the greed of their captors, who forgot that their own relatives and
friends might be carried off and sold across the seas by some other
tribe of blacks.)

When these slaves were kept as the servants of their conquerors, their
number was very small as compared with that of their masters. When, on
the other hand, a tribe settled among a people whom they had
conquered, they often found themselves fewer in numbers, and kept
their leadership only by their greater strength and fighting ability.

Here there had arisen a new situation: all men were no longer equal,
led by a chief of their own choosing, but instead, the greater part of
them now had no voice in the government. They had become subjects,
working to earn their own living and also, as has been said, to
support in idleness their conquerors.

This ability of the few to rule the many and force them to support
their masters was increased as certain peoples learned better than
others how to make strong armor and effective weapons. Nearly five
hundred years before the time of Christ, at the battle of Marathon
(Măr'ȧ thŏn), the Greeks discovered that one Greek, clad
in metal armor and armed with a long spear, was worth ten Persians
wearing leather and carrying a bow and arrows or a short sword. One
hundred and sixty years later, a small army of well-equipped
Macedonian Greeks, led by that wonderful general, Alexander the Great,
defeated nearly forty times its number of Persians in a great battle
in Asia and conquered a vast empire.

[Illustration: Alexander Defeating the Persians]