hey now came in contact. Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet,
and they began the writing of books. Egypt showed them her records, and,
improving on her idea, they became historians. So far as we know, the
earliest real "histories" were written in Greece; that is, the earliest
accounts of a whole people, an entire series of events, as opposed to
the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments, the
personal, boastful clamor of some king.

Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks
had long been civilized. Their own legends scarce reach back farther
than the first founding of Athens,[13] which they place about B.C. 1500.
Yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the remains of a
civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries.

[Footnote 13: See _Theseus Founds Athens_, page 45.]

But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down
to us is the _Iliad_, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14]
Critics will not permit us to call the _Iliad_ a history, because it was
not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after
the events of which it tells. Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless
enlarges its pictures, brings gods and goddesses before our eyes,
instead of severely excluding everything except what the blind bard
perchance could personally vouch for.

[Footnote 14: See _Fall of Troy_, page 70.]

Still both the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are good enough history for
most of us, in that they give a full, outline of Grecian life and
society as Homer knew it. We see the little, petty states, with their
chiefs all-powerful, and the people quite ignored. We see the heroes
driving to battle in their chariots, guarded by shield and helmet,
flourishing sword and spear. We learn what Ulysses did not know of
foreign lands.. We hear Achilles' famed lament amid the dead, and note
the vague glimmering idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught
perhaps from the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams.

With the year B.C. 776 we come in contact with a clear marked
chronology. The Greeks themselves reckoned from that date by means of
olympiads or intervals between the Olympic games. The story becomes
clear. The autocratic little city kings, governing almost as they
pleased, have everywhere been displaced by oligarchies. The few leading
nobles may name one of themselves to bear rule, but the real po