The Project Gutenberg EBook of Xerxes, by Jacob Abbott

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Xerxes
Makers of History

Author: Jacob Abbott

Release Date: May 6, 2008 [EBook #25351]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK XERXES ***

Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

Makers of History

Xerxes

BY JACOB ABBOTT

WITH ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Copyright, 1878, by JACOB ABBOTT

[Illustration: ARTABANUS AND THE GHOST]

PREFACE.

One special object which the author of this series has had in view, in
the plan and method which he has followed in the preparation of the
successive volumes, has been to adapt them to the purposes of text-books
in schools. The study of a _general compend_ of history, such as is
frequently used as a text-book, is highly useful, if it comes in at the
right stage of education, when the mind is sufficiently matured, and has
acquired sufficient preliminary knowledge to understand and appreciate
so condensed a generalization as a summary of the whole history of a
nation contained in an ordinary volume must necessarily be. Without this
degree of maturity of mind, and this preparation, the study of such a
work will be, as it too frequently is, a mere mechanical committing to
memory of names, and dates, and phrases, which awaken no interest,
communicate no ideas, and impart no useful knowledge to the mind.

A class of ordinary pupils, who have not yet become much acquainted with
history, would, accordingly, be more benefited by having their attention
concentrated, at first, on detached and separate topics, such as those
which form the subjects, respectively, of these volumes. By studying
thus fully the history of individual monarchs, or the narratives of
single events, they can go more fully into detail; they conceive of the
tr