o the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the Hellenistic
state-system, like the Celts and the Indians--was analogous in
greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over
the Hellespont. But it was not the mere difference of issue that
formed the distinction between the expedition to the east and that
to the west. Alexander with his Macedonian army, in which the
staff especially was excellent, could fully make head against the
great-king; but the king of Epirus, which stood by the side of
Macedonia somewhat as Hesse by the side of Prussia, could only raise
an army worthy of the name by means of mercenaries and of alliances
based on accidental political combinations. Alexander made his
appearance in the Persian empire as a conqueror; Pyrrhus appeared in
Italy as the general of a coalition of secondary states. Alexander
left his hereditary dominions completely secured by the unconditional
subjection of Greece, and by the strong army that remained behind
under Antipater; Pyrrhus had no security for the integrity of his
native dominions but the word of a doubtful neighbour. In the case
of both conquerors, if their plans should be crowned with success,
their native country would necessarily cease to be the centre of
their new empire; but it was far more practicable to transfer the
seat of the Macedonian military monarchy to Babylon than to found a
soldier-dynasty in Tarentum or Syracuse. The democracy of the Greek
republics--perpetual agony though it was--could not be at all coerced
into the stiff forms of a military state; Philip had good reason for
not incorporating the Greek republics with his empire. In the east no
national resistance was to be expected; ruling and subject races had
long lived there side by side, and a change of despot was a matter of
indifference or even of satisfaction to the mass of the population.
In the west the Romans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, might be
vanquished; but no conqueror could have transformed the Italians
into Egyptian fellahs, or rendered the Roman farmers tributaries of
Hellenic barons. Whatever we take into view--whether their own power,
their allies, or the resources of their antagonists--in all points the
plan of the Macedonian appears as a feasible, that of the Epirot an
impracticable, enterprise; the former as the completion of a great
historical task, the latter as a remarkable blunder; the former as
the foundation of a new system of states a