n was declared to be public land of Rome.
Thus was extinguished "the eye of Hellas," the last precious ornament
of the Grecian land, once so rich in cities. If, however, we review
the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge--
what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed--that
the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the
contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks
compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock
sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams
connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government
of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell
short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous
confusion and misrule of Greek confederacies and Roman commissions.
The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries;
it is affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct
government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned.
The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied
by the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss
of Greek independence. The singular indulgence, which Rome even now
showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared
with the contemporary conduct of the same authorities towards the
Spaniards and Phoenicians. To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed
not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan
in later times, deemed it "harsh and barbarous to deprive Athens
and Sparta of the shadow of freedom which they still retained." All
the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and
the revolting treatment of Corinth--a treatment disapproved by the
orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and
far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by
the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets
of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality
of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure
deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err,
if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus
early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy
proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial
rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything