Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/89

 DEMOSTHENES 53 conquered. In both cases the outsiders were governed wholly for the benefit oi the city crowd. "The mistakes and the injustices which resulted in the Roman executive were such that any able adventurer could take advantage of the world-wide dis. content, and could play off one city faction against the other. It is not conceiv- able that any other general course of events would have taken place at Athens, had she become the ruler of the Hellenic world. Her demos regarded itself as a sovran, ruling subjects for its own glory and benefit ; there can therefore be no doubt that the external pressure of that wide discontent, which was the primary cause of the Peloponnesian war, would have co-operated with politicians within, if there weUe no enemies without, and that ambitious military chiefs, as at Rome, would have wrested the power from the sovran people either by force or by fraud." (Mahaffy, " Problems in Greek History," 98 foil.) In other words, however distressing the ills which might happen to Athens through Philip's success, they could not be worse than those which were sure to beset her in any event ; while for Greece as a whole, Philip's victory would mean unity and peace such as could have been secured in no other way. This splendid possibility, which must have impressed the minds of Phocion and Philip, is obscured to our thought by the untimely death of both the great Macedonian generals, before their plans had any time to bear fruit. Desperate chaos follows Alexander's death of course ; and when, little by little, order is evolved, it is a new order, not the old one. Never again does Athens sit there as a queen looking out upon her yEgean, but her day of political glory is ended forever. It is natural to trace all this wild disorder, involving the decline of Athens, the wars of Alexander's successors, small and great, and also the Roman conquest at last, to Philip's victory at Chaeronea. As we read the tangled and bloody record, we say to ourselves : Oh, how much better all would have been had the Athenians roused at the cry of Demosthenes, and beaten Philip instead of being beaten ! We assume that had this happened Greece would have kept on its old splendid way, able to have conquered Rome herself when Rome came. Philip ruined Greece ; the advice of Demosthenes, had it been followed, would have saved her. Superficially considered, all this seems clever reasoning ; but it is in fact a stu- pendous fallacy. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Philip conquered and subsequently things went ill with Greece. A man looked at Mars and subsequently had the cholera. Let us no longer argue so childishly. The evils that befell Hellas were not at all those which Demosthenes prophesied. They are no proof of his foresight. From the point of view of his wishes they were entirely accidental. To see this we need only inquire what would in all probability have come to pass had Alex- ander lived. One may heavily discount Droysen's adoration of the young con- queror, and yet, from what he achieved while alive and the way in which he achieved it, believe that immeasurable blessings to Greece and to humanity would