What grossness did they not attribute to Juno and Venus?* No citizen would have wished that his wife or daughters should resemble those goddesses. Timotheus, the famous musician, having represented Diana upon the stage of Athens, transported with folly, fury, and rage, one of the spectators conceived he could not utter a greater imprecation against Fm, than to wish his daughter might resemble that divinity. It is better, says Plutarch, to believe there are no gods, than to imagine them of this kind; open and declared impiety being less profane, if we may be allowed to say so, than so gross and absurd a superstition.

However it be, the sentence, of which we have related the circumstances, will, through all ages, cover Athens with infamy and reproach, which all the splendour of its glorious actions, for which it is otherwise so justly renowned, can never obliterate: and it shows at the same time what is to be expected from a people, gentle, humane, and beneficent at bottom, for such the Athenians really were, but volatile, proud, haughty, inconstant, wavering with every wind and every impression. It is therefore wit' reason that public assemblies have been compared to a tempestuous sea; as that element, like the peopie, though calm and peaceable of itself, is subject to be frequently agitated by a violence not its own.

As to Socrates, it must be allowed that the Pagar. world never produced any thing so great and perfect. When we observe to what a height he carries the sublimity of his sentiments, not only in respect to the moral virtues, temperance, sobriety, patience in adversity, the love of poverty, and the forgiveness of wrongs; but, what is far more considerable, in regard to the Divinity, his unity, omnipotence, creation of the world, and providence in the government of it; the immortality of the soul, its ultimate end and eternal destiny; the rewards of the good and the punishment of the wicked: when we consider this train of sublime knowledge, we ask ourselves whether it is a Pagan who thinks and speaks in this manner; and are scarce persuaded that from so dark and obscure a stock as Paganism, should shine forth such brilliant and glorious rays of light. It is true, his reputation has not been unimpeached, and it has been affirmed that the purity of his manners did not correspond with that of his sentiments. This question has been discussed by the learned, but my plan will not admit me to treat it in its full extent. The reader may see Abbé Fraguier's dissertation in defence of Socrates, against the reproaches made him upon account of his con duct. The negative argument he makes use of in his justification seems a very strong one. He observes, that neither Aristophanes in his comedy of The Clouds, which is entirely directed against Socrates, nor his vile accusers in his trial, have advanced one word that tends to impeach the purity of his manners; and it is not probable that such violent enemies as those would have neglected one

Plut. de superstit. p. 170. † Memoires de l'Académie des Inscript. tom. iv p. 37.

of the most likely methods to discredit him in the opinion of his judges, if there had been any foundation or probability for the use of it.

I confess, however, that certain principles of Plato, his disciple, neld by him in common with his master, with respect to the nudity of the combatants in the public games, from which at the same time he did not exclude the fair sex; and the behaviour of Socrates himself, who wrestled naked, man to man with Alcibiades, give us no great idea of that philosopher's delicacy in point of modesty and bashfulness. What shall we say of his visit to Theodota,* a woman of Athens of indifferent reputation, only to assure himself with his own eyes of her extraordinary beauty, which was much talked of, and of the precepts he gave her, in order to attract admirers and to retain them in her snares? Are such lessons very suitable to a philosopher? I pass over many other things in silence.

I am the less surprised after this, that several of the fathers have censured him in regard to the purity of his manners, and that they have thought fit to apply to him, as well as to his disciple Plato, what St. Paul says of the philosophers:† That God by a just judgment abandoned them to a reprobate mind, and the most shameful lusts, as a punishment; for that having clearly known there was but one true God, they had not honoured him as they ought, by publicly avowing their belief, and were not ashamed to associate with him an innumerable multitude of divinitics, ridiculous and infamous even in their own opinions.

And in this, properly speaking, consists the crime of Socrates, which did not make him guilty in the eyes of the Athenians, but gave occasion for his being justly condemned by eternal Truth. She had illuminated his soul with the most pure and sublime lights of which the Pagan world was capable; for we are not ignorant, that all knowledge of God, even natural, cannot come but from himself alone. He held admirable principles on the subject of the Divinity. He agreeably rallied the fables of the poets, upon which the ridiculous mysteries of his age were founded. He often spoke, and in the most exalted terms, of the existence of one only God, eternal, invisible, creator of the universe, supreme director and arbiter of all events, avenger of crimes and rewarder of virtues; but he had not the courage to bear public testimony to these great truths. He perfectly discerned the falsehood and absurdity of the Pagan system; and nevertheless, as Seneca says of the wise man, and as he acted himself, he observed exactly all the customs and

* Xenoph. Memorab. 1. iii. p. 783-786.

† Rom. ch. i. ver. 17-32.

Quæ omnia (ait Seneca) sapiens servabit tanquam legibus jussa, non tanquam diis grata-Omnem istam ignobilem deorum turbam, quam longo ævo longa superstitio congessit, sic, inquit adorabimus, ut meminerimus cultum ejus magis ad morem, quàm ad rem, pertinere Sed iste, quem philosophia quasi liberum fecerat, tamen, quia illustris senator erat, colebat quod reprehendebat, agebat quod arguebat, quod culpabat adorabat -ed damnabiliùs, quò illa, quæ mendaciter agebat, sic ageret, ut eum populus veraciter agerc existimaret. S. August. de civit. Dei, I. vi. c. 10.

ceremonies, not as agreeable to the gods, but as enjoined by the laws. He acknowledged at bottom one only Divinity,* and worshipped with the people that multitude of infamous idols which ancient superstition had heaped up during a long succession of ages. He held peculiar opinions in the schools, but followed the multitude in the temples. As a philosopher, he despised and detested the idols in secret; as a citizen of Athens and a senator, he paid them in public the same adoration with others by so much the more worthy of blame, says St. Augustin, as that worship, which was only external and dissembled, seemed to the people to be the effect of sincerity and conviction.

And it cannot be said that Socrates altered his conduct at the end of his life, or that he then expressed a greater zeal for truth. In his defence before the people, he declared that he had always received and honoured the same gods as the Athenians: and the last order he gave before he expired, was to sacrifice in his name a cock to Esculapius. Behold then this prince of the philosophers, declared by the Delphic oracle the wisest of mankind, who notwithstanding his internal conviction of one only Divinity, dies in the bosom of idolatry, and professing to adore all the gods of the Pagan theology. Socrates is the more inexcusable in this, since, declaring himself a man expressly appointed by Heaven to bear witness to the truth, he fails in the most essential duty of the glorious commission he ascribes to himself. For if there be any truth in religion that we ought most particularly to avow, it is that which regards the unity of the Godhead, and the vanity of idol worship. In this his courage would have been well placed; nor would it have been any great difficulty to Socrates, determined besides as he was to die. But, says St. Augustin, it was not these philosophers who were designed by God to enlighten the world, nor to bring men over from the impious worship of false deities to the holy religion of the true God.

We cannot deny Socrates to have been the hero of the Pagan world, in regard to moral virtues. But to judge rightly of him, let us draw a parallel between this supposed hero and the martyrs of Christianity, who often were young children and tender virgins, and yet were not afraid to shed the last drop of their blood, to defend and confirm the same truths, which Socrates knew, without daring to assert them in public: I mean the unity of God, and the vanity of idols. Let us also compare the so much boasted death of this prince of philosophers, with that of our holy bishops, who have done the Christian religion so much honour, by the sublimity of their genius, the extent of their knowledge, and the beauty and excellence of their writings; a saint Cyprian, a saint

Eorum sapientes, quos philosophos vocant, scholas habebant dissentientes, et templa communia. S. August. lib. de ver. rel. c. i.

† Non sic isti nati erant, ut populorum suorum opinionem ad verum cultum veri Dei à simulacrorum superstitione atque ab hujus mundi vanitate converterent. Id. c. ii.

Augustin, and so many others, who were all seen to die in the bosom of humility, fully convinced of their unworthiness and nothingness, penetrated with a lively fear of the judgments of God, and expecting their salvation from his sole goodness and condescending mercy. Philosophy inspires no such sentiments; they could proceed only from the grace of the Mediator, which Socrates was not thought worthy to know

BOOK X.

THE

ANCIENT HISTORY

OF THE

PERSIANS AND GRECIANS.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE GREEKS.

THE most essential part of history, and that which it concerns the reader most to know, is that which explains the character and manners as well of the people in general, as of the great persons in particular, of whom it treats; and this may be said to be in some sort the soul of history, while the facts are only the body. I have endeavoured, as occasion offered, to paint, in their true colours, the most illustrious personages of Greece; it remains for me to show the genius and character of the people themselves. I shall confine myself to those of Lacedæmon and Athens, who always held the first rank among the Greeks, and shall reduce what I have to ay upon this subject to three heads; their political government, war, and religion.

Sigonius, Meursius, Potter, and several others, who have written upon Grecian antiquities, supply me with great lights, and are of much use to me in the subject which it remains for me to treat.

CHAPTER I.

OF POLITICAL GOVERNMENT.

There are three principal forms of Government: Monarchy, m which a single person reigns; Aristocracy, in which the elders and wisest govern; and Democracy, under which the supreme authority is lodged in the hands of the people. The most celebrated writers of antiquity, as Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Plutarch, give the