A Short History of the World, H. G. Wells [beach books .TXT] 📗

GARDEN IN ENGLAND
Given wisdom, all mankind might live in such gardens

But if the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past, it is because science has brought him such powers as he never had before. And the scientific method of fearless thought, exhaustively lucid statement, and exhaustively criticized planning, which has given him these as yet uncontrollable powers, gives him also the hope of controlling these powers. Man is still only adolescent. His troubles are not the troubles of senility and exhaustion but of increasing and still undisciplined strength. When we look at all history as one process, as we have been doing in this book, when we see the steadfast upward struggle of life towards vision and control, then we see in their true proportions the hopes and dangers of the present time. As yet we are hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness. But in the beauty of flower and sunset, in the happy and perfect movement of young animals and in the delight of ten thousand various landscapes, we have some intimations of what life can do for us, and in some few works of plastic and pictorial art, in some great music, in a few noble buildings and happy gardens, we have an intimation of what the human will can do with material possibilities. We have dreams; we have at present undisciplined but ever increasing power. Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, that it will live, the children of our blood and lives will live, in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state, and all this history we have told, form but the prelude to the things that man has got to do.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

About the year 1000 B.C. the Aryan peoples were establishing themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy and the Balkans, and they were established in North India; Cnossos was already destroyed and the spacious times of Egypt, of Thothmes III, Amenophis III and Rameses II were three or four centuries away. Weak monarchs of the XXIst Dynasty were ruling in the Nile Valley. Israel was united under her early kings; Saul or David or possibly even Solomon may have been reigning. Sargon I (2750 B.C.) of the Akkadian Sumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian history, more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world of the present day. Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. The Assyrians were already dominating the less military Babylonians. In 1100 B.C. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. But there was no permanent conquest; Assyria and Babylonia were still separate empires. In China the new Chow dynasty was flourishing. Stonehenge in England was already some hundreds of years old.

The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the XXIInd Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans, South Italy and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan predominance in Central Italy. We begin our list of ascertainable dates with

B.C.        800.    The building of Carthage. 790.    The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth Dynasty).   776.    First Olympiad.   753.    Rome built.   745.    Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded the New Assyrian Empire.   722.    Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons.   721.    He deported the Israelites.   680.    Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the Ethiopian XXVth Dynasty).   664.    Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the XXVIth Dynasty (to 610).   608.    Necho of Egypt defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at the battle of Megiddo.   606.    Capture of Nineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes.      Foundation of the Chaldean Empire.   604.    Necho pushed to the Euphrates and was overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar II.      (Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon.)   550.    Cyrus the Persian succeeded Cyaxares the Mede.      Cyrus conquered Crœsus.      Buddha lived about this time.      So also did Confucius and Lao Tse.   539.    Cyrus took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire.   521.    Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, ruled from the Hellespont to the Indus.      His expedition to Scythia.  

490.    Battle of Marathon.   480.    Battles of Thermopylï and Salamis.   479.    The battles of Platea and Mycale completed the repulse of Persia.   474.    Etruscan fleet destroyed by the Sicilian Greeks.   431.    Peloponnesian War began (to 404)   401.    Retreat of the Ten Thousand.   359.    Philip became king of Macedonia.   338.    Battle of Chïronia.   336.    Macedonian troops crossed into Asia. Philip murdered.   334.    Battle of the Granicus.   333.    Battle of Issus.   331.    Battle of Arbela.   330.    Darius III killed.   323.    Death of Alexander the Great.   321.    Rise of Chandragupta in the Punjab.      The Romans completely beaten by the Samnites at the battle of the Caudine Forks.   281.    Pyrrhus invaded Italy.   280.    Battle of Heraclea.   279.    Battle of Ausculum.   278.    Gauls raided into Asia Minor and settled in Galatia.   275.    Pyrrhus left Italy.   264.    First Punic War. (Asoka began to reign in Behar—to 227.)   260.    Battle of Mylï.   256.    Battle of Ecnomus.   246.    Shi-Hwang-ti became King of Ts’in.   220.    Shi-Hwang-ti became Emperor of China.   214.    Great Wall of China begun.   210.    Death of Shi-Hwang-ti.   202.    Battle of Zama.   146.    Carthage destroyed.   133.    Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to Rome.   102.    Marius drove back Germans.   100.    Triumph of Marius. (Chinese conquering the Tarim valley.)   89.    All Italians became Roman citizens.   73.    The revolt of the slaves under Spartacus.   71.    Defeat and end of Spartacus.   66.    Pompey led Roman troops to the Caspian and Euphrates. He encountered the Alani.   48.    Julius Cïsar defeated Pompey at Pharsalos.   44.    Julius Cïsar assassinated.   27.    Augustus Cïsar princeps (until 14 A.D.).   4.    True date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth.   A.D.    Christian Era began.   14.    Augustus died. Tiberius emperor.   30.    Jesus of Nazareth crucified.   41.    Claudius (the first emperor of the legions) made emperor by pretorian guard after murder of Caligula.   68.    Suicide of Nero. (Galba, Otho, Vitellus, emperors in succession.)   69.    Vespasian.   102.    Pan Chau on the Caspian Sea.   117.    Hadrian succeeded Trajan. Roman Empire at its greatest extent.   138.    (The Indo-Scythians at this time were destroying the last traces of Hellenic rule in India.)   161.    Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antoninus Pius.   164.    Great plague began, and lasted to the death of M. Aurelius (180). This also devastated all Asia.      (Nearly a century of war and disorder began in the Roman Empire.)   220.    End of the Han dynasty. Beginning of four hundred years of division in China.   227.    Ardashir I (first Sassanid shah) put an end to Arsacid line in Persia.   242.    Mani began his teaching.   247.    Goths crossed Danube in a great raid.   251.    Great victory of Goths. Emperor Decius killed.   260.    Sapor I, the second Sassanid shah, took Antioch, captured the Emperor Valerian, and was cut up on his return from Asia Minor by Odenathus of Palmyra.  

277.    Mani crucified in Persia.   284.    Diocletian became emperor.   303.    Diocletian persecuted the Christians.   311.    Galerius abandoned the persecution of the Christians.   312.    Constantine the Great became emperor.   323.    Constantine presided over the Council of Nicïa.   337.    Constantine baptized on his deathbed.   361-3.    Julian the Apostate attempted to substitute Mithraism for Christianity.   392.    Theodosius the Great emperor of east and west.   395.    Theodosius the Great died. Honorius and Arcadius redivided the empire with Stilicho and Alaric as their masters and protectors.   410.    The Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome.   425.    Vandals settling in south of Spain. Huns in Pannonia, Goths in Dalmatia. Visigoths and Suevi in Portugal and North Spain. English invading Britain.   439.    Vandals took Carthage.   451.    Attila raided Gaul and was defeated by Franks, Alemanni and Romans at Troyes.   453.    Death of Attila.   455.    Vandals sacked Rome.   470.    Odoacer, king of a medley of Teutonic tribes, informed Constantinople that there was no emperor in the West. End of the Western Empire.   493.    Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, conquered Italy and became King of Italy, but was nominally subject to Constantinople. (Gothic kings in Italy. Goths settled on special confiscated lands as a garrison.)   527.    Justinian emperor.   529.    Justinian closed the schools at Athens, which had flourished nearly a thousand years. Belisarius (Justinian’s general) took Naples.   531.    Chosroes I began to reign.   543.    Great plague in Constantinople.   553.    Goths expelled from Italy by Justinian. Justinian died. The Lombards conquered most of North Italy (leaving Ravenna and Rome Byzantine).   570.    Muhammad born.   579.    Chosroes I died.      (The Lombards dominant in Italy.)   590.    Plague raged in