5. The lantern of science has guided us on the Track of Time by his advancing Footprints down to the period when the grand luminary, Written History, begins to shine from the hills of Greece. Looking over what was then known of Asia we find it a vast battlefield, on the western border of which were the Jews, receiving lessons of instruction or chastisement from the surrounding nations, and slowly evolving the Master Religion of the world, the massive grandeur of Egypt is dimly visible in the south, and on the eastern horizon rise the immense walls and towers of the huge cities of Nineveh and Babylon. On the north and west all is darkness, though we subsequently learn that the elements of a high culture among the Etrurians of Italy were waiting their destruction at the hands of valiant Rome, yet to be. The Phenicians were beginning to scour the sea and to build up a flourishing commerce, and the cities of Greece had already learned, from the tyranny of their petty kings, the advantages of free government. The period of authentic history is held to have commenced seven hundred and seventy-six years before the Christian era. In that year the Greeks began to record the name of the conqueror in the Olympian games—a national and religious festival, which had been commenced long before—and it was called the First Olympiad. It formed the first definite starting point of the true and fairly reliable historians who, some four hundred years later, began to write a carefully-studied account of what was known of their own and of other countries. It was the time when dates of passing events first began to be stated in the records of the cities and kingdoms of Greece, and marks the beginning of a real civilization and culture, and the course of events began to be rescued from the magnifying and marvel-loving imaginations of the people.