rivals, and was finally betrayed by the Macedonians whom he had taught, as Plutarch tells us, to love and obey him.[1]
Alexander's empire was soon broken up into Macedonian satrapies or kingdoms. Greece was the continual prey of one of these, and the scene of struggle between others; and the difficulty of maintaining these kingdoms, together with the rude character of their Macedonian rulers, led to continual wars between individual kings at the head of mercenary armies, — wars which seem for a time to deprive history of all its value. Meanwhile the Greeks, instead of finding new life and hope in a mighty political combination of which they, like their πόλις in its surrounding territory, were to have been the brain and life, were left to continue half-heartedly, weary and worn-out, in their City-States, under the ominous shadow of Macedonian kings, until some new power should appear with a political genius adequate to the organising of the world afresh.
Such a power at last appeared, after an interval of a century and a half, in that great City-State of the West whose political development has been already sketched. In tracing this development I intentionally dwelt upon those points which seemed to indicate that of all City-States Rome was the best equipped for the task of governing the world.
- ↑ It is possible that Plutarch's life of Eumenes may be too favourable, as based on the evidence of his fellow-townsman Hieronymus; but it is not contradicted by other writers. Cf. Ranke, Weltgeschichte, vol. i. pt. ii. 221 foll.
