Through Epaminondas Thebes was raised to an equality with the city of the Athenians, as a seat of a policy aiming at freedom and national greatness. It thus became possible for the two cities to join hands in the subsequent struggle for the independence of Greece. And, in this sense, Epaminondas worked beforehand for the objects of Demosthenes. If it is considered how, with his small resources, Epaminondas founded or helped to found Mantinea, Messene, and Megalopolis; how through him other places, such as Corone and Heraclea, likewise received Theban settlers--the honor will not be denied him of having been in the royal art of the foundation of cities the predecessor of Alexander and his successors. But he was also their predecessor in another point. By spreading Greek manners and ways of life he enlarged the narrow boundaries of the land of the Greeks, and introduced the peoples of the North into the sphere of Greek history. In his own person he represented the ideas of a general Hellenic character, which, unconditioned by local accidents, was freely raised aloft above the distinction of states and tribes. Hitherto only great statesmen had appeared who were great Athenians or Spartans. In Epaminondas this local coloring is of quite inferior importance; he was a Hellene first, and a Theban only in the second place. Thus he prepared the standpoint from which to be a Hellene was regarded as an intellectual privilege, independent of the locality of birth; and this is the standpoint of Hellenism. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. BY GEORGE GROTE. [Son of Philip, King of Macedon, born 356 B.C., died 323. The greatest of the world’s conquerors in the extent and rapidity of his conquests, he began with the consolidation of his father’s conquests over the republics of Greece, overthrew the great Persian Empire, and carried his arms to farther India, within a period of thirteen years. At his death his dominions were divided among his principal generals. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”] The first growth and development of Macedonia during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chæronea, from an embarrassed secondary state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius; but the achievements of Alexander during the twelve years of his reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a [Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT.]