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