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August 26 - August 29, 2023
The Battle of Marathon didn’t end the war, though. The Persians and Greeks went on fighting until the Greeks finally defeated the Persians, once and for all, in a great sea battle at a place called Salamis. After the Battle of Salamis (which took place in 480 BC/BCE) the Persians finally gave up attacking Greece. The Greek cities would remain free and independent from Persia.
They became famous for their architecture—the way they designed and built buildings. The Greeks built enormous buildings from marble. One of the most famous Greek buildings is called the Parthenon. The Parthenon was a temple built in honor of Athena, the Greek goddess of war. Its ruins still stand in Greece, in the city of Athens, on a hill called the Acropolis. Inside the Parthenon were pictures, carved in marble, of different Greek battles.
So instead of remaining on friendly terms, Sparta and Athens began to fight with each other again. The war between Sparta and Athens began in 431 BC/BCE. It had a very long name—the Peloponnesian War. And the Peloponnesian War went on for a long time, over 25 years.
The plague was a sickness spread by the fleas that lived on rats. But the Athenians didn’t know this. They just knew that people were getting sick and dying all over the city. They couldn’t leave the city, because of the Spartan army camped outside. And inside the city, sickness was everywhere.
So late one night, the traitor led the Spartans into his own city. The Spartan army captured Athens and took over. Sparta became the strongest city in Greece. But most of the Athenian men and many of the Spartan soldiers had died in the long, long Peloponnesian War. Now Greece no longer had the men they needed to keep other invaders away. The Greeks had spent all their energy fighting each other; they had none left to defend themselves.
In this case, the bully was a king named Philip, who ruled a country called Macedonia. Philip noticed that Athens and Sparta had become weaker and weaker after years of battle. And so he came down into Greece with his army and conquered the Greek cities. They barely had enough energy to resist.
But before he could attack Persia, Philip died. And his son Alexander took over his throne. Do you know what the name Alexander means? It means “ruler of men.” Alexander became the most famous “ruler of men” ever. He was known by the whole world as “Alexander the Great.”
When Alexander met the Persian army in Asia Minor, he used his cavalry—soldiers riding on horseback—to push the Persians back. Asia Minor was now his.
He went south into Egypt and was crowned the pharaoh of Egypt. And then he came back up into Mesopotamia and took over the rest of the Persian Empire. Now Alexander was king of more land than anyone else had ever ruled. He was truly “Alexander the Great”—the ruler of the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Alexander’s army began to invade India. Alexander learned how to use elephants in combat. And his soldiers won most of their battles. But the Indians who fought against Alexander were fierce warriors as well. Even though the soldiers from Macedonia won many battles, more and more of them died claiming these victories. Finally, Alexander’s army mutinied. After a particularly difficult battle, in which over a thousand soldiers were killed or badly wounded, the army refused to go any further. “Be content with what you have!” they told Alexander. “We don’t want to go on dying to make your empire
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Finally Alexander agreed. He gave up trying to take over the rest of India.
Alexander wanted the people of the future to remember what a great ruler he was. And he knew that cities last for years and years. So he built new cities all over his empire. He named many of these cities after himself: Alexandria. Some of these cities still stand today.
The most famous city called Alexandria is in Egypt. Alexandria was built near the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea, so that merchants could reach it easily by ship.
Just outside Alexandria was the biggest lighthouse in the world. It was called the Pharos, and it was 330 feet tall. Ships could see it from miles away.
We learned that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Great Pyramid are two of the Seven Wonders. The Pharos is the third. No one had ever seen a lighthouse as large as this one.
Alexander the Great became king when he was only twenty.
Alexander died suddenly when he was only thirty-two. He was planning on taking an expedition with his army when he began to feel weak. He decided to wait a day or two until he felt better.
Alexander’s generals knew that no one else could keep control of Alexander’s large empire. Only Alexander could manage to rule such a huge kingdom. So they divided it up. One of the generals took Macedonia and the northern part of Alexander’s kingdom in Asia Minor. Another general, named Ptolemy I, took over Egypt. His family would rule Egypt for three hundred years. Ptolemy was responsible for finishing the city of Alexandria; he built a huge library in Alexandria and filled it with books. A third general, named Seleucus, took over the southern part of Asia Minor and Alexander’s lands in
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Philip conquered the Greek city states in 338 BC/BCE. Alexander the Great ruled from 336–323 BC/BCE.
Like the people of ancient Africa, the people of the Americas didn’t leave written records behind them. So we don’t know as much about them as we know about the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Greeks.
One of these South American tribes was called the Nazca. They lived along the rivers of South America in a place that is now called Peru.
More than two thousand years after the Nazca lived in South America, an airplane flew over Peru. The pilot looked down. He saw a drawing of a monkey—a drawing that covered hundreds of feet of ground. The lines of the drawing were scraped into the earth. From down on the ground, the drawings couldn’t be seen.
The Olmecs were the first civilization in Central America. They built a big city, now called San Lorenzo, in the country that we now call Mexico. The city stood up on top of a huge hill. The most important people—leaders, priests, and rich men—lived up in the city. Poor people and farmers lived down at the foot of the hill, on the plain. They grew crops on the plain and sent them up for the important people to eat.
At the center of the city, on top of the hill, the Olmecs built a huge pyramid of dirt and clay. The platform was so high that it could be seen by someone standing miles away.
The Olmec heads are probably sculptures of important rulers. But none of these stone rulers has a body. The heads sit directly on the ground, as though an enormous stone person had been buried in the dirt up to his neck. And the heads are enormous—as big as nine feet tall.
The ancient North Americans didn’t settle down in one place and own houses. Instead, they lived like nomads.
The legend of Romulus and Remus tells us that Romulus was the first king of Rome. Other stories about ancient Rome say that he was the first of seven kings of Rome.
The most important Italian tribe was called the Etruscans. The Etruscans lived north of Rome, in the hills and mountains of Italy. They liked music and art, and painted pictures that we can still see today. The Etruscans also grew crops, made weapons and jewelry out of metal, and sailed back and forth between Greece and Italy, trading with the Greeks. On these trips, the Etruscans learned how to use the Greek alphabet and worship the Greek gods. The Roman kings fought with the Etruscans. But they also traded with them, and learned from them. The Etruscans taught the Romans how to dress like
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The Etruscan kings also carried a bundle of rods with an axe blade in it, as a symbol of royal power.
The Romans liked this symbol of power, which was called the fasces. Soon Roman kings, like Etruscan kings, wore special purple-bordered togas and carried fasces.
The fasces showed how powerful the king was. But after seven kings, the people of Rome decided that the king had too much power. They didn’t like living in a monarchy—a country where the king was in charge. Instead, they wanted Rome to be a place where the people could help make the laws and choose the leaders.
The city of Athens was a democracy, where the people voted on their laws and leaders. But Rome didn’t become a democracy like Athens, though. In Athens, all the men who weren’t slaves could vote about laws and leaders. But in Rome, only rich and powerful men called patricians were allowed to have a say in the government. Two of these patricians were appointed by the other patricians to be the leaders of the city. They were called consuls. The Romans thought that having two leaders, instead of one king, would keep any one man from getting too much power. The two consuls were supposed to keep an
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The Romans took the Greek gods as their own. They worshipped the gods of Greece. But they called these Greek gods by their own, Roman names.
In Rome, Zeus was called Jupiter. He controlled the sky, the moon, and the weather: wind, rain, and thunder. Today, we call one of the planets in our solar system Jupiter, after the Roman name of the king of the gods. The planet Mars is also named after a Roman god—the god of war. And do you remember the god of the sea, Poseidon, who tried to keep Odysseus from getting home? The Romans called this sea god Neptune. Our solar system also has a planet named Neptune.
The Romans weren’t content just to stay in their little city of Rome. The bigger the city got, the more land the Romans wanted. And the best way to get land was to take it from other towns and tribes. So the Romans attacked their neighbors and conquered them. The more land they conquered, the richer they got. Soon, Rome controlled the whole Italian peninsula.
Now that Rome ruled all of Italy, the Romans needed to be able to travel easily from one end of the peninsula to the others. So they began to build roads.
The Romans became famous for their beautiful roads. The most famous of all Roman roads was called the Appian Way. It led from Rome to several large Roman cities in Italy. The Appian Way can still be used today. Roman roads were so well built that they lasted for hundreds of years. Today, many roads in Italy still follow the tracks of the old Roman roads.
The Romans were the first ancient people to use concrete.
Today, the ruins of Roman roads, buildings, baths, and aqueducts can still be found in the places where the Romans lived—even though they were built more than two thousand years ago.
Some of the historians who lived in Rome thought that this bloodthirstiness was wrong and evil. They wrote about men like Servius who refused to kill their opponents in the arena. Some even killed themselves so that they would not be forced to kill other men.
Carthage made a lot of money trading with cities all around the Mediterranean Sea. They wanted to keep on trading with these cities, and they didn’t want Rome to get in the way! But the Romans also wanted to trade with these cities without Carthage interfering. So Rome and Carthage began to fight. They fought for years and years and years. These wars were called the Punic Wars. They began in 264 BC/BCE. And they didn’t finally end until 146 BC/BCE, over a hundred years later.
At first, Carthage had the advantage because it had a navy—soldiers who knew how to sail ships. Rome didn’t have a navy. But when a Carthaginian ship wrecked on the coast of Italy, the Romans took it apart and figured out how to copy it. They built ships of their own and learned how to sail them. Soon the Romans could match the Carthaginians in a sea battle.
The Carthaginians and Romans fought back and forth for a long time. Neither side could win.
The Carthaginian general who planned this attack was named Hannibal. Hannibal saw that the battle between Carthage and Rome at sea was a stalemate—no one was winning. So while the two navies fought with each other, Hannibal took his army and forty elephants around the Mediterranean Sea by land. He surprised the Romans by coming down over the mountains into Italy. His invasion took place in 218 BC/BCE. Once Hannibal had gotten into Italy with his elephants, he roamed up and down Italy, burning villages and leaving Roman soldiers dead all through the countryside. The Romans were terrified. And
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Hannibal left Italy and sailed across the African Sea to defend his home town. But his soldiers were so worn out from burning and sacking towns in Italy that they were defeated! Hannibal himself ran away and hid, in Asia Minor. Finally, the city of Carthage was forced to surrender to Rome. When Hannibal heard this news, over in Asia Minor, he drank poison. He could not bear to think that his great city, Carthage, had been beaten by the Romans who were afraid of his elephants.
The First Punic War was fought 264–241 BC/BCE; the Second Punic War took place 218–202 BC/BCE.
They were called the Aryans, and they came down into India from the north, from the area we call Asia. At first, the Aryans were nomads. But they soon settled down along the two big rivers of India, the Indus River and the Ganges River. They became farmers, just like the people who lived in the first villages of Mesopotamia.
The people who believed in Shiva and Ganga were called Hindus. Their religion was called Hinduism. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Hindus worshipped many different gods. But all Hindu believers worshipped the Ganges River! Today, Hindu pilgrims still come to the banks of the Ganges. At dusk, they float lighted candles on the water and pray to the river-goddess, Ganga.
The first and most important people were the priests—the brahmin. They came out of Purusha’s mouth. They were intelligent and wise; as they walked out onto the Earth, they became the most honored people in India.
Out of Purusha’s arms, the gods made the second kind of people—the noble warriors.
