in these pages. Greek history has been in the hands of people with literary and scholastic interests. So long as there are great authors to be translated, explained, panegyrized, all the most minute events are recorded and discussed with care; but as soon as we come to an epoch certainly not less important in human affairs, perhaps more decisive than any that had gone before in shaping the future history of the world, we are deserted by our modern historians, because the Greeks had lost that literary excellence which makes their earlier records the proper training for the schoolboy and the collegian[156:1]. We are now reduced to Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, Strabo, for our materials, and there are those who think that the moral splendour and unfailing interest of the famous Parallel Lives do not atone for the want of Attic grace and strength which marks the decadence of Greek prose literature. Yet surely to the genuine historian, to whom all these records are merely sources of information on the course of affairs and the characters of men, literary perfection should only be an agreeable accident, an evidence, if you like, of that day's culture, not a gauge to test the pre-eminence of one century or one nation over another.
Alexander's place in history still disputed.
§ 64. Accordingly, the character of Alexander and his work have not yet been sufficiently weighed and studied to afford us a perfectly clear picture, which might carry conviction to the majority of readers, and finally fix his place in history. As I said above[157:1], Grote's picture of him—the only recent study of the period in England previous to my own Alexander's Empire and Greek Life and Thought—is so manifestly unfair that no candid judge will be satisfied with it. If any other writer had used against Demosthenes or Pericles such evidence as Grote cites and believes against Alexander, the great historian would have cried shame upon him, and refuted his arguments with the high satisfaction of supporting an unanswerable case.
Grote's unfairness in accepting evidence against him.
Thus, for example, Grote finds in Q. Curtius, a late, rhetorical, and very untrustworthy Latin historian of Alexander, theatrical details of Alexander's cruelties to the heroic defender of Gaza, or the mythical descendants of the Milesian Branchidæ who had settled in Inner Asia,—details unknown to Arrian, unknown apparently to the Athenians of the day, and fairly to be classed with the king's adventures among the Amazons or in the land beyond the Sun. Yet these stories have their distinct effect upon Grote's estimate of Alexander, whom he esteems hardly a Hellene, but a semi-barbarian conqueror, of transcendent military abilities, only desirous of making for himself a great Oriental despot-monarchy, with a better and more efficient
military and civil organization, but without any preparations for higher civilization.
Droysen's estimate.
The estimate of Droysen is nearer the truth, but still not strictly the truth itself[158:1]. To him the Macedonian is a political as well as a military genius of the highest order, who is educated in all the views of Aristotle, who understands thoroughly that the older forms of political life are effete, that small separate States require to be united under a strong central control. He even divines that the wealth and resources of Asia require regeneration through Greek intelligence and enterprise, and therefore the 'marriage of Europe and Asia,' of which the manifest symbol was the wholesale matrimony of his officers with Persian ladies, was the real aim and goal of all his achievements. As such Alexander is more than the worthy pupil of Aristotle, and the legitimate originator of a new and striking form of civilization.
Tendency to attribute calculation to genius.