the throne of
Macedonia. He aspired to be king because of his kingly qualities. He
wished his people to apply to him the words which Tiberius used of a
distinguished Roman of humble birth: "Curtius Rufinus videtur mihi ex se
natus" (_Ann._ xi. 21). He succeeded in his attempt. He won the hearts
of his people, and although he failed in his endeavour to govern the
whole of Greece through the agency of subservient "tyrants," he
accomplished the main object which through good and evil fortune he
pursued with dogged tenacity throughout the whole of his chequered
career. He lived and died King of Macedonia.

The world-politics of this period are almost as confused as the
relationships which were the outcome of the matrimonial alliances
contracted by the principal actors on the world's stage. How bewildering
these alliances were may be judged from what Mr. Tarn says of
Stratonice, the daughter of Antiochus I., who married Demetrius, the son
of Antigonus: "Stratonice was her husband's first cousin and also his
aunt, her mother-in-law's half-sister and also her niece, her
father-in-law's niece, her own mother's granddaughter-in-law, and
perhaps other things which the curious may work out." Mr. Tarn has
unravelled the tangled political web with singular lucidity. Here it
must be sufficient to say that, after the death of Pyrrhus, a conflict
between Macedonia and Egypt, which stood at the head of an
anti-Macedonian coalition of which Athens, Epirus, and Sparta were the
principal members, became inevitable. The rivalry between the two States
led to the Chremonidean war--so called because in 266 the Athenian
Chremonides moved the declaration of war against Antigonus. The result
of the war was that on land Antigonus remained the complete master of
the situation. With true political instinct, however, he recognised the
truth of that maxim which history teaches from the days of Aegospotami
to those of Trafalgar, viz. that the execution of an imperial policy is
impossible without the command of the sea. This command had been secured
by his predecessors, but had fallen to Egypt after the fine fleet
created by Demetrius the Besieger had been shattered in 280 by Ptolemy
Keraunos with the help of the navy which had been created by Lysimachus.
Antigonus decided to regain the power which had been lost. His efforts
were at first frustrated by the wily and wealthy Egyptian monarch, who
knew the power of gold. "Egypt neither moved a man nor lau