ere a set of treacherous Iscariots.
But why, it will naturally be asked, had there not been _hitherto_ some
outbreak of these discordant elements? That question is easily answered,
if we consider that up to this time there had existed certain external
elements, which, by arousing incessantly the patriotic feelings of all
Greece against hostilities from without, had administered an opiate to
the Cerberus of domestic strife. The terrible storm was maturing its
thunderbolts treacherously and in subterranean chambers; but its
mutterings were effectually silenced by the more audible thunderings
that burst across the Aegean from the Persian throne. Treachery was
lulled to sleep, while the nobler sentiment which united Greece against
Asiatic despotism was perpetually stung into activity in the popular
heart, and inspired the utterances of eloquence. Thus it might not
have been, if Greece had first come within hail of Persia through the
ordinary commerce of peace; since, in that case, after receiving from
the latter her treacherous gifts, her voluptuous effeminacies, she would
easily have fallen into the vast net-work that already trammelled all
Asia, and would then, through her own entanglement, include the whole
world. But it was not in peace that they met. The first question put to
Hellas by her Oriental neighbor was in effect this:--Are you willing,
without going to the trouble of subjecting the matter to the test of
actual conflict, to consider yourself as having been whipped? This,
it must be confessed, was a shivering introduction to the world for
Greece,--something like a Lacedaemonian baptism,--but it stood her
in good stead. Like the dip in the Styx, it insured immortality. The
menaces of despotism, coming from the East, gave birth to the impulses
of freedom in the West; and the latter sustained themselves at a more
exalted height, in proportion as the former were backed by substantial
support. Subtract anything from that deafening chorus of slaves which
follows in the train of Xerxes, and we must by the same amount take
from the paeans of aspiring Greece. Abolish the outlying provinces that
acknowledge a forced allegiance to the Persian monarch, or turn out of
their course the tributary streams that from every part of Asia swell
the current of Eastern barbarism, and there arises the necessity, also,
of circumscribing within narrower limits the glories of the Western
civilization. Against the dangers of external invasio