swayed to pommel, tax, and bully them. Thucydides was a great
master of prose style, and so could invest with an air of
importance all the matter of his tale. Besides, he was the
only contemporary historian, or the only one that survives.
So the world ever since has been tricked into thinking this
Peloponnesian War momentous; whereas really it was a petty
family squabble among that most family-squabblesome of peoples,
the Greeks.--In most of which I am only quoting Mahaffy; who,
whether intentionally or not, deals with Greek history in such a
way as to show the utter unimportance, irrelevance, futility,
of war.

Greek history is merely a phase of human history. We have looked
for its significance exclusively in political and cultural
regions; but this is altogether a mistake. The Greeks did not
invent culture; there had been greater cultures before, only
they are forgotten. All that about the "evolution of Political
freedom," of the city state, republicanism, etc., is just
nonsense. As far as I can see, the importance of Greece lies in
this: human history, the main part of it, flowing in that age
through the narrow channel of Greece, came down from sacred to
secular; from the last remnants of a state of affairs in which
the Lodge, through the Mysteries, had controlled life and
events, to the beginnings of one in which things were to muddle
through under the sweet guidance of brain-minds and ordinary men.
The old order had become impossible; the world had drifted too
far from the Gods. So the Gods tried a new method: let loose a
new great force in the world; sent Teachers to preach openly
(sow broadcast, and let the seed take its chances) what had
before been concealed and revealed systematically within the