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Marathon was a plain on the North-East coast of Attica (or Attic Peninsula), divided from the plain of Athens by the range of Pentelicus. It contained four villages: Marathon, Probalinthos, Tricorythos and Oenoe, which originally formed an independent tetrapolis and in historical times still upheld peculiar rites and legendary associations, chiefly connected with Heracles and Theseus. In the 6th century B.C. it served as a base for Peisistratus, who owned much property in that district, fo...

Hannibal was a Famous Carthaginian General Officer and Statesman. His influence over men is perhaps his most wonderful trait. As a distinguishing mark, we may well call him The Father of Strategy.“Son of Hamilcar Barcas, Hannibal was born in 247 B. C. At this period, Rome and Carthage were rival powers and both seated upon the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had been in existence about five hundred years, and had already extended her conquests over Italy and a portion of Spa...

However many legends of other kindsthere may be, the buried treasure or lost mine legend is the typical legend ofTexas…The people who tell these legendsrepresent many standards and strata of life, but the ultimate source of theirlegendary gold and their tales is common: Mexican or Spanish.The nativeTexan frequently makes no distinction between “Spaniard” and “Mexican”; thewealth of legend, however, is generally Spanish. And that wealth would fade theactual riches of Potosi ...

Charlemagne,or Charles the Great, was great in war and great in peace; a great conqueror,great law-maker, great scholar, great organizer, great civilizer. He subduedsavage nations, introduced learning, extended religion, encouraged the arts andsciences, and established one of the mightiest empires of the olden times. Allthe races of Germany, of Italy, and of France were welded by him into one greatmonarchy. He maintained and extended the influence of Christian culture. Alarge part of his l...

This book deals with the history of the sewing machine.After almost a century of attempts to invent a machine that would sew, the practical sewing machine evolved in the mid-19th century.In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved them.Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755...

The first domestication of the horse was one of the greatest achievements of man in the animal kingdom...If we say that of all brute animals none is more valuable to man than the horse, and that the neglect of any means which may promote and insure his welfare and efficiency is a blunder not easily distinguishable from crime, we may fairly be charged with uttering truisms. If we urge that this value is not recognized as it should be, and that this neglect is miserably common, we ma...

The history of dolphins is one of the most fascinating and instructive in the history of ideas in the western world. Indeed, it provides one of the most illuminating examples of what has probably occurred many times in human culture – a virtually complete loss of knowledge, at least in most segments of the culture, of what was formerly well understood by generations of men.Dolphins are mammals. They belong in the order Cetacea, suborder Odontoceti, family Delphinidae. Within the Del...

Few natural groups present so many remarkable illustrations of several of the most important general laws which appear to have determined the structure of animal bodies as that of the whales.The term "whale" is commonly but vaguely applied to all the larger and middle-sized Cetacea, and, though such smaller species as the dolphins and porpoises are not usually spoken of as whales, they may to all intents and purposes of zoölogical science be included in the term. Taken all together...

Seated on the dry hill-side here, by the belted blue Mediterranean, I have picked up from the ground a bit of blanched and moldering bone, well cleaned to my hand by the unconscious friendliness of the busy ants; and looking closely at it I recognize it at once, with a sympathetic sigh, for the solid welded tail-piece of some departed British tourist swallow. He came here like ourselves, no doubt, to escape the terrors of an English winter: but among these pine-clad Provençal summits some ...

This book deals with the life of Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse.Everyone knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succor the afflicted, the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her goodness the dying soldier's couch—the vision is familiar to all. But the truth was ...

Ulysses was king of Ithaca, and had been, like many other princes of Greece, a suitor of the beautiful Helen. Believing that he had no hope for success among so many competitors, Ulysses asked the hand of Penelope, daughter of Icarus...The Odyssey, the second of the two great poems attributed to Homer, is a history of the wanderings of Ulysses. After some adventures of minor importance, the ships of the hero were overtaken by a storm which drove them southward for nine days, and as...

It is now four or five years since my attention was called to the collection of native American ballads from the Southwest, already begun by Professor Lomax. At that time, he seemed hardly to appreciate their full value and importance. To my colleague, Professor G.L. Kittredge, probably the most eminent authority on folk-song in America, this value and importance appeared as indubitable as it appeared to me. We heartily joined in encouraging the work, as a real contribution both to literat...