Such was the convention, in so far as we know its terms, agreed to by the Grecian deputies at Corinth with Alexander; but with Alexander at the head of an irresistible army. He proclaimed it as the “public statute of the Greeks”,[39] constituting a paramount obligation, of which he was the enforcer, binding on all, and authorizing him to treat all transgressors as rebels. It was set forth as counterpart of, and substitute for, the convention of Antalkidas, which we shall presently see the officers of Darius trying to revive against him—the headship of Persia against that of Macedonia. Such is the melancholy degradation of the Grecian World, that its cities have no alternative except to choose between these two foreign potentates—or to invite the help of Darius, the most distant and least dangerous, whose headship could hardly be more than nominal, against a neighbor sure to be domineering and compressive, and likely enough to be tyrannical. Of the once powerful Hellenic chiefs and competitors—Sparta, Athens, Thebes—under each of whom the Grecian world had been upheld as an independent and self-determining aggregate, admitting the free play of native sentiment and character, under circumstances more or less advantageous—the two last are now confounded as common units (one even held under garrison) among the subject allies of Alexander; while Sparta preserves only the dignity of an isolated independence. [39] Arrian, i. 16, 10. παρὰ τὰ κοινῇ δόξαντα τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. After the death of Darius, Alexander pronounced that the Grecian mercenaries who had been serving with that prince, were highly criminal for having contravened the general vote of the Greeks (παρὰ τὰ δόγματα τὰ Ἑλλήνων), except such as had taken service before that vote was passed, and except the Sinopeans, whom Alexander considered as subjects of Persia and not partakers τοῦ κοινοῦ τῶν Ἑλλήνων (Arrian, iii. 23, 15; iii. 24, 8, 9).