V. From the battle of Leuktra to that of Chæroneia.
VI. From the battle of Chæroneia to the end of the generation of Alexander.
The five periods, from Peisistratus down to the death of Alexander and of his generation, present the acts of an historical drama capable of being recounted in perspicuous succession, and connected by a sensible thread of unity. I shall interweave in their proper places the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks,—introducing such occasional notices of Grecian political constitutions, philosophy, poetry, and oratory, as are requisite to exhibit the many-sided activity of this people during their short but brilliant career.
After the generation of Alexander, the political action of Greece becomes cramped and degraded,—no longer interesting to the reader, or operative on the destinies of the future world. We may, indeed, name one or two incidents, especially the revolutions of Agis and Kleomenês at Sparta, which are both instructive and affecting; but as a whole, the period, between 300 B. C. and the absorption of Greece by the Romans, is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value as it helps us to understand the preceding centuries. The dignity and value of the Greeks from that time forward belong to them only as individual philosophers, preceptors, astronomers, and mathematicians, literary men and critics, medical practitioners, etc. In all these respective capacities, especially in the great schools of philosophical speculation they still constitute the light of the Roman world; though, as communities, they have lost their own orbit, and have become satellites of more powerful neighbors.
I propose to bring down the history of the Grecian communities to the year 300 B. C., or the close of the generation which takes its name from Alexander the Great, and I hope to accomplish this in eight volumes altogether. For the next two or three volumes I have already large preparations made, and I shall publish my third (perhaps my fourth) in the course of the ensuing winter.
There are great disadvantages in the publication of one portion of a history apart from the remainder; for neither the earlier nor the later phenomena can be fully comprehended without the light which each mutually casts upon the other. But the practice has become habitual, and is indeed more than justified by the well-known inadmissibility of “long hopes” into the short span of human life. Yet I cannot but fear that my first two volumes will suffer in the estimation of many readers by coming out alone,—and that men who value the Greeks for their philosophy, their politics, and their oratory, may treat the early legends as not worth attention. And it must be confessed that the sentimental attributes of the Greek mind—its religious and poetical vein—here appear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its more vigorous and masculine capacities,—with those powers of acting, organizing, judging, and speculating, which will be revealed in the forthcoming volumes. I venture, however, to forewarn the reader, that there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks, which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Hermæ, unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability and security with the domiciliation of the gods in the soil: nor will he adequately appreciate the habit of the Spartan king on military expeditions,—when he offered his daily public sacrifices on behalf of his army and his country,—“always to perform this morning service immediately before sunrise, in order that he might be beforehand in obtaining the favor of the gods,”[1] if he be not familiar with the Homeric conception of Zeus going to rest at night and awaking to rise at early dawn from the side of the “white-armed Hêrê.” The occasion will, indeed, often occur for remarking how these legends illustrate and vivify the political phenomena of the succeeding times, and I have only now to urge the necessity of considering them as the beginning of a series,—not as an entire work.
London, March 5, 1846.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF
VOLUMES I. AND II.