The first question put to
Hellas by her Oriental neighbor was in effect this:--Are you willing,
without going to the trouble of subjecting the matter to the test of
actual conflict, to consider yourself as having been whipped? This,
it must be confessed, was a shivering introduction to the world for
Greece,--something like a Lacedaemonian baptism,--but it stood her
in good stead. Like the dip in the Styx, it insured immortality. The
menaces of despotism, coming from the East, gave birth to the impulses
of freedom in the West; and the latter sustained themselves at a more
exalted height, in proportion as the former were backed by substantial
support. Subtract anything from that deafening chorus of slaves which
follows in the train of Xerxes, and we must by the same amount take
from the paeans of aspiring Greece. Abolish the outlying provinces that
acknowledge a forced allegiance to the Persian monarch, or turn out of
their course the tributary streams that from every part of Asia swell
the current of Eastern barbarism, and there arises the necessity, also,
of circumscribing within narrower limits the glories of the Western
civilization. Against the dangers of external invasion, against all the
menaces of barbarians, Greece was secure through the forces which by
opposition were developed in herself,--and for so long a period was she
secure against herself.
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