The Outline of History by H. G. Wells (good books to read TXT) 📕

Fn-27.5 Plutarch.

Fn-27.6 The bow was probably the composite bow, so-called because it is made of several plates (five or so) of horn, like the springs of a carriage: it discharges a high-speed arrow with a twang. This was the bow the Mongols used. This short composite bow (it was not a long bow) was quite old in human experience. It was the bow of Odysseus; the Assyrians had it in a modified form. It went out in Greece, but it survived as the Mongol bow. It was quite short, very stiff to pull, with a flat trajectory, a remarkable range, and a great noise (cp. Homers reference to the twang of the bow). It went out in the Mediterranean because the climate was not good for it, and because there were insufficient animals to supply the horn.J. L. M.

Fn-27.7 H. S. Jones in _The Encyclopdia Britannica,_ article "Rome."

Fn-28.1 Gibbon.

Fn-28.2 See Legge, _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity,_

Fn-28.3 E. H. Parker, _A Thousand Years of the Tartars._

Fn-28.4 Even in Eastern Turkestan there are still strong evidences of Nordic blood in the physiognomy of the people. Ella and Percy Sykes, _Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia._

Fn-28.5 See Roger Pocock, _Horses,_ a very interesting and picturesque little book.

Fn-28.6 _The History of Mankind,_ book v., C.

Fn-28.7 _Ibid._

Fn-28.8 E.� B.

Fn-28.9 In Helmolts _History of the World._

Fn-28.10 Gibbon.

Fn-29.1 Josephus.

Fn-29.2 Matt. xii. 46-50.

Fn-29.3 Mark. x. 17-25.

Fn-29.4 Mark. vii, 1-9.

Fn-29.5 Mark. xii. 13-17.

Fn-29.6 Mark x. 35-45.

Fn-29.7 Hirth, _The Ancient History of China,_ Chap. viii.

Fn-29.8 "St. Paul understood what most Christians never realize, namely, that the Gospel of Christ is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance, Dean Inge in _Outspoken Essays._

Fn-29.9 Pauls Greek is very good. He is affected by the philosophical jargon of the Hellenistic schools and by that of Stoicism. But his mastery of sublime language is amazing.G.� M.

Fn-29.10 In any prayer book of the Episcopalian Church. The Athanasian Creed embodies the view of Athanasius, but probably was not composed by him.

Fn-29.11 Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,_ chap xvi.

Fn-29.12 _Encyclopdia Britannica,_ art. "Church History," p. 336.

Fn-30.1 Great importance is attached to this task by historians, including one of the editors of this history. We are told that the essential contribution of Rome to the inheritance of mankind is the idea of society founded on _law_ and that this exploit of Justinian was the crown of the gift. The writer is ill-equipped to estimate the peculiar value of Roman legalism to mankind. Existing law seems to him to be based upon a confused foundation of conventions arbitrary assumptions, and working fictions about human relationship, and to be a very impracticable and antiquated system indeed; he is persuaded that a time will come when the whole theory and practice of law will be recast in the light of a well-developed science of social psychology in accordance with a scientific conception of human society as one developing organization and in definite relationship to a system of moral and intellectual education. He contemplates the laws and lawyers of today with a temperamental lack of appreciation. This may have made him negligent of Justinian and unjust to Rome as a whole.

Fn-30.2 _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,_ chap. xxiii.

Fn-30.3 Turanians from Turkestan or Avars from the Caucasus.

Fn-30.4 There were girl slaves who did domestic work and women who were bought and sold.J. J. L. D.

Fn-30.5 It is doubtful if the Chinese knew of the mariners compass. Hirth, _Ancient History of China_, p. 126 sqq., comes to the conclusion, after a careful examination of all data, although it is probable something like the compass was known in high antiquity, the knowledge of it was lost for a long time afterwards, until the Middle Ages, re reappears as an instrument in the hands of geomancers (people who selected favourable sites for graves, etc.). The earliest unmistakable mention of its use as a guide to mariners occurs in a work of the 12th century and refers to its use on foreign ships trading between China and Sumatra. Hirth is rather inclined to assume that Arab travellers may have seen it in the hands of Chinese Geomancers and applied its use to navigation, so that it was afterwards brought back by them to China as the "mariners compass."J. J. L. D.

Fn-30.6 But Mr. Vogan tells me that rock carvings of a distinctively Chinese character have been found in New Zealand and New Caledonia.

Fn-31.1 Mark Sykes

Fn-31.2 Published by the _Islamic Review_

Fn-31.3 But Schurtz, in Helmholts _History of the World,_ says that the private life of the gallant Khalid was a scandal to the faithful. He committed adultery, a serious offense in a world of polygamy.

Fn-31.4 At Ctesiphon

Fn-31.5 Paraphrased from Schurtz in Helmholts _History of the World._

Fn-31.6 Mark Sykes

Fn-31.7 St. Johns Gospel, chap i. 1.

Fn-31.8 _The Caliphs Last Heritage._

Fn-31.9 _A General History of Europe._

Fn-31.10 Alcohol as "spirits of wine was known to Pliny (79 A.D.). The student of the history of science should consult Campbell Browns _History of Chemistry_ and check these statements in the text.

Fn-32.1 _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, article "Feudalism," by Professor G. B. Adams.

Fn-32.2 The Franks differed from the Swabians and South Germans, and came much nearer the Anglo-Saxons in that they spoke a "Low German" and not a "High German" dialect. Their language resembled plattdeutsch and Anglo-Saxon, and was the direct parent of Dutch and Flemish. In fact, the Franks where they were not Latinized became Flemings and "Dutchmen" of South Holland (North Holland is still Friesisch-i.e. Anglo-Saxon). The "French" which the Latinized Franks and Burgundians spoke in the seventh to the tenth centuries was remarkably like the Romansch language of Switzerland, judging from the vestiges that remain in old documents.H. H. J.

Fn-32.3 _A General History of Europe,_ Thatcher and Schwill.

Fn-32.4 N.B.Vik-ings, not Vi-kings, Vik = a fiord or inlet.

Fn-32.5 The Lateran was the earlier palace of the Popes in Rome. Later they occupied the Vatican.

Fn-32.6 Eginhards _Life of Karl the Great._ (Glaister.)

Fn-32.7 The addition was discreetly opposed by Leo III "In the correspondence between them the Pope assumes the liberality of a statesman and the prince descends to the prejudice and passions of a priest."Gibbon, chap. ix.

Fn-32.8 Gibbon mentions a second Theodora, the sister of Marozia.

Fn-32.9 The period is a tangled one. The authority is Gregorovius, _History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages._ John X owed the tiara to his mistress, the elder Theodora, but he was "the foremost statesman of his age." He fell in 928 owing to Marozia. John XI became Pope in 931 (after two Popes had intervened in the period 928-931); he was Marozias son, possibly by Pope Sergius III. John XII did not come at once after John XI, who died in 936; there were several Popes in between; and he became Pope in 955.E. B.

Fn-32.10 There were three dynasties of emperors in the early middle ages:

Saxon: Otto I (962) to Henry II, ending 1024.

Salian: Conrad II to Henry V, ending about 1125.

Hohenstaufen: Conrad III to Frederic II, ending 1250.

The Hohenstaufens were Swabian in origin. Then came the Hapsburgs with Rudolph I in 1273, who lasted until 1918.

Fn-32.11 These dates are from Gibbon. Beazley gives 865, 904-7, 935, 944, 971-2. (_History of Russia_, Clarendon Press.)

Fn-32.12 "A Turkish people whose leaders had adopted Judaism," says Harold Williams.

Fn-32.13 E. Barker, art. "Crusades," _Encyclopaedia Britannica._

Fn-32.14 "The custody of the _True Cross_ which on Easter Sunday was solemnly exposed to the people, was entrusted to the Bishop of Jerusalem; and he alone might gratify the curious devotion of the pilgrims, by the gift of small pieces, which they encased in gold or gems, and carried away in triumph to their respective countries. But, as this gainful branch of commerce must soon have been annihilated, it was found convenient to suppose, that the marvellous wood possessed a secret power of vegetation, and that its substance, though continually diminished, still remained entire and unimpaired."Gibbon.

Fn-32.15 The Popes inhabited the palace of the Lateran until 1305, when a French Pope set up the papal court at Avignon. When the Pope returned to Rome in 1377 the Lateran was almost in ruins, and the palace of the Vatican became the seat of the papal court. It was, among other advantages, much nearer to the papal stronghold, the Castle of St. Angelo.

Fn-32.16 He was crowned emperor in 1220 by Honorius III, the successor of Innocent.

Fn-32.17 Some authorities deny this authorship of this letter.

Fn-32.18 Perhaps parchment rather than leather. Such promises on parchment were also used by the Carthaginians. Was Fredericks money an Inheritance from an old tradition living on in Sicily since Carthaginian times?E. B.

Fn-32.19 _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, art, "Dominic."

Fn-32.20 J. H. Robinson.

Fn-33.1 Sir Mark Sykes, _The Caliphs Last Heritage._

Fn-33.2 "Mogul" is our rendering of the Arabic spelling Mughal, which itself was a corruption of Mongol, the Arabic alphabet having no symbol for _ng._H. H. J.

Fn-33.3 Dr. Schmit in Helmholts _History of the World._

Fn-34.1 Renascence here means rebirth, and it is applied to the recovery of the entire Western world. It is not to be confused with the "Renaissance," an educational, literary, and artistic revival that went on in Italy and the Western world affected by Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Renaissance was only a part of the Renascence of Europe. The Renaissance was a revival due to the exhumation of classical art and learning; it was but one factor in the very much larger and more complicated resurrection of European capacity and vigour, with which we are dealing in this chapter.

Fn-34.2 But the Jews were already holding their community together by systematic education at least as early as the beginning of the Christian era.

Fn-34.3 Ltzows _Bohemia_

Fn-34.4 Dr. C. O. Stallybrass says that this plague reached China thirty or forty years after its first appearance in Europe. Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveller who was in China from 1342 to 1346, first met with it on his return to Damascus. The Black Death is the human form of a disease endemic among jerbons and other small rodents in the districts round the head of the Caspian Sea.

Fn-34.5 The seeds of conflict which grew up into the Peasants Revolt of 1381 were sown upon ground which is strangely familiar to any writer in 1920. A European catastrophe had reduced production and consequently increased the earnings of workers and traders. Rural wages had risen by 48 percent in England, when an unwise executive endeavoured to enforce in the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers (1350-51) a return to the pre-plague wages and prices of 1346, and aimed a blow in the Statute of 1378 against labour combinations. The villeins were driven to desperation by the loss of their recent increase of comfort, and the outbreak came, as Froissart saw it from the angle of the Court, "all through the too great comfort of the commonalty." Other ingredients which entered into the outbreak were the resentment felt by the new working class at the restrictions imposed on its right to combine, the