Athenian soldiers knew the fine passages of Euripides by heart. These artificers and soldiers, from assisting at the public deliberations, were besides versed in affairs of state, and understood every thing at half a word. We may judge of this from the orations of Demosthenes, whose style, we know, is ardent, brief, and concise. III. "As they naturally inclined to relieve persons of a low condition and 66 mean circumstances, so were they fond of conversation seasoned with plea"santry, and proper to make people laugh.' (1)They assisted persons of a low condition, because from such they had nothing to apprehend in regard to their liberty, and saw in them the characters of equality and resemblance with themselves. They loved pleasantry, and shewed in that they were men, but men abounding with humanity and indulgence, who understood raillery, who were not prone to take offence, nor over delicate in point of the respect due to them. One day, when the assembly was fully formed, and the people had already taken their places and sat down, Cleon, after having made them wait his coming a great while, appeared at last with a wreath of flowers upon his head, and desired the people to adjourn their deliberations to the next day: "For to day," said he I have business. I have been sacrificing to the gods: and I am to en"tertain some strangers, my friends at supper." The Athenians, setting up a laugh, rose and broke up the assembly. At Carthage, such a pleasantry would have cost any man his life that had presumed to vent it, and to take such a liberty with a proud, haughty, jealous, morose people, of a genius averse to complacency, and less inclined to humour. Upon another occasion, the orator Stratocles, having informed the people of a victory, and in consequence caused sacrifices to be offered; three days after, news came of the de feat of the army. As the people expressed their discontent and resentment upon the false information, he asked them, " of what they had to complain, and"what harm he had done them, in making them pass three days more agreeably "than they would else have done?" IV. "They were pleased with hearing themselves praised, and could not "bear to be railed at or criticised." The least acquaintance with Aristophanes and Demosthenes will shew, with what address and effect they employed praises and censure with regard to the people of Athens. (2) When the republic enjoyed peace and tranquillity, says the same Plutarch in another place, the Athenian people diverted themselves with the orators who flattered them: but in important affairs, and emergencies of the state, they became serious, and gave the preference to those whose custom it had been to oppose their unjust desires; such as Pericles, Phocion, and Demosthenes. V. "They kept those who governed them in awe, and shewed their hu- The people of Athens made good use of the talents of those who distinguished themselves by their eloquence and prudence; but they were full of suspicion, and kept themselves always on their guard against the superiority of genius and ability: they took pleasure in restraining their courage and lessening their glory and reputation. This may be judged from the ostracism, which was instituted only as a curb on those whose merit and popularity ran too high, and which spared neither the greatest nor the most worthy persons. The hatred of tyranny and tyrants, which was in a manner innate in the Athenians, made them extremely jealous and apprehensive for their liberty with regard to those who governed. As to their enemies, they did not treat them with rigour; they did not make an insolent use of victory, nor exercise any cruelty towards the vanquished. The amnesty decreed after the tyranny of the Thirty shews that they could forget the injuries which had been done them. To these different characteristics, which Plutarch unites in the same passages of his works, some others may be added, extracted principally from the same author. (1) Xenoph. do Athen. Rep. p. 691. (2) Plut. in Phocion. p. 746. VI. It was from this fund of humanity and benevolence, of which I have now spoken, and which was natural to the Athenians, that they were so attentive to the rules of politeness, and so delicate in point of just behaviour; qualities one would not expect to find among the common people. (1)In the war against Philip of Macedon, having intercepted one of his couriers, they read all the letters he carried, except that of Olympias his wife, which they returned sealed up and unopened, out of regard to conjugal love and secrecy, the rights of which are sacred, and ought to be respected even amongst enemies. The same Athenians, having decreed that a strict search should be made after the presents distributed by Harpalus amongst the orators, would not suffer the house of Callicles, who was lately married, to be visited, out of respect for his bride, not long brought home. Such behaviour is not very common; and upon like occasions people do not stand much upon forms and politeness. VII. The taste of the Athenians for all arts and sciences is too well known to require dwelling long upon it in this place, though. I shall have occasion to speak of it at some length elsewhere. But we cannot see without admiration a people composed for the most part, as I have said before, of artisans, husbandmen, soldiers, and mariners, carry delicacy of taste in every thing to so high a degree of perfection, which seems the peculiar attribute of a more exalted condition and nobler education. VIII. It is no less wonderful, that this people (2) should have had such great views, and risen so high in their pretensions. In the war which Alcibiades made them undertake, filled with vast projects and unbounded hopes, they did not confine their desires to the taking of Syracuse, or the conquest of Sicily, but had already seized Italy, Peloponnesus, Libya, the Carthaginian states, and the empire of the sea as far as the Pillars of Hercules. Their enterprise failed, but they had formed it; and the taking of Syracuse, which seemed no great difficulty, might have enabled them to put it in execution. IX. The same people, so great, and, one may say, so haughty in their projects, had nothing of that character in other respects. In what regarded the expense of the table, dress, furniture, private buildings, and, in a word private life, they were frugal, simple, modest, and poor; but sumptuous and magnificent in all things public, and capable of doing honour to the state. Their victories, conquests, wealth, and continual communication with the people of Asia Minor, introduced neither luxury, gluttony, pomp, nor vain profusion amongst them. (3)Xenophon observes, that a citizen could not be distinguished from a slave by his dress. The richest inhabitants, and the most famous generals, were not ashamed to go to market themselves. X. It was very glorious for Athens to have produced and formed so many excellent persons in the arts of war and government; in philosophy, eloquence, poesy, painting, sculpture, and architecture; to have furnished alone more great men, in every other kind, than any other city of the world; if perhaps we except Rome, which(4) had imbibed learning and arts from her, and knew how to apply her lessons to the best advantage; to have been in some sort the school and tutor of almost the whole universe; to have served, and still to have continued to serve, as the model for nations which pique themselves most upon their excellent taste; in a word, to have taught the language, and prescribed the laws of all that regards the talents and productions of the mind. That part of this history, wherein I treat of the sciences and learned men that rendered Greece illustrious, with the arts also, and those that excelled in them, will set this in a clear light. XI. I shall conclude this description of the Athenians with one more attribute, which cannot be denied them, and appears evidently in all their ao Plut. in Demetr. p. 898. (2) Μέγα φρονεί μεγάλων ὀρέγεται, Plut. (4) Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes tions and enterprises; and that is, their ardent love of liberty. This was their darling passion, and the main-spring of their policy. We see them, from the commencement of the war with the Persians, sacrifice every thing to the liberty of Greece. They abandoned, without the least regret, their lands, estates, city, and houses, and removed to their ships in order to fight the common enemy whose view it was to enslave them. What day could be more glorious for Athens, than that in which, when all the allies were trembling at the vast offers made her by the king of Persia, she answered his ambassador by the mouth of (1)Aristides, That all the gold and silver in the world was not capable of tempting them to sell their own, or the liberty of Greece! It saw from such generous sentiments that the Athenians not only became the bulwark of Greece, but preserved the rest of Europe, and all the western world from the invasion of the Persians. These great qualities were mingled with great defects, often the very reverse of them, such as we may imagine in a fluctuating, light, inconstant, capricious people, like the Athenians. SECTION VI. COMMON CHARACTER OF THE LACEDÆMONIANS AND ATHENIANS. I CANNOT refuse giving a place here to what M. Bossuet says upon the character of the Lacedæmonians and Athenians. The passage is long, but will not appear so; and will include all that is wanting to a perfect knowledge of the genius of both those states. Amongst all the republics of which Greece was composed, Athens and Lacedæmon were undoubtedly the principal. No people could have more wit than the Athenians, nor more solid sense than the Lacedæmonians. Athens affected pleasure; the Lacedæmonian way of life was hard and laborious. Both loved glory and liberty; but the liberty of Athens tended to licentiousness; and controlled by severe laws at Lacedæmon, the more restricted it was at home, the more eager it was to rule abroad. Athens also wished to reign, but upon another principle, in which interest had a share with glory. Her citizens excelled in the art of navigation, and the sovereignty at sea had enriched her. To continue in the sole possession of all commerce, there was nothing she would not have subjected to her power; and her riches, which inspired this passion, supplied her with the means of gratifying it. On the contrary, at Lacedæmon money was in contempt. As all the laws tended to make the latter a military republic, the glory of arms was the sole object that engrossed her citizens. From thence she naturally affected dominion; and the more she was above interest, the more she abandoned herself to ambition. Lacedæmon, from her regular life, was steady and determinate in her maxims and measures. Athens was more lively and active, and the people too much masters. Philosophy and the laws had indeed the most happy effects upon such exquisite natural parts as theirs; but reason alone was not capable of keeping them within due bounds. (2)A wise Athenian, who knew admirably the genius of his country, informs us, that fear was necessary to those too ardent and free spirits; and that it was impossible to govern them, after the victory at Salamis had removed their fears of the Persians. Two things, then, ruined them, the glory of their great actions, and the supposed security of their present condition. The magistrates were no longer heard; and as Persia was afflicted with excessive slavery, so Athens, says Plato, experienced all the evils of excessive liberty.. These two great republics, so contrary in their manners and conduct, interfered with each other in the design they had each formed of subjecting all Greece; so that they were always enemies, more from the contrariety of their interests, than the incompatibility of their humours. (1) Plut, in Aristid. p. 342. (2) Plat. de Leg. 1. iii. 200 HISTORY OF THE PERSIANS AND GRECIANS. BOOK X, The Grecian cities were against submitting to the dominion of either the one or the other; for, besides the desire of preserving their liberty, they found the empire of those two republics too grievous to bear. That of the Lacedæmonians was severe. That people was observed to have something almost brutal in their character. (1)A government too rigid, and a life too laborious rendered their tempers too haughty, austere, and imperious in power: besides which, they could never expect to live in peace under the influence of a city, which being formed for war, could not support itself but by continuing perpetually in arms. (2)So that as the Lacedæmonians had the power of attaining to command, all the world were afraid they should assert it. (3) The Athenians were naturally obliging and agreeable. Nothing was more delightful to behold than their city, in which feasts and games were perpetual; where wit, liberty, and the various passions of men, daily exhibited new objects; but the inequality of their conduct disgusted their allies, and was still more insupportable to their own subjects. It was impossible for them not to experience the extravagance and caprice of a flattered people; that is to say, according to Plato, something more dangerous than the same excesses in a prince vitiated by flattery. These two cities did not permit Greece to continue in repose. We haye seen the Peloponnesian and other wars, which were always occasioned or fomented by the jealousy of Lacedæmon and Athens. But the same jealousies which involved Greece in troubles, supported it in some measure, and prevented its falling into the dependence of either the one or the other of those republics. The Persians soon perceived this condition of Greece: and accordingly the whole mystery of their politics consisted in keeping up those jealousies, and fomenting those divisions. Lacedæmon, which was the most ambitious, was the first that gave them occasion to take a part in the quarrels of the Greeks. They engaged in them from the sole view of making themselves masters of the whole nation; and, industrious to weaken the Greeks by their own arms, they waited only the opportunity to crush them altogether. (4)The states of Greece in their wars, already regarded only the king of Persia, whom they called the Great King, or "the King," by way of eminence, as if they had already been of the number of his subjects. But it was impossible that the ancient spirit of Greece should not revive, when they were upon the point of falling into slavery, and the hands of the Barbarians. The petty kings of Greece undertook to oppose this great monarch, and ruin his empire. (5)With a small army, but bred in the discipline we have related, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, made the Persians tremble in Asia Minor, and shewed it was not impossible to subvert their power. The divisions of Greece alone put a stop to his conquests. The famous retreat of the ten thousand, who, after the death of the younger Cyrus, made their way in a hostile manner through the whole Persian empire, and returned into their own country; that action, I say, demonstrated to Greece more than ever, that their soldiery was invincible, and superior to all opposers; and that only their domestic divisions could subject them to an enemy too weak to resist their united force. We shall see, in the sequel of this history, by what methods Philip king of Macedon, taking advantage of these divisions, came at length, between address and force, to make himself little less than the sovereign of Greece, and to oblige the whole nation to march under his colours against the common enemy. What he had only planned, his son Alexander brought to perfection, and shewed the wondering world how much ability and courage avail against the most numerous armies, and formidable preparations. Aristot. Polit. 1. i. p. 4. (2) Xenoph. de Rep. Lacon. (3) Plat. de Rep. 1. viù (5) Polyb. i. iii. SIXTY years had elapsed since Syracuse had regained its liberty by the expulsion of the family of Gelon. The events which passed in that interval, except the invasion of the Athenians, are of no great importance, and little known; but those which follow are of a different nature, and make amends for the chasm; I mean the reigns of Dionysius the father and son, tyrants of Syracuse; the first of whom governed thirty-eight, and the (1) other twelve, in all fifty years. As this history is entirely foreign to what passed in Greece at the same time, I shall relate it in this place altogether and by itself,observing only, that the first twenty years of it, upon which I am now entering, agree almost in point of time with the last preceding twenty years. This history will present to our view a series of the most odious and horrid crimes, though it abounds at the same time with instruction. When (2) on the one side we behold a prince the declared enemy of liberty, justice, and laws, treading under his feet the most sacred rights of nature and religion, inflicting the most cruel torments upon his subjects, beheading some, burning others for a slight word, delighting and feasting himself with human blood and gratifying his savage inhumanity with the sufferings and miseries of every age and condition: I say, when we behold such an object, can we deny a truth which the Pagan world itself hath confessed and Plutarch takes occasion to observe in speaking of the tyrants of Sicily,—that God in his anger gives such princes to a people, and makes use of the impious and the wicked to punish the guilty and the criminal? On the other side, when the same prince, the dread and terror of Syracuse, is perpetually anxious, and trembling for his own life, and abandoned to remorse and regret, can find no per (.) After having been expelled for more than ten years, he re-ascended the throne, and reigned two or three years. (2) Erit Dionysius illic tyrannus, libertatis, justitiæ, legum exitium-Alios uret, alios verberabit, alios ob levem offensam jubebit detruncari.-Senec. de Consol. ad Marc. c. xvii. Sanguine humano non tantum gaudet, sed pascitur; sed et suppliciis omnium &tatum crudelitatem insatiabilem explet.-Id. de Benef. 1. vii. c. 19. 2 D VOL. II. |