ext-books of
political wisdom, has often seemed to me one of the most mournful books
in the world. At no other spot on the earth's surface, and at no other
time in the career of mankind, has the human intellect flowered with
such luxuriance as at Athens during the eighty-five years which
intervened between the victory of Marathon and the defeat of
AEgospotamos. In no other like interval of time, and in no other
community of like dimensions, has so much work been accomplished of
which we can say with truth that it is [Greek: ktaema es aei],--an
eternal possession. It is impossible to conceive of a day so distant, or
an era of culture so exalted, that the lessons taught by Athens shall
cease to be of value, or that the writings of her great thinkers shall
cease to be read with fresh profit and delight. We understand these
things far better to-day than did those monsters of erudition in the
sixteenth century who studied the classics for philological purposes
mainly. Indeed, the older the world grows, the more varied our
experience of practical politics, the more comprehensive our survey of
universal history, the stronger our grasp upon the comparative method of
inquiry, the more brilliant is the light thrown upon that brief day of
Athenian greatness, and the more wonderful and admirable does it all
seem. To see this glorious community overthrown, shorn of half its
virtue (to use the Homeric phrase), and thrust down into an inferior
position in the world, is a mournful spectacle indeed. And the book
which sets before us, so impartially yet so eloquently, the innumerable
petty misunderstandings and contemptible jealousies which brought about
this direful result, is one of the most mournful of books.

We may console ourselves, however, for the premature overthrow of the
power of Athens, by the reflection that that power rested upon political
conditions which could not in any case have been permanent or even
long-enduring. The entire political system of ancient Greece, based as
it was upon the idea of the sovereign independence of each single city,
was one which could not fail sooner or later to exhaust itself through
chronic anarchy. The only remedy lay either in some kind of permanent
federation, combined with representative government; or else in what we
might call "incorporation and assimilation," after the Roman fashion.
But the incorporation of one town with another, though effected with
brilliant results in the early hi