Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/56

 20 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE ancient times the dyes obtained from the purple fisheries were highly prized. The Roman Empire may be divided into three sections differing in their previous history and civilization; namely, ^. __ M. the Oriental, the Greek or Hellenic, and the Oriental. . . section of Roman- Barbarian. The Oriental section had a the Empire n i story g i n g back at least four or five thousand years in the river- valley civilizations and despotisms of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates. Here are still found to-day magnificent monuments and ruins of stately edifices, an abundance of written records, and evidences of a carefully organized government. and society, of artisans and mathe- maticians, of people with high standards of morality and a belief in a future life and last judgment, and provided with a calendar dividing the year into twelve months and three hundred and sixty-five days, of a city forty miles in circum- ference and trading in gems from India, silks from China, ivory and ostrich feathers from the heart of Africa, — and all this hundreds or thousands of years before Rome had ceased to be a village, before Julius Caesar had added an extra day each leap-year, before Roman jurisprudence had developed, and before Rome's censors and imperators had built a single road or erected one triumphal arch. This cul- ture is also found at an early date in the islands of Cyprus and Crete. In the latter place works of art have recently been excavated worthy of the Greek genius, but made many centuries before the history of Greece begins and at a time when the Orient was the industrial center of the world. The Phoenicians spread this Oriental civilization to various points in the Mediterranean, notably to Carthage in North Africa. Most of Asia Minor is also to be counted within this Oriental section of the Empire. Greek or Hellenic civilization — the Greeks called them- selves "Hellenes" and occupied more territory than is in- The Greek eluded in modern Greece — reached its height section j n the fif^ anc j f our th centuries before Christ. The Hellenes were great colonizers, and lived on the west coast of Asia Minor, in Sicily and southern Italy, and in