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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Man as a base line for measuring the universe, man as a source of governing power, arose in Greece; it was Greece that shaped the law of beauty from which came the arts of form, the law of speculative truth from which by ordered observations came the sciences, and the law of liberty from which came the democratic state. This was what the old Greece held in keeping for the world. Alexander was the strong wind that scattered the seed; again, he was the willing hand of the sower.
The story of Alexander has become a story of death. He died, himself, before his time. With his life he brought the old Greece to its end; with his death, the state he had founded. But they all three, Alexander, Greece, the Grand Empire, each after its sort, set forth, as history judges men and things, the inner value of the saying, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone.”o
CHAPTER LVIII. GREECE DURING THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER
The great conqueror is so much more of a cosmopolitan than a Greek that it has been possible and advisable to trace his career as a unit almost without alluding to the little territory his father had been so anxious to acquire and appease. But Greece, never quiet, was not stagnant during the absence of Alexander; and before taking up the tangle of the successors of Alexander, it will be well to glance at the activities of the Grecians and their futile restiveness.a
The springs of that policy among the Grecian republics, which produced war against Alexander in Greece itself while he was prosecuting the war of the Grecian confederacy against Persia—nowhere declared by ancient writers, but seeming rather studiously involved in mist by some of them—may nevertheless, by a careful examination of information remaining, in a great degree be traced.
Nothing in ancient history remains more fully ascertained than that, under the Macedonian supremacy, the Grecian republics enjoyed, not only more liberty and independency than under the Athenian or Lacedæmonian supremacy, but, as far as appears, all that could be consistent with the connection of all as one people. Nor did it rest there; Demosthenes, in the Athenian assembly, reviled the Macedonian monarchs, the allies of his commonwealth, the heads of the Grecian confederacy, in a manner that in modern times would be reckoned highly indecent towards an enemy; and he avowed and even boasted of treasonable practices against the general confederacy, of which his commonwealth was a member. “I,” he said, “excited Lacedæmon against Alexander: I procured the revolt against him in Thessaly and Perrhæbia.” In fact the government of Athens, described, as we have formerly seen, by Xenophon and Isocrates as in their time verging towards anarchy, is largely shown, in the extant works of following orators, and especially in the celebrated contest between Æschines and Demosthenes, to have been still advancing in corruption and degradation. During the whole time that Alexander was in Asia, the struggle of parties was violent—one, under Demosthenes, with the support of Persia, contended ably and indefatigably for the mastery of Athens and of Greece; the other, after Isocrates, looking to Phocion as their leader, desired peace under the established supremacy of Macedonia, and above all things dreaded the ascendency of Demosthenes and his associates.
[333-331 B.C.]
Of the domestic politics of Lacedæmon information rarely comes to us but through transactions with other states. Agis, the reigning king of the Proclidean family, whom we have seen already active in enmity to Macedonia, appears to have been a man of character to suit the purposes of Demosthenes. Possibly he was not much grieved, nor perhaps was Demosthenes, at the death of Memnon. Had Memnon lived, either could have been but second of the Greeks of the party; which could no way maintain itself but through the patronage of Persia. By Memnon’s death indeed great advantages were lost, and a contest of far less hope for the party altogether remained. But in that contest Demosthenes reckoned, by his talents and his extensive political communication, to hold the first importance among the Greeks, while Agis reckoned himself effectually first, by his regal dignity and the old eminence of the Lacedæmonian state; both trusting that they should still not fail of support from Persia. Till the battle of Issus the hopes of both might reasonably run high; and evidently they were not abandoned on the adverse event of that battle.
Looking to facts acknowledged by all, we find the half-ruined state of Lacedæmon never ceasing to avow a political opposition, at length growing into open hostility to the confederacy of republics, constitutionally established under the lead of Macedonia; as constitutionally, it appears, as ever before under the lead of Lacedæmon, Athens, or Thebes. In Athens itself an opposition to the Macedonian interest was always openly maintained. Negotiation was carried on by Lacedæmon among the other republics with avowed hostile purpose, and adverse intrigue from Athens appears to have been no secret. Against this open political hostility no interference of force has been even pretended to have been used; and, in all appearance, hardly so much opposition of influence as honest prudence might require. Negligence, inertness, short-sightedness, may seem, with more reason, to be imputed; yet they never have been imputed to Antipater, to whom the government of Macedonia and the protection of the Macedonian party in Greece were committed. While then the Macedonian supremacy, if not remissly, was liberally exercised, the party interests in every Grecian state, the inveterate hatred everywhere of fellow-citizens to fellow-citizens, and the generally active and restless temper of the Grecian people afforded ground for that league against the confederacy of the Greek nations acknowledging the lead of Macedonia, which Demosthenes and Agis succeeded in forming.
CONFEDERACY AGAINST MACEDONIA
[331-330 B.C.]
It is beyond question that Persian gold, imputed by all writers, greatly promoted the Persian interest. It appears to have been after the disastrous battle of Arbela, when the Persian monarch’s hope even of personal safety depended on opportunity to raise new enemies to Alexander, that he found means to make remittances to Greece. Æschines, uncontradicted by Demosthenes, stated before the assembled Athenian people, as a matter publicly known and not to be gainsaid, that a present to them of three hundred talents (about sixty thousand pounds) was offered in the name of the king of Persia. The prevalence of Phocion’s party however at the time sufficed to procure a refusal of the disgraceful offer.
But in Peloponnesus the Persian party, under the lead of the king of Lacedæmon, for whom there was no difficulty in taking subsidies from the Persian court, obtained superiority. Argos and Messenia were inveterately hostile to Lacedæmon, and were indeed neither by bribes nor threats to be gained. But all Elis, all Arcadia, except Megalopolis, and all Achaia, one small town only refusing, renounced the confederacy under the lead of Macedonia, and joined Lacedæmon in war, equally against Macedonia and all Grecian republics which might adhere to the confederacy. Beyond the peninsula the opposite politics generally prevailed; though in Athens Phocion’s party could do no more than maintain nominal adherence to engagement, and a real neutrality; the weight of the party of Demosthenes sufficing to prevent any exertion against the Lacedæmonian league.
That league however was not of such extent that it could be hoped, with the civic troops only of the several states, to support war against the general confederacy under the lead of Macedonia; and those states were not of wealth to maintain any considerable number of those, called mercenaries, ready to engage with any party. Nevertheless mercenary troops were engaged for that league, to the number, if the contemporary orator Dinarchus should be trusted, of ten thousand—Persia supplying the means, as Æschines, still uncontradicted by Demosthenes, affirms; and another source is hardly to be imagined. With such preparation and such support Agis ventured to commence offensive war. A small force of the opposing Peloponnesian states was overborne and destroyed or dispersed; siege was laid to the only adverse Arcadian city, Megalopolis, and its fall was expected daily.