soon as the head of the dart was drawn out of it. Those words gave all that were present the utmost sorrow and affliction: they were inconsolable on seeing so great a man about to die, and to die without issue. For him, the only concern he expressed was about his arms, and the success of the battle. When they showed him his shield, and assured him that the Thebans had gained the victory; turning towards his friends with a calm and serene air: Do not regard, said he, this day as the end of my life, but as the beginning of my happiness, and the completion of my glory. I leave Thebes triumphant, proud Sparta humbled, and Greece delivered from the yoke of servitude. For the rest, I do not reckon that I die without issue; Leuctra and Mantinea are two illustrious daughters, that will not fail to keep my name alive, and to transmit it to posterity. Having spoken to this effect, he drew the head of the javelin out of his wound and expired.

It may be truly said, that the Theban power expired with this great man; whom Cicero seems to rank above all the illustrious men Greece ever produced.* Justin is of the same opinion,† when he says, That as a dart is no longer in a condition to wound when the point of it is blunted, so Thebes, after having lost its general, was no longer formidable to its enemies, and its power seemed to have lost its edge, and to be annihilated by the death of Epaminondas. Before him, that city was not distinguished by any memorable action; and after him, it sunk into its original obscurity; so that it saw its glory take birth and expire with this great man.

It has been doubted whether he was a more excellent captain or good man. He sought not power for himself, but for his country; and carried his disinterestedness to such a pitch, that at his death he did not leave sufficient wealth to defray the expenses of his funeral. Truly a philosopher, and poor by inclination, he despised riches, without affecting any reputation from that contempt; and if Justin may be believed, he coveted glory as little as he did money. It was always against his will that commands were conferred upon him; and he behaved himself in them in such a manner, as did more honour to the dignities, than the dignities to him.

Though poor himself, and without any estate, his very poverty, by drawing upon him the esteem and confidence of the rich, gave him the opportunity of doing good to others. One of his friends being in great necessity, Epaminondas sent him to a very rich citi

Epaminondas princeps, meo judicio, Græciæ. Acad. Quæst. 1. i. n. 4.

† Nam sicuti telo, si primam aciem præfregeris, reliquo ferro vim nocendi sustuleris: sic illo, velut mucrone teli, ablato duce Thebanorum, rei quoque publica vires hebetatæ sunt: ut non tam illum amisisse, quam cum illo omnes interiise viderentur. Nam neque hunc ante ducem ullum memorabile bellum gessero, nec postea virtutibus, sed cladiubs, insignes fuere: ut manifestum sit, patriæ gloriam et natam et extinctam cum eo fuisse. Justin. 1. vi. c. 8.

Fuit incertum, vir melior an dux esset. Nam et imperium non sibi semper sed patriæ quæsivit; et pecuniæ adeò parcus fuit, ut sumptus funeri defuerit. Gloria quoque non eupidior, quàm pecuniæ; quippe recusanti omnia imperia ingesta sunt, honoresque ita gessit, ornamentum non accipere, sed dari ipsi dignitati videretur. Justin.

zen, with orders to ask him for 1000 crowns in his name.* That rich man coming to his house, to know his motives for directing his friend to him upon such an errand; Why,† replied Epaminondas, it is because this honest man is in want, and you are rich.‡

He had imbibed those generous and noble sentiments from the study of polite learning and philosophy, which he had made his usual employment and sole delight from his earliest infancy; so that it was surprising, and a question frequently asked, how, and at what time, it was possible for a man, always busy amongst books, to attain, or rather seize, the knowledge of the art military in so great a degree of perfection. Fond of leisure, which he devoted to the study of philosophy, his darling passion, he shunned public employments, and intrigued only to exclude himself from them. His moderation concealed him so well, that he lived obscure and almost unknown. His merit, however, discovered him. He was taken from his solitude by force, to be placed at the head of armies; and he demonstrated that philosophy, though generally despised by those who aspire at the glory of arms, is wonderfully well calculated to form heroes. For besides its being the greatest step towards conquering the enemy to know how to conquer one's self, in this school anciently were taught the great maxims of true policy,|| the rules of every kind of duty, the motives for a due discharge of them, what we owe to our country, the right use of authority, wherein true courage consists; in a word, the qualities that form the good citizen, statesman, and great captain.

He possessed all the ornaments of the mind: he had the talent of speaking in perfection, and was well versed in the most sublime sciences. But a modest reserve threw a veil over all those excellent qualities, which still augmented their value, and he knew not what it was to be ostentatious of them. Spintharus, in giving his character, said, That he never had met a man, who knew more, and spoke less. T

It may be said therefore in praise of Epaminondas, that he falsified the proverb, which treated the Baotians as boorish and stupid. This was the notion commonly entertained of them ;* .** and it was imputed to the gross air of the country, as the Athenian delicacy of taste was attributed to the subtlety of the air they breathed. Horace says, that to judge of Alexander from his bad taste for poetry, one would swear him a true Boeotian:

* A talent.

Bootum in crasso jurares aëre natum Epist. i. 1. 2.
In thick Boeotian air you'd swear him born.

† Plut. de præcept. reipub. ger. 809.

Ὅτι χρηστὸς, εἶπεν, οὗτος ὤν, πένης ἐστι: σὺ δὲ πλουτεῖς.

Jam literarum studium, jam philosophiæ doctrina tanta, ut mirabile videretur, unde tam insignis militiæ scientia homini inter literas nato. Justin.

The works of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, are proofs of this.

Plut. de audit. p. 39.

** Inter locorum naturas quantum intersit, videmus-Athenis tenue cœlum, ex quo acutiores etiam putantur Attici; crassum Thebis, itaque pingues Thebani. Cic. de Fato, n. 7.

When Alcibiades was reproached with having little inclination to music, he thought fit to make this excuse; It is for Thebans to sing as they do who know not how to speak. Pindar and Plutarch, who had very little of the soil in them, and who are proofs that genius is of all nations, do themselves condemn the stupidity of their countrymen. Epaminondas did honour to his country, not only by the greatness of his military exploits, but by that sort of merit which results from elevation of genius and the study of the sciences.

I shall conclude this portrait and character with a circumstance that gives place to nothing in all his other excellencies, and which may even be preferred to them, as it indicates a good heart, and a tenderness and sensible disposition; qualities very rare amongst the great, but infinitely more estimable than all those splendid attributes which the generality of mankind commonly gaze at with admiration, and fancy almost the only objects worthy either of being imitated or envied. The victory at Leuctra had drawn the eyes and admiration of all the neighbouring states upon Epaminondas, and caused him to be looked upon as the supporter and restorer of Thebes, as the triumphant conqueror of Sparta, as the deliverer of all Greece; in a word, as the greatest man, and the most excellent captain, that ever was in the world. In the midst of this universal applause, so capable of intoxicating, in a manner, the general of an army, Epaminondas, little sensible to so affecting and so deserved a glory, My joy,t said he, arises from my sense of that which the news of my victory will give my father and my mother.

Nothing in history seems to me so valuable as such sentiments, which do honour to human nature, and proceed from a heart which neither false glory nor false greatness have corrupted. I confess it is with grief I see these noble sentiments daily expire amongst us, especially in persons whose birth and rank raise them above others, who, too frequently, are neither good fathers, good sons, good husbands, nor good friends; and who would think it derogatory to them to express for a father and mother the tender regard, of which we have here so fine an example from a Pagan.

Until Epaminondas's time, two cities had exercised alternately a kind of empire over all Greece. The justice and moderation of Sparta had at first acquired it a distinguished pre-eminence, which the pride and haughtiness of its generals, and especially of Pausanias, soon made it lose. The Athenians, until the Peloponnesian war, held the first rank; but in a manner scarcely discernible in any other respect, than in their care to acquit themselves worthily, and in giving their inferiors just reason to believe themselves their equals. They judged at that time, and very justly, that the true method of commanding, and of continuing their power, was to evince their superiority only by their good offices and the benefits they conferred. Those times, so glorious for Athens, were of about

*They were great musicians.

↑ Plut. in Coriol. p. 215.

forty-five years' continuance, and they retained a part of that preeminence during the twenty-seven years of the Peloponnesian war, which make in all the seventy-two, or seventy-three years, which Demosthenes assigns to the duration of their empire; but for this latter space of time, the Greeks, disgusted by the haughtiness of Athens, received no laws from that city without reluctance. Hence the Lacedæmonians became again the arbiters of Greece, and continued so from the time Lysander made himself master of Athens, until the first war undertaken by the Athenians, after their re-establishment by Conon, to withdraw themselves and the rest of the Greeks from the tyranny of Sparta, which was now grown more insolent than ever. At length, Thebes disputed the supremacy; and by the exalted merit of a single man, saw itself at the head of all Greece. But that glorious condition was of no long continuance, and the death of Epaminondas, as we have already observed, plunged it again into the obscurity in which he found it.

Demosthenes remarks, in the passage above cited, that the preeminence granted voluntarily either to Sparta or Athens, was a preeminence of honour, not of dominion, and that the intent of Greece was to preserve a kind of equality and independence in the other cities. Hence, says he, when the governing city attempted to ascribe to itself what did not belong to it, and aimed at any innovations, contrary to the rules of justice, in established customs, all the Greeks thought themselves obliged to have recourse to arms, and without any ground of personal discontent, to espouse with ardour the cause of the injured.

I shall add here another very judicious reflection from Polybius.f He attributes the wise conduct of the Athenians, in the times I have spoken of, to the ability of their generals, who were then at the head of their affairs; and he makes use of a comparison, which explains, not unhappily, the character of that people. A vessel, without a master, says he, is exposed to great dangers, when every one insists upon its being steered according to his opinion, and will not suffer others to guide him. If then a rude storm attacks it, the common danger conciliates and unites them; they abandon themselves to the pilot's skill, and all the rowers doing their duty, the ship is saved, and in a state of security. But if, when the tempest ceases, and the weather grows calm again, the discord of the mariners revives; if they will hearken no longer to the pilot, and some are for continuing their voyage, whilst others resolve to stop in the midst of the course; if on one side they loose their sails, and furl them on the other; it often happens that, after having escaped the most violent storms, they are shipwrecked even in port. This, says Polybius, is a natural image of the Athenian republic. As long as it suffered itself to be guided by the wise counsels of an Aristides, a Themistocles, a Pericles, it came off victorious from the

*Demost. Philip. iii. p. 89

† Polyb. l. vii. p. 488.

greatest dangers. But prosperity blinded and ruined it; following no longer any thing but its own caprice, and being become too insolent to be advised or governed, it plunged itself into the greatest misfortunes.

SECTION VIII.

Death of Evagoras king of Salamis. Nicocles his son succeeds him. Admirable charac ter of that prince.

A. M. 3630.

The third year of the 101st Olympiad, and soon Ant. J. C. 374. after the Thebans had destroyed Platex and Thespia, as has been observed before, Evagoras, king of Salamis in the isle of Cyprus, of whom much has been said in the preceding volume, was assassinated by one of his eunuchs. His son Nicocles succeeded him. He had a fine model before him in the person of his father; and he seemed to consider it as his duty to make it his study, and to tread in his steps. When he took possession of the throne, be found the public treasury entirely exhausted, by the great expenses which his father had been obliged to incur in the long war which he had to maintain with the king of Persia. He knew that the generality of princes, upon like occasions, think every means just for the re-establishment of their affairs; but for his part, he acted upon different principles. In his reign there was no talk of banishment, taxes, and confiscation of estates. The public felicity was his sole object, and justice his favourite virtue. He discharged the debts of the state gradually; not by crushing the people with excessive imposts, but by retrenching all unnecessary expenses, and by using a wise economy in the administration of his revenues. I am sure, said he, that no citizen can complain that I have done him the least wrong; and I have the satisfaction to know that I have enriched many with an unsparing hand. He believed this kind of vanity, if it be vanity, might be permitted in a prince, and that it was glorious for him to have it in his power to throw out such a defiance to his subjects.

He piqued himself also in particular upon another virtue, which is the more worthy of admiration in princes, as it is very uncommon among them; I mean temperance. It is most amiable, but very difficult, in an age and a rank of life to which every thing seems to be lawful, and wherein pleasure, armed with all her arts and attractions, is continually lying in ambush for a young prince, and anticipating his desires, to make a long resistance against the vio lence and insinuation of her assaults. Nicocles gloried in having never known any woman besides his wife during his reign, and was amazed that all other contracts should be treated with due regard in civil society, whilst that of marriage, the most sacred and inviolable of obligations, was broken through with impunity; and that

*Diod. 1. xv. p. 363.

Ibid. p. 64.

† Isocrat. in Nicoc. p. 64.

+ Ibid. p. 63, 66