Even from Homer’s time, there was a growing feeling which softened the hardships of war between Hellenic peoples. Poisoned weapons were not tolerated, and if the prisoners became the slaves of the victors, ransom was very general, and according to Herodotus there was even an acknowledged tariff--two _minæ_--accepted throughout Peloponnesus for the release of such a prisoner. I will not pretend that the wars even of the Golden Age were not much fiercer and more cruel than the rose-water campaigns we now carry on, when the wives and children of the enemy are supported in comfort, and he is accordingly encouraged to prolong a conflict which only affects his personal convenience. For war is a shocking thing, and to sweeten it by such amenities is only to enhance its cost of life and of treasure to the victor. But if you were to compare Greek wars with those of the earlier centuries of modern Europe, say the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, you would find the balance of humanity most decidedly on the side of the Greeks. The non-combatants in a stormed Greek city, though by the laws of war they became slaves, were in a far better plight than the unfortunate people of a German town captured by the Pandurs and Croats of Tilly or Wallenstein. I gladly turn from this grievous subject. “War,” says Thucydides, “is a stern taskmaker, and makes men’s hearts as hard as their circumstances.” Let us enter on a more grateful and more instructive task, the international relations of Greek states in peace and particularly their political combinations or alliances for protection against external dangers. It was obvious that a number of distinct small city-states must be at the mercy of a strong invading force which could conquer them one by one, and that therefore combinations and alliances among them were absolutely necessary. Such combinations could also be made for offensive purposes, as was the case with the Homeric conception of the Siege of Troy, and so in after times many Greek theorists actually recommended this policy as an engine of conquest, the very conquest carried out by Alexander the Great. But for a long time, alliances were only made for the moment, and to ward off an imminent danger, and they soon fell to pieces again, owing usually to the reverting of both parties into a selfish and jealous policy of isolation. From the seventh century B.C., onward, the waxing of the power of Sparta made a sort of semi-compulsory league among the smaller cities of the Peloponnesus, and later on, after the crisis of the Persian war was over, the Asiatic Greeks put themselves under the leadership of Athens. Let me call it by its technical name, _hegemony_. This was an alliance under a president state, which was to guide the policy of the league in war, but was not supposed to interfere with the several polities in peace. You all know how the leading power gradually encroached upon the liberties of the allies, who really became subjects paying tribute; and when they