The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.Prescott, Thomas H.
History
The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.
Prescott, Thomas H.
Biography; World history
_the Parthian_ _Empire_; and how these three fragments dragged on a
separate existence, full of wars and revolts; all this belongs to
Grecian history.
How, about two centuries and a half before Christ, another, but more
mixed portion of this Pelasgic family, which had arisen in Italy, and
in the course of several centuries rendered itself coëxtensive with
that peninsula――began to assume consequence in the wider area of the
Mediterranean world: how it first grappled with the power of the
Carthaginians (B. C. 264-201), who for several centuries had been
pursuing the career of world-merchants, formerly pursued by their
fathers the Phœnicians; how it then assailed and subdued the crumbling
Macedonian monarchy, incorporating all Greece with itself (B. C. 134);
how retrograding, so to speak, into Asia, it gradually absorbed the
Syrian and Egyptian monarchies, till it came into collision with the
Parthian empire at the Euphrates (B. C. 134-B. C. 60); how, advancing
into the new regions of northern and western Europe, it compelled the
yet uncultured races there――the Celts or Gauls, the Iberians, etc.――to
enter the pale of civilization (B. C. 80-50); how thus, from the
Atlantic to the Euphrates, was founded a new empire, called ‘The
Roman,’ retaining, with vast additions, all that portion of humanity
which the former empires had embraced, with the exception of what had
lapsed back to the Parthians; how this empire subsisted for several
centuries, a great mass of matured humanity girt by comparative
barbarism――that is, surrounded on the east by the Parthians, on the
south by the Ethiopians, on the north by the Germans and Scythians,
and on the west by the roar of the Atlantic; and how at last (A. D.
400-475) this great mass, having lost its vitality, fell asunder
before the irruption of the barbaric element――that is, the Germans,
the Scythians, and the Arabs――giving rise to the infant condition of
the modern world; all this belongs to Roman history, which forms the
subject of a separate treatise.
With one general remark we shall conclude; namely: that the progress
of history――that is, of Caucasian development――has evidently been,
upon the whole, from the east westward. First, as we have seen, the
Assyrian or Semitic fermentation affected western Asia as far as the
Mediterranean; then the Persian movement extended the historic stage
to the Ægean; after that the Macedonian conquest extended it to the
Adriatic; and finally, the Romans extended it to the Atlantic. For
fifteen centuries humanity kept dashing itself against this barrier;
till, at length, like a great missionary sent in search, the spirit of
Columbus shot across the Atlantic. And now, in the form of a dominant
Anglic race, though with large inter-mixture, Caucasian vitality is
working in its newest method, with Ethiopian help, on the broad and
fertile field of America.
HISTORY OF GREECE――EARLY MYTHOLOGY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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