GREECE 



which was to be fused into homo- 

 geneity was not destined to be ac- 

 complished. 



Dying with no son to succeed 

 him, he left the vast dominion to 

 be striven for among his generals, 

 with the result that after a few 

 years it had fallen into five main 

 divisions, in Europe, in Asia Minor, 

 in Egypt, in Syria, and in the re- 

 mote East beyond the Euphrates. 

 In the four Oriental divisions 

 Hellenism was only an exotic ; a 

 foreign influence, an atmosphere 

 which surrounded Macedonian and 

 Greek dynasts, which left its traces 

 but was never absorbed into the 

 soil. And Alexander, failing to 

 fuse East and West, failed no less 

 to fuse Hellas. The Hellas he led 

 was still only a congeries of small 

 states forced into alliance and 

 dominated by Macedon. So it re- 

 mained after he was gone. 

 Athens and Antipater 



Alexander was no sooner dead 

 than Athens took the lead in 

 forming a league from which as 

 a matter of course Sparta and 

 others stood apart for throwing 

 off the Macedonian yoke ; but, 

 after some initial success against 

 Antipater, the regent whom Alex- 

 ander had left in Macedonia, in 

 what is known as the Lamian war, 

 the league was virtually dissolved 

 by Antipater's diplomacy. Then 

 followed the period of the strug- 

 gles for supremacy between Alex- 

 ander's generals, which finally set- 

 tled on the Macedonian throne the 

 dynasty of Antigonus in 278. 



The last of his rivals was 

 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus ; but the 

 career of that brilliant military 

 adventurer, who perished in the 

 contest with Antigonus, had scarce- 

 ly any influence on the story of 

 Greece. The Macedonian kingdom 

 exercised no recognized authority 

 over the Greek states, though it 

 enforced an effective domination 

 wherever only an isolated resist- 

 ance was offered. As a matter of 

 fact, Antigonus secured his ascen- 

 dancy by setting up a tyrannos 

 who was a creature of his own in 

 most of the states. 



Nevertheless, it was at this stage, 

 about the middle of the third cen- 

 tury B.C., that there arose among 

 those minor states which had 

 never claimed a leading position, 

 the conception of a free federation 

 of self-governing states, bound 

 together for purposes of foreign 

 policy. In the Peloponnesian dis- 

 trict "which still bore the ancient 

 name of Achaea, and in Aetolia, 

 facing Achaea, on the northern 

 side of the gulf of Corinth, arose 

 the Achaean and Aetolian leagues 

 ot cities, which began by expelling 

 the tyrants who had been imposed 



3671 



upon them, and assisting their 

 neighbours to do likewise. 



Leagues of the 3rd Century 



Each of the leagues was orga- 

 nized with what might be called a 

 central federal council with a 

 common commander-in-chief, and 

 one or other was quickly joined by 

 most of the more vigorous cities, 

 though Sparta obstinately stood 

 aloof. Had the Greeks in the day of 

 their greatest glory been able to 

 rise to the conception of an Hel- 

 lenic federation in which every 

 state would be ready to subordi- 

 nate its particular interests to the 

 common good, there might con- 

 ceivably have been a true union 

 and fusion of Hellas. But now it 

 was too late. The leagues were 

 jealous of each other, and Sparta 

 was jealous of both, while both 

 were jealous of Sparta. 



Greater Hellas in the W. had 

 never been in close touch with 

 Hellas proper since the episode of 

 the Athenian expedition to Sicily. 

 Then the old struggle with Car- 

 thage had been renewed, which in 

 the third century was merged in the 

 struggle between Carthage and 

 Rome. This tremendous contest 

 was brought to a decisive issue in 

 the second Punic War (218-201),' 

 which began at the moment 

 when Eastern Hellas was split up 

 between Macedon, Sparta, and the 

 two leagues. Philip V of Macedon, 

 unfortunately for himself, hoped 

 to strengthen his own position by 

 alliance with the Carthaginian 

 Hannibal, which brought down 

 upon him the wrath of Rome as 

 soon as she felt herself free to 

 extend her activities. 



Greek States and Macedon 



The Greek states were divided 

 generally into those hostile to 

 Macedon, and those which favoured 

 her, and individually into parties 

 which followed the same line. 

 But the first result was that Philip 

 was beaten by the Romans, who 

 proceeded to declare the liberation 

 of Greece from the Macedonian 

 yoke (196). But though Rome ab- 

 stained from assuming a formal 

 sovereignty, it was obvious that 

 her domination had, as a matter 

 of fact, taken the place of that of 

 Macedon, whose king had been 

 made a dependent of the republic. 



Rome had rewarded the states 

 which favoured her at the expense 

 of those which supported Macedon; 

 but the one group considered their 

 gains inadequate, while the other 

 considered that they had been 

 robbed. Consequently, as soon as 

 Philip's successor, Perseus, sought 

 to throw off the Roman domina- 

 tion he received moral support from 

 many quarters, though no material 

 aid. He was decisively crushed at 



GREECE 



the battle of Pydna, in 168, and 

 Macedon was partitioned into a 

 group of republics. It -was natural 

 that Rome should assume a dic- 

 tatorial tone towards the states 

 whose conduct she felt justified in 

 resenting, and that those states in 

 their turn should resent her 

 haughty attitude. Again the 

 natural results followed attempt- 

 ed defiance crushed by overwhelm- 

 ing force, and the pronouncement 

 that since the Greeks persisted in 

 misusing their liberty, they must 

 lose it. The last hopeless effort for 

 Greek independence expired with 

 the siege and capture of Corinth, 

 in 146, when Greece was swallowed 

 up in the Roman Empire. 

 Greece and Rome 



Greece fell, but in falling, in part 

 at least, conquered the conqueror. 

 The Greek spirit and the Roman 

 spirit were poles apart ; but if the 

 Roman had in him something 

 which the Greek lacked, he was 

 nevertheless conscious that the 

 Greek compelled his admiration by 

 some quality in which he was 

 himself deficient, and set himself 

 painfully to the sincere flattery of 

 imitation ; an imitation not always 

 discriminating, and not always 

 successful. Roman literature and 

 Roman art became palpably the 

 product of effort to reproduce 

 Greek literature and Greek art, 

 seldom more than half understood. 



The Roman formulated his 

 canons from the Greek examples, 

 often without grasping what was 

 fundamental, and what was acci- 

 dental, thereby creating the classi- 

 calism by which he himself was 

 hidebound; departing, however, en- 

 tirely from the essential Romanti- 

 cism of the Greek in the great days 

 of Greece, when the most vigorous 

 individuality had sought its own 

 expression, and by its triumphant 

 success made individuality there- 

 after afraid of itself. But if it 

 was in the main, not the spirit of 

 Greece, but the form in which it 

 had clothed itself, that the Roman 

 sought "to assimilate, there was 

 yet some infusion even of the spirit 

 which may be felt in the work of 

 the greatest of the Roman poets. 



This sketch of the political 

 history of the Hellenes shows how 

 the conditions which fostered an 

 extraordinary and unparalleled vi- 

 tality in individual communities, 

 actually prevented their fusion into 

 a greater homogeneous political 

 organization, so that they never 

 shaped into a nation exercising an 

 imperial sway over other peoples. 

 The function of Hellenism was not, 

 like that of Rome, to conquer and 

 control the world, but to educate 

 it, and to inspire its ideals. 



A. D. Innes 



