Page:The Ancient East.djvu/19

since the Greek has put the East under his feet, the history of the centuries, which have still to elapse before Rome shall take over Asia, will simply be Greek history writ large — the history of a Greater Greece which has expanded over the ancient East and caused it to lose its distinction from the ancient West. Yet this impression does not by any means coincide with historical truth. The Macedonian conquest of Hither Asia was a victory won by men of Greek civilization, but only to a very partial extent a victory of that civilization. The West did not assimilate the East except in very small measure then, and has not assimilated it in any very large measure to this day. For certain reasons, among which some geographical facts — the large proportion of steppe-desert and of the human type which such country breeds — are perhaps the most powerful, the East is obstinately unreceptive of western influences, and more than once it has taken its captors captive. Therefore, while, for the sake of convenience and to avoid entanglement in the very ill-known maze of what is called " Hellenistic" history, I shall not attempt to follow the consecutive course of events after 330 B.C., I