§ 81. The diplomatic conflict between the Achæans and the Romans is of the highest interest, and we have upon it the opposing judgments of great historians; for here Roman and Greek history run into the same channel, and the conflict may be treated from either point of view. Those who look at the debate from the Roman point of view, like Mommsen, and who are, moreover, not persuaded of the immeasurable superiority of republican institutions over a strong central power, controlling without hesitation or debate, are convinced that all the talk about Greek independence was mere folly. They point out that these Greeks, whenever they had their full liberty, wore each other out in petty conflicts; that liberty meant license, revolutions at home and encroachments upon neighbours; and that it was the historical mission and duty of the Romans to put an end to all this sentimental sham. [Sidenote: Hertzberg and Freeman on the Achæan question.] On the other hand Hertzberg, in the first volume of his excellent _History of the Greeks under Roman Domination_, and Professor Freeman, in his _Federal Government_, show with great clearness that far lower motives often actuated the conquering race, that they were distinctly jealous of any power in the hands of their Greek neighbours, and that they constantly encouraged appeals and revolts on the part of individual cities in the League. So the Senate in fact produced those unhappy disturbances which resulted in the destruction of Corinth and the conquest of Greece by a Roman army in formal war. [Sidenote: Senility of The Greeks.] It is of course easy to see that there were faults on both sides, and that individual Romans, using their high position without authority of the Senate, often promoted quarrels in the interests of that truculent financial policy which succeeded in playing all the commerce of the world into the hands of Roman capitalists. On the other hand, it is hard to avoid the conviction that the days of independent Greece were over, that the nation had grown old and worn out, that most of its intellect and enterprise had wandered to the East, to Egypt, or to Rome, and that had the Romans maintained an absolute policy of non-intervention, the result would have been hardly less disastrous, and certainly more disgraceful to the Greeks. For a long and contemptible decadence, like that of Spain in modern Europe, is surely more disgraceful than to be embodied by force in a neighbouring empire. [Sidenote: Decay of the mother-country.]