r masters. When, on
the other hand, a tribe settled among a people whom they had
conquered, they often found themselves fewer in numbers, and kept
their leadership only by their greater strength and fighting ability.

Here there had arisen a new situation: all men were no longer equal,
led by a chief of their own choosing, but instead, the greater part of
them now had no voice in the government. They had become subjects,
working to earn their own living and also, as has been said, to
support in idleness their conquerors.

This ability of the few to rule the many and force them to support
their masters was increased as certain peoples learned better than
others how to make strong armor and effective weapons. Nearly five
hundred years before the time of Christ, at the battle of Marathon
(Mar'a thon), the Greeks discovered that one Greek, clad
in metal armor and armed with a long spear, was worth ten Persians
wearing leather and carrying a bow and arrows or a short sword. One
hundred and sixty years later, a small army of well-equipped
Macedonian Greeks, led by that wonderful general, Alexander the Great,
defeated nearly forty times its number of Persians in a great battle
in Asia and conquered a vast empire.

[Illustration: Alexander Defeating the Persians]

In later times, as better and better armor was made, the question of
wealth entered in. The chief who had money enough to buy the best arms
for his men could defeat his poorer neighbor and force him to pay
money as to a ruler. Finally, in the so-called "Middle Ages," before
the invention of gunpowder, one knight, armed from crown to sole in
steel, was worth in battle as much as one hundred poorly-armed farmers
or "peasants" as they are called in Europe.

In the "Dark Ages,"[2] after all these barbarians that we have
named had swarmed over Europe, and before the governments of modern
times were fully grown, there were hundreds of robber chiefs, who,
scattered throughout a country, were in the habit of collecting
tribute at the point of the sword from the peaceful peasants who lived
near. This tribute they collected in some cases, regularly, a fixed
amount each month or year, just as if they had a right to collect it,
like a government tax collector. It might be money or food or fodder,
or fuel. The robber chiefs were well armed themselves and were able to
give good weapons and armor to their men, who lived either in the
chief's castle or in small houses built ver