; and the ordinary
man, when he speaks of the nations of antiquity, has in mind
specifically these three peoples--although, judged even by the history
of which we have record, theirs is a very modern antiquity indeed.

The case of the Jew was quite exceptional. His was a small nation, of
little more consequence than the sister nations of Moab and Damascus,
until all three, and the other petty states of the country, fell under
the yoke of the alien. Then he survived, while all his fellows died.
In the spiritual domain he contributed a religion which has been the
most potent of all factors in its effect on the subsequent history of
mankind; but none of his other contributions compare with the legacies
left us by the Greek and the Roman.

The Graeco-Roman world saw a civilization far more brilliant, far more
varied and intense, than any that had gone before it, and one that
affected a far larger share of the world's surface. For the first time
there began to be something which at least foreshadowed a "world
movement" in the sense that it affected a considerable portion of the
world's surface and that it represented what was incomparably the most
important of all that was happening in world history at the time. In
breadth and depth the field of intellectual interest had greatly
broadened at the same time that the physical area affected by the
civilization had similarly extended. Instead of a civilization
affecting only one river valley or one nook of the Mediterranean,
there was a civilization which directly or indirectly influenced
mankind from the Desert of Sahara to the Baltic, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the westernmost mountain chains that spring from the
Himalayas. Throughout most of this region there began to work certain
influences which, though with widely varying intensity, did
nevertheless tend to affect a large portion of mankind. In many of the
forms of science, in almost all the forms of art, there was great
activity. In addition to great soldiers there were great
administrators and statesmen whose concern was with the fundamental
questions of social and civil life. Nothing like the width and variety
of intellectual achievement and understanding had ever before been
known; and for the first time we come across great intellectual
leaders, great philosophers and writers, whose works are a part of all
that is highest in modern thought, whose writings are as alive to-day
as when they were first issued; and there