THE EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 65 



called literature. But they are history, and an expansion of Greek 

 history of the highest interest. There were no doubt Egyptian fea- 

 tures, as there were Persian features and Syrian features elsewhere in 

 this civilization, but the whole of it bears the impress of the one great 

 nationality which stamped it upon the world. It has been well 

 shown by more than one modern historian 1 that even the oriental 

 reactions against the West, even the Indian and Parthian monarchies 

 that repudiated Hellenism, owed a great part of their strength to the 

 new life which Alexander brought into the disorganized systems of 

 the East; it is perhaps more remarkable that a Prussian government 

 official, examining the bureaus and the red tape of the Greek papyri, 

 can tell us that all the official life of our own day, with the exception 

 perhaps of the transmission of checks through private hands, can be 

 found among the Greeks of two thousand years ago. 2 It is an inherit- 

 ance from them through the Roman Empire, which few of us had 

 suspected. Not till we unearthed the clay figurines from Tanegra did 

 we learn how the ordinary Greek lady dressed, in contrast to our 

 knowledge frqm many ideal statues by great artists how the Greek 

 goddess undressed. There is as great a contrast between the 

 stately periods of the studied orator and the curt indorsements of the 

 overworked official. I heard not long ago a great English banker, 3 with 

 the self-complacency of his race, attribute the invention of banking to 

 his earliest predecessors in London. He might have learned from the 

 very name " Lombard Street " that he was wrong; he may now learn 

 from a whole literature on the money and corn banks of Egypt, that 

 there were many " brave men before Agamemnon." 4 



When we consider the effect of all these studies and discoveries 

 upon the general influence which Hellenic civilization has had, or will 

 have, on the culture of the twentieth century, we must be prepared 

 to meet the objection more widely felt than formulated, that all this 

 study of lesser and later Greek history is likely to dilute the strong 

 impression which the noblest and best epoch made upon our fathers. 

 There was then a strict selection of what was pure; all that was 

 supposed degenerate and second-rate was neglected, and this is why 

 Greek culture has maintained its supremacy till the present day. 

 Why study Polybius or Diodorus when we have Thucydides and 

 Herodotus? Why study Callimachus when we have Pindar? Are not 

 a few acknowledged masters sufficient to maintain the Greek in- 

 fluence on modern culture? These objections are true, indeed, but 

 only true from a special standpoint. For the education of the young 

 in any literature, we are bound, by natural selection, to choose first 



1 Niese, Gesch. des Hellenist. Zeitalters ; Bevan, The House of Seleucus. 



2 Preisigke, " Griech. Pap. Urkunden u. Bureaudienst im griech. rom. aegyp- 

 ten," Archiv fur Post u. Telegraphic, 1904. 



3 Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury). 



4 Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona. Horace, Od. iv, 9, 25. 



