before us in its successive stages, it presents four great phases
of development--the history of the Coptic or Egyptian stock dwelling
on the southern shore, the history of the Aramaean or Syrian nation
which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of
Asia as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, and the histories of the
twin-peoples, the Hellenes and Italians, who received as their heritage
the countries on the European shore. Each of these histories was
in its earlier stages connected with other regions and with other
cycles of historical evolution; but each soon entered on its own
distinctive career. The surrounding nations of alien or even of
kindred extraction--the Berbers and Negroes of Africa, the Arabs,
Persians, and Indians of Asia, the Celts and Germans of Europe--came
into manifold contact with the peoples inhabiting the borders of
the Mediterranean, but they neither imparted unto them nor received
from them any influences exercising decisive effect on their
respective destinies. So far, therefore, as cycles of culture admit
of demarcation at all, the cycle which has its culminating points
denoted by the names Thebes, Carthage, Athens, and Rome, may be
regarded as an unity. The four nations represented by these names,
after each of them had attained in a path of its own a peculiar
and noble civilization, mingled with one another in the most varied
relations of reciprocal intercourse, and skilfully elaborated and
richly developed all the elements of human nature. At length their
cycle was accomplished. New peoples who hitherto had only laved
the territories of the states of the Mediterranean, as waves lave
the beach, overflowed both its shores, severed the history of its
south coast from that of the north, and transferred the centre of
civilization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. The
distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no
mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience.