THE DEATH-STRUGGLE OF GREECE. 349

marvel of stupidity by a remark to those who were
charged with the conveyance of some of the noblest
of Grecian statues.

“Take good care that you do not lose these on the
way,” he said; “for if you do you shall be made to
replace them by others of equal value.”

Rome could conquer the world, but honest Mum-
mius had set a task which Rome throughout its
whole history was not able to perform.

Thus ended the death-struggle of Greece. The
chiefs of the party of revolt were put to death; the
inhabitants of Corinth who had fled were taken and
sold as slaves. The walls of all the cities which had
resisted Rome were levelled to the ground. An an-
nual tribute was laid on them by the conquerors.
Self-government was left to the states of Greece, but
they were deprived of their old privilege of making
war.

Yet Greece might have flourished under the new
conditions, for peace heals the wounds made by war,
had its states not been too much weakened by their
previous conflicts, and had not a new war arisen just
when they were beginning to enjoy some of the
fruits of peace.

This war, which broke out sixty years later, had
its origin in Asia, Mithridates the Great, king of
Pontus, had made himself master of all Asia Minor,
where he ordered that all the Romans found should
be killed. It is said that eighty thousand were
slaughtered. Then he sent an army into Greece,
under his general Archelaus, and there found the
people ready and willing to join him, in the hope of

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