This then, from the point of view of œcumenical history, is the time which saw the full height of strictly Hellenic greatness, the greatness of Hellenic commonwealths, the greatness of states which were Greek by birth and not only Greek by adoption. Let us pass on to the next strongly marked period, the days, stretching not very much beyond a century and a half, which are undoubtedly the most brilliant days in the life of some of the greatest cities of the elder Hellas, and which have therefore often been mistaken for the whole history of the Greek people. Now, as Herodotus says, we can no longer say that all Greeks are free. In the course of the sixth century B.C. the work of Mummius and Mahomet begins; Greeks now begin to be the subjects of foreign rulers. Barbarian powers such as Greeks had never yet had to deal with have arisen in East and West. Two such powers above all have come to the front, a mighty empire in the East, a mighty commonwealth in the West, an empire and a commonwealth which for some generations were to be names of fear throughout the Hellenic world. On the one side the old barbarian powers of Asia, powers which lay beyond the range of European history, have given way to a new barbarian power which forced itself within the European range, and which we may almost say had a right to force itself. It was not against the Hittite or the Assyrian that the strife had to be waged, but against the kindred Persian. An Aryan people had been misled in their course of wandering; they had strayed into the land of morning; they now turned their faces towards the setting sun, but they turned them only when it was too late, when they had already put on the guise of the lands of their sojourn and could show themselves among their European kinsfolk in no light but that of barbarian invaders. Yet we must pay our tribute to the long abiding national life and national energy which could so often rise again in full freshness after ages of bondage. It was no mean people which could twice spring into fresh being at the preaching of a national religion. It was in truth no small mission in the world’s history that fell to the lot of the Aryan of Persia. Once the worthy rival of Greece, he rose again to be the worthy rival of Rome; like the Greek, he could lead captive successive conquerors; in the grasp of the Saracen, in the grasp of the Turk, his old life could still abide, and, if he bowed to the creed of Arabia, it was only by changing it into a new shape which made it before all things the creed of Persia. The Lydian reaped the first-fruits of Greek subjection; the Persian threatened to turn the whole eastern half of Hellas, continuous and scattered, into part of a world-wide dominion. The King--βασιλεύς--forestalling in that simple word the titles and controversies of days to come, was indeed beaten back from old Hellas; he was beaten back from Europe; he was for a while forced to withdraw his fleets and armies from