obligation for any questionable policy of expediency. I look upon the great civil wars of the Romans, which followed these conquests, in which so much blood was shed, and in which Marius and Sulla and Caesar and Pompey exhausted the resources of the state, and made an imperial _regime_ necessary, only as the visitation of God in rebuke of such wicked ambition. [Sidenote: Greece reaps the penalty of the unscrupulous wars of Alexander.] [Sidenote: Degeneracy of the Greeks.] [Sidenote: Spoils of Greece fall into the hands of the Romans.] [Sidenote: The triumph of Paulus.] [Sidenote: Grecian provinces added to the empire.] The conquest over the Macedonians, however, by the Romans, was not an unmixed calamity, and was a righteous judgment on the Greeks. Nothing could be more unscrupulous than the career of Alexander and his generals. Again, the principle which had animated the Oriental kings before him was indefensible. We could go back still further, and show from the whole history of Asiatic conquests that their object was to aggrandize ambitious conquerors. The Persians, at first, were a brave and religious people, hardy and severe, and their conquest of older monarchies resulted in a certain good. But they became corrupt by prosperity and power, and fell a prey to the Greeks. The Greeks, at that period, were the noblest race of the ancient world--immortal for genius and art. But power dazzled them, and little remained of that glorious spirit which was seen at Thermopylae and Marathon. The Greek ascendency in Asia and Egypt was followed by the same luxury and extravagance and effeminacy that resulted from the rule of Persia. The Greeks had done great things, and contributed to the march of civilization, but they had done their work, and their turn of humiliation must come. Their vast empire fell into the hands of the Romans, and the change was beneficial to humanity. They who had abused their trust were punished, and those were exalted above them who were as yet uncorrupted by those vices which are most fatal to nations. The great fruit of these wars were the treasures of Greece, especially precious marbles, and other works of art. The victory at Pydna, B.C. 168, which gave the final superiority to the Roman legion over the Macedonian phalanx, was followed by the triumph of Paulus himself--the grandest display ever seen at Rome. First passed the spoils of Greece--statues and pictures--in two hundred and fifty wagons; then the arms and accoutrements of the Macedonian soldiers; then three thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin; then victims for sacrifice, with youths and maidens with garlands; then men bearing vases of gold and precious stones; then the royal chariot of the conquered king laden with armor and trophies; then his wife and children, and the fallen monarch on foot; then the triumphal car of the victorious general, preceded by men bearing four hundred crowns of gold--