his exile as the cause of all their misfortunes. But this triumph was
of short duration. He was sent with one hundred ships to Asia; and, not
being supplied with money to pay his soldiers, he saw himself under
the necessity of seeking help in Caria, and committed the command
to Antiochus, who was drawn into a snare by Lysander, and lost his
life and a part of his ships. The enemies of Alcibiades improved this
opportunity to accuse him, and procure his removal from office.
Alcibiades now went to Pactyæ in Thrace, collected troops, and waged
war against the Thracians. He obtained considerable booty, and secured
the quiet of the neighboring Greek cities. The Athenian fleet was,
at that time, lying at Ægos Potamos. He pointed out to the generals
the danger which threatened them, advised them to go to Sestos, and
offered his assistance to force the Lacedæmonian general, Lysander,
either to fight, or to make peace. But they did not listen to him, and
soon after were totally defeated. Alcibiades, fearing the power of
the Lacedæmonians, betook himself to Bithynia, and was about to go to
Artaxerxes, to procure his assistance for his country. In the meantime,
the thirty tyrants, whom Lysander after the capture of Athens, had set
up there, requested the latter to cause Alcibiades to be assassinated.
But Lysander declined, until he received an order to the same effect
from his own government. He then charged Pharnabazes with the execution
of it. Alcibiades was at the time with Timandra, his mistress, in a
castle in Phrygia. The assistants of Pharnabazes, afraid to encounter
Alcibiades, set fire to his house, and when he had already escaped the
conflagration, they despatched him with their arrows. Timandra buried
the body with due honor.
Thus Alcibiades ended his life, 404 B. C., being about forty-five years
old. He was endowed by nature with distinguished qualities, a rare
talent to captivate and rule mankind, and uncommon eloquence, although
he could not pronounce the letter _r_, and had an impediment in his
speech. He had, however, no fixed principles, and was governed only by
external circumstances. He was without that elevation of soul which
steadily pursues the path of virtue. On the other hand, he possessed
that boldness which arises from consciousness of superiority, and which
shrinks from no difficulty, because confident of success. He was a
singular instance of intellectual eminence and moral depravity. His
faculty for adapting himself to circumstances enabled him to equal
the Spartans in austerity of manners, and to surpass the pomp of the
Persians. Plutarch says, that “no man was of so sullen a nature but he
would make him merry; nor so churlish but he could make him gentle.”
DEMOCRITUS.
Democritus, one of the most remarkable of the philosophers of
antiquity, was born at Abdera, a maritime city of Thrace, 460 B. C. He
travelled over the greatest part of Europe, Asia and Africa, in quest
of knowledge. Though his father was so rich as to entertain Xerxes
and his whole army, while marching against Greece, and left his son a
large fortune, yet the latter returned from his travels in a state of
poverty. It was a law of the country, that a man should be deprived
of the honor of a funeral, who had reduced himself to indigence.
Democritus was of course exposed to this ignominy; but having read
before his countrymen his chief work, it was received with the greatest
applause, and he was presented with five hundred talents,—a sum nearly
equal to half a million of dollars. Statues were also erected to his
honor; and a decree was passed that the expenses of his funeral should
be paid from the public treasury.
These circumstances display alike the great eminence of the
philosopher, and an appreciation of genius and learning on the part
of the people, beyond what could now be found in the most civilized
communities of the world. Where is the popular assembly of the present
day, that would bestow such a reward, on such an occasion?
After his return from his travels, Democritus retired to a garden
near the city, where he dedicated his time to study and solitude;
and, according to some authors, put out his eyes, to apply himself
more closely to philosophical inquiries. This, however, is unworthy
of credit. He was accused of insanity, and Hippocrates, a celebrated
physician, was ordered to inquire into the nature of his disorder.
After a conference with the philosopher, he declared that not the
latter, but his enemies were insane. Democritus was so accustomed to
laugh at the follies and vanities of mankind, who distract themselves
with care, and are at once the prey to hope and anxiety, that he
acquired the title of the “laughing philosopher,” in contrast to
Heraclitus,[12] who has been called the “weeping philosopher.” He told
Darius, the king, who was inconsolable for the loss of his wife, that
he would raise her from the dead if he could find three persons who had
gone through life without adversity, and whose names he might engrave
on the queen’s monument. The king’s inquiries after such, proved
unavailing, and the philosopher discovered the means of soothing the
sorrows of the sovereign.
He was a disbeliever in the existence of ghosts; and some youths, to
try his fortitude, dressed themselves in hideous and deformed habits,
and approached his cave in the dead of night, expecting to excite his
terror and astonishment. The philosopher received them unmoved, and,
without hardly deigning to bestow upon them a look, desired them to
cease making themselves such objects of ridicule and folly. He died in
the one hundred and fourth year of his age, B. C. 357.
All the works of Democritus, which were numerous, are lost. He was
the first to teach that the milky way was occasioned by a confused
light from a multitude of stars. He may be considered as the parent of
experimental philosophy; in the prosecution of which he was so ardent,
that he declared he would prefer the discovery of one of the causes of
the works of nature, to the diadem of Persia. He is said to have made
artificial emeralds by chemical means, and to have tinged them with
various colors; he likewise found the art of dissolving stones and
softening ivory.
He was the author of the atomic theory; he viewed all matter, in which
he included mind, as reducible to atoms; he considered the universe to
consist only of matter and empty space. The mind he regarded as round
atoms of fire. He argued that nothing could arise out of nothing; and
also that nothing could utterly perish and become nothing. Hence he
inferred the eternity of the universe, and dispensed with the existence
of a Creator.
He explained the difference in substances by a difference in their
component atoms; and all material phenomena, by different motions,
backward or forward, taking place of necessity. He did not seem to
perceive that under this word, _necessity_, he concealed a deity. He
explained sensation by supposing sensible images to issue from bodies.
In moral philosophy, he only taught that a cheerful state of mind was
the greatest attainable good.
The theories of Democritus appear absurd enough in our time; but
philosophy was then in its infancy. His struggles after light and truth
display the darkness of the age, and the ingenuity of the philosopher.
They may also teach us by what a process of mental toil, for centuries
piled upon centuries, the knowledge we possess has been attained. The
school he established, was supplanted, about a century after, by that
of Epicurus.
[Illustration]
[Footnote 12: Heraclitus flourished about 500 years B. C. He was a
native of Ephesus; and being of a melancholy disposition, he spent
his time in mourning and weeping over the frailties of human nature,
and the miseries of human life. He employed himself for a time, in
writing different treatises, in which he maintained that all things
are governed by a fatal necessity. His opinions, in some things, were
adopted by the Stoics. He became at last a man-hater, and retired to
the mountains, so as to be entirely separated from his fellow-men. Here
he fed on grass, which brought on a dropsical complaint: to get cured
of this, he returned to the town. He established his residence on a
dunghill, hoping that the warmth might dissipate his disease; but this
proved ineffectual, and he died in his sixtieth year.]
[Illustration]
PERICLES.
This celebrated man, born about 498 B. C., was an Athenian of noble
birth, son of Xantippus and Agariste. He was endowed by nature with
great powers, which he improved by attending the lectures of Damon,
Zeno, and Anaxagoras. Under these celebrated masters, he became a
commander, a statesman, and an orator, and gained the affections
of the people by his great address, and well-directed liberality.
When he took a share in the administration of public affairs, he
rendered himself popular by opposing Cimon, who was the favorite of
the nobility; and, to remove every obstacle which stood in the way of
his ambition, he lessened the dignity and the power of the court of
Areopagus, whom the people had been taught for ages to respect and
venerate.
He continued his attacks upon Cimon, and finally caused him to be
banished by the ostracism. Thucydides also, who had succeeded Cimon
on his banishment, shared the same fate, and Pericles remained, for
fifteen years, the sole minister, and, as it may be said, the absolute
sovereign of a republic which always showed itself so jealous of her
liberties, and which distrusted so much the honesty of her magistrates.
In his ministerial capacity, Pericles did not enrich himself, but the
prosperity of Athens was the object of his administration. He made war
against the Lacedæmonians, and restored the temple of Delphi to the
care of the Phocians, who had been illegally deprived of that honorable
trust.
He obtained a victory over the Sicyonians near Nemæa, and waged a
successful war against the inhabitants of Samos. The Peloponnesian war
was fomented by his ambitious views, and when he had warmly represented
the flourishing state, the opulence and actual power of his country,
the Athenians did not hesitate to undertake a war against the most
powerful republics of Greece—a war which continued for twenty-seven
years, and was concluded by the destruction of their empire and the
demolition of their walls. The arms of the Athenians were, for some
time, crowned with success; but an unfortunate expedition raised
clamors against Pericles, and the enraged populace attributed all their
losses to him. To make atonement for their ill-success, they condemned
him to pay fifty talents.
The loss of popular favor did not so much affect Pericles, as the death
of all his children. When the tide of disaffection had passed away, he
condescended to come into the public assembly, and viewed with secret
pride the contrition of his fellow-citizens, who universally begged his
forgiveness for the violence which they had offered to his ministerial
character. He was again restored to all his honors, and, if possible,
invested with more power and more authority than before; but the
dreadful pestilence which had diminished the number of his family, and
swept away many of his best friends, proved fatal to himself, and about
429 years B. C., in his seventieth year, he fell a sacrifice to that
terrible malady which robbed Athens of so many of her citizens.
Pericles was forty years at the head of the administration; twenty-five
years with others, and fifteen alone. The flourishing state of the
country under his government, gave occasion to the Athenians publicly
to lament his loss and venerate his memory. As he was expiring
and apparently senseless, his friends, that stood around his bed,
expatiated with warmth on the most glorious actions of his life, and
the victories which he had won—when he suddenly interrupted their
tears and conversation, by saying, that in mentioning the exploits he
had achieved, and which were common to him with all generals, they had
forgotten to mention a circumstance, which reflected far greater glory
on him as a minister, a general, and above all, as a man: “It is,” said
he, “that not a citizen in Athens has been obliged to put on mourning
on my account.”
The Athenians were so affected by his eloquence that they compared it
to thunder and lightning, and, as if he were another father of the
gods, they gave him the title of Olympian. The poets said that the
goddess of persuasion, with all her charms and attractions, dwelt
upon his tongue. When he marched at the head of the Athenian armies,
he observed that he had the command of a free nation, who were Greeks
and citizens of Athens. He also declared that not only the hand of
a magistrate, but also his eyes and his tongue, should be pure and
undefiled. There can be no doubt that Pericles was one of the most
eloquent orators and sagacious statesmen of Greece.
Yet, great and venerable as his character may appear, we must not
forget his follies. His vicious partiality for the celebrated
courtesan, Aspasia, justly subjected him to the ridicule and censure
of his fellow-citizens. The greatness of his talents and his services,
enabled him to triumph over satire and reproach for the time, but the
Athenians had occasion to execrate the memory of a man, who, by his
example, corrupted the purity and innocence of their morals, and who,
associating licentiousness with talents and public virtue, rendered it
almost respectable.
Pericles lost all his legitimate children by the pestilence already
mentioned; and to call a natural son by his own name, he was obliged to
repeal a law which he had made against spurious children, and which
he had enforced with great severity. This son, named Pericles, became
one of the ten generals who succeeded Alcibiades in the administration
of affairs, and, like his colleagues, he was condemned to death by the
Athenians, after the unfortunate battle of Arginusæ.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ARISTIDES.
This great Athenian general and statesman, who took so conspicuous
a part in the deliverance of Greece from the Persians, and who has
come down to us with the enviable surname of THE JUST, was the son of
Lysimachus and born about the year 550 B. C. We know little of the
steps by which he rose to eminence. He was one of the ten generals of
the Athenian forces, when they fought with the Persians at Marathon.
According to the custom, each general held command of the army for
one day, in rotation. Aristides, perceiving the disadvantages of
this system, prevailed on his colleagues to give up their command
to Miltiades. To this, in a great measure, must be attributed the
memorable victory of the Greeks upon that occasion.
The year after this, Aristides was archon; and the ambitious
Themistocles, desiring to get rid of him privately circulated a charge
that Aristides was aiming at sovereign power. He succeeded finally in
causing him to be exiled by the ostracism—a vote of banishment, in
which the Athenians used shells for ballots. While the voting, upon
this occasion, was going on, Aristides was among the people; a rustic
citizen, who did not know him, came up and asked him to write the name
of Aristides upon the shell with which he intended to vote. “Has he
ever injured you?” said Aristides. “No,” said the voter, “but I am
tired of hearing him called the ‘_Just!_’”
Aristides left Athens, with prayers for its welfare. He was recalled
at the end of three years, and, forgetting his injury, devoted himself
with ardor and success to the good of his country. In the famous battle
of Platea, he commanded the Athenians, and is entitled to a great share
of the merit of the splendid victory gained by the Greeks. He died at
an advanced age, about 467 B. C. He was so poor that the expenses of
his funeral were defrayed at the public charge, and his two daughters,
on account of their father’s virtues, received a dowry from the public
treasury, when they came to marriageable years.
The effect of so rare an example as that of Aristides, was visible even
during his lifetime. The Athenians became more virtuous, in imitating
their great leader. Such was their sense of his good qualities, that,
at the representation of one of the tragedies of Æschylus, when the
actor pronounced a sentence concerning moral goodness, the eyes of the
audience were all at once turned from the players to Aristides. When
he sat as judge, it is said that the plaintiff in his accusation—in
order to prejudice him against the defendant—mentioned the injuries
he had done to Aristides. “Mention the wrong _you_ have received,”
said the equitable Athenian. “I sit here as judge; the lawsuit is
yours, not mine.” On one occasion, Themistocles announced to the
people of Athens that he had a scheme of the greatest advantage to the
state; but it could not be mentioned in a public assembly. Aristides
was appointed to confer with him. The design was to set fire to the
combined fleet of the Greeks, then lying in a neighboring port, by
which means the Athenians would acquire the sovereignty of the seas.
Aristides returned to the people, and told them that nothing could be
more advantageous—yet nothing more unjust. The project was of course
abandoned.
The character of Aristides is one of the finest that is handed down by
antiquity. To him belongs the rarest of all praises, that of observing
justice, not only between man and man, but between nation and nation.
He was truly a patriot, for he preferred the good of his country to his
own ambition. A candid enemy, an impartial friend, a just administrator
of other men’s money—an observer of national faith—he is well
entitled to the imperishable monument which is erected in that simple
title, THE JUST!
[Illustration]
ÆSOP.
This celebrated inventor of fables was a native of Phrygia, in Asia
Minor, and flourished in the time of Solon, about 560 B. C. A life of
him was written by a Greek monk, named Planudes, about the middle of
the fourteenth century, which passed into circulation as a genuine
work, but which is proved to have been a mere fiction. In that work,
Æsop is represented as being hunch-backed, and an object of disgust
from his deformity. There appears to be no foundation whatever for this
story. This invention of the monk, no doubt, had for its object, to
give eclat to the beauties of Æsop’s mind, by the contrast of bodily
deformity.
Throwing aside the work of Planudes, we are left to grope in obscurity
for the real history of the great fabulist. After the most diligent
researches, we can do little more than trace the leading incidents of
his life. The place of his birth, like that of Homer, is matter of
question; Samos, Sardis, Cotiæum in Phrygia, and Mesembria in Thrace,
laying claim alike to that honor. The early part of his life was spent
in slavery, and the names of three of his masters have been preserved:
Dinarchus, an Athenian, in whose service he is said to have acquired
a correct and pure knowledge of Greek; Xanthus, a Samian, who figures
in Planudes as a philosopher, in order that the capacity of the slave
may be set off by the incapacity of the master; and Iadmon or Idmon,
another Samian, by whom he was enfranchised.
He acquired a high reputation in Greece for that species of
composition, which, after him, was called Æsopian, and, in consequence,
was solicited by Croesus to take up his abode at the Lydian court. Here
he is said to have met Solon, and to have rebuked the sage for his
uncourtly way of inculcating moral lessons. He is said to have visited
Athens during the usurpation of Pisistratus, and to have then composed
the fable of Jupiter and the Frogs[13] for the instruction of the
citizens.
Being charged by Croesus with an embassy to Delphi, in the course of
which he was to distribute a sum of money to every Delphian, a quarrel
arose between him and the citizens, in consequence of which he returned
the money to his patron, alleging that those for whom it was meant
were unworthy of it. The disappointed party, in return, got up the
charge of sacrilege, upon which they put him to death. A pestilence
which ensued was attributed to this crime, and in consequence they made
proclamation, at all the public assemblies of the Grecian nation, of
their willingness to make compensation for Æsop’s death to any one who
should appear to claim it. A grandson of his master, Iadmon, at length
claimed and received it, no person more closely connected with the
sufferer having appeared.
It is a question of some doubt, whether Æsop was the inventor of that
species of fable which endows the inferior animals, and even inanimate
objects, with speech and reason, and thus, under the cover of humorous
conceit, conveys lessons of wisdom; and which, from their pleasant
guise, are often well received where the plain truth would be rejected.
The probability is, that, if not the originator of such fables,
Æsop was the first who composed them of such point as to bring them
into use as a powerful vehicle for the inculcation of truth. At all
events, there is abundant proof that fables, passing under his name,
were current and popular in Athens, during the most brilliant period
of its literary history, and not much more than a century after the
death of the supposed author. The drolleries of Æsop are mentioned by
Aristophanes in terms which lead us to suppose that they were commonly
repeated at convivial parties. Socrates, in prison, turned into verse
‘those that he knew;’ and Plato, who banishes the fictions of Homer
from his ideal republic, speaks with high praise of the tendency of
those of Æsop.
Many of the fables in circulation among us, under the name of Æsop, are
not his;—indeed, it is probable that but a small portion of them can
trace their origin back to the Phrygian. A good fable, as well as a
good story, however it may originate, is apt to be attributed to one
whose character it may suit—and thus it happens that the same smart
sayings are credited, in different countries, to different individuals;
and thus, also, we see that many of the fables which we assign to Æsop,
are credited, by the Mohammedans, to their fabulist, Lokman.
The value of fables, as instruments of instruction, is attested by
Addison, in the following words. “They were,” says he, “the first
pieces of wit that made their appearance in the world; and have been
still highly valued, not only in times of the greatest simplicity, but
among the most polite ages of mankind. Jotham’s fable of the Trees is
the oldest that is extant, and as beautiful as any which have been
made since that time. Nathan’s fable of the Poor Man and his Lamb is
likewise more ancient than any that is extant, excepting the above
mentioned, and had so good an effect as to convey instruction to the
ear of a king, without offending it, and to bring the ‘man after God’s
own heart’ to a right sense of his guilt and his duty. We find Æsop
in the most distant ages of Greece. And, if we look into the very
beginning of the commonwealth of Rome, we see a mutiny among the common
people appeased by the fable of the Belly and the Members; which was
indeed very proper to gain the attention of an incensed rabble, at
a time when perhaps they would have torn to pieces any man who had
preached the same doctrine to them in an open and direct manner. As
fables took their birth in the very infancy of learning, they never
flourished more than when learning was at its greatest height. To
justify this assertion, I shall put my reader in mind of Horace, the
greatest wit and critic in the Augustan age; and of Boileau, the most
correct poet among the moderns; not to mention La Fontaine, who, by
this way of writing, is come more into vogue than any other author of
our times.”
“Reading is to the mind,” continues the writer, “what exercise is
to the body: as, by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and
invigorated, by the other, virtue, (which is the health of the mind,)
is kept alive, cherished and confirmed. But, as exercise becomes
tedious and painful when we make use of it only as the means of health,
so reading is too apt to grow uneasy and burdensome, when we apply
ourselves to it only for our improvement in virtue. For this reason,
the virtue which we gather from a fable or an allegory, is like the
health we get by hunting, as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit
that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues
that accompany it.”