To these different characteristics, which Plutarch unites in the same pas sages of his works, some others may be added, extracted principally from the same author.

VI. It was from this fund of humanity and benevolence, of which I have now spoken, and which was natural to the Athenians, that they were so atten tive to the rules of politeness, and so delicate in point of just behaviour; qualities which one would not expect to find among the common people.* In the war against Philip of Macedon, having intercepted one of his couriers, they read all the letters he carried, except that of Olympias his wife, which they returned sealed up and unopened, out of regard to conjugal love and secrecy, the rites of which are sacred, and ought to be respected even among enemies. The same Athenians, having decreed that a strict search should be made after the presents distributed by Harpalus among the orators, would not suffer the house of Callicles, who was lately married, to be visited, out of respect for his bride, who had not long been home. Such behaviour is not very common and upon like occasions people do not stand much upon forms and politeness.f VII. The taste of the Athenians for all arts and sciences is too well known to require dwelling long upon it in this place. Besides which, I shall have occasion to speak of it with some extent elsewhere. But we cannot, without admiration, behold a people, composed for the most part, of artisans, husbandmen, soldiers, and mariners, carrying delicacy of taste in every thing to so high a degree of perfection, which seems the peculiar attribute of a more exalted condition and noble education.

VIII. It is no less wonderful, that this people should have such great views and should rise so high in their pretensions. In the war which Alcibiades caused them to undertake, fired with vast projects and unbounded hopes, they did not confine themselves to the taking of Syracuse, or the conquest of Sicily, but had already in idea added Italy, Peloponnesus, Libya, the Carthaginian gates, and the empire of the sea to the pillars of Hercules. Their enterprise failed; but they had formed it, and the taking of Syracuse, which seemed no great difficulty, might have enabled them to put it in execution.

IX. The same people, so great, and we may say so haughty in their projects, had nothing of that character in other respects. In what regarded the expense of the table, dress, furniture, private buildings, and, in a word, private life, they were frugal, simple, modest, and poor; but sumptuous and magnificent in every thing public, and capable of doing honour to the state. Their victories, conquests, wealth, and continual intercourse with the people of Asia Minor, introduced neither luxury, gluttony, pomp, nor vain profusion among them. Xenophon observes, that a citizen could not be distinguished from a slave by his dress. The richest inhabitants, and the most famous generals, were not ashamed to go to market themselves.§

It was very glorious for Athens to have produced and formed so many persons illustrious in the arts of war and government; in philosophy, eloquence, poesy, painting, sculpture, and architecture; to have alone furnished more great men in every other department, than any other city in the world; except perhaps Kome, which had imbibed learning and arts from her, and knew how to improve her lessons to the best advantage; to have been in a manner the school of almost all the world; to have served, and still continue to serve, as the model for nations which pride themselves most upon the excellency of taste; in a word, to have taught the language, and prescribed the laws of all that regards the talents and productions of the mind. The part of this history, wherein I shall treat of the sciences and learned men that rendered Greece lustrious, with the arts, and those who excelled in them, will set this in a clear light

Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.

• Πατριον αυτοις και σύμφυτον ην το φιλανθρωπον. In Pelop. p. 280. † Plut. in Demetr. p. 89% Μεγα φρονεί, μεγάλων ορέγεται· De Rep. Athen. f. 693 Horat. Epist. i. 1. 2. "Greece taken, took her savage victors' hearts. And polish'd rustic Latium with her arts."

X. I shall conclude this description of the Athenians with one more attribute, which cannot be denied them, and appears evidently in all their actions and enterprises; and that is, their ardent love of liberty. This was their dar ling passion, and great principle of policy. We see them, from the commence ment of the war with the Persians, sacrificing every thing to the liberty of Greece. They abandoned, without the least regret, their lands, estates, city, and houses, and removed to their ships in order to tight the common enemy, whose view was to enslave them. What could be more glorious for Athens, than, when all the allies were trembling at the vast offers made her by the king of Persia, to answer his ambassador by the mouth of Aristides, that all the gold and silver in the world was not capable of tempting them to sell their own, or the liberty of Greece ?*

It was from such generous sentiments that the Athenians not only became the bulwark of Greece, but preserved the rest of Europe, and all the western world, from the invasion of the Persians.

These great qualities were mingled with great defects, often the very reverse of them, such as we may imagine in a fluctuating, light, inconstant, and capri cious people, like the Athenians.

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, as it includes all that is wanting to a perfect knowledge of the genius of both these people.

Among all the republics of which Greece was composed, Athens and Lacedæmon were undoubtedly the principal. No people could possess more wit than the Athenians, nor more solid sense than the Lacedæmonians. Athens affected pleasure; the Lacedæmonian manner of living was hard and laborious. Both loved glory and liberty; but the liberty of Athens tended to licentiousness. The love of power among the Lacedæmonians, though restricted by severe laws at home, was the more ardent to extend itself abroad. Athens also was fond of power, 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 riches, which inspired this passion, supplied her with the means of gratifying it. 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 her citizens. From thence she naturally affected dominion; and the more she was above interest, the more she abandoned herself to ambition.

On

Lacedæmon, from her regular life, was steady and determinate in her maxims and measures. Athens was more lively and active, but the people had too much control. Their laws and philosophy had indeed the most happy effect upon excellent natural capacities like theirs; but reason alone was not capable of keeping them within due bounds. A wise Athenian, who perfectly knew the genius of his country, informs us, that fear was necessary to keep those too ardent and free spirits in order; and that it was impossible to govern them, after the victory at Salamin had removed their fears of the Persians.t

They were therefore ruined by 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.

These two great republics, so opposite in their manners and conduct, interered with each other in the design they had each formed of subjecting all Greece; so that they were always enemies, more from the contrariety of their interests, than the dissimilarity of their genius.

Plut. in Aristid. P. 324.

t Plat. l. i. de Leg.

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 bear. That of the Lacedæmonians, who were observed to have something almost brutal in their character, was severe. A government too rigid, and a life too laborious, rendered their tempers too haughty, austere, and imperious in power: besides which, it could never be expected to live in peace under the authority of a city, which, formed for war, could not support itself but by continuing perpetually in arms.* Sc that the Lacedæmonians were capable of attaining to command, and all the world were afraid they should do so.t

The Athenians were naturally obliging and agreeable. Nothing was more delightful to behold than their city, in which feasts and games were perpetual: their 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, which is, according to Plato, somewhat more dangerous than the same excesses in a prince vitiated by flattery.t

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 their wars, 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. But with a small army, disciplined as we have related, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, made the Persians tremble in Asia Minor, and showed that 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, made their way in a hostile manner through the whole Persian empire, and returned into their own country, fully demonstrated to Greece that her soldiery was invincible, and that only their domestic divisions could subject them to an enemy too weak to resist their united force. We shall see, in the sequel of this history, how Philip king of Macedon, ta king advantage of these divisions, succeeded at length, between address and force, in making himself little less than the sovereign of Greece, and in obliging the whole nation to march under his colours against the common enemy. What he had only planned, his son Alexander brought to perfection, who showed the wondering world, how much ability and valour avail against the most numerous armies, and the most formidable preparations.

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

† Xenoph. de Rep. Lacon.

Plat. 1. iii. de Leg. Isocrat. Panegyr.

Plat. de Rep. 1. viii.
Polyb. iii.

THE

HISTORIES

OF

DIONYSIUS AND HIS SON,

TYRANTS OF SYRACUSE

SYRACUSE had for about sixty years enjoyed the liberty gained by the expul sion 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 and his son, tyrants of Syracuse; the first of whom governed thirty-eight, and the latter twelve years.* As this history is entirely foreign to 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 preceding twenty 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. When on the one side we behold a prince, the declared enemy of liberty, justice, and laws, trampling on 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,t can we deny a truth, which the pagan world itself has confessed, and Plutarch has taken 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 that the oracle of wisdom has declared, that if the hearts of tyrants could be seen, we should find them torn in pieces with 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 injustice and violence of their proceedings.t

The condition of a good prince is quite 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

* After having been expelled for more than ten years, he re-ascended the throne, and reigned two cr fhree years.

Erit Dionysius illic tyrannus, libertatis, justitiæ, legum exitium-Alios uret, alios verberabit, alios ob leven offensam jubebit detruncari.-Senec. de Consol. ad Marc. c. xvii.

Sanguine humano non tantum gaudet, sed pascitur; sed ut suppliciis omnium ætatum crudelitatem inG tiabilem explet.--Id de Benef. I. vii. c. 19.

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 dilacere tur.Tacit. Annal. 1. vict6.

368

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 display his power, but with great reluctance, in the last extremity, and with all the forms and sanction of the laws. "A tyrant punishes only from caprice and passion; and believes," says Plutarch 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 distinguished the first Dionysius, we shall see in his history, all that unbounded ambition, sustained by great valour, extensive abilities, and the necessary talents for acquiring the confidence of a people, is capable of undertaking for the attainment of sovereignty; the various means which he had the address to employ for the maintaining himself in it against the opposition of his enemies, and the odium of the public; and lastly, the tyrant's success in escaping, during a reign of thirty-eight years, the many conspiracies formed against him, and in transmitting peaceably the tyranny to his son, as a legitimate possession and a right of inheritance.

CHAPTER I

THIS chapter contains the history of Dionysius the Elder, who reigned thr ty-eight years.

SECTION 1.-MEANS MADE USE OF BY DIONYSIUS THE ELDER TO POSSESS HIMSELF OF THE TYRANNY.

DIONYSIUS was a native of Syracuse, of noble and illustrious extraction according to some, but others say that his birth was base and obscure. However that may be, he distinguished himself by his valour, and acquired great reputation in a war with the Carthaginians. He was one of those who accompanied Hermocrates, when he attempted to re-enter Syracuse by force of arms, after having been banished through the intrigues of his enemies. The event of that enterprise was unsuccessful and Hermocrates was killed. The Syracusans did not spare his accomplices, several of whom were publicly executed. Dionysius was left among the wounded. The report of his death. designedly given out by his relations, saved his life. Providence would have spared Syracuse many misfortunes, had he expired either in the fight, or by the executioner.

The Carthaginians had made several attempts to establish themselves in S: cily, and to possess themselves of the principal towns of that island, as we have observed elsewhere.§ Its happy situation for their maritime commerce the fertility of its soil, and the riches of its inhabitants, were powerful inducements to such an enterprise. We may form an idea of the wealth of its cities from the account given of Agrigentum. The temples were of extraordinary magnificence, especially that of Jupiter Olympus, which was three hundred and forty feet in length, sixty in breadth, and one hundred and twenty in height. The piazzas, or galleries, in their extent and beauty, answered to the rest of the building. On one side was represented the battle of the giants, on the other, the taking of Troy, in figures as large as life. Without the city

*Hæc est in maxima potestate verissima animi temperantia, non cupiditate aliqua, non temeritate in sendi; non priorum principum exemplis corruptum, quantum in cives suos liceat, experiendo tentare; sed hebetare aciem imperii sui-Quid interest inter tyi annum et regem, (species enim ipsa fortunæ ac licentia par est.) nisi quod tyranni in voluptate sæviunt, reges non nisi ex causa et necessitate -Senec, de Clem. lib. i. c. 11.

Η Έφη απολαύειν μάλιςα της αρχης οταν ταχέως α βύλεται ποιη. Μεγας αν ο κίνδυνος βαλεσθαι αν μη δει, τον α βαλεται ποιειν δυναμενον.-Ad. Princ. Indoet. p. 782.

Diod. 1. xiii. 197.

In the history of the Carthagin'an, a II. Part.1