CHAPTER IX ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE HELLENISTIC AGE Section 35. The Rise of Macedonia The common danger which threatened all Greek states alike, Persistence the power of Persia, had failed to bring together the Greek among"hT cities and weld them into a nation, or even to unite them in a Greeks ; ' necesskty of federation of any permanence. It was evident that the per- political , , . . r ^ • ' ^•^ leadership sistent local patriotism of such city-states, in some respects like from abroad the "sectionalism^" which brought on the great Civil War in the United States, would not submit to the leadership of any one of their number. Exhausted by ceaseless wars among them- selves, their union was now to be accomplished by a people whom the Greeks loftily classified among the " barbarians." On the northern frontiers in the mountains of the Balkan The unculti- Peninsula Greek civilization gradually faded and disappeared, of t^he ^6^^311 merging into the barbarism which had descended from the Pe^'^sula ° ^ and the north Europe of the Stone Age. These backward northerners, such as the Thracians, spoke Indo-European tongues akin to Greek, but their Greek kindred of the south could not understand them. Nevertheless a surface of Greek civilization began here and there to mask somewhat the otherwise rough and uncultivated life of the peasant population of Macedonia. The Macedonian kings began to cultivate Greek literature and art. The mother of Philip of Macedon was grateful that she had been able to learn to write in her old age. Philip himself had enjoyed a Greek education, but when he Philip of gained the power over Macedonia in 360 B.C. he had by no Jls^^olky o"*^ means completely suppressed the barbarous instincts still throb- expansion bing in his blood. Many an unbridled orgy and drunken revel 215
