A Manual of Ancient History - 1869 Author:George Rawlinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: is obviated by the possibility of combining the two into one system. This combined method, which has been already preferred as most convenient by other writers o... more »f Manuals, will be adopted in the ensuing pages, where the general division of the subject will be as follows: — Book I.—History of the Ancient Asiatic and African States and Kingdoms from the Earliest Times to the Foundation of the Persian Monarchy by Cyrus the Great, B. c. 558. Book II.—History of the Persian Monarchy from the Accession of Cyrus to the Death of Darius Codomannus, B. c. 558-330. Book III.—History of the Grecian States, both in Greece Proper and elsewhere, from the Earliest Times to the Accession of Alexander, B.c. 336. Book IV.—History of the Macedonian Monarchy, and the Kingdoms into which it broke up, until their absorption into the Roman Empire. Book V.—History of Rome from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire, A. D. 476, and Parallel History of Parthia. BOOK I. HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT ASIATIC AND AFRICAN STATES AND KINGDOMS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE PERSIAN MONARCHY BY CYRUS THE GREAT. PART I. ASIATIC NATIONS. A. Preliminary Remarks on the Geography of Asia. i. Asia is the largest of the three great divisions of the Eastern Hemisphere. Regarding it as separated from Africa by the Red Sea and Isthmus of Suez, and from Asia—size Europe by the Ural mountains, the Ural river, the and situation. Caspian Sea, and the main chain of the Caucasus, its superficial contents will amount to 17,500,000 square miles, whereas those of Africa are less than 13,000,000, and those of Europe do not exceed 3,800,000. In climate it unites greater varieties than either of the two other divisions, extending as it does from the 7 8th degree of north latitude t...« less