88 THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 



and politics, and Athens rapidly decayed. In the 

 second century b.c. the Romans " delivered the Greeks 

 from the Macedonian yoke," as they put it, and — as 

 the drowsy Athenians might have expected — com- 

 pleted its protection by bringing it under their own 

 yoke. The lamp of civilization was handed on to the 

 next great branch of the Aryan race. But Athens, in 

 its two hundred years of brilliant civilization, had 

 made upon the world a mark that will never be 

 effaced — a deeper mark than Egypt had made in four 

 thousand years. 



