when they can be seen to have survived the conflict, it is more than ever our duty to be thankful, that, in the midst of wrongs and sufferings, there still stand forms of light and loveliness. There can be no greater comfort in history than the appearance of truths, humane or holy, upon the earth: once descended, they remain with folded wings, as if their duty were henceforth inseparable from the good of men. In Greece we have arrived at one of these happier periods, not as when manna dropped, or when the still, small voice was heard, but when humanity, without being actually purified in heart, was lightened of the burdens under which its body and mind had both been benumbed. India, Egypt, and Persia have been like lands depeopled, in which the only materials for history are the governments, and the powers which the governments suffered or forced their subjects to exert. Society, in its substance as well as its form, has had no possible existence; and vainly would one attempt to retrace the vestiges of habits and feelings which have been long obliterated. But in Greece, the world of human beings expands into a society of living, acting, and hoping men, amongst whom government sinks to a secondary place in history, and even laws become unimportant

etc., Introd. à l'Hist. de la Phil., Leçon IX.) is bad enough. It begins with "La guerre est utile," and ends with "La guerre est né cessaire à la vie." Only in the early period of a nation's history, in its deepest barbarism, can war be either useful or necessary. The Italian

Gioberti is more of a philosopher than the Frenchman, in saying, "L'azione conciliatrice della civiltà essendo una pugna colla barbarie dee cominciar colla guerra; la quale è perciò la prima dialettica delle nazioni." Prolegomeni, p. 71.

except in their immediate connection with the minds. and the deeds of those by whom, and, as we can say at last, for whom, they were framed.

At the same time that the growth of society was helped by the rivalry and activity amongst the nations of Greece, its natural offspring was conceived. The lower orders not only became of consequence to the higher, but, as warfare continued and civilization dilated, they rose, themselves, towards and to the higher, while new classes were brought from hitherto silent shores to cover the ocean upheaving with strength and hope. Henceforth the fitness of man for freedom was determined; and beings trampled in the dust, above which they were supposed incapable to lift their faces, much more their souls, were recognized as having their portion, also, in humanity. It must be plainly added, that these were results in their beginning only; but the beginning was the boon most desirable to mankind. The course of ancient history brightens with increasing liberty; yet liberty, though the inspiration of progress, was, as we may see hereafter, the forerunner of that humiliation in which heathenism departed and Christianity appeared.

With these recollections, we may gain some definite knowledge of Grecian liberty, although it be nearly impossible to do justice, in a few pages, to a subject fitted for patient and profound inquiry. Three periods are to be considered:-one, the age of heroes and kings, continuing until the tenth or eleventh century before our era; the second, the age

of laws, lasting five or six centuries, through the Persian war; and the third, the succeeding period of struggle and ruin.

SECTION II.

AGE OF HEROES AND KINGS.

AFTER long and uncertain years, in which age had succeeded to age1 and change to change, it seemed in Greece as if the ties that had scarcely been formed amongst men were about to be severed, like Gordian knots, by the swords which none knew how to sheathe. The ancient historian began his narrative of a later war by recurring to the memories of primeval conflicts, and wrote how Greece was clad in iron, and how the lives of its inhabitants were spent in arms. The shepherd who watched his flocks among the mountains or along the river's sides did not escape the universal warfare in the wild and lonely haunts to which he was sent against his will. His quarrels with his fellows were in wrathful mimicry of the battles and the glories which were denied him in the world; and when the warrior's call to

5

4 See Hesiod's chronology in the Works and Days, 108 et seq.

5 Πᾶσα γὰρ ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐσιδηροφάρει διὰ τὰς ἀφράκτους τε οἰκήσεις καὶ οὐκ ἀσφαλεῖς παρ ̓ ἀλλήλους ἐφόδους, καὶ ξυνήθη τὴν δίαιταν μεθ' ὅπλων ἐποιήσαντο, ὥσπερ οἱ βάρ Bapo. Thucyd., I. 6.

It is scarcely necessary to mention that Thucydides, here first cited, was the greatest historian of antiquity, or that his work was a history of the Peloponnesian War. He lived A. C. 471 – 391.

arms resounded through the plain or up the glade, there was not one of his retainers who did not rejoice to throw away the crook and grasp the pointed spear. The historian quoted a few lines back lamented, on arriving at a subsequent epoch in the legendary times, that there was still no tranquillity nor civilization. It was harder for him, however, than for the humble-minded Christian to believe, that, when a whole nation is inspired with the same desires, and formed, apparently, for the same toils, it must through these, whatever be their kind, be directed to the attainment of some great ends. It appears, at first, as if in Greece, the field was only to be sown for harvest with human blood and bones.

Among a nation thus inclined and thus employed,, almost any man could be a hero, provided he were brave and hopeful. The strong arm and the resentful mind were the endowments most coveted and most respected; and when united with princely, or even, as was often believed, with immortal birth, their possessor was the real and the exalted hero. The liberty of the age, however, is not to be judged by the nominal capacity of every warrior for heroism," but rather by that obedience which the followers

6 Mǹ novxáσaσa avέnovai. Thuc., wall, Hist. Greece, Ch. V. Creuzer I. 12.

remarks, more precisely, (Religions, etc., Liv. VII. ch. 1,) that the word was applied universally; and that "whoever raised himself by his merits above the common stature of humanity was a hero."

rendered to their dashing chieftain, in concession of his superiority. They who were emphatically heroes were princes in their own times, and, generally speaking, the progenitors, real or imaginary, of the later kings. kings. Venerated with such submission as to make their poet speak of them as though they had been worshipped, their preeminence was not confined to the present world; but in the divine existence to which most of them were summoned, they were above the mass of the immortals almost as much as above the mortals whom they had left behind to build them altars and make them offerings on bended knees. The freedom of such a period was primarily, at least, in the hands of the class from which it received its name. But the superiority of the hero is not to be regarded as founded merely upon martial prowess or severe dominion. He was the great, the greatest, warrior of the host he led; but he was also the one above all others to conceive the deeds and to endure the labors which no ordinary spirit could shape and no ordinary energy achieve, 10 Menelaus, girding on his sword in the morning," or turning his brother's heart against a

78.

8 Θεὸς δ ̓ ὡς τίετο δήμῳ. Iliad, V.

9 Et optimus quisque dictus apiσTOs, qui 'Apeî (Marte) esset præstantissimus. Ever. Feith, Antiquitat. Homer., Lib. IV. 7. See Aristot., Pol., III. 10.

10 The fundamental idea," says Otfried Müller, "of all the heroic mythology may be pronounced to be

a proud consciousness of power innate in man, by which he endeavours to place himself on a level with the gods, not through the influence of a mild and benign destiny, but by labor, misery, and combat." History of the Dorians, Eng. trans., Vol. I. p. 444.

11 Odyss., IV. 308.