Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/325

x and Demetrius of Phalerum. Thus the policy of union and reorganisation for the under the strong guardianship of Macedon was the one which was eventually successful; but it cost them the loss of much of their remaining vitality as free and self-sufficing political organisms. True, neither Philip nor Alexander dealt hardly with the cities, Thebes alone excepted; they left them nominally free, and they identified the interest of the Greeks with their own. But they could and did interfere with them whenever they chose, and without meeting with any successful resistance. Their forcible supervision cast a great shadow upon the City-State, dimming and almost obliterating the clear outlines of its political life.

A great future was still before the Greek race, which was yet to set its mark upon the world's history, with a force it never could have exerted under the older political system. But the, the peculiar product of the political genius of the Greeks, their true home in which all their choicest work had been done, was now no longer their own. They were like the freeholder of an ancient family, who has mortgaged and lost his inheritance, but is still allowed to live on in the old home as tenant.