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The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
 
HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 EDWARD Ar^REEMAN, M.A., Hon. D.C.L., 
 
 LATE PELLOW OE TEIITITT COLLESE, OXFOSS. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 ' I will at least luype tJtat these volvmes may encourage a spii-it of resea/rch into 
 history, and may im some measure assist in directing it ; that they may con- 
 triimte to the conviction that history is to ie studied as a whole, a/nS according 
 to its philosophical dimsions, not smch as merely geographical and chronological ; 
 that the history of Oreece and Borne is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and 
 forgotten imstitulums, hut a limng picture of things present, fitted not so much 
 for the curiosity of the scholar, as the instruction of the statesman and the 
 citizen.' — Abnold, Preface to Thucydides, vol. iii. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1873. 
 
A- 3i 
 
 NELL 
 UNiVERSITYi 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OXFORD: 
 
 Bjr T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, E. Fickard Hall, and J. H. Stacy, 
 
 PEIBTEBS TO THE TJHIVEEBITT. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 The present collection is that which was spoken of in the 
 Preface to the second edition of my former series of Essays. 
 The Essays now reprinted chiefly relate to earlier periods of 
 history than those which were dealt with in the former volume 
 — to the times commonly known as 'ancient' or 'classicaL' 
 I need hardly say that to me those names simply mark con- 
 venient halting-places in the one continuous history of 
 European civilization. They mark the time when political 
 life was confined to the two great Mediterranean peninsulas, 
 and when the Teutonic and Slavonic races had as yet hardly 
 shown themselves on the field of history. I should be well 
 pleased some day to connect the two series by a third, which 
 might deal with the intermediate times, with those times which 
 I look on as the true Middle Ages, the times when the 
 B^iman and Teutonic elements of modem Europe stood side 
 by side, and had not yet been worked together into a third 
 thing distinct from either. 
 
 In reprinting these Essays, I have followed nearly the same 
 course which I followed in the former series. As most of 
 them were written before those which appeared in my former 
 series, they have, on the whole, needed a greater amount of 
 revision, and a greater number of notes to point out the times 
 and circumstances under which they were written. In the 
 process of revision I have found myself able to do very much 
 in the way of improving and simplifying the style. In 
 almost every page I have found it easy to put some plain 
 English word, about whose meaning there can be no doubt, 
 instead of those needless French or Latin words which are 
 thought to add dignity to style, but which in truth only add 
 vagueness. I am in no way ashamed to find that I can write 
 purer and clearer English now than I did fourteen or fifteen 
 years back ; and I think it well to mention the fact for the 
 encouragement of younger writers. The common temptation 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 of beginners is to write in what they think a more elevated 
 fashion. It needs some years of practice before a man fully 
 takes in the truth that, for real strength and above all for real 
 clearness, there is nothing like the old English speech of our 
 fathers. 
 
 All the Essays in this volume, except the first, were written 
 as reviews. When the critical part of the article took the 
 shape of discussion, whether leading to agreement or to dif- 
 ference, of the works of real scholars like Bishop Thirlwall, 
 Mr. Grote, and Dr. Merivale, I have let it stand pretty much 
 as it was first written. But the parts which were given to 
 pointing out the mistakes of inferior writers I have for the 
 most part struck out. On this principle I had to sacrifice 
 nearly the whole of the article headed 'Herodotus and his 
 Commentators,' in the National Review for October 1862. 
 I have kept only a small part, of it as a note to one of 
 the other Essays. I have done this, not because there is a 
 word in that or in any other article of the kind which I now 
 diflfer from or regret, but because, while the unflinching 
 exposure of errors in the passing literature of the day is the 
 highest duty of the periodical critic, it is out of place in 
 writings which lay any claim to lasting value. I do not think 
 I have sinned against my own rule in reprinting my articles 
 in the Saturday Review on the German works of Mommsen 
 and Curtius. Both are scholars of the highest order, and, as 
 such, I trust that I have dealt with them with the respect that 
 they deserve. But if, as there seems to be some danger, Curtius 
 should displace Grote in the hands of English students, and 
 if Mommsen should be looked up to as an infallible oracle, 
 as Niebuhr was in my own Oxford days, I believe that the 
 result would be full of evil, not only for historical truth, but, 
 in the case of Mommsen, for political morality also. 
 
 I have to renew my thanks to the publishers of the Edin- 
 burgh Review and to the editors and publishers of the other 
 periodicals in which the Essays appeared, for the leave kindly 
 given to me to reprint them in their present form. 
 
 SOMEELEAZB, WeLLS. 
 
 January ']th, 1873. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancient Greece and Medi^vai Italy {Oxford Essays, 
 
 1857) 1 
 
 Note from ' Herodotus and his Commentators ' 
 
 {National Review, October 1862) .. .. 47 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age 
 
 {NatioTMl Review, 3vl\j l^5i) .. .. .. 52 
 
 The Historians of Athens {National Review, January 
 
 1858) 94 
 
 The Athenian Democracy {North British Review, May 
 
 1856) 107 
 
 Appendix on Cv/rtius' History of Greece {Saturday 
 Review, July 31, September 19, October 3, 
 1868 ; July 10, 1869 ; May 27, July 10, 1871) 148 
 
 Alexander the Great {Edinhwrgh Review, April 1857) 161 
 
 Greece during the Macedonian Period {North British 
 
 Review, August 1854) . . . . . . . . 207 
 
 Mommsen's History of Eomb {National Review, April 
 
 1859) 234 
 
 Appendix from Sabwrday Review, Marcb 28, 1868.. 266 
 
 Lucius Cornelius Sulla {National Review, January 1 862.) 271 
 
 The Flavian C^sars {National Review, January 1863) 307 
 
HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
 I. 
 
 ANCIENT GREECE AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 
 
 The history of the Italian peninsula forms, in many respects, 
 the naost important and the most fascinating chapter in the 
 history of the middle ages. Every part indeed of the his- 
 tory of those wonderful 'times has its own special charm ; 
 each has its special attraction for minds of a particular 
 class. Upon the English statesman or jurist the early annals 
 of our own country have a claim above all others. But 
 a knowledge of those annals is very imperfect without some 
 knowledge both of the kindred nations of Northern Europe 
 and of the once kindred and then antagonistic powers of 
 Gaul. To minds of another class, who view history with 
 philological or antiquarian rather than with political eyes, 
 the laws, the languages, the monuments of Scandinavia 
 and Northern Germany will be of primary, instead of sub- 
 sidiary, value. The long struggle between the Christian 
 and the Saracen, the early liberties of Aragon and Castile, 
 clothe the Iberian peninsula with an interest at once poli- 
 tical and romantic. Even the obscure annals of the Sla- 
 vonic nations are not without a charm of their own, and they 
 have a most important bearing upon rfecent events. But to 
 the scholar, whose love for historical research has been first 
 kindled among the remains of Greek and Roman antiquity, 
 no delight will be so great as that of tracing out every relic 
 of their influence, every event or institution which can be 
 connected with them either by analogy or by direct deriva- 
 tion. The mere student of words, the mere dreamer over 
 
ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 classic lore, is indeed tempted to cast aside the mediaeval and 
 modern history both of Greece and Italy as a mere profana- 
 tion of the ancient. But a more enlarged and practical love 
 of antiquity will not so dwell upon the distant past as to 
 neglect more recent scenes which are its natural complement 
 and commentary. And the scenes which thus attract the 
 scholar may challenge also the attention of the political and 
 ecclesiastical inquirer. Our knowledge of the political life of 
 Kome, of the intellectual life of Greece, of the religious life 
 of early Christendom, is imperfect indeed without some 
 knowledge of the long annals of the Eastern Empire. 
 There we may behold the political immortality of one race, 
 the literary immortality of another; there we may learn 
 how a language and a religion can reconstruct a nation ; we 
 may trace the force and the weakness of a centralized des- 
 potism, and may marvel at the destiny which chose out such 
 a power to be the abiding bulwark of Christianity and civili- 
 zation. But over the other classic peninsula a higher interest 
 lingers. If both Greece and Eome still lived on in the 
 mingled being of the Byzantine Empire, they rose again 
 to a more brilliant life among the Popes, the Csesars, and the 
 Republics of mediseval Italy. The political power of Eome 
 still survived in theory in the hands of German Emperors, 
 while in very truth the lordly spirit of the Imperial city 
 sprang into new being, and founded a wider empire, under 
 the guidance of Italian Pontiffs. And besides this twofold 
 life of Eome, the life of Hellas lives once more in the rise 
 and fall, the wars and revolutions, of countless independent 
 commonwealths. The theatre was less favourable ; the results 
 were less splendid ; but the reproduction was as close as such 
 a reproduction can ever be, and the text and the commentary 
 should never be studied apart. 
 
 To the general English reader the history of mediaeval 
 Italy is commonly very little known. It forms no part of 
 the stereotyped educational course for either sex. Few remain 
 wholly ignorant of Greece and Rome in the old world, of 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 3 
 
 France and England in the new ; few are altogether with- 
 out some idea of those later wars and treaties which have 
 changed the general face of Europe. But this forms the 
 usual boundary of the historical course ; further inquiry is left 
 to those who pass their lives in deciphering illegible records 
 or in harmonizing discordant chronicles. Most people carry 
 in their memories the succession of all the Kings of England 
 and of most of the Bangs of France, but nobody remembers 
 the Doges of Venice any more than the Emperors of Constan- 
 tinople. And yet a certain aspect of the historic life of Italy 
 is familiar to every one. No land has produced more names 
 ■which are familiar to the lips of every man, woman, and child. 
 Every one can talk of Dante and Petrarch and Ariosto ; every 
 one knows ' the age of Leo the Tenth,' and most people know 
 that his character of Maecenas was one which he inherited 
 from his forefathers. It were well for Italian history, as for 
 Italy itself, if its reputation of this kind had been somewhat 
 less splendid. As the Medici destroyed Italian freedom, so 
 their fame has overshadowed the purer fame of Italy. The 
 like fate indeed has befallen ancient Greece likewise. Athens 
 is, in popular conception, the parent of art and philosophy, far 
 more than the parent of civil justice and political freedom. 
 Athenian poetry and speculation have overshadowed the glory 
 of Athenian democracy; Sophokles and Plato have dimmed the 
 brighter fame of Kleisthenes and Perikles. In like manner 
 Italy is looked upon so wholly as the land of poetry and art, 
 as to obscure its higher character as the land which affords 
 greater treasures of political science than any other land save 
 Grreece itself. And this more popular aspect has tended to 
 throw a very false colouring over those parts of political his- 
 tory which are inseparably connected with the history of art 
 and literature. If the earlier times are thought of at all, it is 
 because the wars of Guelf and Ghibelin are needed as a key to 
 Dante, instead of Dante being needed as a commentary on the 
 wars of Guelf and Ghibelin. And in later times, the blaze of 
 poetic and artistic splendour makes men forget that the age of 
 Italy's apparent glory was in truth that of her real degrada- 
 
 B a 
 
ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 tion. Everything is judged by a false standard. It is enough 
 for a Pope or a prince to have gathered together the vsrorks of 
 ancient genius, and to have encouraged those of contejnporary 
 skill. It is enough if he filled his palace with pictures and 
 statues, and surrounded himself with flatterers who could sing 
 his praises aHke in Latin and in Italian verse. These merits 
 will wipe out the overthrow of a dozen free constitutions ; they 
 will fully atone for stirring up unjust wars, for public per- 
 fidy and private licentiousness. Of this mode of treatment 
 the writings of Mr. Eoscoe are the foremost example. He 
 tells us in his preface 'that the mere historical events of the 
 fifteenth century, so far as they regarded Italy, could not 
 deeply interest his countrymen in the eighteenth,' but ' that 
 the progress of letters and arts would be attended to with 
 pleasure in every country where they were cultivated and 
 protected.' No rational person will ever undervalue either 
 the practice or the history of "■ letters and arts ; ' but surely 
 the progress and decay of political freedom is a subject the 
 most interesting of all to every country which professes to 
 enjoy and to value the greatest of merely human blessings. 
 
 That few people go deeper into the matter than this, though 
 it is to be regretted, is hardly to be wondered at. Italian 
 history is highly important ; but it is, of all histories, the 
 most difficult to carry in one's head. The details are hope- 
 less. The brain grows dizzy among the endless wars and 
 revolutions of petty tyrants and petty commonwealths ; three 
 or four schemes of policy and warfare twine round one another; 
 and no such factitious aid is supplied to "the memory as is 
 afforded by the succession of reigns and dynasties in France 
 and England. Can any man living repeat — we do not say 
 all the Tyrants of Rimini or Faenza^ but all the Popes, all 
 the Doges, all the Lords, Dukes, and Marquesses of Milan 
 and Ferrara? It would need a faculty savom-ing as much 
 of Jedediah Buxton as of Niebuhr, to say without book how 
 many times Genoa became subject to Milan and how many 
 times to France ; how often the Adorni drove out the Fregosi, 
 and how many times the Fregosi did the like by the Adorni. 
 
I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 5 
 
 As long as the Western Emperors still kept any real sovereignty ■ 
 in Italy, the chronology of their reigns aiford something like 
 a clue ; but, alas, it guides us only a very little way, and it fails 
 us just when a clue becomes most needful. We are driven to 
 aid our recollection by arbitrary synchronisms. The death of 
 Manfred, the birth of Dante, and the death of Simon of 
 Montfort; the establishment of Mahomet at Constantinople 
 and the establishment of Francesco Sforza at Milan; the 
 Castilian conquest of Granada and the invasion of Italy by 
 Charles the Eighth; — all these are sets of events vrhieh 
 respectively come within two or three years of each other. 
 But one date beams across our path like a solitary guiding 
 star ; the year 1378 claims the everlasting gratitude of the 
 baffled chronologer ; it must have been some gracious decree 
 of destiny for his especial benefit, which procured that a single 
 revolution of the seasons should witness the beginning of the 
 War of Chioggia, of the Sedition of the Ciompi, and of the 
 Great Schism of the West. 
 
 It is then nothing very astonishing if a history which the 
 professed student caimot undertake always to keep in his 
 naemory, should seem to the ordinary reader to be one which 
 he may pass by altogether. It is a fact that there are those 
 whom an identity of name and numeral has misled into the 
 belief that the prince who stood barefoot at the gates of 
 Canosa was one and the same with the prince whose white 
 plume served as oriflamme upon the field of Ivry. Pity not 
 to have carried out the process to its full extent, and to have 
 landed the triple-bodied Geryon by the headland of Eaven- 
 spur and guided him in safety through the fight of Shrewsbury. 
 We once saw, in a popular description of Milan Cathedral, an 
 expression of wonder that so vast a work should have been 
 undertaken by ' the petty lord of that and a few other neigh- 
 bouring towns.' If these are fair samples of the average 
 Englishman's belief as to Italian chronology and Itahan 
 politics, it is really high time for that belief to be very largely 
 set right. To confound Henry of Franconia and Henry of 
 Navarre is sheer ignorance, possibly of the invincible class. 
 
6 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 To have heard of Gian-Galeazzo Viseonti, and to mistake him 
 for a ' petty lord/ is really the greater sin of the two. Such 
 an error could only arise either from a profound reverence for 
 a mere title, or else from an incapacity to look beyond the 
 extent which a country occupies on the map. The Lord of 
 Milan was not a King ; till he received the ducal coronet he 
 did not belong to any class of acknowledged sovereigns; his 
 territory was far smaller than that of France or England or 
 Castile. But in wealth, in population, in every element of 
 material prosperity, this ' petty ' territory surpassed every 
 land beyond the Alps, and its rulers directed its resources 
 with a far more absolute command than princes of higher 
 dignity held over their wider domains. Gibbon remarks that, 
 when John Palaiologos came to Ferrara, the Roman Emperor 
 of the East found in the Marquess of that city a sovereign 
 more powerful than himself. In like manner the ' petty lord ' 
 of Milan was in very truth a prince of greater weight in 
 European polities than the Bohemian Caesar of whom, for an 
 empty title, he stooped to profess himself the vassal. 
 
 The fact is that many of the particular facts of Italian 
 history, as they are extremely hard to remember, are really 
 by no means worth remembering. The particular event, 
 looked at by itself, touched perhaps the interests only of an 
 inconsiderable district, and it had no great direct influence 
 over the particular events which followed it. The same 
 stages repeat themselves over again in the history of a 
 hundred cities ; every town gradually wins and as gradually 
 loses its liberties; in each the demagogue stealthily grows 
 into the chief of the commonwealth; in each the chief 
 of the commonwealth stealthily or forcibly grows into the 
 Tyrant; in many the Tyrant or his successor wins an 
 outward legitimacy for the wrong by some ceremony which 
 admits him into the favoured order of acknowledged sove- 
 reigns. The general outline of events in a few of the greater 
 states should of course be carefully remembered ; but, beyond 
 this, little can be attempted, except the general picture which 
 the details serve to produce, and the deep political lessons 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 7 
 
 which ought to be drawn from its contemplation. We read 
 the details, and we are content to forget them ; but we keep 
 in our memories the great characteristics of one of the most 
 stirring times of man's being. We learn that the powers of 
 the human heart and intellect are not dwarfed or cramped by 
 confinement to a seemingly narrow field of action. We learn 
 that the citizen of the pettiest commonwealth is a being of a 
 higher nature than the slave of the mightiest despotism. We 
 learn that man, under the same circumstances, is essentially 
 the same in the most distant times and countries. The small 
 commonwealths of Italy could not help playing over again a 
 part essentially the same as that which the small common- 
 wealths of Greece had played so many ages earlier. 
 
 Rightly to treat a history of this kind is indeed a hard, if a 
 noble, task, and it calls for an historical genius of the highest 
 order. It is no small matter to group and harmonize together 
 the contemporary stories of endless states all full of life and 
 energy ; at once to avoid wearying the reader with needless 
 detail, and to avoid confounding him between five or six 
 parallel streams of narrative. The task has been accomplished 
 in a manner perhaps as nearly approaching perfection as 
 human nature allows in the immortal work of Sismondi. If 
 even in his pages weariness sometimes creeps over us as we 
 follow the endless series of wars and revolutions, it is soon 
 forgotten in the eloquence with which he adorns the more 
 striking portions of the narrative, and in the depth and clear- 
 ness with which he draws forth the general teaching of the 
 whole. If he fails in anything, it is in his arrangement of the 
 parallel narratives. Italy often witnessed at the same moment 
 a war of aggrandizement in Lombardy and a domestic revo- 
 lution at Genoa or Florence. Rival Popes were troubling the 
 Christian world with bulls and counter-bulls, with Councils 
 and counter-Councils. Rival Kings meanwhile were wasting 
 the fields of Campania and Apulia in quarrels wholly per- 
 sonal and dynastic. In reading the history of such times, 
 we sometimes find that Sismondi hurries us rather too 
 suddenly from place to place, and joins on one unfinished 
 
ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 narrative to another. He had not quite mastered that wonder- 
 ful, power by which Gibbon contrived to avoid confusion in 
 describing the various contemporary events of a wider, though 
 hardly a busier scene. As for graver charges against him, 
 that Sismondi is a party writer may be freely confessed. But 
 what historian who understands the time of which he writes 
 can fail to be so ? Sismondi draws republics in their best 
 colours; Roscoe does the same by Popes and princes. The 
 reader must make his option, and decide as he best may be- 
 tween the two contending advocates.* 
 
 The point of view which gives to mediaeval Italy its 
 highest importance in the general history of mankind is one 
 .on which Sismondi himself has only partially entered. This 
 is the point of view which takes in in a single glance the 
 history of mediaeval Italy, and of ancient Greece. The really 
 profitable task is to compare together the two periods in which 
 the highest civilization of the age was confined to a cluster of 
 commonwealths, small in point of territory, but rising, in all 
 political and social enlightenment, far above the greatest con- 
 temporary empires. The two periods can never be understood 
 unless they are studied in this way, side by side. Thucydides 
 and Villani, Sismondi and Grote, should always lie open at 
 the same moment. And close as is the analogy between the 
 two periods, yet a subject of study perhaps still more profitable 
 is afforded by the points of contrast which they suggest. 
 
 It may be well to pause at starting, in order to deal with 
 an objection which may be brought against this whole treat- 
 ment of the subject. Many students of history have a 
 general dislike to any system of historical analogies. Nor can 
 
 * [I have struck out a paragraph of critioiam on some modern English books 
 of no great importance, but I have left what I said of Sismondi, as it records 
 my impression of his work in itself, before I had read much of the original 
 authorities of any part of his history, yince then I have, as I hope I have 
 shown in my former volume of Essays, given some attention to the original 
 sources of at least some parts of Italian history. But I have not since then 
 read Sismondi through; I am therefore hardly able to say how far the com- 
 parison of his work with his authorities would either confirm or modify what 
 I have said of him.] 
 
!■] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 
 
 the dislike be called wholly unreasonable, when we think of 
 the extravagant and unphilosophical way in which such ana- 
 logies have sometimes been applied. It is certain that no age 
 can exactly reproduce any age which has gone before it, if 
 only because that age has gone before it. The one is the first 
 of its class, the other the second ; the one is an original, the 
 other is at least a repetition, if not a direct copy. And besides 
 this, no two nations ever found themselves in exactly the same 
 circumstances. Distance of space will modify the likeness be- 
 tween two societies^ otherwise analogous^ which are in being 
 at the same time. Distance of time will bring in points of 
 unlikeness between parallels which repeat themselves even on 
 the same ground. In fact, in following out an analogy, it is 
 often the points of unlikeness on which we are most tempted 
 to dwell. But this is in very truth the most powerful of 
 witnesses to their general hkeness. We do not stop to think 
 of diflFerenees in detail, unless the general picture presents 
 a likeness which is broad and unmistakeable. We may reckon 
 up the points of contrast between ancient Greece and medi- 
 aeval Italy j but we never stop to count in how many ways 
 a citizen of Athens differed from a subject of the Great King, 
 or what are the points of unlikeness between the constitution 
 of the United States from that of the Empire of all the 
 Hussias. 
 
 On the other handj analogies which really exist are often 
 passed by, merely because they lie beneath the surface. The 
 essential likeness between two states of things is often dis- 
 guised by some purely external difference. Thus, at first 
 sight no difference can seem greater than that which we see 
 between our present artificial state of society and politics and 
 the primitive institutions of our forefathers before the Norman 
 Conquest. Yet our position and sentiments are, in many 
 important respects, less widely removed from that ruder time 
 than from intermediate ages whose outward garb hardly differs 
 from our own. In many eases, the old Teutonic institutions 
 have come up again, silently and doubtlessly unwittingly^ under 
 new names, and under forms modified by altered circumstances. 
 
10 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 Thus the Folcland of early times, the common estate of the 
 nation, was, as the royal power increased, gradually turned 
 into the Terra Regis, the personal estate of the sovereign. 
 Now that the Crown lands are applied to the public service 
 under the control of the House of Commons, what is it but a 
 return to the old institution of Folcland in a shape fitted to 
 the ideas of modern times?* Again, the remark has been 
 made that there can be no real likeness between ancient 
 Athens and modern England, because the press, confessedly 
 so important an engine among ourselves, had no being in 
 the commonwealth of PeriMgs. The difference here is ob- 
 vious at first sight ; it is moreover the sign of a more real 
 and more important difference ; but neither of them is enough 
 to destroy the essential analogy. The real difference is, not 
 that the Athenians had no printing, but the far more im- 
 portant difference that they had very little writing. Now 
 this is simply the difference which cannot fail to exist be- 
 tween the citizen of a southern state confined to a single city, 
 and the citizen of an extensive kingdom in a northern 
 climate. The one passed his life in the open air ; the 
 other is driven by physical necessity to the fireside either of 
 his home or his club. The one could be personally present 
 and personally active in the deliberations of the common- 
 wealth ; the other needs some artificial means to make up for 
 his unavoidable absence from the actual scene of debate. 
 The one, in short, belonged to a seeing and hearing, the other 
 belongs to a reading public ; the one heard Perikles, Nikias, 
 or Kleon with his own ears, the other listens to his Cobden, 
 his Disraeli, or his Palmerston only through the agency 
 of paper and printer's ink. The difference between read- 
 ing in print and reading in manuscript is a wide one; 
 the difference between reading in manuscript and not read- 
 ing ^t all is wider still : but the widest difference of all 
 lies between free discussion in any shape and the absence 
 
 * [This subject, with one or two kindred ones, has been worked out more 
 fully m the third chapter of my ' Growth of the English Constitution.' See 
 PP- 132-134-] 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. ll 
 
 of free discussion. The narrow strait between Athens and 
 England sinks into nothing beside the impassable gulf 
 which fences off both from Sparta or Venice or 'imperial' 
 Prance. Where there is free discussion of every subject 
 of public interest, where no man is afraid to speak his 
 mind on the most important affairs of the commonwealth, 
 it matters comparatively little whether the intercourse be- 
 tween citizen and citizen is carried on with their own tongues 
 or through the medium of type and paper. Thoughts pent 
 up under the bondage of a despotism or an oligarchy 
 would gladly catch at either means of expression, without 
 being over-nice as to the comparative merits of the two 
 methods. 
 
 In the ease both of ancient Greece and of mediseval Italy, 
 the nation which, at that particular period, stood far above 
 all others in every material and intellectual advantage is 
 found incapable or careless of a combined national govern- 
 ment : each is split up into endless states, many of them of 
 the smallest possible size. This system of ' separate town- 
 autonomy' is indeed by no means peculiar to old Greece or 
 to mediaeval Italy. These two lands are merely those which 
 supplied its most perfect examples, those which showed it 
 forth on the greatest scale, and adorned it with the richest 
 accompaniments of art, literature, and general cultivation. The 
 separate city-community, as Mr. Grote has shown, was the 
 earliest form of organized freedom. It is the simplest and the 
 most obvious form. To unite a large territory into a federal 
 commonwealth or a constitutional monarchy implies a much 
 higher and later stage of political progress. Or it might be 
 more accurate to say that it needs such a higher and later 
 stage to show that those forms of government are really 
 capable of combining freedom and order. For, in old Greece 
 and the neighbouring states, it was precisely the most ad- 
 vanced states which clung most fondly to their separate 
 town-autonomy. It is only among the less advanced and 
 half-barbaric portions of the race that we find the rude germs 
 
12 ANCIENT GREECE [Essat 
 
 of the other two forms of freedom. Aitolia, Ph6kis,* and 
 other backward portions of the Hellenic race, had something 
 like federal commonwealths. The half-barbarian states of 
 Macedonia and Molossis had something like constitutional 
 monarchies. Yet no one would think of setting their 
 governments on a level with the democracy of Athens, or 
 even with such moderate oligarchies as Corinth, Chios, or 
 Rhodes. In the same way, in primaeval Italy, the principle of 
 town-autonomy was greatly modified in the Latin, Etruscan, 
 and Samnite federations. The one Italian city which always 
 clave to its distinct autonomy was the one which rose to the 
 empire of Italy and the world. In mediaeval Switzerland 
 again there arose a freedom purer, if less brilliant, than that 
 of mediaeval Italy; but there town-autonomy was still more 
 largely modified. It was modified by the relation, lax as it was, 
 of the federal tie, and by the existence of rural democracies 
 alongside of the urban commonwealths. And, during the best 
 days of the League, it was further modified by an acknow- 
 ledgement oT the power of the Emperors far more full than 
 they ever could win in Italy. In other parts of Germany, 
 free cities flourished indeed ; but they were mere exceptions 
 to princely rule ; they were closely connected with the chief 
 of the Empire ; they rejoiced in the title of ' free Imperial 
 city,' which, in the ears of a Greek, would have sounded like 
 a contradiction in terms. In Prance the cities maintained, 
 for a while, their internal republican constitutions ; in Spain 
 they were even invested with supremacy over considerable 
 surrounding dictricts ; but, in both cases, they fell before a 
 kingly power stronger and more encroaching than that of 
 the German Emperors. England had mere municipalities j 
 the greater strength of the central power, the more general 
 diffusion of political rights, neither allowed nor needed the 
 formation of even tributary republics. But, had the monarchy 
 founded by the Conqueror possessed no greater inherent 
 
 ' I do not mention Bceotia, because the hardly disguised sovereignty of 
 Thebes hinders it from being regarded as a truly federal state. 
 
I.] AND MEDIJSVAL ITALY. 13 
 
 vigour than the monarchy founded hy Charles the Greatj it is 
 easy to conceive that London, York, and Bristol might have 
 imitated, though they would hardly have rivalled, the career of 
 Florence, Bern, and Niirnberg.* 
 
 It may perhaps be worth noting that freedom, and freedom 
 too in this particular form of town-autonomy, has never been 
 left without a witness upon earth. Hellenic freedom was far 
 from utterly wiped out, either at the fight of Chair6neia or 
 at the sack of Corinth. The commonwealths of Rhodes and 
 Byzantion, the wise confederacy of Lykia, kept at least an 
 internal independence till Rome was becoming an acknow- 
 ledged monarchy. And even then, one shoot of the old tree con- 
 tinued to flourish on a distant soil. Far away, on the northern 
 shores of the Inhospitable Sea, for a thousand years after 
 Sparta and Athens had sunk in bondage, did the Hellenic 
 city of Cherson remain, the only state in the world where 
 freedom and civilization were not divorced. In close con- 
 nexion with the lords of Rome and Constantinople, the old 
 Megarian colony still retained a freedom far more than 
 municipal; its relation might be that of a dependent ally, 
 but it was still alliance and not subjection. How many of 
 the warriors and the tourists, how many of the ephemeral 
 writers of the day, who have compassed the fortress of Sebas- 
 topol, so much as knew that they were treading on the ruins 
 of the last of the Greek republics. Such was Cherson up to 
 the ninth century ; still free, still Greek, ruled by Hellenic 
 Presidents, who slew Barbarian Kings in single combat. In 
 the ninth century, under the Byzantine Theophilos, she ceased 
 to be free; in the tenth, under the Russian Vladimir, she 
 well nigh ceased to be Hellenic. But, by that time, freedom 
 had begun to show itself once more in the western world. 
 Free commercial commonwealths again arose on the Hadriatic 
 and on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Venice, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi 
 might, as vassals or slaves-^ of the Byzantine Caesar, withstand 
 
 * [See History of the Norman Conquest, iv. 3o8.] 
 
 + illiits SovXoi eiko/ify etvai rod "Pw/taiW Paai\eas.—See Gibbon, cap. Ix. 
 note 37. 
 
14 ANGIUNT GREECE [Essay 
 
 the claims of his Teutonic rival : but, in truth, they flourished 
 in possession oi a freedom with which neither Empire inter- 
 fered. Venice, in later years, may be deemed to have more in 
 common with despotic than with republican states ; but the 
 Campanian republics handed on the torch of freedom to those 
 of Lombardy ; Milan and Alessandria handed it on to Florence 
 and Sienna, to Ziirich, Bern, and Geneva. Uri, Schwyz, and 
 Unterwalden, the most thrilling names of all, needed neither 
 precept nor example to guide them to a democracy more 
 perfect than the world had seen since Antipatros entered 
 Athens. But the freedom of the mountains is distinct from 
 the freedom of the cities ; the old uncontaminated Switzer was 
 not an Athenian or a Florentine, but an Aitolian who had 
 unlearned, or had never fallen into, the turbulence and bri- 
 gandage of his race. 
 
 The results of this system of town-autonomy seem strange 
 to us in these days of wide-spread empires. We are tempted 
 to mock at political history on so small a scale ; we are tempted 
 to despise the revolutions of independent commonwealths less 
 populous than many an English borough. Both in Greece 
 and in Italy, towns which, in most lands, would have merely 
 swelled the private estate of some neighbouring lord took 
 to themselves every attribute of sovereignty, and, in their 
 external relations and their internal revolutions, they exhibited 
 greater political activity than the mightiest contemporary 
 kingdoms. Each city has its own national being, around 
 which every feeling of patriotism gathers ; each calls its 
 citizens under its banner, to harry the fields and homesteads 
 of its neighbour, or to defend its own from the like harm. 
 Each has its own internal political life ; each is rent by its 
 own factions ; each witnesses the alternate sway of democracy 
 and oligarchy, or beholds both fall beneath the rod of some 
 foreign or domestic tyrant. Greece and Italy alike set before 
 us a scene of endless war — of war of a kind at once more 
 terrible and more ennobling than the political contests of 
 later times. In the wars of a great monarchy the subject 
 has no voice on the question of war and peace ; he has often 
 
I-] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 15 
 
 but a faint knowledge indeed of the reasons why a war is 
 either begun or ended. Except in the case of invasionj war, 
 to all but a professional class, means simply increase of 
 taxation and the occasional loss of a friend or kinsman. 
 Even when a country is invaded^ it can only be a very small 
 part of a great kingdom on which the scourge directly 
 lights. Very diiferent was the warfare of the old Greek and 
 Italian commonwealths. Every citizen had a voice in the 
 debate and a hand in the struggle. Each was ready personally 
 to inflict, and personally to suffer, all the hardships of war. 
 Each man might fairly look forward, some time in his life, 
 to witness the pillage of his crops and the burning of his 
 house, even if he and his escaped the harder doom of 
 massacre, violation, or slavery. In Greece and Italy alike 
 war went through two stages. In the first, it was carried 
 on by a citizen militia, of whom every man had a personal 
 interest in the strife. In the second, the duty of doing or 
 warding off injury was entrusted to hireling banditti, heed- 
 less in what cause their lances were levelled. In Greece 
 and Italy alike, the internal history of each city shows us a 
 picture of every stage of political progress ; each grows 
 and decays with a swiftness to which larger states hardly 
 ever afford a parallel. In each case we see that these 
 little communities could cherish a warmth of patriotism, an 
 intensity of political life, beyond example in the records of 
 extensive kingdoms. A large well-governed state secures the 
 blessings of order and tranquillity to a greater number ; but 
 it does so at the expense of condemning a large proportion 
 even of its citizens to practical nonentity. Citizenship is less 
 valued, and it is therefore more freely conferred. But in the 
 single city, each full citizen has his intellectual and political 
 faculties nourished and sharpened to the highest pitch. 
 Athens and Florence could reckon a soldier, a statesman, or 
 a diplomatist, in every head of a free household. Citizenship 
 then was a personal right and a personal privilege ; it was 
 a possession far too dearly valued to be granted at random to 
 the mob of slaves or foreigners. In such a state of things. 
 
16 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 patriotism was not a sober conviction or a grave matter of 
 duty ; it was the blind and fervent devotion of a child to his 
 parent, or rather of a lover to his mistress. To the Athenian 
 or the Florentine his country was not a mere machine for 
 defending life and property; it was a living thing, whose 
 thoughts worked in his own brain, whose passions beat in 
 his heart, whose deeds were done by his hands. Such 
 a patriotism might be narrow, ill-regulated,* inconsistent 
 with still better and loftier feelings; but it worked up the 
 individual citizen to the highest pitch. Strange to say, it 
 spread itself even among classes wholly cut off from political 
 rights. ' Viva San Marco,' was as stirring a cry to the Venetian 
 citizen, and even to the Lombard peasant, as to the foremost 
 of the Zenos and the Morosini. When republican France 
 stained herself with the greatest of recorded crimes, the 
 German subject of Bern fought well nigh as zealously . for 
 his patrician master f as the freeman of Unterwalden fought 
 for a democracy more full and true than that preached by the 
 apostles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. 
 
 But both Greece and Italy teach us that the pohtical life 
 of these small states, more intense, more vigorous, more 
 ' glorious, while it lasts, either runs its course in a shorter 
 time, or else sinks into more utter decay than that of states 
 of greater extent. Three centuries, at the utmost, measure 
 the political life of Athens and of Florence. At the end 
 of that term Florence fell gloriously before irresistible 
 enemies ; Athens lingered on in far deeper degradation under 
 Macedonian and Eoman lordship. But a great nation, still 
 more a great empire which is not a nation, may survive 
 
 * ' Es war in unaern Vatern, zur Zeit als die ersten biirgerliohen Gesetze 
 sie zahmten, kein Begriff noch Gefiihl von allgemeinen Eeohteu der Mensoh- 
 heit ; bei ihnen war Summe der Moral, dass die Burger gut und herzhaft 
 
 seyen fiir ihre Stadte, die Eitter fur ihreu Stand und Piirsten.' J. von 
 
 Miiller, Gesch. der Sohweiz, b. 1. c. i6, § 7. 
 
 + For an instance of similar feelings extending themselves to soldiers at 
 least, belonging to subject races muob worse qff than the Italian and German 
 subjects of Venice and Bern, see the famous speech of Brasidas in Thucydides 
 iv. 126, and Mr. Grote's comment, vol, vi. p. 610. 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 17 
 
 and flourish, age after age, by its mere power of silently- 
 recruiting the national life by new blood. This process can 
 hardly take place, hardly at least without open revolution, in 
 any community which, whether it be oligarchic or democratic, 
 is grounded on the exclusive hereditary freedom of a single 
 city. It may be the blood of conquerors, of subjects, or of 
 refugees ; the foreign element may either be silently assimi- 
 lated or it may become openly dominant : in either case the 
 nation is born anew. Rome was, in her origin, a single 
 city ; but she grew from a city into a nation, from a nation 
 into an Empii-e, by granting her citizenship more freely than 
 any other city on record. She grew up by the side of 
 Greece, she conquered her, and, to all appearance, she out- 
 lived her. And yet, by the working of the same law, 
 Greece outlived Eome. The blood, and even the language, 
 of Rome died out; but her political being went on without 
 a break in a Grecian city. The combined work of Greece 
 and Rome, strengthened by a hundred rills of energetic 
 barbarian blood from various quarters, survived every con- 
 temporary state in political duration, and still survives, as 
 a vigorous and progressive nation, to our own times. So too 
 with our own nation, one which, like the Greek, draws at once 
 its name and its true being from one dominant stock, but 
 which has been strengthened by the influx of successive waves 
 of subjects, conquerors, and exiles. The germ of English 
 freedom had begun to blossom centuries before the forma- 
 tion of the Lombard League ; it did not put forth its full 
 fruit till long after Italy was given up to the domination of 
 French and Austrian and Spanish masters. Both Greece and 
 Italy teach us the same lesson, that a nation divided into small 
 states can, under ordinary circumstances, keep its independ- 
 ence only so long as its political world is confined to its own 
 limits. When greater powers come vigorously and perma- 
 nently on the scene, it must either fall altogether, or at most 
 it may be allowed to drag on a degraded and precarious ex- 
 istence, if such a boon chance to fall in with schemes dictated 
 by the mutual jealousies of the rival powers around it. 
 
 c 
 
18 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 Besides this more general analogy, the history of Greece 
 and Italy presents a fair parallel in the different periods into 
 which it may, in each case, most naturally be divided. The 
 most brilliant period in each is a time of strife indeed, of war 
 and bloodshed and revolution ; but it is still a time of lofty 
 principles and feelings, in which even strife and confusion 
 seem to go on according to a certain fixed law. Next comes 
 a time when the national strength and virtue are fearfully, 
 impaired, and when no fixed principles can be traced out in 
 the dealings of one state with another. But still the national 
 independence lives on ; it is stiU a strife of Greek against 
 Greek, of Italian against Italian. At last we reach the lowest 
 stage of overthrow and of degradation. Greece and Italy 
 become the battlefields of contending strangers, the theatre of 
 conflicts in which no patriotic native has any interest save 
 simply to deliver his country from the presence of aU the 
 combatants alike. The analogy between these several periods 
 in each country must not be pressed too far ; it cannot be 
 pressed nearly so far as the general analogy between the two 
 political systems. A striking likeness however there reaUy 
 is, which it will be worth our while to trace out a little more 
 in detail. 
 
 To the old struggle between Athens and Sparta there 
 attaches that special kind of interest which belongs to a strife 
 in which our sympathies cannot be exclusively claimed by 
 either party. Among all the horrors of a wasting warfare 
 and the still more fearM horrors of internal discord, notwith- 
 standing Melian and Plataian massacres, Korkyraian seditions 
 and Argeian skytaUsms, there is still an ennobling spirit whiOi 
 reigns over the whole, to redeem the scene of perfidy and 
 slaughter. We see thait the conflict was inevitable, and that it 
 was not whoUy selfish on either side ; it was not a struggle for 
 private aggrandizement, but for political superiority ; it was a 
 war of contending races and contending principles ; either side 
 could aflbrd scope, not only for military and political skill, 
 but for the purest virtue and the most heroic self-devotion. 
 The war is not waged by foreign hirelings careless as to 
 
1] ANB MEDIEVAL ITALY. 
 
 19 
 
 the cause in which they fought ; it is not even entrusted to a 
 professional class in the contending cities. The man whose 
 head devises the political scheme is the man who carries out in 
 his own person the military operations which are needed for it. 
 The orator who proposes an enterprise is himself the general 
 who executes it ; the citizens who applaud his proposal are the 
 soldiers who march under his command. No feeling of deadly 
 hatred is to he seen between the two great opposing powers. 
 Athens was stirred to far less bitterness by the political rivalry 
 of Sparta than by her pettier contests with her neighbours 
 of Megaris and Boeotia. Sparta too, in the fuU swing of her 
 power, with all Greece crouching before her harmosts and her 
 dekarchies, with the might of the Great King himself ready 
 at her call, could yet east aside with scorn the suggestion to 
 carry vengeance beyond the bounds of political necessity. It 
 might suit the border hatred of Thebes to make a sheep-walk 
 of a dangerous neighbour-city; but Sparta knew her own 
 greatness too well to deprive herself of her yokefellow and to 
 put out one of the eyes of Greece. 
 
 The parallel to this period is to be found in those heroic 
 days of mediaeval Italy when the names of Guelf and Ghibelin 
 were no unmeaning badges of hereditary feud, but were the 
 true and speaking watchwords of the highest principles that 
 can stir the breast of man.* It was indeed a strife of giants, 
 
 * It may perhaps be thought that a truer parallel to the struggle of the 
 Lombard cities against the Swabian Emperors is to be found in the struggle 
 of the Hellenic cities Skgainst the Persian Kings. It is easy to answer that 
 the war of Guelf and Ghibelin was not mere resistance to foreign invasion; 
 that it was an internal conflict in Italy itself; that, though the Imperial claims 
 were backed by German armies, yet many Italian cities enrolled themselves with 
 no less zeal under the Imperial banners. The rejoinder is no less easy, namely, 
 that the Persian War may also be called an internal struggle in Greece itself, 
 because many Greek cities enrolled themselves under the banners of Xerxes. 
 But it is impossible to look on an acknowledged Emperor of the Romans, 
 even of Teutonic blood, as so whoUy external to Italy as the King of the 
 Medes and Persians was to Hellas. It is impossible to look on the Ghibelins 
 of Italy as such mere traitors aa the medizing Greeks. The fact is that, as 
 none of these parallels can be perfectly exact, the first struggle against 
 Frederick Barbarossa has many points in common with the Persian War ; 
 while the second conflict vrith his grandson forms the best analogy to the 
 
 C 2 
 
20 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 when the crozier of the Pontiff and the sceptre of the Caesar 
 met in deadly conflict. The vigorous youth of the Teutonic 
 race had decked itself in the Imperial garb of elder days, and 
 appealed to the proudest associations, both of the old and of 
 the new state of things. And a yet truer heir of that ancient 
 sway sat as the homeborn guardian of Rome and Italy, the 
 successor of the Fisherman, the maker and the deposer of 
 Kings and Emperors. One disputant called on the political 
 loyalty of either race alike. The Roman Caesar demanded the 
 humble duty of the subject, laid down for ever in Rome's 
 imperishable Law. The King of Italy appealed to a truer 
 and loftier fidelity, to those sacred engagements which riveted 
 the personal bond of suzerain and vassal. His rival called 
 on the mysterious powers of an unseen world ; his empire 
 acknowledged no earthly boundaries^ as his authority rested 
 on no human grant. He stood forth as the vicegerent of his 
 Creator, to bind and to loose, to build up and to pluck down ; 
 his ban could sweep either crown from the brow of his rival, 
 and could release alike from the obligations of Roman slavery 
 and of Teutonic freedom. All things to all men, the Pontiffs 
 of those days knew when to bless the swords of conquerors 
 and when to hallow the aspirations of insurgents. And now 
 beneath the shadow of their lofty claims grew up that germ 
 of freedom which the deep policy of Rome knew alike when 
 to cherish and when to stifle in the bud. Hildebrand pitted 
 against Henry, Alexander against Barbarossa, Innocent 
 figainst the second Frederick, was indeed a strife which no 
 man could stand by and not draw his sword either for the 
 throne of Caesar or the chair of Peter. Each cause had in it 
 
 Peloponnesian War. Frederick the Second could hardly be deemed a foreigner 
 in Italy ; the enmity which he awakened was political and religious, hardly at 
 all strictly national. But the Guelf and Ghibehn contest, so long as thoae 
 names retained any real meaning, can hardly be looked on as other than a 
 single- whole, and that whole certainly bears more analogy to the Pelopon- 
 nesian War than to anything else in Grecian history. 
 
 [I have since spoken more fully of the characteristics of this period of 
 Italian history, in the Essay headed ' Frederick the First, King of Italy ' in 
 my former series of Essays.] 
 
I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 21 
 
 an element of truth and righteousness. One side might boast 
 that it maintained the lawful rights of civil government at 
 once against priestly despotism and against political licentious- 
 ness. Twofold might he the answer of his rival. The priestly 
 despot did but assert the claims of man's spiritual element 
 against the brute force which had usurped the name of 
 government. The pohtical rebel did but maintain the cause 
 of municipal and national freedom against the arbitrary exac- 
 tions of feudal lords and alien Emperors. A warfare like this 
 could not fail to call forth on either side man^s highest and 
 noblest feelings ; each cause was supported from the purest 
 enthusiasm and the most unselfish principles of duty. Who 
 can doubt but that the loyalty of Pisa and Pavia to the 
 Imperial cause was as true and ennobhng a feeling as any 
 that roused their foes for the Holy Church and the liberties 
 of Milan ? And the chiefs on either side alike displayed the 
 surest proof of true nobility ; they were greatest in the hour 
 of adversity. Never was the spirit of Hildebrand or of Alex- 
 ander more unbroken than when they marched forth to exile ; 
 never were their claims more lofty than when all the powers 
 of earth seemed arrayed against them. Henry indeed was 
 unworthy of his cause ; but the spirit of Innocent himself was 
 not more truly lordly than that of the Caesars of Hohenstaufen. 
 Frederick the Second, deposed and excommunicated, branded 
 as a tyrant and a heretic, brought forth the diadems of all 
 his realms, and dared the world to touch the heirlooms of 
 Augustus and of Charles the Great. But he had his vices 
 and his weaknesses. The meteoric splendours of his course 
 must pale before the steady and enduring glory of his illus- 
 trious grandfather. Few characters in history can awaken a 
 warmer feeling of sympathy than the indomitable Barbarossa. 
 He might be hard, while opposition lasted, to an extent which 
 our age justly brands as cruelty ; yet his untiring devotion 
 to claims which he deemed founded on eternal right, his re- 
 solution while the struggle lasted, his faithfulness* to his 
 
 * A single breacli of faith is all that has ever been alleged against Frederick 
 during the whole of this long struggle. (See Sismondi, ii. 211, 272.) In the 
 
22 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 engagements even in tlie hour of triumph, are qualities only 
 less honourable than the prudence and generosity with which, 
 when the day had finally turned against him, he accepted a, 
 destiny which he could no longer withstand, with which he 
 threw himself honestly into altered circumstances, and dwelled 
 as an ally where he was no longer accepted as a master. Yet 
 who can fail to do equal honour to the no less noble spirits 
 •who won the victoiy against him? Cold indeed must be 
 the heart which could refuse to beat in concert with that burst 
 of zeal for Church and freedom which scattered the chivalry of 
 Swabia before the charge of the Company of Death,* and 
 drove the Emperor of the Romans, the King of Germany and 
 Italy, to seek safety in ignominious flight before the armed 
 burghers of a rebellious city. 
 
 In one part of the field indeed the scene puts on another 
 character. Sicilian history hardly forms part of the history of 
 Italy, though it is closely connected with it. This is true even 
 of the continental, and much more so of the insular kingdom. 
 Neither presents the ordinary phsenomena of Italian history. 
 Neither formed part of the Western Empire or of the Kingdom 
 of Italy. While Henry the Third held a nearly absolute sway 
 over his German and Italian realms, the greater part of the 
 modern Neapolitan kingdom still obeyed the throne of Con- 
 stantinople, and the island of Sicily was still numbered among 
 the possessions of the Arabian Prophet. The earliest Italian 
 commonwealths, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, arose indeed in 
 what afterwards became Sicilian territory ; there was even, 
 after the death of Frederick the Second, a short republican 
 period in Sicily itself; but neither country developed any 
 lasting system of commonwealths, like those of Lombardy 
 and Tuscany. Their position is rather analogous to that of 
 those great fiefs at the other end of Italy which have grown 
 
 age of Henry the Second and PMlip Augustus, this is really no slight praise 
 for a prince whose good faith was so often and so severely tried. 
 
 [My reference here was to Frederick's breach of faith at the siege of 
 Alessandria, of which I have said something in my former series, p. 276.] 
 
 * At the battle of Legnano, A.D. 1176. (See Sismondi, ii. 219, 221.) 
 
I-] AND MEDIJS7AL ITALY. 23 
 
 up into tHe modern kingdom of Sardinia* Both have much 
 more in common with the feudal states in other parts of 
 Europe than with other Italian governments, whether repub- 
 lican or tyrannical. During the whole period with which we 
 are concerned, both the Sicilies possessed hereditary monarchs 
 and a feudal nobility. They were indeed torn by eivU wars 
 and revolutions, but the object of the struggle was always to 
 put one King in the room of another, not to put freedom in 
 the room of both. 
 
 Still it could hardly fail that the divisions and revolutions 
 of Sicily should, as it were, group themselves under the 
 two great parties which divided the rest of Italy. Their 
 history shows us a peculiar and instructive modification of the 
 controversy between Guelf and Ghibelin. It took the form 
 which was naturally impressed' upon it by the monarchic tra- 
 ditions of the country. What was in northern Italy a strife 
 of principles became in the south a mere struggle between 
 nations and dynasties — between the house of Hohenstaufen 
 and the house of Anjou — in the end between the power of Spain 
 and the power of France. The strife which began between 
 Manfred of Swabia and Charles of Anjou is carried on at 
 intervals down to the days of Francis of Valois and Charles of 
 Austria. The claims of the old Imperial family pass away 
 into the line of Aragon,'till the remote descendant of that line 
 is ag^in enabled to back them with the majesty of the Roman 
 Empire and with the more real might of Burgundy and Cas- 
 tile. In the earlier stages of the conflict it differs from the 
 form which it took in Northern Italy^ inasmuch as one side 
 alone can enlist our sympathies. We may be balanced in our 
 regard between Hildebrand and Henry, between Alexander 
 and Frederick, but every heart must beat for Manfred and 
 Conradin and Frederick of Aragon against the foreign tyrants 
 and hireling Pontiffs with whom they struggled. Yet small 
 indeed was the lasting good which arose even from the 
 righteous and heroic conflict which delivered insular Sicily 
 
 * [This was -wTitteii, it must be remembered, before Piedmont had grown 
 into Italy, even before it had recovered Milan.] 
 
24 ANCIENT GBEEGE [Essay 
 
 from her foreign masters. Sicily cast off the yoke, but it 
 was only by the fatal help of the stranger. The vesper-bell- 
 of Palermo rang the knell of French domination, but it 
 summoned the more lasting oppressor of Aragon to take pos- 
 session of the spoil. One wise and valiant ruler did Sicily gain 
 from the foreign stock: the noble Frederick threw himself 
 honestly into her interests, and ruled her as her native sove- 
 reign. But his line died out in a succession oi faineants, and 
 their foreign kinsman presently grasped the opportunity of 
 joining the island to his ancestral kingdom. Naples and 
 Sicily alike failed of the highest glory and happiness; but 
 the contrast of their destiny was strange. Sicily, which cast 
 off the yoke of the Angevin, sank first into utter insignifi- 
 cance, and then into the deadening position of a subject 
 province. Naples, which patiently bore his tyranny, though 
 torn by civil wars and disputed successions, still kept for 
 two centuries and a half an independent place among the 
 powers of Europe, an important, sometimes a dominant, place 
 among those of Italy. 
 
 Coming back to our more general subject, we may mark 
 that, during the whole of the first pair of parallel periods, 
 both in Greece and Italy, there is little difliculty in remem- 
 bering the political and military relations of the several 
 states. It is throughout a strife of principles ; each city acts 
 according to an attachment of long standing to the Athenian 
 or the Lacedaemonian alliance, to the cause of the Church or 
 of the Empirp. Corinth leagued with Athens or Plataia with 
 Sparta, Florence false to the cause of freedom or Pisa for- 
 saking the Imperial eagles, would be something little less 
 than a contradiction in terms. How thoroughly Greece was 
 divided between the two great political ideas which were em- 
 bodied in Athens and Sparta is best shown in the fruitless 
 attempt made by the Spartan allies, in a moment of pique, to 
 put together confederacies upon other principles. All the 
 intrigues of Alkibiades, in the period which immediately 
 followed the Peace of Nikias, did but bring about a temporary 
 
I-] AND MEBIJE7AL ITALY. 
 
 25 
 
 confusion'; the cities speedily settled themselves again in 
 their old positions as followers of the two ruling states. The 
 neutral Argos was indeed won to the side of Athens, but no 
 member of the rival confederacy permanently fell away. If any 
 seeming exceptions are found, if cities suddenly changed their 
 policy, it only shows how deeply the contending principles 
 had in each case divided the national mind. Men often loved 
 their party better than their city, and they often forced their 
 city to shape its policy to meet the interests of their party. 
 Such a change implies no fickleness, no change of sentiment 
 in an existing government : it bespeaks an internal revolution 
 which has placed in other hands the guidance of the policy of 
 the state. The oligarchs are triumphant or the people have 
 won the victory ; the Ghibelin has vanquished the Guelf or 
 the Guelf has avenged his wrongs upon the Ghibelin; the 
 haughty leader at least exchanges places with the homeless 
 exile, even if no sterner doom is the penalty for the evil deeds 
 of his own day of triumph. Does Korkyra open her harbours 
 to the Athenian fleet which her rulers have so lately driven 
 from her shores ? It is because the people have won the day, 
 and have taken a fearful vengeance upon sacrilege and op- 
 pression. Does the banner of Manfred float on the walls of that 
 Florence which was so lately the chosen citadel of the Guelf ? 
 The field of Arbia has been won, and Farinata has saved his 
 country from her doom, though the good deed may not 
 deliver himself from his burning grave. Till the power of 
 Athens is broken at Aigospotamos and the insolence of 
 Sparta loses her the aflPections of her allies— till Roman 
 Caesars sink into heads of a Germanic Federation and Roman 
 Pontifis into tools of the Kings of France — this fixedness of 
 purpose in parties and commonwealths prevails through both 
 the analogous periods, and renders their study far more fasci- 
 nating and far less perplexing than that of the times which 
 immediately follow them. 
 
 In the next period this steadiness of principles is altogether 
 lost ; wars and alliances are begun and broken ofi" according 
 to the immediate interest of the moment ; . instead of two 
 
26 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 parties ranged permanently and consistently under their 
 several leaders, we behold an ever-shifting scene in which 
 Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Elis, and Mantineia, or 
 Rome, Milan, Venice, Naples, Florence, and Genoa, figure in 
 every possible variety of friendship and enmity. In Greece 
 the old ruling states become thoroughly worn out, and new 
 powers flash across the scene with meteoric brilliancy. Athens 
 becomes materially, and Sparta morally, incapable of acting 
 as leader of a great confederacy. The genius and virtue of 
 Epameinondas raise Thebes to a momentary greatness, but 
 they prove only how much and how little even the best and 
 greatest of men can do to raise a state whose citizens at 
 large are not animated by his spirit. Lykomedls does the 
 same, on a smaller scale, for Arkadia ; Philomelos, in a less 
 worthy cause, for Ph6kis; while the Man of Macedon looks 
 on, steadily waiting for the moment when internal discord 
 shall at last place the prize within his grasp. So too in 
 the later parallel. The Empire well nigh withdraws from 
 the scene, and it had been well for the reputation of the 
 Church if she had withdrawn also. Many Kings of the 
 Romans were content to reign in Germany alone, and forsook 
 Italy altogether. Some of the noblest, as Rudolf and Albert 
 the Second, never even claimed the rite which should invest 
 them with the rank of Emperor. Of those who did cross the 
 Alps, Henry of Liizelburg alone crossed them for any other 
 purpose than to expose himself and his authority to contempt. 
 The papacy sinks through three successive stages of degra- 
 dation. The Babylonish captivity of Avignon removed the 
 Roman Pontiif from his native seat, and changed the Vice- 
 gerent of Christ into the despised hireling of a French master. 
 The Great Schism showed the world the spectacle of a 
 spiritual sovereignty contested, like a temporal throne, between 
 selfish and worthless disputants. At last the gap is healed, 
 and Rome again receives her Pontifis; but she receives them 
 only that men might see the successors of Hildebrand and 
 Innocent in the character of worldly and profligate Italian 
 princes, bent only on the aggrandizement of their families or 
 
I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 27 
 
 at best, on making good the pettiest temporal claims of the 
 Holy See. Venice is following her schemes of crooked policy, 
 only beginning to be redeemed by her nobler character as 
 
 ' Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite.' 
 
 MUan, once the chosen home of freedom, is ground down 
 beneath the vilest of tyrannies. Genoa, tossed by endless 
 revolutions, is glad to throw herself into the arms of any 
 despot who can ensure an hour of repose. Florence alone 
 is left ; but the noblest laurels of the Guelf city are now won 
 in strife against a hostile Pontiff, and the eight Saints of 
 the "War are canonized by the voice of their country for 
 withstanding the power to whose cause their fathers had 
 been devoted. At last her hour comes ; she sinks, gradually 
 and well nigh willingly, imder the gilded tyranny of citizens, 
 Guelfs, and plebeians. Her ancient glories are past, her last 
 dying glory is yet to come ; but her degradation under Medi- 
 cean rule might have moved her own poet to pity rather than 
 to indignation. War is as endless, and it is yet more relent- 
 less than ia earlier times, but it has lost its redeeming and en- 
 nobling features. Athens and Florence alike have ceased to 
 be defended by the arms of their own citizens. Hireling ban- 
 ditti, without a cause and without a country, sell themselves 
 to the highest bidder, and commonly prove a greater curse to 
 those whom they profess to defend than to those against whom 
 they are paid to wage warfare. Each land is speedily ripening 
 for foreign bondage ; each is ready to become the battle- 
 field of foreign quarrels fought out upon her soil — quarrels 
 which might now and then awaken a momentary interest, but 
 which could never appeal to those high and ennobling feelings 
 which were called forth by the warfare of an elder time. 
 
 What the struggles between the successors of Alexander 
 were to Greece the wars of the early part of the sixteenth 
 century were to Italy. The part of Polysperchon, Kassan- 
 dros, Demetrios, and Antigonos was acted over again in all 
 its fulness by Charles and Lewis and Ferdinand, and that 
 Francis and that other Charles who have won for themselves 
 a fame which has been unfairly denied to their victims. 
 
28 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 During this period all traces of consistency, almost all traces of 
 patriotism, are lost. The names of Guelf and Ghibelin indeed 
 are still heard, but they now carry with them no more of 
 meaning than the Shanavests and Caravats of a nearer field 
 of discord. For the nobler feehngs which they once embodied 
 there could indeed be no room, now that every question was 
 decided by the mere brute force of the stranger. The Mace- 
 donian plunderers could set forth no claim of right, not even 
 the shallow blind of family or dynastic pretensions. Each 
 competitor laid hands on whatever came in his way, and 
 kept it till the law of the stronger adjudged the right to 
 some more fortunate claimant. The subtler diplomacy of 
 modern Europe helped the competitors in the later straggle 
 to words and forms of legalized wickedness which their 
 elder brethren might perchance have envied, perchance have 
 honestly despised. When a French prince laid waste a pro- 
 vince or slaughtered the garrison of a city, it was because 
 his great-grandmother had drawn her first breath beneath 
 its sky, and had handed on to him the right, thus strangely 
 exercised, to be its lawful governor and protector. When 
 Charles of Austria handed over city after city to a more ruth- 
 less and more lasting scourge, when for months and months 
 every atrocity which earth or hell could devise was dealt 
 out to the wretched people of Rome and Milan, it was all 
 in support of the just rights of their King and Emperor ; 
 the majesty of Caesar could not allow that claims should be 
 any longer trampled on which, in most cases, had slept since 
 the days of the Hohenstaufen. But even such pretexts as 
 these were wanting to the insatiable and perfidious ambition 
 of that Csesar's grandfather. Kassandros or Ptolemy Kerau- 
 nos could hardly have devised a more unprovoked and 
 flagrant wrong than when the Catholic King parted out 
 by treaty with his Most Christian brother the territories of 
 his own ally and kinsman of Naples ; when he luUed to 
 sleep the suspicions of his victim till the blow could be effec- 
 tually struck ; when he at last turned his arms against his 
 partner in evU, and carried off the whole spoil, without even 
 
I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 29 
 
 a shadow of right, from him who could at least bring forward 
 some worn-out genealogy to justify his share in the wrong. 
 And it is with a feeling, in some sort, of yet deeper indig- 
 nation that we see the lance of the free Switzer too often 
 levelled in warfare hardly more righteous than that of Austrian, 
 French, and Spanish tyrants. The boasted age of Francis 
 the First and Leo the Tenth is to the lover of right and 
 freedom simply an age of well nigh unmixed evil, of evil 
 even more unmixed than the warfare of the Successors them- 
 selves. The wars of Italy afford no such relief as the earliest 
 and best days of Demetrios, when, before his head was turned 
 by flattery and indulgence, he eagerly caught at the title of 
 the chosen head of independent Greece. No province handed 
 over to Spanish or Medicean rule underwent so mild a des- 
 tiny as Egypt under the early Ptolemies, or even Macedonia 
 under some of her better Kings. Both pictures show forth 
 human nature in its darkest colours ; selfishness, cruelty, and 
 treachery stalk forth undisturbed in each ; but it must be 
 confessed that, as far as Kings and princes are concerned, the 
 advantage is on the side of the earlier chamber of horrors. 
 The upstart brigands of Macedonia do not, with all their 
 crimes, show themselves in hues quite so dark as the chiefs of 
 the Holy Roman Empire, as the Eldest Sons of the Church, 
 as the leaders of that Castilian chivalry which boasted of 
 overcoming the Moslem at home and the idolater beyond 
 the Ocean. 
 
 But in both pictures, among all the crimes of foreign 
 oppressors, a gleam of native virtue shines forth. In Italy 
 it sheds a ray of light over the darkest gloom of bondage ; 
 in Greece it is like a short polar day between her first and 
 her last night of overthrow. Florence, so long the nearest 
 parallel to Athens, holds, in her latest days, a place which 
 rather answers to that of the Achaian League. The last 
 time of freedom at Florence came in the darkest days of Italy; 
 it even had its birth in the greatest of national misfortunes. 
 The invasion of Charles the Eighth led to the first, the sack of 
 Eome to the second, driving out of the Medici. During the 
 
30 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 first sbort interval, she enjoyed a truer freedom and more of 
 domestic peace than she had known in the proudest days of her 
 former greatness ; during the second, she defied the power of 
 Pope and Emperor, who forgot their quarrels to destroy a 
 freedom hateful to both alike. She fell only when a single 
 city, without an ally at home or abroad, could no longer 
 stand, in the mere strength of truth and right, against 
 the spiritual thunders of the Pontiff and the secular arm 
 of the mightiest potentate in Europe. Achaia ran a longer 
 course, but she ended by a less noble fate. The better 
 days of Aratos wrought more of lasting good than the gon- 
 falohiership of Soderini ; but the devotion of ' lUy to lily,' 
 imreasonable and unrequited as it was, never betrayed Flo- 
 rence into such deeds of treason as disgraced his later years. 
 Florence never swerved : but the deliverer of Siky6n and 
 Corinth undid his own work; he betrayed Greece to the 
 Macedonian whom he had driven out, because a worthier than 
 himself had arisen to contest her championship with him. 
 If Italy gave birth to no Agis and no Kleomenes, the fame 
 of her last bulwark is not tarnished by a surrender of Corinth 
 or by a victory of SeUasia. Florence fell at once and glori- 
 ously, the last blow in the general overthrow of Italy ; Achaia 
 stooped to drag on a feeble and lingering life under the 
 degrading patronage of Macedonia and Rome. The course 
 of both lands seemed to have been run ; one indeed lived 
 on, led captive her conquerors, and ruled in their name for a 
 thousand, years. The cannon and the scimitar of Mahomet at 
 last wrought a conquest more thorough than the pilum and 
 broadsword of Mummius. A yoke which could not be light- 
 ened has since been rent asunder : the very soil of Marathon 
 and Thermopylai has again been dyed with the blood of 
 vanquished Barbarians; Mesolongi has outdone the fame of 
 Eira and Plataiaj and Greece, amid cruel diflBculties and 
 more cruel calumnies, has again taken her place among the 
 nations. Must we deem that the last struggle of the sister 
 peninsula has been made in vain ? that the elder two-headed 
 bird of prey must tear at his will the entrails of Milan and of 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALT. 31 
 
 Venice, and his younger single-headed brother gorge himself 
 for ever with the blood of Eome ? Will force for ever trample 
 upon right ? or must we deem that there is something in the 
 yoke of Habsburg even more grinding, deadening, and cor- 
 rupting than in that of the barbarian infidel himself? * 
 
 An incidental reference in the last paragraph may suggest 
 a third form of our comparison, but one which it is even less 
 safe to press into minute particulars than either of the others. 
 This is the analogy between the position and destinies of par- 
 ticular cities. Florence^ the great democracy of Italy, bears 
 undoubtedly a general analogy to Athens, the great demo- 
 cracy of Greece. From the thirteenth century onward, we 
 can hardly help looking at Italian affairs from a Florentine, 
 just as we look at Greek affairs from an Athenian point' of 
 view. The oligarchy of Sparta may suggest a fainter like- 
 ness to the oligarchy of Venice. Sismondi likens the momen- 
 tary greatness of Lucca under Castruceio to the momentary 
 greatness of Thebes under Epameinondas. A still fainter 
 likeness may suggest itself in the position, among a system of 
 neighbouring commonwealths, of the monarchy of Macedonia 
 and the monarchy of Naples, f But in this part of our sub- 
 
 * [The vehemence with which I wrote fifteen years ago seems almost 
 amusing when we think how utterly the state of things which called it forth 
 has passed away. Of the two birds of prey one has ceased to be a bird of 
 prey, the other has had his claws cut at least for a season. But the men- 
 tion of the two-headed eagle leads to the remark that it would be well if 
 the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke, would give up an ensign to 
 which he has no kind of right, and which constantly leads people astray. 
 Many people fancy that the two-headed eagle, and not the lion, is the bearing 
 of Austria, and thence they are led to go on to cry out 'Austria' whenever 
 they see a two-headed eagle. At the same time it must be remembered that 
 the two heads of the Imperial bird were a comparatively modern innovation.] 
 
 t The states of Savoy would be a closer parallel, both in their geographical 
 position and in their only half Itaban character. The Burgundian Count has 
 moved downwards uponLombardy and Genoa, much as the Macedonian moved 
 down upon AmphipoUs and Thessaly. But, unlike the Macedonian, he has left 
 the greater part of bis older dominions behind him. But Savoy was of so 
 little account in Italy during Italy's best days that it is hardly neediul to 
 enter on the comparison. 
 
 [This was how matters struck me when the Duke of Savoy and Prince of 
 
32 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 ject especially, the comparison will be found more instructive 
 in points of difference than in points of agreement. Mace- 
 donia was a state at least half Barbarian, though it was ruled 
 by Hellenic Kings ; Naples was an Italian land whose Kings 
 were, by descent at least. Barbarians. Epameinondas was the 
 leader of a free democracy; Castruccio was a Tyrant, though 
 a Tyrant undoubtedly of the nobler sort. The oUgarchy of 
 Sparta was born from the intrusion of a conquering race : 
 the oligarchy of Venice gradually arose out of a people who 
 had started on equal terms for a common stock. Sparta was 
 great while she abode on the mainland : she failed when she 
 attempted distant and maritime conquest. Venice was essen- 
 tially maritime and colonizing, and she never erred so deeply 
 as when she set up for a continental power. But some of the 
 points of the two great oligarchic constitutions may be profit- 
 ably compared. The analogy between the Spartan King and 
 the Venetian Doge is striking indeed. Our first impulse 
 is to underrate the importance of both princes in their re- 
 spective commonwealths. We are led to compare the Duke 
 of Venice with the Duke of Milan^ to compare the King of 
 the Lacedsemonians with the King of Macedon, or even with 
 the Great King himself. A prince fettered by countless 
 restrictions, a prince liable to deposition, fine, exile, or even 
 death, seems to be no prince at all. He sinks below the level 
 of a Florentine Prior, almost down to that of an Athenian 
 Archon. Looked at as princes, the Spartan King and the 
 Venetian Doge may indeed seem contemptible; but, looked 
 at as republican magistrates, they filled a more commanding 
 position than any other republican magistrates in Greece 
 or Italy. No Greek save a Spartan Herakleid was bom 
 to the permanent command of his country's armies; no 
 other was born to a place ia her Senate which needed 
 no popular renewal and could be forfeited only by treason 
 against the state. No Italian citizen save the Venetian Duke 
 
 Piedmont reigned on both sides of the Alps. The process by which the House 
 of Savoy has, ever since the sixteenth century, gone on losing Burgundian and 
 gaining Italian territory has since been carried out in all its fulness.] 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 33 
 
 was chosen to a position which clothed him for life at once 
 with an honorary precedence, and with an important Yoice, 
 if nothing more, in the direction of public affairs. The 
 legal authority of the King and the Doge was. most narrowly 
 limited, but his opportunities of gaining influence were 
 unrivalled. Holding a permanent position, while other magis- 
 trates were changed around him, a King or Doge of any 
 ability could win for himself a personal authority far beyond 
 any which belonged to his office. He could not indeed com- 
 mand, but he could always advise, and his advice was very 
 often followed. We find therefore that the personal character 
 of Kings and Doges was by no means so unimportant as the 
 narrow range of their legal powers might at first lead us to 
 think. A vigorous prince, an Agesilaos or a Francesco 
 Foscari, might, during the course of a long reign, gain an 
 influence over the counsels of the republic which was not 
 within the reach of any other citizen, and which made him 
 virtuallyj as well as in name, the sovereign of his country. 
 
 Enough has perhaps been said to show that between the 
 general position and the general course of events in ancient 
 Greece and in mediaeval Italy the parallel is as near as any 
 historical parallel is ever likely to be. It only remains to 
 make the likeness still nearer by pointing out the special 
 diversities which it is easy to see between the two. 
 
 Nearly all of these diversities spring from the same source. 
 In Greece everything was fresh and original, while the con- 
 dition of mediaeval Italy was essentially based upon an earlier 
 state of things. Greece was the first country which reached 
 anything worthy of the name of civilization, if by that word 
 we ujiderstand, not the pomp and luxury of kingly or priestly 
 despots, but the real cultivation of man's intellectual and 
 political powers. The history of Greece springs out of a 
 mythical chaos, out of which we can at least learn thus 
 much, that all that made the greatness of the nation 
 was strictly of native birth. No earlier or foreign system 
 underlies the historical civilization of Hellas : what is not 
 
34 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 strictly immemorial is no less strictly self-developed. No 
 one capable of any historical criticism will now put faith in 
 those tales of Barbarian settlements in Greece of which 
 Homer at least had never heard. No one possessed of any 
 sesthetic perception will derive the glorious forms of Doric and 
 Attic skiU from the heavy columns and lifeless idols reared by 
 the adorers of apes and onions. The pure mythology of 
 the Iliad is indeed akin to the splendid fictions of Hindo- 
 stan or Scandinavia, but no one who has a heart to feel or 
 a mind to understand will trace it to the follies of Egyp- 
 tian or to the abominations of Semitic idolatry. But in 
 mediaeval Italy nothing is strictly original ; politics, religion, 
 literature, and art are all developements or reproductions of 
 something which had existed in earlier times. Others la- 
 boured, and she entered into their labours ; she succeeded 
 to the good and the evil of two, we might perhaps say of 
 three, earlier systems. Her political institutions rose out of 
 the feudalism which had overshadowed the Roman Empire, 
 just as the Roman Empire had itself arisen from the gradual 
 fusion of the independent states of primaeval Italy. The 
 Greek system was the first of its class ; that of mediaeval 
 Italy was in some sort a return to that of times before 
 Roman supremacy began. It carries us back to the days 
 \\hen twelve cities of Etruria gathered under the banner of 
 Lars Porsenaj and thirty cities of Latium under the banner 
 of the Tusculan Mamilius, to humble the upstart asylum of 
 shepherds and bandits which had encroached upon their imme- 
 morial dignity. Even in this primaeval Italy town-autonomy 
 was far less perfectly developed than in contemporary Greece ; 
 in mediaeval Italy we see only its revival, and a revival modi- 
 fied by the events of fifteen intervening centuries. 
 
 The grand distinguishing feature between the two systems 
 is that over the whole period of Italian freedom there still 
 hung the great, though shadowy, conception of the Roman 
 Empire.* To this there is nothing analogous in the Hel- 
 
 * [AH this has since been worked out more fully both in Mr. Bryoe's Essay 
 and in my own remarks on it in my former series. But I leave the passage 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 35 
 
 lenic prototype. The sovereign independence of the Grecian 
 cities' is strictly immemorial. No time can be pointed out 
 when every town did not at least pretend, though power 
 might often fail to support the pretension, to a distinct poli- 
 tical being. The several cities arise out of the mythical dark- 
 ness in the shape of sovereign states, each governed by its 
 independent King, soon to be exchanged for its independent 
 commonwealth. The dynasty represented by the names of 
 Atreus and Agamemn6n probably exercised a kind of suze- 
 rainty over the whole of Peloponnesos ; but this seems to 
 have been a mere passing domination ; everything tells 
 against the notion of the separate Grecian commonwealths 
 being fragments of an earher Grecian empire. But in the 
 mediaeval parallel the case is conspicuously reversed. The 
 separate Italian commonwealths were essentially fragments 
 of an earlier Italian empire. The repubhcs of Lombardy 
 and Tuscany were members of the Roman Empire and of the 
 Kingdom of Italy, which had gradually grown from simple 
 municipalities into sovereign commonwealths. Their liberties 
 were won by local struggles against the petty lord of each 
 several district ; they were confirmed by a common struggle 
 against the Eoman Emperor himself. Sismondi likens 
 Frederick Barbarossa to Xerxes.* One is half inclined to 
 be angry at seeing one of the noblest of men placed side by 
 side with one of the most contemptible ; but, had the com- 
 parison lain between Cyrus and Wenceslaus, there is the all- 
 important difference that, while the Persian was simply 
 extending his empire, the German was striving to win back 
 rights which his predecessors had held, and of which he 
 deemed himself to be unjustly deprived. The old Imperial 
 ideas never lost their general hold upon men's minds, and 
 new circumstances were continually happening to clothe 
 them with new prominence. Strange as it may seem, it 
 
 pretty much as I first wrote it, to show how things had struck me before 
 Mr. Bryce's Essay appeared.] 
 
 * ' Le redoubtable Xerxfes du moyen age/ vol. ii. p. 8. See above, the 
 remarks in p. 19, note. 
 
 U 3 
 
36 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 was assumed as an axiom not to be gainsaid that the prince 
 who styled himself Emperor of the Romans, however alien 
 from Eome and Italy in blood and policy and language, was 
 still the lawful successor of Augustus and Constantine. A 
 thousand years of history will always be misunderstood, 
 unless we bear in mind that, throughout the early middle 
 age, the Roman Empire was not merely acknowledged as 
 an existing fact, but was believed in as something grounded 
 on the eternal fitness of things. We are tempted to 
 overlook the importance of this belief as a fact, because 
 to us it seems so unreasonable as a principle. In theory 
 the Roman Empire never became extinct, though its sover- 
 eignty was handed on from race to race, though its seat 
 of government wandered from city to city. Up to 476, 
 Italy still kept her resident Emperors of her own blood. 
 From 476 to 800 the Old Rome stooped to acknowledge 
 the authority, sometimes nominal, sometimes real, of the 
 masters of the New. In 800 she again set forth her pre- 
 scriptive rights, and chose the Frank Charles, not as the 
 restorer of a power which had passed away, but as the lawful 
 successor of Constantine the Sixth in opposition to his 
 usurping mother.* From that moment we have again two 
 distinct, and now two rival, lines of princes, each alike foreign 
 to Rome and Italy, but each claiming to be no longer a mere 
 colleague in a divided government, but the true and only 
 representative of the undivided monarchy, the one lawful 
 Emperor of the Romans. For nearly three centuries after the 
 coronation of Charles, the German Caesar of the West was at 
 least the nominal sovereign of Northern Italy, while the 
 Greek Caesar of the East retained a far more practical pos- 
 session of a large portion of its southern provinces. The power 
 of the Byzantine Emperors in Italy was at last rooted out by 
 the Norman settlers ; but circumstances continually arose to 
 
 * It is curious to aee how quietly this is assumed in those of the old chro- 
 nicles, which, like that of Eadulfiis Niger, follow the order of the Imperial 
 reigns. 'Leo, Constautinus, Carolus, Ludovious,' follow in the most peaceable 
 succession. 
 
I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 37 
 
 invest their Teutonic rivals with both a moral and a material 
 authority over Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome itself. Prom 
 Saxon Otto to Austrian Charles, the dignity which the East 
 reverenced so long in her unbroken succession of Emperors, 
 was acknowledged by the West as belonging to every G erman 
 prince who could win for himself the Papal benediction. The 
 iron crown of Monza made him, as King of Italy, the feudal 
 superior of every Lombard and Tuscan state ; the golden 
 diadem of Rome clothed him, as Csesar and Augustus, with 
 higher and vaguer claims weU nigh co-extensive with the 
 sovereignty of the world. One age revives the study of the 
 Civil Law ; and its professors at once invest the Erankish 
 or Swabian overlord with all the rights and powers of 
 the old Roman despotism. Another age beholds the an- 
 cient poets again assert their supremacy, and all that Virgil 
 and Horace had sung of the Julian house is at once trans- 
 ferred to sovereigns of whose native tribes Germanicus him- 
 self had hardly heard. Albert of Habsburg is reproached by 
 Dante for forsaking the garden of his Empire, and the Eternal 
 City is earnestly bidden to be no longer stepdame unto 
 Caesar. Henry of Liizelburg came down from the Alps amid 
 the applause of Italy. Poets, orators, and civilians alike 
 pressed to welcome the barbarian chief of a petty northern 
 principality, claiming the lawful jurisdiction over Rome and 
 Italy, with the sword of Germany in the one hand and the 
 books of Justinian in the other. Both cities and Tyrants were 
 always found to support the Imperial claims in their fulness ; 
 the stoutest Guelf of Florence would hardly have denied 
 the abstract theory that some superiority over his com- 
 monwealth belonged to Csesar Augustus, however narrow 
 might be the bounds within which he would confine his 
 practical authority. If a large proportion of the ancient 
 kingdom formally disowned the supremacy of the Emperor, 
 it was because the Imperial rights were held to have been 
 handed over to" another lord. Ferrara, Bologna, and Perugia 
 acknowledged no superiority in the Roman Emperor ; but it 
 was only because they looked up to a temporal as well as a 
 
38 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 spiritual master in the Eoman Pontiff. Throughout the 
 middle ages, no one dreamed that full and absolute sover- 
 eignty belonged to any Italian city. The notion of an 
 Italian kingdom perhaps hardly outlived the Hohenstaufen ; 
 but the vaguer claims of the Empire, the more practical claims 
 of the Popedom, still lived on within their respective boundaries. 
 Every prince, every commonwealth, held either of the Pope or 
 the Emperor as superior lord. The authority of either lord was 
 often but nominal ; but the bare existence of such never-for- 
 gotten claims at once distinguishes the princes who asserted 
 them from mere foreign invaders like Xerxes at ThermopylsB 
 or Mahomet at Constantinople. The Imperial rights, even 
 when anything like government was out of the question, 
 could often be successfully used as a means of extorting money; 
 when they were at last backed by the might of Castile and 
 Burgundy, they laid Italy as prostrate as she had ever lain 
 before Belisarius, Charles, or Otto. In like manner, the 
 feudal claims of the Papacy could be successfully asserted after 
 centuries of abeyance. Thus Bologna lost her republic and her 
 demagogues, Urbino lost her magnificent Dukes, in the com- 
 mon wilderness of ecclesiastical misgovemment. Venice alone, 
 strong in her lagoons and her islands, contrived to escape 
 the pretensions both of the spiritual and the temporal master. 
 She escaped all prescriptive right in the Western Caesar by 
 preserving, as long as prudence bade her, her nominal al- 
 legiance to his Byzantine rival. She destroyed all tradi- 
 tionary authority in the master of the East by the still more 
 practical process of overturning his throne and partition- 
 ing his Empire. In the ninth century, she drove back the 
 Prankish King of Italy, by asserting the lawful claims of 
 the true Csesar by the Bosporos. Four centuries later, she 
 could divide that Csesar's realm and capital with fellow-rob- 
 bers of the same Prankish blood.* Her style and title had 
 
 * [It would seem that when I wrote this sentence I had not fully learned 
 to distinguish between FraiJcs and Frenchmen. The Latin conquerors of Con- 
 stantinople are rightly called Franks in the sense which that word bears 
 throughout the East, and the chances are that many of the leaders of the 
 
I] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 39 
 
 strangely altered in the interval. ' The slaves of the Em- 
 peror of the Romans could now invest their Doges with that 
 arithmetical title, so worthy of a merchant prince, Lord of 
 one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania/ 
 
 The independence of the Greek cities was thus strictly 
 immemorial, while that of their Italian antitypes arose from 
 the bosom of an earlier feudal* monarchy. From this it almost 
 necessarily follows that in Greece the cities were everything, 
 while in Italy they indeed became predominant, but could 
 never wholly wipe out all traces of the earlier state of things. 
 In proper Greece there was no spot of ground which did not 
 belong to some city. That city might be democratically, 
 aristocratically, or tyrannically governed; it might even be in 
 bondage to some stronger city ; but there was no such thing 
 as an independent chief who had nothing to do with the 
 organized government of any acknowledged city-common- 
 wealth. But in Italy feudalism had existed, and was never 
 wholly rooted out. Not only did there exist in its southern 
 portion a powerful kingdom which remained unconnected 
 with the Western Empire; within the Kingdom of Italy 
 itself the territory of the towns never took in the whole 
 country. The liberties of each city were won from the feudal 
 chief of its own district. When those liberties were esta- 
 blished within, the city usually grew to be dominant without ; 
 the neighbouring feudal lords were brought under its autho- 
 rity, and were often changed into a civic nobility within the 
 town. But this process was never carried out through the 
 whole extent of the kingdom. In its north-western portion 
 powerful feudal princes went on reigning over Piedmont, 
 
 Fourth Crusade would, as a matter of genealogy, really be of Frankiah blood. 
 StiU the expression is " misleading one. When we speak of ' Gesta Dei per 
 Francos,' we use the word Frcmcus in its later and not in its earlier sense ; 
 in the sense in which Prancus and Francigena are used in Domesday— the 
 sense of persons using the French language, whether subjects or vassals to the 
 King of the French or not.] 
 
 * [The word 'feudal' is 'patient' of a correct meaning j I therefore leave 
 it; but every one should be on his guard against believing that any such thing 
 as a ' feudal system' ever existed anywhere.] 
 
40 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 Montferrat, and Saluzzo; even elsewhere feudal chieftains of 
 less dignity maintained their wild independence in many 
 mountain holds. In short, the brood of petty rulers, holding 
 nominally of the Emperor^ and neither citizens nor Tyrants of 
 any city, was for the most part driven into inaccessible holes 
 and corners, but it was never wholly rooted out. 
 
 The feudal origin of the Italian aristocracies brought with 
 it another important difference between them and those of 
 Greece. A Grecian aristocracy was often a body of invaders 
 who had settled in a conquered city, and who handed on 
 exclusive political rights to their descendants. Sometimes a 
 privileged class arose by a gradual process from among the 
 body of their fellow-citizens. And this last process has been 
 at work in later times also ; to it was owing the closest and 
 most unscrupulous, and at the same time the most orderly 
 and sagacious of all such bodies, the long-lived oligarchy of 
 Venice. A somewhat intermediate process produced the less 
 brilliant, but far more righteous and hardly less prudent 
 aristocracy of Bern. A city which contained a large patrician 
 element from its first foundation enlarged its territory by 
 repeated conquests and purchases, tiU the civic oligarchy 
 found itself changed into the corporate despot of an extensive 
 dominion. Hence the Grecian, and in after-times the Venetian 
 and Bernese, oligarchies acted strictly as an oligarchic clasSj 
 bound together by a common spirit and interest. But in 
 most Italian cities the half-tamed feudal lords were gathered 
 into the town not a little against their will. They therefore 
 naturally kept on within the walls much of the 'isolation 
 and lawlessness ' of the old life which they had led in the 
 mountains. The Venetian noble might boast of his palace, 
 but in most Italian cities the patrician mansion was not a 
 palace, but a fortress, fitted and accustomed to defend itself 
 aKke against rival nobles and against the power of the com- 
 monwealth itself. This state of things was unheard of in 
 Greece. No such licence was allowed to any citizen or any 
 King of Sparta ; nor can we imagine anything like it in 
 aristocratic Chios or Corinth. Even in democratic Athens 
 
I.] AND MBDI^VAL ITALY. 41 
 
 wealth and birth assumed a strange practical licence. Meidias 
 indulged himself in the practice of assault and battery;* but 
 it was only the corporate i';8pis of the Four Hundred which 
 was followed by a band of armed retainers. Alkibiades was 
 lord of a private castle ;f but it stood on the shores of the 
 Chersonesos, not within the walls of Athens ; even the 
 house in which he held the unwilling Agatharchos could 
 hardly have been ready to stand a siege against the united 
 power of the Ten Generals. 
 
 Another difference between a Greek and an Italian com- 
 monwealth is to be found in the origin of the commonwealths 
 themselves. As the Italian republics were municipalities 
 which had gradually grown into sovereign states, they natu- 
 rally kept on much of the mercantile constitution of the old 
 communes. A Grecian city had indeed its smaller political 
 divisions. It was either artificially partitioned into local wards 
 or districts, or sometimes the city itself was formed by the union 
 of earlier villages which still survived as wards or districts of 
 the city. But commercial guilds, if they existed at all in 
 Greece, were nowhere of any political importance. In many 
 Italian cities they were the very soul of the constitution. The 
 Athenian acted directly as a citizen of the commonwealth ; the 
 Florentine acted only indirectly as a member of some incor- 
 porated trade. 
 
 Fi'om aU these causes working together it followed that the 
 true republican spirit was very weak in mediaeval Italy, as 
 compared with its full growth in ancient Greece. The natural 
 tendency of a commonwealth is to vest all authority, as far as 
 may be, in some Senate or Assembly, meeting often and con- 
 stantly looking into pubhc affairs. The constitution of such 
 Assembly of course depends upon the aristocratic or democratic 
 constitution of the commonwealth. But in either case, each 
 
 » [I almost Buspect that this strange insolence of individual men of which 
 Meidias and Alkibiades were examples is more likely to be found in a 
 democracy than in an oligarchy. In an oligarchy, members of the privileged 
 order at least will be safe from it. And a wise and legal oligarchy will have 
 the sense for its own interest to protect the non-privileged classes also.] 
 
 + Td iavTov reixv- Xen. Hell. i. 5, 17; cf. ii. I, 25. 
 
42 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 citizen who is possessed of the fullest franchise deems him- 
 self entitled to a direct voice in all important affairs. Even 
 Sparta, oligarchy within oligarchy as she was, notwithstand- 
 ing the lofty position of her Kings and Gerontes and the 
 more practical authority of her Ephors, did not, like con- 
 stitutional England, entrust questions of war and peace to 
 Ministers acting in the dark, but had them freely debated in 
 the General Assembly of the privileged order. The highest 
 developement of this tendency is of course to be found in the 
 Public Assembly of Athens. DSmos made himself an absolute 
 monarch, and cut down all magistrates to the position of mere 
 executors of his decrees. The Archons had once been sove- 
 reign, but their powers were gradually cut down to a peaceful 
 routine of police and religious ceremonial, which carried with it 
 no political influence whatever. The Generals indeed acted as 
 Foreign Secretaries, but they confined themselves to the 
 functions of Secretaries ; they could not irrevocably commit 
 the commonwealth to a policy for which the Assembly could 
 only censure them after the fact. But in the most democratic 
 states of medieeval Italy, even in Florence herself, a constantly 
 superintending popular Assembly was altogether unknown, or 
 appeared only in her latest day. At the very utmost, the 
 assembled people were only called together now and then, to 
 declare peace or war or to agree to some important constitu- 
 tional change. At Florence, for a long time, they only as- 
 sembled when the purposes of faction called for the gathering 
 of a tumultuous Parliament, whose first act commonly was 
 to vote away its own liberties. The old commonwealth 
 had indeed its Councils, but a real Assembly, entitled in any 
 way to speak in the name of the people, arose only in the 
 revived commonwealth under the gonfaloniership of Sodeiini. 
 To individual magistrates it was everywhere usual, and indeed 
 it often was necessary, to entrust a power over the lives and 
 liberties of the citizens at which an Athenian would have 
 stood aghast. And no wonder, when it was perhaps less 
 often their business to preside at a peaceful tribunal than to 
 march at the head of the armed people to put down some 
 
I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 43 
 
 rebellious noble who stood out in utter defiance of all legal 
 authority. Hence the excessive shortness of the terms for 
 which magistrates were elected : no man could be trusted to 
 wield such tremendous powers for more than the shortest 
 possible time. But hence too the fluctuations and confusions 
 of a commonwealth which changed its rulers six times in 
 every year. Hence again an Italian commonwealth afforded 
 very little of that political education of the entire people 
 which was the noblest result of the Athenian democracy. 
 The citizen of Athens had his wits sharpened by the constant 
 practice of 'ruling and judging.' The Florentine could at 
 most look forward to enjoy, some day or other, a two months' 
 share in the exercise of a despotic power to which during the 
 rest of his life he must bow down. The ordinary Athenian 
 was necessarily a judge and a statesman; the ordinary Floren- 
 tine had hardly the opportunity of so much political education 
 as the Englishman may contrive to pick up in the jury-box, 
 the parish vestry, * or the quarter-sessions. 
 
 From this comparative weakness of the republican spirit it 
 could not fail to follow that the foundation of tyrannies was 
 more easy in mediaeval Italy than it ever was in Greece. 
 It followed also that they became more lasting and, in out- 
 ward show at least, more lawful. Civil liberty, as Sismondi 
 has drawn out, was but little known or valued even in the 
 republican states. The wishes of the people were satisfied if 
 rulers were popularly chosen or drawn, and if they kept their 
 office only for a short term. While their power lasted, it 
 hardly differed in extent from that of any permanent des- 
 potism not of the most outrageous kind. It followed that 
 the change from a republic to a tyranny was, in its begin- 
 nings at least, less violent than in Greece. Moreover, the first 
 generation of each dynasty of Tyrants were almost always 
 men of ability ; they were not always quite devoid of virtue ; 
 
 * [For the Pariah Vestry I should perhaps now say the Board of Guardians, 
 the Highway Board, the School Board, perhaps the County Finanoiiil Board of 
 the future.] 
 
44 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 they were men who had at least been brought up as citizens 
 and had not been born in the purple. The saying that 
 
 'Nemo repente fuit turpissimus' 
 
 seems to apply to families as well as to individuals. It was not 
 till after several generations of sovereignty that the viper of 
 the Visconti began to hatch the monstrous brood of Bernabos 
 and Gian-Marias. In many Italian cities, the mass of the 
 people were so used to aristocratic insolence, they were so cut 
 off from all real share in the government, that the establish- 
 ment of a despot might easily look to them like the coming of 
 a deliverer. At any rate it might look like the coming of one 
 oppressor instead of many. The high magistracies were often 
 practically confined to a few distinguished families, even where 
 technical nobility was no longer needed. It was to them alone 
 that the change would involve any great political loss ; and the 
 less exalted spirits among them would easily find compensa- 
 tion in the honours and flatteries of a court. It is true that, in 
 nearly every case, the people came to rue their error. The most 
 imperfect form of law, the most turbulent form of freedom, 
 was found to be better than deadening submission to a single 
 despotic will. The Tyrant too commonly deserved his name ' 
 in the popular as well as in the technical sense; Malatestas 
 were more common than Montefeltros ; Francesco Sforza left 
 his coronet to Galeazzo-Maria. But, at the moment of change, 
 the setting up of a tyranny was far less offensive to Italian 
 than it had been to Grecian feelings. The government of 
 a single person was far less strange to the Italian mind. To 
 the Greek monarchical power in any shape seemed to be one of 
 the characteristics which distinguished the Barbarian from 
 himself But Italy was familiar with monarchs of every size 
 and degree. The existence of feudal princes side by side with 
 the commonwealths, the feudal notions kept up by many of 
 the nobles within the cities, the acknowledged overlordship 
 of the Emperors, all joined together to give an impulse to 
 monarchical government in Italy. The position too both 
 of the Pope and of the Emperor afforded a means of bestow- 
 ing an outward legitimacy on those who became possessed of 
 
I.] ■ AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 45 
 
 sovereign power. The means were indeed not quite so easy 
 as they have become in later times. In our days nothing 
 is simpler than the change of an elective President into 
 a hereditary Emperor. It may be done with equal success 
 on either side of the Atlantic ; the skin of the son of fortune 
 may be indifferently white or black ; it matters not whether 
 the work is done by simple violence or vith some outward 
 show of legality. In either ease might makes right, and the 
 crown covers all defects. In old Greece and Italy the art of 
 a Soulouques and a Buonaparte appeared only in a much ruder 
 form.* Neither in Greece nor in Italy did the God or the 
 saint whom he had sworn by always keep back an ambitious 
 leader from the luxury of a coiiji d^etat. But the Greek was 
 commonly high-minded enough to despise the mere gewgaws 
 of kingship, and even the Italian was modest enough to 
 abstain from the highest of earthly titles. Rumour said 
 that Gian-Galeazzo had a royal crown in his treasure-house 
 designed for his own brow ; but respect for his feudal superior 
 hindered him from forestalling the lofty style of their Csesarean 
 majesties of France and Hayti. Old Greece was far behind 
 the march of modern improvement ; she drew a distinction 
 between rvpavvos and ^aaiXevs which our age seems to have 
 forgotten, and she afforded no means, violent or legal, of con- 
 verting one into the other. Italian polities equally drew the 
 perfectly analogous distinction between the hereditary prince 
 of a feudal lordship and the Tyrant who arose in a civic re- 
 pubHcf But the Itahan Tyrant, far as he lagged behind more 
 recent professors, at least possessed means of changing his title 
 which were denied to his Grecian forerunners. The partizan 
 chief who, half by force, half by election, became ' Lord ' or 
 ' Tyrant ' of an Italian commonwealth, was himself not unfre- 
 quently the hereditary feudal prince of some smaller territory, 
 
 * [Soulouques and Buonapartes are now happily swept away from the list of 
 rulers. But the loathsome flattery with which the fallen Tyrant has been 
 greeted in this country shows something very wrong in the moral feelings of 
 the age, and makes one fear that Soulouques and Buonapartes may not have 
 passed away for ever.] 
 
 + The indifferent term 'signore,' exactly translates the indifferent term 
 
46 ' ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 and the distinct sources of his authority over the two states 
 might easily come to be confounded. Thus the Marquesses of 
 Este became Lords of Modenaand Ferrara, and they were often 
 spoken of as Marquesses of the latter city before they had 
 gained any formal right to the title. In any case, the position 
 of a feudal prince, independent in fact, though nominally 
 holding of a superior lord, was one perfectly familiar both 
 to the ruler and to his subjects, and it was one to which an 
 easy process could raise him. It only needed the outlay of 
 some small part of what he levied on his countrymen to buy 
 from the Pope or the Emperor a diploma changing the 
 fallen commonwealth into a duchy or marquisate to be held 
 by himself and his heirs for ever. Such a document at once 
 changed, legally at least, his usurped and precarious power 
 into an acknowledged and lawful sovereignty, handed on 
 according to a definite law of succession, and subject to all the 
 accidents of a feudal lordship. But such a process often carried 
 with it the seeds of its own destruction. When Gian-Galeazzo 
 bought the investiture of a Duke of the Empire from the 
 careless Wenceslaus^ he paved the way for all the wars which 
 devastated his duchy, and for the final loss of its independence. 
 When Borso of Este became a Papal vassal for his new Duchy 
 of Ferrara, he took the first step towards its ultimate absorp- 
 tion into the immediate domain of the Roman See. 
 
 This phsenomenon of Tyrants is one which seems to he 
 peculiar to Greece and Italy among the various systems of 
 town-autonomy. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, a 
 demagogue * now and then won an influence which prac- 
 tically made him the temporary sovereign of his own city. 
 But no such demagogue ever founded a permanent tyranny ; 
 much less did he ever change his position into an acknow- 
 ledged sovereignty. Again, between Greece and Italy we 
 may discern some chronological differences. In the Greek 
 colonies the Tyrant was a phsenomenon to be found in all 
 ages, and his position seems to have differed less than else- 
 where from lawful kingship. Not only the laureate 
 
 * [I do not use tlie word contemptuously : SrinayaiySs — a name given to 
 Periklda himself — is surely the highest title that man can bear.] 
 
[.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 47 
 
 Pindar, but Herodotus himself does not scruple to apply 
 bhe title of ^aaiKevs to various Sicilian and Italian rulers.* 
 [n the Macedonian times, when Greece had become familiar 
 with kingship, the title was of course more freely assumed. 
 But in Greece itself tyranny was a phsenomenon confined 
 almost wholly to two periods. There were the dema- 
 gogue-Tyrants of the early days of the republics, partizan 
 chiefs who commonly ruled with the good-will of at least 
 a portion of the people. There were the military Tyrants 
 of a later time, who ruled by sheer violence at the head 
 of bands of mercenaries, and who were practically mere 
 
 * [On looking more narrowly into this matter, I doubt whether Herodotus, 
 speaking in his own person, ever does ^ve the title of 0aai\eis to any one 
 who was strictly ripamos. I add an extract from an Essay of mine which 
 deals too much with details to be reprinted in full. (' Herodotus and his Com- 
 mentators,' National Review, October 1862, p. 300.) 
 
 ' Nothing is more clearly marked in Greek political languages than the dif- 
 ference between King and Tyrant, 0aai\eis and ripavvos. The $a(Ti\evs, we need 
 hardly say, is the lawful King, the hereditary or elective prince of a state whose 
 constitution is monarchic. It is applicable alike toagoodKingandtoabadone, 
 to the despotic empire of Persia and to the almost nominal royalty of Lacedaemon ; 
 but it always implies that kingship is the recognized government of the country. 
 The ripawos, on the other hand, is the ruler who obtains kingly power in a 
 republic, and whose government therefore, whether good or bad in itself, is 
 unlawful in its origin. In the same way it is applicable to the lawful King 
 who seizes on a degree of power which the law does not give him ; it is there- 
 fore applied, by their respective enemies, to Pheidfln of Argos and to the last 
 Kleomen^s of Sparta. It is clear then that 0aatKivs is a title of respect, 
 while ripavvos implies more or less of contempt or hatred. The Tyrant would 
 wish to be called paai\(vs, and would be so caEed by his flatterers, but by 
 nobody else. But in republican language, especially in days when lawful 
 Kings hardly existed in Greece itself, lawful kingship might often be spoken of 
 as tyranny. Now all these distinctions are carefully attended to by Herodo- 
 tus; to translate the words 0aai\eis and ripavvos as if Herodotus used 
 them indiscriminately is utterly to misrepresent the author. Herodotus clearly 
 observes the distinction. He applies the word PaaiMvs to foreign Kings, and 
 to the princes of those Greek states where royalty had never been abolished. 
 He gives us Kings of Kyr^nS, Kings of Cyprus, Kings of Sparta, a King of 
 Thessaly,— meaning doubtless the Tagos (v. 63) ; but never, when speaking in 
 his own person, does he give us Kings of Athens or Corinth. When therefore 
 we find a King of Zanklg (vi. z, 3) and a King of the Tarentines (iii. 136) we 
 may fairly infer that at ZanklS and Tarentum kingly government had not 
 gone out of use up to the time of Herodotus. The address Si PaaiKfi, at the 
 beginning of the angry speech of the Athenian envoys (vii. 161), may well be 
 sarcastic.'] 
 
48 ANCIENT GREECE [Essay 
 
 Macedonian viceroys. Neither class were ever acknowledged 
 as Kings, but the later class were still further from such 
 acknowledgement than the earlier. Between the two periods 
 comes the real republican period, from Kleisthen^s to Demo- 
 sthenes, during which Tyrants are but seldom heard of, and 
 scarcely ever in the most illustrious cities. But in Italy, 
 the phsenomenon of tyranny did not begin at all till the 
 republican spirit had begun to decay, and, as we have seen, 
 it gradually changed into what was looked upon as legi- 
 timate sovereignty. 
 
 Lastly, as the Greek nation was the first which developed 
 for itself anything worthy of the name of civilization, Greece 
 and the Greek colonies naturally formed the whole extent of 
 their own civilized world. Other nations were simply outside 
 Barbarians. In the best days of Greece the interference of a 
 foreign power in her internal quarrels would have seemed as 
 if the sovereign of Morocco or China should claim the presir 
 dency of a modern European congress. In later times indeed 
 Sparta and Thebes and Athens, each in turn, found it con- 
 venient to contract political alliances with the Great King at 
 Ekbatana, or with their more dangerous neighbour at PeUa. 
 But the Mede always remained a purely external enemy 
 or a purely external paymaster ; the Macedonian had him- 
 self to become a Greek before his turn came to be the 
 dominant power of Greece. But in mediaeval Italy the case 
 was widely different. She affected indeed to apply the name 
 Barbarian to all nations beyond her mountain-bulwark. Nor 
 did the assumption want some show of justification in her 
 palpable pre-eminence in wealth, in refinement, in literature, 
 in many branches of art, above all in political knowledge 
 and progress. But, notwithstanding this, it was impossible 
 to place mediaeval Italy so far above contemporary France 
 or Spain or Germany, as ancient Greece stood above the 
 rest of her contemporary world. All the states of Western 
 Christendom were fragments of a single Empire, whose 
 laws and language and general civilization had -left traces 
 
r.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 49 
 
 among them all. A common religion too united them 
 against the paynim of Cordova or Bagdad, too often against 
 the schismatic who fiUed the throne of Constantine. Italy 
 for ages saw the lawful successor of her Kings and Csesars 
 in a Barbarian of the race most alien to her feelings and 
 language. Most of her highest nobility drew their origin 
 from the same foreign stock. No wonder then if nations 
 less alien to her tongue and manners played a part in her 
 internal politics which differed widely from any interference 
 of Barbarians in the affairs of Greece. Italian parties ranged 
 themselves under the German watchwords of Guelf and 
 Ghibelin, and fought under the standards of Angevin, 
 Provenpal, and Aragonese invaders. Florence looked to 
 Usance — ^lily to lily — as her natural ally and her chosen 
 |>roteetor. Sicily sought for her deliverer from French 
 oppression in the rival power of a Spanish King. French 
 and Spanish princes had been so often welcomed into 
 Italy, they had so often filled Italian thrones and guided 
 Italian politics, that men perhaps hardly understood the 
 change or foresaw the consequences, when for the first 
 time a King of France entered Italy in arms as the claimant 
 of an Italian kingdom. Gradually, but only gradually, the 
 strife which had once been a mere disputed succession be- 
 tween an Angevin and an Aragonese pretender grew into 
 a strife between the mightiest potentates of the West for 
 the mastery of Italy and of Europe. 
 
 The coronation of Charles the Fifth ends the histoiy of 
 independent Italy. It ends also the history of the Western 
 Empire. No Roman Emperor ever again came down into 
 Italy to claim the golden crown at the hands of the 
 Roman Pontiff. Moreover, since the days of Justinian, no 
 Roman Emperor had ever held the same unbounded sway 
 through the whole length of the Italian peninsula. That 
 sway he indeed handed on to his successors, not indeed to 
 his successors in the shadowy majesty of the Empire, but to 
 those who wielded the more real might of Spain and the 
 
 E 
 
50 ANCIENT GREECE [EssaV 
 
 Indies. If in later times his power in Italy came back to 
 German princes wlio still bore the Imperial title, it came 
 back to them, not as chiefs of a Roman or even a German 
 Empire, but as those who wielded the power of the hereditary 
 states of the Austrian House. The real history alike of the 
 Empire and of the commonwealths ends with the fall of 
 Florence and the pageant of Bologna. The formal close of 
 Italian independence may indeed be put off till the last 
 conquest of Sienna some twenty years later. One Italian 
 state indeed had yet to run a course of glory, but it was 
 hardly in the character of an Italian state. Venice still 
 continued her career as the withstander, sometimes the con- 
 queror, of the infidel. Bragadino had yet to die in torments 
 — the penalty of trusting to an Ottoman capitulation. The 
 fruitless laurels of Lepanto were yet to be won, and Morosini 
 had yet to drive out the Barbarian from the plains of Argos 
 and the Akropolis of Corinth. Genoa still kept her republican 
 forms, and for one moment she showed the true republican 
 spirit. Her patrician rulers had sunk in slumber ; but the 
 people of the Proud City had still, hardly a century back, 
 strength left for a rising which drove forth the Austrian 
 from her gates. But as a whole, Italy was dead. We have 
 ourselves seen her renewed struggles for life; we have 
 again seen her crushed down under the yoke of the brother 
 tyrants of Austria and France. For eight years she has 
 crouched in voiceless and seemingly hopeless bondage. That 
 she has fallen for ever we will not willingly believe. But 
 in what form shall she rise again? Her town-autonomy 
 can never be restored in an age of Emperors and standing 
 armies. Yet no lover of Italy could bear to see Milan 
 and Venice and Florence and the Eternal City itself sink 
 into provincial dependencies of the Savoyard. The other 
 and more fortunate home of freedom supplies the key. If 
 right and freedom should ever win back their own, the 
 course of Aratos and Washington, of Fiirst and Stauffacher 
 and Melchthal,* must be the guiding star of the liberators 
 
 * [I have since learned that the 'Three Men' are mythical ; but the lesson 
 of Swiss histoiy is none the less useful.] 
 
I-] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 51 
 
 of Italy. The union which she failed to work in the 
 twelfth century the bitter experience of ages may lead her 
 to work in these later times. We cannot indeed look to 
 see Italyj any more than Greece, become once more the 
 central point of European history; but it may not be too 
 wild a dream, if only foreign intermeddlers will stand aloof, 
 to hope that an Italian Confederation may yet hold an 
 independent and honourable place in the general system 
 of Europe. * 
 
 • [I leave this as I wrote it. The question of an Italian Confederation has 
 row become as purely a matter of history as the question of a Boeotian Con- 
 federation. Italy has chosen her own form of government ; that form of 
 government every ItaKan is bound loyally to accept, and every lover of Italy 
 is bound to wish it well. Nor can I wonder that the name of a Confederation 
 became hateful in Italy after Buonaparte had put forth the insidious scheme of 
 an Italian Confederation as one of his devices for hindering Italian unity and 
 freedom. The proposal of the sham Confederation was quite enough to hinder 
 the establishment of a real one. Yet I may be allowed to doubt whether. 
 Italy has not been somewhat hasty in her choice, and whether something of a 
 Federal form would not have been better for a constitution which was to take 
 in lands differing so widely from one another in their social state and in their 
 historical associations as do some of the provinces of the present Italian 
 Kingdom.] 
 
 E 2 
 
II. 
 
 ME. GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE 
 HOMERIC AGE.* 
 
 Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. 
 W. E. Gladstone, D.C.L.^ M.P. for the University of 
 Oxford. 3 vols. Oxford, 1858. 
 
 These three volumes of Mr. Gladstone's form a great, but 
 a very unequal work. They would be a worthy fruit of a 
 life spent in learned retirement. As the work of one of 
 our first orators and statesmen, they are altogether won- 
 derful. Not indeed that Mr. Gladstone's two characters 
 of scholar and statesman have done aught but help and 
 strengthen one another. His long experience of the world 
 has taught him the better to appreciate Homer's wonderful 
 knowledge of human nature ; the practical aspect of his 
 poems, the deep moral and political lessons which they teach, 
 become a far more true and living thing to the man of busy 
 life than they can ever be to the mere solitary student. And 
 perhaps his familiarity with the purest and most ennobling 
 source of inspiration may have had some efiect in adorning 
 
 • [I have left this Essay substantially as it was first -written. I have made 
 some verbal improvements, and I have left out some passages which had lost 
 their point through lapse of time, but I have not altered any actual expres- 
 sions of opinion. I should now perhaps write a little less enthusiastically on 
 one or two points than I did then, but I have seen no reason to change the 
 general views which I held then. I stiU believe that we have in the Iliad and 
 Odyssey, the genuine works — allowing of course for a certain amount of iuter- 
 polation — of a real personal Homer. There are of course difficulties about such 
 a belief, but the difficulties the other way seem to me to be greater. The theory 
 of Mr. Paley, the most unbelieving of all, I hope some day to have an oppor- 
 tunity of examining in detail.] 
 
MR. GLADSTONE'S HOMER, &c. 53 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's political oratory with more than one of its 
 noblest features. He is not unlike the Achilleus of his own 
 story. He may at least say with equal right, 
 
 Ix^p^s 7ap jioi Ktivos, b\>ms 'AtSao wi\rj<riv, 
 
 Ss x' ETf/Joi' liiv KevBet ivl fpiaiv, &Wo Si Pa^d. 
 
 What strikes one more than anything else throughout Mr. 
 Gladstone's volumes is the intense earnestness, the loftiness of 
 moral purpose, which breathes in eveiy page. He has not taken 
 up Homer as a plaything, nor even as a mere literary enjoy- 
 ment. To him the study of the Prince of Poets is clearly a 
 means by which himself and other men may be made wiser 
 and better. Here lies an immeasureable distance between 
 him and a purely literary critic like Colonel Mure. Indeed 
 Mr. Gladstone's morality, pure and noble as it is, is, we think, 
 somewhat overwrought. It sometimes sinks into asceticism, 
 sometimes into over-scrupulousness. So, in the more purely 
 intellectual portions of his inquiry, we can easily see that 
 same over-subtlety with which his censors reproach him in 
 his speeches. Everywhere minute, everywhere ingenious, he 
 often attempts to prove too much, and to find meanings in 
 Homer of which Homer certainly never dreamed. In short, 
 every one of the noblest qualities which adorn, every one of 
 the defects which mar, the political portraiture of the most 
 earnest and eloquent of living statesmen, is to be found trans- 
 ferred in all its fuUness to the Studies on Homer and the 
 Homeric Age. 
 
 In one point at least of his subject, and that the greatest 
 of all, Mr. Gladstone certainly stands unrivalled. In his 
 pages Homer has, for the first time for many ages, had full 
 justice done to him. This saying may seem strange, after 
 Homer has so long been alike the text-book of school-boys 
 and the delight of riper scholars ; but it is true, after all, 
 that Mr. Gladstone has been the first to teach us to admire 
 Homer as we ought. He claims for him, and that most justly, 
 a place difiering, not only in degree but in kind, from all who 
 have come after him. He is the first of poets, to whom Dante 
 
54 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 and Shakespere alone could ever be seriously compared ; and 
 lie is set above Dante and Shakespere by tbe fact of his being 
 the first in time, with every thought native and unborrowed. 
 Homer is moreover not only a poet, but, indirectly at least, 
 he is a historian, a moralist, and a divine ; he is our sole 
 witness to the events, the manners, and the creed of Greece 
 in her heroic age. Yet, as Mr. Gladstone truly eomplainSj 
 for ages past men have not learned to draw the proper line 
 between him and all who came after him. They have not 
 even learned to come to the fountain-head, and to quaff for 
 themselves at the true well of inspiration. Men's ideas of 
 the Homeric age are largely drawn, not from Homer himself, 
 but from modern descriptions or abridgements, or at best 
 from the later Greek and Latin writers. The popular con- 
 ception of the Homeric characters comes, not so much from 
 Homer himself, as from poets like Virgil and Euripides, who 
 treat Homeric subjects in a non-Homeric manner, and in 
 whose hands both the spirit of the heroic age and the likeness 
 of the individual heroes is utterly defaced and degraded. 
 The school-boy reads Homer as his first Greek poet ; but 
 he does not read through the Hiad and Odyssey, and, if he 
 did, he would be unable to fathom their full depth and 
 greatness. In the Universities Homer is strangely neglected 
 for the tragedians. In general life many a man keeps up 
 some knowledge of Latin literature and Latin poets, while, 
 if he has ever gained any real knowledge of those of Greece, 
 he has altogether let it slip. In the very assembly where 
 Mr. Gladstone holds so high a place, it is quite regular to 
 quote the heartless and egotistical talk of the pious ^neas, 
 while one word of the living oratory of Achilleus spoken 
 in his own tongue would be at once cried out against as a 
 breach of order. That unhappy habit, continued in blind 
 I imitation of mediajval practice, by which we begin education 
 with the artificial literature of Rome, instead of going at once 
 \to the fountain-head of immortal Greece, has done endless 
 Iharm to Homeric and to all Hellenic study. Mr. Gladstone 
 Ihimself has not escaped. The example of many earlier 
 
II.] HOMER AND TEE HOMERIC AGE. 55 
 
 seholarsj strengthened by the authority of Bishop Thirlwall 
 and Mr. Grote, has fully established the practice of calling' 
 the Greek Gods by their own nameSj instead of those of the 
 analogous Italian deities ; yet Mr. Gladstone goes back to the 
 bygone fashion of calling Zeus Jupiter and Athene Minerva. 
 He disapproves of the practice, but he does it all the same. 
 Now really nothing is more fatal than this. In the first place 
 it is simply a blunder. It is confounding two distinct and 
 very different religions. There is just as much and just as 
 little reason for calling Zeus Jupiter as there is for calling him 
 Woden or Brahma.* And the practice is utterly inconsistent 
 with the aim which Mr. Gladstone so specially seeks after, the 
 separation of the Homeric poems from all later and inferior 
 literature. Mars, Venus, Vulcan, are thoroughly vulgarized ; 
 so are Jupiter and Juno somewhat less thoroughly. But the 
 real Olympian Gods are still untouched. Poetasters do not 
 scribble about Ares and Aphrodite ; penny-a-liners do not dub 
 the village blacksmith HSphaistos ; nor does any sportsman 
 that we ever heard of call his pointer after the wife and sister 
 of Zeus. Mr. Gladstone, of all men, was bound to keep the 
 Homeric Olympos pure from the introduction of what are 
 practically degrading nicknames. So, in rescuing the hero of 
 Ithaca from the calumnies of Virgil, we would also rescue his 
 name from the perversions of Latin tongues. Ulysses may 
 pass, and welcome, as the cruel and crafty sinner of the ^Eneid, 
 but let us keep unhurt in name as well as in character the 
 true and brave and wise Achaian hero, the divine Odysseus 
 of Homer. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone scarcely enters at all into what is called the 
 ' Homeric controversy.' He takes for granted, and we think 
 quite fairly as regards all the main points, that the controversy 
 exists no longer ; that the matter has been set at rest by the 
 unanswerable arguments of Colonel Mure. It shows indeed 
 how truly Mr. Gladstone may complain of Homer being 
 imperfectly understood, when the critics of one age undertook 
 
 ' * [Practically "Woden answers to Zeus ; phEologioally the English cognate 
 of Zens is Tw— the epSnymos of Tuesday.] 
 
56 MR. GLABSTONWB [Essay 
 
 to run him down, and the critics of the next thought it a 
 great exploit to tear him in pieces. How little could men 
 have understood the epic art of Homer, how little could they 
 have entered into the wonderful dramatic power by which 
 every character is clearly conceived and consistently kept 
 up from Alpha of the Iliad to Omega of the Odyssey, when 
 they looked upon the poems as mere chance assemblages 
 of detached ballads ! It is to the honour of English common 
 sense that these notions were never very prevalent among us, 
 and that it is by English scholarship that they have been 
 finally overthrown. Mr. Grote, though a partial unbeliever, 
 raised a vigorous protest against the worst forms of unbelief. 
 Colonel Mure and Mr. Gladstone have done the business more 
 thoroughly, and have cast the whole wretched theory to the 
 winds. It is impossible to go through the works of these 
 two great scholars without feeling more and more convinced 
 that the old critics of Alexandria were more skilful in their art 
 than the modern critics of Germany. They have given back 
 to us the living personal Homer, the first of bards and the 
 first of sages, the painter of the whole life of heroic Greece, the 
 man who drew AchUleus and Odysseus, Helen and Penelopeia, 
 and who peopled Olympos with the grand assemblage of 
 deities created after the likeness of man. They have set up 
 again the true Homeric faith. We have again our Homer, 
 the author of the Iliad and Odyssey,- and of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey only, with his works handed down to us in a state 
 nearly as pure as any other part of the ancient literature of 
 Hellas. 
 
 But, while Mr. Gladstone has done no more than justice in 
 claiming for Homer his place at the head of the poets of aU 
 ages, in claiming for him a paramount authority as the one 
 trustworthy expounder of the heroic life of Greece, we cannot 
 but think that he goes a great deal too far in the amount of 
 positive historical credit which he allows to him. Mr. Glad- 
 stone seems almost willing- to accept the Iliad as a substantially 
 true metrical chronicle. The case seems to us to be this. 
 Homer is a very high historical authority in a certain sense. 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 57 
 
 We have no doubt that his heroic age is a real age. It is 
 drawn with all the simplicity and artlessness of a picture 
 taken from the life. Homer describes the sort of scenes 
 which he had seen himself and had heard of from his father. 
 No doubt he describes the heroic life in its best colours; 
 but it is still a real life and not an imaginary one. In a 
 conscious and reflecting age a writer may, by a combination 
 of antiquarian knowledge and poetical genius, produce a vivid 
 picture of a long past age. But such a picture smells of 
 the lamp; it needs an historical student either to produce 
 or thoroughly to enter into it. Or again, a great poet may 
 produce a grand picture out of an utterly fictitious tale, with 
 no reproduction of any age in particular. The former has 
 been at least the aim of writers like Scott and Bulwer. 
 The latter we see in Shakespere's King Lear.* Now nothing 
 is plainer than that the Iliad belongs to neither of these 
 classes. In Homer we cannot talk of either knowledge or 
 ignorance. He simply sets before us the life which he 
 himself Uved, described doubtless in its fairest and noblest 
 aspect, but still essentially the real life of his own time. 
 For all points of archaeologyj all customs, forms of govem- 
 mentj modes of religious belief, we refer to Homer with 
 unshaken faith. And, if we accept him as an authority at 
 all, it clearly foUows that we must, with Mr. Gladstone, 
 accept him as a paramount authority, differing in kind from 
 all others. For he alone is a direct witness ; every one else 
 speaks at secondhand. 
 
 But this is quite another matter from following Mr. 
 Gladstone in his whole length of accepting Homer, as he 
 really seems to do, as strictly an historical authority, if not 
 on the level of Thucydides, at any rate on that of Herodotus. 
 To justify us in this we need something like corroborative 
 evidence, something like testimony as to the time when he 
 lived, and the means of knowledge which he had. But 
 
 * [I might add Macbeth; for, though Lear is an imaginary person, while 
 Macbeth and his much calumniated wife really lived, they have been changed 
 into imaginary persons in the hands of legend-makera.] 
 
58 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 such corroborative testimony utterly fails us. We know 
 nothing either of Homer or of the Homeric heroes except 
 from Homer himself. We have no kind of chronology, no 
 means of judging how long a time passed between the events 
 themselves and the bard who sang of them. He may, as a boy, 
 have seen Odysseus as an old man, or he may have thought 
 of Odysseus as living ages before himself. We cannot tell 
 one way or another. Mr. Gladstone himself has shown how 
 little is proved either way by such sayings as that about 
 oloi vvv PpoToi ilai Now, in either case, we may be sure 
 that Homer's picture of Odysseus faithfully sets forth the 
 manners and feelings of his own time, whether his own time 
 was really the time of Odysseus or not. Such is always the 
 case with a purely native and unlearned poetry. In either 
 case he is equally great as a poet, equally valuable as an 
 archaeological witness. But the two supposed cases make 
 simply all the difference as to his strictly historical credit. 
 In short we are not in a position to judge. We have no 
 means of cross-examining our witness. We can neither 
 accept his story nor cast it aside. 
 
 Analogy may indeed help us a little. Homer gives us a 
 poetical account of events of which we have no historical 
 record. Now other ages give us poetical or romantic accounts 
 of events of which we have also the real history*. In these 
 cases we commonly find a certain foundation of fact, but 
 the truth is covered over with fictitious details. A few 
 leading persons, a few leading events, are still preserved, but 
 the great bulk of the tale is fabulous. The names of Attila 
 and Theodoric may be just seen, and no more, in the old 
 Teutonic romances. There is an Arthur and a Charlemagne 
 of history, an Arthur and a Charlemagne of romance."f Of 
 
 * [I have since said something on this head in the Essay on the Mythical 
 and Eomantic Elements in Early English History, in my former series.] 
 
 t [I should now say a Charles of history and a dtarlemagne of romance. 
 The distinction is convenient, and I wish that we had one of the same kind to 
 distinguish the real Arthur who fought against Cerdio from the mythical 
 subject of so many romances and poems.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 59 
 
 the Arthur of history we can only say that he was a British 
 prince who withstood the English invaders. In Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth he does exploits rather in the style of the 
 Seven Champions of Christendom. Of the Charlemagne of I 
 history, thanks to Eginhard and the Capitularies, we know| 
 far more than of many much later Kings. But the Charle- 
 magne of romance, with his adventures at Constantinople 
 and Jerusalem, is quite another person from the Charles 
 who beheaded the Saxons and was crowned by Pope Leo at 
 Home. Whenever we have the means of judging in such 
 cases, we find that there is a kernel of truth; but it is a 
 kernel so overlaid with fiction, that, without external help, 
 it is impossible to distinguish the two. 
 
 We have here taken an analogy very unfavourable to 
 Homer, but it is one which we think justifies us in assuming 
 that the Homeric poems do contain some portion of true 
 history. We cannot fancy that they are less trustworthy 
 than the romances of Charlemagne and Arthur. It is veryj 
 likely that they are much more trustworthy. It is very likely ' 
 that Homer lived much nearer to the events which he reeordsj 
 and that he was much more careful of truth in recording 
 them. The chances are greatly in favour of the Homeric 
 poems containing very much more historical truth than 
 the mediaeval romances. But we are not in a position to 
 measure the exact amount of truth. We cannot dogmatize 
 either way. In the worst case we may be pretty sure there 
 is some truth ; in the best case we may be pretty sure there 
 is a good deal of fiction. But we cannot say how much is 
 truth and how much is fiction, except when we can find 
 some external evidence, either to corroborate or to confute, 
 or else when there is some internal evidence which carries 
 with it an overwhelming conviction either of truth or of 
 falsehood. 
 
 Now for some points of the Homeric story strong external 
 evidence may be brought in corroboration. It is the fault 
 of the school represented by Sir G. C. Lewis to rely too 
 much upon written books only, and almost to put out of sigh!; 
 
\ 
 
 60 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 the growing sciences of archseology and ethnology. But 
 these last sometimes step in very opportunely to confirm the 
 legend. The Iliad speaks of a great King of Mykene as 
 warring on the coast of Asia. To one who knew Greece 
 only from Herodotus and Thucydides the story would seem 
 absurd. In their pages MykSnS appears utterly insignifi- 
 cant ; Homer's picture of it as the capital of Peloponnesos 
 might be cast aside as wholly incredible. But go to the place 
 itself, look at the wonderful remains of early magnificence 
 ■which are still there, and the difficulty at once vanishes. 
 Legend and archseology between them have kept alive a truth 
 which history has lost. We may fairly set down the Pelopid 
 dynasty as a real dynasty. But, if we are asked whether 
 Atreus and Agamemnon were real persons, we have no 
 evidence to make us decide either way. Again, the settle- 
 ment of large bodies of Greeks on the Asiatic shore is an 
 undoubted fact. And it is impossible not to connect with 
 this undoubted fact the legend of the Trojan war. It is 
 impossible not to believe that the warfa,re of Agamemnon 
 represents some stage or other of the process which made 
 the western coast of Asia Hellenic. Again, ethnological 
 evidence alone would lead us to beUeve that the Greeks found 
 there a people separated from themselves by no very wide 
 ethnical barrier. This exactly falls in with Homer's portrai- 
 ture of the Trojans. They are inferior to the Greeks, but they 
 are not broadly distinguished from them in creed, manners, or 
 language. Here ethnology supports legend. That Greeks 
 did war on the Hellespont is certain; that a Mykenaian 
 King may have led them is highly probable. Here then 
 we have clear external evidence corroborating the bare 
 historical kernel around which the poetry of the Iliad has 
 gathered. 
 
 Again, there are some places in which internal evidence 
 leads us to the belief that Homer meant to make direct and 
 accurate statements of historical fact. We have never doubted 
 for a moment that the Catalogue in the Iliad is a real picture 
 of the Greek geography of the time. It is quite unlike any 
 
61 
 
 IL] EOMEB AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 
 
 such catalogues in other poems or romances, where distance 
 
 either of time or space allowed the author to invent at pleasure, 
 
 and to tickle his audience with strange or high-sounding names. 
 
 The exact amount of its historical value, the degree to which 
 
 we are justified in appealing to it to prove the existence of 
 
 particular persons, depends upon the question which wei 
 
 cannot answer, How long did Homer live after his heroes? 
 
 But we may surely trust it for the names and the position of 
 
 cities, for the boundaries of regions, and for their importance 
 
 relatively to one another. We may be quite sure that, even 
 
 if Homer's heroes lived ages before him, he would give us 
 
 the geography of his own times and not that of any other ; 
 
 and in the geography of his own times he could not venture 
 
 to be otherwise than accurate, with all Greece ready to 
 
 criticize and confute him.* Again, when he makes Poseidon 
 
 foretell that, after Priam and his city had fallen, the 
 
 children's children of Aineias would still go on reigning 
 
 in the Troad, it is impossible not to believe that there 
 
 was, in the poet's days, an existing dynasty, sprung or 
 
 claiming to spring from Aineias. And on negative points 
 
 the historical testimony of Homer becomes of the highest 
 
 importance. If he had ever heard of those Egyptian and 
 
 Asiatic settlements in Greece which are dreamed of by later 
 
 writers, it is utterly impossible that there should have been, 
 
 as there now is, not the slightest reference to them in any 
 
 portion of the poems. The lines in which Homer describes 
 
 the passing of the sceptre from father to son along the line 
 
 of Pelops may or may not be enough evidence to prove the 
 
 real existence of each of the potentates which they speak of, 
 
 but, as other evidence has led us to believe that the dynasty 
 
 is a real dynasty, so this passage may lead us to believe that 
 
 it was not a dynasty of foreign blood. Had Homer believed 
 
 the patriarch of the house of Agamemnon to have been of 
 
 * [Every time I read the Homeric Catalogue I am the more conTinced that 
 we have in it a real picture of early Greek geography. No conceivable motive 
 can be thought of for its invention at any later time.] 
 
62 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 Lydian birth, he would hardly have left the fact to be first 
 told to us by Pindar. 
 
 But we must remember, on the other hand^ that the sUenee 
 of Homer on any point is not absolutely conclusive. It is con- 
 clusive only when the point is one which we cannot fancy him 
 failing to speak of, had he heard of it. This applies both in 
 divine and in human affairs. Nothing is more certain than that 
 Homer did not invent, however much he may have embellished, 
 either his Olympian mythology or his Trojan war. The con- 
 stant references which the Odyssey contains to matters which 
 do not come within the range of the Hiad, fully show that 
 there was a great mass of floating Troic legend, of which 
 I Homer only wrought up so much as suited his own purpose. 
 \ Again, it is equally clear that Homer allowed his own taste 
 "' or discretion to settle the prominence to be allowed to different 
 portions of his theological system. The series of revolutions 
 by which Zeus was enthroned on Olympos were clearly not 
 unknown to Homer; but, while ^Eschylus has chosen to 
 bring them prominently forward. Homer has chosen to 
 keep them in the background. It may therefore sometimes 
 happen that even very late and inferior writers may 
 preserve traditions which fill up Homeric gaps or explain 
 Homeric allusions. But we fully grant to Mr. Gladstone 
 that Homer's authority is absolutely paramount ; that every 
 other testimony is merely secondary; that, though we may 
 admit some things which are not in Homer, we must admit 
 nothing which is inconsistent with Homer. 
 
 In what we have already said we have gone through pretiy 
 nearly all that we have to say on Mr. Gladstone's Prolego- 
 mena, and we have forestalled some parts of the later divisions 
 of his work. Of its three volumes, the first contains ' Pro- 
 legomena' and 'Aehseis, or the Ethnology of the Greek 
 Baces ;' the second is wholly devoted to ' Olympus, or the 
 Eeligion of the Homeric Age ;' the third contains ' Agore, 
 Politics of the Homeric Age ;' ' Ilios : Trojans and Greeks 
 compared ;•■ 'Thalassa: the Outer Geography;' 'Aoidos: 
 some points of the Poetry of Homer.' Here is matter 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 63 
 
 enoughj matter whose full examination would need a volume 
 rather than an essay, if we were to examine with any minute- 
 ness. The treatment of the different sections too is widely 
 different, both in kind and in merit. Rightly to deal with 
 some of them would involve a minute examination of nearly 
 the whole Homeric text. Other parts are of a more general 
 character, and to them we shall chiefly confine our attention. 
 
 The division headed ' Thalassa ' we shall not go into at all. 
 It is entirely devoted to points of minute mythical geography, 
 which, if examined at all, must be examined in great detail. 
 It is better to pass it by than to deal with it cursorily and 
 unworthily. We will only say that it shows Mr. Gladstone's 
 never-failing minuteness and never-failing ingenuity in a 
 high degree ; but we decline to pronounce any opinion for or 
 against the accuracy of his theory. 
 
 ' Achaeis ' is a division which we cannot undertake to 
 examine in detail, and which yet we cannot pass by quite 
 so briefly as ' Thalassa.' It is, to our minds, the weakest 
 part of the book : and we shall presently give our reasons 
 for thinking so. 
 
 ' Olympus' is perhaps the most important part of the 
 work, and it shows most fully all the strength and all 
 the weakness of the author's mind. ' Agore,' ' Ilios,' and 
 'Aoidos,' all contain much attractive and admirable matter, 
 mingled with things here and there from which we dissent. 
 To these four sections we shall give our chief attention, with- 
 out binding ourselves minutely to follow Mr. Gladstone's 
 arrangement. 
 
 But, first, for a few words as to the ethnological portion of 
 the work, the section headed ' Achaeis.' It is no disparage- 
 ment to Mr. Gladstone to say that he is not an ethnologer. 
 He is so many things that are great and good that he can 
 afford to be told that he has made a mistake in entering at 
 all on this particular field. We do not know how far our 
 conjecture is really correct ; but it seems to us that while 
 Mr. Gladstone has always kept up his general scholarship 
 in other respects, he is a kind of sens studiomm in this 
 
64 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 special branch. Now ethnology, like every other science, 
 needs a preliminary discipline, and the greatest mind cannot 
 deal with the subject offhand. Of Mr. Gladstone's wonder- 
 fully minute study of the poems, of the wonderful ingenuity 
 of his mind, this section gives perhaps the fullest proof of 
 any. But it is equally clear that he has no scientific way of 
 looking at ethnological problems. He seems to have no clear 
 view of the general relations between the great divisions of the 
 human family. He is carried away by small points of inci- 
 dental likeness and unlikeness. He finds a kindred between 
 Pelasgians and Egyptians, because both are agricultural and 
 neither (according to him) maritime. At the end of his 
 inquiry, he seems to identify Medes, Egyptians, and Pelas- 
 gians with the remains of the Allophylian races in western 
 and northern Europe. If this means anything, it must 
 mean that Medes, Egyptians, and Pelasgians were all Tura- 
 nian, a view which certainly struck us with' no small amaze- 
 ment. We had long ago made up our own minds that the 
 Pelasgians and the Hellenes differed pretty much as the 
 different branches, or rather as the different stages, of the 
 Teutonic nations ; as Danes from Germans, or rather perhaps 
 as Anglo-Saxons* from modern Englishmen. These Tura- 
 nian Pelasgians were, according to Mr. Gladstone, overlaid 
 by the Aryan Hellenes fresh from Persia. His arguments seem 
 to be, that the names "EAAot and "EAATjres come near to that 
 of the JEelleats in modern Persia ; that, on the other hand, 
 the name of Fars or Persia is met with again in the hero 
 Persem and the goddess Persephone; that Achaimenes and 
 Achaia may be connected ; that there is some likeness between 
 the manners of the heroic Greeks and those of the nomad 
 tribes of modern Persia. Now there is a good deal of 
 Turkish blood in modern, Persia ; and one would like to be 
 quite sure how many of Mr. Gladstone's Eelleats are true 
 Iranians of the land of light, and how many are Turanian 
 
 * [I should not now talk about 'Anglo-Saxons' as opposed to 'modem 
 Englishmen." But it should be remembered that the word 'Anglo-Saxon 
 is a perfectly good word, if people would only use it in its right meaning.]- 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 65 
 
 impostors from the land of darkness. But granting that the 
 forefathers of every living Eelleat were found under the 
 banner of Roostam, what does it all prove ? We really never 
 knew a man of a fourth part of Mr. Gladstone's understand- 
 ing patch up a theory on such wretchedly slender evidence. 
 Undoubtedly the Hellenes and the Persians are conneeted, 
 because both are members of the great Aryan family ; but we 
 cannot see the slightest sign of any more special connexion. . 
 Greeks and Persians are kindred ; so are Greeks and Hindoos, 
 Greeks and Teutons, Greeks and Slaves, Greeks and Celts. 
 But Mr. Gladstone's special Helleno-Persian brotherhood seems 
 to us to rest upon no good ground whatever. It is just the 
 sort of thought which might come into the mind of an 
 ingenious man who had heard of some of the discoveries of 
 modern ethnology, but who had not learned to look at them 
 in their scientific bearings. But it is quite unworthy of Mr. 
 Gladstone. He is a man whom we may fairly ask to forbear 
 from dealing with any subject except the many of which he 
 is master. 
 
 We will now turn to the Olympian division of the work. 
 In treating the mythological side of the Homeric poems^ there 
 are two obvious ways of dealing with the subject. The com- 
 mentator may, if he will, strictly keep himself to the Homeric 
 text ; he may bring out, as far as may be, the belief about 
 his Gods which was held by Homer himself; he may compare 
 passage with passage, and, if need be, he may contrast the 
 Homeric picture with that of other poets and philosophers. 
 In short, he may deal with the Gods simply as divine actors 
 in the poems ; he may comment on their functions and 
 characters as conceived by the poet, and he may draw what- 
 ever lessons, poetical or moral, may be suggested by the 
 part which they play in the story. In such a view as this 
 the origin of the Hellenic mythology, its relation to other 
 religious systems, are altogether beside the question. But in 
 another aspect, these latter questions become altogether para- 
 mount, while the mode of dealing with the subject which 
 
66 ME. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 may liave been followed by Homer or any other Greek poet be- 
 comes important only as part of the evidence. Professor Max 
 Miillerj in his most striking paper in the Oxford Essays, has 
 shown that there is a science of Comparative Mythology, just 
 as there is a science of Comparative Philology.* The two 
 sciences follow the same process of argument, and indeed, to a 
 great extent, they work upon the same set of facts. Neither 
 the Greek language nor the Greek mythology stands alone ; 
 each is a member of a family. Neither of them therefore can 
 be fully understood without reference to the other languages 
 and the other mythologies of the same family. A man who 
 understands neither Sanscrit nor Teutonic may indeed reach 
 to a high degree of Greek scholarship of a certain kind ; he 
 may know all the minutest usages of the language, and he 
 may be able fully to enter into every literary beauty of the 
 poet or the orator. So may a man who knows nothing of 
 Indian or Scandinavian mythology no less fully enter into the 
 poetical or the political character of the mythology of Greece ; 
 he may fully understand its part in the drama of the Iliad ; 
 he may trace its gradual change in later times ; he may see 
 clearly how it influenced, and how it was influenced by, the 
 character of the nation. He can indeed, in either case, carry 
 on his researches from Homer onwards into the historic age, 
 but he cannot carry them from Homer backwards into times 
 when even poetical and mythical evidence fails us. With- 
 out a knowledge of the languages and the mythologies of 
 ancient India and of the other kindred races, no man can 
 ever deal with the origin either of the Greek language or of 
 the Greek mythology, f 
 
 Now with the purely Hellenic and Homeric side of the 
 subject no man is better fitted to deal than Mr. Gladstone. 
 Though the Hellenic mythology is historically a mere frag- 
 
 * [It must be remembered that tbia waa written when Comparative Mytho- 
 logy was quite a new subject, and when even Comparative Philology had not 
 made much way in Kngland ; otherwise there now seems something amusing 
 in the way in which I wrote then.] 
 
 + [This requirement of Itnowledge must be taken with the limitations which 
 1 have made in my Eede Lecture on the Unity of History, p. 17.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 67 
 
 ment of a common earlier system, yet practically, poetically, 
 and politically it is the original creation of the Hellenic mind. 
 In the shape in which we behold it, it bears the full impress 
 of the Hellenic character, the stamp of all that distinguishes 
 the Greek from the other branches of the Aryan stem. As far 
 as the student of Greek literature and of Greek political history 
 is concerned, it is of native Hellenic birth. And it is in the 
 poems of Homer that we find the Hellenic mythology in its 
 earliest and purest form. With this portion of the subject 
 Mr. Gladstone's Hellenic scholarship and Homeric enthusiasm, 
 his keen observation and refined taste, enable' him to deal 
 with a master's hand. Allowing for that vein of exaggeration 
 and over-subtlety which runs through the whole work, allow- 
 ing also for a strange ascetic tone of which we shall again 
 speak, the dramatic character of the Homeric Gods as actors 
 in the Homeric poems, the practical effect of the Homeric 
 religion upon the thoughts and acts of the Homeric man, have 
 been handled in Mr. Gladstone's Olympian volume with a 
 depth, a vigour, a minuteness, and a fullness, with which they 
 have never been handled before. But unluckily Mr. Gladstone 
 has also thought it his duty to set forth a theory of the 
 historical, or rather archaeological, origin of the Greek re- 
 ligion. And here he utterly and lamentably fails. He fails 
 for the same reason that he fails in his ethnological section. 
 Scientific ethnology he attempts without being master of it ; 
 scientific mythology he does not even attempt. Though he 
 once quotes Professor Miiller's Essay, he seems practically not 
 to know that there is such a thing as Comparative Mytho- 
 logy. That the origin of the Greek mythology is to be 
 sought for in some common source with the mythology of 
 India, of Italy, and of Scandinavia is a thought which plainly 
 never came into his mind. 
 
 The fact is that Mr. Gladstone has sacrificed the scientific 
 treatment of his subject to a supposed theological necessity. 
 Throughout the book he shows a strange fondness for bringr 
 ing in references to Scripture, and a strange mixture of 
 timidity and daring in his way of dealing with them. Be- 
 
68 "" MR GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 cause lie holds the Old Testament to be the Word of God, be- 
 cause he holds the Hebrews to have been God's chosen people, 
 he forbids us to yield any literary homage to Hebrew writers, 
 or any historical admiration to Hebrew warriors and statesmen: 
 Yet, with a daring which many would call irreverent, he sees 
 a shadow of the Christian Trinity in Zeus, Poseid6n, and 
 Ai'doneus ; he sees the seed of the woman in Phoibos Apoll6n 
 and the Divine Wisdom in Pallas AthenS. Now this kind of 
 thing is not to be borne. It is fit only for those divines 
 who combine thorough weakness of intellect with a certain 
 amount of school-boy learning, just as mere vulgar reviling 
 of heathens and heathenism befits that other class of divines 
 who find it a hard task to construe either their Homer or 
 their Greek Testament. Mr. Gladstone does not indeed be- 
 long to the very worst form of the school ; he does not fancy 
 that the Greeks really borrowed, directly or indirectly, from 
 the Jews. He divides the Greek divinities into two classes, 
 Traditive and Inventive. The former he holds to come from 
 recollections, however fragmentary and perverted, of original 
 patriarchal tradition. This tradition was, among the Hebrews, 
 miraculously preserved. Among other nations, it was left to 
 its fate. It was therefore, not indeed wholly lost, but dis- 
 torted, 'disintegrated,'' and mixed up with mere human inven- 
 tions. From this last source spring the Inventive deities, 
 pure devices of -man, embodiments of ' nature-worship,' ' pas- 
 sion-worship,' and mere poetic caprice. Some are of Pelasgian, 
 some are of Hellenic birth, some were brought in from foreign 
 lands. But all are mere human invention ; they do not 
 preserve even a distorted form of the genuine patriarchal 
 tradition. 
 
 Now our first answer to all this is that Mr. Gladstone's 
 division into ' Traditive' and ' Inventive' deities is a purely 
 arbitrary one. Those deities in which he personally can see 
 traces of primitive tradition he puts in one class, and all the 
 rest he puts in another. The whole thing is pure theory, with- 
 out a shadow of any external evidence. Another writer might 
 see traces of primitive tradition in Hermes and Aphrodite, and 
 
n.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 69 
 
 none at all in Athene and Apollon. And, for the reason which 
 we have just given, we maintain that Mr. Gladstone has not 
 earned for himself the right to theorize upon the suhject. 
 It is evident that the Aryan nations, before their separa- 
 tion, had made certain advances in knowledge and culture, 
 while certain further advances were made by each separate 
 branch of the race after the dispersion. Now surely, what- 
 ever amount of primitive truth is preserved in the Hellenic 
 mythology must have been part of this common intellectual 
 stock of the whole Aryan family. If, after the dispersion, 
 the Hellenes learned any additional truths of which Hin- 
 doos or Teutons remained in ignorance, knowledge so gained 
 could not be unbroken patriarchal tradition; it would come 
 near to that special and direct biblical derivation which 
 Mr. Gladstone rightly casts aside. We do not at all dog- 
 matically deny that traces of patriarchal tradition may 
 survive in the Hellenic mythology ; but we do say that 
 a man can never find them out by merely sitting down 
 with his Homer on one side and his Bible on the other. 
 He must first of all find out how much of the Hellenic 
 mythology is distinctively Hellenic^ how much belongs 
 to the common stock of the whole Aryan family. Other- 
 wise he is acting exactly like a philologer of the last century 
 who derived some Greek word from Hebrew, without think- 
 ing of asking whether the root was found in German or 
 Sanscrit. It is highly probable that, both in language and 
 in belief, there is a certain element common to the Aryan 
 and the Semitic families. But it does not do to look for 
 Semitic analogies for any one Aryan language or any 
 one Aryan mjrthology. The only scientific process is, to 
 ask. First, What have Hellenes, Hindoos, Teutons, &c. in 
 common? Secondly, What have Hebrews, Arabs, &e. in 
 common ? Thirdly, What have these two original stocks in 
 common? When Mr. Gladstone has found out the common 
 element in the Greek, Italian, Persian, Indian, Teutonic, 
 Celtic, and Slavonic mythologies, he may then fairly ask 
 how much of this common element is of patriarchal origin, 
 
70 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 and how much is due to human invention before the dis- 
 persion. Till he has done this, he has no right arbitrarily to 
 set down some Hellenic deities as ' Traditive,' and others as 
 ' Inventive.' 
 
 And further still, even if we were in a position to deal with 
 a common Aryan mythology instead of with a merely Hellenic 
 mythology, we should still protest against the particular 
 kind of analogies which are sought for by Mr. Gladstone. 
 In the Homeric mythology he finds traces of the doctrines 
 of the Trinity, of the fall of man, of the promise of Messiah, 
 of the existence and the rebellion of .Satan. Now we are here 
 treading on dangerous ground, as we wish, while dealing with 
 the present question, to avoid as far as possible all points of 
 dogmatic theology. But it really seems to us that Mr. Glad- 
 stone might just as well go to his Homer for evidence for or 
 against Mr. Gorham or Archdeacon Denison. We say nothing 
 for or against the doctrines for which either of those divines 
 have been called in question ; we only say that we cannot find 
 their confirmation or their refutation either in Homer or in 
 the Pentateuch. We say exactly the same of the doctrines 
 for which Mr. Gladstone seeks in the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 Surely the primitive patriarchal tradition of which Mr. 
 Gladstone speaks can be found nowhere else but in the book 
 of Genesis. And we trust that we shall give no ofience to 
 the most orthodox mind, if we say that most of the doc- 
 trines of which Mr. Gladstone speaks are not to be found in 
 the book of Genesis. It is the very essence of Christianity to 
 be a religion of progression ; even before we come to actual 
 Christian teaching, nothing can be plainer tban that far 
 clearer and loftier ideas of the divine nature were granted to 
 the Prophets than any that can be found in the Law. It 
 is thoroughly weak to try to prove that the contemporaries 
 of Abraham had equal light with the contemporaries of 
 Saint Paul, or even with the contemporaries (5f Isaiah. We 
 claim the right to do for Moses the same good service which 
 Mr. Gladstone has done for Homer. We can accept nothing 
 as patriarchal tradition except what we can find in a literal 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 71 
 
 and grammatical construction of the text of the book of 
 Genesis. We are so much in the habit of reading the Hebrew 
 records by the light of Christian and later Jewish glosses 
 that few people know what is there and what is not. We 
 have known people who fully believed that the book of 
 Genesis said, in so many words, that 'the Devil tempted 
 Eve,' and we have seen them stand altogether aghast at 
 finding that there was nothing of the kind there. Now 
 surely no one who reads the book of Genesis, forgetting as 
 far as possible all later books, will find in it any of those 
 doctrines of which Mr. Gladstone sees traces in the Homeric 
 poems. * Genesis tells us of a serpent beguiling Eve by his 
 natural subtlety, and of the mutual hatred thence following 
 between men and serpents. Genesis tells us of giants be- 
 gotten between the sons of God and the daughters of men. 
 Genesis and the books which follow it contain passages 
 which, if they were found in Homer, would certainly be 
 understood as implying highly anthropophuistic views of 
 Deity. It is in the image of God that man was- created. 
 The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. 
 God smelled a sweet savour from Noah's sacrifice. The Lord 
 went his way after communing with A.braham. The elders 
 saw God, and did eat and drink. Moses saw the back parts 
 of God, but might not see his face. On the other hand, we 
 find no reference whatever to a future state; we find not a 
 word against polygamy ; we find marriages with an aunt, 
 a wife's sister, a man's own half-sister, having at least the 
 sanction of patriarchal example. We presume not to com- 
 ment or to interpret ; we only say what is in the book. To 
 us nothing can be clearer than that, through the whole 
 history of Judaism and Christianity, new light has been con- 
 tinually given ; indeed, no Christian; to be a Christian at 
 all, can deny this, thougjh he may weakly strive to escape 
 
 * [Let me say that in all this passage I simply gave the results of my own 
 thought. I never read a word of any of the Gei-man writers on biblical 
 matters, and later controversies in our own tongue had not begun when this 
 was written.] 
 
72 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 the consequences. All Mr. Gladstone's doctrines are later 
 doctrines ; they are later deductions^ later developements, 
 later revelations^ if he pleases^ which he has no right to set 
 down as forming any part of patriarchal tradition. The 
 personification of the Logos or the Wisdom cannot be traced 
 back beyond the book of Proverbs, and there it appears only in 
 a most rudimentary shape. Yet this is the doctrine of which 
 Mr. Gladstone finds a traditionary vestige in Athenfi. There 
 is not a shadow of evidence that the ancient Hebrews had any 
 distinct,* if any, idea of a Divine Trinity, that they had 
 any idea at aU of a future Deliverer at once divine and 
 human, or any idea of evil spirits at warfare with, or in 
 rebellion against, the Most High, f We find the first clear 
 traces of these doctrines in writings much later than the 
 time of Homer. Mr. Gladstone has no right to take for 
 granted that they were handed down from the beginning 
 by unwritten tradition. He brings no sort of proof, and all 
 probability is against it. He cannot show that they formed 
 any part of the patriarchal creed ; he has therefore no right 
 to look for even the most perverted vestiges of them in the 
 primitive mythology of Hellas. 
 
 While dealing with Mr. Gladstone's treatment of this 
 portion of his subject, we cannot help expressing our 
 amazement at the chapter which concludes the Olympian 
 volume ; that headed, ' The Ofiice of the Homeric Poems 
 in relation to that of the early Books of Holy Scripture.' 
 We must copy the following passage at length : — 
 
 ' Should we, like some writers of the present day, cite the Pentateuch 
 before the tribunal of the mere literary critic, we may strain our generosity 
 
 * We speak thus guardedly, because of two remarkable passages, which will 
 at once occur to the reader, in the early part of Genesis. But few scholars 
 now believe that even these passages have the meaning which was formerly 
 so often attributed to them, and certainly the general mode of speaking 
 throughout that book would not suggest the idea of a plurality of persons in 
 the Godhead. 
 
 + If we rightly understand Mr. Gladstone, he looks upon Ej-onos as a, 
 representative of Satan, and yet holds that the Kronid brothers represent the 
 divine Trinity. One stands aghast at this amazing piece of theogony. 
 
11.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 73 
 
 at the cost of justice, and still only be able to accord to it a secondary place. 
 The mistake surely is to bring it there at all, or to view its. author otherwise 
 than as the vehicle of a divine purpose, which uses all instruments, great, 
 insignificant, or middling, according to the end in view ; but of which all the 
 instruments are perfect, by reason, not of what is intrinsic to themselves, but, 
 simply and solely, of their exact adaptation to that end. 
 
 If, however, we ought to decline to try the Judaic code by its merely po- 
 litical merits, much more ought we to apply the same principle to the sublimity 
 of the prophecies, and to the deep spiritual experiences of the Psalms. In the 
 first, we have a voice speaking from God, with the marks that it is of God so 
 visibly imprinted upon it, that the mind utterly refuses to place the prophetical 
 books in the scale against any production of human genius. And all that 
 is peculiar in our conception of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, does not tend so much 
 to make them eminent among men, as to separate them from men. Homer, 
 on the other hand, is emphatically and above all things human : he sings by 
 the spontaneous and the unconscious indwellings of nature; whereas these are 
 as the trumpet of unearthly sounds, and cannot, more than Balaam could, 
 depart from that which is breathed into them, to utter either less or more. 
 
 But most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of philoso- 
 phical or poetical ^competition. In that hook, for well-nigh three thousand 
 years, the piety of saints has found its most refined and choicest food; to such 
 a degree, indeed, that the rank and quality of the religious frame may in 
 general be tested, at least negatively, by the height of its relish for them. 
 There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of 
 the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, 
 for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude 
 and rest. There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul 
 to God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had its 
 foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged book it was 
 permitted to anticipate His coming. 
 
 We can no more, then, compare Isaiah and the Psalms with Homer, than 
 we can compare David's heroism with Diomed's, or the prowess of the 
 Israelites when they drove Philistia before them With the valour of the 
 Greeks at Marathon or Platsa, at lasus or Arbela. We shall most nearly 
 do justice to each by observing careftiUy the boundary-lines of their re- 
 spective provinces.' 
 
 All this is evidently heartfelt, and it almost deserves the 
 name of eloquence ; yet it is to us simply unintelligible. 
 Mr. Gladstone, by way of reverence for certain writings, 
 actually goes out of his way to disparage them. Why cannot 
 he accept the Hebrew writings for all that he says, and yet 
 not deny the palpable fact that they are also the literature of 
 the Hebrew nation, — its whole literature, historical, political, 
 and poetical, as weU as strictly theological? Why should 
 the Pentateuch, as a literary work, be content with a secondary 
 
74 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 place? Could Homer or ^schylus or Dante surpass the 
 grandeur of the Song of Moses ? What is there that ' sepa- 
 rates Isaiah and Jeremiah from men' ? What is more truly 
 and beautifully human than the lament of Jeremiah over the 
 city sitting solitary which once was full of people ? What 
 Lombard dreaming of the rending of the yoke of Habsburg, 
 what Greek or Bosnian looking for the final overthrow of the 
 trembling Ottoman, could desire a truer psean of a nation's 
 vengeance than Isaiah's hymn of triumph over the doomed 
 tyrant of Babel?* What is there in the noblest of the 
 Psalms, in the seventy-eighth, in the hundred and fourth 
 and those which follow it, which need ' refuse the challenge 
 of poetical competition' against the noblest poetry of the 
 whole world ? And the last paragraph, seemingly designed 
 to explain, only makes matters darker stiU. We do not 
 compare the prowess of the Israelites at Gath or Gob with 
 that of the Greeks at Plataia or Arbela, simply because 
 we doubt whether the Hebrews knew any such skilful order 
 as the Dorian phalanx, or wielded any weapon so effective as 
 the Macedonian sarissa. But why we may not compare the 
 heroism of David and that of Diomedes is altogether beyond 
 our understanding. May we compare Greeks and Jews only 
 in their sins, and not in their virtues? Mr. Gladstone 
 himself, in one place, draws out an elaborate comparison 
 between the demeanour of Bathsheba and that of Helen. 
 But must we look upon the mutual love of Jonathan and 
 David as less touching, less thoroughly human, than that of 
 Achilleus and Patroklos, because one is recorded in a Hellenic, 
 and the other in a Hebrew volume ? 
 
 We wonder then not a little at the strange mixture of 
 daring and timidity which Mr. Gladstone shows in his way 
 of dealing with the Old-Testament records; and we dissent 
 altogether from the way in which he tries to connect those 
 records with the Greek mythology. We therefore altogether 
 reject that division into Traditive and Inventive deities 
 
 * [Surely that glorious hyran never sounded in men's ears with a more 
 thrilling voice than in September 1870.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 75 
 
 whick forms the groundwork of his whole system. And 
 with our notions of the relations between Pelasgians and 
 Hellenes, we see hardly more ground for his division of 
 the Inventive deities into Pelasgian and Hellenic, or for his 
 derivation of some of them from Phcenician or other foreign 
 sources. We hold the Greek mythology to be, exactly like 
 the Greek language, a Hellenic developement from the 
 common primgeval stock of the Aryan races. The scientific 
 problem is to show how much is shared by other Aryan 
 nations, how much is distinctively Hellenic. The next en- 
 quiry would be, what Asiatic elements were mingled in the 
 later Greek religion after the date of the Greek settlements 
 in Asia. It is clear that the later Greeks practised both 
 Barbarian rites and Barbarian vices ; but in Homer we find 
 no trace of either. Of these two questions, the latter hardly 
 comes within Mr. Gladstone's scope ; the former, in the 
 view he has chosen to take of his subject, certainly does so ; 
 but he has nowhere even tried to examine it. 
 
 We think then that the general principle of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's 'Olympus' is altogether inadmissible. But we can 
 hardly speak too highly of the services in detail which he 
 has done to the study of the Homeric religion. The dramatic 
 aspect of the several deities, the conception which Homer had 
 formed of each, their powers, their functions, their physical 
 and moral attributes, the features in which Homer's idea of 
 each differs from that of later writers,— all these points have 
 been studied by him with minute and affectionate care, and 
 they are brought out in his work with a fullness and accuracy 
 of detail, with an union of taste and moral feeling, such as 
 we have never seen before. Every reader of the poems must 
 have remarked the vast superiority of Apoll6n and AthenS 
 over all their fellow divinities ; but few probably have taken 
 the trouble to bring together the evidence of their superiority 
 in the way in which it has been brought together by Mr. 
 Gladstone. They are clearly not subject either to the same 
 physical restrictions or to the same moral weaknesses as 
 the other dwellers on Olympos. All this, according to 
 
76 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, shows them to be Traditive deities ; the proofs 
 which he brings together to that end are most valuable for 
 other purposes, but the main argument altogether fails. For 
 Zeus too is a Traditive deity, and Zeus is pursued by Mr. 
 Gladstone with a relentless enmity. Smile-loving AphroditCj 
 golden Aphrodite, fares no better. Mr. Gladstone is a stern 
 moralist, and will have no pity on the transgressions of either 
 father or daughter. Altogether we think that Mr. Gladstone's 
 picture of Olympos is a little over-drawn. He tells us that 
 the Homeric men are much better than the Homeric Gods. 
 This, to a certain extent, is true; though Mr. Gladstone is 
 certainly a little over-partial to the Homeric men, and, we 
 think, a little over-severe upon the Homeric Gods. But is 
 not something of what Mr. Gladstone complains almost in- 
 herent in any polytheistic system? May not its rudiments 
 be found in every attempt of man to conceive of Deity at 
 all ? The Homeric Gods live regardless of the restraints 
 which they themselves impose on men. Their moral standard 
 is lower ; they are more selfish, more capricious, more sensual, 
 than their worshippers. Now it is hardly possible to conceive 
 of a divine being as governed by the same moral laws which 
 rule mankind. Many Christian divines tell us that morality 
 is simply conformity to the Divine wiU. The Deity is here 
 looked at as the maker of the moral law, but not as being 
 himself bound by it; and there is probably no religion 
 in which devout men do not find difiiculties in recon- 
 ciling what they believe of the object of their worship 
 with the rules which they follow in shaping their own 
 earthly life. Now, in a monotheistic creed, the Deity may 
 be thus placed, as it were, above human morality, and no 
 immoral influences need follow. But when we come to a 
 polytheistic system, to many anthropophuistic Gods dwell- 
 ing in an organized society, in such a case to be above 
 human morality easily slides into being below human mo- 
 rality. A monotheistic religion looks on the Godhead as 
 all-wise and all-powerful. Polytheism cannot make each of 
 its deities separately all- wise and all-powerful ; power and 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 77 
 
 wisdom must at any rate be divided among: them. The 
 idea of deity in any case implies superior happiness to that 
 of mortals ; the Gods, free from death and from old age, 
 cannot lead man's life of pain and labour. But, if soj 
 they can hardly be made subject to the rules of law and 
 responsibility in the same manner as their worshippers. 
 Each God may find hindrances to the carrying out of his 
 personal will ; but the Gods, as a body, must exercise a will 
 uncontrollable and irresponsible. Deity, in any case, carries 
 out its own pleasure ; but it is easy to see what must be 
 the pleasure of a company of anthropophuistic Gods. The 
 loftiest virtues of man are those which arise most directly 
 out of the imperfection of man's nature : deity allows no 
 scope for their exercise. No wonder then if the Homeric 
 Gods are selfish, capricious, and sensual ; it is rather to the 
 credit of Homer and his contemporaries that they are no- 
 thing worse. The Gods of many mythologies are positively 
 malevolent and cruel, — attributes which we can hardly fasten 
 even upon the Ares of Homer. The Hellenic Gods may be 
 both sensual and selfish; but neither cruelty nor obscenity 
 forms any part of their worship. The Hellenic Gods are at 
 least men ; those of many mythologies are brutes or fiends. 
 
 Closely connected with all this is one of the most remark- 
 able features of Mr. Gladstone's work ; the ascetic, the almost 
 monastic, sternness of its moral tone. We honour him alike 
 for the loftiness and for the straightforwardness of his 
 teaching ; it is certainly far better to talk with him in plain 
 words about 'lust' and 'adultery,' than to speak in the 
 common flippant way of ' amours,' ' intrigues,' ' gallantries,' 
 and the like. We believe that Mr. Gladstone is essentially 
 right; but he certainly goes too far; in short, he becomes 
 monastic. It is in this respect, above all others, that he is 
 imfiiirly hard upon his Gods and unfairly partial to his men. 
 The first aspect of the Homeric creed in this respect shows 
 us two opposite phsenomena. On "the one hand, the pas- 
 sions of the Gods are far more unrestrained than those of 
 men ; but, on the other hand, there is in Olympos something 
 
78 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 like that monastic reverence for virginity of which we find no 
 trace on the Hellenic earth. The sexual morality of the 
 Homeric Greeks was manifestly far purer than that of their 
 successors, far purer than that of Eastern nations. But of 
 the mediseval notion of virginity there is not a trace. The 
 virgin must remain a virgin till she becomes a matron, but a 
 virgin she must some time cease to be. In Olympos, on the 
 other hand, the Gods, Zeus above all, practise polygamy, 
 adultery, and seduction, without scruple. But to set against 
 that, we have in Athene, in Artemis, in Hestie, the virgin cha- 
 racter as distinctly marked as in any mediseval saint ; it is 
 more remarkable still if, as seems highly probable, we are to 
 look on the same character as a feature of the male deity/ 
 Apoll6n. It seems as if two opposite notions were striving for 
 the mastery. It seems naturally to foUow that anthropophu- 
 istic beings should beget and be begotten ; and, once granting 
 this, it would be hard to conceive how powers raised above 
 human law and responsibility could be tied down by the 
 restraints of human matrimonial rules. To be placed above 
 humanity becomes, in this respect, almost the same thing as 
 to be placed below it. Yet it is clear that in all this there is 
 something very repugnant to any idea of deity, especially to 
 any idea of female deity. As regular monogamy was the idea 
 of the divine condition least easy to be imagined, the Greek 
 carried out the two opposite conceptions in all their fullness on 
 either side. He pictured to himself libertine deities and virgin 
 deities, but few or no regular and respectable married couples. 
 Hence we get the profligate Zeus and the pure ApoU6n, the 
 adulteress AphroditS and the chaste maiden Athene. The 
 purity of Apoll6n and Athene is brought out strongly by 
 Mr. Gladstone in his portraits of them as ' Traditive' deities ; 
 but he has hardly g^ven prominence enough to the general 
 idea of virgin deities as a set-oif against the idea of libertine 
 deities. 
 
 If the sexual vices of the gods are looked on as the 
 natural result of their position, it would seem that lack of 
 shame about such matters would almost unavoidably follow. 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 79 
 
 Mr. Gladstone complains bitterly that so it is : men and 
 women, if they err, are at least ashamed of their errors; Gods 
 and Goddesses unblushingly avow theirs. But we are not 
 sure that such is altogether the case. It would be quite 
 logidal if it were so ; but an anthropophuistie creed would 
 easily, at the expense of logic, transport shame, as well as 
 other human feelings, into the breasts of the immortals. 
 Now surely the whole song of DSmodokos assumes such a 
 feeling of shame. Ares and Aphrodite are heartily ashamed 
 of being caught ; while it is the same feeling of shame — that 
 oKms about which Mr. Gladstone has much to say — which 
 hinders the Goddesses from coming to see them in the toils 
 of Hephaistos. Mr. Gladstone says that the trespass of an 
 immortal is never dealt with in so tender and delicate a 
 tone as that of the maiden Astyoehe, 
 
 ■napBevos alSoirj, v-nip6j''ov eiffava^affa. 
 
 If we may break Mr. Gladstone's canon of never stepping 
 beyond the Iliad and Odyssey^ we would appeal to the 
 beautiful ' Homeric ' hymn to Aphrodite. Mr. Gladstone's 
 rule seems to be, that after Homer things could never get 
 better, but only get worse. Now certainly the Aphrodite of 
 the hymn is very far from the grossly sensual Aphrodite on 
 whom Mr. Gladstone is so severe. Certainly, as Colonel 
 Mure says, * ' The author has here treated a licentious 
 subject, not merely with grace and elegance, but with an 
 entire freedom from meretricious ornament.' Colonel Mure 
 looks on the poem, and we fully go along with his opinion, 
 as being probably indeed not Homeric, but certainly as being 
 in no way unworthy of Homer. 
 
 The morals of the Gods can hardly be separated from the 
 morals of the heroes. As we said, the sexual morality of 
 heroic Greece is far above that of later Greece, far above that 
 of any Eastern people. The higher position of women in 
 the Homeric age has been admirably worked out by Mr. 
 Gladstone. He also distinctly brings forward the marked 
 
 * Literature of Ancient Greece^ vol. iii. p. 346- 
 
80 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 difference between early and later Greece in the absence in 
 early times of those strange perversions of the passions which 
 really had a most important effect upon later Greek society. 
 We must remember that the tie which bound Harmodios and 
 Aristogeitdiij which united men like Solon, Aristeides, and 
 Epameinondas to the objects of their affections, was not the 
 mere brutality of a Turkish pasha; the whole set of senti- 
 ments implied in the notion of romantic love had been thus 
 strangely turned away from their natural direction. Hence 
 this strange side of later Greek society went hand in hand 
 with the later Greek seclusion of women. Both customs 
 doubtless, notwithstanding the strange assertion of Herodotus 
 the other way, were corruptions which were brought into 
 Greece from an Eastern source. The harlot again, — a charac- 
 ter familiar enough in later Greece, not unknown at an 
 early stage of Oriental life, — is nowhere seen in the Homeric 
 poems. But Mr. Gladstone certainly tries to make out some- 
 what too strict a monogamy for his heroes. His notion is 
 that the only breach of the strict law of marriage which the 
 heroic code tolerated was that each of the chiefs, when away 
 from home before Troy, allowed himself a single captive con- 
 cubine. Briseis, in his view, is the wife of Achilleus, or at least 
 she stands to him in a relation hardly to be distinguished from 
 marriage.* The damsels offered to him by Agamemnon were, 
 according to Mr. Gladstone, not intended as concubines. To 
 us it is clear that they were to be whatever Briseis was ; they 
 and Briseis are classed together. In Agamemn6n's offer f we 
 find the words— 
 
 b6]ff€L 8' Ittt^ '^volkos dfivfiovas, epy' eiSvias^ 
 AeaPiSas, &s, ore hia&ov ivKTinivqv this airbs, 
 4^^Ked\ at T(5t6 h&XXu kvifcajv ^\a yvvaiKuv. 
 rAs iiiv Toi Si;<TU, jitTci S' iaatrai, ijv tcSt' anrjipa 
 Koiuprjv Bpiaijos. 
 
 * [Something, I conceive, like the marriage riiore Danico of which we hear 
 a good deal in early Norman and English history. It must be remembered that 
 Brisfiis herself (II. xix. 299) draws the distinction between her own position 
 and that of a wife.] 
 
 t II. ix. 270. [Cf. xix. 246.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 81 
 
 So again in the speech of Aias in the same book * — 
 
 ffol 5' aWqKrlv t€ tcaie6v re 
 BvjX&v ivi <rr^Oea<ri Beol Biaav, eireKa Koifnjs 
 otijs' vvv Se Toi kmci napiff^^ofifv €^ox dpiffraSf 
 a\Aa re ir6\\' iirl rfiai. 
 
 Were these Lesbian women to be prized only as epy dbvMi ? 
 One of their countrywomen certainly was thought worthy 
 to fill the place of Brislis herself. When the messengers 
 were gone, 
 
 'Axt^^evs eu8e fivx^ K\ttTii]s ivir'i]«Tov' 
 T^ 5* &pa •trapKaT4\€KT0 yvvi], riiv Aeff^6$fV ^-ye, 
 ^6p0tXyTos 6ir/dTrfPf AiofJ.'ljSr] KaWivdpTjos. + 
 
 The fact is that the heroes evidently allowed themselves full 
 Mahometan privileges with regard to ' those whom their right 
 hands did possess.' Regular marriages were the law of heroic 
 Hellas ; adultery was abhorred ; prostitution was unheard of ; 
 but concubinage with captives clearly brought no discredit 
 on either party. And is not the relation of Gods to mortals 
 very like that of conquerors to captives ? The irregularity in 
 either case was not so much immoral as extra-moral ; it im- 
 plied no corruption and it carried with it no dishonour. And 
 it may be doubted whether, on this particular pointy historic 
 Greece was not more scrupulous than heroic Greece. The 
 conduct which is recorded of Achilleus as a matter of course is 
 brought up as an unheard-of crime against Alkibiades. Alki- 
 biades, who counselled the destruction of Melos, had a son by 
 a Mehan captive. This, according to Andokides or whoever 
 speaks in his name, was something worse than the evil deeds of 
 all the sinners represented on the tragic stage, and the birth of 
 the child is spoken of as more unlawful than that of Aigisthos. J 
 
 * II. ix. 632. t Ibid. 659. 
 
 J "Os TT/Xi/toitras notfiTat tSiv afUipTrjii&Tan' iirep0o\ht, fiffrc irip\ tZv MrjXloiv 
 •miiiujv iiToif)j]vdiievos k^avSpairoSi^eaiai, irpiifievos yvvai/ca ruv cuxfUtK^rav vlov 
 i( avT^s ne-roirjTai, ts roao^TO) Ttapavoputnipms AiyiaBov yiyovev, Har' l« t&v 
 ixBlffTon' dXKi}\ois iriipvue, koX tuv ohaoT&roiv iirapx^i avr^ rh eCxoTa rovs liiv 
 irenotTjicivat Toba Si neirovBevaf &(iOV Si Tr)v rdA/jac auToB aa^iarfpov ert Sie\0e7v 
 (which is done at some length). 'AvSok. /car. 'AK«. 23. Surely the moral of 
 the case is not greatly affected by the difference between 't\fs airbs and yvdinjv 
 6,iro(jnjv&fitvoa i^avSpamSiifaeai, between AeaPSOev ^e and nptdiiivos. 
 
 G 
 
82 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 The language is certainly exaggerated ; the story may be true 
 or false ; the speech may be genuine or spurious ; but there is 
 the sentiment, one which the lovers of Chrys6is and Bris&'s 
 would certainly not have entered into. 
 
 , The language of Homer on all these subjects is simply 
 natural. He is neither prudish nor prurient, neither monastic 
 nor meretricious. He sets forth the whole life of his Gods and 
 of his heroes ; whether he is speaking of Zeus or of Achilleus, 
 of Alkinoos or of Odysseus, the companion of his bed, whether 
 wife or concubine, is recorded in precisely the same matter- 
 of-fact way as the materials of his dinner. Mr. Gladstone is 
 scandalized at the advice which Thetis gives, in plain language, 
 to her mourning son,* and he comforts himself that it is only 
 a divine and not a human mother who uses it. But does 
 Thetis do anything more than say straightforwardly what 
 other people think^ but do not say ? Make the language a 
 little less direct ; talk about 
 
 ' Lovely Thais sits beside thee ; 
 Take the gifts the gods provide thee;' 
 
 and it may with propriety be read aloud in a family : dilate 
 and dilute it a little more into mere commonplaces about 
 love and beauty, and no ears and no tongues will shrink 
 from what is essentially the same doctrine. Homer doubt- 
 less thought that he was simply stating an undoubted fact 
 of man's nature, the truth of which the wise Odysseus and 
 the chaste Penelopeia did not scruple practically to acknow- 
 ledge, f 
 
 We have dwelled perhaps over long on these subjects be- 
 cause of the prominence which Mr. Gladstone has given to 
 them, and the very curious way in which he has treated them. 
 But his general picture of the heroic Greeks is very true and 
 
 * tcTevov ^/Jix^y, Teopi fih oSvpofievos /cat ax^vaiv, 
 aiiv cScai icpaSir)v, lUiivrnxhos oiS4 Ti itItov, 
 oUt' evvr,s ; wyaibv bl yvvatui wep hi <j>i\6Tr)Ti 
 liiffyeaS: H. xxiv. 128. 
 
 Achilleus, as Mr. Gladstone says (ii. 464), makes no direct answer ; but, later 
 in the book (xxiv. 676), he practically accepts his mother's counsel, 
 t Od. xxiii. 295-300. 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 83 
 
 noble. There is in it indeed somewhat of exaggeration. 
 Mr. Gladstone, after so many years in the House of Com- 
 mons, seems to be getting rather tired of the nineteenth 
 century. The age of Perikles or Demosthenes is one too like 
 to his own to give him any relief ; he plunges with increased 
 enthusiasm into a state of things more distant and more un- 
 like. How thoroughly and genially he has gone into the 
 life and feelings of those old times may be seen from his 
 highly wrought description of the life of an Aehaian of the 
 heroic times.* It is one of the gems of the book : it would, 
 as a description, be a gem in any bookj but we suspect 
 that Homer himself would hardly have known his heroes 
 again in a picture from which nearly all the shades are 
 left out. 
 
 The last volume is, we think, on the whole, the best of the 
 three. It gives more room for the exercise of the higher 
 qualities of the author's mind, and less for the display of 
 his ethnological and theological crotchets. On the section 
 ' Thalassa,' as we before said, we give no opinion ; nor do 
 we mean to dwell at length on some minute and very in- 
 genious criticisms on the sense of number and of colour 
 in Homer^ which are contained in the section ' Aoidos.' We 
 have then the sections ' Agore' and ' Ilios/ and the remain- 
 ing portions of ' Aoidos,' left before us. 
 
 The section ' Agore ' is one which could hardly have been 
 written by any man but one in whom the characters of 
 statesman and scholar are so happily united as Mr. Gladstone. 
 Brim-full as it is of true Homeric scholarship, almost every 
 page contains some little touch or other which shows that 
 it comes from one who is no solitary student, but a man to 
 whom the j3ov\aL and the ayopaC of real life axe matters of 
 every-day experience. In several parts of his argument, Mr. 
 Gladstone grapples very successfully with Mr. Grote. Mr. 
 Grote's strong point lies in historic Greece ; his great glory is 
 
 * Vol. ii. 468—470. 
 
84 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 to have vindicated the character of democratic Athens. But 
 to this darling object of his affections he has sacrificed some 
 other objects not wholly unworthy of regard. Like the 
 Thracian potentate in Aristophanes, 
 
 iv ToTffi Tolxots typcup', ^AOrjvaioi KoXoi' 
 
 but he has forgotten that something worthy of his admiration 
 might have been found in federal Achaia, something perhaps 
 even in monarchic Macedonia, still more than either in the 
 common source of all, in the institutions of heroic Hellas. 
 Mr. Grote can see nothing in the Homeric state of things 
 but a degrading picture of submission on the part of the 
 people towards their princes. This is simply because Homer 
 does not record any formal division, any solemn telling of votes, 
 such as Mr. Grote is familiar with both in Saint Stephen's 
 and upon the Pnyx. Also perhaps because of the chastise- 
 ment dealt out by Odysseus to Thersites, which would hardly 
 appear scandalous on the other side of the Atlantic* Mr. 
 Gladstone, less enamoured of democracy, while an equal hater 
 of tyranny, sees more clearly into the truth of the matter. 
 Possibly he goes too far the other way, for it would seem that he 
 looks on the institutions of historic Greece as corruptions rather 
 than developements of the heroic model. Mr. Grote complains 
 that m the Homeric Assembly nobody but the princes talk, 
 nobody at all votes, and that the will of the King of Men 
 always prevails. He is therefore half inclined to look upon 
 the whole thing as a sham. Mr. Gladstone reminds him that 
 the other princes often oppose AgamemnSn, and that the 
 mass of the army, if they do not talk, at any rate cheer. 
 Now to cheer, as he most truly argues, is in truth to take 
 a very practical share in the debate. Mr. Gladstone most 
 happily compares the Homeric Assembly to such a scene as 
 an English county meeting, where it seldom happens that 
 the speaking goes beyond a select few, where a volunteer 
 
 [I was thinking, I believe, of the dastardly attack on Mr. Sumner in the 
 Senate-House— an act largely approved in the Southern States — which was 
 then a fresh story.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 85 
 
 speaker is far from meeting with encouragement, where a vote 
 taken otherwise than by acclamation is decidedly the excep- 
 tion, but which yet affords a genuine expression of public 
 feeling, and where a vote contrary to the popular will could not 
 possibly be carried. Within the Hellenic world the Homeric 
 Agore went on in the Military Assembly of the Macedonians, 
 where Alexander and a few chiefs have most of the talk, 
 where we do not read of any divisions or tellers, but where 
 the mass of the army still know how to express a real will of 
 their own, and where, if they sometimes condemned, they some- 
 times also acquitted, those whom their King and demigo.d 
 denounced to them as traitors. The Homeric Assembly is in 
 everything a youthful institution ; it shares the nature of all 
 youthful institutions ; it is imperfect, but it is a reality as far 
 as it goes. The early institutions of a nation may tail of fully 
 carrying out their ends, but there is no make-belief as to what 
 those ends are. We may well believe that the Old-English 
 Witenagemot was an imperfect way of expressing public 
 opinion ; the King and a few great Earls had doubtless most 
 of the talk ; and to cry, ' Nay, nay,' instead of ' Yea, yea,' was 
 most likely a rare and extreme measure. But we may be sure 
 that the spirit of the thing was exactly opposite to the spirit 
 which has brought about nearly the same external phaenomena 
 in Louis Napoleon's Legislative Assembly. There is all the 
 difference in the world between an Assembly which dares not 
 oppose and an Assembly which has not yet formed the wish to 
 oppose. In the one case it is the relation of slaves to their 
 master, in the other it is that of children to their father. 
 Mr. Gladstone remarks of the Homeric Agore, as Sir Edward 
 Bulwer Lytton does of the English Witenagemot, that in both 
 we find that public speaking is a real instrument of public 
 policy ; and, wherever this is so, they both most truly argue 
 that the real essence of liberty is there. Odysseus and God- 
 wine could sway assemblies of men by the force of eloquence. 
 We need no further argument to show that the assemblies 
 which they addressed were assemblies of freemen. 
 
 Of the sections 'Ilios' and 'Aoidos/ some of the most 
 
86 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 important parts, those namely which relate to the characters 
 of the poems, run closely into one another. The latter part 
 of ' Aoidos ' consists of articles reprinted from the Quarterly 
 Review. We do not know in what order the different parts 
 of Mr. Gladstone's book were written; but we find a cer- 
 tain amount of repetition in these two parts. This strikes 
 us especially in the estimate of the characters of Paris — 
 why not give him his Homeric name of Alexander,* and 
 shut out Virgilian ideas altogether ? — and of Argeian Helen. 
 But this estimate is one of the very best things in Mr. 
 Gladstone's book^ and we can well afford to have it twice over. 
 Mr. Gladstone nowhere shines more than in dealihg with the 
 persons of the Homeric tale, and in distinguishing the true 
 Homeric cbnceptions from the perversions palmed off upon 
 the world by Euripides and Virgil. Of the whole dealing 
 of Virgil with the Trojan story Mr. Gladstone has made 
 A thoroughly withering exposure. A modern Roman could 
 not be an old Achaian ; the court-poet of Augustus could not 
 rival the nature and simplicity of the singer of the Hellenic 
 people ; thus far the fault was that of the age and not of the 
 man. But Virgil might have spared us his wilful perversions 
 both of great matters and of small, alike of the character 
 of Helen and of the comparative bigness of Simoeis and 
 Skamandros. From the Cyclic poets down to Dryden and 
 Racine, the whole world seems to have conspired to disfigure 
 ^he glorious conceptions of Homer, to mar alike the unrivalled 
 power and the incomparable delicacy of his touch. Odysseus, 
 the wise and valiant, becomes a vulgar rogue ; Achilleus 
 sinks into a mere brutal soldier, far below the Homeric Aias ; 
 the brave, the generous, the affectionate Menelaos becomes 
 a coward and a sophist. jSlschylus alone seems to have kept 
 some little reverence for the heroes and for him who drew 
 them. He has given us an Agamemnon who perhaps unduly 
 
 * The double name is curioiis. Homer doea sometimes use the name 
 Paris, but far more commonly that of Alexander. But the latter name 
 gradually disappears in later writers. 
 
II.] HOMER AND TEE HOMERIC A GE. 87 
 
 surpasses tte Agamemnon of Homer ; but in return even 
 he seems not to have been able to touch vvithout defilement 
 the Homeric conception of Achilleus and Patroklos.* But 
 the vrretched treatment which the Homeric characters have 
 undergone rises to its height in the ruthless way in 
 which later writers have marred and defiled the master- 
 piece even of Homer's art, the picture of the Homeric Helen. 
 Even Colonel Mure, who has done so much for Homer and 
 the Homeric personages, here fails us ; it has been reserved 
 for Mr. Gladstone to set once more before us the Helen of 
 Homer in all her beauty. The Helen of the later poets is a 
 vain and wanton adulteress ; the Trojce et patria communis 
 Erinnys, who can at best only excuse herself by laying her 
 own sins to the charge of Fate and Aphrodite. Not such is 
 the Helen of the Iliad and the Odyssey. There the crime of 
 Alexander is not seduction, but high-handed violence ; he is 
 not the corrupter, but the ravisher : Helen is not the willing 
 partner, but the passive victim ; her fault is at most a half- 
 reluctant submission after the fact. No sign of passion or 
 affection does she show for her worthless lover; her heart 
 yearns for Greece and Menelaos, for her forsaken home and 
 her worse than motherless child. The Helen of Homer is, i 
 in fact, the most perfect, perhaps indeed the only, example of I 
 humility and repentance of the Christian type conceived by ' 
 a heathen writer. Every word on which a worse view of her 
 conduct might be founded is put into her own mouth ; like a 
 true penitent, she despises herself, and paints her own doings 
 in colours in which no one else would have dared to paint 
 them. Readers who carry about with them the vulgar post- 
 Homeric conception have always stumbled at the Helen of 
 the Odyssey, restored to her hearth and home and to her 
 husband's love, as though she had never gone in the well- 
 
 • The strange fragments of the J/lvpn'iSoves certainly show that ^sohylus 
 was guilty of degrading the relations of Achilleus and Patroklos, just as the 
 calumnious pen of Niebuhr has degraded the equally beautiful picture of 
 Alexander and Hephaisti6n. 
 
88 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 oared shipSj nor come to the citadel of Troy.* But on the 
 Helen of the Iliad, far more sinned against than sinning, 
 the Helen of the Odyssey follows as the natural afterpiece. 
 All that Mr. Gladstone has said on these two characters of 
 Paris and Helen is worthy the deepest attention of every 
 Homeric student. Had he written nothing else, this alone 
 would be enough to place him in the first rank of Homeric 
 critics. t 
 
 The whole section 'Ilios' is highly interesting and in- 
 genious ; but some things, as usual, strike us as being over- 
 done. It is here, above all, that Mr. Gladstone treats the Iliad 
 too much as a chronicle in verse. He admits indeed in words 
 that the question of historical truth and falsehood is not 
 altogether to the point ; that, in any case, it is the part of the 
 critic distinctly to find out what wais the conception in the 
 mind of the poet, whether that conception was historical or 
 fictitious. He admits also in words that, whether as chronicler 
 or as poet. Homer was not bound to give us the same minute 
 picture of the life of Troy as he gives us of the Hfe of Greece. 
 But in practice Mr. Gladstone hardly carries out his theory. 
 His exaggerated notion of the historical trustworthiness of the 
 Iliad leads him to seek for historical signs of Trojan manners 
 and institutions in every single word of the poet which can 
 anyhow be pressed into such a service. Now we have ad- 
 mitted that Homer is a real historical witness, at least for a 
 real state of things in Greece. But, even if we fully admitted 
 the historical reality of the Trojan War, we could not admit 
 
 * ovK iaf (TV/ios \6yos otros' 
 ov 7Ap e/3as h vrjvirlv ivafKiioa, 
 oiS' i«eo iripyafia Tpoias. — Stesichoros' Palinodia. 
 + While Mr. Gladatone's version of Paris and Helen is undoubtedly that 
 which best harmonizes the various statements in different parts of the Iliad 
 and Odyssey, we stiU think that he builds rather too much upon the mere use 
 of the word a/jirafoi. Surely, as fer as we understand such matters, the two 
 processes run so much into one another that apiri(ai might be not inaccurately 
 used of a case in which the element of seduction overcame the element of 
 violence. And what says Herodotus of this whole class of legends ? 8i'\o ycLp 
 St) an, el /t^ aiiTol i^ovKiaro, oiiK h/ Tiimi(ovTO. i. 4. 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 89 
 
 Homer as an equally trustworthy authority for Trojan affairs. 
 He would assuredly describe the Trojans after the pattern of 
 the Greeks of his own day, or at the utmost — though even 
 this is supposing a rather unlikely striving after accuracy — ■ 
 after the pattern of the inhabitants of the Troad in his own 
 day. But we have no right to assume that either of these 
 pictures would be an accurate representation of the historical 
 TrojanSj if historical Trojans there ever were. Again, we 
 have said that in no case was Homer bound to be equally 
 minute in his descriptions of Greek and of Trojan affairs. 
 Negative arguments therefore prove very little. Homer's 
 silence as to the existence of any Greek practice in Troy 
 does not prove that he purposely meant to imply that it did 
 not exist there. But hence the opposite line of argument 
 gains increased strength. Any positive account of things 
 Trojan is of great importance. And here the minute re- 
 searches of Mr. Gladstone have brought out some very curious 
 points. Everybody has doubtless observed that Priam lives 
 in clearly marked polygamy, while the Greek princes at most 
 practise concubinage. But everybody probably has not 
 observed that, while in Greece the women attract the love 
 of the Gods, in Troy the men attract the love of the God- 
 desses. Again, in Greece we hear little or nothing about 
 priests, but a great deal about prophets. In Troy, considering 
 our slender means of knowledge, the priests cut a great 
 figure. These touches cannot be accidental. They may be 
 genuine elder traditions ; they may be the result of Homer's 
 own observations on that later Dardanian dynasty for whose 
 historical being we hold him to be a trustworthy witness. 
 Nor can it be without some reason or other that Homer 
 always dwells with such delight upon the good and valiant 
 Lykians. They are clearly the only people on the hostile 
 side whom he looked upon as worthy foes of his own 
 countrymen. We do not know whether it is to the purpose, 
 or not, but it certainly is a curious coincidence that, while 
 Achaian and Lykian are the two names in Europe and in 
 Asia which Homer most delights to honour, so it was in the 
 
90 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 Achaian and Lykian Confederations that the greatest share 
 of freedom and good government lingered on till all was 
 engulfed in the universal dominion of Rome.* 
 
 Homer's general picture of his Trojans as compared with 
 his Greeks is very skilfully commented on by Mr. Gladstone. 
 The Trojans are a kindred people ; they are not widely dis- 
 tinguished from the Greeks in manners, religion, or polity. 
 They are not ^apfiap6(jia>voi ; they are not aWodpooi avQpta-noi. 
 No such broad line parts them off from the Hellenic world as 
 that which parts oflF the savage Kyklopes and Laistiygonians, 
 or even the wholly foreign Egyptians and Phoenicians. But, 
 though they are clearly a kindred people, they are no less 
 clearly in every way, as men and as soldiers, an inferior people. 
 But they are not too greatly inferior. They are inferior enough 
 to be beaten ; but they are not so inferior as to make it 
 inglorious to beat them. This train of ideas, in which Homer's 
 patriotism plainly rejoiced, is very minutely and ingeniously 
 worked out by Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 So far as we can conjecture, the picture thus given by 
 Homer may be supposed fairly to represent the facts of the 
 case. If by the Trojans we understand the race whom the 
 ^olian and Ionian colonists found in possession of the 
 western coast of Asia, one can hardly doubt their near 
 kindred with the Greeks. Everything tends to show that 
 they belonged to that race, call it Pelasgian or what we 
 will, of which the Hellenic nation formed the most 
 illustrious member. The little we find recorded of them in 
 authentic history — the local nomenclature of their country, 
 which corresponds in so striking a way with that of the 
 other side of the MgsB&n. — the ease with which the whole 
 land was hellenized, — all point to them, along with Sikels, 
 Epeirots, and Macedonians, as a kind of im.developed Greeks, 
 capable of receiving full Hellenic culture, though not capable 
 of developing it for themselves. This exactly falls in with 
 
 * [This parallel came home to me again in tlie History of Federal Govern- 
 ment, i. 216.] 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 91 
 
 the true Homeric portrait of the Trojans. But here again 
 the true Homeric portrait must be carefully distinguished 
 from the later shapes which it puts on in the hands of Sopho- 
 kles, Euripides, and Virgil. In their hands every touch of 
 Homer's picture is lost. Achaians and Trojans are broadly 
 distinguished as 'F-kX-qvi^ and fiap^apoi. The subjects of 
 Priam are degraded into Phrygians. The Achaians sometimes 
 figure as Dorians, sometimes as Pelasgians. Homer is, on all 
 these points, probable and self-consistent. Euripides treats 
 them in a spirit about as historical as when he makes the 
 supposed wantonness of Argeian Helen the natural result of 
 the scanty clothing which the discipline of Lykourgos allotted 
 to the virgins of Dorian Sparta. 
 
 Not the least, to our mind, of Mr. Gladstone's services 
 to Homer is his defence of the ninth book of the Iliad. 
 In his section 'Aoidos' he has thoroughly overthrown Mr. 
 Grote's idea of an Aclulleid developed into an Iliad, and he 
 has fully vindicated the plot of the poem in its received 
 form. Mr. Grote thinks the ninth book inconsistent with 
 much that follows; all possible satisfaction has been offered 
 AchilleuSj and yet in later books he still wishes to see 
 Agamemnon and the Greeks humbled and suppliant before 
 him. Mr. Gladstone answers that in the ninth book no 
 real satisfaction is offered to the wounded spirit of the 
 hero. Agamemnon strives, as it were^ to buy his return by 
 costly offers, which, in plain truth, are simply bribes. But 
 there is no real atonement, no humiliation, no confession of 
 error. There is therefore no real compensation to the injured 
 honour of Achilleus. The wrath of the hero was not to be 
 appeased by gifts, not even by the restitution of Briseis. 
 He need not have given her up, and he refuses to receive her 
 again. Such a feeling as the wrath of Achilleus was not to 
 be bought off by gifts, even if it might have been appeased 
 by repentance. Homer gives it a far grander and more 
 characteristic end ; it is neither bought off nor appeased ; it 
 is swallowed up in a still mightier passion. In the grief of 
 
92 MR. GLADSTONE'S [Essay 
 
 Achilleus for the loss of Patroklos, in his longing to avenge 
 him, no room is left in his heart for memory of the wrong 
 done to him by Agamemnon. In this -dew, the ninth book, 
 the record of the fruitless embassy, is altogether needful to 
 the developement of the story. And, as part of the picture 
 of Achilleus, as a specimen of the grand old heroic rhetoric, 
 no part of the poems surpasses it. Those few words of 
 sarcasm, which Mr. Gladstone is so fond of quoting as the 
 climax of Achilleus' oratory, 
 
 ^ liovvoi (piKiova' d\6xovs fiepiwai' a.v6p6nicaii 
 'ArpetSai ; 
 
 might alone have made the fortune of a poet or a rhe- 
 torician. 
 
 We thus part from these noble volumes, worthy alike of 
 their author and of their subject, the freshest and most genial 
 tribute to ancient literature which has been paid even by an 
 age rich in such offerings. Mr. Gladstone will not rate our 
 admiration the less because we have plainly stated our wide 
 dissent from some important parts of his book. He has, we 
 think, dealt with ethnology without the needful training, and 
 he has treated mythology from a wholly false point of view. 
 But he has done such justice to Homer and his age as 
 Homer has never received out of his own land. He has vin- 
 dicated the true position of the greatest of poets ; he has 
 cleared his tale and its actors from the misrepresentations 
 of ages. With an ordinary writer, we might end with the 
 almost conventional compliment, that we trust we are not 
 meeting him for the last time. With Mr. Gladstone we feel 
 that there is truth in the words with which he winds up his 
 Homeric labours, words which the records of the present 
 parliamentary session have shown to be no empty boast : 
 
 ' Nemesis must not find me, 
 
 fl vvv d7j$vvovT*, -tl Sffrepov a^0is Uvra. 
 
 To pass from the study of Homer to the ordinary business of the world, is to 
 step out of a palace of enchantment into the cold gray light of a polax day. 
 But the spells in which this sorcerer deals have no afiinity with that drug from 
 
II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 93 
 
 Egypt, which drowns the spirit in effeminate indifference : rather they are like 
 the tpdpiMKov iaOKbv, the remedial specific, which, freshening the understanding 
 by contact with the truth and strength of nature, should both improve its 
 vigilance against deceit and danger, and increase its vigour and resolution for 
 the discharge of duty.' * 
 
 * [It must be remembered that this appeared in July, 1858. In the 
 February of that year the famous 'Conspiracy BUI' was brought in. While 
 Lord Pahnerston was cowering before the thre.its of French Colonels and 
 proposing to change the laws of England at the bidding of a French Tyrant, 
 Mr. Gladstone, along with Mr. Milner Gibson and Lord John Russell, was 
 among those who stood up for the independence of his country. His speech 
 on February 19th was a noble exposure of the way in which Lord Palmerston 
 and his ally Lord Clarendon had cringed to Buonaparte whenever they bad a 
 chance. So, later in the year, after the article was published, Mr. Gladstone 
 was striving for the good of the Greek nation in the Ionian Islands, while Lords 
 Palmerston and Clarendon were the guests of the Tyrant at Compifegne, at the 
 very moment when he was persecuting the Count of Montalembert for no 
 crime but that of good will to England.] 
 
III. 
 
 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS.* 
 
 It is indeed a wonderful thought, that Herodotus and 
 Thucydides were contemporary writers, perhaps not so widely 
 removed in age as is commonly the case between father and 
 son. As Colonel Mure remarks, an interval of centuries would 
 seem to have passed away between them. The question of 
 their comparative merit can hardly arise ; the two writers are 
 wholly diflFerent in kind. It would be as easy to compare 
 an old Greek, a writer of the middle ages, and a writer of our 
 own time. Herodotus is a Greek of the fifth century before 
 Christ. His archaic tastes indeed make him rather a Greek 
 of a century earlier. Xenoph6n is a Greek of the following 
 age, a far less favourable specimen ofhis age than Herodotus 
 is of his. But Thucydides belongs to no age or country; he 
 is the historian of our common humanity, the teacher of 
 abstract political wisdom. Herodotus is hardly a political 
 writer at all ; the few political comments which he makes 
 are indeed always true and generous ; but they are put forth 
 with an amiable simplicity which comes near to the nature of 
 a truism. When he infers from the growth of Athens after 
 she had driven out her Tyrants that 'freedom is a noble thing,'t 
 the comment reads like the remark of an intelligent child, or 
 like the reflexion of an Oriental awakening to the realities of 
 
 * [This is part of an article which was originally headed ' Colonel Mure 
 and the Attic Historians.' I have, changed the title, because Herodotus, 
 though not an ' Attic Historian,' may be fairly called a ' Historian of 
 Athens.' I have also left out all the miuute criticisms on Colonel Mure's 
 book, and I have worked in some matter which at first formed part of the 
 next Essay, but which seemed more in place here.] 
 
 t ij Icniyopiij Sis imi XPW" anoviaiov. Herod, v. 78. 
 
THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 95 
 
 European life. Xenophon writes from the worst inspiration of 
 local and temporary party-spirit. He writes history, not to 
 record facts or to deduce lessons, but, at whatever cost of triith 
 and fairness, to set up Agesilaos and to run down the Thebans. 
 But Thucydides, living at a time when the political life of 
 man had as yet hardly been spread over two ages, seems to 
 have drawn from that short time the lessons of whole millen- 
 niums. From the narrow field which lay before his eyes he 
 could draw a political teaching which should apply to every 
 age, race, and country. There is hardly a problem in the 
 science of government which the statesman will not find, if 
 not solved, at any rate handled, in the pages of this universal 
 master. The political experience of Thucydides could have 
 set before him only two sets of phsenomena — the small city- 
 commonwealth and the vast barbaric kingdom. But we feel 
 that he would have been equally at home under any other 
 state of things. If we could think of Herodotus or Xenophon 
 as suddenly set down in the feudal France or Germany of a 
 past age, in the constitutional England or the federal America 
 of our own time, everything would doubtless bear in their eyes 
 the air of an insoluble problem. But we can imagine that 
 Thucydides would at once behold real analogy through seeming 
 unlikeneps, and would see that phsenomena so unlike anything 
 within his own experience were merely fresh instances of the 
 general principles which he had learned from another state of 
 things. No truth seems harder for men to receive than the 
 doctrine that history is really one whole ; that ' ancient,' 
 ' modem,' ' mediseval,' mark convenient halting-places and 
 nothing more ; that man's political nature is essentially the 
 same under every change of outward circumstances. But 
 there is no witness which more overwhelmingly confirms its 
 truth than the fact that the political wisdom of all ages was 
 thus forestalled by the citizen of a small commonwealth living 
 twenty-three centuries ago. 
 
 Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides were men of their own 
 age. The mind of Herodotus clearly lived in past times. The 
 stern truth of chronology tells us that he was contemporary 
 
96 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHEWS. [Essay 
 
 with Perikl^s, perhaps with Alkibiad^s. But no one thinks 
 of the fact while reading his enchanting chronicle. While so 
 engaged, we fully helieve him to have been an eye-witness of 
 Marath6n and Salamis. We are indeed hardly clear whether he 
 may not have stood by at the return of Peisistratos, or even 
 have been an unseen looker-on in the sleeping-chamber of 
 Kandaules. Nothing connects him with his own age, except 
 a few brief, sparing, sometimes doubtful, references to events 
 later than his main subject. The genial traveller of Halikar- 
 nassos loved to gather together, to set in dramatic order, to 
 garnish here and there with religious or moral sentiment, the 
 antiquities and legends of every age and country except the 
 Greece of the Peloponnesian War. His own age, we may be- 
 lieve, he tried to forget ; a more dignified form- of love for 
 the past than that which shows itself in querulous long- 
 ings after what is gone and petulant sarcasms upon what is 
 present. Herodotus is the liberal, well-informed, antiquary 
 and scholar, who lives out of his own age; he is not the 
 disappointed politician, who lives in it only to carp at every- 
 thing around or beyond him. 
 
 In Xenophon, on the other hand, notwithstanding much 
 that is personally attractive and estimable, we see, as a po- 
 litical writer, only the man of a particular time and place 
 in the smallest and most malignant form of that character. 
 Herodotus lived in the past, Thucydides lived for the future ; 
 Xenoph6n reflects only the petty passions of the moment. He 
 writes not like a historian, whether antiquarian or political, but 
 like a petulant journalist who has to decry the troublesome 
 greatness of an opposite party. Yet even his writings may 
 indirectly lead us to the same lesson as those of Thucydides. 
 One teaches us that much of our modem wisdom might be 
 reached by a powerful mind while human thought was yet 
 in its infancy. The other shows that, if old Greece could fore- 
 stall modem political science, it could also forestall the pettiest 
 forms of modern pohtical rivalry. Thucydides, without Xeno- 
 phon, might make us place the ideal Greek historian at a 
 superhuman height above us. Xenophon, without Thucydides, 
 
III.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 97 
 
 might lead us to drag him down to the level of a very inferior 
 modern pamiphleteer. But the two together teach the same 
 lesson, the lesson that man is essentially the same everywhere, 
 that an old Greek was a being of like passions with a modem 
 Englishman, that each could show, in the shapes belonging to 
 their several ages, alike the highest and the lowest phases of 
 our common nature. 
 
 In fact, no one can thoroughly know what Thucydides is, 
 if he does not make use of Xenophon as a foil. Without com- 
 paring the two, we might be led to think that Thucydidean 
 dignity and impartiality was an easy commonplace quality 
 which did not entitle its possessor to any special honour. When 
 we turn to the Hellenics, we at once see how great were the 
 temptations to a contrary course which surrounded a Greek who 
 wrote the history of his own time. How many opportunities 
 must Thucydides have had, how many must he have cast 
 aside, for colouring, omitting, exaggerating. How easy was 
 it to pass by the good or the bad deeds of one or the other 
 party. How hard a task to keep the bitter revengeful spirit 
 of the exile from showing its'elf in every page. Thucydides, 
 after all, was a man and a Greek, an Athenian of oligarchic 
 tendencies banished under the democracy. The wonderful 
 thing is that such a position did not warp his statements in 
 every page. Yet all that has ever been alleged against him is 
 that once, or at most tvnee, in his history he has shown that 
 he could not deal with perfect fairness between himself and a 
 bitter personal and political enemy. That Thucydides does 
 bear hard upon KleSn (and upon Hyperboles) is to our mind 
 perfectly clear. His way df speaiking of them is all the more 
 marked from its standing out in such utter contrast to his 
 way of speaking of people in general. Nothing is more striking 
 throughout his history tham the way in which he commonly 
 abstains from direct censure of any one. Yet he never brings 
 in Kleon's name without some unfavourable insinuation or 
 some expression of disparagement. We may freely allow thalt 
 for once the impartiality of Thucydides failed him. But, even 
 when it did so, we have noisason to doubt the thoroagh homesty 
 
 H 
 
98 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [Essay 
 
 of his narrative. It bears about it in fact one most convincing 
 proof 'of honesty; the story, as he tells it, does not bear out 
 the epithets which he applies to the actors in it. But, after 
 all, what does the utmost that can be made out against him 
 amount to ? That he once pronounces a judgement which his 
 own narrative does not bear out: in short that, though he 
 never ceased to he a truthful witness, he had not reached that 
 more than human height of virtue which enables a man to 
 be a perfectly fair judge in his own cause. Think of this 
 one flaw, and compare it with the moral' state of the man 
 who could describe the Theban revolution without bringing 
 in the name of Pelopidas ; who, when recording at large the 
 history of his own times, could hold forth at impertinent 
 length on the smallest doings of his Spartan hero, and 
 deliberately leave out all mention of the deliverance of Mes- 
 senia and the foundation of Megalopolis. Thucydides himself 
 was not absolutely perfect ; but perhaps no other actor in 
 important events ever told them with so great an amount of 
 impartiality. In Xenoph6n we have to brand, not merely 
 an unpardonable degree of weakness and passion, but sheer 
 want of common honesty, a deliberate breach of the first moral 
 laws of the historian's calling. 
 
 But the greatness of Thucydides is, after all, of a somewhat 
 cold and unattractive character. He does not, like many other 
 writers, draw us near to himself personally. What reader of 
 Herodotus does not long for a talk face to face with the 
 genial and delightfiil old traveller, who had been everywhere 
 and had seen everything — who could tell you the founder 
 of every city and the architect of every temple — ^who could 
 recite oracles and legends from the beginnings of things to 
 his own day, and who could season all with a simple moral 
 and political commentary, not the less acceptable for being a 
 little commonplace ? What would one not give for the chance 
 of asking why it was, after all, that the Scythians blinded 
 their slaves, or of finding but, in some unguarded moment, ' 
 in honour of what deity the Egyptians submitted themselves 
 to the discipline? Xenophon again would evidently not 
 
m.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS 99 
 
 have been the less agreeable a companion on account of his 
 unpatriotic heresies and his historical unfairness. If he was 
 a bitter enemy and an unscrupulous partizan, his very faults 
 arose from carrying into excess the amiable character of a 
 zealous friend. The pupil of S6krates could not help being 
 unfair to the government by which his master was condemned ; 
 the officer of Agesilaos could not mete out common justice to 
 those pestilent Thebans by whom all the schemes of Agesilaos 
 were brought to nought. But Thucydides awakens no feel- 
 ings of the kind. We might have highly esteemed the privi- 
 lege of sitting at his feet as a lecturer ; but we should hardly 
 have been very eager for his company in our lighter moments. 
 Genial simplicity^ hearty and unconscioils humour, are, after 
 all, more attractive than the stem perfection of wisdom ; a 
 little superstition and a little party-spirit, if they render a 
 man less admirable, do not always make him less agreeable. 
 Impartiality is a rare and divine quality ; but a little human 
 weakness sometimes commends itself more to frail mortals. 
 There is something lofty in the position of a man who records 
 the worst deeds of Athenian and Lacedaemonian alike, as a 
 simple matter of business, without a word of concealment, 
 palliation, or rebuke for either. But we feel quite sure 
 that Herodotus would have told us that the massacre of 
 Plataia and the massacre of Melos were each of them a irprj-yna 
 ovx o<nov. We suspect that Xenophon would have been so 
 ashamed of the evil deed of that side on which his own feel- 
 ings might be enlisted that he would not have set down both 
 crimes in his history. But we get a little puzzled as to 
 the moral condition of the man who minutely dissects the 
 intellectual and political characters of Themistokles and 
 Perikles without a word of moral praise or dispraise of either. 
 Our perplexity grows when we find the historian recording 
 the treachery of Paches towards Hippias without a word of 
 comment.* It grows yet more when we find him honestly 
 recording the assassinations in which Antiph6n was at least 
 
 * Thucydides iii. 54. 
 H 2 
 
100 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [Essay 
 
 an accompHee, and yet pronouncing this saffie Antiphdn to 
 have been inferior to no Athenian of his day — Konon and 
 ThrasyboTilos among them,— mot only in ability but in virtue.* 
 Herodotus would have lifted up his hands in pious horror ; 
 Xenophon would either have shirked so unpleasant a subject, 
 or would at least have found out some ingenious sophism to 
 cloak the crime. Then again, human nature craves for some- 
 thing like religion, and it does not always kick at a little 
 superstition. We do not think the worse of Herodotus, 
 Xenoph6n, Pausanias, and Arrian for believing in oracles, 
 visions, and the whole art and mystery of divination. It is 
 perhaps very admiuable, but it is not altogether amiable, in 
 Thucydides to have got so far in advance of his age as to 
 make it pretty certain that he believed in nothing of the 
 kind, and to leave it by no means clear whether he believed in 
 any Gods at all. Finally, we oannot Ibrget, possibly even a 
 conteiUporary Gir^k could not forget, how easy, how pleasant, 
 it is to read Herodotus and XeOoph6n, how very hard it often 
 is to read Thucydides. We admire, but we cannot bring our- 
 selves to love, the man who has olothed the words of wisdoia 
 with a veil so hard to uplift. We ^we sometimes tempted to 
 prefer a teaching less profound in -substance, but more con- 
 formable to the lordinaty laws of human iand Hellemie grammar. 
 There is no denying that a speech of Thaieydides is far more 
 profitable than one of XenophSn, or even than one of Herodotus. 
 But there are times of weakness when we prefer pleasure to 
 jprofit,— -the r/hv to the ■)(p^(nfiov, — times when, even in spite ^ 
 the repeated -exhoitations of PerifcMs to prefer deeds to words, 
 we still for a moment prefer the &,yiiviaifta Is re •jiapa.\p^iia. 
 even to the KTvjfw, is det. 
 
 la fact, the wonderful way in which Thucydides soars intel- 
 leotually over the men of his own age, and indeed of any age, 
 while it makes his history the eternal treasUire-hoMse -of po- 
 litical •tpisdota, makes him, in some ifteidental points, less 
 
 * Thuo. viii. c. 68. 'AvrupSh', Avtip 'Afli/raW tuv naB' iavriv dperp ouSccis 
 varepos, K.T.K., where see Dr. Arnold'* note. 
 
ni.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 101 
 
 instructive than a very inferior writer might have been, as the 
 immediate chronicler of his own particular age. Colonel Mure 
 truly remarks that the Greek historians commonly looked on 
 the internal politics of the several states as something which did 
 . not come within their province. A knowledge of them is taken 
 for granted in a well-informed Greek reader. The historian, 
 for the most part, deals only with the cities in their interna- 
 tional — in what, as Mr. Grote suggests, might more properly 
 he called their inf-erpoUticat, aspect. It is only when internal 
 revolutions bear on foreign affairs that they are set down at 
 any length. Thus Thucydides records the Athenian revolu- 
 tions of the year 41 1 in full detail, because the part which was 
 taken in them by the fleet at Samos brings them within the 
 immediate sphere of his military narrative. But in his 
 Summary he does not give a line to the constitutional changes 
 introduced by Aristeid^s, EphialtSs, and PeriklSsj though he 
 records military and diplomatic events which were certainly 
 not of greater importance. Kle6n, Nikias, Alkibiad^s, are 
 brought in only when they begin to have an influence on 
 foreign affairs. Of the assaults made on Perikles by Kleon, 
 of the demagogues who arose for a short space in the time 
 between the death of the one and the confirmed influence of 
 the other, Thucydides teUs us not a word. Still less, as 
 Colonel Mure observes, does he tell us anything directly as 
 to the literary, artistic, and philosophic being of Athens 
 in her greatest splendour. We should never have learned 
 from him that ^schylus, Euripides^ PheidiaSj or Anaxa- 
 goras ever lived. From Thucydides alone we should never 
 have found out that the Sophokl^s who figures as an 
 admiral in the Samian war was at least not less illustrious 
 as the author of the CEdipus and the Electra, Had Thucy- 
 dides lived to tell the tale of Arginousai, we may well doubt 
 whether the name of Sdkrates would have been found in 
 his report of the great debate on the amendment of Eury- 
 ptolemos. One might have expected that the enemy of 
 Kle6n would have looked with some sympathy on the author 
 of the Knights ; but the name of Aristophanes is nowhere 
 
102 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [Essay 
 
 found in the history of the Peloponnesian War. Even in deal- 
 ing with Perikles, his great artistic works appear only in the 
 melancholy position of items in a budget. Even the pictures 
 of the heroes of his narrative are in a manner imperfect, 
 because they appear as beings wholly political and military. 
 We see in all his greatness the PerikMs who guided .the 
 democracy through the horrors of war and pestilence. But 
 we hear nothing of the lover of Aspasia, of the founder of 
 the Parthenon, nothing even of the reformer who levelled the 
 last relics of oHgarchy, and placed the popular tribunal in 
 the room of the venerable Senate on the hill of Ares. 
 
 On all. these points we should doubtless have learned much 
 more from either the earlier or the later historian. Had 
 Herodotus deigned to record the events of his own age, his very 
 love of genial gossip would have led him to tell us a great 
 deal on which Thucydides keeps a dead silence, and which we 
 are driven to pick up secondhand from Plutarch and other in- 
 ferior writers. Herodotus may, as Mr. Grote has shown, not 
 have understood the full depth and meaning of the democratic 
 changes of Kleisthenes. But he has at least recorded their 
 outward forms, while Thucydides has not done even thus 
 much by those further changes which brought the work of 
 Kleisthenes to completion. We can hardly fancy that the 
 antiquary who was so curious about the temples of the Samian 
 HerS and the Egyptian Ammon could have been altogether 
 blind to the pile reared under his own eye to Athene of the 
 AkropoUs. He who has recorded the innovations made by 
 Kleisthenes of Siky6n in the choric ritual of his own city 
 could hardly have listened unconcerned to the strains which 
 told the glories of Koldnos, or to those in which the over- 
 whelming burst of satire was hurled upon the head of the 
 devoted Paphlagonian. Still less can we fancy the prose 
 narrator of the fight of Salamis listening, without at least a 
 generous rivalry, to the tale of defeat as told in the palace 
 of Susa, or to the picture of the glories of Persia under the 
 sway of that Darius who, in his own tale, seems less divine 
 and invincible. Thucydides either cared for none of these 
 
in.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 103 
 
 things, or he unluckily thought them 'beneath the dignity 
 of history.' If the old Halikarnassian could but have been 
 brought to deal with things of his own time, we feel sure 
 that his less exalted standard would have found room for an 
 enchanting picture of the social and artistic^ as well as of 
 the political, aspect of Athens in the days of her glory. 
 
 And as with Herodotus^ so, in another way, with Xenophon. 
 The smaller historian has fittingly allotted to him the smaller 
 hero. But Xenophon gives us a far more vivid picture of 
 Agesilaos than Thucydides gives us of Perikles. In the one 
 we simply admire the statesman, in the other we are brought 
 into daily intercourse with the man. And again the tendency 
 to personal gossip incidentally helps us to valuable political 
 knowledge. We doubt whether Thucydides would have en- 
 lightened us as to the singular and discreditable -means by 
 which Sphodrias escaped the punishment of his unprovoked 
 and treacherous inroad iuto Attica. Xenophon, in his blind 
 zeal for his hero, lets us behind the curtain, and thereby shows 
 us what strange causes might warp the course of justice amid 
 the secret workings of an oligarchy, and how much personal 
 influence lay within the reach of a King who kept hardly a 
 shadow of constitutional power. Again, while we reverence 
 the set speeches of Thucydides for the deep teaching which 
 they contain, we cannot but feel that the shorter and livelier 
 addresses and rejoinders preserved or invented by Xenophon 
 give us a truer picture of the real tone of a debate in a Greek 
 assembly. And though a critical judgement may go along 
 with Colonel Mure in condemning Xenophon's profusion of 
 small dialogue and petty personal anecdote, we cannot, at this 
 distance of time, regret anything which helps to give us a 
 more perfect picture of the manner and tone of feeling of an 
 age from the hand of a contemporary and an actor. 
 
 One word more as to Thucydides' estimate of Kle6n. We 
 have said that all that has ever been alleged against Thucy- 
 dides is, that he has allowed personal feelings to colour his 
 inferences from facts, while it is not even suggested that he has 
 reported the facts inaccurately. Because we owe so much to 
 
104 TEE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [EasAT 
 
 Thueydides, people commonly leap to the conclusion that his 
 banishment by the Athenian people must have been Hnjusff. 
 It was Mr. Grote who dared for the first time to hint 
 that his own narrative of his command at Amphipolis and 
 Eion gave no ground for arraigning the judgement of his 
 countrymen. Kleon again was a personal and political 
 enemy of Thneydides ; he is well nigh the only person in 
 speaking of whom the historian deserts his usual unim- 
 passioned dignity Mr. Grote was bold enough to hint that 
 the historian's prejudice had coloured, not indeed his nar- 
 rative, but his commentary; and that his own statement of 
 the case did not fully bear out his unfavourable judgementi 
 Mr. Grote's case was that, when Amphipolis was threatened, 
 the Athenian commander ought to have been nowhere but 
 at Amphipolis ; least of all should he have been at Thasos, 
 which the land force of Brasidas did not and could not 
 threaten. He is at the very least called on to show cause why 
 he was anywhere else, and such cause he nowhere attempts to 
 show. Colonel Mure went a step further than Mr. Grote, and 
 hinted very broadly what the real cause was. Thucydides, as 
 he himself tells us, was a mining proprietor in that part of 
 the world. Colonel Mure ventures to say, 
 
 ' May not this very fact, his extensive interest as a proprietor in that 
 extremity of his provinee, ftimish an explanation of his preference of Thasus 
 to Amphipolis or Eion as his head-quarter? The centre of the Thracian 
 mining district, where his own possessions were situated, was Scaptesyle, on 
 the coast immediately opposite Thasus; and the principal town and port of 
 that island was also the chief emporium of the mineral trade of Thrace. In 
 the absence, therefore, of all other apparent motive for his being stationary in 
 the extreme* north of his province, whUe' Brasidas was conquering the prin- 
 
 * We must confess that we do not understand Colonel Mure's geography. 
 How is Thasos the ' extreme north of his province' more than Amphipolis ? 
 Did Colonel Mure think that Amphipolis lay ' south' of Thasos S He says so 
 directly in the page before. ' It (Thasos) lay as far from Amphipolis io the 
 north, as the scene of the Spartan warrior's earliest successes from the same 
 city to the south.' Now Akanthos, the city already won by Brasidas, cer- 
 tainly lies as nearly as possible due south of Amphipolis. The island of Thasos 
 lies, not north, but south-east. The island, as a whole, is decidedly south of 
 Amphipolis ; the city of Thasos, in the extreme north of the island, is very 
 nearly on the same parallel as Amphipolis, but still a little south of it. 
 
ni] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 105 
 
 cipal cities of its south and centre, it is not very uncharitable to suppose that 
 the feiilt laid to his charge, apd not without reason, was hia having been more 
 occupied with his own afiairs than with hia official duties, at a time when the 
 latter had an imperative claim on his undivided attention.' (p. 40.) 
 
 Now as to Kle6n. Mr. Grote fully accepts Thucydides' 
 narrative, both as to the scene in the Assembly, and as to the 
 campaign at Pylos. He simply thinks that, for once, personal 
 enmity has betrayed Thucydides into a comment which his own 
 statement does not bear out. Thucydides says that a certain 
 scheme was ' mad,' which his own narrative shows to have been 
 quite feasible. Mr. Grote refuses to believe either the satires 
 of Aristophanes or the invectives of Thucydides, because he 
 holds that the facts, as reported by Thucydides himself, do 
 not justify them. Aristophanes represents Kleon as stealing' 
 away the well-earned prize from Demosthenes. Certainly no 
 one would find this out from the fourth book of Thucydides. 
 Aristophanes represents Kleon as winning his influence over 
 the people by the basest and most cringing flattery. Thucy- 
 dides puts into his mouth a speech on the afiair of MitylSnS, 
 which counsels indeed a wicked line of policy, but which, 
 of all speeches in the world, is the least like the speech of a 
 flatterer of the people. In fact, it is a bitter invective against 
 the people. Nothing that Demosthenes did say, nothing that 
 Perikles can have said, could outdo the boldness of the censures 
 which Kle6n passed on his own hearers. The exact amount of 
 historic reality which belongs to the Thucydidean orations is 
 very doubtful, and it probably difilers much in difierent cases. 
 But we may be quite sure that Thucydides would not put into 
 the mouth of Kledn a speech more austere and dignified than 
 became his character. And as for the general conduct of the 
 much reviled demagogue, we may make an extract from 
 Colonel Mure which is the more valuable because it is some- 
 what inconsistent with his general tone about the matter. 
 
 Another evidence of impartiality [on the part of Thucydides] is the ciroum- 
 gtance, that while those authorities represent the whole career of the dema- 
 gogue as one unmitigated course of foUy or mischief, Thucydides gives him 
 credit for a conduct in some of his undertakings not very easy to reconcile 
 with the incapacity displayed in others. The apparent inconsistency implies 
 
106 TEE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS 
 
 at least a disposition to award him such merit as he really possessed. In his 
 campaign of Amphipolis, Cleon certainly figures in a contemptible light, both 
 as a soldier and a general. But his other military operations are not repre- 
 sented as open to censure. Thucydides, indeed, withholds from him the merit 
 of having made good his ' insane promise' to capture the Spartan garrison of 
 Sphacteria. He describes Demosthenes as having already matured his 
 measures for the success of tbat enteiprise, and as the director-iu-chief of 
 their execution. But there is no hint of Cleon, as the honorary commander- 
 in-chief on the occasion, having shown any want of capacity or courage. In 
 the early part of his ensuing Thracian campaign, his operations are repre- 
 sented not only as successful, but as well planned and vigorously executed. 
 He even, on one important occasion, outmanoeuvred the formidable Brasidas, 
 by whom he was afterwards defeated ; and, by a curious coincidence, much 
 in the mode in which Thucydides himself had been discomfitted not long 
 before by the same able adversary.' 
 
 After all, what is the accusation against Thucydides? 
 Simply, as we have already said, that though he has nowhere 
 misstated facts, he has in one instance allowed political or 
 personal pique to warp his judgement. All honour to thai 
 contemporary historian against whom this is the heaviest! 
 charge ! Think of the temptations, not merely to a single 
 false judgement, but to constant misrepresentation of fact, 
 which beset every political chronicler; above all, those 
 which must have beset a Greek of the days of the Pelopon- 
 nesian War. Think, in a word, what Xenoph6n was — what 
 Thucydides might have been, and was not. We may well 
 admit that Thucydides was prejudiced against Kledn, and 
 that he himself failed of his duty at Amphipolis, without 
 taking away one jot from the sterling worth of his immortal 
 history. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY* 
 
 A History of Greece. By George Gkote, Esq. 
 Twelve Volumes. London, 1846-56. 
 
 Mr. Gkote's great work is at last brought to an end. 
 For ten years his massive octavos have been gathering upon 
 our shelves, and they have won for themselves a place from 
 which it is hard to fancy that they can ever be dislodged. 
 Few reputations indeed seem to be less lasting than that which 
 proclaims a man to be the great historian of times which have 
 long since gone by. Hooke and Mitford have passed away : 
 if Sir George Lewis is to be trusted, Niebuhr and Arnold 
 ought to pass away after them. We therefore cannot posi- 
 tively affirm that Grote may not be to our grandchildren 
 what Mitford is to ourselves. Yet the thought that it may 
 be so is one very hard to take in. Mr. Grote has done so 
 much, he has throughout shown, so much real vigour and 
 originality, he has thrown so much clear and practical light 
 upon points which had been hitherto misunderstood, that, 
 though we may conceive him being surpassed, we can hardly 
 conceive him being wholly forgotten. 
 
 That one thoroughly good history need not wholly set aside 
 another thoroughly good history of the same people, is very 
 
 * [The references to Mr. Grote's book were so thoroughly interwoven with 
 the framework of this Essay that I hare thought it better to leave it, like that 
 on Mr. Gladstone's Homer, in its first shape of a review. Beside verbal im- 
 provements, I have only left out or modified a few passages of only temporary 
 interest, ajid I have given the Essay a title of which I think that Mr. Grota 
 would not have disapproved.] 
 
108 THE ATHENIAN DEMOGRAOt. [Essay 
 
 clearly shown by the case of Mr. Grote himself. The pub- 
 lication of his history in no way sets aside the sterling 
 work of Bishop Thirlwall. Each has its own use. The 
 professed historical student cannot do without either. But 
 there are doubtless many persons who have no special 
 devotion to Grecian history, but who still wish to study its 
 main outlines in something higher than a mere school-book. 
 To such readers we should certainly recojnmend, Thirlwall 
 rather than Grote. The comparative shortness, the greater 
 clearness and terseness of the narrative, the freedom from 
 discussions and digressions, all join to make it far better 
 fitted for such a purpose. But for the political thinker, who 
 looks to Grecian history chiefly in its practical bearing, Mr. 
 Grote's work is far better fitted. The one is the work of a 
 scholar, an enlarged and practical scholar indeed, but still 
 one in whom the character of the scholar is the primary one. 
 The other is the work of a politician and man of business^ 
 a London banker, a Radical Member of Parliament, whose 
 devotion to ancient history and literature forms the most 
 illustrious confutation of the charges brought again.st such 
 studies as being useless and unpractical. Till some one arises 
 who can cast both alike into the shade, we trust that these 
 two great writers wiU continue to be honoured side by side.* 
 High indeed is the honour which each of them deserves from 
 all who see in the history of ancient freedom no vain and 
 lifeless inquiry into a state of things which is as though it 
 had never been, but one of the most living and instructive 
 pursuits for the ruler and the citizen. Still, of the two we 
 must give the higher place to the more zealous and fervent 
 champion of the parent state of justice and liberty, the 
 great Democracy of Athens. 
 
 Mr. Grote^s work is so vast, and it may be looked at from 
 
 * [At the risk of being thought behind the age, I must say that I do not 
 look on the German work of Curtius as throwing either of them into the shade. 
 I add, by way of Appendix to tliis Essay, some extracts from various notices 
 of the earlier volumes of Curtius which I have contributed to the Saturday 
 Jleview.] 
 
IV.] TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 109 
 
 so many different points of view, that it will be better to try 
 to do justice to one only of its many aspects, and to give but / 
 a few words to the other parts of the work. Which aspect it 
 is that we have chosen we have perhaps already made known. 
 Mr. Grote is, to our mind, greatest as the historian of Athenian 
 Democracy. It is therefore as the historian of Athenian 
 Democracy that we intend specially to look at him. We 
 choose this particular subject at once from its intrinsic iaterest^ 
 from the misrepresentations under which it has suffered, and 
 from the masterly and original manner in which it has been 
 dealt with by Mr. Grote. The common misrepresentations of 
 the Athenian Democracy have to a great extent arisen from 
 sheer ignorance of its real nature, combined with a prejudice 
 against democratic government in general. But there is no 
 doubt that, in popular conception also, the literary glory of 
 Athens has been allowed to overshadow her political greatness. 
 Now, in truth, the pre-eminence of Athens in literature, phi- 
 losophy and art, was simply the natural result of her pre- 
 eminence in freedom and good government. We have now 
 to speak, not of the result, but of the cause, and of th« cause 
 more specially as dealt with by Mr. Grote. After some short 
 general criticisms on his work as a whole, we shall go on 
 to examine his conception of the origin, the greatness, and 
 the fall of the most illustrious of commonwealths. 
 
 In point of mere style, Mr. Grote is not specially pleasing ; 
 but either be improves by practice as he goes on, or else his 
 readers become reconciled to his manner. Certainly, from 
 one cause or the other, we think him a better writer now 
 than we did ten years ago. His style is diffuse and heavy ; 
 it often lacks both dignity and simplicity. In ihis anxiety 
 to make bis meaning plain from all points of view, he is 
 like Macaulay. But nothing can be more 'Unlike than the 
 means by which the two historians go about to compass this 
 praiseworthy end. Instead of epigranmiatic sentences and 
 brilliant antitheses, it is ^J dint of ponderous and paren- 
 tlietical repetitions tha;t Mr. Grote seeks to hinder any scrap 
 of his meaning from escaipipg the reader. Yet his style is not 
 
110 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 unpleasing when one is used to it, and it gives a favourable 
 impression of Mr. Grote as a man. Writers who are clearly 
 artificial, like Gibbon and Macaulay, we admire, but at the 
 same time we rather distrust them. But the noble simplicity 
 of Arnold was clearly not more natural to him than a whoUy 
 different style of writing is to Mr. Grote. We feel quite sure 
 with both of them, while we do not feel quite sure with 
 Gibbon and Macaulay, that neither of them ever sacrificed a 
 single atom of truth to improve the turn of a period or to 
 sharpen the poignancy of an epithet. 
 
 Mr. Grote indeed strikes us as an eminently conscientious 
 writer. He is an avowed partizan, therein differing from 
 the more than judicial, coldness which Dr. Thirlwall shows 
 through a large part of his work. His partizanship is 
 moreover tinged with a certain love of paradox. It is a 
 real delight to him to differ from every earlier writer. 
 But both partizanship and love of paradox are kept within 
 bounds, not only by scrupulous honesty, but by the calm 
 and dignified tone which runs through the whole work. 
 Mr. Grote's political views colour his judgements, but they 
 in no way colour his statements. He always argues, and 
 never assumes or insinuates. He always fully and fairly sets 
 forth the whole evidence, and places elaborately before his 
 reader the grounds of his own judgement. The pupil of 
 Mr. Grote, though he should never see any other history, will 
 never be surprised into an opinion ; he always has full oppor- 
 tunity, if he be so disposed, of dissenting from the decisions of 
 his teacher. And Mr. Grote is altogether free from the vice 
 to which his somewhat aggressive and paradoxical position 
 specially lays him open. He is painstaking and merciful 
 towards all previous writers. He never condemns, he hardly 
 even dissents, without telling us at full length why he con- 
 demns or dissents. Even Mitford,* at whom Dr. Thirlwall 
 
 * Mitford was a baid scholar, a bad historian, a bad writer of English. Yet 
 we feel a lingering weakness for him. He was the first writer of any note who 
 found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing. 
 We of course hold that he applied it the wrong way. He hated Dfimo- 
 
IV.] THM ATHENIAN DEM0CEAG7. m 
 
 sneers till we feel a reaction in his favour, is never set aside 
 unheard. Mr. Grote stops to wonder at him, to argue with 
 him, to prove, as well as to assert, that he is very much 
 in the wrong. Everything that Mr. Grote does is serious 
 and earnest. Twice perhaps in his volumes we think we can 
 see his features relaxing into a stern smile. Mr. Grote 
 loves a parallel both well and wisely. But when IphikratSs 
 is coupled with Wellington and Bliicher as ' having lent an 
 honourable denomination to boots and shoes,' * we cannot 
 ourselves keep down a slight tendency to laughter, one which 
 we would fain justify by the hope that the historian himself 
 intended to arouse it. 
 
 In fact, Mr. Grote's praiseworthy desire to be full and ac- 
 curate on every point, and to give his reasons for everything, 
 has sometimes led him astray. To his office as historian 
 of Greece, he very needlessly adds the quite distinct func- 
 tions of a commentator on the text of Thucydides. He is 
 always filling up his pages with notes of frightful length and 
 tediousnessj proposing and elaborately defending new trans- 
 lations of particular passages. Now most of these digressions 
 are by no means called for by his subject. Mr. Grote more- 
 over is a great historian, but he is not a great Greek scholar. 
 He understands the Greek language quite well enough to 
 make excellent use of his Greek books. He does not under- 
 stand it well enough to enter into elaborate discussions on 
 minute grammatical points. By thus attempting a line 
 
 sthenes ; "we love and reverence him. But it was a great step to find out that 
 Demosthenes could be the object of any human emotion. For the young 
 student or for the general reader Mitford's History would be simply mislead- 
 ing ; but it is quite worth reading by any one who wishes to look at Grecian 
 history from every possible point of view. 
 
 * Vol. ix. p. 468. So in vol. vi. p. 174, speaking of the odd abodes to 
 which the Athenians were driven during the Peloponnesian war, 'in sheds, 
 cabins, tents, or even tubs,' he adds, 'Aristophanes, Equites, 789, oiicoxnn' 
 iv Tail mBixvaicrir xiv yimapiois icaX jTvpyiSiois. The philosopher Diogenes, in 
 taking up his abode in a tub, had thus examples in history to follow.' Surely 
 Mr. Grote laughed over both the boots and the tub. We are not so clear 
 whether he laughed when, describing the Scythian expedition of Darius 
 (vol. iv. p. 361), he speaks of Mr. Kenrick as being ' among those who cannot 
 swim the Dniester.' 
 
112 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essat 
 
 which is not really his own, he has laid himself open to the 
 puny and insolent attacks of men to whose small minds his 
 real greatness is simply unintelligible. There is a story of 
 King Philip trying to set a harper right after dinner, and 
 receiving for answer, ' You ought to be ashamed if I did not 
 know such things better than you.' * When a politician and 
 historian like Mr. Grote wanders into the narrow field of verbal 
 criticism, he might well have received an answer of the same 
 kind from a man who could find nothing better to do with 
 twenty years of his life than to devote them to the empirieal 
 study and teaching of Grreek pronouns. If Mr. Grote, in the 
 course of his great work, has now and then made a slip or 
 given a judgement which cannot be maintained, we can only 
 say, with Sir Archibald Alison, that such things will cease 
 ' when human nature is other than it is, but not tiU then.' 
 No man that ever wrote is surer and sounder than Bishop 
 Thirlwall; but we have found inaccuracies even in him. 
 Nay, more, in one or two placesf we have found Mr. Grote 
 himself in pieces of false construing which he makes the 
 foundation of historical arguments. Yet it never came into 
 our mind to write an impertinent pamphlet against either of 
 them. Great men may now and then err ; small men may 
 now and then set them right : yet, after all, there is a certain 
 ■decent respect owing from the small men to the great. 
 
 From the general character of Mr. Grote's style, it follows 
 almo^ necessarily that he is -greater in comment than in nar- 
 rative. His narrative is always full and clear; but it is 
 seldom graphic or eloquent. But he is ever on the watch 
 for the moral and political teaching of every incident. Fer- 
 
 * Plut. Ajiopli. Phil. 29. (Moralia, ii. zo. Tauclmitz.) 
 
 •f- Vol. T. p. 481, Mr. Grote's translation of rh Si diuaar^pia iua9o<p6pa 
 KOT^ffTijfft YlfpiKMis, is quite untenable ; but this passage we shall probaibly 
 have to refer to again. In vdl. iv. p. 145 (compare Thirlwall, vol. ii. p. 68) 
 Mr. Grote is clearly wrong, and Dr. Thirlwall clearly right, in his translation 
 of the passage from Herodotus. 
 
 In vol. ii. p. 585, vol. x. p. 463, vol. xi. p. '681, we find Mr. -Grote reviving, 
 wholly or partially, interpretations of Mitford's whidh Br. Tbirlwall (vol. v. 
 p. 200, vdl. vi. p. 66 of the old edition ; compare vol. vi..?. 103 of the new) 
 had scornfully set aside. 
 
rV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 113 
 
 haps he overdoes it in this way ; but Grecian history has 
 been so much misunderstood, and most of Mr. Grrote's com- 
 ments are so weighty, that it is quite a fault on the right 
 side. 
 
 Mr. Grote divides his work into two portions of very un- 
 equal length — Legendary and Historical Greece. In the 
 former he makes it his business to tell all the myths at full 
 length ; from his point of view, we really cannot understand 
 why. To tell them fittingly as legends, as Dr. Arnold has 
 done with the Roman stories, he does not even try, and it 
 would certainly be quite out of his line to do so. And his 
 code of historical behef expressly forbids all attempts to find 
 historical truth in them^ in the way which has been carried 
 out by Niebuhr. Mr. Grote is not quite so strict in point 
 of evidence as Sir George Lewis ; but it is only with the first 
 Olympiad, B.C. 776, that he sees anything like even the first 
 glimpse of real history. Now we are quite as far as either 
 Mr. Grote or Sir George Lewis firom the old uncritical belief 
 in poetic fables, which, if they contain any kernel of truth, 
 hide it under such disguises that it can no longer be seeru 
 But surely both of them cast aside one whole source of 
 knowledge of a very different kind. It is clear that neither 
 of them has the least turn for prae-historic or ethnological 
 researches. They have hardly a word to teU us about the 
 Pelasgians* or the Leleges. Speculations of this kind rest, 
 they say, on no evidence. Sir George Lewis especially would 
 seem to rank them almost below the legends of the poets. 
 Certainly they rest on no contemporary written evidence ; 
 but surely they rest on an evidence of their own. That 
 evidence is of the same kind as that which forms the ground- 
 work of philology and of some branches of natural science— 
 of geology, for instance, which is simply archseology before 
 man. Moreover it sometimes happens, as in the case of the 
 
 * On the historical Pelaagians of Krestdn and Plakia Mr. Grote haa one of 
 hia best notea, vol. ii. p. 351. He shows very clearly, against Dr. Thirlwall, 
 that in the well-known passage of Herodotus yofanr^f must be interpreted 
 by fiap^apot, not fiappapot by xapa/trijp. 
 
 I 
 
114 THE ATHENIAN DEM0CRAG7. [Ebsat 
 
 legendary greatness of Myken^, that archaeological and legen- 
 dary evidence coincide so wonderfully as to leave no doubt that 
 the legend has preserved the memory of a real state of things.* 
 
 ISir. Grote's chapters on Sparta, her gradual developement 
 and her distinctive constitution, form a most valuable contri- 
 bution to early Grecian history. He shows very clearly how 
 thoroughly Argos was the leading state of PeloponnSsos in 
 the early Doric times; how very slowly it was that Sparta 
 rose to the post of honour ; how obstinately Argos clung 
 to the assertion of her ancient position, long after she had 
 lost all means of practically enforcing it. Highly valuable 
 also are the chapters which, at various stages of the work, are 
 given to the fortunes of the Sicilian Greeks. In the pro- 
 minence which Mr. Grote gives to them he agrees with 
 Mitford, though no contrast can be greater than that which 
 is shown in the treatment of the subject by the two writers. 
 Dr. Thirlwall, somewhat unaccountably, takes very little notice 
 of this important part of the Hellenic world. 
 
 The Homeric poems are another subject to which Mr. Grote 
 gives much of his attention. His general philosophical re- 
 marks on the origin and growth of legend are among the pro- 
 foundest things in his work ; but in purely literary criticism 
 he is hardly equal to Colonel Mure, His view is one which 
 lies between the ' Wolfian hypothesis ' of disjointed lays, 
 and Colonel Mure's belief in the essential unity of both 
 poems.f The Odyssey Mr. Grote looks on as an integral 
 whole, the Iliad as a poem enlarged out of an earlier Achilleid. 
 This view he very ably supports, but on the whole we incline 
 to Colonel Mure. It is instructive indeed to contrast- these 
 two eminent men, to whom Grecian literature is so deeply- 
 indebted. Each is so well fitted for his own task ; neither is 
 quite safe when he handles the task of the other. The one 
 has all the strength and depth of the political historian, 
 the other the taste and acuteness of the refined literary critic. 
 
 * [See above p. 60. I have struck out a passage to the same effect as what I 
 said there.] 
 + [This was written before the appearance of Mr. Gladstone's book.] 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCBACT. 115 
 
 Sir George Lewis, Colonel Mure, and Mr. Grote, may all be 
 classed together as illustrious examples of a love of learning 
 kept on in the midst of busy life. Three public men, — one 
 a distinguished son of Oxford, another brought up at a 
 foreign University, a third without any academic training at 
 all, — are all, among pursuits which do not commonly lead men 
 to such researches, equally led to profound research into 
 the literature and politics of distant times. No argument can 
 be more overwhelming against those who gainsay the useful- 
 ness of such studies. 
 
 • 
 
 But we must hasten on to our real subject, the origin and 
 working of the Athenian Democracy. What old Greece was 
 to the rest of the contemporary world, Athens emphatically 
 was to Greece itself. Every tendency which marked off 
 the Greek from the Barbarian marked off, in its highest 
 developement, the Athenian from every other Greek. The 
 Athenian, in short, was the highest form of the Hellenic type. 
 By nothing is the Greek more emphatically distinguished 
 from every nation with which he came in contact during 
 his best days, than by the presence of what Mr. Grote calls 
 a ' constitutional morality.' Political liberty was grounded on 
 a habit of fairly hearing both sides, and then deciding ; it 
 was understood that the minority should peaceably yield to 
 the will of the greater number. This is a doctrine which 
 was wholly unknown to the Persian or the Egyptian, who 
 knew no choice but either blind submission to a master or 
 open rebellion against him. But in every Greek city the 
 theory was thoroughly well known, though it was by no 
 means in every Greek city that the theory was fully or con- 
 stantly carried out. It is in democratic Athens that we find 
 the nearest approach, and that positively a very near approach, 
 to its perfect fulfilment. 
 
 Old Greece, taking in under that name not only the original 
 Hellas, but all the settlements of the Greek nation every- 
 where, was, we must always remember, a system of cities 
 wholly independent of one another. It was moreover a system 
 
 I a 
 
116 THE ATHENIAN DEM0GRAG7. [Essay 
 
 which, during its best days, was co-extensive with its own 
 civilized world. In ancient and in mediaeval Italy, in mediaeval 
 and in modern Switzerland, a like system of what Mr. Grote 
 calls 'town-autonomy,' has more or less largely prevailed. 
 But it is in old Greece alone that the system is seen in its 
 full perfection. The City was the highest and the lowest 
 political unit which the Greek willingly acknowledged. He 
 must have a city ; a mere village was not enough for him : he 
 did not want the wild independence of the mountaineer, but 
 the settled legal freedom of the citizen. There must be an 
 authority to obey, but of that authority he must himself 
 form a part. But for such authority he did not willingly 
 look beyond his own city ; he had no mind to merge the full 
 sovereignty of that city even in a federation, much less in an 
 empire. The full and perfect sovereignty of each separate 
 city formed the political ideal of the Greek mind. The less 
 advanced members of the Hellenic race did not fuUy attain 
 to the conception, because they did not fully attain to the per- 
 fection of Greek city-life. In later times Greece learned by 
 bitter experience the need of closer union; and at last the 
 Achaian League was the result. But among the most ad- 
 vanced Greeks in the best days of Greece the sovereignty 
 of each city was the acknowledged political theory. If it 
 was never fuUy carried out, it was only because every city 
 had not physical resources to maintain its independence. 
 But every city looked on perfect independence as its natural 
 right ; eYerj city asserted its independence whenever it could ; 
 every city deemed itself wronged if it were hindered from so 
 doing by superior force. 
 
 Now in the earliest times into which we can get any 
 insight, this system of small separate communities formed 
 the whole political world of which the Greek had any know- 
 ledge. In old Greece, above all, he never met, either as 
 friend or foe, vrith any but a Greek neighbour. Even in the 
 early colonies the Greek never came across any foreigner 
 able to meet him on equal terms either of friendship or of 
 hostility. In this state of things the bond between Greek and 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN BEM0CRAC7. 117 
 
 Greek differed little from the bond between man and man. 
 But the colonizing system first gave birth to a feeling which 
 the rise of great Barbarian states strengthened, a feeling that 
 the Greek race did not stand alone in the world. In Thrace, 
 in Asia, in Sicily, the Greek learned the existence of the Bar- 
 barian ; and as Lydia, Carthage, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome 
 arose one after the other, he learned that the friendship or 
 enmity of the Barbarian might be a matter of moment to 
 the Greek. But he learned at the same time that the 
 Greek could boast of something whereby to distinguish him- 
 self from the Barbarian. He learned that, over and above 
 the independent political being of the several Grecian cities, 
 there was a higher national being in which every Greek could 
 claim a sTiare. From Spain to the Tauric Chersonesos, every 
 Greek shared a common language, a common religion, com- 
 mon political and intellectual tendencies. The Greek of the 
 Iberian Zakynthos and the Greek of the Borysthenic Olbia 
 might meet and contend in those games, by the banks of 
 the Alpheios or beneath the crags of Delphi, from which 
 even the Macedonian and the Thesprotian were hopelessly 
 shut out. He began to feel that his brother Greek might by 
 chance be an enemy, but that he was still in himself a 
 countryman. He felt that even to a hostile Greek he stood 
 in a relation in which he did not stand to the outside 
 foreigner, whose language, manners, and worship were alto- 
 gether strange to him. Thus the feeling of ' separate town- 
 autonomy ' began to be somewhat modified by the wider feel- 
 ing of ' Pan-hellenic obligation.' As Mr. Grote several times 
 suggests, the proper union and harmony of these two tenden- 
 cies would have led to the establishment of a Federal Govern- 
 ment. No such Federal Government could have taken in the 
 whole Hellenic race ; but a Federal Government might easily 
 have taken in all the Grecian cities around the ^gsean. It 
 might have taken in all Greeks from Epidamnos to Sin6p6j a 
 range nearly answering to the extent of the Greek race at 
 the present day. But the only really effective Federal Govern- 
 ment which Greece ever saw arose too late to do the work, and 
 
118 THE ATHENIAN BEMOQRAGY. [Essay 
 
 never spread to any purpose beyond the bounds of Peloponn^sos. 
 As it was, the natural inclination of all communities to ext€nd 
 their dominion, whether rightfully or wrongfully, too often 
 clashed alike with town-autonomy and with Pan-hellenic 
 patriotism. At no time of their history did Greeks scruple to 
 hold dominion over other Greeks. And as soon as they had the 
 » meansj they did not scruple to win and to uphold such do- 
 minion by the help either of barbaric steel or of barbaric gold. 
 Now Athens stands out prominently as the highest de- 
 velopement of all these tendencies. She is the most illustrious 
 example alike of the single autonomous city, of the Pan-heUenic 
 leader against the Barbarian, and of the Greek state bearing 
 rule over other Greeks. In all these characters she has been 
 thoughtfully examined and clearly described by the great 
 historian with whom we are dealing. In the sketch of the 
 Athenian Democracy which we are now about to attempt, our 
 readers will understand that we are chiefly following Mr. 
 Grote, and that we mean to set the seal of our full agreement 
 to his general views, — of course not pledging ourselves to 
 every minute detail, — whenever we do not stop formally to 
 argue against them. 
 
 As a single autonomous city, Athens was in two ways the 
 greatest in Greece. No other single city could boast of so 
 great a number of citizens ; *in no other did those citizens so 
 directly and thoroughly hold the government of their own 
 city, A glance at the map of Greece wiU show that Attica 
 was far larger than the territory of any other single city. 
 Sparta of course ruled over a far larger extent of country ; 
 but that was because Sparta held the sovereignty over many 
 other cities, which were thereby thrust down to the rank 
 of subjects. Attica was nearly as large as Boeotia ; but while 
 Boeotia formed an ill-contrived and inharmonious federation, 
 Attica formed one indivisible body-politic. Attica was in fact 
 about as large a territory as could, according to Greek notions, 
 form one indivisible body-politic. Had the land been much 
 larger, each qualified citizen could no longer have exercised a 
 personal share in the government. This happy position was 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 119 
 
 owing to an event whicli comes to us in the form of legend, but 
 which is supported by so great a weight of probability that 
 we may fairly set it down as a historical fact. That Attica 
 once contained twelve independent cities, and that they were 
 led to give up their separate political life and to be merged 
 into the one city of Athens, we may undoubtedly believe. 
 But as to the exact date of the change, whether it took place 
 at once or gradually^ — whether some cities kept their inde- 
 pendence longer than others^ — whether their inhabitants re- 
 ceived the full Athenian citizenship at once, or after struggles 
 like those of the Roman Commons, — whether any of the 
 early dissensions in Attica were owing to distinctions between 
 Athenians and Attieans, are questions at which we can do little 
 more than guess. But it is plain that the change had been 
 fuUy wrought out before the time of Drak6n and Sol6n. The 
 Athens for which they legislated was an Athens in whose 
 rights and in whose wrongs all Attica shared alike. Marathon, 
 Aphidnai, and Eleusis * had no longer any distinct political 
 being ; they were merged into the higher whole of Athens. 
 It is the utter disappearance of the Attic towns as political 
 bodies which forms the distinguishing phsenomenon of Athe- 
 nian history. Several of them kept on a large population and 
 considerable municipal importance ; but they had given up all 
 claims to separate sovereignty. Their relation to Athens was 
 one neither of subjection nor of federation. A Laconian town^ 
 
 * Mr. Grote (vol. iii. p. 94) remarks that the story of Tellos, which is put- 
 into the mouth of Solon at the Lydian Court, ' assumes the independence of 
 Eleusis in earlier times.' We thinli that it does even more : it seems to show 
 (so fer as we can trust it at all) that the union of Eleusis and Athens was not 
 in Soldn's days of very long standing. The tale certainly does not sound like 
 an event of mythical antiquity, but rather like something of which Soldn might 
 have heard from his grandfather. Mr. Grote also infers, with much force, from 
 the Homeric hymn to Demfiter, that Eleusis formed an independent state at 
 the time when that hymn was made, perhaps as late as the middle of the 
 seventh century before Christ. If the union of the Attic towns was gradual, 
 so important a place as Eleusis would doubtless be one of the last to come in, 
 much like Orohomenos in Boeotia or Akanthos in Chalkidike. It is even pos- 
 sible that the choice of Eleusis, rather than any other Attic town, to form 
 a separate state under the oligarchy, after they were driven from Athens, may 
 point to some abiding memory of its ancient independence. 
 
120 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 whatever monieipal rights it might keep, was politically in 
 utter bondage to Sparta. Its citizens had no share whatever 
 in the general government of their country. A Boeotian town 
 formed a distinct commonwealth, whose sovereign rights were 
 somewhat curtailed by its federal relations towards its fellow 
 Boeotian towns, and still more so by the practical supremacy 
 of Thebes over the whole Boeotian League. The burgher of 
 Thespia or Orchomenos was a Boeotian ; but he was in no sense 
 a Theban. The burgher of Eleusis or Marathon had well nigh 
 lost the name of Attican in that of Athenian.* By this 
 happy diffusion of equal political rights over the whole of 
 Attica, Athens became the greatest of Hellenic cities. Other 
 cities ruled over wider domains and more numerous subjects ; 
 no other city could marshal so great a number of free and equal 
 citizens. Whether this great event was owing to force or to 
 persuasion, to some happy accident or to long-sighted political 
 wisdom, — whether we see iu it the gradual result of pre- 
 disposing causes or attribute it to the single genius of some 
 nameless f statesman of an unrecorded age, — in any case, it 
 stands forth as one of the foremost events in the history of the 
 world. As the determining cause of the greatness of Athens, 
 it was the determining cause of the distinctive and lasting 
 greatness of Hellas. As such, the union, the ^voCklo-ls, of 
 Attica becomes nothing less than the beginning of the poli- 
 tical history of mankind. 
 
 The union of the old Attic towns made Athens and Attica 
 words of the same political meaning; but it was very far 
 from wiping out all political distinctions between the several 
 classes of their inhabitants. Eleusinians and Athenians no 
 longer strove with each other upon the field of battle ; but 
 
 * [Dikaiarchos (PeriSg^siB, 4) says of Attica tSiv 6* evoiKoivTojv 01 fiev avraiv 
 'AttikoI, ol S' 'ASr]vcuoi, and he goes on to draw a distinction between the 
 characters of the two. C. MUUer, in his note, has brought together a few 
 other eases of this rare use of the word.] 
 
 + The legend attributes it to the mythical King Thfeeus. In this change, as 
 in most others, some one man was most likely the chief agent ; several things 
 look as it it was at least begun before kingship was done away with ; the King 
 who had the chief hand in it may as well have been called Theseus as anything 
 else ; but this is as much as we can say. 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 121 
 
 the poor Eleusinian and the poor Athenian had alike to 
 bear the yoke, personal and political, of the oligarchy which 
 ruled over their common country. Such is the aspect of 
 Athenian affairs when we first begin to see them in anything 
 like detail, at the time of the Solonian legislation. Theseus 
 and Solon were the two great names round which the loving 
 memory of Athens gathered. Her orators and poets sometimes 
 scrupled not to attribute her full-grown democracy to Theseus 
 the King, no less than to Sol6n the Archon. Of Theseus we 
 can say nothing ; of the reforms of Solon we can happily 
 make out a good deal. If Theseus* founded a democracy, it 
 was assiu-edly not a lasting one. Even of Solon the utmost 
 we can say is that his reform took a decidedly democratic 
 turn. The most distinctively democratic of Athenian in- 
 stitutions were undoubtedly of later date. 
 
 The questions which have been so often raised as to the 
 so-called four Ionic tribes we shall pass by, as not directly 
 bearing on our immediate subject. It is enough for our 
 purpose that they formed an oppressive oligarchy. The 
 question which immediately concerns us is, How far did Solon 
 break down the barriers of this oligarchy ? We all know how 
 he made a division into classes according to property, and how 
 under his system the rich alone could be chosen to the great 
 offices of the state. But here an important question arises, Who 
 were the persons thus classified ? According to one answer, 
 Solon could hardly have even looked in the direction of de- 
 mocracy. Niebuhr,t at one time at least, held the Solonian 
 timocracy to have been a mere change within the patrician order 
 itself; the poor noble was to be shut out from office, while the 
 rich plebeian was not let in. Surely such a change would have 
 
 * If we may trust the sage Diodflros, democracy could look still higher for 
 its founder. Zeus himself established that foi-m of government, not only at 
 Athens, but throughout the world. iTuKBtiv 5' airhv [Ai'o] ra! T^y oiieoviikvi\v 
 ffveSii' anaffav, tovs fikv Kriffrds xaX daepHS ivaipovvra, Tipi 8' la&rrfTa Kal t^c 
 Sri/iOKpaTiav thriyovfifvov. Died. v. 71. One would certainly never have 
 found this out from the Prometheus of ^schylus. 
 
 t History of Eome, vol. ii. pp. 384, 385. In his Lectures on Ancient 
 History, vol, i. p. 288, he seems to take a different, but less intelligible, view. 
 
122 TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 been merely to make the oligarchy still narrower than it was 
 before. Surely it is inconsistent with the well-known saying* 
 of Sol6n himself, which, whatever be its exact meaning, clearly 
 implies that he gave the mass of the people some power. It 
 would be easier to believe that the timoeracy simply took the 
 place of the oligarchy, that wealth became the qualification 
 instead of birth, that the rich plebeian was qualified no 
 less than the rich patrician, and the poor patrician dis- 
 qualified no less than the poor plebeian. But this view seems 
 inconsistent with the fact, which is allowed on all hands, 
 that the Four Tribes went on as real political divisions down 
 to the legislation of Kleisthenes. We are therefore driven, 
 though not without some doubt and difficulty, to the be- 
 lief that the timoeracy extended only to the patrician 
 order, and that the whole body of the plebeians, rich and 
 poor, were placed, together with the poorest patricians, in the 
 fourth or lowest class. This seems to be the view taken both 
 by Dr. Thirlwallf and by Mr. Grote.J 
 
 Athens then, after the Solonian reform, was still a modified 
 oligarchy. Solon § preserved the old Senate of Areiopagos, 
 
 * A^/t^ }jt.iv yhp eStufca Toaov fcparos offffov eirapKei. "f" Vol. ii. p. 45. 
 
 t Mr. Gi'ote seema decidedly to assert this, when he formally describes the 
 Solonian constitution. He there (vol. iii. p. 1 76) speaks of persons not included 
 in the Four Tribes, who still were citizens with votes in the Assembly, and 
 adds, ' It seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the Four Tribes, 
 whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to 
 political privilege as the fourth and lowest class of the Solonian census.' Yet 
 afterwards (vol. iv. p. 169), when he describes the legislation of Elleisthengs, he 
 says, ' the political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both 
 before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes, 
 each of which was an aggregate of so many close corporations or qtiasi families, 
 the gentes and phratries ; none of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those 
 included in some gens or [and !] phratry, had any part in the political fi-anchise. 
 . . . Kleisthenfe broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted 
 the political franchise to the excluded mass.' We cannot reconcile these two 
 statements, and we greatly prefer the former one. The latter seems to agree 
 with the view of Niebuhr quoted above, according to which Sol6n really made 
 the oligarchy more oligarchical. 
 
 § Mr. Grote has, we tliink, clearly made out that the Senate of Areiopagos 
 was the originaA one, older than Sol6n, and that the yearly Senate was of his 
 foundation. 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEM00RAC7. 123 
 
 which was made up of all who had served the ofSce of Archon 
 with credit. But he set up alongside of it another Senate 
 of a somewhat more popular kind. A hundred patricians 
 chosen from each trihe formed a yearly Senate. The chief 
 executive and judicial powers — those which had been vested 
 in the ancient Kings, and in their successors, the Archons for 
 life, for ten years, for one year — Solon found and left in the 
 hands of nine yearly Archons. These, by his legislation, 
 were to be chosen from the first class of the census, so that 
 their qualification implied both noble birth and the possession 
 of the highest degree of wealth in the community. What 
 then did the people gain by the Solonian reform ? Very little, 
 as compared with their power in after times ; but very much, 
 as compared with their earlier state of utter political nothing- 
 ness. They still shared iq nothing, but they now had the 
 disposal of everything. They still had masters, but they were 
 masters of their own choosing. The Public Assembly, the 
 famous EkMesia, now arose, in which every Athenian citizen 
 had an equal vote. Here the poor or ignoble citizen, himself 
 shut out from office, chose and sat in judgement upon those 
 who ruled him. Here the yearly Senate and the yearly 
 Archons were chosen by the common sufirage of the people. 
 Here the same Archons, after their year of office, underwent 
 the euthyne or examination, without honourably passing 
 through which they could not take their seat in the per- 
 manent Senate of Areiopagos. 
 
 The constitution of Solon had hardly time to show itself in 
 practical working, before the tyranny * of Peisistratos practi- 
 cally set it aside. Peisistratos, as is acknowledged on all 
 hands, respected the forms of the constitution. Senate, 
 Assembly, and Archons — all doubtless went on, but their 
 practical power was probably about as great as when, ages 
 
 * We keep to the common usage of 'Tyrant' and ' tyranny,' to express ri- 
 pavyos and its derivatives, rather than Mr. Grote's ' Despot ' and ' despotism.' 
 Neither ' Tyrant ' nor ' Despot,' in its usual English meaning, exactly expresses 
 Tijoawos ; either word must be used in a fixed technical sense. We see there- 
 fore no reason for departing from established custom. 
 
124 THE ATHENIAN DEM0CBAG7. [Essay 
 
 • 
 after, Athens was enrolled as a favoured ally of Nero. But 
 the rule of the Tyrants, by bringing nobles and people 
 under one common bondage, indirectly helped the cause of 
 democracy. When the tyranny was overpassed, it was found 
 impossible to call back the old distinctions into practical 
 life. Still, as the constitutional forms had been respected, 
 there was an established system to fall back upon and to 
 reform. Under the unwitting guidance of Peisistratos and 
 Hippias, the Athens of Solon had become ripe for its 
 change into the Athens of KleisthenSs. Democracy had now 
 fairly begun its course, though it was still far from having 
 reached the goal. 
 
 From Kleisthenes to PeriklSs, reforms were so steadily 
 going on in a democratic direction that it is not easy to fix 
 the exact date of each change. But three great stages may 
 clearly be made out. First come the reforms of Kleisthenes 
 himself, after the driving out of the lyrants : secondly, the 
 changes which were wrought immediately after the Persian 
 War, some of which are attributed to AristeidSs : thirdly, 
 those which brought about the perfect consummation of 
 democracy under Ephialt^s and PeriklSs. 
 
 What Kleisthenes himself did seems to have been wholly 
 to sweep away all distinctions founded on birth, and greatly to 
 lessen the strictness of those founded on property. The Four 
 Tribes, as a political institution, ceased to exist. The gentes 
 and phratries of which they are made up went on as religious 
 and social unions, but they no longer determined a man's 
 political rank. The whole people — ^patricians, commoners, 
 together with many slaves and foreigpaers who now received 
 the franchise for the first time — were divided into Ten Tribes. 
 These tribes were again subdivided into Demoi or Parishes. 
 These last were essentially local divisions, each D^mos forming 
 a larger or smaller municipality. Full scope was thus given 
 for the working of those local feelings which were very strong 
 in the Attic bosom. But a wise arrangement, whereby the 
 Demoi forming each Tribe did not lie together, hindered these 
 local feelings from having any bad political eflfect, such as 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN BEMOGRAGT. 125 
 
 they had had in the time between Solon and Peisistratos. The 
 ten Tribes were the immediate constituent members of the 
 body-politic. On them all the arrangements of the state, 
 both military and civil, depended. The citizens of each tribe 
 were marshalled together in battle, while a board of ten 
 Generals, one from each tribe, was placed at the head of 
 military affairs. The yearly Senate now consisted of five 
 hundred members, fifty from each tribe ; and the Senators of 
 each tribe in turn enjoyed the presidency in the Public 
 Assembly. The aristocracy of birth was thus legally swept 
 away, but the Solonian timocracy was only modified. The 
 Axchonship, confined by Solon to the first class of his census, 
 was now opened to the first three, into which all citizens who 
 had the legal amount of wealth were now admitted. The 
 fourth and poorest class alone were still shut out. 
 
 Between Kleisthen^s and Perikles three great changes were 
 gradually wrought, which, as Mr. Grote clearly shows, all 
 hang together. All citizens became eligible for all offices. 
 The Archons and the yearly Senate began to be named 
 by lot instead of by election. The Archons, the successors 
 of the ancient Kings, were cut down to that routine of police 
 and religious ceremony which is all that we find left to them 
 under the full-grown Democracy. Of these three changes, 
 the earliest must, in the nature of things, have been that 
 which admitted all citizens without distinction to office. As 
 Mr. Grote observes, the use of the lot implies that this change 
 had taken place. As long as restrictions were left, the intro- 
 duction of the lot would not have been any gain to democracy. 
 As long as the high offices were confined to rich men, the 
 poor man's influence lay in his vote, by which he decided 
 among the rich candidates. He clearly would not give up 
 this form of power till the loss was made good by his being 
 himself made admissible to office. 
 
 But, if the lot implies universal admissibility to the archon- 
 ship, it no less implies a diminished power in the office of 
 Archon. The Archons, like the Roman Consuls, took the place 
 of the ancient Kings. Indeed the single Archon, whether for 
 
126 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 life, for ten years, or for one year only, held a still more 
 commanding position than the Roman Consul. But while 
 Eome kept on the powers of the consulship, with compara- 
 tively little change, down to the end of the commonwealth, 
 Athens was always lessening the once kingly powers of her 
 Archons. Even under the oligarchy, a board of nine Archons 
 took the place of a single ruler. Under the Democracy, whether 
 from jealousy of the old patrician magistracy, or from what- 
 ever cause, the Archons sank into something like aldermen 
 or police magistrates. They still kept a summary jurisdiction 
 in small cases, but they had to bring weightier matters before 
 the popular courts, which had succeeded to their old judicial 
 powers and where they themselves kept only a barren presi- 
 dency. Their old administrative and military functions, so far 
 as Demos did not take them upon himself, were handed over 
 to his favourite magistracy, the Ten Generals. We may be 
 quite sure that this change was at least far advanced before 
 the lot was made to decide their appointment. The lot was 
 never applied at Athens to offices which called for any special 
 fitness.* Generals and ambassadors were always chosen by 
 the Assembly. It follows that, so long as the Archons were 
 still the eflFective heads of the state, they were appointed 
 in the same way. The lot could only have come in after 
 the Archons had been cut down to mere routine duties, 
 which it was held that any respectable citizen was able to 
 go through. Notoriously discreditable persons would either 
 be shut out by the Bokimasia or examination before admis- 
 sion to office, or else punished by the Euthynfi or examination 
 after their term of office was over. 
 
 The following then must have been the order of the three 
 changes. First, All citizens were made admissible to the 
 archonship. Secondly, The powers of the archonship were so 
 cut down as to be within the competence of any respectable 
 citizen. Thirdly, The Archons were appointed by lot. But it 
 is allowed on all hands that all citizens were not admissible 
 
 Arist. Pol. vi. 2. 5. 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEM0GEAG7. 127 
 
 to the archonship till after the battle of Plataia. It follows 
 therefore that, at least up to that time, the Archons were 
 elected,* and that they still held powers which needed special 
 qualifications. As for the yearly Senate, where the same 
 special qualifications were not needed in each individual 
 niember,t it is possible, though by no means certain, that the 
 lot may have been applied to their appointment as early as 
 the time of Kleisthenes. 
 
 The reforms of Kleisthenes and the reforms of Aristeides, 
 mark two great stages in the democratic march. Under 
 Peisistratos and his sons, patrician and plebeian were con- 
 founded in one common bondage, which most likely pressed 
 more heavily upon the patrician. Liberty was brought back, 
 and the legal distinction between patrician and plebeian was 
 swept away by 'the legislation of Kleisthenes. During the 
 Persian invasion rich and poor showed themselves equal in 
 sufiering and in heroism; the Thes did and suflfered side by 
 side with the Pentakosiomedimnos. Their common country was 
 won back, and the legal distinction between rich and poor was 
 swept away by the legislation of Aristeides. The lot and the 
 lessened powers of the Archons must soon have followed, till 
 at last the full-grown Democracy showed itself under Ephialtes 
 and Perikles. What the Athenian constitution became under 
 them, such it went on being — with the short interruptions of 
 the Four Hundred and the Thirty — during the whole remain- 
 
 * The only objection to this view ia the expression of Herodotus with regard 
 to Kallimachos at Marathdn, 6 rw Kvdfup Xax^^v noXifmp'xps. Now Herodotus 
 directly bears witness to the fact that the Polemaroh then stUl held high 
 military command. This is essential to the story, and it is a point on which 
 he could hardly be mistaken. But the mention of the lot is a mere obiter 
 dietvm, in which Herodotus might easily transfer the language of his own 
 day to an earlier period. Herodotus shows that in B.C. 490 the Polemaroh 
 acted as a General. Now the Generals were always elected ; surely then in 
 B.C. 490 the Polemaroh must have been elected. There is also the direct 
 witness of Isokrat^s and of Idomeneus of Lampsakos quoted by Plutarch. 
 Their direct authority is much lower than that of Herodotus ; but their positive 
 statement on a point to which they are specially referring, may counterbalance 
 his mere casual allusion. See Grote, vol. iv. p. 197. 
 
 + See Lysias c. Evan. § 14. The whole speech should be studied as 
 illustrative of the BoMmasia. 
 
128 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 ing period of Athenian independence. It was only by the 
 Macedonian Antipatros — Philip and Alexander had spared her 
 thus nauch — that Athens was driven once more to set up a 
 money qualification for the exercise of her now narrowed and 
 dishonoured citizenship. 
 
 And now what was the true nature of the fiill-grown 
 Athenian constitution, that great Democracy which has been 
 made the object of such unsparing abuse, and of which Mr. 
 Grote stands forth as the defender ? The essence of this typi- 
 cal Greek Democracy is that it unites all power, legislative, 
 executive, and judicial, in the Assembly of the People. The 
 essence of pure Democracy, as it was understood by Demos him- 
 self, was that the assembled people should be Tyrant; the name 
 at which he shuddered when applied to a ' single person,' he 
 seems rather to have rejoiced in when it was applied to his 
 own collective majesty.* In the popular Assembly, where 
 every citizen, rich or poor, has an equal vote, centres the whole 
 authority, legislative, judicial, and executive. It may be con- 
 venient to delegate some of its functions to committees taken 
 by lot from its own number; hence we have a probouleutic 
 Senate and popular courts of judicature ; but these bodies 
 never lose the character of committees of the sovereign As- 
 sembly ; the courts of justice are by the orators who address 
 them constantly identified with the political EkklMa, and 
 they are held to be animated by the same views and passions. 
 Hence too magistrates have no independent authority ; the 
 Archon, and even the General, is the mere executor of the will 
 of the sovereign People ; the former indeed is charged with 
 little more than to carry out, formally and ministerially, 
 certain routine duties of police and ceremonial religion. 
 The division of powers which we look on as so essential to 
 
 « Arist. Eq. 1027, JI13, 1329, 1331. Thuo. ii. 63, iii. 37. Isok. Areop. 29. 
 aia Si avvTiiuoa ilireiv, ixeivoi SieyiiaKOTis ?j<rav St« Sfi riv Arjuov, Sisirep 
 rifavvov, KoSioravai rat &px^ *"' KoXA^av tou« i^ana/nivmrras ml icplvav 
 irepl r&v &iul>i(r0ijToviievBii', roiit Se ffxoXV liffii' Swa/iivom koI 0lov Xkovov 
 KucTriiiivova kmiie\eiirSai tSiv koivSiv &snep oiuiTas, Cf. Mitford, chap. 37, 
 sect. vii. 
 
rV.] TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 129 
 
 good government was at Athens never heard of. Demos was 
 himself King, Minister, and Parliament. He had his smaller 
 officials to carry out the necessary details of public business, 
 but he was most undoubtedly his own First Lord of the Trea- 
 sury, his own Foreign Secretary, his own Secretary for the 
 Colonies. He himself kept up a personal correspondence both 
 with foreign potentates and with his own officers on foreign 
 service; the 'despatches' of Nikias and the 'notes' of Philip 
 were alike addressed to no officer short of the sovereign him- 
 self ; he gave personal audience to the ambassadors of other 
 states, and clothed his own with just so great or so small a 
 share as he deemed good of his own boundless authority. He 
 had no need to entrust the care of his thousand dependencies 
 to the mysterious working of a Foreign Office ; he himself sat 
 in judgement upon Mitylenaian rebels' ; he himself settled the 
 allotment of lands at Chalkis or AmphipoHs ; he decreed by 
 his own wisdom what duties should be levied at the Sound 
 of Byzantion ; he even ventured on a task of which two-and- 
 twenty ages have not lessened the difficulty, and undertook, 
 without the help of a Lord High Commissioner, to adjust the 
 relations and compose the seditions even of Korkyra and 
 Zakynthos.* He was his own Lord High Chancellor, his 
 own Lord Primate, his own Commander-in-Chief. He listened 
 to the arguments of Kleon on behalf of a measure, and to the 
 arguments of Nikias against it, and he ended by bidding Nikias 
 to go and carry out the proposal which he had denounced as 
 extravagant or unjust. He listened with approval to his own 
 ' explanations ' ; he passed votes of confidence in his own 
 policy ; he advised himself to give his own royal assent to the 
 bills which he had himself passed, without the form of a 
 second or third reading, or the vain ceremony of moving that 
 the Prytaneis do leave their chairs. 
 
 Demos then was Tyrant ; and now the question comes, Did 
 he use his despotic powers well or ill? Did he truly bring 
 
 * [Let Englishmen be thankful that this responsibility no longer lies ' upon, 
 them.] 
 
 s K 
 
130 TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 himself under tte censure of a great historian, who lays 
 down the rule that an assembly of even five or six hundred 
 persons has 'a tendency to become a mob;' and that 'a 
 country of which the supreme executive council is a mob is 
 surely in a perilous situation' ?* This is doubtless very good 
 constitutional doctrine for an age of Cabinet Councils and 
 diplomatic conferences ; but a Greek of the fourth or fifth cen- 
 tury before Christ might well have doubted it. The supreme 
 executive council of his most illustrious city was a mob, not 
 merely of five or six hundred, but of five or six thousand, 
 conceivably of from twenty to thirty thousand. This mob 
 restrained itself just where a modern Parliament gives itself 
 full freedom, and it gave itself full freedom just where a modem 
 Parliament restrains itself. Its legislative powers wej-e greatly 
 narrowed by one of its own committees ; t but its executive 
 powers were unbounded. This mob, as we have seen, made 
 peace and war ; it appointed generals and gave them instruc- 
 tions ; it gave audience to foreign ambassadors and discussed 
 their proposals; it appointed its own ambassadors, and gave 
 them instructions for foreign powers, f If comparative secrecy 
 was ever needed in a diplomatic transaction, the larger mob 
 which counted its thousands handed over' its powers to the 
 smaller mob of five hundred which formed the Senate of the 
 republic. § Generals, ambassadors, and other ministers, were 
 of course allowed a certain liberty and authority, but so are 
 the generals and ambassadors of the most absolute despot. 
 But the control which Demos exercised over generals and 
 ambassadors was the control of a ' Government,' not merely 
 the control of a Parliament. The Athenian system admitted 
 of individual Ministers, but it admitted of nothing in the 
 shape of a Ministry. Even the probouleutic Senate did not 
 take on itself the functions of a Cabinet. It was by the Sove- 
 reign Assembly that all public servants were directly ap- 
 
 * Maoaulay's History of England, vol. iv. p. 4';4. 
 + The sworn Nomotbetai. See Grote, vol. v. p. 500. 
 
 t 'O yd,f> T^i/ x^'P"' "A'S" /i^^A.ttir alpeiv, ovtos 6 irpeaPeiav iariv, SirSrep' hv 
 avT^ SoKrj, feed t^v sipfjvrjv koX rhv ■n6Kffiov ttohiv. Andok. IIe/)l Etp. p. 41. 
 § See Grote, vol. xi. p. 332. 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 131 
 
 pointed ; it was to the Sovereign Assembly that they were 
 directly responsible. 
 
 Now a fair examination of Grecian history will assuredly 
 lead tis to the conclusion that this mob clothed with exe- 
 cutive functions made one of the best governments which 
 the world ever saw. It did not work impossibilities] it 
 did not change earth into paradise nor men into angels; 
 it did not forestall every improvement which has since 
 appeared in the world ; still less did it forestall all the 
 improvements which we may trust are yet in store for man- 
 kind. But that government cannot be called a bad one 
 which is better than any other government of its own time. 
 And surely that government must be called a good one which 
 is a marked improvement upon every government which has 
 gone before it. The Athenian Democracy is entitled to both 
 these kinds of praise. Demos was guilty of some follies and 
 some crimes; but he was guilty of fewer follies and fewer 
 crimes, and he did more wise and noble deeds^ than any 
 government of his own or of any earlier age. 
 
 First then, the Democracy of Athens was the first great 
 instance which the world ever saw of the substitution of law 
 for force. Here, as usual, we find in Athens the highest 
 instance of a tendency common to all Greece. The rudest 
 Greek conmiunity had a far more advanced conception of 
 law than any barbarian state which it came across. The 
 Athenian Democracy carried the conception into more perfect 
 working than any other state in Greece. The history of an 
 eastern despotism is commonly a historj' of usurpations, 
 rebellions, and massacres. Blood is shed without mercy to 
 decide which of two rival men shall be the despot. In too 
 many Greek commonwealths, blood was shed with hardly more 
 of mercy to decide which of two political parties should have 
 the upper hand. But even here, as the aim of the Greek is 
 one degree nobler, so are his means one degree less cruel. 
 The barbarian mutilates, impales, crucifies : the Greek simply 
 slays. Again, what the Greek of Argos or Korkyra is to the 
 Barbarian, the Greek of Athens is to the Greek of Argos or 
 
 E 2 
 
132 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 Korkyra. The Athenian, at least the democratic Athenian, 
 does not even slay. Demos put some men to death unjustly, 
 some illegally : the Generals at Arginousai died by a bill of 
 attainder worthy of a Tudor Parliament ; but Demos was 
 never guilty of massacre or assassination in any civil struggle. 
 The dagger of the assassin, the hemlock administered without 
 trial, were the weapons only of his enemies. Their use was 
 confined to the good, the noble, the refined, the men of birth 
 and culture, the boasted pikruTToi and KaXoKayadoi who shared 
 the power, and abetted the crimes, of the Four Hundred and 
 the Thirty. Never did the history of the world show forth 
 nobler instances of moderation and good faith than the con- 
 duct of the Athenian People on each occasion of its restoration. 
 In no other city could such a triumph have been wrought with- 
 out wholesale massacres and confiscations. The victorious 
 Demos was satisfied with the legal trial and execution of a few 
 notorious traitors. For the rest an amnesty was proclaimed, 
 oaths were sworn, and, as even the oligarchic historian point- 
 edly tells us, the People abode by its oaths.* Such was the 
 result of a form of government in which every citizen partook, 
 where every question was fairly argued on both sides, and 
 where the minority peaceably yielded to an adverse vote. 
 
 But we are told that the Athenian people were jealous 
 and suspicious of their most distinguished citizens. Aris- 
 teid^s was ostracized, Perikles was fined, Sokrates was put 
 to death, Iphikrates and Chabrias dared not live at home 
 for fear of popular jealousy. No rich man had a moment's 
 quiet between liturgies on the one hand and sycophants on 
 the other. Base and selfish demagogues enjoyed the con- 
 fidence from which high-born and virtuous aristocrats were 
 debarred. Such is the picture commonly drawn of the prac- 
 tical working of Athenian freedom. Let us group together all 
 these charges into two or three. First, then, what was the 
 general condition of a rich man at Athens ? 
 
 The real ground of complaint brought against the Athenian 
 
 * Tors SpKois (linivei & A^/jos. Xen. Hell. ii. 4, 43. 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN BEMOCRAGY. 133 
 
 Democracy by its aristocratic enemies was simply that it kept 
 them from somewhat of that licence to do evil which they en- 
 joyed elsewhere. We may judge of the real nature of their 
 wrongs by one charge which is gravely brought against 
 Athens by her own apostate citizen. She did not indeed fore- 
 stall our own fathers and grandfathers by abolishing either 
 slavery or the slave-trade ; but she at least did something to 
 Kghten the yoke of the slave. At Athens, says Xenoph6n,* 
 a man did not dare to beat a foreigner or another man's 
 slave : in well-regulated Sparta such liberty seems to have 
 been allowed. But what did the rich really suffer ? All legal 
 advantages had been taken away both from birth and wealth ; 
 but in all ages birth and wealth carry with them certain 
 natural advantages which no legislation can take away. And 
 these advantages the Athenian aristocrats enjoyed only too 
 freely. What licence the rich practically exercised even under 
 the full-grown Democracy we see in the stories of Alkibiad^s 
 and Meidias. What licence they deemed themselves entitled 
 to we see in the share taken by the whole equestrian 
 order in the vilest deeds of the Thirty. The high and 
 honourable offices of the commonwealth fell all but exclusively 
 to their share. It was rare indeed that the fleets and armies 
 of Athens were commanded by other than men of old aristo- 
 cratic blood. If the rich man was burthened with heavy 
 and costly liturgies, if he had to furnish a chorus or to 
 fit out a trireme, we commonly find that he laid out a sum 
 far beyond his legal liability, in order to make political 
 capital out of his munificence, t 
 
 Again, did the Athenian Demos deserve either the charge of 
 inconstancy so commonly brought against it, or that other 
 charge which Ma'caulay brings in its stead against ' the com- 
 mon people,' namely, that 'they almost invariably choose their 
 favourite so ill, that their constancy is a vice and not a virtue ?' J 
 Do the 'common people' of Athens, the mob of lamp-makers, 
 
 * De Eep. Ath. i. lo. 
 
 t See Lysias, 'Att. Acup. § 2-9. AijU. Kar, § 16. n«pl Eiai/. § 4. 
 , X History of England, vol. i. p. 627. 
 
134 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCBACY. [Essay 
 
 lyre-makers, and leather-sellers, fairly come under either charge? 
 With regard to measures, their fault was certainly rather 
 obstinacy than inconstancy. Till their energy began to fail 
 them altogether, they were, as the fatal Sicilian expedition 
 proved, only too slow to change, too fully bent on cleaving to 
 a policy after it had been shown to be hurtful. But, if they 
 were obstinate about measures, were they fickle about men ? 
 Were they either inconstant in their attachments, or did they 
 form those attachments on slight grounds ? They are said to 
 have been inconstant because Miltiades was fined. This charge 
 Mr. Grote* has tossed to the winds. No man can dare to 
 bring it up again, unless he is ready to lay down the principle 
 that one great public service is to secure a man from punish- 
 ment for all his after offences. In fact, instead of fickleness, 
 the Athenians seem rather to have been remarkable for strange 
 constancy to their favourites. Take the case of Nikias at 
 one stage of their history, and that of Phoki6n at another. 
 Nikias, on whom we hold that Mr. Grote is unduly hard, was 
 a rich man, a man of decided aristocratic tendencies, but one 
 who never found that either his wealth or his politics laid him 
 open to public jealousy or mistrust. Ph6ki6n was poor ; but 
 of all men he was the last to be called a flatterer of the 
 People; he was rather remarkable for saying the most 
 unpleasant things in the most unpleasant way. Yet, year 
 after year, first Nikias, and then Ph6ki6n, were elected 
 Generals of the commonwealth. Nikias kept to the last a 
 confidence which proved fatal both to himself and to the 
 state. Ph6ki6n at last drank the hemlock juice ; but it was 
 not till Athens had lost her freedom ; it was not till he had 
 been the accomplice of her oppressors ; and even then, it was 
 not by the lawful sentence of the People, but by the voice of 
 an irregular rabble, hounded on by a foreign deliverer or 
 conqueror. In the greatest crime that the People ever did, 
 the execution of the Generals at Arginousai, what we have 
 a right to condemn is the breach of the ordinary securities 
 which the law had provided for accused persons. On the 
 
 * Vol. iv. p. 497. a 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOGRACT. • 135 
 
 guilt or innocence of the Generals themselves it is hardly safe 
 to pronounce with confidence.* 
 
 But what has the apologist of Athens to say to the insti- 
 tution of Ostracism ? Aristeides, Themistohles, Kim6n, Thucy- 
 dides son of Melesias, were all ostracized ; all, that is^ were 
 banished without crime — banished, we might almost say, 
 avowedly on accoimt of their merits. Mr. Grote has, we think, 
 jnade out a very fair case in behalf of the ostracism. It was 
 a rude and imperfect means of meeting a temporary danger, 
 while the Democracy was still in a rude and imperfect state. 
 In the fully developed Democracy ostracism had no place ; it 
 wag never formally abolished, but it silently dropped out of 
 use. It was bad in theory ; it could have no place in a 
 fixed and settled polity ; but it was meant to meet — and 
 perhaps no other means could have met — a real danger 
 during the infancy of the commonwealth. In most Grecian 
 cities, the triumph of one political party carried with it the 
 slaughter, exile, and confiscation of the other. Ostracism 
 was meant to hinder these horrors ; it did hinder them very 
 thoroughly. Ostracism stood instead of revolutions, proscrip- 
 tions, bills of attainder. When civil strife seemed to hang 
 over the state, the People were called on to decide who was 
 the dangerous person. If six thousand secret votes agreed 
 in naming the same person, he had to go abroad for ten 
 years. He could hardly be said to be banished; still less 
 was he dishonoured.f His property was untouched; his 
 political rights were merely suspended; in many cases he 
 was actually recalled before his whole time of absence was 
 over. Ostracism then might be an evil, perhaps a wrong ; 
 but it was the only way that showed itself of hindering far 
 greater evils and far greater wrongs. The honourable exile 
 
 * Mr. Grote's remarks on this event are throughout most weighty. He 
 leans however a little more to the unfavourable side, as regards the Gene- 
 rals than we are disposed to do. 
 
 ri shall say something more on this head in the Appendix to this Essay.] 
 + The pseudo-AndokidSs (o. Aloib. 4) says that ostracism was too heavy 
 a punishment for private, too light for pubUo offences ; rSiv SI Sriiioaimi ntKpdr 
 
136 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 of one stood instead of the proscription of many. Ostracism 
 did its work and then disappeared. It became as wholly out 
 of date under the later Democracy as the far sterner safeguard 
 of impeachment has now become in England. In both cases 
 liberty has grown strong enough to dispense with any ex- 
 ceptional safeguard. It has been found that party-spirit can 
 be kept within legal and constitutional bounds without re- 
 sorting to extra-legal means for its restraint. 
 
 But Demos not only banished his statesmen; he allowed 
 himself to be led by his Demagogues. Now on this head not 
 only is there a great popular misconception afloat, but we can- 
 not help thinking that Mr. Grote himself labours under a 
 certain amount of misconception. Mr. Grote delights to call 
 the Demagogues ' opposition speakers,' in contrast to the great 
 men of action whom he ha,lf looks on as an executive Cabinet. 
 He evidently has in his mind the vision of Joseph Hume 
 calling the ministerial estimates over the coals, or of his own 
 annual motion for the ballot^ defeated by the frowns of the 
 Treasury benches or the apathy of the Opposition itself.* 
 He does not always remember, what no man knows better 
 than himself as matter of faet^ that at Athens there were 
 no Treasury benches, no ministerial estimates, and there- 
 fore no opposition speakers. He allows that the term is not 
 strictly accurate : to us it seems not only not to be strictly 
 accurate but to be altogether misleading. There is hardly any 
 analogy between the two cases. The direct sovereignty vested 
 in the Assembly admitted of nothing answering to office and 
 opposition. Mr. Grote looks on Nikias as being in office, and 
 Kle6n as being in opposition. Now undoubtedly, as one of the 
 Generals of the commonwealth, Nikias was, in a certain sense, 
 ' in office.' He held one of the highest places of trust and 
 authority in the state. But he was not in office in the same 
 sense in which Lord Palmerston or Lord Derby was in office 
 among ourselves. He was not even in office in the same sense 
 in which Quintus Fabius or Manius Curius was in office at 
 
 * [Pity that the historian could not see the fruit of his own labours in 
 
 1872.] 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 137 
 
 Rome, or in which Aratos or Lydiadas was in office in the 
 Aehaian League. With us a minister whose policy is no longer 
 followed is held to be no longer trusted, and he no longer retains 
 office. But Nikias constantly saw his policy set aside, while he 
 himself still continued to be trusted, and still continued to retain 
 office. Out of the Assembly Nikias was a great officer of the 
 commonwealth, armed with high authority to cany out the 
 bidding of the Assembly. In the Assembly Nikias was one 
 citizen out of some thousands, a citizen who was always listened 
 to with respect, but whose advice was sometimes followed and 
 sometimes not. Kle6n, in the Assembly, stood in the same 
 position as Nikias. He often canvassed the doings of men in 
 office ; but he often persuaded the People to follow his policy 
 rather than theirs. Now the idea of an ' opposition speaker ' 
 implies that his policy is not at present followed. We hold 
 then that it is not merely not strictly accurate, but that it 
 is thoroughly misleading, to apply the name to an Athenian 
 Demagogue.* 
 
 The word Demagogue means simply ' a leader of the people,'t 
 and it belongs to Themistokles and Perikles as much as to 
 Kleon and Hyperbolos. But, apart from any invidious mean- 
 ing, it means, in its later use, a political leader who is not 
 also a military leader. The Demagogue is a citizen whose 
 advice the Assembly habitually takes, but whom it does not 
 place at the head of its armies. In early times political and 
 
 * The late Professor Grote, in a pamphlet in answer to a puny attack on 
 his brother, acutely remarked that Mr. Grote had been somewhat misled by 
 assuming the position of Kle6n at Athens as being the same as that of Ath6na- 
 goras at Syracuse. Now the speech of Ath^nagoras in Thuoydides does read 
 like that of an ' opposition speaker.' He talks like one who has been rather 
 kept in the dark about public affairs, and who wants to get an answer out of 
 men in office. We do not know the details of the Syracusan constitution, and 
 the probability is that at this time it entrusted individual magistrates with 
 greater powers than was the case at Athens. Such is the natural inference 
 from the debate in Thuoydides, while Aristotle distinctly says that Syra^ 
 cuse became, after the Athenian invasion, more democratic than before. See 
 Grote, vol. x. p. 538. In no case can we safely argue from one Grecian city 
 to another. 
 
 + Lysias does not scruple to speak of dyaflol hjimyarjoi, and to point out 
 their duties. Kord 'Bm«. § II. 
 
138 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 military authority always go together. Homer's perfect ruler is 
 
 And this Homeric sentiment long survived the establishment 
 of democracy. Miltiades, Aristeides, and Themistoklfis, were 
 great alike on the battle-field and in the Assembly. But, 
 as both military and political science advanced, it was found 
 that the highest merit in the one was not always found in 
 company with the highest merit in the other. The cha- 
 racters of the military commander and the political leader 
 were gradually separated. The first germs of this division 
 we find in the days of Kimdn and Perikles. Kimon was no 
 mean politician ; but his real genius clearly called him to 
 warfare with the Barbarian. Perikles was an able and suc- 
 cessful general ; but in him the military character was quite 
 subordinate to that of the political leader. It was a wise 
 compromise which entrusted Kim6n with the defence of the 
 state abroad and Perikles with its management at home. 
 After Perikles the separation widened. We nowhere hear of 
 Demosthenes and Phormion as political leaders ; and even in 
 Nikias the political is subordinate to the military character. 
 Kle6n, on the other hand, was a politician but not a soldier. 
 But the old notion of combining military and political position 
 was not quite lost. It was still deemed that he who proposed 
 a warlike expedition should himself, if it were needful, be able 
 to conduct it. Kleon in an evil hour was tempted to take 
 on himself military functions : he was forced into command 
 against Sphakteria; by the able and loyal help of Demosthenes 
 he acquitted himself with honour. But his head was turned 
 by success ; he aspired to independent command ; he measured 
 himself against the mighty Brasidas ; and the fatal battle of 
 Amphipolis was the result. It now became clear that the 
 Demagogue and the General must commonly be two distinct 
 persons. The versatile genius of Alkibiades again united the 
 two characters ; but he left no successor. The soldier Thrasy- 
 boulos needed the help of the civilian Archin6s to give its 
 new life to the restored Democracy. Konon, Iphikrat^s, 
 Chabrias, Timotheos, were almost exclusively generals ; Kal- 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 139 
 
 listratos, Demosthenes, Hyperides, and ^schines, were quite 
 exclusively demagogues. Phokion alone united something of 
 both characters. But Phokion was primarily a general : in 
 the Assembly he was more truly an ' opposition-speaker ' than 
 Kle6n ; at least he commonly spoke in opposition to the pre- 
 vailing opinions of his time. 
 
 In fact, as times advanced, the separation between the two 
 characters became too wide. Their final separation is closely 
 connected with that decay of military spirit in Greece which is 
 so instructively dealt with by Mr. Grote in his eleventh volume. 
 Under the old system, citizen and soldier, political and mili- 
 tary leader, had been convertible terms. The oiator who 
 proposed an expedition was the general who commanded it. 
 The citizens who voted for his proposal were the soldiers 
 who served under his command. But the later ' Athenians 
 shrank from militairy service in their own persons. Nor was 
 the evil peculiar to Athens. Throughout Greece there arose a 
 class of professional soldiers. Now in Greece a professional 
 soldier could hardly be distinguished from a mercenary, and 
 a mercenary could hardly be distinguished from a brigand. 
 Professional soldiers of this kind needed professional generals, 
 just as naturally as the citizen-soldiers of earlier times needed 
 orator-generals. We are told that it was because of the 
 jealousy of the people that Iphikrates and Chabrias commonly 
 lived away from Athens. The real case is very plain. Iphi- 
 krates and Chabrias were professional generals. "When their 
 country was at war, they served their country. When their 
 country was at peace, they liked better to serve some one else 
 than to live quietly at home. Iphikrates even went so 
 far as to help his barbarian father-in-law in a contest with 
 Athens. Prom professional generals of this kind there is 
 surely but one step to professional robbers like Charts and 
 Charidemos of Euboia. 
 
 A Demagogue then was simply an influential speaker of 
 popular politics. Demosthenes is commonly distinguished as 
 an orator^ while Kleon is branded as a Demagogue j but the 
 position of the one was the same as the position of the other. 
 
140 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 The only question is as to the wisdom and the honesty of the 
 advice given either by Kle6n or by Demosthenes. Now no 
 part of Mr. Grote's History took the world more by surprise 
 than his elaborate vindication of Kle6n. A vindication we may 
 fairly call it, though it leaves many points in Kleon's character 
 open to blame, when we compare it with the unmeasured invec- 
 tive of every other writer. We suspect that Mr. Grote at once 
 enjoyed the paradox^ and felt himself bound to say something 
 on behalf of the Demagogue. We do not wholly go along with 
 him, but we must say that his defence is more than plausible ; 
 it is perfectly good on several of the counts. Two remarks we 
 must make. We are told that the Demagogues flattered the 
 People. Now nothing can be less like flattery of the People 
 than Kle6n's speech in the debate on Mitylene. It is as full 
 of reproaches against the People as the speeches of Demo- 
 sthenes eighty years later. Again, we are told that Kleon was 
 ■ so frightfully abusive. He could hardly be more abusive than 
 both Demosthenes and ^schines, Now in Demosthenes and 
 -^schines, every one regrets their abusive language as a fault ; 
 no one looks on it as wholly destroying their claim to honour. 
 Why then should Kleon receive harder measure ? 
 
 With the character of Kleon the character of Thucydides 
 is inseparably bound up. Mr. Grote has brought some censure 
 upon himself by putting forth two opinions on this point. 
 First, that Thucydides was to blame for the loss of Am- 
 phipolis ; secondly, that the disparaging character which he 
 gives of Kleon was partly the result of personal enmity. 
 Now Thucydides is our only witness, and we have perfect 
 right to cross-question him. And we think Mr. Grote clearly 
 shows that Thucydides should have been nowhere but at 
 Amphipolis when Amphipolis was in danger; at all events, 
 Thucydides gives no good reason for his being at Thasos. 
 Mr. Grote in no way disputes the truthfulness of Thucydides ; 
 he only disputes the propriety of his military conduct as re- 
 ported by himself The Athenian People, by whom Thucy- 
 dides was banished, clearly took the same view as Mr. Grote. 
 As for the case between Thucydides and Kle6n, of that we 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOGEAGT. 141 
 
 have spoken elsewhere.* Here we need only ask why, as no 
 one thinks himself bound to accept Thueydides' judgement of 
 Antiph6n, it should be thought such frightful heresy in Mr. 
 Grote to make use of the like discretion as to Thueydides' 
 judgement of Kle6n ? 
 
 The judicial system of the Democracy formed a most re- 
 markable feature in Athenian life, and Mr. Grote's remarks 
 upon the working of the popular courts of justice are among 
 the most valuable things in his work. But we think that he 
 is not quite clear in his historical view as to their introduction. 
 When speaking of Kleisthenes, he seems to attribute more to 
 his early reform than he afterwards does when he speaks of 
 Perikles.f This judicial system, which at any rate received its 
 final perfection from the hands of Perikles,'waSj as Mr. Grote 
 truly says, an exaggeration of jury trial, both in its merits 
 and its defects. We should remember that the Athenian juris- 
 prudence was much less complicated than our own, and that 
 there was no class of professional lawyers. The question was, 
 Who shall judge ? an individual Archon or a large body of 
 citizens ? All Grecian experience showed that, where a single 
 magistrate judged, there was far more danger of corruption, 
 oppression, and sacrifice of justice to private interest. That the 
 popular courts were always inclined to undue severity is a mere 
 calumny. Their fault was a tendency to listen to irrelevant 
 matter on both sides alike. They doubtless pronounced some 
 unrighteous condemnations and some unrighteous acquittals, 
 but the unrighteous acquittals were at least as common as the 
 unrighteous condemnations.! 
 
 * See above p. io8. 
 
 t We have already mentioned Mr. Grote's mistranslation of the passage 
 in Arist. Pol. ii. 12, 4. tA Si SiKaaTiipia iua9o(j>6pa Kariarriae Jlfpi/cX^s, which 
 he renders ' Perikles first constituted the paid dikasteries ; that is, the 
 dikasteries as well as the pay were of his introduction.' Mr. Grote's version, 
 we need hardly say, would require Tci SiKaffr^pia rci iua9ocj>6pa. But it is just 
 possible that the meaning may be (paraphrastically) something of this kind : 
 'PeriklSe, in instituting the Sixaariipia, made them paid rather than gra- 
 tuitous.' But, on turning back to Mr. Grote's account of Kleisthen^s (vol. iv. 
 p. 187) we find that he allows very considerable judicial powers to have been 
 vested in popular bodies by his constitutiou, 
 
 t On this head see especially Dem. U(pl napavp. § 253, and the opening of 
 Lysias' speech against Nikomachos. 
 
142 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 The Athenian system of jurisprudence is moreover closely 
 bound up with one of the most important subjects of all. It 
 is bound up with the relations of Athens to her dependencies 
 among other Grecian cities. Athens, as we have already said, 
 was the most illustrious of Greek states, not only as an indi- 
 vidual autonomous city, but as a ruler over other Greeks, and 
 as a Pan-Hellenic leader against the Barbarian. In the latter 
 character at least she stands unrivalled. When CrcEsus sub- 
 dued the Ionic cities, Sparta was the ally of the first Barbarian 
 who bore rule over Greeks. When the same cities revolted 
 against Darius, Athens fought by their side in the first Greek 
 War of Independence. During the great Persian War, Athens 
 was the one Grecian city whose endurance never failed for a 
 moment. While Northern Greece fought on the side of the 
 invader, while Peloponnesos thought of Peloponnesian interests 
 alone, Athens never flinched, never faltered. Her fields were 
 harried ; her city was destroyed ; the most favourable terms 
 of submission were offered to her ; but neither fear nor hope 
 moved her for a moment. She rose far above that local 
 jealousy which was the common bane of Hellas. When her 
 contingent was two-thirds of the whole fleet, she cheerfully 
 gave up the command to a Lacedsemonian landsman. On 
 the field of Plataia, the victors of Marath6n were ready to 
 yield the place of honour to the presumptuous pretensions of 
 Tegea. Athens, more than any other state, drove back the 
 invader from Greece itself; Athens, without any help from 
 the mainland, carried a triumphant war into his own terri- 
 tory. She freed the ^Egsean from the presence of barbarian 
 fleets, and the Greeks of Asia from the presence of barbarian 
 tribute-gatherers. And from this glorious position she never 
 willingly drew back. The Democracy of Athens was never 
 numbered among the pensioners of the Great King, till the 
 oligarchy of Sparta drove her to such a course in self-defence. 
 It was Sparta who first betrayed the Greeks of Asia as the 
 price of barbarian help. It was Sparta who negotiated the 
 shameful peace of Antalkidas ; it was Sparta who again ac- 
 knowledged the Greeks of Asia as the subjects, and the Greeks 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 143 
 
 of Europe as something very like the vassals, of the power 
 which Athens had kept back three days' journey from the 
 shores of the Grecian seas. 
 
 These thoughts lead us at once to the character and po- 
 sition of Athens as a ruler over other Greeks. When the 
 Spartans withdrew from the war with Persia, the Greek cities 
 of Thrace, Asia, and the Mgs&n islands, formed themselves 
 of their own free will into the confederacy of Delos, under the 
 presidency of Athens. Mr. Grote has well shown how, by 
 the gradual working of circumstances, and without any single 
 coup d'etat, this Athenian presidency was changed into an 
 Athenian empire. This empire began in a pre-eminence 
 honourably won and willingly bestowed; it ended in a su- 
 premacy, not positively oppressive, but offensive to Greek 
 political instincts, and exercised with little regard to aught 
 but the interests of the ruling city. That is to say, Athens, 
 like every other recorded state, ancient or modern, kingdom or 
 commonwealth, could not withstand the temptation to unjust 
 though plausible aggrandizement. But certainly Athens, as a 
 ruler of dependencies, need not be ashamed of a comparison 
 with other states in the same position. The subject of Athens 
 gained some solid advantages : he saw the sea kept clear alike 
 from pirates and from hostile fleets ; he was wholly at rest as 
 to all danger from the Great King ; if one city had a quarrel 
 with another, the supremacy of Athens afforded means for a 
 peaceful, instead of a warlike, settlement of differences. Far 
 less oppression was exercised by Athenian than by Persian or 
 Spartan commanders ; and, when instances of oppression did 
 happen, the chance of redress was far greater than commonly 
 lies open to subject commonwealths. Here we see one great 
 advantage of the Athenian system of judicature, of the numer- 
 ous judges, the publicity of proceedings, the free licence alike 
 of accusation and defence. The popular courts of Athens, as 
 even their enemies acknowledged, were ever ready to punish 
 the wrong-doer. Nor does it appear that Athens, as a general 
 rule, interfered with the form of internal government in the 
 allied cities. But all these advantages which the allied cities 
 
144 TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 enjoyed under tte rule of Athens were purchased at the 
 cost of what the Greek loved more than all of thenij the 
 position of his city as a sovereign state. It is of this political 
 degradation, much more than of any practical oppression, that 
 the orators hostile to Athens always complain. The Athenian 
 sway was not hated ; but it was acquiesced in without affection. 
 Revolts were almost always the work of a few leading men, 
 without the consent, sometimes directly against the will, of 
 the people. But, on the other hand, the people were not 
 often found ready to do or to suffer anything in the cause 
 of Athens. Athens, in short, was not an oppressive sovereign, 
 but she was a sovereign; and the mere existence of a sovereign 
 was hateful to the political instincts of Greece. 
 
 But let us see what happened when the Athenian Empire 
 came to an end, when Sparta gave herself out as the 
 liberator and president of Greece. Freedom, under her, cer- 
 tainly put on a strange form. Athens had at least kept back 
 the Barbarian: Sparta gave up the Asiatic Greeks to be 
 subjects of Persia. Athens, satisfied with tribute, left the in- 
 ternal government of the cities to themselves : Sparta set up a 
 narrow oligarchy in each, and backed it by a Spartan governor 
 and garrison. Truly the subject states must have longed 
 for the restoration of Athenian bondage, when each Asiatic 
 city bowed to a Persian satrap, and each European city to 
 a Spartan harmost. One main principle of Spartan govern- 
 ment was never to punish, much less to redress, the evil deeds 
 of Spartan commanders abroad. Phoibidas seized the Theban 
 Kadmeia : justice was mocked by the infliction of a fine on 
 the offender, while his govermnent continued to profit by his 
 offence. Sphodrias invaded Attica in time of peace : private 
 interest rescued the wrong-doer from even the pretence of 
 judicial qensure. When the Athenian Paches carried off two 
 free women of Mityl^n6 and slew their husbands, the injured 
 women accused him. before an Athenian tribunal : his con- 
 demnation was certain, and he stabbed himself in open 
 court. But when two Spartan ofiicers did the like outrage 
 by the daughters of Skedasos of Leuktra, the father in vain 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOOEAGT. 145 
 
 sought for redress at Sparta^ and not the ravishers, but their 
 victims, were driven to self-destruction. 
 
 The best tribute to the comparative merit of the Athenian 
 empire is the voluntary reconstruction of the confederacy 
 under Timotheos. The insular cities had found that Athenian 
 supremacy was at least the second best thing when absolute 
 independence was not to be had. Again was Athens installed 
 as constitutional president of an equal confederacy. Again 
 she began gradually to change into an autocrat. Again she 
 grasped at the absolute possession of various cities. And 
 moreover, under the new state of things, her professional 
 generals and mercenary soldiers proved far greater scourges 
 to the allied cities than the orator-generals and citizen- 
 soldiers of her first empire. These causes at last led to 
 the Social War, which left both parties ready victims for 
 the Macedonian aggressor. 
 
 Athens then, as a ruler of Greeks, deserves at least com- 
 parative praise. Not but that some of her individual acts 
 were both cruel and impolitic. The massacres which she 
 decreed at Mitylene, which she carried out at Skione and 
 MeloSj are sad blots on her fame. But, even here, we should 
 remember the harshness of the Greek laws of war. The life 
 of the prisoner, apart from any special compact, was in no way 
 sacred. The victor might at pleasure enslave or put him to 
 death. These massacres were only very harsh instances of a 
 very harsh rule, carried out on a scale which gives them a 
 character of fearful atrocity. That at Melos, above all, is 
 clothed with additional blackness when we think that the war 
 itself was an utterly unprovoked aggression. But think of 
 the deeds of oligarchic Sparta. Viler than any Athenian 
 deed of blood was the Spartan massacre at Plataia. Athens 
 relentlessly carried out a cruel law of war ; but the Plataian 
 captives were no longer prisoners of war : they were prisoners 
 at the bar of justice, mocked by the promise of a fair trial, and 
 slaughtered, not by a military, but by a judicial murder. Even 
 in this catalogue of crime, we find our usual three degrees. 
 Athens massacred her prisoners by wholesale; Sparta murdered 
 
146 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 the unarmed merchants of neutral states. But at least both 
 Athens and Sparta were satisfied with simple murder : the re- 
 finements of torture and mutilation were left to the Barbarians 
 of Persia and of Carthage. 
 
 Such is a picture of the Democracy of Athens^ drawn chiefly- 
 after the great historian with whose noble work we have been 
 dealing. We thus see how that great commonwealth, the 
 first fully developed free constitution that the world had seen, 
 not only gave the political life of each citizen a fuller and wider 
 action than any constitution that has ever been, but also secured 
 life and property and personal freedom better than any other 
 government of its own age, or of many ages afterwards. Its 
 defect was that it was the ofispring of an enthusiasm too high- 
 strung, and of a citizenship too narrow, to allow of lasting 
 greatness. Demos was but the shadow of his former self after 
 his ' happy restoration ' by the Albemarle of Democracy, the 
 hero of Phylai and Peiraieus. At the age of two centuries he 
 became politically and morally dead under the care of his two 
 rival D^m^trioi, and from thenceforth he did but drag on a 
 weary second childhood till he disappeared under a Flavian 
 Emperor in the vast charnel-house of Roman dominion. But 
 his real life, short as it was, was as glorious as it was short. 
 English writers are too apt to argue on this head from what 
 they see around them at home. Mitford was right enough 
 when he assumed that an English county meeting reached the 
 very height of political ignorance ; only he should not have 
 thence leaped to a similar conclusion as to the assembled people 
 of Athens. Certainly squires . and farmers alike, gathered 
 together at times few and far between under some political 
 excitement, are utterly incapable of really entertaining a 
 political question, or of getting beyond some party watch- 
 word of 'Liberal' or 'Conservative,' 'Free-Trade' or 'Protec- 
 tion.' * But we must not thence infer that the Ekklesia of 
 
 * [I believe however that I was not so much thinking of meetings gathered 
 for any real political purpose, as of the Ephesian mobs — largely made up of 
 well-dressed persons — which came together to roar against religious liberty at 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN BEMOGRACT. 147 
 
 Athens presented a scene equally deplorable. Sucli writers 
 forget that, as Macaulay has shown in a brilliant passage 
 which every one should be able to call to mind, the common 
 life of the Athenian was itself the best of political educations. 
 We suspect that the averaige Athenian citizen was, in political 
 intelligence^ above the average English Member of Parliament. 
 It was this concentration of all power in an aggregate of 
 which every citizen formed a part, which is the distinguishing 
 characteristic of true Greek democracy. Florence had nothing 
 like it ; there has been nothing like it in the modern world : 
 the few pure democracies which have lingered on to our own 
 day have never had such mighty questions laid before themj 
 and have never had such statesmen and orators to lead them. 
 The great Democracy has had no fellow; but the political 
 lessons which it teaches are none the less lessons for all time 
 and for every land and people. 
 
 It is not without some important points of dissent, but 
 it is with deep and heartfelt admiration^ that we part com- 
 pany with the illustrious subject of this essay — tov y.iyav 
 "AyyKov Icnopioyp&^ov Tedpyiov Tpore, as we are glad to find 
 him called in the land of which he writes. * His work is 
 one of the glories of our age and country. Honourable as 
 it is to the intellectual, it is still more honourable to the 
 moral, qualities of its author. His unwearied research, his 
 clearness of insight, his depth and originality of thought, are 
 more easily to be paralleled than his diligent and conscien- 
 tious striving after truth, and the candour with which he 
 marshals in their due order even the facts which tell most 
 strongly against his own conclusions. And when we think 
 that we can place him side by side with another writer of the 
 same age and country, and devoted to the same studies — a 
 writer of merit equal in degree, though widely different 
 
 the time of the so-called 'Papal Aggression.' For that folly some of our 
 statesmen have since stood on the stool of repentance.] 
 
 * In the Lectures of Professor Constantine PaparrSgopoulos of Athens, irtpl 
 t5« 'Apxv' *"' T^s ^anofupdatas tov dpxaiov 'EA.A.ijwotS HBvovs, p. 3. 
 
 L 3 
 
148 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 in kind — ^we may say that it is no small tribute that the 
 England of the nineteenth century has paid to the first 
 founders of art and freedom and civilized life. If the 
 -mighty men of old HeHas can look out of their graves, 
 they may be well pleased to see two such minds as those 
 of George Grote and Connop Thirlwall give long years 
 of busy life to set forth their thoughts and deeds as a lesson 
 of wisdom for the men of lands of which they themselves 
 had never heard. 
 
 CURTIUS'S HISTORY OF GREECE. 
 I. 
 
 The Grecjp.li History of Ernst Curtius is doubtless already well known to 
 all those students of the subject who do not shrink from reading a, German 
 book in the original. It is really wonderful how many histories of Greece 
 may be written, each of them thoroughly good in its own way, and yet none 
 of which allows us to dispense with the others. We believe that the im- 
 petuous generation which now presides over education at Oxford has long ago 
 thrown Bishop Thirlwall behind the fire. Yet no rational English student of 
 Grecian history would think that he had mastered his subject, unless he had 
 compared both Thirlwall and Grote with one another and with the original 
 writers. So now, though we should recommend every such student to read 
 Curtius without fail, we in nowise hold that his reading of Curtius at aU lets 
 him off from the duty of reading both Grote and Thirlwall also. In study- 
 ing what is called ancient history, where the original authorities are for the 
 most part scanty, good modern guides are a matter of distinct necessity as com- 
 mentators and harmpnizers. But where a great deal must always be matter of 
 inference, theory, and even conjecture, it is highly dangerous to follow any one 
 modern guide implicitly. Inferences and theories, however ingenious and pro- 
 bable, mus't not be put on the same level as ascertained facts. Five-and-twenty 
 years ago the theories of Niebuhr were accepted as if they rested on the evidence 
 of eye-witnesses. A faith yet more self-sacri6oing seems now to be given to 
 the more novel theories of Mommsen. All this is thoroughly bad. The use of 
 a modem historian is to collect and sift the original writers, and to act as their 
 interpreter, not to act as a prophet on his own account. In a subject like 
 Grecian or Boman history. It is specially mischievous to rely on any one modem 
 guide. Each writer, if he is fit for his work, will suggest valuable matter 
 for thought ; but none of them can be entitled to implicit submission. Each 
 wiU look at things differently, according to his natural turn of mind, according 
 to his place of birth, his political party, and the many other influences which 
 affect a man's point of view. One writer will succeed best in one part of his 
 subject, another in another. Thirlwall, Grote, Curtius, others besides, all have 
 
IV.] TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 149 
 
 their use ; each teaches something which the others do not teach ; each is the 
 strongest in some particular part of their common subject. A careful student 
 will read and weigh all of them, but he wiU decline to pledge himself as the 
 bondslave of any one among them. 
 
 The work of Curtius appears in the same series with the work of Mommsen, 
 and it is impossible to avoid comparing the two. There is no trace in Curtius 
 of that boisterous dogmatism with which Mommsen, in well nigh every page, sets 
 forth some startling theory without deigning to give any shadow of a reason, 
 and hurls some epithet of abuse at all who refuse to believe on the spot. The 
 one very startling thing which Curtius has to put forward in his first volume 
 is put forth quietly and soberly, not the least in the knock-me-down style of his 
 fellow-worker, and it is moreover supported by an Excursus at the end. In 
 another point also Curtius has greatly the advantage over Mommsen. A Ger- 
 man, professing to write in German, he does not shrink from what he professes. 
 No one can give the honourable name of High-Dutch to the half- Welsh jargon 
 of Mommsen, in which about every third word is some needless French or Latin 
 intruder. There is nothing of this kind about Curtius. Pew modem books, 
 German or English, are freer from this wretched affectation. In his hands the 
 stores of his own noble language are shown to be fiilly capable of dealing with 
 his subject, as with any other subject. And, more than this, his book is one 
 of the few books in German prose which can be read with real pleasure. He is 
 always clear and graceful, and, though some even of his sentences might be 
 shortened with advantage, they at least do not go rambling over whole pages. 
 As a mere work of literature, apart fi?om its historical value, we are disposed to 
 place the work of Curtius in a very high rank. 
 
 The first volume of the original text goes down to the Ionic revolt and the 
 battle of Lads. It thus contains the whole of that ethnological and mjrthological 
 matter which must form the beginning of any History of Greece, the introduc- 
 tion to its strictly historical portions, and it also carries on the story some way 
 into far more strictly historic times. In going again through matters which 
 have so often been gone through before, we look, if not for actually new facts, 
 at least for some new way of looking at them, for some new light thrown upon 
 them. Without some such claim as this on our attention, we do not admit a 
 new writer's right to call us to listen again to so old a story. But Curtius un- 
 doubtedly makes out his claim to attention by a display of special excellence in 
 one branch of his subject. His strong point seems to us to be geography. 
 Curtius was known as a traveller and a geographer before he was known as an 
 historian ; and his knowledge of the country, and his keen eye for the charac- 
 teristic features of the whole land and of its several portions, stand him in good 
 stead in every page. The first chapter seems to ub the best, simply be- 
 cause it is the most geographical. We never read a more vivid sketch of the 
 aspect of any country. Curtius gives us an elaborate picture of the whole land, 
 marking with a moat delicate touch all that distinguishes every valley and sea- 
 board from every other. He brings out, as clearly as words can bring out, the 
 physical conformation, the climate, the products, of the diflferent countries round 
 the JEgaean Sea, and the way in which the course of their history has been, in- 
 fluenced by these geographical features. The whole thing is done with a kind 
 of enthusiasm which communicates itself to the reader, and which could only 
 be kindled by one who is personally and minutely familiar with the land of 
 
150 TEE ATHENIAN DEMOGBAGY. [Essay 
 
 which he is writing. Mr. Grote bestowed great pains on the geographical 
 part of his work, but we believe that he never visited Greece, and we sus- 
 pect that, even if he had, he would not have given us the same vivid picture as 
 Curtiua has done. The difference lies in the turn of mind and way of looking 
 at things natural to the two men. We might perhaps say that Curtius has 
 a direct love, a sort of personal regard, for Greece — that is, for Hellas in the 
 widest sense — for the land itself, as for a personal friend whose acquaintance 
 he has made and enjoyed. To Mr. Grote, on the other hand, Greece is simply 
 the scene of certain great political events. He has studied the geographical 
 and other features of the country with minute and conscientious care, because 
 a knowledge of them is essential to an understanding of the events which 
 happened among them. But it is only in this secondary way that the country 
 itself has any attraction for him. He cannot, as Curtius can, throw a fascina- 
 tion over a geographical lesson. Next to the opening part, the description of 
 Greece — taking in of course Asiatic as well as European Greece — comes, in 
 our eyes, the chapter on Greek colonization. Here again the geographical 
 powers of Curtius are called out with admirable effect. But of course he can- 
 not produce the same fascinating picture of settlements in Spain or in the 
 Tauric Cherson&os as he can when he is describing European Greece itself, 
 and those Asiatic islands and shores which cannot be separated from it as a 
 geographical and historical whole. 
 
 But, to keep everything in its proper proportion, when we turn to the strictly 
 political parts of the history, we find the balance of merit no less distinctly in 
 fa-vour of the English writer. In these parts of the histoiy, it is to the English 
 writer that we have to look for originality, vigour, and clearness — ^for sug- 
 gestions which strike at the time, and which we carry off to dwell upon after- 
 wards. To read the political part of Mr. Grote's history, even in these its 
 earliest portions, is an epoch in a man's life. Sol6n, Peisistratos, EUeisthenSs, 
 are names with which we had been familiar from childhood ; it was in the 
 hands of Mr. Grote that they received a life and meaning which had never be- 
 longed to them before. But we have read the parts of Curtius' history which 
 answer to them without receiving any marked new impression. It is all good and 
 clear and accurate, and we often light upon very suggestive remarks. But the 
 whole is not specially striking. In the geographical parts of the book, just as in 
 the political parts of Grote, we feel that a really new light has come upon us ; we 
 do not feel this in the political parts of Curtius. The difference is no doubt in some 
 degree owing to the different forms of the two works. Mr. Grote could discuss 
 and argue ; he could illustrate by examples, he could explain and confirm by re- 
 ferences, to any amount that he thought good. Curtius has been cut off from 
 much of this liberty by the fetters in which he has evidently been working, at 
 any rate in his first volume. He never falls into the offensive dogmatism of 
 Mommsen, but his work unavoidably takes a shape in which the vnriter calls 
 on his readers to take down a great deal simply because he says that it is so. 
 Now this kind of treatment does thoroughly well for the geographical and 
 other descriptive portions. The observer and describer is here himself an ori- 
 ginal authority, and we receive what he teHs us as such. The same treatment 
 may also suit a flowing narrative, where we have no reason to suspect the good 
 faith and accuracy of the writer, or where, even if we have, his mere power 
 of narration carries us away with him. But it does not at all suit a political 
 
IV.] TEE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 151 
 
 history like the early history of Greece and Italy. In those histories a great 
 deal must depend upon conjecture, or at any rate upon inferences drawn from 
 scattered notices, which allow of room for great varieties of opinion. In such 
 cases we allow a reasonable deference to the opinion of a man who is evidently 
 learned and thoughtful; but we refuse to pin our faith upon any one. We like 
 to know, and we think we have a right to ask, a man's reasons and authorities 
 for every one thing that he says. Mr. Grote fully satisfies this demand. He 
 gives us full means of accepting or rejecting whatever he tells us. Curtius does 
 not do so ; not, we feel sure, from any lack of good will, but because the 
 scheme of this part of his work hindered him. In this sort of case even the 
 violence of Mommsen has an incidental advantage over his better-mannered 
 colleague. We may not believe — perhaps we are even set against believing — 
 but we at any rate understand and remember. We must confess that we have 
 read a good deal of Curtius' political history, without carrying away anything 
 in particular. 
 
 The point of greatest novelty in Curtius' work is that he has given us, as far 
 as we know, the fiirst History of Greece in which any attempt is made to con- 
 nect Grecian history with the results both of Comparative Philology and of 
 Eastern research. When Bishop Thirlwall wrote, those studies were hardly 
 advanced enough to have been applied to Grecian history to much purpose, 
 and, even when Mr. Grote wrote, they were far from being so advanced as 
 they are now. The ethnological part of Bishop Thirlwall's history, what he 
 has to say about Pelasgians and so forth, is certainly the least satisfactory 
 part of his work. Mr. Grote, perhaps more prudently, throws the Pelasgians 
 overboard altogether. In truth, the practical and political turn of Mr. Grote's 
 mind is hardly suited for pure ethnological research. He thoroughly masters 
 and clearly sets forth the historical and political relations of the various 
 neighbouring nations to the Greeks ; but for their exact relations, as a, 
 matter of race and speech, even to the Greeks, much more to one another, he 
 seems to care very little. In one respect this tendency has done Mr. Grote's 
 history a serious damage. It has combined with his position as the historian of 
 Athenian Democracy to make him distinctly unfair to Alexander and to Mace- 
 donia in general. Now Curtius comes to his Grecian history thoroughly pre- 
 pared with the last results of ethnological and philological study. This is a 
 most valuable qualification, and it gives him so far a great advantage over both 
 his English predecessors. We are not quite so clear about his Eastern studies. 
 Purely Western scholars, classical or mediaeval, have not yet made up their 
 minds about the results of Egyptian and Assyrian research. Tbey do not take 
 upon themselves to reject what they have often had no opportunity of minutely 
 examining. But they are by no means prepared implicitly to believe every- 
 thing. They cannot help seeing that the Eastern scholars do not always seem 
 to know their own minds, and they feel that they are constantly asked to be- 
 lieve statements about Egypt and Nineveh on evidence which they would not 
 think enough for a statement about Athens or England. It is easy to see that 
 Curtius' standard of belief is much laxer than that of Mr. Grote ; much more 
 then is it laxer than that of Sir George Lewis. He clearly holds that a good deal 
 of history, the history of the successions of states and dynasties, if not of indi- 
 viduals, may be recovered out of mythical times. It is by no means our wish 
 to say that no such history can be recovered, but we must confess that Curtius 
 
152 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 sometimes goes on faster than we can follow him. It is rather a call on our 
 faith to be asked to believe, if not in Min6s personally, at any rate in his Tha- 
 tasaocracy. The Pelopid dynasty at MykSng is another thing ; Homer and 
 the existing monuments are two distinct kinds of evidence which corroborate 
 and explain one another. Indeed our chief objection to Curtius' treatment of 
 prsehistoric times is that he believes a great deal which Homer implicitly 
 contradicts. The Lydian origin of Pelops, the Egyptian origin of other Greek 
 patriarchs, seem to us to be mere dreams of after-times, of which Homer had no 
 knowledge. In the system of Curtius all these supposed immigrations plsy an 
 important part. 
 
 It must not however be thought that Curtius is at all an advocate of the 
 exploded notions of past days about purely barbarian settlements in Greece. 
 He accepts from Niebuhr and Bunsen, but he works out in fuU for himself, the 
 theory of extensive Hellenic or quasi- Hellenic colonization — though coloniza- 
 tion is not exactly the right word — in praehistoric times. Greeks were spread 
 over the Asiatic coast, and they had made settlements in various places, Egypt 
 among them, ages before the date of that later Greek colonization which followed 
 the Dorian migration. When the European lonians settled in the Asiatic Ionia, 
 they were but returning to an older Ionic land. The distance to which Greek 
 colonies had spread in very early times is said to be shown by the occurrence of 
 the lonians — ^the Umim of the Egyptians, the Jmvwn of the Hebrews — among 
 the subjects of the early Egyptian Kings. But then the Egyptologists are at 
 loggerheads amongst themselves about the meaning of the inscription in which 
 these early TJinim are said to be mentioned. What Lepsius admits, Bunsen 
 rejects, and far be it from us to decide between them. Indeed for strictly 
 Grecian history the point is not of much moment. As it is made use of by 
 Curtius, the effect, if any, of this early connexion between Greece and Egypt 
 must have been that a chance of improvement was offered to Egypt, 
 of which Egypt, in true Egyptian fashion, made no use. Curtius asks us to 
 beKeve that colonists from Lydia and Egypt settled in PeloponnSsos ; but he 
 does not ask us to believe that Lydian and Egyptian Barbarians settled there. 
 His Lydians and Egyptians are Lydian and Egyptian Greeks. This is indeed 
 somewhat of a relief, but it is surely simpler to cast aside these utterly un- 
 authentic immigrations altogether. 
 
 We confess that Tje cannot always follow Curtius in detail in his speculations 
 about what he calls Old-Ionians and the like. But this whole part of the book, 
 especially what may be called the praehistorio history of Peloponnesus, is 
 throughout most ingenious and interesting, and it is, in the original, set forth 
 with a charm of style which some may perhaps have thought that neither the 
 subject nor the German language admitted. And we should not have a word 
 of complaint to make, if Curtius would be satisfied with our believing that the 
 inhabitants of a large region from Sicily to Asia were closely allied to the 
 Greeks, that the Greeks in settling among them were not settling among utter 
 strangers, and that this original ethnical kindred accounts for the speedy, 
 thorough, and in many places lasting, heUenization of those districts. This we 
 believe to be one of the most certain, and one of tlie most important, facts in 
 Grecian history. Round Greece Proper we find a circle of nations, neither 
 strictly Greek nor strictly Barbarian, not Greek in the fuller sense, but capable 
 of easy heUenization — half-developed Greeks, whom a slight intercourse with 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 153 
 
 their more advanced neighboura easily raised to their level. Such a quasi- 
 Greek people we find in Epeiros, the original 3eat of the Greek name, and 
 the scene of national migrations which Curtlus has set forth in his best 
 manner. 
 
 We will take a leap from the beginning of the present volume to the end. 
 In all these inquiries, whether we agree with the author in every detail or not, 
 Curtius is plainly in his element, and his treatment of all these matters is 
 most masterly. He is, we think, less successful, because he is on ground which 
 is less thoroughly his own, when he attempts to grapple with Mr. Grote on a 
 point of the developement of the Athenian Democracy. We cannot think, vrith 
 Curtius, that the lot came in with KleisthenSs. What is the evidence ? On 
 the one side is an obiter dictum of Herodotus, who is not examining into the 
 matter ; on the other side is a direct statement of Isokrat^s, who is examining 
 into the matter, and also, as we think, the probability of the case. 
 
 II. 
 
 The main strength of Curtius seems to us to He, not so much in narrative, 
 not so much in military or political history, as in drawing a picture of those 
 other parts of the life of a nation which some historians neglect and which do 
 not enter into the plan of others. The mere narrative power of Curtius, though 
 by no means small, is hardly of the first order, and his way of dealing with 
 political history is feeble by the side of Mr. Grote's. To Mr. Grote, with his poli- 
 tical experience and his political views, the political life and development of 
 Athens was a real and living thing in a way in which it can never be to a mere 
 student. No other historian ever entered as Mr. Grote has entered into the 
 real spirit of such a body as the Athenian Assembly ; no one therefore has ever 
 drawn so full and clear a picture of its nature. But on the other hand this 
 greatest merit of Mr. Grote's work led directly to its greatest defect. His 
 history ia, after all his strivings to make it otherwise, Athenian rather than 
 Helleuic, and this purely Athenian way of looking at things makes him unfeir 
 both to the earliest and to the latest ages of Greece. No charge of this sort 
 can be brought against Curtius, and this though he has given a more fuU and 
 vivid picture of Athens as a whole than Mr. Grote has. But then Curtius' 
 picture of Athens as a whole is a picture of Athens as the intellectual centre 
 of Greece, as the abode of art, philosophy, and inquiry of every sort, rather 
 than as the great example of democratic freedom. Curtius in no way neglects the 
 political history ; we have little direct fault to find with his way of treating it, 
 but it clearly has not been to him the same intense labour of love which it 
 evidently was to Mr. Grote. The two great chapters in the present volume 
 are undoubtedly those headed ' The Unity of Greece ' and ' The Years of 
 Peace.' They are the best pictures we ever saw of the general mind and life 
 of Greece at tlie two dates fixed upon — at the time before the Persian War and 
 in the age of Perikles. In both of these we find a great deal of matter, some 
 of which is actually new, while much more is not to be found in other His- 
 tories of Greece, worked together with great skill, so as to make a vivid and 
 interesting picture. The developement of Greek poetry, science, and art at the 
 time when art and the later poetry had reached their highest point, is here set 
 
154 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 forth in a full, clear, and connected way, sucli as we have never seen elsewhere. 
 Curtius looks at all these matters with a thoroughly artistic eye ; they are 
 plainly the parts of his subject on which he best loves to dwell, and yet he 
 never gives them any exaggerated importance or puts them in more than their 
 proper relation to the general march of the history. This is a great point to 
 have gained. Some writers and talkers, both on ancient Greece and mediaeval 
 Italy, have utterly wearied us with poets, artists, and philosophers, tiU we 
 have sometimes been tempted to wish that neither Greece nor Italy had ever 
 produced any poets, artists, or philosophers at aU. Curtius never errs in this 
 way. He never forgets that, if Athens did great things in the way of literature 
 and art, it was only by virtue of her position of a great and free city that she 
 was enabled to do so. Curtius has ever before his eyes the memorable words of 
 Periklfis himself, how to make Athens the school and ornament of Greece was 
 a distinct part of his plans, but a plan conceived with a definite political object, 
 and one which really had important political results. In this point of view, 
 the architectural splendours of the Akropolis, the dramatic splendours of the 
 Dionysiac Festivals, are clothed with a twofold interest. They have an interest 
 strictly their own, and they have a still higher interest as parts of the political 
 system and the general life of the great Democracy. This Curtius always 
 bears in mind, and we look on it as the greatest merit of this part of his 
 History that he has done so. 
 
 Somewhat of the same nature is the earlier general chapter, headed ' The 
 Unity of Greece.' This chapter is, in effect, a picture of Greek religion as dis- 
 tinguished from Greek mythology. There are some things in it which startle 
 us somewhat, some things for which we should have been well pleased to have 
 fuller references, some things which we should ask for longer time before we 
 either accept or reject. But it is a chapter at once most interesting and most 
 suggestive, which supplies abundant materials for thought, and which contains 
 many propositions that commend themselves at once to our acceptance. One 
 great point on which Curtius insists is the importance of religious and sacred 
 rites, above all of the Delphic temple and oracle, in the formation of Greek 
 national life. He skilfully and elaborately traces out the effects of the position 
 of Delphoi and the growth of the importance of the oracle as the religious 
 centre of Greece. We are not sure that he does not sometimes press matters 
 too far, and clothe ApoUfln with even greater authority than really belonged to 
 him ; still there is nothing that he says which does not at least deserve to be 
 most carefully weighed. At the very outset he clearly sets forth the influence 
 which the Apoll6n worship had on the process by which the Hellenes disen- 
 tangled themselves, so to speak, from among the mass of neighbouring and 
 kindred tribes and stood forth, not indeed as a political unit, but still as a 
 nation in every higher sense of the word. He then goes on to point out the 
 importance of Dorian influences upon the developement of Delphoi. It was of 
 course the great Dorian Migration and Conquest of PeloponnSsos which mainly 
 extended the influence and authority of Delphi, but this extension was merely 
 a development of a connexion which began at an earlier period, when the 
 Dorians first settled at the foot of Fama^sos, 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOGRAGY. 155 
 
 III. 
 
 We haye remarked in notices of his earlier volumes that Curtius' way of 
 dealing with the strictly political side of his subject was by no means equal to 
 his way of dealing with the more artistic and general side of it. The deficiency 
 comes out yet more strongly in the latter part of the second volume of the 
 German original, which takes in the history of the Peloponnesian War. The 
 treatment of this part of the history is the most memorable thing in Mr. Grote's 
 work. We by no means profess ourselves unreserved followers of all Mr. Grote's 
 views. He is throughout a partizan, the champion of a side. The Athenian 
 Democracy is to him as a party or a country, and he says all that is to be said 
 for it. We read what he says, not as the sentence of a judge, but as the 
 pleading of an advocate ; but it is a great thing to have the pleading of such 
 an advocate. We may not be prepared to go all Mr. Grote's lengths on every 
 matter, but we should have thought that no reader of Mr. Grote ever shut up 
 his book in exactly the same frame of mind in which he opened it. If he does 
 not think exactly as Mr. Grote does about Sophists and Demagogues, about 
 Klefin and Kleoph&n, he will not think exactly the same about them as he did 
 when he began. He will at least have seen that there is another side to 
 a great many things of which he had hitherto only looked at one side. And 
 even if we admit that Mr. Grote, besides his political bias, has a certain love 
 of novelty for its own sake, such a tendency on his particular subject does 
 much more good than harm. Onr knowledge of Grecian history comes from 
 a very few original sources. The mass of so-called classical writers are no 
 more original sources than Grote and Curtius are ; their only value is that 
 they vprote with original sources before them which are now lost. A writer 
 under the Roman Empire had far better means than a modem scholar of 
 getting at the facts of Greek republican history, but he had not nearly such 
 good means of forming a judgement on those facts as the modern scholar has. 
 He lived in an age which, in point of time, in language, in all outward cfrcum- 
 stances, came much nearer to the time of which he wrote than our own time 
 does. But in real fellow-feeling for the earlier time, in real power of under- 
 standing it, a writer of the age of Plutarch was further removed from the age 
 of Thucydides than we are. And he had not the same habit of drawing histo- 
 rical analogies as the modern scholar, nor had he the same wide field of 
 historical experience to seek his analogies in. And a writer of the age of 
 Plutarch was really aU the further removed from the age of Thucydides, 
 because the great men of that age had in his day already grown into a sort of 
 canonized heroes. A conventional way of looking at Grecian history therefore 
 grew up very early ; the same statements, tinged by this conventional view, 
 were repeated over and over again from so-called classical times to our^ own 
 day, tlU Grecian history, instead of a living thing of flesh and blood, be- 
 came a collection of formulaB, of misunderstood models, and of sentiments 
 fit only for a child's copy-book. Mitford, with all his blunders and all his 
 unfairness, did good service in showing that Plutarch's men were real human 
 beings like ourselves. The calm judgement and consummate scholarship of 
 Bishop Thirlwall came in to correct, sometimes a little too unmercifully, the 
 mistakes and perversions of Mitford. But it was Mr. Grote who first thoroughly 
 
156 THE ATHENIAN DEM0CRAG7. [Essay 
 
 tested our materials, who first looked straight at everything, without regard 
 to conventional beliefs, by the light of his own historical and political know- 
 ledge. Bishop Thirlwall had clearly drawn the line between primary and 
 secondary authorities. Mr. Grote went further, by hinting that primary 
 authorities themselves are not infallible. We may or we may not agree with 
 Mr. Grote's strictures on Thucydides in the matter of Amphipolis or in the 
 matter of Kleda ; still it is a useful thing to be reminded that Thucydides was, 
 after all, a faUible human being; that, in a matter which touched himself 
 personally, he gave his own view on the matter, and that there was most likely 
 something. to be said on the other side. We read Mr. Grote with a respectful 
 freedom, and we use our own judgement upon each detail of his conclusiona» 
 But we feel that his work is the great landmark in the study of Grecian 
 history. He has done a work which had never been done before him, and 
 which can never be done again. 
 
 With these feelings we turn to Curtius, and we find with regret that, in the 
 most important points, he is simply prce- Grotian. He has his own sphere in which 
 he rises far above Mr. Grote, or, more truly, he has a sphere in which Mr. Grote 
 has no part or lot whatever. But, after all, the highest side of history is its 
 political side ; its highest object is to set man before us in his highest character 
 as a member of a firee state. It is here that Mr. Grote has shown his pre-eminent 
 qualifications, his power of bringing his practical knowledge of public life to bear 
 upon wide reading and deep thought. It is here that Curtius altogether breaks 
 down. He does not enter with any spirit into either military or political events ; 
 he can give a brilliant picture of a country or of a city, but he has very little 
 power of giving a Hfelike narrative of a campaign or a debate. The greater 
 part of Mr. Grote's views, whether we call them theories or discoveries, are 
 passed by without any notice. Curtius speaks of the Demagogues and the 
 Sophists pretty much as if Mr. Grote had never written. Of course it may be 
 that he has come to different conclusions from Mr. Grote, but is hindered by 
 the scale of his work from entering on the grounds of his conclusions. But it 
 will hardly apply to his treatment of two or three of the most remarkable 
 passages of the history which come towards the end of the present volume. 
 Every reader of Mr. Grote, indeed every reader of Xenophdu, must have 
 admired the heroic character of Kallikratidas, the man who had the lofty 
 courage to run counter to the evil habit of the whole Greek nation and to 
 declare that no Greek should be sold into slavery by his act. The words stand 
 out even in the bald narrative of Xenophon ; ovk t<pT}, kavrov ye apxovTos, oiiSeva 
 'EW-f/voni Is TovKeivov Swardv &vSpairobi(76Tjvai. Mr. Grote's comments on the 
 ' grandeur and sublimity of this proceeding,' ' unparalleled in Grecian history,' 
 carry him beyond himself. No one, we should have thought, could have for- 
 gotten his picture of ' ICalliki'atidas, unfortunately only shown by the Fates 
 and not suffered to continue in the Grecian world.' We turn to Curtius, and 
 we are told how great a man Kallikratidas was, how he united the merits both 
 of a Spartan and of an Athenian (' Er vereinigte in aeltenster Weise den 
 hochherzigen und stolzen Sinn eines Altspartaners mit der Thatkraft iind 
 Gewandtheit, wie sie der Beruf eines Flottenfiihrers in lonien verlangte '), but 
 he leaves out tliis most signal example of his rising high above either character. 
 M^thymna is taken — atpet icarh Kp6,Tos according to Xenophon, ' sie musste sich 
 ergeben ' according to Curtius — but the striking scene that follows, the demand 
 
IV„] TSE ATHENIAN DEMOGHACY. 157 
 
 of the allies for tlie sale of the prisoners, the refusal of KaUikratidas, the mag- 
 nanimous declaration which gladdens Mr. Grote's heart, find no place in 
 Curtius's narrative. A little time before Mr. Grote had dwelled at some length 
 on the circumstances of the battle of Notion, which led to the final disgrace of 
 Alkibiadgs. Alkibiad^s left the Athenian fleet in command of Autiochos, 
 forbidding him to fight with Lysandros — fit) eiTiw\fTv iirl rds AvaavSpov yaCs. 
 This Antiochos was no qualified commander at all, but the pilot of Alkibiadga' 
 own ship, and a personal favourite of his. Xenoph6n simply calls him toc 
 aijTov Kv^epv^TTjv ; Plutarch adds that he was dyaObs Kv^epv^rrjs, dvor^TOs h\ 
 ToXAo «ai (popTiicSs. In Curtius he becomes 'einer der trefflichsten SchiJfs- 
 fUhrer.' This Antiochos, thus put in a post for which he was utterly unfit, 
 challenged Lysandros in » way which was simply frantic, and the defeat of 
 Notion followed. On this, the Athenians deprived AUdbiadgs of his command, 
 oiofjievot 5(* dfieKit&v re Kal aKpareiav dtToKQj\€tc4vai rcis vavs, says Xenophon; 
 and Plutarch adds that he was charged with neglecting his duties for banquets 
 and the company of Ionian women. His removal fi:om his command of course 
 forms the ground for one of the stock charges of ingratitude against the Ather 
 nian people. Mr. Grote argues with great power that the removal was fully 
 deserved, that AUdbiad^s left the fleet when he ought to have been with it, 
 and left it in the hands of one who was quite unfit to command it. He was 
 therefore responsible for the disasters into which his unworthy representative 
 led it. Now why did Alkibiadfe leave the fleet ? The contemporary Xenoph6n 
 gives an account which by itself is quite unintelligible ; axovaas @paai0ov\ov 
 e^tu 'EWrjffTrSvTov ^Kovra TeLxi^eiv ^a/caiav, 5iiTr\€vff€ irpos avT6v. Plutarch 
 makes him go dpyvpoXoyrjffaiy enl Kapias. DiodAros sends bim to Klazomenai j 
 but Mr. Grote works in a story which Diod6ros gives two chapters afterwards 
 about AlkibiadSs attacking KymS, a town in aUiance with Athens, on which 
 the Kymaians very naturally sent a charge to Athens against him. Curtius 
 tells ns, 'Es war eine Ehrenschuld des Alkibiades, lonien, dessen Abfall sein 
 "Werk war, den Athenem wieder zu verschaffen.' He therefore leaves the 
 fleet with Antiochos, 'wahrend er selbst bei Phokaia den Eroberungskrieg 
 begann, der natiirlich darauf berechnet war, dass ein Flottensieg den Feldzug 
 erofihen und sein Gelingen erleichtern sollte.' It is hard to see all this in any 
 of the Greek writers, and we certainly hold with Mr. Grote that no case is made 
 out to excuse Alkibiades for leaving the fleet in the care of a man so incompe- 
 ent as Antiochos, especially when such an enemy as Lysandros was near. But 
 Curtius makes the following wonderful comment, ' Alkibiades war ohne Schuld 
 an diesem Unglucke ; auch Antiochos trug sie nicht allein. Denn er hatte 
 alien Schiifen Befehl gegeben, sich kampf bereit zu halten, und dieser Befehl 
 war nicht befolgt worden.' We do not know what this last sentence means, 
 but what excuse can there be for an officer who disobeys the direct commands 
 of his chief, and disobeys them in a way' which, if he had been himself in com- 
 mand, would have been simple madness ? Antiochos met with a fate too good 
 for him by dying in the battle. But certainly nothing could be more just than 
 the sentence which the Athenian people pronounced upon Alkibiades. Now 
 our charge against Curtius is, not simply that he difiers from Mr. Grote, which, 
 when he has a good reason for so doing, he is perfectly right to do ; but 
 that he seems to have made absolutely no use of Mr. Grote on a matter which 
 Mr. Grote has made thoroughly clear, and still more that, as it seems to us, 
 
158 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Essay 
 
 his own statements are, setting Mr. Grote quite aside, not borne out by his 
 Greek authorities. Good books, as we have been lately told with much 
 Bolemnity, may commonly be written in German, but in this case we venture 
 to think that the better book is written in English. 
 
 Here then is more than one passage in Curtius's History in which we hold 
 that Mr. Grote's treatment far surpasses his in judgement and accuracy. We 
 have another passage to speak of, in which Curtius distinctly calls Mr. Grote's 
 views in question, and in doing so shows that he altogether misunderstands 
 them. This is with regard to the treatment of the Generals after the battle of 
 Arginousai. Of this matter we have two accounts, that of Xenophdn and that 
 of Dioddros, besides a few allusions in Lysias and in Xenophdn himself at a 
 later stage. Xenoph6n is contemporary, but his account is thoroughly unsatis- 
 factory and unfair on the face of it. This is allowed even by those who, like 
 Bishop Thirlwall, are inclined to put more faith in it than Mr. Grote does. 
 Diod6ros wrote long after, and he was thoroughly stupid and careless, but he 
 had original writers before him whom we have not. The allusions in Lysias 
 and in the later speech of Th&amengs in Xenophdn himself are incidental 
 allusions in the speeches of orators, and every student of Grecian history knows 
 how often such allusions are quite inaccurate, even when made very soon after 
 the events. And inaccuracy of this kind is certainly not confined to Athenian 
 debates. Our materials then, though fairly full, are by no means good in 
 quality, and we must make use of our own judgements upon them. One thing 
 however is perfectly plain, that the sentence by which the Generals died was 
 monstrously illegal. All the forma of Athenian jurisprudence were trampled 
 under foot. By Athenian law each man ought to have been tried separately 
 before a sworn court ; he ought to have been heard in his own defence, and to 
 have been convicted or acquitted by a vote of the judges which touched hini- 
 self only. Instead of this, the whole body of accused men were condemned by 
 a single vote of the unsworn Assembly, and they were not heard in their own 
 defence, except so far as some at least of them had spoken on the subject in an 
 earlier debate. The Generals in short died by a Bill of Attainder, very much 
 like those which gladden the heart of Mr. Froude. It is perfectly plain that, 
 if any of us had been present in the Assembly, we should have voted against 
 the proposal of the Senate and for the amendment of Euryptolemos, who de- 
 manded that the Generals should be fairly tried according to law. But this does 
 not at all prove whether, if we had sat on a court for trying any one of the 
 Generals, we should have acquitted or convicted him. These two questions 
 are perfectly distinct ; but Mr. Grote seems to be the only writer who 
 thoroughly distinguishes them. The utter injustice of the vote by which the 
 Generals died is plain on any showing, and Mr. Grote asserts it as strongly as 
 any man. But as to the circumstances which led the People to this unhappy 
 vote, as to the probable guilt or innocence of the Generals themselves, our ac- 
 counts are confused and contradictory, and it is not wonderful if different readers 
 of the story come to different conclusions. Mr. Grote comes to one conclusion ; 
 Curtius or any other man has a perfect right to come to another. Mr. Grote 
 does not see any elaborate ohgarchical plots on the part of Thdramen^s for 
 the destruction of the Generals or of anybody else ; he looks on the People as led 
 away by overpowering family feelings. He points out —what many have failed 
 to see, though Curtius does see it— that what the Generals were charged with 
 
IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 159 
 
 was not merely neglecting to take up dead bodies for burial — though that alone, 
 according to Greek religious ideas, was » heinous crime — but leaving their 
 wounded and drowning comrades to perish. Mr. Grote too accepts as 
 genuine the lamentations and accusations of the kinsfolk of the forsaken 
 men, who are commonly represented as being no kinsfolk at all, or at any 
 rate as being stirred up and bribed by ThSramen^s. Xenoph5n mentions 
 that certain mourners appeared ; so does Diodflros. But Xenoi)h6n adds, 
 while Diodfiros does not, that these mourners were not real mourners, but 
 people set to work by ThgramenSs. Mr. Grote shows the impossibility of 
 this story in itself. Besides this, the appearance of the mourners was a fact 
 about which there could he no doubt ; that they were bribed by Thfo-amengs 
 was a surmise, about which Xenoph6n or anybody else might be mistaken, 
 and which the writers whom Diodfiros followed did not accept. So again a 
 certain man came forward (■napTJKSe) in the Assembly, saying that he had, in 
 the wreck, saved himself on a meal-tub, &c. &c. Till Mr. Grote wrote, every 
 modem writer represented this man also as an instrument of Thgramengs. 
 He was 'produced,' 'brought forward,' and the like — ^' wurde endlioh auch ein 
 Mann vorgefuhrt* as Curtius has it— though no such meaning can be got out 
 of irap5\fl€. As to the guilt of the Generals and the guilt of Thgramengs, all 
 that we can say is that Mr. Grote and Curtius come to different conclusions. 
 Our own conclusion, if it is worth anything, would be that some of the Generals 
 were guilty, and some innocent; whether the guilty ought to have been 
 punished with death is a question of Athenian law and feeling, which is hard to 
 settle at this distance of time. But it is hardly fair in Curtius to leave out of 
 sight that we cannot condemn Therameufis so strongly as he does, without in 
 some degree also condemning Thrasyboulos, who clearly had a share, although 
 a less prominent one, in the first accusation. But it is really too bad to say, 
 as Curtius does, after quoting a work unluckily unknown to us, Herbst's Die 
 Scklacht hei den Argmusen : — 
 
 ' In dieser Schrift ist gegen Grote's Versuch, das Verfahren der Biirgerschaft 
 zu rechtfertigen und die Peldherren als schuldig darzustellen, das riohtige 
 Sachverhaltniss entwickelt, wie es sich aus Xenophon ergiebt. X. gegeniiber 
 kann Diod. xiii. loi keine Autoriat sein und es ist unstatthaft, Theramenes 
 Verfehren als eine nothgedrungene Selbstvertheidigung zu enschuldigen.' 
 
 Now Herbst may possibly have refuted Mr. Grote on any of the points 
 which are open to controversy. He may have proved the innocence of all the 
 Generals ; he may have shown that Thfiramends bribed the supposed mourners 
 or even the man who said that he had escaped on the meal-tub ; but he can- 
 not have refuted any attempt of Mr. Grote's to justify the proceedings of the 
 Assembly, because no such attempt was ever made. Mr. Grote as distinctly 
 condemns the doings of the Assembly as Curtius or Herbst can do. On 
 the very heading of one of his pages may be read the words ' Causes of the un- 
 just sentence.' In his text he speaks of the ' temporary burst of wrong,' of the 
 ' enormity ' of the proposal of the Senate, of its ' breaking through the esta- 
 blished constitutional maxims and judicial practices of the Athenian de- 
 mocracy,' of its ' depriving the Generals of all fair trial,' and of the ' well-merited 
 indignation ' with which ' it was heard by a large portion of the Assembly.' It 
 was an ' illegal and unconstitutional proposition ; ' the Athenians ' dishonoured 
 themselves ;' ' under a momentary ferocious excitement they rose in insurrec- 
 
160 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 
 
 tion not less against the forms of their own democracy than against the most 
 sacred restraints of their habitual constitutional morality.' We do not see 
 ■what stronger language Herbst can have used, or what stronger language Cur- 
 tius can have wished any one to use ; and it is hard indeed, when Mr. Grote 
 has expressed himself so plainly, that he should be charged, in a sort of pass- 
 ing contemptuous sneer, with having defended what he most righteously 
 condemned. The truth plainly is that Curtius has neither the same political in- 
 stincts nor the same knowledge of human nature as Mr. Grote. He seemingly 
 cannot understand that a sentence may be utterly monstrous both in a legal and 
 a moral point of view, and yet that the persons condemned may not be whoUj 
 free from blame. 
 
 We have thought it right to point out these things clearly, because there 
 seems every chance thsit Curtius may depose Grote, and we believe that such a 
 deposition would be a great evil. In aU these political matters Curtius is behind 
 his generation ; he is behind the generation to which Mr. Grote has explained 
 so many matters which before were dark. But even in this matter of the con- 
 demnation of the Generals, we may mention one point of detail in which we 
 think that Curtius has the better of Grote. Mr. Grote rejects, on grounds 
 which seem to us very inconclusive, the speech which Dioddros puts into the 
 mouth of Diomed6n as he is led to execution. Curtius silently accepts it.' But 
 an incidental advantage like this goes for little when the whole story is so 
 completely misconceived. 
 
 Nearly the same objections will apply to Curtius's treatment of most of the 
 subjects in which he comes into collision with Mr. Grote ; that is to say, of most 
 of the political questions which arise during the Peloponnesian War. We 
 cannot express our feeling better than by saying that Curtius is behindhand, 
 pra-Grotian. He writes with the notions and prejudices of a time which we 
 thought had passed away. But there are better things in the present volume 
 than these. What Curtius does grasp, no man can set forth more clearly or 
 effectively. His picture of Periklgs is thoroughly well done ; so is his general 
 narrative of Sicilian affairs. Both these subjects carry us a little out of the 
 beaten track of Athenian politics. This may seem a strange thing to say of the 
 great organizer of Athenian Democracy. But if Periklgs was the organizer of 
 the Athenian Democracy, he was many other things as well. He stands out 
 as a man so completely by himself that questions about the exact nature of his 
 dealings with the Areiopagos or with the law courts seem of secondary moment. 
 Into the many sides of the character of Perikl^s Curtius thoroughly enters, and 
 he works them up into a portrait in his best style. So again, Sicily, the island 
 which so largely filled Greek imagination, with its cities and their revolutions, 
 vrith its ancient legends and its contending races, a land which to the dweller 
 within the ordinary range of Greek history is a land half familiar and half un- 
 accustomed, supplies Curtius with a far better field for his peculiar powers than 
 he finds in the everyday walk of the Athenian commonwealth. Curtius could, 
 it strikes us, have given us a series of monographs of Greek subjects of brilliant 
 excellence ; many particular parts of his subject he has treated as they have 
 never been treated before ; but the continuous ma oh of Greek political and 
 military events is not his strong point, and, in attempting them, he falls, to our 
 thinking, fer below the level of either of our great English historians. 
 
V. 
 
 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 ffistofy of Greece. By Geoege Geote, Esq. Vol. XII. 
 London: 1856. 
 
 Me. Geote has fixed the end of his great work at an earlier 
 point than we could have wished. It is indeed that which he 
 chose at the begianing of his labours ; but we had hoped 
 that he might be led to think over the matter again, and not 
 to lay down his pen till he had traced the history of Grecian 
 freedom down to its final overthrow. As it is, he contents him- 
 self with tracing the decline of Athenian independence down 
 to its lowest pitch of degradation. The historian of the great 
 Democracy cannot bring himself to go on with his labours in 
 times when Athens vanishes into political insignificance, and 
 when the main interest of the drama gathers aroxmd kingly 
 Macedonia and federal Achaia. His contempt for the 'Greece 
 of Polybios,' we must confess, surprises us. The Greece of Poly- 
 bios stands indeed very far below the Greece of Thucydides ; 
 but it is still Greece, still living Greece, Greece still free and 
 republican. It was indeed but a recovered freedom which it 
 enjoyed, a freedom less perfect, less enduring, than that of the 
 elder time ; but it was still, as Pausanias calls it, a new shoot 
 from the old trunk.* But Mr. Grote has turned away with 
 something of disdain from a subject which we think is worthy 
 of him, and which we are sure that no other man living is 
 
 * "Ore 5^ Kal l^iyis, are in SivSpov \e\tij0ijiJ.hov «al liSii rd tr\(iova, ivf0\6.<r- 
 TT]aiV f« T^s 'EAAdSos rd 'AxcuKiv, vii. 17. i. Mr. Grote himself quotes the 
 passage, xii. 527. 
 
 M 
 
162 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 so fit to treat. Excellently as it has been dealt with by- 
 Bishop Thirlwall, there is still something to be added from 
 Mr. Grote's own special point of view. No one could have so 
 well compared the Aehaian institutions with those of earher 
 and of later commonwealths. Mr. Grote is strongly anti- 
 Macedonian, but we should have expected that his very dislike 
 of Macedonia would have led him to look with special in- 
 terest on the revolution which freed so large a part of 
 Greece from Macedonian bondage. It is indeed strange to 
 find Mr. Grote dismissing, in two or three contemptuous 
 lines, the revival and the final struggles of that Hellenic 
 liberty which is so dear to him. And strange too we think 
 it, in so careful an observer of the affairs of Switzerland, to 
 pay so little heed to one of the first and most successful 
 attempts to solve the great problem of Federal Government. 
 
 With regard to the Macedonian aspect of the subjectj we 
 must confess that we hold a different opinion. Mr. Grote 
 is admirably fitted to be the historian of Achaia ; he is not 
 so well fitted to be the historian of Macedonia. Indeed, in 
 the present volume and in the one next before it, he has 
 given us a history of Macedonia in its most brilliant period, 
 which we cannot but look upon as the least satisfactory part 
 of his noble work. Mr. Grote's History is so great a work 
 that some points fairly open to discussion could not fail to 
 be found in it. He puts forth so much that is new and startling 
 that he must be prepared for a certain amount of dissent even 
 among admirers who study him in his own spirit. And we 
 ourselves have so often set forth our admiration for his general 
 treatment of his subject, we have borne such full and willing 
 witness to all that Mr. Grote has done for the truth of history, 
 that we have fairly earned the right to dispute any special 
 point, however important. Such a special point of contro- 
 versy we find in his treatment of the history of Macedonia, 
 and especially of its greatest sovereign. Prom Mr. Grote's 
 view of Alexander the Great, we respectfully but very widely 
 dissent, and our present object is to set forth oui" reasons for 
 so dissenting. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 163 
 
 Mr. Grote has many claims on the gratitude of the his- 
 torical student ; but it is as the historian of the Athenian 
 Democracy that his claims are highest and most enduring. 
 In that character he has won abiding fame. He has grappled 
 with popular errors : he has put forth truths which, but for 
 the weighty arguments with which he has supported them, 
 would have been at once east aside as paradoxes. He has 
 justified ostracism ; he has found something to say for Kleon ; 
 he has shown that, even in the condemnation of Sokrates, 
 though the People erred and erred deeply, yet their error was 
 natural and almost pardonable. Demos is the darling of his 
 affections ; he watches him from his cradle, and forsakes him 
 only when he has sunk into a second childhood from which no 
 Sausage-seller on earth could call him up again. Now it was 
 by Macedonian hands that this cherished object was trampled 
 down^ degraded, corrupted, well nigh wiped out from the list 
 of independent states. That Mr. Grote should be perfectly 
 fair to Macedonia and Macedonians would have been too much 
 to hope for. But the result is that Mr. Grote, in this part 
 of his history, sinks far below the level of his great prede- 
 cessor. Bishop Thirlwall's narrative of this period it would 
 indeed be hard to outdo. The clear and vivid narrative, 
 the critical appreciation of evidence, the thorough impar- 
 tiality which can fully sympathize with the cause of Athens 
 and yet yield all due honour to Alexander and even to 
 Philip, all are here in the pages of Bishop Thirlwall, but 
 they are not found in those of Mr. Grote. Alexander, with 
 him, becomes a vulgar destroyer, a mere slaughterer of men. 
 He overthrows Greece and Persia alike, and founds nothing 
 in their stead. That Philip and Alexander put an end to the 
 brightest glory and fullest independence of Greece, cannot 
 be gainsaid. But it is another thing when Mr. Grote 
 deals with them as mere barbarian invaders, as aggressors as 
 thoroughly external as Darius and Xerxes. Whether the 
 claims which Philip and Alexander made to a Hellenic cha- 
 racter for themselves or their people were just or unjust, it was 
 only under that Hellenic character that they took on them 
 
 M 2 
 
164 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 tlie dominion of Hellas. That their conquests brought a large 
 portion of the world within the pale, not indeed of Greek 
 political city-freedom, but of Greek social life and intellectual 
 culture, can as little be gainsaid as anything that is said against 
 them. And it is surely not unreasonable to believe that Alex- 
 ander looked forward to such a result, and that he adapted 
 means to such an end. In our view, Alexander founded a 
 great deal. He founded the civilization of Alexandria and 
 Constantinople. He founded the modern Greek nation. On 
 such a point as this, Mr. Finlay, who fully appreciates the 
 great Macedonian, is a better judge than Mr. Grote. To the 
 one Alexander is the end of his subject; to the other he is its 
 beginning. Yet even here, where we think that his judgement 
 is thoroughly warped, we must bear our thankful testimony to 
 Mr. Grote's careful and conscientious collation of every state- 
 ment and every authority. In this he presents throughout a 
 most honourable contrast to another great writer who shares 
 his view of the subject. Niebuhr's Lectures on the age of 
 Philip and Alexander are throughout conceived in the spirit of 
 the too famous oration of KallisthenSs. * Everything Mace- 
 donian is brought in only to be reviled. Every recorded scandal 
 against Alexander is eagerly seized upon, without regard to the 
 evidence on which it rests. Even for actions which the whole 
 world has hitherto agreed to admire Niebuhr is always ready 
 to find out some unworthy motive. And all is put forth with 
 overbearing dogmatism, on the mere ipse dixit of Barthold 
 Niebuhr. Wholly unlike this is the conduct of Mr. Grote. 
 Even here his laborious honesty never fails him. Mr. Grote 
 does not refuse, even to a Macedonian, the right, no less 
 Macedonian than Athenian, of being heard before he is con- 
 demned. The evidence is, as ever with Mr. Grote, fully and 
 fairly marshalled ; the reader who has not gone through the 
 original authorities for himself is put in a position to dissent, 
 if he pleases, from the decision of the judge. Hardly ever 
 does Mr. Grote fail to bring forward the passages which tell 
 
 * Oi T^s iuv6Tr)Tos 6 KaKKiuBivjjs, &K\lt Trjs dvafttveias VlaicfSiaiv dirJStifii' 
 SlSaiice. Hut. Alex. 53. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. 165 
 
 most strongly against his own view. He telieves much 
 against Alexander which we hold that the evidence does not 
 warrant : but he never invents scandal or attributes motives 
 after the manner of Niehuhr. * Niebuhr is simply incapable 
 of understanding a hero; Mr. Grote merely fails to rise 
 to the heroic point of fully appreciating an enemy. With 
 Niebuhr, Alexander becomes a monster instead of a man ; 
 with Mr. Grote he becomes at the worst a Barbarian instead 
 of a Greek. In short, Niebuhr is, in this case, a mere reck- 
 less calumniator ; Mr. Grote is simply one who, after weighing 
 a mass of conflicting authorities, has come to a conclusion less 
 favourable to Alexander of Macedon than we ourselves have 
 come to after weighing the same authorities, i 
 
 Of the life of Alexander we have five consecutive narratives, 
 besides numerous allusions and fragments scattered up and 
 down various Greek and Latin writers. Of these last, the 
 greatest in number and the most curious in detail are to be 
 found in the strange miscellany of Athenaios; but the most 
 really valuable are due to the judicious and accurate Strabo. 
 Of our five writers, Arrian and Quintus Curtius have given 
 us separate histories of the great conqueror. The work of 
 Arrian has come down to us whole, with the exception of 
 a single gap. In the work of Curtius there are several such 
 gaps, and the whole of his two first books are wanting. 
 Plutarch has devoted to Alexander one of his longest biogra- 
 phies ; Diodoros bestows on him a whole book of his Universal 
 History ; Justin gives a shorter narrative in his abridgement 
 of Trogus Pompeius. But we have again to regret a very con- 
 siderable gap in the narrative of Diod6ros, which however is 
 partially supplied by the headings of the chapters being 
 preserved. 
 
 Here, it might be thought, are authorities enough ; but 
 unluckily, among all the five, there is not a single contempo- 
 rary chronicler. All five write at secondhand ; the earliest of 
 
 * [Of these Lectures of Niebuhr's something more will be found iu the next 
 
166 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 them writes about three centuries after Alexander's death. 
 The value of all, it is clear, must depend upon the faithfulness 
 with which they represent the earlier writings which they had 
 before them, and upon the amount of critical power which 
 they may have brought to bear upon their examination. 
 Unluckily again, among all the five, one only has any claim 
 to the name of a critic. Arrian alone seems to have had at 
 once the will and power to exercise a discreet judgement upon 
 the statements of those who went before him. Diodoros we 
 believe to be perfectly honest, but he is, ■ at the same time, 
 impenetrably stupid. Plutarch, as he himself tells us, does 
 not write history, but lives; his object is rather to gather 
 anecdotes, to point a moral, than to give a formal narrative of 
 political and military events. Justin is a feeble and careless 
 epitomizer. Quintus Curtius is, in our eyes, little better than 
 a romance-writer ; he is the only one of the five whom we 
 should suspect of any wilful departure from the truth. 
 
 The contemporary historians of Alexander's exploits llpuft! 
 by no means few, but most of them seem to have been of 
 very inferior character. His own generation gave birth to 
 no Thucydides, and the next to no Herodotus. Both Arrian 
 and Strabo* constantly eomplaia of the contradictions in 
 their statements, and of the way in which most of them 
 trifled with their subject. They tell us of their wild fables, 
 their gross exaggerations, their constant sacrifice of truth to 
 effect. Kleitarchos, Onesikritos, HSgesias, the unfortunate 
 Kallisthenes, all have a very bad name among later writers. 
 Even Charts of MytilSn^, though an author of higher 
 character, has handed down to us some very doubtful state- 
 ments. Some seem to have been wilful liars f ; others were 
 
 * OuSe ToTs irepl 'AKf^dydpov SJ ffvyyp&pafftv ^i^Siov TriffTsiuv toTs TroWotsj 
 «.tA. Strabo, xi. 6 (vol. ii. p. 424, Tauchnitz). AijXQvffL 5i fidKiara tovto 
 ol Tois 'AXe^dvipov irp&^us dvayp&pavTes, •trpoffTi6ivT€s pi\v iroX\i teal rd T^s 
 uoXajceias eJSos. xvii. i (toI. iii. p. 4S9). 
 
 t Such at least seems to have been Strabo's judgement of On^sikritos, xv. i 
 (vol. iii. p. 269). 'OvTjffiicpiTOi, tv oi« 'A\((a,t'dpov imWov fj tSjv irapa$6(aii' 
 ipXitv^epo^TTiv irpoafivoi tis dv irivres ptiv yap ol ircpl 'AK4iavdpov rb Bavimarhv 
 &vtI Ti.K-q0ovs iwiSixovTO jiaKKov imfpffAWtaSai Si SoKtt Tois Toaoiravs indvoi 
 Tp TcpaToKoylq. 
 
V.} ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 167 
 
 nothing worse than dreaming pedants^ whose accounts of 
 military and political affairs seemed ridiculous to practical 
 men like Polybios and Arrian. 
 
 Of the guides that we have, it is plain that Diod6ros and 
 Curtius drew largely from the same sources, but they do not 
 often quote their authorities. Of these two, Diodoros, we 
 have no doubt, honestly repeated what he found in his books, 
 as far as he understood it ; but he had not the slightest 
 critical power to judge between one statement and another. 
 In fact, as we find from his narrative of times when we are 
 better able to test him, he could not always grasp the 
 meaning of a plain story when it was set before him. Cur- 
 tius, whoever he was and whenever he lived, was a man of 
 far higher powers. Like Livy, he tells his tale to perfection 
 as a mere matter of rhetoric. But then rhetoric is all that 
 he has to give us ; his constant sacrifice of everything to 
 oratorical display, his palpable blunders in history and geo- 
 graphy, his manifest exaggerations, his love of the wonderful 
 and the horrible wherever he can find them — all show that he 
 represents the most extravagant and inaccurate among the 
 earlier writers ; they even suggest the thought that a great 
 deal may in truth come from his own imagination. In fact, 
 in reading Curtius, we feel that we are already on the road to 
 the wild romance of the false Kallisthen^s, and to the yet 
 stranger imaginings of the Eastern historians. It is highly 
 dangerous to accept any statement on his witness alone.* 
 
 The object of Plutarch, as we have already said, was anec- 
 dote or biography rather than history. He may therefore 
 fairly be judged by a less severe standard than any of the 
 other writers. And certainly, of the two, we look far more 
 favourably upon the anecdotes of Plutarch than upon the 
 marvels of Curtius. We are far from accepting them in the 
 
 * Curtius, we suspect, was capable of better things. He once or twice (see 
 ix. 5. 21) attempts criticism ; he once really gives us a piece of it. There was 
 a tale that Alexander once caused Lysimachos, the future King, to be exposed 
 to a lion. Curtius acutely finds the origin of the fable in an encounter be- 
 tween Lysimachos and a lion at a hunting-party in Alexander's presence (viii. 
 I. 17). 
 
168 ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. [Essat 
 
 mass as literal facts. Anecdotes are easy to invent and easier 
 to improTC ; indeed the man is a sort of martyr to truthful^ 
 ness who can withstand the temptation of making a good story 
 still better. But, for an anecdote to pass current at all, it 
 must have a kind of truth. It must have a certain degree of 
 probability ; it must at least be the kind of thing which might 
 have happened, even if it never actually did happen. Stories 
 of this kind may therefore generally be accepted as throwing 
 light upon the character of the persons of whom they speak* 
 Plutarch, again, is more valuable than Curtius or Dioddros, 
 from his frequent references to his authorities. Among these 
 he often refers to one source of information which would be 
 the highest of all, could we only feel sure of its genuineness, 
 namely, the private letters of Alexander himself. Of the 
 letters which claimed to be Alexander's we should like to 
 know more than we can find out from Plutarch's occasional 
 quotations. It is well known that letters are easily forged, 
 and that they often were forged in those times. We cannot 
 therefore look upon these documents, which seem to have 
 been unknown to Arrian, * with any great measure of trust. 
 At most they can only be looked on as one source of know- 
 ledge among others. 
 
 Arrian, as he himself tells us, chose the two narratives of 
 Ptolemy and Aristoboulos as the groundwork of his own. 
 
 * Arrian indeed (vii. 23, 9) refers to a letter sent by Alexander to Kleo- 
 men^s, his Satrap in Egypt ; but he merely works its contents into his narra- 
 tive, as if he had read in Ptolemy or Aristoboulos that such a letter was sent. 
 Had he known and believed in the collection of epistles referred to by Plu"- 
 tarch, he would surely have placed them above either of his &vourite authori- 
 ties. 
 
 Bishop Thirlwall (vol vii. p. 386) argues in favour of the genuineness of one 
 of the letters quoted by Plutarch, that it is ' placed beyond doubt by its direc- 
 tion {KfaTip^ «al 'AxT-oAy Kal 'AA/te'r^], which would not have occurred to a 
 forger.' Surely this turns upon the skill of the forger and the means of 
 knowledge at his command. 
 
 Strabo (xv. i; vol. iii. p. 375, Tauchnitz) quotes a letter from Krateros to 
 his mother, which may belong to the same colleotion. Either the letter must 
 have been a forgery, or Krateros must have been a liar of the first order. 
 Strabo himself calls it imaroKilv iroWi re a\Ka mipiSo(a (ppi^ovaav md oiix 
 6ito\oyov(Tav oudevl. It makes Alexander reach the Ganges. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 169 
 
 Both, he tells us, were companions of Alexander ; both wrote 
 after his deaths when they had nothing to hope or to fear 
 from him : Ptolemy moreover was a King-, in whom false- 
 hood would be specially unlikely. We do not profess to 
 share Arrian's ultra-royalism on this last head ; but we think 
 that we can see good reasons for placing Ptolemy among our 
 most trustworthy authorities. On two occasions, when his 
 name was honourably put forward by other writers — probably 
 his own flatterers — he himself disclaimed all merit. When 
 Alexander received his famous wound among the Malli, 
 Ptolemy, according to some stories, was one of those who 
 first came to his help. According to Ptolemy himself, he 
 was in command of another division of the army in another 
 part of the country.* In the like sort, according to Diod6ros 
 and Curtius, Ptolemy was once wounded by a poisoned arrow, 
 and the means of relief were revealed to Alexander in a 
 vision. As Arrian speaks of nothing of the kind, we may 
 infer that Ptolemy spoke of nothing either : f for the tale was 
 one which, had it rested on any tolerable evidence, Arrian 
 would not have been inclined to cast aside. For Arrian, like 
 Pausanias, was a devout pagan, and he loved tales of omens 
 and prodigies, which he sometimes tells at disproportionate 
 length. But he is quite free from that general love of ex- 
 aggerated and horrible stories which is so rife among the 
 inferior writers. It was doubtless the sober and practical 
 tone of the narratives of Ptolemy and Aristoboulos, as con- 
 trasted with the monstrous fables of Onesikritos and Kleit- 
 archos, which led him to follow them before all others. 
 
 We hold then that Arrian ought to be our chief guide; 
 and yet we can grant to Mr. Grote that his silence does not 
 always absolutely set a statement aside. But our reason is 
 not quite the same as Mr. Grote's. The other writers often 
 contain stories to the discredit of Alexander, which are not 
 found in Arrian. Mr. Grote infers that the other writers 
 preserved the truthj which was kept back by Ptolemy and 
 
 * Arrian, vi. ii. + See Ste Croix, p. 409. 
 
170 ALEXANDEn THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 Aristoboulos, in their zeal for Alexander's good name. Arch- 
 deacon Williams of Cardigan, on the other hand, will have it 
 that the writers of what he calls 'republican Greece' did 
 nothing but invent tales to the disparagement of the royal 
 Macedonian. This phantasy has been tossed to the winds by 
 the stronger hand of his Diocesan.* The mass of Greek 
 writers, at all events o^ later Greek writers, certainly did not 
 run down Alexander either as a Kling or as a Macedonian. 
 They had got over their hatred of Kings, and they had learned 
 to look on Macedonians as Greeks. The chief vice which Strabo 
 lays to their charge, is not depreciation, but flattery and love 
 of the marvellous. And no small appetite they do indeed 
 show for the extravagant, the horrible, and the scandalous. 
 Among all this, Alexander of course comes in for his share ; 
 but so do his enemies likewise. Deeds of wrong are laid to 
 the charge of both which most likely neither of them ever 
 did. But on the other hand^ it is not necessary to believe 
 that Ptolemy and Aristoboulos were such formal apologists 
 for Alexander as Mr. Grote seems to take for granted. To 
 suppose that they wilfully left out Alexander's crimes implies 
 that they looked on them as crimes. But there is no reason 
 to give Ptolemy and Aristoboulos credit for a higher moral 
 standard than that of Alexander himself. If Alexander, as Mr. 
 Grote believes,t massacred the Branchidai as an act of piety, 
 Ptolemy or Aristoboulos would be quite as likely to applaud 
 as to condemn the deed. If, out of zeal for Alexander's good 
 name, they left out the kiss publicly given by him to BagoasJ 
 in the theatre, we must infer that their morals were sterner 
 than those of the assembled Macedonians, Greeks, and Per- 
 
 * Perhaps every one of Bishop Thirlwall's endless sarcasms against Arch- 
 deacon Williams's ' Life of Alexander,' la in itself strictly deserved. Yet the 
 book, as a whole, is not so bad as might be thought from the specimens thus 
 embalmed. Among a good many blunders and a great deal of partiality, it 
 shows some thought and research, and it is written in a. specially agreeable 
 manner. 
 
 + Vol. xii. p. 275. 
 
 X See Plut. Alex. 67 (compare, on the other hand, c. 22) ; Athen. xiii. 80 
 (p. 603) ; compare on the other hand, x. 45 (p. 435). Compare also the 
 counter story about Agdsilaos, Xeu. Ages. v. 4. 
 
v.] ALEXANDEB THE GREAT. 171 
 
 siansj who called for and who applauded the act. It is far 
 EQore likely that they passed by the one tale as untrue, the 
 other perhaps as untrue, anyhow as trivial. Still it must be 
 known that the silence of Arrian is not of itself conclusive 
 against a statement. Arrian was himself a military man of 
 some reputation, fond both of the theory and the practice of 
 his art. His history therefore is primarily a military one, 
 and he sometimes passes lightly' over matters which do not 
 bear on military affairs. But both the assertions and the 
 silence of Arrian afford strong a priori grounds of historical 
 presumption, against which the statements of the other 
 writers must be weighed at whatever they are worth. 
 
 It is no wonder then that, from such a mass of conflicting 
 evidence, different minds should draw different conclusions, 
 and that Alexander should appear one kind of being to 
 Mitford, Droysen, and Archdeacon Williams, and quite 
 another to Ste Croix, Niebuhr, and Mr. Grote. Among these, 
 Droysen and Niebuhr form the two extremes on either side, 
 for blind and often unfair idolatry, and for still more blind 
 and unfair depreciation. High above them all, the serene 
 intellect of Bishop Thirlwall holds the judicial balance. He 
 can sympathize with the fall of Athenian freedom without 
 denying the common rights of mankind to its destroyers. 
 He can reverence Lykourgos and Demosthenes, and can yet 
 see a hero in Alexander, and not an unmixed monster even in 
 Philip. He can understand how a man exposed to the most 
 fearful of temptations may sink into many faults and occa- 
 sional crimes, and yet keep a heart sound at its core. He 
 will not deny to such an one, though he may have been the 
 author of much incidental evil, his claim to be ranked 
 among the benefactors of mankind. The oftener we read 
 Bishop ThirlwalFs narrative of this period, the more disposed 
 are we to see in it the nearest approach to the perfection of 
 critical history. The acute appreciation, the calm balancing 
 of evidence, the deep knowledge of human nature, the clear 
 and vigorous narrative, the eloquence and feeling with which 
 he sums up the character of the conqueror, would be alone 
 
172 ALEXANDER THE GBEAT. [Essay 
 
 enough to place their author in the very first rank of hisr 
 torical writers. In his treatment of the internal affairs of 
 Athens in earlier times Mr. Grote far outshines Bishop 
 Thirlwall ; but nowhere does he equal, or even approach, the 
 Bishop's admirable narrative of the period from the accession 
 of Philip to the death of DSmetrios PoliorketSs] It is thereT 
 fore, on the whole, the Alexander of Thirlwall, rather than 
 the Alexander either of Grote or of Droysen, who deserves to 
 live in the memory of mankind and to challenge the admira- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 The first leading fact in Alexander's history is that a King 
 of the Macedonians overthrew the Persian empire, in the cha- 
 racter of Captain-general of Hellas and in the name of Hellenic 
 vengeance for wrongs wrought on Hellas by the Barbarians 
 of a past generation. The second fact is that, when he had 
 carried out this work, he began to identify himself with the 
 empire which he had overthrown, that he took on himself 
 the character of King of Asia, that he began a series of con- 
 quests in which neither Greece nor Macedonia had either real 
 or sentimental interest, and, that he was cut off while engaged 
 in organizing a world-wide dominion of which both Greece 
 and Macedonia would have been, in geographical extent, 
 insignificant corners. In looking at such a career, its hero 
 must be judged by the standard of his own times, and not 
 by any standard, whether moral or political, which is either 
 purely Christian or purely modern. Alexander cannot be 
 fairly judged by a higher standard, except on a view which is 
 of itself the greatest homage to him — namely, that he was a 
 man of such greatness as to belong to aU time, one to whom 
 men might reasonably look to forestall the progress of future 
 ages. But in all fairness, Alexander must be looked on 
 simply as a heathen Greek warrior of the fourth century 
 before Christ. It is enough if his career, allowing for his 
 special circumstances and temptationsj be found to be not less 
 honourable than that of Agesilaos or Pelopidas. Mr. Grote, 
 who looks at Alexander not as a Greek but as a Barbarian, 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 173 
 
 should in fairness judge Mm by a standard still less strict ; 
 he should not condemn him if he reaches the measure of the 
 better class of Persian rulers, of the first Darius, of the elder 
 or the younger Cyrus. 
 
 Nothing would be easier than to set forth in glowing 
 language the wretchedness which must have been the im- 
 mediate result of Alexander's conquests, and to lament that 
 the lives of countless thousands should have been sacrificed to 
 the insatiable ambition of a single man. But these are ob- 
 jections, not to Alexander, but to war in the abstract. The 
 real questions are, Were the wars of Alexander unjust accord- 
 ing to the principles of his own age ? Were they carried on 
 with any circumstances of cruelty or perfidy contrary to the 
 laws of war which were then acknowledged ? 
 
 The notions which were held, not only by Greek soldiers, 
 but by Greek philosophers also, as to the relations between 
 Greek and Barbarian, were of a kind which it is not easy for 
 modem Europe to enter into. They may be compared with the 
 line which Islam draws between the true believer and the in- 
 fidel. Between those two^lasses "there is to be an endless holy 
 war, modified only by the obligations which may spring out of 
 special treaties, or rather truces. Unless he is under the safe- 
 guard of such special engagements, the infidel has nothing to 
 look for but death or submission. Not very unlike this 
 was the light in which, for some ages at least, the Chris- 
 tians* of Europe looked on the heathens of Asia, Africa, 
 and America. The old Greek deemed the Barbarian, unless 
 he was protected by some special compact, to be his natural foe 
 and his natural slave. War between the two was looked upon 
 as the regular order of things. And war, it should be re- 
 membered, even when waged by Greek against Greek, carried 
 with it utter havoc and devastation. Fruit-trees were cut 
 down, corn-fields were trampled, houses were burned, every 
 kind of wanton ravage was wrought, not only from the 
 incidental necessities of a battle, but as the ordinary con- 
 sequence of a march through an enemy's country. Nothing 
 
 * See Arnold, Thueydidea, vol. i. p. 28. 
 
174 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 but a special capitulation could even secure the life and 
 freedom of the prisoner. To slaughter the men and sell the 
 women and children of a captured town was looked on indeed 
 as harshness, but as harshness which occasion might justify, 
 and which was no breach of the received laws of war. If 
 we look at it by these principles, we shall hardly pronounce 
 Alexander's attack on the Persian Empire to have been unjust 
 in itself; we shall certainly not pronounce it to have been 
 carried out with wanton harshness in detail. 
 
 Long before Alexander was born, long before Macedonia 
 rose to greatness, a Pan-Hellenic expedition against Persia 
 had been the day-dream alike of Greek statesmen and of 
 Greek rhetoricians. It was the cherished vision of the long 
 life of Isokrates. It had been planned by the Thessalian 
 Tagos Jas6n. It had been actually begun by the Spartan 
 King Agdsilaos. Demosthenes himself would hardly have 
 said anything against it on the score _ef abstract justice. In 
 his view it was untimely, it was impolitic, it was dangerous 
 to Athenian and even to Hellenic interests. Persia was no 
 longer to be feared, while MaeedDnia was of all powers the 
 one that was most to be feared. These arguments settled the 
 matter as against a Pan-Hellenic attack on Persia under 
 Macedonian headship. But there is no reason to think that 
 such a warfare, under more favourable circumstances and 
 with a less dangerous leader, would have sinned against any 
 abstract moral instinct in any Athenian or Lacedsemonian 
 statesman. 
 
 The question now arises, How far had Alexander any right to 
 put himself forward as the champion of united Hellas against 
 the Barbarian ? According to Mr. Grote, Alexander himself 
 was no Greek, but a mere Barbarian or half-Barbarian, who 
 had at most put on some superficial varnish of Hellenic cul- 
 ture. He was a mere ' non-Hellenic conqueror,' almost as 
 external as Darius or Xerxes. Instead of the champion, he 
 was the destroyer, the tyrant, of independent Hellas. Grecian 
 interests lay on the side of Persia, not on that of Macedonia. 
 The victory of Alexander at Gaugam^la brought about sub- 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 175 
 
 stantially the same results as would have followed a victory of 
 Xerxes at Salamis. In fact, if a cry of Hellenic liberty or 
 Hellenic vengeance was to be raised, it was the despot of 
 Pella, not the despot of Susa, against whom the national 
 crusade ought to have been preached. 
 
 In all this there is much of truth. Indeed, the purely 
 political portion of the theory cannot be disputed. It had 
 been before put forth, with no difference that we can see, by 
 Bishop Thirlwall himself. Archdeacon Williams indeed 
 holds, with the Corinthian Demaratos, that the sight of 
 Alexander on the throne of Darius ' must have been a source 
 of the greatest pride and exultation to every Greek who 
 possessed a single spark of national feeling.' * But even he 
 can see that the Macedonians at Issos ' conquered not the 
 Persians alone, but the united efforts of Southern Greece and 
 Persia.' f Undoubtedly Grecian interests, in the narrower 
 sense, lay on the Persian, and not on the Macedonian side. 
 A Persian victory at Gaugamela would have been almost as 
 great a gain for the political freedom of Athens as was the Per- 
 sian defeat at Marathon. The old Greek system of independent 
 city-commonwealths was in no wise threatened by Persia ; it 
 was more thAn threatened by Macedonia. We see all this 
 now; Atheiiian and Spartan statesmen saw it at the time. 
 It was natural that every Athenian patriot should see a friend 
 in his old aiemy the Great King, a foe and an oppressor in the 
 self-styled ahampion of Greece. Nor is it unnatural that the 
 modern champion of Athenian freedom should see the whole 
 matter frol^ an Athenian point of view, and should set 
 down the claims of Alexander to Hellenic championship as 
 mere mockeiy and pretence. But all this by no means proves 
 that there was not another side to the question, one which 
 might be fairly taken, and which actually was taken, both by 
 Alexander himself and by a large part of the Greek nation. 
 
 The exact ethnical relation between the Greek and the 
 Macedonian people is a difficult question, and one on which 
 
 * Life of Alexander, p. 176. t Ibid. p. m. 
 
176 ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. \EssaX 
 
 we need not here enter. * Very different statements are found 
 in different authorities. Alexander assumes Macedonia to 
 be beyond doubt part of Greece, f Demosthenes reckons 
 Philip not only as no Greek, but as among the vilest of 
 Barbarians. % Both these statements are clearly interested 
 exaggerations in opposite directions. The Macedonian was 
 certainly not strictly a Greek, yet neither was he strictly a 
 Barbarian ; § he had at least a power of adopting Greek 
 culture which was not shared by the Persian or the 
 Egyptian. Throughout the campaigns of Alexander, we 
 always feel that Greeks and Macedonians, whatever might 
 be the amount of difference among themselves, form one 
 class as opposed to the mere Asiatic Barbarian. It is not 
 only that they were fighting under the same banners, — so 
 were Greek and Barbarian on the opposite side, — it is that 
 Greek and Macedonian alike display those peculiar military 
 qualities which have always distinguished the European from 
 the Asiatic, and of which the Greek had hitherto been the 
 great example. The Macedonian, in short, if not a bom 
 Greek, became a naturalized Greek. He was the first-fruits 
 of that artificial Greek nation which was to play so important 
 a part in later times, and whose nationality is still vigorous 
 and progressive in our own day. Indeed, from the highest 
 Hellenic type at Athens the descent is very gradual down to the 
 non-Hellenic or semi- Hellenic Epeirots and Macedonians. The 
 latter surely did not stand so far below the Greek of iEtolia 
 or Thessaly as the Greek of jEtolia or Thessaly stood below 
 the Greek of Athens. The few- traces which we have of the old 
 Macedonian language show it to have been a speech not strictly 
 Greek, but still closely allied to Greek. It may even have 
 
 * [See above, p. 90.] 
 
 + MaKfSoviav xal T^f oJ^Xtjv 'EWiSa. (Arrian, ii. 14.) 
 
 J 01) ii6vov ovx "EKKijvos ovros ouSc irpoaijicavTos ovd\v Tois "EXXiyo'ii', dXV 
 o\>h\ ^ap^dpov €VTev$€V S6ev Ka\dv eitrHy, dW* d\66pov MatfeStSi^os, k.t.K, X)eni. 
 Phil. iii. 40 (p. 119). 
 
 I ' Greeks, Macedonians, Barbarians' are spoken of as three distinct classes, 
 not only by Arrian (ii, 7, iv. 11) but by IsokratSs, Philip, 178. So Plutarch, 
 Alex. 47 (cf. 51). 
 
"V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 177 
 
 been no further removed from Attic purity than was the 
 speech of the wild ^tolians.* At all events, Greek of 
 respectable purity soon became the one tongue of Macedonian 
 government, Kterature, and business. A nation which could 
 so soon take up with the language, manners, and religion of 
 Greece cannot be looked upon as a horde of outside Bar- 
 barians like the Persian invaders. Nor did the adoption of 
 Greek manners by the Macedonians merely answer to their par- 
 tial adoption in after days by the Eoman conquerors of Greece. 
 The Eoman never lost his separate national being and his 
 national dominion. He never looked on himself as a Greek 
 or laid aside the language of Latium. But the Macedonian 
 sunk his distinct nationality in that of his subjects. He 
 was content with the position of the dominant Greek among 
 other Greeks. 
 
 But whatever the Macedonian people were, the Macedonian 
 Kings were undoubtedly Hellenic. Isokrates loves to point 
 to the willing subjection of Macedonia to its Greek rulers as 
 one of the noblest tributes to the inborn superiority of the 
 Greek.f In much earlier times the judges of Olympia had 
 acknowledged another Alexander as a Greek, an Argive, a 
 Herakleid. In the veins of the son of Philip and Olympias the 
 blood of Herakles was mingled with the blood of Achilleus. 
 Not only Philip, but earlier Macedonian Kings, had striven, 
 and not without fruit, to bring their subjects within the pale of 
 the civilization of their own race. Philip first showed himself 
 to the south of Olympos, not as a Barbarian conqueror, but as 
 the champion of Apoll6n, chosen by the Amphiktyonic Synod 
 to lead the armies of the God against the sacrilegious Phokian. 
 His services were rewarded by the admission of himself and 
 his successors as members of the great religious Council of 
 Greece. From that moment Macedonia is clearly entitled to 
 rank as a Greek state. 
 
 The object of Philip clearly was, not to macedonize Hellas, 
 
 * 'Onep [EupvTai/es] fiiytarov fiipos iarl ray AlriuKaiv, AfvaardTaTOt ik 
 yXmaaav «al di/io^iyot eialy, <is \iyovTai. (Thuc. iii. 94.) 
 t Isok. Philip. 125, 6. 
 
 N 
 
178 ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 but to hellenize Macedonia. Macedonia was acknowledged 
 as a Greek state ; the next step was to make it the dominant 
 Greek state. The supremacy, the ^yejuiovto, of Greece, which 
 had so often been struggled for among her leading cities, was 
 now to be claimed by the King of the Macedonians, not as a 
 foreign invader, but by virtue of his Hellenic position as chief 
 of the most powerful of Greek states. By the confederacy of 
 Corinth, Macedonia was clothed with the same supremacy 
 which, after the battle of Aigos Potamos and again after the 
 peace of Antalkidas, had been held by Sparta. The existence 
 of such a supremacy in both cases sinned against Greek 
 political instincts, and in both cases it led to much practical 
 oppression. But we have no reason to think that the 
 supremacy of Macedonia was at all more oppressive than the 
 supremacy of Sparta. Demosthenes, or rather some con- 
 temporary orator under his name,* has drawn a dark enough 
 picture of Macedonian rule ; but hardly so dark a picture as 
 Isokrat^s had before drawn of Spartan rule.f Philip and 
 Alexander do not seem to have systematically interfered with 
 the governments of the Greek cities. J Athens, under the 
 supremacy of Sparta, was put under the tyranny of the 
 Thirty. Under the supremacy of Macedonia, she kept her 
 democracy, and listened to Demosthenes pleading for the 
 Crown. In Asia, Lysandros everywhere set up oKgarchies ; § 
 Alexander, in several places at least, restored democracies. || 
 We need not believe that he had any enthusiasm for popular 
 rights, but he at least had not that abstract hatred of freedom 
 
 * See the oration Hipl tSiv irpbs 'AX l^nvSpov avi/BrjKoiv throughout. 
 
 + Paneg. I44. et seq. Panath. 57. et seq. &c. 
 
 t In two cases, that of MesstaS and of the Achaian Pelllng, Alexander is 
 accused (Dem. vepl tSiv irpbs 'A. 5. 12., Pausanias, viii. 7. 27) of forestalling 
 the policy of his successors and of setting iip a Tyrant in a Grecian city. 
 But these acts seem to stand quite aloae. Elsewhere we find him (Arrian, 
 T. 25) expressing admiration for the aristocratical constitutions which he 
 found in some Indian states. He would doubtless favour whatever form of 
 government best suited his policy in each particular case. 
 
 § See Isok. Panath. 58. 
 
 II Arrian, ii. 17, iS ; ii. 5. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 179 
 
 which has been the leading feeling of so many Kings. The 
 supremacy of Philip and Alexander was naturally hateful to 
 great cities like Thebes, Athens, and Sparta, which strove 
 to set up a similar supremacy of their own. But we can 
 hardly doubt that many of the smaller states hailed them as 
 deliverers, and gave their votes in the synod of Corinth with 
 hearty good will. 
 
 The main difference between the Macedonian supremacy 
 and the earlier supremacy of Athens, Thebes, or Sparta^ lay 
 in this — that those states were republics, while Macedonia 
 was a monarchy. Mr. Grote seems to argue that Philip 
 and Alexander could not be Greeks, because they were 
 Kings.* In another place t he far more truly speaks of 
 Alexander as being, in many respects, a revival of the 
 Homeric Greek. But the Homeric Greek was surely a 
 Greek and not a Barbarian ; one main difference between 
 Greece and Macedonia was that Macedonia had kept on the 
 old heroic kingship which Greece had cast aside. Such was 
 the case with Molossis also, the land of Alexander's mother, 
 a state where, just as in Macedonia, Greeks of heroic descent 
 reigned over a people who were at most, only half Hellenic. 
 Molossis, like Macedonia, became Greek; indeed it went a 
 step farther than Macedonia, and became a democratic con- 
 federation. 
 
 We hold then that Alexander has the fullest right to all the 
 honours of the Hellenic name, though his sympathies may 
 well have lain more warmly with the heroic Greeks of the 
 Homeric age than with the republican Greeks of his own day. 
 Yet he did not appear among those republican Greeks as a 
 barbarian conqueror. It was his ambition to attack the Bar- 
 barian in the character of the chosen champion of Hellas, and 
 that rank was formally bestowed upon him, with the out- 
 ward consent of all, J and doubtless with the real good will 
 of many. As such, he crossed over to Asia, he overthrew 
 
 * Vol. xii. p. 3. t Ibid. p. 95. 
 
 f Arriart, i. 1. Sparta alone refused. 
 
180 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 the Persian dominion, and solemnly destroyed the palace of 
 the Persian Kings in revenge for the ravages wrought by 
 Xerxes in Greece. The championship of Hellas was, at least 
 during this stage of his life, always strongly put forward; 
 and who has the right to say that it was dishonestly put 
 forward ? The inscription on his votive offering was, ' Alex- 
 ander the son of Philip, and the Greeks, the Lacedaemonians 
 excepted, from the Barbarians who inhabit Asia.' * The place 
 chosen for the offering was not Dion or Pella, but the Akro- 
 poHs of Athens. In his passage through Grecian Asia, he 
 proclaimed himself as a Grecian deliverer, and, as we have 
 seen, he restored to the Grecian cities their democratic freedom. 
 If he dealt harshly with Greeks in the Persian service, it 
 was because they had transgressed the common decree of the 
 nation ;t and he carefully distinguished between those who 
 had enlisted before and those who had .enlisted after his 
 own acknowledgement as Pan-Hellenic Captain-general. % 
 
 There is no doubt that the mercenary Greeks who fought 
 for the Great King against that Pan-Hellenic Captain-general 
 were in truth fighting the battles of HeUas. So, if Persia 
 had taken mercenary Greeks into her service against Agesilaos, 
 they would have fought the battles, perhaps of Hellas, at any 
 rate of Thebes and of Athens. But the battles of Hellas were 
 
 * Arrian, i. l6. 
 
 t Ibid. i. 16. 29 ; iii. 23. Mr. Grote, somewhat strangely to our mind, 
 likens Alexander's relation towards the Greek Confederacy to Buonaparte's 
 relation towards the Confederation of the Rhine (vol. xii. p. 70). He quotes 
 an instance of the distinction made by Buonaparte, in his Bussian campaign, 
 between native Russians and Germans in the Russian service. The former 
 were honourable enemies doing their duty ; the latter were his own rebellious 
 subjects, whom he might deal vrith as traitors. This, Mr. Grote tells us, 
 answers to Alexander's treatment of the Greeks in the Persian service. But, 
 to make the analogy good for anything, Buonaparte should have proclaimed 
 himself as a German, the chosen head of Germany, the Germanizer of France, 
 the invader of Russia to avenge German vrrongs. Alexander did not say that 
 the Greek prisoners were his 'subjects,' as Buonaparte did with the Germans. 
 He said that they were ' Greeks, fighting against Greece, contrary to the 
 common agreement of all the Greeks' (dSiAcrr yhp fiey&Ka rohs ffTpaTevofi4yovs 
 tvivrui Tp 'EAAiSt, ira/id TOis Papffapois, itapi. rd, S6yimTa Tct 'EW^i'oji'), 
 
 J Arrian, iii, a.}. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 181 
 
 fought in the one case^ they would have been fought in the 
 other, in an indirect and underhand way. One can hardly 
 believe that the Greeks who fought for Persia at Issos and 
 Gaugamela shared the same feelings of Hellenic patriotism 
 as the Greeks who fought openly for Greece at Chaironeia 
 and at Krann6n. The show and sentiment of Hellenic 
 nationality must have been throughout on the side of Alex- 
 ander. An Athenian patriot lamenting the degradation of 
 his own once ruling city, indeed a keen-sighted politician in 
 any Grecian city, might wish well to Darius and ill to Alex- 
 ander.* But the sight of a hero-King, sprung from the most 
 venerated heroes of Grecian legend, devoting himself to 
 avenge the old wrongs of Greece upon the Barbarian, must 
 have had a charm about him which it was hard indeed to 
 withstand. Alexander at least fully believed in his own 
 mission ; and such of his Macedonians as took up any Hel- 
 lenic position at all, would, with the usual zeal of new con- 
 verts, feel such influences even more strongly than the Greeks 
 themselves. 
 
 Nor does Alexander's conduct within Greece itself, at all 
 events during the earher years of his reign, at all belie these 
 Hellenic claims. The destruction of Thebes was indeed an 
 awful blow, but it was a blow in no wise more awful than 
 Hellenic cities had often suffered at each other's hands. As 
 far as human suffering went, the vengeance of Alexander 
 upon Thebes was less extreme than the vengeance of Athens 
 upon Skion^ and MSlos. The fate of Thebes moreover was 
 referred by Alexander to his own Greek allies, to Plataians 
 and Orchomenians, whose own cities had been overthrown by 
 Thebes in her day of might, and who now hastened with 
 delight to wreak their vengeance upon their oppressor. 
 
 * [In my Essay, as it was published in the Edinburgh Review, the following 
 words followed this sentence : ' As many of the French emigris and some of the 
 friends of liberty in 1814 supported the cause of the Allies against the cause of 
 Napoleon.' What these words mean, what they have to do with the matter, is 
 beyond my power even of guessing. The interpolator, whoever he was, must 
 explain.] 
 
182 ALEXANDER THE GEE AT. [Essay 
 
 What seemed so specially awe-striking in the fate of Thebes 
 was not the mere amount of misery that was wrought, but, 
 as Mr. Grote says,* the breach of Hellenic sentiment in the 
 destruction of so great a city, a city of such historical and 
 legendary fame, and the danger of offending local Gods and 
 heroes by putting an end to their accustomed local worship. 
 Had Alexander merely driven out or enslaved the existing 
 Thebans, and had handed over the walls and temples to a 
 new Theban community formed out of his own Greek allies, 
 but little would have been said of his cruelty. As it was, the 
 destruction of Thebes was held to follow him through life. 
 The native city of Dionysos was overthrown, and the destroyer 
 had to look for the vengeance of the patron-God. He paid 
 the penalty when Kleitos fell by his hand, and when his army 
 refused to march beyond the Hyphasis.f But, even in earlier 
 days, he repented of the deed, and he tried to make amends 
 by showing special kindness to such Thebans as the chances 
 of war threw in his way. % 
 
 Against harshness towards Thebes we may, iu the case 
 both of Philip and Alexander, set generosity towards Athens. 
 Both of them, it is plain, had a strong feeling of reverence for 
 the intellectual mistress of Hellas. Such a feeling was likely 
 to be far stronger in Macedonians who had adopted Grecian 
 culture than it would be in contemporary Spartans or Thebans, 
 to whom Athens was merely an ordinary enemy or ally. Athens 
 was a political adversary both to Philip and to Alexander ; 
 both of them humbled her so far as their policy called for ; 
 but neither of them ever thought in her ease of those acts of 
 coercion and vengeance which they deemed needful in the 
 case of Thebes. When Thebes received a garrison from 
 Philip, Athens was only called on to give up her foreign 
 possessions. When Thebes was levelled with the ground 
 by Alexander, Athens was only called on to give up her 
 obnoxious orators, and even that demand was not finally 
 
 " xii. 5/. + Plut. Alex. 13. 
 
 $ Arrian, ii. 15, 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 183 
 
 pressed. * As we have seen, Alexander's first barbarian spoils 
 were dedicated in Athenian temples ; from the captured palace 
 of the Great King he sent back to Athens the statues of her 
 tyrannicides. Even the anecdote told by Plutarch, f which 
 sets forth Athenian praise as the chief object of his toils, exag- 
 gerated as it doubtless isj shows at least that the Macedonian 
 conqueror, though his conquests might carry with them the 
 overthrow of the poUtieal greatness of Athens, was in no way, 
 in spirit or feeling, the foe of Athens or of Greece. 
 
 Three great battles and several great sieges made Alex- 
 ander master of the Persian empire. And it is worth remark- 
 that the immediate results of the three battles, Granikos, Issos, 
 and Gaugamela, coincide with lasting results in the history 
 of the world. The victory of the Granikos made Alexander 
 master of Asia Minor, of a region which in the course of a 
 few centuries was thoroughly hellenized, and which remained 
 Greek, Christian, and Orthodox, down to the Turkish inva- 
 sions of the eleventh century. The territory which Alexander 
 thus won, the lands from the Danube to Mount Tauros, 
 answered very nearly to the extent of the Byzantine Empire 
 for several centuries, and it might very possibly have been 
 ruled by him, as it was in Byzantine times, from an European 
 centre. The field of Issos gave him Syria and Egypt, lands 
 
 * Mr. Grote (vol. xii. p. 63) has a note on the details connected with 
 Alexander's demand for the extradition of the orators, into which we need 
 not enter. But we may mention thus much. Mr. Grote says : — 
 
 ' I think it highly improbable that the Athenians would by public vote 
 express their satis&<;tion that Alexander had panished the Thebans for their 
 revolt. If the Maoedonising party at Athens was strong enough to carry so 
 ignominious a vote, they would also have been strong enough to carry the 
 subsequent proposition of Phokion, — that the ten citizens demanded should be 
 surrendered.' 
 
 But surely it is on thing to pass a vote which, however ignominous, did no 
 actual harm to anybody, another to hand over iUustrioua citizens to exile, bonds, 
 or death. Doubtless many votes would be given for the one motion, which 
 would be given against the other. 
 
 t Alex. 60. S) 'AeTjvatoi, ipd ye inaniaaiT hv fjKiKovs imoixhoi mvSivovs 
 'iv(Ka T^s nap v/uv eiSo(la> ; This is put into his mouth at the crossing of the 
 Hydaspes, just before the great battle with Pdros. 
 
184 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 which the Macedonian and the Roman kept for nearly a 
 thousand years, and which for ages contained, in Alexandria 
 and Antioeh, the two greatest of Grecian cities. But Syria 
 and Egypt themselves never became Greek; when they 
 became Christian, they failed to become Orthodox, and they 
 fell away at the first touch of the victorious Saracen. Their 
 government called for an Asiatic or Egyptian capital, but 
 their ruler might himself still have remained European and 
 Hellenic. His third triumph at Gaugam^la gave him the 
 possession of the whole East; but it was but a momentary 
 possession : he had now pressed onward into lands where 
 neither Grecian culture, Roman dominion, nor Christian 
 theology proved in the end able to strike any lasting root. 
 
 Mr. Grote remarks that Philip would most likely have 
 taken the advice of Parmenion, so scornfully cast aside by 
 Alexander, and would have accepted the offer of Darius to 
 give up the provinces west of the Euphrates. Alexander him- 
 self might well have taken it could he have foreseen the future 
 destiny which fixed the Euphrates as the lasting boundary 
 of European dominion in Asia. But for the sentiment of 
 Hellenic vengeance — we may add for Alexander''s personal 
 spirit of adventure — it was not enough to rob Persia of her 
 foreign possessions ; he must overthrow Persia herself. Per- 
 sian Kings had taken tribute of Macedonia and had harried 
 Greece ; Greek and Macedonian must now march in triumph 
 into the very home of the enemy. As Xerxes had sat in state 
 by the ruins of Athens, so must the Captain-general of Hellas 
 stand in the guise of the Avenger over the blackened ruins of 
 Persepolis. But the conquest of Persia at once changed the 
 whole position of the conqueror. The whole realm of the 
 Achaimenids could neither be at once hellenized, nor yet 
 turned into a dependency of Macedonia. The limited King of 
 the Macedonians, the elective Captain-general of Greece, was 
 driven to take to himself the position of the Great King, and 
 to reign on the throne of Cyrus, as his lawful successor, and 
 not as a foreign intruder. 
 
 , Here was the rock upon which Alexander's whole scheme 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 185 
 
 of conquest split. He had gone too far ; yet his earlier 
 position was one which would hardly have allowed hiin to 
 stop sooner. Till he crossed the Persian Gates, he had 
 appeared rather as a deliverer than as an enemy to the 
 native inhabitants of all the lands- through which he passed. 
 The Greek cities of Asia welcomed a conqueror of their own 
 race, a King who did not shrink from giving back to them 
 their democratic freedom. Even to the barbarian inhabitants 
 of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, Alexander might well appear 
 as a deliverer. A change of masters is commonly welcome to 
 subject nations ; and men might fairly deem that a Greek 
 would mate a better master than a Persian. Against Phoe- 
 nicians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Alexander had no mission of 
 vengeance ; he might rather call on them to help him against 
 the common foe. If they had served in the army of Xerxes, 
 so had his own Herakleid forefathers.* If the Gods of Attica 
 had been wronged and insulted, so had the Gods of Memphis 
 and Babylon. In Western Asia therefore Alexander met with 
 but little strictly native opposition, save only from those fierce 
 tribes which had here and there still kept their independence 
 against the Persian, and which had as little mind to give 
 it up to the Macedonian. But at last he reached Persia 
 itself; he entered the royal city, where the Great King 
 reigned, not, as at Susa and Babylon, as a foreign conqueror, 
 but as the chief of his own people, in the hearth and cradle of 
 his empire. He saw the palace of the Barbarian arrayed with 
 the spoils of Greece ; he threw open his treasure-house rich 
 with the tribute of many Grecian cities, and of his own once 
 subject kingdom. The destruction of the Persepolitan palace 
 might well seem to him an impressive act of symbolical 
 vengeance, a costly sacrifice to the oflFended Gods of Greece 
 and Macedonia, of Babylon and Syria and Egypt. 
 
 * Mr. Grote would seem (vol, xii. p. 56) to imply that this fact barred 
 Alexander from all right to avenge the Persian invasion ; at all events that 
 it barred him from all right to reproach Thebes with her share in it. But 
 the earlier Alexander, in following Xerxes, only bowed to the same constraint 
 as all Northern Greece ; and it is clear that his heart was on the side of 
 Athens, while Thebes served the Barbarian with hearty good will. 
 
186 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 But in this impressive scene at Persepolis Alexander 
 showed himself for the last time in the character of Hellenic 
 avenger. Not long afterwards, the fortunate crime of Bessos 
 handed over to the invader all the gains, without any of the 
 guilt, of the murder of Darius. From this moment Alexander 
 appears as the Great King, the successor of Cyrus. On his 
 change of position naturally followed many changes in other 
 respects. He began to claim the same outward marks of 
 homage as had been shown to his predecessors, a homage 
 which, according to Greek and Macedonian notions, was de- 
 grading, if not impious. We readily allow that from this 
 time the character of Alexander changed for the worse ; 
 that his head was in some degree turned by success ; that his 
 passions, always impetuous, now became violent;* that, in 
 short, with the position of an Eastern despot, he began to 
 share a despot's feelings, and now and then to be hurried into 
 a despot's crimes. 
 
 His position was now a strange one. He had gone too far for 
 his original objects. Lasting possession of his conquests beyond 
 the Tigris could be kept only in the character of King of the 
 Medes and Persians. Policy bade him to put on that character. 
 We can also fully believe that he was himself really dazzled 
 with the splendour of his superhuman success. His career had 
 been such as to outdo the wildest dreams which he could have 
 cherished either in his waking or his sleeping moments. The 
 Great King, the type of earthly splendour and happiness, had 
 fallen before him ; he himself was now the Great King ; he 
 was lord of an empire wider than Grecian imagination had 
 assigned to any mortal ; he was master of wealth which in 
 Grecian eyes might enable its possessor to enter into the lists 
 with Zeus himself.f But no feature of the Hellenic character 
 is more remarkable, as Mr. Grote himself has so often shown, 
 than inability to bear unlooked-for good luck. A far lower 
 
 * Arrian, vii. 8. ^v yAp S)) d^vrepos iv t$ rdre, koI dnb rijs fiapfiapiicrjs 
 6epaireias ovteeri ws Tr&\ai eiriciKijs h Toiis MaK€56vas. 
 
 t Herod, v. 49. i\6vTes 5i rairqv T^r v6\a', [Sovira] Sapaeovres tjSt; t^ Att 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 187 
 
 height had turned the heads of Miltiades, Pausanias, and 
 Alkibiad^s. Was it then wonderful that, on a height such as 
 none of them had dreamed of, the head of Alexander should 
 be turned also? We may believe that the conduct which 
 policy dictated was also personally agreeable ; that he took a 
 delight, unreasonable indeed to a philosopher, but natural to 
 a man, in the splendours of his new position ; that he may 
 even have been beguiled into some of its besetting vices, into 
 something of the luxury and recklessness of an eastern King. 
 The mind of Alexander was one which lay specially open to 
 all heroic and legendary associations ; he was at once the off- 
 spring and the imitator of Gods and heroes. His own deeds had 
 outdone those which were told of any of his divine forefathers 
 or their comrades ; Achilleus, Herakles, Theseus, Dionysos, 
 had done and suffered less than Alexander. Was it then 
 wonderful that he should seriously believe that one who had 
 outdone their acts must come of a stock equal to their own ? 
 Was it wonderful if, not merely in pride or policy, but in 
 genuine faith,* he disclaimed a human parent in Philip, and 
 looked for the real father of the conqueror and lord of earth 
 in the conqueror and lord of the heavenly world ? 
 
 We believe then that policy, passion, and genuine super- 
 stition were all joined together in the demand which Alexander 
 made for divine, or at least for unusual, honours. He had 
 taken the place of the Great King, and he demanded the 
 homage which was held to be due to him who held that place. 
 Such homage his barbarian subjects were perfectly ready to 
 pay ; they would most likely have had but little respect for 
 a king who forgot to call for it. But the homage which to 
 a Persian seemed only the natural expression of respect for the 
 royal dignity, seemed to Greeks and Macedonians an invasion 
 of the honour due only to the immortal Gods. Yet Alexander 
 could hardly, with any prudence, draw a distinction between 
 the two classes of his subjects. He certainly could not put 
 up with a state of things in which every Persian who came to 
 
 * Mr. Grote admits this, vol. xii. p. 202. 
 
188 ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 do his ordinary service to his King was left open to the coarse 
 jeers of Macedonian soldiers and to the more eloquent rebukes 
 of Grecian sophists.* The claim of divine birth was not needed 
 to impose upon Orientals ; it was needed to impose upon 
 Europeans. The Orientals were ready enough to pay all that 
 Alexander asked for to a mere earthly sovereign. For a man 
 to be the child of a God was an idea utterly repugnant to the 
 Persian religion, while nothing was more familiar to Grecian 
 notions. Least of all would Alexander, in order to impose 
 upon his Persian subjects, have chosen as his parent a God 
 of the conquered and despised Egyptians. This was no diffi- 
 culty to the Greeks and Macedonians, who looked on the 
 Egyptian Amm6n as the same God with their own Zeus. 
 The homage which they refused to an earthly King they 
 might willingly pay to the son of Zeus, the peer of Herakles 
 and Dionysos. Nor was Alexander the first who had re- 
 ceived the like or greater honours even during his lifetime. 
 LysandroSj the Spartan citizen, had supplanted Here in the 
 worship of the Samians ;t and Philip, the Macedonian King, 
 had, on one memorable day, marched as a thirteenth among 
 the twelve great Gods of Olympos. J At what time the idea 
 of a divine birth first came into the mind of Alexander or 
 of his courtiers is far from clear. The inferior writers give 
 us fall details of the reception which his divine father gave 
 him at his Libyan oracle ; but the sober Arrian keeps a dis- 
 creet silence. 
 
 Probably no other way could be found to reconcile his 
 European subjects to a homage which was absolutely neces- 
 sary to maintain his Asiatic dominion. But nothing shows 
 more clearly the incongruous nature of Alexander's position as 
 at once despotic King of Asia, constitutional § King of the 
 
 * See Arrjan, iv. iz. Compare Plut. Alex. 74. 
 
 + Plut. Lys. 18. X Diod. xvi. 92. 95. 
 
 § We think we may fairly use this word. Of course, as Mr. Grote often 
 tells US, the will of the King, and not the declared will of the people, was 
 the great moving cause in Macedonian affairs. But the Macedonians were 
 not slaves. Alexander himself (Arrian, ii. 7) contrasts the Macedonians as 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 189 
 
 Macedonians, and elective President of the Hellenic Confede- 
 racy. It is not wonderful if it led him in his later days to 
 deal with his European subjects and confederates in a way 
 widely different from any in which they had been dealt with 
 in the early part of his reign. He not only sent round to all 
 the cities of Greece to demand divine honours, which were 
 perhaps not worth refusing,* but he ordered each city to 
 bring back its political exiles. This last was an interference 
 with the internal government of the cities which certainly 
 was not warranted by Alexander's position as head of the 
 Greek Confederacy. And, in other respects also, from this 
 unhappy time all the worst failings of Alexander become 
 more strongly developed. Had he not been from the first 
 impetuous and self-confident, he could never have begun his 
 career of victory. Impetuosity and self-exaltation now grew 
 •upon him, till he could bear neither restraint nor opposition. 
 In one sad instance we even find these dangerous tendencies 
 going together with something like the suspicious temper 
 of an Eastern despot. Kleitos might perhaps have fallen by 
 his hand in a moment of wrath at any stage of his life;t 
 but we cannot believe that the fate of Philotas and Parmeni6n 
 could have happened at any moment before his entry into 
 Persepolis. It is not safe to rely on the details of that un- 
 happy story as given by Curtius and Plutarch ; and we hardly 
 know enough to pronounce with confidence upon the guilt or 
 innocence of the victims. We need not believe that Alexander 
 invited Philotas to his table after he had made up his mind to 
 destroy him, nor that he listened to and mocked the cries of 
 
 iXdBtpoi with the Persians as Soi/Aoi ; Curtius (iv. 7. 31) speaks of them 
 as, 'Macedones assneti quidem regio imperio, sed majore libertatis umbr4 
 quam cBeteTSB gentes.' Certainly a people who kept in their own hands the 
 power of life and death, and before whom their sovereign pleaded as an 
 accuser— sometimes as an unsuccessful accuser — cannot be confounded with 
 the subjects of an Eastern despotism. 
 
 * See Thirlwall, vol. vii. p. 163. 
 
 t The scene between Alexander and his father recorded by Plutarch 
 (Alex. p. 9) certainly shows the germ of those failings which afterwards led 
 to the murder of Kleitos. 
 
190 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 his former friend when in the agonies of the torture. But 
 we can plainly see that Alexander brought a charge and 
 sought a condemnation on grounds which, to say the 
 leastj were not enough for a fair verdict of guilty. For 
 once the narrative of Arrian gives us the impression that 
 there was something which he or his authorities wished to 
 slur over ; and one would like to know the grounds which 
 led the judicious Strabo to his seeming conviction of the 
 guilt of the accused.* We are told that the Macedonian law 
 of treason sentenced the kinsfolk of the condemned traitor 
 to the same punishment as himself. We are also told by 
 Diodorosf that Parmeni6n was formally condemned by the 
 military Assembly, the constitutional tribunal when the life 
 of a Macedonian was at stake. We may add thatthe acquital 
 of some of the persons whom Alexander accused shows that 
 that Assembly did exercise a will of its own, and did not 
 always meet merely to register the royal decrees. It is there- 
 fore quite possible that the death of Parmeni6n, as well as 
 that of Philotas, may have been strictly according to the 
 letter of the law. But we may be far more sure that Alex- 
 ander would never have put such a law in force against his 
 old friend and teacher in the days when he handed Parme- 
 ni6n's own accusing letter to his physician, and drank off the 
 draught in which death was said to lurk. 
 
 We have already quoted the remark of Mr. Grote that the 
 character of Alexander recalled, to a great extent, that of the 
 heroes of legendary Greece. By virtue of the same features, 
 it forestalled, to a great extent, that of the heroes of mediaeval 
 chivalry. Bishop Thirlwall % truly says that his disposition 
 was ' rather generous than either merciful or scrupulously 
 just,' but that ' cruelty, in the most odious sense of the word, 
 wanton injustice, was always foreign to his nature.' Reck- 
 lessness of human suffering is a necessary characteristic of 
 every conqueror; but we have no reason to attribute it to 
 
 * XV. 2 (vol. iii. p. 312). itXiirav ivfTKe riv napnev'uuvos vlhv, <papdtxas 
 entpov\-fiv. 
 t xvii. 80. J Vol. vu. p. 71. 
 
v.] ALEXANDEE THE GREAT. 191 
 
 Alexander in any greater degree than to all other aggres- 
 sive warriors. But in Alexander, a general of the highest 
 order and at the same time a man full of the highest 
 spirit of personal adventure, we find, it may be, a greater 
 delight in the practice of war for its own sake than in the 
 warriors of the Grecian commonwealths. In Alexander too, 
 a royal warrior, we find a feature of the chivalrous character 
 which could not show itself in his republican predecessors. 
 This is his extreme courtesy and deference to persons of his 
 own rank ; his almost overdone generosity to the family of 
 Darius, and to Darius himself when he was no more. This 
 is stiU more impressively set before us in his famous dialogue 
 with the captive P6ros, a foe indeed after his own heart. 
 The death and misery of innocent thousands are easily for- 
 gotten in the excess of chivalrous respect which is thus ex- 
 changed between the royal combatants who use them as their 
 playthings. All these faults grew upon Alexander during 
 the latter stages of his career. It is impossible to look with 
 the same complacency upon his Indian campaigns as upon 
 his warfare in Bithynia and Syria. The mission of Hellenic 
 vengeance was then over. Personal ambition and love of 
 adventure had been strongly mingled with it from the first ; 
 they now became the ruling passions. Yet Alexander's posi- 
 tion, even in his later expeditions, is one easy to understand, 
 if not altogether to justify. He was the Great King, partly 
 winning back provinces which had been torn away from his 
 predecessors, partly making good their vague claims to the 
 universal empire of Asia. But he was also the Hellenic 
 warrior, asserting the natural right of the civilized man 
 over the Barbarian. He was the demigod, the son of Zeus, 
 commissioned, like Theseus or Herakles, at once to conquer 
 and to civilize the earth. He was the ardent searcher after 
 knowledge, eager to enlarge the bounds of human science, 
 and to search out distant lands which could be searched out 
 only at the point of the sword. In his later campaigns we 
 can see a larger measure of arrogance, of rashness, of reckless- 
 ness of human sufiering ; but it is nowhere shown that he 
 
192 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 ever sinned against the received laws of war of tis own age ; 
 and certainly, even in his most unprovoked aggressions, we 
 may still see traces of a generosity of spirit, a nobleness of 
 purpose, which at once distinguish him from the vulgar herd 
 of conquerors and devastators. 
 
 The unfulfilled designs of Alexander must ever remain in 
 darkness ; no man can tell what might have been done by 
 one of such mighty powers who was cut off at so early a 
 stage of his career. That he looked forward to still further 
 conquests seems beyond doubt, f The only question is, 
 Did his conquests, alike those which were won and those 
 which were still to be won, spring from mere ambition and 
 love of adventure, or is he to be looked on as in any degree 
 the intentional missionary of Hellenic culture? That such 
 he was is set forth with much warmth and some extrava- 
 gance in a special treatise of Plutarch ;% it is argued more 
 soberly, but with true vigour and eloquence, in the seventh, 
 volume of Bishop 'Thirlwall. § Mr. Grote denies him all 
 merit of the kind. But Mr. Grote too thoroughly identifies 
 ' Hellenism ' with republicanism to be altogether a fair judge. 
 He will hardly allow that there could be such a thing as 
 Hellenic culture under a monarchy. Yet surely there is a 
 diflerence between Greek and Barbarian before and above 
 any distinction as to forms of government. Alexander is 
 said to have found both aristocracies and democracies in 
 India, but surely such aristocracies and democracies might 
 need hellenizing by his Macedonian monarchy. That Alex- 
 
 * Plutarch (Alex. 59) says of one occasion in the Indian war : airiiaaiuvos 
 €V Ttvi n6\ei Tiphs aiiTous dmovTas hf iS^ ^ajStxiv UnavTas dneHTUve * zeal tovto 
 rots TToKefiiKoTs avTov ^pyois r&Wa vopifiois KoX 0afftXiKais TroKf/ii/ffavTos fijffir€p 
 icTj\ls TTf>6aiara'. The place intended must be Massaga. If so, the narrative 
 in Arrian (iv. 27) does not bear out Plutarch's censure. The capitulation was 
 clearly broken on the other side. We may accept Bishop ThirlwaH's (vol. vii. 
 p. 8) censure, that ' Alexander exhibited less generosity than might have been 
 expected from him, even if mercy was out of the question ; ' but there was no' 
 breach of faith. 
 
 + Arrian, vii. I ; ib. 19. 
 
 X HipX rris 'AKe^dvSpov riJx'?* ^ Aper^s, 
 
 § P. 121 et eeq. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 193 
 
 ander did carry Hellenic culture into a large portion of the 
 world is an undoubted fact. That he intended to do so is 
 but an inference ; but surely it is a very natural one. 
 
 Mr. Grote however somewhat strangely depreciates the 
 merit of Alexander in this respect, in order by comparison to 
 extol his successors.* So far as Asia was hellenized at all, it 
 was, he tells us, not Alexander, but the Ptolemies and Seleu- 
 kids, who hellenized it. No doubt the details of the process 
 were carried out by them ; but they did nothing but follow the 
 impulse which had been given to them by their great master. 
 No doubt also, as Mr. Grote points out, their circumstances 
 were in some respects more favourable than those, of Alexander 
 for carrying on the work. Alexander himself could not do so 
 much in eleven years of marching and countermarching as 
 they could do in two centuries of comparative peace. Again, 
 Asia Minor, as the event proved, could receive a lasting 
 Hellenic culture, and Syria and Egypt could at least receive 
 lasting Hellenic colonies. But no lasting Hellenic culture 
 could flourish on the banks of the Indus and the Jaxartes. 
 Yet it surely speaks much for Alexander's zeal in the cause, 
 when we find him labouring for it under such unfavour- 
 able circumstances. At every promising spot he founds a 
 Greek city, an Alexandria, and plants in it a Greek or Mace- 
 donian colony, whose language and manners might be spread 
 among their barbarian fellow-citizens. Nor was his labour, 
 even in those far-ofl" lands, altogether thrown away. A 
 Greek kingdom of Bactria flourished for some agesj several 
 of his cities, though no longer Greek, flourish to this day ; 
 one at least, Candahar, still keeps the name of its founder. 
 Mr. Grote himself does not deny that ' real consequences 
 beneficial to humanity arose from Alexander's enlarged and 
 systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased 
 means of communication among its inhabitants.' t Biahop 
 Thirlwall, as might be expected, is far more copious and 
 eloquent on this point : — ■ 
 
 * Vol. xii. p. 362. + Vol. xii. p. 368. 
 
194 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 'Let any one contemplate the contrast between tlie state of Asia under 
 Alexander, and the time when Egypt was either in revolt against Persia, or 
 visited by her irritated conquerors with the punishment of repeated insurrection, 
 when almost every part of the great mountain chain which traverses the length ■ 
 of Asia, from the Mediterranean to the borders of India, was inhabited by 
 fierce, independent, predatory tribes : when the Persian kings themselves were 
 forced to pay tribute before they were allowed to pass from one of their capitals 
 to another. Let any one endeavour to enter into the feelings, with which a. 
 Phoenician merchant must have viewed the change that took place in the face 
 of the earth, when the Egyptian Alexandria had begun to receive and pour 
 out an inexhaustible tide of wealth : when Babylon had become a great port : 
 when a passage was open both by sea and land between the Euphrates and the 
 Indus : when the forests on the shores of the Caspian had begun to resound 
 with the axe and the hammer. It will then appear that this part of the 
 benefit which flowed from Alexander's conquest cannot be easily exaggerated. 
 
 ' And yet this was perhaps the smallest paH of his glmy.' * 
 
 Still more strangely, to our minds, does Mr. Grotef specially 
 depreciate the merit of the greatest of Alexander's foundations. 
 On a spot whose advantages had, for we know not how many 
 thousand years, been overlooked by the vaunted wisdom of 
 Egypt, a glance and a word of the Macedonian called into 
 being the greatest mart and hearth of the commerce and 
 cultivation of the world. But Mr. Grote tells us that the 
 greatness of Alexandria was not owing to Alexander, but 
 to the Ptolemies. As a single city of Alexander's universal' 
 empire, it could never have become what it did become as 
 the royal seat of the smaller monarchy. Perhaps not: yet 
 two points are worth noticing : first, that, if we may believe 
 Niebuhr, Alexander designed Alexandria as the capital of his 
 universal empire ; secondly, that the commerce of Alexandria 
 became far greater when it had sunk into a provincial city 
 of the Roman dominion than it had been under at least the 
 later Ptolemies, f And surely, after all, it is no disparage- 
 ment to an originally great conception, if circumstances give 
 it in the end a still greater developement than its first 
 designer could have hoped for. 
 
 Nor does Alexander's partial adoption of Asiatic manners 
 really prove anything against his civilizing intentions. The 
 
 * Vol. vii. p. 1 20. t Vol. xii. p. 200. 
 
 J See Meri vale's Rome, vol. iv. p. 125. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER TEE GREAT. 195 
 
 Barbarian could not be won to the higher calling which was 
 set before him unless his teachers stooped in some degree to 
 his own prejudices. Greek sopliists and Macedonian soldiers 
 saw in the Persians merely born slaves with whom it was de- 
 grading to hold intercommunion. Alexander thought better of 
 his new subjects. If he himself wore the costume of a Persian 
 King, he taught the chosen youth of Persia the tongue of 
 Greece, the arms and discipline of Macedonia.* This surely 
 does not justify the doctrine of Mr. Grote, that 'instead of 
 hellenizing Asia, he was tending to asiatize Macedonia and 
 Hellas.' t Mr. Grote is again deceived by his unwillingness 
 to look at the case from any but a political point of view. 
 Alexander seems to him to be ' tending to asiatize Macedonia 
 and Hellas,^ because he increased the royal power in Mace- 
 donia, and extended it over Hellas. And we cannot help 
 remarking how often, throughout his whole argument, Mr. 
 Grote, who looks on Alexander and his Macedonians as utterly 
 non-HeUenie, is driven to speak of Greece and Macedonia as 
 forming a single whole in opposition to the Barbarians of 
 Asia. 
 
 On the general merits of Alexander in his purely military 
 capacity there is the less need for us to enlarge, as no one 
 has ever done more full justice to them than Mr. Grote him- 
 self. The carping spirit of Niebuhr seems half inclined, if 
 it were possible, to depreciate him in this respect also. The 
 campaigns of Alexander are the earliest in which we can 
 study war on a grand scale, carried out vnth all the appliances 
 of art which was then known. Above all, he was conspicuous 
 for his skill in the harmonious employment of troops of dif- 
 ferent kinds. Horsemen, phalangists, hypaspists, archers, 
 horse-archers, all found their appropriate places in his armies. 
 But our object is less to extol Alexander as a soldier than 
 to vindicate him as a conqueror, to claim for him a higher 
 moral and intellectual rank than can ever belong to the 
 mere soldier, however illustrious. We have always delighted 
 to look on Alexander as one who, among all the temptations 
 
 * See Thirlwall, vol. vii. p. 89. t Vol. xii. p. 359. 
 
196 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 of the King and the warrior, still kept his love for elegant 
 literature and scientific discovery. We were therefore sur- 
 prised indeed at finding the last paragraph of Mr. Grote's 
 ninety-fourth chapter thus analysed in the margin : ' Interest 
 of Alexander in literature and science not great.' Yet in 
 the text he allows that Alexander probably gave Aristotle 
 help in his zoological researches, and he adds that ' the intel- 
 lectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry, 
 and history.' He goes on to quote the instances given by 
 Plutarch of his sending for historical and poetical works on 
 his distant campaigns. To us it seems as much as can well 
 be asked of a general on a distant march if he keeps up his 
 personal taste for literature, poetry, and historyj and encou- 
 rages others in the pursuit of physical science. 
 
 We have thus far striven to defend the general character 
 of Alexander against the view of him taken by Niebuhr, and, 
 in a milder form, by Mr. Grote. We have implied that there 
 are many particular cases in which, out of various conflicting 
 reports, Mr. Grote adopts those which are most unfavourable 
 to Alexander, and that on what seems to us to be incon- 
 clusive grounds. It is quite beyond our power to examine 
 all of them in detail. We will therefore choose three of the 
 most remarkable, namely, the conduct of Alexander at Tyre, 
 at Gaza, and at Persepolis. 
 
 Of the first two of these enterprises each was the crowning 
 of one of Alexander's earlier victories, the third was the formal 
 gathering in of his final success. At Granikos, at Issos, and 
 at Gaugamela he overthrew the hosts of the Great King in 
 open fight ; at Tyre and at Gaza he overcame the most stub- 
 born resistance of his feudatories and lieutenants ; at Persepolis 
 he entered into undisputed possession of his home and treasure. 
 We must confess that we cannot enter into Mr. Grote's con- 
 ception of the siege of Tyre. * He seems to look on it, laying 
 aside moral considerations, as a mere foolhardy enterprise, 
 
 * Vol. xii. p. 182. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 197 
 
 a simple waste of time which, from Alexander's own point 
 of view, might have been better employed. Sympathy may 
 be enlisted on the side of the Tyrians on many grounds. 
 In the narrative of any siege our feelings almost unavoidably 
 side with the beleaguered party. Whateyer may be the right 
 or wrong of the original quarrel, the besiegers are, then and 
 there, the aggressors and the besieged are the defenders, 
 and the besieged too are commonly the weaker party. The 
 Tyrians again, from their former history, their commercial 
 greatness, their comparative political freedom, have a claim 
 on our sympathy far beyond the ordinary subjects of Persia. 
 They were fully justified in braving every extremity on behalf 
 of their allegiance to the Persian King. They were more 
 than justified in braving every extremity in behalf of 
 their independence of Persian and Macedonian alike. Nor 
 should we be very hard upon them, if they first of all sub- 
 mitted to the invader, and then repented, drew back, with- 
 stood him to the death. But we must look at the matter from 
 Alexander's point of view also. The question of abstract 
 justice must of course apply to the war as a whole, not to 
 each particular stage of its operations. If Alexander was 
 to conquer Persia, he must conquer Tyre. Tyre offered her 
 submission without waiting to be attacked ; she acknowledged 
 Alexander as her sovereign, and promised obedience to all his 
 commands. * His first command was an announcement, 
 conveyed in highly complimentary language, of his wish to 
 enter the city, and to offer sacrifice in the great temple of 
 Herakles. The request was doubtless half religious, half 
 political. Alexander would be sincerely anxious to visit and 
 to honour so renowned a shrine of his own supposed forefather. 
 But he would be also glad to avail himself of so honourable 
 a pretext for trying the fidelity of his new subjects. We 
 really cannot see that this was, as Mr. Grote calls it, 'an 
 extreme demand ; ' and, in any case, the Tyrians had promised 
 to comply with all his demands, extreme or otherwise. When 
 
 * Arrian, ii. 15. 
 
198 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 the demand was refused, it was utterly impossible to leave 
 the refusal unpunished. So to have done would at once have 
 broken the charm of success, and would have made the con- 
 quest of Western Asia imperfect. Had Tyre, with ber power- 
 ful fleet, been left to defy Alexander unchastised, anti-Mace- 
 donian movements migbt have been always set on foot m 
 Greece and Asia Minor. Nor could he leave Tyre, like the 
 Halikarnassian citadel, to be blockaded by a mere division 
 of his army. The work called, as the event proved, for 
 his own presence and his whole force. This famous siege had 
 undoubtedly the unhappy result of ' degrading and crushing 
 one of the most, ancient, spirited, wealthy, and intelligent 
 communities of the ancient world;' but that community most 
 undoubtedly brought its destruction upon itself, and we cer- 
 tainly cannot admit that its conquest was 'politically unprofit- 
 able ' to the conqueror. 
 
 Now how did Alexander treat his conquest? Tyre^ after 
 a noble resistance, was taken by storm. The Macedonians, 
 according to Arrian, * were kindled to extreme wrath be- 
 cause the Tyrians had habitually kUled their prisoners before 
 the eyes of their comrades, and had thrown their bodies 
 into the sea. The mere slaughter of the prisoners was no 
 breach of the Greek laws of war^ though it would doubtless 
 be felt as a special call to vengeance. But the mockery and 
 the denial of burial were direct sins against all Greek religious 
 notions. We therefore cannot be surprised that the successful 
 assault of the city was followed by a merciless slaughter. 
 Such would most likely have been the case witb the most 
 civilized armies of modern times. But did Alexander add to 
 these horrors in cold blood ? Arrian tells us that he spared 
 all who took refuge in the temple of HerakMs — who happened 
 to be the King and the principal magistrates — and that he 
 sold the rest as slaves, the common doom of prisoners in 
 ancient warfare. According to Diodoros and Curtius, a 
 certain number of the captives were hanged or crucified by 
 
 11. 24. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 199 
 
 Alexander's order.* Mr. Grote accepts tbis tale. We see no 
 ground to believe it. It is, to our mind, an instance of tbe 
 mere love of horrors, which, as in other eases, shows itself in 
 the invention of additional crimes on both sides. Curtius, 
 who speaks of Alexander as crucifying Tyrian prisoners, also 
 speaks of the Tyrians as murdering Macedonian heralds. f 
 Arrian records neither atrocity ; and we believe neither. 
 Mr. Grote accepts the charge against Alexander and rejects 
 the charge against his enemies. 
 
 The like, as seems to us, is the state of the case with regard 
 to the atrocity laid to the charge of Alexander after his second 
 great siege, that of Gaza. Mr. Grote here brings up again 
 a tale which, as far as we are aware, has found acceptance 
 with no other modern writer, and which Bishop Thirlwall 
 passes by with the scorn of silence. Mr. Grote would have us 
 believe that Alexander, after the capture of Gaza, caused its 
 brave defender, the eunuch Batis, to be dragged to death 
 at his chariot- wheels, in imitation of the treatment of Hektor's 
 dead body by AchiUeus. This tale comes from Curtius ; he 
 most likely got it from Hegesias, who is quoted by Dionysios 
 of Halikamassos in one of his critical treatises. J Arrian, 
 Plutarch, and Diodoros are alike ignorant of the story. The 
 passage from Hegesias is quoted by Dionysios, without any 
 historical object, as an instance of bad rhythm and bad taste. 
 Mr. Grote truly says that 'the bad taste of Hegesias as a 
 writer does not diminish his credibility as a witness.' But his 
 credibility as a witness is not a little diminished by the general 
 
 * Diod. xvii. 46. 6 5e ^aaiX^vs rticva ^iXv «ai ywtuHas e^TjuSpairoBiaaTOt 
 Tovs 5^ viovs &,iTavTas $VTas ovk fKarrovs rmv Ziaxihxoiv ^ i/cpefiaffc, 
 
 Curtius iv. 4. 'Triate deinde spectaoulum victoribus ira praebuit Regis. 
 Duo millia, in quibus occidendi defecerat rabies, cruoibus af&xi per ingens 
 littoris spatjum pependerunt.' 
 
 Mr. Grote, here and elsewhere, translates iKp4iiaaf, hanged. Bishop Thirl- 
 wall, crucified. It need not imply the latter, and, between Dioddros and 
 Curtius, a tale of hanging might easily grow into a tale of crucifixion. 
 Similarly Plutarch has, in one place (Alex. 72) &vfaraifiaae, where Arrian 
 (vii. 14) has kxpciiaae. 
 
 + iv. :i. 
 
 i Vol. V. p. 125, ed. Eeiske. 
 
200 ALEXANBER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 witness of antiquity against him on more important points. * 
 The tale seems to us utterly incredible. Mr. Grote allows that 
 it ' stands out in respect of barbarity from all that we read 
 respecting the treatment of conquered towns in antiquity. 
 Curtius acknowledges that it is repugnant to the usual 
 character of Alexander.f We might add that Alexander, 
 if he wished to copy Achilleus, could hardly have forgotten 
 that Hektdr was dead, while Batis was living, and moreover 
 he would hardly have copied Achilleus in an action which 
 Homer expressly condemns. J But Mr. Grote should surely 
 not have left out the fact that those who attribute this 
 cruelty to Alexander speak of it as an act of revenge for 
 a treacherous attempt which had been made upon Alexander 
 on the part of Batis. § Both HegSsias and Curtius tell us 
 that an Arab of the garrison, in the guise of a suppliant or 
 deserter, obtained admission to Alexander, that he attempted 
 to kill him, and was himself killed by the King. The tale 
 reminds one of the stories^ true or false, of the fate of the Seljuk 
 Sultan Togrel Beg and of the Ottoman Amurath the First. || 
 Mr. Grote leaves out all mention of it, the only instance in 
 which we have found him fail to put forth the whole evidence 
 against his own view. To us the whole story, in both its 
 parts, seems to be merely another instance of the way in 
 which the love of marvels and horrors triumphed over simple 
 truth. Imaginary crimes are heaped, certainly with praise- 
 worthy impartiality, alike upon Alexander and upon his 
 enemies. 
 
 And now as to Persepolis. We have already shown that 
 we agree with Mr. Grote in believing that the destruction 
 of the Persepolitan palace was Alexander's deliberate act. 
 We have no doubt that the tale of Thais at the banquet is 
 
 * See Smith's Diet, of Biog., art. Hegesias. 
 
 + ' Alias virtutis etiam in hoste mirator.' 
 
 J II. xxii. 395. ^ ^a, Kal'EKTopa Stov Adxla /(^Scto ipya. 
 
 § H§g6sias clearly implies this. The words /uaJiaas ltj>' oXa e0e0oi\evTo must 
 refer, not to the general resistance, but to the special attempt against Alex- 
 ander's life. 
 
 II [And of the story of the death of Stisagoras in Herodotus, vi. 38.] 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 201 
 
 a mere romantic invention. Arrian indeed * blames the act 
 of destruction, because it could be no punishment to the real 
 offenders, the Persians of a century and a half earlier. This 
 is rather an objection to the whole war than to this particular 
 action. No doubt to Alexander the destruction of the palace 
 seemed a high symbolic rite, setting forth Grecian victory 
 and barbarian overthrow. The deed was done against the 
 remonstrance of Parmeni6n, who argued that it did not be- 
 come Alexander to destroy what was his own, and that so 
 to do would lead the Asiatics to look on him as a mere passing 
 devastator, and not as a permanent sovereign. To Alexander 
 such arguments would doubtless sound like the suggestions of 
 base avarice to stay the hand of vengeance. Nor do we see, 
 with Bishop Thirlwall, f that this view is at all inconsistent 
 with the fact that he repented of the deed in after times. 
 The destruction was the act of the Captain-general of Greece ; 
 the repentance was the sentiment of the King of Asia. When 
 the deed was done, he did not yet feel that the home of the 
 Barbarian was his own. With altered circumstances and 
 altered feelings, he might well look back with regret on the 
 ruin of one of the choicest ornaments of his empire. 
 
 Mr. Grote f indeed would add to this symbolic and im- 
 posing manifestation of vengeance an act of quite another 
 kind, namely, a general massacre of the male inhabitants 
 of Persepolis, done, if not at Alexander's bidding, at least 
 with his approval. In his version, in short, a city which 
 seems to have made no resistance is described as undergoing 
 the worst fate of a city taken by storm. This version he takes 
 from Curtius § and Dfod6ros, || on whose accounts, we think, 
 he somewhat improves. For neither author directly says 
 that Alexander ordered the massacre, while Curtius does say 
 that he stopped it in the end. Arrian says nothing about 
 
 * iu. i8. 
 
 + Vol. vi. p. 287. He .rgues again that this deliberate destmotion is 
 inconsistent with the reverence shown by Alexander to the tomb of Cyms. 
 But Cyrus was guiltless of Marathfln and Salamis, while the buildings at 
 Persepolis were actually the -works of Darius and Xerxes. 
 
 t Vol. xii. p. 239. § V. 6. 3-7. II xvii. 70, 71. 
 
202 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 the whole story, nor yet, in our judgement^ does Plutarch. 
 Mr. Grote refers indeed to a letter of Alexander's quoted by 
 Plutarch, in which the King speaks of a slaughter as having 
 taken place by his order ' on grounds of state policy.' But 
 this reference occurs in a most confused and incoherent 
 passage, in which Plutarch jumbles together the passage 
 of the Persian Gates and the seizure of the Persepolitan 
 treasure. Of neither event does he give any geographical 
 description more exact than is implied in the words ' Persia' 
 and ' Persians.' We have no doubt that the slaughter 
 referred to by Plutarch means the slaughter at the Persian 
 Gates. * There Alexander met with a most desperate resist- 
 ance. To bid his soldiers to refuse quarter, horrible as it 
 seems to us, would be nowise repugnant to Greek laws of 
 war. A slaughter there might very likely ' be profitable to 
 him ' (aira ktxnre'Kiiv) as tending to strike fear into others 
 who might otherwise have thought of resistance. But no 
 such motive of policy could apply to the massacre of an 
 
 * [The whole passage runs thus. Plut. Alex. 37. Tr)S hi XiepaiSoi ova'qs Sia 
 Tpax^TTjTa 5vaefi06\ov Kal tpvKaTTOfi^vTjs imd '^ej/vaior&rtuv JJepcruy {Aapetos /xiv 
 7(ip k'ir€<j>€vyei) yiyverai tivos irfpioSov kiSkKov exovtrrjs ov no\i}v f/ye/xajv avTu 
 tiyXoiaaos dv&pomos e« iraTphs Avkiov, /irjTp^s 5i IlepaiSos yeyov^js' ov <paaiv, en 
 iraidds bvTos ^A\e^&j/Spov, rf/v Ilv$iav Trpoettretv, u/s ^.ifcos effrat KO&Tjyepuiiv 'AAc^- 
 avSpaj T^s ktrl Il^pffas Tropeias. ^ovov likv oZv IvravGa iroXvv raiy ahiffKo^ivonr 
 y&ea&at avvetrecrf yp&^ti yhp avT^s, iis vofd^ojv avrqi tovto \vatre\etv siceKevev 
 airoaip6.TT€(T9ai tq-iis dvBpanrovs' vofuff/iaros S' evpeiv irXijOos Saov Iv Sovtrois. t^v 
 S" dWrpf KaraoKiv^v Kal rhv ttKovtov eKKopuaOTJvai iprjat fivpiois dpmoTs ^eiyeffi koX 
 vcvraKiffxtXixiis xapiiiKois. 
 
 It seema impossible to believe that this can refer to anything except the 
 slaughter at the Persian Gates, which is described by Arrian (iii. 18) in the 
 earlier part of the same chapter in which he de^ribes the destruction of the 
 palace at Persepolis. But it is clear from Arrian, as indeed the geography 
 proves, that the two things were whoEy distinct, and he has not a word to make 
 us fancy that the destruction of the palace was accompanied by any slaughter. 
 Curtius (v. 2), describes the slaughter at the Gates as well as the supposed 
 slaughter at Persepolis. But between the two he brings in a moving story of the 
 Macedonian army being met by four thousand Greek captives who had been 
 mutilated in various ways by the Persians. Justin and Diodflros tell the same 
 stoiy, but cut the number down to eighty. If we accept this, we get, as in the 
 cases of Tyre and Gaza, a special motive for the alleged cruelty done at 
 Persepolis. But the whole story of these inferior writers seems to me to be not 
 a little doubtful. Arrian alone gives us a clear and probable narrative.] 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 203 
 
 unarmed people. Such a deed would be fully open to the 
 objection urged by Parmeni6n ; it would not strike terror, but 
 horror ; if submission earned no better fate than resistance, 
 all men would choose the bolder alternative. A massacre at 
 Persepolis could only have been allowed^ as Mr. Grote seems 
 to imply, under the influence of some perverted and horrible 
 form of the same feeling which prompted the destruction of 
 the palace. But this feeling was something quite different 
 from state policy ; it was even, as Parmenion very soundly 
 argued, quite repugnant to it. In fact 'Mr. Grote this time 
 treats his authorities rather loosely. Diodoros and Ourtius 
 speak of the massacre ; they also speak of the destruction of 
 the palace as a drunken freak suggested by Thais. Arrian 
 says nothing of the massacre, and speaks of the destruction 
 of the palace as deliberate. Mr. Grote takes something from 
 each narrative to work up, together with some touches of his 
 own, into a picture of savage and cold-blooded ferocity on the 
 part of Alexander which is not to be found in either. We 
 follow Arrian ; but the other story may well be, as is so often 
 the case, the exaggeration or distortion of something which 
 really happened. The destruction of the palace may have 
 been accompanied by a licence to plunder ; still more probably 
 would it be seized on as an occasion for unlicensed plunder. 
 In such a scene of confusion, some lives might easily be 
 lost ; and this would be quite groundwork enough for rhe- 
 torical historians to work up into the moving picture which 
 we find in Curtius and Diod6ros.* 
 
 * We hare already referred to another horrible tale, which Mr. Grote 
 accepts (vol. xii. p. 275), but on which Bishop Thirl wall is silent, namely, the 
 massacre of the Branchidai in Sogdiana. On this we will remark thus 
 much : — 
 
 First, that the second of the passages from Strabo which Mr. Grote 
 quotes does not imply a massacre. Strabo merely says, rb tSiv 'Bpaix'^^" 
 aarv &vi\(iv. 
 
 Secondly, that in the third passage the grounds of Alexander's supposed 
 special devotion to the oracle of Branchidai are introduced by Strabo with 
 great contempt : vpoarpa'^tpdu he tovtois d KaWiffSivrjs, k.t,X. 
 
 Thirdly, that the whole story of the Sogdian Branchidai and their origin 
 is very difficult to reconcile with the narrative of Herodotus. The tale in 
 Strabo and Suidas reads very like a perversion of that in Herodotus vi. 20. 
 
204 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [Essay 
 
 Perhaps, as we have already hinted, Alexander would have 
 better consulted his own traest gloiy and the lasting benefit of 
 mankind, had he kept himself to Tyre and Gaza, and had he 
 never entered Persepolis at all. His strictly Hellenic mission 
 called him to the conquest of those lands only which his suc- 
 cessors, Macedonian, Roman, and Byzantine, proved in the 
 end able to keep. But it was not in human nature to stop 
 in such a career. Had he turned back when Parmenidn 
 counselled him, he must needs have been, as Eastern writers 
 paint him, not only Iskender the Conqueror, but Iskender 
 the Prophet. And a prophet perchance, in an indirect and 
 unwitting way, he really was. As the pioneer of Hellenic 
 cultivation, he became in the end the pioneer of Christianity. 
 He paved the way for the intellectual empire of the Greek and 
 for the political empire of the Roman.* And it was the extent 
 of that empire, intellectual and political, which has marked 
 the lasting extent of the religion of Christ. As the champion 
 of the West against the East, Alexander foreshadowed the 
 later championship of the Cross against the Crescent. He 
 pointed dimly to a day when the tongue which he spoke and 
 the system which he founded should become the badge and 
 bulwark of a creed which to him would have seemed the most 
 alien to all his schemes and all his claims. That creed first 
 arose in a land where his name was cherished ; it received 
 its formal title in the greatest city of his successors ; it allied 
 itself with the intellectual life of that yet more famous city 
 which still hands down to us his name. Jerusalem,t Antioch, 
 
 * Nowhere has fuller justice been done to the eSects of Alexander's con- 
 quests than in the opening chapter of Mr. Finlay's ' Greece under the Romans.' 
 The two great historians, of Greece independent and Greece enslaved, are 
 here well contrasted. The historian of the Athenian Democracy curses the 
 Macedonian as a destroyer; to the historian of the Byzantine Empire he 
 seems entitled to the honours of a founder. 
 
 + It is not needful for our purpose to go into the &mous details of Alex- 
 ander's supposed visit to Jerusalem. But, if the tale, as it stands, be a &ble, 
 it at least points to favours bestowed by Alexander upon the Jews and to 
 gratitude felt by the Jews towards Alexander. Cyrus and Alexander, the 
 Persian and the Macedonian founder, fill a place in Jewish history most unlike 
 that of most heathen rulers. 
 
v.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 205 
 
 Alexandria, all revered the Macedonian conqueror as in some 
 sort their founder or benefactor. The son of Ammon, the 
 worshipper of Belus, made ready the path for a faith which 
 should overthrow the idols of Egypt and Assyria, The 
 heroes of a later age, who bore up against the Fire- worshipper 
 and the Moslem, did but tread in his steps and follow out the 
 career which he had opened. If he overthrew the liberties of 
 Hellas in their native seatj he gave to the Hellenic mind a 
 wider scope, and in the end a yet nobler mission. He was the 
 forerunner of Heraclius bringing home the True Cross from 
 its Persian bondage, of Leo beating back the triumphant 
 Saracen from the walls of the city which Philip himself had 
 besieged in vain. The victories of Christian Emperors, the 
 teaching of Christian Fathers, the abiding life of the tongue 
 and arts of Greece far beyond the limits of old Hellas, per- 
 haps the endurance of Greek nationality down to our own 
 times, all sprang from the triumphs of this, it may be, ' non- 
 HeUenic conqueror,' but, in the work which he wrought, most 
 truly Hellenic missionary. And though we may not give him 
 in his own person the praise of results which neither he nor 
 any mortal could have looked for, let us at least do justice to 
 the great and noble qualities, the wide and enlightened aims, 
 which marked his short career on earth. Many faults, and a 
 few crimes, indeed stain his glory ; but perhaps none of 
 mortal birth ever went through such an ordeal. It would 
 indeed have been a moral miracle if a fiery and impulsive 
 youth had passed quite unscathed through such temptations 
 as had never beset mortal man before. A youth, a Greek, a 
 warrior, a King, he would have been more than man, had he 
 looked down quite undazzled from the giddy height of what 
 he might well deem more than human greatness. The fame 
 of even the noblest of conquerors must yield to that of the 
 peaceful benefactors of mankind, or of the warriors whose 
 victories do but secure the liberties of nations. We do not 
 place Alexander beside Lednidas or Washington, beside Alfred 
 or William the Silent. But we do protest against a view 
 which places him in the same class with Attila and Jenghiz 
 
206 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 and Timour. Their warfare was havoc for its own sake ; his 
 was conquest which went hand in hand with discovery and 
 improvement. Theirs was a wild beast's thirst of blood, a 
 barbarian's lust of mere dominion ; his was ' an ambition 
 which almost grew into one with the highest of which man is 
 capable, the desire of knowledge and the love of good.' J 
 Such is the judgement of one who yields to none in the extent 
 of his research, and who, if he may yield to some of his 
 rivals in the brilliancy of original discovery, yet surpasses 
 all in those calm and judicial faculties, without which re- 
 search and brilliancy are vain. By the judgement of that 
 great historian we still abide. Not the petty malignity of 
 Niebuhr, not the weighty accusations of Grote, can avail to 
 tear away the diadem of unfeding glory which the gratitude 
 of ages has fixed for ever on the brow of Alexander, the 
 son of Philip, the Macedonian.* 
 
 * TMrlwall, vol. ii. p. 119. 
 
VI. 
 
 GREECE DURING THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD. * 
 
 Lectures on Ancient History, from the Earliest Times to the 
 Taking of Alexandria hy Octavianus ; comprising the History 
 of the Asiatic Nations, the Egyptians, Greehs, Macedonians, 
 and Carthaginians. By B. G. Niebtjhb,. Translated from 
 the German edition of Dr. Marcus Niebuhr, by Dr. Leon- 
 HAUD ScHMiTZ, &c. &c. London;, 1852. 
 
 Theeb is perhaps no part of the history of the civilized 
 world which has of late years, in this country at least, re- 
 ceived a degree of attention less proportioned to its import- 
 ance than the later or Macedonian sera of Greece, under which 
 name we must take in the contemporary history of those 
 more distant lands which then became part of the Grecian 
 world. True it is that this period is forced upon our notice 
 from oar earliest years ; none is richer in that literature of anec- 
 dotes of which the Lives of Plutarch form the great store- 
 house ; stories of Alexander and Pyrrhos rush naturally to the 
 mind of the school-boy to furnish illustrations for his theme 
 on the dangerous consequences of drunkenness or the need 
 of bridling a hasty temper. But this precocious and super- 
 
 * [I have preserved this Essay, or at least some parts of it which seemed 
 worth preserving, because it was in some sort the germ of the first volume — 
 as yet, but I trust not for many years longer, the only volume — of my His- 
 tory of Federal Government. I have struck out a good deal, and I have trans- 
 ferred some passages to other Essays, where, in the present arrangement of 
 the collection, they seemed more in place. But I have left my general sketch 
 of Macedonian and Achaian affairs as a kind of introduction to the great subject 
 with part of which I have already dealt, and which I hope one day to take up 
 again.] 
 
208 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 ficial knowledge seldom forms the groundwork of any after 
 knowledge of a more solid kind. Philip and his son are 
 household words in every mouth ; but we suspect that they 
 often fare like those standard works in every language, of 
 which it is caustically said, that they are quoted by everybody 
 but read by none. Of the ' Successors,' to give them their 
 old technical name, men commonly have the vaguest notions ; 
 we suspect that not a few fair classical scholars would be sore 
 put to if called on to draw any minute distinction between 
 Demetrios PoliorkStes and Dem^trios Phal^reus. We suspect 
 that there are plenty of learned persons who know the exact 
 number of courses in the walls of Plataia, and who can accu- 
 rately describe every evolution of Phormion's fleet, who still 
 have nothing but their school-boy recollections of the Anabasis 
 to remind them that deeds of no small note were done both 
 among Greeks and Barbarians^ at a later time than a certain 
 sacrifice with which Tissaphern^s honoured the Ephesian Ar- 
 temis. The orators may perhaps carry on a few to behold 
 the death-struggle of Athens ; but that death-struggle is too 
 often hastily assumed to have been that of Greece also. At 
 all events, when Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes 
 have all failed us, none but the professed historian can be 
 called on to wade through a period where he has to pick his 
 way at every step amid the careless blunders of Plutarch and 
 the impenetrable stupidity of Diod6ros, where constant refer- 
 ences have to be made to the scandalous gossip of Athenaios 
 and the antiquarian twaddle of Pausanias, and where the very 
 purest and most familiar atmosphere that we are allowed to 
 breathe consists of the scattered fragments of Polybios and of 
 those out-of-the-way decades of Livy which nobody ever 
 thinks of reading. 
 
 There is doubtless force in all this; it at least shows 
 that this period cannot be so easily made a subject of 
 minute academical study as the history of the Persian and 
 Peloponnesian Wars.* Had we the whole work of Polybios, 
 
 * [That is to say, Polybios could hardly be taken up as a hook, as Thucy- 
 dides ia ; but the part of Grecian history with which we are concerned might 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 209 
 
 the case would be widely different. It is sad indeed when, 
 at some critical point of warfare or negotiation^ the too famQiar 
 break in the text warns us that we have to fill up the gaps of 
 the historian and the statesman with the double-filtered talk 
 of moralists, topographers, and anecdote-mongers. But it is 
 something to have even such fragments as we still have of 
 such a work as that of Polybios is still. To him, through a 
 happy though mournful fate which befell no other historian, 
 the old local politics of Greece and the wide-spreading diplo- 
 macy of the Eternal City were alike living and familiar things. 
 His lot was cast, now among party feuds in Bceotia and 
 Arkadia and border warfare of Messene and Megalopolis, 
 now among those scenes of vast intrigue and conquest whichj 
 to a vulgar mind, might have made the events of his youth 
 seem but combats of the kites and crows. He who had borne 
 the urn of the last of Hellenic heroes — the last who had 
 organized a Grecian commonwealth for war and peace, the 
 last who had fought, Greek against Greek, at no Macedonian 
 or Roman bidding —lived to stand beside the conqueror of 
 mighty Carthage, when he wept over the predestined fate of 
 Rome amid the ashes of her proudest rival.* 
 
 While then our great authority has come down to us only in a 
 patched and fragmentary state, it is no wonder that the want 
 of- a text-book is enough to frighten away those who are used 
 to such guidance as that of Herodotus and Thucydides from 
 venturing themselves among the shoals and quicksands of so 
 dangerous a coast." And, besides this, we must allow that the 
 history itself is, in many respects, far from an attractive one. 
 We are working among the dregs of a nation, the vigour of 
 whose political and literary life has for ever passed away. 
 Conscious speculation on the science of commonwealths and 
 
 well be taken up as a svhject or period. I am glad to see it recommended for 
 this purpose in Mr. A. W. Ward's suggestions for the reform of the History 
 Tripos at Cambridge.] 
 
 * [On the position of Polybios see History of Federal Government, i. 228. 
 I also found something to say about him in my Rede Lecture on the Unity of 
 History.] 
 
 P 
 
210 GREECE DURING THE [Essat 
 
 kingdoms has taken the place of the inborn and experimental 
 wisdom of Themistokles and Perikles. The grammarian and 
 the imitative poet strive, at a still wider distance, to make up 
 for those glorious days of Homer or of ^schylus which are 
 gone from us for ever. It is a shock to old and high asso- 
 ciations when, in the heading or the index, we see the death- 
 less names of Thermopylai and Salamis attached to unfamiliar 
 and comparatively ignoble conflicts. The city of Teukros and 
 Evagoras so keenly suggests the memory of its more famous 
 parent,* that one is grieved to find that so glorious a name 
 now recalls only the selfish warfare of Macedonian robbers. 
 The very spot where Le6nidas had fallen beholds indeed 
 Europe revenge its old wrongs upon the rival continent, but 
 our sympathies are well nigh called forth for the fallen despot, 
 when it is not the patriot fervour of old Greece, but the cold 
 and selfish ambition of the masters of the world before which 
 the pride of Eastern tyrants has now to bend. 
 
 In short, there is quite enough to account for, though we 
 cannot bring ourselves to think that there is enough to justify, 
 the neglect into which this part of history has commonly 
 fallen. We have always looked upon the period from the 
 second battle of Mantineia to the reduction of Macedonia 
 and Aehaia into Roman provinces f as by no means lacking 
 either in interest to the reader or in value to the general 
 historian of Greece and of the world. The rise of the Mace- 
 donian state under its two great princes, the spread of Hel- 
 lenism in Asia through the conquests of Alexander, the great 
 political phsenomenon of the Achaian League, even the mo- 
 mentary glory of Young Sparta under the last Blleomenes, 
 are surely events of a kind at once highly important and 
 highly interesting. They are less important and less in- 
 
 * We may here reverse the words of ^schylus — 
 
 .... ^aXaimii, te, tos vvv iuvrf6voXis Tui'S' 
 atria ffTevayfiSrv. Pers. 864. 
 
 i* [By the reduction of Macedonia and Aehaia into Homan provinces, I 
 doubtless meant what happened in B.O. 146. But, though Achaian liberty 
 came practically to an end at that time, Aehaia did not formally become a 
 Boman province till long after. See History of Federal Government, i. 705.] 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 211 
 
 teresting, we fully grant, than the old days of Marathon and 
 Thermopylai, of Arginousai and Aigospotamos, but they are 
 still very far from deserving to be wholly passed by in a 
 historical survey either of Grreece or of tbe world at large. 
 
 We were therefore naturally well pleased to find thorough 
 sympathy with these feelings set forth by no less an authority 
 than Niebuhr, and the more so as Mr. Grote seemed to have 
 fallen into the common error of undervaluing this period. 
 Niebuhr, on the other hand, we are told, had made these 
 times the object of more careful study than any other part 
 of ancient history^ and in his great course of professorial 
 lectures by far the most elaborate and valuable part is 
 given to its examination^ while the lecturer himself several 
 times directly sets forth his opinion that this period had 
 been ia general unduly neglected. 
 
 The time with which we have now to do naturally divides 
 itself into two great periods — the age of Philip and Alex- 
 ander and their immediate Successors ; and that of the Achaian 
 League and the Antigonid dynasty. 
 
 The first period takes in the organization of Macedonia 
 under Philip, first as a Greek state, and then as the ruling 
 Greek state, the wonderful career of Alexander, and the endless 
 wars among his immediate Successors till the kingdoms which 
 they founded were brought into something like a settled order. 
 Now, except the romantic tales of Alexander's own conquests, 
 there is but little in this period to please, and in its last 
 stage there is, at first sight, little to interest.. The reign of 
 Philip was a triumph of slavery over freedom, and it wrought 
 the degradation of the city to. which every real student of 
 history, every real lover of literature and art, must for ever 
 look as the most sacred shrine of his intellectual pilgrimage. 
 Again, the last stage, the wars of the Successors, loses the 
 interest which attaches to the glorious struggle of Demo- 
 sthenes, and sinks, at first sight, into little beyond a mere 
 record of crimes. 
 
 While the narrative of this period by Bishop Thirlwall is 
 
 p2 
 
212 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 by far the greatest portion of his great work, the way in 
 which Niebuhr has treated it is one which we cannot but call 
 altogether unworthy both of his intellectual and moral nature. 
 We may believe that this defect was chieily owing to the pe- 
 culiar form of lectures, and that in a History of Greece, answer- 
 ing to his greatest work, he would have written in quite 
 another way. Lectures delivered extempore, and printed, 
 without the author's revision, from notes taken by the pupils 
 who heard them, are something which must be measured by 
 quite a different standard from an elaborate work written in 
 the writer's study, with every means for reference and second 
 thoughts. It would be vain to look in these volumes for entire 
 freedom from slips and contradictions, but it would be unfair, 
 under such circumstances, to make them the subject of un- 
 favourable criticism. It shows in fact the wonderful range of 
 Niebuhr's knowledge, and his still more wonderful power of 
 applying his knowledge without external help, that the amount 
 of errors or inconsistencies wliich his editor has pointed out, 
 or which we have found out for ourselves, does not greatly 
 exceed in number or importance the allowance which would 
 be fairly pardonable in a work of the same bulk written or 
 dictated at the author's fireside. The lectures alsoj in their 
 present form, have a peculiar value^ as shewing us the workings 
 of Niebuhr's mind, and the manner in which his opinions were 
 worked out. There are many passages in which it is clear, not 
 only that the lecturer spoke extempore, but that the thoughts 
 themselves came into the speaker's mind while he was in the 
 act of speaking. Of course such illustrations or conjectures do 
 not carry with them the weight of Niebuhr's mature judge- 
 ment, but they are specially valuable as illustrating Niebuhr's 
 own self. Again, in his History Niebuhr appears as far more 
 happy in what he thought than in his way of telling us 
 why he thought it. Many of his views need only to be 
 stated in order at once to carry conviction with them,* but 
 
 * [When I wrote this, I could hardly have thrown oflf that idolatry of 
 Niebuhr which was the natural result of the Oxford training of thirty years 
 back ; not that the idol of the present moment is any improvement.] 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 213 
 
 the reader's confidence is anything but increased by toiling 
 through the maze of argument m which theorem and de- 
 monstration are confused together. In the Lectures^ on the 
 other hand, all is clear and straightforward ; results are given 
 and little more, which is just what we want. It is enough to 
 be told Niebuhr's opinion ; the grounds of it, for the most 
 partj any other man could explain better than himself. 
 
 But, on the other hand, this mode of delivery has brought 
 out certain characteristics which, while they greatly enhance 
 the value of the work as an index of the author's mind, 
 Certainly lessen its trustworthiness as an historical guide. 
 This is specially the case in the period with which we are 
 now dealing. Niebuhr was a man of ardent and indeed 
 hasty feelings ; his love and his enmity were strongly felt 
 and strongly expressed, and he had a wonderful power of 
 throwing himself into the feelings of past ages, and of look- 
 ing on the men of two thousand years back in the light of 
 living friends and foes. Now all these qualities, as could 
 not fail to be the case, appear in these lectures in their most 
 exaggerated form. In throwing himself into the cause of 
 right and freedom Niebuhr failed to do justice to those 
 whom circumstances made its enemies. In his admiration 
 of the high, heroic, unselfish, virtue of Demosthenes, he 
 sometimes forgot that language which was natural in the 
 mouth of the orator in the Pnyx was no longer becoming 
 when it fell from the mouth of the Professor in his lecture- 
 room at Bonn. The business of Demosthenes was to call on 
 his hearers to arm against Philip or Alexander ; the business 
 of Niebuhr was calmly and judicially to set before his hearers 
 the right and wrong of the cause in which those mighty men 
 were the actors. The first aspect of Niebuhr's treatment of 
 this period is that of simple unscrupulous malignity towards 
 everything bearing the Macedonian name. The two great 
 Kings are reviled to an extent which might have wearied the 
 willing ears of Demos himself; their crimes are exaggerated, 
 their virtues depreciated, their motives distorted ; every piece 
 of scandalous gossip is raked up against them on evidence 
 
214 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 which Niebuhr himself is the first to cast aside when it 
 tells against his own favourites. Now in all this we see 
 no ground for charging Niebuhr with intentional disin- 
 genuousness ; we fully believe that in the solitude of his 
 closet he would have drawn his pen through most of the 
 passages of which we complain ; he must certainly have been 
 both a worse historian and a worse man than we hare ever 
 deemed him, if he could, in his calmer moments, have ven- 
 tured to brand Alexander as the murderer of his father, and 
 to sully one of the most amiable features of his character 
 with the foulest of imputations. We believe the ease simply 
 to be that Niebuhr had so thoroughly thrown himself into 
 the position of Demosthenes and HyperidSs, that he had 
 become even less capable than they were of doing justice to 
 their mightiest adversary. 
 
 From Niebuhr we may turn to our own great historian of 
 the same period. If Bishop Thirlwall is not so ardent as 
 Niebuhr for Athens and Demosthenes, it is because it is neither 
 his nature nor his principle to be so ardent about anything. 
 But he shows with equal clearness where his sympathies lie, 
 and which side he holds to be the side of truth and justice. 
 Here and there a burst of indignant eloquence shows that his 
 convictions are as deeply rooted as those of Niebuhr himself. 
 But he never lowers himself to reviling or misrepresentation 
 of the other side. On his showing, we see in Philip the very 
 founder of intrigue and diplomacy, unscrupulous when his 
 ends were to be served, but far from lacking generous feel- 
 ings, and never allowing himself to be hurried into an useless 
 crime. It is highly unfair to class' men of this stamp" with 
 monsters like Ochus or Nero, Rufus or John, Gian-Maria 
 Visconti or Galeazzo Sforza, who seem to have revelled in 
 evil for its own sake. To raise his own country, to make 
 Macedonia a Greek state and the first of Greek states, was 
 surely no mean or paltry ambition, no worse surely than 
 exploits which have attached lasting honour to the names of 
 many Christian potentates. And Alexander, whom for two 
 thousand years the world has rejoiced to reckon among the 
 
VL] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 215 
 
 first of its heroes, can never be changed into a mere monster 
 of wickedness and weakness^ even though the wand of the 
 historical Kirk6 be grasped by the hand of Barthold 
 Niebuhr. 
 
 Between the years B.C. 280 and 2'jo, we may place the boun- 
 dary which parts the two periods into which we have divided 
 the later history of Greece. The storm of Macedonian conquest 
 has passed by, and its results now begin to appear in the 
 comparatively settled state of Grecian Europe ; that of Gre- 
 cian Asia, so far as it can be said to have ever been settled at 
 all, may fairly date from the field of Issos. The deaths of 
 Demetrios, Pyrrhos^ Lysimachos, and Seleukos, the Gaulish 
 invasion and the first great display of power on the part of 
 the jSltolians, the establishment of the Antigonid dynasty in 
 Macedonia and the first beginnings of the Achaian League, 
 all come within about twelve years of each other, a period of 
 far smaller practical extent at that point of Grecian history 
 than it was in either an earlier or a later generation. Prom 
 this point Niebuhr's treatment of his subject wonderfully 
 improves. He seems to have got over his abstract hatred 
 of Macedonians ; he can see some merit in the later Anti- 
 gonidsj while his treatment of the afiairs of the League is 
 most just and valuable. It was evidently, as his editor tells 
 us, a favourite period, which he dealt with thoroughly as a 
 labour of love. And, when we look at the whole time under 
 his guidance, we soon see how great a mistake it is to look 
 on the whole period vpith the usual scorn. It is a time 
 which sets before us the political fall of Greece, accompanied 
 by an increased spread of Grecian influence over the world ; 
 it shows to us the slow and sure advance of Rome, and how, 
 in the meshes of her policy, the former masters of the civilized 
 world were led down the gradual descent of alliance, depend- 
 ence, subjugation, and amalgamation. Surely every one who has 
 traced Grecian history and literature through its earlier and 
 more brilliant stages must feel some share of what Niebuhr 
 calls a natural ' Pietas ' towards Greece, which is of itself 
 
216 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 enough to make us wish to follow out its history to the 
 end. Wretched indeed as was the last century and a half 
 of Athenian existence,* it is still the duty of those who 
 have walked in the full blaze of its earlier day, at least 
 to watch the glimmering light till it is wholly put out. 
 And again, Athens is not Greece ; other states will give us 
 real political and historical lessons down to the last moment. 
 
 But while Greece itself is thus falling, Greeks are rising 
 to the height of their intellectual sway in other lands. The 
 spread of Hellenism in the East through the Macedonian 
 conquests is in itself a phsenomenon worthy of study, and 
 it becomes of yet greater importance when we think of its 
 bearing on the spread of Christianity, and its close con- 
 nexion with the Apocryphal, and even with the New Tes- 
 tament history. The Greek language became the badge at once 
 of European civilization and of Orthodox Christianity ; Asia 
 Minor was really hellenized ; Syria and Egypt had only a 
 few great Hellenic cities scattered over them. Hence these 
 latter countries first fell aside into heresies or national 
 churches, and afterwards became an easy prey to Mahometan 
 conquest. The thoroughly Greek provinces, on the other 
 hand, withstood Monophysite and Nestorian, Saracen and 
 Turk, for many ages longer. When Gibbon spoke of Antioch 
 retaining ' her old allegiance to Christ and CsBsar," he doubt- 
 less meant a scoff, but he none the less set forth a great 
 historical truth. 
 
 Again, if the gradual advance of Roman power, and its 
 still more gradual decline, contain, as in truth they do, the 
 whole history of the civilized world, it is surely no uninstruc- 
 tive task to trace the steps by which Rome gradually wound 
 the toils of her crooked diplomacy around the fairest of her 
 conquests. Bisliop Thirlwall truly says that in such arts 
 the Roman Senate surpassed every cabinet, ancient and 
 
 * [Again I must have forgotten that Athens, still less than Aohaia, did 
 not formally come to an end in B.C. 146. It must be remembered that 
 Hadrian was an Archon, and Constantine a General, of the Athenian De- 
 mocracy.] 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 217 
 
 modern j and it was to them, more than to her pilum and 
 broadsword, that Rome owed the reduction of Macedonia and 
 Achaia into provinces of a city of which Demosthenes and 
 Philip may have barely heard the name. And again, if we 
 remember how the hellenized nations took up the name and 
 position of Romans, how they kept on the political life of 
 the Roman Empire in a Megarian and a Milesian* colony, for 
 hundreds of years after the old Rome had forgotten her 
 ancient mission, it can be no fruitless speculation to trace 
 the steps by which the first impulse was given to so strange 
 and lasting an union between the intellectual supremacy of 
 Greece and the political eternity of Rome. 
 
 And when we carry on our view beyond the limits of direct 
 cause and efiect, when we take in the wider field of analogy 
 and historical parallelism, this period becomes clothed with 
 yet deeper interest. The history of old Greece and the history 
 of mediaeval Italy can never be thoroughly understood unless 
 the two are constantly employed to illustrate one another, f 
 And the fall of each country presents a picture, in which, 
 though the likeness is certainly less strong than in the earlier 
 periods, it is still marked enough to make it worth while to 
 point out some of the chief features, both where the parallel 
 clearly exists and where it must be allowed to fail. 
 
 As Greece was the elder, the more native, in every sense 
 the nobler, of the two great developements of republican splen- 
 dour, it seems only right that Greece should, even in her 
 corruption and her fall, keep more of dignity than her me- 
 diaeval antitype. % 
 
 * [Trapezous, which became, ages after, the seat of that Empire of Tre- 
 bizond which outlived that of Constantinople, was a colony of Sin6p6, and 
 so a granddaughter of Milgtos.] 
 
 ■)• [I have cut short this comparison, which I afterwards expanded into the 
 First Essay in this Series. But I have left one or two points on which I 
 said little or nothing there.] 
 
 J [This may seem to contradict what I have said above in p. 30, but 
 I do not think that it really does so. The point is that, after the wars of the 
 Successors, Greece had a time of revived freedom, which Italy, since the tim^ 
 of the French, Spanish, and German wars, never had till our own day.] 
 
218 GREECE DURING THE [Essat 
 
 'Magna feres tacitas solatia mortis ad umbras 
 A tanto cecidisse viro.' * 
 
 Italy, in fact, has no parallel to the age of Philip and 
 Alexander, when Greece might forget her bondage in the 
 dazzling glory of a hero who boasted of her blood, and whose 
 pride it was to bear her language and civilization into realms 
 which had never obeyed the voice of Assyrian or Persian 
 despot. It is clear that both the great Macedonians really 
 loved and revered Greece, Athens above all. To humble her 
 politically was an unavoidable part of their policy ; but they 
 always kept themselves from doing her any wrong beyond 
 which their policy called for. They felt as Greeks, and they had 
 no temptation to destroy what they claimed as their mother 
 country. They had clearly no wish to swallow up Greece in 
 Macedonia, but rather to make Macedonia, as a Greek state, 
 the ruling power of Greece, f Such was undoubtedly the aim of 
 Philip, and it was that of Alexander too, till, from the throne 
 of the Great King, he may have learned to look on both 
 Greece and Macedonia as little more than corners of his 
 empire, nurseries of his most valiant soldiers. 
 
 But the desolation of Greece undet Alexander's immediate 
 Successors very fairly answers to the desolation of Italy 
 by French, Spanish, Swiss, and German invaders. As in 
 the later parallel, the history of these endless wars is indeed 
 little more than a revolting record of crime ; still we cannot 
 help looking even on them with somewhat more of favour 
 than they receive from Niebuhr. Selfish and unscrupulous 
 as they were, we cannot set them down as mere monsters ; 
 even the blood-stained Kassandros must not be ranked with 
 a Phalaris or an Eccelino. Treachery and murder were 
 familiar to them all when they served their purpose; but, 
 when they were once established in their kingdoms, we 
 do not find that they became such mere savage scourges 
 of mankind as Kings and rulers have too often shown 
 themselves. Ptolemy's hands were no cleaner than those 
 
 * [I have since used this quotation for another purpose. * Willelmus Mag- 
 nus ' may surely rank in the same class as ' Alexander Magnus.'] 
 ■(• See above, p. 178. 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 219 
 
 of his fellows ; he won his way to his throne by equal crime ; 
 yet when he was once seated there, the unanimous voice 
 of history has placed him in the first rank of sovereigns. 
 Such rulers as Augustus, as Francesco Sforza, as our own Cnut, 
 form a far truer parallel to the better class of Macedonian 
 princes, to Antigonos, Ptolemy, or Seleukos, than the mere 
 loathsome tyrants either of classical or of mediaeval Italy. 
 
 For one prince of these troubled times, whom Niebuhr 
 holds up to special hatred, we must confess a certain ten- 
 dernesSj — it may be a weakness. This is Demetrios Polior- 
 k^t^s, the Alkibiad^s or Antonius of his age. An ambition 
 not only selfish, but utterly reckless and extravagant, a 
 private profligacy of the wildest and most revolting kind, 
 a haughty carelessness of others, and all this joined with an 
 utter lack of those arts of the ruler and the statesman which 
 distinguish a Seleukos and a Ptolemy, might, at first sight, 
 seem to stamp him with hopeless infamy, as the vilest speci- 
 men of a vile time. But, as in his Athenian prototype^ 
 open to all these charges but the last, and towards whom 
 Niebuhr is by no means harsh — there is still something about 
 Demetrios which renders it impossible to look on him with 
 unmixed dishke. In his first expedition we may fairly attri- 
 bute to him a really generous ambition to become the chosen 
 prince of independent HeUas, and as such Athens at least was 
 ready to receive him. And when we think how Athens re- 
 ceived him, we may deem that it was nothing wonderful if 
 a fiery and voluptuous youth had his head utterly turned 
 by such incense as had never before been ofiered to mortal 
 man. Demetrios would have had no claim to rank even as a 
 naturalized Greek, could he have gone unscathed through a 
 milder ordeal than that of being formally acknowledged as the 
 peer of Zeus and Athene, and of having his will solemnly de- 
 clared to be the measure of holiness and justice. It is perhaps 
 only because we judge him by a higher standard that we speak 
 so harshly of his private life; that it went far beyond the 
 bounds even of Athenian licence cannot be denied, but it would 
 have seemed nothing wonderful in the seraglios of Nineveh 
 
220 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 or Susa. He seems to have won the affections of his many 
 wives, and he certainly was not in the habit of divorcing or 
 murdering them, like many of his contemporaries and suc- 
 cessors. The harmony which reigned between himself and his 
 father, and afterwards between himself and his son, forms a 
 beautiful picture in itself, and it is a remarkable character- 
 istic of the whole family, in contrast to the fearful domestic 
 tragedies which disgraced almost every other Macedonian 
 palace. Till the quarrel in the last generation between Per- 
 seus and the last D^metrios, no Antigonid ever stained his 
 bauds with the blood of father, son, or brother ; none ever 
 even stood forth as the enemy or rival of his nearest kinsman. 
 Against the Besieger himself no special deed of blood or 
 perfidy is distinctly proved; haughty and overbearing in 
 prosperity, faults which lost him the Macedonian throne, 
 he does not seem even there to have sunk into an actual 
 oppressor. Adversity no man knew better how to bear ; the 
 rebound was always greater than the fall. Throughout his 
 whole career, whether dealing with Ptolemy, with Rhodes, or 
 with Athens, we see touches of a generous and chivalrous 
 spirit, which he shares with Alexander and Pyrrhos, but with 
 perhaps no other prince of his age. Surely he deserves at 
 least as much tenderness as Niebuhr grants, with full justice 
 we allow, to his descendant, degenerate indeed, but not 
 wholly unlike him, the last Philip of Macedon. 
 
 And if Italy has no exact parallel to the age of Philip and 
 Alexander, still less has she a parallel to the days of revived 
 freedom which in Greece followed the age of the Successors. 
 Stern as was the doom of Greece, it was still not to be com- 
 pared to the doom of her antitype ; her race was as yet by 
 no means run, the day of her final overthrow was still far 
 off. Even during the period of confusion, Greece was never of 
 so little account among the struggles of her masters as Italy 
 was during the analogous time; her attachment was eagerly 
 sought after, both from the reverence which she inspii-ed, and 
 still more from the substantial force which she still held, 
 a force quite enough in most cases to turn the scale between 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 221 
 
 two contending potentates. And when things began to fall 
 back again into something like settled order, a new asra of 
 freedom and glory arose, shorter and less bright indeed than 
 her elder day, but still at least a worthy old age for such 
 a youth. And it was the more true and vigorous because 
 it was no mere superficial restoration, but a developement 
 really fitted to the political circumstances of the age. With 
 this period Italy has nothing to compare, unless we may 
 venture to see in the successful working of constitutional 
 government in Piedmont at the present moment, a harbinger 
 of still brighter days for Italy than those of federal liberty in 
 Grxeece.* 
 
 By one of those strange cycles which are often found in 
 history, the last people who kept up the glory of the Grecian 
 name were the people who first came forth into historic being 
 from the darkness of the old prse-historic time. It was as 
 Achaians that the Greeks gathered round the walls of Ilios ; 
 it was as Achaians that they fell beneath the tardy vengeance 
 of a people whose boast it was to trace their origin to that 
 sacred source. The cities of Perikles and Epameinondas had 
 sunk into utter insignificance ; Lykourgeian Sparta had indeed 
 done a work worthy of her old fame when she drove back the 
 hero of Epeiros from her gates ; but it was the last work of 
 Lykourgeian Sparta; as the city of the Herakleids she had 
 still to run a short course of glory, but as the city of the Dorian 
 she was no more. Aehaia, a land which had lived on through 
 Persian, Peloponnesian, and Macedonian warfare, perhaps at 
 once the most respectable and the most insignificant part of 
 proper Greece, now becomes the field for this second crop of 
 Grecian freedom and dignity, though it must be confessed 
 that the harvest was for the most part reaped for her by 
 generals and statesmen who were Achaians only by adoption. 
 
 The great value of the Achaian League to the student of 
 history comes from its being the best known example of the 
 ancient Federal constitutions, indeed the only genuine confede- 
 ration of equal cities which ever rose to much importance in 
 " [Of. the note on p. 51.] 
 
222 GREECE DURING TEE [Essay 
 
 Greece itself.* Mr. Grote has. fully set forth how deeply the 
 pervading notion of the ' autonomous city ' was rooted in the 
 Grecian mind ; in truth, the more highly developed and civi- 
 lized a Grecian state was, the more strongly did it cleave to its 
 separate independence, the more it shrank from Federal rela- 
 tions with any other. It might find it expedient or needful 
 to acknowledge, to a certain extent, the external supremacy, 
 the fiyenovCa, of some ruling city, but no Grecian town in 
 historic times willingly consented to sink its separate being 
 in any general confederacy. This is the more to be noted, 
 because several phsenomena are found which at first sight 
 look very like such an union, but which at all events difier 
 very widely from its fully developed Achaian form. 
 
 A Federal union of the whole nation was a thing which 
 was never thought of; the Amphiktyonic Council has often 
 been mistaken for such an one ; but such an opinion is now 
 thoroughly thrown aside by scholars. In fact, the existence 
 of the Amphiktyonic Council tells the other way ; without 
 being reaUy a Federal union, it came near enough to such an 
 union to have suggested the idea, and to have formed the germ 
 of such an institution, had the want of it been at all felt by 
 the Greek mind. If indeed the Council had ever taken such 
 a character on itself, its first act must certainly have been 
 to pass a Reform Bill, as its constitution was strikingly like 
 that of the House of Commons up to 183a. The Malians and 
 Phthiotic Achaians, 'rotten' states, in which the Tagos of 
 
 * Hellenic cities beyond the bounds of proper Greece seem to have had far 
 less dislike to Federal relations, doubtless because, as strangers scattered in a 
 foreign land, they often found it needful to join together against powerful 
 barbarian neighbours. Thus we find several confederations, more or less close, 
 among the Hellenic and hellenized states in Asia Minor. There was also the 
 great Olynthian Confederacy, of which Mr. Grote has given so clear an account, 
 and whose forcible suppression was one of the most crying sins of Spartan 
 ascendency. But here there was one predominant city, which at once dis- 
 tinguishes it from our Achaian state. 
 
 [On the Olynthian Confederacy see History of Federal Government, i. 
 190-197. Later thoughts on the matter carried me further away from Mr. 
 Grote's view of the constitution of the Confederacy. But none the less thanks 
 are owing to him for first bringing out the Olynthian scheme into its fitting 
 prominence.] 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 223 
 
 Thessaly ' enjoyed, ' according to the modern euphemism, 
 ' considerable influence/ must have gone the way of Gatton 
 and Old Sarum. In like manner, the same principle which 
 gave parliamentary being to Birmingham and Manchester 
 must have given distinct votes to Sparta, Corinth, and Argos, 
 and the system which gave an enlarged representation to the 
 English counties might even have bestowed the Amphi- 
 ktyonic franchise upon the enlightened and independent free- 
 holders of Arkadia. In truth, the one fact that the Amphi- 
 ktyonic votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by cities, at 
 once shuts it out from our present comparison, and shows it 
 to be a mere vestige of a bygone state of things, alien to 
 the common tendency of Grecian feeling in its best days. 
 In truth, ' the shadow at Delphi ' * hardly pretended to any 
 political functions at all, till it suited the policy of Thebes 
 and of Philip to push it into a factitious importance. 
 
 The other confederations which meet our notice among 
 the Grecian states may well have suggested ideas to the 
 founders of the League, but none of them, not even the 
 Arkadian League under Lykomedes, so thoroughly forestalled 
 it as to show, in actual and lasting working, a combination of 
 many equal cities united, for all external purposes, into one 
 indivisible Federal republic. The League stands distinguished, 
 alike from mere alliances, however close they may be made 
 by traditional sentiment — from combinations of cities which, 
 like that of Bceotia, acknowledge a greater or less degree of 
 supremacy in some leading state^ — and from those irregular 
 unions among the less developed branches of the Greek 
 nation, which were confederations of tribes rather than of 
 cities. The ^tolians, Akarnanians, and the like, never reached 
 to the full developement of Greek city life. One of these 
 unions, that of the brigands of iEtolia, attained a strange and 
 unnatural amount of power during the times we are now con- 
 sidering; but every recorded act of that confederation only 
 shows how utterly incapable it was of exercising political 
 
 * OvKow tvfiffes Kol KOfuS^ (Tx^tAio)' .... irpoa irivras vepl rrjs iv Ae\- 
 »poT> aicias vvyl iroXc/t^cat ; Dem. de Face, ad fin. 
 
224 GREECE DURING THE [Essat 
 
 power, and in truth its reckless conduct brought about the 
 final ruin of Greece.* 
 
 Unlike all these, the Achaian League was, in the strictest 
 sense, a confederation of cities united on equal terms. The 
 cities of the original Aehaia, which formed its kernelj seem 
 to have been united in the same kind of way before the 
 Macedonian times. These therefore did little more than 
 restore an old connexion on still closer terms ; but aU the 
 historical importance of the League was owing to its non- 
 Achaian members, Sikyon, Corinth, and Megalopolis. For aU 
 external purposes the united cities formed one state ; no single 
 city could treat with a foreign power, still less could it make 
 war upon any other member of the League. But the several 
 towns still kept much more than a mere municipal being, 
 as is shown by the very fact that it was needful to forbid 
 diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers. Still, it is clear 
 that the general tendency of the League was to a far closer 
 union, even in internal matters, than Greece had ever before 
 witnessed among distinct cities. In the end Polybios could 
 boast, with only a slight exaggeration, that all Peloponn^sos 
 was united under the same government and the same laws. 
 Any tendency to separation seems, unless when stirred up 
 by foreign intrigues, to have been wholly confined to those 
 cities which, like Sparta and MessSne, had been unwillingly 
 incorporated with the League, and which therefore added 
 nothing to its real strength. 
 
 The constitution of the League was professedly democra- 
 tic : and herein it afibrds us a great political lesson, as the 
 first instance in Greece of a democratic government on so 
 large a scale. Now this mere fact of its extent, to say 
 nothing of any unlikeness in the characters of the two 
 nations, at once brought with it most important differences 
 in the Achaian democracy, as compared with the typical de- 
 
 * [This is true ; but the mere constitutional forms of the ^tolian League 
 differed very little fiom those of Aehaia. 
 
 The Akarnanian League on the other hand, though always secondary in 
 point of power, was of all Greek commonwealths the most upright in its 
 policy and the most faithful to its engagements.] 
 
VI.] MAGEDONIAN PERIOD. 225: 
 
 mocracy of Athens. * In the new state the purely demo- 
 cratic ideal had to be greatly modified. Every free Achaian 
 of fuU age, no less than every free Athenian, might attend 
 and speak in. the sovereign Assembly of his country ; but 
 then that Assembly was not held weekly at his own doors, 
 but twice a year in a distant city. Such a franchise could 
 have but little attraction for any but the high-born and 
 wealthyj who alone could afford the cost of the journey, and 
 who alone would be likely to be listened to when the As- 
 sembly met. Again, such a franchise, the exercise of which 
 came so seldom, could of itself have given but little political 
 education ; and, though each citizen had his share in the in- 
 ternal management of his own town, yet a vote in the petty 
 local affairs of Dyme or Tritaia must have been a very different 
 thing from a voice in the direction of the vast and complicated 
 relations of a ruling city like Athens. As the meetings of the 
 Assembly were so rare, the powers of individual magistrates 
 were necessarily far greater than could have been endured 
 under the Athenian system ; and here it is perhaps that we 
 find the most marked difference between the two constitutions. 
 At Athens, as we have seen. Demos himself was the real execu- 
 tive power j magistrates were the mere ministerial instruments 
 of his sovereign will. But the Achaian Assembly took up 
 only six days in its two ordinary sessions; therefore, when 
 no extraordinary Assembly happened to be summoned, the 
 sovereign authority was suspended for three hundred and 
 fifty- three days in each year, during which time the 
 executive power had to be lodged somewhere. The natural 
 result was a far nearer approach than Athens ever beheld 
 to the system of modem commonwealths, monarchical or re- 
 publican. We find foreshadowings by no means dim of a 
 Council of Ministers and of a President of the Eepublic. 
 There was a Senate which held far greater authority, and was 
 far more independent of the Assembly, than the mere Com- 
 mittee of Five Hundred at Athens; there was a Cabinet of 
 
 * [A picture of the Athenian Democracy which followed here I have trans- 
 ferred to the Essay specially devoted to that subject.] 
 
 Q 
 
226 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 ten Demiourgoi, a body which D^mos would never have borne ; 
 lastly, the Republic had a ' single person ' at its head. For 
 the two Generals whom the League in its first form chose 
 year by year a single one was afterwards substituted, who 
 was indeed appointed by annual election, but who, during his 
 year of office, held a position such as no Athenian had ever 
 held since the decennial Archons came to an end. During his 
 time of office he was clearly the very soul of the State. * Not 
 indeed that Aratos exercised a greater practical authority than 
 Perikl^s ; but, while the Athenian, a single citizen to whom 
 the other citizens habitually looked for wise counsels, owed 
 all his influence to his personal qualities, the Sikyonian stood 
 before his countrymen with all the weight of official position, 
 like a Premier or President of our own day. We do not 
 indeed find that any Achaian General ever showed any wish 
 to change his elective and temporary magistracy into a here- 
 ditary empire, or even into a consulate for life ; but his place 
 was a place of dignity enough to lead more than one well- 
 disposed Tyrant to lay aside his sovereignty and to unite his 
 city to the League. f Lydiadas doubtless enjoyed a far greater 
 personal influence over Grecian politics as the elective magis- 
 trate of the Achaian democracy than he had ever wielded as 
 irresponsible despot of the single city of Megalopolis. 
 
 It is clear that, where there was a President and Cabinet, as 
 we may fairly call them, of such a kind, the whole executive 
 power must have been lodged in their hands, and that, even 
 without formal enactments to that effect, they must have held a 
 practical initiative in the Assembly at least as fully as a modem 
 Ministry holds it. Moreover the right of individual citizens 
 to make proposals in the Assembly was very narrowly restricted 
 by law; a precaution which was perhaps not needless in a 
 session of three days. The real business of the Assembly was 
 to choose the magistrates, and to say Yea or Nay to their pro- 
 posals. After the somewhat unfair monopoly which Aratos 
 so long enjoyed had come to an end, it was dearly in the 
 election of the General that the parliamentary warfare of 
 
 * See THrlwall, viii. 93. + See Polyb. ii. 41, 44. 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 227 
 
 the League found its fullest scope. We often find the policy 
 of _ the Republic fluctuating from year to year, according as 
 one party or another had succeeded in placing its leader at 
 the head of the state. Each election might, in fact, bring on 
 what we should call a change of Ministry ; but to the grand 
 device of constitutional monarchies Achaia never reached. 
 Every year the Ministry and its policy were put in jeopardy^ 
 but, when that ordeal was past, they were safe for another 
 twelvemonth. Achaia had not hit upon our happy plan by 
 which the executive power is held at the silent pleasure of the 
 Legislature, by which the real rulers may be kept on for 
 an indefinite time, or may be sent away at a moment's 
 notice, according as they behave themselves. * 
 
 These parliamentary functions were probably discharged by 
 a few of the leading men of each city, together with a some- 
 what undue proportion of the inhabitants of Aigion. Though, 
 by the Achaian constitutionj the presence of any dispropor- 
 tioned number of citizens of a particular town had no direct 
 efiect on the reckoning of the votes, still the men of Aigion 
 must have had an unfair monopoly as long as the Assembly 
 was invariably held in their city. Philopoim^n acted like a 
 truly liberal statesman when he procured that its meetings 
 should be held in each city of the League in turn. But so 
 long as the place of meeting was confined to any one city, 
 Aigion, as one of the less considerable members of the Con- 
 federation, was a good choice ; had the Assembly been always 
 held at Corinth or Megalopolis, one can fancy that some pre- 
 tension to supremacy on the part of those great cities might 
 have gradually arisen. 
 
 The practical working of such a system was doubtless that 
 of a mild and liberal 'aristocracy, t which, existing solely on 
 suflTerancCj could not venture upon tyrannical or unpopular 
 measures. The material well-being of the people may have 
 
 * [The result of the general election of 1868 showed that, under the Eng- 
 lish constitution, this power can on occasion be exercised, not only by the 
 House of Commons, but by the people themselves in their polling-booths.] 
 
 t [Anstoeracy in the strictest sense ; not its counterfeit oligwrchy.'\ 
 
 Q2 
 
228 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 been equal to that of Attica in its best daySj but for the 
 intense vigour of Athenian political and intellectual life there 
 was no room. The individual Achaian was a free citizen, 
 and not the slave of a Tyrant or of an oligarchy ; but 
 he was not himself Minister, Senator, and Judge, in the 
 same way as a member of the typical Democracy. His per- 
 sonal happiness, as far as human laws can secure it, may 
 have been equally great, and his political life was certainly 
 more peaceful ; but he could not, by the hand which he 
 held up or by the bean which he dropped, exercise a con- 
 scious influence over the greatest questions of his own age, 
 and an unconscious one over those of all the ages that were 
 to come. 
 
 One more remark must be made. The votes in the 
 Assembly were not counted by heads, but 1^ cities. Whether 
 one Corinthian or a thousand were present, Corinth had one 
 vote, and no more. Here, as Niebuhr justly says, lay the 
 great fault of the constitution, that great cities like Argos 
 and Corinth had no greater weight in the councils of the 
 united nation than the petty towns of the original Achaia. 
 Had any proportion of this kind been observed, as it after- 
 wards was in the Lykian Confederation, the constitution would 
 have been very nearly a representative one ; and, in such a 
 case, the final step could hardly have been delayed of each 
 city sending just as many deputies as it had votes in the 
 Assembly. * 
 
 * [I am not sure that, when S wrote this, or even when I wrote what I 
 said upon the same matter in the History of Federal Government, i. 273, 
 274, I fully understood that in a perfect Federal constitution it is needful 
 to have two Houses, one of which represents the sovereignty of the united 
 nation, and in which Ihe vote to be taken is that of the majority of the 
 whole people or their representatives, while the other House represents the 
 separate sovereignty of the several Cantons, and must give an equal voice to 
 each Canton, great or small. This object is gained in the United States by 
 the Senate and House of Kepresentatives, as distinct and equal branches of 
 the Federal legislature. In Switzerland it is gained, not only by the same 
 constitution of the Federal Legislature, the Standeraih and NationaVrath 
 answering to the Senate and House of Representatives, but also by the dis- 
 tinct votes of the Cantons and of the People which are taken in the case of 
 
VI.] MACEBONIAN PERIOD. 229 
 
 But while the great political phsenomenon of the League is 
 certainly the first object of attraction in later Grecian history, 
 there are not wanting others of no small importance. The his- 
 tory of the Macedonian monarchy is in itself one of high 
 interest. A small nation, of uncertain origin in its first be- 
 ginnings, gradually swells into a civilized kingdom ; under 
 several energetic princes it becomes Greek and the ruling 
 state of Greece ; it overthrows the throne of Cyrus^ and for a 
 while the single realm of Macedon stretches from the Hadri- 
 atic to the Hyphasis. Such an empire as this could not be 
 lasting ; but the Macedonian race gave rulers and a lasting 
 civilization to vast regions of the East, and the Kingdom of 
 Macedonia itself kept its place as the leading power of Greece, 
 as the dreaded rival of Rome. This is hardly the history of 
 so worthless a people as Niebuhr, and even Thirlwall, seem 
 to deem them. We cannot go along with Niebuhr in the 
 way in which he identifies the Macedonian royalty with that 
 of Eastern kingdoms* It is more like an irregular mediaeval 
 monarchy, which, under a weak prince, sank into mere 
 anarchy, while an able and popular prince had everything 
 his own way. The Macedonian government was indeed 
 essentially monarchical ; there was no formal constitution, and 
 probably few or no written laws ; the absence of a Legislative 
 Assembly is expressly asserted by Polybios ;* and Demosthenes 
 
 a constitutional amendment. No arrangement of votes in a single assembly, 
 whether primary or representative, can in the same way give their due weight 
 to each of the two elements of that divided sovereignty which is the essence 
 of a. Federal state. But there is no need to blame either the Achaiau or 
 the Lykian Confederation for not at once reaching to the latest refinements 
 of modem political science. We must always remember that in all these 
 commonwealths representation was unknown, though, as specially in the case 
 of the Lykian League, they often trembled on the very verge of it. And 
 in Greece at least, the coordinate power of two legislative chambers was 
 altogether unknown, though something like it may be seen in the relations 
 between the Senate and the Popular Assembly in the best days of Eome.] 
 * xxxi. 12. ^aKiB6vas d.7}6€is ^vras itinoKpariKTis Kal awiipiaitris TToXniias, 
 [I perhaps inferred too much from this passage, which relates to the diffi- 
 culties which the Macedonians felt in adapting themselves to the constitutions 
 of the four commonwealths into which Macedonia was divided by the Romans 
 after the fall of Perseus. We do not know exactly what the constitutions of 
 
230 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 witnesses that the personal agency of the King himself was 
 the primary moving power of everything,* contrasting Mace- 
 donia on this point with the republican governments of Greece. 
 Still the Macedonians were clearly anything but slaves like 
 the Asiatics; though political liberty may have had no 
 settled being, there were certain barriers of civil liberty 
 which the King could not venture to overpass. There was 
 evidently something answering to trial by juiy ; Alexander, in 
 the height of his conquests, did not venture to put a free 
 Macedonian to death in the way of public justice, till he had 
 been brought before the judgement of his peers. Again, the 
 Asiatic pomp, both of Alexander himself and afterwards of 
 DSmetrioSj is expressly said to have offended a people who 
 were used to very different treatment at the hands of their 
 rulers. The mere existence of a Macedonian monarchy is in 
 itself a remarkable phsenomenoUj as no other civilized Euro- 
 pean state, save the neighbouring land of Epeiros, so long kept 
 on the ancient kingship. Macedonia, and Epeiros also, tiU a 
 democratic revolution cut off the line of Pyrrhos, look like 
 continuations, on a larger scale, of the old heroic monarchies 
 which in Greece and Italy were done away with at a much 
 earlier time. 
 
 We see then that, even in a political point of view, Mace- 
 donia is far from being an utterly barren subject, while, when 
 looked at as a matter of ethnology, it is of the very highest 
 interest. We wiU not however now enter on the question of 
 the exact amount of national kindred between Greeks and 
 Macedonians, a subject which involves the whole Pelasgian 
 controversy, and which cannot be settled without a full exami- 
 
 these four states were, but their citizens may well have been puzzled how to 
 supply the loss of the old familiar kingship. As for the Macedonian Assemblies 
 in earlier times, we are of course not to suppose that they met as regularly 
 as the Assemblies of Athens or Achaia, and they were doubtless far less 
 orderly when they did meet. But it is plain that they were called together 
 on occasion both for judicial and other purposes. Of course in such a state 
 of society the army was the Assembly and the Assembly was the army, just 
 as it was in the heroic days of Greece, the institutions of which went on 
 in Macedonia after they had died away in Greece itself.] 
 * Pha. iii. 59, 60. 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 331 
 
 nation of all the ethnological phsenomena of Greece, Italy, 
 and Lesser Asia. We will at present only express our belief 
 that the Macedonians were a branch of that great Pelasgian 
 family — using the word in what we take to be Niebuhr's 
 sense of it — ^which spread over all those countries. * That bar- 
 barian, especially Illyrian, elements were largely intermingled 
 in the Macedonian nationality is perfectly clear ; but it is to 
 our mind no less clear that the predominant aspect of th^ 
 Macedonian people is, like that of the Sikels, the Epeirots, 
 even of the Lykians and Karians, one of a quasi-Gieek cha^ 
 racter. Their language was not Greek ; therefore in the Greek 
 sense it was barbarous ; but it was clearly akin to Greek,t in the 
 same way as the different Teutonic tongues are akin to one 
 another. The^ whole region which we have spoken of is clearly 
 marked by the recurrence of similar local names in widely 
 different districts, by a similar style of primaeval architecture, J 
 and by the singular ease with which all its inhabitants adopted 
 the fully developed Hellenic language and civilization. 
 
 The only other Greek state of any note during the Mace- 
 donian period was Sparta. The later history of this once 
 ruling city is highly important in a political point of view, 
 and it is interesting, far beyond that of any contemporary 
 state, in the pictures which it gives us of personal cha- 
 racter and adventure. Macedonia, after Alexander, gives 
 us, unless we may venture to put in a word for DemStrios, 
 no character which really calls forth our interest ; Antigonos 
 D6s6n was certainly a good King, but we know compara- 
 tively little about him, and there is nothing specially attrac- 
 tive in what we do know. Even the chiefs of the League 
 
 * [The Pelasgians are better left untouched. But I fully believe in the 
 close coimexion of all these nations with the Greeks. The researches of Curtius 
 and Hahn have made it probable that we must draw a wider circle again, 
 and take in Thracians, Illyrians, and Phrygians, as more distant kinsmen.] 
 
 ■j- See Mtiller's Dorians, i. 3, 486. 
 
 t [Since the preaching of Mr. Tylor's science, whatever it is to be called, 
 this argument does not prove very much, but it is none the less curious to 
 trace the various strivings after the arch both in Greece and in Italy.] 
 
232 GREECE DURING THE [Essay 
 
 are not men to awaken much enthusiasm on their behalf. 
 The character of Aratos was always stained by many weak- 
 nesseSj and towards the close of his life it assumed a deeper 
 dye ; of the gallant Lydiadas we know less than we could 
 desire; even .the brave, prudent, and honest PhilopoimSn 
 is, after all, a hero of a somewhat dull, order. But far 
 different is the case when we have to tell how the gallant, 
 unselfish, enthusiastic, Agis won the glory of the martyr in 
 the noblest but most hopeless of causes, and how his mantle 
 fell upon an abler, though a less pure, successor. Here, for 
 once, we may turn with pleasure from the prejudiced nar- 
 rative of Polybios to the picture given us by Plutarch of 
 the happy union of kingly virtues with every amiable quality 
 of domestic life. Nowhere either in Grecian or in any other 
 history can we find a character more fitted to call forth our 
 sympathies than the heroic wife of the two last Herakleids ; 
 nowhere are more touching scenes recorded than the martyr- 
 dom of Agesistrata by the side of her slaughtered son, or the 
 parting of Kleomen^s from his mother in the temple of Posei- 
 d6n, parent and child alike ready to sacrifice all for the 
 good of Sparta. There can be no doubt but that the designs 
 of Kleomenes would have borne lasting fruit, but for the 
 envious treason with which Aratos stained the glory of his 
 earlier exploits. Agis perished because he undertook the 
 hopeless task of restoring a state of things which had for 
 ever passed away ; Kleomenes, a keener and less scrupulous 
 statesman, adapted himself to the circumstances of the time. 
 The Dorian element was dying out in Sparta, just as the Nor- 
 man and Prankish elements died out in England and France.* 
 Sparta was again Achaian, as Prance again became Celtic, 
 and England again became Teutonic. The only difference 
 was that at Sparta formal barriers had to be got rid of, 
 while in the other cases the silent working of time has been 
 enough. Kleomenes, a Herakleid prince of the old Achaian 
 blood, had no sympathy with Dorian oligarchs. He became 
 
 * [That is in ' Francia Latina ' in the strict sense. South of the Loire there 
 were no Frankish, though there may have been Gothic, elements to die out.] 
 
VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 233 
 
 the true leader of the people. He swept away^ by his un- 
 scrupulous energy, distinctions which had outlived their pur- 
 posCj and set up again the throne of Tyndareos rather than 
 the throne of Agesilaos. That Aratos could not bear the 
 glory of such a rival ; that, rather than submit to a cordial 
 and equal alliance with the Spartan King, he chose to- undo 
 his own work, and to hand over the Greece that he had freed 
 to the grasp of a Macedonian ruler, is one of the most pain- 
 ful instances on record of the follies and crimes of otherwise 
 illustrious men. Sparta and the League cordially allied, — an 
 union closer than alliance they could hardly have made, — 
 might have braved the power of Antigonos and Philip, and 
 might perhaps have put off for some generations the fated 
 absorption of all in the vast ocean of Roman conquest. 
 
 But time would fail us to tell of Laconian heroism and 
 Achaian treason, of Roman diplomacy and ^tolian rashness. 
 We must forbear to speak of the days when, at KynoskephalS 
 and Pydna, the shield and the sarissa which had borne 
 the literature and civilization of Greece into the wilds of 
 Scythia and the burning plains of Hindostan were them- 
 selves doomed to fall before the mightier onslaught of 
 
 'the good weapons 
 That keep the war-God's land.' 
 
 We have yet to see the successor of Philip and Alexander 
 toiling his weary way, as a dishonoured captive, along the 
 bellowing forum and the suppliant's grove; we have yet 
 to witness the last throes of Grecian freedom, disgraced as 
 they were by the rashness and selfishness of a Diaios and a 
 Kritolaosj but still calling on us to let fall a tear over the 
 last day of plundered and burning Corinth. But we stop, how- 
 ever much against our will, throwing ourselves in full con- 
 fidence upon the judgement of our readers, and looking for 
 their favourable verdict in the cause which we have striven to 
 maintain — that of the high interest and value of Grecian 
 history in all its stages, even down to the latest and saddest 
 days of all. 
 
: VII. 
 
 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME.* 
 
 Eomiscke GeschicMe, von Theodok Mommsen. Three volumes. 
 Leipzig and Berlin, 1854-6. 
 
 The history of Rome is the greatest of all historical subjects, 
 for this simple reason, that the history of Rome is in truth 
 the same as the history of the world. If history be read, 
 not as a mere chronicle of events, recorded as a form and 
 remembered as a lesson, but as the living science of causes 
 and effeetSj it will be found that, if we would rightly under- 
 stand the destiny of what is truly called the Eternal City, 
 our researches must be carried up to the very beginnings of 
 history and tradition, and must be carried on without break 
 to the present hour. Palestine, Greece, Italy, are the three 
 lands whose history contains the history of man. From 
 Palestine we draw our religion, from Greece comes art and 
 literature, and, in a manner, law and freedom. But the 
 influence of Palestine and Greece is, to a large extent, an in- 
 fluence of mere example and analogy ; even where it is a real 
 influence of cause and effect, it is at best an indirect influence, 
 an influence working through the tongues and the arms of 
 strangers. The history of civilized man goes on in one un- 
 broken tale from Theseus to our own day ;t but the drama 
 
 * [This article represents my first impressions, drawn mainly &om its 
 earlier parts, of what, with all its feulte, is undoubtedly a great work. As an 
 Appendix I have added a, later notice, which was written when Mommsen's 
 book was plainly beginning to have an effect in England, which it had not had 
 time to have when the earlier article was written. Perhaps I was also myself 
 only then beginning to shake off the spell with which we in our island are 
 apt to be affected by ' the last German work ' on any subject.] 
 
 + [ I of course did not mean to pledge myself to the personal existence of 
 ThSseuB, but we may fairly take his name as representing the fwot/ncris of 
 Attica. See above, p. 1 19.] 
 
MOMMSEF'S HISTORY OF ROME. 235 
 
 shifts its scenes and changes its actors ; Greece can reach us 
 only by way of Italy ; the Athenian speaks to modern Europe 
 almost whoUy through a Roman interpreter. We profess a 
 religion of Hebrew birth ; but the oracles of that religion 
 speak the tongue of Greece, and they reached us only through 
 the agency of Rome. Among the old states of the world, 
 the history of Carthage and of Palestine merges itself for ever 
 in that of Rome. Greece, like one of her own underground 
 rivers, merges herself also for a while; she shrouds herself 
 under the guise and title of her conqueror^ and at last she 
 shows herself again at such a distance that some refuse to 
 know her for herself. To understand Roman history aright, 
 we must know the history of the Semitic and Hellenic races 
 which Rome swallowed up, and the history of those races of the 
 further East which Rome herself never could overcome. We 
 must go yet further back : we must, by the aid of philological 
 research, grope warily beyond the domain of history or legend. 
 We must go back to unrecorded days, when Greek and Italian 
 were one people ; and to days more ancient stiU, when Greek, 
 Italian, Celt, Teuton, Slave, Hindoo, and Persian, were as yet 
 members of one undivided brotherhood. And, if the historian 
 of Rome is bound to look back, still more is he bound to look 
 onwards. He has but to cast his eye upon the world around 
 him to see that Rome is still a living and abiding power. 
 The tongue of Rome is the groundwork of the living speech 
 of south-western Europe ; it shares our own vocabulary with 
 the tongue of our Teutonic fathers. * The tongue of Rome is 
 still the ecclesiastical langnage of half Christendom ; the days 
 
 * [I should hardly hare written this sentence now, because, though literally 
 true, it is misleading. In an English dictionary, even after striking out mere 
 technical terms and mere pieces of vulgar affectation, there will most likely 
 be as many Komance as Teutonic words. Many of these Romance words 
 are thoroughly naturalized, and may now rank on a level with native 
 English words. Still, even words of this class, which it needs philological 
 knowledge to distinguish from real Teutonic words — ^leoit, 'pay, money, have 
 nothing on the face of them to distinguish them from tease, say, honey — are a 
 mere infusion, and not a co-ordinate element. We may make sentence after 
 sentence out of Teutonic words only ; we cannot make a single full sentence 
 out of Bomance words only.] 
 
236 MOMMSEN'S HISTOKT OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 are hardly past when it was the common speech of science 
 and learning. The Law of Rome is still quoted in our courts 
 and taught in our Universities ; in other lands it forms the 
 source and groundwork of their whole jurisprudence. Little 
 more than half a century has passed since an Emperor of 
 the Romans, tracing his unbroken descent from Constan- 
 tine and Augustus, still held his place among European 
 sovereigns, and, as Emperor of the Romans, still claimed 
 precedence over every meaner potentate. And the title of a 
 Roman office, the surname of a Roman family, is still the 
 highest object of human ambition, still clutched at alike by 
 worn-out dynasties and by successful usurpers. Go eastward, 
 and the whole diplomatic skill of Europe is taxed to settle the 
 affairs of a Roman colony, which, cut off alike by time and 
 distance, still clings to its Roman language and glories in 
 its Roman name.* We made war but yesterday upon a 
 power whose badge is the Roman eagle, on behalf of one 
 whose capital has not yet lost the official title of New Rome. 
 Look below the surface, and the Christian subjects of the Porte 
 are found called and calling themselves Romans ; go beyond 
 the Tigris, and their master himself is known to the votary 
 of Ali simply as the Roman Csesar. Even facts like these, 
 which hardly rise above the level of antiquarian curiosities, 
 still bear witness to an abiding power such as no other 
 city or kingdom ever knew. And, far above them all, in deep 
 and vast significance, towers the yet living phsenomenon of 
 the Roman Church and the Roman Pontiff. The city of the 
 CsBsars has for ages been, it still is, and, as far as man can 
 judge, it will still for ages be, the religious centre, the holy 
 place, the sacred hearth and home, of the faith and worship of 
 millions on each side of the Atlantic. The successor of the 
 Fisherman still in very truth sits on the throne of Nero, 
 and wields the sceptre of Diocletian. It is indeed a throne 
 rocked by storms ; Gaul and German may do battle for its 
 
 * [The Koumau Principalities on the Danube were, when this was written, 
 as indeed they have often been since, one of the standing difficulties of Euro- 
 pean politics.] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 237 
 
 advocacy ; they have done so in ages past, and they may do 
 so for ages to come ; but the power which has lived through 
 the friendship and the enmity of Justinian and Liudprand, 
 of Charles and Otto, of the Henries and the Fredericks, of 
 Charles of Austria and Buonaparte of France, may well live 
 to behold the extinction, however distant it may be, of both 
 the rival lines of Corsica and Habsburg.* Look back to the 
 first dim traditions of the European continent, and we look 
 not too iar back for the beginnings of Roman history. Ask 
 for the last despatch and the last telegram, and it will tell 
 us that the history of Rome has not yet reached its 
 end. It is in Rome that all ancient history loses itself; 
 it is out of Rome that all modern history takes its source. 
 Her native laws and language, her foreign but naturalized 
 creedj still form one of the foremost elements in the intel- 
 lectual life of every European nation ; and, in a large portion 
 of the European continent, they not only form a foremost 
 element, but are the very groundwork of all. 
 
 The history of Rome dies away so gradually into the 
 general history of the middle ages, that it is hard to say at 
 what point a special Roman history should end. Arnold 
 proposed to carry on his History to the coronation of Charles 
 the Great. Something may doubtless be said for this point, 
 and something also for other points, both earlier and later.f The 
 Roman history gradually changes from the history of a city 
 
 * [The Papacy has now seen the extinction, as Italian powers, of both the 
 foreign oppressors of Italy. One has lost the power to do evil, the other has 
 lost both the power and the will. The extinction of the temporal power of the 
 Papacy itself has Indeed followed, but any one who remembers the deathbed 
 of Gregory the Seventh may doubt whether the real power of the spiritual 
 Rome is not strengthened by it^ seeming loss.] 
 
 + [I now feel that Arnold was right, and that the coronation of Charles is 
 the proper ending for a strictly Roman history. Before that point it is impossible 
 to draw any line. The vulgar boundary of A.D. 476 would shut out Theodorio 
 the Patrician and Belisarius the Consul. But when the Roman Empire prac- 
 tically becomes an appendage to a German kingdom, the old life of Rome is 
 gone. The old memories still go on influencing history in a thousand ways, 
 but the government of Charles was not Roman in the same sense as the 
 government of Theodoric] 
 
238 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 into the history pf an Empire. The history of the Republic is 
 the history of a municipality which bore sway over an ever- 
 increasing subject territory ; it differed only in its scale from 
 the earlier dominion of Athens and Carthage, from the later 
 dominion of Bern and Venice. Under the Empire this 
 municipal character died away; the Roman citizen and the 
 provincial became alike the subjects »f Csesar ; in process of 
 time the rights, such as they then were, of the Roman citizen 
 were extended to all the subjects of the Roman monarchy. 
 During the middle ages the strange sight was seen of a 
 Greek and a German disputing over the title of Roman 
 Emperor, while Rome itself was foreign ground to both alike. 
 But this was only the full developement of a state of things 
 which had begun to arise, which indeed could not fail to 
 arise, long before the period commonly given as the end of 
 the true Roman Empire. The importance of the capital, 
 even under the Emperors, was far greater than that of the 
 capital of a modern state. " But it was no longer what it 
 had been under the Republic. When from the Ocean to 
 the Euphrates all alike were Romans, the common sovereign of 
 all ceased to be bound to Rome itself by the same tie as the 
 old Consuls and Dictators. Rome gradually ceased to be an 
 Imperial dwelling-place. The truth of the case is clouded 
 over when we are told that Constantiue translated the seat of 
 Empire from Rome to Byzantion. What Constantino did was 
 to fix at Byzantion a throne which had already left Rome, but 
 which had as yet found no other lasting resting-place. The 
 predecessors of Constantine had reigTied at Milan and Niko- 
 medeia ; his successors reigned at Ravenna and at what now 
 had become Constantinople. Constantius and Honorius did 
 but visit Rome now and then; they came more peacefully 
 than the Ottos and Henries of a later age, but they came quite 
 as truly as passing strangers. And when the seat of govern- 
 ment — always for a large part, sometimes for the whole — 
 of the Roman Empire was for ever transferred to Con- 
 stantinople, it is wonderful to see how truly that city became, 
 as it was called, the New Rome. Greece indeed in the end 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 239 
 
 won back her rights over the old Megarian city ; the Byzan- 
 tine Empire gradually changed from a Roman to a Greek 
 state; but at what moment the change was fully wrought 
 it is impossible to say. Up to the coronation of Charles, the 
 Byzantine Emperor was at least nominal lord of the Old as 
 well as of the New Rome. With Charles begin the various 
 dynasties of German Csesars, which kept up more of local 
 connexion with Old Rome^ but much less of the true Roman 
 tradition, than their rivals at Byzantion. There is at least 
 thus much to be said for the point chosen by Arnold, that, 
 down to the coronation of Charles, there was still one Roman 
 Empire and one undisputed Roman Emperor. Heraclius and 
 Leo ruled Italy from Constantinople, as Diocletian had ruled 
 it from NikomMeia. After the year 800 East and West are 
 formally divided ; there are two Roman Empires, two Roman 
 Emperors. Of these, the one is fast tending to become de- 
 finitively German, the other to become definitively Greek. 
 
 We know not to what point the author of the History 
 before us means to carry on his work. As yet he has carried 
 it up to the practical establishment of a practical monarchy 
 under the first Csesar. He shows how one Italian city con- 
 trived to conquer the whole Mediterranean worlds and how 
 unfit the municipal government of that city proved itself to 
 be for the task of ruling the whole Mediterranean world. 
 This is indeed a subject, and a very great subject, by itself; 
 it is one of the greatest of political lessons ; it is, in fact, the 
 whole history of the City of Rome as the conquering and 
 governing municipality ; what follows is the history of the 
 Empire, which took its name from the city, but which was 
 gradually divorced from it. The point which Mommsen has 
 now reached might almost be the end of a GescMchte von 
 Rom; but his work calls itself a Romische GescMchte, and 
 it may therefore be fairly carried to almost any point which 
 the historian may choose. 
 
 The Roman History of Mommsen is, beyond all doubt, to be 
 ranked among those really great historical works which do so 
 
240 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 much honour to our own day. We can have little doubt as to 
 calling it the best complete Roman History that we have. For 
 a complete History, as we have just shown, we may call it, even 
 as it now stands ; it is not a mere fragment, like the works of 
 Niebuhr and Arnold. And even the ages with which Niebuhr 
 and Arnold have dealt may be studied again with great ad- 
 vantage under Mommsen's guidance. And the important 
 time between the end of Arnold's third volume and the 
 opening of Dr. Merivale's History Mommsen has pretty well 
 to himself among writers who have any claim to be looked 
 on as his peers. In short, we have now, for the first time, 
 the whole history of the Roman Republic really written in a 
 way worthy of the greatness of the subject. Mommsen is 
 a real historian ; his powers of research and judgement are 
 of a high order ; he is skilful in the grasp of his whole sub- 
 ject, and vigorous and independent in his way of dealing 
 with particular parts. At the same time, there are certain 
 inherent disadvantages in the form and scale of the work. 
 Mommsen's History, like Bishop Thirlwall's, is one of a series. 
 Most readers of Bishop Thirlwall must have marked that the 
 fact of writing for a series, and a popular series, threw certain 
 trammels around him during the early part of his work, from 
 which he gradually freed himself as he went on. Momm- 
 sen's work is the first of a series, the aim of which seems to 
 be to popularize — we do not use the word as one of depreci- 
 ation — the study of classical antiquity among the general 
 German public* Such a purpose does not allow of much 
 citation of authorities, or of much minute discussion of contro- 
 verted points. The writer everywhere speaks as a master to 
 an audience whose business it is to accept and not to dispute 
 his teaching. But this mode of writing has its disadvantages, 
 when it is applied by a bold and independent writer like 
 Mommsen to a period of the peculiar character which belongs 
 to the early history of Rome. That history, we need not say, 
 
 * ' Es wird daniit eine Keihe von Handbiicliem eroffnet, deren Zweck ist, 
 das lebendigere Verstandniss des classioheu Alterthuma in weitere Kreise zu 
 bringen.' 
 
Vn.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 241 
 
 is one which does not rest on contemporary authority. That 
 Rome was taken by the Gauls seems to be the one event 
 in the annals of several centuries which we can be absolutely 
 sure was recorded by a writer who lived at the time.* Yet of 
 these ages Dionysios and Livy give us a history as detailed as 
 Thucydides can give of the Peloponnesian War or Eginhard 
 of the campaigns of Charles the Great. Till the time of 
 Niebuhr^ all save a solitary sceptic here and there were ready 
 to give to the first decade of Livy as fuU a belief as they 
 could have given to Thucydides or Eginhard. And the few 
 sceptics that there were commonly carried their unbelief to so 
 unreasonable a length as rather to favour the cause of a still 
 more unreasonable credulity. Till Arnold wrote, Hooke's was 
 the standard English History of Rome ; and Hooke no more 
 thought of doubting the existence of Romulus than he thought 
 of doubting the existence of Csesar. Then came the wonder- 
 ful work of Niebuhr, which overthrew one creed and set up 
 another. The tale which our fathers had believed on the 
 authority of Livy sank to the level of a myth, the invention 
 of a poet, the exaggeration of a family panegyrist ; but in its 
 stead we were, in our own youth, called upon to accept another 
 tale, told with almost equal minuteness, on the personal au- 
 thority of a German doctor who had only just passed away 
 from among men. Niebuhr's theory in fact acted like a spell ; 
 it was not to argument or evidence that it appealed ; his fol- 
 lowers avowedly claimed for him a kind of power of ' divi- 
 nation.' Since that time there has been, both in Germany and 
 in England, a reaction against Niebuhr's authority. The in- 
 surrection has taken difierent forms : one party seem to have 
 quietly fallen back into the unreasoning faith of our fathers.f 
 Others are content to adopt Niebuhr's general mode of 
 
 * See the latter part of the twelfth chapter of Sir G. C. Lewis's Credibility of 
 Early Boman History. It seems clear that Greek contemporary writers did re- 
 cord the Gaulish invasion ; possibly the account of Polybios may fairly represent 
 their version of the event. 
 
 ■)• Sir George Levris quotes, as taking this line, ' Die Geschichte der Eomer, 
 von F. D. Gerlach und J. J. Bachofen,' of which we can boast of no further 
 knowledge. [The same line has since been taken up in England by Dr. Dyer.] 
 
 E 
 
3-42 MOMMSEN'S BISTORT OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 inquiry, and merely to reverse his judgement on particular 
 points. This is the case with the able but as yet fragmentary 
 work of Dr. Ihne.* Lastly, there comes the party of absolute 
 unbelief, whose champion is no less a person than the late 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, t Beneath the Thor's hammer 
 of Sir George Cornewall Lewis the edifice of Titus Livius 
 and the edifice of Barthold Niebuhr fall to the ground side 
 by side. Myths may be very pretty, divinations may be very 
 ingenious, but the Right Honourable member for the Radnor 
 boroughs will stand nothing but evidence which would be 
 enough to hang a man. Almost every child has wept over the 
 tale of Virginia, if not in Livy, at least in Goldsmith. Niebuhr 
 and Arnold connect the tragic story with deep historical and 
 political lessons ; but Sir George Lewis coldly asks, ' Who saw 
 her die?' and as nobody is ready to make the same answer as 
 the fly in the nursery legend, — as Virginius and Icilius did 
 not write the story down on a parchment roll, or carve it on 
 a table of brass, — he will have nothing to say to any of them. 
 ' That the basis ' of the decemviral story ' is real, need not 
 be doubted.' % But that is all ; how much is real basis, how 
 much is imaginary superstructure. Sir George Lewis cannot 
 undertake to settle. 
 
 To that large body of English scholars who have been 
 brought lip at the feet of Niebuhr, but who have since learned 
 in some measure to throw aside his authority, there will be 
 found something unsatisfactory, or perhaps more truly some- 
 thing disappointing, in Mommsen's way of dealing with the 
 
 * Researches into the History of the Boman Constitution. By "W. Ihne, 
 Ph. D. London, 1853. [Dr. Ihne's complete History has since appeared 
 bott in German and English.] 
 
 •(■ [It will be remembered that this was written daring the 'life-time of Sir 
 George Lewis. I still believe that that great scholar went too far in his un- 
 belief, owing to his looking too exclusively to mere documentary evidence and 
 passing by equally important evidence of other kinds. Nothing can be more 
 thorough than Sir Georgb Lewis's overthrow of many of Niebuhr's particular- 
 notions. But I still believe that Niebuhr's general method, if it were only 
 more judieiously carried out, is tiie right one. Mr. Tylor's new sdience would 
 be OUT best guide to many of the iiicts in early Komab History.] 
 
 J Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. ii. p. 292. 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 248 
 
 Kings and the early Republic. The spell of Niebuhr's fascina- 
 tion is one which is not easily broken : it is, in fact, much more 
 than a spell ; the faith with which we looked up to him in our 
 youth was exaggerated, but it was not wholly misplaced. Sir 
 George Lewis has, beyond all doubt, done a lasting service to 
 historical truth by convicting Niebuhr of a vast amount of 
 error in detail — of inaccuracies, inconsistencies, hasty induc- 
 tions, instances of arrogant dogmatism ; but we cannot think 
 that he has shown Niebuhr's general system to be a wrong 
 one. Niebuhr's method, at once destructive and constructive, 
 is surely essentially sound. His doctrine that the current state- 
 ment, probably far removed from the literal truth, still con- 
 tains a basis of truth, Sir George Lewis himself does not 
 venture wholly to deny. That a process^ not indeed of ' divi- 
 nation,' but of laborious examination and sober reflexion, may 
 in many eases distinguish the truth from the falsehood, does 
 not seem in itself unreasonable. Our own belief is that 
 Niebuhr's arrogant and self-sufficient dogmatism did but 
 damage a cause which was essentially sound. Sir George 
 Lewis, while successfully demolishing the outworks, has made^ 
 in our judgement, no impression upon Niebuhr's main fortress. 
 In such a state of mind, we cannot help looking at every 
 page of the early Roman history as essentially matter of con- 
 troversy ; every step must be taken warily ; no assertion must 
 either be lightly accepted or lightly rejected, and no decision 
 must be come to without weighing the arguments on one side 
 and on the other. It is therefore soniewhat disappointing, not 
 to say provoking, when in Mommsen's History of this period 
 we find difficulties passed over without a word, when we find, 
 statements made, which sometimes command our assent, which 
 sometimes arouse our incredulity, but of which, in either casie, 
 we never heard before, and which make us eager to knbXv 
 Mommsen's grounds for adopting them. It is easy to see 
 that Mommsen is quite capable of holding his own ground 
 Against either Niebuhr or Sir George Lewis. We feel sure 
 that he has gone carefully through every point of cbntro'rfe^sy 
 in his own mind ; We only wish that we ourselves might be 
 
244 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 admitted to witness the process as well as the result. We in 
 no way blame Mommsen for a defect which springs at once 
 from the scale and nature of his work. To have treated the 
 whole subject controversially, to have examined every state- 
 ment at length and cited every authority in full, would have 
 swelled the book to an extent which would have been quite 
 unfitted for the classes of readers for which it was in the first 
 instance meant. But the lack of reasons and references makes 
 this part of the book less valuable to the professed scholar 
 than either that which goes before or that which follows it. 
 Mommsen shines most in one part in which he himself exer- 
 cises a 'divination' as ingenious and more sound than that of 
 Niebuhr, and in another part in which the whole business of 
 the historian is to narrate and to comment upon facts whose 
 general truth has never been called in question. The two 
 subjects in dealing with which Mommsen has been most 
 successful are the prse-historic age of the Italian nations, 
 and the steps, military and diplomatic, by which a single 
 city of one of them rose to universal empire. It is greatly 
 to his credit that he should have achieved such striking 
 success in two subjects which call for such different modes 
 of treatment. 
 
 The prse-historic chapters of Mommsen's book form one of 
 the best applications that we have ever seen of the growing 
 science of Comparative Philology.* They show how much 
 we may learn, from evidence which cannot deceive, of the 
 history of nations for ages before a single event was set 
 down in writing. We are thus enabled to go back to days 
 earlier even than those which are, in a manner, chronicled by 
 poetry and tradition. In the Homeric poems we have our 
 first written record of the Greek people.f But Comparative 
 
 * [It must be remembered here, as in some other parts of these Essays, that 
 Comparative Philology was only just beginning to make its way in England 
 when they were written, I have struck out a good deal which was new when 
 I wrote it, but which has now become a thrice-told tale.] 
 
 + [I have here again cut short my argument as being practically the same as 
 what I have said in my Essay on Mr. Grladstone's book. See above, p. 58.] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 245 
 
 Philology goes far beyond the tale of Troy, far beyond the 
 settlement of the Hellenes in the land of the many islands 
 and of all Argos. And its evidence is the surest evidence of 
 all, evidence thoroughly unconscious. Comparative Philology 
 and prse-historic archaiology do for man what geology does for 
 his dwelling-place. Their mode of inquiry is the same. There 
 may be indeed minds to which it would fail to carry con- 
 viction. The phaenomena of human language and the phse- 
 nomena of the earth's strata may be alleged to be the result 
 of accident. Different strata may not really represent different 
 periods ; the whole may be the work of one act of creation, 
 on which the Creator may have impressed such appearances 
 from its birth. So the likeness between Greek, Teutonic^ and 
 Sanscrit may be said to be no likeness at all ; it may be said to 
 be an accident ; it may be said to prove, if anything, only the 
 confusion of tongues at Babel. Certainly neither geology nor 
 Comparative Philology can bring strict mathematical proof to 
 bear upon the mind of a determined objector. Possibly indeed 
 they might retort that geometry itself has its,postulates. When 
 the geologist or the philologer demands a certain amount 
 of blind submission, he hardly does more than Euclid himself 
 Aoes, when he assumes, without proving, certain positions 
 about parallels and angles which, though undoubtedly true, 
 are certainly not self-evident. Geology has made its way ; it 
 has become popular; hardly any one seriously disputes its con- 
 elusions. Comparative Philology is still struggling; and its 
 attendant. Comparative Mythology, is only just beginning to 
 be heard of. The fact is, that to the uneducated mind the 
 first principles of etymology are a great mystery. The real 
 likenesses of words need a certain education to make them 
 familiar ; people catch at purely accidental likenesses, and fail 
 to grasp those which are essential. We have no doubt that 
 many of those who learn both French and German believe 
 French to be the language more nearly akin to English. 
 Comparative Philology only asks for a little faith at the 
 beginning : the believer soon begins to see with his own eyes, 
 and he shortly makes discoveries of his own, which he in turn 
 
246 MOMMSEN'S HIST0B7 OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 finds the outer world slow to put any faith in. And we are 
 not sure that perverted ingenuity does not sometimes do even 
 more harm than unbelieving ignorance. We once came across a 
 book, whose name we have forgotten, which undertook to prove 
 the kindred between the early inhabitants of Gaul and Britain 
 by the likeness between the modern Bret-Welsh and French 
 languages. Now it would be hard to find any two descent 
 dants of the original Aryan stock which have Jess to do with 
 one another than the speech of the modern Cymrian and the 
 speech of the modern Frenchman. But a few traces of primitive 
 kindred may still be seen. And, while Latin of course forms 
 the whole groundwork of French, a few Latin words have, 
 naturally enough, strayed into Welsh. Between these two 
 classes our writer gathered together a rather large stock of 
 Welsh words which are very like the words which translate 
 them in French. Gefl was undoubtedly akin to cJieval ; eglwys 
 was still more clearly akin to eglise. Whether our philologer 
 got so far as to see that gosper and vepres were also akin, 
 we do not remember. But, at any rate, his collections quite 
 satisfied him that the Celt of Gaul and the Celt of Britain 
 were closely akin ; a proposition which nothing could lead 
 any one to doubt except the fact that it had been supported 
 by such a wonderful argument. 
 
 We need hardly say that the Comparative Philology of 
 Mommsen is not exactly of the same kind as that of our 
 Celtic searcher after truth. Starting from the doctrine of the 
 common origin of the Aryan nations, a comparison of their 
 several languages, and of the amount of cultivation which 
 language shows each branch to have reached before it finally 
 parted asunder, enables him to put together something like 
 a map of their wanderings, by which he gradually comes down 
 to his own theme of the history of Italy. After the Asiatic 
 Aryans had parted ofi" to the East, the European Aryans still 
 formed a single people. A step further still shows that the 
 Italians and the Hellenes remained one people after Celt and 
 Teuton and Slave had parted from them, and that they had 
 made considerable advances in cultivation before they again 
 
VII.] MOMMSEiV'S HISTORY OF ROME. 247 
 
 parted asunder, each to occupy its own peninsula, and to meet 
 again in each, through colonization and conquest, in after times. 
 With regard to the earliest inhabitants of Italy Mommsen's 
 general conclusions are these : Ancient Italy contained three 
 distinct races — first, the lapygians in the south ; secondly, 
 those whom Mommsen distinctively calls ' Italians'" in the 
 middle ; thirdly, the Etruscans in the north and north-west. 
 Their geographical position would seem to show that this was 
 the order in which the three nations entered the peninsula. 
 Of the lapygians we know but little ; history shows them to 
 us only in a decaying state, and all that we know of their 
 language comes from certain inscriptions which are as yet 
 uninterpreted. This evidence however tends to show that 
 their language was Aryan, distinct from the Italian,* and 
 possessing certain affinities with the Greek. With this also falls 
 in the fact that in historic times they adopted Greek civiliza- 
 tion with unusual ease. The Italians of Mommsen's nomencla- 
 ture are the historical inhabitants of the greater portion of 
 the peninsula. This is the nation the history of whose tongue 
 and government becomes one with the history of civil- 
 ized man ; for of their language the most finished type is the 
 Latin, and of their cities the greatest was Rome. The Etrus- 
 cans Mommsen holds to be wholly alien from the Italian 
 nations ; their language is most likely Aryan, but that is all 
 that can be said. He rejects the story of their Lydian origin, 
 and seems inclined to look upon Rsetia as the cradle of their 
 race.f He makes two periods of the Etruscan language, of 
 which the former one is to be found in those inscriptions 
 on vases at Csere or Agylla, which Mr. Francis Newman % 
 
 * We are here merely setting forth Mommsen's views, without binding our- 
 selves either to accept or to refute them. We think however that he should 
 at least have noticed the seeming identity of the names lapyges, ApuU, Opici, 
 which, so far as it goes, tells against him. 
 
 + [The latest results of prsehistoric research — in this case quite as important 
 as any documentary evidence — on Etruscan matters will be found in the article 
 on the ' Present Phase of Praehistoric Archaeology,' in tlie British Quarterly 
 Review for October, 1870, p. 470 et seqq.] 
 
 j Eegal Rome, p. 7. It is certainly hard to see how this sort of language 
 can, as Mommsen supposes, have developed into the later Etruscan. 
 
248 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 quotes as Pelasgian. Into the endless Pelasgian controversy 
 Mommsen hardly enters at all. For that controversy turns 
 almost wholly on points of legend or tradition, hardly at all 
 on Comparative Philology. On the other hand, he passes by 
 in yet more utter silence some theories the evidence for 
 which is wholly of a philological kind. We mean the theory 
 supported by Mr. Newman and others,* which sees a Celtic, 
 and specially a Gaelic, element in the old Italian population 
 and that which supposes a race of Basque or Iberian abori- 
 gines to have occupied Italy before the entrance of its his- 
 torical inhabitants, t 
 
 The Italians, in Mommsen's special sense, were then a 
 people closely allied to the Hellenes, and they had made no 
 small advances in cultivation before the two stocks parted 
 asunder. The Italian stock again divides itself into two, the 
 Latin and the Umbro-Samnite, the difference between which 
 he compares to that between Ionic and Doric Greek. The 
 Umbro-Samnite branch again divides itself into the Oscan 
 and the Umbrian, analogous, according to our author, to the 
 Doric of Sicily and the Doric of Sparta. Rome is a city 
 purely Latin, and the head of Latium. The Tiber was at 
 once the boundary of Latium against the Etruscan stranger, 
 and the natural highway for the primitive commerce of the 
 early Latins. The site of Rome thus marks it out as at once 
 the commercial capital of Latium and the great bulwark of 
 the land against the Etruscan. Such was the earliest mission 
 of Rome. It may have been merely by a happy accident 
 that one of the Latin cities was placed on a site which 
 enabled it to take such a mission on itself; it may have 
 been founded expressly to discharge it, either by the com- 
 mon will of the Latin confederacy, or by the wisdom of some 
 clear-sighted founder of unrecorded times. Rome may have 
 
 * Regal Rome, pp. 17 et seqq. 
 
 t [The Basque occupation of Italy, and of large regions besides Italy, seems 
 to have all probability in its favour ; but I suspect that Mr. Newman's Gaelic 
 element proves nothing more than the original Aryan kindred of Latin and 
 Celtic] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 249 
 
 been either the eldest or the youngest of Latin cities. But 
 the chances seem greatly in favour of her being rather the 
 child than the parent of the League. All tradition calls 
 Rome an Alban, that is a Latin, colony. As soon as we get 
 anything like a glimpse of real history, we find Rome essen- 
 tially a Latin city, we find her unmistakeably the chief among 
 the cities of Latium. But Rome is not only far greater than 
 any other Latin city ; she appears as something in a manner 
 outside the League ; we find her in the very position, in short, 
 which was likely to be taken by a younger city which had out- 
 stripped its elders. She is a Latin city, she is closely bound to 
 the other Latin cities ; but she is hardly an integral member 
 of their confederacy ; in the times of her greatest recorded 
 weakness she treats with the League as an equal ; the single 
 city of Rome is placed on an equal footing with the whole 
 body of the other thirty. And, through the advantage which a 
 single powerful state always has over a confederacy of smaller 
 states, the equal alliance between Rome and Latium grew into 
 a practical supremacy of Rome over Latium. Rome clearly 
 held this power under her Kings, and, if she lost it by her ' 
 revolution, she gained it again by the League of Spurius 
 Cassius. Rome and Latium were in form equal allies ; the 
 Hernicans were united in the League on the same terms; 
 but it is impossible to doubt that Rome was the soul of the 
 confederacy during the whole time that it lasted. The 
 JEquian and Volscian invasions again fell far more heavily 
 upon the Latin allies than upon Rome herself. Many Latin 
 cities were wholly lost, others were greatly weakened. All 
 this would of course greatly increase the proportionate 
 importance of Rome ; the Latins would be led to look more 
 and more to Rome as the natural head of their nation, and 
 to seek, not for independence, but for union on closer and 
 juster terms. The demands of the Latin allies at the out- 
 break of the great Latin War are the best comment on the 
 relations between Rome and Latium. Their feeling to- 
 wards Rome was clearly that of excluded citizens under an 
 oligarchy, rather than that of an oppressed nation under 
 
25Q MOMMSEN'S BISTORT OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 a foreign government. They do not ask to shake off the 
 Roman yoke or to forsake the Eoman alliance ; what they 
 ask is to become wholly Roman themselves. They are ready 
 to wipe out the Latin name and the separate being of the 
 Latin League. Their demands are almost the same as the 
 demands of the plebeians in Rome itself hardly a generation 
 earlier. As the Licinian laws ordained that one Consul should 
 be a plebeian, the Latins now asked that one Consul should be 
 a Latin. The Senate was to be half Latin ; the Latin cities 
 would probably have been reckoned each one as a Roman tribe. 
 Terms like these Rome held it beneath her dignity to grant ; 
 but, after the conquest of Latium, the mass of the Latin nation 
 did gradually gain Roman citizenship in one way or another. 
 This is, in short, the constantly repeated history of Rome and 
 her allies, from the earliest to the latest period. Men seek to 
 get rid of their bondage to Ronae, but they do not seek to get 
 rid of it by setting up wholly for themselves ; what they seek 
 is to become Romans, and, as Romans^ to help to rule both 
 themselves and others. The first recorded struggle, that between 
 patrician and plebeian, was in its beginning much more truly 
 a struggle between distinct nations than a struggle between 
 different orders in the same nation. But the demand of the 
 plebeians was, not to overthrow the patrician government, but 
 to win a share in it for themselves. It was only in some des- 
 perate moment, when every demand was refused, that they 
 resorted to the extreme measure of a ' secession' ; that is, they 
 threatened to leave Rome, and to found a new city for them- 
 selves. On the struggle between patrician and plebeian fol- 
 lowed the struggle between Roman and Latin ; but the Latin 
 was driven into a war against Rome only when he could not 
 obtain his desire of incorporation with Rome. The Samnite 
 wars, and the wars with the Etruscan, Gaulish, and Epeirot 
 allies of Samnium, brought the whole of Italy into the state 
 of dependent alliance with Rome. Italy was now latinized 
 step by step; but at the same time the yoke of Rome was 
 found to be no light one. Still no signs are seen of any wish 
 to throw it off, except in such strange exceptional oases as the. 
 
VII.] MQMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 251 
 
 solitary revolts of Falerii and Fregellae. The Italians gradually 
 put on the feelings of Komans ; like the plebeians, like the 
 Latins, they sought not independence, but full incorporation. 
 The claims of the Italian Allies formed the most important 
 political Question of the seventh century of the city. The 
 rights of the Italians, admitted by the best men both of the 
 senatorial and of the democratic party, were opposed to the 
 vulgar prejudices of Senate and People alike. When each 
 party alike had failed them, then the Allies took arms, not for 
 Samnite or Marsian independence, but for a New Rome of 
 their own, a premature republican Constantinople, the city 
 Italy. This New Rome, like the Old, had its Senate, its 
 Consuls, its Prsetors, its citizenship shared by every member 
 of the allied commonwealths. Like the Latins of the fifth 
 century, the Italians of the seventh were at last admitted 
 piecemeal to the rights for which they strove. Every Italian 
 was now a Roman ; save where Hellenic intluenee had taken 
 lasting root, all Italy was now latinized. But by this time 
 vast regions out of Italy had begun to be latinized also. 
 Latin civilization spit^^ 1 over Spain, Gaul, and Africa; the 
 policy of the Emperors tended to break down the distinction 
 between citizen and provincial, and at last the franchise of 
 the Roman city was extended to all the subjects of the Roman 
 Empire. Western Europe became thoroughly romanized ; 
 even the Greek and his eastern proselytes became Roman in 
 political feeling, and learned to glory in that Roman name to 
 which some of them still cleave. In Syria and Egypt alone 
 did the old national feelings abide. Elsewhere, save some wild 
 tribe here and there, the Mediterranean world was wholly 
 Roman. Its unity was constantly rent by civil wars, by the 
 claims of rival Emperors, by peaceful division between. Im- 
 perial colleagues. But from the Ocean to Mount Taurus no 
 Roman citizen thought of laying aside his Roman character. 
 Emperors reigned in Gaul and Britain ; but they were not 
 Gaulish or British sovereigns ; they were still Roman Caesars, 
 holding a part of the Roman Empire, and striving after the 
 possession of the whole. During the whole history of Rome, 
 
252 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 both Old and New, from the first mythical King to the last 
 phantom Emperor, it would be hard to find a city or a pro- 
 vince which, when it had been once thoroughly welded 
 into the Roman system, willingly threw aside its Roman 
 allegiance. Provinces might helplessly submit to foreign con- 
 querors, but they never asserted their own national inde- 
 pendence.* Till Monophysite Egypt welcomed a deliverer in 
 the Mussulman Arab, it does not appear that barbarian in- 
 vaders ever met with actual help from the provincials any- 
 where within the Roman territory. Italy indeed, in the seventh 
 century of our sera, revolted against the Eastern Emperor and 
 gave herself of her own free will to a Frankish master. But 
 her Frankish master himself came as a Roman Patrician, a 
 Roman Csesar, to assert the rights of the Old Rome against 
 the usurpation of the New. Through the whole of this long 
 series of centuries, all who come in contact with the original 
 Romulean city, — the plebeian, the Latin, the Italian, at last 
 the inhabitants of the whole Mediterranean world, — all, one 
 by one, obtained the Roman name ; and none of them willingly 
 forsook it. 
 
 The workings of a law which went on in full force for 
 above two thousand years have carried us far away from 
 Mommsen's immediate subject. And yet we have perhaps not 
 spoken of the earliest instance of its working. Rome, as we 
 have said, is in Mommsen's view strictly a Latin city. He 
 easts aside with scorn the notion of the Romans being a 
 mongrel race, ein Mischvolk, an union of elements from the 
 three great races of Italy. Of the three old patrician tribes, 
 the Titienses were indeed most likely of Sabine origin ; but 
 they were Sabines who had been thoroughly latinized, who at 
 most, as other incorporated nations did in later times, brought 
 some Sabine rites into the Roman religion. The really Latin 
 
 * Whether the so-called revolt of Britain and Armorica in the fifth century 
 is to be reckoned as a solitary exception depends on two very difficult ques- 
 tions : First, How far had Britain and Armorica really become Roman ? 
 Secondly, What is the meaning of the not very intelligible narrative in the 
 last book of Zdsimos? 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTOEF OF MOME. 253 
 
 character of Rome was no more touched by them than when, 
 under the early Republic, the Sabine Attus ClausuSj with his 
 clan and following, were changed into the Claudian gens and 
 tribe. Here then in days totally unrecorded, before the strug- 
 gles of Latin or of plebeian, we find the first instance of that 
 inherent power of assimilation or incorporation on the part of 
 the Roman commonwealth, which went on alike under Kings, 
 Consuls, and Caesars. The legend of Romulus is, in Mommsen's 
 view, a comparatively late one, as is shown by the name of 
 the eponymous hero being formed from the later form of the 
 name of the city and people. The oldest form is not JRomani, 
 but Ramnes, that of the first patrician tribe ; and that form 
 points to the name of the Eternal City as having had in 
 the first days the same meaning as our own Woottons and 
 Bushburies. * 
 
 The other strong point of Mommsen, besides his treatment 
 of the primsBval archaeology, is his treatment of what we may 
 call the diplomatic history of Rome. In Romeo's gradual march 
 to universal empire two great stages are marked, the com- 
 plete subjugation of Italy, and the conquest of Macedonia at 
 the battle of Pydna. Mommsen wholly throws aside the notion 
 that the Roman Senate and People acted through successive 
 centuries on any deliberate and systematic scheme of universal 
 dominion. War and conquest were undoubtedly as agreeable 
 to them as they have commonly been to most other nations ; 
 but their distant conquests were in some cases almost forced 
 upon them, and they often drifted into foreign wars as much 
 through the result of circumstances as from any deliberate 
 intent. It certainly seems to have been so throughout the 
 time of Rome's greatest glory. Rome was at the true 
 height of her greatness, within and without, in the fifth and 
 sixth centuries of her history. The days of her early civil 
 strife were over, the days of her later civil strife had not yet 
 
 * ' So das3 der Name Roma oder Ea/ma vielleicht urspriinglioh die Wald- 
 oder Buschstadt bezeichnet.' 
 
254 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 come. The old political struggle between patrician and 
 plebeian had become a thing of the past, and the far more 
 fearful struggle between rich and poor was still a thing of the 
 future. The Romans of those ages not only knew how to wift 
 victories^ they had learned the far harder lesson how to bear 
 defeat. The victories of Pyrrhos and Hannibal would have 
 broken the spirit of almost every other nation of any age. 
 But the endurance of Rome was never shaken; she could 
 dare to proclaim publicly in her forum, ' We have been 
 overcome in a great battle,' and her Senators could go forth 
 to thank the defeated demagogue* who had not despaired 
 of the Republic. Her political constitution may seem an 
 anomaly ; the sovereigii Senate side by side with the no less 
 sovereign popular Assembly, the Consul all-powerful to act, 
 the Tribune all-powerful to forbid, may seem inconsistent, im- 
 practicable, unable to be worked. But the proof of the Roman 
 system is seen in two centuries stained by nothing worthy 
 to be called civil strife ; it is seen in the conquest of Italy, 
 in the driving back of Pyrrhos and of Hannibal, in tribu- 
 tary Carthage and tributary Macedonia. What the Roman 
 system in these ages really was is shown by the men whom 
 it brought forth ; men always great enough, and never 
 too great ; men ready to serve their country, but never 
 dreaming of enslaving it. What the true Roman national 
 being was is shown to us in the hereditary virtues of the 
 Decii and the Fabii, in the long-descended Scipio and in 
 the lowly-born Curius and Regulus ; we see it allied with 
 Grecian culture in Titus Quinctius Flamininus and standing 
 forth in old Italian simplicity in Marcus Porcius Cato. 
 Rome in these ages bore her full crop of statesmen and 
 soldiers, magistrates and orators, ready to be the rulers of one 
 year and the subjects of the next. But as yet she brought 
 forth neither a traitor nor a tyrant, nor, in any but the older 
 and nobler sense, a demagogue. To this splendid period 
 Mommsen is far from doing full justice ; he understands, but he 
 
 * Mommaen seems to us irtiduly harsh oh M. Telfeiltius T'Art^, as well aa 
 on C. Flaminius. Arnold does them far more justte^. 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 255 
 
 does not always feel ; his narrative constantly seems cold and 
 tame after that of Arnold. We miss the brilliant picture of 
 the great men of the fifth century j* we miss the awful vision 
 of Hannibal ;t we miss the pictures of Gracchus and his en- 
 franchised slaves and of Nero^'s march to the ' fateful stream ' 
 of the Metaurus. Both tell us how the old Marcellus died by 
 a snare which a youth might have avoided; but in how 
 different a strain ! Mommsen gives us indeed the facts with 
 all truth and clearness : 
 
 'Bei einer unbedeutenden Eecognosoirung wurden beide Consult! von einer 
 Abtheilung africanischer Eeiter iiberfallen ; Marcellus, sohon ein Seohziger, 
 fochte tapfer den ungleioheQ Kampf, bis er sterbend vom Pferde sank; C'ris- 
 pinus entkam, starb aber an den im Gefecht empfimgendeu Wunden.'t 
 
 Turn we now to Arnold : 
 
 'Crispinus and the young Marcellus rode in covered with blood and fol- 
 lowed by the scattered survivors of the party ; but Marcellus, six times consul, 
 the bravest and stoutest of soldiers, who had dedicated the spoils of the Gaulish 
 king, slain by his own hand, to Jupiter Feretrius in the Capitol, was lying 
 dead on a nameless hill ; and his arms and body were Hannibal's.'^ 
 
 The policy of Rome during these two glorious ages had, 
 according to Mommsen, for its primary object, first to win, 
 and then to hold, a firm dominion in Italy. Its dealings with 
 the provinces and with foreign states were simply means to 
 secure this primary end. Italy was won ; its various states 
 were brought to the condition of dependent allies. This con- 
 dition deprived them of all practical sovereignty, and made 
 them in all their external relations the passive subjects of 
 Rome. But they kept their own local governments; they 
 served Rome with men, not with money ; and Rome^s con- 
 stant wars gave their individual citizens many chances of 
 winning both Wealth and honour. Doubtless, as they had 
 constantly more and more to do with distant nations, they 
 began to feel a wider Italian patriotism, and to glory in the 
 triumphs which they had helped to win for the greatest of 
 Italian cities. This feeling on the one hand, and on the other 
 
 * Atneld, ii. 2^i. t IWd, Hi. 76. 
 
 J MoDSUiisen, i. 464. § Arnold, iii. 354. 
 
256 ■ MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 hand the occasional excesses of Roman officers in more degene- 
 rate times, combined to bring about that yearning after full 
 Roman citizenship which we have so often spoken of already. 
 The old Latin League was no longer in being ; some of its 
 states had vanished from the earth, others had been incor- 
 porated with Rome. But its place was in a manner filled by 
 those Latin colonies, those children of Rome, on which, for 
 some not very apparent reason, the Latin, and not the full 
 Roman, franchise was bestowed. These were, in fact, Roman 
 garrisons, scattered over the peninsula, serving to watch over 
 the allied states, and to keep them in due dependence. Such 
 was the state of things from the Rubico to the Strait of 
 Messina. But for the full and safe possession of Italy some- 
 thing more was needed. Italy had no natural frontier nearer 
 than the Alps ; Cisalpine Gaul was therefore to be conquered. 
 And, looking beyond the Hadriatic and the Libyan Sea, Rome 
 had to settle her relations with the Carthaginian republic and 
 the Macedonian kingdom. The balance of power was in those 
 days an idea altogether unknown . To a modern statesman, could 
 he have been carried into the third century before Christ, the 
 great problem would have been to keep up such a balance be- 
 tween Rome, Carthage, and Macedonia. No rational English, 
 French, or Russian diplomatist wishes to make any one of the 
 other countries subject or tributary to his own ; his object is 
 not positively to weaken the rival state, but merely to keep 
 down any undue encroachment.* But, from a Roman point of 
 view, for Rome to be strong it was needful that Carthage 
 and Macedonia should be positively weak. It may perhaps 
 be doubted whether the modern system does not bring about 
 just as many material evils as the other ; but the two theories 
 are quite different. A war between Rome and Carthage could 
 end only in the overthrow, or at least the deep humiliation, of 
 one or other of the contending powers. But let France and 
 
 * [We had not then heard the thoroughly Koman doctrine that France 
 could not be Bafe unless Germany and Italy were divided, and that, because 
 Prussia had made conquests — not at the expense of Prance — ^therefore France 
 must needs get a ' compensation ' for the losses of other people.] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 257 
 
 Austria go to war to-morrow, and the result will not be that 
 either Paris or Vienna will cease to be the capital of a power- 
 ful and independent state ;* those who pay the price will 
 be the unhappy scapegoats of Lombardy or Wallachia.f 
 But, in the view of a Roman statesman, Italy could not be 
 strong save at the direct cost of Carthage and Macedonia. A 
 first war with Rome, like a modern war, led at most only to a 
 payment in money or to the loss of some distant dependency; 
 but a second led to the loss of political independence; 
 a third led to utter overthrow. Thus the first Punic War 
 cost Carthage Sicily and Sardinia, the second made Carthage 
 a dependent state, the third swept her away from the face of 
 the earth. The results of the first Macedonian War were 
 almost wholly diplomatic ; the second brought Macedonia 
 down to the dependent relation ; the third swept away the 
 kingdom and cut it up into four separate commonwealths ; 
 the fourth, if it deserves the name, made Macedonia a Roman 
 province. The difference in the processes of the two conquests 
 is a good Commentary on Mommsen's theory. The problem 
 was for Rome to preserve a direct and unshaken dominion 
 over Italy ; everything beyond that was only means to an end. 
 But Sicily and Sardinia were natural appendages of Italy; 
 their possession by a state of equal rank might be directly 
 dangerous. Rome therefore called on Carthage to give them 
 up, Sicily by the terms of peace with Carthage, Sardinia 
 as the price of its continuance a few years after. Their pos- 
 session was almost as necessary as the possession of Cisalpine 
 Gaul. But Macedonia had no such threatening colonies. 
 The first treaty with Philip was concluded nearly on equal 
 
 * [This was written shortly before the famous time when France made 
 war ' on behalf of an idea,' and ended by betraying Verona and Venice to 
 Austria. I was therefore by no means a false prophet. But it is worth mark- 
 ing how in those days the rivalry seemed still to lie between France and 
 Austria, not between France and either Prussia or Germany as a whole.] 
 
 + [Lombardy is now safe ; Wallachia and Moldavia I cannot but think 
 would be better off under the rule of Hungary — perhaps even as Hungary 
 now stands ; certainly when Austria is reunited to Germany, and when Hungary 
 stands forth in her proper place as the central state of south-eastern 
 CSiristendom.] 
 
 S 
 
258 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 terms ; the Macedonian frontier was simply ' rectified ' by the 
 loss of some points and the addition of others. Macedonia 
 too had to pass through a more gradual descent than Car- 
 thage. Even the third war^ the war of Pydna, did not in- 
 volve destruction, or even formal incorporation with the 
 Roman dominion ; for Macedonia had sent no Hannibal to 
 Cannse, and her total humiliation was not so clearly an Italian 
 necessity as the humiliation of Carthage. 
 
 The original Eoman system then was to maintain direct 
 rule in Italy ; to endure no equal power, but to weaken all 
 neighbouring states, to reduce them to what Mommsen calls 
 the condition of clientage. But it is evident that this system 
 could not fail to lead Rome more and more into the whirl- 
 pool of distant conquest. It is just like our own dominion in 
 India, where we have our immediate provinces and our client 
 princes answering exactly to those of Rome. In either case, 
 when intermeddling has once begun, there is no way to stop 
 it. Policy, or even sheer self-defence, leads to one conquest ; 
 that conquest leads to another ; till at last annexation is loved 
 for its own sake, the independent state becomes a dependency, 
 and the dependency becomes a province. The Roman policy 
 of surrounding Italy with a circle of weak states did not 
 answer ; it laid her open all the sooner to the neeessiiy of a 
 struggle with the powerful states which still remained behind. 
 Macedonia was made, first a dependency and then a province ; 
 this only made it needful as the next stage to do the like by 
 Syria. The like was done Syria ; that only made it needful to 
 try to do the like by Parthia, with which the like could not be 
 done. In this last particular ease, Mommsen shows very clearly 
 that the result of the Roman policy was hurtful alike to the 
 immediate interests of Rome and to the general interests of 
 the world. The monarchy of the Seleukids, the truest heirs 
 of Alexander's empire, whatever else it was, was at least, then 
 and there, champion of European cultivation. It was the 
 bulwark of the West against the East, the follower of Mil- 
 tiades and Ag6sUaos, the forerunner of Leo the Isaurian and 
 Don John of Austria. Now the policy of Rome brought the 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 259 
 
 Syrian monarchy to precisely that point in which the King 
 of Antioeh could no longer defend his own eastern borders, 
 and in which it was not as yet either the clear duty or the 
 clear interest of Rome to defend them for him. The effect of 
 this is pointed out by Mommsen in a brilliant passage, 
 which shows how well he understands the relation of his own 
 immediate subject to the general history of the world. 
 
 ' Diese Umwandlung der Volkerverhaltnisse im inneren Asien ist der 
 Wendepunct'in der Gesohichte des Alterthnms. Statt der Volkerfliith, die 
 bisher Ton Westen nach Osten sich ergossen und in dem grossen Alexander 
 ihren letzten und hochsten Ausdrucli gefunden hatte, beginnt die Ebbe. Seit 
 der Partherstaat besteht, ist nioht bloss verloren, was in Baktrien und am 
 Indus etwa noch von hellenischen Elemeuten sich erhalten haben mochte, 
 sondem auoh das westliche Iran weioht wieder zuriiek in das seit Jahrhun- 
 derten verlassene, aber nocb nicht verwiscbte Geleise. Der romiscbe Senat 
 opfert das erste wesentliohe Ergebniss der Politik Alexanders und leitet damit 
 jene riicklaufige Bewegung ein, deren letzten Auslaufer im Alhambra von 
 Grranada and in der grossen Moschee von Conetantinopel endigen. So lange 
 noch das Land von Bagae und Persepolis bis zum Mittelmeer dem Konig von 
 Antiocheia gehorchte, erstreckte auch Boms Macht sich bis an die Grenze der 
 grossen Wiiste ; der Partherstaat, nicht weil er so gar machtig war, sondem 
 weil er fern von der Kiiste, im inneren Asien seinen Schwerpunct land, konnte 
 niemals eintreten in die Glientel des Mittehneerreiches. Seit Alexander hatte 
 die Welt den Occidentalen aUein gehort uud der Orient shieu fiir diese nur 
 zu sein was spater Amerika und Australien fiir die Europaer wurden ; mit 
 Mithradates trat er wieder ein in den Kreis der politischen Bewegung. Die 
 Welt hatte wieder zwei Herren.' * 
 
 But mixed up with much of the policy of Rome's Eastern 
 dealings there was undoubtedly a large amount of what would 
 nowadays be called philhellenic feeling. That the Roman 
 Senate^ as Bishop Thirlwall says, surpassed all recorded govern- 
 ments in diplomatic skill, we can readily admit ; and yet we 
 need not attribute all their doings to some unfathomably 
 subtle line of policy. To hold that Rome acted, through a 
 long series of years^ on a deliberate plan of gradual conquest — 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 59. We are not quite sure however that Mommsen has not 
 too closely identified the Parthian dominion with the native Persian race and 
 religion. The rise of Parthia was, as he describes it, a great reaction of the 
 East against the West. But the Parthians seem to have been not quite 
 beyond the influence either of Greek cultivation or of Christianity. The final 
 blow was struck when a really national Persian state arose again in the third 
 century A.D. 
 
 s a 
 
260 MOMMSBN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 that she systematically made use of her allies, and cast tliem 
 off when they were done with — that she formed a league with 
 a state with the settled purpose of reducing it to a dependency 
 in the next generation, and to a province in the generation 
 after that, — to think all this is really to clothe what is after 
 all an abstraction with rather too much of the attributes of a 
 living and breathing man. The characteristics both of the 
 Roman nation and of particular Roman fiimilies have so 
 strong a tendency to pass on from father to son that Rome 
 does seem clothed with something more like a personal being 
 than almost any other state. Venice and Bern are the two 
 nearest parallels in later times. But the policy even of Rome 
 or Venice still, after all, means the policy of the men who at 
 any given time took the lead in the Roman or Venetian 
 commonwealth. Even in those grave Senates everything 
 was not so much matter of precedent and tradition that no 
 fluctuating circumstances, no individual passions, could ever 
 affect their counsels. States, like individuals — for the de- 
 cisions of states are really the decisions of individuals — 
 commonly act from mixed motives ; and, as most men would 
 feel no small difficulty in analysing their own motives, we 
 may feel still more difficulty in analysing those of the Roman 
 Senate. So much generosity as to shut out all thought for 
 self, so much selfishness as to shut out all thought for others, 
 are both of them the exception in human affairs. To act 
 generously, provided it does no great harm to yourself, is, 
 we fancy, the commonest rule both, with rulers and with 
 private men. There is no need to think that, when Fla- 
 mininus ' proclaiamed the freedom of Greece, it was mere 
 hypocrisy on the part either ©f him or of his government. 
 But we cannot think that either Flamioinus or the Roman 
 Senate would knowingly have sacrificed a jot of Rome's real 
 power or real interest to any dream of philhellenic generosity. 
 It is easy however to see that a strong philhellenic feeling 
 did really exist in the mind of Flamininus and of many other 
 Romans of his day. Greece was then newly opened to Roman 
 inquirers ; Greek civilization and literature were beginning to 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S BISTORT OF ROME. 261 
 
 make a deep impression upon the Roman mind, both for good 
 and for evil. The famous cities of Greece had already become 
 places of intellectual pilgrimage. The natural result was that, 
 for at least a generation, both Greek allies and Greek enemies 
 received better treatment than allies or enemies of any other 
 race. Achaia and Athens were favoured and, as it were, 
 humoured to the highest degree that was not clearly incon- 
 sistent with Roman interests. But the tide must have turned 
 not a little before Mummius destroyed Corinth, even before 
 Lucius ^Emilius PauUus was forced, against his will, to destroy 
 the Epeirot cities. The phsenomenon may well have been 
 analogous to one of our own days with regard to the same 
 land. A generation back men looked for results from the 
 emancipation of Greece which were utterly extravagant and 
 chimerical. The fashion now is to decry everything to do 
 with independent Greece, and to deny the real progress she 
 has made, because impossible expectations have not come 
 to pass. A generation of Mummii has, in short, succeeded 
 to a generation of Flaminini. Mommsen, we should remark, 
 by no means shares or approves of the philhellenism of the 
 victor of Kynoskephale.* He has throughout a way of deal- 
 ing more freely with established heroes, of casting about 
 censure with a more unsparing hand, than is altogether 
 consistent with the sort of vague and half superstitious 
 reverence with which one cannot help looking on the 
 men of old. Indeed, he sometimes passes from criticism 
 and censure into the regions of sarcasm, almost of mockery ; 
 he deliberately quizzes ' Plutarch's men ' v?ith as little Com- 
 punction as Punch quizzes the men of our own time. Con- 
 temporary events have brought this home very strongly to 
 our mind. While reading Mommsen's account of what we 
 may call the Lord High Commissionership of Titus Quinctius 
 Flamininus, we could more than once have fancied that we 
 were reading an attack in some English paper on him whom 
 
 * [Against Mommsen's treatment of these matters I was stirred up to make 
 a protest in my History of Federal Government, i. 64O.] 
 
262 MOMMSEJrSrSlSTORT'oF^OMJE. [Essay 
 
 modern Hellas delights to honour as 6 ■nep(<f>r]ixos Koi ^iXeKKrjp 
 TXahcTTcav* 
 
 Mommsen, following Polybios, makes the battle of Pydna 
 one great stage in his history. Rome's work of conquest was 
 now practically over ; there was now little left to do but to 
 gather in the spoil. She had yet many battles to fight, many 
 provinces to win, but there was no longer any Mediterranean 
 power able to contend with her on equal terms for the lord- 
 ship of the Mediterranean world. And now she began to 
 show how little fitted her constitution was to administer an 
 universal empire. Men commonly look to this period of 
 Roman history for arguments for or against monarchy, aris- 
 tocracy, or democracy. Possibly all such may be found ; but 
 the most truly instructive lesson which it teaches is one into 
 which those questions do not immediately enter. That lesson 
 is one which, to the nineteenth century, has become almost 
 matter of curiosity ; but it was a practical lesson as long as 
 Venice ruled over Corfu and Kephallenia, as long as Vaud 
 obeyed the mandates of the ^oligarchy of Bern. That lesson 
 is this, one well set forth by Mommsen in several passages, 
 that a municipal government is unfitted to discharge imperial 
 functions. Such a municipal government may be either aris- 
 tocratic or democratic; but in either case it governs solely 
 in the interest of the ruling city. It need not be tyrannical — 
 Bern was far from being so; but the subject states, the 
 provinces or dependencies, have no share in their own 
 government, and their interest is not the object of those who 
 rule them. This warning will of course apply to all states 
 which hold colonies or dependencies ; but the cause is not the 
 same. The Roman Government, with its Senate, its popular 
 Assembly, its annually elected magistrates, was a government 
 essentially municipal ; it was fitted only for the government 
 of a single city. It had indeed, as if its founders had foreseen 
 the danger, something of a representative element from the 
 beginning. The ruling principle of the ancient city govern- 
 
 * [This was of course written when Mr. Gladstone's mission to the Ionian 
 Islands was &esh in men's minds.] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 263 
 
 ments, aristocratic and democratic alike, was, we need hardly 
 say, that every member of the ruling body, be that body the 
 widest democracy or the narrowest oligarchy, should have his 
 personal share in the government, that he should give his 
 direct vote in the sovereign Assembly. But the territory of 
 the Roman city spread, at a very early time, over a region 
 far too wide to allow every Roman citizen to appear habitually 
 in the comitia. Had the voting gone by heads, the dwellers 
 in the city would have had it all their own way. This 
 was hindered by the tribe system. Each of the thirty-five 
 tribes had one vote. On the day fixed for an election or 
 for voting on a law, half a dozen citizens from a distant 
 tribe had the same voice as the hundreds or thousands of a 
 nearer one. In fact, as Niebuhr suggests, those half-dozen 
 rural voters might really be the chosen delegates of the 
 hundreds or thousands of their neighbours. Hence the 
 importance of the legislation of Appius Claudius and of the 
 counter-legislation of Fabius and Decius. Appius divided the 
 freedmen, the turha foreniis, the Lambeth and Tower Hamlets 
 of Rome, among all the then existing tribes ; that is, he put 
 the votes of all the tribes into their hands. Fabius and Decius 
 removed them all into the four city tribes, so that they could 
 command four votes only. But, even with this modification, 
 the Roman popular Assembly became, what the Ekklesia 
 never became at Athens, a body utterly unmanageable, which 
 could only cry ' Yea, yea,' to the proposals of the magistrates, 
 and in which debate was out of the question. And, after all, 
 Senate and Assembly alike represented purely Roman in- 
 terests; the AUies, still less the provinces, had no voice in 
 either body. It was as if the liverymen of London were to pass 
 laws and appoint to offices for the whole United Kingdom. 
 Under the municipal system of Rome there was no help. 
 Had Italy and the world been received into the old tribes, or 
 mapped out into new tribes, it would only have made the 
 Assembly yet more unwieldy than it was already. A repre- 
 sentative or a federal system would have solved the problem 
 without any sacrifice of freedom. But a representative system 
 
264 MOMMSEN'S BISTORT OF ROME. [Bssat 
 
 the ancient world never knew; though the Achaian, the 
 LykiaDj though, as we have seen, the Roman system itself, 
 hovered on the verge of it. Federalism was indeed at work 
 in its most perfect form in Lykia and Achaia ; but it would 
 have heen vain to ask Roman pride to allow conquered nations 
 to set up Senates and Assemblies of equal rank with those of 
 Rome herself. The monarchy of the Caesars cut the knot in 
 another way : the provincial could not be raised to the level 
 of the citizen, but the citizen could be dragged down to the 
 level of the provincial. Both now found a common master. 
 The provincials no doubt gained by the change. It is indeed 
 true that the municipal origin of the Roman Empire, and the 
 covert way in which monarchy gradually crept in under re- 
 publican formSj caused the capital always to keep an undue 
 importance, .and made, first Rome and then Constantinople, 
 to flourish at the cost of the provinces. But the evil was far 
 less under the Empire than it had been under the Republic. 
 The best Emperors did what they could to rule in the interest 
 of the whole Empire, and the worst Emperors were most 
 dangerous to those to whom they were nearest. The overthrow 
 of the Roman Republic, the establishment of the Caesarean 
 despotism, was the overthrow of the very life of the Roman 
 city ; but to the Roman Empire it was a bitter remedy for a 
 yet more bitter disease. It proves nothing whatever in favour 
 of despotism against liberty ; it establishes no law that de- 
 mocracy must lead to military monarchy. Athens and 
 Schwyz had to bend to foreign invaders; but no Prytanis 
 or Landammann ever wrought a coup-d! etat. What the later 
 history of Rome does prove is that a single city cannot 
 govern an empire ; that for a subject province one master is 
 less to be dreaded than seven hundred thousand. Those seven 
 hundred thousand citizens were, among themselves, a frantic 
 mob rather than an orderly democracy : as against the millions 
 of Roman subjects from the Ocean to the Euphrates, they 
 were an oligarchy as narrow and exclusive as if they had all 
 been written in the Golden Book of Venice. The experience 
 of the last age of Roman history proves nothing against any 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 265 
 
 form of freedom, be it Athenian democracy, English monarchy, 
 or Swiss or Aehaian federalism. If it has any immediate 
 practical warning for our own time, it is a warning against 
 the claims of overgrown capitals. It has lately become the 
 fashion to call the seat of government the ' metropolis,' and 
 the rest of the kingdom the ' provinces ' ; names unknown 
 to English law, and foreign to all English feeling. If we 
 begin to give eight members to the Tower Hamlets, the words 
 may perhaps begin to have a meaning; and Manchester and 
 Arundel, Caithness and Tipperary, may alike have to look out 
 for a Fabius and a Decius to deliveir them from the turba 
 forensis of a single overgrown city.* 
 
 * [Since this was written we have had another Eeform Bill, which, though it 
 has increased the number of ' metropolitan' members, has not done so to any 
 frightful extent. It has always struck me that, though members should not be 
 given or refused to places in the haphazard way in which they still are, even 
 after the last changes, it would none the less be a mistake to allot members in 
 exact proportion to numbers. I could never agree to jumble together towns and 
 counties, large towns and small towns, without regard to their distinct feelings 
 and interests. And the greater a constituency is, the fewer members it needs 
 in proportion to its numbers, because it has greater means of influencing 
 Parliament and the country in aVaec ways. In the case of London this reaches 
 its height ; every member of Parliament is in some sort member for London ; 
 his mind is open to London feelings and influences in a way in which it is not 
 open to influences from Cornwall, Galway, or Orkney. The money of the people 
 of Galway and Orkney is very likdy to be spent on objects which concern only 
 the people of London ; the money of the people of London is not at all likely 
 to be spent on objects which concern only the people of Galway or Orkney. 
 The interests of the smaller constituencies need therefore to be protected 
 in the House by giving them a proportionately larger number of members. 
 But this object is not fairly reached by giving^ as at present, members purely 
 at random to certain towns, while other towns of the same class are without 
 any. The true solvent is the grouping of the smaller towns for electoral pur- 
 poses. In strictness of speech, London, though the capital of England and of the 
 United Kingdom, is the metropolis of nothing except its own colony London- 
 derry. The parliamentary and vulgar use of the word ' metropolis ' most likely 
 comes from the fact that, while ' London ' would in legal language mean 
 nothing but the City of London, a word was wanted to express that great col- 
 lection of houses which forms London in the popular and practical sense. 
 As for ' provinces,' the application of the name to any part of Great Britain, 
 except in an ecclesiastical sense, is simply insulting. A province is a subject 
 state ruled by a Proconsul, Satrap, or Viceroy. The word has no meaning in 
 an isk.nd every comer of which has equal rights. How far Ireland,. as long as 
 she cleaves to the obsolete pageant of a nominal Satrap, may not be looked on 
 as sinking to the level ot a province of her own free wiU, is another question.] 
 
266 . MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [Essay 
 
 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OE EOME.* 
 
 FlVE-AND-TWENTT years ago the Roman History of Niebuhr was dominant 
 at Oxford. An examination in Livj' was practically an examination in 
 Niebuhr. If any shrank from the task of getting up Niebuhr himself in the 
 crib — few in those days ventured on the High-Dutch text — ^to such Arnold 
 acted as the prophet of Niebuhr. Men whom oceans now separate took in 
 those days sweet counsel together, in college gardens or by the banks of 
 canals, strengthening each other's memory in the wars of the ^quians and 
 Volscians as mapped out by the great authority. But an University is, beyond 
 all others, the place of change, the place where the wisdom of forefathers, 
 and even of elder brothers, is least regarded. Since those days, generation 
 after generation has passed through the world of Oxford, each knowing less of 
 Niebuhr than the one before it. The fall of Niebuhr was, we believe, followed 
 by a period — shall we call it a period of anarchy or of tyranny ? — when no in- 
 spired modem interpreter was recognized, but when men fell back on the text 
 of Livy himself. The Commonwealth, in short, was without a master; Sulla 
 had gone, and Caesar had not yet appeared. Dr. LiddeE's attempt at grasping 
 the vacant post came hardly to more than the attempt of Marcus Lepidus. At 
 last Mommsen arose, and, at the time of our last advices, Mommsen ruled in 
 the University without a competitor. We speak cautiously, because of the 
 swift march of all Oxford doings. We never have any certainty whether the 
 brilliant discovery of last term may not be a sign of old fogyism this term. The 
 statutes passed by acclamation a year back are by this time dragged through 
 the dirt like the images of Sejanus. So we do not affirm positively that Momm- 
 sen is at this moment the supreme authority on Eoman History at Oxford. 
 We only say that he was so the last time that we heard any news upon 
 the subject. 
 
 We half regret, but we are not in the least surprised at the position which 
 Mommsen 's work has won. It is h position which in many respects is fiiUy 
 deserved. Mommsen has many of the highest qualities of an historian. First 
 of aU, he has the qualification which is the groundwork of all others ; he is a 
 thorough, a consummate, scholar. We stand aghast at some of hi^ statements 
 and inferences, but we never catch him in a blunder. On the contrary he is 
 thoroughly master — master in a way of which few men ever have been — of the 
 history, the antiquities, the language and philology, of the people of whom he 
 writes. He has worthily won the right to be heard on any point on which he 
 speaks, and the corresponding right, whenever we think him wrong, to be 
 answered. If we hold him, as we do, to be in many ways an imtrustworthy 
 guide, it is on grounds poles asunder from any charge of ignorance, careless- 
 ness, or inaccuracy. 
 
 To this sterling merit Mommsen adds another merit equally sterling. He 
 always tells his story clearly ; he often tells it with extraordinary force. We 
 
 * [This is printed nearly as it was written, merely leaving out one or two 
 sentences whose point was only temporary.] 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S BISTORT OF ROME. 267 
 
 quarrel with mucli both in his matter and in his manner, but his book con- 
 tains many passages of the highest historic power. To take instances from 
 the parts which, coming last, we have last read, it would be very hard to sur- 
 pass Mommsen's description of the state of Gaul at the time of Caesar's in- 
 vasion, of the warfare of the Parthians against Crassus, and, above all, of the 
 whole career, especially the legislation, of Caesar. We are here fairly carried 
 away in spite of ourselves. We think of another historian of Caesar, and we 
 try to measure the gap, not by stadia but by parasangs. 
 
 In this last quality Mommsen is the exact opposite of Niebuhr. Niebuhr 
 could not tell a story ; he could hardly make an intelligible statement. His 
 setting forth of his own opinions is so jumbled up with his citations and his 
 arguments that it is no slight work to know what his opinions are. He pours 
 forth as it were the whole workings of his own mind upon the subject, and we 
 cannot always tell the last stage from the first. Mommsen, on the other 
 hand, without troubling us with the process, gives us the results in the clearest 
 shape. W-e should very often like to ask him his reason or authority for 
 saying this or that. We never feel any need to ask him, as we should very 
 often like to ask Niebuhr, what it is that he means to say. 
 
 Here then are merits real and great, enough of themselves to account for 
 Mommsen's having many and zealous disciples. And, though we have a long 
 bill of indictment to bring against him, most of our charges are charges of 
 faults which have somewhat of the nature of merits, or which at any rate may 
 easily be mistaken for merits, Mommsen has faults, but we cannot say that he 
 has failings. His errors are never on the side of weakness or defect. They 
 are errors on a grand scale. If Mommsen made history instead of writing it, 
 we could fancy him committing a great crime ; we could not fancy him 
 playing a shabby trick. He might level a city with the ground ; he might be- 
 head four thousand prisoners in a day ; but he would not vex an unlucky news- 
 paper editor with the small shot of a Correctional Police. There is nothing 
 weak or petty about him from beginning to end. His faults are all of them 
 of a striking, of what to many people is a taking kind. Foremost among 
 these faults we reckon his daring dogmatism — the way in which he requires 
 us to believe, on his sole ipse dixit, without the shadow either of argument or of 
 authority, things which we have never before heard of, as if they were things 
 which no man had ever thought of doubting. But we have no doubt that 
 to many people this very daring is attractive. We can fancy its being especi- 
 ally attractive to the present generation of young Oxford men. It gratifies 
 the love of novelty and paradox, and it gratifies it in a grand sort of way. 
 There is a special temptation blindly to follow a man who clearly is not a fool, 
 who no doubt could, if he chose, give a reason for everything that he says, 
 but who deals with things too much in the gi'and style to stoop to give any 
 reasons. Niebuhr gives you elaborate theories about the early history of 
 Eome, but he also gives you, though in a somewhat clumsy way, his reasons 
 for forming those theories. In this there is a certain confession of weakness. 
 But when Mommsen gives you theories equally startling in a calm way as if 
 there never had been, and never could be, any doubt about them, his very con- 
 fidence in himself is apt to breed confidence in a certain class of readers. 
 Mommsen and Niebuhr, in short, remind us of the story of the general who, 
 when appointed to the governorship of a West India island, found that he had 
 
268 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [EssAf 
 
 also to act as a judge. As long as he did not give his reaBons, his Judgements 
 gave universal satisfaction ; but when, fancying himself a great lawyer, he ven- 
 tured to give his reasons, his judgement was at once appealed against. So we 
 suspect that there is a class of readers who never think of appealing from 
 Mommsen, while they would at once appeal from Niebuhr. On ourselves we 
 confess that the effect is different. We see that what Mommsea says is always 
 very clear and very taking; we think it very likely that he has good reasons 
 for what he says ; but we certainly should be better pleased if he gave us his 
 reasons and quoted his authorities. 
 
 We can fancy again that many tastes are pleased, though our ovm are dis- 
 tinctly offended, at the way in which Mommsen deals with various matters, 
 and especially with various persons whom other writers have taught us to 
 reverence. Mommsen can be grave and earnest when he chooses, but he too 
 often chooses to treat things and persons in a vein of low sarcasm which we 
 must look upon aa altogether unworthy of his subject. Whatever and whoever 
 displeases Mommsen is sure to be set upon by him with a torrent of what we 
 can call nothing but vulgar slang. All sorts of queer compounds, of strange 
 and low allusions, are hurled at the heads of men for whom we are old- 
 fashioned enough to confess a certain respect. Why are Pompeius and Cato 
 always to be called names ? Though to be sure, as to Cato Mommsen does 
 not keep on to the end exactly as he begins. At first he does nothing but 
 mock at him ; but towards the end of his tale^Mommsen seems for once to be 
 impressed, with the real grandeur of an honest man. And worse still is his 
 treatment of Cicero. The weaknesses of Cicero's character are manifest, and 
 no honest historian will try to hide them. But surely he is not a man whom 
 it is right or decent to make a mere mark for contemptuous jeers, for his name 
 never to be uttered without some epithet of scorn. This kind of thing seems 
 to us to be bad in every way. It is bad in point of taste and art, and it is 
 thoroughly unfair as a matter of history. 
 
 This last point is closely connected with another fault. We mean Momm- 
 seu's custom of using strange words, and common words in strange senses — 
 words and senses which often seem still stranger in the English than they do 
 in the German. We believe that it is just allowable in German to call Sulla 
 a 'Regent' ; it certainly is not allowable in English. Here, it may be said, the 
 fault lies directly, not with Mommsen, but with his English translator. We do 
 not think so. Monmasen has a way of using words like this * Regent,' words 
 which would pass unnoticed if they came only casually, as if they were technical 
 terms. In fact Mommsen confers titles on his characters out of his own head. If 
 we find Sulla and others systematically called ' Regent,' even in German, much 
 more in English, it is hard for the reader to avoid the notion that ' Regent ' was 
 a real description used at the time. It is still worse when Mommsen constantly 
 speaks of Csesar as 'Monarch' and even as 'King.' We see what he means ; 
 it is meant as a forcible way of saying that Caesar's power was really kingly, 
 that the commonwealth had become a practical monarchy. We suspect also 
 that he means to contrast the despotism of the first Caesar — certainly the more 
 openly avowed of the two — with the more carefully veiled despotism of the 
 second. Still we cannot think that it is a right way of expressing the truth 
 to call Caesar, not in a bit of passing rhetoric, but frequently and deliberately. 
 Monarch and even King. It cannot fail to convey a false idea to the reader. 
 
VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 269 
 
 Mommsen too is not free from the fashionable way of personifying this and 
 that, Revolution and Eeaction and so forth, though he does not carry the 
 fashion so far as many French writers. And he has throughout a way of using 
 words of his own mating or choosing in this sort of technical fashion of which 
 we cannot approve. The Regency of Sulla and the Monarchy of Caesar are only 
 two cases among many. This tendency can hardly be separated from views of 
 facts which we cannot but look upon as erroneous. Mommsen, with the rise 
 of the coming Empire in his head, goes back as far as the Gracchi, and thinks 
 that Caius contemplated, or at least dreamed of, Bomething like kingship. For 
 this we cannot see a shadow of evidence. 
 
 Mommsen *s style, strictly so called, is a matter rather for German than for 
 English critics ; yet the interest which we take in a noble and kindred tongue, 
 a tongue whose European importance is daily growing, compels us to say a few 
 words. We are doubtless behind the age when we pronounce Mommsen to be 
 one of the worst corrupters of our common Teutonic speech. High-Dutch, 
 like English, is just now exposed to an inroad of Latin, or rather French, 
 words, which it seems to be looked on as high-polite to prefer to the tongue of 
 our common fathers. And there is a difference between the two cases which 
 makes the fault on the part of our continental brethren still more unpardon- 
 able than it is among ourselves. An Englishman cannot. speak perfectly pure 
 Teutonic, if he wishes ; a High-Dutchman may. First of all, owing to early 
 events in our history, there is a certain class of Romance words which have 
 been naturalized in English for ages, and against which no one wishes to say 
 anything. Secondly, our language seems to have to a great degree lost its 
 flexibility and power of throwing off new words, so that the stoutest Teutonic 
 pnrist cannot forbid the use of Romance words to express ideas which are at 
 all technical or abstract. We are of course using them freely as we now 
 write. But neither of these necessities is laid on the High-Dutchman. There 
 is nothing in his tongue answering to what we may call the Norman, as op- 
 posed to the Latin or French, infusion into our language, and the number of 
 the purely Latin words introduced at an earlier date is not very large. And 
 as for new words, the High-Dutch tongue, unlike our own, can make them as 
 readily now as it could a thousand years back. If a German wants a new 
 word for a new thought, he has nothing to do but to make it in his own 
 tongue. Yet, in defiance of all this, the German language is being flooded 
 with every kind of absurd French invention, orientiren, iornirt, nobody knows 
 what ; we look for a speedy day when mangiren and diren will supplant essen 
 and sagen. No one is a greater sinner in this way than Mommsen ; he seems 
 to take a distinct delight in corrupting the speech of his fathers to the ex- 
 tremest point. Why talk about ' Insurgenten ' and ' Coneurrenten ' and 
 'Proclamationen' and ' Patrouillen ' ? why give us such foul compounds as 
 'Coteriewesen ' and 'Eabulistenart' ? We have not come across any German 
 writer of the same pretension as Mommsen who is in this respect so guilty as 
 Mommsen. His fellow-worker in the series in which his history is published, 
 Ernst Curtius, the historian of Greece, writes a language which, though per- 
 haps not quite the language of a hundred years ^ast, is at any rate Dutch and 
 not Welsh. ' Lond uns tiitsch blyben,' said the old Swabian ; ' die walsoh Zung 
 ist untrii.' But Mommsen at least acts on quite another principle. 
 
 At the same time we must add in fairness that Mommsen's. etyle^ allowing 
 
270 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 
 
 for his strange words and strange uses of words, is singularly clear, and often 
 forcible. One has ilot with him, as with some German writers, to wander up 
 and down a sentence in hopeless ignorance where one is, and to seek for the 
 verb among thickets and quagmires miles away from its nominative case. But 
 then' this is equally true of Curtius, without the sad drawback of Mommsen's 
 language. Dr. Dickson's translation, as far as we have compared it with the. 
 original, which we have done through many pages, is careftilly and accurately 
 done. He very seldom mistakes his author's meaning, and he commonly 
 expresses it with all clearness. His fault is rather that he sticks so closely 
 to the words of his author that his own sentences are rather German than 
 Bnglish. This makes the English translation a little unpleasant to read. 
 
 But there is a fault in Mommsen's work, far graver than any of which we 
 have spoken, and one which we think is of itself enough to make the book 
 unfit for the position which it now holds at Oxford. It is not too much to say 
 that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong, It is not so much 
 that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to. know that right 
 and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more 
 clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome 
 gradually reduced the States round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence 
 — what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a 
 state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best 
 parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's un- 
 blushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can 
 have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be 
 anything but a fool. Every patriotic Greek, every Koman phUhellen, is 
 accordingly brought upon the stage to be jeered at only less brutally than 
 Cicero himself. His treatment of Caesar is also characteristic in this way. 
 Csesar's still more famous biographer gives himself great trouble to justify 
 every action of his hero, to prove that Cffisar was throughout a perfect patriot, 
 unswayed by any motive save the purest zeal for the public good. All this is 
 ridiculous enough ; still it is, after all, a certain homage paid to virtue. Momm- 
 sen is intellectually above any such foUy ; at any rate he never trifles vrith 
 facts, and it seems perfectly indifierent to him whether Csesar, or anybody else, 
 was morally right or wrong". It is enough for him that Csesar was a man of 
 surpassing genius, who laid his plans skilfully and carried them out success- 
 fully. The only subject on which Mommsen ever seems to be stirred up to 
 anything like moral indignation is one not very closely connected with his 
 immediate subject, namely American slavery. It is however some comfort 
 that he does not, like Mr. Beesly, go in for Catilina. 
 
 We need not review in detail <• book which every one who cares for its 
 subject is likely to have read already. We admire Mommsen's genius, his 
 research, his accuracy, as, warmly as any of his followers can. We hold that his 
 hook is most valuable for advanced scholars to compare with other books, to 
 weigh his separate statements, and to come to their own conclusions. But a 
 book which gives no references, which puts forth new theories as confidently 
 as if they were facts which had never been doubted — above all, a book which 
 seems peifeotly indifferent to all considerations of right and wrong, seems to 
 us, when put alone into the hands of those who are still learners, to be 
 thoroughly dangerous and misleading. 
 
VIII. 
 
 LUCIUS COENELIUS SULLA* 
 
 In a former Essay we touched slightly on some of the political 
 phsenomena of the last age of the Roman Commonwealth, but 
 without going into any details, and without examining in- 
 dividual characters at any length. We now propose to work 
 out rather more fully some of the points which were there 
 casually brought in, especially as they are illustrated by the 
 life and character of the most wonderful man of his genera- 
 tion, the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. 
 
 Among the many writers by whom the time of Marius 
 and SuUa has been treated in our own times, it is not needful 
 to speak here of more than two. Mommsen has dealt with it 
 at great length, and with all his usual power. Of Sulla him- 
 self he has drawn one of his most elaborate pictures, traced 
 with that vigorous hand every touch of which is striking 
 and instructive, whether it commands assent in every detail 
 or not. Here, as elsewhere, Mommsen errs on the side of 
 being wise above that which is written ; a few strokes here 
 and there are plainly due to the imagination of the painter. 
 But when anj' one has, by careful study of his authorities, 
 gained such an idea of a man or a period as those authorities 
 can give him, it is pardonable, and indeed unavoidable, to fill 
 
 * [This Essay, in its original state, had as its heading the names of several 
 works, German and English. But as the part of the "Article which was given 
 to the criticism of those works could easily be separated from the general 
 historical matter, I have cut out all the critical part, save a reference here and 
 there, as being of merely temporary interest. But, for those who may remem- 
 ber the article as it stood in the National Review, I think it right to add that 
 there is not a word in those criticisms, any more than in those which were 
 contained in the article quoted in page 47, which I see any reason to with- 
 draw or regret on its own account.] 
 
272 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 up an outline which cannot fail to be imperfect with a few 
 conjectural strokes of his own. It is a great matter to know 
 clearly what kind of idea of Sulla, or of any other man, is 
 conveyed to the mind of a judge like Mommsen by the 
 writings on which we have to depend. Even when there 
 are points on which we claim to ourselves the right utterly 
 to dissent, the result is very different from the blunders of 
 men who do not read their books with care, or from the 
 solemn emptiness of men who read with all their might, but 
 whom nature has forbidden to understand. - 
 
 Long before Mommsen, in a time indeed which is now per- 
 haps wholly forgotten, Dr. Arnold wrote for the Encyclopaedia 
 Metropolitana that sketch of the later Roman History which 
 has since been republished as a continuation of his imperfect 
 History of Rome. It was a comparatively youthful produc- 
 tion, and it certainly does not show that full maturity of power 
 which comes out in the matchless narrative of the Hannibalian 
 War. But it was the worthy beginning of a great work ; 
 and it is quite in its place as the best, though doubtless an 
 imperfect, substitute for what Arnold would have given us 
 had he been longer spared. It already shows that clear con- 
 ception of the politics of the time which shines forth so 
 •conspicuously in Arnold's finished History ; and, in the part 
 with which we are now concerned, he displays less of that 
 partizan feeling which comes out, perhaps too strongly, in 
 his narrative of the wars of Csesar and Pompeius. And, above 
 all, Arnold showed then, as ever, that pure and lofty morality, 
 that unflinching determination to apply the eternal laws of 
 right and wrong to his estimate of men of every age and 
 country, which distinguishes him above every other writer of 
 history. Perhaps he sets up too high a standard ; perhaps he 
 is now and then hard upon men who may fairly claim to be 
 judged according to their own light. But it is something to 
 have history written by one who does not worship success ; 
 by one who never accepts intellectual acuteness, literary power, 
 or firmness of purpose, as any substitute for real moral worth ; 
 by one who never swerves from the doctrine that the same 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 273 
 
 moral law must judge of dealings between commonwealth and 
 commonwealth, between party and party, which judges of deal- 
 ings between man and man. Never did Arnold rise to a higher 
 pitch of moral grandeur than in his 'character of Sulla himself. 
 He refuses to accept SulWs taste for elegant literature as the 
 slightest set-off against his crimes ; he tells us plainly that 
 the indulgence of intellectual tastes is as much a personal 
 gratification as the indulgence of sensual tastes, and that the 
 one is not ia itself, apart from the ends to which it is usedj 
 entitled to one jot more of moral approbation than the other. 
 We will now turn to our ancient authorities. We have for 
 the age of Sulla, as for so many other important periods of 
 history, no one consecutive contemporary narrative. This is to 
 be the more regretted, as the contemporary materials must have 
 been specially rich. The age of Sulla was an age of memoir- 
 writing at Rome, just like the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries in France. Sulla himself left an autobiography, and 
 so did many other eminent men of the age. But all their 
 writings have perished ; for the age of Marius and Sulla we have 
 no such contemporary stores as we have in abundance for the 
 age of Csesar and Pompeius. Of that age too we have no com- 
 plete contemporary narrative ; but then we have the countless 
 letters and orations of Cicero for the whole time, and we have 
 the narratives of Caesar and his officers for a part of it. Of 
 Sulla's Memoirs we have not so much as fragments ; we have 
 no letters and very few speeches; the earliest orations of 
 Cicero belong to the last days of Sulla. As for writers not 
 contemporary, among formal writers of history Sallust comes 
 nearest to the time, and next to him Livy. We have also 
 Appian's History of the Civil War, and Plutarch's Lives of 
 Marius and Sulla ; there are also numerous allusions to events 
 of the Sullan age both in Cicero and in later and inferior 
 writers.* 
 
 * [There is also the account given in the sketch of Boman History tfritten by 
 VelleiuB in the early days of the reign of Tiberius, and the fragments of the 
 great work of Didn Caasius. VeUeius is of special importance, as he writes 
 in some sort from the point of view of the Italian AMie^. He gives some 
 
 T 
 
274 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 When we say that Sallust was not a contemporary writer, 
 we mean that he could not write from actual personal know- 
 ledge. He was born in B.C. 86, the year of the death of 
 Marius, and eight years Before the death of Sulla. Still the 
 events of Sulla's dictatorship were such as must have made 
 some impression on an intelligent child ; he had plenty of op- 
 portunities of conversing with spectators and actors ; and he 
 had access to the documents, speeches, and memoirs of the 
 time while they were still in their freshness. Sallust there- 
 forCj if we had his guidance throughout, would be an authority 
 all but contemporary. But unluckily the work in which he 
 treated of the Social and Civil Wars has perished. In his 
 Jugurthine War however we have the narrative of the earliest 
 important exploits of the two rivals. We have characters of 
 both drawn by a master's hand ; and we have a speech^ whose 
 substance at least is probably genuine, from Caius Marius 
 himself. Among the fragments of Sallust we have also a 
 speech against Sulla from the Consul Marcus JEmilius Lepidus, 
 and a speech against Lepidus by Lucius Marcius Philippus, 
 both belonging to the year of Sulla's death. 
 
 Of Livy's History of this age we have only the Epitomefe, 
 but these Epitomes form a complete, though, of coursCj far 
 from a detailed narrative. They sometimes help us to facts, 
 at all events to statements, which are not found elsewhere. 
 Thus it is only in the Epitome of Livy that we are dis- 
 tinctly told that Marius and Cinna entered on the consul- 
 ship in B.C. 86 simply by their own will and pleasure, with- 
 out even the form of an election. What we have lost in these 
 
 important details of tiie war, and his characters of Marius and Sulpicius 
 are specially striking. Di6n, a Senator and Consul under the Emperors from 
 Pertinax to Alexander Severus, is in point of date the latest of our authorities, 
 but his thorough knowledge of the Koman history and constitution, and his 
 access to and use of official documents, make him practically nearer to the 
 time than Plutarch or Appian. But of Di&n's History at this time we have 
 nothing but a few scraps, till we get to Sulla's proscription, which an extant 
 fragment describes in some detail. Both Velleius and Di6n seem to believe in 
 a sudden change in Sulla's character, which strikes me as neither historical 
 nor philosophical.] 
 
VIIL] LUOIUS COBNELIUS SULLA. 275 
 
 books of Livy can hardly be guessed at. Tbe carelessness and 
 ignorance wbicb. disfigure his treatment of early times would 
 not have affected his narrative of days so near to his own ; the 
 charm of his style would have been joined with real knowledge 
 of his subject, and, we have every reason to beUeve, with as 
 fair a judgement of men and things as we have any right 
 ever to expect. 
 
 Our main authorities then^ after all, are the later Greek 
 writers, Plutarch and Appian. Plutarch, living under the 
 Emperors from Nero to Hadrian, is about as far removed from 
 the age of Marius and Sulla as we are now from the last half 
 of the seventeenth century. Appian comes a generation later ; 
 Marius and Sulla were to him as Charles the First and his 
 adversaries are to us. They therefore could write of the age of 
 Sulla only as we can write of it ourselves, by examining and 
 judging of such materials as they had at hand. They are 
 therefore merely authorities at secondhand. Had we any con- 
 temporary writers, we should doubtless cast Appian aside as 
 utterly as we cast aside Diodoros when we can get Thucy- 
 dides ; the charm of Plutarch's delightful biographies would 
 probably save him in any case. As it is, we are thankful to 
 them for preserving to us much of the substance of those 
 original writers which they had before them, but which we 
 have not. But in using them we exercise our own judge- 
 ment in a degree which we do not venture to do when we 
 read Thucydides, or when we read those parts of Polybios 
 where he writes from his own knowledge. Here, as in the 
 days of Aratos and Kleomenes, we have to stop and think 
 whence our informants got their matter, and how far the 
 narratives which they read were tinged with the passions of 
 the time. Aratos and Sulla left autobiographies ; there were 
 no autobiographies of Lydiadas or of Marius. Plutarch, 
 though his sound moral sense utterly abhorred Sulla's 
 atrocities, clearly writes on the whole from the SuUan side. 
 Doubtless Sulla's autobiography was one of his chief sources. 
 Hence he is perhaps unfair "to Marius; we may say, almost 
 with certainty, that he is unfair to the Tribune Sulpicius, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 LUGItrS CORNBLIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 whose character is certainly one of the hardest problems of the 
 age. ^One German critic of these times* rules that Appian is 
 to be preferred as an authority to Plutarch. We are inclined to 
 agree with him, on the condition that no censure of Plutarch is 
 implied. Plutarch writes with a special objeetj Appian with 
 a general object. Plutarch tells us plainly that he does not 
 write history ; he writes the lives of great men with a moral 
 purpose ; he uses their actions only to throw light on their 
 characters ; he tells us that menu's behaviour in small matters 
 often throws more light on their character than their behaviour 
 in great matters ; therefore he dwells as much or more upon 
 small anecdotes and sharp sayings as upon the gravest matters 
 of politics. He might perhaps even have gone on to say that 
 an apocryphal anecdote often throws as much light on a man's 
 character as an authentic one. Current stories about people 
 are often, perhaps generally, exaggerated ; but the peculiar 
 qualities which are picked out for exaggeration are pretty sure 
 to show what a man's character really is. All this doubtless 
 lessens Plu^rch's direct value as an historical witness, but it 
 does not at all lessen the merit of his work from his own 
 point of view. Appian, a writer in every way inferior to 
 Plutarch, does attempt, perhaps not Yerj successfully, but still 
 to the best of his power, to write a political history. We are 
 perhaps unduly set against Appian by his narrative of the 
 Hannibalian War, where we can compare him with first-rate 
 historians, ancient and modern. In that narrative he un- 
 doubtedly falls as far below Livy as Livy himself falls below 
 Polybios. But his narrative of the Civil War is evidently a 
 more careful composition ; he doubtless had more and better 
 authorities before him, and he was better able to understand such 
 authorities as he had. He at least tries to master the politics 
 of the time, and we owe to him several pieces of information 
 which are of great importance in illustrating them. Thus it is 
 from him alone that we hear of the marked separation between 
 the urban and the ruyal citizens during the tribuneship of 
 
 * [Lucius Cornelius Sulla : eine Biografie. Von Dr. Thaddseus Lau. 
 Hamburg, 1855.] 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 277 
 
 Saturninus, and of the strange temporary alliance between the 
 aristocracy and the mob of the Forum. On the whole, Appian 
 seldom contradicts Plutarch, though he often explains his 
 difficulties and fills up his blanks. On the other hand, we 
 must add that in the European part of the Mithridatic War 
 Plutarch had an advantage of local knowledge above all 
 writers of any age. Sulla's two great battles, Chaironeia and 
 Orchomenos, were both fought in Plutarch's native province, 
 and one of them close to his native town. 
 
 Such are the authorities, partly fragmentary, partly second- 
 hand, from which we have to gather up our knovvledge of this 
 remarkable period, and of the two remarkable men who were 
 the leading actors in it. We may fairly wish that we bad 
 fuller and more thoroughly trustworthy accounts ; but, com- 
 pared with our knowledge of some other ages, we have reason 
 to be thankful for what we have. There is quite enough, we 
 think, if it be carefully and critically weighed, to enable us to 
 put together a fairly accurate picture both of Marius and Sulla 
 personally, and of the iage in which they lived. 
 
 In a former Essay a general sketch was given of the relations 
 which existed between the Roman Commonwealth and the states 
 which stood to her in various degrees of subjection or dependent 
 alliance. We there left Rome, after the victory of Pydna, still 
 far from possessing the universal empire of after days, but 
 already without a rival on equal terms in the lands round 
 , the Mediterranean. In the sixty years between the battle of 
 Pydna and the first appearance in history of Marius and Sulla, 
 the Roman dominion had been greatly extended, but it may be 
 doubted whether the real power of Rome had been at all 
 increased in proportion. We left Carthage still a flourishing 
 city, internally free, if externally dependent on Rome ; we left 
 Achaia still a free confederation, whose dependence was in 
 theory even slighter than that of Carthage. Now those free 
 states have sunk into the Roman provinces of Africa and 
 Achaia, and the great cities of Carthage and Corinth have 
 vanished in one year from the face of the earth. Pergamos, 
 
278 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 then a powerful kingdom, a cherished ally of Rome, is now 
 the Roman province of Asia. Macedonia, which, on the over- 
 throw of her King, had received a mockery of freedom, is now 
 a province also. The Roman power was now fast advancing 
 in Gaul, and Roman colonies were beginning to be planted 
 beyond the Alps. Numidia still kept her Kings, but after 
 Massinissa they were the vassals rather than the allies of 
 Rome. Syria, Egypt, Mauritania, were the only Mediter- 
 ranean kingdoms which still kept any share of independ- 
 ence. Republican freedom lived on only in the Lykian 
 Confederation and in a few outlying Greek islands and cities. 
 But each of Rome's territorial acquisitions gave her a new 
 frontier to defend, and new enemies to defend it against. 
 Rome was no longer threatened by Gaulish invaders, but 
 Roman Gaul had to be defended against independent Gauls 
 and wandering Germans. Macedonia was no longer the 
 oppressor of Greece and the rival of Rome ; but Rome had 
 now to do Macedonia's old duty of guarding the civilized 
 world against the Barbarians of Thrace and Moesia. Rome 
 had now firmly planted her foot on the Asiatic mainland; 
 but she now had to do for herself what Pergamos had once 
 done for her, to keep in check the rising and reviving powers 
 of the further East. The municipal system of Rome, admir- 
 able as it was as the goverment of a single city and its 
 immediate territory, was wholly unfit either to administer so 
 vast a dominion, or to carry on the wars which its possession 
 constantly brought with it. The conduct of a war fellj by 
 Roman law, to one of the Consuls of the year. Now, to say 
 nothing of the not uncommon case of actual corruption or 
 cowardice, it clearly would often happen that a Consul who 
 was quite fit to be the civil chief of the commonwealth, who 
 was quite fit to carry on a war of the old local Italian kind, 
 would utterly break down when sent to carry on war in 
 distant lands against unknown and adventurous enemies. 
 Hence a Roman war of this period commonly begins with 
 two or three years of defeat and disgrace, followed by com- 
 plete victory as soon as the right man, Flamininus or Scipio 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 279 
 
 or Metellus or Marius, is sent to retrieve the blunders or the 
 treachery of his predecessors. The cause is plain enough. 
 The People of Rome, till they became open to bribes, were 
 quite fit to choose ordinary magistrates for their own com- 
 monwealth ; they were not fit to choose generals and adminis- 
 trators for the whole civilized world. 
 
 Within the commonwealth matters were worse still. The 
 old distinctions of patrician and plebei'an — distinctions whose 
 historical and religious origin did something to lessen their 
 bitterness — had utterly passed away. The glorious age of 
 harmony and victory which followed their abolition had now 
 passed away also. Instead of patricians and plebeians, we 
 now see the nobles and the people, the rich and the poor. 
 The nobles were fast shrinking up into a corrupt and selfish 
 oligarchy. The people were fast sinking into a venal and 
 brutal mob. The old plebeian yeomanry, the truest glory of 
 Rome, were fast dying out ; their little farms were swallowed 
 up in vast estates tilled by slaves ; and the Consul or Tribune 
 who spoke to the Quirites in the Forum now commonly spoke 
 to a mongrel rabble of naturalized strangers and enfranchised 
 bondsmen. The Italian Allies, who had done so much for 
 Rome's greatness, were still legally free, but they were exposed 
 to all kinds of irregular oppression. Now indeed they were 
 beginning to ask for Roman citizenship, and to see their 
 righteous claims turned into a means to help on the schemes of 
 political parties at Rome. The two Gracchi had done what 
 they could to bring back a better state of things. Both of 
 them had perished, and the blood of Tiberius was the first- 
 fruits of the long civil wars and massacres of Rome. Step by 
 step, the little, that Caius had really done was undone by an 
 encroaching oligarchy, by a thoughtless and ungrateful people. 
 The old constitution was thoroughly worn out ; the theoretical 
 sovereignty of the People was used only to seal its own 
 bondage and degradation; the wrongs of the Allies were 
 making themselves heard more and more loudly. Subjection 
 to the true Roman People, to the descendants of their con- 
 querors, might perhaps have been borne; but subjection to 
 
280 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 the vile populace who now filled the Eoman Forum was a 
 bondage too galling for the countrymen of Lars Porsena and 
 Caius Pontius. Still the Italians could at least make their 
 complaints heard ; but the provincials had to suffer in silence, 
 or to seek a mockery of justice from courts where the oppressor 
 was judged by the partners of his guilt. Such was the state 
 of the Roman commonwealth at the beginning of the memor- 
 able war with Jugurtha. It may be that, as Niebuhr says, we 
 attribute an undue importance to that war. It may be that 
 it was really only one of many like struggles, and that it 
 only looks greater because it alone happens to have been 
 chosen for a monograph by a great historian. Yet it is hard 
 to believe that many of the barbarian chiefs with whom Rome 
 had to strive on her vast frontier could have rivalled Jugurtha, 
 either in his crimes, in his undoubted natural powers, or in 
 the advantages of his half- Roman education. And however 
 this may be, the Jugurthine war must ever be memorable as 
 the first field on which Caius Marius and Lucius Sulla showed 
 themselves to the eyes of after ages. 
 
 These two men, of whom each alike may be called at once the 
 preserver and the destroyer of his country, were born in widely 
 difierent ranks, but both were men who rose wholly by their 
 own powers. Marius was by birth a man of the people in the 
 best sense ; he sprang neither from the proud nobility nor yet 
 from the low populace of the Forum. He was a yeoman's son* 
 
 * This seems, on the whole, pretty well to express the position of the family 
 of Marius. Mommsen surely goes too far in making him the son of a poor 
 labourer {eines armen TagelShner's Sohn). Marius married a Julia ; he most likely 
 married her late in life, when he had already risen to distinction : still one can 
 hardly fancy a Julia sinking, in any case, so low as the son of a day-labourer. 
 There is moreover no sign of his ever being in difficulties for want of money. 
 That quickly vanishing class among ourselves, intermediate between the 
 higher farmers and the smaller gentry, would perhaps, better than any other, 
 answer to his real position. Such a man may have even reached the equestrian 
 census, — ' natus equestri loco,' says VeUeius, which it is dangerous to change 
 into ' agresti,' — and yet have been looked down on by the nobles for his rustic 
 breeding and utter want of family honours. 
 
 [The whole portrait of Marius given by Velleius (ii. il) is very striking. 
 ' C Marius, natus equestri loco, hirtus atque borridus, vitaqtie sa/nctvs, 
 
Vm.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 281 
 
 in the territory of the Volscian town of Arpinum, whose citi- 
 zens had been admitted to the full Roman franchise only thirty 
 years before his birth. Family honours he had none, liberal 
 education he had none ; his temper was rude and coarse, and 
 on provocation brutally ferocious ; he had little eloquence or 
 skill in civil affairs, but he was not without a certain cunning, 
 with which he tried to supply their place. On the other hand, 
 he was a good soldier, a good officer, and we see no reason why 
 we should not add, a good general. He rose from the ranks to 
 his six consulships mainly^ if not wholly, by his own merit. 
 And to his new rank he carried with him many of the virtues 
 of the state of life from which he rose : his morals were pure ; 
 he was a stern punisher of vice in others,* and the determined 
 foe of luxury and excess of every kind. Above all, his sym- 
 pathies lay wholly with the best element which was still left 
 among the inhabitants of Italy. The villager of Arpinum, whose 
 grandfather had not been a full citizen, felt with the remnant 
 of the old rural plebeians ; still more strongly perhaps did he feel 
 with the unenfranchised Allies. If the daring plebeian bearded 
 the nobles to their faces, the stout yeoman looked with no favour 
 on the law which distributed corn among the idle populace of 
 the city. The one act of his life which looks like truckling to 
 the mere mob is capable of another meaning. Hitherto no one 
 had served in the Roman army who had not some stake in the 
 Roman state ; Caius Marius was the first to enlist everybody 
 who came. To him we may well believe that fighting and 
 ploughing seemed the only callings worthy of a citizen; to 
 turn lazzaroni into soldiers might seem a charitable work ; if 
 they died, the commonwealth was well rid of them ; if they 
 lived through the campaign, he had turned useless citizens 
 into useful ones. The language of satire is not always the 
 language of truth, but certainly no saying was ever truer 
 than the noble lines of Juvenal, which set forth the glory and 
 
 quantum beUo optimus, tantuiu pace pessimus, immodicus gloriee, insatiabiliB, 
 impotens, semperque inquietus.'] 
 
 * See the atoiy of Trebonius and Lusius in Plutarch, Marius 14. 
 
282 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 happiness of Marius, had he never shown himself on any stage 
 but his own element, the field of battle.* 
 
 We will now turn to his rival. Lucius Cornelius Sulla had 
 in his veins some of the oldest and proudest blood of Rome, and 
 yet he owed almost as little to hereditary descent as Marius 
 himself. He was a patrician of the patricianSj a member of 
 that great Cornelian Gens which gave Rome her Cossi and her 
 Scipios, but his immediate forefathers were obscure, and his 
 inherited wealth was probably smaller than that of the Volscian 
 yeoman. Men might almost have looked to see him take the 
 popular side, as that which was more natural to his position than 
 the side of the nobles. But he was twenty years younger than 
 Marius; his rival was committed to the one party, and he could 
 become great only as the chief of the other. But neither rivalry 
 with Marius nor the desire of personal greatness was at all the 
 ruling passion in the heart of Sulla. If any man ever was a 
 born aristocrat, he was one. Amidst all his vices and crimes, 
 we cannot help yielding a certain admiration to the sincere, we 
 might almost say disinterested, steadiness with which he clave 
 to the political party which he had chosen. Sulla was not 
 exactly ambitious, at least he at all times loved pleasure better 
 than powerj he utterly looked down on his fellow-creatures, and 
 could not stoop to the ordinary arts of the demagogue. Had 
 it been otherwise, he might no doubt have risen to sovereign 
 power by the same course as Dionysios and Csesar. His 
 genius both for war and for politics was consummate ; but he 
 loved ease and luxury better than either ; he took to public 
 life as it were by fits and starts, and he at least professed to 
 have been driven into the Civil War without any choice of his 
 own. But, when he was once fairly on the scene, he carried out 
 his object without flinching. That object was the restoration 
 of what he held to be the old, uncorrupted, aristocratic govern- 
 
 * Juvenal, x. 298. 
 
 ' Quid illo oive tulisset 
 Hatura in terris, quid Boma beatius uniquam, 
 Si oircumduoto oaptivorum agmine, et omni 
 Bellorum pomp4, animam exhalSsset opimam, 
 Quum de Teutonioo vellet desoendere ourru ! ' 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 283 
 
 ment of Rome. To bring that about, neither law nor con- 
 science stood in his way. He was not cruel in the sense of 
 delighting in human suffering; his natural character indeed 
 is said to have been eminently the reverse. He was easily 
 moved to pity ; lie was capable of love, perhaps of friendship, 
 in a high, degree. But he stuck at no sort of crime which 
 could, even indirectly, tend to compass his ends. ' Stone dead 
 hath no fellow;' so he got rid of his prisoners and his political 
 opponents by the most fearful massacres in European history. 
 And more than this ; as long as it suited his purpose, he 
 winked at crimes of every kind in those whom he thought 
 likely to be won by such licence to be useful tools for bis 
 purpose. An unscrupulous partizan was worth having; for 
 the sake of such an one he would add names to the pro- 
 scription-list which his own political ends would not have 
 placed there. We may believe that Marius thoroughly 
 enjoyed a massacre of his enemies, but that he would have 
 shrunk from the wanton murder of any man who was not 
 his enemy. Sulla took no pleasure in bloodshed,* but he 
 would shed any amount of blood, guilty or innocent, which 
 was likely to serve his ends. When his object was once 
 gained, his cruelties came to an end. There is nothing in the 
 rule of Sulla like the frantic tyranny of some of the Emperors, 
 or of some Italian tyrants of later days. Nero lighted up 
 Rome with burning Christians ; Gian-Maria Visconti amused 
 himself with hunting his subjects through the streets with 
 bloodhounds. Sulla was never guilty of crimes of so foolish 
 a kind. He did not kill people for mere sport, neither did he 
 put them to death by torture, f To be sure, even when the 
 
 * Another German biographer of Sulla says : — ' Aber es ist ein Untersohied 
 zu machen, zwischen jener muthwilligen Grausamkeit, welohe sich ihrer 
 TJnthaten erfreut, oder aus Kachsucht oder zur Befriedigung einer andern 
 kleinichen Leidenschaft mordet, und zwischen der Grausamkeit, welohe, um 
 einen grossen, an sich oder in den Augen des Handelnden, lobliohen Zweck 
 zu erreichen, kein Opfer fiir zu gross halt.' (Zacharia, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, 
 177 ; Mannheim, 1850.) The words are tinged with the author's spirit of 
 apology for the crimes of Sulla, but they contain much truth. 
 
 t Marcus Marius Gratidiauus was put to death in a horrible way during 
 the proscription, but this was the private brutality of Catilina. That it was 
 
284 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 prosoription was over, he ever and anon reminded the People 
 that they had given him power of life and death. When 
 Ofella, one of his best officers, sued for the consulship in an 
 illegal manner, Sulla had him cut down before all men in 
 the Forum. By a more imjustifiable stretch of power, after 
 he had laid down his dictatorship, he caused Granius of 
 Puteoli to be strangled before his eyes for attempting to 
 shirk or embezzle the local contribution to the rebuilding of 
 the Capitol.* Of these two acts, the latter was a mere murder 
 done by a private man, but it was a murder with a purpose, 
 and that a public purpose. Through the whole of Sulla's 
 tyranny there is nothing passionate ; it is not so much cruelty 
 as recklessness of human life ; it is the cold, deliberate, ex- 
 terminating, policy of a man who has an object to fulfil, and 
 who will let nothing stand in the way of that object. We do 
 not say this in justification^ or even in palliation. The cold- 
 blooded, politic, massacres of Sulla seem to us to imply a 
 lower moral state than the ferocious revenge of Marius, or even 
 than the bloody madness of Caius or Nero. In these latter 
 cases indeed the very greatness of the crime becomes its own 
 protection. Its doers seem to be removed out of the class of 
 responsible human beings into the class of madmen or of wild 
 beasts. But the massacres of Sulla were the deliberate acts 
 of a man whose genius as scholar, statesman, and general 
 altogether bars him from the poor excuse of those tyrants 
 whom we charitably believe to have lost their senses. That 
 sudh a man should have done such deeds puts human nature 
 in a far more fearful light than it is put by the frantic crimes 
 
 done by Sulla's order is not to be inferred from the few words of Livy's 
 Epitomator. 
 
 * The story of Ofella is given most fully by Appian (i. loi), who supplies 
 the legal objection to Ofella's candidature, which is passed by in Plutarch 
 and in the Epitome of Livy. One of Sulla's laws required that men should 
 rise to the offices of the state in regular order : the Praetor must have served 
 as ^dile, and the Consul must have served as Prsetor. Quintus Ofella sued for 
 the consulship per saltum, without having been Praetor or .^dile. Sulla bade 
 him desist ; and when he continued his canvass, he ordered a centurion to kill 
 him. 
 
VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 285 
 
 of silly youths whose heads were turned by the possession of 
 absolute power. 
 
 It is a very paltry and superficial view to attribute the acts 
 of Sulla to 'passion' and 'fury,'' and to hold that his end 
 throughout was merely his own self-indulgence. Those who 
 talk in this way must have read history carelessly indeed. 
 That Sulla loved pleasure better than power we have already 
 said ; but, when once roused to political life, he had a political 
 object which he followed out unflinchingly. His old patrician 
 blood forbade him alike to aspire to be a King and to sink 
 to be a demagogue. He would win back for the Roman 
 aristocracy all its ancient pride and power. He would have 
 no more turbulent mobs, no more factious Tribunes ; he would 
 have no more discontented Allies claiming to intrude them- 
 selves into the Roman Senate or the Roman Forum. The 
 Senate of Rome should again rule Italy and the world. Etru- 
 ria, Samnium, Lucania, dared to set themselves in array against 
 the majesty of the Roman commonwealth. The strong arm 
 of the Dictator came down on the rebels with the heaviest 
 vengeance. Prisoners of war were slaughtered by thousands ; 
 cities were swept away and whole districts were wasted ; the 
 revolted nations were, as far as nations can be, swept from 
 the face of the earth. Their annihilation secured Rome's 
 supremacy, and their lands stood ready to reward the faithful 
 soldiers of Rome and her Dictator. Inside the walls of Rome 
 he followed out as vigorous a policy to secure the power of 
 the Senate as he followed outside them to secure the power 
 of Rome over Italy. Every tradition of the past was bound 
 up in the honoured formula of the Senate and People. To 
 have taken away all power from the People, to have made 
 Rome like a narrow Greek oligarchy, would have been the act, 
 not of a restorer but a revolutionist. But Sulla could lessen 
 the power of the popular element by every restriction which 
 savoured of antiquity, and he could do much to make the 
 people degraded and subservient. At one blow he enfran- 
 chised ten thousand slaves whom his proscription had set free 
 from their masters. They bore his name, they owed to him 
 
286 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 their political being; ten thousand citizens, ten thousand 
 Comelii, were at once called into being to guard his person 
 and to vote as he bade them. A Fabius or a Scipio would 
 have shrunk with horror from tainting the Roman People 
 with such a plague-spot. But Sulla was an aristocrat of the 
 school of the old Claudii ; he acted in the spirit of the Censor 
 Appius when he scattered the freedmen through all the tribes. 
 A degraded and mongrel people would be more subservient 
 than the genuine, high-spirited plebeians of old. What Sulla 
 least wished to see was a Commons of the old type, strong in 
 the assertion of their own rights, but reverencing law and order ; 
 acting under the guidance of worthy leaders, but not prepared 
 to be the satellites and bravos of any man. All his political 
 legislation -tended at once to degrade the popular character 
 and to lessen the popular power. Legislation was transferred 
 from the Assembly of the Tribes to that of the Centuries, where 
 property had more weight than numbers ; and even this more 
 trustworthy body was allowed to vote only on such proposals 
 as were laid before it by the Senate. The tribuneship was 
 too old an institution to be swept away, but it might be 
 made harmless. No man could now be Tribune who had not 
 been at least Quaestor ; the Tribune could no longer summon 
 assemblies and propose laws ; he who had been Tribune could 
 not aspire to the loftier oflSces of Prsetor and Consul. Men 
 could henceforth only rise to the higher magistracies by regu- 
 larly passing through the lower, with fixed intervals between 
 each. The six successive consulships of the elder Marius, the 
 consulship of the younger at the age of twenty, were thus 
 wholly shut out. In everything, in the spirit if not in the 
 letter, Rome was to go back to what she was before the Lici- 
 nian Laws, almost to what she was before the Deeemvirate. 
 
 In all this Sulla acted strictly as an aristocratic leader. 
 He did not aspire to kingship, or even to tyranny. He 
 founded no dynasty. He had children and kinsmen ; but he 
 did nothing to secure for them any superiority above other 
 Roman nobles. He did not even keep his own power for his 
 lifetime. Created Dictator, with absolute authority for an 
 
YIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 287 
 
 iinlimite^ time, lie wielded his boundless powers with terrible 
 eifect till he looked on his work as done. He then laid down 
 his office ; he offered to account to all the world for his 
 actions ; and he withdrew to enjoy those pleasures, intellectual 
 and sensual, which he loved better than governing the world. 
 His crimes were greater in degree than those of either Csesar 
 or of either Buonaparte ; but there is something in all this 
 which sets him above any of the four. To say that Sulla had 
 a consciencej to say that he followed any object because he 
 thought it right, might be going too far; but he had an 
 object before him which was not wholly selfish ; he was above 
 the vulgar ambition of becoming a King and the father of 
 Kings. When the man who had killed^ — the reckoning is 
 Appian's — fifteen Consulars, ninety Senators, two thousand six 
 hundred knights, who had confiscated their goods and declared 
 their children incapable of office, who had moreover wasted 
 whole cities and lands, and had slaughtered a hundred thou- 
 sand Romans and Italians either in his battles or in massacres 
 after his battles, — when the man who had done all this ofiered 
 to explain to any one his reasons for doing it, and walked home 
 without a single lictor, — there was something in all this of 
 mockery, somethiag of utter contempt for mankind ; but there 
 was also something of a feeling that he had not been working 
 and sinning only for his own gain or his own vanity ; there 
 was a kind of patriotism in the man, perverted and horrible 
 as was the form which it took. 
 
 The private life of Sulla was as wide a contrast as can be 
 thought of to the private life of Marius. Everything we hear 
 of Marius leads us to believe- that his household was an old 
 Roman household of the best kind. But he was utterly with- 
 out intellectual tastes or acquirements of any sort. Sulla, on 
 the other hand, was a man of taste, a man of learning ; he 
 studied both Greek and Latin authors ; he busied himself in 
 writing the history of his own times down to the day of his 
 death. He was a sensual and intellectual voluptuary ; he was 
 well pleased to unbend, to leave public afiairs behind him ; 
 he loved sportive and merry conversation ; he l9ved the com- 
 
288 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 pany of actors and artists of all kinds, from men of high 
 character like the great Quintus Roseius down to the lowest 
 instruments, male and female, of his pleasures and his amuse- 
 ments. He indulged, seemingly through his whole life, in 
 every form of sensual vice. And yet even his domestic life is 
 not without its redeeming features. How far he was capable 
 of friendship, as distinguished from political partizanship, we 
 can hardly judge. Certainly towards his partizans, Pom- 
 peius, Crassus, and the viler Catilina, his error was on the 
 side of indulgence. But the strangest part of his character 
 in this way is shown in his relations to his successive wives. 
 For an unfaithful husband to be also an affectionate husband is 
 no very strange phsenomenon ; the annals of royal houses will 
 supply examples enough. But Sulla was something much 
 more than an unfaithful husband, he was a man given up to 
 every kind of foul and unnatural debauchery, and yet he 
 evidently both loved and was loved by those of his wives 'of 
 whom we have any account. He married five times. Of his 
 two first wives we know nothing but the names ; the third, 
 Cselia, he divorced on pretence of barrenness, in order to marry 
 Csecilia Metella. Metella plays no unimportant part in his 
 history, and the relations of the pair were throughout those 
 of confidence and affection. If he divorced her on her very 
 death-bed, it was from & motive of religion, and by the order 
 of the chiefs of the national worship ; he was holding a solemn 
 feast, and his house might not at such a time be defiled by 
 mourning. But he made what amends he could by giving 
 her a magnificent funeral, in defiance of one of his own laws. 
 He ended by a strange love-match with a Valeria, the details 
 of which, as given by Plutarch, remind us of a cause which has 
 lately exercised the ingenuity of Irish and Scottish lawyers.* 
 
 * She sat next him at a show of gladiators and drew the hem of his toga 
 over her, to share in his good luck. Then follows a whole story of courtship, 
 a curious episode in such a life as that of Sulla. (Plut. SuUa 35.) 
 
 [The story is also told in a fragment of Di6n, i. 146 of Dindorf 's edition. 
 Both Plutarch and Di6n call this Valeria a sister of the great orator Hortensius, 
 which can hardly be. See Drumann, Crescbiohte Roms, ii. 508.] 
 
VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 289 
 
 He had children by three of his wives. His only surviving son 
 was of tender age when he died; but he left also a brother 
 and a nephew, fuller materials for a Cornelian dynasty than 
 Csesar left for a Julian dynasty. But son, daughter, brother, 
 nephew, were all left in their native rank of Roman patricians, 
 to win such honours as the Roman People might give them. 
 
 The religion or superstition of Sulla is a curious subject, 
 which Dr. Merivale, alone among the English historians of 
 the time, has set forth as it deserves. Caius Marius, we have 
 no doubt, sincerely and honestly, like a good citizen, said his 
 prayers and offered his sacrifices to Jupiter of the Capitol and 
 to Mars the father of Rome. If he carried about with him a 
 Syrian — ^perhaps a Jewish — prophetess named Martha, we 
 must remember that Jupiter and Mars were tolerant deities, 
 who, as long as they were duly worshipped themselves, had 
 nothing to say against strange Gods being worshipped also. 
 Sulla's creed was more remarkable and personal. He was 
 certainly not an Epicurean in the sense of shutting out the 
 Gods from all care for human affairs. He had the deepest 
 belief in fortune, in his own good luck ; but that good luck 
 did not come to him by blind chance, it was his portion as 
 the special favourite of the Gods. But Sulla's religion was 
 rather Greek than Roman. He was the favourite of Aphro- 
 dite : she gave him victories of all kinds ; through her grace 
 women yielded to him their favours, and his enemies yielded 
 to him trophies and triumphs. He gave himself the title of 
 Felix ; he called his children by the hitherto unknown names 
 of Faustus and Faustaj but his own Greek translation of 
 Felix was Epaphroditos, the darling, not of blind chance, but 
 of Aphrodite. He carried also, reminding one of Levris the 
 Eleventh^ an image of the Delphian Apollo hx his bosom, 
 which he drew forth and addressed in fervent prayer in the 
 heat of his great battle by the CoUine Gate. In the 
 height of his power, he dedicated a tenth of his substance to 
 Hercules,* and it was in the midst of this festival that the 
 
 * [Mommsen makes the Latin Hercules to be an original Italian Her- 
 cului or Berclus, Preller (Romiach Mythologie, 640) rejects this. At any 
 
 U 
 
290 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 priests made him divorce Metella. He paid strict heed to 
 dreams and omens, he set them down in his Memoirs, and 
 he bade his lieutenant Lucullus to attend above all things to 
 the warnings which were thus given him by the Gods.* He 
 put faith in Chaldsean soothsayers, who, in the midst of his 
 greatness, dared to tell him when it was time for him to 
 die. He believed in another world, and looked for a place in 
 some paradise of his own, of whose nature one would like to 
 hear more. Shortly before his death, — our authority is Sulla 
 himself, — his young son Lucius, the deceased child of Metella, 
 appeared to him in a dream, and bade him come and live 
 with his mother in a land of rest and freedom from care. He 
 had then, blood-stained and debauched as he was, some dream 
 of a better state of things to which the Gods would admit 
 their favourite, where wars and tumults were to be at an end, 
 where the chaste love of Metella -would still be in its place, 
 but from which we may deem that Marius and Sulpicius, 
 Nikopolis and M^trobios, would all alike be shut out. It is 
 wonderful indeed thus to see the author of the Proscription 
 going out of the world with hopes for the future such as 
 might almost have cheered the death-bed of a Christian 
 saint. 
 
 "We have thus tried to draw the characters of these two 
 mighty men, and we have diawn that of Sulla, as by far the 
 more remarkable study of human nature, at much greater 
 length than that of his liyal. In so doing we have of course 
 forestalled the mention of many particular actions of both. 
 It is now time to see their characters more fully at work in a 
 summary, however short, of the main events of their Hves. 
 The ancient writers delight in contrasts between the earlier 
 and the later character both of Marius and of Sulla. The 
 deliverer from the Cimbri and the deliverer from MithridatSs 
 form a fine subject for rhetorical opposition to the party- 
 rate, by Sulla's time HeronjB| ftjld the Greek H«rakISs were thoroughly 
 confounded,] 
 
 » Plutarch, Sulla, 6. 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 291 
 
 leaders who deluged Italy with the blood of citizens. Now 
 we have no doubt that Marius and Sulla, like so many other 
 men, lived to do deeds of which they would once have believed 
 themselves to be incapable. The young officer whom Seipio 
 j^Jmilianus marked out for honour at Numantia, the young 
 Qusestor who found out his marvellous diplomatic powers at 
 the court of Boechus, most surely neither of them looked for- 
 ward to the day when each would lead hostile armies to the 
 gates of Rome. But we do not believe in sudden changes in 
 men's characters. Men's dispositions are born with them ; 
 their special developement is due to education, to after cir- 
 cumstances — in really wise and virtuous men, to diligent 
 training of themselves. The deliverer of Rome was,, in each 
 case, not another man from her tyrant, but essentially the same 
 man under different circumstances. Neither Marius nor Sulla 
 did any great crime till comparatively late in life ; had Sulla 
 died at the age of fifty, and Marius at sixty, they would have 
 filled a much smaller place in history than they do ; but such 
 place as they would fill would be in the character of faithful 
 and useful servants of their country. But we do not believe 
 in any sudden corruption. Each found himself in his later 
 years placed under circumstances and laid open to tempta- 
 tions from which his youth had been free. The later man was 
 something very different from the earlier, but the difference 
 was one which was wholly brought about by the calling into 
 full play of qualities which had hitherto slumbered or had 
 been only feebly called forth. 
 
 Marius was more than fifty years old when he is brought 
 before us by Sallust in the Jugurthine War. But he had 
 already distinguished himself as an officer ; he had won the 
 marked approval of the younger Seipio ; he had been Tribune 
 of the Commons, and, as such, he had acted the by no means 
 demagogic part of opposing the distribution of corn to the 
 people. But he had won the hatred of the nobility by carry- 
 ing a measure the object of which was, by some mechanical 
 means, to give more freedom to the popular vote. He had 
 filled the office of Praetor, and had administered a province 
 
292 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 with credit. He had thus risen to curule rank, and would 
 hand down some small share of nobility to his descendants. 
 But he had won the bitter hatred of the class into which he had 
 thus partially thrust himself. The new man at least should 
 not be Consul. The new man himself was making ready 
 by every means to compass his own elevation to the highest 
 place in the state. Some of his arts, as recorded by SaUust, 
 seem rather paltry ; but, even among ourselves, men say 
 things on the hustings which they would not say anywhere 
 else. Metellus, his commander in Africa, a man otherwise of 
 pure and noble character, deemed it his duty to throw every 
 hindrance in his way. For a Marius to be Consul seemed then 
 as monstrous to a Metellus as, two hundred and fifty years 
 before, the like elevation of a Metellus would have seemed 
 to Appius Claudius. A foolish insult on the part of Metellus 
 brought matters to a head. Marius might stand for the 
 consulship some day when the young Metellus was of age to 
 be his colleague — that is, Marius might stand, if he pleased, 
 when he was drawing near the age of eighty. Marius became 
 Consul, Proconsul ; he subdued Numidia ; he led Jugurtha in 
 triumph through the streets of Rome.* He was chosen, 
 contrary to all law and custom. Consul for a second, a third, 
 a fourth, a fifth time, in successive years, as the one man who 
 could save Rome from the great Northern invasion. Save her 
 he did, and that thoroughly ; the hosts of the Cimbrians and 
 Teutones were utterly cut ofi" ; the Massaliots fenced in their 
 vineyards with the bones of the slaughtered Northmen. 
 Marius was ranked with Romulus and Camillus as the Third 
 Founder of Rome ; men poured out drink-ofierings to him 
 
 * The horrible death of Jugurtha, straggling for six days with cold and hun- 
 ger in a Roman dungeon, is not the less horrible because of the fearful crimes 
 of which he had been guilty., But why was he not simply beheaded, like 
 Caius Pontius, like Vercingetorix, like the many other noble victims whom 
 Rome led in bonds through her streets and murtljered in cold blood? One 
 cannot help suspecting that there was some superstitious motive which forbade 
 the shedding of blood in this particular case. Perseus of Macedonia, accord- 
 ing to one very doubtful story, was worried to death by being kept from sleep. 
 If this be true, the superstition is intelligible, for Perseus had surrendered, and 
 his slaughter would have been a breach of faith. 
 
VIII.] LUGIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 293 
 
 together with the Gods — the first beginning', it may be, of 
 that impious flattery which Romej a hundred years later, 
 lavished as a matter of course upon all her tyrants. That 
 the great salvation of Aquse Sextias was due to Marius no 
 man ever doubted; that he had but a small share in the 
 crowning mercy of Vercellge is told us indeed by his biographer, 
 but it is told us on the authority of Sulla. His country 
 hearkened to no such whispers ; she hailed the yeoman of 
 Arpinum, and not the noble Catulus, as her true deliverer; 
 she honoured in him the union of modesty and valour, when 
 he declined a triumph over the Teutones in. which his army 
 could not share, and while the host of the Cimbrians had yet 
 to be overcome. Well indeed had it been for his fame had he 
 died as he came down from his Teutonic chariot.* 
 
 Thus far had the career of Marius been great and glorious, 
 because the baser side of his character had had as yet but 
 small opportunity to display itself. He had raised himself, 
 by sheer good service to his country, from a humble Volscian 
 farm to a place alongside of heroes and demigods. He had 
 shown all the virtues of the old Roman plebeian ; if he had 
 shown too something of the rougher side of that character, 
 so had men no less venerated bj- later ages than Fabricius, 
 than Manius Curius, than Marcus Porcius Cato. He had won 
 victories at home and abroad ; he had won the consulship, in 
 his own words, from the nobles, like spoils from a vanquished 
 enemy ; he had, new man as he was, shown the moral courage 
 to withstand the licentiousness of the low rabble of the Forum ; 
 he had led a dreaded King in triumph ; he had saved Rome 
 from a foe more fearful than Hannibal himself. But amid all 
 this glory we can see the germs of his future crimes. We can 
 see in him the beginnings of personal vanity and of incapacity 
 to bear a rival. He envies Metellus, he envies Catulus ; 
 above all, he envies Sulla. The fierce conqueror, untutored 
 and unrefined, half grudged, half despised, the wonderful 
 diplomatic powers of his patrician lieutenant. It was Sulla, 
 after all, who, by winning over Bocchus to the side of Rome, 
 * [See my former volume of Essays, p. 398.] 
 
294 LUOIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 at last brought about what the arms of Metellus and Marius 
 had failed to bring about, the final capture of Jugurtha. Both 
 in the Jugurthine and the Teutonic wars, Sulla served under 
 Marius in high but still subordinate offices, such as became a 
 rising man twenty years younger than his chief. In those 
 offices he had won fame enough to make men foretell his 
 future greatness, but not so much fame that a man who had 
 been five times Consul, who had won two triumphs and de- 
 clined a third, had any real need to envy him. Scipio iEmi- 
 lianus had nobly and generously pointed out Marias as the 
 man who might one day fill his own place. Marius had no 
 such feeling towards his own brilliant young officer. Sulla 
 was young, noble, gifted with powers in which Marius knew 
 that he himself had no part. Marius hated him from the day 
 when he engraved the capture of Jugurtha on his ring. But 
 years had to pass before Rome was to feel the full effects of 
 the hatred of the plebeian against the patrician, of the mere 
 soldier against the man who was soldier, scholar, and lawgiver 
 in one. 
 
 After his triumph, Marius was ag^ln chosen to a sixth 
 consulship. For this breach of all established rule there was 
 no longer any pretext : the Northern invaders were destroyed ; 
 there was no war of any moment elsewhere ; the deepest political 
 questions were indeed ready to arise at any moment, but Rome 
 had many citizens to whom she could intrust the care of her 
 welfare in days of civil danger far more safely than to Caius 
 Marius. But Marius had tasted the sweets of power, and he 
 would not willingly come down again from his height. To 
 shut out Metellus from the consulship, he did not scruple to ally 
 himself with the most infamous of men. He became the partner 
 of Satuminus and Glaucia ; of Saturninus, who, when he failed 
 in a legal contest for the tribuneship, murdered his successful 
 competitor, and seized his place by virtue of a sham election. 
 In this disgraceful year (b.c. ioo) the reputation of Marius 
 was damaged for ever ; yet many of the measures which he 
 supported were thoroughly good in themselves, if they had 
 only been proposed by more reputable men, and in a more 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 295 
 
 lawful manner. Marius and his allies were the friends of the 
 agricultural plebeians and of the Italian allies ; that is, they 
 were the friends of the best elements which Italy still con- 
 tained ; the mob of the Forum was in alliance with the aristo- 
 crats against them. Marius had already, without any legal 
 right, bestowed citizenship on a whole division of the Italians 
 who had distinguished themselves in his wars. Amid the din of 
 arms, he could not hear the voice of the laws. To give grants 
 of land to the deliverers of Italy was no more than the fit 
 reward of merit ; it was a course suggested by the precedents of 
 the best days of Rome ; it was a measure which, of all others, 
 would do most to preserve the rapidly lessening class to whom 
 Rome owed her greatness. Unluckily, thanks to the encroach- 
 ments of the nobles and the thoughtlessness of the people, 
 there were no more lands which could be honestly divided. 
 Tlie materials for the grant were to be found in a foul abuse 
 of the rights of conquest. Cisalpine Gaul had been conquered 
 from the provincials by the Cimbrians ; the Roman People 
 had conquered it again from the conquerors ; it had thuSj it 
 was argued, ceased to be the property of the provincials, and 
 had become the prize, first of the Cimbrians, and then of the 
 Roman People. The Roman and Italian veterans were thus 
 to be provided for at the expense of Roman subjects who had 
 already undergone all the horrors of a barbarian invasion. On 
 the other hand, to satisfy the mere mob, who would have no 
 share in the division of land, a new law was brought in for 
 distributions of com, which this time Marius did not with- 
 stand. But the populace valued their own corn less than they 
 envied the lands of the veterans. Honest men of all parties 
 were indignant at the proposed robbery of the provincials ; 
 the mere oligarchs opposed anything which was proposed by 
 Satuminus and supported by Marius. The Consul had thus 
 brought three classes of enemies into alliance against him ; 
 the year was passed in strife and conflict, which at last grew 
 into open rebellion. The agricultural plebeians, when their 
 blood was once up, were no more sparing of violence than the 
 populace ; and the conduct of Marius himself was a disgraceful 
 
296 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [EssAif 
 
 mixture of low cunning and moral weakness. He neither 
 stood by his friends nor yet by the commonwealth. He had 
 the poor satisfaction of causing the exile of Metellus; but 
 he had soon to go out of the way to avoid beholding his 
 triumphant recall.* 
 
 Marius had now utterly fallen in public esteem, but his 
 ambition was as insatiable as ever. He had found that the 
 Forum and the Senate-house were theatres where he was 
 likely to win no glory. But a day might come when Rome 
 should again call for the sword of her Third Founder. A new 
 Jugurtha, a new Teutoboehus, might again make it needful 
 that the command of the armies of the commonwealth should 
 be intrusted to no weaker hands than those of Caius Marius. 
 Perhaps such a happy day might even be hastened. Mithri- 
 dates was rising to power in the far East : a war with him 
 might lead to richer spoils and more stately triumphs than 
 could be won at the cost of Numidians and Teutones. The 
 restless MariuSj under a religious pretext, actually went into 
 Asia to do what he could to stir up strife between the Pontic 
 King and his country. 
 
 Meanwhile Sulla was rising into eminence slowly but surely. 
 He despised the office of ^Edile, and stood at once for the 
 prsetorship. He failed from a cause which is worth remark. 
 Sulla was the friend of King Bocchus; King Bocchus was 
 lord of the land of lions ; the friend of Bocchus should have 
 been ^dile in regular course, andj as -ffidile, he should have 
 got lions from his friend to be butchered in such a Roman 
 holiday as no jEdile before him had ever made. We in 
 England do not ask for lions from our candidates ; but time 
 was when some boroughs looked to their members to supply 
 the materials of an annual bull-bait, and the members' plate 
 
 * [It is however only fair to quote the judgement of Velleius (ii. 12) on this 
 consulship. ' Sextus oonsulatus ei yeluti prsemium ei meritorum datus. Non 
 tamen hiijus consulatus fraudetur gloria, quo Servilii Glancise, Saturninique 
 Apuleii furorem, continuatia honoribus rempublioam lacerantium et gladiis 
 quoque et caede comitia discutientium consul aruiis com^esouit hominesque 
 exitiabiles in Hostilia curia morte mulctarit.'] 
 
Till] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 297 
 
 at the local races is not left off even in our age of humanity 
 and purity of election. Next year Sulla got his preetorship, 
 but he got it by being liberal of money before the election, 
 and of lions after it. He then visited Asia as well as Marius, 
 but he went in the legal character of Propraetor, to restore to 
 his throne one of the friendly Kings whom Mithridates had 
 driven out. He succeeded in his object, and he had the hon- 
 our of being the first Roman who had any dealings with the 
 distant and mighty power of Parthia. Sulla received a Par- 
 thian ambassador, and he received him in a style which, in 
 Roman ideas, was but keeping up the dignity of the common- 
 wealth, but which carried with it such degradation in Eastern 
 eyes that the envoy was put to death by his sovereign for sub- 
 mitting to it. 
 
 Were we writing the history of Rome, and not commenting 
 on the lives and characters of two particular Romans, there is 
 no part of the history of those times on which we should be 
 more tempted to dwell than on the tribuneship of the younger 
 Marcus Livius Drusus. But neither Marius nor Sulla is 
 mentioned in any direct connexion with the career of that 
 remarkable and perplexing statesman. If not at the same 
 momentj at any rate within a very short time, Drusus played 
 the part of Marius and of Sulla in one. He restored to the 
 Senate a share in the administration of justice ; but he was 
 also a founder of colonies, a distributor of corn, a promoter of 
 the claim of the Italians to the franchise, He was murdered, 
 and his laws died with him. But his tribuneship. forms the 
 turning-point in the struggle. The failure of his schemes 
 drove the Italians to take up arms, and the Civil War of 
 Marius and Sulla was essentially a continuation of the Social 
 War with the Italians,* 
 
 The rivalry between Marius and Sulla was meanwhile 
 growing more and more deadly. Both chiefs had gone into 
 Asia ; but Marius had gone only as a private man ; Sulla had 
 
 * ' So erscheint er [der Biirgerkrieg] als eine Folge von dem Kriege mit den 
 Bvindesgeuossen, ja in der That nur als die Fortsetzung dieses Krieges." 
 (Zaoharia, i. 96.) 
 
298 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 gone as a public officer. He had succeeded in the errand on 
 which he was sent, and, if he had not extended the bounds 
 of the Roman dominion, he had brought a new land within 
 the terror of the Roman name. Marcus Marcius Censorinus, 
 a strong partizan of Marius, brought a charge against Sulla, 
 but he found it wiser to withdraw it before trial, a sort of 
 bootless attack which is sure only to strengthen the party- 
 assailed. King Bocchus too made an offering in the Capitol, 
 a group of golden figures which represented himself giving 
 lip Jugurtha, not to the Consul Marius, but to his lieutenant 
 Sulla. By all these things we are told that the wrath of 
 Marius was kindled. But we must again remember that our 
 main authority for these events is the history of Sulla himself, 
 and that, if Marius had had Sulla's gift of memoir-writing, 
 he might perhaps have told a different story. 
 
 And now came the Social War ; a war on whose character 
 ind objects we made some remarks in a former Essay.* 
 Both the disease and the remedy arose from causes inherent 
 in that system of purely municipal government which was the 
 only form of freedom known to the ancient world. To a single 
 city indeed that system gave the highest form of freedom ; but 
 to a large territory it carried with it a bondage worse than that 
 of despotism. Rome was felt to be a proud and cruel mistress 
 to her Allies; but the remedy sought for was, not to throw 
 off her yoke — ^not to set up either a federal union or a repre- 
 sentative system — but to get the franchise of the Roman city 
 for all the people of Italy. The cause of the Allies was taken 
 up, as it suited their purposes, by the noblest and by the vilest 
 of the Romans, by Satuminus and Glaucia no less than by 
 Caius Gracchus and Marcus Drusus. To Sulla and the high 
 oligarchs no cause could be more hateful ; it was a lowering 
 
 * [Velleius (ii. 1 5) says of the cause of the aJlies, ' quorum ut fortuna atrox, 
 ita caussa fiiit justissima. Petebant enim earn oivitatem oujus imperium 
 armis tuebautur ; per omnes annos atque omnia bella dupliei numero se 
 militum equitumque fungi, neque in ejus civitatis jus recipi, quae per eos in 
 id ipsum pervenisset fastigium, per quod homines ejusdem et gentis et san- 
 guinis, ut extemos alienosque fastidire posset.'] 
 
VIII] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 299 
 
 of the dignity of Rome, and it was something which touched 
 themselves yet more deeply. To the Eoman populace the 
 enfranchisement of the Allies was hateful on low selfish 
 grounds, as an infringement of their monopoly of power. To 
 the oligarchs it was hateful on a ground no less low and 
 selfish. It would be a real strengthening of the people. They 
 were willing enough to degrade the people by the wholesale 
 enfranchisement of slaves and strangers, Sulla's Cornelii and 
 tlie like ; but to raise the people by the enfranchisement of 
 honest yeomen and gallant soldiers from the Marsian and 
 Samnite lands would be to make it more worthy of its 
 constitutional functions, and therefore less subservient to 
 their will. Then too the allied commonwealths contained 
 nobles as proud and ancient as any of Rome's own patricians, 
 Etruscan Lucumos and Samnite Imperators. Make these 
 men Roman citizens, and txhe esdsting nobles must either be 
 content to divide with them their monopoly of high office, 
 or else they must stand by and see them pass into the most 
 dangerous leaders of a regenerated Roman People. It was, in 
 fact, the old struggle between patrician and plebeian over 
 again. The Italian Allies were now what the plebeians had 
 been in earlier days ;* the union between the high aristocracy 
 and the low populace had its parallel in the days when 
 Appius Claudius allied himself with the mere populace against 
 such patricians as Quintus Fabius and such plebeians as 
 Publius Decius. The war broke out; the Allies^ denied the 
 Roman franchise, set up, as we before said, a counter Rome of 
 their own. Rome had now to struggle, not with Epeirots and 
 Macedonians, champions of a rival military discipline, not with 
 northern or southern Barbarians, dreaded only for their num- 
 bers and brute force, but with men of her own race, schooled 
 in her own wars, using her own weapons, skilled in her own 
 tactics, led on by chiefs whom her system confined to inferior 
 commands, but whom a more generous policy would have 
 made her own Praetors and Consuls. In the new war success 
 
 * [See the speech of Claudius in Tacitus, Annals, xi. 24, ' Plebei raagistratus 
 post patricios : Latini post plebeios ; ceterarum Italise gentium post Latinos.] 
 
300 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 was very varied ; but Rome had the advantage of her unity; 
 she kept Etruria from revolting ; she won back one by one the 
 states which did revolt, by the grant of that franchise which 
 might have been granted before. The grant was, as the Allies 
 soon found, given in such a shape as to be little better than a 
 cheat ; but the offer was enough to do its work at the time. 
 One by one the allied states came in, save only Samnium and 
 Lucania, where the war still smouldered, ready, when the time 
 came, to break forth again yet more fiercely. The neighbouring 
 nations more nearly akin in language and habits, more easy 
 of access to the capital, gladly became E,omans ; among the 
 countrymen of Cains Pontius, the old hate, which had doubtless 
 never wholly died away, now sprang up again to renewed life. 
 Their wish, as we shall sooni see, was not to become Romans, 
 but to destroy Rome. 
 
 In this war both Marius and Sulla served ; Sulla increased 
 his reputation, Marius tarnished his. Some plead for him age 
 and illness ; some say that he was able to triumph over Bar- 
 barians, but not to contend with skilful generals and. civilized 
 aumies. Our belief is that the key to this contrast between 
 the two rivals is to be mainly found in their several feelings 
 and positions. Marius went forth against the allies, as he had 
 in civil strife gone forth against Saturninus, with only half a 
 heart. Sulla went forth in all the concentrated energy of his 
 mighty powers. The Roman patrician, the proud Cornelius, 
 went forth to fight for Rome, to spare none who disobeyed her 
 bidding or dared to parody her majesty.. But the heart of the 
 Volscian yeoman had at least half its sympathies in the camp 
 of the enemy. He was not a traitor to betray the cause in 
 which he armed, but he was a lukewarm supporter, who could 
 not bring himself to fight against Marsians and Samnites 
 as he had fought against Cimbrians and Numidians. His 
 weakness) his want of success, lowered him still further in 
 public esteem ; perhaps the consciousness of his further 
 fall made him pant yet more eagerly for a field where he 
 could again display the powers which he felt were still within 
 him. 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 301 
 
 And now came the struggle with Mithridates. The Pontic 
 King had oeeupied all Asia ; he had massacred every Eoman 
 and Italian to be found there ; his armies had passed into 
 Greece, and Greece had welcomed them as deliverers. He had 
 been, and still was, ia league with the rebellious Samnites. 
 Such a foe was one very diiferent from the Numidian who 
 kept within his own continent ; he was almost more dangerous 
 than the Cimbrian or the Teutonic invader. Rome needed 
 her foremost chief to win back her lost provinces and to defend 
 what was left to her. But who was that foremost chief? 
 Consuls were to be chosen, Consuls to wage the war with 
 Mithridates. Twelve years before, every tribe would have 
 voted for Cains Marius and for whatever colleague Caius 
 Marius chose to name. Now the choice of the Roman People 
 fell on Quintus Pompeius Rufus and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. 
 
 We have now reached the famous tribuneship of Publius 
 Sulpicius. On this puzzling matter we think that much light 
 has been thrown by Sulla's German biographer, Lau.* It 
 has always been a problem how such a man as Sulpicius, the 
 first orator of his time, an aristocrat by birth and politics, 
 a man whose general character up to this time had stood as 
 high as that of any man in Rome, suddenly turned into a 
 fierce and violent Tribune like Saturninns. It has been usual 
 to look on Sulpicius as a mere tool of Marius, to look on the un- 
 just and unconstitutional proposal of transferring the command 
 from Sulla to Marius as the main object of their union, and 
 on the bill for bettering the condition of the new citizens by 
 distributing them through all the tribes as a mere means for 
 getting that measure through the Assembly. But we must 
 
 * [Lucius Cornelius Sulla, 1 8 7 et seqq. The account given by Velleius (ii. 1 8) 
 brings strongly out the supposed incomprehensible change in the character of 
 Sulpicius. 'P. Sulpicius tribunus plebis, disertu.i, acer, opibus, gratia, ami- 
 citiis, vigore ingenii atque animi celeberrimus, quum antea rectissima voluntate 
 apud populum maximam quaesisset dignitatem, quasi pigeret eum virtutum 
 suarum et bene consulta ei male cederent, subito pravus et praeoeps, C. Mario 
 post Ixx. annum omnia imperia et omnes provincias concupiscenti addixit, 
 legemque ad populum tulit, qua SuUae imperium abrogaretur, C. Mario bellum 
 decemeretur Mithridiaticum, aliasque leges pemiciosas et exitiabiles, neque 
 tolerandas libers civitati tulit.'] 
 
302 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SVLLA, [Essat 
 
 again remember that the version which we have of these 
 things is the Sullan version. The Sulpician Reform-Bill was 
 a bill for giving to the new citizens, instead of a franchise 
 which was a mere mockery, a weight in the commonwealth 
 proportioned to their numbers and character. It would, if it 
 had stood by itself, have won the approval of all^ and history 
 would have set it before us as one of the best measures of one 
 of Rome's best men. Lau looks on it as really being so. The 
 bill for transferring the Mithridaftie war from Sulla to Marius 
 he looks on as a mere afterthought, a stroke of defence on 
 the side of Sulpieius after Sulla and Pompeius had violently, 
 and indeed illegally, thrown hindrances in the way of his 
 constitutional reforms. On this again turns the question. 
 Who began the Civil War ? That Sulla struck the first blow 
 no man doubts; but he who begins a war is not always he 
 who strikes the first blow, but he who makes the striking of 
 that blow unavoidable. On the common view of the Sulpician 
 Law, Sulla had at least that excuse; he, the Consul, with- 
 stood a base and unconstitutional conspiracy to deprive him 
 of his constitutional powers. But the case is altered if we 
 hold that the first blow was really struck when Sulla placed 
 illegal hindrances in the way of a good and wholesome law of 
 Sulpieius, and that the bill for depriving him of his command 
 was merely a punishment for so doing, or rather a measure of 
 self-defence against him. We see nothing in the facts of the 
 ease to contradict thjs view, which altogether gets rid of the 
 inconsistent light in which Sulpieius otherwise appears. 
 That, when he was violently opposed, he grew violent also 
 is not very wonderful ; but again we must remember that we 
 have no memoir from Marius or Sulpieius.* The Civil War 
 may now be said to begin ; it is worth notice that the first 
 and last act of generosity which was shown in its course 
 
 * The savage abuse of Sulpieius in Plutarch (SuUa, 8) must come from Sulla 
 himself. Among other things, he is said to have gone about surrounded by a 
 band of youths of equestrian rank, vfho were ready for anything, and whom he 
 called his AnU-Benaie {avnai^icXTiToa). One would have thought it incredible 
 that any mortal man could have confused so plain a story, and have said that 
 Sulpieius called them ' his Senate.' 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 303 
 
 comes from the side of Marius. Sulla, in one of the tumults 
 caused by the first Sulpician Law, sought shelter in the house 
 of Marius. His rival let him go free. Sulla spared no man, 
 because his cruelty was a cold, determined, adaptation of means 
 to an end. The cruelties of Marius were cruelties of passion ; 
 before passion had reached its height, there was room for 
 more generous feelings now and then to share the dominion 
 of his heart. 
 
 We must not seek to follow the rivals through the details 
 of the Mithridatie and the Civil Wars, and we think that we 
 have said enough to bring out forcibly the characters of the 
 two men. The first slaughter and pursuit of illustrious victims 
 came from Sulla; Marius repaid them tenfold; Sulla repaid 
 them tenfold again. Sulla was the first to lead a Roman army 
 against Rome, but it was only the Marian party that allied 
 itself with Rome's enemies. At the last moment of the war, 
 when the younger Marius was besieged in Prseneste, the old 
 spirit of Samnium again sprang to life. Another Pontius, a 
 descendant it may be of the hero who spared Rome's army 
 and whom Rome led in chains and beheaded, burst forth to 
 strike greater fear into Roman hearts than had been struck 
 by Hannibal himself. He came to deliver Prieneste, to deliver 
 Marius, but he came too to root up the wood which sheltered 
 the wolves who so long had ravaged Italy.* Rome had now 
 to do, what in Hannibal's time she never had to do, to fight a 
 pitched battle for her very being close to her own gates. 
 Sulla had saved the Roman power at Chaironeia and Orcho- 
 
 * [The character of this stage of the war is brought out with wonderful 
 vigour by the Italian memories of Velleius (ii. 27). 'Pontius Telesinus dux 
 Samnitium, vir domi bellique fortissimus penitusque Romano nomini infes- 
 tissimus, contractis circiter quadraginta millibus fortissimae pertinacissimaeque 
 in retiuendis armis juventutie, Carbone ac Mario oonsulibua, abhiuo annos cxi, 
 Kal. Novembribus ita adportam CoUinam cum Sullaili dimioavit ut ad summum 
 discrimen et eum et rempublicam perduceret. Quse non majus periculum 
 adiit Hannibalis intra tertium milliarium castra conspicata, quam eo die quo 
 circumvolans ordines exeroitus aui Telesinus, diotitansque adesse Komanis 
 ultimum diem, vociferabatur eruendam delendamque urbem, adjioiens num- 
 quam defiituroB raptores Italics libertatis lupos ; nisi silva, in quam refugere 
 solerent, esset exciaa.'] 
 
304 LUCIUS OOENELIUS SULLA. [Essay 
 
 menos; he now saved Rome herself when he overcome 
 Pontius before the CoUine Gate. But the salvation of Rome 
 was the destruction of Samnium and Etruria. Whatever 
 work the hand of Sulla found to do, he did it with all his 
 might. 
 
 At first sight Sulla seenis to have lived wholly in vain. To 
 restore the power of the Roman aristocracy was a scheme 
 vainer than the scheme of the Gracchi for regenerating the 
 Roman People. This part of Sulla's work was soon swept away; 
 hut, because part, even the chief part, of a man's work comes 
 to nothing, it does not follow that he leaves no lasting results 
 behind him. Charles the Great himself seems to many to have 
 lived in vain, because Gaul and Germany have not, for nearly 
 a thousand years, obeyed a single ruler. Those who thus 
 speak do not see that the whole later history of Germany and 
 Italy bears the impress of his hand for good and for evil. So 
 the political work of Sulla soon perished ; but as the codifier 
 of the Roman criminal law, he ranks as a forerunner of Theo- 
 dosius and Justinian, and in another way his work is still 
 living at this day. It was Sulla who first made Rome truly 
 the head of Italy. He crushed every other nationality within 
 the peninsula ; he plucked down and he built up till he made 
 all Italy Roman. His harrying of Samnium still abides in its 
 fruit; southern Italy never recovered from it; that Apulia 
 and Calabria are not now what Lombardy and Tuscany are is 
 mainly the work of Sulla. But that every Italian heart now 
 looks to Rome as the natural centre of Italy is the work of 
 Sulla too. From his day to ours, Rome, republican, Impe- 
 rial, or Papal, has kept a supremacy without a rival. 
 When Italy was most divided in the middle ages, Rome was 
 still the object of a vague reverence which no other city could 
 share with her. And now Italy is felt to be cut short till she 
 can win back what every Italian looks on as her capital. Had 
 Pontius carried out his threat, had he won, as once he seemed 
 likely to win, in that most fearful of battles by the CoUine 
 Gate, had he and Mithridates together so much as seriously 
 
VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 305 
 
 weakened the Roman power, the fate of Italy and the world 
 must have been far different from what it has been. The 
 first King of Italy who enters Rome may indeed sit on the 
 throne of Caesar, but he will reign in a city preserved for him 
 by Sulla.* 
 
 Why is it that those two names, Sulla and Caesar^ call up 
 such different feelings? Of the two Dictators, one is never 
 spoken of without abhorrence, the other is never spoken of 
 without some degree at least of admiration. Yet there is 
 much likeness in the two men, and there are points in which 
 Sulla has the advantage. Sulla and Csesar alike were at once 
 generals, statesmen, scholars, and profligates. On the military 
 details of their campaigns military men must decide ; but the 
 results of the warfare of Sulla were assuredly not less than the 
 results of the warfare of Caesar. If Csesar conquered Gaul, 
 Sulla reconquered Greece and Asia ; if Caesar overthrew Pom- 
 peius, Sulla overthrew Pontius Telesinus. The political career 
 of Sulla is far more honourable and consistent than that of 
 Caesar. Both led armies against their country ; both gave out 
 that they were driven to do so only by the intrigues of their 
 enemies. Sulla struggled, we might say for a principle, at 
 any rate for a party, at any rate for something beyond him- 
 self; he scorned the gewgaws of royalty ; he aspired not to 
 keep perpetual dominion for himself, still less to found a 
 dynasty of Kings or Dictators in his own house. Caesar's 
 career was purely selfish ; it may be that the sway of one was 
 at the moment the best thing for Rome and the world; it 
 may be that Csesar knew and felt this ; still his career was a 
 selfish one. He sought his own advancement; he sank even 
 to the low ambition of titles and ornaments ; he wanted to be 
 called a King, and to wear a diadem. As private men, there is 
 little to choose between the two ; both were steeped in every 
 
 vice refined, accomplished, scholar-like, debauchees. Why 
 
 then do we hate Sulla, and in a manner love Csesar ? Success 
 may have something to do with it; Sulla's aristocracy passed 
 
 * [Italy has again won back her capital; whether the man who saved Eoma 
 was remembered at the moment may be doubted.] 
 
306 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 
 
 ib'wa.y ; Csesar's Empire fell for a moment, but it had strength, 
 enough to rise again under his adopted son, and to live on, we 
 may almost say, till the present hour. The other Dictator has 
 left no such memorials before our eyes and earsj no month is 
 called Cornelius, no modern potentate calls himself Sulla as 
 his proudest title. But this is not all : the real difference 
 lies much deeper. CsBsar, with all his crimes and vices, had a 
 heart. He was a man of battles, but not a man of proscrip- 
 tions. He was a warm friend and a generous enemy; * In 
 one point of view, Sulla's was the wiser policy. Sulla never 
 spared or forgave, and he died in his bed ; Csesar forgave, and 
 he died by the daggers of those whom he had forgiven. Most 
 men indeed would choose the bloody death of Csesar — a death 
 which admirers might call martyrdom— rather than the foul 
 and lingering disease of Sulla. But there is the fact ; the 
 merciful conqueror died by violence, the wholesale murderer 
 went unmolested to his grave. Sulla really had in him more 
 of principle than Csesar ; but Csesar was a man, Sulla was 
 like a destroying angel. Csesar one might have loved, at Sulla 
 one could- only shudder; perhaps one might have shuddered 
 most of all at the careless and mirthful hours of the author of 
 the proscription. Great he was in every natural gift ; great, 
 one might almost say, in his vices ; great in his craft of 
 soldier and ruler, great in his unbending will, great in the 
 crimes which human wickedness never can outdo. In his 
 strange superstition, the most ruthless of men deemed himself 
 the special favourite of the softest of the idols with which his 
 heaven was peopled. We too can acknowledge the heaven-sent 
 luck of Sulla, but in another sense. If Providence ever sends 
 human instruments to chastise a guilty world, we may see in 
 the all-accomplished Roman aristocrat, no less than in the 
 Scythian savage, one who was, beyond all his fellow-men, 
 emphatically the Scourge of God. 
 
 * [To Roman enemies certainly ; but Veroingetorix must not be forgotten. 
 No captives were slain at the triumph of Pompeiua.] 
 
IX. 
 
 THE FLAVIAN CiESARS. 
 
 A History of the Romans under the Empire. By Chakles 
 Meeivalu, B. D. * Vols. VI. and VII. London, 1858-62. 
 
 "We are sorry that Mr. Merivale has made up his mind to 
 bring his work to an end at a point earlier than that which he 
 first fixed upon. His first purpose was to carry on his his- 
 tory to the time of Constantine ; he has now ended it with the 
 death of Marcus Aurelius. Each of these points makes a good 
 ending for the book, because each marks the end of a distinct 
 period in the annals of the Empire. We should have better 
 liked the later date, partly because it marks the completion 
 of a still more marked change than the other, partly because 
 it would have given us the advantage of Mr. Merivale's 
 companionship over a longer space. By leaving off where he 
 has left off, Mr. Merivale indeed avoids any show of rivalry 
 with Gibbon. He now leaves off where Gibbon begins, and 
 the two may be read as a consecutive history. But we do 
 not think that Mr. Merivale, or any scholar of Mr. Meri- 
 vale's powers, need be frightened off any portion of the wide 
 field between Commodus and the last ConstantinCj simply 
 through dread of seeming rivalry with Gibbon. That 
 Gibbon should ever be displaced seems impossible. That 
 wonderful man monopolized, so to speak, the historical genius 
 and the historical learning of a whole generation, and left 
 little indeed of either for any of his contemporaries. He 
 remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom 
 modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set 
 
 * [Now D.D. and Dean of Ely.] 
 X % 
 
308 THE FLA VIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 aside. We may correct and improve in detail from the 
 stores which have been opened since Gibbon's time ; we may- 
 write again large parts of his story from other, and often 
 truer and more wholesome, points of view. But the work of 
 Gibbon, as a whole, as the encycloptedic history of thirteen 
 hundred years, as the grandest of historical designs carried 
 out alike with wonderful power and with wonderful accuracy, 
 must ever keep its place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon 
 must be read too. But, for that very reason, the scholar who 
 reproduces any particular part of Gibbon's History, Dean 
 Milman or Mr. Finlay, — we wish we could add Mr. Merivale, 
 — does not really enter into any rivalry with his great pre- 
 decessor. The two things are different in kind, and each may 
 be equally good in its own way. We do not think of com- 
 paring the man who deals with the whole of a vast subject 
 with the man who deals — necessarily at far greater detail — 
 with one particular part of it. And, after all, we hardly 
 feel that we have reached Gibbon's proper and distinctive 
 field, till we have reached a later period than that which he 
 and Mr. Merivale would have had in common. Gibbon is 
 before all things the historian of the transition from the Roman 
 world to the world of modern Europe. But that transition 
 can hardly be said to have openly begun till we reach the 
 point which Mr. Merivale at first set before him as the goal 
 of his labours. 
 
 Still, as it is, Mr. Merivale has the advantage of occupying, 
 absolutely without a rival in his own tongue, the period of 
 history which he has chosen for himself. It is only in his 
 opening volumes that he comes into competition with Arnold, 
 and there only with Arnold before he had reached the fulness 
 of his powers. The history of the Emperors he has, among 
 writers of his own class, wholly to himself. Yet it must not 
 be thought that he owes his vantage-ground solely to the 
 lack of competition. His history is a great work in itself, 
 and it must be a very great work indeed which can outdo it 
 within its own range. In days of licensed blundering like 
 ours, it is delightful indeed to come across the sound and 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN G^SARS. 309 
 
 finished scholarship, the unwearied and unfailing accuracy, of 
 Mr. Merivale. It is something to find, for once, a inodern 
 writer whom one can trust, and the margin of whose hook 
 one has not to crowd with corrections of his mistakes. On 
 some points we hold that Mr. Merivale's views are open to 
 dispute ; but it is always his views, never his statements. 
 With Mr. Merivale we may often have to controvert opinions 
 which are fair matters of controversy ; we never have to cor- 
 rect blunders or to point out misrepresentations. We have 
 somewhat of a battle to fight with him, so far as he is in 
 some sort an advocate of Imperialism ; but it is all fair fighting 
 with a fair and moderate advocate. Compared with Arnold's 
 noble third volume, Mr. Merivale's narrative seems heavy, 
 and his style is cumbered with needless Latinisms, savouring, 
 sometimes of English newspapers, sometimes of French histo- 
 rians and politicians. Still he always writes with weight and 
 clearness, often with real vigour and eloquence. That he is 
 lacking in the moral grandeur of Arnold, his burning zeal for 
 right, his unquenchable hatred of wrong, is almost implied in 
 the choice of his subject and the aspect in which he views it. 
 But the gift of rising to the dignity of a prophet without 
 falling into the formal tediousness of a preacher is something 
 which Arnold had almost wholly to himself And even that 
 gift had its disadvantages. Arnold could have written the 
 history of the Empire only in the spirit of a partizan. Arnold 
 was never unfair, but the very keenness of his moral sense 
 sometimes made him unjust. He was apt to judge men by 
 too high a standard. Mr. Merivale's calmer temper has 
 some advantages. If he does not smite down sin like Arnold, 
 he lets us see more clearly the extenuating circumstances and 
 temptations of the sinner. He has, as we think, somewhat of 
 a love of paradox, but it is kept fairly in check by a really 
 sound and critical judgement. While we cannot help setting 
 down Mr. Merivale as, in some degree, an apologist of Im- 
 perial tyranny, we are never sorry to see any cause in the 
 hands of an apologist so competent and so candid. Indeed, 
 when we compare his history with the fanatical advocacy of 
 
310 THE FLAVIAN OMSARS. [Essay 
 
 Mr. Congreve, we hardly feel that we have any right to call 
 him an apologist at all. * 
 
 We said that hoth the point at which Mr. Merivale first 
 intended to stop, and that at which he has actually laid down 
 his pen, each marked the close of a distinct period in the 
 Imperial history. The history of the Roman Empire is the 
 history of two" tendencies, working side by side, and greatly 
 influencing one another. Tho one is the gradual change from 
 the commonwealth to the avowed monarchy ; the other is the 
 gradual extension of the name and character of Romans over 
 the inhabitants of the whole empire. Of the former the be- 
 ginnings may be seen for some time before the usurpation of 
 either Csesar ; of the latter we may trace the beginnings up to 
 the very foundation of the Roman city. The age of Constan- 
 tine, the point first chosen by Mr. Merivale, marks the final 
 and complete triumph of both these tendencies ; it is also 
 marked by the first appearance, as really visible and dominant 
 influences, of the two great elements of modern life — the 
 Christian and the Teutonic element. The mere beginnings 
 of both of course come far earlier, but it was in the third 
 century that they began directly and visibly to influence the 
 course of Roman affairs. When the Christian Emperor reigns 
 at Constantinople, when all purely pagan and all local Roman 
 ideas have become the merest shadows, when Csesar presides 
 in the Councils of the Church and has to defend his Em- 
 pire against Goths and Vandals, we feel that the purely 
 classical period is over, that the middle ages have in truth 
 begun. The last Constantine hardly differs so much from 
 the first as the first does from the first Augustus. Here 
 then is the most important stopping-point of all. But the 
 tendencies which reached their height under Constantine 
 had been working all along. It was Diocletian rather than 
 Constantine who really forsook the Old Rome; what Con- 
 
 * [Mr. Congreve's Lectures on the Eoman Empire of the West are perhaps 
 best remembered through the crushing review by Mr. Goldwin Smith in the 
 Oxford Essays.] 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN CJESARS. 311 
 
 stantine did was to find a better and more lasting place for 
 the New. * From Diocletian onwards, Rome never won back 
 her place as an Imperial dwelling-place. This forsaking of 
 the local Rome was indeed the consummation of the ten- 
 dency whose first beginning we see in the mythical history 
 of Romulus and Titus Tatius. QuiriteSj Latins, Italians, 
 Provincials^ had all become equally Romans. The common 
 master of all might dwell, as the needs of his Empire bade 
 him, at Nikomedeia or at Byzantium, at Milan or at York, 
 anywhere rather than in the true Roman city itself. On 
 the other hand, this forsaking of Rome had a most impor- 
 tant influence on the future history of the world. When 
 CsBsar definitely changed from a republican magistrate into 
 an avowed despot, he forsook the scene of the old republican 
 memories. Those memories were therefore able to keep on a 
 certain vague and fitful life down to our own age ; and, what 
 proved of greater moment still, the departure of the Emperor 
 left room for the developement of the Pope. Had the successor 
 of Augustus and the successor of St. Peter gone on dwelling 
 within the same walls, the Patriarch of the Old Rome might 
 never have reached any greater height than the Patriarch of 
 the New. The age of Constantino then is, above all others, 
 the point where old tendencies find their consummation, and 
 where new tendencies find their beginning. We should be 
 well pleased if Mr. Merivale would,' even now, think over his 
 decision, and carry his history at least down to this most 
 important sera of transition. 
 
 Here then is the great turning-point, at the change begun by 
 Diocletian, and completed by Constantine. But, in the course 
 of the three hundred years which divide them from Augustus, 
 we may make several convenient resting-places. One of these 
 is to be found at the extinction of the first Cesarean line 
 in Nero. The founder of the Empire himself was a Julius, or 
 a patrician at all, only by adoption; but both he and his suc- 
 cessors, down to Nero, were Caisars according to that familiar 
 legal fiction, and both Augustus himself and all his successors 
 
 " [See above, p. 238.] 
 
312 THE FLAVIAN G^SARS. [Essay 
 
 but one had real Julian blood ia them by tte female line.* 
 But with Nero the family succession, even as a matter of legal 
 fiction, came wholly to an end. Whatever family sentiment 
 might cleave to the divine race, to the heirs and kinsmen, 
 if not the literal offspring, of the deified Dictator, came to 
 an end with the last and vilest of the stock. The line of 
 ^neas and Aphrodite was at an end; their place was now 
 open to every Roman, a name which was soon to take in 
 every free inhabitant of the Roman Empire. Here then is 
 one marked poiijt of change. The Csesar Augustus who 
 owed his power purely to the vote of the Senate or to the 
 acclamation of the soldiers was something different from the 
 Csesar Augustus around whom lingered a kind of religious 
 reverence as the representative of Gods and heroes. On the 
 faU of the Julii, after a short period of anarchy, followed 
 the Flavii. Vespasian, came nearer to founding a real here- 
 ditary dynasty than any Emperor before him, or indeed than 
 any that came after him, till we reach the second Flavian 
 dynasty, the house of Constantine. Vespasian was followed 
 by his two sons, his only offspring, in peaceful succession. On 
 the death of Domitian, Nerva was peacefully chosen, and from 
 him the Empire passed, by a series of adoptions, to Marcus 
 Aurelius and his son Commodus. At the extinction of this 
 artificial house of the Antonines we may place, with Mr. Meri- 
 vale, another great break. We have now lost anything like a 
 dynasty; the last traces of the hereditary feeling are seen in 
 the attempt of Severus to connect himself with the Antonines, 
 and in the further attempt to connect the Syrian youths 
 Elagabalus and Alexander with Severus. But the unbroken 
 line of adopted Emperors, which begins with Nerva, ends with 
 Commodus. Here is the real break. Mr. Merivale should, in 
 
 * The grandmother of Augustus was a. Julia, a sister of the Dictator. 
 Caiug was the grandson, and Nero the great-grandson, of Julia, the daughter 
 of Augustus, through their mothers, the elder and younger Agrippina. 
 Claudius, though not a descendant of Augustus, was a grandson of his sister 
 Octavia, and therefore had as much Csesarean blood in him as Augustus 
 himself. Tiberius alone was a purely artificial Caesar, a complete stranger in 
 blood to the Julian house. 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN O^SARS. 313 
 
 consistency, have at least taken in Commodus in tis history 
 as well as his father. But it is with Commodus that Gibbon 
 begins, and Marcus makes a more impressive and honourable 
 ending for his Imperial series. 
 
 The period dealt with in Mr. Merivale's last volume, the 
 period from Vespasian to Marcus Aurelius, is distinguished 
 in many ways, both from the days of the Julian dynasty which 
 went before it and from the days of military anarchy which 
 came after it. In most respects it contrasts very favourably 
 with both periods. From the accession of Vespasian in 
 A.D. 69 to the death of Commodus in A.d. 193, the Empire 
 was under a really settled government. Of nine Emperors 
 seven were good rulers, and those seven died — we were going 
 to say, in their beds, only the first of them, as all the world 
 knows, died standing. Two only, the tyrants Domitian and 
 Commodus, died by violence, and they died, not by military 
 insurrection, but by private conspiracy. In both cases a vir- 
 tuous successor was at once found. The death of Commodus 
 and the accession of Pertinax read like a repetition of the 
 death of Domitian and the accession of Nerva. But the 
 military element was now too strong ; Emperors were for the 
 future to be set up and put down at the will of the army ; 
 most of them were murdered by their soldiers or by their 
 successors; till Rome, under her Imperial High Pontiff, became 
 like the grove of Juno at Aricia in old times : 
 
 'Those trees in whose deep shadow 
 
 The ghastly priest doth reign, 
 The priest who slew the slayer, 
 And shall himself be slain.' 
 
 In fact, with a few short exceptions, the whole period of 
 ninety-two years, from Pertinax to Diocletian, seems little more 
 than an expansion on a gigantic scale of the year of anarchy 
 between Nero and Vespasian. With the organized despotism 
 of Diocletian an approach to settled order begins again, a 
 very imperfect approach as compared with the time of the 
 Elavil and the Antonines, but still a vast improvement on 
 the fearful century which went before it. 
 
314 THE FLAVIAN CMSARS. [Essay 
 
 We thus get three great settled periods — the Julian dynasty, 
 the Flavian and Antonine period, and the period of Diocletian 
 and Constantine ; the first being divided from the second by 
 a short, and the second from the third by a long, interval of 
 military anarchy. Three sets of princes, whose names, order, 
 and actions it is easy to remember, are divided by groups of 
 others, who flit by, one after another, like a procession of 
 ghastly shadows. This sort of alternation goes on down to 
 the last days of the Byzantine Empire. The groups and 
 dynasties of Emperors which we remember, the houses of 
 Theodosius, Justin, Heraclius, Leo, Basil, Komnenos, Angelos, 
 and Palaiologos, are divided from one another by groups of 
 ephemeral princes, who rise, fall, and are forgotten. And 
 something analogous, though of course not owing to the same 
 cause, may be seen in the succession of the Popes as well as 
 of the Csesars. A group of Pontifis of some mark, each of 
 whom reigned for some years and whose actions live in the 
 memory, is divided from another group of the same kind by 
 a herd of momentary Popes, pressing on one another with 
 puzzling haste, and who seem to have come into being only in 
 order to add to the number of Johns, Gregories, or Leos. 
 But perhaps no group in the whole line, either of Popes or 
 of Emperors, is so clearly marked out as that of which, and 
 especially of its first three members, we are about to treat 
 somewhat more at length. This is the series of nine Csesars 
 which begins with Vespasian and ends with Commodus, 
 among whom we mean more especially to dwell on the three 
 Flavii, Vespasian himself and his two sons. 
 
 The nature and origin of the Imperial sovereignty has been 
 well explained by Mr. Merivale in one of his earlier volumes. 
 The causes which made it a kind of necessity we have our- 
 selves spoken of in a former essay.* The constitution of the 
 B,oman Commonwealth, which had worked so well as the con- 
 stitution of a single city, broke down when it was applied 
 to the government of an Empire which took in all the nations 
 
 * See above, p. 264. 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN GJE8ARS. 315 
 
 around the Mediterranean. A federal or a representative form 
 might have done something to lessen the evil ; but both of 
 them were practically out of the question. As long therefore 
 as the Commonwealth lasted, the essentially municipal govern- 
 ment of a single city held absolute sway over the whole Roman 
 dominion. The only way by which the subject races, the 
 Latins, Italians, and Provincials, could be admitted to any 
 share in the general government was by clothing them — 
 sometimes as individuals, sometimes as whole communities — 
 with the local franchise of the Roman city, a franchise which 
 could be exercised nowhere but in the Roman city itself. It 
 was not till the votes of the people had ceased to be of any 
 importance that Augustus devised a plan by which the votes 
 of non-re«ident citizens might be collected in their own towns. 
 Such a system was too unnatural to last. The Empire itself 
 was a relief. If, instead of our representative constitution, 
 the supreme power over the whole of the British dominions 
 were vested in a primary Assembly of the citizens of London, 
 even though every inhabitant of Great Britain received the 
 local franehise^ we should most likely welcome any Csesar 
 or Buonaparte who would deliver us from such a state of 
 things. This tendency towards monarchy may be traced back 
 at least to the days of Marius and Sulla, — even, according to 
 Mommsen, as far back as those of Caius Gracchus. The usur- 
 pation of Cinna, the dictatorship of Sulla, the extraordinary 
 commands and the sole consulship of Pompeius, the dictator- 
 ship of the first Csesar, were all steps in the same direction. 
 Caesar indeed dared to clutch at actual kingship, but popular 
 feeling was too strong for him ; and a thousand years had to 
 pass before any man ventured to call himself King of the 
 Romans. The second Caesar took warning, and established a 
 virtual despotism on a purely republican groundwork. . The 
 form of the Roman monarchy may be best described as an extra- 
 ordinary commission which went on for ever. The republic 
 was not abolished ; Senate, People, Maigistrates, retained th^ir 
 old rights; but certain powers were specially vested in one 
 particular magistrate, which practically cut down all the rest 
 
316 THE FLAVIAN G^SARS. [Essay 
 
 to shadows. A single citizen was at once Imperator of the 
 army, Prince of the Senate, and High Pontiff of the national 
 religion. If he was not actually Consul, one vote clothed 
 him with the active powers of the consulship ; if he was not 
 actually Tribune, another vote clothed him with the negative 
 powers of the tribuneship.* At once Consul and Tribune 
 within the city, he held the authority of Proconsul in every 
 province of the Commonwealth. A Magistrate clothed with 
 such accumulated powers, one who held all at once the various 
 offices which were meant to act as checks upon one another, 
 one who could at once command as Consul and forbid as 
 Tribune, was practically as absolute a ruler as any King or 
 Tyrant. Still, in form he was not a King, but a Magistrate ; 
 the various powers and titles which together made up sove- 
 reignty had to be specially conferred on each succeeding 
 Emperor ; they were not always conferred by a single vote, 
 nor always accepted at once by the prince on whom they were 
 pressed. Augustus indeed would not even accept his special 
 powers for life ; he had them renewed to him over and over 
 again for periods of five or ten years. The Csesar was thus 
 in truth an absolute monarch, and his Greek subjects, from 
 the very beginning, did not scruple to give him the kingly 
 title, t But in theory he was only a citizen, a senator, a 
 magistrate — the first of citizens, the first of senators, the first 
 of magistrates. Doubtless there was something of solemn 
 hypocrisy in all this ; but the peculiar hidden nature of the 
 Imperial power had some very practical results. As compared 
 
 * Each Emperor commonly assumed the actual consulship at least once, 
 often much oftener. Augustus could not assume the actual tribuneship, be- 
 cause, though a plebeian by birth, he had been adopted into the patrician 
 house of the Julii. Hence both he and succeeding Emperors obtained the 
 grant of the tribunitian power without holding the office, and it was in this 
 particular tribunitian power, more than in anything else, that their soyereignty 
 was felt really to dwell. 
 
 + The formal equivalent of Imperator is of course avroKpartup ; but it is 
 clear from the New Testament, to go no further, that the provincials freely 
 spoke of even the Julian Caesars as 0aai\€vs. It is curious to trace how, in 
 the progress of the Empire, /3a(riA.Ei;s obtained the special sense of Emperor, 
 while inere Kings were only ^^yes. 
 
IX.] TEE FLA YIAN CMSAES. 317 
 
 with acknowledged kingship, we shall hardly be wrong in 
 saying that it made the rule of a good Emperor better, and 
 the rule of a bad Emperor worse. 
 
 The Csesar then and his family had no court, no position 
 wholly distinct from that of other Roman nobles. The very 
 fact that the Roman Empire took in the whole civilized 
 world of itself hindered the growth of any royal caste. 
 There were no foreign princesses for the Emperor to marry ; 
 there was no privileged order out of whom candidates were to 
 be chosen for the vacant throne. Any man of Roman birth 
 might, by electionj adoption, or force, become Csesar and 
 Augustus j no man of other than Roman birth could dream 
 of such a post for a moment. Any woman of Roman birth 
 might become the wife and mother of Caesars and Augusti ; 
 but the thought of a foreign Queen, the daughter of Ptolemy 
 or the daughter of Herod, was something from which every 
 Roman shrank as an abomination. And the citizen who was 
 thus raised to the first rank among citizens was not placed in 
 any position outwardly to lord it over his brethren. Practically 
 they were his slaves, but no court-etiquette reminded them of 
 their slavery. The Emperor gave his vote in the Senate like 
 another Senator ; as Prince of the Senate he gave the first 
 vote ; but it was open either to patriots or to subtle flatterers 
 to vote another way. His household was like that of any other 
 Roman noble ; he mixed with other Roman nobles on terms 
 of social equality ; he had no crowns and sceptres, no bond- 
 ings of the knee, no titles of Majesty or Highness. The 
 master of the world was addressed by his subjects by the 
 simple name of Csesar, half his hereditary surname, half his 
 official title. No Chief Butlers or High Falconers or Lord 
 Stewards swelled the pomp of an Augustus ; no Cornelia or 
 Emilia waited as Maid of Honour or Lady in Waiting upon 
 the bidding of the proudest Augusta. Such personal services 
 as the first of citizens needed were done for him, as for all 
 other citizens, by the hands of his own slaves and freedmen. 
 No Roman would have felt himself honoured by tying the 
 Imperial shoe-latchet or serving at the Imperial table. It 
 
318 TEE FLAVIAN CMS ARS. [Essay 
 
 was unusual to appoint any but freedmen even to really 
 honourable offices in the Imperial service.* The children and 
 kinsfolk of the monarch were not Princes and Princesses; 
 they were magistrates, Senators, or simple citizens, according 
 to the rank which they might personally reach. f We might 
 perhaps say, that under the best Emperors the Senate filled 
 the place of a constitutional King, while the Emperor was its 
 inevitable and irremovable Prime Minister. His position was 
 that of a virtually absolute monarch ; but he was a monarch 
 who reigned without a particle of royal show, who consulted 
 the Senate on all matters, and respected the formal functions of 
 other magistrates. And surely such a position has something 
 in common with the position of the private peer or commoner, 
 undistinguishable from other peers or commoners, who pracr 
 tically commands the sovereign who is his formal master, whose 
 word can create the Dukes, Archbishops, and high officers of 
 the state, after whom, when he has created them, he humbly 
 walks, as many degrees their inferior in formal rank. J 
 
 It is evident that this lack of what we may call personal 
 royalty had, in the hands of the better Emperors, the efiect of 
 greatly lightening the yoke of their practical despotism. The 
 Romans were slaves, but the badges of their slavery were not 
 ostentatiously thrust in their faces. The will of Csesar had 
 practically as much effect as the will of a barbarian King j but 
 it was exercised in such a way that the Romans could, with 
 
 * Spartianus (Hadr. 22) says that Hadrian was the first to employ Roman 
 knights, even in what ws should think the honourable office of private secretary. 
 ' Ab epistolis et libellis primus equites Komanos habuit.' But according to 
 Tacitus (Hist. i. 58), ViteUius had long before employed knights in all the 
 offices usually fiUed by freedmen. 'Ministeria prinoipatfls, per libertos agi 
 solita, in equites Eomanos disponit.' Probably the innovation of ViteUius was 
 not followed by his successors, and had therefore been forgotten in the time of 
 Hadrian. 
 
 t Claudius Caesar, for instance, held no office at all till his nephew Caiua 
 made him Consul. Till then, he seems not to have been a Senator, therefore 
 he was only a knight. 
 
 t [This comparison was of course meant to apply only to the relations 
 of the Prime Minister to the King, as compared with those of the Emperor 
 to the Senate, not at all to the relation of the Prime Minister to Parliament 
 or to the nation.] 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN O^SARS. 319 
 
 just pride, compare the dominion of Law under which they lived 
 with the arbitrary rule of the Parthian despot. The good side 
 of this civil sovereignty is never so clearly shown as during 
 the Flavian and Antonine reigns. Under such princes the 
 forms of the Commonwealth had a practical good effect. They 
 allowed greater scope for the good intentions of the ruler, and 
 they removed him from many of the temptations of an acknow- 
 ledged monarch. The good Emperors were men of various 
 personal dispositions, but they all agreed in the general cha- 
 racter of their rule. Trajan the new Romulus and Anto- 
 ninus the new Numa, the homely plebeian Vespasian and the 
 meek philosopher Marcus^ all agreed in the strictly legal nature 
 of their government, in their deference to the Senate, in their 
 respect for the old traditions of the Commonwealth. The forms 
 of modern royalty would have altogether hindered the simple 
 and genial mode of life which, in the persons of the good 
 Emperors, veiled and lightened the reality of their absolute 
 power. 
 
 But, if the peculiar nature of the Imperial power gave a 
 wider field to the goodness of the good Emperors, there can 
 he no doubt that it heightened the wickedness of the bad. 
 It is plain that the deeds of some of the worst Csesars are 
 wholly without parallel in the annals of European royalty in 
 any age. Both the Macedonian kingdoms of old and the 
 kingdoms of modern Europe have been disgraced by many 
 cruel, foolish, and profligate monarchs ; but it would be hard 
 to find the like of Caius or Nero or Elagabalus. A perfect 
 parallel, we suspect, could hardly be found even in the worst 
 Oriental despotism. So far as there ever was any approach 
 to it in Europe, it must be looked for, not among the lawful 
 Kings of any age, but among some of the worst of the Tyrants 
 of old Greece and of mediaeval Italy. But even the worst of 
 these — and bad enough they were indeed— hardly supply any 
 real parallel to the frantic excesses of combined lust and 
 cruelty which we see in the vilest of the Emperors. Several 
 of them, we may believe, had, in some sort, lost their senses. 
 Caius, it is clear, at last became a mere madman. But if 
 
320 THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 they lost their senses, it was through the practice of unre- 
 strained wickedness that they lost them. And here comes in 
 the seeming paradox that the CsEsar, the first citizen, the 
 Consul, the High Pontifi", the social equal of other patricians, 
 had really, because he was all this, more means given him for 
 the practice of unrestrained wickedness than even an Eastern 
 despot. The formal etiquette of royalty, the traditional re- 
 straints and trammels which check the personal action even of 
 an absolute monarch, if they cut him off from much good, cut 
 him off' also from much evil. The position of a King exposes 
 him to many temptations, but it also provides him with 
 some safeguards. The worst King commonly retains some re- 
 gard for the dignity of his person and office ; even a Sultan 
 finds his caprices checked by various conventional forms which 
 it is not easy for him to escape from. A King who cannot 
 set foot in public without being surrounded by a certain degree 
 of ceremony cannot play off before the world the utterly mad 
 freaks of the worst of the Roman Caesars. He may be cruel, 
 he may be lustful ; but the very necessity of his position 
 drives him in some degree to moderate, or at any rate to 
 veil, both his cruelty and his lust. The influence of Chris- 
 tianity and of modern European civilization has doubtless 
 largely helped towards this happy result, but it is not the 
 whole cause ; the excesses of the Roman Caesars stand, as we 
 have said, alone, even in the ancient and heathen world. 
 If we find a feeble approach to Imperial cruelty in a few 
 Sicilian Tyrants, it is precisely because they were Tyrants, 
 and therefore were not under the same restraints, either of 
 shame or of usage, as a lawful King, The will of the Roman 
 Csesar was practically unrestrained ; and, precisely because he 
 was merely Csesar and not King, he was set free from the moral 
 restraints of royalty. That lack of court-etiquette which en- 
 abled Vespasian and Antoninus to live on terms of equality 
 with virtuous Senators no less enabled Nero and Commodus 
 to live in a partnership of unutterable vice with the very vilest 
 of mankind. The pride of the Roman citizen, which looked 
 on personal service to the sovereign as the duty of slaves and 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN GJESARS. 321 
 
 freedmen, handed over a weak or viciously disposed Emperor 
 to the unrestrained influence of the basest and most rapacious 
 of flatterers. The corrupting influence of the Imperial position 
 on a mind at all predisposed to evil is clearly shown by the fact 
 that nearly all the worst Emperors began well. The 'reigns 
 of even absolute princes under other forms of administration 
 do not often show the utter contrast which we see between 
 the first and the last days of Caius or Nero or Domitian. 
 
 The unacknowledged character of the Imperial power had 
 also another evil effect, and that one which is most strongly 
 marked in the reigns of the good Emperors. The only 
 advantage or palliation of the Imperial despotism was that 
 it allowed, better than the Commonwealth could allow, of the 
 fusion together of all races within the Empire, and of the ex- 
 tension of equal rights to all the subjects of a common master. 
 The boon was, after all, a very poor substitute either for 
 national independence or for full federal or municipal freedom ; 
 still it was better than the absolute bondage of the whole 
 world to the Senate and People of a single city. But the 
 republican forms which were kept on under the Empire tended 
 greatly to cheek this result. The Empire had its local habi- 
 tation in the one city just as much as the republic had.* As 
 Consulj Tribune, High Pontiff, and Prince of the Senate, the 
 ■ Caesar was nowhere fully at home but in the capital ; even in 
 the provinces he appeared as the Imperator of the Roman 
 army, as the Proconsul of the ruling city. All this tended to 
 keep the provinces in a state of greater inferiority than if their 
 ruler had been an avowed King, who held equal powers over 
 all his dominions, and who was equally at home in every part 
 of them. Every period of reform, while the old constitution 
 kept any shadow of life, took the shape of a reaction, of 
 a falling back upon old Roman traditions. Now those tradi- 
 tions were of course wholly founded on the one principle of the 
 greatness of the local Rome ; they taught the wide difference 
 
 * [I was of course thinking mainly of the Julian, Flavian and Antonine 
 periods ; at all events of the times before the changes represented by Diooletiaii 
 and Constantine.] 
 
 X 
 
322 THE FLAVIAN CJSSARS. [Essay 
 
 between the citizen, the stranger, and the slave ; their whole 
 object was Roman conquest and Roman dotninion. The 
 Dictator Caesar seems, more than any one either before or 
 after him, to have risen above these local prejudices ; but they 
 reignefl in full force from Sulla to Trajan. Csesar wished to 
 be King over the subjects of Rome, doubtless as a step to 
 being King over Rome herself. He filled the Senate with 
 Gauls, and gave away the Roman franchise broadcast. But 
 when his successor found that the dream of avowed royalty 
 was hopeless, he necessarily fell back upon the traditions of 
 republican exclusiveness. Augustus crucified, or sent back 
 into slavery, the enfranchised slaves who had fought under 
 Sextus Pompeius. His legislation threw hindrances in the 
 way of any large manumission of that wretched class. Such 
 legislation was a sin against the rights of mankind, but it 
 was absolutely necessary if the Roman people was to keep 
 up any bind of purity as a dominant race. Claudius — whom, 
 as far as intention goes, we may fairly rank among the better 
 Emperors — did something for the slave class, but he most 
 likely thought himself a new Scipio or JEmiliiis when he 
 destroyed the freedom which Lykia had kept down to his 
 time. The Imperial antiquary doubtless rejoiced in adding 
 a province to the Empire at each end. Nero, on the other 
 hand, had no Roman feelings at all; he hated the Senate 
 which was the resting-place of Roman traditions, while he 
 sought after a certain popularity both among the provincials 
 and among the mixed multitude which called itself the People 
 of Rome. But even he did nothing really to break down the 
 middle wall of partition ; all that he could do for his favourite 
 Greeks was to set himself up as a kind of mock Flamininus, 
 and to give back to them a local freedom which they had lost 
 all power of using. In Nero the series of strictly Roman Em- 
 perors ends ; the Flavii are Italians ; with Nerva begins the 
 series of provincial rulers.* But Italians and provincials alike 
 
 * See two remarkable passages of Aurelius "Victor, De Cassaribns xi. 13: 
 ' Hactenus Bomas, seu per Italiam orti imperiuni rexere, hino advense ; nesoio 
 quoque an, ut In Prisoo Tarquinio, longe meliores. Ac mihi quidem audienti 
 
IX.] THE FLA VJAN G^SARS. 323 
 
 fall back for some while upon old Roman precedents. The 
 Sabine Vespasian gathered ia the last gleanings of Greek 
 freedom. Rhodes, Byzantium, and other outlying Hellenic 
 commonwealths had never been conquered by Rome ; they 
 had kept their independence for two hundred years after the 
 conquest of Macedonia and Achaia. Vespasian, without any 
 assigned reason, incorporated them in the Empire by whose 
 provinces they had long been surrounded. The Spaniard 
 Trajan fought and conquered as thoroughly in the interest 
 and for the glory of the local Rome as any Camillus or Fabius 
 of old time. It was Hadrian, as Mr. Merivale points out, 
 who first really ruled in the interest of the whole Empire. He 
 was the first to look on his dominions in general as some- 
 thing more than mere farms for the enrichment of the Prince 
 and the People of a single town. Nero's visit to Greece 
 was the freak of a madman ; but Hadrian passed through all 
 parts of his Empire in the spirit of a master anxious for the 
 welfare of all alike. Through the whole period there is no 
 doubt some truth in the remark which Tacitus puts into the 
 mouth of Cerialis,* that the whole Empire reaped the advan- 
 tage of the virtues of a good prince, while the wickedness of a 
 bad one was most felt by those who were nearest to him. A 
 good prince doubtless did what he could to reform the adminis- 
 tration of the provinces as well as that of the city. But as the 
 virtues of a good prince commonly took the form of a falling 
 back upon antique Roman models, it followed that the better 
 princes were commonly those who did least to break down the 
 barriers which divided the difierent classes of their subjects. 
 It is for exactly the same reason that we find so many of the 
 best Emperors persecuting the Christians, while some of the 
 worst showed them more favour. The better Emperors 
 were striving to keep up the ©Id traditions of the Common- 
 
 multa legentique, plane compertum, urbem Komanam extemornm virtute, 
 atque inaitivis artibus, prsecipue creviBse.' In the Epitome, xi. i ■;, the last two 
 paragraphs are : ' Unde compertum est, urbem Eomam externorum virtute 
 crevisse. Quid enim Nerva prudentius aut moderatius ? quid Trajauo divinius ! 
 quid prasetantius Hadriano ? ' 
 
 * Tac. Hist. iv. 74. 
 
 Y a 
 
324 THE FLA VIAN CJHSARS. [Essay 
 
 wealth, and at those traditions Christianity aimed the dead- 
 liest of all blows. To put the citizen and the provincial on a 
 level, to tolerate a sect which refused the worship that every 
 Roman owed to the Roman Jupiter, were hoth of them sins 
 against the traditions of the ancient commonwealth, — sins 
 which might well be expected to bring down the wrath of 
 the patron Gods of Rome upon the Prince and People who 
 endured such iniquity among them. 
 
 The Flavian age was a period of reaction — for the most 
 part, of wholesome reaction — in every way. The Julian 
 reigns had, at least from the death of Tiberius, been a 
 period of licensed madness, not only of cruelty, but of folly 
 and caprice of every kind. Claudius, well-disposed pedant as 
 he was, always needed to be cajoled and bullied into crime 
 by his wives and freedmen ; but the crimes were done, though 
 Csesar hardly knew of them. Under Nero Imperial wickedness 
 reached its height ; every Roman tradition was trampled on, 
 and the only steadfast principle of the tyrant was an abiding 
 hatred of the Senate. Then came the fearful year of the civil 
 war, a year full of events which must have shocked every 
 Roman feeling as bitterly as either the murders or the fiddlings 
 of Nero. A real national feeling was thoroughly aroused. 
 When Vitellius led his army of Gauls and Germans into Italy, 
 things seemed to have gone back to the days when the 
 younger Marius allied himself with the last Samnite Pontius, 
 or when Antonius led the forces of his Egyptian * paramour 
 against the Commonwealth and the Gods of Rome. When the 
 Capitol was stormed and burned by the barbarian legions, 
 men felt that Rome had undergone a greater blow than ever 
 Porsena or Brennus had dealt against her.f The homely 
 Sabine burgher came to restore Rome after what was really 
 
 * We employ Boman language to express Roman feelings ; but to con- 
 found the Macedonian Queen, the daughter of all the Ptolemies, with her 
 Egyptian subjects, was pretty much — to use an illustration of Lord Macaulay's 
 — as if one were to paint Washington as a Red Indian brandishing a 
 tomahawk. 
 
 t See the emphatic lament of Tacitus, Hist. iji. 72. 
 
IX.] THE FLA VIAN C^SARS. 325 
 
 occupation at the hands of a foreign enemy, a foretaste of 
 future barbarian conquests,, from Alaric down to our own day.* 
 Vespasian restored the dominion of Law at least, if not of 
 liberty, and reigned in Eome as a Roman, the Prince of the 
 Eoman Senate, the Tribune of the Roman People. He was 
 indeed the choice, not of the Senate or People, but of an 
 army quartered far from Rome ; but it was an army warring 
 for Rome's greatness in the hardest of her later struggles, 
 an army which was certainly not an army of Jews and 
 Syrians in the same way that the Vitellian host was prac- 
 tically an army of Gauls and Germans. But there was one 
 thing which the new ruler needed. Rome, and the rest of 
 the world, had long looked for something of divinity in its 
 rulers. The lord of men must be himself something more than 
 man. We have elsewhere spoken of the divine homage which 
 was paid to Philip and Alexander, and, long before their day, 
 to the Spartan Lysandros. The successors of Alexander had 
 received, and seemingly delighted in, the same impious flat- 
 tery. The Athenian People had quartered Demetrios and his 
 harem in the temple of his virgin sister Athene, and a 
 General of the Achaian League had sung pseans in honour 
 of the Macedonian whom he brought to overthrow the free- 
 dom of Peloponnesos.f So each successive Csesar, who at 
 Rome was only a magistrate of the Commonwealth, had re- 
 ceived divine worship at the hands of the provincials. Rome 
 herself was gradually taught to see something more than 
 human in the Julian house, the descendants of Rome's divine 
 ancestress ; Augustus himself, simple citizen as he demeaned 
 himself, did not quarrel with the belief which made him 
 the son of Apollo ; J he took it kindly if men held down 
 their eyes before the divine brightness of his countenance. 
 
 * [This was of course written while Kome was still under the yoke of her 
 last Gaulish invaders.] 
 
 + [See History of Federal Government, i. 493.] 
 
 J It must be remembered that, as the connexion of Augustus with the 
 Julian house was wholly through the female line, to give him a divine father 
 did not throw the same slur on his human legitimacy which it did in the case 
 of Alexander and others. 
 
326 THE FLA VIAN GJESARS. [Essay 
 
 But. it was hopeless to clothe Vespasian, a maa with as 
 little divinity as might be either in his countenance or in his 
 pedigree, with any kind of godhead, either hereditary or per- 
 sonal. His strong good sense cast aside the flatteries of 
 genealogists, who invented for him a descent from heroes 
 and demi-gods. In his last illness he mocked at the usual 
 practice of canonizing deceased Emperors ; when his mortal 
 strength was failing, he felt himself beginning to be a God. 
 But a Roman Emperor, above all one whose rise was so re- 
 markable as that of Vespasian, coiild not be left without a 
 sanctity about him of some kind or other. The sanctity of Ves- 
 pasian took a form which was characteristic of the Eastern lands 
 in which he rose to greatness, and which was utterly unlike 
 anything which we find in any form of Greek or Boman 
 religion. Earlier Kings and Emperors had received divine 
 worship, but they seem never to have exercised any divine 
 power. But Vespasian works miracles, exactly after the like- 
 ness of the miracles in the Christian Scriptures. The blind 
 and the lame pray him to touch them with his sacred foot, 
 or to anoint them with his sacred spittle. For some time 
 he withstands their importunity, but at last he goes through 
 the needful ceremony, * and, as the story runs, works the 
 needful cure. These tales are not to be taken as mockeries 
 or imitations of the Christian miracles. The Old and New 
 Testaments of themselves clearly show that miracles of heal- 
 ing, hardly heard of in Western religions, were, by the Jews 
 and the neighbouring nations, looked for from all who either 
 themselves professed to be, or were acknowledged by others as 
 being, clothed with any special function as prophets, teachers, 
 or reformers. Vespasian laid no claim to -the prophetic oflSce, 
 but Eastern admirers might naturally clothe him with it. He 
 was eminently a political reformer, and we are apt to forget 
 how thoroughly the idea of political reformation was implied 
 in the mission of a Hebrew prophet. In an age when a vague 
 expectation seemed to be everywhere spread that some great 
 
 * [Compare the unwillingness of William the Third to touch for the evil. 
 Macaulay, iii. 478.] 
 
IX.] THE FLA 71 AN CJESARS. 327 
 
 ruler and deliverer was coming from the East, the chief #ho 
 was called from a Syrian command to the Empire of the world 
 m.ight well, in Eastern eyes, put on somewhat of the character 
 of a Messiah. The religious halo thus spread about Vespasian 
 was one of a purely Eastern kind ; but as soon as he had put 
 on a mysterious and miraculous character of any kind, the sub- 
 stitute had at once been found for that earlier type of divinity 
 which had died out with the Julian name and blood. Men's 
 minds were better disposed to receive a prince who was thus 
 clearly marked out as a favourite of the Gods ; and the cure 
 of the Alexandrian beggars, whether an instance of cringing 
 imposture or of genuine superstition, may not have been 
 without its share in enabling Vespasian to form what, after 
 the ephemeral reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, might well 
 be Called a lasting dynasty. 
 
 One chief object of Mr. Merivale's present volume is to 
 claim for the Flavian period a share in that admiration which 
 is commonly confined to the five reigns beginning with Nerva. 
 In his view, the accession of Nerva marks indeed an epoch, 
 but it is an epoch, so to speak, within another. The Flavian 
 and Antonine periods together form a whole, as distinguished 
 from the periods before and after them. Undoubtedly the 
 change from Italian to provincial Emperors was a real change, 
 as is pointed out in the passages of Victor which we have 
 already quoted. In this way, the accession of Nerva is a 
 marked point in the Imperial history. But the cause which 
 generally tempts us to make the fall of Domitian a point of 
 greater moment than it really was is very different, and is 
 indeed somewhat ludicrous. Suetonius happened to stop in 
 his series of Imperial biographies with the life of the twelfth 
 Caesar. The work of Suetonius was the popular source of 
 knowledge on the subject ; the full number of twelve was a 
 taking one ; and thus arose the popular notion of the Twelve 
 Cffisars, as if there were some wider gap between the twelfth 
 Cffisar and the thirteenth than there was between any two of 
 the first twelve. But, in truth, as we have already seen, the 
 
328 THE FLA 7IAN GJSSABS. [Essat 
 
 widest gap of all comes between tlie sixth and the tenth, be- 
 tween Nero and Vespasian. We do not meet with such another 
 marked change till we come to the point which marks oflP the 
 legal government of the Antonines from the alternate military 
 despotisra and military anarchy which succeeded it. The dif- 
 ficulty of classing the Flavian and Antonine princes together 
 chiefly arises from the tyranny of Domitian and his violent 
 end, coming, as they do, in the midst of a period which is 
 otherwise one of unbroken good government and peaceful suc- 
 cession. But, after all, the fall of Domitian was simply the pri- 
 vate assassination of a single tyrant : the prsetorians grumbled, 
 but there was no civil war, no general disturbance of any kind. 
 And again, the tyranny of Domitian must not altogether be 
 confounded with the tyranny of some of those who went 
 before him and of some of those who came after him. The 
 character of this strange prince has been very earefuUy worked 
 out by Mr. Merivale, and we think that his view bears a 
 greater impress of truth than is the case with some of his 
 Imperial portraits. We must never forget, among the many 
 merits of Mr. Merivale, that he is still, in some degree, an 
 apologist for the Csesarean despotism, and that it is a kind of 
 duty in his eyes to make out as good a ease as he can for any 
 particular Csesar. In some of the earlier reigns, we cannot 
 think that his success was very great. He has indeed rescued 
 Claudius from a good deal of unmerited popular contempt ; 
 but no fair person ever could confound the weak, well-mean- 
 ing, hen-pecked, antiquary with a madman like Caius or a 
 monster like Nero. As for the others, Mr. Merivale is doubt- 
 less quite justified in his general cautions as to the nature of 
 our materials. We have, as he says, no contemporary history 
 of the earlier Emperors. Our authorities — Suetonius, Tacitus, 
 Di6n — all wrote long after the time. Suetonius is a mere 
 collector of anecdotes ; Di6n loves to find fault with every- 
 body ; Tacitus writes the history of the Empire by the light 
 of senatorial and republican traditions. Undoubtedly, in read- 
 ing narratives of this sort, we must allow for a certain amount 
 of hostile colouring. But, after making every allowance on 
 
IX.] ' THE FLA VIAE CJESARS. 329 
 
 this score that can fairly be made, the undoubted facts, which 
 Mr. Merivale does not dispute for a moment, are enough to 
 stamp the Claudian Caesars, as a whole, as a succession of some 
 of the vilest of mankind. This or that particular story may be 
 false ; the general picture which we draw from the whole mass of 
 stories may be exaggerated ; but even scandal generally pays 
 some regard to probability ; it exaggerates real faults, but 
 it seldom invents qualities which have no being at all. Pos- 
 sibly Nero may not have been quite so bad, nor Antoninus 
 Pius quite so good, as popular belief makes them out ; 
 but there is quite evidence enough to show that Nero was 
 very bad and Antoninus very good. After making every pos- 
 sible allowance, the lusts and cruelties of the early Csesars still 
 far surpass the average of the lusts and cruelties even of the 
 worst tyrants. And their cruelty is a loathsome, capricious, 
 purposeless cruelty ; even Nero's abiding hatred to the Senate 
 is quite unworthy of the name of principle, or even of party- 
 feeling. With Domitian the case is dilFerent ; he was a tyrant 
 of a very remarkable kind ; and Mr. Merivale has, as it seems 
 to us, given a very successful and probable portrait of him 
 and his government. 
 
 Tyrants may perhaps be divided into three classes. There 
 are some whose cruelty is simply military or judicial severity 
 carried too far, whose blows smite men who really deserve to 
 be smitten, only not with so heavy a stroke. A tyranny of 
 this kind is not inconsistent with many personal virtues, and 
 it of itself implies a real zeal for the public good. Again, there 
 are some tyrants whose cruelty has a definite object, who strike 
 in order to destroy or to weaken some hostile party, who are 
 ready to inflict any amount of suffering which suits their own 
 ends, but who take no pleasure in oppression, and who are 
 capable of becoming mild and beneficent rulers as soon as oppo- 
 sition ends. Such were the- authors of both the first and the 
 second proscription. Sulla and Augustus alike shed blood with- 
 out mercy as long as anything was to be gained by shedding 
 it ; but neither of them had any appetite for slaughter and con- 
 fiscation when the need for them had passed by. Lastly, there 
 
3S0 TEE FLA VIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 are tyrants whose tyranny is utterly reckless and capricious, and 
 in whom the frequent practice of cruelty seems at last to create 
 a sort of enjoyment in cruelty for its own sake. Such was the 
 cruelty of Caius and Nero. The second and third classes are 
 distinguished from each other by the fact that tyrants of the 
 second class commonly get better, while tyrants of the third 
 class commonly get worse. The horrors of the second proscrip- 
 tion were followed in due course by the long paternal reign of 
 Augustus. On the other hand, both Caius and Nero began 
 with a professed hatred to cruelty of every kind, which we 
 have no right to assume was mere acting. The one form of 
 tyranny is the cruelty of statesmen, reckless as to the means 
 by which an end is to be compassed ; the other is the cruelty 
 of men in whom weakness and frivolity are united with a 
 childish delight in the mere exercise of power. But the 
 tyranny of Domitian was something which stands quite by 
 itself. He may be said to have begun with a tyranny of the 
 first type, which gradually changed into one of the third. 
 Without being a man of any real power of mind, Domitian was 
 neither a madman like Caius, nor a mere pedant like Claudius, 
 nor a monster of vice and emptiness like Nero. He began as 
 a reformer, as a restorer of old Roman manners and of the 
 old Roman faith. He assumed, unlike earlier Emperors, a 
 perpetual censorship, and, as Censor, he made war upon the 
 vices and luxury of the age. There is no reason to doubt his 
 sincerity. Everything seems to show that he started as a 
 conscientious worshipper of the Gods of Rome, full of an 
 honest wish to bring back Roman life to its ancient purity, 
 and fully determined to carry on the duties of the pontificate, 
 the censorship, and every other magistracy which he held, 
 with the most exemplary and unsparing righteousness. The 
 seeming inconsistency of all this reforming zeal, civil and re- 
 ligious, in a man of Domitian's personally depraved life, is well 
 explained by Mr. Merivale. Neither the Gods of Rome nor the 
 laws of Rome asked for moral purity in their votaries. They 
 may have done so in the early ages of the Republic, but the 
 idea of personal morality had, in Domitian's age, long been 
 
IX.] TEE FLA VIAN C^SARS. 331 
 
 divorced from the ideas of religious and political duty. Par- 
 ticular forms of vice were censured by Law, not as morally 
 wrong-, but as hurtful to the welfare of the state, or as de- 
 grading to the dignity of a Roman citizen. In so doing, the 
 Roman Law did in truth keep within the proper limits of 
 human legislation. The business of an earthly lawgiver is 
 certainly not to punish sins or vices as such, but to hinder, 
 and with that end to punish, crimes against society. The 
 dififerenee between Roman and modern ideas on this subject 
 consists in the difference which the Roman Law drew 
 between Roman citizens and other persons. The adultery 
 of a Roman citizen and a Roman matron was a crime 
 against the state and against the Gods. It led to the 
 confusion of family rights and family worship ; it checked 
 the succession of the lawful race of Rome's citizens ; it was a 
 personal affront to the Gods to whom the marriage-bed was 
 sacred. Other yet worse forms of vice were equally forbidden, 
 as degrading to the lofty character of a citizen of Rome. But 
 beyond these limits, neither the State nor the Gods cared for 
 any man's private vices. ' Domitian, himself a man of infamous 
 life, punished as High Pontiff the frailty of the erring Vestals, 
 as Censor he put in force the Julian and Scantinian Laws, 
 without any inconsistency in his own eyes or those of others. 
 Excesses of which only strangers were the instruments did not 
 violate the sanctity of either character. He did not scruple — 
 so we are universally told— to live in incest with his own 
 niece ; but he had shrunk in horror from the proposal of marry- 
 ing her. No doubt the one crime was a less glaring breach of 
 formal enactments than the other.* In everything Domitian 
 proclaimed himself as a strict and righteous minister of the 
 ancient laws. But, when a man with no real moral principle, 
 with no real force of -character, sets himself up as the severe 
 reformer of a corrupt age, he is almost sure to bring in worse 
 evils than any that he takes away. The merciless exercise 
 
 * [So for several centuries of eoclegiastioal history the concubinage of the 
 Clergy was looked on as a less evil than their marriage.] 
 
332 THB FLAVIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 of a merely formal justice will very easily sink into capri- 
 cious and indiscriminate cruelty. So it proved with Domitian. 
 The strict reformer and unbending judge gradually sank into a 
 tyrant, never perhaps quite so contemptible, but fully as hateful 
 and bloodthirsty, as the vilest of those who went before him. He 
 began by chastising real crimes, and he probably never ceased to 
 do so in his worst days. He has at least the credit of swifbly 
 punishing any deeds of wrong done by his governors in the 
 provinces. But, in his zeal to spare no offender, he encour- 
 aged the vile brood of informers ; and thus the innocent were 
 often condemned, while one class at least of the worst offenders 
 was openly favoured. At last he became utterly hardened 
 in cruelty; after the revolt of Antonius had thoroughly fright- 
 ened him, he began to live in constant fear of rebellions and 
 conspiracies, and at last his reign became, as Mr. Merivale 
 truly calls it, emphatically a reign of terror. And it would 
 almost seem that the possession, and the habitually harsh exer- 
 cise, of absolute power had in some measure turned his brain. 
 Otherwise, it is certainly strange that a political and religious 
 reformer, such as Domitian began by being, should have 
 plunged into excesses of insolent and impious tyranny almost 
 beyond any of the oppressors who went before him. Since the 
 frantic Caius, no one had so openly indulged in the fancy for 
 deification ; Rome's human inhabitants and her divine protec- 
 tors were alike insulted, when the modest style of the first 
 CsBsars was exchanged for the frightful formula of " our Lord 
 and God."* Mr. Merivale remarks that this assumption of 
 divinity may possibly have been connected with the fact that 
 he stood in a closer relation to deified predecessors than any 
 earlier Caesar. His own father, his own brother, were enrolled 
 among the Gods ; he may have learned to think that the god- 
 head of the Flavian house was not confined to its deceased 
 
 * ' Dominua et Dens noster,' Suet. Dom. 13. Domiwrn in this formula must 
 not be confounded with the Christian use of tile word. The impiety lies 
 wholly in the Deus. But domtnus, implying a master of slaves, was a title 
 which no magistrate under the Eepublio, and seemingly till now none \mder 
 the Empire, had ever ventured to claim. 
 
 [See Growth of the English Constitution, p. 169.] 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 333 
 
 members, but had become incarnate in the person of its only 
 living representative. Other freaks of moody, and generally 
 gloomy, caprice marked the latter years of his reign, which 
 seem to show that his intellect was at least weakened, if it 
 had not wholly given way, Altogether, the sanctimonious 
 pretences with which he began only served to make his 
 tyranny more frightful in itself, and more hateful from its 
 inconsistency. Few, if any, of the long line of Roman tyrants 
 went out of the world as the object of a more universal 
 hatred ; the memory of none has been the subject of more 
 universal and unalleviated condemnation. 
 
 We have closely followed Mr. Merivale in his masterly por^ 
 trait of the last Flavian Emperor, the only Flavian tyrant. It 
 is a portrait which we think may fairly be drawn from our 
 scanty notices. In this case Mr. Merivale neither throws doubt 
 on his authorities, nor does he say anything which can be fairly 
 called an apology for crime. The utmost that he does is to hint 
 that the evidence against Domitian is 'suspiciously harmo- 
 nious,' and to give an ' admonitory caution' about the ' frightful 
 temptations of his position.' But, when we find him the only 
 thoroughly bad prince in a series of eight, we really cannot 
 see so much excuse for him on the ground of temptations which 
 the others contrived, more or less successfully, to overcome. 
 We do not quarrel with Mr. Merivale's ' admonitory caution,' 
 as we do not find that it at all leads him to try to evade the 
 overwhelming testimony of the facts. His account of Domitian 
 explains, without at all excusing, a sort of wickedness which 
 took a very peculiar form. In fact, Domitian properly takes 
 his place in the series from Vespasian to Marcus. He was 
 indeed bad, while the others may, on the whole, be called 
 good ; still, he was a prince whose government aimed at the 
 same general objects ; his crimes were the excess and corrup- 
 tion of their virtues, not something utterly different and con- 
 tradictory. He fairly takes his place in the series of reactionary 
 or reforming Emperors ; he became in truth as bad as Nero 
 himself, yet his reign may be truly reckoned as part of the 
 period of revulsion which the excesses of Nero called forth, 
 
334 TEE FLA YIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 We have spoken throughout of the Flavian and Antonine 
 Csesars in that language of respect which, on the whole, they 
 deserre. The men themselves deserve far more praise than 
 blame. Doubtless all had their faults ; those certainly had of 
 whose actions we possess any detailed account. Few of them 
 wholly escaped from the degrading vices of the age. Few re- 
 mained wholly uneorrupted by the temptations of unrestrained 
 power. But, on the whole, all, save Domitian, played their 
 part well. Their >faults, whether as men or as rulers, are alto-, 
 gether outshone by their merits. It would be easy to charge 
 Vespasian with inflicting on his country the miseries of a civil 
 war. But, in a moment of anarchy, when there was no legiti- 
 mate or universally acknowledged Emperor, we cannot fairly 
 blame the man best worthy to rule for obeying the call of his 
 troops to put in his claims among others. For the special horrors 
 of the war, for the fearful sack of Cremona, for the arbitrary 
 and cruel acts of Mucianus and Antonius Primns, Vespasian 
 can hardly be made personally responsible. So, when we 
 come to Trajan, though the giving up of so many of his con^ 
 quests by his successor is the best comment on their real , 
 value, we can hardly blamfi a Roman soldier and reformer 
 for treading in the steps of all the most famous worthies of 
 the Commonwealth. And, transient as were his Eastern 
 victories, one of Trajan's conquests had results which have 
 lasted to this day, and which take their turn among the 
 other questions which occupy the busy pens of ambassadors 
 and foreign ministers. The Eouman provinces, attached 
 to the Old Rome by their language, as they are to the 
 New Rome by their creed, bear witness to the strong hand 
 with which Trajan founded his new dominion north of the 
 Danube. The gorernment of Hadrian was not free from faults ; 
 but the first prince who really cared for the provinces is entitled 
 to lasting honour. Altogether, the Emperors of this period 
 formed a succession of wise and good rulers, to which it would 
 not be easy to find a parallel. We may well look with admira- 
 tion on so long a period of comparative good government, when 
 we think of what went before, and of what followed. But, while 
 
IX.] THE FLA 7IAN C^SARS. 335 
 
 we do every justice to men who did all that could be done in 
 their position, we must not be blinded to the utterly unrighteous 
 nature of that position itself. We must not forget, in the 
 splendours of the Empire^ in the virtues of many of its rulers, 
 the inherent wickedness of the Empire itself. On this iiead it 
 is well, after the extravagant advocacy of Mr. Congreve, even 
 after the more measured apology of Mr. Merivale, to turn to 
 the voice of truth and righteousness speaking through the 
 mouth of Mr. Goldwin Smith. His vigorous setting forth of 
 the essential unrighteousness of the Roman Empire is one of 
 those utterances where simple truth of itself becomes the 
 highest eloquence. The Eoman Empire did its work in the 
 scheme of Providence ; it paved the way for the religion and 
 civilization of modern Europe : but this is simply one of the 
 countless cases in which good has been brought out of evil. 
 The Empire may have been a necessary evil ; it may have been 
 the lesser evil in a choice of evils ; but it was in itself a 
 thing of evil all the same. It showed, with tenfold aggrava- 
 tion, all that we look upon with loathing in the modern despot- 
 isms of Austria* and Russia. The worst of modern despots is 
 placed under some restraint by the general public opinion of the 
 world, by the religion which he professes, by the civilization in 
 which all Europe shares, by the existence of powerful free states 
 side by side with despotisms, by the very jealousies and rivalries 
 of the despotic powers themselves. But the Roman Empire stood 
 alone in the world ; there was no influence or opinion beyond it, 
 Its subjects, even in the worst times, would hardly have gained 
 by flying to the wilds of independent Germany, or by exchang- 
 ing the civilized despotism of Rome for the barbarian despotism 
 of Parthia. But, whatever were its causes, whatever were its 
 results, however necessary it was in its own time, it was in 
 itself a wicked thing, which, for so many ages, crushed all 
 national, and nearly all intellectual, life in the fairest regions of 
 three continents. There is life as long as old Greece keeps the 
 
 * [Austria as it then was ; not the ' Oesterreichisch-ungarisoheMonarohie ' 
 that is now.] 
 
336 THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. [Essay 
 
 least relic of her freedom ; there is life again as soon as we reach 
 the first germ of Christian and Teutonic Europe ; nay, life 
 shows itself again in the Empire itself, when its place and its 
 object are changed, when it has taken up the championship of 
 Christianity against fire-worship and Islam, and when it has in 
 the end become coextensive with that artificial nation — Greek 
 in one aspect and Roman in another — which for so many ages 
 boasted of the Roman name. Butj from Mummius to Augustus, 
 the Roman city stands as the living mistress of a dead world ; 
 and, from Augustus to Theodoric, the mistress becomes as life- 
 less as her subjects. For the truest life of man, for the political 
 life of Perikles and Aratos, of Licinius and the Gracchi, the 
 world had now no scope ; the Empire allowed but one field for 
 the exercise of man's higher feculties, when the righteous soul 
 of a Tacitus or a Juvenal was stirred up to brand the evil deeds 
 of the Empire itself. The bane did, in some slight degree, 
 prove its own antidote, when such stern preachers of truth 
 were called forth to take the place of the courtly elegance of 
 the hired poets of Augustus. Of the great legacy of Rome 
 to later times, the legacy of the Roman Law, the best 
 parts were simply inherited by the Empire from the days 
 of the Republic. The Republic may indeed have ceased 
 to be possible; but we may remember that, under the Re- 
 public, the virtues of Titus and Trajan would have found a 
 field for their exercise, while there was no field for the crimes 
 of Caius or Nero or Domitian. The Verres of a single pro- 
 vince sank before the majesty of the Law and the righteous 
 eloquence of his accuser : against the Verres of the world 
 there was no defence except in the dagger of the assassin. 
 A chain is of the strength of its weakest link, and a system 
 of this kind may fairly be judged by the worst princes that 
 it produces. A system under which a Nero and a Commodus 
 are possible and not uncommon is truly a system of Neros 
 and Commodi, though they may be relieved by a whole 
 series of Trajans and Antonines. For the Trajans and the 
 Antonines have their parallels elsewhere ; their virtues were 
 not the result of the Imperial system ; they simply existed 
 
IX.] THE FLA VIAN CjESAR'S. 337 
 
 in spite of it. But the crimes of Nero and Commodus are 
 without parallels elsewhere ; they are the direct and distinctive 
 product of the system itself, when left to its own developement. 
 In a free state Caius would have found his way to Bedlam, 
 and Nero to Tyburn ; Domitian, under the checks of the re- 
 publican system, might perhaps have made as useful a Censor 
 as Cato. We cannot end a view of even the best period of 
 the Roman monarchy without echoing the fervent wish of the 
 Oxford Professor that the world may never see its like again. 
 
 We have one more remark to make on Mr. Merivale's way 
 of looking at the establishment of the Empire. He is fond of 
 speaking of both the elder and the younger Csesar as the chiefs 
 of a popular party, who set up their dominion on the ruins 
 of an oligarchy. This is of course true in a sense; the mob 
 of Rome were favourable to Csesar, and his party historically 
 represented the party of his uncle Marius. But we need not 
 take long to show what is the real nature of a pseudo-demo- 
 cratic despotism. It is a device which neither Csesar had all 
 to himself. There were Dionysii before their time, and 
 there have been Buonapartes since. It is undoubtedly true 
 that, in one sense, the party of Csesar was a popular party, 
 and that the party of the Republic was an aristocratic party ; 
 but they were not popular and aristocratic parties in any 
 sense which would make us sympathize with the popular 
 party against the aristocratic party. As long as there was a 
 real Roman People, capable and worthy of political rights, we 
 go along with all its struggles against the domination of any 
 exclusive caste. But sympathy with a people against an olig- 
 archy does not carry us on to sympathize with a mob against 
 a Senate. Great as were the faults of the Roman Senate in 
 the last stage of its freedom, it was at least the only body left 
 where free discussion was possible ; it was the only assembly 
 where two opinions could be expressed, where the arguments 
 for both of them were fairly hearkened to, and a free vote 
 taken between them. As such it was the salt of the earth, 
 the last abidxng-place of freedom. And we must not carry on 
 
 z 
 
338 THE FLAVIAN CJESARS. [Essay 
 
 into those days ideas which belong only to the older struggle^ 
 between the orders. Many of the most illustrious nobles were 
 technically plebeians ; every Licinius and Csecilius and Luta- 
 tius, the Great Pompeius, the Triumvir Antonius and the 
 tyrannicide Brutus, Cato and Milo and Hortensius and the 
 second Csesar himself,— all belonged to the order which the 
 old Appii had striven to shut out from the fasces and the 
 senate-house. And the doors of the senate-house were not 
 open only to those who were indeed formally plebeians, but 
 who were practically as much members of a noble class as 
 any Cornelius or ^milius in Rome. A new man at Rome, 
 as everywhere else, lay under disadvantages; but his dis- 
 advantages might be overcome, and it rested wholly with 
 the People itself whether they should be overcome or not. 
 That government cannot be called a mere oligarchy in which 
 the Tribes still chose Praetors, Consuls, Censors, and High 
 Pontiffs ; where the highest places in the commonwealth were 
 not refused to Caitis Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero. 
 Any deliberative body where two sides can be fairly heard, 
 whether it take the form of a democratic Assembly or of an 
 aristocratic Senate, is essentially a safeguard of freedom, a 
 check on the will either of a mob or of a despot. Even in 
 the days of the Empire, the Senate, the last shadow of the 
 free state, still keft life enough for the good Emperors to 
 respect it and for the bad Emperors to hate it. It is then 
 with the Senate that the sympathies of the real lover of 
 freedom lie in the last age of the Republic, rather than with 
 the frantic mob which disgraced the once glorious name 
 of the Roman Commons. No assembly that ever was devised 
 was less fitted to undertake the championship of freedom 
 than the old Parliament of Paris ; but, when the Par- 
 liament of Paris was the one representative of right against 
 might left in all France, when the feeble opposition of the 
 magistracy was the sole check upoli a despot's arbitrary will, 
 our sympathies lie wholly with the Parliament in all its strug- 
 gles with the royal power. It is something when even a 
 Sultan has to ask a Sheikh-ul-Islam whether his wishes are in 
 
IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SABS. 339 
 
 agreement with the Law of the Prophet. He may indeed, like 
 our James the Second, depose a too unbending expounder of the 
 Law, and may supply his place with one who will know no 
 law but the prince's will ; but the mere formality is some- 
 thing ; the mere delay is something ; it is something when a 
 despot has to ask a question to which the answer may perhaps 
 run counter to his wish. And so, as the last check on the 
 despotism at once of the mob of the Forum and of the Caesar 
 on the Palatine, we still hold that the Senate where Cicero 
 denounced Catilina and Antonius, where the last dying notes 
 of freedom were heard from the lips of Thrasea and Helvidius, 
 was an assembly which well deserves the grateful remem- 
 brance of mankind. 
 
 On many points then, and those points the most important 
 of all, we look on the history of the Csesars with widely 
 different eyes from those of their last historian. But, on 
 the very ground which makes us differ from him, we can 
 never regret a difference from an advocate at once so candid 
 and so competent. Mr. Merivale is a real scholar, in an age 
 when real scholars are not so common that we can afford to 
 lose or to undervalue a single one of the order. In all the 
 highest qualities of a historian, there are few living men 
 who surpass him. We look with sadness on his seventh volume, 
 when we hear that his seventh volume is to be his last. If 
 our words can have any influence with him, — and he may 
 receive them as the words, not of flatterers, but in some degree 
 of antagonists, — he will even now change a purpose which 
 all scholars must have heard with sorrow, and will carry on 
 his great work down at least to the limit which he first set 
 before hiTn as its close. 
 
 THE END.