Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/311

 ATHENIAN EMPIRE. 289 realized by Sparta. And even if she had been ever so much disposed to cramp the free play of mind and purpose among her subjects, a disposition which is no way proved, the very circumstances of her own democracy, with its open antithesis of political parties, universal liberty of speech, and manifold indi- vidual energy, would do much to prevent the accomplishment of such an end, and would act as a stimulus to the dependent com- munities, even without her own intention. Without being insensible either to the faults or to the misdeeds of imperial Athens, I believe that her empire was a great com- parative benefit, and its extinction a great loss, to her own subjects. But still more do I believe it to have been a good, looked at with reference to Pan-Hellenic interests. Its main- tenance furnished the only possibility of keeping out foreign intervention, and leaving the destinies of Greece to depend upon native, spontaneous, untrammelled Grecian agencies. The down- fall of the Athenian empire is the signal for the arms and cor- ruption of Persia again to make themselves felt, and for the reenslavement of the Asiatic Greeks under her tribute-officers. What is still worse, it leaves the Grecian world in a state inca- pable of repelling any energetic foreign attack, and open to the overruling march of " the man of Macedon," half a century after- wards. For such was the natural tendency of the Grecian world to political non-integration or disintegration, that the rise of the Athenian empire, incorporating so many states into one system, is to be regarded as a most extraordinary accident Nothing but the genius, energy, discipline, and democracy of Athens, could have brought it about ; nor even she, unless favored and pushed on by a very peculiar train of antecedent events. But having once got it, she might perfectly well have kept it ; and. had she done so, the Hellenic world would have remained so organized as to be able to repel foreign intervention, either from Susa or from Pella. When we reflect how infinitely superior was the Hellenic mind to that of all surrounding nations and races ; how completely its creative agency was stifled, as soon as it came under the Macedonian dictation ; and how much more it might perhaps have achieved, if it had enjoyed another century or half-century of freedom, under the stimulating headship of the VOL. vm. 13 19oc.