“ But ought we to give the name of bravery and valour to a boldness that is equally blind, rash, and impetuous; a boldness void of all rule, that will never listen to the voice of reason, and has no other guide than a senseless ardour for false glory, and a wild desire of distinguishing itself at any price? This character suits only a military robber, who has no attendants; whose own life is alone exposed; and who, for that reason, may be employed in some desperate action; but the case is far otherwise with regard to a king, who owes his life to all his army and his whole kingdom. ”

“ So died Epaminondas—the ablest commander, the noblest citizen, the most stainless character, even if not the greatest statesman, of the Hellenic world. The combination of military ability with civic virtue, of physical prowess with intellectual culture and eloquence, of manly daring with humane feeling, of practical capacity with ideal aspirations, of merit with modesty, of glory with humility, of power with simplicity, has won for him the admiration of succeeding generations as of the whole ancient world. ”

“ Athens remained, but how fallen from its former condition of active energy. In vain Demosthenes tried to awaken it; it asked but to sleep the long sleep of worn-out races. “When, Athenians,” cried the great demagogue, “will you rouse and do your duty? What new event, what pressing need, do you await? What contingency more urgent for free men than the danger of dishonour? Will you always assemble in the public squares to ask each other, ‘Well, what is new?’ What can be newer than a man from Macedonia making himself victor of Athens and master over all Greece? Is Philip dead? ”

“ The young soldier’s meteoric career, which Appian, the great Roman historian, justly likened to a flash of lightning, had all the elements of dramatic picturesqueness. Alexander was the wonder of the age in which he lived, and no less a wonder to each succeeding generation. A myth soon grew up about his name, but the myth was scarcely more wonderful than the bald facts of his history. The main outlines of that history are familiar to every school-boy, yet it is a curious fact that no contemporary record of the achievements of Alexander has come down to us. ”

“ He had failed in a cause in which defeat was more glorious than victory in any other, in a struggle not less worthy of Athens than those in which her heroic citizens in past ages had earned their fame. In a word, the whole oration breathes the spirit of that high philosophy which, whether learned in the schools or [416] from life, has consoled the noblest of our kind in prisons, and on scaffolds, and under every persecution of adverse fortune, but in the tone necessary to impress a mixed multitude with a like feeling, and to elevate it for a while into a sphere above its own. ”

“ He alone raised himself to the power and grandeur to which he afterwards attained. He was obliged to train up, not only his soldiers, but his officers; to instruct them in all the military exercises; to inure them to the fatigues of war; and to his care and abilities alone, Macedonia owed the rise of the celebrated phalanx, that is, of the best troops the world had then ever seen, and to which Alexander owed all his conquests. How many obstacles stood in Philip’s way before he could possess himself of the power which Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had successively exercised over Greece! ”

“ If the oracle of Zeus Ammon, although ridiculed, in the end still designated the king as Zeus’ son; if Alexander, sprung of the race of Hercules and Achilles, had conquered and reorganised a world; if in reality he had accomplished greater things than Hercules and Dionysus; if the long established enlightening of minds disaccustomed to the deepest religious wants had left from the honour and feasts of the gods only the diversions, the outer ceremonies, and the calendar;—then one can realise that for Greece, the thoughts of divine honour and deification of man did not lie too far off. ”

“ Alexander’s claim of divine honours could not be viewed in Greece with the same feelings which it had excited among the victorious Macedonians. To the people bowed down by irresistible necessity under a foreign yoke, it was not a point of great moment under what form or title the conqueror, in the plenitude of his power, chose to remind them of their subjection. They might consider the demand as a wanton insult; but it was in no other sense an injury. There might not be many base enough to recommend it, but there were perhaps still fewer so unwise as to think it a fit ground for resistance. ”

“ Socrates was Athenian to the core, and therefore a loyal citizen of the democratic state; but, like Solon, he combines the Ionian and the Doric temperament; and, in common with the law-giver, he is devoid of feeling for mysticism and the whole sphere of the Unknown. His life is only intelligible as an outgrowth of the history of Athens; his death makes him a type of man as he can and should be. So long as the human race survives on our planet it will be a master experience of our moral education to live through the dying hours of this old and ugly plebeian. ”

“ A bevy of daughters entered upon the heritage of this mother—Italy, France, England, Germany, and many others—and added to it, each after her own fashion. Then they outgrew the imitation and mere echo of the antique, passing on to express in act an independent culture of their own; and now the time seems to have come when the modern spirit claims absolute liberty of action in every sphere, without the slightest reference to the traditions of antiquity. For the modern technician, the modern naturalist, the modern historian, the modern artist, the modern poet, the ancient world has no message. ”

“ With the annihilation of the old kingdom, with the death of Darius, he became heir to the empire over unnumbered peoples who had been governed till then as slaves. A labour it was, worthy of a king indeed, to free them so far as they could understand or learn of freedom, to preserve and further them in whatever they enjoyed of laudable and sound, to respect and spare them in whatever was sacred in their eyes and whatever was their very own. ”

“ But this power, widespread as it was, was scarcely more than an influence, and an influence that was already on the wane, since the nation that lacks citizens has no resources within itself.
Sparta’s exactions offended those who still loved liberty and had not, to console them for its loss, the advantages offered by Athens to her subjects—extensive commerce, and the splendour of public festivals, of arts and of poetry. Sparta, equally grasping and more oppressive, robbed her subjects of everything. ”

“ Alexander’s contemporaries among the Greeks were not mistaken as to the influence which he exercised. He died detested and cursed by Greece and Macedonia. If he had lived longer, he would perhaps himself have seen the downfall of the structure he had reared. He could not be otherwise than active and stirring, and he could not have gone on without bringing ruin upon himself. His intention was not to hellenise Asia, but to make Greece Persian; hence if he had longer remained in Asia, we should have seen the formation of a Græco-Persico-Macedonian empire. ”

“ Absolute monarchy was the only possible form for the empire. The founder of this empire, who bore as many wounds on his body as anyone among his veterans, who commanded in all battles in person, who himself, by ceaseless toil, carried on the business of administration, might well regard himself as the true king whose right to rule, even his master, Aristotle, did not dispute, though he questioned the possibility of such a man’s existence. But Alexander in no way regarded himself as a sovereign because he had the power. ”

“ While Greece and Macedonia were torn by the disputes of Alexander’s successors, Sicily was a prey to a tyrant who for energy, audacity, and complete absence of moral sense, is worthy to be ranked amongst them. It was the age of adventurers and soldiers of fortune. Agathocles, the son of a working potter, became famous in his youth by his beauty, strength, and courage, and also by his immoral life. He enlisted as a soldier, and men were amazed by his height and the weight of his weapons. ”

“ Do any of these characteristics suit Alexander? When we peruse his history and follow him to sieges and battles, we are perpetually alarmed for his safety, and that of his army; and conclude every moment that they are upon the point of being destroyed. Here we see a rapid flood, which is going to draw in and swallow up this conqueror: there we behold a craggy rock, which he climbs, and perceives round him soldiers, either transfixed by the enemy’s darts, or thrown headlong by huge stones from precipices. We tremble when we perceive in a battle the axe just ready to cleave his head ”

“ But in truth it is absurd to speak of opportunities of feasting on the loveliest of landscapes, to the man who has extinguished in himself all sense of beauty, of opportunities for generous action to the man whose whole life exhibits nothing but the working of unvarying and consistent selfishness. Whether after Ægospotami, or after the return of the Ten Thousand, it was impossible for Sparta to do anything towards establishing a real Panhellenic union, in other words, a real Greek nation, without reverting in greater or less degree to the works of Athens. ”

“ The Roman peace did not restore to the Greek towns of Italy the glory which had radiated from their art and literature during the stormy period [585] of their political independence. The innumerable painted vases which are admired in our museums, and the coins of infinite variety suffice to mark their place in the history of civilisation. Not rich Tarentum only, but towns of no importance, Terina, Velia, Metapontum, Heraclea in Lucania, made coins of inimitable perfection. The production of these works of art ceased abruptly with that communal autonomy of which the coin was the visible symbol. ”

“ These gods will vanish into thin air like vapours at the advent of a true god who wins men’s hearts to serve him. These men and women enjoy and suffer—to what end? To blossom and wither like the leaves of the woodland. What is the end of this brilliant world? The horrors of devastation for Ilium, and for the Achæans, returning home in their fleet—shipwreck.
The Ionians had just been torn from their native mountains and springs, from their ancestors and from their gods; in dire distress they had fought for and conquered new settlements on a foreign coast and among foreign races. ”

“ The military merits alone of Epaminondas, had they merely belonged to a general of mercenaries, combined with nothing praiseworthy in other ways, would have stamped him as a man of high and original genius, above every other Greek, antecedent or contemporary. But it is the peculiar excellence of this great man that we are not compelled to borrow from one side of his character in order to compensate deficiencies in another. His splendid military capacity was never prostituted to personal ends—neither to avarice, nor ambition, nor overweening vanity. ”

“ Rome had already banished Greek influence from Italy. This momentous fact of the weakness of Greece was the result of Alexander’s untimely death and of the impossibility of maintaining the unity of the empire, the struggle for which had lasted fifty years and allowed of the rise of three great powers which mutually held one another in check. By the time Rome had overcome Hannibal, Egypt had been so enfeebled by misgovernment that it put itself, ingloriously but prudently, under the protection of the Roman republic. Macedonia succumbed, not without honour. ”

“ Remembering all the better side of the Spartan life and the Spartan philosophy, one is disposed to feel a deep sense of regret. It seems to be a moment for elegy. But to certain historians who can see in Sparta at best only a stupid mountain of conservatism, and at worst a monster of hypocrisy, of cruelty and of inertia, it seems to be a time for rejoicing that a blot has been removed from the Grecian escutcheon. No one is more severe and no one more eloquent than Cox who says in his self-defence, “I have been charged with being over-severe to Sparta. ”

“ It is the common possession of their age, their nation, and the culture which it had attained; and marks in the most striking fashion the contrast of the relative values of Persian and Greek civilisation and political institutions. A handful of Greeks bid splendid defiance to the sovereign of the enormous Persian empire, to the sheer bulk of his army, and to all the intrigues of his satraps. It was the victory of Greek subtlety and skill over the rigid and mechanical organisation of Persia, of Greek science over the intellectual poverty of the East, of Greek tactics over Persian confusion ”

“ With the fall of the Hellenic municipal system and the rise of the Macedonian sovereignty a new world comes into being, in which the leaders are monarchs and no longer individual citizens. The outlook and sphere of action of the individual is restricted. Men grow to be eminent in practical affairs, experts in the art of living, less eager to solve the riddle of the universe than that of the personal Ego, by withdrawing men from the tumult of external affairs and guiding them into the imperturbable calm of philosophic conviction as into a sure haven. ”

“ In the eyes of many, even to this day, he stands for the sum total of the Greek spirit; in the eyes of some, for the whole body of poetry. What the two epics set before us is so complete, so individual, that in spite of all concessions in detail, the oneness of the poem and of the author is constantly obtruding itself upon our notice anew. Homer is so little antiquated that he seems to be of no age; we place him in a sunnier morning-time of mankind, that is all; but to range him in the sequence of history, to conceive of him as under conditions of time and place seems like profanation ”