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THE ROMAN EMPIRE 21 coast settlements scattered about the Black and Mediter- ranean Seas, as well as in Greece proper and the islands of the ^Egean. Their culture owed much to the Orient, but they were freer politically and intellectually, since no long dynasties of rulers nor ancient hierarchies of priests domi- nated their life and thought. They were "free-born wan- derers of the mountain air" or on the sea. They enjoyed the advantage of a better system of writing than those of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. They developed art, especially sculpture, to a higher point, and even in architec- ture their simple temples are better proportioned, and their Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns and capitals more graceful. In their Aryan language, which invaders from the north had introduced among them, they expressed them- selves more clearly and beautifully than Oriental languages and thought had permitted. It is to them that we look for the first " classics" in many varieties of literary production; for instance, the epics of Homer, the lyrics of Sappho, the history of Herodotus, the tragedies of ^Eschylus, the com- edies of Menander, the orations of Demosthenes, the pas- torals of Theocritus. The thought of the Hellenes at first took the imaginative form of beautiful mythology, but then changed to rational speculation concerning the nature of the universe „, ., •i-i 1. 11 -i 1 r 1 • Philosophy in which man lives and the right conduct 01 his life in it. Such reasoning has ever since been called "phil- osophy," the name the Greeks themselves gave to it, and is important to note, not only as a prominent feature of their civilization, but because of its great influence upon Chris- tian writers both during the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages. The Greek historians themselves narrated little but wars and the doings of generals and statesmen ; but the medieval historian, who never had heard of Themisto- cles or Agesilaus or Philopcemen, could give a brief outline of the views of all the Greek philosophers from Thales of Miletus, who foretold an eclipse of the sun and held that everything is made out of water, down through such names as Pythagoras, who asserted the importance of number