HKB
but Alexander’s death left it a prey to warring tyrants. It lost its prosperity and its commerce; and whatever else it became, it was never independent, or really Hellenic again.
For a few years more Sparta and then Thebes assumed to be head of Greece, but the Macedonian supremacy secured at Chaeronea (B.C. 338), still more fully after the abortive Lamian war (B.C. 323), left Greece only a nominal freedom, again and again assured to it by various Macedonian monarchs, but really held only on sufferance. The country seemed to settle down without farther struggle into political insignificance. The games and festivals went on, and there was still some high talk of Hellenic glories. But one after another of the towns submitted to receive Macedonian garrisons and governors; and Athens, once the brilliant leader in national aspirations, practically abandoned politics, and was content to enjoy a reputation partly founded on her past, and partly on the fame of the philosophers who still taught in her gardens and porches, and attracted young men from all parts of the world to listen to their discourses, and to sharpen their wits by the acute if not very useful discussions which they promoted.[103] Sparta, far from retaining her old ascendency, had been losing with it her ancient constitution, which had been the foundation of her glory, as well perhaps as in some respects the source of her weakness; and for good or evil had ceased to count for much in Hellenic politics.
In the midst of this general collapse two portions of the Hellenic race gradually formed or recovered some sort of united government, which enabled them to play a conspicuous part in the later history of Greece, and which was essentially different from any of the combinations of earlier times of which I have been speaking. These were the Aetolians and Achaeans.
[Sidenote: Aetolian league.]