A

GENERAL HISTORY OF GREECE

FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE DEATH

OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

WITH A SKETCH OF THE subsequenT HISTORY TO THE PRESENT TEMP

PREFACE.

In the preparation of this volume it has been my wish and purpose to present the history of the Greek people in a form which may interest readers of all classes, as well as the scholar and the critic. The great lessons which that history teaches must be learnt by all who would really understand the life of the modern world; and the task of learning them is one which calls for no greater effort than the attention which the honest love of truth will never fail to waken.

During the present century historical criticism has, it is well known, been largely busied with the earlier history both of Greece and Rome; but stress may be fairly laid on the fact that in the former the most rigid scrutiny has tended rather to determine the true course of events than to throw over the whole traditional story a dark, if not an impenetrable, veil. In his General History of Rome, Dean Merivale is constrained to admit that there is scarcely one particular of importance throughout three centuries of our pretended annals on the exact truth of which we can securely rely.' The historian of Greece may well rejoice in the happier assurance that our knowledge of the Persian Wars and of many events which preceded those wars is scarcely less full or less trustworthy than our knowledge of the Norman Conquest of England.

Throughout this earlier portion of my task I have striven to exhibit clearly the motives and policy of the actors in this great struggle; and the conviction that I have established rather than destroyed the history has enabled me to give without hesitation my reasons for calling into question or rejecting the statements of the traditional narratives, whenever it became necessary to do so.

The history of Greece is the history of the most wonderful political and intellectual growth which the world has yet seen. Its interest is the more absorbing from the rapid march of events in the mighty drama which may fairly be said to have been played out in less than three centuries. This astonishing quickness of developement and decay must be ascribed to the fact that the ancient Hellenic communities never coalesced into a nation. The explanation of this fact is the most important task of the historian of Greece. Nor can we regard it as explained by a mere reference to the centrifugal tendencies (as they have been called) which compelled the Greeks to see in the Polis or City the ultimate Unit of Society, or by the assertion that particular clans or tribes worshipped particular gods and that the mixture of persons of different race in the same commonwealth tended in their belief to confuse the relations of life and their notions of right and wrong ;-for, in truth, the tendency which brought about these results is the very fact to be explained. Nor can the question be really answered until we have traced the political and social life of the Greeks to its source in the earliest Aryan civilisation. The clue once given may be followed through the whole history of the Greek states. I may honestly say that I have followed it with special care, sparing no pains to bring out in the clearest light all the circumstances which at Athens tended to soften, if not to remove, and at Sparta to keep alive, the narrow exclusiveness of the primitive society.

We are thus able to understand the wonderful developement of Athenian power which followed the flight of Xerxes and the defeat of Mardonios. The empire so called into being was in reality nothing more than an attempt to weld isolated fragments into something like national union, -an attempt which roused the fiercest opposition of the Spartans and their allies, as soon as they began to comprehend the significance of the changes which they themselves had been foremost in bringing about.

The necessary result of this antagonism was the Peloponnesian War, which ended in the triumph of the old