MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE WORK AND THOUGHT
OF ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
by Teodoro Tagliaferri (University of Naples Federico II)
No. 34 (October 20th, 2023)
WRITINGS ON THE EMPIRES IN WORLD HISTORY, XXVII
Arnold J. Toynbee, Review of The Cambridge Ancient History, edited by J.B. Bury, S.A. Cook, and F.E. Adcock, vol. IV, The Persian Empire and the West, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1926, in «Nation and the Athenaeum», XXXIX, 12, June 26, 1926, pp. 355-357.
“The sources and subject of this volume differ rather markedly from those of its predecessors. The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean finally pass into the background or disappear altogether from the scene, and younger societies – the Greeks on the one side and the Syrians and Iranians on the other – come forward upon the stage, or, rather, descend into the arena, for their first contact is a clash of arms and not an interchange of thoughts and feelings. At the same time there flows in, with the Greeks, a stream of historical literature which is not only a more copious but a more certain source of information than the archeological evidence out of which the record of the first three volumes is mainly constructed”.
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