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IX. The same people, so great, and one 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 all things public, and capable of doing honour to the state. Their victories, conquests, wealth, and continual communication 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 excellent persons in the arts of war and government; in philosophy, eloquence, poesy, painting, sculpture, and architecture: of having furnished alone more great men in every kind than any other city of the world; if perhaps we except Rome, which had imbibed learning and arts from her, and knew how to apply her lessons to the best advantage; of having been in some sort the school and tutor of almost the whole universe; of having served, and still continuing to serve, as the model for nations, which pique themselves most upon the excellency of taste; in a word, of having 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 the sciences and learned men, that

De rep. Athen. p. 693.

í Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes

Intulit agresti Latio.

Horat. Epist. i. 1. 2.

rendered Greece illustrious, with the arts also, and those who excelled in them, will set this in a clear light.

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 darling passion and great principle of policy. We see them, from the commencement of the war with the Persians, sacrifice 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 fight the common eneman 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, capricious people, as the Athenians.

Plut. in Arist. p. 324.

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 Lacedemonians 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.

ans.

Among all the republics of which Greece was composed, Athens and Lacedemon were undoubtedly the principal. No people could have more wit than the Athenians, nor more solid sense than the Lacedemoni. Athens affected pleasure; the Lacedemonian 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 Lacedemon, the more restrained it was at home, the more ardent it was to extend 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 riches, which inspired this passion, supplied her with the means of gratifying it. On the contrary, at Lacedemon 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.

Lacedemon, 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. 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, 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, 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 bear.

Plat, 1 iii. de. leg.

That of the Lacedemonians 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 Lacedemonians were capable of attaining the command, and all the world, were afraid they should do so.

1 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 Lacedemon 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.

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

* Xenoph. de rep. Lacon.

Plat. de rep. 1. viii.

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