Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/326

302 The essential charm of ownership was gone for them, and with it all the joy and intensity of social life; and though this very calamity might widen their mental horizon, and find them new interests and fresh work to do, the stream of their intellectual effort would never again run so clear and strong as in the days of the perfect freedom of the individual City-State.

Of the ultimate fate of the Greek cities I shall give some account in the next chapter. But it may be as well to follow out the story we have been pursuing by referring at once to the last attempt of the Greeks to recover political independence; especially as that attempt was for a time successful, and successful just because the old instinct of autonomy had steadily become feebler, and the cities were more willing than in the earlier periods to unite into real federal unions.

After Alexander's empire had been broken up, his successors on the throne of Macedon continued to press more or less heavily on the Greek cities. Though for the most part left nominally independent, they were not really so; more than one of them was a Macedonian fortress, and in others the old disease of tyranny, aided now by the Macedonian power, begins once more to appear. About 280 B.C. four cities of the old Achæan League, which had been dissolved by Alexander, united afresh in a more solid union than their former one. These were quickly joined by others, and in 251 Aratus of Sicyon compelled his native city to join the league. From this latter year we may date the