was a victory won by men of Greek civilization, but only to a very
partial extent a victory of that civilization. The West did not
assimilate the East except in very small measure then, and has not
assimilated it in any very large measure to this day. For certain
reasons, among which some geographical facts--the large proportion of
steppe-desert and of the human type which such country breeds--are
perhaps the most powerful, the East is obstinately unreceptive of
western influences, and more than once it has taken its captors captive.
Therefore, while, for the sake of convenience and to avoid entanglement
in the very ill-known maze of what is called "Hellenistic" history, I
shall not attempt to follow the consecutive course of events after 330
B.C., I propose to add an epilogue which may prepare readers for what
was destined to come out of Western Asia after the Christian era, and
enable them to understand in particular the religious conquest of the
West by the East. This has been a more momentous fact in the history of
the world than any political conquest of the East by the West.

* * * * *

In the further hope of enabling readers to retain a clear idea of the
evolution of the history, I have adopted the plan of looking out over
the area which is here called the East, at certain intervals, rather
than the alternative and more usual plan of considering events
consecutively in each several part of that area. Thus, without
repetition and overlapping, one may expect to convey a sense of the
history of the whole East as the sum of the histories of particular
parts. The occasions on which the surveys will be taken are purely
arbitrary chronological points two centuries apart. The years 1000, 800,
600, 400 B.C. are not, any of them, distinguished by known events of the
kind that is called epoch-making; nor have round numbers been chosen for