SYRIA: THE LAND LINK OF HISTORY'S CHAIN 



455 



Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams 



where Christ's disciples were first caeeed christians 



Antioch, although the cradle of Gentile Christianity, was a gay and voluptuous city at 

 the beginning of the Christian Era, as one may judge from reading "Ben Hur." Today it is 

 important chiefly for its export of hundreds of tons of licorice for flavoring tobacco. The 

 capture of pleasure-loving Antioch by the Persians under Sapor was a dramatic page in a 

 theatrical history. According to the traditional account, while the favorite actress was enter- 

 taining the purple-clad citizens with all the seductive skill of the Oriental, a look of horror 

 came to her painted face. Her bare white arm pointed to the mountainside behind the 

 amphitheater, and as the spectators turned, the javelins of Sapor's hosts transfixed them in 

 their seats. Like the dwellers in Herculaneum, disaster befell them at an instant when the 

 pleasure of the flesh had banished from their fickle minds all thought of death. 



situation was never borne in on me as 

 strongly as when I taught a course in 

 universal history in that cosmopolitan 

 university of 1,100 students, representing 

 a dozen races and a half dozen religions. 

 When the class was studying Egyptian his- 

 tory, there were three or four Egyptian 

 members who had devoted the best years 

 of their early life to memorizing the feats 

 of the Pharaohs. By the time the lesson 



turned to Greek history the eight or nine 

 Greeks in the class saw this as their 

 grand opportunity to dazzle the others 

 with the splendor of the age of Pericles, 

 and those who were interested in ath- 

 letics introduced the name of the original 

 Marathon runner in order to impress the 

 non-Greeks and embarrass their teacher. 

 Mohammedan history divided the class 

 into two factions. Christian and Moslem. 



