tages, have this most happy effect, that they soften our manners, polish our understandings, improve the heart, and render our behaviour civil, courteous, gentle, and obliging; such, in a word, as qualifies us for company and society, and makes the ordinary commerce of life agreeable? Hence it came to pass, that there was something of a roughness and austerity in the temper and behaviour of the Spartans, and many times even something of ferocity, a failing that proceeded chiefly from their education, and that rendered them disagreeable and offensive to all their allies.

towards

It was an excellent practice in Sparta, to accustom 3. Their their youth betimes to suffer heat and cold, hunger barbarous and thirst, and by several severe and laborious exer- cruelty cises to bring the body into subjection to reason, their whose faithful and diligent minister it ought to be in children. the execution of all her orders and injunctions; which it can never do, if it be not able to undergo all sorts of hardships and fatigues. But was it rational in them to carry their severities so far, as the inhuman treatment we have mentioned? And was it not utterly barbarous and brutal in the fathers and mothers to see the blood trickling from the wounds of their children, nay, even to see them expiring under the lashes without concern?

nity.

Some people admire the courage of the Spartan 4. The mothers, who could hear the news of the death of mothers' their children slain in battle, not only without tears, inhumabut even with a kind of joy and satisfaction. For my part I should think it much better that nature should shew herself a little more on such occasions, and that the love of one's country should not utterly extinguish the sentiments of maternal tenderness. One of our generals in France, who in the heat of battle was told that his son was killed, spoke much more properly on the subject: Let us at present think,

* Exercendum corpus, & ita afficiendum est, ut obedire consilio rationique possit in exequendis negotiis & labore tolerando.— Lib. i. de offic. n. 79.

5. Their

leisure.

said he, how to conquer the enemy; to-morrow I will mourn for my son.

Nor can I see what excuse can be made for that excessive law, imposed by Lycurgus upon the Spartans, which enjoined the spending so much of their time in idleness and inaction, and the following no other business than that of war. He left all the arts and trades entirely to the slaves and strangers that lived amongst them, and put nothing into the hands of the citizens but the lance and the shield. Not to mention the danger there was in suffering the number of slaves, that were necessary for tilling the land, to increase to such a degree, as to become much greater than that of their masters, which was often an occasion of seditions and riots among them; how many disorders must men necessarily fall into, that have so much leisure upon their hands, and have no daily occupation, or regular labour? This is an inconvenience even now but too common among our nobility, and which is the natural effect of their inju dicious education. Except in the time of war, most of our gentry spend their lives in a most useless and unprofitable manner. They look upon agriculture, arts, and commerce, as beneath them, and derogatory to their gentility. They seldom know how to handle any thing but their swords. As for the sciences, they take but a very small tincture of them; just so much as they cannot well be without; and many have not the least knowledge of them, nor any manner of taste for books or reading. We are not to wonder then, if gaming and hunting, eating and drinking, mutual visits and frivolous discourse, make up their whole occupation. What a life is this for men that have any parts or understanding!

6. Their

wards the Helots.

Lycurgus would be utterly inexcusable if he gave cruelty to occasion, as he is accused of having done, for all the rigour and cruelty exercised towards the Helots in his republick. These Helots were the slaves employed by the Spartans to till the ground. It was

their custom not only to make these poor creatures drunk, and expose them before their children, in order to give them an abhorrence for so shameful and odious a vice, but also to treat them with the utmost barbarity, as thinking themselves at liberty to destroy them by any violence or cruelty whatsoever, under pretence of their being always ready to rebel.

d

Upon a certain occasion related by Thucydides, two thousand of these slaves disappeared at once, without any body's knowing what was become of them. Plutarch pretends, this barbarous custom was not practised till after Lycurgus's time, and that he had no hand in it.

397

lected.

But that wherein Lycurgus appears to be most 7. Modesculpable, and what most clearly shews the prodigious ty and deenormities and gross darkness in which the Pagans cency entirely neg were plunged, is the little regard he shewed for modesty and decency, in what concerned the education of girls, and the marriages of young women; which was without doubt the source of those disorders that prevailed in Sparta, as Aristotle has wisely observed. When we compare these indecent and licentious institutions of the wisest legislator that ever profane antiquity could boast, with the sanctity and purity of the evangelical precepts; what a noble idea does it give us of the dignity and excellence of the Christian religion?

Nor will it give us a less advantageous notion of this pre-eminence, if we compare the most excellent and laudable part of Lycurgus's institutions with the laws of the gospel. It is, we must own, a wonderful thing, that the whole people should consent to a division of their lands, which set the poor upon an equal footing with the rich; and that by a total exclusion of gold and silver, they should reduce themselves to a kind of voluntary poverty. But the Spartan legislator, when he enacted these laws, had the sword in his hand; whereas the Christian legis

Lib. iv.

lator says but a word, Blessed are the poor in spirit, and thousands of the faithful through all succeeding generations, renounce their goods, sell their lands and estates, and leave all to follow Jesus Christ, their master, in poverty and want.

ARTICLE VIII.

The Government of Athens. The Laws of Solon. The History of that Republick from the time of Solon to the reign of Darius the First.

I HAVE already observed, that Athens was at first governed by kings. But they had little more than the name; for their whole power, being confined to the command of the armies, vanished in time of peace. Every man was master in his own house, where he lived in an absolute state of independence. * Codrus, the last king of Athens, having devoted himself to die for the publick good, his sons Medon and Nileus quarrelled about the succession. The Athenians took this occasion to abolish the regal power, though it did not much incommode them; and declared, that Jupiter alone was king of Athens; at the very same time that the Jews were weary of their Theocracy, that is, having the true God for their king, and would absolutely have a man to reign over them.

Plutarch observes, that Homer, when he enumerates the ships of the confederate Grecians, gives the name of people to none but the Athenians; from whence it may be inferred, that the Athenians even then had a great inclination to a democratical government, and that the chief authority was at that time vested in the people.

In the place of their kings they substituted a kind of governors for life, under the title of Archons. But this perpetual magistracy appeared still in the eyes of

* Codrus was contemporary with Saul.

this free people, as too lively an image of regal power, of which they were desirous of abolishing even the very shadow; for which reason, they first reduced that office to the term of ten years, and then to that of one: And this they did with a view of resuming the authority the inore frequently into their own hands, which they never transferred to their magistrates but with regret.

Such a limited power as this was not sufficient to restrain those turbulent spirits, who were grown excessively jealous of their liberty and independence, very tender and apt to be offended at any thing that seemed to encroach upon their equality, and always ready to take umbrage at whatever had the least appearance of dominion or superiority. From hence arose continual factions and quarrels: There was no agreement or concord among them, either about religion or government.

Athens therefore continued a long time incapable of enlarging her power, it being very happy for her that she could preserve herself from ruin in the midst of those long and frequent dissensions, with which she had to struggle.

390

3380.

Ant. J.C.

624.

Misfortunes instruct. Athens learned at length, that true liberty consists in a dependence upon justice and reason. This happy subjection could not be established, but by a legislator. She therefore pitched upon Draco, a man of acknowledged wisdom and integrity, for that employment. It does A. M. not appear that Greece had, before his time, any written laws. The first of that kind then were of his publishing; the rigour of which anticipating, as it were, the Stoical doctrine, was so great, that it punished the smallest offence, as well as the most enormous crimes, equally with death. These laws of Draco, written, says Demades, not with ink, but with blood, had the same fate that usually attends all violent things. Sentiments of humanity in the judges, compassion for the accused, whom they were wont to look upon rather as unfortunate