ther duty: the reader and I are here to part. A few words, therefore, on such an occasion, I may be permitted to subjoin: I have done my best to merit his protection, and as I have been favourably heard whilst yet talking with him, I hope I shall not be unkindly remembered when I can speak no more: I have passed a life of many labours, and now being near its end, have little to boast but of an inherent good-will towards mankind, which disappointments, injuries, and age itself, have not been able to diminish. It has been the chief aim of all my attempts to reconcile and endear man to man: I love my country and contemporaries to a degree of enthusiasm that I am not sure is perfectly defensible, though to do them justice, each in their turns have taken some pains to cure me of my partiality. It is, however, one of these stubborn habits, which people are apt to excuse in themselves, by calling it a second nature. There is a certain amiable lady in the world, in whose interests I have the tenderest concern, and whose virtues I contemplate with paternal pride; to her I have always wished to dedicate these volumes; but when I consider that such a tribute cannot add an atom to her reputation, and that no form of words which I can invent for the occasion, would do justice to what passes in my heart, I drop the undertaking, and am silent. NUMBER CXIV. THAT period of the Athenian history, which is included within the era of Pisistratus and the death of Menander the comic poet, may be justly styled the literary age of Greece. I propose to dedicate some of these papers to a review of that period; but as the earlier ages of poetry, though in general obscure, yet afford much interesting matter of inquiry, it will be proper to take up the Athenian his tory from its origin, because it is so connected with the account I mean to give, that I cannot otherwise preserve that order and continuation in point of time, which perspicuity requires. This account may properly be called a history of the human understanding within a period peculiarly favourable to the production of genius; and, though I cannot expect that my labour will in the end furnish any thing more than what every literary man has stored in his memory, or can resort to in his books, still it will have the merit of being a selection uninterrupted and unmixed with other events, that crowd and obscure it in the original relations, to which he must otherwise refer. The wars, both foreign and domestic, which the small communities of Greece were perpetually engaged in, occupy much the greater part of the historian's attention, and the reader, whose inquiries are directed to the subject I am about to treat of, must make his way, through many things, not very interesting to an elegant and inquisitive mind, before he can discover, Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Eschylus utile ferrent. Such will not envy me the labour of having turned over a heavy mass of scholiasts and grammarians, r hesitate to prefer accepting the result of my inquiries to the task of following the like track in ursuit of his own. The Athenians were a most extraordinary people; minent in arms and in arts: of their military atchievements I do not profess to treat, and if the reader takes less delight in hearing of the ravages of war than of the progress of literature, he may, in the contemplation of these placid scenes, undisturbed by tumult and unstained with blood, experience some degree of that calm recreation of mind, which deludes life of its solicitude, and forms the temperate enjoyment of a contemplative man. Ogyges is generally supposed to have been the founder of the Athenian monarchy, but in what æra of the world we shall place this illustrious person, whether he was Noah or one of the Titans, grandson to Jupiter or contemporary with Moses, is an inquiry, which the learned have agitated with much zeal and very little success. It is however agreed, that there was a grievous flood in his time, which deluged the province afterwards called Attica; but that happily for king Ogyges, being a person of gigantic stature, he survived the general calamity. A period of one hundred and eightynine years succeeded to this flood, in which this province remained so depopulated, that it is generally supposed no king reigned over it till the time of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, from him at first named Cecropia. Cecrops made many prudent institutes for the benefit of his rising state during a long reign of fifty years, and, by establishing the rites of matrimony, abolished the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, in which they lived before his time; by these and other regulations, upon a general numbering of all his subjects, he found the male adults in his domiuions to amount to twenty thousand, every person might thereby be kept in mind of the gracefulness of temperance; and it is not easy to find any in stance in the pagan worship, where superstition has been applied to more elegant or moral purposes. In small communities such regulations may be carried into effect, where all the people are under the eye of the sovereign, and in the same spirit of reformation Amphictyon published an edict, that none of his subjects should indulge themselves in the use of undiluted wine, except in one small glass after their meals, to give them a taste of the potency of the god; under this restriction he permitted the free use of diluted wines, provided they observed in their meetings to address their libations to Jupiter, the preserver of man's health. This virtuous usurper, after an administration of ten years, was in his turn expelled from the throne of Athens, by that Erechthonius, the son of Cecrops, whom Minerva shut up in a chest with his companion the dragon, and committed to the keeping of his sisters this is the person whom Homer mentions in his second book of the Iliad by the name of Erechtheus: he is celebrated for having first yoked horses to a chariot, and also for introducing the use of silver coin in Attica. : Primus Erechthonius currus et quatuor ausus Jungere Equos, rapidisq; rotis insistere Victor. But the institutions which have rendered the name of Erechthonius famous to all posterity, are those of the Elcusynian Mysteries and the feasts of the Panathenæa. The first of these he established in honour of Ceres, on account of a seasonable supply of corn from the granaries of Egypt, when the city and territory of Athens were in imminent danger of starving by an extraordinary drought: these sacred mysteries were of Egyptian origin, and as they con sisted of forms and rites, unintelligible to the vulgar, and probably very little comprehended even by the initiated, the secret was well kept. : As for the Panathenæa, they were instituted, as their name indicates, in honour of Minerva, and were the great festival of the Athenians: the celebration was originally comprised in one day, but afterwards it was extended to several, and the various athletic games and races, with the recitation of poems, that accompanied it, attraóted an immense resort of spectators. Every species of contention both on foot and horseback, drew the bold and adventurous to the field of fame, whilst the prizes for music and the rival display of the drama in aftertimes recreated the aged, the elegant, and the learned the conquerors in the several games gave entertainments to their friends, in which they presided, crowned with olive in honour of the guardian deity: these were scenes of the greatest festivity, till, when Athens had submitted to the Roman yoke, those sanguinary conquerors introduced the combats of gladiators into these favorite solemnities. Every age had its share in contributing to the spectacle; the old men walked in procession with branches of olive in their hands, the young in armour with shield and spear; the labouring peasants with spades, and their wives with waterbuckets; the boys crowned with garlands, and dressed in frocks or surplices of white, chaunted hymns to Minerva; and the girls followed with baskets, in which the sacrificing utensils were con.. tained. A superstition, supported by splendour, and enlivened with festivity, was well calculated to keep a lasting hold upon the human mind. |