He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the Ægeans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes. He came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began to build little boats for his own use.
THE FALL OF CNOSSUS
And when he had learned everything the Ægeans could teach him he turned upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands. Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the sea and conquered all the cities of the Ægean. Finally in the fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece, of the Ægean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy, the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation, was destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history was to begin in all seriousness.
THE GREEK CITIES
THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES
We modern people love the sound of the word “big.” We pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the “biggest” country in the world and possess the “biggest” navy and grow the “biggest” oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in cities of “millions” of inhabitants and when we are dead we are buried in the “biggest cemetery of the whole state.”
A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, would not have known what we meant. “Moderation in all things” was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress him at all. And this love of moderation was not merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of their death. It was part of their literature and it made them build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the theatre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense.