k to be degenerate members of the race.
We shall turn to look on them again in a later period; but they will be
seen in no favorable light.

[Footnote 8: See _The Formation of the Castes_, page 52.]

[Footnote 9: See _The Foundation of Buddhism_, page 160.]

Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear to the north and
west. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an Aryan race, much altered
from long dwelling among the yellow peoples. One tribe, the Persians,
moved directly west, and became neighbors of the already noted Semitic
group. After long wars backward and forward, bringing us well within the
range of history, the Persians proved too powerful for the whole Semite
group. They helped destroy Assyria,[10] they overthrew the second
Babylonian empire which Nebuchadnezzar had built up, and then, pressing
on to the conquest of Egypt, they swept the Hamites too from their place
of sovereignty.[11]

[Footnote 10: See _Destruction of Nineveh_, page 105.]

[Footnote 11: See _Conquests of Cyrus_, page 250.]

How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on each new savage
horde of invaders from the hardy North. It is not done in a generation,
not in a century, perhaps. But drop by drop the vigorous, tingling,
Arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose
pleasure, of the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors.
As we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or become
effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them. We
see the whole race visibly degenerate, until one questions if
Marathon[12] were after all so marvellous a victory, and suspects that
at whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe they
would have been easily hurled back.

[Footnote 12: See _The Battle of Marathon_, page 322.]

It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a temperate
climate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recent
speculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home, from
which they had strayed toward Asia, and to which they now returned.
Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop.
Earliest of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modern
heritage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the European
continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came the
Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a single
migration, that spread