The Historians' History of the World 04

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. The king of Asia no longer had the power to extend his influence to Europe; he forfeited to Rome the countries to which he owed that title. But the fall of the empire, now called Syria, involved the strengthening of that nationality which Alexander, rightly estimating its value, had desired to gain over by a share in the government. With the Arsacid monarchy, Philhellenes though they called themselves, a foreign nationality and an intolerant religion flung Hellenism back beyond the Euphrates. The Roman senate undertook the government of the Greek provinces reluctantly, rightly thinking that the result would be as detrimental to their own people as to the subject provinces. It is none the less true that a more ruthless set of blood-suckers has hardly ever fallen upon a defenceless prey. Despair made the Asiatics see a deliverer even in that savage Cappadocian Mithridates, thus bringing disaster upon disaster. Rome herself was utterly out of joint, and finally Greece had to furnish a stage for the decisive struggles of the Roman revolution. Rhodes, the last city that had enjoyed some degree of immunity, was pillaged by the liberators who had murdered Cæsar. How hardened men were to such catastrophes we have recently learnt when it became known that, in the time of Sulla, northern barbarians burned the temple at Delphi; a thing that had been entirely forgotten in the traditions handed down to us. It has also come to light that probably at that time the whole amount of capital accumulated and secured in countless institutions was lost, the festivals of the gods, the games, the banquets all came to an end; the guilds collapsed, even those of the musicians and actors, who had provided themselves with charters from all the powers; wide stretches of the country lay desolate. Some few individuals acquired property which in the sequel became enormously valuable, and this fact in itself was a hindrance to any healthy revival.