driving new bargains, they became alert, quick-witted, progressive, the
foremost race of all the ancient world.

They do not seem to have been a creative folk. They only adapted and
carried to a higher point what they learned from the older nations with
whom they now came in contact. Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet,
and they began the writing of books. Egypt showed them her records, and,
improving on her idea, they became historians. So far as we know, the
earliest real "histories" were written in Greece; that is, the earliest
accounts of a whole people, an entire series of events, as opposed to
the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments, the
personal, boastful clamor of some king.

Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks
had long been civilized. Their own legends scarce reach back farther
than the first founding of Athens,[13] which they place about B.C. 1500.
Yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the remains of a
civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries.

[Footnote 13: See _Theseus Founds Athens_, page 45.]

But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down
to us is the _Iliad_, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14]
Critics will not permit us to call the _Iliad_ a history, because it was
not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after
the events of which it tells. Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless
enlarges its pictures, brings gods and goddesses before our eyes,
instead of severely excluding everything except what the blind bard
perchance could personally vouch for.