news of the overthrow did not interfere with a festival that was going on, and only the relatives of the survivors of the battle appeared in mourning.

II. THEBAN SUPREMACY.

211. Epaminondas. - For nine years after Leuctra Thebes was the head of Greece. This position she owed to her great leader, Epaminondas, whose life marks one of the fair heights to which human nature can ascend. Epaminondas was great as general, statesman, and philosopher; but he was greatest as a man, lofty and lovable in nature. In his earlier days he had been looked upon as a dreamer, and when the oligarchs of Thebes drove out Pelopidas and other active patriots (§ 209), they only sneered while Epaminondas continued calmly to preach of liberty to the young. Later, it was recognized that, more than any other man, he had prepared the way for the overthrow of tyranny; and after the expulsion of the oligarchs he soon became the chief leader and organizer of the restored democracy.

Epaminondas sought to do for Thebes what Pericles had done for Athens; and while he lived success seemed possible. Unhappily the few years remaining of his life he was compelled to give mainly to war, to guard against Spartan recovery. Laconia was repeatedly invaded. During these campaigns Epaminondas freed Messenia, on one side of Sparta, and organized Arcadia, on the other side, into a federal union,

so as to "surround Sparta with a perpetual blockade." The great Theban aided the Messenians to found a new capital, Messene; and in Arcadia he restored Mantinea, which Sparta had destroyed (§ 208). In this district he also founded Megalopolis, or "the Great City," by combining forty scattered villages.

Athenian aid saved Sparta from complete destruction, but drew down Theban vengeance upon herself. Epaminondas turned upon Athens, built fleets, swept the Athenian navy from

the seas, and made Euboea a Theban possession. Meantime Pelopidas had been active in the north. Both Thessaly and Macedonia were brought under Theban influence, and the young Philip, prince of Macedon, spent some years in Thebes as a hostage.

The leadership of Thebes, however, rested solely on the supreme genius of her one great statesman, and vanished instantly at his death. In 362, for the fourth time, Epaminondas marched against Sparta, and at Mantinea won another great victory, by tactics like those of Leuctra. This was the greatest land battle ever fought between Hellenes, and nearly all the states of Greece took part on one side or the other. But the victory of Thebes bore no results; for Epaminondas himself fell on the field, and his city sank at once to a slow and narrow policy.

Within

No state was left in Greece to assume leadership. the Peloponnesus, Arcadians and Messenians proved incapable of steady government; and a turbulent anarchy, in place of the stern Spartan rule, seemed the only fruit of the brief glory of the great Theban.

212. Anarchy in Greece; Failure of the City-state. The failure of the Greek cities to unite in larger states made it certain that sooner or later they must fall to some outside power. Sparta and Thebes (with Persian aid) had been able to prevent Athenian leadership; Thebes and Athens had overthrown Sparta; Sparta and Athens had been able to check Thebes. Each state had been discredited and exhausted in turn.

Athens had had seventy glorious years of leadership. Sparta's thirty years of tyranny and Thebes' short supremacy were followed by over twenty years more of anarchy, before Greece fell finally to a foreign master. But during those years the weakness of the Greek political system became more and more plain, and a new nation was growing up on the north to replace that system with something stronger (§§ 213 ff.).

FOR FURTHER READING. - Plutarch's Lires ("Agesilaus" and "Pelopidas "), Sankey's Spartan and Theban Supremacies (“ Epochs "), and the standard histories. For the usual high school student, the period is worth little library study, unless, perhaps, for the exploits of Pelopidas and the character of Epaminondas.

III. THE MACEDONIAN CONQUEST.

213. Macedon: its People and King. The Macedonians were part of the "outer rim of the Greek race." They were still barbaric, and perhaps were mixed somewhat with non-Hellenic elements. Until shortly before this time they had remained a loose union of tribes; but now a series of able kings had consolidated them into a real nation. The change was so recent that Alexander a little later could say to his army:

"My father, Philip, found you a roving people, without fixed habitations and without resources, most of you clad in the skins of animals, pasturing a few sheep among the mountains, and, to defend these, waging a luckless warfare with the Illyrians, the Triballans, and the Thracians on your borders. He gave you the soldier's cloak to replace the skins, and led you down from the mountains into the plain, making you a worthy match in war against the barbarians on your frontier, so that you no longer trusted to your

Alexander.

history. He was ambitious, crafty, sagacious, persistent, unscrupulous, an unfailing judge of character, and a marvelous

1 Read Wheeler's characterization, Alexander the Great, 5-7.

organizer. He set himself to make his people true Greeks by making them the leaders of Greece. He was determined to secure that primacy for which Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had all vainly striven.

The struggle revealed the advantages of a consolidated national monarchy as against divided, mutually jealous citystates, and of a single powerful ruler, able to keep his own counsel and to pursue one policy unwaveringly, as against city assemblies, with their public discussions, changing votes, and conflicting plans.

214. Philip's Aims and Methods. At Philip's accession Macedon was still a poor country without a good harbor. The first need was an outlet on the sea. Philip found one by con

quering the Chalcidic peninsula; and his energy developed the gold mines of the district until they furnished him a yearly revenue of a thousand talents. as large as that of Athens at her greatest power.

Then Philip turned to Greece itself. Here he used an adroit mingling of cunning, bribery, and force. In all Greek states, among the pretended patriot statesmen, there were secret servants in his pay. He set city against city; and the constant tendency to quarrels among the Greeks played into his hands.

The only man who saw clearly the designs of Philip, and who at the same time constantly opposed them, was Demosthenes the Athenian. Demosthenes was the greatest orator of Greece. To check Macedonia became the one aim of his life; and the last glow of Greek political independence flames up in his passionate appeals to Athens to defend Hellas against Macedon as she had once done against Persia.

"Suppose that you have one of the gods as surety that Philip will leave you untouched, in the name of all the gods, it is a shame for you in ignorant stupidity to sacrifice the rest of Hellas!"

The noble orations (the Philippics) by which Demosthenes sought to move the Athenian assembly to action against Philip are still unrivaled in literature,' but their practical effect was to secure only spasmodic action.

215. The Macedonian Army. - The most important work of Philip was his army. This was as superior to the fourmonths citizen armies of Hellas as Philip's diplomacy was superior to that of a popular assembly. The king's wealth enabled him to keep ready for action a disciplined force. He enlarged the Theban phalanx, and improved it, so that the ranks presented five rows of bristling spears projecting beyond the front soldier. The flanks were protected by light

1 Special report: Demosthenes.

2 Special report: the Macedonian phalanx. A good account is found in Curteis' Rise of the Macedonian Empire, 34-37. This phalanx is one of the things Philip owed to his life in Thebes (§ 211).