SECTION 4. MACEDONIA

The storm had been gathering on the Western horizon for some time past.
Twenty years earlier there had come to the throne of Macedonia a man of
singular constructive ability and most definite ambition. His
heritage--or rather his prize, for he was not next of kin to his
predecessor--was the central southern part of the Balkan peninsula, a
region of broad fat plains fringed and crossed by rough hills. It was
inhabited by sturdy gentry and peasantry and by agile highlanders, all
composed of the same racial elements as the Greeks, with perhaps a
preponderant infusion of northern blood which had come south long ago
with emigrants from the Danubian lands. The social development of the
Macedonians--to give various peoples one generic name--had, for certain
reasons, not been nearly so rapid as that of their southern cousins.
They had never come in contact with the higher Aegean civilization, nor
had they mixed their blood with that of cultivated predecessors; their
land was continental, poor in harbours, remote from the luxurious
centres of life, and of comparatively rigorous climate; its
configuration had offered them no inducement to form city-states and
enter on intense political life. But, in compensation, they entered the
fourth century unexhausted, without tribal or political impediments to
unity, and with a broad territory of greater natural resources than any
southern Greek state. Macedonia could supply itself with the best cereal
foods and to spare, and had unexploited veins of gold ore. But the most
important thing to remark is this--that, compared with Greece, Macedonia
was a region of Central Europe. In the latter's progress to imperial
power we shall watch for the first time in recorded history a
continental European folk bearing down peninsular populations of the
Mediterranean.