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. Sicul. lib. 14. p. 318, 319.

[157] Plut. in Vit. Cim. p. 483.

[158] Justin. p. 67. Edit. Elziv.

[159] Plut. de Glor. Athen. p. 349. Vol. 2.

[160] Plut. Symposiac. p. 710.

[161] Ἐν πότῳ καὶ ἀνέσει.

[162] Plut. in Vit. Pericl. p. 156.

[163] Plut. in Vit. Phocion, p. 744. Item Demos. Olynth. 2. p.

25. Edit. Wolf. 1604.

[164] Demost. Orat. in Philip. 3. p. 86, 92.

[165] Demost. ibid.

[166] Plut. in Vit. Phocion, p. 747.

[167] Diodor. Sicul. lib. 16. p. 450.

[168] Diodor. Sicul. lib. 16. p. 476.

[169] Plut. in Vit. Demost. p. 854.

[170] Polyæn. Stratagem, lib. 4. c. 3. p. 311.

[171] Polyænus calls this general Stratocles.

[172] Hic dies universæ Greciæ et gloriam dominationis, et

vetustissimam libertatem finivit. Justin. lib. 9. p. 79. Edit.

Elziv.

[173] Thus Demades termed the gratuities given to the people

out of the publick money, the glue or cement of the different

parts of the republick. Plut. Quæst. Platon. p. 1011.

[174] Fable of the bees.

[175] Ἀλλὰ μὴν τούτοις ἐσμὲν ἡμεῖς εὐδαίμονες καὶ μακάριοι τοῖς

περιττοῖς, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐκείνοις τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις. Plut. de Cupidit.

p. 527.

[176] Demades, according to Plutarch, by the dissoluteness of

his life, and conduct in the administration, shipwrecked the

Athenian republick. Plut. in Vit. Phocion, p. 741.

[177] Plut. Apotheg. p. 188.

[178] Plut. in Vit. Aristid. p. 320.

[179] Plut. in Vit. Demet. p. 893 ... 94 ... 900.