Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

tained. The temple which Numa dedicated to Faith was to that which is seen, not to that which is unseen.

Horatius, the conqueror of the Curiatii, slew his sister for lamenting her lover's death; but he was acquitted by acclamation of his crime. Tullia, the daughter of the good king Servius, drove over the corpse of her father, whom she had urged her husband, Tarquin, to murder; but none the less was she proclaimed the queen, and he the king of Rome. The daughter who fed her father from her own breast, that he might not die in his dungeon, was of "a sweeter," but a solitary, "ray." Yet there were prob

ably other deeds, as worthy in our eyes, which have been left untold, because less noble in the eyes of those who witnessed them.

The virtue, the confidence, and the energy of early Rome all flowed in one channel of patriotism. Neither father nor mother was so venerable a parent to the Roman as his country,16 to which his affections, in manhood at least, were given out from an ardent heart. The highest duty was that which the Commonwealth required; the highest knowledge was that which rendered the duty acceptable and useful." It is in setting this standard before our minds that the importance of liberty to the part which Rome was appointed to sustain in the heathen world becomes apparent; yet it may be equally evident, that, though her work might be wrought, her perfection

.....

16" Antiquior parens, ma- 17 Eas artes quæ efficiunt ut jor ei profecto quam parenti debetur usui civitati simus." Ibid., II. 20. gratia." Cic., Rep., III. 48, Frag.

could never be accomplished, through the exercise of merely political or public freedom. While the most rapid progress towards strength and dominion was achieved by the state, there was scarcely any made towards individual excellence. The character of the Romans did not seem to develope or improve itself, except so far as they were soldiers or citizens in the mass, until the fortunes of the Commonwealth began to reel. Yet the resolution of their patriotism was none the less admirable, according to their times; and there were few, even among the old Patricians, who would not have laid down power and life to save the liberty for which Brutus condemned his children. This, at least, may be remembered in their behalf; for though history is not to be made an apology for one class or another, it should certainly give a hearing to both the sides, according to which its judgments are to be formed. Sir Philip Sidney said, in a Christian age, that his "chiefest honor was to be a Dudley": Valerius or Brutus, even in heathen Rome, would have thought that to be a Roman was their highest praise.

There was an old tradition that Numa owed much of his wisdom to the teachings of the philosopher Pythagoras. Common accounts of chronology close Numa's reign near a century before Pythagoras's birth; 18 but the philosophy which bears the name of

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]
« НазадПродовжити »