An ancient kingdom of Greece, situated between the Strait of Euripus or Negropont on the north-east, and the Gulf of Saros or Ægina on the south-west, may be considered as forming a triangle, the base of which constituted the conterminous boundary with Boeotia, while the two other sides, washed by the sea, had their vertex at the promontory of Sunium or Cape Colonna. The prolongation of the south-western side northward till it reached the extremity of the base at the foot of Mount Citheron served as the line of demarcation between the Athenian territory and that belonging to the small state of Megara. Hence Attica may be described generally as bounded on the north-east by the channel of Negropont, on the south-west by the Gulf of Ægina and part of Megara, and on the north-west by the territory which formed the ancient Boeotia; including, within these limits, an area or superficies of about 750 square miles.

The soil of Attica was not so unsuited to the purposes of agriculture as has commonly been supposed. It was, indeed, stony and uneven in many places; a considerable part consisted of bare rock, on which little or nothing could be grown; but even the less fertile portion produced barley and wheat, the latter, it is true, with difficulty; and the mildness of the climate allowed all the more valuable products of the earth to ripen the earliest and go out of season the latest. Every kind of plant and animal thrived notwithstanding the poverty of the soil; and the advantages which nature had denied were, in a great measure, compensated by the effects of skill and industry. It seldom happens that the richest countries are the most productive; or that the bounty of nature, where it has been profusely lavished, is improved by corresponding exertions on the part of man. Repugnant to labour where labour can be dispensed with, it is necessity alone that compels him to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow, and to torture the ungrateful soil for its scanty products. But habits of exertion being once formed, a variety of causes gradually contribute to stimulate his activity and extend his resources. He naturally aspires to improve his condition and circumstances by all the means in his power; experience soon teaches him better modes of exerting his industry;—as society advances, the natural reward of labour and skill is increased;—and if the public policy of the state be wisely directed to accelerate the operation of natural causes, the most striking results may be produced, and countries originally barren covered with well-cultivated fields, teeming with abundant harvests. Such seems to have been the progression of improvement in Attica; which, though one of the least fertile of the Grecian provinces, was, by the industry and skill of its inhabitants, rendered ultimately one of the most productive in proportion to its extent and the portion of its surface which was susceptible of cultivation.

The chief cities in the ancient kingdom of Attica were Athens the capital, of which a very full description has been given under that head (see article ATHENS); Eleusis, situated on the gulf of the same name, at an equal distance from Megara and the Peiræus, where the greater mysteries of Ceres were quadriennially celebrated; and, lastly, Rhamnus, famous for the temple of Amphiaræus, and a statue of the goddess Nemesis, executed by Phidias.

Ogyges has had the reputation of being the first king of Attica; and chronologers have even undertaken to fix the date of his reign, which has been variously set down at 150 and 200 years before the arrival of Cecrops. But we have no assurance that even the name of Ogyges was known to the older Grecian authors; and if anything can be gathered from the traditions concerning this fabulous personage, reported by later writers, it is, that, at some very remote period, a flood, having desolated the rich fields of Boeotia over which he reigned, drove many of the inhabitants to establish themselves in the adjoining district of Attica, which, though hilly, rocky, and little fruitful, was yet judged preferable to a champaign country, surrounded on all sides by mountainous tracts, and consequently exposed to a recurrence of the calamity by which so many of them had been overwhelmed. We may therefore safely consign this legendary monarch to that primitive obscurity in which his existence, his origin, and his achievements are equally involved.

At the same time there cannot be a stronger proof of the early civilization of Attica, or at least of its capital city, than the remote period to which its history is carried back in a clear and consistent series. This series commences with Cecrops, an Egyptian, believed to have been contemporary with Moses. Having led into Attica a colony of his countrymen, and brought along with him from Sais the worship of Neith, afterwards called Athene, this adventurer settled on the rock of the Acropolis, which hence received the name of Cecropia, and soon extended his dominion over the whole tract, which was afterwards denominated Attica. He divided his newly-acquired territory into twelve districts, with a principal town or rather village in each, where he caused justice to be administered according to some salutary laws he had established; and he also taught his subjects a more regular and effectual mode of defence against the incursions of their neighbours, from which even their poverty did not exempt them. He fixed his residence in the Cecropia, which was peculiarly under the patronage of the Egyptian goddess, whom the Greeks worshipped by the name of Athene, and the Latins by that of Minerva; while many, induced by the proximity of the port and the protection of the fortress, erected their habitations around the base of the latter, and thus gave rise to that city which was destined to become afterwards so illustrious both in arts and in arms. Cecrops is also said to have been the founder of religion as well as laws; to have established the worship of Jupiter, and instituted marriage among the Greeks; to have taught his subjects the arts of ship-building and navigation; to have divided them into four tribes, which were afterwards increased to ten by Cleisthenes; and, finally, to have instituted the celebrated tribunal of Areiopagus.

Among the successors of Cecrops, whose names have been chiefly recorded in Athenian tradition are, 1. Amphictyon, son of Deucalion of Thessaly, who is said to have succeeded to the throne in right of his wife Atthis, daughter of Cranus, a native Athenian, who succeeded Cecrops. From Atthis the country, which had hitherto been called Actea, is said to have taken the name of Attica. 2. Erechtheus the First, called by later writers Erichthonius. He set up an image of Minerva, made of olive wood, in the Cecropia; and instituted festivals called Athenea in the Attic cities or head towns of districts, which were then twelve in number. Erechtheus was fabled to have been the son of Neptune and the earth, to have been educated by Minerva, to have acted as her assistant in the invention of war-horses and chariots, and to have been... buried in the temple which he had dedicated to her in the Crocopia; and which, from this circumstance, was in the latest period known by the name of the Erichtheum.

3. Pandion the First. In his reign lived Triptolemus, who was supposed to have been instructed in the art of husbandry by Ceres, and to have instituted the Eleusinian mysteries.

4. Erechtheus the Second. He colonized a part of Euboea, and defeated Eumolpus, who, with a body of Thracians, had seized on Eleusis; but he was unhappily slain in the action. The daughters of Erechtheus are said to have devoted themselves to death that their father might prove successful in the Eleusinian war; and about the same time the daughters of Leos were immolated to avert a contagious sickness, in obedience to the Delphic oracle, which prescribed human sacrifices upon the occasion. These and similar remains of barbarism appear from Homer to have prevailed among the Greeks as late as the time of the Trojan war.

5. Ægeus, who, after the direct succession had been considerably disturbed by the collateral branches, recovered the throne, and enjoyed a long reign of thirty-nine years.

6. Theseus. In his way to Athens from Troezen, where he had been living in obscurity, Theseus cleared the country of the robbers who opposed him, and for these exploits was acknowledged by Ægeus and the Athenians as successor to the throne. He afterwards relieved Athens from a disgraceful tribute exacted by the king of Crete; and having succeeded to the royal authority, laid the foundation of the early pre-eminence of his country, by founding the Prytaneum as a court of judicature common to all Attica, and by establishing the Panathenaia in the Erichtheum as a festival for the whole province. The immediate consequence of this change, which occurred about the year B.C. 1300, was the decline of the other eleven Attic cities; a concentration of the government in the town of Athens; and a great increase of population in Attica, attracted by the protection and security resulting from the new laws of Theseus. But these signal benefits, gilded as they were by the brilliant exploits of the patriotic hero, failed to secure him the gratitude of those for whom he had laboured, and fought, and suffered. In consequence of the intrigues of Mnestheus, the son of Pteus, and great-grandson of Erechtheus, he was forced to flee from Athens, and at length died in exile in the island of Scyros.

Mnestheus ascended the throne from which Theseus had been expelled, and reigned twenty-four years. He lost his life at the siege of Troy, and was succeeded by Demophon, one of the sons of Theseus by Phedra, who was likewise present at the siege, but had the good fortune to return in safety. In the reign of the latter prince was erected the famous court of the Ephete, consisting originally of fifty Athenians and as many Argives, appointed for the purpose of trying persons accused of the crime of wilful murder. By this court the king himself afterwards submitted to be tried for having accidentally killed one of his subjects. Mnestheus was succeeded by his son or brother Oxyntes, who again was succeeded by his son Aphydes; and this last was murdered by a natural brother of the name of Thymætes. But the bastard usurper discovered many base qualities unworthy of the station he had assumed, and was at last deposed by his subjects on account of the flagrant cowardice he had displayed on a critical occasion.

Thymætes was appropriately succeeded by a knavish adventurer called Melanthus, who, after a long reign of thirty-seven years, left the kingdom to his son Codrus. The latter reigned twenty-one years, during which period the Dorians and Heraclidae had regained all Peloponnesus, and were upon the point of invading Attica. Codrus, being informed that the oracle had promised them victory provided they did not kill the king of the Athenians, came immediately to a resolution of dying for his country. Disguising himself, therefore, as a peasant, he went into the enemy's camp, and having quarrelled with some of the common soldiers, was killed in a brawl. On the morrow the Athenians, knowing what had happened, sent to demand the body of their king, at which the invaders were so terrified that they decamped without striking a blow.

Upon the death of Codrus, a dispute which happened among his sons concerning the succession furnished the Athenians with a pretence for ridding themselves of their kings, and changing the monarchical into a republican form of government. It was highly improbable, they said, that they should ever again have so good a king as Codrus; and, to prevent their having a worse, they resolved to have no king but Jupiter. That they might not, however, appear ungrateful to the family of Codrus, they made his son Medon their supreme magistrate, with the title of archon; an office which was afterwards rendered decennial, but nevertheless continued in the family of Codrus. But the extinction of the Medontide having at last left them without restraint, they not only made this office annual, but at the same time created nine archons. By the latter expedient they provided against the exorbitant power of a single person, as by the former they took away all apprehension of the archons having time to establish themselves, so as to be able to change the constitution. In a word, they now attained what they had long sought after, namely, rendering the supreme magistrates entirely dependent upon the people.

There has been handed down to us an enumeration of Archons, these archons for upwards of six centuries, beginning with Draco, Creon, who lived about 684 years B.C., and coming down to Herodes, who lived only sixty years prior to that era. The first archon of whom we hear anything really worthy of notice was Draco. He governed about the middle of the 39th Olympiad, when it is supposed he promulgated his laws; but although his name is very frequently mentioned in history, no connected account can be found either of the lawgiver or of his institutions. We only know generally that his laws were excessively severe, awarding the punishment of death for the smallest offences no less than for the most heinous crimes; and that, as Demades remarked of them, they seemed to have been written, not with ink, but with blood. For this extraordinary and undiscriminating severity he gave no other reason than that the smallest faults appeared to him to be worthy of death, and that he could find no higher punishment for the greatest. He was far advanced in years when he legislated for Athens; and he appears to have been vastly conceited of his institutions, which he would not suffer to be called laws, but sanctions; as if they had been emanations of divine wisdom. The Athenians, however, soon grew weary both of the sanctions and their author; upon which Draco was obliged to retire to Aegina, where he was received in the most flattering manner. But the favour of the inhabitants of this place proved more fatal to him than the hatred of the Athenians; for coming one day into the theatre, the audience, to evince their regard for the exiled legislator, threw their cloaks upon him, and fairly stifled the old man to death with their kindness.

Not long after the expulsion of Draco, we find the re-Mitylenian war.

---

1 "It is remarkable," says Mr Mitford, "that Athenian and Roman superstition, without any connection between the people, should have agreed so exactly in the extraordinary circumstance that, after the abolition of royalty among both, and while the very name of king was abhorred as a title of civil magistracy or military command, yet equally the title and the office were scrupulously retained for the administration of religious ceremonies." (History of Greece, vol. I. p. 90, London, 1829, &c.) public engaged in a war with the Mitylenians about the city Sigaeum, situated near the mouth of the river Scamander. The Athenian army was commanded by Phrynon, and that of the Mitylenians by Pittacus, one of the seven sages of Greece; but the generals, thinking the honour of their respective countries concerned, and being at the same time desirous to spare the effusion of blood, agreed to settle the dispute by single combat. They met accordingly; but the sage, trusting more to cunning than to courage, concealed behind his shield a net, wherewith he suddenly entangled his antagonist, and easily slew him. This, however, not putting an end to the war, Periander of Corinth interposed; and both parties having submitted to his arbitration, he decreed that Sigaeum should belong to the Athenians.

About seven years after the Mitylenian war, a conspiracy was entered into by Cylon, son-in-law of Theseus, prince of Megara, for the purpose of seizing on the sovereignty of Athens. Having consulted the Delphic oracle as to the most proper time, and received directions to make the attempt while the citizens of Athens were engaged in celebrating the great festival of Jupiter, Cylon and his associates made themselves masters of the citadel by a coup-de-main, at the time when the greater part of the citizens had repaired to Elis to witness the celebration of the Olympic games. But being instantly besieged by Megacles, who was at that time archon, and soon reduced to great distress from want of water, the chief conspirator and his brother contrived to effect their escape; upon which the remainder fled for safety to the temple of Minerva, where they were barbarously massacred by order of Megacles, and in virtue of one of those sophistical quibbles by means of which men sometimes reconcile their minds to the perpetration of the foulest and bloodiest deeds.

At this period of confusion the Megarensians attacked and took both Nisus and Salamis. The former was a place of little or no importance in any, the latter one of the very greatest in every view; but so completely were the Athenians routed in every attempt to retake it, that a law was at last passed, declaring it capital for any one to propose the recovery of Salamis. About the same time the city was disturbed by reports of frightful appearances, and filled with superstitious fears. The oracle at Delphi was therefore consulted, and an answer returned that the city must be purified by certain expiatory rites. This was accordingly done under the superintendence of one Epimenides, a Cretan, who prescribed the sacrifice of white and black sheep, and also caused many temples and chapels to be erected, including one dedicated to Contumely, and another to Impudence! This man, after looking wistfully for a long time to the port of Munychia, spoke as follows to those that were near him: "How blind is man to the future! For, did the Athenians know what mischief will one day be derived to them from this place, they would eat it with their teeth." This prediction was thought to have been accomplished two hundred and seventy years after, when Antipater constrained the Athenians to admit a Macedonian garrison into that place.

About 577 years B.C., Solon, the famed Athenian legislator, began to show himself to his countrymen. He is said to have been lineally descended from Codrus, but left by his father in circumstances rather necessitous, which obliged him to apply himself to merchandise. From the first he appeared in the character of a patriot. The shameful decree, that none under pain of death should propose the recovery of Salamis, grieved him so much, that having composed an elegy such as he thought calculated to inflame the minds of the people, he ran into the market-place as if he had been insane, with his nightcap on his head, repeating his verses. A crowd soon collected around the pretended madman; his kinsman Peisistratus mingled with the people, and observing them moved with Solon's words, agreed to second the patriotic poet with all the eloquence he was master of; and at length they prevailed so far as to have the law rescinded, war declared against the people of Megara, and an expedition immediately fitted out for the recovery of Salamis; which was ultimately effected by a stratagem more creditable to the ingenuity than the bravery of the Athenians.

The success of this enterprise at once established the reputation of Solon; who, on his return to Athens, was greatly honoured by the people, and soon afforded them another occasion of admiring that wisdom for which they had already given him credit. The inhabitants of Cirrha, a town situated in the Bay of Corinth, having repeatedly wasted the territory of Delphi, at last hesitated the capital itself, with a view of making themselves masters of the treasures contained in the temple of Apollo. Advice of this intended sacrilege having been sent to the Amphictyons, or the states-general of Greece, Solon advised that the matter should be universally resented, and that all the states should join in punishing the Cirrheans, and in saving the Delphic oracle. This suggestion was adopted, and a general war against Cirrha declared. Cleisthenes, prince of Sicyon, commanded in chief, and the Athenian contingent was under the orders of Alcmenon. Solon accompanied the expedition as assistant or counsellor to Cleisthenes, and under his direction the war was conducted to a prosperous issue. According to Pausanias, the city was reduced by a singular stratagem, said to have been invented by Solon. He caused the river Plistus, which flowed through Cirrha, to be turned into another channel, hoping thereby to distress the inhabitants for want of water; but finding they had many wells within the city, and were not to be reduced by that means, he caused a vast quantity of roots of hellebore to be thrown into the river, which was then suffered to return into its former bed. The inhabitants, overjoyed at the sight of running water, came in troops to drink of it; the consequence of which was, that an epidemic flux ensued, and the citizens being no longer able to defend the walls, the town was easily captured. This, as far as we know, is the only instance on record of a town taken by physic.

On his return to Athens after the hellebore achievement, Solon found things again in the utmost confusion. The remnant of Cylon's faction gave out that all sorts of misfortunes had befallen the republic on account of the impiety of Megacles and his followers; and this clamour was heightened by the retaking of Salamis about the same time by the Megarensians. Solon interposed, and persuading those who were styled "execrable" to abide a trial, three hundred persons were chosen to judge them. The issue was, that the whole of Megacles's party who were alive were sent into perpetual exile, and the bones of such as had died were dug up and sent beyond the limits of their country. But although this decision restored tranquillity for the time, the people soon became divided into three factions, contending about the proper form of government. These were called the Diacrii, Pediaci, and Parali; the first of whom, consisting of the inhabitants of the hilly country, declared positively for democracy; the second, dwelling in the low country, and far more opulent than the former, were in favour of an oligarchy, supposing the government would fall mostly into their own hands; whilst the third party, who inhabited the sea-coast, were people of moderate principles, and therefore friendly to a mixed government. But besides the agitations occasioned by this difference of political sentiment, disturbances of a much more serious character arose, in consequence of the lamentable condition to which the labouring classes had been reduced. According to Plutarch, the poor having become indebted to the rich, either tilled their grounds and paid them the sixth part of the produce, or impignorated their persons for their debts, so that many were made slaves at home, and not a few sold as such into foreign countries; while some were even obliged to sell their children to pay their debts, and others in despair quitted Attica altogether. The greater part, however, were for throwing off the yoke, and began to look about for a leader, openly declaring that they intended to change the form of government, and to introduce an agrarian law.

In this extremity the eyes of all were turned to Solon, and some were for offering him the sovereignty at once; but, perceiving the intentions of these misjudging persons, he behaved in such a manner as to deceive both parties, and showed that he thoroughly understood the character of his countrymen. He refused the sovereignty tendered to him, not because he had any objection to sovereign power, but because he disliked an invidious name; and, preferring the substance to the shadow, he quietly took upon himself, without any pomp or pageantry, the unqualified exercise of the supreme authority of the state, in all its branches, and wielded it with an absolutism which would have been intolerable except under the disguise of republican forms. He was chosen archon without having recourse to the ballot, an anomaly of which there is no other example; and, after his election, he proved the wisdom of the choice which the people had made, by disappointing the interested expectations of all parties. It was a fundamental maxim with Solon, that those laws will be best observed which power and justice equally support. Hence, wherever he found the old constitution in any measure consonant to justice, he refused to make any alteration at all, and was at extraordinary pains to show the reason of such changes as were actually introduced. In a word, being a consummate judge of mankind generally, and, above all, thoroughly conversant with the character of his countrymen, he sought to rule only by showing the people that it was their interest to obey, and contented himself with giving them such institutions as they were prepared to receive, instead of forcing upon them those which might be esteemed theoretically the most perfect. Hence, to one who inquired whether he had given the Athenians the best laws in his power, he replied, "I have established the best which they could receive."

With reference to the main cause of sedition, namely, the oppressed state of the meaner class, Solon removed it by a scheme which he called seisachthia, or discharge. Ancient authors, however, are not agreed as to the precise nature of this contrivance. Some say that he cancelled all debts then in existence, and prohibited the seizure of any man's person in default of payment of a debt for the future; whilst others affirm that the poor were relieved, not by cancelling the debts, but by lowering the interest, and increasing the value of money, so that a mina, which before was equal to seventy-three drachmas only, was by him made equal to a hundred. The more probable opinion is, that the seisachthia was a general remittance of all debts whatsoever; for if the fact had been otherwise, Solon could scarcely have boasted, as he did in his verses, that he had removed the marks of mortgages which were everywhere frequent, that he had freed from apprehension such as were driven to despair, and had removed a source of interminable discord and confusion. It must be confessed, however, that there is little ground for the ovation in which the Athenian legislator appears to have indulged. His contrivance, whichever way it be interpreted, was a manifest wrong, which nothing but necessity—and scarcely even that—could have justified. If by the seisachthia we are to understand a general remittance of all debts, the nature of the proceeding scarcely requires to be characterized. It was an act of open robbery committed on the creditor, who was despoiled and ruined by law in order to relieve the debtor. If, again, its operation was limited to lowering the rate of interest and increasing the value of money, it was still an act of robbery, though the spoliation of the creditor in this case was only partial; while, by disturbing all existing arrangements, and by utterly destroying public confidence, it was evidently calculated to strike at the sources of national industry, and ultimately to aggravate the very evils which it was intended to remedy. In this view it can scarcely be regarded in any other light than as a fraudulent bankruptcy; the less excusable as it seems to have been sanctioned, not so much from the pressure of any immediate necessity, as from a desire to conciliate the multitude, and to secure that hollow popularity which no man ever trusted to without having cause to repent his credulity.

But in the midst of all the glory which Solon acquired by this notable expedient, an accident occurred which for a time clouded his reputation, and had almost entirely ruined his schemes. Having, it seems, consulted Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus, three of his friends, on an oration he had prepared with a view to engage the people's consent to the seisachthia, these worthies, thus apprized of the contemplated measure, availed themselves of their knowledge to borrow large sums of money before the law was promulgated, with the intention, of course, to take advantage of its provisions, and refuse to repay the lenders. We cannot wonder that Solon himself was at first believed to have been cognizant of the scheme, and a partner in this fraudulent adventure. But, happily for his credit, these suspicions were obliterated when it was discovered that the lawgiver was a creditor to a large extent, and likely to become a considerable loser by the operation of his own law. His friends, however, never recovered their credit (it would have been marvellous if they had), but were ever afterwards stigmatized with the opprobrious appellation of chriocopidae or debt-sinkers.

From these and other causes the Athenians were as little pleased with Solon's management as with their former condition; the rich, thinking he had done too much in cancelling the money-debts due to them; and the poor, that he had done too little because he had not made an equal division of the lands of Attica. But, with the fickleness characteristic of democracy, they at length acquiesced in the new institutions, and gave a more public token of their approbation than they had before shown of their displeasure, by instituting a solemn sacrifice under the name of seisachthia; at the same time that Solon was unanimously elected legislator of Athens, with full powers to make laws, and to alter or new-model the constitution as he might think fit.

Solon being thus invested with unlimited authority, set about the arduous task of compiling a body of laws for the use of a turbulent people of Attica; and having at last completed his task in the best manner he could, or at least in the best manner that the character of the people would admit, he caused them to be duly ratified, and declared to be in force for a century from the date of their publication. Those which related to private actions were preserved on parallelograms of wood, with cases which reached from the ground, and turned upon a pin like a wheel, whence the appellation of axones; and were placed, first in the citadel, and afterwards in the Prytaneum, that all the subjects of the state might have access to consult them whenever they chose. Such as concerned public institutions and sacrifices were inscribed on triangular tablets of stone called eyrobes. The Athenian magistrates were sworn to observe both; and in process of time these monuments of Solon's wisdom became so famous that all public acts were from them named axones and cyrbes. With regard to the axones or jus privatum of Solon, our information is exceedingly imperfect; but if it be true that the decemviral constitutions were principally borrowed from this portion of his code, the fragments which remain of these celebrated laws are certainly calculated to give us no mean idea of his fitness for the task which circumstances as well as inclination had induced him to undertake. Nor will our opinion of the legislator be lowered by attending to his system of public law; concerning which more exact details have been preserved, and some account will be given when we come to speak of the Athenian government.

After the promulgation of his code, Solon found himself obliged to leave Athens, to avoid being continually teased for explanations and emendations of his laws; an annoyance, it is to be feared, with which all codifiers, modern as well as ancient, must lay their account. He therefore pretended an inclination to merchandise, and obtained leave to withdraw himself for ten years, in the hope that during the period of his absence his laws would grow familiar to the people. From Athens Solon accordingly travelled into Egypt, where he conversed with Psmenophis of Heliopolis and Sesonchis of Sais, the most learned priests of that age, from whom he learned the situation of the island Atlantis, and wrote an account of it in verse, which Plato afterwards continued. Leaving Egypt, he visited Cyprus, where he was well received by one of the petty kings, and assisted in the foundation of a new city, the site of which he had pointed out, and which, out of gratitude to the Athenian legislator, was called Solos.

But while Solon was thus travelling in quest of wisdom, which is not always found in the course of tours and perambulations, his countrymen, resolved on being dissatisfied at all events, had again divided themselves into three factions. Lycurgus was at the head of what may be called the country party; Megacles the son of Alcmaeon swayed those who lived on the sea-coast; and Peisistratus appeared as the champion of the poorer sort, under the pretence of protecting them from tyranny, but in reality with the view of seizing on the sovereignty for himself. All these factions pretended to have a prodigious regard for Solon and his laws, at the same time that they were secretly desirous of a change; but in what way they were to be benefited by a counter-revolution none of them knew, or even pretended to know. An abstract love of change for its own sake, rather than any definite purpose of improvement, seems to have been the ruling principle of these factions; nor was the agitation produced the less violent because no one knew exactly what it was desired. In the midst of all this confusion the legislator returned. Each of the factions paid their court to him; affecting to receive him with the deepest reverence and respect, and beseeching him to resume his authority, and compose the disorders to which they themselves had given birth. But Solon declined this hollow invitation, on the ground that his age rendered him unable to speak and act as formerly for the good of his country: he however sent for the chiefs of each party, and entreated them in the most pathetic manner not to ruin their common parent, but to prefer the public good to their own private interest; sound advice, doubtless, but, like most sage admonitions, entirely thrown away on those to whom it was administered.

Peisistratus, who of all the chiefs had unquestionably the least intention of following Solon's advice, appeared to be the most affected with his discourses; but perceiving that he affected popularity by all possible methods, Solon easily penetrated into his design of assuming the sovereign power. This he spoke of privately to Peisistratus himself; but as he saw that his admonitions had no effect, he unveiled the designs of this ambitious chief, that the public might be on their guard against him and his artful machinations. But all the wise discourses of Solon were lost upon the Athenians. Peisistratus had got the meaner sort entirely at his devotion, and therefore resolved to cheat them out of the liberty which they could not appreciate, and deserved to lose. With this view he wounded himself, then drove into the market-place, and there showed his bleeding body, imploring the protection of the people against those whom his kindness to them had rendered his implacable enemies. It was for being their declared friend, he said, that he had thus suffered. They saw it was no longer safe for a man to be a friend to the poor; they saw it was no longer safe for a man to live in Attica, unless they would take him under that protection which he implored. A crowd being instantly collected, Solon came among the rest, and, suspecting the deceit, openly taxed Peisistratus with his perfidious conduct; but to no purpose. A general assembly of the people was summoned, wherein it was moved that Peisistratus should have a guard. Solon was the only person present who had resolution enough to oppose this measure; the richer Athenians remaining silent through fear of the multitude, which implicitly followed Peisistratus, and applauded every thing he said. But when he saw that all his endeavours were vain, he left the assembly, remarking as he withdrew, that he was wiser than some, and stouter than others. A guard of four hundred men was then unanimously decreed to Peisistratus; and with this inconsiderable body he managed, partly by stratagem and partly by force, to possess himself of the supreme power, b.c.560. Solon inveighed bitterly against the meanness of his countrymen, in thus tamely surrendering their liberties, and attempted to rouse them to take up arms in defence of the constitution and the laws; but finding his efforts unavailing, he withdrew, remarking that he had done his utmost for his country; and immediately retired from the dominion of Athens, to which he refused to return, even at the solicitation of Peisistratus himself.

Peisistratus, having thus obtained the sovereignty, did not overturn the laws of Solon, but on the contrary used his power with the greatest moderation. It was not in the nature of things, however, that the Athenians could long remain satisfied with any form of government. On the usurpation of Peisistratus, Megacles and his family had retired from Athens, ostensibly in order to save their own lives; but having entered into a treaty with Lycurgus, whom they brought, along with his party, into a scheme for deposing the usurper, they concerted matters so skilfully, that Peisistratus was soon after obliged to withdraw from the city; and, on his departure, the Athenians ordered his goods to be confiscated. But Megacles had no sooner succeeded in his project against Peisistratus, than, finding his ally Lycurgus untractable, he changed sides, like a thorough-paced intriguer, and began to plot the return of the very man whom he had just succeeded in expelling as a tyrant and usurper. And in this counter-project, as may easily be supposed, he found an able coadjutor in Peisistratus himself, whose recall was at length effected by means of a trick worthy of the parties engaged in this little political drama, and eminently characteristic of a people who resorted to finess in every thing, and were always content to be gulled, provided the thing was cleverly executed. Having found out a woman of the name of Phya, of a mean family and fortune, but of great stature and very handsome person, they dressed her in armour, placed her in a chariot, and having disposed things so as to make her appear to the utmost advantage, they conducted her towards the city, sending heralds before, with orders to address the people in the following terms: "Give a kind reception, O Athenians, to Peisistratus, who is so much honoured above all other men by Minerva, that she her- self condescends to bring him back to the citadel." The report being universally spread that Minerva was bringing back Peisistratus, and the ignorant multitude believing this woman to be the goddess, addressed their prayers to her, and received Peisistratus with the utmost joy. When he had recovered the sovereignty, Peisistratus married the daughter of Megacles, in fulfillment of a stipulation made between them to that effect, and also gave the mock goddess as a wife or mistress to his son Hipparchus.

But unfortunately Peisistratus did not long enjoy the authority to which he had been restored in this creditable manner. He had indeed married the daughter of Megacles according to treaty; but having children by a former marriage, and remembering that the whole family of Megacles were execrated by the Athenians, he thought it expedient to suffer his new spouse to remain in a state of perpetual widowhood. This the lady bore patiently for some time; but at last acquainting her mother with the state in which she was compelled to live, the affront was highly resented; and Megacles immediately entered into a treaty with the malcontents, of whom there was always a great number at Athens under every form of government. Peisistratus, apprized of this step on the part of his father-in-law, and perceiving that a new storm was gathering, voluntarily quitted Athens and retired to Eretria; where, having consulted with his sons, he resolved to reduce Athens, and repossess himself of power by force of arms. With this view he applied to several of the Greek states, including that of Thebes, who furnished him with the troops he desired; and at the head of a considerable force he returned to Attica,—reduced Marathon, the inhabitants of which had taken no measure for their defence,—surprised and routed the republican forces, which had marched out of Athens to attack him,—and finally re-established himself in power, by using victory with his accustomed moderation.

Peisistratus being thus reinstated once more in the sovereignty, took a method of securing himself in power directly opposite to that which Theseus had adopted. For, instead of collecting the inhabitants from the country into towns, as his predecessor had done, Peisistratus, made them retire from the towns into the country, in order to apply themselves to agriculture; and thus prevented their meeting together in bodies and caballing against him as they had hitherto been accustomed to do. By this means also the territory of Athens was greatly ameliorated, and extensive plantations of olives were reared over all Attica, which had hitherto been not only destitute of corn, but also naked and bleak in appearance from the total want of trees. And had he stopped here it would have been well. But actuated by that partiality for sumptuary laws which seems to have been the foible of nearly all the ancient legislators, he commanded his subjects in the city to wear a kind of sheepskin frock reaching to the knees, and appears to have set great store by this absurd enactment, which was doubtless intended to restore the simplicity of ancient manners. The Athenians, however, vehemently resented this interference with their habits; and so odious did the sheepskin garment become, that in succeeding times the frock or jacket of Peisistratus was a sort of by-word for the badge or garb of slavery. Experience shows that it is comparatively an easy matter to rob men of their liberty, and trample both on their political and civil rights; but an interference with their private habits or the adornment of their persons is almost always dangerous. As prince of Athens, Peisistratus exacted for the service of the state the tenth part of every man's revenue, and even of the fruits of the earth; a heavy tax, undoubtedly, and one which might well justify a little grumbling on the part of those who had to pay it; nor could all the magnificence with which the public revenue was expended reconcile the Athenians to the heavy burdens they were called upon to bear. Indeed they not unnaturally fancied themselves oppressed by tyranny, and indulged in perpetual complaints from the time Peisistratus first ascended the throne to the day of his death; which happened about thirty-three years after he had first assumed the sovereignty, of which period, according to Aristotle, he reigned about seventeen years.

In taking a retrospect, however, of the government and character of this celebrated man, it is impossible to doubt that the one was enlightened and the other humane. The ancient writers are all agreed that he made no change of any consequence in the Athenian constitution. All the laws continued in force; the general assembly, the council of state, the courts of justice, and the magistracies, respectively retained their constitutional powers; and it is known that the usurper himself obeyed a citation from the Areopagus upon a charge of murder. His hand, it is true, lay heavy on the purses of the people in the matter of taxation. But the sums which he raised were religiously expended in the decoration and improvement of the capital, or in works of public utility; and it cannot be questioned that, although he resorted to iniquitous or contemptible expedients to obtain power, he never abused it, either for the gratification of selfishness or revenge. "Take away only his ambition," said Solon; "cure him of the lust of reigning; and there is not a man more naturally disposed to every virtue, nor a better citizen, than Peisistratus." He embellished the city with a great variety of edifices; he improved and strengthened its defences; he enlarged and ameliorated its harbours; and by various acts of taste and magnificence, not less than by his attention to the cultivation of the public mind, he may be said to have fixed the muses at Athens. In a word, if he was ambitious he was also enlightened and humane; and although no one can justify the modes which he took to possess himself of power, his use of it was characterized by a moderation and patriotism which have never as yet been exemplified by any other usurper, ancient or modern; insomuch that, reviewing his character and conduct, we are almost tempted to

The government of Peisistratus, as we have seen, resolves itself into three distinct periods, interrupted by two exiles. Aristotle and Herodotus both agree in this. Further, the term of one exile being ten or eleven years, that of the other must have been five or six. Thus far all is clear. But the duration of his three periods of government, especially of the first and third, is not so satisfactorily ascertained; and chronologers have accordingly adopted various schemes for the arrangement of these periods. Corsini, Barthélemy, Larcher, and Du Fresnoy, make the first tyranny one year; Blair and Clavier make it two and ten years respectively. Corsini and Blair make the first exile one year; Barthélemy two; Larcher, Clavier, and Du Fresnoy, five years. Larcher, Blair, and Du Fresnoy, make the second tyranny one year; Corsini and Clavier four and two years respectively. Corsini states the duration of the second exile at fourteen; Larcher, Blair, Clavier, and Du Fresnoy, at only eleven years. Corsini makes the third tyranny twelve, Larcher fifteen, Blair eighteen, Clavier five, and Du Fresnoy fifteen; while Barthélemy estimates the second tyranny, the second exile, and the third tyranny, as extending together to thirty years. We may remark, however, that these chronologers, as Corsini, Blair, and Barthélemy, who make the first exile less than five years, are at variance with the authorities; and that Corsini, in particular, is inconsistent in his dates, since, according to his own principles, the second exile should be eleven years, instead of fourteen, which last number alone accords with his arrangement. Larcher, Clavier, and Du Fresnoy, rightly give the two exiles at $5 + 11 = 16$ years; but they differ materially in the duration of the first and last tyranny; nor on this point is it easy to decide between them. It is almost superfluous to add, that the general results of these different evaluations coincide, with the exception of that given by Corsini, which is 32, or one year less than the others. (Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, Appendix, No. ii. p. 180; Oxford, 1824, 4to.) subscribe to the sentiment expressed by the poet Claudian, *Numquam gratior extat libertas, quam sub rege pio*.

Peisistratus left behind him two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, both men of abilities, who shared the government between them; and behaved for a time with lenity and moderation. But though, by the mildness of their government, the family of the Peisistratidæ seemed to be fully established on the throne of Athens, a conspiracy was unexpectedly formed against the brothers, by which Hipparchus was slain, and Hippias narrowly escaped death. There were at that time living in Athens two young men, called Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The former being remarkable for his personal beauty, was, on that account, it is said, unnaturally beloved by the other, and also by Hippias, who, if we may believe Thucydides, actually forced him. This was vehemently resented by Aristogeiton, who, in consequence, determined on revenge, which another circumstance contributed to accelerate. Hippias, finding that Harmodius endeavoured on all occasions to shun him, publicly affronted the youth, by refusing permission to his sister to carry the offering of Minerva, as if she had been a person unworthy of that distinction. The two young men, not daring to show any public signs of resentment, consulted privately with their friends, amongst whom it was resolved, that at the approaching festival of the great Panathenaic, when the citizens were allowed to appear in arms, they should attempt to restore Athens to its former liberty; and in this they imagined they would be seconded by the whole body of the people. But when the appointed day arrived, they perceived one of their number talking familiarly with Hippias; wherefore, dreading a discovery, they immediately fell upon Hipparchus, and dispatched him with many wounds. In this exploit, however, the people were so far from aiding the conspirators, that they suffered Harmodius to be killed by the guards of Hipparchus; and seizing Aristogeiton, delivered him up to the vengeance of Hippias. But with their usual fickleness, they soon changed their opinion, and some time afterwards paid the most extravagant honours to the memory of these conspirators; causing their praises to be sung at the great Panathenaic, forbidding any citizen to call a slave by either of their names, and erecting brazen statues to them in the agora or market-place. Several immunities and privileges were also granted to the descendants of these (so called) patriots, and all possible means were taken to render their memory respected and revered by posterity.

Hippias being now sole master of Athens, and burning to revenge the murder of his brother, began by torturing Aristogeiton, in order to force him to disclose his accomplices. But this proved fatal to his own friends; for Aristogeiton impeaching such only as he knew to be best affected to the government of Hippias, the latter were instantly put to death without further inquiry; and when he had exhausted his list, he at last told Hippias, that he now knew of none who deserved to suffer death except the tyrant himself. Hippias next vented his rage on a woman named Leaina, who had been kept by Aristogeiton, and who was put to the torture; which, however, she had the courage to endure without making any confession. After the conspiracy was thought to be quashed, Hippias set about strengthening his government by every means he could think of. With this view he contracted alliances with foreign princes; he increased his revenues by different expedients; he married his only daughter, Archedice, to Æantides, son of Hippocles, tyrant of Lampsacus; and he endeavoured, by affecting various arts of popularity, to conciliate that public opinion which his excessive severities had so rudely shocked. But all these precautions proved fruitless. The lenity of the government of Peisistratus had alone supported it; and although Hippias had fewer difficulties to contend with than his father, the vehemence of his resentment on account of his brother's murder betrayed him into courses repugnant alike to sound policy and to the interests of his family, and at last proved the

---

1 However much we may be shocked at the alleged cause of this tyranny, it is impossible not to admire the beautiful verses ascribed to Kallistratus, in which the act of supposed patriotic immolation is commemorated. The *Agamemnon* has, in fact, shed around the affair a ray of glory which does not in truth belong to it, when viewed in its proper light. The song, accompanied with a translation nearly literal,—

``` En μόρον ελάτε καὶ ἐφέρε φύσιν, Πάντως Ἀρμόδιος ἢ Ἀριστογείτων, Ὅτι τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκολούθησαν, Ἰσχυροὶ ἢ Ἀθήνας ἐπιστρέψαν. Φιλότης Ἀρμόδιος, ὡς ἂν τῶν παιδίων, Νεώτερον ἢ ἐπιστρέψαν ἐκ τῶν παιδίων. Ἴσως τοῦ πατρὸς Ἀριστογείτων, Τοῦδέ τε ἔστιν Ἀρμόδιος ἐπιστρέψαν. Εἰ μόρον ελάτε καὶ ἐφέρε φύσιν, Πάντως Ἀρμόδιος ἢ Ἀριστογείτων, Ὅτι τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκολούθησαν, Ἰσχυροὶ ἢ Ἀθήνας ἐπιστρέψαν. Φιλότης Ἀρμόδιος, ὡς ἂν τῶν παιδίων, Νεώτερον ἢ ἐπιστρέψαν ἐκ τῶν παιδίων. Ἴσως τοῦ πατρὸς Ἀριστογείτων, Τοῦδέ τε ἔστιν Ἀρμόδιος ἐπιστρέψαν. ```

This song," says Mr Mitford, "the most ancient composition of its kind extant, may be seen, with an elegant Latin translation, in Bishop Lowth's Lectures on Hebrew Poetry." (History of Greece, vol. i. p. 508, 509, &c. London, 1830, &c.) A Latin translation by Bishop Lowth could scarcely fail to be elegant; but in no edition of the Lectures with which we are acquainted has any translation of this song, either in whole or in part, been attempted. After quoting the Greek, however, the accomplished prelate just named remarks, "Quod si post Idus illas Martias e Tyrannonotis quisquam tale aliquod carmen plebi tradidisset, inique Suburram, et fari circulos, et in ora vulgi intulisset, actu profecto fuisset de partibus, deque dominatione Caesarum: plus mercurie valuissest *Agamemnon* quam Ciceronis Philippicis omnibus." (De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, præl. i. p. 10. Oxon. 1753, &c.) The translation above attempted has little to recommend it except its literal closeness, in as far at least as the somewhat unmanageable nature of the proper names would admit. A free paraphrase would have allowed more poetical embellishment, but would not have answered the historical purpose which we had in view. Executed in this manner, the last quatrain, for example, might have been rendered thus:—

``` Oh, glory shall follow thee ever and ever, And song shall enshrine in its numbers thy name; Nor till Athens and liberty finally sever, Will the halo grow dim that encircles thy fame. ``` cause of his expulsion from power in rather less than four years after the death of Hipparchus. This revolution was principally brought about by the party of the Alcmaeonidae, by which name the adherents of Megacles became known after the death of that inveterate infringer. Hippias retired to Sigeum, an appanage of his family, where he seems to have died, without making any vigorous or effectual effort to recover his lost authority.

After the expulsion of the Peisistratidae, the Athenians did not long enjoy the tranquillity which they had promised themselves. They became divided into two factions; one of which was headed by Cleisthenes, chief of the Alcmaeonidae; and the other by Isagoras, a man of quality, and highly in favour with the Athenian cuprads or nobility. Cleisthenes cultivated the people, and endeavoured to gain their affection by increasing as much as possible their power; whilst Isagoras perceiving that the popular arts of his rival would secure him an ascendancy, applied to the Lacedemonians for assistance; at the same time reviving the old story of Megacles's sacrilege, and insisting that Cleisthenes ought to be banished as being of that person's family. Cleomenes king of Sparta readily entered into his schemes, and suddenly dispatched a herald to Athens with orders to declare war provided all the Alcmaeonidae were not immediately banished. The Athenians had the pusillanimity to comply with this insolent requisition, and to banish Cleisthenes with all his relations. But their base poltroonery and ingratitude did not answer their purpose. Cleomenes entered Attica at the head of a Spartan army; and arriving at Athens, condemned to banishment seven hundred families, in addition to those previously sent into exile. And, not content with this, he would have dissolved the senate, and vested the government in the heads of the faction of Isagoras; but happily the Athenians were not yet degraded enough to submit to such humiliation; so, taking up arms, they drove the Spartan troops into the citadel, where, after sustaining a short siege, Cleomenes surrendered, on condition that all who were in the castle should retire unmolested; a stipulation which was shamefully violated on the part of the Athenians.

The Spartan king, however, had no sooner withdrawn from Athens, than he formed a strong combination in favour of Isagoras; having engaged the Boeotians to attack Attica on the one side, and the Chalcidians on the other, whilst he at the head of a powerful Spartan army entered the territory of Eleusis. But this powerful confederacy was quickly dissolved. The Corinthians, who had joined Cleomenes, doubting the justice of their cause, returned home; the rest of his allies likewise began to waver; and his colleague Ariston, the other king of Sparta, differing in opinion with Cleomenes, the latter was obliged to abandon the enterprise. The Spartans and their allies having withdrawn, the Athenians quickly routed the Boeotians and Chalcidians, and carried off a great number of prisoners, who were afterwards set at liberty on paying a ransom of two minae a head. The Boeotians, on the other hand, immediately vowed revenge, and engaging on their side the people of Ægina, who had a hereditary hatred of the Athenians, the Æginetans landed a considerable army, and ravaged the coasts of Attica while the Athenians were occupied with the Boeotian war.

In the meanwhile Cleomenes, exasperated by his unsuccessful expedition against Attica, and anxious for an opportunity of effacing the remembrance of his defeat, produced at Sparta certain pretended oracles which he alleged he had found in the citadel of Athens while he was besieged therein, the purport of which was, that Athens would soon become a rival of Sparta. At the same time it was discovered that Cleisthenes had bribed the priestess of Apollo to cause the Lacedemonians to expel the Peisistratidae from Athens; which was sacrificing their best friends to those whom interest necessarily rendered their enemies. This pitiful jugglery had such an effect, that the Spartans repented their folly in expelling Hippias, sent for him from Sigeum, in order to restore him to his principality; but the other states refusing to countenance the projected restoration, the Spartans were forced to abandon the enterprise, and Hippias returned to Sigeum to digest his disappointment with what appetite he might.

About this period Aristagoras the Milesian, having stirred up a revolt in Ionia against the Persian king, applied to the Spartans for assistance; but sickened already with bootless crusades of this description, they declined to have any hand in the matter; and it would have been well if the Athenians, to whom the disturber next made application, had followed this wise and prudent course. One would have thought that their own intestine broils, aggravated by the interference of the Lacedemonians, might have indisposed them to foment disturbances in other countries, against the government of which they had no ground or even pretence for complaint. But the fact proved otherwise; and Aristagoras was by them furnished with twenty ships, under the command of Melanthis, a nobleman universally esteemed. This rash action cost the Greeks very dear; for no sooner did the king of Persia hear of the assistance sent from Athens to his rebellious subjects, than he declared himself the sworn enemy of that city, and solemnly besought the deity that he might one day have it in his power to be revenged on them. But besides the displeasure which Darius had conceived against the Athenians on account of the assistance they had afforded the Ionians, he was further encouraged, by the intrigues of the ex-tyrant Hippias, to undertake an expedition against Greece. Immediately on his return from Lacedemon, as above related, Hippias passed over into Asia; proceeded to Artaphernes, governor of the adjacent provinces belonging to the Persian king; and excited him to make war upon his country, promising to do homage to the Persian monarch provided he was restored to the principality of Athens. Apprized of this step on the part of their late tyrant, the Athenians sent ambassadors to Artaphernes, desiring permission to enjoy their liberty in peace. But the Persians returned for answer, that if they would have peace with the Great King, they must immediately consent to receive Hippias; and as the Athenians were by no means disposed to purchase the forbearance of the Persian monarch at the price of compliance, they resolved to assist his enemies by every means in their power. This resolution being made known to Darius, he commissioned Mardonius to avenge him of the insults which he thought the Greeks had offered him; but that commander having met with a storm at sea and other accidents, which rendered him unable to do anything, Datis and Artaphernes (the son of the Artaphernes above mentioned) were commissioned to chastise Grecian insolence and presumption.

---

1 The Peisistratidae were expelled before the fourth year of Hippias was completed, eighteen years after the death of Peisistratus, twenty years before the battle of Marathon, a hundred years before the constitution of the Four Hundred, and n. c. 510. (Herodotus, v. 53; Thucydides, vi. 69, and viii. 68; Plato, Hipparch. p. 229; Schol. Lycastrat. 619; Fasti Hellenici, 16.) 2 Herodotus, v. 37, 38, 55, 97, 98, 99. Charon Lampasceus apud Plutarch. Mor. p. 661; Fasti Hellenici, p. 20. Aristagoras was slain in Thrace, n. c. 497. War being thus declared, the Persian commanders, fearing again to attempt doubling the promontory of Athos, where their fleet had formerly suffered, drew their forces into the plains of Cilicia, and passing thence, through the Cyclades to Euboea, directed their course towards Athens. Their instructions were to destroy both Eretria and Athens, and to bring away the people. The first attempt was made on Eretria; and on the approach of the Persian fleet the inhabitants sent to Athens to apply for assistance. Nor did they sue in vain. With a magnanimity almost unparalleled, considering the crisis, the Athenians sent 4000 men to their aid; but unhappily the Eretrians were so greatly divided in opinion, that, though the danger was urgent, nothing could be resolved on. One party was for receiving the Athenian succours into the city; another declared for abandoning the city and retiring into the mountains of Euboea; whilst a third was base enough to seek to betray their country to the Persians. Matters being in this hopeless state, the Athenian commanders withdrew the auxiliary force, and retiring by Oropus, escaped the destruction with which they were threatened; whilst Eretria, betrayed into the hands of the Persians, was pillaged, burned, and its inhabitants sold for slaves; a fate which their cowardice and treachery richly merited.

On the tidings of this disaster the Athenians immediately drew together such forces as they could muster, amounting in all to about 10,000 men; and these, with 1000 Plateans who afterwards joined them, were commanded by ten general officers, with equal power, amongst whom were the illustrious names of Miltiades, Aristides, and Themistocles, men distinguished alike for their valour, their conduct, their patriotism, and their virtue. But it being generally thought that so small a body of troops would be unable to resist the formidable power of the Persians, a messenger was dispatched to Sparta to entreat the immediate assistance of that state. He communicated his business to the senate in the following terms:—“Men of Lacedemon,” said he, “the Athenians desire you to assist them, and not to suffer the most ancient of all the Grecian cities to be enslaved by the barbarians. Eretria is already destroyed, and Greece consequently weakened by the loss of so considerable a place.” The assistance was readily granted; but the promised succours arrived too late for the occasion which required them; and, happily for their own glory, the Athenians were obliged to fight without waiting for their arrival. In the memorable engagement on the plains of Marathon, whither Hippias had conducted the Persian host, the latter were defeated with great loss by the Athenian infantry, under the command of Miltiades, and driven to their ships. They then endeavoured to double Cape Sunium (Colonna), in order to surprise Athens before the army could return. But in this they were prevented by Miltiades, who, leaving Aristides with 1000 men to guard the prisoners, returned so expeditiously with the main body, that he reached the temple of Hercules before the barbarians had time to commence a serious attack on the city. In the meanwhile the virtuous Aristides discharged the trust reposed in him with the strictest integrity. Though there was much gold and silver in the Persian camp, and the tents and ships they had taken were filled with all manner of riches, he not only forbore taking any thing for his own use, but exerted himself to the utmost in order to prevent others from appropriating the spoils of the enemy, which were religiously reserved for the public service of the state.

After the victory of Marathon, the inhabitants of Platæa were declared free citizens of Athens, and Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristides were at first treated with all possible marks of admiration and respect. But the gratitude of nations, more especially of republics, is proverbially short-lived. Miltiades having undertaken the command of an expedition against the island of Paros, in which he proved unsuccessful, he was, on his return, accused and condemned in a fine of fifty talents, the whole expense of the expedition; and, being unable to pay so large a sum, he was barbarously thrown into prison, where he soon after died of a wound received in the service of his country. Nor did Aristides fare much better than his illustrious colleague. Miltiades had proposed an expedition, which failed, and in which it was possible he might have had sinister designs; but against Aristides not so much as even a suspicion of guilt could with any plausibility be alleged. On the contrary, his extraordinary virtue had procured him the title of The Just, and he had never been found to swerve from the maxims of strict equity. His downfall was occasioned by the intrigues of Themistocles; who being a man of great abilities, and hating Aristides on account of the character which the latter deservedly bore among his countrymen, took all opportunities of insinuating that his rival had in reality made himself master of Athens without the parade of guards and royalty. “He gives laws to the people,” said he; “and what constitutes a tyrant but giving laws?” By this strange kind of reasoning a strong party was formed against him, and it was resolved to banish him for ten years by the ostracism. In this species of ballot the name of the accused was written upon a shell by every one who desired his exile, and this coach was carried to a certain place in the agora, inclosed by means of rails. If the number of shells so collected exceeded six thousand, the sentence was inflicted; if it fell short of this number, the accused was exonerated from the charges against him. When the agents of Themistocles had sufficiently accomplished their purpose, the people suddenly flocked to the market-place, loudly demanding the ostracism. On this occasion a clown, who had just come from some place in the country, bringing a shell to Aristides, said to him, “Write me Aristides upon this.” Aristides, surprised, asked him if he knew any ill of that Athenian, or if he had ever done him any hurt? “Hurt me!” replied the rustic, “no, I don’t so much as know him; but I am weary and sick at heart from hearing him everywhere called The Just.” The reason was unanswerable. Aristides took the shell; wrote his own name upon it; and when informed that the ostracism had fallen upon him, modestly retired from the agora, saying, as he withdrew, “I beseech the gods that the Athenians may never see the day which shall force them to remember Aristides.”

About three years after the banishment of this virtuous citizen, Xerxes king of Persia sent to demand of the Greeks earth and water as tokens of submission and homage. But Themistocles, desirous to widen the breach with that monarch, put to death the interpreter for publishing the decree of the king of Persia in the language

---

1 For an account of the memorable battle of Marathon, with military details of the Greek armies, including the Athenian, see the article Amy. “The Athenians who fought at Marathon,” says Herodotus, “were the first among the Greeks known to have used running for the purpose of coming at once to close fight; and they were the first who withstood (in the field) even the sight of the Median dress and of the men who wear it; for hitherto the very name of Medes and Persians had been a terror to the Greeks.” This honest confession seems to have given great offence to Plutarch, but it is confirmed by Plato (in Menexen. l. ii. p. 240) and other writers of the highest authority.

2 The ostracism of Aristides took place n. c. 483, since he was recalled ἐπὶ τῷ ἑτέρῳ ἔτει ὁ Ἀριστίδης ἀνακαλεῖται. (Plutarch, Aristid. c. 8.) Some, however, think that it took place the following year; and, in fact, he seems to have been in exile at the time of the of the Greeks; and having prevailed with the several states to lay aside their animosities and provide for their common safety, he got himself elected general of the Athenian army.

When the news arrived that the Persians were advancing to invade Greece by the Straits of Thermopylae, and that with this view they were transporting their forces by sea, Themistocles advised his countrymen to abandon the city, embark on board their galleys, and encounter their enemies while yet at a distance. But this advice being disregarded, Themistocles put himself at the head of the army, and having joined the Lacedaemonians, marched towards Tempe. Here intelligence was received that the Straits of Thermopylae had been forced, and that Bœotia and Thessaly had submitted to the Persians; and the army in consequence returned without attempting anything. In this extremity the oracle at Delphi was consulted by the Athenians, and at first returned a very alarming response, threatening them with total destruction; but after much humiliation, a more favourable answer was obtained, in which, probably by the direction of Themistocles, they were promised safety in walls of wood. This being interpreted as a command to abandon Athens, and place all their hopes of safety in their fleet, the greater part began to prepare for embarkation, and money was distributed among them by the council of the Areiopagus, to the amount of eight drachmas a head; but this not proving sufficient, Themistocles publicly gave out that somebody had stolen the shield of Minerva, and, under pretence of searching for the lost legs, he seized on all the money he could find. Some, however, still refused to embark, and understanding the oracle in its literal sense, raised fortifications of wood, resolving to wait the arrival of the Persians, and defend themselves to the last. About this time Aristides was recalled, not so much, it is said, from a sense of the injustice which had been done to him, as from a groundless apprehension of his going over to the Persians and assisting them with his advice.

The Persians having advanced to Athens soon after the inhabitants had deserted it, met with no opposition except from the few who had resolved to remain; and as they would listen to no terms of accommodation, they were put to the sword, and the city utterly destroyed. Xerxes, however, being defeated in a great naval engagement at Salamis, was forced to fly with prodigious loss. Themistocles was for pursuing him and breaking down the bridge of boats which he had thrown over the Hellespont; but this advice being overruled, the crafty Athenian sent a trusty messenger to the king, acquainting him that the Greeks intended breaking down his bridge, and at the same time suggesting the propriety of his making all haste in order to prevent his retreat being cut off. This advice, though misinterpreted by some, was certainly a prudent one, as Xerxes, although he had sustained a defeat, was still at the head of an army capable of destroying all Greece; and had he been driven to despair by finding himself shut up or even too hotly pursued, it is impossible to say what might have been the event. "Make a bridge of gold for a flying enemy," is a rule which the experience of war in all ages has sanctioned.

The defeat of Xerxes at Salamis disposed Mardonius, who had been left to carry on the war by land, rather to treat with the Athenians than to fight them; and with this view he sent Alexander, king of Macedon, to Athens to propose an alliance with the republic, exclusively of the other Grecian states. But this proposal was rejected; in consequence of which Athens was a second time destroyed, and the Athenians were forced to retire to Salamis. But they were soon freed from the apprehension of final subjugation by the total defeat and death of Mardonius at Platæa, where Aristides and the Athenian troops under his command particularly distinguished themselves. And, by a singular coincidence, on the same day that the battle of Platæa was fought, another division of the Persians was defeated at Mycale in Ionia, where the Athenians also behaved with more signal gallantry than any of the other Greeks. The Persians being thus disposed of, the troops who had fought at Mycale crossed over to the Chersonesus, and laid siege to Sestos, which they at length captured after an obstinate defence by the garrison; a circumstance which appears to have irritated them so much that they put both the commanders to death in the most barbarous manner. One of them, Oibazus, was sacrificed to a Thracian god; whilst the other, Artyactes, was impaled alive, and his son stoned to death before his face, on the absurd pretence that he had rifled the sepulchre of Protesilaus.

After the victories of Platæa and Mycale the Athenians, City re-freed from all apprehension respecting the Persians, began to rebuild their city in a more magnificent manner fortified than ever. But, as usual, disputes immediately arose about the form of government most proper to be adopted, and threatened to plunge the city into anarchy. The commons, with Themistocles at their head, declared for a democracy; whilst Aristides, dreading the inconstancy of a purely popular government, wished to organize a kind of mixed administration, but withdrew his opposition when he found the general opinion hostile to his views. Accordingly it was proposed that every citizen should have an equal right to the government, and that the archons should be chosen out of the body of the people without preference or distinction; which being agreed to, put an end for a season to all discontents on this head. About the same time Themistocles suggested the necessity of immediately fortifying the city, so as to prevent its being again destroyed whenever the Persians might deem it expedient to invade Greece. The Lacedaemonians disdained this project exceedingly, and remonstrated against it, upon the hollow ground, that were Athens to be strongly fortified, and the Persians to become possessed of it, it might be impossible ever to dislodge them. The Athenians were not imposed on by this shallow pretence, which was soon changed into a peremptory command not to raise their walls higher; but, considering the great power of Sparta at that time, Themistocles advised the Athenians to temporize, and to assure the Spartan envoys that the work should not be proceeded with until by a special embassy satisfaction had been given to their allies. Being, at his own desire, named ambassador in conjunction with some other Athenians, Themistocles set out alone, telling the senate that it would be for the interest of the state to delay sending the other ambassadors as long as possible. Arrived at Sparta, he put off from time to time receiving an audience, on the pretence that his colleagues had not yet joined him; but in the meanwhile the walls of Athens were building with the utmost expedition, neither houses nor sepulchres being spared for materials, and men, women, children, strangers, citizens, and servants, labouring at the work without intermission. The truth, however, having at length oozed out, Themistocles and his colleagues, who had by this time arrived, were summoned before the ephori, who immediately began to exclaim against the Athenians on account of their breach of compact. But Themistocles stoutly denied the charge; his colleagues, he said, assured him of the contrary; at all events, it did not become a great state to give lie to vague rumours of this description; and if they had any doubts about the truth of his statement, the proper course would be to send deputies to inquire into the fact of the matter, whilst he should himself remain as a hostage to be answerable for the event. This plausible suggestion being agreed to, Themistocles engaged his associates to advise the Athenians to commit the Spartan ambassadors to safe custody until he should be released; after which he publicly avowed the whole transaction, acknowledged himself the author of the scheme, and told the Lacedemonians that "all things are lawful for our country." The Spartans indeed were completely overreached; but seeing no remedy, they concealed their resentment, and sent Themistocles back to Athens in safety.

The following year, the last of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, Themistocles, observing the inconvenience of the port of Phalerum, formed the resolution of improving the Peiraeus, and rendering it the principal harbour of Athens. The wily statesman did not at first think proper to mention publicly his scheme; but having signified to the people that he had something of importance to communicate, they appointed Xantippus and Aristides to examine his project and report thereupon. This they did accordingly; and having informed the people that what Themistocles proposed would be of the utmost advantage to the state, at the same time that it might easily be carried into effect, they were desired to lay the matter before the senate, who, coming unanimously into their measures, sanctioned the project; on which the work was set about and executed with as much expedition as the defences of the city, in order to prevent the possibility of opposition on the part of the Lacedemonians. By these wise and prudent measures, undertaken and carried through with equal energy and address, the naval power of Athens was fixed on a sure basis, and the ascendancy in Grecian politics transferred from the Spartans to the Athenians.

It now came to the turn of Themistocles to experience the ingratitude of his countrymen. His services had been too great ever to be repaid; so essential, in fact, that the treatment he received may perhaps be a sufficient excuse for modern patriots when they connect their own interest with the service of the country. Themistocles had confessedly saved the state from ruin by his advice; he had pre-eminently distinguished himself by his valour; he had rendered Athens, by his policy, superior to the other states of Greece; and he had entirely subverted the Lacedaemonian scheme of power. Yet notwithstanding all this, he was banished by the ostracism, without the shadow of crime being even alleged against him, except that he was hated by the Lacedemonians, and that he had erected a temple near his own house, dedicated to Diana, the Giver of the best Counsel; intimating, with pardonable vanity, that he had himself given the best counsel for the safety both of Athens and of Greece, which was no more than the truth. The state he had exalted, the country he had saved, cast him forth, like an unclean thing, as if unworthy to breathe the common air on the soil of Greece, which he had delivered from the presence of the invader; and he was at length forced to seek shelter from the very monarch whose fleets he had defeated, whose ambition he had thwarted, and whose glory the ascendancy of his genius had for ever tarnished. But more magnanimous and more enlightened than the inconstant race who insolently denominated him a barbarian, the king of Persia received his great enemy in the kindest and most gracious manner, endeavouring by his princely munificence to make him forget his misfortunes; and the conqueror of Salamis was never afterwards recalled, "because," as an old writer quaintly observes, "the Greeks had no occasion for his services."

But the war with Persia was not yet discontinued, because the Greeks found their advantage in plundering and enriching themselves with the spoils of the Persians. For this reason, about the end of the seventy-seventh Olympiad, they equipped a navy, under pretence of relieving certain Greek cities in Asia, subject to the Persians, and gave the command of it to Cimon, the son of Miltiades by a daughter of the king of Thrace. Cimon had already tasted the justice and generosity of his countrymen, having been thrown into prison for his father's fine, from which he was released by Callias, whom his sister Elpinice had married on account of his great wealth, procured, it is said, by no very honourable means. But he nevertheless accepted of the command, and gained such immense booty in this expedition, that the Athenians were thereby enabled to lay the foundation of that longitudinal inclosure which united the port to the city; as also to adorn the Agora with palm-trees, and beautify the Academy with delightful walks and fountains. Soon after this expedition, the Persians having invaded the Chersonesus, and made themselves masters of it, with the assistance of the Thracians, Cimon was hastily sent against both. He had only four ships under his command; but with these he captured thirteen of the Persian galleys, and reduced the whole of the Chersonesus; after which he attacked the Thracians, who had made themselves masters of the gold mines situated between the rivers Nyssus and Strymon, and speedily obliged them to yield. But Cimon was as wise and politic as he was brave. Many of the Greek states, in virtue of a general tax established by Aristides with the view of providing a fund for the common defence, were bound to furnish men and galleys, as well as to pay for their support. But when they saw themselves exposed to danger from the Persians, most of them evinced an unwillingness to furnish their contingent of men. This exasperated the Athenian generals, who, finding them obstinate in their refusal, were for having immediate recourse to force; but Cimon overruled this proposal, permitted such as were desirous of staying at home to remain, and accepted a sum of money instead of a galley completely manned; by which means he inured the Athenians, whom he took on board his galleys, to hardship and discipline, whilst the allies, who remained at home, became enervated through idleness, and, from being confederates, dwindled into tributaries or slaves.

It was scarcely possible, however, for any person who had effectively served the state to escape banishment at Athens. Cimon had gained great wealth both to the state and to himself; but in his public character he had acted with unimpeached integrity, and as a private citizen he had dedicated his wealth to the most laudable purposes. He had demolished the inclosures about his grounds and gardens, permitting every one to enter and take what fruits they pleased; and he had kept open table, where both rich and

---

1 For an account of the fortifications of the capital of Attica, the Long Walls, and the defences of Peiraeus, Phalerum, and Munychia, see article Athens.

2 A considerable period appears to have elapsed between the banishment of Themistocles by the ostracism, a. c. 471, and his flight into Persia. He withdrew to Argos, and resided there when the treason of Pausanias was discovered; as is manifest from Diodorus, xi. 55; Plutarch, Themistoc. c. 23; and Thucydides, i. 135. It would indeed seem that the plans of Pausanias had been communicated to him during his exile; a proof that he had been living in a state of banishment a considerable period before he passed over into Persia, and sought the protection of his former enemy. poor were plentifully entertained. If he met a citizen in a tattered suit of clothes, he made some of his attendants exchange with him; or if the quality of the person rendered such a kindness unsuitable, he caused a sum of money to be privately given him. But all this was insufficient to save him; he did not concur with every measure of the commonality, or evince a proper deference for the wisdom of the sovereign people; and therefore the popular party resolved on putting him to death. The crime hid to his charge was, that by presents from the Macedonians he had been prevailed upon to let slip a manifest opportunity of enlarging his conquests, after taking from the Persians the gold mines of Thrace. To this accusation Cimon replied, that to the utmost of his power he had prosecuted the war against the Thracians, and other enemies of the state of Athens—that it was indeed true he had not made any inroads in Macedonia, because he did not imagine he was to act as a public enemy of mankind, and because he was struck with respect for a nation which appeared modest in their carriage, just in their dealings, and strictly honourable in their behaviour towards him and the Athenians—that if his countrymen looked upon this as a crime, he must abide their judgment—but that, for his own part, he could never be brought to think such conduct deserving of condemnation. His great rival, Pericles, was appointed to accuse him; but this celebrated statesman and orator, rising superior to the occasion, of which a meaner spirit would have availed himself, spoke in such a manner as showed plainly that he did not think the accused guilty; the consequence of which was that Cimon, instead of being condemned to death, as his enemies had fully anticipated, was only banished by the ostracism.

The Athenian power had now risen to such a height that all the other states of Peloponnesus looked upon the republic with a jealous eye, and were continually watching for opportunities of making war upon it when engaged in troublesome affairs, or hard pressed by other enemies. These attempts, however, so far from lessening, generally contributed to increase the power of the Athenians. But in the year B.C. 458 the republic entered into a war with Sparta, which eventually proved nearly as fatal to the state as to the city. For this war no recent provocation had been given on the part of the Spartans. They had indeed sent a considerable army to assist the Dorians against the Phocians; but the Athenians had no interest in the contest, and only sought an occasion to revenge former quarrels. Having therefore engaged the Argives and Thessalians as confederates, they posted themselves on the isthmus, so that the Spartan army could not return without encountering them. The Athenians and their confederates amounted to 14,000, and the Spartans to 11,500 men. The Lacedaemonian general, however, unwilling to hazard a battle, turned aside to Tanagra, a city of Boeotia, where some of the Athenians who were favourable to aristocracy entered into a correspondence with him. But before their designs were ripe for execution, the Athenian army marched with great expedition to Tanagra, and instantly made arrangements for the attack. They were however defeated with great loss, as they justly deserved to be, considering the unprovoked nature of the aggression. Another engagement soon followed, in which both armies suffered so much that they were glad to conclude a short truce, that each might have time to recruit their shattered forces. But the scale of fortune soon turned in favour of the Athenians. The Thebans, who had been deprived of the command of Boeotia on account of their having sided with Xerxes, were now restored to it by the Lacedemonians. At this the Athenians were so greatly displeased that they sent an army under Myronides the son of Callias into Boeotia to overturn all that had been done. That general was encountered by the Thebans and their allies, who composed a numerous and well-disciplined army; but although the Athenian army was but a handful in comparison of that of their enemies, Myronides gained a victory over the allies, which, in a purely military point of view, may perhaps be considered as more glorious than either that of Marathon or of Platea. In these battles they had fought against the effeminate and ill-disciplined troops of Persia; but now they encountered and defeated a superior army composed of the bravest Greeks. After this victory Myronides marched to Tanagra, which he took by storm, and afterwards razed to the ground. He then plundered Boeotia; defeated another army which the Boeotians had drawn together to oppose him; next fell upon the Locrians; and having penetrated into Thessaly, chastised the inhabitants of that country for having revolted from the Athenians; after which he returned to Athens laden alike with riches and with glory.

About this time Cimon was recalled from banishment by Death of the will of the sovereign people, and soon after fell to his Cimon's old employment of plundering the Persians; having nothing less in view, according to Plutarch, than the conquest and subjugation of the whole Persian empire. But, however this may be, the Great King, finding he could have no rest whilst he continued in a state of hostility with the Athenians, sent instructions to his generals Artabazus and Megabizus, to conclude, if possible, a treaty of peace; which, after much discussion, was at length effected upon the following conditions: 1. That the Greek cities in Asia should be free, and governed by their own laws; 2. that the Persians should send no army within three days' journey of the sea; 3. that no Persian ship of war should sail between Thessalis in Pamphylia and Cyrene in Lycia. Whilst this treaty was pending Cimon died, B.C. 449, but whether of sickness or of a wound which he had received in battle remains unknown.

One thing, however, is certain, that after the death of this Truce with remarkable personage, the Athenian affairs began to fall into confusion. It was now the misfortune of the republic to be alike hated by her enemies and by her allies; and hence the latter missed no opportunity of throwing off their allegiance, when they thought they could do so with impunity. The Megarensians, for instance, who had long been under the protection of Athens, thought proper to disclaim all dependence on their ancient protectrix, and to have recourse to Sparta, with which they entered into a strict alliance, offensive and defensive. Exasperated at this proceeding, and determined to punish the ingratitude of their former allies, the Athenians ravaged the country of the Megarensians; a step which soon brought on a renewal of the Lacedaemonian war, which had been suspended rather than terminated. But Pericles procured the return of the first Lacedaemonian army without bloodshed, by bribing Chandrides, the young king of Sparta's tutor; and the Lacedaemonians, finding it was not for their interest to carry on the war, concluded a truce or pacification with the Athenians for the period of thirty years.

Six years after the conclusion of the peace between Reduction Athens and Sparta, a war broke out between the Samians of Samos and Milesians, about an insignificant town situated under Mount Mycale in Ionia. In this war the Athenians took part, for what reason we are not informed; and the island of Samos was reduced by Pericles, who established there a democracy, and left an Athenian garrison. He was no

---

1 On the subject of the thirty years' truce, concluded B.C. 445, the reader may consult and compare Andocid. de Pace, p. 14, 24; Aeschin. Fals. Leg. p. 23, 51. It was about this time that Pericles began to assume the sole direction of affairs. sooner gone, however, than the Samians, disliking their new form of government, rose in arms and expelled the garrison; but Pericles quickly returning, besieged and took their city, demolished their walls, and fined them in the whole expense of the war; part of which he obliged them to pay down, and took hostages for the remainder.

This insignificant contest was almost immediately followed by a war between the Coreyrians and Corinthians, which arose out of the following circumstances. An intestine broil breaking out in the little territory of Epidamnum, a town of Macedonia, founded by the Coreyrians, one party applied for aid to the Illyrians, and the other to the Coreyrians. But the latter having neglected the matter, Corinth was appealed to, as the Coreyrians were originally a colony from that place; and the Corinthians, partly out of pity for the Epidamnians, partly from dislike to the Coreyrians, dispatched a considerable fleet to the assistance of the former, by which means the party which had appealed to Corinth gained the ascendency. This being resented by the Coreyrians, they sent a fleet to Epidamnum to support the exiles; but although this fleet began to act offensively on its entering the port, the chief commanders had instructions to propose terms of accommodation. To these, however, the Corinthians refused to accede; and next year the Coreyrians defeated the Corinthians and their allies at sea, took Epidamnum by storm, and wrested the territories of the allies of the Corinthians. The latter, therefore, began to make great preparations for carrying on the war, and pressed their allies to imitate their example, that they might be in a condition to retrieve the honour they had lost, and to humble the ungrateful colony, which had thus insulted the metropolitan city.

When the Coreyrians became acquainted with these proceedings, they dispatched envoys to Athens to sue for aid; and these were quickly followed by others from Corinth on the same errand. At first the Athenians inclined to favour the Corinthians, but with their usual fickleness they soon changed their minds and took part with the Coreyrians; contenting themselves, however, with entering into a defensive alliance with that little state, and furnishing the Coreyrians with ten galleys, under the command of Lacedemonius the son of Cimon. But this determination did not retard the preparations of the Corinthians, who, as soon as the season permitted, sailed for the coast of Coreyra with a fleet of 150 ships, under the command of Xenoclides, assisted by four other Corinthian admirals; each squadron of their allies being commanded by an admiral of its own. The Coreyrian and Athenian fleet amounted to 120 sail, but the Athenians had orders to give as little assistance as possible. A brisk action ensued, in which the Coreyrian right wing broke the left of the Corinthian fleet, and drove some of the ships on shore; whilst the Corinthian ships in the right wing defeated the Coreyrian ships opposed to them. Next day preparations were made on both sides for renewing the battle; but twenty ships arriving opportunely from Athens to the assistance of the Coreyrians, turned the scale against the Corinthians, who therefore declined the combat.

As soon as the Coreyrian war broke out, the Athenians sent orders to the citizens of Potidea to demolish part of their wall, to send back the magistrates they had received from Corinth, and to give hostages for their own behaviour. The Potidaeans, however, refused to comply with this demand, upon which the Athenians dispatched a considerable fleet against them, under the command of Callias, a man celebrated for his courage; whilst the Corinthians, on the other hand, sent one Aristeus, with a considerable body of troops, to the assistance of the city. An engagement ensued, in which the Athenians were victorious, but their brave general fell in the action. Phormio, who succeeded to the command on the death of Callias, then invested the city in form, and blockaded its harbour with his fleet; but the Potidaeans, dreading the vengeance of the Athenians, made a most obstinate defence, at the same time warmly soliciting the Corinthians to perform their promises, and to engage the rest of the states of Peloponnesus to take part in their quarrel.

Meanwhile the Lacedemonians having heard the complaints of the Corinthians and other small states of Greece against the Athenians, sent ambassadors to Athens to demand reparation for the injuries done to these states, and, in the event of refusal, to denounce war. The terms demanded were, first, that all Athenians who were allied to the family of Megacles should be expelled from Attica; secondly, that the siege of Potidea should be raised; thirdly, that the inhabitants of Ægina should be left free; and, lastly, that a decree prohibiting the Megarensians from resorting to the ports and markets of Athens should be revoked, and all the Grecian states under the dominion of Athens set at liberty.

By the persuasion of Pericles, however, these degrading terms were rejected; and while the right arbitrarily claimed by the commonwealth of Sparta to interfere in the concerns of the other Greek states, in the character of a lord-paramount, was peremptorily denied, an accommodation was proposed upon the fair principles of equality and reciprocity. In recommending the measure which he suggested for the adoption of his countrymen, this celebrated statesman argued, that whatever the Lacedemonians might pretend as to the complaints of the allies, the true ground of their resentment was the prosperity of the Athenian republic, which they had always hated, and now sought an opportunity of humbling; and that it must be owing to the Athenians themselves if this design succeeded, because, for many reasons, Athens was better able to engage in a long and expensive war than the Peloponnesians. He then laid before the people an exact account of their circumstances—reminding them that the treasure brought from Delos amounted to no less than ten thousand talents; that, although four thousand of these had been expended on the magnificence of their citadel, six thousand still remained in their coffers; that they were also entitled to the subsidies payable by the confederate states; that the statues of their gods, the spoils of the Persians, and other valuable property, were worth immense sums; that many private individuals had amassed vast fortunes; that, considering the extent of their trade and commerce, they might calculate upon a certain annual increase of wealth; that they had on foot an army consisting of 12,000 men, besides 17,000 in their colonies and garrisons; that their fleet amounted to 360 sail; and, finally, that the Peloponnesians, with whom they might be called to contend, had none of these advantages, and, as compared with the Athenians, were nearly destitute of all those resources which constitute the sinews of war. For these reasons he proposed, as at once the most consistent and most equitable satisfaction that could be given, to reverse the decree against Megara, provided the Lacedemonians agreed to accede to the principle of reciprocity in favour of the Athenians and their allies; to consent to leave all those states free which were acknowledged as such at the conclusion of the last peace with Sparta, provided the latter state also agreed to give freedom to all the states which

---

1 Thucydides, i. 117. were under their dominion; and, finally, to submit to arbitration all disputes which might in future arise between the parties to this arrangement. He concluded by advising them to hazard a war in case these terms were rejected; telling them, that they should not think they ran that hazard for a trifle, or retain a scruple in their minds as if a small consideration moved them to it, because on this matter depended their safety, and the reputation of their constancy and resolution. If they yielded in this, the next demand of the Lacedaemonians would be still more extravagant; for having once discovered that the Athenians were to be acted upon by fear, they would thence conclude that nothing could be denied them, whereas a stout resistance in the present case would teach them to treat Athens in future upon terms of reciprocity.

The firm attitude which Athens assumed on this occasion, under the guidance of her most illustrious statesman, may be considered as the origin of the Peloponnesian war, which makes so prominent a figure in ancient history. The immediate preliminary to general hostilities, however, was an attempt of the Thebans to surprise Platæa. With this view they sent Eurymachus with three hundred men to assist those of the Platæans whom they had drawn over to their interest, in making themselves masters of the place. But although the design succeeded very well at first,—the Platæans, who had promised to open the gates, keeping their words exactly, so that they instantly obtained possession of the city,—yet the other party, perceiving the smallness of the number they had to contend with, unanimously rose upon them, killed a great many, and forced the remainder to surrender themselves prisoners of war. The Thebans sent a reinforcement to assist their countrymen, but it arrived too late to be of any service, and the whole were ultimately obliged to withdraw. As soon as the Athenians were apprised of this attempt, they caused all the Boeotians in their territory to be arrested; and when they understood how their allies had delivered themselves, they immediately dispatched a considerable convoy of provisions to Platæa, together with a numerous body of troops for the purpose of escorting the wives and children of the inhabitants to Athens. This attempt leaving no doubt that all hopes of accommodation were at an end, both parties began to prepare in good earnest for war. Most of the Grecian states inclined to favour the Spartans, partly because the latter assumed the character of deliverers of Greece, and partly also because many of the states either had been, or feared they would be, oppressed by the Athenians. Accordingly, the whole of the Peloponnesians except the Argives and part of the Acheans made common cause with the Spartans; whilst, on the continent of Greece, the Megarensians, Phocians, Locrians, Boeotians, Ambraciots, Leucadians, and Anactorians, declared for the Athenians; as also did the Chians, Lesbians, Platæans, Messenians, Arcanians, Corecians, Zacynthians, Carians, Dorians, Thracians, and all the Cyclades, excepting Melos and Thera, together with Euboea and Samos.

The Peloponnesian war commenced in the year B.C. 431. The Lacedaemonian army, consisting of no less than 60,000 men, assembled on the isthmus, and, after a vain attempt at negociation, the campaign opened. The Lacedaemonian army was commanded by Archidamus, king of Sparta; that of the Athenians by Pericles, with nine generals under him. Soon after the opening of the campaign, the Spartan force entered Attica and committed horrible ravages; Pericles having no force capable of opposing it, and steadily refusing to engage on disadvantageous terms, notwithstanding prodigious clamours were in consequence raised against him by his countrymen. The invaders, however, had no great reason to boast of the advantages they had gained; for an Athenian fleet ravaged the coasts of Peloponnesus, whilst another infested the Locrians, expelled the inhabitants of Ægina, and repopled the island from Athens and Attica. Cephallenia, and some towns in Acarnania and Leucas which had declared for the Lacedaemonians, were also reduced; and in the autumn, when the Peloponnesians had retired, Pericles entered the Megarensian territory, which he laid waste with fire and sword, in revenge for the devastation committed in Attica.

But the spring of the second year proved signalily disastrous to Athens; for a dreadful plague carried off great numbers of the citizens, whilst the Peloponnesians, under Archidamus, wasted every thing abroad. In the midst of all these calamities, however, the firmness of Pericles remained unshaken; and he would suffer none of his countrymen to stir from the city, either to escape the plague, which committed horrible ravages within the walls, or to assail the enemy, who desolated the country without. He meditated deeper game, namely, an inroad into the enemy's territory, which in fact had been left completely uncovered by the attack upon Attica. With this view he caused a large fleet to be equipped, on board which he embarked 4000 foot and 300 horse, and immediately set sail for Epidaurus. This division produced the desired effect, in compelling the enemy to withdraw from Attica; but in other respects the expedition failed on account of the plague, which committed so great havoc among his men, that Pericles brought back to Athens only 1500 of the 4300 composing the expedition. By this disaster the Athenians were thrown into utter despair, and immediately sued for peace; but the Spartans refusing to accede to any terms of accommodation, their despair gave place to fury against their great statesman and commander, whom (as the mob must always in such cases have a victim) they basely dismissed from their service, and amerced in a heavy fine. And, as if this had not been enough, at the same time that Pericles experienced the ingratitude of his country, the plague carried off his children and nearly the whole of his kindred, leaving him almost alone in the world, childless and forsaken. This accumulation of misfortunes preyed deeply on his spirits and overwhelmed him with melancholy, in consequence of which he secluded himself for a time entirely from public view. But through the persuasion of Alcibiades and other friends, he was at length induced to show himself to the people; who, ever inconstant, and often as prompt to pardon as to condemn, received him with acclamations of joy, and declared him the only man qualified to save the state in its present exigency. The first use Pericles made of his recovered popularity was to procure the repeal of the iniquitous law which he had himself caused to be enacted, whereby all Athenians of the half blood were disfranchised of their natural liberty, and reduced to a state of helotism; a measure which was not altogether disinterested on his part, as he was thereby enabled to enrol in the list of citizens his

---

1 In this campaign the Peloponnesians remained forty days in Attica, burning and destroying without, while the pestilence was raging within the city, and while the Athenians seemed abandoned to utter despair. For an account of this memorable plague see Thucydides, ii. 47, whose description has been often imitated, but never equalled, far less surpassed. That which approaches nearest to it in terrible truth and picturesqueness of delineation is the description of the plague in Egypt, and also in the prison of the Seraglio at Constantinople, contained in the novel entitled Anastasia, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek; a work which displays greater talents, and gives a more vivid and faithful picture of society and manners in the countries of the Levant, than all the books which have yet been written on the subject. only remaining son by a Milesian mother, whom the operation of the law in question had of course bastardized. But this was destined to be one of the last public acts of the great Athenian statesman and patriot.

The third year of the Peloponnesian war was chiefly remarkable for the death of Pericles, who at length fell a victim to the plague, which had already desolated his house, but who left behind him a name that will never die.1 Platæa was also besieged by Archidamus, but without success; for although the greater part of it had been set on fire, the Platæans resolved to submit to every extremity rather than abandon the Athenian cause. In the end, therefore, the king of Sparta was obliged to convert the siege into a blockade, and to return to Peloponnesus.

In the following summer the Peloponnesians under Archidamus again invaded Attica, wasting everything with fire and sword; and at the same time the whole island of Lesbos, except the district of Methymna, revolted against the Athenians. In the meanwhile Platæa was strictly blockaded, and its inhabitants being reduced to the greatest extremity from want of provisions, the garrison came to the resolution of forcing a passage through the enemy's lines. When the moment arrived, however, for carrying this design into execution, many of them became intimidated; but the greater number persisting in their resolution, succeeded in their gallant attempt, and above two hundred reached Athens in safety.

In the beginning of the fifth year the Peloponnesians sent forty ships to the relief of Mitylene, which the Athenians had invested after the revolt of Lesbos; but this effort proved unavailing, since the place had surrendered before the fleet could come to its assistance. Paches, the Athenian commander, then drove off the Peloponnesian fleet; and returning to Lesbos, sent the Lacedaemonian minister, whom he found in Mitylene, together with a deputation, to Athens. On their arrival the Lacedaemonian was immediately put to death; and in a general assembly of the people, it was resolved that all the Mitylenians who had attained to manhood should also be put to death, and the women and children sold as slaves. But the next day this cruel decree was revoked, and a galley dispatched to countermand the sanguinary order; which, however, arrived before the reversal, owing to the slow sailing of the vessel sent off with the latter. But Paches, being a man of great humanity, had fortunately taken a day to consider the orders he had received; and the last-mentioned galley arriving during this interval, only about a thousand of the principal insurgents were put to death. The walls of the city were however demolished, their ships taken away, and their lands divided among the Athenians, who let them again to their former proprietors at exorbitant rents. About this time also the Platæans who had failed in the attempt to break through the enemy's lines surrendered at discretion, and were cruelly put to death by the Lacedaemonians, who sold their women as slaves. The city was soon after razed by the Thebans, who left only an inn to show where it stood; but the fame of Platæa induced Alexander the Great afterwards to rebuild it on a more extensive scale.

In this year also happened the famous sedition of Corcyra, proverbial for the horrors with which it was accompanied. We have already seen that the dispute between the Coreyrians and Corinthians was mainly instrumental in bringing on the Peloponnesian war, one of the most protracted and sanguinary contests of ancient times. At the commencement of this struggle a great number of Coreyrians were, it seems, carried as prisoners into Peloponnesus, where the chief of them were well treated, and the remainder sold as slaves. The motive of this conduct on the part of the Corinthians was a design they had formed of engaging these Coreyrians to influence their countrymen to join the Corinthians and their allies. With this view the latter treated them with all imaginable lenity and tenderness, endeavouring to instil into their minds a hatred of democratic government; after which they were informed that they might obtain their liberty upon condition of exerting their influence at home in favour of the allies, and to the prejudice of Athens. This the Coreyrians readily promised and endeavoured to perform; and at first the partisans of aristocracy so far prevailed, that, assisted by a Peloponnesian fleet, they murdered such of the opposite party as fell into their hands. But the Athenians having dispatched first one fleet and then another to the assistance of their friends, the Peloponnesians were forced to withdraw, leaving the aristocrats at the mercy of the democratic party; who, having thus gained the ascendency, literally exterminated their antagonists with circumstances of horrible atrocity. Nor was this all. For, the example once set, the several states of Greece in their turn experienced similar commotions, which were invariably fermented by agents of Sparta or of Athens; the former endeavouring to establish an aristocratic and the latter a democratic form of government, wherever their influence happened to prevail.

While the Athenians were thus engaged in a contest in which they were already overmatched, they foolishly rushed into a new one, which in the end proved more disastrous than any in which they had yet embarked. The inhabitants of Sicily were, it seems, divided into two factions; the one called the Doric, at the head of which was Syracuse; the other the Ionic, at the head of which was Leontium. But the Ionic faction finding itself too weak to contend with its rival without foreign aid, sent Gorgias of Leontium, a celebrated orator, sophist, and rhetorician, to Athens to apply for assistance; and he by his fine speeches so captivated the giddy and inconstant multitude, the Μύρα Θηρίου, or Great Beast (as the populace were sometimes contemptuously styled in private, by those who did not scruple to pander to their worst passions in public), that they rushed headlong into a war which they were unable to maintain while engaged in a death-struggle with nearly all the states of the Peloponnesus. Accordingly, bewrayed by the wily sophist,2 and probably enticed by the hope of effecting the conquest of Sicily, they dispatched a fleet to the assistance of the Leontines, under the command of Lachetes and Chabrias; and this had no sooner sailed than another destined for the same service was begun to be fitted out. In the mean time the plague

---

1 Corsini (Fast. Att. tom. ii. p. 60) says, "Pericles excessit Ol. 87. 4 octogenario major, quippe qui Plutarcho teste 55 annis remp. administraverit." This is inaccurate, and proceeds on a misapprehension of Plutarch (Pericl. c. 16), who merely says that Pericles was engaged in public affairs forty years, and performed certain functions during fifteen; but the fifteen are evidently included in the forty. Accordingly, Cicero (Orat. iii. 34) says, "Quadragesinta annos praefuit Athenis;" and from other authorities we learn that he began to appear in public affairs about the year n. c. 469, and to have the sole direction about the year n. c. 444; so that he could not have exceeded fourscore at the time of his death, which took place in n. c. 429.

2 Diadorus, xii. 83. See also Pausanias, vi. 17, 3, and Philostratus in Vit. Geog. This celebrated artist in the dangerous craft of making the worse appear the better reason, would seem to have been a singular specimen of "health and longevity;" for, according to Philostratus, Ἀπειρον ἐπὶ Τυρρηνίας κατὰ τοὺς ἀληθεῖς ἀναμνήσεις; but the sounder opinion seems to be, that he was born about n. c. 485, and died soon after n. c. 380, at the age of 105 or 106. He was in reputation as a sophist and rhetorician for nearly fourscore years. (Fasti Hellenici, p. 63.) continued its ravages to such an extent that in the course of this year four thousand citizens, and a much larger number of the lower class of people, fell victims to its fury.

The sixth year of the Peloponnesian war was not remarkable for any great exploit. Agis, the son of Archidamus, king of Sparta, assembled an army in order to invade Attica; but he was prevented doing so by earthquakes, which shook almost every part of Greece, and produced general consternation. The next year, however, he entered Attica with his army; whilst the Athenians, on their part, sent a fleet, under the command of Demosthenes, to infest the coasts of Peloponnesus. As this fleet passed the coast of Laconia, the commander observed that the promontory of Pylos, which was joined to the continent by a narrow neck of land, had before it an island about two miles in circumference, which, though barren in itself, nevertheless contained an excellent harbour, sheltered from all winds either by the headland or isle, and capable of admitting the most numerous fleets; circumstances which led him to conclude that a garrison left here would alarm the Peloponnesians, and induce them to think rather of protecting their own country than of invading that of their neighbours. Accordingly, having raised a strong fortification, he established himself in the post, reserving five ships of war for its defence; and ordered the rest of the fleet to proceed to its intended destination. On the news of this event the Peloponnesian army immediately returned to besiege Pylos, and soon made themselves masters of the harbour, as well as of the island of Sphacteria, which was taken by a chosen body of Spartans. They then made a vigorous attack upon the fort, hoping to carry it before succours could arrive; but Demosthenes and his garrison made an obstinate defence; and an Athenian fleet arriving in the interval, relieved the besieged from all apprehensions on account of the superior force of the enemy. Battle was immediately offered; but as the Peloponnesian fleet declined the challenge, the Athenians sailed boldly into the harbour, and sunk or destroyed most of the enemy's ships, after which they besieged the Spartans in Sphacteria. Alarmed at finding the war carried into their own territory, the Peloponnesians now began to treat with their enemies; and whilst the negociations were carrying on at Athens, a cessation of hostilities was agreed to, upon the condition that the Peloponnesians should in the mean time deliver up all their ships, but that in the event of the treaty not taking effect, these should be immediately restored. In as far as regards the negociations, the Athenians, having heard the propositions of the Spartan plenipotentiaries, were at first strongly inclined to put an end to this ruinous and destructive war, all the evils of which had been so greatly aggravated by the dreadful pestilence which at the same time ravaged the city of Athens and part of the territory of Attica. But the orator Cleon, a warm and headstrong man, persuaded his countrymen to insist on the most unreasonable terms; and as the confederates were by no means so far reduced as to suffer the Athenians paus imponere nemum, to dictate terms of peace, the plenipotentiaries withdrew, and by doing so, of course put an end to the armistice. The Peloponnesians then demanded the restoration of their vessels, conformably to the stipulation above mentioned; but the Athenians refused to deliver them up, on the miserable and dishonest pretence that the former had violated the truce. Hostilities, therefore, were immediately recommenced on both sides; and the Lacedaemonians attacked the Athenians at Pylos, while the latter attacked the Spartans at Sphacteria. But the Lacedaemonians, though only a handful of men, and under every imaginable discouragement, defended themselves with so much bravery that the siege proceeded very slowly; and the people of Athens becoming uneasy at its duration, began to wish they had embraced the offers of the Spartans, and to rail vehemently against Cleon, who had been primarily instrumental in occasioning their rejection. To excuse himself, however, the orator affirmed it would be an easy matter for the general of the forces which they were then sending to attack the Spartans in the isle, and reduce them at once. Nicias, who had just been appointed to the command, replied that if Cleon believed he could perform such wonders, he would do well to repair to the scene of action in person. The orator, compelled to sustain his part, rejoined without hesitation that he was ready to go with all his heart; upon which Nicias caught him at his word, and declared that he had relinquished his command. Startled at this renunciation, the speech-maker protested that he was no general; but Nicias tauntingly assured him that he might some day become one; and the people, amused with the controversy, held the orator to his word. Cleon then advancing, told them he was so little afraid of the enemy, that, with a very inconsiderable force, he would undertake, in conjunction with that already at Pylos, to bring to Athens in twenty days the Spartans who had given them so much trouble. The people laughed at this apparent gasconade; but having furnished him with the troops he desired, the orator, to the infinite surprise of every one, brought the Spartans prisoners to Athens within the time he had specified.

In the eighth year of the war Nicias reduced the island Eighth of Cythera on the coast of Laconia, and Thyrrea, a frontier territory, which had been given to the Æginetans when expelled from their own country by the Athenians. In Sicily, Hermocrates of Syracuse, having persuaded the inhabitants of the island to adjust their differences without foreign interference, the Athenian generals returned home; a step which so greatly displeased their countrymen that two of them were banished, and the third was sentenced to pay a heavy fine. The Athenians, under the conduct of Hippocrates and Demosthenes, next laid siege to Megara; but Brasidas, a Spartan general, coming to its relief, a battle ensued, which, though indecisive in its result, gave the Lacedaemonian faction an ascendancy in Megara, and forced many who had favoured the Athenians to withdraw. In Boeotia some commotions were raised in favour of the Athenians; but their generals Hippocrates and Demosthenes being defeated by the Lacedaemonian party, all hopes ceased of the Athenian power being established in this district of Greece.

In the ninth year the Spartans made new proposals of Ninth peace, which the Athenians were now more inclined to accept than formerly; so, finding their affairs much unsettled by the loss of Amphipolis, which had been reduced by Brasidas, a truce for a year was agreed on, while negotiations were immediately opened for restoring a general peace. But this pacific scheme was soon overthrown by a misunderstanding, arising out of an occurrence purely accidental, and the war was in consequence renewed.

The following year commenced with an attempt by Nician Brasidas upon Potidea; but this having failed, the Athepacifists began to recover some courage; and the truce expiring on the day of the Pythian games, Cleon advised the Athenians to send an army under his own command.

---

1 Thucydides, iv. 39. 2 Alcibiades seems to have already begun to take part in public affairs. See a passage in the Wasps of Aristophanes, 44, where his manner of speaking is ridiculed. At this time he was about twenty-four years of age. into Thrace. They agreed to this proposal, and immediately fitted out a force, consisting of 1200 foot and 300 horse, all Athenian citizens, embarked on board thirty galleys, of which the orator took the command. Brasidas was inferior in numbers to his opponent; but, observing that the Athenian commander was careless, and neglectful of discipline, the Spartan suddenly attacked him, and routed his army with the loss of half its numbers, while that of the assailants amounted to only seven killed and a few wounded. In this encounter, which appears to have been a complete surprise, the commanders on both sides were slain; and although the Athenians might well spare their orator-general, whom impudence and accident had invested with a military command, the death of their brave leader was a serious loss to the Spartans, who, in fact, lamented him more than the Athenians did the loss of the battle. In consequence of this event, however, the latter were now much more disposed than formerly to hearken to terms of accommodation. Amongst the Spartans, too, there was a party, at the head of whom was Platonax, their king, who earnestly wished for peace; and as Nicias laboured no less assiduously at Athens to bring about this desirable event, a peace was at last concluded between the two nations for the period of fifty years. The conditions were, a restitution of places and prisoners on both sides; with the exception of Niseca, which was to remain in the hands of the Athenians, who had taken it from the Megarensians, and of Platæa, which was to continue in possession of the Thebans, who could not possibly give it up without uncovering the whole of their territory. The Boeotians, Corinthians, and Megarensians, refused to be included in this peace; but the rest of the allies acquiesced; and being accordingly ratified, it received the name of the Nician pacification, from that of the individual who had been mainly instrumental in restoring the blessing of peace to his country.

But although peace had been nominally established, tranquillity was far from being restored. Dissatisfied with the treaty on various grounds, several states of the Peloponnesus, headed by Argos, immediately commenced organizing a new confederacy; even the Lacedemonians found it impossible to fulfil exactly the stipulations of the agreement; and the town of Amphipolis in particular peremptorily refused to return under the government of Athens; for which reason the Athenians also refused to evacuate Pylos. In the course of the winter fresh negotiations were opened, but nothing definite was agreed upon, and the time passed in mutual complaints and recriminations. At Athens, in particular, the flame of discontent was artfully fanned by Alcibiades, who now began to rival Nicias in public favour, and who, perceiving that the Lacedemonians paid their court principally to his rival, took every opportunity of incensing his countrymen against that nation. On the other hand Nicias, whose reputation was concerned in maintaining the treaty inviolate, used his utmost endeavours to bring about a reconciliation, and even undertook a journey to Sparta, in the hope of effecting an accommodation; but, most unhappily, the artifices of Alcibiades, added to the turbulent and haughty disposition of both nations, rendered all his efforts unavailing, and at length satisfied him that a renewal of the war was inevitable. If the intrigues of this remarkable man, however, were mainly instrumental in bringing about a rupture, it cannot be denied that he took the most prudent methods for insuring the safety of his country. With this view he entered into a league with the Argives for the long term of a hundred years; he then marched into the territories of that state at the head of a considerable force; and he exerted all his influence, both at Argos and at Patrae, to persuade the people to connect their cities with the sea by means of walls, in order to facilitate the landing of succour, when it might be necessary, by the Athenians. But, though vigorous preparations were now made for a renewal of the war, nothing of any consequence was undertaken this year; if we except an attempt by the Argives to make themselves masters of Epidaurus, which was, however, defeated by the Lacedemonians throwing a strong garrison into the place.

The next being the fourteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, a Spartan army, under the command of Agis, entered the territory of Argos; but just as battle was on the eve of commencing, a truce was suddenly concluded between two of the Argive generals and the king of Sparta. But it so happened that neither party felt satisfied with this proceeding, and both the king and the generals were very ill received by their respective fellow-citizens. Accordingly, on the arrival of some fresh troops from Athens, the Argives immediately broke the truce; and a battle ensuing soon afterwards, the allied army was defeated with great slaughter by Agis, who thus achieved a victory on the very spot which was afterwards destined to acquire additional celebrity as the scene of one of the most disastrous defeats which the Spartan arms ever experienced. In the winter a strong party in Argos joined the Lacedemonians; in consequence of which that city renounced her alliance with Athens, and concluded peace with Sparta for the period of half a century. Further, in compliment to their new allies, the Argives abolished democracy in their city, substituting an aristocracy in its stead; and they also assisted the Lacedemonians in forcing the Sicyonians to adopt a similar form of government. Notwithstanding all this, however, the Argives, with a levity natural to the Greeks, renounced their alliance with Sparta the following year; abolished aristocracy, drove the Lacedemonians out of the city, and renewed their league with Athens. On the other hand the Athenians, convinced of the bad faith of Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, abjured his alliance and declared war against him; preferring, as they said, an open enemy to a treacherous friend. And as Argos was still distracted by adverse factions, Alcibiades in the course of the ensuing year terminated all disputes between them by the expulsion of the Spartan party. He then sailed for the island of Melos, which had shown the greatest invertebracy against his countrymen, in order to punish the inhabitants for repeated acts of wanton hostility; but perceiving that the reduction of the island would be a work of time, he left a considerable body of forces there, and returned to Athens. In his absence, however, the capital of Melos surrendered at discretion, and the inhabitants were treated with the utmost severity; all the men capable of bearing arms being slaughtered, and the women and children carried into captivity.

In the beginning of the seventeenth year, Nicias was appointed commander-in-chief of an expedition destined to act against the Syracusans, with Alcibiades and Lamachus as colleagues. But whilst the necessary preparations were being made, Athens was thrown into terrible confusion by the defacing of the Hermæ or statues of Mercury, of which there was a great number in the city; an outrage equally wanton in itself, and appalling to the people of Athens, who revered these statues both as monuments of art and as symbols of religion. Great efforts were in consequence made to discover the perpetrators of

---

1 Thucydides, v. 18, 19, 20. this sacrilege; but although ample rewards were offered, no disclosure was then made. At last, from some cause unexplained, suspicion fell upon Alcibiades, who in consequence received orders to return immediately from Sicily in order to take his trial for this alleged crime. But he knew the temper of his countrymen too well to trust himself to their mercy; wherefore, instead of returning to Athens, he fled to Sparta, where he met with a gracious reception; whilst the Athenians were severely punished by the loss of their army, generals, and fleet, in Sicily; a disaster which the superior abilities of Alcibiades would in all probability have prevented.

The nineteenth and twentieth years of the war were spent by the Athenians in equipping a new fleet in order to repair their losses; but Alcibiades hurt their interests greatly by persuading Tissaphernes the Persian to league with the Spartans against them, and at the same time stirring up several of the Ionian states to revolt against what he described as the mob government of Athens. Equally restless and profligate, however, this celebrated Athenian had scarcely established himself amongst his new allies when he contrived, by means of a handsome person and an insinuating address, to debauch the wife of Agis the Lacedaemonian commander; and as the latter strongly resented the affront which had been put upon him, the Athenian seducer was obliged to quit Sparta and pass over into Persia. Here, however, he met with a favourable reception from Tissaphernes, who profited much by his advice, which, in fact, was equally shrewd and insidious. "Let the Greeks," said he to the Persian general, "exhaust themselves by their mutual wars; foment discord among them, which you will always find comparatively an easy task; take care never to let one state be totally destroyed, but always to support the weaker party against the more powerful—follow this policy for a time, and the Greeks will themselves spare you the trouble of conquering them. By their incessant contests they will so weaken themselves that their country will become the prey of the first invader."

As may easily be supposed, Tissaphernes readily acquiesced in these counsels; upon which Alcibiades wrote privately to some of the officers in the Athenian army at Samos, informing them that he had been treating with the Persians in behalf of his countrymen, but that he did not choose to return till the democracy should be abolished; adding, that the Persian king disliked a democracy, but would immediately assist them if that was abolished, and an oligarchy established in its stead. On the arrival of Pisander and other deputies from the army with the proposals of Alcibiades, the Athenians without hesitation resolved to overturn the democratical form of government which they had all along so strenuously defended; in consequence of which Pisander and the deputies received directions to return to Alcibiades, in order to ascertain precisely on what terms the king of Persia was disposed to enter into an alliance with them. But perceiving that Tissaphernes was by no means inclined to assist the Athenians, on account of their recent successes, Alcibiades artfully set up such extravagant demands in the king of Persia's name, that the Athenians of themselves broke off the treaty, and thus enabled him to outwit both parties without offending either. But notwithstanding the failure of the negotiations with Tissaphernes, the democratical form of government was abolished, first in the cities subject to Athens, and afterwards in the capital itself; whilst, according to the scheme substituted in its stead, it was provided that the old form of government should be entirely dissolved—that five Prytanes should be elected—that these five should choose a hundred others, and each of the hundred choose three more—that the Four Hundred thus elected should become a senate with full power, but should nevertheless consult occasionally with Five Thousand of the wealthiest citizens, who alone were henceforth to be accounted The People—and that no authority whatever should remain in the hands of the lowest class of citizens. Such was the scheme proposed by Pisander; and although the people were opposed to this change, those who conducted it, being men of great parts, found means to establish it by one of those unceremonious acts of audacity which commonly distinguish revolutions in popular governments.

In the meanwhile the Athenian army having changed their mind, declared for a democracy; and recalling Alcibiades, they invested him with full power, and insisted on his immediate return to Athens for the purpose of restoring the ancient government. But he peremptorily refused to comply with their wishes; persuaded them to stay where they were in order to save Ionia; and further prevailed on them to allow some deputies, who had been sent by the new governors of Athens, to deliver the message with which they were charged. When the deputies had done so, Alcibiades enjoined them in reply to return immediately to Athens, and acquaint the Four Hundred that they were commanded instantly to resign their authority and restore the senate; adding, that the Five Thousand might retain their power for the present, provided they used it with moderation. By this answer the city was thrown into the utmost confusion; but the party of the new government prevailing, ambassadors were dispatched to Sparta with orders to conclude peace upon any terms. This, however, was not so easy a matter as some had hastily imagined; for the Spartans proved intractable; and Phrynicus, the chief of the embassy, was murdered on his return. When the news of his death arrived, Thermes, the head of the democratical party, seized the leaders of the Four Hundred; upon which a tumult ensued that had almost proved fatal to the city itself; but the mob being at last dispersed, the Four Hundred immediately assembled, and sent deputies to the people, promising to comply with all their reasonable demands. A day was accordingly appointed for convoking a general assembly, and settling the form of government; but when it arrived, intelligence was brought that the Lacedaemonian fleet was in sight, and steering directly for Salamis. Thus all was again thrown into confusion; and the people, instead of deliberating on the subject proposed, ran in crowds down to the port, whence a fleet of thirty-six ships was immediately dispatched, under the command of Timocharis, to engage the enemy, who were perceived to be making for Euboea. But this fleet was utterly defeated, twenty-two ships being taken, and the remainder either sunk or disabled; and this disaster was followed by the revolt of all Euboea, except the small district of Orcus. When the dismal tidings reached Athens, every thing was given up for lost; and had the Lacedaemonians taken this opportunity of attacking the city, they would undoubtedly have succeeded in the attempt, and thus put an end to the war by the subjugation of Athens. But being at all times slow, especially in naval affairs, they allowed the Athenians time to equip another fleet, and to retrieve their affairs; while Alcibiades, by his intrigues, so effectually embroiled the Persians and Peloponnesians that neither party knew whom to trust, and mutual distrust at length rose to such a pitch as almost to involve them in open hostility; and several advantages gained by the Athenians at sea tended to revive their hopes and restore their confidence.

During the succeeding years of this celebrated war the Athenians were also in the first instance very successful; triumphing at Thrasybulus obtained a signal advantage at sea; and in the same day Alcibiades gained two victories, one by land and another by sea, capturing the whole Peloponnesian fleet; besides an immense spoil. The Spartans, humbled by these reverses, were reduced in their turn to the necessity of suing for peace. But the Athenians, intoxicated with success, sent back the envoys without vouchsafing an answer to their proposals; and the Spartans, justly incensed at this insolent and contemptuous conduct, renewed the war with the utmost vigour, and soon after made themselves masters of Pylos. Nor was this the only misfortune of the Athenians. The Megarensians surprised Nysa, and put the garrison to death; an act which so exasperated the Athenians that they immediately sent an army against that people,—defeated them with great slaughter,—and committed horrid devastations, in revenge for the affair of Nysa. But these misfortunes were still in some measure counterbalanced by the great actions of Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes. Indeed, when Alcibiades returned in triumph to Athens, he brought with him a fleet of two hundred ships, together with such a load of spoils as had never been seen in the capital since the conclusion of the Persian war. The people crowded to the port to behold the hero as he landed; old and young blessed him as he passed; and next day, when he had delivered a harangue to the assembly, they directed the record of his banishment to be thrown into the sea, absolved him from the curses he lay under on account of the alleged sacrilege, and created him generalissimo of their forces. But this enthusiasm was too violent to be lasting; and in point of fact a casual reverse which Alcibiades sustained soon after this obliterated all remembrance of his former services, and involved him in disgrace.

Having sailed to the Hellespont with part of his fleet, he left the remainder under the command of Antiochus his pilot, with strict orders to attempt nothing in his absence. But the pilot chose to disobey his instructions, and having provoked Lysander the Lacedaemonian admiral to an engagement, he paid for his temerity by a total defeat, with the loss of fifteen ships, and that of his own life into the bargain. On receiving intelligence of this disaster, Alcibiades returned, and endeavoured to induce the Lacedaemonian commander to hazard a second battle; but Lysander was too prudent to incur such a risk; and in the meanwhile the Athenians, with their usual ingratitude and inconstancy, deprived Alcibiades of his command, and named ten new generals in his stead. By this iniquitous proceeding their ruin was sealed. Conon, who succeeded to the command, was beaten by Callicrates, Lysander's successor; but being afterwards strongly reinforced, he retrieved this disgrace by defeating the Lacedaemonians with the loss of no less than seventy-seven ships. Such a victory might have been supposed to inspire the Athenians with some gratitude towards the generals who had gained it; but instead of this eight of them were recalled, on pretence of their not having assisted the wounded during the engagement; two were prudent enough not to return; and the six who trusted to the justice of their country were all put to death without mercy.

The following year Lysander, appointed commander of the Peloponnesian fleet, succeeded in capturing both Thasus and Lampasacus. Conon was immediately dispatched against him with a hundred and eighty ships; a force so superior to that under Lysander, that the Lacedaemonians declined accepting battle, and was consequently blocked up in the river Ægos. While the Athenians lay there observing him, they grew quite idle and careless, insomuch that Alcibiades, who had built a habitation for himself in the neighbourhood, entreated them to be more watchful, as he well knew Lysander's great abilities, and dreaded that they might have reason to repent their security if they disregarded his advice. They replied by expressing their wonder at the assurance of a fellow who was an exile and a vagabond, in pretending to offer advice to them; adding, that if he gave them any further trouble, they would seize and send him a prisoner to Athens. The consequences of such conduct may easily be imagined. Lysander fell unexpectedly upon the presumptuous fools, and gained a complete victory; Conon, with only nine galleyes, escaping to Evagoras at Cyprus: after which the Lacedaemonian commander returned to Lampasacus, where he put to death Philocles with 3000 of his soldiers, and the whole of the officers except Adimantus. He then reduced all the cities subject to Athens, and artfully sent home their garrisons, that the city, overstocked with inhabitants, might thus be rendered incapable of holding out for any length of time when he came to besiege it.

Nor was any time lost in undertaking this decisive operation. Lysander appeared before the harbours with a fleet; and while Agis, at the head of a powerful army, invested it on the land side. For a considerable time the Athenians resisted both attacks; but they were at last forced to send deputies to Agis, who referred them to Sparta; and when they repaired thither they were told that no terms could be granted except they consented to demolish their walls. They next applied to Lysander, but he also referred them to Sparta; to which Theramenes, with other deputies, was immediately dispatched. On their arrival they found assembled the council of the confederates, who all except the Spartans gave their votes for the utter destruction of Athens; but the latter would on no account consent to the ruin of a city which had deserved so well of Greece. The Athenian envoys did all in their power to mitigate the severity of the terms, but without effect; and finally peace was concluded, on condition that the long walls and the fortifications of the port should be demolished, and that the Athenians should deliver up all their ships excepting twelve, receive back such as had been banished for political offences, and consent to follow the fortune of the Lacedaemonians. And these severe terms were punctually executed. Lysander caused the walls and fortifications to be pulled down; established an oligarchy expressly against the will of the people; and thus completed the ruin of Athens in the twenty-seventh year of the Peloponnesian war, and the 404th s. c.

As soon as the Lacedaemonian had demolished the long walls and the fortifications of the Peiraeus, he constituted a council of thirty, with power, as was pretended, to make laws, but in truth to subjugate the state. These were the persons so famous in history under the title of The Thirty Tyrants. They were all the creatures of Lysander; and as they derived their power from conquest and the law of the sword, they exercised it in a manner worthy of its origin. Instead of making laws, they governed without them; they appointed a senate and magistrates at their will; and, lastly, they applied for a garrison from Lacedaemon, that, under the protection of a foreign military force, they might give a freer and bolder scope to the licentiousness of tyranny.

Critias and Theramenes, two men of the greatest power and abilities in Athens, were at the head of this odious oligarchy. The former was ambitious and cruel beyond measure; but the latter was of a more merciful and humane disposition. The one pushed on all the bloody schemes framed by his confederates, and carried into execution many of his own; the other always opposed them, at first with moderation, at last with vehemence. In the course of his expostulations he said, that power was given them to rule and not to despoil the commonwealth; that it became them to act like shepherds, not like wolves; and that they ought to beware of rendering themselves at once odious and ridiculous, by attempting to domineer over all, being a mere handful of men, whom the slightest resistance would crush. This hint was not thrown away; for the remaining oligarchs immediately chose three thousand persons, whom they constituted the representatives of the people, and on whom they granted the notable privilege of not being liable to be put to death except by judgment of the senate; thereby assuming by implication a power of sacrificing the other Athenian citizens at their pleasure. Nor were they slow in practically confirming the justice of this interpretation: for as many as they conjectured to be unfriendly to the government in general, or to any of themselves in particular, they put to death, without cause and without mercy. Theramenes stoutly resisted this wantonness of cruelty; and absolutely refusing to concur in such measures, Critias accused him to the senate as a man of unsteady principles, sometimes for the people, sometimes against them, and favourable to nothing except innovation and revolution. The accused admitted that he had sometimes changed his measures, but alleged that he had always done so for the benefit of the people. It was solely with this view that he made peace with Sparta, and accepted of office as one of the Thirty; nor had he ever opposed their measures while they cut off the wicked; but when they began to destroy men of fortune and family, then he owned he had differed with them, which he conceived to be no crime against the state.

Whilst Theramenes was speaking, Critias, perceiving the impression made upon the senate by his words, withdrew abruptly; but he soon returned with a guard, crying out that he had struck the name of Theramenes out of the list of the three thousand; that the senate had therefore no longer cognizance of the cause; and that the Thirty had already judged and condemned him to death. Theramenes, seeing that they intended to seize him, fled to the altar in the midst of the senate-house, and laying his hands thereon, said, "I do not seek refuge here because I expect to escape death, or desire it; but that, tearing me from the altar, the impious authors of my murder may interest the gods in bringing them to speedy judgment, and thereby restore freedom to my country." The guards then dragged him from the altar, and carrying him to the place of execution, he drank the poison with undaunted courage; reminding the people, with his last breath, that the same tyrants who had arbitrarily struck his name out of the list of the three thousand, might also strike out any of theirs, and that none could say whose turn it might next be to drink the fatal cup which he had just drained. The death of this heroic man was followed by a train of murders such as are to be found recorded only in the annals of republican oligarchies or aristocratical republics. Almost every citizen of any eminence had either died a violent death or been driven into exile.

At length Thrasybulus, and such as like him had taken shelter in the Theban territory, resolved to hazard everything rather than remain in a state of perpetual exile from their country; and although he had not more than thirty men on whom he could depend, yet, inspired by the remembrance of the victories he had heretofore obtained in the cause of his country, he boldly made an irruption into Attica, and seizing on Phyle, a castle at a short distance from Athens, numbers flocked to his standard, and he soon found himself at the head of seven hundred men, who, driven mad by cruelty and oppression, were prepared to devote themselves for their country. The tyrants of course had the disposal of the Spartan garrison, which they employed to reduce Thrasybulus and his party; yet he prevailed in various skirmishes, and at last obliged them to decamp from Phyle, which they had intended to blockade. The Thirty and their partisans conceiving it expedient to obtain possession of Eleusis, marched thither; and having persuaded the people to go unarmed out of their city, on the pretence of numbering them, the monsters instantly commenced an indiscriminate massacre. But the forces of Thrasybulus increasing daily, he seized on the Peiraeus, which he fortified in the best manner he could; and although the tyrants came down against him with the utmost force they could raise, he defended himself with so much obstinacy, that in the end they were forced to retreat, having lost before the place not only a great number of their men, but Critias, the president of the Thirty, and other members of this sanguinary oligarchy. By this gallant resistance the fate of the oligarchy was sealed. The people indeed differed among themselves; and the sanguinary monsters, who during their short administration had destroyed more men than had fallen during half the Peloponnesian war, had still a considerable party in Athens. But happily the cause of humanity prevailed; the tyrants were expelled, and ten men of each tribe were chosen to govern in their stead.

But although the citizens had changed the government, Spartans they had made no agreement with those in the Pei-attempt reus, whilst the tyrants, who had retired to Eleusis, sent to reduce deputies to Lacedaemon to announce the revolt of the Athenians, and request assistance to reduce them. Nor did their application prove fruitless. Besides remitting them a large sum of money to aid their intrigues, the Lacedaemonians appointed Lysander commander-in-chief, and his brother admiral; resolving to send both a fleet and an army, in order to reduce Athens a second time, and, as most of the Greek states then strongly suspected, to add it to their other dominions. Nor is it improbable that this design would have taken effect, had not Pausanias, the rival and enemy of Lysander, resolved to obstruct it by every means in his power. With this view he caused another army to be raised, of which he took the command, and immediately marched for the ostensible purpose of besieging the Peiraeus. But while he lay before the place, and pretended to attack it, he entered into a private correspondence with Thrasybulus, instructing him what propositions to make in order to induce the Lacedaemonians, who were suspected by their allies, to abandon the contest, and conclude peace upon equitable terms. These intrigues had all the success that could be desired. The Ephori who were with Pausanias in the camp concurred in his measures; and in a short time a treaty was concluded, by which, amongst other things, it was provided that all the citizens of Athens should be restored to their homes and privileges, with the exception of the Thirty, the Ten who had succeeded them, and the Eleven who during the time of the oligarchy had been constituted governors of the Peiraeus; that all should remain quiet for the future in the city; and that, if any persons were afraid to trust to this agreement, they should have permission to retire unmolested to Eleusis. Pausanias then marched away with the Spartan army; and Thrasybulus at the head of his forces entered Athens, where, having laid down their arms, they sacrificed with the rest of their fellow-citizens in the temple of Minerva, and then, to the

---

1 Alcibiades died during the tyranny of the Thirty. He was then in the forty-fourth year of his age, and had been more or less engaged in public affairs for about twenty years. He was a bold, bad man; of great personal and mental endowments, but utterly devoid of principle, and addicted to the most shameless profligacy; prompt, skilful, brave, enterprising, restless, ambitious, yet fond of intrigue and finesse in all things; an enemy to liberty under the mask of ultra-democracy; and reckless of every consideration which was opposed to the gratification of his pride, vanity, ambition, sensuality, revenge, and love of perpetual bustle and turmoil.

2 Or Ἀλκιβιάδης, that is, Thrasybulus and his party. Throughout the whole of this transaction the conduct of Thrasybulus was admirable. When he first seized the castle of Phyle, the tyrants privately offered to receive him into their number instead of Theramenes, and to pardon at his request any twelve persons whom he might choose to name. But he nobly replied that he considered his exile far more honourable than any authority could be, purchased on such terms; and by persisting in his design he accomplished the deliverance of his country from a ferocious and sanguinary oligarchy, which, as Isocrates informs us, had put fourteen hundred citizens to death without any form of law, and had driven five thousand more into banishment, besides committing a variety of other acts of cruelty and oppression.

But, although Athens was thus restored to liberty by the virtuous patriotism of Thrasybulus, the age of Athenian glory had passed away. From this period till the reign of Philip of Macedonia the republic gradually sunk in energy, though it still continued to enjoy tolerable prosperity; and although many of the great masterpieces of Athenian genius were the productions of a later age, the most splendid of these only serve to prove beyond all question that the national spirit had degenerated, and that, "sunk in its glory, decayed in its worth," the Athenian Demos, which had once been the wonder and terror of the world, was now prepared to receive the law from the hands of almost any master. Philip accordingly found but little difficulty in extinguishing the feeble remains of liberty; and his son Alexander having completed the subjugation of Greece, the history of the Grecian states henceforward ceases to be of almost any interest. With regard to the capital, however, a rapid sketch of its history from this period till the present time will be found under the article Athens, to which reference is accordingly made.

Having thus laid before the reader an outline of the general history of Attica, it now only remains to give, as briefly as possible, some account of the character, government, religion, and public economy of the Athenians.

National character may be defined the aggregate of those qualities or peculiarities, physical, moral, and political, by which one community of men is distinguished from another; in other words, it is a complex result produced by the action and re-action of primary and secondary causes, or the joint effect of all the circumstances, original and accidental, in which a people happens to be placed. But these causes are so various, both in kind and degree,—the operation of one is so much affected and modified by that of another, and direct physical become so much blended with indirect moral and political influences,—that, whilst it is comparatively an easy matter to determine in what respects the general characters of nations differ, it is exceedingly difficult, not to say impossible, to resolve that of any one into its constituent elements, and to assign to each its due share in the production of the ultimate result. The instrument of analysis which, employed in the investigation of physical laws, has led to the discovery of the most sublime truths, and extended the knowledge and consequently the power of man over the material world, is applicable only in a very limited degree even to the most complex phenomena of mind. Here we possess no manner of control over the subject of our inquiries; we have no power of placing it in new situations, of trying it by a variety of tests, or of submitting it to a course of skilfully-contrived experiments. All that we can possibly do is either carefully to watch its manifestations, where these fall under our own notice, or to apply the principles of a sound logic to such observations as have been recorded by others, and thus to endeavour to make the nearest approximation we can to the truth. In such a method of investigation, however, the liability to error must necessarily be great; for, independently of its own obvious imperfection, the subtle nature of the phenomena observed, and the constant transitions and modifications they experience, produce continual mistakes upon the part of the observer; whilst the spirit of system or of theory, which is generally most active where our knowledge is least accurate and extensive, instead of facilitating the correction of such mistakes, contributes rather to render them irrevocate, and thus opposes a serious obstacle to the progress of sound inquiry. In attempting to form a judgment of the national character of a people, therefore, it becomes us to be equally on our guard against dogmatism in the statement of facts, and rash generalization in the inferences deduced from them. The former, indeed, are but too frequently stated without the qualifications proper to be applied to them; the latter is almost certain to lead into error and mystification. In cases where physical and moral causes are blended together in their operation; where primary results experience endless modifications from the influence of circumstances and the re-active working of positive institutions; and where we are in possession of no instrument of analysis by which the complex whole can be reduced into its constituent parts or elements; it is manifest that no theory which human ingenuity can invent will ever be sufficient to explain all the phenomena of national character, or to account for the varied and often incongruous phases which it assumes. Some writers, for instance, have amused themselves with referring to the influence of climate all the varieties observable in the characters and institutions of different nations; whilst others, again, have ascribed to the joint effect of moral and political causes, operating under peculiar circumstances, the diversities in question. But it must be obvious, on the slightest consideration, that both these theories are equally untenable, insasmuch as national character is not the result of one cause or set of causes, but of all the causes and influences, of whatever kind, which act, either directly or indirectly, upon the general mind of a people. Instead of attempting to generalize, therefore, where generalization is from the very nature of things inadmissible, let us endeavour simply to point out some of the leading features in the character of that illustrious nation which in ancient times inhabited the territory of Attica, and filled the world with the renown of their achievements both in arts and in arms.

The Athenians surpassed all the other Greeks in physical conformation no less than in mental endowments. Among this people, indeed, strength and symmetry of body were happily united with many of the rarest attributes of mind. For these advantages they were indebted partly to nature, and partly to a system of education, which, apparently limited and imperfect, was nevertheless singularly calculated to develope their peculiar capabilities. Habitual exercise may not be capable of creating beauty of form originally, but it certainly tends greatly to improve it; and in the human frame elegance and grace are seldom divorced from the free and flexible vigour acquired in the palestra. A similar observation may be applied to the human mind. Admitting that certain tribes or races of men are, taken as a whole, gifted by nature with finer faculties, nicer perceptions, and more acute sensibilities, than others, no one can doubt that these may be prodigiously improved by

---

1 The whole of this war lasted ten months. (Xenophon, ii. 4, 43.) education; which, in fact, is to the mind what the chisel of the sculptor is to the rude block of marble—that which fashions it, by scarcely perceptible degrees, into the fairest proportions, and gives animation and expression to that which was originally inert and lumpish. The Athenians were early sensible of this important truth; and although, till the age of Pericles, the three principal preceptors of their youth were the grammarian, the teacher of music, and the master of the gymnasium, yet even this limited circle of instructors was not ill adapted to call forth and keep in exercise the peculiar faculties for which they were so remarkably distinguished, and to prepare them for a more extended range of instruction. To the study of music, indeed, they were enthusiastically devoted, because in that delightful art they found a natural scope for the gratification of those nice and delicate perceptions which constituted a prominent characteristic of their minds; nor will its union with the study of grammar be deemed surprising, when we reflect, that it was probably this circumstance, aided by an organic and intellectual sensibility altogether unrivalled, which gave form to the most harmonious language ever spoken among men, and guided invention to the structure of that verse which, even under the gross disguise of modern pronunciation, is still universally charming. But there were other elements in the Athenian character besides a love of music, poetry, and the fine arts, to which both nature and education had contributed to form them.

Speaking of this people, Plutarch, after describing them as at once passionate and placable, prone to anger yet easily appeased, goes on to observe, that their minds were not formed for laborious researches, and that although they seized a subject as it were by intuition, yet they wanted the patience and perseverance requisite for a thorough examination of its various bearings and ramifications. An observation more superficial in itself, and arguing a greater ignorance of the real character of the Athenians, cannot easily be imagined. That they were remarkable for ardour and vivacity of temperament, quickness of sensibility as well as of apprehension, and versatility of feeling, as well as of genius, has not been disputed. But there is nothing in all this which necessarily pre-supposes or implies an incapacity for the prosecution of subjects requiring patient thought and persevering attention. The French, in point of national character, hold nearly the same relative place among the modern nations of Europe, that the Athenians held among the states of ancient Greece; yet it is matter of notoriety, that in the cultivation of the natural and the exact sciences, that is, in the prosecution of those subjects where patience and perseverance are pre-eminently indispensable, they have for a considerable time outstripped all competition, and now bear the palm alone. This was precisely the case with the Athenians. A love of profound research and curious speculation seems to have been as inherent in their character, and as congenial to their national temperament, as a love of poetry, music, and the fine arts.

The fire which Thales lighted up was never afterwards wholly extinguished amongst them. He had kindled his torch at the altar of science in Egypt, and it burned brightly in the propitious atmosphere to which it was transferred by the father of Greek philosophy. The Ionian school, of which this philosopher became the founder, was followed in quick succession by the Italian and Eleatic, where the physical and metaphysical sciences were cultivated with equal success; and in the dialogues of Plato ample evidence may be found of the zeal and ardour with which the laws both of mind and of matter were investigated in Athens, as soon as the violence of political contention had subsided, and a respite from wars and revolutions gave leisure for the discussion of such subjects. God, the Universe, and Man, at once divided and engrossed the whole of their attention. The question first asked was, What is God? and to this various and discordant answers were of course necessarily given. According to Thales, he is the most ancient of all things, for he is without beginning; he is air, said Anaximenes; he is a pure mind, quoth Anaxagoras; he is both air and mind, contended Archelaus. Democritus thought him mind in a spherical form; Pythagoras, a monad and the principle of good; Heraclitus, an eternal circular fire; Parmenides, the finite and immovable principle, in a spherical form; Melissus and Zenon, one and every thing, the only eternal and infinite. But these answers, being all more or less physical, did not satisfy the question; a vacuity was still left; and Necessity, Fate, and Fortune or Accident, were the principles called in to fill it up. The Universe gave rise to another set of disputations. According to some, what is, has ever been, and the world is eternal; others, again, argued that the world is not eternal, but that matter is eternal. And here a multitude of questions arose. Was this matter susceptible of forms, of one or of many? Was it water, or air, or fire, or an assemblage of corpuscular atoms, or an infinite number of indestructible elements? Had it subsisted without movement in the void, or had it an irregular movement? Did the world appear by intelligence communicating its action to it, or did the Deity ordain it by penetrating it with a part of its essence? Did these atoms move in the void, and was the universe the result of their fortuitous concourse? Are there but two elements in nature, earth and fire, and by these are all things produced; or are there four elements, whose parts are united by attraction and separated by repulsion? In a word, "causes and essences; bodies, forms, and colours; production and dissolution; the great phenomena of visible nature, the magnitudes, figures, eclipses, and phases of the two heavenly luminaries; the nature and division of the sky; the magnitude and situation of the earth; the sea with its ebbs and flows; the causes of thunder, lightning, winds, and earthquakes—all these furnished disquisitions, which were pursued with an eagerness of research and intenseness of application peculiar to the Greeks." Nor did Man form a subject of less interesting and curious speculation than the universe of which he was considered an epitome. All allowed him a soul and an intelligence, but all differed widely in their ideas respecting this soul or intelligence. Some maintained that it was always in motion, and that it moved by itself; others thought it a number in motion; some considered it the harmony of the four elements; others, again, variously represented it as water, fire, blood, a fiery mixture of things perceptible by the intellect, which have globose shapes and the force of fire, a flame emanating from the sun, an assemblage of fiery and spherical atoms, like those subtle particles of matter which are seen floating in the rays of the sun.

Such were a few of the speculations which science had devised for employing the thoughts of the active-minded.

---

1 "What the music of the ancients ever was, we have now, as a very competent observer (Milford, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 151) remarks, little means of judging, as none of it has been transmitted intelligible to us; but that the Grecian music, even from the earliest times, had extraordinary merit, we have Plato's testimony in very remarkable words (Mises, 46; Concheleum, 333); and Aristotle, who, according to Montesquieu, had two ruling motives to guide his decision, affection for Alexander, and a jealousy against Plato, upon this subject (Politic. I. viii. c. 6) coincides in judgment with his great master." (Mitchell's Aristophanes, prel. disc. p. xxxv. xxxvi.)

2 Mitchell's Aristophanes, prel. disc. adi supra.

3 Ibid. p. xli. et sequ. men in Greece, particularly in Attica; and when to these we add the ethical and political systems of the Academy, the Lyceum, the Porch, and the Gardens, to say nothing of that of the New Academy founded by Arcesilaus, and ably maintained by Carneades, or of the attention paid by almost all the philosophers to the cultivation of pure geometry, some idea may be formed of the extent of Plutarch's misrepresentation of the Athenian mind, when he described it as incapable of pursuing laborious researches, and as wanting in persevering and continuous attention. The very reverse of this, as has just been shown, was the truth; and, independently of the exemplification of a similar capacity for deep and laborious researches on the part of a modern nation, whose character in many particulars resembles that of the ancient Athenians, it is no more than a sound view of the principles of human nature might, anterior to all experience, have led us to anticipate. For, as travellers often reach the same destination by different routes, so men frequently pursue the same course from different motives or impulses. In the prosecution of scientific investigations, for instance, the Frenchman and the German are each persevering and laborious. But the former is impelled by an ardent curiosity and an overpowering ambition, which concentrate the whole energies of his mind on the subject which has powerfully attracted his attention, and merge all his feelings and desires in the attainment of one great object. The latter, without effort and without enthusiasm, perhaps with no definite object of ambition in view, pursues a similar career, because it belongs to his phlegmatic and passionless nature to persevere in whatever he may have undertaken or commenced. The principles by which these inquirers are set in motion are different, and the rates of advancement consequently unequal; but diligent and persevering labour is nevertheless alike predicable of each. The one travels, so to speak, in a light chariot, and compasses the distance to be travelled over at an accelerated pace; the other trundles it slowly along in a heavy lumbering post-waggon, but in time he also reaches the same destination. This analogy will probably serve to bring out the distinction here pointed at, and which indeed it is necessary to keep steadily in view, in order to form a just conception of the Athenian character. The native of Attica may be considered the Frenchman of Greece; quick, lively, sensitive, versatile, inconstant, full of that mercurialized spirit which shows itself equally in extreme delicacy of organic perception, and intuitive rapidity of mental apprehension; yet ended with an ardent and unquenchable curiosity, together with an inherent taste for subtle and abstract speculations, under the joint influence of which he was capable of penetrating the most recondite mysteries of science. Much of the excellence attainable in art is doubtless due to superiority of physical constitution and of natural character; but in science, although original genius will always assert its pre-eminence, and distinguish itself by the felicity of its intuitions, unremitting labour is the conditio sine qua non of great and signal success; and it is not a little remarkable to find this condition so strikingly exemplified in the character of a people, whose more obvious qualities would seem incompatible with steady concentration of thought, and whom a superficial observer has accordingly pronounced incapable of that intense, resolute application, which, in fact, constituted one of their most distinguishing national peculiarities.

Politically considered, the Athenian character took by reflection the hue of those republican institutions to which it had originally given birth; and this, blending and intermingling with its natural lights and shadows, produced a composite mass, which moral analysis unfortunately has no prismatic power of resolving into its primary elements. Love of liberty, however, as liberty was then understood, formed the ruling principle as well as passion of the people. An equality of political rights, or, in other words, an equal right in all free citizens to aspire to the exercise of political power, constituted the essence of the Athenian form of government. It was for the most part a despotism under the disguise of republican forms, and, even in its best times, it may be described as the tyranny of all over all. Civil liberty, the benign discovery of modern times, was then unknown, or at least unenjoyed, and, indeed, is scarcely compatible with a purely democratical form of polity. Political equality was the only species of liberty understood or enjoyed in the ancient republics, and in those of Italy during the middle ages. It was this which had so powerful charms for the citizens of those democracies; it was this of which they were so passionately enamoured; it was this which gave so effective a stimulus to all the faculties of the human mind, and produced those wonders of genius and of art which have exhausted the admiration, and rendered hopeless the rivalry, of succeeding times. The glory of the country in fact formed the glory of every citizen belonging to it; and he felt himself directly participant in all that contributed in any way towards its aggrandizement or renown. For a short time, indeed, an oligarchical usurpation might oppress the people, or the ambition of a fortunate soldier or crafty statesman might prove dangerous to liberty; but a sudden popular explosion might overturn the one, and the ostracism expel the other; whilst, in the frequent revolutions of the wheel of fortune, he who occupied the lowest station to-day might by to-morrow be elevated to ambition's utmost round, and in a condition to give the law to those from whom he had lately received it. The re-action of such a political system upon the national character could not fail to be powerfully marked. Its immediate products were extreme jealousy of those intrusted with power, and an incessant watchfulness over all their proceedings; an intense, passionate detestation of tyrants and tyranny; an ardent and active zeal in defence of public liberty when assailed, whether from within or from without; overweening nationality of feeling, mixed with no small degree of contempt and even aversion for the natives of other less favoured states; and, we fear it must be added, a spirit of aggression and conquest singularly at variance with that love of liberty which free institutions naturally inspire. Factious turbulence, inconstancy, and love of change, may also be numbered amongst the effects of a system of government purely democratical; and, paradoxical as it may seem, these for a time constitute its best if not its only safeguards. A democracy, in truth, is little else than revolution systematized; nor is there anything which is so much calculated to endanger its existence, if not to bring about its entire subversion, as any relaxation in that jealous watchfulness which leads the people constantly to suspect, distrust, and combine against those invested with power. Much has been said and written about republican ingratitude, which, indeed, has long been proverbial; but those who declaim on this theme do not reflect, that while the vice in question is not the peculiar reproach of democracy, the essence of that form of government consists in anxiously guarding against the aggrandizement of individuals or classes, and in crushing every aspirant who attempts to raise his head above the common level. Republics have often had occasion to regret their rewards, seldom their punishments.

If we are not greatly mistaken, these observations furnish a key to the right intelligence of the Athenian character, the leading features of which were unquestionably moulded and fashioned by their political institutions. They were fickle, versatile, liable to sudden gusts of passion, but easily appeased; inconstant in their affections, but not implacable in their hatreds; jealous, factious, turbulent, impatient of command, and prone to resent the assumption of superiority; attentive to the information and instruction afforded them by eminent citizens, yet intolerant of dictation, and, in their best days, ready to repress an overgrown and dangerous reputation; fond of flattery, and too apt to lend a delighted ear to the adulation of sycophants or demagogues, but not insensible to virtue, nor unwilling to listen to those honest patriots who proved their sincerity by courageously exposing the vices and follies of their countrymen; brave in the field, and liable to be excessively elated with victory or depressed with misfortunes, but seldom chargeable with dishonouring success by inhumanity to the vanquished, or deepening the disgrace of defeat by humiliating or abject concessions to the victor; generous in their sentiments; bold and free in their opinions; invariable in their sympathy with and admiration of genius; constant in their love of liberty and their country; and never backward to repair the errors or injustice committed under the influence of pernicious advice, passionate excitement, or the headlong impetuosity of an ardent and uncontrollable temperament. In their private conduct they were courteous, mild, humane, polished, liberal, and enlightened; simple in their manners, frugal in their habits, and but little addicted to any kind of ostentation or parade, even after their victories had brought them into contact with oriental luxury, and when their riches enabled them to rival in costliness and in splendour the nations whom they conquered. All their sumptuousness and magnificence was reserved for and lavished on those public edifices and monuments of art which made Athens the pride of Greece, the envy of the surrounding nations, and the admiration of the world at large. Such was the Athenian Demos in the days of its glory and independence, when, by the mouth of Aristides, it declared to the ambassadors of the Great King, "that it was impossible for all the gold in the world to tempt the republic of Athens, or to prevail with it to sell its liberty and that of Greece," and when public virtue maintained the purity and vigour of public institutions.

During the period which elapsed from the abolition of royalty till the appearance of Solon in the character of a lawgiver and codifier, the constitution of the Athenian government experienced frequent mutations. To the kings succeeded the hereditary archons, who held their office for life, and were in fact sovereigns under another designation. Of this the people were at length sensible; and, accordingly, on the death of Alcmaeon (B.C. 647), Charops was raised to the archonship upon the condition of holding it for ten years only. He was followed in succession by six others, who exercised the functions of the office under the same decennial limitation. But on the expiration of the archonship of Eryxias, a further and greater change took place. The duration of the office was limited to a single year, and its duties were divided amongst nine persons, chosen by lot out of the first order of the state, the eupatrids or nobles only. These functionaries all bore the title of archon, but differed in dignity as well as in the particular nature of their duties. The first in rank, called Archon Eponymus, or simply the archon, represented the majesty of the state, and by his name the year of his magistracy was distinguished; the second bore the title of king, and was the head of the religion of the commonwealth, to the care and protection of which his functions principally related; and the third, or polemarch, was originally a sort of minister at war or commander-in-chief. The six other archons, denominated thesmothetes, presided as judges in the ordinary courts of justice, and formed together a tribunal with a special jurisdiction. The nine together constituted the Council of State. The legislative functions remained with the assembly of the people; but the whole executive powers of the state, political, military, judicial, and religious, were exercised by the archons.

This is the substance of the information derived from the ancient authors respecting the Athenian government at the period to which we refer; but as writing bad hither, Draco, to been little practised in Greece, and as laws were promulgated orally and preserved by tradition, it is necessarily scanty and imperfect; nor was it possible, under such circumstances, that the sciences of legislation and government should receive any material improvement, or the rights and interests of the many meet with due respect and attention, when the authority of the state was lodged in the hands of an irresponsible few. The commonwealth was distracted by a perpetual scramble for the sovereign power, which, being open to all the principal families, some who could not obtain it by legal sought to grasp by illegal means. Factious ambition and lawless turbulence found equal scope for displaying themselves; and amidst continual alternations of despotism and anarchy, of usurpation and revolution, the intolerable evils of an unsettled government and an uncertain jurisprudence became deeply felt and almost universally acknowledged. A remedy was accordingly sought for in a stern and sanguinary code, which Draco about this period introduced; but the talents of the legislator were unequal to the task he had undertaken, and the indiscriminate severity of his system speedily defeated its own purpose. He made no attempt to reform the political constitution of his country, the real source of the miseries under which it groaned, but established a new penal code, which denounced the highest punishment against the most trivial offences as well as the most enormous crimes, upon the ground that the slightest breach of any positive law deserved death as treason against the jurisprudence of the state. A system so revolting to the natural feelings and sentiments of mankind could never be reduced into practice, nor rendered productive of any thing but evil; for every principle of reason and of humanity conspired to defeat its operation; and whilst its obvious tendency was to provoke the commission of heinous crimes, it at the same time multiplied the chances of impunity in favour of criminals. The laws of Draco, therefore, instead of applying a remedy to the evils of a defective system of polity, served rather to increase them, and to make the people feel strongly the necessity of a more radical and comprehensive reform than that which had been proposed by this stern and inflexible moralist. Nor was it long ere a change was effected in the constitution of the government, which laid the foundation of the Athenian system of polity properly so called, and which, though it subsequently underwent frequent and considerable alterations, may nevertheless be regarded as the basis of Athenian liberty. This was accomplished by Solon, one of the greatest characters that Greece ever produced, and one of the wisest men of whom any age or country can boast. We now accordingly proceed to give some account of his legislative labours, as these were embodied in the constitution which he reformed and remodelled on a plan suited to the circumstances and wants of his country.

By the fundamental law of this constitution the sovereign power was vested in the general assembly of the people. But an important question here arises, namely, Who were accounted The People, legally entitled, in their collective capacity, to the exercise of the supreme power of the state, as well as to provide effectually for the exclusion of those upon whom that high privilege had not been conferred? The population of Attica, or, in other words, the component members of the Athenian commonwealth, consisted of three classes, viz. Athenian citizens; resident aliens, or freemen liable to the capitation tax, who had not the rights of Athenian citizens; and slaves in actual bondage; and these classes differed from one another in numbers no less than in rank and condition. The number of citizens has been variously estimated, and, in point of fact, must have differed at different times. According to the census taken in the time of Pericles, they amounted to no more than 14,040 persons; but Mr Mitford conjectures that this enumeration included only those above the age of thirty, who alone were competent to be admitted as jurymen or assessors for the trial of causes. In the first speech of Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, they are, however, reckoned at nearly 20,000; Plato, in his Critias, assumes the same amount for the most ancient times, having doubtless transferred the number that was commonly computed in his own day to the earliest periods of the state; and the modern Grecian writers, as Libanius, for instance, follow the same statement. But the enumeration made by Demetrius Phalereus gives more precise and definite results. According to this census, which was taken in the fourth year of the 117th Olympiad, there were 21,000 citizens, 10,000 resident aliens, and 400,000 slaves; an estimate which, according to the usual statistical rule of taking the adults as a fourth part of the population, would give for the total number of citizens 84,000, and for that of aliens 40,000; whilst the slaves, having no head or status of any kind in the commonwealth, are reckoned absolutely, comprehending under the 400,000 all those in actual bondage, men, women, and children, without distinction of age or sex. But, from various considerations, into which it is unnecessary to enter, Boeckh has shown that the census of the archon requires considerable modifications; and, upon grounds which appear to be completely conclusive, he reckons the free inhabitants at 90,000, the resident aliens at 45,000, and the slaves at 365,000, together with women and children, which latter, however, were proportionally few. Assuming this estimate, then, as a pretty close approximation to the truth, it follows that the number of adult citizens was above 22,000, and that The People, in the political sense of the term, consisted of only about a twenty-third part of the entire population of the country. It is of the greatest importance to keep this fact steadily in view, as it has an immediate bearing upon the whole political system of the Athenians, and serves to reconcile many apparent anomalies by which superficial inquirers have been so often perplexed and misled. Nothing indeed can be more erroneous than the notion, which has been repeatedly promulgated, that the Athenian constitution was purely democratical. On the contrary, it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a republican aristocracy,—the whole power of the state being vested in the privileged class called citizens, who, as we have just seen, constituted but a small portion of the entire population; whilst the two other classes had no recognised political existence whatsoever, and that which was by far the most numerous remained in a state of more abject servitude than the villains under the feudal system or the serfs in Russia and Poland.

We have already said that, by the fundamental law of the Athenian constitution, the sovereign power was vested in the general assembly of the people. This body consisted of all the citizens, or privileged class, who had attained a certain age; excepting such as had been attainted and rendered infamous by a judicial sentence. Yielding to the temper of the times and the force of circumstances, Solon confirmed to this body an authority universally and uncontrollably absolute; yet, with singular inconsistency, he at the same time sought to establish a balancing power, capable in some measure of restraining the excesses into which a sovereign multitude is ever ready, on the slightest excitement, to plunge. With this view he made a new division of the people into four ranks or classes, according to the relative value of their possessions or property. The first rank consisted of those whose lands produced annually five hundred medimni of corn, wine, oil, or any other commodity, dry or liquid; and who were hence called Pentacosiomedimnians. The second rank was composed of persons whose lands yielded at least three hundred measures, and who were denominated Hippies; because although enjoying the same exemption as the first rank from service in the infantry or on shipboard, they were bound to maintain, at their own charge, a horse for the public, and, within the military age, to serve personally in the cavalry. The third rank, or Zeugites, consisted of those whose lands produced upwards of two hundred, but less than three hundred measures, and who were bound to serve in the infantry of the line (στρατός), and to be completely provided with arms for the purpose. The rest of the citizens not possessed of lands yielding two hundred measures were comprehended under the name of Thetes, and were also liable to military service either in the infantry of the line or among the light troops, according as they chanced to be provided with arms; and when Athens afterwards became a maritime power, it was also from this class that the fleet was principally manned. The diligent researches of Arbuthnot show the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of ascertaining, by modern standards, the precise relative value of an Attic estate in the age of Solon; but it seems to be tolerably clear that the object and intention of the Athenian lawgiver in forming such division, was to give to property a preponderance over numbers; and, accordingly, by his constitution, it was expressly provided that the magistracies should be filled from the first, second, and third ranks, to the exclusion of the fourth. But the policy of this arrangement was completely neutralized by leaving the appointments to be made by popular election, and admitting the fourth rank to the exercise of the right of voting in common with the others; for the poorest class being in all societies the most numerous, an equality of suffrage in the sovereign assembly of the people, combined with a difference of rank not founded in exclusive political privileges so much as on the grosser and more invidious distinction of wealth or riches, sufficed to unite the highest number against the greatest amount of property; to overturn the feeble and exceedingly artificial barriers which Solon had reared up; and ultimately to place unlimited power in the hands of those who may fairly be supposed the least capable of exercising it with judgment or moderation. The Athenian lawgiver, therefore, committed a grave practical error, highly favourable indeed to the development of the democratical spirit, but wholly inconsistent with that system of checks and counterpoises which it seems to have been one great object of his legislative labours to organize, and render effectual in restraining the indiscretion of the multitude.

Another of Solon's balancing expedients was the institution of a council or senate, consisting of one hundred persons chosen out of each of the four wards or districts into which the people of Attica were divided, or four hundred in all, but afterwards raised to five hundred, when the number of wards or districts was increased to ten, and fifty counsellors or senators allotted for each. Its common designation was, The Council; but, for the sake

---

1 History of Greece, vol. i. p. 307. London, 1830, &c. 2 Public Economy of Athens, vol. i. p. 49, &c. Engl. Transl. London, 1828. 3 Mitford's History of Greece, vol. i. p. 371, &c. of distinction, it was called The Council of Five Hundred, or simply The Five Hundred. The members were chosen annually by lot from among those who were legally qualified for the office and desirous of obtaining it; but, prior to their admission, they had to undergo, before the existing council, a strict scrutiny, termed Dokimasia, concerning their past life, and if any thing prejudicial to their character came out in course of the inquiry, they were rejected.

The counsellors of each tribe, in turn, for the space of thirty-five days, enjoyed superior dignity and additional authority under the title of Prytanes; and from them the council-hall or place of meeting was denominated Prytaneum. The Prytanes officiated in turn as presidents of the council, each holding the office only one day, during which he had the custody of the public seal, with the keys of the treasury and those of the citadel; and the whole assembly formed the Council of State of the commonwealth. This body, partly deliberative and partly executive, had the initiative of all laws; and, in fact, its peculiar and most important function consisted in preparing business for the assembly of the people, where nothing could be proposed which had not previously received the sanction of the council, and where the whole procedure was regulated by functionaries of its appointment. Attendance at the general assemblies was made compulsory on the part of the citizens, and four were held during the presidency of every Prytaneia, or term of thirty-five days, for the regular dispatch of public business, which was duly apportioned and subdivided amongst them. The first confirmed or rescinded the appointments of magistrates, received accusations of public offences presented by the thesmothete archons, and heard the catalogue of fines and confiscations for the service of the state; the second enacted laws, and disposed of petitions, public and private; the third gave audience to the ministers of foreign powers; and the fourth regulated such matters as concerned religion. All citizens who attended in due time received a small recompense or pay from the treasury. The Epistates, chairman, speaker, or president of the assembly, was appointed by lot from the nine Proedri or foremen, who were nominated in the same way from the council, that is, one from the counsellors of each tribe whose representatives were not at the time Prytanes; and with these functionaries sat the Nomophylaces, otherwise called, from their number, The Eleven, whose duty it was to watch over the laws, and to explain to the people the tendency of any proposal which seemed contrary to the spirit of the constitution, as well as to superintend the administration of justice.

Solon took none of these severe precautions to maintain his constitution which were adopted by some other ancient democratical legislators; neither exacting an oath, like Lycurgus, who by a species of artifice sought to render its obligation perpetual, nor ordaining, like Charondas, that whosoever proposed to abrogate an old law or enact a new one, should come into the assembly of the people with a halter about his neck. On the contrary, aware that regulations, however well adapted to the circumstances of the commonwealth at one period, might prove wholly unsuitable to its circumstances at another, and that time, the great innovator, rendered certain changes and modifications necessary, he even went so far as to enjoin an annual revision of the laws, and to prescribe the form in which this might with most propriety be effected. If the assembly of the people declared alteration in any point necessary, a committee was to be appointed, with directions to consider the change proper to be made; and if a new law was in consequence prepared, five officers were at the same time named to defend the old one before the assembly, which then decided between them. The persons composing such a committee were denominated Nomothetes, and in later times amounted to so many as a thousand; the persons nominated to defend an old law had the name of Syndics. This was the only form in which it was safe, or indeed constitutional, to propose any alteration in the existing law at Athens. But as the passing of a law by the assembly without the regular formalities of previous publication, or of one couched in ambiguous and fallacious terms, or contrary to a former law, subjected the proposer to penalties, it became usual to repeal the old law before any new measure was brought forward; and the delay occasioned by this double procedure served as an additional security to the constitution, which was equally guarded against rash innovation on the one hand, and the danger resulting from the absence of all improvement or amelioration on the other.

The regular and ordinary mode of enacting a law at Mode of Athens may be very shortly described. As the council had enacting the initiative of all laws, so it was their duty to frame the a law bills which were to be submitted to the general assembly of the people. But any citizen having ought to propose for public consideration, might address it to the Prytanes, whose duty it was to receive all petitions, suggestions, and communications, and to transmit them to the council. When the matter had been there approved and digested into proper form, it became a probouleuma or bill, and being written on a tablet, was exposed during several days for public perusal and consideration. At the next assembly it was read to the people, after which the question was asked by the public crier, "Who of those above fifty years of age chooses to speak?" And these, if any were so disposed, having delivered their sentiments, the crier again proclaimed, "Any Athenian, not disqualified by law, may now speak." The circumstances absolutely disqualifying were flight in battle, a large amount of debt to the commonwealth, and conviction for a crime inferring infamy; but the Prytanes had the privilege of enjoining silence at discretion, although the injunction was not effectual unless ratified or acquiesced in by the assembly. When the debates had ended, the suffrages were taken by a show of hands, which was the ordinary way of voting; but in extraordinary cases, particularly where the question to be determined related to alleged mal-administration on the part of magistrates, the votes were given by casting pebbles into vessels prepared for the purpose by the Prytanes, who, after the foremen had examined the suffrages, and declared the majority, dismissed the assembly. Such was the legislative mechanism of the Athenian constitution.

But not satisfied with all these checks and precautions, Court of which seem to have been wisely contrived for steadying Areopagus, the naturally eccentric and irregular movements of a democracy, Solon hoped to provide a further and more powerful restraint against aberration by restoring the Court of Areopagous, improving its regulations, and extending its powers. We have no account of the origin of this celebrated tribunal, which, indeed, the partiality of succeeding ages carried too far back into the fabulous ages to be now discovered. It is certain, however, that the institutions of Draco had nearly abolished its authority and superseded its use; and that, at the period of its restoration by Solon, it had sunk into comparative insignificance. By this renowned lawgiver its jurisdiction was revived and greatly extended. It was composed of those who, having executed the office of archon with credit, and passed the

---

1 Mitford's History of Greece, ubi supra. 2 Mitford, ubi supra. euthyne or scrutiny concerning their conduct while in power, were considered best qualified, by their experience and integrity, for being admitted members of this tribunal; and, in order to place them above being influenced either by fear or favour, they held their offices not for a year, which was the ordinary official term in the Athenian commonwealth, but for life. The powers of the court of Areiopagus were very great indeed. It is said to have been the first which adjudged the punishment of death for murder; and capital offences amongst the Athenians were for the most part cognizable by it alone. It was the only court from which there lay no appeal to the assembly of the sovereign people. It had power to stay execution of all judicial decrees, not excepting those pronounced by the general assembly itself, and to annul an acquittal or to extend mercy to the condemned; it directed all issues from the public treasury; in its censorial capacity it punished impiety, immorality, and all disorderly conduct, and exercised a general superintendence over the morals and behaviour of the people; it required every citizen to account to it annually for his means of livelihood, and to show that he earned his subsistence by honest industry in his particular calling; lastly, it took a fatherly care of the youth of the republic, and provided that all should receive an education suitable to their rank and fortune.

For the dispatch of judicial business the court of Areiopagus sat only during the night, and in perfect darkness, that the members, it is said, might be the less liable to prepossessions either for or against the accused; and, on the same precautionary principle, advocates were required to confine themselves to a simple narrative of facts and statement of the law, without digressing into rhetorical embellishment, or attempting to influence the understandings by appealing to the passions of the judges. In a word, this celebrated institution, which appears to have been of Egyptian origin, and which, after its restoration by Solon, long maintained a high reputation for severe wisdom and strict justice, formed a sort of State Inquisition, and seems to have been organized for the double purpose of checking that constant tendency to excess which is inherent in all purely popular governments, and of maintaining that public and private virtue which has rightly been pronounced the principle of democracy.

Besides the Areiopagus, which ought properly to be regarded as constituting part of the machine of government, there were no less than ten courts of judicature at Athens, of which four had jurisdiction in criminal and six in civil causes. Before the time of Solon the archons officiated as supreme and sole judges in nearly all manner of suits; but these functionaries being appointed by lot, and often very ill qualified for discharging so important a duty, it had become usual for each to choose two persons learned in the law to assist him; and the latter, under the name of paredri or assessors, were at length recognised as regular constitutional officers, and appointed with the same formalities as the archons themselves. Solon, however, discerned the inconveniences of this system, and reformed it altogether. "That," said he, "is, in my opinion, the most perfect government, where an injury to any one is the concern of all." The principle from which he set out was therefore to give to all an immediate concern in the administration of justice. With this view he ordained, that in the courts just mentioned causes should be tried by select bodies of men, resembling modern juries, and called to perform nearly the same functions; the archons merely superintending the preparation of causes, and presiding at the trial of them in the manner of our judges.

All questions of law or of practice were determinable solely by the latter; but in all questions of fact, or in the general issue of guilty or not guilty, the jury were the exclusive judges; and it was the bounden duty of the presiding magistrate to give immediate effect to their decision, whatever it might be. Any Athenian above thirty years of age, and not under legal disqualification, was eligible as a juryman, on delivering his name and addition to the thesmothete archons; but as no one could be compelled to serve in this capacity, a small honorarium was given by the treasury to induce such as had leisure to offer themselves. From the general list of those who voluntarily tendered their services, the thesmothete archons appointed by ballot juries to the different courts; and these appear to have officiated for a definite period in each, somewhat in the manner of the Roman judices, who were, to all intents and purposes, a species of standing jury. It thus appears that the honour of inventing jury trial is due to the great Athenian lawgiver; and that, in his hands, the institution reached a degree of perfection which it has not yet attained among many modern nations, who affect the greatest admiration for the ancient jurisprudence, and boast of having transfigured into their codes its wisest rules and provisions. It is necessary to add, that, in order to save the inhabitants of the country the trouble and expense of resorting to Athens for justice, in cases of inferior importance, itinerant judges, called from their number The Forty, were appointed to make regular circuits through the towns or boroughs of Attica, with full powers to judge and determine in all actions of petty assault, and in all disputes about property under a certain value.

In all countries, and throughout all ages, religion and civil government have, with few exceptions, been so intimately, or rather so inseparably connected, that an exposition of the one would be incomplete and even unintelligible without some account of the other. The magistrate has almost everywhere sought the alliance of the priest; and the hopes and fears arising from a supposed dependence on superior power or a belief in a future state of existence have been employed as useful auxiliaries in governing men and managing their affairs in the present life. The possibility of ruling nations by means of their reason alone, and by a due regard to their secular interests, without any reference to their religious opinions or observances, is an idea which seems never to have entered the mind of any ancient legislator, and which even now, when the mighty volume of past experience is unfolded for our instruction, many still consider as little better than downright political heresy. It was deemed alike impious and impracticable to attempt to establish any form of polity of which religion or the church did not constitute one of the main pillars, or to seek to promote the happiness of men in society without at the same time prescribing by law the mode in which they ought to worship the gods. In the Athenian constitution, as settled by Solon, religion and government, the church and the state, were so intimately connected, and became so indissolubly blended together, that, without any sensible error, we may at will consider the religion as part of the government, or the government as part of the religion, and both as alike the creatures of positive enactment or legislative ordination.

A sense of dependence on some superior power is so natural to an imperfect being like man, and has been so universally manifested by him in all the conditions and circumstances under which he is found, that it may be regarded as one of his most prevailing instincts. His own helplessness, compared with the stupendous powers of

---

1 Mitford's History of Greece, ubi supra. nature which he sees constantly in operation around him, necessarily leads the savage to look anxiously for some being of a higher order, on whom to rely for protection against the evils and dangers, real or imaginary, by which he is surrounded; whilst the more enlightened have only to exercise the faculties of their mind in reflecting on themselves, their own relative situation, and the appearances in the world around them, their knowledge and their ignorance, their strength and their weakness, their happiness and their misery, their beginning and their end, in order to be directed to the same belief; coupled with an expectation of some future state of existence, where the inequalities and evils of the present life will be fully redressed, and where ample scope will be afforded for the gratification of those desires and the expansion of those powers which are here confined and repressed. The first suggestions of religion in the human mind, therefore, naturally produce a belief in the existence of a deity, and in the consequent duty of worshipping and serving him. Its primary doctrine is pure, and its primary practice is simple; nor, from the causes which have now been mentioned, can it ever be wholly lost among mankind. But, through the imperfection of human nature, and the debasing alliance of purely human institutions, religion is so prone to degenerate, that superstition in one state of society and scepticism in another, separated perhaps by short intervals of enthusiasm or fanaticism, are almost the only aspects in which history presents it to our view. The variety, indeed, and the grossness, of the corruptions of religion, from which few pages in the annals of the world are pure, may well, as Mr Mitford remarks,1 excite wonder on first reflection; but if we proceed to inquire into their origin, and to investigate those circumstances in the nature and condition which have combined to produce them, we shall soon find enough to satisfy us that nothing short of a constant miracle could have prevented that degeneracy to which the history of all countries in all ages bears testimony. The fears of ignorance, the follies of wisdom, the interests of cunning, the frauds of priestcraft and statecraft, and even the pride of science, have all and each proved sources of corruption; nor is there almost any human passion which, in one way or other, has not contributed its share to the work of deterioration. Yet, strange to say, this religious debasement has been frequently found co-existent with a high degree of intellectual improvement and an advanced state of civilization.

The religion, like the science and art of Greece, was not indigenous, but exotic. Derived originally from Egypt, the great storehouse of superstition, it found a congenial soil in the country to which it was transplanted, and in time put forth a multitude of new shoots and branches, worthy of the stock from which they sprung. Its general character and quality, indeed, remained pretty much the same, rationally considered; but many of its harsher peculiarities were mitigated, and as it branched into greater variety, and became more intermixed with the native products of the soil, it lost not a little of the grossness and extravagance for which it had been originally distinguished. In Egypt, where priestcraft formed the inalienable inheritance of a particular order of men or a sacerdotal nobility, who monopolized all learning and all knowledge, superstition naturally presented itself under a hideous and revolting aspect, because the security of this order was incompatible with any condition except that of general debasement. But in Greece, where policy had not made professions and callings hereditary through all ranks of men, where religion became the ally of free institutions, and where the genius of the people naturally led them to embellish whatever they chose to imitate, the crude and monstrous fictions which had been originally imported from the banks of the Nile were gradually worked up into that graceful though somewhat fantastic and sensual system of mythology which the young are still taught to admire, and which even the old find it difficult to condemn. Among the Greeks, however, as among the Egyptians, two different religions prevailed, both derived from the same source, both acknowledged by the same persons, and both equally warranted by the civil law. But one of these only was common to all the people, revered as the sanction of oaths and obligations, and thus constituted the religion of the state. The other, denominated the mystical, was confined to a select few, who were bound to inviolable secrecy respecting the whole of its doctrines and the greater part of its ceremonies; so that its real character can only be conjectured from the displays made in some public exhibitions, or from casual and scattered hints in the writings of those who had been initiated into its mysteries. The former embraced that system of rites and observances which the legislator and the magistrate publicly recognised and enforced upon grounds of political expediency, and with a view merely to promote the objects and ends of civil government. The latter was in all probability chiefly doctrinal, and confined to those grand elementary principles of natural religion which, as they are the first that present themselves to the human mind, so, without some positive and permanent means of conservation, they are the soonest debased and forgotten; but being rigorously denied to public discussion, and communicable only to the few who had qualified for receiving its esoteric revelations, it had small influence comparatively on public affairs, and in fact is very little noticed by ancient historians.2 It is to the exotic form, therefore, as delivered by Homer, expounded by succeeding writers, and found continually connected with politics, that we shall here direct our attention; promising that a general sketch is all that we intend offering on the subject.

Various are the opinions which have been expressed by Origin of philosophers, and the traditions which have been handed Polytheism down by poets, respecting the origin of polytheism. Plato, after stating his belief that the host of heaven had originally been the only objects of worship, records a different and very remarkable tradition, according to which "One God once governed the universe: but a great and extraordinary change for the worse taking place in the nature of men and things (for originally there was perfect virtue and perfect happiness upon earth), the command then devolved upon Jupiter, with many inferior deities to preside over different departments under him." Here we find the original unity of the deity asserted, and an attempt made to account for the rise of polytheism, on the assumption of a great and deplorable change in human nature and the state of all things upon earth. Plato himself pronounces no opinion on the subject, for the fate of his master Socrates had probably taught him caution; but the notion of such a revolution as that assumed in the tradition which he records was universally entertained, and has been transmitted in a detailed form by Hesiod and other ancient authors; and it is not a little singular that this notion is for the most part combined with an assertion of the unity of the deity. "It is a tradition," says Aristotle, or whoever else was the author of the treatise On the World, "received from of old among all men, that God is the creator and preserver

---

1 Mitford's History of Greece, vol. i. p. 89, et seqq. 2 Mitford, ubi supra. See also Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated, b. iii. On the Myst. of all things, and that nothing in nature is sufficient to its own existence without his superintending protection. Hence some of the ancients have held that all things are full of gods, obvious to sight, hearing, and to all the senses; an opinion consonant enough to the power but not to the nature of the deity. God being one, has thus received many names, according to the variety of effects of which he is the cause." The testimony of Herodotus is, if possible, still more direct and explicit. After giving an account of the origin of the names of the principal divinities in the Greek Pantheon, he proceeds to say, that, being at Dodona, he was there informed, probably by the priests of the temple of Jupiter, that the Pelasgic ancestors of the Greeks sacrificed and prayed to gods to whom they gave no distinguishing name or appellation, "for they had never heard of any, but called them gods as the disposers and rulers of all things:" from which it appears that the Pelasgians acknowledged but one God; for where polytheism is believed, there will always be a corresponding nomenclature, and it is only the doctrine of the unity of the deity that precludes all use or need of distinguishing appellations.

But this purer religion, said to have been brought into Greece by some of its first inhabitants, must have been originally confined to a few, and exposed, from a variety of causes, to speedy corruption and debasement. Its primary doctrines were doubtless preserved in the mystical form which was at a very early period established; but it is inconceivable that, in the popular belief, these could co-exist with the absurdities of polytheism imported from Egypt, and greedily received by the rude natives, in an age when superstition in some form is inseparable from the human mind. Nor, even if the case had been otherwise, is the transition violent from a vague idea of an omnipresent deity to the belief of a separate divine essence in different places and in different things. On the contrary, the superstitions of almost all nations prove it to be congenial to the human mind in its unenlightened state; which, unable to exalt its thoughts to the steady conception of one almighty and boundless being, naturally satisfied itself with ascribing all effects of which it knew not the causes to the immediate presence and agency of distinct powers. But polytheism having been once introduced, soon disseminated itself among a people remarkable for the liveliness of their imaginations as well as for a love of the marvellous; and the Greeks in time far exceeded the bounds of the system which they had derived from their Egyptian instructors. Hence, besides Juno, Vesta, Themis, and others, which they added to the catalogue of the divinities imported from the banks of the Nile, every mountain had its Oread, every wood its Dryad, every fountain its Naiad, every river its god; the sea had its Tritons and its Nereids; the variety of the seasons gave birth to the Hours; and the Muses and the Graces were the immediate offspring of the poetical genius of the people. In the manufacture of gods unbounded scope was given to the imagination; and thus, even in Homer's time, divinities were so multiplied that nobody any longer cared to say how many there were not. Nor was the balance of power at all well adjusted in the hierarchy of the Greek polytheists. Jupiter, the chief of their gods, was neither omnipotent, nor omnipresent, nor omniscient; and as perfect goodness was nowhere to be found in heaven any more than upon earth, perfect happiness was equally a stranger to its inhabitants. Father Jove himself was supposed to be under the control as well as protection of Fate, which was also personified; and he is described as living under perpetual apprehension of the inferior deities, as subject to innumerable weaknesses and vices, as liable to be overcome with passion, and as an object of incessant jealousy to his somewhat tempestuous and unreasonable spouse. Ate, the goddess of mischief, was said to be his eldest daughter; and, probably under her influence, the inferior deities were represented constantly at work to disturb rather than to support or aid the government of their chief. Prodigality, perjury, treachery, sensuality, corruption, and insubordination, were the vices of heaven as well as of earth, and, in point of downright villany and wickedness, the gods, as of right, claimed a marked superiority over men. Such are the representations of poets, and such seems to have been in a greater or less degree the popular belief. But the legislator and the magistrate found it necessary to teach, however inconsistently, that Jupiter would not favour the false; that the gods loved not evil deeds, but honoured justice and the righteous works of men; and that, although the chief of the gods sometimes granted the spoil to hardened and wicked men, the fear of vengeance dwelt on their minds. Religious sanctions were felt to be indispensable for enforcing civil obligations; and gross as were the fictions which composed the body of the popular faith, their aid was sought in maintaining moral and political order, especially as they involved some faint and indistinct notions of future retribution. But how frail that aid really proved, and how much better calculated such a system of religious belief was to subvert than to maintain public or private morality, no one acquainted with the history of Greece need now be told.

At the same time it was a system of show and parade, of festivals and ceremonies, of rites and observances, and as such, singularly adapted to take a powerful hold of the popular mind, more especially when it became intimately blended with the literature as well as with the political institutions of the country. It imposed no particular set of doctrines, and exacted no peremptory compliances, but, addressing itself exclusively to the senses and the imagination, it was acquiesced in without inquiry, and maintained without persecution. As the religion of the state, an outward respect was due to it and required; but crimes against this religion were only punished as they affected the state, and not on the abstract grounds of impiety or sacrilege. Socrates was condemned to death, not because he revered the deity and taught a purer faith than that entertained by his countrymen, but because he attacked the religion of the state as by law established, and closely interwoven with the whole system of national policy; and even this sacrifice to the violated law was speedily and deeply repented; for the genius of polytheism was essentially tolerant. Hence mere raillery, when general and not directed against positive institutions, seldom or never incurred the animadversion of the magistrate, and was often highly relished by the people. Aristophanes, for example, made as free with the gods as he did with the great, and lashed the supposed foibles of the former with as little mercy as the vices and follies of the latter; yet his wit produced no inconvenience to its author, and was even loudly applauded by his countrymen. Eschylus, indeed, incurred some danger from a suspicion of having betrayed the secrets of Eleusis; but as this was always considered a crime of the greatest magnitude, and as it importuned a violation of the most sacred human obligations, as well as of the public policy of the state in a matter where the sanctions of its laws were peculiarly severe, no inference can justly be drawn from this against the general toleration exercised, viz., when its salutes were directed only against the public religion.

1 Mitford's History of Greece, ubi supra. 2 Ibid. Another circumstance deserving of notice is, that the ministers of religion were not confined exclusively to the service of its altars. The sacerdotal dignity was indeed incompatible with the exercise of any regular profession, and for this reason the priests had a fixed revenue secured to them; but they were eligible to the most important offices in the state, and might, if so inclined, serve as soldiers in the field. Their salaries were in general proportioned to the dignity of their functions and the rank of the deities whom they served; and these were paid out of the sacred revenues, which were derived partly from fines that individuals were condemned to pay for various offences, partly from the produce of lands consecrated to the gods or appropriated to defray the expense of sacrifices offered in the name of the republic, partly from particular grants, and partly from a tithe of the spoils taken in war, although the last were commonly considered the exclusive property of Minerva. These, with the produce of accidental confiscations, formed the regular sources of income; but the credulity of the people supplied an inexhaustible fund, which enriched the temples of Delos and Eleusis, and supported the magnificence and splendour amidst which the Delphic oracle was enshrined.

The solemn festivals, such as the Dionysiac and Panathenaic, which indeed constituted the greater part of this religion, and contributed alike to maintain its hold of the popular mind and to nourish a taste for the arts, were celebrated at the expense of the choragi or leaders of the choirs, of which each tribe furnished one; and the richest citizens only were appointed to the office, which, though ruinous, was eagerly solicited, as, like the curule dignity at Rome, it paved the way to more substantial honours, and formed a passport to the favour of a people ever ready to reward him who ministered profusely to their pleasures.

Panem et Circenses! Bread and amusement! may be considered as at once summing up the immediate wants of the sovereign multitude, and pointing out the mode in which wealth might be rendered indirectly subservient to the purposes of ambition. Hence the privilege enjoyed by the choragus who had proved victorious in the scenic contests, of inscribing his name on the tripod erected by his tribe, or of perpetuating the memory of his success by a choragic monument, was not the only recompense looked for by those who had incurred the ruinous expense of ministering to the pleasures of the people. Lastly, although Athens had a state religion, it had no sacerdotal hierarchy. The priests did not, as in Egypt and in other countries, form a distinct order or caste, which, indeed, would have been incompatible with a democratical form of government. They were not a separate body united by peculiar laws under a chief whose authority extended over all its inferior members. The dignity of supreme pontiff was unknown, and each priest served his particular shrine unconnected with his brethren. The temples of the principal divinities, indeed, such as those of Minerva, Neptune, Ceres, and Proserpine, had each a high-priest who presided over its service; and the number of subaltern ministers employed was commonly in proportion to the rank of the particular deity, and the wealth accumulated at his shrine; but the pontifical dignity was altogether local; and the priests of one temple formed a society wholly distinct from those of another. Hence the ministers of the gods at Athens were not judges in matters of religion, nor authorized to take cognizance of or to punish crimes against the deity. This, as we have already said, was exclusively within the competency of the civil magistrate; and, accordingly, we find that it was in consequence of a civil sentence alone, and not in virtue of any power or authority in themselves, that the Eumolpide launched their anathemas against Alcibiades, and that Socrates was adjudged to die the death.

The subject of the public economy of the Athenian Public estate, embracing inquiries concerning prices, wages, and the money interest of money; the administration of finance and the Prices public expenditure; the ordinary and extraordinary revenues; and the peculiar financial measures of the Greeks; is too vast and complicated to be treated here at full length. In Boeckh's learned and laborious work, however, there will be found a prodigious accumulation of curious facts relative to all these branches of the subject; and although the science of the author is greatly inferior to his erudition, and his conclusions are frequently at variance with sound principle, yet he has furnished abundant means for the correction of his own errors, and collected a body of information, the value and importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate. A large part of his first book is dedicated to an enumeration of the various prices of commodities in Attica, by comparing which with the actual prices of the same commodities in different countries, he endeavours to determine the relative wealth of Attica according to modern standards. But although this collection is equally interesting and valuable, the utility of such a comparison may be fairly questioned, upon the ground that no certain inference can be drawn from the similarity or dissimilarity of ancient and modern prices. The proportion between the value of any given commodity and that of gold or silver, may be a safe enough criterion in the same place and for short periods of time; but for distant ages and countries such a comparison can lead to no result upon which any reliance can be placed; and for this plain reason, that we have no common or invariable standard to which we can refer. For a comparison with prices in other countries at the same time, and for such a purpose as that to which Boeckh has applied it in examining the statement of Polybius respecting the valuation of Attica, his list of prices may be used with safety and advantage; but whether the precious metals, labour, or any other standard, be adopted as a medium of comparison between the prices of commodities in ancient Greece and in modern Europe, the result must, for the reason already stated, be equally fallacious and nugatory. The standard employed, whatever it may be, is itself indeterminate; or, in other words, the measure assumed and the thing to be measured by it are equally uncertain.

Again, with regard to the interest of money, it is evident that no sound conclusion can be drawn as to its rate money from a consideration of the securings, rates, or interest of money lent on bottomry, which Boeckh takes as a criterion; because this was doubtless a most hazardous species of investment, on account of the imperfect state of nautical science, the dangerous navigation of the Greek seas, and, worse than all, the insecurity of the laws and the corruption of the tribunals; and the premium paid by the borrower to the lender would of course be in some measure commensurate with the risk to which the capital of the latter was exposed. Nor is this all. For, if the rate of interest be that sum which the lender receives and the borrower pays for the use of a certain amount of monied capital, without any consideration for trouble in the collection of the income, or for risk as to the punctual repayment of the interest or principal at stipulated periods, it may fairly be doubted whether there was any thing

---

1 Panem et Circenses! Bread and bulls! exclaims the philosopher Jovellanos, who, in lamenting the fallen and degraded state of his countrymen the Spaniards, unconsciously parodies the expression employed on a similar occasion by an old Roman, at once indignant and sorrowful at the degeneracy that surrounded him. which can justly be considered as a general or an established rate of interest at Athens. There were no public securities, no means of investing money under the guarantee of the national credit; whilst, from the continual dread of revolution or foreign invasion, the insecurity of property was such that the punctual repayment of interest or principal at stipulated periods must have been liable to very great, but at the same time very variable, risks; a state of things wholly incompatible with a general or an established rate of interest. And with respect to money lent on mortgage or land-pledge, which in the settled communities of modern times approaches nearest to the public securities in point of safety, the tenure of land in Attica was, from the causes already mentioned, so precarious and insecure that, in this case also, a large yet variable indemnification, in the name of interest, must have been paid, and consequently no particular rate could have been general or common.

Mr Mitford has been led to accuse the Athenian state of neglect in the administration of its finances, but without reason, as Boeckh has most conclusively shown. Of all charges, indeed, the government of Athens is the least open to that of want of diligence in exacting the utmost farthing of revenue which its available resources could by any artifice of taxation be made to afford. The ordinary revenues of the Athenian state consisted chiefly of duties arising from lands, houses, and similar property of the state, or from companies and temples; of the produce of the mines, which were public property, though commonly let in fee-farm under certain conditions, including the payment of a twenty-fourth part of the gross produce in the name of rent, and over and above the grassum or fine which the tenant originally paid for the lease; of custom-house duties; of harbour duties and market tolls; of tithes, poll-taxes, taxes upon industry, protection-money, taxes on slaves, and taxes on prostitutes; of judicial fines and fees; of appeal-money, and fines in general; of confiscations, and tribute of various kinds; to say nothing of a variety of minor sources which it would be tedious to enumerate. The extraordinary revenues were of course variable, but arose principally from a species of property-tax, which was laid on in seasons of great emergency, when increased means were required for the defence of the state, or for the assertion of its dignity and independence. The spoils of war were also included under this head.

Property of all kinds appears to have been commonly let upon lease; and all leases were sold by auction to the highest bidder. For this purpose the conditions of lease were previously engraved upon stone and fixed up in public. The names of the lessees were subsequently added, and the document which had been originally exhibited then became a regular contract of lease; or if not, a fresh agreement was afterwards set up. A proposal or advertisement of this kind, copied from the original document engraved on stone, and still extant, being preserved in the British Museum, is to the following effect:—“In the archonship of Archippus, Phrynon being demarch. The Peiraeans let Paralia, and Halmyris, and the Theseium, and all the other sacred lands, upon the following conditions: That the tenants for more than ten drachmas are to give sufficient security for the payment of the rent; and that those for less than ten drachmas are to provide a surety, whose property shall be liable for the same. Upon these conditions they let the lands, tax and duty free. And if any property-tax be imposed upon the farms according to their valuation, the burghers will pay it. The tenants shall not be allowed to remove wood or earth from the Theseum and other sacred lands, nor injure whatever wood there is on the farm. The tenants of the Thesmophorion, and the Scheumos, and the other pasture-lands, shall pay half the rent in Hecatomboson (the first month) and the other half in Poseidon (the sixth month). The tenants occupying Paralia, and Halmyris, and the Theseum, and any other grounds that there may be, shall cultivate them for the first nine years in whatever manner they please, and according to custom; but in the tenth year they shall plough the half of the land, and no more, so that the succeeding tenant may be able to begin preparing the soil from the sixteenth of Anthesterion. And if he shall plough more than half, the excess of the produce shall be the property of the burghers.” Then follows a stipulation that the tenant shall receive a house connected with one of the farms, in good repair. This document, which is in several respects a remarkable one, shows that the public economy of Athens, in as far as concerns the law of landlord and tenant, had attained considerable advancement, and that the state had not been wanting in a due regard to the security as well as the improvement of property.