CHAPTER II.

OF ATHENS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos_,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He demonstrated to them, that the glorious principle, which had so long preserved the liberty of Greece, and had enabled them to triumph over the whole force and opulence of the mighty power of Persia, was that common hatred, that general detestation of corruption, which prevailed so universally amongst their generous forefathers.[164] That, in those times of publick virtue, to receive presents from any foreign power was deemed a capital crime. That if any man should be found so shamefully profligate, as to sell himself to any one, who had designs upon the liberty of Greece; or should endeavour to introduce corruption into his own country; death without mercy would have been his punishment here, and his memory branded with indelible and eternal infamy hereafter. That the statesmen and generals of those happier times, were absolute strangers to that most criminal and infamous kind of traffick; which was grown so common and so universal, that honour, fame, character, the liberty and welfare of their country were all set to sale, and sold publickly by auction to the best bidder.[165] He then made use of his utmost art, backed with the greatest strength of reasoning, to persuade the people, to give up that fund to the support of the army and navy (the service to which it had been originally appropriated) which from the time of Pericles had been applied solely to defray the expenses of the theatre. He showed next the folly and danger of confiding the defence of the state to mercenary forces, who had already served them so