Greece was not so much a kingdom as a collection of small fortified cities, each with its own palace and king. The people were mostly seafarers, like the Phoenicians, only they traded less and fought more. They were often at war with one another, but on occasion would gan together to plunder other shores. And as their fortunes grew bigger, they grew bolder - and not just bolder, but braver, because to be a sea raider takes courage as well as cunning. So sea raiding was a task which fell to the nobility. The rest of the population were simple peasants and shepherds.
Now, unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians, these noblemen weren’t interested in preserving the ways of their ancestors. Their many raids and battles with foreign peoples had opened their eyes to new ideas and taught them to relish variety and change. And it was at this point, and in this part of the world, that history began to progress at a much greater speed, because people no longer believed that the old ways were best. From now on, things were constantly changing. And this is why, nowadays, when we find even a fragment of pottery - in Greece, or anywhere else in Europe - we can say: ‘this dates from roughly this or that period.’ Because a hundred years later a pot like that would have gone out of fashion, and nobody would have wanted it.
Their meaning is roughly this: in all the world - in wind and rain, in plants and animals, in the passage from day to night, in the movement of the stars - everything acts in accordance with one great law. This he calls the ‘Tao’, which means the Way, or the Path. Only man in his restless striving, in his many plans and projects, even in his prayers and sacrifices, resists, as it were, this law, obstructs its path and prevents its fulfillment.
Therefore the one thing we must do, said Laotzu, is: do nothing. Be still within ourselves. Neither look nor listen to anything around us, have no wishes or opinions. Only when a person has become like a tree or a flower, empty of all will or purpose, will he begin to feel the Tao - that great universal law which makes the heavens turn and brings the spring - begin to work within him. This teaching is hard to grasp and harder still to follow.
Once Gaul had become a Roman province the inhabitants soon learnt to speak Latin, just as they had in Spain. And this is why French and Spanish, which come from the language of the Romans, are known as Romance languages.
And because the Romans were less gifted than the Greeks at such things, Augustus had copies made of all the finest Greek statues and placed them in his palaces and gardens. The Roman poets of his time - and they are the most famous of all the Roman poets - also took the poems of the Greeks as their models.
You can imagine the effect of this promise of Paradise on poor tribespeople living in the scorching desert heat, and how willingly they would fight and die to be admitted.
Just think of trying to multiply and add up with Roman numbers like these! Whereas with our ‘Arabic’ numbers it’s easy. Not just because they are attractive and easy to write, but because they contain something new: place value - the value given to a number on account of its position.
Sons of serfs become serfs and sons of knights, knights. It wasn’t so very different from ancient India and its castes.
At the age of seven a knight’s son was sent away to another castle, to learn about life. He was called a page, and had to serve the ladies - carry their trains and perhaps read to them aloud - for women were rarely taught to read or write whereas pages usually were. On reaching the age of fourteen, a page became a squire. He didn’t have to stay in the castle and sit beside the fire anymore. Instead, he was allowed to accompany his knight when he went hunting, or to war. A squire had to carry his knight’s shield and spear and hand him the second lance on the battlefield when the first one shattered. He had to obey his master in all things and be true to him. If he proved a brave and loyal squire, he in his turn would be dubbed a knight at the age of twenty-one.
From all this solemn ceremony you can see that a knight was by now something more than just a soldier on horseback. He was almost a member of an order, like a monk. For to be a good knight, bravery was not enough. A monk served God through prayer and good works and a knight served God through his strength. It was his duty to protect the weak and defenceless, women and the poor, widows and orphans. He was only allowed to draw his sword in a just cause, and must serve God in each and every deed. To his master - his liegelord - he owed absolute obedience. For him he must risk all. He must be neither brutal or cowardly, and in battle must only fight man to man, never two against one. A vanquished opponent must never be humiliated. We still this sort of behaviour chivalrous, because it conforms to the knights’ ideal.
To please the ladies a knight had to do more than shine at feats of arms. He had to behave in a moderate and noble manner, not curse or swear as soldiers usually did, and master chess-playing and poetry and other arts of peace.
In fact, knights were often great poets, who wrote songs praising the women they loved, telling of their beauty and their virtue. They also sang the deeds of other knights of the past.
This meant that anyone who owned a mechanical loom could, with the help of one or two assistants do more work than a hundred trained weavers.
The great questions of history are decided not by speeches but by blood and iron.
I know a wise old Buddhist monk who, in a speech to his fellow countrymen, once said he’d love to know why someone who boasts that he is the cleverest, the strongest, the bravest or the most gifted man on earth is thought ridiculous and embarrassing, whereas if, instead of ‘I’, he says, ‘we are the most intelligent, the strongest, the bravest and the most gifted people on earth,’ his fellow countrymen applaud enthusiastically and call him a patriot. For there is nothing patriot about it. One can be attached to one’s own country without needing to insist that the rest of the world’s inhabitants are worthless. But as more and more people were taken in by this sort of nonsense, the menace of peace grew greater.