But if a school of sculpture opposed to that of Praxiteles was an artistic necessity, a reaction against the social circumstances which had rendered a Praxiteles possible was equally sure. The art change indeed witnesses to the social revolution; the social change to the artistic. Nor is the reaction in any sense the result of a merely passive objection to a dangerous method of living and feeling. Athens was impelled by misfortune into adopting sounder ideals. Such an incident as the sack of the shops in the Piræus by the pirate vessels of Alexander of Pheræ after the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.) had rudely shaken the self-confidence of the Athenians. At the time, the outrage led to no more vigorous step than the exiling of the Athenian statesman, Callistratus. But these rebuffs reached a climax in 338 B.C. when Thebes and Athens were routed by Philip and Alexander at Chæronea. The impossible had happened. With the victory of Chæronea, the hegemony of Greece had passed to Macedonia—a non-Greek power. The Athenians prepared for root and branch reform. As if to justify the taunt of Demosthenes, “the administration has risen from beggary to wealth, while the Treasury wants sustenance for one day’s march,” such an incorruptible as Lycurgus was elected to the Ministry of the Public Revenue. What is more he was permitted to act. The Navy was increased to 400 galleys. The marble store-house for ships’ gear (the Skeuotheke of Philo) was completed. With grim irony, the cases that lined the triple-aisled arcades were left open for public inspection, “that those who passed might see all the gear in the gear-house.” It was almost a century since the seeds of decay had been sown in the city-state system. It needed no Demosthenes to prove that with all its faults it was to this system that Athens owed its most enduring glories. It had developed the powers of the citizens to the greatest extent. Faced with the possibility of the absolute monarchy embodied in the power of Macedonia triumphing over the free commonwealth, Athens naturally looked to the past. The rule of Phocion and Lycurgus was the result. It was marked by a closer return to the ideals of the fifth century than had prevailed in Athens since the death of Pericles, a century earlier. Many of the old shrines were restored, and the theatre of Dionysus rebuilt. Aided by the produce of the silver mines of Laurion, Lycurgus was able to rebuild the Lycæan gymnasium and construct the Panathenaic stadion.