ce our steps, and
give a rough review of the various stages of conquest. We must now
retrace our steps, and give a rough review of the various stages
of conquest by which the different regions of the Old World became
known to the Greeks and the Roman Empire, whose knowledge Ptolemy
summarises.

[_Authorities:_ Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography,_ 2 vols.,
1879; Tozer, _History of Ancient Geography,_ 1897.]

CHAPTER II

THE SPREAD OF CONQUEST IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

In a companion volume of this series, "The Story of Extinct
Civilisations in the East," will be found an account of the rise
and development of the various nations who held sway over the west
of Asia at the dawn of history. Modern discoveries of remarkable
interest have enabled us to learn the condition of men in Asia
Minor as early as 4000 B.C. All these early civilisations existed
on the banks of great rivers, which rendered the land fertile through
which they passed.

We first find man conscious of himself, and putting his knowledge
on record, along the banks of the great rivers Nile, Euphrates,
and Tigris, Ganges and Yang-tse-Kiang. But for our purposes we
are not concerned with these very early stages of history. The
Egyptians got to know something of the nations that surrounded
them, and so did the Assyrians. A summary of similar knowledge
is contained in the list of tribes given in the tenth chapter of
Genesis, which divides all mankind, as then known to the Hebrews,
into descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet--corresponding, roughly,
to Asia, Europe, and Africa. But in order to ascertain how the
Romans obtained the mass of information which was summarised for
them by Ptolemy in his great work, we have merely to concentrate
our attention on the remarkable process of continuous expansion
which ultimately led to the existence of the Roman Empire.

All early histories of kingdoms are practically of the same type.
A certain tract of country is divided up among a certain number
of tribes speaking a common language, and each of these tribes
ruled by a separate chieftain. One of these tribes then becomes
predominant over the rest, through the skill in war or diplomacy
of one of its chiefs, and the whole of the tract of country is thus
organised into one kingdom. Thus the history of England relates
how the kingdom of Wessex grew into predominance over the whole
of the country; that of France tells how the kings who ruled over
the Isle of France