Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/180

 I40 Outlines of Ej trope an History among all classes.^ Literature, nevertheless, long remained an oral matter and was much slower than business to resort to writing. The Greeks often called the Egyptian paper, brought in by the Phoenicians, byblos^ after the name of the Phoenician city by way of which it came. Thus when they began to write books on rolls of such paper (Fig. 104) they called them biblia. It is from this term that we received our word " Bible " (literally "book" or "books"), and hence the English word "Bible," once the name of a Phoenician city, is a living evidence of the origin of books and the paper they are made of, in the ancient Orient, from which the Greek received so much. There was now wide intercourse among the Greek states ; the constant commingling of their interests, the ebb and flow of their material life, developed and refined the Greek mind. The life which the Hellenes now led was much richer and more highly developed than that of their rude nomad ancestors. The contests in feats of arms and athletic games with which they had been accustomed to honor the burial of a hero in earlier days finally came to be practiced at stated seasons in honor of the gods. As early as 776 B.C. such contests were celebrated as public festivals at Olympia. Repeated eveiy four years, they eventually aroused the interest and participation of all Greece. Later, similar contests were also established elsewhere (Figs. 81, 82). Various Greek states offered money prizes to the victors, and the winners were regarded as having gained undying fame both for themselves and the fortunate cities to which they belonged. They v/ere finally celebrated by the 1 Few Greek inscriptions now surdving are as early as the seventh century B.C. The eariiest inscription dated with precision belongs a little after 600 B.C. The written list of victors in the Olympian games went back to 776 B.C. 2 In view of the fact that the Egyptians were exporting papyrus paper to Byblos by the 12th century B.C., it is evident that the Greeks called it byblos because they received it from there, as we call stuff from Damascus " damask," and from Calicut " calico." Another Greek word for Egyptian paper was "papyros," hence our word "paper" (see p. 23, note i).