Page 431 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

their standards rose at the place of assembly they could be found
deliberating, seated upon their saddle blankets and surrounded
by a vocal throng. Every free man could listen to the deliberations
of the chiefs, and speak if he could attain a hearing.

In these years there were many and serious complaints. The
eastern natives of the confederacy, who had lost their pastures,

had been encroaching on their western neighbors. Ranges were
being overgrazed twice in one year, and the grass was failing. The
hungry herds had broken into the plowlands of the farmers and

eaten the young grain, and it had come to blows between settlers
and herdsmen. The returning mercenaries were claiming family
grazing rights that had been reapportioned in their years of

absence. Too many people, too many flocks and herds were
competing for too little land.
The traditional solution to such a situation (which after all

was known to have recurred every few generations) was to seek
more land. And no time was wasted in deliberating that point.
Even the question of direction involved little discussion. For the

south was blocked by the armies of Assyria and the not incon­
siderable might of Urartu. And the Scythians in the east had

already shown themselves too strong to be pushed back. To the
north the grazing became progressively worse until the swamps
and forests began, a country only suitable for hunting and

marginal farming.
But the west was, as it had always been, a land with possi­
bilities. And the debate turned to ways and means of exploiting

its promise.
The west was in a turmoil unparalleled in the memory of
man. Ever since the central Europeans had established their own

bronze foundries and armament industry three hundred years or
more ago they had been pushing out to the Mediterranean coast,

to raid the rich shipping and richer cities of the mercantile
empires there. But since, just a hundred years ago, the Achaeans
of Greece had sacked Troy, the guardian of the gateway leading

from Europe to Asia, and incidentally weakened their own power
in the process, the nations of Europe had been moving south in

organized bodies to loot and occupy the exposed lands.
The main work was already done. The Phrygians and the