The Historians' History of the World 04

Athenian independence and power and that Greek liberty in opposition to which Philip looked a barbarian and a tyrant in the eyes of Demosthenes, had in truth long been but a phantom. The attempt made by Athenian statesmen, from Aristides to Pericles, to transform into an Athenian empire the confederation of cities which the repulse of the Persians had called into existence, was the greatest act of the Hellenes in the sphere of politics. The concentration of their civilisation into a unit under the hegemony of Athens was achieved. But the issue which the young Thucydides foresaw when, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, he determined to write his history, fell out otherwise than he perhaps anticipated or than was in all human probability to be anticipated. Athens had not strength to subdue the Peloponnesus; Sparta subdued Athens and destroyed the empire—but with the help of the Persians, who were the real victors. The result was not only the desolation and brutalisation incident to a long civil war, but a despair of any kind of favourable issue—indeed of any issue at all. The restoration of the Athenian democracy, the catastrophe of Sparta, which after Leuctra has as much as it can do in fighting for its own existence, the ephemeral rise of Thebes, due to the pre-eminence of a single man, all this has no further significance in the history of the nation except to emphasise the fact that none of these little cities could maintain a sovereignty either at home or over their neighbours; that they existed only in virtue of the general weakness. Even the Persian might, which imposes its will on the Greeks so frequently even without the aid of armed force, subsists only because no one attacks it. What this whole world lacks is a dominant will to coerce it to its own advantage. It lacks a master. Many are aware of this, many give voice to it; that state in particular,—founded in violence and yet powerful,—which Dionysius of Syracuse carved out for himself by overcoming the Carthaginians in the hour of their need, widely disseminated this feeling. The fall of his dynasty brought about a reaction, and the spirit of ancient municipal independence owed its power to the fact that the monarchy seemed to place even the personal freedom of the individual in jeopardy. How Philip would have solved the problem put in his hands on the day of Chæronea, it is idle to speculate. Long before that, the aged Isocrates had called upon him to take his place as general of the Hellenic confederacy against the Persians. And now it came to pass that his son was confronted with this same problem. He it was who solved it. He is and was the master of whom the Hellenic nation stood in need.

Demosthenes and all those who were pledged to the old ideals of sovereign cities, whether oligarchies or democracies, were naturally incapable of understanding the great king and his empire, but even Aristotle seems to have thought much as they did, although he had been Alexander’s tutor and saw clearly the need of reform in society and the petty states, and was strongly inclined to translate his political theories into practice. His historical compilations ignore the Macedonian monarchy, and his theories reveal no suspicion of what Alexander designed and executed. This ought not to astonish us, even if we see in Alexander the crowning figure of Hellenic civilisation. For all truly great men in history seem to the reflective eye of posterity like providential agents appearing at the right moment to accomplish what has long ago been augured as a need, prophesied and prepared for. As a matter of fact they accomplish the result in quite another fashion, a fashion of their own, often contrary to all anticipation, filled as they justly are with the sense that they are contributing something new and original. But contemporaries who have no power of reading history backwards from the event (even if their interpretation were likely to be sound), experience the clash of this novel contribution with all the more violence the higher they stand over the common herd, which after all only takes up the catchword, crying, “Hosannah!” on Sunday, and on Friday, “Crucify!” Even now it counts itself singularly sage for taking its catchword from Demosthenes or Aristotle for the condemnation of Alexander.