nly was Greece in
general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including
all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and
the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea,
the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of
isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the
promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian
territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian
garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias
in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of
the Hellenes." But the strength of the state lay above all in its
hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed,
of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting
forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as
many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two
legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet
recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of
Alexander and by the Gallic invasion. But while in Greece proper
the moral and political energy of the people had decayed, the day of
national vigour seemed to have gone by, life appeared scarce worth
living for, and even of the better spirits one spent time over the
wine-cup, another with the rapier, a third beside the student's lamp;
while in the east and Alexandria the Greeks were able perhaps to
disseminate elements of culture among the dense native population and
to diffuse among that population their language and their loquacity,
their science and pseudo-science, but were barely sufficient in point
of number to supply the nations with officers, statesmen, and
schoolmasters, and were far too few to form even in the cities middle-
class of the pure Greek type; there still existed, or the other hand,
in northern Greece a goodly portion of the old national vigour, which
had produced the warriors of Marathon. Hence arose the confidence
with which the Macedonians, Aetolians, and Acarnanians, wherever they
made their appearance in the east, claimed to be, and were taken as,
a better race; and hence the superior part which they played at the
courts of Alexandria and Antioch. There is a characteristic story,
that an Alexandrian who had lived for a considerable time in Macedonia
and had adopted the manners and the dress of that country, on
re