Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/64

 52 THE GLORY OF GREECE AND RISE OF ROME Even then the supremacy was not sufficiently established to become permanent, and even the semblance of unity vanished when the supremacy broke down. In one sense, the history of Greece from the expulsion of the Persians to the destruction of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great is the story of the attempts made by successive states to establish their own supremacy among the Hellenes, and of the breakdown of every such attempt. A Hellenic Empire then was never established, because the unity of the Hellenic nation was never established. Neverthe- The crown ^ ess J one Greek state has exercised a supreme of Hellas. influence on the world, because it brought forth itself all that was best, the fine flower of Hellenic civilisation. Athens herself could not have done what she did had she not been in the centre of Hellenic life. There were great Greeks who were not Athenians, but they would have been lesser men if they had not come in contact with Athens. And in the Greek states generally there was a fullness, a richness, a variety, and a vigour of life, physical and intellectual, which has never been surpassed. Politically, the great rival of Athens was Sparta, and those two states stand in other respects in the most marked contrast to each other. Sparta or Lacedaemon was the chief state of the Dorian division of the Hellenes. It was the typical state which set before itself an ideal of military perfection, which trained its citizens primarily to be soldiers, which treated dauntless courage and endurance as the first of all the virtues. But the full citizens, the true Spartans, were only a small number among the population of Lacedaemon ; and it was to these that the special Spartan training was con- fined. They formed an aristocracy in whose hands lay the whole control of the state ; although from among their numbers the officers were chosen in a way which prevented the same individuals or the same families from remaining in power for any length of time. Sparta was the one state in which the old kingship had not been abolished, but had the curious modifica- tion that there were two kings ; both ruling by hereditary right, but having only very limited powers. In short, the government