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Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks

by Edward Wortley Montagu · English · Gutenberg #45592 · 531,149 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks

Author: Edward Wortley Montagu


        
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REFLECTIONS ON THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ANCIENT REPUBLICKS.

Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain.

   Οὐ τί τῷδε, ἢ τῷδε δόξει λογιζόμενος
   Ἀλλὰ τί πέπρακται λέγων.

   Lucian. Histor. Scribend.

by

EDWARD W. MONTAGU, JUN.







Philadelphia:
Printed and Published by C. P. Wayne.
1806.




CONTENTS.



                                                       Page.

   PREFACE,                                                i

   INTRODUCTION,                                         vii

   CHAP. i. OF THE REPUBLICK OF SPARTA                     1

   CHAP. ii.                 OF ATHENS                    54

   CHAP. iii.                OF THEBES                   127

   CHAP. iv.                 OF CARTHAGE                 144

   CHAP. v.                  OF ROME                     184

   CHAP. vi. OF THE REAL CAUSE OF THE RAPID
               DECLENSION OF THE ROMAN
               REPUBLICK                                 249

   CHAP. vii. CARTHAGINIANS AND ROMANS
               COMPARED                                  270

   CHAP. viii. OF REVOLUTIONS IN MIXED GOVERNMENTS       311

   CHAP. ix. OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION                 322




PREFACE


Plutarch takes notice of a very remarkable law of Solon’s,[1] “which
declared every man infamous, who, in any sedition or civil dissension in
the state, should continue neuter, and refuse to side with either
party.” Aulus Gellius,[2] who gives a more circumstantial detail of this
uncommon law, affirms the penalty to be “no less than confiscation of
all the effects, and banishment of the delinquent.” Cicero mentions the
same law to his friend Atticus,[3] and even makes the punishment
capital, though he resolves at the same time not to conform to it under
his present circumstances, unless his friend should advise him to the
contrary.

Which of these relators has given us the real penalty annexed to this
law by Solon, is scarce worth our inquiry. But I cannot help observing,
that strange as this law may appear at first sight, yet if we reflect
upon the reasons of it, as they are assigned by Plutarch and A. Gellius,
it will not appear unworthy of that great legislator.

The opinion of Plutarch is; “that Solon intended no citizen, as soon as
ever he had provided for the security of his own private affairs, should
be so unfeeling with respect to the publick welfare, as to affect a
brutal insensibility,[4] and not to sympathize with the distress and
calamities of his country: but that he should immediately join the
honester and juster party; and rather risque his all in defence of the
side he had espoused, than keep aloof from danger until he saw which
party proved the stronger.”

The reason given by A. Gellius is more striking, and less liable to
objections than that of Plutarch. “If (says that writer) all the good
men in any state, when they find themselves too weak to stem the torrent
of a furious divided populace, and unable to suppress a sedition at its
first breaking out, should immediately divide, and throw themselves into
the opposite sides, the event in such a case would be that each party,
which they had differently espoused, would naturally begin to cool, and
put themselves under their direction, as persons of the greatest weight
and authority: thus it would be greatly in the power of such men so
circumstanced, to reconcile all differences, and restore peace and
union, while they mutually restrained and moderated the fury of their
own party, and convinced the opposite side, that they sincerely wished
and laboured for their safety, not for their destruction.”

What effect this law had in the Athenian state is no where mentioned.
However, as it is plainly founded upon that relation which every member
bears to the body politick, and that interest which every individual is
supposed to have in the good of the whole community; it is still, though
not in express terms, yet virtually received in every free country. For
those who continue neuter in any civil dissension, under the
denomination of moderate men, who keep aloof and wait quietly in order
to follow the fortune of the prevailing side, are generally stigmatized
with the opprobious name of _time servers_, and consequently neither
esteemed, nor trusted by either party.

As our own country is blessed with the greatest share of liberty, so is
it more subject to civil dissensions than any other nation in Europe.
Every man is a politician, and warmly attached to his respective party;
and this law of Solon’s seems to take place as strongly in Britain, as
ever it did in the most factious times at Athens. Freedom of thought, or
the liberty of the mind, arises naturally from the very essence of our
constitution; and the liberty of the press, that peculiar privilege of
the British subject, gives every man a continual opportunity of laying
his sentiments before the publick. Would our political writers pursue
the salutary intention of Solon, as delivered to us by A. Gellius in his
explication of that extraordinary law, they might contribute greatly to
the establishment of that harmony and union, which can alone preserve
and perpetuate the duration of our constitution. But the opposite views
and interests of parties make the altercation endless; and the victory
over an antagonist is generally the aim, whilst the investigation of
truth only, ought ever to be the real end proposed in all controversial
inquiries. The points which have lately exercised so many pens, turn
upon the present expediency, or absolute insignificancy, of a _militia_;
or, what principles conduce most to the power, the happiness, and the
duration of a free people. The dispute has been carried on, not only
with warmth, but even with virulence. The chicane of sophistry has been
employed, whilst indecent personal reflections, and the unfair charge of
disaffection, have been too often made use of to supply the defect of
argument, and to prejudice the reader, where they despaired of confuting
the writer. Historical facts have been either misrepresented, or
ascribed to wrong principles; the history of ancient nations has been
quoted in general terms, without marking the different periods
distinguished by some memorable change in the manners or constitution of
the same people, which will ever make a wide difference in the
application.

Anxious after truth, and unsatisfied with so many bold assertions
destitute of all proof but the writer’s word, which I daily met with, I
determined coolly and impartially to examine the evidence arising from
ancient history, which both sides so frequently appealed to: for bare
speculative reasoning is no more conclusive in political inquiries than
in physical. Facts and experience alone must decide: and political facts
and experience must alone be learned from history. Determined therefore
to judge for myself, I carefully read over the histories of the most
celebrated republicks of antiquity in their original languages, unbiased
either by comments or translations; a part of history of all others the
most instructive, and most interesting to an Englishman.

As instruction was the sole end of my inquiries, I here venture to offer
the result of them to the candour of the publick, since my only motive
for writing was a most ardent concern for the welfare of my country. The
design therefore of these papers is, to warn my countrymen, by the
example of others, of the fatal consequences which must inevitably
attend our intestine divisions at this critical juncture; and to
inculcate the necessity of that national union, upon which the strength,
the security, and the duration of a free state must eternally depend.
Happy, if my weak endeavours could in the least contribute to an end so
salutary, so truly desirable!

In the numerous quotations from the Greek and Latin historians, which
are unavoidable in a treatise of this nature, I have endeavoured to give
the genuine sense and meaning of the author, to the best of my
abilities. But as every reader has an equal right of judging for
himself, I have subjoined in the margin, the original words of the
author, with the book, page, name, and date of the respective edition, I
made use of, for the ease as well as the satisfaction of the candid and
judicious: for that vague and careless manner, which some writers
affect, of quoting an author by name only, without specifying the
particular passage referred to in evidence, is neither useful, nor
satisfactory to the generality of readers; whilst the unfair method, too
often practised, of quoting disjointed scraps, or unconnected sentences,
is apt to raise strong suspicions, that the real sentiments and
intention of the author are kept out of sight, and that the writer is
endeavouring to palm false evidence upon his readers.

I must take the liberty of offering another reason, which, I confess,
was of more weight with me, because more personally interesting. As the
British state and the ancient free republicks were founded upon the same
principles, and their policy and constitution nearly similar, so, as
like causes will ever produce like effects, it is impossible not to
perceive an equal resemblance between their and our manners, as they and
we equally deviated from those first principles. Unhappily, the
resemblance between the manners of our own times, and the manners of
those republicks in their most degenerate periods, is, in many respects,
so striking, that unless the words in the original were produced as
vouchers, any well-meaning reader, unacquainted with those historians,
would be apt to treat the descriptions of those periods, which he may
frequently meet with, as licentious, undistinguished satire upon the
present age.

The behaviour of some of our political writers makes an apology of this
nature in some measure necessary; on the one hand, that I may avoid the
imputation of pedantry, or being thought fond of an idle ostentatious
parade of learning; on the other, _lest a work calculated to promote
domestick peace and union, should be strained, by the perverseness of
party construction, into an inflammatory libel_.

  [1] Plut. in Vit. Solon. ἄτιμον.

  [2] A. Gellii Noct. Attic. lib. 2. c. 12.

  [3] Epist. ad Attic. lib. 10. epist. 1.

  [4] Μὴ συναλγεῖν, μηδὲ συννοσεῖν.




INTRODUCTION.


I am not at all surprised at those encomiums which the philosophers and
poets so lavishly bestow upon the pleasures of a country retirement. The
profusion of varying beauties, which attend the returning seasons,
furnishes out new and inexhaustible subjects for the entertainment of
the studious and contemplative. Even winter carries charms for the
philosophick eye, and equally speaks the stupendous power of the great
author of nature. To search out and adore the Creator through his works,
is our primary duty, and claims the first place in every rational mind.
To promote the publick good of the community of which we are born
members, in proportion to our situation and abilities, is our secondary
duty as men and citizens. I judged therefore a close attention to the
study of history the most useful way of employing that time which my
country recess afforded, as it would enable me to fulfil this
obligation: and upon this principle I take the liberty of offering these
papers as my mite towards the publick good.

In the course of these researches nothing gave me so much pleasure as
the study of ancient history: because it made me so truly sensible of
the inestimable value of our own constitution, when I observed the very
different maxims and conduct, and the strong contrast between the
founders of despotick monarchies, and the legislators of the free states
of antiquity. In the former, that absurd and impious doctrine of
millions created for the sole use and pleasure of one individual, seems
to have been the first position in their politicks, and the general rule
of their conduct. The latter fixed the basis of their respective states
upon this just and benevolent plan, “that the safety and happiness of
the whole community was the only end of all government.” The former
treated mankind as brutes, and lorded it over them by force. The latter
received them as their fellow-creatures, and governed them by reason:
hence whilst we detest the former as the enemies and destroyers; we
cannot help admiring and revering the latter, as the lovers and
benefactors of mankind.

The histories which I considered with the greatest attention, gave me
the highest entertainment, and affected me most, were those of the free
states of Greece, Carthage, and Rome. I saw with admiration the profound
wisdom and sagacity, the unwearied labour and disinterested spirit of
those amiable and generous men, who contributed most towards forming
those states, and settling them upon the firmest foundations. I traced
with pleasure their gradual progress towards that height of power, to
which in process of time they arrived; and I remarked the various steps
and degrees by which they again declined, and at last sunk gradually
into their final dissolution, not without a just mixture of sorrow and
indignation.

It would be a labour of more curiosity, than of real use at this time,
to give a long detail of the original formation of those states, and the
wise laws and institutions by which they were raised to that envied
degree of perfection; yet a concise account of the primitive
constitution of each state may be so far necessary, as it will render
the deviations from that constitution more intelligible, and more fully
illustrate the causes of their final subversion. But to point out and
expose the principal causes, which contributed gradually to weaken, and
at length demolish and level with the ground, those beautiful fabricks
raised by the publick virtue, and cemented by the blood of so many
illustrious patriots, will, in my opinion, be more interesting and more
instructive.

When I consider the constitution of our own country, I cannot but think
it the best calculated for promoting the happiness, and preserving the
lives, liberty, and property of mankind, of any yet recorded in profane
history. I am persuaded too, that our wise ancestors, who first formed
it, adopted whatever they judged most excellent and valuable in those
states when in their greatest perfection; and did all that human wisdom
could do for rendering it durable, and transmitting it pure and entire
to future generations. But as all things under the sun are subject to
change, and children are too apt to forget and degenerate from the
virtues of their fathers, there seems great reason to fear, that what
has happened to those free states may at length prove the melancholy
fate of our own country; especially when we reflect, that the same
causes, which contributed to their ruin, operate at this time so very
strongly amongst us. As I thought therefore that it might be of some use
to my country at this dangerous crisis, I have selected the interesting
examples of those once free and powerful nations, who by totally
deviating from those principles upon which they were originally founded,
lost first their liberty, and at last their very existence, so far as to
leave no other vestiges remaining of them as a people, but what are to
be found in the records of history.

It is an undoubted truth, that our own constitution has at different
times suffered very severe shocks, and been reduced more than once to
the very point of ruin: but because it has hitherto providentially
escaped, we are not to flatter ourselves that opportunities of recovery
will always offer. To me therefore the method of proof drawn from
example, seemed more striking, as well as more level to every capacity,
than all speculative reasoning: for as the same causes will, by the
stated laws of sublunary affairs, sooner or later invariably produce
the same effects, so whenever we see the same maxims of government
prevail, the same measures pursued, and the same coincidences of
circumstances happen in our own country, which brought on, and attend
the subversion of those states, we may plainly read our own fate in
their catastrophe, unless we apply speedy and effectual remedies, before
our case is past recovery. It is the best way to learn wisdom in time
from the fate of others; and if examples will not instruct and make us
wiser, I confess myself utterly at a loss to know what will.

In my reflections, which naturally arose in the course of these
researches, truth and impartiality have been my only guides. I have
endeavoured to show the principal causes of that degeneracy of manners,
which reduced those once brave and free people into the most abject
slavery. I have marked the alarming progress which the same evils have
already made, and still continue to make amongst us, with that honest
freedom which is the birthright of every Englishman. My sole aim is to
excite those who have the welfare of their country at heart, to unite
their endeavours in opposing the fatal tendency of those evils, whilst
they are within the power of remedy. With this view, and this only, I
have marked out the remote as well as immediate causes of the ruin of
those states, as so many beacons warning us to avoid the same rocks upon
which they struck, and at last suffered shipwreck.

Truth will ever be unpalatable to those who are determined not to
relinquish error, but can never give offence to the honest and
well-meaning amongst my countrymen. For the plain-dealing remonstrances
of a friend differ as widely from the rancour of an enemy, as the
friendly probe of the physician from the dagger of the assassin.




REFLECTIONS ON THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ANCIENT REPUBLICKS.




CHAPTER I.

OF THE REPUBLICK OF SPARTA.


All the free states of Greece were at first monarchical,[5] and seem to
owe their liberty rather to the injudicious oppressions of their
respective kings, than to any natural propensity in the people to alter
their form of government. But as they had smarted so severely under an
excess of power lodged in the hands of one man, they were too apt to run
into the other extreme, democracy; a state of government the most
subject of all others to disunion and faction.

Of all the Grecian states, that of Sparta seems to have been the most
unhappy, before their government was new modelled by Lycurgus. The
authority of their kings and their laws (as Plutarch informs us) were
alike trampled upon and despised. Nothing could restrain the insolence
of the headstrong encroaching populace; and the whole government sunk
into anarchy and confusion. From this deplorable situation the wisdom
and virtue of one great man raised his country to that height of power,
which was the envy and the terror of her neighbours. A convincing proof
how far the influence of one great and good man will operate towards
reforming the most bold licentious people, when he has once thoroughly
acquired their esteem and confidence! Upon this principle Lycurgus
founded his plan of totally altering and new moulding the constitution
of his country. A design, all circumstances considered, the most daring,
and the most happily executed, of any yet immortalized in history.[6]

Lycurgus succeeded to the moiety of the crown of Sparta at the death of
his elder brother; but his brother’s widow declaring herself with child,
and that child proving to be a son, he immediately resigned the regal
dignity to the new born infant, and governed as protector and guardian
of the young prince during his minority. The generous and disinterested
behaviour of Lycurgus upon this occasion endeared him greatly to the
people; who had already experienced the happy effect of his wise and
equitable administration. But to avoid the malice of the queen-mother
and her faction, who accused him of designs upon the crown, he prudently
quitted both the government and his country. In his travels during this
voluntary exile, he drew up and thoroughly digested his great scheme of
reformation. He visited all those states which at that time were most
eminent for the wisdom of their laws, or the form of their constitution.
He carefully observed all the different institutions, and the good or
bad effects which they respectively produced on the manners of each
people. He took care to avoid what he judged to be defects; but selected
whatever he found calculated to promote the happiness of a people; and
with these materials he formed his so much celebrated plan of
legislation, which he very soon had an opportunity of reducing to
practice. For the Spartans, thoroughly sensible of the difference
between the administration of Lycurgus and that of their kings, not only
earnestly wished for his presence, but sent repeated deputations to
entreat him to return, and free them from those numerous disorders under
which their country at that time laboured. As the request of the people
was unanimous, and the kings no ways opposed his return, he judged it
the critical time for the execution of his scheme. For he found affairs
at home in the distracted situation they had been represented, and the
whole body of the people in a disposition proper for his purpose.

Lycurgus began his reform with a change in the constitution, which at
that time consisted of a confused medley of hereditary monarchy divided
between two families, and a disorderly democracy, utterly destitute of
the balance of a third intermediate power, a circumstance so essential
to the duration of all mixed governments. To remedy this evil, he
established a senate with such a degree of power, as might fix them the
inexpugnable barrier of the constitution against the encroachments
either of kings or people. The crown of Sparta had been long divided
between two families descended originally from the same ancestor, who
jointly enjoyed the succession. But though Lycurgus was sensible that
all the mischiefs which had happened to the state, arose from this
absurd division of the regal power, yet he made no alteration as to the
succession of the two families. Any innovation in so nice a point might
have proved an endless source of civil commotions, from the pretensions
of that line which should happen to be excluded. He therefore left them
the title and the ensignia of royalty, but limited their authority,
which he confined to the business of war and religion. To the people he
gave the privilege of electing the senators, and giving their sanction
to those laws which the kings and senate should approve.

When Lycurgus had regulated the government, he undertook a task more
arduous than any of the fabled labours of Hercules. This was to new
mould his countrymen, by extirpating all the destructive passions, and
raising them above every weakness and infirmity of human nature. A
scheme which all the great philosophers had taught in theory, but none
except Lycurgus was ever able to reduce to practice.

As he found the two extremes, of great wealth and great indigence, were
the source of infinite mischiefs in a free state, he divided the lands
of the whole territory into equal lots proportioned to the number of the
inhabitants. He appointed publick tables, at which he enjoined all the
citizens to eat together without distinction; and he subjected every
man, even the kings themselves, to a fine if they should violate this
law by eating at their own houses.[7] Their diet was plain, simple, and
regulated by the law, and distributed amongst the guests in equal
portions. Every member was obliged monthly to contribute his quota for
the provision of his respective table. The conversation allowed at these
publick repasts, turned wholly upon such subjects as tended most to
improve the minds of the younger sort in the principles of wisdom and
virtue. Hence, as Xenophon observes, they were schools not only for
temperance and sobriety, but also for instruction. Thus Lycurgus
introduced a perfect equality amongst his countrymen. The highest and
the lowest fared alike as to diet, were all lodged and clothed alike,
without the least variation either in fashion or materials.

When by these means he had exterminated every species of luxury, he next
removed all temptation to the acquisition of wealth, that fatal source
of the innumerable evils which prevailed in every other country. He
effected this with his usual policy, by forbidding the currency of gold
and silver money, and substituting an iron coinage of great weight and
little value, which continued the only current coin through the whole
Spartan dominions for several ages.

To bar up the entrance of wealth, and guard his citizens against the
contagion of corruption, he absolutely prohibited navigation and
commerce, though his country contained a large extent of sea coast
furnished with excellent harbours. He allowed as little intercourse as
possible with foreigners, nor suffered any of his countrymen to visit
the neighbouring states, unless when the publick business required it,
lest they should be infected with their vices. Agriculture, and such
mechanick trades as were absolutely necessary for their subsistence, he
confined to their slaves the Helots; but he banished all those arts
which tended either to debase the mind, or enervate the body. Musick he
encouraged, and poetry he admitted, but both subject to the inspection
of the magistrates.[8] Thus by the equal partition of the lands, and the
abolition of gold and silver money, he at once preserved his country
from luxury, avarice, and all those evils which arise from an irregular
indulgence of the passions, as well as all contentions about property,
with their consequence, vexatious lawsuits.

To ensure the observance of his laws to the latest posterity, he next
formed proper regulations for the education of their children, which he
esteemed one of the greatest duties of a legislator. His grand maxim was
“that children were the property of the state, to whom alone their
education was to be intrusted.” In their first infancy, the nurses were
instructed to indulge them neither in their diet, nor in those little
froward humours which are so peculiar to that age; to inure them to bear
cold and fasting; to conquer their first fears by accustoming them to
solitude and darkness; and to prepare them for that stricter state of
discipline, to which they were soon to be initiated.

When arrived at the age of seven years, they were taken from the nurses,
and placed in their proper classes. The diet and clothing of all were
the same, just sufficient to support nature, and defend them from the
inclemency of the seasons; and they all lodged alike in the same
dormitory on beds of reeds, to which for the sake of warmth they were
all allowed in winter to add the down of thistles. Their sports and
exercises were such as contributed to render their limbs supple, and
their bodies compact and firm. They were accustomed to run up the
steepest rocks barefoot; and swimming, dancing, hunting, boxing, and
wrestling, were their constant diversions. Lycurgus was equally
solicitous in training up the youth to a habit of passive courage as
well as active. They were taught to despise pain no less than danger,
and to bear the severest scourgings with the most invincible constancy
and resolution. For to flinch under the strokes, or to exhibit the least
sign of any sense of pain, was deemed highly infamous.

Nor were the minds of the Spartan youth cultivated with less care. Their
learning, as Plutarch informs us, was sufficient for their occasions,
for Lycurgus admitted nothing but what was truly useful. They carefully
instilled into their tender minds the great duties of religion, and the
sacred indispensable obligation of an oath, and trained them up in the
best of sciences, the principles of wisdom and virtue. The love of
their country seemed to be almost innate; and this leading maxim, “that
every Spartan was the property of his country, and had no right over
himself,” was by the force of education incorporated into their very
nature.

When they arrived to manhood they were enrolled in their militia, and
allowed to be present in their publick assemblies: privileges which only
subjected them to a different discipline. For the employments and way of
living of the citizens of Sparta were fixed, and settled by as strict
regulations as in an army upon actual service. When they took the field,
indeed, the rigour of their discipline with respect to diet and the
ornament of their persons was much softened, so that the Spartans were
the only people in the universe, to whom the toils of war afforded ease
and relaxation. In fact, Lycurgus’s plan of civil government was
evidently designed to preserve his country free and independent, and to
form the minds of his citizens for the enjoyment of that rational and
manly happiness, which can find no place in a breast enslaved by the
pleasures of the senses, or ruffled by the passions; and the military
regulations which he established, were as plainly calculated for the
protection of his country from the encroachments of her ambitious
neighbours.[9] For he left no alternative to his people, but death or
victory; and he laid them under a necessity of observing those
regulations, by substituting the valour of the inhabitants in the place
of walls and fortifications for the defence of their city.

If we reflect that human nature is at all times and in all places the
same, it seems to the last degree astonishing, how Lycurgus could be
able to introduce such a self-denying plan of discipline amongst a
disorderly licentious people: a scheme, which not only levelled at once
all distinction, as to property, between the richest and the poorest
individual, but compelled the greatest persons in the state to submit to
a regimen which allowed only the bare necessaries of life, excluding
every thing which in the opinion of mankind seems essential to its
comforts and enjoyments. I observed before that he had secured the
esteem and confidence of his countrymen, and there was, besides, at that
time a very lucky concurrence of circumstances in his favour. The two
kings were men of little spirit, and less abilities, and the people were
glad to exchange their disorderly state for any settled form of
government. By his establishment of a senate consisting of thirty
persons who held their seats for life, and to whom he committed the
supreme power in civil affairs, he brought the principal nobility into
his scheme, as they naturally expected a share in a government which
they plainly saw inclined so much to an aristocracy. Even the two kings
very readily accepted seats in his senate, to secure some degree of
authority. He awed the people into obedience by the sanction he procured
for his scheme from the oracle at Delphos, whose decisions were, at that
time, revered by all Greece as divine and infallible. But the greatest
difficulty he had to encounter was to procure the equal partition of the
lands. The very first proposal met with so violent an opposition from
the men of fortune, that a fray ensued, in which Lycurgus lost one of
his eyes. But the people, struck with the sight of the blood of this
admired legislator, seized the offender, one Alcander, a young man of a
hot, but not disingenuous disposition, and gave him up to Lycurgus to be
punished at discretion. But the humane and generous behaviour of
Lycurgus quickly made a convert of Alcander, and wrought such a change,
that from an enemy he became his greatest admirer and advocate with the
people.

Plutarch and the rest of the Greek historians leave us greatly in the
dark as to the means by which Lycurgus was able to make so bitter a
pill, as the division of property, go down with the wealthy part of his
countrymen. They tell us indeed, that he carried his point by the gentle
method of reasoning and persuasion, joined to that religious awe which
the divine sanction of the oracle impressed so deeply on the minds of
the citizens. But the cause, in my opinion, does not seem equal to the
effect. For the furious opposition which the rich made to the very
first motion for such a distribution of property, evinces plainly, that
they looked upon the responses of the oracle as mere priestcraft, and
treated it as the _esprits-forts_ have done religion in modern times; I
mean as a state engine fit only to be played off upon the common people.
It seems most probable, in my opinion, that as he effected the change in
the constitution by the distribution of the supreme power amongst the
principal persons, when he formed his senate; so the equal partition of
property was the bait thrown out to bring over the body of the people
entirely to his interest. I should rather think that he compelled the
rich to submit to so grating a measure, by the assistance of the poorer
citizens, who were vastly the majority.

As soon as Lycurgus had thoroughly settled his new polity, and by his
care and assiduity imprinted his laws so deeply in the minds and manners
of his countrymen, that he judged the constitution able to support
itself, and stand upon its own bottom, his last scheme was to fix, and
perpetuate its duration down to latest posterity, as far as human
prudence and human means could effect it. To bring his scheme to bear,
he had again recourse to the same pious artifice which had succeeded so
well in the beginning. He told the people in a general assembly, that he
could not possibly put the finishing stroke to his new establishment,
which was the most essential point, until he had again consulted the
oracle. As they all expressed the greatest eagerness for his undertaking
the journey, he laid hold of so fair an opportunity to bind the kings,
senate, and people, by the most solemn oaths, to the strict observance
of his new form of government, and not to attempt the least alteration
in any one particular until his return from Delphos. He had now
completed the great design which he had long in view, and bid an eternal
adieu to his country. The question he put to the oracle was “whether the
laws he had already established, were rightly formed to make and
preserve his countrymen virtuous and happy?” The answer he received was
just as favourable as he desired. It was “that his laws were excellently
well calculated for that purpose; and that Sparta should continue to be
the most renowned city in the world, as long as her citizens persisted
in the observance of the laws of Lycurgus.” He transmitted both the
question and the answer home to Sparta in writing, and devoted the
remainder of his life to voluntary banishment. The accounts in history
of the end of this great man are very uncertain. Plutarch affirms, that
as his resolution was never to release his countrymen from the
obligation of the oath he had laid them under, he put a voluntary end to
his life at Delphos by fasting. Plutarch extols the death of Lycurgus in
very pompous terms, as a most unexampled instance of heroic patriotism,
since he bequeathed, as he terms it, his death to his country, as the
perpetual guardian to that happiness, which he had procured for them
during his lifetime. Yet the same historian acknowledges another
tradition, that Lycurgus ended his days in the island of Crete, and
desired, as his last request, that his body should be burnt, and his
ashes thrown into the sea;[10] lest, if his remains should at any time
be carried back to Sparta, his countrymen might look upon themselves as
released from their oath as much as if he had returned alive, and be
induced to alter his form of government. I own, I prefer this latter
account, as more agreeable to the genius and policy of that wise and
truly disinterested legislator.

The Spartans, as Plutarch asserts, held the first rank in Greece for
discipline and reputation full five hundred years, by strictly adhering
to the laws of Lycurgus; which not one of their kings ever infringed for
fourteen successions quite down to the reign of the first Agis. For he
will not allow the creation of those magistrates called the ephori, to
be any innovation in the constitution, since he affirms it to have been,
“not a relaxation, but an extension, of the civil polity.”[11] But
notwithstanding the gloss thrown over the institution of the ephori by
this nice distinction of Plutarch’s, it certainly induced as fatal a
change into the Spartan constitution, as the tribuneship of the people,
which was formed upon that model, did afterwards into the Roman. For
instead of enlarging and strengthening the aristocratical power, as
Plutarch asserts, they gradually usurped the whole government, and
formed themselves into a most tyrannical oligarchy.

The ephori (a Greek word signifying inspectors or overseers) were five
in number, and elected annually by the people out of their own body. The
exact time of the origin of this institution and of the authority
annexed to their office, is quite uncertain. Herodotus ascribes it to
Lycurgus; Xenophon to Lycurgus jointly with the principal citizens of
Sparta. Aristotle and Plutarch fix it under the reign of Theopompus and
Polydorus, and attribute the institution expressly to the former of
those princes about one hundred and thirty years after the death of
Lycurgus. I cannot but subscribe to this opinion as the most probable,
because the first political contest we meet with at Sparta happened
under the reign of those princes, when the people endeavoured to extend
their privileges beyond the limits prescribed by Lycurgus. But as the
joint opposition of the kings and senate was equally warm, the creation
of this magistracy out of the body of the people, seems to have been the
step taken at that time to compromise the affair, and restore the
publick tranquility: a measure which the Roman senate copied afterwards,
in the erection of the tribuneship, when their people mutinied, and made
that memorable secession to the _mons sacer_. I am confirmed in this
opinion by the relation which Aristotle gives us of a remarkable dispute
between Theopompus and his wife upon that occasion.[12] The queen much
dissatisfied with the institution of the ephori, reproached her husband
greatly for submitting to such a diminution of the regal authority, and
asked him if he was not ashamed to transmit the crown to his posterity
so much weaker and worse circumstanced, than he received it from his
father. His answer, which is recorded amongst the laconick _bons mots_,
was, “no, for I transmit it more lasting.”[13] But the event showed that
the lady was a better politician, as well as truer prophet, than her
husband. Indeed the nature of their office, the circumstances of their
election, and the authority they assumed, are convincing proofs that
their office was first extorted, and their power afterwards gradually
extended, by the violence of the people, irritated too probably by the
oppressive behaviour of the kings and senate. For whether their power
extended no farther than to decide, when the two kings differed in
opinion, and to overrule in favour of him whose sentiments should be
most conducive to the publick interest, as we are told by Plutarch in
the life of Agis; or whether they were at first only select friends,
whom the kings appointed as deputies in their absence, when they were
both compelled to take the field together in their long wars with the
Messenians, as the same author tells us by the mouth of his hero
Cleomenes, is a point, which history does not afford us light enough to
determine. This however is certain, from the concurrent voice of all the
ancient historians, that at last they not only seized upon every branch
of the administration, but assumed the power of imprisoning, deposing,
and even putting their kings to death by their own authority. The kings
too, in return, sometimes bribed, sometimes deposed or murdered the
ephori, and employed their whole interest to procure such persons to be
elected, as they judged would be most tractable. I look therefore on the
creation of the ephori as a breach in the Spartan constitution, which
proved the first inlet to faction and corruption. For that these evils
took rise from the institution of the ephori is evident from the
testimony of Aristotle, “who thought it extremely impolitick to elect
magistrates, vested with the supreme power in the state, out of the body
of the people;[14] because it often happened, that men extremely
indigent were raised in this manner to the helm, whom their very poverty
tempted to become venal. For the ephori, as he affirms, had not only
been frequently guilty of bribery before his time, but, even at the very
time he wrote, some of those magistrates, corrupted by money, used their
utmost endeavours, at the publick repasts, to accomplish the destruction
of the whole city. He adds too, that as their power was so great as to
amount to a perfect tyranny, the kings themselves were necessitated to
court their favour by such methods as greatly hurt the constitution,
which from an aristocracy degenerated into an absolute democracy. For
that magistracy alone had engrossed the whole government.”

From these remarks of the judicious Aristotle, it is evident that the
ephori had totally destroyed the balance of power established by
Lycurgus. From the tyranny therefore of this magistracy proceeded those
convulsions which so frequently shook the state of Sparta, and at last
gradually brought on its total subversion. But though this fatal
alteration in the Spartan constitution must be imputed to the intrigues
of the ephori and their faction, yet it could never, in my opinion, have
been effected without a previous degeneracy in their manners; which must
have been the consequence of some deviation from the maxims of Lycurgus.

It appears evidently from the testimony of Polybius and Plutarch, that
the great scheme of the Spartan legislator was, to provide for the
lasting security of his country against all foreign invasions, and to
perpetuate the blessings of liberty and independency to the people. By
the generous plan of discipline which he established, he rendered his
countrymen invincible at home. By banishing gold and silver, and
prohibiting commerce and the use of shipping, he proposed to confine
the Spartans within the limits of their own territories; and by taking
away the means, to repress all desires of making conquests upon their
neighbours. But the same love of glory and of their country which made
them so terrible in the field, quickly produced ambition and a lust of
domination; and ambition as naturally opened the way for avarice and
corruption. For Polybius truly observes, that as long as they extended
their views no farther than the dominion over their neighbouring states,
the produce of their own country was sufficient for what supplies they
had occasion for in such short excursions.[15] But when, in direct
violation of the laws of Lycurgus, they began to undertake more distant
expeditions both by sea and land, they quickly felt the want of a
publick fund to defray their extraordinary expenses. For they found by
experience, that neither their iron money, nor their method of trucking
the annual produce of their own lands for such commodities as they
wanted (which was the only traffick allowed by the laws of Lycurgus)
could possibly answer their demands upon those occasions. Hence their
ambition, as the same historian remarks, laid them under the scandalous
necessity of paying servile court to the Persian monarchs for pecuniary
supplies and subsidies, to impose heavy tributes upon the conquered
islands, and to exact money from the other Grecian states, as occasions
required.

Historians unanimously agree, that wealth with its attendants, luxury
and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first
Agis. Lysander, alike a hero and a politician; a man of the greatest
abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced;
rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave
only to ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the
manners of his countrymen. After he had enabled his country to give law
to all Greece by his conquest of Athens, he sent home that immense mass
of wealth, which the plunder of so many states had put into his
possession. The most sensible men amongst the Spartans, dreading the
fatal consequences of this capital breach of the institutions of their
legislator, protested strongly before the ephori against the
introduction of gold and silver, as pests destructive to the publick.
The ephori referred it to the decision of the senate, who, dazzled with
the lustre of that money, to which until that time they had been utter
strangers, decreed “that gold and silver money might be admitted for the
service of the state; but made it death, if any should ever be found in
the possession of a private person.” This decision Plutarch censures as
weak and sophistical.[16] As if Lycurgus was only afraid simply of
money, and not of that dangerous love of money which is generally its
concomitant; a passion which was so far from being rooted out by the
restraint laid upon private persons, that it was rather inflamed by the
esteem and value which was set upon money by the publick. Thus, as he
justly remarks, whilst they barred up the houses of private citizens
against the entrance of wealth by the terror and safeguard of the law,
they left their minds more exposed to the love of money and the
influence of corruption, by raising an universal admiration and desire
of it, as something great and respectable. The truth of this remark
appears by the instance given us by Plutarch, of one Thorax, a great
friend of Lysander’s, who was put to death by the ephori, upon proof
that a quantity of silver had been actually found in his possession.

From that time Sparta became venal, and grew extremely fond of subsidies
from foreign powers. Agesilaus, who succeeded Agis, and was one of the
greatest of their kings, behaved in the latter part of his life more
like the captain of a band of mercenaries, than a king of Sparta. He
received a large subsidy from Tachos, at that time king of Egypt, and
entered into his service with a body of troops which he had raised for
that purpose. But when Nectanabis, who had rebelled against his uncle
Tachos, offered him more advantageous terms, he quitted the unfortunate
monarch and went over to his rebellious nephew, pleading the interest of
his country in excuse for so treacherous and infamous an action.[17] So
great a change had the introduction of money already made in the
manners of the leading Spartans!

Plutarch dates the first origin of corruption, that disease of the body
politick, and consequently the decline of Sparta, from that memorable
period, when the Spartans having subverted the domination of Athens,
glutted themselves (as he terms it) with gold and silver.[18] For when
once the love of money had crept into their city, and avarice and the
most sordid meanness grew up with the possession, as luxury, effeminacy
and dissipation did with the enjoyment of wealth, Sparta was deprived of
many of her ancient glories and advantages, and sunk greatly both in
power and reputation, until the reign of Agis and Leonidas.[19] But as
the original allotments of land were yet preserved (the number of which
Lycurgus had fixed and decreed to be kept by a particular law) and were
transmitted down from father to son by hereditary succession, the same
constitutional order and equality still remaining, raised up the state
again, however, from other political lapses.

Under the reign of those two kings happened the mortal blow, which
subverted the very foundation of their constitution. Epitadeus, one of
the ephori, upon a quarrel with his son, carried his resentment so far
as to procure a law which permitted every one to alienate their
hereditary lands, either by gift or sale, during their lifetime, or by
will at their decease. This law produced a fatal alteration in the
landed property. For as Leonidas, one of their kings, who had lived a
long time at the court of Seleucus, and married a lady of that country,
had introduced the pomp and luxury of the east at his return to Sparta,
the old institutions of Lycurgus, which had fallen into disuse, were by
his example soon treated with contempt.[20] Hence the necessity of the
luxurious, and the extortion of the avaricious, threw the whole property
into so few hands, that out of seven hundred, the number to which the
ancient Spartan families were then reduced, about one hundred only were
in possession of their respective hereditary lands allotted by
Lycurgus.[21] The rest, as Plutarch observes, lived an idle life in the
city, an indigent abject herd, alike destitute of fortune and
employment; in their wars abroad, indolent dispirited dastards; at home
ever ripe for sedition and insurrections, and greedily catching at every
opportunity of embroiling affairs in hope of such a change as might
enable them to retrieve their fortunes. Evils, which the extremes of
wealth and indigence are ever productive of in free countries.

Young Agis, the third of that name, and the most virtuous and
accomplished king that ever sat upon the throne of Sparta since the
reign of the great Agesilaus, undertook the reform of the state, and
attempted to re-establish the old Lycurgic constitution, as the only
means of extricating his country out of her distresses, and raising her
to her former dignity and lustre. An enterprise attended not only with
the greatest difficulties, but, as the times were so corrupt, with the
greatest danger.[22] He began with trying the efficacy of example, and
though he had been bread in all the pleasures and delicacy which
affluence could procure, or the fondness of his mother and grandmother,
who were the wealthiest people in Sparta, could indulge him in, yet he
at once changed his way of life as well as his dress, and conformed to
the strictest discipline of Lycurgus in every particular. This generous
victory over his passions, the most difficult and most glorious of all
others, had so great an effect amongst the younger Spartans, that they
came into his measures with more alacrity and zeal than he could
possibly have hoped for.[23] Encouraged by this success, Agis brought
over some of the principal Spartans, amongst whom was his uncle
Agesilaus, whose influence he made use of to persuade his mother, who
was sister to Agesilaus, to join his party.[24] For her wealth, and the
great number of her friends, dependants, and debtors, made her extremely
powerful, and gave her great weight in all publick transactions.

His mother, terrified at first at her son’s rashness, condemned the
whole as the visionary scheme of a young man, who was attempting a
measure not only prejudicial to the state, but quite impracticable. But
when the reasonings of Agesilaus had convinced her that it would not
only be of the greatest utility to the publick but might be effected
with great ease and safety, and the king himself entreated her to
contribute her wealth and interest to promote an enterprise which would
redound so much to his glory and reputation;[25] she and the rest of her
female friends at last changed their sentiments. Fired then with the
same glorious emulation, and stimulated to virtue; as it were by some
divine impulse, they not only voluntarily spurred on Agis, but summoned
and encouraged all their friends, and incited the other ladies to engage
in so generous an enterprise.[26] For they were conscious (as Plutarch
observes) of the great ascendency which the Spartan women had always
over their husbands, who gave their wives a much greater share in the
publick administration, than their wives allowed them in the management
of their domestic affairs. A circumstance which at that time had drawn
almost all the wealth of Sparta into the hands of the women, and proved
a terrible, and almost unsurmountable obstacle to Agis. For the ladies
had violently opposed a scheme of reformation, which not only tended to
deprive them of those pleasures and trifling ornaments, which, from
their ignorance of what was truly good and laudable, they absurdly
looked upon as their supreme happiness, but to rob them of that respect
and authority which they derived from their superior wealth. Such of
them therefore as were unwilling to give up these advantages, applied to
Leonidas, and entreated him, as he was the more respectable man for his
age and experience, to check his young hotheaded colleague, and quash
whatever attempts he should make to carry his designs into execution.
The older Spartans were no less averse to a reformation of that nature.
For as they were deeply immersed in corruption, they trembled at the
very name of Lycurgus, as much as runaway slaves, when retaken, do at
the sight of their master.

Leonidas was extremely ready to side with and assist the rich, but durst
not openly oppose Agis for fear of the people, who were eager for such a
revolution. He attempted therefore to counteract all his attempts
underhand, and insinuated to the magistrates, that Agis aimed at setting
up a tyranny, by bribing the poor with the fortunes of the rich; and
proposed the partition of lands and the abolition of debts as the means
for purchasing guards for himself only, not citizens, as he pretended,
for Sparta.

Agis, however, pursued his design, and having procured his friend
Lysander to be elected one of the ephori, immediately laid his scheme
before the senate. The chief heads of his plan were: “that all debts
should be totally remitted; that the whole land should be divided into a
certain number of lots; and that the ancient discipline and customs of
Lycurgus should be revived.” Warm debates were occasioned in the senate
by this proposal, which at last was rejected by a majority of one
only.[27] Lysander in the meantime convoked an assembly of the people,
where after he had harangued, Mondroclidas and Agesilaus beseeched them
not to suffer the majesty of Sparta to be any longer trampled upon for
the sake of a few luxurious overgrown citizens, who imposed upon them at
pleasure.[28] They reminded them not only of the responses of ancient
oracles, which enjoined them to beware of avarice, as the pest of
Sparta, but also of those so lately given by the oracle at Pasiphae,
which, as they assured the people, commanded the Spartans to return to
that perfect equality of possessions, which was settled by the law first
instituted by Lycurgus.[29] Agis spoke last in this assembly, and to
enforce the whole by example, told them in a very few words, “that he
offered a most ample contribution towards the establishment of that
polity, of which he himself was the author. That he now resigned his
whole patrimony into the common stock, which consisted not only of rich
arable and pasture land, but of six hundred talents besides in coined
money. He added, that his mother, grandmother, friends and relations,
who were the most wealthy of all the citizens of Sparta, were ready to
do the same.”

The people, struck with the magnanimity and generosity of Agis, received
his offer with the loudest applause, and extolled him, as the only king
who for three hundred years past had been worthy of the throne of
Sparta. This provoked Leonidas to fly out into the most open and violent
opposition from the double motive of avarice and envy. For he was
sensible, that if this scheme took place, he should not only be
compelled to follow their example, but that the surrender of his estate
would then come from him with so ill a grace, that the honour of the
whole measure would be attributed solely to his colleague. Lysander,
finding Leonidas and his party too powerful in the senate, determined to
prosecute and expel him for the breach of a very old law, which forbid
any of the royal family to intermarry with foreigners, or to bring up
any children which they might have by such marriage, and inflicted the
penalty of death upon any one who should leave Sparta to reside in
foreign countries.

After Lysander had taken care that Leonidas should be informed of the
crime laid to his charge, he with the rest of the ephori, who were of
his party, addressed themselves to the ceremony of observing a sign from
heaven.[30] A piece of state craft most probably introduced formerly by
the ephori to keep the kings in awe, and perfectly well adapted to the
superstition of the people. Lysander affirming that they had seen the
usual sign, which declared that Leonidas had sinned against the gods,
summoned him to his trial, and produced evidence sufficient to convict
him. At the same time he spirited up Cleombrotus, who had married the
daughter of Leonidas, and was of the royal blood, to put in his claim to
the succession. Leonidas, terrified at these daring measures, fled, and
took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva: he was deposed therefore for
non-appearance, and his crown given to his son-in-law Cleombrotus.

But as soon as the term of Lysander’s magistracy expired, the new
ephori, who were elected by the prevailing interest of the opposite
party, immediately undertook the protection of Leonidas. They summoned
Lysander and his friends to answer for their decrees for cancelling
debts, and dividing the lands, as contrary to the laws, and treasonable
innovations; for so they termed all attempts to restore the ancient
constitution of Lycurgus. Alarmed at this, Lysander persuaded the two
kings to join in opposing the ephori; who, as he plainly proved, assumed
an authority which they had not the least right to, as long as the
kings acted together in concert. The kings, convinced by his reasons,
armed a great number of the youth, released all who were prisoners for
debt, and thus attended went into the forum, where they deposed the
ephori, and procured their own friends to be elected into that office,
of whom Agesilaus the uncle of Agis was one. By the care and humanity of
Agis, no blood was spilt on this memorable occasion. He even protected
his antagonist Leonidas against the designs which Agesilaus had formed
upon his life, and sent him under a safe convoy to Tegea.

After this bold stroke, all opposition sunk before them, and every thing
succeeded to their wishes; when the single avarice of Agesilaus, that
most baneful pest, as Plutarch terms it, which had subverted a
constitution the most excellent, and the most worthy of Sparta that had
ever yet been established, overset the whole enterprise. By the
character which Plutarch gives of Agesilaus, he appears to have been
artful and eloquent, but at the same time effeminate, corrupt in his
manners, avaricious, and so bad a man, that he engaged in this projected
revolution with no other view but that of extricating himself from an
immense load of debt, which he had most probably contracted to support
his luxury.[31] As soon therefore as the two kings, who were both young
men, agreed to proceed upon the abolition of debts, and the partition of
lands, Agesilaus artfully persuaded them not to attempt both at once,
for fear of exciting some terrible commotion in the city. He assured
them farther that if the rich should once be reconciled to the law for
cancelling the debts, the law for dividing the lands would go down with
them quietly and without the least obstruction. The kings assented to
his opinion, and Lysander himself was brought over to it, deceived by
the same specious, though pernicious reasoning: calling in therefore all
the bills, bonds, and pecuniary obligations, they piled them up, and
burnt them all publickly in the forum, to the great mortification of the
moneyed men, and the usurers. But Agesilaus in the joy of his heart
could not refrain from joking upon the occasion, and told them with a
sneer, that whatever they might think of the matter, it was the
brightest and most cheerful flame, and the purest bonfire, he had ever
beheld in his lifetime.[32] Agesilaus had now carried his point, and his
conduct proves, that the Spartans had learned the art of turning publick
measures into private jobs, as well as their politer neighbours. For
though the people called loudly for the partition of lands, and the
kings gave orders for it to be done immediately, Agesilaus contrived to
throw new obstacles in the way, and protracted the time by various
pretences, until Agis was obliged to march with the Spartan auxiliaries
to assist their allies the Achæans. For he was in possession of a most
fertile and extensive landed estate at the very time when he owed more
than he was worth; and as he had got rid of all his incumbrances at once
by the first decree, and never intended to part with a single foot of
his land, it was by no means his interest to promote the execution of
the second.

The Spartan troops were mostly indigent young men, who elate with their
freedom from the bonds of usury, and big with the hopes of a share in
the lands at their return, followed Agis with the greatest vigour and
alacrity, and behaved so well in their march, that they reminded the
admiring Greeks of the excellent discipline and decorum for which the
Spartans were formerly so famous under the most renowned of their
ancient leaders. But whilst Agis was in the field, affairs at home took
a very unhappy turn in his disfavour. The tyrannical behaviour of
Agesilaus, who fleeced the people with insupportable exactions, and
stuck at no measure, however infamous or criminal, which would bring in
money, produced another revolution in favour of Leonidas. For the
people, enraged at being tricked out of the promised partition of the
lands, which they imputed to Agis and Cleombrotus, and detesting the
rapaciousness of Agesilaus, readily joined that party which conspired to
restore Leonidas. Agis finding affairs in this desperate situation at
his return, gave up all for lost, and took sanctuary in the temple of
Minerva, as Cleombrotus had done in the temple of Neptune.

Though Cleombrotus was the chief object of Leonidas’s resentment, yet he
spared his life at the intercession of his daughter Chelonis, the wife
of Cleombrotus; but condemned him to perpetual exile. The generous
Chelonis gave a signal instance, upon this occasion, of that heroick
virtue, for which the Spartan ladies were once so remarkably eminent.
When her father was expelled by the intrigues of Lysander, she followed
him into exile, and refused to share his crown with Cleombrotus. In this
calamitous reverse of fortune, she was deaf to all entreaties, and
rather chose to partake of the miseries of banishment with her husband,
than all the pleasures and grandeur of Sparta with her father. Plutarch
pays the ladies a fine compliment, upon this occasion, when he says,
“that unless Cleombrotus should have been wholly corrupted by false
ambition, he must have deemed himself more truly happy in a state of
banishment with such a wife, than he could have been upon a throne
without her.”[33]

But though Cleombrotus escaped death, yet nothing but the blood of Agis
could satisfy the vindictive rage of the ungrateful Leonidas, who, in
the former revolution, owed his life to that unfortunate prince’s
generosity. After many ineffectual attempts to entice Agis from his
asylum, three of his intimate friends in whom he most confided, who used
to accompany and guard him to the baths and back again to the temple,
betrayed him to his enemies. Amphares, the chief of these, and the
contriver of the plot, was one of the new ephori created after the
deposition of Agesilaus. This wretch had lately borrowed a quantity of
valuable plate, and a number of magnificent vestments, of Agis’s mother
Agesistrata, and determined to make them his own by the destruction of
Agis and his family; at their return therefore in their usual friendly
manner from the baths, he first attacked Agis by virtue of his office,
whilst Demochares and Arcesilaus, the other two, seized and dragged him
to the publick prison. Agis supported all these indignities with the
utmost magnanimity: and when the ephori questioned him, whether
Agesilaus and Lysander did not constrain him to do what he had done, and
whether he did not repent of the steps he had taken; he undauntedly took
the whole upon himself, and told them that he gloried in his scheme,
which was the result of his emulation to follow the example of the great
Lycurgus. Stung with this answer, the ephori condemned him to die by
their own authority, and ordered the officers to carry him to the place
in the prison where the malefactors were strangled. But when the
officers and even the mercenary soldiers of Leonidas refused to be
concerned in so infamous and unprecedented an action as laying hands
upon their king, Demochares threatening and abusing them greatly for
their disobedience, seized Agis with his own hands, and dragged him to
the execution room, where he was ordered to be dispatched immediately.
Agis submitted to his fate with equal intrepidity and resignation,
reproving one of the executioners who deplored his calamities, and
declaring himself infinitely happier than his murderers. The unfeeling
and treacherous Amphares attended the execution, and as soon as Agis was
dead, he admitted his mother and grandmother into the prison, who came
to intercede that Agis might be allowed to make his defence before the
people. The wretch assured the mother, with an insulting sneer, that her
son should suffer no heavier punishment than he had done already; and
immediately ordered her mother Archidamia, who was extremely old, to
execution. As soon as she was dead, he bid Agesistrata enter the room,
where, at the sight of the dead bodies, she could not refrain from
kissing her son, and crying out, that his too great lenity and
good-nature had been their ruin. The savage Amphares, laying hold of
those words, told her, that as she approved of her son’s actions she
should share his fate. Agesistrata met death with the resolution of an
old Spartan heroine, praying only that this whole affair might not prove
prejudicial to her country.

Thus fell the gallant Agis in the cause of liberty and publick virtue,
by the perfidy of his mercenary friends, and the violence of a corrupt
and most profligate faction. I have given a more particular detail of
the catastrophe of this unfortunate prince as transmitted to us by
Plutarch, because it furnishes convincing proofs, how greatly the
introduction of wealth had corrupted and debased the once upright and
generous spirit of the Spartans.

Archidamas, the brother of Agis, eluded the search made for him by
Leonidas, and escaped the massacre by flying from Sparta. But Leonidas
compelled his wife Agiatis, who was a young lady of the greatest beauty
in all Greece, and sole heiress to a vast estate, to marry his own son
Cleomenes, though Agiatis had but just lain-in of a son, and the match
was entirely contrary to her inclinations. This event however produced a
very different effect from what Leonidas intended, and after his death
proved the ruin of his party, and revenged the murder of Agis.[34] For
Cleomenes, who was very young, and extremely fond of his wife, would
shed sympathizing tears whenever she related the melancholy fate of
Agis, and occasionally desire her to explain his intentions, and the
nature of his scheme, to which he would listen with the greatest
attention. From that time he determined to follow so glorious an
example, but kept the resolution secret in his own breast until the
means and opportunity should offer. He was sensible that an attempt of
that nature would be utterly impracticable whilst his father lived; who,
like the rest of the leading citizens, had wholly given himself up to a
life of ease and luxury. Warned too by the fate of Agis, he knew how
extremely dangerous it was even once to mention the old frugality and
simplicity of manners, which depended upon the observance of the
discipline and institutions of Lycurgus. But as soon as ever he
succeeded to the crown at the death of his father, and found himself the
sole reigning king of Sparta without a colleague, he immediately applied
his whole care and study to accomplish that great change which he had
before projected. For he observed the manners of the Spartans in general
were grown extremely corrupt and dissolute, the rich sacrificing the
publick interest to their own private avarice and luxury; the poor, from
their extreme indigence, averse to the toils of war, careless and
negligent of education and discipline; whilst the ephori had engrossed
the whole royal power, and left him in reality nothing but the empty
title: circumstances greatly mortifying to an aspiring young monarch,
who panted eagerly after glory, and impatiently wished to retrieve the
lost reputation of his countrymen.

He began by sounding his most intimate friend, one Xenares, at a
distance only, inquiring what sort of a man Agis was, and which way, and
by whose advice, he was drawn into those unfortunate measures. Xenares,
who attributed all his questions to the curiosity natural to a young
man, very readily told him the whole story, and explained ingenuously
every particular of the affair as it really happened. But when he
remarked that Cleomenes often returned to the charge, and every time
with greater eagerness, more and more admiring and applauding the scheme
and character of Agis, he immediately saw through his design. After
reproving him, therefore, severely for talking and behaving thus like a
madman, Xenares broke off all friendship and intercourse with him,
though he had too much honour to betray his friend’s secret. Cleomenes,
not in the least discouraged at this repulse, but concluding that he
should meet with the same reception from the rest of the wealthy and
powerful citizens, determined to trust none of them, but to take upon
himself the whole care and management of his scheme.[35] However, as he
was sensible that the execution of it would be much more feasible, when
his country was involved in war, than in a state of profound peace, he
waited for a proper opportunity; which the Achæans quickly furnished him
with. For Aratus, the great projector of the famous Achæan league, into
which he had already brought many of the Grecian states, holding
Cleomenes extremely cheap, as a raw unexperienced boy, thought this a
favourable opportunity of trying how the Spartans stood affected
towards that union. Without the least previous notice therefore, he
suddenly invaded such of the Arcadians as were in alliance with Sparta,
and committed great devastations in that part of the country which lay
in the neighbourhood of Achaia.

The ephori, alarmed at this unexpected attack, sent Cleomenes at the
head of the Spartan forces to oppose the invasion. The young hero
behaved well, and frequently baffled that old experienced commander. But
his countrymen growing weary of the war, and refusing to concur in the
measures he proposed for carrying it on, he recalled Archidamus the
brother of Agis from banishment, who had a strict hereditary right to
the other moiety of the kingdom; imagining that when the throne was
properly filled according to law, and the regal power preserved entire
by the union of the two kings, it would restore the balance of
government and weaken the authority of the ephori. But the faction which
had murdered Agis, justly dreading the resentment of Archidamus for so
atrocious a crime, took care privately to assassinate him upon his
return.

Cleomenes now more than ever intent upon bringing his great project to
bear, bribed the ephori with large sums to intrust him with the
management of the war.[36] His mother Cratesiclea not only supplied him
with money upon this occasion, but married one Megistonus, a man of the
greatest weight and authority in the city, purposely to bring him over
to her son’s interest. Cleomenes taking the field, totally defeated the
army of Aratus, and killed Lydiadas the Megalopolitan general. This
victory, which was entirely owing to the conduct of Cleomenes, not only
raised the courage of his soldiers, but gave them so high an opinion of
his abilities, that he seems to have been recalled by his enemies,
jealous most probably of his growing interest with the army. For
Plutarch, who is not very methodical in his relations, informs us, that
after this affair, Cleomenes convinced his father-in-law, Megistonus, of
the necessity of taking off the ephori, and reducing the citizens to
their ancient equality according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as the
only means of restoring Sparta to her former sovereignty over
Greece.[37] This scheme therefore must have been privately settled in
Sparta. For we are next told, that Cleomenes again took the field,
carrying with him such of the citizens as he suspected were most likely
to oppose him. He took some cities from the Achæans that campaign, and
made himself master of some important places, but harrassed his troops
so much with many marches and countermarches, that most of the Spartans
remained behind in Arcadia at their own request, whilst he marched back
to Sparta with his mercenary forces and such of his friends as he could
most confide in. He timed his march so well that he entered Sparta
whilst the ephori were at supper, and despatched Euryclidas before with
three or four of his most trusty friends and a few soldiers to perform
the execution. For Cleomenes well knew that Agis owed his ruin to his
too cautious timidity, and his too great lenity and moderation. Whilst
Euryclidas therefore amused the ephori with a pretended message from
Cleomenes, the rest fell upon them sword in hand, and killed four upon
the spot, with above ten persons more who came to their assistance.
Agesilaus the surviver of them fell, and counterfeiting himself dead,
gained an opportunity of escaping. Next morning as soon as it was light,
Cleomenes proscribed and banished fourscore of the most dangerous
citizens, and removed all the chairs of the ephori out of the forum,
except one which he reserved for his own seat of judicature. He then
convoked an assembly of the people, to whom he apologized for his late
actions. He showed them, in a very artful and elaborate speech, “the
nature and just extent of the power of the ephori, the fatal
consequences of the authority they had usurped of governing the state by
their own arbitrary will, and of deposing and putting their kings to
death without allowing them a legal hearing in their own defence.[38]
He urged the example of Lycurgus himself, who came armed into the forum
when he first proposed his laws, as a proof that it was impossible to
root out those pests of the commonwealth, which had been imported from
other countries, luxury, the parent of that vain expense which runs such
numbers in debt, usury, and those more ancient evils, wealth and
poverty, without violence and bloodshed: that he should have thought
himself happy, if like an able physician he could have radically cured
the diseases of his country without pain: but that necessity had
compelled him to do what he had already done, in order to procure an
equal partition of the lands, and the abolition of their debts, as well
as to enable him to fill up the number of the citizens with a select
number of the bravest foreigners, that Sparta might be no longer exposed
to the depredations of her enemies for want of hands to defend her.”

To convince the people of the sincerity of his intentions, he first gave
up his whole fortune to the publick stock; Megistonus, his
father-in-law, with his other friends, and all the rest of the citizens,
followed his example. In the division of the lands, he generously set
apart equal portions for all those citizens he had banished, and
promised to recall them as soon as the publick tranquillity was
restored. He next revived the ancient method of education, the
gymnastick exercises, publick meals, and all other institutions of
Lycurgus; and lest the people, unaccustomed to the denomination of a
single king, should suspect that he aimed at establishing a tyranny, he
associated his brother Euclidas with him in the kingdom. By training up
the youth in the old military discipline, and arming them in a new and
better manner, he once more recovered the reputation of the Spartan
militia, and raised his country to so great a height of power, that
Greece in a very short time saw Sparta giving law to all
Peloponnesus.[39]

The Achæans, humbled by repeated defeats, and begging peace of Cleomenes
upon his own terms, the generous victor desired only to be appointed
general of their famous league, and offered upon that condition to
restore all the cities and prisoners he had taken. The Achæans gladly
consenting to such easy terms, Cleomenes released and sent home all the
persons of rank amongst his prisoners, but was obliged by sickness to
defer the day appointed for the convention, until his return from
Sparta. This unhappy delay was fatal to Greece.[40] For Aratus, who had
enjoyed that honour thirty-three years, could not bear the thought of
having it wrested from him by so young a prince, whose glory he envied
as much as he dreaded his valour. Finding therefore all other methods
ineffectual, he had recourse to the desperate remedy of calling in the
Macedonians to his assistance, and sacrificed the liberty of his own
country, as well as that of Greece, to his own private pique and
jealousy. Thus the most publick-spirited assertor of liberty, and the
most implacable enemy to all tyrants in general, brought back those very
people into the heart of Greece, whom he had driven out formerly purely
from his hatred to tyranny, and sullied a glorious life with a blot
never to be erased, from the detestable motives of envy and revenge. A
melancholy proof, as Plutarch moralizes upon the occasion, of the
weakness of human nature, which with an assemblage of the most excellent
qualities is unable to exhibit the model of a virtue completely perfect.
A circumstance which ought to excite our compassion towards those
blemishes which we unavoidably meet with in the most exalted characters.

Cleomenes supported this unequal war against the Achæans and the whole
power of Macedon with the greatest vigour, and by his success gave many
convincing proofs of his abilities; but venturing a decisive battle at
Sallasia, he was totally defeated by the superior number of his enemies,
and the treachery of Damoteles, an officer in whom he greatly confided,
who was bribed to betray him by Antigonus. Out of six thousand Spartans,
two hundred only escaped, the rest with their king Euclidas were left
dead on the field of battle. Cleomenes retired to Sparta, and from
thence passed over to Ptolemy Euergetes king of Egypt, with whom he was
then in alliance, to claim the assistance he had formerly promised. But
the death of that monarch, which followed soon after, deprived him of
all hopes of succour from that quarter. The Spartan manners were as
odious to his successor Ptolemy Philopater, a weak and dissolute prince,
as the Spartan virtue was terrible to his debauched effeminate
courtiers. Whenever Cleomenes appeared at court, the general whisper
ran, that he came as a lion in the midst of sheep; a light in which a
brave man must necessarily appear to a herd of such servile dastards.
Confined at last by the jealousy of Ptolemy, who was kept in a perpetual
alarm by the insinuations of his iniquitous minister Sosybius, he with
about twelve more of his generous Spartan friends broke out of prison
determined upon death or liberty. In their progress through the streets,
they first slew one Ptolemy, a great favourite of the king, who had been
their secret enemy; and meeting the governor of the city, who came at
the first noise of the tumult, they routed his guards and attendants,
dragged him out of his chariot, and killed him. After this they ranged
uncontrouled through the whole city of Alexandria, the inhabitants
flying every where before them, and not a man daring either to assist or
oppose them. Such terror could thirteen brave men only strike into one
of the most populous cities in the universe, where the citizens were
bred up in luxury, and strangers to the use of arms! Cleomenes,
despairing of assistance from the citizens, whom he had in vain summoned
to assert their liberty, declared such abject cowards fit only to be
governed by women. Scorning therefore to fall by the hands of the
despicable Egyptians, he with the rest of the Spartans fell desperately
by their own swords, according to the heroism of those ages.[41]

The liberty and happiness of Sparta expired with Cleomenes.[42] For the
remains of the Spartan history furnishes us with very little after his
death, besides the calamities and miseries of that unhappy state,
arising from their intestine divisions. Machanidas, by the aid of one of
the factions which at that time rent that miserable republick, usurped
the throne, and established an absolute tyranny. One Nabis, a tyrant,
compared to whom even Nero himself may be termed merciful, succeeded at
the death of Machanidas, who fell in battle by the hand of the great
Philopœmen. The Ætolians treacherously murdered Nabis, and endeavoured
to seize the dominion of Sparta; but they were prevented by Philopœmen,
who partly by force, partly by persuasion, brought the Spartans into the
Achæan league, and afterwards totally abolished the institutions of
Lycurgus.[43] A most inhuman and most iniquitous action, as Plutarch
terms it, which must brand the character of that hero with eternal
infamy. As if he was sensible that as long as the discipline of Lycurgus
subsisted, the minds of the Spartan youth could never be thoroughly
tamed, or effectually broke to the yoke of foreign government. Wearied
out at last by repeated oppressions, the Spartans applied to the Romans
for redress of all their grievances; and their complaints produced that
war which ended in the dissolution of the Achæan league, and the
subjection of Greece to the Roman domination.

I have entered into a more minute detail of the Spartan constitution, as
settled by Lycurgus, than I at first proposed; because the maxims of
that celebrated lawgiver are so directly opposite to those which our
modern politicians lay down as the basis of the strength and power of a
nation.

Lycurgus found his country in the most terrible of all situations, a
state of anarchy and confusion. The rich, insolent and oppressive; the
poor groaning under a load of debt, mutinous from despair, and ready to
cut the throats of their usurious oppressors. To remedy these evils, did
this wise politician encourage navigation, strike out new branches of
commerce, and make the most of those excellent harbours, and other
natural advantages which the maritime situation of his country afforded?
Did he introduce and promote arts and sciences, that by acquiring
and diffusing new wealth amongst his countrymen, he might make his
nation, in the language of our political writers, secure, powerful, and
happy? just the reverse. After he had new-modelled the constitution, and
settled the just balance between the powers of government, he abolished
all debts, divided the whole land amongst his countrymen by equal lots,
and put an end to all dissensions about property by introducing a
perfect equality. He extirpated luxury and a lust of wealth, which he
looked upon as the pests of every free country, by prohibiting the use
of gold and silver; and barred up the entrance against their return by
interdicting navigation and commerce, and expelling all arts, but what
were immediately necessary to their subsistence. As he was sensible that
just and virtuous manners are the best support of the internal peace and
happiness of every kingdom, he established a most excellent plan of
education for training up his countrymen, from their very infancy, in
the strictest observance of their religion and laws, and the habitual
practice of those virtues which can alone secure the blessings of
liberty and perpetuate their duration. To protect his country from
external invasions, he formed the whole body of the people, without
distinction, into one well armed, well disciplined national militia,
whose leading principle was the love of their country, and who esteemed
death in its defence, the most exalted height of glory to which a
Spartan was capable of attaining. Nor were these elevated sentiments
confined solely to the men; the colder breasts of the women caught fire
at the glorious flame, and glowed even with superior ardour. For when
their troops marched against an enemy, “to bring back their shields, or
to be brought home upon them,” was the last command which the Spartan
mothers gave their sons at parting.[44]

Such was the method which Lycurgus took to secure the independency and
happiness of his country; and the event showed, that his institutions
were founded upon maxims of the truest and justest policy. For I cannot
help observing upon the occasion, that from the time of Lycurgus to the
introduction of wealth by Lysander in the reign of the first Agis, a
space of five hundred years, we meet with no mutiny amongst the people,
upon account of the severity of his discipline, but on the contrary the
most religious reverence for, and the most willing and cheerful
obedience to the laws he established. As on the other hand, the wisdom
of his military institutions is evident from this consideration; that
the national militia alone of Sparta, a small insignificant country as
to extent, situated in a nook only of the Morea, not only gave laws to
Greece, but made the Persian monarchs tremble at their very name, though
absolute masters of the richest and most extensive empire the world
then knew.

I observe farther, that the introduction of wealth by Lysander, after
the conquest of Athens, brought back all those vices and dissensions
which the prohibition of the use of money had formerly banished; and
that all historians assign that open violation of the laws of Lycurgus,
as the period from which the decadence of Sparta is to be properly
dated. I observe too, with Plutarch, that though the manners of the
Spartans were greatly corrupted by the introduction of wealth, yet that
the landed interest (as I may term it) which subsisted as long as the
original allotments of land remained unalienable, still preserved their
state; notwithstanding the many abuses which had crept into their
constitution. But that as soon as ever the landed estates became
alienable by law, the moneyed interest prevailed, and at last totally
swallowed up the landed, which the historians remark as the
death’s-wound of their constitution. For the martial virtue of the
citizens not only sunk with the loss of their estates, but their number,
and consequently the strength of the state, diminished in the same
proportion. Aristotle, who wrote about sixty years after the death of
Lysander, in his examen of the Spartan republick, quite condemns that
law which permitted the alienation of their lands.[45] For he affirms,
that the same quantity of land which, whilst equally divided, supplied
a militia of fifteen hundred horse, and thirty thousand heavy armed
foot, could not in his time furnish one thousand; so that the state was
utterly ruined for want of men to defend it.[46] In the reign of Agis
the 3d, about a hundred years after the time of Aristotle, the number of
the old Spartan families was dwindled (as I remarked before) to seven
hundred; out of which about one hundred rich overgrown families had
engrossed the whole land of Sparta, which Lycurgus had formerly divided
into thirty-nine thousand shares, and assigned for the support of as
many families. So true it is, that a landed interest diffused through a
whole people is not only the real strength, but the surest bulwark of
the liberty and independency, of a free country.

From the tragical fate of the third Agis we learn, that when abuses
introduced by corruption are suffered by length of time to take root in
the constitution, they will be termed by those whose interest it is to
support them, essential parts of the constitution itself; and all
attempts to remove them will ever be clamoured against by such men, as
attempts to subvert it: As the example of Cleomenes will teach us, that
the publick virtue of one great man may not only save his falling
country from ruin, but raise her to her former dignity and lustre, by
bringing her back to those principles on which her constitution was
originally founded. Though the violent remedies made use of by Cleomenes
never ought to be applied, unless the disease is grown too desperate to
admit of a cure by milder methods.

I shall endeavour to show in its proper place, that the constitution
established by Lycurgus, which seemed to Polybius to be rather of divine
than of human institution, and was so much celebrated by the most
eminent philosophers of antiquity, is much inferior to the British
constitution as settled at the revolution.[47] But I cannot quit this
subject without recommending that excellent institution of Lycurgus
which provided for the education of the children of the whole community
without distinction. An example which under proper regulations would be
highly worthy of our imitation, since nothing could give a more
effectual check to the reigning vices and follies of the present age, or
contribute so much to a reformation of manners, as to form the minds of
the rising generation by the principles of religion and virtue. Where
the manners of a people are good, very few laws will be wanting; but
when their manners are depraved, all the laws in the world will be
insufficient to restrain the excesses of the human passions. For as
Horace justly observes....

   _Quid legis sine moribus
     Vanæ proficiunt._ Ode 24. lib. 3.

  [5] Dion. Halicarn. p. 248. edit. Rob. Steph. 1546.

  [6] Plutarch relates this affair greatly to the honour of
  Lycurgus in the beginning of his life.

  [7]

      Ἄγιδος γοῦν τοῦ βασιλέως
      ἐζημίωσαν αὐτόν

  Plut. vita Lycur. pag. 46. lit. c. Edit. Xiglandri.

  [8] Lycurgus was the first who collected the entire works of
  Homer; which he brought into Greece out of Asia-Minor.

  [9] Plutarch has taken no notice of them. But Xenophon has
  fully explained them in his treatise on the Spartan republick,
  p. 542, and seq.

  [10] Plut. Vit. Lycurg. ad finem.

  [11] Plut. ibid. p. 58. A. Ἡ γὰρ τῶν Ἐφόρων κατάστασις, &c.

  [12] De Rebuspubl. cap. 11. p. 154. vol. 2. Edit Basil. 1550.

  [13] Οὐ δῆτα φάναι παραδίδωμι γὰρ πολυχρονιωτέραν.

  [14] Arist. de. Rebuspubl. lib. 2. c. 7. p. 122. lit. 1. vol.
  2.

  [15] Polyb. lib. 6. p. 685. vol. 1. edit. Isaac Gronov. 1670.

  [16] Plut. in Vit. Lysand. p. 442. lit. E.

  [17] Plut. it Vit. Agesi. p. 617. lit. C.

  [18] In Vit. Agid. p. 796. lit. C.

  [19] Ibid. p. 797. lit. C.

  [20] In Vit Agid. p. 797. lit. A.

  [21] Ibid. lit. E.

  [22] Vita Agid. p. 797. lit. B.

  [23] Ibid. lit. C.

  [24] Ibid. p. 798. lit. B.

  [25] Something seems plainly to be wanting in this passage,
  which is strangely obscure and intricate. It is evident that
  Agis employed his uncle Agesilaus to persuade his mother, who
  was Agesilaus’s sister, τὴν μητέρα πείθειν, ἀδελφὴν οὖσαν τοῦ
  Ἀγησιλάου. The king himself entreats his mother to assist him,
  &c αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐδεῖτο τῆς μητρός. And after he has
  enumerated the advantages which would result from his scheme,
  Plutarch abruptly adds οὕτω μετέπεσον ταῖς γνώμαις αἱ γυναῖκες
  &c. in the plural number, though he had just before mentioned
  Agis’s mother only, as the woman applied to on this occasion.
  It is evident therefore that his grandmother and all their
  female friends and relations must have been present that time,
  though not mentioned, and that they were the only Spartan
  ladies who came heartily into his scheme. For when Agis
  afterwards offers his whole fortune to the publick, he assures
  the people that his mother and grandmother, τὰς μητέρας, and
  his friends and relations, who were the richest families in
  Sparta, were ready to do the same. As Agis certainly includes
  the wives of his friends and relations, and mentions no other
  women, I have taken that speech for my guide in giving the
  sense of this whole passage, in which I could get no assistance
  from any of the commentators.

  [26] In Vit. Agid. p. 798. lit. D.

  [27] Vit. Agid. p. 800. lit. A.

  [28] Ibid. 799. lit. A.

  [29] This is an oracle mentioned by Plutarch, about which the
  learned are not agreed: however, it seems to have given its
  responses in dreams.

  [30] The reader may be glad perhaps to find here the ceremony
  made use of upon this occasion. Vit. Agid. p. 800. lit. B.
  δι’ ἐτῶν ἐννέα λαβόντες οἱ Ἔφοροι, &c. Every ninth year the
  ephori taking the opportunity of a clear and still night, when
  the moon did not appear, sat silently and observed the sky with
  great attention, and if they saw a star shoot, they judged the
  kings had offended the gods; and removed them from government,
  until an oracle came from Delphos which was favourable to them.

  [31] Plut. Vit. Agid. p. 798. lit. A.

  [32] Ibid. p. 801. lit. B.

  [33] Vit. Agid. p. 803. lit. A.

  [34] Plut. Vit. Cleom. p. 805. lit. B.

  [35] Plut. Vit. Cleom. p. 809. lit. A.

  [36] Plut. Vit. Cleom. p. 807. lit. B.

  [37] Vit. Cleom. p. 808. lit. A.

  [38] Vit. Cleom. p. 809. lit. A.

  [39] Parallel. inter Agid. et Cleom. et T. et C. Gracch. p.
  844. lit. D.

  [40] Vit. Cleom. p. 811. lit. C.

  [41] Plut. Vit. Cleom. p. 822. lit. E.

  [42] Polyb. lib. 4. p. 479.

  [43] Plut. Vit. Philopœm. p. 365. lit. E.

  [44] To bring back their shields, implied victory; to be
  brought home upon them, a glorious death in defence of their
  country; because the Spartans, if possible, brought back and
  buried all who fell in battle in their native country.

  [45] Aristot. de Rebuspubl. lib. 2. cap. 7. fol. 122. lit.
  Θ.

  [46] Ἡ πόλις ἀπώλετο διὰ τὴν ὀλιγανθρωπίαν. Aristot. ibid.

  [47] Ὥστε θειοτέραν τὴν ἐπινοίαν ἢ κατ’ ἄνθρωπον
  αὐτὸν νομίζειν. Polyb. lib. 6. p. 683.




CHAPTER II.

OF ATHENS.


The republick of Athens, once the seat of learning and eloquence, the
school of arts and sciences, and the centre of wit, gaiety, and
politeness, exhibits a strong contrast to that of Sparta, as well in her
form of government, as in the genius and manners of her inhabitants.

The government of Athens, after the abolition of monarchy, was truly
democratick, and so much convulsed by those civil dissensions, which are
the inevitable consequences of that kind of government, that of all the
Grecian states, the Athenian may be the most strictly termed the seat of
faction. I observe that the history of this celebrated republick is
neither very clear nor interesting until the time of Solon. The laws of
Draco (the first legislator of the Athenians who gave his laws in
writing) affixed death as the common punishment of the most capital
crimes, or the most trivial offences; a circumstance which implies
either the most cruel austerity in the temper of the lawgiver, or such
an abandoned profligacy in the manners of the people, as laid him under
a necessity of applying such violent remedies. As the historians have
not clearly decided which of these was the case, I shall only remark,
that the humanity of the people, so natural to the human species, was
interested upon the occasion, and the excessive rigour of the laws
obstructed the very means of their being carried into execution. A plain
proof that a multiplicity of rigorous penal laws are not only
incompatible with the liberty of a free state, but even repugnant to
human nature. For the natural equity of mankind can easily distinguish
between the nature and degree of crimes; and the sentiments of humanity
will naturally be excited when the punishment seems to be too rigorous
in proportion to the demerits of the offender. The chief reason, in my
opinion, why so many offenders in our nation escape with impunity for
want of prosecution, is because our laws make no distinction, as to the
punishment, between the most trifling robbery on the highway, and the
most atrocious of all crimes, premeditated murder.

The remedy which Draco proposed by his laws, proving worse than the
disease, the whole body of the people applied to Solon, as the only
person equal to the difficult task of regulating their government. The
supreme power of the state was at that time vested in nine magistrates,
termed archons or governors, elected annually by the people out of the
body of the nobility. But the community in general was split into three
factions, each contending for such a form of government as was most
agreeable to their different interests. The most sensible amongst the
Athenians, dreading the consequence of these divisions, were willing, as
Plutarch informs us, to invest Solon with absolute power; but our
disinterested philosopher was a stranger to that kind of ambition, and
preferred the freedom and happiness of his countrymen to the splendour
of a crown.[48] He continued the archons in their office as usual, but
limited their authority by instituting a senate of four hundred persons
elected by the people, by way of ballot, out of the four tribes into
which the community was at that time divided. He revived and improved
the senate and court of Areopagus, the most sacred and most respectable
tribunal, not only of Greece, but of all which we ever read of in
history.[49] The integrity and equity of this celebrated court was so
remarkable, that not only the Greeks, but the Romans, sometimes,
submitted such causes to their determination which they found too
intricate and difficult for their own decision. To prevent all suspicion
of partiality either to plaintiff or defendant, this venerable court
heard all causes and passed their definitive sentence in the dark, and
the pleaders on either side were strictly confined to a bare
representation of the plain truth of the fact, without either
aggravation or embellishment. For all the ornament of fine language, and
those powers of rhetorick which tended to bias the judgment by
interesting the passions of the judges, were absolutely prohibited.
Happy if the pleaders were restricted to this righteous method in our
own courts of judicature, where great eloquence and great abilities are
too often employed to confound truth and support injustice!

It is evident from history that Solon at first proposed the institutions
of Lycurgus as the model for his new establishment. But the difficulty
which he met with in the abolition of all debts, the first part of his
scheme, convinced him of the utter impracticability of introducing the
laconick equality, and deterred him from all farther attempts of that
nature. The laws of Athens gave the creditor so absolute a power over
his insolvent debtor, that he could not only oblige the unhappy wretch
to do all his servile drudgery, but could sell him and his children for
slaves in default of payment. The creditors had made so oppressive an
use of their power, that many of the citizens were actually obliged to
sell their children to make good their payments; and such numbers had
fled their country to avoid the effects of their detestable inhumanity,
that, as Plutarch observes, the city was almost unpeopled by the
extortion of the usurers.[50] Solon, apprehensive of an insurrection
amongst the poorer citizens, who openly threatened to alter the
government, and make an equal partition of the lands, thought no method
so effectual to obviate this terrible evil, as to cancel all debts, as
Lycurgus had done formerly at Sparta. But some of his friends, to whom
he had privately communicated his scheme, with an assurance that he did
not propose to meddle with the lands, were too well versed in the art of
jobbing to neglect so fair an opportunity of making a fortune. For they
stretched their credit to the utmost in loans of large sums from the
moneyed men, which they immediately laid out in the purchase of landed
estates. A precedent which the treacherous Agesilaus copied too
successfully afterwards at Sparta. The cheat appeared as soon as the
edict for abolishing all debts was made publick: but the odium of so
flagitious a piece of roguery was thrown wholly upon Solon; as the
censure of the publick for all frauds and exactions committed by
officers in the inferior departments will naturally fall upon the
minister at the helm, however disinterested and upright.

This edict was equally disagreeable to the rich and to the poor. For the
rich were violently deprived of all that part of their property which
consisted in their loans, and the poor were disappointed of that share
of the lands which they so greedily expected. How Solon drew himself out
of this difficulty, historians have no where informed us. All we can
learn from them is, that the decree was at last received and submitted
to, and that Solon was still continued in his office with the same
authority as before.

This experiment gave Solon a thorough insight into the temper of his
countrymen, and most probably induced him to accommodate his subsequent
regulations to the humour and prejudices of the people. For as he wanted
the authority which naturally arises from royal birth, as well as that
which is founded on the unlimited confidence of the people, advantages
which Lycurgus possessed in so eminent a degree, he was obliged to
consult rather what was practicable, than what was strictly right; and
endeavour, as far as he was able, to please all parties. That he
acknowledged this, seems evident from his answer to one who asked him
“whether the laws he had given the Athenians were the best he could
possibly have made?”[51] “They are the best,” replied Solon, “which the
Athenians are capable of receiving.” Thus whilst he confined the
magistracies and the executive part of the government solely to the
rich, he lodged the supreme power in the hands of the poorer citizens.
For though every freeman whose fortune did not amount to a particular
census or estimate, was excluded from all state offices by the laws of
Solon; yet he had a legal right of giving his opinion and suffrage in
the Εκκλησια or assembly of the people, which was wholly composed of
this inferior class of citizens. But as all elections, and all cases of
appeal from the superior courts were determined by the voices of this
assembly; as no law could pass without their approbation, and the
highest officers in the republick were subject to their censure, this
assembly became the _dernier resort_ in all causes, and this mob
government, as it may be justly termed, was the great leading cause of
the ruin of their republick. Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher, who at
that time resided with Solon, justly ridiculed this excess of power
which he had lodged in the people.[52] For when he had heard some points
debated, first in the senate, and afterwards decided in the assembly of
the people, he humourously told Solon, that at Athens “wise men debated,
but fools decided.” Solon was as sensible of this capital defect as
Anacharsis; but he was too well acquainted with the licentiousness and
natural levity of the people, to divest them of a power, which he knew
they would resume by violence at the first opportunity. The utmost
therefore he could do was to fix his two senates as the moorings of the
constitution.[53] That of four hundred, to secure the state against the
fluctuating temper and tumultuous fury of the people;[54] that of the
areopagus, to restrain the dangerous encroachments of the great and
wealthy.[55] He repealed all the laws of Draco, those against murder
alone excepted; rightly judging, as Plutarch remarks, that it was not
only most iniquitous, but most absurd, to inflict the same punishment
upon a man for being idle, or stealing a cabbage or an apple out of a
garden, as for committing murder or sacrilege.[56] But as the account
handed down to us of the laws which Solon established is extremely lame
and imperfect, I shall only mention the sarcasm of Anacharsis upon that
occasion, as a proof of their insufficiency to answer that end for which
Solon designed them. For that philosopher comparing the corrupt manners
of the Athenians with the coercive power of Solon’s laws, resembled the
latter to cobwebs which would entangle only the poor and feeble;[57] but
were easily broke through by the rich and powerful. Solon is said to
have replied,[58] “that men would readily stand to those mutual
compacts, which it was the interest of neither party to violate; and
that he had so rightly adapted his laws to the reason of his countrymen,
as to convince them how much more advantageous it was to adhere to what
was just, than to be guilty of injustice.” The event, as Plutarch truly
observes, proved more correspondent to the opinion of Anacharsis, than
to the hopes of Solon. For Pisistratus, a near relation of Solon’s,
having artfully formed a strong party among the poorer citizens, by
distributing bribes under the specious pretence of relieving their
necessities, procured a guard of fifty men armed with clubs only for the
safety of his person, by the help of which he seized the citadel,
abolished the democracy, and established a single tyranny in spite of
all the efforts of Solon.[59]

This usurpation proved the source of endless faction, and brought
innumerable calamities upon the republick. Pisistratus was expelled more
than once by the opposite party, and as often brought back in triumph
either by the fraud or force of his prevailing faction. At his death he
left the kingdom to his two sons Hipparchus and Hippias. The former of
these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton for a personal
injury they had received;[60] Hippias was soon after driven out of
Athens by the Spartans at the instigation of some of his discontented
countrymen. Despairing of recovering his former sovereignty by any other
means, he fled to Darius for assistance, and was the cause of the first
invasion of Greece by the Persians, in which he died fighting against
his country in the ever memorable battle of Marathon. But the most fatal
evil which resulted from the usurpation of Pisistratus, was, that
perpetual fear of seeing the supreme power again lodged in the hands of
a single person.[61] For this fear kept the jealousy of the people in a
constant alarm, and threw them at last into the hands of the factious
demagogues. Hence superior merit was frequently represented as an
unpardonable crime, and a kind of high treason against the
republick.[62] And the real patriots were rendered suspected to the
people, just as the demagogues were influenced by envy or private pique,
or even bribed by ambitious or designing men, who aspired at the very
thing of which the others were unjustly accused. The history of Athens
abounds with instances of the levity and inconstancy of that unsteady
people. For how frequently do we find their best and ablest citizens
imprisoned or sentenced to banishment by the ostracism, in honour of
whom the same people had just before erected statues:[63] nay not
unfrequently raising statues to the memory of those illustrious and
innocent men, whom they had illegally doomed to death in the wantonness
of their power;[64] at once the monuments of their injustice and too
late repentance! This evil was the natural consequence of that capital
error in Solon’s polity, when he entrusted the supreme power to the
giddy and fluctuating populace. A defect which (as I observed before)
was the great leading cause of the loss of that liberty which they had
so licentiously abused. For as the removal of all the honest citizens
either by death or banishment paved an easy way for usurpation and
tyranny; so it was a measure invariably pursued, in the democratick
governments of Greece, by all those ambitious men who aimed at
subverting the liberties of their country. This truth is so clearly
explained, and so incontestably proved, by the great Thucydides, that
whilst I peruse the annals of that admirable historian, I cannot help
grieving over the tragick pages stained with the blood of so many
patriot citizens, who fell a sacrifice to the dire ambition and avarice
of faction. What a striking detail does he give us of the most
calamitous situation of all the Grecian republicks during the
Peloponnesian war! How does he labour for expression in his pathetick
enumeration of the horrible consequences of faction, after his
description of the destructive sedition at Corcyra! A contempt of all
religion, the open violation of the most sacred ties and compacts;
devastations, massacres, assassinations, and all the savage horrors of
civil discord inflamed even to madness, are the perpetual subjects of
his instructive history. Calamities of which he himself was at once an
eyewitness and a most faithful recorder.

Thucydides truly ascribes this destructive war to the mutual jealousy
which then subsisted between the Spartans and Athenians.[65][66] The
most stale frivolous pretences were trumped up by the Spartans, and as
strongly retorted by the Athenians. Both states made the interests or
grievances of their allies, the constant pretext for their mutual
altercations, whilst the real cause was that ambitious scheme which each
state had formed of reducing all Greece under its respective dominion.
But an event which both states seemed to have waited for, quickly blew
up the latent sparks of jealousy into the most violent flame.[67] The
Thebans privately entered the city of Platæa in the night (a small state
at that time allied to Athens) which had been betrayed to them by a
treacherous faction, who were enemies to the Athenians. But the honester
part of the Platæans recovering from their surprise, and taking notice
of the small number of the Thebans, quickly regained possession of their
city by the slaughter of most of the invaders. The Platæans immediately
applied to the Athenians for assistance; the Thebans to the
Spartans.[68] Both states entered eagerly into the quarrel between their
respective allies, and engaged as principals in that destructive war
which at last involved all Greece in the common calamity. Wherever the
fortune of the Spartan prevailed, an oligarchical aristocracy was
established, and the friends to a popular government destroyed or
banished. Where the Athenians were victors, democracy was settled or
restored, and the people glutted their revenge with the blood of the
nobility. Alternate revolts, truces violated as soon as made, massacres,
proscriptions, and confiscations, were the perpetual consequences, in
all the petty republicks, of the alternate good or bad success of those
two contending rivals. In a word, all Greece seems to have been seized
with an epidemick madness; and the polite, the humane Grecians treated
one another, during the whole course of this unnatural war, with a
ferocity unknown even to the most savage barbarians. The real cause,
assigned by Thucydides, of all these atrocious evils, was, “the lust of
domination arising from avarice and ambition:” for the leading men in
every state, whether of the democratick or aristocratick party, affected
outwardly the greatest concern for the welfare of the republick, which
in reality was made the prize for which they all contended.[69] Thus,
whilst each endeavoured by every possible method to get the better of
his antagonist, the most audacious villanies, and the most flagrant acts
of injustice were equally perpetrated by both sides. Whilst the moderate
men amongst the citizens, who refused to join with either side, were
alike the objects of their resentment or envy, and equally destroyed
without mercy by either faction.[70]

Historians unanimously agree, that the Athenians were instigated to this
fatal war by the celebrated Pericles. Thucydides, who was not only
cotemporary with Pericles, but actually bore a command in that war, does
real honour to that great man’s character; for he assigns his desire of
humbling the Spartans, and his zeal for the glory and interest of his
country, as the real motives of his conduct upon that occasion.[71] But,
as a detail of this tedious and ruinous war is wholly foreign to my
purpose, I shall only remark, that if ever union and harmony are
necessary to the preservation of a state, they are more essentially so
when that state is engaged in a dubious war with a powerful enemy. For
not only the continuation, but the event, of that long war, so fatal to
the Athenians, must (humanly speaking) be wholly attributed to the
disunion of their counsels, and the perpetual fluctuation in their
measures, occasioned by the influence of the ambitious and factious
demagogues. Not the calamities of war, nor the most dreadful plague,
ever yet recorded in history, were able to fix the volatile temper of
that unsteady people.[72] Elate beyond measure with any good success,
they were deaf to the most reasonable overtures of peace from their
enemies, and their views were unbounded. Equally dejected with any
defeat, they thought the enemy just at their doors, and threw the whole
blame upon their commanders, who were always treated as unpardonably
criminal when unsuccessful. The demagogues, who watched every turn of
temper in that variable people, took care to adapt every circumstance
that offered to their own ambitious views, either of gaining or
supporting an ascendency in the state, which kept up a perpetual spirit
of faction in that unhappy republick. Thus, in the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war, Cleon, a noisy seditious demagogue, declaimed
violently against Pericles, and was the constant opposer of all his
measures:[73] but the firmness and superior abilities of that great man
enabled him to baffle all his antagonists. When Pericles was carried off
by that fatal pestilence which almost depopulated Athens, the nobility,
jealous of that sway which Cleon had acquired over the people, set up
Nicias in opposition. Nicias was honest, and a real lover of his
country, but a man of no great abilities; and though an experienced
officer, yet cautious and diffident even to timidity.[74] In his temper
he was mild, humane, and averse to bloodshed, and laboured to put an end
to a war which spread such general destruction: but all his measures
were opposed by the turbulent Cleon; for when the Spartans proposed an
accommodation, Cleon persuaded the Athenians to insist upon such high
terms that the treaty broke off, and war was again renewed with the same
inveterate fury: but the incendiary Cleon, the chief obstacle to all
pacifick measures, falling in battle in the tenth year of that war,
negociations were again set on foot, and a peace for fifty years
concluded between the Athenians and the Spartans by the unwearied
endeavours of Nicias.[75] But whilst Nicias was intent upon the
enjoyment of that repose which he had procured, a new and infinitely
more formidable rival started up, and again involved his country and all
Greece in the same calamities by his restless and insatiable ambition.

Alcibiades now appeared upon the stage; a man composed of a motley
mixture of virtues and vices, of good and bad qualities; one who could
assume even the most opposite characters; and with more ease, than a
chameleon can change its colours, appear a very contrast to himself just
as his interest or ambition required.[76] This state Proteus was
strongly piqued at the growing power and reputation of Nicias. His lust
of power was too great to bear either a superior or an equal;[77] and he
determined at all events to supplant him, alike regardless either of the
equity of the means, or of the consequences of it to his country. The
Athenians were not a little displeased with the Spartans, who had not
been very punctual in fulfilling the conditions of the treaty.[78]
Alcibiades finding his countrymen in a humour very proper for his
purpose, inflamed them violently against Nicias, whom he publickly
accused as a secret friend and wellwisher to that people. Nicias
endeavoured to ward off the blow, and prevent his countrymen from coming
to an open rupture; but the intrigues of Alcibiades prevailed, who
procured himself to be elected general, and fresh hostilities to be
commenced against the allies of Sparta.[79]

The seventeenth year of this memorable war is remarkable for that fatal
expedition against Sicily, which gave a mortal blow to the Athenian
grandeur, and affords a signal instance of the terrible consequences of
faction. The Egestians, a small state in Sicily, applied to the
Athenians for assistance against the oppressions of the Syracusans.
Alcibiades, looking upon it as an object worthy of his ambition,
undertook the cause of these suppliants, and knew so well how to flatter
the vanity of his countrymen, that a large armament was decreed by the
people for that purpose, and Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus, a daring
but able officer, were elected generals.[80] Nicias was the only person
who had the honesty or courage to oppose a measure which he judged not
only rash, but to the last degree impolitick; but the Athenians were
deaf to all his remonstrances. The relief of the Egestians was only the
pretext; for the entire dominion of Sicily, as Thucydides assures us,
was the real object they had in view when they gave orders for that
powerful armament.[81] Alcibiades had promised them an easy conquest of
that island, which he looked upon only as a prelude to much greater
enterprises; and the besotted people had already swallowed up Italy,
Carthage, and Africa in their idle imaginations.[82] Both factions
concurred in the vigorous prosecution of this measure, though from very
different motives: the friends of Alcibiades, from the view of
aggrandizing their chief by that vast accession of wealth and glory
which they hoped for from this expedition: his enemies, from the hopes
of supplanting him in his absence, and gaining the lead in the
administration.[83] Thus the true interest of the state was equally
sacrificed to the selfish and private views of each party! But, in the
midst of these vast preparations, an odd accident threw the whole city
into confusion, and at once alarmed the superstition and jealousy of the
people. The terms, or statues of Mercury, were all defaced in one and
the same night by some unknown persons; nor could the Athenians ever
discover the real authors of this reputed sacrilege.[84] Proclamations
were issued with a free pardon, and reward for any of the accomplices
who could make a discovery, and the information of strangers and slaves
was allowed as legal evidence; but no information could be procured as
to the true authors of that particular fact; a circumstance which to me
does not appear at all surprising: for it was evidently, in my opinion,
a piece of party-craft played off against Alcibiades by the opposite
faction, who knew that to attack the established religion, was to touch
the master-spring of the passions of their countrymen.[85] Some slaves
indeed, and other low persons (suborned, as Plutarch asserts, by
Androcles,[86] one of the demagogues) deposed, that long before that,
some statues had been mutilated, and the most sacred mysteries of their
religion ridiculed, in a drunken frolick by some wild young fellows, and
that Alcibiades was of the party.[87] This information, which, according
to Plutarch, was a palpable contrivance of his enemies, enabled them to
fix the odium of the last action upon Alcibiades.[88] The demagogues of
the opposite faction greatly exaggerated the whole affair to the people.
They accused him of a treasonable design against the popular government,
and produced his contemptuous ridicule of the sacred mysteries, and the
mutilation of Mercury’s statues, in support of their charge; as they
urged his well known libertinism, and licentious life as a proof that he
must be the author of those insults upon their religion. Alcibiades not
only denied the charge, but insisted upon being brought immediately to a
legal trial; declaring himself ready to undergo the punishment inflicted
by the laws, if he should be found guilty.[89] He beseeched the people
not to receive any informations against him in his absence, but rather
to put him to death upon the spot if they judged him to be the
offender. He urged too, how impolitick it would be to send him with the
command of so great an army, whilst he lay under the imputation of a
crime of that nature, before they had taken thorough cognizance of the
affair: but his accusers dreading the effect which his interest with the
army, and his well known influence over the allied troops, which had
engaged in the expedition from their personal attachment to him, might
have upon the people, if he should be brought to immediate trial,
procured other demagogues of their party to dissuade the people from a
measure which they judged would disconcert their scheme. These men
pleaded the dangerous delay which such a proceeding might occasion, and
urged the necessity of dispatch in an enterprise of such vast
importance. They proposed therefore that the fleet should sail
immediately, but that Alcibiades should return when a day was appointed
for his trial.[90] For their intention was, as Thucydides remarks, to
recall and bring him to his trial when the popular prejudice ran strong
against him, which they knew they could easily spirit up in his absence.
It was decreed, therefore, that Alcibiades should depart immediately
upon the expedition.

This mighty armament, which carried the flower of the Athenian forces,
was the most splendid, the best fitted out, and the most expensive, that
had ever sailed from any of the Grecian ports to that very time.[91]
But the first thing we meet with in this expedition, is (what might
naturally be expected) a disagreement between the three generals as to
the manner of beginning their operations.[92] Alcibiades indeed brought
them both over to his opinion; but whilst he was disputing with his
colleagues in Sicily, his enemies at Athens were by no means idle. The
affair of the statues, and the pollution of the sacred mysteries, were
again brought upon the carpet. The people, naturally suspicious, never
inquired into the character of the informers, or the validity of the
evidence, but admitted all that offered without distinction; and, giving
easy credit to the most abandoned wretches, apprehended several of the
most eminent citizens, and committed them to prison.[93] One of these
persuaded another of his fellow prisoners, who was most liable to
suspicion, to take the crime upon himself, and to impeach some others as
his accomplices.[94] Urging this as a reason, that whether what he
confessed should be true or false, he would at least secure his own
pardon, and calm the present suspicions of the people. Andocides, for
that was the name of this person according to Plutarch, though it is
omitted by Thucydides, was prevailed upon by this kind of reasoning to
acknowledge himself guilty of defacing the statues, and to inform
against some others as accomplices in the same act of impiety.[95] Upon
this declaration the informer received his pardon, and all those who
were not mentioned in his information their liberty:[96] but processes
were made out against as many as he had named, and all who were
apprehended were tried, condemned, and executed upon his single
evidence. Those who escaped by flight were sentenced to die, and a price
set upon their heads by a publick proclamation. Whether the persons
condemned were guilty or innocent was not at all clear, according to
Thucydides. Plutarch tells us, that the friends and acquaintance of
Alcibiades, who fell into the hands of the people, were severely handled
on this occasion.[97] It is certain therefore that the information was
chiefly levelled at him by the artifice of the opposite faction; for
Thucydides informs us almost in the very next sentence, that the people
received the information against Alcibiades with all the fury of
prejudice, at the instigation of such of his enemies as had accused him
before he sailed upon the expedition.[98] And since they now had not the
least doubt of his being concerned in the affair of defacing the
statues, they were more than ever convinced that he was equally guilty
of the pollution of the mysteries, and that both those crimes were
committed by him and his associates with the same design of subverting
the popular government. For a body of Spartan troops happened to make an
incursion, in that very juncture, as far as the Isthmus, upon some
design or other against the Bœotians. This unlucky incident confirmed
the people in their suspicions that this was a scheme concerted
beforehand with Alcibiades, covered with the specious pretext of
attacking the Bœotians;[99] and that if the plot had not been happily
discovered in time, and the execution of it prevented by the death of
the conspirators, their city would most inevitably have been betrayed to
the Spartans.[100] Thus on every side suspicions fell strongly upon
Alcibiades, and the people determining to put him to death, sent a
private express to Sicily to recall him and such of his friends as were
named in the information. The officers dispatched in the Salaminian
galley, which was sent on that occasion, were ordered to acquaint
Alcibiades, that he was desired to return with them to Athens to clear
himself of those things which were objected to him before the people;
but they received a strict charge not to offer to take him or his
friends into custody; not only from the dread of some mutiny amongst
their own soldiers upon his account, but for fear the allied troops,
whom his influence had engaged, should desert and abandon the
enterprise.[101] Alcibiades obeyed the summons, and taking his friends,
who were included in the information, into his own ship, left Sicily in
company with the Salaminian galley, seemingly as if returning to Athens;
but, whether he only suspected, or, which is more probable, had received
intelligence of the measures taken by his enemies in his absence, he,
with his friends, went ashore at Thuria, and gave the Athenian officers
the slip, not caring to stand the sentence of the credulous and
prejudiced people.[102] The officers finding all their search after him
quite fruitless, returned to Athens without him, and the Athenians
passed sentence of death upon him and all those who accompanied him, and
confiscated their estates for non-appearance.[103] Thus, instead of
uniting their joint efforts to promote the success of an enterprise upon
which they had staked their all, the infatuated Athenians were intent
upon nothing but the cabals and intrigues of faction; and the folly of
the people, managed by their ambitious and selfish demagogues, deprived
the state of the only commander from whom they could rationally hope for
success in that hazardous expedition. A measure which occasioned the
total ruin both of their fleet and army, and gave a fatal shock to
their republick; for the soldiers were not only greatly dispirited at
the loss of a chief, in whose abilities they placed the most entire
confidence, but Alcibiades, in revenge for his usage, took refuge
amongst the Spartans, and prevailed upon them to send such supplies to
the Syracusans as completed the destruction of the Athenians in that
country.[104] Nicias was taken and put to death by the enemy; not a
single ship returned, and few of the men escaped either slaughter or
captivity.[105] The news of this terrible defeat threw the city into the
utmost consternation.[106] They at first gave up all hopes, and imagined
they should quickly see the enemy’s fleet in the Pyræum whilst they were
in this exhausted and defenceless condition. However, the dread of the
impending danger had this good effect that it made the populace
extremely tractable, and ready to support their magistrates in whatever
measures they judged most conducive to the common safety.[107] Nor could
any thing but union and harmony amongst themselves have possibly saved
them in the midst of so many enemies, with which they were surrounded.
For all the Greeks in general were highly elated, as Thucydides tells
us, with the ill success of the Athenians in Sicily.[108] Those who had
hitherto observed a strict neutrality in this war wanted no
solicitations to join in crushing that unhappy people, but rather
thought it glorious to have a share in a war which they concluded would
be but of short duration. The Spartan allies were more than ever
desirous of delivering themselves from the calamities of war which they
had so long suffered; whilst those states, which until that time had
received laws from the Athenians, exerted themselves above their
strength to support the revolt which they were then meditating. They
judged of the situation of affairs from the blind impulse of passion,
regardless of the dictates of reason, and fancied the next campaign
would finish the ruin of the Athenians. The Spartans, promising
themselves the certain dominion over all Greece, if the Athenians were
once reduced, made vast preparations for the war, to which all their
allies contributed their utmost; all got ready for opening the campaign
the spring following.[109]

The Athenians, now harmony was restored in the state, recovered their
spirits, and begun to act with vigour.[110] They applied themselves to
the re-establishment of their marine, the repairs of their
fortifications, and the care of storing their magazines with the
greatest diligence and economy, retrenching all such expenses as they
judged useless or superfluous. The good effects of this unanimity were
visible when the campaign opened, for they found themselves in a
condition to make head against their numerous enemies, though
strengthened by a new alliance with the Persians, and assisted with
Persian money; and they even gained some considerable advantages. An
event too happened, which greatly disconcerted the measures of their
enemies, and raised their state once more to its former power and
lustre. Alcibiades, a thorough libertine, who never stuck at the most
infamous means of gratifying his passions, debauched Timæa, the wife of
Agis, king of Sparta, his great friend and protector.[111] Dreading the
resentment of that prince for so shameful a breach of friendship and
hospitality, as well as the jealousy of the Peloponnesians, who had sent
private orders to Astyochus, the Lacedemonian admiral, to cut him off,
he fled to Tissaphernes, at that time governor of the provinces in the
lower Asia under the Persian monarch.[112] Alcibiades, who was a
consummate master in the art of address, quickly insinuated himself into
his good graces, and explained to him the true interest of the Persians
with respect to the Grecian republicks.[113] He showed him the bad
policy of raising one state to a superiority over all the rest, which
would deprive his master of all his allies, and oblige him to contend
alone with the whole power of Greece. He advised him to permit every
state to enjoy its own separate independent government; and
demonstrated, that by keeping them thus divided, his master might set
them together by the ears, and, by playing them one against another,
crush them all at last without the least danger. He added too, that an
alliance with the Athenians would be more advantageous to the Persian
interest, and preferable to that which he had made with the
Lacedæmonians. The crafty Persian was too able a politician not to
relish his advice; he paid the Peloponnesians their subsidy so ill, and
put off a naval engagement so long, under pretence of waiting for the
Phœnician fleet, that he wasted the strength of their navy, which was
far superior to the Athenian, and ruined all their measures.[114]

Whilst Alcibiades resided with Tissaphernes, and gave the Persians the
best instructions he could for regulating their conduct, he at the same
time formed a scheme for procuring the repeal of his sentence, and
liberty to return once more to his native country.[115] He judged the
best way to obtain this favour would be to convince the Athenians of his
intimacy with Tissaphernes. To effect this, he wrote to the chief
officers of the Athenian forces, which then lay at Samos, directing them
to inform all those of the greatest weight and authority how desirous he
was of revisiting Athens if the government should be once lodged in the
hands of a small number of the principal citizens; but that he could by
no means think of returning whilst the democracy subsisted, and the
state was governed by a parcel of abandoned wretches, who had so
scandalously driven him out of his country. Upon that condition he
promised to procure the friendship of Tissaphernes, and declared himself
ready to accept a share with them in the administration. The event
answered his expectations; for the officers and the leading men, both of
the sea and land forces, which were at Samos, were eagerly bent upon
subverting the democracy. Thus the treaty was set on foot at Samos, and
the scheme laid for altering the government.[116] The principal men were
in hopes of a share in the administration, and the inferior people
acquiesced from the expectation of large subsidies from the Persians.
Phrynicus, one of the generals, alone opposed it, sensible that
Alcibiades cared as little for an aristocratick government as for a
democracy, and had no other point in view (which, as Thucydides
acknowledges, was the real truth) than to procure such a change in the
present administration as might enable his friends to recall him. The
terms, however, which Alcibiades offered, were agreed to by the rest,
and Pisander, one of the leading men, was sent to Athens to manage the
affair.[117]

Pisander at first met with violent opposition from the people;[118] and
the enemies of Alcibiades in particular clamoured loudly against the
violation of the laws, when his return was proposed, which they chiefly
dreaded. But Pisander applied so artfully to the fears of the people,
and showed them so plainly that it was the only resource they had left
which could possibly save the state, that they at last agreed to it,
though with great reluctance.[119] He therefore, with ten others, was
appointed to settle the affair with Tissaphernes and Alcibiades as they
should judge most conducive to the interest of the republick; but
Tissaphernes, who dreaded the power of the Peloponnesians, was not so
ready to enter into a convention with the Athenians, as they were taught
to believe.[120] Alcibiades therefore, to save his credit, and conceal
from the Athenians his inability to make good what he had promised,
insisted, in the name of Tissaphernes, upon such high terms that the
treaty broke off, and the deputies returned to Samos, enraged at the
trick which they thought had been put upon them by Alcibiades.
Determined however, at all events, to pursue their scheme, Pisander,
with some of the deputies, returned to Athens, where their party had
already made a considerable progress, for they had privately
assassinated such of the leading men as were averse to an aristocracy,
and though they permitted the senate and people to assemble and vote as
usual, yet they would not allow any thing to be decreed but what they
thought proper;[121] besides, none but those of their own faction durst
venture to harangue the people; for if any one attempted to speak in
opposition, he was sure to be dispatched at the first convenient
opportunity; nor was any inquiry made after the assassins, or any
process issued out against those who were strongly suspected of the
murders. The people were so terrified with these bloody executions, that
they acquiesced to whatever was proposed, and every man thought himself
happy if no violence was offered him, even though he continued quiet and
silent. They were deprived even of the power of bewailing the common
calamity to each other, in order to concert measures for revenge: for
the faction had artfully spread so strong and so universal a diffidence
amongst the popular party, that no one durst venture to confide in his
neighbour, but each man suspected every other as an accomplice of the
crimes which were daily perpetrated.

In this situation Pisander found the city at his arrival,[122] and
immediately prepared to finish what his friends had so successfully
begun: convoking therefore an assembly of the people, the aristocratick
faction openly declared their resolution to abolish the ancient form of
government, and to lodge the supreme power in the hands of four hundred
of the nobility, who should govern the state in the manner they thought
best, with the power of assembling five thousand of the citizens to
consult with as oft as they thought proper. Pisander was the man who
acquainted the people with this definitive resolution,[123] but Antiphon
was the person who formed the plan, and was chief manager of the whole
affair: a man, according to the testimony of Thucydides, who knew him
personally, master of the greatest abilities, and of by far the most
nervous eloquence of any of his contemporaries. Thus the oligarchy was
established, and the Athenians deprived of that liberty which they had
enjoyed near one hundred years from the expulsion of Hippias: during
which whole space they had been subject to none, but had been
accustomed, above half that time, to lord it over others; for as soon as
this decree had passed in the assembly without opposition,[124] the
chiefs of the conspiracy artfully permitted such citizens as were upon
duty, but had not been let into the secret, to go wherever they pleased;
but directed their own friends to continue under arms, and disposed them
in such a manner as might best favour their enterprise: for the
Athenians kept at that time a constant guard upon their walls, as the
Spartan army was encamped in their neighbourhood. When they had made
their disposition, the four hundred nobles with poignards concealed
under their habits, and attended by an hundred and twenty daring young
fellows, whom they employed in their assassinations, surrounded the
senators,[125] and paying them what was due upon their salaries,
commanded them to depart the court. The senators tamely submitting,[126]
and not the least stir happening amongst the citizens, they proceeded to
elect magistrates out of their own body, and performed all the religious
ceremonies usually practised upon those occasions. When they had thus
got possession of the government, they did not think proper to recall
those whom the people had formerly banished, for fear of being obliged
to include Alcibiades in the number, whose enterprising genius they
dreaded extremely; but they behaved most tyrannically to the citizens,
putting some to death, throwing some into prison, and banishing others.

The spirit of liberty however is not so easily extinguished. Pisander
had brought mercenary troops with him out of some of the cities which he
passed through on his return to Athens, who were of great service to the
new governors in their enterprise:[127] but the forces at Samos
consisted of Athenian citizens, jealous even of the least attempt upon
the liberty of their country, and declared enemies to every species of
tyranny. The first news which these brave fellows received of the
usurpation, brought such exaggerated accounts of the cruelty and
insolence of the four hundred, that they were with great difficulty
restrained from cutting every one to pieces who was in the interest of
the oligarchy. However,[128] they took the command from their former
generals, and cashiered every officer they suspected, substituting
others in their places; the chief of whom were Thrasybulus and
Thrasyllus. Alcibiades was recalled,[129] and unanimously declared their
captain general both by the sea and land forces; which gave such a turn
to affairs at Athens, that the four hundred were deposed, in spite of
all their efforts to continue in power, and the publick tranquillity
once more established.

The people confirmed Alcibiades in the command, and committed the whole
management of the war to his conduct.[130] But his soul was too great to
receive his recall from banishment, and even his high post as an act of
favour.[131] He determined to merit both by some signal service, and not
to revisit Athens until he could return with glory. His usual success
attended him in this war, and he seemed to bring victory with him
wherever he appeared; for he gained so many victories both by sea and
land, and distressed the Peloponnesians so much by his address and
conduct, that he once more retrieved the dominion of the sea, and
returned triumphant to Athens.[132] His entry was splendidly
magnificent, adorned with the trophies of two hundred ships of war,
which he had destroyed or taken, and a vast number of prisoners.[133]
His reception was attended with all the honours and applause he had so
justly merited. The people, conscious of the late happy change in their
affairs under the administration of Alcibiades, lamented with tears
their miscarriage in Sicily, and other subsequent calamities; all which
they imputed to their own fatal error in not trusting the sole command
to so able and successful a commander.

The fortune however of this great man was perpetually fluctuating, and
seemed to be ever on the extreme; and Plutarch remarks,[134] that if
ever man owed his ruin to his own glory, it must be Alcibiades; for the
people were so prepossessed with the opinion of his courage and conduct,
that they looked upon him as absolutely invincible. Whenever therefore
he failed in any one point, they imputed it entirely to his neglect, or
want of will; for they could imagine nothing so difficult, but what they
thought him able to surmount, if he applied to it with earnestness and
vigour. Thus, in the same campaign, he sailed to the isle of Andros
with a powerful fleet, where he defeated the joint forces of the
inhabitants and Spartans; but, as he did not take the city, he gave his
enemies a fresh handle for renewing their usual accusations; for the
people already fancied themselves masters of Chios and the rest of
Ionia, and were extremely out of humour because his conquests did not
keep pace with their heated imaginations. They made no allowance for the
wretched state of their finances, which frequently obliged him to quit
his army to go in search of money to pay, and provisions to subsist, his
forces, whilst their enemies had a constant resource for all their wants
in the treasures of Persia. To one of these excursions, which necessity
obliged him to make in order to raise money, he properly owed his ruin:
for leaving the command of the fleet to one Antiochus, an able seaman
indeed, but rash, in every other respect unequal to such a charge, he
gave him the most positive orders not to fight the enemy upon any
account whatsoever during his absence; but the vain Antiochus treated
his orders with so much contempt, that he sailed out with a few ships to
brave the Spartan admiral Lysander, which brought on a general
engagement. The event was, the death of Antiochus, the defeat of the
Athenians, who lost many of their ships, and a trophy erected by the
Spartans in honour of their victory. Alcibiades, at the first news of
this misfortune, returned to Samos with precipitation, and endeavoured
to bring Lysander to a decisive action; but the wary Spartan knew too
well how different a man he had now to deal with, and would by no means
hazard a second engagement.

In the mean time one Thrasybulus,[135] who bore a mortal enmity to
Alcibiades, posted to Athens, and impeached him as the cause of the late
defeat, affirming that he committed the care of the fleet to his
potcompanions, whilst he rambled at pleasure amongst the provinces,
raising money, and living in a state of riot and dissipation with wine
and women. A violent charge, besides, was brought against him for
fortifying a place near Bizanthe,[136] as a retreat upon occasion, which
his enemies urged as a proof that he either was not able, or not
willing, to reside in his native country.

Jealousy and inconstancy were the characteristicks of the Athenian
people. They gave implicit belief to the suggestions of his enemies, and
discharged, as Plutarch tells us, the fury of their gall upon the
unfortunate Alcibiades, whom they deprived immediately of the command.

Thucydides,[137] speaking of the behaviour of his countrymen to
Alcibiades upon the impeachment brought against him for defacing the
statues, imputes their ruin to that jealousy which they constantly
harboured both of his ambition and abilities. For though he had done the
state many great and signal services, yet his way of life made him so
odious to every individual, that the command was taken from him and
given to others, which not long after drew on the destruction of the
republick.

For Tydeus,[138] Menander, and Adimantus, the new generals, who lay with
the Athenian fleet, in the river Ægos, were so weak as to sail out every
morning at daybreak to defy Lysander, who kept his station at Lampsacus;
and, at their return from this idle bravado, spent the rest of the day
without order or discipline, or keeping any look-out, from an affected
contempt of the enemy. Alcibiades, who was at that time in the
neighbourhood, and thoroughly sensible of their danger, came and
informed them of the inconveniences of the place where their fleet then
lay, and the absurdity of suffering their men to go ashore and ramble
about the country. He assured them too, that Lysander was an experienced
and vigilant enemy, who knew how to make the most of every advantage:
but they, vain of their new power, despised his advice, and treated him
with the utmost rudeness. Tydeus, in particular, ordered him to be gone,
and told him insolently, that not he, but they were now commanders, and
knew best what to do. The event happened as Alcibiades had foreseen.
Lysander attacked them unexpectedly whilst they lay in their usual
disorder, and gained so complete a victory, that of all their fleet
eight vessels alone escaped, which fled at the first onset. The able
Spartan, who knew as well how to make use of, as to gain, a victory,
soon after compelled Athens itself to surrender at discretion. As soon
as he was master of the city,[139] he burnt all their shipping, placed a
garrison in their citadel, and demolished the rest of their
fortifications. When he had thus reduced them to a state of absolute
subjection, he abolished their constitution, and left them to the mercy
of thirty governors of his own choosing, well known in history by the
appellation of the Thirty Tyrants.

This tyranny, though of very short duration, was to the last degree
inhuman. The tyrants sacrificed all whom they suspected to their fear,
and all who were rich to their avarice. The carnage was so great, that,
according to Xenophon,[140] the thirty put more Athenians to death in
eight months only, than had fallen in battle, against the whole force of
the Peloponnesians, during ten years of the war. But the publick virtue
of Thrasybulus[141] could not bear to see his country enslaved by such
inhuman monsters: collecting therefore about seventy determined
citizens, who, like him, had fled to Thebes for refuge, he first seized
upon Phyle,[142] a strong fort near Athens; and, strengthened by the
accession of fresh numbers, which flocked in to him from every side, he
got possession of the Pyræum.[143] The thirty tyrants endeavoured to
retake it, but were repulsed, and Critias[144] and Hippomachus, two of
their number, slain in the attempt. The people now, weary of the
tyrants,[145] drove them out of the city, and chose ten magistrates, one
out of each tribe, to supply their places. The tyrants applied to their
friend Lysander, who sailed and invested the Pyræum, and reduced
Thrasybulus, and his party, to an extreme want of necessaries, for they
were yet confined to the Pyræum, as the people, though they had deposed
the tyrants, yet refused to receive them into the city; but
Pausanias,[146] one of the kings of Sparta, who commanded the land
forces in this expedition, jealous of the reputation which that great
man had acquired, gained over two of the ephori, who accompanied him,
and granted peace to the Athenians notwithstanding all the opposition of
Lysander. Pausanias returned to Sparta with his army, and the
tyrants,[147] despairing of assistance, began to hire foreign troops,
and were determined to re-establish themselves by force in that power of
which they had been so lately deprived. But Thrasybulus, informed of
their design, marched out with all his forces, and, drawing them to a
parley, punished them with that death their crimes so justly merited.
After the execution of the tyrants, Thrasybulus proclaimed a general act
of indemnity and oblivion, and by that salutary measure restored peace
and liberty to his country without further bloodshed.

The conclusion of the Peloponnesian war may properly be termed the
period of the Athenian grandeur; for though, by the assistance of the
Persians, they made some figure after that time, yet it was of but short
duration. The manners of the people were greatly degenerated, and the
extreme scarcity of virtuous characters, so visible in their subsequent
history, marks at once the progress and the degree of their degeneracy.
Conon, who escaped with eight ships only when they were so totally
defeated by Lysander, had convinced the Persian monarch how much his
interest was concerned in supporting the Athenians, and obtained the
command of a powerful armament in their favour. Whilst the artful
Tithraustus,[148] general of the Persian forces in Asia, raised a
strong confederacy against the Spartans by properly distributing large
sums amongst the leading men of the Grecian republicks. Conon[149]
totally defeated the Spartan fleet commanded by Pisander, and, by the
help of the Persian money, rebuilt[150] the strong walls and other
fortifications of Athens, which Lysander had demolished. The
Spartans,[151] jealous of the rising power of the Athenians who seemed
to aspire at recovering their former grandeur, made such advantageous
offers to the Persians by their admiral Antalcidas, that they once more
drew them over to their party. Conon[152] was recalled and imprisoned
upon the suggestions of Antalcidas, that he had embezzled the money
allotted for the re-establishment of Athens, and was no friend to the
Persian interest. The Athenians now sent Thrasybulus, their great
deliverer, with a fleet of forty sail to annoy the Spartans: he reduced
several cities which had revolted to the enemy, but was slain by the
Rhodians in an unsuccessful attempt upon their island. Conon,[153]
according to Justin, was executed at Susa by the Persians. Xenophon, who
lived at the same time, is silent as to his death; but, whatever might
be his fate, it is certain he is no more mentioned in history. After the
death of these two great men we meet with none but Chabrias, Iphicrates,
and Timotheus, the son of Conon, whose characters are worthy of our
notice, until the time of Demosthenes and Phocion. The martial spirit of
the Athenians subsided in proportion as luxury and corruption gained
ground amongst them. The love of ease, and a most insatiable fondness
for diversions, now took place of those generous sentiments which before
knew no other object but the liberty and glory of their country. If we
trace the rise of publick virtue up to its first source, and show the
different effects arising from the prevailing influence of the different
ruling passions, we may justly account for the fatal and amazing change
in that once glorious republick. A short digression therefore, on that
subject, may perhaps be neither unuseful nor unentertaining.

Of all human passions, ambition may prove the most useful, or the most
destructive to a people. The ...

   _... Digito ... monstrari et dicier hic est_;[154]

the fondness for admiration and applause seems coeval with man, and
accompanies us from the cradle to the grave. Every man pants after
distinction, and even in this world affects a kind of immortality. When
this love of admiration and applause is the only end proposed by
ambition, it then becomes a primary passion; all the other passions are
compelled to be subservient, and will be wholly employed on the means
conducive to that end. But whether this passion for fame, this eagerness
after that imaginary life, which exists only in the breath of other
people, be laudable or criminal, useful or frivolous, must be determined
by the means employed, which will always be directed to whatever happens
to be the reigning object of applause. Upon this principle, however the
means may differ, the end will be still the same; from the hero down to
the boxer in the bear-garden; from the legislator who new-models a
state, down to the humbler genius who strikes out the newest cut for a
coat-sleeve. For it was the same principle directing to the same end,
which impelled Erostratus to set fire to the temple of Diana, and
Alexander to set the world in a flame so quickly after.

There is no mark which so surely indicates the reigning manners of a
people at different periods, as that quality or turn of mind, which
happens to be the reigning object of publick applause. For as the
reigning object of applause will necessarily constitute the leading
fashion, and as the leading fashion always takes rise among the great or
leading people; if the object of applause be praiseworthy, the example
of the great will have a due influence upon the inferior classes; if
frivolous or vicious, the whole body of the people will take the same
cast, and be quickly infected by the contagion. There cannot, therefore,
be a more certain criterion, by which we may form our judgment of the
national virtue or national degeneracy of any people, in any period of
their existence, than from those characters, which are the most
distinguished in every period of their respective histories. To analyze
these remarkable characters, to investigate the end proposed by all
their actions, which opens to us all their secret springs; and to
develop the means employed for the acquisition of that end, is not only
the most entertaining, but, in my opinion, by much the most useful, part
of history. For as the reigning object of applause arises from the
prevailing manners of a people, it will necessarily be the reigning
object of desire, and continue to influence the manners of succeeding
generations, until it is opposed, and gradually gives way to some new
object. Consequently the prevailing manners of any people may be
investigated without much difficulty, in my opinion, if we attend to the
increase or decrease of good or bad characters, as recorded in any
period of their history; because the greater number will generally
endeavour to distinguish themselves by whatever happens at that time to
be the reigning object of applause. Hence too we may observe the
progressive order, in which the manners of any people prepared the way
for every remarkable mutation in their government. For no essential
mutation can ever be effected in any government (unless by the violence
of external force) until the prevailing manners of the people are ripe
for such a change. Consequently, as like causes will ever produce like
effects; when we observe the same similarity of manners prevailing
amongst our own people, with that which preceded the last fatal mutation
of government in any other free nation; we may, at such a time, give a
shrewd guess at the approaching fate of our constitution and country.
Thus in the infancy and rise of the Grecian republicks, when necessity
of self-defence had given a manly and warlike turn to the temper of the
people, and the continuance of the same necessity had fixed it into a
habit, the love of their country soon became the reigning object of
publick applause. As this reigning object consequently became the chief
object of desire to every one who was ambitious of publick applause, it
quickly grew to be the fashion. The whole people in those states glowed
with the generous principle of publick virtue to the highest degree of
enthusiasm. Wealth had then no charms, and all the bewitching pleasures
of luxury were unknown, or despised. And those brave people courted and
embraced toils, danger, and even death itself, with the greatest ardour,
in pursuit of this darling object of their universal wishes. Every man
planned, toiled, and bled, not for himself, but for his country. Hence
the produce of those ages was a race of patriot statesmen and real
heroes. This generous principle gave rise to those seminaries of manly
bravery and heroick emulation, the Olympick, Isthmian, and other publick
games. To obtain the victory at those scenes of publick glory was
esteemed the utmost summit of human felicity, a wreath of wild olive,
laurel or parsley (the victor’s prize) that _palma nobilis_, as Horace
terms it, which

   _Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos_,

was infinitely more the object of emulation in those generous times,
than coronets and garters are of modern ambition. Let me add too, that
as the former were invariably the reward of merit only, they reflected a
very different lustre upon the wearer. The honours acquired at these
games quickly became the darling themes of the poets, and the charms of
musick were called in to give additional graces to poetry. Panegyrick
swelled with the most nervous strokes of eloquence, and decked up with
all the flowers of rhetorick, was joined to the fidelity and dignity of
history; whilst the canvass glowing with mimick life, and the animated
marble contributed all the powers of art to perpetuate the memory of the
victors. These were the noble incentives, which fired the Grecian youth
with the glorious emulation of treading in the steps of those
publick-spirited heroes, who were the first institutors of these
celebrated games. Hence that refined taste for arts and sciences arose
in Greece, and produced those masterpieces of every kind, the
inimitable remains of which not only charm, but raise the justest
admiration of the present times.

This taste raised a new object of applause, and at last supplanted the
parents which gave it birth. Poetry, eloquence, and musick became
equally the subjects of emulation at the publick games, were allotted
their respective crowns, and opened a new road to fame and immortality.
Fame was the end proposed and hoped for by all; and those who despaired
of attaining it by the rugged and dangerous paths of honour, struck into
the new and flowery road,[155] which was quickly crowded with the
servile herd of imitators. Monarchs turned poets,[156] and great men,
fiddlers; and money was employed to bias the judges at the publick games
to crown wretched verses and bungling performers with the wreaths
appropriated only to superior merit. This taste prevailed more or less
in every state of Greece (Sparta alone excepted) according to the
different turn of genius of each people; but it obtained the most ready
admission at Athens, which quickly became the chief seat of the muses
and graces.

Thus a new object of applause introducing a new taste, produced that
fatal alteration in the manners of the Athenians, which became a
concurrent cause of the ruin of their republick. For though the manners
of the Athenians grew more polite, yet they grew more corrupt, and
publick virtue ceased gradually to be the object of publick applause and
publick emulation. As dramatick poetry affected most the taste of the
Athenians; the ambition of excelling in that species of poetry was so
violent, that Æschylus died with grief, because in a publick contention
with Sophocles the prize was adjudged to his antagonist.[157] But though
we owe the finest pieces of that kind now extant to that prevailing
taste, yet it introduced such a rage for theatrical entertainments as
fatally contributed to the ruin of the republick.

Justin informs us that the publick virtue of Athens declined immediately
after the death of Epaminondas.[158] No longer awed by the virtue of
that great man, which had been a perpetual spur to their ambition, they
sunk into a lethargy of effeminate indolence. The publick revenues
appropriated for the service of the fleet and army were squandered in
publick festivals and publick entertainments. The stage was the chief
object of the publick concern, and the theatres were crowded whilst the
camp was a desert. Who trod the stage with the greatest dignity, or who
excelled most in the conduct of the drama; not who was the ablest
general, or most experienced admiral, was the object of the publick
research and publick applause. Military virtue and the science of war
were held cheap, and poets and players engrossed those honours due only
to the patriot and the hero; whilst the hard-earned pay of the soldier
and the sailor was employed in corrupting the indolent pleasure-taking
citizen. The fatal consequence of this degeneracy of manners, as Justin
assures, was this: that the able Philip, taking advantage of the
indolence and effeminacy of the Athenians, who before took the lead in
defence of the liberty of Greece, drew his beggarly kingdom of Macedon
out of its primitive obscurity, and at last reduced all Greece under the
yoke of servitude. Plutarch, in his inquiry whether the Athenians were
more eminent in the arts of war or in the arts of peace, severely
censures their insatiable fondness for diversions.[159] He asserts, that
the money idly thrown away upon the representation of the tragedies of
Sophocles and Euripides alone, amounted to a much greater sum than had
been expended in all their wars against the Persians, in defence of
their liberty and common safety. That judicious philosopher and
historian, to the eternal infamy of the Athenians, records a severe but
sensible reflection of a Lacedemonian who happened to be present at
these diversions. The generous Spartan, trained up in a state where
publick virtue still continued to be the object of publick applause
could not behold the ridiculous assiduity of the choragi, or magistrates
who presided at the publick shows, and the immense sums which they
lavished in the decorations of a new tragedy, without indignation. “He
therefore, frankly told the Athenians, that they were highly criminal in
wasting so much time, and giving that serious attention to trifles,
which ought to be dedicated to the affairs of the publick.[160] That it
was still more criminal to throw away upon such bawbles as the
decorations of a theatre, that money which ought to be applied to the
equipment of their fleet, or the support of their army. That diversions
ought to be treated merely as diversions, and might serve to relax the
mind at our idle hours,[161] or when over a bottle; if any kind of
utility could arise from such trifling pleasures. But to see the
Athenians make the duty they owed to their country give way to their
passion for the entertainments of the theatre, and to waste unprofitably
that time and money upon such frivolous diversions, which ought to be
appropriated to the affairs and the necessities of the state, appeared
to him to be the height of infatuation.”

Could we raise the venerable philosopher from the grave to take a short
survey of the present manners of our own countrymen, would he not find
them an amazingly exact copy of those of the Athenians, in the times
immediately preceding their subjection to Macedon? Would he not see the
same series of daily and nightly diversions, adapted to the taste of
every class of people, from the publick breakfasting (that bane to the
time and industry of the tradesman) up to our modern orgies, the
midnight-revels of the masquerade? If he censured the Athenians for
throwing away so much time and attention upon the chaste and manly
scenes of Sophocles and Euripides, what must he have thought of that
strange _Shakespearomania_ (as I may term it) which prevailed so lately,
and so universally amongst all ranks and all ages? Had he inquired of
those multitudes who so long crowded both theatres at the representation
of Romeo and Juliet, what were the striking beauties which so strongly
and so repeatedly engaged their attention, could a tenth part of the
affected admirers of that pathetick poet, have given him a more
satisfactory answer than, “that it was the fashion?” would he not be
convinced that fashion was the only motive, when he saw the same people
thronging with the same eagerness, and swallowing the ribaldry of modern
farce, and the buffoonery of pantomime with the same fury of applause?
must he not have pronounced, that they as much exceeded the Athenians in
thoughtless levity and folly, as they sunk beneath them in taste and
judgment? For Plutarch does not find fault with the fine taste of the
Athenians for the noble compositions of those incomparable poets; but
for that excess of passion for the theatre, which, by setting up a new
object of applause, had almost extinguished that publick virtue, for
which they had been so greatly eminent; and made them more solicitous
about the fate of a new tragedy, or the decision of the pretensions of
two rival players, than about the fate of their country. But what idea
must he have of the higher class of our people, when he saw those who
should be foremost in a time of distress and danger, to animate the
drooping spirit of their countrymen by the lustre of their example,
attentive only to the unmanning trills of an opera; a degree of
effeminacy which would have disgraced even the women of Greece, in times
of greatest degeneracy. If he was informed that this species of
diversion was so little natural to the rougher genius, as well as
climate of Britain, that we were obliged to purchase and fetch over the
worst performers of Italy at the expense of vast sums; what opinion must
he form of our understanding? but if he was to see the insolence of
these hirelings, and the servile prostration of their paymasters to
these idols of their own making, how must such egregious folly excite
his contempt and indignation! In the midst of these scenes of
dissipation, this varying round of unceasing diversions, how must he be
astonished at the complaint of poverty, taxes, the decay of trade, and
the great difficulty of raising the necessary supplies for the publick
service, which would strike his ear from every quarter! would not his
censure upon our inconsistent conduct be just the same which the honest
Spartan passed upon the infatuated Athenians? when a national militia of
sixty thousand men only was asked for, would he not have blushed for
those who opposed a measure (once the support and glory of every free
state in Greece) and whittled it down to half the number from a
pretended principle of economy? but could his philosophick gravity
refrain a smile, when he saw the same people lavishing their thousands
in subscriptions to balls, concerts, operas, and a long train of
expensive et cætera’s, yet so wonderous frugal in pounds, shillings, and
pence, in a measure so essential to the very safety of the nation? If
therefore he saw a people bending under an accumulating load of debt,
almost to bankruptcy, yet sinking more and more into a luxury, known in
his time only to the effeminate Persians, and which required the wealth
of Persia to support it: involved in a war, unsuccessful until measures
were changed with ministers; yet indulging in all the pleasures of pomp
and triumph, in the midst of national losses and national dishonour: ...
contracting daily fresh debts of millions, to carry on that war, yet
idly consuming more wealth in the useless pageantry of equipage, dress,
table, and the almost innumerable articles of expensive luxury, than
would support their fleets and armies; he could not help pronouncing
such a people mad past the cure of Hellebore, and self-devoted to
destruction.

This strange degeneracy of the Athenian manners, which Plutarch so
severely censures, was first introduced (as that great man informs us)
by Pericles.[162] That ambitious man determined to supplant his rival
Cimon, who, by the _eclat_ of his victories, and the services he had
done the publick, was considered as the first man in Athens, and
supported his popularity by the distribution of a large fortune.
Pericles, greatly inferior in point of fortune, and no way able to
contend with him in liberality and magnificence, struck out a new method
of gaining over the people to his party. He procured a law, by which
every citizen was entitled to a gratuity out of the publick money, not
only for attending at the courts of judicature, and assemblies of the
states; but even at the entertainments of the theatre, and the publick
games and sacrifices on their numerous days of festivity. Thus Pericles
bought the people with their own money; a precedent which has been so
successfully followed by corrupt and ambitious statesmen in all
succeeding ages. To this piece of state-craft, not to superior
abilities, late ministers owed their long reigns, which enabled them to
reduce corruption into system.

The consequence of this corruption, as we may gather from the writings
of Demosthenes, was, that in a few years time the Athenians were no more
the same people. The annual fund, appropriated to the publick service
for the army and navy, was wholly diverted to the support of the
theatre. Their officers regarding nothing but their rank and pay,
instead of patriots, were degenerated into mere mercenaries.[163] The
emulation, of who should serve their country best, no longer subsisted
amongst them; but of who should obtain the most lucrative command. The
people tasting the sweets of corruption, and enervated by the luxury of
a city, which was one perpetual scene of festivals and diversions, grew
averse to the toils and dangers of war, which now seemed an
insupportable slavery, and beneath the dignity of free citizens. The
defence of the state was committed to mercenary hirelings, who behaved
so ill that their affairs were in the utmost disorder. Of all their
leading men, Demosthenes and Phocion were alone proof against the gold
of Macedon; the rest were Philip’s known and avowed pensioners.
Demosthenes, at this alarming juncture, laid before the people the
ambitious views of Philip, and the distressed situation of their
country, with the utmost freedom. He employed all the energy and pathos
of eloquence, to rouse them out of that lethargy of indolence and
inattention to the publick safety, into which their own luxury, and the
flatteries of their corrupt demagogues, had thrown them.

He demonstrated to them, that the glorious principle, which had so long
preserved the liberty of Greece, and had enabled them to triumph over
the whole force and opulence of the mighty power of Persia, was that
common hatred, that general detestation of corruption, which prevailed
so universally amongst their generous forefathers.[164] That, in those
times of publick virtue, to receive presents from any foreign power was
deemed a capital crime. That if any man should be found so shamefully
profligate, as to sell himself to any one, who had designs upon the
liberty of Greece; or should endeavour to introduce corruption into his
own country; death without mercy would have been his punishment here,
and his memory branded with indelible and eternal infamy hereafter. That
the statesmen and generals of those happier times, were absolute
strangers to that most criminal and infamous kind of traffick; which was
grown so common and so universal, that honour, fame, character, the
liberty and welfare of their country were all set to sale, and sold
publickly by auction to the best bidder.[165] He then made use of his
utmost art, backed with the greatest strength of reasoning, to persuade
the people, to give up that fund to the support of the army and navy
(the service to which it had been originally appropriated) which from
the time of Pericles had been applied solely to defray the expenses of
the theatre. He showed next the folly and danger of confiding the
defence of the state to mercenary forces, who had already served them so
ill. He informed them, that their allies the Olynthians earnestly
insisted, that the troops sent to their assistance might no longer be
composed of venal hirelings as before, but of native Athenians, animated
with a zeal for the glory of their country, and warm in the interest of
the common cause. Both these motions were opposed by the corrupt party
who adhered to Philip. The people were unwilling to give up that fund,
even to the most pressing exigencies of the state, which enabled them to
gratify their favourite passion; thus the opposition of the people
quashed the former of these motions. But though the urgent, and repeated
remonstrances of Demosthenes prevailed in favour of the latter, yet the
demagogues, who omitted no opportunity of convincing Philip, how well he
employed his money, took care to reduce the promised succours to a very
small number, and to procure Chares, a creature of their own, to be
placed at the head of the expedition.[166] Small as those succours were,
yet they did the Olynthians essential service. But as all the eloquence
of Demosthenes could not prevail upon his countrymen to make more
vigorous efforts, the city of Olynthus fell the year following into the
hands of Philip by the treachery of Euthycrates and Lasthenes, two of
the leading citizens.[167] Philip still continued his encroachments
upon the allies of Athens; sometimes cajoling, sometimes bullying the
Athenians; just as he found either method most conducive to his purpose,
in which he was punctually seconded by the corrupt demagogues. But at
last the joint attack which he made upon the cities of Perynthus and
Byzantium, from whose territories the Athenians drew their chief
supplies of corn, at once opened their eyes, and roused them from their
indolence. They equipped a very large armament with great expedition;
but the Philippick faction had still influence enough with the people,
to obtain the command of it for their friend Chares. The conduct of this
general was exactly answerable to the opinion and hopes of his friends,
who had procured him that employment. Chares, voluptuous, yet sordidly
avaricious; vain and assuming, yet without either courage or capacity;
rapacious, and intent only upon enriching himself at the expense either
of friend or foe, was refused admittance by the inhabitants of
Byzantium; who from experience were too well acquainted with his
character. Enraged at such an unexpected affront; this doughty general
employed his time in parading along the coasts, detested by his allies
whom he plundered, and despised by his enemies whom he had not the
courage to face. The Athenians, sensible of their folly, displaced
Chares, and gave the command to Phocion. The able and honest Phocion was
received with open arms by the Byzantines, and quickly convinced his
countrymen, that he was more than a match for Philip. He not only drove
that ambitious monarch out of the territories of the allies; but
compelled him to retire with great loss and precipitation into his own
dominions, where Phocion made several glorious and successful
incursions. Philip now throwing off the masque, marched his army towards
Athens, with a resolution to humble that people, who were the chief
obstacle to his ambitious views. Demosthenes alone took the lead upon
this occasion, and persuaded his countrymen to join the Thebans with all
the force they could raise, and make head against the invader. Philip
finding his measures quite disconcerted by this confederacy, sent an
embassy to Athens to propose terms of peace, and to profess his desire
of living in amity with the Athenians. Phocion, anxious about the
success of a war, which he knew his countrymen had not virtue enough to
support, and where the loss of a single battle must be fatal to the
state, pleaded strongly for pacifick measures. But the flaming zeal of
Demosthenes prevailed. Phocion was not only insulted, but excluded from
all share in the command of the army by the infatuated people. Chares,
so notorious for his cowardice and incapacity, who (as Diodorus Siculus
informs us[168]) knew no more the duty of a general than the meanest
private soldier in the army, and one Lysicles, a man of daring courage,
but rash and ignorant, were appointed commanders in chief. As
Demosthenes had pushed on the people to this war, and was at that time
at the head of affairs, this fatal step must be entirely attributed to
his private pique at Phocion for opposing his measures. Phocion had more
than once beaten Philip with much inferior forces, and was indisputably
the ablest general of the age, and the only man whom Philip was afraid
of. The conduct therefore of Demosthenes was so rash and weak in the
management of this war,[169] that Plutarch resolves the whole into a
certain divine fatality; which, in the circumvolution of mundane
affairs, had limited the freedom of Greece to that particular point of
time. The battle of Chæronea, which ensued quickly after, gave the
Athenians a too fatal proof of the superior foresight and sagacity of
Phocion, and their own superlative folly in the choice of their
generals. The battle was fought with equal bravery and obstinacy on both
sides, and the confederates behaved as well as men could do upon the
occasion; but their defeat was owing entirely to the incapacity of the
Athenian commanders. This was so apparent,[170] that Philip observing a
capital blunder committed by Lysicles in the heat of the action,[171]
turned about coolly, and remarked to his officers, “that the Athenians
knew not how to conquer.” This fault in point of generalship quickly
turned the scale in favour of the abler Philip, who knew his trade too
well to let slip so material an advantage. The Athenians were totally
routed, and that fatal day put a period to the liberty and independency
of Greece.[172]

Thus fell the Athenians, and their fall involved the rest of Greece in
one common ruin. The decadence of this once glorious and free state was
begun by Pericles, who first introduced venality amongst the people for
the support of luxury; continued by the venal orators, who encouraged
that corruption to maintain their influence over the people; but
finished by that fatal disunion between the only two men, whose publick
virtue and abilities could have saved their country from destruction.

Athens, however, by her fall, has left us some instructions highly
useful for our present conduct. Warned by her fate we may learn ... that
the most effectual method which a bad minister can take, to tame the
spirit of a brave and free people, and to melt them down to slavery, is
to promote luxury, and encourage and diffuse a taste for publick
diversions ... that luxury, and a prevailing fondness for publick
diversions, are the never-failing forerunners of universal idleness,
effeminacy, and corruption ... that there cannot be a more certain
symptom of the approaching ruin of a state than when a firm adherence
to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit, and all the
qualifications requisite to a right discharge of every employment, are
reduced to that single standard ... that these evils take root, and
spread by almost imperceptible degrees in time of peace and national
affluence; but, if left to their full and natural effects without
controul, they will inevitably undermine and destroy the most
flourishing and best founded constitution ... that in times of peace and
affluence, luxury, and a fondness for diversions, will assume the
specious names of politeness, taste, and magnificence. Corruption will
put on different masks. In the corruptors it will be termed able
management, encouraging the friends of the administration, and cementing
a mutual harmony, and mutual dependence between the three different
estates of the government.[173] In the corrupted it will be denominated
loyalty, attachment to the government, and prudence in providing for
one’s own family. That in such times these evils will gain a fresh
accession of strength from their very effects; because corruption will
occasion a greater circulation of the publick money; and the dissipation
of luxury, by promoting trade,[174] will gild over private vices with
the plausible appearance of publick benefits ... that when a state so
circumstanced, is forced into a war with any formidable power, then, and
not until then, these baleful evils will show themselves in their true
colours, and produce their proper effects. The counsels in such a state
will be weak and pusillanimous, because the able and honest citizens,
who aim solely at the publick welfare, will be excluded from all share
in the government from party motives ... their measures will terminate
in poor shifts, and temporary expedients, calculated only to amuse, or
divert the attention of the people from prying too closely into their
iniquitous conduct. Their fleets and armies will be either employed in
useless parade, or will miscarry in action from the incapacity of their
commanders, because, as all the chief posts will be filled up with the
creatures of the prevailing faction, such officers will be more intent
upon enriching themselves than annoying the enemy; and will act as shall
be judged most conducive to the private interest of their party, not to
the publick service of their country. For they will naturally imagine,
that the same power, which placed them in the command, will have weight
enough to screen them from the resentment of an injured people ... their
supplies for the extraordinary expenses of the war will be raised with
difficulty; ... because, as so great a part of the publick money will be
absorbed by the number of pensions and lucrative employments, and
diverted to other purposes of corruption, the funds destined for the
publick service will be found greatly deficient. If the rich are
applied to, in such depraved times, to contribute their superfluous
wealth towards the publick expenses, their answer will be the same which
Scopas the rich Thessalian made to a friend, who asked him for a piece
of furniture, which he judged wholly useless to the possessor, because
it was quite superfluous.[175] “You mistake, my friend; the supreme
happiness of our lives consists in those things which you call
superfluous, not in those things which you call necessaries.” The
people, accustomed to sell themselves to the best bidder, will look upon
the wages of corruption as their birthright, and will necessarily rise
in their demands, in proportion as luxury, like other fashions, descends
from the higher to the lower classes. Heavy and unequal taxes must
consequently be imposed to make up this deficiency; and the operations
of the war must either be retarded by the slowness in collecting the
produce, or the money must be borrowed at high interest and excessive
premiums, and the publick given up a prey to the extortion of usurers.
If a venal and luxurious Demades should be at the head of the ruling
party,[176] such an administration would hardly find credit sufficient
to support their measures, as the moneyed men would be averse to
trusting their property in such rapacious hands;[177] for the chain of
self-interest, which links such a set of men together, will reach from
the highest quite down to the lowest officer of the state; because the
higher officers, for the mutual support of the whole, must connive at
the frauds and rapines of the inferior, or screen them if detected.

If therefore the united voice of a people, exhausted by the oppressions
of a weak and iniquitous administration, should call a truly
disinterested patriot to the helm, such a man must be exposed to all the
malice of detected villany, backed by the whole weight of disappointed
faction. Plutarch has handed down to us a striking instance of this
truth in the case of Aristides, which is too remarkable to be omitted.

When Aristides was created quæstor, or high treasurer of Athens, he
fairly laid before the Athenians what immense sums the publick had been
robbed of by their former treasurers,[178] but especially by
Themistocles, whom he proved to be more criminal than any of the others.
This warm and honest remonstrance produced such a powerful coalition
between these publick plunderers, that when Aristides, at the expiration
of his office, (which was annual and elective) came to give up his
accompts to the people, Themistocles publickly impeached him of the same
crime, and, by the artifice of his corrupt party, procured him to be
condemned and fined; but the honester, and more respectable part of the
citizens highly resenting such an infamous method of proceeding, not
only acquitted Aristides honourably, and remitted his fine, but, to show
their approbation of his conduct, elected him treasurer for the
following year. At his entrance upon his office the second time, he
affected to appear sensible of his former error, and, by winking at the
frauds of the inferior officers, and neglecting to scrutinize into their
accompts, he suffered them to plunder with impunity. These state-leeches
thus gorged with the publick money, grew so extremely fond of Aristides,
that they employed all their interest to persuade the people to elect
him a third time to that important office. On the day of election, when
the voices of the Athenians were unanimous in his favour, this real
patriot stood up with honest indignation, and gave the people this
severe, but just reprimand. “When,” says he, “I discharged my duty in
this office the first time, with that zeal and fidelity which every
honest man owes to his country, I was vilified, insulted, and condemned.
Now I have given full liberty to all these robbers of the publick here
present to pilfer, and prey upon your finances at pleasure, I am, it
seems, a most upright minister, and a most worthy citizen. Believe me, O
Athenians! I am more ashamed of the honour, which you have so
unanimously conferred upon me this day, than of that unjust sentence
which you passed upon me with so much infamy the year before. But it
gives me the utmost concern, upon your account, when I see that it is
easier to merit your favour and applause by flattering, and conniving at
the rogueries of a pack of villains, than by a frugal and uncorrupt
administration of the publick revenues.” He then disclosed all the
frauds and thefts, which had been committed that year in the treasury,
which he had privately minuted down for that purpose. The consequence
was, that all those, who just before had been so loud in his praise,
were struck dumb with shame and confusion; but he himself received those
high encomiums, which he had so justly merited, from every honest
citizen. It is evident from this whole passage, as related by Plutarch,
that Aristides might have made his own fortune, at the expense of the
publick, with the same ease, and to as great a degree, as any of his
predecessors had done before, or any ministers in modern states have
done since. For the rest of the officers, who seemed to think their
chief duty consisted in making the most of their places, showed
themselves extremely ready to conceal the speculation of their chief,
because it gave them a right to claim the same indulgence from him in
return. A remark not restricted to the Athenians alone, but equally
applicable to every corrupt administration under every government.
History, both ancient and modern, will furnish us with numerous
instances of this truth, and posterity will probably make the same
remark, when the genuine history of some late administrations shall see
the light in a future age.

If the Athenians were so corrupt in the time when Aristides lived, ought
we to wonder at that amazing height to which that corruption arrived in
the time of Demosthenes, when left to its full effects for so long a
term of years? Could the state of Athens at that time have been
preserved by human means; the indefatigable zeal of Demosthenes, joined
to the strict economy, the inflexible integrity, and superior abilities
of Phocion, might have raised her once more to her ancient lustre. But
the event showed, that luxury, corruption and faction, the causes of her
ruin, had taken too deep root in the very vitals of the republick. The
Grecian history indeed affords us ever memorable instances of republicks
bending under the yoke of foreign or domestick oppression, yet freed and
restored to their former liberty and dignity by the courage and virtue
of some eminent patriot-citizen. But if we reflect upon the means, by
which these great events were so successfully conducted, we shall always
find, that there yet remained in the people a fund of publick virtue
sufficient to support their chiefs in those arduous enterprises. The
spirit of liberty in a free people may be cramped and pressed down by
external violence; but can scarce ever be totally extinguished.
Oppression will only increase its elastick force, and when roused to
action by some daring chief, it will break out, like fired gunpowder,
with irresistible impetuosity. We have no occasion to look back to
antiquity for convincing proofs of this most important truth. Our own
history is but one continued scene of alternate struggles between
encroaching princes, aiming at absolute power, and a brave people
resolutely determined to vindicate their freedom. The genius of liberty
has hitherto rose superior in all those conflicts, and acquired strength
from opposition. May it continue to prevail to the end of time! The
United Provinces are a striking proof that the spirit of liberty, when
animated and conducted by publick virtue, is invincible. Whilst under
the dominion of the house of Austria, they were little better than a
poor assemblage of fishing towns and villages. But the virtue of one
great man not only enabled them to throw off that inhuman yoke, but to
make a respectable figure amongst the first powers in Europe. All the
different states in Europe, founded by our Gothic ancestors, were
originally free. Liberty was as truly their birthright as it is ours,
and though they have been wormed out of it by fraud, or robbed of it by
violence, yet their inherent right to it still subsists, though the
exercise of that right is superseded, and restrained by force. Hence no
despotick government can ever subsist without the support of that
instrument of tyranny and oppression, a standing army. For all illegal
power must ever be supported by the same means by which it was at first
acquired. France was not broke into the yoke of slavery until the
infamous administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin. But though loyalty
and zeal for the glory of their prince seem to form the characteristick
of the French nation, yet the late glorious stand against the arbitrary
impositions of the crown, which will immortalize the parliament of
Paris, proves that they submit to their chains with reluctance. Luxury
is the real bane of publick virtue, and consequently of liberty, which
gradually sinks in proportion as the manners of a people are softened
and corrupted. Whenever, therefore, this essential spirit, as I may term
it, of a free nation is totally dissipated, the people become a mere
_caput mortuum_, a dead inert mass, incapable of resuscitation, and
ready to receive the deepest impressions of slavery. Thus the publick
virtue of Thrasybulus, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas, Philopœmen, Aratus,
Dion, &c. restored their respective states to freedom and power, because
though liberty was suppressed, yet the spirit of it still remained, and
acquired new vigour from oppression. Phocion and Demosthenes failed,
because corruption had extinguished publick virtue, and luxury had
changed the spirit of liberty into licentiousness and servility.

That luxury and corruption, encouraged and propagated by a most
abandoned faction, have made an alarming progress in our nation, is a
truth too evident to be denied. The effects have been too sensibly felt
during the course of the late and present wars, which, until the last
campaign, were the most expensive, and the least successful of any we
ever yet engaged in. But a late signal change must convince our enemies,
that we have a fund of publick virtue still remaining capable of
vindicating our just rights, and raising us out of that calamitous
situation, into which we were plunged, under some late administrations.
When the publick imagined the helm in the hands of corruption,
pusillanimity and ignorance, they transferred it to a virtuous citizen,
possessed, in their opinion, of the zeal and eloquence of Demosthenes,
joined to the publick economy, incorrupt honesty, and immovable
fortitude of Aristides and Phocion. The numerous disinterested marks of
approbation, so lately given from every part of this kingdom,
demonstrate the resolution and ability of the publick to support that
minister, as long as he pursues his upright plan of conduct with
undeviating firmness.

From the time of Phocion, the Athenian history affords little more than
a detail of scandalous decrees, and despicable instances of the levity
and servile adulation of that abject people.[179] Reduced at last to a
province of the Romans, Athens contributed her taste for arts and
sciences towards polishing, and her passion for theatrical performances
towards corrupting the manners of that warlike people.

  [48] Vita Solon, p. 85. lit. D.

  [49] The time of the first institution of this court (so
  denominated from Ἄρειος πάγος, i. e. Hill of Mars, an eminence
  where they always assembled) is quite uncertain; nor are the
  historians at all agreed about the number of the members of
  which it was composed. However this was the supreme court,
  which had cognizance of wilful murders, and all matters which
  were of the greatest consequence to the republick. Suidas. They
  had also cognizance of all matters of religion, as we find by
  the instance of St. Paul.

  [50] Plut. 85. lit. A.

  [51] Plut. in Vit. Solon, p. 86. lit. C.

  [52] Plut. in Vit. Solon, p. 81. lit. B.

  [53] Plut. in Vit. Solon, p. 88. lit. D.

  [54] The new Senate, which he had instituted.

  [55] Which he had revived. Vide note p. 76.

  [56] Ibid. p. 87. lit. E.

  [57] Ibid. p. 81. lit. A.

  [58] Ibid. p. 81.

  [59] Solon in his letter to Epimenides, says 400, which seems
  most probable. Diog. Laert.

  [60] Thucyd.

  [61] Thucid. lib. 6. p. 415. sect. 60.

  [62] Xenoph. de Republ. Athen. p. 55. Edit. Luvenel. Bas. 1572.

  [63] Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Thucydides the
  historian, &c.

  [64] Socrates, Phocion, &c.

  [65] Thucyd. edit. Duker. lib. 1. p. 58. sect. 88.

  [66] Thucyd. lib. 1. p. 82. sect. 127, 128.

  [67] Thucyd. lib. 2. p. 98. sect. 2, 3, 4, et sequent.

  [68] Thucyd. lib. 2. p. 101, &c. sect. 6.

  [69] Thucyd. Πάντων δ’ αὐτῶν αἴτιον ἡ ἀρχὴ διὰ πλεονεξίαν καὶ
  φιλοτιμίαν. lib. 3. p. 218. sect. 82.

  [70] Τὰ δὲ μέσα τῶν πολιτῶν ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, ἢ ὅτι οὐ
  ξυνηγωνίζοντο, ἢ φθόνῳ τοῦ περιεῖναι διεφθείροντο Thucyd. p.
  219.

  [71] Thucyd. lib. 1 p. 91. sect. 140.

  [72] Thucyd. lib. 2. p. 127. sect. 47. et seq.

  [73] Plut. in Vit. Pericl. p. 171. lit. E.

  [74] Plut. in Vit. Nic. p. 524. lit. B.

  [75] Hence, as Plutarch informs us, it was termed the Nician
  peace, lib. 5.

  [76] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 203. lit. B.

  [77] Plut. Vit. Alcib. p. 197. lit. C.

  [78] Thucyd. lib. 5. p. 339. sect. 35, 42.

  [79] Thucyd. lib. 5. p. 350. sect. 52.

  [80] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 383. sect. 8.

  [81] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 381. sect. 6.

  [82] Plut. in Vita Alcibid. Item. Thucyd. in orat. Alcib. ad
  Lacedæm. lib. 6. p. 436. sect. 90.

  [83] Thucyd. lib. 6. 395, 396. sect. 28, 29.

  [84] Thucyd. The terms were statues of Mercury, placed at the
  doors of their houses, made of square stones of a cubical form.

  [85] A similar measure was taken in the latter end of queen
  Anne’s reign.

  [86] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 200. lit. D.

  [87] Thucyd. lib. 6. 395. sect. 28.

  [88] Thucyd. ibid.

  [89] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 29. passim.

  [90] Thucyd. lib. 6. 395. sect. 23. ad finem.

  [91] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 396. sect. 31.

  [92] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 408. sect. 47, 48, 49.

  [93] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 411. sect. 53.

  [94] Ibid. p. 415. sect. 60.

  [95] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 202.

  [96] Thucyd. p. 416. sect. 60.

  [97] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 201. lit. C.

  [98] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 416. sect. 61.

  [99] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 416. sect. 61.

  [100] Ibid.

  [101] This vessel may properly be termed the Athenian
  State-packet-boat, and was never sent out but upon very
  extraordinary occasions. Plut.

  [102] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 417. sect. 61.

  [103] Thucyd. ibid.

  [104] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 202.

  [105] Thucyd. lib. 7. p. 505. ad finem.

  [106] Thucyd. lib. 8. p. 506. &c.

  [107] Thucyd. ibid. p. 507.

  [108] Thucyd. ibid. p. 508. sect. 2.

  [109] Thucyd. lib. 8. sect. 2....3.

  [110] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 4.

  [111] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 203.

  [112] Thucyd. lib. 8. p. 531. sect. 45.

  [113] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 46.

  [114] Thucyd. ibid. p. 531. sect. 45.

  [115] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 47.

  [116] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 48.

  [117] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 49.

  [118] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 53.

  [119] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 54.

  [120] Thucyd. ibid. sect. 56.

  [121] Thucyd. ibid. 66.

  [122] Thucyd. ibid. 67.

  [123] Thucyd. ibid. 68.

  [124] Thucyd. ibid. 69.

  [125] Solon’s new senate of four hundred.

  [126] Thucyd. ibid. 70.

  [127] Thucyd. lib. 8. p. 543, sect. 65.

  [128] Thucyd. lib. 8. p. 551. sect. 76.

  [129] Thucyd. ibid. p. 553. sect. 81.

  [130] Thucyd. ibid. p. 567. sect. 97.

  [131] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 206.

  [132] Plut. ibid. p. 207, 208.

  [133] Plut. ibid. p. 209.

  [134] Ibid. p. 211.

  [135] The son of Thrason; the other of that name is called by
  Thucydides, the son of Lycus. Thucyd. lib. 8. p. 549. sect. 75.

  [136] A city in Thrace.

  [137] Thucyd. lib. 6. p. 387. sect. 15.

  [138] Plut. in Vit. Alcib. p. 211-212.

  [139] Plut. in Vit. Lysand. p. 441.

  [140] Τριάκοντα πλήους ἀπεκτόνασιν Ἀθηναίων ἐν ὀκτὼ μησὶν, ἢ
  πάντες Πελοπόννησιοι δέκα ἔτη πολεμοῦντες. Xenoph. Hellenic.
  lib. 2. p. 370. Edit. Lewencl. Basil.

  [141] Most probably the son of Lycus, mentioned by Thucydides,
  who had so great a share in deposing the Four Hundred, and
  restoring the ancient constitution.

  [142] Xenoph. ibid. p. 367.

  [143] Xenoph. ibid. p. 368.

  [144] Xenoph. ibid. 370.

  [145] Xenoph. ibid. 371.

  [146] Xenoph. ibid. 372.-373.

  [147] Xenoph. ibid. p. 375.

  [148] Xenoph. lib. 3. p. 392.

  [149] Xenoph. lib. 4. p. 404.

  [150] Ibid. p. 420.

  [151] Ibid.

  [152] Ibid. 421.

  [153] Justin. in Vit. Conon.

  [154] Persius, sat. 1.

  [155] Lucian, p. 328. Edit. Bourdel. 1615.

  [156] Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse.

  Diodor. 

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