Evening star., 1927-11-20
BY WILL DURANT, Ph. D.,
Author of
"The Story Of Philosophy"

as Greeks. The earnest nOFueS Cdileo
themselves Achaeans; they appeared
about 1000 B. c., worked their way
slowly to the southern coast. drove
out the Cretans who had settled on
the mainland and destroyed the cities
of Tiryns and Mycenae. Five centu'
ries later the half-savage Dorians
came, sailed over the Gulf of Argos
(ca 1900 B. C) and laid the palaces
Of Cnossos in ruins. The cultured and
pacific Cretans fed, as the Greeks
were to do a millennium later before
the barbarians of Macedon and Rome.
Many Of them went to Asia Minor and
became the Philistines of Biblical his
tory: but the people were never re-
united and the nation was destroyed.
The conquering Achaeans intermar-
ried with the Cretans and took from
them something of moral refinement
and decorative art. The nomads in
turn settled down, tending sheep and
growing grapes or olives on the rug
ged hills. They lived in crude houses
of brick or stone or wood; but as the
sun almost always shone upon them
they stayed for the most part out of
doors and became lively and social
race, all the world away from the tacl-
turn and domestic north European
peoples whom the long Winter drives
INTO SeCreLlFS CdStlS IlOIilGos
y - X
They had no government in those
early days 1000 B. C0 beyond the will
and arm of their warrior chief. The
separating hills made each tribe. and
later each city-state, pugnaciously
sovereign; and the natural organiza-
| ton of people passing from war to
settled life was a feudalism in which
each village gave it's allegiance and its
tithes to the strongest man. These
chieftains dwelt in rough but massive
palaces, with many wives and many
slaves; but even these conveniences
could not lure them from the drama
and poetry of war. Learning from
| the Phoenicians the art of building
ships, they took to the sea. beginning
with piracy and graduating into trade.
| The arid soil they lived on gave them
very little wheat; unless they could
exchange their surplus wines and oils
| for bread they would slowly starve.
| And so. having become seamen, like
| the English, because surrounded by
the sea, they became imperialists. like
the English, because they were COM
PEELED to import food.
| But they found the way barred al
most everywhere by the Phoenicians.
These subtle Semites were specialists
in trade; they had learned the art from
Egypt, and when Crete fell they had
! inherited the commercial supremacy
of the Western World. From Tyre
and Sidon and Biblos their great ships
sailed to Crete. and Egypt, and Garth
age, and Sicily, and Rome, and Spain,
md Greece, and Troy. About $50 B. &.
they circumnavigated Africa through
Suez. coming back audaciously through
Gibraltar, the ne plus ultra Of the
ancient mariner. Everywhere they
founded colonies and taught people
writing and arithmetic for the pur-
poses Of trade. It was from them, OF
course. that the Greeks received the
alphabet which is now our own.
| But such gifts were nothing to the
Greeks so long as the Phoenicians
were masters of the Mediterranean.
The chieftains and seamen OF the new
race were tempted to navigation by
other things than bread; the wind blew
| regularly eastward in the morning.
and regularly westward in the late
afternoon, between Asia Minor and
| Greece: and the islands that were in
| laid upon the glittering Aegean made
! travel so safe that in fair weather
one might row from Europe to Asia
| with the isles as friendly stepping.
stones. All things were favorable ex-
cept the Phoenicians.
To destroy them it was only neces-
sary to capture Troy. For that city
won. the route through the Black Sea
would be held by Greece; and the
cheapness of water transport would
soon draw trade away from the slow
| lov Urn n
ports of Phoenicia from the East.
With the iron and minerals Of the
Black Seas shores the Greeks would
be ready to play lofty role in history.
! And so, some thousand years before
| Christ. the chieftains mustered their
men from the hills and fields, told
them how villainous Trojan had raw.
ished a Greek princess Of unspeakahle
| CONTINUED on Sixteenth Page)