and Demetrius of Phalerum.[1] Thus the policy of union and reorganisation for the πόλεις 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,[2] 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 πόλις, 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.
- ↑ Of this philosopher-statesman, who was ἐπιμελήτης of Athens under Cassander, and altered her constitution perhaps on the model of Aristotle's ideal State, we should be glad to know more. What little we do know will be found succinctly put together in Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. vii. 355 foll.
- ↑ Alexander, for example, made proclamation of their autonomy after the battle of Issus. See Plutarch's life of him, ch. xxxiv., and cf. xvi. fin.
