We ought to appreciate at the beginning the enormous time length of this period. It seems long since modern thought began, but it was only about 450 years ago. The Hellenic-Roman Period was 800 years long, or nearly twice as long as modern times. It is, furthermore, two and a half times as long as the period which we have just been discussing,――the pure Greek period. Now the Hellenic-Roman Period and the Middle Ages together form the epoch of human history that is relatively uncreative. This is an extent of 1800 years, a long interval when compared with the 750 years of creative history, which represents the combined length of the pure Greek Period and modern times. In European history the periods of productive thought have been less than half as long as those of the unproductive. Yet we must not be misled by such statistics. History is an organic growth. Its seedtime and growth are long; its harvest is short. =The Fall of the Greek Nation and the Persistence of its Civilization.= The 800 years after the death of Aristotle are named the Hellenic-Roman Period, because Greek civilization burst its own national boundaries and became a part of Roman civilization. The Greek nation died; its culture remained. It is no longer pure Greek, but Greek in the environment of the Roman world――it becomes Hellenism. With the death of Alexander in 323 B. C. the motherland of Greece became a prey to revolutions for 200 years. It was often the battleground of foreigners and the object of their contentions. Its government and population sank into hopeless decay. It was incorporated into the Roman empire in 146 B. C. and shared in the depressing times of the Civil Wars of the first century B. C. By becoming a part of Rome Greece lost its uniqueness but the world gained its culture as a common heritage. Its autonomy was forever gone, but its people became the teachers of mankind. In political power Greece reached its height with Alexander, in creative thought with Aristotle; then by its own momentum its civilization persisted as a missionary force to the whole world. Illustration: THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER (Showing the spread of Hellenism eastward, beginning 334 B. C. with Alexander’s Campaign)