fig. 72. A Glimpse along the Coast of Phcenicia

The mountain at the right is Carmel, and we look northward across the
harbor of Akko toward Tyre and Sidon. From these harbors sailed the
Phoenician ships which became so familiar to the early Greek settlers
in Hellas

^geans in close connection with the Orient, so now the Phoeni-

cians played the same part for the Greeks. The work of the
Phoenician craftsmen spread widely and became proverbial in
Greece, appearing often in the Homeric songs (p. 142). The
influence of such work gave to early Greek crafts a decidedly
oriental character, which continued for a long time.
1 The flat, round dish of pure silver shown at the end of this chapter (p. 165)
is a good example of such work as done in Egypt. The design shows a marsh as a
circle of water around the center, with plentiful vegetation, and four Egyptian
boats bearing a picnic party.
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece 1 39

The Greek now received from the Phoenician a priceless gift, The Greeks
far more vahiable than all the manufactured wares of the Orient. phSnkian
This new gift was an alphabet. Until long after 1000 B.C. the ^^P^abet
Greek was as unable to write as he had been on the grasslands
of inner Asia fifteen hundred years earlier. The Orient, how-
ever, as we have seen (pp. 21, 62), had been writing for
several thousand years. The Phoenician merchant had by this
time long abandoned the inconvenient Babylonian clay tablet
(p. 62). About 1000 B.C. he or his kinsmen had developed an
alphabet of twenty-two consonants but still without any signs
for the vowels^ (p. 71). For several centuries the Phoenicians
of the city of Byblos had been importing the Egyptian papyrus
paper (p. 22), on which they wrote with their new alphabet.^
The Greek merchant, thumbing the bits of papyrus bearing the
Phoenician tradesman's written list of goods, finally learned the
alphabet in which it was written, and slowly began to note down
Greek words in the same way. Here the Greek soon displayed
his usual mental superiority ; for, finding signs for certain Phoe-
nician sounds which did not occur in Greek and were there-
fore superfluous to him, he used these signs for the Greek
voivels and thus perfected the first complete system of alpha- Greek in
letters ; the
oenician
betic writing. It slowly spread among the Greek states, begin-earliest
ning in Ionia. It long remained only a convenience in business writing on
and administration. For centuries the nobles, unable to read European
..... , . continent
or write, regarded writing with misgivings. The Homeric songs
(p. 142), which were at first not written but were handed down
orally from generation to generation, speak of the " deadly
signs " used in writing. But even the painters of pottery jars had
learned to use it by 700 B.C., when we find it on their decorated
vases (compare Fig. 75). Shortly after this it was common

1 They probably devised it, by adaptation from Egyptian signs, or at least

under their influence.
2 It is important to notice that all the alphabets of western Asia and all the
alphabets of European countries, including our own alphabet, are descended
from this old Phoenician alphabet. The student should recall its adoption by the
Arameans (p. 71) and its spread eastward under the Persians (p. 98).
 I40 Outlines of European History

among all classes.^ Literature, nevertheless, long remained an

oral matter and was much slower than business to resort to
writing.
Earliest The Greeks often called the Egyptian paper, brought in by
books in
Europe the Phoenicians, byblosf after the name of the Phoenician city
by way of which it came. Thus when they began to write books
on rolls of such paper (Fig. 104) they called them biblia. It is
from this term that we received our word " Bible " (literally
" book " or " books "), and hence the English word " Bible,"
once the name of a Phoenician city, is a living evidence of the
origin of books and the paper they are made of, in the ancient
Orient, from which the Greek received so much.
Athletic There was now wide intercourse among the Greek states ;
games
the constant commingling of their interests, the ebb and flow of
their material life, developed and refined the Greek mind. The
life which the Hellenes now led was much richer and more
highly developed than that of their rude nomad ancestors. The
contests in feats of arms and athletic games with which they
had been accustomed to honor the burial of a hero in earlier
days finally came to be practiced at stated seasons in honor of
the gods. As early as 776 B.C. such contests were celebrated
as public festivals at Olympia. Repeated every four years,
they eventually aroused the interest and participation of all
Greece. Later, similar contests were also established elsewhere
(Figs. 81, 82). Various Greek states offered money prizes to
the victors, and the winners were regarded as having gained
undying fame both for themselves and the fortunate cities to
which they belonged. They were finally celebrated by the

1Few Greek inscriptions now surviving are as early as the seventh century
B.C. The earliest inscription dated with precision belongs a little after 600 B.C.
The written Hst of victors in the Olympian games went back to 776 B.C.
2As far as I know this remark is new ; but in view of the fact that the Egyp-
tians were exporting papyrus paper to Byblos by the 12th century' B.C., it is
evident that the Greeks called it byblos because they received it from there, as
we call stuff from Damascus, " damask," and from Calcutta, " calico." Another
Greek word for Egyptian paper was " papyros," hence our word " paper "
(see p. 23, note i).
 The Age of the Nobles mid the Tyrants iii Greece 14 1

greatest poets, an honor which led the noble class to spend

much of their time in manly exercises.
In art there had been distinct decay in the ^Egean with the Early Greek
incoming of the Greeks. The art of the Cretan palaces which
the Dorians had sent up in smoke and flame long surpassed
anything the Greek could
produce. Echoes of it sur-
vived on the coast of Asia
Minor, where they were
finally received by the Ionian
Greeks.^ But for a long time
the early Greeks fell under
the influence of the oriental
art imported in such abun-
dance in the works of the
Phoenician craftsman. Greek
sculpture had hardly begun
to produce rude figures ;
painting was confined to the
decorative efforts of the
craftsman, like the work of Fig. 73. Ax Ideal Portrait of
the painter of pottery jars. Homer
There was no great archi- This head, from the Boston Museum
tecture, for the State em- of Fine Arts, is a noble example of
ployed only the simplest the Greek sculptor's ability to create
an ideal portrait of a poet whom he
buildings of sun-baked brick, had never seen. Such work was un-
and the earliest Greek tem- known in the archaic days of Greece;
it was produced in the Hellenistic
ples were merely houses, Age (p. 232)
like those of private citizens,
consisting of a square room built of sun-baked brick, with a
wooden roof and timbers, and a porch across the front with
woodern posts supporting it.
It was in literature that Greek genius achieved its first great Literature
triumph in this age of the disappearing kingship and the rule
of the nobles. In the pastures of Thessaly where the singer
 142 Otitlines of European Hisfofy

looked up at the cloud-veiled summit of Mount Olympus (Fig. 69),

The hero the home of the gods, there grew up a group of songs telling
songs many a story of the feats of gods and heroes. Into these songs
were woven also vague memories of remote wars which had
actually occurred. By 1000 B.C. these songs had crossed to
the coasts and islands of Ionia on the Asiatic side of the
T^gean Sea.
The Ionian Here arose a class of professional bards who graced the
singers feasts of king and noble with songs of battle and adventure re-
cited to the music of the harp. Framed in exalted and ancient
forms of speech, and rolling on in stately measures,^ these
heroic songs resounded through many a royal hall — the oldest
literature born in Europe. After the separate songs had greatly
increased in number, they were finally woven together by the
bards into a connected whole — a great epic cycle especially
clustering about the traditions of the Greek expedition against
Troy. They were not the work of one man, but a growth of
several centuries by generations of singers, some of whom were
still living even after 700 B.C. It was then that they were first
written down.
Homer Among these ancient singers there seems to have been one
of great fame whose name was Homer (Fig. 73). His reputa-
tion was such that the composition of the whole cycle of songs,
then much larger than it now is, was attributed to him. Then
as the Greeks themselves later discerned the impossibility' of
Homer's authorship of them all, they credited him only with
Iliad and
Odyssey the Iliad,^ the story of the Greek expedition against Troy ; and
the Odyssey, or the tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus
on his return from Troy. These are the only two series of
songs that have entirely survived, and even the ancient world
had its doubts about the Homeric authorship of the Odyssey.
These ancient bards not only gave the world its greatest epic

1 These were in hexameter ; that is, six feet to a line. This Greek verse is the
oldest literary form in Europe.
2 So named after Ilium, the (ireek name of Troy.
 The Age of the N'obles and the Tyrmtts in Gi-eece 143
in the Iliad, but they were, moreover, the earliest Greeks to put
into permanent literary form their thoughts regarding the world
of gods and men. At that time the Greeks had no other sacred
books, and the Homeric songs became the veritable Bible of
Greece. They gave to the disunited Greeks a common litera-
ture and the inspiring belief that they had once all taken part
in a common war against Asia. But the heroic world of glori-
ous achievement in which the vision of these early singers
moved, passed away, and with it passed their art.
The Homeric singers never refer to themselves ; they never Hesiod and
speak of their own lives, but retire behind the stirring pictures cry for soda;
of heroic adventure which absorb their thought and completely pstice m
occupy them with the lives of their heroes who had died long,
long before. But now the problems of the present begin to
press hard upon the minds of men ; the peasant farmer's dis-
tressing struggle for existence (see p.^ 132) makes men conscious
of very present needs. Their own lives become a great and
living theme. The voices that once chanted the hero songs die
away, and now we hear the first voice raised in Europe on be-
half of the poor and humble. Hesiod, an obscure farmer under
the shadow of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sings of the dreary
and hopeless life of the peasant — of his own life as he struggles
on under a burden too heavy for his shoulders. We even hear
how his brother Persis seized the lands left by their father, and
then bribed the judges to confirm him in their possession.
It is not a little interesting to observe that this earliest pro- Social forces
test against the tyrannies of wealthy town life is raised at the
very moment when across the corner of the Mediterranean the
once nomad Hebrews are passing through the same experience
(see p. 104). The voice of Hesiod raising the cry for social
justice in Greece sounds like an echo from Palestine. We should
notice also that in Palestine the cry for social justice resulted
finally in a religion of brotherly kindness, whereas in Greece it re-
sulted indemocratic institutions, the rule of the people who refused
longer to submit to the oppressions of the few and powerful.
 144 Outlines of European History

Early reii- Homer was the religious teacher of the Greeks, for the
Greeks ^ Homeric songs brought vividly before them the world of the
gods. In this Homeric world the gods have become human,
Influence of and act like men. Of course they possess more power than
songs ^"^^"^ mortals, and at the same time they enjoy the gift of immortality
which raises them high above the world of men. Each god has
The gods and a kingdom and a function of his own. Zeus rules the sky ;
omains j^^Qj^yg^g brings forth the vine, and the goddess Demeter the
wheat, from the earth which both control ; Poseidon rules the
sea ; Athena with shining weapons glories in war ; Apollo with
his golden arrows is the deadly archer of the gods, and Hermes
of the winged feet is their messenger ; Hera is protectress
Their
defects human of marriage, and Aphrodite the goddess of love. They show
decidedly human defects of character; they practice all sorts
of deceit and display many other human frailties.
The hereafter Nor do the gods demand anything better in the character of
men, for at death all men go to a gloomy world of spirits be-
neath the earth (Hades), where no distinction is made between
good and bad. As a special favor of the gods, the heroes are
at last endowed with immortality and permitted to enjoy a life
of endless bliss in the beautiful Elysian Fields or the Islands
of the Blest somewhere in the Far West, toward the unexplored
Altars and occan. The altars of the gods were at first always set up under
temp es ^^ Q^Qr\ sky ^ without any sheltering roofs, as we should expect
among tribes of wandering shepherds. But the settled life had
brought permanent shrines in the royal castle, and, when the
castle was vacated by the king (p. 136), these shrines became
temples, dwelling houses of the gods, made like the dwellings of
men. The citadel mount was thus transformed into the sacred
inclosure of the gods, like the Acropolis of Athens (Fig. 91).
1 See the altar in the forecourt of the prehistoric castle of Tiryns (Fig. 67).
145
 146 Outlines of Emvpeaji History

Section 24. Greek Expansion in the Age of

THE Nobles

Greek colo-
nies in the
The oppressive rule of the nobles, and the resulting impover-
Black Sea ishment of the peasants, was an important influence, leading the
■Greek farmers to seek new homes and new lands beyond the
-^gean world. Greek merchants were not only trafficking with
the northern v^gean, but their vessels had penetrated the great
northern sea, which they called the " Pontus," known to us as the
Black Sea (see map, p. 1 46). Their trading stations among the
descendants of the Stone Age peoples in these distant regions
offered to the discontented farmers of Greece plenty of land
with which to begin life over again. Before 600 b.c. they girdled
the Black Sea with their towns and settlements, but no such
development of Greek genius took place in this harsher climate
of the north as we shall find in the ^gean. The Pontus became
the granary of Greece but never contributed anything to its
higher life.
Greek colo-
nies in the In the easi", along the southern coasts of Asia Minor, there
east — south- were already maritime peoples in possession ; but Greek expan-
em Asia
Minor and sion in this direction was stopped by the Assyrian Sennacherib
Cyprus (p. 72) when he defeated a body of Greeks in Cilicia about
700 B.C., in the earliest collision between the Hellenes and a
great power of the Tigris- Euphrates world. At the eastern end
of the Mediterranean, Greek colonists absorbed nearly all of
Cyprus the large Island of Cyprus, which long remained the eastern-
most outpost of the Greek world. In the south they found a
Egypt and friendly reception in Egypt, where they were permitted to estab-
Cyrene
lish a trading city at Naukratis (Mistress of Ships), the prede-
cessor of Alexandria. West of the Delta also they eventually
founded Cyrene.
Discovery of It was the unknown west, however, which became the America
the west
of the early Greek colonists. Many a Columbus pushed his ship
into this strange region of mysterious dangers on the distant
borders of the world, where the heroes were believed to live in
 THE
ANCIENT GREEKWORLD
IN EUROPE. ASLV MINOR .\ND THE
AEGEAN ISLANDS
26 Longilude East from Greenwich 28
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece 147

the Islands of the Blest. But step by step the dreaded regions
were explored. Flourishing cities like Corinth, in trading with
the western coast of Greece, pushed northward, where the sea-
men could discover the shores of Italy as they looked westward
toward the heel of that great peninsula. It was indeed but fifty
miles distant from the west coast of Greece. When they had
once crossed to it, their trading ventures carried them on coast-
ing voyages around Sicily and northward far into the west, at
last even to the then unknown shores which we call the French
and Spanish coasts. Here was a new world. Its discovery was
as momentous for the Greeks as that of America for later Europe.
By 750 B.C. their colonies appeared in this new western Greek colo-
world, and within a century they fringed southern Italy from wes\!!!south-
the heel to a point well above the instep north of Naples, which ^^'^ ^^^^^
was also a Greek colony known as " Neapolis," or " New City,"
like our Newburgh or Newtown. So numerous were the Greek
settlements that this region of southern Italy came to be known
as " Great Greece." ^ Here the Greek colonists looked north-
ward to the hills crowned by the rude settlements which were
destined to become Rome. They little dreamed that this insig- Rome
nificant town would yet rule the world, making even the proud
cities of their homeland its tributaries. As the Greeks were
superior in civilization to all the other dwellers in Italy, the civ-
ilized history of that great pefii?isula begins with the advent of the
Helle?ies. They first brought in such things as writing, literature,
architecture, and art (see headpiece of Chapter VII, p. 166).
The Greek colonists crossed over also to Sicily (Fig. 74), sicilyand

where they drove out the Phoenician trading posts except at ^"^^ ^^^ ^^'^^*
the western end of the island, and there the Phoenicians held
their own. These Greek colonists in the west shared in the
higher life of the homeland ; and Syracuse, at the southeast

1 One of the oldest of all Greek temples now surviving stands in a wonderful
state* of preservation on the Italian coast south of Naples at the ancient Posei-
donia (Poseidon's town), afterward called Paestum. It was built about 500 B.C.
(see the drawing at head of Chapter VII, p. 166).
 148 Outlines of European History

corner of the Island of Sicily, became at one time the most

cultivated, as well as the most powerful, city of the Greek world.
At Massilia (Marseilles), on the coast of later France, the western
Greeks founded a town which controlled the trade up the Rhone
valley; and they reached over even to the Mediterranean coasts
of Spain, attracted by the silver mines of Tartessus.
Racial Thus, under the rule of the eupatrids, the Hellenes expanded
aspects of
ancient colo- till they stretched from the Black Sea along the north shore of
nization in
the Medi- the Mediterranean almost to the Atlantic. In this imposing
terranean movement we recognize a part of the far outstretched western
wing of the Indo-European line (see p. 87) ; but at the same
time we discover that the Semite has also taken to the water,
and in the Phoenician Empire of Carthage, reaching from Sicily
along the northern coast of Africa even to the Atlantic coast
of Spain, the Semite has likewise flung out his western wing
along the southern Mediterranean, facing the Indo-European
peoples on the north}

Section 25. The Industrial and Commercial

Revolution

Growth of The remarkable colonial expansion of the Greeks, together

Greek com-
merce and with the growth of industries in the home cities, led to profound
industry changes. The new colonies not only had needs of their own, but
they also made connections with the inland, behind which opened
up extensive regions of Europe as a market for Greek wares.
The home cities at once began to meet this demand for goods
of all sorts. The Ionian cities led the way as usual, but the
islands also, and finally the Greek mainland, felt the new im-
pulse. Ere long the great commercial fleets of the Hellenes were
threading their way along all the coasts of the northern, western,
and southeastern Mediterranean, bearing to distant communities
Greek metal work, woven goods, and pottery. They brought
1 The diagram (Fig. 49) should be carefully studied again at this point,
especially the west end. Compare the diagram with map of Roman Empire.
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece 149

back either raw materials and foodstuffs, such as grain, fish, and International
market on
the island
ambe;-, or finished products like the magnificent utensils in bronze of Delos
from the cities of the
Etruscans in north-
ern Italy (p. 246 and
Fig. 107). At the
yearly feast and mar-
ket on the Island
of Delos the Greek
householder found the
Etruscan bronzes of
the West side by side
with the gay carpets
of the Orient, j
To meet the in-
creasing demands of
trade the Greek crafts-
Fig. t^. An Athenian Painted Vase
man was obliged to en- OF THE Early Sixth Century b.c.
large his small shop, This magnificent work (over thirty inches
once perhaps only high) was found in an Etruscan tomb in Italy
large enough to sup- (see map, p. 245), whither it had been exported
ply the wants of a by the Athenian makers in the days of Solon
single estate. Unable (pp. 1 55 ff.). It is signed by the potter P>go-
timos, who gave the vase its beautiful shape,
to find the necessary and also by the painter Clitias, whose skillful
workmen, the propri- hand executed the sumptuous painted scenes
etor who had the extending in bands entirely around the vase.
These decorations represent the final eman-
means bought slaves, cipation of the Greek painter from oriental
trained them to the influences, so marked before this time, and
work, and thus en- the triumph of his own imagination in depict-
larged his little stall ing scenes from Greek stories of the gods
and heroes. On the wide distribution of the
into a factory with a works of these two artists see pp. 1 50-1 51
score of hands. Hence-
forth industrial slave labor became an important part of Greek life.
Athens entered the field of industry much later than the Ionian
cities, but when she did so, she won victories not less decisive
 ISO Outlines of Europe aji History

than her later triumphs in art, literature, philosophy, or war.

Expansion of Her factories must have assumed a size quite unprecedented in
Athenian
commerce the Greek world, for of the painted Greek vases — discovered

S^£lS|g^^^\^

Fig. 76. The Isthmus of Corinth, the Link between the

Peloponnesus and Northern Greece
The observer stands on the hills south of ancient Corinth (out of range
on the left) and looks northeastward along the isthmus, on both sides
of which the sea is visible. On the left (west) we see the tip of the Gulf
of Corinth (see map, p. 146), and on the right (east) the Saronic Gulf.
The commerce across this isthmus from the Orient to the West made
the Gulf of Corinth an important center of traffic westward, and Cdrinth
early became a flourishing commercial city. Through this sole gateway of
the Peloponnesus (see map, p. 1 46) passed back and forth for centuries the
leading men of Greece, and especially the armies of Sparta, some sixty
miles distant (behind the observer). The faint white line in the middle of
the isthmus is the modern canal — a cut from sea to sea, about four miles
long and nearly two hundred feet deep at the crest of the watershed

by excavation — which are signed by the artist, about half are

found to have come from only six factories at Athens. It is not
a little impressive at the present day to see the modern excavator
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece 15I

opening tombs far toward the in-

terior of Asia Minor and taking out
vases bearing the signature of the
same Athenian vase-painter whose
name you may also read on vases
dug out of the Nile Delta in north-
ern Africa, or taken from tombs in
cemeteries of the Etruscan cities of
Italy (Fig. 75). We suddenly gain a
picture of the Athenian craftsman and
merchant in touch with a vast com-
mercial domain extending far across
the ancient world.
Soon the ship-
builder, responding
to the growing com-
merce, began to build
craft far larger than
the old " fifty-oar "
galleys of the Ho-
meric Age. The new
Fig. T]. Specimex\s illustrating the
" merchantmen "were Beginning of Coinage
driven by sails, an
These are rough lumps of silver, as long before
Eg}'-ptian invention of used in the Orient (pp. 38, 67), flattened by
ages before (Fig. 14). the pressure of the stamp. Gradually they
They were so large became round, and the stamp itself was finally
that they could no made round instead of square, as in these
early examples. /, both sides of a Lydian
longer be drawn up coin (p. 98) (about 550 B.C.); .?, both sides of
on the strand as a coin of the Greek island of Chios (500 B.C.),
before ; sheltered har- showing how the Greeks followed the Lydian
model (/) ; j, both sides of a Carian coin of
bors were neces-
Cnidus (650-550 B.C.), an example of the
sary, and for the first square stamp ; 4, both sides of a coin of
time in history the Athens (sixth century B.C.), bearing head
of goddess Athena and an owl with olive
anchor appeared. The branch (square stamp). The inscription is
protection of such an abbreviation of " Athens "
 152 Outlijics of European History

merchant ships demanded more effective warships, and the dis-

tinction arose between a " man-o'-war," or battleship, , and a
Corinth and
decked war- " merchantman." Corinth (Fig. 76), an older commercial center
ships than Athens, boasted the production of the first decked warships,
a great improvement, giving the warriors above more room
and better footing, and protecting the oarsmen below. The latter
were arranged in three rows, three men on the same bench, each
man wielding an oar, and thus the power of an old " fifty-oar"
could be multiplied by three without essentially increasing the
size of the craft. These innovations were all in common use by
500 B.C. With their superior equipment on the sea, the Hellenes
were soon beating the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean markets,
and at the same time the Greek craftsmen had not only broken
away from the leading strings of the Orient, but were already
showing superiority in many lines of industry and art.
Introduction The Ionian cities, which enjoyed important commerce with
of coinage
the peoples of inner Asia Minor, besides receiving the Babylonian
system of weights and measures,^ began to use the precious
metals in making business payments. The metals were first used
in bars and rods of a given weight, as had been the custom in
the Orient for thousands of years before (pp. 38, 67). When the
kings of Lydia late in the seventh century B.C. began to cut up
these bars into small pieces of a fixed weight, and to stamp these
pieces with some symbol of the king or state, we have the earliest
coined money (Fig. 77, j). The Ionian cities were soon using
this new convenience, and it quickly passed thence to the islands
and the European Greeks (Fig. 77,2-4'). It rapidly became a
powerful influence in Greek society.
Rise of a Wealth had formerly consisted of land and flocks, but now
capitaUstic
class men began to accumulate capital in money ; loans were made,
and the use of interest came in from the Orient. The developing
industries and the commercial ventures on the seas rapidly created

1 This system has 60 as a basis and underlies also the division of the circle (360°)
which we have inherited. The smaller subdivisions of GreeJ^ weights were on a
decimal system derived from Egypt.
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in Greece i53

fortunes among a class before obscure. There arose a prosper-

ous industrial and commercial middle class who demanded a voice
in the government. At the beginning of the sixth century B.C.
even a noble like Solon could say, " Money makes the man."

Section 26. Rise of the Democracy and the

Age of the Tyrants

While the prosperous capitalistic class was thus arising, the Decline of
ccindition of the peasant on his lands grew steadily worse. His and thrcon>
fields were dotted with stones, each the sign of a mortgage. The j"g °^ J^f,
wealthy creditors were foreclosing these mortgages and taking
the lands ; and the unhappy owners were being sold into foreign
slavery, or were fleeing abroad to escape such bonds. The
eupatrids in control did nothing as a class to improve the situa-
tion. They were usually divided among themselves into hostile
factions, however, and in time able leaders among them placed
themselves at the head of the dissatisfied people in real or feigned
sympathy with their cause. In this way such a leader of the
nobles was able to gain the support of the people, and thus to
overcome and expel his own rivals among the noble class and
gain control of the State.
Such a ruler was in reality a king ; but the new king differed The " tyrant "
from the kings of old, in that he had no royal ancestors and had opinFon of
seized the control of the State by violence. The people did not ^'^ °^^^
reverence him as of ancient royal lineage, and while they may
have feit gratitude to him, they felt no loyalty. The position of
such a ruler always remained insecure. The Greeks called such
a man a " tyrant," which was not at that time a term of reproach
as it is with us. The word " tyranny " was merely a term for
the high office held by such a ruler. Nevertheless the instinctive
feeling of the Greeks was that they were no longer free under
such a prince, and the slayer of a tyrant was -regarded as a hero
and savior of the peopler~l
 154
Outlines of European History
Earliest One of the fancied remedies for their wrongs which the people
written codes
of law had long demanded was the putting of the recognized laws into
writing (Fig. 78). Hitherto all law, so long ago reduced to writ-
ing in the Orient (see Fig. 42^ had been a matter of oral tradition

'■^r
^mi
Fig. 78. Ruins of the Ancient Courthouse of Gortyna and
THE Early Greek Code of Laws engraved on its Walls
This hall at Gortyna in Crete, dating from the sixth century B.C., was a
circular building about one hundred and forty feet across, which served
as a courthouse. If any citizen thought himself unjustly treated, he could
appeal to the great code engraved in twelve columns on the inside of
the stone wall of the building. It covers the curved surface of the wall
for about thirty feet, but extends only as high as would permit it to be
read easily. It forms the longest Greek inscription now surviving. This
code shows a growing sense of justice toward a debtor and forbids a
creditor to seize a debtor's tools or furniture for debt ; this illustrates
the tendency among the Greeks in the age of Solon (p. 155)

and custom in Greece. It was easy to twist such law to favor

the man who gave the judge the largest present, just as the judge
did for Persis when he swindled his brother Hesiod out of their
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants m Greece i55

father's lands and secured them himself (see p. 1 43). After a long
struggle the Athenians secured such a written code, arranged by
a man named Draco about 624 b.c. It was an exceedingly severe
code, so severe, in fact, that the adjective " Draconic " has passed
into our language as a synonym for " harsh." It did nothing to
relieve the agricultural class, and the mortgage stones in the -
Attic grain fields were no fewer than before.
The situation in Athens was much complicated by hostilities Foreign com-
with neighboring powers like Megara, ^^gina, and Sparta. The Athens"^ °
merchants of Megata had seized the Island of Salamis (Fig. 86),
overlooking the port of Athens, while a little further south was
another commercial rival in the little Island of ^gina (see
map, p. 1 46). The loss of Salamis and the failure of the eupatrids
to recover it aroused intense indignation among the Athenians.
Then a man of the old family to which the ancient kings of
Athens had belonged, a wealthy noble named Solon, who had Rise of Solon
increased his wealth by many a commercial venture 011 the
seas, roused his countr)'men by fiery verses, calling upon the
Athenians not to endure the shame of such a loss. Salamis was Recovery of

recovered, and Solon gained great popularity with all classes of "^^"^'^
Athenians.
The verses of Solon (which in a later day when the Greeks Solon elected
had begun to write prose would have taken the form of political reforms
speeches) pictured the distressing condition of the Attic people
with startling effect. The result was Solon's election as archon
(p. 136) in 594 B.C. He was given full power to remedy the evil
conditions. To save the peasants, he declared void all mortgages
on land and all claims of creditors which endangered the liberty
of a citizen. Furthermore, citizens who had been sold into foreign
slavery to satisfy such claims Solon repurchased at the cost of
the State, and they returned as free men to Attica. But Solon
was a true statesman, and to the demands of the lower classes
for a new apportionment of lands held by the eupatrids he would
not yield. He did however set a limit to the amount of land
which a noble might hold.
156 Outlines of European History

Further, he proclaimed
a constitution which gave
all but the v&[y lowest
classes a voice in the
control of the State. It
was not democratic, for it
recognized an aristocracy
of wealth in the place of
the old aristocracy of
birth.. There were three
political classes according
to income. Only the men
who belonged to the first
class, with the largest in-
come (five hundred meas-
ures of grain, or of oil
and wine together), could
hold the highest offices
in the State; but the
humblest free craftsman
Fig. 79. Monument of j mi: 1 \ kant-
Slayers of Athens, Harmodius could vote in the As-
AND ArISTOGITON
sembly of the people.
On the slopes of the Areopagus (see Otherwise, the estab-
plan, p. 173, and Fig. 91) overlooking the lished institutions were
market place, the Athenians set up this
group, depicting at the moment of attack little changed by Solon.
the two heroic youths who lost their lives He left also a written
in an attempt to slay the two sons of
Pisistratus and to free Athens from the code of law by which all
free men were for the
two tyrants (514 B.C.) (p. 157). The group
was carried off by the Persians after the first time given equal
battle of Salamis ; the Athenians had
another made to replace the first one.
rights in the courts. Some
It was afterward recovered in Persia by of these laws have de-
Alexander or his successors and restored scended to our own time
to its old place where both groups stood and are still in force.
side by side. Our illustration is an an- Solon is the first great
cient copy in marble, probably reproduc-
ing the later of the two groups Greek statesman of whom
 The Age of the N'obles aiid the lyrants in Greece 157
we obtain an authentic picture, chiefly through those poems of
his which have survived to our day. The leading trait of his
character was moderation, combined' with unfailing decision.
When all expected that he would assume permanent authority
over the Athenian State and make himself " tyrant " at the end
of his official term, he laid down his archonship without a
moment's hesitation and left the city for several years, to give
his constitution a fair chance to work.
Solon saved Attica from a great social catastrophe, and it was Pisistratus

chiefly due to his wise reforms that Athens achieved her indus- tyrants^ o?"^'
trial and commercial triumphs. But his work, though it deferred ^^^^"^
the humiliation, could not save the Athenian State from sub-
jection to the tyrant. After an unsuccessful attempt to seize
the government, Pisistratus, a member of one of the powerful
eupatrid families, returned from exile and gained control of the
Athenian State. He ruled with great sagacit)^ and success, and
many of the Athenians . gave him sincere allegiance. But his
two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, though able men, were un-
able to overcome the prejudice against a ruler on whom the
people had not conferred authority. One of the earliest exhi-
bitions of that love of the State which we call patriotism is the
outburst of enthusiasm at Athens when two youths, Harmodius
and Aristogiton (Fig. 79), at the sacrifice of their own lives,
struck down one of the tyrants (Hipparchus). Hippias, the
other one, was eventually obliged to flee. Thus, shortly before
500 B.C., Athens was freed from her tyrants.
The people were now able to gain new power against the The reforms
eupatrids by the efforts of a noble friendly to the lower classes,
named Clisthenes. He broke up the old tribal divisions of blood
and established purely local lines of division, so cleverly adjusted
that city and countr}^ communities were combined to form part
of each tribe. This gave the country communities an equal
chance with the city. Moreover the development of tactics
of war under the leadership of the Spartans had produced
close masses of spearmen, each mass (phalanx) remaining an
 158 Outlifies of Europea7t History

Rise of the impenetrable unit throughout the battle. Against such infantry,
phalanx ; dis-
appearance the horsemen or the individual champions of ancient times, al-
of the indi-
vidual cham- ways men of the noble class, were powerless. Thus the demand
pion for the ordinary citizen in the army much increased the impor-
tance and power of the people in the State as over against the
eupatrids. The new tribal divisions of Clisthenes were also the
military divisions of the country, and again, as in the old nomad
days, citizenship and the bearing of arms in defense of the State
were more closely identified. In the Assembly of the people
and on the field of battle the townsman and the country peasant
henceforth stood shoulder to shoulder.
In order to avoid the rise of a new tyrant, Clisthenes estab-
lished alaw that the people might once a year by vote declare
any prominent citizen dangerous to the State and banish him
for ten years. On the day appointed for the voting a citizen
had only to pick up one of the pieces of broken potter}- lying
about the market place, write upon it. the name of the citizen
to be banished, and deposit it in the voting urn. As such a bit
of pottery was called an " ostracon " (Fig. 88), to " ostracize "
a man (literally to " potsherd " him) meant to interrupt his
political career by banishment. Although the men of five hun-
dred measures' income (seep. 156) were still the only ones to
whom the office of archon and the other high offices were open,
Attica had now (about 500 B.C.) gained a form of government
giving the people a high degree of power, and the State was in
large measure a democracy.
Although a tyrant here and there survived, especially in Asia
Minor, Greece at this time passed out of the Age of the Tyrants.
As a group, the leaders of this age made an impression upon
the mind of the people which never entirely disappeared. They
were the earliest statesmen in Greece, if not in histor}^, and
some of them were led by high-minded motives in their control
of the Greek states. The people loved to quote their sayings,
such as " Know thyself," a proverb which was carved over
the entrance of the Apollo temple at Delphi ; or Solon's wi.se
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyrants in G7'eece i 59

maxim, " Overdo nothing." There came to be collections of

such sayings, and the most famous of the men of the age were
grouped together as the " Seven Wise Men." ^

Section 27. Civilization in the Age of the Tyrants

The Age of the Tyrants was a period of unprecedented prog- Architecture

ress among the Hellenes, in industries, in commerce, and in the ^" ^^" ^ ^^^
higher life which we call civilization. The old sun-baked brick
and wooden temples were replaced by structures of limestone,
and the front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was even
clothed with marble, but the building was painted in colors as
before. Sculpture adorned the temple front, the statues of the
gods being in human form and showing strong influences from
the Orient, especially Egypt. Not only religion but patriotism
also found its voice in art, as shown by a noble group repre-
senting the two youths who endeavored to free Athens from the
tyranny of the sons of Pisistratus (see p. 157 and Fig. 79),
The tyrants loved music and it w^as much cultivated. A Music
system of writing musical notes, meaning for music what the
alphabet means for literature, now arose. The flute was a favor-
ite instrument, and one musician even wrote a composition
for the flute which was intended to tell the story of Apollo's
fight with the dragon of Delphi. In literature the old heroic Literature
meter of the Homeric poems, with its six feet, was abandoned
for less stately and monotonous forms of verse. From serious
discussions in verse like those of Solon (p. 155), the poets passed The new
to the expression of momentar}-' moods, longings, dreams, hopes,
and fiery storms of passion. Each in his way found a wondrous
world within himself \M\i\c\i he thus pictured in short songs.
The Homeric songs were the impersonal voice of an age as a
whole ; but now these new songs reveal inner experiences of the

1 The list of the Seven Wise Men is as follows : Solon of Athens, Periander
of Corinth, Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mitylene, Bias of
Priene, and Cleobulus of Lindus.
 i6o Outlines of European History

Sappho individual singers. Among tiiem the poetess Sappho was the
earliest woman to gain undying fame in literature. In Sicily

So.|..«Sth..c,A,

Fig. 8o. Ruins of the Hall of the " Mysteries " at Eleusis
Very little of the building survives ; remnants of the columns once
supporting the roof are seen on the left ; on the right are the seats cut
from the solid rock, on which the initiates (p. 162) sat while watching
the sacred ceremonies of the " Mysteries," the spring and autumn
feasts celebrated here. Especially at the autumn feast, after five days'
preparation, multitudes came out from Athens, seventeen miles distant,
along the Sacred Way, and spent five days more here at Eleusis. Em-
blems of the undying life of the earth, like heads of grain, displayed at
these ceremonies, suggested the immortal life promised to all initiates
(compare the similar Osirian beliefs, pp. 27-28). In the distance we see
the Bay of Eleusis and beyond it the heights of the northern part of the
Island of Salamis (Fig. 86 and map, p. 146)

Stesichorus the poet Stesichorus developed a kind of country festival songs

(the dithyramb), sung by peasant choruses as they marched in
procession at many a picturesque harvest or spring feast. These
songs told the stories of the gods from the old myths. They
 The Age of the Nobles a7td the Tyrants in Gi'eece i6i
were sung responsively by chorus and leader, and the leader
illustrated with gestures the story told in the song. He thus
became the fore-
runner ofthe actor
in a play, and in
Athens, not long
after, such songs
led to the drama
actually presented
in a theater (Fig.
94)-
Such literature
reveals the pro-
found changes in
the religion of this
age — changes due
to the growing dis-
crimination be-
tween right and Fig. 8i. View over the Valley anu
wrong. Men could Ruins of Delphi to the Sea
no longer believe
This splendid gorge in the slopes of Mount Par-
that the gods led nassus on the north side of the Corinthian Gulf
the evil lives pic- (see map, p. 146) was very early sacred to Apollo,
tured in the Ho- who was said to have slain the dragon Pytho
which lived here. The white line of road in the
meric songs. Ste- foreground is the highway descending to the
sichorus had so distant arm of the Corinthian Gulf. On the left
of this road the cliff descends sheer a thousand
high an ideal of
feet, and above the road (on its right) on the
womanly fidelity steep slope are the ruins of the sacred buildings
that he could not of ancient Delphi, excavated by the French in
accept the tale of recent years. We can see the zigzag "f oad lead-
ing up the hill among the ruins just at the right
the beautiful Hel- of the main road (compare also Fig. 82)
en's faithlessness,
and in his festival songs he told the ancient stor)^ in another
way. Men now felt that even Zeus and his Olympian divinities New power of
, , , J. moral feeling
must do the right. Mortals too must do the same; for men
 l62 Outlines of European History

had now come to believe that in the world of the dead there
was punishment for the evil-doer and blessedness for the good.
" Mysteries"
at Eleusis In the temple at Eleusis (Fig. 80) scenes from the mysteri-
ous earth life of Demeter and Dionysus, to whom men owe the
fruits of the earth, are presented by the priests in dramatic form
before the initiated, and he who views them may be received into
the Islands of the Blessed, where once only the ancient heroes
were admitted. Even the poorest slave is permitted to enter
this fellowship and be initiated into the " Mysteries," as they
Oracles were called. More than ever, also, men now turned to the gods
for a knowledge of the future in this world. Everywhere it was
believed that the oracle voice of Apollo revealed the outcome of
every untried venture, and his shrine at Delphi (Figs. 81, 82)
became a national religious center, to which the whole Greek
world resorted.
Greek On the other hand, some thoughtful men began to reject the
thought in
the Age of beliefs of the earlier day regarding the world and its control by
the Tyrants ;
Thales of the gods. When Thales of Miletus, from his study of the Baby-
Miletus, and lonian astronomical lists (p. 84), correctly predicted an eclipse
the earliest-
predicted of the sun in the year 585 B.C. and boldly proclaimed that the
eclipse
(585 B.C.) movements of the heavenly bodies were due not to the whims
of the gods but to fixed laws of nature, he banished the gods
from a whole world of their former domain. Likewise, when the
Greeks learned of the enormous age of the oriental peoples,
especially of the Egyptians, it was at once perceived that the
gods could not have been wandering on earth like men only a
few generations earlier. Such men as Thales, therefore, became
the founders of natural science and philosophy. At this point
in their thinking they entered upon a new world, which had
never dawned upon the greatest minds of the early East. This
step remains and will forever remain the greatest achievement
of the human intellect — an achievement to call forth the rever-
ence and admiration of all time.
Just at this point, when the Greek was standing on the
threshold of a new world, the Persian hosts suddenlv advanced
Fig. 82. Restoration of the Temple and Sacred Lxclusire
OF Delphi. (After Luckenbach)
The famous temple of Apollo, where all Greece and many foreigners
came to hear the oracles (p. 162), is the large building in the center, up
to which leads the paved zigzag path visible also in Fig. 81. On both
sides of this path are seen the small buildings containing the costly gifts
presented by the various Greek states — often the spoils of war to
commemorate some victory. A forest of statues not shown here rose
everywhere in the inclosure, until it became a vast treasury not only
of memories and of the noblest Greek art but also of the precious
metals so freely used in making the statues, tripods, etc. which filled
the inclosure. The value of these things proved fatal. It was finally
plundered by the Romans (p. 284), ^but 63 ahhough the Roman emperor
Nero (54-6S A.D.) removed five hundred statues from here, there were
still three thousand left when Pliny visited the place some years later
 164 Outlines of European History

Advance of to the ^gean (see p. 96) and absorbed the Ionian cities. The
iEgean Persians represented a high civilization and an enlightened rule ;
but with these things went lack of free citizenship, political bond-
age, and intellectual subjection to religious tradition. Whether
or not the Greek states had developed the power to throw off
the Asiatic assailant, Avhose supremacy in Greece would have
checked the free development of Greek genius along its own
individual lines, — this was the question which now confronted
the Hellenes. They little dreamed of the importance which
the ensuing struggle would assume for the future career of
civilized man,

QUESTIONS
Section 23. Who overthrew the Greek kings.? Who then ruled.-*
What institutions came in as a result? What became of the citadel

and king's castle? Describe Greek commercial and industrial devel-

opment in the Age of the Nobles. W' ho led in these matters ? Who
were the chief competitors of the Greeks? How did the Greeks gain
an alphabet? How did such intercourse affect the Greeks?
What were the hero songs? Where did they chiefly flourish? To
whom were they attributed ? Which of them have come down to us ?
How does Hesiod differ from the Homeric singers ? Give an account
of him and compare him with the Hebrew prophets. Give some ac-
count of early Greek gods. Were they free from moral faults ?
Section 24. Describe Greek colonization in north and east ; in
south and west. Whom did they find as competitors already in the
west? Where were the Phoenician colonies? Which was the most
• famous? What two racial lines were then facing each other across
the Mediterranean ?
Section 25. How did the new colonies affect trade and industry in
the homeland ? Describe the growth of commerce. What were the
results at Athens? Where was the painted vase of Fig. 75 made and
where was it found? Has the work of its makers been found
elsewhere? How did the growth of commerce affect shipbuilding?
How and when did coinage arise? What class did the introduction
of motley create? What effect did it have on the peasants?
Section 26. How did some of the eupatrids m.ake use of the
discontent of the people? What is a "tyrant" in this ancient age?
Why did the people demand written laws? Whose was the first
 The Age of the Nobles and the Tyt-ants in Greece 165
written code of laws in Athens ? Did it prove a remedy for the dis-
tress of the peasant class? Who was Solon? Outline his reforms.
Did Solon save Athens from the " tyranny " ? Did the tyranny
last long at Athens?
What reforms did Clisthenes introduce ? What change in military
service and weapons had now taken place ? Of what advantage was
this change to the ordinary citizen ? What was ostracism ? Tell some-
thing of the " Seven Wise Men."
Section 27. What advances in civilization were made in the
Age of the Tyrants ? in sculpture ? music ? literature ? poetry ?
What progress do we now discover in rehgion? W^as there now
life hereafter for all? What were the "Mysteries" of Eleusis?
What were oracles? Who was the great god of oracles and where
was his temple ?
Who was Thales? What did he do? W^hat effect did his predic-
tion have on thinking men's ideas of the world and its control by
the gods ? What did they thus create ? Who now appeared in Asia
Minor (p. 163)?
 ^.-i^^ v^V
;i^^J^^^ri^

CHAPTER VII
THE REPULSE OF PERSIA AND THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE

Section 28. The Struggle with Persia

When the Ionian cities which Persia had captured in her

advance to the ^Egean^ revolted, their friend and relative,
Athens, sent twenty ships to aid them. This act brought a
Persian army of revenge, under King Darius, into Europe. The
long march across the Hellespont and through Thrace cost the
invaders many men, and the fleet which formed one wing of
the Persian advance was wrecked in trying to round the high
promontory of Mount Athos (492 B.C.). The advance into
Greece was therefore abandoned for a different plan of invasion,
which would avoid the long march around the Hellespont.
In the early summer of 490 p.c. a considerable fleet of trans-
ports and warships bearing the Persian host put out from the
Island of Samos, sailed straight across the JEgean, and entered
the straits between Euboea and Attica (see map, p. 146, and Fig.
83). The Persians began by burning the little city of Eretria,
which had also sent ships to aid the lonians against Persia, and
then landed on the shores of Attica, in the Bay of Marathon
1 The student should here reread pp. 96-97.
166
 The Repulse of Persia and the Athenian Empire 167

(see map, p. 146, and Fig. 2>t,), intending to march on Athens,

the greater offender. They were guided by the aged Hippias,
son of Pisistratus, once tyrant of Athens, who accompanied
them with high hopes of regaining control of his native city.

If '
:^ ^^^
'"''^'iflC.r
.d

■-bfe^^-ti^^ HI,. ,%,.,.

Fig. 83. The Plain of Marathon

This view is taken from the hills at the south end of the plain, and we
look northeastward across a corner of the Bay of Marathon to the
mountains in the background, which are on the large island of Euboea
(see map, p. 146). The Persian camp was on the plain at the very shore
line, where their ships were moored or drawn up. The Greeks held a
position in the hills overlooking the plain (just out of range on the left)
and commanding the road to Athens, which is twenty-five miles distant
behind us. When the Persians began to move along the shore road
toward the right, the Greeks crossed the plain and attacked. The
memorial mound (Fig. 84) is too far away to be visible from this point

All was excitement and confusion among the Greek states. Conster-
The defeat of the revolting Ionian cities, and especially
. , the
, Athens
nation inand

Persian sack of Miletus, had made a deep impression through- Greece

out Greece. An Athenian dramatist had depicted in a play the
plunder of the unhappy city and so incensed the Athenians that
i68 Oiitliiics of European History

they passed weeping from the theater to prosecute and fine the
author. Now this Persian foe who had crushed the Ionian cities
was camping behind the hills only a few miles northeast of
Athens. After dispatching messengers in desperate haste to
seek aid in Sparta* the Athenian citizens turned to contemplate
the seemingly hopeless situation of their beloved city. Here was
a tiny Greek state confronted by the army of the Lord of Asia,
the Emperor of the world, who regarded the peoples of the West
as insignificant communities which had been troubling the fron-
tiers of his vast world empire.
Thinking to find the Athenians unprepared, Darius had not
sent a large army. The Persian forces probably numbered no
more than twenty thousand men, while at the utmost the Athe-
nians could not put more than half this number into the field.
Fortunately for them there was among their generals a skilled
and experienced commander named Miltiades, a man of resolu-
tion and firmness, who, moreover, had lived on the Hellespont
and was familiar with Persian methods of fighting. To his
judgment the commander-in-chief, Callimachus, yielded at all
points. As the citizen-soldiers of Attica flocked to the city at
the call to arms, Miltiades was able to induce the leaders not to
await the assault of the Persians at Athens, but to march across
the peninsula (see map, p. 146) and block the Persian advance
among the hills overlooking the eastern coast and commanding
the road to the city. This bold and resolute move roused cour-
age and enthusiasm in the downcast ranks of the Greeks.
Nevertheless, when they issued between the hills and looked
down upon the Persian host encamped upon the Plain of Mara-
thon (Fig. 83), flanked by a fleet of hundreds of vessels, misgiv-
ing and despair chilled the hearts of the little Attic army. But
Miltiades held the leaders firmly in hand, and the arrival of a
thousand Greeks from Platasa revived the courage of the Athe-
nians. The Greek position overlooked the main road to Athens,
and the Persians could not advance without leaving their line
of march exposed on one side to the Athenian attack.
 The Rcpidse of Persia and the AtJienian Empire 169

Unable to lure the Greeks from their advantageous position The battle

after several days' waiting, the Persians at length attempted to (4^0 bx.)°"
march along the road to Athens, at the same time endeavoring
to cover their exposed line of march with a sufficient force
thrown out in battle arrav. Miltiades was familiar with the

?»tf5si-*-*^"'
^//T' ,f.r,ie^c(irei(ler-
#'

FiG. 84. Mound raised as a Monument to the Fallen

Greeks at Marathon
The mound is nearly fifty feet high. Excavations undertaken in 1890 dis-
closed beneath it the bodies of the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian
citizens who fell in the battle. Some of their weapons and the funeral
vases buried with them were also recovered

Persian custom of massing troops in the center. He there-

fore massed his own troops on both wings, leaving his center
weak. It was a battle between bow and spear. The Athenians
undauntedly faced the storm of Persian arrows, ^ and then both
wings pushed boldly forward to the line of shields behind which
the Persian archers were kneeling. In the meantime the Persian
center had forced back the Greeks, while the two Greek wings

1 See page 96 and Fig. 5 j

 I/O Outlines of Europe mi History

closed in on either side and thrust back the Persian wings in

confusion. The Asiatic army crumbled into a broken multitude
between the two advancing lines of Greeks. The Persian bow
was useless, and the Greek spear ever^-where spread death and
terror. As the Persians fled to their ships they left over six
thousand dead upon the field, while the Athenians lost less than
two hundred men (Fig. 84).^ When the Persian commander,
unwilling to acknowledge defeat, sailed around the Attic pen-
insula and appeared with his fleet before the port of Athens,
he found it unwise to attempt a landing, for the victorious
Athenian army was already encamped beside the city.
Rise of Among the men who stood in the Athenian ranks at Marathon
Themistocles
was Themistocles, the ablest statesman in Greece, a man who
had already occupied the oflfice of archon, the head of the
Athenian state. As archon Themistocles had striven to con-
vince the Athenians that the only way in which Athens could
hope to meet the assault of Persia was by making herself un-
disputed mistress of the sea. He had failed in his effort. But
His plan for now the Athenians had seen the Persians cross the ^gean
creation of
a fleet with their fleet and land at Marathon. It was evident that
a powerful Athenian navy might have stopped them. They
began to listen to the counsels of Themistocles to make Athens
the great sea power of the Mediterranean.
Persian prep-
arations for a
Darius the Persian died without having avenged his defeat
third invasion at Marathon, but his son and successor, Xerxes, took up the
unfinished task. He was prevailed upon by his able general
Mardonius to adopt the Hellespont route. When the Athenians
saw that Xerxes' commanders were cutting a canal behind the
promontory of Athos, to secure a short cut and thus to avoid
all risk of such a wreck as had overtaken their former fleet in
Themistocles rounding this dangerous point, Themistocles was able to induce
creates a fleet
the Assembly to build a great fleet of probably a hundred and
eighty triremes.
1 The mound raised by the Athenians in honor of the fallen Greeks still
marks the battlefield, a sacred memorial reverently visited by many travelers.
 The Repulse of Persia mid the Athenian Empire i/i

Themistocles' masterly plan of campaign corresponded exactly Third Per-

to the plan of the Persian advance. The Asiatics were coming in xhemil^^^^"
combined land and sea array, with army and fleet moving together ^°^^^^ P^^"^
down the east coast of the Greek mainland. The design of

?CT -^C^

Fig. '^^. The Pass of Thermopyl^

In the time of the Persian invasion the mountains to the left dropped
steeply to the sea, with barely room between for a narrow road. Since
then the rains of twenty-four hundred years have washed down the
mountainside, and it is no longer as steep as formerly, while the neigh-
boring river has filled in the shore and pushed back the sea several
miles. Otherwise we would see it here on the right. The Persians,
coming from beyond the mountains toward our point of view, could not
spread out in battle array, being hemmed in by the sea on one side
and the cliff on the other. It was only when a traitorous Greek led
a Persian force by night over the mountain on the left, and they ap-
peared behind the Greeks in the pass, that Leonidas and his Spartans
were crushed by the simultaneous attack in front and rear (pp. 172-174)

Themistocles was to meet the Persian fleet first with full force
and fight a decisive naval battle as soon as possible. If vic-
torious, the Greek fleet commanding the ^gean would then be
able to sail up the eastern coast of Greece and threaten the
 1/2 Oiitlines of European History

communications and supplies of the Persian army. There must

be no attempt of the small Greek army to meet the vast land
forces of the Persians, beyond delaying them as long as possi-
ble at the narrow northern passes, which could be defended
with a few men. An attempt to unite all the Greek states
against the Persian invasion was not successful, but Sparta
and Athens united to meet the common danger. Themistocles
was able to induce the Spartans to accept his plan only on con-
dition that Sparta be given command of the allied Greek fleets.
Persians In the summer of 480 B.C. the Asiatic army was approaching
enter Greece
the pass of Thermopylae (Fig. 85), just opposite the western-
most point of the Island of Euboea (see map, p. 1 46). Their fleet
moved with them. The Asiatic host must have numbered over
two hundred thousand men, with probably as many more camp
followers, while the enormous fleet contained presumably about a
thousand vessels, of which perhaps two thirds were warships. Of
these they lost a hundred or two in a storm, leaving probably
about five hundred warships available for action. The Spartan
king Leonidas led some five thousand men to check the Persians
at the pass of Thermopylae, while the Greek fleet of less than
three hundred triremes was endeavoring to hold together and
strike the Persian navy at Artemisium, on the northern coast
of Euboea. Thus the land and sea forces of both contestants
were face to face.
The battles
of Thermop-
After several days' delay the Persians advanced to attack on
ylae and both land and sea. The Greek fleet made a skillful and credit-
Artemisium
able defense against superior numbers, and all day the daunt-
less Leonidas held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persian
host. Meantime the Persians were executing two flank move-
ments by land and by sea — one over the mountains to strike
Leonidas in the rear, and the other with two hundred ships
around Euboea to take the Greek fleet likewise from behind.
A storm destroyed the flanking Persian ships, and a second
combat between the two main fleets was indecisive, but the
flanking of the pass was successful. Taken in front and rear,
^7Z
 174
Outlines of Europe a7i History

the heroic Leonidas died fighting at the head of his small force,
which the Persian host completely annihilated. The death of
Leonidas stirred all Greece. With the defeat of the Greek
land forces and the advance of the Persian army, the Greek
Greek retreat fleet, seriously damaged, was obliged to withdraw to the south.
It took up its position in the Bay of Salamis (see map, p. 146,
and Fig. 86), while the main army of the Spartans and the
allies w^as drawn up on the Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 76), the
only point at which the Greek land forces could hope to make
another defensive stand.
As the Persian army moved southward from Thermopylae,
the indomitable Themistocles gathered together the Athenian
population and carried them in transports to the little islands of
Salamis and ^gina and to the shores of Argolis (see map, p. 1 46,
and PlateII,p. 124). Meantime the Greek fleet had been repaired,
and with reinforcements numbered over three hundred battle-
ships. Nevertheless it shook the courage of many as they looked
northward, where the far-stretching Persian host darkened the
coast road, while in the south they could see the Asiatic fleet
drawn up off the old port of Athens at Phalerum (see map,
p. 173). High over the Attic hills the flames of the burning
Acropolis showed red against the sullen masses of smoke that
obscured the eastern horizon and told them that the homes
of the Athenians lay in ashes. With masterly skill Themis-
tocles held together the irresolute Greek leaders, while he
induced Xerxes to attack by the false message that the Greek
fleet was about to slip out of the bay.
Battle of
Salalnis
On the heights overlooking the Bay of Salamis the Persian
(4S0 B.C.) king, in the midst of his brilliant oriental court, took up his
station to watch the battle. The Greek position between the
jutting headlands of Salamis and the Attic mainland (see map,
p. 146, and Fig. 86) was too cramped for the maneuvers of a
large fleet. Crowded and hampered by the narrow sea-room, the
huge Asiatic fleet soon fell into confusion before the Greek attack.
There was no room for retreat. The combat lasted the entire
 The Repulse of Persia and the Atheiiian Empire 175

day, and when darkness settled on the Bay of Salamis the

Persian fleet had been almost annihilated. The Athenians were
masters of the sea, and it was impossible for the army of
Xerxes to operate with the same freedom as before. By the

Fig. 86. Piraeus, the Port of Athens, and the Strait and
Island of Salamis
The view shows the very modern houses and buildings of this flourish-
ing harbor town of Athens (see map, p. 173). The mountains in the back-
ground are the heights of the island of Salamis, which extends also far
over to the right (north), opposite Eleusis (see map, p. 146), as we saw in
Fig. 80. The four steamers at the right are lying at the place where
the hottest fighting in the great naval battle here (p. 174) took place.
The Persian fleet advanced from the left (south) and could not spread
out in a long front to enfold the Greek fleet, because of the little island
just beyond the four steamers, which was called Psyttaleia. The Greek
fleet lying behind Psyttaleia and a long point of Salamis came into
action from the right (north), around Psyttaleia. A body of Persian
troops stationed by Xerxes on Psyttaleia were all slain by the Greeks

creation of its powerful fleet Athens had saved Greece, and

Themistocles had shown himself the greatest of Greek statesmen.
Xerxes was now troubled lest he should be cut off from Asia
by the victorious Greek fleet. Indeed, Themistocles made every
176 Outlines of European History

effort to induce Sparta to join with Athens in doing this very

thing; but the cautious Spartans could not be prevailed upon
to undertake what seemed to them so dangerous an enterprise.
Had Themistocles' plan of sending the Greek fleet immediately
to the Hellespont been carried out, Greece would have been
saved another year of anxious campaigning against the Persian
army. With many losses from disease and insufficient supplies,
Xerxes retreated to the Hellespont and withdrew into Asia,
leaving his able general Mardonius with an army of perhaps
fifty thousand men to winter in Thessaly. Meantime the news
reached Greece that an army of Carthaginians which had
crossed from Africa to Sicily had been completely defeated
by the Greeks under the leadership of Gelon, tyrant of Syra-
cuse. Thus the assault of the Asiatics upon the Hellenic
world was beaten back in both east and west in the same year

(480 B.C.)l
The brilliant statesmanship of Themistocles, so evident to us
of to-day, was not so clear to the Athenians as the winter passed
and they realized that the victory at Salamis had not relieved
Greece of the presence of a Persian army, and that Mardonius
would invade Attica with the coming of spring. Themistocles,
whose proposed naval expedition to the Hellespont would have
forced the Persian army out of Greece, was removed from
command by the factions of his ungrateful city. Nevertheless
the most tempting offers from Mardonius could not induce the
Athenians to forsake the cause of Greek liberty and join hands
with Persia.
As Mardonius at the end of the winter rains led his army
again into Attica, the unhappy Athenians were obliged to flee
as before, this time chiefly to Salamis. Sparta, always reluctant

1 It is evident that Xerxes by his control of the Phoenician cities had in-
duced Phoenician Carthage to attack the Greeks in the west while he himself
attacked them in the east. The Persian fleet defeated at Salamis was largely
made up of Phoenician ships. The Phoenicians in east and west (Carthage)
thus represent the two wings of the great Semitic line, in attack on the Indo-
European line (Fig. 49) represented in east and west by the Greeks.
 The Repidse of Persia and the Atheniaii Empwe 177

and slow when the crisis demanded quick and vigorous action, Spartan
was finally induced to put her army into the held. When Mar- advances^^*^
donius in Attica saw the Spartan king Pausanias advancing
through the Corinthian Isthmus and threatening his rear, he
withdrew northward, having for the second time laid waste
Attica far and wide. With the united armies of Sparta, Athens,
and other allies behind him, Pausanias was able to lead some
thirty thousand heavy-armed Greeks of the phalanx, as he fol-
lowed Mardonius into Boeotia.
In several days of preliminary movements which brought the Battle of
two armies into contact at Plataea, the clever Persian showed ^nai defeat
of Persia
his superiority, out-maneuvering Pausanias and even gaining
possession of the southern passes behind the Greeks and cap- (479 B.C.)
turing atrain of their supply wagons. But when Mardonius led
his archers forward at double-quick, and the Persians kneeling
behind their line of shields rained deadly volleys of arrows into
the compact Greek lines, the Hellenes never flinched, although
their comrades were falling on every hand. With th^ gaps closed
up, the massive Greek phalanxes pushed through the line of
Persian shields, and, as at Marathon, the spear proved invincible
against the bow. In a heroic but hopeless effort to rally his Death of
broken lines, Mardonius himself fell. The Persian cavalry
covered the rear of the flying Asiatic army and saved it from
destruction. ^
Not only European Greece, but Ionia too, was saved from Athenian
Asiatic despotism ; for the Greek triremes, having meantime ous in'io^ni'a
crossed to the peninsula of Mycale on the north of Miletus, and the north
drove out or destroyed the remnants of the Persian fleet. The
Athenians now also captured and occupied Sestus on the Euro-
pean side of the Hellespont and thus held the crossing from
Asia into Europe closed against further Persian invasion. Thus
the grandsons of the men who had seen Persia advance to the
^gean had blocked her further progress in the west and thrust
her back from Europe. Indeed, no Persian army ever set foot
in European Greece again.
 78 Outlines of European History

Section 29. The Rise of the Athenian Empire

Emancipated As the Athenians returned to look out over the ashes of what
Greece
was once Athens, amid which rose the smoke-blackened heights
of the naked Acropolis, they began to realize the greatness of
their deliverance and the magnitude of their achievement. With
the not too ready help of Sparta, they had met and crushed the
hoary power of Asia. They felt themselves masters of the
Progressive world. The past seemed narrow and limited. A new and
Athens
greater Athens dawned upon their vision.
On the other hand, the stolid Spartans, wearing the fetters of
a rigid military organization, gifted with no imagination, looked
with misgivings upon the larger world which was opening to
Greek life, and although they desired to lead Greece in mili-
tary power, they shrank from assuming the responsibilities of
expansion. They represented the past and the privileges of the
Conser\'ative few. Athens represented the future and the rights of the many.
Sparta
Thus Greece fell into two camps as it were : Sparta (Fig. 87),
the bulwark of tradition and limited privileges ; Athens (Plate III,
p. 180), the champion of progress and the sovereign people. And
thus the sentiment of union born in the common struggle for
liberty, which might have united the Hellenes into one Greek
Rivalry of nation, was followed by an unquenchable rivalry between the
Athens and
Sparta two leading states of Hellas, which finally cost the Greeks the
supremacy of the ancient world.
Themisto- Themistocles was now the soul of Athens and her policy of
cles and the
fortification progress and expansion. He determined that Athens should no
of Athens
longer follow Sparta. He cleverly hoodwinked the Spartans,
and in spite of their objections completed the erection of strong
walls around a new and larger Athens. At the same time he
fortified the Piraeus, the Athenian port (see map, p. 173, and
Fig. 86). When the Spartans, after the repulse of Persia, relin-
quished the command of the combined Greek fleets, the power-
ful Athenian fleet, the creation of Themistocles, was master
of the ^gean.
 The Repulse of Persia and the AtheuiaTi Empire 179

'^^^T'^ze-

f|Sf%'?r;

Fig. 87. The Plain where once Sparta stood

The olive groves now grow where the Spartans once had their houses.
The town was not walled until long after the days of Spartan and
Greek power were over. From the mountains (nearly eight thousand
feet high) behind the plain the visitor can see northeastward far beyond
Athens, almost to Euboea ; one hundred miles northward to the moun-
tains on the north of the Corinthian Gulf (see map, p. 146); and one
hundred and twenty-five miles southward to the Island of Crete. This
view shows also how Greece is cut up by such mountains

As the Greek cities of Asia still feared the vengeance of the Estabiish-
Persian king, it was easy for the Athenians to form a perma- Delian
nent defensive league with the cities of their Greek kindred in f;!.8?.^77 ^c.)
Asia and the ^gean islands. The wealthier of these cities con-
tributed ships, while others paid a sum of money each year into
 i8o Outlijies of European Histor)>

the treasury of the League. Athens had command of the com-

bined fleet and collected the money. This treasure was placed
for protection in the temple of Apollo, on the little Island of
Delos. Hence the federation was known as the Delian League.
It was completed within three years after Salamis. The transfor-
mation ofsuch a league into an empire, made up of states subject
to Athens, could be foreseen as a very easy step. All this was
therefore viewed with increasing jealousy and distrust by Sparta.

Fig. ^%. Potsherd bearing the Name of Themistocles

AND HIS Place of Residence
The name of Themistocles is scratched in the surface of this fragment
of a pottery jar (ostracon, p. 1 58). It was written there by some citizen of
the six thousand who desired and secured his ostracism in 472 B.C.,
or may have served a similar purpose in the earlier but unsuccessful
attempt to ostracize him

Rise of Under the leadership of Cimon, the son of Miltiades the hero
of Marathon, the fleet of the League now drove the Persians out
of the region of the Hellespont entirely. 'Cimon did not under-
stand the importance of Athenian supremacy, but favored a
policy of friendship and alliance with Sparta. Hence political
conflict arose at Athens over this question. Noble and wealthy
and old-fashioned folk favored Cimon and friendship with
Sparta, but progressive and modern Athenians followed The-
mistocles and his anti-Spartan plans.
Themistocles was unable to carry the Assembly ; he was
 t/3 .i; >-
•5 <u J2

~ 'JO
•t: X jD

_^ o O
rt T^ 'S.tt;

si
1-5 S

.^ o

<u -^ c ,
I-
■^^rt 2 O cw

fc£

<u .2 '^
- u :^ ^- CL'

03
> O

3 0-0;

^ r
j_i -^
 The Repulse of Persia and the Athenian Empire l8l

ostracized (Fig. 88), and at length, on false charges of treason, Fall of The-
he was condemned and obliged to flee for his life. The greatest (^7^2-47^1^.0.)
statesman in Athenian histor)^ spent the rest of his life in the
service of the Persian king, and he never again saw the city he
had saved from the Persians and made mistress of an empire.
When a Persian fleet of some two hundred ships now came Cimon de-
creeping westward along the southern coast of Asia Minor, PeSln fleet
Cimon and
landed not only destroyed
crushed the entire
the Persian hostilewhich
land force fleet, had
but fortified
he also ejjjjf^i"el|^'"'

itself at this point (468 B.C.).

Covered with glory, Cimon returned to Athens and urged the Fall of Cimon
dispatch of troops to Sparta in response to a request from the
Spartans for help in quelling a revolt among their own subjects.
Herein Cimon overestimated the good feeling of the Spartans
toward Athens ; for, in spite of the continuance of the revolt,
the Spartans after a time curtly demanded the withdrawal
of the very Athenian troops they had asked for. Stung by
this rebuff, to which Cimon's friendly policy toward Sparta had
exposed them, the Athenians voted to ostracize Cimon (461 B.C.).
The name of Pericles, the statesman who succeeded Cimon Pericles and

as the leader of Athens, is the most illustrious in her history, isdc^piny^^

He was a handsome and brilliant young Athenian, descended ^* Athens
from one of the old noble families, of the line of Clisthenes,
who two generations before had done so much for Athenian
democracy (see p. 157). Like his great ancestor, he fearlessly
championed the cause of the people, and he also accepted the
" imperialistic program " of Athenian supremacy over the other
Greek states. He desired to rear the splendid Athenian empire
of which Themistocles had dreamed. He put himself at the head
of the party of progress and of increased power of the people.
Increasing prosperity had been creating an ever-growing body
of wealthy men who rose from the lower classes. They hoped
for wide expansion of Athenian power, for they felt the com-
petition ofthe merchants of ^Egina and of Corinth, the powerful
commercial ally of Sparta.
 l82 Outlines of Eiiropean History

Fig. 89. The Pnyx, the Athenian Place of Assembly

The speakers' platform with its three steps is immediately in the fore-
ground. The listening Athenian citizens of the Assembly sat on the
ground now sloping away to the left, but at that time probably level.
The ground they occupied was inclosed by a semicircular wall, begin-
ning at the further end of the straight wall seen here on the right,
extending then to the left, and returning to the straight wall again
behind our present point of view (see semicircle on plan, p. 173). This
was an open-air House of Commons, where, however, the citizen did
not send a representative but came and voted himself as he was in-
fluenced from this platform by great Athenian leaders, like Themisto-
cles, Pericles, or Demosthenes (p. 216). Note the Acropolis and the
Parthenon, to which we look eastward from the Pnyx (see plan, p. 173).
The Areopagus is just out of range on the left (see Fig. 91)

Salaries for A long Struggle of the people for power had brought about
state offices
introduced changes in the constitution providing that all citizens holding
state office should receive pay for such service. The people
were in the saddle (Fig. 89). It was now possible even for men
of very limited means to hold office, and all were permitted to
 The Repulse of Persia and the A thenian Empire 183

do so except members of the laboring class entirely without Complete

triumph
democracyoj

property. one exception

Withofficers, there was no longer any election '^.'"'""^P °
of the higher but they were now all chosen by lot from
the whole body of eligible citizens. The result was that the men
holding the once influential positions in the State were now mere
chance " nobodies " and hence completely without influence.
It was, however, impossible to choose a military commander The leader-
{^strategus) by lot. These important offices remained elective Peddes
and thus open to men of ability and influence, into whose hands
the direction of affairs naturally fell. It thus became more and
more possible for a strong and influential leader, a man of per-
suasive eloquence like Pericles, to lay out a definite series of
plans for the nation and by his oratory to induce the Assembly
of the Athenian citizens on the Pnyx (Fig. 89) to accept them.
Year after year Pericles was thus able to retain the confidence of
the people. He became the actual head of the State in power, or,
as we should say, the undisputed political " boss " of Athens from
about 460 B.C. until his untimely death over thirty years later.
Pericles had won favor with the people by favoring a policy New de-
of hostilit)^ to Sparta, a policy opposed to Cimon's attitude of At"hens°
friendship toward the only dangerous rival of Athens in the ^^t^?,"?,
struggle for the leadership of Hellas. Pericles greatly strength-
ened the defenses of Athens by inducing the people to connect
the fortifications of the city with those of the Pirasus harbor by
two " Long Walls," thus forming a road completely walled in,
connecting Athens and her harbor (Fig. 86 and plan, p. 173).
The inevitable war with Sparta lasted nearly fifteen years. First war
with varying fortunes on both sides. The Athenian merchants A^thenTand
resented the keen commercial rivalry of ^gina, planted as the Sparta (459-
flourishing island was at the very front door of Attica (see map,
p. 1 46). They finally captured the island after a long siege. Pericles Athenians
likewise employed the Athenian navy in blockading for years ^^gina
the merchant fleets of the other great rival of Athens and friend
of Sparta, Corinth (Fig. 76), and thus brought financial ruin on
its merchants.
 1 84 Outlines of Eitropean History

Pericles shifted the treasury of the Delian League from Delos

to Athens, an act which made the city more than ever the capi-
tal of an Athenian Empire. The assassination of Xerxes and a
consequent revolt against the Persians in Egypt had induced
the Athenians to resume the conflict with Persia (459 B.C.).
They therefore dispatched a fleet of two hundred ships against
the Persians in Eg}-pt and had thus been fighting both Sparta
and Persia for years. The entire Athenian fleet in Egypt was
lost. Some Attic successes in Boeotia were followed by defeats in
which the Athenians lost all that they had gained in the north.
Peace with When peace was concluded (446 b.c.) all that Athens was
Persia ^ ^t)le to retain was the Island of yEgina. It was agreed that the
peace should continue for thirty years. Thus ended what is
often called the First Peloponnesian War with the complete
exhaustion of Athens as well as her enemies in the Pelopon-
nesus. The Athenians then arranged a peace with Persia
also, over forty years after Marathon. But the rivalry between
Athens and Sparta for the leadership of the Greeks was still
unsettled. The struggle was to be continued in another long
and weary " Peloponnesian War." Before we proceed with
the stor}' of this fatal struggle we must glance briefly at the
new and glorious Athens now growing up under the hand of
Pericles.

Section 30. Civilization of Imperial Athens in

THE Age of Pericles

The higher Although the first fifteen years of the leadership of Pericles
rial Athens^; were encumbered with the Spartan and Persian wars, the higher
sute^°"^^^ life of Athens continued to unfold, and the next fifteen years
brought to fruitage the tremendous and revolutionary experi-
ences through which Greece and especially Athens had been
passing for half a century. The new vision of the glory of the
State, discerned nowhere in the world before this age, caught
the imagination of poet and painter, of sculptor and architect,
 The Repjdse of Persia and the A tJienian Empire 185
and not of these alone
but of the humblest
artizan and tradesman.
All classes alike partici-
pated in the public
festivals which were con-
ducted by the State
every six or seven days.
The great Pan-Athenaic
festival, which occurred
every four years, gath-
ered all the people in
stately processions and
splendid games, bring-
ing into their lives the
memories of a heroic
past and the imposing
honors paid to the great
gods who sheltered and
protected the Athenian
wState. The wealthy citi-
zens themselves paid Fig. 90. Monument coMxMemorat-
iNG THE Triumph of an Athenian
the expenses of compet- Citizen in Music
ing choruses, and each
An entire street of Athens was filled
successful competitor with such monuments (p. 185). We learn
proudly erected a grace- the name of the citizen, Lysicrates, who
ful monument of victory erected this beautiful monument, from
the inscription it still bears, which reads:
(Fig. 90) in a street es- " Lysicrates . . . was choragus [leader
pecially reserved for of the chorus] when the boy-chorus of
such memorials. These the tribe of Akamantis won the prize ;
Theon was flute-player, Lysiades of
choruses were made up Athens trained the choir. Euatnetus
of the men and boys of was archon." The archon's name dates
Athens. The citizen thus the erection of the monument for us in
found music, the drama, 335 ^^ 334 B-C- Beyond the monument
we look westward to the back of the
art and architecture, Acropolis (see plan, p. 173)
1 86 Outlines of European History

profoundly touched by the new and exalted vision of the State,

thrust into the foreground of his life.
We can still follow the citizen and note a few of the inspir-
ing monuments that met his eye as he went about the new
Athens which Pericles was creating. Wandering into the market
place (see plan, p. 173, and Fig. 91), the citizen found an impos-
ing colonnaded porch along one side, presented to the city by a
wealthy noble : the wall behind the columns bore a long series
of paintings by an artist from one of the island possessions of
Athens, a gift of the painter to the Athenians, depicting their
glorious victory at Marathon. Here in splendid panorama was a
vision of the heroic devotion of the fathers. In the thick of the
fray the citizen might pick out the figure of Themistocles, of
Miltiades, of Callimachus who fell in the battle, of ^schylus the
great tragic poet. He could see the host of the fleeing Persians
and perhaps hear some old man tell how the brother of ^schylus
seized and tried to stop one of the Persian boats drawn up on
* In this view we stand inside the wall of Themistocles, near the
Dipylon Gate in the Potters' Quarter (see plan, p. 173). In the fore-
ground isthe temple of Theseus, the legendary unifier of Attica, whom
all Athenians honored as a god, and to whom this temple has long
been supposed to have been erected. It is built of Pentelic marble
and was finished a few years after the death of Pericles ; but now,
after twenty-three hundred years or more, it is still the best preserved
of all ancient Greek buildings. Above the houses, at the extreme right,
may be seen one corner of the hill called the Areopagus (see plan,
p. 173), often called Mars' Hill, where sat the ancient criminal court of
Athens — a court made up of the most influential and respected old
citizens. It was probably here that the apostle Paul (p. 300) preached
in Athens (see" Acts xvii). The great hill of the Acropolis was once
crowned by the dwellings of the prehistoric kings of Athens (p. 136).
The buildings we nov/ see there are all ruins of the structures erected
after the place had been laid waste by the Persians (p. 174). At the
right (west) are the approaches built by the architect Mnesicles under
Pericles (p. 188). The Parthenon (p. 188), in the middle of the hill (see
plan, p. 173), shows the gaping hole caused by the explosion of a Turk-
ish powder magazine ignited by a Venetian shell in 1687, when the
entire central portion of the building was blown out. The space be-
tween the temple of Theseus, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis was
largely occupied by the market place of Athens (p. 186 and plan, p. 173).
[87
1 88 Outlines of Etnvpean History

the beach, and how a desperate Persian raised his ax and slashed
off the hand of the brave Greek. Perhaps among the group of
eager listeners he might notice one questioning the veteran
carefully and making full notes of all that he can learn from
the graybeard. The questioner is Herodotus, the " father of
history," the first great prose writer to devote himself to the
stor)^ of the past. He is collecting from survivors the tale of
the Persian wars for a history which he is writing (p. 203).
The citizen wanders on toward the theater. Above him
towers the height of the Acropolis crowned with the Parthenon
(Plate IV, p. 192, and Fig. 91), a noble temple to Athena, whose
protecting arm is always stretched out over her beloved Athens.
There on the Pnyx (Fig. 89) Pericles made the splendid speech
in which he laid before the Assembly of the people his plans
for the beautification of the Acropolis and the restoration of the
temples which the Persians had burned. As he passes the Hill
of the Areopagus the citizen remembers the discontented mut-
terings of the old men in the ancient council which convenes on
its summit (Fig. 91), when they heard the vast expenses required
for Pericles' building plans, and he smiles in satisfaction as he
reflects that this unprogressive old body, once so influential in
Athens, has been deprived of its powers to obstruct the will of
the people in anything they wish to do. Here before him rise
the imposing marble colonnades of the magnificent monumental
approach to the Acropolis (Fig. 91). It is still unfinished, and
the architect Mnesicles, with a roll of plans under his arm, is
perhaps at the moment directing a group of workmen to their
task. The tinkle of many distant hammers from the height
above tells where the stone cutters are shaping the marble-
blocks for the still unfinished Parthenon (Fig. 91 and Plate III,
p. 180) ; and there, too, the people often see Pericles intently in-
specting the work, as Phidias the sculptor and Ictinus the archi-
tect of the building pace up and down the inclosure, explaining
to him the progress of the work. In these wondrous Greek
buildings architect and sculptor work hand in hand.
I^^U'"^^ ■-V;
fcJOTJ

o t^
 Fig. 93. Hermes playing with the Child Dionysus
The uplifted right hand (now broken off) of the god probably held a bunch
of grapes, with which he was amusing the child. This wonderful work
was wrought by the sculptor Praxiteles and illustrates the culmination of
Athenian art in the fourth century B.C., in the days of the political weak-
ness of Athens, when Thebes was overthrowing Sparta (p. 212), and Mace-
donia was gaining the leadership of the Greeks (p. 216)
 The Repulse of Persia and the A thenian Empire 1 89

Phidias is the greatest of the sculptors at Athens. In a long Sculpture —

band of carved marble extending entirely around the four sides
of the Parthenon, at the top inside the colonnades (Plate IV,
p. 192), Phidias and his pupils have portrayed, as in a glorified
vision, the sovereign people of Athens moving in the stately
procession of the Pan-Athenaic festival (Fig. 92). To be sure,
these are not individual portraits of Athenian folk, but only types
which lived in the exalted vision of the sculptor, and not on the
streets of Athens. But such sculpture had never been seen
before. How different is the supreme beauty of these perfect
human forms from the cruder figures which adorned the temple
burned by the Persians. The citizen has seen the shattered
fragments of these older \vorks cleared away and covered
with rubbish when the architects leveled off the summit of the
Acropolis.^ Inside the new temple gleams the colossal figure of
Athena, wrought by the cunning hand of Phidias in gold and
ivory — his masterpiece. Even from the city below the citizen
can discern, touched with bright colors, the heroic figures of
the gods with which Phidias has filled the triangular gable ends
of the building.^
These are the gods to whom the faith of the Athenian people The drama
still reverently looks up. Have not Athena and these gods
raised the power of Athens to the imperial position which she
now occupies ? Do not all the citizens recall ^schylus' drama .Eschylus
" The Persians," in which the memories of the great deliverance
from Persian conquest are enshrined ? How that tremendous
day of Salamis was made to live again in the imposing picture
which the poet's genius brought before them, disclosing the
mighty purpose of the gods to save Hellas ! As he skirts the
sheer precipice of the Acropolis the citizen reaches the theater

1 Till recently they lay buried under the rubbish on the slope (Fig. 91). The
excavations of the Greek government have recovered them, and they are now in
the Acropolis Museum at Athens.
2 These figures will be found at the end of Chapter VII (p. 195). They repre-
sent the battle between Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, for possession of
Attica.
1 90 Outlines of European History

(see plan, p. 173, and Fig. 94), where he finds the people are al-
ready entering. Only yesterday he and his neighbors received
from the state treasury the money for their admission. It is natu-
ral that they should feel that the theater and all that is done there
belong to the people, and not the less as the citizen looks down
upon the stage and recognizes many of his friends and neighbors
and their sons in the chorus for that day's performance.
A play of Sophocles is on, and his neighbor in the next seat
leans over to tell the citizen how as a lad many years ago he
stood on the shore of Salamis,- whither his family had fled
(p. 174), and as they looked down upon the destruction of the
Persian fleet, this same Sophocles, a boy of sixteen, was in the
crowd looking on with the rest. How deeply must the events
of that tragic day have sunk into the poet's soul ! For does he
not see the will of the gods in all that happens to men ? Does
he not celebrate the stern decree of Zeus everywkere hanging
over human life, at the same time that he uplifts his audience
to adore the splendor of Zeus, however dark the destiny he lays
upon men. This is the only attitude which can bring consola-
tion in the tragedy of life, and the citizen feels that Sophocles is
a veritable voice of the people, exalting the old gods in the new
time. Moreover, in place of the former two, Sophocles has three
actors in his plays, a change which makes them more interesting
and full of action.^ Even old ^schylus yielded to this inno-
vation once before he died. Yet too much innovation is also
unwelcome to the citizen.
The citizen feels this especially if it is one of the new sensa-
tional plays of Euripides which is presented. Euripides (Fig. 95)
is decidedly an innovator, a younger poet, the son of a farmer
who lives over on the Island of Salamis (Fig. 86) ; he has for
some time been presenting plays at the spring competition. His
new plays are all inwrought with problems and mental struggle
regarding the gods, and they have raised a great many questions
1 These actors were once only the leaders of the choruses at the spring feast
(see p. 161).
 T^

'Z^ ^

s^<<
,r^\

Fig. 94. The Theater of Athens

This theater was the center of the growth and development of Greek
drama, which began as a part of the celebration of the spring feast of
Dionysus, god of the vine and the fruitfulness of the earth (p. 161).
The temple of the god stood here, just at the left. Long before any
one knew of such a thing as a theater, the people gathered at this
place to watch the celebration of the god's spring feast, where they
formed a circle about the chorus, which narrated in song the stories of
the gods (p. 161). This circle (called the orchestra) was finally marked
out permanently, seats of wood for the spectators were erected in a
semicircle on one side, but the singing and action all took place in the
circle on the level of the ground. On the side opposite the public was
a booth, or tent (Greek skene, " scene"), for the actors, and out of this
finally developed the stage. Here we see the circle, or orchestra,
with the stage cutting off the back part of the circle. The seats are of
stone and accommodated possibly seventeen thousand people. The
fine marble seats in the front row were reserved for the leading men of
Athens. The old wooden seats were still in use in the days when
i^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides presented their dramas here, in
competition for prizes awarded to the finest plays (pp. 190-192). From
the seats the citizens had a grand view of the sea, with the Island of
^gina, their old-time rival (p. 155) ; and even the heights of Argolis,
forty miles away, were visible ; for orchestra and seats continued
roofless, and a Greek theater was always open to the sky. In Roman
times a colonnaded porch across the back of the stage was introduced,
and such columns of Roman date may be seen in Fig. 74

191
192 Outlines of European History

and doubts which the citizen has never been able to banish from
his mind since he heard them. In their pictures of men, too,
they are nearly always very dark and gloomy and discouraging.
The citizen determines that he will use all the influence he has
to prevent the plays of Euripides from winning the prize, which
the State grants to the most successful among the competing
play writers each spring.
When the Athenian citi-
zen turns homeward from
the theater, he and his neigh-
bor perhaps discuss, as they
walk, how they shall edu-
cate their sons. There are
the old subjects which the
State schools teach : read-
ing and writing, the study
of the old poets, music and
dancing, and the athletic ex-
ercises at the gymnasium.
But their sons are not satis-
fied with these ; they want
tuition money to hear the
Fig. 95. Portrait of Euripides lectures and the instruction
The name of the poet (p. 191) is of private teachers, a class
engraved in Greek letters along the of new and clever-witted
lower edge of the bust
lecturers, who wander from
city to city, and whom the people call " Sophists." The
Sophists are far worse than Euripides ; they doubt everything,
and make all conclusions impossible. Yes, to be sure, but they
are wonderful speakers, much better than Herodotus when he
recites his historical tales in the market place. And they teach
a young man such readiness in speech that he can carry the
people with him in the Assembly. They have indeed created a
new art, the art of oratory and of writing prose, and no young
man can do without it.
 Tlate 1\'. a Corn El iiii: I'A..
Looking through the colonnades (p. 1S9) at the southeast corner of the build-
ing to the distant hills of liymettus. On the left is the base of the wall of the
interior, blown out by the explosion of the Turkish powder magazine (Fig. 91).
At the top of this wall was the frieze of Phidias, extending around the inner
part of the building (p. 189 and Fig. 92). (F>om painting by Hethe-Lowe,
Rhine Prints. l)v 1>. G. Teubner, Leipzig. The l*rang Company. New York)
 TJie Repulse of Pei'sia and the AtJienian Empire 193
They are such useful teachers, it is a pity they are such an Skepticism
impious crew, these Sophists ; but when one of them actually
writes a book which begins with a statement doubting the ex-
istence of the gods, what is a citizen to do but vote that the
book be burned ? And the worst of it is that there are several
bookshops in the city and people read such books. Why, even
the sausage-peddler who delivers meat at the citizen's door can
read ! And the book was read aloud in the house of Euripides
too ! There should be no hesitation in condemning and banish-
ing such infidels, even if they are friends of Pericles, and he
steps in to help them. But the citizen and his friend chuckle
as they recall how Pericles was well roasted for it in the last
comic play (comedy) they went to see.
In spite of the fact that the Sophists teach a little arithmetic, Science
geometry, and astronom\', natural science is a line of progress
of which the Athenian citizen has not even a vague intimation.
To be sure, he has seen on the Pnyx (Fig. 89) a strange-looking
tablet set up by Meton, the builder and engineer ; it is said to Meton's
be a calendar which will bring the short moon-month year (p. 62) ^^ ^" ^''
and the long solar year together every nineteen years. But this
is all quite beyond the citizen's puzzled mind. Moreover, the
archons have all shaken their heads at it and will have nothing
to do with it. The old moon months are good enough for them.
But practical men like Meton, whose callings in life carry them
into such investigations, are making much progress in science.
The physician especially has largely outgrown the old Eg)'ptian Medicine
medical roll (p. 44) which his fathers found very useful ; he has
made many important and new observations of his own, and
there is even a Greek physician in Persia at the court of the
Great King. Interesting progress is being made in mathematics
also by the surveyor, and a new science known as " land- Geometry
measuring," geometry, is taking form.
The reader will readily perceive how different from the Athens Athens the
of the old days before the Persian wars was this imperial the worW
Athens ! — throbbing with new life, astir with a thousand
194 Outlines of European History

questions eagerly discussed at every corner, keenly awake to the

demand of the greater State and the sovereign people, deeply
pondering the diWes and privileges of the individual who felt
new and larger visions of himself conflicting with the exactions
of the State and the old faith, already troubled by serious doubts,
but clinging with wistful apprehension to the old gods and the
old truths. Under Pericles Athens had become, as he desired
it should, the teacher of the Greek world. It now remained to
be seen whether the people, in sovereign control of the State,
could guide her wisely and maintain her new power.

QUESTIONS
Section 28. What was the chief provocation of the war with
Persia? By what route did Darius first attempt the invasion of
Greece.^ What route was next adopted? Where did the Persians
land ? Why did not the battle take place at Athens ? Describe the
device of Miltiades. What was the outcome? What was the policy
of Themistocles? What led the Athenians to vote the building of
a fleet?
What route did Xerxes select for the next (third) Persian invasion ?
Outline Themistocles' plan of campaign. Describe the batfle of Ther-
mopylae and Artemisium. What was the next move of the Persians ?
Describe the battle of Salamis. Outline the remaining course of the
campaign under Mardonius, and the battle of Plataea. What was the
final result of the Asiatic invasion of Greece and Sicily ? What were
the racial lines of the struggle ?
Section 29. What rivalry dominated the Greek situation after
the repulse of Persia? What did Themistocles accomplish ? Describe
the Delian League. Contrast the policies of Cimon and Themistocles.
What was the fate of Themistocles ?
What victory did Cimon win? Describe the Imperial Party at
Athens. Who was its ablest young leader? What happened to
Cimon? How did democracy now gain complete leadership at
Athens? Who became the leader of the democracy? Outline the
first war with Sparta (First Peloponnesian War).
Section 30. Describe the awakening in Greece and especially
Athens after the repulse of Persia and in the Age of Pericles. De-
scribe a great painting of the time. What buildings were being
 The Repulse of Persia and the Athenian Empire 195
erected at Athens ? What great sculptor was at work, and what are
some of his works ? Who were the great dramatists ? What was the
position of Aeschylus toward the gods ?
What attitude toward the gods did Sophocles teach ? What feeling
did Euripides show toward them? How did these things affect the
life of Athens ? its education ? Who were the Sophists ? What did
they teach? How did the people feel toward them ? Did the people
know any science ? What sciences were now making progress ?
 CHAPTER VIII

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE AND

THE END OF GREEK POWER

Section 31. The Second Peloponnesian War

AND THE Fall of Athens

Jealousy of The outward splendor of Athens, her commercial prosperity,

of^A^thens her not very conciliatory attitude toward her rivals, the visible
growth of her power, and the example she offered of the seem-
ing success of triumphant democracy — all these things were
causes of jealousy to a backward and conservative military State
like Sparta (Fig. 87), This feeling of unfriendliness toward
Athens was not confined to Sparta but was quite general
throughout Greece. The merchants of Corinth (Fig. 76) found
Athenian competition a continuous vexation, and Corinth did
all in her power to aggravate the situation by stirring up the
sluggish Spartans to action. When Athenian possessions in the
north yEgean revolted and received support from Corinth and
Sparta, the fact that hardly half of the thirty years' term of
peace (p. 184) had expired did not prevent the outbreak of war.
Opening of It seemed as if all European Greece not included in the
ponnesian Athenian Empire had united against Athens, for Sparta con-
\\ ar (431 B.C.) (-j-Qiig^ ^YiQ entire Peloponnesus except Argos, and north of
Attica Boeotia led by Thebes, as well as its neighbors on the
west, were hostile to Athens. The support of Athens consisted
of the ^gean cities which made up her empire and a few out-
lying allies of little power. She began the war with a large war
treasury and a fleet of warships which made her undisputed
mistress of the sea. But she could not hope to cope with the
land forces of the enemy, which, some thirty thousand strong,

ig6
 71ie Destnictioii of the Atheiiiaii Empire 197

had planned to meet in the Isthmus in the spring of 431 b.c.

When this army entered Attica the outlying communities were
at once obliged to leave their homes and take refuge in the
open markets and squares of Athens, the sanctuaries, and espe-
cially between the Long Walls leading to the Piraeus. To offset
the devastation of Attica by the Spartan army, all that Athens
could do was to organize destructive sea raids and inflict as
much damage as possible along the coasts of the Peloponnesus
or destroy Corinthian commerce as of old.
ue m
The masses of people crowded within the walls of Athens Athens Flag
under unsanitary conditions exposed the city to disease ; a
plague, probably brought in from the Orient, broke out in the
port, spread to the city, and raged with intermissions for several
seasoris. It carried off probably a third of the population, and
from this unforeseen disaster Athens never recovered. With
such a visitation Pericles had of course been unable to reckon.
Constantly under arms for the defense of the walls, deprived
of any opportunity to strike the enemy, forced to sit still and
see their land ravaged, the citizens at last broke out in discontent.
In spite of his undaunted spirit Pericles was unable to hold Fall and
the confidence of a. majority. He lost control, was tried for Pericles
misappropriation of funds, and fined. The absence of his steady-
ing hand and powerful leadership was at once felt by the people,
for there was no one to take his place, although a swarm of
small politicians were contending for control of the Assembly.
Realizing their helplessness the people soon turned to Pericles
again and elected him strategus, but he was stricken with the
plague and died soon after his return to power. Great statesman
as he was, he had left Athens with a system of government
which did not provide for the continuation of such leadership
as he had furnished, and without such leadership the Athenian
Empire was doomed. This was the great mistake in the states-
manship of Pericles.
Men of the prosperous manufacturing class now came to the
fore. They possessed neither the high station in life, the ability
 198 Outlines of European History

as Statesmen, nor the qualities of leadership to win the confi-

War after the dence and respect of the people. Moreover these new leaders
death of
Pericles were not soldiers, and could not command the fleet or the army
as Pericles had done. The only notable exception was Alcibiades,
a brilliant young man, a relative of Pericles and brought up in
his house. The two sons of Pericles had died of the plague,
and Alcibiades, if he had enjoyed the guidance of his foster
father a few years longer, might have become the savior of
Athens and of Greece. As it happened, however, this young
leader was more largely responsible than any one else for
the destruction of the Athenian Empire and the downfall
of Greece.
Unsteadied by a statesman whose continuous policy formed
a firm and guiding influence, the management of Athenian affairs
fell into confusion, rarely interrupted by any display of firmness
and wisdom ; the leaders drifted from one policy to another, and
usually from bad to worse. It seemed irapossible to regain stable
leadership. The youthful Aristophanes depicted the rudderless
condition of the ship of State in one clever comedy after another,
in which he ridiculed in irresistible satire the pretense to states-
manship of such " men of the people " as Cleon the tanner. A
typical example of the ill-considered actions of the Assembly was
their treatment of the revolting citizens of Mitylene. When the
men of Mitylene were finally subdued, the Assembly on the Pnyx
(Fig. 89) voted that they should all be put to death, and a ship
departed with these orders. It was with gr&at difficulty that a
more moderate group in the Assembly secured a rehearing of
the question and succeeded in inducing *the people to modify
their barbarous action to the condemnation and execution of
the ringleaders only. A second ship then overtook the first
barely in time to save from death the entire body of the revolting
citizens of Mitylene.
In spite of such revolts Athenian naval supremacy continued ;
but as the war dragged on, the payrnent of army and fleet re-
duced Athenian funds to a very low state. Cleon the tanner
 The Destniction of the Athenian Empire 199

succeeded in having an income tax introduced, and later on the

tribute of the ^gean cities was raised. The only great battle
during the first decade of the war was fought at Delium in the
north, and this the Athenians lost ; but there was really no mili-
tary disaster of sufficient importance to cripple seriously either
Sparta or Athens. It was the devastation wrought by the plague
which had seriously affected Athens. When after ten years of Peace Nicias of
warfare peace was arranged for fifty years, each contestant
(421 B.C.)
agreed to give up all new conquests and to retain only old
possessions or subject cities.
The attack of the allies on Athens had not realized their hope the Failure
Peaceof
of breaking up her empire and overthrowing her leadership of of Nicias
the ^gean cities. Nevertheless Athens and the whole Greek
world had been demoralized and weakened. The contest had in
it no longer the inspiration of a noble struggle such as the Greeks
had maintained against Persia. Unprecedented brutality, like
that at first adopted toward Mitylene, had given the struggle
a savagery and a lack of respect for the enemy which com-
pletely obscured all finer issues, if there were any such involved
in the war. Meantime serious difficulties arose in carrying out
the conditions of the peace. One of the northern subject cities
of Athens which had gone over to Sparta refused to return to
Athenian allegiance. Athens took the unreasonable ground that
Sparta should force the recalcitrant city to obey the terms of
peace. It was at this juncture that Athens especially needed
such guidance as a statesman like Pericles could have furnished.
She was obliged to depend for leadership upon Nicias, one of
her old commanders, and the unprincipled Alcibiades.
Nicias had adjusted the peace compact and he continued to brings Alcibiades
on
urge a conciliatory attitude toward Sparta ; but the gifted and war again
reckless Alcibiades, seeing a great opportunit}^ for a brilliant
career, did all that he could to excite the war party in Athens.
In spite of the fact that troubles at home had forced Sparta
into a treaty of alliance with Athens, Alcibiades was able to
carry the Assembly with him. After complicated negotiations
 200 Outlines of European History

he involved Athens in an alliance with Argos against Sparta,

and thus Attica, exhausted with plagwe and ten years of war-
fare, was enticed into a lifc-and-death struggle which was to
prove final.
Sicilian
expedition
Several years of ill-planned military and naval operations
followed the fruitless peace of Nicias. Under the spur of
Alcibiades' persuasion the Athenians at length planned a great
joint expedition of army and navy against Sicily, where the
mighty Corinthian city of Syracuse was leading in the oppres-
sion of certain cities in alliance with Athens. The Athenians
Nicias and placed Alcibiades and Nicias in command of the expedition.
Alcibiades
in command Just as the fleet was about to sail, certain sacred images about
the city were impiously mutilated, and the deed was attributed
to Alcibiades. In spite of his demand for an immediate trial,
the Athenians postponed the case until his return from Sicily.
When the fleet reached Italy, however, the Athenian people,
with their usual inability to follow any consistent plan and also
desiring to take Alcibiades at a great disadvantage, suddenly
recalled him for trial. This method of procedure not only de-
prived the expedition of its only able leader but also gave
Flight of
Alcibiades
Alcibiades an opportunity to desert to the Spartans, which
to Sparta he promptly did. His advice to the Spartans now proved
fatal to the Athenians.
Incompe-
tence of
Nicias, though a brave man, was totally lacking in initiative
Nicias and boldness, such as a Themistocles or a Miltiades would have
shown under the same circumstances. The appearance of the
huge Athenian fleet off their coast struck dismay into the hearts
of the Syracusans, but Nicias entirely failed to see the impor-
tance of immediate attack before the Syracusans could recover
and make preparations for the defense of their city. He wasted
the early days of the campaign in ill- planned maneuvers, only
winning a barren victory over the Syracusan land forces. When
Nicias was finally induced by the second general in command
to begin the siege of the city, courage had returned to the
Syracusans and their defense was well organized.
 The Dcstnu'tioii of tJic AtJienimi Empire 201
On the advice of Alcibiades the Spartans had sent an able A Spartan
imande

commander with a small force to support Syracuse, and the ^°™"^^" Syracuse^^
city was confident in its new ally. When Nicias made no prog-
ress in the siege, Athens responded to his call for help -with a
second fleet and more land forces. No Greek state had ever Athenian re-

mustered such power and sent it far across the waters. All ^"^^'^'^ei^ents
Greece watched the spectacle with amazement. Meantime the
Syracusans too had organized a fleet. The Athenians were
obliged to give battle in the narrow harbor, where there was no
room for maneuvers or for any display of their superior seaman-
ship, and the fleet of Syracuse was victorious in several actions.
The Athenians were caught as they themselves had caught the
Persians at Salamis two generations before.
With disaster staring him in the face, the superstitious Nicias Capture of
refused to withdraw in time because of an eclipse of the moon, fleet^am?
and insisted on waiting another month. The Syracusans then ^^"^y
blockaded the channel to the sea and completely shut up the
Athenian fleet within the harbor, so that an attempt to break
through and escape disastrously failed. The desperate Athenian
army, abandoning sick and wounded too late, endeavored to
escape into the interior, but was overtaken and forced to sur-
render. After executing the commanding generals, the Syracu-
sans took the prisoners, seven thousand in number, and sold
them into slavery or threw them into the stone quarries of the
city, where most of them miserably perished. Thus the Athenian
expedition was not only defeated, but captured and completely
destroyed (413 B.C.). This disaster, together with the earlier
ravages of the plague, brought Athens near the end of her
resources.
Sparta, seeing the unprotected condition of Athens, now no Decelean
longer hesitated to undertake a campaign into Attica. On the begins
hostilities
advice of Alcibiades, again the Spartans occupied the town of
Decelea, almost within sight of Athens. Here they established
a permanent fort held by a strong garrison, and thus placed
Athens in a state of perpetual siege. All agriculture ceased and
 202 Outlijies of European History

Athenian the Athenians lived on imported grain. The people now under-
distress
stood the folly of having sent away on a distant expedition the
ships and the men that should have been kept at home to repel
the attacks of a powerful and still uninjured foe. The ^gean
cities of the Empire began to fall away ; there was no way to
raise further funds, but by desperate efforts a small fleet was
gotten together to continue the struggle.
Aristocrats The failure of the democracy in the conduct of the war enabled
regain power
the opponents of popular rule to regain power. For a time the
old Council was overthrown and in the name of a new council,
in the election of which the people had little voice, a group of
aristocratic leaders ushered in a period of violence and blood-
shed. These men strove to restore peace with Sparta, but their
Restoration own excesses and the war sentiment in the fleet provoked a
of the
democracy reaction too strong to be overcome. The democracy with some
modifications was restored.
Greek Both Athens and Sparta had long been negotiating with
overtures
to Persia Persia for support, and Sparta had concluded an agreement
with Persia, which recognized Persian rule over the Greek
cities of Asia. Alcibiades had now fallen out with the Spartans
and gone over to Persia. He skillfully used his influence with
the Persians to arouse their hostility toward Sparta and attach
them to Athens. He intended this action to pave the way for
his return to favor with his own fellow citizens, and it did in
Recall of fact lead to his recall and appointment to command the Athe-
Alcibiades
nian fleet. Thus the one-time union of jGreece in a heroic
'■)

*1V(.'
struggle against the Asiatic enemy had given \vav to a disgrace-
ful scramble for Persian support and favor. The only benefits
resulting were enjoyed by Persia as she stood by and watched
the Hellenes exhausting their power and squandering their
wealth in a fruitless struggle among themselves. A naval defeat
followed by several victories of the x\thenian fleet enabled the
blind leaders of the people's party at Athens to refuse Spartan
offers of peace more than once, at a time when the continuance
of war was the most evident folly.
 TJie Destruction of the Athenian Empire 203

Then the Attic fleet of a hundred and eighty ships, lulled Battle of
into false security in the Hellespont near the river called yEgos- gospotami
potami, was surprised by the able Spartan commander Lysander
and captured almost intact as it lay drawn up on the beach.
Not a man slept on the night when the terrible news of final
ruin reached Athens. It was soon confirmed by the appearance
of Lysander's fleet blockading the Pirasus. The grain ships
from the Black Sea could no longer reach the port of Athens ;
the Spartan army wandered through Attica plundering at will.
Athens saw^ starvation before her, and there was nothing to do
but surrender. The Long Walls and the fortifications of the
Piraeus were torn down, the remnant of the fleet handed over
to Sparta, and Athens was forced to enter the Spartan League. Fall of
These hard conditions saved the city from the complete destruc- destruction of
tion demanded by Corinth. Thus the century which had begun ^^'^ire^"'^"
so gloriously for Athens with the repulse of Persia, the century
which under the leadership of such men as Themistccles and
Pericles had seen her rise to supremacy in all that was best and
noblest in Greek life, closed with the annihilation of the Athenian
Empire (404 B.C.).

Section 32. The Higher Life of Athens after

Pericles

During this last quarter century which brought such ruin Conflict of
upon her, the inner life of Athens was more than ever a seeth- modernism
ing whirlpool of conflicting tendencies, in which the old currents
of life, as it was in the days of the fathers, met the counter
currents of more modern feeling and discernment. All felt the
supreme importance of the State and of the high mission of
Athens, so long held up before their eyes by Pericles. At the History of
very time when Pericles fell a victim to the plague Herodotus
had issued his history (p. 188). It was a history of the world
so told that the glorious leadership of Athens would be clear to
all Greeks and would show them that to her the Hellenes owed
 204
Outlines of European History

their deliverance from Persia. Throughout Greece it created a

deep impression, but so tremendous was its effect in Athens
that, in spite of the financial drain of war, the Athenians voted
Herodotus a reward of ten talents, some thirteen thousand
dollars. In this earliest history of the world which has come
down to us, Herodotus traced the course of events as he
believed them to be directed by the will of the gods, and as
prophesied in their divine oracles. There was little or no effort
to explain events as the result of natural processes, even though
Herodotus was too modem and had seen too much of the
ancient Orient to believe that the gods were actually present
and active on earth only a few generations back.
But the old beliefs of the fathers regarding the gods had
been rudely disturbed by such men as the Sophists, and by the
insistent problems of destiny which the tragedies of Euripides
still placed upon the stage (Fig. 94). The people responded
Aristophanes with delight to the mockery with which Aristophanes in his
comedies ridiculed the mental stmggles of Euripides, and they
keenly enjoyed the railleries in which he travestied the teaching
and methods of the Sophists. To be sure, they were also obliged
to see the rule of the people with all its weaknesses and mis-
takes ridiculed on the same stage, much as w^e see the faults
of our own lawmakers caricatured in the cartoons which adorn
our daily papers. Thus, while the citizens were still ready for
any popular experiment in government by the people at the
expense of the aristocrats, they shared the feelings of the aris-
tocrats in their resentment toward those who stirred up doubt
regarding the gods of the fathers.
Socrates Aristophanes was sure of a sympathetic audience of Athe-
nians when he put upon the stage a caricature of a certain pes-
tiferous citizen, whose ill-clothed figure and ugly face (Fig. 96)
had become familiar in the streets to all the folk of Athens
since the outbreak of the second war with Sparta. He had just
returned from a campaign in the north ; his name was Socrates,
and he was the son of a stone mason. He was accustomed to
 The Destnictioji of the Athenian Empire 205

stand about the market place, the street corners, and the public
baths all day long, insisting on engaging in conversation every
citizen he met, and asking a great many questions, which left
the average citizen in a very con-
fused state of mind. He seemed
to call in question everything which
the citizen had formerly regarded
as settled. Yet this familiar and
homely figure of the stone mason's
son was the personification of the
best and highest in Greek genius.
Without desire for office or a
political career, Socrates' supreme
interest nevertheless was the State.
He believed that the State, made
up as it was of citizens, could be
purified and saved only by the im-
provement ofthe individual citizen
through the education of his mind
to recognize virtue and right.
Herein lies the supreme achieve-
ment of Socrates as he daily con-
fronted problems which the mind Fig. 96. Portrait of
of man was clearly stating for the Socrates
first time ; he planted his feet This is not the best of the
numerous surviving portraits
upon what he regarded as an im-
of Socrates, but it is especially
movable rock of truth ; namely, interesting because it bears
that the human mind is able to
under the philosopher's name
recognize and determine what are nine inscribed lines contain-
truth and virtue, beauty and ing a portion of his public de-
fense as reported
his Apologyby Plato in
honesty, and all the other great
ideas which mean so much to
human life. To him these ideas had reality. He taught that
by keen questioning and discussion it is possible to reject error
and discern these realities. Inspired by this impregnable belief,
 2o6 Outlines of European History

His belief in Socrates went about in Athens, engaging all his fellow citizens
man's power in such discussion, convinced that he might thus lead each
to discern the
great truths citizen in turn to a knowledge of the leading and compelling
as such and
to shape his virtues. Furthermore, he firmly believed that the citizen who
conduct by
them had once recognized these virtues would shape every action and
all his life by them. Socrates thus revealed the power of virtue
and similar ideas by argument and logic, but he made no appeal
to religion as an influence toward good conduct. Nevertheless
he showed himself a deeply religious man, believing with devout
heart in the gods, although they were not exactly those of the
fathers, and even feeling, like the Hebrew prophets, that there
was a divine voice within him, calling him to his high mission.
The simple but powerful personality of this greatest of Greek
teachers in the streets of Athens often opened to him the
houses of the rich and noble. His fame spread far and wide,
and when the Delphian oracle (Fig. 82) was asked who was the
wisest of the living, it responded with the name of Socrates. A
group of pupils gathered about him, among whom the most
famous was Plato. But it was inevitable that his aims and his
noble efforts on behalf of the Athenian state should be misunder-
stood. His keen questions seemed to throw doubt upon all the
old beliefs. The Athenians had already vented their displeasure
on more than one leading Sophist who had rejected the old
faith and teaching (see p. 193)-
They summoned Socrates to trial for corrupting the youth.
Such examples as Alcibiades, who had been his pupil, seemed
convincing illustrations of the viciousness of his teaching ; every-
body had seen and many had read with growing resentment the
comedy of Aristophanes which held him up to contempt and
execration. Socrates might easily have left Athens when the
complaint was lodged against him. Nevertheless he appeared
for trial, made a powerful and dignified defense (Fig. 96), and,
when the court voted the death penalty, passed his last days in
tranquil conversation with his friends and pupils, in whose pres-
ence he then quietly drank the fatal hemlock (400 B.C.). Thus
 The DestTiictioii of tJic Athenian Empire

the Athenian democracy, which had so fatally mismanaged the Execution

affairs of the nation in war, brought upon itself much greater
reproach in condemning to death, even though in accordance
with law, the greatest and purest soul among its citizens (Fig. 97),

iXvkvik -....-_
MWA ,>.^-
Fig. 97. Street of Tombs outside Ancient Athens
It was the custom both of Greeks and Romans (Fig. 127) to bury their
dead outside one of the city gates, on either side of the highway. This
Athenian cemetery, outside the Dipylon Gate (see plan, p. 173), was on
the Sacred Way to Eleusis (Fig. So, and plan, p. 173), both sides of which
were lined for some distance with marble tomb-monuments. The Ro-
man Sulla (p. 265), in his eastern war, while besieging Athens, piled up
earth as a causeway leading to the top of the wall of Athens (see plan,
p. 173) at this point. The part of the cemetery which he covered with
earth was thus preserved, to be dug out in modern times — the only
surviving portion of such an ancient Greek street of tombs. In this
cemetery the Athenians of Socrates' day were buried. The monument
at the left shows a brave Athenian youth on horseback, charging the
fallen enemy. He was slain in battle against Corinth and buried here a
few years after the death of Socrates (p. 207)

The undisturbed serenity of Socrates in his last hours, as The influence

pictured to us in Plato's idealized version of the scene, pro- after his
foundly affected the whole Greek world, and still forms one of ^^^^^
the most precious possessions of humanity. But the glorified
 2o8 Oiitlines of EiLwpemt History

figure of Socrates, as he appears in the writings of his pupils,

was to prove more powerful even than the living teacher. The
past could not be recalled, and, in spite of themselves, thinking
people were tinctured through and through with the very views
which they had striven to stamp out by such means as the verdict
Thucydides against Socrates. The historian Thucydides, who was now writ-
ing his great account of the wars which destroyed the xA.thenian
Empire, no longer discerned only the will of the gods in these
events but, with an insight like that of modern historians, was
tracing events to their natural causes in the world of men where
they occur.

Section 33. The Age of Spartan Leadership

The leader- The long duel for supremacy in the Greek world between
Athens and Sparta, which occupied a large part of the latter
half of the fifth century before Christ, ended toward the close
of that century in the complete collapse of Athens. While the
two states were devouring one another Persia had again appeared
on the scene, and it was only by the use of Persian money that
Sparta had compassed the destruction of the last Athenian fleet.
It now remained to be seen whether Sparta (Fig. 87) could
maintain the leadership of the Greek world, and thrust back the
Persians in Asia as Athens had done.
Lysander Sparta was now dominated by the commanding figure of
methods Lysandcr, who had destroyed the last remnants of Attic sea
power. Under his guidance the popular party in each of the
city-states, including Athens, was deprived of power as far as
possible, and the control placed in the hands of a group of the
old aristocrats. A garrison under a Spartan officer was placed
in many of the cities, and Spartan control was maintained in much
more offensive form than was the old tyranny of xA.thens in her
empire over the island cities, against which Sparta had always
protested. The Athenian democracy, however, finally regained
and maintained control of Attic affairs.
 The Age of Spartan Leadership 209

It is one of the ironies of the whole deplorable situation that War between
when Sparta finally fell out with Persia, and stepped in to defend |ersia ^"^
the Ionian cities, a fleet of Athens made common cause with the
Persians and helped to fasten Persian despotism on the Greek
cities of Asia. The Greeks had learned nothing by their long
and unhappy experience of fruitless wars. When peace was at
last established it was under the humiliating terms of a treaty
accepted by Hellas at the hands of the Persian king, to whom
the Greek states had appealed. It is known as the King's Peace King's Peace
(387 B.C.). It recognized the leadership of Sparta over all the ^
Greek states ; but the Greek cities of Asia Minor were shame-
fully abandoned to Persia.
The period of the King's Peace brought only discontent with Greece under
Sparta's control and no satisfactory solution of the question of ^he King"
the relations of the Greek states among themselves. The in- ^^^^^
flexible militar}' organization of Sparta had long ago smothered
individual aspirations for a higher culture, and even all individ-
ual genius in leadership had been suppressed. Even men like
Pausanias, the victor over the Persians at Plataea, or Lysander,
the conqueror of the Athenian fleet at yEgospotami, were unable
to transform the rigid Spartan system into a government which
should sympathetically include and direct the activities of the
whole Greek world.
At Athens the burning question had now become the problem Rise of the
of the proper form of a free state — the problem which the
efforts of Socrates toward an enlightened citizenship had thrust government
into the foreground. What should be the form of the ideal state .''
The Orient had already had its social idealism. By 2000 B.C. the
Egyptian sages were striving for a state which should realize
brotherly kindness and social justice. The more hopeful among
them thought to find it under a righteous king and just officials.
Later on in the eighth centur)^ B.C. the Hebrews also had begun
to dream of an ideal state ruled by a righteous king like the
David of their fond idealization of the past. In the Orient,. how-
ever, ithad never occurred to these social dreamers to discuss
 2IO Outlines of European History

the form of government of the ideal state. They accepted as a

matter of course the monarchy under which they lived as the
obvious form for the state. But in Greece the question of the
form of government, whether a kingdom, a republic, or what not,
was now earnestly discussed. Thus there arose a new science,
the scie?ice of governjnent.
Plato Plato, the most gifted pupil of Socrates, published much of
his beloved master's teaching in the form of dialogues, sup-
posedly reproducing the discussions of the great teacher himself.
Then after extensive travels in Egypt and the west he returned
to Athens, where he set up his school in a grove near the gym-
nasium of Academus (hence our word " academy "). Convinced
of the hopelessness of democracy in Athens, he reluctantly gave
up all thought of a career as a statesman, to which he had been
strongly drawn, and devoted himself to teaching. He was both
philosopher and poet. The ideas which Socrates maintained the
human mind could discern, became for Plato eternal realities,
having an existence independent of man and his mind. The
♦ human soul, he taught, had always existed, and in an earlier state
had beheld the great ideas of goodness, beauty, evil, and the like,
and had gained an intuitive vision of them which in this earthly
life the soul now recalled, and recognized again. The elect souls,
'gifted with such vision, were the ones to control the ideal state,
for they would necessarily act in accordance with the ideas of
virtue and justice which they had discerned. It was possible by
education, thought Plato, to lead the souls of men to a clear
vision of these ideas.
Plato's
state ideal In a noble essay entitled The Republie Plato presents a
lofty vision of his ideal state. Here live the enlightened souls
governing a society which is the embodiment of righteousness
and justice. They do no work, but depend on craftsmen and
slaves for all menial labor. And yet the comforts and luxury
which they enjoy are the product of that very world of industry
and commerce in a Greek city which Plato so thoroughly de-
spises. The plan places far too much dependence on. education,
 The Age of Spartan Leadership 211

and takes no account of the dignity and fundamental importance

of labor in human society. Moreover, Plato's ideal state is the
self-contained, self -controlling city-state as it had in times past
supposedly existed in Greece. He fails to perceive that the vital
question for Gree(^ is now the relation of these eities to each
other. He does not discern that the life of a cultivated state
unavoidably expands beyond its borders, and by its needs and
its contributions affects the life of surrounding states. It cannot
be confined within its political borders, for its commercial borders
lie as far distant as its galleys can carry its produce.
Thus boundary lines cannot separate nations ; their life over- Growth of a
laps and interfuses with the life round about them. It was so wo^rld"^^^
within Greece and it was so far beyond the borders of Greek
territory. There had grown up an ancient world which was read-
ing Greek books, using Greek utensils, fitting up its houses with
Greek furniture, decorating its house interiors with Greek paint-
ings, building Greek theaters, learning Greek tactics in war —
a great Mediterranean and Oriental world bound together by
lines of commerce, travel, and common economic interests. For
this world, as a coming political unity, the lofty idealist Plato, in Lack of
spite of his travels, had no eyes. To this world, once dominated caUeadership
by■'oriental culture, '
the Greeks had given
*^ the noblest and sanest ^^ ^^^ ^^^^}^by
aominated
ideas yet attained by the mind of civilized man, and to this world Hellas
likewise the Greeks should have given political leadership.
Men in practical life, like Isocrates, a very able Athenian isocrates
writer of political pamphlets, clearly understood the situation
at this time (first half of the fourth century B.C.). Isocrates
urged the Greeks to bury their petty differences, and expand
their local patriotism into a loyalty for the united Greek world.
He told his countrymen that, so united, they could easily over-
throw the decaying Persian Empire and make themselves lords
of the world, whereas now they were but the feeble creatures of
the king of Persia. Xeriophon also, who had marched into the Xenophon
heart of the Persian Empire with the ten thousand Greek troops
hired by Cyrus the Persian prince to assist him in overthrowing
 212 Outlines of Einvpcaii Histoiy

his brother, Artaxerxes W, — Xenophon had witnessed the de-

feat of a large Persian army of archers by the impact of the
irresistible Greek phalanx. Xenophon wrote out the story of his
journey, and his book was widely read. To all Greece the weak-
ness of the Persian State was obvious. Every motive toward
unity was present. But yet no Greek city was ready to submit
to the leadership of another, and no plan of federation could be
devised which proved satisfactory to all.

Section 34. The Leadership of Thebes

Athens and
Thebes unite \Mthin ten years after the beginning of the King's Peace,
against Athens had recovered sufficient sea power to begin the organiza-
Sparta tion of a second maritime alliance like her old Empire. The
Spartan fleet was beaten and an alliance with Thebes was ar-
ranged which greatly disquieted Sparta. Thebes succeeded in
gaining the leadership of Boeotia, and when during the arrange-
ment of a peace with Sparta the Spartans refused to recognize
Thebes as the head of Boeotia, the Thebans made ready to
oppose the Spartan invasion and the two armies met at Leuctra.
The skillful Theban commander Epaminondas drew up his
troops in a manner altogether novel, so placing his line that it
was not parallel with that of the Spartans, his right wing being
much further from the Spartan line than his left. At the same
time he massed his troops on his left wing, making it many
shields deep. This last was an old device.^
Destruction As the lines moved into action the battle did not begin along
of Spartan
power and the whole front at once ; but the Theban left wing, being furthest
the leader-
ship of advanced, met the Spartan line first and was at first engaged
Thebes
alone. Its onset proved so heavy that the Spartan right oppos-
ing it was soon crushed, and the rest of the Spartan line was
unable to stand as the Theban center and right came into action.
1 It is frequently stated that the new device of Epaminondas was the massing
on his left wing. But this was not a new device ; the Thebans had employed it
against the Athenians at the battle of Delium (424 B.C.) Epaminondas's innova-
tion consisted in the obliqueness of his line of battle as it advanced.
 The Leadership of Thebes 213

The long invincible Spartan army was thus at last defeated.

While continuing the war into Spartan territory, even to Sparta
itself/ Thebes under Epaminondas's leadership likewise created
a navy and greatly weakened Athenian supremacy at sea. Thus,
with Spartan power at last shattered, and Athens held in check
on the sea, Thebes gained the leadership of Greece.
But it was a supremacy based upon the genius of a single Collapse
man, and when Epaminondas fell in a final battle with Sparta ° ^ ^ ^^
at Mantinea (362 B.C.), the power of Thebes by land and sea
again collapsed. Thus the only powerful Greek states, which
might have developed a federation of the Hellenic world, having
destroyed each other, were ready to fall helplessly before the
conqueror from the outside. He appeared in the person of
Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. Nor
were the powerful and highly civilized Greek cities of the west
in Italy and Sicily, like Syracuse, able to assume the political Final political

leadership of the Hellenes. The Greek world, whose culture Se whole" ""^
was everywhere supreme, was politically prostrate and helpless. Greek world

QUESTIONS
Section 31. What causes contributed to hostilities between
Athens and Sparta ? W^ho were the other enemies of Athens t By
whom was she supported .? What catastrophe caused the fall of
Pericles? Had he founded a system which left to Athens wise and
stable leadership ? Give some account of Alcibiades. What kind of
leadership did Athens now receive? Give an example. What was
the result of ten years of war ?
What spirit had pervaded the struggle? Why did the peace of
Nicias fail ? Who brought on war again ? Tell the story of the
Sicilian expedition. What did Sparta do after the destruction of the
Sicilian expedition ? Give an account of the Decelean W^ar. What
kind of leadership did the Athenian democracy furnish in this war?
What was the outcome? What became of the Athenian Empire?
Section 32. In what condition was the higher life of Athens
after the death of Pericles? What was the purpose of the history

1 Where the city was still without walls (see Fig. 87 and explanation).
214 Outlines of European History
of Herodotus ? To what causes does Herodotus trace events in the
history of men? What happened to the old behefs about the gods?
What attitude did Aristophanes take toward the Sophists and Eu-
ripides? What was the attitude of the people? Tell something of
the life of Socrates.
What was his method of teaching? W^hat was his supreme inter-
est? What did he teach? What were the realities to him? How
did he believe they could be discerned ? What was his purpose ? Of
w'hat in particular was he the champion ? How was he regarded in
Athens and in Greece? Give an account of his last days. Did his
teaching die with him? Where did the historian Thucydides find
the causes for the events in the history of men ?
Section 33. Describe Spartan methods of controlling the other
Greek states. What were now the relations between the Greeks and
Persia? How did the Spartan system affect her leading men? How
did the study which w-e may call the science of government arise?
Relate the career of Plato. Describe his ideal state. Wherein does
it fail to be practical ?
What kind of leadership did the Greeks fail to furnish? Could
leadership in Plato's age be confined to a single city-state ? What did
practical men like Isocrates and Xenophon advise ?
Section' 34. How did Thebes gain the leadership of Greece?
Who was her great commander? What was his clever military de-
vice ? W^hat was the cause of his successes ? Did the western Greeks
in Italy and Sicily succeed in furnishing leadership for all the Greeks
and combining them into one nation ? W^hat was the final result of
the long struggle among the Greek states ?
 CHAPTER IX

ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE HELLENISTIC AGE

Sfxtiox 35. The Rise of IVIacedoxia

The common danger which threatened all Greek states alike, Persistence

the power of Persia, had failed to bring together the Greek among"he"
cities and weld them into a nation, or even to unite them in a necessity
Greeks; of
federation of any permanence. It was evident that the per- political
, , Z . ^ , . . ... leadership
sistent local patriotism 01 such city-states, in some respects like from abroad
the "sectionalism^" which brought on the great Civil ^^'ar in the
United States, would not submit to the leadership of any one
of their number. Exhausted by ceaseless wars among them-
selves, their union was now to be accomplished by a people
whom the Greeks loftily classified among the " barbarians."
On the northern frontiers in the mountains of the Balkan The unculti-

Peninsula Greek civilization gradually faded and disappeared, of fhe^B^alkan

merging into the barbarism which had descended from the Peninsula
Europe of the Stone Age. These backward northerners, such as
the Thracians, spoke Indo-European tongues akin to Greek, but
their Greek kindred of the south could not understand them.
Nevertheless a veneer of Greek civilization began here and there
to mask somewhat the otherwise rough and uncultivated life of
the peasant population of Macedonia. The Macedonian kings
began to cultivate Greek literature and art. The mother of
Philip of Macedon was grateful that she had been able to
leam to write in her old age.
Philip himself had enjoyed a Greek education, but when he Philip of
gained the power over Macedonia
215 in 360 B.C. he had by no his policy of
means completely suppressed the barbarous instincts still throb- expansion
bing in his blood. Many an unbridled orgy and drunken revel
2l6 Outlines of Eiiropeaji History

betrayed his northern origin. But as a hostage at Thebes he

had learned to manipulate an army under the eye of no less a
master than Epaminondas, the conqueror of the Spartans, and
his keen intelligence made him both a skillful commander and an
able statesman. He completely transformed the Macedonians,
organized them chiefly on Greek methods into an unconquer-
able army, and steadily expanded the territory of his kingdom
eastward and northward until it
reached the Danube and the
Hellespont,
As he absorbed the Greek cit-
ies of the northern ^gean, he of
course collided with the interests
of the southern Greek states like
Athens, where Demosthenes (Fig,
98) was now delivering those fa-
mous orations against Philip and
the Macedonian policy, which have
become traditional among us as
" Philippics." ^ After a long series
of hostilities Philip defeated the
Greek forces in a final battle at
Fig. 98. Portrait Bust Chaeronea (346 B.C.), and firmly
OF Demosthenes
established his position as head of
a league of all the Greek states except Sparta, which still held
out against him. He had begun operations in Asia Minor for
the freedom of the Greek cities there, when ten years after the
battle of Chaeronea he was stabbed by conspirators during the
revelries at the wedding of his daughter.
The power passed into the hands of his son Alexander, a
youth of only twenty years. Fortunately Philip also left behind
1 At the same time there was a sentiment in Greece, even ir. Athens, which
favored Philip's imperial plans, and saw in him the uniter and savior of Greece.
This sentiment found a voice in Isocrates, the Athenian pamphleteer, now an
aged man, who had so long chided the Greeks for lack of unity in opposing
Persia (see p. 211).
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistie Age 217

him in the Macedonians of his court a group of remarkable The suc-

men, of imperial abilities such as no century of the ancient phfifp^of^
world had ever yet seen. They were devoted to the royal Macedon
house, and Alexander's early successes were in no small measure
due to them. But their very devotion, ability, and firmness of
character, as we shall see, later brought the young king into a
personal conflict which contained all the elements of a tremen-
dous tragedy (see p. 228).

Section 36. Campaigns of Alexander the Great

When Alexander was thirteen years of age, his father had Education
called to the Macedonian court the great philosopher Aristotle, of AtandlT
a former pupil of Plato, to be the teacher of the young prince. ^^^ Gx&^t
Aristotle, the most gifted successor of Socrates and Plato, was
treating eveiy possible subject in learned essays and arranging
the known facts and discoveries in all branches of science in a

great series of treatises, which became the world's Encyclo-

paedia Britannica for nearly two thousand years. Under the in-
struction ofthis greatest of the living Greek thinkers, the lad
learned to know and love the masterpieces of Greek literature,
especially the Homeric songs. The deeds of the ancient heroes
touched and kindled his youthful imagination and lent an heroic
tinge to his whole character, while, as he grew and his mind
ripened, his whole personality was imbued with the splendor of
Greek genius and Hellenic culture. He came to believe abso-
lutely in its power and superiority, and in its inevitable success
as a civilizing influence.
When Thebes revolted against Macedonia for the second time Alexander's
after Philip's death, Alexander, knowing that he must take up ateadramadc
the struggle with Persia, realized that it would not be safe for his
impression
mission of
him to march into Asia without giving the Greek states a lesson as champion
which they would not forget. He therefore captured and com-
pletely destroyed the ancient city of Thebes, sparing only the
house of the great poet Pindar. All Greece was thus taught to
 2l8 Outlines of European History

fear and respect his power, but learned at the same time to recog-
nize his reverence for Greek genius. Alexander already dreamed
of world-wide conquests, and the Asiatic campaign which he
now planned was to vindicate his position as the champion of
Hellas against Asia.
He thought to lead the united Greeks against the Persian
lord of Asia, as the Hellenes had once made common cause
against Asiatic Troy. Leading his army of Macedonians and
allied Greeks into Asia Minor, he therefore stopped at Troy and
camped upon the plain (Fig. 58 and map, p. 146) where the
Greek heroes of the Homeric songs had once fought. Here he
w^orshiped in the temple of Athena, and prayed for the success
of his cause against Persia. He thus contrived to throw around
himself the heroic atmosphere of the Trojan War, till all Hellas
beheld the dauntless figure of the Macedonian youth, as it were,
against the background of that glorious age which in their belief
had so long ago united Greek arms against Asia (p. 133).
Battle of the The Persian satraps, with what troops they could gather,

(^34"b.cO endeavored to bar his eastward progress, but at the river

^"^, ^°"^,"^^^
of Asia Min Granicus orhe had no difficultv■'
in scattering° their forces in a
decisive action. Following the Macedonian custom the young
king, then but twenty-two years of age, led his troops into the
thick of the fray and exposed his royal person without hesi-
tation. But for the timely support of Clitus, the brother of his
childhood nurse, who bravely pushed in before him at a critical
moment, the impetuous young king would have lost his life in
the action on the Granicus. Marching southward he took the
Greek cities one by one, and freed all \yestem Asia Minor
forever from the Persian yoke.
Alexander's Meantime a huge Persian fleet dominated the Mediterranean,
thro^il^h It was at this juncture that the young Macedonian, litde more
Asia Minor \}ci2X\ a boy in years, began to display his master)^ of a military
situation which demanded the completest understanding of the
art of war. It was a vast stage on which he was to dictate
the course of the stirring world drama for the next ten years
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 219

(333-323 B.C.). Believing that his destruction of Thebes had fur-

nished the Greeks such an evidence of the terrible consequences
of revolt that not even a Persian fleet in the yEgean could arouse
Hellas to hostility against him in his absence, Alexander pushed
boldly eastward and rounded the northeast corner of the Medi-
terranean. Here was spread out before him the vast Asiatic
world of forty million souls where the family of the Great King
had been supreme for two hundred years.
At this important point, by the Gulf of Issus, Alexander met Defeat of
the main army of Persia, under the personal command of the at the battle
of Issus
Great King, Darius HI, the last of the line. In a fierce battle the
irresistible onset of Alexander and his Macedonians (Fig. 99), i^r^ B.C.)
combined with the skillful disposition of his troops, swept the
Asiatics from the field, and the disorderly retreat of Darius never
stopped until it had crossed the Euphrates. The Great King
then sent a letter to Alexander desiring terms of peace and offer-
ing to accept the Euphrates as a boundary between them, all
Asia west of that river to be handed over to the Macedonians.
It is a dramatic picture, the figure of the young king, still The situation
only twenty-three years old, standing with this letter in his hand, ^nd Alexan-
As he ponders it he is surrounded by a group of the ablest ^^'"'^ friends
Macedonian youth, who have grown up around him as his
closest friends ; but likewise by old and trusted counselors
upon whom his father before him had leaned. The hazards of
battle and of march, and the daily associations of camp and
bivouac, have wTOught the closest bonds of love and friend-
ship and intimate influence between these loyal Macedonians
and their ardent young king.
As he considers the letter of Darius therefore, his father's
old general Parmenio, who has commanded the Macedonian left
wing in the battle just won, proffers him serious counsel. We
can almost see the old man leaning familiarly over the shoulder
of this imperious boy of twenty-three and pointing out across the
Mediterranean, as he bids Alexander remember the Persian fleet
operating there in his rear, and likely to stir up revolt against him
 220 Oiitlifies of El I rope an History

in Greece. He says too that with 1 )arius beliind the Euphrates,

as proposed in the letter, Persia will be at a safe distance from
Europe and the Greek world. The campaign against the Great
King, he urges, has secured all that could reasonably be ex-
pected. Undoubtedly he adds that Philip himself, the young
king's father, had at the utmost no further plans against Persia
than those already successfully carried out. There is nothing
to do, says Parmenio, but to accept the terms offered by the
Great King.
The decision In this critical decision lay the parting of the ways. Before
after Issus,
and Alex- the kindling eyes of the young Alexander there rose a vision of
anders fric-
tion with world-empire dominated by Greek civilization — a vision to
his friends which the duller eyes about him were entirely closed. He
waved aside his father's old counselors and decided to press on
in pursuit of the Persian king. In this far-reaching decision
he disclosed at once the powerful personality which represented
a new age. Thus arose the conflict which never ends — the
* The artist who designed this great work has selected the supreme
moment when the Persians (at the right) are endeavoring to rescue
their king from the onset of the Macedonians (at the left). Alexan-
der, the bareheaded figure on horseback at the left, charges furiously
against the Persian king (Darius III), who stands in his chariot (at
the right). The Macedonian attack is so impetuous that the Persian
king's life is endangered. A Persian noble dismounts and offers his
riderless horse, that the king may quickly mount and escape. De-
voted Persian nobles heroically ride in between their king and the
Macedonian onset, to give Darius an opportunity to mount. But
Alexander's spear has passed entirely through the body of one of these
Persian nobles, who has thus given his life for his king. Darius throws
out his hand in grief and horror at the awful death of his noble friend.
The driver of the royal chariot (behind the king) lashes his three
horses, endeavoring to carry Darius from the field in flight (p. 219).
This magnificent battle scene is put together from bits of colored
glass (mosaic) forming a floor pavement, discovered in 183 1 at the
Roman town of Pompeii (Fig. 128). It has been injured in places,
especially at the left, where parts of the figures of Alexander and hfs
horse have disappeared. It is a Roman copy of an older Hellenistic
work, probably a painting done at Alexandria (p. 233). It is one of the
greatest scenes of heroism in battle ever painted, and illustrates the
splendor of Hellenistic art.
^^^p^
 Outlijics of RitropCLDi History

conflict between the new age and the old. Never has it been
more dramatically staged than as we find it liere in the daily
growing friction between Alexander and that group of devoted,
if less gifted, Macedonians who were now drawn by him into
the labors of Heracles — - the conquest of the world.
Conquest of The danger from the Persian fleet was now carefully and
Phoenicia
and Egypt ; deliberately met by a march southward along the eastern end
dispersion of of the Mediterranean. All the Phoenician seaports on the way
the Persian
fleet ; march were captured, and disorganized Egypt fell an easy prey to the
to the Tigris
Macedonian arms. The Persian fleet, thus deprived of all its
home harbors and cut off from its home government, soon
scattered and disappeared. Having freed himself in this way
from the danger of an enemy in his rear, Alexander then re-
turned from Egypt to Asia, crossed the Euphrates, and marched
to the Tigris, where, near Arbela, the Great King had gathered
his forces for a last stand.
Battle of Parmenio advised a surprise by night attack, but Alexander
Arbela
il^-^ B.C.) characteristically disregarded the old general's suggestions, and
in a battle planned by himself crushed the Persian army and
forced the Great King into ignominious flight. In a few days
Alexander was established in the winter palace of Persia, in
Death of Babylon. As Darius fled into the eastern mountains he was
Darius III
(330 B.C.) ; stabbed by his own treacherous attendants (330 B.C.). Alex-
Alexander
lord of the ander rode up with a few of his officers in time to look upon
ancient East
the body of the last of the Persian emperors, the lord of Asia,
whose vast realm had now passed into his hands. He punished
the murderers and sent the body with all respect to the fallen
ruler's mother and sister, to whom he had extended protec-
tion and hospitality. Thus at last both the valley of the Nile
and the "fertile crescent" (see p. 56), the two earliest homes
of those hoary oriental civilizations, whose long careers we
have already sketched (see Chapters II-HI), were now in the
hands of a European power and under the control of a newer
and higher civilization. Only five years had passed since the
young Macedonian had entered Asia.
 Alexander the Great a)id the Hellenistic Age 223

Although the Macedonians had nothing more to fear from Alexander

the Persian arms, there still remained much for Alexander to p^e^rsJan^oyal
do in order to establish his empire in Asia. On he marched *^'^^^^
through the original little kingdom of the Persian kings, whence
Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, had victoriously issued
over two hundred years before (see pp. 96-97). He stopped at
Susa, one of the most important of the royal Persian residences,
and then passed on to Persepolis, where he gave a dramatic
exhibition of his supremacy in Asia by setting fire to the Persian
palace (Fig. 52) with his own hand, as the Persians had once
done to Miletus and to the temples on the Athenian Acropolis.
It was but a symbolical act, and Alexander ordered the flames
extinguished before serious damage was done.
After touching Ecbatana in the north, and leaving behind the Alexander's
trusted Parmenio in charge of the enormous treasure of gold in the Far
and silver, accumulated for generations by the Persian kings, ^/^g^^^\°~
Alexander again moved eastward. In the course of the next
five years, while the Greek world looked on in amazement, the
young Macedonian seemed to disappear in the mists on the
far-off fringes of the known world. He marched his army in
one vast loop after another through the heart of the Iranian
plateau (see map, p. 80), northward across the Oxus and the
Jaxartes rivers, southward across the Indus and the frontiers
of India, into the valley of the Ganges, where at last the mur-
murs of his intrepid army forced him to turn back.
He descended the Indus, and even sailed the waters of the Alexander
Indian Ocean. Then he began his westward march again along ^^ Babylon
the shores of the Indian Ocean, ' accompanied
^ (323 ^.c.)
a fleet which some
by-^ ;
results
he had built on the Indus. The return march through desert of his eastern
11- 1-11 • • 1 campaigns
wastes cost many lives as the thirsty and lU-provisioned troops
dropped by the way. Over seven years after he had left the
great city of Babylon, Alexander entered it again. He had been
eleven years in Asia, and he had carried Greek civilization into
the very heart of the continent. At important points along his
line of march he had founded Greek cities bearing his name,
 ■224
Outlines of linropccDi History

and had set up kingdoms which were to be centers of Greek

influence on the frontiers of India. From such centers Greek
art entered India, to become the source of the art which still
survives there ; and the Greek works of art from Alexander's
communities in these remote regions of the east penetrated even
to China, to contribute to the later art of China and Japan.
Never before had East and West so interpenetrated as in these
amazing marches and campaigns of Alexander.

Section 37. International Policy of Alexander :

ITS Personal Consequences

Alexander's
scientific
During all these unparalleled achievements the mind of this
enterprises young Heracles never ceased to busy itself with a thousand
problems on every side. He dispatched an exploring expedition
up the Nile to ascertain the causes of the annual overflow of
the river, and another to the shores of the Caspian Sea to build
a fleet and circumnavigate that sea, the northern end of which
was still unknown. He brought a number of scientific men with
him from Greece, and with their aid he sent hundreds of natural-
history specimens home to Greece to his old teacher Aristotle,
then teaching in Athens.
His endeavor
to merge
Meantime he applied himself with diligence to the organiza-
European tion and administration of his vast conquests. Such problems
and Asiatic
civilization must have kept him tediously bending over many a huge pile
of state papers, or dictating his great plans to his secretaries
and officers. He believed implicitly in the power and superiority
of Greek culture. He was determined to Hellenize the world
and to merge Asia with Europe by transplanting colonies of
Greeks and Macedonians. In his army, Macedonian, Greek, and
Asiatic stood side by side. He himself felt that he could not
rule the world as a Macedonian, but must make concessions to
the Persian world (Plate V, p. 224). He married Roxana, an
Asiatic princess, and at a gorgeous wedding festival he obliged
his officers and friends also to marry the daughters of Asiatic
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 225

nobles. Thousands of Macedonians in the army followed the

example of their royal lord and took Asiatic wives. He appointed
Persians to high offices and set them over provinces as satraps.
He even adopted Persian raiment in part.
Amid all this he carefully worked out a complete plan of Alexander
campaign for the conquest of the western Mediterranean, in- f^?the^on-^
cludins:*=•
instructions for the building°of a fleet of a thousand western
^"^^'^ *^^ Med-
!?^ ■,
battleships with which to subdue Italy, Sicily, and Carthage, and iterranean
a vast roadway along the northern coast of Africa, to be built
at an appalling expense and to furnish a highway for his army
from Egypt to Carthage and the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar).
It is here that Alexander's statesmanship may be criticized. If
he had spent less time on the remote frontiers in the far east,
and gone earlier to the west, he would have saved himself and
Hellas incalculable losses.
What was to be his own position in this colossal world-state Deification
of which he dreamed ? That question he had settled seven years °nd itTlogical
before in Egypt. When he entered Asia he was king of Mace- necessity
donia. duke of Thessaly, and general and head of a league or
federation of the Greek states, finally including also Sparta,
which had defied his father. Many a great Greek had come to
be recognized as a god, and there was in Greek belief no sharp
line dividing gods from men. Moreover, after a long struggle,
the Greeks had come to believe that their gods had all once
been human beings of power and influence during their lives.
The will of a god, in so far as a Greek might believe in him at #
all, was still a thing to which he bowed without question and
with no feeling that he was being subjected to tyranny. Alex-
ander found in this attitude of the Greek mind the solution of
the question of his own position. He would have himself lifted
to the realm of the gods, where he might impose his will upon
the Greek cities without offense. This solution was the more
easy because it had for ages been customary to regard the king
as divine in Egypt, where he was a son of the sun-god, and it was
a common idea in the Orient.
I
 226 Outlines of European History

Alexander's In Egypt therefore he had deliberately taken the time, while

visit to Siwa
— the desert a still unconquered Persian army was awaiting him in Asia, to
shrine of
Amon march with a small following far out into the Sahara Desert to
the Oasis of Siwa (see map, p. 80, and Fig. 100), where there was
a shrine of the Egyptian god Amon. Amon had been identified

Fig. 100. Oasis of Siwa in the Sahara

In this oasis was the famous temple of the Egyptian god Amon (or
Ammon), who delivered oracles greatly prized by the Greeks (p. 237).
Alexander marched hither from the coast, a distance of some two hun-
dred miles, and thence back to the Nile at Memphis, some three hundred
and fifty miles (see map, p. 80). A modern caravan requires twenty-one
days to go from the Nile to this oasis. Such an oasis is a deep depression
in the desert plateau; the level of the plateau is seen at the tops of the
cliffs on the right. Its fertility is due to many springs and flowing wells

with Zeus, and the oracles of Zeus-Amon at Siwa enjoyed the

respect of the whole Greek world. Here in the vast solitude
Alexander entered the holy place alone. No one knew what
took place there ; but when he issued again he was greeted by
the high priest of the temple as the son of Zeus. Alexander
took good care that all Greece should hear of this remarkable
occurrence, but the Hellenes had to wait some years before they
learned what it all meant.
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 22/

Four years later the young king found that this divinity which Alexander
he claimed lacked outward and visible manifestations. There deification by
must ogo -with it some outward observances which would vividlv- ^'^^
cities^"^^f^.
of the
suggest his character as a god to the minds of the world
.
which dissolved
league
he ruled. He adopted oriental usages, among which was the
demand that all who approached him on official occasions should
bow down to the earth and kiss his feet. He also sent formal
notification to all the Greek cities that the league of which
he had been head was dissolved, that he was henceforth to
be officially numbered among the gods of each city, and that
as such he was to receive the state offerings which each city
presented.
Thus w^ere introduced into Europe absolute monarchy and Absolute
the divine right of kings. Indeed, through Alexander there was and divine
transferred to Europe much of the spirit of that Orient which "^^'^ ^^ ^'"^^
had been repulsed at Marathon and Salamis. But these meas-
ures of Alexander were not the efforts of a weak mind to gratify
a vanity so drunk with power that it could be satisfied only
with superhuman honors. They were carefully devised political
measures dictated by state policy, and systematically developed
step by step for years.
This superhuman station, investing with divine power the Personal
throne of the world-king Alexander, was gained at tragic cost to sufferedTy^^
Alexander the Macedonian ^ youth and to the &groupr of friends aAlexander as
result of his
and followers about him (p. 219). Beneath the Persian robes deification
r , r. 1*1111 1 r ^"d interna-
of the State-god Alexander beat the warm heart o± a young tional policy
Macedonian. He had lifted himself to an exalted and lonely
eminence whither those devoted friends who had followed him
to the ends of the earth could follow him no longer. Neither
could they comprehend the necessity for measures which thus
strained or snapped entirely those bonds of friendship which
linked together comrades in arms. And then there were the
Persian intruders treated like the equals of his personal friends
(Plate V, p. 224), or even placed over them! The tragic
consequences of such a situation were inevitable.
 228 Outlines of European History

Execution
of Philotas, Early in those tremendous marches eastward, after Darius's
Parmenio, death, Philotas, son of Parmenio, had learned of a conspiracy
and their
friends against Alexander's life, but his bitterness and estrangement
were such that he failed to report his guilty knowledge to the
king. The conspirators were all given a fair and legal trial, and
Alexander himself suffered the bitterness of seeing a whole
group of his former friends and companions, including Philotas,
condemned and executed in the presence of the army. I'he
trusted Parmenio, father of Philotas, still guarding the Persian
treasure at Ecbatana, was also implicated, and a messenger was
sent back with orders for the old general's immediate execution.
This was but the beginning of the ordeal through which the
man Alexander was to pass, in order that the world-king Alex-
ander might mount the throne of a god.
Alexander Clitus also, who had saved his life at Granicus, was filled with
slays his
friend Clitus
grief and indignation at Alexander's political course. At a royal
feast, where these matters intruded upon the conversation, Clitus
was guilty of unguarded criticisms of his lord and then, entirely
losing his self-mastery, he finally heaped such unbridled re-
proaches upon the king that Alexander, rising in uncontrollable
rage, seized a spear from a guard and thrust it through the
bosom of the man to whom he owed his life. As we see him
thereupon sitting for three days in his tent, speechless with grief
and remorse, refusing all food, and prevented only by his officers
from taking his own life, w^e gather some slight impression of
the terrible personal cost of Alexander's state policy.
Execution of Similarly the demand that all should prostrate themselves and
Callisthenes
kiss his feet on entering his presence cost him the friendship of
the historian Callisthenes. For, not long after, this friend was
likewise found criminally guilty toward the king in connection
with a conspiracy of the noble Macedonian pages who ser\'ed
Alexander- Trusted and admired as he had been by Alexander,
Callisthenes too lost his life. He w^as a nephew of the king's
old teacher, Aristotle, and thus the friendship between master
and royal pupil was transformed into bitter enmity.
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 229

On his return to Babylon, Alexander was overcome with grief Death of

at the loss of his dearest friend Hephaestion, who had just died. i^^^,c^
He arranged for his dead friend one of the most magnificent
funerals ever celebrated. Then, as he was preparing for a cam-
paign to subjugate the Arabian peninsula and leave him free
to carry out his great plans for the conquest of the western
Mediterranean, Alexander himself fell sick, and after a few-
days died (323 B.C.). He was thirty-three years of age and
had reigned thirteen years.

Section 38, The Heirs of Alexander's Empire

Alexander has been well termed "the Great." Few men of Conse-
genius if any, and certainly none in so brief a career as his, Alexander's
have left so indelible a mark upon the course of human affairs. ^^^^^
His death in the midst of his colossal designs was a fearful calam-
ity, for it made impossible forever the unification of Hellas and
of the world by the power of that gifted race which was now
civilizing the world. Fabulous tales of Alexander's heroic career
grew up on every hand, as men looked back upon the wondrous
life of the world-hero. But such visions could not bring back
the man himself, and there was none to take his place. Of his Alexander's
line there remained in Macedonia a demented half brother and, appears
ere long, the son of Roxana, born in Asia after Alexander's death.
Conflicts among the leaders at home swept away all ^Alexander's
family, even including his mother.
His generals , in.Babylonia , found
. the plans
. of his great west-J cessors
The suc-of
ern campaign lymg among his papers, but no man possessed Alexander;

the genius or the will to carry them out, nor could there be any ^^^"' ^^^^^
unity among leaders feeling no authority above them which they
would long recognize. These able Macedonian commanders
were soon involved among themselves in a long struggle, which
slumbered only to break out anew. After a generation of con-
flict we find Alexander's empire in three parts, corresponding
to Europe, Asia, and Africa, with one of his generals at the
 230 Outlines of European History

head of each. In FAirope, Macedonia is in the hands of Antig-

onus, who endeavors to maintain control of ( Greece; in Asia
we find the territory of the former Persian Empire under the
rule of Seleucus ; while in Africa, Eg)'pt, a clearly demarked.
region by itself, is held by Ptolemy.
Ptolemies in But the boundaries between these states were not constant.
^^^ Ptolemy found it impossible to maintain his power with native
Egyptian troops. He was obliged constantly to draw upon
Greece. He made his capital Alexandria the greatest port on
the Mediterranean. With statesmanlike judgment he built up
a fleet which gave him the mastery of the Mediterranean, with
the control of Cyprus and the Phoenician ports, the yEgean
and parts of southern Greece, and at times also of various
points along the coasts of Asia Minor. Indeed, for a century
(roughly the third century B.C.) the eastern Mediterranean
was an Egyptian sea. To make his frontier toward Asia safer
against his Asiatic rival he finally took possession of Palestine
and southern Syria. Such an aggressive policy maintained the
power of the Ptolemies for over a hundred years. But after
200 B.C. they allowed their navy to decay and their army to
decline. Then Egypt became the cat's-paw of Rome.
Seleucids In Asia the Seleucids^ selected the northeast comer of the
in Asia
Mediterranean as their home, and here they endeavored to build
up another Macedonia in the valley of the lower Orontes and
the plain between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. Here
they founded the great city of Antioch as their capital. Without
the hardy peasantry of the Macedonian homeland, from which
to recruit their armies, the Seleucids found it almost impossible
to hold together their vast empire of western Asia. P\3rced out
of Asia Minor by the Romans, they lost also much of their east-
ern territory at the hands of the Parthians, kinsmen of the Per-
sians, who energetically pushed their boundarv westward even
to the Euphrates. As a result there arose on the east of the
Seleucid empire a new Persian state which not even the power
^ The descendants of Seleucus.
 Alexander the Girat and the Hellenistie Age 231

of Rome was able to thrust back permanently from the Euphra-

tes. Behind the Parthians other Indo-European tribes absorbed
the easternmost dominions of the Seleucids to the frontiers of

Fig. ioi. Restoration of thp: Public Buildings of Pergamum.

A Hellenistic City of Asia Minor. (After Thiersch)
Pergamum, on the west coast of Asia Minor (see map, p. 80), became a
flourishing city-kingdom in the third century B.C. under the successors
of Alexander the Great (p. 229). The dweUings of the citizens were all
lower down, in front of the group of buildings shown here. These
public buildings stand on three terraces — lower, middle, and upper. The
large loiver terrace, where we see the groups of people, was the main
market place, adorned with a vast square marble altar of Zeus, having
colonnades on three sides, beneath which was a long sculptured band
(frieze) of warring gods and giants (Fig. 112). The middle terrace (at
the right) contained a temple of Athena, and the colonnades behind it
adorned the famous library of Pergamum, where the stone bases of
library shelves still survive. The upper terrace once contained the
palace of the king ; the temple now there (directly above the Athena tem-
ple) was built by the Roman Emperor Trajan in the first century a.d.

India. Thus the Seleucid empire shrank to the region between

the Taurus and the Euphrates, commonly called Syria.
At the same time the Antis^onids, the kings of Macedon, found .Antigonids
'^
It difficult to maintain their control 1 fleet
of Greece, as the n 01r the
1 '"
and Macedonia
c.reece
Ptolemies pushed into the ^gean. In war after war the three
 232 Outlines of European Histojy

states of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt devoured one another.

Merc ]jla\tliings of these great powers, the unhappy (ireek
cities steadily declined, and commercial leadership passed east-
ward to Antioch and Alexandria (Fig. 102). At length, as the
strength of Egypt declined, the other two plotted to divide her
possessions between them, at the very time when they all should
have combined to crush the growing powder of Rome in the west,
then in the throes of a deadly struggle with Carthage (pp. 258 ff.).
The result of the failure of Macedon, Syria, and Egypt to com-
bine against Rome was their submission to the rising city of the
Supremacy Wcst. Rome gradually extended her power through the eastern
the^E^t after Mediterranean, till, with the seizure of Egypt about a generation
200 B.C. before Christ and about three hundred years after the death of
Alexander, she was supreme from the Euphrates to the Pillars
of Hercules (p. 263).

Section 39. The Civilization of the

Hellenistic Age

The Hellen- The three centuries following the death of Alexander we call
supremac^T the Hellenistic Age, meaning the period in which Greek civili-
of the Greek nation spread throughout the ancient world, and was itself
much modified by the culture of the Orient. While Greek cul-
ture had greatly influenced the world outside Greece long before
Alexander, his conquests placed Asia and Egypt in the hands
of Macedonian rulers who were in civilization essentially Greek.
Their language was the Greek spoken in Attica. The business
of government was carried on in this language, and, together
with Greek commerce and Greek literature, it made Greek the
international language of the civilized world, the tongue of which
every man of education must be master. Thus the strong Jewish
community now living in Alexandria found it necessary to trans-
late the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek,
in order that their educated men might read them. While the
native peasants in the thickly populated portions of the East
 Alexander the Great ami the Hellenistie Age 233

might learn it but indifferently, Greek became, nevertheless,

the daily language of the great cities and of an enormous
world throughout the Mediterranean and the F^ast (Fig. 115).

Fig. 102. The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria

IX THE Hellenistic Age. (After Thiersch)
The harbor of Alexandria (see map in corner above) was protected by
an island called Pharos, which was connected with the city by a cause-
way of stone. On the island and bearing its name (Pharos) was built
(after 300 K.c.) a vast stone lighthouse, some three hundred and seventy
feet high (that is, over thirty stories, like those of a modern skyscraper).
It shows how vast was the commerce and wealth of Alexandria only a
generation after it was founded by Alexander the Great, when it became
the New York or Liverpool of the ancient world, the greatest port on
the Mediterranean (p. 232). The Pharos tower, the first of its kind, was
influenced in design by oriental architecture, and in its turn it furnished
the model for the earliest church spires, and also for the minarets of the
Mohammedan mosques. It stood for about sixteen hundred years, the
greatest lighthouse in the world, and did not fall until 1326 a.d.

In a large city like Alexandria, founded as its name sug- Alexandria

gests by Alexander, in the western corner of the Nile Delta, a
Greek of the Hellenistic Age felt very much at home. He heard
his own language in every street and market. Just as in the
 234
Outlines of European History

homeland, he could go to the theater, could wander into the Odeon

to listen to the music, or spend an agreeable hour in conversa-
Education tion with the idlers around the gymnasium. At the same time
he could watch the
practice in the manly
sports and the use of
weapons, in which the
youth were still well
exercised, or, if so
inclined as the after-
noon wore on, he
could listen to a lec-
ture by a philosopher
or an address by a
rhetorician in one of
the courts or halls of

the gymnasium — all

in Greek. To the
Fig 103. The Town Clock of Athens elementary branches,
IN THE Hellenistic Age
like reading and writ-
This tower, commonly called the " Tower of ing, which had been
the Winds," now stands among modern
houses but once looked out on the Athenian learned at the primar)'
market place (p. 186). The arches at the left school, a young Greek
support part of an ancient channel which
supplied the water for the operation of a
might here add much.
water clock in the tower. Such clocks were But if the youth
something like hourglasses, the flowing wished to take up
water filling a given measure in a given time,
like the sand in the hourglass. This tower higher education seri-
was built in the last century B.C., when Athens ously he might go to
was under the control of Rome (p. 263) Athens, still a great
center of learning and
venerated by the whole ancient world for her noble history.
The Uni- The first university that was established by a government,
versity of
Alexandria ; however, was the institution which flourished in Alexandria
progress of
science and under the patronage of the Ptolemies, known as the Museum,
philosophy the home of the Muses. Here the greatest philosophers and
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 235

scientists of the world carried on their studies and researches,

combined with some lecturing and teaching. The first great
library of the Greek world containing many thousand rolls was
attached to this institution. Under the direction of a pupil of
Aristotle, an astronomical observatory was erected, though as yet
without telescopes, which were unknown to the ancient world.
Thus supported and encouraged, science reached a level not
again attained until modern times, two thousand years later.
Greek thought, which culminated in the teaching of Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, had now developed into four systems, or
"schools of philosophy" as they are called,^ which continued
for a time to make some progress in original thought. Of all
this the educated man of the time learned something, and
two classes were now clearly distinguished — the educated and
the uneducated.
The real current of civilized life, as Aristotle taught, was in Hellenistic
the cities. To be sure there were many differences between the
cities of Eg}pt, Asia, Greece, and Macedonia in this age. In
Eg)'pt there were no free cities and no communities enjoying
local self-government in the old Greek sense. On the other
hand, the Antigonids granted to the cities of Hellas their old
self-government in local affairs, and in Asia the numerous new
cities founded by the Seleucids, as well as the older communi-
ties, were given the same liberal privileges. The result was the
greatest stimulation of productive activity in all the avenues of
life, especially commercial and intellectual life. The cities of
Asia continued to produce great names in the histoiy of
thought and art" (Plate V, p. 224, and Figs. 99, 112), but
such names were noticeably fewer in Egypt.
Life in such cities was more comfortablv furnished and Life in the
equipped than ever before. There were roomy market , places
, cities
Hellenistic
(Fig. 1 01), tree-shaded gardens around the temples, and stalely
1 The four schools are : the Academy, Peripatetic. .Stoic, and Epicurean.
•-i A noble work of Hellenistic art will be found in the figure of (he dying
"Gaul at the end of Chapter \'I1 1 (p. 214).
 236 Outlines of Eu7'opeaji History
buildings to accommodate the pul)lic offices and departments of
government. Along the sea and in the harbors were wide quays
and far-reaching moles, where the traffic with distant lands
passed in and out. At Alexandria a vast lighthouse tower
(Fig. 102), one of the wonders of the world, shed its beams far
across the sea to guide the mariner into the harbor.
Time and A public clock, either a shadow dial, such as the well-to-do
Egyptian had had in his house for over a thousand years, or a
water clock of Greek invention (Fig. 103), stood in the market
place and furnished all the good townspeople with the hour of
the day. The calendar used by the government offices employed
the inconvenient moon month of Macedonia, and that of the
Greeks was no better. The Ptolemies or the priests under
them attempted to improve the practical and convenient Eg}^p-
tian calendar of twelve thirty-day months (see p. 23) by the
insertion ever}' four years of a leap year with an additional day,
but the people could not be gotten out of the rut into which
usage had fallen, and they continued to use the inconvenient
moon month of the Greeks. There was no system for the
numbering of the years anywhere but in Syria, where the
Seleucids gave each year a number reckoned from the begin-
ning of their sway. In Egypt at least, there was a postal service
which carried all royal communications.
Greek papers The soil of the Nile valley is still yielding to the modern
dug up in excavator enormous quantities of office documents and house-
Egypt \\o\6. papers (Fig. 104) written chiefly in Greek, which disclose
to us the way in which the business of government and of private
citizens was then conducted. I'hese masses of papers form one
of the most interesting revelations of ancient life which modern
discovery has furnished us. Indeed, the grave of a member of
the Greek community in Memphis has preserved to us the
oldest-surviving Greek book.
Conimingling It is in such papers that we discern how Greek and oriental
oriental life life were interfused in these Hellenistic states. While this was
and religion ^^^^^ ^£ ^j^^ whole fabric of life, in art and literature, in customs,
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age 237

government, and language, it was true especially of religion.

National boundaries were gradually wiped out in such matters,
and even before Alexander's day the Athenians had a ship en-
gaged in carrying Greeks across the Mediterranean, that they
might land at Cyrene, penetrate the Sahara, and consult the Egyp-
tian Amon in his desert shrine (see map, p. 80, and Fig. 100).
Men thus grew accustomed to strange gods and no longer
looked askance at foreign usages in religion. It was only in
such a world that Christianity was later able to pass as a foreign
religion from land to land. There was now complete freedom
of conscience — far more freedom, indeed, than the later Chris-
tian rulers of Europe granted their subjects. The teachings of

Fig. 104. A Letter written on Papyrus, folded,

SEALED, AND ADDRESSED

Among the ruins of sun-dried brick houses of the Hellenistic Age in

Egypt great quantities of such papers are now being found (p. 236).
Their preservation is due to the rainless climate of Egypt

Socrates would no longer have incurred his condemnation by

his Athenian neighbors. From Babylonia the mysterious lore
of the Chaldean astrologers was spreading widely through the
Mediterranean. It w^as received and accepted in Egypt, and
even Greek science did not escape its influence.
In this connection let us not misunderstand the meaning of intrusion
the Greek repulse of Persia. Marathon and Salamis were of influences
incalculable importance in quickening the life of Greece and ["rranean
especially of Athens, and in arousing it to a development which
resulted in the highest fruition of Greek genius (see pp. 184-
194). But it is a great mistake to suppose that Marathon and
Salamis once and for all banished the influence of the Orient
from the Mediterranean, as an impenetrable dam keeps back a
body of water. The great fabric of oriental life in Asia and
 238 0?itlines of European Flistory

Egypt continued to be a permanent force exerting a steady

pressure upon the life of the Mediterranean world, in commerce,
in forms of government, in customs and usages, in art, literature,
and religion. This pressure resulted in many ways in the slow
orientalization of the Mediterranean w^orld. When Christianity
issued from Palestine, therefore, as we shall see (see p. 300),
it found itself but one among many other influences from the
Orient which were passing westward. Thus while (jreek civili-
zation, with its language, its art, its literature, its theaters and
gymnasiums, was Hellenizing the Orient, the Orient in the
same way was exercising a powerful influence on the West
and was orientalizing the Mediterranean w^orld.
Disappear- In this process let us not fail to notice that the Hellenic civi-
citL^enship^ lization was on the whole the loser. In the Hellenistic states
of the East there was no such thing as national citizenship.
Herein they resembled the earlier Orient. Where citizenship
existed it was that of a city-state, and implied no rights of the
city-citizen in the affairs of the great nation or empire of which
the city-state w^as a part. It was as if a citizen of Chicago might
vote at the election of a mayor of the city but had no right to
vote at the election of a President of the United States. There
• was not even a name for the empire of the Seleucids, and their
subjects, wherever they went, bore the names of their home
cities or countries.^ The conception of " native land " in the
national sense was wanting, and patriotism did not exist. The
citizen-soldier who defended his fatherland had long ago given
way, even in Greece, to the professional soldier who came from
abroad and fought for hire. The Greek no longer stood weapon
in hand ready to defend his home and his community against
every assault. The patriotic sense of responsibility for the wel-
fare of the state which he loved, and the fine moral earnestness
which this responsibility roused, no longer animated the Greek
mind nor quickened it to the loftiest achievements in politics,
in art, in architecture, in literature, and in original thought.
lit was as if the citizens of the United States were termed Bostonians, New
Yorkers, Philadelphians, Chicagoans, etc.
 Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age ^ 239

Indeed, in many Greek cities only a discouraged remnant of A last at-

the citizens was left after the emigration to Asia. The cattle unTty'^among
often browsed on the grass growing in the public square before *^ Greeks
the town hall in such cities. To be sure, ^'Etolia, of little fame
in Greek history, stood forth in these declining days of Hellas
and devised a form of federation for the union of the Greek
states probably better than any before known. But alas, it was
too late ; no lasting union ensued.

The sumptuous buildings" and the pretentious home of science Final decline
in Alexandria (p. 234) represented little more than the high civiHzation
aims of the Macedonian kings of Egypt. They were no indica-
tion of widespread productive power still active in the Greek
race as a zvhole. For when such state support failed, with
its salaries and pensions to scientists and philosophers, the
line of scientists failed too, and we see at once how largely
science in the Hellenistic Age was rooted in the treasuries of
the Hellenistic kings, rather than in the minds of the Greek
race, as it had been of old. Add to this the extortions and
robberies of the Roman tax gatherer under the last century
of the Roman Republic (see p. 277); the criminal failure of
Rome to protect her eastern dependencies of the Greek world
from piracy and pillage (p. 277); the hopeless outlook for
the liberties and the commercial prosperity of Hellas, and we
have reasons enough for the tragic decline of Greek civilization
which set in during the last two of the three centuries of the
Hellenistic x^ge.
The Greeks had brought the world to a higher level of civi- The end

lization than men had ever seen before, but they had not been j^eadeSiip
able to unite and organize it. Not even their own Hellas was
a unified nation. The w^orld which the Greeks, as successors
of the Orient, had civilized was now to be organized and uni-
fied by a much less gifted but more practical race, whose city on
the Tiber was destined to become the mistress of an enduring
world empire.
240 Outlines of European History

QUESTIONS
Section 35. (iive an account of the northern (Jreeks and their
kindred in the north. What was the policy of Philip of Macedon ?
Give an account of his career and its effects in Greece.
Sectiox 36. Give an account of the youth of Alexander. De-
scribe his early dealings with the Greeks. How did he desire to be
regarded ? Describe his conquest of Asia Minor. What was his great
purpose thereafter? What did his father's counselors think of it?
What was the result? How was the-danger from the Persian fieet
removed ? W^hat conquest was gained at the same time ? What move
in Asia did Alexander now make? Describe the end of the Per-
sian Empire. How long had it lasted (p. 108)? What extraordinary
campaigns did Alexander then carry out ? W^hat results followed ?
Section 37. Describe Alexander's efforts on behalf of science.
What organization of the world he ruled did he undertake ? What
was to be the relation of Europe and Asia? What other conquests
had he in mind?
What necessary position was he himself to occupy in the new
world empire? Recount his visit to the oracle at the oasis of Siwa
and its purpose. W^hat were the Greek cities now asked to do ?
What personal consequences did Alexander suffer ? What was the
date of his death ?
Section 38. What were the consequences of Alexander's death ?
What became of his royal line ? What great divisions of his empire
finally emerged ? Who were the rulers of these ? Give an account
of each of these realms. What western influence succeeded them ?
Section 39. WHiat do we mean by the Hellenistic Age? What
is the leading language of the Hellenistic Age ? Describe Alexandria
and its great institutions. What was the result for science ? Describe
the other cities. What practical conveniences for measuring time
were now common ? Tell something of the Greek papyri in Egypt.
Describe the commingling of Greek and oriental life. Did the
Greek victories at Marathon and Salamis banish oriental influences
from Greece and the Mediterranean?' Did citizenship improve and
develop? Did civilization continue to advance under these condi-
tions ? What other influences brought on the final decline of Greek
civilization ?
 CHAPTER X

THE WESTERN WORLD AND ROME TO THE FALL

OF THE REPUBLIC

Section 40. The Western Mediterranean World

AND Early Italy

The western Mediterranean forms a large detached basin, The western

marked off from the eastern Mediterranean by the Italian ranean world
peninsula and the Island of Sicily. There is no geographical
name for this western basin, but with its islands and surround-
ing countries we may call it the western Mediterranean world.
The most important land in the western Mediterranean world
in early times was Italy.
Italy ^ is not only four times as large as Greece, but, unlike Geography
„ . .
Greece, it is not cut' up ,
by a tangle, ofr •
mountains •
into . i
tortuous and climate
^f j^aiy
valleys and tiny plains. The main chain of the Apennines,
though crossing the peninsula obliquely in the north, is nearly
parallel with the coasts and many of its outlying ridges are
quite so. There are larger plains than we find anywhere in
Greece ; at the same time there is much more room for upland
1 The area of Italy is about 110,000 square miles, roughly equaling the area
of the state of Nevada, and not quite four times the area of South Carolina.
I 241
242 Outlines of European History

pasturage and there are more forests. This last fact is due to
the latitude of Italy ; as a whole, it lies well north of Greece and
hence enjoys more of
the northern rains.
There are far better

opportunities for agri-

culture and livestock
in Italy than in Greece,
and a considerably
larger population can
be supported in the
plains. At the same
time the coast is not
so cut up and in-
dented as in Greece ;
there are fewer good
harbors. Hence agri-
culture and livestock

300 developed much ear-

lier than trade. Italy
Fig. 105. Ground Plan of a Prehis- slopes westward, in
toric Pile Village in Italy the main ; it faces and
The settlement was surrounded by a moat belongs to the western
(A) nearly one hundred feet across, filled Mediterranean world.
with water from a connected river (C). In-
side the moat was an earth wall (B) about Three great islands
fifty feet thick at the base. The village thus lie before the penin-
inclosed was about two thousand feet long ;
that is, four city blocks. The whole village, sula and tempt to ex-
being in the marshes of the Po valhey, was pansion thither.
supported on piles, like the lake-villages Italy and the west-
(Fig. 5). The plan and arrangement of em Mediterranean
streets are exactly those of the Roman mili- world were further
tary camp later derived from it
removed from the
Orient than the yEgean. Living as they did on the threshold
of the Orient, the peoples of the .'P^gean had responded quickly
to the civilizing; influences of the East ; but while the .Egeans
 The Western World ami Rome

and the Greeks were making the most *\vonderf ul progress, the The western
-^ times
peoples of the western Mediterranean world had lagged far be- ranean in
hind and had made little advance in civilization since the days Prehistoric
of the Swiss lake-dwellers.^
Some movements among these early westerners had occurred. Earliest Italy
The lake-dwellers of Switzerland (p. ii) had pushed southward

'f '

Fig. io6. Prehistoric Sardinians

Part of the bodyguard of Ramses II, king of Egypt, as shown on the
wall of the temple of Abu Simbel (Fig. 30) in the twelfth century B.C.
Notice the heavy metal swords of these westerners, and see p. 53

through the Alpine passes and occupied the lakes of north-

ern Italy. The remains of over a hundred of their pile-
supported settlements (Fig. 105) have also been found under
the soil of the Po valley, once a vast morass ; and the city of
A^enice, still standing on piles, is a surviving example of their
methods of building in this region. They had their influence
1 The student should here reread pp. 10-16.
 244
Outlines of Ru7vpcan Histoiy

on the later Romans, whose military camj) exactly reproduced

the plan of the Po valley pile settlement (Fig. 105).
Prehistoric We do not know the race of these })eople of the pile villages,
intercourse
between Italy but in the Po Valley they entered the area of more direct influ-
and the East
ence from the eastern Mediterranean. Articles wrought by
the craftsmen of
Egypt (see cut, p.
16) and of Cnos-
sus were then find-
ing their way into
these regions, and
the westerners who
received them were
beginning to ap-
pear in the east-
em Mediterranean.
Some of these
early westerners,
the descendants of
Stone Age Europe,
who lived on the
island of Sardinia,
took service as
hired soldiers in
the army of the
Fig. 107. Etruscan Chariot of Bronze
declining Egyptian
This magnificent work illustrates the ability of Empire (p. 53),
the Etruscans in the art of bronze-working
(p. 246). The chariot was found in an Etruscan and we find them
tomb ; it is of full size and now belongs to the
Metropolitan Museum of New York City pictured on the

Egyptian
ments, bearing huge bronze swords and heavy monu-
round shields
(Fig. 106). They mark the earliest appearance of the men of
the West in the arena of history yet to be dominated by them.
The At the same time, the northern coast of Italy opposite
Etruscans
Corsica was occupied by a powerful group of sea rovers like the
I'o^ Longitude 12°
245
East from il° Greenwich 16"

Map of Ancient Italy

246 ■ Oiitliiics of Ejiropcan History

Sardinians. We call them Etruscans. They were a people whose

origin is still uncertain ; they probably had an earlier home in
western Asia Minor,' and the Egyptian monuments tell us of
their sea raids on the coast of the Delta as far back as the
thirteenth century- B.C., at a time when they were perhaps leav-
ing Asia Minor in search of a new home in Italy. Here the
Etruscans fast developed into the most civilized and powerful
people north of the Greek colonies of Sicily and southern Italy
(p. 147). Greek religion and arts found easy entrance among
them ; they mined copper and became masters in metal work
(Fig. 107). Their utensils of bronze found a ready market even
in Greece i p. 1 49). They learned to write with Greek letters, and
they have left behind thousands of inscriptions, which unfortu-
nately we cannot yet read. The west coast of Italy from the
Bay of Naples almost to Genoa, including the inland country
as far as the Apennines, was finally held by the Etruscans. They
seemed destined to become the final lords of Italy, and they con-
tinued as an important people of the \\'est far down into Roman
history.
But the Etruscans were not the only immigrants who sought
an early home in Italy. The tribes forming the western end of
the Indo-European migration (pp. 86-91) early felt the attrac-
tiveness of this warm, sunny, and fertile peninsula." Probably
not long after the Greeks pushed into the Greek peninsula
(p. 124), the western tribes of Indo-European blood had threaded
the Alpine passes from the north and entered the beautiful Medi-
terranean world into which the Italian peninsula extends. They
took possession of the main portion of the peninsula, where we
call them " Italic " peoples. In Italy their dialects so differed
among themselves that hardly a tribe of the Italic peoples was
able to understand its kindred of the next group of tribes.
^ They do not belong to the Indo-European line (Fig. 49).
2 Whether the lake-dwellers represent a western migration of the Indo-
European peoples or not we do not know.
 The Western World and Rome

Section 41. Earliest Rome

On the south or east banks of the Tiber, which flows into the The tribes
sea in the middle of. the
,
west coast ofr Italy
T 1 /
(see map, p. 245),\ there
1 of '' Latium

was a group of Italic tribes known as the Latins. They occupied a

plain (Fig. 108), less than thirty by forty miles/ that is smaller

Fig. 108. Thp: Plaix of Latium

We look eastward from Rome to the Sabine Mountains. The arches
on the left are part of an immense aqueduct built by the Roman
Emperor Claudius in the first century a.d. The whole waterway was
over forty miles long. Much of it was subterranean, but for the last ten
miles it was carried on these tall masonry arches, which conducted the
water to the palace of the emperors in Rome

than many an American county. They called it " Latium,"

whence their own name, " Latins." Like all their Italic neighbors
they lived scattered in small communities cultivating grain and
maintaining flocks on the upland. Their land was not very fertile,
and the battle for existence developed hardy and tenacious chil-
dren of the soil. They had little to do with their neighbors.
1 Latium probably contained something over seven hundred square miles.
248 Outlines of European History

Once a year, however, they went ujd to the Alban Mount (Fig.
109), where all the Latin tribes united in a feast of their chief
god, Jupiter, whose rude mud-brick sanctuary was on the Mount.

Fig. 109. Ruins of the Roman PY^kum

The scene is taken from the Capitol Hill (see plan, p. 250) looking south-
eastward along the Forum to the distant Alban Mount on the horizon
(p. 248). The steep elevation at the right is the Palatine Hill, where the
palace of the Roman emperors stood. The long lines of bases of col-
umns on the right belonged to a basilica built by Julius Caesar (Fig. 113);
on the left of these was the open market place of the Forum (p. 249) ;
the columns in the foreground belong to the Temple of Saturn (Fig. 113),
which was used as a treasury by the Rom-an government

Sometimes, too, they were forced to unite with the other commu-
nities todefend themselves against their neighbors, especially the
Samnites, a powerful group of mountain tribes in the south.
It was at such times that the peasant was obliged to make
the day's journey up to the town to purchase weapons for his
son, when he reached fighting age. These — the spear, the short
 TJie Western World and Rome 249

sword, and the shield — - he has adopted from the Samnites. His
fathers could find them in the market made only of bronze, but
now they were to be had of iron, and a bronze sword was a rarity.
The market was at a ford in the Tiber just above the coast
marshes, which extend some ten or twelve miles inland from
its mouth. At this ford the Etruscan merchants from the north
side crossed over with their wares to find a market among the
Latin peasants. The traffic resulted in a settlement on a hill
known as the Palatine^ (Fig. 109). The settlement had long Etruscan
been there and a line of Etruscan nobles had once succeeded in Rome°
gaining control of the place as its kings. Several other hills close
by, seven of them in all, bore straggling settlements which grad-
ually merged into a considerable city, indeed the largest of
middle Italy. It was called Rome. The peasant could recall
the tradition which told how the townsmen, as they increased
in wealth and power, rose against their Etruscan lords and
expelled them.
As he reaches the market place, the " forum " (Fig. 109, and Greek ships
plan, p. 250), which lies beside the Palatine and another hill known influences
as the Capitol, he looks down the valley toward the river. There
lies a group of ships from the great Mediterranean world out-
side, of which the peasant knows so little. Some of them are
from the Greek cities of the south (cut, p. 166) and some from
the Etruscan ports along the northern coast. There are no
Roman ships among them. The peasant goes down to the dock.
Here he finds a Roman mechanic building a ship constructed
exactly like the Greek and Etruscan ships beside it.
The Greek merchants bring written invoices and bills. The Greek in-
Romans, entirely unable to read them at first, are slowly the alphabet
1 The traditional date for the foundation of Rome — namely, the middle of the
eighth century B.C. (often 753 B.C.) — has come to us from the ancient Roman
historians and is worthless. There was a settlement of men at this important place
on the Tiber as early as the Late Stone Age. In later times the Roman folk told
fabulous tales about the foundation of the city by two brothers, Romulus and Remus,
and these tales were long accepted as narratives of fact, though it is evident that
they are purely fanciful. The headpiece of this chapter (p. 241) shows the two
brothers as infants suckled by a wolf, according, to the tradition.
250 Outlines of European History

learning to spell them out, and thus finally to recognize a Greek

word here and there. Ere long they are scribbling memoranda
of their own transactions in these Greek letters, which in this
way become likewise the Roman alphabet, slightly changed of
course to suit the Latin language used in Rome. It is this
alphabet which descended from the Orient through Rome to us.

Plan of Rome uxder the Emperors

The Greek merchant on the dock has a sack full of copper

coins and a smaller purse filled with silver ones. These too the
Roman tradesman learns to use, against the day when his own
city shall begin to coin them. He is obliged to accept also the
measures of bulk and of length with which the Greek measures
out to him the things he buys. The peasant hears the merchants
 TJie Western World and Rome 25i

on the dock speaking Greek. He too learns the Greek words

for the clothing offered for sale, for household utensils and pot-
tery and other things connected with traffic. These words be-
come part of the daily fund of Roman speech.
The Latin peasant looks on with wonderment at all this world Greek
of civilized life of which he knows so little — a world in which religion
influences -

these clever Greeks seem so much at home. Indeed, they bring

in things which cannot be weighed and measured like produce,
from a realm of which the Roman is but beginning to catch
fleeting glimpses. For the peasant hears of strange gods of the
Greeks, and he is told that they are the counterparts or the
originals of his own gods. For him there is a god over each
realm in nature and each field of human life : Jupiter is the
great sky-god and king of all the gods ; Mars, the patron of all
warriors ; Venus, the queen of love ; Vesta presides over the
household life, with its hearth fire surviving from the nomad
days of the fathers on the Asiatic steppe a thousand years be-
fore (p. 91); Ceres is the goddess who maintains the fruit-
fulness of the earth, and especially the grain fields (compare
English " cereal ") ; and Mercury is the messenger of the
gods who protects intercourse and //z^rr/zandising, as his name
shows. The streets are full of stories which the townsmen
have learned from the Greeks, regarding the heroic adventures
of these divinities when they were on earth. The peasant
learns that Venus is the Greek Aphrodite, Mars is Apollo,
Ceres is Demeter, and so on.
The oracles delivered by the Greek Sibyl, the prophetess of Oracles
x\pollo of Delphi (Fig. 82), are deeply reverenced in Italy;
gathered in the Sibylline Books, they are regarded by the Roman
townsmen as mysterious revelations of the future. There are
also other means of piercing the veil of the future, for the towns-
men tell the peasant how the Etruscans are able to discover in
the liver or the entrails of a sheep killed for sacrifice hints and
signs of the outcome of the next war ; but the peasant does
not know as we do that this art was received bv the Etruscans
 252 Outlines of European Histoiy

from the Babylonians by way of Asia Minor, whence the Etrus-

cans have brought it to the Romans.
Mechanical An art like this appealed to the rather coldly calculating mind
character
of Roman of the Roman. To such a mind, lacking a warm and vivid
religion imagination, the Greek myths opened a new world. To such a
mind the gods required only the fulfillment of all formal cere-
monies, and if these w^ere carried out w^ith legal exactness, all
would be well. As the Roman looked toward his gods he felt
no doubts or problems, like those which troubled the spirit of
Euripides (p. 190). The Roman saw only a list of mechanical
duties easily fulfilled. Hence he was fitted for great achieve-
ment in political and legal organization, but not for new and
original developments in religion, art, literature, or even science.
The rise of When the city on the Tiber had rid itself of its Etruscan
the Roman
republic kings (p. 249) it was ruled by a body of nobles called " patri-
cians." It began a political development much like that which
we have met in the Greek cities. By the middle of the fifth
century B.C. the people had secured protection from the whim
of the judge by a WTitten code of laws, engraved on twelve
tables of bronze. Public affairs were largely controlled by a
council of old men known as the Senate (a word connected
with seiiex, meaning " an old man " ). At the head of the
government were tw^o elective magistrates of the same powers,
called " consuls." The peasantry, or " multitude '" {plebs, com-
pare "plebeian "), of the district immediately surrounding the
city made up an assembly of the people, which struggled for
greater power in government.
The struggle It was a struggle for the rights of the lower classes like that
between the
people and which we have seen in Egypt (p. 42), in Palestine (p. 105), and
the patricians
of Rome in Greece (p. 132). In Greece and Rome, how^ever, as con-
trasted with the Orient, there was the important difference that
the struggle resulted not in monarchy, but in a republican form
of government, giving the people a share in its control. In
Rome the peasant's demand for a vote and voice in govern-
ment was heeded. He finally gained the right to election as
 The Western World and Rome 253

consul (366 B.C.) and to representation in the Senate. Eut

here the fine political insight of the Roman demonstrates his
superiority to the Greek in such matters.
The patricians, or aristocrats, continued to hold the leader- The leader-
ship, and they contrived so to control the power of the popular theTsenate^
assembly as not to expose public affairs to the passing humors
of a changeable city multitude like that of Athens. This stable
leadership of a group of seasoned councilors in the Roman
Senate was the chief reason for the success of Roman govern-
ment, and saved the Romans from the fate of Athens after the
death of Pericles (p. 197). Rome was thus an "-aristocratic ■
republic " — more so than Athens.
At the same time the people w^ere not without protection Tribunes
from injustice at the hands of the aristocrats. They gained the
right to elect tribunes as their magistrates, who enjoyed great
power to shield any citizen from oppression by the State. One
of the tribunes named Licinius secured the passage of a law Licinian laws
intended to relieve the peasantry from financial oppression by
large landholders, and limiting the amount of land which could
be held by a rich man.^ In times of great danger to the State,
it was possible to appoint a " Dictator" with absolute power to '• Dictator"
rule as the crisis might require. The presence of the Greek
cities in the south had exerted a great influence in leading the
Romans to a city form of state, but the native genius of the
Roman for government saved him from the political mistakes
of the Greeks. Similarly the exaction of military service from
every landholding peasant and the census'"^ arrangements sug-
gest Greek customs. These developments in government were
a slow process occupying centuries. Meantime the Roman
republic was continually expanding and to this steady growth
we must now turn our attention.
^Such abuses had become a great evil, as in Greece (p. 153). The date of
the Licinian law is uncertain, though commonly placed in 367 B.C. See, how-
ever, p. 263, for the later conditions calling for such laws.
^ These w^ere controlled by " censors," a word which has descended to us
from the Romans like so many other of our terms of government.
254
Outlines of European History

Section 42. The Exi'Ansion of the Ro.max J^EfUBLic

The motive power which brought about the expansion of
Rome beyond the limits of the city was largely the necessity of
defense against the intrusion of neighboring tribes living out-
side Latium, especially the Samnites and their kinsmen, who
endeavored to seize the territory of the Latin tribes. The
Latins found the leadership and the protection of the city in-
valuable under such circumstances, and a permanent league
naturally developed uniting the tribes of Latium under the
leadership of the city of Rome. I'he obligation to bear arms,
if they owned land, gave to the peasants of Latium the right to
demand citizenship, and the men of all the straggling Latin com-
munities, over thirty in number, were at length received as Roman
citizens. It was herein that the Roman Senate displayed a
sagacity which cannot be too much admired. While the Greek
city always jealously guarded its citizenship and would not grant
it to any one born outside its borders, the Roman Senate con-
ferred citizenship as a means of expansion and increased power.
As their intruding neighbors, like the Samnites or the
Volscians, were thrust back and new territory was thus gained,
the Romans planted colonies of citizens in the new lands con-
quered, or ultimately granted citizenship to the absorbed popu-
lation. Roman peasants, obligated to bear Roman arms and
having a voice in government, thus pushed out into the ex-
panding borders of Roman territory. This policy of agricultural
expansion steadily and consistently followed by the Senate
finally made Rome mistress of Italy. It was a policy Vv^hich
knit together into an invincible structure of government the city
and the outlying communities of its weapon-bearing peasants.
It gave to Rome an ever increasing body of citizen-soldiers,
greater at last than any other state could muster, in the whole
ancient world. Curiously enough this nation which was about
to include the territory of all Italy remained a city-state, add-
ing distant regions of Italy as if they were new wards of the
 TJie Wcstci'ii World and Rome 255

city. But the citizens of these distant wards lost their votes
rather than take the trouble to go up to the city to vote.
While this steady expansion of Rome was going on, a tre- Gallic and
mendous migration of Gauls inundated southern Europe. The wars^'Rome
Gauls were a vast ■ group of Indo-European
^ tribes extending:° premacy
^^'"^^ ^"'
across what is novv^ France, from the English Channel to the Po in Italy
valley in Italy. Their eastern tribes entered the Balkan Pen-
insula and even pushed into Asia Minor.-^ At one time they
seemed about to overwhelm the nations on the north of the
Mediterranean, as the Germans later did (p. 305). These in-
vasions bythe Gauls swept over the city of Rome after 400 b.c.
and almost submerged it. Nevertheless the hardy city survived.
The rivalry with the Samnites continued. These enemies in
the south might win miore than one battle, but they could not
break down the stability of the State which the sagacious Roman
Senate had welded together. Rival peoples, like the Samnites,
lacked such a system, and furthermore they lacked such a city as
Rome to serve as a nucleus and center of union. By 300 b.c. the
lands absorbed by the Romans had quite enveloped the Samnites
on east and west, and in the north likewise had carried the Roman
boundaries far into Etruscan territory and well up the Tiber.
Hence not even the combined assaults of Etruscan, Samnite, and
Gaul could exhaust the resources of the Roman State. When
the Roman legions met the Gauls at Sentinum and overwhelm-
ingly defeated them (295 e.g.), they won the supremacy of Italy
for the city on the Tiber. Henceforth, unchallenged, Roman
dominion in Italy was a matter of a short time. While the
eastern empire of Alexander the Great was being cut up and
parceled out by his Macedonian generals (p. 229), Italy was
undergoing a process of stable consolidation which brought even
the Greek cities in the south of the peninsula (see cut, p. 166)
under Roman rule (272 B.C.).

1 The figure of the dying Gaul (see end of Chapter VIII, p. 214), once set up
in Pergamum in Asia Minor (Fig. loi), represents one of the Gauls who invaded
Asia Minor.'
 256 Outlines of European History

Meantime the eity itself had greatly grown. The seven hills
had long before been covered with buildings, and the capture
of the town by the Gauls had taught the Romans to surround
the place with a wall. While the wall was of massive stone,
the buildings within were chiefly of wood and sun-baked brick.
They were simple and unpretentious, and there was hardly a
building of monumental architecture in the city. A fine paved
road, leading southward to the city of Capua in the region of
Naples (see map, p. 245), was the first of the famous Roman
military roads, and it was called the Via Appia, after the consul
Appius Claudius.
Traflftc with the Greek ships at the docks at length forced
the Romans to begin the issue of copper coins, — " aes " they
called them, — and in their bills the values of goods were given in
copper coins ; hence our word " estimate " (Roman " aesiv
mare "). But transactions soon grew too large for such small
copper change, and the government was obliged to begin the
coinage of silver, with Attic weights as a basis of the different-
sized coins. Money began to be a power in the city.
Heretofore the interests of the farmer had been supreme,
and his settlement on conquered land had dictated the govern-
ment's policy of expansion. The farmer looked no further than
the shores of Italy. But the transactions of the Roman mer-
chant reached out beyond those shores, especially to Sicily and
the south. Here he was hampered by competition from Car-
thage. While his foreign interests were still small he had been
willing that the Senate should make a commercial treaty with
Carthage, agreeing that Rome would not intrude in Sicily, pro-
Such compe-
tition aided
vided that Carthage on her part would keep aloof from Italy.
by the failure Now, however, the Roman merchant chafed under such restric-
of western
Greeks to tions ;the more so because the Greeks of Sicily and Italy
unite
(Fig. 74 and cut, p. 166) had as usual failed to unite,^ and had
1 Such a union seemed at one time about to take place under King Pyrrhus
of Epirus (on the Greek mainland), as a result of his invasion of these regions
(280 B.C.). Rome herself regarded him as dangerous to her power in Italy,
 The Western World and Rome 257

thus left Sicily more than ever open to Carthaginian control.

The resulting supremacy of the Carthaginian merchants in Sicily
was a source of aggravation to the merchants of Rome.
Carthage^ was governed by an aristocracy of wealthy mer- Carthage
chants. The mercantile instinct, which still makes their race a
line of merchant princes at the present day, was strong in the
blood of the Semitic Carthaginians. In their veins flowed the
blood of those hardy desert mariners of Arabia, the Semitic
caravaneers (p. 59) who had made the market places of Baby-
lon the center of ancient eastern trade two thousand years
before Rome ever owned a ship (p. 67). The fleets of their
Phoenician ancestors had coursed the Mediterranean in the days
when the Stone Age barbarians of Italy were eagerly looking
for the merchant of the East and his metal implements (p. 244).
Now Rome had gained the supremacy in Italy only to find that
the merchant princes of Carthage had made the western Medi-
ter anean aCarthaginian sea. They ruled the northern coast
of Africa from the frontiers of the Greek cit)^ of Cyrene west-
ward to the Atlantic. They controlled southern Spain, they had
absorbed the islands of the west, large and small, including
Sardinia and Corsica, and only the Greek cities of Sicily had
prevented them from appropriating the whole of this island
long ago. Thus they formed the extreme left or western wing
of the great Semitic line (Fig. 49).^ We are now to witness the
continuation of the old struggle of Semite and Indo-European,
which has reached its final phase on the Semitic left wing,
where the areas of Roman and Carthaginian trade have over-
lapped and brought on the contest.

fought him, and, although at first defeated, iyially forced him to retire to Epirus
again. This new failure of the southern Greeks to unite was of course another
example of that local independence of which we have seen so much in Hellas.
1 The student should here reread pp. 59-60, 67, 137-139.
2 We have followed Europe and Asia in a long struggle for the possession
of the eastern Mediterranean ; we now behold Europe and Asia, as represented
by Carthage, again facing each other, but this time across the western Mediter-
ranean, for the control of which they are fighting.
 258 Outlines of Europe a7i History

Section 43. The Carthaginian Wars

The Sicilian The Senate needed litde persuasion from the wealthy mer-
Carthage chants of Rome to intervene in Sicilian affairs, as the Greeks
completely lost control in Sicily. The inevitable war^ saw the
Roman legions steadily thrusting back the Carthaginian frontier
in Sicily by 265 B.C. Carthage, as a wealthy commercial syndi-
cate, having no agricultural population to furnish its soldiers, was
forced to engage its troops for hire from abroad. Such troops
were no match for the Roman legions, and the Carthaginians
steadily lost ground.
The Romans One great advantage, however, enabled them to defend
fleet themselves in a last stronghold at the western end of Sicily.
They were masters of the sea, while Rome had no war fleet.
The Senate, like Themistocles in Athens (p. 170), at length per-
ceived the difficulty. The forests of Italy furnished abundant
raw material, and Roman builders were soon able to master
the art of building warships. Gradually the new Roman fleet
gained experience, and the outcome was the complete destruc-
The Sicilian tion of Carthaginian sea power. After twenty-four years of
the defeat fighting Carthage was forced to make peace, leaving Rome in
?2^TcT^ undisturbed possession of all Sicily (241 B.C.). For the first
time Rome held territory outside of Italy, an epoch-making
step from which she was never able to draw back — a step
which has been compared with the act of the United States in
taking Porto Rico and the Philippines.
Rome de- ,
feats the
Peace between two•
such rivals could only be i temporary,
r t-. -i
for
Gauls, gains the Constant expansion of Roman power was a daily menace to
vaiie^^and Carthage. She looked in vain for some adversary who might
rules aliitaly humble her proud rival on, the Tiber. But she was forced to
see the Roman arms again triumphant as they crushed the
Gauls of northern Italy, who had taken possession of the valley
of the Po. Thenceforth the entire Italian peninsula to the foot
1 Commonly called the " First Punic War." " Punic " is a Latin form of the
word " Phoenician," to which race the Carthaginians belonged.
 The Western World mid Rome 259

of the Alps was under Roman sovereignty. There were, to be

sure, many cities bound to Rome only by treaty, whose citizens
were not at first received into Roman citizenship. But in spite
of the fact that there was no uniform language common to the
Roman citizens and the allies who made up the population of
the peninsula, a national feeling arose and Italy as a whole was
slowly becoming a nation.
In defiance of the treaty of peace with Carthage, Rome had Rome seizes
no hesitation in seizing the island of Sardinia, a Carthaginian Carthaginian
possession. A counter move by Carthage was necessary. While ^^vance m
the Roman war with the Gauls was going on, the Carthaginians
therefore took advantage of the situation to seize additional
territory in southern Spain. Here they acquired silver mines
of immense value, and at the same time the native population
of Spain furnished excellent troops for the Carthaginian army.
Thus they were equipped with both money and men for another
war. Nevertheless, the Carthaginian merchants had not for-
gotten their losses in the Sicilian war and had no desire to
repeat the experience.
The Roman Senate, however, could not allow all Spain to Rome
be acquired by Carthage. They ordered a few legions to cross carthage in
the Pyrenees and to seize northern Spain for Rome as far as ^-Pg^^f' ^^^
the Ebro River. Here a young Carthaginian named Hannibal, Hannibal
whose father had been the soul of the Carthaginian defense of
Sicily, now organized a formidable army. He intentionally be-
came involved in trouble with the Romans on the Spanish
frontier and thus forced the peace party at home into war.^
He was but twenty-four years of age when he began his Span-
ish operations, and at twenty-seven he was beginning a plan of
campaign of such boldness and genius that he took the Romans
completely by surprise. Italy
The Senate had determined to carry the war into Africa to The war with
the very walls of Carthage, when in the autumn of 218 B.C. he invades
Hannibal suddenly appeared with his army issuing from the
1 Commonly called the " Second Punic War."
 26o 0?itlines of European History

passes on the Italian slopes of the Alps and taking possession

of the valley of the Po. This unexpected march through south-
em France, over the Alps and into Italy, at once threw Rome
on the defensive. The army, which they had hurriedly gotten
together to meet Hannibal beyond the Alps, had been cleverly
evaded by that general, and the Roman force went on into
Spain. Then this young commander of twenty-eight, showing
himself a master of military science (like Napoleon, who at
about the same age won his first Italian victories in this very
region), at once advanced with his Spanish veterans and many
Gauls and defeated one Roman army after another.
Hannibal's Pushing far southward into the old territory of the Greek
ear y victories ^^j^j^^ q£ Italy, Hannibal succeeded in detaching many of the
southern cities from their alliance with Rome, and finally all
Sicily went over to his cause. But the nucleus of the states in
central Italy, which Rome had gathered about her and linked
to herself by bonds of citizenship, could not be detached. They
Stability stood fast. Meantime Carthage was unable to send reenforce-
ments to its army in Italy, for the Romans commanded the sea
with their fleet. After the first defeats the Senate was more care-
ful in picking its commanders, and these new men were more
successful. Among them it was now especially Fabius, who
made himself famous by a policy of defensive waiting and
avoiding battle with the clever Hannibal, foreseeing that the
Carthaginian forces, if not reenforced from home, must slowly
melt away. j
Hannibal Hannibal sent to Macedonia urging alliance and seeking aid,
donian aidt ^^<^ there was a futile effort to respond. Had the descendants
the East fails ^^ ^^ Macedonian rulers who divided Alexander's empire
to intervene ^ in
the East now discerned the character of this battle of giants
which was going on in Italy, they might have changed the history
of the world. For this struggle of the Romans with Hannibal
was the decisive turning point in the history of the ancient world.
Roman victor}^ in this contest meant the supremacy of Rome
not only in the \^^estern Mediterranean but in the whole
 The Western World and Rome 261

Mediterranean world. ^ Meantime the Roman forces besieged

and slowly recovered the unfaithful cities one by one, until
Sicily was in their hands again.
Western aid
Hannibal's brother endeavors to push in with reenforcements fails to reach
from Spain, where he has been obliged to leave the Romans in Hannibal
possession. But he is intercepted, defeated, and slain. Finally,
when Hannibal has been thirteen years in Italy, the Senate
organizes an expedition against Carthage itself. Not even the Roman vic-
tory over
Hannibal
recall of Hannibal to Carthage can now stay the victorious
(202 B.C.)
Romans, and in 202 B.C. the merchant princes of Carthage are
compelled to accept an ignominious peace. Their power is
forever broken, and they are never again a source of anxiety to
the Roman Senate. Rome thus becomes mistress of the western
Mediterranean, and her power so far exceeds that of all other
states that the rivalry between nations, which makes up so large a
part of the career of the ancient world, is soon to cease, because
there is no one who dares to challenge the power of Rome.
For over fifty years more the merchants of Carthage w^ere struction
TheCarthage
of de-
permitted to traffic in the western Mediterranean, and then the
iron hand of Rome was laid upon the doomed city for the last (146 B.C.)

time. It was completely destroyed, and the only formidable rival

of Rome in the West disappeared (146 b.c.).^

Section 44. World Dominion and Civil War

The third century B.C., which gave to Rome the naval and introduction

military supremacy in the Mediterranean, nevertheless saw Rome eratunfand'

herself conquered
^ Greek civilization. Greek slaves and cap-
by-^ ^ civilization
into Rome
tives of war from the Greek cities in Italy and Sicily, now ruled
by Rome, begin to be common in Roman households. Greek

1 The Egyptian navy of the Ptolemies (p. 230), after a centur)^ of supremacy
in the Mediterranean, was at this time on the decline. The armies of the Hellen-
istic kings also were declining. They were no match for those of Rome.
2 As the result of a three years' war, commonly called the " Third Punic War."
The Semitic /e/f wing was thus annihilated by the western end of the Indo-
European line (Fig. 49), and Europe again triumphed over Asia.
262 Outlines of European History

merchants multiply in the Roman Forum and along the river

front. Amid the hum of voices on street or in market the sound
of Greek becomes more and more familiar to Roman ears.
Here and there a household possesses a Greek slave of educa-
tion, and the parents are glad to have their children follow him
about the house, picking up verses from Homer, or sit at his
elbow learning to read.
Among the Greek slaves from southern Italy in Rome at
this time is a young man named Andronicus. Just after the
Sicilian war with Carthage he is given his liberty by his lord,
and seeing the interest of the Romans in Greek literature, he
translates the Homeric Odyssey (p. 142) into Latin as a school
book for Roman children. For their elders he likewise renders
into Latin the classic tragedies w^hich we have seen in Athens
(p. 190), and also a number of Attic comedies (p. 204). These
the Romans attend with great delight as they are presented on
the stage at the various feasts. Thus the materials and the
forms of Greek literature enter Roman life.
To be sure, the Latins, like all peasant peoples, have had their
folk songs and their simple forms of verse, but these natural prod-
ucts of the soil of Latium now disappear as the men of Latin
speech feel the influence of an already highly finished literature.
Latin literature, therefore, did not develop along its own lines
from native beginnings, as did Greek literature, but it grew up
on the basis of a great inheritance from abroad. Indeed, we
now see, as the poet Horace said, that Rome, the conqueror, was
being conquered by the civilization of the Greeks, into whose
world Roman power was now pushing out. For books, music,
works of art, architecture, and all those things which belong to
the more refined and the higher side of life, the Roman was at
first dependent entirely upon the Greek. What the Romans were
furnishing of their own was a more stable and powerful organi-
zation than any devised by the Greeks.
These triumphs of Greek civilization in Rome were being
achieved at the very time when Roman political and military
 The Western World and Rome 263

power was laying a heavy hand on the old Greek cities and the Rome ad-
entire Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean. Imme- Macedonia,
diately after the close of the war with Hannibal the Senate Greece, and
-' , , Asia
determined to punish Macedonia for its attempt to support
Hannibal (p. 260). At last the long-irresistible phalanx of the
Greeks was confronted by the Roman legion. Before the vic-
torious legion Macedonia and Greece fell under Roman control,
though the Roman Senate proclaimed the Greek cities free.
The object of Rome was not the conquest of the East, but such
a control of the eastern states as would prevent the rise of a
great power dangerous to Rome.
Such a control, however, unavoidably developed into more, and
finally became Roman sovereignty. When the Seleucids (p. 230)
interfered in Greek affairs a Roman army marched for the first
tim^e into Asia, and the Seleucid army received a crushing defeat.
The last great powder that confronted Rome was thus perma-
nently crippled, and, although they did not yet take possession of
it all, the Romans were masters of the civilized w^orld (190 B.C.).
A generation later the helpless Greeks were given a vivid exam-
ple of what revolt would bring upon them, as they beheld the
Roman destruction of Corinth in the same year (146 B.C.) which
saw the annihilation of Carthage.
The Rome which thus gained the dominion of the world had Rise of large
hitherto been a republic of farmers, led by a body of aristocrats great pro-
making up the majority of the Roman Senate. The long wars P^ietors
and the resulting vast conquests inevitably produced great changes
as the wealth of the conquered states flowed into the Roman
treasury, and Roman officials were enriched at the expense of
the provinces. In these changes the farmer was the sufferer.
He had kept his post in the legion for years, in Spain, in Africa,
in Macedonia, or in Italy facing Hannibal. There had been
no one to work his lands in his absence. When he returned
he found that his neighbors all around him had disappeared,
and their lands had been bought up by the wealthy men of
Rome, who had combined them into huge estates.
 264
Outlines of European Histo?y

Increase of These lands were now being worked by slaves, the captives,
slavery ; de- of whom the Romans had taken great numbers in their wars.
cay of the
agricultural Such captives of war were usually sold into slavery. Pirates
class
now in control of the eastern Mediterranean also brought in
multitudes of captives, whom they sold as slaves to wealthy
buyers. As a result great hosts of such slaves were working
the lands of Italy, and a single large landholder might possess
thousands of them. The farmer is unable' to compete with slave
labor ; he falls into debt, loses his scanty lands, and goes up to
the city. On the way thither he finds all Italy stripped of its
hardy farmers by the wars, and their lands in the possession of
Roman capitalists, who have equipped them with foreign slaves.
He finds the city filled with a great multitude of former citizens,
now penniless like himself, who have lost their citizenship with
their property. All Italy is thus seething with discontent.
Increase of What matters it to the landless peasant who has fought the
poverty and battles of Rome and won her dominion over the whole civilized
the landless
class
world — what matters it to him that the city is now being
adorned with splendid public buildings, such as have never been
Splendor and seen in the West before, outside of the Greek "cities. He sees
growing cul-
ture of Rome the gardens and villas of the rich filled with sculpture from the
cities of Hellas and Asia; he sees a network of new military
roads spreading in all directions from the city; he finds the
houses of the Roman nobles in the city filled with foreign
slaves ; he hears his old commanders speaking Greek and sees
them reading Greek books ; he knows that they send their sons
to Athens to receive a Greek education.
Growing hos- He knows, moreover, that while these . Roman lords are
tility between
Senate and drinking thus deeply at the fountains of Greek life, they are
people
likewise appropriating the wealth of all this great world, where
Greek culture is everywhere. This wealth and the leadership
of the vast dominions that contribute it, have made the Roman
Senate powerful beyond the uttermost dreams of the fathers
of old, and in this new power and wealth the Roman multitude
have no share. What is worse they- have lost their own property
 The Western World and Rome 265

at home. To be sure many of them have no higher desire than

the opportunity of plundering the provinces themselves, but the
landless condition of Rome's citizen-soldiers is destroying the
very foundation of Roman power.
Two men of the noble class, Tiberius Gracchus and his Reforms of
brother Gains, patriots with the welfare of the State in view, ^nd civil war
now (133-122 B.C.) endeavored to better the situation by laws
which would redistribute the lands among the citizens and
weaken the power of the selfish aristocrats in the Senate. Both
men lost their lives in the struggle. The proud and powerful
Senate was no longer willing to make concessions to the people
as of old. A revolution began, with intermittent civil war which
lasted for a century (ending 31 B.C.) (p. 273). As it went on, and
the legions were turned against each other, some of the greatest
battles in the histor}^ of the ancient world were fought between
Roman armies. At the same time multitudes of slaves seized
arms and terrorized southern Italy and Sicily for years.
As we watch the further course of this century of civil war, Roman insti-
we see that the statesman in the Senate more than once found to military
himself confronted by the general from the field backed by P^^er
Roman legions. Such a commander with a loyal army behind
him could force Rome to elect him dictator. He might not
abolish the institutions and the outward forms of the republic,
but he controlled the State like an absolute monarch. He
crushed his enemies, he appropriated their property, and the
streets of the city were stained with the blood of her own
citizens. Military power was undermining Roman institutions.
Such were the methods of Marius and Sulla — Marius on be- Marius and
half of the people and redistribution of lands ; Sulla in defense
of the Senate and the wealthy of Rome (81-79 ^-C-)- Sulla and
the Senate triumphed, though Rome was compelled to grant
citizenship to the rebellious Italian cities. At Sulla's death the
struggle broke out anew. More than one man plotted for the
complete overthrow of the Republic, and the gifted orator and
literary man Cicero, elected consul in 63 B.C., saved the State
 >66
Outlines of European History

from seizure, and Rome, as he claimed, from fire and sword, at

the hands of the notorious Catiline and his associates. But the
aims of such lawless leaders as Catiline may perhaps have been
more laudable service on behalf of the people than the famous
speeches of Cicero would lead us to believe.
Rise of Thus military leadership became the controlling power in the
Julius Caesar
Roman world, and it was evident to the practical statesman
that the old machinery of the
Republic could never again re-
store order and stable govern-
ment in Italy. The situation
absolutely demanded an able
and patriotic military com-
mander with an army behind
him, who should make him-
self undisputed and permanent
master of Italy. Convinced of
this, the young patrician poli-
tician Julius Caesar (Fig. no),
steadily aiming to gather the
reins of power in his own
hands, adopted the cause of
Fig. 1 10. Bust said to be a the people against the Senate.
Portrait of Julius C^sar Rising through the consulship,
The ancient portraits commonly he secured appointment as
accepted as those of Julius Caesar governor of Gaul, the ancient
are really of uncertain identity
region corresponding to mod-
ern France (58 B.C.). This gave him the desired militaiy op-
portunity. He organized a powerful army, and in the use of
it he displayed a military skill which placed him among the
world's greatest masters of the art of war.
Caesar con- In eight years of march and battle he subdued the Gauls
quers Gaul
(58-50 B.C.) and conquered their territory from the ocean and the English
Channel eastward to the Rhine. He even crossed the Channel
and landed in Britain. He added a vast dominion to the
 The Western World and Rome 267

territory of Rome, and we should not forget that his conquests

brought Latin into France, as the ancestor from which French
speech has descended. In the midst of these great operations
Caesar nevertheless found time to write the story of his con-
quest of Gaul. The tale is narrated with the most unpretentious
simplicity, but it was intended to convey to the Roman people
an indelible impression of the services which they owed to their
governor in Gaul. It did not fail of its purpose.
When Caesar's term as governor of Gaul expired and the Caesar leads
Senatorial party prevented his reelection as consul, the victori- iJaly^^gB-"-)
ous general was at no loss what to do. The veterans of his
Gallic campaigns were devoted to him, and they followed him
into Italy without hesitation. There was no army south of the
Alps capable of meeting them in battle. Pompey, the other
leading commander of the time, once a political colleague of
Caesar and enemy of the Senate, had now adopted the cause
of the Senatorial party. Crossing to Greece with his army, in Caesar de-
order to gain time and to give his troops the needed organiza- at Pharsalus
tion, Pompey was at length confronted by Caesar at Pharsalus • ^-^^ ^•^•^
in Thessaly. Roman again met Roman, but the seasoned
veterans of the Gallic wars, led by the greatest commander
of the age, inevitably drove their countr^^men from the field.
From this day (Aug. 9, 48 B.C.) the Roman Republic was
doomed, and the rule of a military leader was inevitable.
Pompey, fleeing to Egypt, was murdered there. The beautiful Caesar makes
Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies (p. 230), found that her the Medi-
terranean
charms and the political advantages of her friendship met a
ready response on the part of the victorious Caesar as he dis-
embarked and entered the oldest seat of civilization on the
Mediterranean. In a single battle he gained Asia Minor and
then turned his attention to the far west. The subjugation of
the African province behind Carthage and serious opposition in
Spain formed the only obstacles to Caesar's complete control
of the empire of the world. These troubles were all disposed of
by March, 45 b.c.
 268 Outlines of Emvpean History

Caesar sole There was now no one in Rome to gainsay this mightiest of
master of
Rome the Romans. He made no attempt to abolish the outward forms
of the Republic. For this he was too wise. He caused himself
to be appointed Dictator for life, consul for ten years, and gath-
ered the powers of all other important offices into his hands.
He filled the Senate with his own supporters and appointees
till it was ready at any time to do his bidding. He began exten-
sive reforms of the corrupt Roman administration. He put an
end to centuries of vexation with the Graeco-Roman moon
calendar (p. 193) by introducing the practical Eg}^ptian calendar
(p. 23), which we are all still using.-^ Divine honors were now paid
to this tremendous Roman who had lifted himself to the throne
of the world. He planned far-reaching conquests into new lands
beyond the frontiers, like the subjugation of the Germans be-
yond the Rhine. Had he carried out these plans, the language
of the Germans to-day would be a descendant of Latin, like the
speech of the French and the Spanish.
The assassi-
nation of
But there were still men in Rome who were not ready to
Caesar submit to the rule of one man. On the fifteenth of March,
44 B.C., only a year after C^sar had quelled the last disturbance
in Spain, these men struck down the greatest of the Romans.
If some of his murderers fancied themselves patriots overthrow-
ing a tyrant, they little understood how vain were all such efforts
to restore the ancient Republic. World dominion and its mili-
tary power had forever demolished the Roman Republic, and
the murder of Caesar again plunged Italy and the Empire into
civil war.

QUESTIONS
Section 40. Define the western Mediterranean world. Discuss
the geography and climate of Italy. Did the peoples of the Late
Stone Age in the West advance in civilization as fast as the .i^gean
people .? Do you think their distance from the Orient had anything
1 Unfortunately the Romans altered the convenient Egyptian calendar with
its twelve thirty-day months and five holidays at the end ; hence the varying
length of our months.
 The Western World and Rome 269
to do with this? What early movement can we discern in north
Italy? What happened in the Po valley? What westerners appeared
as mercenaries in thirteenth-century Egypt (Fig. 106)?
Give an account of the Etruscans. What civilization did they ab-
sorb? Whence came the Indo-European tribes of Italy? Did they
possess a common language like the Greeks or were their tribes
unable to understand each other?
Section 41. Give an account of the Latins and their plain of
Latium. Describe the probable causes and course of the foundation
of Rome. Who were its foreign kings? What happened to them?
What foreign traffic went on at the Roman docks? What Greek
matters passed into Roman life here? Discuss Roman religion.
Mention the Greek influences noticeable in Roman religion. What
Etruscan practice was found in Roman religion ?
What was the prevailing character of Roman religion ? What kind
of a state emerged when the Romans had expelled the kings? How
does it compare with the Greek states ? How does it contrast with
the oriental states ? What do we mean when we call Rome an aristo-
cratic republic? Who were the consuls? the tribunes? What was
the Senate ? the Assembly ?
Section 42. Describe the Latin League and its origin. What
was the Roman policy as to expansion ? Outline the course of Roman
absorption of Italy. Describe the growth of the city. Discuss its
commercial expansion. What troublesome competitor did the Roman
merchant find in the south ?

W^hat position in this competition was occupied by the Greek

cities of Sicily and southern Italy? Sketch the story of early Car-
thage. What racial situation did Rome and Carthage illustrate ?
Section 43. Sketch the Sicilian war with Carthage. What was
the result? Sketch the war with Hannibal. Who should have en-
deavored to interfere at this point? What was the result of this
war? Where did these campaigns place Rome? What finally
happened to Carthage?
Section 44. Describe the introduction of Greek literature into
Rome. What schoolbook did the Roman boy now gain? What lit-
erature did his parents receive? What civilization underlay Roman
progress ? Give some examples. Describe the advance of Rome into
Macedonia and Asia. Describe the decline of the independent farm-
ers of Italy. What part had slavery in the situation ? How did men
of wealth influence the situation ?
2/0 Outlines of Eu7'opcaii History

What happened to the peasant farmer? Who now ruled? Tell

the story of the Gracchi. Describe the resulting civil war and the
methods of Marius and Sulla. Could the Republic survive after the
introduction of such methods? Narrate the early career of Julius
Caesar. Who was his most dangerous opponent? What was the
result of their rivalry? What was Caesar's aim? What were the
consequences of his murder?
 CHAPTER XI

THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY

Section 45. The Reign of Augustus

The death of Alexander the Great interrupted in mid-career Far-reaching

the conquest of a world empire stretching from the frontiers of of^cSaS^^^
India to the Atlantic Ocean. The bloody deed of the Ides of ^f ^i^i^J^het
March, 44 B.C., stopped a similar conquest by Julius Caesar — Octavian
a conquest which would have subjected Orient and Occident to
the rule of a single sovereign. A like opportunity never rose
again, and Caesar's successor had no such aims. Over in Illyria
the terrible news from Rome found the murdered statesman's
grand-nephew Octavian (Fig. iii), a youth of eighteen, quietly
pursuing his studies. His mother's letter brought by a secret
messenger bade him flee far away eastward without delay, in
order to escape all danger at the hands of his uncle's murderers.
The youth's reply was to proceed without a moment's hesitation
to Rome. This statesmanlike decision of character reveals the
quality of the young man both as he then showed it and for
years to follow.
On his arrival in Rome Octavian learned that he had been Early career
legally adopted by Caesar and also made his sole heir. His bold
claim to his legal rights was met with refusal by Mark Antony,
who had taken possession of Caesar's fortune and gained elec-
tion to the consulship. By such men Octavian was treated with
patronizing indulgence at first — a fact to which he owed his
life. He was too young to be regarded as dangerous. But his
young shoulders carried a very old head. He slowly gathered
the threads of the tangled situation in his clever fingers, not
forgetting the lessons of his adoptive father's career. The most
271
 2/2 Ontlijies of European History

obvious lesson was the necessity of military power. He therefore

rallied a force of Caesar's veterans, and two legions of Antony's
troops also came over to him. Then playing the game of politics,
with military power at his back and with none too scrupulous a
conscience, he showed himself a statesman no longer to be ignored.
Octavian Thus the death of Caesar reopened the long and weary civil
gains Italy
and the West war. Year after year Octavian met the difficulties of his situa-
tion with an ever surer hand as his experience increased. One
after another his rivals and op-
ponents were overcome, and
the murderers of his adoptive
father were punished. Within
ten years after Caesar's assas-
sination this youth of twenty-
eight had gained complete con-
trol of Italy and the West.
Meantime he had early been
obliged to enter a political alli-
ance with his most serious
rival, Antony, who was now
living in Alexandria, where he
ruled the East as far as the
Euphrates like an oriental sov-
ereign. With Cleopatra as his
Fig. III. PoRTRArr of Augus- queen, Antony maintained a
tus, NOW IN THE Boston Mu- court of sumptuous splendor
seum OF Fine Arts like that of the Persian kings
in the days of their Empire.
Octavian The tales of all this made their way to Rome and did not help
overthrows
Antony and Antony's cause in the eyes of the Roman Senate. Octavian easily
gains the
East (31 B.C.)
induced the Senate for this and other reasons to declare war on
Cleopatra, and thus he was able to advance against Antony. As
the legions of Caesar and Pompey, representing the East and the
West, had once before faced each other on a batde field in Greece
(p. 267), so now Octavian and Antony, the leaders of the East
 Fig. 112, Conflict between Gods and Giants

A monument of Hellenistic art — part of the great frieze around the colossal
altar of Zeus at Pergamum (Fig. loi). A giant at the left, whose limbs end
in serpents, raises over his head a great stoneio hurl it at the goddess on the
right. Note the vigorous action evident in the agitation of her drapery
 Fig. 113. The Roman Forum and its Public Buildings in
THE Early Empire. (After Luckenbach)
Below, at the left, is the tiny circular temple of Vesta, with its never-
quenched sacred fire (p. 251); just beyond it is the triumphal arch (like
Fig. 124) of Augustus, through which one gains access to the Forum be-
yond. The large building on«the left, with a row of triumphal columns in
front, is the Basilica of Julius Caesar; note the clerestory windows in the
roof and compare Fig. 28. At the further end of the Forum, beside a,
triumphal arch, is the rostrum, or speakers' platform, where the orator
stood in addressing the Roman people. Behind the rising group of
temples beyond, is the Capitol hill crowned by the temple of Jupiter
The Ro)}ian Euipirc to the TiiunipJi of CJiristianity 273

and the ^^^est, met at Actiiim on the west coast of Greece. The
battle was fought both by land and by sea, and the outcome was
a sweeping victory for the heir of Caesar. Antony and Cleopatra
took their own lives.
To the West, which he already controlled, Octavian now added close of a
also the East. Thus at last the unity of the Roman dominions ch^l"Sr*and
was restored and an entire century■' of civil war, which had begun° ""^°"Medi-
the ^\.
in the days of the Gracchi, was ended (31 B.C.). The next year terranean
^ . \ landed
Octavian , , m. ' . 1 resistance
Egypt without . and ,took,possession
^. world
Octavianunder
of the ancient land, as the successor of Cleopatra, the last of the
Ptolemies. The lands under his control girdled the Mediter-
ranean, and the entire ^Mediterranean world was under the power
of a single ruler.
When Octavian returned to Italy he was received with the Octavian's

greatest
among allenthusiasm. A veritable
classes at the hymn
termination of aofcentury
thanksgiving
of civilarose
war po^iicy"^^ ^
and devastation. With few exceptions, all now felt also that the
supremacy of an individual ruler was necessary for the control
of the vast Roman dominions. It would have been easy for
Octavian to make himself absolute monarch as his adoptive
father was doing when the dagger cut short his plans. But
Octavian was a man of qualities totally different from those of
Caesar. On the one hand, he was not trained as a soldier and
had no desire for a career of military conquest ; on the other
hand, he felt a sincere respect for the institutions of the Roman
Republic and did not wish to destroy them nor to gain for him-
self the throne of an oriental sovereign. During his struggle
for the master)^ heretofore he had preserved the forms of the
Republic and had been duly elected to his position of power.
On returning to Rome, therefore, Octavian did not disturb the Organization
Senate, but did much to strengthen it and improve its member- <;j.ate bv
ship. Indeed, he voluntarily handed over his powers to the Senate Octavian
in January, 27 B.C. The Senate thereupon, realizing by past
experience that it did not possess the ability nor the organiza-
tion for ruling the great Roman world successfully, gave him
274
Outlines of Ejuvpcan History

officially the command of the army and the control of the leading
frontier provinces. At the same time they conferred upon him
the title of "Augustus," that is, "the august/' He had many
other important powers, and the chief name of his office was
" Princeps,'" that is, " the First,"" meaning the first of the citizens.
Another title given the head of the Roman Empire was an old
word for director or commander, namely '* Imperator," from
which our word " Emperor "' is derived.^ Augustus, as we may
now call him, regarded his position as that of an official of the
Roman Republic, to which he was appointed by the Senate
representing the government of the Republic.^ Indeed, his ap-
pointment was not permanent, but for a term of years, after
w^hich he was reappointed.
The Roman Empire which here emerges was thus under a
dual government of the Senate and of the Princeps, whom we
commonly call the Emperor. \M-iile Augustus devised no legally
established method for electing his successors and continuing
the office, there was little danger that the position of Emperor
would lapse. This dual state in which Augustus endeavored to
preserve the old Republic was not well balanced. The Princeps
held too much power to remain a mere appointive official. His
powers were more than once increased by the Senate during
the life of Augustus ; not on his demand, for he always showed
the Senate the most ceremonious respect, but because the
Senate could not dispense with his assistance. ,
Furthermore, the old powers of the Senate could not be main-
tained reign after reign, when the Senate controlled no army.
This was an obvious fact already discerned by Caesar, who made
no pretext of preserving the mere appearance of senatorial
power. The legions were behind the Princeps, and the so-called
republican State created by Augustus tended to become a mili-
tary monarchy, as we shall see. All the influences from the
1 The German and Russian words for Emperor, "Kaiser" and "Czar," are
derived from " Caesar."
2 The citizens, or the Assembly, seem to have had no voice in the creation of
the office of princeps and its powers, though some scholars think otherwise.
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 275

Orient were in the same direction. Eg}-pt was in no way con- influences of
trolled by the Senate, but remained a private domain of the th?EasT^
Emperor. In this the oldest State on the Mediterranean the J^^^^^^j^
Emperor was king, in the oriental sense. He collected its huge
revenues and ruled there as the Pharaohs had done. His posi-
tion as absolute monarch in Eg}'pt influenced his position as
Emperor and his methods of government everj^vhere. Indeed,
the East as a whole could only understand the position of

Fig. 114. Restoration of the Roman Fortified Wall on

THE German Frontier

This masonr}' wall, some three hundred miles long, protected the north-
ern boundary of the Roman Empire between the upper Rhine and the
upper Danube, where it was most exposed to German attack. At short
inter\-als there were blockhouses along the wall, and at points of great
danger strongholds and barracks (Fig. 125) for the shelter of garrisons

Augustus as that of a king, and this title they at once appHed

to him. This also had its influence in the ^^'est.
The Empire which Rome now ruled consisted of the entire Peace policy
, r -I • , , r . r T . , Of AugUStUS
^Nlediten-anean world, or a fringe of states extendmg entirely
around the Mediterranean and including all its shores.^ There
was a natural boundar}- in the south, the Sahara, and also in the
west, the Atlantic : but on the north and east further conquests
1 On the extent of the Mediterranean, see p. in.
 276 Outlines of European Histojy

might be made. Augustus adopted the policy of organizing

and consolidating the Empire as he found it, without mak-
ing further conquests. In the east his boundary thus became
the Euphrates, and in the north the Danube and the Rhine.
The angle made by the Rhine and the Danube was not a favor-
able one for defense of the border (Fig. 1 1 4), and an effort was
later made to push forward to the Elbe (see map of Roman
Empire) ; but the Roman army was disastrously defeated by
the barbarous German tribes and the attempt was abandoned.
Thus the bulk of what we now call Germany never was con-
quered bythe Romans, and the speech of the German tribes was
not Latinized like that of France and Spain, ^
The army For the maintenance of these vast frontiers Augustus organ-
ized an enormous standing army. Such was the extent of the
exposed borders that it taxed the powers of the great Empire
to the utmost to furnish enough troops for the purpose. Since
the time of Marius the Italian farmers who made up the Roman
army had been slowly giving way to professional soldiers having
no home but the camp of the legion. Now the army was re-
cruited from the provinces, and the soldier who entered the
legion received citizenship in return for his service. Thus the
fiction that the army was made up of citizens was maintained.
Great diver- The population of this vast Empire, which girdled the Medi-
sity of races
included in terranean, including France and England, was made up of the
the Empire
most diverse peoples and races. Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, •
Italians, Gauls, Britons, Iberians (Spaniards) — all alike were
under the sovereign rule of Rome. One great State embraced
the nomad shepherds who spread their tents on the borders of
the Sahara, the mountaineers in the fastnesses of Wales, and the
citizens of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, heirs to all the luxury
and learning of the ages. Whether one lived in York or Jeru-
salem, Memphis or Vienna, he paid his taxes into the same
1 The vast hordes of Germans in the unconquered north remained a constant
menace to the Roman Empire. They finally overwhelmed a large part of it
and caused the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West (see below,
Chapter XII).
THE ROMAN E3IPIRE
AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT
(Under Trajan, A. D. 98-117)
9 ipo 200 300 400 £00 600 ^9^
Scale of illks.
The Roman Empire to the TriumpJi of CJiristianity 277

treasury, he was tried by the same law, and looked to the

same armies for protection.
At the accession of Augustus the Roman Empire from Rome The suffer-
outward to the very frontiers of the provinces was sadly in provinces
need of restoration and opportunity to recuperate. The eastern Jg^JJ^^^^^^jf
domains, especially Greece, where the most important fighting civil war
of the long civil war had occurred, had suffered severely. All
the provinces had been oppressed and excessively overtaxed or
even tacitly plundered under the Republic (p. 239). Barbarian
invaders had seized the undefended cities of the provinces and
even established robber-states for plundering purposes. Greece
herself never recovered from the wounds then suffered, and in
general the eastern Mediterranean had been greatly demoralized.
It was not until Caesar's time that Pompey cleared it of the
pirates, who had almost taken possession of it. The cost of the
century of civil war had been borne by the provinces. The civi-
lized world was longing for peace. Augustus now succeeded
brilliantly in restoring order and in establishing those stable
conditions out of which prosperity grows.
In Italy the policy of Augustus was in all directions governed The at-
by that respect for the traditions of older Rome which he had toration by
displayed in organizing the new State. Everywhere he endeav- ^^g^^^us
ored to restore the old days, the good old Roman customs, the
beliefs of the fathers. The state temples, which had frequently
fallen into decay, were repaired ; new ones were built, especially
in Rome ; and the services and usages of Roman state religion
were revived. The people were urged to awaken their declining
interest in the religion of their fathers, and the old religious feasts
were celebrated with increased splendor and impressiveness.^
The purpose of Augustus in reviving old Rome as far as possible
was evidently to nationalize Italy, and to establish there a Roman
nation forming a stable nucleus within the Roman Empire.

1 Had it been possible for Augustus to know the history of the Orient for six
centuries before his own time, he would have discerned how vain is any attempt
of authority to turn back the hand of time and restore old conditions (see p. 84).
 2/8 Outlines of European History
Much as Athens in
the days of greatest
Athenian power, so the
vision of the greatness
of the Roman State
'k ^^i-At^
4 stirred the imagination
of the time. Roman
literature now reached
its highest level. Cic-
YA^^ ero, the most cultivated
man Rome ever pro-
duced (p.2 6 5), had per-
ished at the hands of
Fig. 115. ScRiBBLixGs of Sicilian
Schoolboys ox a Brick in the Antony's brutal sol-
Days of the Roman Empire
diery as one of the last
sacrifices of the long
In passing a brickyard these school- civil war. He had
boys of seventeen hundred years ago
amused themselves in scribbling school drunk deep at the foun-
exercises hi Greek on the soft clay bricks tains of Greek culture.
before they were baked. At the top a lit-
tle boy who was still making capitals care-
There were many edu-
fully wrote the capital letter S (Greek 2) cated men in Rome
ten times, and under it the similar letter who had enjoyed sim-
A', also ten times. These he followed by ilar opportunities, and,
the words "turtle" (XEAfiNA), "mill" like Cicero too, had
(MTAA), and "pail" (KAAOS), all in cap-
itals. Then an older boy, who could do been shaken by the ter-
more than write capitals, has pushed the rible ordeal of the
little chap aside and proudly demonstrated
his superiority by writing in two lines an death struggles of the
exercise in tongue gymnastics (like "Peter
Republic.
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," Horace, the greatest
etc.), which in our letters is as follows :
Nai neai nea naia neoi temon, hos neoi ha naus poet of the time, had
fraternized with the as-
This means : " Boys cut new planks for a
new ship, that the ship might float." A sassins of Caesar, and
third boy then added two lines at the bot- in the ensuing strijggle
tom. The brick illustrates the spread of
had faced the future
Greek (p. 232) as well as provincial educa-
tion under the Roman Empire (p. 282) Augustus on the field
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 279

of battle. Like the old Greek lyric poets (p. 159) he had been
cauglit in the dangerous current of his time, and, as he was
swept along in the violent stream of civil war, he had with diffi-
culty struggled ashore and at last found secure footing in the
general peace. From the vantage ground of the Emperor's

fi^n ' \ pi y- ^^ 1 '10' r?^ ^^.

^T-T1!Ot[ ^

Fig. 116. Roman Amphitheater at Pola, Dalmatia

Every large Roman town had a vast arena, or amphitheater, in which
thousands of spectators could be seated to watch the public fights
between professional swordsmen (gladiators) and between men and
wild beasts. The emperors and rich men paid the expenses of these
combats. The greatest of these arenas was the Colosseum at Rome.
The one here represented is at Pola, in Dalmatia, and shows that a
Roman town of perhaps forty thousand inhabitants was supplied with
an amphitheater, holding no less than twenty thousand spectators, who
must have assembled from all the region around. The seats have dis-
appeared and only the outside of the building remains

forgiveness and favor he quietly watched events as the tide

swept past him, and then finding his voice he interpreted the
men and the life of his time in a body of verse, which forms for
us an undying picture of the Romans in the age of Augustus.
The poems of Horace will always remain one of the greatest
legacies from the ancient world, a treasury of human life as
28o Outlines of European History

pictured by a ripe and cultivated mind, unsurpassed even in the

highly developed literature of the Greeks.
The other great literary name of the epoch is that of Virgil,
the friend of Horace. Hardly so penetrating a mind as Horace,
.' >;
Virgil nevertheless remains one of the great interpreters of the
age in which he lived. Moreover, his command of Latin verse

'-,---.
„ .- .;fe.<a V .<, '»^-r-aS<^~

/I K / «» t'-

^» V^, 4_ ' fA
- ,-„^/v
^
. ,-^'*-r '

.
r'

^.
>^>
'
--.
' ^^ _
S^f:-^:^ ^:i
r-'
;._-.: ^-:
— ^ ^^=;.^,
* ^^

Fig. 117. Ruixs of the Roman Temples at Baalbek, Syria

The Roman temples of the Sun-god at this place are among the great-
est buildings ever erected (p. 284). The huge block in the foreground
belongs to an inclosure wall ; this block is about sixty-one feet long,
thirteen feet wide, and nearly ten feet thick

is supreme. He has reflected to us in all its poetic beauty the

rustic life of his time on the green hillsides of Italy, but he is
better known to the modem world at large by his great epic,
the ^T^neid. Unlike the Homeric songs, the epic of Virgil is
not the expression of a heroic age (p. 142). It is the product
of a self-conscious, literary age — the highly finished work of
a literary artist. He takes his materials largely from the early
Greek stories of the Trojan cycle, but he feels the inspiration
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of CJiristianity 281

of the great State under which he lives, and the motive of the
poem is to trace the origin of the house of Augustus from the
Trojan heroes of old. Deeply admired by the age which pro-
duced it,the yEneid has had an abiding influence on the litera-
ture of the later world. These two names, Horace and Virgil,
far outshine the numerous
lesser lights of the Augustan
Age, of whom there were
later but too few.
The Romans who enjoyed
such writings as these had
also begun to read Greek
philosophy. Once obliged to
read it in Greek, they could
now peruse the essays and
treatises of Cicero, in which
Greek philosophy is set forth
in Latin. Greek thought had
now taken a practical turn,
and endeavored to furnish
the thinking man with rules Fig. 118. Portrait of an
Unknown Roman
of life by which he might
shape his character and order This terracotta head is one of the fin-
his conduct. The two later est portraits ever made. It represents
one of the masterful Roman lords of
schools of Greek philosophy, the world, and shows clearly in the
the Stoic and the Epicurean, features those qualities of power
are in this respect practically and leadership which so long main-
tained Roman supremacy (p. 285)
religions — systems of thought Philosophy
which furnish a reasonable basis for right conduct. The educated and law in the
Roman has now usually abandoned his beliefs in the old gods of Age
Augustan
Rome and has become a Stoic or an Epicurean. Such men came
to find their gospel in the writings of Seneca, who wrote on the Seneca
Stoic manner of life after Augustus's time.
At the same time men of the greatest gifts were beginning The Roma
to expand the narrow city-X'dc^ of Rome, that it might meet the
 282 Outlines of liuropcan History

needs of a great empire. They laid the foundations of a vast

imperial code of law, a great work of Roman genius. Its pur-
pose was that as there was one government, so there should
be one law for all the civilized world. The same principles of
reason, justice, and humanity were believed to hold whether
the Roman citizen lived upon the Euphrates or the Thames.
The law of the Roman Empire is its chief legacy to posterity.
Its, provisions are still in force in many of the states of Europe
to-day, and it is one of the subjects of study in our American
universities. Wives and children were protected from the cruelty
of the head of the house, w^ho, in earlier centuries, had been
privileged to treat the members of his family as slaves. The law
held that it was better that a guilty person should escape than
that an innocent person should be condemned. It conceived
mankind not as a group of nations and tribes, each with its own
laws, but as one people included in one great empire and sub-
ject to a single system of law based upon fairness and reason.

Section 46. Civilization after Augustus and

ITS Decline

The Medi- Such organization created a vast Mediterranean world, in the

terranean
world : the midst of which men of all nations lost their nationality. In spite
same culture
throughout of the efforts of Augustus, even the men of Italy soon felt
the Roman
Empire themselves to be citizens of the great Roman wo7-Id — a world
everywhere more and more inwrought with Greek civilization.
The government encouraged education by supporting at least
three teachers in every town of any considerable importance
(Fig. 115). They taught rhetoric and oratory and explained
the works of the great Greek and Latin writers. A reading
public for the first time fringed the entire Mediterranean, and
an educated man was sure to find, even in the oudying parts
of the great Empire, other educated men with much the same
interests and ideas as his own. Travel was so common that
wide acquaintance with the world was not unusual.
The Roinaii Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 28,

The cultivated Roman gentleman now makes his tour of the A tour of
Mediterranean much as does the modern man of means. In the the Medi- ter anean in

writin<^s
° of the Empire
r we may^ follow the Roman tourist as he ^^^ Empire
Greece
wanders along the foot of the Acropolis of Athens (Plate III,
p. 180) and catches a vision of vanished greatness as it was in the
days of Themistocles and Pericles. He strolls through the porch

C\Q:^^^i<^ 0 -> _
-^^11-

Fig. 119. Roman Bridge axd Aqueduct at Nimes, Franxe

This structure was built by the Romans about the year 20 a.d. to
supply the Roman colony of Nemausus (now called Nimes) in south-
ern France with water from two excellent springs twenty-five miles
distant. It is nearly nine hundred feet long and one hundred sixty feet
high, and carried the water over the valley of the river Gard. The
channel for the water is at the very top, and one can still walk through
it. The miles of aqueduct on either side of this bridge and leading up
to it have almost disappeared

of the Stoics, where Stoic philosophy was first taught, and he

renews pleasant memories of student days when as a youth he
studied here. He remembers also how he went occasionally
over to the Academy (p. 210), where he heard the teaching of
Plato's successors.
If his journey takes him to Delphi (Fig. 82), he finds it still a
vivid story of the victories of Hellas in the days of her greatness,
 284 Outlines of European History

a story told in marble treasuries and in votive monuments

(Fig. 82) donated to Apollo by all the Greek states in thanks-
giving for the triumphs he has granted. As he stands amid
these thickly clustered monuments, the Roman notices many an
empty pedestal, and he recalls how the villas of his friends at
home, across the hills from his own estates, are adorned in
court and porch and garden vista with the bronze and marble
statues which once occupied these empty pedestals, but have
now been carried to Italy by Roman power. It is a vivid illus-
tration of how the best things in Greek civilization have been
appropriated by the Romans. The Greek cities which brought
forth these things are all now politically helpless under the
sovereignty of Rome, and the Romans have become the heirs
of the great past of Greece.
The East As the Roman traveler passes through the cities of Asia
Minor (Fig. loi) and Syria, his national pride is quickened to
see what Roman rule is doing for these undeveloped lands to
the very borders of the Arabian desert. Fine militar}^ roads
paved with smooth stone blocks link city to city and furnish what
is for the ancient world rapid transit for the speedy movement
of government messengers or the urgent transfer of the never-
failing legions. Long aqueducts conduct the waters from the
mountain heights down into the city fountains for public use.
Imposing public buildings and monuments are rising on every
hand (Fig, 1 17). Where once the barracks sheltered the merce-
naries of the local tyrant of former days, there now stands a
schoolhouse. Men are everywhere rejoicing in the universal
peace and realize fully that it is the gift of Rome. The ad-
vantages of Roman citizenship are constantly before their eyes
in the ever-increasing number of Roman citizens in the eastern
cities, where they are settled as merchants even on the banks
of the Euphrates. Tranquillity and safe transport, guaranteed
by the Roman legions, have filled the highways with merchants
and travelers. As the Roman looks out over the eastern harbors
(Fig. 102) he sees the distant horizon whitened with the sails of
The Roman Empire to the TriumpJi of CJiristianity 285

Mediterranean commerce in Roman ships. They carry Roman

coins, weights, and measures throughout the Mediterranean.
If he takes one of these huge Roman galleys and lands in Egypt
the Nile delta, he finds this land of ancient wonders filled as of
old with flocks and herds and vast stretches of luxuriant grain

" -riw)-'-*-':,^, -;■■ ■■•-^-;>.'.'-; -^._,

Jaf,..,,. Wpi-y*

Fig. 120. Roman Temple at NImes, France

This beautiful temple was probably built about the beginning of the
Christian era. It was situated in the forum with other public buildings
which have now disappeared. After the break-up of the Roman Em-
pire it was used as a Christian church, then as a town hall, then as a
warehouse, and finally as a stable. In 1824 it was restored to its original
condition, as we now find it

fields. It has become the granary of Rome and a mine of wealth

for the Emperor's private purse. The splendid buildings of
Alexandria remind the traveler of Greece ; but as he sails up the
river, he is at once in the midst of the ancient East, and all about
him are buildings which were old long before Rome was founded.
These attract numerous wealthy Greek and Roman tourists.
Such Romans feel themselves lords of the world (Fig. 118).
 286 Outlines of Riiropcau History

Like our own modern fellow citizens in the same land, their
clothing betrays every touch of the latest mode. They berate
the slow mails, languidly discuss the latest news from Rome
while with indolent curiosity they visit the Pyramids of Gizeh
(Plate I), or spend a lazy afternoon carving their names on the
colossal statues which overshadow the mighty plain of Egyptian
Thebes (Fig. 29). On these monuments we find their scrib-
blings at the present day. Everywhere throughout the eastern

j=^:^J&'nlitf^ «

,r-^^

Fig. 121. Roman Bridge at St. Chamas in Southern France

This Roman bridge with its handsome portals was built in the time of
the Emperor Augustus ; that is, about the beginning of the Christian era

Mediterranean the Roman hears Greek and speaks it with his

friends. As he moves westward again, however, he begins to
hear more Latin.
The West Seneca, one of the wisest of the Romans, said, " Wherever a
Roman has conquered, there he also lives." This w^as true to
some extent everywhere, but especially in the West. Colonies
were sent out to the confines of the Empire, and the remains of
great public buildings, of theaters and bridges, of sumptuous
villas and baths at places like Treves (Trier), Cologne, Bath,
and Salzburg, indicate how thoroughly the influence and civili-
zation of Rome penetrated to the utmost parts of the territory
The Roman Empire to the TriiimpJi of CJiristianity 287

subject to her rule. The illustrations in this chapter will show

the reader what wonderfully fine towns the Roman colonies were
(see Figs. 116, 117, 1 19-124).
The remarkable development of such splendid cities in the The decline
Roman provinces would indicate great advances in civilization. JionTfter
This was without doubt true of certain localities. But this out- Augustus
ward splendor of the colonies and provinces was no indication

Fig. 122. Ruins of Roman Baths at Bath, England

There are hot springs at Bath, England, and here the Roman colonists
in Britain developed a fashionable watering place. In recent years
the soil and rubbish which, through the centuries, had collected over
the old Roman buildings have been removed, and we can get some idea
of how they were arranged. The picture represents a model of a part
of the ruins. To the right is a great quadrangular pool, eighty-three by
forty feet in size, and to the left a circular bath. Over the whole a fine
hall was built, with recesses on either side of the big pool where one
might sit and talk with his friends

of the tendency of civilization in the Roman world as a whole.

The triumph of Augustus had ushered in two centuries of peace,
little affected by the frequent disturbances and the often serious
wars on the frontiers. During these two centuries the most pro-
found changes went on within the Roman Empire — changes
which betray the slow decline and lead to the fall of the great
structure of civilization which had risen to dominate the Medi-
terranean world. The effort of Augustus to restore the simple
wholesomeness and the sturdy virtues of the old Roman life
 288 Outlines of European History

had failed. Beneath the surface tendencies which no ruler can

control were in motion.
Lack of
responsible
In the first place, the people were losing their voice in govern-
citizenship ment. Responsible citizenship, which does so much to develop
the best among the citizens of any community, passed away and
the world became indifferent to public questions. Men no longer
enjoyed the educative influence of an interest in the welfare and
the problems of the community. As the comparatively small
percentage of highly educated men thus yielded to passive in-
difference they lost public leadership, and it passed into the hands
of the corrupt and untrained masses.
Decline of This loss of regard for the duties of citizenship had a serious
the army
effect on the army, once the greatest organization in the Roman
Empire. By the end of the first century a.d. the Romans of
Italy had ceased to enlist in the rank and file of the army. Re-
cruits for the defense of the frontiers were then levied exclusively
in the provincial districts. We recall that the sword which such
a recruit received from the hands of the centurion, as he stepped
into the ranks for the first time, eventually brought him Roman
citizenship. But such a recruit had never seen Rome nor ever
enjoyed the influences of civilized life. He knew nothing of
Roman citizenship in the old sense. He and his comrades lived
in frontier barracks (Fig. 125), far from refining contact with
civilization. As it became more and more difficult to raise the
legions, even the German barbarians of the north were permitted
to cross the border (Fig. 1 1 4) and enlist. In the end the army
degenerated into unruly and turbulent hordes of military fron-
tiers men, feeling none of the responsibilities of a citizen bear-
ing arms, and often much resembling the revolutionary bands
which devastate Mexico or the South American republics.
Men of
wealth absorb The Romans of Italy, who thus yielded the sword to provin-
the farming cials and foreigners, either succumbed to poverty on the one hand
lands ; the
villas or, on the other, improving the opportunities of the age for self-
enrichment, the fortunate few were leading a life of idle luxury
(Fig. 129). It was unlawful for a Roman of senatorial rank to
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 289

engage in merchandising. Hence land was the most highly

esteemed form of wealth in the Roman Empire, in spite of the
heavy taxes imposed upon it. Without large holdings of land no
one could hope to enjoy a high social position or an honorable
office under the government. Consequently the land came gradu-
ally into the hands of the rich and ambitious. This change which

XU,_ , _.i

*ti'v'
^ ->
in
Fig. 123. Fortified Gate of the City of Trier
Western Germany

Colonia Augusta Treverorum (now called Trier or Treves) was one of

the chief Roman colonies on the German boundaries of the Empire.
The Roman emperors often resided there, and the remains of their
palace are still to be seen. The great gate here represented was de-
signed to protect the entrance of the town, which was surrounded
with a wall, for the Romans were in constant danger of attack from the
neighboring German tribes. One can also see at Treves the remains
of a vast amphitheater in which on two occasions Constantine had
several thousand German prisoners cast to be killed by wild animals
for the amusement of the spectators (see Fig. 116)
I
 290 Outlines of European History

had already destroyed the small farmer in Italy (p. 264) now
blighted the prosperity of the provinces also. Great estates called
villas covered not only Italy but also Gaul and Britain. Half of
the great province behind Carthage, called "Africa,"^ was in
the hands of six such villa owners. The lord of such kingly do-
mains lived like a prince, with a great household of personal
attendant slaves who cooked the food, waited on the proprietor,
wjcote his letters, read to him, and entertained him in other ways.
Decreasing : Such household slaves led a not undesirable life and were often
slaves and on tcrms of the greatest intimacy with their owners. Household
^y^^^^ I
improved slaveryj had never been so »great an evil as the industrial and
condition agrieultural slavery which had brought such social and economic
ruin during the last two centuries of the Republic, when the
work in the factories and the fields of Italy was done by multi-
tudes of slaves (p. 264). The long wars had furnished these vast
hordes of slaves ; but after the great wars of conquest were over,
this source of supply ceased, for there were no prisoners of war
to be sold as slaves. The hosts of foreign slaves who accom-
plished the ruin of the Italian farmers and craftsmen after 200 B.C.
(p. 264) had therefore greatly decreased under the Empire, when
the number of slaves was steadily diminishing, and the villas were
worked by the eoloni (see p. 292). The condition, even of in-
dustrial and agricultural slaves moreover, had much improved.
Their owners abandoned the horrible subterranean prisons in
which the farm hands had once been miserably huddled at night.
The law, moreover, protected the slave from some of the worst
forms of abuse ; first and foremost it deprived his master of the
right to kill him. Although a villa might be as extensive as a
large village, its members were under the absolute control of
the proprietor of the estate. (
Another cause of the decreasing number of slaves was the fact
that masters now began to free their slaves on a large scale —

1 This word did not, of course, designate the whole continent of Africa as it
does now. Under Rome it applied to a province extending only to the borders of
the Sahara.
 (U

•"
03
T3 bJ3 O
03
c
^
C3
^3 -i^
(U
Vi

£ o o
r^
2 u
1 ^3
o3
OJ

^ t
3
JZ
(U
!U
>
(U
05
o 03

> o c
to 5 o
o5 c
g(U c O
o
o03
03 C
:3
3 s 3
03
Jq
< o o o
O T3
T^
G
tn
^ ^ « .2f
s£
C/3 (U

^
i-,

o
^
C 03

^
u
< rt
C3 OJ

c H o
4
p

O o

~i
c c "+-1

^ 4J o
£
p< £ oT
E OJ (U
03
<U
> o
H w
o
< ^
hJ
w
O
o3

o
-2 > o
g M-l
o (U
dj
03

ia,
03
D

(U «+H

.Sa. £
rt
Cu £ tj
< u w o T3
S O
IJ
o "•^ ^
73
o3
f^
o
Ph
o 3
ri:3 OJ

% o >
<4-<
2 (U
o <+H

S 05
6 rl4 D o
w
s .£<u
Vi
o
U-{ O
<u s
o
, ^ri&
C/3
o
o o ^IS
c 03
o o
rt
C/5
o
T3 c
o03
TJ
i>v X
o ^ o
o
rt
D
► -ifiX^- , * £
o en
<+-c c
w O o
£=3
< ^g
o l-l

291
 292 Outlijics of European History

Contrast for what reasons we do not know. When a slave was freed he
between
frcedmaii was called ^ freedman, but he was by no means in the position
and free men of one who had been born free. It was true that he was no
longer a mere thing that could be bought and sold, but he had
still to serve his former master — who had now become his
patroji — for a certain number of days in the year. He was
obliged to pay him a part of his earnings and could not marry
without his patron's consent.
Decline of But as the condition of the slaves improved and many of
the poor free
citizen — in
the towns
them became freedmen, the state of the poor free man only be-
came worse. In the towns (Fig. 128), if he tried to earn his
living, he was forced to mingle with those slaves who were
permitted to work for wages and with the freedman, but he
naturally tended to sink to their level.
In the In the country the small farmer and the free laborer for hire
country :
the coloiii could not survive long in competition with the great villas. As
the burden of taxes became unbearable the farmer finally gave
up the struggle. He entered upon an arrangement which made
him the colojius of some wealthy landholder. As such the farmer
and his descendants w^ere forever attached to the land they
worked, and passed with it from owner to owner when it changed
hands. While not actually slaves, they were not free to leave
or go where they pleased, and they were hardly as favorably sit-
Resemblance
between the uated as many slaves. Like the -medieval serf,^ they could not
coloni and the be deprived of their fields so long as they paid the owner a cer-
later serfs
tain part of their crop and worked for him during a period
fixed by the customs of the estate upon which they lived. This
system made it impossible for the farmer to become really in-
dependent, orfor his son to become better off than he. The
great villas once worked by slaves were now cultivated chiefly
by these coloni.
Country Multitudes turned to the city for relief, just as at the present
people flock
to the city ; day in Europe and America there is a large and steady move-
decreasing
population ment of country population toward the cities. The large families,
1 See below, section 67.
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 293

which country life favors, were no longer reared, the number of

marriages decreased, and the population of the Empire steadily
shrank. The rapid decline of agriculture, which had long before
overtaken Greece, and then Italy (p. 264), having now reached
the provinces also, there were vast stretches of unworked fields
which were slowly absorbed by forest wilds. As the amount of

-«ifi&'.

Fig. 125. Glimpses of a Roman Frontier Stronghold

(Restored after Waltze-Schulze)
Above, at the left, the main gate of the fort ; the other three views show
the barracks (compare Fig. 114)

land under cultivation steadily decreased, the ancient world was Diminishing
no longer raising enough food to feed itself properly. The insufficient'
scarcity was felt most severely in the great centers of popula- ^'^^'^ supply
tion, like Rome, where prices at once began to go up. Our
generation, afflicted in the same way, is not the first to complain
of "the high cost of living." Industrial prosperity and the
growth of manufactures in the cities could not avail to offset
the decay of agriculture.
294
Outlines of ILuropcaii llistoiy

The country people who yielded to the attractions of the city

were only debased by the life they entered there. At Rome the
newcomer found a city of sumptuous marble where once there
was little but brick. Noble architecture enveloped the Forum

li-U^i «f-

Fig. 126. The Vast Flavian Amphitheater at Rome now

CALLED THE COLOSSEUM. (AfTER LuCKENBACH)
This enormous building, one of the greatest in the world, was an oval
arena surrounded by rising tiers of seats, accommodating nearly fifty
thousand people. We see here only the outside wall, as restored. It
was built by the emperors Vespasian and Titus, and was completed in
80 A.D. as a place for spectacular combats. Athletic games and contests
of strength had long accompanied the funerals of great men in Greece
and Rome. The Romans then continued such combats for their own
sake, and the combatants, called gladiators (meaning "swordsmen"),
often took each other's lives (compare Fig. 116)

and crow^ned the Seven Hills (Figs. 113, 127). Outward pros-
perity, luxury and splendor, chariot races, bloody games and
spectacles (Fig. 126), free distribution of bread, wine, and meat
to all needy citizens at the cost of the State — these things
completely concealed from the discernment of the mob the cur-
rents beneath the surface which were setting so steadily toward
ruin. The city of Rome thus became a great hive of shiftless
The Roman Einpiir to the Triumph of Christianity 295

population supported by the State with means for which the

struggling agriculturist was taxed.
Meantime the great city was rife with increasing luxury and incoming
display. The discovery of the seasonal winds in the Indian luxuries
Ocean resulted in great commerce, through the Red Sea with
India, such as the world had never known before. At the same

-k ^^--
-^^^^^^^feg^

Fig. 127. A Street of Tombs outside Rome, ox the

Appian Way

These tombs lined both sides of the Appian Way (p. 256) for some dis-
tance from Rome. They illustrate the more showy and sumptous archi-
tecture of the Romans as contrasted with the simpler style of the
Greeks (compare the Athenian street of tombs, Fig. 97)

time there was overland connection further north with China.

All the luxuries of the East began to flow into the Mediterra-
nean— many of them luxuries which the Romans never had
seen before. Roman ladies were decked with diamonds, pearls,
and rubies from India, and they robed themselves in shining
silks from China. The tables of the rich were bright with
peaches and apricots, now appearing for the first time in the
Roman world. Roman cooks learned to prepare rice, formerly
 296 Outlines of European History

only prescribed by physicians as a delicacy for convalescents.^

Instead of sweetening their dishes with honey, as formerly,
Roman households began to find a new product in the market
place known as "sakari,"' as the report of a venturesome oriental
sailor of the first century a.d. calls the sirup of sugar cane,
which he brought by water from India into the Mediterranean
for the first time. This is the earliest mention of sugar in his-
tor}^ These new things in the Roman world remind one of the
potatoes, coffee, tobacco, and Indian com of America as they
found their way to Europe after the voyages of Columbus.

Section 47. Popularity of Oriental Religions and

THE Spread of Early Christianity

These things are tangible evidence of the tide that was set-
ting into the ^lediterranean from the Orient. This tide brought
with it other things less easily traced, but much more important
in their influence on the declining Roman world. Intellectual
life was steadily ebbing ; there was not a really great name in
Roman literature after Horace and Virgil, Philosophy was no
longer occupied with new thoughts and the discovery of new
truths. In its place, as we have seen, appeared the semireligious
systems of living, taught by the Stoics and Epicureans, But
such teaching was only for the highly educated and the intel-
lectual class — a class constantly decreasing. Even such men
frequently yielded to the tendency of the multitude and sought
refuge in the oriental religions which the incoming life of the
East was bringing in.
Eg>ptian I sis Even in Augustus's day the Roman poet Tibullus, absent on
a military campaign which sickness had interrupted, wrote to
his fiance'e Delia then in Rome : " What does your Isis for me
now, Delia ? What avail me those brazen sistra ^ of hers, so
often shaken by your hand ? . . . Now, now, goddess, help me ;
1 Horace amusingly pictures the distress of a miserly Roman at the price of
a dish of rice prescribed by a physician. It was still a luxury in his time.
2 Musical instruments played by shaking in the hand.
 The Roman Empire to the Tiiiimph of CJiristianity 297

for that man may be healed by thee is proved by many a picture

in thy temples." Tibullus and his fiancee belonged to the most
cultivated class, but they had taken refuge in the faith of the
Egyptian Isis. \\'hat these t\vo had done, was being done under

^«^^:4Jg,uia

I
rrivs.jt-« >

'■ii^-
Fig. 128. A View across the Forim of Pompeii to Vesuvius
The little provincial city of Pompeii near Naples, having twenty
thousand to thirty thousand inhabitants, was destroyed by fire and over-
whelmed with showers of ashes from the neighboring volcano of Vesu-
vius in 79 A.D. Some two thousand of the inhabitants perished. At
present the accumulations from successive eruptions are about twenty
feet deep. The excavation of the town is still going on, and will prob-
ably continue some twenty-five years longer before the whole place is
uncovered. The place is a great treasure house of Roman life in the
smaller cities under the early Empire, for all the streets and the first
floors of the houses are preserved, often with many things of value
which they contained (see Figs. 99 and 129)

the early Empire by multitudes, and the temples of Isis were

to be found in all the larger cities. The Isis temple at Pompeii
(Fig. 128) has survived to illustrate the power of the foreign
goddess and Osiris her husband (p. 27), who were now dis-
placing the gods of the Greeks and Romans.
 298 Outlines of Eui'opcaii History
" Great Isis and Osiris were not without oriental competitors, for the
Mother " of
Asia Minor Great Mother goddess of Asia Minor, with her consort Attis,
gained the devotion of many Romans also. In the army the
Persian god Mithras (p. 100), a god of light, who slew his

\\

Fig. 129. Interior of the House of a Wealthy Roman

Citizen in Pompeii

The walls of the houses in Pompeii (Fig. 128) are now often found pre-
served up to the tops of the doors, or even sometimes to the ceihng.
These walls still bear their beautiful decorative paintings, while the
floors are paved with many-colored marble blocks of splendid mosaics
like Fig. 99. Sumptuous rugs and hangings also enriched walls and
floors. Statues from Greece (p. 284 ; cut, p. 214), and many bronze lamps,
tripods, and candelabra (see rear of first room) for lighting and heat-
ing adorned the rooms and halls. Immense wealth was expended on
luxury in such fittings. Cicero, not a man of great wealth, is reported
to have spent over fifty thousand dollars, for a single table

enemy the bull, was a great favorite, and many a legion had its
underground chapel where its members celebrated his triumph.
All these faiths had their " mysteries," consisting chiefly of
dramatic presentations of the career of the god. In the Egyp-
tian religion and that of the Great Mother, his submission to
death, his triumph over it, and ascent to everlasting life made
The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 299

a deep impression.^ It was believed that to witness these things

and to submit to certain holy ceremonies of initiation would
bring to the initiated deliverance from evil, the power to share
in the endless life of the god, and to dwell with him forever.
The old Roman faith had little to do with conduct and held Decline of
out to the worshiper no such hopes as these. Little wonder religion
that the Roman multitude found the attraction of these oriental
faiths and the blessed future insured by their "mysteries" irre-
sistible. At the same time it Vvas possible to learn the future Astrology
of ever}' individual, as all believed, by the use of Babylonian
astrology (p. 84), and its mysterious practices were ever}'-
where. The orientals who practiced it were called Chaldeans
(p. 84) or Magi.^
The Jews too, now that their temple in Jerusalem (p. 108) Judaism
had been destroyed by the Romans, were to be found in in-
creasing numbers in the larger cities. Strabo, a geographer of
the early Empire, says of them, " This people has already made
its way into ever}^ citv% and it would be hard to find a place in
the habitable world which has not admitted this race and been

dominated by it.'"'* The Roman world was becoming accustomed

to their synagogues ; but the Jews refused to acknowledge any
other gods, and their exclusiveness brought them disfavor and
trouble with the government.
All subjects of the Empire were required to recognize the The Emperor

divinity of the Emperor. He had now become a sun-god like ^ ""'^°

the kings of Eg}'pt and he was known as the " Invincible Sun "'
(Fig. 117). As a god he stood for the majesty and glor}^ of the The worship
Roman dominion. The inhabitants of each province might Emperor
revere their particular gods, undisturbed by the government,
but all were obliged, as good citizens, to join in the official sacri-
fices to the head of the State, as a god. His birthday was on
the twenty-fifth of December.
1 See the account of the resurrection of Osiris, p. 27.
- The Magi were originally an order of oriental priests. Our word " magic "
is derived from this name.
 Outlines of European History
300
Spread of Among all these faiths of the East that were displacing the
Christianity
old religion of Rome, the common people were more and more
inclining toward one of which we have not yet spoken. It too
came out of the East. Its teachers told how their Master,
Jesus, was born in Palestine, the land of the Jews, in the days
of Augustus, and how he had caught a vision of human brother-
hood and of divine fatherhood, surpassing that which the Hebrew
prophets had once discerned (p. io6). This faith he preached
for a few years — till he incurred the hatred of his countrymen
and they put him to death.
Paul and the
foundation of A Jewish tent-maker named Paul, a man gifted with pas-
the earUest
churches sionate eloquence and unquenchable love for his Master,* passed
far and wide through the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and
even to Rome, proclaiming his Master's teaching. He left be-
hind him a line of devoted communities stretching from Palestine
to Rome. A group of letters which he wrote to his followers
were circulating widely among them and were read with eager-
ness. They are preserved to us in the New Testament. The
slave and the freedman, the artizan and craftsman, the humble
and the despised in the huge barracks which sheltered the poor
in Rome, listened to this new " mystery " from the East, as they
thought it to be, and, as time passed, multitudes accepted it and
found joy in the hopes which it awakened.
Rome Thus was Christianity launched upon the great tide of Roman
persecutes,
the early life. The officers of government often found these early con-
Christians
verts not only refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the Em-
peror and to sacrifice to him, but also openly prophesying the
downfall of the Roman State. They were therefore more than
once called upon to endure cruel persecution. Their religion
seemed incompatible with good citizenship, since it forbade them
to show the usual respect for the government. Nevertheless
their numbers steadily grew.
The Roman Emph'e to the Tiiumph of Christianity 301

Section 48. Internal Revolution and the Col-

lapse OF Ancient Civilization

Meantime there was steady decline in the prosperity of the Marcus

Empire as more and more farm lands lay idle ; population de- and his great
creased and the burden of taxes on those who remained ° 2:rew maintain
^ff?rts to the
heavier. The able rule of Marcus Aurelius, who began to reign Roman state
in 161 A.D., marked the end of two centuries of internal peace
(p. 287) which contrast sharply with the age that followed him.
He found a great scarcity of money among the people, and it
was increasingly difficult to collect the taxes necessary to main-
tain the State and support the army with which he was strug-
gling to keep back the incoming hordes of barbarian invasion
on the northern frontiers (Fig. 1 1 4).
Yet he found time amid the growing anxieties of his position, Marcus
even as he sat in his tent on a dangerous campaign in the heart ifghTeS mie
of the barbarous north, to record his thoughts and leave the
world a little volume of meditations which are among the most
precious legacies of the past. His ability and enlightened states-
manship were only equaled by the purity and beauty of his per-
sonal life. He granted salaries of six hundred gold pieces (about
$1600) to the heads of the four schools of philosophy at Athens.
This was the first state support received by this " university "
of Athens, and marked another effort to maintain the old Greek
culture against the oriental religions. Marcus Aurelius was the
finest spirit among all the Roman emperors, and there was
never another like him on the imperial throne.
Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, was one of the most The fearful
detestable in the long list of Roman emperors, and as we enter of\he third
the third century a.d. one such worthless ruler after another '^^"^"^y ^•''•
was set up by the army ; for unfortunately no satisfactory means
of selecting an emperor had ever been devised, and whenever
they wished, the army elected a new emperor. Such an ap-
pointee of the army in one province often found himself con-
fronted bya rival in another province. We have already seen
 ;o2 Outlines of European History

Eighty how degenerate the army became (p. 288), and it was chiefly
emperors in
ninety years from such a class as these military frontiersmen that the Roman
Empire received eighty rulers in ninety years after the death
of the son of Marcus Aurelius. In order to gain additional op-
portunity for taxation, one of them gave Roman citizenship to
all free men dwelling in any community ruled by Rome (212 a.d.).
All distinction between Roman and non-Roman passed away.
Citizenship however meant nothing which could better the situa-
tion, as the troops tossed the scepter of Rome from one ignorant
soldier-emperor to another.
Collapse
of ancient ^^'hile tumult and fighting between rival emperors hastened
civilization economic decay and national bankruptcy, the affairs of the
nation passed from bad to worse. For fifty years there was
no public order. Life and property were nowhere safe. Turbu-
lence, robbery, and murder were everywhere. While no Rom.an
subject attempted to overthrow the Empire, and all men revered
it as eternal, nevertheless in this tempest of anarchy during
the third century a.d. the civilization of the ancient world suf-
fered final collapse. The supremacy of mind and of scientific
knowledge won by the Greeks in the third century B.C. yielded
to the reign of ignorance and superstition in these social disasters
of the thi?-d centiuy A.D.
Diocletian ;
the Roman
The world which issued from these disasters toward 300 a.d.
Empire under Diocletian, was a totally different one from that which
becomes an
oriental des- Augustus and the Roman Senate had ruled three centuries be-
potism (284- fore. When Diocletian succeeded in restoring order, he deprived
305 A.D.)
the shadowy Senate of all power, except for the municipal gov-
ernment ofthe city of Rome. The Roman Emperor thus became
for the whole Roman world, what he had always been in Egypt,
an absolute monarch with none to limit his power. The State
had been completely militarized and orientalized. With the un-
limited power of the oriental despot the Emperor now assumed
also its outward symbols — the diadem, the gorgeous robe em-
broidered with pearls and precious stones, the throne and foot-
stool, at which all who came into his presence must bow down
The Roman Empire to the TriumpJi of CJiristianity 303

to the dust. Thus ended the long struggle of democracy which

we have followed through so many centuries of the career of
man in the ancient world.
ressive
As far back as the days of Marcus Aurelius, it had proved taxation Opp
difficult for the Roman government to raise enough by taxation
to maintain itself. The situation in the reign of Diocletian was
far worse. The business of the State was now^ in the hands of
a vast number of local officials graded into many ranks and
classes. This multitude and the huge army had all to be paid
and supported. It required a great deal of money also to main-
tain the luxurious court of the Emperor surrounded by his innum-
erable palace officials and servants, and to supply " bread and
circuses " for the populace of the towns (p. 294). All sorts of
taxes and exactions were consequently devised by ingenious
officials to make up the necessary revenue.
When the scarcity of coin made it impossible to collect the Bad methods
land tax in money, the deficit was taken in grain or produce
from the granary of the delinquent tax payer. As this collection
of produce increased, the tax tended to become a mere share in
the yield of the lands, and thus the Roman Empire sank to a
primitive system of taxation already thousands of years old in
the Orient (p. 29). The crushing burden of this great land
tax, the Emperor's chief source of income, was much increased
by the bad way in which it was collected. The government made
a group of the richer citizens in each of the towns permanently
responsible for the whole amount due each year from all the
landowners within their district. It was their business to collect
the taxes and make up any deficiency, it mattered not from
what cause.
This responsibility, together with the weight of the taxes Resulting im-
themselves, ruined so many landowners that the government poverishment
was forced to decree that no one should desert his estates in
order to escape the exactions. Only the very rich could stand
the drain on their resources and even wealthy families were im-
poverished. I'he middle class sank into poverty and despair and
 304 Ontlijics of European History

many a worthy man secretly fled from his lands to become a wan-
dering beggar, or even to take up a life of robbery and violence.
In this way the Empire lost just that prosperous class of citizens
who should have been the leaders in business enterprises.
Disappear-
ance of
Under this oriental despotism the liberty for which men had
liberty and striven so long disappeared in Europe, and the once free Roman
free citizen-
ship citizen had no independent life of his own. Even his wages and
the prices of the goods he bought or sold were as far as possi-
ble fixed for him by the Emperor, For the will of the Emperor
had now become law, and his decrees were dispatched through-
out the length and breadth of the Roman dominions. His in-
numerable officials kept an eye upon even the humblest citizen.
They watched the grain dealers, butchers, and bakers, and saw
to it that they properly supplied the public and never deserted
their occupation. If the government could have had its way, it
would have had every one belong to a definite class of society,
and his children after him. In some cases it forced the son to
follow^ the profession of his father. It kept the unruly poor in
the towns quiet by furnishing them with bread; and sometimes
with wine, meat, and clothes. It continued to provide amuse-
ment for them by expensive entertainments, such as races and
gladiatorial combats. In a word, the Roman government now
attempted to regulate almost every interest in life.
Staggering under his crushing burden of taxes, in a state
which was practically bankrupt, the citizen of every class had now
become a mere cog in the vast machinery of the government.
He had no other function than to toil for the State, which ex-
acted so much of the fruit of his labor that he was fortunate
if it proved barely possible for him to survive on the balance.
As a mere toiler for the State, he was finally where the peasant
on the Nile had been for thousands of years. The Emperor
had become a Pharaoh, and the Roman Empire a colossal Egypt
of ancient days.
Such a complete transformation of State and society in the
Roman Empire was accomplished only by unlimited application
Tlie Rovian Empire to tJie TriinnpJi of Christianity 305

of the most brutal force. Diocletian increased the size of the The army
army fourfold in spite of the additional expense and the in- barbarians
creased burden of taxation. A vicious circle was thus set up.
More troops cost more money, but they also meant greater
ability to suppress disorders and collect taxes. The decreasing
population of the Empire was insufficient to furnish the troops
for the increased army. Diocletian w^as obliged to allow whole
tribes of German barbarians to cross the border as military
colonies furnishing troops for his great army. Thus the bar-
barians were enlisted in the Roman legions to help keep out
their fellow Germans. Julius Caesar was the first to give them
a place among his soldiers. This custom became more and more
common, until, finally, whole armies were German, entire tribes
being enlisted under their own chiefs. Some of the Germans
rose to be distinguished generals ; others attained important
positions as officials of the government.
In order to replenish the shrinking population likewise, great Population of
numbers of the German tribes were encouraged to settle within ^nd the^'^^
the Empire, where they became coloni. Constantine (306- ^g^j.^'J^^ns
337 A.D.) is said to have called in three hundred thousand of
a single people. In this way it came about that a great many
of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire were Germans before
the great invasions, and the line dividing the citizens of the
Roman Empire from the barbarians was already growing
indistinct.
As the Empire declined in strength and prosperity and was Decline of
gradually permeated by the barbarians, its art and literature and art
rapidly degenerated. The buildings and monuments of Rome
after Marcus Aurelius incline toward tawdry vulgarity in design
and barbarous crudity in execution. The writings of the deca-
dent Romans of this age fell far below the standard of the great
literary men of the golden age of Augustus. Nor did the readers
of the time demand anything better. The distinction of Cicero's
clear style lost its charm for the readers of the fourth and fifth
centuries, and a flowery kind of rhetoric took its place. No
 Out lilies of Eh rope a }i History
3o6
more great men of letters arose. Few of those who understand
and enjoy Latin literature to-day would think of reading for
pleasure any of the poetry or prose written in the later centuries
of the Roman Empire.
During the three hundred years before the barbarian inva-
sions those who studied at all did not ordinarily take the trouble
to read the best books of the earlier Greek and Roman writers,
but relied upon mere collections of quotations, and got their
information from textbooks put together by often ignorant
compilers. These textbooks the Middle Ages inherited and
continued to use. The great Greek writers were forgotten alto-
gether, and only a few of the better known Latin authors like
Cicero, Horace, and Virgil continued to be copied and read.

Section 49. The Triumph of Christianity

Like so many of the emperors of his time Diocletian had

risen from the ranks of provincial troops and felt little attach-
ment for the city of Rome, The pressure of dangerous enemies
on the oriental frontier and the threatening flood of German
barbarians along the lov/er Danube kept him much in the East,
and still further detached him from Rome. Similar conditions led
Constantine to forsake Rome altogether, to shift his residence
eastward, and to establish a new seat of government on the
Bosporus at the old Greek city of Byzantium (see map, p. 1 46).
The Emperor stripped many an ancient city of its great monu-
ments in order to secure materials for the beautification of his
splendid residence. Some of these monuments from older places
still stand in Constantinople (Fig. 130). By 330 a.d. the new
capital on the Bosporus was a magnificent monumental city,
whence the Emperor might overlook both Europe and Asia.
Meantime one of the most important changes in the whole
career of man was slowly taking place within the Roman Em-
pire. The long struggle of Christianity among the older reli-
gions of the Mediterranean and the Orient (p. 300) had steadily
TJic Roman Empire to the TriumpJi of CJiristianity 307

continued. The first Christians looked for the speedy return of

Christ before their own generation should pass away. Since all
were filled with enthusiasm for the Gospel and eagerly awaited

^^

i^'-^^fmw^'/.

i
—_2^ i i . At\ J. -^ 4 t\/%^

Fig. 130. Ancient Monuments in Constaxtinople

The obelisk in the foreground (nearly one hundred feet high) was first
set up in Thebes, Egypt, by the conqueror Thutmose III (p. 46) ; it
was erected here by the Roman Emperor Theodosius (p. 309). The
small spiral column at the right is the base of a bronze tripod set up by
the Greeks at Delphi (Fig. 82) in commemoration of their victory over
the Persians at Platsea (p. 177). The names of thirty-one Greek cities
which took part in the battle are still to be read, engraved on this base.
These monuments of ancient oriental and Greek supremacy stand in
what was the Roman horse-race course when the earlier Greek city of
Byzantium became the eastern capital of Rome (p. 306). Finally, the
great mosque behind the obelisk, with its slender minarets, represents
the triumph of Islam under the Turks, who took the city in 1453 a.d.

the last day, they did not feel the need for much organization.
But as time went on the Christian communities greatly increased
in size, and many persons joined them who had litde or none
of the original earnestness and devotion. It became necessary
to develop a regular system of church government in order to
 Outlines of European History
3o8
control the sinful ahd expel those who brought disgrace upon
their religion by notoriously bad conduct.
The " Cath- Gradually the followers of Christ came to believe in a
olic," or
universal,
church
" Catholic " — that is, a universal — church which embraced
all the groups of true believers in Christ, wherever they might
be. To this one universal church all must belong who hoped
Organization
of the Church to be saved.-^ A sharp distinction was already made between
before Con- the officers of the Church, who were called the clergy, and the
people, or laity. To the clergy was committed the government
of the Church, as well as the teaching of its members. In each
Bishops, of the Roman cities was a bishop, and at the head of each of the
priests, and
archbishops country communities a priest, who had derived his name from
the original elders mentioned in the New Testament.^ It was
not unnatural that the bishops in the chief towns of the Roman
provinces should be especially influential in church affairs.
They came to be called archbishops, and might summon the
bishops of the province to a council to decide important matters.
Constantine
favors the Thus Christianity, once the faith of the weak and the de-
Church spised, gained a strong organization and became politically
powerful. The result w^as that in 311 the Roman Emperor
Galerius^ issued a decree placing the Christian religion upon
the same legal footing as the worship of the Roman gods.
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, strictly enforced this
The end of edict. His successors soon began to issue laws which gave the
the old
religions Christian clergy important privileges and forbade the worship
of the old pagan gods. The splendid temples of the gods, which
fringed the Mediterranean (cut, p. 166) and extended far up the
Nile into inner Africa, were then closed and deserted, as they
are to-day (Fig. 28, Plate III, p. 180).
1 " Whoever separates himself from the Church," writes St. Cyprian (died
258) "is separated from the promises of the Church. . . . He is an alien, he is
profane, he is an enemy ; he can no longer have God for his father who has not
the Church for his mother. If any one could escape who was outside the Ark of
Noah, so also may he escape who shall be outside the bounds of the Church."
See Readings in European Histoij^ chap. ii.
2 Our word " priest " comes from the Greek word presbyter, meaning " elder,"
3 One of the emperors ruling jointly with Constantine,
The Rouian Empire to the Triicmpk of C/wistianity 309

In the last book of the Theodosian Code — a great collection The church
of the laws of the Empire, which was completed in 438 — all Jjosian Code
the emperors' decrees are to be found which relate to the Chris-
tian Church and the clergy. We find that the clergy, in view of
their holy duties, were exempted from certain burdensome gov-
ernment offices and from some of the taxes which the laity had
to pay. They were also permitted to receive bequests. The
emperors themselves built churches and helped the Church in
many ways (see below, section 52). Their example was fol-
lowed by rulers and private individuals all through the Middle
Ages, so that the Church became incredibly wealthy and en-
joyed a far greater income than any state of Europe. The
clergy were permitted to try certain law cases, and they them-
selves had the privilege of being tried in their own church courts
for minor criminal offenses.
The Theodosian Code makes it iinlaivful for any one to differ Heresy
from the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Those who dared to as crime
disagree with the teachings of the Church were called he7'etics.
If heretics ventured to come together, their meetings were to be
broken up and the teachers heavily fined. Houses in which the
doctrines of the heretics were taught were to be confiscated by
the government. The books containing their teachings were to
be sought out with the utmost care and burned under the eyes
of the magistrate ; and if any one was convicted of concealing
a heretical book, he was to suffer capital punishment.
It is clear, then, that very soon after the Christian Church
was recognized by the Roman government, it induced the em-
jjerors to grant the clergy particular favors, to destroy the
pagan temples and prohibit pagan worship, and, finally, to
persecute all those who ventured to disagree with the orthodox
teachings of the Church.
We shall find that the governments in the Middle Ages, fol-
lowing the example of the Roman emperors, continued to grant
the clergy special privileges and to persecute heretics, often in
a very cruel manner (see below, section 82).
 Outlines of liiiropcan History
3IO
In these provisions of the Thcodosian Code the later medie-
val Church is clearly foreshadowed. The imperial government
in the West was soon overthrown by the barbarian conquerors,
but the Catholic Church converted and ruled these conquerors.
When the officers of the Empire deserted their posts, the bishops
stayed to meet the oncoming invader. They continued to rep-
resent the old civilization and ideas of order. It was the Church
that kept the Latin language alive among those who knew only
a rude German dialect. It was the Church that maintained some
little education even in the times of greatest ignorance, for with-
out the ability to read Latin the priests could not have performed
the religious services and the bishops could not have carried on
their correspondence with one another.

Section 50. Retrospect

Retrospect As we stand here at the close of the career of ancient civili-
zation, we may look back for a moment and glance over the
vast vista traversed by early man. For some fifty thousand
years he struggled upward through the Stone Age, from which
he emerged into civilized life for the first time in the Orient.
There we found the first home of civilization in the valley of
the Nile, where it arose over five thousand years ago, appear-
ing later also along the lower Euphrates. From these early
homes it contributed for ages to the civilization of the Medi-
terranean world, till Greek genius arose to assert its own inde-
pendent individuality and the supremacy of mind. At Salamis
and Marathon Hellas repulsed the sovereignty of the East and
of eastern ideals of government and thought. That victory was
not in vain, for it stirred free Athens, as we have seen, to the
greatest intellectual achievements in her history. But we have
said before that the repulse of Persia was not final (p. 237).
Final orien-
talization of
The tide from the East could not be stayed by a successful
the Medi- battle or two. It swept through the Mediterranean with in-
terranean
creasing power, till Rome, the last great state of the ancient
The Roman Empire to the TriiimpJi of Christianity 311

world, was conquered by the civilization of that Orient which

she despised. Her ruler became an oriental sultan ; his methods
of government and administration were orientalized ; oriental
religion and methods of thought were supreme; and at Con-
stantinople life and art were also oriental. By Rome oriental
monarchy was introduced into Europe, where it later so pro-
foundly affected the history of our ancestors, and in the Roman
Empire free citizenship perished. Thus the final organization of
Rome (in spite of the Republic out of which it grew) has proved
one of the great links between the world to which we belong
and the despotism of the early Orient behind Rome.
One leading element in the organization of Rome always The greatest
remained her own, and this was law. In Roman law, still a Rome
power in modern government, w^e have the great creation of
Roman genius, which has more profoundly affected the later
world than any other Roman institution. Another great office
of Rome was the universal spread of that international civili-
zation which had been brought forth by Greece in contact
with the Orient. She gave to that civilization the far-reach-
ing organization which under the Greeks it had lacked. That
organization, though completely transformed into oriental des-
potism, endured for five centuries and withstood the tide of
barbarian invasion from the grasslands of the north (p. 86),
which would otherwise have overwhelmed the disorganized
Greek world long before. Herein lies much of the significance
of Rome. The Roman State was the last bulwark of civilization
intrenched on the Mediterranean against the Indo-European
hordes pouring in from those same northern pastures, where
the ancestors of Greek and Roman alike had once fed their
flocks. But the bulwark, though shaken, did not fall because of
hostile assaults from without. It fell because of decay within,
and because it could not keep itself impervious to the tide of
life from the East.
After the foundation of Constantinople the Roman Empire
for a time remained one in law, government, and culture. Even
 12 021 1lines of European History

Futile effort before the death of Diocletian, however, there was a tendency
to maintain
the unity of for the eastern and western portions to drift apart. Constantine
the Empire
had established his sole supremacy only after a long struggle
There were with his rivals. Thereafter there were often two emperors, one
often two
emperors, but in the west and one in the east, but they were supposed to
only o)ic
Empire govern one empire conjointly and in " unanimity." New laws
were to be accepted by both. The writers of the time do not
speak of two states but continue to refer to " the Empire," as
if the administration were still in the hands of one ruler. Indeed,
the idea of one government for all civilized mankind did not
disappear but continued to influence men during the whole of
the Middle Ages.
The end of The foundation of Constantinople and the establishment of
the ancient
world a western emperor at Rome left the venerable city dangerously
isolated ; it was a fatal step toward the surrender of Rome and
the West to the barbarians, who were already gaining possession
of the Empire by peaceable migration (p. 305). From the bar-
barism which engulfed it in the fifth century a.d. the Roman
west did not emerge for centuries. The Roman Empire sur-
viving at Constantinople belonged, as we have seen, to the East
and was essentially an oriental state. This was the outcome of
the long struggle of civilization in the Mediterranean. Its finest
fruits — democracy, free citizenship, creative art, and independent
thought unshackled by theology — had perished.
Eastern Although it was in the eastern part of the Empire that the
Empire
lasts until barbarians first got a permanent foothold, the emperors at
1453 A.D.
Constantinople were able to keep a portion of the old posses-
sions of the Empire under their rule for centuries after the
Germans had completely conquered the West. When at last
the eastern capital of the Empire fell, it was not into the hands
of the Germans, but into those of the Turks, who have held it
ever since 1453 (Fig. 130).
There will be no room in this volume to follow the histoiy of
the Eastern Empire, although it cannot be entirely ignored in
studying western Europe. Its language and civilization had
 The Roman Empii'e to tJic Triinnph of Christianity 313

always been Greek, and owing to this and the influence of the Constanti-

Orient, its civilization offers a marked contrast to that of the mTst^'wealthy

Latin West, which w^as adopted by the Germans. Learning of ^"^^ populous
a mechanical type never died out in the East as it did in the Europe dur-
1 1 11-1- . ing the early
West, nor did art reach so low an ebb. ror some centuries Middle Ages
after the break-up of the Roman Empire in the West, the capital
of the Eastern Empire enjoyed the distinction of being the
largest and most wealthy city of Europe. Within its walls could
be found a refinement and civilization which had almost dis-
appeared inthe West, and its beautiful buildings, its parks, and
paved streets filled travelers from the West with astonishment.

QUESTIONS
Section 45. Recount the career of Octavian. Did he wish to
destroy the Republic ? Describe the office which he wished to hold
under it. What kind of an adjustment of power resulted? Could it
be permanent.? What was the foreign policy of Augustus.? Define
the extent of the Empire and name some of the peoples it included.
What is the distance from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the
Euphrates, and how far would a line of this length reach across
the United States.? Describe the condition of the army at this time;
of the Empire as a whole. What did Augustus attempt to restore ?
Give some account of Horace and Virgil. Contrast Greek and
Roman literature. Discuss philosophy in Augustan Rome. Give
some account of Roman law.
Section 46. What conditions did a wealthy Roman traveler find
during the first century of the Roman Empire.? in Hellas.? in the
East? in E!gypt? in the W^est? How long did the peace established
by Augustus last? Mention the chief causes of decline during this
period.
Describe a Roman villa. Discuss slavery. Define coloiii, and
compare them with slaves. What was happening to the population
of the Empire as a whole ? Describe city life. W^hat oriental influences
are discernible ?
Section 47. Discuss the oriental religions in the Mediterranean.
Describe the spread of Christianity.
Section 48. Whose reign marked the end of the two centuries
of peace ? Give an account of this reign. What followed ? Describe
314 Gutliiics of European History

the revolution of the third century a.ij. What happened to the

highest civilization ? What kind of a Roman state issued from this
revolution ?
Who organized it ? What was now the character of taxation ?
What was the result? Describe the army under Diocletian and
later. Discuss literature and art under the declining Roman Empire.
Section 49. Where was the Emperor's new residence and who
founded it 1 Tell what religion now triumphed and how it came about.
How was the Christian Church organized and what were bishops
and archbishops .^
What privileges are granted to the Christian clergy in the Theo-
dosian Code ? Define heresy. How were heretics treated according
to Roman law.^
Sectiox 50. Sketch the career of man to the fall of ancient
civilization. What influences were the leading ones in the Eastern
Empire? What were the greatest offices of Rome? Discuss the
unity of the Empire after the founding of Constantinople. What
happened to Rome and the West? How long did the Eastern
Empire survive, and what was it like?
 CHAPTER XII

THE GERMAN INVASIONS AND THE BREAK-UP OF THE

ROMAN EMPIRE

Section 51. Founding of Kingdoms by Barbarian

Chiefs

It is impossible to divide the past into distinct, clearly defined Impossibility

of dividing
periods and prove that one age ended and another began in a par- the past into
ticular year, such as 333 B.C., or 1453 a.d,, or 1789. Men do not clearly fined
de-periods
and cannot change their habits and ways of doing things all at
once, no matter what happens. It is true that a single event,
such as an important battle w^hich results in the loss of a nation's
independence, may produce an abrupt change in the government. ally
This in turn may either encourage or discourage trade and
manufactures, and modify the language and alter the interests
of a people. But these deeper changes take place only very All general
changes take
gradually. After a battle or a revolution the farmer will sow
and reap in his old way ; the artisan will take up his familiar place gradu-
tasks, and the merchant his buying and selling. The scholar
will study and write as he formerly did, and the household will
go on under the new government just as it did under the old.
3'5
 Outlines of European Histoiy
3i6
So a change in government affects the habits of a people but
slowly in any case, and it may leave them quite unaltered.
The unity or This tendency of mankind to do, in general, this year v^hat
continuity of
history it did last, in spite of changes in some one department of life, —
such as substituting a president for a king, traveling by rail in-
stead of on horseback, or getting the news from a newspaper
instead of from a neighbor, — results in what is called the unity
or co?itinuity of history. The truth that no sudden change has
ever taken place in all the customs of a people, and that it can-
not, in the nature of things, take place, is perhaps the most
fundamental lesson that history teaches.
General Historians sometimes seem to forget this principle, when they
changes do
not occur on undertake to begin and end their books at precise dates. We
fixed dates
find histories of Europe from 476 to 918, from 1270 to 1492,
as if the accession of a capable German king in 918, or the
death of a famous French king in 1270, or the discovery of
America in 1492, marked ?i general change in European affairs.
In reality, however, no general change took place at these dates
or in any other single year.
Meaning of
the term
We cannot, therefore, hope to fix any year or event which may
" Middle properly be taken as the beginning of that long period which
Ages " followed the break-up of the Roman Empire in western Europe
and which is commonly called the Middle Ages. Beyond the
northern and eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire, w^hich
embraced the whole civilized world from the Euphrates to Britain,
mysterious peoples moved about w^hose history before they came
into occasional contact with the Romans is practically unknown.
The Germans
belonged to These Germans, or " Barbarians " as the Romans called them,
the Indo- belonged to the same great group of peoples to which the Per-
European
peoples sians, Greeks, and Romans belonged — the Indo-European race
(see above, pp. 86 ff.). They were destined, as their relatives
had earlier done, to take possession of the lands of others and
help build up a different civilization from that they found. They
had first begun to make trouble about a hundred years before
Christ, when a great army of them was defeated by the Roman
 The German Invasions 317

general Marius. Julius Caesar narrates in polished Latin how

fifty years later he drove back other bands. Five hundred years
elapsed, however, before German chieftains succeeded in found-
ing kingdoms within the boundaries of the Empire. With their
establishment the Roman government in western Europe m.ay be
said to have come to an end and the Middle Ages to have begun.
Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that this means Most medie-
that the Roman civilization suddenly disappeared at this time, ^e foundTn*^
Long^ before the German conquest,
^ art and literature had begun
° "^^^ ^^}^
man ^°"
Empire
to decline toward the level that they reached in the Middle Ages.
Many of the ideas and conditions which prevailed after the com-
ing of the barbarians were common enough before. Even the
ignorance and strange ideas which we associate particularly with
the Middle Ages are to be found in the later Roman Empire.
The term " Middle Ages " will be used in this volume to
mean, roughly speaking, the period of over a thousand years
that elapsed between the fifth century, when the disorder of the
barbarian invasions was becoming general, and the opening of
the sixteenth century, when Europe was well on its way to recover
all that had been lost since the break-up of the Roman Empire.
Previous to the year 375 the attempts of the Germans to The Huns
penetrate into the Roman Empire appear to have been due to Goths into
their love of adventure, their hope of plundering their civilized ^^^ Empu-e
neighbors, or the need of new lands for their increasing num-
bers. And the Romans, by means of their armies, their walls,
and their guards, had up to this time succeeded in preventing
the barbarians from violently occupying Roman territory. But
suddenly a new force appeared in the rear of the Germans
which thrust some of them across the northern boundary of the
Empire. The Huns, a Mongolian folk from central Asia, swept
down upon the Goths, who were a German tribe settled upon
the Danube, and forced a part of them to seek shelter across
the river, within the limits of the Empire.
Here they soon fell out with the Roman officials, and a great
battle was fought at Adrianople in 378 in which the Goths
 Outlines of EuivpCLVi History
3 1 8
Battle of defeated and slew the Roman emperor, Valens. The Germans
Adrianople,
had now not only broken through the boundaries of the Empire^
but they had also learned that they could defeat the Roman
legions. The battle of Adrianople may therefore be said to
mark the beginning of the conquest of the western part of the
Empire by the Germans. For some years, however, after the
battle of Adrianople the various bands of West Goths — or
Visigoths, as they are often called — were induced to accept the
terms of peace offered by the emperor's officials, and some of
the Goths agreed to serve as soldiers in the Roman armies.
Alaric takes Among the Germans who succeeded in getting an important
Rome, 410
position in the Roman army was Alaric, but he appears to have
become dissatisfied with the treatment he received from the Em-
peror. He therefore collected an army, of which his countrymen,
the West Goths, formed a considerable part, and set out for Italy,
and finally decided to march on Rome itself. The Eternal City
fell into his hands in 410 and was plundered by his followers.
St. Augus- Although Alaric did not destroy the city, or even seriously
tine's City
of God damage it, the fact that Rome had fallen into the hands of an
invading army was a notable disaster. The pagans explained it
on the ground that the old gods were angry because so many
people had deserted them and become Christians. St. Augustine,
in his famous book, The City of God, took much pains to prove
that the Roman gods had never been able on previous occasions
to prevent disaster to their worshipers, and that Christianity could
not be held responsible for the troubles of the time.
West Goths Alaric died before he could find a satisfactory spot for his
settle in
southern people to settle upon permanently. After his death the West
Gaul and
Spain
Goths wandered into Gaul, and then into Spain. Here they
came upon the Vandals, another German tribe, who had
crossed the Rhine four years before Alaric had captured
Rome. For three years they had devastated Gaul and then had
moved down into Spain. For a time after the arrival in Spain of
the West Goths, there was war between them and the Vandals.
The West Goths seem to have got the best of their rivals, for
 W N)
Xolgi

X^I5$

otttS

S B A
4 ^
h R o ^ i
i AclrAan(5ple/-V

EXELANATION.:
'-■ VANDALS
"■"WEST
LIMITS GOTHS
OF ATTILA'S
E^EMPIRE ABOUT 450

"";_ EAST GOTHS

FRANKS
"^ SAXONS AND ANGLES

C:^^^ ••
^ -4 jv
E ^

Al«xau(lri3 ^^
from Green wicl)
 The German Invasions 319

the A^andals determined to move on across the Strait of Gibraltar the

Kingdom of
Vandals
into northern Africa, where they established a kingdom and con- in Africa

quered the neigh-

boring islands in the
Mediterranean (see
map, p. 323).
Having rid them-
selves of the Van-
dals, the West Goths
took possession of a
great part of the Span-
ish peninsula, and
this they added to
their conquests across
the Pyrenees in Gaul,
so that their kingdom
extended from the
river Loire to the
Strait of Gibraltar.
It is unnecessary
to follow the con-
fused history of the
movements of the
innumerable bands
of restless barbari-
ans who wandered
about Europe dur-
ing the fifth century. Fig. 131. Roman Mausoleum at St.-Remy
Scarcely any part The Roman town of Glanum (now called St.-
of western Europe Remy) in southern France was destroyed by
the West Goths in 480. Litde remains of the
was left unmolested; town except a triumphal arch and the great
even Britain wascon- monument pictured here. Above the main
arches is the inscription, SEX. L. M. IVLIEI.
quered by German C. F. PARENTIBUS. SVEIS, which seems to
tribes, the Angles mean, " Sextus Julius and [his brothers] Lucius
and Saxons. and Marcus, sons of Gaius, to their parents "
 Outlines of European History
320
Attila and To add to the universal confusion caused l3y the influx of the
the Huns
German tribes, the Huns (the Mongolian people who had first
pushed the West Goths into the Empire) now began to hll all
western Europe with terror. Under their chief, Attila, this sav-
age people invaded Gaul. But the Romans and the German
inhabitants joined together against the invaders and defeated
them in the battle of Chalons, in 451. After this rebuff in Gaul,
Attila turned to Italy. But the danger there was averted by a
Roman embassy, headed by Pope Leo the Great, who induced
Attila to give up his plan of marching upon Rome. Within a
year he died and with him perished the power of the Huns,
who never troubled Europe again.
The " fall " of The year 47^ has commonly been taken as the date of the
the Empire
in the \Vest, " fall " of the Western Empire and of the beginning of the
476 Middle Ages. What happened in that year was this. Most of
the Roman emperors in the West had proved weak and indolent
rulers. So the barbarians wandered hither and thither pretty
much at their pleasure, and the German troops in the service
of the Empire became accustomed to set up and depose
emperors to suit their own special interest, very much in the
same way that a boss in an American city often succeeds in
securing the election of a mayor w^ho will carry out his wishes'.
Odoacer Finally in 476, Odoacer, the most powerful among the rival
German generals in Italy, declared himself king and banished
the last of the emperors of the West.^
Theodoric
conquers
It was not, however, given -to Odoacer to establish an endur-
Odoacer and ing German kingdom on Italian soil, for he was conquered by
establishes
the kingdom the great Theodoric, the king of the East Goths (or Ostro-
of the East
Goths in goths). Theodoric had spent ten years of his early youth in
Italy Constantinople and had thus become familiar with Roman life
and was on friendly terms with the Emperor of t-he E^st.
The struggle between Theodoric and Odoacer lasted for sev-
eral years, but Odoacer was finally shut up in Ravenna and
1 The common misapprehensions in regard to the events of 476 are discussed
by the author in The Nciv History^ pp. 1 54 ff.
 TJic German Invasions

surrendered, only to be treacherously slain a few days later by Italy

Theodoric s own hand (493J.
The East
Theodoric put the name of the Eiuperor at Constantinople
on the coins which he issued, and did everything in his power Goths 'in
to gam
the Emperor's approval of the new German kingdom.
32

Fig. 132. Church of Saxt' Apollinare Nuovo

This church was erected at Ravenna by Theodoric. Although the out-
side has been changed, the interior, here represented, remains much
the same as it was originally. The twenty-four marble columns were
brought from Constantinople. The walls are adorned with 7?iosahs,
that is, pictures made by piecing together small squares of brightly
colored marbles or glass

Nevertheless, although he desired that the Emperor should

sanction his usurpation, Theodoric had no idea of being really
subordinate to Constantinople.
The invaders took one third of the land for themselves, but
this seems to have been done without causing any serious dis-
order. Theodoric greatly admired the Roman laws and insti-
tutions and did his best to preserve them. The old offices and
titles were retained, and Goth and Roman lived under the same
Roman law. Order was maintained and learning encouraged. In
 322 Outlines of Euvopean History

Ravenna, which Theodoric chose for his capital, beautiful build-

ings still exist that date from his reign. ^
While Theodoric had been establishing his kingdom in Italy
in this enlightened way, Gaul, which we now call France, was
coming under the control of the most powerful of all the bar-
barian peoples, the Fra?iks, who were to play a more important
role in the formation of modern Europe than any of the other
German races (see next section).
Besides the kingdom of the East Goths in Italy and of the
Franks in Gaul, the West Goths had their kingdom in Spain,
the Burgundians had established themselves on the Rhone River,
and the Vandals in Africa. Royal alliances were concluded be-
tween the various reigning houses, and for the first time in the
history of Europe we see something like a family of nations, liv-
ing each within its own boundaries and dealing with one another
as independent powers (see map). It seemed for a few years
as if the new German kings who had divided up the western por-
tion of the Empire among themselves would succeed in keeping
order and in preventing the loss of such civilization as remained.
But no such good fortune was in store for Europe, which
was now only at the beginning of the turmoil which was to
leave it almost completely barbarized, for there was little to
encourage the reading or writing of books, the study of science,
or attention to art, in a time of constant warfare and danger.
Cassiodorus Theodoric had a distinguished Roman counselor named Cassi-
manuals odorus (d. 575), to whosc letters we owe a great part of our
knowledge of this period, and who busied himself in his old age

1 The headpiece of this chapter represents the tomb of Theodoric. Emperors

and rich men were accustomed in Roman times to build handsome tombs for
themselves (see Fig. 131). Theodoric followed their example and erected this two-
storied building at Ravenna to serve as his mausoleum. The dome consists of a
single great piece of rock 36 feet in diameter, weighing 500 tons, brought from
across the Adriatic. Theodoric was a heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church,
and not long after his death his remains were taken out of his tomb and scattered
to the winds, and the building converted into a church. The picture represents
the tomb as it probably looked originally ; it has been somewhat altered in modem
times, but is well preserved.
 SCALE OF MILES

b ' 100 200 300 400

Longitude

Map of Europe in the Time of Theodoric

It will be noticed that Theodoric's kingdom of the East Goths included

a considerable part of what we call Austria to-day, and that the West
Gothic kingdom extended into southern France. The Vandals held
northern Africa and the adjacent islands. The Burgundians lay in be-
tween the East Goths and the Franks. The Lombards, who were later
to move down into Italy, were in Theodoric's time east of the Bavarians,
after whom modern Bavaria is named. Some of the Saxons invaded
England, but many remained in Germany, as indicated on the map.
The Eastern Empire, which was all that remained of the Roman Empire,
included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, and the eastern portion of
the Mediterranean. The Britons in Wales, the Picts in Scotland, and
the Scots in Ireland were Celts, consequently modern Welsh, Gaelic, and
Irish are closely related and belong to the Celtic group of languages

323
 324 Outlines of European }Iistory

in preparing textbool<s of the " liberal " arts and sciences, —

grammar, arithmetic, logic, geometry, rhetoric, music, and as-
tronomy. His treatment of these seven important subjects, to
which he devotes a few pages each, seems to us very silly and
absurd and enables us to estimate the low plane to which learn-
ing had fallen in Italy in the sixth century. Yet these and similar
works were regarded as standard treatises and used as textbooks
all through the Middle Ages, while the really great Greek and
Roman writers of the earlier period were forgotten.
Scarcely any
writers in
Between the time of Theodoric and that of Charlemagne
western three hundred years elapsed, during which scarcely a person
Europe dur- was to be found who could write out, even in the worst of
ing the sixth,
seventh, and
eighth cen- Latin, an account of the events of his day.-^ Everything con-
turies
spired todiscourage education. The great centers of learning —
Carthage, Rome, Alexandria, Milan — had all been partially
destroyed by the invaders. The libraries which had been kept
in the temples of the pagan gods were often burned, along
with the temples themselves, by Christian enthusiasts, who
were not sorry to see the heathen books disappear with the
heathen religion. Shortly after Theodoric 's death the Emperor
at Constantinople withdrew the support which the Roman gov-
ernment had been accustomed to grant to public teachers, and
closed the great school at Athens. The only important historian
of the sixth century was the half-illiterate Gregor)-, bishop of
Tours (d. 594), whose whole work is evidence of the sad state
of affairs. He at least heartily appreciated his own ignorance
and exclaims, in bad Latin, " Woe to our time, for the study of
books has perished from among us."
Justinian
destroys the The year after Theodoric's death one of the greatest of the
kingdoms of
the Vandals
emperors of the East, Justinian (527-565), came to the throne
and the East at Constantinople. He undertook to regain for the Empire the
Goths
provinces in Africa and Italy that had been occupied by the
Vandals and East Goths. His general, Belisarius, overthrew
1 See Robinson, Readings in European History^ I, chap, iii (end), for histori-
cal writings of this period.
 TJic Gennan Invasions 325

the Vandal kingdom in northern Africa in 534, but it was a

more difficult task to destroy the Gothic rule in Italy. How-
ever, in spite of a brave resistance, the Goths were so com-
pletely defeated in 553 that they agreed to leave Italy with all
their movable possessions. What became of the remnants of
the race we do not know.
The destruction of the Gothic kingdom was a disaster for The Lo

Italy,farformore
and the barbarous
Goths would have helped
invaders. defend after
Immediately it against later i^^iy^ °
the death
of Justinian the country was overrun by the Lombards, the
last of the great German peoples to establish themselves within
the bounds of the former Empire. They were a savage race, a
considerable part of which was still pagan. The newcomers
first occupied the region north of the Po, which has ever
since been called " Lombardy " after them, and then extended
their conquests southward. Instead of settling themselves with
the moderation and wise statesmanship of the East Goths, the
Lombards moved about the peninsula pillaging and massacring.
Such of the inhabitants as could, fled to the islands off the
coast. The Lombards were unable, however, to conquer all of
Italy. Rome, Ravenna, and southern Italy continued to be held
by the emperors who succeeded Justinian at Constantinople.
As time went on, the Lombards lost their wildness and adopted
the habits and religion of the people among whom they lived.
Their kingdom lasted over two hundred years, until it was
conquered by Charlemagne (see below, p. 374).

Section 52. Kingdom of the Franks

The various kingdoms established by the German chieftains The Franks :

were not very permanent, as we have seen. The Eranks, how- tance3°'^
ever, succeeded in conquering more territory than any other JJj*^^on"^uesr^
people and in founding an empire far more important than the
kingdoms of the West and East Goths, the Vandals, or the
Lombards. We must now see how this was accomplished.
 Outlines of European History
326
When the P>anks are first heard of in history they were set-
tled along the lower Rhine, from Cologne to the North Sea.
Their method of getting a foothold in the Empire was essen-
tially different from that which
the Goths, Lombards, and
Vandals had adopted. Instead
of severing their connection
with Germany and becoming
an island in the sea of the
Empire, they conquered by de-
grees the territory about them.
However far they might ex-
tend their control, they re-
mained in constant touch with
their fellow barbarians behind
them. In this way they re-
tained the warlike vigor that
was lost by the races who
were completely surrounded
by the luxuries of Roman civi-
lization.
Fig. 133. Fraxkish Warrior
In the early part of the fifth
It is very hard to find illustrations
for a chapter on the barbarian in- century they had occupied the
vasions, for this period of disorder district which forms to-day
was not one in which pictures were the kingdom of Belgium, as
being painted or buildings erected.
From the slight descriptions we well as the regions east of
have of the costume worn by the it. In 486, seven years before
Frankish soldiers, we infer that it Theodoric founded his Italian
was something Hke that repre-
kingdom, they went forth un-
sented here. We know that they
wore their hair in long braids and der their great king, Clovis
carried weapons similar to those (a name that later grew into
in the picture
Louis), and defeated the
Roman general who opposed them. They extended their control
over Gaul as far south as the Loire, which at that time formed
the northern boundarv of the kingdom of the West Goths.
 TJic Gcnnau Invasions 327

Clovis next enlarged his empire on the east by the conquest

of the Alemanni, a German people living in the region of the
Black Forest.
of Clovis, 496
The battle in which the Alemanni were defeated (496) is in C onversion
one respect important above all the other battles of Clovis
Although still a pagan himself, his wife had been converted to
Christianity. In the midst of the battle, seeing his troops giving
way, he called upon Jesus Christ and pledged himself to be
baptized in his name if he would help the Franks to victory
over their enemies. When he won the battle he kept his word
and was baptized, together with three thousand of his warriors.
It is from Bishop Gregory of Tours, mentioned above, that most
of our knowledge of Clovis and his successors is glerived. In
Gregory's famous History of the Franks the cruel and unscrupu-
lous Clovis appears as God's chosen instrument for the support
of the Christian faith.^ Certainly Clovis quickly learned to com-
bine his own interests with those of the Church, and, later, an
alliance between the Pope and the Frankish kings was destined
to have a great influence upon the history of western Europe.*
To the south of Clovis's new possessions in Gaul lay the Conquests of
kingdom of the West Goths ; to the southeast that of another
German people, the Burgundians. Clovis speedily extended his
power to the Pyrenees, and forced the West Goths to confine
themselves to the Spanish portion of their realm, while the Bur-
gundians soon fell completely under the rule of the P>anks.
Then Clovis, by a series of murders, brought portions of the
Frankish nation itself, which had previously been independent
of him, under his scepter.
When Clovis died in 511 at Paris, which he had made his Bloody
residence, his four sons divided his possessions among them, of Frankish
Wars between rival brothers, interspersed with the most horrible ^^^^^
murders, fill the annals of the Frankish kingdom for over a hun-
dred years after the death of Clovis, Yet the nation continued
to develop in spite of the unscrupulous deeds of its rulers.
1 See Readings, chap, iii, for passages from Gregory of Tours.
 Outlines of En rope an History
328
T\\Q Frankish kings who followed Clovis succeeded in ex-
tending their power over pretty nearly all the territory that is
included to-day in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as
well as over a goodly portion of western Germany. Half a
century after the death of Clovis, their dominions extended from
the Eav of Biscay on the west to a point east of Salzburg.

of the 0^
The Domixioxs of the Fraxks uxder the Merovixgiaxs
This map shows how the Frankish kingdom grew up. Clovis while still
a young man defeated the Roman general Syagrius in 486, near Sois-
sons, and so added the region around Paris to his possessions. He
added Alemannia on the east in 496. In 507 he made Paris his capital
and conquered Aquitania, previously held by the West Goths. He also
made a beginning in adding the kingdom of the Burgundians to his
realms. Pie died in 511. His successors in the next half century com-
pleted the conquest of Burgundy and added Provincia, Bavaria, and
Gascony. There were many divisions of the Frankish realms after the
time of Clovis, and the eastern and western portions, called Austrasia
and Neustria, were often ruled by different branches of the Merovingiatis,
as Clovis's family was called
 The German Invasions ^ig

Section 53. Results of the Barbarian Invasions

As one looks back over the German invasions it is natural Fusion of
to ask upon what terms the newcomers lived among the old ^^s anc?the
inhabitants of the Empire, how far they adopted the customs ^^.^^^ pop"-
of those among whom they settled, and how far they clung to
their old habits ? These questions cannot be answered very sat-
isfactorily. Solittle is known of the confused period of which
w^e have been speaking that it is impossible to follow closely
the mixing of the two races.
Yet a few things are tolerably clear. In the first place, we The number
must be on our guard against exaggerating the numbers in the barians^^^
various bodies of invaders. The writers of the time indicate

that the \\'est Goths, when they were first admitted to the
Empire before the battle of Adrianople, amounted to four or
five hundred thousand persons, including men, women, and chil-
dren. This is the largest band reported, and it must have been
greatly reduced before the West Goths, after long wanderings
and many battles, finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul. The
Burgundians, when they appear for the first time on the banks
of the Rhine, are reported to have had eighty thousand warriors
among them. When Clovis and his army were baptized, Gregory
of Tours speaks of " over three thousand " soldiers who became
Christians upon that occasion. This would seem to indicate
that this was the entire army of the Frankish king at this time.
Undoubtedly these figures are very meager and unreliable.
But the readiness with which the Germans appear to have
adopted the language and customs of the Romans would tend
to prove that the invaders formed but a small minority of the
population. Since hundreds of thousands of barbarians had
been absorbed during the previous five centuries, the invasions
of the fifth century can hardly have made an abrupt change in
the character of the population.
The barbarians within the old Empire were soon speaking the
same conversational Latin which was everywhere used by the
 Outlines of European History
330
Romans about them. This was much simpler than the elaborate
and complicated language used in books, which we find so much
difficulty in learning nowadays. The speech of the common peo-
ple was gradually diverging more and more, in the various coun-
tries of southern Europe, from the written Latin, and finally grew
into French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. But the barba-
rians did not produce this change, for it had begun before they
came and would have gone on without them. They did no more
than contribute a few convenient words to the new languages.
The northern Franks, who did not penetrate far into the
Empire, and the Germans who remained in what is now Ger-
many and in Scandinavia, had of course no reason for giving
up their native tongues ; the Angles and Saxons in Britain also
kept theirs. These Germanic languages in time became Dutch,
English, German, Danish, Swedish, etc. Of this matter some-
thing will be said later (see below, section 92).
The Germans and the older inhabitants of the Roman Empire
appear to have had no dislike for one another, except when
there was a difference in religion.^ Where there was no religious
barrier the two races intermarried freely from the first. The
Frankish kings did not hesitate to appoint Romans to impor-
tant positions in the government and in the army, just as the
Romans had long been in the habit of employing the barbarians
as generals and officials. In only one respect were the two
races distinguished for a time — each had its particular law.
The West Goths were probably the first to wTite down their
ancient laws, using the Latin language for the purpose. Their
example was followed by the Franks, the Burgundians, and later
by the Lombards and other peoples. These codes make up the
" Laws of the Barbarians," which form our most important
source of knowledge of the habits and ideas of the Germans at
the time of the invasions. For several centuries following the

1 The West and East Goths and the Burgundians were heretics in the eyes
of the Catholic Church, for they had been taught their Christianity by mission-
aries who disagreed with the Catholic Church on certain points.
 The Germajt Invasions 331

barbarian conquests, the members of the various German tribes

appear to have been judged by the laws of the particular people to
which they belonged. The older inhabitants of the Empire, on
the contrary, continued to have their lawsuits decided according
to the Roman law.
The German laws did not provide for trials, either in the Medieval
Roman or the modern sense of the word. There was no attempt
to gather and weigh evidence and base the decision upon it.
Such a mode of procedure was far too elaborate for the simple-
minded Germans. Instead of a regular trial, one of the parties
to the case was designated to prove that his side of the case
was true by one of the following methods :
1. He might solemnly swear that he was telling the truth Compurga-
and get as many other persons of his own class as the court
required, to swear that they believed that he was telling the truth.
This was called annpurgation. It was believed that God would
punish those who swore falsely.
2. On the other hand, the parties to the case, or persons Wager of
representing them, might meet in combat, on the supposition
that Heaven would grant victory to the right. This was the
so-called tvager of battle.
3. Lastly, one or other of the parties might be required to Ordeals
submit to the ordeal in one of its various forms : He might
plunge his arm into hot water, or carry a bit of hot iron for
some distance, and if at the end of three days he showed no ill
effects, the case was decided in his favor. Or he might be
ordered to walk over hot plowshares, and if he was not burned,
it was assumed that God had intervened by a miracle to establish
the right. ^ This method of trial is but one example of the rude
civilization which displaced the refined and elaborate organization
of the Romans.
The account which has been given of the conditions in the
Roman Empire, and of the manner in which the barbarians
1 Professor Emerton gives an excellent account of the Germanic ideas of law
in his bitrodiiction to the Middle Ages, pp. 73-91.
 Outlines of Eiiropcau History
:>:)■
The igno- occupicd its western part, serve to explain why the following
orde'rof the^ centuries — known as the early Middle Ages — were a time of
S-e^
Ages ^^'^*^'^ ignorance and disorder. The Germans, no doubt, varied a good
deal in their habits and character. The Goths differed from the
Lombards, and the Franks from the Vandals ; but they all agreed
in knowing nothing of the art, literature, and science which had
been developed by the Greeks and adopted by the Romans. The
invaders were ignorant, simple, vigorous people, with no taste
for anything except fighting, eating, and drinking. Such was the
disorder that their coming produced that the declining civiliza-
tion of the Empire was pretty nearly submerged. The libraries,
buildings, and works of art were destroyed or neglected, and
there was no one to see that they were restored. So the western
world fell back into a condition similar to that in which it had
been before the Romans conquered and civilized it.
The loss was, however, temporary. The great heritage of
skill and invention which had been slowly accumulated in Egypt
and Greece, and which formed a part of the civilization which
the Romans had adopted and spread abroad throughout their
great Empire, did not wholly perish.
It is true that the break-up of the Roman Empire and the
centuries of turmoil which followed set everything back, but we
shall see how the barbarian nations gradually developed into our
modern European states, how universities were established in
which the books of the Greeks and Romans were studied.
Architects arose in time to imitate the old buildings and build
a new kind of their own quite as imposing as those of the
Romans, and men of science carried discoveries far beyond
anything known to the wisest of the Greeks and Romans.

QUESTIONS
Section 51. How did the Germans first come into the Roman
Empire, and for what reasons t What is meant by the barbarian in-
vasions ?Give some examples. Trace the history of the West ( jOths.
Where did they finally establish their kingdom.? Why has the
 TJie German Invasions 333

year 476 been regarded as the date of the fall of the Roman Empire?
Tell what you can of Theodoric and his kingdom. Contrast the
Lombard invaders of Italy with the East Goths.
Sectiox 52. Who were the Franks, and how did their invasion
differ from that of the other German peoples .-^ What did Clovis
accomplish, and what was the extent of the kingdom of the Franks
under his successors ? Compare the numbers of the barbarians who
seem to have entered the Empire with the number of people in our
large cities to-day.
Section 53. On what terms do the Germans seem to have lived
with the people of the Roman Empire 1 Why are the " Laws of the
Barbarians" useful to the historian ? Compare the ways in which the
Germans tried law cases with those we use to-day in the United States.
Tell as clearly as possible why the Middle Ages were centuries of
disorder and ignorance as compared with the earlier period.
 CHAPTER XIII

THE RISE OF THE PAPACY

Section 54. The Christian Church

Besides the emperors at Constantinople and the various

German kings, there grew up in Europe a line of rulers far
more powerful than any of these, namely, the popes. We must
now consider the Christian Church and see how the popes
gained their great influence.
We have already seen how marvelously the Christian com-
munities founded by the apostles and their fellow missionaries
multiplied until, by the middle of the third century, writers like
St. Cyprian came to conceive of a " Catholic," or all-embracing,
Church. We have seen how Emperor Constantine favored
Christianity, and how his successors worked in the interest of
the new religion ; how carefully the Theodosian Code safe-
guarded the Church and the Christian clergy, and how harshly
those were treated who ventured to hold another view of
Christianity from that sanctioned by the government.^
1 See above, section 49.

334
 The Rise of the Papacy 335

We must now follow this most powerful and permanent of all

the institutions of the later Roman Empire into the Middle Ages.

We must stop first to consider how the Western, or Latin,'

portion of Christendom, which gradually fell apart from the
Eastern, or Greek, region, came to form a separate institution
under the popes, the longest and mightiest line of rulers that
the world has ever seen. We shall see how a peculiar class of
Christians, the monks, appeared ; how they joined hands with
the clergy ; how the monks and the clergy met the barbarians,
subdued and civilized them, and then ruled them for centuries.
One great source of the Church's strength lay in the gen- Contrast be-
eral fear of death and judgment to come, which Christianity and^ChrSan ideas
had brought with it. The educated Greeks and Romans of the
classical period usually thought of the next life, when they
thought of it at all, as a very uninteresting existence compared
with that on this earth. One who committed some great crime
might suffer for it after death with pains similar to those of the
hell in which the Christians believed. But the great part of
humanity were supposed to lead in the next world a shadowy
existence, neither sad nor glad. Religion, even to the de-
vout pagan, was, as we have seen, mainly an affair of this life ;
the gods were worshiped with a view to securing happiness and
success in this world.
Since no great satisfaction could be expected in the next
life, according to pagan ideas, it was naturally thought wise to
make the most of this one. The possibility of pleasure ends —
so the Roman poet Horace urges — when we join the shades
below, as we all must do soon. Let us, therefore, take advan-
tage of every harmless pleasure and improve our brief oppor-
tunity to enjoy the good things of earth. We should, however,
be reasonable and temperate, avoiding all excess, for that
endangers happiness. Above all, we should not worry use-
lessly about the future, which is in the hands of the gods and
beyond our control. Such were the convictions of the majority
of thoughtful pagans.
 Outlines of Europcaii History
336
Other-
worldliness Christianity opposed this view of life with an entirely differ-
of medieval
ent one. It constantly emphasized man's existence after death,
Christianity
which it declared to be infinitely more important than his brief
sojourn on earth. Under the influence of the Church this con-
ception of life gradually supplanted the pagan one in the Roman
world, and it was taught to the barbarians.
The monks The " other-worldliness " became so intense that thousands
gave up their ordinary occupations altogether and devoted their
entire attention to preparation for the next life. They shut
themselves in lonely cells ; and, not satisfied with giving up
most of their natural pleasures, they inflicted bodily suffering
upon themselves by hunger, cold, and other discomforts. They
trusted that in this way they might avoid some of the sins into
which they were apt to fall, and that, by self-inflicted punish-
ment in this world, they might perchance escape some of that
reserved for them in the next.
The barbarians were taught that their fate in the next world
depended largely upon the Church. Its ministers never wearied
of presenting the alternative which faced every man so soon as
this short earthly existence should be over — the alternative
between eternal bliss in heaven and perpetual, unspeakable tor-
ment in hell. Only those who had been duly baptized could
hope to reach heaven ; but baptism washed away only past sins
and did not prevent constant relapse into new ones. These, un-
less their guilt was removed through the Church, would surely
drag the soul down to hell.
Miracles a
source of the The divine power of the Church was, furthermore, estab-
Church's lished in the eyes of the people by the wonderful works which
power
Christian saints were constantly performing. They healed the
sick, made the blind to see and the lame to walk. They called
down God's wrath upon those who opposed the Church and
invoked terrible punishments upon those who treated her holy
rites with contempt. To the reader of to-day the frequency of
the miracles narrated by medieval writers seems astonishing.
The lives of the saints, of which hundreds and hundreds have
 The Rise of tJic Papacy 337

been preserved, contain little else than accounts of them, and

no one appears to have doubted their everyday occurrence.-^
A word should be said of the early Christian church build- The early
ings. The Romans were accustomed to build near their market bas^lical^'
places a species of public hall, in which townspeople could meet
one another to transact business, and in which judges could hear
cases, and public officials attend to their duties. These buildings
were called basilicas. There were several magnificent ones in
Rome itself, and there was doubtless at least one to be found in
every town of considerable size. The roofs of these spacious
halls were usually supported by long rows of columns ; some-
times there were two rows on each side, forming aisles. When,
after Constantine had given his approval to Christianity, large,
fine churches began to be built they were constructed like these
familiar public halls and, like them, were, called basilicas.
During the sixteen hundred years that have passed since
Constantine's time naturally almost all the churches of his day
have disappeared or been greatly altered. But the beautiful
church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (Fig. 134) was built
only a hundred years later, and gives us an excellent notion of
a Christian basilica with its fine rows of columns and its hand-
some mosaic decorations. In general, the churches were plain
and unattractive on the outside. A later chapter will explain
how the basilica grew into the Gothic cathedral, which was as
beautiful outside as inside.
The chief importance of the Church for the student of The Church
medieval history does not lie, however, in its religious func- R^^mangov-
tions, vital as they were, but rather in its remarkable relations ernment
to the government. From the days of Constantine on, the
Catholic Church had usually enjoyed the hearty support and
protection of the government. But so long as the Roman
Empire remained strong and active there was no chance for the
clergy to free themselves from the control of the Emperor, even
if they had been disposed to do so. He made such laws for
1 For reports of miracles, see Readings, especially chaps, v, xvi.
 Outlines of European History
338
the Church as he saw fit, and the clergy did not complain. The
government was, indeed, indispensable to them. It undertook
to root out paganism by destroying the heathen shrines and
preventing heathen sacrifices, and it punished severely those
who refused to accept the teachings sanctioned by the Church.

Fig. 134. Santa Maria Maggiore

This beautiful church at Rome was built shortly after Constantine's

time, and the interior, here shown, with its stately columns, above which
are fine mosaics, is still nearly as it was in the time of St. Augustine,
fifteen hundred years ago. The ceiling is of the sixteenth century

The Church But as the great Empire began to fall apart, there was a
begins to
seek inde- growing tendency among the churchmen in the West to resent
pendence the interference of the new rulers whom they did not respect.
Consequently they managed gradually to free themselves in
large part from the control of the government. They then pro-
ceeded to assume themselves many of the duties of government,
which the weak and disorderly states into which the Roman
Empire fell were unable to perform properly.
One of the bishops of Rome (Pope Gelasius I, d. 496) briefly
stated the principle upon which the Church rested its claims, as
 The Rise of the Papacy 339

follows : " Two powers govern the world, the priestly and the Pope Gela-
kingly. The first is assuredly the superior, for the priest is of"the rek-^
responsible to God for the conduct of even the emperors them- ^^'^ of the
selves." Since no one denied that the eternal interests of man- the State
kind, which were under the care of the Church, were infinitely
more important than those merely worldly matters which the
State regulated, it was natural for the clergy to hold that, in
case of conflict, the Church and its officers, rather than the
king, should have the last word.
Gradually, as we have said, the Church began to undertake The Church
the duties which the Roman government had previously per- perforrn*^the
formed and which our governments perform to-day, ^ such as government
functions of
keeping order, the management of public education, the trial of
lawsuits, etc. There were no well-organized states in western
Europe for many centuries after the final destruction of the
E.oman Empire. The authority of the various barbarian kings
was seldom sufficient to keep their realms in order. There
were always many powerful landholders scattered throughout
the kingdom who did pretty much what they pleased and set-
tled their grudges against their fellows by neighborhood wars.
Fighting was the main business as well as the chief amusement
of this class. The king was unable to maintain peace and
protect the oppressed, however anxious he may have been
to do so.
Under these circumstances it naturally fell to the Church to
keep order, when it could, by either threats or persuasion ; to
see that contracts were kept, the wills of the dead carried out,
and marriage obligations observed. It took the defenseless
widow and orphan under its protection and dispensed charity ;
it promoted education at a time when few laymen, however rich
and noble, were able even to read. These conditions ser\^e to
explain why the Church was finally able so greatly to extend
the powers which it had enjoyed under the Roman Empire,
and why it undertook duties which seem to us to belong to the
State rather than to a religious organization.
 Outlines of Emvpcan History
340
Section 55. Origin of the Power of the Popes

Origin of We must now turn to a consideration of the origin and

papal power
growth of the supremacy of the popes, who, by raising them-
selves to the head of the Western Church, became in many
respects more powerful than any of the kings and princes with
whom they frequently found themselves in bitter conflict.
Prestige of While we cannot discover in the Theodosian Code any recog-
the Roman
Christian nition of the supreme headship of the bishop of Rome, there is
community
little doubt that he and his flock had almost from the very first
enjoyed a leading place among the Christian communities. The
Roman church was the only one in the West which could claim
the distinction of having been founded by the immediate followers
of Christ — the " two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul."
Belief that
Peter was the The New Testament speaks repeatedly of Paul's presence in
first bishop Rome. As for Peter, there had always been an unquestioned
of Rome
tradition, accepted throughout the Christian Church, that he was
the first bishop of Rome. This belief appears to have been gener-
ally accepted at least as early as the middle of the second century.
There is, certainly, no conflicting tradition, no rival claimant.
The belief itself, whether or not it corresponds with adtual events,
is a fact of the greatest historical importance. Peter enjoyed a
preerhinence among the other apostles and was singled out by
Christ upon several occasions. In a passage of the New Testa-
ment which has affected history more profoundly than the edicts
of the most powerful monarch, Christ says : " And I s_ay also unto
thee. That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and what-
soever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." ^
1 Matt, xvi, 18-19. Two other passages in the New Testament were held
to substantiate the divinely ordained headship of Peter and his successors :
Luke xxii, 32, where Christ says to Peter, " Strengthen thy brethren," and John xxi,
15-17, where Jesus said to him, " Feed my sheep." See Readings^ chap. iv. The
keys always appear in the papal arms (see headpiece of this chapter, p. 334).
 cj o c 2:

^ o ..

^ a; ° a; ^ § :^
j= 5 c <u c> *^ c

ci-x; c ;z:
bio ^-S.S 2 o o

h-i -n:, -C ^ 73
U 1) O '^
o o

^ a; o > -a -^ (U
g § 03 -^ rt rt (U

•£ o 2 .2^ ^ -v. .2

^ -5 o S ; I ^
2 S I 1 ^ "^ I
o 2 c« ^^ '^ ^

H-I i5"^ ==^55 ;£

0^ "^ -S a; i3 "^ «

O ^ ^ ^ OJ

■^ ^
^ <+H ^S X)=> ^« ^
^ -M

rt £ .5 ^ X -S 5
HJ£ '-^
O 5c b•■ ""o "^'^ !^-
-^ -i 0 T3 S -S |,

§^^ ^^^<
f? X5 •£ C flH "5 O

I 341
 Outlines of European History
3 4 2
The Roman Thus it was natural that the Roman church should early have
church the
mother
church
been looked upon as the " mother church " in the West. Its
doctrines were considered the purest, since they had been handed
down from its exalted founders. When there was a difference
of opinion in regard to the truth of a particular teaching, it was
natural that all should turn to the bishop of Rome for his view.
Moreover, the majesty of Rome, the capital of the world,
helped to exalt its bishop above his fellows. It was long, how-
ever, before all the other bishops, especially those in the large
cities, were ready to accept unconditionally the authority of
the bishop of Rome, although they acknowledged his leading
position and that of the Roman community.
Leo the We know comparatively little of the bishops of Rome during
Great,
440-461 the first three or four centuries of the Church's existence. It is
only with the accession of Leo the Great (440-461) that the
history of the papacy may, in one sense, be said to have begun.
At his suggestion, Valentinian III, the Emperor in the West,
issued a decree in 445 declaring the power of the bishop of Rome
supreme, by reason of Peter's headship, and the majesty of the
Decree of city of Rome. He commanded that the bishops throughout the
Valentinian
III West should receive as law all that the bishop of Rome ap-
proved, and that any bishop refusing to answer a summons to
Rome should be forced to obey by the imperial governor.
Separating
of the Eastern
But a council at Chalcedon, six years later, declared that
from the new Rome on the Bosporus (Constantinople) should have the
Western
Church same power in the government of the Church as old Rome
on the Tiber. This decree was, however, never accepted in
the Western, or Latin, Church, which was gradually separating
from the Eastern, or Greek, Church, whose natural head was at
Constantinople. Although there were times of trouble to come,
when for years the claims of Pope Leo appeared an empty
boast, still his emphatic assertion of the supremacy of the
Roman bishop was a great step toward bringing the Western
Church under a single head.^
1 See Readings, chap, iv, for development of the Pope's power.
 The Rise of the Papacy 343

The name "pope" (L^tm papa, -'father") was originally Title of pope
and quite naturally given to all bishops, and even to priests. It
began to be especially applied to the bishops of Rome, perhaps
as early as the sixth century, but was not apparently confined
to them until two or three hundred years later. Gregory VII

Fig. 136. The Axciext Basilica of St. Peter

Of the churches built by Constantine in Rome that in honor of St. Peter

was, next to the Lateran, the most important. It was constructed on
the site of Nero's circus, where St. Peter was believed to have been
crucified. It retained its original appearance, as here represented, for
twelve hundred years, and then the popes (who had given up the
Lateran as their residence and come to live in the Vatican palace close
to vSt. Peter's) determined to build the new and grander church one
sees to-day (see section 90, below). Constantine and the popes made
constant use in their buildings of columns and stones taken from the
older Roman buildings, which were in this way demolished

(d. 1085 ; see section 75, below) was the first to declare explicitly
that the title should be used only for the bishop of Rome.
Not long after the death of Leo the Great, Odoacer put an Duties that
devolved
end to the Western line of emperors. Then, as we know, early popes
Theodoric and his East Goths settled in Italy, only to be upon the
344 Outlines of liuropcan History

followed by still less desirable intruders, the Lombards. During

this tumultuous period the people of Rome, and even of all Italy,
came to regard the Pope as their natural leader. The Eastern
Emperor was far away, and his officers, who managed to hold a
portion of central Italy around Rome and Ravenna, were glad
to accept the aid and counsel of the Pope. In Rome the Pope
watched over the elections of the city officials and directed the
manner the public money should be spent. He had to manage
and defend the great tracts of land in different parts of Italy
which from time to time had been given to the bishopric of
Rome. He negotiated with the Germans and even gave orders
to the generals sent against them.
The pontificate of Gregory the Great, one of the half dozen
most distinguished heads that the Church has ever had, shows
how great a part the papacy could play. Gregory, who was the
son of a rich Roman senator, had been appointed by the
Emperor to the honorable office of prefect. He began to fear,
however, that his proud position and fine clothes were making
him vain and worldly. His pious mother and his study of the
writings of Augustine and the other great Christian writers
led him, upon the death of his father, to spend all his hand-
some fortune in founding seven monasteries. One of these
he established in his own house and subjected himself to
such severe discipline that his health never entirely recovered
from it.
When Gregory was chosen pope (in 590) and most reluctantly
left his monastery, ancient Rome, the capital of the Empire,
was already transforming itself into medieval Rome, the capi-
tal of Christendom. The temples of the gods had furnished
materials for the many Christian churches. The tombs of the
apostles Peter and Paul were soon to become the center of
religious attraction and the goal of pilgrimages from every part
of western Europe. Just as Gregory assumed office a great
plague was raging in the city. In true medieval fashion he
arranged a solemn procession in order to obtain from heaven a
 The Rise of the Papacy 345

cessation of the pest. Then the archangel Michael was seen

over the tomb of Hadrian (Fig. 137) sheathing his fiery sword
as a sign that the wrath of the Lord had been turned away.
With Gregory we leave behind us the Rome of Caesar and
Trajan and enter upon that of the popes.

U}Jl liiJiMttlii
iiTiTi— - '--i^,;in]m''^TnTmTiinr,imir ^ .irninrn,.. ■-,■ ^^^

"M~T@rfeir^^'
lll^^^l^^PI^-
Fig. 137. Hadrian's Tomb
The Roman Emperor Hadrian (d. 13S) built a great circular tomb at
Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber, for himself and his successors.
It was 240 feet across, perhaps 165 feet high, covered with marble and
adorned with statues. When Rome was besieged by the Germans in
537, the inhabitants used the tomb for a fortress and threw down the
statues on the heads of the barbarians. Since the time when Gregory
the Great saw the archangel Michael sheathing his sword over Hadrian's
tomb it has been called the Castle of the Holy Angel

writings
Gregory enjoyed an unrivaled reputation during the Middle
Gregory's
Ages as a writer. His works show, however, how much less
cultivated his period was than that of his predecessors. His
most popular book was his Dialogues, a collection of accounts
of miracles and popular legends. It is hard to believe that it
 Outlines of Europe a) I History
346
could have been composed by the greatest man of the time and
that it was written for adults.^ In his commentary on Job,
Gregory warns the reader that he need not be surprised to find
mistakes in Latin grammar, since in deaHng with so holy a work
as the Bible a writer should not stop to make sure whether
his cases and tenses are right.
Gregory as a
statesman Gregory's letters show clearly what the papacy was coming
t© mean for Europe when in the hands of a really great man.
While he assumed the humble title of " Servant of the servants
of God," which the popes still use, Gregory was a statesman
whose influence extended far and wide. It devolved upon him
to govern the city of Rome, — as it did upon his successors
down to the year 1870, — for the Eastern Emperor's control
had become merely nominal. He had also to keep the Lombards
out of central Italy, which they failed to conquer largely on
account of the valiant defense of the popes. These duties were
functions of the State, and in assuming them Gregory may be
said to have founded the " temporal " power of the popes.
Gregory's
missionary
Beyond the borders of Italy, Gregory was in constant com-
undertakings munication with the Emperor and the Frankish and Burgundian
rulers. Everywhere he used his influence to have good clergy-
men chosen as bishops, and everywhere he watched over the
interests of the monasteries. But his chief importance in the
history of the papacy is due to the missionary enterprises he
undertook, through which the great countries that were one
day to be called England, France, and Germany were brought
under the sway of the Roman Church and its head, the Pope.
As Gregory had himself been a devoted monk it was natural
that he should rely chiefly upon the monks in his great work of con-
verting the heathen. Consequently, before considering his mission-
ary achievements, we must glance at the origin and character of
the monks, who are so conspicuous throughout the Middle Ages.

1 He is reckoned, along with Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, as one of the

four great Latin " fathers " of the Church. For extracts from Gregory's writings,
see Readings^ chap. iv.
 The Rise of the Papacy 347

QUESTIONS
Sectiox 54. Why is it essential to know about the histoty of the
Church in order to understand the Middle Ages? Compare the
Christian idea of the importance of life in this world and the next
with the pagan views. Describe a basilica. Mention some govern-
mental duties that were assumed by the Church, Give the reasons
wh}' the Church became such a great power in the Middle Ages.
Section ^^. Why was the Roman church the most important of
all the toChristian
claim churches
be the head of the"^whole
On what grounds
Church did the
? Did the Christians
bishop of Rome
in the
eastern portion of the Roman Empire accept the bishop of Rome as
their head ? Why did the popes become influential in the governing
not only of Rome but of Italy } Tell what you can of Gregory the Great.
 . r^-^K-^'^^-. '-.'-^

v^^ft^ff^^ii'-' %'^^x^-

CHAPTER XIV

THE MONKS AND THEIR MISSIONARY WORK;

THE MOHAMMEDANS

Section 56. Monks and Monasteries

Importance It would be difficult to overestimate the influence that the

of the monks
as a class monks exercised for centuries in Europe, The proud annals of
the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits contain
many a distinguished name. The most eminent philosophers,
scientists, historians, artists, poets, and statesmen may be found
in their ranks. Among those whose achievements we shall men-
tion later are "The Venerable Bede," Boniface, Thomas Aquinas,
Roger Bacon, Fra Angelico, Luther, Erasmus — all these, and
many others who have been leaders in various branches of
human activity, were monks.
Monasticism
The life in a monastery appealed to many different kinds of
appealed to
many differ- people. The monastic life was safe and peaceful, as well as
ent classes
holy. The monastery was the natural refuge not only of the
religiously minded, but of those of a studious or thoughtful dis-
position who disliked the career of a soldier and were disinclined
to face the dangers and uncertainties of the times. Even the
 TJie Monks and their Missionary Work 349

rude and unscrupulous warriors hesitated to destroy the property

or disturb the life of those who were believed to enjoy God's
special favor. The monastery furnished, too, a refuge for the
friendless, an asylum for the disgraced, and food and shelter for
the indolent, who would otherwise have had to earn their living.
There were, therefore, many different motives which led people
to enter monasteries. Kings and nobles, for the good of their
souls, readily gave land upon which to found colonies of monks,
and there were plenty of remote spots in the mountains and
forests to invite those who wished to escape from the world and
its temptations, its dangers or its cares.
Monastic communities first developed on a large scale in Egypt Necessity for
in the fourth centurv'. The idea, however, was quickly taken up the regula-
tion ofnasticmo-
life
in Europe. At the time that the Germans were winning their
first great victory at Adrianople, St. Jerome was busily engaged
in writing letters to men and women whom he hoped to induce
to become monks or hermits. In the sixth century monasteries
multiplied so rapidly in western Europe that it became necessary
to establish definite rules for these communities which proposed
to desert the ordinary ways of the world and lead a holy life
apart. Accordingly St. Benedict drew up, about the year 526,
a sort of constitution for the monastery of Monte Cassino, in
southern Italy, of which he was the head.^ This was so saga-
cious, and so well met the needs of the monastic life, that it was
rapidly accepted by the other monasteries and gradually became
the " rule " according to which all the Western monks lived. ^
1 The illustration on page 348 shows the monastery of Monte Cassino. It is
situated on a lofty hill, lying some ninety miles south of Rome. Benedict
selected a site formerly occupied by a temple to Apollo, of which the columns
may still be seen in one of the courts of the present building. The monaster)'
was destroyed by the Lombards not long after its foundation and later by the
Mohammedans, so none of the present buildings go back to the time of Benedict.
- Benedict did not introduce monasticism in the West, as is sometimes sup-
posed, nor did he even found an order in the proper sense of the word, under a
single head, like the later Franciscans and Dominicans. Nevertheless, the
monks who lived under his rule are ordinarily spoken of as belonging to the
Benedictine order. A translation of the Benedictine Rule may be found in
Henderson, Historical Documents^ pp. 274-314.
 Outlines of European History
350
The Rule of The Rule of St. Benedict is as important as any constitution
St. Benedict
that was ever drawn up for a state. It is for the most part very
wise and sensible. It provided that, since every one is not fitted
for the monk's life, the candidate for admission to the monastery
should pass through a period of probation, called the novitiate,
before he was permitted to take the solemn, final vows. The
brethren were to elect the head of the monastery, the abbot,
as he was called. Along with frequent prayer and meditation,
the monks were to do the necessary cooking and washing for the
monastery and raise the necessary vegetables and grain. They
were also to read and teach. Those who were incapacitated for
outdoor work were assigned lighter tasks, such as copying books.
The monas-
tic vows
The monk had to take the three vows of obedience, poverty,
and chastity. He was to obey the abbot without question in all
matters that did not involve his committing a sin. He pledged
himself to perpetual and absolute poverty, and everything he
used was the property of the convent. He was not permitted
to own anything whatsoever — not even a book or a pen. Along
with the vows of obedience and poverty, he was also required
to pledge himself never to marry ; for not only was the single
life considered more holy than the married, but the monastic
organization would have been impossible unless the monks re-
mained single. Aside from these restrictions, the monks were
commanded to live reasonable and natural lives and not to
destroy their health, as some earlier ones had done, by undue
fasting in the supposed interest of their souls.
The influence of the Benedictine monks upon Europe is in-
calculable. From their numbers no less than twenty-four popes
and forty-six hundred bishops and archbishops have been chosen.
They boast almost sixteen thousand writers, some of great dis-
tinction. Their monasteries furnished retreats during the Mid-
dle Ages, where the scholar might study and write in spite of
the prevailing disorder of the times.
The copying of books, as has been said, was a natural occu-
pation of the monks. Doubdess their work was often done
 TJie Monks and their Missiojiaiy Work 351

carelessly, with little heart and less understanding. But, with the The monks
great loss of manuscripts due to the destruction of libraries and prSeive^the
the general lack of interest in books, it was most essential that ^^^^" authors
new copies should be made. Even poor and incorrect ones were
better than none. Almost all the books written by the Romans
disappeared altogether during the Middle Ages, but from time to
time a monk would copy out the poems of Virgil, Horace, or Ovid,
or the speeches of Cicero. In this way some of the chief works of
the Latin writers have continued to exist down to the present day.
The monks regarded good hard work as a great aid to salva- The monks
tion. They set the example of careful cultivation of the lands ^ateriTl
Europe
dE
about their monasteries and in this way introduced better farm- velopment of
ing methods into the regions where they settled. They enter-
tained travelers at a time when there were few or no inns and so
increased the intercourse between the various parts of Europe.
The Benedictine monks were ardent and faithful supporters The " regu-
of the papacy. The Church, which owes much to them, ex- "secular"
tended to them many of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy, ^^^^sy
Indeed, the monks were reckoned as clergymen and were called
the " regular " clergy, because they lived according to a regnla^
or rule, to distinguish them from the " secular " clergy, who con-
tinued to live in the world {saeculutii) and did not take the
monastic vows described above.
The home which the monks constructed for themselves was Arrangement

called a monastery or abbey. This was arranged to meet their astery*

particular needs and was usually at a considerable distance from
any town, in order to insure solitude and quiet.^ It was mod-
eled upon the general plan of the Roman country house. The
buildings were arranged around a court, called the cloister. On The cloister
all four sides of this was a covered walk, which made it possible
to reach all the buildings without exposing one's self to either the
rain or the hot sun. Not only the Benedictines but all the orders
which sprang up in later centuries arranged their homes in
much the same way.
1 Later monasteries were sometimes built in towns, or just outside the walls.
 Outlines of liiiropcan History
352
'J'he abbey On the north side of the cloister was the church, which ahvays
church
faced west. As time went on and certain groups of monks
were given a great deal of property, they constructed very beau-
tiful churches for their monasteries. Westminster Abbey was
originally the church of a monastery lying outside the city of

Fig. 138. Cloisters of Heiligexkreuz

This picture of the cloister in the German monastery of Heiligenkreuz
is chosen to show how the more ordinary monastery courts looked, with
their pleasant sunny gardens

London, and there are in Great Britain many picturesque re-

mains of ruined abbey churches which attract the attention of
every traveler.
The refec- On the west side of the cloister v^ere storerooms for pro-
tory, lavatory,
and dormi- visions ;on the south side, opposite the church, was the *' re-
tory
fectory," or dining room, and a sitting room that could be
warmed in cold weather. In the cloister near the dining room
was a " lavatory " where the monk could wash his hands before
meals. To the east of the cloister was the " dormitory," where
the monks slept. This always adjoined the church, for the Rule
required that the monks should hold services seven times a day.
 The Monks and their Missionary Work 353

One of these services, called vigils, came well before daybreak,

and it was convenient when you were summoned in the dark-
ness out of your warm bed to be able to go down a short passage
that led from the dormitory into the choir of the church, where
the service was held.
The Benedictine Rule provided that the monks should so far
as possible have everything for their support on their own land.

Fig. 139. Monastery of Val di Cristo

This monastery in southern Spain has two cloisters, the main one lying
to the left. One can see how the buildings were surrounded by vegetable
gardens and an orchard which supplied the monks with food. Compare
picture of another monastery (Fig. 151, below)

So outside the group of buildings around the cloister would be The out-
found the garden, the orchard, the mill, a fish pond, and fields t^^^s o£°the
for raising grain. There were also a hospital for the sick and a monastery
guest house for pilgrims or poor people who happened to come
along. In the greater monasteries there were also quarters
where a king or nobleman might spend a few nights in comfort.
«r^^

X c .^^

Si ir

354
 TJie Monks and their Missionary Work 355

Section 57. Missionary Work of the Monks

The first great undertaking of the monks was the conver- The monks
sion of those German peoples who had not yet been won over ad™^^^""
to Christianity. These the monks made not merely Christians,
but also dutiful, subjects of the Pope. In this way the strength
of the Roman Catholic Church was greatly increased. The first
people to engage the attention of the monks were the heathen
German tribes who had conquered the once Christian Britain.
The islands which are now known as the kingdom of Great Early Britain
Britain and Ireland were, at the opening of the Christian era,
occupied by several Celtic peoples of whose customs and re-
ligion we know almost nothing. Julius Caesar commenced the
conquest of the islands (55 B.C.) ; but the Romans never suc-
ceeded in establishing their power beyond the wall which they
built, from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, to keep out the
wild tribes of the North. Even south of the wall the country
was not completely Romanized, and the Celtic tongue has
actually survived down to the present day in Wales (see
p. 323, above).
At the opening of the fifth century the barbarian invasions Saxons and
forced Rome to withdraw its legions from Britain in order to que^r^BrSn
protect its frontiers on the Continent. The island was thus left
to be conquered gradually by the Germans, mainly Saxons and
Angles, who came across the North Sea from the region south
of Denmark. Almost all record of what went on during the two
centuries following the departure of the Romans has disap-
peared. No one knows the fate of the original Celtic inhabitants
of England. It was formerly supposed that they were all killed
or driven to the mountain districts of Wales, but this seems un-
likely. More probably they were gradually lost among the dom-
inating Germans with whom they merged into one people. The
Saxon and Angle chieftains established small kingdoms, of which
there were seven or eight at the time when Gregory the Great
became pope.
 Outlines of Europcafi History

Conversion 56
Gregory, while still a simple monk, had been struck with the
of Britain
beauty of some Angles whom he saw one day in the slave market
at Rome. When he learned who they were he was grieved that
such handsome beings should still belong to the kingdom of the
Prince of Darkness, and he wished to go as a missionary to their
people, but permission was refused him. So when he became

-^

'1^. -

Fig. 141. St. Martin's, Canterbury

A church built during the period when the Romans were occupying
England had been used by Bertha, the Christian wife of the king of
Kent. Augustine found this on his arrival in Canterbury and is said to
have baptized the king there. It has been rebuilt and added to in later
times, but there are many Roman bricks in the walls, and the lower parts
of the church as we now see it may go back to the Roman period

Pope he sent forty monks to England under the leadership of

a prior, named Augustine (who must not be confused with the
church father of that name). The heathen king of Kent, in
whose territory Augustine and his monks landed with fear and
trembling (597), had a Christian wife, the daughter of a Frankish
king. Through her influence the monks were kindly received
and were given an ancient church at Canterbury, dating from
the Roman occupation before the German invasions. Here they
 The Monks and their Missionary Work 357

established a monastery, and from this center the conversion,

first of Kent and then of the whole island, was gradually accom-
plished. Canterbury has always maintained its early preeminence
and may still be considered the religious capital of England.-^
England thus became a part of the ever-growing territory em-
braced in the Roman Catholic Church and remained for nearly
a thousand years as faithful to the Pope as any other Catholic
country.
The conversion of England by the missionaries from Rome was Early culture
followed by a period of general enthusiasm for Rome and its '" "^^"
literature and culture. The English monasteries became centers
of learning unrivaled perhaps in the rest of Europe. A constant
intercourse was maintained with Rome. Masons and glass-
makers were brought across the Channel to replace the wooden
churches of Britain by stone edifices in the style of the Romans.
The young English clergy were taught Latin and sometimes
Greek. Copies of the ancient classics were brought from the
Continent and copied. The most distinguished writer of the
seventh and early eighth centuries in Europe was the English
monk Baeda (often called "The Venerable Bede," 673-735),
from whose admirable history of the Church in England most
of our information about the period is derived.^
In 718 St. Boniface, an English monk, was sent by the Pope St. Boniface,
as a missionary to the Germans. After four years spent in re- ^^e c'ermanr
connoitering the field of his future labors, he visited Rome and
was made a missionary bishop, taking the same oath of obedi-
ence to the Pope that the bishops in the immediate vicinity of
Rome were accustomed to take. Indeed, absolute subordination
to the Pope was a part of his religion, and he became a powerful
agent in extending the papal power.
Boniface succeeded in converting many of the more remote Conversion
German tribes who still clung to their old pagan beliefs. His
energetic methods are illustrated by the story of how he cut
1 See Readings, chap, v, for Gregory's instructions to his missionaries.
2 See Readings, chap, v.
 Outlines erf Eu7'opean History
358
down the sacred oak of the old German god Odin, at Fritzlar,
in Hesse, and used the wood to build a chapel, around which a
monastery soon grew up. In 732 Pjoniface was raised to the
dignity of Archbishop of Mayence and proceeded to establish
in the newly converted region a number of German bishoprics,
Salzburg, Regensburg, Wiirzburg, and others; this gives us some
idea of the geographical extent of his labors.

Section 58. Mohammed and his Religion

Just at the time that Gregory the Great was doing so much
to strengthen the power and influence of the popes in Rome,
a young Arab camel driver in far-away Mecca was meditat-
ing upon the mysteries of life and devising a religion which was
destined to spread with astounding rapidity into Asia, Africa,
and Europe and to become a great rival of Christianity. And
to-day the millions who believe in Mohammed as God's greatest
prophet are probably equal in number to those who are faithful
to the Pope, as the head of the Catholic Church.
Arabs before Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs (a branch of the
Mohammed
great Semitic people) had played no great part in the w^orld's
history. The scattered tribes were constantly at war with one
Mecca and
the Kaaba another, and each tribe worshiped its own gods, when it wor-
shiped at all. Mecca was considered a sacred spot, however,
and the fighting was stopped four months each year so that all
could peacefully visit the Kaaba, a sort of temple full of idols
and containing in particular a black stone, about as long as a
man's hand, which was regarded as specially worthy of reverence.
Mohammed was poor and earned a living by conducting
caravans across the desert. He was so fortunate as to find a
rich widow in Mecca, named Kadijah, w^ho gave him employ-
ment and later fell in love with him and became his wife. She
was his first convert and kept up his courage when few of his
fellow townsmen in Mecca were inclined to pay any attention
to his new religious teachings.
 The MoJimnmedans 359

As Mohammed traveled back and forth across the desert with Mohammed's
his trains of camels heavily laden with merchandise he had plenty from^he^An-
of time to think, and he became convinced that God was sending S^i Gabriel
him messages which it was his duty to reveal to mankind. He
met many Jews and Christians, of whom there were great num-
bers in Arabia, and from them he got some ideas of the Old and
New Testaments. But when he tried to convince people that he
was God's prophet, and that the Angel Gabriel had appeared to
him in his dreams and told him of a new religion, he was treated
with scorn.
Finally, he discovered that his enemies in Mecca were plan- The Hcjira,
ning to kill him, and he fled to the neighboring town of Medina,
where he had friends. His flight, which took place in the year
622, is called the Ilejmi by the Arabs. It was taken by his
followers as the beginning of a new era — the year One, as
the Mohammedans reckon time.
A war followed between the people of Mecca and those who islam
had joined Mohammed in and about Medina. It was eight years
before his followers became numerous enough to enable him to
march upon Mecca and take it with a victorious army. Before
his death in 632 he had gained the support of all the Arab
chiefs, and his new religion, which he called Islam (submission
to God), was accepted throughout the whole Arabian peninsula.
Mohammed could probably neither write nor read well, but The Koran
when he fell into trances from time to time he would repeat to
his eager listeners the words which he heard from heaven, and
they in turn wrote them down. These sayings, which were col-
lected into a volume shortly after his death, form the Koran^ the
Mohammedan Bible. This contains the chief beliefs of the new
religion as well as the laws under which all good Mohammedans
were to live. It has been translated into English several times.
Parts of it are very beautiful and interesting, while other portions
are dull and stupid to a modern reader.
The Koran follows the Jewish and Christian religions in pro-
claiming one God, " the Lord of the worlds, the merciful and
 Outlines of European Histo7y
36o
compassionate." Mohammed believed that there had been great
prophets before him, — Abraham, Moses, and Jesus among
others, — but that he himself was the last and greatest of
God's messengers, who
brought the final and
highest form of religion
to mankind. He de-
stroyed all the idols in
the Kaaba at Mecca
and forbade his follow-
ers to make any images
whatsoever — but he
left the black stone.
Besides serving the
one God, the Moham-
medan was to honor his
parents, aid the poor,
protect the orphan,
keep his contracts, give
full measure, and weigh
with a just balance. He
was not to walk proudly
on the earth, or to be
Fig. 142. Arabic \\'ritl\g wasteful, " for the waste-
This is a page from the Koran, with an ful were ever the devil's
elaborate decorated border. It gives an brothers." He was to
idea of the appearance of Arabic writing. avoid, moreover, all
The Arabic letters are, next to the Roman
alphabet, which we use, the most widely strong drink, and this
employed in the world command has saved
Mohammed's faithful
followers from the terrible degradation which alcohol has made
so common in our Western world.
The creed Besides obeying these and other commands the Mohammedan
and prayers
who would be saved must do five things : First, he must recite
daily the simple creed, " There is no god but God, and
 The Mohaminedaiis

Mohammed is his prophet." Secondly, he must pray five times

a day — just before sunrise, just after noon, before and after
sunset, and when the day has closed. It is not uncommon to361
see in well-furnished houses in this country the so-called
" prayer rugs " brought from Mohammedan countries. These
are spread down on the ground or the flat roof of the oriental
house, and on them the worshiper kneels to pray, turning his
face toward Mecca
and bowing his head
to the ground. The
pattern on the rug
indicates the place
where the bowed
head is to be placed.
Thirdly, the. Moham-
medan must fast
during the whole
month of rainadan ;
he may neither eat
nor drink from sun-
rise to sunset, for Fig. 143. Mohammedan kneeling on
this is the month A Prayer Rug
in which God sent
Gabriel down from the seventh heaven to bring the Koran,
which he revealed, paragraph by paragraph, to Mohammed.
Fourthly, the Mohammedan must give alms to the poor, and. Pilgrimage
to Mecca
fifthly, he must, if he can, make a pilgrimage to Mecca at
least once during his lifetime. Tens of thousands of pilgrims
flock to Mecca every year. They enter the great courtyard
surrounding the Kaaba, which is a plain, almost cubical,
building, supposed to have been built in the first place by
Abraham. The sacred black stone is fixed in the outside wall
at the southeast corner, and the pilgrims must circle the build-
ing seven times, kissing the black stone each time as they pass
it (Fig. 144).
4mm t ;U#
Plate VI. Street Scene in Cairo
 ;63
The Mohamvicdans

The Koran announces a day of judgment when the heavens medan hell
shall be opened and the mountains be powdered and become Moham-
like flying dust. Then all men shall receive their reward. Those
who have refused to accept Islam shall be banished to hell to
be burned and tormented forever. " They shall not taste therein
coolness or drink, save scalding water and running sores," and
the scalding water they shall drink like thirsty camels.
Those, on the other hand, who have obeyed the Koran, Heaven
especially those who die fighting for Islam, shall find themselves
in a garden of delight. They shall recline in rich brocades
upon soft cushions and rugs and be served by surpassingly
beautiful maidens, with eyes like hidden pearls. Wine may be
drunk there, but "their heads shall not ache with it, neither shall
they be confused." They shall be content with their past life
and shall hear no foolish words ; and there shall be no sin but
only the greeting, " Peace, peace."
The religion of Mohammed was much simpler than that of the The mosque
medieval Christian Church ; it did not provide for a priesthood
or for any great number of ceremonies. The Mohammedan
mosque, or temple, is a house of prayer and a place for reading the
Koran ; no altars or images or pictures of any kind are permitted
in it. The mosques are often very beautiful buildings, especially
in great Mohammedan cities, such as Jerusalem, Damascus,
Cairo, and Constantinople. They have great courts surrounded
by covered colonnades and are adorned with beautiful marbles
and mosaics and delightful windows with bright stained glass.
The walls are adorned with passages from the Koran, and the
floors covered with rich rugs. They have one or more minarets
from which the call to prayer is heard five times a day.
The Mohammedans, like other Eastern peoples, are very Women and
the harem
particular to keep the women by themselves in a separate part
of the house, called the harein^ or women's quarters. They
may not go out without the master's permission and even then
not without wearing a veil ; no man must ever see a respectable
woman's face, except her father, brother, or husband. The Koran
 364 Outlines of European Histoiy

permits a man to have as many as four wives, but in practice

only the men of the richer classes have more than one. For a
woman to attempt to escape from the harem is a crime punish-
able with death. Sometimes the women seem to lead pleasant
lives, but, for the most part, their existence is very monotonous.^
Slaves Slaves are very common in Mohammedan countries, but
once they are freed they are as good as any one else and may
then hold the highest places in the government.

Section 59. Conquests of the Mohammedans ;

THE Caliphate

The Arabs' Mohammed had occupied the position of pope and king
conquests.
Caliphs at combined, and his successors, who took the title of caliph
Damascus
(which means " successor " or " representative "), were regarded
as the absolute rulers of the Mohammedans. Their word was
law in both religious and worldly matters. Mohammed's father-
in-law was the first caliph. His successor, Omar (634-644), led
the Arabs forth to conquer Syria, Egypt, and the great empire
of Persia. The capital of the caliphate was then transferred
from Medina to Damascus, which occupied a far better position
for governing the new realms. Although the Mohammedans
were constantly fighting among themselves, they succeeded in
extending their territory so as to include Asia Minor and the
northern coast of Africa, A great part of the people whom they
conquered accepted the new religion of the prophet.
Caliphs
at Bagdad Something over a hundred years after Mohammed's death a
new line of caliphs came into power and established (762) a
new capital on the river Tigris near the site of ancient Babylon.
This new city of Bagdad became famous for its wealth, magnifi-
cence, and learning. It was five miles across and at one time
is supposed to have had two millions of inhabitants. In the

1 The colored plate (opp. p. 362) shows the minarets of a great mosque in Cairo.
One can also see the gratings of the upper stories of the houses, through which
the women can look out of their harem without being seen from the street.
365
 Outlines of European TJistory
366
ninth century it was probably the richest and most splendid
city in the world.
" The Arabian The most entertaining example of Arabic literature which
Nights' Enter-
has been translated into English is the " Thousand and One
Nights," or " The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," as it is com-
monly called. These include the story of " Sindbad the Sailor,"
" Aladdin and the Lamp," " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,"
and other famous tales. The great collection was got together in
Egypt, perhaps in the fifteenth century, but many of the stories
are very much older and were translated by the Arabs from the
Persian, when the caliphs of Bagdad were at the height of their
power. Some of these stories give one a lively idea of Moham-
medan manners and 'customs.
The Mohammedans made t\yo or three attempts to cross
over from Asia into Europe and take Constantinople, the capital
of the Eastern Empire, but failed. It was more than eight
hundred years after Mohammed's death that the Turks, a
Mohammedan people, succeeded in this, and Constantinople is
now a Mohammedan city and the Sultan of Turkey is the
nominal head of Islam. Long before the Turks captured Con-
stantinople, however, the Arabs at the other end of the caliph's
empire had succeeded in crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from
Africa and possessing themselves of Spain.
The kingdom of the West Goths was in no condition to
defend itself when a few Arabs and a much larger number
of Berbers, inhabitants of northern Africa, ventured to invade
Spain. Some of the Spanish towns held out for a time, but the
invaders found allies in the numerous Jews, who had been shame-
fully treated by their Christian countrymen. As for the innumer-
able serfs who worked on the great estates of the aristocracy,
a change of landlords made very little difference to them. In 7 1 1
the Arabs and Berbers gained a great battle, and the peninsula
was gradually overrun by new immigrants from Africa.
In seven years the Mohammedans were masters of almost
the whole region south of the Pyrenees. They then began to
 TJie Mohamineda?is 367
cross into Gaul. For some years
the Duke of Aquitaine kept them
in check; but in 732 they col-
lected alarge army, defeated the
duke near Bordeaux, advanced
ill ^^^11
.,

to Poitiers, and then set out for

Tours.
Here they met the army of
the Franks which Charles the ^H
?aM^
Hammer (Martel), the king's
chief minister, had brought to-
gether to meet the new danger.
\\q know very little indeed of
this famous battle of Tours, ex-
cept that the Mohammedans
were repulsed, and that they
never again made any serious
attempt to conquer western
Europe beyond the Pyrenees.
They retired to Spain and there
developed a great and prosper-
ous kingdom, far in advance of
the Christian kingdoms to the
north of them.
Fig. 147. GiRALDA
Some of the buildings which This tower, called the Giralda,
they erected soon after their was originally the great minaret
arrival still stand. Among these of the chief mosque at Seville.
It was built (1184-1196) out of
is the mosque at Cordova with
Roman and West Gothic mate-
its forest of columns and arches.^ rials, and many Roman inscrip-
They also erected a great tower tions are to be seen on the
stones used for the walls. Orig-
at Seville (Fig. 147). This has
inally the tower was lower than
been copied by the architects of it now is. All the upper part,
1 The great mosque, which the Mo- including the story where the
hammedan rulers built at Cordova (Fig. bells hang, was rebuilt by the
145) on the site of a Christian church of Christians after they drove
the West Goths, was second in size only the Moors out of the city
 368 Outlines of European Histoiy

Madison Square Garden in New York. The Mohammedans

built beautiful palaces and laid out charming gardens. One of
these palaces, the Alhambra, built at Granada some centuries
after their arrival in Spain, is a marvel of lovely detail (Fig. 146).
They also founded a great university at Cordova, to which Chris-
tians from the North sometimes went in search of knowledge.
iMoors far Historians commonly regard it as a matter of great good luck
the Franks that Charles the Hammer and his barbarous soldiers succeeded
in defeating and driving back the Mohammedans at Tours. But
had they been permitted to settle in southern France they might
have developed science and art far more rapidly than did the
Franks. It is difficult to say whether it was a good thing or a
bad thing that the Moors, as the Mohammedans in Spain were
called, did not get control of a portion of Gaul.

QUESTIONS
Section 56, What various reasons led men to enter monasteries.'*
When and where did Christian monasteries originate t Give some
of the chief provisions of St. Benedict's Rule. What is meant by the
"regular" and the "secular" clergy.? Why did the monks some-
times devote part of their time to copying books.'* Describe the
general plan of a monastery.
Section 57. Tell about the conversion of the king of Kent. Did
England become a part of the medieval Catholic Church .?
Section ^%. Give a short account of Mohammed's life. Define
Kaaba, Islam, Koran. What does the Mohammedan religion require
of its adherents t
Section 59. What countries did the Mohammedans conquer
during the century following Mohammed's death ? Where is Mecca,
Bagdad, Damascus, Cordova? Tell what you can of the Moorish
buildings in Spain.

to the Kaaba at Mecca (Fig. 144). It was begun about 785 and gradually en-
larged and beautified during the following two centuries, with the hope that it
would rival Mecca as a place of pilgrimage. The part represented in the illus-
tration was built by Caliph Al-Hakim, who came to the throne in 961. The
beautiful holy of holies (the entrance of which may be seen in the background)
is richly adorned with magnificent mosaics. The whole mosque is 570 by 425 feet ;
that is, about the size of St. Peter's in Rome.
 CHAPTER XV

CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS EMPIRE

Section 6o. Conquests of Charlemagne

We have seen how the kings of the Franks, Clovis and How Pippin
his successors, conquered a large territory, including western of the'FranlS
Germany-^ and what is called France to-day.-'
As time• went on, ' Z^^^ ^,^^
Pope's ap-
the king's chief minister, who was called the Mayor of the proval, 752
Palace, got almost all the power into his hands and really ruled
in the place of the king. Charles Martel, who defeated the
Mohammedans at Tours in 732, was the Mayor of the Palace
of the western Frankish king. His son, Pippin the Short, finally
determined to do away altogether with the old line of kings and
put himself in their place. Before taking the decisive step, how-
ever, he consulted the Pope. To Pippin's question whether it
was right that the old line of kings should continue to reign
when they no longer had any power, the Pope replied : " It
seems better that he who has the power in the State should be
king, and be called king, rather than he who is falsely called
king." With this sanction, then (752), the Frankish counts and
dukes, in accordance with the old German ceremony, raised
Pippin on their shields, in somewhat the way college boys now-
adays carry off a successful football player on their shoulders.
He was then anointed king by St. Boniface, the apostle to the
Germans, of whom we have spoken, and received the blessing
of the Pope.^
It would hardly be necessary to mention this change of dynasty
in so short a history as this, were it not that the calling in of the
1 The old line of kings which was displaced by Pippin is known as the
Merovingian line. Pippin and his successors are called the Carolingian line,
I 369
 Outlines of JinropciDi History
370
coronation
Pope brought about a revolution in the ideas of kingship. The
of Pippin kings of the German tribes had hitherto usually been suecessful
a religious
ceremony warriors who held their office with the consent of the people,
or at least of the nobles. Their election was not a matter that
concerned the Church at all.. But when, after asking the Pope's
opinion, Pippin had the holy oil poured on his head, — in ac-
cordance with an ancient religious custom of the Jews, — first
by Bishop Boniface and later by
the Pope himself, he seemed to
ask the Church to approve his
usurpation. As the historian Gib-
bon puts it, "A German chieftain
was transformed into the Lord's
anointed." The Pope threatened
with God's anger any one who
should attempt to supplant the
consecrated family of Pippin.
It thus became a religious duty
to obey the king and his succes-
Fig. 148. Charlemagne sors. He came to be regarded
This bronze figure of Charle-
by the Church, when he had
magne on horseback was made
received its approval, as God's
in his time, and the artist may representative on earth. Here
have succeeded in reproducing
the general appearance of the
we have the beginning of the
Emperor later theory of kings " by the
grace of God," against whom it
was a sin to revolt, however bad they might be. We shall see
presently how Pippin's famous son Charlemagne received his
crown from the hands of the Pope.
Charle- Charlemagne, who became king of all the Prankish realms in
magne,
ca. 742-814 771, is the first historical personage among the German peoples
of whom we have any satisfactory knowledge.^ Compared with
1 " Charlemagne " is the French form for the Latin Carohis Magnus (Charles
the Great). We must never forget, however, that Charlemagne was a Gennan,
that he talked a German language, namely Prankish, and that his favorite palaces
at Aix-Ia-Chapelle, Ingelheim, and Nimwegen were in German regions.
 Charlemagne and his Empi 17

X|^
him, Theodoric, Clovis, Charles Martel, Pippin, and the rest are

i
but shadowy figures. The chronicles tell us something of their
deeds, but we can make only the vaguest inferences in regard
to their appearance or
character.

4i
Charlemagne's looks, ^^

~M;
as described by his sec-

1
retary, so exactly corre-
rj-

1
spond with the character
of the king as exhibited
in his reign that they are

H 1H
worthy of attention. He
was tall and stoutly built ;
his face was round, his
eyes were large and keen,
his nose somewhat above
the common size, his
expression bright and
a
1 w
cheerful. The good pro-
portions and grace of his ,
c
body prevented the ob- „

server from noticing that

his neck was rather short Fig. 149. Charlemagne and
HIS Wife
and his person somewhat
too stout. His voice was There is no picture of Charlemagne that
we' can be sure looked like him. The
rather comical one here given occurs in a
clear, but rather weak'
for his big body. He law document of about' the year 820 and
shows what passed for a picture in those
delighted in riding and days. It may be meant for Charlemagne
hunting, and was an ex- and his wife, but some think that it is a
pert swimmer. His ex- rehgious painting representing the Angel
Gabriel announcing the birth of Jesus to
cellent health and his the Virgin Mary
physical endurance can
alone explain the astonishing swiftness with which he moved
about his vast realm and conducted innumerable campaigns
against his enemies in widely distant regions in rapid succession.
 Outlines of EuropctDi Histoiy
372
Charles was an educated man for his time, and one who knew
how to appreciate and encourage scholarship. While at dinner
he had some one read to him ; he delighted especially in history,
and in St. Augustine's City of God. He tried to learn writing,
which was an unusual accomplishment at that time for any but
churchmen, but began too late in life and got no farther than
signing his name. He called learned men to his court and did
much toward reestablishing a regular system of schools. He
was also constantly occupied with buildings and other public
works calculated to adorn his kingdom. He himself planned the
remarkable cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle and showed the greatest
interest in its furnishings. He commenced two palaces, one
near Mayence and the other at Nirnwegen, in Holland, and had
a long bridge constructed across the Rhine at Mayence.
The impression which his reign made upon men's minds con-
tinued to grow even after his death. He became the hero of a
whole series of romantic adventures which were as firmly be-
lieved for centuries as his real deeds. In the fancy of an old
monk in the monaster}^ of St. Gall,^ writing of Charlemagne not
long after his death, the king of the Franks swept over Europe
surrounded by countless legions of soldiers who formed a very
sea of bristling steel. Knights of superhuman valor formed his
court and became the models of knighthood for the following
centuries. Distorted but imposing, the Charlemagne of poeti-y
meets us all through the Middle Ages.
A study of Charlemagne's reign will make clear that he was
a truly remarkable person, one of the greatest figures in the
world's records and deservedly the hero of the Middle Ages.
It was Charlemagne's ideal to bring all the German peoples
together into one great Christian empire, and he was wonder-
fully successful in attaining his end. Only a small portion of
what is now called Germany was included in the kingdom ruled

.1 Professor Emerton {Introduction^ pp. 183-185) gives an example of the

style and spirit of the monk of St. Gall, who was formerly much relied upon
for knowledge of Charlemagne.
 CJiarlcmagne and his Entpife 373

over by Charlemagne's father, Pippin the Short. Frisia and

Bavaria had been Christianized, and their rulers had been in-
duced by the efforts of Charlemagne's predecessors and of the
missionaries, especially Boniface, to recognize the overlordship
of the Franks. Between these two half-independent countries
lay the unconquered Saxons. They were as yet pagans and
appear still to have clung to much the same institutions as those
under which they had lived when the Roman historian Tacitus
described them seven centuries earlier.
The Saxons occupied the region beginning somewhat east The con-
of Cologne and extending to the Elbe, and north to where the saxons
great cities of Bremen and Hamburg are now situated. They
had no towns or roads and were consequently very difficult to
conquer, as they could retreat, with their few possessions, into
the forests or swamps as soon as they found themselves unable
to meet an invader in the open field. Yet so long as they
remained unconquered they constantly threatened the Frankish
kingdom, and their country was necessar)' to the rounding out
of its boundaries. Charlemagne never undertook, during his
long military career, any other task half so serious as the
subjugation of the Saxons, which occupied many years.
Nowhere do we find a more striking example of the influence
of the Church than in the reliance that Charlemagne placed
upon it in his dealings with the Saxons. He deemed it quite
as essential that after a rebellion they should promise to honor
the Church and be baptized, as that they should pledge them-
selves to remain true and faithful subjects of the king. He was
in quite as much haste to found bishoprics and monasteries as
to build fortresses. The law for the newly conquered Saxon
lands issued some time between 775 and 790 provides the same
death penalty for him who " shall have shown himself unfaithful
to the lord king " and him who " shall scorn to come to baptism
and shall wish to remain a pagan."
Charlemagne believed the Christianizing of the Saxons so
important a part of his duty that he decreed that any one should
374 Oittlincs of Ru7'opean History

suffer death who broke into a church and carried off anything
by force. No one, under penalty of heavy fines, was to make
vows, in the pagan fashion, at trees or springs, or partake of
any heathen feasts in honor of the demons (as the Christians
termed the heathen gods), or fail to present infants for baptism
before they were a year old.
These provisions are characteristic of the theory of the Middle
Ages according to which the government and the Church went
hand in hand in ordering and governing the life of the people.
Disloyalty to the Church was regarded by the State as quite as
serious a crime as treason against itself. While the claims of the
two institutions sometimes conflicted, there was no question in
the minds either of the king's officials or of the clergy that both
the civil and ecclesiastical governments were absolutely neces-
sary ;neither of them ever dreamed that they could get along
without the other.
Before the Frankish conquest the Saxons had no towns. Now,
around the seat of the bishop, or about a monastery, men be-
gan to collect, and towns and cities grew up. Of these the
chief was Bremen, which is still one of the most important
ports of Germany.
Summoned by the Pope to protect him from his old enemies
the Lombards, Charlemagne invaded Lombardy in 773 with a
great army and took Pavia, the capital, after a long siege. The
Lombard king was forced to become a monk, and his treasure
was divided among the Frankish soldiers. Charlemagne then
took the extremely important step, in 774, of having himself
recognized by all the Lombard dukes and counts as king of
the Lombards.
So far we have spoken only of the relations of Charlemagne
with the Germans, for even the Lombard kingdom was estab-
lished bythe Germans. He had, however, other peoples to deal
with, especially the Slavs on the east (who were one day to build
up the kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia and the vast Russian
empire) and, on the opposite boundary of his dominion, the
20 from Greenwicb
 CJiarlemagne and his Empire 375

Moors in Spain. Against these it was necessary to protect his

realms, and the second part of Charlemagne's reign was devoted
to what may be called his foreign policy, A single campaign
in 789 seems to have sufficed to subdue the Slavs, who lay to
the north and east of the Saxons, and to force the Bohemians
to acknowledge the supremacy of the Frankish king and pay
tribute to him.
The necessity of protecting the Frankish realms against any The
new uprising of these non-German nations led to the establish- margraves"^
ment, on the confines of the kingdom, of marches, that is, districts
under the military control of counts of the march, or margraves}
Their business was to prevent any invasion of the interior of
the kingdom. Much depended upon the efficiency of these
men ; in many cases they founded powerful families and later
helped to break up the empire by establishing themselves as
practically independent rulers.
At an assembly that Charlemagne held in 777, ambassadors Charlemagne
appeared before him from certain dissatisfied Mohammedans ^" "^^'"
in Spain, They had fallen out with the emir of Cordova ^ and
now offered to become the faithful subjects of Charlemagne
if he would come to their aid. In consequence of this embassy
he undertook his first expedition to Spain in the following year.
After some years of war the district north of the Ebro was con-
quered bythe Franks, and Charlemagne established there the
Spanish march. In this way he began that gradual expulsion
of the Mohammedans from the peninsula, which was to be car-
ried on by slowly extending conquests until 1492, when Granada,
the last Mohammedan stronghold, fell.

1 The king of Prussia still has, among other titles, that of Margrave of Bran-
denburg. The German word Mark is often used for " march " on maps of
Germany.
2 The Mohammedan caliphate broke up in the eighth century, and the ruler
of Spain first assumed the title of emir (about 756) and later (929) that of caliph.
The latter title had originally been enjoyed only by the head of the whole Arab
empire, who had his capital at Damascus, and later at Bagdad (see above, p. 364).
 Outlines of Euivpcaji History
376
Section 6i. Establishment of a Line of Emperors
IN the West

But the most famous of all the achievements of Charle-

magne was his reestablishment of the Western Empire in the
year 800. It came about in this wise. Charlemagne went to
Rome in that year to settle a dispute between Pope Leo III
and his enemies. To celebrate the satisfactory settlement of the
dispute, the Pope held a solemn service on Christmas Day in
St. Peter's. As Charlemagne was kneeling before the altar
during this service, the Pope approached him and set a crown
upon his head, saluting him, amid the acclamations of those
present, as " Emperor of the Romans."
The reasons for this extraordinary act, which Charlemagne in-
sisted took him completely by surprise, are given in one of the
Prankish histories, the Chronicles of Lorsch, as follows : " The
name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were
under the reign of a woman [the Empress Irene], wherefore it
seemed good both to Leo, the apostolic pope, and to the bishops
who were in council with him, and to all Christian men, that they
should name Charles, king of the Franks, as Emperor. For he
held Rome itself, where the ancient Caesars had always dwelt, in
addition to all his other possessions in Italy, Gaul, and Germany.
Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions, it
seemed just to all that he should take the title of Emperor,
too, when it was offered to him at the wish of all Christendom."
Charlemagne appears to have accepted gracefully the honor
thus thrust upon him. Even if he had no right to the imperial
tide, it was obviously proper and wise to grant it to him under
the circumstances. Before his coronation by the Pope he was
only king of the Franks and of the Lombards ; but his con-
quests seemed to give him a right to a higher title which should
include all his outlying realms.
The empire thus reestablished in the West was considered to
be a continuation of the Roman Empire founded by Augustus.
 Charlemagne and his Empire '^yy

Charlemagne was reckoned the immediate successor of the Em- Continuity of

peror at Constantinople, Constantine VI, whom Irene had de- Empire"^"
posed and blinded. Yet, it is hardly necessary to say that the
position of the new Emperor had little in common with that of
Augustus or Constantine. In the first place, the eastern emperors
continued to reign in Constantinople for centuries, quite regard-
less of Charlemagne and his successors. In the second place, the
German kings who wore the imperial crown after Charlemagne
were generally too weak really to rule over Germany and north-
ern Italy, to say nothing of the rest of western Europe. Never-
theless, the Western Empire, which in the twelfth century came to
be called the Holy Roman Empire, endured for over a thousand
years. It came to an end only in 1806, when the last of the emper-
ors, wearied of his empty if venerable title, laid down the crown.
The assumption of the title of Emperor was destined to make The title of
the German rulers a great deal of trouble. It constantly led sou'r^e^of^
trouble to the
them into unsuccessful efforts to keep control over Italy, which German
really lay outside their natural boundaries. Then the circum- rulers
stances under which Charlemagne was crowned made it possible
for the popes to claim, later, that it was they who had transferred
the imperial power from the old eastern line of emperors to Charle-
magne and his family, and that this was a proof of their right to
dispose of the crown as they pleased. The difficulties which arose
necessitated many a weary journey to Rome for the emperors,
and many unfortunate conflicts between them and the popes.

Section 62. How Charlemagne carried on

HIS Government

The task of governing his vast dominions taxed even the Difficulty
highly gifted and untiring Charlemagne ; it was quite beyond g^ fa?ge™n
the power of his successors. The same difficulties continued to ^^np'^^
exist that had confronted Charles Martel and Pippin — above
all, a scanty royal revenue and overpowerful officials, who were
apt to neglect the interests and commands of their sovereign.
 Outlines of European History
378
Charle-
Cliark-magnc's income, like lliat of all medieval rulers, came
magne's
farms chiefly from his royal estates, as there was no system of general
taxation such as had existed under the Roman Empire. He
consequently took the greatest care that his numerous planta-
tions should be well cultivated, and that not even a turnip or an
^^^ which was due him should be withheld. An elaborate set of
regulations for his farms is preserved, which sheds much light
upon the times.^
Origin of
titles of
The officials upon whom the Prankish kings were forced to
nobility rely chiefly were the counts, the " hand and voice of the king "
wherever he could not be in person. They were expected to
maintain order, see that justice was done in their district, and
raise troops when the king needed them. On the frontier were
the counts of the march, or margraves (marquises), already
mentioned. These titles, together with that of duke, still exist
as titles of nobility in Europe, although they are no longer asso-
ciated with any governmental duties except in cases where their
holders have the right to sit in the upper House of Parliament.
Charlemagne held assemblies of the nobles and bishops of
his realm each spring or summer, at which the interests of the
Empire were considered. With the sanction of his advisers he
issued an extraordinary series of laws, called capitularies, a num-
ber of which have been preserved. \Vith the bishops and abbots
he discussed the needs of the Church, and, above all, the neces-
sity of better schools for both the clergy and laity. The reforms
which he sought to introduce give us an opportunity of learning
the condition in which Europe found itself after four hundred
years of disorder.
The dark Charlemagne was the first important king since Theodoric
century
before Charle- to pay any attention to book learning. About 650 the supply
magne
of papyrus — the kind of paper that the Greeks and Romans
used — had been cut off, owing to the conquest of Egypt by
the Arabs, and as our kind of paper had not yet been invented,

1 .See extracts from these regulations, and an account of one of Charlemagne's

farms, in Readings, chap. vii.
 C/iarleinagJie and his Etnpire 379

there was only the very expensive parchment to write upon.

Whik: this had the advantage of being more durable than papy-
rus, its high cost discouraged the copying of books. The eighth
century — that immediately preceding Charlemagne's coronation
-I- is commonly regarded as the most ignorant, the darkest, and
the most barbarous period of the Middle Ages.
Yet, in spite of this dark picture, there was promise for the The elements
future. It was evident, even before Charlemagne's time, that preserved^
Europe was not to continue indefinitely in the path of ignorance. *^^ <^hurch
Latin could not be forgotten, for that was the language of the
Church, and all its official communications were in that tongue.
Consequently it was absolutely necessary that the Church should
maintain some sort of education in order that there might be
persons who knew enough to write a Latin letter and conduct
the church services. Some of those who learned Latin must
have used it to read the old books written by the Romans. Then
the textbooks of th.e later Roman Empire ^ continued to be
used, and these, poor as they were, contained something about
grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and other subjects.
It seemed to Charlemagne that it was the duty of the Church
not only to look after the education of its own officers but to
provide the opportunity of at least an elementary education for
the people at large. In accordance with this conviction, he issued
(789) an order to the clergy to gather together the children of
both freemen and serfs in their neighborhood and establish
schools " in which the boys may learn to read." -
It would be impossible to say how many of the abbots and Establish-
bishops established schools in accordance with Charlemagne's monastery
recommendations. It is certain that famous centers of learning the^'^School
existed at Tours, Fulda, Corbie, Orleans, and other places during of the
his reign. Charlemagne further promoted the cause of education
by the establishment of the famous " School of the palace " for
the instruction of his own children and the sons of his nobles.
palace "
He placed the Englishman Alcuin at the head of the school,
1 See above, p. 324. 2 See RcaUiiii^s, chap. vii.
 380 Outlines of Ent'opcan History
and called distinguished men from Italy and elsewhere as
teachers. The best known of these was the historian Paulus
Diaconus, who wrote a history of the Lombards, to which we
owe most of what we know about them.
Charlemagne Charlemagne appears to have been particularly impressed
intere^sted in ^vith the constant danger of mistakes in copying books, a task
religious frequently turned over to ignorant and careless persons. He
thought it very important that the religious books should be
carefully copied. It should be noted that he made no attempt
to revive the learning of Greece and Rome. He deemed it
quite sufficient if the churchmen would learn their Latin well
enough to read the church services and the Bible intelligently.
Discourage- The hopeful beginning that was made under Charlemagne
mion after ^' i^i the revival of education was destined to prove disappointing
Charle-
magne s time j^^ j^g immediate results. It is true that the ninth century^
produced a few noteworthy men who have left works which
indicate acuteness and mental training. But the break-up of
Charlemagne's empire, the struggles between his descendants,
the coming of new barbarians, and the disorder caused by the
unruly feudal lords, who were not inclined to recognize any
master, all combined to keep Europe back for at least two cen-
turies more. Indeed, the tenth and the first half of the eleventh
century seem, at first sight, little better than the seventh and
the eighth. Yet ignorance and disorder never were quite so
prevalent after, as they were before, Charlemagne.

QUESTIONS
Section 60. Explain the importance of the coronation of Pippin.
Describe Charlemagne's appearance and character. How did the
Church cooperate with Charlemagne in his efforts to incorporate the
Saxons in his empire?
Section 61. What led to Charlemagne's becoming Emperor.?
What modern countries did his empire include .?
Section 62. What were the chief sources of Charlemagne's
revenue? How did titles of nobility originate in medieval Europe?
What did Charlemagne do for education ?
 CHAPTER XVI

THE AGE OF DISORDER ; FEUDALISM

Section 63. The Disruption of Charlemagne's

Empire

It was a matter of great importance to Europe whether Division of

Charlemagne's extensive empire held together or fell apart Charle-

after his death in 814. He does not seem to have had any empire
expectation that it would hold together, because some years
magne's
before his death he arranged that it should be divided among
his three sons. But as two of these died before he did, it fell
into the hands of the only surviving son, Louis, who succeeded
his august father as king of all the various parts of the Frankish
domains and was later crowned Emperor.
Division of
Louis, called " the pious," proved a feeble ruler. He tried Frankish
all sorts of ways of dividing the Empire peaceably among his
empire into
rebellious and unruly sons, but he did not succeed, and after three king-
Mersen,doms at S70
his death they, and their sons as well, continued to fight over
the question of how much each should have. It is not neces-
sary to speak of the various temporary arrangements that were
made. Finally, it was agreed in 870, by the Treaty of Mersen,

381
 382 Outlines of European History

that there should be three states, a West Frankish kingdom, an

East Frankish kingdom, and a kingdom of Italy. The West
Frankish realm corresponded roughly with the present bound-
aries of France and Belgium. Its people talked dialects derived
from the spoken Latin, which the Romans had introduced after
their army, under the command of Julius Caesar, conquered
Gaul. The East Frankish kingdom included the rest of Charle-
magne's empire outside of Italy and was German in language.

Map of Treaty of Mersen

This map shows the division of Chademagne's empire made in 870 by

his descendants in the Treaty of Mersen

Obstacles to Each of the three realms established by the Treaty of Mersen

maintaining
order was destined finally to grow into one of the powerful modem
states which we see on the map of Europe to-day, but hundreds
of years elapsed before the kings grew strong enough to con-
trol their subjects, and the Treaty of Mersen was followed by
several centuries of constant disorder and local warfare. Let us
consider the difficulties which stood in the way of peace.
 The Age of Disorder ; Feudalism 383

In the first place, a king found it very hard to get rapidly Bad roads
from one part of his realms to another in order to put down
rebellions, for the remarkable roads which the Romans had so
carefully constructed to enable their armies to move about had
fallen into disrepair.
To have good roads one must be constantly working on
them, for the rains wash them out and the floods carry away the
bridges. As there was no longer a body of engineers employed
by the government to keep up the roads and repair the bridges,
they often became impassable. In the East Frankish kingdom
matters must have been worse than in the West Frankish realm,
for the Romans had never conquered Germany and consequently
no good roads had ever been constructed there.
Besides the difficulty of getting about quickly and easily, the Lack of
king had very little money. This was one of the chief troubles go°"mmem^
of the Middle Ages. There are not many gold or silver mines officials
in western Europe, and there w'as no supply of precious metals
from outside, for commerce had largely died out. So the king
had no treasury from which to pay the many officials which
an efficient government finds it necessary to employ to do its
business and to keep order. As we have seen, he had to give
his officers, the counts and margraves, land instead of money,
and their land was so extensive that they tended to become
rulers themselves within their own possessions.
Of course the king had not money enough to support a stand- No perma-
ing army, which would have enabled him to put down the con-
stant rebellions of his distant officers and of the powerful and
restless nobility, whose chief interest in life consisted in fighting.
In addition to the weakness and poverty of the kings there New
invasions
was another trouble, — and that the worst of all, — namely, the
constant new invasions from all directions which kept all three
parts of Charlemagne's empire, and England besides, in a con-
stant state of terror and disaster. These invasions were almost
as bad as those which had occurred before Charlemagne's time ;
they prevented western Europe from becoming peaceful and
 384 Outlines of European History

prosperous and serve to explain the dark period of two hundred

years which followed the break-up of Charlemagne's empire.
The Moham- We know how the Mohammedans had got possession of
medans
attack Italy northern Africa and then conquered Spain, and how Charles
and southern
France Martel had frustrated their attempt to add Gaul to their pos-
sessions. But this rebuff did not end their attacks on southern
Europe. They got control of the Island of Sicily shortly after

Fig. 150. AxMPHITHEATER AT ArLES IX THE MiDDLE AgES

The great Roman amphitheater at Aries (built probably in the first or

second century) is about fifteen hundred feet in circumference. During
the eighth century, when the Mohammedans were invading southern
France, it was converted into a fortress. Many of the inhabitants settled
inside its walls, and towers were constructed, which still stand. The pic-
ture shows it before the dwellings were removed, about 1830

Charlemagne's death, and then began to terrorize Italy and

southern France. Even Rome itself suffered- from them.
The accompanying picture shows how the people of Aries,
in southern France, built their houses inside the old Roman
amphitheater in order to protect themselves from these Moham-
medan invaders.
Slavs and On the east the German rulers had constantly to contend
Hungarians
with the Slavs. Charlemagne had defeated them in his time, as
 Fig. 151. Monastery of St.-Germain-des-Pres, Paris
This famous monastery, now in the midst of Paris, was formerly outside
of the walls when the town was much smaller, and was fortified, as shown
in the picture, with a moat (C) and drawbridge (Z>). One can see the
abbey church (A), which still stands; the cloister (B) ; the refectory, or
dining room {£) ; and the long dormitory {G). It was common in the
age of disorder to fortify monasteries and sometimes even churches, as
nothing was so sacred as to protect it from the danger of attack
I 385
 Outlines of European History
386
mentioned above, but they continued to make much trouble for
two centuries at least. Then there were also the Hungarians,
a savage race from Asia, who ravaged Germany and northern
Italy and whose wild horsemen penetrated even into the West
Frankish kingdom. Finally, they were driven back eastward and
settled in the country now named after them — Hungary.
The North- And lastly there came the Northmen, bold and adventurous
men
pirates from the shores of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
These skillful and daring seamen not only attacked the towns
on the coast of the West Frankish kingdom but made their way
up the rivers, plundering and burning the villages and towns
as far inland as Paris. In England we shall find them, under
the name of Danes, invading the country and forcing Alfred the
Great to recognize them as the masters of northern England.
So there was danger always and everywhere. If rival nobles
were not fighting one another, there were foreign invaders of
some kind devastating the country, bent on robbing, maltreat-
ing, and enslaving the people whom they found in towns and
villages and monasteries. No wonder that strong castles had
to be built and the towns surrounded by walls ; even the mon-
asteries, which were not of course respected by pagan invaders,
were in some cases protected by fortifications.
Growing In the absence of a powerful king with a well-organized army
power and
independ- at his back, each district was left to look out for itself. Doubt-
ence of the
great land-
less many counts, margraves, bishops, and other great landed
owners
proprietors, who were gradually becoming independent princes,
earned the loyalty of the people about them by taking the lead
in defending the country against its invaders and by estab-
lishing fortresses as places of refuge when the community was
hard pressed. These conditions serve to explain why such
government as continued to exist during the centuries following
the death of Charlemagne was necessarily carried on mainly,
not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders.
1 These Scandinavian pirates are often called vikings^ from their habit of leav-
ing their long boats in the vik^ which meant, in their language, " bay " or " inlet."
 TJie Age of Disorder ; Feudalism 3^7

Section 64. The Medieval Castle

As one travels through England, France, or Germany to- The medie-

day he often comes upon the picturesque ruins of a medieval ^^' ^^^^^^
castle perched upon some rocky cliff and overlooking the sur-
roundJBig country for miles. As he looks at the thick walls
ofiten surrounded by a deep, wide trench once filled with water,

^^'%^
l

^-^r" .^-i!.^^ T^|(^^ «®*^|^^

::;s^i^ \^)l\ ^f ^^
JL
Fig. 152. A Medieval Castle near Klagenfurt, Austrl\
It was not uncommon in mountainous regions to have fortresses
perched so high on rocky eminences that it was practically
impossible to capture them

and observes the great towers with their tiny windows, he can-
not but wonder why so many of these forts were built, and why
people lived in them. It is clear that they were never intended
to be dwelling places for the peaceful households of private
citizens ; they look rather like the fortified palace of a ruler.
Obviously, whoever lived there was in constant expectation of
being attacked by an army, for otherwise he would never have
 Outlines of Enropcaii History
388
gone to the trouble and expense of shutting himself up in those
dreary, cold, stone rooms, behind walls from ten to twenty feet
thick. We can picture the great hall of the castle crowded
with the armed followers of the master of the house, ready to
fight for him when he wished to make war on a neighbor;
or if he himself were attacked, they would rush to the little
windows and shoot arrows at those who tried to approach, or

Fig. 153. Machine for Hurling Stones

This was a medieval device for throwing stones and bolts of iron, which
were often heated red hot before they were fired. It consisted of a great
bow {A) and the beam {B), which was drawn back by the windlass (C)
turned by a crank applied at the point (D). Then a stone was put in
the pocket {F) and the trigger pulled by means of the string (E). This
let the beam fly up with a bang against the bumper, and the missile went
saihng against the wall or over it among the defenders of the castle

pour lighted pitch or melted lead down on their enemies if they

were so bold as to get close enough to the walls.
The Romans had been accustomed to build walls around their
camps, and a walled camp was called castrum ; and in such
names as Rochester, Winchester, Gloucester, Worcester, we
have reminders of the fact that these towns were once for-
tresses. These camps, however, were all government fortifica-
tions and did not belong to private individuals.
 389
TJie Age of Disorder ; Feudalism

But as the Roman Empire grew weaker and the disorder Early castles
caused by the incoming barbarians became greater, the various
counts and dukes and even other large landowners began to
build forts for themselves, usually nothing more than a great
round mound of earth surrounded by a deep ditch and a wall
made of stakes interwoven with twigs. On the top of the mound
was a wooden fortress, surrounded by a fence or palisade.

Fig. 154. Medieval Battering-ram

This is a simple kind of battering-ram, which was trundled up to the
walls of a besieged castle and then swung back and forth by a group
of soldiers, with the hope of making a breach. The men were often
protected by a covering over the ram

similar to the one at the foot of the mound. This was the type
of " castle " that prevailed for several centuries after Charle-
magne's death. There are no remains of these wooden castles
in existence, for they were not the kind of thing to last very long,
and those that escaped being burned or otherwise destroyed,
rotted away in time.
About the year 1 100 these wooden buildings began to be re- improved
placed by great square stone towers. This was due to the fact ^fack lead
that the methods of attacking*=>
castles had so changed
° that wood *° "se towers
stone of
was no longer a sufficient protection. The Romans when they about noo
besieged a walled town were accustomed to hurl great stones
and heavy-pointed stakes at the walls and over them. They had
ingenious machines for this purpose, and they also had ways of
 P^iG. 155. Movable Tower
This attacking tower was rolled up to the wall of the besieged town
after the moat had been filled up at the proper point. The soldiers then
swarmed up the outside and over a bridge onto the wall. Skins of ani-
mals were hung on the side to prevent the tower from being set on fire
 The Age of Diso7'der ; Feudalism
protecting their soldiers when they crept up to the walls with
their battering-rams and pickaxes in the hope of making a breach
and so getting into the
391
town. But the Ger-
man barbarians who
overran the Roman
Empire were unaccus-
tomed to these ma-
chines, which therefore
had fallen into disuse.
But the practice of
taking towns by means
of them was kept up
in the Eastern Empire,
and during the Cru-
sades, which, as we
shall see, began about
1 100 (see Chapter
XIX, below), they were
introduced once more
into western Europe,
and this is the reason
why stone castles be-
gan to be built about
that time. Fig. 156. Tower of Beaugexcy
A square tower This square donjon not far from Orleans,
(Fig. 156) can, how- towers France, is one of the very earliest square
that survive. It is a translation into
ever, be more easily
stone of the wooden donjons that prevailed
attacked than a round up to that time. It was built about 1 100, just
tower, which has no after the beginning of the First Crusade. It
corners, so a century is about 76 by 66 feet in size and 1 1 5 feet high
later round towers be-
came the rule and continued to be used until about the year
1500, when gunpowder and cannon had become so common
that even the strongest castle could no longer be defended.
 Outlines of Eiiropcaii History
392
for it could not withstand the force of cannon balls. The
accompanying pictures give an idea of the stone castles built
from about iioo to 1450 or 1500. They also show how a
stone-throwing machine, such as was used before the invention
of cannon, was constructed (Fig. 153).
As we have no remains or good pictures of the early wooden
castles on a mound, we must get our notions of the arrangement
of a castle from the
later stone fortresses,
many of which can still
be found in Europe.
When the castle was
not on a steep rocky
f'^^^fflV' hill, which made it very
hard to approach, a

^TTrtTiT deep ditch was con-

structed outside the
walls, called the moat.
This was filled with
^Vllliiifii..,,,, „„
water and crossed by
bridge, which could
be drawn up when the
Fig. 157. Fortified Gate of castle was attacked,
Medieval Castle
leaving no way of
Here one can see the way in which the
getting across. The
entrance to a castle was protected : the
doorway was further
moat {A) ; the drawbridge
cullis (O {B) ; the port-
protected by a grating
of heavy planks, called
the p07'tcuUis, which could be quickly dropped down to close the
entrance (Fig. 157). Inside the castle walls was the great donjon,
or chief tower, which had several stories, although one would not
suspect it from its plain exterior. There was sometimes also a fine
hall, as at Coucy (Fig. 158), and handsome rooms for the use of the
lord and his family, but sometimes they lived in the donjon. There
were buildings for storing supplies and arms, and usually a chapel.
 Fig. 158. Coucy-le-Chateau
This castle of Coucy-le-Chateau was built by a vassal of the king of
France in the thirteenth century. It is at the end of a hill and protected
on all sides but one by steep cliffs. One can see the moat (A) and the
double drawbridge and towers which protected the portal. The round
donjon (B) is probably the largest in the world, 100 feet in diameter and
210 feet high. At the base its walls are 34 feet thick. At the end of the
inner court (C) was the residence of the lord {D). To the left of the
court was a great hall, and to the right were the quarters of the garrison

393
394 Outlines of European History

Section 65. The Serfs and the Manor

Obviously the owner of the castle had to obtain supplies

to support his family and servants and armed men. He could
not have done this had he not possessed extensive tracts of land.
A great part of western Europe in the time of Charlemagne
appears to have been divided into great estates or plantations.
These medieval estates were called vits, or itianors, and closely
resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter.^
The peasants who tilled the soil were called villaiiis^ a word
derived from vil. A portion of the estate was reserved by the
lord for his own use ; the rest of it was divided up among the
peasants, usually in long strips, of which each peasant had several
scattered about the manor.
The peasants were generally serfs, who did not own their
fields, but could not, on the other hand, be deprived of them
so long as they worked for the lord and paid him certain dues.
They were attached to the land and went with it when it changed
hands. The serfs were required to till those fields which the
lord reserved for himself and to gather in his crops. They might
not marry without their lord's permission. Their wives and
daughters helped with the indoor work of the manor house. In
the women's buildings the women serfs engaged in spinning,
weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes,
food, and drink for the whole community.
We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from
the ancient descriptions of manors, which give an exact account
of what each member of a particular community owed to the
lord. For example, we find that the abbot of Peterborough
held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and seventeen other
serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him three
days in each week during the whole year, except one week at
Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf
was to give the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen
1 See above, p. 290.
 TJie Age of Disoj'der ; Feudalism 395

sheaves of oats, three hens, and one cock yearly, and five eggs at
Easter. If he sold his horse for more than ten shillings, he was
to give the said abbot fourpence. Five other serfs, mentioned by
name, held but half as much land as Hugh and his companions,
by paying and doing in all respects half as much service.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was
its independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly

M^. ^

Fig. 159. PlERREFONDS

This castle of Pierrefonds, not very far from Paris, was built by the
brother of the king of France, about 1400. It has been very carefully
restored in modern times and gives one a good idea of the way in which
the feudal lords of that period lived. Within the walls are a hand-
some central courtyard and magnificent apartments

everything that its members needed, and might almost have con-
tinued to exist indefinitely without communication with those who
lived beyond its bounds. Little or no money was necessary,
for the peasants paid what was due to the lord in the form of
labor and farm products. They also rendered the needful help
to one another and found little occasion for buying and selling.
 Outlines of Jiuropcdii llistoiy
396
The monot-
ony and Inhere was almost no opportunity to better one's condition,
misery of the and life must have gone on for generation after generation in a
peasants'
lives weary routine. And the life was not merely monotonous, it was
wretched. The food was coarse and there was litde variety, as
the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables.
The houses usually had but one room', which was ill-lighted by
a single little window and had no chimney.
Barter re- ^The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth
placed by
money centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry,
transactions
tended to break up the manor. The old habit of trading one
thing for another without the intervention of money began to
disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was
satisfied with the old system, which had answered well enough
in the time of Charlemagne. The serfs, on the one hand, began
to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of
neighboring towns. They soon found it more profitable to pay
the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they
could then turn their whole attention to their own farms.
The landlords, on the other hand, found it to their advantage
to accept money in place of the services of their tenants. With
this money the landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields
and could buy the luxuries which were brought to his notice as
commerce increased. So it came about that the lords gradually
gave up their control over the peasants, and there was no longer
very much difference between the serf and the freeman who
paid a regular rent for his land. A serf might also gain his lib-
erty by running away from his manor to a town. If he remained
undiscovered, or was unclaimed by his lord, for a year and a
day, he became a freeman.M

1 The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun

as early as the twelfth century. A very general emancipation had taken place in
France by the end of the thirteenth century, though there were still some serfs
in France when the Revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more backward
in this respect. We find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's
time (i524-i525),and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that
the serfs were freed in Prussia.
 The Age of Disorder ; Feudalism 397

These manors served to supptnt their lords and left them

free to busy themselves fighting with other landowners in the
same position as themselves.

Section 66. Feudal System

Landholders who had large estates and could spare a por- Lord and
tion of them were accustomed to grant some of their manors ^'^^^^
to another person on condition that the one receiving the land
would swear to be true to the giver, should fight for him on
certain occasions, and should lend him aid when particular diffi-
culties arose. It was in this way that the relation of lord and
vassal originated. The vassal who received the land pledged
himself to be true to his lord, and the lord, on the other hand,
not only let his vassal have the land but agreed to protect him
when it was necessary. These arrangements between vassals The feudal
and lords constituted what is called the feudal system. system
The feudal system, or feudalism, was not established by Gradual de-
any decree of a king or in virtue of any general agreement be- feudalism^ °
tween all the landowners. It grew up gradually and irregularly
without
it seemedany convenient
conscious plan
and on any one's
natural under part,
the simply because
circumstances.
The owner of vast estates found it to his advantage to par-
cel them out among vassals, that is to say, men who agreed to
accompany him to war, guard his castle upon occasion, and
assist him when he was put to any unusually great expense.
Land granted upon the terms mentioned was called 2. fief. One The fief
who held a fief might himself become a lord by granting a
portion of his fief to a vassal upon terms similar to those upon
which he held his lands of his lord, or suzerain.
The vassal of a vassal was called a subvassal. There was Vassal and
still another way in which the number of vassals was increased.
The owners of small estates were usually in a defenseless con-
dition, unable to protect themselves against the attacks of the
great nobles. They consequently often deemed it wise to put
 Outlines of European History
398
their land into the hands of a neighboring lord and receive it
back from him as a fief. They thus became his vassals and
could call upon him for protection.
Homage The one proposing to become a vassal knelt before the lord
and rendered him homage ^ by placing his hands between those
of the lord and declaring himself the lord's " man " for such and
such a fief. Thereupon the lord gave his vassal the kiss of
peace and raised him from his kneeling posture. Then the
vassal swore an oath of fidelity upon the Bible, or some holy
relic, solemnly binding himself to fulfill all his duties toward his
lord. This act of rendering homage by placing the hands in
those of the lord and taking the oath of fidelity was the first
and most essential duty of the vassal (Fig. i6o). For a vassal to
refuse to do homage for his fief when it changed hands
amounted to a declaration of revolt and independence.
Obligations The obligations of the vassal varied greatly.^ He was ex-
of the vassal.
Military pected to join his lord when there was a military expedition on
service
foot, although it was generally the case that the vassal need not
serve at his own expense for more than forty days. The rules
in regard to the length of time during which a vassal might
be called upon to guard the castle of his lord varied almost
infinitely.
Other feudal Besides the military service due from the vassal to his lord,
obligations
he was expected to attend the lord's court when summoned.
There he sat with other vassals to hear and pronounce upon
those cases in which his fellow vassals were involved. Moreover,

1 " Homage " is derived from the Latin word hotnq, meaning " man."
2 The conditions upon which fiefs were granted might be dictated either by
interest or by mere fancy. Sometimes the most fantastic and seemingly absurd
obligations were imposed. We hear of vassals holding on condition of attending
the lord at supper with a tall candle, or furnishing him with a great yule log at
Christmas. Perhaps the most extraordinary instance upon record is that of a lord
in Guienne who solemnly declared upon oath, when questioned by the commis-
sioners of Edward I, that he held his fief of the king upon the following terms :
When the lord king came through his estate he was to accom.pany him to a cer-
tain oak. There he must have waiting a cart loaded with wood and drawn by two
cows without any tails. When the oak was reached, fire was to be applied to the
cart and the whole burned up, " unless mayhap the cows make their escape."
 399
TJie Age of Diso7'dc7' ; Feudalism

he had to give the lord the benefit of his advice when required,
and attend him upon solemn occasions.
Under certain circumstances vassals had to make money Money pay-
payments to their lord ; as, for instance, when the lord was ™^"^^
put to extra expense by the necessity of knighting his eldest
son or providing a dowry for his daughter, or when he was
captured by an enemy
and was held for ransom.
Lastly, the vassal might
have to entertain his lord
should he be passing his
castle. There are amus-
ingly detailed accounts
in some of the feudal
contracts of exactly how
often the lord might
come, how many fol-
lowers he might bring,
and what he should have
to eat. Fig. i6o. Ceremony of Homage .
There were fiefs of
This is a modern picture of the way in
all kinds and of all
which the ceremony of homage took place.
grades of importance, The new vassal is putting his hands be-
from that of a duke or tween those of his lord. To the left are
retainers in their chain armor, and back
count, who held directly of the lord and his lady is the jester, or
of the king and exercised court fool, whose business it is to amuse
his master when he needs entertainment
the powers of a practi-
cally independent prince,
down to the holding of the simple knight, whose bit of land,
cultivated by peasants or serfs, was barely sufficient to enable
him to support himself and provide the horse upon which he
rode to perform his military service for his lord.
It is essential to observe that the fief was not granted for a
certain number of years, or simply for the life of the grantee,
to go back at his death to the owner. On the contrary, it became
 400 Oittlincs of European History

The heredi- hereditary in the family of the vassal and passed down to the
oTfiefs^and^^
Its conse eldest son from one generation to another. So long as the
quences vassal remained faithful to his lord and performed the stipu-
lated services, and his successors did homage and continued to
meet the conditions upon which the fief had originally been
granted, neither the lord nor his heirs could rightfully regain
possession of the land.
The result was that little was left to the original owner of the
fief except the services and dues to which the practical owner,
the vassal, had agreed in receiving it. In short, the fief came
really to belong to the vassal, and only the shadow of owner-
ship remained in the hands of the lord. Nowadays the owner
of land either makes some use of it himself or leases it for a
definite period at a fixed money rent. But in the Middle Ages
most of the land was held by those who neither really owned it
nor paid a regular rent for it, and yet who could not be deprived
of it by the nominal owner or his successors.
Subvassals of Obviously the great vassals who held directly of the king
under^his"^'^
control became almost independent of him as soon as their fiefs were
granted to ihem and their descendants. Their vassals, since
they had not done homage to the king himself, often paid little
attention to his commands. From the ninth to the thirteenth
century, the king of France or the king of Germany did not
rule over a great realm occupied by subjects who owed him
obedience as their lawful sovereign, paid him taxes, and were
bound to fight under his banner as the head of the State. As
a feudal landlord himself, the king had a right to demand fidel-
ity and certain services from those who were his vassals. But
the great mass of the people over whom he nominally ruled,
whether they belonged to the nobility or not, owed little to the
king directly, because they lived upon the lands of other feudal
lords more or less independent of him.
 The Age of Disorder ; Feicdalism 40 1

Section 6'j. Neighborhood Warfare in the

Middle Ages

One has only to read a chronicle of the time to discover that The feudal

brute force governed almost everything outside of the Church. tahie™only"*

The feudal obligations were not fulfilled except when the lord was ^>' ^^^^^
sufficiently powerful to enforce them. The oath of fidelity was
constantly broken, and faith was violated by both vassal and lord.
It often happened that a vassal was discontented with his The breaking
lord and transferred his allegiance to another. This he had ton/
a right to do under certain circumstances, as, for instance,
when his lord refused to see that justice was done him in his
court. But such changes were generally made merely for the
sake of the advantages which the faithless vassal hoped to gain.
The records of the time are full of accounts of refusal to do
homage, which was the commonest way in which a vassal re-
volted from his lord. So soon as a vassal felt himself strong
enough to face his lord's displeasure, or when the lord was
a helpless child, the vassal was apt to declare his independence
by refusing to recognize as his lord the one from whom he had
received his land.
We may say that war, in all its forms, was the law of the War the law
feudal world. War formed the chief occupation of the restless ^orld
nobles who held the land and were supposed to govern it. An
enterprising vassal was likely to make war upon each of the
lords to whom he had done homage ; secondly, upon the bishops
and abbots with whom he was brought into contact, and whose
control he particularly disliked ; thirdly, upon his fellow vassals ;
and lastly, upon his own vassals. The feudal bonds, instead of
offering a guarantee of peace and concord, appear to have been
a constant cause of violent conflict. Every one was bent upon
profiting by the permanent or temporary weakness of his neigh-
bor. This chronic fighting extended even to members of the
same family ; the son, anxious to enjoy a part of his heritage
immediately, warred against his father, younger brothers against
 Outlines of lluropcmi History
402
older, and nephews against uncles who might seek to deprive
them of their rights.
In theory, the lord could force his vassals to settle their dis-
putes in an orderly manner before his court ; but often he was
neither able nor inclined to bring about a peaceful adjustment,
and he would frequently have found it hard to enforce the
decisions of his own court. So the vassals were left to fight
out their quarrels among themselves, and they found their chief
interest in life in so doing. War was practically sanctioned by
law. This is shown by two striking examples. The great French
code of laws of the thirteenth century and the Golden Bull, a
most important body of law drawn up for Germany in 1356,
did not prohibit neighborhood war, but merely provided that
it should be conducted in what was considered a decent and
gentlemanly way.
Justs and
tourneys Justs and tourneys were military exercises — play wars — to
fill out the tiresome periods which occasionally intervened be-
tween real wars. They were, in fact, diminutive battles in which
whole troops of hostile nobles sometimes took part. These
rough plays called down the condemnation of the popes and
even of the kings. The latter, however, were much too fond of the
sport themselves not to forget promptly their own prohibitions.
The " Truce The horrors of this constant fighting led the Church to try
of God "
to check it. About the year 1000 several Church councils in
southern France decreed that the fighters were not to attack
churches or monasteries, churchmen, pilgrims, merchants, and
women, and that they must leave the peasant and his catde
and plow alone. Then Church councils began to issiie what
was known as the " Truce of God," which provided that all
warfare was to stop during Lent and various other holy days
as well as on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of every
week. During the truce no one was to attack any one else.
Those besieging castles were to refrain from any assaults during
the period of peace, and people were to be allowed to go quietly
to and fro on their business without being disturbed by soldiers.
 The Age of Disorder ; Fcudalisni 403

If any one failed to observe the truce, he was to be excom-

municated bythe Church — if he fell sick no Christian should
dare to visit him, and on his deathbed he was not to receive the
comfort of a priest, and his soul was consigned to hell if he
had refused to repent and mend his ways. It is hard to say
how much good the Truce of God accomplished. Some of the
bishops and even the heads of great monasteries liked fighting
pretty well themselves. It is certain that many disorderly lords
paid little attention to the truce, and found three days a week
altogether too short a time for plaguing their neighbors.
Yet we must not infer that the State ceased to exist altogether The kings
during the centuries of confusion that followed the break-up of thebetfer of
Charlemagne's empire, or that it fell entirely apart into little Jhe feudal
local governments independent of each other. In the first place,
a king always retained some of his ancient majesty. He might
be weak and without the means to enforce his rights and to
compel his more powerful subjects to meet their obligations
toward him. Yet he was, after all, the king, solemnly anointed
by the Church as God's representative on earth. He was always
something more than a feudal lord. The kings were destined to
get the upper hand before many centuries in England, France,
and Spain, and finally in Italy and Germany, and to destroy the
castles behind whose walls their haughty nobles had long defied
the royal power.

QUESTIONS
Section 63. What led to the breaking up of Charlemagne's em-
pire? What is the importance of the Treaty of Mersen.? What
were the chief obstacles that prevented a king in the early Middle
Ages from really controlling an extensive realm ? What invasions
occurred in western Europe after Charlemagne's time? Tell what
you can of the Northmen.
Section 64. Describe the changes that took place during the
Middle Ages in the method of constructing castles. Describe the
arrangement of a castle.
404 Ojitliiics of Europcaji History

Section 65. What was a manor, and what Roman institution did
it resemble? What was a serf? What were the chief services that
a serf owed to his master? What effect did the increased use of
money have upon serfdom ?
Section 66. Define "lord," "vassal," "fief," "homage," "feudal-
ism." What services did a vassal owe to his lord? What effects did
feudalism have upon the power of the kings?
Section 67. What is meant by neighborhood warfare ? Why was
it very common in the Middle Ages? What was the Truce of God?
 CHAPTER XVII

ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Section 68. The Norman Conquest

The country of western Europe whose history is of great- importance

est interest to English-speaking peoples is, of course, Eng- h^the^Sory
land. From England the United States and the vast English gj^^g^*""
colonies have inherited their language and habits of thought,
much of their literature, and many of their laws and institutions.
In this volume it will not, however, be possible to study Eng-
land except in so far as it has played a part in the general
development of Europe. This it has greatly influenced by its
commerce and industry and colonies, as well as by the example
it was the first to set in modern times of permitting the people
to share with the king in the government.
The conquest of the island of Britain by the German Angles Overlordship
and Saxons has already been spoken of, as well as the con-
version of these pagans to Christianity by Augustine and his
monks. ^ The several kingdoms founded by the German invaders
were brought under the overlordship of the southern kingdom
of Wessex by Egbert, a contemporary of Charlemagne.
But no sooner had the long-continued invasions of the Ger- invasion of
mans come to an end and the country been partially unified Their defeat
than the Northmen (or Danes, as the English called them), who ^j^'^'^^fj-e^^^
were ravaging France (see above, p. 386), began to make incur- 871-901
sions into England. Before long they had conquered a large
district north of the Thames and were making permanent set-
tlements. They were defeated, however, in a great battle by
Alfred the Great, the first English king of whom we have any
1 See above,
405 pp. 355 f.
 Ontlincs of European Ilistoiy
4o6
satisfactory knowledge. He forced the Danes to accept Christi-
anity, and established, as the boundary between their settlements
and his own kingdom of Wessex, a line running from London
across the island to Chester.
England But more Danes kept coming, and the Danish invasions con-
from the
death of
Alfred the tinued for more than a century after Alfred's death (901 J.
(Ireat to Sometimes they were bought off by a money payment called the
the Norman
Daiiegeld^ which was levied on the people of England like any
Conquest,
901-1066 other tax. But finally a Danish king (Cnut) succeeded in making
himself king of England in 1017. This Danish dynasty main-
tained itself, however, for only a few years. *rhen a last weak
Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, reigned for twenty years.
Upon his death one of the greatest events in all English
history occurred. The most powerful of the vassals of the king
of France crossed the English Channel, conquered England, and
made himself king. This was William, Duke of Normandy.
France in the
Middle Ages We have seen how Charlemagne's empire broke up, and how
the feudal lords became so powerful that it was difficult for the
king to control them. The West Frankish kingdom, which we
shall hereafter call France, w^as divided up among a great many
dukes and counts, who built strong castles, gathered armies and
fought against one another, and were the terror alike of priest,
merchant, and laborer. (See above, sections 63 and 67.)
Formation
of small In the tenth century certain great fiefs, like Normandy, Brit-
independent tany, Flanders, and Burgundy, developed into little nations, each
states in
France under its line of able rulers. Each had its own particular cus-
toms and culture, some traces of which may still be noted by
the traveler in France. These little feudal states were created
by certain families of nobles who possessed exceptional energy
or statesmanship. By conquest, purchase, or marriage they in-
creased the number of their fiefs, and they insured their control
over their vassals by promptly destroying the castles of those
who refused to meet their obligations.
Normandy Of these subnations none was more important or interesting
than Normandy. The Northmen had been the scourge of those
 England in the Middle Ages 407

who lived near the North Sea for many years before one of
their leaders, Rollo (or Hrolf ), agreed in 911 to accept from
the West Prankish king a district on the coast, north of Brit-
tany, where he and his followers might peacefully settle. Rollo
assumed the title of Duke of the Normans, and introduced the
Christian religion among his people. For a considerable time
the newcomers kept up their Scandinavian habits and language.
Gradually, however, they appropriated such culture as their
neighbors possessed, and by the twelfth century their capital,
Rouen, was one of the most enlightened cities of Europe. Nor-
mandy became a source of infinite perplexity to the French
kings when, in 1066, Duke William added England to his pos-
sessions and the title of " the Conqueror " to his name ; for
he thereby became so powerful that his overlord, the king
of France, could hardly hope to control the Norman dukes
any longer.
William of Normandy claimed that he was entitled to the The struggle
English crown, but we are somewhat in the dark as to the basis fl^h^crown^'
of his claim. There is a story•that he ^
had visited the court of between
Harold Earl
Edward the Confessor and had become his vassal on condition and Duke
that, should Edward die childless, he was to declare William his Normandy
successor. However this may be, Harold of Wessex assumed
the crown upon Edward's death and paid no attention to William's
demand that he should surrender it.
William thereupon appealed to the Pope, promising that if he The Pope
came into possession of England, he would see that the English ^villiam's
clergy submitted to the authority of the Roman bishop. Conse- ^^^^™
quently the Pope, Alexander H, condemned Harold and blessed
in advance any expedition that William might undertake to
secure his rights. The conquest of England therefore took on
the character of a sort of holy war, and as the expedition had
been well advertised, many adventurers flocked to William's
standard. During the spring and summer of 1066 ships were
building in the various Norman harbors for the purpose of
carrying William's army across the Channel.
 Outlines of European History
408
Harold, the English king, was in a very unfavorable position
to defend his crown. In the first place, while he was expecting
William's coming, he was called to the north of England to repel
a last invasion of
\\ Uk the fierce North-
men, who had
again landed in
England and were
devastating the
coast towns. He
was able to put
them to flight, but
as he was cele-
brating his victory
by a banquet, news
reached him that
William had actu-
ally landed with
his Normans in
southern England.
It was autumn
now and the peas-
ants, who formed
a large part of
Abbaye-aux-Dames, Caen Harold's forces,
William the Conqueror married a lady, Matilda, had gone home
who was remotely related to him. This was to harvest their
against the rules of the Church, and he took
pains to get the Pope's sanction to his marriage. crops, so he had
But he and his queen were afraid that they might to hurr)' south
have committed a sin in marrying, so William with an insuffi-
built a monastery for men and Matilda a nunnery cient army.
for women as a penance. The churches of these
monasteries still stand in the Norman city of The English
Caen. William was buried in his church. The
occupied the hill
picture represents the interior of Matilda's of vSenlac, west
church and is a good example of what the
English called the Norman style of architecture of Hastings, and
 England in the JMiddle Ages 409

awaited the coming of the enemy. They had few horses and Battle of
fought on foot with their battle-axes. The Normans had horses, October^,
which they had brought across in their ships, and were supplied ^°^^
with bows and arrows. The English fought bravely and re-
pulsed the Normans as they tried to press up the hillside. But
at last they were thrown into confusion, and King Harold was
killed by a Norman arrow which pierced his eye.
William thus destroyed the English army in this famous battle William
of Hastings, and the rightful English king was dead. But the atTondon
Norman duke was not satisfied to take possession of England
as a conqueror merely. In a few weeks he managed to induce
a number of influential nobles and several bishops to agree to
accept him as king, and London opened its gates to him. On
Christmas Day, 1066, he was chosen king by an assembly in
Westminster Abbey (where Harold had been elected a year
before) and was duly crowned.
In the Norman town of Bayeux a strip of embroidery is pre- The Bayeux
served some two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen ^^^^ ^
inches wide. If it was not made by Queen Matilda, William's
wife, and her ladies, as some have supposed, it belongs at any
rate to the time of the Norman conquest of England, which it
pictures with much detail. The accompanying colored repro-
duction of two scenes shows the Normans landing with their
horses from their ships on the English coast and starting for
the battle field of Hastings, and, in the second scene, the battle
in actual progress ; the English are on their hill, trying to drive
back the invaders. While the ladies could not draw very well,
historians are able to get some ideas of the time from their
embroidery.
We cannot trace the history of the opposition and the revolts
of the great nobles which William had to meet within the next
few years. His position was rendered doubly difficult by troubles
which he encountered on the Continent as Duke of Normandy.
Suffice it to say, that he succeeded in maintaining himself against
all his enemies.
 Outlines of Europe aii History
4IO
William's policy in England exhibited profound statesman-
ship. He introduced the Norman feudalism to which he was
accustomed, but took good care that it should not weaken his
power. The English, who had refused to join him before the
battle of Hastings, were declared to have forfeited their lands,
but were permitted to keep them upon condition of receiving
them back from the king as his vassals. The lands of those
who actually fought against him at Hastings, or in later rebel-
lions, including the great estates of Harold's family, were seized
and distributed among his faithful followers, both Norman
and English, though naturally the Normans among them far
outnumbered the English.
William declared that he did not propose to change the Eng-
lish customs, but to govern as Edward the. Confessor, the last
Saxon king, had done. He maintained the Witenagemot, a
council made up of bishops and nobles, whose advice the Saxon
kings had sought in all important matters. But he was a man
of too much force to submit to the control of his people. He
avoided giving to any one person a great many estates in a
single region, so that no one should become inconveniently
powerful. Finally, in order to secure the support of the smaller
landholders and to prevent combinations against him among
the greater ones, he required every landowner in England to
take an oath of fidelity directly to him, instead of having only a
few great landowners as vassals who had their own subvassals
under their own control, as in France.
We read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1086): " He came,
on the first day of August, to Salisbury, and there came to
him his wise men (that is, counselors), and all the land-owning
men of property there were over all England, whosoever men
they were ; and all bowed down to him and became his men,
and swore oaths of fealty to him that they would be faithful to
him against all other men."
It is clear that the Norman Conquest was not a simple change
of kings, but that a new element was added to the English
 England in the Middle Ages 411

people. We cannot tell how many Normans actually emigrated General re-
across the Channel, but they evidently came in considerable Norman^Con-
numbers, and their influence upon the English habits and gov- ^^^^^
ernment was very great. A century after William's conquest
the whole body of the nobility, the bishops, abbots, and govern-
ment officials, had become practically all Norman. Besides these,
the architects who built the castles and fortresses, the cathe-
drals and abbeys, came from Normandy. Merchants from the
Norman cities of Rouen and Caen -settled in London and other
English cities, and weavers from Flanders in various towns
and even in the country. For a short time these newcomers
remained a separate people, but by the year 1200 they had
become for the most part indistinguishable from the great mass
of English people amongst whom they had come. They had
nevertheless made the people of England more energetic, active-
minded, and varied in their occupations and interests than they
had been before the conquest.

Section 69. Henry II and the Plantagenets

William the Conqueror was followed by his sons, William William

Rufus and Henry I. Upon the death of the latter the country noo^^and ^~
went through^^ a terrible ^
period of civil war,'
for some of the ^^"0^ i-
1100-1135
nobility supported the Conqueror's grandson Stephen, and some
his granddaughter Matilda. After the death of Stephen, when Civil war end-
Henry II, Matilda's son,^ was finally recognized in 1 154 by all cession o^f^'^"
as king, he found the kingdom in a melancholy state. The Henry 11,
nobles had taken advantage of the prevalent disorder to erect
castles without royal permission and to establish themselves
as independent rulers, and many disorderly hired soldiers had
been brought over from the Continent to support the rivals for
the throne.
Henry II at once adopted vigorous measures. He destroyed
the illegally erected fortresses, sent off the foreign soldiers, and
i See genealogical table below, p. 416.
 Outlines of European History
412
Henry'scultiesdiffi- deprived many earls who had been created by Stephen and
and
his success
Matilda of their titles. Henry's task was a difficult one. He
in meeting
them had need of all his tireless energy and quickness of mind to
restore order in England and at the same time rule the wide
realms on the Continent which he had either inherited or gained
through his marriage
with a French heiress.
In order to avoid
all excuse for the pri-
vate warfare which
was such a persistent
evil on the Continent,
he undertook to im-
prove and reform the
law courts. He ar-
ranged that his judges
should make regular
circuits throughout
the country, so that
they might try cases
on the spot at least
Fig. 162. Norman Gateway at once a year. We
Bristol, England
find, too, the begin-
This beautiful gateway was originally the ning of our grand
entrance to a monastery, begun in 1142. It
jury in a body of men
is one of the finest examples of the Norman
style of building to be seen in Englandin each neighborhood
who were to be duly
sworn in, from time to time, and should then bring accusations
against such malefactors as had come to their knowledge.
Trial by jury
As for the " petty," or smaller, jury of twelve, w^hich actually
tried the accused, its origin and history are obscure. It did not
originate with Henry II, but he systematized trial by jury and
made it a settled law of the land instead of an exceptional
favor. The plan of delegating to twelve men the duty of decid-
ing on the guilt or innocence of a suspected person was very
 A,
England in tJic Middle 413
different from the earlier
systems. It resembled
neither the Roman trial,
where the judges made
the decision, nor the
medieval compurgation
and ordeals (see above,
p. 331), where God was
supposed to pronounce
the verdict. In all legal
matters the decisions
of Henry's judges were
so wise that they became
the basis of the commoJi
hnv which is still used
in all English-speaking
countries.
Henry's reign was em-
bittered bythe famous
struggle with Thomas
Becket, which illustrates
admirably the peculiar
dependence of the
monarchs of his day
upon the churchmen.
Becket was born in
London and became a Fig. 163. Choir of Canterbury
churchman, but he grew Cathedral
up in the service of the The choir of Canterbury Cathedral was
king and was able to aid destroyed by fire four years after Thomas
Becket was murdered there. The picture
Henry in gaining the shows how it was rebuilt under Henry II
throne. Thereupon the during the years 1 175-1 184. The two lower
new king made him rows of arches are the round kind that
his chancellor. Becket had been used up to that time, while the
upper row shows how the pointed arch
proved an excellent was coming in (see below, section 89)
 414 Outlines of European History

Thomas
Becket minister and defended the king's interest even against the
chancellor Church. He was fond of hunting and of war and maintained
a brilliant court from the revenues of the numerous church
positions which he held. It appeared to Henry that there could
be no better head for the English clergy than his sagacious
and worldly chancellor. He therefore determined to make him
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Made Arch- In securing the election of Becket as Archbishop of Canter-
bishop of
Canterbury, bury, Henry intended to insure his own complete control of the
Becket
defends the Church. He proposed to punish churchmen who committed
cause of
the Church
crimes, like other offenders, to make the bishops meet all the
against the feudal obligations, and to prevent appeals to the Pope. Becket,
king
however, immediately gave up his gay life and opposed every
effort of the king to reduce the independence of the Church.
After a haughty assertion of the supremacy of the Church
over the king's government,^ Thomas fled from the wrathful
and disappointed monarch to France and the protection of
the Pope.
Murder of
Becket and In spite of a patched-up reconciliation with the king, Becket
Henry's proceeded to excommunicate some of the great English prelates
remorse
and, as Henry believed, was conspiring to rob his son of the
crown. In a fit of anger, Henry exclaimed among his followers,
" Is there no one to avenge me of this miserable churchman ? "
Unfortunately certain knights took the rash expression literally,
and Becket was murdered in his own cathedral of Canterbury,
whither he had returned. The king really had no wish to resort
to violence, and his sorrow and remorse when he heard of the
dreadful deed, and his terror at the consequences, were most
genuine. The Pope proposed to excommunicate him. Henry,
however, made peace with the papal legates by the solemn as-
sertion that he had never wished the death of Thomas and by
promising to return to Canterbury all the property which he had
confiscated, to send money to aid in the capture of the Holy
Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and to undertake a crusade himself.
1 See below, section 75.
-tk.EHa., BUFFALO. 6

The Plant agexet Possessions in England and France

415
 Outlines of European History
4i6
The French Although Henry II was one of the most important kings in
of the^^^°"^ English history, he spent a great part of his time across the
Plantagenets Channel in his French possessions. A glance at the accompany-
ing map will show that rather more than half of his realms lay to
the south of the English Channel. He controlled more territory
in France than the French king himself. As great-grandson of
William the Conqueror, he inherited the duchy of Normandy
and the suzerainty over Brittany. His mother, Matilda, had mar-
ried the count of Anjou and Maine, so that Henry II inherited
these fiefs along with those which had belonged to William the
Conqueror. Lastly, he had himself married Eleanor, heiress of the
dukes of Guienne, and in this way doubled the extent of his French
lands.-^ Henry II and his successors are known as the Plantag-
enets, owing to the habit that his father, the count of Anjou,
had of wearing a bit of broom (^2X\wpIanta gefiistd) in his helmet.
Philip Au- So it came about that the French kings beheld a new State,
gustus of
France, under an able and energetic ruler, developing within their bor-
1180-1223
ders and including more than half the territory over which they
were supposed to rule. A few years before Henry II died, an
ambitious monarch, Philip Augustus, ascended the French
throne, and made it the chief business of his life to get control
of his feudal vassals, above all, the Plantagenets,
1 William the Conqueror, king of England (1066-1087)
I
William II (Rufus) Henry I (1100-1135), Adela, m. Stephen,
(1087-1100) m. Matilda, daughter count of Blois
of Malcolm, king I
of Scotland Stephen (1135-1154)
I
Matilda (d. 1167),
m. Geoffrey Plantagenet,
count of Anjou

Henry II (i 154-1 189),

the first Plantagenet king,
m. Eleanor of Aquitaine
Geoffrey
Richard
(1189-1199) I
Arthur (1199-1216)
I
Henry III
(1216-1272)
John
 England in tJic Middle Ages 4 17

Henry divided his French possessions among his three sons, Quarrels in
Geoffrey, Richard, and John ; but father and sons were engaged family ^
in constant disputes with one another, as none of them were
easy people to get along with. Philip Augustus took advantage
of these constant quarrels of the brothers among themselves
and with their father. These quarrels were most fortunate for
the French king, for had the Plantagenets held together they
might have annihilated the royal house of France, whose narrow
dominions their own possessions closed in on the west and south.
So long as Henry H lived there was little chance of expelling Richard the
the Plantagenets from France ; but with the accession of his
reckless son, Richard the Lion-Hearted,^ the prospects of the
French king brightened wonderfully. Richard is one of the
most famous of medieval knights, but he was a veiy poor ruler.
He left his kingdom to take care of itself while he went upon
a crusade to the Holy Land (see below, p. 471). He persuaded
Philip Augustus to join him ; but Richard was too overbearing
and masterful, and Philip too ambitious, to make it possible for
them to agree for long. The king of France, who was physi-
cally delicate, was taken ill on the way and was glad of the
excuse to return home and brew trouble for his powerful vassal.
When Richard himself returned, after several years of romantic
but fruitless adventure, he found himself involved in a war with
Philip Augustus, in the midst of which he died.
Richard's younger brother John, who enjoys the reputation John loses
of being the most despicable of English kings, speedily gave possessions
of his house
Philip a good excuse for seizing a great part of the Plantagenet
lands. John was suspected of conniving at the brutal murder of
his nephew Arthur (the son of Geoffrey). He was also guilty
of the less serious offense of carrying off and marrying a lady
betrothed to one of his own vassals. Philip Augustus, as John's
suzerain, summoned him to appear at the French court to answer
the latter charge. Upon John's refusal to appear or to do
1 Geoffrey, the eldest of the three sons of Henry II mentioned above, died
before his father.
I
 4i8 Outlines of Ej trope an History

homage for his continental possessions, Philip caused his court

to issue a decree confiscating almost all of the Plantagenet
lands, leaving to the English king only the southwest corner
of France.
Philip found little difficulty in possessing himself of Normandy
itself, which showed no disinclination to accept him in place of
the Plantagenets. Six years after Richard's death the English
kings had lost all their continental fiefs except Guienne. It
should be observed that Philip, unlike his ancestors, was no
longer merely suzerain of the new conquests, but was himself
duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou, of Maine, etc. The
boundaries of his domain — that is, the lands which he himself
controlled directly as feudal lord — now extended to the sea.
English St. Louis, Philip's successor, arranged with John's successor
confinued to in 1 258 that the English king should do him homage for Guienne,
hold south-
wester Gascony,
n and
j 1 Poitou, ■>
and should surrender everyj claim on all the
France rest of the former possessions of the Plantagenets. So it came
about that the English kings continued to hold a portion of France
for several hundred years.
John of Eng- John not only lost Normandy and other territories which had
a vassal of belonged to the earlier Norman kings but he actually consented
the Pope ^Q become the Pope's vassal, receive England as a fief from
the papacy, and pay tribute to Rome. This strange proceeding
came about in this wise : The monks of Canterbury had (1205)
ventured to choose an archbishop — who was at the same time
their abbot ^ — without consulting King John. Their appointee
hastened off to Rome to gain the Pope's confirmation, while the
irritated John forced the monks to hold another election and
make his treasurer archbishop. The Pope at that time was no
less a person than Innocent III, one of the greatest of medieval
rulers.^ Innocent rejected both the men who had been elected,
sent for a new deputation of monks from Canterbury, and bade
them choose Stephen Langton, a man of great ability. John
then angrily drove the monks of Canterbury out of the kingdom.
1 See above, p. 357. 2 See below, p. 457.
 England in the Middle Ages 4 19

Innocent replied by placing England under the inte^'did ; that England un-
is to say, he ordered the clergy to close all the churches and ^fcV ^ '"^^'^'
suspend all public services — a very terrible thing to the people
of the time. John was excommunicated, and the Pope threatened
that unless the king submitted to his wishes he would depose
him and give his crown to Philip Augustus of France. As Philip
made haste to collect an army for the conquest of England,
John humbly submitted to the Pope in 12 13. He went so far
as to hand England over to Innocent III and receive it back as
a fief, thus becoming the vassal of the Pope. He agreed also
to send a yearly tribute to Rome.

Section 70. The Great Charter and the

Beginnings of Parliament

We must now turn to the most important event in John's

reign — the drawing up of the Great Charter of English
liberties.
When, in 12 13, John proposed to lead his English vassals The grant-
across the water in order to attempt to reconquer his lost pos- Qfeat Ch^ar-
sessions in France, they refused to accompany him on the ground *^^' ^^^5
that their feudal obligations did not bind them to fight outside
of their country. Moreover, they showed a lively discontent with
John's tyranny and his neglect of those limits of the kingly
power which several of the earlier Norman kings had solemnly
recognized. In 12 14 a number of the barons met and took a
solemn oath that they would compel the king, by arms if neces-
sary, to sign a charter containing the things which, according
to English traditions, a king might not do. As John would not
agree to do this, it proved necessary to get together an army
and march against him. The insurgent nobles met him at
Runnymede, not far from London. Here on the 15th of June,
1 2 15, they forced him to swear to observe what they believed
to be the rights of his subjects, which they had carefully
written out.
 Outlines of European History
420
The provi- The Great Charter is perhaps the most famous document in
sions of the
Charter the history of government ; ^ its provisions furnish a brief and
and its
importance
comprehensive statement of the burning governmental questions
of that period. It was really the whole nation, not merely the
nobles, who concluded this great treaty with a tyrannous ruler,
for the rights of the commoner were guarded as well as those
of the noble. The king promises to observe the rights of his
vassals and not to abuse his feudal prerogatives, and the vassals
in turn agree to observe the rights of their men. The merchant
is not to be deprived of his goods for small offenses, nor the
farmer of his wagon and implements. The king is to impose no
tax, besides the three stated feudal aids,^ except with the consent
of the great council of the nation. This is to include the prelates
and greater barons and all who hold directly of the king.
There is no more notable clause in the Charter than that
which provides that no one is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or
deprived of his property, unless he be immediately sent before
a^ court of his peers for trial. To realize the importance of this,
we must recollect that in France, down to 1789, — nearly six
hundred years later, — the king exercised such unlimited powers
that he could order the arrest of any one he pleased, and could
imprison him for any length of time without bringing him to
trial or even informing hifti of the nature of his offense. The
Great Charter provided further that the king should permit
merchants to move about freely and should observe the privileges
of the various towns ; nor were his officers longer to be allowed
to exercise despotic powers over those under them.
Permanent In spite of his solemn confirmation of the Charter, John,
value of
the Charter with his accustomed treachery, made an unsuccessful attempt to
break his promises in the Charter ; but neither he nor his suc-
cessors ever succeeded in getting rid of the document. Later
there were times when the English kings evaded its provisions

1 Extracts from the Great Charter are given in the Readings^ chap. xi.
2 These were payments made when the lord knighted his eldest son, gave his
eldest daughter in marriage, or had been captured and was waiting to be ransomed.
 Efigland iji tJie Middle Ages 421

and tried to rule as absolute monarchs. But the people always

sooner or later bethought them of the Charter, which thus con-
tinued toform a barrier against permanent despotism in England.
During the long reign of John's son, Henry III, England Henry ill,
began to construct her Parliament, an institution which has not
only played a most important role in English history, but has
also served as the model for similar bodies in almost every
civilized state in the world.
The Great Council of the Norman kings, like the older Wite-
nagemot of Saxon times, was a meeting of nobles, bishops, and
abbots, which the king summoned from time to time to give
him advice and aid, and to sanction important governmental
undertakings. During Henry's reign its meetings became more
frequent and its discussions more vigorous than before, and the
name Pai'liainent began to be applied to it.
In 1265 a famous Parliament was held, where a most impor- The Com-
tant new class of members — the commons — were present, who moned"o^'
were destined to give it its future greatness. In addition to the Parliament,
nobles and prelates, two simple knights were summoned from
each county and two citizens from each of the more flourishing
towns to attend and take part in the discussions.
Edward I, the next king, definitely adopted this innovation. The Model
He doubtless called in the representatives of the towns because Edward^"
the townspeople were becoming rich and he wished to have an ^^95
opportunity to ask them to make grants of money to meet the
expenses of the government. He also wished to obtain the
approval of all classes when he determined upon important
measures affecting the whole realm. Ever since the so-called
"Model Parliament" of 1295, the commons, or representatives
of the people, have always been included along with the clergy
and nobility when the national assembly of England has been
summoned.
The Parliament early took the stand that the king must agree Redress of
to " redress of grievances " before they would grant him any
money. This meant that the king had to promise to remedy any
 Outliues of European History
422
acts of himself or his officials of which Parliament complained
before it would agree to let him raise the taxes. Instead of fol-
lowing the king about and meeting wherever he might happen
to be, the parliament from the time of Edward I began to hold
its sessions in the city of Westminster, now a part of London,
where it still continues to meet.
Growth of
powers of Under Edward's successor, Edward II, Parliament solemnly
Parliament declared in 1322 that important matters relating to the king and
his heirs, the state of the realm and of the people should be con-
sidered and determined upon by the king " with the assent of the
prelates, earls and barons, and the commonalty (that is, com-
mons) of the realm." Five years later Parliament showed its
powder by deposing the inefficient king, Edward II, and declared
his son, Edward III, the rightful ruler of England.
The new king, w^ho was carrying on an expensive war with
France, needed much money and consequently summoned Par-
liament every year, and, in order to encourage its members to
grant him money, he gratified Parliament by asking their advice
and listening to their petitions. He passed no new law without
adding " by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual
and temporal and of the commons."
House of At this time the separation of the two houses of Parliament
Lords and
House of
Commons took place, and ever since the " lords spiritual and temporal " —
that is, the bishops and higher nobles — have sat by themselves
in the House of Lords, and a House of Commons, including the
country gentlemen (knights) and the representatives elected by
the more important towns, have met by themselves. Parliament
thus made up is really a modern, not a medieval, institution,
and we shall hear much of it later.

Section 71. Wales and Scotland

Extent of the The English kings who preceded Edward I had ruled over
England's ^^^Y ^ portion of the island of Great Britain. To the v\^est
Ed'"^^d 1^°"^^ of their kingdom lay the mountainous district of Wales, in-
(1272-1307) habited by that remnant of the original Britons which the
 England in the Middle Ages 423

German invaders had been unable to conquer. To the north of

England was the kingdom of Scotland, which was quite inde-
pendent except for an occasional recognition by the Scotch
kings of the English kings as their feudal superiors. Edward I,
however, succeeded in conquering Wales permanently and
Scotland temporarily.
For centuries a border warfare had been carried on between The Welsh

the English and the Welsh. William the Conqueror had found bards ^^^
it necessary to establish a chain of fortresses on the Welsh fron-
tier, and Chester, Shrewsbury, and Monmouth became the out-
posts of the Normans. While the raids of the Welsh constantly
provoked the English kings to invade Wales, no permanent con-
quest was possible, for the enemy retreated into the mountains
about Snowdon, and the English soldiers were left to starve
in the wild regions into which they had ventured. The Welsh
were encouraged in their long and successful resistance against
the English by the songs of their bards, who promised that
their people would sometime reconquer the whole of England,
which they had possessed before the coming of the Angles
and Saxons.
When Edward I came to the throne he demanded that Edward i

Llewellyn, prince of Wales, as the head of the Welsh clans was wafeT^^
called, should do him homage, Llewellyn, who was a man of
ability and energy, refused the king's summons, and Edward
marched into Wales. Two campaigns were necessary before the
Welsh finally succumbed. Llewellyn was killed (1282), and with
him expired the independence of the Welsh people. Edward
divided the country into shires and introduced English laws and
customs, and his policy of conciliation was so successful that
there was but a single rising in the country for a whole century.
He later presented his son to the Welsh as their prince, and from
that time down to the present the title of " Prince of Wales " The title of
has usually been conferred upon the heir to the English throne, waies "
The conquest of Scotland proved a far more difficult matter
than that of Wales.
 424 Outlines of European Histoiy

Lowlands and
When the German peoples — the Angles and Saxons — con-
Highlands
of Scotland quered Britain, some of them wandered north as far as the Firth
of Forth and occupied the so-called Lowlands of Scotland. The
mountainous region to the north, known as the Highlands, con-
tinued to be held by wild tribes related to the Welsh and Irish
and talking a language similar to theirs, namely, Gaelic. There
was constant w^arfare between the older inhabitants themselves
and between them and the newcomers from Germany, but both
Highlands and Lowlands were finally united under a line of

Fig. 164. Conway Castle

Edward built this fine castle in 1284 on the north coast of Wales, to
keep the Welsh in check. Its walls are 12 to 15 feet in thickness. There
were buildings inside, including a great banqueting hall 130 feet long

Scottish kings, who moved their residence down to Edinburgh,

which, with its fortress, became their chief town.
It was natural that the language of the Scotch Lowlands
should be English, but in the mountains the Highlanders to this
day continue to talk the ancient Gaelic of their forefathers.
Edward inter- It was not until the time of Edward I that the long series
Scotch affairs of troubles between England and Scotland began. The dying
out of the old line of Scotch kings in 1290 was followed by
the appearance of a number of claimants to the crown. In order
 England in the Middle Ages 425

to avoid civil war, Edward was asked to decide who should

be king. He agreed to make the decision on condition that
the one whom he selected should hold Scotland as a Jief from
the English king. This arrangement was adopted, and the
crown was given to John Baliol. But Edward unwisely made
demands upon the Scots which aroused their anger, and their
king renounced his homage to the king of England. The
Scotch, moreover, formed an alliance with Edward's enemy. Alliance be-
Philip the Fair of France ; thenceforth, in all the difficulties i^^d and^°
between England and France, the English kings had always France
to reckon with the disaffected Scotch, who were glad to aid
England's enemies.
Edward marched in person against the Scotch (1296) and Edward at-
speedily put down what he regarded as a rebellion. He declared Scotland corporate '"
that Baliol had forfeited his fief through treason, and that con- with England
sequently the English king had become the real ruler of Scot-
land. He emphasized his claim by carrying off the famous
Stone of Scone (now in Westminster Abbey), upon which the
kings of Scotland had been crowned for ages. Continued resist-
ance led Edward to attempt to incorporate Scotland with Eng-
land in the same way that he had treated Wales. This was the
beginning of three hundred years of intermittent war between
England and Scotland, which ended only when a Scotch king,
James VI, succeeded to the English throne in 1603 as James I.
That Scotland was able to maintain her independence was
mainly due to Robert Bruce, a national hero who succeeded in
bringing both the nobility and the people under his leadership.
Edward I died, old and worn out, in 1307, when on his way
north to put down a rising under Bruce, and left the task of
dealing with the Scotch to his incompetent son, Edward H.
The Scotch acknowledged Bruce as their king and decisively
defeated Edward H in the great battle of Bannockburn, the Battle of
most famous conflict in Scottish history. Nevertheless, the j^j^
English refused to acknowledge the independence of Scotland
until forced to do so in 1328.
 Outlines of European History
426
The Scottish In the course of their struggles with England the Scotch
nation differs
from the people of the Lowlands had become more closely welded to-
English gether, and the independence of Scotland, although it caused
much bloodshed, first and last, served to develop certain per-
manent differences between the little Scotch nation and the rest
of the English race. No Scotchman to the present day likes to
be mistaken for an Englishman. The peculiarities of the lan-
guage and habits of the people north of the Tweed have been
made familiar to all readers of good literature by the novels of
Sir Walter Scott and Robert L. Stevenson and by the poems
of Robert Burns.

Section 72. The Hundred Years' War

England and France were both becoming strong states in
the early fourteenth century. The king in both of these countries
had got the better of the feudal lords, and a parliament had been
established in France as well as in England, in which the tovv^ns-
people as well as the clergy and nobility were represented. But
both countries were set back by a long series of conflicts known
as the Hundred Years' War, which was especially disastrous to
France. The trouble arose as follows :
It will be remembered that King John of England had lost
all the French possessions of the Plantagenets except the duchy
of Guienne (see above, pp. 417-418). For this he had to do hom-
age to the king of France and become his vassal. This arrange-
ment lasted for many years, but in the times of Edward III
the old French line of kings died out, and Edward declared
that he himself was the rightful ruler of all France because his
mother, Isabella, was a sister of the last king of the old line (see
table on the next page).
The PYench lawyers, however, decided that Edward had no
claim to the French throne and that a very distant relative of
the last king was the rightful heir to the crown (Philip VI).
Edward, nevertheless, maintained that he was rightfully king of
 Engla7id hi tJie Middle Ages 427

France.^ He added the French emblem of the lilies (fleur-de-

lis) to the lions on the English coat of arms (Fig. 165). In
1346 he landed in Normandy with an English army, devas-
tated the country and marched up the Seine toward Paris. He
met the troops of Philip at Cre'cy, where a celebrated battle was Battle of
fought, in which the English with their long bows and well- ^"^^^^^ ^^^^
directed arrows put to rout the French knights. Ten years
later the English made another incursion into France and again
defeated the French cavalry. The French king (John H) was
himself captured and carried off to London.
The French Parliament, commonly called the Estates Gen- The French
Parliament
eral, came together to consider the unhappy state of affairs,
The members from the towns were more numerous than the General) (Estates
representatives of the clergy and nobility. A great list of

1 The French kings during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ;

Louis IX (St. Louis) (1226-1270)
Philip III (1270-1285)

Philip IV, the Fair Charles of Valois,

(1285-1314) ancestor of the house of Valois

Louis X
I r ^1
Isabella, m. Philip V Charles IV
(1314-1316) Edward II (1316-1322) (1322-1328)
I
I I Edward daughters daughter
daughter John III of Philip VI
(1316), England (1328-1350)
an
infant
who died John II
(1350-1364)
when but
a few
days old Charles V Philip,
(1364-1380) founder of
CharlesIVI the
ful power-
house
(1380-1422) of Bur-
Charles VII I (1422-1461)gundy
I
Louis XI (1461-1483)

Charles VIII (1483-1498)

 Outlines of European History
428
reforms was drawn up. These provided among other things that
the Estates General should meet regularly even when the king
failed to summon them, and that the collection and expenditure
of the public revenue should be no longer entirely under the
control of the king but should be supervised by the representa-
tives of the people. The city of Paris rose in support of the
revolutionary Estates, but the violence of its allies discredited
rather than helped the move-
ment, and France was soon
glad to accept the unrestricted
rule of its king once more.
The history of the Estates
General forms a curious con-
trast to that of the English
Parliament, which was laying
the foundation of its later power
during this very period. While
the French king occasionally
summoned the Estates when he
needed money, he did so only in
Fig. 165. Royal Arms order that their approbation of
Edward III OF new taxes might make it easier
to collect them. He never
On the upper left-hand quarter admitted that he had not the
and the lower right-hand are the
lilies as represented in heraldry right to levy taxes if he wished
without consulting his subjects.
Contrast In England, on the other hand, the kings ever since the time
between the
position of of Edward I had repeatedly agreed that no new taxes should
the Estates
General and be imposed without the consent of Parliament. Edward II, as
the EngUsh we have seen, had gone farther and accepted the representatives
Parliament
of the people as his advisers in all important matters touching the
welfare of the realm. While the French Estates gradually sank
into insignificance, the English Parliament soon learned to grant
no money until the king had redressed the grievances which it
pointed out, and thus it insured its influence over the king's policy.
 England in the Middle Ages 429

Edward III found it impossible, however, to conquer France, Edward iii

and the successor of the French King, John II, managed before pofs^ibiJTo
Edward died in 1^77 to get back almost all the lands that «>nquer
'' ^ France
the English had occupied.
For a generation after the death of Edward III the war with Miserable
France w^as almost discontinued. France had suffered a great France"" °
deal more than England. In the first place, all the fighting had
been done on her side of the Channel, and in the second place,
the soldiers, who found themselves without occupation, wandered
about in bands maltreating and plundering the people. The
famous Italian scholar, Petrarch, who visited France at this
period, tells us that he could not believe that this was the
same kingdom which he had once seen so rich and flourishing.
" Nothing presented itself to my eyes but fearful solitude and
extreme poverty, uncultivated land and houses in ruins. Even
about Paris there were everywhere signs of fire and destruction.
The streets were deserted, the roads overgrown with weeds."
The horrors of war had been increased by the deadly bubonic The bubonic
plague which appeared in Europe early in 1348. In April it ^3^8-1349
had reached Florence ; by August it was devastating France ^^(['^^P'^
and Germany ; it then spread over England from the south- black death
west northward, attacking every part of the country during the
year 1349. This disease, like other terrible epidemics, such as
smallpox and cholera, came from Asia. Those who were stricken
with it usually died in two or three days. It is impossible to
tell what proportion of the population perished. Reports of the
time say that in one part of France but one tenth of the people
survived, in another but one sixteenth ; and that for a long time
five hundred bodies were carried from the great hospital of
Paris every day. A careful estimate shows that in England
toward one half of the population died. At the Abbey of New-
enham only the abbot and two monks were left alive out of
twenty-six. There were constant complaints that certain lands
were no longer of any value to their lords because the tenants
were all dead.
 Outlines of European History
430
In England the growing discontent among the farming
classes may be ascribed partly to the results of the great pesti-
lence and partly to the new taxes which were levied in order to
prolong the disastrous war with France. Up to this time the
majority of those who cultivated the land belonged to some
particular manor, paid stated dues to their lord, and performed
definite services for him. Hitherto there had been relatively
few farm hands who might be hired and who sought employ-
ment anyw^here that they could get it. The black death, by
greatly decreasing the number of laborers, raised wages and
served to increase the importance of the unattached laborer.
Consequently he not only demanded higher wages than ever
before but readily deserted one employer when another offered
him more money.
This appeared very shocking to those who were accustomed
to the traditional rates of payment ; and the government under-
took to keep down wages by prohibiting laborers from asking
more than had been customary during the years that preceded
the pestilence. Every laborer, when offered work at the estab-
lished wages, was ordered to accept it on pain of imprisonment.
The first "Statute of Laborers" was issued in 135 1 ; but
apparently it was not obeyed, and similar laws were enacted
from time to time for a century.
The old manor system was breaking up. Many of the labor-
ing class in the country no longer held land as serfs but moved
from place to place and made a living by working for wages.
The villain, as the serf was called in England, began to regard
the dues which he had been accustomed to pay to his lord as
unjust. A petition to Parliament in 1377 asserts that the vil-
lains are refusing to pay their customary services to th^ir lords
or to acknowledge the obligations which they owe as serfs.
In 1 38 1 the peasants rose in revolt against the taxes levied
on them to carry on the hopeless war with France. They burned
some of the houses of the nobles and of the rich ecclesiastics, and
took particular pains to see that the registers were destroyed
 England in the Middle Ages 431

which were kept by the various lords enumerating the obligations

of their serfs.
Although the peasants met with little success, serfdom de- Final disap-
cayed rapidly. It became more and more common for the serf serfdom in
to pay his dues to the lord in money instead of working for him, England
and in this way he lost one of the chief characteristics of a serf.
The landlord then either hired men to cultivate the fields which
he reserved for his own use, or rented the land to tenants.
These tenants were not in a position to force their fellow
tenants on the manor to pay the full dues which had formerly
been exacted by the lord. Sixty or seventy years after the
Peasants' War the English rural population had in one way or
another become free men, and serfs had practically disappeared.
The war between England and France almost ceased for Renewal of
nearly forty years after the death of Edward III. It was re- years' War
newed in 141 5, and the English king won another great victory ^" '-^^5
at Agincourt, similar to that won at Cre'cy. Once more the
English bowmen slaughtered great numbers of French knights.
Fifteen years later the English had succeeded in conquering all
of France north of the Loire River ; but a considerable region
to the south still continued to be held by King Charles VII of
France. He was weak and indolent and was doing nothing to
check the English victories. The English were engaged in be-
sieging the great town of Orleans when help and encourage-
ment came to the French from a most unexpected quarter. A
peasant girl put on a soldier's armor, mounted a horse, and led
the faint-hearted French troops to victory.
To her family and her companions Joan of Arc seemed only Joan of Arc
" a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," but she
brooded much over the disasters that had overtaken her coun-
try, and a " great pity on the fair realm of France " filled her
heart. She saw visions and heard voices that bade her go forth
to the help of the king and lead him to Rheims to be crowned.
It was with the greatest difficulty that she got anybody to
believe in her mission or to help her to get an audience with
 Outlines of European History
432
Relief of her sovereign. But her own firm faith in her divine guidance
Orleans by
Joan, 1429 triumphed over all doubts and obstacles. She was at last ac-
cepted as a God-sent champion and placed at the head of some
troops dispatched to the relief of Orle'ans. This city, which was
the key to southern France, had been besieged by the English
for some months and was on the point of surrender. Joan, who
rode at the head of her troops, clothed in armor like a man,
had now become the idol of the soldiers and of the people.
Under the guidance and inspiration of her courage, sound sense,
and burning enthusiasm, Orleans was relieved and the English
completely routed. The Maid of Orleans, as she was hence-
forth called, was now free to conduct the king to Rheims,
where he was crowned in the cathedral (July 17, 1429).
The Maid now felt that her mission was accomplished and
begged permission to return to her home and her brothers and
sisters. To this the king would not consent, and she continued
to fight his battles with success. But the other leaders were
jealous of her, and even her friends, the soldiers, w-ere sensitive
to the taunt of being led by a woman. During the defense of
Compiegne in May, 1430, she was allowed to fall into the hands
of the Duke of Burgundy, who sold her to the English. They
were not satisfied with simply holding as prisoner that strange
maiden who had so discomfited them ; they wished to discredit
everything that she had done, and so declared, and undoubtedly
believed, that she was a witch who had been helped by the
Execution of devil. She was tried by a court of clergymen, found guilty,
Joan, 1431
and burned at Rouen in 1431. Her bravery and noble con-
stancy affected even her executioners, and an English soldier
who had come to triumph over her death was heard to ex-
claim, "We are lost — we have burned a saint." The English
cause in France was indeed lost, for her spirit and example had
given new courage and vigor to the French armies.
England The English Parliament became more and more reluctant to
loses her
French grant funds when there were no more victories gained. From
possessions this time on the English lost ground steadily. They were
 Englaftd in the Middle Ages 433

expelled from Normandy in 1450. Three years later, the last 1453
vestige of their possessions in southern France passed into the
End of the
hands of the French king. The Hundred Years' War was Hundred
Years' War,
over, and although England still retained Calais, the great ques-
tion whether she should extend her sway upon the Continent
was finally settled.
The Wars of
The close of the Hundred Years' War was followed in Eng- the Roses
land by the Wars of the Roses, between the rival houses which tween the be-
houses of
were struggling for the crown. The badge of the house of Lancaster
and York,
Lancaster was a red rose, and that of York was a white one.^
1455-1485
Each party was supported by a group of the wealthy and pow-
erful nobles whose conspiracies, treasons, murders, and execu-
tions fill the annals of England during the period which we have
been discussing.
Retainers
The nobles no longer owed their power as they had in pre-
vious centuries to vassals who were bound to follow them to
war. Like the king, they relied upon hired soldiers. It was easy
to find plenty of restless fellows who were willing to become
the retainers of a nobleman if he would agree to clothe them
and keep open house, where they might eat and drink their fill.
Their master was to help them when they got into trouble, and
1 Descent of the rival houses of Lancaster and Yorlc
Edward III (1327-1377)
\
I I i
Edmund,
I ,
Edward, John of ^ ^
Gaunt,
the Black Prince duke of Lancaster duke of York
(d. 1376)
I I
Richard L Henry IV (1399-1413) John Beaufort Richard
(1377-1399) I I I
Richard
Henry V (1413-1422) John Beaufort
Henry VI (1422-1461)
Edward IV Richard III
(1461-1483) (1483-1485)

Edmund Tudor, m. Margaret

I
Henry VII, m. Elizabeth of York Edward V,
(1485-1509) murdered in
first of the the Tower,
Tudor kings 1483
 434 Outlines of European History

they on their part were expected to intimidate, misuse, and

even murder at need those who opposed the interests of their
chief.
Accession of It is needless to speak of the several battles and the many
Henry VII,
skirmishes of the miserable Wars of the Roses. These lasted
from 1455, when the
Duke of York set seri-
ously to work to dis-
place the weak-minded
Lancastrian king (Henry
VI), until the accession
of Henry VII, of the
house of Tudor, thirty
years later. (See table
on page 433.)
The Wars of the
Roses had important
results. Nearly all the
Fig. 166. Portrait of Henry VH powerful families of
England had been drawn
The despot-
ism of the
into the war, and a great part of the nobility, whom the kings
Tudors had formerly feared, had perished on the battle field or lost
their heads in the ruthless executions carried out by each
party after it gained a victory. This left the king far more
powerful than ever before. He could now control Parliament,
even if he could not do away with it. For a centur}^ and more
after the accession of Henry VII the Tudor kings enjoyed
almost despotic power. England ceased for a time to enjoy
the free government for which the foundations had been
laid under the Edwards, whose embarrassments at home and
abroad had made them constantly dependent upon the aid of
the nation.
France estab-
Hshes a stand- In France the closing years of the Hundred Years' War
ing army, had witnessed a great increase of the king's power through the
1439
establishment of a well-organized standing army. The feudal
 England in the Middle Ages 435

army had long since disappeared. Even before the opening

of the war the nobles had begun to be paid for their military
services and no longer furnished troops as a condition of hold-
ing fiefs. But the companies of soldiers found their pay very
uncertain, and plundered their countr\^men as well as the
enemy.
As the war drew to a close, the lawless troopers became a
terrible scourge to the country and were known '&$> flayers^ on
account of the horrible way in which they tortured the peasants
in the hope of extracting money from them. In 1439 ^^ Estates
General approved a plan devised by the king, for putting an
end to this evil. Thereafter no one was to raise a company
without the permission of the king, who was to name the
captains and fix the number of the soldiers.
The Estates agreed that the king should use a certain tax, Theperma-
called the faille, to support the troops necessary for the pro- f^tai to^the
tection of the frontier. This was a fatal concession,'for the Estates
powers ofGen-
the
king now had an army and the right to collect what he chose to eral
consider a permanent tax, the amount of which he later greatly
increased ; he was not dependent, as was the English king,
upon the grants made for brief periods by the representatives
of the nation.
Before the king of France could hope to establish a compact, The new
well-organized state it was necessary for him to reduce the power
of his vassals, some of whom were almost his equals in strength.
The older feudal families had many of them succumbed to the
attacks and the diplomacy of the kings of the thirteenth century,
especially of St. Louis. But he and his successors had raised
up fresh rivals by granting whole provinces to their younger
sons. In this way new and powerful lines of feudal nobles were
established, such, for example, as the houses of Orleans, Anjou,
Bourbon, and, above all, Burgundy. The process of reducing
the power of the nobles had, it is true, been begun. They had
been forbidden to coin money, to maintain armies, and to tax
their subjects, and the powers of the king's judges had been
 Outlines of European History
436
Work of extended over all the realm. But the task of consolidating
Louis XI
France was reserved for the son of Charles VII, the shrewd
and treacherous Louis XI (i 461-1483).
The most powerful and dangerous of Louis XI's vassals
were the dukes of Burgundy, and they gave him a great deal of
trouble. Of Burgundy something will be said in later chapters.
Louis XI had himself made
heir to a number of provinces in
central and southern France, —
Anjou, Maine, Provence, etc.,
— which by the death of
their possessors came under the
king's immediate control (1 48 1 ).
He humiliated in various ways
the vassals who in his early
days had combined against him.
The Duke of Alengon he im-
prisoned ;the rebellious Duke
of Nemours he caused to be
Fig. 167. Louis XI of Fkaxce executed in the most cruel
manner. Louis's aims were
worthy, but his means were generally despicable. It some-
times seemed as if he gloried in being the most rascally among
rascals, the most treacherous among the traitors.
England and Both England and France emerged from the troubles and
France estab-
lish strong
desolations of the Hundred Years' War stronger than ever
national gov-
ernments before. In both countries the kings had overcome the menace
of feudalism by destroying the power of the great families.
The royal government was becoming constantly more powerful.
Commerce and industry increased the people's wealth and sup-
plied the monarchs with the revenue necessar)^ to maintain gov-
ernment officials and a sufficient army to keep order throughout
their realms. They were no longer forced to rely upon the
uncertain fidelity of their vassals. In short, England and
France were both becoming: modern states.
 England in the Middle Ages 437

QUESTIONS
Section 68, Tell what you can about England before the Nor-
man Conquest. How did Normandy come into existence? How
did William of Normandy get possession of England? What was
William's policy after he conquered England ?
Section 69. Mention some of the reforms of Henry II. Describe
Henry's troubles with Thomas Becket. Wliat was the extent of
the possessions of the Plantagenets in France? In what way did the
French king succeed in getting a considerable part of the Plantagenet
possessions into his own hands? Describe the chief events in the
reign of King John of England.
Section 70. How was the Great Charter granted, and what were
some of its main provisions ? W^hat is the English Parliament ? When
was it formed ? What were its powers ?
Section 71. When was Whales conquered by the English kings?
What are the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland? Tell of the
attempts of Edward I to get possession of Scodand.
Section 72. Give the origin and general course of the Hundred
Years' War under Edward III. Why did not the Estates General
become as powerful as the English Parliament? Tell about the black
death. What led to the disappearance of serfdom in England ? Give
an account of Joan of Arc. What were the great causes of disorder
in England during the generation before the accession of Henry VII ?
Why did feudalism revive in France? What was accomplished by
Louis XI ?
 ^-^r^l^^S^
^-at

CHAPTER XVIII

POPES AND EMPERORS

Section 73. Origin of the Holy Roman Empire

Charlemagne's successors in the German part of his em-

pire found it quite as hard as did the kings of the western,
or French, kingdom to keep control of their vassals. Germany,
like France, was divided up into big and little fiefs, and the
dukes and counts were continually waging war upon each other
and upon their king. The general causes of this chronic disorder
in the Middle Ages have been described in a previous chapter.
The first German ruler whom we need to notice here was
Otto the Great, who came to the throne in the year 936. He
got as many of the great fiefs as possible into the hands of his
relatives in the hope that they would be faithful to him. He
put an end forever to the invasions of the Hungarians who had
been ravaging Germany. He defeated them in a great batde
near Augsburg and drove them out of his realms. As has
already been said (see above, p. 386), they finally settled in
eastern Europe and laid the foundations of what is now the
important state of Hungary.

438
 Popes and Emperors 439

But the most noteworthy of Otto's acts was his interference

in Italian affairs, which led to his winning for the German kings
the imperial crown that Charlemagne had worn. We have seen
how Charlemagne's successors divided up his realms into three
parts by the Treaty of Mersen in 870 (see above, p. 382). One
of these parts was the kingdom of Italy. We know but litde
of what went on in Italy for some time after the Treaty of
Mersen. There was incessant warfare, and the disorder was
increased by the attacks of the Mohammedans. Various power-
ful nobles were able to win the crown for short periods. Three
at least of these Italian kings were crowned Emperor by the
Pope. Then for a generation there was no Emperor in the west,
until Otto the Great again secured the title.
It would seem as if Otto had quite enough trouble at home, Otlo the
but he thought that it would make him and his reign more comes king of
glorious if he added northern Italy to his realms. So in 951 jg^^^'j; ^^g"^
he crossed the Alps, married the widow of one of the Italian crowned
kings, and, without being formally crow^ned, was generally ac-
knowledged asking of Italy. He had to hasten back to Ger-
many to put down a revolt organized by his own son, but ten
years later he was called to Rome by the Pope to protect him .
from the attacks of his enemies. Otto accepted the invitation,
and the grateful Pope in return crowned him Emperor, as
Charlemagne's successor (962).
The coronation of Otto was a very important event in Ger-
man history ; for, from this time on, the German kings, instead
of confining their attention to keeping their own kingdom in
order, were constantly distracted by the necessity of keeping
hold on their Italian kingdom, which lay on the other side of a
great range of mountains. Worse than that, they felt that they
must see to it that a Pope friendly to them was elected, and
this greatly added to their troubles.
The succeeding German emperors had usually to make sev-
eral costly and troublesome journeys to Rome, — a first one to
be crowned, and then others either to depose a hostile Pope or
 Outlines of European History
440
to protect a friendly one from the oppression of neighboring
lords. These excursions were very distracting, especially to a
ruler who left behind him in Germany a rebellious nobility that
always took advantage of his absence to revolt.
Otto's successors dropped their old title of king of the East
Franks as soon as they had been duly crowned by the Pope at
Rome, and assumed the magnificent and all-embracing designa-
tion, "Emperor Ever August of the Romans."^ Their " Holy
Roman Empire," as it came to be called later, which was to
endure, in name at least, for more than eight centuries, was
obviously even less like that of the ancient Romans than was
Charlemagne's. As kings of Germany and Italy they had prac-
tically all the powers that they enjoyed as emperors. The title
of Emperor was of course a proud one, but it gave the German
kings no additional power except the fatal right that they claimed
of taking part in the election of the Pope. We shall find that,
instead of making themselves feared at home and building up
a great state, the German emperors wasted their strength in
a long struggle with the popes, who proved themselves in the
end far stronger, and eventually reduced the Empire to a mere
shadow.

Section 74. The Church and its Property

In order to understand the long struggle between the em-

perors and the popes, we must stop a moment to consider
the condition of the Church in the early Middle Ages. It
seemed to be losing all its strength and dignity and to be
falling apart, just as Charlemagne's empire had dissolved into
feudal bits. This was chiefly due to the vast estates of the
clergy. Kings, princes, and rich landowners had long con-
sidered it meritorious to make donations to bishoprics and

1 Henry II (1002-1024) and his successors, not venturing to assume the title
of Emperor till crowned at Rome, but anxious to claim Rome as attached to the
German crown, began to call themselves, before their coronation, " King of the
Romans."
TESIO / LoiigitiHle Kast 15 from Greenwich
 Popes and Emperors 44 1

monasteries, so that a very considerable portion of the land

in western Europe had come into the hands of churchmen.
A king, or other landed proprietor, might grant fiefs to The Church
churchmen as well as to laymen. The bishops became the into^the^^"
vassals of the king or of other feudal lords by doing homage f^"^^^
for a fief and swearing fidelity, just as any other vassal would
do. An abbot would sometimes secure for his monastery the
protection of a neighboring lord by giving up his land and
receiving it back again as a fief.
One great difference, however, existed between the Church Fiefs held
lands and the ordinary fiefs. According to the law of the nfgn not
Church, the bishops and abbots could not marry and so could hereditary
have no children to whom they might transmit their property.
Consequently, when a landholding churchman died, some one
had to be chosen in his place who should enjoy his property
and perform his duties. The rule of the Church had been,
from time immemorial, that the clergy of the diocese should
choose the bishop, their choice being ratified by the people. As
for the abbots, they were, according to the Rule of St. Benedict,
to be chosen by the members of the monastery.
In spite of these rules, the bishops and abbots had come, Bishops
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, to be selected, to all intents practlcalV
and purposes, by the various kings and feudal lords. It is true *^u°^/"i^-\
that the outward forms of a regular election were usually per- lords
mitted ; but the feudal lord made it clear whom he wished
chosen, and if the wrong person was elected, he simply refused
to hand over to him the lands attached to the bishopric or
abbey. The lord could in this way control the choice of the
prelates, for in order to become a real bishop or abbot, one
had not only to be elected, he had also to be solemnly " in-
vested "with the appropriate powers of a bishop or abbot
and with his lands.
When a bishop or abbot had been duly chosen, the feudal investiture
lord proceeded to the investiture. The new bishop or abbot first
became the '' man " of the lord by doing him homage, and then
 Outlines of European History
442
the lord transferred fo him the lands and rights attached to
the office. No careful distinction appears to have been made
between the property and the religious powers. The lord often
conferred both by bestowing upon a bishop the ring and the
crosier (see headpiece to Chapter XX, p. 475), the emblems of
religious authority. It seemed shocking enough that the lord,
who was often a rough soldier, should dictate the selection of
the bishops ; but it was still more shocking that he should assume
to confer religious powers with religious emblems. Yet even
worse things might happen, since sometimes the lord, for his
greater convenience, had himself made bishop.
Attitude of The Church itself naturally looked at the property attached
the Church
toward its to a church office as a mere incident and considered the religious
property prerogatives the main thing. And since the clergy alone could
rightly confer these, it was natural that they should claim the
right to bestow the lands (" temporalities ") attached to them
upon whomsoever they pleased without consulting any layman
whatever.
Attitude of Against this claim the king might urge that a simple minister
the king
of the Gospel, or a holy monk, was by no means necessarily
fitted to manage the interests of a feudal state, such as the
great archbishoprics and bishoprics, and even the abbeys, had
become in Germany and elsewhere in the eleventh century.
Difficult In short, the situation in which the bishops found themselves
position of
the bishops was very complicated, (i) As an officer of the Church, the
in Germany
and else- bishop saw to it that parish priests were properly selected
where and ordained, he tried certain cases in his court, and performed
the church ceremonies. (2) He managed the lands which be-
longed to the bishopric, which might, or might not, be fiefs.
(3) As a vassal of those who had granted lands to the bishopric
upon feudal terms, he owed the usual feudal dues, including the
duty of furnishing troops, to his lord. (4) Lastly, in Germany, the
king had found it convenient, from about the beginning of
the eleventh century, to confer upon the bishops in many cases
the authority of a count in the districts about them. In this
 Popes and Empcro7's 443

way they might have the right to collect tolls, coin money, and
perform other important governmental duties. When a prelate
took office he was invested with all these various functions at
once, both spiritual and governmental.
To forbid the king to take part in the investiture was, con-
sequently, to rob him not only of his feudal rights but also
of his authority over many of his government officials, since
bishops, and sometimes even abbots, were often counts in all
but name. He therefore found it necessary to take care who
got possession of the important church offices.
Still another danger threatened the wealth and resources of The marriage
the Church. During the tenth and eleventh centuries the rule Ehrea^enrSe
of the Church prohibiting the clergy from marrying appears to pP^*\*^^ ^^^
have been widely neglected in Italy, Germany, France, and
England. To the stricter people of the time this appeared a
terrible degradation of the clergy, who, they felt, should be
unencumbered by family cares and should devote themselves
wholly to the service of God. The question, too, had another
side. It was obvious that the property of the Church would
soon be dispersed if the clergy were allowed to marry, since
they would wish to provide for their children. Just as the
feudal lands had become hereditary, so the church lands would
become hereditary unless the clergy were forced to remain
unmarried.
Besides the feudalizing of its property and the marriage of Buying and
the clergy, there was a third great and constant source of church offices
weakness and corruption in the Church, at this period, namely,
the temptation to buy and sell church offices. Had the duties
and responsibilities of the bishops, abbots, and priests always
been heavy, and their income slight, there would have been
little tendency to bribe those who could bestow the offices. But
the incomes of bishoprics and abbeys were usually considerable,
and sometimes very great, while the duties attached to the
office of bishop or abbot, however serious in the eyes of the
right-minded, might easily be neglected by the unscrupulous.
 444 Outlines of European History

The revenue from a great landed estate and the high rank
that went with the office were enough to induce the members
of the noblest families to vie with each other in securing church
positions. The king or prince who possessed the right of inves-
titure was sure of finding some one willing to pay something
for important benefices.
Origin of The sin of buying or selling church offices was recognized
the term . ^ n i • ,, i i • i
"simony" as a most serious one. It was called "simony, a name derived
from Simon the Magician, who, according to the account in the
Acts of the Apostles, offered money to the Apostle Peter if he
would give him the power of conferring the Holy Spirit upon
those upon whom he should lay his hands. As the apostle
denounced this first simonist, — " Thy silver perish with thee,
because thou hast thought to obtain the gift of God with money "
(Acts viii, 20), — so the Church has continued ever since' to
denounce those who propose to purchase its sacred powers.
Simony not Doubtless very few bought positions in the Church with the
of church view of obtaining the " gift of God," that is to say, the religious
offices office. It was the revenue and the honor that were chiefly
coveted. Moreover, when a king or lord accepted a gift from
one for whom he procured a benefice, he did not regard him-
self as selling the office ; he merely shared its advantages. No
transaction took place in the Middle Ages without accompany-
ing gifts and fees of various kinds.
Simony cor- The ' evil of simony was, nevertheless, very demoralizing, for
lower clergy it Spread downward and infected the whole body of the clergy.
A bishop who had made a large outlay in obtaining his office
naturally expected something from the priests, whom it was his
duty to appoint. Then the priest, in turn, was tempted to exact
too much for baptizing and marrying his parishioners, and for
burying the dead.
So it seemed, at the opening of the eleventh century, as if
the Church was to be dragged down by its property into the
anarchy of feudalism described in a preceding chapter.
1 Pronounced stm'o-ny.
 Popes and Emperors 44 5

The popes had, therefore, many difficulties to overcome in

the gigantic task which they undertook of making the Church
a great international monarchy, like the Roman Empire, with
its capital at Rome. The control exercised by kings and feudal
lords in the selection of Church officials had to be done away
with. Simony with its degrading effects had to be abolished.
The marriage of the clergy had to be checked, for fear that the
property and wealth of the Church would go to their families
and so be lost to the Church.
The first great step toward the freeing of the Church from Pope Nicho-
the control of the kings and feudal lords was taken by Pope the elecdon^
Nicholas II. In loco he issued a remarkable decree which pf
•^ -' the hands
in the popes
took the election of the head of the Church once for all out of of the cardi-
the hands of both the Emperor and the people of Rome, and
placed it definitely and forever in the hands of the cardinals,
who represented the Roman clergy.^ Obviously the object of
this decree was to prevent all interference, whether of the dis-
tant Emperor, of the local nobility, or of the Roman mob. The
college of cardinals still exists and still elects the Pope.
The reform party which directed the policy of the popes Opposition to
had, it hoped, freed the head of the Church from the control of reforms
worldly men by putting his election in the hands of the Roman
clergy. It now proposed to emancipate the Church as a whole
from the base entanglements of earth : first, by strictly for-
bidding the married clergy to perform religious functions and by
exhorting their flocks to refuse to attend their ministrations ;
and secondly, by depriving the kings and feudal lords of their
influence over the choice of the bishops and abbots, since this

1 The word " cardinal" (Latin cardmalis, " principal ") was applied to the priests
of the various parishes in Rome, to the several deacons connected with the
Lateran, — which was the cathedral church of the Roman bishopric, — and, lastly,
to six or seven suburban bishops who officiated in turn in the Lateran. The title
became a very distinguished one and was sought by ambitious foreign prelates
and ecclesiastical statesmen, like Wolsey, Richelieu, and Mazarin. If their
oflficial titles were examined, it would be found that each was nominally a cardinal
bishop, priest, or deacon of some Roman Church. The number of cardinals
varied until fixed, in 1586, at six bishops, fifty priests, and fourteen deacons.
 446 Outlines of European History

influence was deemed the chief cause of worldliness among the

prelates. Naturally these last measures met with far more
general opposition than the new way of electing the Pope.
The magnitude of the task which the popes had undertaken
first became fully apparent when the celebrated Gregory VII
ascended the papal throne, in 1073.

Section 75. Powers claimed by the Popes

The Dirtatns Among the writings of Gregory VII there is a very brief
VII statement, called the Dictatiis, of the powers which he believed
the popes to possess. Its chief claims are the following: The
Pope enjoys a unique title ; he is the only universal bishop and
may depose and reinstate other bishops or transfer them from
place to place. No council of the Church may be regarded as
speaking for Christendom without his consent. The Roman
Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No one
may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree
with the Roman Church. No book is authoritative unless it has
received the papal sanction.
Gregory does not stop with asserting the Pope's complete
supremacy over the Church. He says that " the Pope is the
only person whose feet are kissed by all princes " ; that he may
depose emperors and " absolve subjects from allegiance to an
unjust ruler." No one shall dare to condemn one who appeals
to the Pope. No one may annul a decree of the Pope, though
the Pope may declare null and void the decrees of all other
earthly powers ; and no one may pass judgment upon his acts.
Gregory VII Immediately upon his election as Pope, Gregory began to
ries of 'the ^° P^^; into practice his high conception of the role that the reli-
mto^' facdce S'^*^"^ \\e.did of Christendom should play. He dispatched legates
throughout Europe, and from this time on these legates became
a powerful instrument of the Church's government. He warned
the kings of France and England and the youthful German
ruler, Henry IV, to forsake their evil ways, to be upright and
 Popes and Emperors 44^

just, and to obey his admonitions. He explained, kindly but

firmly, to William the Conqueror that the papal and kingly pow-
ers are both established by God as the greatest among the
authorities of the world, just as the sun and moon are the
greatest of the heavenly bodies. But the papal power is obvi-
ously superior to the kingly, for it is responsible for it ; at the
Last Day, Gregory would have, he urged, to render an account
of the king as one of the flock intrusted to his care. The
king of France was warned to give up his practice of simony,
lest he be excommunicated and his subjects freed from their
oath of allegiance. All these acts of Gregory appear to have
been dictated not by worldly ambition but by a fervent con-
viction of their righteousness and of his heavy responsibility
toward all men.

Section yG. Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV

Obviously Gregory's plan of reform included all the states of

western Europe, but conditions were such that the most strik-
ing conflict took place between him and the Emperor. The
trouble came about in this way. Henry IV 's father had died
in 1056, leaving only his good wife Agnes and their little son
of six years to maintain the hard-fought prerogatives of the
German king in the midst of ambitious vassals, whom even
the strong Otto the Great had found it difficult to control.
In 1065 the fifteen-year-old lad, Henry IV, was declared of Accession of
age, and his lifelong difficulties began with a great rebellion of 1065. Trouble
the Saxons. They accused the young king of having built castles ^^'^^ ^^^ ^^P^
in their land and of filling them with rough soldiers who preyed
upon the people. Pope Gregory felt it his duty to interfere.
To him the Saxons appeared a people oppressed by a heedless
youth guided by evil counselors. But Henry continued to asso-
ciate with counselors whom the Pope had excommunicated and
went on filling important bishoprics in Germany and Italy,
regardless of the Pope's prohibitions.
 Outlines of European History
448
New prohibi- The popes who immediately preceded Gregory had more than
tion of lay in-
vestiture once forbidden the churchmen to receive investiture from laymen.
Gregory reissued this prohibition in 1075, just as the trouble
with Henry had begun. Investiture was, as we have seen (see
above, p. 441), the legal transfer by the king or other lord, to
a newly chosen church official, of the lands and rights attached
to the office. In forbidding lay investiture Gregory attempted
nothing less than a revolution. The bishops and abbots were
often officers of government, exercising in Germany and Italy
powers similar in all respects to those of the counts. The king
not only relied upon them for advice and assistance in carrying
on his government, but they were among his chief allies in his
constant struggles with his vassals.
Henry IV Gregory dispatched three envoys to Henry (end of 1075)
angered by
the language with a fatherly letter ^ in which he reproached the king for his
of the papal wicked conduct. But he evidently had little expectation that
legates
mere expostulation would have any effect upon Henry, for he
gave his legates instructions to use threats if necessar}^ The
legates were to tell the king that his crimes were so numer-
ous, so horrible, and so well known, that he merited not only
excommunication but the permanent loss of all his royal honors.
Gregory VII
deposed by The violence of the legates' language not only kindled the
a council of wrath of the king but also gained for him friends among the
German
bishops at bishops. A council which Henry summoned at Worms (in
Worms, 1076
1076) was attended by more than two thirds of all the Ger-
man bishops. Here Gregory was declared deposed, and many ter-
rible charges of immorality were brought against him. The bishops
publicly proclaimed that he had ceased to be their Pope. It ap-
pears very surprising, at first sight, that the king should have
received the prompt support of the German churchmen against
the head of the Church. But it must be remembered that the
prelates really owed their offices to the king and not to the Pope.
Gregory's reply to Henry and the German bishops who had
deposed him was speedy and decisive. " Incline thine ear to
1 To be found in the Readings^ chap. xiii.
 Popes and Emperors 449

us, O Peter, chief of the Apostles. As thy representative and Henry iv

by thy favor has the power been granted especially to me excommmii-
by God of binding and loosing in heaven and earth. On the ^p^^^ ^^ *^^
strength of this, for the honor and glory of thy Church, in the
name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I with-
draw, through thy power and authority, from Henry the King,
son of Henry the Emperor, who has risen against thy Church
with unheard-of insolence, the rule over the whole kingdom of
the Germans and over Italy. I absolve all Christians from the
bonds of the oath which they have sworn, or may swear, to
him ; and I forbid anyone to serve him as king." ^
For a time after the Pope had deposed him everything went Attitude of
against Henry. Instead of resenting the Pope's interference, princes
the discontented Saxons, and many other of Henry's vassals,
believed that there was now an excellent opportunity to get rid
of Henry and choose a more agreeable ruler. The Pope was
even invited to come to Augsburg to consult with the princes
as to whether Henry should continue to be king or another
ruler should be chosen in his stead. It looked as if the Pope
was, in truth, to control the civil government.
Henry decided to anticipate the arrival of the Pope. He Henry sub-
hastened across the Alps in midwinter and appeared as an Pope at Ca-
humble suppliant before the castle of Canossa,^ whither the "<^^^^' ^°77
pope had come on his way to Augsburg. For three days the
German king presented himself before the closed door, barefoot
and in the coarse garments of a pilgrim and a penitent, and even
then Gregory was induced only by the expostulations of his influ-
ential companions to admit the humiliated ruler. The spectacle
of this mighty prince of distinguished appearance, humiliated
and in tears before the little man who humbly styled himself the

1 Gregory's deposition and excommunication of Henry may be found in the

Readings, chap. xiii. *
2 The castle of Canossa belonged to Gregory VII's ally and admirer, the
Countess of Tuscany. It was destroyed by the neighboring town of Reggio about
two centuries after Gregory's time, and only the ivy-clad ruins, represented in the
headpiece of this chapter, remain.
 Outlines of E7iivpca}i History
450
" servant of the servants of God," has ahvays been regarded
as most completely typifying the power of the Church and the
potency of her curses, against which even the most exalted of
the earth found no weapon of defense except abject penitence.^
A new king The pardon which Henry received at Canossa did not satisfy
chosen
the German princes. They therefore proceeded to elect another
ruler, and the next three or four years was a period of bloody
struggles between the adherents of the rival kings. Gregory
Henry again
excommuni-
remained neutral until 1080, when he again "bound with the
cated
chain of anathema '' Henry, " the so-called king," and all his
followers. He declared him deprived of his royal power and
dignity and forbade all Christians to obey him.
Henry The new excommunication had precisely the opposite effect
triumphs over
Gregory to the first one ; it seemed to increase rather than decrease
Henry's friends. The German clergy^ again deposed Gregory
VH. Henry's rival for the throne fell in battle, and Henry be-
took himself to Italy with the double purpose of installing a Pope
of his own choice and winning the imperial crown. Gregory
held out for no less than two years ; but at last Rome fell into
Death of
Gregory Henry's hands, and Gregory withdrew and soon after died. His
last words were, " I have loved justice and hated iniquity, there-
fore 1die an exile," and the fair-minded historical student will
not question their truth.
Henry IV's
further The death of Gregory did not, however, put an end to Henr)-''s
troubles difficulties. He spent the remaining twenty years of his life in
trying to maintain his rights as king of Germany and Italy
against his rebellious subjects on both sides of the Alps. In
Germany his chief enemies were the Saxons and his discon-
tented vassals. In Italy the Pope was now actively engaged
as a temporal ruler, in building up a little state of his own, and
he was always ready to encourage the Lombard cities in their
opposition to the German emperors.
All his life long Henry was turning from one enemy to
another. Finally, his discontented German vassals induced his
1 For Gregor>''s own account of the affair at Canossa, see Readings, chap. xiii.
 Popes and Emperors 125

son, vvhom he had had crowned as his successor, to revolt Death of

against his father. Thereupon followed more civil war, more451 fio"*^^ ^^
treason, and a miserable abdication. In 1106 death put an end
to perhaps the saddest reign that history records.
The achievement of the reign of Henry IV's son, Henry V, Henry v
which chiefly interests us was the adjustment of the question of
investitures. Pope Paschal II, while willing to recognize those
[06-
bishops already chosen by the king, provided they were good

Fig. 168. Medieval Pictures of Gregory VII

These pictures are taken from an illustrated manuscript written some

decades after Gregory's death. In the one on the left Gregory is rep-
resented blowing out a candle and saying to his cardinals, "As I blow out
this light, so will Henry IV be extinguished." In the one on the right
is shown the death of Gregory (1085). He did not wear his crown in bed,
but the artist wanted us to be sure to recognize that he was Pope

men, proposed that thereafter Gregory's decrees against inves-

titure bylaymen should be carried out. The clergy should no
longer do homage by laying their hands, consecrated to the
service of the altar, in the bloodstained hands of the nobles.
Henry V, on the other hand, declared that unless the clergy
took the oath of fealty the bishops would not be given the lands,
towns, castles, tolls, and privileges attached to the bishoprics.
After a succession of troubles a compromise was at last
reached in the Concordat of Worms (1122), which put an end
 Outlines of European History
452
to the controversy over investitures in Germany.^ The Emperor
promised to permit the Church freely to elect the bishops and
abbots and renounced his old claim to invest with the religious
emblems of the ring and the crosier. But the elections were to
be held in the presence of the king, and he was permitted, in a
separate ceremony, to invest the new bishop or abbot with his
fiefs and his governmental powers by a touch of the scepter.
In this way the religious powers of the bishops were obviously
conferred by the churchmen who elected them ; and although the
king might still practically invalidate an election by refusing to
hand over the lands, nevertheless the direct appointment of the
bishops and abbots was taken out of his hands. As for the Em-
peror's control over the papacy, too many popes, since the advent
of Henr}^ IV, had been generally recognized as properly elected
without the sanction of the Emperor, for any one to believe any
longer that his sanction was necessary.

Section JJ . The Hohenstaufen Emperors and

THE Popes

A generation after the matter of investitures had been arranged

by the Concordat of Worms the most famous of German em-
perors, next to Charlemagne, came to the throne. This was
Frederick I, commonly called Barbarossa, from his red beard. He
belonged to the family of Hohenstaufen, so called from their castle
in southern Germany. Frederick's ambition was to restore the
Roman Empire to its old glory and influence. He regarded him-
self as the successor of the Caesars, as well as of Charlemagne and
Otto the Great. He believed his office to be quite as truly estab-
lished byGod himself as the papacy. When he informed the Pope
that he had been recognized as Emperor by the German nobles,
he too took occasion to state quite clearly that the headship of
"the Empire had been " bestowed upon him by God," and he
did not ask the Pope's sanction as his predecessors had done.
1 See Readings^ chap. xiii.
 Popes and Emperors
45,
In his lifelong attempt to maintain what he thought to be his Frederick's
rights as Emperor he met, quite naturally, with the three old ' duties
difficulties. He had constantly to be fighting his rivals and
rebellious vassals in Germany ; he had to face the opposition of
the popes, who never forgot the claims that Gregory VII had
made to control the Emperor as well as other rulers. Lastly,

Fig. 169. Ruins of Barbarossa's Palace at Gelnhausen

Frederick Barbarossa erected a handsome palace at Gelnhausen (not far
east of Frankfort). It was destroyed by the Swedes during the Thirty
Years' War (see below, section 113), but even what now -remains is
imposing, especially the arcade represented in the picture

in trying to keep hold of northern Italy, which he believed to

belong to his empire, he spent a great deal of time with but
slight results.
One of the greatest differences between the early Middle Ages importance
and Frederick's time was the development of town life. Up to jn human
this period we have heard only of popes, emperors, kings, bishops. Progress
and feudal lords. From now on we shall have to take the towns
and their citizens into account. No nation makes much progress
454 Oiitlhics of Ruropcan History

without towns ; for only when people get together in considerable

numbers do they begin to build fine buildings, establish univer-
sities and libraries, make inventions and carry on trade, which
brings them into contact with other people in their own country
and in foreign lands. (See below, Chapter XXI, for town life.)

S'' '. \i^- Tito V ^ '•12 ! ■• 14

Italian Towns in the Twelfth Century

The towns had never decayed altogether in Italy, and by the

time of Frederick Barbarossa they had begun to flourish once
more, especially in Lombardy. Such towns as Milan, Verona,
and Cremona were practically independent states. Their govern-
ment was in the hands of the richer citizens, and the poorer
people were not given any voice in city affairs. Compared with
 o ^ ^ ^

z -^ ^ -^
•- ,, ^^ oc 3 c . a.
c
W 03 CO J>^-2 O
^^ « H; I- t« -t::;

-a o :;: - c c c
^ >ii ^rt -o c ^ ^
<u ? <i^ o
5 -t^ •'" o -Q VM ':;5
g
° ^" -73
c« 2
^ 1^
=« -° ;£-

5 .5(u •£
-S o;5 c^ cc f-
-

!> O <U I— I °J3 x ^

o6 C I 2o I ^ § --S

U I-* P t:' fe

5 o £ rt i-
8tn ■"s uS_ «., -^O ^
g oj c -5 • ^

^ b ^ +2 w
•„— ID C ^ !_, t_,
^ ^ ^ o ^
—H o r3 o r^ tr'

455 illj:
 Outlines of European History
456
a modern city they were very disorderly, for sometimes the poor
revolted against the rich, and often the nobles, who had moved
in from the country and built fortified palaces in the towns,
fought among themselves. And then the various towns were
always fighting one another.
But in spite of all the warfare and disorder, the Italian cities
became wealthy and, as we shall see later, were centers of
learning and art similar to the ancient cities of Greece, such as
Athens and Corinth. They were able to combine in a union
known as the Lombard League to oppose Frederick, for they
hated the idea of paying taxes to a German king from across
the Alps. Frederick made several expeditions to Italy, but he
only succeeded, after a vast amount of trouble, in getting them
to recognize him as a sort of overlord. He was forced to leave
them to manage their own affairs and go their own way. They
could, of course, always rely upon the Pope when it came to
fighting the Emperor, for he was quite as anxious as the towns
to keep Frederick out of Italy.
The Hohen- So Frederick failed in his great plans for restoring the Roman
staufens
extend their Empire ; he only succeeded in adding a new difficulty for his
claims to
southern descendants. In spite of his lack of success in conquering the
Italy Lombard cities, Frederick tried to secure southern Italy for his
descendants. He arranged that his son should marry Constance,
the heiress of Naples and Sicily. This made fresh trouble for
the Hohenstaufen rulers, because the Pope, as feudal lord of
Naples and Sicily, was horrified at the idea of the Emperor's
controlling the territory to the south of the papal possessions
as well as that to the north.
Frederick II After some forty years of fighting in Germany and Italy
and Innocent
III Frederick Barbarossa decided to undertake a crusade to the
Holy Land, and lost his life on the way thither. His son was
carried off by Italian fever while trying to put down a rebellion
in southern Italy, leaving the fate of the Hohenstaufen family
in the hands of his infant son and heir, the famous Frederick II.
It would take much too long to try to tell of all the attempts of
 Popes and Emperors 457

rival German princes to get themselves made king of Germany

and of the constant interference of the popes who sided now
with this one and now with that. It happened that one of the
greatest of all the popes, Innocent III, was ruling during Fred-
erick II's early years. After Xrj'mg to settle the terrible disorder
in (Germany he decided that Frederick should be made Emperor,
hoping to control him so that he would not become the dan-
gerous enemy of the papacy that his father and grandfather had
been. As a young man Frederick made all the promises that
Innocent demanded, but he caused later popes infinite anxiety.
Frederick II was nearsighted, bald, and wholly insignificant Character of
in person ; but he exhibited the most extraordinary energy and Frederick ii,
ability in the organization of his kingdom of Sicily, in which he I2I2-I2;o
was far more interested than in Germany. He drew up an
elaborate code of laws for his southern realms and may be said
to have founded the first modem well-regulated state, in which
the king was indisputably supreme. He had been brought up
in Sicily and was much influenced by the Mohammedan culture
which prevailed there. He appears to have rejected many of the
opinions of the time. His enemies asserted that he was not
even a Christian, and that he declared that Moses, Christ, and
Mohammed were all alike impostors.
We cannot stop to relate the romantic and absorbing story His bitter
of his long struggle with the popes. They speedily discovered the"papacy
that he was bent upon establishing a powerful state to the south
of them, and upon extending his control over the Lombard
cities in such a manner that the papal possessions would be
held as in a vise. This, they felt, must never be permitted.
Consequently almost every measure that Frederick adopted
aroused their suspicion and opposition, and they made every
effort to destroy him and his house.
His chance of success in the conflict with the head of the Frederick
Church was gravely affected by the promise which he had as king of
made before Innocent Ill's death to undertake a crusade. Jerusalem
He was so busily engaged with his endless enterprises that he
 Outlines of European History
458
kept deferring the expedition, in spite of the papal admoni-
tions, until at last the Pope lost patience and excommunicated
him. While excommunicated, he at last started for the East.
He met with signal success and actually brought Jerusalem, the
•Holy City, once more into Christian hands, and was himself
recognized as king of Jerusalem.
Extinction of
the Hohen- Frederick's conduct continued, however, to give offense to
staufens' the popes. He was denounced in solemn councils, and at last
power deposed by one of the popes. After Frederick died (1250)
his sons maintained themselves for a few years in the Sicilian
kingdom ; but they finally gave way before a French army, led
by the brother of St. Louis, Charles of Anjou, upon whom the
Pope bestowed the southern realms of the Hohenstaufens.^
Frederick's
death marks With Frederick's death the medieval Empire may be said
the close of to have come to an end. It is true that after a period of " fist
the medieval
Empire law," as the Germans call it, a new king, Rudolf of Hapsburg,
was elected in Germany in 1273. The German kings continued
to call themselves emperors. Few of them, however, took the
trouble to go to Rome to be crowned by the Pope. No serious
effort was ever made to reconquer the Italian territory for
which Otto the Great, Frederick Barbarossa, and his son and
grandson had made such serious sacrifices. Germany was hope-
lessly divided and its king was no real king. He had no capital
and no well-organized government.
Division of
Germany and
By the middle of the thirteenth centur}^ it becomes apparent
Italy into that neither Germany nor Italy was to be converted into a
small inde-
pendent strong single kingdom like England and France. The map of
states
Germany shows a confused group of duchies, counties, arch-
bishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and free towns, each one of
which asserted its practical independence of the weak king
and Emperor.
In northern Italy each town, including a certain district about
its walls, had become an independent state, dealing with its
1 An excellent account of Frederick's life is given by Henderson, Germany in
the Middle Ages^ pp. 349-397.
 Popes a7id Emperors 459

neighbors as with independent powers. The Italian towns were

destined to become the birthplace of our modern culture during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Venice and Florence, in
spite of their small size, came to be reckoned among the most
important states of Europe (see section 90, below). In the cen-
tral part of the peninsula the Pope maintained more or less
control over his possessions, but he often failed to subdue the
towns within his realms. To the south Naples remained for some
time under the French dynasty, which the Pope had called in,
while the island of Sicily drifted into Spanish hands.

QUESTIONS
Sectiox 73. Describe the way in which the German kings gained
the title of Emperor. Why did they think that they ought to control
the election of the Pope? What do you understand by the Holy
Roman Empire.?
' Section 74. What were the sources of wealth of the Church ?
What was the effect of the vast landholdings of the Church '^. What
was investiture, and why did it raise difficulties between the popes
and emperors? Why did the Pope oppose the marriage of the
clergy? How is the Pope elected? What is a cardinal?
Section 75. What was the Dictatjis, and what claims did it make ?
Section 76. Describe the conflict between Henry IV and
Ciregory \\\. What were the provisions of the Concordat of
Worms ?
Section ']']. What new enemies did Frederick Barbarossa find
in northern Italy? How did the German kings establish a claim to
southern Italy? Give some facts about Innocent HI. Narrate the
struggle between Frederick II and the popes and its outcome. How
many years elapsed between the death of Otto the Great and the
accession of Henry IV? between the death of Henry IV and that
of Frederick Barbarossa ? between the death of Barbarossa and that
of Frederick 1 1 ?
 S
^-^<S«-A
-:f.^. |f.^ ^v— #^. t «^

CHAPTER XIX

THE CRUSADES

Section 78. Origin of the Crusades

Of all the events of the Middle Ages, the most romantic

and fascinating are the Crusades, the adventurous expeditions
to Syria and Palestine, undertaken by devout and warlike
kings and knights with the hope of permanently reclaiming the
Holy Land from the infidel Turks. All through the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great
army of crusaders gathering from all parts of the West and
starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure
of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross.
For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of
Europeans of every rank and station — kings and princes,
powerful nobles, simple knights, common soldiers, ecclesias-
tics, monks, townspeople, and even peasants — from England,
France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, making their way into
western Asia. If they escaped the countless dangers which
beset them on the journey, they either settled in this distant land
and devoted themselves to war or commerce, or returned home,
bringing with them tales of great cities and new peoples, of skill,
knowledge, and luxury unknown in the West.

60
 TJie Crusades 461

Our sources of information in regard to the Crusades are Natural

so abundant and so rich in picturesque incidents that writers to'overrate
have often yielded to the temptation to give more space to ^^^ impor-
these expeditions than their consequences really justify. They Crusades
were, after all, only one of the great foreign enterprises which
have been undertaken from time to time by the European
peoples. While their influence upon the European countries was
doubtless very important, — like that of the later conquest
of India by the English and the colonization of America, — the
details of the campaigns in the East scarcely belong to the
history of western Europe.
Syria had been overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, The Holy
shortly after the death of Mohammed, and the Holy City of JuTrtdTrst
Jerusalem had fallen
• ' into the hands of the infidels. The Arab, by the Arabs
and then by
however, shared the veneration of the Christian for the places the Turks
associated with the life of Christ and, in general, permitted the ■
Christian pilgrims who found their way thither to worship un-
molested. But with the coming of- a new and ruder people, the
Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh century, the pilgrims began to
bring home news of great hardships. Moreover, the eastern
Emperor was defeated by the Turks in 107 1 and lost Asia
Minor. The presence of the Turks, who had taken possession
of the fortress of Nicaea, just across from Constantinople, was
of course a standing menace to the Eastern Empire. When the
energetic Emperor Alexius (1081-1118) ascended the throne
he endeavored to expel the infidel. Finding himself unequal to Eastern
the task, he appealed for assistance to the head of Christendom, appealTto
PopecallUrban
the issued ILby Urban
The first greatcelebrated
at the impetus church
to the Crusades was the
council which g^j^^^nst^"^
infidel
U, ■ Turks
met m 1095 at Clermont in France.
In an address which produced more remarkable immediate
results than any other which history records, the Pope exhorted
knights and soldiers of all ranks to give up their usual wicked
business of destroying their Christian brethren in private
warfare (see above, section 67) and turn, instead, to the succor
 462 Outlines of EuropcaJi History

Urban II of their fellow Christians in the East. He warned them that the
call to the insolent Turks would, if unchecked, extend their sway still more
^t\? Coun^n ^^'^^^^y ^^^^ t^^ faithful servants of the Lord. Urban urged, be-
of Clermont, sides, that France was too poor to support all its people, while
the Holy Land flowed with milk and honey. " Enter upon the
road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest the land from the wicked
race and subject it to yourselves." When the Pope had finished,
all who were present exclaimed, with one accord, " It is the will
of God." This, the Pope declared, should be the rallying cry of
the crusaders, who were to wear a cross upon their bosoms as
they went forth, and upon their backs as they returned, as a
holy sign of their sacred mission.-^
The motives The Crusades are ordinarily represented as the most striking
crusaders examples of the simple faith and religious enthusiasm of the
Middle Ages. They appealed, however, to many different kinds
of men. The devout, the romantic, and the adventurous were
by no means the only classes that were attracted. Syria held
out inducements to the discontented noble who might hope to
gain a principality in the East, to the merchant who was look-
ing for new enterprises, to the merely restless who wished to
avoid his responsibilities at home, and even to the criminal who
enlisted with a view of escaping the results of his past offenses.
It is noteworthy that Urban appeals especially to those who
had been " contending against their brethren and relatives," and
urges those " who have hitherto been robbers now to become
soldiers of Christ." And the conduct of many of the crusaders
indicates that the Pope found a ready hearing among this class.
Yet higher motives than a love of adventure and the hope of
conquest impelled many who took their way eastward. Great
numbers, doubtless, went to Jerusalem " through devotion alone,
and not for the sake of honor or gain," with the sole object of
freeing the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidel.
To such as these the Pope promised that the journey itself
should take the place of all penance for sin. The faithful
1 For the speech of Urban, see Readings, chap, xv.
 TJie Crusades 463

crusader, like the faithful Mohammedan, was assured of immedi- Privileges

ate entrance into heaven if he died repentant. Later, the Church crusaders
exhibited its extraordinary authority by what would seem to us
an unjust interference with business contracts. It freed those
who " with a pure heart " entered upon the journey from the
payment of interest upon their debts, and permitted them to
mortgage property against the wishes of their feudal lords.
The crusaders' wives and children and property were taken
under the immediate protection of the Church, and he who
troubled them incurred excommunication. These various con-
siderations help to explain the great popularity of undertakings
that, at first sight, would seem to have promised only hardships
and disappointment.
The Council of Clermont met in November. Before spring Peter the
(1096) those who set forth to preach the Crusade, — above all, hisarmy^"
the famous Peter the Hermit, who was formerly given credit
for having begun the whole crusading movement, — had col-
lected, in France and along the Rhine, an extraordinary army
of the common folk. Peasants, workmen, vagabonds, and even
women and children answered the summons, all blindly intent
upon rescuing the Holy Sepulcher, two thousand miles away.
They were confident that the Lord would sustain them during
the weary leagues of the journey, and that, when they reached
the Holy Land, he would grant them a prompt victory over the
infidel.
This great host was got under way in several divisions under
the leadership of Peter the Hermit, and of Walter the Penni-
less and other humble knights. Many of the crusaders were
slaughtered by the Hungarians, who rose to protect them-
selves from the depredations of this motley horde in its passage
through their country. Part of them got as far as Nicaea, only
to be slaughtered by the Turks. This is but an example, on
a large scale, of what was going on continually for a century
or so after this first great catastrophe. Individual pilgrims and
adventurers, and sometimes considerable bodies of crusaders,
 464 Outlines of European History

were constantly falling a prey to every form of disaster —

starvation, slavery, disease, and death — in their persistent
endeavors to reach the far-away Holy Land.

Section 79. The First Crusade

The First The most conspicuous figures of the long period of the
Crusade,
1096 Crusades are not, however, to be found among the lowly fol-
lowers of Peter the Hermit, but are the knights, in their long
coats of flexible armor. A year after the summons issued at
Clermont great armies of fighting men had been collected in
the West under distinguished leaders — the Pope speaks of
three hundred thousand soldiers. Of the various divisions which
were to meet in Constantinople, the following were the most
important : the volunteers from Provence under the papal
legate and Count Raymond of Toulouse ; inhabitants of Ger-
many, particularly of Lorraine, under Godfrey of Bouillon and
his brother Baldwin, both destined to be rulers of Jerusalem ;
and lastly, an army of French and of the Normans of southern
Italy under Bohemond and Tancred.-^
The distinguished noblemen who have been mentioned were
not actually in command of real armies. Each crusader under-
took the expedition on his own account and was only obedient
to any one's orders so long as he pleased. The knights and
men naturally grouped themselves around the more noted lead-
ers, but considered themselves free to change chiefs when they
pleased. The leaders themselves reserved the right to look out
for their own special interests rather than sacrifice themselves
to the good of the expedition.
Hostilities Upon the arrival of the crusaders at Constantinople it quickly
between the
Greeks and became clear that they had not much more in common with the
the crusaders
" Greeks " '^ than with the Turks. Emperor Alexius ordered
1 For the routes taken by the different crusading armies, see the accompanying
map.
2 The people of the Eastern Empire were called Greeks because the
Greek language continued to be used in Constantinople.
TfiflFac i ""i^.M (Fdk. Barharossa ——-—-
[P/tilip Augustus.
0 no iix) ioo
 The Crusades 465

his soldiers to attack Godfrey's army, encamped in the suburbs

of his capital, because their chief at first refused to take the
oath of feudal homage to him. The Emperor's daughter Anna,
in her history of the times, gives a sad picture of the outrageous
conduct of the crusaders. They, on
the other hand, denounced the
Greeks as traitors, cowards, and liars.
The eastern Emperor had hoped
to use his western allies to reconquer
Asia Minor and force back the
Turks. The leading knights, on the
contrary, dreamed of carving out
principalities for themselves in the
fonner dominions of the Emperor,
and proposed to control them by
right of conquest. Later we find
both Greeks and western Christians
shamelessly allying themselves with
the Mohammedans against each
other. The relations of the eastern 171. Knight of the
and western enemies of the Turks First Crusade

were well illustrated when the cru- In the time of the Crusades

saders besieged their first town, knights wore a coat of inter-

woven iron rings, called a
Nicaea. When it was just ready to hauberk, to protect them-
surrender, the Greeks arranged with selves. The habit of using the
rigid iron plates, of which
the enemy to have their troops ad- later armor was constructed,
mitted first. They then closed the did not come in until the
Crusades were over
gates against their western confeder-
ates and invited them to move on.
The first real allies that the crusaders met with were the Dissension
among the
Christian Armenians, who gave them aid after their terrible leaders of the
march through Asia Minor. With their help Baldwin got crusaders

possession of Edessa, of which he made himself prince. The

chiefs induced the great body of the crusaders to postpone
the march on Jerusalem, and a year was spent in taking the
 Ontli7tcs of European History
466
rich and important city of Antioch. A bitter strife then broke
out, especially between the Norman Bohemond and the count
of Toulouse, as to who should have the conquered town. After
the most unworthy conduct on both sides, Bohemond won,
and Raymond
was forced to set
to work to con-
quer another prin-
cipality forhimself
on the coast about
Tripoli.
In the spring

of 1099 about
twenty thousand
warriors were at
last able to move
upon Jerusalem.
They found the
city well walled,
in the midst of
a desolate region
where neither
food nor water
nor the materials
to construct the

apparatus neces-
sary for the cap-
ture of the town
Map of the Crusaders' States in Syria
were to be found.
However, the opportune arrival at Jaffa of galleys from Genoa
furnished the besiegers with supplies, and, in spite of all the
difficulties, the place was taken in a couple of months. The
crusaders, with shocking barbarity, massacred the inhabitants.
Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen ruler of Jerusalem and took
the modest title of " Defender of the Holy Sepulcher." He soon
 TJie Crusades 467

died and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who left Edessa
in 1 100 to take up the task of extending the bounds of the
kingdom of Jerusalem.
It will be observed that the " Franks," as the Mohammedans Founding
called all the western folk, had established the centers of four domf i'n SntE
principalities. These were Edessa, Antioch, the region about
Tripoli conquered by Raymond, and the kingdom of Jerusalem.
The last was speedily increased by Baldwin ; with the help of
the mariners from Venice and Genoa, he succeeded in getting
possession of Acre, Sidon, and a number of other less impor-
tant coast towns.
The news of these Christian victories quickly reached the
West, and in 1 1 o i tens of thousands of new crusaders started
eastward. Most of them were lost or dispersed in passing
through Asia Minor, and few reached their destination. The
original conquerors were consequently left to hold the land
against the Saracens and to organize their conquests as best
they could. This was a very difficult task — too difficult to
accomplish under the circumstances.
The permanent hold of the Franks upon the eastern bor-
ders of the Mediterranean depended upon the strength of the
colonies which their various princes were able to establish. It
is impossible to learn how many pilgrims from the West made
their permanent homes in the new Latin principalities. Cer-
tainly the greater part of those who visited Palestine returned
home after fulfilling the vow they had made — to kneel at the
Holy Sepulcher.
Still the princes could rely upon a certain number of soldiers
who would be willing to stay and fight the Mohammedans.
The Turks, moreover, were so busy fighting one another that
they showed less energy than might have been expected in
attempting to drive the Franks from the narrow strip of terri-
tory — some five hundred miles long and fifty wide — which
they had conquered. The map on the opposite page shows
the extent and situation of the crusaders' states.
 Outlines of European History
468
Section 8o. The Religious Orders of the
Hospitalers and Templars

Military reli- A noteworthy outcome of the crusading movement was

gious orders
the foundation of several curious orders, of which the Hospi-
talers and the Templars were the most important. These orders
combined the two dominant inter-
ests of the time, those of the monk
and of the soldier. They permitted
a man to be both at once; the
knight might wear a monkish
cowl over his coat of armor.
The Hospitalers grew out of
a monastic association that was
formed before the First Crusade
for the succor of the poor and sick
among the pilgrims. Later the
society admitted noble knights to
its membership and became a mili-
tary order, at the same time con-
tinuing its care for the sick. This
Fig. 172. Costume of the charitable association, like the
Hospitalers
earlier monasteries, received gen-
The Hospitaler here repre- erous gifts of land in western
sented bears the peculiar
Maltese cross on his bosom. Europe and built and controlled
His crucifix indicates his reli- many fortified monasteries in the
gious character, but his sword
Holy Land itself. After the evacu-
and the armor which he wears
beneath his long gown enabled
ation of Syria in the thirteenth
him to fight as well as pray, century, the Hospitalers moved
and to succor the wounded their headquarters to the Island of
Rhodes, and later to Malta. The
order still exists, and it is considered a distinction to this day to
have the privilege of wearing its emblem, the cross of Malta.
Before the Hospitalers were transformed into a military
order, a little group of French knights banded together in 1 1 19
 TJie Crusades 469

to defend pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem from the attacks The

of the infidel. They were assigned quarters in the king's palace ^^"^P^^''^
at Jerusalem, on the site of the former Temple of Solomon ;
hence the name " Templars," which they were destined to render
famous. The '' poor soldiers of the Temple " were enthusiasti-
cally approved by the Church. They wore a white cloak adorned
with a red cross, and were under a very strict monastic rule
which bound them by the vows of obedience, poverty, and
celibacy. The fame of the order spread throughout Europe,
and the most exalted, even dukes and princes, were ready to
renounce the world and serve Christ under its black and white
banner, with the legend Non iiobis, Domine.
The order was aristocratic from the first, and it soon became
incredibly rich and independent. It had its collectors in all parts
of Europe, who dispatched the " alms " they received to the
Grand Master at Jerusalem. Towns, churches, and estates were
given to the order, as well as vast sums of money. The king
of Aragon proposed to bestow upon it a third of his kingdom.
The Pope showered privileges upon the Templars. They were
exempted from tithes and taxes and were brought under his
immediate jurisdiction ; they were released from feudal obliga-
tions, and bishops were forbidden to excommunicate them for
any cause.
No wonder they grew insolent and aroused the jealousy and Abolition of
hate of princes and prelates alike. Even Innocent III violently Tempia^rs^
upbraided them for admitting to their order wicked men who
then enjoyed all the privileges of churchmen. Early in the four-
teenth century, through the combined efforts of the Pope and
Philip the Fair of France, the order was brought to a terrible
end. Its members were accused of the most abominable prac-
tices, — such as heresy, the worship of idols, and the systematic
insulting of Christ and his religion. Many distinguished Tem-
plars were burned for heresy ; others perished miserably in dun-
geons. The once powerful order was abolished and its property
confiscated.
 Outlines of Europian History
470
Section 8i. The SecOxXd and Later Crusades
The Second
Crusade Fifty years after the preaching of the First Crusade, the
fall of Edessa (i 144), an important outpost of the Christians in
the East, led to a second great expedition. This was forwarded
by no less a person than St. Bernard, who went about using
his unrivaled eloquence to induce volunteers to take the cross.

Fig. 173. Krak-des-Chevaliers, restored

This is an example of the strong casdes that the crusaders built in
Syria. It was completed in the form here represented about the year
1200 and lies halfway between Antioch and Damascus. It will be
noticed that there was a fortress within a fortress. The castle is now
in ruins (see headpiece of this chapter)

In a fierce hymn of battle he cried to the Knights Templars :

" The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is
sure of his reward, the more sure if he himself be slain. The
Christian glories in the death of the infidel, because Christ is
glorified." The king of France readily consented to take the
cross, but the Emperor, Conrad III, appears to have yielded
only after St. Bernard had preached before him and given a
vivid picture of the terrors of the Judgment Day.
 TJie Crusades

In regard to the less distinguished recruits, a historian of the

time tells us that so many thieves and robbers hastened to
take the cross that every one felt that such enthusiasm could471
only be the work of God himself. St. Bernard himself, the chief
promoter of the expedition, gives a most unflattering description
of the " soldiers of Christ." " In that countless multitude you
will find few except the utterly wicked and impious, the sacri-
legious, homicides, and perjurers, whose departure is a double
gain. Europe rejoices to lose them and Palestine to gain them ;
they are useful in both ways, in their absence from here and their
presence there."
It is unnecessary
to describe the
movements and
fate of these cru-
saders ;suffice it
to say that, from
a military stand-
point, the so-called
Second Crusade
was a miserable
Fig. 174. Tomb of a Crusader
failure.
The churches of England, France, and Germany
In the year contain numerous figures in stone and brass of
1 187, forty years crusading knights, reposing in full armor with
later, Jerusalem shield and sword on their tombs
was recaptured by
Saladin, the most heroic and distinguished of all the Moham-
medan rulers of that period. The loss of the Holy City led to
the most famous of all the military expeditions to the Holy
Land, in which Frederick Barbarossa, Richard the Lion-Hearted
of England, and his political rival, Philip Augustus of France,
all took part (see above, p. 41 7). The accounts of the enterprise
show that while the several Christian leaders hated one another
heartily enough, the Christians and Mohammedans were coming
to respect one another. We find examples of the most courtly
 Oiitlijies of European History
472
relations between the representatives of the opposing religions.
In 1 192 Richard concluded a truce with Saladin, by the terms
of which the Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the holy
places in safety and comfort.
The Fourth In the thirteenth century the crusaders began to direct their
and subse-
quent expeditions toward Egypt as the center of the Mohammedan
Crusades
power. The first of these was diverted in an extraordinary
manner by the Venetians, who induced the crusaders to con-
quer Constantinople for their benefit. The further expeditions
of Frederick II (see above, p. 457) and St. Louis need not be
described. Jerusalem was irrevocably lost in 1 2 44, and although
the possibility of recovering the city was long considered, the
Crusades may be said to have come to a close before the end
of the thirteenth century.

Section 82. Chief Results of the Crusades

Settlements
of the Italian For one class, at least, the Holy Land had great and perma-
nierchants nent charms, namely, the Italian merchants, especially those
from Genoa, Venice, and Pisa. It was through their early inter-
est and by means of supplies from their ships, that the conquest
of the Holy Land had been rendered possible. The merchants
always made sure that they were well paid for their services.
When they aided in the successful siege of a town they arranged
that a definite quarter should be assigned to them in the cap-
tured place, where they might have their market, docks, church,
and all that was necessary for a permanent center for their com-
merce. This district belonged to the town from which the mer-
chants came. Venice even sent governors to live in the quarters
assigned to its citizens in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Marseilles
also had independent quarters in Jerusalem, and Genoa had its
share in the county of Tripoli.
Oriental
This new commerce had a most important infiuence in bring-
luxury intro-
duced into ing the West into permanent relations with the Orient. Eastern
Europe
products from India and elsewhere — silks, spices, camphor,
 TJie Crusades 473

musk, pearls, and ivory — were brought by the Mohammedans

from the -East to the commercial towns of Palestine and Syria;
then, through the Italian merchants, they found their way into
France and Germany, suggesting ideas of luxury hitherto
scarcely dreamed of by the still half-barbarous Franks.
Moreover, the Crusades had a great effect upon the methods Effects of
of warfare, for the soldiers from the West learned from the orTwarfare^^
Greeks about the old Roman methods of constructing machines
for attacking castles and walled towns. This led, as has been
pointed out in a previous chapter (see section 64), to the con-
struction inwestern Europe of stone castles, first with square
towers and later with round ones, the remains of which are so
common in Germany, France, and England. The Crusades also
produced heraldry, or the science of coats of arms. These were
the badges that single knights or groups of knights adopted in
order to distinguish themselves from other people.
Some of the results of the Crusades upon western Europe Results of
must already be obvious, even from this very brief account.
Thousands and thousands of Frenchmen, Germans, and Eng-
lishmen had traveled to the Orient by land and by sea. Most
of them came from hamlets or castles where they could never
have learned much of the great world beyond the confines of
their native village or province. They suddenly found them-
selves ingreat cities and in the midst of unfamiliar peoples and -
customs. This could not fail to make them think and give them
new ideas to carry home. The Crusade took the place of a
liberal education. The crusaders came into contact with those
who knew more than they did, above all the Arabs, and brought
back with them new notions of comfort and luxury.
Yet in attempting to estimate the debt of the West to the
Crusades it should be remembered that many of the new things
may well have come from Constantinople, or through the
Mohammedans of Sicily and Spain,^ quite independently of the
1 The western Europeans derived many important ideas from the Mohamme-
dans in Spain, as Arabic numerals, alchemy, algebra, and the use of paper.
474 Outlines of European History

armed incursions into Syria. Moreover, during the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries towns were rapidly growing up in Europe,
trade and manufactures were extending, and the universities
were being founded. It would be absurd to suppose that with-
out the Crusades this progress would not have taken place.
So we may conclude that the distant expeditions and the con-
tact with strange and more highly civilized peoples did no more
than hasten the improvement which was already perceptible
before Urban made his ever-memorable address at Clermont.

QUESTIONS
Section 78. What led to the Crusades .-^ Describe Urban's speech.
What was the character of Peter the Hermit's expedition ?
Section 79. Who were the leaders of the First Crusade.?
Describe the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders.
Section 80. Who were the Hospitalers } What was the order
of the Temple and what became of the Templars ?
Section 81. What was the Second Crusade? Give some par-
ticulars inregard to the Third Crusade and its leaders.
Section 82. Give as complete an account as you can of the chief
results of the Crusades.
 CHAPTER XX

THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT

Section 83. Organization and Powers of

THE Church

In the preceding pages it has been necessary to refer con-

stantly to the Church and the clergy. Indeed, without them
medieval histor)^ would become almost a blank, for the Church
was incomparably the most important institution of the time,
and its officers were the soul of nearly every great enterprise.
We have already learned something of the rise of the Church
and of its head, the Pope, as well as the mode of life and the
work of the monks as they spread over Europe. We have
also watched the long struggle between the emperors and the
popes, in which the emperors were finally worsted. We must
now consider the Medieval Church as a completed institution at
the height of its power in the 475 twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
 Outlines of Europcati History
476
Ways in We have already had abundant proofs that the Medieval
which the
Medieval Church was very different from our modern churches, whether
Church dif-
fered from
Catholic or Protestant.
modern 1. In the first place, every one was required to belong to it,
churches
just as we all must belong to some country to-day. One was
Membership not bom into the Church, it is true, but he was ordinarily bap-
in the
Medieval tized into it when he was a mere infant. All western Europe
Church
compulsory formed a single religious association, from w^hich it was a crime
to revolt. To refuse allegiance to the Church, or to question
its authority or teachings, was regarded as treason against God
and was punishable with death.
The wealth 2. The Medieval Church did not rely for its support, as
of the
Church churches usually must to-day, upon the voluntary contributions
of its members. It enjoyed, in addition to the revenue from its
vast tracts of lands and a great variety of fees, the income from
The tithe a regular tax, the tithe. Those upon whom this fell were forced
to pay it, just as we all must now pay taxes imposed by the
government.
Resemblance 3. It is clear, moreover, that the Medieval Church was not
of the Church
to a State merely a religious body, as churches are to-day. Of course it
maintained places of worship, conducted devotional exercises,
and cultivated the religious life ; but it did far more. It was, in
a way, a State, for it had an elaborate system of law, and its
own courts, in which it tried many cases which are now settled
in our ordinary courts. -"^ One may get some idea of the business
of the church courts from the fact that the Church claimed the
right to try all cases in which a clergyman was involved, or any
one connected with the Church or under its special protection,
such as monks, students, crusaders, widows, orphans, and the
helpless. Then all cases where the rites of the Church, or its
prohibitions, were involved came ordinarily before the church
courts, as, for example, those concerning marriage, wills, sworn
1 The law of the Church was known as the canon law. It was taught in most
of the universities and practiced by a great number of lawyers. It was based upon
the acts of the various church councils, from that of Nicaea (325 a.u.) down, and,
above all, upon the decrees and decisions of the popes.
 The Medieval Clutrch at its Height 477

contracts, usury, blasphemy, sorcery, heresy, and so forth. The

Church even had its prisons, to which it might sentence offenders
for life.
4. The Church not only performed the functions of a State ; Unity of
it had the organization of a State. Unlike the Protestant min- °n^he'^^*^°"
isters of to-day, all churchmen and religious associations of Church
medieval Europe were under one supreme head, the Pope, who
made laws for all and controlled every church officer, wherever
he might be, whether in Italy or Germany, Spain or Ireland.
The whole Church had one official language, Latin, in which
all communications were written and in which its services were
everywhere conducted.
The Medieval Church may therefore properly be called a The Medi-
monarchy in its government. The Pope was its all-powerful rmoSarchy
and absolute head. He was the supreme lawgiver.^ He might
° '" '^^ ^^''"^ °^
government
set aside or repeal any law of the Church, no matter how
ancient, so long as he did not believe it to be ordained by the
Scriptures or by Nature. He might, for good reasons, make Dispensa-
exceptions to all merely human laws ; as, for instance, permit "^'^"^
cousins to marry, or free a monk from his vows. Such exceptions
were known as dispensatiofis.
The Pope was not merely the supreme lawgiver ; he was the The Pope

supreme judge. Any one, whether clergyman or layman, in any judg^e^or"^^

part of Europe could appeal to him at any stage in the trial of Christendom
a large class of cases. Obviously this system had serious draw-
backs. Grave injustice might be done by carrying to Rome a
case which ought to have been settled in Edinburgh or Cologne,
where the facts were best known. The rich, moreover, always
had the advantage, as they alone could afford to bring suits
before so distant a court.
The control of the Pope over all parts of the Christian Church
was exercised by his legates. These papal ambassadors were
intrusted with great powers. Their haughty mien sometimes
offended the prelates and rulers to whom they brought home
the authority of the pope, — as, for instance, when the legate
 Outlines of European History
478
Pandulf grandly absolved all the subjects of King John of
England, before his very face, from their oath of fealty to him
(see above, p. 419).
The Roman The task assumed by the Pope of governing the whole
curia
western world naturally made it necessary to create a large body
of officials at Rome in order to transact all the multiform business
and prepare and transmit the innumerable legal documents.^
The cardinals and the Pope's officials constituted what was
called the papal curia, or court.
Sources of
. To carry on his government and meet the expenses of pal-
the Pope's
income ace and retinue, the Pope had need of a vast income. This he
secured from various sources. Heavy fees were exacted from
those who brought suits to his court for decision. The arch-
bishops, bishops, and abbots were expected to make generous
contributions when the Pope confirmed their election. In the
thirteenth century the Pope himself began to fill many benefices
throughout Europe, and customarily received half the first year's
revenues from those whom he appointed. For several centuries
before the Protestants finally threw off their allegiance to the
popes, there was widespread complaint on the part of both
clergy and laymen that the fees and taxes levied by the curia
were excessive.
The arch- Next in order below the head of the Church were the arch-
bishops
bishops and bishops. An archbishop was a bishop whose power
extended beyond the boundaries of his own diocese and who
exercised a certain control over al) the bishops within his
province.
The impor-
tance of the
There is perhaps no class of persons in medieval times whose
bishops position it is so necessary to understand as that of the bishops.
They were regarded as the successors of the apostles, whose
powers were held to be divinely transmitted to them. They
represented the Church Universal in their respective dioceses,
under the supreme headship of their " elder brother," the
1 Many of the edicts, decisions, and orders of the popes were called hdls^
from the seal (Latin buUa) attached to them.
 The Medieiml CJinrcJi at its Height 479

bishop of Rome, the successor of the chief of the apostles.

Their insignia of office, the miter and crosier, are familiar to
every one.^ Each bishop had his especial church, which was
called a cathedral, and usually surpassed the other churches of
the diocese in size and beautv.

Fig. 175. Canterbury Cathedral

The bishop's church was called a cathedral, because in it stood the

bishop's chair, or throne (Latin cathedra). It was therefore much more
imposing ordinarily than the parish churches, although sometimes the
abbey churches belonging to rich monasteries vied with the bishop's
church in beauty (see below, section 89)

In addition to the oversight of his diocese, it was the bishop's The bishop's
business to look after the lands and other possessions which duties
belonged to the bishopric. Lastly, the bishop was usually a
feudal lord, with the obligations which that implied. He might
have vassals and subvassals, and often was himself a vassal, not
only of the king but also of some neighboring lord.

1 The headpiece of this chapter represents an English bishop ordaining a

priest and is taken from a manuscript of Henry II 's time. The bishop is
wearing his miter and holds his pastoral staff, the crosier, in his left hand while
he raises his right, in blessing, over the priest's head.
 Outliiics of Europe ail History
4{^o
The parish The lowest division of the Church was the parish. At the
priest and
ins duties head of the parish was the parish priest, who conducted services
in the parish church and absolved, baptized, married, and buried
his parishioners. The priests were supposed to be supported by
the lands belonging to the parish church and by the tithes. But
both of these sources of income were often in the hands of lay-
men or of a neighboring monastery, while the poor priest re-
ceived the merest pittance, scarcely sufficient to keep soul and
body together.
The exalted The clergy were set apart from the laity in several ways.
position of
the clergy The higher orders — bishop, priest, deacon, and subdeacon —
were required to remain unmarried, and in this way were
freed from the cares and interests of family life. The Church
held, moreover, that the higher clergy, when they had been
properly ordained, received through their ordination a mysterious
imprint, the " indelible character," so that they could never
become simple laymen again, even if they ceased to perform
their duties altogether. Above all, the clergy alone could ad-
minister the sacraments upon which it was believed the salva-
tion of every individual soul depended.
Nature of
The punishment for sin imposed by the priest was called
penance
pe7ia?ice. This took a great variety of forms. It might consist
in fasting, repeating prayers, visiting holy places, or abstaining
from one's ordinary amusements. A journey to the Holy Land
was regarded as taking the place of all other penance. Instead,
however, of requiring the penitent actually to perform the fasts,
pilgrimages, or other sacrifices imposed as penance by the priest,
the Church early began to permit him to change his penance
into a contribution, to be applied to some pious enterprise, like
building a church or bridge, or caring for the poor and sick.
Only clergy-
men ordi-
The influence of the clergy was greatly increased by the fact
narily knew that they alone were educated. For six or seven centuries after
how to read
and write the overthrow of the Roman government in the West, very few
outside of the clergy ever dreamed of studying, or even of learn-
ing to read and write. Even in the thirteenth century an offender
 The Medieval CliiircJi at its HeigJit 481

who wished to prove that- he belonged to the clergy, in order

that he might be tried by a church court, had only to show that
he could read a single line ; for it was assumed by the judges
that no one unconnected with the Church could read at all.
It was therefore inevitable that all the teachers were clergy-
men, that almost all the books were wTitten by priests and
monks, and that the clergy was the ruling power in all intellectual,
artistic, and literary matters — the chief guardians and promoters
of civilization. Moreover, the civil government was forced to
rely upon churchmen to write out the public documents and
proclamations. The priests and monks held the pen for the
king. Representatives of the clergy sat in the king's councils
and acted as his ministers ; in fact, the conduct of the govern-
ment largely devolved upon them.
The offices in the Church were open to all ranks of men, and Offices in the
many of the popes themselves sprang from the humblest classes, j^ airdasse"
The Church thus constantly recruited its ranks with fresh blood.
No one held an office simply because his father had held it
before him, as was the case in the civil government.
No wonder that the churchmen w^ere by far the most power- Excommu-
ful class in the Middle Ages. They controlled great wealth ; they interdict^"
alone were educated ; they held the keys of the kingdom of
heaven and without their aid no one could hope to enter in.
By excommunication they could cast out the enemies of the
Church and could forbid all men to associate with them, since
they were accursed. By means of the interdict they could sus-
pend all religious ceremonies in a whole city or country by
closing the church doors and prohibiting all public services.

Section 84. The Heretics and the Inquisition

Nevertheless, in spite of the power and wonderful organi- Rebels

zation of the Church, a few people began to revolt against it as Srch^^^
early as the time of Gregory VII ; and the number of these
rebels continued to increase as time went on. Popular leaders
I
 Outlijics of liu7'opca)i History
482
arose who declared that no one ought any longer to rely upon
the Church for his salvation ; that all its elaborate ceremonies
were worse than useless ; that its Masses, holy water, and relics
were mere money-getting devices of a sinful priesthood and
helped no one to heaven.
\ eresy Those who questioned the teachings of the Church and pro-
posed to cast off its authority were, according to the accepted
view of the time, guilty of the supreme crime of heresy.
Heretics were of two sorts. One class merely rejected the
practices and some of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic
Church while they remained Christians and endeavored to
imitate as nearly as possible the simple life of Christ and the
apostles.
The Walden- Among those who continued to accept the Christian faith but
sians
refused to obey the clergy, the most important sect was that of
the Waldensians, which took its rise about 1175. These were
followers of Peter Waldo of Lyons, who gave up all their
property and lived a life of apostolic poverty. They went about
preaching the Gospel and explaining the Scriptures, which they
translated from Latin into the language of the people. They
made many converts, and before the end of the twelfth cen-
tury there were great numbers of them scattered throughout
western Europe.
The Albi- On the other hand, there were popular leaders who taught
gensians
that the Christian religion itself was false. They held that there
were two principles in the universe, the good and the evil,
which were forever fighting for the victory. They asserted
that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was really the evil
power, and that it was, therefore, the evil power whom the Cath-
olic Church worshiped. These heretics were commonly called
Albigensians, a name derived from the town of Albi in southern
France, where they were very numerous.
It is very difficult for us who live in a tolerant age to under-
stand the universal and deep-rooted horror of heresy which long
prevailed in Europe. But we must recollect that to the orthodox
 The Medieval CJmrch at its Height 483

believer in the Church nothing could exceed the guilt of one

who committed treason against God by rejecting the religion
which had been handed down in the Roman Church from the
immediate followers of his Son. Moreover, doubt and unbelief
were not merely sin ; they were revolt against the most power-
ful social institution of the time, which, in spite of the sins of
some of its officials, continued to be venerated by people at
large throughout western Europe. The story of the Albigensians
and Waldensians, and the efforts of the Church to suppress
them by persuasion, by fire and sword, and by the stern court
of the Inquisition, form a strange and terrible chapter in
medieval history.
In southern France there were many adherents of both the
Albigensians and the Waldensians, especially in the county of
Toulouse. At the beginning of the thirteenth century there
was in this region an open contempt for the Church, and bold
heretical teachings were heard even among the higher classes.
Against the people of this flourishing land Innocent III Albigensian
preached a crusade in 1208. An army marched from northern
France into the doomed region and, after one of the most
atrocious and bloody wars upon record, suppressed the heresy
by wholesale slaughter. At the same time, the war checked the
civilization and destroyed the prosperity of the most enlightened
portion of France.
The most permanent defense of the Church against heresy was The inqui-
the establishment, under the headship of the Pope, of a system
of courts designed to ferret out secret cases of unbelief and bring
the offenders to punishment. These courts, which devoted their
whole attention to the discovery and conviction of heretics, were
called the Holy Inquisition, which gradually took form after
the Albigensian crusade. The unfairness of the trials and the
cruel treatment to which those suspected of heresy were sub-
jected, through long imprisonment or torture, — inflicted with
the hope of forcing them to confess their crime or to implicate
others, — have rendered the name of the Inquisition infamous.
 484 Outlines of Hu7vpcan History

Without by any means attempting to defend the methods

employed, it may be remarked that the inquisitors were often
earnest and upright men, and the methods of procedure of the
Inquisition were not more cruel than those used in the secular
courts of the period.
The assertion of the suspected person that he was not a
heretic did not receive any attention, for it was assumed that
he would naturally deny his guilt, as would any other criminal.
A person's belief had, therefore, to be judged by outward acts.
Consequently one might fall into the hands of the Inquisition
by mere accidental conversation with a heretic, by some unin-
tentional neglect to show due respect toward the Church rites,
or by the malicious testimony of one's neighbors. This is really
the most terrible aspect of the Inquisition and its procedure.
Fate of the If the suspected person confessed his guilt and abjured his
convicted
heretic heresy, he was forgiven and received back into the Church ;
but a penance of life imprisonment was imposed upon him as
a fitting means of wiping away the unspeakable sin of which he
had been guilty. If he persisted in his heresy, he was " relaxed
to the secular arm " ; that is to say, the Church, whose law for-
bade it to shed blood, handed over the convicted person to the
civil power, which burned him alive without further trial.

Section 8:;. The Franxiscans and Dominicans

Founding of We may now turn to that far more cheerful and effective
the mendi-
cant orders method of meeting the opponents of the Church, which may
be said to have been discovered by St. Francis of Assisi. His
teachings and the example of his beautiful life probably did far
more to secure continued allegiance to the Church than all the
harsh devices of the Inquisition.
We have seen how the Waldensians tried to better the world
by living simple lives and preaching the Gospel. Owing to the
disfavor of the Church authorities, who declared their teach-
ings erroneous and dangerous, they were prevented from
 The Medieval Church at its Height 485

publicly carrying on their missionary work. Yet all conscientious

men agreed with the Waldensians that the world was in a sad
plight, owing to the negligence and the misdeeds of the clergy.
St. Francis and St. Dominic strove to meet the needs of their
time by inventing a new kind of clergyman, the begging brother,
or "mendicant friar" (from the l.dXmf rater, " brother"). He was
to do just what the bishops and parish priests often failed to do
— namely, lead a holy life of self-sacrifice, defend the Church's
beliefs against the attacks of the heretics, and awaken the people
to a new religious life. The founding of the mendicant orders
is one of the most interesting events of the Middle Ages.
There is no more lovely and fascinating figure in all history St. Francis
than St. Francis. He was born (probably in 1182) at Assisi, a 1 182-1226
little town in central Italy. He was the son of a well-to-do
merchant, and during his early youth he lived a very gay life,
spending his father's money freely. He read the French
romances of the time and dreamed of imitating the brave
knights whose adventures they described. Although his com-
panions were wild and reckless, there was a delicacy and chivalry
in Francis's own make-up which made him hate all things coarse
and heartless. When later he voluntarily became a beggar, his
ragged cloak still covered a true poet and knight.
The contrast between his own life of luxury and the sad state Francishisfor-
S3.lccs life
of the poor early afflicted him. When he was about twenty, of luxury
after a long and serious illness which made a break in his gay inheritance
life and gave him time to think, he suddenly lost his love for the and becomes
old pleasures and began to consort with the destitute, above all
with lepers. His father does not appear to have had any fond-
ness whatever for beggars, and the relations between him and
his son grew more and more strained. When finally he threatened
to disinherit the young man, Francis cheerfully agreed to sur-
render all right to his inheritance. Stripping off his clothes and
giving them back to his father, he accepted the worn-out garment
of a gardener and became a homeless hermit, busying himself
in repairing the dilapidated chapels near Assisi.
 Outlines of European History
486
Francis He soon began to preach in a simple way, and before long a
begins to
preach and
to attract rich fellow townsman resolved to follow Francis's example — sell
followers his all and give to the poor. Others soon joined them, and these
joyous converts, free of worldly burdens, went barefoot and
penniless about central Italy preaching the Gospel instead of
shutting themselves up in a monastery.
Seeks and When, with a dozen followers, Francis appealed to the Pope
obtains the
approval of in I2IO for his approval. Innocent III hesitated. He did not
the Pope
believe that any one could lead a life of absolute poverty. Then
might not these ragged, ill-kempt vagabonds appear to condemn
the Church by adopting a life so different from that of the rich
and comfortable clergy? Yet if he disapproved the friars, he
would seem to disapprove at the same time Christ's directions
to his apostles. He finally decided to authorize the brethren to
continue their missions.
Missionary
work under- Seven years later, when Francis's follower's had greatly in-
taken creased in numbers, missionary work was begun on a large
scale, and brethren were dispatched to Germany, Hungary,
France, Spain, and even to Syria. It was not long before an
English chronicler was telling with wonder of the arrival in his
country of these barefoot men, in their patched gowns and with
ropes about their waists, who, with Christian faith, took no
thought for the morrow, believing that their Heavenly Father
knew what things they had need of.
Francis did As time went on, the success of their missionary work led
not desire
to found a the Pope to bestow many privileges upon them. It grieved
powerful
order Francis, however, to think of his little band of companions
being converted into a great and powerful order. He foresaw
that they would soon cease to lead their simple, holy life, and
would become ambitious and perhaps rich. " I, litde Brother
Francis," he writes, " desire to follow the life and the poverty
of Jesus Christ, persevering therein until the end ; and I beg
you all and exhort you to persevere always in this most holy
life of poverty, and take good care never to depart from it
upon the advice and teachings of any one whomsoever."
 487
The Medieval Church at its Height

After the death of St. Francis (1226) many of the order, Change in

which now numbered several thousand members, wished to o^he FralT-'^

maintain the simple
^ rule of absolute
. poverty : others, includins:^ after
^^^"^^^Francis's
°''^^''
the new head of the order, believed that much good might be death
done with the wealth which people were anxious to give them.

•IV
^<^jm^.

\x^

Fig. 176. Church of St. Fraxcis at Assisi

Assisi is situated on a high hill, and the monastery of the Franciscans
is built out on a promontory. The monastery has t7vo churches, one
above the other. The lower church, in which are the remains of
.St. Francis, was begun in 1228 and contains pictures of the life and mira-
cles of the saint. To reach the upper church (completed 1253) one can
go up by the stairs, seen to the right of the entrance to the lower church,
to the higher level upon which the upper church faces

They argued that the individual friars might still remain abso-
lutely possessionless, even if the order had beautiful churches
and comfortable monasteries. So a stately church was imme-
diately constructed at Assisi (Fig. 176) to receive the remains of
their humble founder, who in his lifetime had chosen a deserted
 Outlines of European History
488
hovel for his home ; and a great chest was set up in the church
to receive the offerings of those who desired to give.
St. Dominic St. Dominic (b. 1 1 70), the Spanish founder of the other great
mendicant order, was not a simple layman like Francis. He
was a churchman and took a regular course of instruction in
theology for ten years in a Spanish university. He then (1208)
accompanied his bishop to southern France on the eve of the
Albigensian crusade and was deeply shocked to see the preva-
lence of heresy. His host at Toulouse happened to be an Albi-
gensian, and Dominic spent the night in converting him. He then
and there determined to devote his life to fighting heresy.
Founding of By 1 2 14 a few sympathetic spirits from various parts of
the Domini-
can order Europe had joined Dominic, and they asked Innocent HI to
sanction their new order. The Pope again hesitated, but is
said to have dreamed a dream in which he saw the great Roman
Church of the Lateran tottering and ready to fall had not
Dominic supported it on his shoulders. He interpreted this as
meaning that the new organization might sometime become a
great aid to the papacy, and gave it his approval. As soon as
possible Dominic sent forth his followers, of whom there were
but sixteen, to evangelize the world, just as the Franciscans
were undertaking their first missionary journeys. By 122 1
the Dominican order was thoroughly organized and had sixty
monasteries scattered over western Europe.
" Wandering on foot over the -face of Europe, under burning
suns or chilling blasts, rejecting alms in money but receiving
thankfully whatever coarse food might be set before the way-
farer, enduring hunger in silent resignation, taking no thought for
the morrow, but busied eternally in the work of snatching souls
from Satan and lifting men up from the sordid cares of daily
life" — in this way did the early Franciscans and Dominicans
win the love and veneration of the people. '
The Dominicans were called the " Preaching Friars " and
were carefully trained in theolog}^ in order the better to refute
the arguments of the heretics. The Pope delegated to them
 The Medieval Church at its Height 489

especially the task of conducting the Inquisition. They early Contrast

began to extend their influence over the universities, and the rSm^nicans
two most distinguished
^ theologians
^ and teachers of the thirteenth ^"^ ^^^
Franciscans
century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, were Domini-
cans. Among the Franciscans, on the other hand, there was
always a considerable party who were suspicious of learning
and who showed a greater desire to remain absolutely poor than
did the Dominicans. Yet as a whole the Franciscans, like the
Dominicans, accepted the wealth that came to them, and they
too contributed distinguished scholars to the universities.

Section 86. Church and State

We have seen that the Medieval Church was a single The state
great institution with its head, the Pope, at Rome and its aided the ^"
officers in all the countries of western Europe. ^ It had its laws, ' Church,
and the
law courts, taxes, and even prisons, just like the various kings churchmen
and other rulers. In general, the kings were ready to punish government
every one who revolted against the Church. Indeed, the State de-
pended upon the churchmen in many ways. It was the church-
men who wrote out the documents which the king required ;
they took care of the schools, aided the poor, and protected the
weak. They tried, by issuing the Truce of God, to discourage
neighborhood warfare, which the kings were unable to stop.
But as the period of disorder drew to an end and the Chief sources
kings and other rulers got the better of the feudal lords and betw-een" ^^
established peace in their realms, they began to think that ^^^l^^ ^""^
the Church had become too powerful and too rich. Certain
difficulties arose of which the following were the most important :
I. Should the king or the Pope have the advantage of select- Filling
ing the bishops and the abbots of rich monasteries ? Naturally
both were anxious to place their friends and supporters in these
influential positions. Moreover, the Pope could claim a con-
siderable contribution from those whom he appointed, and the
king naturally grudged him the money.
 Outlines of European History
490
Taxing of 2. How far might the king venture to tax the lands and other
church
property property of the Church ? Was this vast amount of wealth to go
on increasing and yet make no contribution to the support of
the government ? The churchmen usually maintained that they
needed all their money to carry on the church services, keep
up the churches and monasteries, take care of the schools, and
aid the poor, for the State left them to bear all these necessary
burdens. The law of the Church permitted the churchmen to
make voluntary gifts to the king when there was urgent necessity.
Church 3. Then there was trouble over the cases to be tried in the
courts
church courts and the claim of churchmen to be tried only by
clergymen. Worst of all was the habit of appealing cases to
Rome, for the Pope would often decide the matter in exactly
the opposite way from which the king's court had decided it.
Right of the 4. Lastly there was the question of how far the Pope as head
Pope to in-
terfere in the of the Christian Church had a right to interfere with the govern-
government
ment of a particular state, when he did not approve of the way
in which a king was acting. The powers of the Pope were very
great, every one admitted, but even the most devout Catholics
differed somewhat as to just how great they were.
We have seen some illustrations of these troubles in the
chapter on the Popes and Emperors. A famous conflict between
the king of France, Philip the Fair, and Pope Boniface VTII,
about the year 1300, had important results. Philip and Edward I
of England, who were reigning at the same time, had got into the
habit of taxing the churchmen as they did their other subjects.
Edward I and It was natural after a monarch had squeezed all that he could
Philip the
Fair attempt out of the Jews and the towns, and had exacted every possible
to tax the
clergy feudal due, that he should turn to the rich estates of the clergy,
in spite of their claim that their property was dedicated to God
and owed the king nothing. The extensive enterprises of
Edward I (see above, pp. 422 ff.) led him in 1296 to demand
one fifth of the personal property of the clergy. Philip the Fair
exacted one hundredth and then one fiftieth of the possessions
of clergy and laity alike.
 The Medieval CJuircJi at its Height 491

Against this impartial system Boniface protested in the famous The bull,
bull, Clericis laicos (1296). He claimed that the laity had always of^Boniface""^'
hostile to the clergy, and that the rulers were
exceedinglythis
been exhibiting '^ iii> 1296
now hostility by imposing heavy burdens upon
the Church, forgetting that they had no control over the clergy'
and their possessions. The Pope, therefore, forbade all church-
men, including the monks, to pay, without his consent, to a king
or ruler any part of the Church's revenue or possessions upon
any pretext whatsoever. He likewise forbade the kings and
princes under pain of excommunication to presume to exact
any such payments.
It happened that just as the Pope was prohibiting the clergy Boniface
from contributing to the taxes, Philip the Fair had forbidden u^te/right
the exportation of all gold and silver from the country. In that J.^^Jhmen
way he cut off an important source of the Pope's revenue, for
the Church of France could obviously no longer send anything
to Rome. The Pope was forced to give up his extreme claims.
He explained the following year that he had not meant to inter-
fere with the payment on the clergy's part of customary feudal
dues nor with their loans of money to the king.^
In spite of this setback, the Pope never seemed more com- The jubilee
pletely the recognized head of the western world than during
the first great jubilee, in the year 1300, when Boniface called
together all Christendom to celebrate the opening of the new
centur}' by a great religious festival at Rome. It is reported
that two millions of people, coming from all parts of Europe,
visited the churches of Rome, and that in spite of widening the
streets, many were crushed in the crowd. So great was the
influx of money into the papal treasury that two assistants were
kept busy with rakes collecting the offerings which were deposited
at the tomb of St. Peter.
Boniface was^ however, very soon to realize that even if
Christendom regarded Rome as its religious center, the na-
tions would not accept him as their political head. When he
1 See Readings, chap. xxi.
 Ontluies of European History
492
dispatched an obnoxious prelate to Philip the Fair, ordering him
to free a certain nobleman whom he was holding prisoner, the
king declared the harsh language of the papal envoy to be high
treason and sent one of his lawyers to the Pope to demand
that the messenger be punished.
The Estates Philip was surrounded by a body of lawyers, and it would
General of
1302 seem that they, rather than the king, were the real rulers of
France. They had, through their study of Roman law, learned
to admire the absolute power exercised by the Roman Emperor.
To them the civil government was supreme, and they urged
the king to punish what they regarded as the insolent conduct
of the Pope. Before taking any action against the head of the
Church, Philip called together the Estates General, including not
only the clergy and the nobility but the people of the towns as
well. The Estates General, after hearing a statement of the case
from one of Philip's lawyers, agreed to support their monarch.
Nogaret, one of the chief legal advisers of the king, undertook
to face the Pope. He collected a little troop of soldiers in Italy
and marched against Boniface, who was sojourning at Anagni,
where his predecessors had excommunicated two emperors,
Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. As Boniface, in his
turn, was preparing solemnly to proclaim the king of France
an outcast from the Church, Nogaret penetrated into the papal
palace with his soldiers and heaped insults upon the helpless
Death of but defiant old man. The townspeople forced Nogaret to leave
Boniface,
1303 the next day, but Boniface's spirit was broken and he soon died
at Rome.
King Philip now proposed to have no more trouble with
popes. He arranged in 1305 to have the Archbishop of Bor-
deaux chosen head of the Church, with the understanding
that he should transfer the papacy to France. The new Pope
accordingly summoned the cardinals to meet him at Lyons,
where he was crowned under the title of " Clement V." He
remained in France during his whole pontificate, moving from
one rich abbey to another.
 The Medieval Church at its Height 493

At Philip's command he reluctantly undertook a sort of trial

of the deceased Boniface VIII, who was accused by the king's
lawyers of all sorts of abominable crimes. Then, to please the
king, Clement brought the Templars to trial ; ^ the order was
abolished, and its possessions in France, for which the king
had longed, were confiscated. Obviously it proved very advanta-
geous to the king to have a Pope within his realm. Clement V
died in 13 14.
His successors took up their residence in the town of The popes
Avignon, just outside the French frontier of those days. There resfdence at'^
they built a sumptuous palace in which successive popes lived ^^ignon
in great splendor for sixty years.
The prolonged exile of the popes from Rome, lasting from The Babylo-
1305 to 1377, is commonly called the Babylonian Captivity" of hv^ of th?^^'
the Church, on account of the woes attributed to it. The popes *^hurch
of this period were for the most part good and earnest men ;
but they were all Frenchmen, and the proximity of their court to
France led to the natural suspicion that they were controlled
by the French kings. This, together with their luxurious court,
brought them into discredit with the other nations.^
At Avignon the popes were naturally deprived of some of the The papal
revenue which they had enjoyed from their Italian possessions
when they lived at Rome. This deficiency had to be made up
by increased taxation, especially as the expenses of the splendid
papal court were very heavy. The papacy was, consequently,
rendered unpopular by the methods employed to raise money.
The papal exactions met with the greatest opposition in Statute of
England because the popes were thought to favor France, with P™^^^^'^^'
which country the English were at war. A law was passed by
Parliament in 1352, ordering that all who procured a church
office from the Pope should be outlawed, since they were ene-
mies of the king and his realm. This and similar laws failed,

1 See above, p. 469.

2 The name recalled, of course, the long exile of the Jews from their land.
3 See Readings^ chap. xxi.
494 Oiitlijics of Europcati History

however, to prevent the Pope from filling English benefices.

The English king was unable to keep the money of his realm

gti{^ti.<rjcurf|}ar&iifrtbrt;'a» ,
pf ft of ttAitiec- fern fpmanfaao
pffttjfsrAitiec-
fitttoOB
ti>0ta ro ijts b«r(nr.-i:ftt&mgt
pc cec net
s^eutU. pet v&tcm
^me ^ccaftiniifrT
^Jv(d}€m^Jita utasccbal make
cnipto baa)?'
<^uto]3t tiiffljefipCDbcqJs of ttiair,

m^-pt^st^ of pf UuD'tttf M*
t^H^ of jjaiamjct tut* tttmatooa Owf taalnagr urtii«J(itt69?ia)n
wti tm^tm^iut to litTit* allf f c j4>cdcntbcbe»u-iCtio 54>t«c^)«'fe'
mmtot fair- 1 t»ami>aptt«8<tf
atioon tn ^ fabotp^ ucgtm^itt
to pf fi^uQcrogirtAi^^eai. »tii>

<atticotm B&xnacfafmi^m^Unt

Fig. 177. Page from Wycliffe's Translation of the Bible

This is the upper half of the first page of the Gospel according to Mark
and contains verses 1-7 and 15-23. The scribe of the time made t, y,
and M in something the same way. The page begins : " The bigyn-
ninge of the gospel of ihusu crist, the sone of god. As it is writen in
isaie, the prophete, Loo, I send myn aungel bifore thi face, that schal
make thi weie redi bifore thee. The voice of one crying in deseert,
make thee redi the weie of the lord, make thee his pathis ryghtful.
Joon was in deseert baptizinge and prechinge the baptism of penaunce
in to remissioun of sinnes." While the spelUng is somewhat different
from ours it is clear that the language used by Wycliffe closely resembled
that used in the familiar authorized version of the New Testament, made
two centuries and a half later

from flowing to Avignon, and at the meeting of the English

Parliament held in 1376 a report was made to the effect that
the taxes levied by the Pope in England were five times those
raised by the king.
 The Medieval CJmrcJi at its Height 495

The most famous and conspicuous critic of the Pope at this John
time was John Wycliffe, a teacher at Oxford. He was born ^^>'^'^^^
about 1320, but we know little of him before 1366, when
Urban V demanded that England should pay the tribute prom-
ised by King John when he became the Pope's vassal.^ Parlia-
ment declared that John had no right to bind the people
without their consent, and Wycliffe began his career of oppo-
sition to the papacy by trying to prove that John's agreement
was void. About ten years later we find the Pope issuing bulls
against the teachings of Wycliffe, who had begun to assert that
the State might appropriate the property of the Church, if it
was misused, and that the Pope had no authority except as he
acted according to the Gospels. Soon Wycliffe went further
and boldly attacked the papacy itself, as well as many of the
Church institutions.
Wycliffe 's anxiety to teach the people led him to have the Wycliffe the
Bible translated into English. He also prepared a great num- EnglLh
ber of sermons and tracts in English. He is the father of P""^^^
English prose,^ for we have little in English before his time,
except poetry.
Wycliffe and his " simple priests " were charged with encour- influence of
aging the discontent and disorder which culminated in the teaching^
Peasants' Rebellion.^ Whether this charge was true or not, it
caused many of his followers to fall away from him. But in spite
of this and the denunciations of the Church, Wycliffe was not
seriously interfered with and died peaceably in 1384. Wycliffe
is remarkable as being the first distinguished scholar and re-
former to repudiate the headship of the Pope and those prac-
tices of the Church of Rome which a hundred and fifty years
after his death were attacked by Luther in his successful re-
volt against the Medieval Church. This will be discussed in a
later chapter.

1 See above, p. 418. 2 For extracts, see A'eacfings, chap. xxi.

3 See above, p. 430.
496 Outlines of European History

QUESTIONS
Section 83. In what ways did the Medieval Church differ from
the modern churches with which we are familiar? In what ways did
the Medieval Church resemble a State ? What were the powers of the
Pope ? What were the duties of a bishop in the Middle Ages ? Why"
was the clergy the most powerful class in the Middle Ages ?
Section 84. What were the views of the Waldensians ? of the
Albigensians ? What was the Inquisition ?
Section 85. Narrate briefly the life of St. Francis. Did the
Franciscan order continue to follow the wishes of its founder.''
Contrast the Dominicans with the Franciscans.
Section 86. What were the chief subjects of disagreement
between the Church and the State 1 Describe the conflict between
Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair. How did the Babylonian
Captivity come about? What were some of the results of the
sojourn of the popes at Avignon ? What were the views of John
Wycliffe ?
 CHAPTER XXI

MEDIEVAL TOWNS -THEIR BUSINESS AND BUILDINGS

Section 87. The Towns and Guilds

In discussing the Middle Ages we have hitherto dealt mainly

with kings and emperors, and with the popes and the Church
of which they were the chief rulers ; we have also described the
monks and monasteries, the warlike feudal lords and their castles,
and the hard-working serfs who farmed the manors ; but nothing
has been said about the people who lived in the towns.
Towns have, however, always been the chief centers of chief Towns centers
the
progress and enlightenment, for the simple reason that people of progress
must live close together in large numbers before they can
develop business on a large scale, carry on trade with foreign
countries, establish good schools and universities, erect noble
public buildings, support libraries and museums and art galleries.
One does not find these in the country, for the people outside
the towns are too scattered and usually too poor to have the
things that are common enough in large cities.
One of the chief peculiarities of the early Middle Ages, from
the break-up of the Roman Empire to the time of William the
Conqueror, was the absence of large and flourishing towns in
western Europe, and this fact alone would serve to explain why
there was so little progress.
^ 497
 Outlines of European History
498
Unimpor- The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the
tance of
town life in German inroads. The confusion which followed the invasions
the early hastened their decline, and a great number of them disappeared
Middle Ages
altogether. Those which survived and such new towns as sprang
up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very little importance
during the early Middle Ages. We may assume, therefore, that
during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick Barbarossa
by far the greater part of the population of England, Germany,
and northern and central France were living in the country,
on the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots,
and bishops.^
Reappear-
ance of It is hardly necessary to point out that the gradual reappear-
towns in the ance of town life in western Europe is of the greatest interest to
eleventh
century the student of history. The cities had been the centers of Greek
and Roman civilization, and in our own time they dominate the
life, culture, and business enterprise of the world. Were they
to disappear, our whole life, even in the country, would neces-
sarily undergo a profound change and tend to become primitive
again, like that of the age of Charlemagne.
Origin of the
medieval
A great part of the medieval towns, of which we begin to
towns have some scanty records about the year looo, appear to have
originated on the manors of feudal lords or about a monastery
or castle. The French name for town, ville, is derived from
" vill," the name of the manor, and we use this old Roman word
when we call a town JacksonTy///^ or Flarris?-///^. The need of
protection was probably the usual reason for establishing a town
with walls about it, so that the townspeople and the neighbor-
ing country people might find safety within it when attacked by
neighboring feudal lords (Fig. 178).
Compactness The way in which a medieval town was built seems to justify
of a medi-
eval town this conclusion. It was generally crowded and compact com-
pared with its more luxurious Roman predecessors. Aside from
the market place there were few or no open spaces. There
1 In Italy and southern France town life was doubtless more general than in
northern Europe.
 499
Medieval Toivns — tJieii' Btisiiiess and Buildijurs

were no amphitheaters or public baths as in the Roman cities.

The streets were often mere alleys over which the jutting stories
of the high houses almost met. The high, thick wall that sur-
rounded itprevented its extending easily and rapidly as our
cities do nowadays (see headpiece and Figs. 179, 208).

';^^ ^ a-'', -

TtS^.^<^^-

Fig. 178. A Castle with a Village below it

A village was pretty sure to grow up near the castle of a powerful lord
and might gradually become a large town

All towns outside of Italy were small in the eleventh and Townsmen
twelfth centuries, and, like the manors on which they had serfs"^ ^
grown up, they had little commerce as yet with the outside
world. They produced almost all that their inhabitants needed
except the farm products which came from the neighboring
country. There was likely to be little expansion as long as the
 Outlines of European History
500
town remained under the absolute control of the lord or monas-
tery upon whose land it was situated. The townspeople were
scarcely more than serfs, in spite of the fact that they lived
within a wall and were traders and artisans instead of farmers.
They had to pay irritating dues to their lord, just as if they still
formed a farming community.
Increase of With the increase of trade (see following section) came the
trade pro-
motes the longing for greater freedom. For when new and attractive com-
growth of
the towns modities began to be brought from the East and the South, the
people of the towns were encouraged to make things which
they could exchange at some neighboring fair for the products
of distant lands. But no sooner did the townsmen begin to en-
gage in manufacturing and to enter into relations with the out-
side world than they became conscious that they were subject to
exactions and restrictions which rendered progress impossible.
Consequently, during the twelfth century there were many
insurrections of the towns against their lords and a general
demand that the lords should grant the townsmen charters
in which the rights of both parties should be definitely stated.
Town These charters were written contracts between the lord and the
charters
town government, which served at once as the certificate of birth
of the town and as its constitution. The old dues and services
which the townspeople owed as serfs (see above, section 65)
were either abolished or changed into money payments.
As a visible sign of their freedom, many of the towns had a
belfry, a high building with a watchtower, where a guard was
kept day and night in order that the bell might be rung in case
of approaching danger.^ It contained an assembly hall, where
those who governed the town held their meetings, and a prison.
In the fourteenth century the wonderful town halls began to be
erected, which, with the exception of the cathedrals and other
churches, are usually the most remarkable buildings which the
traveler sees to-day in the old commercial cities of Europe.
1 At the beginning of this chapter there is a picture of the town of Siegen
in Germany, as it formerly looked, with its walls and towers.
 Fig. 179. Street in Quimper, Franxe
None of the streets in even the oldest European towns look just as
they did in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but here and there,
as in this town of Brittany, one can still get some idea of the narrow,
cramped streets and overhanging houses and the beautiful cathedral
crowded in among them
 502 Ontliiu's of Ruropcan Histoiy
Craft guilds The tradesmen in the medieval towns were at once manu-
facturers and merchants ; that is, they made, as well as offered
for sale, the articles which they kept in their shops. Those who
belonged to a particular trade — the bakers, the butchers, the
sword makers, the armorers, etc. — formed unions or guilds to
protect their special interests. The oldest statutes of a guild
in Paris are those of the candle makers, which go back to 1061.
The number of trades differed greatly in different towns, but
the guilds all had the same object — to prevent any one
from practicing a trade who had not been duly admitted to
the union.
The guild A young man had to spend several years in learning his trade.
system
During this time he lived in the house of a "master workman " as
an " apprentice," but received no remuneration. He then became
a " journeyman " and could earn wages, although he was still
allowed to work only for master workmen and not directly for
the public. A simple trade might be learned in three years, but
to become a goldsmith one must be an apprentice for ten years.
The number of apprentices that a master workman might employ
was strictly limited, in order that the journeymen might not be-
come too numerous.
. The way in which each trade was to be practiced was care-
fully regulated, as well as the time that should be spent in v/ork
each day. The system of guilds discouraged enterprise but main-
tained uniform standards everywhere. Had it not been for
these unions, the defenseless, isolated workmen, serfs as they
had formerly been, would have found it impossible to secure
freedom and municipal independence from the feudal lords
who had formerlv been their masters.

Section 88. Business in the Later Middle Ages

The chief reason for the growth of the towns and their in-
creasing prosperity was a great development of trade throughout
western Europe. Commerce had pretty much disappeared with
 Medieval Towns — tJieb' Business eind Buildings 503

the dec'ine of the Roman roads and the general disorganization Practical dis-
produced by the barbarian invasions. In the early Middle Ages of Commerce
^ Middle Ages
there was no one to mend the ancient Roman roads. The great 1." . j^f, ^^.""'y
network of highways from Persia to Britain fell apart when inde-
pendent nobles or poor local communities took the place of a
world empire. All trade languished, for there was little demand
for those articles of luxur)^ which the Roman communities in the
North had been accustomed to obtain from the South, and there
was but little money to buy what we should consider the com-
forts of life ; even the nobility lived uncomfortably enough in
their dreary and rudely furnished castles.
In Italy, however, trade does not seem to have altogether Italian cities
ceased. A^enice, Genoa, Amalfi, and other towns appear to have tffe Orient
developed a considerable Mediterranean commerce even before
the Crusades (see map above, p. 454). Their merchants, as we
have seen, supplied the destitute crusaders with the material
necessary for the conquest of Jerusalem (see above, p. 466).
The passion for pilgrimages offered inducements to the Italian
merchants for expeditions to the Orient, whither they transported
the pilgrims and returned with the products of the East. The
Italian cities established trading stations in the East and carried
on a direct traffic with the caravans which brought to the shores
of the Mediterranean the products of Arabia, Persia, India, and
the Spice Islands. The southern French towns and Barcelona
entered also into commercial relations with the Mohammedans
in northern Africa.
This progress in the South could not but stir the lethargy of Commerce
the rest of Europe, \^'hen commerce began to revive, it encour- industry
aged a revolution in industry. So long as the manor system
prevailed and each man was occupied in producing only what
he and the other people on the estate needed, there was nothing
to send abroad and nothing to exchange for luxuries. But when
merchants began to come with tempting articles, the members of
a community were encouraged to produce a surplus of goods
above what they themselves needed, and to sell or exchange this
 504 Outli)ics of Enropeaji History

surplus for commodities coming from a distance. Merchants and

artisans gradually directed their energies toward the production
of what others wished as well as what was needed by the little
group to which they belonged.
The luxuries The romances of the twelfth century indicate that the West
of the East
introduced was astonished and delighted by the luxuries of the East — the
into Europe
rich fabrics, oriental carpets, precious stones, perfumes, drugs,
silks, and porcelains from China, spices from India, and cotton
from Egypt. Venice introduced the silk industry from the East
and the manufacture of those glass articles which the traveler
may still buy in the Venetian shops. The West learned how
to make silk and velvet as well as light and gauzy cotton and
linen fabrics. The Eastern dyes were introduced, and Paris w-as
soon imitating the tapestries of the Saracens. In exchange for
those luxuries which they were unable to produce, the Flemish
towns sent their woolen cloths to the East, and Italy its wines.
Some of the The .Northern merchants dealt mainly with Venice and brought
important
commercial their wares across the Brenner Pass and down the Rhine, or
sent them by sea to be exchanged in Flanders (see map). By
the thirteenth century important centers of trade had come
into being, some of which are still among the great commercial
towns of the world. Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen carried on
active trade with the countries on the Baltic and with England.
Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the south of Germany, became im-
portant on account of their situation on the line of trade between
Italy and the North. Bruges and Ghent sent their manufactures
everywhere. English commerce was relatively unimportant as
yet compared with that of the great ports of the Mediterranean.
Obstacles to It was very difficult indeed to carry on business on a large
business
scale in the Middle Ages, for various reasons. In the first place,
as has been said, there was little money, and money is essential
to buying and selling, unless people confine themselves merely
Lack of to exchanging one article for another. There were few gold and
money
silver mines in western Europe and consequently the kings and
feudal lords could not supply enough coin. Moreover, the coins
 ^

°^vgoro4

jJRiga

C K S E

^ 1^
jCntitior^e

ClT^^!^^

f^^^asH^
bBey

TOtt*

ENS.) BDFTALO.

0 from Greenwich
v-^
Me.'
 Medieval Tozvns — their Business an el Buildings 505

were crude, with such rough, irregular edges (Fig. 180) that
many people yielded to the temptation to pare off a little of the Clipping"

precious metal before they passed the money on. " Clipping,"
as this was called, was harshly punished, but that did not stop
the practice, which continued for hundreds of years. Nowadays
our coins are
perfectly round
and often have
"milled" edges,
so that no one
would think of
trying to appro-
priate bits of
them as they
pass through
his hands.
It was univer-
sally believed
that everything
had a " just "
price, which was Fig. 180. Medieval Coins
^ & The two upper coins reproduce the face and back of
to cover the a silver penny of William the Conqueror's reign, and
cost of the ma- below is a silver groat of Edward III. The same ir-
^ . , 1 . regularities in outline will be noted in the ancient
terials used m ^^.^^ represented in Fig. 77
its manufacture
and to remunerate the maker for the work he had put into it.
It was considered outrageous to ask more than the just price, no
matter how anxious the purchaser might be to obtain the article.
Every manufacturer was required to keep a shop in which he Difficulties
in the way of
offered at retail all that he made. Those who lived near a town wholesale
trade
were permitted to sell their products in the market place within
the walls on condition that they sold directly to the consumers.
They might not dispose of their whole stock to one dealer, for
fear that if he had all there was of a commodity he might raise
 Outlines of Europe a } I Histoiy
5o6
the price above the just one. These ideas made wholesale trade
very difficult.
Payment of
interest on
Akin to these prejudices against wholesale business was that
money against interest. Money was believed to be a dead and sterile
forbidden
thing, and no one had a right to demand any return for lending
it. Interest was considered wicked, since it was exacted by those
who took advantage of the embarrassments of others. " Usur^-,"
as the taking of even the most moderate and reasonable rate
of interest was then called, was strenuously forbidden by the
laws of the Church. \\'e find church councils ordering that im-
penitent usurers should be refused Christian burial and have
their wills annulled. So money lending, which is necessar)^ to all
great commercial and industrial undertakings, was left to the
Jews, from whom Christian conduct was not expected.
The Jews as This ill-starred people played a most important part in the
money
lenders economic development of Europe, but they were terribly mal-
treated bythe Christians, who held them guilty of the supreme
crime of putting Christ to death. The active persecution of the
Jews did not, however, become common before the thirteenth
century, when they first began to be required to wear a peculiar
cap, or badge, which made them easily recognized and exposed
them to constant insult. Later they were sometimes shut up
in a particular quarter of the city, called the Jewr}'. As they
were excluded from the guilds, they not unnaturally turned
to the business of money lending, which no Christian might
practice. Undoubtedly this occupation had much to do in
causing their unpopularity. The kings permitted them to make
loans, often at a most exorbitant rate ; Philip Augustus allowed
them to exact forty-six per cent, but reserved the right to extort
their gains from them when the royal treasury' was empty. In
England the usual rate was a penny a pound for each week.
The Lom- In the thirteenth centur\^ the Italians — Lombards, as the
bards as
bankers
English called them ^ — began to go into a sort of banking
1 There is a Lombard Street in the center of old London where one still finds
banks.
 Aledieval Toivns — tlicit' Bjisincss and Btiilduigs 507

business and greatly extended the employment of bills of ex-

change. They lent for nothing, but exacted damages for all de-
lay in repayment. This appeared reasonable and right even
to those who condemned ordinary interest.
Another serious disadvantage which the medieval merchant Tolls, duties,
had to face was the payment of an infinite number of tolls and annoyances
to which
duties which were demanded by the lords through whose domains merchants
his road passed. Not only were duties exacted on the highways, were sub-
bridges, and at the fords, but those barons who were so fortunate land
as to have castles on a navigable river blocked the stream in such
a way that the merchant could not bring his vessel through
without a payment for the privilege.
The charges were usually small, but the way in which they
w^ere collected and the repeated delays must have been a serious
source of irritation and loss to the merchants. For example, a
certain monastery lying between Paris and the sea required that
those hastening to town with fresh fish should stop and let the
monks pick out what they thought worth three pence, with little
regard to the condition in which they left the goods. When a
boat laden with wine passed up the Seine to Paris, the agent
of the lord of Poissy could have three casks broached, and,
after trying them all, he could take a measure from the one
he liked best. At the markets all sorts of dues had to be paid,
such, for example, as fees for using the lord's scales or his
measuring rod. Besides this, the great variety of coinage
which existed in feudal Europe caused infinite perplexity and
delay.
Commerce by sea had its own particular trials, by no means Dangers
confined to the hazards of wind and wave, rock and shoal. ^ ^^^
Pirates were numerous in the North Sea. The\' were often Pirates
organized and sometimes led by men of high rank, who appear
to have regarded the business as no disgrace. The coasts were
dangerous and lighthouses and beacons were few. Moreover,
natural dangers were increased by false signals which wreckers
used to lure ships to shore in order to plunder them.
 Outlines of Eiwopcaii History
5o8
With a view to mitigating these manifold perils, the towns
early began to form unions for mutual defense. The most
famous of these was that of the German cities, called the
Hanseatic League. Liibeck was always the leader, but among
the seventy towns which at one time and another were included
in the confederation, we find Cologne, Brunswick, Danzig, and
other centers of great importance. The union purchased and
controlled settlements in London, — the so-called Steelyard near
London Bridge, — at Wisby, Bergen, and the far-off Novgorod
in Russia. They managed to monopolize nearly the whole trade
on the Baltic and North Sea, either through treaties or the
influence that they were able to bring to bear.-^
The League made war on the pirates and did much to reduce
the dangers of traffic. Instead of dispatching separate and
defenseless merchantmen, their ships sailed out in fleets under
the protection of a man-of-war. On one occasion the League
undertook a successful war against the king of Denmark, who
vhad interfered with their interests. At another time it declared
war on England and brought her to terms. For two hundred
years before the discovery of America, the League played a
great part in the commercial affairs of western Europe ; but it
had begun to decline even before the discover}- of new routes
to the East and West Indies revolutionized trade.
Trade regu- It should be observed that, during the thirteenth, fourteenth,
lated by
the towns and fifteenth centuries, trade was not carried on between ?iatio?is,
(thirteenth
to fifteenth but by the various towns, like Venice, Liibeck, Ghent, Bruges,
centur)'), not
by nations or
Cologne. A merchant did not act or trade as an independent
individuals individual but as a member of a particular merchant guild, and
he enjoyed the protection of his town and of the treaties it
arranged. If a merchant from a certain town failed to pay a
debt, a fellow-townsman might be seized if found in the town
where the debt was due. At the period of which we have been
speaking, an inhabitant of London was considered as much of
a foreigner in Bristol as was the merchant from Cologne or
1 The ships of the Hanseatic League were very small (see below, Fig. 233).
 Medieval Tozviis — tJieii' BtLsmess and Buildings 509
Antwerp. Only gradually did the towns merge into the nations
to which their people belonged.
The increasing wealth of the merchants could not fail to raise The business
them to a position of importance which earlier tradesmen had ^^^Jis^b?^
not enjoyed. They began to build fine houses and to buy the ^""""^ .^" ^""
various comforts and luxuries which were finding their way into class
western Europe. They wanted their sons to be educated, and
so it came about that other people besides clergymen began to
learn how to read and write. As early as the fourteenth century
many of the books appear to have been written with a view of
meeting the tastes and needs of the business class.
Representatives of the towns were summoned to the councils
of the kings — into the English Parliament and the French
Estates General about the year 1300, for the monarch was
obliged to ask their advice when he demanded their money to
carr)' on his government and his wars (see above, p. 422). The
rise of the business class alongside of the older orders of the
clergy and nobility is one of the most momentous changes of
the thirteenth century.

Section 89. Gothic Architecture

Almost all the medieval buildings have disappeared in the Disappear-

ancient towns of Europe. The stone town walls, no longer ade- me^djevai
quate in our times, have been removed, and their place taken buildings
by broad and handsome avenues. The old houses have been
torn down in order to widen and straighten the streets and
permit the construction of modern dwellings. Here and there
one can still find a walled town, but they are few in number
and are merely curiosities (see Fig. 208).
Of the buildings erected in towns during the Middle Ages The churches
only the churches remain, but these fill the beholder with wonder survived^
and admiration. It seems impossible that the cities of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were neither very large
nor very rich, could possibly find money enough to pay for
 Outlmcs of Eiiropcaji Ilistofy
5IO
them. It has been estimated that the bishop's church at Paris
(Notre Dame) would cost at least five millions of dollars to re-
produce, and there are a number of other cathedrals in F^rance,
England, Italy, Spain, and Germany which must have been
almost as costly. No modern buildings equal them in beauty

Fig. i8i. Romanesque Church of Chatel-Moxtagxe in the

Department of Allier, France

This is a pure Romanesque building with no alterations in a later style,

such as are common. Heavy as the walls are, they are reenforced by
buttresses along the side. All the arches are round, none of them pointed

and grandeur, and they are the most striking memorial of the
religious spirit and the town pride of the Middle Ages.
The construction of a cathedral sometimes extended over two
or three centuries, and much of the money for it must have
been gathered penny by penny. It should be remembered that
every one belonged in those days to the one great Catholic
Church, so that the building of a new church was a matter of
 Medieval Towns their Ihisijiess and Buildings

interes': to the whole community — to men of every rank, from

the bis-iop himself to the workman and the peasant.
Up to the twelfth century churches were built in what 5is11 The Roman-
esque style
called the Romanesque, or Roman-like, style because they re-
sembled the solid old basilicas referred to in earlier chapters
(see pp. 47 and 337 above). These Romanesque churches had
stone ceilings (see Figs.
161, 163, 181), and it was
necessary to make the
walls very thick and solid
to support them. There
was a main aisle in the
center, called the 7iave,
and a narrower aisle on
either side, separated
from the nave by massive
stone pillars, which helped
hold up the heavy ceiling.
Fig. 182. Figures on Notre
These pillars were con-
nected by round arches Dame, Paris
of stone above them. The Such grotesque figures as these are very
tops of the windows were common adornments of Gothic build-
ings. They are often used for spouts to
round, and the ceiling carry off the rain and are called gar-
was constructed of round
goyles, that is, " throats " (compare our
vaults, somewhat like a words "gargle" and "gurgle"). The
two here represented are perched on a
stone bridge, so the ?vund
parapet of one of the church's towers
arches form one of the
striking features of the Romanesque style which distinguishes
it from the Gothic style, that followed it. The windows had to
be small in order that the walls should not be weakened, so the
Romanesque churches are rather dark inside.
The architects of France were not satisfied, however, with The Gothic
style
this method of building, and in the twelfth century they invented
a new and wonderful way of constructing churches and other
buildings which enabled them to do away with the heavy walls
 12 OiitliNiS of Eiiropca}i Histoty

and put high, wide,

graceful windows in
their place. This new
style of architecture is
known as the Gothic}
and its underlying prin-
ciples can readily be
understood from a
little study of the ac-
companying diagram
(Fig. 183). which shows
how a Gothic cathedral
is supported, not by
heavy walls, but by
buttresses.
The architects dis-
covered in the first
place that the concave
stone ceiling, which is
known as the vaulting
(A\ could be supported
by ribs i^B). These
could in turn be brought
together and supported
on top of pillars which
Fig. 183. Cross Section of Amiens 1 The inappropriate name
Cathedral " Gothic " was given to the
beautiful churches of the
It will be noticed that there is a row of North by Italian architects
rather low windows opening under the of the sixteenth centun-, who
roof of the aisle. These constitute the so- did not like them and pre-
ferred to build in the sr\ie
called triforium (£). Above them is the
of the ancient Romans. The
cUrestory {F), the windows of which open
between the flying buttresses. So it came Italians with their '• classical "
tastes assumed that only
about that the walls of a Gothic church
German barbarians — whom
were in fact mainly windows. The Eg^p-
they carelessly called Goths
tians were the first to invent the clerestor}- — could admire a Gothic
(see p. 4S and Fig. 2S) cathedral.
Fig. 184. Facade of the Cathedral at Rheims
(Thirteenth Century)
 '^^P'iSfgS^iJ^

Fig. 185. Rose Window of Rheims Cathedral, nearly

Forty Feet in Diameter, from the Inside
Fig. 1 86. Interior of Exeter Cathedral (Early
Fourteenth Century)
Fic. 187. North Porch of Chartres Cathedral
(Fourteenth Century)
 Medieval Tozvns their Business and Buildings 5i

rested on the floor of the church. So far so good ! But '4the

m
builders knew well enough that the pillars and ribs would be
pushed over by the weight and outward " thrust "' of the stone
vaulting if they were not firmly supported from the outside.
Instead of erecting
heavy walls to insure
this support they
had recourse to but- «K9?;

tresses (D), which

they built quite out-
side the walls of the
church, and con-
nected them by
means of " flying "
buttresses (C) with
the points where the
pillars and ribs had
the most tendency
to push outward. In
this way a v aid ted
stone ceili7ig coidd
be siippO}'ted without
the use of a massive
wall. This ingen- Fig. 188. Flying Buttresses of Notre
ious use of but-
Dame, Paris
tresses instead of
walls is the funda- The size of the buttresses and the height of
the clerestory windows of a great cathedral
mental principle of are well shown here
Gothic architecture,
and it was discovered for the first time bv the architects in
the medieval towns.
The wall, no longer essential for supporting the ceiling, was The pointed
used only to inclose the building, and windows could be built as arch
high and wide as pleased the architect. By the use of pointed
instead of round arches it was possible to give great variety to
I
514 Outlines of European History

the windows and vaulting. So pointed arches came into general

use, and the Gothic is often called the " pointed " style on this
account, although the use of the ribs and buttresses is the chief
peculiarity of that form of architecture, not the pointed arch.
The light from the huge windows (those at Beauvais are
fifty to fifty-five feet high) would have been too intense had it
not been softened by the stained glass, set in exquisite stone

Fig. 189. Grotesque Heads, Rheims Cathedral

Here and there about a Gothic cathedral the stone carvers were accus-
tomed to place grotesque and comical figures and faces. During the
process of restoring the cathedral at Rheims a number of these heads
were brought together, and the photograph was taken upon which the
illustration is based

tracery, with which they were filled (Fig. 185). The stained
glass of the medieval cathedral, especially in France, where the
glass workers brought their art to the greatest perfection, was
one of its chief glories. By far the greater part of this old glass
has of course been destroyed, but it is still so highly prized that
every bit of it is now carefully preserved, for it has never since
been equaled. A window set with odd bits of it pieced together
like crazy patchwork is more beautiful, in its rich and jewel-like
coloring, than the finest modern work.
 Medieval Tozvns- tJieir Business and Biiildings 5i5

As the skill of the architects increased they became bolder Gothic

sculpture
and bolder and erected churches that were marvels of lightness
and delicacy of ornament, without sacrificing dignity or beauty
of proportion. The facade of Rheims cathedral (Fig. 184) is
one of the most famous examples of the
best work of the thirteenth century, with
its multitudes of sculptured figures and
its gigantic rose window (Fig. 185), filled
with exquisite stained glass of great bril-
liancy. The interior of Exeter cathedral
(Fig. 186), although by no means so
spacious as a number of the French
churches, affords an excellent example
of the beauty and impressiveness of a
Gothic interior. The porch before the
north entrance of Chartres cathedral
(Fig. 187) is a magnificent example of
fourteenth-century work.
One of the charms of a Gothic build-
ing is the profusion of carving — statues
of saints and rulers and scenes from the
Bible, cut in stone. The same kind of
stone was used for both constructing the
building and making the statues, so they
harmonize perfectly. A fine example of
medieval carving is to be seen in Fig. 190.
Here and there the Gothic stone carvers Fig. 190. Eve and
THE Serpext,
would introduce amusing faces or comical Rheims
animals (see Figs. 182, 189).
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Gothic buildings Gothic used
mainly in
other than churches were built. The most striking and impor- churches
tant of these were the guild halls, erected by the rich corpora-
tions of merchants, and the town halls of important cities. But
the Gothic style has always seemed specially appropriate for
churches. Its lofty aisles and open floor spaces, its soaring
 Outlines of European History
5i6
arches leading the eye toward heaven, and its glowing windows
suggesting the glories of paradise, may well have fostered the
faith of the medieval Christian.

Section 90. The Italian Cities of the Renaissance

We have been speaking so far of the town life in northern

Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We must now
see how the Italian towns in the following two centuries reached
a degree of prosperity and refinement undreamed of north of
the Alps. Within their walls learning and art made such ex-
traordinary progress that a special name is often given to the
period when they flourished — the Renaissaiice} or new birth.
The Italian towns, like those of ancient Greece, were each a
little state with its own peculiar life and institutions. Some of
them, like Rome, Milan, and Pisa, had been important in Roman
times ; others, like Venice, Florence, and Genoa, did not become
conspicuous until about the time of the Crusades.
Map of The map of Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century
Italy in the
fourteenth was still divided into three zones, as it had been in the time of
century
the Hohenstaufens.^ To the south lay the kingdom of Naples.
Then came the states of the Church, extending diagonally across
the peninsula. To the north and west lay the group of city-
states to which we now turn our attention.
Venice and Of these none was more celebrated than Venice, which in the
its relations
with the history of Europe ranks in importance with Paris and London.
East
This singular town was built upon a group of sandy islets lying
in the Adriatic Sea, about two miles from the mainland. It was
protected from the waves by a long, narrow sand bar similar to
those which fringe the Atlantic coast from New Jersey south-
ward. Such a situation would not ordinarily have been delib-
erately chosen as the site of a great city ; but it was a good

1 This word, although originally French, has come into such common use
that it is quite permissible to pronounce it as if it were English, — 7'e-7ia'sens,
2 See map above, p. 454.
 Medieval Tozwiis their Bjisiness and Btdtdings 5 17

place for fishermen, and its very desolation and inaccessibility

recommended it to those settlers who fled from their homes on the
mainland during the barbarian invasions- As time went on, the
location proved to have its advantages commercially, and even
before the Crusades Venice had begun to engage in foreign

Yh ■ SI . fit; * k .' \fe. S t.

mi!m.'^"y::'jhmf„

tU' I tL^^^^Bs- •^-^ '■ ^^?i^S'

Fig. 191. A Scene ix Venice

Boats, called gondolas, take the place of carriages in Venice ; one can
reach any point in the city by some one of the numerous canals, which
take the place of streets. There are also narrow lanes along the canals,
crossing them here and there by bridges, so one can wander about
the town on foot

trade. Its enterprises carried it eastward, and it early acquired

possessions across the Adriatic and in the Orient. The influ-
ence of this intercourse with the East is plainly shown in the
celebrated church of St, Mark, whose domes and decorations
suggest Constantinople rather than Italy (Fig. 192).
It w^as not until early in the fifteenth century that Venice
found it to her interest to extend her sway upon the Italian
 Outlines of European History
518
Venice ex- mainland. She doubtless believed it dangerous to permit her
tends her
sway on the rival, Milan, to get possession of the Alpine passes through
mainland
which her goods found their way north. It may be, too, that she

Fig. 192. St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace in Venice

One sees the fa9ade of St. Mark's to the left, and that of the doge's
palace beyond. The church, modeled after one in Constantinople,
was planned before the First Crusade and is adorned with numerous
colored marble columns and slabs brought from the East. The interior
is covered with mosaics, some of which go back to the twelfth and the
thirteenth century. The fa9ade is also adorned with brilliant mosaics.
St. Mark's " is unique among the buildings of the world in respect
to its unparalleled richness of material and decoration." The doge's
palace contained the government offices and the magnificent halls in
which the senate and Council of Ten met. The palace was begun
about 1300, and the fa9ade we see in the picture was commenced
about a hundred years later. It shows the influence of the Gothic
Style, which penetrated into northern Italy

preferred to draw her food supplies from the neighborhood in-

stead of transporting them across the Adriatic from her eastern
possessions. Moreover, all the Italian cities except A^enice al-
ready controlled a larger or smaller area of country about them.
 Medieval Tozvns — tJieir Btisitiess and Buildings 5 19

About the year 1400 Venice reached the height of its pros-
perity. Ithad a population of two hundred thousand, which was
very large for those days. It had three hundred seagoing
vessels which went to and fro in the Mediterranean, carrying
wares from the East to the West. It had a war fleet of forty-
five galleys, manned by eleven thousand marines ready to

Fig. 193. Senate Chamber in the Doge's Palace

This is an example of the magnificent decoration of the rooms used by
the Venetian government. It was adorned by celebrated painters in
the sixteenth century, when Venice became famous for its artists

fight the batdes of the republic. But when Constantinople

fell into the hands of the Turks (1453) and when, later, the route
to India by sea was discovered (see next section), Venice could
no longer keep control of the trade with the East, and while it
remained an important city, it no longer enjoyed its former
influence and power.
Although Venice was called a republic, it was really gov-
erned by a very small group of persons. In 131 1, after a
 Outlines of European History
520
rebellion, the famous Council of Ten was created as a sort of
committee of public safety. The whole government, domestic and
foreign, was placed in its hands, in conjunction with the senate
and the doge (that is, duke), the nominal head of the republic.
The government, thus concentrated in the hands of a very few,
was carried on with great secrecy, so that public discussion,
such as prevailed in Florence and led to innumerable revolu-
tions there, was unheard of in Venice. The Venetian merchant
was such a busy person that he was quite willing that the State
should exercise its functions without his interference.
Venice often came to blows with other rival cities, especially
Genoa, but its citizens lived quietly at home under the govern-
ment of its senate, the Council of Ten, and the doge. The
other Italian towns were not only fighting one another much of
the time, but their government was often in the hands of despots^
somewhat like the old Greek tyrants, who got control of towns
and managed them in their own interest.
There are many stories of the incredible ferocity exhibited
by the Italian despots. It must be remembered that they were
very rarely legitimate rulers, but usurpers, who could only hope
to retain their power so long as they could keep their subjects
in check and defend themselves against equally illegitimate
usurpers in the neighboring cities. This situation developed a
high degree of sagacity, and many of the despots found it to
their interest to govern well and even to give dignity to their
rule by patronizing artists and men of letters. But the despot
usually made many bitter enemies and was almost necessarily
suspicious of treason on the part of those about him. He was
ever conscious that at any moment he might fall a victim to
the dagger or the poison cup.
The Italian towns carried on their wars among themselves
largely by means of hired troops. When a military expedition
was proposed, a bargain was made with one of the professional
leaders {co?idottieri), who provided the necessary force. As the
soldiers had no more interest in the conflict than did those whom
 Medieval Toivjis — their Business and Buildings 521

they opposed, who were likewise hired for the occasion, the
fight was not usually very bloody ; for the object of each side
was to capture the other without unnecessarily rough treatment.
It sometimes
happened that the
leader who had
conquered a town
for his employer
appropriated the
fruits of the vic-
tory for himself.
This occurred in
the case of Milan
in 1450. The old
line of despots
(the A^isconti)
having died out,
the citizens hired
a certain captain,
named Francesco
Sforza, to assist
them in a war
against Venice,
whose possessions
now extended al-
most to those
of Milan. \Mien
Sforza had repelled Fig. 194. Tomb of an Italian Despot
the Venetians, the The family of the Visconti maintained them-
Milanese found it selves many years as despots of Milan. Gian
Galeazzo Visconti began in 1396 a magnificent
impossible -to get Carthusian monastery not far from Milan, one of
rid of him, and the most beautiful structures in Italy. Here,
he and his succes- long after his death, a monument was erected to
sors became rulers him as founder of the monastery. The monu-
ment was begun about 1500 but not completed
over the town. for several decades
 Oiitlifies of E J crop e an History
522
Machiavelli's An excellent notion of the position and policy of the Italian
Prince
despots may be derived from a little treatise called The Prince^
written by the distinguished Florentine historian, Machiavelli.
The writer appears to have intended his book as a practical
manual for the despots of his time. It is a cold-blooded discus-
sion of the ways in which a usurper may best retain his control
over a town after he has once got possession of it. The author
even takes up the questions as to how far princes should con-
sider their promises when it is inconvenient to keep them, and
how many of the inhabitants the despot may wisely kill.
Machiavelli concludes that the Italian princes who have not
observed their engagements overscrupulously, and who have
boldly put their political adversaries out of the way, have fared
better than their more conscientious rivals.
Florence
The history of Florence, perhaps the most important of the
Italian cities, differs in many ways from that of Venice and of
the despotisms of which Milan was an example. Florence was a
republic, and all classes claimed the right to interest themselves
in the government. This led to constant changes in the constitu-
tion and frequent struggles between the different political parties.
When one party got the upper hand it generally expelled its
chief opponents from the city. Exile was a terrible punishment
to a Florentine, for Florence was not merely his native city —
it was his country, and loved and honored as such.
The Medici By the middle of the fifteenth century Florence had come
under the control of the great family of the Medici, whose
members played the role of very enlightened political bosses.
By quietly watching the elections and secretly controlling the
selection of city officials, they governed without letting it be
Lorenzo the
Magnificent
suspected that the people had lost their power. The most dis-
tinguished member of the house of Medici was Lorenzo the
Magnificent (d. 1492) ; under his rule Florence reached the
height of its glory in art and literature.
As one wanders about Florence to-day, he is impressed with
the contradictions of the Renaissance period. The streets are
 Medieval Ton their Business and Buildings 523

lined with the palaces of the noble families to whose rivalries

much of the continual disturbance was due. The lower stories
of these build-
ings are con-
structed ofgreat
stones, like for-
tresses, and
their windows
are barred like
those of a prison
(Fig. 195); yet
within they were
often furnished
with the great-
est taste and
luxury. For in
spite of the dis-
order, against
w^hich the rich
protected them-
selves bymak-
ing their houses
half strongholds,
the beautiful
churches, noble
Fig. 195. The Palace of the Medici in
public build- Florence
ings, and works
of art which This was erected about 1435 by Cosimo dei Medici,
and in it Lorenzo the Magnificent conducted the
now fill the mu- government of Florence, and entertained the men
seums indicate of letters and artists with whom he liked best to as-
that mankind sociate. It shows how fortresslike the lower por-
tions of a Florentine palace were, in order to protect
has never, per- the owner from attack
haps, reached a ^
higher degree of perfection in the arts of peace than amidst
the turmoil of this restless toWn (see below, Figs. 203, 204).
 524 Outlines of Ejiropeait History

Rome, the During the same period in which Venice and Florence became
capital of the
papacy leaders in wealth and refinement, Rome, the capital of the popes,
likewise underwent a
great change. After the
popes returned from
their seventy years' resi-
dence in France and
Avignon (see above,
p. 493) they found the
town in a dilapidated
state. For years they
were able to do little to
restore it, as there was
a long period during
which the papacy was
weakened by the exist-
ence of a rival line of
popes who continued to
live at Avignon. When
the " great schism " was
over, and all the Euro-
pean nations once more
acknowledged the pope
at Rome (141 7), it be-
Fig. 196. Cathedral and Bell came possible to improve
Tower at Florenxe the city and revive some
of its ancient glory.
The church was begun in 1296 and com-
pleted in 1436. The great dome built by Architects, painters, and
the architect Brunelleschi has made his men of letters were called
name famous. It is 300 feet high. The in and handsomely paid
fa9ade is modern but after an old design.
The bell tower, or campanile, was begun by the popes to erect and
by the celebrated painter Giotto about adorn magnificent build-
1335 and completed about fifty years later. ings and to collect a
It is richly adorned with sculpture and
colored marbles and is considered the great library in the Vati-
finest structure of the kind in the world can palace.
 Medieval Towns — their Business and Binldings 525

The ancient basilica of St. Peter's (Fig. 136) no longer satis- St Peter's
fied the aspirations of the popes. It was gradually torn down,
and after many changes of plan the present celebrated church
with its vast dome and imposing approach (Fig. 197) took its

Fig. 197. St. Peter's and the Vatican Palace

This is the largest church in the world. It is about 700 feet long, includ-
ing the portico, and 435 feet high, from the pavement to the cross on the
dome. The reconstruction was begun as early as 1450 but it proceeded
very slowly. Several great architects, Bramante, Raphael, Michael
Angelo, and others were intrusted with the work. After many changes
of plan the new church was finally in condition to consecrate in 1626.
It is estimated that it cost over $50,000,000. The construction of the
vast palace of the popes, which one sees to the right of the church, was
carried on during the same period. It is said to have no less than eleven
thousand rooms. Some of them are used for museums and others
are celebrated for the frescoes which adorn their walls, by Raphael,
Michael Angelo, and other of Italy's greatest artists

place. The old palace of the Lateran (Fig. 135), where the The Vatican
government of the popes had been carried on for a thousand
years, had been deserted after the return from Avignon, and
the new palace of the Vatican was gradually constructed to the
right of St. Peter's. It has thousands of rooms great and small,
 5 26 Outlines of Euivpean History

some of them adorned by the most distinguished of the Italian 1

painters, and others filled with ancient statuary.
As one visits Venice, Florence, and Rome to-day he may still
see, almost perfectly preserved, many of the finest of the build-
ings, paintings, and monuments which belong to the period we
have been discussing.

Section 91. Early Geographical Discoveries

Medieval The business and commerce of the medieval towns was

a^smairscalT ^^ what would seem to us a rather small scale. There were

no great factories, such as have grown up in recent times with
the use of steam and machinery, and the ships which sailed
the Mediterranean and the North Sea were small and held only
a very light cargo compared with modem merchant vessels.
The gradual growth of a world commerce began with the sea
voyages of the fifteenth century, which led to the exploration by
Europeans of the whole globe, most of which was entirely
unknown to the Venetian merchants and those who carried on
the trade of the Hanseatic League. The Greeks and Romans
knew little about the world beyond southern Europe, northern
Africa, and western Asia, and much that they knew was for-
gotten during the Middle Ages. The Crusades took many
Europeans as far east as Egypt and Syria. About 1260 two
Venetian merchants, the Polo brothers, visited China and were
kindly received at Pekin by the emperor of the Mongols. On
Marco Polo a second journey they were accompanied by Marco Polo, the
son of one of the brothers. When they got safely back to
Venice in 1295, after a journey of twenty years, Marco gave
an account of his experiences which filled his readers with
wonder. Nothing stimulated the interest of the West more than
his fabulous description of the abundance of gold in Zipangu
(Japan) ^ and of the spice markets of the Moluccas and Ceylon.
1 See below, p. 530.
Illllli^y
527
 528 Outlines of Europe an History

The dis- About the year 13 18 Venice and Genoa opened up direct
theTortu'- communication by sea with the towns of the Netherlands,
guese in the Their fleets, which touched at the port
fourteenth ' of Lisbon, aroused the
and fifteenth commercial enterprise of the Portuguese, who soon began to
undertake extended maritime expeditions. By the middle of the
fourteenth century they had discovered the Canary Islands,
Madeira, and the Azores. Before this time no one had ven-
tured along the coast of Africa beyond the arid region of
Sahara. The country was forbidding, there were no ports,
and mariners were, moreover, discouraged by the general belief
that the torrid region was uninhabitable. In 1445, however,
some adventurous sailors came within sight of a headland beyond
the desert and, struck by its luxuriant growth of tropical trees,
they called it Cape Verde (the green cape). Its discovery put
an end once for all to the idea that there were only parched
deserts to the south.
For a generation longer the Portuguese continued to venture
farther and farther along the coast, in the hope of finding it
coming to an end, so that they might make their way by sea
to India. At last, in i486, Diaz rounded the Cape of Good
Hope. Twelve years late?' (1498) Vasco da Gama, spurred on
by Columbus's great discovery, after sailing around the Cape of
Good Hope and northward beyond Zanzibar, steered straight
across the Indian Ocean and reached Calicut, in Hindustan,
by sea.
The spice Vasco da Gama and his fellow adventurers were looked upon
with natural suspicion by the Mohammedan spice merchants,
who knew very well that their object was to establish direct trade
between the Spice Islands (Moluccas) and western Europe.
Hitherto the Mohammedans had had the monopoly of the spice
trade between the Moluccas and the eastern ports of the Med-
iterranean, where the products were handed over to Italian mer-
chants. The Mohammedans were unable, however, to prevent
the Portuguese from concluding treaties with the Indian princes
and establishing trading stations at Goa and elsewhere. In 15 12
 Medieval Tozvjis — their Business and Buildings 529

a successor of Vasco da Gama reached Java and the Moluccas,

where the Portuguese speedily built a fortress. By 15 15 Por-
tugal had become the greatest among sea powers ; and spices
reached Lisbon regularly without the intervention of the Moham-
medan merchants or the Italian towns, which, especially Venice,
were mortally afflicted by the change (see above, p. 519).

rc;::^

ANDAMAN

0'

The Malay Archipelago

The outline of the United States has been drawn in to make clear the
vast extent of the region explored by the Portuguese at the opening
of the sixteenth century. It is not far from 2000 miles from Ceylon to
Malacca Strait, and as far from there on to the Spice Islands as from
Denver to Richmond, Virginia

There is no doubt that the desire to obtain spices was at Importance

encouraging
of spices in
this time the main reason for the exploration of the globe.
This motive led European navigators to try in succession every navigation

possible way to reach the East — by going around Africa, by

sailing west in the hope of reaching the Indies (before they
knew of the existence of America), then, after America was
discovered, by sailing around it to the north or south, and even
sailing around Europe to the north.
 Outlines of Europe a7i History
530
It is hard for us to understand this enthusiasm for spices, for
which we care much less nowadays. One former use of spices
was to preserve food, which could not then as now be carried
rapidly, while still fresh, from place to place ; nor did our con-
veniences then exist for keeping it by the use of ice. Moreover,
spice served to make even spoiled food more palatable than it
would otherwise have been.
Idea of It inevitably occurred to thoughtful men that the East Indies
reaching
the Spice could be reached by sailing westnuxrd. All intelligent people
Islands by knew, all through the Middle Ages, that the earth was a globe.
sailing
westward
The chief authority upoa the form and size of the earth con-
tinued to be the ancient astronomer Ptolemy, who had lived
about 150 A.D. He had reckoned the earth to be about one sixth
smaller than it is ; and as Marco Polo had given an exaggerated
idea of the distance which he and his companions had traveled
eastward, and as no one suspected the existence of the Amer-
ican continents, it was supposed that it could not be a very long
journey from Europe across the Atlantic to Japan.-^
Columbus In 1492, as we all know, a Genoese navigator, Columbus
discovers
America, (b. 145 1 ), who had had much experience on the sea, got together
1492
three little ships and undertook the journey westward to Zipangu,
— the land of gold, — which he hoped to reach in five weeks.
After thirty-two days from the time he left the Canary Islands
he came upon land, the island of San Salvador, and believed
himself to be in the East Indies. Going on from there he dis-
covered the island of Cuba, which he believed to be the main-
land of Asia, and then Haiti, which he mistook for the longed-for
Zipangu (see p. 526). Although he made three later expedi-
tions and sailed down the coast of South America as far as
the Orinoco, he died without realizing that he had not been
exploring the coast of Asia.
Magellan's After the bold enterprises of Vasco da Gama and Columbus,
expedition
around the an expedition headed by the Portuguese Magellan succeeded
world
in circumnavigating the globe. There was now no reason why
i See accompanying reproduction of Behaim's globe.
An Old Map ok the Globe, showing the Conception of the
World in the Time of Columbus
 Medieval Tozvns — their Business and Biiildings 531
the new lands should not become more and more familiar to
the European nations. The coast of North America was ex-
plored principally by English navigators, who for over a century
pressed northward, still in the vain hope of finding a northwest
passage to the Spice Islands.
Cortes began the Spanish conquests in the western world by The Spanish
undertaking the subjugation of the Aztec empire in Mexico in Amerk;?^ ^^
15 19. A few years later Pizarro established the Spanish power
in Peru. Spain now superseded Portugal as a maritime power,
and her importance in the sixteenth century is to be attributed
largely to the wealth which came to her from her possessions
in the New World.
By the end of the century the Spanish main — that is, the The Spanish
northern coast of South America — was much frequented by "^^"^
adventurous seamen, who combined in about equal parts the
occupations of merchant, slaver, and pirate. Many of these
hailed from English ports, and it is to them that England owes
the beginning of her commercial greatness.
It is hardly necessary to say that Europeans exhibited an
utter disregard for the rights of the people with whom they
came in contact and often treated them with contemptuous
cruelty. The exploration of the globe and the conquest by
European nations of peoples beyond the sea led finally to the
vast colonization of modern times, which has caused many wars
but has served to spread European ideas throughout the world.
This creation of a greater Europe will be discussed in the next
volume of this work.

QUESTIONS

Section 87. Why are towns necessary to progress .^ How did the
towns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries originate.'' What was the
nature of a town charter.'' Describe the guild organization.
Section 88. Describe the revival and extending of commerce in
the Middle Ages. What were some of the obstacles to business?
Describe the Hanseatic League.
532 Outlines of Euivpcan Histoiy

Section 89. What are the chief characteristics of Romanesque

churches? What were the principles of construction which made it
possible to build a Gothic church? Tell something about the decora-
tion of a Gothic church.
Section 90. Describe the map of Italy in the fourteenth century.
What are the peculiarities of Venice? Who were the Italian despots?
What is the interest of MachiavelH's Frmce ? Contrast Florence with
Venice.
Section 91. W^hat geographical discoveries were made before
1 500 ? How far is it by sea from Lisbon to Calicut around the Cape
of Good Hope? What was the importance of the spice trade ? What
led Columbus to try to reach the Indies by sailing westward?
 CHAPTER XXII

BOOKS AND SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Section 92. How the Modern Languages originated

We should leave the Middle Ages with a very im^ ^rfect notion
of them if we did not now stop to consider what \. "ople were
thinking about during that period, what they had to /ead, and
what they believed about the world in which they lived.
To begin with,- the Middle Ages differed from our own time General use
in the very general use then made of Latin, in both writing and ;„ the '"
speaking. The language of the Roman Empire continued to be Middle Ages
used in the thirteenth century, and long after ; all books that
made any claim to learning were written in Latin ; ^ the pro-
fessors inthe universities lectured in Latin, friends wrote to one
another in Latin, and state papers, treaties, and legal documents
were drawn- up in the same language. The ability of every edu-
cated person to make use of Latin, as well as of his native tongue,
was a great advantage at a time when there were many obstacles
to intercourse among the various nations. It helps' to explain,
for example, the remarkable way in which the Pope kept in
touch with all the clergymen of western Christendom, and the
ease with which students, friars, and merchants could wander
from one country to another. There is no more interesting or
important revolution than that by which the languages of the
people in the various European countries gradually pushed aside
the ancient tongue and took its place, so that even scholars
scarcely ever think now of writing books in Latin.
1 In Germany the books published annually in the German language did not
exceed those in Latin until after 1690.
533
 534 Outlines of European History

In order to understand how it came about that two languages,

the Latin and the native speech, were both commonly used in
all the countries of western Europe all through the Middle Ages,
we must glance at the origin of the modern languages. These
all fall into two quite distinct groups, the Germatiic and the
Romance.
The Ger- Those German peoples who had continued to live outside of
guT^es^" the Roman Empire, or who, during the invasions, had not set-
denved
the from ^^^ f^j- enough
dialects ^ within its bounds to be led, as were the Franks
of the in Gaul, to adopt the tongue of those they had conquered, natu-
barbarians rally adhered to the language they had always used; namely, the
particular Germanic dialect which their forefathers had spoken
for untold generations. From the various languages used by the
German barbarians, modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish,
Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic are derived.
The Romance The second group of languages developed within the terri-
d?rfve^d1rom tory which had formed a part of the Roman Empire, and
Latfif^^^" includes modern French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It
has now been clearly proved, by a very minute study of the old
forms of words, that these Romance languages were one and
all derived from the spoken Latin, employed by the soldiers,
merchants, and people at large. This differed considerably
from the elaborate and elegant written Latin which was used,
for example, by Cicero and Caesar. It was undoubtedly much
simpler in its grammar and varied a good deal in different
regions ; a Gaul, for instance, could not pronounce the words
like a Roman. Moreover, in conversation people did not always
use the same words as those employed in books. For example,
a horse was com.monly spoken of as caballus, whereas a writer
would use the word equus ; it is from cahallus that the word
for " horse " in Spanish, Italian, and French is derived (caballo,
cavalto, cheval).
As time went on the spoken language diverged farther and
farther from the written. Latin is a troublesome speech on
account of its complicated inflections and grammatical rules,
 Books a7id Sciejice hi the Middle Ages 535

which can be mastered only after a great deal of study. The

people of the more remote Roman provinces and the incoming
barbarians naturally paid very little attention to the niceties of
syntax and found easy ways of saying what they wished/
Yet several centuries elapsed after the German invasions be-
fore there was anything written in the language used in con-
versation. So long as the uneducated could understand the
correct Latin of the books when they heard it read or spoken,
there was no necessity of writing anything in their familiar daily
speech. But by the time Charlemagne came to the throne the
gulf between the spoken and the written language had become
so great that he advised that sermons should be given thereafter
in the language of the people, who, apparently, could no longer
follow the Latin.
Although little was written in any German language before
Charlemagne's time, there is no doubt that the Germans pos-
sessed an unwritten literature, which was passed down by word
of mouth for several centuries before any of it was written out.
The oldest form of English is commonly called Anglo-Saxon Ancient
and is so different from the language which we use that, in order Angicf-skxon
to be read, it must be learned like a foreign language. We hear
of an English poet, as early as Bede's time, a century before
Charlemagne. A manuscript of an Anglo-Saxon epic, called
Beowtdf, has been preserved which belongs perhaps to the close
of the eighth century; The interest which King Alfred displayed
in the English language has already been mentioned. This old
form of our language prevailed until after the Norman Con-
quest; the Anglo-Saxon Chronide, which does not close until
1 154, is written in pure Anglo-Saxon. Here is an example :
" Here on thissum geare Willelm cyng geaf Rodberde eorle
thone eorldom on Northymbraland. Da komon tha landes menn
1 Even the monks and others who wrote Latin in the Middle Ages often did
not know enough to fallow strictly the rules of the language. Moreover, they
introduced many new words to meet the new conditions and the needs of the
time, such as imprisoiiare^ " to imprison " ; tdlagare, " to outlaw " ; baptizare,
" to baptize " ; foresta, " forest " ; fcudmn, " fief," etc.
 Outlines of Enrvpcaii History
536
togeanes him & hine ofslogen, & ix hund manna mid him."^
In modern English this reads : " In this year King William
gave the Earl Robert the earldom of Northumberland. Then
came the men of the country against him and slew him, and
nine hundred men with him."
By the middle of the thirteenth century, two hundred years
after the Norman Conquest, English begins to look somewhat
familiar :
An example And Aaron held up his bond
of English
in the To the water and the more lond ;
thirteenth
Tho cam thor up schwilc froschkes here
centur)'
(from A The dede al folc Egipte dere ;
Mct7-ical
Version of Summe woren wilde, and summe tame,
Genesis)
And tho hem deden the moste schame ;
In huse, in drinc, in metes, in bed,
It cropen and maden hem for-dred. . . .
^Modernized And Aaron held up his hand
version
To the water and the greater land ;
Then came there up such host of frogs
That did all Egypt's folk harm ;
Some were wild, and some were tame,
And those caused them the most shame ;
In house, in drink, in meats, in bed,
They crept and made them in great dread. . . .

Chaucer (about 1340-1400) was the first great English writer

whose works are now read with pleasure, although one is some-
times puzzled by his spelling and certain words which are no
longer used. This is the way one of his tales opens :
A poure wydow somdel stope in age.
Was whilom dwellyng in a narwe cotage,

1 In writing Anglo-Saxon two old letters are used for M, one (b) for the sound
in " thin " and the other (■??) for that in " father." The use of these old letters
serv^es to make the language look more different from that of to-day than it is.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 537

Bisyde a grove, stondyng in a dale.

This wydwe of wichh I telle yow my tale,
Syn thilke day that sche was last a wif.
In pacience ladde a ful symple lyf.

In the Middle Ages, however, French, not English, was the

most important of the national languages of western Europe.
In France a vast literature was produced in the language of
the people during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which
profoundly affected the books written in Italy, Spain, Germany,
and England.
Two quite different languages had gradually developed in French and

France from the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. To the ^''°'^^"§^^
north, French was spoken ; to the south, Provencal. ^
Very litde in the ancient French language written before the Medieval
year 11 00 has been preserved. The West Franks undoubtedly JJ^mances
began much earlier to sing of their heroes, of the great deeds
of Clovis and Charles Martel. These famous rulers were, how-
ever, completely overshadowed later by Charlemagne, who be-
came the unrivaled hero of medieval poetry and romance. It
was believed that he had reigned for a hundred and twenty-five
years, and the most marvelous exploits were attributed to him
and his knights. He was supposed, for instance, to have led a
crusade to Jerusalem. Such themes as these — more legend
than history — were woven into long epics, which were the first
written literature of the Frankish people. These poems, com-
bined with the stories of adventure, developed a spirit of patriotic
enthusiasm among the French which made them regard " fair
France " as the especial care of Providence.
The famous So?ig of RoIa7id, the chief character of which
was one of Charlemagne's captains, was written before the First
1 Of course there was no sharp line of demarcation between the people who
used the one language or the other, nor was Provengal confined to southern
France. The language of Catalonia, beyond the Pyrenees, was essentially the
same as that of Provence. French was called la?tgHC (foil, and the southern
language langtie d^oCj each after the word used for "yes."
 Outlines of European History
538
Romances of Crusade. In the latter part of the twelfth century the romances
King Arthur
and the of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table begin to
Knights of
the Round appear. These enjoyed great popularity in all western Europe
Table for centuries, and they are by no means forgotten yet. Arthur,
of whose historical existence no one can be quite sure, was
supposed to have been king of Britain shortly after the Saxons
gained a foothold in the island.^
In other long poems of the time, Alexander the Great, Caesar,
and other ancient worthies appear as heroes. The absolute dis-
regard of historical facts and the tendency to represent the
w^arriors of Troy and Rome as medieval knights show the in-
ability of the medieval mind to understand that the past could
have been different from the present. All these romances are
full of picturesque adventures and present a vivid picture of the
valor and loyalty of the true knight, as well as of his ruthlessness
and contempt for human life.
The fabliaux
and the
Besides the long and elaborate epics, like Roland, and the
fables romances in verse and prose, there w^ere numberless short stories
in verse (the fabliaux), which usually dealt wuth the incidents
of ever)^day life, especially with the comical ones. Then there
were the fables, the most famous of which are the stories of
Reynard the Fox, which were satires upon the customs of the
time, particularly the weaknesses of the priests and monks.

Section 93. The Troubadours and Chivalry

The trou-
badours
Turning now to southern France, the beautiful songs of the
troubadou7's, which were the glory of the Proven9al tongue,
reveal a gay and polished society at the courts of the numerous
feudal princes. The rulers not merely protected and encouraged
the poets — they aspired to be poets themselves and to enter the
ranks of the troubadours, as the composers of these elegant

1 Malory's Mort cTArtluir, a collection of the stories of the Round Table

made in the fifteenth century for English readers, is the best place to turn for
these famous stories.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 5 39

verses were called. These songs were always sung to an accom-

paniment on some instrument, usually the lute. The troubadours
traveled from court to court, not only in France, but north into
Germany and south into Italy, carrying with them the southern
French poetry- and customs. We have few examples of Provencal
before the year 11 00, but from that time on, for two centuries,
countless songs were written, and many of the troubadours en-
joyed an international reputation. The terrible Albigensian cru-
sade brought misery and death into the sprightly circles which
had gathered about the Count of Toulouse and other rulers who
had treated the heretics too leniently.
For the student of history, the chief interest of the long poems chivalry
of northern France and the songs of the South lies in the in-
sight that they give into the life and aspirations of this feudal
period. These are usually summed up in the term chivalry, or
knighthood, of which a word may properly be said here, since
we should know little of it were it not for the literature of which
we have been speaking. The knights play the chief role in
ail the medieval romances ; and, since many of the troubadours
belonged to the knightly class, they naturally have much to say
of it in their songs.
Chivalry was not a formal institution established at any par-
ticular moment' Like feudalism, with which it was closely con-
nected, ihad
t no founder, but appeared spontaneously throughout
western Europe to meet the needs and desires of the period.
When the youth of good family had been carefully trained to
ride his horse, use his sword, and manage his hawk in the hunt,
he was made a knight by a ceremony in which the Church
took part, although the knighthood was actually conferred by
an older knight.
The knight was a Christian soldier, and he and his fellows Nature of
were supposed to form, in a way, a separate order, with high order"'^ ^
ideals of the conduct befitting their class. Knighthood was
not, however, membership in an association with officers and a
definite constitution. It was an ideal, half-imaginary society
 Outlines of European History
540
— a society to which even those who enjoyed the title of king
or duke were proud to belong. One was not born a knight as
he might be born a duke or count, and could become one only
through the ceremony mentioned above. Although most knights
belonged to the nobility, one might be a noble and still not
belong to the^ knightly order, and, on the other hand, one who
was baseborn might be raised to knighthood on account of some
valorous deed.
The ideals of The knight must, in the first place, be a Christian and must
the knight
obey and defend the Church on all occasions. He must respect
all forms of weakness and defend the helpless wherever he
might find them. He must fight the infidel Mohammedans
ceaselessly, pitilessly, and never give way before the enemy.
He must perform all his feudal duties, be faithful in all things
to his lord, never lie or violate his plighted word.' He must be
generous and give freely and ungrudgingly to the needy. He
must be faithful to his lady and be ready to defend her and
her honor at all costs. Everywhere he must be the champion
of the right against injustice and oppression. In short, chivalry
was the Christianized profession of arms.
In the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table there is a beautiful picture of the ideal knight. The dead
Lancelot is addressed by one of his sorrowing companions as
follows : " Thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield,
and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode
horse, and thou wert the tmest lover among sinful men that ever
loved woman, and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck
with sword, and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came
among the crowd of knights, and thou wert the meekest man
and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies, and thou
wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear
in breast."
The German The Germans also made their contribution to the literature
minne-
singers of chivalry. The German poets of the thirteenth century are
called 7?ii?inesi?igers. Like the troubadours, whom they greatly
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 541

admired, they usually sang of love, hence their name (German, Walther
Mintie). The most famous of the minnesingers was Walther V^ogelweide
von der Vogelweide (d. about 1228), whose songs are full of
charm and of enthusiasm for his German fatherland. Wolfram
von Eschenbach (d. about 1225) in his story of Parsifal gives
the long and sad adventures of a knight in search of the Holy
Grail — the sacred vessel which had held the blood of Christ,
which only a person perfectly pure in thought, word, and deed
could hope to behold.

Section 94. Medieval Science

So long as all books had to be copied by hand, there were,

of course, but few of them compared with those of modern times.
The literature of which we have been speaking was not in general
read, but was only listened to, as it was sung or recited by
those who made it their profession. Wherever the wandering
troubadour or minnesinger appeared he was sure of a delighted
audience for his songs and stories, both serious and light.
People unfamiliar with Latin could, however, learn little of the General
past, for there were no translations of the great classics of of the past
Greece and Rome, of Homer, Plato, Cicero, or Livy. All that
they could know of ancient history was derived from the fan-
tastic romances referred to above, which had for their theme
the quite preposterous deeds ascribed to Alexander the Great,
v^neas, and Caesar. As for their own history, the epics relating
to the earlier course of events in France and the rest of Europe
were hopelessly confused. For example, the writers attributed
to Charlemagne a great part of the acts of the Prankish kings
from Clovis to Pippin.
Of what we should call scientific books there were practically Medieval

none.
which It is atrue
gave greatthat
dealthere was a kind ofabout
of misinformation encyclopedia
things in in verse sdence'^
general.
Every one continued to believe, as the Greeks and Romans had
done, in strange animals like the unicorn, the dragon, and the
 Outlines of Europe mi History
542
phenix, and in still stranger habits of real animals. A single
example will suffice to show what passed for zoology in the
thirteenth century.
The " There is a little beast made like a lizard and such is its
salamander
nature that it will extinguish fire should it fall into it. The beast
is so cold and of such a quality that fire is not able to burn it,
nor will trouble happen in the place where it shall be." This
beast signifies the holy man who lives by faith, who " will never
have hurt from fire nor will hell burn him. . . . This beast we
name also by another name, salamander. It is accustomed to
mount into apple-trees, poisons the apples, and in a well where
it falls it poisons the water."
Medieval
idea of the " The eagle [we are told by a learned writer of the time
eagle's habits of Henry II], on account of its great heat, mixeth very cold
stones with its eggs when it sitteth on them, so that the heat
shall not destroy them. In the same way our words, when we
speak with undue heat, should later be tempered with discretion,
so that we may conciliate in the end those whom we offended
by the beginning of our speech."
Moral
lessons It will be noticed that the habits of the animals were sup-
derived from posed to have some moral or religious meaning and carry with
the habits
of animals them a lesson for mankind. It may be added that this and
similar stories were centuries old and are found in the encyclo-
pedias of the Romans. The most improbable things were re-
peated from generation to generation without its occurring to
any one to inquire if there was any truth in them. Even the most
learned men of the time believed in astrology and in the miracu-
lous virtues of herbs and gems. For instance, Albertus Magnus,
one of the most distinguished thinkers of the thirteenth century,
says that a sapphire will drive away boils and that the diamond
can be softened in the blood of a stag, which will work be^-.t if
the stag has been fed on wine and parsley.
From the Roman and early Christian writers the Middle Ages
got the idea of strange races of men and manlike creatures of
various kinds. We find the following in an encyclopedia of the
 Books and Science m the Middle Ages 543

thirteenth century : " Satyrs be somewhat like men, and have Strange
crooked noses, and horns in the forehead, and are like to goats ^eations
in their feet. St. Anthony■'
saw such an one in the wilderness. ... ^"^ ^^^^^
of men
These wonderful beasts be divers ; for some of them be called
Cynocephali, for they have heads as hounds, and seem beasts
rather than men ; and some be called Cyclops, and have that
name because each of them hath but one eye, and that in the
middle of the forehead ; and some be all headless and noseless
and their eyes be in the shoulders ; and some have plain faces
without nostrils, and the nether lips of them stretch so that they
veil therewith their faces when they be in the heat of the sun.
Also in Scythia be some with so great and large ears, that they
spread their ears and cover all their bodies with them, and these
be called Panchios. ..."
" And others there be in Ethiopia, and each of them have only
one foot, so great and so large that they beshadow themselves
with the foot when they lie gasping on the ground in strong
heat of the sun ; and yet they be so swift that they be likened
to hounds in swiftness of running, and therefore among the
Greeks they be called Cynopqdes. Also some have the soles
of their feet turned backward behind the legs, and in each
foot eight toes, and such go about and stare in the desert
of Lybia."
Two old subjects of study were revived and received great
attention in Europe from the thirteenth century onwards until
recent times. These were astrology and alchemy.
Astrology was based on the belief that the planets influence the Astrology
make-up of men and consequently their fate. Following an idea
of the Greek philosophers, especially xA^ristode, it was believed
that all things were compounded of " the four elements " earth,
air, fire, and water. Each person was a particular mixture of these
four elements, and the position of the planets at the time of his
birth was supposed to influence his mixture or "temperament."
By knowing a person's temperament one could judge what he
ought to do in order to be successful in life, and what he should
 544 Outlines of European History

avoid. For example, if one were born under the influence of

Venus he should be on his guard against violent love and should
choose for a trade something connected with dress or adornment ;
if he were born under Mars he might make armor or horseshoes
or become a successful soldier. Many common words are really
astrological terms, such as " ill-starred," " disastrous," " jovial,"
" saturnine," " mercurial " (derived from the names of the
planets). Astrology w^as taught in the universities because it
was supposed to be necessar)' for physicians to choose times
when the stars were favorable for particular kinds of medical
treatment.
Alchemy Alchemy was chemistr}' directed toward the discovery of a
method of turning the baser metals, like lead and copper, into
gold and silver. The alchemists, even if they did not succeed
in their chief aim, learned a great deal incidentally in their
laboratories, and finally our modem chemistry emerged from
alchemy. Like astrology, alchemy goes back to ancient times,
and the people of the thirteenth century got most of their ideas
through the Mohammedans, who had in turn got theirs from
the Greek books on the subjects.

Section 95. Medieval Universities and Studies

All European countries now have excellent schools, colleges,

and universities. These had their beginning in the later Middle
Ages. With the incoming of the barbarian Germans and the
break-up of the Roman Emipire, education largely disappeared
and for hundreds of years there was nothing in western Europe,
outside of Italy and Spain, corresponding to our universities and
colleges. Some of the schools which the bishops and abbots
had established in accordance with Charlemagne's commands
(see above, p. 379) were, it is true, maintained all through the
dark and disorderly times which followed his death. But the
little that we know of the instruction offered in them would
indicate that it was very elementary.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 545

About the year iioo an ardent young man named Abelard Abelard,
started out from his home in Brittany to visit all the places ' ""^^
where he might hope to receive instruction in logic and phi-
losophy, in which, like all his learned contemporaries, he was
especially interested. He reports that he found teachers in
several of the French towns, particularly in Paris, who were
attracting large numbers of students to listen to their lectures
upon logic, rhetoric, and theology. Abelard soon showed his
superiority to his teachers by defeating them several times in
debate. So he began lecturing on his own account, and such
was his success that thousands of students flocked to hear him.
Abelard did not found the University of Paris, as has some-
times been supposed, but he did a great deal to make the dis-
cussions of theological problems popular, and by his attractive
method of teaching he greatly increased the number of those
who wished to study.
Before the end of the twelfth century the teachers had be- Origin of the
come so numerous in Paris that they formed a union, or guild, of^Parir ^
for the advancement of their interests. This union of professors
was called by the usual name for corporations in the Middle
Ages, universitas ; hence our word " university." The king and
the Pope both favored the university and granted the teachers
and students many of the privileges of the clergy, a class to
which they were regarded as belonging, because learning had
for so many centuries been confined to the clergy.
About the time that we find the beginnings of a university or Study of the
guild of professors at Paris, another great institution of learning canon"a^v in
was growing up at Bologna. Here the chief attention was given, bologna
not to theology, as at Paris, but to the study of the law, both
Roman and church (canon) law. Students began to stream to
Bologna in greater and greater numbers. In order to protect
themselves in a town where they were regarded as strangers,
they also organized themselves into unions, which became so
powerful that they were able to force the professors to obey the
rules which they laid down.
 Outlines of European History
546
Other uni-
versities
The University of Oxford was founded in the time of Henry II,
founded probably by English students and masters who had become dis-
contented atParis for some reason. The University of Cambridge,
as well as numerous universities in France, Italy, and Spain,
were founded in the thirteenth century. The German universities,
which are still so famous, were established somewhat later, most
of them in the latter half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth
century. The northern institutions generally took the great
mother university on the Seine as their model, while those in
southern Europe usually adopted the methods of Bologna.
The academic When, after some years of study, a student was examined
degree
by the professors, he was, if successful, admitted to the cor-
poration of teachers and became a 7naster himself. What we
call 'a degree to-day was originally, in the medieval universi-
ties, nothing more than the right to teach ; but in the thirteenth
century many who did not care to become professors in our
sense of the word began to desire the honorable title of f?iasfer
or doetor (which is only the Latin word for "teacher ").■'
Simple The students in the medieval universities v/ere of all ages,
methods of
instruction from thirteen to forty, and even older. There were no univer-
sity buildings, and in Paris the lectures were given in the Latin
Quarter, in Straw Street, so called from the straw strewn on the
floors of the hired rooms where the lecturer explained the text-
book, with the students squatting on the floor before him. There
were no laboratories, for there was no experimentation. All
that was required was a copy of the textbook. This the lecturer
explained sentence by sentence, and the students listened and
sometimes took notes.
The most striking peculiarity of the instruction in the medieval
university was the supreme deference paid to Aristotle. Most

1 The origin of the bachelor's degree, which comes at the ead of our college
course nowadays, may be explained as follows : The bachelor in the thirteenth
century was a student who had passed part of his examinations in the course in
"arts," as the college course was then called, and was permitted to teach certain
elementary subjects before he became a full-fledged master. So the A.B. was
inferior to the A.M. then as now.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 547

of the courses of lectures were devoted to the explanation of Aristotle's

some one of his numerous treatises — his Physics, his Meta- become
p/i\'sics,'
^ '
his treatises on logic,
^ '
his Ethics, '
his minor works the
knownWest
in
upon the soul, heaven and earth, etc. Only his Logic had been
known to Abelard, as all his other works had been forgotten.
But early in the thirteenth century all his comprehensive con-
tributions toscience reached the West, either from Constantinople
or through the Arabs, who had brought them to Spain. The
Latin translations were bad and obscure, and the lecturer had
enough to do to give some meaning to them, to explain what the
Arab philosophers had said of them, and, finally, to reconcile
them to the teachings of Christianity.
Aristotle was, of course, a pagan. He was uncertain whether \'eneration
the soul continued to exist after death ; he had never heard of °^ ' "^^°^ ^
the Bible and knew nothing of the salvation of man through
Christ. One would have supposed that he would have been
promptly rejected with horror by the ardent Christian believers
of the Middle Ages. But the teachers of the thirteenth cen-
tur)' were fascinated by his logic and astonished at his learn-
ing. The great theologians of the time, Albertus Magnus
(d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), did not hesitate to
prepare elaborate commentaries upon all his works. He was
called " The Philosopher " ; and so fully were scholars convinced
that it had pleased God to permit Aristotle to say the last word
upon each and every branch of knowledge that they humbly
accepted him, along with the Bible, the church fathers, and the
canon and Roman law, as one of the unquestioned authorities
which together formed a complete guide for humanity in conduct
and in every branch of science.
The term " scholasticism " is commonly given to the beliefs and ticism
Scholas-
method of discussion of the medieval professors. To those who
later outgrew the fondness for logic and the supreme respect for
Aristotle, scholasticism, with its neglect of Greek and Roman
literature, came to seem an arid and profitless plan of education.
Yet, if we turn over the pages of the wonderful works of
 Outlines of European History
548
Thomas Aquinas, we see that the scholastic philosopher might
be a person of extraordinary insight and learning, ready to
recognize all the objections to his position, and able to express
himself with great clearness and cogency.^ The training in
logic, if it did not increase the sum of human knowledge,
accustomed the student to make careful distinctions and pre-
sent his arguments in an orderly way.
Course of No attention was given to the great subject of history in the
study
medieval universities, nor was Greek taught. Latin had to be
learned in order to carry on the work at all, but little time was
given to the Roman classics. The new modern languages were
considered entirely unworthy of the learned. It must of course
be remembered that none of the books which we consider the
great classics in English, French, Italian, or Spanish had as yet
been written.
Petrarch tries Although the medieval professors paid the greatest respect to
to learn
Greek the Greek philosopher Aristotle and made Latin translations of
his works the basis of the college course, very few of themi could
read any Greek and none of them knew much about Homer or
Plato or the Greek tragedians and historians. In the fourteenth
century Petrarch (1304-13 74) set the example in Italy of care-
fully collecting all the writings of the Romans, which he greatly
admired. He made an unsuccessful effort to learn Greek, for he
found that Cicero and other Roman writers were constantly
referring with enthusiasm to the Greek books to which they
owed so much.
Chrysoloras Petrarch had not the patience or opportunity to master Greek,
begins to
teach Greek but twenty years after his death a learned Greek prelate from
in Florence,
1396 Constantinople, named Chrysoloras, came to Florence and found
pupils eager to learn his language so that they could read the
Greek books. Soon Italian scholars were going to Constanti-
nople to carry on their studies, just as the Romans in Cicero's
time had gone to Athens. They brought back copies of all the
1 An example of the scholastic method of reasoning of Thomas Aquinas may
be found in Translations and Reprints^ Vol. Ill, No. 6.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages' 549
ancient writers that they could find, and by 1430 Greek books Greek
were oace more known in the West, after a thousand years of brought"?^
neglect. Italy
In this way western Europe caught up with ancient times ; The
scholars could once more know all that the Greeks and Romans "™^"^^ ^
had known and could read in the original the works of Homer,
Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and other
philosophers, historians, orators, and tragedians. Those who
devoted their lives to a study of the literature of Greece and
Rome were called Hutnanists. The name is derived from the
Latin word humaftitas, which means " culture." In time the
colleges gave up the exclusive study of Aristotle and substituted
a study of the Greek and Latin literature, and in this way what
is known as our " classical " course of study originated.

Section 96. Beginnings of Modern Inventions

So long, however, as intellectual men confined themselves to

studying the old books of Greece and Rome they were not likely
to advance beyond what the Greeks and Romans had known.
In order to explain modem discoveries and inventions we have
to take account of those who began to suspect that Aristotle was
ignorant and mistaken upon many important matters, and who
set to work to examine things about them with the hope of find-
ing out more than any one had ever known before.
Even in the thirteenth century there were a few scholars who Roger
criticized the habit of relying upon Aristotle for all knowledge, attack on
The most distinguished faultfinder was Roger Bacon, an English scholas-
Franciscan monk (d. about 1290), who declared that even if
Aristotle were very wise he had only planted the tree of knowl-
edge and that this had " not as yet put forth all its branches nor
produced all its fruits." " If we could continue to live for end-
less centuries we mortals could never hope to reach full and
complete knowledge of all the things which are to be known.
No one knows enough of nature completely to describe the
 Outlines of European Histo7y
550
peculiarities of a single fly and give the reason for its color and
why it has just so many feet, no more and no less." Bacon held
that truth could be reached a hundred thousand times better by
experiments with real things than by poring over the bad Latin
translations of Aristotle. " If I had my way," he declared, " I
should burn all the books of Aristotle, for the study of them can
only lead to a loss of time, produce error and increase ignorance."
Bacon Roger Bacon declared that if men would only study common
foresees
great things instead of reading the books of the ancients, science would
inventions
outdo the wonders which people of his day thought could be
produced by magic. He said that in time men would be able to
fly, would have carriages which needed no horses to draw them
and ships which would move swiftly without oars, and that
bridges could be built without piers to support them.
All this and much more has come true, but inventors and
modern scientists ow^e but little to the books of the Greeks and
Romans, which the scholastic philosophers and the Humanists
relied upon. Although the Greek philosophers devoted consider-
able attention to natural science, they were not much inclined to
make long and careful experiments or to invent anything like
the microscope or telescope to help them. They knew very little
indeed about the laws of nature and were sadly mistaken upon
many points. Aristotle thought that the sun and all the stars
revolved about the earth and that the heavenly bodies were per-
fect and unchangeable. He believed that heavy bodies fell faster
than light ones and that all earthly things were made of the four
elements — earth, air, water, and fire. The Greeks and Romans
knew nothing of the compass, or gunpowder, or the printing
press, or the uses to which steam can be put. Indeed, they had
scarcely anything that we should call a machine.
Discoveries The thirteenth century witnessed certain absolutely new
of the
thirteenth achievements in the history of mankind. The compass began
century
to be utilized in a way to encourage bolder and bolder ventures
out upon the ocean (see above, section 91). The properties of
the lens were discovered, and before the end of the century
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages

spectacles are mentioned. The lens made the later telescope, Arabic
1 ., , , . , numerals
microscope, spectroscope, and camera possible, upon which so
much of our modern science depends. The Arabic numerals551
began to take the place of the awkward Roman system of
using letters. One cannot well divide XLVIII by VIII but he
can easily divide
48 by 8. Roger
Bacon knew of the
explosive nature
of a compound of.
sulphur, saltpeter,
and charcoal, and
a generation after
his death gunpow-
der began to be
used a little for
guns and artillery.
A document is still
preserved referring
to the making of
brass cannon and
balls in Florence
in the year 1326. Fig. k Effects of Cannon on a
By 1350 powder Medieval Castle
works were in ex-
istence in at least three German towns, and French and Eng-
lish books refer now and then to its use.
At least a hundred and fifty years elapsed, however, before
gunpowder really began to supplant the old ways of fighting
with bows and arrows and axes and lances. By the year 1500
it was becoming clear that the old stone casdes were insufficient
protection against cannon, and a new type of unprotected castle
began to be erected as residences of the kings and the nobility
(see below, p. 570). Gunpowder has done away with armor,
bows and arrows, spears and javelins, castles and walled towns.
 Outlines of Ejiropean History
552
It may be that sometime some such fearfully destructive com-
pound may be discovered, that the nations may decide to give
up war altogether as too dangerous and terrible a thing to resort
to under any circumstances.
Advantages The inventions of the compass, of the lens, and of gunpowder
of printing
with mova- have helped to revolutionize the world. To these may be added
ble type
the printing press, which has so facilitated and encouraged read-
ing that it is nowadays rare to find anybody who cannot read.
The Italian classical scholars of the fifteenth century suc-
ceeded, as we have seen (pp. 548-549, above), in arousing a new-
interest in the books of the Greeks as well as of the Romans.
They carefully collected every ancient work that they could lay
hands on, made copies of it, edited it, and if it was in Greek,
translated it into Latin. While they were in the midst of this
w'ork certain patient experimenters in Germany and Holland
were turning their attention to a new way of multiplying books
rapidly and cheaply by the use of lead t}-pe and a press.
Excellent The Greeks and Romans and the people of the Middle Ages
work of
medieval knew no other method of obtaining a new copy of a book
copyists
except by writing it out laboriously by hand. The professional
copyists were incredibly dexterous with their quills, as may be
seen in Fig. 199 — a page from a Bible of the thirteenth cen-
tury which is reproduced in its original size.^ The letters are
1 Figs. 199 and 200 are reproductions, exactly the size of the original, of two
pages in a manuscript Bible of the thirteenth century (in Latin) belonging to the
library of Columbia University. The first of the two was chosen to illustrate the
minuteness and perfection of the best work ; the second to show irregularities
and mistakes due to negligence or lack of skill in the copyists.
The page represented in Fig. 199 is taken from i Maccabees i, 56-ii, 65 (a
portion of the Scriptures not usually included in the Protestant Bibles). It begins,
"... ditis fugitivorum locis. Die quintadecima mensis Caslev, quinto et quadra-
gesimo et centesimo anno aedificavit rex Antiochus abominandum idolum desola-
tionis super altare Dei : et per universas civitates Juda in circitu aedificaverunt
aras et ante januas domorum, et in plateis incendebant thura, et sacrificabant
et libros legis Dei com[busserunt]." The scribes used a good many abbrevia-
tions, as was the custom of the time, and what is transcribed here fills five lines
of the manuscript.
The second less perfect page here reproduced is from the prophet Amos,
iii, 9-vii, 16. It begins, "vinearum vestrarum : oliveta vestra et ficeta vestra
comedit eruca et non redistis ad me, dicit Dominus."
Plate VIII. Page from a Book of Hours, Fifteenth Century
(Original Size)
 Books and Scie7ice hi the Middle Ages 553

as clear, small, and almost as regular as if they had been printed, illuminated
The whole volume containing the Old and New Testaments is "^^""^^"P ^
about the size of this book. After the scribe had finished his
work the volume was often turned over to the iUummator^
who would put in gay illuminated initials and sometimes page
borders, which were delightful in design and color.^ Books de-
signed to be used in the church services w^ere adorned with pic-
tures as well as with ornamented initials and decorative borders.
Plate VIII is a reproduction of a page from a Book of Hours
in the library of Columbia University. It is the same size as the
original.
The written books were, in short, often both compact and Slow process

beautiful, but they were never cheap or easily produced in by hand"*'

great numbers. When Cosimo, the father of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, wished to form a library just before the in-
vention of printing, he applied to a contractor who engaged
forty-five copyists. By working hard for nearly two years
they were able to produce only two hundred volumes for the
new librar}^
Moreover, it was impossible before the invention of printing to Errors of
have two copies of the same work exactly alike. Even with the copyists
greatest care a scribe could not avoid making some mistakes, and a
careless copyist was sure to make a great many. The universi-
ties required their students to report immediately any mistakes
discovered in their textbooks, in order that the error might not
be reproduced in another copy and so lead to a misunderstand-
ing of the author. With the invention of printing it became
possible to produce in a short time a great many copies of a
given book which were exactly alike. Consequently, if suffi-
cient care was taken to see that the types were properly set,
the whole edition, not simply a single copy, might be relied
upon as correct.

1 The word " miniature," which is often applied to them, is derived from minium^
that is, vermilion, which was one of the favorite colors. Later the word came to
be applied to anything small.

k
 :.^

MV6«flial«n.v«A
dmfexfltnnwt Uar-©«rrp»i
<J{«rfetr*nCCf «4ndm ftlw txlami.fr cvcUnu«tr tnst^
thufmcutnattf uocfnugtu duotC lDtttn«f<}ui (gi\iim\)ak
Ijim okfitaucmnrjtaf ratwc itnua« 2»rtt«c r inplMwC l(g«rfhmi«if«lla immtna-cn-pfl-meft-fiigtr^tft
t« cmf zi»Uqu«tmr m mtfittrC t ttbqoffunt- eftwtmm Hilir
hanrmmut3mT[iMKictte»Jiin«»r«nutatjummtfuMbeifi
ntcb.wmflilnii tcftawn Jotnmx jqmttw ; flI>faM4h.tttrI^_ 2 m(haa« tnirtJmmi- ur fiAntsnr tbt 7 tpf^hi fUM <»r ■unw
ttrftKujntpwttu {jfnuiduaitamrfiigfsrrtnaU.it-flsmI
t«-fiufi<«i«iTrltcwtoift«hrt«t«unuott*bati tut* tn»nuu a4nun (^rnitTitjftrarotmjt qui ctmrtfl i^rlni ouaast
YtwniHnaumttb: «-tn«r«nJ5i*-in«ttfiflCMnfi<ab*m-flj Mm* qm jfalftflHIian- um qmJUni (jut *flifMn«tmr maa
&.«M«Ji a^tfinlflaorntHautZcttrw z.mcfl«ir|tfft-tlljfma.
fffemttt mcvmmt- p»ft-eafl t mtxatmtrUftrAZmcrCif Mfp^^r^
l^tn^faH4avt^oy.:^>tv^mm^4^<l)g.&c^tftttttfTmM^Ja^)iUi^ _
«Df«p»to»tumad«mm-tt)» twaAilutrt: ^ mwln 5e^l5 Jfi-J

iti4gtftn«tt tjujm ttl>fr»mqmtun«tMmM*^tMUictli»t» iRremmaantmr40ucrfits oCpttlutm inic^vnteimrcwj

qiQtnqa»I<g»n tetfcon rttueiAtn <tmt; r'twci ivAini Upitenmtlmmr ilUf naaptlaufnutr l«a«tutm 9im
tfl^OTMmttftftnfmfhtiphuutc luiiTttOtfawtf Q«pff
u«r(dttm«taia-i}'ttwttac^»mfHM. femmteurtrcsfldlu
CUkxaC-imtgmiiixxtt rpt ztmHtcttfMCzpMtota ceru uQ^^
_ -iJelvnn^m ttm«5n»tm^ah«Mt»gaa^tCTi&Vm•n<^alfl^

tftttnff'frtfftyTwtC'fiJctti tlmi)?^tMQttftmtimj?npngtiiiniyTr
;>S^fafjtcutcrp.tmmal>: trnfrtirthfitwOTntetrnftmaC
rfjfpto I r utfT Aicfui. ct'caffit^iiifftoi^^i^illa roftuift^flmig
{tan uticmo2ni{m«ne p^ntlt tntt -stfmnnmt^tui tctttf {{^ |lym« qtiumtu imintf4>t»jfm tcQo mdietiftaojppagB^
'tfitertllummJEmt'uttnantbAtmtnuwi^T'aiittttMnthj itiMf<»frwctlba mmin«ntnou««itt'«tmcrfiri«'mim»j
tttJirtMonfiwm flimnimpTttm eutf <Mm-lwii»iflritf1«f*a
ttwgogi mft»» finttf atftK am*,'- «tnmf oalamaminiA
vyLttctf TumauTeutf «miBrtmr tngUiuj timtttiMiwr jwnmtf «tm 'fiigtrfi«tr 4 tnaliC addm fettfjaarir film w
CtwnhcjitxatttrtJtftnmrCiTitfbntmtrfJjBltUiuff:^
jIHnntf«mpCtwm«r.«l>trta£fjucc»«-ldrtti'fia««u«ltu pmatatjffttfttalaa^ trntCVtutuo* inind;gtiim«nclii4.T
tttcn€jgi«»iar4atutt«n«fm-C!Wictetar(&'attm«rrtti*r
gflntitptmnimwffcmt^ttgC^iiBJgrmJ^ttrtnartfilg
mjfocftnnwSu.'roptmettjnr-C^^llmtfpUtwciiittn^tial

_ r4ttcntoirtl>trt6^rAlge-2et«bto«!e; l&nmlttte-pjpiil*

|c<^ it^tru a-cafh^ttto ncmpufeufi^mTif uatmfagttatftf

^/Httudw divcA-.'ni4ttvtd>te7rttucp« uUttJ&nu:f«< '^^xmtg fila eOmttmuLtxoientgit'j Jutt^tmnuf ne^ptcfti
•Hii^:nstrgfmKu<mtt«trgenti»uffthtf^g{fef><S|p rtttgm^ttJtTnttnTTogjuoK tfpwtt'F4tttnn<ttt^TWfrttrtp<fg'

^ tcf?mt<MjJi*»c[m*tmn'Qrttn*'t«tt^icffftu*€Jtj
-mt «nt5K4niM»fiegif T «npUficmtf /»tge»iw «^ntl> t rtVoj3nt<bHaniI")oftphtntmpr4it«ttlh<^mlhi9«urrtii
_ tntMittlij'imanr. Urt^^xm^trnutKnKjfxdwtrtrt* hsnmii-&tmf<^a>maiiif gpypn-^n«» pa«rnrsd«Jto
'pH4'ttoo»ttl^tttnti ^c*mcrttefft4tttugio octnituit uvMt jdwttla .weeptrttftamtwirt C»«rt»o^«*fiu^cajfi 3atpe;_
[mr ulmni ■etwTc^v rfrt (flviicpb dum rrthflamrciu
tunr mAnfiattr»nrf^5or€ht nwt t^KVcttCtnetobeAt
Wtlu dcc|>tt-lrmtemsn.'©4uii mfua mu toir&nmtf
Mtn^l^ piittwn tife jpinuf -fit no^asKtQxmcO'
ite^tt!lM«iu«Vt«»l«- legem tu^^xmXieUi^fnattAim^ jmfcd-m{dam.'ajun«rxsnue'rtnrfiul nrtiftnrf btaatt
;t4»r 3rflitM,tn4nD«tttl tn Cia fi«ipUma»1il»mrcft'af
l«giftu)ft»«-ni4Ji*.«a.«f«ttutr4JtCtt»ut4.ft^«fec(t* nt^l£DtUttn« ^ tta tJ33 tuUC U^ l'iJi*lttdTUttJ 70tTUi<ii<0ttCtfi
j|tomnd'ciJu1i«imrm«m» n in^mnam; ffTJuWrnnpc
|ta»arti*n -muumnr. qtiU5ti nxrT ftcmri" Tiimif c(fclj)l>tt-
tuCUni regtC (I*-ttt4tr m.tduthiaf-ra»li«r.*eBmtwm> lawDnttt* enw tuninistmttttr t)tud emufltf cmnam €iam
tnmr tcncTentf T.«tmfixf f •fitttt.ettf ■Gtmtdtmt mflt
jr agMari cturjim'^otfg- fllu wttftrtatmrnimtflncrigL-
«r m Igp quia m t|n 5lmflfi mt». <fr «cc tVttwa fhtt^uw^
Hub tfoem tm&aa- rty antudntCttw ay»ar wtrnioUar l(to^timt>»w«nfQuc(Vtpm<mxlar1ht^Ttfeci^H9fp>^

Fig. 199. Page from a Copy of the Bible made in the Thirteenth
Century, showing Perfection of the Best Work (see note p. 552)

554
 '^mo^*

cr(k«)tfi<unn obtuliftif tTttniefnto »aAtimfi»«rt

A-mtgrai'euoffA«Xcwnf><iiriAfm>tF.inf 55 9^
WWentiiw t%«mn? ^<-5"t (>^ut«in tlViJ «n|^<w^T^j> ^

, net uttoenr -rite- tttW tn ettjgtH? m^wwrn'-rb^jcdi /

_j8^^«V«yeituunem*t- 3lul>*trubum i(Vu^<i&^ ,^.lui>im«it«ftnl«<rKriH>uwctr^Ufnumfm|}«i^^^^ ^

yr tcfut^prgtUigo tfi-Kptt^ cnnctngfuX- xtTg "tno AVtn^vqutdinmfabtw«-yrAtftt'rve»Aui&gu^-^

Ti«i*anc(€'VnbffVAf4 c*nna.1^«bcntcf inpb i-iVf "^'?'"
cr otinmo utiguiito iettlnret -inicljtl •}j.iu«t<>ntut^
ftvc c»TtCT-irwmc' xcC<rp{^,^ixAi^ nunc mtataW"^
X11 cA|)tw-Ti'mtf«iWpszutTm. *r4ufaTtui>'rA«cwUr '
aixtt<vc-het{^(l{ •Ttinj7<lg«'Unolvtc'inti»W.-fl'ed4 ^

Jbetijcl ettnttunUf- tfi.ucrw«^mTn -i utarte-nrfinrt*_

o5bu*^tu»^ut v»nifbo-m\ofeBb^u»»^T'<n <Wtr<J jfiutnnc'Sec* lUiH inSamo UrtA-ltgV »rua.t<mtuv^<f'
'«nnafu.«: beWT <N«» ov\n.uf»< 1^ T fci imw^u^t
ciuirtiM<».l>fl«t4:nA»m.-xvuJKciAtt\fiAvcliit^r. j
f^cicrtcr-iCilunitn ■roiwme''*S;.-iounutcnwmirt'^
f^nTnqm>)AbViuc»^Af^utn3tf'A"vtfp<mi!Bc^t5ri
~~ tnA*ieSl^'rJ>tcrtitt<'<trtnutj\rrtr-qutiio<s*r:
■\iiinu5' i««tn ctuO »SXui TuljujirtT uAfhtn to- fujj iv-
ftirrAT»isWm^ir«(>imr':f fhjrmtufHHab f/iHjiu^ tCy
ly^^^tM-ttaw- mjjcrxta. a«iij>tettS'.^7rIc>ojuonte
_ «'fccW.aV|;>onunitn{urtt^5><wxo^«) <f5 ^vl'yn-^
u/ibm at onarV' uf^: a> «; tStf^Kmi'Sj fVn>'^^

iff^«r1ia-lJS-«rr>J»vi-'8v*^ifFe<te«J^C<W'<a-#>"i''^t
■auifuiuih efyuukiCcfe) ifccC ei>i(f^t,t n SXtr'aii,

.pt«twf mun?^ jviii^ iTip»tm>^}3t7irc>r.'Jv pm -' ftftiiwt<tfnincfMitu*«rr(tnulp&r«m.6ri.»>tt ^

(ttuciitr l>»num-tn m aIu ur uiuatif. cTcxxc^nvf^ ■ft ii^sttftjuwice'^Tj feffl? . <n«tf fufenllnrua&ti qwisi.
. •rpCi'ettuamuo^cumrtJfei.KifU/.^lnnrtnaXu'r^tli.

tfUwbju \iOttf AtviA^r (v- "Sn^ XmVlAytvonti."rvttai.-«f

y/ltniHyUmfplAnc^^incui-icKj-cTuefimrritm-

^(Stfnfai^aaintujjisnnu, biit-elioini tngLi^u} ■^riWUtP'

:if*i^ citr yUnctuf «tU4 j^nan^lc tnttte^to tui^ic"
Luivc «ni.tiiiitriitn<>fiH'm4*w^»mifi4?- Vvu eite-rvu- 1

.■mv-i^Kwrlconif- 7 «<:mt1t^ciurfixf.-z ingxStar'

__'^inu rvi -t 1 n ni tatxu- m^ rt u jUa Imp iM i-tftr^T nt en. .
J>M^ cum coliitof Tlumqut^ n t«n<W-i n UwKcf *<M^u fu4 • f^Myatnd fuy a^ £tm*f <5.uii ui1»j^C^-^'
-iinVetijel C4>ia«ftjJa\iu^|p!7oea-^mAicvfLC«ttii» I
— Uicatcf umf Tfn e^y 1-1111 oiui*- «ecutitn^u<;(K«uiTTV> !^•<2^fe"'^*<mv'^Sra5n^♦^, ^ttVp<»nSwr4«\opKr'htj?3^
^_V^J«_^tCTi\cnnf-ntx£l5 iljolocaufhmi 4t2t_T muntttt.
__iir4it fufaptam a»ct cc-pttigiuum ut?tKutvr«it»i '^
cuuri. jLujW^TnMumulTu, <wi-minuTue^^-r<Mntifti
uttnvncui
nunc AuVi ^um >or

Fig. 200. Another Page from the Same Volume from which the
Page opposite is taken, showing Imperfections and Mistakes of
Poor Copyists
555
 0?ttlmcs of European History
556
Paper
introduced After the supply of papyrus — the paper of the Egyptians,
in western Greeks, and Romans — was cut off from Europe by the con-
Europe
quest of Egypt by the Mohammedans the people of the Middle
Ages used parchfuent, made from the skin of lambs
and goats. This was so expensive that printing would
have been of but little use, even if it had been thought

KrTme pralmoi^ roDtymmiftatf rapiraliuttro -

ratuo *rubrifaiionibufcp fcfhiimtrr Diftiniue'
[aDmuf nronr artiftriora imprimmDi arraraderi^anDi:
abfij t)lla ralami r fararone fir rtftgiatim *rr ad lauDtoi
teiar Ipnoiefantti ^arDbitttofiimat9,per5oiem fuft
riufmagutmu*fr^ftm^dpiflfrtrgfmf^)iiidm^
^^nno Dnipllefimo mt*li)?*fjri]r*Die*niniri6^ugiilli^
Fig. 20 1. Closing Lines of the Psalter of 1459
(Much reduced)

The closing lines (that is, the so-called colop/iou) of the second edition of
the Psalter, which are here reproduced, are substantially the same as
those of the first edition. They may be translated as follows : " The
present volume of the Psalms, which is adorned with handsome capitals
and is clearly divided by means of rubrics, was produced not by writing
with a pen but by an ingenious invention of printed characters ; and
was completed to the glory of God and the honor of St. James by John
Fust, a citizen of Mayence, and Peter Schoifher of Gernsheim, in the
year of our Lord 1459, on the 29th of August "

of, before paper was introduced into Europe by the Moham-

medans.^ Paper began to become common in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries and was already replacing parchment
before the invention of printing.
The earliest
The earliest book of any considerable size to be printed was
printed
books the Bible, which appears to have been completed at Mayence in
the year 1 456. A year later the famous Mayence Psalter was fin-
ished, the first dated book (Fig. 201). There are, however, earlier
1 The Arabs seem to have derived their knowledge of paper-making from
the Chinese.
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 557

examples of little books printed with engraved blocks and even

with movable types. In the German towns, where the art spread
rapidly, the printers adhered to the style of letters which the
scribe had found it convenient to make with his quill — the so-
^lack letter
called Gothic, or black letter. In Italy, however, where the f ''^^
printing press was set up
in 1466, a type was soon
adopted which resembled
the letters used in ancient
Roman inscriptions. This
was quite similar to the
style of letter commonly
used to-day. The Italians
also invented the com-
pressed italic type, which
enabled them to get a
great many words on a
page. The early printers
generally did their work
conscientiously, and the
very first book printed is
in most respects as well Fig. 202. Ax Old-fashioned
Printing Office
done as any later book.
By the year 1500, after Until the nineteenth century printing
printing had been used was carried on with very little machin-
ery. The type was inked by hand,
less than half a century, then the paper laid on and the form
there appear to have been slipped under a wooden press operated
at least forty printing by hand by means of a lever
presses to be found in va-
rious towns of Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and
England. These presses had, it is estimated, already printed
eight millions of volumes. So there was no longer any danger
of the old books being again lost, and the encouragement to
write and publish new books was greatly increased. From
that date our sources for history become far more voluminous
 Oiitliiics of European History
558
than those which exist for the previous history of the world ;
we are much better informed in regard to events and con-
ditions since 1500 than we ever can be respecting those of
the earlier periods.

Section 97. The Art of the Renaissance

Development We have already described briefly the work of the medieval
of art in
Italy architects and referred to the beautiful carvings that adorned
the Gothic cathedrals and to the pictures of saints and angels
in stained glass which filled the great church windows. But in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries art developed in a most
astonishing manner in Italy and set new standards for all of
western Europe.
Florence the Florence was the great center of artistic activity during the
art center
of Italy fifteenth century. The greatest sculptors and almost all of the
most famous painters and architects of the time either were
natives of Florence or did their best work there. During the
first half of the century sculpture again took the lead. The
bronze doors of the baptistery at Florence by Ghiberti, which
were completed in 1452, are among the finest products of
Renaissance sculpture (Fig. 203).^
Rome Florence reached the height of its preeminence as an art
becomes the
center of center during the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was
artistic
activity a devoted patron of all the arts. With his death (1492), this
preeminence passed to Rome, which was fast becoming one of
the great capitals of Europe. The art-loving popes, Julius II
and Leo X, took pains to secure the services of the most dis-
tinguished artists and architects of the time in the building and
adornment of St. Peter's and the Vatican, that is, the papal
church and palace (see above, p. 525).
1 Opposite the cathedral at Florence (Fig. 196) stands the ancient baptistery.
Its northern bronze doors, with ten scenes from the Bible, surrounded by a very
lovely border of foliage, birds, and animals, were completed by Lorenzo Ghiberti
in 1452, after many years of labor. Michael Angelo declared them worthy to be
the gates of heaven.
Fig. 203. GHiBERirs Uoors at Florence
Fig. 204. Holy Family by Andrea del Sarto
 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 559

During the sixteenth century the art of the Renaissance Height of

Da^"^^^^"^^
Vinci,
reached its highest development. Among all the great artists of Michael
this period three stand out in heroic. proportions — Leonardo da
Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. The first two not only art Angelo,
—
practiced, but achieved distinction in, the three arts of archi-
tecture, sculpture, and painting.^ It is impossible to give in a
few lines any idea of the beauty and significance of the work of
these great geniuses. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo left
behind them so many and such magnificent frescoes and paint-
ings, and in the case of Tvlichael Angelo statues as well that it
is easy to appreciate their importance. Leonardo, on the other
hand, left but litde completed work. His influence on the art
of his time, which was probably greater than that of either of
the others, came from his many-sidedness, his originality, and
his unflagging interest in the discover}' and application of new-
methods. He was almost more experimenter than artist.
While Florence could no longer boast of being the art center The ^'enetian
of Italy, it still produced great artists, among whom Andrea del
Sarto may be especially mentioned (Fig. 204). But the most
important center of artistic activity outside of Rome in the six-
teenth centur\' was Venice. The distinguishing characteristic
of the Venetian pictures is their glowing color. This is strik- Titian

ingly exemplified in the paintings of Titian, the most famous ^^'^"''^^^

of all the Venetian painters.-
It was natural that artists from the northern countries should Painting in
be attracted by the renown of the Italian masters and, after Europe
learning all that Italy could teach them, should return home to
practice their art in their own particular fashion. About a century
after painting began to develop in Italy two Flemish brothers,
Van Eyck by name, showed that they were not only able to
paint quite as excellent pictures as the Italians of their day, but
they also discovered a new way of mixing their colors superior
to that employed in Italy. Later, when painting had reached DUrer
its height in Italy, Albrecht Diirer and Hans Holbein the '"^'^ ^'~
1 Leonardo was engineer and inventor as well. '^ See Fig. 205.
 Outlines of European History
;6o
Younger^ in Germany vied with even Raphael and Michael
Angelo in the mastery of their art. Diirer is especially cele-
brated for his wonderful woodcuts and copperplate engravings,

in which field he has perhaps never been excelled."'^

Rubens When, in the seventeenth century, painting had declined south
(1 577-1640)
and Rem- of the Alps, Dutch and Flemish masters — above all, Rubens
brandt
(1607-1669) and Rembrandt — developed a new and admirable school of
painting. To Van Dyck, another Flemish master, we owe many
Van Dyck
noble portraits of historically important -persons.^ Spain gave
(1599-1641)
and his to the world in the seventeenth century a painter whom some
portraits
would rank higher than even the greatest artists of Italy, namely,
Velasquez
Velasquez (i 599-1 660). His genius, like that of Van Dyck, is
especially conspicuous in his marvelous portraits.

QUESTIONS
Section 92. Why was Latin used by learned men, churchmen,
scholars, and lawyers in the Middle Ages .? What is the origin of the
Germanic languages.^ of the Romance tongues.'' When does English
become sufficiently modern for us to read it easily without special study?
What is the character of the French romances of the Middle Ages ?
Section 93. Who were the troubadours.^ Describe chivalry
and the ideal knight.
Section 94. Why did people know little of history in the Middle
Ages ? Give some examples of the beliefs in regard to the habits of
animals and the existence of strange races of men. What value was
supposed to come from studying the habits of animals.? Define
astrology. What words do we use that recall the beliefs of the
Middle Ages in regard to the influence of the stars on man .? What
was alchemy .?
Section 95. W^ho was Abelard? What was a "university"
originally? Mention some early universities. W^hat was the origin
of our degrees? What subjects were studied in a medieval univer-
sity? Why was Aristotle so venerated by the medieval scholars?
What was scholasticism ? How and when were Greek books again
brought into western Europe ? Who were the Humanists ? Why did
not the Humanists make any discoveries?
1 See below, Fig. 209. - See below, Fig. 211. 3 See below, Figs. 226 and 227.
 Books and Science i7i the Afiddle Ages 561

Section 96. Why did Roger Bacon criticize the enthusiasm for
Aristotle? What great inventions did he foresee? What great new
discoveries were made in the thirteenth century ?
What effects did the introduction of gunpowder have? How were
books made before the invention of printing? What are the dis-
advantages of a book copied by hand? What is the earliest large
printed book? How rapidly did printing spread? What do you
consider the chief effects of the introduction of printing?
Section 97. Say something of the chief artists of the Renais-
sance in Italy and their work. Name some of the artists of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries w^ho lived outside of Italv.
 CHAPTER XXIII

EMPEROR CHARLES V AND HIS VAST REALMS

Section 98. Emperor Maximilian and the

Hapsburg Marriages

Charles Vs In the year 1500 a baby was born in the town of Ghent who
empire
was destined before he reached the age of twenty to rule, as
Emperor Charles V, over more of Europe than any one since
Charlemagne. He owed his vast empire not to any conquests of
his own but to an extraordinary series of royal marriages which
made him heir to a great part of western Europe. These mar-
riages had been arranged by his grandfather, Maximilian I, one
of the most successful matchmakers that ever lived. Maximilian
belonged to the House of Hapsburg, and in order to under-
stand European history since 1500 we must learn something of
Maximilian and the Hapsburg line.
Reasons why The German kings had failed to create a strong kingdom
the German
kings failed
to establish
such as those over which Louis XI of France and Henr)-' VII
a strong of England ruled. Their fine title of emperor had made them
state
a great deal of trouble and done them no good, as we have
seen.^ Their attempts to keep Italy as well as Germany under
their rule, and the alliance of the might}-' bishop of Rome with
their enemies had well-nigh ruined them. Their position was
further weakened by the fact that their office was not strictly
hereditary. Although the emperors were often succeeded by
their sons, each new emperor had to be elected, and those great
vassals who controlled the election naturally took care to bind
the candidate by solemn promises not to interfere with their
1 See above, sections 6i, 72)-77-
 Emperor CJiarles V and his Vast Realms 563

privileges and independence. The result was that, after the ^

downfall of the Hohenstaufens, Germany fell apart into a great
number of practically independent states, of which none were
ver}^ large and some were extremely small.
After an interregnum, Rudolf of Hapsburg had been chosen Rudolf of

emperor in 1273 (see above, p. 458). The original seat of the ge^s pos^&s-
Hapsburgs, who were destined to play such a great part in ^'°" °/
European affairs, was in northern Switzerland, where the ves-
tiges of their original castle may still be seen. Rudolf was the
first prominent member of the family ; he established its posi-
tion and influence by seizing the duchies of Austria and Styria,
which became, under his successors, the nucleus of the extensive
Austrian possessions.
About a century and a half after the death of Rudolf the The imperial

German princes began regularly to choose as their emperor the practicaUy^^^

ruler of the Austrian possessions, so that the imperial title became, hereditary
to all intents and purposes, hereditary in the Hapsburg line, of Austria
The Hapsburgs were, however, far more interested in adding
to their family domains than in advancing the interests of the
German Empire as a whole. Indeed, the Holy Roman Empire
was nearly defunct and, in the memorable words of Voltaire, it
had ceased to be either holy, or Roman, or an empire.
Maximilian, while still a very young man, married Mary of
Burgundy, the heiress to the Burgundian realms, which included
what we now call Holland and Belgium and portions of eastern
France. In this way the House of Austria got a hold on the
shores of the North Sea. Mary died in 1482 and her lands were
inherited by her infant son, Philip. Maximilian's next matri-
monial move was to arrange a marriage between his son Philip
and Joanna, the heiress to the Spanish kingdoms, and this
makes it necessary for us to turn a moment to Spain, of
which little or nothing has been said since we saw how the
kingdom of the Visigoths was overthrown by the Mohammedan
invaders, over seven hundred years before Maximilian's time
(section 59).
 564 Outlines of European History

Arab civiliza- The Mohammedan conquest served to make the history of

tion in Spain
Spain very different from that of the other states of Europe.
One of its first and most important results was the conversion
of a great part of the inhabitants to Mohammedanism. During
the tenth century, which was so dark a period in the rest of
Europe, the Arab civilization in .Spain reached its highest de-
velopment. The various elements in the population, Roman,
Gothic, Arab, and Berber, appear to have been thoroughly
amalgamated. Agriculture, industry, commerce, art, and the
sciences made rapid progress. Cordova, with its half million
of inhabitants, its stately palaces, its university, its three thou-
sand mosques and three hundred public baths, was perhaps
unrivaled at that period in the whole world. There were thou-
sands of students at the University of Cordova at a time when,
in the North, only clergymen had mastered even the simple
arts of reading and writing. This brilliant civilization lasted,
however, for hardly more than a hundred years. By the middle
of the eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova had fallen to
pieces, and shordy afterwards the country was overrun by new
invaders from Africa.
The rise of But the Christians were destined to reconquer the peninsula.
new Chris-
tian king-
doms in As early as the year 1000^ several small Christian kingdoms
Spain — Castile, Aragon, and Navarre — had come into existence in
the northern part of Spain. Castile, in particular, began to push
back the Mohammedans and, in 1085, reconquered Toledo from
them. Aragon also widened its bounds by incorporating Barce-
lona and conquering the territory watered by the Ebro. By
1250, the long war of the Christians against the Mohammedans,
which fills the medieval annals of Spain, had been so success-
fully prosecuted that Castile extended to the south coast and
included the great towns of Cordova and Seville. The Christian
kingdom of Portugal was already as large as it is to-day.
Granada and
Castile The Moors, as the Spanish Mohammedans were called, main-
tained themselves for two centuries more in the mountainous
1 See map above, p. 440.
 Emperor Charles V and Jiis Vast Realms 565

kingdom of Granada, in the southern part of the peninsula.

During this period Castile, which was the largest of the Spanish
kingdoms and embraced all the central part of the peninsula,
was too much occupied by internal feuds and struggles over
the crown to wage successful war against the Moorish kingdom
to the south.
The first Spanish monarch whose name need be mentioned Marriage of
here was Queen Isabella of Castile, who, in 1469, concluded castiie and
an all-important marriage with Ferdinand, the heir of the crown ^^a^JJ^^"*^ °^
of Aragon. It is with this union of Castile and Aragon that
the great importance of Spain in European history begins. For
the next hundred years Spain was to enjoy more military power
than any other European state.
Ferdinand and Isabella undertook to complete the conquest Granada, the
of the peninsula, and in 1492, after a long siege, the city of stronghold,
Granada fell into their hands, and therewith the last vestige of ^^'^^
Moorish domination disappeared.^
In the same year that the conquest of the peninsula was com- Spain's in-
pleted, the discoveries of Columbus, made under the auspices t^h^New"^
of Queen Isabella, opened up sources of undreamed-of wealth ^uf^^'^^"'
beyond the seas. The transient greatness of Spain in the six- become a
teenth century is largely to be attributed to the riches which power
poured in from her American possessions. The shameless and
cruel looting of the Mexican and Peruvian cities by Cortes and
Pizarro (see above, p. 531), and the products of the silver mines
of the New World, enabled Spain to assume, for a time, a posi-
tion in Europe which her internal strength and normal resources
would never have permitted.
Unfortunately, the most industrious, skillful, and thrifty Persecution
among the inhabitants of Spain, that is, the Moors and the Jews, and Moors^
who well-nigh supported the whole kingdom with the products
1 No one can gaze upon the great castle and palace of the Alhambra, which
was built for the Moorish kings, without realizing what a high degree of culture
the Moors had attained. Its beautiful and impressive arcades, its magnificent
courts, and the delicate tracery of its arches represent the highest achievement
of Arabic architecture (Fig. 146).
 566 Outlines of European History

The revival of their toil, were bitterly persecuted by the Christians. So

sition "''"' anxious was Isabella to rid her kingdom of the infidels that she
revived the court of the Inquisition.^ F'or several decades its
tribunals arrested and condemned innumerable persons who
were suspected of heresy, and thousands were burned at the
stake during this period. I'hese wholesale executions have
served to associate Spain especially with the horrors of the
Inquisition. Finally, in 1609, a century after Isabella's death,
the Moors were driven out of the country altogether. The per-
secution diminished or disheartened the most useful and enter-
prising portion of the Spanish people, and permanently crippled
the country.
It was no wonder that the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand
and Isabella seemed to Maximilian an admirable match for his
son Philip. Philip died, however, in 1506, — six years after
his eldest son Charles was born, — and his poor wife, Joanna,
became insane with grief and was thus incapacitated for ruling.
So Charles could look forward to an unprecedented accumula-
tion of glorious titles as soon as his grandfathers, Maximilian
of Austria and Ferdinand of Aragon, should pass away.^ He
was soon to be duke of Brabant, margrave of Antwerp,
count of Holland, archduke of Austria, count of Tyrol, king
of Castile, Aragon, and Naples,^ and of the vast Spanish
possessions in America — to mention a few of his more
important titles.
1 See above, pp. 483-484.
2 Austria Burgundy Castile Aragon Naples, etc.
(America )
Maximilian I =r Mar)' (d. 14S2), Isabella = Ferdinand (d. 15 16)
(d. 1519) I dau. of Charles (d. 1504) !
I the Bold (d. 1477) |
Philip (d. 1506) Joanna the Insane (d. 1555)

Charles V (d. 1558) Ferdinand (d. 1564) = Anna, heiress to kingdoms

Emperor. 15 19-1556 Emperor, 1556-1564 of Bohemia and Hungary
•3 Naples and Sicily were in the hands of the king of Aragon at this time
(p. 459).
 Emperor Charles V and his Vast Realms 567

Ferdinand died in 15 16, and Charles, now a lad of sixteen, Charles and
who had been born and reared in the Netherlands, was much posseSns
bewildered when he first landed in his Spanish dominions. The
Burgundian advisers whom he brought with him were distasteful

Fig. 205. Charles V at the Age of 48, by Titian

to the haughty Spaniards, to whom, of course, they were for-

eigners; suspicion and opposition awaited him in each of his
several Spanish kingdoms, for he found by no means a united
Spain. Each kingdom demanded special recognition of its rights
and proposed important reforms before it would acknowledge
Charles as its king.

I
 Outlines of European History
568
Charles It seemed as if the boy would have his hands full in assert-
elected Em-
peror, 15 19 ing his authority as the first " king of Spain " ; nevertheless, a
still more imposing title and still more perplexing responsibilities
were to fall upon his shoulders before he was twenty years old.
It had long been Maximilian's ambition that his grandson
should succeed him upon the imperial throne. After his death
in 15 19 the electors finally chose Charles as Emperor — the
fifth of that name — instead of the rival candidate, Francis I
of France. By this election the king-of Spain, who had not yet
been in Germany and who never learned its language, became
its ruler at a critical juncture, when the teachings of Luther
(see next chapter) were adding a new kind of trouble to the
old disorders.

Section 99. How Italy became the Battleground

OF THE European Powers

In order to understand the Europe of Charles V and the

constant wars which occupied him all his life, we must turn
back and review the questions which had been engaging the
attention of his fellow kings before he came to the throne. It
is particularly necessary to see clearly how Italy had suddenly
become the center of commotion — the battlefield for Spain,
France, and Germany.
Charles VIII
of France Charles VIII of France (i 483-1 498) possessed little of the
invades Italy practical sagacity of his father, Louis XI (pp. 435-436). He
dreamed of a mighty expedition against the Turks and of the
conquest of Constantinople. As the first step he determined to
lead an army into Italy and assert his claim, inherited from his
father, to the kingdom of 'Naples, which was in the hands of
the House of Aragon.^ While Italy had everything to lose by
1 It will be remembered that the popes, in their long struggle with Frederick II
and the Hohenstaufens, finally called in Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis,
and gave to him both Naples and Sicily (see above, pp. 456 ff.). Sicily revolted
in 1282 and was united with the kingdom of Aragon, which still held it when
 Emperor Charles V and his Vast Realms 569

permitting a powerful foreign monarch to get a foothold in the

South, there was no probability that the various little states
into which the peninsula was divided would lay aside their
animosities and combine against the invader. On the contrary,
Charles A'lII was urged by some of the Italians themselves
to come.
Had Lorenzo the Magnificent still been alive, he might have Savonarola
organized a league to oppose the French king, but he had died ^^m
in 1492, two years before Charles started. Lorenzo's sons
failed to maintain the influence over the people of Florence
which their father had enjoyed ; and the leadership of the city
fell into the hands of the Dominican friar, Savonarola, whose
fervid preaching attracted and held for a time the attention of
the fickle Florentine populace. He believed himself to be a
prophet, and proclaimed that God was about to scourge Italy
for its iniquities.
When Savonarola heard of the French invasion, it appeared Charles vi 11
to him that this was indeed the looked-for scourge of God,
which might afflict, but would also purify, the Church. As
Charles approached Florence, the people rose in revolt against
the Medici, sacked their palaces, and drove out the three sons
of Lorenzo. Savonarola became the chief figure in the new
republic which was established.^ Charles was admitted into
Florence, but his ugly, insignificant figure disappointed the
Florentines. They soon made it clear to him that they did not
regard him in any sense as a conqueror, and would oppose a
prolonged occupation by the French. So, after a week's stay,
the French army left Florence and proceeded on its southward
journey.
Charles V came to the Spanish throne. Naples also was conquered by the king
of Aragon, and was in his family when Charles ^'III undertook his Italian
expedition. Louis XI, although he claimed the right of the French to rule in
Naples, had prudently refused to attempt to oust the Aragonese usurpers, as he
had quite enough to do at home.
1 The fate of Savonarola was a tragic one. He lost the confidence of the
Florentines and aroused the opposition of the Pope. Three years after Charles
VI IPs visit he was accused of heresy and executed.
 570 Outlines of European History

Attitude of The next power with which Charles had to deal was the Pope,
°P^ who ruled over the states of the Church. The Pope was greatly
perturbed when he realized that the French army was upon
him. He naturally dreaded to have a foreign power in control
of southern Italy just as his predecessors had dreaded the efforts
of the Hohenstaufen to add Naples to their empire. He was
unable, however, to oppose the French and they proceeded on
their way.
Charles VIII The success of the French king seemed marvelous, for even
unconquered Naples speedily fell into his hands. But he and his troops were
demoralized by the wines and other pleasures of the South, and
meanwhile his enemies at last began to form a combination
against him. Ferdinand of Aragon was fearful lest he might
lose Sicily, and Emperor Maximilian objected to having the
French control Italy. Charles's situation became so dangerous
that he may well have thought himself fortunate, at the close
of 1495, to escape, with the loss of only a single battle, from
the countr}' he had hoped to conquer.
Results of The results of Charles VIII's expedition appear at first sight
expedition trivial : in reality they were momentous. In the first place, it
was now clear to Europe that the Italians had no real national
feeling, however much they might despise the " barbarians "
who lived north of the Alps. From this time down to the
latter half of the nineteenth centur}^, Italy was dominated by
foreign nations, especially Spain and Austria. In the second
place, the French learned to admire the art and culture of Italy
(section 97). The nobles began to change their feudal castles,
which since the invention of gunpowder were no longer im-
pregnable, into luxurious palaces and countr}^ houses. The new
scholarship of Italy also took root and flourished not only in
France but in England and Germany as well, and Greek began
to be studied outside of Italy. Consequently, just as Italy was
becoming, politically, the victim of foreign aggressions, it was also
losing, never to regain, that intellectual leadership which it had
enjoyed since the revival of interest in Latin and Greek literature.
 Einpejv}' Chaj'les V and his Vast Reahns 5/1

It would be wearisome and unprofitable to follow the at-

tempts of the French to get a foothold in Milan. Suffice it
to say, that Charles VIII soon died and that his successor
Louis XII laid claim to the duchy of Milan in the north as w^ell as
to Naples in the south. But he concluded to sell his claim to

Fig. 206. Francis I

Naples to Ferdinand of Aragon and centered his attention on

holding Milan, but did not succeed in his purpose, largely owing
to the opposition of the Pope.
Francis I, who came to the French throne in 15 15 at the age
of twenty, is one of the most famous of the French kings. He
was gracious and chivalrous in his ideas of conduct, and his
proudest title was " the gentleman king." Like his contempo-
raries, Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, and Henry
VIII of England, he helped artists and men of letters and was
interested in fine buildings (Fig. 207).
 Outlines of Ejiropcaii History
572
Francis I Francis opened his reign by a very astonishing victory. He
in Italy
led his troops into Italy over a pass which had hitherto been
regarded as impracticable for cavalry and defeated the Swiss
— who were in the Pope's pay — at Marignano. He then

Fig. 207. Court of the Palace at Blois

The expedition of Charles VIII to Italy called the attention of French

architects to the beautiful Renaissance style used there. As cannon
had by this time begun to render the old kind of castles with thick
walls and towers useless as a means of defense, the French kings
began to construct magnificent palaces of which several still exist.
Charles VIII's successor, Louis XII, began a handsome structure at
Blois, on the Loire River, and Francis I added a wing, the inner side of
which is here reproduced. Its magnificent open staircase and wide, high
windows have little in common with the old donjons of feudal times

occupied Milan and opened negotiations with Leo X, who was

glad to make terms with the victorious young king. The Pope
agreed that Francis should retain Milan, and Francis on his
The republic
of Florence
becomes the part acceded to Leo's plan for turning over Florence once more
grand duchy to the Medici, of which family the Pope himself was a member.
of Tuscany This was done, and some years later this wonderful republic
 Empero7' CJiarles V and his Vast Rcabns 573

became the grand duchy of Tuscany, governed by a line of petty

princes under whom its former glories were never renewed.
Friendly relations existed at first between the two young Sources of
sovereigns, Francis I and Charles V, but there were several beuv^een
circumstances which led to an almost incessant series of wars France
and the
between them. France was clamped in between the northern Hapsburgs
and southern possessions of Charles, and had at that time no
natural boundaries. Moreover, there was a standing dispute
over portions of the Burgundian realms, for both Charles and
Francis claimed the ducliy of Burgundy and also the neighboring
cou?ity Q>i Burgundy — commonly called PYanche-Comte (see ac-
companying map). Charles also believed that, through his grand-
father, Maximilian, he was entitled to Milan, which the French
kings had set their hearts upon retaining. For a generation the
rivals fought over these and other matters, and the wars be-
tween Charles and Francis were but the prelude to a conflict
lasting over two centuries between France and the overgrown
power of the House of Hapsburg.
In the impending struggle it was natural that both monarchs Henry viri
should Xxy to gain the aid of the king of England, whose friend- i509-f547 '
ship w^as of the greatest importance to each of them, and who
was by no means loath to take a hand in European affairs.
Henry VHI had succeeded his father, Henry VH, in 1509
at the age of eighteen. Like Francis, he was good-looking and
graceful, and in his early years made a very happy impression
upon those who came in contact with him. He gained much
popularity by condemning to death the two men who had been
most active in extorting the '* benevolences " which his father
had been wont to require of unwilling givers. With a small but
important class, his learning brought him credit. He married,
for his first wife, an aunt of Charles V, Catherine of Aragon,
and chose as his chief adviser Thomas Wolsey, whose career
and sudden downfall were to be strangely associated with the
fate of the unfortunate Spanish princess.^
1 See below, pp. 609-611.
 574 Oiitlifics of Ejiropcan History
Charles V In 1520 Charles V started for Germany to receive the
goes to
Germany imperial crown at Aix-la-Chapelle. On his way he landed in
England with the purpose of keeping Henry from forming an
alliance with PYancis. He judged the best means to be that
of freely bribing Wolsey, who had been made a cardinal by
Leo X, and who was all-powerful with Henr}^ Charles there-
fore bestowed on the cardinal a large annuity in addition to
one which he had granted him somewhat earlier. He then set
sail for the Netherlands, where he was duly crowned king of
the Romans. From there he proceeded, for the first time, to
Germany, where he summoned his first diet at Worms.

Section 100. Condition of Germany when

Charles V became Emperor

Germany of To US to-day, Germany means the German Empire, one of

to-day
the three or four best organized and most powerful of the
European states. It is a compact federation, somewhat like
that of the United States, made up of twenty-two monarchies
and three little city-republics. Each member of the union man-
ages its local affairs, but leaves all questions of national impor-
tance to be settled by the central government at Berlin. This
federation is, however, less than half a century old.
The " Ger- In the time of Charles V there was no such Germany as this,
manics "of
the sixteenth
century but only what the French called the " Germanics " ; that is, two
or three hundred states, which differed greatly from one another
in size and character. This one had a duke, that a count, at its
head, while others were ruled over by archbishops, bishops, or
abbots. There were many cities, like Nuremberg, Frankfort, and
Cologne, which were just as independent as the great duchies
of Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Saxony. Lastly there were the
knights, whose possessions might consist of no more than a
single strong castle with a wretched village lying at its foot.
Weakness of
As for the Emperor, he no longer had any power to control
the Emperor
his vassals. He could boast of unlimited pretensions and great
 Emperor CJiaides V and his Vast Realms 575

traditions, but he had neither money nor soldiers. At the time

of Luther's birth the poverty-stricken Frederick III (Maxi-
milian's father) might have been seen picking up a free meal
at a monastery or ,
riding behind a slow
but economical ox
team. The real .Mil^^llr^
power in Germany
lay in the hands of
the more important
vassals.
First and fore-
most among these were the
seven electors, so called be-
cause, since the thirteenth cen-
tury, they had enjoyed the
right to elect the Emperor.
Three of them were arch-
bishops — kings in all but
name of considerable terri-
tories on the Rhine, namely,
the electorates of Mayence,
Treves, and Cologne. Near
Fig. 208. The Walls of
them, to the south, was the
rothenburg
region ruled over by the elector
of the Palatinate ; to the One town in Germany, Rothen-
northeast were the territories burg, on the little river Tauber,
once a free imperial city, retains
of the electors of Brandenburg its old walls and towers intact and
and of Saxony ; the king of many of its old houses. It gives
the visitor an excellent idea of how
Bohemia made the seventh of
the smaller imperial towns looked
the group. two or three hundred years ago
Beside these states, the do-
minions of other rulers scarcely less important than the electors
appear on the map. Some of these territories, like Wiirtemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse, and Baden, are familiar to us to-day as members
 576 Outlines of European History

of the present German Empire, but all of them have been much
enlarged since the sixteenth century by the absorption of the
little states that formerly lay within and about them.
The towns The towns, which had grown up since the great economic
revolution that had brought in commerce and the use of money
in the thirteenth century, were centers of culture in the north of
Europe, just as those of Italy were in the south. Nuremberg,
the most beautiful of the German cities, still possesses a great
many of the extraordinary buildings and works of art which it
produced in the sixteenth century. Some of the towns were
immediate vassals of the Emperor and were consequently in-
dependent of the particular prince within whose territory they
were situated. These were called free, or imperial, cities and
must be reckoned among the states of Germany (Fig. 208).
The knights, who ruled over the smallest of the German
territories, had earlier formed a very important class, but the
introduction of gunpowder and new methods of fighting put
them at a disadvantage, for they clung to their medieval tra-
ditions. Their tiny realms were often too small to support them,
and they frequently turned to robbery for a living and proved a
great nuisance to the merchants and townspeople whom they
plundered now and then.
No central It is clear that these states, litde and big, all tangled up with
power to
maintain one another, would be sure to have disputes among themselves
order
which would have to be settled in some way. The Emperor was
not powerful enough to keep order, and the result was that each
Neighbor- ruler had to defend himself if attacked. Neighborhood war was
hood war • i i i -r i i- • •
permitted by law it only some courteous preliminaries were
observed. For instance, a prince or town was required to
give warning three days in advance before attacking another
member of the Empire (see above, section 67).
Germany had a national assembly, called the diet, which met
at irregular intervals, now in one town and now in another, for
Germany had no capital city. The towns were not permitted
to send delegates until 1487, long after the townspeople were
 Empe7'or Chai'les ]^ and his Vast Realms 577

represented in France and England. The restless knights and

other minor nobles were not represented at all and consequently
did not always consider the decisions of the diet binding
upon them.
It was this diet that Charles V summoned to meet him on the
Rhine, in the ancient town of Worms, when he made his first
visit to Germany in 1520. The most important business of the
assembly proved to be the consideration of the case of a uni-
versity professor, Martin Luther, who was accused of writing
heretical books, and who had in reality begun what proved to
be the first successful revolt against the seemingly all-powerful
Medieval Church.

QUESTIONS
Section 98. When and how did the House of Hapsburg become
important.? What marriages were arranged by Maximilian I which
affected the history of Europe ? How did Spain become a powerful
kingdom.? Over what countries did Ferdinand and Isabella rule?
What was the extent of Charles V's dominions?
Section 99. Describe the Italian expedition of Charles VIII.
What were its results? What were the causes of trouble between
the French kings and the Hapsburgs? What are your impressions
of Francis I ? of Henry VIII ?
Section too. Contrast Germany in Charles V's time with the
German Empire of to-day. Who were the knights? the electors?
What was the German diet? Why was the Emperor unable to
maintain order in Germany ?
 CHAPTER XXIV

MARTIN LUTHER AND THE REVOLT OF GERMANY

AGAINST THE PAPACY

Section ioi. The Question of Reforming the

Church : Erasmus

Break-up of By far the most important event during the reign of Charles V
the Medieval
Church was the revolt of a considerable portion of western Europe
against the popes. The Medieval Church, which was described
in a previous chapter, was in this way broken up, and Protes-
ta?it churches appeared in various European countries which
declared themselves entirely independent of the Pope and re-
jected a number of the religious beliefs which ever}^ one had
held previously.
Europe With the exception of England all those countries that lay
divided into
Catholic and within the ancient bounds of the Roman Empire — Italy,
Protestant
countries France, Spain, Portugal, as well as southern Germany and
Austria — continued to be faithful to the Pope and the Roman
Catholic Church. On the other hand, the rulers of the northern
German states, of England, Holland, Denmark, Nonvay, and
Sweden, sooner or later became Protestants. In this way
Europe was divided into two great religious parties, and this
led to terrible wars and cruel persecutions which fill the annals
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Sources of The revolt began in Germany. The Germans, while good
discontent
with the Catholics, were suspicious of the popes, whom they regarded as
Church,
especially in Italians, bent upon getting as much money as possible out of
Germany the simple people north of the Alps. The revenue flowing to
the popes from Germany was very large. The great German
prelates, like the archbishops of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne.

578
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 5 79

were each expected to contribute no less than ten thousand

gold guldens to the papal treasury upon having their election
confirmed by the church authorities at Rome. The Pope en-
joyed the right to fill many important church offices in Germany,
and frequently appointed Italians, who drew the revenue with-
out performing the duties attached to the office. A single per-
son frequently held several church offices. For example, early
in the sixteenth century, the archbishop of Mayence was at the
same time archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Halberstadt.
There were instances in which a single person had accumulated
over a score of benefices.
It is impossible to exaggerate the impression of widespread
discontent with the condition of the Church which one meets
in the writings of the early sixteenth century. The whole Ger-
man people, from the rulers down to the humblest tiller of the
fields, felt themselves unjustly used. The clergy were denounced
as both immoral and inefficient. While the begging friars — the
Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians ^ — were scorned
by many, they, rather than the ordinary priests, appear to have
carried on the real religious work.
At first, however, no one thought of withdrawing from the
Church or of attempting to destroy the power of the Pope. All
that the Germans wanted was that the money which flowed
toward Rome should be kept at home, and that the clergy
should be upright, earnest men who should conscientiously
perform their religious duties.
Among the critics of the Church in the early days of Charles V's Erasmus,
reign the most famous and influential was Erasmus. He was ^^ ^ ^^
a Dutchman by birth, but spent his life in various other coun-
tries — France, England, Italy, and Germany. He was a citizen
of the world and in correspondence with literary men every-
where, so that his letters give us an excellent idea of the
feeling of the times. He was greatly interested in the Greek
1 The Augustinian order, to which Luther belonged, was organized in the
thirteenth century, a Httle later than the Dominican and the Franciscan.
58o Outlines of European History

and Latin authors, but his main purpose in life was to better
the Church. He was well aware of the bad reputation of many
of the clergymen of the time and he especially disliked the

Fig. 209. Portrait of Erasmus, by Holbein

This wonderful picture by Hans Holbein the Younger (i 497-1 543)

hangs in the Louvre gallery at Paris. We have every reason to suppose
that it is an excellent portrait, for Holbein lived in Basel a considerable
part of his life and knew Erasmus well. The artist was, moreover,
celebrated for his skill in catching the likeness when depicting the
human face. He later painted several well-known Englishmen, including
Henry VHI and his little son Edward VI (see Fig. 214)

monks, for when he was a boy he had been forced into a

monastery, much against his will.
It seemed to Erasmus that if ever)'body could read the Bible,
especially the New Testament, for themselves, it would bring
about a great change for the better. He wanted to have the
Gospels and the letters of Paul translated into the language
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 581

of the people so that men and women who did not know Latin
could read them and be helped by them.
Erasmus believed that the two arch enemies of true religion Erasmus'
were
Italian(i) paganism,fellinto
Humanists whichadmiration
in their many offorthethemore
Greekenthusiastic
and Latin reHgion ^"^
writers ; and (2) the popular confidence in outward acts and
ceremonies, like visiting the graves of saints, the mere repetition
of prayers, and so forth. He claimed that the Church had be-
come careless and had permitted the simple teachings of Christ
to be buried under myriads of dogmas introduced by the theo-
logians.The
" essence of our religion," he says, " is peace and
harmony. These can only exist where there are few dogmas and
each individual is left to form his own opinion upon many matters."
In a little book called The Praise of Polly ^ Erasmus has much in his Praise
to say of the weaknesses of the monks and theologians, and of Erasmus
the foolish people who thought that religion consisted simply in attacks the
pilgrimages, the worship of relics, and the procuring of indul- Church
gences. Scarcely one of the abuses which Luther later attacked
escaped Erasmus' pen. The book is a mixture of the lightest
humor and the bitterest earnestness. As one turns its pages
one is sometimes tempted to think Luther half right when he
declared Erasmus " a regular jester who makes sport of every-
thing, even of religion and Christ himself."
Yet there was in this humorist a deep seriousness that cannot
be ignored. Erasmus believed, however, that revolt from the
Pope and the Church would produce a great disturbance and
result in more harm than good. He preferred to trust in the
slower but surer effects of education and knowledge. Supersti-
tions and the undue regard for the outward forms of religion
would, he argued, be outgrown and quietly disappear as man-
kind became more cultivated.
He believed, moreover, that the time was favorable for reform. Erasmus

As he looked about him he beheld intelligent rulers on the times^favor^

thrones of Europe, men interested in books and art and ready ^^J^^^"^
to help scholars and writers. There was Henry VIII of England
 Outlines of European History
582
and Francis I of France. Then the Pope himself, Leo X, the
son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was a friend and admirer of
Erasmus and doubtless sympathized with many of his views.
The youthful Charles V had advisers who believed Erasmus to
be quite right and were ready to work toward a reform of the
Church. Charles was a devout Catholic, but he too agreed that
there were many evils to be remedied. So it seemed to Erasmus
that the prospects were excellent for a peaceful reform ; but, in-
stead of its coming, his latter years were embittered by Luther's
revolt and all the ill-feelings and dissensions that it created.

Section 102. How Martin Luther revolted

AGAINST the PaPACY

Martin Luther was born in 1483. He was the son of a poor

miner, and he often spoke in later life of the poverty and super-
stition in which his boyhood was spent. His father, however,
was determined that his son should be a lawyer, and so Martin
was sent to the Lmiversity of Erfurt. After he finished his college
course and was about to take up the study of the law he sud-
denly decided to become a monk. He summoned his college
friends for a last evening together, and the next morning he
led them to the gate of a monastery, bade them and the world
farewell, and became a begging friar.
Luther He was much worried about his soul and feared that nothing
becomes a
professor he could do would save him from hell. He finally found comfort
in the thought that in order to be saved he had only to believe
sincerely that God would save him, and that he could not
possibly save himself by trying to be good. He gained the re-
spect of the head of the monaster}^ and when Frederick the Wise
of Saxony (Fig. 211) was looking about for teachers in his new
university at Wittenberg, Luther was recommended as a good
person to teach Aristotle ; so he became a professor.
Luther
discards As time went on Luther began to be suspicious of some of
Aristotle the things that were taught in the university. He finally decided
 AeTHERNA IPvSE SVAE mentis SIMVLACHRi LVTHEFyS
EXPIRIMITXTWITVS CERA LVCAE OCaDVOS

Fig. 2IO. Luther as a Monk, by Cranach, 1520

None of the portraits of Luther are very satisfactory. His friend
Cranach was not, like Holbein the Younger, a great portrait painter.
This cut shows the reformer when his revolt against the Church was just
beginning. He was thirty-seven years old and still in the dress of an
Augustinian friar, which he soon abandoned

583
 584 Outlines of EiiJ'opeaji History
that Aristotle was after all only an ancient heathen who knew
nothing about Christianity and that the students had no business
to study his works. He urged them to rely instead upon the
Bible, especially the letters of St. Paul, and upon the writings of
St. Augustine, who closely followed Paul in many respects.
Luther's Luther's main point was that man, through Adam's sin, had
idea of
salvation become so corrupt that he could, of himself, do nothing pleas-
ing to God. He could only hope to be saved through faith in
God's promise to save those who should repent. Consequently
" good works," such as attending church, going on pilgrimages,
repeating prayers, and visiting relics of the saints, could do
nothing for a sinner if he was not already "justified by faith,"
that is, made acceptable to God by his faith in God's promises.
If he was "justified," then he might properly go about his daily
duties, for they would be pleasing to God without what the
Church was accustomed to regard as " good works."
Luther's teachings did not attract much attention until the
year 1 5 1 7 , when he was thirty-four years old. Then something
occurred to give him considerable prominence.
Collection The fact has already been mentioned that the popes had
for rebuild-
ing St. Peters undertaken the rebuilding of St. Peter's, the great central church
of Christendom (see above, p. 525). The cost of the enterprise
was very great, and in order to collect contributions for the
purpose. Pope Leo X arranged for an extensive distribution
of indulgefues in Germany.
Indulgences
In order to understand the nature of indulgences and Luther's
opposition to them, we must consider the teaching of the Catholic
Church in regard to the forgiveness of sin. The Church taught
that if one died after committing a serious (" mortal ") sin of
which he had not repented and confessed, his soul would cer-
tainly be lost. If he sincerely repented and confessed his sin
to a priest, God would forgive him and his soul would be saved,
but he would not thereby escape punishment. This punishment
might consist in fasting, saying certain prayers, going on a pil-
grimage, or doing some other "good work." It was assumed,
 The Revolt of Geinnaiiy against the Papacy 585

however, that most men committed so many sins that even if

they died repentant, they had to pass through a long period in
purgatory, where they would be purified by suffering before
they could enter heaven.
Now an indulgence was a pardon, issued usually by the Pope
himself, which freed the person to whom it was granted from
a part or all of his sufferi?ig in purgatory. It did not forgive
his sins or in any way take the place of true repentance and
confession ; it only reduced the punishment which a truly
contrite sinner would otherwise have had to endure, either
in this world or in purgatory, before he could be admitted to
heaven.^
The contribution to the Church which was made in return for
indulgences varied greatly ; the rich were required to give a con-
siderable sum, while the very poor were to receive these pardons
gratis. The representatives of the Pope were naturally anxious
to collect all the money possible, and did their best to induce
every one to secure an indulgence, either for himself or for his
deceased friends in purgatory. In their zeal they made many
claims for the indulgences, to which no thoughtful churchman
or even layman could listen without misgivings.
In October, 15 17, Tetzel, a Dominican monk, began granting Luther's
indulgences in the neighborhood of Wittenberg, and making indulgenc
claims for them which appeared to Luther wholly irreconcilable
with the deepest truths of Christianity as he understood and
taught them. He therefore, in accordance with the custom of
the time, wrote out a series of ninety-five statements in regard
to indulgences. These theses, as they were called, he posted on
the church door and invited any one interested in the matter to
enter into a discussion with him on the subject, which he believed
was very ill understood.
1 It is a common mistake of Protestants to suppose that the indulgence was
forgiveness granted beforehand for sins to be committed in the future. There is
absolutely no foundation for this idea. A person proposing to sin could not pos-
sibly be contrite in the eyes of the Church, and even if he secured an indulgence,
it would, according to the theologians, have been quite worthless.
 Outlities of Eitivpcau History
586

Fig. 211. Portrait of Frederick the Wise, by

Albrecht DiJRER

Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, was very proud of the univer-
sity that he founded at Wittenberg, and, while he was a devout Catholic
and seems hardly to have understood what Luther stood for, he pro-
tected his professor and did not propose to have him tried for heresy
by the Church. The portrait is a fine example of the work of the artist
who distinguished himself as both a painter and an engraver

In posting these theses, Luther did not intend to attack the

Church, and had no expectation of creating a sensation. The
theses were in Latin and addressed, therefore, only to learned
men. It turned out, however, that every one, high and low, learned
and unlearned, was ready to discuss the perplexing theme of the
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 587

nature of indulgences. The theses were promptly translated into Contents of

German, printed, and scattered abroad throughout the land. In these^^
these Ninety-five Theses Luther declared that the indulgence was
very unimportant and that the poor man would better spend his
money for the needs of his household. The truly repentant, he
argued, do not flee punishment, but bear it willingly in sign of
their sorrow. Faith in God, not the procuring of pardons, brings
forgiveness, and every Christian who feels true sorrow for
his sins will receive full remission of the punishment as well as
of the guilt. Could the Pope know how his agents misled the
people, he would rather have St. Peter's burn to ashes than
build it up with money gained under false pretenses. Then,
Luther adds, there is danger that the common man will ask
awkward questions. For example, " If the Pope releases souls
from purgatory for money, why not for charity's sake ? " or,
" Since the Pope is rich as Croesus, why does he not build
St. Peter's with his own money, instead of taking that of the
poor man ? "
Luther now began to read church history and reached the Luther
conclusion that the influence of the popes had not been very suspicious of
great until the times of Gregory VII (sections 75-76), and the papacy
therefore that they had not enjoyed their supremacy over the
Church for more than four hundred years before his own birth.
He was mistaken in this conclusion, but he had hit upon an
argument that has been constantly urged by Protestants ever
since. They assert that the power of the Medieval Church and
of the papacy developed gradually and that the apostles knew
nothing of masses, indulgences, pilgrimages, purgatory, or the
headship of the bishop of Rome.
The publication of Luther's theses brought him many sympa- Wide diffu-
thizers in Germany. Some were attracted by his protests against Luther's
the ways in which the popes raised money, and others liked him works
for attacking Aristotle and the scholastic theologians. Erasmus'
publisher at Basel agreed to publish Luther's books, of which
he sent copies to Italy, France, England, and Spain, and in this
 Outlines of European History
5 8 8
way the Wittenberg monk began before long to be widely known
outside of Germany as well as within it.
Erasmus' But Erasmus himself, the mighty sovereign of the men of
attitude
toward the letters, refused to take sides in the controversy. He asserted that
Lutheran
movement he had not read more than a dozen pages of Luther's writings.
Although he admitted that " the monarchy of the Roman high
priest was, in its existing condition, the pest of Christendom," he
believed that a direct attack upon it would do no good. Luther,
he urged, would better be discreet and trust that as mankind
became more intelligent they would outgrow their false ideas.
Contrast To Erasmus, man was capable of progress ; cultivate him and
between
Luther and extend his knowledge, and he would grow better and better.
Erasmus
He was, moreover, a free agent, with, on the whole, upright
tendencies. To Luther, on the other hand, man was utterly cor-
rupt, and incapable of a single righteous wish or deed. His
will was enslaved to evil, and his only hope lay in the recogni-
tion of his absolute inability to better himself, and in a humble
reliance upon God's mercy. By faith only, not by conduct,
could he be saved.
Erasmus was willing to wait until every one agreed that the
Church should be reformed. Luther had no patience with an
institution which seemed to him to be leading souls to destruc-
tion by inducing men to rely upon their good works. Both men
realized that they could never agree. For a time they expressed
respect for each other, but at last they became involved in a
bitter controversy in which they gave up all pretense to friend-
ship. Erasmus declared that Luther, by scorning good works
and declaring that no one could do right, had made his follow-
ers indifferent to their conduct, and that those who accepted
Luther's teachings straightway became pert, rude fellows, who
would not take off their hats to him on the street.
Luther By 1520, Luther, who gave way at times to his naturally
begins to
use violent violent disposition, had become threatening and abusive and
language
suggested that the German rulers should punish the church-
men and force them to reform their conduct. " We punish
 The Revolt of Ge7'niany against the Papaey 589
thieves with the gallows, bandits with the sword, heretics with
fire ; why should we not, with far greater propriety, attack with
every kind of weapon these very masters of perdition, the cardi-
nals and popes." "The die is cast," he writes to a friend; "I
despise Rome's wrath as I do her favor ; I will have no recon-
ciliation or intercourse with her in all time to come. Let her
condemn and bum my writings. I will, if fire can be found,
publicly condemn and burn the whole papal law."
Luther had gained the support of a German knight named Luther's and
Ulrich von Hutten, who was an ardent enemy of the popes. appeaUothe
He and Luther vied with one another during the year 1520 in German
attacking the Pope and his representatives. They both pos-
sessed afine command of the German language, and they were
fired by a common hatred of Rome. Hutten had little or none
of Luther's religious fervor, but he was a born fighter and he
could not find colors dark enough in which to picture to his coun-
trymen the greed of the papal curia, which he described as a
vast den, to- which everything was dragged which could be
filched from the Germans.
Of Luther's popular pamphlets, the first really famous one Luther's
was his Address to the German Nobility, in which he calls upon \jl^ German
the rulers of Germany, especially the knights, to reform the Mobility
abuses themselves, since he believed that it was vain to wait
for the Church to do so. He explains that there are three walls
behind which the papacy had been wont to take refuge when
any one proposed to remedy its abuses. There was, first, the
claim that the clergy formed a separate class, superior even to
the civil rulers, who were not permitted to punish a churchman,
no matter how bad he was. Secondly, the Pope claimed to be
superior even to the great general assemblies of the Church,
called councils, so that even the representatives of the Church
itself might not correct him. And, lastly, the Pope assumed the
sole right, when questions of belief arose, to interpret with
authority the meaning of the Scriptures ; consequently he could
not be refuted by arguments from the Bible.
 Outlines of E^iropean History
590
Luther undertook to cast down these defenses by denying, to
begin with, that there was anything especially sacred about a
clergyman except the duties which he had been designated to
perform. If he did not attend to his work, it should be possible
to deprive him of his office at any moment, just as one would
turn off an incompetent tailor or farmer, and in that case he
should become a simple layman again. Luther claimed, more-
over, that it was the right and duty of the civil government to
punish a churchman who does wrong just as if he were the
humblest layman. When this first wall was destroyed the others
would fall easily enough, for the dominant position of the clergy
was the very cornerstone of the Medieval Church.
Luther advo-
cates social
The Address to the German Nobility closes with a long list
as well as of evils which must be done away with before Germany can
religious
reforms become prosperous. Luther saw that his view of religion really
implied a social revolution. He advocated reducing the monas-
teries to a tenth of their number and permitting those monks
who were disappointed in the good they got from living in them
freely to leave. He would • not have the monasteries prisons,
but hospitals and refuges for the soul-sick. He points out the
evils of pilgrimages and of the numerous church holidays, which
interfered with daily work. The clergy, he urged, should be
permitted to marry and have families like other citizens. The
universities should be reformed, and " the accursed heathen,
Aristotle," should be cast out from them.
It should be noted that Luther appeals to the authorities
not in the name of religion chiefly, but in that of public order
and prosperity. He says that the money of the Germans flies
" feather-light " over the Alps to Italy, but it immediately be-
comes like lead when there is a question of its coming back.
He showed himself a master of vigorous language, and his
denunciations of the clergy and the Church resounded like a
trumpet call in the ears of his countrymen.^
1 Luther had said little of the doctrines of the Church in his Address to the
German Nobility^ but within three or four months he issued a second work, in
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 591

Luther had long expected to be excommunicated. But it was Luthe

excommuni
not until late in 1520 that John Eck, a personal enemy of his, ^ated
arrived in Germany with a papal bull (Fig. 212) condemning
many of Luther's assertions as heretical and giving him sixty
days in which to recant. Should he fail to return to his senses
within that time, he and all who adhered to or favored him
were to be excommunicated, and any place which harbored him
should fall under the interdict. Now, since the highest power in
Christendom had pronounced Luther a heretic, he should un-
hesitatingly have been delivered up by the German authorities.
But no one thought of arresting him.
The bull irritated the German princes ; whether they liked The German
Luther or not, they decidedly disliked to have the Pope issuing reluctant to
commands to them. Then it appeared to them very unfair that buu^a ^aSJt
Luther's personal enemy should have been intrusted with the Luther
publication of the bull. Even the princes and universities that
were most friendly to the Pope published the bull with great
reluctance. In many cases the bull was ignored altogether.
Luther's own sovereign, the elector of Saxony, while no con-
vert to the new views, was anxious that Luther's case should
be fairly considered, and continued to protect him. One mighty
prince, however, the young Emperor Charles V, promptly and
willingly published the bull ; not, however, as Emperor, but as
ruler of the Austrian dominions and of the Netherlands. Luther's
works were publicly burned at Louvain, Mayence, and Cologne,
the strongholds of the old theology.
The Wittenberg professor felt himself forced to oppose him- Luther defies
self to both Pope and Emperor. " Hard it is," he exclaimed, Ernperor,
" to be forced to contradict all the prelates and princes, but p"™e>s^bull
there is no other way to escape hell and God's anger." Late 1520
which he sought to overthrow the whole system of the sacraments, as it had
been taught by the theologians. Four of the seven sacraments — ordination,
marriage, confirmation, and extreme unction — he rejected altogether. He re-
vised the conception of the Mass, or the Lord's Supper. The priest was, in
his eyes, only a minister, in the Protestant sense of the word, one of whose
chief functions was preaching.
 Outlines of Ejiropeaii History
5 9 2
in 1520 he summoned his students to witness what he called
"a pious religious spectacle." He had a fire built outside the
walls of Wittenberg and cast into it Leo X's bull condemning him,

crfcquartum.

Fig. 212. The Papal Bull directed against Luther, 1521

This is a much-reduced reproduction of the title-page of the Pope's bull

" against the errors of Martin Luther and his followers " as it was
printed and distributed in Germany. The coat of arms with its "balls"
is that of the Medici family to which Leo X belonged

and a copy of the Laws of the Church, together with a volume

of scholastic theology which he specially disliked.
Yet Luther dreaded disorder. He was certainly sometimes
reckless and violent in his writings and often said that bloodshed
 The Revolt of Germmty against the Papacy 593

could not be avoided when it should please God to visit his Luther's
a
judgments upon the stiff-necked and perverse generation of towa"/ violent zationreali-
" Romanists," as the Germans contemptuously called the sup- of his
porters of the Pope. Yet he always discouraged hasty reform, reforms
He was reluctant to make changes, except in belief. He held
that so long as an institution did not actually mislead, it did no
harm. He was, in short, no fanatic at heart.

Section 103. The Diet at Worms, i 520-1 521

The Pope's chief representative in Germany, named Ale- Views of the

ander, wrote as follows to Leo X about this time : "I am sentoti^ve"^^
prettv
" ^ ■nation. I know
of this German
familiar with the history•' on publicin
opinion
their past heresies, councils, and schisms, but never were affairs Germany
so serious before. Compared with present conditions, the struggle
between Henry IV and Gregory VH was as violets and roses.
. . . These mad dogs are now well equipped with knowledge
and arms ; they boast that they are no longer ignorant brutes like
their predecessors ; they claim that Italy has lost the monopoly
of the sciences and that the Tiber now flows into the Rhine.
Nine-tenths of the Germans are shouting ' Luther,' and the other
tenth goes so far at least as ' Death to the Roman curia.' "
Among the enemies of Luther and his supporters none was Charles v's
more important than the young Emperor. It was toward the pathy'^wi^th'"
end of the year 1520 that Charles came to Germany for the ^^foS^™s^"
first time. After being crowned king of the Romans at Aix-
la-Chapelle, he assumed, with the Pope's consent, the title of
Emperor elect, as his grandfather Maximilian had done. He
then moved on to the town of Worms, where he was to hold
his first diet and face the German situation.
Although scarcely more than a boy in years, Charles had
already begun to take life very seriously. He had decided that
Spain, not Germany, was to be the bulwark and citadel of all
his realms. Like the more enlightened of his Spanish subjects,
he realized the need of reforming the Church, but he had no
 594 Outlines of Europe an History

sympathy whatever with any change of religious belief. He

proposed to live and die a devout Catholic of the old type, such
as his orthodox ancestors had been. He felt, moreover, that he
must maintain the same religion in all parts of his heterogeneous
dominions. If he should permit the Germans to declare their
independence of the Church, the next step would be for them
to claim that they had a right to regulate their government
regardless of their Emperor.
Luther sum-
moned to the
Upon arriving at Worms the case of Luther was at once
diet at
Worms forced upon Charles's attention by Aleander, the papal repre-
sentative, who was indefatigable in urging him to outlaw the
heretic without further delay. While Charles seemed convinced
of Luther's guilt, he could not proceed against him without
serious danger. The monk had become a sort of national hero
and had the support of the powerful elector of Saxony. Other
princes, who had ordinarily no wish to protect a heretic, felt
that Luther's denunciation of the evils in the Church and of
the actions of the Pope was very gratifying. After much dis-
cussion itwas finally arranged, to the great disgust of the
zealous Aleander, that Luther should be summoned to Worms
and be given an opportunity to face the German nation and
the Emperor, and to declare plainly whether he was the author
of the heretical books ascribed to him, and whether he still
adhered to the doctrines which the Pope had condemned.
The Emperor accordingly wrote the " honorable and respected "
Luther a very polite letter, desiring him to appear at Worms
and granting him a safe-conduct thither.
Luther be-
fore the diet
It was not, however, proposed to give Luther an opportunity
to defend his beliefs before the diet. When he appeared he
was simply asked if a pile of his Latin and German works
were really his, and, if so, whether he revoked what he had
said in them. To the first question the monk replied in a low
voice that he had written these and more. As to the second
question, which involved the welfare of the soul and the Word
of God, he asked that he might have a little while to consider.
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 595

The following day, in a Latin address which he repeated in

German, he admitted that he had been overviolent in his attacks
upon his opponents ; but he said that no one could deny that,
through the popes' decrees, the consciences of faithful Chris-
tians had been tormented, and their goods and possessions,
especially in Germany, devoured. Should he recant those things
which he had said against the popes' conduct, he would only
strengthen the papal tyranny and give an opportunity for new
usurpations. If, however, adequate arguments against his posi-
tion could be found in the Scriptures, he would gladly and
willingly recant.
There was now nothing for the Emperor to do but to outlaw The Emperor
Luther, who had denied the binding character of the commands lavv'^to outlaw
of the head of the Church. Aleander was accordingly assigned Luther
the agreeable duty of drafting the famous Edict of Worms.
This document declared Luther an outlaw on the following The Edict of

grounds: he questioned
thatsacraments, the recognized number and char- °'^"^^' ^^^^
acter of the impeached the regulations in regard
to the marriage of the clergy, scorned and vilified the Pope,
despised the priesthood and stirred up the laity to dip their
hands in the blood of the clergy, denied free will, taught licen-
tiousness, despised authority, advocated a brutish existence, and
was a menace to Church and State alike. Every one was for-
bidden to give the heretic food, drink, or shelter, and required
to seize him and deliver him to the Emperor.
Moreover, the decree provides that " no one shall dare to
buy, sell, read, preserve, copy, print, or cause to be copied or
printed, any books of the aforesaid Martin Luther, condemned
by our holy father the Pope, as aforesaid, or any other writings
in German or Latin hitherto composed by him, since they are
foul, noxious, suspected, and published by a notorious and stiff-
necked heretic. Neither shall any one dare to affirm his opinions,
or proclaim, defend, or advance them in any other way that human
ingenuity can invent, — notwithstanding that he may have put
some good into his writings in order to deceive the simple man."
 Outlines of European History
596
" I am becoming ashamed of my fatherland," Hutten cried
when he read the Edict of Worms. So general was the dis-
approval ofthe edict that few were willing to pay any attention
to it. Charles V immediately left Germany, and for nearly ten
years was occupied outside it with the government of Spain
and a succession of wars.

Section 104. The Revolt against the Papacy

BEGINS IN Germany

Luther be- As Luther neared Eisenach upon his way home from Worms
gins a new
translation of he was kidnaped by his friends and conducted to the Wart-
the Bible in
the Wartburg burg, a castle belonging to the elector of Saxony. Here
he was concealed until any danger from the action of the
Emperor or diet should pass by. His chief occupation during
several months of hiding was to begin a new translation of
the Bible into German. He had finished the New Testament
before he left the Wartburg in March, 1522.
Luther's Up to this time, German editions of the Scriptures, while
Bible the
first impor-
tant book in not uncommon, had been poor and obscure. Luther's task was
modem
a difficult one. He was anxious above all that the Bible should
German
be put into language that would seem perfectly clear and natural
to the common folk. So he went about asking the mothers and
children and the laborers questions which might draw out the
expression that he was looking for. It sometimes took him
two or three weeks to find the right word. But so well did he
do his work that his Bible may be regarded as a great land-
mark in the history of the German language. It was the first
book of any importance written in modern German, and it has
furnished an imperishable standard for the language.
General dis-
cussion of
Previous to 1 5 18 there had been very few books or pamphlets
public ques- printed in German. The translation of the Bible into language
tions in
pamphlets so simple that even the unlearned might read it was only
and satires
one of the signs of a general effort to awaken the minds of the
common people. Luther's friends and enemies also commenced
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 597

to write for the great German public in its own language.

The common man began to raise his voice, to the scandal
of the learned.
Hundreds of pamphlets, satires, and cartoons have come
down to us which indicate that the religious and other ques-
tions of the day were often treated in somewhat the same
spirit in which our comic papers deal with political problems
and discussions now. We find, for instance, a correspondence
between Leo X and the devil, and a witty dialogue between a
well-known knight, Franz von Sickingen, and St. Peter at the
gate of heaven.
Hitherto there had been a great deal of talk of reform, but Divergent
as yet nothing had actually been done. There was no sharp ^q^ ^i^g
line drawn between the different classes of reformers. All SJ^^'iS^ actu,
should
agreed that something should be done to better the Church ; ally be
few realized how divergent were the real ends in view. The
rulers listened to Luther because they were glad of an excuse
to get control of the church property and keep money from
flowing to Rome. The peasants listened because he put the
Bible in their hands and they found nothing there that proved
that they ought to go on paying the old dues to their lords.
While Luther was quietly living in the Wartburg, translating The revolt
the Bible, people began to put his teachings into practice. The
monks and nuns left their monasteries in his own town of
Wittenberg. Some of them married, which seemed a very
wicked thing to all those that held to the old beliefs. The
students and citizens tore down the images of the saints in
the churches and opposed the celebration of the Mass, the
chief Catholic ceremony.
Luther did not approve of these sudden and violent changes Luther
and left his hiding place to protest. He preached a series of violent
sermons in Wittenberg in which he urged that all alterations "deform
in religious services and practices should be introduced by the
gover?iment and not by the people. He said, however, that those
who wished might leave their monasteries and that those who
 598 Outlines of FAtropeaii His tor)'

chose to stay should give up begging and earn their living like
other people. He predicted that if no one gave any money to
the Church, popes, bishops, monks, and nuns would in two years
vanish away like smoke.
Revolt of the But his counsel was not heeded. First, the German knights
kn%^tr organized a movement to put the new ideas in practice. Franz
von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, admirers of Luther, at-
tacked the archbishop of Treves and proclaimed that they were
going to free his subjects from " the heavy unchristian yoke ot
the ' parsons ' and lead them to evangelical liberty." But the
German princes sided with the archbishop and battered down
Franz von Sickingen's castle with cannon, and Franz was fatally
injured by a falling beam. Twenty other castles of the knights
were destroyed and this put an end to their revolt ; but Luther
and his teachings were naturally blamed as the real reason for
the uprising.
Luther's rash The conservative party, who were frankly afraid of Luther,
the princes received a new and terrible proof, as it seemed to them, of the
and
servesnobles
to en-noxious influence of his teachings. & In ic;2C
j o the serfs rose,' in
courage the
revolt of the
the nam.e
,.,,..,
of " God's
-r
justice,"
i
to avenge their wTongs
•, i r i
and• -iestab-
peasants ush their rights. Luther was not responsible tor the civil war
which followed, though he had certainly helped to stir up dis-
content. He had asserted, for example, that the German feudal
lords were hangmen, who knew only how to swindle the poor
man. " Such fellows were formerly called rascals, but now
must we call them ' Christian and revered princes.' " Yet in
spite of his harsh talk about the princes, Luther really relied
upon them to forward his movement, and he justly claimed
that he had greatly increased their power by attacking the
authority of the Pope and subjecting the clergy in all things
to the government.
The demands Some of the demands of the peasants were perfectly rea-
ants in the sonablc. The most popular expression of their needs was the
Artkles^' dignified "Twelve Articles."^ In these they claimed that the
1 The " Twelve Articles " may be found in Readings^ Vol. II, No. 6.
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 599

Bible did not sanction any of the dues which the lords de-
manded of them, and that, since they were Christians like their
lords, they should no longer be held as serfs. They were willing
to pay all the old and well-established dues, but they asked to
be properly remunerated for extra services demanded by the
lord. They thought too that each community should have the
right freely to choose its own pastor and to dismiss him if he
proved negligent or inefficient.
There were, however, leaders who were more violent and Luther urges

who proposed to kill the " godless " priests and nobles. Hun- menf^to^sup-
dreds of castles and monasteries were destroyed by the frantic P^^^^ *^^
peasantry, and some of the nobility were murdered with shock-
ing cruelty. Luther tried to induce the peasants, with whom,
as the son of a peasant, he was at first inclined to sympathize,
to remain quiet; but when his warnings proved vain, he turned
against them. He declared that they were guilty of the most
fearful crimes, for which they deserved death of both body and
soul many times over. They had broken their allegiance, they
had wantonly plundered and robbed castles and monasteries,
and lastly, they had tried to cloak their dreadful sins with ex-
cuses from the Gospels. He therefore urged the government
to put down the insurrection without pity.
Luther's advice was followed with terrible literalnes"s by the The peasant
German rulers, and the nobility took fearful revenge on the down\?ith
peasants. In the summer of 1525 their chief leader was de- ^reat cruelty
feated and killed, and it is estimated that ten thousand peasants
were put to death, many with the utmost cruelty. Few of the
rulers or landlords introduced any reforms, and the misfortunes
due to the destruction of property and to the despair of the
peasants cannot be imagined. The people concluded that the
new gospel was not for them, and talked of Luther as " Dr.
Liigner," that is, liar. The old exactions of the lords of the
manors were in no way lightened, and the situation of the
serfs for centuries following the great revolt was worse rather
than better.
 6oo Outlines of European History

Skctiox 105. Division of Germany into Catholic

AND Protestant Countries

Charles V was occupied at this time by his quarrels with

Francis I (see p. 573) and was in no position to return to
Germany and undertake to enforce the Edict of Worms against
Luther and his followers. Germany, as we have seen, was
divided up into hundreds of practically independent countries,
and the "various electors, princes, towns, and knights naturally
could not agree as to what would best be done in the matter of
reforming the Church, It became apparent not long after the
Peasant War that some of the rulers were going to accept
Luther's idea that they need no longer obey the Pope but that
they were free to proceed to regulate the property and affairs
of the churchmen in their respective domains without regard to
the Pope's wishes. Other princes and towns agreed that they
would remain faithful to the Pope if certain reforms were intro-
duced, especially if the papal taxation were reduced. Southern
Germany decided for the Pope and remains Catholic down to
the present day. Many of the northern rulers, on the other
hand, adopted the new teachings, and finally all of them fell
away from the papacy and became Protestant.
Since there was no one powerful enough to decide the great
;26 question for the whole of Germany, the diet which met at
Speyer in 1526 determined that pending the summoning of a
church council each ruler should " so live, reign, and conduct
himself as he would be willing to answer before God and His
Imperial Majesty." For the moment, then, the various German
governments were left to determine the religion of their subjects.
Yet everybody still hoped that one religion might ultimately
be agreed upon. Luther trusted that all Christians would some-
time accept the new gospel. He was willing that the bishops
should be retained, and even that the Pope should still be
regarded as a sort of presiding officer in the Church. As
for his enemies, they were equally confident that the heretics
 The Revolt of Germany agaifist the Papacy 6oi

would in time be suppressed, as they had always been in the

past, and that harmony would thus be restored. Neither party
was right ; for the decision of the diet of Speyer was destined
to become a permanent arrangement, and Germany remained
divided between different religious faiths.
New sects opposed to the old Church had also begun to Charles V
appear. Zwingli, a Swiss reformer, was gaining many followers, venes in the
and the Anabaptists were rousing Luther's apprehensions by rehgious con-
their radical plans for doing away with the Catholic religion alto- Germa-ny
gether. The Emperor, finding himself again free for a time to
attend to German affairs, commanded the diet, which again met
at Speyer in 1529, to order the enforcement of the Edict of
Worms against the heretics. No one was to preach against
the Mass, and no one was to be prevented from attending
it freely.
This meant that the " Evangelical " princes would be forced (Origin of
to restore the most characteristic of the Catholic ceremonies. " pro^testam "
As they formed only a minority in the diet, all that they could
do was to draw up a protest^ signed by John Frederick, elector
of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, and fourteen of the imperial towns
(Strassburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, etc.). In this they claimed that
the majority had no right to abrogate the edict of the former
diet of Speyer, which had been passed unanimously, and which
all had solemnly pledged themselves to observe. They there-
fore appealed to the Emperor and a future council against
the tyranny of the majority. Those who signed this appeal
were called from their action Protestants. Thus originated the
name which came to be generally applied to those who do not
accept the rule and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Ever since the diet at Worms the Emperor had resided in Preparations

Spain,of busied
king France. with a succession
It will of warsthat
be remembered carried
both on with and
Charles the o^'^Augsburg
Francis claimed Milan and the duchy of Burgundy, and they
sometimes drew the Pope into their conflicts. But in 1530 the
Emperor found himself at peace for the moment and came to
 602 Outlines of Eiuvpean History

Germany to hold a brilliant diet of his German subjects at

Augsburg in the hope of settling the religious problem, which,
however, he understood very imperfectly. He ordered the Prot-
estants to draw up a statement of exactly what they believed,
which should serve as a basis for discussion. Melanchthon,
Luther's most famous friend and colleague, who was noted
for his great learning and moderation, was intrusted with this
delicate task.
The Augs- The Augsburg Co7ifession, as his declaration was called, is
burg Con-
fession a historical document of great importance for the student of
the Protestant revolt.^ Melanchthon's gentle disposition led him
to make the differences between his belief and that of the old
Church seem as few and slight as possible. He showed that
both parties held the same fundamental A^iews of Christianity.
But he defended the Protestants' rejection of a number of the
practices of the Roman Catholics, such as the celibacy of the
clergy and the observance of fast days. There was little or
nothing in the Augsburg Confession concerning the organization
of the Church.
Charles V's Certain theologians who had been loud in their denunciations
attempt at
pacification of Luther were ordered by the Emperor to prepare a refutation
of the Protestant views. The statement of the Catholics ad-
mitted that a number of Melanchthon's positions were perfectly
orthodox ; but the portion of the Augsburg Confession which
dealt with the practical reforms introduced by the Protestants
was rejected altogether.
Charles V declared the Catholic statement to be " Christian
and judicious " and commanded the Protestants to accept it.
They were to cease troubling the Catholics and were to give
back all the monasteries and church property which they had
seized. The Emperor agreed, however, to urge the Pope to call
a council to meet within a year. This, he hoped, would be able

1 It is still accepted as the creed of the Lutheran Church. Copies of it in

English may be procured from the Lutheran Publication Society, Philadelphia,
for ten cents each.
 The Revolt of Germany against the Papacy 603

to settle all differences and reform the Church according to the

views of the Catholics.
It is unnecessary to follow in detail the progress of Protestant- Progress of
Protestant-
ism in Germany during the quarter of a centur\- succeeding the ism up to the
diet of Augsburg.
^ " Enough
° has been said to show the character Peace of
Augsburg,
of the revolt and the divergent views taken by the German 1555
princes and people. For ten years after the Emperor left Augs-
burg he was kept busy in southern Europe by new wars ; and
in order to secure the assistance of the Protestants, he was
forced to let them go their own way. Meanwhile the number
of rulers who accepted Luther's teachings gradually increased.
Finally there was a brief war between Charles and the Protestant
princes, but there was little fighting done. Charles V brought his
Spanish soldiers into Germany and captured both John Frederick
of Saxony and his ally, Philip of Hesse, the chief leaders of the
Lutheran cause, whom he kept prisoners for several years.
This episode did not, however, check the progress of Prot-
estantism. The king of France promised them help against his
enemy, the Emperor, and Charles was forced to agree to a peace
with the Protestants.
In 1555 the religious Peace of Augsburg was ratified. Its The Peace of
Augsburg
provisions are memorable. Each German prince and each town
and knight immediately under the Emperor was to be at liberty
to make a choice between the beliefs of the venerable Catholic
Church and those embodied in the Augsburg Confession. If,
however, an ecclesiastical prince — an archbishop, bishop, or
abbot — declared himself a Protestant, he must surrender his-
possessions to the Church. Every German was either to con-
form to the religious practices of his particular state or emi-
grate from it. Every one was supposed to be either a Catholic
or a Lutheran, and no provision was made for any other belief.
This religious peace in no way established freedom of con-
science, except for the rulers. Their power, it must be noted,
was greatly increased, inasmuch as they were given the control
of religious as well as of secular matters. This arrangement
 6o4 Outlines of European History

The principle which permitted the ruler to determine the religion of his
government realm was more natural in those days than it would be in
mine^*the^^^^ ours. The Church and the civil government had been closely
religion of its associated with one another for centuries. No one as yet
subjects .
dreamed that every individual might safely be left quite free
to believe what he would and to practice any religious rites
which afforded him help and comfort.

QUESTIONS
Section ioi. What were the sources of discontent with the
Church in Germany ? What were the views of Erasmus in regard to
church reform?
Section 102. Tell something of Luther's life before he posted
up his theses. What was an' indulgence? Give some of Luther's
views expressed in his Ninety-five Theses. Contrast the opinions of
Erasmus and Luther. Who was Ulrich von Hutten ? Discuss Luther's
Address to the German jVobitity. Why was Luther excommuni-
cated ? What was the fate of the papal bull directed against him ?
Section 103. Why did Charles V summon Luther at Worms?
What did Luther say to the diet ? What were the chief provisions of
the Edict of Worms ?
Section 104. Describe Luther's translation of the Bible. What
was the state of public opinion in Germany after the diet at Worms ?
What was Luther's attitude toward reform ? Why did the German
peasants revolt? What did the Twelve Articles contain? What
effect did the peasant war have on Luther ?
Section 105. What was the origin of the term "Protestant"?
What was the Augsburg Confession ? What were the results of the
diet of Augsburg? What was the policy of Charles V in regard to
the Protestants? What were the chief provisions of the Peace of
Augsburg ?
 CHAPTER XXV

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT IN SWITZERLAND AND

ENGLAND

Section io6. Zwingli and Calvin

For at least a century after Luther's death the great issue

between Catholics and Protestants dominates the history of
all the countries with which we have to do, except Italy and
Spain, where Protestantism never took permanent root. In
Switzerland, England, France, and Holland the revolt against
the Medieval Church produced discord, wars, and profound
changes, which must be understood in order to follow the later
development of these countries.
We turn first to Switzerland, lying in the midst of the great Origin of the
chain of the Alps which extends from the Mediterranean to federation
Vienna. During the Middle Ages the region destined to be
included in the Swiss Confederation formed a part of the Holy
Roman Empire and was scarcely distinguishable from the rest
of southern Germany. As early as the thirteenth century the
three " forest " cantons on the shores of the winding lake
of Lucerne formed a union to protect their liberties against
the encroachments of their neighbors, the Hapsburgs. It was
about this tiny nucleus that Switzerland gradually consolidated.
Lucerne and the free towns of Zurich and Berne soon joined
the Swiss league. By brave fighting the Swiss were able to frus-
trate the renewed efforts of the Hapsburgs to subjugate them.
Various districts in the neighborhood joined the Swiss union
in succession, and even the region lying on the Italian slopes of
605
the Alps was brought under its control. Gradually the bonds
between the members of the union and the Empire were broken.
 6o6 Outlines of European History

Switzerland In 1 499 they were finally freed from the jurisdiction of the

separafe ^ Emperor and Switzerland became a practically independent

countr>'; country. Although the original union had been made up of
nationality German-speaking people, considerable districts had been an-
of its people 1 • 1 x i- t^ 1 r^^i r>. • -,• ■,
nexed m which Italian or i^rench was spoken/ Ihe Swiss did

The Swiss Confederation

not, therefore, form a compact, well-defined nation, and conse-

quently for some centuries their confederation was weak and
ill-organized.
In Switzerland the first leader of the revolt against the Church
was a young priest named Zwingli, who was a year younger
' This condition has not changed ; all Swiss laws are still proclaimed in
three languages.
 Protestant Revolt in Switzerland and England 607

than Luther. He lived in the famous monastery of Einsiedeln, Zwingli

near the Lake of Zurich, which was the center of pilgrimages on iJads^he^^^
account of a wonder-working image. '* Here," he says, " I be- ^^^°^^ ^"
gan to preach the Gospel of Christ in the year 15 16, before any against the
one in my locality had so much as heard the name of Luther."
Three years later he was called to an influential position as Zwingli
preacher in the cathedral of Zurich, and there his great work tif^abuses
really•'
commenced. He then began
'^ to denounce the abuses in !?,*^^,
Church and
the Church as well as the shameless traffic in soldiers, which the traffic in
he had long regarded as a blot upon his country's honor.^
But the original cantons about the Lake of Lucerne, which
feared that they might lose the gr^at influence that, in spite
of their small size, they had hitherto enjoyed, were ready to
fight for the old faith. The first armed collision between the
Swiss Protestants and Catholics took place at Kappel in 153 1,
and Zwingli fell in the battle. The various cantons and towns
never came to an agreement in religious matters, and Switzer-
land is still part Catholic and part Protestant.
Far more important than Zwingli's teachings, especially for Calvin
England and America, was the work of Calvin, which was and°?he^
carried on in the ancient city of Geneva, on the very outskirts ph^^rdb^"^"
of the Swiss confederation. It was Calvin who organized the
Presbyterian Chii,rch and formulated its beliefs. He was born
in northern France in 1509; he belonged, therefore, to the
second generation of Protestants. He was early influenced by
the Lutheran teachings, which had already found their way into
France. A persecution "of the Protestants under Francis I drove
him out of the country and he settled for a time in Basel.
Here he issued the first edition of his great work, The Insti- Calvin's
tutes of Christianity, which has been more widely discussed than Christianity
any other Protestant theological treatise. It was the first orderly
1 Switzerland had made a business, ever since the time when Charles VIII
of France invaded Italy, of supplying troops of mercenaries to fight for other
countries, especially for France and the Pope. It was the Swiss who gained the
battle of Marignano for Francis I, and Swiss guards may still be seen in the
Pope's palace.
 6o8 Outlines of European History

exposition of the principles of Christianity from a Protestant

standpoint, and formed a convenient manual for study and dis-
cussion. The Institutes are based upon the infallibility of the
Bible and reject the infallibility of the Church and the Pope.
Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and
admirable style. The PYench version of his great work is the
first example of the successful use of that language in an
argumentative treatise.
Calvin's
reformation
Calvin was called to Geneva about 1540 and intrusted with
in Geneva the task of reforming the town, which had secured its inde-
pendence of the Duke of Savoy. He drew up a constitution
and established an extraordinary government in which the
Church and the civil government were as closely associated as
they had ever been in any Catholic country. Calvin intrusted
the management of church affairs to the ministers and the
elders, ox presbyters ; hence the name " Presbyterian." The Prot-
estantism which found its way into France was that of Calvin,
not that of Luther, and the same may be said of Scotland (see
below, pp. 640-641).

Section 107. How England fell away from

THE Papacy

Erasmus in When Erasmus came to England about the year 1500 he

England
was delighted with the people he met there. Henry VII was
still alive. It will be remembered that it was he that brought
order into England after the Wars of the Roses. His son, who
was to become the famous Henry VIII, impressed Erasmus as
a very promising boy. We may assume that the intelligent men
whom Erasmus met in England agreed with him in regard to
the situation in the Church and the necessity of reform. He
Mere's was a good friend of Sir Thomas More, who is best known
Utopia
for his litde book called Utopia, which means " Nowhere."
In it More pictures the happy conditions in an undiscovered
land where the government was perfect and all the evils that
 Protestant Revolt in Szvitr^ertand aiiei England 609

he saw about him were done away. It was at More's house

that Erasmus wrote his Praise of Folly and dedicated it to him.
Henry VIII came to the English throne when he was eighteen Wolsey's
years old. His chief adviser, Cardinal Wolsey, deserves great peace alJd
credit for having constantly striven to discourage his sovereign's his idea of
ambition to take part in the wars on the Continent. The cardinal's of power

Fig. 213. Henry \TI1

argument that England could become great by peace better than

by war was a momentous discovery. Peace he felt would be
best secured by maintaining the balance of power on the Con-
tinent, so that no ruler should become dangerous by unduly
extending his sway. For example, he thought it good policy
to side with Charles V when Francis I was successful, and then
with Francis after his terrible defeat at Pa via (1525) when he
fell into the hands of Charles. This idea of the balance of
power came to be recognized later by the European countries
as a very important consideration in determining their policy.
 6io Ojttlines of European History

But Wolsey was not long to be permitted to put his enlightened

ideas in practice. His fall and the progress of Protestantism in
England are both closely associated with the notorious divorce
case of Henry VHI.
Henry vilPs It will be remembered that Henry had married Catherine
of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. Only one of their children,
Mary, survived to grow up. As time went on Henry was very
anxious to have a son and heir, for he was fearful lest a woman
might not be permitted to succeed to the throne. Moreover,
, he had tired of Catherine, who was considerably older than he.
Catherine had first married Henry's older brother, who had
died almost immediately after the marriage. Since it was
a violation of the rule of the Church to marry a deceased
brother's wife, Henry professed to fear that he was commit-
ting a sin by retaining Catherine as his wife and demanded
to be divorced from her on tbe ground that his marriage had
never been legal. His anxiety to rid himself of Catherine was
greatly increased by the appearance at court of a black-eyed
girl of sixteen, named Anne Boleyn, with whom the king fell
in love.
Clement VII Unfortunately for his case, his marriage with Catherine had
divorce been authorized by a dispensation from the Pope, so that
Henry Clement VII, to whom the king appealed to annul the mar-
riage, could not, even if he had been willing to run the risk
of angering the queen's nephew, Charles V, have granted
Henry's request.
Fall of Wolsey 's failure to induce the Pope to permit the divorce
excited the king's anger, and with rank ingratitude for his
minister's great services, Henry drove him from office (1529)
and seized his property. Trom a life of wealth which was
fairly regal, Wolsey was precipitated into extreme poverty.
An imprudent but innocent act of his soon gave his enemies
a pretext for charging him with treason ; but the unhappy
man died on his way to London and thus escaped being
beheaded as a traitor.
 Protestant Revolt in Switzerland and Engla?id 611

Cardinal Wolsey had been the Pope's representative in Henry viii

England. Henry VIII's next move was to declare the whole revdlt^gainst
clergy of England guilty in obeying Wolsey, since an old law ^^^ papacy
forbade any papal agent to appear in England without the king's
consent.^ The king refused to forgive them until they had
solemnly acknowledged him supreme head of the English
Church.^ He then induced Parliament to cut off some of
the Pope's revenue from England ; but, as this did not bring
Clement VH to terms, Henry lost patience and secretly married
Anne Boleyn, relying on getting a divorce from Catherine later.
His method was a simple one. He summoned an English
church court which declared his marriage with Catherine null
and void. He had persuaded Parliament to make a law pro-
viding that all lawsuits should be definitely decided within the
realm and in this way cut off the possibility of the queen's
appealing to the Pope.
Parliament, which did whatever Henry VIH asked, also de-
clared Henry's marriage with Catherine unlawful and that with
Anne Boleyn legal. Consequently it was decreed that Anne's
daughter Elizabeth, born in 1533, was to succeed her father on
the English throne instead of Mary, the daughter of Catherine.
In 1534 the English Parliament completed the revolt of the The Act of
English Church from the Pope by assigning to the king the and'the^^^
right to appoint all the English prelates and to enjoy all f^^ p^^^g
the income which had formerly found its way to Rome. In authority
the Act of Supremacy, Parliament declared the king to be
" the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England,"
and that he should enjoy all the powers which the title naturally
carried with it.
Two years later every officer in the kingdom was required
to swear to renounce the authority of the bishop of Rome.
1 Henry had, however, agreed that Wolsey should accept the office of papal
legate.
2 The clergy only recognized the king as " Head of the Church and Clergy
so far as the law of Christ will allow." They did not abjure the headship of the
Pope over the whole Church.
 6l2 Outlines of European Histojy

Refusal to take this oath was to be adjudged high treason.

Many were unwilling to deny the Pope's headship merely be-
cause king and Parliament renounced it, and this legislation
led to a persecution in the name of treason which was even
more horrible than that which had been carried on in the sup-
posed interest of religion.
Henry VIII It must be carefully observed that Henry VIII was not a
no Protestant
Protestant in the Lutheran sense of the word. He was led,
it is true, by Clement VH's refusal to declare his first mar-
riage illegal, to break the bond between the English and the
Roman Church, and to induce the English clergy and Parlia-
ment to acknowledge the king as supreme head in the religious
as well as in the worldly interests of the country'. Important
as this was, it did not lead Henry to accept the teachings of
Protestant leaders, like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin.
Henry's to
anxiety
Henry was anxious to prove that he was orthodox, espe-
prove him- cially after he had seized the property of the monasteries and
self a good
Catholic the gold and jewels which adorned the receptacles in which
the relics of the saints were kept. He presided in person
over the trial of one who accepted the opinions of Zwingli, and
he quoted Scripture to prove the contrary. The prisoner was
The English
Bible
condemned and burned as a heretic. Henry also authorized a
new translation of the Bible into English. A fine edition of this
was printed (1539), and every parish was ordered to obtain a
copy and place it in the parish church, where all the people
could readily make use of it.
Henry's Henry VIII was heartless and despotic. With a barbarity
tyranny
not uncommon in those days, he allowed his old friend and
Execution of
Sir Thomas adviser. Sir Thomas More, to be beheaded for refusing to pro-
More nounce the marriage with Catherine void. He caused numbers
of monks to be executed for refusing to swear that his first
marriage was illegal and for denying his title to supremacy in
the Church. Others he permitted to die of starvation and
disease in the filthy prisons of the time. Many Englishmen
would doubtless have agreed with one of the friars who said
 Protestant Revolt in Szuitcerland and England 613

humbly " I profess that it is not out of obstinate malice or a

mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the
fear of God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty ; because
our Holy Mother, the Church, hath decreed and appointed
otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained."
Henry wanted money ; some of the English abbeys were Dissolution
rich, and the monks were quite unable to defend themselves ushmonas-
against the charges which were brought against them. The *^"^^
king sent commissioners about to inquire into the state of the
monasteries. A large number of scandalous tales were easily
collected, some of which were undoubtedly true. The monks
were doubtless often indolent and sometimes wicked. Never-
theless they were kind landlords, hospitable to the stranger,
and good to the poor. The plundering of the smaller monas-
teries, with which the king began, led to a revolt, due to a
rumor that the king would next proceed to despoil the parish
churches as well..
This gave Henry an excuse for attacking the larger monas-
teries. The abbots and priors who had taken part in the revolt
were hanged and their monasteries confiscated. Other abbots,
panic-stricken, confessed that they and their monks had been
committing the most loathsome sins and asked to be permitted
to give up their monasteries to the king. The royal commis-
sioners then took possession, sold every article upon which they
could lay hands, including the bells and even the lead on the
roofs. The picturesque remains of some of the great abbey
churches are still among the chief objects of interest to the
sight-seer in England. The monastery lands were, of course,
appropriated by the king. They were sold for the benefit of
the government or given to nobles whose favor the king
wished to secure.
Along with the destruction of the monasteries went an
attack upon the shrines and images in the churches, which
were adorned with gold and jewels. The shrine of St. Thomas
of Canterbury was destroyed, and the bones of the saint were
 6i4
Outlines of European History

Destruction burned. An old wooden figure which was revered in Wales

of shrines
and images was used to make a fire to burn an unfortunate friar who main-
for the
benefit of tained that in religious matters the Pope rather than the king
the king's should be obeyed. These acts resembled the Protestant attacks
treasury
on images which occurred in Germany, Switzerland, and the
Netherlands. The main object of the king and his party was
probably to get money, although the reason urged for the de-
struction was the superstitious veneration in which the relics
and images were popularly held.
Henry's third Henry's family troubles by no means came to an end
marriage and
the birth of with his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Of her, too, he soon
Edward VI
tired, and three years after their marriage he had her executed
on a series of monstrous charges. The very next day he married
his third w4fe, Jane Seymour, who was the mother of his son
and successor, Edward VI. Jane died a few days after her
son's birth, and later Henry married in succession three
other women who are historically unimportanJ: since they left
no children as claimants for the crown. Henry took care that
his three children, all of whom were destined to reign, should
be given their due place in the line of inheritance by act of
Parliament.-^ His death in 1547 left the great problem of
Protestantism and Catholicism to be settled by his son and
daughters.

Section 108. England becomes Protestant

Edward VI's
ministers
While the revolt of England against the papacy was carried
introduce through by the government at a time when the greater part of
Protestant
practices the nation was still Catholic, there was undoubtedly, under
Henry VIH, an ever-increasing number of aggressive and
ardent Protestants who applauded the change. During the six

1 Henry VIII, m. (i) Catherine m. (2) Anne Boleyn, m. (3) Jane Seymour
I I I
Mary (1553-1558) Elizabeth (1558-1603) Edward VI (1547-1553)
It was arranged that the son was to succeed to the throne. In case he died
without heirs, Mary and then Elizabeth were to follow.
 Protesta7it Revolt in Switzerland and E^igland 615

years of the boy Edward's reign — he died in 1553 at the

age of sixteen — those in charge of the government favored
the Protestant party and did what they could to change the
faith of all the people by bringing Protestant teachers from
the Continent.
A general demolition of all the sacred images was ordered ;
even the beautiful stained glass, the glory of the cathedrals,

X \
Fig. 214. Edward VI, bv Holbein
This interesting sketch was made before Edward became king, and he
could have been scarcely six years old, as Holbein died in 1543

was destroyed, because it often represented saints and angels.

The king was to appoint bishops without troubling to observe
the old forms of election, and Protestants began to be put into
the high offices of the Church. Parliament turned over to the
king the funds which had been established for the purpose of
having masses chanted for the dead, and decreed that thereafter
the clergy should be free to marry.
A prayer book in English was prepared under the auspices
of Parliament, not very unlike that used in the Church of
 6i6 Outlines of Eu7vpcan History

The prayer England to-day (see below, p. 639). Moreover, forty-two articles
"Thirty-Nine of faith were drawn up by the government, which were to be
Articles" ^^ Standard of belief for the country. These, in the time of
Queen Elizabeth, were revised and reduced to the famous

Fig. 215. Queen Mary, by Axtonio Moro

This life-like portrait, in the Madrid collection, is by a favorite painter
of Philip II, Mary's husband (see Fig. 218). It was painted about 1554,
and one gets the same impressions of Mary's character from the por-
trait that one does from reading about her. Moro had Holbein's skill
in painting faces

" Thirty-Nine Articles," which still constitute the creed of the

Church of England.
The changes in the church services must have sadly shocked
a great part of the English people, who had been accustomed
to watch with awe and expectancy the various acts associated
 Protestant Revolt in Sivitzerland and England 6 17

with the many church ceremonies and festivals. Earnest men Protestant-
who deplored the misrule of those who conducted Edward's Sred^ted^
government in the name of Protestantism must have concluded ^jj^ster?^^
that the reformers were chiefly intent upon advancing their
own interests by plundering the Church. We get some idea
of the desecrations of the time from the fact that Edward was
forced to forbid " quarreling and shooting in churches " and
"the bringing of horses and mules through the same, making
God's house like a stable or common inn." Although many were
heartily in favor of the recent changes, it is no wonder that after
Edward's death there was a revulsion in favor of the old religion.
Edward VI was succeeded in 1553 by his half sister Mary, Queen Mary
the daughter of Catherine, who had been brought up in the aid^die^^
Catholic faith and held firmly to it. Her ardent hope of bring- ^^^^^^^^
ing her kingdom back once more to her religion did not seem
altogether ill-founded, for the majority of the people were still
Catholics at heart, and many who were not, disapproved of the
policy of Edward's ministers, who had removed abuses '' in the
devil's own way, by breaking in pieces."
The Catholic cause appeared, moreover, to be strengthened
by Mary's marriage with the Spanish prince, Philip II, the son
of the orthodox Charles V. But although Philip later distin-
guished himself, as we shall see, by the merciless way in which
he strove to put down heresy within his realms, he never gained
any great influence in England. By his marriage with Mary he
acquired the title of king, but the English took care that he
should have no hand in the government nor be permitted to
succeed his wife on the English throne.
Mary succeeded in bringing about a nominal reconciliation
between England and the Roman Church. In 1554 the papal
legate restored to the communion of the Catholic Church the
" Kneeling " Parliament, which theoretically, of course, repre-
sented the nation.

During the last four years of Mary's reign the most serious
religious persecution in English history occurred. No less than
6 18 Outlines of European History

277 persons were put to death for denying the teachings of the
Roman Church. The majority of the victims were humble arti-
sans and husbandmen. The two most notable sufferers were
two bishops named Latimer and Ridley, who were burned
in Oxford.
It was Mary's hope and belief that the heretics sent to the
stake would furnish a terrible warning to the Protestants and
check the spread of the new teachings, but Catholicism was not
promoted ; on the contrary, doubters were only convinced of the
earnestness of the Protestants who could die with such constancy.^

QUESTIONS
Section 106. How did the Swiss Confederation originate.^ De-
scribe the reforms begun by Zwingli. Who was Calvin and what are
his claims to distinction ?
Section 107. Mention the chief contemporaries of Erasmus,
What was the policy of Wolsey? Describe the divorce case of
Henry VI H. In what way did Henry VIII break away from the
papacy } What reforms did he introduce ? What was the dissolution
of the monasteries 1
Section 108. W^hat happened during the reign of Edward Wl
What was the policy of Queen Mary ?
1 The Catholics, it should be noted, later suffered serious persecution under
Elizabeth and James I, the Protestant successors of Mar^^ Death was the penalty
fixed in many cases for those who obstinately refused to recognize the monarch
as the rightful head of the English Church, and heavy fines were imposed for
the failure to attend Protestant worship. Two hundred Catholic priests are
said to have been executed under Elizabeth, Mary's sister, who succeeded her on
the throne ; others were tortured or perished miserably in prison.
 CHAPTER XXVI

THE WARS OF RELIGION

Section 109. The Council of Trent; the Jesuits

In the preceding chapters we have seen how northern Ger-

many, England, and portions of Switzerland revolted from the
papacy and established independent Protestant churches. A great
part of western Europe, however, remained faithful to the Pope
and to the old beliefs which had been accepted for so many cen-
turies. In order to consider the great question of reforming the
Catholic Church and to settle disputed questions of religious be-
lief a great church council was summoned by the Pope to meet
in Trent, on the confines of Germany and Italy, in the year 1 545.
Charles V hoped that the Protestants would come to the coun-
cil and that their ideas might even yet be reconciled with those
of the Catholics. But the Protestants did not come, for they
were too suspicious of an assembly called by the Pope to have
any confidence in its decisions.
The Council of Trent was interrupted after a few sessions Council

and did not complete its work for nearly twenty years after it i545!.^i"6'3
first met. It naturally condemned the Protestant beliefs so far
as they differed from the views held by the Catholics, and it
sanctioned those doctrines which the Catholic Church still holds.
It accepted the Pope as the head of the Church ; it declared
accursed^ any one who, like Luther, believed that man would be
saved by faith in God's promises alone ; for the Church held
that man, with God's help, could increase his hope of salvation
by good works. It ratified all the seven sacraments, several of
which the Protestants had rejected. 619 The ancient Latin transla-
tion of the Bible — the Vulgate, as it is called — was proclaimed
 620 Oiitliiies of European History

the Standard of belief, and no one was to publish any views

about the Bible differing from those approved by the Church.
The " Index'
The Council suggested that the Pope's officials should com-
pile a list of dangerous books which faithful Catholics might
not read for fear that their faith in the old Church would be
disturbed. Accordingly, after the Council broke up, the Pope
issued the first " Index," or list of books which were not to be
further printed or circulated on account of the false religious
teachings they contained. Similar lists have since been printed
from time to time. The establishment of this " Index of Pro-
hibited Books " was one of the most famous of the Council's
acts. It was hoped that in this way the spread of heretical and
immoral ideas through the printing press could be checked.
Results of Although the Council of Trent would make no compromises
the reform
of the with the Protestants, it took measures to do away with certain
Catholic
Church abuses of which both Protestants and devout Catholics com-
plained. All clergymen were to attend strictly to their duties,
and no one was to be appointed who merely wanted the income
from his office. The bishops were ordered to preach regularly
and to see that only good men were ordained priests. A great
improvement actually took place — better men were placed in
office and many practices which had formerly irritated the people
were permanently abolished.
Ignatius Among those who, during the final sessions of the Council,
Loyola,
1491-1556, sturdily opposed every attempt to reduce in any way the exalted
the founder
of the power of the Pope, was the head of a new religious society
Jesuits which was becoming the most powerful Catholic organization in
Europe. The Jesuit order, or Society of Jesus, was founded by a
Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola. He had been a soldier in his younger
days, and while bravely fighting for his king, Charles V, had
been wounded by a cannon ball (15 21). Obliged to lie inactive
for weeks, he occupied his time in reading the lives of the saints
and became filled with a burning ambition to emulate their
deeds. Upon recovering, he dedicated himself to the service of
the Church, donned a beggar's gown, and started on a pilgrimage
 ■C Xi

-C o
O OS

^^

c -

11

biO

OH e

o ^

2 S
c r- ~
o o

621
 622
Outlines of Eji7'opean History

to Jerusalem. Once there he began to realize that he could

do little without an education. So he returned to Spain and,
although already thirty-three years old, took his place beside
the boys who were learning the elements of Latin grammar.
After two years he entered a Spanish university, and later went
to Paris to carry on his theological studies.
In Paris he sought to influence his fellow students at the uni-
versity, and finally, in 1534, seven of his companions agreed to
follow him to Palestine or, if they were prevented from doing
that, to devote themselves to the service of the Pope. On arriv-
ing in Venice they found that war had broken out between that
republic and the Turks. They accordingly gave up their plan for
converting the infidels in the Orient and began to preach in the
neighboring towns. When asked to what order they belonged,
they replied, " To the Society of Jesus."
Rigid organ-
ization and
In 1538 Loyola summoned his followers to Rome, and there
discipline of they worked out the principles of their order. When this had
the Jesuits
been done the Pope gave his sanction to the new society.^
Loyola had been a soldier, and he laid great and constant stress
upon absolute and unquestioning obedience. This he declared
to be the mother of all virtue and happiness. Not only were all
the members to obey the Pope as Christ's representative on
earth, and to undertake without hesitation any journey, no matter
how distant or perilous, which he might command, but each was
to obey his superiors in the order as if he were receiving direc-
tions from Christ in person. He must have no will or prefer-
ence of his own, but must be as the staff which supports and
aids its bearer in any way in which he sees fit to use it. This
admirable organization and incomparable discipline were the
great secret of the later influence of the Jesuits.
Objects and The object of the society was to cultivate piety and the love
methods of
the new of God, especially through example. The miembers were to
order
pledge themselves to lead a pure life of poverty and devotion.
A great number of its members were priests, who went about
1 See Readings^ II, chap, xxviii.
 The Vf^ars of Religio72

preaching, hearing confession, and encouraging devotional exer-

cises. But the Jesuits were teachers as well as preachers and
confessors. They clearly perceived the advantage of bringing
young people under their influence ; they opened schools and
seminaries and soon became the schoolmasters of Catholic

Fig. 217. Principal Jesuit Church in Venice

The Jesuits believed in erecting magnificent churches. This is a good
example. The walls are inlaid with green marble in an elaborate pat-
tern, and all the furnishings are very rich and gorgeous

Europe. So successful were their methods of instruction that

even Protestants sometimes sent their children to them.
Before the death of Loyola over a thousand persons had crease of the
joined the society. Under his successor the number was trebled, Rapid in-
Jesuits in
and it went on increasing for two centuries. The founder of numbers
the order had been, as we have seen, attracted to missionary
work from the first, and the Jesuits rapidly spread not only
over Europe but throughout the whole world. Francis Xavier,
 624
Outlines of E^iropean History

Their mis-
sions and one of Loyola's original little band, went to Hindustan, the
explorations Moluccas, and Japan. Brazil, Florida, Mexico, and Peru were
soon fields of active missionary work at a time when Protestantb
as yet scarcely dreamed of carrying Christianity to the heathen.
We owe to the Jesuits' reports much of our knowledge of the con-
dition of America when white men first began to explore Canada
and the Mississippi valley, for the followers of Loyola boldly pene-
trated into regions unknown to Europeans, and settled among
the natives with the purpose of bringing the Gospel to them.
Their fight Dedicated as they were to the service of the Pope, the Jesuits
against the
Protestants early directed their energies against Protestantism. They sent
their members into Germany and the Netherlands, and even
made strenuous efforts to reclaim England. Their success was
most apparent in southern Germany and Austria, where they
became the confessors and confidential advisers of the rulers.
They not only succeeded in checking the progress of Protestant-
ism, but were able to reconquer for the Catholic Church some
districts in which the old faith had been abandoned.
Accusations Protestants soon realized that the new order was their most
brought
against the powerful and dangerous enemy. Their apprehensions produced
Jesuits
a bitter hatred which blinded them to the high purposes of the
founders of the order and led them to attribute an evil purpose
to every act of the Jesuits. The Jesuits' air of humility the
Protestants declared to be mere hypocrisy under which they
carried on their intrigues. They were popularly supposed to
justify the most deceitful and immoral measures on the ground
that the result would be " for the greater glory of God." The
very obedience on which the Jesuits laid such stress was viewed
by the hostile Protestant as one of their worst offenses, for he
believed that the members of the order were the blind tools of
their superiors and that they would not hesitate even to commit
a crime if so ordered.^

1 As time went on the Jesuit order degenerated just as the earher ones had
done. In the eighteenth century it undertook great commercial enterprises,
and for this and other reasons lost the confidence and respect of even the
I The Wars of Religion 625

Section iio. Philip II and the Revolt of

THE Netherlands

The chief ally of the Pope and the Jesuits in their efforts to Philip 11, the
check Protestantism in the latter half of the sixteenth century of Protes"^^
was the son of Charles V, Philip II. Like the Jesuits he enjoys ^^oJ^'^the
Europe
a most unenviable reputation among Protestants. Certain it is rulers of
that they had no more terrible enemy among the rulers of the
day than he. He eagerly forwarded every plan to attack Eng-
land's Protestant queen, Elizabeth, and finally manned a mighty
fleet with the purpose of overthrowing her (see below, p. 644).
He resorted, moreover, to great cruelty in his attempts to bring
back his possessions in the Netherlands to what he believed to
be the true faith.
Charles V, crippled with the gout and old before his time. Division of

laid down the cares of government in 1555-1556- To his polseSon'^'^^

brother Ferdinand, who had acquired by marriage the king- Q^gJ^J^^JJ ^|^^
doms of Bohemia and Hungary, Charles had earlier transferred Spanish
the German possessions of the Hapsburgs. To his son, Philip II
(i 556-1598), he gave Spain with its great American colonies,
Milan, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Netherlands.^
Catholics. The king of Portugal was the first to banish the Jesuits from his
kingdom, and then France, where they had long been very unpopular with an
influential party of the Catholics, expelled them in 1764. Convinced that the
order had outgrown its usefulness, the Pope abolished it in 1773. It was, however,
restored in 18 14, and now again has thousands of members.
1 Division of the Hapsburg possessions between the Spanish and the German
branches :

Maximilian I (d. 15 19), m. Mar)' of Burgundy (d. 1482)

Philip (d. 1506), m. Joanna the Insane (d. 1555)

Charles V (d. 1558) Ferdinand (d. 1564), m. Anna, heiress to kingdoms

Emperor. 1519-1556 Emperor, 15 56-1 564 I of Bohemia and Hungary
Philip II (d. 1598) Maximilian II (d. 1576)
inherits Spain, the Netherlands, Emperor, and inherits Bohemia,
and the Italian possessions of Hungary, and the Austrian pos-
the Hapsburgs sessions of the Hapsburgs
The map of Europe in the sixteenth century (see above, p. 572) indicates the
vast extent of the combined possessions of the Spanish and German Hapsburgs.
 626 Outlines of European History

Philip ITs Charles had constantly striven to maintain the old religion
fervent
desire to within his dominions. He had never hesitated to use the Inqui-
stamp out
Protestantism sition in Spain and the Netherlands, and it was the great dis-
ap ointment ofhis life that a part of his empire had become
Protestant. He was, nevertheless, no fanatic. Like many of
the princes of the time, he was forced to take sides on the
religious question without, perhaps, himself having any deep
religious sentiments. The maintenance of the Catholic faith
he believed to be necessary in order that he should keep his
hold upon his scattered and diverse dominions.
On the other hand, the whole life and policy of his son Philip
were guided by a fervent attachment to the old religion. He
was willing to sacrifice both himself and his country in his long
fight against the detested Protestants within and without his
realms. And he had vast resources at his disposal, for Spain
was a strong power, not only on account of her income from
America, but also because her soldiers and their -commanders
were the best in Europe at this period.
The Nether-
lands
The Netherlands, which were to cause Philip his first and
greatest trouble, included seventeen provinces which Charles V
had inherited from his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy. They
occupied the position on the map where we now find the king-
doms of Holland and Belgium. Each of the provinces had its
own government, but Charles V had grouped them together and
arranged that the German Empire should protect them. In the
north the hardy Germanic population had been able, by means
of dikes which kept out the sea, to reclaim large tracts of low-
lands. Here considerable cities had grown up — Harlem,
Leyden, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, To the south were the
flourishing towns of Ghent, Bruges, Brussds, and Antwerp,
which had for hundreds of years been centers of manufacture
and trade.
Charles V, in spite of some very harsh measures, had retained
the loyalty of the people of the Netherlands, for he was himself
one of them, and they felt a patriotic pride in his achievements.
 27

The Wars of Religion

Toward Philip II their attitude was very different. His haughty Philip ITS
manner made a disagreeable impression upon the people at harsh tudeatti- toward
landsNether-
Brussels when his father first introduced him to them as their the
future ruler. He was to them a Spaniard and a foreigner, and
he ruled them as such after he returned to Spain.

Fig. 218. Fhilu^ II, by Antonio Moro

Instead of attempting to win them by meeting their legitimate

demands, he did everything to alienate all classes in his Bur-
gundian realm and to increase their natural hatred and suspicion
of the Spaniards. The people were forced to house Spanish
soldiers whose insolence drove them nearly to desperation.
What was still worse, Philip proposed that the Inquisition The inqui-
(see above, p. 483) should carry on its work far more actively Netherlands
than hitherto and put an end to the heresy which appeared to
 628 Outlines of Eiiropea7i History

him to defile his fair realms. The Inquisition was no new thing
to the provinces. Charles V had issued the most cruel edicts
against the followers of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. According
to a law of 1550, heretics who persistently refused to recant
were to be burned alive. Even those who confessed their errors
and abjured their heresy were, if men, to lose their heads ; if
women, to be buried alive. In either case their property was
to be confiscated. The lowest estimate of those who were
executed in the Netherlands during Charles's reign is fifty thou-
sand. Although these terrible laws had not checked the growth
of Protestantism, all of Charles's decrees were solemnly re-
enacted by Philip in the first month of his reign.
Protest
against For ten years the people suffered Philip's rule ; nevertheless
Philip's
their king, instead of listening to the protests of their leaders,
policy
who were quite as earnest Catholics as himself, appeared to be
bent on the destruction of the land. So in 1566 some five hun-
dred of the nobles ventured to protest against Philip's policy.
Thereupon Philip took a step which led finally to the revolt of
Philip sends
the Duke of
the Netherlands. He decided to dispatch to the low countries
Alva to the the remorseless Duke of Alva, whose conduct has made his
Netherlands
name synonymous with blind and unmeasured cruelty.
The report that Alva was coming caused the flight of many
of those who especially feared his approach. William of Orange,
who was to be the leader in the approaching war against Spain,
went to Germany. Thousands of Flemish weavers fled across
the North Sea, and the products of their looms became before
long an important article of export from England.
Alva's cruel Alva brought with him a fine army of Spanish soldiers, ten
administra-
tion, 1567- thousand in number and superbly equipped. He appeared to
1573
think that the wisest and quickest way of pacifying the discon-
tented provinces was to kill all those who ventured to criticize
" the best of kings," of whom he had the honor to be the
faithful servant. He accordingly established a special court
for the speedy trial and condemnation of all those whose
fidelity to Philip was suspected. This was popularly known as
 The Wars of Religio7t 629

the Council of Blood, for its aim was not justice but butchety. The Council
Alva's administration from 1567 to 1573 was a veritable reign
of terror.
The Netherlands found a leader in William, Prince of Orange William
1504
of
and Count of Nassau. He is a national hero whose career canned the
bears a striking resemblance to that of Washington. Like the Silent, 1533-
American patriot, he undertook the seemingly hopeless task of
freeing his people from the oppressive rule of a distant king.
To the Spaniards he appeared to be only an impoverished
nobleman at the head of a handful of armed peasants and fisher-
men, contending against the sovereign of the richest realm in
the world.
William had been a faithful subject of Charles V and would William the
gladly have continued to serve his son after him had the lectsanVrmy
oppression and injustice of the Spanish dominion not become
intolerable. But Alva's policy convinced him that it was use-
less to send any more complaints to Philip. He accordingly
collected a little army in 1568 and opened the long struggle
with Spain.
William found his main support in the northern provinces. Differences
of which Holland was the chief. The Dutch, who had very northern
generally accepted Protestant teachings, were purely German S^^^f '
in blood, while the people of the southern provinces, who provinces
adhered (as they still do) to the Roman Catholic faith, were southern
more akin to the population of northern France.
The Spanish soldiers found little trouble in defeating the William
troops which William collected. Like Washington, again, he governor of
seemed to lose almost every battle and yet was never con- ?°l'^"j ^"^
quered. The first successes of the Dutch were gained by the 1572
mariners who captured Spanish ships and sold them in Protestant
England. PLncouraged by this, many of the towns in the northern
provinces of Holland and Zealand ventured to choose William
as their governor, although they did not throw off their allegiance
to Philip. In this way these two provinces became the nucleus
of the United Netherlands.
 630 Ojitlines of E7Lropea7i History

Both the Alva recaptured a number of the revolted towns and treated
northern and
southern their inhabitants with his customary cruelty ; even women and
provinces
combine children were slaughtered in cold blood. But instead of quench-
against ing the rebellion, he aroused the Catholic southern provinces
Spain, 1576
to revolt.
The " Span- After six years of this tyrannical and mistaken policy, Alva
ish fury " was recalled. His successor soon died and left matters worse
than ever. The leaderless soldiers, trained in Alva's school,
indulged in wild orgies of robbery and murder ; they plun-
dered and partially reduced to ashes the rich city of Antwerp.
The " Spanish fury," as this outbreak was called, together with
the hated taxes, created such general indignation that repre-
sentatives from all of Philip's Burgundian provinces met at
Ghent in 1576 with the purpose of combining to put an end
to the Spanish tyranny.
The Union This union was, however, only temporary. Wiser and more
of Utrecht
moderate governors were sent by Philip to the Netherlands,
and they soon succeeded in again winning the confidence of
the southern Catholic provinces. So the northern provinces went
their own way. Guided by \Mlliam the Silent, they refused to
consider the idea of again recognizing Philip as their king. In
1579 seven provinces (Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Gelderland,
The northern Overyssel, Groningen, and Friesland, all lying north of the
provinces
declare mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt) formed the new and
themselves
firmer Union of Utrecht. The articles of this union served as
independent
of Spain, a constitution for the United Provinces which, two years later,
1581
at last formally declared themselves independent of Spain.
Assassination Philip realized that William was the soul of the revolt and
of William
the Silent that without him it might not improbably have been put
down. The king therefore offered a patent of nobility and
a large sum of money to any one who should make way with
the Dutch patriot. After several unsuccessful attempts, William,
who had been chosen hereditary governor of the United Prov-
inces, was shot in his house at Delft, 1584. He died praying
the Lord to have pity upon his soul and " on this poor people."
 The Wars of Religion 631

The Dutch had long hoped for aid from Queen Elizabeth or Reasons why

from the French, but had heretofore been disappointed. At finally "won
last the English
^ queen
^ decided to send troops
^ to their assistance. ^^^^\ i"^^-
pendence
While the English rendered but little actual help, Elizabeth's
policy so enraged Philip that he at last decided to attempt the
conquest of England. The destruction of the " Armada," the
great fleet which he equipped for that purpose,^ interfered with
further attempts to subjugate the United Provinces, which might
otherwise have failed to maintain their liberty. Moreover, Spain's
resources were being rapidly exhausted, and the State was on the
verge of bankruptcy in spite of the wealth which it had been draw- independ-
ing from across the sea. But even though Spain had to surrender t?nfted
the hope of winning back the lost provinces, which now became a Provinces
small but important European power, she refused formally to edged by
acknowledge their independence until 1 648 (Peace of Westphalia),

Section hi. The Huguenot Wars in France

The history of France during the latter part of the sixteenth Beginnings
century is little more than a chronicle of a long and bloody ^ntism^ri
series of civil wars between the Catholics and Protestants. France
Protestantism began in France in much the same way as in
England. Those who had learned from the Italians to love the
Greek language turned to the New' Testament in the original
and commenced to study it with new insight. Lefevre, the most Lefevre,

conspicuous of these Erasmus-like reformers, translated the ^^^50-15^7

Bible into French and began to preach justification by faith
before he had ever heard of Luther.
The Sorbonne, the famous theological school at Paris, soon Persecution
, , . . ^ „ . T • 1 of the Protes-
began to arouse the suspicions of Francis I against the new tants under
ideas. He had no special interest in religious matters, but he Francis I
was shocked by an act of desecration ascribed to the Protestants,
and in consequence forbade the circulation of Protestant books.
About 1535 several adherents of the new faith were burned,
1 See below, p. 644.
 632 Oiitliiics of European History

and Calvin was forced to flee to Basel, where he prepared a

defense of his beliefs in his Institutes of Christianity (see above,
p. 607). This is prefaced by a letter to Francis in which he pleads
Massacre of
the Walden- with him to protect the Protestants.^ PYancis, before his death,
sians, 1545 became so intolerant that he ordered the massacre of three
thousand defenseless peasants who dwelt on the slopes of the
Alps, and whose only offense was adherence to the simple

Persecution teachings of the Waldensians."'^

under Francis's son, Henry II (i 547-1 559), swore to extirpate the
Henr>' II, Protestants, and hundreds of them were burned. Nevertheless,
1547-1559
Henry IPs religious convictions did not prevent him from, will-
ingly aiding the German Protestants against his enemy Charles V,
especially when they agreed to hand over to him three bish-
oprics which lay on the French boundar}' — Metz, Verdun,
and Toul.
Francis II, Henry II was accidentally killed in a tourney and left his
1559-1560,
Mar}' Queen kingdom to three weak sons, the last scions of the house of
of Scots, and
the Guises Valois, who succeeded in turn to the throne during a period of
unprecedented civil war and public calamity. The eldest son,
Francis II, a boy of sixteen, followed his father. His chief im-
portance for France arose from his marriage with the daughter
of King James V of Scotland, Mary Stuart, who became famous
as Mar)'' Queen of Scots. Her mother was the sister of two
wQvy ambitious French nobles, the Duke of Guise and the cardinal
of Lorraine. Francis II was so young that Mary's uncles, the
Guises, eagerly seized the opportunity to manage his affairs for
him. The duke put himself at the head of the army, and the
cardinal of the government. When the king died, after reigning
but a year, the Guises were naturally reluctant to surrender their
power, and many of the woes of France for the next forty years
were due to the machinations which they carried on in the name
of the Holy Catholic religion.
The queen-
mother, The new king, Charles IX (15 60-1 5 7 4), was but ten years
Catherine of old, so that his mother, Catherine of Medici, of the famous
Medici
1 See Readings^ II, chap, xxviii. 2 See above, p. 482.
 The Wars of Religion 633

Florentine family, claimed the right to conduct the govern-

ment for her son until he reached manhood.
By this time the Protestants in France had become a power-
ful party. They were known as Huguenots ^ and accepted the

Fig. 219. Francis II of France

This is from a contemporaneous engraving. The boy king, the first

husband of Mary Queen of Scots, died when he was only 17 years old

religious teachings of their fellow countryman, Calvin. Many The Hugue-

of them, including their great leader Coligny, belonged to the "hefr political
nobility. They had a strong support in the king of the little ^i"^^
realm of Navarre, on the southern boundary of France. He
1 The origin of this name is uncertain.
634
Outlines of European History
•CXI

U O

T3 ^c/3

(U
8O >
OS -tJ
oJ o
*j

u
■Jl

oi

O
rOu 5
CJ <-*
tU ^? '^
G
3
C/i o ■^ O 5; rt o
3
1^ O
O T3

3^ 00

DO -eoi-
 TJie Wars of Religion 635

belonged to a side line of the French royal house, known as The

the Bourbons, who were later to occupy the French throne ^^^ °"^
(see genealogical table, p. 634). It was inevitable that the
Huguenots should try to get control of the government, and
they consequently formed a political as well as a religious party
and were often fighting, in the main, for worldly ends.
Catherine tried at first to conciliate both Catholics and Hu- Catherine
guenots, and granted a Decree of Toleration (1562) suspending ditional
grants con-
toleration
the former edicts against the Protestants and permitting them to the
to assemble for worship during the daytime and outside of the Protestants,
towns. Even this restricted toleration of the Protestants ap- ^
peared an abomination to the more fanatical Catholics, and
a savage act of the Duke of Guise precipitated civil war.
As he was passing through the town of A'assy on a Sunday The massa-
he found a thousand Huguenots assembled in a barn for wor- an? the ^^^^
ship.^The duke's followers rudelvyinterrupted
I- the service,'and the ^yai-g of
ope^'^g of
a tumult arose in which the troops killed a considerable num- religion
ber of the defenseless multitude. The news of this massacre
aroused the Huguenots and was the beginning of a war which
continued, broken only by short truces, until the last weak
descendant of the house of Valois ceased to reign. As in the
other religious wars of the time, both sides exhibited the most
inhuman cruelty. France was filled for a generation with
burnings, pillage, and every form of barbarity. The leaders
of both the Catholic and Protestant parties, as well as two of
the French kings themselves, fell by the hands of assassins,
and France renewed in civil war all the horrors of the English
invasion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In, 1570, a brief
,
peace
,
was.
concluded. The Huguenots
• 1 ^
were Coligny's
xi influence and
to be tolerated, and certam towns were assigned to them, pian for a
where they might defend themselves in case of renewed attacks "^a-^gf ^^^
from the Catholics. For a time both Charles IX and his mother, Philip 1 1
Catherine of Medici, were on the friendliest terms with the Hu-
guenot leader Coligny, who became a sort of prime minister.
He was anxious that Catholics and Protestants should join in
 636 Outlines of Europe aji History

a great national war against France's old enemy, Spain. In this

way the whole people of France might sink their religious dif-
ferences ina patriotic effort to win Franche-Comte (see above,
p, 575), which seemed naturally to belong to France rather
than to Spain.
Plot against The strict Catholic party of the Guises frustrated this plan
Coligny
by a most fearful expedient. They easily induced Catherine
of Medici to believe that she was being deceived by Coligny,
and an assassin was engaged to put him out of the way ; but
the scoundrel missed his aim and only wounded his victim.
Fearful lest the young king, who was faithful to Coligny,
should discover her part in the attempted murder, Catherine
invented a story of a great Huguenot conspiracy. The credu-
lous king was deceived, and the Catholic leaders at Paris ar-
ranged that at a given signal not only Coligny, but all the
Huguenots, who had gathered in great numbers in the city to
witness the marriage of the king's sister to the Protestant Henry
of Navarre, should be massacred on the eve of St. Bartholomew's
Day (August 23, 1572).
Massacre of The signal was duly given, and no less than two thousand
St. Bartholo-
mew, 1572 persons were ruthlessly murdered in Paris before the end of
the next day. The news of this attack spread into the prov-
inces, and it is probable that, at the very least, ten thousand
more Protestants were put to death outside of the capital
Civil war again broke out, and the Catholics formed the famous
The Holy Holy League, under the leadership of Henry of Guise, for the
League
advancement of their interests, the destruction of the Hugue-
nots, and the extirpation of heresy.
Question of
the succes- Henry HI (1574-1589), the last of the sons of Henry II,
sion to who succeeded Charles IX, had no heirs, and the great question
the French
throne of succession arose. The Huguenot Henry of Navarre was
the nearest male relative, but the League could never consent
to permit the throne of France to be sullied by heresy, espe-
cially as their leader, Henry of Guise, was himself anxious to
become king.
 The Wars of Religion

Henry III was driven weakly from one party to the other, Henrys,
War
three of the
and it finally came to a war between the three Henrys —
Henry HI, Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise (i 585-1 589).
It ended in a way characteristic of the times. Henry the king
had Henry of Guise assassinated. The sympathizers of the 1585-1589'

Fig. 220. Henry IV of Franxe

This spirited portrait of Henry of Navarre gives an excellent

impression of his geniality and good sense

League then assassinated Henry the king, which left the field
to Henry of Navarre. He ascended the throne as Henry IV
in 1589 and is an heroic figure in the line of French kings.
Henry IV,
The new king had many enemies, and his kingdom was
devastated and demoralized by years of war. He soon saw that 1589-1610,a
becomes
he must accept the religion of the majority of his people if he Cathohc

wished to reign over them. He accordingly asked to be read-

mitted to the Catholic Church (1593), excusing himself on the
 638 Outlines of European History

ground that " Paris was worth a mass." He did not forget his
old friends, however, and in 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes.
The Edict of By this edict of toleration the Calvinists were permitted to
Nantes, 1598
hold services in all the towns and villages where they had pre-
viously held them, but in Paris and a number of other towns
all Protestant services were prohibited. The Protestants were
to enjoy the same political rights as Catholics, and to be eligible
to government offices. A number of fortified towns Were to
remain in the hands of the Huguenots, particularly La Rochelle,
Montauban, and Nimes. Henry's only mistake lay in granting
the Huguenots the right to control fortified towns. In the next
generation this privilege aroused the suspicion of the king's
minister, Richelieu, who attacked the Huguenots, not so much
on religious grounds as on account of their independent position
in the state, which suggested that of the older feudal nobles.
Ministry of Henry IV chose Sully, an upright and able Calvinist, for his
Sully
chief minister. Sully set to work to reestablish the kingly power,
which had suffered greatly under the last three brothers of the
house of Valois. He undertook to ghten the tremendous burden
of debt which weighed upon the country He laid out new roads
and canals, and encouraged agriculture and commerce : he dis-
missed the useless noblemen and officers whom the government
was supporting without any advantage to itself. Had his ad-
ministration not been prematurely interrupted, it might have
brought France unprecedented power and prosperity ; but reli-
gious fanaticism put an end to his reforms.
Assassination In 1 610 Henry IV, like William the Silent, was assassinated
of Henry IV,
1610 just in the midst of his greatest usefulness to his country. Sully
could not agree with the regent, Henry's widow, and so gave
up his position and retired to private life.
Richelieu Before many years Richelieu, perhaps the greatest minister
France has ever had. rose to power, and from 1624 to his death
in 1642 he governed France for Henr)' IV's son, Louis XIII
(16 1 0-1643). Something will be said of his policy in connec-
tion with the Thirty Years' War (see section 113).
 The Wars of Religion 639

Section 112. England under Queen Elizabeth

The long and disastrous civil war between Catholics and England

Protestants, which desolated France in the sixteenth century, beth, 1558-'

had happily no counterpart in England. During her long reign ^^°^
Queen Elizabeth succeeded not only in maintaining peace at
home, but in frustrating the conspiracies and attacks of Philip II,
which threatened her realm from without. Moreover, by her
interference in the Netherlands, she did much to secure their
independence of Spain.
Upon the death of Catholic Mary and the accession of her Elizabeth
sister Elizabeth in 1558, the English government became once protestant
more Protestant. The new queen had a new revised edition esJ^^^fshe^
issued of the Book of Common Prayer which had been pre- the church
of England
pared in the time of her brother, Edward VI. This contained
the services which the government ordered to be performed in
all the churches of England. All her subjects were required to
accept the queen's views and to go to church, and ministers
were to use nothing but the official prayer book. Elizabeth did
not adopt the Presbyterian system advocated by Calvin but
retained many features of the Catholic church, including the
bishops and archbishops. So the Anglican church followed a"
middle path halfway between Lutherans and Calvinists on the
one hand and Catholics on the other.
The Catholic churchmen who had held positions under Queen
Mary were naturally dismissed and replaced by those who would
obey Elizabeth and use her Book of Prayer. Her first Parlia-
ment gave the sovereign the powe7's of supreme head of the
Church of England, although the title, which her father, Henry
VIII, had assumed, was not revived.
The Church of England still exists in much the same form in The EngUsh
which it was established in the first years of Elizabeth's reign and survives in
the prayer book is still used, although Englishmen are no longer jQ^m"^'"^^
required to attend church and may hold any religious views they
please without being interfered with by the government.
 640 Outlines of Eitropea7i History

Presbyterian While England adopted a middle course in religious matters

Church
established Scotland became Presbyterian, and this led to much trouble for
in Scotland
Elizabeth. There, shortly after her accession, the ancient Cath-
olic Church was abolished, for the nobles were anxious to get

.mr ■■:.... \

n p '
^H■

Fig. 221.
hM--'^!"^^^

^|
Portrait
■^,
-'

of Queen Elizabeth
'
'

Elizabeth, the first woman to rule England, deemed herself a very

handsome and imposing person. She was fond of fine clothes and
doubtless had on her best when she sat for her portrait

the lands of the bishops into their own hands and enjoy the
revenue from them. John Knox, a veritable second Calvin in his
stern energy, secured the introduction of the Presbyterian form
of faith and church government which still prevail in Scotland.
 The Wars of Religion 641

In 1 56 1 the Scotch queen, Mary Stuart, whose French hus- Mar>' Stuart,
band, Francis II, had just died, landed at Leith. She was but quee'n,"^''^
nineteen years old, of s^reat beauty and charm, and, by reason becomes the
of her Catholic faith and French training, almost a foreigner to Catholics
her subjects. Her grandmother was a sister of Henry VIII,
and Mary claimed to be the rightful heiress to the English
throne should Elizabeth die childless. Consequently the beau-
tiful Queen of Scots became the hope of all those who wished
to bring back England and Scotland to the Roman Catholic
faith. Chief among these were Philip II of Spain and Mary's
relatiyes the Guises in France.
Mary quickly discredited herself with both Protestants and Marj-'s
Catholics by her conduct. After marrying her second cousin, conduct"^
Lord Darnley, she discovered that he was a dissolute scape-
grace and came to despise him. She then formed an attach-
ment for a reckless nobleman named Bothwell. Hie house
near Edinburgh in which Darnley was lying ill was blown up
one night with gunpowder, and he was killed. The public sus-
pected that both Bothwell and the queen were implicated. How
far Mary was responsible for her husband's death no one can
be sure. It is certain that she later married Bothwell and that
her indignant subjects thereupon deposed her as a murderess.
After fruitless attempts to regain her power, she abdicated in Mary flees
favor of her infant son, James A^I, and then fled to England to ^^",England,
appeal to Elizabeth. W'hile the prudent Elizabeth denied the
right of the Scotch to depose their queen, she took good care
to keep her rival practically a prisoner.
As time went on it became increasingly difficult for Elizabeth The rising in
to adhere to her policy of moderation in the treatment of the 1-5^ and the
Catholics. A rising in the north of England (1569) showed ^i^^^g^f^j.
that there were many who would gladly reestablish the Catholic deposing
faith by freeing Mary and placing her on the English throne.
This was followed by the excommunication of Elizabeth by the
Pope, who at the same time absolved her subjects from their
allegiance to their heretical ruler. Happily for Elizabeth the
 642 Outlines of Einvpeaii History

rebels could look for no help either from Philip II or the French
king. The Spaniards had their hands full, for the war in the
Netherlands had just begun ; and Charles IX, who had accepted
Coligny as his adviser, was at that moment in hearty accord
with the Huguenots. The rising in the north was suppressed,
but the English Catholics continued to look to Philip for help.
They opened correspondence with Alva and invited him to
come with six thousand Spanish troops to dethrone Elizabeth
and make Mary Stuart queen of England in her stead. Alva
hesitated, for he characteristically thought that it would be better
to kill Elizabeth, or at least capture her. Meanwhile the plot
was discovered and came to naught.
English Although Philip found himself unable to harm England, the
mariners
capture English mariners caused great loss to Spain. In spite of the
Spanish
ships fact that Spain and England were not openly at war, Elizabeth's
seamen extended their operations as far as the West Indies,
and seized Spanish treasure ships, with the firm conviction that
in robbing Philip they were serving God. The daring Sir Francis
Drake even ventured into the Pacific, where only the Spaniards
had gone heretofore, and carried off much booty on his little
vessel, the Pelican. At last he took " a great vessel with jewels
in plenty, thirteen chests of silver coin, eighty pounds weight of
gold, and twenty-six tons of silver." He then sailed around the
world, and on his return presented his jewels to Elizabeth, who
paid little attention to the expostulations of the king of Spain.
Relations One hope of the Catholics has not yet been mentioned,
between
England and namely, Ireland, whose relations with England from very early
Catholic
Ireland times down to the present day form one of the most cheerless
pages in the history of Europe. The population was divided
into numerous clans, and their chieftains fought constantly with
one another as well as with the English, who were vainly
endeavoring to subjugate the island. Under Henr)' II and
later kings England had conquered a district in the eastern
part of Ireland, and here the English managed to maintain a
foothold in spite of the anarchy outside. Henry VIII had
 TJie Wars of Religion 643

suppressed a revolt of the Irish and assumed the title of king of

Ireland. Queen Mary of England had hoped to promote better
relations by colonizing Kings County and Queens County with
Englishmen. This led, however, to a long struggle which only
ended when the colonists had killed all the natives in the district
they occupied.
Elizabeth's interest in the perennial Irish question was stim-
ulated bythe probability that Ireland might become a basis for
Catholic operations, since Protestantism had made little progress
among its people. Her fears were realized. Several attempts
were made by Catholic leaders to land troops in Ireland with the
purpose of making the island the base for an attack on England.
Elizabeth's officers were able to frustrate these enterprises, but
the resulting disturbances greatly increased the miser)^ of the
Irish. In 1582 no less than thirty thousand people are said to
have perished, chiefly from starvation.
As Philip's troops began to get the better of the opposition Persecution
in the southern Netherlands, the prospect of sending a Spanish EngHsh
army to England grew brighter. Two Jesuits were sent to Eng- Catholics
land in 1580 to strengthen the adherents of their faith and urge
them to assist the foreign force against their queen when it should
come. Parliament now grew more intolerant and ordered fines
and imprisonment to be inflicted on those who said or heard
mass, or who refused to attend the English services. One of
the Jesuit emissaries was cruelly tortured and executed for
treason, the other escaped to the Continent.
In the spring of 1582 the first attempt by the Catholics to Plans to
assassinate the heretical queen was made at Philip's instigation. EUzab^th^
It was proposed that, when Elizabeth was out of the way, the
Duke of Guise should see that an army was sent to England in
the interest of the Catholics. But Guise was kept busy at home
by the War of the Three Henrys, and Philip was left to under-
take the invasion of- England by himself.
Mary Queen of Scots did not live to witness the attempt.
She became implicated in another plot for the assassination of
 644
Outlines of Europca7i Histo7y

Execution of Elizabeth. Parliament now realized that as long as Mary lived

Mary Queen
of Scots, Elizabeth's life was in constant danger ; whereas, if Mary were
1587
out of the way, Philip II would have no interest in the death
of Elizabeth, since Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, who
would succeed Elizabeth on the English throne, was a Protestant.
Elizabeth was therefore reluctantly persuaded by her advisers
to sign a warrant for Mary's execution in 1587.
Destruction
of the Philip II, however, by no means gave up his project of re-
Spanish claiming Protestant England. In 1588 he brought together a
Armada,
;88 great fleet, including his best and largest warships, which vs^as
proudly called by the Spaniards the "Invincible Armada" (that
is, fleet). This was to sail through the English Channel to the
Netherlands and bring over the Duke of Parma and his veterans,
who, it was expected, would soon make an end of Elizabeth's
raw militia. The English ships were inferior to those of Spain in
size although not in number, but they had trained commanders,
such as Francis Drake and Hawkins.
These famous captains had long sailed the Spanish Main and
knew how to use their cannon without getting near enough to
the Spaniards to suffer from their short-range weapons. When
the Armada approached, it was permitted by the English fleet
to pass up the Channel before a strong wind, which later became
a storm. The English ships then followed, and both fleets were
driven past the coast of Flanders. Of the hundred and twenty
Spanish ships, only fifty-four returned home ; the rest had been
destroyed by English valor or by the gale to which Elizabeth
herself ascribed the victory. The defeat of the Armada put an
end to the danger from Spain.

Prospects of
the Catholic
As we look back over the period covered by the reign of
cause at the Philip II, it is clear that it was a most notable one in the history
opening of
the reign of of the Catholic Church. When he ascended the throne in 1556
Philip II
Germany, as well as Switzerland and the ^Netherlands, had be-
come largely Protestant. England, however, under his Catholic
wife, Mary, seemed to be turning back to the old religion, while
 The Wars of Religion 645

the French monarchs showed no inclination to tolerate the heret-

ical Calvinists. Moreover, the new and enthusiastic order of
the Jesuits promised to be a powerful agency in inducing the
Protestants to accept once more the supremacy of the Pope
and the doctrines of the Catholic Church as formulated by the
Council of Trent. The tremendous power and apparently
boundless resources of Spain itself, which were viewed by the
rest of Europe with terror, Philip was prepared to dedicate to
the destruction of Protestantism throughout western Europe.
But when Philip II died in 1598 all was changed. England Outcome of
was hopelessly Protestant : the " Invincible Armada " had been po/j^y ^
miserably wrecked and Philip's plan for bringing England once
more within the fold of the Roman Catholic Church was for-
ever frustrated. In France the terrible wars of religion were
over, and a powerful king, lately a Protestant himself, was on
the throne, who not only tolerated the Protestants but chose
one of them for his chief minister and would brook no more
meddling of Spain in French affairs. A new Protestant state, the
United Netherlands, had actually appeared within the bounds
of the realm bequeathed to Philip by his father. In spite of its
small size this state was destined to play, from that time on,
quite as important a part in European affairs as the harsh
Spanish stepmother from whose control it had escaped.
Spain itself had suffered most of all from Philip's reign. His Decline of
domestic policy and his expensive wars had sadly weakened the th?sixtee^nth
country. The income from across the sea was bound to decrease ^^^^ury
as the mines were exhausted. The final expulsion of the in-
dustrious Moors, shortly after Philip's death (see above, p. 566),
left the indolent Spaniards to till their own fields, which rapidly
declined in fertility under their careless cultivation. Some one
once ventured to tell a Spanish king that " not gold and silver »
but sweat is the most precious metal, a coin which is always
current and never depreciates " ; but it was a rare form of cur-
rency in the Spanish peninsula. After Philip IPs death Spain
sank to the rank of a secondary European power..
 646 Outlines of European History

Section 113. The Thirty Years' War

The Thirty The last great conflict caused by the differences between the
Years" War Catholics and Protestants was fought out in Germany during
really a
series of
wars the first half of the seventeenth century. It is generally known
as the Thirty Years' War (16 18-1648), but there was in reality
a series of wars ; and although the fighting was done upon
German territory, Sweden, France, and Spain played quite as
important a part in the struggle as the various German states.
\Yeaknesses Just before the abdication of Charles Y, the Lutheran princes
of the Peace
of Augsburg had forced the Emperor to acknowledge their right to their own
religion and to the church property which they had appropriated.
The religious Peace of Augsburg had, however, as we have
seen,^ two great weaknesses. In the first place only those
Protestants who held the Lutheran faith were to be tolerated.
The Calvinists, who were increasing in numbers, were not in-
cluded in the peace. In the second place the peace did not
put a stop to the seizure of church property by the Protestant
princes.
Spread of Protestantism, however, made rapid progress and invaded the
Protestant-
Austrian possessions and, above all, Bohemia. So it looked for
a time as if even the Catholic Hapsburgs were to see large por-
tions of their territory falling away from the old Church. But
the Catholics had in the Jesuits a band of active and efficient
missionaries. They not only preached and founded schools, but
also succeeded in gaining the confidence of some of the German
princes, whose chief advisers they became. Conditions were
very favorable, at the opening of the seventeenth century, for a
renewal of the religious struggle.
Opening of The long war began in Bohemia in i6t8. This portion of
the Thirty
Years' ^\ar, the Austrian possessions was strongly Protestant and decided
1618
that the best policy was to declare its independence of the Haps-
burgs and set up a king of its own. It chose Frederick, the
Elector of the Palatinate, a Calvinist who would, it was hoped,
1 See above, p. 603.
 TJie WiD's of Religion

enjoy the support of his father-in-law. King James I of England.^

So Frederick and his English wife moved from Heidelberg
to Prague. But their stay there was brief, for the Hapsburg
Emperor (Ferdinand ID with the aid of the ruler of Bavaria put
to flight the poor " winter king," as Frederick was called on
account of his reign of a single season.
This was regarded as a serious defeat by the Protestants, Denmark
interv^enes
and the Protestant king of Denmark decided to intervene. He
remained in Germany for four years but was so badly beaten by
the Emperor's able general, Wallenstein, that he retired from 1629
the conflict in 1629.
The Edict of
The Emperor was encouraged by the successes of the Catho- Restitution,
lic armies in defeating the Bohemian and Danish Protestant
armies to issue that same year an Edict of Restitution. In this
he ordered the Protestants throughout Germany to give back
all the church possessions which they had seized since the reli-
gious Peace of Augsburg (1555). These included two arch-
bishoprics (Magdeburg and Bremen), nine bishoprics, about one
hundred and twenty monasteries, and other church foundations.
Moreover, he decreed that only the Lutherans might hold re-
ligious meetings; the other "sects," including the Calvinists,
were to be broken up. As Wallenstein was preparing to exe-
cute this decree in his usual merciless fashion, the war took a
new turn.
Dismissal of
The Catholic League, which had been formed some time be- Wallenstein ;
fore, had become jealous of a general who threatened to become
of Gustavus
too powerful, and it accordingly joined in the complaints, which appearance
Sweden,
Adolphus of
came from every side, of the terrible extortions and incredible
cruelty practiced by Wallenstein 's troops. The Emperor con- 1594-1632
sented, therefore, to dismiss this most competent commander.
Just as the Catholics were thus weakened, a new enemy ar-
rived upon the scene who proved far more dangerous than
any they had yet had to face, namely Gustavus Adolphus,
king of Sweden.
1 James VI of Scotland who succeeded Queen Elizabeth in 1603.
 648 Outlines of Ilni'opcaii Ilistojy
The kingdom We have had no occasion hitherto to speak of the Scandinavian
of Sweden
kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which the northern
German peoples had established about Charlemagne's time ; but
from now on they begin to take part in the affairs of central
Europe. The Union of Calmar (1397) had brought these three
kingdoms, previously separate, under a single ruler. About the
time that the Protestant revolt began in Germany the union was
broken by the withdrawal of Sweden, which became an independ-
(iustavus
ent kingdom. Gustavus Vasa, a Swedish noble, led the move-
\'asa,
i;6o 1523- ment and was subsequently chosen king of Sweden (1523). In
the same year Protestantism was introduced. Vasa confiscated
the church lands, got the better of the aristocracy, — who had
formerly made the kings a great deal of trouble, — and started
Sweden on its way toward national greatness.
Motives of
Gustavus Gustavus Adolphus (159 4- 163 2) was induced to invade
Adolphus in Germany for two reasons. In the first place, he was a sincere
invading
Germany, and enthusiastic Protestant and by far the most generous and
1630 attractive figure of his time. He was genuinely afHicted by the
misfortunes of his Protestant brethren and anxious to devote
himself to their w^elfare. Secondly, he undoubtedly hoped by
his invasion not only to free his fellow Protestants from the
oppression of the Emperor and of the Catholic League, but
to gain a strip of German territory for Sweden.
Destruction
of Magde- Gustavus was not' received with much cordiality at first by
burg, 1631 the Protestant princes of the north, but they were brought to
their senses by the awful destruction of Magdeburg by the troops
of the Catholic League under General Tilly. Magdeburg was
the most important town of northern Germany. When it finally
succumbed after an obstinate and difficult siege, twenty thousand
of its inhabitants were killed and the town burned to the ground.
Although Tilly's reputation for cruelty is quite equal to that of
Gustavus Wallenstein, he was probably not responsible for the fire. After
Adolphus
victorious at Gustavus Adolphus had met Tilly near Leipsic and victoriously
Breitenfeld,
1631 routed the army of the League, the Protestant princes began to
look with more favor on the foreigner.
 TJic Wars of Religion 649

The next spring Gustavus entered Bavaria and once more Wallenstein
defeated Tilly (who was mortally wounded in the battle) and ^^^^ ^
forced Munich to surrender. There seemed now to be no rea-
son why he should not continue his progress to Vienna. At
this juncture the Emperor recalled Wallenstein, who collected a
new army over which he was given absolute command. After
some delay Gustavus met Wallenstein on the field of Liitzen, Gustavus
in November, 1632, where, after a fierce struggle, the Swedes kuied'ar
gained the victory. But they lost their leader and Protestantism Liitzen, 1632
its hero, for the Swedish king ventured too far into the lines of
the enemy and was surrounded and killed.
The Swedes did not, however, retire from Germany, but Murder of
continued to participate in the war, which now degenerated
into a series of raids by leaders whose soldiers depopulated
the land by their unspeakable atrocities. Wallenstein, who
had long been detested by even the Catholics, was deserted
by his soldiers and murdered (in 1634), to the great relief
of all parties.
Just at this moment Richelieu ^ decided that it would be to Richelieu
the interest of France to renew the old struggle with the Haps- stnf^le o^f
burgs by sending troops against the Emperor. France was still France
shut in, as she had been since the time of Charles V, by the Hapsburgs
Hapsburg lands. Except on the side toward the ocean her
boundaries were in the main artificial ones, and not those estab-
lished bygreat rivers and mountains. She therefore longed to
weaken her enemy and strengthen herself by winning Roussillon
on the south, and so make the crest of the Pyrenees the line of
demarcation between France and Spain. She dreamed, too, of ex-
tending her sway toward the Rhine by adding the county of Bur-
gundy (that is, Franche-Comte) and a number of fortified towns
which would afford protection against the Spanish Netherlands.
Richelieu declared war against Spain in May, 1635. ^^ ^^^ Richelieu's
already concluded an alliance with the chief enemies of the prolongs'^*°"
house of Austria. So the war was renewed, and French, ^^^ "^^^
1 See above, p. 638.
 650 Outliiics of European History

Swedish, Spanish, and German soldiers ravaged an already

exhausted country for a decade longer. I'he dearth of provi-
sions was so great that the armies had to move quickly from
place to place in order to avoid starvation. After a serious de-
feat by the Swedes, the Emperor (Ferdinand III, 1637-1657)

Fig. 222. Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, from a

Contemporaneous Painting

sent a Dominican monk to expostulate with Cardinal Richelieu

for his crime in aiding the German and Swedish heretics against
Catholic Austria.
France suc- The cardinal had, however, just died (December, 1642),
ceeds Spain
in the well content with the results of his diplomacy. The French
military
supremacy were in possession of Roussillon and of Lorraine and Alsace.
of western
Europe
The military exploits of the French generals, especially Turenne
and Conde', during the opening years of the reign of Louis XIV
 TJie Wars of Religion 651

(1643-17 15), showed that a new period had begun in which

the military and political supremacy of Spain was to give way
to that of France (see Chapter XXVIII).
The participants in the war were now so numerous and their Close of the

objects
required sosome
various
yearsandto conflicting
arrange thethatconditions
it is not of
strange
peace,that
evenit \va"^64r'^^
after every one was ready for it. It was agreed (1644) that
France and the Empire should negotiate at Miinster, and the
Emperor and the Swedes at Osnabriick — both of which towns
lie in Westphalia. For four years the representatives of the
several powers worked upon the difficult problem of satisfying
every one, but at last the treaties of Westphalia were signed
late in 1648.
The religious troubles in Germany were settled by extending Provisions
the toleration of the Peace of Augsburg so as to include the treaties of

Calvinists as well as the Lutherans. The Protestant princes ^^'estphaha

were to retain the lands which they had in their possession in
the year 1624, regardless of the Edict of Restitution, and each
ruler was still to have the right to determine the religion of his
state. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was practi-
cally acknowledged by permitting the individual states to make
treaties among themselves and with foreign powers ; this was
equivalent to recognizing the practical independence which they
had, as a matter of fact, already long enjoyed. While portions
of northern Germany were ceded to Sweden, this territory did
not cease to form a part of the Empire, for Sweden was thereafter
to have three votes in the German diet.
The Emperor also ceded to France three important towns —
Metz, Verdun, and Toul — and all his rights in Alsace, although
the city of Strassburg was to remain with the Empire. Lastly, the
independence both of the United Netherlands and of Switzer-
land was acknowledged.
The accounts of the misery and depopulation of Germany Disastrous
caused by the Thirty Years' War are well-nigh incredible, the war in
Thousands of villages were wiped out altogether ; in some ^^^^many
 652 Outlines of European History

regions the population was reduced by one half, in others to

a third, or even less, of what it had been at the opening of the
conflict. The flourishing city of Augsburg was left with but
sixteen thousand souls instead of eighty thousand. The people
were fearfully barbarized by privation and suffering and by the
atrocities of the soldiers of all the various nations. Until the
end of the eighteenth century Germany remained too exhausted
and impoverished to make any considerable contribution to the
culture of Europe.

Section 114. The Beginnings of our Scientific Age

The new
science The battles of the Thirty Years' War are now well-nigh forgot,
and few people are interested in Tilly and Wallenstein and Gus-
tavus Adolphus. It seems as if the war did little but destroy
men's lives and property, and that no great ends were accom-
plished byall the suffering it involved. But during the years
that it raged certain men were quietly devoting themselves to
scientific research which was to change the world more than all
the battles that have ever been fought. These men adopted a
new method. They perceived that the books of ancient writers,
especially Aristotle, which were used as textbooks in the univer-
sities, were full of statements that could not be proved. They
maintained that the only way to advance science was to set to
work and try experiments, and by careful thought and investi-
gation to determine the laws of nature without regard to what
previous generations had thought.
The dis- The Polish astronomer Copernicus published a work in
covery of
Copernicus 1543 in which he refuted the old idea that the sun and all the
stars revolved around the earth as a center, as was then taught
in all the universities. He showed that, on the contrary, the
sun was the center about which the earth and the rest of the
planets revolved, and that the reason that the stars seem to go
around the earth each day is because our globe revolves on its
axis. Although Copernicus had been encouraged to write his
 The Wars of Religion 653

book by a cardinal and had dedicated it to the Pope, the Catholic

as well as the Protestant theologians declared that the new theory-
did not correspond with the teachings of the Bible, and they
therefore rejected it. But we know now that Copernicus was

Fig. 223. Galileo

right and the theologians and universities wrong. The earth is

a mere speck in the universe and even the sun is a relatively
small body compared with many of the stars, and so far as we
know the universe as a whole has no center.
The Italian scientist Galileo (i 564-1 642), by the use of a Galileo
little telescope he contrived, was able in 16 10 to see the spots
654
Outlines of European History

on the sun ; these indicated that the sun was not, as Aristotle
had taught, a perfect, unchanging body, and showed also that
it revolved on its axis, as Copernicus had guessed that the earth
did. Galileo made careful experiments by dropping objects from

Fig. 224. Rene Descartes

the leaning tower of Pisa (Fig. 170), which proved that Aristotle
was wrong in assuming that a body weighing a hundred pounds
fell a hundred times as fast as a body weighing but one. To
Galileo we owe, besides, many new ideas in the science of me-
chanics. He wrote in Italian as well as Latin, and this, too, gave
offense to those who pinned their faith to Aristotle. They would
 The Wars of Religion 655

have forgiven Galileo if he had confined his discussions to the

learned who could read Latin, but they thought it highly dan-
gerous to have the new ideas set forth in such a way that the
people at large might find out about them and so come to doubt
what the theologians and universities were teaching. Galileo
was finally summoned before the Inquisition and some of his
theories condemned by the church authorities.
Just as the Thirty Years' War was beginning, a young French- Descartes
man by the name of Descartes had finished his education at a
Jesuit college and decided to get some knowledge of the w^orld
by going into the war for a short time. He did much more
thinking than fighting, however. Sitting by the stove during the
winter lull in hostilities, deep in meditation, it occurred to him
one day that he had no reason for believing anything. He saw
that everything that he accepted had come to him on the authority
of some one else, and he failed to see any reason why the old
authorities should be right. So he boldly set to work to think
out a wholly new philosophy that should be entirely the result
of his own reasoning. He decided, in the first place, that one
thing at least was true. He was f/ii?iki?ig, and therefore he must
exist. This he expressed in Latin in the famous phrase Cogifo,
ergo sum, " I think, therefore I am." He also decided that God
must exist and that He had given men such good minds that, if
they only used them ca?'efi(IIy, they would not be deceived in
the conclusions they reached. In short, Descartes held that dear
thoughts must be true thoughts.
Descartes not only founded modern philosophy, he was also Work of
Descartes
greatly interested in science and mathematics. He was impressed
by the wonderful discovery of Harvey in regard to the circulation
of the blood (see below, p. 661), which he thought well illustrated
what scientific investigation might accomplish. His most famous
book, called An Essay 011 Method, was written in French and
addressed to intelligent men who did not know Latin. He says
that those who use their own heads are much more likely to
reach the truth than those who read old Latin books. Descartes
 656 Outlines of European History

wrote clear textbooks on algebra and that branch of mathematics

known as analytical geometry, of which he was the discoverer.
Francis Bacon, an English lawyer and government official,
spent his spare hours explaining how men could increase their

iihii S'lCi'-CoinrS ^' ^O.'injrit IHort tJtti O^//

Fig Fraxcis Bacon

Francis knowledge. He too wrote in his native tongue as well as m Latin.

Bacon's tt 1 1 . ^ ,
New Atlantis FLe was the most eloquent representative of the new science
which renounced authority and relied upon expe?'imefit. " We
are the ancients," he declared, not those who lived long ago
when the world was young and men ignorant. Late in life
he wrote a little book, which he never finished, called the
 The PVars of Religion 657

New Atlafitis. It describes an imaginaty state which some Euro-

peans were supposed to have come upon in the Pacific Ocean.
The chief institution was a " House of Solomon," a great
laboratory for carrying on scientific investigatipn in the hope of
discovering new facts and using them for bettering the condi-
tion of the inhabitants. This House of Solomon became a sort
of model for the Royal Academy, which was established in
London some fifty years after Bacon's death. It still exists and
still publishes its proceedings regularly.
The earliest societies for scientific research grew up in Italy. societies
Scientific
Later the English Royal Society and the French Institute were founded
established, as well as similar associations in Germany. These
were the first things of the kind in the history of the world.
Their object was not, like that of the old Greek schools of
philosophy and the medieval universities, merely to hand down
the knowledge derived from the past, but to find out what had
never been known before.
We have seen how in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
new inventions were made, such as the compass, paper, specta-
cles, gunpowder, and, in the fifteenth century, the printing press.
But in the seventeenth century progress began to be much
more rapid, and an era of invention opened, in the midst of
which we still live. The microscope and telescope made it pos-
sible to discover innumerable scientific truths that were hidden
to the Greeks and Romans. In time this scientific advance
produced a spirit of reform^ also new in the world, and the first
chapter of the following volume will be devoted to this.

QUESTIONS
Section' i 09. What were the chief results of the Council of Trent?
Why did the Protestants refuse to take part in it } Give an account
of the life of Loyola. What were the objects of the Jesuit order.?
W^hat accusations did the Protestants bring against the society 1
Section i id. What are your impressions of Philip \\t How did
it come about that the Netherlands belonged to Spain.? Describe
658 Outlines of European History

Philip's policy in dealing with the Netherlands. How did the United
Netherlands gain their independence ?
Section i i i . What were the religious conditions in France when
Charles IX and Catherine of Medici came into power? What was
the character of the Huguenot party? Describe the massacre of
St. Bartholomew. How did .Henry IV become king? What was the
Edict of Nantes ?
Section i i 2. What measures did Queen Elizabeth take in reli-
gious matters? How did the English Church originate? Tell the
story of Mary Queen of Scots. What was the policy of Philip II in
regard to Elizabeth? What were the general results of Philip IPs
reign ?
Section 113. What was the origin of the Thirty Years' War?
What led the Swedish king to intervene ? W^hat did the Swedes gain
by the intervention ? Why did Richelieu send troops to fight in the
war? What w^ere the chief provisions of the Treaty of Westphalia?
What were the other results of the w- ar ?
Section i i 4. What is the difference between modern scientific
research and the spirit of the medieval universities ? Describe the
discoveries of Copernicus. What did Galileo accomplish ? Give the
views of Descartes. What was the position of Francis Bacon in regard
to scientific research? What was the " House of Solomon"?
What societies were established for scientific investigation ? Can
you think of some of the effects that modem science has had on the
lives of mankind?
 CHAPTER XXVII

STRUGGLE IN ENGLAND BETWEEN KING AND PARLIAMENT

Section 115. James I and the Divine Right

OF Kings

On the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James I, the first of the Accession of

Scotch family of Stuart, ascended the throne. It will be remem- scodand as
bered that he was the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and e^^^^^^j^^
through her a descendant of Henry VII (see table, p. 634). In 1603
Scotland he reigned as James VI ; consequently the two king-
doms were now brought together under the same ruler. This
did not, however, make the relations between the two countries
much more cordial than they had been in the past.
The chief interest of the period of the Stuarts, which began Chief interest
with the accession of James I in 1603 and ended with the flight of the Smarts
from England of his grandson, James II, eighty-five years later,
is the long and bitter struggle between the kings and Parlia-
ment. The vital question was, Should the Stuart kings, who
claimed to be God's representatives on earth, do as they thought
fit, or should Parliament control them and the government of
the country ?
We have seen how the English Parliament originated in the The attitude
time of Edward I and how his successors were forced to pay toward

attention to its wishes (see above, pp. 421 ff.). Under the P^r^'^ment
Tudors — that is, from the time of Henry VII to Elizabeth — the
monarchs had been able to manage Parliament so that it did,
in general, just what they wished. Henry VIII was a heartless
tyrant, and his daughter Elizabeth,
659 like her father, had ruled the
nation in a high-handed manner, but neither of them had been
accustomed to say much of their rights.
 660 Outlines of Europe mi History

James I James I, on the other hand, had a very irritating way of dis-
loved to
discuss the cussing his claim to be the sole and supreme ruler of England.
king's claims
" It is atheism and blasphemy," he declared, " to dispute what
God can do ; ... so it is presumption and high contempt in a
subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot
do this or that." James was a learned man and fond of writing

Fig. 226. James I

books. Among them he published a work on monarchs, in

which he claimed that the king could make any law he pleased
without consulting Parliament ; that he was the master of
every one of his subjects, high and low, and might put to death
whom he pleased. A good king would act according to law,
but is not bound to do so and has the power to change the
law at any time to suit himself.
Struggle in England betzveeii King and Parliament 66 1

These theories seem strange and very unreasonable to us, but The " divine
James was only tr)dng to justify the powers which the Tudor kj^gs"^
monarchs had actually exercised and which the kings of France
enjoyed down to the French Revolution of 1789. According to
the theory of " the divine right of kings " it had pleased God to
appoint the monarch the father of his people. People must
obey him as they would God and ask no questions. The king
was responsible to God alone, to whom he owed his powers, not
to Parliament or the nation (see below, p. 682).
It is unnecessary to follow the troubles between James I and
Parliament, for his reign only forms the preliminary to the fatal
experiences of his son Charles I, who came to the throne in 1625.
The writers of James's reign constituted its chief glory. They Great writers
outshone those of any other European country. Shakespeare is reign —^ ^
generally admitted to be the greatest dramatist that the world Shakespeare
has produced. While he wrote many of his plays before the
death of Elizabeth, some of his finest — Othello, Kifig Lear, and
The Tempest, for example — belong to the time of James I.
During the same period Francis Bacon (see above, p. 656) was Francis
writing his Advancement of Learning, which he dedicated to ^^°"
James I in 1605 and in which he urged that men should cease
to rely upon the old textbooks, like Aristotle, and turn to a
careful examination of animals, plants, and chemicals, with a
view of learning about them and using the knowledge thus
gained to improve the condition of mankind. Bacon's ability
to write English is equal to that of Shakespeare, but he chose
to write prose, not verse. It was in James's reign that the King james
authorized English translation of the Bible was made which Jhe^Bibie
is still used in all countries where English is spoken.
An English physician of this period, William Harvey, exam- William
ined the workings of the human body more carefully than any ^^^^
previous investigator and made the great discovery of the man-
ner in which the blood circulates from the heart through the
arteries and capillaries and back through the veins — a matter
which had previously been entirely misunderstood.
 662 Outlines of European History

Section 116. How Charles I got along without

Parliament

Charles I,
1625-1649
Charles I, James I's son and successor, was somewhat more
dignified than his father, but he was quite as obstinately set
upon having his own way and showed no more skill in winning
the confidence of his subjects. He did nothing to remove the
disagreeable impressions of his father's reign and began im-
mediately to quarrel with Parliament. When that body refused
to grant him any money, mainly because they thought that it
was likely to be wasted by his favorite, the Duke of Bucking-
ham, Charles formed the plan of winning their favor by a great
military victory.
He hoped to gain popularity by prosecuting a war against
Spain, whose king was energetically supporting the Catholic
League in the Thirty Years' War. Accordingly, in spite of Par-
liament's refusal to grant him the necessary funds, he embarked
in war. With only the money which he could raise by irregular
means, Charles arranged an expedition to capture the Spanish
treasure ships which arrived in Cadiz once a year from America,
laden with gold and silver ; but this expedition failed.
Charles's ex-
actions and
In his attempts to raise money without a regular grant from
arbitrary- acts Parliament, Charles resorted to vexatious exactions. The law
prohibited him from asking for gifts from his people, but it did
not forbid his asking them to lend him money, however little
prospect there might be of his ever repaying it. Five gentlemen
who refused to pay such a forced loan were imprisoned by the
mere order of the king. This raised the question of whether
the king had the right to send to prison those whom he wished
without any legal reasons for their arrest.
The Petition This and other attacks upon the rights of his subjects aroused
of Right
Parliament. In 1628 that body drew up the celebrated Petition
of Right, which is one of the most important documents in the
history of the English Constitution. In it Parliament called the
king's attention to his unlawful exactions, and to the acts of
Striio;(^le in Eno;laiid betiveen Kins; and Parliament 66'\

his agents who had in sundry ways molested and disquieted the
people of the realm. Parliament therefore " humbly prayed "
the king that no man need thereafter " make or yield any gift,
loan, benevolence, tax, or such
like charge " without consent of
Parliament ; that no free man
should be imprisoned or suffer
any punishment except according
to the laws and statutes of the
realm as presented in the Great
Charter ; and that soldiers should
not be quartered upon the people
on any pretext whatever. Very
reluctantly Charles consented to
this restatement of the limitations
which the English had always, in
theory at least, placed upon the
arbitrary power of their king.
The disagreement between
Charles and Parliament was ren-
dered much more serious by
religious differences. The king
had married a French Catholic
princess, and the Catholic cause
seemed to be gaining on the Con-
tinent, The king of Denmark had
Fig.
just been defeated by Wallenstein 227. Charles I of
England
and miy (see above, p. 647), and
Richelieu had succeeded in de- This portrait is by one of the
priving the Huguenots of their greatest painters of the time,
Anthony Van Dyck, 1 599-1641
cities of refuge. Both James I (see Fig. 229)
and Charles I had shown their
readiness to enter into agreements with France and Spain to
protect Catholics in England, and there was evidently a growing
inclination in England to revert to the older ceremonies of the
 664 Outlmes of European History

Church, which shocked the more strongly Protestant members

of the House of Commons. The communion table was again
placed by many clergymen at the eastern end of the church and
became fixed there as an altar, and portions of the service were
once more chanted.
Charles dis- These " popish practices," as the Protestants called them,
^£^^(1629)^ ^^it^^ which Charles was supposed to sympathize, served to
and deter-
mines to rule widen the breach between him and the Commons, which had
by himselfbeen caused by the king's attempt to raise taxes on his own ac-
count. The Parliament of 1629, after a stormy session, was dis-
solved bythe king, who determined to rule thereafter by him^self.
For eleven years no new Parliament was summoned.
Charles's Charlcs was not well fitted by nature to run the government
exactions o^ England by himself. He had not the necessary tireless
energy. Moreover, the methods resorted to by his ministers to
raise money without recourse to Parliament rendered the king
more and more unpopular and prepared the way for the trium-
phant return of Parliament. For example, Charles applied to his
subjects for " ship money." He was anxious to equip a fleet,
but instead of requiring the various ports to furnish ships, as
was the ancient custom, he permitted them to buy themselves off
by contributing money to the fitting out of large ships owned by
himself. Even those living inland were asked for ship money.
The king maintained that this was not a tax but simply a pay-
ment by which his subjects freed themselves from the duty of
defending their country.
John John Hampden, a squire of Buckinghamshire, made a bold
Hampden ^^^^^ against this illegal demand by refusing to pay twenty
shillings of ship money which was levied upon him. The case
was tried before the king's judges, and he was convicted, but
by a bare majority. The trial made it tolerably clear that
the country would not put up long with the king's despotic
policy.
In 1633 Charles made William Laud archbishop of Canter-
bury. Laud believed that the English Church would strengthen
Struggle ill England betzveen King and Parliament 665

both itself and the government by following a middle course, William

which should lie between that of the Church of Rome and that ^rchbiSSfp^
of Calvinistic Geneva. He declared that it was the part of of Canterbury
good citizenship to conform outwardly to the services of the

Fig. 228. John Hampden

state church, but that the State should not undertake to oppress
the individual conscience, and that every one should be at liberty
to make up his own mind in regard to the interpretation to be
given to the Bible and to the church fathers. As soon as he
became archbishop he began a series of visitations through his
province. Every clergyman who refused to conform to the
 666 Outlines of European History

praver book, or opposed the placing of the communion table

at the east end of the church, or declined to bow at the name
of Jesus, was, if obstinate, to be brought before the king's
special Court of High Commission to be tried and. if convicted,
to be deprived of his position.
The different Laud's conduct was no doubt gratifying to the High Church
S-oistants— party among the Protestants, that is, those who still clung to
^^f\ *^^"^^^ some of the ancient practices of the Roman Church, although
Church thev rejected the doctrine of the Mass and refused to regard
the Pope as their head. The Low Church party, or Puritans,
on the contrary, regarded Laud and his policy with aversion.
While, unlike the Presbyterians, they did not urge the abolition
of the bishops, they disliked all '• superstitious usages," as they
called the wearing of the surplice by the clergy, the use of the
sign of the cross at baptism, the kneeling posture in partaking
of the communion, and so forth. The Presbyterians, who are
often confused with the Puritans, agreed with them in many
respects, but went farther and demanded the introduction of
Calvin's system of church government.
The Lastly, there was an ever-increasing number of Separatists,
epen en s ^^ Independents. These rejected both the organization of the
Church of England and that of the Presbyterians, and desired
that each religious community should organize itself independ-
ently. The government had forbidden these Separatists to hold
their little meetings, which they called coni'enticles, and about
The Pilgrim i6oo somc of them fled to Holland. The community of them
Fathers
which established itself at Leyden dispatched the Mayflower, in
1620, with colonists — since known as the Pilgrim Fathers — to
the New World across the sea.^ It was these colonists who laid
the foundations of a Xeiu England which has proved a worthy
offspring of the mother countr}-. The form of worship which they
established in their new home is still known as Congregational.
1 The name " Puritan." it should be noted, was applied loosely to the English
Protestants, whether Low Churchmen. Presbyterians, or Independents, who
aroused the antagonism of their neighbors by advocating a godly life and opposing
popular pastimes, especially on Sunday.
Stncggle in England betzueen King and Parliament 667

Section 117. How Charles I lost hl> Head

In 1640 Charles found himself forced to summon Parlia- Charles r's

ment, for he was involved in a war with Scotland which he Xe Scotch
could not carry on without money. There the Presbyterian Presbnenans
system had been prett)' generally introduced by John Knox in
Elizabeth's time (see above, p. 640;. An attempt on the part
of Charles to force the Scots to accept a modified form of the
English prayer book led to the signing of the National Covenant The National

in 1638. This pledged those who attached their names to it to 15^3^^"^" '
reestablish the purity and liberty of the Gospel, which, to most
of the Covenanters, meant Presbyterianism.
Charles thereupon undertook to coerce the Scots, Having Charles
Parliament,
no money, he bought on credit a large cargo of pepper, which the^Long
had just arrived in the ships of the East India Company, and 640
sold it cheap for ready cash. The soldiers, however, whom he
got together showed little inclination to fight the Scots, with
whom they were in tolerable agreement on religious matters.
Charles was therefore at last obliged to summon a Parliament,
which, owing to the length of time it remained in session, is
known as the Long Parliament.
The Long Parliament began by imprisoning Archbishop Laud The meas-
in the Tower of London. They declared him guilty of trea- L^Jng
son, and he was executed in 164;,^^in spite
^ Parliament
of Charles's efforts to against the
save him. Parliament also tried to strengthen its position by t)Tanny
king's
passing the Triennial Bill, which provided that it should meet at
least once in three years, even if not summoned by the king.
In fact, Charles's whole system of government was abrogated.
Parliament drew up a '' Grand Remonstrance '' in which all of
Charles's errors were enumerated and a demand was made that
the king's ministers should thereafter be responsible to Parlia-
ment. This document Parliament ordered to be printed and
circulated throughout the countr}-.
Exasperated at the conduct of the Commons. Charles at-
tempted to intimidate the opposition by undertaking to arrest
 668 Outlines of Eiiropean History

Charles's five of its most active leaders, whom he declared to be traitors.

attempts to
arrest fi\-e But when he entered the House of Commons and looked
members of
the House around for his enemies, he found that they had taken shelter
of Commons
in London, whose citizens later brought them back in triumph \
to Westminster, where Parliament held its meetings.

Fig. 229. Children of Charles I

This very interesting picture, by the Flemish artist Van Dyck, was
painted in 1637. The boy with his hand on the dog's head was des-
tined to become Charles II of England. Next on the left is the prince,
who was later James II. The girl to the extreme left, the Princess
Mary, married the governor of the United Netherlands, and her son
became WiUiam III of England in 1688 (see below, p. 678). The two
princesses on the right died in childhood

The begin- Both Charles and Parliament now began to gather troops
ning of civil
war, 1642 — for the inevitable conflict, and England was plunged into civil
Cavaliers and
Roundheads war. Those who supported Charles were called Cavaliers.
They included not only most of the aristocracy and the Catholic
party, but also a number of members of the House of Com-
mons who were fearful lest Presbyterianism should succeed in
Struggle i?i E^iglaiid betivee7i King and Parliament 669

doing aw£.y with the English Church. The parliamentary party

was popularly known as the Roundheads, since some of them
cropped their hair close because of their dislike for the long
locks of their more aristocratic and worldly opponents.
The Roundheads soon found a distinguished leader in Oliver Oliver
Cromwell (b. 1599), a country gentleman and member of Parlia-
ment, who was later to become the most powerful ruler of his
time. Cromwell organized a compact army of God-fearing men,
who were not permitted to indulge in profane words or light
talk, as is the wont of soldiers, but advanced upon their enemies
singing psalms. The king enjoyed the support of northern
England, and also looked for help from Ireland, where the
royal and Catholic causes were popular.
The war continued for several years, and a number of Battles of
batdes were fought which, after the first year, went in general ^loor and

againstofthe Cavaliers. The most important of these were the- ^"^^^^^y

battle Marston Moor in 1644, and that of Naseby the next
year, in which the king was disastrously defeated. The enemy
came into possession of his correspondence, which showed The losing
them how their king had been endeavoring to bring armies the king
from France and Ireland into England. This encouraged Par-
liament to prosecute the war with more energy than ever.
The king, defeated on ever)^ hand, put himself in the hands of
the Scotch army which had come to the aid of Parliament
(1646), and the Scotch soon turned him over to Parliament.
During the next two years Charles was held in captivity.
There were, however, many in the House of Commons who Pride's
in December, 1648, that body de- "'^^^
the king, andwith
clared for with
still sided a reconciliation the monarch, whom they had
safely imprisoned in the Isle of Wight. The next day Colonel
Pride, representing the army, — which constituted a party in it-
self and was opposed to all negotiations between the king and
the Commons, — stood at the door of the House with a body of
soldiers and excluded all the members who took the side of the
king. This outrageous act is known in histor}^ as '' Pride's Purge."
 6/0 Outlines of Eiiropcaji History

Execution of In this way the House of Commons was brought completely

Charles, 1649
under the control of those most bitterly hostile to the king, whom
they immediately proposed to bring to trial. They declared that
the House of Commons, since it was chosen by the people, was
supreme in England and the source of all just power, and that
consequently neither king nor House of Lords was necessary.
The mutilated House of Commons appointed a special High
Court of Justice made up of Charles's sternest opponents, who
alone would consent to sit in judgment on him. They passed
sentence upon him, and on January 30, 1649, Charles was be-
headed in front of his palace of Whitehall, London. It must be
clear from the above account that it was not the nation at large
which demanded Charles's death, but a very small group of ex-
tremists who claimed to be the representatives of the nation.

Section ii8. Oliver Cromwell: England a

Commonwealth

England The " Rump Parliament," as the remnant of the House of

becomes a
common- Commons was contemptuously called, proclaimed England to
wealth, or
republic. be thereafter a " commonwealth," that is, a republic, without a
Cromwell at king or House of Lords. But Cromwell, the head of the army,
the head of
the govern- was nevertheless the real ruler of England. He derived his main
ment
support from the Independents ; and it is very surprising that he
was able to maintain himself so long, considering what a small
portion of the English people was in sympathy with the religious
ideas of that sect and with the abolition of kingship. Even the
Presbyterians were on the side of Charles I's son, Charles II,
the legal heir to the throne. Cromwell was a vigorous and
skillful administrator and had a well-organized army of fifty
thousand men at his command, otherwise the republic could
scarcely have lasted more than a few months.
Ireland and
Scotland Cromwell found himself confronted by every variety of diffi-
subdued culty. The three kingdoms had fallen apart. The nobles and
Catholics in Ireland proclaimed Charles II as king, and Ormond,
St7'uggle 271 England betwee7i Ki7ig a7id Pa7'liai7ie7it 671

a Protestant leader, formed an army of Irish Catholics and Eng-

lish royalist Protestants with a view of overthrowing the Com-
monwealth. Cromwell accordingly set out for Ireland, where,
after taking Drogheda, he mercilessly- slaughtered two thousand
of the " barbarous wretches," as he called them. Town after

Fig. 230. Oliver Cromwell

This portrait is by Peter Lely and was painted in 1653

town surrendered to Cromwell's army, and in 1652, after much

cruelty, the island was once more conquered. A large part of it
was confiscated for the benefit of the English, and the Catholic
landowners were driven into the mountains. In the meantime
(1650) Charles II, who had taken refuge in France, had landed in
Scotland, and upon his agreeing to be a Presbyterian king, the
whole Scotch nation was ready to support him. But Scotland was
subdued by Cromwell even more promptly than Ireland had been.
 6/2 Outlines of European History

So completely was the Scottish army destroyed that Cromwell

found no need to draw the sword again in the British Isles.

Fig. 231. Great Seal of England under the

Commonwealth, 1651
This seal is reduced considerably in the reproduction. It gives us an
idea of the appearance of a session of the House of Commons when
England was for a short period a republic. It is still to-day the custom
for members to sit with their hats on, e.xcept when making a speech

The Naviga- Although it would seem that Cromwell had enough to keep
ion c , I 3 1 j^.^ busy at home, he had already engaged in a victorious
foreign war against the Dutch, who had become dangerous
commercial rivals of England. The ships which went out from
Struggle in England between King and Parliament 673

Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the best merchant vessels in

the world and had got control of the carrying trade between
Europe and the colonies. In order to put an end to this, the
English Parliament passed the Navigation Act (1651), which
permitted only English vessels to bring goods to England,
unless the goods came in vessels belonging to the country
which had produced them. This led to a commercial war be- Commercial
tween Holland and England, and a series of battles was fought Holland and
between the English and Dutch fleets, in which sometimes one England
and sometimes the other gained the upper hand. This war is
notable as the first example of the commercial struggles which
were thereafter to take the place of the religious conflicts of
the preceding period.
Cromwell failed to get along with Parliament any better than Cromwell

Charles I had done. The Rump Parliament had become very Long^Parlia-
unpopular, for its members, in spite of their boasted piety, ™^"y ^^^'^^a
accepted bribes and were zealous in the promotion of their Lord Pro-
relatives in the public service. At last Cromwell upbraided his own
Parliament
them angrily for their injustice and self-interest, which were
injuring the public cause. On being interrupted by a mem-
ber, he cried out, " Come, come, we have had enough of this !
I '11 put an end to this. It 's not fit that you should sit here
any longer," and calling in his soldiers he turned the members
out of the House and sent them home. Having thus made an
end of the Long Parliament (April, 1653), he summoned a
Parliament of his own, made up of " God-fearing " men whom
he and the officers of his army chose. This extraordinary body
is known as Barebone's Parliament, from a distinguished mem-
ber, a London merchant, with the characteristically Puritan
name of Praisegod Barebone. Many of these godly men were
unpractical and hard to deal with. A minority of the more sen-
sible ones got up early one winter morning (December, 1653)
and, before their opponents had a chance to protest, declared
Parliament dissolved and placed the supreme authority in the
hands of Cromwell.
 6/4
Outlines of Eni'opcan History
The Pro- For nearly five years Cromwell was, as Lord Protector, — a
tector's
foreign title equivalent to that of Regent, — practically king of England,
policy although he refused actually to accept the royal insignia. He
did not succeed in permanently organizing the government at

Fig. 232. DinxH War Vessel ix Cromwell's Tlme

This should be compared with Fig. 233 to realize the change that had
taken place in navigation since the palmy days of the Hanseatic League.
(See above, p. 50S)

home but showed remarkable ability in his foreign negotiations.

He formed an alliance with France, and English troops aided

1
the French in winning a great victory over Spain. England
gained thereby Dunkirk, and the West Indian island of Jamaica.
Struggle in England between King and Parliament 675

The French king, Louis XIV, at first hesitated to address Crom-

well, in the usual courteous way of monarchs, as " my cousin,"
but soon admitted that he would have even to call Cromwell
" father " should he wish it, as the Protector was undoubtedly
the m.ost powerful person in Europe. Indeed, he found himself
forced to play the part of a monarch, and it seemed to many
persons that he was quite as despotic as James I and .Charles I.
In May, 1658, Crom-
well fell ill, and as a great
storm passed over Eng-
land at that time, the
Cavaliers asserted that
the devil had come to
fetch home th^ soul of
the usurper. Cromwell
was dying, it is true, but
he was no instrument of
the devil. He closed a
life of honest effort for
his fellow beings with a
last touching prayer to
Fig. 233. A Ship of the Haxseatic
God, whom he had con- Leagle
sistently sought to serve :
This is taken from a picture at Cologne,
" Thou hast made me, painted in 1409. It, as well as other pic-
though very unworthy, tures of the time, makes it clear that the
a mean instrument to do Hanseatic ships were tiny compared with
those used two hundred and fifty years
Thy people some good later, when Cromwell fought the Dutch
and Thee service : and
many of them have set too high a value upon me, though
others wish and would be glad of my death. Pardon such as
desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they
are Thy people too ; and pardon the folly of this short prayer,
even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a good night, if it
be Thy pleasure. Amen."
 ^']6 Ojttlincs of En7vpcan History

Section 119. The Restoration

The Resto-
ration After Cromwell's death his son Richard, who succeeded him,
found himself unable to carry on the government. He soon
abdicated, and the remnants of the Long Parliament met once
more. But the power was really in the hands of the soldiers.
In 1660 George Monk, who was in command of the forces in
Scotland, came to London with a view of putting an end to the
anarchy. He soon concluded that no one cared to support the
Rump, and that body peacefully disbanded of its own accord.
Resistance would have been vain in any case with the army
Charles II against it. The nation was glad to acknowledge Charles H,
welcomed
back as king, whom every one preferred to a government by soldiers. A new
1660
Parliament, composed of both houses, was assembled, which
welcomed a messenger from the king and solemnly resolved
that, " according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this
kingdom, the government is, and ought to be, by king, lords,
and commons." Thus the Puritan revolution and the short-lived
republic was followed by the RestoratioJi of the Stuarts.
Character of Charles H was quite as fond as his father of having his own
Charles II
way, but he was a man of more ability. He disliked to be ruled
by Parliament, but, unlike his father, he was too wise to arouse
the nation against him. He did not propose to let anything
happen which would send him on his travels again. He and his
courtiers were fond of pleasure of a light-minded kind. The
immoral dramas of the Restoration seem to indicate that those
who had been forced by the Puritans to give up their legitimate
pleasures now welcomed the opportunity to indulge in reck-
less gayety without regard to the bounds imposed by custom
and decency.
Religious
measures Charles's first Parliament was a moderate body, but his second
adopted by was made up almost wholly of Cavaliers, and it got along, on
Parliament
the whole, so well with the king that he did not dissolve it for
eighteen years. It did not take up the old question, which was
still unsettled, as to whether Parliament or the king was really
Struggle in England betivecn King and Parliament 6y7

supreme. It showed its hostility, however, to the Puritans by a

series of intolerant acts, which are very important in English
histoiy. It ordered that no one should hold a town office who
had not received the communion according to the rites of the
Church of England. This was aimed at both the Presbyterians
and the Independents. By the Act of Uniformity (1662) every The Act of

clergyman who refused to accept everything contained in the "^ ormity

Book of Common Prayer was to be excluded from holding his
benefice. Two thousand clergymen thereupon resigned their
positions for conscience' sake.
These laws tended to throw all those Protestants who refused The Dis-
to conform to the Church of England into a single class, still known
to-day as Dissenters. It included the Independents, the Pres-
byterians, and the newer bodies of the Baptists and the Society
of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. These sects aban-
doned any idea of controlling the religion or politics of the coun-
try, and asked only that they might be permitted to worship in
their own way outside of the English Church.
Toleration found an unexpected ally in the king, who, in Toleration
spite of his dissolute habits, had interest enough in religion to ^^e king
have secret leanings toward Catholicism. He asked Parliament
to permit him to moderate the rigor of the Act of Uniformity
by making some exceptions. He even issued a declaration in
the interest of toleration, with a view of bettering the posi-
tion of the Catholics and Dissenters. Suspicion was, however,
aroused lest this toleration might lead to the restoration of
" popery,'"' — as the Protestants called the Catholic beliefs, —
and Parliament passed the harsh Conventicle Act (1664). The Conven-
Any adult attending a conventicle — that is to say, any reli-
gious meeting not held in accordance with the practice of the
English Church — was liable to penalties which might culminate
in transportation to some distant colony. Samuel Pepys, who
saw some of the victims of this law upon their way to a terrible
exile, notes in his famous diary : *' They go like lambs without
any resistance. I would to God that they would conform, or be
 6/8 Outlines of Ejiropea7i History

more wise and not be catched." A few years later Charles II

issued a declaration giving complete religious liberty to Roman
Catholics as well as to Dissenters. Parliament not only forced
The Test him to withdraw this enlightened measure but passed the Test
Act
Act, which excluded every one from public office who did not
accept the views of the English Church.
War with The old war with Holland, begun by Cromwell, was renewed
Holland
under Charles II, who was earnestly desirous to increase Eng-
lish commerce and to found new colonies. The two nations
were very evenly matched on the sea, but in 1664 the English
seized some of the West Indian Islands from the Dutch and
also their colony on Manhattan Island, which was re-named
New York in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York.
In 1667 a treaty was signed by England and Holland which
confirmed these conquests.

Section 120. The Revolution of 1688

James IT, Upon Charles IPs death he was succeeded by his brother,
i68;-i688
James II, who was an avowed Catholic and had married, as his
second wife, Mary of Modena, who was also a Catholic. He was
ready to reestablish Catholicism in England regardless of what it
might cost him. Mary, James's daughter by his first wife, had
married her cousin, William HI, Prince of Orange, the head of
the United Netherlands. The nation might have tolerated James
so long as they could look for\vard to the accession of his
Protestant daughter. But when a son was born to his Catholic
second wife, and James showed unmistakably his purpose of
favoring the Catholics, messengers were dispatched by a group
of Protestants to William of Orange, asking him to come and
rule over them.
The revolu- William landed in November, 1688, and marched upon Lon-
tion of 1688
and the don, where he received general support from all the English
accession of
William III, Protestants, regardless of party. James II started to oppose Wil-
1688-1702 liam, but his army refused to fight and his courtiers deserted
Struggle in England betzveen King and Parlia^nent 679

him. William was glad to forward James's jflight to France, as

he would hardly have known what to do with him had James in-
sisted on remaining in the country. A new Parliament declared
the throne vacant, on the ground that King James II, " by the
advice of the Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated
the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom,
had abdicated the government."
Charles I, m. Henrietta Maria of France
(1625-1649) j
I \ i
Charles II Mary, m. William II Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. Mary of Modena
(1660-1685) Prince of 1(1685-1688)
Orange
I I
William III, m. Mary Anne James Francis Edward,
(1688-1702) "(1702-1714) the Old Pretender

A Bill of Rights was then drawn up, condemning James's The Bill of
violation of the constitution and appointing William and Mary Rights
joint sovereigns. The Bill of Rights, which is an important
monument in English constitutional history, once more stated
the fundamental rights of the English nation and the limitations
which the Petition of Right and Magna Charta had placed upon
the king. By this peaceful revolution of 1688 the English rid
themselves of the Stuarts and their claims to rule by divine right,
and once more declared themselves against the rule of the Pope.
h. bill of toleration was passed by Parliament which freed
Dissenters from all penalties for failing to attend services in
Anglican churches and allowed them to have their ow^n meet-
ings. Even Catholics, while not included in the act of toleration,
were permitted to hold services undisturbed by the government.

QUESTIONS
Section 115. What was the great issue during the period of the
Stuarts .? What were the views of kingship held by James I .? Men-
tion some of the books of his time.
Section 116. What policy did Charles I adopt in regard to
Parliament.? What was the Petition of Right? What were the chief
68o Outlines of European History

religious parties in England in the time of Charles I ? Who was John

Hampden ? Mention some of the religious sects that date from that
time which still exist in the United States.
Section i i 7. What measures did the Long Parliament take
against the king ? Describe the civil war. What led to the execution
of Charles I .?
Section 118. What were the chief events during Cromwell's
administration? What are your impressions of Cromwell.?
Section i i 9. Wliat led to the restoration of the Stuarts ? What
was the attitude of Charles II toward the religious difficulties? Who
were the Dissenters ?
Section i 20. Why was James II unpopular ? Give an account of
the revolution which put William and Mary on the English throne.
 CHAPTER XXVIII

FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV

Section 121. Position and Character of Louis XIV

Under the despotic rule of Louis XIV (1643-17 15) France France at the
1 ^■ ■ a • T^ rr • \ c. accession of
enjoyed a commanding miluence m European aftairs. After Louis xiv
the wars of religion were over, the royal authority had been ^^43-1715
reestablished by the wise conduct of Henry IV. Later, Riche-
lieu had solidified the monarchy by depriving the Huguenots of
the exceptional privileges granted to them for their protection
by Henry lA" ; he had also destroyed the fortified castles of the
nobles, whose power had greatly increased during the turmoil
of the Huguenot wars. His successor. Cardinal Mazarin, who
conducted the government during Louis XIV's boyhood, was
able to put down a last rising of the discontented nobility.
When Mazarin died, in 166 1, he left the young monarch with What Riche-
a kingdom such as no previous French king had enjoyed. The M^arin had
nobles, '
who for centuries had disputed
r the r
power with the king,
o? J*^"^
French^°''mon-
^^^
were no longer feudal lords but only courtiers. The Huguenots, archy
whose claim to a place in the State beside the Catholics had led
to the terrible civil wars of the sixteenth century, were reduced
in numbers and no longer held fortified towns from which they
could defy the king's officers. Richelieu and Mazarin had suc-
cessfully taken a hand in the Thirty Years' War, and France
had come out of it with enlarged territory and increased impor-
tance in European affairs.
Louis XIV carried the w^ork of these great ministers still The govern-
farther. He gave that form to the French monarchy which it Louis xiv
retained until the French Revolution. He made himself the very
mirror of kingship. His marvelous court at Versailles became
6S1
 682 Outlines of European History

the model and the despair of other less opulent and powerful
princes, who accepted his theory of the absolute power of kings
but could not afford to imitate his luxury. By his incessant wars
he kept Europe in turmoil /or over half a century. The dis-
tinguished generals who led his newly organized troops, and the
wily diplomats who arranged his alliances and negotiated his

Fig. 234. Louis XIV

treaties, made France feared and respected by even the most

powerful of the other European states.
The theory Louis XIV had the same idea of kingship that James I had
of the .... fc> r J
" divine right tried in vain to induce the English people to accept. God had
France^ '" given kings to men, and it was His will that monarchs should
be regarded as His lieutenants and that all those subject to
them should obey theni absolutely, without asking any questions
or making any criticisms ; for in submitting to their prince they
were really submitting to God Himself. If the king were good
 >a ,1 d
OF

' ^^ o r t h
D.

EUROPE Versaille
WHEN LOUIS XIV. BEGAN
HIS PEKSONAE GOVEKN3IENT/
FraiicliL- (Mlnttia
1661

I ISpanish Possessions K I ^ G D Oi3l\p

I IAustrian Possessions fli pi A N C El
^sssi'^s!^; Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire f
0 100 200 300

«e
J
(Papal)

Madr^ Gl
id i
K
9JM
Op>

E I) I
 France luider Loids XIV 683

and wise, his subjects should thank the Lord ; if he proved

foolish, cruel, or perverse, they must accept their evil ruler as
a punishment which God had sent them for their sins. But in
no case might they limit his power or rise against him.^
Louis XIV had two great advantages over James L In the Different
first place, the English nation has always shown itself far more the English
and French
reluctant than France to place absolute power in the hands of its nations
toward
rulers. By its Parliament, its courts, and its various declarations absolute
of the nation's rights, it had built up traditions which made it monarchy
impossible for the Stuarts to establish their claim to be absolute
rulers. In France, on the other hand, there was no Great
Charter or Bill of Rights ; the Estates General did not hold the
purse strings, and the king w^as permitted to raise money without
asking their permission or previously redressing the grievances
which they chose to point out. They were therefore only sum-
Tinoned at" irregular intervals. When Louis XIV took charge of
the government, forty-seven years had passed without a meet-
ing of the Estates General, and a century and a quarter was
still to elapse before another call to the representatives of the
nation was issued in 1789.
Moreover, the French people placed far more reliance upon
a powerful king than the English, perhaps because they were
not protected by the sea from their neighbors, as England was.
On every side France had enemies ready to take advantage of
any weakness or hesitation which might arise from dissension
between a parliament and the king. So the French felt it best,
on the whole, to leave all in the king's hands, even if they
suffered at times from his tyranny.
Louis had another great advantage over James. He was a Personal
. character-
handsome man, of elegant and courtly mien and the most ex- istics of
quisite perfection of manner ; even when playing billiards he ^^"^^ ^^^
is said to have retained an air of world mastery. The first of

1 Louis XIV does not appear to have himself used the famous expression " /am
the State^^'' usually attributed to him, but it exactly corresponds to his idea of
the relation of the king and the State.
 684
Outlijics of Europe aji Histoiy

the Stuarts, on the contrar)^, was a vety awkward man, whose

slouching gait, intolerable manners, and pedantic conversation
were utterly at variance with his lofty pretensions. Louis added,
moreover, to his graceful exterior a sound judgment and quick
apprehension. He said neither too much nor too little. He
was, for a king, a hard worker and spent several hours a day
attending to the business of government.
The strenu- It requires, in fact, a great deal of energy and application to
ous life of a
despotic be a real despot. In order thoroughly to understand and to solve
ruler

Fig. 235. Facade of the Palace of Versailles

the problems which constantly face the ruler of a great state, a

monarch must, like Frederick the Great or Napoleon, rise early
and toil late. Louis XIV was greatly aided by the able min-
isters who sat in his council, but he always retained for himself
the place of first minister. He would never have consented to
be dominated by an adviser, as his father had been by Richelieu.
" The profession of the king," he 'declared, " is great, noble,
and delightful if one but feels equal to performing the duties
which it involves," — and he never harbored a doubt that he
himself was born for the business.
 France imder Louis XIV

Section 122. How Louis encouraged Art and

Literature

Louis XIV was careful that his surroundings should suit the The king's
grandeur of his office. His court was magnificent beyond any- v^ersaiUes
thing that had been dreamed of in the West. He had an enor-
mous palace constructed at Versailles, just outside of Paris,
with interminable halls and apartments and a vast garden

Fig. 236. One of the Vast Halls of Versailles

stretching away behind it. About this a town was laid out,
where those who were privileged to be near his majesty or
supply the wants of the royal court lived. This palace and
its outlying buildings, including two or three less gorgeous
residences for the king when he occasionally tired of the cere-
mony of Versailles, probably cost the nation about a hundred
million dollars, in spite of the fact that thousands of peasants
and soldiers were forced to turn to and work without pay.
The furnishings and decorations were as rich and costly as the
palace was splendid and still fill the visitor with wonder. For
 686 Outlines of European History

over a century Versailles continued to be the home of the

PYench kings and the seat of their government.
Life at This splendor and luxury helped to attract the nobility, who
Louis XIV
court no longer lived on their estates in well-fortified castles, plan-
ning how they might escape the royal control. They now dwelt
in the effulgence of the king's countenance. I'hey saw him to
bed at night and in stately procession they greeted him in the
morning. It was deemed a high honor to hand him his shirt as

Fig. 237. Facade of the Palace of Versailles toward

THE Gardens

he was being dressed or, at dinner, to provide him with a fresh

napkin. , Only by living close to the king could the courtiers
hope to gain favors, pensions, and lucrative offices for them-
selves and their friends, and perhaps occasionally to exercise
some little influence upon the policy of the government. For
they were now entirely dependent upon the good will of their
monarch.
The reforms The reforms which Louis XIV carried out in the earlier part
of Colbert
of his reign were largely the work of the great financier Colbert,
to whom France still looks back with gratitude. He early
 France Tinder Louis XIV 687

discovered that the king's officials were stealing and wasting vast
sums. The offenders were arrested and forced to disgorge, and
a new system of bookkeeping was introduced, similar to that
employed by business men. He then turned his attention to
increasing the manufactures of France by establishing new in-
dustries and seeing that the older ones kept to a high standard,
which w^ould make French goods sell readily in foreign markets.
He argued justly that if foreigners could be induced to .buy
French goods, these sales would bring gold and silver into the
country and so enrich it. He made rigid rules as to the width
and quality of cloths which the manufacturers might produce
and the dyes which they might use. He even reorganized the
old medieval guilds ; for through them the government could
keep its eye on all the manufacturing that was done ; this would
have been far more difficult if every one had been free to carry
on any trade which he might choose.
It was, however, as a patron of art and literature that Art and liter-
Louis XIV gained much of his celebrity. Moliere, who was at i-gio-n of

once a playwright and an actor, delighted the court with come- -^^"^^ -"^^"^
dies in which he delicately satirized the foibles of his time.
Corneille, who had gained renown by the great tragedy of The
Cid in Richelieu's time, found a worthy successor in Racine, the
most distinguished, perhaps, of French tragic poets. The charm-
ing letters of Madame de Se'vigne' are models of prose style and
serve at the same time to give us a glimpse into the more refined
life of the court circle. In the famous memoirs of Saint-Simon,
the weaknesses of the king, as well as the numberless intrigues
of the courtiers, are freely exposed with inimitable skill and wit.
Men of letters were generously aided by the king with pen- The govern-
sions. Colbert encouraged the French Academy, which had [he"develop-
been created bv Richelieu. This body gave special attention to ^^""^ ?V^^*^
making the French tongue more eloquent and expressive bv guage and
determmmg what words1^,111
should be used.IT- 1greatest'
It is now the literature
honor that a Frenchman can obtain to be made one of the
forty members of this association. A magazine which still exists,
 688 0?itli?ics of European History

the Jour?ial des Savants, was founded for the promotion of

science at this time. Colbert had an astronomical observatory
built at Paris; and the Royal Library, which only possessed
about sixteen thousand volumes, began to grow into that great
collection of two and a half million volumes — by far the largest
in existence — which to-day attracts scholars to Paris from all
parts of the world. In short, Louis XIV and his ministers be-
lieved one of the chief objects of any government to be the pro-
motion of art, literature, and science, and the example they set
has been followed by almost every modem state.

Section 123. Louis XIV attacks his Neighbors

Louis XIV's
warlike Unfortunately for France, the king's ambitions were by no
enterprises means exclusively peaceful. Indeed, he regarded his wars as his
chief glory. He employed a carefully reorganized army and the
skill of his generals in a series of inexcusable attacks on his neigh-
bors, in which he finally squandered all that Colbert's economies
had accumulated and led France to the edge of financial ruin.
He aims to
restore the Louis XIV's predecessors had had, on the whole, little time
'■ natural to think of conquest. They had first to consolidate their realms
boundaries '
of France and gain the mastery of their feudal dependents, who shared the
power with them ; then the claims of the English Edwards and
Henrys had to be met, and the French provinces freed from
their clutches ; lastly, the great religious dispute was only settled
after many years of disintegrating civil war. But Louis XI\^
was now at liberty to look about him and consider how he
might best realize the dream of his ancestors and perhaps rees-
tablish the ancient boundaries which Caesar reported that the
Gauls had occupied. The " natural limits " of France appeared
to be the Rhine on the north and east, the Jura Mountains and
the Alps on the southeast, and to the south the Mediterranean
and the Pyrenees. Richelieu had believed that it was the chief
end of his ministry to restore to France the boundaries deter-
mined for it by nature. Mazarin had labored hard to win Savoy
 France under Loins XIV 689

and Nice and to reach the Rhine on the north. Before his
death France at least gained Alsace and reached the Pyrenees,
"which," as the treaty with Spain says (1659), ''formerly
divided the Gauls from Spain."
Louis XIV first turned his attention to the conquest of the Louis xiv

Spanish Netherlands, to which he laid claim through his wife, the the^ Spanish^
elder sister of the Spanish king, Charles II (1665-1700). In ^Netherlands
1667 he surprised Europe by publishing a little treatise in which
he set forth his claims not only to the Spanish Netherlands, but
even to the whole Spanish monarchy. By confounding the king-
dom, of France with the old empire of the Franks he could main-
tain that the people of the Netherlands were his subjects.
Louis placed himself at the head of the army which he had The invasion

re-formed and reorganized, and announced that he was to under- "ands, 1667^^"
take a " journey,"' as if his invasion was only an expedition into
another part of his undisputed realms. He easily took a num-
ber of towns on the border of the Netherlands and then turned
south and completely conquered Franche-Comte. This was
an outlying province of Spain, isolated from her other lands,
and a most tempting morsel for the hungry king of France.^
These conquests alarmed Europe, and especially Holland,
which could not afford to have the barrier between it and France
removed, for Louis XIV would be an uncomfortable neighbor.
A Triple Alliance, composed of Holland, England, and Sweden,
was accordingly organized to induce France to make peace with
Spain. Louis contented himself for the moment with the dozen
border towns that he had taken and which Spain ceded to him
on condition that he would return Franche-Comte'.
The success with which Holland had held her own against Louis xiv
the navy of England and brought the proud king of France the\>ipkj
to a halt produced an elation on the part of that tiny country '^J!'^"^^ ^"^
which was very aggravating to Louis XIV. He was thoroughly self with
vexed that he should have been blocked by so trifling an England
obstacle as Dutch intervention. He consequently conceived a
1 See above, pp. 573 and 649.
 690 Outlines of European History

Strong dislike for the United Provinces, which was increased

by the protection that they afforded to writers who annoyed
him with their attacks. He broke up the Triple Alliance by
inducing Charles II of England to conclude a treaty which
pledged England to help France in a new war against the Dutch.
Louis XI\"s
invasion of
Louis XIV then startled Europe again by seizing the duchy of
Holland, 1672 Lorraine, which brought him to the border of Holland. At the
head of a hundred thousand men he crossed the Rhine (1672)
and easily conquered southern Holland. For the moment the
Dutch cause appeared to be lost. But William of Orange showed
the spirit of his great ancestor William the Silent ; the sluices
in the dikes were opened and the country flooded, so the French
army was checked before it could take Amsterdam and advance
into the north. The Emperor sent an army against Louis, and
England deserted him and made peace with Holland.
Peace of When a general peace was concluded at the end of six years,
Nimwegen,
1678 the chief provisions were that Holland should be left intact, and
that France should this time retain Franche-Comte', which had
been conquered by Louis XIV in person. This bit of the
Burgundian heritage thus became at last a part of France,
after France and Spain had quarreled over it for a century
Louis XIV and a half. For the ten years following there was no open
seizes
Strassburg war, but Louis seized the important free city of Strassburg and
made many other less conspicuous but equally unwarranted ad-
ditions tohis territor}\ The Emperor was unable to do more than
protest against these outrageous encroachments, for he was fully
occupied with the Turks, who had just laid siege to Vienna.

Section 124. Louis XIV and his Protestant

Subjects

Situation of Louis XIA^ exhibited as woeful a want of statesmanship in

no^ts at'fhe the treatment of his Protestant subjects as in the prosecution
LmiiTxfv^s ^^ disastrous wars. The Huguenots, deprived of their former
reign military and political power, had turned to manufacture, trade.
 France tindei' Lo7tis XIV 691

and banking ; " as rich as a Huguenot " had become a proverb

in France. There were perhaps a million of them among fifteen
million Frenchmen, and they undoubtedly formed by far the
most thrifty and enterprising part of the nation. The Catholic
clergy, however, did not cease to urge the complete suppression
of heresy.
Louis XIV had scarcely taken the reins of government into Louis's
his own hands before the perpetual nagging and injustice to pressLn ^"^
which the Protestants had been subjected at all times took a
more serious form. Upon one pretense or another their churches
were demolished. Children were authorized to renounce Prot-
estantism when they reached the age of seven. Rough dragoons
were quartered upon the Huguenots with the hope that the in-
sulting behavior of the soldiers might frighten the heretics into
accepting the religion of the king.
At last Louis XIV was led by his officials to believe that prac- Revocation
tically all the Huguenots had been converted by these harsh of Nantes and
measures. In 1685, therefore, he revoked the Edict of Nantes, its results
and the Protestants thereby became outlaws and their ministers
subject to the death penalty. Even liberal-minded Catholics,
like the kindly writer of fables, La Fontaine, and the charming
letter writer, Madame de Sevigne, hailed this reestablishment
of " religious unity " with delight. They believed that only ^n
insignificant and seditious remnant still clung to the beliefs of
Calvin. But there could have been no more serious mistake.
Thousands of the Huguenots succeeded in eluding the vigi-
lance of the royal officials and fled, some to England, some to
Prussia, some to America, carrying with them their skill and in-
dustry to strengthen France's rivals. This was the last great
and terrible example in western Europe of that fierce religious
intolerance which had produced the Albigensian Crusade, the
Spanish Inquisition, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Louis XIV now set his heart upon conquering the Palatinate, Louis's
a Protestant land, to which he easily discovered that he had a Jhe^RhenLh"
claim. The rumor of his intention and the indignation occasioned Palatinate
 692 Outlines of Europe lvi History

in Protestant countries by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes

resulted in an alliance against the French king headed by William
of Orange. Louis speedily justified the suspicions of Europe by
a frightful devastation of the Palatinate, burning whole towns and
destroying many castles, including the exceptionally beautiful
one of the elector at Heidelberg. Ten years later, however,
Louis agreed to a peace which put things back as they were
before the struggle began. He was preparing for the final and
most ambitious undertaking of his life, which precipitated the
longest and bloodiest war of all his warlike reign.

Section 125. War of the Spanish Succession

The question The king of Spain, Charles II, was childless and brotherless,
i'sh succession and Europe had long been discussing what would become of his
vast realms when his sickly existence should come to an end.
Louis XIV had married one of his sisters, and the Emperor,
Leopold I, another, and these two ambitious rulers had been
considering for some time how they might divide the Spanish
possessions between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. But
when Charles II died, in 1700, it was discovered that he had
left a will in which he made Louis's younger grandson, Philip,
the heir to his twenty-two crowns, but on the condition that
France and Spain should never be united.
Louis's grand- It was a weighty question whether Louis XIV should permit his
becomes ^^' grandson to accept this hazardous honor. Should Philip become
s "am"^ king of Spain, Louis and his family would control all of south-
western Europe from Holland to Sicily, as well as a great part
of North and South America. This would mean the establish-
ment of an empire more powerful than that of Charles V. It
was clear that the disinherited Emperor and the ever watchful
William of Orange, now king of England (see above, p. 678),
would never permit this unprecedented extension of French
influence. They had already shown themselves ready to make
great sacrifices in order to check far less serious aggressions on
 Fra7ice under Louis XIV 693

the part of the French king. Nevertheless, family pride and

personal ambition led Louis criminally to risk the welfare of
his country. He accepted the will and informed the Spanish
ambassador at the French court that he might salute Philip V
as his new king. The leading French newspaper of the time
boldly proclaimed that the Pyrenees were no more.
King William soon succeeded in forming a new Grand Alii- The War of
ance (1701) in which Louis's old enemies, England, Holland, sm;cession
and the Emperor, were the most important members. William
himself died just as hostilities were beginning, but the long
War of the Spanish Succession was carried on vigorously by
the great English general, the Duke of Marlborough, and the
Austrian commander, Eugene of Savoy. The conflict was more
general than the Thirty Years' War; even in America there was
fighting between French and English colonists, which passes in
American histories under the name of Queen Anne's War. All
the more important battles went against the French, and after
ten years of war, which was rapidly ruining the country by the
destruction of its people and its wealth, Louis XIV was willing
to consider some compromise, and after long discussion a peace
was arranged in 17 13.
The-Ii:©aty-t7f"Utrecht changecTlRe'lii^p of Europe as no The Treaty
previous treaty had done, not even that of Westphalia. Each j^^^ ^^"^ '
of the chief combatants got his share of the Spanish booty over
which they had been fighting. The Bourbon Philip V was per-
mitted to retain Spain and its colonies on condition that the
Spanish and French crowns should never rest on the same
head. To Austria fell the Spanish Netherlands, hereafter called
the Austrian Netherlands, which continued to form a barrier
between Holland and France. Holland received certain for-
tresses to make its position still more secure. The Spanish
possessions in Italy, that is, Naples and Milan, were also given
to Austria, and in this way Austria got the hold on Italy which
it retained until 1866. From France, England acquired Nova
Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay region, and so
 694 Ojitlincs of European History

began the expulsion of the French from North America. Besides

these American provinces she received the rock and fortress of
Gibraltar, which still gives her command of the narrow entrance
to the Mediterranean.
The develop- The period of Louis XIV is remarkable for the development
mcnt of in
ternationalof international law. The incessant wars and great alliances
law
embracing several powers made increasingly clear the need of
well-defined rules governing states in their relations with one
another both in peace and in war. It was of the^ utmost
importance to determine, for instance, the rights of ambassa-
dors and of the vessels of neutral powers not engaged in the
war, and what should be considered fair conduct in warfare
and in the treatment of prisoners.
Grotius's War The first great systematic treatise on international law was
published by Grotius in 1625, when the horrors of the Thirty
Years' War were impressing men's minds with the necessity of
finding some means other than war of settling disputes between
nations. While the rules laid down by Grotius and later writers
have, as we must sadly admit, by no means put an end to war,
they have prevented many conflicts by increasing the ways in
which nations may come to an understanding with one another
through their ambassadors without recourse to arms.
Louis XIV outlived his son and his grandson and left a
sadly demoralized kingdom to his five-year-old great-grandson,
Louis XV (17 1 5-1 774). The national treasury was depleted,
the people were reduced in numbers and were in a miserable
state, and the army, once the finest in Europe, was in no
condition to gain further victories.

We have now reviewed the long history of western Europe

from the remote period when the makers of the fist-hatchet
wandered naked through the tropical jungles which then covered
France to the days when Louis XIV and his elegant courtiers
rolled in their splendid coaches amid the carefully tended gar-
dens and sparkling fountains of Versailles. It is the story of
 France uudc?- Louis XIV 695

fifty thousand }'ears. In the following volume we shall have

but two hundred years to traverse — a moment only in the
history of mankind, but fraught with sueh momentous changes
that they seem almost to eclipse all those that occurred be-
tween the building of the pyramids and the erection of the
palace of Versailles. The whole world has now been explored
by Europeans and has become so closely united in interest that
a war between two European powers endangers the happiness
of people in the most distant portions of the globe. The science

which began to fiourish in the reign of Louis Xl\' has not only
revolutionized our conception of the universe but it has, through
modern inventions, so altered our lives and ideals that we seem
to live in a different world from that of the early eighteenth
century. It is the purpose of Part II of the OutJincs to show
the nature and progress of these changes, to put us in a posi-
tion to understand the great problems which now face mankind,
and to encourage us to do our part in solving them.

QUESTIONS
Section 121, What did Richelieu accomplish in strengthening
the French monarchy.'* What were Louis XIV's ideas of kingship.^
Why did the French view the " divine right of kings " differently
from the English.^ Contrast Louis XIV with James I.
Section i 22. Describe the palace of Versailles. What were the
chief reforms of Colbert.^ Mention some of the great writers of
Louis XIV's time. How did the government aid scholarship and
science }
Section i 23. What led Louis XI V to attack his neighbors .? What
are the " natural " boundaries of France ? What country did Louis first
attack ? What additions did he make to French territory 1
Section 124. What was the policy of Louis XIV toward the
Huguenots? Who were Louis XIV's chief enemies?
Section 125. What were the causes of the War of the Spanish
Succession ? What were the chief changes provided for in the Treaty
of Utrecht?
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is not the aim of this bibliography to mention all of even the im-
portant books in various languages that relate to the period in question.
The writers are well aware that teachers are busy people and that high-
school libraries and local public libraries usually furnish at best only a
few historical works. It is therefore most important that those books
should be given prominence in this list which the teacher has some
chance of piocuring and finding the time to use. It not infrequently
happens tJiat the best account of a particular period or topic is in a for-
eign language or in a rare publication, such as a doctor's dissertation,
which could only be found in one of our largest libraries. All such titles,
however valuable, are omitted from this list. They can be found men-
tioned in all the more scholarly works in the various fields.

PART I

EARLIEST MAN, THE ORIENT, GREECE AND ROME

The ancient world seems so remote and unreal to the young student
who is taking it up for the first time that it is very necessary to empha-
size strongly the reality of man's early career. This can be done in a
number of ways, but most effectively by visualization. If a class of high-
school boys and girls could be taken through the British Museum and
shown the tools and implements used by early man, the letters dictated
by Hammurapi to his secretary and written on clay in 2100 B.C., and the
letters written by Roman citizens in the days when the apostles were
preaching early Christianity ; or if they could enter the National Museum
at Cairo and look into the very flesh and blood faces of Egyptian kings
who ruled the Orient centuries before Moses lived ; or if our young
people could visit the Berlin Museum and see there, cut in stone, relief
pictures of the Egyptian ships which sailed the Mediterranean in the
thirtieth century B.C., there would be69 little difficulty in impressing these
7
visitors with the reality of the ancient world, and the importance of the
inheritance which the early world has left us.
698 Outlines of European History
In lieu of such museum visits, or travels among ancient cities, the
treatment of the ancient world in this book has been very plentifully
sprinkled with illustrations to supplement the text. The fact cannot be
too strongly emphasized that a careful study of the illustrations belongs
to every lesson assigned. The explanatory matter under each figure should
be thoroughly studied in connection with the accompanying text, and
full discussion of every illustration and its description should regularly
be required of the class. Outside illustrative matter ought also to be
used. The best collection of such materials will be found in the Under-
wood stereoscopic views, to the various series of which, references will
be found below in their proper places.
As a result of the difficulty of the subject and the very rapid progress
of discovery and research, there are relatively few books on prehistoric
man and the early Orient which are not either entirely out of date or
quite unsuited for use by younger students, or even by their teachers.
Especially in the important matter of chronology most of the current
books are quite out of date. Let the teacher note particularly that the
enormously remote dates for Babylonian history once current have been
given up by all the leading Orientalists in view of recent conclusive
evidence. Our oldest written documents in Babylonia are not older
than the thirty-first century B.C. Fortunately interest in Bible study
has brought forth a very useful group of books in Palestinian history ;
hence the larger number of titles in this department below. In Greek
and Roman history too, where written sources are more plentiful and
modern study of the subject has made further progress, the available
books are better and far more numerous.
A small high-school library on the ancient world, of moderate cost,
including a standard book or two on each main period or topic, has been
indicated in the following list by a dagger (t) before each title to be
included. All books with a star (*) are suited chiefly for the teacher,
and are rather advanced for the student.

CHAPTER I

*SoLLAS, Ancient Hunters. \Ty'LO'^, Primitive Culture. tHoERNES,

Primitive Man. tMvRES, The Dawn of History^ chaps, i-ii, vii-xi. An
excellent little book in which only the traditional Babylonian chronology
needs revision. *SiR John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Prehistoric
Times.
 Bibliography

CHAPTER II
A. Histories
Breasted, History of Egypt. fBREASTED, History of the Ancient
Egyptians, *Hall, The Aficient History of the A^ear East, chaps, ii-iv,
vi-viii.
archaeology
B. Art and
tMASPERO, Art in Egypt. A useful little manual in Ars una — species
7nille. (Hachette & Cie, and Scribner's, New York.) *Maspero, Manual
of Egyptian Archceotogy. (Last edition, 191 4. Putnam's.) C. Mythology
*Breasted, The Development of Religion and Thought iii Ancieiit and religion
Egypt.
tERMAN, Life in Ancient Egypt. D. Social life

Edwards, Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers. Petri E, Ten Years^ E. discovery

Excava-
tion and
Digging in Egypt. Weigall, Treasury of the Nile. A quarterly journal
begun in 19 14, called Anciejit Egypt, edited by Petrie, reports all
discoveries as fast as made. ($2.00 a year; subscriptions taken by
Dr. V/. C. Winslow, 525 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.)
F. Original
^Breasted, Ancioit Records of Egypt. Vols. I-V. jPetrie, Egyptian sources in
Tales.
English
The Underwood & Underwood Series of Egyptian views, edited by
day.
G. The mon-
Breasted, Egypt through the Stereoscope : a fotu-ney through the Latid uments as
of the Pharaohs (100 views wdth explanatory volume and set of maps).
See remarks above, p. 698. t (Selected views, with explanations printed they are to-
on the backs, may be secured at moderate cost. The most useful fifteen
on Egypt are Nos. 17, 27, 29, 30, 31, 42, 48, 52, 57, 60, 62, 69, 82, 89, 97.)

CHAPTER III

*KlNG, History of Stimer and Akkad. tGoODSPEED, History of the A. Histories

Babylonians and Assyrians. Recent discoveries have greatly altered the
chronology. Later results will be found in fJoHNS, C. H. W., Ancient
Babylonia (Cambridge Manuals) ; t Johns, C. H. W., Ancient Assyria

(Cambridge Manuals) ; *Hall, The Ancient History of the N'ear East,

chaps. V, X, xii ; *Olmstead, Sargon of Assyria ; *RgGERS, A History
of Babylonia and Assyria.
archaeology
B. Art and
There is no handbook corresponding to Maspero's Art in Egypt.
*Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology. *Hall, The Ancie7tt History
of the N'ear East. tGooDSPEED, History of the Babylonians and Assyri-
ans (see index).
C. Mythology
*Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and and religion
Assyria.
D. Social life
tSAYCE, Babylonian and Assy^-iaJt Life a7td Customs.
 Oittlines of Ej trap can History
700
E. Excava- Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I. There is no
tion and
journal exclusively devoted to reports of discoveries in Babylonia and
discovery
Assyria (like Ancient Egypt above), but see the new journal of the
American Archaeological Institute, called Art and ArchcBology {^2.00
a year; subscriptions taken by The Macmillan Company, 64-66 Fifth
Avenue, New York). This journal reports discovery in the whole field
of ancient man.
F. Original *Harper, R. F. (Editor), Assyrian and Baby lotiian Literature. tBOTS-
sources in
English FORD, A Source Book of Ancient History, chap. iii. *Sayce (Editor),
Records of the Past. First Series, 1 2 vols. ; Second Series, 6 vols, t JohnS;
Oldest Code of Laws iit the World (Laws of Hammurapi). *King, Letters
of Hammurapi. The buildings surviving in Babylonia and Assyria are
in a state so ruinous that photographs of them would not be instructive
to the young student (see pp. 63 f. and 82 ; cf. Fig. 47). Hence we
give no references for the monuments as they are to-day.

CHAPTER IV
I. Persian Empire

A. Histories There is no good modem history of Persia in English based on the

sources, but see especially : IBenjamin, Story of Persia (Story of the
Nations Series). Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopcedia Britannica. Raw-
LINSON, Five Great Monarchies : Persia. *Hall, The Ancient History
of the Near East, chap. xii.
B. Art and Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art : Persia. Rawlinson.
archaeology
C. Mythology Meyer, " Persia," in Encyclopcedia Britannica. Rawlinson.
and religion Ravv^linson.
D. Social Hfe t Jackson, Persia, Past and Present. This valuable book is the best
E. Explora-
tion and introduction to the subject of Persia as a whole, and contains much
discovery information on all the above subjects. tMiCHAELis, A. Century of
Archceological Discovery.
F. Original tToLMAN, The Behistan Lnscription of King Darius. The Persian
sources in
English monuments are not numerous, and this inscription of Behistun is the
most important. A considerable part of it will be found quoted in
BOTSFORD, A Sotcrce Book of Ancient LListory, pp. 57-59. The Avesta
will be found in the series called Sacred Books of the East.

2. Palestine and the Hebrews

A. Histories Smith, George Adam, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land^
The most valuable of the many books on Palestine, but a little advanced
for high-school pupils. *Smith, Henry Preserved, Old Testament
 Bibliography

Histo7'y. *CoRNlLL, History of the People of Israel. fKENT, History oj

the Hebrew People. tKENT, History of the Jewish People. *Hall, The
Aficient History of the Near East, chap. ix. tMACALiSTER, A History
701 B. Mythology
of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals).
*BuDDE, The Religion of Israel to the Exile. *Cylyn^Y., Jewish Reli- and religion
gious Life after the Exile. fSMiTH, J. M. Powis, The Prophet and his
Problems (Scribner's).
HiLPRECHT, Recent Research in Bible Laiids. tMACALiSTER, A His- discovery
C. Excava-
tion and
tory of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge INIanuals). Current reports
will be found in Joiirfial of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and in Art
and Archceology (see above). D. Social
life
Day, Social Life of the Hebrews.
The Old Testament in the Revised Version. tMooRE, The Literature E. Original
sources in
of the Old Testament. *Cornill, Introdnction to the Canonical Books of
English
the Old Testament. Rogers, Cimeifoi-m Parallels to the Old Testame7it.
tBoTSFORD, A Source Book of Ancient History., chap. iv.
The Underwood & Underwood Stereoscopic Photographs, edited by F. Palestine,
to-day
HuRLBUT, Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope (100 its people and
monuments
views with guidebook and maps). See remarks above in Preface, p. v. as they are
I (A selection of the best ten w^ould include Nos. 8, 9, 18, 25, 39, 40, 41,
47, 61, 71.) Smith, George Adam, The Historical Geography of the
Holy Land. Paton, Guide to Jerusaletn.

CHAPTER V

jBoTSFORD, Orient and Greece., chap. i. Goodspeed, Ancient World, A. Histories

pp. 70-79. Westermann, Aitcient N'ations, chap. vii. Kimball-Bury,

Students' Greece, chap. i. Bury, History of Greece, chap. i. Allcroft
and Stout, Early Grecian History, chaps, i, iii, v. Woodhouse,
Tuto7'ial History of Greece, chaps, i-iv. tBAiKiE, J., Sea Kings of Crete.
tHAWES, C. H. and H, B., Crete the Forerunner of Greece.

CHAPTER VI

tBOTSFORD, Orient and Greece, chaps, ii-v. Goodspeed, Aitcient A. Histories

World, pp. 79-125. Westermann, Ancietit Nations, chaps, viii-xi.
Kimball-Bury, Students'' Greece, pp. 33-40 and chaps, iv-vi. Oman,
History of Greece, chaps, ix-xii. Woodhouse, Tutorial History of Greece,
chaps, v-xv. Allcroft and Stout, Early Grecian History, chaps, iv
and vi-xvii. Allcroft and Masom, Histoiy of Sicily, chaps, i-ii. Bury,
History of Greece, chaps, iii-v.
 Outlines of European History
702
B. Sources Short selections in fBoTSFORD, Source Book of Ancient History^
and source
selections chaps, vii-xiv ; fFLlNG, Source Book of Greek History ; Davis, Readings
in Ancient History, Vol, I, chaps. iv-v; Appleton, Greek Poets in Eng-
lish Verse; Perry, From the Garden of Hellas, t Homer, Iliad, trans-
lated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers (prose), and Bryant (verse). fHoMER,
Odyssey, translated by Butcher and Lang (prose), and Bryant (verse).
Homeric Hynuis, translated by Lang (prose). Hesiod and Theognis,
translated by various authors in prose and verse in Bohn Library.
tHERODOTUS, Histories, best translation by Rawlinson (Everyman's
Library). Aristotle, Cofistittdion of Athens, translated by Poste or
Kenyon, chaps, i-xxii. jPlutarch, Lives of Theseus, Solon, and
Lycurgus. Xenophon, State of the Lacedcemonians.

CHAPTER VII
A. Histories tBoTSFORD, Orient and Greece, chaps, vi-ix ; also all books given
above under Chapter VI, A.
B. Sources Short extracts in IBotsford, Source Book of Ancient History, chaps,
and source
selections xv-xviii; t Fling, Source Book of Greek History; Davis, Readings in
Ancient History, Vol. I, pp. 130-21 7. fTHUCYDlDES, translated by Jowett
(selections to be made by teacher). Aristotle, Constitution of Athens,
chaps, xxii-xxviii. t Plutarch, Lives of Aristides, Themistocles, Pausa-
nias, Cimon, Pericles. tSelections from ^schylus and Sophocles in
Appleton, Greek Poets, and Goldwin Smith, Specimens of Greek
Tragedy.

CHAPTER VIII
A. Histories IBotsford, Orient and Greece, chaps, ix-xiv ; also all books given
above under Chapter VI, A.
B. Sources Short extracts in IBotsford, Source Book of Ancient History, chaps,
and source
selections xix-xxiii; IFling, Source Book of Greek Histojy; Davis, Readings in
Ancient History, Vol. I, pp. 217-284. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens,
chaps, xxix-lxiii. Xenophon, Hellenica, Anabasis, and Cyropcedia,
translated by Dakyns (selections to be made by the teacher). A nev(r
translation of the Cyropcedia in the Loeb Classical Series. IPlutarch,
Lives of Alcibiades, Pelopidas, Timoleon. I Plato, Apology, selections
on the death of Socrates (Bohn Library). Nepos, Life of Epaminondas.
Aristophanes, Achamians and Birds, translated by Frere, in Every-
man's Library, Selections from Euripides in Appleton, Greek Poets, and
Goldwin Smith, Specimens of Greek Tragedy (2 vols.).
 Bibliography 703

CHAPTER IX

tBoTSFORD, Orient and Greece, chaps, xv-xvi ; also all books given A. Histories
above under Chapter VI, A.
Short extracts in tBoTSFORD, Sojirce Book of Ancient History, chaps, B. Sources
and source
xxiv-xxvii ; t Fling, Source Book of Greek Histo7y ; Davis, Readings in selections
Ancient History, Vol. I, pp. 285-341. tPLUTARCH, Lives of Demosthenes,
Phocion, Alexander, Philopoemen, and Aratus. Justin, History, Bk. IX
(Bohn Library). Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander (Bohn Library).
tDEMosTHENES, Oration on the Crown, and the Third Philippic.

A Few Additional Reference Works on Ancient Greece

AND THE Hellenistic Age, arranged topically

A full list of such works will appear in the author's History of the
Early World, to be published in 191 5.
history
tBuRY, J. B., A History of Greece. A. General
tGuLiCK, C. B., Life of the Ancient Greeks. IMahaffy, J. P., Old and political
Greek Life. BliJmner, H., Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. B. Social life
tGREENlDGE, A. H. J., Handbook of Greek Constitutional LListory. tional history
C. Constitu-
Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities. D. Mythology
tFAiRBANKS, A., Handbook of Greek Religion. Fairbanks, A.,
and religion
Mythology of the Greeks and Romans.
archaeology
tBAlKlE, J., Sea Kings of Crete. fTARBELL, History of Greek Art. E. Art and
Fowler and Wheeler, Greek Archceology. ophy
tjEBB, Greek Literature, t Murray, G., LListory of Ajicient Greek F. Literature
Literature, t MARSHALL, Short History of Greek Philosophy.
and philos-
GuLiCK, LJfe of the Ancie?tt Greeks, chaps, xvii-xviii. G. Economic
development
tMlCHAELls, A Century of Archaeological Discoveries. Periodic re-
//. Explora-
ports of current discoveries will be found in the magazine called Art discovery
tion and
and .Irchisology (see above, p. 700).
The Underwood & Underwood Series of Stereoscopic Photographs of /. The mentsmonu-
as they
Greece and its Monuments, edited by Richardson, Greece tlirough the are to-day
Stereoscope (100 views with guidebook and maps ; a short description is
also printed on the back of each view). See remarks above, p. v.
(A selection of fifteen of the most useful views comprises Nos. i, 8, 21,
35' 39' 42, 48, 54' 62, 64, 77, 80, 87, 96, 97.)

CHAPTER X

tBoTSFORl), History of Rome, chaps, i-viii. Goodspeed, Ancient A. Histories

World, pp. 276-428. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxiii-xxxiv.
Fairley-Seignobos, History of the Roman People, chaps, i-xvii.
 704 Outlines of Eii7'opean History
Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, chaps, xvii-xxiii. FoWLER, Rome^
chaps, i-vii. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, pp. 3-397. t Abbott,
Short History of Rome, pp. 1-179. Heitland, Short History of the
Roman Republic. Liddell, History of Rome (to 31 B.C.). How and
Leigh, History of Rome to the Death of CcBsar. Allcroft and Masom,
Rome under the Oligarchs, 202-1 jj b.c. Masom and Woodhouse, His-
tory ofRome, jgo-202 b.c. Masom, Decline of the Oligarchy, 133-^8 B.C.
Allcroft, Making of the Monarchy, 78-31 b.c.
B. Sources
and source Short extracts in fBoTSFORp, Story of Rome, chaps, i-viii ; jMuNRO,
selections Source Book far Roman History, chaps, i-viii ; Davis, Readings in
Ancient History, Vol. II, pp. 1-166; tBoTSFORD, Sojirce Book of Ancient
History, chaps, xxviii-xxxvii ; Hardy, Six Rotnan Laws. Sources in
tLiVY, Histories (Everyman's Library) ; Appian, History, ti-anslated by
White; fPLUTARCH, Lives of Romulus, Numa, Pyrrhus, Sulla, Marius,
Cicero, Caesar, translated by Clough (Everyman's Library) ; Polybius,
Histories, translated by Shuckburgh ; Cicero, Letters, translated by
Shuckburgh ; tCyESAR, Commentaries (Bohn Library); Nepos, L.ives
(Bohn Library).

CHAPTER XI

A. Histories
tBoTSFORD, Roman History, chaps, ix-xiii. Davis, Outli>ie History of
the Roman Etnpire. Jones, H. S., Story of the RoDian Empire. Bury, Ro-
man EjHpire (to 180 A.D.). Allcroft and Haydon, Early Principate.
Also the books mentioned above under Chapter X, A.
B. Sources Short extracts in tMuNRO, Source Book of Roman History, chaps,
and source
selections ix-xii ; Davis, Readings in Ancie7ti History, Vol. II, pp. 167-309 ; tBoTS-
FORD, Story of Rome, chaps, viii-xi ; fBoTSFORD, Source Book of Ancient
Histo7y, chaps, xxxviii-xlii.

A Few Additional Reference Works on Ancient Rome,

ARRANGED TOPICALLY

A full list of such works will appear in the author's History of the
Early World.
A. General jBuRY, J. B., Roman Empire (to 180 A.D.). Jones, H. S., The Roman
and political t^ , ■ ^ z
history Empire to 476 a.d.
B. Social life t ABBOTT, F. F., Cofn?non People of Ancient Rome, t Abbott, F. F.,
C. Constitu- Society and Politics in Ajicient Rome, t Johnston, H. W., Private Life
tionaland of the Romans.
institutional -^
histoiy IGreenidge, a. H. J., Roman Public LJfe.
 Bibliography
705 D. Mythology
IFairbanks, a., Mythology of Greece and Rome. tGRANGER, A., and religion
Worship of the Romans. archaeology
E. Art and
tMAU and Kelsey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. IPlatner, Topography
and Monuments of Ancient Rotne. ophy
IMackail, Latin Literature. Fowler, History of Roman Literature. F. Literature
fFARRAR, F. W., Seekers after God. and philos-
IDavis, W. S., Lnfiuence of Wealth in Lmperial Rome. IMattingly, G. Economic
development
Lmperial Civil Service.
MiCHAELls, A Century of Archceological Discoveries. Periodic reports discovery
tion and
H. Explora-
from the field in the magazine called Art and Archaeology (see above,
p. 700).
The Underwood & Underwood Series of Stereoscopic Photographs /. The mentsmonu-
as they
of Rome and Italy, edited by Ellison and Egbert, Ltaly through the are to-day
Stereoscope (lOO views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See
above, p. v. (A selection of the most useful fifteen views comprises
Nos. 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, T,z^ 34, 43, 45, 46, 47, 58, 60, 62, 91.)

PART II

FROM THE BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

TO THE OPENING OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

CHAPTER XII
reading
The best short account of the barbarian invasions is Emerton, A. General
Lntrodnction to the Middle Ages, chaps, i-vii. Oman, The Dark Ages,
gives a somewhat fuller narrative of the events. Adams, G. B., Civiliza-
tion durijig the Middle Ages, chaps, i, ii, iv, and v, discusses the general
conditions and results.
The textbook and the collateral reading should always be supple- B. Source
mented byexamples of contemporaneous material. Robinson, Readings material
in European History, Vol. I (from the barbarian invasions to the opening Readings
History in
of the sixteenth century) and Vol. II (from the opening of the sixteenth European
century to the present day), arranged to accompany chapter by chapter
the author's Lntrodnction to the History of Western Europe, will be found
especially useful in furnishing extracts which reenforce the narrative
together with extensive bibliographies and topical references. This
compilation will be referred to hereafter simply as Readings.
I
 Outlines of European History
7o6
For extracts relating to the barbarian invasions, see Readings, Vol. I,
pp. 28-55 ' O'^G, A Source Book of Mediceval History, chaps, i-iv. Much
more extensive are the extracts given in Hayes, C. H., An Introduc-
tion to the Sources relating to the Germanic Invasions, i^o() (Columbia
University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. XXXIII,
No. III).
C. Historical Constant use should be made of good historical atlases. By far the best
atlases
and most convenient for the high school is Shepherd, Wm, R., Histori-
cal Atlas, 191 1 (see maps 43, 45, 48, 50-52). Dow, Earle E., Atlas of
European History, 1907, also furnishes clear maps of the chief changes.
D. Additional HoDGKiN, the author of an extensive work in eight volumes on Italy
reading
and her Invaders, has written two small works, Dyttasty of Theodosius
and Theodoric the Goth. Sergeant, 7>^<? /^rd!«>('j, may be recommended.
Every historical student should gain some acquaintance with the cele-
brated historian Gibbon. Although his Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire was written about a century and a half ago, it is still of great
interest and importance and is incomparable in its style. The best
edition is published by The Macmillan Company, with corrections and
additions by a competent modern historian, J. B. Bury. The Cambridge
MedicEval History, by various writers, now in course of publication, devotes
its first volume to the period in question.

CHAPTER Xin
A. General There are no very satisfactory short accounts of the development of
reading the papacy. One must turn to the church histories, which are written
by either Catholics or Protestants and so differ a good deal in their in-
terpretation ofevents. One may refer to Fisher, History of the Chris-
tian Church (Protestant), or Alzog, Manual of Universal Church
Histoj-y (Catholic). Milman, History of Latin Christianity, although
old, is scholarly and readable and to be found in many good libraries.
Cambridge Mediceval History, Vol. I, chaps, iv, vi. Newman, Matiual
of Church History, Vol. I (Protestant).
B. Source Readings, Vol. I, pp. 14-27 and chap. iv. By far the best collection
material
of illustrative sources is to be found in Ayer, J. C, A Source Book of
Ancient Chtirch History, 19 13.

CHAPTER XIV

A. General The church histories referred to above all have something to say of
reading the monks. There is an excellent chapter on monasticism in Taylor,
Henry O., Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, chap. vii. See also a
little book by the famous church historian Harnack, Monasticisjn.
 Bibliography 707
Readings, chap. v. There is a Life of St. Cohimban, written by one of B. Source
material
his companions, which, although short and simple in the extreme, fur-
nishes abetter idea of the Christian spirit of the sixth century than the
longest treatise by a modern writer. This life may be found in Traiisla-
tions and Reprints, Vol. II, No. 7, translated by Professor Munro. The
chief portions of the Benedictine Rule may be found in Henderson,
E. F., Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, pp. 74 ff. and in
Thatcher and McNeal, A Source Book for Me diceva I History, pp. 432 ff.
See map, pp. 46-47, in Shepherd, Historical Atlas, showing spread of
Christianity in Europe. reading
Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. II, chap. xvi. The most complete C. Additional
history of the monks is by the French writer Montalembert, The
Monks of the West frofjt St. Benedict to St. Bernard, which has been
translated into English (6 vols.). The writer's enthusiasm and excellent
style make the work very attractive.
For Mohammed and the Saracens, Thatcher and Schwill, Europe D. Moham-
med and his
in the Middle Age, chap. xv. Oilman, The Saracens. GiBBON has a followers
famous chapter on Mohammed and another on the conquests of the
Arabs. These are the fiftieth and fifty-first of his great work. Cambj-idge
Mediceval Histoty, Vol. II, chaps, x-xii.
It is not hard to find a copy of one of the English translations of the E. Source
material
Koran. See brief extracts in Readings and in Ogg, Source Book of
Mediceval History, pp. 97 ff. Stanley Lane-Poole, Speeches and
Table Talk of Mohammed, is very interesting. reading
F. Additional
MuiR, Life of Moha?nmed. Ameer Ali, The Life and Teachings of
Mohammed, a Short History of the Saracens, by one who sympathizes
with them.
CHAPTER XV

Emertox, Lntroduction to the Middle Ages, chaps, xii-xiv. Bryce, A. General

Holy Roman Empire, chaps, iv-v. Henderson, History of Gerinany in reading
the Middle Ages, chaps, iv-v. Oman, Dark Ages, chaps, xix-xxii.
/headings, pp. 120-125 and chap. vii. Duncalf and Krey, Parallel B. Source
Source Problems in Mediceval History, pp. 3-26. material
HoDGKiN, Charles the Great, a small volume. Mombert, A History C. Additional

of Charles the Great, the most extensive treatment in English. Cai?ibridge ""^^"'"S
Mediceval History, Vol. II, chaps, xviii-xix.

CHAPTER XVI
Emerton, Lntroduction to the Middle Ages, chap. xv. Oman, Dark A. General
^^^j-, chaps, xxiii-xxv. YJ^IL^TO^, Mediceval Europe, Q\i2^^.yivi. Adams, reading
Civilizatioti during the Middle Ages, chap. ix.
 Outlines of EiLvopean History
B. Source
7o8
Readings, chaps, viii-ix. Ogg, Source Book of Mediceval History,
material
chap. X. Thatcher and McNeal, A Source Book for Mediceval History,

pp. 341-417-
C. Additional
reading Seignobos, Feiidal Regime (excellent). See " Feudalism," in Encyclo-
pcedia Britannica, nth ed. Ingram, History of Slavery and Serfdom, espe-
cially chaps, iv-v. Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of England.

CHAPTER XVII

A. General There are a number of convenient general histories of England during

reading
the Middle Ages which can be used to supplement the short account
here given : Cheyney, Short History of England; Green, Short History
of the English People ; Cross, A. L., yi History of England and Greater
Britain, chaps, iv-xviii ; Andrews, Charles M., History of England;
Terry, History of England; and a number of others. For France,
Adams, G. B., Growth of the French Nation ; Duruy, History of France.
B. Source Readings, chaps, xi, xx. There are several source books of English
material
history : Cheyney, Readings in English History, chaps, iv-xii ; CoLBY,
Selections from the Sources of English History ; Lee, Source-Book of
English History; Kendall, Source Book of English History.
C. Additional There is, of course, a great deal more available in English relating to
reading
English history than to the history of the continental countries. One
will find plenty of references to the more extensive works in any of the
books mentioned above.

CHAPTER XVIII

A. General Emerton, MedicEval Europe, chaps, iii-x. Henderson, E. F., History

reading
of Germany in the Middle Ages. A clear and scholarly account of the
whole period.
B. Source
material Readings, Vol. I, chaps, xii-xiv. Duncalf and Krey, Parallel Source
Problems in Medi<rval History, Problem II (Canossa). Thatcher and
McNeal, A Source Book for Mediaeval History, Section III, pp. 132-259.
C. Additional Tout, The Empire and the Papacy, with chief attention to the
reading
strictly political history. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, chaps. viii--xi.
Excellent maps for the period will be found in Shepherd, Historical
Atlas.

CHAPTER XIX

A. General Emerton, Mediceval Europe, chap. xi. Tout, The Ef?ipire and the
reading
Papacy, chaps, vii, viii, xiii, xiv, xix. Adams, Civilization during the
Middle Ages, chap, xi, for discussion of general results.
 Bibliography 709

Readings, chap. xv. Thatcher and McNeal, A Source Book for B. Source
MedicBval History, Section IX, pp. 510-544. Translations and Reprints rnatenal
published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsyl-
vania, Vol. I, Nos. 2, 4, and Vol, III, No. i.
Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades. Gibbon, Decline and Fall C. Additional

of the Rotnan Empire, chaps. Iviii-lix. See " Crusades," in Encyclo- ^^^ ^"^
pcEdia Britannica, nth ed.

CHAPTER XX
reading
The available material on this important subject is rather scattered. A. General
The author gives a somewhat fuller account of the Church in his
Western Europe, chaps, xvi, xvii, xxi. See good chapter in Emerton,
MedicBval Europe, chap. xvi. Special topics can be looked up in the
Encyclopcedia Britannica, the Catholic Encyclopcsdia, or any other good
encyclopedia.
Readings, Vol. I, chaps, xvi, xvii, xxi. Thatcher and McNeal, B. Source
material
A Source Book for Mediceval History, contains many important docu-
ments relating to the Church.
reading
CUTTS, Parish Priests and their People. The opening chapter of Lea, C. Additional
A History of the hiquisition of the Middle Ages, gives a remarkable
account of the medieval Church and the abuses which prevailed. The
first volume also contains chapters upon the origin of both the Francis-
can and Dominican orders. For St. Francis the best work is Sabatier,
St. Francis of Assisi. See also Gasquet, English Monastic Life; Jes-
SOPP, The Coming of the Friars, and Other Historic Essays; Creighton,
Historv of the Papacy, introductory chapter.

CHAPTER XXI
reading
Emerton, Mediceval Ejirope, chap. xv. Historians are so accustomed A. General
to deal almost exclusively with political events that one looks to them
in vain for much information in regard to town life in the Middle Ages
end is forced to turn to special works: Gibbins, History of Commerce,
best short account with good maps; Cunningham, Western Civilization
in its Economic Aspects, Vol. II; Cheyney, Industrial and Social His-
tory of England', GiBBiNS, Industrial History of England; Day, C,
History of Commerce ; Luchaire, Social Life in the Time of Philip
Augustus. Symonds, Age of Despots, gives a charming account of town
life in Italy in its more picturesque aspects. Hamlin, History of Archi-
tecture, good introduction. Good account of early discoveries in Cam-
bridge Modern History, Vol. I, chaps, i-ii.
 Outlines of European History
7IO
B. Source Readings, Vol. I, chap, xviii. Ogg, Source Book of Aledicrval History,
material
chap. XX. Thatcher and McNeal, A Source Book for Medi<rval His-
tory. Section X, pp. 545-61 2, gives many interesting documents. Marco
Polo's account of his travels is easily had in English. The best edition
of Travels of Sir John Maiideville is that published by The Macmillan
Company, because it contains the accounts on which the anonymous
writer of the travels depended for his information.

CHAPTER XXII

A. General Emerton, Medicsval Europe, chap. xiii. Rashdall, History of the

reading
Universities in the Middle Ages, introductory chapters.
B, Source Readings, Vol. I, chap. xix. Steele, Mediieval Lore, extracts from an
material
encyclopedia of the thirteenth century. The Song of Roland is trans-
lated into spirited English verse by O'Hagan. The reader will find a
beautiful example of a French romance of the twelfth century in an
English translation of Aucassin and Nicolette. Mr, Steele gives charm-
ing stories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Huon of Bordeaux,
Renaud of IMontauban, and The Story of Alexander. Malory, Mori
d' Arthur, a collection of the stories of the Round Table made in the
fifteenth century for English readers, is the best place to turn for these
famous stories. Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch (new enlarged edition,
1914), a collection of his most interesting letters. Whitcomb, Literary
Source Book of the Ltalian Renaissance. Coulter, Mediccval Garner, a.
collection of selections from the literary sources.
C. Additional Saintsbury, Flourishing of Romance, a. good introduction to medieval
reading
literature. Walsh, The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries (rather too
enthusiastic in its claims). Smith, Justin H., The Troubadours at Hotne.
Cornish, Chivalry. DeVinne, Lnvention of Priiiting. Putnam, Books
and their Makers duri7ig the Middle Ages. Burckhardt, The Civiliza-
tion ofthe Renaissance in Ltaly. Van Dyck, The History of Painting.

CHAPTER XXIII

A. General Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, chaps, i-ii. Cambridge

reading
Modern History, Vol. I, chaps, iv, xi. See " Charles V," in Encyclopiedia
Britannica. DuRUY, History of France, Ninth and Tenth Periods.
B. Source Readings, Vol. II, chap, xxiii.
material
C. Additional Cambridge ALidern History, Vol. II, chap. ii. Dyer and Hassall,
reading Modern Europe (a political history of Europe in 6 vols.), Vol. I.
Creighton, Llistory of the Papacy. Pastor, History of the Popes,
Vol. V. Bryce, Lloly Roman E7)ipire, chap. xiv.
 BibliograpJiy JW

CHAPTER XXIV

See fuller account in Robinson, History of Western Europe, chaps. A. General

xxi, xxiv-xxvi. Henderson, E. F,, Short History of Germany. John- reading
SON, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, chaps, iii-v. Lindsay, History of
the Reformation^N o\. I. See " Reformation," in Encyclopaedia Britannica,
nth ed.
Readings, Vol. I, chap, xxi, and Vol. II, chaps, xxiv-xxvi. Wage and B. Source
BuCHHEiM (Editors), Luther's Fri?nary Works and The Augsburg "^^'^^"^^
Confession. Whitcomb, Source Book of the German Renaissance. reading
McGlFFERT, Martin Litther. Beard, Martin Luther, especially in- C. Additional
troductory chapters on general conditions. Creighton, LLisiory of the
Papacy, Vol. VI. Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, chaps. i.\, xix,
and Vol. II, chaps, iv-viii. Janssen, History of the German People,
Vols. I-II. Emerton, Desiderius Erastmcs, very interesting.

CHAPTER XXV

Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 272 ff. See " Zwingli " A. (General
and " Calvin," in Encyc/optrdia Britannica. Chapters on the changes ^^^"^"g
under Henry VIII and Edward VI will be found in all general histories of
England; for example, Cheyney, Short History of England, chap, xii ;
Cross, A History of England, chaps, xx-xxii ; Green, Short History of
the English People, chaps, vi-vii.
Readings, chap, xxvii. Gee and Hardy, Docufuents Ilh'istrative of B. .Source
English Church History, pp. 145 ff., very useful and full. Cheyney, material
Readings in English History, chap. xii.
Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, chaps, x-xi, xiii-xv. Jagkson, C. Additional
S. M., Huldreich Zwingli. Lindsay, History of the Refortnation, Vol. II, reading
Bk. Ill, chaps, i-iii, and Bk. IV. Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation.

CHAPTER XXVI

Johnson, Etirope iji the Sixteenth Century, chaps, vii-ix. Wakemax, a. General
European History, ijgS-iyi^, chaps, i-v. The portion of the chapter ''^^"'"g
dealing with English affairs can be readily supplemented by means of the
general histories of England, Cheyney, Cross, Green, Andrews, etc.
Readings, Vol. II, chaps, xxviii xix. Cheyney, Readings in English B. Source
Ldi story, chap. xiii. material
 Outlines of European History
712
C. Additional Catubridge Modern History, Vol. II, chaps, ix, xvi, xviii-xix; Vol. Ill,
reading chaps, i, vi-x, xv, xx ; Vol. IV, chaps, i, iii-vi, xiii-xiv. LINDSAY,
History of the Reformation, Vol II, Bk. Ill, chaps, iv-v and Bk. VI.
Putnam, Ruth, IVilliatn the Silent. Payne, Voyages of Elizabethan
Seainen to America, Vol. I. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic.
Gi^D'Ei.Y, History of the Thirty Years' War.

CHAPTER XXVII
A. General Cheyney, Short History of England, chaps, xiv-xvi. Cross, A. His-
reading
tory ofEngland, chaps, xxvii-xxxv. Green, Short History of the English
People, chaps, viii-ix.
B. Source Readings, chap. xxx. Cheyney, Readi?tgs in English History, chaps,
material
xiv-xvi. Lee, Source Book of English History, Pt. VI ; Colby, Selec-
tions fr0771 the Sources of E7iglish History, Pt. VI, the Stuart Period.
Gee and Hardy, Docu77ie7its IHustrative of E7iglish Chu7-ch History,
pp. 508-664.
C. Additional Ca77ibridge Moder7i History, Vol. Ill, chap, xvii ; Vol. IV, chaps,
reading
viii-xi, XV, xix ; Vol. V, chaps, v, ix-xi. Morley, Oliver Cromwell.
Macaulay, Essay on Milton. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts a7id
the Puritan Revolutio7t.

CHAPTER XXVIII
A. General Ca77ibridge Moder7i Histoiy, Vol. V, chaps, i-ii, xiii-xiv. Wakeman,
reading
Europe fro77i i^gS to lyij, chaps, ix-xi, xiv-xv. Duruy, History of
B. Source France, Thirteenth Period. Adams, Groivth of the Fre7ich Nation.
material Readings, Vol. II, chap. xxxi.
C. Additional Perkins, Fra/ice U7ider the Rege7icy.
reading
 INDEX
Marked letters sound as in far, prudent, move, French boh

Alemanni, 327
Abbeys, dissolution of, in Eng-
land, 613 Alexander the Great, 2 1 6 ff . ; cam-
Ab'e lard, 545 paigns of, 217 ff.; international
Abraham, 105 policy of, 224 ff.
Abu Sim'bel, Fig. 30 (op. p. 49), 243 Alexander's Empire, 229 ff.
Alexandria, 88, 230, 233 ff., 236
Abusir (a bu ser'), 122 Alexius, Emperor, 461, 464
Aby'dos, 25 Alfred the Great, 405 f.
Ac a de'mus, 210
Academy, Plato's, 235; French, 687 Al ham'bra, the, 368
A chae'ans, 126 Ali Baba (a'le ba'ba), 50
Alphabet. See Writing
Acrop'olis, 130, 137, 144, 174, 182,
185 ff., Plate III Alsace (al sas') and Lorraine, 650
Act of Supremacy, 611 Alva, Duke of, 628 f.
A'mon, 226, 237
Act of Uniformity, 677
Am'o rites, 59, 67
Actium (ak'shi um), 273
Amos, 106, 108
Ad'ri an o'ple, battle of, 317 f.
Advancement of Learning, 661 Am phic'ty on ies, 133
Anabaptists, 601
i^gean (e je'an), the, civiliza- Anatomy, earliest, 44
tion of, 1 1 1 ; geography of, 116;
influence of Orient on, ii6f. ; Ancient civilization, collapse of,
peoples of the, 117 ff., I26ff. 302 ff., 312 f.
sar'to ), 559
^gina (eji'na), 155, 183 Andrea del Sarto (an dre^a del
^ gos pot'a mi, 203
iEneid (e ne'id), the, 280 f. An dro ni'cus, 262
Angles, in Britain, 355
M. o'li ans, 127 Anglo-Saxon, 535
^s'chylus, 186, 189 ff.
Agincourt (aj'in court, Eng. pron.), Anglo-Saxon Cknviicle, 410
Ani (a'ne), 53
battle of, 431
Agriculture, rise of, 12, 20, 33 f., Anjou (an'jo, Eng. pron.), 416, 418 ;
61, 90, 95 f. house of, 435 ; Charles of, 458
An'shan, 96
Ahuramazda
100 (a ho'ra m'az'da), 94,
An tig'o nids, 231 f.
Ak a man'tis, 185 An tig'o nus, 230
Ak'kad, 64 ff. Antioch (an'ti ok), 230 ; Latin
Ak'ko, 138 kingdom of, 467
Al'ar ic takes Rome, 318 Aphrodite (afrodi'te), 144, 251
Alban Mount, 248 ApoHo, 133, 144, 159, 163, 180, 251
Albertus Magnus, 489, 547 Ap'pi an Way, 295
Al bi gen'sians, 482 f. A qui'nas, Thomas, 489, 547 f.
Al'che my, 544 Arabia, 57 f., 86, 89
Al ci bi'a des, 198 ff. Arabiafi Alights* Entertainments,
Al'cuin, 379
713 The, 50, 3*66
714 Outli?ics of European History

Arabic numerals, 551 in, 183; in age of Pericles,

185 ff. ; destruction of, 196 ff.
Ar'abs, 57 ff. ; condition of, before
Mohammed, 358 ; conquests of, Athens, 133 ; map and plan of,
366 ff., 461 ; civilization of, in 173; and Sparta, 178, 183 f. ;
Spain, 564 fall of, 186 ff., 203 ; after Peri-
Aragon, 564 cles, 203 ff.
Arame'ans, 71, 79, 89, 103 Athletic games. See Olympian
Arausio (a ra'shi 6), 291
Ar be'la, 222 A'thos (cr Ath'os), Mount, 166
Arch, the, 62, 76, 81 games
At'ti ca, 320
133, 166 f.
la,
Archbishops, powers of, 478 At'tis, 298
Architecture, medieval, 509 ff. ;
_ Renaissance, 521 f. Augsburg, battle of, 438, 449, 504 ;
Ar'chon, 136 diet of, 601 ; confession of, 602 ;
peace of, 603, 646
A re op'a gus, 156, 173, 182, 186 ff.,
,, Plate III Augustan Age, the, 281
Ar'go lis, 174 Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 318
Ar'gos, 124 f. Augustus. See Octavian
Ariana (a ri a'na), 9 Au re'li us, Marcus, 301 ff.
burgs
Aristogiton (ar is to jl'ton), i56f. Austria, origin of, 563. See Haps-
Ar is toph'a nes, 198, 204 A ves'ta, 94
Aristotle, 217; medieval veneration
for, 547 ; revolt against, 652 A ve.s'tan, 90
Ar ma'da, 631, 644 Avignon (av 493
popes at, en yon'), residence of
Art, Middle Stone Age, 8 f.;
Egyptian, 41, 48, 51 f. ; Baby- Axes and daggers, earliest, stone,
lonian, 64 ff ., 69 ; Assyrian, 10 ; copper, 14, 114 f.
75 ff. ; Chaldean, 83; Cretan,
ii6ff. ; Greek, 141, 159, 186 ff.; Baalbek (bal'bek), 280
Etruscan, 244 f. ; Roman, 262 Babylon, 58, 80 ff., 97
Artaxerxes (ar ta zerks'ez), 212 Babylonian art and architecture,
62, 64 ff., 69
Ar te mis'i um, 172 Babylonian captivity, 493
Aryans (ar'yanz), 89, 91 ff.
Ash ur ba'ni pal, 78 Babylonian law, 67 f.
Asia, western, geography of, Babylonian religion, 62 f.
56 ff. ; races of, 57 ff. Babylonian society, 63 f.
Assembly, Greek, 129, 132, 136, Babylonian state, 64, 67
198 ; place of, 182 Babylonian writing, 60, 62
Assur (as'or), 70, 72 Babylonians,
rians earliest. See Sume-
Assyrian art and architecture,
72 ff., 76 f. Bacon, Lord,
Bacon, Roger, 656
549f., 661
Assyrian civilization, 76 ff.
Assyrian literature, 78 Baeda. See Venerable Bede
Bagdad, 364
Assyrian society, 78 f.
Assyrian state, 70, 73 Balance of power, 609
Assyrian war, 70 ff., 75 f. Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, 464 f.,
Astrology, 83 f., 299, 543 467
Astronomy, 44, 83 f., 193, 235 Bal'i ol, John, 425
Bannockburn, battle of, 425
A of,
the'na,
231 144, 188 ff., 195 ; temple Baptists, 677
Athenian Empire, 166 ff.; rise of, " liarbarians " (in Greece), 133,
178 ff. ; triumph of democracy
305. See Germans
 Index
715
Business in later Middle Ages,
" Barbarians, Laws of the," 330
Barbarossa. See Frederick I
Bards, Welsh, 423 Buttress, 512 f.
502 ff.
Ba sil'i ca, the, Fig. 113 and p. 337 Byb'los, 139 f.
Battering rams, 391 Byzantium (bi zan'shi um), 306 f.
Bayeux (ba yu') tapestry, 409 " Caesar," 274
Becket, Thomas, 413 f.
Behistun (be his ton'), 98 Caesar, Julius, 266 ff.
Belshazzar, 97 Calais (kal'is), 433
Benedict, St., 349 ; rule of, 349 f. Calendars, 23 f., 62, 193, 236
Benedictine order, 349 and note ; Caliph (ka'lif), title of, 364
influence of, 350 Caliphate, transferred from Medina
Bi'as, I 59 to Damascus, 364; to Bagdad,
364, 375
Bible, the, origin' of name, 23, 140;
Persian, 94 {see Avesta) ; Jewish, Callimachus (ka lim'a kus), 168
loS : Luther's translation of, Callisthenes (ka lis'the nez), 228
596 ; English translation of, 61 2 ; Calvin, 607 f., 632
King James version of, 661 Cambyses (kam bi'sez), 97
Bill of Rights, 679 Canaanites, 59 f-, 102 ff.
Bishop of Rome, early claims of, Canon
Canossa,law,
449476 note
340 ; leading position of, 340-
342, 441 f., 478 f. See Popes Capitol Hill, 248 f. and Fig. 113
Black death, 429 Capitularies, 378
Bo'ghaz-Koi, 113 Cardinals, origin of, 445 and note
Bohemia, 375, 575 f., 646 Caria (ka'ri a), 151
Caramel, 138
Boleyn
614 (bool'in), Anne, 610 f.,
Carolingian line, 369 note
Bologna (bolon'ya). University of, Carthage, 87, 89, 176, 257, 25Sff.;
545 relations with Rome, 256 ff.
Boniface VIII, Pope, 490, 492 Carthaginian wars, 258 ff.
Boniface, St., apostle to the Ger- Cas si 6 d5'rus, his treatises on the
mans, 357 f. liberal arts and sciences. 322 f.
" Book of the Dead," 52 f. Castles, medieval, 387 ff.
Books, earliest, in Europe, 140; Cathedral, 47 f. and Fig. 1 13, 510 f.
oldest surviving Greek, 236 ; Catherine of Aragon, 610 f.
in Middle Ages, 552 f.
Catherine of Medici (med'e che),
Bos'po rus, 306
Bourbons, House of, 435; Spanish, Catholic
632 ff. Church, early conception
692 f. of, 334. See Church, Clergy
Bows and arrows, earliest use of Catholic League, 647 f.
7, 74 ff., 95 f. Cavaliers, 668
Brandenburg, elector of, 575 Celts, 89, 355 ; in Britain, 355
Bremen (bra'men), 374, 504 Ceres (se'rez), 251
Britain conquered by the Angles
and Saxons, 355 Chaeronea (ker 5 ne'a), 216
Chalcedon
Council of,(kal342se'don). Act of the
Bronze, 10, 34 f., 115
Bruce, Robert, 425 Chaldea (kal de'a), 89, 96 f.
Bubonic plague, 429 Chaldean art and architecture,
Burgundians, 322, 327 ; number 81 ff.
of, entering the Empire, 329 Chaldean commerce. 83
Burgundy, 432, 436, 573, 690 Chaldean F^mpire, 80 ff.
Chaldean industries, 83
 Outlines of Etiropeaii History
7i6
Chaldean science, 83 ff. Clerestory,
188 47 f. and Figs. 1 13, 183,
Chaldean state, 80 f.
Chaldean war, 80 Clergy, position of, in Middle Ages,
Chaldean writing, 83
Chaldeans, 69, 79, 80 Cleric
443 isf.,laicos,
480 ff.491
Clermont, Council of, 461
Chalons (sha Ion'), battle of, 320 Clipping, 505
Charlemagne (shar'le man), 369 ff.,
disruption of Empire of, 381 Clis'the
Clit'i as, nes,
149 157 f.
Charles L 662 ff.
Charles II of England, 676 ff., 689 Cirtus, 228
Charles V, Emperor, 562, 566 ff., Clocks, earliest, in Greece, 234 ;
in Egypt,
Cloister, 351 236
593 U VIII
Charles 625 of France, Italian
invasion of, 568 ff . Clovis, conquests of, 326 f. ; con-
Charles IX of France, 632 f. version of, 327 ; number of sol-
Charles Martel defeats the Mo- diers of, 329 ; baptized, 329
hammedans atTours, 367, 369 Cnidus (ni'dus), 151
Charter, Great, 419 f. Cnossus(nos'us),i4, 116, Ii8ff.,i27
Charters, town, 500 Cnut (knot), 406
Chartres (shartr), cathedral of, 515 Codes of law, earliest written, 29,
Chaucer, 536 67 f., 154, 252, 281 f., 311 f.
Coinage, earliest, in Egypt, 38 ;
Cheops (ke'ops) {see Khufu), 25, 28
in Age of Hammurapi, 67 ; in
Chephren (kef'ren), frontispiece
Chilon (krion), 159 Medo-Persian Empire, 98; in
Chios (kros), 151 Greece, 151 ; in Rome, 250,
Chivalry, 538 f. 256; medieval, 505
Christ. See Jesus
Colbert (kol bar'), 686 f.
Christianity, promises of, 335;
contrast between ideas of, and Coligny (ko len'ye), 635 f.
Coloni, the, 292 f.
those of the pagans, 335 f. Colonia Augusta Treverorum, 289
Colonnades, the earliest, 40, 46 ff.
Chrysoloras (kris 5 lo'ras), 548
Church, greatness of, 334 ; sources Col OS se'um,530279, 294
Columbus,
of power of, 335 ff. ; relation of,
to the civil government, 337 ; Commerce in Middle Ages, 503 ff.
begins to perform the functions Com'mo dus, 301 f.
Common law, 413
of the civil government, 338 f. ;
in time of Charlemagne, 374, Commons, House of. See Parlia-
ment
379; property of, 440 ff. ; char-
acter and organization of, 475ff.; Commonwealth in England, 670 ff.
relation of, to State, 489 ; break Compurgation, 331
up of, 578. See Clergy, Popes Condottieri
Church of England, 611, 639 Conscience, (kon dot tya're),
emergence of, 520 f.
43, 53,
Cicero (sis'e ro), 265 f. 161 f.
Cilicia (silish'ia), 146 Con'stan tine, 289, 305 f., 308
Cimmerians (si me'ri anz), 79 Constantinople, 306 f., 312 f., 464,
Cimon (si'mon), 180 f.
City-states, 64, 127 ff., 247, 516 ff. Continuity of history, 316
Civil war in England, 668 f. Conventicle Act, 677
Claudius, 247 Conventicles, 666
472 f.
Cle 6 bij'lus, 159 Conversion, of the Germans, 357 f.;
of the Saxons, 373 f.
Cle'on the tanner, 198 f.
Cle 6 pa'tra, 267, 272 ff. Co per'ni cus, 652 f.
 Index ;i;

Copper, 14, 24, 26, 28, 34 f., 88, DT 6 ny'sus, 144 and Fig. 93
ii4f., 246 Dip'y Ion Gate, 186
Cor'do va, mosque at, 367 ; uni- Discoveries, geographical, 526 ff.;
versity at, 368, 564 of the Portuguese, 528 f.
Disorder, age of, 381
Cor'inth, 1508., 196 f. Dispensations, 477
Corinthian Gulf, 161
Dissenters, 677
Coronation, religious ceremony,370
Cotton, earliest, 77 f. Divine right of kings, 370, 659 f.,
Council, Greek, I29ff., 132; re- 682 ff.
ligious, 133 Domestication
61, 90 of animals, 12, 34,
Covenant, National, 667
Dominicans, 488
Crecy Don'jon, 392
Cretan (kres'sy), battle of, 427ii6ff.
art and architecture,
Crete, prehistoric, iiSff. Do'ri ans, I26f.
Dra'co (dra'ko), 155
Croesus (kre'sus), 96
Cromwell, Oliver, 669 ff. Drainage systems, earliest known,
Crusades, 460 ff. 122, Fig. 66
Cuneiform. See Wedge-writing Drake, Sir Francis, 642
Curia, papal, 478 Diirer, Albrecht, 559
Dutch. See Holland
Cy'prus, 230
Cy re'ne, 146
Cy'rus, 96 ff., 99 Early Stone Age. See Stone Age
•' Czar," 274 East, luxuries of, introduced into
Europe, 295 f., 504
East, the Far, 223
Dalmatia (dalma'shi a), 279
Damascus, 71 f., 89, 103 East Frankish kingdom, 382
Danegeld, 406 East Goths, 320 f., 324
Danes, invasion of England by, Eastern Church. -&^ Greek Church
405 ff. Ecbatana
Eck, John, (ek
591bat'a na), 98
Da ri'us (Darius the Great), 98 ff.,
i66ff., 219 ff. Edessa, 465, 467 ; fall of, 470
Dark ages, 332, 379 Edict of Nantes (nants), 638 ; rev-
David, 103 ocation of, 691
Edict of Restitution, 647
Decelea (des e le'a), 201 ff.
Decelean War, 201 f. Education, 379, 380, 541 ff.
Degrees, university, explained, Edward the Confessor, 406 f.
546 and note Edward I, 421, 423 f., 490
Edward 11, 422, 425
De'li a, 296 f.
Delian League, i79f., 184 Edward III, 422, 426
De'li um, 199 Edward VI, 614
Egbert, 405
De'los, 133
DeFphl, 133, 161, 163 Egypt, 17; geography of, 17 ff.
Delta, the, 18 earliest inhabitants of, 20 ff.
earliest known writing in, 21 ff.
De me'ter, 144, 251
De mos'the nes, 216 stone architecture in, 25 ff.
Denmark, in Thirty Years' War,647 Pyramid Age of, 27 ff. ; arts and
Descartes (dakart^, 655 ff. crafts in, 34 ff., 51 ff-; Feudal
Dictator (in Rome), 253 Age of, 42 ff . ; the Empire, 44 ff. ;
Diet, of Germany, 576; at Worms, influence of, upon Rome, 275;
during Roman Empire, 285 f.
.593
Diocletian (dl 6 kle'shi an), 302 £., Egyptian art and architecture,
305 ff. . 25ff-» 33' 4i.46ff., 50 ff-
 Outlines of European History
718
Egyptian commerce, 31 ff.,36, 38 Eurymedon (u rim'e don) River,
Egyptian industries, 34 ff. 181
Egyptian literature, 42 f., 53 Excommunication, 481 .
P^gyptian painting, 41 Exeter, cathedral of, 515
Egyptian religion, 27 f., 51 ff. Exile, the (Hebrew), 106 ff.
Egyptian science, 44
Fa'bi us, 260
Egyptian ships, 30 f., 37
Egyptian society, 38 f., 42 f. Fabliaux (fab le 6'), 538
Egyptian state, 29 ff., 42 f., 46 Ferdinand, Emperor, 625 and note
Ferdinand of Aragon, 565
Egyptian war, 46
Egyptian
E' lam, 97 writing, 21 ff. Festival Street in Babylon, 81 ff.
Feudal Age in Egypt, 42 ff. ;
Electors in the Empire, 575 tombs of, 42 ff. ; civilization in,
Eleusis (e lu'sis), 160, 162
Elizabeth, Queen, 611, 639 ff. Feudal system. See Feudalism
Elysian Fields, 144 Feudalism, 397 ff. ; warfare, 401 f. ;
Embalmment, 27, 46, 50 42 ff.
introduction of, into England,
E mir'ate of Cordova, 375 410; introduction of, into France,
Empire, the, in Egypt. See Egyp- 435; relation of, to Church, 441
tian Empire Fiefs. See Feudalism
Empire, Holy Roman. 376, 439 f., First Cataract of the Nile, iS, 32
Flanders, 411, 504
England, reconversion of, 357 ; in Flavian amphitheater. See Colos-
452 ff., 458^ seum 435
Flayers,
the Middle Ages, 405 ff.; condi-
tion of labor in, 430 f. ; rela-
tions with Scotland, 425 ; Prot- Fleur-de-lis (fliir'de le'), 427
estant revolt in, 608 ff. ; under Flint mines, earliest, 13
Elizabeth, 639 ff.; Constitutional Florence, 459, 516, 522, 558, 569,
struggle in, 659 ff.
English Church, 664 f. Forum, Roman, Fig. 113 and 248 f.
English language, 535 f.
France, 429, 434 ff.; natural bound-
E pam i non'das, 212 f. aries of, 649, 688 ; under Louis
XIV, 681 ff. ^
Ep i cu're'ans, 235, 281
E pi'rus, 2 56f. Franche-Comte (frorish kofi ta'),
Erasmus, 579 ff . ; attitude of, toward 636, 649, 689
572
Luther, 588, 608 ; Praise of Folly Francis I, 571 ; persecution under,
of, 609
Erechtheus (e rek'thus), 137 Francis
631 II, 632 f.
E re'tri a, 166 Franciscans, 484 ff. .
Er lil
go ti'mos, 149 Franks, conquests of, 322, 325 f.;
En' 683, 63 conversion of, 327, 369, 381
Estates General, 427 f., 435, 492, Frederick I, Emperor, 452 f., 456,

Etruscan art, 244 f. Frederick II, Emperor, 456 f.

Etruscan bronzes, 149, 244, 246 Frederick, the "winter king,"
Etruscan kings of Rome, 249, 252
Frederick
646 f. the Wise, 582, 591
E trus'cans, 244 ff., 249
Eu ae'ne tus, 185 471
French language, 537 and note
French medieval romances, 537
Eubcea (ube'a), 137, 166 f., 172
Fritzlar, sacred oak of Odin at, 358
Eu pat'rids, 1 30 ff.
Eu phra'tes River, 58 Furniture, earliest wooden, 12, 37.
See Wood
Eu rip'i des, 190 ff.
 Index 719

Government, Hebrew, 103 f., 106

Gaelic (ga'lik), 424
Government, Roman, 248 f., 252 ff.,
Gaius (ga'yus), 265
Ga le'ri us, 30S 255, 264 ff., 268, 271 ff., 273 ff.,
Gal i le'5, 653 f. 301, 311 f.
Gallic wars, 255 Gracchi
fall of, (grak'I), 265
Gard (gar) River, 283 Gra na'da,375 the Alhambra at, 368 ;
Gascony (gas'ko ni), 41S Grand Remonstrance, 667
Gaul, dying, 214, 255
Gaul (Gauls), 235, 254, 255, 258 ff., Gra nfcus River, 218
266 ff. "Great Greece," 147
Great King, 98 f., 219
Gelasius (je la'shi us). Pope, his Great Mother, 298
opinion of the relation of the
Church and the civil govern- " Great schism," 524
ment, 339 Greek, study of, in the Middle
Ge'lon (je'lon), 176 Ages, 547 f.
Geneva, reformation at, 607 Greek art and architecture, 141,
Genoa, 472, 503, 516 156, 159, 182, 186 ff., 231 and
Geographical discoveries, 526 ff. Fig. 112
Geography, 44 Greek Church tends to separate
Geometry, 44, 193 from the Latin, 342
Germaniclanguages, origin of, 330, Greek colonization, 146 ff.
534 Greek commerce, 137, 146 ff., 155
Germans, objects of, in invading Greek drama, 189 ff., 204
the Empire, 317 ; number of, in- Greek education, 192, 234 f.
vading, 329; fusion of, with the Greek history writing, 203 ff,
Romans, 329; character of early, Greek industries, 148 f.
Greek law, 154
332 ; conversion of, 355 ff.
Germany, 439 ff.; division of, into Greek literature,^ 142 ff., 155, i59ff.,
small states, 458, 562 ; universi- 189 f., 192
ties of, 546 ; in the sixteenth Greek music, 159, 185
century, 574 ff. ; religious divi- Greek oratory, 192, 216
sion of, 600 Greek painting, 186
Greek philosophy. See Philosophy
Ghiberti (ge ber'te), 558 Greek religion, 144, 236
Gibraltar, 694
Greek science, 162, 193, 234 f.
Gizeh (ge'ze), 19, 25 ff. ; Great Pyra- Greek sculpture, 189
mid of, 25, 28 ff., 33 ; Second
Pyramid of, 41, 42 ; cemetery Greek ships, 137, 152, 107 f.
of, Plate I (frontispiece) Greek society, 127 f., 129, 143,
Glass, earliest, 35. f., 77, 83 i55ff., 183, 2i7ff., 238
Godfrey of Bouillon (bo y6fi'),464f. Greek state, 129 f., 132 ff., 136 ff.,
Golden Bull, 402 155 ff., 181 f., 184, 216 f., 239
Greek theater, 145, 189 ff.
Gortyna (gortl'na), 154
Gothic architecture, 511 ff. Greek war, 167 ff., 183 f., 196 ff.,
Gothic sculpture, 515 f. 208 ff., 212 f.
Government, Assyrian, 70 ff., 78 Greek writing, 130, 139 f.
Government, Babylonian, 64, 67 Gregory VII, Pope, 446 ff.
Government, Chaldean, 80 Gregory of Tours, 324, 327
Government, Egyptian, 20 f., 29 ff., Gregory the Great, 344 f.; writings
42, 46 of, 345 ; missionary work of,
Government, Greek, 129 f., 132 ff., Grotius,
346, 356694
136 ff., 155 ff., 181 ff., 184, 209 f.,
215' 239 Guienne (ge en'), 416, 418
 Outlines of Eiiivpean History
720 He'ra, 144
Guilds, in the Middle Ages, 502 ; Hephaestion (he fes'ti on), 229
of teachers, 545
Guise (guez), House of, 632, Her'a cles, 222
Heresy, 469, 481 f.
634 ff.
Gunpowder, 551 f. Her'mes, 144 and Fig. 93
Gustavus Adolphus, 647 ff. He rod'o tus, 188, 203 f.
He'si od, 128, 143
Ha'des, 144 Hieroglyphs, 21 f., 62, 66, 117 ff.,
Hamburg, 504 121

Ham mu ra'pi, 67 ff. High Church party, 666

Hampden, John, 664 f. Highlands, 424
Hanging Gardens (of Babylon), Hip par'chus, i 57
82 Hip'pi as, 157, 167
Hannibal, 259 ff. History, continuity or unitv of,
Hanseatic League, 508
Hapsburg, Rudolf of, 458, 563 ; Hittites (hit'Its), 70, 113 f., 117 f.
House of, 562 ff. Hobenstaufens, 452 f. See Fred-
Ha' rem ^ 363 erick I,Frederick II
Holbein (horbin), Hans, 559
Har mo'di us, 1 56 f.
Harold, Earl of Wessex, 407 f. Holland,6 629, 689 ; English war
Harvey, William, 661 with,31 672 f., 678
Hastings, battle of, 409 Holy Land, 460 f.
Hatchets, early stone, 3 ff. Holy League, 636
Hebrew history writing, 105 f. Holy Roman Empire, 377, 438 ff.,
Hebrew industries, 104
Homage, 398
Hebrew kingdoms, the, 103 ff. 563' 651
Hebrew literature, 106 Homer, 141 ff.
Hebrew oratory, 106 Homeric songs, 133, 139, 142 £.,
Hebrew religion, 104, 106 ff.
144, i59f.
Hebrew society, 105 f. Hor'ace, 278 ff.
Hebrew state, 103 f. Horse, first appearance of the,
Hebrew war, 106
45 f- 69, 90
He jl'ra, the, 359 Hospitalers, 46S
Hel'i con, 143 Hrolf, 407
House, the earliest wooden, 12
Hellas, 126
Hellenes (hergnz), 133 f., 147 Humanists,
Huguenots, 549
633 ff., 690 ff.
Hellenistic Age, the, 232 ff. ; civ-
ilization of, 232 ff. Hundred Years' War, 426 ff., 433
Hel'les pont, 166 463
Hungarians, invasions of, 386, 438,
Henry I of England, 411
Henry II of England, 411 Huns, 317, 320
Henry III of England, 421
Henry VII of England, 434 rbismet'tus,
Hy , 53 Plate IV
Henry VIII of England, 573, I be'ri ans, 276
609 ff. ; divorce case of, 610 f.;
revolt of, against papacy, 61 1 f. Ice Age, the, 5 ff. ; last retreat of
Henry II of France, 632 ice, ID
Henry III of France, 636 f. Ic tl'nus, '88
Henry IV of Germany, 447 ; con- Ides (Tries* of March, 271
flict of, with Gregory VII, 447 ff. Ikh na'ton, 52
Henry V of Germany, 451 iri ad, 142 f.
Henry IV of Navarre, 637 ff. iri um, 112
 Index
Jacob, 105
II lyr'ia, 271
Iniperatoi\, 274 James I, 659 ff., 683
Independents, 666 James II, 678 f.
Index of prohibited books, 620
England, 425 721
James VI of Scotland and I of
Indo-Europeans, 61 ; dispersion of,
86 ff., 261 ; their occupation of Jax ar'tes, 88, 223
Italy, 246 Je ho'vah, 104
Indulgences, 584 and note Jericho, 102 f., 105
Ink, earliest use of, 22 Jerome, nastic
St.,life, advocate
349 of the mo-
Innocent III, Pope, struggle of,
with the Hohenstaufens, 456 ff. ; Jerusalem, 80, 103 f., 108, 461, 466,
419, 469, 486, 48S 471 f. ; kingdom of, 467
Inquisition, 483 f. ; in Spain, 566; Jesuits, 620 ff. ; 646
in the Netherlands, 627 f. Jesus, 300
Institute, PYench, 657 Jews, economic importance of,
Interdict, 419, 481 506; persecution of, 565 f.
Interest, attitude toward, in the Joan of Arc, 431 f.
Middle Ages, 506 John of England, 417 ff., 426
International law, 694 John Frederick of Saxony, 603
histituies of Christianity, Calvin's, Joseph, 106
607 f., 632 Jou7'nal des Savants (joor nal'da
Invasions, in the ninth and tenth sav on'), 688
centuries, 383 f. Jubilee of 1300, 491
Inventions, modern, 65.7 Judah, 80, 104, 106 f.
Investiture, 441 ff., 458 ; question Julius II, Pope, 558
of, settled, 452 Ju'pi ter, 84, 248, 251 and Fig. 113
I o'ni ans, 127, 137 Jury, trial by, 412
"Just " price, 505
Iran (e ran'), 91 ff.
Iranians (I ra'ni anz), 91 ff. Justinian, 324 f.
Ireland, 642 f., 670 f. Justs and tourneys in the Middle
Irene, Empress, 376 Ages, 402
Iron, incoming of, 75
Irrigation, earliest known, 17 f., Kaaba (ka'ba), 358, 361
61
Kadijah med,
(ka358 de'ja), wife of Moham-
Isaac, 105
Isabella, queen of Castile, 565 "Kaiser" (ki'zer), 274
Ish'tar, Gate of, 81 ff. " Kaldi " (kal'de), 79, 80
Kal'ki, 66
I'sis, 296 ff.
Is'lam, 58, 359 Kar'nak, temple of, Fig. 24 and
Islands of the Blest, 144
I soc'ra tes, 211, 216 Khafre (kaf'ray, Greek Chephf-en)^
Israel, 104, 106 f. 41 f. and frontispiece
Is'sus, battle of, 219 f. Khatti (khat'te). See Hittites
Italian cities, trade of, with Orient, Khufu (ko'fo, Greek Cheops), 25, 28
503 ; of the Renaissance, 516 ff. King's Peace, 209
Italian despots, 526 Kingship, origin of, 20 f., 29, 129;
Italic peoples, 246 f. divine right of kings, 227
Italy, geography and climate of, Kish, 60
241 ff. ; earliest, 243 ff. ; in the Knighthood,
Germany, 576 539 f. ; knights in
Middle Ages, 382, 516 ff. ; art
of, 558 ff. ; becomes battleground Knox, John, 640
of Europe, 568 ff. Ko ran', the, 359 f.
 Out lift es of European History
722 Low Church party, 666
La con'ica (Laconia), 132 Lowlands of Scotland, 424
Lake-dwellers, 9 ff., 35, 11 5, 243 f.,
246 Lo yo'la, 620
Lancaster, House of, 433 f.
Lli'beck, 504, ff.508
Land, ownership of, 20 f., 34, 42, Luther, Martin, 582 ff.
64, 1 28 f., 1 53, I 55, 263 ff., 289 ff., Lutheran revolt, 597 ff.
303 f. ; in Middle Ages, 383, 386 Lycabettus (lik a bet'us), Mount,
Langton, Stephen, 418 Plate III
Late Stone Age. See Stone Age Lyd'i a, 98
Lateran, palace of the, 525 Ly san'der, 203, 208 f.
Latin kingdoms, in Syria, 467 Ly sic'ra tes, 185
Latin language, 330, 533 ff.
Latin League, the, 254 Mac'e don (mas'e don), 213
Latin literature, extinction of, 324 Macedonia, rise of, 215 ff.
Latins, 247 f. Machiavelli (ma'kya vel'le). The
Prince, by, 522
Latium (la'shi urn), 247 f.
Laud, William, 664 f. Magdeburg, destruction of, 648
Magi, 299
Law, earliest written codes of, 29, Ma gel'lan, expedition of, 530
67 f., 154, 252, 281 f., 311 f.
Laws of Hammurapi, 67 f. Maine, 416, 436, 480
Malta, 468
Learning preserved by Church, 379
Leb'a non, 32 Man, earliest, i ff. ; condition of,
Legates, papal, 477 2 f. ; stone tools of, 3 f.
Leo the Great, 320, 342 Manor, medieval, 394 ff. ; break up
Leo X, 558, 571, 582 ff. of the, in England, 430
Leonardo da Vinci (da vin'che), Man ti ne'a, 213
559 Mar^a thon, 166 ff., 186; battle of,
Marches, 375
Le on'i das, 171 f., 174 i69f.
Libraries, earliest, of Feudal Age
of Egypt, 42 ff. Marco Polo, 526
235
Library, of Ashurbanipal, 78 ; of Mar do'ni us, 170-176 f., 178 ff.
Pergamum, 231 ; of Alexandria, Margraves, 375
Marduk (mar'dok), 81, 84
Licinian laws, 253
of, 572
Marignano (ma ren ya'n5), battle
Li cin'i us, 253
Lighthouse, earliest, 236 Ma'ri us, 265 f.
Lin'dus, 159 Mark Antony, 271 ff.
Lion Gate, 125 Mars, 84, 251
Llewellyn, 423
Mars' Hill, 148,
Marseilles, 173, 472
186 ff.
Lombard League, 456
Lombard towns, 454 Marston Moor, battle of, 669
Lombards, inltaly,325; as bankers, Mary of Burgundy, 563
Mary of England, 611, 616 f.
Lombardy conquered by Charle- Mary Queen of Scots, 632, 641 f.
magne, 374
506 Massilia
148 (ma sil'i a) (Marseilles),
Long Walls of Athens, 173, 183
Lord, medieval, 397 Mathematics, 44, 193
Lords, House of, 422 Matilda, 409, 41 1
Lorenzo the Magnificent, 522, 558 Max i mirian I, Emperor, 562 f.
Louis the Pious, 381
Louis XI of PVance, 436 Mayence, bishopelector
of, 579 of, 575; arch-
Louis XIV of France, 681 ff.
Mayflower, 666
 Inde: .723

Mayor of the Palace, 369 Mohammedans, 358 ff. ; expelled

Mazarin (ma za ran'), 681 from Spain, 375 ; in Sicily, 384
Maz da, 94 Monasteries, arrangement of,
Maz'da ka, 93
Mecca, 358, 359; pilgrimage to, Monasticism, attraction of, for
many different classes, 348 f.
361 80, 89, 92 f., 96 f.
Medes, 35iff- lack of, in Middle Ages,
Money,
Medes and Persians, 89, 92 f. 383 ; replaces barter, 396, 399
Medici (med'eche), the, 522 Monks, 336 ; origin and distin-
Medicine, 44, 193 guished services of, 348 f. ; mis-
Medina, 359, 364 sionary work of, 355 ff.
Mediterranean world, geography Mon'te ing Cassino
of, 349 (kas se'no), found-
and products of, iii ff. ; the
western, 241 ff. ; in Roman Em- Moors, 368, 564 f. ; expelled from
pire, 282 ff. ; orientalization of, Spain, 566, 645
310 ff. More, Sir Thomas, 608, 612
Medo-Persian Empire, 86 ff. Moses, 102
Mosque_, 363
Me dum', 25 Myc'ale, 177
Meg'a ra, 155
Melanchthon (me langk'thon), 602 Mycenae (ml se'ne), 123
Memphis, 226 Mycenasan Age, 123
Mendicant orders, 484 f. Mysteries
162 of Eleusis(e lu'sis), 160,
Menes (me'nez), 31 Nahum, 79
Mer'cu ry, 84, 251
Merovin'gian line, 328, 369 note
Nantes (nants), Edict of, 638
Mer'sen, Treaty of, 381, 439
Metal, age of, 14, 24 ff. ; in Europe, Naples, kingdom of, 568 note, 571
ii4ff. Napoleon of Egypt. See Thut-
Me'ton, 193 mose III
Na ram'-Sin, 65
Michael Angelo. (ml'kel an'je 15),
559 Nase'by, battle of, 669
Middle Ages, meaning of term, National Covenant, 667
316 f. ; character of, 332 Natural boundaries of France, 649,
688
Middle Stone Age. See Stone Age
Nau'cra tis, 146
Navarre,
Mil'an, 454, 571, 572; despots of, 633
521 Navigation Act, 672 f.
Mi le'tus, 159, 167
Milti'ades, i68f. Ne ap'o lis, 147
Minnesingers, 540 f. Nebuchadnezzar, 69, 80 ff., 107
Miracles, frequency of, in Middle Neighborhood war in the Middle
Ages, 336 f. Ages, 401, 576
Missions of Jesuits, 623 f. Ne mau'sus,
689 283
Mith'ras, 94, 100 f., 298 Ne nek he ptah', 41
Netherlands, revolt of the, 626 ff. ;
Mit y le'ne, 1 59, 198 f.
Mnesicles (ne'siklez), 186, 188 Louis XIV's invasion of the,
Model Parliament, 421
Modern inventions, 549 ff. N'eiv Atlant 656 f.
Modern languages, 533 ff. New Testais, 300
m
New York, e6n7t8,
Moham'med, 94, 358 f.
Mohammedan conquests. See Ara- Nicaea (nl se'a), 461, 463, 465
bic conquests Nichol II, Pope, 445
as
Mohammedanism, 359 ff. Nicias (nish'i as), 199 ff.
724 Outlines of European History
Nile, i8ff.; Delta of, i8 ff. ; First Pan-Athenaic Festival, 185, 189
and Fig. 92
Cataract of, i8; historical value
of, 26; voyage up, 42 ff. ; Fourth Papacy, origin of, 340 f. See Pope
Cataract of, 46 ; Nubian, Fig. 30 Papal States, 516
Nimes (nem), 283, 285 Paper and paper-making, 22 f., y],
Nineveh (nin'e ve), 72, 77 ff. 140 ; introduction
Europe, 556 of, in western
Nobility, origin of titles of, 378
Nobles, age of, in Greece, 136 ff.; Papy'rus,
Parchment, 22usef., 37, 140, 237, 378
of, 379
expansion in, 146 ff.
Nogaret, 492 Paris, University of, 545
Norman Conquest of England, Parliament, English, 421 f., 494;
405 ff. ; results of, 410 f. "kneeling," 617; struggle of,
Normandy, 406 f., 416, 418 with Stuarts, 659 f. ; Long, 667
Northmen, 386 ; invasion of Eng- Par me'ni 0, 219 f., 223, 228
land by, 405, 408 Par nas'sus.
Parsifal, 541 Mount, 161
Notre Dame (n5'tr dam), 46, 510
Nuremberg, 504 Par'the non, 137, 182, 186, 188 ff.,
Plate III, Plate IV
Oc ta'vi an, 271 ff. Par'thi ans, 230 f.
O de'on, 234 Pasargadae
Paschal II, (pa sar'ga
Pope, 451 de), 99
O do a'cer, 320
Patricians, 252 f.
Odysseus (0 dis'us), 142 Paul, 300
Od'ys sey, 142 f.
Old Testament, 108, 232 Paulus Di ac'5 nus, 380
Olympic Games, 133, 140 Pau sa'ni as, 177
O lym'pus, I24f., 126 Pavia (pave'a), battle of, 609
Oracles, 162, 251 f. Peasants, medieval, 394 ff.; revolt
Orange, William of, 629 ff. of, in England, 430, 495 ; revolt
Ordeals, 331 of, in Germany, 598 f.
Orient, Late Stone Age Europe Peasants' Rebellion, 430, 495
and, 14 ff.; history of, 17-110; Pel 6 pon ne'sian War, 184, I96ff.
influence on yEgean world, 1 1 6 f. ; Peloponnesus,
influence on Mediterranean Penance, 480 126
world, 236f . ; influence on Roman Pens, earliest use of, 22 f.
Empire, 275, 295 ff.; European Pen teric marble, 186
relations with, 472 f., 503 Per'ga mum, 231, Fig. 112
Orleans, House of, 435 ; Maid of, Peri an'der, 159
431 f-_ Per'icles, 181 ff., 188, 197 f.
O ron'tes, 230 Per i pa tet'ics, 235
O si'ris, 27, 52, 297 f. Persecution in England, 618 and
Ostracism, 158, 180 note
Per sep'o lis, 97, 99
Os'tro goths. See East Goths
Otto I, the Great, of Germany, Persian Empire, the, 95 ff.
Persians, early, 87 ff., 95; literature,
Oxfo43rd8 , ff.L niversity of, 546 91 f., 94; religion, 93 ff., 100 f.;
Ox'us River, 223 war and weapons, 95 ff.) 162 ff.,
i66ff. ; commerce, 98 ff. ; state,
Paestum (pes'tum), 147 98 ; writing,
Palatinate, elector of the, 575; tecture, 99 ;98 civilization,
; art and archi-
99 ;
Rhenish, 691 Perships,
'sis, 154
99 f.
Palatine Hill, 248 f.
Palestine, 57 ff., 89, loi ff., 107 f. Peter the Hermit, 463
 Index
725
Portcullis, 392
Peter, St., regarded as first bishop
of Rome, 340 Portuguese discoveries, 528 f.
Petition of Right, 662 f. Poseidon (posl'don), 144, 189, 195
Petrarch, 548 Postal systems, earliest, 98 f., 236
Phaestus (fes'tus), 121 Potter's furnace, earliest, 35 f.
Phalanx, rise of, 158 Potters' Quarter (Athens), 173, 186
Phalerum (fale'rum), 174 Potter's wheel, earliest, 35
Pottery, earliest, 11 f., 35 f., 117
Pharaoh (fa'ro), 29
Pha'ros, 233 Praise of Folly, by Erasmus, 581
Phar sa'lus, 267 Prax it'e les. Fig. 93
Phid'i as, 188 f. ; frieze of, Plate IV Prayer book, English, 615 f., 639
Philip Augustus, 416 f„ 471 Prayer rugs, 361
Philip the Fair, 425, 469, 490 f. Presbyterian Church, 607 f.
Philip of Hesse, 603 Pride's Purge, 669
Philip of Macedon, 2 1 5 ff. Pri e'ne, 1 59
PhiHp II of Spain, 617 ff., 642 f. Priest, duties of, 480
Philippics, 216 Prince of Wales, 423
Princeps, 274
Philistines (filis'tinz), 103, 127 f.
Philosophy, 162, 204 ff., 2ioff., 281 Printing, invention of, 552, 556 f.
Phi lo'tas, 228 Protestant, origin of term, 601
Protestant revolt, in Germany, 582
Phoenicia (fe nish'a), 31 f., 87, 89
Phoenicians, 30, 59 f., 89, 137 ff. ff. ; in Switzerland, 605 ff. ; in
Phrygians (frij'i ans), 89 England, 608 ff.
Pile villages, 242 f . See Lake- Protestantism, progress of, 603
dwellers
Proven9al (pr5 von sal'), 537
Pilgrim Fathers, 666 Provence (pro-vohs'), 436
Pillars of Her'cu les, 225 Psyttaleia (sit tale'ya), 175
Pin'dar, 217 Ptolemies (tol'e miz), 230 ff.
Pippin the Short, 369 Punic Wars, 258 ff.
Puritans, 666 and note
PI rae'us, 173, 175
Pirates in Middle Ages, 507 Pyramid Age, the, 27 ff. ; govern-
Pi sis^a tus, 1 56 f., 167 ment in, 29 f. ; length of, 30 f.,
Pi'thom, loi 44 ; tomb-chapels in, and depic-
Pit'ta cus, 1 59 tion of Egyptian life in, 33 ff. ;
Plantagenets, 4i6ff. art in, 41 ff.
Pla tae'a, 168; battle of, 177 Pyramids, the, 25, 27 ff. ; as royal
Pla'to, 205 ff. tombs, 27 and Plate I ; pyramid-
Plato's ideal state, 2iof. temples, 40 and Plate I
Plin'y, 163 Pyr'rhus, King, 256 f.
Pnyx (niks), the, 182 f., Plate III
Quakers, 677
Poitou (pwato'), 418
Po'la, 279
Pompeii (pom pa'ye), 220, 297 f. Ramadatt (ra ma dan'), month of,
Pompey (pom'pi), 267 es
Pon'tus, 146 Ram'sses II, 46 and Fig. 30, 243
Pope, 340 ; origin of the title of, Raapmhael, III5,9 128
R 5
343 ; relations of, with Otto the na, ior f h
Great, 439; position of, 477 f. Raven 61 inter o a churc at,
3
Popes, duties of the early, 343 f. ; 321 ; tomb of Theodoric at, 322
origin of the "temporal" power Raymond, Count, 464, 466
of, 346, 369 ; election of, 445 ; Re (ray), 27
claims of, 446 f. ; at Avignon, 493 Redress of grievances, 421
 Outlines of European History
726
Reform, spirit of, 657 Rom'u lus and Remus, 249
Regular clergy defined, .351 Rouen (ro oh'), 407, 432
Roundheads, 669
Re ho bo'am, 104
Rembrandt, 560 Roussillon (ro se yon'), 649 f.
Roxan'a, 224
Renaissance (re na sons'), cities
of the, 516 ff.; buildings of, Royal Society, English, 657
Rubens, 560
522 f.; art of, 558 ff. Rudolf of Hapsburg, 458, 563
Restoration in England, 676 ff.
Retainers, 433 Runnymede, 419
Revolution of 1688, 678 f.
Sacred Way, 160, 207
Rheims (remz), 431, 432; cathe- Sahara Desert, 18, 19
dral of, 515
Rhodes, Island of, 468 Sahure (sa hoo ray'), 30
Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, 417, St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 636
St. Benedict, Rule of, 441
ieu, 38, 49
Richel 6 6 f. St. Bernard, 470 f.
1
Ris i 4
n 7g in the North, 641 f. e ges,
St. Boniface anoints Pippin, 369
Ro a d s , ba d , in th Middl
e A St.
St. Chamas
Dominic, (sah
488 sha ma'), 286
383
RoUo, 407 St. Francis, 484 f.
Roman art and architecture, 262, St. Peter's, rebuilding of, 584, 5S5
273 f., 279 f., 285 ff., 291, 293 ff., Saint-Simon (sah-se moh'), 6S7
305 Sale ka' ra, 25
Roman church, the mother Sal'a din takes Jerusalem, 471
church, 340 f. Sal'amis, Island of, 155; battle
Roman colonization, 254, 276, of, 1 74 ff.
282 ff., 286 ff. Samaria, 71, 104, 106
Roman commerce, 249 f., 256 f., Sam'nite wars, 255
284 f., 295 Samnites, 254 f.
Roman education, 262, 282 Sa'mos, Island of, 166
Sanskrit, 89 f., 92
Roman Empire, " fall " of, in the
West, 320 ; relations of, with Saracens, 467, 504160
Sappho (saf'fo),
Church, 337 ; continuity of, 377
Roman law, 281 f., 321, 331 Sar din'i a, 259
Roman literature, 261 f., 278 ff., Sardinians,
Sar'dis, 96 prehistoric, 243 f .

Roma 5 f.religion, 251 f., 296 ff., 308

30n Sar'gon I, 64 f.
Roman ships, 249, 258, 285 Sargon II, 71 ff.
Roman society, 252, 263 ff., 276 f., Saronic
•Sa ul, (saron'ik), 150
288 ff., 301 ff. Saturn,10384; temple of, 248
Roman State, 248 f., 252 ff., 255,
264 ff., 268, 271 ff., 373 ff., 301, Sa v5 na ro'la, 569
Saxons settle in England, 355 ;
311 ff.
Romanwar, 255, 258ff., 263, 266 ff., conquest of, by Charlemagne,
272 373 ; rebellion of, 450
Roman writing, 249 f. Saxony, elector of, 575
Romance languages, 534 Schliemann, 112, 123, 131
Romances in Middle Ages, 537, Bacon on, 549
Scholasticism, 547; attack of Roger

Romanesque architecture, 511 School of the palace, 379 f.

Rome, city of, in Middle Ages, Science, medieval, 541 ff . ; begin-
318, 344, 524 f-> 558 nings of modern, 652 ff.
 hidex 727

Scone, Stone of, 425 Soc'ra tes, 204 ff.

Scotch nation, language of, 424 ; Solomon, 104
differs from England, 426 So'lon, 153, 155 f., 157, 159
Scotland, 424 ff., 667, 671 ; Pres- Sotig of Roland, 537
byterian Church in, 640 Sophists, 192 f.
Scylax (ski'lax), 99 Soph'6 cles, 190 f.
Sorbonne, 631
Scythians (sith'i anz), 79, 89
Secular clergy defined, 351 Spain, 318, 375, 531, 5641, 567;
exhaustion of, 631, 644 f.
Seleucids (se lu'sids), 230 f.
Spanish fury, 630
Seleucus (se lu'kus), 230
Seljuk Turks, 461 Spanish Inquisition, 566
Spanish main, 531
Semites (sem'Its), 57 ff., 67 ff., 87,
89, 148, 176, 261 Spanish succession, war of, 692
Semitic nomad, 57 ff. Sparta, 132 f., 136, 178 ff.; military
Sen'e ca, 286 character of, 208 f.
Senlac, 408 Sparta and Athens, 178, 183 f.
Sen nach'e rib, 72, 77 f. Sparta and Thebes, 212 f.
Spartan League, 203
Sen tl'num, 255
Separatists, 666 Spear, earliest use of the, 74 f.,
Serfdom, extinction of, 396 n.; in
England, 431 95 f., 248 f.
Speyer, Diet of, 600
Serfs, medieval, 394 ff. Sphinx, Great. 41 f. and Plate I
Ses'tos, 177 Spice trade in the Middle Ages,
Se'ti I, 50
Seven Hills (of Rome), 294 Spinning wheels, earliest, 1 1 f.
Seven Wise Men, 158 f. 528 ff. glass, medieval, 514
Stained
Sev'ille, tower at (Giralda), 367, States of the Church. See Papal
564 States
Shakespeare, 661 Statute of Provisors, 493
Shields, earliest, 63, 243 f., 248 f. Statutes of Laborers, 430
Ship money, 664 Stephen, 411
Shires, 423 Stesichorus (ste sik'o rus), i6of.
Stoics, 235, 281, 283
Sib'yl, Greek, 251
Sibylline Books. 251 Stone Age, the, 3 ; Early, 3 ff. ;
Sicilian expedition, 200 Middle, 6 ff. ; Late, 10 ff., 14 ff.
Sicilian war with Carthage, 258 Stone architecture, earliest, 12, 25,
Sicily, 457, 459, 473 27 ff., 44 ft".. iiSff.,
earliest i24ff.,
131
Sidon, 137 f., 467 Stone masonry, appearance
Simony (sim' o ny), 444 of, 25, 27 ff.
Sinai (sf nl), Peninsula of, 24 Stonehenge (st5n'henj), 115
Sind'bad, 42 Stories, oldest written, 42 f.
Stra'bo, 299
Siwa (se'wa), Oasis of, 226 Strassburg, 690
Slavery, in Egypt, 38 ; in Greece,
149; in Rome, 264 f., 290, 292 Street of tombs (Athens), 207
Slavs, subdued by Charlemagne, Stuarts, 659 ff.
375; invasions of, 386 Subvassal, 397 ; not under control
Snefru, 25 of king, 400
Society, Egyptian, 38 f., 42 f. ; Baby- Sudan (so dan'), 32
lonian, 63f. ; Assyrian, 78 f. ; Sulla
Hebrew, 105 f. ; Greek, 127 ff., Sully, (sul'a),
638 265 f.
143, 155 ff., 183 ; Roman, 217 ff,, Sume'ri ans, 61 ff., 67 ff.
238 Sun, the Invincible. 299
 Outlines of European History
728
Sun-god,
299 27 f. ; Roman temples Thes'sa ly, 123, 125 f.
of, 280; Roman Emperor as a, Thirteenth century, discoveries of,

Susa (so'sa), " Thirty-Nine Articles," 616

Suzerain, 397 99, 223
Thirty Years'
Thomas ^Var,489
Aquinas, 646 ff.
Sweden, intervention of, in Thirty
Thomas of Canterbury, 613
Years' War, 647 ff.
Swiss lake-dwellers. See Lake- Thrace (thras), 166
dwellers
Thu cyd'i des, 208
Switzerland, origin of, 605 f. ; Prot- Thiit mo' se III, 46
estant revolt in, 606 ff. ; merce- Tl be'ri us Gracchus (grak'us), 265
naries, 607 note Tibul'lus, 296 f.
Swords, earliest, 53, 243 f., 248 f. Tigris River, 60
Syracusans, 200 f. Tilly, 648 f.
Syracuse, 147 f. Tin, 34 f., 115
Syria, 59, 89, 23Q f., 460 ; Latin Tithe,
Titian, 476
Tiryns (tfrinz),
559 I23f. and Plate II
kingdoms in, 467
Ti'tus, 294
Tacitus, 373

Taille (tah'ye), 435 To khar', 88, 89

Tancred in First Crusade, 464 Tolls in the Middle Ages, 507
Tombs, ancient, in Late Stone
Taormina (ta or me'na), 145
Tartes'sus, 148 Age, 13; Egyptian royal, 27 ff.
Tasmanians (taz ma'ni ans), 2 f., and Plate I; in Feudal Age in
Egypt, 42 ff. ; of Persian kings,
Tau ro me'ni um, 145 99 ff.; streets of (Athens), 207;
Tau'rus, 231 streets of (Rome), 295
Taxes, earliest, in E'gypt, 29 f. ; in Tomb-temples and portrait statues,
Assyria, 72 f.; in Greece, 129;
in Rome, 277, 303 f. Tourneys in the Middle Ages, 402
Tours, battle of, 367
Taxes, origin of, 20 f. 46 ff.
Templars, 468 f., 493 "Tower of Babel," 63, 81
Tower of the Winds, 234
"Temporalities," 442
Test Act, 678 Towns, earliest, 12, 20, 59, 62,
Tetzel, 585 243 ff., 247 ff. ; of Germany, 374,
Textbooks, 324, 379 576; in the Middle Ages, 453 f.,
Tha'les, 159, 162 459' 497 ff-' 509' 5^6 ff-
Thebes (in Egypt), 44ff.; ceme- Trade, medieval, 500, 502 ff. ; regu-
tery of, 49 ff. lated by the towns, 508 ; spice,
Thebes (in Greece), 212 f., 217
Tra'jan, 231
The mis'to cles, i7off., 178, 180 ff.,
186 Treaty
528 ff.of Mersen, 381
The od'o ric, 320 ff. Trent, Council of, 619 ff.
Theodosian (the o do'shi an) Code, of, 598elector of, 575 ; archbishop
Treves,
Tribunes, 253
309 f.
Theodosius (the o do'shi us), 307 Trier (trer), 289
Ther mop'y
battle lae, pass of, 171 ff.;
of, 173 Tripoli, 466, 467, 472
Theses of Luther on Indulgences, Trojan War, 1 12
Trojans, 1 17
585 f. (the'sus), 186 ff. and Plate Troubadours, 538 f.
Theseus
III Troy, 112, 117, 123, 131
 Index 729
Truce cf God, 402 f. Wales, 422 ff.
Tudor, House of, 434 f., 659 Wallenstein, 647 f.
Turks, 460, 461, 467 Walter the Penniless, 463
Twelve Articles of peasants, 598 Walther von der Vogelweide, 541
Tyrants, age of, 1 53 ff. ; civiliza- Wangen (wang'en), 12 f.
tion in, 159 ff.; Greek thought Wars of the Roses, 433
in, 162 f. Wartburg (vart'borg), translation
Tyre, 137 f. of Bible at, by Luther, 596
Weapons, earliest, 10, 14, 53, 65,
U'bil-Ish'tar, 66 74 f., 95 f., 243 f., 248 f.
Ulrich von Hutten, 589, 598 Weaving, earliest, 10 ff., 20, 36 f.
United Netherlands, 629 ff., 678 Wedge-writing (Sumerian), 60,
Unity of history, 316 Wessex, 405
62
Universities, medieval, 544 ff., 548
Upper Egypt, 46 Western mediterranean world, the,
Urban II, Pope, 461
Usury, doctrine of, 506 241 ff.Frankish
West kingdom, 382,
Utrecht,
693 Union of, 630 ; Treaty of,
West Goths, 318 f., 327, 329
Westminster Abbey, 409
Valentinian III, decree of, 342 Westminster,
406 city of, 422
Vandals, 318 f., 324 Westphalia, Treaty of, 651
Van Dyck, 560 Wheeled vehicles, earliest, 12, 61,
Van Eyck, the brothers, 559
William the Conqueror, 407 ff.
Vaphio (va'fio), 121, 123 William and Mary, 679
Vasa (va'sa), Gustavus, 648
Vassal, medieval, 397 ff. William of Orange, 678 f., 690
Vassy, massacre of, 635 William Rufus, 411
Vatican, 525 William the Silent, 629 ff.
William III, 67S f.
Vedas (va'daz), 92
Velasquez, 560 Wit'e na ge90 mot, 410
Venerable Bede, the, 348, 357 Wittenberg, 582, 585, 592
Venetian school of painting, 559 Wolfram von Eschenbach. 541
Venice, 459, 472, 503, 504, 5i6ff. ; Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, 573,
government of, 519 f.
609 f.early use of, for tools, 3, 7 ;
Wood,
Venus, 84, 251
Versailles (ver salz', Eng. pron.) ture, 12, 37
for dwellings, 9 f., 12 ; for furni-
palace of, 684 f.
Ves pa'sian, 294 Wooden dwellings, earliest. See
Vesta, 251 and Fig. 113 House
Vesuvius, 297 Worms, 448 ; Concordat of, 451 f. ;
Diet at, 593 ; Edict of, 595
Vikings (vT'kings), 386 note
Vil. See Manor, 394 Writing, invention of, 21 ff. ; Egyp-
Villains, 394 tian, 21 f. ; Sumerian, 60. 62, 66 ;
Ville, 498 Babylonian, 62, 66 ; Chaldean,
Vir'gil, 280 f. 83 ; Cretan, 117, 121, 123 ; Phoe-
Visigoths. See West Goths nician, 139 f.; Aramean, 71;
Vulgate, 619 Hebrew, 106; Greek, 130, 139 f. ;
Etruscan, 246 ; Roman, 249 ff.
Wager of battle, 331 Writing materials, earliest, 21 ff.,
Waldensians, 482
Waldo, Peter, 482 37, 62, 140
Wyc'liffe, John, 495
730 Outlines of European History

Xavier, Francis, 623 Za ra thush'tra, 93

Xenophon (zen'o phon), 79, 211 f. Zeus (zus), 144, 190 and Fig. 113
Xerxes (zerk'sez), 170, 174 ff. Zeus-Amon, 226
Zo'di ac, signs of, 84
Yahweh (ya'we), 104, 107 f. Zo'ro as'ter, 91, 93 f., 100 f.
York, House of, 433 f. Zo'ser, 25
Zurich, reformation at, 607
Za'gros Mountains, 99 Zwingli, 601. 606 f.
COmMBIA UNIVERST-^Y " '^"^ ARIES
 R5(,4
940 \