within the sphere of politics, results unrivalled for greatness. They neglected, however, to lay their foundations broad and deep. No sufficient permanence was secured for delicate and elastic institutions. Communities limited in extent and simple in arrangement sufficed for a Greek. But how could such simplicity include all branches of the Greek family, satisfying at once the legitimate interests of peoples so diverse? Within the range of science the very same observation holds good. Advancing from isolated facts at once, without any mediating links, to the most general conceptions, they constructed theories upon foundations of limited and imperfect experience-theories such as the foundation was wholly inadequate to bear. Whether, and in how far, the intellect of Greece, if left to itself, might have remedied these defects as it grew older, is a question which it is impossible to answer. intellect was far too intimately bound up with the political, the moral, and the religious life of the nation, in short with the whole external culture of the people, not to be seriously affected by any changes in these departments. The character too, and historical progress of the Greeks, was one adapted to have only a brief period of splendour; and that period was soon over. At the time that the philosophy of Greece was being raised to its highest point by Plato and Aristotle, Greece was in all other respects in a hopeless state of decline. Notwithstanding all the efforts of individuals to resuscitate it, the old morality and propriety of That CHAP. I. CHAP. I. conduct had disappeared since the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Together with them, too, the old belief in the gods was gone. To the bulk of the people, the ethics of the rising philosophy afforded no substitute for the loss of their religious creed. Art, though carefully cultivated, could no longer come up to the excellence of the strictly classic period. Politics became more unsatisfactory every day. In the fifth century B.C. the rivalry of Athens and Sparta had, at any rate, ranged the states of Greece into two groups; in the succeeding century disunion continually increased. It was in vain that the Theban Epaminondas attempted to found a new united confederation. His attempt only ended in a still further breaking up of Greece. Destitute of a political centre of gravity, the Greeks, of their own choice, drifted into a disgraceful dependence on the now declining Persian empire. Persian gold wielded an influence which Persian arms had never been able to exercise. The petty jealousies of little states and tribes wasted in endless local feuds resources which, had they been united, might have moved the world. With the decline of civil order the wellbeing and martial prowess of the nation declined also; and the technicalities of the art of war continually increasing, the decision of a battle was more and more taken out of the hands of free citizens, and placed in those of mercenary troops. The system of mercenaries became one of the most injurious institutions of this age, and a sure sign of the decline of freedom-a portent of the approach of a military despotism. When in imminent danger of such a CHAP. I. By the battle of Charonea the doom of Greece C. Greece after the was sealed. Never since then has Greece been really battle of free. All attempts to shake off the Macedonian Charonea. supremacy ended in disastrous defeat. In the subsequent struggles Greece, and Athens in particular, was the toy of changing rulers, the scene of perpetual warfare. In the second half of the third century a purely Grecian power was formed-the Achæan League-round which the hopes of the nation rallied. How inadequate was the attempt to meet the real wants of the country! How inevitable the disappointment when the league proved, in the issue, powerless to heal the prevailing ills! That old hereditary failing of the Greeks-internal discord-rendered it still impossible to be independent of foreign interference, and to be united and settled within. The best resources were lavished in perpetual struggles between Achæans, Etolians, СНАР. I. and Spartans. The very individual who had led the Achæans against the Macedonians, in the cause of independence, summoned the Macedonians back to the Peloponnesus, to gain their support against Sparta. At length, the supremacy of Macedonia was broken by the arms of Rome, when a more avowed dependence on Italian allies succeeded; and when, in the year 146 B.C., the province of Achaia was incorporated under Roman rule, even the shadow of freedom, which had been previously enjoyed, vanished for ever. Sad as was the state of Greece at this period, the decline of its internal resources being palpable, a single redeeming feature may be found in the extension of its mental horizon, and the more general diffusion of its culture. The Macedonian ascendency, whilst dealing a death-blow at the independence of Greece, also broke down the boundaries which had hitherto separated Greeks from foreigners. It opened out a new world before the gaze of Greece, and offered a vast territory for her energies to explore. It brought her into manifold contact with the Eastern nations belonging to the Macedonian monarchy, and secured for her culture the place of honour among the nations of the East, producing at the same time a tardy, but, in the long run, important back-current of Oriental thought, traces of which appeared in the philosophy of Greece a few centuries later. By the side of the old famed centres of learning in the mother country of Hellas, new centres arose, suited by position, inhabitants, and peculiar circumstances, to unite the culture of East and West, and to fuse into one homogeneous mass 1 the intellectual forces of different races. By the number of emigrants who left her shores to settle in. CHAP. |