tal idea of Hellenizing the east
--changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene-
Asiatic states. The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for
migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders
to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly
held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-,
Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout
the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae. The officers, who divided the
heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences,
and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very
Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.

The Great States
Macedonia

Of the three states of the first rank belonging to this system
--Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--Macedonia under Philip the Fifth, who
had occupied the throne since 534, was externally at least very much
what it had been under Philip the Second the father of Alexander
--a compact military state with its finances in good order. On its
northern frontier matters had resumed their former footing, after the
waves of the Gallic inundation had rolled away; the guard of the
frontier kept the Illyrian barbarians in check without difficulty,
at least in ordinary times. In the south, not only was Greece in
general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including
all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and
the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea,
the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of
isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the
promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian
territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian
garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias
in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of
the Hellenes." But the strength of the state lay above all in its
hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed,
of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting
forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as
many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two
legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet
recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of
Alexander and by the Gallic invasion. But while in Gree