liked to represent Demosthenes as a godless fellow,
and it is not perhaps without significance that the latter never directly
replied to such attacks, or indirectly did anything to impair their force.

During the violent revolutions that took place in Hellas under Alexander
the Great and his successors, and the instability of social and political
conditions consequent thereon, the Tyche-religion received a fresh
impetus. With one stroke Hellas was flung into world politics. Everything
grew to colossal proportions in comparison with earlier conditions. The
small Hellenic city-states that had hitherto been each for itself a world
shrank into nothing. It is as if the old gods could not keep pace with
this violent process of expansion. Men felt a craving for a wider and more
comprehensive religious concept to answer to the changed conditions, and
such an idea was found in the idea of Tyche. Thoughtful men, such as
Demetrius of Phalerum, wrote whole books about it; states built temples to
Tyche; in private religion also it played a great part. No one reflected
much on the relation of Tyche to the old gods. It must be remembered that
Tyche is a real layman's notion, and that Hellenistic philosophy regarded
it as its task precisely to render man independent of the whims of fate.
Sometimes, however, we find a positive statement of the view that Tyche
ruled over the gods also. It is characteristic of the state of affairs;
men did not want to relinquish the old gods, but could not any longer
allow them the leading place.

If we return for a moment to Polybius, we shall find that his conception
of Tyche strikingly illustrates the distance between him and Thucydides.
In the introduction to his work, on its first page, he points out that the
universally acknowledged task of historical writing is partly to educate
people for political activities, partly to teach them to bear the
vicissitudes of fortune with fortitude by reminding them of the lot of
others. And subsequently, when he passes on to his main theme, the
foundation of the Roman world-empire, after having explained the plan of
his work, he says: "So far then our plan. But the _co-operation of
fortune_ is still needed if my life is to be long enough for me to
accomplish my purpose." An earlier--or a later--author would here either
have left the higher powers out of the game altogether or would have used
an expression showing more submission to the gods of the popular faith.