"THE ANCIENT WORLD."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

"THE ANCIENT WORLD."

A NOTABLE SURVEY. To those who would understand the ancient world from the dawn of history to the time of Constantine Mr. T. R. Glover's survey, published by the Cambridge University Press, may be entliusiastical y commended. The work of a distinguished Cambridge don, who lias been teaching the history of these periods for many years, "The Ancient World" is an admirable survey in a moderate compass, written with knowledge, sympathy and imagination. It is the mark of a really well educated man to understand a civilisation different from his own, to pass over barriers of time and space and national prepossessions and discern the soul in something foreign or remote. Mr. Glover is such an interpreter; lie makes us understand why Greek and Roman civilisations were important and why Alexander and Caesar were so much more than mere conquerors. Beginning with a lucid and fascinating consideration of the influence of climate and geography upon material and cultural development, he discusses the civilisations of old and how they clashed and shows that their flowering influenced subsequent history. It is vain for us to put the Romans and Greeks aside as ancient and of no account. Our King is Caesar —Kaisar-i-PTind—and the American sign for the dollar dates back to the first Greek sailor of whom we know to sight the Pillars of Hercules and sail into the Atlantic. The sections on Christianity are extraordinarily good. At the end Mr. Glover links up Christianity with pagan teachers of antiquity and later leaders and concludes that "everything comes back somehow to the individual, his convictions and his choices." These are words to ponder to-day when the right of the individual to his convictions and choices are so widely and strongly challenged.