er reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or four
weeks."]

Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek tendency to
trade and colonization. Their mental activity was accompanied by great
physical freedom of movement. They displayed an inherent disposition to
extensive emigration. "Without aiming at universal conquest, they
developed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of
character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called
Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the
Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley
which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of the Nile. The Hellenic
tribes, on the other hand, though they despised the foreigners, were
never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At
the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see
them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of
their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the Christian
era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to
advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies; and lower Italy,
when the Roman Republic was just becoming conscious of its strength, had
received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried
their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their
amusements.... They were gradually taking the place of the Phoenicians
in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively
mercantile than those old discoverers. Their voyages were not so long.
But their influence on general civilization was greater and more
permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are
due to the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo, are
our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul's
journeys.

"With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to
appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took the meshes
of the net of Greek civilization which were lying in disorder on the
edge of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries he
traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were
suddenly brought together. Separate tribes were united under a common
government. New cities were built as the centres of political life. New
lines of communication were opened as the channels of commercial
activi