fects, often the very reverse of them, such as we may imagine in a fluctuating, light, inconstant, capricious people, as were the Athenians. SECT. VI. Common character of the Lacedæmonians and Athenians. I CANNOT refuse giving a place here to what M. Bossuet says upon the character of the Lacedæmonians and Athenians. The passage is long, but will not appear so; and will include all that is wanting to a perfect knowledge of the genius of both those states. Amongst all the republics of which Greece was composed, Athens and Lacedæmon were undoubtedly the principal. No people could have more wit than the Athenians, nor more solid sense than the Lacedæmonians. Athens affected pleasure, the Lacedæmonian way of life was hard and laborious. Both loved glory and liberty; but liberty at Athens tended to licentiousness: and, controlled by severe laws at Lacedæmon, the more restrained it was at home, the more ardent it was to extend itself by ruling abroad. Athens wished also to reign, but upon another principle, in which interest had a share with glory. Her citizens excelled in the art of navigation, and her sovereignty at sea had enriched her. To continue in the sole possession of all commerce, there was nothing she was not desirous of subjecting to her power; and her riches, which inspired this desire, supplied her with the means of gratifying it. On the contrary, at Lacedæmon money was in contempt. As all the laws tended to make the latter a military republic, martial glory was the sole object that engrossed the minds of her citizens. From thence she naturally affected dominion; and the more she was above interest, the more she abandoned herself to ambition. Lacedæmon, from her regular life, was steady and determinate in her maxims and measures. Athens was more lively and active, and the people too much masters. Philosophy and the laws had indeed the most happy effects upon such exquisite natural parts as theirs; but reason alone was not capable of keeping them within due bounds. A wise Athenian, who knew admirably the genius of his country, informs us, that fear was necessary to those too ardent and free spirits; and that it was impossible to govern them, after that the victory at Salamis had removed their fears of the Persians. Two things, then, ruined them; the glory of their great actions, and the supposed security of their present condition. The magistrates were no longer heard; and as Persia was afflicted with excessive slavery, so Athens, says Plato, experienced all the evils of excessive liberty. Those two great republics, so contrary in their manners and conduct, interfered with each other in the design they had each formed, of subjecting all Greece; so that they were always enemies, still more from the contrariety of their interests, than from the incompatibility of their humours. u The Grecian cities were unwilling to submit to the dominion of either the one or the other; for, besides that each was desirous of preserving their liberty, they found the empire of those two republics too grievous to bear. That of the Lacedæmonians was severe. That people were observed to have something almost brutal in their character. " A government too rigid, and a life too laborious, rendered their tempers too haughty, austere, and imperious in power: besides which, they could never expect to live in peace under the influence of a city which, being formed for war, could not support itself, but by continuing perpetually in arms. So that the Lacedæmonians were desirous of attaining to command, and all the world were afraid they should do so. "The Athenians were naturally more mild and u Aristot. Polit. 1. i. p. 4. y Plat. de Rep. 1. viii. t Plat. I. iii. de leg. X agreeable. Nothing was more delightful to behold than their city, in which feasts and games were perpetual; where wit, liberty, and the various passions of men, daily exhibited new objects: but the inequality of their conduct disgusted their allies, and was still more insupportable to their own subjects. It was impossible for them not to experience the extravagance and caprice of a flattered people; that is to say, according to Plato, something more dangerous than the same excesses in a prince vitiated by flattery. These two cities did not permit Greece to continue in repose. We have seen the Peloponnesian and other wars, which were always occasioned, or fomented, by the jealousy of Lacedæmon and Athens. But the same jealousies which involved Greece in troubles, supported it in some measure, and prevented its falling into dependence upon either the one or the other of those republics. The Persians soon perceived this condition of Greece; and accordingly the whole mystery of their politics consisted in keeping up those jealousies, and fomenting those divisions. Lacedæmon, which was the most ambitious, was the first that gave them occasion to take a part in the quarrels of the Greeks. They engaged in them from the sole view of making themselves masters of the whole nation; and, industrious to weaken the Greeks by their own arms, they waited only the opportunity to crush them altogether. *The states of Greece, in their wars, already regarded only the king of Persia, whom they called the Great King, or the king, by way of eminence, as if they had already reckoned themselves among the number of his subjects. But it was impossible that the ancient spirit of Greece should not revive, when they were upon the point of falling into slavery, and the hands of the barbarians. a The petty kings of Greece undertook to oppose this great king, and to ruin his empire. With a Plat, 1. iii. de leg. Isocrat. Panegyr. a Polyb. 1, iii. 140 HISTORY OF THE PERSIANS AND GRECIANS. small army, but bred in the discipline we have related, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, made the Persians tremble in Asia Minor, and showed it was not impossible to subvert their power. The divisions of Greece alone put a stop to his conquests. The famous retreat of the ten thousand, who, after the death of the younger Cyrus, in spite of the victorious troops of Artaxerxes, made their way in a hostile manner through the whole Persian empire, and returned into their own country: that action, I say, demonstrated to Greece more than ever, that their soldiery was invincible, and superior to all opposers; and that only their domestic divisions could subject them to an enemy too weak to resist their forces when united. We shall see, in the series of this history, by what methods Philip, king of Macedon, taking advantage of these divisions, succeeded at length, partly by address and partly by force, in making himself little less than the sovereign of Greece, and by what means he obliged the whole nation to march under his colours against the common enemy. What he had only planned, his son Alexander brought to perfection; and showed to the wondering world, how much ability and valour avail against the most numerous armies and the most formidable preparations. BOOK THE ELEVENTH. THE HISTORY OF DIONYSIUS THE ELDER AND YOUNGER, TYRANTS OF SYRACUSE, SIXTY years had elapsed since Syracuse had regained its liberty, by the expulsion of the family of Gelon. The events which passed during that interval in Sicily, except the invasion of the Athenians, are of no great importance, and little known; but those which follow are highly interesting, and make amends for the chasm: I mean the reigns of Dionysius the father and son, tyrants of Syracuse; the first of whom governed thirty-eight years, and the other twelve, in all fifty years. As this history is entirely unconnected with what passed in Greece at the same time, I shall relate it in this place altogether, and by itself; observing only, that the first twenty years of it, upon which I am now entering, agree almost in point of time with the last twenty of the preceding volume. *After having been expelled for more than teu years, he reascended the throne, and reigned two or three years. |