George Finlay, the historian of Greece, was born on December 21, 1799, at Faversham, Kent, England, where his father, Capt. J. Finlay, R.E., was inspector of the Government powder mills. His early instruction was undertaken by his mother, to whose training he attributed his love of history. He studied law at Glasgow and Göttingen universities, at the latter of which he became acquainted with a Greek fellow-student, and resolved to take part in the struggle for Greek independence. He proceeded to Greece, where he met Byron and the leaders of the Greek patriotic forces, took part in many engagements with the Turks, and conducted missions on behalf of the Greek provisional government until the independence of Greece was established. Finlay bought an estate in Attica, on which he resided for many years. The publication of his great series of histories of Greece began in 1844, and was completed in 1875 with the second edition, which brought the history of modern Greece down to 1864. It has been said that Finlay, like Machiavelli, qualified himself to write history by wide experience as student, soldier, statesman, and economist. He died on January 26, 1875.
I.--Greece Under the Romans
The conquests of Alexander the Great effected a permanent change in the political conditions of the Greek nation, and this change powerfully influenced its moral and social state during the whole period of its subjection to the Roman Empire.
Alexander introduced Greek civilisation as an important element in his civil government, and established Greek colonies with political rights throughout his conquests. During 250 years the Greeks were the dominant class in Asia, and the corrupting influence of this predominance was extended to the whole frame of society in their European as well as their Asiatic possessions. The great difference which existed in the social condition of the Greeks and Romans throughout their national existence was that the Romans formed a nation with the organisation of a single city. The Greeks were a people composed of a number of rival states, and the majority looked with indifference on the loss of their independence. The Romans were compelled to retain much of the civil government, and many of the financial arrangements which they found existing. This was a necessity, because the conquered were much further advanced in social civilisation than the conquerors. The financial policy of Rome was to transfer as much of the money circulating in the provinces, and the precious metals in the hands of private individuals, as it was possible into the coffers of the state.
Hence, the whole empire was impoverished, and Greece suffered severely under a government equally tyrannical in its conduct and unjust in its legislation. The financial administration of the Romans inflicted, if possible, a severer blow on the moral constitution of society than on the material prosperity of the country. It divided the population of Greece into two classes. The rich formed an aristocratic class, the poor sank to the condition of serfs. It appears to be a law of human society that all classes of mankind who are separated by superior wealth and privileges from the body of the people are, by their oligarchical constitution, liable to rapid decline.
The Greeks and the Romans never showed any disposition to unite and form one people, their habits and tastes being so different. Although the schools of Athens were still famous, learning and philosophy were but little cultivated in European Greece because of the poverty of the people and the secluded position of the country.
In the changes of government which preceded the establishment of Byzantium as the capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine, the Greeks contributed to effect a mighty revolution of the whole frame of social life by the organisation which they gave to the Church from the moment they began to embrace the Christian religion. It awakened many of the national characteristics which had slept for ages, and gave new vigour to the communal and municipal institutions, and even extended to political society. Christian communities of Greeks were gradually melted into one nation, having a common legislation and a common civil administration as well as a common religion, and it was this which determined Constantine to unite Church and State in strict alliance.
From the time of Constantine the two great principles of law and religion began to exert a favourable influence on Greek society, and even limited the wild despotism of the emperors. The power of the clergy, however, originally resting on a more popular and more pure basis than that of the law, became at last so great that it suffered the inevitable corruption of all irresponsible authority entrusted to humanity.
Then came the immigration and ravages of the Goths to the south of the Danube, and that unfortunate period marked the commencement of the rapid decrease of the Greek race, and the decline of Greek civilisation throughout the empire. Under Justinian (527-565), the Hellenic race and institutions in Greece itself received the severest blow. Although he gave to the world his great system of civil law, his internal administration was remarkable for religious intolerance and financial rapacity. He restricted the powers and diminished the revenues of the Greek municipalities, closed the schools of rhetoric and philosophy at Athens, and seized the endowments of the Academy of Plato, which had maintained an uninterrupted succession of teachers for 900 years. But it was not till the reign of Heraclius that the ancient existence of the Hellenic race terminated.