The more cultivated
Greek states, to judge from the writings of Plato, had not been an over-
righteous people during the generation in which he lived. And in the
generations which followed, they became an altogether wicked people;
immoral, unbelieving, hating good, and delighting in all which was evil.
And it was in consequence of these very sins of theirs, as I think, that
the old Hellenic race began to die out physically, and population
throughout Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of
the Achaean league. The facts are well known; and foul enough they are.
When the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful. The eagles
were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed
from the face of God's earth. And at the time of which I now speak, the
signs of approaching death were fearfully apparent. Hapless and
hopeless enough were the clique of men out of whom the first two
Ptolemies hoped to form a school of philosophy; men certainly clever
enough, and amusing withal, who might give the kings of Egypt many a
shrewd lesson in king-craft, and the ways of this world, and the art of
profiting by the folly of fools, and the selfishness of the selfish; or
who might amuse them, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and
repartees, and battles of logic; "how one thing cannot be predicated of
another," or "how the wise man is not only to overcome every misfortune,
but not even to feel it," and other such mighty questions, which in
those days hid that deep unbelief in any truth whatsoever which was
spreading fast over the minds of men.
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