[157:1] Cf. § 10. [158:1] With the usual zeal of a specialist, who not only makes a hero his own, but defends him against every criticism, Droysen even justifies Alexander's introduction of the Oriental obeisances at his court. As Holm observes, such ceremonies, in themselves impolitic as regards free subjects, were quite inconsistent with the familiarities of the drinking-parties, which Alexander would not deny himself. A Persian King would have understood this, not so a Macedonian. The latest estimate, that of Holm (iii. 403 _sq._), appears to me also far the best. Yet he too, seems to attribute too much consciousness to the youthful Alexander. [159:1] Thus Timoleon set up in his house a shrine to [Greek: Automatia], the spontaneous impulse which had led him to many brilliant successes. Cf. my _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 110. [160:1] We hear of the complaints of Macedonians and Greeks. The complaints of the Persians have not been transmitted to us; but as they were certainly more just and well-founded, and as the king was living in their midst, where he could not but hear them, are we rash in asserting that they must have been fully as important in influencing his decision? Could the many Persian princesses, married to high Macedonian officers, and their native retinues, have been satisfied or silenced without large concessions? [165:1] In the _Historical Review_ for 1887, pp. 317, _sqq._ [166:1] It is to be noted that the Achæmenid kings, though asserting for themselves a Divine origin, did not claim to be gods. I think the first Greek who received in his lifetime supra-human honours was Lysander, who was flattered by altars, &c., in Asia Minor after his great victory. CHAPTER IX. POST-ALEXANDRIAN GREECE. [Sidenote: Tumults of the Diadochi:] [Sidenote: their intricacy;] § 69. The period which follows the death of Alexander is one so complicated with wars and alliances, with combinations and defections, with reshapings of the world's kingdoms[168:1], with abortive efforts at a new settlement, that it deters most men from its study, and has certainly acted as a damper upon the student who is not satisfied with the earlier history, but strives to penetrate to the closing centuries of freedom in Greece. There is very little information upon it, or rather there are but few books upon it, to be found in English. Thirlwall has treated it with his usual care and justice; and to those who will not follow minute and intricate details, I have recently given, in my _Greek Life and Thought_, a full study of the social and artistic development which took place in this and the succeeding periods of Hellenism in Greece and the East. Hertzberg's and Droysen's histories, the one confined in space to Greece proper, the other in time to the fourth and third centuries B.C., are both thorough and excellent works. Holm's final volume, which will include the same period, is not yet accessible, so that I cannot notice it.