fhem, and which, by stifling in them the great motives of glory, of zeal for their prince, and love for their country, render them fearful and cowardly, and deter them from exposing themselves to dangers, which may in a moment deprive them of all those things wherein they place their felicity. SECTION II. The abject subMISSION AND SLAVERY OF THE PERSIANS. We are told by Plato, that this was one of the causes of the declension of the Persian empire. And, indeed, what contributes most to the preservation of states, and renders their arms victorious, is not the number, but the vigour and courage of their armies; and, as it was finely said by one of the ancients, "from the day a man loseth his liberty, he loseth one half of his ancient vir tue." He is no longer concerned for the prosperity of the state, to which he looks upon himself as an alien; and having lost the principal motives of his attachment to it, he becomes indifferent about the success of public affairs, about the glory or welfare of his country, in which his circumstances allow him to claim no share, and by which nis own private condition is not altered or improved. It may truly be said, that the reign of Cyrus was a reign of liberty. That prince never acted in an arbitrary manner; he did not think that despotic power was worthy of a king; or that there was any great glory in ruling an empire of slaves. His tent was always open, and free access allowed to every one that desired to speak to him. He did not live retired, but was visible, accessible, and affable to all; heard their complaints, and with his own eyes observed and rewarded merit; invited to his table, not only his general officers, and prime ministers, but even subalterns, and sometimes whole compa nies of soldiers. The simplicity and frugality of his table made him capable of giving such entertainments frequently. His aim therein was to animate his officers and soldiers, to inspire them with courage and resolution, to attach them to his person rather than to his dignity, and make them warmly espouse his glory, and still more the interest and prosperity of the state. This is what may be truly called the art of reigning and commanding. In reading Xenophon, with what pleasure do we observe, not only those fine turns of wit, that justness and ingenuity in their answers and repartees, that delicacy in iesting and raillery, but at the same time that amiable cheerfulness and gayety,which enlivened their entertainments, from which all vanity and luxury were banished, and in which the principal seasoning was a decent and becoming freedom, that prevented all constraint, and a kind of familiarity which was so far from lessening their respect for the prince, that it gave such life and spirit to it, as nothing but real affection and tenderness could produce. I may venture to say, that by such conduct as this, a prince doubles and trebles his army at a small expense. Thirty thousand men of this sort are preferable to millions of such slaves as the Persians became afterwards. In time of action, on a decisive day of battle, this truth is most evident; and the prince is more sensible of it than any body else. At the battle of Thymbria, when Cyrus's horse fell under him, Xenophon takes notice how much it concerns a commander to be loved by his soldiers. The danger of the king's person became the danger of the army; and his troops on that occasion gave incredible proofs of their courage and bravery. Things were not carried on in the same manner under the greatest part of his successors. Their only care was to support the pomp of sovereignty. I must confess, their outward ornaments and ensigns of royalty did not a little contribute to that end. A purple robe richly embroidered, and hanging down to their feet, a tiara, worn upright on their heads, with an imperial diadem round it, a golden sceptre in their hands, a magnificent throne, a numerous and shining court, a multitude of officers and guards; these things must needs conduce to heighten the splendour of royalty; but all this, when this is all, is Hom. Odyss. v. 322. Tantas ires habet frugalitas principis, ut tot impendiis tot erogationibus sola sufficiat.Plin. in Paneg Traj. of little or no value. What is that king in reality, who loses all his merit and his dignity, when he puts off his ornaments? Some of the eastern kings, to procure the greater reverence to their persons, generally kept themselves shut up in their palaces, and seldon, showed themselves to their subjects. We have already seen that Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, at his accession to the throne, introduced this policy, which afterwards became very common in all the eastern countries. But it is a great mistake, that a prince cannot descend from his grandeur, by a sort of familiarity, without debasing or lessening his greatness. Artaxerxes did not think so: and Plutarch observes that that prince, and queen Statira his wife, took a pleasure in being visible and easy of access to their people, and by so doing were but the more respected.* Among the Persians, no subject whatever was allowed to appear in the king's presence without prostrating himself before him: and this law, which Seneca, with good reason, calls a Persian slavery, Persicam servitutem, extended also to foreigners. We shall find afterwards, that several Grecians refused to comply with it, looking upon such a ceremony as derogatory to men born and bred in the bosom of liberty. Some of them, less scrupulous, did submit to it, but not without great reluctancy; and we are told, that one of them, in order to cover the shame of such a servile prostration, purposely let fall his ring, when he came near the king, that he might have occasion to bend his body on another account. But it would have been criminal for any of the natives of the country to hesitate or deliberate about a homage which the king exacted from them with the utmost rigour. What the Scripture relates of two sovereigns, on one hand, one of whom commanded all his subjects, on pain of death, to prostrate themselves before his image; and the other, on the same penalty, suspended all acts of religion, with regard to the gods in general, except to himself only; and on the other hand, of the ready and blind obedience of the whole city of Babylon, who ran altogether, upon the first signal, to bend the knee before the idol, and to invoke the king, exclusively of all the powers of heaven: all this shows to what an extravagant excess the eastern kings carried their pride, and the people their flattery and servitude. So great was the distance between the Persian king and his subjects that the latter, of whatever rank or quality, whether satraps, governors, near relations, or even brothers to the king, were only looked upon as slaves; whereas the king himself was always considered, not only as their sovereign lord and absolute master, but as a kind of divinity. In a word, the peculiar character of the Asiatics, and the Persians more particularly than any other, was servitude and slavery; which made Cicero say, that the despotic power, which some were endeavouring to establish in the Roman commonwealth, would be an insupportable yoke, not only to a Roman, but even to a Persian. T It was therefore this arrogant haughtiness of the princes, on the one hand, and this abject submission of the people on the other, which, according to Plato, were the principal causes of the ruin of the Persian empire, by dissolving all the ties wherewith a king is united to his subjects, and the subjects to their king.** Such a haughtiness extinguishes all affection and humanity in the former; and such an abject state of slavery, leaves the people neither courage, zeal, nor gratitude. The Persian kings governed and commanded only by threats and menaces, and the subjects neither obeyed nor marched, but with unwillingness and reluctance. This is the idea Xerxes himself gives us of them, in Herodotus, where that prince is represented as wondering how the Grecians, who were a free people, could go to battle with a good will and inclination. How could any thing great or noble be expected from men so dis❤ In Artax. p. 1013. Elian. 1, i. Var. Hist. c. xxi. A Plut. in Apopth. p. 213. † Lib. iii. de Benef. c. 12. et lib. iii. de Ira, c. 17. Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. c. iii, and Darius the Mede, Dan. c. vi. Lib. x. Epist. ad Attic. ** Lib. iii. de Leg. p. 697 pirited and depressed by slavery, as the Persians were, and reduced to such an abject servitude! which, to use the words of Longinus, is a kind of imprisonment, wherein a man's soul may be said, in some sort, to grow little and contracted!* I am unwilling to say it, but I do not know, whether the great Cyrus himself did not contribute to introduce among the Persians, both that extravagant pride in their kings, and that abject submission and flattery in the people. It was in that pompous ceremony, which I have several times mentioned, that the Persians, till then very jealous of their liberty, and very far from being inclined to make a shameful prostitution of it by any mean behaviour or servile compliances, first bent the knee before their prince, and stooped to a posture of adoration. Nor was this an effect of chance; for Xenophon intimates clearly enough, that Cyrus, who desired to have that homage paid him, had appointed persons on purpose to begin it; whose example was accordingly followed by the multitude, and by the Persians, as well as the other nations. In these little tricks and stratagems, we no longer discern that nobleness and greatness of soul, which had ever been conspicuous in that prince till this occasion; and I should be apt to think, that being arrived at the utmost pitch of glory and power, he could no longer resist those violent attacks, with which prosperity is always assaulting even the best of princes, Secundæ res sapientum animos fatigant; and that at last pride and vanity, which are almost inseparable from sovereign power, forced him, and in a manner tore him from himself, and his own natural inclination: Vi dominationis convulsus et mutatus.§ SECTION III. THE WRONG EDUCATION OF THEIR PRINCES, ANOTHER CAUSE OF THE DECLENSION OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. IT is Plato, still the prince of philosophers, who makes this reflection; and we shall find, if we narrowly examine the fact in question, how solid and judi cious it is, and how inexcusable Cyrus's conduct was in this respect. Never had any man more reason than Cyrus to be sensible, how highly necessary a good education is to a young prince. He knew the whole value of it with regard to himself, and had found all the advantages of it by his own experience.¶ What he most earnestly recommended to his officers, in that fine discourse he made to them after the taking of Babylon, in order to exhort them to maintain the glory and reputation they had acquired, was to educate their children in the same manner as they knew they were educated in Persia, and to preserve themselves in the practice of the same manners as were practised there, Would one believe, that a prince who spoke and thought in this manner, could ever have entirely neglected the education of his own children? Yet this is what happened to Cyrus. Forgetting that he was a father, and employing himself wholly about his conquests, he left that care entirely to women, that is, to princesses, brought up in a country where vanity, luxury, and vouptuousness, reigned in the highest degree; for the queen his wife was of Media. And in the same taste and manner were the two young princes Cambyses and Smerdis educated. Nothing they asked was ever refused them; nor were their desires only granted, but prevented. The great maxim was, that their attendants should cross them in nothing, never contradict them, nor ever make use of reproofs or remonstrances with them. No one opened his mouth in their presence, but to praise and commend what they said and did. Every one cringed and stooped, and bent the knee before them; and it was thought essential to their greatness, to place an infinite distance between them and the rest of mankind, as if they had been of a different species from them. It is Plato that informs us of all these particulars: for Xenophon, probably to spare his hero, says not one word of the manner in which these princes were Cap. xxxv. Cyrop. 1. i. p. 215. Sallust, brought up, though he gives us so ample an account of the education of their father. What surprises me the most is, that Cyrus did not, at least, take them along with him in his last campaigns, in order to draw them out of that soft and effeminate course of life, and to instruct them in the art of war, for they must have been of sufficient years; but perhaps the women opposed his design, and overruled him. Whatever the obstacle was, the effect of the education of these princes was such as ought to be expected from it. Cambyses came out of that school, what he is represented in history, an obstinate and self-conceited prince, full of arrogance and vanity, abandoned to the most scandalous excesses of drunkenness and debauchery, cruel and inhuman, even to the causing of his own brother to be murdered in consequence of a dream; in a word, a furious, frantic madman, who, by his ill conduct. brought the empire to the brink of destruction. His father, says Plato, left him at his death many vast provinces, immense riches, with innumerable forces by sea and land; but he had not given him the means of preserving them, by teaching him the right use of such power. This philosopher makes the same reflection with regard to Darius and Xerxes. The former, not being the son of a king, had not been brought up in the same effeminate manner as princes were, but ascended the throne with a long habit of industry, great temper and moderation, a courage little inferior to that of Cyrus, and by which he added to the empire almost as many provinces as the other had conquered. But he was no better a father than him, and reaped no benefit from the fault of his predecessor, in neglecting the education of his children. Accordingly, his son Xerxes was little better than a second Cambyses. From all this, Plato, after having shown what numberless rocks and quicksands, almost unavoidable, lie in the way of persons bred in the a ms of wealth and greatness, concludes, that one principal cause of the declension and ruin of the Persian empire, was the bad education of their princes; because those first examples had an influence upon, and became a kind of rule to, all their successors, under whom every thing still degenerated more and more, till at last their luxury exceeded all bounds and restraints. SECTION IV.-THEIR BREACH OF FAITH, OR WANT OF SINCERITY. We are informed by Xenophon, that one of the causes, both of the great corruption of manners among the Persians, and of the destruction of their empire, was their want of public faith.* Formerly, says he, the king, and those that governed under him, thought it an indispensable duty to keep their word, and inviolably to observe all treaties, into which they had entered with the solemnity of an oath, and that even with respect to those that had rendered themselves most unworthy of such treatment, through their perfidiousness and insincerity; and it was by this true policy and prudent conduct that they gained the absolute confidence, both of their own subjects, and of their neighbours and allies. This is a very great encomium given by the historian to the Persians, which undoubtedly belongs to the reign of the great Cyrus; though Xenophon applies it likewise to that of the younger Cyrus, whose grand maxim was, as he tells us, never to violate his faith upon any pretence whatever, with regard either to any word he had given, any promise made, or any treaty he had concluded. These princes had a just idea of the regal dignity, and rightly judged, that if probity and truth were renounced by the rest of mankind, they ought to find a sanctuary in the heart of a king, who, being the bond and centre, as it were, of society, should also be the protector and avenger of plighted faith; which is the very foundation whereon the other depends.† Such sentiments as these, so noble, and so worthy of persons born for government, did not last long. A false prudence, and a spurious, artificial policy, soon succeeded in their place. Instead of faith, probity, and true merit, says Xen * Cyrop. 1. viii. 239. De Exped. Cyr. 1. i. 267 P. 406 MANNERS OF THE ASSYRIANS, &e. ophon, which heretofore the prince used to cherish and distinguish, all the chief offices of the court began to be filled with those pretended zealous servants of the king, who sacrifice every thing to his humour and supposed interest; who hold it as a maxim, that falsehood and deceit, perfidiousness and perjury, if boldly and artfully put in practice, are the shortest and surest expedients for bringing about his enterprises and designs; who looked upon a scrupulous adherence in a prince to his word, and to the engagements into which he has entered, as an effect of pusillanimity, incapacity, and want of understanding; and whose opinion, in short, is, that a man is unqualified for government, if he does not prefer reasons and considerations of state before the exact observation of treaties, though concluded in ever so solemn and sacred a manner.† The Asiatic nations, continues Xenophon, soon imitated their prince, who became their example and instructer in double-dealing and treachery. They soon gave themselves up to violence, injustice, and impiety; and from thence proceeds that strange alteration and difference we find in their manners, as also the contempt they conceived for their sovereigns, which is both the natural consequence and punishment of the little regard princes pay to the most sacred and awful solemnities of religion. Surely the oath by which treaties are sealed and ratified, and the Deity brought in, not only as present, but as guarantee of the conditions stipulated, is a most sacred and august ceremony, very proper for the subjecting of earthly princes to the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth, who alone is qualified to judge them, and for the keeping all human majesty within the bounds of its duty, by making it appear before the majesty of God, in respect of which it is as nothing. Now, if princes will teach their people not to stand in fear of the Supreme Being, how will they be able to secure their respect and reverence to themselves? When once that fear comes to be distinguished in the subject as well as in the prince, what will become of fidelity and obedience, and on what foundations shall the throne be supported? Cyrus had good reason to say, that he looked upon none as good servants and faithful subjects, but such as had a sense of religion, and a reverence for the Deity: nor is it at all astonishing that the contempt which an impious prince, who has no regard to the sanctity of oaths, shows of God and religion, should shake the very foundations of the firmest and best-established empires, and sooner or later occasion their utter destruction. Kings, says Plutarch, when any revolution happens in their dominions, are apt to complain bitterly of the unfaithfulness and disloyalty of their subjects; but they do them wrong, and forget that it was themselves who gave them the first lessons of their disloyalty, by showing no regard to justice and fidelity, which, on all occasions, they had sacrificed, without scruple, to their own particular interests.§ *Cyrop. 1. viii. p. 239. † Ἐπὶ τὸ κατεργάζεσθαι ὧν ἐπιθυμοίη, συντομωτάτην όδον ώετο εἶναι διὰ τὸ ἐπιορκεῖν τε καὶ ψεύδεσθαι καὶ ἐξαπατῶν· τὸ δὲ ἁπλόν τε καὶ ἀληθὲς, τὸ αυτὸ τω ἠλιθίω εἶναι.-De Exped. Cyr. l. i. p. 292. Plut. in Pyrrh. p.: Cyrop. 1. viii. P. 204. $90. |