beautiful city--the City of the Gods--was at last surrendered, and the
scoffing Spartans (404 B.C.) took possession of the treasures
they scorned.

Athens had fallen, but her real kingdom was indestructible. She was to be
forever Queen in the empire of ideas, of literature, and of art!

The coarse, harsh rule of Sparta lasted less than a century. Then Thebes,
another powerful Greek state, arose to the leadership of discontented
Greece. And so Hellas, the land in which they all gloried, had become a
mass of quarrelling, struggling states, until it was seized by the rough
hand of a master.

In the north of Greece was the State of Macedonia. It was not composed of
a multitude of free cities like the rest of Greece, but its people were
diffused throughout the state, and all governed by one king.

Compared with the Athenians, these unpolished, rude Macedonians were
almost barbarians.

But in the year 359 B.C. a man came to the throne of this state,
who was not going to be satisfied with being merely a Greek among Greeks.
He was resolved to be the head of the Greeks. This was Philip of Macedon.
He bent all the energies of his strong, crafty mind toward making himself
master of Greece.

Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, in a desperate effort to save his
people from this man, delivered a set of orations denouncing Philip. These
are the famous "Philippics," of which you will often hear.