THE ETHICS OF THE ANCIENT 261 



victims until ' its wheels were clogged with flesh 

 and blood.' ' Evidently,' remarks Spencer, in 

 speaking of these monstrous inscriptions, ' the 

 expectation was that men of after-times would 

 admire these merciless destructions ; for we cannot 

 assume that these Assyrian kings intentionally 

 made themselves eternally infamous ' (i). 



To the ancient Greeks there were two classes of 

 human beings in the world : Greeks and ' barbar- 

 ians.' The Greeks were the inhabitants of Hellas, 

 which was believed to be the central region of 

 the world, and the ' barbarians ' were the godless 

 denizens of the less-favoured and less centrally 

 located remainder of the earth. The world was 

 believed to be flat or shield-shaped, and in its 

 exact centre stood Mount Olympus in northern 

 Thessaly. This mountain, which is 9,700 feet 

 high, was supposed to be the highest elevation on 

 the earth, and was the awful abode of the gods. 

 The Greeks called themselves Hellenes. According 

 to their fabled genealogy, they were the descend- 

 ants of Hellen, son of Deucalion, the Greek Noah. 

 While they were often at war with each other, 

 they spoke a common language, and always 

 regarded themselves as members of a single 

 family. All non-Greeks were ' barbarians,' in- 

 cluding the Romans, who were called 'barbarians' 

 down to the time of Augustus. While the Greeks 

 themselves traced their ancestry back to the bright 

 blood of the gods, the ' barbarians ' were generally 

 supposed to have originated from stones and trees. 

 The ' barbarians ' were looked upon and treated 



