Isocrates,
his anti-Persian policy.
Let us begin with Isocrates, whose pamphlets, though written with far too much attention to style, and intended as rhetorical masterpieces, nevertheless tell us a great deal of what filled the minds of thoughtful men in his day. He sees plainly that the Greeks were wearing themselves out with internecine wars and perpetual jealousies, and he opined, shrewdly enough, that nothing but a great external quarrel would weld them together into unity, and make the various States forget their petty squabbles in the enthusiasm of a common conflict against a foreign foe. He saw plainly enough that the proper enemy to attack
was the power of Asia. For it was ill-cemented and open to invasion; it was really dangerous to the liberty even of the Hellenic peninsula,—almost fatal to that of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and moreover so full of wealth as to afford an enormous field for that legitimate plunder which every conqueror then thought his bare due at the hands of the vanquished.
No large ideas of spreading Hellenic culture.
Isocrates had not the smallest idea of raising the Asiatic nations, or of civilizing them[132:1]. No Greek down to Aristotle, nay, not even Aristotle himself, ever had such a notion, though he might concede that isolated men or cities could possibly, by careful and humble imitation of Hellenic culture, attain to a respectable imitation of it. Isocrates' plain view of the war policy against Persia was simply this: first, that the internal quarrels of Greece would be allayed; secondly, that a great number of poor and roving Greeks would attain wealth and contentment; thirdly, 'the Barbarians would learn to think less of themselves[132:2].'
Who is to be the leader of Greece?
His first proposal was that Athens and Sparta, the natural leaders of Greece, should combine in this policy, divide the command by a formal treaty,
and so resume their proper position as benefactors and promoters of all Hellenedom.
But as years went on, the impotence and the strife of these powers made it only too plain that this was no practical solution; so he turns in an open letter to Philip of Macedon, who was gradually showing how to solve the problem of Hellenic unity, and advises him to use his power, not for the subjugation of the Greeks, but to lead them in a victorious campaign into Asia.