There can be little doubt that this is why almost all Hellenistic sculpture strikes us as wanting some material element. The very refinement of the modelling of the “Belvedere Apollo,” compared with the strenuous naturalism of the Pergamene artists, argues an absence of vital feeling. There is almost a feminine note in the smooth-limbed Apollo, when the sentiment of the Hellenistic statue is contrasted with the vigorous manhood of the “Hermes” of Praxiteles, the product of an age which really knew what manhood was worth. In a phrase, the “Apollo Belvedere” belongs to a time when individual Greek sculptors were producing great bronzes and marbles but when Greece itself had ceased to do so. Seeing that the emotions of an individual can never have the driving force which is given to the feelings and thoughts astir in nations, the absence of this national stress stamps the “Apollo Belvedere” as Hellenistic—the product of a civilization which had lost that sense of communal fellowship which was peculiarly Hellenic. During the fifth century B.C., and, in a great measure, throughout the fourth century, the individual Greek had sacrificed everything to his membership in the city-state. He cared nothing for individual pleasures and aspirations. But when the civilization which had been Hellenic became Hellenistic, the relationship between the citizen and the state, between the citizen and his fellows, changed entirely. The rise of a new political power—the country-state—led to the abandonment of the intimate interest with which each member had followed every change in the political and social life around him. Roughly, the new political situation in Greece after the death of Alexander amounted to this. A city-state continued free and independent as long as it was content to remain poor. But any accumulation of this world’s goods was the signal for the descent of a Macedonian garrison and a peremptory demand for a subsidy. If the city-state determined to resist the Macedonian demands, two courses were open. Allies could be purchased or a federation of neighbouring cities could be formed. The federation of neighbouring cities constituted the country-state, which played so large a part in the history of Hellenistic Greece. A typical league is the Achæan. Its early beginnings dated from 281 B.C., but it was thirty years later before a man of genius arose to make the dead arrangement a living force. When Aratus persuaded Sicyon to join the League, a really powerful body was created. Corinth joined in 243 and finally Argos and the rest of the states of North Peloponnesus. The Achæan League was by this time the chief political power in Southern Greece. Its counterpart in the North was the Ætolian League, whose allies met periodically at Thermus, where the booty won in their piratical expeditions was stored.