y
consequence of the intense shock inflicted on the religious mind of
Athens, and especially of Nicias--this calculation was not realized.
Probably matters had already proceeded too far even for Nicias to
recede. Notice had been sent around to all the allies; forces were
already on their way to the rendezvous at Corcyra; at Argeian and
Mantineian allies were arriving at Piraeus to embark. So much the more
eagerly did the conspirators proceed in that which I have stated as
the other part of their probable plan; to work that exaggerated
religious terror, which they had themselves artificially brought
about, for the ruin of Alcibiades.

Few men in Athens either had, or deserved to have, a greater number of
enemies, political as well as private, than Alcibiades; many of them
being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence,
and whose liturgies and other customary exhibitions he outshone by his
reckless expenditure. His importance had been already so much
increased, and threatened to be so much more increased, by the
Sicilian enterprise, that they no longer observed any measures in
compassing his ruin. That which the mutilators of the Hermae seemed to
have deliberately planned his other enemies were ready to turn to
profit.

II

IF ALEXANDER HAD LIVED[43]

The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever in the
plenitude of health, vigor, and aspirations, was an event impressive
as well as important in the highest possible degree, to his
contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was brought
to Athens, the orator Demades exclaimed, "It can not be true: if
Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would have smelt of his
carcass." This coarse, but emphatic comparison, illustrates the
immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression produced by the
sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It was felt by each of the
many remote envoys who had so recently come to propitiate this
far-shooting Apollo--by every man among the nations who had sent these
envoys--throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known--to affect
either his actual condition or his probable future.

The first growth and development of Macedonia, during the twenty-two
years preceding the battle of Chaeroneia,[44] from an embarrassed
secondary state into the first of all known powers, had excited the
astonishment of contemporaries, and admiration for Philip's organizing
genius. But the achievements