Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/287

 SLOW TENDENCY TO COOPERATION. 271 emancipation, wherein the European Greeks became impli- cated, first as accessories, and afterwards as principals. 2. The combined action of the large mass 'of Greeks under Sparta, as their most powerful state and acknowledged chief, succeeded by the rapid and extraordinary growth of Athens, the compleie development of Grecian maritime power, and the struggle between Athens and Sparta for the headship. These two causes, though distinct in themselves, must, nevertheless, be regarded as working together to a certain degree, or rather, the second grew out of the first. For it was the Persian invasions of Greece which first gave birth to a wide-spread alarm and antipa- thy among the leading Greeks (we must not call it Pan-Hellenic, since more than half of the Amphiktyonic constituency gave earth and water to Xerxes) against the barbarians of the East, and impressed them with the necessity of joint active operations under a leader. The idea of a leadership or hegemony of col lective Hellas, as a privilege necessarily vested in some one state for common security against the barbarians, thus became current, an idea foreign to the mind of Solon, or any one of the same age. Next, came the miraculous development of Athens, and the violent contest between her and Sparta, which should be the leader ; the larger portion of Hellas taking side with one or the other, and the common quarrel against the Per- sian being for the time put out of sight. Athens is put down, Sparta acquires the undisputed hegemony, and again the anti- barbaric feeling manifests itself^ though faintly, in the Asiatic expeditions of Agesilaus. But the Spartans, too incompetent either to deserve or maintain this exalted position, are over- thrown by the Thebans, themselves not less incompetent, with the single exception of Epameinondas. The death of that single man extinguishes the pretensions of Thebes to the hegemony, and Hellas is left, like the deserted Penelope in the Odyssey, worried by the competition of several suitors, none of whom is strong enough to stretch the bow on which the prize depends. 1 Such a manifestation of force, as well as the trampling down of 1 Xenophon, Hellen. vii. 5, 27 ; Demosthenes, De Coron. c. 7, p. 231 fakd TLf rjv anpirof nai napa TOVTOIC KOI trapa -olf aKXaif T.AA^atv Ipn 10}