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Random Facts about Great Men
ILLUSTRIOUS MEN
It is not likely that any two persons would agree as to who
are entitled to the first fifty places on the roll of great
men.
Using "great" in the sense of eminence
in their professions, of great military commanders the
following are among the chief: Sesostris, the Egyptian
conqueror, who is represented as having subdued all Asia to
the Oxus and the Ganges, Ethiopia, and a part of Europe;
Cyrus the Great; Alexander the Great; Hannibal; Che-Hwanti,
who reduced all the kingdoms of China and Indo-China to one
empire, and constructed the Great Wall; Caesar; Genghis
Khan, the Tartar chief, who overran all Asia and a
considerable part of Europe; Napoleon Bonaparte; Ulysses S.
Grant, and General Von Moltke. Among the most illustrious
benefactors of mankind, as statesmen, lawgivers and
patriots, stand Moses, David, Solon, Numa Pompilius,
Zoroaster, Confucius, Justinian, Charlemagne, Cromwell,
Washington and Lincoln. Eminent among the philosophers,
rhetoricians and logicians stand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Seneca, the two Catos, and Lord Bacon; among orators,
Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Mirabeau, Burke, Webster and
Clay; among poets, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and
Shakespeare; among painters and sculptors, Phidias,
Parrhasius, Zenxis, Praxiteles, Scopas, Michael Angelo,
Raphael and Rubens; among philanthropists, John Howard;
among inventors, Archimedes, Watt, Fulton, Arkwright,
Whitney and Morse; among astronomers, Copernicus, Galileo,
Tycho Brahe, Newton, La Place and the elder Herschel. Here
are sixty names of distinguished men, and yet the great
religious leaders, excepting Moses and Zoroaster, have not
been named. Among these stand Siddhartha or Buddha, Mahomet,
Martin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley. Then the great
explorers and geographers of the world have not been
noticed, among whom Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Vasco de Gama,
Columbus and Humboldt barely lead the van.
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