CHAPTER XII
ATHENS—ITS DECAY AND ITS REVIVAL
WITHIN a few years after the death of Demosthenes a striking evidence was afforded of the sad change which had come over the city of Athens. The restoration of its political freedom for a brief period by Demetrius Poliorcetes (307 B.C.) in the name of his father Antigonus, one of the successors (diadochoi) of Alexander the Great, was the occasion for an exhibition of servility and impiety which showed that the manly spirit of those who fought at Marathon and Salamis had utterly forsaken their descendants. Not only were Demetrius and his father acknowledged as kings, but they were also exalted to the rank of divinities, orders being given by the authorities that their pictures and achievements should be wrought into the sacred robe which figured so prominently at the Pan-Athenaic festival, along with those of Zeus and Athena. A few years afterwards the shameful profanation was carried still further by the admission of Demetrius to the Parthenon as the guest of the goddess, and by the issue of a licentious decree that whatever he commanded was to be regarded as holy and just. How
Behind the lofty pedestal of the monument of Agrippa is the temple of Theseus; to the right the sub-structures and part of the north wing of the Propylæa (the Pinacotheca). To the left we have the wall of the terrace or bastion of the Temple of Wingless Victory. The distant view gives the plain of the Kephissus and the mountains of Daphni.
little sincerity there was in all this obsequious homage became evident the following year, when fortune turned against Demetrius at the battle of Ipsus. He set sail from Ephesus for Athens, but was refused admission.
Various causes may be assigned for the decline and fall of the Athenian state. From a political point of view the more immediate cause was its overweening pride and unbridled ambition—typified by the character of Alcibiades, who has been well described as the evil genius of his country at a most critical period of its history. Hence arose the terrible disasters which befell it in Sicily, and the subsequent dissolution of its naval empire. If the imperial capital had paid more respect to the claims of other Greek states associated with it in the Delian confederacy, its fate might have been very different. But while incurring the jealousy of Sparta and other rival powers it failed to gain the confidence of the minor states allied to it. Its imperial policy when at the height of its power may be contrasted with that of Great Britain, regarding which it has been recently said by Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Prime Minister of Canada: “The British Empire means freedom, decentralisation, and autonomy. It will live and live for ever.”