The Peloponnesian War was the suicide of Greek civilization. It is the saddest page of history. In the brief Periclean epoch preceding the catastrophe Hellas had shone forth with unparalleled splendor, and even those wonderful achievements seemed but the prelude to still loftier heights of glory. On the eve of its self-immolation the Greek race, far from being exhausted, was bubbling over with exuberant vitality and creative genius. But the half-blown rose was nipped by the canker of discord. Jealous rivalries and mad ambitions smouldered till they burst into a consuming flame. For a generation Hellas tore itself to pieces in a delirium of fratricidal strife. And even this was not the worst. The "peace" which closed the Peloponnesian War was no peace. It was a mere truce, dictated by the victors of the moment to sullen and vengeful enemies. Imposed by the sword and infused with no healing or constructive virtue, the Peloponnesian War was but the first of a war cycle which completed Hellas's ruin. The irreparable disaster had, indeed, occurred: the gulfs of sundering hatred had become fixed, and the sentiment of Greek race-unity was destroyed. Having lost its soul, the Greek race soon lost its body as well. Drained of its best strains, the diminished remnant bowed to foreign masters and bastardized its blood with the hordes of inferior aliens who swarmed into the land. By the time of the Roman conquest the Greeks were degenerate, and the Roman epithet "Græculus" was a term of deserved contempt. Thus perished the Greeks--the fairest slip that ever budded on the tree of life. They perished by their own hands, in the flower of their youth, carrying with them to the grave, unborn, potencies which might have blessed and brightened the world for ages. Nature is inexorable. No living being stands above her law; and protozoön or demigod, if they transgress, alike must die. The Greek tragedy should be a warning to our own day. Despite many unlikenesses, the nineteenth century was strangely reminiscent of the Periclean age. In creative energy and fecund achievement, surely, its like had not been seen since "the glory that was Greece," and the way seemed opening to yet higher destinies.