Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/409

ATHENS WITHOUT FORCE OR HOPE. 377 How few of those who received Demetrius Poliorketes, had taken part in the battle of Chaeroneia, or listened to the stirring exhortations of Demosthenes in the war which preceded that disaster ! ' Of the citizens who yet retained courage and patri- otism to struggle again for their freedom after the death of Alex- ander, how many must have perished with Leosthenes in the Lamian war ! The Athenians of 307 b. c. had come to con- ceive their own city, and Hellas generally, as dependent first on Kassander, next on the possible intervention of his equally overweening rivals, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Lysimachus, etc.. If they shook off the yoke of one potentate, it could only be by the protectorate of another. The sentiment of political self-reliance and autonomy had fled ; the conception of a citizen military force, furnished by confederate and co-operating cities, had been super- seded by the spectacle of vast standing armies, organized by the heirs of Alexander and of his traditions. Two centuries before (510 b. c), when the Lacedoemoniang expelled the despot Hippias and his mercenaries from Athens, there sprang up at once among the Athenian people a forward and devoted patriotism, which made them willing to brave, and competent to avert, all dangers in defence of their newly-acquired liberty.2 At that time, the enemies by whom they were threatened were Lacedaemonians, Thebans, -i3ilginetans, Chalki- dians, and the like (for the Persian force did not present itself vmtil after some interval, and attacked not Athens alone, but .Greece collectively). These hostile forces, though superior in number and apparent value to those of Athens, were yet not so disproportionate as to engender hopelessness and despair. Very different were the facts in 307 b. c, when Demetrius Polior- ketes removed the Kassandrian mercenaries with their fortress Munychia, and proclaimed Athens free. To maintain that free- dom by their own strength — in opposition to the evident superi- ority of organized force residing in the potentates around, one ' Tacitus, Annal. i. 3. " Juniores post Actiacam victoriam, seniores pie rique inter bella civium nati : quotusquisque rcliquus, qui rempublicanj vidisset f " • Herodotus, t. 78. 32*