Produced by Stan Goodman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1887
[Illustration: ANCIENT GREECE (Map)]
[Illustration: MAYFLOWER, 1620]
Patriotism, or love of country, is one of the tests of nobility ofcharacter. No great man ever lived that was not a patriot in thehighest and truest sense. From the earliest times, the sentiment ofpatriotism has been aroused in the hearts of men by the narrative ofheroic deeds inspired by love of country and love of liberty. Thistruth furnishes the key to the arrangement and method of the presentwork. The ten epochs treated are those that have been potential inshaping subsequent events; and when men have struck blows for humanliberty against odds and regardless of personal consequences. Thesimple narrative carries its own morals, and the most profitable workfor the teacher will be to merely supplement the narrative so that thepicture presented shall be all the more vivid. Moral reflections arewearisome and superfluous.
1. The great events in history are those where, upon specialoccasions, a man or a people have made a stand against tyranny, andhave preserved or advanced freedom for the people. Sometimes tyrannyhas taken the form of the oppression of the many by the few in thesame nation, and sometimes it has been the oppression of a weak nationby a stronger one. The successful revolt against tyranny, the terribleconflict resulting in the emancipation of a people, has always beenthe favorite theme of the historian, marking as it does a step in theprogress of mankind from a savage to a civilized state.
2. One of the earliest as well as most notable of these conflicts ofwhich we have an authentic account took place in Greece twenty-fourhundred years ago, or five hundred years before the Christian era. Atthat time nearly all of Europe was inhabited by rude barbarous tribes.In all that broad land the arts and sciences which denote civilizationhad made their appearance only in the small and apparentlyinsignificant peninsula of Greece, lying on the extreme southeastborder adjoining Asia.
3. At a period before authentic history begins, it is probable thatroving tribes of shepherds from the north took possession of the hillsand valleys of Greece. Shut off on the north by mountain ranges, andon all other sides surrounded by the sea, these tribes were able tomaintain a sturdy independence for many hundred years. The numerousharbors and bays which subdivide Greece invited to a maritime life,and at a very early time, the descendants of the original shepherdsbecame skillful navigators and courageous adventurers.
4. The voyages of Ae