Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/266

236 These kingdoms were reduced to three on the death of Lysimachus, King of Thrace, in B.C. 281, whose dominions were divided between the kings of Egypt and Syria. Subordinate kingdoms—or what became such—in Asia, which afterwards grew to some importance, were those of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Pergamus. All these, though containing a large majority of non-Hellenic subjects, retained much of the Hellenic civilisation introduced or strengthened by Alexander. But the more eastern parts of his conquests lapsed quickly back to Orientalism, and before the middle of the next century the Parthians were winning nearly all that the Persian kings had held east of the Euphrates; and Armenia, which first asserted and then lost its independence, never ceased to struggle till, in the second century B.C., it regained its national life.

In one sense the formation of these kingdoms shattered the ideal of Hellenism—local autonomy and free constitutions. The miseries caused by the constant wars between such free constitutions had caused a widespread revulsion in favour of monarchies and strong states. The only alternative—that of leagues or alliances—had failed in the case of the two Athenian leagues of B.C. 476 and B.C. 378. An alliance of sea-powers, Byzantium, Chios, and Rhodes, had some temporary success, but was not strong enough to hold out against the united power of Rome. The experiment of a closer league was again made in the Peloponnese and Aetolia, and we shall have hereafter to consider its brief success and final failure.