Czytaj książkę: «The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897», strona 4

LETTERS FROM OUR FRIENDS

From Monterey, Cal., come the two following letters about books:

Dear Editor:

I thought that I should take much pleasure in writing to The Great Round World.

I have been reading your magazines for several months, and I greatly enjoy them.

Among the books that I like to read are those of the Stories of the Ancient Greeks, but for current events I greatly prefer The Great Round World.

Ever your reader,

Rosa B.

Monterey, Cal.

Dear Editor:

I enjoy reading The Great Round World very much. I think it is very interesting, as well as instructive.

One of the books I like best is Kipling's "Jungle Book." I think all of the readers of The Great Round World would enjoy it also.

I will close now, wishing great success to The Great Round World.             Marion C.

Monterey, Cal., April 7th, 1897.

We are very much obliged to our kind young readers.

Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book," of which there are two volumes—"The First Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book"—is a very delightful series of stories of Indian life, and those of our readers who have not yet read them have a great treat in store.

"The First Jungle Book" is perhaps the better of the two, and the tale of the little Mongoose Rikki Tikki is so delightful that you can read it again and again with pleasure.

Dear Editor:

I like The Great Round World. Mrs. Mills, my teacher, reads something out of it every morning that she has time. Will you please answer a few questions? Can the prisoners in Sing Sing prison talk together? If not, why not? Can they, after doing their day's work, do work for themselves and keep the money? Yours truly,

Carl C.

Cheyenne, Wyo., April 5th, 1897.

My Dear Carl:

The prisoners in Sing Sing are not allowed to talk together. This is part of their punishment. Prisoners cannot do work for themselves and keep the money. They used to have certain tasks given to them every day, and when these were done they went back to their cells. Under the present law they stay in their cells all the time, except for a certain period of exercise, when they go round and round the prison yard.

Editor.

ANCIENT GREECE

I have already told you some things about the old Roman Empire, which ran its course long before modern Europe came into existence.

Now I am going to tell you about a civilization so much older than that, that it makes the Roman Empire seem like a thing of to-day!

The Greeks are the most ancient people in Europe. Their early history, before there were books or written records, has come down to us through legends and tradition; that is, fanciful stories, in which fact and fable are mingled, handed down from generation to generation. These legends tell us that the founders of their nation were not men but gods, who came down from heaven and peopled the land; that the massive architecture (of which there are remains to-day) was the work of these gods, who were the ancestors of the Greek people.

But you and I know more about the origin of this people than they themselves did. And the wonderful story has all been found out almost in our own day!

Their ancestors did not come from heaven, but from Central Asia. Countless ages ago an Asiatic race, called the Aryans, began to flow westward into Greece. When they came, or why, nobody knows. But come they did, and for centuries like a great sea spread farther and farther into Europe, until at last the continent was covered. And you and I and almost all the people now in Europe are Aryans, and belong to this great Asiatic race.

It was a long time after the occupation of Greece that the Aryan wave reached Italy.

Then after long ages another Aryan branch, called the Keltic, came into Western Europe, and overflowed what we now call France, Spain, and the British Isles. Long, long after that, still another, the Teutonic branch, flowed over Central Europe, and became Germany. Then, last of all, came the Slavonic, which occupied the eastern part (Russia); and then—the Asiatic Aryans had possessed themselves of the entire Continent of Europe.

It is a strange fact that knowledge and civilization have always, like the sun, arisen in the East, and moved steadily toward the West!

Probably the first spot in Europe touched by the rays of the coming day was the little island of Crete! Minos, who was King of Crete in this time of fable, was always worshipped as the deity who first established civilization and social order!

Theseus also, King of Athens at this time, was one of their great heroes. And you must read about his slaying the Minotaur in Crete, and about the beautiful Ariadne who fell in love with him, and gave him the clue to the labyrinth where her father, Minos, kept the monster hid. These things about the classic little island have an especial interest for us now.

At this earliest period the people were called, not Greeks, but Pelasgians. In the course of time the Hellenes, a more powerful Aryan race, overpowered them, and after that their country was called Hellas, and its people Hellenes, until a much later period, when they were known as Greeks.

The Hellenes, like the ancient Pelasgians, had a system of religion which we call mythology. They worshipped twelve principal deities and countless smaller ones, who, they believed, ruled the lives and fortunes of men. Jupiter was the chief of these, and his will and that of the other gods were communicated to the people by priestesses, in the form of "Oracles." These were mysterious utterances, the meaning of which had to be guessed like riddles. But for centuries no war was undertaken nor a single important thing done without first consulting the "Oracles."

The "Heroic Age" (as it is called) is all so vague and shadowy, we should know nothing about it were it not for the great poet Homer. But, strangely enough, about nine hundred years before Christ, Homer gathered all that was then known about the early life and habits of the Hellenes into two great poems, called the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey."

In describing an ancient war which took place between the Hellenes and the Trojans—a people in Asia Minor—he so minutely pictured the people engaged in the struggle, their habits of life, their thoughts and feelings, with the minutest details of the circumstances in which they lived, that it enables us to know what would otherwise be impossible.

This marvellous work, produced more than a thousand years before there was a Germany, or an England, and almost a thousand before there was a Roman Empire, is still the world's great masterpiece, and is to-day an indispensable part of education.

At the close of the "Heroic Age" something happened, which had the same effect upon Ancient Greece that many centuries later the descent of the Goths and Vandals had upon Southern Europe. Greece, too, had its northern barbarians. Some stronger and fiercer Aryan tribes poured down from Epirus, and for a time upset everything, just as the Goths did in Europe.

The Dorians, a stern, unrelenting tribe, took possession of the southern extremity of the peninsula, called the Peloponnesus; and the city of Sparta was the head of their State. There were other States, too, in Greece, and each had its king and separate government. But although jealous of each other and almost always at war, they worshipped the same deities, consulted the same Oracles, and all alike gloried in being descended from the same gods and in being Greeks.

The two most powerful States (or cities, which meant the same thing) were Athens and Sparta. But they were as widely separated in character and habits as if they did not belong to the same family. Athens was the brain, and Sparta the rough, strong arm of Greece.

Athens delighted in poetry, music, art, and eloquence. The Spartans despised all these things. They scorned to use three words where two would do, and aimed only to make their youth fearless and terrible defenders of Greece.

When a child was born, if it did not give promise of being physically strong and perfect, it was cast into a ravine and then left to perish. When the boys who were permitted to live were seven years old, they were taken from their mothers and made to endure cold, hunger, and inhuman severities. They were beaten until the blood flowed, simply to teach them endurance, and a Spartan boy would die under the lash rather than endure the disgrace of uttering a cry of pain. There was never any family life, nor pleasure.

Every boy was trained to be a soldier; and until he was sixty years old the man belonged to the State absolutely. And all those years he ate his black broth at a public mess, seasoned only with fatigue and hunger. A witty Athenian said he did not wonder the Spartans were brave in battle, for death was preferable to their life.

The severe code of laws by which they were governed was established by Lycurgus, about 770 b.c. (before Christ).

Athens had her days of severity and cruelty, too, under Draco, who established her first laws. But the people rebelled, and in 594 b.c. Solon, a man of great sagacity, prepared a constitution, which was a model of wisdom, justice, and even of gentleness. The government established by Solon was an aristocratic Republic, in which the common people had no part. The Chief, or Archon, as he was called, was chosen by the nobles, and served for a stated time, like our Presidents.

But the supreme authority lay in the "Court of Areopagus," whose members had already served as Archons. The Areopagus really ruled the State, a Senate of four hundred members preparing the cases which were to be brought before it for decision.

Athens prospered under this rule. But an ambitious noble stirred the people to believe they were unjustly excluded from office and from power, and produced a new government, which, under the cloak of a democracy, was really a despotism, with the scheming Pisistratus at its head, or, as it was called, its "Tyrant" (meaning simply ruler).

But Lycurgus did something else besides placing an austere and merciless system upon Sparta. He helped to re-establish the famous and ancient Olympic Games (776 b.c.).

You know how we feel about our great baseball and football games; how excited we are, and how glad or how sorry if one team or the other is defeated. Well, suppose, instead of these, there was one great game every four years, in which all the country could compete. And suppose the victor in this great game was crowned and treated like a king forever afterward. That would be what the Olympic Games were in Greece.

Every four years the young Greeks from all parts of the country met at Olympia and contended for prizes in athletic games. There was running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, the throwing of javelins and quoits (the "discus"), and races of horses and chariots. For one month, during this great festival, wars were suspended throughout Greece.

The only reward of the victor was a crown of wild-olive leaves; but this was regarded as the dearest prize in life and the greatest honor a Greek could attain.