OUR EARLIEST TEACHERS

ANCIENT CITIES THAT STILL EXIST. In Ancient Times the most
important peoples lived on the shores of the Mediterranean. The
northern shore turns and twists around four peninsulas. The first is
Spain, which separates the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean;
the second, shaped like a boot, is Italy; and the third, the end of
which looks like a mulberry leaf, is Greece. Beyond Greece is Asia
Minor, the part of Asia which lies between the Mediterranean Sea and
the Black Sea.

The Italians now live in Italy, but the Romans lived there in Ancient
Times. The people who live in Greece are called Greeks, just as they
were more than two thousand years ago. Many of the cities that the
Greeks and Romans built are still standing. Alexandria was founded by
the great conqueror Alexander. Constantinople used to be the Greek
city of Byzantium. Another Greek city, Massilia, has become the modern
French city of Marseilles. Rome had the same name in Ancient Times,
except that it was spelled Roma. The Romans called Paris by the name
of Lutetia, and London they called Lugdunum.

RUINS WHICH SHOW HOW THE ANCIENTS LIVED. In many of these cities
are ancient buildings or ruins of buildings, bits of carving, vases,
mosaics, sometimes even wall paintings, which we may see and from
which we may learn how the Greeks and Romans lived. Near Naples are
the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman city suddenly destroyed during an
eruption of the volcano Vesuvius.