purchased at the price of submission to Spartan tyranny, which would be more galling and oppressive in proportion as it was nearer and more unremitting. With these views Aratus began to turn his eyes to the Macedonian court, as the only possible means of resisting the encroaching policy of Cleomenes. The character of Antigonus Doson, who was then administering Macedonia, gave some encouragement to hope for honest and honourable conduct on his part; and after some hesitation Aratus took the final step of asking for his aid.[126] I do not expect to carry the assent of many readers when I express the opinion that he was right; and that the Greek policy towards Macedonia had been from the first a grievous error,—fostered originally by the patriotic eloquence of Demosthenes, and continued ever since by that ineradicable sentiment for local autonomy which makes Greek history so interesting, but inevitably tended to the political annihilation of Greece. Had some _modus vivendi_ been found with the series of very able sovereigns who ruled Macedonia, a strong Greek nation might have been the result, with a central government able to hold its own even in the face of the great “cloud in the West,” which was surely overshadowing Greek freedom. But this was not to be. The taste for local freedom was too strong; and showed itself by constant appeals to an outside power against neighbours, which yet the very men who appealed to it would not recognise or obey. The Greeks had to learn that nations cannot, any more than individuals, eat their cake and have it too. Local autonomy, and the complete liberty of every state to war with its neighbours as it chooses, and of every one to speak and act as he pleases, have their charms; but they are not compatible with a united resistance to a great centralised and law-abiding power. And all the eloquence of all the Greek orators rolled into one could not make up for the lack of unity, or enable the distracted Greeks to raise an army which might stand before a volley of Roman pila or a charge of Roman legionaries.