With the general intellectual development of the Hellenes the political development of their republics had not kept equal pace, or rather the luxuriant growth of the former had--just as too full a bloom bursts the calyx that contains it--not allowed any individual commonwealth to acquire the extent and stability which are preliminary conditions for the thorough formation of a state. The petty-state-system of individual cities or city-leagues could not but be stunted in itself or fall a prey to the barbarians. Panhellenism alone guaranteed alike the continued existence of the nation and its further development in presence of the alien races dwelling around it. It was realised by the treaty which king Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander, concluded in Corinth with the states of Hellas. This was, in name, a federal agreement, in fact, the subjection of the republics to the monarchy, but a subjection, which took effect only as regards external relations, seeing that the absolute generalship in opposition to the national foe was transferred by almost all towns of the Greek mainland to the Macedonian general, while in other respects freedom and autonomy were left to them; and this was, as circumstances stood, the only possible realisation of Panhellenism and the form regulating in substance the future of Greece. It subsisted in presence of Philip and Alexander, though the Hellenic idealists were reluctant, as they always were, to acknowledge the realised ideal as such. Then, when the kingdom of Alexander fell to pieces, all was over, as with Panhellenism itself, so also with the union of the Greek towns under the monarchic supremacy; and these wore out their last mental and material power in centuries of aimless striving, distracted between the alternating rule of the too powerful monarchies, and vain attempts, under cover of their quarrels, to restore the old particularism. [Sidenote: Hellas and Rome.]