pared the way for the subsequent calamities of Greece and its subjection to Macedon. She endeavoured persistently to break up the Greek world into a number of petty dependencies, which she might hold under her absolute control. Her systematic policy was to reduce Greece to a collection of separate towns and even villages, each of which should be completely in her own power. The idea which lay at the root of Greek strength and greatness was, that Greece should be made up of federations, with the leading cities at the head of them. In the face of a common foe these federations, it was hoped and believed, would be attracted to each other, and would feel that they had a common cause. This was Panhellenism. Sparta, by her methods of rule, weakened this idea, and thereby undermined the foundations of the Greek world. The feebleness and disunion of Greece in the fourth century B.C., which were so favourable to Macedon, were, in part at least, due to Sparta's influence. In one instance she inflicted the most direct and positive mischief upon Greece. At the head of the Gulf of Torone, in the peninsula of Chalcidice, was the prosperous city of Olynthus, round which had grown up a confederacy of Greek towns that might have been an effectual barrier against Macedon, or any other northern power. This confederacy Sparta, true to her policy, broke up in 379 B.C., and thus gave a heavy blow to Greek interests on the coasts of Macedon and Thrace. But for this, the Ægean and the Propontis might never have known the presence of Macedonian cruisers, and Philip's kingdom might have remained a poor and barbarous
