The Greatest Story in the World, Period 1 by Horace G. Hutchinson

It is amusing to stop now and then in the course of a story to wonder / how it would have gone if one or other of the events in it had / happened rather differently. Sometimes it seems as if just one event / turned the whole course of what happened afterwards.

So here in this great story of ours we may wonder what would have / happened to the world if the Persians, pushing their way westward, / had not come up against that strong wall of opposition which they / found in the Greek phalanx. There was no other power, so far as we / know, at this time, in the west, that was at all likely to be able to / stop them.

If we look at what happened in the more southward direction of their / advance, in Egypt, we shall perhaps be inclined to think that they / would not have gone very much farther westward than they did, for the / Egyptian story of that time shows that they were not able to / establish their power very securely in that country. For nearly / forty years after the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, the son / of Cyrus, Egypt was held as a province of Persia, but in 488 B. C. the / Egyptians made a successful revolt and threw off the Persian yoke for / a time. Three years later they were again subdued by Xerxes, who was / then king of Persia, but only fifteen years afterwards they were / {130} again revolting, and through the whole of that century, 500 to / 400 B. C., they were continually rising against their Persian masters, / never quite succeeding in winning their freedom, but constantly / giving trouble, never completely subdued. It is evident that the / Persians, after their first and most effective conquest, never had a / very secure hold over the people of the Nile.

Then, if we turn to look at what was going on farther north, where / the Persian cavalry were coming up against that famous Greek phalanx, / we shall see good reason why the Persians were not able to give a / great deal of attention to making their position good in Egypt. The / wonder is that they should have found any forces at all to spare for / that enterprise.

The Persian monarch had assumed the title of King of Kings. He / claimed dominion over the whole world, as the Persians knew it. It / must have been most vexatious to him, and to that great claim and / title of his, to find the claim opposed and contested. He had / conquered Greeks before -- those Spartans whom he had met fighting in / the alliance under King Crœsus. He would conquer them again. He / would crush them and take possession of their country.

After all that they had accomplished, the conquest of Greece cannot / have seemed to the Persians as if it would be a hard matter. Greece, / as a single nation, did not exist. There were many Grecian states, / but they were always fighting among themselves, each striving for the / supremacy. The chief of the fighting states were Sparta and Athens. / Each of these would form alliances from time to time with other / states to fight against the other. Just at this moment, that is just / before 500 B. C., the contention between them was most severe. The / forms of the government in the two {131} were sharply opposed. The / government of Athens had lately fallen into the hands of the people. / The people, the democracy (from _demos_, the people, and _kratos_, / power) had deposed their king and driven him out of the country. The / Spartans, who hated the idea of a democratic government, sympathised / with him, and no doubt would have restored him to power had they been / able to do so; but he went to Asia Minor, to the court of Darius, who / was then king of Persia, and besought his help. The Persian was very / willing to give it, but it was not until some years later, in 490 / B. C., that the first actual invasion of Greece by the Persians took / place. That invasion practically began and ended with what was one / of the most famous battles in the world's history, the battle of / Marathon.

[Sidenote: Marathon]

It was fought on a small plain, only some three miles wide, on the / seashore, where the Persians had disembarked their forces. And here / I would give you a word of warning which must apply to all this story / of the glorious days of Greece. The battles -- Marathon, Thermopyle, / and Salamis -- have become very famous, and rightly famous. They were / of importance in the story because they -- Marathon and Salamis, at all / events, which were Grecian victories -- put a stop to that westward / advance of the Persians which might have extended we cannot say how / far but for those victories. But they were battles in which the / forces engaged on the one side or the other were almost ridiculously / small in comparison with the armies which we have seen put into the / field. They were fought over very small spaces of land or sea, and / they were very quickly over.

But though they are rightly famous, for the reason which I have / spoken of, a good deal of their fame is due to the splendid way in / which their story has been told {132} to us by the great historian / Herodotus, and, as you know, the best story in the world can be made / to seem very poor if it is badly told; and a poor story can be made / interesting by good telling. These people, these Greeks, with their / extraordinary accomplishments, had the power of telling stories very / well, and the stories really were good in themselves. They were good / stories, and stories of important events, but the events are rather / apt to appear even more important than they really were, just because / their story is told so very well.

That is the word of warning which I want to give you about all these / stories of the glorious days of Greece.