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Excerpt from Ancient History: To the Death of Charlemagne The study of history in secondary schools offers many problems. Foremost in demanding decision stands always the question of the proper distribution of time. The old one year course in universal history is confessedly inadequate, unattractive, and destitute of disciplinary value. No possible series of courses on single countries can be sufficiently com prehensive. Some compromise is inevitable. The most promising plan yet proposed is the one outlined in the memorable Report of the Committee of Seven to the National Historical Association in In accordance with that plan, the series of school histories of which this book is the first will give two volumes to a general survey of the world's history. The present volume deals with the early development of those historic elements whose interworkings have since produced our modern world. As is explained more fully in the opening pages of the text, it deals with those Oriental peoples who were to contribute directly to European civilization, and, more in detail, with Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, whose life in each case was to be taken up, almost as a whole, into our modern life; and the story is traced until these formative elements have been brought together and until their fusion is well under way in the empire of Charlemagne. A second book will treat the subsequent working of these forces in Modern History. The present volume, however, may be followed instead by the study of England, France, or Germany, or by intensive topic study; it is designed for the first year's work in history in high schools, but, by expanding or contracting the suggestions for topical reports and for library work, it may be adapted to older or younger students and to courses of varying length. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historica