Greece in the fourth century BC 103 



self-working laborious animal (avrovpyov KOI eiwrovov gaov). Nor 

 must we suppose that God, seated aloft in heaven and influencing all 

 things more or less directly in proportion as they are near or far, per- 

 vades and flits through the universe regardless of his dignity and 

 propriety to carry on the things of earth with his own hands (avrovpyel 

 TCL eVt 7*7?)- The third passage is in a comparison, illustrating the 

 divine power by the Persian system, in which the Great King sitting 

 on his throne pervades and directs his vast empire through his mini- 

 stering agents. Such a fortiori is the government of God. 



XVIII. THE LATER ATTIC ORATORS. 



It has already been remarked that no clear chronological line can 

 be drawn to divide this famous group into two sections, but that there 

 is nevertheless a real distinction between the period of hostility to 

 Persia and that in which fear of Macedon was the dominant theme. 

 The jealousies and disunion of the Greek states are the background of 

 both. Isocrates 1 had appealed in vain for Greek union as a means of 

 realizing Greek ambitions and satisfying Greek needs. Demosthenes, 

 so far as he did succeed in combining Greek forces to resist the en- 

 croachments of Philip, succeeded too late. In the fifth century BC we 

 see the Greek states grouped under two great leading powers. The 

 conflict of these powers leaves one of them the unquestioned head of 

 the Greek world. The next half century witnessed the fall of Sparta, 

 earned by gross misgovernment, and the rise and relapse of Thebes. 

 In the same period Athens made another bid for maritime empire, but 

 this second Alliance had failed. Isolation of Greek states was now the 

 rule, and the hopelessness of any common policy consummated the 

 weakness of exhaustion. At Athens the old fervent patriotism was 

 cooling down, as we learn from the growing reluctance to make sacri- 

 fices in the country's cause. Demos was no longer imperial, and he 

 was evidently adapting himself to a humbler role. His political leaders 

 had to secure his food-supply and provide for his festivals, and this 

 out of a sadly shrunken income. To provide efficient fighting forces 

 on land and sea was only possible by appropriating the Festival fund 

 (deaypLKov), and the mob of Athens was unwilling either to fight in 

 person or to surrender its amusements in order to hire mercenaries. 

 Too often the result was that mercenaries, hired but not paid, were left 

 to pillage friend and foe alike for their own support. The truth is, 



1 Even after the ruin of Phocis and the peace of 346 BC the old man wrote in the same 

 strain. But it was to Philip, in whom he recognised the real master of Greece, that he now 

 appealed. 



