the Greeks, that the struggles between the classes of the same state, rich and poor, slaves and masters, exposed the institutions which such as Solon and Lycurgus had devised to repeated failures and perpetual difficulties. It appears as if the destiny of the states into which the Grecian nation was divided had been marked for a rapid, and therefore, perhaps, for a temporary, development of their varied powers. To each was given the love of beauty, and to each the love of rivalry, of war, and of domination supplied the means of fostering simultaneously its highest and its lowest passions. Within the quarter of a century from Marathon, more voices than one were raised as if to deprecate the precipitation with which men were hurrying onwards and downwards. Pindar, the Bootian, did not chant the triumphs of his own generation without recalling the memories of the earlier heroes; nor were his praises for the victory at the games unmixed with fervent eulogy upon the virtue, as if he thought it superior to the triumph, of the victor. 207 Æschylus, the tragic poet, not only of Greece, but of the whole ancient world,208 was one of the warriors 207 Pindar was born A. C. 522, as is most probable, and died in 442. Two of the passages exemplifying his anxious times are subjoined: ̓Αλλ ̓ ἐμὲ χρὴ μναμοσύναν Πολλοὶ δὲ διδακταῖς 66 *Ανευ δὲ θεοῦ, σεσιγα μένον γ' οὐ σκαιότερον χρῆμ ̓ ἕκαστον. Many have girded themselves with the imparted virtues of men in order to gain renown. But aught done without the god is as well untold." Ol., IX. 153 et seq. 208 Ἐκεῖνος εἶχε τὸν τραγωδικὸν Opóvov, "He held the tragic throne." Aristoph., Ranæ, 769. in the great battles of both the Persian invasions; but, instead of sharing in the intoxication and vehemence of his countrymen, he wrote of the higher powers and the remoter glories that they seemed to have forgotten. The shades he summoned from the silent dead, to confront with the men of Marathon and Salamis, came with sepulchral voices and awful forms; but they who beheld the images and listened to the thoughts of his creation complained that it was too much for them to bear, and broke away with murmurs. 209 The poet would have called the gods themselves to his tribunal for their sufferance of the evils he seemed for ever to lament upon the earth; and though his spirit was essentially a religious one, he was the first to question the majesty and the eternity of the immortals.210 In the generation to whom the Persian war was already become an inheritance is the place of Herodotus, the father of history. A native of Halicarnassus, in Caria, a traveller for the greater part of his life, and finally a resident at Thurii, a newly colonized city in Italy, where he wrote his history 211 and died,212 he was nevertheless in every sense a Greek,—in language, knowledge, and inspiration. East and west, the civilized earth contributed its legends to swell the fresh and flowing narrative to which he gave his manhood and his age; but the most transparent fervor of its course 209 Aristoph., Ran., 1059 et seq. 210 See Prometheus, 938 et seq. Eschylus was born at Eleusis, A. C. 525, and died in Sicily, 456. 211 According to all probabilities, and to Pliny, Nat. Hist., XII. 8. 212 Some time after A. C. 408. is when it reaches Athens or Ionia, or the world, as it was to him, of Greece, in his eyes superior to any other portion of the universe. Yet while we seek in Herodotus to trace in general the influences which the preceding pages may have partially explained, it is especially apparent that the old man at Thurii was moved to apprehension by the changes befalling the land he loved, and to which he still belonged. It was a spirit kindred to that of Eschylus which inspired Herodotus to become an historian, and to compose his simple and entrancing relation of the renown that was departing or departed. departed. The answer of Leonidas to one who said that he had too few to fight with him at Thermopylae seems to belong to the whole generation," They are too many to die!" 213 SECTION IV. ILLUMINATION AND DECLINE. THE remainder of the history of Greece has comparatively little connection with the history of liberty. It would be almost sufficient here to remark, that, through a course of internal and external wars, the evils that were beyond the sight or control of the first generations increased so swiftly and so thickly, both with private habits and in public institutions, that the fabrics of earlier fell under the floods of 213 Plut., De Herod. Mal., Tom. IX. p. 437, ed. Reiske. after years.214 But inasmuch as the intellectual powers of the Greeks received their highest and broadest expansion while their freedom politically and materially was in the act of departure, and further, as many of the most glorious names of all their history are bound in with the times of their decline, it is necessary to sketch these, at least in outline. The reader, however, must be again warned that the pages he is reading are intended as an analysis rather than a narrative. The Athenian who remembered the dreadful day when he, with all he knew and loved best, was forced to fly before the approach of the invader, would have had no thought of lamenting his condition or that of his country at the time when Pericles succeeded to what may be safely styled supreme authority in Athens. In the interval, the Persians had been driven back, and the Spartans met on equal terms; the empire, of which the justice of Aristides was the foundation, had been increased by the policy of Themistocles and Cimon, and fastened, as it were, with cables to the mistress-city, by the removal of the treasure and the tribunal of the confederate islands to Athens. Within the new-built walls, houses and temples were risen or rising on every side; the streets resounded with the hum of a busy population; the assemblies and the courts of the citizens were fuller than ever, since there had been pay provided for attendance, and authority added for exercise, by the VOL. I. 214 "Deluge upon deluge followed, Discord, Macedon, and Rome."- SHELLEY. 26 measures that stripped the Areopagus of its dignities and clothed the popular institutions with fresh and more turbulent importance. The artist labored on his fresco of the battle or the return; the sculptor, like Phidias, was endowing the goddess to whom Athens was supposed to owe its safety with greater than her heavenly beauty; and the architect was intent upon the holy habitation to which the immortals might boldly be invited from their banquet-halls amongst the clouds. However much the masses of the Athenians might be interested in plans of building and adorning the homes they had recovered, they were scarcely employed as laborers in their completion. Industry was already become a reproach 215 to the citizen, as the multitude of foreigners, artisans or slaves, abundantly testified. Nor were the occupations of warfare any more attractive to the greater part of the Athenians, who were beginning to resign their arms to the stranger and the mercenary. cation was composed of grammar, music, and gymnastics; and if we understand the gymnastics and the music for what they were, education may be taken for the description of most men's lives. Edu Away from the sight of men, Sophocles was bending over the images he had called into existence, with love and tender feeling, that would have both been 215 We call those occupations thought its freedom and its grandbase," says Aristotle, "which in eur." Pol., VIII. 2. Cf. Plato, any way injure the beauty of the Republic, Lib. IX. body or are paid; for they take from |