CHAPTER VIII.

[151:1]But according to our evidence, Demosthenes did not deny that he had taken the money; he pleaded as an excuse that he had advanced for the Theoric Fund, for the benefit of the Athenians, twenty talents, and that he had recouped himself for this money. This is the plea put into his mouth by Hypereides (in Demosth.10). Such a defence, which merely amounted to making the Athenian public an unwitting accomplice, is so suicidal in Demosthenes' mouth, that I hesitate to accept it as it stands, though Holm (G. G. iii. 420) does so.

[152:1]All the evidence has been justly weighed by Holm, G. G. iii. 420-4, who comes to the same conclusion which I had put forward twenty years ago, long before the recent change of opinion concerning Demosthenes. That the Athenians condemned the orator justly, and to a moderate penalty, can be demonstrated from his own admissions. Political expediencies doubtless secured his conviction; they do not prove it to have been unjust.

[152:2]Pro Flacco, cap. iv.Graeca fideswas a stock phrase.

[154:1]Cf. now the sensible remarks of Holm, G. G. 501sq., who criticises this exceedingly studied oratory from the very same standpoint.

Alexander the Great.

The further course of Greek history.

§ 63. As I have said already, the death of Demosthenes is the favourite terminus for the political historians of Greece. But let us not grow weary,—let us survey the fortunes of the race for some centuries more, touching upon those turning-points or knotty points where it seems that the evidence has not been duly stated or weighed.

Droysen'sGeschichte des Hellenismus.

In approaching the work and the character of Alexander, we come upon a new authority among modern historians, whom we have not yet encountered. Droysen, who unfortunately devoted the evening of his life to Prussian history, employed his brilliant abilities for years in researches upon the history of Alexander and of his immediate successors. His latest work on this period is no doubt the fullest and best to which we can refer, and it seems a very great omission that it has not been as yet translated into our language.

This period much neglected by English historians.

Nature of our authorities.

This is more specially to be desired as we have no great English history of these times. It is but another instance of what has been so often urgedin these pages. Greek history has been in the hands of people with literary and scholastic interests. So long as there are great authors to be translated, explained, panegyrized, all the most minute events are recorded and discussed with care; but as soon as we come to an epoch certainly not less important in human affairs, perhaps more decisive than any that had gone before in shaping the future history of the world, we are deserted by our modern historians, because the Greeks had lost that literary excellence which makes their earlier records the proper training for the schoolboy and the collegian[156:1]. We are now reduced to Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, Strabo, for our materials, and there are those who think that the moral splendour and unfailing interest of the famousParallel Livesdo not atone for the want of Attic grace and strength which marks the decadence of Greek prose literature. Yet surely to the genuine historian, to whom all these records are merely sources of information on the course of affairs and the characters of men, literary perfection should only be an agreeable accident, an evidence, if you like, of that day's culture, not a gauge to test the pre-eminence of one century or one nation over another.

Alexander's place in history still disputed.

§ 64. Accordingly, the character of Alexander and his work have not yet been sufficiently weighed and studied to afford us a perfectly clear picture, which might carry conviction to the majority of readers, and finally fix his place in history. As I said above[157:1], Grote's picture of him—the only recent study of the period in England previous to my ownAlexander's EmpireandGreek Life and Thought—is so manifestly unfair that no candid judge will be satisfied with it. If any other writer had used against Demosthenes or Pericles such evidence as Grote cites and believes against Alexander, the great historian would have cried shame upon him, and refuted his arguments with the high satisfaction of supporting an unanswerable case.

Grote's unfairness in accepting evidence against him.

Thus, for example, Grote finds in Q. Curtius, a late, rhetorical, and very untrustworthy Latin historian of Alexander, theatrical details of Alexander's cruelties to the heroic defender of Gaza, or the mythical descendants of the Milesian Branchidæ who had settled in Inner Asia,—details unknown to Arrian, unknown apparently to the Athenians of the day, and fairly to be classed with the king's adventures among the Amazons or in the land beyond the Sun. Yet these stories have their distinct effect upon Grote's estimate of Alexander, whom he esteems hardly a Hellene, but a semi-barbarian conqueror, of transcendent military abilities, only desirous of making for himself a great Oriental despot-monarchy, with a better and more efficientmilitary and civil organization, but without any preparations for higher civilization.

Droysen's estimate.

The estimate of Droysen is nearer the truth, but still not strictly the truth itself[158:1]. To him the Macedonian is a political as well as a military genius of the highest order, who is educated in all the views of Aristotle, who understands thoroughly that the older forms of political life are effete, that small separate States require to be united under a strong central control. He even divines that the wealth and resources of Asia require regeneration through Greek intelligence and enterprise, and therefore the 'marriage of Europe and Asia,' of which the manifest symbol was the wholesale matrimony of his officers with Persian ladies, was the real aim and goal of all his achievements. As such Alexander is more than the worthy pupil of Aristotle, and the legitimate originator of a new and striking form of civilization.

Tendency to attribute calculation to genius.

Its spontaneity.

§ 65. There is, I think, a great tendency, whenever we come to estimate a great and exceptional genius, to regard him as manifesting merely a higher degree of that conscious ability called talent,or cleverness. It is much easier to understand this view of genius than to give any rational account of its spontaneity, its unconscious and unreflective inspirations, which seem to anticipate, and solve without effort, questions laboriously answered by the patient research or experiment of ordinary minds[159:1]. We talk of 'flashes of genius.' When these flashes come often enough, and affect large political questions, we have results which baffle ordinary mortals, and are easily mistaken either for random luck or acute calculation.

Alexander's military antecedents.

If I am right, Alexander started with few definite ideas beyond the desire of great military conquests. On this point his views were probably quite clear, and no doubt often reasoned out with his early companions. He had seen the later campaigns of Philip, and had discovered at Chæronea what the shock of heavy cavalry would do against the best infantry the Greek world could produce. In his very first operations to put down revolt and secure his crown, he had made trial of his field artillery, and of the marching powers of his army through the difficult Thracian country. He therefore required no Aristotle to tell him that with the combined arms of Greece and Macedonia he could conquer the Persian Empire. His reckless exposure of his life at the Granicus and at Issus may indeed be interpreted as the divine confidence of a genius in his star, butseems to me nothing more than a manifest defect in his generalship, counterbalanced to some extent by the enthusiasm it aroused in his household troops.

He learns to respect Persian valour and loyalty.

But it also taught him a very important lesson. He had probably quite underrated the high qualities of the Persian nobles. Their splendid bravery and unshaken loyalty to their king in all the battles of the campaign, their evident dignity and liberty under a legitimate sovran, must have shown him that these were indeed subjects worth having, and destined to be some day of great importance in checking Greek discontent or Macedonian insubordination. The fierce and stubborn resistance of the great Aryan barons of Sogdiana, which cost him more time and loss than all his previous conquests, must have confirmed this opinion, and led to that recognition of the Persians in his empire which was so deeply resented by his Western subjects.

He discovers how to fuse the nations in Alexandria.

§ 66. His campaigns, on the other hand, must have at the same time forced this upon his mind, that the deep separation which had hitherto existed between East and West would make a homogeneous empire impossible, if pains were not taken to fuse the races by some large and peaceful process[160:1].This problem was the first great political difficulty he solved; and he solved it very early in his career by the successful experiment of founding a city on the confines of the Greek seas and the Asiatic continent, into which Jews and Egyptians crowded along with Greeks, and produced the first specimen of that composite Hellenistic life which soon spread over all his empire.

His development of commerce.

Diffusion of gold.

This happy experiment, no doubt intended as an experiment, and perhaps the easiest and most obvious under the circumstances, must have set Alexander's mind into the right groove. Further advances into Asia showed him the immense field open to conquest by his arms, and also by the higher culture and enterprise of Greeks and Jews. He must have felt that in the foundation of chains of cities peopled by veterans and traders he would secure not only a military frontier and military communications, butentrepôtsfor the rising trade which brought new luxuries from the East, and new inventions from the West. Two distinct causes tended largely to promote this commerce, the vigorous maintenance of peace and security on roads and frontiers, and still more the dissemination of a vast hoard of gold captured in the Persian treasuries. This hoard, amounting to several millions of our money, not only stimulated trade by its mere circulation, but afforded the merchant a medium of exchange as superior in convenience to baser metals as bank-notes are to gold. The new merchant could pay out of his girdle in gold as much ashis father had paid out of a camel's load in silver or copper. I have no doubt the Jews were the first people to profit by these altered circumstances, and thus to attain that importance from Rhodes to Rhagæ which comes to light so suddenly and silently in the history of the Diadochi.

Development of Alexander's views.

His romantic imagination.

No pupil of Aristotle.

These changes seem to me to have dawned gradually, though quickly, upon the powerful mind of the conqueror, and to have transformed him from a young knight-errant in search of fame into a statesman facing an enormous responsibility. His intense and indefatigable spirit knew no repose except the distraction of physical excitement; and unfortunately, with the growth of larger views, his love of glory and of adventure was not stilled. No cares of State or legislative labours were able to quench the romance of his imagination and the longing to make new explorations and new conquests. This is the feature which legends of the East and West have caught with poetic truth; they have transformed the visions of his fancy into the chronicle of his life. But all that he did in the way of real government, of practical advancement in civilization, of respecting and adjusting conflicting rights among his various subjects, seems to me the result of a rapid practical insight, a large comprehension of pressing wants and useful reforms, not the working out of any mature theory. Hence I regard it as nonsense to call the politician and the king in any important sense the pupil of Aristotle. There is hardly a point in thePoliticswhich can be regarded as having been adopted in the Macedonian settlement of the world. The whole conditions of this problem and its solution were non-Hellenic, non-speculative, new.

His portentous activity.

§ 67. It is quite possible that some of Alexander's most successful ordinances were not fully understood by himself, if what I have said above of the spontaneous action of genius be true. But certainly many of them were clearly seen and really planned. What astonishes us most is the supernatural quickness and vigour of the man. He died at an early age, but we may well question whether he died young. His body was hacked with wounds, worn with hard exercise and still harder drinking. His mind had undergone a perpetual strain. We feel that he lived at such a rate that to him thirty years were like a century of ordinary life.

Compare with Napoleon,

and Cromwell.

Use of artillery.

It is a favourite amusement to compare the great men of different epochs, who are never very similar, for a great genius is an individual belonging to no class, and can neither be copied nor replaced. Nevertheless it may be said that Napoleon shows more points of resemblance than most other conquerors to the Macedonian king. Had he died of fever on his way to Russia, while his Grand Army was unbroken, he would have left a military reputation hardly inferior to Alexander's. He won his campaigns by the same rapidity in movement, the same resource in sudden emergencies. But if Alexander's strategy was similar to that ofNapoleon, his tactics on the battlefield bear the most curious resemblance to those which Cromwell devised for himself under analogous circumstances. Both generals saw that by organizing a heavy cavalry under perfect control, and not intended for mere pursuit, they could break up any infantry formation then possible. Both accordingly won all their battles by charges of this cavalry, while the enemy's cavalry, often equally victorious in attack, went in wild pursuit, and had no further effect in deciding the contest. It is even the case that both chose their right wing for their own attack, and used their infantry as the defensive arm of the action. This curious analogy, which seems never to have been noticed, only shows how great minds will find out the same solution of a difficulty, whenever like circumstances arise. It is in the use of field artillery, which Alexander brought to bear in quite a novel way upon the northern barbarians in his first campaign, that we should probably find, were our evidence more complete, a resemblance to the tactics which Napoleon employed at Waterloo, attacking with cavalry and artillery together, in a manner which appeared strange even to Wellington.

But the analogy to Napoleon holds good beyond the battlefield. Although both conquerors commenced their career as soldiers, both showed themselves indefatigable in office-work of a peaceful kind, and exceedingly able in the construction of laws. Napoleon imposed, if he did not originate,the best code in modern Europe, and he is known to have worked diligently and with great power at its details.

Vain but not envious.

Both showed the same disagreeable insistence upon their own superiority to other men, whose rivalry they could not brook. But Alexander sought to maintain it by exalting himself to a superhuman position, Napoleon by degrading his rivals with the poisoned weapons of calumny and lies. The falsehoods of Napoleon's official documents have never been surpassed. Alexander did not sink so low; but the assertion of divinity seems to most of us moderns a more monstrous violation of modesty, and a flaw which affects the whole character of the claimant.

His assumption of divinity questioned.

§ 68. So strongly is this felt that an acute writer, Mr. D. C. Hogarth, has endeavoured to show[165:1]that this too was one of the later fables invented about Alexander, and that the king himself never personally laid claim to a divine origin. The criticism of the evidence in this essay is excellent, and to most people will seem convincing. Nevertheless, after due examination of the matter, I am satisfied that the conclusion is wrong, and there is good reason to think that the visit to the temple of Ammon was connected with the policy of deriving Alexander's origin from that god. The very name Alexandria, given at that moment to his new foundation, was a formation only hitherto known in connection with a god's name. The taunt of hissoldiers at Babylon, that he should apply to his father Ammon, is perfectly well attested, and implies that his claim to divinity was well known in the army.

An ordinary matter in those days.

But to my mind a greater flaw in this able essay is the assumption that for a Greek or Macedonian to claim divine origin was as odious and ridiculous as for a modern man to do so. It is only yesterday that men held in Europe the theory that monarchy was of divine origin. In Egypt and the East it was quite the common creed that the monarchs themselves were such.[166:1]The new subjects of the Macedonian king would have thought it more extraordinary that he should not have claimed this descent than that he should; and in Egypt especially the belief that the king was the son of a god and a god himself did not conflict with the assertion of his ordinary human parentage. This is a condition of thought which we cannot grasp, and cannot therefore realize; but nevertheless the fact is as certain as any in ancient history.

Perhaps not asserted among the Greeks.

The assertion, therefore, of divinity in the East was an ordinary piece of policy which Alexander could hardly avoid; the writer I have quoted has, however, shown strong reasons to doubt that he ever claimed it in Greece, though individual Greekswho visited his Eastern court at once perceived it in the ceremonial of his household, and though his soldiers taunted him with it during their revolt at Babylon. But this after all is a small matter. He probably knew better than any of his critics how to impress his authority upon his subjects; and whether it was from vanity or from policy or from a contempt of other men that he insisted upon his own divinity, is now of little consequence.

[156:1]Hence Fynes Clinton's third volume ofFasti, now fifty years old, is still by far the most complete collection of materials for studying later Hellenism. He not only gives all manner of out-of-the-way texts in full, but also a very excellent sketch of each of the Hellenistic monarchies, with dates and other credentials. Considering the time of its appearance (1845), it may be regarded as one of the finest monuments of English scholarship.

[157:1]Cf.§ 10.

[158:1]With the usual zeal of a specialist, who not only makes a hero his own, but defends him against every criticism, Droysen even justifies Alexander's introduction of the Oriental obeisances at his court. As Holm observes, such ceremonies, in themselves impolitic as regards free subjects, were quite inconsistent with the familiarities of the drinking-parties, which Alexander would not deny himself. A Persian King would have understood this, not so a Macedonian. The latest estimate, that of Holm (iii. 403sq.), appears to me also far the best. Yet he too, seems to attribute too much consciousness to the youthful Alexander.

[159:1]Thus Timoleon set up in his house a shrine toΑὐτοματία, the spontaneous impulse which had led him to many brilliant successes. Cf. myGreek Life and Thought, p. 110.

[160:1]We hear of the complaints of Macedonians and Greeks. The complaints of the Persians have not been transmitted to us; but as they were certainly more just and well-founded, and as the king was living in their midst, where he could not but hear them, are we rash in asserting that they must have been fully as important in influencing his decision? Could the many Persian princesses, married to high Macedonian officers, and their native retinues, have been satisfied or silenced without large concessions?

[165:1]In theHistorical Reviewfor 1887, pp. 317,sqq.

[166:1]It is to be noted that the Achæmenid kings, though asserting for themselves a Divine origin, did not claim to be gods. I think the first Greek who received in his lifetime supra-human honours was Lysander, who was flattered by altars, &c., in Asia Minor after his great victory.

Post-Alexandrian Greece.

Tumults of the Diadochi:

their intricacy;

§ 69. The period which follows the death of Alexander is one so complicated with wars and alliances, with combinations and defections, with reshapings of the world's kingdoms[168:1], with abortive efforts at a new settlement, that it deters most men from its study, and has certainly acted as a damper upon the student who is not satisfied with the earlier history, but strives to penetrate to the closing centuries of freedom in Greece. There is very little information upon it, or rather there are but few books upon it, to be found in English. Thirlwall has treated it with his usual care and justice; and to those who will not follow minute and intricate details, I have recently given, in myGreek Life and Thought, a full study of the social andartistic development which took place in this and the succeeding periods of Hellenism in Greece and the East. Hertzberg's and Droysen's histories, the one confined in space to Greece proper, the other in time to the fourth and third centuriesB.C., are both thorough and excellent works. Holm's final volume, which will include the same period, is not yet accessible, so that I cannot notice it.

their wide area.

The liberation of Greece.

A great part of this history was enacted, not in Greece, or even in Greek Asia Minor, but in Egypt, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, and even in Upper Asia. The campaigns which determined the mastery over Greece were usually Asiatic campaigns, and each conqueror, when he arrived at Athens, endeavoured to enlist the support of Greece by public declarations of the freedom, or rather the emancipation, of the Greeks. This constant and yet unmeaning manifesto, something like the Home Rule manifestoes of English politicians, is a very curious and interesting feature in the history of theDiadochi, as they are called, and suggests to us to consider what was the independence so often proclaimed from the days of Demetrius (306B.C.) to those of the Roman T. Flamininus (196B.C.), and why so unreal and shadowy a promise never ceased to fascinate the imagination of an acute and practical people.

Spread of monarchies.

The three Hellenistic kingdoms.

For, on the other hand, it was quite admitted by all the speculative as well as the practical men of the age that monarchy was not only the usual form of the Hellenistic State, but was the onlymeans of holding together large provinces of various peoples, with diverse traditions and diverse ways of life. From this point of view the monarchy of the Seleucids in Hither Asia, and that of the Antigonids over the Greek peninsula, are far more interesting than the simpler and more homogeneous kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt[170:1]. For the Greeks in Egypt were never a large factor in the population. They settled only two or three districts up the country; they shared with Jews and natives the great mart of Alexandria, and even there their influence waned, and the Alexandria of Roman days is no longer a Hellenistic, but an Egyptian city. The persecutions by the seventh Ptolemy, who is generally credited with the wholesale expulsion of the Greeks, would only have had a transitory effect, had not the tide of population been setting that way; the persecutions of the Jews in the same city never produced the same lasting results. The Syrian monarchy stands out from this and even from the Macedonian as the proper type of a Hellenistic State. Unfortunately, the history of Antioch is almost totally lost, andthe very vestiges of that great capital are shivered to pieces by earthquakes. Of its provinces, one only is tolerably well-known to us, but not till later days, through theAntiquitiesof Josephus, and theNew Testament[171:1].

New problems.

§ 70. How did the Greeks of Europe and of Asia accommodate themselves to this altered state of things, which not only affected their political life, but led to a revolution in their social state? For it was the emigrant, the adventurer, the mercenary, who now got wealth and power into his hands, it was the capitalist who secured all the advantages of trade; and so there arose in every city a moneyed class, whose interests were directly at variance with the mass of impoverished citizens. Moreover the king's lieutenant or agent was a greater man in the city than the leading politician. Public discussions and resolutions among the free men of Athens or Ephesus were often convincing, oftener exciting, but of no effect against superior forces which lay quietly in the hands of the controlling Macedonian.

Politics abandoned by thinking men,

We may then classify the better men of that day as follows. First there was a not inconsiderable number of thoughtful and serious men who abandoned practical politics altogether, as being for small States and cities a thing of the past, and only leading to discontent and confusion. These menadopted the general conclusion, in which all the philosophical schools coincided, that peace of mind and true liberty of life were to be obtained by retiring from the world and spending one's days in that practice of personal virtues which was the religion of a nation that had no creed adequate to its spiritual wants.

except as a purely theoretical question,

with some fatal exceptions.

Nevertheless among other topics of speculation these men sometimes treated of politics; and when they did condescend to action, it was to carry out trenchant theories, and to act on principle, without regard to the terrible practical consequences of imposing a new order of things on a divided or uneducated public. The Stoic philosophers, in particular, who interfered in the public life of that day, were dangerous firebrands, not hesitating at the murder of an opponent; for were not all fools criminal, and was not he that offended in one point guilty of all? Such men as the Sphærus who advised thecoup d'étatof the Spartan Cleomenes[172:1], and the Blossius who stimulated the Gracchi into revolution, and the Brutus who mimicked this sort of thing with deplorable results to the world in the murder of Cæsar,—all these were examples of the philosophical politician produced by the Hellenistic age.

Dignity and courage of the philosophers

shown by suicide.

But if there were mischievous exceptions, we must not forget that the main body of the schools kept alive in the Greek mind a serious and exaltedview of human dignity and human responsibility,—above all, they trained their hearers in that noble contempt for death which is perhaps the strongest feature in Hellenistic as compared with modern society; for there can be no doubt that Christian dogmas make cowards of all those who do not live up to their lofty ideal. The Greeks had no eternal punishment to scare them from facing death, and so we find whole cities preferring suicide to the loss of what they claimed as their rightful liberty[173:1]. People who do this may be censured; they cannot be despised.

Rise of despots on principle.

§ 71. Secondly, most philosophers had become so convinced of the necessity of monarchy, if not of the rule of one superior spirit, as better than the vacillations and excitements of a crowd, that many of their pupils considered themselves fit to undertake the duty of improving the masses by absolute control; and so we have a recrudescence, in a very different society, of those tyrants whose merits and defects we have already discussed at an earlier stage in this essay[173:2]. The long series of passages from essaysThat Monarchy is best, which we may read in the commonplace book of Stobæus[173:3], is indeed followed by a series of passagesOn the Censure of Tyranny; but the former is chiefly taken from Hellenistic philosophicaltracts, whereas the latter is drawn wholly from older authors, such as Xenophon, who lived in the days of successful republics.

Probably not wholly unpopular.

Even the literary men, who are always anti-despotic in theory, confess that many of these later tyrants were good and worthy men; and the fact that Gonatas, the greatest and best of the Antigonids, constantly 'planted a tyrant' in a free State which he found hard to manage, proves rather that this form of government was not unacceptable to the majority, than that he violated all the deepest convictions of his unmanageable subjects for the sake of an end certain to be balked if he adopted impolitic means. The force of imitation also helped the creation of tyrannies in the Greek cities; for were not the Hellenistic monarchies the greatest success of the age? And we may assume that many sanguine people did not lay to heart the wide difference between the requirements of the provinces of a large and scattered empire, and those of a town with a territory of ten miles square.

These then were phenomena which manifested themselves all over the peninsula,—aye, even at times at Athens and Sparta, though these cities were protected by a great history and by the sentimental respect of all the world from the experiments which might be condoned in smaller and less august cities.

Contemptible position of Athens and Sparta in politics,

except in mischievous opposition to the new federations,

§ 72. But despite these clear lessons, the normal condition of the old leaders of the Greek worldwas hardly so respectable as that of the modern tyrannies. It consisted of a constant policy of protest, a constant resuscitation of old memories, an obsolete and ridiculous claim to lead the Greeks and govern an empire of dependencies after the manner of Pericles or Lysander. The strategic importance of both cities, as well as their hold upon Greek sentiment, made it worth while for the great Hellenistic monarchs to humour such fancies; for in those days the means of defending a city with walls or natural defences were still far greater than the means of attack, even with Philip's developments of siege artillery,—so that to coerce Athens or Sparta into absolute subjection by arms was both more unpopular and more expensive than to pay political partisans in each, who could at least defeat any active external policy. But if from this point of view these leading cities with all their dignity had little influence on the world, from another they proved fatal to the only new development of political life in Greece which had any promise for small and separate States. And this brings us to the feature of all others interesting to modern readers,—I mean the experiment of a federation of small States, with separate legislatures for internal affairs, but a central council to manage the external policy and the common interests of all the members.

whose origin was small and obscure.

§ 73. This form of polity was not quite new in Greece or Asia Minor, but had remained obscure and unnoticed in earlier and more brilliant times.We may therefore fairly attribute to the opening years of the third centuryB.C.its discovery as an important and practical solution of the difficulty of maintaining small States in theirautonomyor independence as regards both one another and the great Powers which threatened to absorb them.

The old plan of a sovran State not successful.

The old idea had been to put them under thehegemony, or leadership, of one of the great cities. But these had all abused the confidence reposed in them. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, had never for one moment understood the duty of ruling in the interests, not only of the governing, but of the governed. The Athenian law, by which subject-cities could seek redress before the courts of Athens, had been in theory the fairest; and so Grote and Duruy have made much of this apparent justice. But the actual hints we find of individual wrong and oppression, and the hatred in which Athens was held by all her dependencies or allies, show plainly that the democratic theory, fair as it may seem in the exposition of Grote, did not work with justice. Accordingly, we find both in northern and in southern Greece the experiment of federations of cities attaining much success, and receiving much support in public opinion.

The leading cities stood aloof from this experiment.

Athens and the Ætolians

It is most significant that these new and powerful federations were formed outside and apart from the leading cities. Neither Athens nor Sparta, nay, not even Thebes, and hardly even Argos, would condescend to a federation where they should have only a city vote in conjunction with other cities;and so the new trial was deprived both of their advice and of the prestige of their arms and arts. If, for example, both Athens and Thebes, but especially the former, had joined the Ætolian League of wild mountaineers, who had wealth and military power, but no practice in the peaceful discussion and settlement of political questions, they would probably have influenced the counsels of the League for good, and saved it from falling into the hands of unprincipled mercenary chiefs, who regarded border wars as a state of nature, and plunder as a legitimate source of income.

But Athens stood sullenly aloof from this powerful organization, remembering always her long-lost primacy, and probably regarding these mountaineers as hardly Hellenes, and as unworthy to rank beside the ancient and educated States, which had once utilized them as mere semi-barbarous mercenaries. And yet the Ætolians were the only Greeks who were able to make a serious and obstinate struggle for their liberties, even against the power of Rome.

or the Achæans.

§ 74. But if to have rude Ætolians as co-equal members of a common council would have been too bitter a degradation for Athens, why not ally herself to the civilized and orderly Achæans? For the Achæan cities, though insignificant heretofore, had old traditions, legendary glories; and in later times Sicyon especially had been a leading centre, a chosen home for the fine arts. When Corinth and Argos were forced to join this League,why should Athens stand aloof? Yet here was the inevitable limit, beyond which the Achæan League could never obtain a footing. It stopped with the Isthmus, because no arguments could ever induce Athens to give it her adhesion[178:1].

Sparta and the Achæans.

Within the Peloponnesus the case was even worse; for here Sparta was ever the active opponent of the Achæan League, and sought by arms or by intrigues to separate cities and to make any primacy but her own impossible. Thus the Leagues had to contend with the sullen refusal or the active opposition of the principal Powers of Greece; and if, in spite of all that, they attained to great and deserved eminence, it only shows how unworthy was the opposition of those States whose narrow patriotism could not rise beyond their own susceptibilities. This it was which made the success of the experiment from the first doubtful.

A larger question.

What right has a federation to coerce its members?

§ 75. But there was a constitutional question behind, which is one of the permanent problems of statecraft, and therefore demands our earnest attention. The mode of attack upon the Leagues, especially upon the constitutional and orderly Achæan League, adopted by Macedon, Sparta, and Athens, was to invite some member to enter upon separate negotiations with them, without consulting the common council of the federation.And time after time this move succeeded, till at last the interference of the Romans in this direction sapped the power and coherence of the League.

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