The Outline of History - H. G. Wells (most recommended books txt) 📗

in Western Asia._ E. B.

 

Fn-15.6 Iron bars of fixed weight were used for coin in Britain. Csar, _De Bello Gallico._ G. Wh.

 

Fn-15.7 The earliest coinage of the west coast of Asia Minor was in electrum, a mixture of gold and silver, and there is an interesting controversy as to whether the first issues were stamped by cities, temples, or private bankers.P. G.

 

Fn-15.8 Small change was in existence- before the time of Alexander. The Athenians had a range of exceedingly small silver coins running almost down to the size of a pinhead which were generally carried in the mouth; a character in Aristophanes was suddenly assaulted, and swallowed his change in consequence.P. G.

 

Fn-15.9 There is an inn-keeper in Aristophanes, but it may be inferred from the circumstance that she is represented as letting lodgings in hell, that the early inn left much to be desired.P. G.

 

Fn-16.1 See the _Encyclopaedia Brit._, Article _China_, p. 218.

 

Fn-16.2 The writers friend, Mr. L. Y. Chen, thinks that this is only partially true. He thinks that the emperors insisted upon a minute and rigorous study of the set classics in order to check intellectual innovation. This was especially the case with the Ming emperors, the first of whom, when reorganizing the examination system on 9, narrower basis, said definitely, "This will bring all the intellectuals of the world into my trap." The Five Classics and the Four Books have imprisoned the mind of China.

 

Fn-17.1 In his _Dawn of Astronomy_.

 

Fn-17.2 Cp. Moses and the Egyptian Magicians.

 

Fn-17.3 See the last two verses of the Second Book of Chronicles, and Ezra, ch.� i.

 

Fn-18.1 There were literary expressions of social discontent in Egypt before 2,000 B.C. See "Social Forces and Religion" in Breasteds _Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ for some of the earliest complaints of the common man under the ancient civilizations.

 

Fn-18.2 From _casta,_ a word of Portuguese origin; the Indian word is _varna,_ colour.

 

Fn-18.3 In the time of Confucius classes were much more fixed than later. Under the Han dynasty the competitive examination system was not yet established. Scholars were recommended for appointments by local dignitaries, etc.L. Y. C.

 

Fn-18.4 Damascus was already making Damask, and "Damasceining" steel.

 

Fn-19.1 See also G. B. Gray, _A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament._

 

Fn-19.2 This may seem to contradict Genesis xx. 15, and xxi. and xxvi. various verses, but compare with this the _Encyclopaedia Biblica_ article _Philistines._

 

Fn-19.3 That is, where is the glory?

 

Fn-19.4 Estimates of the cubit vary. The greatest is 44 inches. This would extend the width to seventy-odd feet.

 

Fn-19.5 But one version of the Creation story and the Eden story, though originally from Babylon, seem to have been known to the Hebrews before the exile.G. W. B.

 

Fn-19.6 Fletcher H. Swifts _Education in Ancient Israel from Earliest Times to A.D. 70_ is an interesting account of the way in which the Jewish religion, because it was a literature-sustained religion, led to the first efforts to provide elementary education for all the children in the community.

 

Fn-20.1 "The Keltic group of languages, of which it has been said that they combined an Aryan vocabulary with a Berber (or Iberian) grammar." Sir Harry Johnston.

 

Fn-20.2 Roger Pococks _Horses_ is a good and readable book on these questions.

 

Fn-20.3 But these may have been an originally Semitic people who learnt an Aryan speech.

 

Fn-20.4 _Some Aspects of Hindu Life in India.�_ Paper read to the Royal Society _of Arts, Nov, 28, 1918._

 

Fn-21.1 Vowels were less necessary for the expression of a Semitic language. In the early Semitic alphabets only A, I, and U were provided with symbols, but for such a language as Greek, in which many of the inflectional endings are vowels, a variety of vowel signs was indispensable.

 

Fn-21.2 From _ostrakon,_ a tile; the voter wrote the name on a tile or shell.

 

Fn-21.3 776 B.C. is the year of the First Olympiad, a valuable starting point in Greek chronology.

 

Fn-21.4 it is, at least, doubtful whether any change of climate expelled either lion or elephant from southeast Europe and Asia Minor; the cause of their gradual disappearance wasI thinknothing but Man, increasingly well armed for the chase. Lions lingered in the Balkan peninsula till about the fourth century B.C., if not later. Elephants had perhaps disappeared from western Asia by the eighth century B.C. The lion (much bigger than the existing form) stayed on in southern Germany till the Neolithic period. The panther inhabited Greece, southern Italy, and southern Spain likewise till the beginning of the historical period (say 3,000 B.C.).H. H. J.

 

Fn-21.5 But a thousand years earlier the Hittites seem to have had paved highroads running across their country.

 

Fn-21.6 Winckler, in Helmolts _Universal History._

 

Fn-22.1 _Ancient Greek Literature,_ by Gilbert Murray (Heinemann, 1911).

 

Fn-22.2 Plutarch.

 

Fn-22.3 For an account of his views, see Burnets _Early Greek Philosophy._ Gomperz _Greek Thinkers_ is also a good book for this section.

 

Fn-22.4 "But it was not only against the lives , properties, and liberties of Athenian citizens that the Thirty made war. They were not less solicitous to extinguish the intellectual force and education of the city, a project so perfectly in harmony both with the sentiment and practice of Sparta, that they counted on the support of their foreign allies. Among the ordinances which they promulgated was one, expressly forbidding any one to teach the art of words. The edict of the Thirty was, in fact, a general suppression of the higher class of teachers or professors, above the rank of the elementary (teacher of letters or) grammatist. If such an edict could have been maintained in force for a generation, combined with the other mandates of the Thirtythe city out of which Sophocles and Euripides had just died, and in which Plato and Isocrates were in vigorous age, would have been degraded to the intellectual level of the meanest community in Greece. It was not uncommon for a Grecian despot to suppress all those assemblies wherein youths came together for the purpose of common training, either intellectual or gymnastic, as well as the public banquets and clubs or associations, as being dangerous to his authority, tending to elevation of courage, and to a consciousness of political rights among the citizens."Grotes _History of Greece_

 

Fn-22.5 Mahaffy.

 

Fn-22.6 _Ancient Greek Literature_.

 

Fn-22.7 Jung in his Psychology of the Unconscious is very good in his Chapter on the differences between ancient (pre-Athenian) thought and modern thought. The former he calls Undirected Thinking, the latter Directed Thinking. The former was a thinking In images, akin to dreaming; the latter a thinking in words. Science is an organization of directed thinking. The Antique spirit (before the Greek thinkers i.e.) created not science but mythology. The ancient human world was a world of subjective fantasies like the world of children and uneducated young people to-day, and like the world of savages and dreams. Infantile thought and dreams are a re-echo of prehistoric and savage methods of thinking. Myths, says Jung, are the mass dreams of peoples, and dreams the myths of individuals. We have already directed the readers attention to the resemblance of the early gods of civilization to the fantasies of children. The work of hard and disciplined thinking by means of carefully analyzed words and statements which was begun by the Greek thinkers and resumed by the scholastic philosophers of whom we shall tell in the middle ages, was a necessary preliminary to the development of modern science.

 

Fn-22.8 "For the proper administration of justice and for the distribution of authority it is necessary that the citizens be acquainted with each others characters, so that, where this cannot be, much mischief ensues, both in the use of authority and in the administration of justice; for it is not just to decide arbitrarily, as must be the case with excessive population." Aristotle: _Politics._

 

Fn-23.1 Mahaffy. Their names have undergone various changese.g., Condahar (Iskender) and Secunderabad.

 

Fn-23.2 D.� G.� Hogarth.

 

Fn-24.1 Legge, _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_.

 

Fn-25.1 Pronounced Ashoka.

 

Fn-25.2 _The Burmese Chronicle,_ quoted by Rhys Davids.

 

Fn-25.3 The _Madhurattha Vilasini,_.

 

Fn-25.4 Rhys Davids _Buddhism_ .

 

Fn-25.5 See R. F. Johnston, _Buddhist China._L. C. B.

 

Fn-25.6 Hues _Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China_.

 

Fn-25.7 S. N. Fu.

 

Fn-25.8 Hirths _The Ancient History of China._

 

Fn-26.1 Latin _Poeni_ = Carthaginians. _Punicus_ (adj.) = Carthaginian, _i.e._ Phnician.

 

Fn-26.2 Ferrero, _The Greatness and Decline of Rome._

 

Fn-26.3 J. Wells, _Short History of Rome to the Death of Augustus._

 

Fn-26.4 J. Wells, op. cit .

 

Fn-26.5 Plutarch, _Life of Cato._

 

Fn-26.6 Julius Caesar (60 B.C.) caused the proceedings of the Senate to be published by having them written up upon bulletin boards, in albo (upon the white). It had been the custom to publish the annual edict of the praetor in this fashion. There were professional letter-writers who sent news by special courier to rich country correspondents, and these would copy down the stuff upon the Album (white board). Cicero, while he was governor in Cilicia, got the current news from such a professional correspondent. He complains in one letter that it was not what he wanted; the expert was too full of the chariot races and other sporting intelligence, and failed to give any view of the political situation. Obviously this news-letter system was available only for public men in prosperous circumstances.

 

Fn-26.7 Authorities differ here. Mayor says thumbs up (to the breast) meant death and thumbs down meant "Lower that sword." The popular persuasion is that thumbs down meant death.

 

Fn-26.8 A little more needs to be said upon the subject. The Greeks cited gladiatorial shows as reason for regarding the Romans as _Barbaroi,_ and there were riots when some Roman proconsul tried to introduce them in Corinth. Among Romans, the better people evidently disliked them, but as a sort of shyness prevented them from frankly denouncing them as cruel. For instance, Didero, when he had to attend the Circus, took his tablets and his secretary with him, and didnt look. He expresses particular disgust at the killing of an elephant; and somebody in Tacitus (Drusus, Ann. 1.76) was unpopular because he was too fond of gladiatorial bloodshed _quamquam vili sanguine nimis gaudens_ (rejoicing too much in blood, worthless blood though it was). The games were unhesitatingly condemned by Greek philosophy, and at different times two cynics and one Christian gave their lives in the arena, protesting against them, before they were abolished.

 

"I do not think Christianity had any such relation to slavery as is here stated. St. Pauls actions in sending back a slave to his master, and his injunction, Slaves, obey your masters, were regularly quoted on the pro-slavery side, down to the nineteenth century; on the other hand, both the popular philosophies and the Mystery religions were against slavery in their whole tendency, and Christianity of course in time became the chief representative of these movements. Probably the best test is the number of slaves who occupied posts of honour in the religious and philosophic systems, like Epicetus, for instance, or the many saves who hold offices in the Mithraic Inscriptions. I do not happen to know if any slaves were made Christian bishops, but by analogy I should think it likely that some were. In all the Mystery religions, as soon as you entered the community, and had communion with God, earthly distinctions shrivelled away."G. M.

 

Fn-27.1 _Greatness and Decline of Rome_ bk. i. ch, xi.

 

Fn-27.2 Ferrero.

 

Fn-27.3 Ferrero.

 

Fn-27.4 Plutarch. To which, however, G. M. adds the following note: "It is generally believed that Sulla died through bursting a