§ 70. How did the Greeks of Europe and of Asia accommodate themselves to this altered state of things, which not only affected their political life, but led to a revolution in their social state? For it was the emigrant, the adventurer, the mercenary, who now got wealth and power into his hands, it was the capitalist who secured all the advantages of trade; and so there arose in every city a moneyed class, whose interests were directly at variance with the mass of impoverished citizens. Moreover the king's lieutenant or agent was a greater man in the city than the leading politician. Public discussions and resolutions among the free men of Athens or Ephesus were often convincing, oftener exciting, but of no effect against superior forces which lay quietly in the hands of the controlling Macedonian. [Sidenote: Politics abandoned by thinking men,] We may then classify the better men of that day as follows. First there was a not inconsiderable number of thoughtful and serious men who abandoned practical politics altogether, as being for small States and cities a thing of the past, and only leading to discontent and confusion. These men adopted the general conclusion, in which all the philosophical schools coincided, that peace of mind and true liberty of life were to be obtained by retiring from the world and spending one's days in that practice of personal virtues which was the religion of a nation that had no creed adequate to its spiritual wants. [Sidenote: except as a purely theoretical question,] [Sidenote: with some fatal exceptions.] Nevertheless among other topics of speculation these men sometimes treated of politics; and when they did condescend to action, it was to carry out trenchant theories, and to act on principle, without regard to the terrible practical consequences of imposing a new order of things on a divided or uneducated public. The Stoic philosophers, in particular, who interfered in the public life of that day, were dangerous firebrands, not hesitating at the murder of an opponent; for were not all fools criminal, and was not he that offended in one point guilty of all? Such men as the Sphærus who advised the _coup d'état_ of the Spartan Cleomenes[172:1], and the Blossius who stimulated the Gracchi into revolution, and the Brutus who mimicked this sort of thing with deplorable results to the world in the murder of Cæsar,--all these were examples of the philosophical politician produced by the Hellenistic age. [Sidenote: Dignity and courage of the philosophers] [Sidenote: shown by suicide.]