The Historians' History of the World 03

Under the successor of the old despot, Dionysius II, Plato’s pupil, Dion, and Plato himself, made an attempt at reform, first with the ruler’s support, and then in opposition to him. The result was, that the west Grecian kingdom was shattered (357-353 B.C.), while the establishment of the ideal state was not successful; instead anarchy appeared again, and the struggle of all against all. Only the enemies of the nation gained. In Sicily, to be sure, Timoleon (345-337) was able to establish a certain degree of order; he overthrew the tyrants, repulsed the Carthaginians, restored the cities and gave them a modified democratic constitution. But the federation of these republics had no permanence. On the death of Timoleon the internal and external strife began anew, and the final verdict was uttered by the governor of the Carthaginian province.

In Italy, on the other hand, the majority of the Greek cities were conquered by the Lucanians or the newly risen Bruttians. On the west coast only Naples and Elea were left, in the south Rhegium; in the east Locri, Crotona, and Thurii had great difficulty in defending themselves against the Bruttians. Tarentum alone (upon which Heraclea and Metapontum were dependent) possessed a considerable power, owing to its incomparable situation on a sea-girt peninsula and to the trade and wealth which furnished it the means again and again to enlist Greek chieftains and mercenaries in its service for the struggle against its enemies.

It was as Plato wrote to the Syracusans in the year 352 B.C. If matters go on in this way, no end can be foreseen “until the whole population, supporters of tyrants and democrats, alike, has been destroyed, the Greek language has disappeared from Sicily and the island fallen under the power and rule of the Phœnicians or Oscans” (Epist. 8, 353 e). In a century the prophecy was fulfilled. But its range extends a great deal farther than Plato dreamed; it is the fate not only of the western Greeks, but of the whole Hellenic nation, that he foretells here.

The Greek states were not equal to the task of maintaining the position of their nation as a world-power and gaining control of the world for their civilisation. When they had completely failed, a half-Greek neighbouring people, the Macedonians, attempted to carry out this mission. The impotence of the Greek world gave King Philip (359-336) the opportunity, which he seized with the greatest skill and energy, of establishing a strong Macedonian kingdom, including all Thrace as far as the Danube, extending on the west to the Ionian Sea, and finally, on the basis of a general peace, of uniting the Hellenic world of the mother-country in a firm league under Macedonian hegemony (337 B.C.).

Philip adopted the national programme of the Hellenes proposed by Isocrates and began war in Asia against the Persians (336 B.C.). His youthful son Alexander then carried it out on a far greater scale than his father had ever intended. His aim was to subdue the whole known world, the οικουμένη, simultaneously to Macedonian rule and Hellenic civilisation. Moreover, as the descendant of Hercules and Achilles, as king of Macedonia and leader of the Hellenic league, imbued by education with Hellenic culture, the triumphs of which he had enthusiastically absorbed, he felt himself called as none other to this work. Darius III, after the victory of Issus (November 333 B.C.), offered him the surrender of Western Asia as far as the Euphrates; and the interests of his native state and also,—we must not fail to note,—the true interests of Hellenic culture would have been far better served by such self-restraint than by the ways that Alexander followed.

But he would go farther, out into the immeasurable; the attraction to the infinite, to the comprehension and mastery of the universe, both intellectual and material, that lies in the nature of the yet inchoate uniform world-culture, finds its most vivid expression in its champion. When, indeed, he would advance farther and farther, from the Punjab to the Ganges and to the ends of the world, his instrument, his army, failed him; he had to turn back. But the Persian kingdom, Asia as far as the Indus, he conquered, brought permanently under Macedonian rule, and laid the foundation for its Hellenisation. With this, however, only the smaller portion of his mission was fulfilled. The East everywhere offered further tasks which had in part been undertaken by the Persian kingdom at the height of its power under Darius I—the exploration of Arabia, of the Indian Ocean, and of the Caspian Sea, the subjugation of the predatory nomads of the great steppe that extends from the Danube through southern Russia and Turania as far as the Jaxartes.