CLEF, or CLIFE, in Music, derived from the Latin word clavis, a key; because by it is expressed the fundamental sound in the diatonic scale, which requires a determined succession of tones or semitones, whether major or minor, peculiar to the note whence we set out, and resulting from its position in the scale. Hence, as it opens a way to this succession, and discovers it, the technical term key is used with great propriety. But clefs rather point out the position of different musical parts in the general system, and the relations which they bear one to another.
A clef, says Rousseau, is a character in music placed at the beginning of a stave, to determine the degree of elevation occupied by that stave in the general claviary or system, and to point out the names of all the notes which it contains in the line of that clef.
Anciently the letters by which the notes of the gamut were signified were called clefs. Thus the letter A was the clef of the note la, C the clef of ut, E the clef of mi, &c. But in proportion as the system was extended, the embarrassment and superfluity of this multitude of clefs were felt, and a better system was in time adopted.
Guid' Arezzo, who had invented them, marked a letter or clef at the beginning of each line in the stave; for as yet he had placed no notes in the spaces. In process of time they marked no more than one of the seven clefs at the beginning of one of the lines only; and this was sufficient to fix the position of all the rest, according to their natural order. At last, of these seven lines or clefs they selected four, which were called claves signatae, or discriminating clefs, because they satisfied themselves with marking one of them upon one of the lines, from which the powers of all the others might be recognized. Presently afterwards they even retrenched one of these four, namely, the gamma, of which they made use to mark the sol below, that is to say, the hypoprosplanonome added to the system of the Greeks. (See Rousseau's Musical Dictionary, Malcolm on Music, and the article Music.)
CLEMENCY denotes nearly the same thing with mercy, and implies a remission of severity towards offenders. The term is most generally used in speaking of the forgiveness exercised by princes or persons of high authority. It is the result, indeed, of a disposition which ought to be cultivated by all ranks, though its effects cannot be equally conspicuous or extensive. In praise of clemency joined with power, it is observed, that it is not only the privilege,
the honour, and the duty of a prince, but it is also his security, and better than all his garrisons, forts, and guards, to preserve himself and his dominions in safety; that that prince is truly royal who masters himself, looks upon all injuries as below him, and governs by equity and reason, not by passion or caprice. In illustration of this subject, the following examples are selected out of many recorded in history.
Two patricians having conspired against Titus the Roman emperor, were discovered, convicted, and sentenced to death by the senate; but the good-natured prince sent for them, and in private admonished them, that they aspired in vain to the empire, which was given by destiny; exhorting them to be satisfied with the rank in which providence had placed them, and offering them any thing else which might be in his power to grant. At the same time he dispatched a messenger to the mother of one of them, who was then at a great distance, and under deep concern about the fate of her son, to assure her that her son was not only alive, but forgiven.
Licinius having raised a numerous army, Zosimus says 130,000 men, endeavoured to wrest the government out of the hands of his brother-in-law Constantine the emperor. But his army being defeated, Licinius fled with what forces he could rally to Nicomedia, whither Constantine pursued him, and immediately invested the place; but on the second day of the siege, the emperor's sister having entreated him, with a flood of tears, by the tenderness he had ever shown for her, to forgive her husband, and grant him at least his life, he was prevailed upon to comply with her request; and the next day, Licinius, finding no means of making his escape, presented himself before the conqueror, and throwing himself at his feet, yielded to him the purple and the other ensigns of sovereignty. Constantine received him in a very friendly manner, entertained him at his table, and afterwards sent him to Thessalonica, assuring him that he should live unmolested so long as he raised no new disturbances.
The council of thirty, established at Athens by Lysander, committed the most execrable cruelties. Upon pretence of restraining the multitude within their duty, and to prevent seditions, they caused guards to be assigned them, armed 3000 of the citizens for that purpose, and at the same time disarmed all the rest. The whole city was thrown into the utmost terror and dismay. Whoever opposed their injustice and violence fell a victim to their resentment. Riches were a crime which never failed to draw a sentence upon their owners, always followed with death and the confiscation of estates, which the thirty tyrants divided amongst themselves. They put more people to death, says Xenophon, in eight months of a peace, than their enemies had done in a war of thirty years. All the citizens of any consideration in Athens, who retained a love of liberty, quitted a place reduced to so merciless and shameful a state of slavery, and sought elsewhere an asylum, where they might live in safety. At the head of these was Thrasylbulus, a person of extraordinary merit, who beheld with the most lively affliction the miseries of his country.
But the Lacedæmonians had the inhumanity to endeavour to deprive those unhappy fugitives of this last resource. They published an edict prohibiting the cities of Greece from giving them refuge; decreed that they should be delivered up to the thirty tyrants; and condemned all such as should contravene the execution of this edict to pay a fine of five talents. Only two cities rejected with disdain so unjust an ordinance, Megara and Thebes; the latter of which passed a decree to punish all persons whatsoever that should see an Athenian attacked by his enemies without doing their utmost to assist him. Lysias, an orator
Clemency of Syracuse, who had been banished by the thirty, raised 500 soldiers at his own expense, and sent them to the aid of the common country of eloquence. Thrasylbulus lost no time in making the necessary preparations. After having taken Phyla, a small fort in Attica, he marched to the Piræus, of which he made himself master. The thirty flew thither with their troops, and a battle ensued; but the tyrants were completely overthrown. Critias, the most savage of their number, was killed on the spot; and as the army was taking to flight, Thrasylbulus cried out, "Wherefore do you fly from me as from a victor, rather than assist me as the avenger of your liberty? We are not enemies, but fellow-citizens; nor have we declared war against the city, but against the thirty tyrants." He continued to remind them that they had the same origin, country, laws, and religion. He exhorted them to compassionate their exiled brethren, to restore their country to the latter, and resume their own liberty. This discourse had the desired effect. The army, upon their return to Athens, expelled the thirty, and substituted ten persons to govern in their room, whose conduct proved no better than theirs; but King Pausanias, moved with compassion for the deplorable condition to which a city, once so flourishing, was reduced, had the generosity to favour the Athenians in secret, and at length obtained a peace for them. It was sealed with the blood of the tyrants, who having taken arms to reinstate themselves in the government, were all put to the sword; and this left Athens in the full possession of its liberty. All the exiles were recalled. Thrasylbulus at that time proposed the celebrated amnesty, by which the citizens engaged upon oath that all past transactions should be buried in oblivion. The government was re-established upon its ancient footing, the laws were restored to their pristine vigour, and magistrates were elected with the usual forms.
This, says Rollin, is one of the finest events in ancient history, worthy the Athenian clemency and benevolence, and has served as a model to succeeding ages in all good governments. Never had tyranny been more cruel and bloody than that which the Athenians had lately thrown off. Every house was in mourning, every family bewailed the loss of some relation; it had been a series of public robbery and rapine, in which license and impunity had authorized all manner of crimes. The people seemed to have a right to demand the blood of all accomplices in such notorious malversations, and even the interest of the state appeared to authorize such a claim, that by exemplary severities such enormous crimes might be prevented for the future. But Thrasylbulus rising above these sentiments, from the superiority of his more extensive genius, and the views of a more discerning and profound policy, foresaw, that by acquiescing in the punishment of the guilty, eternal seeds of discord and enmity would remain, to weaken the public by domestic divisions, when it was necessary to unite against the common enemy, and would also occasion the loss to the state of a great number of citizens, who might render it important services in the view of making amends for past misbehaviour.
Such conduct, after great troubles in a state, has always appeared to the ablest politicians the most certain and ready means to restore the public peace and tranquillity. Cicero, when Rome was divided into two factions upon the occasion of Cæsar's death, who had been killed by the conspirators, calling to mind this celebrated amnesty, proposed, after the example of the Athenians, to bury all that had passed in eternal oblivion.
Cardinal Mazarin observed to Don Lewis de Haro, prime minister of Spain, that his gentle and humane conduct in France had prevented the troubles and revolts of that kingdom from having any fatal consequences, and
"that the king had not lost a foot of land by them to that day;" whereas "the inflexible severity of the Spaniards was the occasion that the subjects of that monarchy, wherever they threw off the mask, never returned to their obedience but by the force of arms; which sufficiently appears," says he, "in the example of the Hollanders, who are in the peaceable possession of so many provinces that not an age ago were the patrimony of the king of Spain."
Leonidas the Lacedæmonian having, with 300 men only, disputed the Pass of Thermopylæ against the whole army of Xerxes, and being killed in that engagement, Xerxes, by the advice of Mardonius, one of his generals, caused his dead body to be hung upon a gallows, thereby making the intended dishonour of his enemy his own immortal shame. But some time afterwards, Xerxes being defeated, and Mardonius slain, one of the principal citizens of Ægina came and addressed himself to Pausanias, desiring him to avenge the indignity which Mardonius and Xerxes had shown to Leonidas, by treating Mardonius's body after the same manner; and as a farther motive for doing so, he added, that by thus satisfying the manes of those who were killed at Thermopylæ, he would be sure to immortalize his own name throughout all Greece, and render his memory precious to the latest posterity. "Carry thy base counsels elsewhere," replied Pausanias; "thou must have a very wrong notion of true glory, to imagine that the way for me to acquire it is to resemble the barbarians. If the esteem of the people of Ægina is not to be purchased but by such a proceeding, I shall be content with preserving that of the Lacedæmonians only, amongst whom the base and ungenerous pleasure of revenge is never put in competition with that of showing clemency and moderation to their enemies, especially after their death. As for the souls of my departed countrymen, they are sufficiently avenged by the death of the many thousand Persians slain upon the spot in the last engagement."