ll, this great King was Xerxes, and his wife
was Queen Esther. And after the war with the Greeks was over, her uncle,
Mordecai, was chief officer to the King, and wisely managed the affairs of
his great kingdom.

And shall I tell you what sort of place Europe was at the time of this
Persian invasion of Greece, and while Queen Esther was pleading for the
life of her people?

On the peninsula of Italy there had arisen a Roman Republic, where a great
civilization was growing. All west of that was called Gaul. It was filled
with Barbarians (excepting the few Greek colonies on the coast). To the
north were the British Isles, filled with another race of Barbarians,
calling themselves Britons; and in Central Europe still more Barbarians,
of the great Teutonic or German race; and still beyond that, where dwelt
the Slavonic or Russian people, all was silence and impenetrable darkness.

It made little difference to these Barbarians then whether Persians or
Greeks occupied the shores of the Mediterranean. But the history of future
Europe would have been strangely changed if the Greeks had not driven back
this deluge of Asiatic people.

So Greece was now at the head of the world, and Athens was at the head of
Greece. And there was a man in Athens who was going to make that city not
alone the greatest of that time, but in a way the greatest of all time!

Her great citizen Pericles changed the government of Athens to a pure
democracy. And then, by the magic of his influence, it sprang from its
ashes in a form so beautiful, it was known as the "City of the Gods." The
matchless temples and colonnades which arose on the Acropolis, adorned by
the sculptures of Phidias, are still the wonder of the world.

But that was not all. No men have ever thought so profoundly, nor spoken
so wisely, nor with such eloquence, as did the men in those temples and
under those Greek arcades. Never have such tragedies been written as were
recited there, and never has there been an entire people so fitted to
comprehend and to enjoy thought so elevated, and art of such a supreme
type.

The outpouring of genius in the "Age of Pericles" is one of the great
mysteries in history. It sent a path of light down through centuries of
darkness, and that light shines just as brightly to-day, uneclipsed and
even undimmed by anything the world has done since.

Pericles drew all this radiant genius into Athens, and made it beautiful
and great. But he did still more