power from without. Thus when Macedon came into the range of Greek politics, under a man of great diplomatic as well as military capacity, who, like a Czar of to-day, wished to secure a firm footing on the sea-board of the Ægean, she found her work comparatively easy.
The strong imperial policy of Philip found no real antagonist except at Athens. Weak as she was, and straitened by the break-up of her new confederacy, Athens could still produce men of great talent and energy; but she was hampered by divided counsels. Two Athenians of this period seem to represent the currents of Greek political thought, now running in two different directions. Demosthenes represents the cause of the City-State in this age, of a union, that is, of perfectly free Hellenic cities against the common enemy. Phocion represents the feeling, which seems to have been long growing up among thinking men at Athens, that the City-State was no longer what it had been, and could no longer stand by itself; that what was needed was a general Hellenic peace, and possibly even an arbiter from without,[1] an arbiter not wholly un-Hellenic like the Persian, yet one who might succeed in stilling the fatal jealousies of the leading States. We may do well to compare the views of these two statesmen somewhat more closely.
- ↑ The connection between a general peace and a strong arbiter is curiously expressed by Dante in his De Monarchia, ch. iv. foll. The relation of the Greek cities to Macedon is not unlike that of the Italian States to the Empire in Dante's time: See Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, pp. 76 foll.
