Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/395

 END OF FREE HELLENISM 371 Attic period, and that Mimnermus and Sappho have to wait for Theocritus to find their true successor. Yet the death of Demosthenes marks a great dividing line. Before it Greek Hterature is a production abso- lutely unique ; after it, it is an ordinary first-rate litera- ture, like Roman or French or Italian. Of course it is impossible to draw a strict line between creation and adaptation ; but, in the ordinary sense of the words, the death of Demosthenes forms a period before which Greek poets, writers, thinkers, and statesmen were really creating, were producing things of which there was no model in the world ; after which they were only adapt- ing and finishing, producing things like other things which already existed. That is one great division ; the other is similar to it. We have seen how the crash of 404 B.C. stunned the hopes of Athens, dulled her faith in her own mis- sion and in human progress generally. Chaeronea and Crannon stamped out such sparks as remained. Athens and intellectual Greece were brought face to face with the apparent fact that Providence sides with the big battalions, that material force is ultimately supreme. Free political life was over. Political speculation was of no use, because the military despots who held the world were not likely to listen to it. Even Aristotle, who had been Alexander's tutor, and was on friendly terms with him, treats him and his conquests and his system as utterly out of relation to any rational constitution of society. The events of the next two centuries deepened this impression, and political aspirations as a motive in life and literature came to an end for Greece. Of course many ages and peoples have done very well without any freedom in public action or speech or thought.