88 Alexander's policy. 



of governing a great empire. Mr Grote complains 

 that " he had none of that sense of correlative right 

 and ohligation which characterised the free Greeks ; " 

 but Mr Grote describes Alexander too much from the 

 Athenian point of view. In all municipalities, in all 

 aristocratic bodies, in all corporate assemblies, in all 

 robber communities, in all savage families or clans, 

 the privileged members have a sense of correlative 

 right and obligation. The real question is, how far, 

 and to what extent, this feeling prevails outside the 

 little circle of selfish reciprocity and mutual admira- 

 tion. The Athenians did not include their slaves in 

 their ideas of correlative right and obligation ; nor 

 their prisoners of war, when they passed a public de- 

 cree to cut off all their thumbs, so that they might 

 not be able to handle the pike, but might still be 

 able to handle the oar ; nor their allies, when they 

 took their money and spent it all upon themselves. 

 Alexander committed some criminal and despotic acts, 

 but it was his noble idea to blot out the word " bar- 

 barian" from the vocabulary of the Greeks, and to 

 amalgamate them with the Persians. Mr Grote de- 

 clares that Alexander intended to make Greece Per- 

 sian, not Persia Greek. Alexander certainly intended 

 to make Greece a satrapy, as it was afterwards made 

 a Roman province. And where would have been the 

 loss ? The independence of the various Greek cities 

 had one time assisted the progress of the nation. But 

 that time was past. Of late they had made use of 

 their freedom only to indulge in civil war. All that 

 was worthy of being preserved in Greece was its lan- 

 guage and its culture, and to that Alexander was not 

 indifferent. He sent thirty thousand Persian boys to 

 school, and so laid the foundations of the sovereignty 



