But now we must take a look at the very remarkable part which Greece was playing at this moment, 500 B.C. or so, and had played for some years and was to play for many to come. I expect you will have wondered that I have not spoken about Homer and the famous Siege of Troy, and other great men and great events which happened long before this time. Troy began to be besieged very shortly after 1200 B.C. Homer lived at some time between 800 and 900 B.C. We have left them far behind. The reason why I did not pick them up and fit them into their place in the story when we came to the years of their happening is that the part played by Greece in the making of this great story--that is to say, in the making of the world--is different from the part played by any other people. It is such a different part that it is almost another story, although it does really fit into the great story and is a very important part of it. {121} The other great peoples that we have been talking about, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians, conquered vast countries, founded vast empires. The Greeks did nothing of this kind. They were fine and accomplished soldiers, as we have seen, but the various states were too disunited for them to be able to bring their forces together or to keep them for any length of time together. [Sidenote: The genius of Greece] But for many centuries they were by far the most accomplished people in the world; their artists, both painters and sculptors, were far ahead of the rest; their thinkers went deeper and with more clear insight and wisdom than any others into the many problems and puzzles that life and the world set for us; they had finer sculptors, finer orators, finer poets, probably they had finer musicians; we have seen that they had a finer battle formation. In fact, in cleverness and in all the arts and sciences the Greeks were not only superior to all those about them, but they were superior to all that have been since--even to ourselves, though we have had all these years in which to learn. We have learnt to make trains go, and the telephone and poison gases, and guns that will shoot twenty-five miles, and other things of that kind. But we are not the equals of the Greeks of 500 B.C. in art, oratory, poetry or philosophy. Had it not been for the Greek philosophers we cannot tell what our philosophy might have been, for it is built up on the foundations they laid; but we may doubt whether it would have been nearly as far-seeing or as interesting.