Dancing, gymnastics, games of ball and draughts, fishing in preserves, or in the swamps of the Delta with hooks, nets, and spears, spearing the hippopotamus from canoes, and hunting wild fowl in the marshes—favorite pastimes. Ladies present at the sports and sumptuous banquets. A keen eye for humor manifested in the fondness of the Egyptians for caricature, from which even their representations of funeral ceremonies were not exempt. [Illustration: ANCIENT GREECE with the COAST OF ASIA MINOR _Russell & Struthers, N.Y._] PART II. GRECIAN LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. _BIRTH OF GRECIAN LITERATURE._ =Early Settlement of Greece.=—While Chaldea and Assyria were rising to greatness, while Phœnicia was winning for herself maritime supremacy, and wonders in art and science were spreading the renown of Egypt throughout the earth, a simple agricultural people was quietly moving westward toward Greece and Italy. In very early times, Aryan tribes known as _Pelasgic_ quitted their habitations in southwestern Bactria (Map, p. 15), and made their way through Persia and Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. Here, on rich tablelands irrigated by the head-waters of streams flowing into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, presumably among the gold-bearing mountains and vine-grown valleys of Phrygia (see Map), they cultivated their grain, pastured their sheep, made permanent settlements, and rapidly grew into a great nation. These Pelasgic tribes were the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans. The same general causes that led to emigration from the mother-country crowded toward the coast communities of this Phrygian people, and ultimately obliged them to seek new homes in the west. Perhaps, paddling from island to island in rude galleys, some crossed the Æge’an; perhaps, passing the Hellespont, some picked their way through Thrace and Macedonia, entered the defiles of the northern mountains, and spread over Greece; while others, more adventurous, pushed their course still farther, and peopled the Italian peninsula. The Pelasgic tribes were probably the first occupants of Greece and Italy. Earlier emigrants from Asia appear to have found all they desired in the accessible districts of central Europe, and not to have climbed the steep ranges that hemmed in those regions on the south. The Greeks themselves claimed with pride to have sprung from the earth; and a golden grasshopper, worn in the hair as an ornament by the Athenians, pointed to this belief in their _autochthony_.