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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