 19 Athens versus Sparta How Athens and Sparta fought a long and disastrous war for the leadership of Greece. Athens and Sparta were both Greek cities, and their people spoke a common language. In every other respect they were different. Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought. Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The people of Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness. The Spartans, on the other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness. No wonder that these somber Spartans viewed the success of Athens with malicious hate. The energy which the defense of the common home had developed in Athens was now used for purposes of a more peaceful nature. The acropolis was rebuilt and was made into a marble shrine to the goddess Athena. Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists to make the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day. An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for Athens. During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favour of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready, but Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the stone quarries of Syracuse where they died from hunger and thirst. The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered in April of the year 404 BC. The high walls were demolished. The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to exist as the centre of the great colonial empire which it had conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that wonderful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to live. It became even more brilliant. Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece, but now as the home of the first great university the city began to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond the narrow frontiers of Helas. End of Chapter 19, read on October 10th, 2008, in San Diego, California. Chapter 20 of The Story of Mankind. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Michelle Crandall. The Story of Mankind by Hendrick von Lohn. Chapter 20, Alexander the Great. Alexander the Macedonian establishes a Greek world empire and what became of this high ambition. When the Achaeans left their homes along the banks of the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about conditions in Greece. Now it happened just when Sparta and Athens had finished their disastrous war for the leadership of Helas that Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and art, but he despised the Greek lack of self-control and political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece, and then he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before. Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers. Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the year 334 BC. Seven years later he reached India. In the meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped by the people of the Nile Valley as the sun and air of the pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king. He had overthrown the Persian Empire. He had given orders to rebuild Babylon. He had led his troops into the heart of the Himalayan Mountains and had made the entire world a Macedonian province and dependency. Then he stopped and announced even more ambitious plans. The newly formed empire must be brought under the influence of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek language. They must live in cities built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier now turned school master. The military camps of yesterday became the peaceful centers of the newly imported Greek civilization. Higher and higher did the flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise when suddenly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323. Here you see a picture of Greece, two columns surrounded by a field of weeds. Then the waters receded but they left behind the fertile clay of a higher civilization and Alexander with all his childish ambitions and his silly vanities had performed a most valuable service. His empire did not long survive him. A number of ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves but they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge. They maintained their independence until the Romans added Western Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilization, part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian, fell to the Roman conquerors. During the following centuries it got such a firm hold upon the Roman world that we feel its influence in our own lives to this very day. End of Chapter 20. Recorded by Michelle Crandall, Fremont, California, November 2008. Chapter 21 of The Story of Mankind. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Chapter 21. A Summary. A short summary of chapters 1 to 20. Thus far from the top of our high tower we have been looking eastward. But from this time on the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must take you to study the Western landscape. Before we do this let us stop a moment and make clear to ourselves what we have seen. First of all I showed you prehistoric man, a creature very simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I told you how he was the most defenseless of the many animals that roamed through the early wilderness of the five continents but being possessed of a larger and better brain he managed to hold his own. Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold weather and life on this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished to survive. Since however that wish to survive was and is the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to the last gasp of its breath the brain of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people manage to exist through the long cold spells which killed many ferocious animals but when the earth became warm and comfortable once more prehistoric man had learned a number of things which gave him such great advantages over his less intelligent neighbors that the danger of extinction a very serious one during the first half million years of man's residence upon this planet became a very remote one. I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly plodding along when suddenly and for reasons that are not well understood the people who lived in the valley of the Nile rushed ahead and almost overnight created the first center of civilization. Then I showed you Mesopotamia the land between the rivers which was the second great school of the human race and I made you a map of the little island bridges of the Aegean Sea which carried the knowledge and the science of the old east to the young west where lived the Greeks. Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe called the Hellenes who thousands of years before had left the heart of Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who since then have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told you the story of the little Greek cities that were really states where the civilization of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured, that is a big word, but you can figure out what it means, into something quite new, something that was much nobler and finer than anything that had gone before. When you look at the map you will see how by this time civilization has described a semicircle. It begins in Egypt and by way of Mesopotamia and the Aegean islands it moves westward until it reaches the European continent. The first four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians and a large number of Semitic tribes, please remember that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peoples, have carried the torch that was to illuminate the world. They now handed over to the Indo-European Greeks who became the teachers of another Indo-European tribe called the Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when the eastern half has become a Greek or Indo-European possession. This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises the victorious Roman Empire which is to take this Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek civilization to the further most corners of the European continent where it serves as the foundation upon which our modern society is based. I know this all sounds very complicated but if you get hold of these few principles the rest of our history will become a great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words fail to tell. And after this short intermission we go back to our story and give you an account of the famous war between Carthage and Rome. 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. The little Phoenician trading post of Carthageat stood on a low hill which overlooked the African sea, a stretch of water 90 miles wide which separates Africa from Europe. It was an ideal spot for a commercial center, almost too ideal. It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the 6th century before our era Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with the mother country and became an independent state. The great western advanced post of the Semitic races. Here you see a picture of Carthage. Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the Phoenicians. It was a vast business house protected by a strong navy indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group of rich men. The Greek word for rich is Plutos and the Greeks called such a government by rich men a plutocracy. Carthage was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in the hands of a dozen big ship owners and mine owners and merchants who met in the back room of an office and regarded their common fatherland as a business enterprise which ought to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide awake and full of energy and worked very hard. As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her neighbors increased until the greater part of the African coast, Spain and certain regions of France were Carthaginian possessions and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the mighty city on the African sea. Of course such a plutocracy was forever at the mercy of the crowd. As long as there was plenty of work and wages were high the majority of the citizens were quite contented, allowed their betters to rule them and asked no embarrassing questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore was brought to the smelting ovens, when dock workers and stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had been a self-governing republic. To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged to keep the business of the town going at full speed. They had managed to do this very successfully for almost five hundred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain rumours which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had suddenly risen to great power and was making itself the acknowledged leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy. It was also said that this village, which by the way was called Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of Sicily and the southern coast of France. Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The young rival must be destroyed, lest the Carthaginian rulers lose their prestige as the absolute rulers of the western Mediterranean. The rumours were duly investigated and in a general way these were the facts that came to light. The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation whereas in Greece all the good harbours faced eastward and enjoyed a full view of the busy islands of the Aegean. The west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession of their hills and their marshy plains. The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. At an unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had managed to find their way through the passes of the Alps and had pushed southward until they had filled the heel and the toe of the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks. Of these early conquerors we know nothing. No homers saying their glory. Their accounts of the foundation of Rome, written 800 years later when the little city had become the centre of an empire, are fairy stories and do not belong in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each other's walls, I always forget who jumped across whose wall. Make entertaining reading, but the foundation of the city of Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a thousand American cities have done by being a convenient place for barter and horse trading. It lay in the heart of the plains of central Italy. The Tiber provided direct access to the sea. The land road from north to south found here a convenient ford which could be used all the year round, and seven little hills along the banks of the river offered the inhabitants a safe shelter against their enemies who lived in the mountains and those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea. Here you see a series of picture panels. How the city of Rome happened. One, the fort across the river. Two, the toll house and the marketplace. Three, the fortified city dominated the road. The Mountaineers were called the Sabans. They were a rough crowd with an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they were very backward. They used stone axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel swords. The sea people on the other hand were dangerous foes. They were called the Etruscans, and they were and still are one of the greatest mysteries of history. Nobody knew or knows once they came who they were, what had driven them away from their original homes. We have found the remains of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with their inscriptions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the Etruscan alphabet, these written messages are so far merely annoying and not at all useful. Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from Asia Minor and that a great war or a pestilence in that country had forced them to go away and seek a new home elsewhere. Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans played a great role in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient civilization from the east to the west. And they taught the Romans, who, as we know, came from the north, the first principles of architecture and street building and fighting and art and cookery and medicine and astronomy. But just as the Greeks had not loved their Aegean teachers, in this same way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters. They got rid of them as soon as they could and the opportunity offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inhabited the Roman countryside and who were called the Latins quite willing to learn such things as might be a practical use. At once they understood the great benefit that could be derived from a written alphabet and they copied that of the Greeks. They also understood the commercial advantages of a well-regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventually the Romans swallowed Greek civilization, hook, line and sinker. They even welcomed the gods of the Greeks to their country. Zeus was taken to Rome where he became known as Jupiter and the other divinities followed him. The Roman gods, however, never were quite like their cheerful cousins who had accompanied the Greeks on their road through life and through history. The Roman gods were state functionaries. Each one managed his own department with great prudence and a deep sense of justice. But in turn he was exact in demanding the obedience of his worshipers. This obedience the Romans rendered with scrupulous care, but they never established the cordial personal relations and that charming friendship which had existed between the old Halleans and the mighty residents of the high Olympian peak. The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of government, but being of the same Indo-European stock as the people of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of Athens and other Greek cities. They did not find it difficult to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient tribal chieftains, but once the kings had been driven from the city the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the nobles and it took many centuries before they managed to establish a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a chance to take a personal interest in the affairs of his town. Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over the Greeks. They managed the affairs of their country without making too many speeches. They were less imaginative than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multitude, the plebe as the assemblage of free citizens was called, only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They therefore placed the actual business of running the city into the hands of two consuls who were assisted by a council of elders called the Senate because the word Senex means an old man. As a matter of custom and practical advantage the senators were elected from the nobility but their power had been strictly defined. Rome at one time had passed through some sort of struggle between the poor and the rich which had forced Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Salon. In Rome this conflict had occurred in the 5th century BC. As a result the freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the institution of the tribune. These tribunes were city magistrates elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect any citizen against those actions of the government officials which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to condemn a man to death but if the case had not been absolutely proved the tribune could interfere and save the poor fellow's life. But when I used the word Rome I seemed to refer to a little city of a few thousand inhabitants and the real strength of Rome lay in the country districts outside her walls. And it was in the government of these outlying provinces that Rome at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonizing power. In very early times Rome had been the only strongly fortified city in central Italy but it had always offered a hospitable refuge to other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of attack. The Latin neighbors had recognized the advantages of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried to find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alliance. Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, even Greeks would have insisted upon a treaty of submission on the part of the barbarians. The Romans did nothing of the sort. They gave the outsider a chance to become partners in a common rest publica or common wealth. You want to join us, they said. Very well go ahead and join. We shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citizens of Rome. In return for this privilege we expect you to fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be necessary. The outsider appreciated this generosity and he showed his gratitude by his unswerving loyalty. Whenever a Greek city had been attacked the foreign residents had moved out as quickly as they could. Why defend something which meant nothing to them but a temporary boarding-house in which they were tolerated as long as they paid their bills. But when the enemy was before the gates of Rome all the Latins rushed to her defense. It was their mother who was in danger. It was their true home even if they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the walls of the sacred hills. No defeat and no disaster could change the sentiment. In the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced their way into Italy. They had defeated the Roman army near the river Alia and had marched upon the city. They had taken Rome and then they expected that the people would come and sue for peace. They waited but nothing happened. After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by a hostile population which made it impossible for them to obtain supplies. After seven months hunger forced them to withdraw. The policy of Rome to treat the foreigner unequal terms had proved a great success and Rome stood stronger than ever before. This short account of the early history of Rome shows you the enormous difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy state and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful and hearty cooperation between a number of equal citizens. The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt and Western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning and therefore unwilling obedience of subjects and when these failed they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them. You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear such a clever and powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of Carthage was only too willing to pick a quarrel that they might destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late. But the Carthaginians, being good businessmen, knew that it never pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans that their respective cities draw two circles on a map and that each town claim one of these circles as their own sphere of influence and promise to keep out of the other fellow's circle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken just as promptly when both sides thought it was wise to send their armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government invited for an interference. Here you see a picture of the spheres of influence map. The war which followed, the so-called First Punic War, lasted 24 years. It was fought out on the high seas and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Carthaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet. Following their ancient tactics the Carthaginian ships would either ran the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side they would break their oars and then kill the sailors of the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fireballs. But Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the hostile ship. Then there was a sudden end to Carthaginian victories. At the battle of Miley their fleet was badly defeated. Carthage was obliged to sue for peace and Sicily became part of the Roman domains. Here you see a picture of a fast Roman warship. 23 years later new trouble arose. Rome, in quest of copper, had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage, in quest of silver, thereupon occupied all of southern Spain. This made Carthage a direct neighbor of the Romans. The latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian army of occupation. The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two rivals. Once more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war. The Carthaginians were besieging Saguntum on the east coast of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and Rome as usual was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of the Latin armies but the preparation for this expedition took some time and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had been destroyed. This had been done in direct opposition to the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman army was to cross the African Sea and make a landing on Carthaginian soil. A second division was to keep the Carthaginian armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing to the aid of the hometown. It was an excellent plan and everybody expected a great victory but the gods had decided otherwise. It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ and the Roman army which was to attack the Carthaginians in Spain had left Italy. People were eagerly waiting for news of an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumor began to spread through the plain of the Po. Wild Mountaineers, their lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of brown men accompanied by strange beasts, each one as big as a house, who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow which surrounded the old Graean Pass through which Hercules, thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Garion on his way from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of the draggled refugees appeared before the gates of Rome with more complete details. Hannibal, the son of Himilcar, with 50,000 soldiers, 9,000 horsemen, and 37 fighting elephants had crossed the Pyrenees. He had defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhône and he had guided his army safely across the mountain passes of the Alps, although it was October and the roads were thickly covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with the Gauls and together they had defeated a second Roman army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege to Placentia, the northern terminus of the Rhône which connected Rome with the province of the Alpine districts. Here you see a picture of Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual, hushed up the news of these many defeats and sent two fresh armies to stop the invader. Hannibal managed to surprise these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the Trasimene lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most of their men. This time there was a panic among the people of Rome but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was organized and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Maximus with full power to act as was necessary to save the state. Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost. His raw and untrained men, the last available soldiers, were no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eatable, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and generally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a most distressing and annoying form of guerrilla warfare. Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds who had found safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted action. Something must be done and must be done quickly. A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of man who went about the city telling everybody how much better he could do things than slow old Fabius, the Delayer, was made commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the Battle of Cannae he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman history. More than seventy thousand men were killed. Hannibal was master of all Italy. He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, proclaiming himself the Deliverer from the yoke of Rome and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse all Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the Deliverer, found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pretended to be. He was far away from home and did not like the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh supplies and new men. Alas Carthage could not send him either. The Romans with their boarding bridges were the masters of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best as he could. He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed Deliverer. After many years of uninterrupted victories Hannibal found himself besieged in the country which he had just conquered. For a moment the luck seemed to turn. Hasdrubal, his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's assistance. He sent messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and asked the other army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unfortunately the messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal waited in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly packed in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him the fate of the last of the Carthaginian troops. With Hasdrubal out of the way young Publius Scipio easily reconquered Spain and four years later the Romans were ready for a final attack upon Carthage. Hannibal was called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to organize the defenses of his home city. In the year 202 at the Battle of Zama the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to Tyre. From there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians and the Macedonians against Rome. He accomplished very little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of the east and annexed the greater part of the Aegean world. Here you see a map showing a picture of Hannibal's movements around the country of Italy and back into Carthage. Driven from one city to another, a fugitive without a home, Hannibal at last knew that the end of his ambitious dream had come. His beloved city of Carthage had been ruined by the war. She had been forced to sign a terrible peace. Her navy had been sunk. She had been forbidden to make war without Roman permission. She had been condemned to pay the Romans millions of dollars for endless years to come. Life offered no hope of a better future. In the year 190 BC Hannibal took poison and killed himself. Here you see a picture of Hannibal having taken the poison and passing away. Forty years later the Romans forced their last war upon Carthage. Three long years, the inhabitants of the old Phoenician colony held out against the power of the new republic. Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women who had survived the siege were sold to slaves. The city was set on fire. For two whole weeks the storehouses and the palaces and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was pronounced upon the blackened ruins and the Roman legions returned to Italy to enjoy their victory. For the next thousand years the Mediterranean remained a European sea. But as soon as the Roman Empire had been destroyed, Asia made another attempt to dominate this great inland sea as you will learn when I tell you about Mohammed. End of Chapter 22. Recorded by Michele Crandall, Fremont, California, December 2008 Eyes of Rome. How Rome happened. The Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it. It happened. No famous general or statesman or cutthroat ever got up and said, Friends, Romans, citizens, we must found an empire. Follow me and together we shall conquer all the land from the gates of Hercules to Mount Taurus. Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished statesmen and cutthroats and Roman armies fought all over the world, but the Roman Empire making was done without a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very matter of fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When someone began to recite, Eastward the course of Roman Empire, etc., etc., he hastily left the forum. He just continued to take more and more land because circumstances forced him to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both by nature and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay at home. But when he was attacked he was obliged to defend himself, and when the enemy happened to cross the sea to ask for aid in a distant country, then the patient Roman marched many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe, and when this had been accomplished he stayed behind to administer his newly conquered provinces lest they fall into the hands of wandering barbarians and become themselves a menace to Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated, and yet to the contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a moment. In the year 203 BC Scipio had crossed the African Sea and had carried the war into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal back. Badly supported by his mercenaries, Hannibal had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for his surrender, and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter. The rulers of these two countries, remnants of the Empire of Alexander the Great, just then were contemplating an expedition against Egypt. They hoped to divide the rich Nile valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of this, and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage was set for a number of highly interesting plots and counter-plots, but the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang the curtain down before the play had been fairly started. Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx, which was still used by the Macedonians as their battle formation. That happened in the year 197 BC at the Battle in the Plains of Sinocephali, or Dog's Heads, in central Thessaly. The Romans then marched southward to Attica, and informed the Greeks that they had come to deliver the Hellenes from the Macedonian yoke. The Greeks, having learned nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used their new freedom in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less love for these silly bickering of a race which they rather despised, showed great forbearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth, to encourage the other Greeks, and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this way Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected Rome's eastern frontier. Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of Syria, and Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown great eagerness when his distinguished guest, General Hannibal, explained to him how easy it would be to invade Italy and sack the city of Rome. Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who had defeated Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed the armies of the Syrian King near Magnesia in the year 190 BC. Shortly afterwards Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor became a Roman protectorate and the small city republic of Rome was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon the Mediterranean. End of Chapter 23, read by Kara Schellenberg on October 11th, 2008 in San Diego, California. Chapter 24 The Roman Empire How the Republic of Rome after centuries of unrest and revolution became an empire. When the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns they were received with great jubilation. Alas and a lack this sudden glory did not make the country any happier. On the contrary the endless campaigns had ruined the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of empire making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the successful generals and their private friends who had used the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery. The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity which had characterized the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grandfathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to disastrous failure as I shall now tell you. Within less than a century and a half Rome had become the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediterranean. In those early days of history a prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war as a very serious business and he showed no mercy to a conquered foe. After the fall of Carthage the Carthaginian women and children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves and a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against the Roman power. Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of machinery. Nowadays a rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people of Rome, senators, generals and war profiteers invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land they bought or took in the newly acquired provinces, the slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to be cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries before Christ there was a plentiful supply and as a result the landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain counter of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives and now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer. He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her battles without complaint but when he came home after 10, 15 or 20 years his lands were covered with weeds and his family had been ruined but he was a strong man and willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together with his cattle and his poultry to find that the large landowners who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went to the nearest city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been before on the land but he shared his misery with thousands of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all profoundly discontented. They had fought for their country and this was their reward. They were always willing to listen to those plausible spellbinders who gather around a public grievance like so many hungry vultures and soon they became aggraved menace to the safety of the state. But the class of the newly rich shrugged at shoulders. We have our army and our policemen, they argued, they will keep the mob in order and they hid themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters. In a few families, however, the old tradition of unselfish service to the Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gaius. When the boys grew up they had entered politics and tried to bring about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by 2,000 noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been elected a tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a single owner might possess. In this way he hoped to revive the valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The newly rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state. There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the popular tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He passed a poor law which was meant to help the destitute farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman citizens into professional beggars. He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the empire. But these settlements failed to attract the right sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm, he too was murdered and his followers were either killed or exiled. The first two reformers had been gentlemen. The two who came after were of a very different stamp. They were professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following. Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor in a great battle at the foot of the Alps when the Tutans and the Simbri had been annihilated, was the popular hero of the disinherited freemen. Now it happened in the year 88 BC that the Senate of Rome was greatly disturbed by rumors that came from Asia. Mithridites, king of a country along the shores of the Black Sea and a Greek on his mother's side, had seen the possibility of establishing a second Alexandrian empire. He began his campaign for world domination with the murder of all Roman citizens who happened to be an Asia minor, men, women, and children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate equipped an army to march against the king of Pontus and punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander-in-chief? Sulla said the Senate because he is consul. Marius said the mob because he has been consul five times and because he is the champion of our rights. Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be an actual command of the army. He went east to defeat Mithridites and Marius fled to Africa. There he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents, marched on Rome, and entered the city with his professional highwaymen, spent five days and five nights slaughtering the enemies of the senatorial party, got himself elected consul, and promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight. There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated Mithridites, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were going to hang him when someone interfered. The boy is too young, he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius Caesar. You shall meet him again on the next page. As for Sulla, he became dictator, which meant sole and supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow men. But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse. Another general, Gnaeus Pompeus, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridites. He drove that energetic potentate into the mountains, where Mithridites took poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last, in the year 62, returned to Rome with a dozen shiploads of defeated kings and princes and generals, all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession of this enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty million dollars in plunder. It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed in the hands of a strong man. Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of Catalene, who had gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had discovered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Catalene to flee. But there were other young men with similar ambitions, and it was no time for idle talk. Pompey organized a triumvirate, which was to take charge of affairs. He became the leader of this vigilante committee. Gaius Julius Caesar, who had made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second in command. The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus. He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon an expedition against the Parthians and was killed. As for Caesar, who was by far the ableist of the three, he decided that he needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero. He crossed the Alps and conquered that part of the world, which is now called France. Then he hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land of the Wild Tutans. Finally, he took ship and visited England. Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had been appointed dictator for life. This, of course, meant that Caesar was to be placed on the list of the retired officers, and the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the senators and their dictator another lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River, which separated the province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the friend of the people. Without difficulty, Caesar entered Rome and Pompey fled to Greece. Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt. When he landed, he was murdered by order of young King Ptolemy. A few days later, Caesar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey attacked his camp. Here you see a picture of Caesar crossing the bridge going west. Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian fleet. Incidentally, the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria, which was just off the waterfront and destroyed it. Next, he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new government under Cleopatra, the sister of the late King. Just then, word reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridites, had gone on the warpath. Caesar marched northward, defeated Pharnaces in war which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in the famous sentence, Vinny Vidi Vici, which is Latin for, I came, I saw, I conquered, and returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the government in the year 46. He marched at the head of not less than four different victory parades, having won four different campaigns. Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and the grateful Senate made him dictator for ten years. It was a fatal step. The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state. He made it possible for free men to become members of the Senate. He conferred the rights of citizenship upon distant communities, as had been done in the early days of Roman history. He permitted foreigners to exercise influence upon the government. He reformed the administration of the distant provinces, which certain aristocratic families had come to regard as their private possessions. In short, he did many things for the good of the majority of the people, but which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful men in the state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a plot to save the Republic, on the Ides of March, the fifteenth of March, according to that new calendar which Caesar had brought with him from Egypt. Caesar was murdered when he entered the Senate. Once more, Rome was without a master. Here you see a picture of the great Roman Empire, a map with a wall drawn around the Roman Empire, which extends through most of Europe and part of northern Africa. There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Caesar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew, as a state. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to Egypt to be near Cleopatra, with whom he too had fallen in love, as seems to have been the habit of Roman generals. A war broke out between the two. In the Battle of Actium, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself, and Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy. She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she saw that she could make no impression that she was an aristocrat, she killed herself. And Egypt became a Roman province. As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man, and he did not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words. He was very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a dictator. He would be entirely satisfied with the title of the Honorable. But when the Senate a few years later addressed him as Augustus, the illustrious, he did not object, and a few years later the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser, while the soldiers accustomed to regard Octavian as their commander-in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator, or Emperor. The Republic had become an empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the fact. In 14 AD, his position as the absolute ruler of the Roman people had become so well established that he was made an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been reserved for the gods. And his successors were true emperors, the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him, provided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the frontiers of his domains. In the year 9 AD, he had contemplated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was inhabited by the Tutans. But Varus, his general, had been killed with all his men in the Tuttaberg woods, and after that the Romans made no further attempts to civilize these wild people. They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor, against which no free man could hope to compete. It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large bureaucracy, petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence, to bloodshed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and suffering of others. Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander's empire became one of its minor provinces. Underneath this glory, there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest underneath a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of someone else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields. They lived in stables. They died without hope. It was the 753rd year since the founding of Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar, Octavianus Augustus, was living in the palace of the Palantine Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire. In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the carpenter, was tending her little boy born in a stable of Bethlehem. This is a strange world. Before long the palace and the stable were to meet in open combat and the stable was to emerge victorious. End of chapter 24 recorded by Michelle Crandall, Fremont, California, January 2009. Chapter 25 of The Story of Mankind This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Kara Schellenberg. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Chapter 25 Joshua of Nazareth The Story of Joshua of Nazareth, whom the Greeks called Jesus. In the autumn of the year of the city 783, which would be 62 A.D., in our way of counting time, Escalapius Coltelus, a Roman physician, wrote to his nephew, who was with the army in Syria, as follows. My dear nephew, a few days ago I was called in to be a Roman citizen. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had been told that he was here in connection with a lawsuit and appeal from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea, or some such place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to me as a wild and violent fellow who had been making speeches against the people and against the law. I found him very intelligent and friendly. A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus, where he was preaching sermons about a strange new god. I asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the people to rebel against the will of our beloved emperor. Paul answered me that the kingdom of which he had spoken was not of this world and he added many strange utterances to his fever. His personality made a great impression upon me and I was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Austrian road a few days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When next you visit Jerusalem I want you to find out something about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet who seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much excited about this so-called Messiah and a few of them who openly talked of the new kingdom, whatever that means, are classified. I would like to know the truth about all these rumors and I am your devoted uncle, Esculapius Coltalis. Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the Seventh Gaelic Infantry answered as follows, My dear uncle, I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions. Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There have been several revolutions during the last century we have been here now for a month and tomorrow we shall continue our march to Petra where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I shall use this evening to answer your questions but pray do not expect a detailed report. I have talked with most of the older men in this city but few have been able to give me any definite information. A few days ago a peddler came to the camp. I bought some of his olives from the Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said that he remembered it very clearly because his father had taken him to Golgotha, a hill just outside the city to see the execution and to show him what became of the enemies of the laws of the people of Judea. He gave me the address of one Joseph who had been a personal friend of the Messiah and told me that I had better go and see him if I wanted to know more. He had been an old man. He had been a fisherman on one of the freshwater lakes. His memory was clear and from him at last I got a fairly definite account of what had happened during the troublesome days before I was born. Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne and an officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of Judea and Samaria. Joseph knew little about this who left a decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year 783 or 784, Joseph had forgotten when, Pilatus was called to Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man, the son of a carpenter of Nazareth was said to be planning a revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough, our own intelligence officers who are usually well informed about it, and when they investigated the matter they reported that the carpenter was an excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed against him. But the old fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, according to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The Nazarene, so they told Pilatus, as good as a Jew who spent his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not seem to have been impressed by this argument but when the crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus and kill all his followers he decided to take the carpenter into custody to save his life. He does not appear to have understood the real nature of the quarrel. Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain their grievances to the Pharisee and treason and got terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for Joshua. That was the name of the Nazarene but the Greeks who live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus to examine him personally. He talked to him for several hours. He asked him about the dangerous doctrines which he was said to have preached on the shores that he never referred to politics. He was not so much interested in the bodies of men as in man's soul. He wanted all people to regard their neighbors as their brothers and to love one single God who was the father of all living beings. Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines of the Stoics and the other Greek philosophers does not appear to have discovered anything seditious in the talk of Jesus. According to my informant David the Kindly Prophet he kept putting the execution off. Meanwhile the Jewish people lashed into fury by their priests got frantic with rage. There had been many riots in Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman soldiers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the Roman authorities in Caesarea that Pilatus had fallen a victim to the teachings of the Nazarene. Petitions were being circulated all through the city to have Pilatus recalled because he was an enemy of the emperor. You know that our governors have strict instructions to avoid an open break with their foreign subjects. To save the country from civil war Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner Joshua who behaved with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him. He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the Jerusalem mob. That's what Joseph told me with tears running down his old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him but he refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself. I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent-maker who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of a loving and forgiving God who was so very different from that Jehovah who had traveled much in Asia Minor and in Greece telling the slaves that they were all children of one loving father and that happiness awaits all both rich and poor who have tried to live honest lives and have done good to those who were suffering and miserable. I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as the safety of the state is concerned and they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that I were at home again and I am, as ever, your dutiful nephew, Gladius Ensa. End of Chapter 25 Read by Kara Schellenberg on October 11th, 2008 in San Diego, California. Chapter 26 of The Story of Mankind This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information please visit The Story of Mankind by Hendrick Von Lohn Chapter 26 The Fall of Rome The Twilight of Rome The textbooks of ancient history give the date 476 as the year in which Rome fell because in that year the last emperor was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in a day took a long time falling. The process was so slow and so gradual as though their old world was coming to an end. They complained about the unrest of the times. They grumbled about the high prices of food and about the low wages of the workmen. They cursed the profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually rapacious governor. But the majority of the people during the first four centuries of our era ate and drank whatever their purse allowed them to buy and went to the theater whenever there was a free show of fighting gladiators or starved in the slums of the big cities utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish. How could they realize the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing of outward glory. Well paved roads connected the different provinces. The imperial police were active and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. They seemed to be occupying the wastelands of northern Europe. The whole world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome and a score of able men were working day and night to undo the mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier conditions of the early republic. But the underlying causes of the decay of the state of which I have told you in a former chapter had not been removed from the state as Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula but Rome as the ruler of the entire civilized world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military service and by taxation. They either became professional beggars or hired themselves out and made them serfs those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen but who have become part of the soil upon which they work like so many cows and the trees. The empire the state had become everything the common citizen had dwindled down to less than nothing. As for the slaves they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul they had accepted the message of the humble carpenter of Nazareth on the contrary they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed their superiors but they had lost all interest in the affairs of this world which had proved such a miserable place of abode they were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter into the kingdom of heaven but they were not willing to engage in warfare for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots the first centuries went by the first emperors had continued the tradition of leadership which had given the old tribal chieftains such a hold upon their subjects but the emperors of the second and third centuries were barric emperors professional soldiers who existed by the grace of their bodyguards the so-called Praetorians they succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out of it putting the guards into a new rebellion meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of the northern frontier as there were no longer any native Roman armies to stop their progress foreign mercenaries had to be hired to fight the invader as the foreign soldiers happened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy he was apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle finally by way of experiment a few tribes were allowed to settle soon these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax gatherers who took away their last penny when they got no redress they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that they be heard here you see a picture of when the barbarians got through with the Roman city this made Rome very uncomfortable as an imperial residence Constantine who ruled from 323 to 337 looked for a new capital he chose Byzantium the gateway for the commerce between Europe and Asia the city was renamed Constantinople and the court moved eastward when Constantine died his two sons for the sake of a more efficient administration divided the empire between them the elder lived in Rome and ruled in the west the younger stayed in Constantinople and was master of the east then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation of the Huns the mysterious Asiatic coursemen who for more than two centuries maintained themselves in northern Europe and continued their career of bloodshed until they were defeated near Chalon-sur-Main in France in the year 451 as soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun to press hard upon the Goths the Goths in order to save themselves were there upon a bludge to invade Rome the emperor Valens tried to stop them but was killed near Adrianople in the year 378 22 years later under their king Alaric these same west Goths marched westward and attacked Rome they did not plunder and destroyed only a few palaces next came the vandals and showed less respect for the venerable traditions of the city then the Burgundians then the east Goths then the Alemani then the Franks there was no end to the invasions there was just highway robber who could gather a few followers here you see a picture of troops crossing into the city of Rome in the year 402 the emperor fled to Ravina which was a seaport and strongly fortified and there in the year 475 Odoacer commander of a regiment of the German mercenaries who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among themselves Romulus Augustulus the last of the emperors who ruled the western division from his throne and proclaimed himself patriarch or ruler of Rome the eastern emperor who was very busy with his own affairs recognized him and for 10 years Odoacer ruled what was left of the western provinces a few years later the Adorak king of the east Goths invaded the newly formed patriciat and established a gothic kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the empire this patriciat state did not last long in the 6th century a motley crowd of longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars invaded Italy destroyed the gothic kingdom and established a new state of which Pavia became the capital then at last the imperial city sank and Romulus' had been plundered time and again the schools had been burned down the teachers had been starved to death the rich people had been thrown out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil smelling and hairy barbarians the roads had fallen into decay the old bridges were gone and commerce had come to a standstill civilization the product of thousands of years of patient labor on the part of Egyptians bearing dreams of his earliest ancestors threatened to perish from the western continent here you see a map of Europe showing the invasionary movements of the barbarians it is true that in the Far East Constantinople continued to be the center of an empire for another thousand years but it hardly counted as a part of the European continent its interests lie in the east it began to forget its western origin gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek the Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges the emperor became an Asiatic despot worshipped as the god-like kings of thieves had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile three thousand years before when missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity they went eastward to the vast wilderness of Russia as for the west it was left to the mercies of the barbarians for twelve generations murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of the day one thing and one thing alone saved Europe from complete destruction from a return to the days of cavemen and the hyena this was the church the flock of humble men and women who for many centuries had confessed themselves they had been killed that the mighty Roman empire might be saved the trouble of a street riot in a little city somewhere along the Syrian frontier end of chapter 26 recording by Michelle Crandall Fremont California March 2009 chapter 27 of the story of mankind this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain dot org the story of mankind by Hendrik van Loon chapter 27 the rise of the church how Rome became the center of the Christian world the average intelligent Roman who lived under the empire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers a few times a year he went to the temple but merely as a matter of custom he looked on patiently and celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession but he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish a survival from the crude days of the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great philosophers of Athens this attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man and the Roman's foreigners Greeks, Babylonians, Jews should pay a certain outward respect to the image of the emperor which was supposed to stand in every temple just as a picture of the president of the United States is apt to hang in an American post office but this was a formality without any deeper meaning generally speaking everybody could honor, revere and adore whatever gods he pleased and as a result Rome was filled with all sorts of queer little temples dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities when the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man nobody objected the man in the street stopped and listened Rome, the capital of the world had always been full of wandering preachers each proclaiming his own mystery most of the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses with bold and rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of their own particular god soon the crowd in the street noticed that the so-called Christians the followers of the Christ or anointed spoke a very different language they did not appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position they extolled the beauties of poverty and humility and meekness these were not exactly the virtues that made Rome the mistress of the world it was rather interesting to listen to a mystery which told people in the heyday of their glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them lasting happiness besides the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to the words of the true god it was never wise to take chances of course the old Roman gods still existed they were friends against the powers of this new deity who had been brought to Europe from distant Asia people began to have doubts they returned to listen to further explanations of the new creed after a while they began to meet the men and women who preached the words of Jesus they found them very different from the average Roman priests they were all dreadfully poor they were kind to slaves and to animals the example of their unselfish lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion they joined the small communities of Christians who met in the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field and the temples were deserted this went on year after year and the number of Christians continued to increase presbyters or priests the original Greek meant elder were elected to guard the interests of the small churches a bishop was made the head of all the communities within a single province Peter who had followed Paul to Rome was the first bishop of Rome in due time his successors who were addressed as father or papa came to be known as Popes the church became a powerful institution within the empire the Christian doctrines appealed to those who disbared they also attracted many strong men who found it impossible to make a career under the imperial government but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher at last the state was obliged to take notice the Roman Empire I have said this before was tolerant through indifference it allowed everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion but it insisted that the different sects would take the peace among themselves and obey the wise rule of live and let live the Christian communities however refused to practice any sort of tolerance they publicly declared that their God and their God alone was the true ruler of heaven and earth and that all other gods were imposters this seemed unfair to the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances the Christians persisted soon there were further difficulties the Christians refused to go through the formalities of paying homage to the emperor they refused to appear when they were called upon to join the army the Roman magistrates threatened to punish them the Christians answered that this miserable world was only the anti-room to a very pleasant heaven and that they were more than willing to suffer death for their principles the Romans puzzled by such conduct sometimes killed the offenders but more often they did not there was a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the church but this was the work of that part of the mob which accused their meek Christian neighbors of every conceivable crime such as slaughtering and eating babies bringing about sickness and pestilence betraying the country in times of danger because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger as the Christians refused to fight back meanwhile Rome continued to be invaded by the barbarians and when her armies failed Christian missionaries went forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Tutans they were strong men without fear of death they spoke a language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant sinners the Tutans were deeply impressed they still had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome those men were Romans they spoke the truth soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage regions of the Tutans and the Franks half a dozen missionaries were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers the emperors began to understand that the Christian might be of great use to them in some of the provinces they were given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old gods the great change however came during the last half of the 4th century Constantine who, if you have a knows why called Constantine the Great was emperor he was a terrible Ruffian but people of tender qualities could hardly hope to survive in that hard fighting age during a long and checkered career Constantine had experienced many ups and downs once when almost defeated by his enemies he thought that he would try the power of this new asiatic deity of whom everybody was talking he promised that he too would become a Christian he won the victory and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian God and allowed himself to be baptized from that moment on the Christian church was officially recognized and this greatly strengthened the position of the new faith but the Christians still formed a very small minority of all the people not more than 5 or 6% and in order to win they were forced to refuse all compromise the old gods must be destroyed for a short spell the emperor Julian a lover of Greek wisdom managed to save the pagan gods from further destruction but Julian died of his wounds during a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established the church in all its glory one after the other the doors of the ancient temples were then closed then came the emperor Justinian who built the church at Athens which had been founded by Plato that was the end of the old Greek world in which man had been allowed to think his own thoughts and dream his own dreams according to his desires the somewhat vague rules of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery and ignorance had swept away the established order of things there was need of something more positive and more definite that's the church provided during an age when nothing was certain the church stood like a rock and never receded from those principles which had held to be true and sacred this steadfast courage gained the admiration of the multitudes and carried the church of Rome safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state there was however a certain element of luck in the final success of the Christian faith after the disappearance of the Autorix Roman Gothic kingdom in the fifth century Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion the Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were weak and backward tribes under those circumstances it was possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence of their city soon the remnants of the empire scattered throughout the peninsula recognized the dukes of Rome or bishops as their political and spiritual rulers the stage was set for the appearance of a strong man he came in the year 590 and his name was Gregory he belonged to the ruling classes of ancient Rome and he had been prefect or mayor of the city then he had become a monk and a bishop and finally and much against his will for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to be made pope he ruled only 14 years but when he died the Christian world of western Europe had officially recognized the bishops of Rome the popes as the head of the entire church this power however did not extend to the east in Constantinople the emperors continued the old custom which had recognized the successors of Augustus and Tiberius both as head of the government and as high priest in 1553 the eastern Roman empire was conquered by the Turks Constantinople was taken and Constantine Paleolog the last Roman emperor was killed on the steps of the church of the Holy Sophia a few years before Zoe the daughter of his brother Thomas had married Ivan III of Russia in this way did the grand dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constantinople the Byzantium reminiscent of the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a western part became the coat of arms of modern Russia the Tsar who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman emperor before whom all subjects both high and low were inconsiderable slaves the court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which the eastern emperors and which so they flattered themselves resembled the court of Alexander the Great this strange inheritance which the dying Byzantine emperor bequeathed to an unsuspecting world continued to live with great vigor for six more centuries amidst the vast plains of Russia the last man to wear the crown with the double eagle of Constantinople Tsar Nicholas was murdered only the other day so to speak he was thrown into a well his son and his daughters were all killed and his ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished and the church was reduced to the position which had held in Rome before the days of Constantine the western church however fared very differently as we shall see in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is going to be threatened with destruction by the rival creed of an Arab camel driver end of chapter 27 read by Kara Schellenberg on October 11th, 2008 in San Diego, California Chapter 28 of the story of mankind this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Michelle Crandall the story of mankind by Hendrik von Lohn chapter 28 Mohammed Ahmed the camel driver who became the prophet of the Arabian desert and whose followers almost conquered the entire known world for the greater glory of Allah the only true God since the days of Carthage in Hannibal we have said nothing of the Semitic people you will remember how they filled all the chapters devoted to the story of the ancient world the Babylonians the Assyrians the Chaldeans all of them Semites had been the rulers of western Asia for 30 or 40 centuries they had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who had come from the west 100 years after the death of Alexander the Great Carthage a colony of Semitic Phoenicians had fought the Indo-European Romans for the mastery of the Mediterranean Carthage had been defeated for 300 years the Romans had been masters of the world in the 7th century however another Semitic tribe appeared upon the scene and challenged the power of the west they were the Arabs peaceful shepherds who had roamed through the desert since the beginning of time without showing any signs of imperial ambitions then they listened to Mohammed mounted their horses and in less than a century they had pushed to the heart of Europe and proclaimed the glories of Allah and Mohammed the prophet of the only God to the frightened peasants of France the story of Ahmed the son of Abdullah and Aminah usually known as Mohammed or he who will be praised reads like a chapter in the 1001 Nights he was a camel driver born in Mecca he seems to have been an epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel Gabriel whose words were afterwards written down in a book called the Quran his work as a caravan leader carried him all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish merchants and with Christian traders and he came to see that the worship of a single God was a very excellent thing his own people, the Arabs still revered queer stones and trunks of trees as their ancestors had done tens of thousands of years before in Mecca their holy city stood a little square building with thousands of strange odds and ends of hudu worship Mohammed decided to be the Moses of the Arab people he could not well be a prophet and a camel driver at the same time so he made himself independent by marrying his employer the rich widow Chidija then he told his neighbors in Mecca that he was the long expected prophet sent by Allah to save the world the neighbors laughed most heartily and when Mohammed continued to annoy them with his speeches they killed him they regarded him as a lunatic and a public boar who deserved no mercy Mohammed heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to Medina together with Abu Beker his trusted pupil this happened in the year 622 it is the most important date in Mohammedian history and is known as the Higheara the year of the great flight here you see a picture of two men walking through the desert in Medina Mohammed who was a stranger found it easier to proclaim himself a prophet than in his home city where everyone had known him as a simple camel driver soon he was surrounded by an increasing number of followers or Muslims who accepted the Islam the submission to the will of God which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues for seven years he preached to the people of Medina against his former neighbors who had dared to sneer at him in his holy mission in his old camel driving days at the head of an army of Medinese he marched across the desert his followers took Mecca without great difficulty and having slaughtered a number of the inhabitants they found it quite easy to convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet from that time on until the year of his death Mohammed was fortunate for the reasons for the success of Islam in the first place the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers was very simple the disciples were told that they must love Allah the ruler of the world the merciful and compassionate they must honor and obey their parents they were warned against dishonesty and dealing with their neighbors and were admonished to be humble and charitable to the poor and to the sick finally they were ordered to abstain from strong drink in the middle of the hall there were no priests who acted as shepherds of their flocks and asked that they be supported at the common expense the Mohammedian churches or mosques were merely large stone halls without benches or pictures where the faithful could gather if they felt so inclined to read and discuss chapters from the Quran the holy book but the average Mohammedian carried his religion with him and never felt himself hemmed in five times a day he turned his face towards Mecca the holy city and said a simple prayer for the rest of the time he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage the faithful to go forth and invent electrical machinery or bother about railroads and steamship lines but it gave every Mohammedian contentment it bad him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he lived and that was a very good thing the second reason which explains the success of the Muslims in their warfare upon the Christians had to do with the conduct of those Mohammedian soldiers who went forth to do battle for the true faith the prophet promised that those who fell facing the enemy would go directly to heaven this made sudden death in the field preferable it gave the Mohammedians an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in constant dread of a dark hereafter and who stuck to the good things of this world as long as they possibly could incidentally it explains why even today Muslim soldiers will charge into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous and persistent enemies having put his religious house in order Mohammed now began to enjoy his power as the undisputed ruler of a large number of Arab tribes but success has been the undoing of a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity he tried to gain the goodwill of the rich people by a number of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth he allowed the faithful to have four wives as one wife was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were bought directly from the parents four wives became a positive luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice a religion which had at first been meant for the hardy hunters of the high sky desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities it was a regrettable change from the original program and it did very little good to the cause of Mohammedianism as for the prophet himself and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died quite suddenly of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632 his successor as caliph or leader of the muslims was his father-in-law Abu Bekir who had shared the early dangers of the prophet's life two years later Abu Bekir died and Omar ibn al-Katab followed him in less than ten years in Palestine and made Damascus the capital of the first Muhammadian world empire Omar was succeeded by Ali the husband of Mohammed's daughter Fatima but a quarrel broke out upon a point of muslim doctrine and Ali was murdered after his death the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faithful who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a religious sect brought to a new city on the shores of the Euphrates near the ruins of Babylon and called it Baghdad and organizing the Arab horsemen into regiments of cavalry they set forth to bring the happiness of their muslim faith to all unbelievers in the year 700 AD a Muhammadian general by the name of Tariq crossed the old gates of Hercules and reached the high rock on the European side which he called Jibbal al-Tariq eleven years later in the battle of Ziri's De La Frontera he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the muslim army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees they defeated the Duke of Aquitania who tried to halt them near Bordeaux and marched upon Paris but in the year 732 100 years after the death of the prophet they were beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers on that day Charles Martel Charles with the hammer the Frankish chieftain saved Europe from a Muhammadian conquest he drove the muslims out of France but they maintained themselves in Spain where Abed R. Raman founded the caliphate of Cordova which became the greatest center of science and art of medieval Europe the smourish kingdom so called because the people came from Mauritania in Morocco lasted seven centuries it was only after the capture of Grenada the last muslim stronghold in the year 1492 that Columbus received the royal grant which allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery the Muhammadians soon regained their strength in the new conquest which they made in Asia and Africa and today there are as many followers of Muhammad as there are of Christ here you see a picture of the earth with a cross against a crescent moon and it's called the struggle between the cross and the crescent end of chapter 28 recorded by Michelle Crandall Fremont California March 2009 chapter 29 of the story of mankind this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the story of mankind by Hendrik van Loon chapter 29 Charlemagne how Charlemagne the king of the Franks came to bear the title of emperor and tried to revive the old ideal of world empire the battle of Potier had saved Europe from the Muhammadians but the enemy within the hopeless disorder which had followed the disappearance of the Roman police officer that enemy remained it is true that the new converts felt a deep respect for the mighty bishop of Rome but that poor bishop did not feel any too safe when he looked toward the distant mountains heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians were ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome it was necessary very necessary for the spiritual head of the world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful fist who was willing to defend his holiness in case of danger and so the popes who were not only very holy but also very practical cast about for a friend and presently they made overtures to the most promising of the Germanic tribes who had occupied northwestern Europe after the fall of Rome they were called the Franks one of their earliest kings called Merovec had helped the Romans in the battle of the Catalonian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the Huns and continued to take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when King Clovis the old French word for Louis felt himself strong enough to beat the Romans in the open but his descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to their prime minister the Major Domus or Master of the Palace Pepin the short the son of the famous Charles Martel who succeeded his father to go to handle the situation his royal master was a devout theologian without any interest in politics Pepin asked the pope for advice the pope who was a practical person answered that the power in the state belonged to him who was actually possessed of it Pepin took the hint he persuaded Childerec the last of the Merovec to become a monk and then made himself king with the approval of the other Germanic chieftains to satisfy the shrewd Pepin he wanted to be something more than a barbarian chieftain he staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface the great missionary of the European Northwest anointed him and made him a king by the grace of God it was easy to slip those words Dei Grazia into the coronation service it took almost 1500 years to get them out again Pepin was sincerely grateful for his kindness on the part of the church he made two expeditions to Italy to defend the pope against his enemies he took Ravenna and several other cities away from the Longobards and presented them to his holiness who incorporated these new domains into the so-called Papal State which remained an independent country until half a century ago after Pepin's death the relations between Rome and Aixlac Chapelle and the Italian or Engelheim the Frankish kings did not have one official residence but travelled from place to place with all their ministers and court officers became more and more cordial finally the pope and the king took a step which was to influence the history of Europe in a most profound way Charles commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Charlemagne succeeded Pepin in the year 768 he had conquered the land of the Saxons in eastern Germany and had built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of northern Europe at the request of certain enemies of Abd Ar-Rahman he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors but in the Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and had been forced to retire it was upon this occasion that Roland the great Margrave of Breton showed what a Frankish chieftain was to be faithful to his king and gave his life and that of his trusted followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army during the last ten years of the 8th century however Charles was obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of the south the pope, Leo III had been attacked by a band of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street some kind people had bandaged and had helped him to escape to the camp of Charles where he asked for help an army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of Constantine had been the home of the pope that was in December of the year 799 on Christmas day of the next year Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome attended the service in the ancient church of St. Peter when he arose from prayer and placed a crown upon his head called him Emperor of the Romans and hailed him once more with the title of Augustus which had not been heard for hundreds of years once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire but the dignity was held by a German chieftain who could read just a little and never learned to write but he could fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival emperor in Constantinople sent a letter to his dear brother unfortunately this blended old man died in the year 814 his sons and his grandsons at once began to fight for the largest share of the imperial inheritance twice the Carolingian lands were divided by the treaties of Verdun in the year 843 and by the treaty of Maricin on the Moise in the year 870 the latter treaty divided the entire Frankish kingdom into two parts Charles the Bold received the western half it contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized the Franks soon learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue the other grandson got the eastern part the land which the Romans had called Germania the most hospitable regions had never been part of the old empire Augustus had tried to conquer this far east but his legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg wood in the year 9 and the people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilization they spoke the popular Germanic tongue the Tuten word for people was Theot the Christian missionaries therefore called the German language the Lingua Teotisca the popular dialect and this word Teotisca was changed into which accounts for the name Deutschland as for the famous imperial crown it very soon slipped off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain where it became a sort of play thing of a number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other amidst much bloodshed and wore it with or without until it was the turn of some more ambitious neighbor the Pope once more sorely beset by his enemies sent north for help he did not appeal to the ruler of the west Frankish kingdom this time his messengers crossed the Alps and addressed themselves to Otto a Saxon prince who was recognized as the greatest chieftain of the different Germanic tribes Otto who shared his people's affection for the blue skies and the gay and beautiful people hastened to the rescue in return for his services the Pope Leo the 8th made Otto emperor and the eastern half of Charles's old kingdom was henceforth known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation this strange political creation managed to live to the ripe old age of 839 years in the year 1801 during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson it was most unceremoniously delegated to the historical scrap heap the brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was the son of a Corsican Notary public who had made a brilliant career in the service of the French Republic he was ruler of Europe by the grace of his famous guard regiments but he desired to be something more he sent to Rome for the Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon placed the imperial crown upon his head and claimed himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne for history is like life the more things change the more they remain the same end of chapter 29 read by Kara Schellenberg on October 16th, 2008 in San Diego, California