The Mediterranean: Cradle of History

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Know'st thou the land where the lemon trees bloom,

Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom,

Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,

And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

GOETHE, like others before him and others since, was moved to poetry by the sights of the blue Mediterranean. "All the dreams of my youth I beheld realized before me," exclaimed Goethe—for generations of fogbound northerners gazing for the first time at the sun-gilt beauties of Venice, Rome, and the isles of Greece. On the shores of this history-steeped sea were said, done, written and made the best part of what the West still lives by. The story of the Mediterranean is the story of Christ and Moses and Mohammed, of Homer and Socrates, Caesar and Cleopatra, of Alexander and Saladin and Richard Lion-Heart. It is also the story of Mussolini and Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Mediterranean, a place of serene blue skies for many, has been an object of ambition to an important few. The eight pages of maps that follow show the restless flow of conquest across this ancient sea: the days when it was Rome's mare nostrum, then Islam's crescent empire, at last the shared hegemony of three great empires—British, French and Ottoman. Now once again it is a fragmented place; there is no peace; and the Mediterranean is again the center of history and the clashing of rival ambitions.

FAVORED beyond all other great waters by climate and position, this million-square-mile sea of coves and arms and islets is made to man's measure. "Like frogs around a pond," said Plato, "we have settled down upon the shores of this sea." Island-hopping along Aegean shores in the haze of lazy, sunlit waters, the Phoenicians and Greeks of 30 centuries ago first learned the arts of maritime commerce, and of naval war—including the amphibious landing. Across the golden bridge of the Grecian islands the civilizations of the Valleys of the Nile and Euphrates first advanced to Europe. Across this strategic roadway world conquerors from Babylon to Berchtesgaden have sped to their brief zenith and decay. In their day both Ramses II and Darius dug canals between the Nile and the Red Sea. As the North African sands still drift over the last burned-out tanks of Rommel, the newest Pharaoh of the Nile cries his claim for the road to the East.