The Mediterranean: Cradle of History

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...

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