CHAPTER LXI. THE FAILURE OF GRECIAN FREEDOM

[Sidenote: [318-309 B.C.]]

We have already mentioned that Polysperchon with his army was in Phocis when Phocion was brought before him, on his march towards Peloponnesus. Before he reached Attica, Cassander arrived at Piræus to join Nicanor with a fleet of thirty-five ships and four thousand soldiers obtained from Antigonus. On learning this fact, Polysperchon hastened his march also, and presented himself under the walls of Athens and Piræus with a large force of twenty thousand Macedonians, four thousand Greek allies, one thousand cavalry, and sixty-five elephants; animals which were now seen for the first time in Greece. He at first besieged Cassander in Piræus, but finding it difficult to procure subsistence in Attica for so numerous an army, he marched with the larger portion into Peloponnesus, leaving his son Alexander with a division to make head against Cassander. Either approaching in person the various Peloponnesian towns, or addressing them by means of envoys, he enjoined the subversion of the Antipatrian oligarchies, and the restoration of liberty and free speech to the mass of the citizens. In most of the towns, this revolution was accomplished; but in Megalopolis, the oligarchy held out, not only forcing Polysperchon to besiege the city, but even defending it against him successfully. His admiral Clitus was soon afterwards defeated in the Propontis, with the loss of his whole fleet, by Nicanor (whom Cassander had sent from Piræus) and Antigonus.

After these two defeats, Polysperchon seems to have evacuated Peloponnesus, and to have carried his forces across the Corinthian Gulf into Epirus, to join Olympias. His party was greatly weakened all over Greece, and that of Cassander proportionally strengthened. The first effect of this was the surrender of Athens. The Athenians in the city, including all or many of the restored exiles, could no longer endure that complete severance from the sea, to which the occupation of Piræus and Munychia by Cassander had reduced them. Athens without a port was hardly tenable; in fact, Piræus was considered by its great constructor, Themistocles, as more indispensable to the Athenians than Athens itself. It was agreed that they should become friends and allies of Cassander; that they should have full enjoyment of their city, with the port Piræus, their ships and revenues; that the exiles and deported citizens should be readmitted; that the political franchise should for the future be enjoyed by all citizens who possessed one thousand drachmæ of property and upwards; that Cassander should hold Munychia with a governor and garrison, until the war against Polysperchon was brought to a close; and that he should also name some one Athenian citizen, in whose hands the supreme government of the city should be vested. Cassander named Demetrius the Phalerean (_i.e._, an Athenian of the deme Phalerum), one of the colleagues of Phocion.

This convention restored substantially at Athens the Antipatrian government; yet without the severities which had marked its original establishment, and with some modifications in various ways. It made Cassander virtually master of the city (as Antipater had been before him), by means of his governing nominee, upheld by the garrison, and by the fortification of Munychia; which had now been greatly enlarged and strengthened, holding a practical command over Piræus, though that port was nominally relinquished to the Athenians. But there was no slaughter of orators, no expulsion of citizens; moreover, even the minimum of one thousand drachmæ, fixed for the political franchise, though excluding the multitude, must have been felt as an improvement compared with the higher limit of two thousand drachmæ prescribed by Antipater. Cassander was not, like his father, at the head of an overwhelming force, master of Greece. He had Polysperchon in the field against him with a rival army and an established ascendency in many of the Grecian cities; it was therefore his interest to abstain from measures of obvious harshness towards the Athenian people.[b]

HELLAS AT PEACE

Subsequent events, in Greece itself first of all, offer sufficient explanation of what the Peace of 311 meant, so far as the freedom of the Grecian states was concerned. And yet it appears the old magic of the word did not cease to delude the mind and inflame the heart--for did not that word comprehend everything they thought they now lacked and had once enjoyed?

Free their city republics could yet certainly be, or become--free after a certain fashion; but independent, scarce one of them. Powers far superior stood round on every side; and although full of active men ready to be hired for fighting, these little states were too poor to bring up considerable armies, too jealous and bitter about one another to make a reliable alliance, and lastly the public spirit of their citizens was too decayed to permit any possible hope of a radically better state of things. Their day was over. Only the forms of a great monarchy could have held together this restless life which was fretting itself away; but whatever attempt had been made in this direction had taken no root among a people who were entirely separatist, and whose ideas of citizenship never went beyond the limits of their various cities. The very qualities that so peculiarly fitted the Greek spirit to serve as the fermenting leaven that should work through the peoples of Asia and forward their development, incapacitated it for the work of retaining its independent politics and keeping pace with the new developments of the time.

The situation of Sparta in these times is a strange one. The laws of Lycurgus and the old forms still linger there, but the old spirit has gone out, even to the last trace. It is a reign of the basest immorality. The citizens have dwindled to a few hundreds, the constitution of Lycurgus, formally observed, is a lie. The narrower the intellectual circle in which thought may move, the cruder must be the notions that obtain. Literature and science, the comfort and hope of the rest of Greece, were still, even to this day, proscribed in Sparta. Sparta had no other interest in the situation except that in her dominion was the universal recruiting ground for all parties--the peninsula of Tænarus--and distinguished Spartans were always glad to take the field as mercenaries. Even the son of the aged king Cleomenes II, Acrotatus, led a mercenary army to Tarentum and Sicily in 315, revolting those in whose pay he fought by his bloodthirsty savagery and his unnatural passions. He came home to Sparta dishonoured, and died before he could inherit from his father.

At the death of Cleomenes (309), Cleonymus, a worthy brother to Acrotatus in dissoluteness and arrogance, demanded the kingdom; the Gerousia decided in favour of the young son of Acrotatus, Areus, and after a few years Cleonymus entered the service of Tarentum with a force of mercenaries, to bring the name of Sparta into ignominy by behaving even worse than his brother. At home the power of the kings, since the state no longer existed for its business of war, was as good as gone. The ephorate ruled as an oligarchy, and the oligarchy wanted nothing but quiet and pleasure, wrapped up in the dead laws of Lycurgus; nothing was further from their thoughts than the idea of winning again their old hegemony, at least in the Peloponnese--an idea which might now have been justified by the distraction of Greece and the strife of parties that was bursting afresh into flames.

ATHENS UNDER DEMETRIUS; SPARTA BEHIND WALLS

Athens affords us the most vivid glimpse into this unhappy time. How often had the ruling party and the policy of the city changed since the battle of Chæronea. At last in the autumn of 318, after the victory of Cassander, the state was given a form which was anything but a democracy. The man whom the people chose, and Cassander confirmed, as state administrator, was Demetrius, the son of Phanostratus of Phalerus. He had grown up in the house of Timotheus and had been educated in science and for a political life by Theophrastus. He was a man as talented as he was vain, as versatile in the realm of letters as he was politically characterless--for the rest, a man of the world and its pleasures, who fell on his feet wherever he was.

It may be that in his early years he had lived like a philosopher, that his table was laid very frugally, “only with olives in vinegar and cheese from the islands.” And then too, when he became master of the state he showed himself, according to some, a humane, clear-sighted, excellent statesman; while others declare that he spent but a small proportion of the city’s income (which with subsidies from Egypt and Macedonia he had raised to twelve hundred talents) in administration and in keeping the city well prepared for war; the rest went partly in public festivities and splendour, and partly in his own riotous and dissolute living. He that would pose in his ordinances as a reformer of Athenian morals, corrupted morals by his more than doubtful example. Every day, it was said, he gave splendid dinners to which a great number of guests were always invited; in his expenditure on his table he surpassed even the Macedonians, in his elegance he outdid Cyprians and Phœnicians; spikenard and myrrh were sprinkled for perfume, the floor was strewn with flowers, costly carpets and paintings decorated the rooms; he kept so extravagant, so luxurious, a table, that his cook, who had what was left over, was able to buy three properties in two years out of the profits he made by his sales. Demetrius spent the greatest care upon his choice of dress, he dyed his hair fair, painted his face, anointed his head with precious oils; he always showed a smiling countenance, he wanted to please every one.

The most dainty and unbridled wantonness side by side with that subtle, gracious, and witty culture, which has ever since been described by the epithet Attic--both are characteristic of the life of Athens in those days. It was the fashion to attend the schools of philosophy.

Such words as home, chastity, modesty, were no longer heard in the Athens of that time, or they were only words. Life had all become phrases and epigrams, ostentation and occupied idleness. Athens distributed flattery and entertainment to the mighty ones of the earth, and permitted herself to receive in return their gifts and gratuities. She grew more servile as she grew more oligarchic. She played as a state the rôle of parasite to kings and such as held power, a sponging flatterer not at all ashamed to buy admiration and pleasures at the price of dignity. There were only two things her people were afraid of; they were afraid of being bored, and they were afraid of being ridiculous--and there were rich occasions for being both. Religion had disappeared, and with the indifference of enlightenment superstition came in--magic, witchcraft, astrology. Moral conduct, out of an old habit (for morality like the laws had been reasoned away), was theoretically handled in the schools and made a theme for debate and literary duels. The two standard philosophies of the next centuries, the Stoic and the Epicurean, were evolving in Athens at this period.

It was, of course, a proud thing for Demetrius that the city was much and profitably frequented. Trade itself was probably livelier in Athens during these years than at any other time and rivalled that of Rhodes, Byzantium, and Alexandria. According to a census which was probably undertaken during the year Demetrius was archon (309), the population of Attica amounted to 21,000 citizens, 10,000 strangers, 400,000 slaves--certainly a great number of inhabitants for a territory of little more than forty square miles.[c]

[Sidenote: [318-317 B.C.]]

The acquisition of Athens by Cassander, followed up by his capture of Panactum and Salamis, and seconded by his moderation towards the Athenians, procured for him considerable support in Peloponnesus, whither he proceeded with his army. Many of the cities, intimidated or persuaded, joined him and deserted Polysperchon; while the Spartans, now feeling for the first time their defenceless condition, thought it prudent to surround their city with walls. This fact, among many others contemporaneous, testifies emphatically how the characteristic sentiments of the Hellenic autonomous world were now dying out everywhere. The maintenance of Sparta as an unwalled city was one of the deepest and most cherished of the Lycurgean traditions; a standing proof of the fearless bearing and self-confidence of the Spartans against dangers from without. The erection of the walls showed their own conviction, but too well borne out by the real circumstances around them, that the pressure of the foreigner had become so overwhelming as hardly to leave them even safety at home.

THE LAST ACTS OF OLYMPIAS’ POWER

[Sidenote: [317-311 B.C.]]

The warfare between Cassander and Polysperchon became now embittered by a feud among the members of the Macedonian imperial family. King Philip Arrhidæus and his wife Eurydice, alarmed and indignant at the restoration of Olympias, which Polysperchon was projecting, solicited aid from Cassander, and tried to place the force in Macedonia at his disposal. In this however they failed.

Olympias, assisted not only by Polysperchon, but by the Epirot prince Æacides, made her entry into Macedonia out of Epirus, apparently in the autumn of 317 B.C. She brought with her Roxane and her child--the widow and son of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian soldiers, assembled by Philip Arrhidæus and Eurydice to resist her, were so overawed by her name and the recollection of Alexander, that they refused to fight, and thus insured to her an easy victory. Philip and Eurydice became her prisoners; the former she caused to be slain; to the latter she offered only an option between the sword, the halter, and poison. The old queen next proceeded to satiate her revenge against the family of Antipater. One hundred leading Macedonians, friends of Cassander, were put to death, together with his brother Nicanor; while the sepulchre of his deceased brother Iollas, accused of having poisoned Alexander the Great, was broken up.

During the winter, Olympias remained thus completely predominant in Macedonia; where her position seemed strong, since her allies the Ætolians were masters of the pass at Thermopylæ, while Cassander was kept employed in Peloponnesus by the force under Alexander, son of Polysperchon. But Cassander, disengaging himself from these embarrassments, and eluding Thermopylæ by a maritime transit to Thessaly, seized the Perrhæbian passes before they had been put under guard, and entered Macedonia without resistance. Olympias, having no army competent to meet him in the field, was forced to shut herself up in the maritime fortress of Pydna, with Roxane, the child Alexander, and Thessalonice daughter of her late husband Philip, son of Amyntas.

Here Cassander blocked her up for several months by sea as well as by land, and succeeded in defeating all the efforts of Polysperchon and Æacides to relieve her. In the spring of the ensuing year (316 B.C.), she was forced by intolerable famine to surrender. Cassander promised her nothing more than personal safety, requiring from her the surrender of the two great fortresses, Pella and Amphipolis, which made him master of Macedonia. Presently however the relatives of those numerous victims, who had perished by order of Olympias, were encouraged by Cassander to demand her life in retribution. They found little difficulty in obtaining a verdict of condemnation against her from what was called a Macedonian assembly. Nevertheless, such was the sentiment of awe and reverence connected with her name, that no one except these injured men themselves could be found to execute the sentence. She died with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character. Cassander took Thessalonice to wife, confined Roxane with the child Alexander in the fortress of Amphipolis--where (after a certain interval) he caused both of them to be slain.

While Cassander was thus master of Macedonia, and while the imperial family were disappearing from the scene in that country, the defeat and death of Eumenes (which happened nearly at the same time as the capture of Olympias) removed the last faithful partisan of that family in Asia. But at the same time it left in the hands of Antigonus such overwhelming preponderance throughout Asia, that he aspired to become vicar and master of the entire Alexandrine empire, as well as to avenge upon Cassander the extirpation of the regal family. His power appeared indeed so formidable that Cassander of Macedonia, Lysimachus of Thrace, Ptolemy of Egypt, and Seleucus of Babylonia, entered into a convention, which gradually ripened into an active alliance against him.

[Sidenote: [317-315 B.C.]]

During the struggles between these powerful princes, Greece appears simply as a group of subject cities, held, garrisoned, grasped at, or coveted, by all of them. Polysperchon, abandoning all hopes in Macedonia after the death of Olympias, had been forced to take refuge among the Ætolians, leaving his son Alexander to make the best struggle that he could in Peloponnesus; so that Cassander was now decidedly preponderant throughout the Hellenic regions. After fixing himself on the throne of Macedonia, he perpetuated his own name by founding, on the isthmus of the peninsula of Pallene and near the site where Potidæa had stood, the new city of Cassandrea.

Passing through Bœotia, he undertook the task of restoring the city of Thebes, which had been destroyed twenty years previously by Alexander the Great, and had ever since existed only as a military post on the ancient citadel called Cadmea. The other Bœotian towns, to whom the old Theban territory had been assigned, were persuaded or constrained to relinquish it; and Cassander invited from all parts of Greece the Theban exiles or their descendants. From sympathy with these exiles, and also with the ancient celebrity of the city, many Greeks, even from Italy and Sicily, contributed to the restoration. The Athenians, now administered by Demetrius Phalereus under Cassander’s supremacy, were particularly forward in the work; the Messenians and Megalopolitans, whose ancestors had owed so much to the Theban Epaminondas, lent strenuous aid. Thebes was re-established in the original area which it had occupied before Alexander’s siege; and was held by a Cassandrian garrison in the Cadmea, destined for the mastery of Bœotia and Greece.

After some stay at Thebes, Cassander advanced towards Peloponnesus. Alexander (son of Polysperchon) having fortified the isthmus, he was forced to embark his troops with his elephants at Megara, and cross over the Saronic Gulf to Epidaurus. He dispossessed Alexander of Argos, of Messenia, and even of his position on the isthmus, where he left a powerful detachment, and then returned to Macedonia. His increasing power raised both apprehension and hatred in the bosom of Antigonus, who endeavoured to come to terms with him, but in vain. Cassander preferred the alliance with Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus--against Antigonus, who was now master of nearly the whole of Asia, inspiring common dread to all of them. Accordingly, from Asia to Peloponnesus, with arms and money Antigonus despatched the Milesian Aristodemus to strengthen Alexander against Cassander; whom he further denounced as an enemy of the Macedonian name, because he had slain Olympias, imprisoned the other members of the regal family, and re-established the Olynthian exiles. He caused the absent Cassander to be condemned by what was called a Macedonian assembly, upon these and other charges.

Antigonus further proclaimed, by the voice of this assembly, that all the Greeks should be free, self-governing, and exempt from garrisons or military occupation. It was expected that these brilliant promises would enlist partisans in Greece against Cassander; accordingly Ptolemy, ruler of Egypt, one of the enemies of Antigonus, thought fit to issue similar proclamations a few months afterwards, tendering to the Greeks the same boon from himself. These promises, neither executed nor intended to be executed, by either of the kings, appear to have produced little or no effect upon the Greeks.

[Sidenote: [315-312 B.C.]]

The arrival of Aristodemus in Peloponnesus had reanimated the party of Alexander (son of Polysperchon), against whom Cassander was again obliged to bring his full forces from Macedonia. Though successful against Alexander at Argos, Orchomenos, and other places, Cassander was not able to crush him, and presently thought it prudent to gain him over. He offered to him the separate government of Peloponnesus, though in subordination to himself; Alexander accepted the offer--becoming Cassander’s ally--and carried on war, jointly with him, against Aristodemus, with varying success, until he was presently assassinated by some private enemies. Nevertheless his widow Cratesipolis, a woman of courage and energy, still maintained herself in considerable force at Sicyon.

Cassander’s most obstinate enemies were the Ætolians, of whom we now first hear formal mention as a substantive confederacy. These Ætolians became the allies of Antigonus as they had been before of Polysperchon, extending their predatory ravages even as far as Attica. Protected against foreign garrisons, partly by their rude and fierce habits, partly by their mountainous territory, they were almost the only Greeks who could still be called free. Cassander tried to keep them in check through their neighbours the Acarnanians, whom he induced to adopt a more concentrated habit of residence, consolidating their numerous petty townships into a few considerable towns,--Stratus, Sauria, and Agrinium,--convenient posts for Macedonian garrisons. He also made himself master of Leucas, Apollonia, and Epidamnus, defeating the Illyrian king Glaucias, so that his dominion now extended across from the Thermaic to the Adriatic Gulf. His general Philippus gained two important victories over the Ætolians and Epirots, forcing the former to relinquish some of their most accessible towns.

The power of Antigonus in Asia underwent a material diminution, by the successful and permanent establishment which Seleucus now acquired in Babylonia; from which event the era of the succeeding Seleucidæ takes its origin. In Greece, however, Antigonus gained ground on Cassander. He sent thither his nephew Ptolemy with a large force to liberate the Greeks, or in other words, to expel the Cassandrian garrisons; while he at the same time distracted Cassander’s attention by threatening to cross the Hellespont and invade Macedonia. This Ptolemy (not the Egyptian) expelled the soldiers of Cassander from Eubœa, Bœotia, and Phocis; having taken Chalcis, Oropus, Eretria, and Carystus, he entered Attica and presented himself before Athens. So much disposition to treat with him was manifested in the city, that Demetrius the Phalerean was obliged to gain time by pretending to open negotiations with Antigonus, while Ptolemy withdrew from Attica. Nearly at the same epoch, Apollonia, Epidamnus, and Leucas, found means, assisted by an armament from Corcyra, to drive out Cassander’s garrisons, and to escape from his dominion. The affairs of Antigonus were now prospering in Greece, but they were much thrown back by the discontent and treachery of his admiral Telesphorus, who seized Elis and even plundered the sacred treasures of Olympia. Ptolemy presently put him down, and restored these treasures to the god.

[Sidenote: [312-308 B.C.]]

In the ensuing year, a convention was concluded between Antigonus, on one side, and Cassander, Ptolemy (the Egyptian) and Lysimachus, on the other, whereby the supreme command in Macedonia was guaranteed to Cassander, until the maturity of Alexander son of Roxane; Thrace being at the same time assured to Lysimachus, Egypt to Ptolemy, and the whole of Asia to Antigonus. It was at the same time covenanted by all, that the Hellenic cities should be free. Towards the execution of this last clause, however, nothing was actually done. Nor does it appear that the treaty had any other effect, except to inspire Cassander with increased jealousy about Roxane and her child; both of whom (as has been already stated) he caused to be secretly assassinated soon afterwards, by the governor Glaucias, in the fortress of Amphipolis, where they had been confined. The forces of Antigonus, under his general Ptolemy, still remained in Greece. But this general presently (310 B.C.) revolted from Antigonus, and placed them in co-operation with Cassander; while Ptolemy of Egypt, accusing Antigonus of having contravened the treaty by garrisoning various Grecian cities, renewed the war and the triple alliance against him.

Polysperchon--who had hitherto maintained a local dominion over various parts of Peloponnesus, with a military force distributed in Messene and other towns--was now encouraged by Antigonus to espouse the cause of Heracles (son of Alexander by Barsine), and to place him on the throne of Macedonia in opposition to Cassander. This young prince Heracles now seventeen years of age, was sent to Greece from Pergamus in Asia, and his pretensions to the throne were assisted not only by a considerable party in Macedonia itself, but also by the Ætolians. Polysperchon invaded Macedonia, with favourable prospects of establishing the young prince; yet he thought it advantageous to accept treacherous propositions from Cassander, who offered to him partnership in the sovereignty of Macedonia, with an independent army and dominion in Peloponnesus. Polysperchon, tempted by these offers, assassinated the young prince Heracles, and withdrew his army towards Peloponnesus. But he found such unexpected opposition, in his march through Bœotia, from Bœotians and Peloponnesians, that he was forced to take up his winter quarters in Locris (309 B.C.). From this time forward, as far as we can make out, he commanded in southern Greece as subordinate ally or partner of Cassander.

The assassination of Heracles was speedily followed by that of Cleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, and daughter of Philip and Olympias. She had been for some time at Sardis, nominally at liberty, yet under watch by the governor, who received his orders from Antigonus; she was now preparing to quit that place, for the purpose of joining Ptolemy in Egypt, and of becoming his wife. She had been invoked as auxiliary, or courted in marriage, by several of the great Macedonian chiefs, without any result. Now, however, Antigonus, afraid of the influence which her name might throw into the scale of his rival Ptolemy, caused her to be secretly murdered as she was preparing for her departure; throwing the blame of the deed on some of her women, whom he punished with death.

All the relatives of Alexander the Great (except Thessalonice wife of Cassander, daughter of Philip by a Thessalian mistress) thus successively perished, and all by the orders of one or other among his principal officers. The imperial family, with the prestige of its name thus came to an end.

PTOLEMY IN GREECE

[Sidenote: [308-307 B.C.]]

Ptolemy of Egypt now set sail for Greece with a powerful armament. He acquired possession of the important cities--Sicyon and Corinth--which were handed over to him by Cratesipolis, widow of Alexander son of Polysperchon. He then made known by proclamation his purpose as a liberator, inviting aid from the Peloponnesian cities themselves against the garrisons of Cassander. From some he received encouraging answers and promises; but none of them made any movement, or seconded him by armed demonstrations. He thought it prudent therefore to conclude a truce with Cassander and retire from Greece, leaving however secure garrisons in Sicyon and Corinth. The Grecian cities had now become tame and passive. Feeling their own incapacity of self-defence, and averse to auxiliary efforts--which brought upon them enmity without any prospect of advantage--they awaited only the turns of foreign interference and the behests of the potentates around them.

The Grecian ascendency of Cassander, however, was in the following year exposed to a graver shock than it had ever yet encountered, by the sudden invasion of Demetrius called Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus. This young prince, sailing from Ephesus with a formidable armament, contrived to conceal his purposes so closely, that he actually entered the harbour of Piræus (on the 26th of the month Thargelion--May) without expectation, or resistance from any one; his fleet being mistaken for the fleet of the Egyptian Ptolemy. The Phalerean Demetrius, taken unawares, and attempting too late to guard the harbour, found himself compelled to leave it in possession of the enemy, and to retire within the walls of Athens; while Dionysius, the Cassandrian governor, maintained himself with his garrison in Munychia, yet without any army competent to meet the invaders in the field. This accomplished Phalerean, who had administered for ten years as the viceroy and with the force of Cassander, now felt his position and influence at Athens overthrown, and even his personal safety endangered. He obtained permission to retire to Thebes, from whence he passed over soon after to Ptolemy in Egypt. The Athenians in the city declared in favour of Demetrius Poliorcetes; who however refused to enter the walls until he should have besieged and captured Munychia, as well as Megara, with their Cassandrian garrisons. In a short time he accomplished both these objects. Indeed energy, skill, and effective use of engines in besieging fortified places, were among the most conspicuous features in his character; procuring for him the surname whereby he is known to history. He proclaimed the Megarians free, levelling to the ground the fortifications of Munychia, as an earnest to the Athenians that they should be relieved for the future from all foreign garrison.

ATHENS PASSIVE AND SERVILE

[Sidenote: [307-304 B.C.]]

After these successes, Demetrius Poliorcetes made his triumphant entry into Athens. He announced to the people, in formal assembly, that they were now again a free democracy, liberated from all dominion either of soldiers from abroad or oligarchs at home. He also promised them a further boon from his father Antigonus and himself--150,000 medimni of corn for distribution, and ship-timber in quantity sufficient for constructing one hundred triremes. Both these announcements were received with grateful exultation. The feelings of the people were testified not merely in votes of thanks and admiration towards the young conqueror, but in effusions of unmeasured and exorbitant flattery. Stratocles (who has already been before us as one of the accusers of Demosthenes in the Harpalian affair) with others exhausted their invention in devising new varieties of compliment and adulation. Antigonus and Demetrius were proclaimed to be not only kings, but gods and saviours; a high priest of these saviours was to be annually chosen, after whom each successive year was to be named (instead of being named after the first of the nine archons, as had hitherto been the custom), and the dates of decrees and contracts commemorated; the month Munychion was re-named as Demetrion; two new tribes, to be called Antigonias and Demetrias, were constituted in addition to the preceding ten; the annual senate was appointed to consist of six hundred members instead of five hundred; the portraits and exploits of Antigonus and Demetrius were to be woven, along with those of Zeus and Athene, into the splendid and voluminous robe periodically carried in procession, as an offering at the Panathenaic festival; the spot of ground where Demetrius had alighted from his chariot, was consecrated with an altar erected in honour of Demetrius Catæbates or the Descender. Several other similar votes were passed, recognising, and worshipping as gods, the saviours Antigonus and Demetrius. Nay, we are told that temples or altars were voted to Phila-Aphrodite, in honour of Phila wife of Demetrius; and a like compliment was paid to his two mistresses, Leæna and Lamia. Altars are said to have been also dedicated to Adimantus and others, his convivial companions or flatterers. At the same time the numerous statues which had been erected in honour of the Phalerean Demetrius during his decennial government, were overthrown, and some of them even turned to ignoble purposes, in order to cast greater scorn upon the past ruler. The demonstrations of servile flattery at Athens, towards Demetrius Poliorcetes, were in fact so extravagantly overdone, that he himself is said to have been disgusted with them, and to have expressed contempt for these degenerate Athenians of his own time.

The most fulsome votes of adulation proposed in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes by his partisans, though perhaps disapproved by many, would hardly find a single pronounced opponent. One man, however, there was, who ventured to oppose several of the votes--the nephew of Demosthenes, Demochares; who deserves to be commemorated as the last known spokesman of free Athenian citizenship. We know only that such were his general politics, and that his opposition to the obsequious rhetor Stratocles ended in banishment, four years afterwards. He appears to have acted as a general during this period, and to have been active in strengthening the fortifications and military equipment of the city.

The altered politics of Athens were manifested by impeachment against Demetrius Phalereus and other leading partisans of the late Cassandrian government. He and many others had already gone into voluntary exile; when their trials came on, they were not forthcoming, and all were condemned to death. But all those who remained, and presented themselves for trial, were acquitted; so little was there of reactionary violence on this occasion.

The friendship of this obnoxious Phalerean, and of Cassander also, towards the philosopher Theophrastus, seems to have been one main cause which occasioned the enactment of a restrictive law against the liberty of philosophising. It was decreed, on the proposition of a citizen named Sophocles, that no philosopher should be allowed to open a school or teach, except under special sanction obtained from a vote of the senate and people. Such was the disgust and apprehension occasioned by the new restriction, that all the philosophers with one accord left Athens. This spirited protest, against authoritative restriction on the liberty of philosophy and teaching, found responsive sympathy among the Athenians. The celebrity of the schools and professors was in fact the only characteristic mark of dignity still remaining to them--then their power had become extinct, and when even their independence and free constitution had degenerated into a mere name.

Athenian envoys were despatched to Antigonus in Asia, to testify the gratitude of the people, and communicate the recent complimentary votes. Antigonus not only received them graciously, but sent to Athens, according to the promise made by his son, a large present of 150,000 medimni of wheat, with timber sufficient for one hundred ships. He at the same time directed Demetrius to convene at Athens a synod of deputies from the allied Grecian cities, where resolutions might be taken for the common interests of Greece. It was his interest at this moment to raise up a temporary self-sustaining authority in Greece, for the purpose of upholding the alliance with himself, during the absence of Demetrius--whom he was compelled to summon into Asia with his army, requiring his services for the war against Ptolemy in Syria and Cyprus.

The following three years were spent by Demetrius: (1) In victorious operations near Cyprus, defeating Ptolemy and making himself master of that island; after which Antigonus and Demetrius assumed the title of kings, and the example was followed by Ptolemy, in Egypt, by Lysimachus, in Thrace, and by Seleucus in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Syria; thus abolishing even the titular remembrance of Alexander’s family. (2) In an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt by land and sea, repulsed with great loss. (3) In the siege of Rhodes. The brave and intelligent citizens of this island resisted for more than a year the most strenuous attacks and the most formidable siege-equipments of Demetrius Poliorcetes. All their efforts however would have been vain had they not been assisted by large reinforcements and supplies from Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Such are the conditions under which alone even the most resolute and intelligent Greeks can now retain their circumscribed sphere of autonomy. The siege was at length terminated by a compromise; the Rhodians submitted to enrol themselves as allies of Demetrius, yet under proviso not to act against Ptolemy. Towards the latter they carried their grateful devotion so far as to erect a temple to him, called the Ptolemæum, and to worship him (under the sanction of the oracle of Ammon) as a god. Amidst the rocks and shoals through which Grecian cities were now condemned to steer, menaced on every side by kings more powerful than themselves, and afterwards by the giant republic of Rome--the Rhodians conducted their political affairs with greater prudence and dignity than any other Grecian city.

[Sidenote: [304-302 B.C.]]

Shortly after the departure of Demetrius from Greece to Cyprus, Cassander and Polysperchon renewed the war in Peloponnesus and its neighbourhood. We make out no particulars respecting this war. The Ætolians were in hostility with Athens, and committed annoying depredations. The fleet of Athens, repaired or increased by the timber received from Antigonus, was made to furnish thirty quadriremes to assist Demetrius in Cyprus, and was employed in certain operations near the island of Amorgos, wherein it suffered defeat. But we can discover little respecting the course of the war, except that Cassander gained ground upon the Athenians, and that about the beginning of 303 B.C., he was blockading or threatening to blockade Athens. The Athenians invoked the aid of Demetrius Poliorcetes, who, having recently concluded an accommodation with the Rhodians, came again across from Asia, with a powerful fleet and army, to Aulis in Bœotia. He was received at Athens with demonstrations of honour equal or superior to those which had marked his previous visit. He seems to have passed a year and a half, partly at Athens, partly in military operations carried successfully over many parts of Greece. He celebrated, as president, the great festival of the Heræa at Argos; on which occasion he married Didamia, sister of Pyrrhus, the young king of Epirus. He prevailed on the Sicyonians to transfer to a short distance the site of their city, conferring upon the new city the name of Demetrias. At a Grecian synod, convened in Corinth under his own letters of invitation, he received by acclamation the appointment of leader or emperor of the Greeks, as it had been conferred on Philip and Alexander. He even extended his attacks as far as Leucas and Corcyra. The greater part of Greece seems to have been either occupied by his garrisons, or enlisted among his subordinates.

So much was Cassander intimidated by these successes, that he sent envoys to Asia, soliciting peace from Antigonus; who, however, elate and full of arrogance, refused to listen to any terms short of surrender at discretion. Cassander, thus driven to despair, renewed his applications to Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. All these princes felt equally menaced by the power and dispositions of Antigonus, and all resolved upon an energetic combination to put him down.

SUCCESS OF DEMETRIUS IN GREECE

[Sidenote: [302-301 B.C.]]

After uninterrupted prosperity in Greece, throughout the summer of 302 B.C., Demetrius returned from Leucas to Athens, about the month of September, near the time of the Eleusinian mysteries. He was welcomed by festive processions, hymns, pæans, choric dances, and bacchanalian odes of joyous congratulation. One of these hymns is preserved, sung by a chorus of ithyphalli--masked revellers, with their heads and arms encircled by wreaths--clothed in white tunics, and in feminine garments.

Effusions such as these, while displaying unmeasured idolatry and subservience towards Demetrius, are yet more remarkable, as betraying a loss of force, a senility, and a consciousness of defenceless and degraded position, such as we are astonished to find publicly proclaimed at Athens. It is not only against the foreign potentates that the Athenians avow themselves incapable of self-defence, but even against the incursions of the Ætolians,--Greeks like themselves, though warlike, rude, and restless. When such were the feelings of a people--once the most daring, confident, and organising, and still the most intelligent, in Greece, we may see that the history of the Greeks as a separate nation or race is reaching its close; and that from henceforward they must become merged in one or other of the stronger currents that surround them.

After his past successes, Demetrius passed some months in enjoyment and luxury at Athens. He was lodged in the Parthenon, being considered as the guest of the goddess Athene. But his dissolute habits provoked the louder comments, from their being indulged in such a domicile; while the violences which he offered to beautiful youths of good family led to various scenes truly tragical. The subservient manifestations of the Athenians towards him, however, continued unabated. It is even affirmed that, in order to compensate for something which he had taken amiss, they passed a formal decree, on the proposition of Stratocles, declaring that everything which Demetrius might command was holy in regard to the gods, and just in regard to men. The banishment of Demochares is said to have been brought on by his sarcastic comments upon this decree. In the month Munychion (April) Demetrius mustered his forces and his Grecian allies for a march into Thessaly against Cassander; but before his departure, he was anxious to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. It was however not the regular time for this ceremony; the Lesser Mysteries being celebrated in February, the Greater in September. The Athenians overruled the difficulty by passing a special vote, enabling him to be initiated at once, and to receive in immediate succession the preparatory and the final initiation, between which ceremonies a year of interval was habitually required. Accordingly, he placed himself disarmed in the hands of the priests, and received both first and second initiation in the month of April, immediately before his departure from Athens.

BATTLE OF IPSUS

[Sidenote: [301-294 B.C.]]

Demetrius conducted into Thessaly an army of fifty-six thousand men, of whom twenty-five thousand were Grecian allies--so extensive was his sway at this moment over the Grecian cities. But after two or three months of hostilities, partially successful, against Cassander, he was summoned into Asia by Antigonus to assist in meeting the formidable army of the allies--Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Before retiring from Greece, Demetrius concluded a truce with Cassander, whereby it was stipulated that the Grecian cities, both in Europe and Asia, should be permanently autonomous and free from garrison or control. This stipulation served only as an honourable pretext for leaving Greece; Demetrius had little expectation that it would be observed. In the ensuing spring was fought the decisive battle of Ipsus in Phrygia (300 B.C.), by Antigonus and Demetrius, against Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus; with a large army and many elephants on both sides. Antigonus, completely defeated, was slain; his age was more than eighty years. His Asiatic dominion was broken up, chiefly to the profit of Seleucus, whose dynasty became from henceforward ascendant, from the coast of Syria eastward to the Caspian Gates and Parthia; sometimes, though imperfectly, farther eastward, nearly to the Indus.

The effects of the battle of Ipsus were speedily felt in Greece. The Athenians passed a decree proclaiming themselves neutral, and excluding both the belligerent parties from Attica. Demetrius, retiring with the remnant of his defeated army, and embarking at Ephesus to sail to Athens, was met on the voyage by Athenian envoys, who respectfully acquainted him that he would not be admitted. At the same time, his wife Didamia, whom he had left at Athens, was sent away by the Athenians under an honourable escort to Megara, while some ships of war which he had left in the Piræus were also restored to him. Demetrius, indignant at this unexpected defection of a city which had recently heaped upon him such fulsome adulation, was still further mortified by the loss of most of his other possessions in Greece. His garrisons were for the most part expelled, and the cities passed into Cassandrian keeping or dominion. His fortunes were indeed partially restored by concluding a peace with Seleucus, who married his daughter. This alliance withdrew Demetrius to Syria, while Greece appears to have fallen more and more under the Cassandrian parties. It was one of these partisans, Lachares, who, seconded by Cassander’s soldiers, acquired a despotism at Athens such as had been possessed by the Phalerean Demetrius, but employed in a manner far more cruel and oppressive.

Various exiles from his tyranny invited Demetrius Poliorcetes, who passed over again from Asia into Greece, recovered portions of Peloponnesus, and laid siege to Athens. He blocked up the city by sea and land, so that the pressure of famine presently became intolerable. Lachares having made his escape, the people opened their gates to Demetrius, not without great fear of the treatment awaiting them. But he behaved with forbearance, and even with generosity. He spared them all, supplied them with a large donation of corn, and contented himself with taking military occupation of the city, naming his own friends as magistrates. He put garrisons, however, not only into Piræus and Munychia, but also into the hill called Museum, a part of the walled circle of Athens itself (298 B.C.).

While Demetrius was thus strengthening himself in Greece, he lost all his footing both in Cyprus, Syria, and Cilicia, which passed into the hands of Ptolemy and Seleucus. New prospects however were opened to him in Macedonia by the death of Cassander (his brother-in-law, brother of his wife Phila) and the family feuds supervening thereupon. Philippus, eldest son of Cassander, succeeded his father, but died of sickness after something more than a year. Between the two remaining sons, Antipater and Alexander, a sanguinary hostility broke out. Antipater slew his mother Thessalonice, and threatened the life of his brother, who in his turn invited aid both from Demetrius and from the Epirotic king Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus being ready first, marched into Macedonia, and expelled Antipater; receiving as his recompense the territory called Tymphæa (between Epirus and Macedonia) together with Acarnania, Amphilochia, and the town of Ambracia, which became henceforward his chief city and residence. Antipater sought shelter in Thrace with his father-in-law Lysimachus; by whose order, however, he was presently slain. Demetrius, occupied with other matters, was more tardy in obeying the summons; but, on entering into Macedonia, he found himself strong enough to dispossess and kill Alexander (who had indeed invited him, but is said to have laid a train for assassinating him), and seized the Macedonian crown; not without the assent of a considerable party, to whom the name and the deeds of Cassander and his sons were alike odious.

[Sidenote: [294-279 B.C.]]

Demetrius became thus master of Macedonia, together with the greater part of Greece, including Athens, Megara, and much of Peloponnesus. He undertook an expedition into Bœotia, for the purpose of conquering Thebes; in which attempt he succeeded, not without a double siege of that city. But Greece as a whole was managed by Antigonus (afterwards called Antigonus Gonatas) son of Demetrius, who maintained his supremacy unshaken during all his father’s life-time; even though Demetrius was deprived of Macedonia by the temporary combination of Lysimachus with Pyrrhus, and afterwards remained (until his death in 283 B.C.) a captive in the hands of Seleucus. After a brief possession of the crown of Macedonia successively by Seleucus, Ptolemy Ceraunus, Meleager, Antipater, and Sosthenes--Antigonus Gonatas regained it in 277 B.C. His descendants, the Antigonid kings, maintained it until the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.; when Perseus, the last of them, was overthrown, and his kingdom incorporated with the Roman conquests.

Of Greece during this period we can give no account, except that the greater number of its cities were in dependence upon Demetrius and his son Antigonus--either under occupation by Macedonian garrisons, or ruled by local despots who leaned on foreign mercenaries and Macedonian support. The spirit of the Greeks was broken, and their habits of combined sentiment and action had disappeared. The invasion of the Gauls indeed awakened them into a temporary union for the defence of Thermopylæ in 279 B.C. But this burst of spirit did not interrupt the continuance of the Macedonian dominion in Greece, which Antigonus Gonatas continued to hold throughout most of a long reign. He greatly extended the system begun by his predecessors, of isolating each Grecian city from alliances with other cities in its neighbourhood--planting in most of them local despots, and compressing the most important by means of garrisons. Among all Greeks, the Spartans and the Ætolians stood most free from foreign occupation, and were the least crippled in their power of self-action. The Achæan League too developed itself afterwards as a renovated sprout from the ruined tree of Grecian liberty, though never attaining to anything better than a feeble and puny life, nor capable of sustaining itself without foreign aid.[b]

At this point Grote ends his immortal work and takes farewell of Grecian history in the following words:

“With this after-growth, or half-revival, I shall not meddle. It forms the Greece of Polybius, which that author treats, in my opinion justly, as having no history of its own, but as an appendage attached to some foreign centre and principal among its neighbours--Macedonia, Egypt, Syria, Rome. Each of these neighbours acted upon the destinies of Greece more powerfully than the Greeks themselves. The Greeks to whom these volumes have been devoted--those of Homer, Archilochus, Solon, Æschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes--present as their most marked characteristic a loose aggregation of autonomous tribes or communities, acting and reacting freely among themselves, with little or no pressure from foreigners. The main interest of the narrative has consisted in the spontaneous grouping of the different Hellenic fractions, in the self-prompted co-operations and conflicts, the abortive attempts to bring about something like an effective federal organisation, or to maintain two permanent rival confederacies, the energetic ambition and heroic endurance of men to whom Hellas was the entire political world. The freedom of Hellas, the life and soul of this history from its commencement, disappeared completely during the first years of Alexander’s reign. After following to their tombs the generation of Greeks contemporary with him--men like Demosthenes and Phocion, born in a state of freedom--I have pursued the history into that gulf of Grecian nullity which marks the succeeding century; exhibiting sad evidence of the degrading servility, and suppliant king-worship, into which the countrymen of Aristides and Pericles had been driven, by their own conscious weakness under the overwhelming pressure from without.

“I cannot better complete that picture than by showing what the leading democratical citizen became, under the altered atmosphere which now bedimmed his city. Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes, has been mentioned as one of the few distinguished Athenians in this last generation. He was more than once chosen to the highest public offices; he was conspicuous for his free speech, both as an orator and as an historian, in the face of powerful enemies; he remained throughout a long life faithfully attached to the democratical constitution, and was banished for a time by its opponents. In the year 280 B.C., he prevailed on the Athenians to erect a public monument, with a commemorative inscription, to his uncle Demosthenes. Seven or eight years afterwards, Demochares himself died, aged nearly eighty. His son Laches proposed and obtained a public decree, that a statue should be erected, with an annexed inscription, to his honour. We read in the decree a recital of the distinguished public services whereby Demochares merited this compliment from his countrymen. All that the proposer of the decree, his son and fellow-citizen, can find to recite, as ennobling the last half of the father’s public life (since his return from exile), is as follows: (1) He contracted the public expenses, and introduced a more frugal management. (2) He undertook an embassy to King Lysimachus, from whom he obtained two presents for the people--one of thirty talents, the other of one hundred talents. (3) He proposed the vote for sending envoys to King Ptolemy in Egypt, from whom fifty talents were obtained for the people. (4) He went as envoy to Antipater, received from him twenty talents, and delivered them to the people at the Eleusinian festival.

“When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens both employed and recompensed her most eminent citizens, an historian accustomed to the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, feels that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.”[b]

A kindred feeling seems to have actuated most of the other prominent historians of Greece, with the notable exception of Thirlwall. Yet from a slightly altered point of view, there is much of interest in the story of the later struggles of this wonderful people, against a seemingly predestined fate. Even were it not so, our present purpose, which regards Greece not as an isolated entity but as a part of the scheme of world history, requires that we should follow the tragic drama to its close.[a]