PAGE 1. The Setting of the Stage 3 2. Our Earliest Ancestors 9 3. Prehistoric Man Begins to Make Things for Himself 13 4. The Egyptians Invent the Art of Writing and the Record of History Begins 17 5. The Beginning of Civilisation in the Valley of the Nile 22 6. The Rise and Fall of Egypt 27 7. Mesopotamia, the Second Centre of Eastern Civilisation 29 8. The Sumerian Nail Writers, Whose Clay Tablets Tell Us the Story of Assyria and Babylonia, the Great Semitic Melting-Pot 32 9. The Story of Moses, the Leader of the Jewish People 38 10. The Phœnicians, Who Gave Us Our Alphabet 42 11. The Indo-European Persians Conquer the Semitic and the Egyptian World 44 12. The People of the Ægean Sea Carried the Civilisation of Old Asia Into the Wilderness of Europe 48 13. Meanwhile the Indo-European Tribe of the Hellenes Was Taking Possession of Greece 54 14. The Greek Cities That Were Really States 59 15. The Greeks Were the First People to Try the Difficult Experiment of Self-Government 62 16. How the Greeks Lived 66 17. The Origins of the Theatre, the First Form of Public Amusement 71 18. How the Greeks Defended Europe Against an Asiatic Invasion and Drove the Persians Back Across the Ægean Sea 74 19. How Athens and Sparta Fought a Long and Disastrous War for the Leadership of Greece 81 20. Alexander the Macedonian Establishes a Greek World-Empire, and What Became of This High Ambition 83 21. A Short Summary of Chapters 1 to 20 85 22. The Semitic Colony of Carthage on the Northern Coast of Africa and the Indo-European City of Rome on the West Coast of Italy Fought Each Other for the Possession of the Western Mediterranean and Carthage Was Destroyed 88 23. How Rome Happened 105 24. How the Republic of Rome, After Centuries of Unrest and Revolution, Became an Empire 109 25. The Story of Joshua of Nazareth, Whom the Greeks Called