though admirable fighters, made no conquests, because they expended their military fury mainly
on each other. It was left to the semibarbarian Alexander to spread Hellenism throughout the
Near East, and to make Greek the literary language in Egypt and Syria and the inland parts of
Asia Minor. The Greeks could never have accomplished this task, not for lack of military force,
but owing to their incapacity for political cohesion. The political vehicles of Hellenism have
always been non-Hellenic; but it was the Greek genius that so inspired alien nations as to cause
them to spread the culture of those whom they had conquered.
What is important to the historian of the world is not the petty wars between Greek cities, or the
sordid squabbles for party ascendancy, but the memories retained by mankind when the brief
episode was ended--like the recollection of a brilliant sunrise in the Alps, while the mountaineer
struggles through an arduous day of wind and snow. These memories, as they gradually faded,
left in men's minds the images of certain peaks that had shone with peculiar brightness in the
early light, keeping alive the knowledge that behind the clouds a splendour still survived, and
might at any moment become manifest. Of these, Plato was the most important in early
Christianity, Aristotle in the medieval Church; but when, after the Renaissance, men began to
value political freedom, it was above all to Plutarch that they turned. He influenced profoundly
the English and French liberals of the eighteenth century, and the founders of the United States;
he influenced the romantic movement in Germany, and has continued, mainly by indirect
channels, to influence German thought down to the present day. In some ways his influence was
good, in some bad; as regards Lycurgus and Sparta, it was bad. What he has to say about
Lycurgus is important, and I shall give a brief account of it, even at the cost of some repetition.
Lycurgus--so Plutarch says--having resolved to give laws to Sparta, travelled widely in order to
study different institutions. He liked the laws of Crete, which were "very straight and severe," *
but disliked those of Ionia, where there were "superfluities and vanities." In Egypt he learned
the advantage of separating the soldiers from the rest of the people, and afterwards, having
returned from his travels, "brought
* In quoting Plutarch I use North's translation.