ployed in more perishing, as well as more criminal, luxury. The pomp of religious solemnities, which were twice as numerous and costly in Athens as in any other city of Greece - the extravagance of entertainments and banquets, which on such occasions always followed the sacrifices-exhausted the resources, without augmenting the glory, of the republic. Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians, soon after the eightieth Olympiad, availed themselves of their extensive commerce to import the delicacies of distant countries, which were prepared with all the refinements of cookery. The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in summer; in winter, the most delightful flowers adorned the tables and persons of the wealthy Athenians. Nor was it sufficient to be crowned with roses, unless they were likewise anointed with the most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and buffoons, were a usual appendage of every entertainment. Among the weaker sex, the passion for delicate birds, distinguished by their voice or plumage, was carried to such excess, as merited the name of madness. The bodies of such youths as were not peculiarly addicted to hunting and horses, which began to be a prevailing taste, were corrupted by a lewd style of living; while their minds were still more polluted by the licentious philosophy of the sophists. It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it may be observed, in one word, that the vices and extravagances which are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome, took root in Athens during the administration of Pericles, the most splendid and most prosperous in the Grecian annals.'

During this period flourished Eschylus and Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, dramatists; Pindar, a lyrical poet; Herodotus and Thucydides, historians; Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, philosophers (reasoners upon the nature of the human mind, and upon man's immortal destiny). In this period also, under the administration of Pericles (from 458 to 429 B. C.), sculpture and architecture attained their perfection. It was then that Phidias executed those splendid works, statues of the gods and goddesses, which excited the admiration of the world, and which succeeding artists have in vain endeavored to rival. While Athens had extended its power over a great part of the coasts of the Ægean Sea, and increased its trade and commerce by every available means, it had also become a city of palaces and temples, whose ruins continue to be the admiration of ages for their grandeur and beauty. It is understood that the Greeks had acquired their knowledge of architecture from the Egyptians; but they greatly excelled them in the elegance of their designs, and are in a great measure entitled to the character of inventors in the art. The beauty of the Corinthian pillar, for example, has never been excelled either in ancient or modern times.

After the surrender of Athens to the Spartans (404 B. c.), the democratic constitution was abolished, and the government was intrusted to thirty persons, whose rapacious, oppressive, and bloody administration ere long procured them the title of the Thirty Tyrants. The ascendancy of these intruders was not, however, of long duration. Conon, assisted pri vately by the Persians, who were desirous of humiliating the Spartans, expelled the enemy, and reëstablished the independence of his country. About seventy years later a new source of agitation throughout Greece

was caused by the warlike projects of Alexander, king of Macedon, usual ly styled

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. This intrepid and ambitious soldier was the son of Philip, king of Macedon, a small territory adjacent to the Grecian states, from which it had originally received a knowledge of arts and learning. Alexander was born in the year 356 B. C., and by his father was committed to the charge of the philosopher Aristotle to be educated; a duty which was faithfully fulfilled. By the assassination of Philip, Alexander was called to the throne of Macedon while yet only twenty years of age, and immediately had an opportunity of displaying his great warlike abilities in conducting an expedition into Greece, which was attended with signal success, and procured for him the honor of succeeding his father as commander-in-chief of the Grecian states. He now carried out a design which had been formed by Philip, to subdue Persia and other countries in Asia. In the spring of 334 B. C., he crossed over to the Asiatic coast, with an army of 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, thus commencing the most important military enterprise which is narrated in the pages of ancient history. Alexander marched through Asia Minor, and in successive encounters completely conquered the armies of Persia; but the whole history of his progress is but an account of splendid victories. During a space of about seven or eight years, he conquered Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, and, in fact, became master of nearly all the half-civilized countries in Asia and Africa. It does not appear that Alex ander had any motive for this wide-spread overthrow of ancient and remote sovereignties, excepting that of simple ambition, or desire of conquest, with perhaps the indefinite idea of improving the social condition of the countries which he overran. From various circumstances in his career, it is apparent that he never contemplated the acquisition of wealth or of praise, except such as could be shared with his soldiers, for whom he displayed a most paternal affection.

The extraordinary career of Alexander was suddenly cut short by death. At Babylon, while engaged in extensive plans for the future, he became sick, and died in a few days, 323 B. C. Such was the end of this conqueror, in his thirty-second year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months. He left behind him an immense empire, which, possessing no consolidated power, and only loosely united by conquest, became the scene of continual wars. The generals of the Macedonian army respectively seized upon different portions of the empire, each trusting in his sword for an independent establishment. The greedy struggle for power finally terminated in confirming Ptolemy in the possession of Egypt; Seleucus in Upper Asia; Cassander in Macedon and Greece; while several of the provinces in Lower Asia fell to the share of Lysimachus.

CONCLUDING PERIOD OF GREEK HISTORY.

At the death of Alexander, the Athenians considered it a fit opportunity to emancipate themselves from the ascendancy of Macedon; but without success. Demosthenes, one of the most eminent patriots and orators of Athens, on this occasion, to avoid being assassinated by order of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy, killed himself by swallowing poison; and his com

patriot Phocion was shortly afterwards put to death by his own countrymen, the Athenians, in a mad outbreak of popular fury. Greece cannot be said to have produced one great man after Phocion; and this deficiency of wise and able leaders was doubtless one chief cause of the insignificance into which the various states, great and small, sunk after this epoch.

The ancient history of Greece, as an independent country, now draws to a close. Achaia, hitherto a small, unimportant state, having begun to make some pretensions to political consequence, excited the enmity of Sparta, and was compelled to seek the protection of Philip, the ruling prince of Macedon. Philip took the field against the Spartans, and their allies the Etolians, and was in a fair way of subjecting all Greece, by arms and influence, when he ventured on the fatal step of commencing hostilities against the Romans. This measure consummated the ruin of Greece, as well as that of Macedon. The Romans warred with Philip till the end of his life (175 B. c.), and continued the contest with his son Perseus, whom they utterly defeated, and with whom ended the line of the kings of Macedon. In a few years the once illustrious and free republics of Greece were converted into a Roman province, under the name of Achaia (146 B. C.).

Thus terminates the fourth and last period of Greek history, during which flourished several eminent writers and philosophers, among whom may be numbered Theocritus, a pastoral poet; Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Herodian, historians; Demosthenes, an orator; and Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, philosophers; also Zeuxis, Timanthes, Pamphilus, Nicias, Appelles, and Eupompus, painters; and Praxiteles, Polycletus, Camachus, Naucides, and Lysippus, sculptors.

In the condition of a humble dependency of Rome, and therefore following the fate of that empire, Greece remained for upwards of four succeeding centuries; but although of little political importance, it still retained its preeminence in learning. Enslaved as the land was, it continued to be the great school of the time. As Greece had formerly sent her knowledge and arts over the East by the arms of one of her own kings, she now diffused them over the western world under the protection of Rome. Athens, which was the emporium of Grecian learning and elegance, became the resort of all who were ambitious of excelling either in knowledge or the arts; statesmen went thither to improve themselves in eloquence; philosophers to learn the tenets of the sages of Greece; and artists to study models of excellence in building, statuary, or painting; natives of Greece were also found in all parts of the world, gaining an honorable subsistence by the superior knowledge of their country. That country in the meantime was less disturbed by intestine feuds than formerly, but was not exempt from the usual fate of conquests, being subject to the continual extortions of governors and lieutenants, who made the conquered provinces the means of repairing fortunes which had been broken by flattering the caprices of the populace at home.

The period of the independence of Greece, during which all those great deeds were performed which have attracted the attention of the world, may be reckoned from the era of the first Persian war to the conquest of Macedon, the last independent Greek state, by the Romans. This period, as we have seen, embraced little more than 300 years. It is not, there

fore, from the duration of the independent political power of the Grecian states that their celebrity arises. Even the patriotism of their soldiers, and the devoted heroism of Thermopyla and Marathon, have been emulated elsewhere without attracting much regard; and we must therefore conclude that it is chiefly from the superiority of its poets, philosophers, historians, and artists, that the importance of the country in the eyes of modern men arises. The political squabbles of the Athenians are forgotten; but the moral and intellectual researches of their philosophers, and the elegant remains of their artists, possess an undying fame.

HISTORY OF ROME.

ABOUT the year 754 B. C., at that point of Central Italy, nearly fifteen miles from the Tuscan Sea, where the Anio joins the Tiber, there stood on a height, called the Palatine Mount, a little village named Roma, the centre of a small township, consisting probably of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants, all of them husbandmen and shepherds. This Rome was one of the border townships of Latium, a territory of fertile and undulating table-land extending from the Tiber to the Liris, and from the sea-coast to the hills of the interiThe whole surface of Latium was under diligent cultivation, and was covered with villages similar to Rome, which together constituted what was called the Latin nation.

or.

Rome, we have said, was a frontier township of Latium. It was situated precisely at that point where the territories of Latium adjoined those of two other nations-of the Sabines, a hardy Oscan race of shepherds inhabiting the angular district between the Anio and the Tiber; and of the Etruscans, a remarkable people, of unknown but probably Oriental origin, who had arrived in the north of Italy some centuries later than the Pelasgians, and conquering all before them, whether Pelasgians or Oscans, by the force of superior civilization, had settled chiefly in the region between the Arnus and the Tiber, corresponding to modern Tuscany. Between these three races Oscans, Pelasgians and Etruscans—either apart, or in various combinations, all Italy, with the exception perhaps of some portions near the Alps, was divided: the Oscan predominating in the interior; the Pelasgians or rather Pelasgo-Oscans, along the coasts, as in Latium; and the Etruscans in the parts above-mentioned. While the Italian peninsula was thus occupied but by three great races or main stocks; the political divisions or nations into which it was parceled out were so numerous, however, that it would be scarcely possible to give a complete list of them.

Situated so near to the Sabine and Etruscan frontiers, an intercourse, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, must naturally have been carried on between the Latins of Rome and the Sabines and Etruscans, with whom they were in contact. A chain of events, which history cannot now trace, but which is indicated in a poetic manner by a number of early Roman legends, led to the incorporation of Rome with two neighboring towns one of them a small dependency of the Etruscans, situated on the Cælian Hill, and probably named Lucerum; another a Sabine village on

the Quirinal Hill, called Quirium. The Etruscans, or Etrusco-Latins as they seem rather to have been, of Lucerum, were received on a subordinate footing; the Sabines of Quirium on one of equality; but the joint city continued to bear its old name of Roma. The population of this new Rome consisted, therefore, of three tribes the ancient Romans, who called themselves Ramnes; the Sabines of Quirium, who called themselves Tities; and the Etrusco-Latins of Lucerum, who were named Luceres.

ORIGINAL ROMAN CONSTITUTION—EARLY HISTORY UNDER THE KINGS-ORIGIN OF THE PLEBEIANS.

With the enlargement of the population of Rome by the addition of these new masses of citizens, a change of the constitution became of course necessary. The following seems to have been the form ultimately assumed:-Governed by a common sovereign, eligible by the whole community from one of the superior tribes. the Ramnes and the Tities- the three tribes intrusted the conduct of their affairs to a senate composed of 200 members, 100 of whom represented the gentes of the Ramnes, and 100 the gentes of the Tities. The Luceres as an inferior tribe, were not represented in the senate; and their political influence was limited to the right to vote with the other two tribes in the general assemblies of the whole people. In these general assemblies, or Comitia, as they were called, the people voted; not individually, nor in families, nor in gentes, but in divisions called Curix or Curies; the Curia being the tenth part of a tribe, and including, according to the ancient system of round numbers, ten gentes. Thus the entire Populus Romanus, or Roman people, of this primitive time, consisted of thirty curies-ten curies of Ramnes, ten of Tities, and ten of Luceres the ten curies of each tribe corresponding to 100 gentes, the thirty curies together making up 300 gentes. As the Luceres were an inferior tribe, their gentes were called Gentes Minores, or Lesser Houses; while those of the Ramnes and Tities were called Gentes Majores or Greater Houses. The assembly of the whole people was called the Comitia Curiatia, or meeting of curies. After a measure had been matured by the king and senate, it was submitted to the whole people in their curies, who might accept or reject, but could not alter, what was thus proposed to them. An appeal was also open to the curies against any sentence of the king, or of the judges nominated by him in his capacity of supreme justiciary. The king, moreover, was the high priest of the nation in peace, as well as the commander-in-chief during war. The 300 gentes furnished each a horseman, so as to constitute a body of cavalry; the mass of the people forming the infantry. The right of assembling the senate lay with the king, who usually convened it three times a month.

and

Such was ancient Rome, as it appears to the historic eye endeavoring to penetrate the mists of the past, where at first all seems vague and wavering. The inquirer to whom we owe the power to conceive the condition of ancient Rome, so far as that depended on political institutions, was the celebrated German historian Niebuhr. Not so, however, did the Romans conceive their own early history. In all ancient communities, it was a habit of the popular imagination, nay, it was part of the popular religion, to trace the fortunes of the community to some divine or semi-divine founder; whose exploits, as well as those of his heroic successors, formed the