Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/674

 658 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

To the extent that intersocial relations became more extended, in Greece as now, conflicts broke out at a distance, at the extremities of those regions which had most recently come into contact or been acquired. The war, at first confined to Attica and the Peloponesus, was carried farther and farther into Thrace and into Sicily. Now all Greece was in the struggle, even Great Greece. Finally it was upon the sea, with the help and in the waters of the Persians, that the struggle was ended. Athens fell and, with her, democracy succumbed. The conduct of affairs passed to military societies as in Sparta, Thebes, and Macedonia. And always the frontiers changed ; tribes were incorporated with other tribes, and became principalities, kingdoms, empires; always evolution mocked at confines; what we call obstacles are for it only steps, or rather landmarks pointing to a journey accomplished and still to be accomplished. At first Macedonia did not touch the sea ; but its boundaries were already very vari- able. There was geographically an upper and a lower Macedonia. In each there were numerous tribes. The two regions formed at a certain period two distinct kingdoms. Lower Macedonia, with Pella as a center, finally obtained the upper hand. In proportion to the extension of the frontiers, means of communication were developed. When Philip, after having extended his boundaries to the west, the north, and the east, had annexed the coast, he was able to dominate Greece. In order to assure this conquest, he contemplated that of Persia; every conquest is, in fact, only guaranteed by sheltering it with more extended frontiers. Alexander realized the plan and, in realizing it, he necessarily amplified it. It was an extension of Greek civilization, but at the expense of what ruin! In every military conquest, the loss approaches the gain and sometimes exceeds it. Alexander began by crowding back the barbarians to the north and east of Mace- donia, but he crushed Greece in Boeotia and destroyed Thebes. Persia was at the moment a more maritime and commercial power than Macedonian Greece. In the second half of the fourth century the Persian empire had been restored to its greatest extent and included Egypt. In reality it was destroyed by a power esseo- tially continental and military, but this was a development of the