第 十八 章 · What Became Of This High Ambition

When the Achæans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to

look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains

of Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or

less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The

Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about

conditions in Greece.

Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their

disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled

by an extraordinarily clever man by the name of Philip. He admired

the Greek spirit in letters and art but he despised the Greek lack of

self-control in political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly

good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he

settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and

then he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant

to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the

Greeks one hundred and fifty years before.

Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this

well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the destruction of

Athens was left to Philip’s son Alexander, the beloved pupil of

Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers. Alexander bade farewell to

Europe in the spring of the year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached

India. In the meantime he had destroyed Phœnicia, the old rival of

the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped

by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the Pharaohs.

He had defeated the last Persian king—he had overthrown the Persian

empire—he had given orders to rebuild Babylon—he had led his troops

into the heart of the Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world

a Macedonian province and dependency. Then he stopped and announced

even more ambitious plans.

The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence of the

Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek language—they must

live in cities built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier

now turned school-master. The military camps of yesterday became the

peaceful centres of the newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and

higher did the flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when

suddenly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old palace

of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.

Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile clay of a

higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish ambitions and

his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable service. His Empire

did not long survive him. A number of ambitious generals divided the

territory among themselves. But they too remained faithful to the dream

of a great world brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge.

They maintained their independence until the Romans added western Asia

and Egypt to their other domains. The strange inheritance of this

Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian

and Babylonian) fell to the Roman conquerors. During the following

centuries, it got such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel

its influence in our own lives this very day.

[Illustration: GREECE]