ss or weakly sentimentality,
which can fail to perceive that the Romans were entirely in earnest
with the liberation of Greece; and the reason why the plan so nobly
projected resulted in so sorry a structure, is to be sought only in
the complete moral and political disorganization of the Hellenic
nation. It was no small matter, that a mighty nation should have
suddenly with its powerful arm brought the land, which it had been
accustomed to regard as its primitive home and as the shrine of
its intellectual and higher interests, into the possession of
full freedom, and should have conferred on every community in it
deliverance from foreign taxation and foreign garrisons and the
unlimited right of self-government; it is mere paltriness that sees
in this nothing save political calculation. Political calculation
made the liberation of Greece a possibility for the Romans; it was
converted into a reality by the Hellenic sympathies that were at that
time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus
himself. If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all
of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded
scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the
Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character
of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom
for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies
that prevailed alike in their internal and their mutual relations,
knew neither how to act nor how to keep quiet. As things stood, it
was really necessary at once to put an end to such a freedom, equally
pitiful and pernicious, by means of a superior power permanently
present on the spot; the feeble policy of sentiment, with all its
apparent humanity, was far more cruel than the sternest occupation
would have been. In Boeotia for instance Rome had, if not to
instigate, at least to permit, a political murder, because the Romans
had resolved to withdraw their troops from Greece and, consequently,
could not prevent the Greeks friendly to Rome from seeking their
remedy in the usual manner of the country. But Rome herself also
suffered from the effects of this indecision. The war with Antiochus
would not have arisen but for the political blunder of liberating
Greece, and it would not have been dangerous but tor the military
blunder of withdrawing the garrisons from the principal fortresses on
the European frontier