SECTION VI.

COMMON CHARACTER OF THE LACEDEMONIANS AND ATHENIANS.

I CANNOT refuse giving a place here to what Mr. Bossuet says upon the character of the Lacedæmonians and Athenians. The passage is long, but will not appear so, and includes all that is wanting to a perfect knowledge of the genius of both those people.

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 the liberty of Athens tended to licence; and controled by severe laws at Lacedæmon, the more restrained it was at home, the more ardent it was to ex tend itself in rule abroad. Athens was also for reigning, but upon another principle, in which interest had a share with glory. Her citizens excelled in the art of navigation, and the Sovereignty at sea had enriched her. To continue in the sole possession of all commerce, there was nothing she would not have subjected to her power; and her riehes, which inspired this passion, 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, the glory of arms was the sole object that engrossed the 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 determi nate in her maxims and measures. Athens was more lively and active, and the people too much masters. Their laws and philosophy 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 the victory at Salamin 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, experi enced all the evils of excessive liberty.

*Plut. 1. iii. de Leg.

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 al ways enemies, more from the contrariety of their interests, than the incompatibility of their humours.

The Grecian cities were against submitting to the dominion of either the one or the other; for, besides the desire of preserving their liberty, they found the empire of those two republics too grievous to lear. 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 capable of attaining the command, and all the world were afraid they should do so.

The Athenians were naturally obliging and 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 the dependence of 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 enter into 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

4 Aristot. Polit. 1. i. p. 4.

Plat. de rep. 1. viii.

* Plut. 1. iii. de Leg. Isocrat. Panegyr.

Xenoph. de rep. Lacon.

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 been of 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.

The petty kings of Greece undertook to oppose this great king, and to ruin his empire. With a 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 10,000, who, after the death of young Cyrus, 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 united force.

We shall see in the series of this history by what methods Philip king of Macedon, taking advantage of these divisions, came at length, between address and force, to make himself little less than the sovereign of Greece, and to oblige 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 the wondering world how much ability and valour avail against the most numerous armies and the most formidable preparations.

† Polyb. 1. iii.

THE

HISTORY

OF

DIONYSIUS ELDER AND YOUNGER,

TYRANTS OF SYRACUSE.

SYRA YRACUSE had regained its liberty about 60 years, by the expulsion of the family of Gelon. The events which passed in that interval, except the invasion of the Athenians, are of no great importance, and little known; but those which follow are of a different nature, and make amends for the chasm ; I mean the reigns of Dionysius the father and son, tyrants of Syracuse; the first of whom governed 38, and the other 12, in all 50 years. As this history is entirely foreign to what passed in Greece at the same time, I shall relate it in this place all together and by itself; observing only, that the first 20 years of it, upon which I am now entering, agree almost in point of time with the last preceding 20 years.

This history will present to our view a series of the most odious and horrid crimes, though it abounds at the same time with instruction. Whent on the one side we behold a prince, the declared enemy of liberty, justice, and laws, treading under his feet the most sacred rights of nature and religion, inflicting the most cruel torments upon his subjects, beheading some, burning others for a slight word, delighting and feasting himself with human blood, and gratifying his savage inhumanity with the sufferings and miseries of every age and condition; I say, when we behold such an object, can we deny a truth which the pagan world itself hath confessed, and

After having been expelled for more than ten years, he reascended the throne, and reigned two or three years.

Erat Dionysius illic tyrannus, libertatis, justitiæ, legum exitumAlios uret, alius verberabit, alios ob levem offensam jubebit detruncaria Senec. de consol. ad Marc. c. xvii.

Sanguine humano non tantum gaudet,sed pascitur; sed ut suppliciis omnium ætatum crudelitatem insatiabilem explet. Ib. de bencf. 1, vii.

c. 19.

VOL. IV.

Plutarch takes occasion to observe in speaking of the tyrants of Sicily, that God in his anger gives such princes to a people, and makes use of the impious and the wicked to punish the guilty and the criminal? On the other side, when the same prince, the dread and terror of Syracuse, is perpetually anxious and trembling for his own life, and, abandoned to remorse and regret, can find no person in his whole state, not even his wives or children, in whom he can confide, who will not think with Tacitus, "* That it is not without reason "the oracle of wisdom has declared, that if the hearts of ty"rants could be seen, we should find them torn in pieces with 66 a thousand evils; it being certain that the body does not "suffer more, from inflictions and torments, than the minds "of such wretches from their crimes, cruelties, and the injus❝tice and violence of their proceedings ?"

The condition of a good prince is quité different. He loves his people, and is beloved by them; he enjoys a perfect tranquillity within himself, and lives with his subjects as a father with his children. Though he knows that the sword of justice is in his hands, he apprehends the use of it. He loves to turn aside its edge, and can never resolve to evidence his power but with extreme reluctance, in the last extremity, and with all the forms and sanction of the † laws. A tyrant pun. ishes only from caprice and passion, and believes, says Plu tarch upon Dionysius, that he is not really master, and does not act with supreme authority, but as he sets himself above all laws, has no other but his will and pleasure, and sees himself obeyed implicitly: Whereas, continues the same author, he that can do whatever he will, is in great danger of doing what he ought not.

Besides these characteristics of cruelty and tyranny which particularly distinguish the first Dionysius, we shall see in his history whatever unbounded ambition, sustained by great va

* Neque frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ firmare solitus est si recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus : quando, ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitia, libidine, malis consultis animus dilaceretur. Tacit. Annal. l. vi. c. 6.

↑ Hæc est in maxima potestate verissima animi temperantia, non cupiditate aliqua, non temeritate incendi ; non priorum principum exemplis corruptum quantum in cives suos liceat experiendo tentare; sed hebetare aciem imperii sui—Quid interest inter tyrannum et regem, species enim ipsa fortunæ ac licentia par est, nisi quod ty ranni in voluptate sæviunt, reges non nisi ex causa et necessitate? Senec. de Clem. lib. i. c. 11.

Η Εφη ἀπολαύαν μάλισα τῆς ἀρχῆς ὅταν ταχέως ἃ βύλεται ποιη. Μέγας ἦν ὁ κίνδυνος βύλεσθαι ἂν μὴ δεῖ, τὸν ἅ βυλεται ποιεῖν δυνάμενον, Ad princ. indoct. p. 782.