A HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE EARLIEST RECORDS TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY PHILIP SMITH, B.A., ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTORS TO THE DICTIONARIES OF GREEK AND ROMAN VOL. I. ANCIENT HISTORY. FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD TO THE ACCESSION Ellustrated by Maps and Plans. LONDON: WALTON AND MABERLY, UPPER GOWER STREET, & IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. ΤΟ HENRY MALDEN, M.A., LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, This Work is Dedicated, IN ADMIRATION OF HIS PROFOUND AND ELEGANT SCHOLARSHIP, AND AS A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE FOR THE LASTING BENEFITS OF HIS TEACHING. PREFACE. SINCE Sir Walter Raleigh solaced his imprisonment in the Tower by the composition of his "History of the World," the Literature of England has never achieved the work which he left unfinished. There have been "Universal Histories," from the bulk of an encyclopædia to the most meagre outline, in which the annals of each nation are separately recorded; but the attempt has not yet been made to trace the story of Divine Providence and human progress in one connected narrative, preserving that organic unity which is the chief aim of this "History of the World." The story of our whole race, like that of each separate nation, has "a beginning, a middle, and an end." That story we propose to follow, from its beginning in the Sacred Records, and from the dawn of civilization in the East,-through the successive Oriental Empires, the rise of liberty, and the perfection of heathen polity, arts, and literature in Greece and Rome,—the change which passed over the face of the world when the light of Christianity sprung up,-the origin and first appearance of those barbarian races, which overthrew both divisions of the Roman Empire, the annals of the States which rose on the Empire's |