State of the Grecian world when Alexander crossed the Hellespont

Even in 334 B.C., when Alexander first entered upon his Asiatic campaigns, the Grecian cities, great as well as small, had been robbed of all their free agency, and existed only as appendages of the kingdom of Macedonia. Several of them were occupied by Macedonian garrisons, or governed by local despots who leaned upon such armed force for support. There existed among them no common idea or public Bentiment, formally proclaimed and acted on, except such as it suited Alexander's purpose to encourage. The miso—Persian sentiment—once a genuine expression of Hellenic patriotism, to the recollection of which Demosthenes was wont to appeal, in animating the Athenians to action against Macedonia, but now extinct and supplanted by nearer apprehensions—had been converted by Alexander to his own purposes, as a pretext for headship, and a help for ensuring submission during his absence in Asia. Greece had become a province of Macedonia; the affairs of the Greeks (observes Aristotle in illustrating a philosophical discussion) are “in the hands of the king”. A public synod of the Greeks sat from time to time at Corinth; but it represented only philo-Macedonian sentiment; all that we know of its proceedings consisted in congratulations to Alexander on his victories. There is no Grecian history of public or political import; there are no facts except the local and municipal details of each city— “the streets and fountains which we are repairing, and the battlements which we are whitening,” to use a phrase of Demosthenes—the good management of the Athenian finances by the orator Lykurgus, and the contentions of orators respecting private disputes or politics of the past.