Even the literary men, who are always anti-despotic in theory, confess that many of these later tyrants were good and worthy men; and the fact that Gonatas, the greatest and best of the Antigonids, constantly 'planted a tyrant' in a free State which he found hard to manage, proves rather that this form of government was not unacceptable to the majority, than that he violated all the deepest convictions of his unmanageable subjects for the sake of an end certain to be balked if he adopted impolitic means. The force of imitation also helped the creation of tyrannies in the Greek cities; for were not the Hellenistic monarchies the greatest success of the age? And we may assume that many sanguine people did not lay to heart the wide difference between the requirements of the provinces of a large and scattered empire, and those of a town with a territory of ten miles square.
These then were phenomena which manifested themselves all over the peninsula,—aye, even at times at Athens and Sparta, though these cities were protected by a great history and by the sentimental respect of all the world from the experiments which might be condoned in smaller and less august cities.
Contemptible position of Athens and Sparta in politics,
except in mischievous opposition to the new federations,
§ 72. But despite these clear lessons, the normal condition of the old leaders of the Greek world
was hardly so respectable as that of the modern tyrannies. It consisted of a constant policy of protest, a constant resuscitation of old memories, an obsolete and ridiculous claim to lead the Greeks and govern an empire of dependencies after the manner of Pericles or Lysander. The strategic importance of both cities, as well as their hold upon Greek sentiment, made it worth while for the great Hellenistic monarchs to humour such fancies; for in those days the means of defending a city with walls or natural defences were still far greater than the means of attack, even with Philip's developments of siege artillery,—so that to coerce Athens or Sparta into absolute subjection by arms was both more unpopular and more expensive than to pay political partisans in each, who could at least defeat any active external policy. But if from this point of view these leading cities with all their dignity had little influence on the world, from another they proved fatal to the only new development of political life in Greece which had any promise for small and separate States. And this brings us to the feature of all others interesting to modern readers,—I mean the experiment of a federation of small States, with separate legislatures for internal affairs, but a central council to manage the external policy and the common interests of all the members.
whose origin was small and obscure.
§ 73. This form of polity was not quite new in Greece or Asia Minor, but had remained obscure and unnoticed in earlier and more brilliant times.
We may therefore fairly attribute to the opening years of the third century B.C. its discovery as an important and practical solution of the difficulty of maintaining small States in their autonomy or independence as regards both one another and the great Powers which threatened to absorb them.
The old plan of a sovran State not successful.