Arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose
pleasure, of the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors.
As we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or become
effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them. We
see the whole race visibly degenerate, until one questions if
Marathon[12] were after all so marvellous a victory, and suspects that
at whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe they
would have been easily hurled back.

[Footnote 12: See _The Battle of Marathon_, page 322.]

It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a temperate
climate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recent
speculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home, from
which they had strayed toward Asia, and to which they now returned.
Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop.
Earliest of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modern
heritage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the European
continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came the
Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a single
migration, that spread westward along the islands and peninsulas of the
Mediterranean. The Teutons may have left Asia before B.C. 1000, for they
seem to have reached their German forests by three centuries beyond that
time, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. The latest
Aryan wave, that of the Slavs, came well within historic times. We
almost fancy we can see its movement. Russian statesmen, indeed, have
hopes that this is not yet completed. They dream that they, the youngest
of the peoples, are yet to dominate the whole.