The debate soon went beyond the stage of rational argument or the possibility of rational persuasion. To the Nationalist, the Romanizing aristocrat or moneyed man was a traitor, sacrificing his country's liberties for his mess of potage, grovelling and touting for Roman favour, copying Roman manners, and sending his sons to be educated in Roman ways. To the advocate of union with Rome, the so-called Nationalist was a needy and dishonest adventurer, using the cry of patriotism and of nationality to cloak personal greed, socialistic schemes, and hatred of what was orderly and respectable. If he succeeded, his so-called liberty would be used in coercing and plundering the dissentients; and, after all, such stormy petrels in politics must be quite unfit to form any stable government. If any portion of the Peloponnesus asserted its right to several liberty, no politicians would have recourse to more violent coercion than these advocates of national independence. They protested against enforced union with Rome: they would be the first to promote enforced union with themselves, and carry it through in bloody earnest. This was actually what happened during the last despairing struggle. The coercion practised by the last presidents of the Leagues, the violent Nationalists who forced the nation into war, was tyrannous and cruel beyond description. But of course the issue was certain; and with the reeking smoke of the ruins of Corinth closes the history of Greece, as most historians, even of wider views, have understood it. [Sidenote: Modern analogies forced upon us,] [Sidenote: and not to be set aside.] § 84. There is no period of the history which deserves modern study more than that which I have here expounded in its principles. The analogies which it presents to modern life, nay, to the very history of our times, are so striking that it is almost impossible to narrate it without falling into the phraseology of current politics. When I first published an account of these things[196:1], I was at once attacked by several of my reviewers for daring to introduce modern analogies into ancient history. I had dragged the Muse of History into the heated atmosphere of party strife and the quarrels of our own day; I had spoiled a good book by allusions to burning questions which disturbed the reader and made him think of the next election, instead of calmly contemplating the lessons of Polybius. It would have been far more to the point had they shown that the analogies suggested were invalid, and the comparisons misleading. This not one of them has attempted to do; nor do I hesitate to say that the objections they raised were rather because my analogies were too just and striking than because they were far-fetched and irrelevant. If these critics had found that the facts I adduced favoured their own political views, no doubt they would have lavished their praise upon the very feature which incurred their censure.