n > , .^ . • j$'i . *■ ^ivvvv''''''W^?: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 3Ta i* | UXITEI) STATES OF AMERICA. & IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS OF GREEKS AND ROMANS. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. LONDON : EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 1853. X LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRJAR3. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR TO CHARLES DICKENS. Feiends as we are, have long been, and ever shall be, I doubt whether I should have prefaced these pages with your name were it not to register my judgement that, in breaking up and cultivating the unreclaimed wastes of Humanity, no labours have been so strenuous, so continuous, or half so successful, as yours. "While the world admires in you an unlimited knowledge of mankind, deep thought, vivid imagination, and bursts of eloquence from unclouded highths, no less am I delighted when I see you at the schoolroom you have liberated from cruelty, and at the cottage you have purified from disease. CONTENTS. GREEKS. Page ACHILLES AND HELENA . . . . . . . . 1 MSOF AND RHODOPE 7 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS 33 ANACREON AND POLYCRATES 43 XERXES AND ARTABANUS .55 PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES 64 DIOGENES AND PLATO . . . 73 • XENOPHON AND CYRUS THE YOUNGER 131 ALCIBIADES AND XENOPHON 141 DEMOSTHENES AND EUBULIDES 150 JSSCHTNES AND PHOCION 172 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON 184 ARISTOTELES AND CALISTHENES 199 EPICURUS, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA 219 LUCIAN AND TLMOTHEUS - . . 280 ROMANS. MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL . . . . _' . . . . 337 P. SCIPIO iEMLLlANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^TIUS .... 342 METELLUS AND MARIUS 377 CONTENTS. ROMANS (continued). Page LUCULLUS AND C^SAR 383 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO . . . . . 403 TIBULLUS AND MESSALA 446 TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA 461 EPICTETUS AND SENECA 406 REFLECTIONS ON THE CONVERSATION OF THE CICEROS . . . 472 INDEX 479 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS OF GREEKS AND ROMANS. ACHILLES AND HELENA. HELENA. Wheee am I? Desert me not, ye blessed from above ! ye twain who brought me hither ! Was it a dream ? Stranger ! thou seemest thoughtful ; couldst thou answer me? Why so silent? I beseech and implore thee, speak. ACHILLES. Neither thy feet nor the feet of mules have borne thee where thou standest. Whether in the hour of departing sleep, or at what hour of the morning, I know not, Helena, but Aphro- dite and Thetis, inclining to my prayer, have, as thou art conscious, led thee into these solitudes. To me also have they shown the way ; that I might behold the pride of Sparta, the marvel of the earth, and . . how my heart swells and agonises at the thought ! . . the cause of innumerable woes to Hellas. HELENA. Stranger ! thou art indeed one whom the goddesses or gods might lead, and glory in ; such is thy stature, thy voice, and thy demeanour • but who, if earthly, art thou ? 4 ACHILLES AND HELENA. ACHILLES. Before thee, Helena, stands Achilles, son of Peleus. Tremble not, turn not pale, bend not thy knees, Helena ! HELENA. Spare me, thou goddess-born ! thou cherished and only son of silver-footed Thetis ! Chryseis and Briseis ought to soften and content thy heart. Lead not me also into captivity. Woes too surely have I brought down on Hellas : but woes have been mine alike, and will for ever be. ACHILLES. Daughter of Zeus ! what word hast thou spoken ! Chryseis, child of the aged priest who performs in this land due sacrifices to Apollo, fell to the lot of another ; an insolent and unworthy man, who hath already brought more sorrows upon our people than thou hast ; so that dogs and vultures prey on the brave who sank without a wound. Briseis is indeed mine ; the lovely and dutiful Briseis. He, unjust and contumelious, proud at once and base, would tear her from me. But, gods above ! in what region has the wolf with impunity dared to seize upon the kid which the lion hath taken ? Talk not of being led into servitude. Could mortal be guilty of such impiety ? Hath it never thundered on these mountain- heads? Doth Zeus, the wide-seeing, see all the earth but Ida? doth he watch over all but his own? Capaneus and Typhoeus less offended him, than would the wretch whose grasp should violate the golden hair of Helena. And dost thou stil tremble ? irresolute and distrustful ! HELENA. I must tremble ; and more and more. ACHILLES. Take my hand : be confident : be comforted. HELENA. May I take it ? may I hold it ? I am comforted. ACHILLES. The scene around us, calm and silent as the sky itself, tranquillises thee ; and so it ought. Turnest thou to survey it ? perhaps it is unknown to thee. HELENA. Truly • for since my arrival I have never gone beyond the walls of the city. ACHILLES AND HELENA. Look then around thee freely, perplexed no longer. Pleasant is this level eminence, surrounded by broom and myrtle, and crisp-leaved beech and broad dark pine above. Pleasant the short slender grass, bent by insects as they alight on it or climb along it, and shining up into our eyes, interrupted by tall sisterhoods of grey lavender, and by dark-eyed cistus, and by lightsome citisus, and by little troops of serpolet running in disorder here and there. HELENA. Wonderful ! how didst thou ever learn to name so many plants ? ACHILLES. Chiron taught me them, when I walked at his side while he was culling herbs for the benefit of his brethren. All these he taught me, and at least twenty more ; for wonderous was his wisdom, boundless his knowledge, and I was proud to learn. All look again ! look at those little yellow poppies ; they appear to be just come out to catch all that the sun will throw into their cups: they appear in their joyance and incipient dance to call upon the lyre to sing among them. HELENA. Childish ! for one with such a spear against his shoulder ; terrific even its shadow ; it seems to make a chasm across the plain. ACHILLES. To talk or to think like a child is not always a proof of folly: it may sometimes push aside heavy griefs where the strength of wisdom fails. What art thou pondering, Helena ? HELENA. Eecollecting the names of the plants. Several of them I do believe I had heard before, but had quite forgotten; my memory will be better now. ACHILLES. Better now ? in the midst of war and tumult ? HELENA. I am sure it will be, for didst thou not say that Chiron taught them ? ACHILLES. He sang to me over the lyre the lives of Narcissus and Hyacynthus, brought back by the beautiful Hours, of silent 4 ACHILLES AND HELENA. unwearied feet, regular as the stars in their courses. Many of the trees and bright-eyed flowers once lived and moved, and spoke as we are speaking. They may yet have memories, although they have cares no longer. HELENA. Ah ! then they have no memories ; and they see their own beauty only. ACHILLES. Helena ! thou turnest pale, and droopest. HELENA. The odour of the blossoms, or of the gums, or the highth of the place, or something else, makes me dizzy. Can it be the wind in my ears ? ACHILLES. There is none. HELENA. I could wish there were a little. ACHILLES. Be seated, Helena ! HELENA. The feeble are obedient : the weary may rest even in the presence of the powerful. ACHILLES. On this very ground where we are now reposing, they who conducted us hither told me, the fatal prize of beauty was awarded. One of them smiled ; the other, whom in duty I love the most, looked anxious, and let fall some tears. HELENA. Yet she was not one of the vanquished. ACHILLES. Goddesses contended for it ; Helena was afar. HELENA. Fatal was the decision of the arbiter ! But could not the venerable Peleus, nor Pyrrhus the infant so beautiful and so helpless, detain thee, Achilles, from this sad sad war? ACHILLES. No reverence or kindness for the race of Atreus brought me against Troy; I detest and abhor both brothers: but another man is more hateful to me stil. Forbear we to name him. ACHILLES AND HELENA. 5 The valiant, holding the hearth as sacred as the temple, is never a violator of hospitality. He carries not away the gold he finds in the house; he folds not up the purple linen worked for solemnities, about to convey it from the cedar chest to the dark ship, together with the wife confided to his protection in her husband's absence, and sitting close and expectant by the altar of the gods. It was no merit in Menalaiis to love thee; it was a crime in another. . I will not say to love, for even Priam or Nestor might love thee . . but to avow it, and act on the avowal. HELENA. Menalaiis, it is true, was fond of me, when Paris was sent by Aphrodite to our house. It would have been very wrong to break my vow to Menelaiis, but Aphrodite urged me by day and by night, telling me that to make her break hers to Paris would be quite inexpiable. She told Paris the same tiling at the same hour; and as often. He repeated it to me every morning: his dreams tallied with mine exactly. At last . . . ACHILLES. The last is not yet come. Helena! by the Immortals! if ever I meet him in battle I transfix him with this spear. HELENA. Pray do not. Aphrodite would be angry and never forgive thee. ACHILLES. I am not sure of that; she soon pardons. Variable as Iris, one day she favors and the next day she forsakes. HELENA. She may then forsake me. ACHILLES. Other deities, Helena, watch over and protect thee. Thy two brave brothers are with those deities now, and never are absent from their higher festivals. • HELENA. They could protect me were they living, and they would. that thou couldst but have seen them ! ACHILLES. Companions of my father on the borders of the Phasis, they became his guests before they went all three to hunt the boar in the brakes of Kalydon. Thence too the beauty of a woman ACHILLES AND HELENA. brought many sorrows into brave men's breasts, and caused many tears to hang long and heavily on the eyelashes of matrons. HELENA. Horrible creatures ! . . boars I mean. Didst thou indeed see my brothers at that season ? Yes, certainly. ACHILLES. I saw them not, desirous though I always was of seeing them, that I might have learnt from them, and might have practised with them, whatever is laudable and manly. But my father, fearing my impetuosity, as he said, and my inex- perience, sent me away. Soothsayers had foretold some mischief to me from an arrow : and among the brakes many arrows might fly wide, glancing from trees. HELENA. I wish thou hadst seen them, were it only once. Three such youths together the blessed sun will never shine upon again. my sweet brothers ! how they tended me ! how they loved me ! how often they wished me to mount their horses and to hurl their javelins. They could only teach me to swim with them ; and when I had well learnt it I was more afraid than at first. It gratified me to be praised for anything but swimming. Happy, happy hours ! soon over ! Does happiness always go away before beauty ? It must go then : surely it might stay that little while. Alas ! dear Kastor ! and dearer Poly- deukes ! often shall I think of you as ye were (and oh ! as I was) on the banks of the Eurotas. Brave noble creatures ! they were as tall, as terrible, and almost as beautiful, as thou art. Be not wroth ! Blush no more for me. ACHILLES. Helena ! Helena ! wife of Menelaus ! my mother is reported to have left about me only one place vulnerable : I have at last found where it is. Farewell ! HELENA. O leave me not ! Earnestly I entreat and implore thee, leave me not alone. These solitudes are terrible : there must be wild beasts among them; there certainly are Eauns and jESOP and rhodope. Satyrs. And there is Cybele, who carries towers and temples on her head ; who hates and abhors Aphrodite, who persecutes those she favors, and whose priests are so cruel as to be cruel even to themselves. ACHILLES. According to their promise, the goddesses who brought thee hither in a cloud will in a cloud reconduct thee, safely and unseen, into the city. Again, daughter of Leda and of Zeus, farewell ! ^ESOP AND EHODOPE. — ♦ Albeit thou approachest me without any sign of derision, let me tell thee before thou advancest a step nearer, that I deem thee more hard-hearted than the most petulant of those other young persons, who are pointing and sneering from the door-way. EHODOPE. Let them continue to point and sneer at me : they are happy; so am I; but are you? Think me hard-hearted, ' O good Phrygian ! but graciously give me the reason for thinking it; otherwise I may be unable to correct a fault too long overlooked by me, or to deprecate a grave infliction of the gods. ^ISOP. I thought thee so, my little maiden, because thou earnest toward me without the least manifestation of curiosity. EHODOPE. Is the absence of curiosity a defect ? ^3SOP. None whatever. EHODOPE. Are we blamable in concealing it if we have it ? ^ESOP. Surely not. But it is feminine ; and where none of it comes forward, we may suspect that other feminine appurtenances, such as sympathy for example, are deficient. Curiosity slips b MSOP and rhodope. in among you before the passions are awake : curiosity comforts your earliest cries ; curiosity intercepts your latest. Tor which reason Daedalus, who not only sculptured but painted admirably, represents her in the vestibule of the Cretan labyrinth as a goddess. RHODOPE. What was she like ? -ESOP. There now ! Like ? Why, like Ehodope r RHODOPE. You said I have nothing of the kind. -ESOP. I soon discovered my mistake in this, and more than this, and not altogether to thy disadvantage. RHODOPE. I am glad to hear it. -ESOP. Art thou ? I will tell thee then how she was depicted : for I remember no author who has related it. Her lips were half- open ; her hair flew loosely behind her, designating that she was in haste ; it was more disordered, and it was darker, than the hair of Hope is represented, and somewhat less glossy. Her cheeks had a very fresh colour, and her eyes looked into every eye that fell upon them ; by her motion she seemed to be on her way into the labyrinth. RHODOPE. how I wish I could see such a picture ! -ESOP. 1 do now. RHODOPE. Where ? where ? Troublesome man ! Are you always so mischievous ? but your smile is not ill-natured. I can not help thinking that the smiles of men are pleasanter and sweeter than of women ; unless of the women who are rather old and decrepit, who seem to want help, and who perhaps are thinking that we girls are now the very images of what they were formerly. But girls never look at me so charmingly as you do, nor smile with such benignity; and yet, Phrygian, there are several of them who really are much handsomer. .ESOP AND RHODOPE* V MSOF. Indeed ? Is that so clear ? RHODOPE. Perhaps in the sight of the gods they may not be, who see all things as they are. But some of them appear to me to be very beautiful. .ESOP. Which are those ? RHODOPE. The very girls who think me the ugliest of them all. How strange ! ^SOP. That they should think thee so ? RHODOPE. No, no : but that nearly all the most beautiful should be of this opinion ; and the others should often come to look at me, apparently with delight, over each other's shoulder or under each other's arm, clinging to their girdle or holding by their sleeve and hanging a little back, as if there were something about me unsafe. They seem fearful regarding me; for here are many venomous things in this country, of which we have none at home. -E80P. And some which Ave find all over the world. But thou art too talkative. RHODOPE. Now indeed you correct me with great justice, and with great gentleness. I know not why I am so pleased to talk with you. But what you say to me is different from what others say : the thoughts, the words, the voice, the look, all different. And yet reproof is but little pleasant, especially to those who are unused to it. -ESOP. Why didst thou not spring forward and stare at me, having heard as the rest had done, that I am unwillingly a slave, and indeed not over- willingly a deformed one ? RHODOPE. I w 7 ould rather that neither of these misfortunes had befallen you. .ESOP. And yet within the year thou wilt rejoice that they have. 10 ,£SOP and rhodope. RHODOPE. If you truly thought so, you would not continue to look at me with such serenity. Tell me why you say it. MSOP. Because by that time thou wilt prefer me to the handsomest slave about the house. RHODOPE. For shame ! vain creature ! MSOF. By the provision of the gods, the under-sized and distorted are usually so. The cork of vanity buoys up their chins above all swimmers on the tide of life. But, Rhodope, my vanity has not yet begun. RHODOPE. How do you know that my name is Rhodope ? ,ESOP. Were I malicious I would inform thee, and turn against thee the tables on the score of vanity. RHODOPE. What can you mean ? MSOF. I mean to render thee happy in life, and glorious long after. Thou shalt be sought by the powerful, thou shalt be celebrated by the witty, and thou shalt be beloved by the generous and the wise. Xanthus may adorn the sacrifice, but the Immortal shall receive it from the altar. RHODOPE. I am but fourteen years old, and Xanthus is married. Surely he would not rather love me than one to whose habits and endearments he has been accustomed for twenty years. JESOP. It seems wonderful : but such things do happen. RHODOPE. Not among us Thracians. I have seen in my childhood men older than Xanthus, who, against all remonstrances and many struggles, have fondled and kissed, before near relatives, wives of the same age, proud of exhibiting the honorable love they bore toward them : yet in the very next room, the very same day, scarcely would they press to their bosoms ^ESOP AND RHODOPE. 11 while you could (rather slowly) count twenty, nor kiss for half the time, beautiful young maidens, who, casting down their eyes, never stirred, and only said "Don't! Don't I" What a rigid morality is the Thracian ! How courageous the elderly ! and how enduring the youthful ! RHODOPE. Here in Egypt we are nearer to strange creatures ; to men without heads, to others who ride on dragons. ^SOP. Stop there, little Ehodope ! In all countries we live among strange creatures. However, there are none such in the world as thou hast been told of since thou earnest hither. RHODOPE. Oh yes there are. You must not begin by shaking my belief, and by making me know less than others of my age. They all talk of them : nay, some creatures not by any means prettier, are worshipped here as deities : I have seen them with my own eyes. I wonder that you above all others should deny the existence of prodigies. ^SOP. Why dost thou wonder at it particularly in me ? RHODOPE. Because when you were brought hither yesterday, and when several of my fellow-maidens came around you, questioning you about the manners and customs of your country, you began to tell them stories of beasts who spoke, and spoke reasonably. ^SOP. They are almost the only people of my acquaintance who do. RHODOPE. And you call them by the name of people ? ^ISOP. For want of a nobler and a better. Didst thou hear related what I had been saying ? RHODOPE. Yes, every word, and perhaps more. ^SOP. Certainly more; for my audience was of females. But canst thou repeat any portion of the narrative ? 12 ^ESOP AND RHODOPE. RHODOPE. They began by asking you whether all the men in Phrygia were like yourself. ^SOP. Art thou quite certain that this was the real expression they used ? Come : no blushes. Do not turn round. RHODOPE. It had entirely that meaning. ^SOP. Did they not inquire if all Phrygians were such horrible monsters as the one before them ? RHODOPE. heaven and earth ! this man is surely omniscient. Kind guest ! do not hurt them for it. Deign to repeat to me, if it is not too troublesome, what you said about the talking beasts. ^!SOP. The innocent girls asked me many questions, or rather half- questions ; for never was one finished before another from the same or from a different quarter was begun. RHODOPE. This is uncivil : I would never have interrupted you. .ESOP. Pray tell me why all that courtesy. RHODOPE. Por fear of losing a little of what you were about to say, or of receiving it somewhat changed. We never say the same thing in the same manner w r hen we have been interrupted. Beside, there are many who are displeased at it ; and if you had been, it would have shamed and vexed me. ^:sop. Art thou vexed so easily ? RHODOPE, When I am ashamed I am. I shall be jealous if you are kinder to the others than to me, and if you refuse to tell me the story you told them yesterday. ^SOP. 1 have never yet made anyone jealous ; and I will not begin to try my talent on little Rhodope. JESOV AND RHODOPE. 13 They asked me who governs Phrygia at present. I replied that the Phrygians had just placed themselves under the dominion of a sleek and quiet animal, half-fox, half-ass, named Alopiconos. At one time he seems fox almost entirely; at another, almost entirely ass. EHODOPE. And can he speak ? -&SOP. Few better. EHODOPE. Are the Phrygians contented with him ? ^:sop. They who raised him to power and authority rub their hands rapturously : nevertheless, I have heard several of the principal ones, in the very act of doing it, breathe out from closed teeth, " The cursed fox!" and others, " The cursed ass!" EHODOPE. What has he done ? ^ISOP. He has made the nation the happiest in the world, they tell us. EHODOPE. How? -&SOP. . By imposing a heavy tax on the necessaries of life, and thus making it quite independent. EHODOPE. iEsop ! I am ignorant of politics, as of everything else. We Thracians are near Phrygia : our kings, I believe, have not conquered it : what others have ? iESOP. None : but the independence which Alopiconos has con- ferred upon it, is conferred by hindering the corn of other lands, more fertile and less populous, from entering it, until so many of the inhabitants have died of famine and disease, that there will be imported just enough for the remainder. EHODOPE. Holy Jupiter ! protect my country ! and keep for ever its asses and its foxes wider apart ! Tell me more. You know many things that have happened in the world. Beside the strange choice you just related, 14 jESOP and rhodope. what is the most memorable thing that has occurred in Phrygia since the Trojan war ? An event more memorable preceded it ; but nothing since will appear to thee so extraordinary. KHODOPE. Then tell me only that. ^SOP. It will interest thee less, but the effect is more durable than of the other. Soon after the dethronement of Saturn, with certain preliminary ceremonies, by his eldest son Jupiter, who thus became the legitimate king of gods and men, the lower parts of nature on our earth were likewise much affected. At this season the water in all the rivers of Phrygia was running low, but quietly, so that the bottom was visible in many places, and grew tepid and warm and even hot in some. At last it became agitated and excited ; and loud bubbles rose up from it, audible to the ears of Jupiter, declaring that it had an indefeasible right to exercise its voice on all occasions, and of rising to the surface at all seasons. Jupiter, who was ever much given to hilarity, laughed at this : but the louder he laughed, the louder bubbled the mud, beseeching him to thunder and lighten and rain in torrents, and to sweep away dams and dykes and mills and bridges and roads, and more- over all houses in all parts of the country that were not built of mud. Thunder rolled in every quarter of the heavens : the lions and panthers were frightened and growled horribly : the foxes, who are seldom at fault, began to fear for the farm- yards ; and were seen with vertical tails, three of which, if put together, would be little stouter than a child's whip for whipping-tops, so thoroughly soaked were they and draggled in the mire : not an animal in the forest could lick itself dry : their tongues ached with attempting it. But the mud gained its cause, and rose above the river-sides. At first it was elated by success ; but it had floated in its extravagance no long time before a panic seized it, at hearing out of the clouds the fatal word teleutaion, which signifies final. It panted and breathed hard; and, at the moment of exhausting the last remnant of its strength, again it prayed to Jupiter, in a formulary of words which certain borderers of the principal stream suggested, imploring him that it might stop and yESOP AND RHODOPE. 15 subside. It did so. The borderers enriched their fields with it, carting it off, tossing it about, and breaking it into powder. But the streams were too dirty for decent men to bathe in them; and scarcely a fountain in all Phrygia had as much pure water, at its very source, as thou couldst carry on thy head in an earthen jar. For several years afterward there were pestilential exhalations, and drought and scarcity, throughout the country. RHODOPE. This is indeed a memorable event ; and yet I never heard of it before. .&30P. Dost thou like my histories ? RHODOPE. Very much indeed. £]SOP. Both of them ? RHODOPE. Equally. uESOP. Then, PJiodope, thou art worthier of instruction than any- one I know. I never found an auditor, until the present, w r ho approved of each; one or other of the two was sure to be defective in style or ingenuity : it showed an ignorance of the times or of mankind : it proved only that the narrator was a person of contracted views, and that nothing pleased him. RHODOPE. How could you have hindered, with as many hands as Gyas, and twenty thongs in each, the fox and ass from uniting ? or how could you prevail on Jupiter to keep the mud from bubbling? I have prayed to him for many things more reasonable, and he has never done a single one of them ; except the last, perhaps. uESOP. What was it ? RHODOPE. That he would bestow on me power and understanding to comfort the poor slave from Phrygia. .ESOP. On what art thou reflecting ? 16 yESOP AND RHODOPE. RHODOPE. I do not know. Is reflection that which will not lie quiet on the mind, and which makes us ask ourselves questions we can not answer ? .ESOP. Wisdom is but that shadow which we call reflection ; dark always, more or less, but usually the most so where there is the most light around it. RHODOPE. I think I begin to comprehend you ; but beware lest any one else should. Men will hate you for it, and may hurt you; for they will never bear the wax to be melted in the ear, as your words possess the faculty of doing. MSOF. They may hurt me, but I shall have rendered them a service first. RHODOPE. JEsop ! if you think so, you must soon begin to instruct me how I may assist you, first in performing the service, and then in averting the danger : for I think you will be less liable to harm if I am with you. ^JSOP. Proud child ! RHODOPE. Not yet ; I may be then. MSOF. We must converse about other subjects. RHODOPE. On what rather ? ^ISOP. 1 was accused by thee of attempting to unsettle thy belief in prodigies and portents. RHODOPE. Teach me what is right and proper in regard to them, and in regard to the gods of this country who send them. MSOF. We will either let them alone, or worship them as our masters do. But thou mayst be quite sure, O Ehodope, that if there were any men without heads, or any who ride upon dragons, they would have been worshipped as deities long ago. -ffiSOP AND UHODOPE. 17 RHODOPE. Ay ; now you talk reasonably : so they would : at least I think so : I mean only in this country. In Thrace we do not think so unworthily of the gods : we are too afraid of Cerberus for that. ^SSOP. Speak lower; or thou wilt raise ill blood between him and Anubis. His three heads could hardly lap milk when Anubis with only one could crack the thickest bone. * RHODOPE. Indeed ! how proud you must be to have acquired such knowledge. .ESOP. It is the knowledge which men most value, as being the most profitable to them • but I possess little of it. RHODOPE. What then will you teach me ? ^ISOP. I will teach thee, Rhodope, how to hold Love by both wings, and how to make a constant companion of an ungrateful guest. RHODOPE. I think I am already able to manage so little a creature. ^SOP. He hath managed greater creatures than Rhodope. RHODOPE. They had no scissors to clip his pinions, and they did not slap him soon enough on the back of the hand. I have often wished to see him; but I never have seen him yet. MSOF. Nor anything like ? RHODOPE. I have touched his statue ; and once I stroked it down, all over ; very nearly. He seemed to smile at me the more for it, until I was ashamed. I was then a little girl : it was long ago : a year at least. -2ESOP. Art thou sure it was such a long while since ? 18 iESOP AND RHODOPE. rhodope. How troublesome ! Yes ! I never told anybody but you : and I never would have told you, unless I had been certain that you would find it out by yourself, as you did what those false foolish girls said concerning you. I am sorry to call them by such names, for I am confident that on other things and persons they never speak maliciously or untruly. ^SSOP. Not abtmt thee ? RHODOPE. They think me ugly and conceited, because they do not look at me long enough to find out their mistake. I know I am not ugly, and I believe I am not conceited : so I should be silly if I were offended, or thought ill of them in return. But do you yourself always speak the truth, even when you know it ? The story of the mud, I plainly see, is a mythos. Yet, after all, it is difficult to believe ; and you have scarcely been able to persuade me, that the beasts in any country talk and reason, or ever did. mso-p. Wherever they do, they do one thing more than men do. RHODOPE. You perplex me exceedingly : but I would not disquiet you at present with more questions. Let me pause and consider a little, if you please. I begin to suspect that, as gods formerly did, you have been turning men into beasts, and beasts into men. But, iEsop, you should never say the thing that is untrue. ^SOP. We say and do and look no other all our lives. RHODOPE. Do we never know better ? Yes i when we cease to please, and to wish it ; when death is settling the features, and the cerements are ready to render them unchangeable. RHODOPE. Alas ! alas ! .&SOP AND RHODOPE. 19 Breathe, Rhodope, breathe again those painless sighs : they belong to thy vernal season. May thy summer of life be calm,, thy autumn calmer, and thy winter never come. RHODOPE. I must die then earlier. £ISOP. Laodameia died ; Helen died ; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late ; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay : but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave : there are no voices, Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however tuneful : there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of winch the echo is not faint at last. RHODOPE. iEsop ! let me rest my head on yours : it throbs and pains me. ^SOP. ■ What are these ideas to thee ? Sad, sorrowful. ^:sop. Harrows that break the soil, preparing it for wisdom. Many flowers must perish ere a grain of corn be ripened. And now remove thy head : the cheek is cool enough after its little shower of tears. RHODOPE. How impatient you are of the least pressure ? 2ESOP. There is nothing so difficult to support imperturbably as the head of a lovely girl, except her grief. Again upon mine ! forgetful one ! Raise it, remove it, I say. Why wert thou reluctant ? why wert thou disobedient ? Nay, look not so. It is I (and thou shalt know it) who should look reproachfully. c 2 20 jEsop and rhodope. Beproachfully ? did I ? I was only wishing you would love me better, that I might come and see you often. ^SOP. Come often and see me, if thou wilt ; but expect no love from me. RHODOPE. Yet how gently and gracefully you have spoken and acted, all the time we have been together. You have rendered the most abstruse things intelligible, without once grasping my hand, or putting your fingers among my curls. .ffiSOP. I should have feared to encounter the displeasure of two persons if I had. RHODOPE. And well you might. They would scourge you, and scold me. .ffiSOP. That is not the worst. RHODOPE. The stocks too, perhaps. -ESOP. All these are small matters to the slave. RHODOPE. If they befell you, I would tear my hair and my cheeks, and put my knees under your ancles. Of whom should you have been afraid ? MSOF. Of Ehodope and of iEsop. Modesty in man, Ehodope, is perhaps the rarest and most difficult of virtues : but in- tolerable pain is the pursuer of its infringement. Then follow days without content, nights without sleep, throughout a stormy season, a season of impetuous deluge which no fertility succeeds. RHODOPE. My mother often told me to learn modesty, when I was at play among the boys. Modesty in girls is not an acquirement, but a gift of nature : and it costs as much trouble and pain in the possessor to eradicate, as the fullest and firmest lock of hair would do. jESOP and rhodope. 21 rhodope. Never shall I be induced to believe that men at all value it in themselves, or much in us, although from idleness or from rancour they would take it away from us whenever they can. .ESOP. And very few of you are pertinacious : if you run after them, as you often do, it is not to get it back. RHODOPE. I would never run after any one, not even you : I would only ask you, again and again, to love me. MSOF. Expect no love from me. I will impart to thee all my wisdom, such as it is ; but girls like our folly best. Thou shalt never get a particle of mine from me. RHODOPE. Is love foolish ? JESOP. At thy age and at mine. I do not love thee : if I did, 1 would the more forbid thee ever to love me. RHODOPE. Strange man ! .ESOP. Strange indeed. "When a traveller is about to wander on a desert, it is strange to lead him away from it; strange to point out to him the verdant path he should pursue, where the tamarisk and lentisk and acacia wave overhead, where the reseda is cool and tender to the foot that presses it, and where a thousand colours sparkle in the sunshine, on fountains incessantly gushing forth. RHODOPE. Xanthus has all these; and I could be amid them in a moment. JESOP. Why art not thou ? RHODOPE. I know not exactly. Another day perhaps. I am afraid of snakes this morning. Beside, I think it may be sultry out of doors. Does not the wind blow from Libya ? 22 ^ESOP AND RHODOPE. .3ESOP. It blows as it did yesterday when I came over, fresh across the iEgean, and from Thrace. Thou mayest venture into the morning air. RHODOPE. No hours are so adapted to study as those of the morning. But will you teach me ? I shall so love you if you will. MSOF. If thou wilt not love me, I will teach thee. RHODOPE. Unreasonable man ! -ESOP. Art thou aware what those mischievous little hands are doing ? RHODOPE. They are tearing off the golden hem from the bottom of my robe ; but it is stiff and difficult to detach. -ffiSOP. Why tear it off? RHODOPE. To buy your freedom. Do you spring up, and turn away, and cover your face from me ? -ZESOP. My freedom ! Go, Ehodope ! Rhodope ! This, of all things, I shall never owe to thee. RHODOPE. Proud man ! and you tell me to go ! do you ? do you? Answer me at least. Must I ? and so soon? .ffiSOP. Child ! begone ! RHODOPE. iEsop, you are already more my master than Xanthus is. I will run and tell him so ; and I will implore of him, upon my knees, never to impose on you a command so hard to obey. jESop and rhodope. 23 SECOND CONVERSATION. And so, our fellow-slaves are given to contention on the score of dignity ? RHODOPE. I do not believe they are much addicted to contention : for, whenever the good Xanthus hears a signal of such misbehaviour, he either brings a scourge into the midst of them, or sends our lady to scold them smartly for it. Admirable evidence against their propensity ! RHODOPE. I will not have you find them out so, nor laugh at them. ,ESOP. Seeing that the good Xanthus and our lady are equally fond of thee, and always visit thee both together, the girls, however envious, can not well or safely be arrogant, but must of necessity yield the first place to thee. RHODOPE. . They indeed are observant of the kindness thus bestowed upon me : yet they afflict me by taunting me continually with what I am unable to deny. If it is true, it ought little to trouble thee ; if untrue, less. I know, for I have looked into nothing else of late, no evil can thy heart have admitted : a sigh of thine before the Gods would remove the heaviest that could fall on it. Pray tell me what it may be, Come, be courageous ; be cheerful. I can easily pardon a smile if thou empleadest me of curiosity. RHODOPE. They remark to me that enemies or robbers took them forcibly from their parents . , and that . . and that . . . m&o?. Likely enough : what then ? Why desist from speaking ? why cover thy face with thy hair and hands? Ehodope! Ehodope ! dost thou weep moreover ? 24 ^SOP AND RHODOPE. RHODOPE. It is so sure ! .ESOP. Was the fault tliine ? RHODOPE. that it were ! . . if there was any. JESOP. "While it pains thee to tell it, keep thy silence ; but when utterance is a solace, then impart it. RHODOPE. They remind me (oh ! who could have had the cruelty to relate it ?) that my father, my own dear father . . . JSSOP. Say not the rest : I know it : his day was come. RHODOPE. . . sold me, sold me. You start : you did not at the lightning last night, nor at the rolling sounds above. And do you, generous iEsop ! do you also call a misfortune a disgrace ? J3SOP. If it is, I am among the most disgraceful of men. Didst thou dearly love thy father ? RHODOPE. All loved him. He was very fond of me. ^SOP. And yet sold thee ! sold thee to a stranger ! RHODOPE. He was the kindest of all kind fathers, nevertheless. Nine summers ago, you may have heard perhaps, there was a grievous famine in our land of Thrace. ^SSOP. 1 remember it perfectly. RHODOPE. poor iEsop ! and were you too famishing in your native Phrygia ? The calamity extended beyond the narrow sea that separates our countries. My appetite was sharpened; but the appetite and the wits are equally set on the same grindstone. .ESOP AND RHODOPE. 25 RHODOPE. I was then scarcely five years old : my mother died the year before : my father sighed at every funereal, but he. sighed more deeply at every bridal, song. He loved me because he loved her who bore me : and yet I made him sorrowful whether I cried or smiled. If ever I vexed him, it was because I would not play when he told me, but made him, by my weeping, weep again. J3SOP. And yet he could endure to lose thee ! he, thy father ! Could any other ? could any who lives on the fruits of the earth, endure it ? age, that art incumbent over me ! blessed be thou; thrice blessed ! Not that thou stillest the tumults of the heart, and promisest eternal calm, but that, prevented by thy beneficence, I never shall experience this only intolerable wretchedness. RHODOPE. Alas ! alas ! MSOP. Thou art now happy, and shouldst not utter that useless exclanlation. RHODOPE. You said something angrily and vehemently when you stepped aside. Is it not enough that the handmaidens doubt the kindness of my father ? Must so virtuous and so wise a man as iEsop blame him also ? .ESOP. Perhaps he is little to be blamed ; certainly he is much to be pitied. RHODOPE. Kind heart ! on which mine must never rest ! mso?. Eest on it for comfort and for counsel when they fail thee : rest on it, as the Deities on the breast of mortals, to console and purify it. RHODOPE. Could I remove any sorrow from it, I should be contented. ^ISOP. Then be so; and proceed in thy narrative.- RHODOPE. Bear with me a little yet. My thoughts have overpowered my words, and now themselves are overpowered and scattered. 26 JESOP AND 11H0D0PE. Forty-seven days ago (this is only the forty-eighth since I beheld you first) I was a child ; I was ignorant, I was careless. 2ESOP. If these qualities are signs of childhood, the universe is a nursery. RHODOPE. Affliction, which makes many wiser, had no such effect on me. But reverence and love (why should I hesitate at the one avowal more than at the other ?) came over me, to ripen my understanding. 2ESOP. Rhodope ! we must loiter no longer upon this discourse. RHODOPE. Why not? iESOP. Pleasant is yonder beanfield, seen over the high papyrus when it waves and bends : deep laden with the sweet heaviness of its odour is the listless air that palpitates dizzily above it : but Death is lurking for the slumberer beneath its blossoms. RHODOPE. You must not love then ! . . but may not I ? ^SOP. We will . . but . . . RHODOPE. We I sound that is to vibrate on my breast for ever ! hour ! happier than all other hours since time began ! O gracious Gods ! who brought me into bondage ! -ESOP. Be calm, be composed, be circumspect. We must hide our treasure that we may not lose it. RHODOPE. 1 do not think that you can love me ; and I fear and tremble to hope so. All, yes ; you have said you did. But again you only look at me, and sigh as if you repented. ^SOP. Unworthy as I may be of thy fond regard, I am not unworthy of thy fullest confidence : why distrust me ? RHODOPE. Never will I . . never, never. To know that I possess your love, surpasses all other knowledge, dear as is all that I .ESOP AND RHODOPE. 27 receive from you. I should be tired of my own voice if I heard it on aught beside : and, even yours is less melodious in any other sound than Rhodope. .ESOP. Do such little girls learn to natter ? RHODOPE. Teach me how to speak, since you could not teach me how to be silent. .ESOP. Speak no longer of me, but of thyself; and only of things that never pain thee. RHODOPE. Nothing can pain me now. £:sop. Relate thy story then, from infancy. RHODOPE. I must hold your hand : I am afraid of losing you again. .ESOP. Now begin. Why silent so long ? RHODOPE. I have dropped all memory of what is told by me and what is untold. -ESOP. Recollect a little. I can be patient with this hand in mine. RHODOPE. I am not certain that yours is any help to recollection. ^:sop. Shall I remove it ? RHODOPE. ! now I think I can recall the whole story. "What did you say ? did you ask any question ? ^SOP. None, excepting what thou hast answered. RHODOPE. Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully 28 ^SOP AND RHODOPE. into the corn-chest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and, finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking however about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out ; and I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many ; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have only the white. However, when he had selected all the white, and I had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder. The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority. Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could have seen how they appeared ! But he knew that there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we divided the latter (alas ! not both) pretty equally. He now took me into the market- place, where a concourse of people was waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and looked at me; some commending, others disparaging ; but all agreeing that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the chlamys, but there was something less saleable in the child and flowers. .ffiSOP. Had thy features been coarse and thy voice rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks and found no fault in thee. RHODOP£. As it was, every one had bought exactly such another in time past, and been a loser by it. At these speeches I perceived the flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my father's agitation. Although he scoffed at them, knowing my healthiness, he was troubled internally, and said many short prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning his head aside. Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last several talents were offered for me, and by the very man who in the beginning had undervalued me the most, and prophesied the worst of me. JESOV AND RHODOPE. 29 Jty father scowled at him, and refused the money. I thought he was playing a game, and began to wonder what it could be, since I never had seen it played before. Then I fancied it might be some celebration because plenty had returned to the city, insomuch that my father had bartered the last of the corn he hoarded. I grew more and more delighted at the sport. But soon there advanced an elderly man, who said gravely, "Thou hast stolen this child: her vesture alone is worth above a hundred drachmas. Carry her home again to her parents, and do it directly, or Nemesis and the Eumenides will overtake thee." Knowing the estimation in which my father had always been holden by his fellow- citizens, I laughed again, and pinched his ear. He, although naturally choleric, burst forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but said calmly, " I think I know thee by name, guest ! Surely thou art Xanthus the Samian. Deliver this child from famine." Again I laughed aloud and heartily ; and, thinking it was now my part of the game, I held out both my arms and pro- truded my whole body toward the stranger. He would not receive me from my father's neck, but he asked me with benignity and solicitude if I was hungry : at which I laughed again, and more than ever : for it was early in the morning, soon after the first meal, and my father had nourished me most carefully and plentifully in all the days of the famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer, took out of a sack, which one of his slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten bread and a piece of honey-comb, and gave them to me. I held the honey-comb to my father's mouth, tliinking it the most of a dainty. He dashed it to the ground ; but, seizing the bread, he began to devour it ferociously. This also I thought was jn play ; and I clapped my hands at his distor- tions. But Xanthus looked on him like one afraid, and smote the cake from him, crying aloud, "Xame the price." My father now placed me in his arms, naming a price much below what the other had offered, saying, " The Gods are ever with thee, Xanthus ! therefor to thee do I consign my child." But while Xanthus was counting out the silver, my father seized the cake again, which the slave -had taken up and was about to replace in the wallet. His hunger was exaspe- rated by the taste and the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in the old woman's bosom who had 30 jESop and rhodope. received me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away ; and many were soon between us. Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine long before : alas ! and he had suffered them for me. Do I weep while I am telling you they ended ? I could not have closed his eyes ; I was too young : but I might have received his last breath; the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now think him blamable, ^Esop ? msov. It was sublime humanity: it was forbearance and self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown us. He could endure to perish by those torments which alone are both acute and slow ; he could number the steps of death and miss not one : but he could never see thy tears, nor let thee see his. weakness above all fortitude ! Glory to the man who rather bears a grief corroding his breast, than permits it to prowl beyond, and to prey on the tender and compassionate ! Women commiserate the brave, and men the beautiful. The dominion of Pity has usually this extent, no wider. Thy father was exposed to the obloquy not only of the malicious, but also of the ignorant and thoughtless, who condemn in the unfortunate what they applaud in the prosperous. There is no shame in poverty or in slavery, if we neither make ourselves poor by our improvidence nor slaves by our venality. The lowest and highest of the human race are sold : most of the intermediate are also slaves, but slaves who bring no money in the market. RHODOPE. Surely the great and powerful are never to be purchased : are they ? ^ESOP. It may be a defect in my vision, but I can not see greatness on the earth. "What they tell me is great and aspiring, to me seems little and crawling. Let me meet thy question with another. What monarch gives his daughter for nothing? Either he receives stone walls and unwilling cities in return, or he barters her for a parcel of spears and horses and horse- men, waving away from his declining and helpless age young joyous life, and trampling down the freshest and the sweetest memories. Midas in the highth of prosperity would have JESOV AND RHODOPE. 31 given his daughter to Lycaon, rather than to the gentlest, the most virtuous, the most intelligent of his subjects. Thy father threw wealth aside, and, placing thee under the pro- tection of Virtue, rose up from the house of Famine to partake in the festivals of the gods. Eelease my neck, Ehodope ! for I have other questions to ask of thee about him. RHODOPE. To hear thee converse on him in such a manner, I can do even that. Before the day of separation was he never sorrowful ? Did he never by tears or silence reveal the secret of his soul ? RHODOPE. I was too infantine to perceive or imagine his intention. The night before I became the slave of Xanthus, he sat on the edge of my bed. I pretended to be asleep : he moved away silently and softly. I saw him collect in the hollow of his hand the crumbs I had wasted on the floor, and then eat them, and then look if any were remaining. I thought he did so out of fondness for me, remembering that, even before the famine, he had often swept up off the table the bread I had broken, and had made me put it between his lips. I would not dissemble very long, but said, "Come, now you have wakened me, you must sing me asleep again, as you did when I was little." He smiled faintly at this, and, after some delay, when he had w r alked up and down the chamber, thus began : " I will sing to thee one song more, my wakeful Ehodope ! my chirping bird ! over whom is no mother's wing ! That it may lull thee asleep, I will celebrate no longer, as in the days of wine and plenteousness, the glory of Mars, guiding in their invisibly rapid onset the dappled steeds of Ehaesus. "What hast thou to do, my little one, with arrows tired of clustering in the quiver? How much quieter is thy pallet than the tents which whitened the plain of Simois ! What knowest thou about the river Eurotas ? What knowest thou about its ancient palace, once trodden by assembled Gods, and then polluted by the Phrygian? What knowest thou of perfidious men or of sanguinary deeds ? 32 .ESOP AND RHODOPE. u Pardon me, goddess who presidest in Cythera ! I am not irreverent to thee, but ever grateful. May she upon whose brow I lay my hand, praise and bless thee for ever- more ! " Ah yes ! continue to hold up above the coverlet those fresh and rosy palms clasped together : her benefits have descended on thy beauteous head, my child ! The Fates also have sung, beyond thy hearing, of pleasanter scenes than snow-fed Hebrus ; of more than dim grottoes and sky-bright w r aters. Even now a low murmur swells upward to my ear : and not from the spindle comes the sound, but from those who sing slowly over it, bending all three their tremulous heads together. I wish thou couldst hear it ; for seldom are their voices so sweet. Thy pillow intercepts the song perhaps : lie down again, lie down, my Rhodope ! I will repeat what they are saying : " e Happier shalt thou be, nor less glorious, than even she, the truly beloved, for whose return to the distaff and the lyre the portals of Tsenarus flew open. In the woody dells of Ismarus, and when she bathed among the swans of Strymon, the Nymphs called her Eurydice. Thou shalt behold that fairest and that fondest one hereafter. But first thou must go unto the land of the lotos, where famine never cometh, and where alone the w r orks of man are immortal/ " my child ! the undeceiving Eates have uttered this. Other Powers have visited me, and have strengthened my heart with dreams and visions. We shall meet again, my Rhodope ! in shady groves and verdant meadows, and we shall sit by the side of those who loved us." He was rising : I threw my arms about his neck, and, before I would let him go, I made him promise to place me, not by the side, but between them : for I thought of her who had left us. At that time there were but two, iEsop ! You ponder : you are about to reprove my assurance in having thus repeated my own praises. I would have omitted some of the words, only that it might have disturbed the measure and cadences, and have put me out. They are the very words my dearest father sang ; and they are the last : yet, shame upon me ! the nurse (the same who stood listening near, who attended me into this country) could remember them more perfectly : it is from her I have learnt them since ; she often sings them, even by herself. SOLON AND PISISTTIATUS, 33 So shall others. There is much both in them and in thee to render them memorable. RHODOPE. Who natters now ? .ESOP. Flattery often runs beyond Truth, in a hurry to embrace her ; but not here. The dullest of mortals, seeing and hear- ing thee, would never misinterpret the prophecy of the Fates. If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of years, and could stand on the mountain-top, and could look again far before me at the bright ascending morn, we would enjoy the prospect together ; we would walk along the summit hand in hand, Khodope, and we would only sigh at last when we found ourselves below with others. SOLON AND PISISTEATUS. PISISTPvATUS. Here is a proof, Solon, if any were wanting, that either my power is small or my inclination to abuse it : you speak just as freely to me as formerly, and add unreservedly, which you never did before, the keenest sarcasms and the bitterest reproaches. Even such a smile as that, so expressive of incredulity and contempt, would arouse a desire of vengeance, difficult to control, in any whom you could justly call impostor and usurper. ' SOLON. I do you no injustice, Pisistratus, which I should do if I feared you. Neither your policy nor your temper, neither your early education nor the society you have since frequented, and whose power over the mind and affections you can not at once throw off, would permit you to kill or imprison, or even to insult or hurt me. Such an action, you well know, would excite in the people of Athens as vehement a sensation as your imposture of the wounds, and you would lose your authority 34 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. as rapidly as you acquired it. This however, you also know, is not the consideration which hath induced me to approach you, and to entreat your return, while the path is yet open, to reason and humanity. PISISTRATUS. What inhumanity, my friend, have I committed ? SOLON. No deaths, no tortures, no imprisonments, no stripes : but worse than these ; the conversion of our species into a lower ; a crime which the poets never feigned, in the wild attempts of the Titans or others who rebelled against the gods, and against the order they established here below. PISISTRATUS. Why then should you feign it of me ? I do not feign it : and you yourself shall bear me witness that no citizen is further removed from falsehood, from the perversion of truth by the heat of passion, than Solon. Choose between the friendship of the wise and the adulation of the vulgar. Choose, do I say, Pisistratus? No, you can not : your choice is already made. Choose then between a city in the dust and a city flourishing. PISISTRATUS. How so ? who could hesitate ? If the souls of the citizens are debased, who cares whether its walls and houses be stil upright or thrown down ? When free men become the property of one, when they are brought to believe that their interests repose on him alone, and must arise from him, their best energies are broken . irreparably. They consider his will as the rule of their conduct, leading to emolument and dignity, securing from spoliation, from scorn, from contumely, from chains, and seize this compendious blessing (such they think it) without exertion and without reflection. From which cause alone there are several ancient nations so abject, that they have not produced in many thousand years as many rational creatures as we have seen together round one table in the narrowest lane of Athens. SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. 35 PISISTRATUS. But, Solon, you yourself are an example, ill treated as you have been, that the levity of the Athenian people requires a guide and leader. SOLON. There are those who, by their discourses and conduct, inflate and push forward this levity, that the guide and leader may be called for ; and who then offer their kind services, modestly, and by means of friends, in pity to the weakness of their fellow -citizens, taking care not only of their follies, but also their little store of wisdom, putting it out to interest where they see fit, and directing how and where it shall be expended. Generous hearts ! the Lacedemonians themselves. in the excess of their democracy, never were more zealous that corn and oil should be thrown into the common stock, than these are that minds should, and that no one swell a single line above another. Their own meanwhile are fully adequate to all necessary and useful purposes, and constitute them a superintending Providence over the rest. PISISTRATUS. Solon, I did not think you so addicted to derision : you make me join you. This in the latter part is a description of despotism ; a monster of Asia, and not yet known even in the most uncivilised region of Europe. Tor the Thracians and others, who have chieftains, have no kings, much less despots. In speaking of them we use the word carelessly, not thinking it worth our while to form names for such creatures, any more than to form collars and bracelets for them, or rings (if they use them) for their ears and noses. Preposterous as this is, there are things more so, under our eyes : for instance, that the sound should become lame, the wise foolish, and this by no affliction of disease or age. You go further; and appear to wish that a man should become a child again : for what is it else, when he has governed himself, that he should go back to be governed by another ? and for no better reason than because, as he is told, that other has been knocked down and stabbed. Incontrovertible proofs of his strength, his prudence, and the love he has been capable of conciliating in those about him ! 36 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. PISISTRATUS. Solon ! it would better become the gravity of your age, the dignity of your character, and the office you assume of adviser, to address me with decorous and liberal moderation, and to treat me as you find me. So small a choice of words is left us, when we pass out of Atticism into barbarism, that I know not whether you, distin- guished as you are both for the abundance and the selection of them, would call yourself in preference king or tyrant. The latter is usually the most violent, at least in the beginning ; the former the most pernicious. Tyrants, like ravens and vultures, are solitary : they either are swept off, or languish and pine away, and leave no brood in their places. Kings, as the origin of them is amid the swamps and wildernesses, take deeper root, and germinate more broadly in the loose and putrescent soil, and propagate their likenesses for several generations ; a brood which (such is the power of habitude) does not seem monstrous, even to those whose corn, wine, and oil, it swallows up every day, and whose children it con- sumes in its freaks and festivals. I am ignorant under what number of them, at the present day, mankind in various countries lies prostrate ; just as ignorant as I am how many are the desarts and caverns of the earth, or the eddies and whirlpools of the sea ; but I should not be surprised to find it stated that, in Asia and Africa, there may be a dozen, greater or less. Europe has never been amazed at such a portent, either in the most corrupted or the most uncivilised of her nations, as a hereditary chief in possession of absolute power. PISISTRATUS. The first despots were tyrannical and cruel. SOLON. And so the last will be. This is w r anting, on some occasions, to arouse a people from the lethargy of servitude ; and there- for I would rather see the cruelest usurper than the mildest king. Under him men lose the dignity of their nature : under the other they recover it. PISISTRATUS. Hereditary kings too have been dethroned. SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. 37 Certainly: for, besotted as those must be who have endured them, some subject at last hath had the hardihood and spirit to kick that fellow in the face and trample on him, who insists that the shoe must fit him because it fitted his father and grandfather, and that, if Ins foot will not enter, he will pare and rasp it. PISISTRATUS. The worst of wickedness is that of bearing hard on the unfortunate, and near it is that of running down the fortunate : yet these are the two commonest occupations of mankind. We are despised if we are helpless ; we are teased by petulance and tormented by reprehension if we are strong. One tribe of barbarians would drag us into their own dry desarts, and strip us to the skin : another would pierce us with arrows for being naked. What is to be done ? SOLON. Simpler men run into no such perplexities. Your great wisdom, O Pisistratus, will enable you in some measure to defend your conduct ; but your heart is the more vulnerable from its very greatness. PISISTRATUS. I intend to exert the authority that is conferred on me by the people, in the maintenance of your laws, knowing no better. SOLON. Better there may be, but you will render worse necessary ; and would you have it said hereafter by those who read them, * Pisistratus was less wise than Solon ?" PISISTRATUS. It must be said ; for none among men hath enjoyed so high a character as you, in wisdom and integrity. SOLON. Either you lie now, Pisistratus, or you lied when you abolished my institutions. PISISTRATUS. They exist, and shall exist, I swear to you. SOLON. Yes, they exist like the letters in a burnt paper, which are looked down on from curiosity, and just legible, while the last of the consuming fire is remaining, but they crumble at a touch, and indeed fly before it, weightless and incoherent. 38 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. Do you desire, Pisistratus, that your family shall inherit your anxieties ? If you really feel none yourself, which you never will persuade me, nor (I think) attempt it, stil you may be much happier, much more secure and tranquil, by ceasing to possess what you have acquired of late, provided you cease early ; for long possession of any property makes us anxious to retain it, and insensible, if not to the cares it brings with it, at least to the real cause of them. Tyrants will never be per- suaded that their alarms and sorrows, their perplexity and melancholy, are the product of tyranny : they will not attribute a tittle of them to their own obstinacy and perverseness, but look for it all in another's. They would move everything and be moved by nothing ; and yet lighter things move them than any other particle of mankind. PISISTRATUS. You are talking, Solon, of mere fools. SOLON. The worst of fools, Pisistratus, are those who once had wisdom. Not to possess what is good is a misfortune; to throw it away is a folly : but to change what we know hath served us, and would serve us stil, for what never has and never can, for what on the contrary hath always been pernicious to the holder, is the action of an incorrigible idiot. Observa- tions on arbitrary power can never be made usefully to its possessors. There is not a foot-page about them at the bath whose converse on this subject is not more reasonable than mine would be. I could adduce no argument which he would not controvert, by the magical words " practical things'" and " present times i" a shrug of the shoulder would overset all that my meditations have taught me in half a century of laborious inquiry and intense thought. "These are theories/'' he would tell his master, " fit for Attica before the olive was sown among us. Old men must always have their way. Will their own grey beards never teach them that time changes things V* One fortune hath ever befallen those whom the indignant gods have cursed with despotical power ; to feed upon false- hood, to loath and sicken at truth, to avoid the friendly, to discard the wise, to suspect the honest, and to abominate the brave. Like grubs in rotten kernels, they coil up for safety in dark hollowness, and see nothing but death in bursting from it. SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. 39 Although they place violence in the highest rank of dignities and virtues, and draw closely round their bodies those whose valour, from the centre to the extremities, should animate the state, yet they associate the most intimately with singers, with buffoons, with tellers of tales, with prodigies of eating and drinking, with mountebanks, with diviners. These captivate and enthrall their enfeebled and abject spirits ; and the first cry that rouses them from their torpor is the cry that demands their blood. Then would it appear by their countenances, that all they had scattered among thousands, had come secretly back again to its vast repository, and was issuing forth from every limb and feature, from every pore, from every hair upon their heads. What is man at last, Pisistratus, when he is all he hath ever wished to be ! the fortunate, the powerful, the supreme ! Life in its fairest form (such he considers it) comes only to flatter and deceive him. Disappointments take their turn, and harass him : weakness and maladies cast him down : pleasures catch him again when he rises from them, to misguide and blind and carry him away : ambition struggles with those pleasures, and only in struggling with them seems to be his friend ; they mar one another, and distract him : enemies encompass him ; associates desert him; rivalries thwart, perse- cutions haunt him: another's thoughts molest and injure him; his own do worse than join with them : and yet he shudders and shrinks back at nothing so much as the creaking of that door by which alone there is any escape. Pisistratus ! Pisistratus ! do we tire out the patience of mankind, do we prey upon our hearts, for this ? Does Nature crave it ? Does Wisdom dictate it ? Can Power avert it ? Descend then from a precipice, it is difficult to stand, it is impossible to* repose on. Take the arm that would lead you and support you back, and restore you to your friends and country, He who places himself far above them, is (any child might tell you) far from them. What on earth can be imagined so horrible and disheartening, as to live without ever seeing one creature of the same species! Being a tyran or despot, you are in this calamity. Imprisonment in a dungeon could not reduce you to it : false friends have done that for you which enemies could but attempt. If such is the harvest of their zeal, when they are unsated and alert, what is that which remains to be gathered in by you, when they are full and 40 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. weary ? Bitterness ; the bitterness of infamy ! And how will you quench it ? By swallowing the gall of self-reproach ! Let me put to you a few questions, near to the point : you will answer them, I am confident, easily and affably. Pisistratus, have you not felt yourself the happier, when in the fulness of your heart, you have made a large offering to the gods ? PISISTRATTJS. Solon, I am not impious : I have made many such offerings to them, and have always been the happier. SOLON. Did they need your sacrifice ? PISISTRATUS. They need nothing from us mortals ; but I was happy in the performance of what I have been taught is my duty. SOLON. Piously, virtuously, and reasonably said, my friend. The gods did not indeed want your sacrifice : they, who give every- thing, can want nothing. The Athenians do want a sacrifice from you : fliey have an urgent necessity of something ; the necessity of that very thing which you have taken from them, and which it can cost you nothing to replace. You have always been happier, you confess, in giving to the gods what you could have yourself used in your own house : believe me, you will not be less so in giving back to your fellow-citizens what you have taken out of theirs and what you very well know they will seize when they can, together with your pro- perty and life. You have been taught, you tell me, that sacrifice to the gods is a duty : be it so : but who taught you it ? Was it a wiser man than you or I ? Or was it at a time of life when your reason was more mature than at present, or your interests better understood? No good man ever gave anything without being the more happy for it, unless to the undeserving, nor ever took anything away without being the less so. But here is anxiety and suspicion, a fear of the strong, a subjection to the weak ; here is fawning, in order to be fawned on again, as among suckling whelps half awake. He alone is the master of his fellow-men, who can instruct and improve them ; while he who makes the people another thing from what it was, is master of that other tiling, but not of the people. And supposing we could direct the city exactly SOLON AND PISISTKATUS. 41 as we would, is our greatness to be founded on this ? A ditcher may do greater things : he may turn a torrent (a thing even more turbid and more precipitate) by his ditch. A sudden increase of power, like a sudden increase of blood, gives pleasure; but the new excitement being once gratified, the pleasure ceases. I do not imagine the children of the powerful to be at any time more contented than the children of others, although I concede that the powerful themselves may be so for some moments, paying however very dearly for those moments, by more in quantity and in value. Give a stranger, who has rendered you no service, four talents : the suddenness of the gift surprises and delights him : take them away again, saying, "Excuse me; I intended them for your brother; yet, not wholly to disappoint you, I give you two/' What think you ; do you augment or diminish that man's store of happiness ? PISISTRATUS. It must depend on his temper and character : but I think in nearly all instances you would diminish it. SOLON. Certainly. When we can not have what we expect, we are dissatisfied; and what we have ceases to afford us pleasure. We are like infants ; deprive them of one toy, and they push the rest away, or break them, and turn their faces from you, crying inconsolably. If you desire an increase of happiness, do not look for it, Pisistratus, in an increase of power. Follow the laws of nature on the earth. Spread the seeds of it far and wide : your crop shall be in proportion to your industry and liberality. What you concentrate in yourself, you stifle ; you propagate what you communicate. Stil silent ? Who is at the door ? PISISTRATUS. The boys. SOLON. Come, my little fugitives ! turn back again hither ! come to me, Hippias and Hipparchus ! I wish you had entered earlier ; that you might have witnessed my expostulation with your father, and that your tender age might have produced upon him the effect my declining one has failed in. Children, you have lost your patrimony. Start not, Pisistratus ! I do not 42 SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. tell them that you have squandered it away : no, I will never teach them irreverence to their parent ; aid me, I entreat you, to teach them reverence. Do not, while the thing is recoverable, deprive them of filial love, of a free city, of popular esteem, of congenial sports, of kind confidence, of that which all ages run in pursuit of, equals. Children seek those of the same age, men those of the same condition. Misfortunes come upon all : who can best ward them off ? not those above us nor those below, but those on a level -with ourselves. Tell me, Pisistratus, what arm hath ever raised up the pillow of a dying despot ? He hath loosened the bonds of nature : in no hour, and least of all in the last, can they be strengthened and drawn together. It is a custom, as you know, for you have not yet forgotten all our customs, to conduct youths with us when we mark the boundaries of our lands, that they may give their testimony on any suit about them in time to come. Unfortunate boys ! their testimony cannot be received : the landmarks are removed from their own inheritance by their own father. Armed men are placed in front of them for ever, and their pleasantest walks through- out life must be guarded by armed men. Who would endure it ? one of the hardest things to which the captive, or even the criminal, is condemned. The restraints which every one would wish away, are eternally about them ; those which the best of us require through life, are removed from them on entering it. Their passions not only are uncontrolled, but excited, fed, and flattered, by all around, and mostly by their teachers. Do not expose them to worse monsters than the young Athenians were exposed to in the time of Theseus. Never hath our city, before or since, endured such calamity, such ignominy. A king, a conqueror, an injured and exas- perated enemy, imposed them : shall a citizen, shall a benefi- cent man, shall a father, devise more cruel and moi:e shameful terms, and admit none but his own offspring to fulfill them ? That monster perhaps was fabulous. that these were so ! and that pride, injustice, lust, were tractable to any clue or conquerable by any courage of despotism ! Weak man ! will sighing suffocate them ? will holding down the head confound them ? Hippias and Hipparchus ! you are now the children of Solon, the orphans of Pisistratus. If I have any wisdom, it is the wisdom of experience : it shall cost you nothing from ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. 48 me, from others much. I present to you a fruit which the gods themselves have fenced round, not only from the animals, but from most men ; one which I have nurtured and watched day and night for seventy years, reckoning from the time when my letters and duties were first taught me ; a lovely, sweet, and wholesome fruit, my children, and which, like the ambrosia of the blessed in Olympus, grows by participation and enjoyment. You receive it attentively and gratefully : your father, who ought to know its value, listens and rejects it. I am not angry with him for this ; and, if I censure him before you, I blame myself also in his presence. Too frequently have I repeated my admonition : I am throwing my time away, I who have so little left me : I am consuming my heart with sorrow, when sorrow and solicitudes should have ceased; and for whom ? for him principally who will derive no good from it, and will suffer none to flow on others, not even on those the dearest to him. Think, my children, how unwise a man is Solon, how hard a man Pisistratus, how mistaken in both are the Athenians. Study to avoid our errors, to correct our faults, and by simplicity of life, by moderation in your hopes and wishes, to set a purer and (grant it, Heaven !) a more stabile example than we have done. ANACEEON AND POLYCEATES. POLYCRATES. Embrace me, my brother poet. ANACREON. What have you written, Polycrates ? POLYCRATES. Nothing. But invention is the primary part of us ; and the mere finding of a brass ring in the belly of a dogfish, has afforded me a fine episode in royalty. You could not have made so much out of it. 44 ANACREON AND POLYCRATEb. AXACREOX. I have heard various stories this morning about the matter : and, to say the truth, my curiosity led me hither. POLYCRATES. It was thus. I ordered my cook to open, in the presence of ten or twelve witnesses, a fat mullet, and to take out of it an emerald ring, which I had laid aside from the time when, as you may remember, I felt some twitches of the gout in my knuckle. ANACREOX. The brass ring was really found in a fish some time ago : might not a second seem suspicious ? And with what object is this emerald one extracted from such another mine ? POLYCRATES. To prove the constancy and immutability of my fortune. It is better for a prince to be fortunate than wise : people know that his fortune may be communicated, his wisdom not ; and, if it could, nobody would take it who could as readily carry off a drachma. In fact, to be fortunate is to be powerful, and not only without the danger of it, but without the displeasure. ANACREOX. Ministers are envied, princes never ; because envy can exist there only where something (as people think) may be raised or destroyed. You were proceeding very smoothly with your reflections, Polycrates, but, with all their profundity, are you unaware that mullets do not eat such things ? POLYCRATES. True; the people however swallow anything; and, the further out of the course of nature the action is, the greater name for good fortune, or rather for the favour of divine providence, shall I acquire. AXACREOX. Is that the cook yonder ? POLYCRATES. Yes ; and he also has had some share of the same gifts. I have rewarded him with an Attic talent : he seems to be laying the gold pieces side by side, or in lines and quincunxes, just as if they were so many dishes. AXACREON AND POLYCRATES. 45 ANACREOX. I go to hirn and see . . . By Jupiter ! rny friend, you have made no bad kettle of fish of it to-day . . . The fellow does not hear me. Let us hope, Polycrates, that it may not break in turning out. If your cook was remunerated so magnificently, what must you have done for the fisherman ! POLYCRATES. He was paid the price of his fish. ANACREON. Royally said and done ! Your former plan was more extensive. To feign that a brazen ring was the ring of Gyges is indeed in itself no great absurdity ; but to lay claim to the kingdom of Lydia by the possession of it, was extravagant. Croesus is unwarlike and weak, confident and supercilious, and you had prepared the minds of his officers by your liberality, not to mention the pity and sorrow we put together over our wine, ready to pour it forth on the bleeding hearts of his subjects, treated so ungenerously for their fidelity. Yet your own people might require, at least once a-year, the proof of your invisibility in public by putting on the brazen ring. POLYCRATES. I had devised as much : nothing is easier than an optical deception, at the distance that kings on solemn occasions keep from the people. A cloud of incense rising from under the floor through several small apertures, and other contrivances were in readiness. But I abandoned my first design, and thought of conquering Lydia, instead of claiming it from inheritance. For, the ring of a fisherman would be too impudent a fabrication, in the claim of a kingdom or even of a village, and my word upon other occasions might be doubted. Croesus is superstitious : there are those about him who will persuade him not to contend with a man so signally under the protection of the gods. ANACREON. Can not you lay aside all ideas of invasion, and rest quiet and contented here ? POLYCRATES. Xo man, Anacreon, can rest anywhere quiet in Ins native country who has deprived Ins fellow-citizens of their liberties ; contented are they only who have taken nothing from another \ 46 ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. and few even of those. As, by eating much habitually, we render our bodies by degrees capacious of more, and uncomfort- able without it, so, after many acquisitions, we think new ones necessary. Hereditary kings invade each other's dominions from the feelings of children, the love of having and of destroying ; their education being always bad, and their intel- lects for the most part low and narrow. But we who have great advantages over them in our mental faculties, these having been constantly exercised and exerted, and in our knowledge of men, wherein the least foolish of them are quite deficient, find wars and civil tumults absolutely needful to our stability and repose. ANACREON. By Hercules ! you people in purple are very like certain sea-fowls I saw in my voyage from Teios hither. In fine weather they darted upward and downward, sidelong and cir- cuitously, and fished and screamed as if all they seized and swallowed was a torment to them: again, wdien it blew a violent gale, they appeared to sit perfectly at their ease, buoyant upon the summit of the waves. POLYCRATES. After all, I cannot be thought to have done any great injury to my friends the citizens of Samos. It is true I have taken away what you ingenious men call their liberties : but have you never, my friend Anacreon, snatched from a pretty girl a bracelet or locket, or other such trifle ? ANACREON. Not without her permission, and some equivalent. POLYCRATES. I likewise have obtained the consent of the people, and have rendered them a great deal more than an equivalent. Formerly they called one another the most opprobrious names in their assemblies, and sometimes even fought there ; now they never do. I entertained from the very beginning so great a regard for them, that I punished one of my brothers with death, and the other with banishment, for attempting to make divisions among them, and for impeding the measures I undertook to establish unanimity and order. My father had consented to bear alone all the toils of government ; and filial piety induced me to imitate his devotion to the commonwealth. The people ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. 47 had assembled to celebrate tlie festival of Juno, and had crowded the avenues of her temple so unceremoniously and indecorously, that I found it requisite to slay a few hundreds to her glory. King Lygdamus of Naxos lent me his assistance in this salutary operation, well knowing that the cause of royalty in all countries, being equally sacred, should be equally secure. ANACREON. My sweet Poly crates ! do not imagine that I, or any wise man upon earth, can be interested in the fate of a nation that yields to the discretion of one person. But pray avoid those excesses which may subject the Graces to the Tempests. Let people live in peace and plenty, for your own sake; and go to war then only when beauteous slaves are wanting. Even then it is cheaper to buy them of the merchant, taking care that at every importation you hire a philosopher or poet to instruct them in morality and religion. The one will demon- strate that obedience is a virtue; the other, that it is a pleasure. If age stimulates the senses, or if youth is likely to return (as the ring did), not a syllable can I add against the reasonableness of conquests to assuage the wants of either. POLYCRATES. The people in all countries must be kept in a state of activity : for men in cities, and horses in stables, grow restive by standing still. It is the destination of both to be patted, ridden, and whipped. The riding is the essential thing ; the patting and ^whipping are accessories ; and few are very careful or expert in timing them. ASACREON. In courts, where silliness alone escapes suspicion, we must shake false lights over the shallows, or we shall catch nothing. But, Polycrates ! I am not in the court of a prince : I am in the house of a friend. I might flatter you, if flattery could make you happier : but, as you have neglected nothing which could render my abode with you delightful, I would omit no precaution, no suggestion, which may secure and prolong my blessings. Do not believe that every poet is dishonest, because most are. Homer was not ; Solon is not ; I. doubt at times whether I myself am ; in despite of your inquisitive eye. My opinion of your wisdom is only shaken by your assumption of royalty, since I can not think it an act of discretion to change 4S ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. tranquillity for alarm, or friends for soldiers, or a couch for a throne, or a sound sleep for a broken one. If you doubt whether I love you (and every prince may reasonably entertain that doubt of every man around him), yet you can not doubt that I am attached to your good fortune, in which I have partaken to my heart's content, and in which I hope to continue a partaker. POLYCRATES. May the Gods grant it ! ANACREON. Grant it yourself, Poly crates, by following my counsel. Everything is every man's over which his senses extend. What you can enjoy is yours ; what you can not, is not. Of all the ilands in the world the most delightful and the most fertile is Samos. Crete and Cyprus are larger ; what then ? The little Teios, my own native country, affords more pleasure than any one heart can receive : not a hill in it but contains more beauty and more wine than the most restless and active could enjoy. Teach the Samiots, Polycrates, to refuse you and each other no delight that is reciprocal and that lasts. Royalty is the farthest of all things from reciprocity, and what delight it gives must be renewed daily, and with difficulty. In the order of nature, flowers grow on every side of us : why take a ploughshare to uproot them ? We may show our strength and dexterity in guiding it for such a purpose, but not our wisdom. Love, in its various forms, according to our age, station, and capacity, is the only object of reasonable and just desire. I prefer that which is the easiest to give and to return : you, since you have chosen royalty, have taken the most difficult in both : yet by kindness and courtesy you may conciliate those minds, which, once abased by royalty, never can recover their elasticity and strength, unless in the fires of vengeance. The gods avert it from you, my friend ! Do not inure your people to war : but instead of arming and equipping them, soften them more and more by peace and luxury. Let your deceit in the ring be your last : for men will rather be subjugated than deceived, not knowing, or not reflecting, that they must have been deceived before they could be subjugated. Let you and me keep this secret : that of the cook is hardly so safe. ANACUEON AND POLYCRATES. 49 POLYCRATES. Perfectly, or death would have sealed it; although my cook is, you know, an excellent one, and would be a greater loss to me than any native of the iland. A tolerably good minister of state may be found in any cargo of slaves that lands upon the coast. Interest ensures fidelity. As for difficulty, I see none : to handle great bodies requires little delicacy. He would make in a moment a hole through a mud-wall who could never make the eye of a needle : and it is easier to pick up a pompion than a single grain of dust. With you however who have lived among such people, and know them thoroughly, I need not discourse long about them, nor take the trouble to argue how impossible it is to blunder on so wide and smooth a road, where every man is ready with a lamp if it is dark or with a cart if it is miry. You know that a good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end. Pleasure and displeasure, sickness and health, life and death, are consigned to his arbitration. It would be little to add that he alone shares with royalty the privilege of exemption from every punish- ment but capital : for it would be madness to flog either, and turn it loose. The story of the ring will be credited as long as I want it ; probably all my life, perhaps after. Por men are swift to take up a miracle, and slow to drop it; and woe to the impious wretch who would undeceive them ! They never will believe that I can be unprosperous, until they see me put to death : some, even then, would doubt whether it were I, and others whether I were really dead, the day following. As we are in no danger of any such event, let us go and be crowned for the feast, and prove whether the mullet has any other merits than we have yet discovered. Come, Anacreon, you must write an ode to Fortune, not forgetting her favorite. ANACREON. I dare not, before I have written one to Juno, the patroness of Samos : but, as surely as you are uncrucified, I will do it then. Pardon me however if I should happen to praise the beauty of her eyes, for I am used to think more about the goddess who has the loveliest ; and, even if I began with the Puries, I should end in all likelihood with her. 50 ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. POLYCRATES. Follow your own ideas. You can not fail, however, to descant on the facility with which I acquired my power, and the unanimity by which I retain it, under the guidance and protection of our patroness. I had less trouble in becoming the master of Samos than you will have in singing it. Indeed, when I consider how little I experienced, I wonder that liberty can exist in any country where there is one wise and resolute man. ANACREON. And I that tyranny can, where there are two. POLYCRATES. "What ! Anacreon, are even you at last so undisguisedly my adversary ? ANACREON. Silly creature ! behold the fruit of royalty ! Eottenness in the pulp, and bitterness in the kernel. Polycrates, if I had uttered those words before the people, they would have stoned me for being your enemy . . for being a traitor ! This is the expression of late, not applied to those who betray, but to those who resist or traverse the betrayer. To such a situation are men reduced when they abandon self-ride ! I love you from similarity of studies and inclina- tions, from habit, from gaiety of heart, and because I live with you more conveniently than in a meaner house and among coarser slaves. As for the Samiots, you can not suppose me much interested about them. Beauty itself is the less fierce from servitude ; and there is no person, young or old, who does not respect more highly the guest of Polycrates than the poet of Teios. You, my dear friend, who are a usurper, for which courage, prudence, affability, liberality, are necessary, would surely blush to act no better or more humanely than a hereditary and established king, the disadvantages of whose condition you yourself have stated admirably. Society is not yet trodden down and forked together by you into one and the same rotten mass, with rank weeds covering the top and sucking out its juices. Circe, when she transformed the companions of Ulysses into swine, took no delight in drawing their tusks and ringing their snouts, but left them, by special grace, in quiet and full possession of their new privileges and dignities. ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. 51 The rod of enchantment was the only rod she used among them, finding a pleasanter music in the chorusses of her nymphs than in the grunts and squeals of her subjects. POLYCRATES. Now, tell me truly, Anacreon, if you knew of a conspiracy against me, would you reveal it ? ANACREON. I would ; both for your sake and for the conspirators. Even were I not your guest and friend, I would dissuade from every similar design. POLYCRATES. In some points, however, you appear to have a fellow feeling with the seditious. You differ from them in this : you wonld not take the trouble to kill me, and could not find a convenient hour to run away. ANACREON. I am too young for death, too old for flight, and too com- fortable for either. As for killing you, I find it business enough to kill a kid as a sacrifice to Bacchus. Answer rne as frankly as I answered you. If by accident you met a girl carried off by force would you stop the ravisher ? POLYCRATES. Certainly, if she were pretty : if not, I would leave the offence to its own punishment. ANACREON. If the offence had been perpetrated to its uttermost extent, if the girl were silent, and if the brother unarmed should rush upon the perpetrator armed . . . POLYCRATES, I would catch him by the sleeve and stop him. ANACREON. I would act so in this business of yours. You have deflowered the virgin. Whether the action will bring after it the full chastisement, I know not: nor whether the laws will ever wake upon it, or, waking upon it, whether they will not hold their breath and lie quiet. Weazels, and other animals that consume our corn, are strangled or poisoned, as may happen : usurpers and conquerors must be taken off quietly in one way only, lest many perish in the attempt, e2 52 ANACREON AND POLYCBATES. and lest it fail. No conspiracy of more than two persons ought ever to be entered into on such a business. Hence the danger is diminished to those concerned, and the satis- faction and glory are increased. Statues can be erected to two, not to many ; gibbets can be erected as readily to many as to few ; and would be ; for most conspiracies have been discovered and punished, while hundreds of usurpers have been removed by their cooks, their cup-bearers, and their mistresses, as easily, and with as little noise or notice, as a dish from the table, or a slipper from the bed-side. Banish the bloated and cloudy ideas of war and conquest. Continue to eat while you have anything in your mouth, par- ticularly if sweet or savoury, and only think of filling it again when it is empty. Croesus hath no naval force, nor have the Persians : they desire the fish but fear the water, and will mew and purr over you until they fall asleep and forget you, unless you plunge too loud and glitter too near. They would have attacked you in the beginning, if they had ever wished to do it, or been ignorant that kings have an enemy the less on the ruin of every free nation. I do not tell you to sit quiet, any more than I would a man who has a fever or an ague, but to sit as quiet as your condition will permit. If you leave to others their enjoyments, they will leave yours to you. Tyrants never perish from tyranny, but always from folly ; when their fantasies build up a palace for which the earth has no founda- tion. It then becomes necessary, they think, to talk about their similitude to the gods, and to tell the people, " We have a right to rule you, just as they have a right to rule us : the duties they exact from us, we exact from you : we are responsible to none but to them." POLYCKATES. Anacreon ! Anacreon ! who, in the name of Hermes, ever talked thus since the reign of Salmoneus ? People who would listen to such inflated and idle arrogance, must be deprived, not of their liberties only, but their senses. Lydians or Carians, Cappadocians or Carmanians, would revolt at it : I myself would tear the diadem from my brow, before I would commit such an outrage on the dignity of our common nature. A little fallacy, a little fraud and imposture, may be requisite to our office, and principally on entering it ; there is however ANACREON AND POLYCRATES. no need to tell the people that we, on our consciences, lay the public accounts before Jupiter for his signature \ that, if there is any surplus, we will return it hereafter ; but that, as honest and pious men, their business is with him, not with us. My dear Anacreon, you reason speciously, which is better in most cases than reasoning soundly ; for many are led by it and none offended. But as there are pleasures in poetry which I can not know, in like manner there are pleasures in royalty which you can not. Say what you will, we have this advantage over you. Sovrans and poets alike court us ; they alike treat you with malignity and contumely. Do you imagine that Hylactor, supposing him to feign a little in regard to me, really would on any occasion be so enthusiastic in vour favour as he was in mine ? ANACREON. You allude to the village-feast, in which he requested from your hand the cup you had poured a libation from, and tasted ? POLTCRATES. The very instance I was thinking on. ANACREON. Hylactor tells a story delightfully, and his poetry is better than most poets will allow. POLTCRATES. I do not think it . . I speak of the poetry. ANACREON. Now, my dear Polycrates, without a word of flattery to you, on these occasions you are as ignorant as a goat-herd. POLYCRATES. I do not think that either. ANACREON. Who does, of himself? Yet poetry and the degrees of it are just as difficult to mark and circumscribe, as love and beauty. POLYCRATES. Madman ! ANACREON. All are madmen who first draw out hidden truths. POLYCRATES. You are envious of Hylactor, because on that day I had 5 I VNACREON AND POLYCRATES. given him a magnificent dress, resembling those of the Agathyrsi. ANACREON. I can go naked at my own expense. I would envy him (if it gave me no trouble) his lively fancy, his convivial fun, and his power to live in a crowd, which 1 can do no longer than a trout can in the grass. What I envied on that day, I had. When with eyes turned upward to you, modestly and reve- rentially, he entreated the possession of the beechen bowl out of which you had taken one draught, I, with like humility of gesture and similar tone of voice, requested I might be possessor of the barrel out of which you had taken but one. The people were silent at his request ; they were rapturous at mine : one excepted. POLYCRATES. And what said he ? ANACREON. "By Bacchus \" he exclaimed, "I thought sycophants were the most impudent people in the world : but, Anacreon, verily thou surpassest them : thou puttest them out of countenance, out of breath, man V 3 Your liberality was, as usual, enough for us ; and, if Envy must come in, she must sit between us. Eeally the dress, coarse as it was, that you gave Placoeis, the associate of Hylactor, would have covered Tityus : nay, would have made winding-sheets, and ample ones, for all the giants, if indeed their mother Earth enwrapt their bones in any. Meditating the present of such another investiture, you must surprise or scale Miletus ; for if, in addition to the sheep of Samos, the cows and oxen, the horses and swine, the goats and dogs, were woolly, the fleeces of ten years would be insufficient. As Placoeis moved on, there were exclamations of wonder on all sides, at all distances. "Another *Epeiis must have made that pageant ! " was the cry : and many were trodden under foot from wishing to obtain a sight of the rollers. His heat, like the sun's, increased as he procedecl ; and those who kept egg-stalls and fish-stalls cursed him and removed them. POLYCRATES. We will feast again no less magnificently when I return from my victory on the continent. There are delicate perfumes and generous wines and beautiful robes at Sardis. * Framer of the Trojan Horse. XERXES AND ARTABANUS. 55 XERXES AND ARTABANUS. ARTABAXUS. Many nations, Xerxes, have risen higher in power, but no nation rose ever to the same elevation in glory as the Greek. XERXES. For which reason, were there no other, I would destroy it ; then all the glory this troublesome people have acquired will fall unto me in addition to my own. ARTABANUS. The territory, yes ; the glory, no. The solid earth may yield to the mighty : one particle of glory is never to be detacht from the acquirer and possessor. XERXES. Artabanus ! Artabanus ! thou speakest more like an Athenian than a Persian. If thou forgettest thy country, remember at least thy race. ARTABAXUS. I owe duty and obedience to my King ; I owe truth both to King and country. Years have brought me experience. And timidity. Yes, before God. ARTABAXUS. XERXES. And not before the monarch ? ARTABAXUS. My last word said it. XERXES. I too am pious ; yea, even more devout than thou. Was there ever such a sacrifice as that of the thousand beeves, which on the Mount of llion I offered up in supplication to Athene? I think it impossible the gods of Hellas should refuse me victory over such outcasts and barbarians in return for a thousand head of cattle. Never was above a tenth of the number offered up to them before. Indeed, I doubt 56 XERXES AND ARTABANUS. whether a tenth of that tenth come not nearer to the amount : for the Greeks are great boasters, and, in their exceeding cleverness and roguery, would chuckle at cheating the eagerly expectant and closely observant gods. "What sayest thou? ARTABANUS. About the Greeks 1 can say nothing to the contrary : but about the gods a question is open. Are they more vigorous, active, and vigilant, for the thousand beeves ? Certain it is that every Mede and Persian in the army would have improved in condition after feasting on them : as they might all have done for many days. XERXES. But their feasting or fasting could have no influence on the gods, who, according to their humour at the hour, might either laugh or scowl at them. ARTABANUS. I know not the will of Him above ; for there is only one ; as our fathers and those before them have taught us. Ignorant Greeks, when they see the chariot of his representative drawn before thee by white horses, call him Zeus. XERXES. Mithra, the sun, we venerate. ARTABANUS. Mithra we call the object of our worship. One sits above the sun, observes it, watches it, and replenishes it perpetually with his own light to guide the walk of the seasons. He gives the sun its beauty, its strength, its animation. XERXES. I worship him devoutly. But if one God can do us good, fifty can do us more, aided by demigods and heroes. ARTABANUS. Could fifty lamps in a royal chamber add light to it when open to the meridian ? XERXES. No doubt they could. ARTABANUS. Are they wanted ? XERXES. Perhaps not. They must be, even there, if the sun should go behind a cloud. XERXES AND ARTABANUS. 57 ARTABAXUS. God avert the omen ! XERXES. I have better omens in abundance. I am confident, I am certain of success. The more powerful and the more noble of the Greeks, the Athenians, Spartans, Thessalians, are with me, or ready to join me. ARTABANUS. How many of them, fugitives from their country, or traitors to it, can be trusted ? XERXES. The Alenadai from Larissa, country of Achilles, whose sepulchral mound we visited, offer me their submission and the strongholds on the borders of their territory. The descendants of Pisistratus, with the King of Sparta, are under my protection, and obedient to my will. They who have been stript of power, lawful or unlawful, are always the most implacable enemies of their country. Whether they return to it by force or by treachery, or by persuasion and the fickleness of the people, they rule with rigour. Ashamed of complicity and cowardice, the rabble, the soldiery, the priests, the nobles, hail them with acclamations, and wait only to raise louder, until his death, natural or violent (but violent and natural are here the same), shall deliver them again from their bondage. Then cometh my hand afresh over the people and draweth it gently back unto me. Resistance is vain. Have I not commanded the refractory and insolent sea to be scourged ? and not for disobeying my orders, which it never dared, but in my absence for destroying my bridge. The sentence hath already been carried into execution. Never more in my proximity and to my detriment will it presume to be tumultuous and insurgent. ARTABAXUS. O King ! thy power is awful, is irresistible ;* but can the waves feel? XERXES. Mutineers can ; and these waves were mutineers. They hiss and roar and foam, and swell and sink down again ; and never are quiet. This, O Artabanus, is so like undisciplined men, that it appears to me they also may feel. Whether they do or * Dead men, it is said, have been whipt under the Tzar Nicholas ; but they were alive and hale when the whipping began. 58 XEEXES AND AIITABANUS. not, terror is stricken into the hearts of the beholders. No exertion of superior power but works upon the senses of man- kind. Men are always the most obedient to, and follow the most vociferously, those who can and who do chastise, whether them or others. A trifle of benefit, bestowed on them after- ward, drops like balm into the wound : but balm the most precious and the most sanitary drops insensibly on an un- wounded part. Behold ! here come into my presence, to be reviewed at my leisure, the silver shields. To what perfect discipline have I brought my army ! Its armature is either the admiration or the terror of the universe. What sayest thou ? ARTABANUS. Certainly our Median and Persian cavalry is excellent. In regard to the armature, which former kings and generals devised, I entreat the liberty to remark, that its brightness and gorgeousness are better adapted to attract the fancies of women and boys, than to strike terror into martial men. XERXES. Look thou again, if thine eyes can endure the splendour, look thou again at my body-guard, and at their silver shields, and at their spears with golden pomegranates at the nearer end. ARTABANUS. Permit me to inquire, of what utility are these golden pomegranates ? They stick not into the ground, which some- times is needful ; they are injurious to the arm in grasping, more injurious in evolution, and may sometimes be handles for the enemy. Metal breast-plates, metal corselets, metal shields, silver or brass, are unwieldy and wearisome, not only by the weight but by the heat, especially at that season of the year when armies are most in activity. XERXES. What woiddst thou have ? What wouldst thou suggest ? ARTABANUS. I would have neither horse-hair nor plumage, nor other ornament, on the helmet, which are inconvenient to the soldier, but are convenient to the enemy. Helmets, alike for cavalry and infantry, should in form be conical, or shaped as the keel of a ship. In either case, a stroke of the sword, descending on it, would more probably glance off, without inflicting a XERXES AND AUTABANUS. 59 wound. But I would render them less heavy, and less subject to the influence of heat and cold. XERXES. Impossible ! How ? ABTABANUS. There are materials. Cork, two fingers breadth in thickness, covered with well-seasoned, strained, and levigated leather, would serve the purpose both for helmet and corselet, and often turn aside, often resist, both sword and spear. XERXES. My younger soldiers, especially the officers, would take little pride in such equipment. ARTABAXU3. The pride of the officer ought to be in the efficiency and comfort of the soldier. Latterly I have been grieved to see vain and idle young persons introduce alterations, which wiser men laugh at, and by which the enemy only, and their tailor, can profit. We should be more efficient if we were less decorative. XERXES. Efficient ! what can excell us ? ARTABANUS. Ah my King ! Our ancestors have excelled their ancestors in various improvements and inventions : our children may excell us. Where is that beyond which there is nothing? Great would be our calamity, for great our disgrace and shame, if barbarians, in any action, however slight and partial, should discomfit the smallest part of our armies. And there are barbarians whose bodies are more active, whose vigilance more incessant, whose abstinence more enduring, and whose armour is less impedimental, than ours. I blush at some of our bravest and best generals giving way so easily to fantas- tical and inexperienced idlers, who never saw a battle even from a balcony or a tower. Who is he that would not respect and venerate grey hairs ? but, seeing such dereliction of dignity, such relaxation of duty, such unworthy subserviency, who can ? Every soldier should be able to swim, and should have every facility for doing it. Corselets of the form I described, would enable whole bodies of troops to cross broad and deep rivers, and would save a great number of pontoons, and their carriages, and their bullocks. No shield would be CO XEKXES AND AUTABANUS. necessary; so that every soldier, Mede and Persian, would have one hand the more out of two. Let the barbarous nations in our service use only their own weapons ; it is inex- pedient and dangerous to instruct them in better. XERXES. There is somewhat of wisdom, but not much, Artabanus, in thy suggestions ; had there been more, the notions would first have occurred to me. But with the arms which our men already bear we are perfectly a match for the Greeks, who, seeing our numbers, will fly. ARTABANUS. Whither ? Prom one enemy to another ? Believe me, sir, neither Athenian nor Spartan will ever fly. If he loses this one battle, he loses life or freedom ; and he knows it. XERXES. I would slay only the armed. The women and children I would in part divide among the bravest of my army, and in part I would settle on the barren localities of my dominions, whereof there are many. ARTABANUS. Humanely and royally spoken : but did it never once occur to an observer so sagacious, that thousands and tens of thousands, in your innumerable host, would gladly occupy and cultivate those desert places, in which an Athenian would pine away ? Immense tracts of your dominions are scantily inhabited. Two million men are taken from agriculture and other works of industry, of whom probably a third would have married, another third would have had children born unto them from the wives they left behind : of these thousands and tens of thousands God only knows how many may return. Not only losses are certain ; but wide fields must lie uncultivated, much cattle be the prey of wild beasts throughout the empire, and more of worse depredators, who never fear the law, but always the battle, and who skulk behind and hide themselves, to fall upon what unprotected property has been left by braver men. Unless our victory and our return be speedy, your providence in collecting stores, during three entire years, will have been vain. Already the greater part (four-fifths at the lowest com- putation) hath been consumed. Attica and Sparta could not supply a sufficiency for two millions of men additional, and three hundred thousand horses, two months. Provender will soon XERXES AND AllTABAXUS. 61 be wanting for the sustenance of their own few cattle : summer heats have commenced; autumn is distant, and unpromising. XERXES. Disaffection ! disaffection ! Artabanus, beware ! I love my father's brother; but not even my father's brother shall breathe despondency or disquietude into my breast. Well do I remember thy counsel against this expedition. ARTABAXUS. Thou thyself for awhile, king, and before I gave my counsel, didst doubt and hesitate. The holy Dream enlightened me : and thou also wert forced to acknowledge the visitation of the same. Awful and super- human was the Apparition. Never had I believed that even a Deity would threaten Xerxes. A second time, when I had begun again to doubt and hesitate, it appeared before me ; the same stately figure, the same menacing attitude, nearer and nearer. Thou wilt acknowledge, Artabanus, that in this guise, or one more terrible, he came likewise unto thee. ARTABAXUS. Commanded by my king to enter his chamber and to sleep in his bed, I did so. Discourse on the invasion of Greece had animated some at supper, and deprest others, "Wine was poured freely into the cups equally of these and of those. Mardonius, educated by the wisest of the Mages, and beloved by all of them, was long in conference with his old preceptor. Toward the close they were there alone. "Wearied, and fearful of offending, I retired, and left them together. The royal bedchamber had many tapers in various parts of it : by degrees they grew more and more dim, breathing forth such odours as royalty alone is privileged to inhale. Slumber came over me ; heavy sleep succeeded. It was thus with me, the first night and the second. Mardonius would never have persuaded me, had dreams and visions been less constant and less urgent. ' What pious man ought to resist them? Nevertheless, I am stil surrounded and trammelled by perplexities. ^2 XERXES AND ARTABANUS. ARTABANUS. The powerful, the generous, the confiding, always are; kings especially. XERXES. Mardonius, I begin to suspect, is desirous of conquering Greece principally in order to become satrap of that country. ARTABANUS. He is young ; he may be and ought to be ambitious, but I believe him to be loyal. XERXES. Artabanus ! thou art the only one about me who never spoke ill, or hinted it, of another. ARTABANUS. I have never walkt in the path of evil-doers, and know them not. XERXES. Fortunate am I that a man so wise and virtuous hath come over to my opinion. The Vision was irresistible. ARTABANUS. It confirmed, not indeed my opinion, but the words formerly told me by a Mage now departed. XERXES. What words? Did he likewise foresee and foretell my conquest of Hellas ? ARTABANUS. I know not whether he foresaw it : certainly he never fore- told it unto me, But wishing to impress on my tender mind (for I was then about the age of puberty) the power apper- taining to the Mages, he declared to me, among other wonders, that the higher of them could induce sleep, of long continuance and profound, by a movement of the hand; could make the sleeper utter his inmost thoughts ; could inspire joy or terror, love or hatred ; could bring remote things and remote persons near, even the future, even the dead. Is it impossible that the Dream was one of them ? XERXES. I am quite lost in the darkness of wonder ; for never hast thou been known to utter an untruth, or a truth disparaging to the Mages. Their wisdom is unfathomable ; their know- ledge is unbounded by the visible world in which we live : XERXES AND AUTABAKUS. bo their empire is vast even as mine. But take heed : who knows but the gods themselves are creatures of their hands ! My hair raises up my diadem at the awful thought. ARTABAXUS. The just man, Xerxes, walks humbly in the presence of his God, but walks fearlessly. Deities of many nations are within thy tents; and each of them is thought the most powerful, the only true one, by his worshiper. Some, it is reported, are jealous : if so, the worshiper is, or may be, better than they are. The courts and pavilions of others are repre- sented by their hymners as filled with coals and smoke, and with chariots and instruments of slaughter. These are the Deities of secluded regions and gloomy imaginations. We are now amid a people of more lively and more genial faith. XERXES. I think their gods are easy to propitiate, and worth pro- pitiating. The same singer who celebrated the valour of Achilles, hath described in another poem the residence of these gods; where they lead quiet lives above the winds and tempests ; where frost never binds the pure illimitable expanse ; where snow never whirls around; where lightning never quivers ; but temperate warmth and clearest light are evermore about them. Such is the description which the sons of Hipparchus have translated for my amusement from the singer. ARTABAXUS. Whatever be the quarrels in the various tents, extending many and many parasangs in every direction, there is no quarrel or disturbance about the objects of veneration. Barbarous are many of the nations under thee, but none so barbarous.- There may be such across the Danube and across the Adriatic ; old regions of fable ; countries where there are Lsestrigons and Cyclopses, and men turned into swine; there may be amid the wastes of Scythia, where Gryphons are reported to guard day and night treasures of gold buried deep under the rocks, and to feed insatiably on human blood and marrow; but none, happy king, within the regions, inter- minable as they are, under the beneficent sway of thy sceptre. XERXES. The huntsman knows how to treat dogs that quarrel in the 64 , PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. kennel ; moreover lie perceives the first symptoms of the rabid, and his arrow is upon the string. Ancient times and modern have seen annihilated two great armies ; the greatest of each ; that of Xerxes and that of Napoleon. Xerxes was neither the more ambitious of these invaders nor the more powerful, but greatly the more provident. Three years together he had been storing magazines in readiness for his expedition, and had collected fresh provisions in abundance on his march. Napoleon marcht where none had been or could be collected, instead of taking the road by Danzic, in which fortress were ample stores for his whole army until it should reach Petersburg by the coast. No hostile fleet could intercept such vessels as would convey both grain and munition. The nobility of Moscow would have rejoiced at the destruction of a superseding city, become the seat of empire. Whether winter came on ten days earlier or later, snow was sure to blockade and famish the army in Moscow ; the importation of provisions (had sufficiency existed within reach) and the march northward, were equally impracticable. Napoleon left behind him a signal example that strategy is only a constituent part of a commander. In his Russian campaign even this was wanting. Xerxes lost his army not so totally as Napoleon lost his : Xerxes in great measure by the valour and skill of his enemy ; Napoleon by his own imprudence. The faith of Xerxes was in his Dream, Napoleon's in his Star : the Dream was illusory, the Star a falling one. PEEICLES AND SOPHOCLES. Sophocles ! is there in the world a city so beautiful as Athens ? Congratulate me ; embrace me ; the Pirseus and the Pcecile are completed this day ; * my glory is accomplished ; behold it founded on the supremacy of our fellow-citizens. SOPHOCLES. And it arises, Pericles, the more majestically from the rich and delightful plain of equal laws. The gods have bestowed on our statuaries and painters a mighty power, enabling them to restore our ancestors unto us, some in the calm of thought, others in the tumult of battle, and to present them before our children when we are gone. * Their decorations only ; for the structures were finished before. The propylea of Pericles were entrances to the citadel : other works of con- summate beauty were erected as ornaments to the city, but chiefly in the Pcecile, where also was seen the Temple of Cybele, with her statue by Phidias. PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. 65 Shall it be so ? Alas, how worthless an incumbrance, how wearisome an impediment is life, if it separate us from the better of our ancestors, not in our existence only, but in our merit ! We are little by being seen among men ; because that phasis of us only is visible which is exposed toward them and which most resembles them : we become greater by leaving the world, as the sun appears to be on descending below T the horizon. Strange reflection ! humiliating truth ! that nothing on earth, no exertion, no endowment, can do so much for us as a distant day. And deep indeed, Sophocles, must be the impression made upon thy mind by these masterly works of art, if they annihilate in a manner the living ; if they lower in thee that spirit which hath often aroused by one touch, or rather flash, the whole Athenian people at thy tragedies, and force upon thee the cold and ungenial belief, the last which it appears to be their nature to inculcate, that while our children are in existence it can cease to be among them. SOPHOCLES. I am only the interpreter of the heroes and divinities who are looking down on me. When I survey them I remember their actions, and when I depart from them I visit the regions they illustrated. Neither the goddesses on Ida nor the gods before Troy were such rivals as our artists. iEschylus hath surpassed me:* I must excell iEschylus. Pericles, thou conjurest up Discontent from the bosom of Delight, and givest her an elevation of mien and character she never knew before : thou makest every man greater than his competitor, and not in his own eyes but in another's. We want historians: thy eloquence will form the style, thy administration will supply the materials. Beware, my friend, lest the people hereafter be too proud of their city, and imagine that to have been born in Athens is enough. * Sophocles gained the first prize for which he contended with iEschylus, and was conscious that he had not yet deserved the superiority, which enthusiasm on the one side and jealousy on the other -are always ready to grant a vigorous young competitor. The character of Sophocles was frank and liberal, as was remarkably proved on the death of his last rival, Euripides. 66 PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. And this indeed were hardly more irrational, than the pride which cities take sometimes in the accident of a man's birth within their walls, of a citizen's whose experience was acquired, whose virtues were fostered, and perhaps whose services were performed, elsewhere. SOPHOCLES. They are proud of having been the cradles of great men, then only when great men can be no longer an incumbrance or a reproach to them. Let them rather boast of those who spend the last day in them than the first; this is always accidental, that is generally by choice ; for, from something like instinct, we wish to close our eyes upon the world in the places we love best, the child in its mother's bosom, the patriot in his country. When we are born we are the same as others : at our decease we may induce our friends, and oblige our enemies, to acknowledge that others are not the same as we. It is folly to say, Death levels the whole human race : for it is only when he hath stripped men of everything external, that their deformities can be clearly discovered or their worth correctly ascertained. Gratitude is soon silent; a little while longer and Ingratitude is tired, is satisfied, is exhausted, or sleeps. Lastly fly off the fumes of party-spirit ; the hottest and most putrid ebullition of self-love. We then see before us and contemplate calmly the creator of our customs, the ruler of our passions, the arbiter of our pleasures, and, under the gods, the disposer of our destiny. What then, I pray thee, is there dead ? Nothing more than that which we can handle, cast down, bury; and surely not he who is yet to progenerate a more numerous and far better race, than during the few years it was permitted us to converse with him. PERICLES. When I reflect on Themistocles, on Aristides, and on the greatest of mortal men, Miltiades, I wonder how their countrymen can repeat their names, unless in performing the office of expiation.* * There are some who may deem this reflection unsuitable to Pericles. He saw injustice in others, and hated it : yet he caused the banishment of Cimon, as great a man as any of the three. It is true he had afterward the glory of proposing and of carrying to Sparta the decree of his recall. PEUICLES AND SOPHOCLES. 67 SOPHOCLES. Cities are ignorant that nothing is more disgraceful to them than to be the birth-places of the illustriously good, and not afterward the places of their residence ; that their dignity consists in adorning them with distinctions, in entrusting to them the regulation of the commonwealth, and not in having sold a crust or cordial to the nurse or midwife. Zeus and Pallas ! grant a right mind to the Athenians ! If, throughout so many and such eventful ages, they have^ been found by you deserving of their freedom, render them more and more worthy of the great blessing you bestowed on them ! May the valour of our children defend this mole for ever; and constantly may their patriotism increase and strengthen among these glorious reminiscences ! Shield them from the jealousy of surrounding states, from the ferocity of barbarian kings, and from the perfidy of those who profess the same religion ! Teach them that between the despot and the free all compact is a cable of sand, and every alliance unholy ! And, O givers of power and wisdom ! remove from them the worst and wildest of illusions, that happiness, liberty, virtue, genius, will be fostered or long respected, much less attain their just ascendancy, under any other form of government ! SOPHOCLES. May the gods hear thee, Pericles, as they have always done! or may I, reposing in my tomb, never know that they have not heard thee ! 1 smile on imagining how trivial would thy patriotism and ideas of government appear to Chloros. And indeed much wiser men, from the prejudices of habit and education, have undervalued them, preferring the dead quiet of their wintry hives to our breezy spring of life and busy summer. The Let us contemplate the brighter side of his character, his eloquence, his wit, his clemency, his judgment, his firmness, his regularity, his decorous- ness, his domesticity ; let us then unite him with his predecessor, and acknowledge that such illustrious rivals never met before or since, in enmity or in friendship. Could the piety attributed to Pericles have belonged to a scholar of Anaxagoras? Eloquent men often talk like religious men : and where should the eloquence of Pericles be more inflamed by enthusiasm than in the midst of his propylaea, at the side of Sophocles, and before the gods of Phidias 1 f2 68 PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. countries of the vine and olive are more subject to hailstorms than the regions of the north : yet is it not better that some of the fruit should fall than that none should ripen ? Quit these creatures ; let them lie warm and slumber; they are all they ought to be, all they can be. But prythee who is Chloros, that he should deserve to be named by Sophocles ? SOPHOCLES. He was born somewhere on the opposite coast of Eubcea, and sold as a slave in Persia to a man who dealt largely in that traffic, and who also had made a fortune by displaying to the public four remarkable proofs of ability : first, by swallow- ing at a draught an amphora of the strongest wine ; secondly, by standing up erect and modulating his voice like a sober man when he was drunk ; thirdly, by acting to perfection like a drunken man when he was sober ; and fourthly, by a most surprising trick indeed, which it is reported he learnt in Babylonia : one would have sworn he had a blazing fire in his mouth ; take it out, and it is nothing but a lump of ice. The king, before whom he was admitted to play his tricks, hated him at first, and told him that the last conjuror had made him cautious of such people, he having been detected in filching from the royal tiara one of the weightiest jewels : but talents forced their way. As for Chloros, I mention him by the name under which I knew him ; he has changed it since ; for although the dirt wherewith it was encrusted kept him com- fortable at first, when it cracked and began to crumble it was incommodious. The barbarians have commenced, I understand, to furbish their professions and vocations with rather whimsical skirts and linings : thus for instance a chessplayer is lion-hearted and worshipful ; a drunkard is serenity and highness; a hunter of fox, badger, polecat, fitchew, and weazel, is excellency and right honourable ; while, such is the delicacy of distinction, a rat-catcher is considerably less : he however is illustrious, and appears, as a tail to a comet, in the train of a legation, holding a pen between his teeth to denote his capacity for secretary, and leading a terrier in the right hand, and carrying a trap baited with cheese and anise-seed in the left. It is as creditable among them to lie with dexterity as it is PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. 69 common among the Spartans to steal. Chloros, who per- formed it with singular frankness and composure, had recently a cock's feather mounted on his turban, in place of a hen's, and the people was commanded to address him by the title of most noble. His brother Alexaretes was employed at a stipend of four talents to detect an adultress in one among the royal wives: he gave no intelligence in the course of several months: the king on his return cried angrily, " What hast thou been doing? hast thou never found her out?" He answered, " Thy servant, king, hath been doing more than finding out an adultress : he hath, king, been making one." I have heard the story with this difference, that the bed- ambassador being as scantily gifted with facetiousness as with perspicacity, the reply was framed satirically by some other courtier, who, imitating his impudence, had forgotten his dulness. But about the reward of falsehood, that is wonderful, when we read that formerly the Persians were occupied many years in the sole study of truth. SOPHOCLES. How difficult then must they have found it ! Xo wonder they left it off the first moment they could conveniently. The grandfather of Chloros was honest : he carried a pack upon his shoulders, in which pack were contained the coarser linens of Caria : these he retailed among the villages of Asia and Greece, but principally in the ilands. He died : on the rumour of war the son and grandson, then an infant, fled : the rest is told. In Persia no man inquires how another comes to wealth or power, the suddenness of which appears to be effected by some of the demons or genii of their songs and stories. Chloros grew rich, was emancipated from slavery, and bought several slaves himself. One of these was excess- ively rude and insolent to me : I had none near enough to chastise him, so that I requested of his master, by a friend, to admonish and correct him at his leisure. My friend informs me that Chloros, crossing his legs, and drawing his cock's feather through the thumb and finger, asked languidly who I was, and receiving the answer, said, " I am surprised at his impudence : Pericles himself could have demanded nothing more." My friend remarked that Sophocles was no less 70 PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. sensible of an affront than Pericles. " True/' replied he, " but he has not the power of expressing his sense of it quite so strongly. Tor an affront to Pericles, who could dreadfully hurt me, I would have imprisoned my whole gang, whipt them with wires, mutilated them, turned their bodies into safes for bread and water, or cooled their prurient tongues with hemlock : but no slave shall ever shrug a shoulder the sorer or eat a leek the less for Sophocles." PERICLES. The ideas of such a man on government must be curious : I am persuaded he would prefer the Persian to any. I forgot to mention that, according to what I hear this morning, the great king has forbidden strange ships to sail within thirty parasangs of his coasts, and has claimed the dominion of half ours. SOPHOCLES. Where is the scourge with which Xerxes lashed the ocean ? Were it not better laid on the back of a madman than placed within his hand ? PERICLES. It hath been observed by those who look deeply into the history of physics, that all royal families become at last insane. Immoderate power, like other intemperance, leaves the progeny weaker and weaker, until JXature, as in compassion, covers it with her mantle and it is seen no more, or until the arm of indignant man sweeps it from before him. We must ere lon^ excite the other barbarians to invade the territories of this, and before the cement of his new acquisitions shall have hardened. Large conquests break readily off from an empire by their weight, while smaller stick fast. A wide and rather waste kingdom should be interposed between the policied states and Persia, by the leave of Chloros. Perhaps he would rather, in his benevolence, unite us with the great and happy family of his master. Despots are wholesale dealers in equality; and, father Zeus ! was ever equality like this ? SOPHOCLES. My dear Pericles ! . . do excuse a smile . . is not that the best government which, whatever be the form of it, we ourselves are called upon to administer ? PERICLES. The Piraeus and the Poecile have a voice of their own PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. 71 wherewith to answer thee, Sophocles ! and the Athenians, exempt from war, famine, tax, debt, exile, fine, imprisonment, delivered from monarchy, from oligarchy, and from anarchy, walking along their porticoes, inhaling their sea-breezes, crowning their gods daily for fresh blessings, and their children for deserving them, reply to this voice by the sym- phony of their applause. Hark ! my words are not idle. Hither come the youths and virgins, the sires and matrons ; hither come citizen and soldier . . SOPHOCLES. A solecism from Pericles ! Has the most eloquent of men forgotten the Attic language ? has he forgotten the language of all Greece ? Can the father of his country be ignorant that he should have said hither comes ? for citizen and soldier is one. PERICLES. The fault is graver than the reproof, or indeed than simple incorrectness of language : my eyes misled my tongue : a large portion of the citizens is armed. what an odour of thyme and bay and myrtle, and from what a distance, bruised by the procession ! SOPHOCLES. What regular and full harmony ! What a splendour and effulgence of white dresses ! painful to aged eyes and dangerous to young. PERICLES. 1 can distinguish many voices from among others. Some of them have blessed me for defending their innocence before the judges ; some for exhorting Greece to unanimity ; some for my choice of friends. Ah surely those sing sweetest ! those are the voices, Sophocles ! that shake my heart with tenderness, a tenderness passing love, and excite it above the trumpet and the cymbal. Return we to the gods : the crowd is waving the branches of olive, calling us by name, and closing to salute us. SOPHOCLES. citadel of Pallas, more than all other citadels may the Goddess of wisdom and of war protect thee ! and never may strange tongue be heard within thy walls, unless from captive king ! Live Pericles ! and inspire into thy people the soul that once animated these heroes round us. 72 PERICLES AND SOPHOCLES. Hail, men of Athens! Pass onward ; leave me ; I follow. Go; behold the Cods, the Demigods, and Pericles ! Artemicloros ! come to my right. No : better walk between us ; else they who run past may knock the flute out of your hand, or push it every now and then from the lip ! Have you received the verses I sent you in the morning ? soon enough to learn the accents and cadences ? ARTEMIDOROS. Actaios brought them to me about sunrise ; and I raised myself up in bed to practise them, while he sat on the edge of it, shaking the dust off his sandals all over the chamber, by beating time. SOPHOCLES. Begin w r e. The colours of thy waves are not the same Day after day, Poseidon ] nor the same The fortunes of the land wherefrom arose Under thy trident the brave friend of man. Wails have been heard from women, sterner breasts Have sounded with the desperate pang of grief, Gray hairs have strown these rocks : here iEgeus cried, " Sun ! careering over Sipylos, If desolation (worse than ever there Befell the mother, and those heads her own Would shelter when the deadly darts flew round) Impend not o'er my house in gloom so long, Let one swift cloud illumined by thy chariot Sweep off the darkness from that doubtful sail." Deeper and deeper came the darkness down ; The sail itself was heard ; his eyes grew dim ; His knees tottered beneatb him, but availed To bear him til he plunged into the deep. Sound, fifes ! there is a youihfulness of sound In your shrill voices : sound again, ye lips That Mars delights in. I will look no more Into the time behind for idle goads To stimulate faint fancies : hope itself Is bounded by the starry zone of glory. On one bright point we gaze, one wish we breathe, Athens ! be ever as thou art this hour, Happy and strong, a Pericles thy guide. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 73 DIOGENES AND PLATO. DIOGENES. Stop ! stop ! come hither ! Why lookest thou so scornfully arid askance upon me ? PLATO. Let me go ; loose me ; I am resolved to pass. DIOGENES. Nay then, by Jupiter and this tub ! thou leavest three good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee. Whither wouldst thou amble ? PLATO. I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you. DIOGENES. Upon whose errand ? Answer me directly. PLATO. Upon my own. DIOGENES. ! then I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were upon another's, it might be a hardship to a good citizen, though not to a good philosopher. PLATO. That can be no impediment to my release : you do not think me one. DIOGENES. No, by my father Jove ! PLATO. Your father ! DIOGENES. Why not ? Thou shouldst be the last man to doubt it. Hast not thou declared it irrational to refuse our belief to those who assert that they are begotten by the gods, though the assertion (these are thy words) be unfounded on reason or probability ? In me there is a chance of it.: wheras in the generation of such people as thou art fondest of frequenting, who claim it loudly, there are always too many competitors to leave it probable. 74 DIOGENES AND PLATO. Those who speak against the great, do not usually speak from morality, but from envy. DIOGENES. Thou hast a glimpse of the truth in this place ; but as thou hast already shown thy ignorance in attempting to prove to me what a man is, ill can I expect to learn from thee what is a great man. PLATO. No doubt your experience and intercourse will afford me the information. DIOGENES. Attend, and take it. The great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws, and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of deceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him. PLATO. Excuse my interruption. In the beginning of your defini- tion I fancied that you were designating your own person, as most people do in describing what is admirable ; now I find that you have some other in contemplation. DIOGENES. I thank thee for allowing me what perhaps I do possess, but what I was not then thinking of; as is often the case with rich possessors : in fact, the latter part of the description suits me as well as any portion of the former. PLATO. You may call together the best company, by using your hands in the call, as you did with me ; otherwise I am not sure that you would succeed in it. DIOGENES. My thoughts are my company : I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men can not do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague, uncertain, cumbersome : and the worst stick ( DIOGENES AND PLATO. 75 to them the longest ; many indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak wishes, others by vain remorse. PLATO. Is there nothing of greatness, Diogenes ! in exhibiting how cities and communities may be governed best, how morals may be kept the purest, and power become the most stabile ? Something of greatness does not constitute the great man. Let me however see him who hath done what thou sayest : he must be the most universal and the most indefatigable traveller, he must also be the oldest creature upon earth. How so , Because he must know perfectly the climate, the soil, the situation, the peculiarities, of the races, of their allies, of their enemies : he must have sounded their harbours, he must have measured the quantity of their arable land and pasture, of their woods and mountains : he must have ascertained whether there are fisheries on their coasts, and even what winds are prevalent.* On these causes, with some others, depend the bodily strength, the numbers, the wealth, the wants, the capa- cities, of the people. PLATO. Such are low thoughts. DIOGENES. The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food under hedges : the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared aloft and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows near the ground, and the plants that bear it require ventilation and lopping. Were this not to be done in thy garden, every walk and alley, every plot and border, would be covered with runners and roots, with boughs and suckers. We want no poets or logicians or metaphysicians to govern us : we want practical men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men, fearful to solicit a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to betray one. Experimentalists may be the best philosophers : * Parts of knowledge which are now general, but were then very rare, and united in none. 76 DIOGENES AND PLATO. they are always the worst politicians. Teach people their duties, and they will know their interests. Change as little as possible, and correct as much. Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally from laying out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up four virtues : fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Now a man may be a very bad one, and yet possess three out of the four. Every cut-throat must, if he has been a cut- throat on many occasions, have more fortitude and more prudence than the greater part of those whom we consider as the best men. And what cruel wretches, both executioners and judges, have been strictly just ! how little have they cared what gentleness, what generosity, what genius, their sentence hath removed from the earth ! Temperance and beneficence contain all other virtues. Take them home, Plato, split them, expound them ; do what thou wilt with them, if thou but use them. Before I gave thee this lesson, which is a better than thou ever gavest anyone, and easier to remember, thou wert accusing me of invidiousness and malice against those whom thou callest the great, meaning to say the powerful. Thy imagina- tion, I am well aware, had taken its flight toward Sicily, where thou seekest thy great man, as earnestly and undoubt- ingly as Ceres sought her Persephone. Paith ! honest Plato, I have no reason to envy thy worthy friend Dionysius. Look at my nose ! A lad seven or eight years old threw an apple at me yesterday, while I was gazing at the clouds, and gave me nose enough for two moderate men. Instead of such a god- send, what should I have thought of my fortune if, after living all my lifetime among golden vases, rougher than my hand with their emeralds and rubies, their engravings and emboss- ments, among Parian caryatides and porphyry sphinxes, among philosophers with rings upon their fingers and linen next their skin, and among singing-boys and dancing-girls, * to whom alone thou speakest intelligibly. . I ask thee again, what should I in reason have thought of my fortune, if, after these facilities and superfluities, I had at last been pelted out of my house, not by one young rogue, but by thousands of all ages, and not with an apple (I wish 1 could say a rotten one) but with pebbles and broken pots ; and, to crown my deserts, had been compelled to become the teacher of so promising a generation. Great men, forsooth ! thou knowest at last who they are. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 77 PLATO. There are great men of various kinds. DIOGENES. No, by my beard, are there not. PLATO. What ! are there not great captains, great geometricians, great dialecticians ? DIOGENES. Who denied it ? A great man was the postulate. Try thy hand now at the powerful one. PLATO, On seeing the exercise of power, a child can not doubt who is powerful, more or less ; for power is relative. All men are weak, not only if compared to the Demiurgos, but if compared to the sea or the earth, or certain things upon each of them, such as elephants and whales. So placid and tranquil is the scene around us, we can hardly bring to mind the images of strength and force, the precipices, the abysses. . . DIOGENES. Prythee hold thy loose tongue, twinkling and glittering Like a serpent's in the midst of luxuriance and rankness. Did never this reflection of thine warn thee that, in human life, the precipices and abysses would be much further from our admi- ration, if we were less inconsiderate, selfish, and vile? I will not however stop thee long, for thou wert going on quite consistently. As thy great men are fighters and wranglers, so thy mighty things upon the earth and sea are troublesome and intractable incumbrances. Thou perceivedst not what was greater in the former case, neither art thou aware what is greater in this. Didst thou feel the gentle air that passed us? PLATO. I did not, just then. DIOGENES. That air, so gentle, so imperceptible to thee, is more powerful not only than all the creatures that breathe and live by it ; not only than all the oaks of the forest, which it rears in an age and shatters in a moment ; not only than all the monsters of the sea, but than the sea itself, which it tosses up into foam, and breaks against every rock in its vast circum- ference; for it carries in its bosom, with perfect calm and 78 DIOGENES AND PLATO. composure, the incontrollable ocean and the peopled earth, like an atom of a feather. To the world's turmoils and pageantries is attracted, not only the admiration of the populace, but the zeal of the orator, the enthusiasm of the poet, the investigation of the historian, and the contemplation of the philosopher : yet how silent and invisible are they in the depths of air ! Do I say in those depths and deserts ? No ; I say at the distance of a swallow's flight ; at the distance she rises above us, ere a sentence brief as this could be uttered. What are its mines and mountains ? Fragments wielded up and dislocated by the expansion of water from below ; the most-part reduced to mud, the rest to splinters. Afterward sprang up fire in many places, and again tore and mangled the mutilated carcase, and stil growls over it. What are its cities and ramparts, and moles and monuments ? segments of a fragment, which one man puts together and another throws down. Here we stumble upon thy great ones at their work. Show me now, if thou canst, in history, three great warriors, or three great statesmen, who have acted other- wise than spiteful children. PLATO. I will begin to look for them in history when I have dis- covered the same number in the philosophers or the poets. A prudent man searches in his own garden after the plant he wants, before he casts his eyes over the stalls in Kenkrea or Keramicos. Returning to your observation on the potency of the air, I am not ignorant or unmindful of it. May I venture to express my opinion to you, Diogenes, that the earlier discoverers and distributers of wisdom, (which wisdom lies among us in ruins and remnants, partly distorted and partly concealed by theo- logical allegory) meant by Jupiter the air in its agitated state, by Juno the air in its quiescent. These are the great agents, and therefor called the king and queen of the gods. Jupiter is denominated by Homer the compeller of clouds : Juno re- ceives them, and remits them in showers to plants and animals. I may trust you, 1 hope, Diogenes ! DIOGENES. Thou mayest lower the gods in my presence, as safely as men in the presence of Timon. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 79 PLATO. I would not lower them : I would exalt them. DIOGENES. More foolish and presumptuous stil ! PLATO. Fair words, Sinopean ! I protest to you my aim is truth. DIOGENES. I can not lead thee where of a certainty thou mayest always find it ; but I will tell thee what it is. Truth is a point ; the subtilest and finest ; harder than adamant • never to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it ; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life-blood, of those who press earnestly upon it. Let us away from this narrow lane skirted with hemlock, and pursue our road again through the wind and dust, toward the great man and the powerful. Him I would call the powerful one, who controls the storms of his mind, and turns to good account the worst accidents of his fortune. The great man, I was going on to demonstrate, is somewhat more. He must be able to do this, and he must have an intellect which puts into motion the intellect of others. PLATO. Socrates then was your great man. DIOGENES. He was indeed ; nor can all thou hast attributed to him ever make me think the contrary. I wish he could have kept a little more at home, and have thought it as well worth his w T hile to converse with his own children as with others. PLATO. He knew himself born for the benefit of the human race. DIOGENES. Those who are born for the benefit of the human race, go but little into it : those who are born for its curse, are crowded. PLATO. It was requisite to dispell the mists of ignorance and error. DIOGENES. Has he done it ? What doubt has he elucidated, or what fact has he established? Although I was bat twelve years 80 DIOGENES AND PLATO. old and resident in another city when he died, I have taken some pains in my inquiries about him from persons of less vanity and less perverseness than his disciples. He did not leave behind him any true philosopher among them ; any who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of disquisition, or his course of life ; any who would subdue the malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain from calumny or from cavil ; any who would devote his days to the glory of his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser, to his own well-founded contentment and well- merited repose. Xenophon, the best of them, offered up sacrifices, believed in oracles, consulted soothsayers, turned pale at a jay, and was dysenteric at a magpie. PLATO. He had then no courage ? I was the first to suspect it. DIOGENES. Which thou hadst never been if others had not praised him for it : but his courage was of so strange a quality, that he was ready, if jay or magpie did not cross him, to fight for Spartan or Persian. Plato, whom thou esteemest much more, and knowest somewhat less, careth as little for portent and omen as doth Diogenes. What he would have done for a Persian I can not say : certain I am that he would have no more fought for a Spartan than he w T ould for his own father : yet he mortally hates the man who hath a kinder muse or a better milliner, or a seat nearer the minion of a king. So much for the two disciples of Socrates who have acquired the greatest celebrity ! PLATO. Why do you attribute to me invidiousness and malignity, rather than to the young philosopher who is coming prema- turely forward into public notice, and who hath^ lately been invited by the King of Macedon to educate his son ? DIOGENES. These very words of thine demonstrate to me, calm and expostulatory as they appear in utterance, that thou enviest in this young man, if not his abilities, his appointment. And prythee now demonstrate to me as clearly, if thou canst, in what he is either a sycophant or a malignant. DIOGEXES AND PLATO. 81 Willingly. DIOGENES. I believe it. But easily too ? PLATO. I think so. Knowing the arrogance of Philip, and the signs of ambition which his boy (I forget the name) hath exhibited so early, he says, in the fourth book of his Ethics (already in the hands of several here at Athens, although in its present state unfit for publication), that "he who deems himself worthy of less than his due, is a man of pusillanimous and abject nrind.'' DIOGENES. His canine tooth, friend Plato, did not enter thy hare's fur here. PLATO. Xo ; he sneered at Phocion, and flattered Philip. He adds, " whether that man's merits be great, or small, or middling/' And he supports the position by sophistry. DIOGENES. How could he act more consistently ? Such is the support it should rest on. If the man's merits were great, he could not be abject. PLATO. Yet the author was so contented with his observation, that he expresses it again a hundred lines below. DIOGENES. Then he was not contented with his observation ; for, had he been contented, he would have said no more about it. But, having seen lately his treatise, I remember that he varies the expression of the sentiment, and, after saying a very foolish thing, is resolved on saying one rather less inconsiderate : on the principle of the hunter on the snows of Pindus, who, when his fingers are frost-bitten, does not hold them instantly to the fire, but dips them first into cold water. Aristoteles says, in his second trial at the thesis, "for he who is of low and abject mind, strips liimself of what is good about him, and is, to a certain degree, bad, because he thinks liimself unworthy of the good." Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs : they also make him unfit for brothels : but do they therefor 82 DIOGENES AND PLATO. make him bad ? It is not often that your scholar is lost in this way, by following the echo of his own voice. His greatest fault is, that he so condenses his thoughts as to render it difficult to see through them : he inspissates his yellow into black. However, I see more and more in him the longer I look at him : in you I see less and less. Perhaps other men may have eyes of another construction, and filled with a sub tiler and more ethereal fluid. PLATO. Acknowledge at least that it argues a poverty of thought to repeat the same sentiment. DIOGENES. It may or it may not. Whatever of ingenuity or invention be displayed in a remark, another may be added which sur- passes it. If, after this and perhaps more, the author, in a different treatise, or in a different place of the same, throws upon it fresh materials, surely you must allow that he rather hath brought forward the evidence of plenteousness than of poverty. Much of invention may be exhibited in the variety of turns and aspects he makes his thesis assume. A poor friend may give me to-day a portion of yesterday's repast ; but a rich man is likelier to send me what is preferable, forgetting that he had sent me as much a day or two before. They who give us all we want, and beyond what we expected, may be pardoned if they happen to overlook the extent of their liberality. In this matter thou hast spoken inconsiderately and unwisely : but whether the remark of Aristoteles was intended as a slur on Phocion is uncertain. The repetition of it makes me incline to think it was ; for few writers repeat a kind sentiment, many an unkind one : and Aristoteles would have repeated a just observation rather than an unjust, unless he wished either to flatter or malign. The gods rarely let us take good aim on these occasions, but dazzle or overcloud us. The perfumed oil of flattery, and the caustic spirit of malignity, spread over an equally wide surface. Here both are thrown out of their jars by the same pair of hands at the same moment ; the sweet (as usual) on the bad man, the unsweet (as universal) on t^e good. I never heard before that they had fallen on the hands of Phocion and of Philip. Thou hast furnished me with the suspicion, and I have furnished thee with the supports for it. Do not, however, hope to triumph DIOGENES AND PLATO. 83 oyer Aristoteles because lie hatli said one thoughtless thing : rather attempt to triumph with him on saying many wise ones. For a philosopher I think him very little of an impostor. He mingles too frequently the acute and dull; and thou too frequently the sweet and vapid. Try to barter one with the other, amicably ; and not to twitch and carp. You may each be the better for some exchanges • but neither for cheapening one another's wares. Do thou take my advice the first of the two; for thou hast the most to gain by it. Let me tell thee also that it does him no dishonour to have accepted the invita- tion of Philip as future preceptor of his newly-born child. I would rather rear a lion's whelp and tame hhn, than see him run untamed about the city, especially if any tenement and cattle were at its outskirts. Let us hope that a soul once Attic can never become Macedonian ■ but rather Macedonian than Sicilian. Aristoteles, and all the rest of you, must have the wadding of straw and saw-dust shaken out, and then we shall know pretty nearly your real weight and magnitude. A philosopher ought never to speak in such a manner of philosophers. DIOGENES. None other ought, excepting now and then the beadle. However, the gods have well protected thee, Plato, against his worst violence. Was this raiment of thine the screen of an Egyptian temple ? or merely the drapery of a thirty-cubit Isis ? or peradventure a holiday suit of Darius for a bevy of his younger concubines ? Prythee do tarry with me, or return another day, that I may catch a flight of quails with it as they cross over this part of Attica. PLATO. It hath always been the fate of the decorous to be calum- niated for effeminacy by the sordid. Effeminacy ! By my beard ! he who could carry all this Milesian bravery on his shoulders, might, with the help of three more such able men, have tost Typhoeus up to the teeth of Jupiter. G 2 84 DIOGENES AND PLATO. We may serve our country, I hope, with clean faces. DIOGENES. More serve her with clean faces than with clean hands : and some are extremely shy of her when they fancy she may want them. PLATO. Although on some occasions I have left Athens, I can not be accused of deserting her in the hour of danger. DIOGENES. Nor proved to have defended her : but better desert her on some occasions, or on all, than praise the tyrant Critias ; the cruellest of the thirty who condemned thy master. In one hour, in the hour when that friend was dying, when young and old were weeping over him, where then wert thou ? PLATO. Sick at home. DIOGENES. Sick ! how long ? of what malady ? In such torments, or in such debility, that it would have cost thee thy life to have been carried to the prison ? or hadst thou no litter ; no slaves to bear it ; no footboy to inquire the way to the public prison, to the cell of Socrates ? The medicine he took could never have made thy heart colder, or thy legs more inactive and torpid in their movement toward a friend. Shame upon thee ! scorn ! contempt ! everlasting reprobation and abhorrence ! PLATO. Little did I ever suppose that, in being accused of hard- heartedness, Diogenes would exercise the office of accuser. DIOGENES. Not to press the question, nor to avoid the recrimination, I will enter on the subject at large ; and rather ^as an appeal than as a disquisition. I am called hard-hearted ; Alcibiades is called tender-hearted. Speak I truly or falsely ? PLATO. Truly. DIOGENES. In both cases ? PLATO. In both. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 85 DIOGENES. Pray, in what doth hardness of heart consist ? PLATO. There are many constituents and indications of it : want of sympathy with our species is one. DIOGENES. I sympathise with the brave in their adversity and afflictions, because I feel in my own breast the flame that burns in theirs : and I do not sympathise with others, because with others my heart hath nothing of consanguinity. I no more sympathise with the generality of mankind than I do with fowls, fishes, and insects. We have indeed the same figure and the same flesh, but not the same soul and spirit. Yet, recall to thy memory, if thou canst, any action of mine bringing pain of body or mind to any rational creature. True indeed no despot or conqueror should exercise his authority a single hour if my arm or my exhortations could prevail against him. Nay, more : none should depart from the earth without flagellations, nor without brands, nor without exposure, day after day, in the market-place of the city where he governed. This is the only way I know of making men believe in the justice of their gods. And if they never were to believe in it at all, it is right that they should confide in the equity of their fellow- men. Even this were imperfect : for every despot and con- queror inflicts much greater misery than any one human body can suffer. Now then plainly thou seest the extent of what thou wouldst call my cruelty. We who have ragged beards are cruel by prescription and acclamation ; while they who have pumiced faces and perfumed hair, are called cruel only in the moments of tenderness, and in the pauses of irritation. Thy friend Alcibiades was extremely good-natured: yet, because the people of Melos, descendants from the Lacedaemonians, stood neutral in the Peloponnesian war, and refused to fight against their fathers, the good-natured man, when he had vanquished and led them captive, induced the Athenians to slaughter all among them who were able to bear arms : and we know that the survivors were kept in irons until the victorious Spartans set them free. PLATO. I did not approve of this severity. 86 DIOGENES AND PLATO. DIOGENES. Nor didst thou at any time disapprove of it. Of what value are all thy philosophy and all thy eloquence, if they fail to humanise a bosom-friend, or fear to encounter a misguided populace ? PLATO. I thought I heard Diogenes say he had no sympathy with the mass of mankind : what could excite it so suddenly in behalf of an enemy ? DIOGENES. Whoever is wronged is thereby my fellow-creature, although he were never so before. Scorn, contumely, chains, unite us. PLATO. Take heed, O Diogenes ! lest the people of Athens hear you. DIOGENES. Is Diogenes no greater than the people of Athens ? Friend Plato ! I take no heed about them. Somebody or something will demolish me sooner or later. An Athenian can but begin what an ant, or a beetle, or a worm will finish. Any one of the three would have the best of it. While I retain the use of my tongue, I will exercise it at my leisure and my option. I would not bite it off, even for the pleasure of spitting it in a tyrant's face, as that brave girl Egina did. But I would recommend that, in his wisdom, he should deign to take thine preferably, which, having always honey upon it, must suit his taste better. PLATO. Diogenes ! if you must argue or discourse with me, I will endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness : but it appears to me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is insulting and vexatious, than to breast and brave it. DIOGENES. Thou hast spoken well. PLATO. It belongs to the vulgar, not to us, to fly from a man's opinions to his actions, and to stab him in his own house for having received no wound in the school. One merit you will allow me : I always keep my temper ; which you seldom do. DIOGENES. Is mine a good or a bad one ? DIOGENES AND PLATO. 87 PLATO. Now must I speak sincerely ? DIOGENES. Dost thou, a philosopher, ask such a question of me, a philosopher ? Ay, sincerely or not at all. PLATO. Sincerely as you could wish, I must declare then your temper is the worst in the world. DIOGENES. I am much in the right, therefor, not to keep it. Embrace me : I have spoken now in thy own manner. Because thou sayest the most malicious things the most placidly, thou tliinkest or pretendest thou art sincere. PLATO. Certainly those who are most the masters of their resent- ments, are likely to speak less erroneously than the passionate and morose. DIOGENES. If they would, they might : but the moderate are not usually the most sincere : for the same circumspection which makes them moderate, makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence: they are also timid in regard to fortune and favour, and hazard little. There is no mass of sincerity in any place. What there is must be picked up patiently, a grain or two at a time • and the season for it is after a storm, after the overflowing of banks, and bursting of mounds, and sweeping away of landmarks. Men will always hold some- thing back : they must be shaken and loosened a little, to make them let go what is deepest in them, and weightiest and purest. PLATO. Shaking and loosening as much about you as was requisite for the occasion, it became you to demonstrate where, and in what manner, I had made Socrates appear less sagacious and less eloquent than he was : it became you likewise to consider the great difficulty of finding new thoughts and new expressions for those who had more of them than any other men, and to represent them in all the brilliancy of their wit and in all the majesty of their genius. I do not assert that I have done it ; but if I have not, what man has? what man has come so 88 DIOGENES AND PLATO. nigh to it? He who could bring Socrates, or Solon, or Diogenes, through a dialogue, without disparagement, is much nearer in his intellectual powers to them, than any other is near to him. DIOGENES. Let Diogenes alone, and Socrates, and Solon. None of the three ever occupied his hours in tinging and curling the tarnished plumes of prostitute Philosophy, or deemed any- thing worth his attention, care, or notice, that did not make men brave and independent. As thou callest on me to show thee where and in what manner thou hast misrepresented thy teacher, and as thou seemest to set an equal value on eloquence and on reasoning, I shall attend to thee aw 7 hile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee w r hether the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk,"* unless in the solemnities of Bacchus ? PLATO. This god was the discoverer of the vine and of its uses, DIOGENES. Is drunkenness one of its uses, or the discovery of a god ? If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason, we should sacrifice our reason with more propriety to Jupiter or Pallas. To Bacchus is due a libation of wane ; the same being his gift, as thou preachest. Another and a graver question. Did Socrates teach thee that u slaves are to be scourged, and by no means admonished as though they were the chil- dren of the master ? " PLATO. He did not argue upon government. DIOGENES. He argued upon humanity, whereon all government is founded : whatever is beside it is usurpation. PLATO. Are slaves then never to be scourged, whatever be their transgressions and enormities ? DIOGENES. Whatever they be, they are less than his who reduced them fco their condition. * Dialogue VI. on The Laws. DIOGENES AND PLATO. OV PLATO. What ! though, they murder his whole family ? DIOGENES. Ay, and poison the public fountain of the city. What am I saying ? and to whom ? Horrible as is this crime, and next in atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one than stealing a fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged by thee; the sentence on the poisoner is to cleanse out the receptacle."* There is, however, a kind of poisoning, which, to do thee justice, comes before thee with all its horrors, and which thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such a sacred personage as an aruspex or diviner : I mean the poisoning by incantation. I, my whole family, my whole race, my whole city, may bite the dust in agony from a truss of henbane in the well ; and little harm done forsooth ! Let an idle fool set an image of me in wax before the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and pray, and chant a hymn to Hecate while it melts, intreating and imploring her that I may melt as easily ; and thou wouldst, in thy equity and holiness, strangle him at the first stave of his psalmody. PLATO. If this is an absurdity, can you find another ? DIOGENES. Truly, in reading thy book, I doubted at first, and for a long continuance, whether thou couldst have been serious ; and whether it were not rather a satire on those busv-bodies who are incessantly intermeddling in other people's affairs. It was only on the protestation of thy intimate friends that I believed thee to have written it in earnest. As for thy question, it is idle to stoop and pick out absurdities from a mass of incon- sistency and injustice : but another and another I could throw in, and another and another afterward, from any page in the volume. Two bare staring falsehoods lift their beaks one upon the other, like spring frogs. Thou sayest that no punishment, decreed by the laws, tendeth to evil. What! not if immoderate ? not if partial ? Why then repeal any penal statute while the subject of its animadversion exists ? In prisons the less criminal are placed among the more criminal the inexperienced in vice together with the hardened * Dialogue VIII. 90 DIOGENES AND PLATO. in it. This is part of the punishment, though it precedes the sentence : nay, it is often inflicted on those whom the judges acquit : the law, by allowing it, does it. The next is, that he who is punished by the laws is the better for it, hoAvever the less depraved. What ! if anteriorly to the sentence he lives and converses with worse men, some of whom console him by deadening the sense of shame, others by removing the apprehension of punishment ? Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws : yet under thy regimen they take us from the bosom of the nurse, turn the meat about upon the platter, pull the bed-clothes off, make us sleep when we would wake, and wake when we would sleep, and never cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connections, be they distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any) eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen, and with a hide outrivalling in colour and plaits his trimmest saffron robe. At the mention of this indeed, friend Plato ! even thou, although resolved to stand out of harm's way, beginnest to make a wry mouth, and findest it difficult to pucker and purse it up again, without an astringent store of moral sentences. Hymen is truly no acquaintance of thine. We know the delicacies of love which thou wouldst reserve for the gluttony of heroes and the fasti- diousness of philosophers. Heroes, like gods, must have their own way : but against thee and thy confraternity of elders I would turn the closet-key, and your mouths might water over, but your tongues should never enter, those little pots of com- fiture. Seriously, you who wear embroidered slippers ought to be very cautious of treading in the mire. Philosophers should not only live the simplest lives, but should also use the plainest language. Poets, in employing magnificent and sonorous words, teach philosophy the better by thus^ disarming suspicion that the finest poetry contains and conveys the finest philosophy. You will never let any man hold his right station : you would rank Solon with Homer for poetry. This is absurd. The only resemblance is, in both being eminently wise. Pindar too makes even the cadences of his dithvrambics keep time to the flute of Reason. My tub, which holds fifty- fold thy wisdom, would crack at the reverberation of thy voice. UTO GENES AND PLATO. 91 Farewell. Not quite yet. I must physic thee a little with law again before we part ; answer me one more question. In punishing a robbery, woulclst thou punish him who steals everything from one who wants everything, less severely than him who steals little from one who wants nothing ? No : in this place the iniquity is manifest : not a problem in geometry is plainer. DIOGENES. Thou liedst then . . in thy sleep perhaps . . bnt thou liedst. Differing in one page from what was laid down by thee in another,* thou wouldst punish what is called sacrilege with death. The magistrates ought to provide that the temples be watched so well, and guarded so effectually, as never to be liable to thefts. The gods, we mnst suppose, can not do it by themselves; for, to admit the contrary, we must admit their indifference to the possession of goods and chattels : an impiety so great, that sacrilege itself drops into atoms under it. He, however, who robs from the gods, be the amount what it may, robs from the rich; robs from those who can want nothing, although, like the other rich, they are mightily vindictive against petty plunderers. But he who steals from a poor widow a loaf of bread, may deprive her of everything she has in the w r orld ; perhaps, if she be bedridden or paralytic, of life itself. I am weary of this digression on the inequality of punish- ments ; let us come up to the object of them. It is not, Plato ! an absurdity of thine alone, but of all who write and of all who converse on them, to assert that they both are and ought to be inflicted publicly, for the sake of deterring from offence. The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne, and that everyone who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse. The virtuous man, as a reward and a privilege, should be permitted to see how calm and satisfied a virtuous man departs. The criminal should be kept in the dark about the departure of his fellows, which is oftentimes as unreluctant ; for to him, if indeed no reward or * Books IX. and X. 92 DIOGENES AXD PLATO. privilege, it would be a corroborative and a cordial. Such tilings ought to be taken from him, no less carefully than the instruments of destruction or evasion. Secrecy and mystery should be the attendants of punishment, and the sole persons present should be the injured, or two of his relatives, and a functionary delegated by each tribe, to witness and register the execution of justice. Trials, on the contrary, should be public in every case. It being presumable that the sense of shame and honour is not hitherto quite extinguished in the defendant, this, if he be guilty, is the worst part of his punishment : if innocent, the best of his release. From the hour of trial until the hour of return to society (or the dust) there should be privacy, there should be solitude. PLATO. It occurs to me, Diogenes, that you agree with Aristoteles on the doctrine of necessity. DIOGENES. I do. PLATO. How then can you punish, by any heavier chastisement than coercion, the heaviest offences ? Everything being brought about, as you hold, by fate and predestination . . Stay ! Those terms are puerile, and imply a petition of a principle : keep to the term necessity. Thou art silent. Here then, Plato, will I acknowledge to thee, I wonder it should have escaped thy perspicacity that free-will itself is nothing else than a part and effluence of necessity. If every- thing proceeds from some other thing, every impulse from some other impulse, that which impels to choice or will must act among the rest. PLATO. Every impulse from some other (I must so take it) under God, or the first cause. DIOGENES. Be it so : I meddle not at present with infinity or eternity : when I can comprehend them I will talk about them. You metaphysicians kill the flower-bearing and fruit-bearing glebe with delving and turning over and sifting, and never bring up any solid and malleable mass from the dark profundity in DIOGENES AND PLATO. 93 which you labor. The intellectual world, like tlie physical, is inapplicable to profit and incapable of cultivation a little way below the surface . . of which there is more to manage, and more to know, than any of you will undertake. It happens that we do not see the stars at even-tide, some- times because there are clouds intervening, but oftener because there are glimmerings of light : thus many truths escape us from the obscurity we stand in ; and many more from that crepuscular state of mind, which induceth us to sit down satisfied with our imaginations and unsuspicious of our knowledge. DIOGENES. Keep always to the point, or witli an eye upon it, and instead of saying things to make people stare and wonder, say what will withhold them hereafter from wondering and staring. This is philosophy; to make remote things tangible, common things extensively useful, useful things extensively common, and to leave the least necessary for the last. I have always a suspicion of sonorous sentences. The full shell sounds little, but shows by that little what is within. A bladder swells out more with wind than with oil. PLATO. I would not neglect politics nor morals, nor indeed even manners : these however are mutable and evanescent : the human understanding is immovable and for ever the same in its principles and its constitution, and no study is so important or so inviting. DIOGENES. Tour sect hath done little in it. You are singularly fond of those disquisitions in which few can detect your failures and your fallacies, and in which, if you stumble or err, you may find some countenance in those who lost their way before you. Is not this school-room of mine, which holdeth but one scholar, preferable to that out of which have proceeded so many impetuous in passion, refractory in discipline, unprin- cipled in adventure, and (worst of all) proud in slavery ? Poor creatures who run after a jaded mule or palfrey, to pick np what he drops along the road, may be certain of a cabbage the larger and the sooner for it \ while those who are equally assiduous at the heel of kings and princes, hunger and thirst 94 DIOGENES AND PLATO. for more, and usually gather less. Their attendance is neither so certain of reward nor so honest ; their patience is scantier, their industry weaker, their complaints louder. What shall we say of their philosophy? what of their virtue? What shall we say of the greatness whereon their feeders plume themselves ? not caring they indeed for the humbler character of virtue or philosophy. We never call children the greater or the better for wanting others to support them : why then do we call men so for it ? I would be servant of any helpless man for hours together : but sooner shall a king be the slave of Diogenes than Diogenes a king's. PLATO. Companionship, Sinopean, is not slavery. DIOGENES. Are the best of them worthy to be my companions ? Have they ever made you w r iser ? have you ever made them so ? Prythee, what is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller ? 'Tis a dire calamity to have a slave ; 'tis an inexpiable curse to he one. When it befalls a man through violence he must be pitied: but where is pity, where is pardon, for the wretch who solicits it, or bends his head under it through invitation ? Thy hardness of heart toward slaves, Plato, is just as unnatural as hardness of heart toward dogs would be in me, PLATO. You would have none perhaps in that condition. DIOGENES. None should be made slaves, excepting those who have attempted to make others so, or who spontaneously have become the instruments of unjust and unruly men. Even these ought not to be scourged every day perhaps; for their skin is the only sensitive part of them, and such castigation might shorten their lives. PLATO. Which, in your tenderness and mercy, you would not do. DIOGENES. Longevity is desirable in them ; that they may be exposed in coops to the derision of the populace on holidays ; and that few may serve the purpose. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 95 We will pass over this wild and thorny theory, into the field of civilization in which we live ; and here I must remark the evil consequences that would ensue, if our domestics could listen to you about the hardships they are enduring. DIOGENES. And is it no evil that truth and beneficence should be shut out at once from so large a portion of mankind ? Is it none when things are so perverted, that an act of beneficence might lead to a thousand acts of cruelty, and that one accent of truth should be more pernicious than all the falsehoods that have been accumulated, since the formation of language, since the gift of speech ! I have taken thy view of the matter; take thou mine. Hercules was called just and glorious, and worshiped as a deity, because he redressed the grievances of others : is it unjust, is it inglorious, to redress one's own ? If that man rises high in the favour of the people, high in the estimation of the valiant and the wise, high before God, by the assertion and vindication of his holiest law, who punishes with death such as would reduce him or his fellow citizens to slavery, how much higher rises he, who, being a slave, springs up indignantly from his low estate, and thrusts away the living load that intercepts from him, what even the reptiles and insects, what even the bushes and brambles of the roadside, enjoy ! PLATO. We began with definitions : I rejoice, Diogenes, that you are warmed into rhetoric, in which you will find me a most willing auditor : for I am curious to collect a specimen of your prowess, where you have not yet established any part of your celebrity. . DIOGENES. I am idle enough for it : but I have other things yet for thy curiosity, other things yet for thy castigation. Thou wouldst separate the military from the citizens, from artizans and from agriculturists. A small body of soldiers, who never could be anything else, would in a short time subdue and subjugate the industrious and the .wealthy. They would begin by demanding an increase of pay; then they would insist on admission to magistracies ; and presently their general would assume the sovranty, and create new offices 96 DIOGENES AND PLATO. of trust and profit for the strength and security of his usurpa- tion. Soldiers, in a free state, should be enrolled from those principally who are most interested in the conservation of order and property ; chiefly the sons of tradesmen in towns : first, because there is the less detriment done to agriculture ; the main thing to be considered in all countries : secondly, because such people are pronest to sedition, from the two opposite sides of enrichment and poverty : and lastly, because their families are always at hand, responsible for their fidelity, and where shame would befall them thickly in case of cowardice, or any misconduct. Those governments are the most flourishing and stabile, which have the fewest idle youths about the streets and theatres : it is only with the sword that they can cut the halter. Thy faults arise from two causes principally : first, a fond- ness for playing tricks with argument and with fancy : secondly, swallowing from others what thou hast not taken time enough nor exercise enough to digest. PLATO. Lay before me the particular tilings you accuse me of drawing from others. DIOGENES. Thy opinions on numbers are distorted from those of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Syrians ; who believe that numbers, and letters too, have peculiar powers, independent of what is represented by them on the surface. PLATO. I have said more, and often differently. DIOGENES. Thou hast indeed. Neither they nor Pythagoras ever taught, as thou hast done, that the basis of the earth is an equilateral triangle, and the basis of water a rectangular. We are then informed by thy sagacity, that " the world has no need of eyes, because nothing is left to be looked at out of it ; nor of ears, because nothing can be heard beyond it ; nor of any parts for the reception, concoction, and voidance, of nutriment ; because there can be no secretion nor accretion."* This indeed is very providential. If things were otherwise, foul might befall your genii, who are always on active service : * Timceus. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 97 a world would not bespatter them so lightly as we mortals are bespattered by a swallow. Whatever is asserted on things tangible, should be asserted from experiment only. Thou shouldst have defended better that which thou hast stolen : a thief should not only have impudence, but courage. PLATO. What do you mean ? DIOGEXES. I mean that every one of thy whimsies hath been picked up somewhere by thee in thy travels ; and each of them hath been ' rendered more weak and puny by its place of concealment in thy closet. What thou hast written on the immortality of the soul, goes rather to prove the immortality of the body ; and applies as well to the body of a weasel or an eel as to the fairer one of Agathon or of Aster. Why not at once introduce a new religion ? # since religions keep and are relished in proportion as they are salted with absurdity, inside and out ; and all of them must have one great crystal of it for the centre; but Philosophy pines and dies unless she drinks limpid water. When Pherecydes and Pythagoras felt in them- selves the majesty of contemplation, they spurned the idea that flesh and bones and arteries should confer it ; and that what comprehends the past and the future, should sink in a moment and be annihilated for ever. No, cried they, the power of thinking is no more in the brain than in the hair, although the brain may be the instrument on which it plays. It is not corporeal, it is not of this world • its existence is eternity, its residence is infinity. I forbear to discuss the rationality of their belief, and pass on straightway to thine ; if indeed I am to consider as one, belief and doctrine. PLATO. As you will. DIOGENES. I should rather then regard these things as mere ornaments ; just as many decorate their apartments with lyres and harps, which they themselves look at from the couch, supinely com- placent, and leave for visitors to admire and play on. PLATO. I foresee not how you can disprove my argument on the * He alludes to the various worships of Egypt, and to what Plato had learnt there. H 98 DIOGENES AND PLATO. immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry with me. DIOGENES. At this time ? PLATO. Even so. DIOGENES. Give me then a certain part of it for my perusal. PLATO. Willingly. DIOGENES. Hermes and Pallas ! I wanted but a cubit of it, or at most a fathom, and thou art pulling it out by the plethron. PLATO. This is the place in question. DIOGENES. Read it. plato (reads.) "Sayest thou not that death is the opposite of life, and that they spring the one from the other ? " " Yes/ 3 " What springs then from the living?" " The dead" cc And what from the dead ? " " The living" " Then all things alive spring from the dead." DIOGENES. Why that repetition ? but go on. plato (reads.) " Souls therefor exist after death in the infernal regions." DIOGENES. Where is the therefor ? where is it even as to existence ? As to the infernal regions, there is nothing that points toward a proof, or promises an indication. Death neither springs from life, nor life from death. Although death is the inevi- table consequence of life, if the observation and experience of ages go for anything, yet nothing shows us, or ever hath signified, that life comes from death. Thou mightest as well say that a barley-corn dies before the germ of another barley- corn grows up from it : than which nothing is more untrue : for it is only the protecting part of the germ that perishes, when its protection is no longer necessary. The consequence, that souls exist after death, can not be drawn from the corrup- DIOGENES AND PLATO. 99 tion of the body, even if it were demonstrable that out of this corruption a live one could rise up. Thou hast not said that the soul is among those dead things which living things must spring from : thou hast not said that a living soul produces a dead soul, or that a dead soul produces a living one. PLATO. ]S T o indeed. DIOGENES. On my faith, thou hast said however things no less incon- siderate, no less inconsequent, no less unwise ; and this very tiling must be said and proved, to make thy argument of any value. Do dead men beget children ? PLATO. I have not said it. DIOGENES. Thy argument implies it. PLATO. These are high mysteries, and to be approached with rever- ence. Whatever we can not account for, is in the same predica- ment. We may be gainers by being ignorant if we can be thought mysterious. It is better to shake our heads and to let nothing out of them, than to be plain and explicit in matters of difficulty. I do not mean in confessing our igno- rance or our imperfect knowledge of them, but in clearing them up perspicuously : for, if we answer with ease, we may haply be thought good-natured, quick, communicative ; never deep, never sagacious ; not very defective possibly in our intel- lectual faculties, • yet unequal and chinky, and liable to the probation of every clown's knuckle. The brightest of stars appear the most unsteddy and tremulous in their light ; not from any quality inherent in themselves, but from the vapours that float below, and from the imperfection of vision in the surveyor. To the stars again ! Draw thy robe round thee ; let the h2 100 DIOGENES AND PLATO. folds fall gracefully, and look majestic. That sentence is an admirable one ; but not for me. I want sense, not stars. What then ? Do no vapours float below the others ? and is there no imperfection in the vision of those who look at them, if they are the same men, and look the next moment ? We must move on : I shall follow the dead bodies, and the benighted driver of their fantastic bier, close and keen as any hyena. PLATO. Certainly, Diogenes, you excell me in elucidations and similies : mine was less obvious. Lycaon became against his will, what you become from pure humanity. DIOGENES. When Humanity is averse to Truth, a fig for her. PLATO. Many, who profess themselves her votaries, have made her a less costly offering. DIOGENES. Thou hast said well, and I will treat thee gently for it. PLATO. I may venture then in defence of my compositions, to argue that neither simple metaphysics nor strict logic would be endured long together in a dialogue. DIOGENES. Tew people can endure them anywhere : but whatever is con- tradictory to either is intolerable. The business of a good writer is to make them pervade his works, without obstruction to his force or impediment to his facility ; to divest them of their forms, and to mingle their potency in every particle. I must acknowledge that, in matters of love, thy knowledge is twice as extensive as mine is : yet nothing I ever heard is so whimsical and silly as thy description of its effects upon the soul, under the influence of beauty. The wings of the soul, thou tellest us, are bedewed; and certain germs of theirs expand from every part of it. The only thing I know about the soul is, that it makes the ground slippery under us when we discourse on it, by virtue (I presume) of this bedewing ; and beauty does not assist us materially in rendering our steps the steddier. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 101 PLATO. Diogenes ! you are the only man that admires not the dignity and stateliness of my expressions. DIOGENES. Thou hast many admirers • but either they never have read thee, or do not understand thee, or are fond of fallacies, or are incapable of detecting them. I would rather hear the murmur of insects in the grass than the clatter and trilling of cymbals and timbrels over-head. The tiny animals I watch with com- posure, and guess their business ; the brass awakes me only to weary me : I wish it under-ground again, and the parch- ment on the sheep's back. PLATO. My sentences, it is acknowledged by all good judges, are well constructed and harmonious. I admit it : I have also heard it said that thou art eloquent. PLATO. If style, without elocution, can be. DIOGENES. Neither without nor with elocution is there eloquence, where there is no ardour, no impulse, no energy, no concentration. Eloquence raises the whole man : thou raisest our eyebrows only. We wonder, we applaud, we walk away, and we forget. Thy eggs are very prettily speckled ; but those which men use for their sustenance are plain white ones. People do not every day put on their smartest dresses ; they are not always in trim for dancing, nor are they practising their steps in all places. I profess to be no weaver of fine words, no dealer in the plumes of phraseology, yet every man and every woman I speak to understands me. PLATO. Which would not always be the case if the occulter opera- tions of the human mind were the subject. DIOGENES. If what is occult must be occult for ever, why throw away words about it ? Employ on every occasion the simplest and easiest, and range them in the most natural order. Thus they will serve thee faithfully, bringing thee many hearers and 102 DIOGENES AXD PLATO. readers from the intellectual and uncorrupted. All popular orators, victorious commanders, crowned historians, and poets above crowning, have done it. Homer, for the glory of whose birthplace none but the greatest cities dared contend, is alike the highest and the easiest in poetry. Herodotus, who brought into Greece more knowledge of distant countries than any or indeed than all before him, is the plainest and gracefulest in prose. Aristoteles, thy scholar, is possessor of along and lofty treasury, with many windings and many vaults at the sides of them, abstruse and dark. He is unambitious of displaying his wealth ; and few are strong-wristed enough to turn the key of his iron chests. Whenever he presents to his reader one full-blown thought, there are several buds about it which are to open in the cool of the study ; and he makes you learn more than he teaches. PLATO. I can never say that I admire his language. DIOGENES. Thou wilt never say it; but thou dost. His language, where he wishes it to be harmonious, is highly so : and there are many figures of speech exquisitely beautiful, but simple and unobtrusive. You see what a fine head of hair he might have if he would not cut it so short. Is there as much true poetry in all thy works, prose and verse, as in that Scoliori of his on Virtue ? PLATO. I am less invidious than he is. DIOGENES. He may indeed have caught the infection of malignity, which all who live in the crowd, whether of a court or a school, are liable to contract. We had dismissed that question : we had buried the mortal and corruptible part of him, and were looking into the litter which contains his true and everlasting effigy : and this effigy the strongest and noblest minds will carry by relays to interminable generations. We were speaking of his thoughts and what conveys them. His language then, in good truth, differs as much from that which we find in thy dialogues, as wine in the goblet differs from wine spilt upon the table. With thy leave, I would rather drink than lap. PLATO. Metliinks such preference is contrary to your nature. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 103 DIOGENES. All Plato ! I ought to be jealous of thee, finding that two in this audience can smile at thy wit, and not one at mine. PLATO. 1 would rather be serious, but that my seriousness is provo- cative of your moroseness. Detract from me as much as can be detracted by the most hostile to my philosophy, stil it is beyond the power of any man to suppress or to conceal from the admiration of the world the amplitude and grandour of my language. DIOGENES. Thou remindest me of a cavern I once entered. The mouth was spacious ; and many dangling weeds and rampant briers caught me by the hair above, and by the beard below, and flapped my face on each side. I found it in some places flat and sandy ; in some rather miry ; in others I bruised my shins against Little pointed pinnacles, or larger and smoother round stones. Many were the windings, and deep the darkness. Several men came forward with long poles and lighted torches on them, promising to show innumerable gems, on the roof and along the sides, to some ingenuous youths whom they conducted. I thought I was lucky, and went on among them. Most of the gems turned out to be drops of water ; but. some were a little more solid. These however in general gave way and crumbled under the touch ; and most of the remainder lost all their brightness by the smoke of the torches underneath. The farther I went in, the fouler grew the air and the dimmer the torchlight. Leaving it, and the youths, and the guides and the long poles, I stood a moment in wonder at the vast number of names and verses graven at the opening, and forbore to insert the ignoble one of Diogenes. The vulgar indeed and the fashionable do call such language as thine the noblest and most magnificent : the scholastic bend over it in paleness, and with the right hand upon the breast, at its unfathomable depth : but what would a man of plain simple sound understanding say upon it ? what would a metaphy- sician ? what would a logician ? what would Pericles ? Truly, he had taken thee by the arm, and kissed that broad well- perfumed forehead, for filling up with light (as thou wouldst say) the dimple in the cheek of Aspasia, and for throwing such a gadfly in the current of her conversation. She was of a 304 DIOGENES AND PLATO. different sect from thee both in religion and in love, and both her language and her dress were plainer. PLATO. She, like yourself, worshiped no deity in public : and pro- bably both she and Aristoteles find the more favour with you from the laxity of their opinions in regard to the Powers above. The indifference of Aristoteles to religion may perhaps be the reason why King Philip bespoke him so early for the tuition of his successor; on whom, destined as he is to pursue the conquests of the father, moral and religious obligations might be incommodious. DIOGENES. Kings who kiss the toes of the most gods, and the most zealously, never find any such incommodiousness, In courts, religious ceremonies cover with their embroidery moral obliga- tions ; and the most dishonest and the most libidinous and the most sanguinary kings (to say nothing of private men) have usually been the most punctual worshipers. PLATO. There may be truth in these words. "We however know your contempt for religious acts and ceremonies, which, if you do not comply with them, you should at least respect, by way of an example. DIOGENES. "What ! if a man lies to me, should I respect the lie for the sake of an example ! Should I be guilty of duplicity for the sake of an example ! Did I ever omit to attend the Thesmophoria ? the only religious rite worthy of a wise man's attendance. It displays the union of industry and law. Here is no fraud, no fallacy, no filching : the gods are worshipt for their best gifts, and do not stand with open palms for ours. I neither laugh nor wonder at anyone's folly. To laugh at it, is childish or inhumane, according to its xiature ; and to wonder at it, would be a greater folly than itself, whatever it may be. Must I go on with incoherencies and inconsistences ? PLATO. I am not urgent with you. DIOGENES. Then I will reward thee the rather. Thou makest poor Socrates tell us that a beautiful vase is DIOGENES AND PLATO. 105 inferior to a beautiful horse ; and as a beautiful horse is inferior to a beautiful maiden, in like manner a beautiful maiden is inferior in beauty to the immortal gods. PLATO. No doubt, Diogenes ! Thou hast whimsical ideas of beauty : but, understanding the word as all Athenians and all inhabitants of Hellas under- stand it, there is no analogy between a horse and a vase. Understanding it as thou perhaps mayest choose to do on the occasion, understanding it as applicable to the service and utility of man and gods, the vase may be applied to more frequent and more noble purposes than the horse. It may delight men in health ; it may administer to them in sickness ; it may pour out before the protectors of families and of cities the wine of sacrifice. But if it is the quality and essence of beauty to gratify the sight, there are certainly more persons who can receive gratification from the appearance of a beautiful vase than of a beautiful horse. Xerxes brought into Hellas with him thousands of beautiful horses and many beautiful vases. Sup- posing now that all the horses which were beautiful seemed so to all good judges of their symmetry, it is probable that scarcely one man in fifty w^ould fix his eyes attentively on one horse in fifty ; but undoubtedly there were vases in the tents of Xerxes which would have attracted all the eyes in the army and have filled them with admiration. I say nothing of the women, who in Asiatic armies are as numerous as the men, and who would every one admire the vases, while few admired the horses. Yet women are as good judges of what is beautiful as thou art, and for the most part on the same principles. But, repeating that .there is no analogy between the two objects, I must insist that there can be no just comparison : and I trust I have clearly demonstrated that the postulate is not to be conceded. We will nevertheless carry on the argument and examination : for "the beautiful virgin is inferior in beauty. to the immortal gods." Is not Vulcan an immortal god ? are not the Furies and Discord immortal goddesses? Ay, by my troth are they ; and there never was any city and scarcely any family on earth to which they were long invisible. Wouldst thou prefer them to a golden cup, or even to a cup from the potter's? Would it require one with a dance of Bacchanals 106 DIOGENES AND PLATO. under the pouting rim ? would it require one foretasted by Agathon? Let us descend from the deities to the horses. Thy dress is as well adapted to horsemanship as thy words are in general to discourse. Such as thou art would run out of the horse's way ; and such as know thee best would put the vase out of thine. PLATO. So then, I am a thief, it appears, not only of men's notions, but of their vases ! DIOGENES. Nay, nay, my good Plato ! Thou hast however the frailty of concupiscence for tilings tangible and intangible, and thou likest well-turned vases no less than well-turned sentences : therefor they who know thee would leave no temptation in thy way, to the disturbance and detriment of thy soul. Away with the horse and vase ! we will come together to the quarters of the virgin. Faith ! my friend, if we find her only just as beautiful as some of the goddesses we were naming, her virginity will be as immortal as their divinity. PLATO. I have given a reason for my supposition. DIOGENES. What is it ? PLATO. Because there is a beauty incorruptible, and for ever the same. DIOGENES. Yisible beauty ? beauty cognisable in the same sense as of vases and of horses ? beauty that in degree and in quality can be compared with theirs ? Is there any positive proof that the gods possess it ? and all of them ? and all equally ? Are there any points of resemblance between Jupiter and the daughter of Acrisius ? any between Hate and Hebe ? whose sex being the same brings them somewhat nearer. In like manner thou confoundest the harmony of music Avith symmetry in what is visible and tangible : and thou teachest the stars how to dance to their own compositions, enlivened by fugues and variations from thy master-hand. This, in the opinion of thy boy scholars, is sublimity ! Truly it is the sublimity which he attains who is hurled into the air from a ballista. Changing my ground, and perhaps to thy advan- DIOGENES AND PLATO. 107 tage, in the name of Socrates I come forth against thee ; not for using him as a wide-mouthed mask, stuffed with gibes and quibbles; not for making him the most sophistical of sophists, or (as thou hast done frequently) the most impro- vident of statesmen and the worst of citizens ; my accusation and indictment is, for representing him, who had distinguisht himself on the field of battle above the bravest and most experienced of the Athenian leaders (particularly at Delion and Potidea), as more ignorant of warfare than the worst- fledged crane that fought against the Pygmies. PLATO. I am not conscious of having done it. DIOGENES. I believe thee : but done it thou hast. The language of Socrates was attic and simple : he hated the verbosity and refinement of wranglers and rhetoricians ; and never would he have attributed to Aspasia, who thought and spoke like Pericles, and whose elegance and judgment thou thyself hast commended, the chaff and litter thou hast tossed about with so much wind and wantonness, in thy dialogue of Menexenus. Now, to omit the other fooleries in it, Aspasia would have laught to scorn the most ignorant of her tire-women, who should have related to her the story thou tellest in her name, about the march of the Persians round the territory of Eretria. This narrative seems to thee so happy an attempt at history, that thou betrayest no small fear lest the reader should take thee at thy word, and lest Aspasia should in reality rob thee or Socrates of the dory due for it. PLATO. TYTiere lies the fault ? DIOGENES. If the Persians had marched, as thou describest them, forming a circle, and from sea to sea, with their hands joined together; fourscore shepherds with their dogs, their rams, and their bell-wethers, might have killed them all, coming against them from points well-chosen. As, however, great part of the Persians were horsemen, which thou appearest to have quite forgotten, how could they go in single Hue with their hands joined, unless they lay flat upon their backs along the backs of their horses, and unless the horses themselves went tail to tail, one pulling on the other ? Even then the 108 DIOGENES AND PLATO. line would be interrupted, and only two could join hands. A pretty piece of net- work is here ! and the only defect I can find in it is, that it would help the fish to catch the fisherman. PLATO. This is an abuse of wit, if there be any wit in it. DIOGENES. I doubt whether there is any ; for the only man that hears it does not smile. We will be serious then. Such nonsense, delivered in a school of philosophy, might be the less derided ; but it is given us as an oration, held before an Athenian army, to the honour of those who fell in battle. The beginning of the speech is cold and languid : the remainder is worse ; it is learned and scholastic. PLATO. Is learning worse in oratory than languor ? Incomparably, in the praises of the dead who died bravely, played off before those who had just been fighting in the same ranks. What we most want in this business is sincerity ; what we want least are things remote from the action. Men may be cold by nature, and languid from exhaustion, from grief itself, from watchfulness, from pity ; but they can not be idling and wandering about other times and nations, when their brothers and sons and bosom-friends are brought lifeless into the city, and the least inquisitive, the least sensitive, are hanging immovably over their recent wounds. Then burst forth their names from the full heart; their fathers' names come next, hallowed with lauds and benedictions that flow over upon their whole tribe ; then are lifted their helmets and turned round to the spectators ; for the grass is fastened to them by their blood, and it is befitting to show the people how they must have struggled to rise up, and to fight afresh for their country. Without the virtues of courage and patri- otism, the seeds of such morality as is fruitful and substantial spring up thinly, languidly, and ineffectually. The images of great men should be stationed throughout the works of great historians. PLATO. According to your numeration, the great men are scanty : and pray, Diogenes ! are they always at hand ? DIOGENES AND PLATO. 109 Prominent men always are. Catch tliem and hold them fast, when thou canst find none better. Whoever hath influ- enced the downfall or decline of a commonwealth, whoever hath altered in any degree its social state, should be brought before the high tribunal of History. Very mean intellects have accomplished these things. Not only battering-rams have loosened the walls of cities, but foxes and rabbits have done the same. Vulgar and vile men have been elevated to power by circumstances : would you introduce the vulgar and vile into the pages you expect to be immortal ? DIOGENES. They never can blow out immortality. Criminals do not deform by their presence the strong and stately edifices in which they are incarcerated. I look above them and see the image of Justice : I rest my arm against the plinth where the protectress of cities raises her spear by the judgment- seat. Thou art not silent on the vile; but delightest in bringing them out before us, and in reducing their betters to the same condition. PLATO. I am no writer of history. Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may. He carries with liim for thousands of years a portion of his times : and indeed if only his own effigy were there, it would be greatly more than a fragment of his country. In all thy writings I can discover no mention of Epami- nondas, who vanquished thy enslavers the Lacedsemonians ; nor of Thrasybulus, who expelled the murderers of thy preceptor. Whenever thou again displayest a specimen of thy historical researches, do not utterly overlook the fact that these excellent men were living in thy clays ; that they fought against thy enemies; that they rescued thee from slavery ; that thou art indebted to them for the whole estate of this interminable robe, with its valleys and hills and wastes ; for these perfumes that overpower all mine; and moreover 110 DIOGENES AND PLATO. for thy house, thy grove, thy auditors, thy admirers and thy admired. PLATO. Thrasybulus, with many noble qualities, had great faults. DIOGENES. Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for. PLATO. Epaminondas was undoubtedly a momentous man, and formidable to Lacedsemon, but Pelopidas shared his glory. DIOGENES. How ready we all are with our praises when a cake is to be divided ; if it is not ours ! PLATO. I acknowledge his magnanimity, his integrity, his political skill, his military services, and, above all, his philosophical turn of mind : but since his countrymen, who knew him best, have until recently been silent on the transcendency of his merits, I think I may escape from obloquy in leaving them unnoticed. His glorious death appears to have excited more enthusiastic acclamation than his patriotic heroism. DIOGENES. The sun colors the sky most deeply and most diffusely when he hath sunk below the horizon ; and they who never said " How beneficently he shines V } say at last, " How brightly he set !" They who believe that their praise gives immortality, and who know that it gives celebrity and distinc- tion, are iniquitous and flagitious in withdrawing it from such exemplary men, such self-devoted citizens, as Epaminondas and Thrasybulus. Great writers are gifted with that golden wand which neither ages can corrode nor violence rend asunder, and are commanded to point with it toward the head (be it lofty or low) which nations are to contemplate and to revere. PLATO. I should rather have conceived from you that the wand ought to designate those who merit the hatred of their species. DIOGENES. This too is another of its offices, no less obligatory and sacred. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 11 1 Not only have I particularised such, faults as I could investigate and detect, but in that historical fragment, which I acknowledge to be mine (although I left it in abeyance between Socrates and Aspasia), I have lauded the courage and conduct of our people. DIOGENES. Thou recountest the glorious deeds of the Athenians by sea and land, staidly and circumstantially, as if the Athenians themselves, or any nation of the universe, could doubt them. Let orators do this when some other shall have rivalled them, which, as it never hath happened in the myriads of generations that have passed away, is never likely to happen in the myriads that will follow. Prom Asia, from Africa, fifty nations came forward in a body, and assailed the citizens of one scanty city : fifty nations fled from before them. All the wealth and power of the world, all the civilisation, all the barbarism, were leagued against Athens; the ocean was covered with their pride and spoils • the earth trembled ; mountains were severed, distant coasts united : Athens gave to Nature her own again : and equal laws were the unalienable dowry brought by Liberty, to the only men capable of her defence or her enjoyment. Did Pericles, did Aspasia, did Socrates foresee, that the descenclents of those, whose heroes and gods were at best but like them, should enter into the service of Persian satraps, and become the parasites of Sicilian kings ? PLATO. Pythagoras, the most temperate and retired of mortals, entered the courts of princes. DIOGENES. True ; he entered them and cleansed them : his breath was lustration ; his touch purified. He persuaded the princes of Italy to renounce their self-constituted and unlawful authority : in effecting which purpose, thou must acknowledge, Plato, that either he was more eloquent than thou art, or that he was juster. If, being in the confidence of a usurper, which in itself is among the most hainous of crimes, since they virtually are outlaws, thou never gavest him such counsel at thy ease and leisure as Pythagoras gave at the peril of his life, thou in this likewise wert wanting to thy duty as an Athenian, a republican, a philosopher. If thou offeredst it, and it was 112 DIOGENES AND PLATO. rejected, and after the rejection thou yet tarriedst with him, then wert thou, friend Plato, an importunate sycophant and self-bound slave. PLATO. T never heard that you blamed Euripides in this manner for frequenting the court of Archelaus. DIOGENES. I have heard thee blame him for it ; and this brings down on thee my indignation. Poets, by the constitution of their minds, are neither acute reasoners nor firmly-minded. Their vocation was allied to sycophancy from the beginning : they sang at the tables of the rich : and he who could not make a hero could not make a dinner. Those who are possest of enthusiasm are fond of everything that excites it ; hence poets are fond of festivals, of wine, of beauty, and of glory. They can not always make their selection ; and generally they are little disposed to make it, from indolence of character. Theirs partakes less than others of the philosophical and the heroic. What wonder if Euripides hated those who deprived him of his right, in adjudging the prize of tragedy to his competitor ? Erom hating the arbitrators who committed the injustice, he proceded to hate the people who countenanced it. The whole frame of government is bad to those who have suffered under any part. Archelaus praised Euripides' s poetry : he therefor liked Archelaus : the Athenians bantered his poetry : therefor he disliked the Athenians. Beside, he could not love those who killed his friend and teacher : if thou canst, I hope thy love may be for ever without a rival. He might surely have found, in some republic of Greece, the friend who would have sympathized with him. DIOGENES. He might : nor have I any more inclination to commend his choice than thou hast right to condemn it. Terpander and Thales and Pherecydes were at Sparta with Lycurgus : and thou too, Plato, mightest have found in Greece a wealthy wise man ready to receive thee, or (where words are more acceptable) an unwise wealthy one. Why dost thou redden and bite thy lip ? Wouldst thou rather give instruction, or not give it ? DIOGENES AND PLATO. 113 I would rather give it, where I could. DIOGENES. Wouldst thou rather give it to those who have it already, and do not need it, or to those who have it not, and do need it ? PLATO. To these latter. DIOGENES. Impart it then to the unwise ; and to those who are wealthy in preference to the rest, as they require it most, and can do most good with it. PLATO. Is not this a contradiction to your own precepts, Diogenes ? Have you not been censuring me, I need not say how severely, for my intercourse with Dionysius? and yet surely he was wealthy, surely he required the advice of a philosopher, surely he could have done much good with it. An Athenian is more degraded by becoming the counsellor of a king, than a king is degraded by becoming the school- master of paupers in a free city. Such people as Dionysius are to be approached by the brave and honest from two motives only : to convince them of their inutility, or to slay them for their iniquity. Our fathers and ourselves have wit- nessed in more than one country the curses of kingly power. All nations, all cities, all communities, should enter into one great hunt, like that of the Scythians at the approach of winter, and should follow it up unrelentingly to its perdition. The diadem should designate the victim : all who wear it, all who offer it, all who bow to it, should perish. The smallest, the poorest, the least accessible village, whose cottages are indistinguishable from the rocks around, should offer a reward for the heads of these monsters, as for the wolf's, the kite's, and the viper's. Thou teilest us, in thy fourth book on Polity, that it matters but little whether a state be governed by many or one, if the one is obedient to the laws. Why hast not thou likewise told us, that it little matters whether the sun bring us heat or cold, if he ripens the fruits of the earth by cold as perfectly as by heat ? Demonstrate that he does it, and I subscribe to the 114 DIOGENES AND PLATO. proposition. Demonstrate that kings, by their nature and education, are obedient to the laws; bear them patiently; deem them no impediment to their wishes, designs, lusts, violences ; that a whole series of monarchs hath been of this character and condition, wherever a whole series hath been permitted to continue; that under them independence of spirit, dignity of mind, rectitude of conduct, energy of character, truth of expression, and even lower and lighter things, eloquence, poetry, sculpture, painting, have flourished more exuberantly than among the free. On the contrary, some of the best princes have rescinded the laws they themselves introduced and sanctioned. Impatient of restraint and order are even the quiet and inert of the species. PLATO. There is a restlessness in inactivity : we must find occupation for kings. DIOGENES. Open the fold to them and they will find it themselves : there will be plenty of heads and shanks on the morrow. I do not see why those who, directly or indirectly, would promote a kingly government, should escape the penalty of death, whenever it can be inflicted, any more than those who decoy men into slave-ships. PLATO. Supposing me to have done it, I have used no deception. DIOGENES. What ! it is no deception to call people out of their homes, to offer them a good supper and good beds if they will go along with thee ; to take the key out of the house- door, that they may not have the trouble of bearing the weight of it ; to show them plainly through the window the hot supper and comfortable bed, to which indeed the cook and chamberlain do beckon and invite them, but inform them however on entering, it is only on condition that they never stir a foot beyond the supper-room and bed-room ; to be conscious, as thou must be, when they desire to have rather their own key again, eat their own lentils, sleep on their own pallet, that thy friends the cook and chamberlain have forged the title-deeds, mortgaged the house and homestead, given the lentils to the groom, made a horse-cloth of the coverlet and a manger of the pallet ; that, on the first complaint against such an apparent injury (for at DIOGENES AND PLATO. 115 present they think and call it one), the said cook and cham- berlain seize them by the hair, strip, scourge, imprison, and gag them, showing them through the grating what capital dishes are on the table for the more deserving, what an appetite the fumes stir up, and how sensible men fold their arms upon the breast contentedly, and slumber soundly after the carousal. PLATO. People may exercise their judgment. People may spend their money. All people have not much money ; all people have not much judgment. It is cruel to prey or impose on those who have little of either. There is nothing so absurd that the ignorant have not believed : they have believed, and will believe for ever, what thou wouldst teach : namely, that others who never saw them, never are likely to see them, will care more about them than they should care about themselves. This pernicious fraud begins with perverting the intellect, and proceeds with seducing and cor- rupting the affections, which it transfers from the nearest to the most remote, from the dearest to the most indifferent. It enthrals the freedom both of mind and body • it annihilates not only political and moral, but, what nothing else however monstrous can do, even arithmetical proportions, making a unit more than a million. Odious is it in a parent to murder or sell a child, even in time of famine : but to sell him in the midst of plenty, to lay his throat at the mercy of a wild and riotous despot, to whet and kiss and present the knife that immolates him, and to ask the same favour of being immolated for the whole family in perpetuity, is not this an abomination ten thousand times more execrable ? Let Falsehood be eternally the enemy of Truth, but not eternally her mistress : let Power be eternally the despiser of Weakness, but not eternally her oppressor : let Genius be eternally in the train or in the trammels of Wealth, but not eternally his sycophant and his pander. What a land is Attica ! in which the kings themselves were the mildest and best citizens, and resigned the sceptre ; deeming none other worthy of supremacy than the wisest and most i 2 116 DIOGENES AND PLATO. warlike of the immortal Gods. In Attica the olive and corn were first cultivated. DIOGENES. Like other Athenians, thou art idly fond of dwelling on the antiquity of the people, and wouldst fain persuade thyself, not only that the first corn and olive, but even that the first man, sprang from Attica. I rather think that what historians call the emigration of the Pelasgians under Danatis, was the emigration of those 'shepherds' as they continued to be denominated, who, having long kept possession of Egypt, were besieged in the city of Aoudris, by Thoutmosis, and retired by capitulation. These probably were of Chaldaic origin. Danatis, like every wise legislator, introduced such religious rites as were adapted to the country in which he settled. The ancient being once relaxed, admission was made gradually for honoring the brave and beneficent, who in successive generations extended the boundary of the colonists, and defended them against the resentment and reprisal of the native chieftains. PLATO. This may be ; but evidence, is wanting. DIOGENES. Indeed it is not quite so strong and satisfactory as in that piece of history, where thou maintainest that c each of us is the half of a man! * By Neptune ! a vile man, too, or the computation were overcharged. PLATO. We copy these things from old traditions. DIOGENES. Copy rather the manners of antiquity than the fables ; or * In the Banquet. No two qualities are more dissimilar than the imagina- tion of Plato and the imagination of Shakspeare. The Androgyne was probably of higher antiquity than Grecian fable. Whencesoever it originated, we can not but wonder how Shakspeare met with it. In his King John, the citizen of Angiers says of the Lady Blanche and of the Dauphin, " He is the half-part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such a she ; And she a fair divided excellence Whose fullness of perfection lies in him." What is beautiful in poetry may be infantine in philosophy, and monstrous in physics. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 117 copy those fables only which convey the manners. That one man was cut off another, is a tradition little meriting preser- vation. Any old woman who drinks and dozes, could recite to us more interesting dreams, and worthier of the Divinity, Surely thy effrontery is of the calmest and most philosophical kind, that thou remarkest to me a want of historic evidence, when I offered a suggestion; and when thou thyself hast attributed to Solon the most improbable falsehoods on the antiquity and the exploits of your ancestors, telling us that- time had 'obliterated' these 'memorable' annals. What is obliterated at home, Solon picks up fresh and vivid in Egypt. An Egyptian priest, the oldest and wisest of the body, informs him that Athens was built a thousand years before Sais, by the goddess Xeithes, as they call her, but as we, Athene, who received the seed of the city from the Earth and Tulcan. The records of Athens are lost, and those of Sais mount up no higher than eight thousand years. Enough to make her talk like an old woman. I have, in other places and on other occasions, remarked to those about me many, if not equal and similar, yet gross absurdities in thy writings. PLATO. Gently ! I know it. Several of these, supposing them to be what you denominate them, are originally from others, and from the gravest men. DIOGENES. Gross absurdities are usually of that parentage : the idle and weak produce but petty ones, and such as gambol at theatres and fairs. Thine are good for nothing : men are too old, and children too young, to laugh at them. There is no room for excuse or apology in the adoption of another's foolery. Imagination may heat a writer to such a degree, that he feels not what drops from him or clings to him of his own : another's is taken up deliberately, and trimmed at leisure. I will now proceed with thee. I have heard it affirmed (but, as philosophers are the afiirmers, the assertion may be questioned) that there is not a notion or idea, in the wide compass of thy works, originally thy own. PLATO. I have made them all mine by my manner of treating them. 118 DIOGENES AND PLATO. DIOGENES. If I throw my cloak over a fugitive slave to steal him, it is so short and strait, so threadbare and chinky, that he would be recognised by the idlest observer who had seen him seven years ago in the market-place : but if thou hadst enveloped him in thy versicolored and cloudlike vestiary, puffed and effuse, rustling and rolling, nobody could guess well what animal was under it, much less what man. And such a tissue would conceal a gang of them, as easily as it would a parsley- bed, or the study yonder of young Demosthenes. Therefor, I no more wonder that thou art tempted to run in chase of butterflies, and catchest many, than I am at discovering that thou breakest their wings and legs by the weight of the web thou throwest over them ; and that we find the head of one indented into the body of another, and never an individual retaining the colour or character of any species. Thou hast indeed, I am inclined to believe, some ideas of thy own : for instance, when thou tellest us that a well-governed city ought to let her walls go to sleep along the ground. Pallas forbid that any city should do it where thou art ! for thou wouldst surely deflower her, before the soldiers of the enemy could break in on the same errand. The poets are bad enough : they every now and then want a check upon them : but there must be an eternal vigilance against philosophers. Yet I would not drive you all out of the city-gates, because I fain would keep the country parts from pollution. PLATO. Certainly, Diogenes, I can not retort on you the accusation of employing any language or any sentiments but your own, unquestionably the purest and most genuine Sinopean. DIOGENES. Welcome to another draught of it, my courteous guest ! By thy own confession, or rather thy own boast, thou stolest every idea thy voluminous books convey ; and therefor thou wouldst persuade us that all other ideas must have an arche- type ; and that God himself, the Demiurgos, would blunder and botch without one. Now can not God, by thy good leave, gentle Plato ! quite as easily form a thing as conceive it ? and execute it as readily at once as at twice ? Or hath he rather, in some slight degree, less of plastic power than of mental ? Seriously, if thou hast received these fooleries from the DIOGENES AND PLATO. 119 Egyptian priests, prythee, for want of articles more valuable to bring among us, take them back on thy next voyage, and change them against the husk of a pistachio dropt from the pouch of a sacred ape. Thy God is like thyself, as most men^s Gods are : he throws together a vast quantity of stuff, and leaves his workpeople to cut it out and tack it together, after their own fashion and fancy. These demons or genii are mischievous and fantastical imps : it would have been better if they had always sitten with their hands before them, or played and toyed with one another, like the young folks in the garden of Academus. As thou hast modified the ideas of those who went before thee, so those who follow thee will modify thine. The wiser of them will believe, and reasonably enough, that it is time for the Demi- urgos to lay his head upon his pillow, after heating his brains with so many false conceptions, and to let the world go on its own way, without any anxiety or concern. Beside, would not thy dialogues be much better and more interesting, if thou hadst given more variety to the characters, and hadst introduced them conversing on a greater variety of topics ? Thyself and Prodicus, if thou wouldst not disdain to meet him, might illustrate the nature of allegory, might explain to your audience where it can enter gracefully, and where it must be excluded : we should learn from you, perhaps, under whose guidance it first came into Greece : whether anyone has mentioned the existence of it in the poems of Orpheus and Musseus (now so lost that we possess no traces of them), or whether it was introduced by Homer, and derived from the tales and mythology of the East. Certainly he has given us for deities such personages as were never worshipt in our country ; some he found, I suspect, in the chrysalis state of metaphors, and hatched them by the warmth of his genius into allegories, giving them a strength of wing by which they were carried to the summit of Olympus. Euripides and Aristophanes might discourse upon comedy and tragedy, and upon that species of poetry which, though the earliest and most universal, was cultivated in Attica with little success until the time of Sophocles. PLATO. You mean the Ode. DIOGENES. I do. There was hardly a corner of Greece, hardly an 120 DIOGENES AND PLATO. ilet, where the children of Pallas were not called to school and challenged by choristers. PLATO. These disquisitions entered into no portion of my plan. DIOGENES. Rather say, ill-suited thy genius ; having laid down no plan whatever for a series of dialogues. School-exercises, or, if thou pleasest to call them so, disquisitions, require no such form as thou hast given to them, and they block up the inlets and outlets of conversation, which, to seem natural, should not adhere too closely to one subject. The most delightful parts both of philosophy and of fiction might have opened and expanded before us, if thou hadst selected some fifty or sixty of the wisest, most eloquent, and most facetious, and hadst made them exert their abilities on what was most at their command. PLATO, I am not certain that I could have given to Aristophanes all his gaiety and humour. DIOGENES. Art thou certain thou hast given to Socrates all his irony and perspicacity, or even all his virtue ? PLATO. His virtue I think I have gwen him fully. DIOGENES. Few can comprehend the whole of it, or see where it is separated from wisdom. Being a philosopher, he must have known that marriage would render him less contemplative and less happy, though he had chosen the most beautiful, the most quiet, the most obedient, and most affectionate woman in the world ; yet he preferred what he considered his duty as a citizen to his peace of mind. PLATO. He might hope to beget children in sagacity like himself. DIOGENES. He can never have hoped it at all, or thought about it as became him. He must have observed that the sons of medi- tative men are usually dull and stupid; and he might foresee that those philosophers or magistrates whom their father had excelled would be, openly or covertly, their enemies. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 121 Here then is no proof of his prudence or his virtue. True indeed is your remark on the children of the contemplative ; and we have usually found them rejected from the higher offices, to punish them for the celebrity of their fathers. DIOGENES. Why didst not thou introduce thy preceptor arguing fairly and fully on some of these topics ? Wert thou afraid of dis- closing his inconsistencies ? A man to be quite consistent must live quite alone. I know not whether Socrates would have succeeded in the attempt ; I only know I have failed. PLATO. I hope, most excellent Diogenes, I shall not be accused of obstructing much longer so desirable an experiment. DIOGENES. I will bear with thee some time yet. The earth is an obstruction to the growth of seed ; but the seed can not grow well without it. "When I have done with thee, I will dismiss thee with my usual courtesy. There are many who marry from utter indigence of thought, captivated by the playfulness of youth, as if a kitten were never to be a cat ! Socrates was an unlikely man to have been under so sorrowful an illusion. Those among you who tell us that he married the too handy Xantippe for the purpose of exercising his patience, turn him from a philosopher into a fool. We should be at least as moderate in the indulgence of those matters which bring our patience into play, as in the indulgence of any other. It is better to be sound than hard, and better to be hard than callous. PLATO. Do you say that, Diogenes ? DIOGENES, I do say it ; and I confess to thee that I am grown harder than is well for me. Thou wilt not so easily confess that an opposite course of life hath rendered thee callous. Frugality and severity must act upon us long and uninterruptedly before they produce this effect : pleasure and selfishness soon produce the other. The red-hot iron is but one moment in sending up its fumes from the puddle it is turned into, and in losing its brightness and its flexibility. 122 DIOGENES AND PLATO. PLATO. I have admitted your definitions, and now I accede to your illustrations. But illustrations are pleasant merely ; and defi- nitions are easier than discoveries. DIOGENES. The easiest things in the world when they are made : never- theless thou hast given us some dozens, and there is hardly a complete or a just one on the list ; hardly one that any wench, watching her bees and spinning on Hymettus, might not have corrected. PLATO. As you did, no doubt, when you threw into my school the cock you had stript of its feathers. DIOGENES. Even to the present day, neither thou nor any of thy scholars have detected the fallacy. PLATO. We could not dissemble that our definition was inexact. DIOGENES. I do not mean that. PLATO. What then ? 'DIOGENES. I would remark that neither thou nor thy disciples found me out. PLATO. We saw you plainly enough : we heard you too, crying Behold Plato's man ! DIOGENES. It was not only a reproof of thy temerity in definitions, but a trial of the facility with which a light and unjust ridicule of them would be received. PLATO. Unjust perhaps not, but certainly rude and vulgar. D^.DGENES. Unjust, I repeat it : because thy definition was of man as nature formed him : and the cock, when I threw it on the floor, was no longer as nature had formed it. Thou art accustomed to lay down as peculiarities the attributes that belong, equally or nearly, to several things or persons. DIOGENES AND PLATO. 123 The characteristic is not always the definition, nor meant to be accepted for it. I have called tragedy b-qixorepiriararov^ 'most delightful to the people/ and \}/vxayLK(&TaTov, 'most agitating to the soul : ' no person can accuse me of laying down these terms as the definition of tragedy. The former is often as applicable to rat-catching, and the latter to cold- bathing. I have called the dog faXoiiaOes, c fond of acquiring information/ and fyikovofyov, c fond of wisdom ; * but I never have denied that man is equally or more. DIOGENES. Deny it then instantly. Every dog has that property ; every man has not : I mean the fyiXojAaOts. The (fiiXocrcxfiov is false in both cases : for words must be taken as they pass current in our days, and not according to any ancient acceptation. The author of the Margites says, ToV5' our au (TKaTTTTJpa 6eoi Qkcav ovt dporrjpa *Ovt dXXccs TL (TOCpOV. Here certainly the o-ocpos has no reference to the higher and intellectual powers, as with us, since he is placed by the poet among delvers and ploughmen. The compound word (j>ik6~ ao~E3 AND PHOCIO>\ 1S3 hurry them on too fast. You must leap over no gap, or you leave them behind and startle them from following you. With them the pioneer is a cleverer man than the commander. I have observed in Demosthenes and Thucydides, that they lay it down as a rule, never to say what they have reason to suppose would occur to the auditor and reader in consequence of anything said before, knowing every one to be more pleased and more easily led by us, when we bring forward his thoughts indirectly and imperceptibly, than when Ave elbow and outstrip them with our own. The sentences of your adversary are stout and compact as the Macedonian phalanx, animated and ardent as the sacred band of Thebes. Praise him, JEschines, if you wish to be victorious ; if you acknowledge you are vanquished, then revile him and complain. In composition I know not a superior to liim : and in an assembly of the people he derives advantages from his defects themselves, from the violence of his action and from the vulgarity of his mien. Permit him to possess these advantages over you ; look on liim as a wrestler whose body is robust, but whose feet rest upon something slippery : use your dexterity, and reserve your blows. Consider him, if less excellent as a statesman, citizen, or soldier, rather as a genius or demon, who, whether bene- ficent or malignant, hath, from an elevation far above us, launched forth many new stars into the firniainent of mind. .ESCHXN'ES. that we had been born in other days ! The best men always fall upon the worst. PHOCIO>". The Gods have not granted us, iEschines, the choice of being bom when we would ; that of dying when we would, they have. Thank them for it, as one among the most excellent of their gifts, and remain or go, as utility or dignity may require. "Whatever can happen to a wise and virtuous man from his worst enemy, whatever is most dreaded by the inconsiderate and irresolute, has happened to him frequently from himself, and not only without his inconvenience, but without his observation. We are prisoners as often as we bolt our doors, exiles as often as we walk to Munychia, and dead as often as we sleep. It would be a folly and a shame to argue that these tilings are voluntary, and that what our enemy imposes are not : they should be the more if thev 184 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. befall us from necessity, unless necessity be a weaker reason than caprice. In fine, iEschines, I shall then call the times bad when they make me so : at present they are to be borne, as must be the storm that follows them. ALEXANDEK AND THE PEIEST OF HAMMON. ALEXANDER. Like my father, as ignorant men called King Philip, I have at all times been the friend and defender of the gods. PRIEST. Hitherto it was rather my belief that the gods may befriend and defend us mortals : but I am now instructed that a king of Macedon has taken them under his shield. Philip, if report be true, was less remarkable for his devotion. ALEXANDER. He was the most religious prince of the age. On what, Alexander, rests the support of such an exalted title? ALEXANDER. Not only did he swear more frequently and more awfully than any officer in the army, or any priest in the temples, but his sacrifices were more numerous and more costly. PRIEST. More costly ? It must be either to those wdiose ruin is con- summated or to those whose ruin is commenced; in other words, either to the vanquished, or to those w T hose ill-fortune is of earlier date, the born subjects of the vanquisher. ALEXANDER. He exhibited the surest and most manifest proof of his piety when he defeated (Enomarchus, general of the Phocians, who had dared to plough a piece of ground belonging to Apollo. PRIEST. Apollo might have made it as hot work for the Phocians who ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. 185 were ploughing his ground, as he formerly did at Troy to those unruly Greeks who took away his priest's daughter. He shot a good many mules, to show he was in earnest, and would have gone on shooting both cattle and men until he came at last to the offender. ALEXANDER. He instructed kings by slaying their people before their eyes : surely he would never set so bad an example as striking at the kings themselves. Philip, to demonstrate in the presence of all Greece his regard for Apollo of Delphi, slew six thousand, and threw into the sea three thousand, enemies of religion. PRIEST. Alexander ! Alexander ! the enemies of religion are the cruel, and not the sufferers by cruelty. Is it unpardonable in the ignorant to be in error about their gods when the wise are in doubt about their fathers ? ALEXANDER. I am not : Philip is not mine. PRIEST. Probable enough. ALEXANDER. Who then is, or ought to be, but Jupiter himself ? PRIEST. The priests of Pella are abler to return an oracle on that matter than we of the Oasis. ALEXANDER. We have no oracle at Pella. PRIEST. If you had, it might be dumb for once. ALEXANDER. I am losing my patience. PRIEST. I have given thee part of mine, seeing thee but scantily provided ; yet, if thy gestures are any signification, it sits but awkwardly upon thy shoulders. ALEXANDER. This to me ! the begotten of a god ! the benefactor of all mankind. 186 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. PRIEST. Such as Philip was to the three thousand, when he devised so magnificent a bath for their recreation. Plenty of pumice! rather a lack of napkins ! ALEXANDER. No trifling ! no false wit ! PRIEST. True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another. ALEXANDER. To come at once to the point ; I am ready to prove that neither Jason nor Bacchus, in their memorable expeditions, ■ did greater service to mankind than I have done, and am about to do. PRIEST. Jason gave them an example of falsehood and ingratitude : Bacchus made them drunk : thou appearest a proper successor to these worthies. ALEXANDER. Such insolence to crowned heads ! such levity on heroes and gods ! PRIEST. Hark ye, Alexander ! we priests are privileged. ALEXANDER. I too am privileged to speak of my own great actions ; if not as liberator of Greece and consolidator of her disjointed and jarring interests, at least as the benefactor of Egypt and of Jupiter. PRIEST. Here indeed it would be unseemly to laugh ; for it is evident on thy royal word that Jupiter is much indebted to thee ; and equally evident, from the same authority, that thou wantest nothing from him but his blessing . . . unless it be a public acknowledgment that he has been guilty of another act of bastardy, more becoming his black curls than his grey decrepitude. ALEXANDER. Amazement ! to talk thus of Jupiter ! PRIEST. Only to those who are in his confidence : a mistress for instance, or a son, as thou sayest thou art. ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. 187 ALEXANDER. Yea, by my head and by my scepter am I. Nothing is more certain. PRIEST. We will discourse upon that presently. ALEXANDER. Discourse upon it this instant. PRIEST. How is it possible that Jupiter should be thy father, when . . . ALEXANDER. When what? PRIEST. Couldst not thou hear me on ? ALEXANDER. Thou askest a foolish question. PRIEST. I did not ask whether I should be acknowledged the son of Jupiter. ALEXANDER. Thou indeed ! PRIEST. Yet, by the common consent of mankind, lands and tene- ments are assigned to us, and we are called " divine" as their children; and there are some who assert that the gods themselves have less influence and less property on earth than we. ALEXANDER. All this is well : only use your influence for your bene- factors. PRIEST. ' Before we proceed any farther, tell me in what manner thou art or wilt ever be the benefactor of Egypt. ALEXANDER. The same exposition will demonstrate that I shall be like- wise the benefactor of Jupiter. It is my intention to build a city, in a situation very advantageous for commerce : of course the frequenters of such a mart will continually make offerings to Jupiter. 188 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. PKIEST. For what ? ALEXANDER. For prosperity. PRIEST. Alas ! Alexander, the prosperous make few offerings ; and Hermes has the dexterity to intercept the greater part of them. In Egypt there are cities enow already : I should say too many : for men prey upon one another when they are penned together close. ALEXANDER. There is then no glory in building a magnificent city ? PRIEST. Great may be the glory. ALEXANDER. Here at least thou art disposed to do me justice. PRIEST. I never heard until this hour that among thy other attain- ments was architecture. ALEXANDER. Scornful and insolent man ! dost thou take me for an architect ? PRIEST. I was about to do so ; and certainly not in scorn, but to assuage the feeling of it. ALEXANDER. How ? PRIEST. He who devises the plan of a great city, of its streets, its squares, its palaces, its temples, must exercise much reflection and many kinds of knowledge : and yet those which strike most the vulgar, most even the scientific, require less care, less knowledge, less beneficence, than what are called the viler parts, and are the most obscure and unobserved ; the construction of the sewers ; the method of exempting the aqueducts from the incroachment of their impurities ; the conduct of canals for fresh air in every part of the house, attempering the summer heats ; the exclusion of reptiles ; and even the protection from insects. The conveniences and comforts of life, in these countries, depend on such matters. ALEXANDER. My architect, I doubt not, has considered them maturely. ALEXANDER AND THE PIUEST OF HAMMON. 189 PRIEST. Who is he ? ALEXANDER. I will not tell thee : the whole glory is mine : I gave the orders, and first conceived the idea. PRIEST. A hound upon a heap of dust may dream of a fine city, if he has ever seen one ; and a madman in chains may dream of building it, and may even give directions about it. ALEXANDER. I will not bear this, PRIEST. Were it false, thou couldst bear it ; thou wouldst call the bearing of it magnanimity ; and wiser men would do the same for centuries. As such wisdom and such greatness are not what I bend my back to measure, do favor me with what thou wert about to say when thou begannest " nothing is more certain ; " since I presume it must appertain to geometry, of which I am fond. ALEXANDER. I did not come hither to make figures upon the sand. PRIEST. Fortunate for thee, if the figure thou wilt leave behind thee could be as easily wiped out. ALEXANDER. What didst thou say ? PRIEST. I was musing. ALEXANDER. Even the building of cities is in thy sight neither glorious nor commendable. PRIEST. Truly, to build them is not among the undertakings I the most applaud in the powerful ; but to destroy them is the very foremost of the excesses I abhor. All the cities of the earth should rise up against the man who ruins one. Until this sentiment is predominant, the peaceful can have no protection, the virtuous no encouragement, the brave no coun- tenance, the prosperous no security. We priests communicate one with another extensively ; and even in these solitudes thy exploits against Thebes have reached and shocked us. What 190 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. hearts must lie in the bosoms of those who applaud thee for preserving the mansion of a deceased poet in the general ruin, while the relatives of the greatest patriot that ever drew breath under heaven, of the soldier at whose hospitable hearth thy father learned all that thou knowest and much more, of Epaminondas (clost thou hear me ?) were murdered or enslaved. Now begin the demonstration than which " nothing is more certain." ALEXANDER. Nothing is more certain, or what a greater number of witnesses are ready to attest, than that my mother Olympias, who hated Philip, was pregnant of me by a serpent. PRIEST. Of what race ? ALEXANDER. Dragon. PRIEST. Thy mother Olympias hated Philip, a well-made man, young, courageous, libidinous, witty, prodigal of splendour, indifferent to wealth, the greatest captain, the most jovial companion, and the most potent monarch in Europe. ALEXANDER. My father Philip, I would have thee to know ... I mean my reputed father . . * was also the greatest politician in the world. PRIEST. This indeed I am well aware of ; but I did not number it among his excellences in the eyes of a woman : it would have been almost the only reason why she should have preferred the serpent, the head of the family. "We live here, Alexander, in solitude; yet we are not the less curious, but on the contrary the more, to learn what passes in the world around. Olympias then did really fall in love with a serpent? and she was induced . . . ALEXANDER, Induced ! do serpents induce people ! They coil and climb and subdue them. PRIEST. The serpent must have been dexterous . . . ALEXANDER. No doubt he was. ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OP HAMMON. 191 PRIEST. But women have such an abhorrence of serpents, that Olvmpias would surely have rather run away. ALEXANDER. How could she ? PRIEST. Or called out. ALEXANDER. TTonien never do that, lest somebody should hear them. PRIEST. All mortals seem to bear an innate antipathy to this reptile. ALEXANDER. Mind ! mind what thou sayest ! Do not call my father a reptile. PRIEST. Even thou, with all thy fortitude, wouldst experience a shuddering at the sight of a serpent in thy bed-clothes. ALEXANDER Not at all. Beside, I do not hesitate in mv belief that on this occasion it was Jupiter himself. The priests in Macedon were unanimous upon it. PRIEST. "When it happened ? ALEXANDER. "When it happened no one mentioned it, for fear of Philip. PRIEST. What would he have done ? ALEXANDER. He was choleric. PRIEST. Would he have made war upon Jupiter ? ALEXANDER. By my soul ! I know not \ but I would have done it in his place. As a son, I am dutiful and compliant : as a husband and king, there is not a thunderbolt in heaven that should deter me from my rights. PRIEST. Did any of the priesthood see the dragon, as he was entering or retreating from the chamber ? 192 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. ALEXANDER. Many saw a great light in it. PRIEST. He would want one. ALEXANDER. This seems like irony : sacred things do not admit it. "What thousands saw, nobody should doubt. The sky opened, light- nings flew athwart it, and strange voices were heard. PRIEST. Juno's the loudest, I suspect. ALEXANDER. Being* a" king, and the conqueror of kings, let me remind thee, surely I may be treated here with as much deference and solemnity as one priest uses toward another. PRIEST. Certainly with no less, king ! Since thou hast insisted that I should devise the best means of persuading the world of this awful verity, thou wilt excuse me, in thy clemency, if my remarks and interrogatories should appear prolix. ALEXANDER. Remark anything • but do not interrogate and press me : kings are unaccustomed to it. I will consign to thee every land from the center to the extremities of Africa ; the Fortu- nate lies will I also give to thee, adding the Hyperborean : I wish only the consent of the religious who officiate in this temple, and their testimony to the world in declaration of my parentage. PRIEST. Many thanks ! we have all we want. ALEXANDER. I can not think you are true priests then ; and if your oath on the divinity of my descent were not my object, and there- for not to be abandoned, I should regret that I had offered so much in advance, and should be provoked to deduct one half of the Fortunate lies, and the greater part of the Hyper- borean. PRIEST. Those are exactly the regions, king, which our modera- tion would induce us to resign. Africa, we know, is worth little : yet we are as well contented with the almonds, the ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OE HAMMON. 193 dates, the melons, the figs, the fresh butter, the stags, the antelopes, the kids, the tortoises, and the quails about us, as we should be if they were brought to us after fifty days' journey through the desert. ALEXANDER. Really now, is it possible that, in a matter so evident, your oracle can find any obstacle or difficulty in proclaiming me what I am ? PRIEST. The difficulty (slight it must be acknowledged) is this : our Jupiter is horned. ALEXANDER. So was my father. PRIEST. The children of Jupiter love one another : this we believe here in Lybia. ALEXANDER. And rightly : no affection was ever so strong as that of Castor and Pollux. I myself feel a genuine love for them, and greater stil for Hercules. PRIEST. If thou hadst a brother or sister on earth, Jove-born, thou wouldst embrace the same most ardently. ALEXANDER. As becomes my birth and heart. PRIEST. Alexander ! may thy godlike race never degenerate ! ALEXANDER. Now indeed the Powers above do inspire thee. PRIEST. Jupiter, I am -commanded by him to declare, is verily thy father. ALEXANDER. He owns me then ! he owns me ! What sacrifice worthy of this indulgence can I offer to him ? PRIEST. An obedient mind, and a camel-load of nard and amomum for his altar. ALEXANDER. 1 smell here the exquisite perfume of benzoin. 194 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. PRIEST. It grows in our vicinity. The nostrils of Jupiter love changes : lie is consistent in all parts, being Jupiter. He has other sons and daughters in the world, begotten by him under the same serpentine form, although unknown to common mortals. ALEXANDER. Indeed ! PRIEST. I declare it unto thee. ALEXANDER. I can not doubt it then. PRIEST. Not all indeed of thy comeliness in form and features, but awful and majestic. It is the will of Jupiter, that, like the Persian monarchs, whose scepter he hath transferred to thee, thou marriest thy sister. ALEXANDER. Willingly. In what land upon earth liveth she whom thou designest for me ? PRIEST. The Destinies and Jupiter himself have conducted thee, Alexander, to the place where thy nuptials shall be cele- brated. ALEXANDER. When did they so ? PRIEST. Now ; at this very hour. ALEXANDER. Let me see the bride, if it be lawful to lift up her veil. PRIEST. Follow me. ALEXANDER. The steps of this cavern are dark and slippery; but it terminates, no doubt, like the Eleusinian, in pure light and refreshing shades. PRIEST. Wait here an instant : it will grow lighter. ALEXANDER. What do I see yonder ? ALEXANDER AXD THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. 195 PRIEST. Where? ALEXANDER. Close under the wall, rising and lowering, regularly and slowly, like a long weed on a quiet river, when a fragment hath dropt into it from the bank above. PRIEST. Thou descriest, Alexander, the daughter of Jupiter, the watchful virgin, the preserver of our treasures. Without her they might be carried away by the wanderers of the desert ; but they fear, as they should do, the daughter of Jupiter. ALEXANDER. Hell and Furies ! what hast thou been saying ? I heard little of it. Daughter of Jupiter ! PRIEST. Hast thou any fancy for the silent and shy maiden ? I will leave you together. . . . ALEXANDER. Orcus and Erebus ! PRIEST. Be discreet ! Eestrain your raptures until the rites are celebrated. ALEXANDER. Sites ! Infernal pest ! horror ! abomination ! A vast panting snake ! PRIEST. Say cc dragon" king ! and beware how thou callest horrid and abominable the truly begotten of our lord thy father. ALEXANDER. "What means this ? inhuman traitor ! Open the door again : lead me back. Are my conquests to terminate in the jaws of a reptile ? PRIEST. Do the kings of ATacedon call their sisters such names ? ALEXANDER. Let me out, I say ! PRIEST. Inconstant man ! I doubt even whether themarriage hath been consummated. Dost thou question her worthiness ? prove her, prove her. TTe have certain signs and manifestations o2 196 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. that Jupiter begat this powerful creature, thy elder sister. Her mother hid her shame and confusion in the desert, where she stil wanders, and looks with an evil eye on everything in the form of man. The poorest, vilest, most abject of the sex, holdeth her head no lower than she. ALEXANDER. Impostor ! PRIEST. Do not the sympathies of thy heart inform thee that this solitary queen is of the same lineage as thine ? ALEXANDER. "What temerity ! what impudence ! what deceit ! PRIEST. Temerity ! How so, Alexander ! Surely man can not claim too near an affinity to his Creator, if he w r ill but obey him, as I know thou certainly wilt in this tender alliance. Impudence and deceit were thy other accusations : how little merited ! I only traced the collateral branches of the genealogical tree thou pointedst out to me. ALEXANDER. Draw back the bolt : let me pass : stand out of my way. Thy hand upon my shoulder ! Were my sword beside me, this monster should lick thy blood. PRIEST. Patience ! king ! The iron portal is in my hand : if the hinges turn, thy godhead is extinct. No, Alexander, no ! it must not be. ALEXANDER. Lead me then forth. I swear to silence. PRIEST. As thou wilt. ALEXANDER. I swear to friendship ; lead me but out again. PRIEST. Come ; although I am much interested in the happiness of his two children whom I serve. . . . ALEXANDER. Persecute me no longer ; in the name of Jupiter ! ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAaHIOX. 197 I can hardly give it up. To have been the maker of such a match ! what felicity ! what glory ! Think once more upon it. There are many who could measure themselves with thee, head to head ; let me see the man who will do it with your child at the end of the year, if thou embracest with good heart and desirable success this daughter of deity. ALEXANDER. Enough, my friend ! I have deserved it ; but we must deceive men, or they will either hate us or despise us. PRIEST. Now thou talkest reasonably. I here pronounce thy divorce. Moreover, thou shalt be the son of Hammon in Libya, of Mithras in Persia, of Philip in Maceclon, of Olympian Jove in Greece : but never for the future teach priests new creeds. ALEXANDER. How my father Philip would have laughed over his cups at such a story as tins ! PRIEST. Alexander ! let it prove to thee thy folly. ALEXANDER. If such is my folly, what is that of others ? Thou wilt acknowledge and proclaim me the progeny of Jupiter. PRIEST. Ay, ay. ALEXANDER. People must believe it. PRIEST. The only doubt will be among the shrewder, whether, being so extremely old and having left off his pilgrimages so many years, he could have given our unworthy world so spirited an offspring as thou art. Come and sacrifice. ALEXANDER. Priest ! I see thou art a man of courage : henceforward we are in confidence. Take mine with my hand : give me thine. Confess to me, as the first proof of- it, didst thou never shrink back from so voracious and intractable a monster as that accursed snake ? 198 ALEXANDER AND THE PRIEST OF HAMMON. PRIEST. "We caught her young, and fed her on goat's milk, as our Jupiter himself was fed in the caverns of Crete. ALEXANDER. Your Jupiter ! that was another. PRIEST. Some people say so : but the same cradle serves for the whole family, the same story will do for them all. As for fearing this young personage in the treasury-vault, we fear her no more, son Alexander, than the priests of Egypt do his holiness the crocodile-god. The gods and their pedagogues are manageable to the hand that feeds them. ALEXANDER. Canst thou talk thus ? PRIEST. Of false gods, not of the true one. ALEXANDER. One ! are there not many ? Some dozens ? some hundreds ? PRIEST. Not in our vicinity ; praised be Hammon ! And plainly to speak, there is nowhere another, let who will have begotten him, whether on cloud or meadow, feather-bed or barn-floor, w r orth a salt locust or a last year's date-fruit. These are our mysteries, if thou must needs know them; and those of other priesthoods are the like. Alexander, my boy, do not stand there, with thy arms folded and thy head aside, pondering. Jupiter the Earn for ever ! ALEXANDER. Glory to Jupiter the Ram ! PRIEST. Thou stoppest on a sudden thy prayers and praises to father Jupiter. Son Alexander! art thou not satisfied? What ails thee, drawing the back of thy hand across thine eyes ? ALEXANDER. A little dust flew into them as the door opened. PRIEST. Of that dust are the sands of the desert and the kings of Macedon. AIUSTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. 199 AEISTOTELES AND CALLISTHEXES. ARISTOTELES. I rejoice, CaUisthenes, at your return ; and the more as I see you in the dress of your country; while others, who appear to me of the lowest rank by their language and physio- gnomy, are arrayed in the Persian robe, and mix the essence of rose with pitch. CALLISTHEXES. I thank the Gods, Aristoteles, that I embrace you again ; that my dress is a greek one and an old one ; that the con- quests of Alexander have cost me no shame and have encumbered me with no treasures. ARISTOTELES. Jupiter! what then are those tapestries, for I will not call them dresses, which the slaves are carrying after you, in attendance (as they say) on your orders ? CALLISTHEXES. They are presents from Alexander to Xeno crates ; by which he punishes, as he declared to the Macedonians, both me and you. And I am well convinced that the punishment will not terminate here, but that he, so irascible and vindictive, will soon exercise his new dignity of godship, by breaking our heads, or, in the wisdom of his providence, by removing them an arm's length from our bodies. ARISTOTELES. On this subject we must talk again. Xenocrates is indeed a wise and virtuous man ; and although I could wish that Alexander had rather sent him a box of books than a bale of woollen, I acknowledge that the gift could hardly have been better bestowed. CALLISTHEXES. You do not appear to value very highly the learning of tins philosopher. ARISTOTELES. To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic 200 AR1STOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. scliool than to read and meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation? People make extremely free use of their other senses ; and I know not what difficulty they could find or apprehend in making use of their eyes, particularly in the gratification of a propensity which they indulge so profusely by the tongue. The fatigue, you would think, is less ; the one organ requiring much motion, the other little. Added to which, they may leave their opponent when they please, and never are subject to captiousness or personality. In open contention with an argumentative adversary, the worst brand a victor imposes is a blush. The talkative man blows the fire himself for the reception of it • and we can not deny that it may likewise be suffered by a reader, if his conscience lies open to reproach : yet even in this case, the stigma is illegible on his brow ; no one triumphs in his defeat, or even freshens his wound, as may sometimes happen, by the warmth of sym- pathy. Al] men, you and I among the rest, are more desirous of conversing with a great philosopher, or other celebrated man, than of reading his works. There are several reasons for this ; some of which it would be well if we could deny or palliate. In justice to ourselves and him, Ave ought to prefer his writings to his speech; for even the wisest say many things inconsiderately ; and there never was one of them in the world who ever uttered extemporaneously three sentences in succession, such as, if he thought soundly and maturely upon them after- ward, he would not in some sort modify and correct. Effrontery and hardness of heart are the characteristics of every great speaker I can mention, excepting Phocion ; and if he is exempt from them, it is because eloquence, in which no one ever excelled or ever will excell him, is secondary to philosophy in this man, and philosophy to generosity of spirit. On the same principle as impudence is the quality of great speakers and disputants, modesty is that of great readers and composers, Ts T ot only are they abstracted by their studies from the facilities of ordinary conversation, but they discover, from time to time, things of which they were ignorant before, and on which they had not even the ability of doubting. We, my Callisthenes, may consider them not only as gales that refresh us while they propell us forward, but as a more compendious engine of the Is, whereby we are brought securely into harbour, and ARISTOTELES AND CALLTSTHENES. 201 deeply laden with imperisliable wealth. Let us then strive day and night to increase the number of these beneficent beings, and to stand among them in the sight of the living and the future. It is required of us that we give more than we received. CALLISTHENES. my guide and teacher ! you are one of the blessed few at whose hands the Gods may demand it : if they had intended to place it in my duties, they would have chosen me a different master. How small a part of what I have acquired from you (and to you I owe all of knowledge and wisdom I possess) shall I be able to transmit to others ! ARISTOTELES. Encourage better hopes. Again I tell you, it is required of us, not merely that we place the grain in a garner, but that we ventilate and sift it, that we separate the full from the empty, the faulty from the sound, and that, if it must form the greater, it do not form the more elegant part of the entertainment our friends expect from us. I am now in the decline of life : to shove me from behind would be a boyish trick : but where- ever I fall I shall fall softly: the Gods having placed me in a path out of which no violence can remove me. In youth our senses and the organs of them wander ; in the middle of life they cease to do it ; in old age the body itself, and chiefly the head, bends over and points to the earth which must soon receive it, and partakes in some measure of its torpor. CALLISTHEXE3. You appear to me fresh and healthy, and your calmness and indifference to accidents are the effects of philosophy rather than of years. ARISTOTELES. Plato is older by twenty, and has lost nothing of juvenility but the colour of his hair. The higher delights of the mind are in this, as in everything else, very different in their effects from its seductive passions. These cease to gratify us the sooner the earlier we indulge in them : on the contrary, the earlier we indulge in thought and reflection the longer do they last and the more faithfully do they serve us. So far are they from shortening or debilitating our animal life, that they prolong and strengthen it greatly. The body is as much at repose in the midst of high imaginations as in the midst of 202 ARISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. profound sleep. In imperfect sleep it wears away much, as also in imperfect thoughts ; in thoughts that can not rise from the earth and sustain themselves above it. The object which is in a direct line behind a thing, seems near : now nothing is in a more direct line than death to life : why should it not also be considered, on the first sight, as near at hand ? Swells and depressions, smooth ground and rough, usually lie between; the distance may be rather more or rather less ; the proximity is certain. Alexander, a god, descends from his throne to conduct me. CALLISTHEXES. Endurance on the part of the injured is more pathetic than passion. The intimate friends of this conductor will quarrel over his carcase while yet warm, as dogs over a dish after supper. How different are our conquests from his ! how different our friends ! not united for robbery and revelry, but joyous in discovery, calm in meditation, and intrepid in research. How often, and throughout how many ages, shall you be a refuge from such men as he and his accomplices : how often will the studious, the neglected, the deserted, fly toward you for compensation in the wrongs of fortune, and for solace in the rigour of destiny ! His judgment-seat is covered by his sepulcher : after one year hence no appeals are made to him : after ten thousand there will be momentous questions, not of avarice or litigation, not of violence or fraud, but of reason and of science, brought before your judgment-seat and settled by your decree. Dyers and tailors, carvers and gilders, grooms and trumpeters, make greater men than God makes ; but God's last longer, throw them where you will. ARISTOTELES. Alexander hath really punished me by his gifts to Xenocrates ; for he obliges me to send him the best tunic I have : and you know that in my wardrobe I am, as appears to many, un- philosophically splendid. There are indeed no pearls in this tunic ; but golden threads pursue the most intricate and most elegant design, the texture is the finest of Miletus, the wool is the softest of Tarentum, and the purple is Hermionic. He will sell Alexander's dresses, and wear mine ; the consequence of which will be imprisonment or scourges. CALLISTHENES. A provident god forsooth in his benefits is our Alexander ! ARIST0TELE3 AND CALLISTHENES. 203 ARISTOTELES. Much to be pitied if ever he returns to his senses ! Justly do we call barbarians the wretched nations that are governed bv one man j and among them the most deeply plunged in barbarism is the rider. Let us take any favorable specimen : Cyrus for instance, or Canibyses, or this Alexander: for how- ever much you and I may despise him, seeing him often and nearly, he will perhaps leave behind him as celebrated a name as they. He is very little amid philosophers, though very great amid monarchs. Is he not undoing with all his might what every wise man, and indeed every man in the order of things^ is most solicitous to do ? Namely, doth he not abolish kindly and affectionate intercourse ? doth he not draw a line of distinction (which of all follies and absurdities is the wildest and most pernicious) between fidelity and truth? In the hoar of distress and misery the eye of every mortal turns to friendship : in the hour of gladness and conviviality what is our want ? it is friendship. TThen the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? my friend. Having thus displaced the right feeling, he finds it necessary to substitute at least a strong one. The warmth which should have been diffused from generosity and mildness, must come from the spiceman, the vintner, and the milliner; he must be perfumed, he must be drunk, he mast toss about shawl and tiara. You would imagine that his first passion, his ambition, had an object : yet, before he was a god, he prayed that no one afterward might pass the boundaries of his expedition : and he destroyed at Abdera, and in other places, the pillars erected as memorials by the Argonauts and by Sesostris. CALLISTHE>~E5. I have many doubts upon the Argonauts. TVe Greeks are fond of attributing to ourselves all the great actions of remote antiquity : we feign that Isis, Daughter of Tnaclius, taught the Egyptians laws and letters. It may be questioned whether the monuments assigned to the Argonauts were not really those of Sesostris or Osiris, or some other eastern conqueror ; and even whether the tale of Troy be not, in part at least, trans- lated. Many principal names, evidently not Grecian, and the mention of a language spoken by the Gods (meaning their representatives and officials) in which the rivers and other 204 ARISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. tilings are professed to be called differently from what they were called among men, are the foundations of my query. The Hindoos, the Egyptians, and probably the Phrygians (a very priestly nation), had their learned language, quite distinct from the vulgar.* ARISTOTELES. We will discuss this question another time. Perhaps you were present when Alexander ran around the tomb of Achilles in honour of his memory : if Achilles were now living, or any hero like him, Alexander would swear his perdition. Neither his affection for virtue nor his enmity to vice is pure or rational. Observation has taught me that we do not hate those who are worse than ourselves because they are worse, but because we are liable to injury from them, and because (as almost always is the case) they are preferred to us; while those who are better we hate purely for being so. After their decease, if we remit our hatred, it is because then they are more like virtue in the abstract than virtuous men, and are fairly out of our way. CALLISTHENES. Disappointment made him at all times outrageous. What is worse, he hated his own virtues in another; as dogs growl at their own faces in a mirror. The courage of Tyre, and many other cities, provoked not admiration but cruelty. Even his friends were unspared; even Clitus and Parmenio. ARISTOTELES. Cruelty, if we consider it as a crime, is the greatest of all : if we consider it as a madness, we are equally justifiable in applying to it the readiest and the surest means of suppression. Bonds may hold the weak; the stronger break them, and strangle the administrator. Cruelty quite destroys our sym- pathies, and, doing so, supersedes and masters our intellects. It removes from us those who can help us, and brings against us those who can injure us. Hence it opposes the great principle of our nature, self-preservation, and endangers not only our well-being, but our being. Reason is then the most perfect when it enables us in the highest degree to benefit our fellow-men ; reason is then the most deranged when there is that over it which disables it. Cruelty is that. As for the * The Galliamhic of Catullus may be a relic (the only one) of Phrygian poetry. He resided in the country, and may have acquired the language ; but his translation came through the Greek. 4- ' ARISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. 205 wisdom of Alexander, I do not expect from a Macedonian, surrounded by flatterers and drinkers, the prudence of an Epaminondas or a Phocion : but educated by such a father as Philip, and having with him in his army so many veteran captains, it excited no small ridicule in Athens, when it was ascertained that he and Darius, then equally eager for combat, missed each other's army in Cilicia. CALLISTHENES. He has done great things, but with great means; the generals you mention overcame more difficulties with less, and never were censured for any failure from deficiency of foresight. AEISTOTELES. There is as much difference between Epaminondas and Alexander as between the Nile and a winter torrent. In this there is more impetuosity, foam, and fury • more astonishment from spectators ; but it is followed by devastation and barren- ness. In that there is an equable, a stedcly, and perennial course, swelling from its ordinary state only for the benefit of mankind, and subsiding only when that has been secured. I have not mentioned Phocion so often as I ought to have done : but now, Callisthenes, I will acknowledge that I con- sider him as the greatest man upon earth. He foresaw long ago what has befallen our country ; and while others were proving to you that your wife, if a good woman, should be at the disposal of your friend, and that if you love your children you should procure them as many fathers as you can, Phocion was practising all the domestic and all the social duties. CALLISTHENES. I have often thought that his style resembles yours. Are you angry ? AEISTOTELES. I will not dissemble to you that mine was formed upon his. Polieuctus, by no means a friend to him, preferred it openly to that of Demosthenes, for its brevity, its comprehensiveness, and its perspicuity. There is somewhat more of pomp and solemnity in Demosthenes, and perhaps of harmony; but his warmth is on many occasions the warmth of coarseness, and his ridicule the roughest part of him ; while in Phocion there is the acuteness of Pericles, and, wherever it is requisite, the wit of Aristophanes. He conquered with few soldiers, and he 206 AlttSTOTELES AND CALLTSTHENES. convinced with few words. I know not what better description I could give yon, either of a great captain or a great orator. Now imagine for a moment the mischief which the system of Plato, just alluded to, would produce : that women should be common. We hear that among the Etrurians they were so, and perhaps are yet : but of what illustrious action do we read ever performed by that ancient people ? A thousand years have elapsed without a single instance on record of courage or generosity. With us one word, altered only in its termination, signifies both father and country : can he who is ignorant of the one be solicitous about the other? Never was there a true patriot who was not, if a father, a kind one : never was there a good citizen who w r as not an obedient and reverential son. Strange, to be ambitious of pleasing the multitude, and indifferent to the delight we may afford to those nearest us, our parents and our children ! Ambition is indeed the most inconsiderate of passions, none of which are considerate; for the ambitious man, by the weakest incon- sistency, proud as he may be of his faculties, and impatient as he may be to display them, prefers the opinion of the ignorant to his own. He would be what others can make him, and not what he could make himself without them. Nothing in fact is consistent and unambiguous but virtue. Plato would make wives common, to abolish selfishness; the mischief which above others it would directly and imme- diately bring forth. There is no selfishness where there is a wife and family : the house is lighted up by the mutual charities : everything achieved for them is a victory, every- thing endured for them is a triumph. How many vices are suppressed, that there may be no bad example ! how many exertions made, to recommend and inculcate a good one ! Selfishness then is thrown out of the question. He would per- haps render men braver by his exercises in the common field of affections. Now bravery is of two kinds ; .the courage of instinct and the courage of reason : animals have more of the former, men more of the latter ; for I would not assert, what many do, that animals have no reason, as I would not that men have no instinct. Whatever creature can be taught, must be taught by the operation of reason upon reason, small as may be the quantity called forth or employed in calling it, and however harsh may be the means. Instinct has no opera- tion but upon the wants and desires. Those who entertain a AUISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. 207 contrary opinion, are unaware how inconsequently they speak when they employ such expressions as these c We are taught bv instinct/ Courage, so necessary to the preservation of states, is not weakened by domestic ties, but is braced by them. Animals protect their young while they know it to be theirs, and neglect it when the traces of that memory are erased. Man can not so soon lose the memory of it, because his recollective facidties are more comprehensive and more tena- cious, and because, while in the brute creation the parental love, which in most is only on the female side, lessens after the earlier days, his increases as the organs of the new creature are developed. There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts. Phidias and our friend Apelles would never have existed as the Apelles and Phidias they appear, if property (I am ashamed of the solecism which Plato now forces on me) were in common. A part of his scheme indeed may be accomplished in select and small communities, holden together by some religious bond, as we find among the disciples of Pythagoras : but li€ never taught his followers that prosti- tution is a virtue, much less that it is the summit of perfection. They revered him, and deservedly, as a father. As what father ? Not such as Plato would fashion ; but as a parent who had gained authority over his children by his assiduous vigilance, his tender and peculiar care, in separating them as far as possible from whatever is noxious in an intercourse with mankind. To complete the system of selfishness, idleness, and licen- tiousness, the worshipful triad of Plato, nothing was wanting but to throw all other property where he had thrown the wives and children. Who then should curb the rapacious ? who should moderate the violent ? The w r eaker could not work, the stronger would not. Pood and raiment would fail; and we should be reduced to something worse than a state of nature, into wdiich we can never be cast back, any more than we can become children again. Civilisation suddenly retrograde, generates at once the crimes and vices, not only of its various stages, but of the state anterior to it, without any of its advan- tages, if it indeed have any. Plato would make for ever all the citizens, what we punish with death a single one for being once. He is a man of hasty fancy and indistinct reflection ; 208 AltlSTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. more different from Socrates than the most violent of his adversaries. If he had said that in certain cases a portion of landed property should be divided among the citizens, he had spoken sagely and equitably. After a long war, when a state is oppressed by debt, and when many who have borne arms for their country have moreover consumed their patrimony in its service, these, if they are fathers of families, should receive allotments from the estates of others who are not, and who either were too young for warfare, or were occupied in less dangerous and more lucrative pursuits. It is also conducive to the public good that no person should possess more than a certain and definite extent of land, to be limited by the popu- lation and produce : else the freedom of vote and the honesty of election must be violated, and the least active members of the community will occupy those places which require the most activity. This is peculiarly needful in mercantile states, like ours, that everyone may enjoy the prospect of becoming a landholder, and that the money accruing from the sale of what is curtailed on the larger properties, may again fall into commerce. A state may eventually be reduced to such distresses by war, even after victories, that it shall be expe- dient to deprive the rich of whatever they possess beyond the portion requisite for the decent and frugal sustenance of a family. This extremity it is difficult to foresee; nor do I think it is arrived at until the industrious and well-educated, in years of plenty, are unable by all their exertions to nourish and instruct their children. A speculative case, which it can not be dangerous or mischievous to state ; for certainly, when it occurs, the sufferers will appeal to the laws and forces of Nature, and not to the schools of rhetoric or philosophy. No situation can be imagined more painful or more abominable than this : while many, and indeed most, are worse than that whereunto the wealthier would be reduced in amending it; since they would lose no comforts, no conveniences, no graceful and unincumbering ornaments of life, and few luxuries ; which would be abundantly compensated to the generality of them, by smoothening their mutual pretensions, and by extinguishing the restless spirit of their rivalry. CALLISTHENES. The visions of Plato have led to Reason: I marvel less that he should have been so extravagant, than that he should AIUSTOTELES AND CALLISTHENLS. 209 have scattered on that volume so little of what we admire in his shorter Dialogues. AMSTOTELES. I respect his genius, which however has not accompanied all his steps in this discussion : nor indeed do I censure in him what has been condemned by Xenophon, who wonders that he should attribute to Socrates long dissertations on the soul and other abstruse doctrines, when that singularly acute reasoner discoursed with his followers on topics only of plain utility. For it is requisite that important things should be attributed to important men ; and a sentiment w x ould derive but small importance from the authority of Crito or Phoedo. A much greater fault is attributable to Xenophon himself, who has not even preserved the coarse features of nations and of ages in his Cyrop&clia. A small circle of wise men should mark the rise of mind, as the Egyptian priests marked the rise of their river, and should leave it chronicled in their temples. Cyrus should not discourse like Solon. CALLISTHENES. You must likewise. then blame Herodotus. AMSTOTELES. If I blame Herodotus, whom can I commend ? He reminds me of Homer by his facility and his variety, and by the suavity and fulness of his language. His view of history was, never- theless, like that of the Asiatics, who write to instruct and please. Now truly there is little that could instruct, and less that could please us, in the actions and speeches of barbarians, from among whom the kings alone come forth distinctly. Delightful tales and apposite speeches are the best tilings you could devise ; and many of these undoubtedly were current in the East, and were collected by Herodotus ; some, it is probable, were invented by him. It is of no importance to the world whether the greater part of historical facts, in such countries, be true or false ; but they may be rendered of the highest, by the manner in which a writer of genius shall represent them. If history were altogether true, it would be not only undig- nified but unsightly : great orators would often be merely the mouth-pieces of prostitutes, and great captains would be hardly more than gladiators or buffoons. The prime movers of those actions which appall and shake the world, are 210 AEISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. generally the vilest things in it; and the historian, if he discovers them, must conceal them or hold them back. CALLISTHENES. Pray tell me whether, since I left Athens, your literary men are busy. ARISTOTELES. More than ever ; as the tettix chirps loudest in time of drought. Among them we have some excellent writers, and such as (under Pallas) will keep out the Persian tongue from the Pirseus. Others are employed in lucrative offices, are made ambassadors and salt-surveyors, and whatever else is most desirable to common minds, for proving the necessity of more effectual (this is always the preamble) and less changeful laws, such as those of the Medes and Indians. Several of our orators, whose grandfathers were in a condition little better than servile, have had our fortunes and lives at their disposal, and are now declaiming on the advantages of what they call " regular government." You wonld suppose they meant that perfect order which exists when citizens rule themselves, and when every family is to the republic what every individual is to the family ; a system of mutual zeal and mutual forbear- ance. No such thing : they mean a government with them- selves at the head, and such as may ensure to them impunity for their treasons and peculations. One of them a short time ago was deputed to consult with Metanyctius, a leading man among the Thracians, in what manner and by what instal- ments a sum of money, lent to them by our republic, should be repaid. Metanyctius burst into laughter on reading the first words of the decree. " Dine with me " said he " and we will conclude the business when we are alone." The dinner was magnificent ; which in such business is the best economy : few contractors or financiers are generous enough to give a plain one. " Your republic " said Metanyctius " is no longer able to enforce its claim ; and we are as little likely to want your assistance in future, as you would be inclined to afford it. A seventh of the amount is at my disposal : you shall possess it. I shall enjoy about the same emolument for my fidelity to my worthy masters. The return of peace is so desirable, and regular government so divine a blessing, added to which, your countrymen are become of late so indifferent to inquiry into what the factious call abuses, that, I pledge ARISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. 211 my experience, you will return amid their acclamations and embraces." Our negotiator became one of the wealthiest men in the city, although wealth is now accumulated in some families to such an amount, as our ancestors, even in the age of Croesus or of Midas, would have deemed incredible. For wars drive up riches in heaps, as winds drive up snows, making and concealing many abysses. Metanyctius was the more provident and the more prosperous of the two. I know not in what king's interest he was, but probably the Persian's ; be this as it may, it was resolved for the sake of good understanding (another new expression) to abolish the name of republic throughout the world. This appeared an easy matter. Our negotiator rejoiced in the promise exacted from him, to employ his address in bringing about a thing so desirable : for republic sounded in his ears like retribution. It was then demanded that laws should be abolished, and that kings should govern at their sole discretion. This was better, but more difficult to accomplish. He promised it however ; and a large body of barbarian troops was raised in readiness to invade our territory, when the decree of Alexander reached the city, ordering that the states both of Greece and Asia should retain their pristine laws. The conqueror had found letters and accounts which his loquacity would not allow him to keep secret ; and the negotiator, whose opinion (a very common one) was, that exposure alone is ignominy, at last severed his weason with an ivory-handled knife. CALLISTHENES. On this ivory the Goddess of our city will look down with more complacency than on that whereof her own image is composed ; and the blade should be preserved with those which, on the holiest of our festivals, are displayed to us in the handful of myrtle, as they were carried by Harmodius and Aristogiton. And now tell me, Aristoteles, for the question much interests me, are you happy in the midst of Macedonians, Illyrians, and other strange creatures, at which we wonder when we see their bodies and habiliments like ours ? ARISTOTELES. Dark reflections do occasionally come, as it were by stealth, upon my mind ; but philosophy has power to dispell them. I care not whether the dog that defends my house and family p2 212 ARISTOTELES AND CALUSTHENES. be of the Laconian breed or the Molossan : if he steals my bread or bites the hand that offers it, I strangle him or cut his throat, or engage a more dexterous man to do it, the moment I catch him sleeping. CALLISTHENES. The times are unfavorable to knowledge. ARISTOTELES, Knowledge and wisdom are different. "We may know many things without an increase of wisdom; but it would be a contradiction to say that we can know anything new without an increase of knowledge. The knowledge that is to be acquired by communication, is intercepted or impeded by tyranny. I have lost an ibis, or perhaps a hippopotamus, by losing the favour of Alexander ; he has lost an Aristoteles. He may deprive me of life ; but in doing it, he must deprive himself of all he has ever been contending for, of glory ; and even a more reasonable man than he, will acknowledge that there is as much difference between life and glory, as there is between an ash-flake from the brow of iEtna, and the untamable and eternal fire within its center. I may lose disciples : he may put me out of fashion : a tailor's lad can do as much. He may forbid the reading of my works ; less than a tailor's lad can do that. Idleness can do it, night can do it, sleep can do it, a sunbeam rather too hot, a few hailstones, a few drops of rain, a call to dinner. By his wealth and power he might have afforded me opportunities of improving some branches of science, which I alone have cultivated with assiduity and success. Fools may make wise men wiser more easily than wise men can make them so. At all events, Callisthenes, I have prepared for myself a monument, from which perhaps some atoms may be detached by time, but which will retain the testimonials of its magnificence and the traces of its symmetry, when the substance and site of Alexander's shall be forgotten. "Who knows but that the very ant-hill whereon I stand, may preserve its figure and con- texture, when the sepulcher of this Macedonian shall be the solitary shed of a robber, or the manger of mules and camels !* If I live I will leave behind me the history of our times, from * Chrysostom, in his 25th homily, says, that neither the tomb of Alexander nor the day of his death was known. Uov, elire /j.oi, to orj/j.a AAe^dvdpov ; 5e?|oV /j.ol' kcu dire ttju rifJLtpav /caO' %v ereAeur^cre. ARISTOTELES AND CALLISTHENES. 213 the accession of Philip to the decease of Alexander. For our comet must disappear soon; the moral order of the world requires it. How happy and glorious was Greece at the commencement of the period ! how pestilential was the folly of those rulers, who rendered, by a series of idle irritations and untimely attacks, a patient for Anticyra the arbiter of the universe ! I will now return with you to Plato, whose plan of govern- ment, by the indulgence of the gods, has lain hitherto on their knees. # CALLISTHENES. I was unwilling to interrupt you ; otherwise I should have remarked the bad consequences of excluding the poets from his commonwealth ; not because they are in general the most useful members of it, but because we should punish a song more severely than a larceny. There are verses in Euripides such as every man utters who has the tooth-ache : and all expressions of ardent love have the modulation and emphasis of poetry. What a spheristerion is opened here to the exer- cise of informers ! We should create more of these than we should drive out of poets. Judges would often be puzzled in deciding a criminal suit ; for, before they could lay down the nature of the crime, they must ascertain what are the qualities and quantities of a dithyrambic. Now, Aristoteles, I suspect that even you can not do this : for I observe in Pindar a vast variety of commutable feet, sonorous, it is true, in their cadences, but irregular and unrestricted. You avoid, as all good writers do carefully, whatever is dactylic ; for the dactyl is the bindweed of prose ; but I know not what other author has trimmed it with such frugal and attentive husbandry.t One alone, in writing or conversation, would subject a man to violent suspicion of bad citizenship ; and he who should * The Homeric expression for ' remaining to be decreed by them' &ea)v €iri yovvacri kgitoli. f Callisthenes means the instance where another dactyl, or a spondee, follows it ; in which case only is the period to be called dactylic. Cicero on one occasion took it in preference to a weak elision, or to the concurrence of two esses. " Quinctus Mutius augur Scsevola multa ; ac . . ." He judged rightly ; but he could easily have done better. Longinus says that dactyls are the noblest of feet and the most adapted to the 214 AR1ST0TELES AND CALL1STHENES. employ it twice in a page or an oration, would be deemed so dangerous and desperate a malefactor, that it might be requisite to dig a pitfall or to lay an iron trap for him, or to noose him in his bed. ARISTOTELES. Demosthenes has committed it in his first Philippic, wdiere two dactyls and a spondee come after a tumultuous concourse of syllables, many sounding alike. ^Ovbe yap ovtos irapa tj\v avrov pcoynqv toctovtov €777]v£r)Tai ocrov irapa rr\v rifitrepav aixtXeiav. Here are seven dactyls : . the same number is nowhere else to be found within the same number of words. CALLISTHENES. Throughout your works there is certainly no period that has not an iambic in it : now our grammarians tell us that one sublime. He adduces no proof, although he quotes a sentence of Demosthenes as resembling the dactylic. Tovro to \l/7](pi(r/JLa rov Tore rr\ iro\€i irepiaraj/Ta kiv^vvov TrapeAdeiv €7tol7)o~€V oocnrep vscpos. Here is plenty of alliteration, but only one dactyl, for rovro ro is not one, being followed by \p. The letter r recurs nine times in fifteen syllables. A dactyl succeeded by a dichoree, or by a trochee with a spondee at the close, is among the sweetest of pauses ; the gravest and most majestic is composed of a dactyl, a dichoree, and a dispondee. He however will soon grow tiresome who permits his partiality to any one close to be obtrusive or apparent. The remark attributed to Callisthenes, on the freedom of Aristoteles from pieces of verse in his sentences, is applicable to Plato, and surprisingly, if we consider how florid and decorated is his language. Among the Romans T. Livius is the most abundant in them ; and among the Greeks there is a curious instance in the prefatory words of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. u". To throw pebbles is a very uncertain way of showing where lie defects. VThenever I have mentioned him seriously, I have brought forward, not accusations, but passages from his writings, such as no philosopher or scholar, or moralist, can defend. TIMOTHEUS. His doctrines are too abstruse and too sublime for you. LUCIAX. Solon, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus, are more sublime, if truth is sublimity. TIMOTHEUS. Truth is indeed; for God is truth. LUCIA>'. "We are upon earth to learn what can be learnt upon earth, and not to speculate on what never can be. This you, Timotheus, may call philosophy : to me it appears the idlest of curiosity; for every other kind may teach us something, and mav lead to more beyond. Let men learn what benefits 300 LUCIAN AUD TIMOTHEUS. men ; above all things, to contract their wishes, to calm their passions, and, more especially, to dispell their fears. Now these are to be dispelled, not by collecting clouds, but by piercing and scattering them. In the dark Ave may imagine depths and highths immeasurable, which, if a torch be carried right before us, we find it easy to leap across. Much of what we call sublime is only the residue of infancy, and the worst of it. The philosophers I quoted are too capacious for schools and systems. Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome, not captious, not frivolous, their lives were commentaries on their doctrines. Never evaporating into mist, never stagnating into mire, their limpid and broad morality runs parallel with the lofty summits of their genius. TIMOTHEUS. Genius ! was ever genius like Plato's ? LUCIAN. The most admired of his Dialogues, his Banquet, is beset with such puerilities, deformed with such pedantry, and disgraced with such impurity, that none but the thickest beards, and chiefly of the philosophers and the satyrs, should bend over it. On a former occasion he has given us a specimen of history, than which nothing in our language is worse : here he gives us one of poetry, in honour of Love, for which the god has taken ample vengeance on him, by perverting his taste and feelings. The grossest of all the absurdities in this dialogue is, attributing to Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so little of a visionary, the silly notion of male and female having been originally complete in one person, and walking circuitously. He may be joking : who knows ? TIMOTHEUS. Porbear ! forbear ! do not call this notion a silly one : he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it' somewhat. Woman was made from man's rib, and did not require to be cut asunder all the way down : this is no proof of bad reasoning, but merely of misinterpretation. LUCIAN. If you would rather have bad reasoning, I will adduce a little of it. Partner on, he wishes to extoll the wisdom of Agathon by attributing to him such a sentence as this. LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 301 w It is evident that Love is the most beautiful of the gods, because he is the youngest of them/' Now even on earth, the youngest is not always the most beautiful; how infinitely less cogent then is the argument when we come to speak of the Immortals, with whom age can have no concern ! There was a time when Yulcan was the youngest of the gods : was he also, at that time, and for that reason, the most beautiful ? Your philosopher tells us, more- over, that "Love is of all deities the most liquid; else he never could fold himself about everything, and flow into and out of men's souls." The three last sentences of Agathon's rhapsody are very harmonious, and exhibit the finest specimen of Plato's style ; but we, accustomed as we are to hear him lauded for his poetical diction, should hold that poem a very indifferent one which left on the mind so superficial an impression. The garden of Academus is flowery without fragrance, and dazzling without warmth : I am ready to dream away an hour in it after dinner, but I think it unsalutary for a night's repose. So satisfied was Plato with his Banquet, that he says of himself, in the person of Socrates, " How can I or anyone but find it difficult to speak after a discourse so eloquent? It would have been wonderful if the brilliancy of the sentences at the end of it, and the choice of expression throughout, had not astonished all the auditors. I, who can never say anything nearly so beautiful, would if possible have made my escape, and have fairly run off for shame." He had indeed much better run off before he made so wretched a pun on the name of Gorgias. " I dreaded," says he, " lest Agathon, measuring my discourse by the head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone for inability of utterance." Was there ever joke more frigid ? What painful twisting of unelastic stuff! If Socrates was the wisest man in the world, it would require another oracle to persuade us, after this, that he was the wittiest. But surely a small share of common sense would have made him abstain from hazarding such failures. He falls on his face in very flat and very dry ground ; and, when he gets up again, his quibbles are well- nigh as tedious as his witticisms. However, he has the presence of mind to throw them on the shoulders of Diotima, whom he calls a prophetess, and who, ten years before the Plague broke out in Athens, obtained from the gods (he tells 302 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. us) that delay. Ah ! the gods were doubly mischievous : they sent her first. Read her words, my cousin, as delivered by Socrates ; and if they have another Plague in store for us, you may avert it by such an act of expiation. TIMOTHEUS. The world will have ended before ten years are over. LUCIAN. Indeed ! TIMOTHECS. It has been pronounced. LUCIAN. How the threads of belief and unbelief run woven close together in the whole web of human life ! Come, come ; take courage ; you will have time for your Dialogue. Enlarge the circle ; enrich it with a variety of matter, enliven it with a multitude of characters, occupy the intellect of the thoughtful, the imagination of the lively; spread the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and sparkling wines; and throw, along the whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns. TIMOTHEUS. What writer of dialogues hath ever done this, or undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it ? LUCIAN. None whatever; yet surely you yourself may, when even your babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incom- parably greater than our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the very best of us. TIMOTHEUS. I wish, my dear Lucian, you would let our babes and sucklings lie quiet, and say no more about them : as for your gods, I leave them at your mercy. Do not impose on me the performance of a task in which Plato himself, if he had attempted it, would have failed. LUCIAN. No man ever detected false reasoning with more quickness; but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure ; and Wit, I am sorry to say, held the lowest place in his household. He sadly mistook the qualities of his mind in attempting the facetious : or rather, he fancied he possessed one quality more LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 303 than belonged to him. But, if he himself had not been a worse quibbler than any whose writings are come down to us, we might have been gratified by the exposure of wonderful acuteness wretchedly applied. It is no small service to the community to turn into ridicule the grave impostors, who are contending which of them shall guide and govern us, whether in politics or religion. There are always a few who will take the trouble to walk down among the sea- weeds and slippery stones, for the sake of showing their credulous fellow-citizens that skins filled with sand, and set upright at the forecastle, are neither men nor merchandise. TIMOTHEUS. I can bring to mind, Lucian, no writer possessing so great a variety of wit as you. LUCIAN. No man ever possessed any variety of this gift ; and the holder is not allowed to exchange the quality for another. Banter (and such is Plato's) never grows large, never sheds its bristles, and never do they soften into the humorous or the facetious. TIMOTHEUS. I agree with you that banter is the worst species of wit. We have indeed no correct idea what persons those really were whom Plato drags by the ears, to undergo slow torture under Socrates. One sophist, I must allow, is precisely like another : no discrimination of character, none of manner, none of language. LUCIAN. He wanted the fancy and fertility of Aristophanes. TIMOTHEUS. Otherwise, his mind was more elevated and more poetical. LUCIAN. Pardon me if I venture to express my dissent in both particulars. Knowledge of the human heart, and discrimina- tion of character, are requisites of the poet. Pew ever have possessed them in an equal degree with Aristophanes : Plato has given no indication of either. TIMOTHEUS. But consider his imagination. 304 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. LUCIAN. On what does it rest ? He is nowhere so imaginative as in his Tolity. Nor is there any state in the world that is, or would be, governed by it. One day you may find him at his counter in the midst of old-fashioned toys, which crack and crumble under his fingers while he exhibits and recommends them : another day, while he is sitting on a goat's bladder, I may discover his bald head surmounting an enormous mass of loose chaff and uncleanly feathers, which he would persuade you is the pleasantest and healthiest of beds, and that dreams descend on it from the gods. " Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus shall send you/' says Aristophanes in his favourite metre. In this helpless condition of closed optics and hanging jaw, we find the followers of Plato. It is by shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips wag and water at whatever distance from the net. We must leave them with their hands hanging down before them, confident that they are wiser than we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is amusing to see them in it before the tall well-robed Athenian, while he mis-spells the charms and plays clumsily the tricks he acquired from the conjurors here in Egypt. I wish you better success with the same materials. But in my opinion all philosophers should speak clearly, The highest things are the purest and brightest ; and the best writers are those who render them the most intelligible to the world below. In the arts and sciences, and particularly in music and metaphysics, this is difficult: but the subjects not being such as lie within the range of the community, I lay little stress upon them, and wish authors to deal with them as they best may, only beseeching that they recompense us, by bring- ing within our comprehension the other things with which they are intrusted for us. The followers of Plato fly off indignantly from any such proposal. If I ask them the meaning of some obscure passage, they answer that I am unprepared and unfitted for it, and that his mind is so far above mine, I can not grasp it. I look up into the faces of these worthy men, who mingle so much commiseration with so LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 305 much calmness, and wonder at seeing them look no less vacant than my own. TIMOTHEUS. Yon have acknowledged his eloquence, while you derided his philosophy and repudiated his morals. LUCIAN. Certainly, there was never so much eloquence with so little animation. When he has heated his oven, he forgets to put the bread into it ; instead of which, he throws in another bundle of faggots. His words and sentences are often too large for the place they occupy. If a water-melon is not to be placed in an oyster-shell, neither is a grain of millet in a golden salver. At high festivals a full band may enter; ordinary conversation goes on better without it. TIMOTHEUS. There is something so spiritual about him, that many of us Christians are firmly of opinion he must have been partially enlightened from above. LUCIAN. I hope and believe we all are. His entire works are in our library : do me the favour to point out to me a few of those passages where in poetry he approaches the spirit of Aristophanes, or where in morals he comes up to Epictetus. TIMOTHEUS. It is useless to attempt it if you carry your prejudices with you. Beside, my dear cousin, I would not offend you, but really your mind has no point about it which could be brought to contact or affinity with Plato's. LUCTAN. In the universality of his genius there must surely be some atom coincident with another in mine. You acknowledge, as everybody must do, that his wit is the heaviest and lowest : pray, is the specimen he has given us of history at all better ? TIMOTHEUS. I would rather look to the loftiness of his mind, and the genius that sustains him. LUCIAN. So would I. Magnificent words, and the pomp and pro- cession of stately sentences, may accompany genius, but are 306 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. not always nor frequently called out by it. The voice ought not to be perpetually nor much elevated in the ethic and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if it issued from a mask in the theater. The horses in the plain under Troy are not always kicking and neighing ; nor is the dust always raised in whirlwinds on the banks of Simois and Scamander; nor are the rampires always in a blaze. Hector has lowered his helmet to the infant of Andromache, and Achilles to the embraces of Briseis. I do not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom occasionally to a breath of poetry ; neither on the contrary can I praise the gait of that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath as in a corn-field. Be authority as old and obstinate as it may, never let it persuade you that a man is the stronger for being unable to keep himself on the ground, or the weaker for breathing quietly and softly on ordinary occasions. Tell me over and over that you find every great quality in Plato : let me only once ask you in return, whether he ever is ardent and energetic, whether he wins the affections, whether he agitates the heart. Finding him deficient in every one of these faculties, I think his disciples have extolled him too highly. Where power is absent, we may find the robes of genius, but we miss the throne. He would acquit a slave who killed another in self- defence, but if he killed any free man even in self-defence, he was not only to be punished with death, but to undergo the cruel death of a parricide. This effeminate philosopher was more severe than the manly Demosthenes, who quotes a law against the striking of a slave ; and Diogenes, when one ran away from him, remarked that it would be horrible if Diogenes could not do without a slave, when a slave could do without Diogenes. TIMOTHEUS. Surely the allegories of Plato are evidences of his genius. LUCIAN. A great poet in the hours of his idleness may indulge in allegory : but the highest poetical character will never rest on so unsubstantial a foundation. The poet must take man from God's hands, must look into every fibre of his heart and brain, must be able to take the magnificent work to pieces, and to reconstruct it. When this labour is completed, let him throw himself composedly on the earth, and care little how many of its ephemeral insects creep over him. In regard to these 6 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 807 allegories of Plato, about which I have heard so much, pray what and where are they ? You hesitate, my fair cousin Timotheus ! Employ one morning in transcribing them, and another in noting all the passages which are of practical utility in the commerce of social life, or purify our affections at home, or excite and elevate our enthusiasm in the prosperity and glory of our country. Useful books, moral books, instructive books, are easily composed : and surely so great a writer should present them to us without blot or blemish : I find among his many volumes no copy of a similar composition. My enthusiasm is not easily raised indeed ; yet such a whirl- wind of a poet must carry it away with him ; nevertheless, here I stand, calm and collected, not a hair of my beard in commotion. Declamation will find its echo in vacant places : it beats ineffectually on the well-furnished mind. Give me proof; bring the work; show the passages; convince, con- found, overwhelm me. TIMOTHEUS. I may do that another time with Plato. And yet, what effect can I hope to produce on an unhappy man who doubts even that the world is on the point of extinction ? LTJCIAN. Are there many of your association who believe that this catastrophe is so near at hand ? TIMOTHEUS. We all believe it ; or rather, we all are certain of it. LUCIAN. How so ? Have you observed any fracture in the disk of the sun ? Are any of the stars loosened in their orbits ? Has the beautiful light of Yenus ceased to pant in the heavens, or has the belt of Orion lost its gems ! TIMOTHEUS. for shame ! LUCIAN. Rather should I be ashamed of indifference on so important an occasion. TIMOTHEUS. We know the fact by surer signs. LUCIAN. These, if you could vouch for them, would be sure enough x2 308 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. for me. The least of tliem would make me sweat as profusely as if I stood up to the neck in the hot preparation of a mummy. Surely no wise or benevolent philosopher could ever have uttered what he knew or believed might be distorted into any such interpretation. For if men are persuaded that they and their works are so soon about to perish, what provident care are they likely to take in the education and welfare of their families ? What sciences will they improve, what learn- ing will they cultivate, what monuments of past ages will they be studious to preserve, who are certain that there can be no future ones ? Poetry will be censured as rank profane- ness, eloquence will be converted into howls and execrations, statuary will exhibit only Miclases and Ixions, and all the colours of painting will be mixed together to produce one grand conflagration : flammantia mcenia mundi. TIMOTHEUS. Do not quote an atheist ; especially in latin. I hate the language : the Romans are beginning to differ from us already. LUCIAN. Ah ! you will soon split into smaller fractions. But pardon me my unusual fault of quoting. Before I let fall a quotation I must be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation, seldomer in composition ; for it mars the beauty and unity of style, especially when it invades it from a foren tongue. A quoter is either ostentatious of his acquirements or doubtful of his cause. And moreover, he never walks gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of another, however gracefully that other may walk. Herodotus, Plato, Aristoteles, Demosthenes, are no quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice, inserts a few sentences of Pericles : but Thucydides is an emanation of Pericles, somewhat less clear indeed, being lower, although at no great distance from that purest and most pellucid source. The best of the Romans, I agree with you, are remote from such originals, if not in power of mind, or in acuteness of remark, or in sobriety of judgment, yet in the graces of composition. While I admired, with a species of awe such as not Homer himself ever impressed me with, the majesty and sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans that in the structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the goddess of battles, confident of power and victory, when LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 309 part of her hair is waving round the helmet, loosened by the rapidity of her descent or the vibration of her spear. Com- position may be too adorned even for beauty. In painting it is often requisite to cover a bright colour with one less bright ; and in language to relieve the ear from the tension of high notes, even at the cost of a discord. There are urns of which the borders are too prominent and too decorated for use, and which appear to be brought out chiefly for state, at grand carousals. The author who imitates the artificers of these, shall never have my custom. TIMOTHEUS. I think you judge rightly : but I do not understand languages ; I only understand religion. LUCIAN. He must be a most accomplished, a most extraordinary man, who comprehends them both together. We do not even talk clearly when we are walking in the dark. TIMOTHEUS. Thou art not merely walking in the dark, but fast asleep. LUCIAN. And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly awaken me with a red-hot poker. I have but a few paces to go along the corridor of life : prythee let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet. Never was any man less an enemy to religion than I am, whatever may be said to the contrary : and you shall judge of me by the soundness of my advice. If your leaders are in earnest, as many think, do persuade them to abstain from quarrelsomeness and contention, and not to declare it necessary that there should perpetually be a religious as well as a political war between east and west. No honest and considerate man will believe in their doctrines, who, incul- cating peace and good-will, continue all the time to assail their fellow- citizens with the utmost rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, forbidding the indulgence of the kindlier affections, exercise at full stretch the fiercer. This is certain : if they obey any commander, they will never sound a charge when his order is to sound a retreat : if they acknowledge any magistrate, they will never tear down the tablet of his edicts. TIMOTHEUS. We have what is all-sufficient. 310 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. LUCIAN. I see you have. TIMOTHEUS. You have ridiculed all religion and all philosophy. LUCIAN. I have found but little of either. I have cracked many a nut, and have come only to dust or maggots. TIMOTHEUS. To say nothing of the saints, are all philosophers fools or impostors ? And, because you can not rise to the ethereal highths of Plato, nor comprehend the real magnitude of a man so much above you, must he be a dwarf ? LUCIAN. The best sight is not that which sees best in the dark or the twilight ; for no objects are then visible in their true colours and just proportions ; but it is that which presents to us things as they are, and indicates what is within our reach and what is beyond it. Never were any three writers, of high celebrity, so little understood in the main character, as Plato, Diogenes, and Epicurus. Plato is a perfect master of logic and rhetoric ; and whenever he errs in either, as I have proved to you he does occasionally, he errs through perverseness, not through un wariness. His language often settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride : by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently of their own class who avoids their society and partakes in none of their humours, prejudices, and animosities. What right has he to be greater or better than they are? he who wears older clothes, who eats staler fish, and possesses no vote to imprison or banish anybody. I am now ashamed that I mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist the childish mischief of smoking him in his tub. He was the wisest man of his time, not excepting Aristoteles ; for he knew that he was greater than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not know that he himself was, or, knowing it, did not act up to his knowledge ; and here is a deficiency of wisdom. LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 311 TIMOTHEUS. Whether you did or did not strike the cask, Diogenes would have closed his eyes equally. He would never have come forth and seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in that day. But, intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus I fear is quite as lamentable. What horrible doctrines ! LUCIAN. Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks where you are : repose, and eat gratefully the fruit that falls into your bosom : do not weary your feet with an excursion, at the end whereof you will find no resting-place : reject not the odour of roses for the fumes of pitch and sulphur. What horrible doctrines ! TIMOTHEUS. Speak seriously. He was much too bad for ridicule. LUCIAN. I will then speak as you desire me, seriously. His smile was so unaffected and so graceful, that I should have thought it very injudicious to set my laugh against it. No philosopher ever lived with such uniform purity, such abstinence from censoriousness, from controversy, from jealousy, and from arrogance, TIMOTHEUS. Ah poor mortal ! I pity him, as far as may be ; he is in hell : it would be wicked to wish him out : we are not to murmur against the all- wise dispensations. LUCIAN. I am sure he would not ; and it is therefor I hope he is more comfortable than you believe. TIMOTHEUS. Never have I defiled my fingers, and never will I defile them, by turning over his writings. But in regard to Plato, I can have no objection to take your advice. LUCIAN. He will reward your assiduity : but he will assist you very little if you consult him principally (and eloquence for this should principally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity. Grandiloquent and sonorous, his lungs seem to play the better for the absence of the heart. His imagination is the most conspicuous, buoyed up by swelling billows over unsounded depths. There are his mild thunders, there are his glowing 312 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shooting stars. More of true wisdom, more of trustworthy manliness, more of promptitude and power to keep you steddy and straightforward on the perilous road of life, may be found in the little manual of Epictetus, which I could write in the palm of my left-hand, than there is in all the rolling and redundant volumes of this mighty rhetorician, which you may begin to transcribe on the summit of the great Pyramid, carry down over the Sphynx at the bottom, and continue on the sands half-way to Memphis. And indeed the materials are appropriate ; one part being far above our sight, and the other on what, by the most befitting epithet, Homer calls the no-corn-bearing. TIMOTHEUS. There are many who will stand against you on this ground. With what perfect ease and fluency do some of the dullest men in existence toss over and discuss the most elaborate of all works ! How many myriads of such creatures would be insufficient to furnish intellect enough for any single paragraph in them ! Yet ' we think this, 3 ( we advise that 3 are expres- sions now become so customary, that it would be difficult to turn them into ridicule. We must pull the creatures out while they are in the very act, and show who and what they are. One of these fellows said to Caius Fuscus in my hearing, that there was a time when it was permitted him to doubt occasionally on particular points of criticism, but that the time was now over. TIMOTHEUS. And what did you think of such arrogance ? What did you reply to such impertinence ? LUCIAN. Let me answer one question at a time. Krst : I thought him a legitimate fool, of the purest breed. Secondly: I promised him I would always be contented with the judgment he had rejected, leaving him and his friends in the enjoyment of the rest. TIMOTHEUS. And what said he ? LUCIAN. I forget. He seemed pleased at my acknowledgment of his LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 313 discrimination, at my deference and delicacy. He wished, however, I had studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, more attentively; without which preparatory discipline, no two persons could be introduced advantageously into a dialogue. I agreed with him on this position, remarking that we our- selves were at that very time giving our sentence on the fact. He suggested a slight mistake on my side, and expressed a wish that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the opposite part. "With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous than Plato, and less trimly attired than Xenophon. TIMOTHEUS. If he spoke in that manner, he might indeed be ridiculed for conceitedness and presumption, but his language is not altogether a fooFs. LUCIAN. I deliver his sentiments, not his words : for who would read, or who would listen to me, if such fell from me as from him ? Poetry has its probabilities, so has prose : when people cry out against the representation of a dullard, Could he have spoken all that ? c Certainly no/ is the reply : neither did Priam implore, in harmonious verse, the pity of Achilles. We say only what might be said, when great postulates are conceded. TIMOTHEUS. We will pretermit these absurd and silly men : but, cousin Lucian ! cousin Lucian ! the name of Plato will be durable as that of Sesostris. LUCIAN. So will the pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected into a pyramid. ' 1 do not hold Sesostris in much higher estima- tion than those quieter lumps of matter. They, Timotheus, who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, the worthiest of our admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things are not always saved. Hen-coops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those who most resembled them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by cold monsters below. 314 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. TIMOTHEUS. You now talk reasonably, seriously, almost religiously. Do you ever pray ? LUCIAN. I do. It was no longer than five years ago that I was deprived by death of my dog Melanops. He had uniformly led an innocent life ; for I never would let him walk out with me, lest he should bring home in his mouth the remnant of some god or other, and at last get bitten or stung by one. I reminded Anubis of this : and moreover I told him, what he ought to be aware of, that Melanops did honour to his relationship. TIMOTHEUS. I can not ever call it piety to pray for dumb and dead beasts. LUCIAN. Timotheus ! Timotheus ! have you no heart ? have you no dog ? do yon always pray only for yourself ? TIMOTHEUS. We do not believe that dogs can live again. LUCIAN. More shame for you ! If they enjoy and suffer, if they hope and fear, if calamities and wrongs befall them such as agitate their hearts and excite their apprehensions; if they possess the option of being grateful or malicious, and choose the worthier : if they exercise the same sound judgment on many other occasions, some for their own benefit and some for the benefit of their masters ; they have as good a chance of a future life, and a better chance of a happy one, than half the priests of all the religions in the world. Wherever there is the choice of doing well or ill, and that choice (often against a first impulse) decides for well, there must not only be a soul of the same nature as man's, although of less compass and comprehension, but, being of the same nature, the same immortality must appertain to it \ for spirit, like body, may change, but can not be annihilated. It was among the prejudices of former times that pigs are uncleanly animals, and fond of wallowing in the mire for mire's sake. Philosophy has now discovered, that when they roll in mud and ordure, it is only from an excessive love of cleanliness, and a vehement desire to rid themselves of scabs LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 315 and vermin. Unfortunately doubts keep pace with discoveries. They are like warts, of which the blood that springs from a great one extirpated, makes twenty little ones. TIMOTHEUS. The Hydra would be a more noble simily. LUCIAN. I was indeed about to illustrate my position by the old Hydra, so ready at hand and so tractable ; but I will never take hold of a hydra, when a wart will serve my turn, TIMOTHEUS. Continue then. LUCIAN. Even children are now taught, in despite of iEsop, that animals never spoke. The uttermost that can be advanced with any show of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they spoke in unknown tongues. Supposing the fact, is this a reason why they should not be respected ? Quite the con- trary. If the tongues were unknown, it tends to demonstrate our ignorance, not theirs. If we could not understand them, while they possessed the gift, here is no proof that they did not speak to the purpose, but only that it was not to our purpose : which may likewise be said with equal certainty of the wisest men that ever existed. How^ little have we learned from them, for the conduct of life or the avoidance of calamity ! Unknown tongues indeed ! yes, so are all tongues to the vulgar and the negligent. TIMOTHEUS. It comforts me to hear you talk in this manner, without a glance at our gifts and privileges. LUCIAN. I am less incredulous than you suppose, my cousin ! Indeed I have been giving you what ought to be a sufficient proof of it. TIMOTHEUS. You have spoken at last with becoming gravity, I must confess. LUCIAN. Let me then submit to your judgment some fragments of history which have lately fallen into my hands. There is among them a Hymn, of which the metre is so incondite, and 316 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. the phraseology so ancient, that the grammarians have attri- buted it to Linus. But the Hymn will interest you less, and is less to our purpose, than the tradition j by which it appears that certain priests of high antiquity were of the brute creation. TIMOTHEUS. No better, any of them. LUCIAN. Now you have polished the palms of your hands, I will commence my narrative from the manuscript. TIMOTHEUS. Pray do. LUCIAN. There existed in the city of Nephosis a fraternity of priests, reverenced by the appellation of Gasteres. It is reported that they were not always of their present form, but were birds, aquatic and migratory, a species of cormorant. The poet Linus, who lived nearer the transformation (if there indeed was any), sings thus, in his Hymn to Zeus. " Thy power is manifest, Zeus ! in the Gasteres. Wild birds were they, strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamourous of gullet. Wild birds, Zeus ! wild birds ; now cropping the tender grass by the river of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing the sweet nymphsea ; now again picking up serpents and other creeping things on each hand of old iEgyptos, whose head is hidden in the clouds. " that Mnemosyne would command the staidest of her three daughters to stand and sing before me ! to sing clearly and strongly. How before thy throne, Saturnian ! sharp voices arose, even the voices of Here and of thy children. How they cried out that innumerable mortal men, various- tongued, kid-roasters in tent and tabernacle, devising in their many-turning hearts and thoughtful minds how to fabricate well-rounded spits of beech-tree, how such men, having been changed into brute animals, it behoved thee to trim the balance, and in thy wisdom to change sundry brute animals into men ; in order that they might pour out flame-colored wine unto thee, and sprinkle the white flower of the sea upon the thighs of many bulls, to pleasure thee. Then didst thou, storm-driver ! overshadow far lands with thy dark eyebrows, LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 317 looking down on them, to accomplish thy will. And then didst thou behold the Gasteres, fat, tall, prominent-crested, purple-legged, daedal-plumed, white and black, changeable in colour as Iris. And lo ! thou didst will it, and they were men/'' TIMOTHEUS. No doubt whatever can be entertained of this Hymn's antiquity. But what farther says the historian ? I will read on, to gratify you. " It is recorded that this ancient order of a most lordly priesthood went through many changes of customs and cere- monies, which indeed they were always ready to accommodate to the maintenance of their authority and the enjoyment of their riches. It is recorded that, in the beginning, they kept various tame animals, and some wild ones, within the precincts of the temple : nevertheless, after a time, they applied to their own uses everything they could lay their hands on, whatever might have been the vow of those who came forward with the offering. And when it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they not only would make none, but declared it an act of impiety to expect it. Some of the people, who feared the Immortals, were dismayed and indignant at this backwardness ; and the discontent at last grew universal. Whereupon, the two' chief priests held a long conference together, and agreed that something must be done to pacify the multitude. But it was not until the greater of them, acknowledging his despondency, called on the gods to answer for him that his grief was only because he never could abide bad precedents : and the other, on his side, protested that he was over-ruled by Ins superior, and moreover had a serious objection (founded on principle) to be knocked on the head. Meanwhile the elder was looking down on the folds of Ins robe, in deep melancholy. After long consideration, he sprang upon his feet, pushing his chair behind him, and said, c "Well ; it is grown old, and was always too long for me : I am resolved to cut off a finger's breadth/ u c Having, in your wisdom and piety, well contemplated the bad precedent/ said the other, with much consternation in Iris countenance at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means bearing any resemblance to a stag's . . ' I have, I have/ 318 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. replied the other, interrupting him ; ' say no more ; I am sick at heart ; you must do the same/ " i A cursed dog has torn a hole in mine/ answered the other, 'and, if I cut anywhere about it, I only make bad worse. In regard to its length, I wish it were as long again/ c Brother ! brother ! never be worldly-minded/ said the senior. c Follow my example : snip off it, not a finger's breadth, half a finger's breadth/ " c But/ expostulated the other, c will that satisfy the gods ? ' ' Who talked about them ? ' placidly said the senior. ' It is very unbecoming to have them always in our mouths : surely there are appointed times for them. Let us be contented with laying the snippings on the altar, and thus showing the people our piety and condescension. They, and the gods also, will be just as well satisfied, as if we offered up a buttock of beef, with a bushel of salt, and the same quantity of wheaten flour on it/ " ' Well, if that will do . . and you know best/ replied the other, ' so be it/ Saying which words, he carefully and con- siderately snipped off as much in proportion (for he was shorter by an inch) as the elder had done, yet leaving on his shoulders quite enough of materials to make handsome cloaks for seven or eight stout-built generals. Away they both went, arm-in-arm, and then holding up their skirts a great deal higher than was necessary, told the gods what they two had been doing for them and their glory. About the court of the temple the sacred swine were lying in indolent composure : seeing which, the brotherly twain began to commune with themselves afresh : and the senior said repentantly, f What fools we have been ! The populace will laugh outright at the curtailment of our vestures, but would gladly have seen these animals eat daily a quarter less of the lentils/ The words were spoken so earnestly and emphatically that they were overheard by the quadrupeds. Suddenly there was a rising of all the principal ones in the sacred inclosure : and many that were in the streets took up, each according to his temperament and condition, the gravest or shrillest tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefor the more desperate of the creatures, pushing their snouts under the curtailed habiliments of the priests, assailed them with ridicule and reproach. For it had pleased the gods to work a miracle in their behoof, and they became as loquacious as those who LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 319 governed them, and who were appointed to speak in the high places. c Let the worst come to the worst, we at least have our tails to our hams/ said they. ' For how long ? ' whined others piteously : others incessantly ejaculated tremendous imprecations : others, more serious and sedate, groaned in- wardly ; and, although under their hearts there lay a huge mass of indigestible sourness ready to rise up against the chief priests, they ventured no farther than expostulation. f We shall lose our voices/ said they, ' if we lose our complement of lentils ; and then, most reverend lords, what will ye do for choristers?' Finally, one of grand dimensions, who seemed almost half-human, imposed silence on every debater. He lay stretched out apart from his brethren, covering with his side the greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its verdure native and imported. He crashed a few measures of peascods to cool his tusks ; then turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far toward the outer extremities of their sockets ; and leered fixedly and sarcastically at the high priests, showing every tooth in each jaw. Other men might have feared them ; the high priests envied them, seeing what order they were in, and what exploits they were capable of. A great painter, who flourished many olympiads ago, has, in his volume entitled the Canon, defined the line of beauty ! It was here in its per- fection : it followed with winning obsequiousness every member, but delighted more especially to swim along that placid and pliant curvature on which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication. Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance from the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his whole length, breadth, and highth : and they who had never seen him in earnest, nor separate from the common swine of the inclosure, with which he was in the habit of husking what was thrown to him, could form no idea what a prodigious beast he was. Terrible were the expressions of choler and comminations which burst forth from his fulminating tusks. Erimanthus would have hidden his puny offspring before them; and Hercules would have paused at the encounter. Thrice he called aloud to the high priests : thrice he swore in their own sacred language that they were a couple of thieves and impostors : thrice he imprecated the worst maledictions on his own head if they had not violated the holiest of their vou's, and were not ready even to sell their gods. A tremor ran 320 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHETJS. throughout the whole body of the united swine ; so awful was the adjuration ! Even the Gasteres themselves in some sort shuddered, not perhaps altogether, at the solemn tone of its impiety ; for they had much experience in these matters. But among them was a Gaster who was calmer than the swearer, and more prudent and conciliating than those he swore against. Hearing this objurgation, he went blandly up to the sacred porker, and, lifting the flap of his right ear between forefinger and thumb with all delicacy and gentleness, thus whispered into it : ' You do not in your heart believe that any of us are such fools as to sell our gods, at least while we have such a reserve to fall back upon/ " ' Are we to be devoured ? ' cried the noble porker, twitching his ear indignantly from under the hand of the monitor. ' Hush ! ' said he, laying it again most soothingly rather farther from the tusks : 'hush ! sweet friend ! Devoured? O certainly not : that is to say, not all : or, if all, not all at once. Indeed the holy men my brethren may perhaps be contented with taking a little blood from each of you, entirely for the advantage of your health and activity, and merely to compose a few slender black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the temple, who latterly are grown very exacting, and either are, or pretend to be, hungry after they have eaten a whole handful of acorns, swallowing I am ashamed to say what a quantity of water to wash them down. We do not grudge them it, as they well know : but they appear to have forgotten how recently no inconsiderable portion of this bounty has been conferred. If we, as they object to us, eat more, they ought to be aware that it is by no means for our gratification, since we have abjured it before the gods, but to maintain the dignity of the priesthood, and to exhibit the beauty and utility of subordination/ " The noble porker had beaten time with his muscular tail at many of these periods ; but again his heart panted visibly, and he could bear no more. " ' All this for our good ! for our activity ! for our health ! Let us alone : we have health enough ; we want no activity. Let us alone, I say again, or by the Immortals ! . / ' Peace, my son ! Your breath is valuable : evidently you have but little to spare : and what mortal knows how soon the gods may demand the last of it ? ' "At the beginning of this exhortation, the worthy high LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 321 priest had somewhat repressed the ebullient choler of his refractory and pertinacious disciple, by applying his flat soft palm to the signet-formed extremity of the snout. " ' We are ready to hear complaints at all times/ added he, 'and to redress any grievance at our own. But beyond a doubt, if you continue to raise your abominable outcries, some of the people are likely to hit upon two discoveries : first, that your lentils w r ould be sufficient to make daily for every poor family a good wholesome porridge; and secondly, that your flesh, properly cured, might hang up nicely against the forth- coming bean-season/ Pondering these mighty words, the noble porker kept his eyes fixed upon him for some instants, then leaned forward dejectedly, then tucked one foot under him, then another, cautious to descend with dignity. At last he grunted (it must for ever be ambiguous whether with despondency or with resignation), pushed his wedgy snout far within the straw subjacent, and sank into that repose which is granted to the just/' TIMOTHEUS. Cousin ! there are glimmerings of truth and wisdom in sundry parts of this discourse, not unlike little broken shells entangled in dark masses of sea- weed. But I would rather you had continued to adduce fresh arguments to demonstrate the beneficence of the Deity, proving (if you could) that our horses and dogs, faithful servants and companions to us, and often treated cruelly, may recognise us hereafter, and we them. We have no authority for any such belief. LUCIAN. We have authority for thinking and doing whatever is humane. Speaking of humanity, it now occurs to me, I have heard a report that some well-intentioned men of your religion so interpret the .words or wishes of its founder, they would abolish slavery throughout the empire. TIMOTHEUS. Such deductions have been drawn indeed from our Master's doctrine : but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically, and would only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if domestic slaves were manumitted, we should neither have a dinner drest nor a bed made, unless by our own children : and as to labour in the fields, who would cultivate them in this hot climate ? We must import slaves from ^Ethiopia and 322 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. elsewhere, wheresoever they can be procured : but the hardship lies not on them; it lies on us, and bears heavily; for we must first buy them with our money, and then feed them ; and not only must we maintain them while they are hale and hearty and can serve us, but likewise in sickness and (unless we can sell them for a trifle) in decrepitude. Do not imagine, my cousin, that we are no better than enthusiasts, visionaries, subverters of order, and ready to roll society down into one flat surface. LUCIAN. I thought you were maligned : I said so. TIMOTHEUS. "When the subject was discussed in our congregation, the meaner part of the people were much in favour of the abolition : but the chief priests and ministers absented themselves, and gave no vote at all, deeming it secular, and saying that in such matters the laws and customs of the country ought to be observed. LUCIAN. Several of these chief priests and ministers are robed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. TIMOTHEUS. I have hopes of you now. LUCIAN. Why so suddenly ? TIMOTHEUS. Because you have repeated those blessed words, which are only to be found in our scriptures. LUCIAN. There indeed I found them. But I also found in the same volume words of the same speaker, declaring that the rich shall never see his face in heaven. TIMOTHEUS. He does not always mean what you think he does. LUCIAN. How is this ? Did he then direct his discourse to none but men more intelligent than I am ? TIMOTHEUS. Unless he gave you understanding for the occasion, they might mislead you. LUCIAN AND T1M0THEUS. 323 LUCIAN. Indeed ! TIMOTHEUS. Unquestionably. For instance, he tells us to take no heed of to-morrow: he tells us to share equally all our worldly goods : but we know that we can not be respected unless we bestow due care on our possessions, and that not only the vulgar but the well-educated esteem us in proportion to the gifts of fortune. LUCIAN. The eclectic philosophy is most flourishing among you Christians. You take whatever suits your appetites, and reject the rest. TIMOTHEUS. We are not half so rich as the priests of Isis. Give us their possessions ; and we will not sit idle as they do, but be able and ready to do incalculable good to our fellow r -creatures. LUCIAN. I have never seen great possessions excite to great alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often overlie and smother them. TIMOTHEUS. Our religion is founded less on sympathies than on miracles. Cousin ! you smile most when you ought to be most serious. LUCIAN. I was smiling at the thought of one whom I would recom- mend to your especial notice, as soon as you disinherit the priests of Isis. He may perhaps be refractory ; for he pretends (the knave !) to work miracles. TIMOTHEUS. Impostor ! who is he ? LUCIAN. Aulus of Pelusium. Idle and dissolute, he never gained anything honestly but a scourging, if indeed he ever made, what he long merited, this acquisition. Unable to run into debt where he was known J he came over to Alexandria. TIMOTHEUS. I know him : I know him well. Here, of his own accord, he has betaken himself to a new and regular life. t2 324 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. He will presently wear it out, or make it sit easier on his shoulders. My metaphor brings me to my story. Having nothing to carry with him beside an empty valise, he resolved on filling it with somewhat, however worthless, lest, seeing his utter destitution, and hopeless of payment, a receiver of lodgers should refuse to admit him into the hostelry. Accordingly, he went to a tailor's, and began to joke about his poverty. Nothing is more apt to bring people into good humour : for, if they are poor themselves, they enjoy the pleasure of dis- covering that others are no better off ; and, if not poor, there is the consciousness of superiority. " The favour I am about to ask of a man so wealthy and so liberal as you are," said Aulus, " is extremely small : you can materially serve me, without the slightest loss, hazard, or inconvenience. In a few words my valise is empty : and to some ears an empty valise is louder and more discordant than a bagpipe : I can not say I like the sound of it myself. Give me all the shreds and snippings you can spare me. They will feel like clothes ; not exactly so to me and my person, but to those who are inquisitive, and who may be importunate." The tailor laughed and distended both arms of Aulus with his munificence. Soon was the valise well filled and rammed down. Plenty of boys were in readiness to carry it to the boat. Aulus waved them off, looking at some angrily, at others suspiciously. Boarding the skiff, he lowered his treasure with care and caution, staggering a little at the weight, and shaking it gently on deck, with his ear against it : and then, finding all safe and compact, he sate on it; but as tenderly as a pullet on her first eggs. When he was landed, his care was even greater, and whoever came near him was warned off with loud vociferations. Anxiously as the other passengers were invited by the innkeepers to give their houses the preference, Aulus was importuned most : the others were only beset; he was borne off in triumphant captivity. He ordered a bed-room, and carried his valise with him : he ordered a bath, and carried with him his valise. He started up from the company at dinner, struck his forehead, and cried out, " Where is my valise ? " " We are honest men here : " replied the host. " You have left it, sir, in your chamber : where else indeed should you leave it ? " " Honesty is seated on your brow/' exclaimed Aulus : "but LUCIAN AXD TIMOTHEUS. 325 there are few to be trusted in the world we live in. I now believe I can eat." And he gave a sure token of the belief that was in him, not without a start now and then and a finger at his ear, as if he heard somebody walking in the direction of his bed-chamber. IS T ow began Ins first miracle : for now he contrived to pick up, from time to time, a little money. In the presence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a few obols, negligently and indifferently, among the beggars. "These poor creatures/'' said he, "know a new comer as well as the gnats do : in one half-hour I am half-ruined by them \ and this daily." Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival, and no account of board and lodging had been delivered or called for. Suspicion at length arose in the host whether he really was rich. When another man's honesty is doubted, the doubter's is sometimes in jeopardy. The host was tempted to unsew the valise. To his amazement and horror he found only shreds within it. However, he was determined to be cautious, and to consult his wife, who, although a Christian like Aulus, and much edified by his discourses, might dissent from him in regard to a community of goods, at least in her own household, and might defy him to prove by any authority that the doctrine was meant for innkeepers. Aulus, on his return in the evening, found out that his valise had been opened. He hurried back, threw its contents into the canal, and, borrowing an old cloak, he tuckec? it up under his dress, and returned. Nobody had seen him enter or come back again, nor was it immediately that his host or hostess were willing to appear. But, after he had called them loudly for some time, they entered his apartment : and he thus addressed the woman. " O Eucharis ! no words are requisite to convince you (firm as you are in the faith) of eternal verities, however mysterious. But your unhappy husband has betrayed his incredulity in regard to the most awful. If my prayers, offered up in our holy temples all day long, have been heard, and that they have been heard I feel within me the blessed certainty, something miraculous has been vouchsafed for the conversion of this miserable sinner. Until the present hour, the valise before you was filled with precious relics from the apparel of saints and martyrs, fresh as when on them." " True, by Jove ! " said the husband to himself. "Within the present hour," 326 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. continued Aulus, "they are united into one raiment, signifying our own union, our own restoration." He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face. Eucharis fell also, and kissed the saintly head prostrate before her. The host's eyes were opened, and he bewailed his hardness of heart. Aulus is now occupied in strengthening his faith, not without an occasional support to the wife's : all three live together in unity. TIMOTHEUS. And do you make a joke even of this ? Will you never cease from the habitude ? LUCIAN. Too soon. The farther we descend into the vale of years, the fewer illusions accompany us : we have little inclination, little time, for jocularity and laughter. Light things are easily detached from us, and we shake off heavier as we can. Instead of levity, we are liable to moroseness : for always near the grave there are more briars than flowers, unless we plant them ourselves, or our friends supply them. TIMOTHEUS. Thinking thus, do you continue to dissemble or to distort the truth ? The shreds are become a cable for the faithful. That they were miraculously turned into one entire garment who shall gainsay ? How many hath it already clothed with righteousness ? Happy men, casting their doubts away before it ! Who knows, cousin Lucian, but on some future day you yourself will invoke the merciful interposition of Aulus ! Possibly : for if ever I fall among thieves, nobody is likelier to be at the head of them. TIMOTHEUS. Uncharitable man ! how suspicious ! how ungenerous ! how hardened in unbelief ! Reason is a bladder on which you may paddle like a child as you swim in summer waters : but, when the winds rise and the waves roughen, it slips from under you, and you sink ; yes, Lucian, you sink into a gulf whence you never can emerge. LUCIAN, I deem those the wisest who exert the soonest their own manly strength, now with the stream and now against it, LUCIAN AND T1M0THEUS. 327 enjoying tlie exercise in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if need be, yet avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but also shallows. In such a light, my cousin, I look on your dispensations. I shut them out as we shut out winds blowing from the desert ; hot, debilitating, oppressive, laden with impalpable sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an incurable blindness. TIMOTHEUS. Well, cousin Lucian ! I can bear all you say while you are not witty. Let me bid you farewell in this happy interval. LUCIAN. Is it not serious and sad, my cousin, that what the Deity hath willed to lie incomprehensible in his mysteries, we should fall upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or ignorantly dissect ? TIMOTHEUS. Ho ! now you come to be serious and sad, there are hopes of you. Truth always begins or ends so. LUCIAN. Undoubtedly. But I think it more reverential to abstain from that which, with whatever effort, I should never under- stand. TIMOTHEUS. You are lukewarm, my cousin, you are lukewarm. A most dangerous state. LUCIAN. For milk to continue in, not for men. I would not fain be frozen or scalded. TIMOTHEUS. Alas ! you are blind, my sweet cousin ! LUCIAN. Well ; do not open my eyes with pincers, nor compose for them a collyrium of spurge. May not men eat and drink and talk together, and perform in relation one to another all the duties of social life, whose opinions are different on things immediately under their eyes ? If they can and do, surely they may as easily on things equally above the comprehension of each party. The wisest and most virtuous man in the whole extent of the Roman empire is Plutarch of Cheronsea : yet Plutarch holds a firm belief in the existence of I know not how many gods, every one of whom 328 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. has committed notorious misdemeanours. The nearest to the Cheronaean in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds all the gods dog-cheap. These two men are friends. If either of them were influenced by your religion, as inculcated and practised by the priesthood, he would be the enemy of the other, and wisdom and virtue would plead for the delinquent in vain. "When your religion had existed, as you tell us, about a century, Caius Csecilius,* of Novum Comum, was Proconsul in Bithynia. Trajan, the mildest and most equitable of mankind, desirous to remove from them, as far as might be, the hatred and invectives of those whose old religion was assailed by them, applied to Csecilius for information on their behaviour as good citizens. The reply of Cflecilius was favorable. Had Trajan applied to the most eminent and authoritative of the sect, they would certainly have brought into jeopardy all who differed in one tittle from any point of their doctrine or discipline. For the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension required less than a century to flower on the steps of your temple. TIMOTHEUS. You are already half a Christian, in exposing to the w r orld the vanities both of philosophy and of power. LUCIAN. I have done no such thing : I have exposed the vanities of the philosophising and the powerful. Philosophy is admirable ; and Power may be glorious : the one conduces to truth, the other has nearly all the means of conferring peace and happi- ness, but it usually, and indeed almost always, takes a contrary direction. I have ridiculed the futility of speculative minds, only when they would pave the clouds instead of the streets. To see distant things better than near, is a certain proof of a defective sight. The people I have held in derision never turn their eyes to what they can see, but direct them con- tinually where nothing is to be seen. And this> by their disciples, is called the sublimity of speculation ! There is little merit acquired, or force exhibited, in blowing off a feather that would settle on my nose : and this is all I have done in regard to the philosophers : but I claim for myself the approbation of humanity, in having shown the true dimensions of the great. The highest of them are no higher than my tunic ; but they * The younger Pliny. LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 329 are high enough to trample on the necks of those wretches who throw themselves on the ground before them. TIMOTHEUS. Was Alexander of Macedon no higher ? LUCIAN. What region of the earth, what city, what theater, what library, what private study, hath he enlightened ? If you are silent, 1 may well be. It is neither my philosophy nor your religion which casts the blood and bones of men in their faces, and insists on the most reverence for those who have made the most unhappy. If the Romans scourged by the hands of children the schoolmaster who would have betrayed them, how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the same quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the intellects of youth to such immoral revelers and mad murderers ! They would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of grapes from a vineyard, and the same men on the same day would insist on his reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Babylon, and the incendiary of Persepolis. And are these men teachers ? are these men philosophers ? are these men priests ? Of all the curses that ever afflicted the earth, I think Alexander was the worst. Never was he in so little mischief as when he was murdering his friends. TIMOTHEUS. Yet he built this very city ; a noble and opulent one when Rome was of hurdles and rushes. He built it ? I wish, Timotheus, he had been as well employed as the stone-cutters or the plasterers. ]\ T o, no : the wisest of architects planned the most beautiful and commodious of cities, by which, under a rational government and equitable laws, Africa might have been civilised to the center, and the palm have extended her conquests through the remotest desert. Instead of which, a dozen of Macedonian thieves rifled a dying drunkard and murdered his children. In process of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome, made an easy mistake in mistaking a palace for a brothel, permitted a stripling boy to beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive the last caresses of his paramour. Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the 330 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. worst passions of youth by the display of such false glories ! If your religion hath any truth or influence, her professors will extinguish the promontory lights, which only allure to breakers. They will be assiduous in teaching the young and ardent that great abilities do not constitute great men, without the right and unremitting application of them; and that, in the sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one cottage than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we have been taught little else than falsehood. AYe have been told to do this thing and that : we have been told we shall be punished unless we do : but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very different foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most easily and lead the most directly to the heart? But both eyes and ears are won over, and alike are persuaded to corrupt us. TIMOTHEUS. Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the strangest of all notions in my head. I began to think for a moment that you doubted my sincerity in the religion I profess; and that a man of your admirable good sense, and at your advanced age, could reject that only sustenance which supports us through the grave into eternal life. LUCIAN. I am the most docile and practicable of men, and never reject what people set before me : for if it is bread, it is good for my own use ; if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or mule. But, although you know my weakness and facility, it is unfair to expect I should have admitted at once what the followers and personal friends of your Master for a long time hesitated to receive. I remember to have read in one of the early commentators, that his disciples themselves* could not swallow the miracle of the loaves ; and one who wrote more recently says, that even his brethren did not believe t in him. TIMOTHEUS. Yet finally, when they have looked over each other's accounts, they cast them up, and make them all tally in the main sum ; and if one omits an article, the next supplies its place with a commodity of the same value. What would you have ? But it is of little use to argue on religion with a man who, pro- * Marie vi. t John viL LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 331 fessing his readiness to believe, and even his credulity, yet disbelieves in miracles. LUCIAN. I should be obstinate and perverse if I disbelieved in the existence of a tiling for no better reason than because I never saw it, and can not understand its operations. Do you believe, O Tiniotheus, that Perictione, the mother of Plato, became his mother by the sole agency of Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of that god ? TIMOTHEUS. I indeed believe such absurdities ? LUCIAN. You touch me on a vital part if you call an absurdity the religion or philosophy in which I was educated. Anaxalides, and Clearagus, and Speusippus, his own nephew, assert it. Who should know better than they ? TIMOTHEUS. Where are their proofs ? LUCIAN. I would not be so indelicate as to require them on such an occasion. A short time ago 1 conversed with an old centurion, who was in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus, and many officers and soldiers of the army, and many captives, were present, and who saw one Eleazar put a ring to the nostril of a demoniac (as the patient was called) and draw the demon out of it. TIMOTHEUS. And do you pretend to believe this nonsense ? LUCIAN. I only believe that Yespasian and Titus had nothing to gain or accomplish, by the miracle ; and that Eleazar, if he had been detected in a trick by two acute men and several thousand enemies, had nothing to look forward to but a cross; the only piece of upholstery for which Judea seems to have either wood or workmen, and which are as common in that country as direction-posts are in any other. TIMOTHEUS. The Jews are a stiff-necked people. LUCIAN. On such occasions, no doubt. 332 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. TIMOTHEUS. Would you, Lucian, be classed among the atheists, like Epicurus ? LUCIAN. It lies not at my discretion what name shall be given me at present or hereafter, any more than it did at my birth. But I wonder at the ignorance and precipitancy of those who call Epicurus an atheist. He saw on the same earth with himself a great variety of inferior creatures, some possessing more sensi- bility and more thoughtfulness than others. Analogy would lead so contemplative a reasoner to the conclusion, that if many were inferior and in sight, others might be superior and out of sight. He never disbelieved in the existence of the gods; he only disbelieved that they troubled their heads with our concerns. Have they none of their own ? If they are happy, does their happiness depend on us, comparatively so imbecile and vile ? He believed, as nearly all nations do, in different ranks and orders of superhuman beings : and perhaps he thought (but I never was in his confidence or counsels) that the higher were rather in communication with the next to them in intellectual faculties, than with the most remote. To me the suggestion appears by no means irrational, that, if we are managed or cared for at all, by beings wiser than ourselves (which in truth would be no sign of any great wisdom in them), it can only be by such as are very far from perfection, and who indulge us in the commission of innumerable faults and follies, for their own speculation or amusement. TIMOTHEUS. There is only one such ; and he is the Devil. LUCIAN. If he delights in our wickedness, which you believe, he must be incomparably the happiest of beings, which you do not believe. No god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his arm- chair with less energetic exertion or discomposure. TIMOTHEUS. "We lead holier and purer lives than such ignorant mortals as are not living under Grace, LUCIAN, I also live under Grace, O Timotheus ! and I venerate her for the pleasures I have received at her hands. I do not LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 333 believe she has quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unattractive to her, and if the trace of her fingers is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, stil I sometimes am told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest of my writings. TIMOTHEUS. You are wilful in misapprehension. The Grace of which I speak is adverse to pleasure and impurity. LUCIAN. Rightly do you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you have taken : on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found together, on mind as on matter, than hardness and lubricity. Believe me, cousin Timotheus, when we come to eighty years of age we are all Essenes, In our kingdom of heaven there is no marrying or giving in marriage ; and austerity in ourselves, when Nature holds over us the sharp instrument with which Jupiter operated on Saturn, makes us austere to others. But how happens it that you, both old and young, break every bond which connected you anciently with the Essenes ? Not only do you marry (a highth of wisdom to which I never have attained, although in others I commend it), .but you never share your substance with the poorest of your community, as they did, nor live simply and frugally, nor refuse rank and offices in the state, nor abstain from litigation, nor abominate and execrate the wounds and cruelties of war. The Essenes did all this, and greatly more, if Josephus and Philo, whose political and religious tenets are opposite to theirs, are credible and trust-worthy. TIMOTHEUS. Doubtless you would also wish us to retire into the desert, and eschew the conversation of mankind. LUCIAN. No indeed; but I would wish the greater part of your people to eschew mine, for they bring all the worst of the desert with them wherever they enter ; its smothering heats, its blinding sands, its sweeping suffocation. "Return to the pure spirit of the Essenes, without their asceticism; cease from controversy, and drop party designations. If you will 334 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. not do this, do less, and be merely what you profess to be, which is quite enough for an honest, a virtuous, and a religious man. TIMOTHEUS. Cousin Lucian, I did not come hither to receive a lecture from you. LUCIAN. I have often given a dinner to a friend who did not come to dine with me. TIMOTHEUS. Then, I trust, you gave him something better for dinner than bay-salt and dandelions. If you will not assist us in nettling our enemies a little for their absurdities and impositions, let me intreat you however to let us alone, and to make no remarks on us, I myself run into no extravagances, like the Essenes, washing and fasting, and roaming into solitude. I am not called to them: when I am, I go. LUCIAN. I am apprehensive the Lord may afflict you with deafness in that ear. TIMOTHEUS. Nevertheless, I am indifferent to the world, and all things in it. This, I trust, you will acknowledge to be true religion and true philosophy. LUCIAN. That is not philosophy which betrays an indifference to those for whose benefit philosophy was designed ; and those are the whole human race. But I hold it to be the most unphiloso- phical thing in the world, to call away men from useful occupations and mutual help, to profitless speculations and acrid controversies. Censurable enough, and contemptible too, is that supercilious philosopher, sneeringly sedate, who narrates in full and flowing periods the persecutions and tor- tures of a fellow man, led astray by his credulity, and ready to die in the assertion of what in his soul he believes to be the truth. But hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible, is the tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies that wisdom or honesty can exist beyond the limits of his own ill-lighted chamber. TIMOTHEUS. What ! is he sanguinary ? LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. 335 Whenever he can be, he is : and he always has it in his power to be even worse than that : for he refuses his custom to the industrious and honest shopkeeper who has been taught to think differently from himself, in matters which he has had no leisure to study, and by which, if he had enjoyed that leisure, he would have been a less industrious and a less expert artificer. TIMOTHEUS. "We can not countenance those hard-hearted men who refuse to hear the word of the Lord. LUCIAN. The hard-hearted knowing this of the tender-hearted, and receiving the declaration from their own lips, will refuse to hear the word of the Lord all their lives. TIMOTHEUS. Well, well ; it can not be helped. I see, cousin, my hopes of obtaining a little of your assistance in your own pleasant way are disappointed : but it is* something to have conceived a better hope of saving your soul, from your readiness to acknowledge your belief in miracles. LUCIAN. Miracles have existed in all ages and in all religions. "Wit- nesses to some of them have been numerous; to others of them fewer. Occasionally the witnesses have been disinterested in the result. TIMOTHEUS. Now indeed you speak truly and wisely. LUCIAN. But sometimes the most honest and the most quiescent have either been unable or unwilling to push themselves so forward as to see clearly and distinctly the whole of the operation • and have listened to some knave who felt a pleasure in deluding their credulity, or some other who himself was either an enthusiast or a dupe. It also may have happened in the ancient religions, of Egypt for instance, or of India., or even of Greece, that narratives have been attributed to authors who never heard of them ; and have been circulated by honest men who firmly believed them ; by half- honest, who indulged their vanity in becoming members of a novel and bustling society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having no 336 LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. other means of rising above the shoulders of the vulgar, threw dust into their eyes and made them stoop. TIMOTHEUS. Ha ! the rogues ! It is nearly all over with them. LUCIAN. Let us hope so. Parthenius and the Roman poet Ovidius Naso, have related the transformations of sundry men, women, and gods. TIMOTHEUS. Idleness ! Idleness ! I never read such lying authors. LUCIAN. I myself have seen enough to incline me toward a belief in them. TIMOTHEUS. You ? "Why ! you have always been thought an utter infidel ; and now you are running, hot and heedless as any mad dog, to the opposite extreme ! LUCIAN. I have lived to see, not indeed one man, but certainly one animal turned into another : nay, great numbers. I have seen sheep with the most placid faces in the morning, one nibbling the tender herb with all its dew upon it ; another, negligent of its own sustenance, and giving it copiously to the tottering lamb aside it. TIMOTHEUS. How pretty ! half-poetical ! LUCIAN. In the heat of the day I saw the very same sheep tearing off each other's fleeces with long teeth and longer claws, and imitating so admirably the howl of wolves, that at last the wolves came down on them in a body, and lent their best assistance at the general devouring. What is more remarkable, the people of the villages seemed to enjoy the sport; and, instead of attacking the wolves, waited until they had filled their stomachs, ate the little that was left, said piously and from the bottom of their hearts what you call grace, and went home singing and piping. MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 337 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. HANNIBAL. Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster ? Marcellus ! ho ! Marcellus ! He moves not . . he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers ? Stand wide, soldiers . . wide, forty paces . . give him air . . bring water . . halt ! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the brushwood . . unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first . . his breast rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me . . they have rolled back again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder ? This horse ? It was surely the horse of Marcellus ! Let no man mount him. Ha ! ha ! the Romans too sink into luxury : here is gold about the charger. GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. Execrable thief ! The golden chain of our king under a beast's grinders ! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the impure . . . HANNIBAL. We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome, and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is . . . The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me . . . Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome . . . Marcellus, who stood alone between us, fallen. Brave man ! I would rejoice and can not . . . How awfully serene a countenance ! Such as we hear are in the ilands of the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature ! Such too was theirs ! They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood . . few other enter there. And what plain armour ! GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. My party slew him . . indeed I think I slew him myself. I claim the chain : it belongs to my king : the "glory of Gaul requires it. Never will she endure to see another take k it : rather would she lose her last man. We swear ! we swear ! & 338 MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. HANNIBAL. My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple, he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The shield he battered down, the breast-plate he pierced with his sword, these he showed to the people and to the gods ; hardly his wife and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it. GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. Hear me, Hannibal ! HANNIBAL. What ! when Marcellus lies before me ? when his life may perhaps be recalled ? when I may lead him in triumph to Carthage ? when Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me ? Content thee ! I will give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such. GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. Tor myself ? HANNIBAL. For thyself. GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. And these rubies and emeralds and that scarlet . . HANNIBAL. Yes, yes. GAULISH CHIEFTAIN. glorious Hannibal ! unconquerable hero ! my happy country ! to have such an ally and defender. I swear eternal gratitude . . yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity. HANNIBAL. In all treaties we fix the time : I could hardly ask a longer. Go back to thy station . . I would see what the surgeon is about, and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus ! the triumph of Hannibal ! what else has the world in it ? only Rome and Carthage : these follow. SURGEON. Hardly an hour of life is left. MARCELLUS. 1 must die then ! The gods be praised ! The commander of a Roman army is no captive. MJLRCELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 339 HANNIBAL (TO THE SURGEON). Coiild not he bear a sea-voyage ? Extract the arrow. SURGEON. He expires that moment. MARCELLUS. It pains me : extract it. HANNIBAL. Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your countenance and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemv in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no captive. (To the Surgeon) Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal pain ? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is there nothing to alleviate and allay it ? MAECELLUS. Hannibal, give me thy hand . . thou hast found it and brought it me, compassion. (To the Surgeon.) Go, friend; others want thy aid ; several fell around me. HANNIBAL. Becomrnend to your country, Marcellus, while time permits it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing the Senate of my superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet is ready : let me take off this ring . . try to write, to sign it at least. ! what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and even to smile ! MARCELLUS. Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would Minos say to me, "Marcellus, is this thy writing?" Borne loses one man : she hath lost many such, and she stil hath many left. HANNIBAL. Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this ? I confess in shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately too the nearer posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Xumidians are so in revenge ; the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other, learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the common z 2 340 MAECELLTJS AND HANNIBAL. good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of their country, after so long an absence. MARCELLUS. Hannibal, thou art not dying. HANNIBAL. What then ? What mean you ? MARCELLUS. That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet to apprehend : I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to me : mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a general ; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation ? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole fault, less plenary than thy adversary's ? I have spoken too much : let me rest : thij mantle oppresses me. HANNIBAL. I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under, and then replace the ring. MARCELLUS. Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation of the most helpless ! Let that ring and the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy prosperous (heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other country) it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then the most conscious that it may befall us. MAECELLUS AND HANNIBAL. 341 There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either. HANNIBAL. What ? MARCELLUS. This body. HANNIBAL. Whither would you be lifted ? Men are ready. MARCELLUS. I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other senses are in confusion. I would have said, This body, when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice than of mine ; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety of my family. HANNIBAL. You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not visible til now. MARCELLCJS. Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes. HANNIBAL. Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the conquered fly together. MARCELLUS. Hast thou any prisoners from my escort ? HANNIBAL. A few dying lie about . . and let them lie . . they are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but . one brave man among them . . he appeared a Roman . . a youth who turried back, though wounded. They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with lordly ease. Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your thoughts ? MARCELLUS. I have suppressed it long enough. My son . . my beloved son ! 342 P. SCIFIO JEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. HANNIBAL. Where is he ? Can it be ? Was he with you ? MARCELLUS. He would have shared my fate . . and has not. Gods of my country ! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpass- ingly beneficent, I render you, for the last time, thanks. P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^ETIUS. SCIPIO. Polybius, if you have found me slow in rising to you, if I lifted not up my eyes to salute you on your entrance, do not hold me ungrateful . . proud there is no danger that you will ever call me : this day of all days would least make me so : it shows me the power of the immortal gods, the mutability of fortune, the instability of empire, the feebleness, the nothing- ness of man. The earth stands motionless ; the grass upon it bends and returns, the same to-day as yesterday, the same in this age as in a hundred past : the sky darkens and is serene again; the clouds melt away, but they are clouds another time, and float like triumphal pageants along the heavens. Carthage is fallen ! to rise no more ! the funereal horns have this hour announced to us, that, after eighteen days and eighteen nights of conflagration, her last embers are extinguished. POLYBIUS. Perhaps, iEmilianus, I ought not to have come in. SCIPIO. Welcome, my friend. POLYBIUS. While you were speaking I would by no means interrupt you so idly, as to ask you to whom you have been proud, or to whom could you be ungrateful. SCIPIO. To him, if to any, whose hand is in mine ; to him on whose shoulder I rest my head, weary with presages and vigils. Collect my thoughts for me, my friend ! the fall of Carthage p. scipio tEmilianus, polybius, panotitis. 343 hath shaken and scattered them. There are moments when, if we are quite contented with ourselves, we never can remount to what we were before. POLYBIUS. Pansetius is absent. SCIPIO. Feeling the necessity, at the moment, of utter loneliness, I despatched him toward the city. There may be (yes ; even there) some sufferings which the senate would not censure us for assuaging. But behold he returns ! We were speaking of you, Pansetius ! PAN2ETIUS. And about what beside ? Come, honestly tell me, Polybius, on what are you reflecting and meditating with such sedately intense enthusiasm ? POLTBIUS. After the burning of some village, or the overleaping of some garden-wall, to exterminate a few pirates or highwaymen, I have seen the commander's tent thronged with officers ; I have heard as many trumpets around him as would have shaken down the places of themselves • I have seen the horses start from the pretorium, as if they would fly from under their trappings, and spurred as if they were to reach the east and west before sunset, that nations might hear of the exploit, and sleep soundly. And now do I behold in solitude, almost in gloom, and in such silence that, unless my voice prevents it, the grasshopper is audible, him who has levelled to the earth the strongest and most populous of cities, the wealthiest and most formidable of empires. I had seen Rome ; I had seen (what those who never saw never will see) Carthage ; I thought I had seen Scipio : it was but the image of him : here I find him. SCIPIO. There are many hearts that ache this day : there are many that never will ache more : hath one man done it ? one man's breath ? What air, upon the earth, or upon the waters, or in the void of heaven, is lost so quickly ! it flies away at the point of an arrow, and returns no more ! the sea-foam stifles it ! the tooth of a reptile stops it ! a noxious leaf suppresses it. What are we in our greatness ? whence rises it ? whither tends it ? Merciful gods ! may not Some be what Carthage is ? may 344 P. SCIPIO ^MILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. not those who love her devotedly, those who will look on her with fondness and affection after life, see her in such condition as to wish she were so ? POLTBIUS. One of the heaviest groans over fallen Carthage, burst from the breast of Scipio : who would believe this tale ? Men like my Polybius : others must never hear it. POLTBIUS. You have not ridden forth, JEmilianus, to survey the ruins. SCIPIO. No, Polybius : since I removed my tent to avoid the heat from the conflagration, I never have ridden nor walked nor looked toward them. At this elevation, and three miles off, the temperature of the season is altered. I do not believe, as those about me would have persuaded me, that the gods were visible in the clouds ; that thrones of ebony and gold were scattered in all directions ; that broken chariots and flaming steeds, and brazen bridges, had cast their fragments upon the earth ; that eagles and lions, dolphins and tridents, and other emblems of power and empire, were visible at one moment, and at the next had vanished ; that purple and scarlet overspread the mansions of the gods • that their voices were heard at first confusedly and discordantly; and that the apparition closed with their high festivals. I could not keep my eyes on the heavens : a crash of arch or of theater or of tower, a column of flame rising higher than they were, or a universal cry, as if none until then had perished, drew them thitherward. Such were the dismal sights and sounds, a fresh city seemed to have been taken every hour, for seventeen days. This is the nineteenth since the smoke arose from the level roofs and from the lofty temples, and thousands died, and tens of thousands ran in search of death. Calamity moves me; heroism moves me more. That a nation whose avarice we have so often reprehended, should have cast into the furnace gold and silver, from the insufficiency of brass and iron for arms ; that palaces the most magnificent should have been demolished by the proprietor for their beams and rafters, in order to build a fleet against us ; that the ropes whereby the slaves hauled them down to the new harbour, P. SCIPIO iEMIUANTJS, POLYBIUS, PA>\ETIUS. 315 should in part be composed of hair, for one lock of which kings would have laid down their diadems; that Asdrubal should have found equals, his wife none . . my mind ; my very limbs, are unsteddy with admiration. Liberty ! what art thou to the valiant and brave, when thou art thus to the weak and timid ! dearer than life, stronger than death, higher than purest love. Never will I call upon thee where thy name can be profaned, and never shall my soul acknowledge a more exalted Power than thee. PASJBHUS. The Carthaginians and Moors have, beyond other nations, a delicate feeling on female chastity. Rather than that their women should become slaves and concubines, they slay them : is it certain that Asdrubal did not observe, or cause to be observed, the custom of his country ? PGLYBirS. Certain : on the surrender of his army his wife threw herself and her two infants into the flames. Xot only memorable acts, of what the dastardly will call desperation, were performed, but some also of deliberate and signal justice. Avaricious as we called the people, and unjustly, as you have proved, JEmilianus, I will relate what I myself was witness to. In a part of the city where the fire had subsided, we were excited by loud cries, rather of indignation, we thought, than of such as fear or lament or threaten or exhort ; and we pressed forward to disperse the multitude. Our 1 horses often plunged in the soft dust, and in the holes whence the pavement had been removed for missiles, and often reared up and snorted violently at smells which we could not perceive, but which we discovered to rise from bodies, mutilated and half-burnt, of soldiers and horses, laid bare, some partly, some wholly, by the march of the troop. Although the distance from the place whence we parted to that where we heard the cries, was very short, yet from the incum- brances in that street, and from the dust and smoke issuing out of others, it was some time before we reached it. On our near approach, two old men threw themselves on the ground before us, and the elder spake thus. " Our age, Bonians, neither will nor ought to be our protection : we are, or rather we have been, judges of this land ; and to the utter- 346 P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANiETIUS. most of our power we have invited our countrymen to resist you. The laws are now yours." The expectation of the people was intense and silent : we had heard some groans ; and now the last words of the old man were taken up by others, by men in agony. " Yes, Romans ! w said the elder who accompanied him that hajl addressed us, " the laws are yours ; and none punish more severely than you do treason and parricide. Let your horses turn this corner, and you will see before you traitors and parricides." We entered a small square : it had been a market-place : the roofs of the stalls were demolished, and the stones of several columns, (thrown down to extract the cramps of iron and the lead that fastened them) served for the spectators, male and female, to mount on. Five men were nailed on crosses ; two others were nailed against a wall, from scarcity (as we were told) of wood. " Can seven men have murdered their parents in the same year ? " cried I. " No, nor has any of the seven," replied the first who had spoken. " But when heavy impositions were laid upon those who were backward in voluntary contributions, these men, among the richest in our city, protested by the gods that they had no gold or silver left. They protested truly." " And they die for this ! inhuman, insatiable, inexorable wretch ! " " Their books," added he, unmoved at my reproaches, " were seized by public authority and examined. It was discovered that, instead of employing their riches in external or internal commerce, or in manufactories, or in agriculture, instead of reserving it for the embellishment of the city, or the utility of the citizens, instead of lending it on interest to the industrious and the needy, they had lent it to foren kings and tyrants, some of whom were waging unjust wars by these very means, and others were enslaving their own country. For so hainous a crime the laws had appointed no specific punishment. On such occasions the people and elders vote in what manner the delinquent shall be prosecuted, lest any offender should escape with impunity, from their humanity or improvidence. Some voted that these wretches should be cast amid the panthers ; the majority decreed them (I think wisely) a more lingering and more ignominious death." P. SCIPIO vEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN/ETIUS. 347 The men upon the crosses held down their heads, whether from shame or pain or feebleness. The sunbeams were striking *them fiercely ; sweat ran from them, liquefying the blood that had blackened and hardened on their hands and feet. A soldier stood by the side of each, lowering the point of his spear to the ground; but no one of them gave it up to us. A centu- rion asked the nearest of them how he dared to stan(J armed before him. " Because the city is in ruins, and the laws stil live/' said he. "At the first order of the conqueror or the .elders, I surrender my spear." " What is your pleasure, commander ? " said the elder. €s That an act of justice be the last public act performed by the citizens of Carthage, and that the sufferings of these wretches be not abridged." Such w r as my reply. The soldiers piled their spears, for the points of which the hearts of the crucified men thirsted • and the people hailed us as they would have hailed deliverers. SCIPIO. It is wonderful that a city, in which private men are so wealthy as to furnish the armories of tyrants, should have existed so long, and flourishing in power and freedom. PANJ3TIUS. It survived but shortly this flagrant crime in its richer citizens. An admirable form of government, spacious and safe harbours, a fertile soil, a healthy climate, industry and science in agriculture, in which no nation is equal to the Moorish, were the causes of its prosperity: there are many of its decline. SCIPIO. Enumerate them, Pansetius, with your wonted clearness. PANOTITIS. We are fond, my friends ! of likening power and great- ness to the luminaries of heaven; and we think ourselves quite moderate when we compare the agitations of elevated souls to whatever is highest and strongest on the earth, liable alike to shocks and sufferings, and able alike to survive and overcome them. And truly thus to reason, as if all things around and above us sympathized, is good both for heart and intellect. I have little or nothing of the poetical in my 348 F. SCIPIO JEMILIAXUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. character; and yet from reading over and considering these similitudes, I am fain to look upon nations with somewhat of the same feeling; and, dropping from the mountains and disentangling myself from the woods and forests, to fancy I see in states what I have seen in cornfields. The green blades rise up vigorously in an inclement season, and the wind itself makes them shine against the sun. There is room enough for all of them : none wounds another by collision or weakens by overtopping it; but, rising and bending simultaneously, they seem equally and mutually supported. No sooner do the ears of corn upon them He close together in their full maturity, than a slight inundation is enough to cast them down, or a faint blast of wind to shed and scatter them. In Carthage we have seen the powerful families, however discordant among themselves, unite against the popular ; and it was only when their lives were at stake that the people co-operated with the senate. A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy can not stand. What people will endure the supremacy of those, uneducated and presumptuous, from whom they buy their mats and faggots, and who receive their money for the most ordinary and vile utensils ? If no con- queror enslaves them from abroad, they would, under such disgrace, welcome as their deliverer, and acknowledge as their master, the citizen most distinguished for his military achieve- ments. The rich men who were crucified in the weltering wilderness beneath us, would not have employed such criminal means of growing richer, had they never been persuaded to the contrary, and that enormous wealth would enable them to commit another and a more flagitious act of treason against their country, in raising them above the people, and enabling them to become its taxers and oppressors. iEmilianus ! what a costly beacon here hath Borne before her in this awful conflagration : the greatest (I hope) ever to be, until that wherein the world must perish. POLYBIUS. How many Sibylline books are legible in yonder embers ! The causes, Panaetius, which you have stated, of Carthage's former most flourishing condition, are also those why a hostile senate hath seen the necessity of her destruction, necessary not only to the dominion, but to the security, of Rome. Italy has P. SCIPIO jEMILIAXUS, POLYBIUS, PAX/ETIUS. 349 the fewest and the worst harbours of any country known to us : a third of her soil is sterile, a third of the remainder is pestiferous : and her inhabitants are more addicted to war and rapine than to industry and commerce. To make room for her few merchants on the Adriatic and Ionian seas, she burns Corinth : to leave no rival in traffic or in power, she burns Carthage. PA^uETIUS. If the Carthaginians had extended their laws and language over the surrounding states of Africa, which they might have done by moderation and equity, this ruin could not have been effected. Rome has been victorious by having been the first to adopt a liberal policy, which even in war itself is a wise one. The parricides who lent their money to the petty tyrants of other countries, would have found it greatly more advantageous to employ it in cultivation nearer home, and in feeding those as husbandmen whom else they must fear as enemies. So little is the Carthaginian language known, that I doubt whether we shall in our lifetime see anyone translate their annals into Latin or Greek : and within these few days what treasures of antiquity have been irreparably lost ! The Romans will repose at citrean* tables for ages, and never know at last perhaps whence the Carthaginians brought their wood. SCIPIO. It is an awful thing to close as we have done the history of a people. If the intelligence brought this morning to Polybius be true, f in one year the two most flourishing and most beautiful cities in the world have perished, in comparison with which our Rome presents but the pent-houses of artizans or the sheds of shepherds. With whatever celerity the messenger fled from Corinth and arrived here, the particulars must have been known at Rome as early, and I shall receive them ere many days are past. * The troths citrea is not citron wood as we understand the fruit tree. It was often of great dimensions : it appears from the description of its colour to have been mahogany. The trade to the Atlantic continent and ilands must have been possessed by a company, bound to secrecy by oath aud interest. The prodigious price of this wood at Rome proves that it had ceased to be imported, or perhaps found, in the time of Cicero. f Corinth in fact was not burnt until some months after Carthage ; but as one success is always followed by the rumour of another, the relation is not improbable. 350 P. SCIPIO jEMILIANUS, polybius, panotitis. PANiETIUS. I hardly know whether we are not less affected at the occurrence of two or three momentous and terrible events, than at one ; and whether the gods do not usually place them together in the order of things, that we may be awe-stricken by the former, and reconciled to their decrees by the latter, from an impression of their power. I know not what Babylon may have been \ but I presume that, as in the case of all other great Asiatic capitals, the habitations of the people (who are slaves) were wretched, and that the magnificence of the place consisted in the property of the king and priesthood, and in the walls erected for the defence of it. Many streets probably were hardly worth a little bronze cow of Myron, such as a stripling could steal and carry off. The case of Corinth and of Carthage was very different. Wealth overspread the greater part of them, competence and content the whole. "Wherever there are despotical governments, poverty and industry dwell together ; Shame dogs them in the public walks • Humiliation is among their household gods. SCIPIO. I do not remember the overthrow of any two other great cities within so short an interval. PAN^TIUS. I was not thinking so much of cities or their inhabitants, when I began to speak of what a breath of the gods removes at once from earth. I was recollecting, iEmilianus, that in one Olympiad the three greatest men that ever appeared together were swept off. What is Babylon, or Corinth, or Carthage, in comparison with these ! what would their destruc- tion be, if every hair on the head of every inhabitant had become a man, such as most men are ! First in order of removal was he whose steps you have followed, and whose labours you have completed, Africanus : then Philopcemen, whose task was more difficult, more complex, more perfect : and lastly Hannibal. What he was you know better than any. SCIPIO. Had he been supported by his country, had only his losses been filled up, and skilful engineers sent out to him with machinery and implements for sieges, we should not be dis- coursing here on what he was : the Eoman name had been extinguished. P. SCIPIO .EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 351 POLYBIUS. Since iEmilianus is as unwilling to blame an enemy as a friend, I take it on myself to censure Hannibal for two things, subject however to the decision of him who has conquered Carthage. SCIPIO. The first I anticipate : now what is the second ? I would hear both stated and discoursed on, although the knowledge will be of little use to me. POLYBIUS. I condemn, as every one does, his inaction after the battle of Cannse ; and, in his last engagement with Africanus, I condemn no less his bringing into the front of the center, as became some showy tetrarch rather than Hannibal, his eighty elephants, by the refractoriness of which he lost the battle. SCIPIO. What would you have done with them, Polybius ? POLTBIUS. Scipio, I think it unwise and unmilitary to employ any force on which we can by no means calculate. Gravely said and worthy of Polybius. In the first book of your history, which leaves me no other wish or desire than that you should continue as you begin it, we have, in three different engagements, three different effects produced by the employment of elephants. The first, when our soldiers in Sicily, under Lucius Postumius and Quinctus Mamilius, drove the Carthaginians into Heraclea ; in which battle the advanced guard of the ememy, being repulsed, propelled these animals before it upon the main body of the army, causing an irrepar- able disaster : the second, in the ill-conducted engagement of Atilius Regulus, who, fearing the shock of them, condensed his center, and was outflanked. He should have opened the lines to them and have suffered them to pass through, as the enemy's cavalry was in the wings, and the infantry not enough in advance to profit by such an evolution. The third was evinced at Panormus, when Metellus gave orders to the light-armed troops to harass them and retreat into the trenches, from which, 352 P. SCIPIO JULIAN US, POLYBIUS, PANiETIUS. wounded and confounded, and finding no way open, they rushed back (as many as could) against the Carthaginian army, and accelerated its discomfiture. POLYBIUS. If I had employed the elephants at all, it should rather have been in the rear or on the flank ; and even there not at the beginning of the engagement, unless I knew that the horses or the soldiers were unused to encounter them. Hannibal must have well remembered (being equally great in memory and invention) that the Eomans had been accustomed to them in the war with Pyrrhus, and must have expected more service from them against the barbarians of the two Gauls, against the Insubres and Taurini, than against our legions. He knew that the Eomans had on more than one occasion made them detrimental to their masters. Having with him a large body of troops collected by force from various nations, and kept together with difficulty, he should have placed the elephants where they would have been a terror to these soldiers, not without a threat that they were to trample down such of them as attempted to fly or declined to fight. SCIPIO. Now, what think you, Pansetius ? PANOTITIS. It is well, iEmilianus, when soldiers would be philoso- phers ; but it is ill when philosophers would be soldiers. Do you and Polybius agree on the point ? if you do, the question need be asked of none other. SCIPIO. Truly, Pansetius, I would rather hear the thing from him than that Hannibal should have heard it : for a wise man will say many things which even a wiser may not have thought of. Let me tell you both however, what Polybius may perhaps know already, that combustibles were placed by Africanus both in flank and rear, at equal distances, with archers from among the light horsemen, whose arrows had liquid fire attached to them, and whose movements would have irritated, distracted, and wearied down the elephants, even if the wounds and scorchings had been ineffectual. But come, Polybius, you must talk now as others talk; we all do sometimes. POLYBIUS. I am the last to admit the authority of the vulgar ; but here P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANiETIUS. 353 we all meet and unite. Without asserting or believing that the general opinion is of any weight against a captain like Hannibal ; agreeing on the contrary with Pansetius, and firmly persuaded that myriads of little men can no more compensate a great one than they can make him ; you will listen to me if I adduce the authority of Lselius. SCIPIO. Great authority ! and perhaps, as living and conversing with those who remembered the action of Cannse, preferable even to your own. POLYBIUS. It was his opinion that, from the consternation of Rome, the city might have been taken. SCIPIO. It suited not the wisdom or the experience of Hannibal to rely on the consternation of the Roman people. I too, that we may be on equal terms, have some authority to bring forward. The son of Africanus, he who adopted me into the family of the Scipios, was, as you both remember, a man of delicate health and sedentary habits, learned, elegant, and retired. He related to me, as having heard it from Ms father, that Hannibal after the battle sent home the rings of the Roman knights, and said in his letter, " If you will instantly give me a soldier for each ring, together with such machines as are already in the arsenal, I will replace them surmounted by the statue of Capitoline Jupiter, and our supplications to the gods of our country shall be made along the streets and in the temples, on the robes of the Roman senate." Could he doubt of so moderate a supply ? he waited for it in vain. And now I will relate to you another thing, which I am persuaded you will accept as a sufficient reason of itself why Hannibal did not besiege our city after the battle of Cannse. His own loss was so severe, that, in his whole army, he could not muster ten thousand men.* But, my friends, as I am certain that neither of you will ever think me invidious, and as the greatness of Hannibal does not diminish the reputation of Africanus, but augment it, I will venture to remark that he had little skill or practice in sieges; that, after the battle of Thrasymene, he attacked (you * Plutarch says, and undoubtedly upon some ancient authority, that both armies did not contain that number. 354 p. scipio jemilianus, polybius, panotitis. remember) Spoletum unsuccessfully ; and that, a short time before the unhappy day at Cannae, a much smaller town than Spoletum had resisted and repulsed him. Perhaps he rejoiced in his heart that he was not supplied with materials requisite for the capture of strong places; since in Rome, he well knew, he would have found a body of men, partly citizens who had formerly borne arms, partly the wealthier of our allies who had taken refuge there, together with their slaves and clients, exceeding his army in number, not inferior in valour, com- pensating the want of generalship by the advantage of position and by the desperation of their fortunes, and possessing the abundant means of a vigorous and long defence. Unnecessary is it to speak of its duration. When a garrison can hold our city six months, or even less, the besieger must retire. Such is the humidity of the air in its vicinity, that the Carthaginians, who enjoyed here at home a very dry and salubrious climate, would have perished utterly. The Gauls, I imagine, left us unconquered on a former occasion from the same necessity. Beside, they are impatient of inaction, and would have been most so under a general to whom, without any cause in common, they were but hired auxiliaries. None in any age hath performed such wonderful exploits as Hannibal; and we ought not to censure him for deficiency in an art which we ourselves have acquired but lately. Is there, Polybius, any proof or record that Alexander of Macedon was master of it ? POLYBIUS. I have found none. "We know that he exposed his person, and had nearly lost his life, by leaping from the walls of a city; which a commander-in-chief ought never to do, unless he would rather hear the huzzas of children, than the appro- bation of military men, or any men of discretion or sense. Alexander was without an excuse for his temerity, since he was attended by the generals who had taken Thebes, and who therefor, he might well know, would take the weaker and less bravely defended towns of Asia. SCIPIO. Here again you must observe the superiority of Hannibal. He was accompanied by no general of extraordinary talents, resolute as were many of them, and indeed all. His irruption into and through Gaul, with so inconsiderable a force; his formation of allies out of enemies, in so brief a space of time ; P. SCIPIO jEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS. 355 and then his holding them together so long; are such miracles, that, cutting through eternal snows, and marching through paths which seem to us suspended loosely and hardly poised in the heavens, are less. And these too were his device and work. Drawing of parallels, captain against captain, is the occupation of a trifling and scholastic mind, and seldom is com- menced, and never conducted, impartially. Yet, my friends, who of these idlers in parallelograms is so idle, as to compare the invasion of Persia with the invasion of Gaul, the Alps, and Italy; Moors and Carthaginians with Macedonians and Greeks ; Darius and his hordes and satraps with Roman legions under Eoman consuls ? While Hannibal lived, Polybius and Pansetius ! although Iris city lay before us smouldering in its ashes, ours would be ever insecure. PANOTITIS. You said, Scipio, that the Romans had learnt but recently the business of sieges ; and yet many cities in Italy appear to me very strong, which your armies took long ago. SCIPIO. By force and patience. If Pyrrhus had never invaded us, we should scarcely have excelled the Carthaginians, or even the Ts T omades, in castrametation, and have been inferior to both in cavalry. Whatever we know, we have learned from your country, whether it be useful in peace or war . . I say your country ; for the Macedonians were instructed by the Greeks. The father of Alexander, the first of his family who was not as barbarous and ignorant as a Carian or Armenian slave, received his rudiments in the house of Epaminondas. PAKfflHUS. Permit me now to return, Scipio, to a question not unconnected with philosophy. "Whether it was prudent or not in Hannibal to invest the city of Rome after his victory, he might somewhere have employed his army, where it should not waste away with luxury. SCIPIO. Philosophers, Pansetius, seem to know more about luxury than we military men do. I can not say upon what their apprehensions of it are founded, but certainly they sadly fear it. A A 2 356 P. SCIPIO J1MILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANiETIUS. POLTBIUS. For us. I wish I could as easily make you smile to-day, .zEmilianus, as I shall our good-tempered and liberal Pansetius ; a philosopher, as we have experienced, less inclined to speak ill or ludicrously of others, be the sect what it may, than any I know or have heard of. In my early days, one of a different kind, and whose alarms at luxury were (as we discovered) subdued in some degree, in some places, was invited by Critolaus to dine with a party of us, all then young officers, on our march from Achaia into Elis. His florid and open countenance made his company very acceptable : and the more so, as we were informed by Critolaus that he never was importunate with his morality at dinner-time. Philosophers, if they deserve the name, are by no means indifferent as to the places in which it is their intention to sow the seeds of virtue. They choose the ingenuous, the modest, the sensible, the obedient. We thought rather of where we should place our table. Behind us lay the forest of Pholoe, with its many glens opening to the plain : before us the Temple of Olympian Zeus, indistinctly discernible, leaned against the azure heavens : and the rivulet of Selinus ran a few stadions from us, seen only where it received a smaller streamlet, originating at a fountain close by. The cistus, the pomegranate, the myrtle, the serpolet, bloomed over our heads and beside us ; for we had chosen a platform where a projecting rock, formerly a stone-quarry, shaded us, and where a little rill, of which the spring was there, bedimmed our goblets with the purest water. The awnings we had brought with us to protect us from the sun, were unnecessary for that purpose : we rolled them therefor into two long seats, filling them with moss, which grew pro- fusely a few paces below. u When our guest arrives," said Critolaus, u every one of these flowers will serve him for some moral illustration ; every shrub will be the rod of Mercury in his hands." We were impatient for the time of his coming. Thelymnia, the beloved of Critolaus, had been instructed by him in a stratagem, to subvert, or shake at least and stagger, the philosophy of Euthymedes. Has the name escaped me ! no matter . . perhaps he is dead . . if living, he would smile at a recoverable lapse as easily as we did. Thelymnia wore a dress like ours, and acceded to every P. SCIPIO ^EMILIAXUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 357 advice of Critolaus, excepting that she would not consent so readily to entwine her head with ivy. At first she objected that there was not enough of it for all. Instantly two or three of us pulled down (for nothing is more brittle) a vast quantity from the rock, which loosened some stones, and brought down together with them a bird's nest of the last year. Then she said, H I dare not use tins ivy : the omen is a bad one." €t Do you mean the nest, Thelymnia ? " said Critolaus. u No, not the nest so much as the stones," replied she, faltering. " Ah ! those signify the dogmas of Euthymedes, which you, my lovely Thelymnia, are to loosen and throw down." At this she smiled faintly and briefly, and began to break off some of the more glossy leaves ; and we who stood around her were ready to take them and place them in her hair ; when suddenly she held them tighter, and let her hand drop. On her lover's asking her why she hesitated, she blushed deeply, and said, "Phoroneus told me I look best in myrtle." Innocent and simple and most sweet (I remember) was her voice, and, when she had spoken, the traces of it were remaining on her lips. Her beautiful throat itself changed colour ; it seemed to undulate ; and the roseate predominated in its pearly hue. Phoroneus had been her admirer : she gave the preference to Critolaus : yet the name of Phoroneus at that moment had greater effect upon him than the recollection of his defeat. Thelymnia recovered herself sooner. We ran wherever we saw myrtles, and there were many about, and she took a part of her coronal from every one of us, smiling on each ; but it was only of Critolaus that she asked if he thought that myrtle became her best. "Phoroneus," answered he, not without melancholy, "is infallible as Paris." There was something in the tint of the tender sprays resembling that of the hair they encircled : the blossoms too were white as her forehead. She reminded me of those ancient fables which represent the favorites of the gods as turning into plants ; so accordant and identified was her beauty with the flowers and foliage she had chosen to adorn it. In the midst of our felicitations to her we heard the approach of horses, for the ground was dry and solid ; and Euthymedes was presently with us. The mounted slave who led oif his master's charger, for such he appeared to be in all 358 P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. points, suddenly disappeared; I presume lest the sight of luxury should corrupt him, I know not where the groom rested, nor where the two animals (no neglected ones certainly, for they were plump and stately) found provender. Euthymedes was of lofty stature, had somewhat passed the middle age, but the Graces had not left his person, as they usually do when it begins to bear an impression of authority. He was placed by the side of Thelymnia. Gladness and expectation sparkled from every eye : the beauty of Thelymnia seemed to be a light sent from heaven for the festival ; a light the pure radiance of which cheered and replenished the whole heart. Desire of her w r as chastened, I may rather say was removed, by the confidence of Critolaus in our friendship. PAN^TIUS. Well said ! The story begins to please and interest me. Where love finds the soul he neglects the body, and only turns to it in his idleness as to an afterthought. Its best allurements are but the nuts and figs of the divine repast. POLTBIUS. We exulted in the felicity of our friend, and wished for nothing which even he would not have granted. Happy was the man from whom the glancing eye of Thelymnia seemed to ask some advice, how she should act or answer : happy he who, offering her an apple in the midst of her discourse, fixed his keen survey upon the next, anxious to mark where she had touched it. For it was a calamity to doubt upon what streak or speck, while she was inattentive to the basket, she had placed her finger. PAN.ETIUS. I wish, iEmilianus, you would look rather more severely than you do . . upon my life ! I can not . . and put an end to these dithyrambics. The ivy runs about usy and may infuriate us. SCIPIO. The dithyrambics, I do assure you, Pansetius, are not of my composing. We are both in danger from the same thyrsus : we will parry it as well as we can, or bend our heads before it. PANJETIUS. Come, Polybius, we must follow you then, I see, or fly you. P. SCIPIO MMILULNUS, polybius, panjetius. 359 POLTBIUS. Would you rather hear the remainder another time ? PAN-ETIUS. By Hercules ! I have more curiosity than becomes me. POLTBIUS. No doubt, in the course of the conversation, Euthymedes had made the discovery we hoped to obviate. Never was his philosophy more amiable or more impressive. Pleasure was treated as a friend, not as a master : many tilings were found innocent that had long been doubtful : excesses alone were condemned. Thelymnia was enchanted by the frankness and liberality of her philosopher, although, in addressing her, more purity on his part and more rigour were discernible. His delicacy was exquisite. TThen his eyes met hers, they did not retire with rapidity and confusion, but softly and compla- cently, and as though it were the proper time and season of reposing from the splendours they had encountered. Hers from the beginning were less governable : when she found that they were so, she contrived scheme after scheme for diverting them from the table, and entertaining his unob- servedly. The higher part of the quarry, which had protected us always from the western sun, was covered with birch and hazel ; the lower with innumerable shrubs, principally the arbutus and myrtle. "Look at those goats above us/' said Thelvmnia. " What has tangled their hair so ? they seem wet." " They have been lying on the cistus in the plain," replied Euthymedes ; " many of its broken flowers are sticking upon them yet, resisting all the efforts, as you see, of hoof and tongue." " How beauteous," said she, " are the flexible and crimson branches of this arbutus," takinsr it in one hand and beating with it the back of the other. " It seems only to have come out of its crevice to pat my shoulder at dinner, and twitch my myrtle when my head leaned back. I wonder how it can grow in such a rock/' " The arbutus," answered he, " clings to the Earth with the most fondness where it finds her in the worst poverty, and covers her bewintered bosom with leaves, berries, and flowers. On the same branch is unripe fruit of the most vivid green ; 360 P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^ETIUS. ripening, of the richest orange; ripened, of perfect scarlet. The maidens of Tyre could never give so brilliant and sweet a lustre to the fleeces of Miletus ; nor did they ever string such even and graceful pearls as the blossoms are, for the brides of Assyrian or Persian kings." "And yet the myrtle is preferred to the arbutus," said Thelymnia, with some slight uneasiness. " I know why," replied he . . " may I tell it ? " She bowed and smiled, perhaps not without the expectation of some compliment. He continued . . " The myrtle has done what the arbutus comes too late for. " The myrtle has covered with her starry crown the beloved of the reaper and vintager : the myrtle was around the head of many a maiden celebrated in song, when the breezes of autumn scattered the first leaves, and rustled among them on the ground, and when she cried timidly, Rise, rise ! people are coming ! here ! there ! many ! " Thelymnia said, " That now is not true. "Where did you hear it ? " and in a softer and lower voice, if I may trust Androcles, " Euthymedes, do not believe it ! " Either he did not hear her, or dissembled it ; and went on . . " This deserves preference ; this deserves immortality ; this deserves a place in the temple of Yenus ; in her hand, in her hair, in her breast : Thelymnia herself wears it." We laughed and applauded : she blushed and looked grave and sighed . . for she had never heard anyone, I imagine, talk so long at once. However it was, she sighed : I saw and heard her. Critolaus gave her some glances : she did not catch them. One of the party clapped his hands longer than the rest, whether in approbation or derision of this rhapsody, delivered with glee and melody, and entreated the philosopher to indulge us with a few of his adventures. ■ c You deserve, young man," said Euthymedes gravely, " to have as few as I have had, you whose idle curiosity would thus intemperately reveal the most sacred mysteries. Poets and philosophers may reason on love, and dream about it, but rarely do they possess the object, and, whenever they do, that object is the invisible deity of a silent worshiper." u Reason then or dream," replied the other, breathing an air of scorn to sooth the soreness of the reproof. " When we reason on love," said Euthymedes, " we often talk as if we were dreaming : let me try whether the recital of P. SCIPIO JEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANiETIUS. 361 my dream can make you think I talk as if I were reasoning. You may call it a dream, a vision, or what you will. " I was in a place not very unlike this, my head lying back against a rock, where its crevices were tufted with soft and odoriferous herbs, and where vine leaves protected my face from the sun, and from the bees, which however were less likely to molest me, being busy in their first hours of honey- making among the blossoms. Sleep soon fell upon me; for of all philosophers I am certainly the drowsiest, though perhaps there are many quite of equal ability in communicating the gift of drowsiness. Presently I saw three figures, two of which were beautiful, very differently, but in the same degree : the other was much less so. The least of the three, at the first glance, I recognised to be Love, although I saw no wings, nor arrows, nor quiver, nor torch, nor emblem of any kind designating his attributes. The next was not Yenus, nor a Grace, nor a Nymph, nor Goddess of whom in worship or meditation I had ever conceived an idea ; and yet my heart persuaded me she was a Goddess, and from the manner in which she spoke to Love, and he again to her, I was convinced she must be. Quietly and unmovedly as she was standing, her figure I perceived was adapted to the perfection of activity. With all the succulence and suppleness of early youth, scarcely beyond puberty, it however gave me the idea, from its graceful and easy languor, of its being possessed by a fondness for repose. Her eyes were large and serene, and of a quality to exhibit the intensity of thought, or even the habitude of reflection, but incapable of expressing the plenitude of joy; and her countenance was tinged with so delicate a colour, that it appeared an effluence from an irradiated cloud, passing over it in the heavens. The third figure, who sometimes stood in one place and sometimes in another, and of whose countenance I could only distinguish that it was pale, anxious, and mis- trustful, interrupted her perpetually. I listened attentively and with curiosity to the conversation, and by degrees I caught the appellations they interchanged. The one I found was Hope ; and I wondered I did not find it out sooner : the other was Eear ; which I should not have found out at all ; for she did not look terrible nor aghast, but more like Sorrow or Despondency. The first words I could collect of Hope were these, spoken very mildly, and rather with a look of appeal than of accusation. c Too surely you have forgotten, 3G2 P. SCIPIO JEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS. for never was child more forgetful or more ungrateful, how many times I have carried you in my bosom, when even your mother drove you from her, and when you could find no other resting-place in heaven or earth/ " ' O unsteddy unruly Love ! ' cried the pale goddess with much energy, ' it has often been by my intervention that thy wavering authority w T as fixed. For this I have thrown alarm after alarm into the heedless breast that Hope had once beguiled, and that was growing insensible and torpid under her feebler influence. I do not upbraid thee ; and it never was my nature to caress thee; but I claim from thee my portion of the human heart, mine, ever mine, abhorrent as it may be of me. Let Hope stand on one side of thy altars, but let my place be on the other ; or, I swear by all the gods ! not any altars shalt thou possess upon the globe/ €t She ceased . . and Love trembled. He turned his eyes upon Hope, as if in his turn appealing to her. She said, ' It must be so ; it was so from the beginning of the world : only let me never lose you from my sight/ She clasped her hands upon her breast, as she said it, and he looked on her with a smile, and was going up (I thought) to kiss her, when he was recalled, and stopped. " c Where Love is, there will I be also/ said Fear, c and even thou, Hope ! never shalt be beyond my power/ " At these words I saw them both depart. I then looked toward Love : I did not see him go ; but he was gone." The narration being ended, there w T ere some who remarked what very odd things dreams are : but Thelymnia looked almost as if she herself was dreaming ; and Alcimus, who sat opposite, and fancied she was pondering on what the vision could mean, said it appeared to him a thing next to certainty, that it signified how love can not exist without hope or without fear. Euthymedes nodded assent, and assured him that a soothsayer in great repute had given the same interpretation. Upon which the younger friends of Alcimus immediately took the ivy from his forehead, and crowned him with laurel, as being worthy to serve Apollo. But they did it with so much noise and festivity, that, before the operation was completed, he began to suspect they were in jest. Thelymnia had listened to many stories in her lifetime, yet never had she heard one from any man before who had been favored by the deities with a vision. Hope and Love, as her excited imagination P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 363 represented them to her, seemed stil to be with Euthymedes. She thought the tale would have been better without the men- tion of Fear : but perhaps this part was only a dream, all the rest a really true vision. She had many things to ask him : she did not know when, nor exactly what, for she was afraid of putting too hard a question to him in the presence of so many, lest it might abash him if he could not answer it : but she wished to ask him something, anything. She soon did it, not without faltering, and was enchanted by the frankness and liberality of her philosopher. " Did you ever love ?" said she smiling, though not inclined to smile, but doing it to conceal (as in her simplicity she thought it would) her blushes, and looking a little aside, at the only cloud in the heavens, which crossed the moon, as if adorning her for a festival, with a fillet of pale sapphire and interlucent gold. " I thought I did," replied he, lowering his eyes that she might lower hers to rest upon him. "Do then people ever doubt this ?" she asked in wonder, looking full in his face with earnest curiosity. u Alas ! " said he softly, " until a few hours ago, until Thelymnia was placed beside me, until an ungenerous heart exposed the treasure that should have dwelt within it, to the tarnish of a stranger, if that stranger had the baseness to employ the sophistry that was in part expected from him, never should I have known that I had not loved before. TTe may be uncertain if a vase or an image be of the richest metal, until the richest metal be set right against it. Thelymnia ! if I thought it possible at any time hereafter, that you should love me as I love you, I would exert to the uttermost my humble powers of persuasion to avert it." " Oh ! there is no danger/'' said she, disconcerted ; " I did not love anyone : I thought I did, just like you ; but indeed, indeed, Euthymedes, I was equally in an error. Women have dropped into the grave from it, and have declared to the last moment that they never loved : men have sworn they should die with desperation, and have lived merrily, and have dared to run into the peril fifty times. They have hard cold hearts, incommunicative and distrustful/'' " Have I too, Thelymnia ? " gently he expostulated. "No, not you," said she; "you may believe I was not thinking of vou when I was speaking. But the idea does 361 P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, polybius, panotitis. really make me smile and almost laugh, that you should fear me, supposing it possible, if you could suppose any such thing. Love does not kill men, take my word for it." He looked rather in sorrow than in doubt, and answered : " Unpropitious love may not kill us always, may not deprive us at once of what at their festivals the idle and inconsiderate call life ; but, O Thelymnia ! our lives are truly at an end when we are beloved no longer. Existence may be continued, or rather may be renewed, yet the agonies of death and the chilliness of the grave have been passed through ; nor are there Elysian fields, nor the sports that delighted in former times, awaiting us, nor pleasant converse, nor walks with linked hands, nor intermitted songs, nor vengeful kisses for leaving them off abruptly, nor looks that shake us to assure us after- ward, nor that bland inquietude, as gently tremulous as the expansion of buds into blossoms, which hurries us from repose to exercise and from exercise to repose." " ! I have been very near loving ! w sighed Thelymnia. u Where in the world can a philosopher have learned all this about it ! " The beauty of Thelymnia, her blushes, first at the deceit, afterward at the encouragement she received in her replies, and lastly from some other things which we could not penetrate, highly gratified Critolaus. Soon however (for wine always brings back to us our last strong feeling) he thought again of Phoroneus, as young, as handsome, and once (is that the word ?) as dear to her. He saddened at the myrtle on the head of his beloved ; it threw shadows and gloom upon his soul; her smiles, her spirits, her wit, and, above all, her nods of approbation, wounded him. He sighed when she covered her face with her hand; when she disclosed it he sighed again. Every glance of pleasure, every turn of surprise, every move- ment of her body, pained and oppressed him. He cursed in his heart whoever it was who had stuffed that portion of the couch; there was so little moss, thought he, between Thelymnia and Euthymedes. He might have seen Athos part them, and would have murmured stil. The rest of us were in admiration at the facility and grace with which Thelymnia sustained her part, and observing less Critolaus than we did in the commencement, when he acknow- ledged and enjoyed our transports, indifferently and contentedly saw him rise from the table and go away, thinking his P. SCIPIO jEMILIANUS, polybius, panotitis. 365 departure a preconcerted section of the stratagem. He retired, as he told us afterward, into a grot. So totally was his mind abstracted from the entertainment, he left the table athirst, covered as it was with fruit and wine, and abundant as ran beside us the clearest and sw r eetest and most refreshing rill. He related to me that, at the extremity of the cavern, he applied his parched tongue to the dripping rock, shunning the light of day, the voice of friendship, so violent was his desire of solitude and concealment, and he held his forehead and his palms against it when his lips had closed. "We knew not and suspected not his feelings at the time, and rejoiced at the anticipation of the silly things a philosopher should have whispered, which Thelymnia in the morning of the festival had promised us to detail the next day. Love is apt to get entangled and to. trip and stumble when he puts on the garb of Friendship : it is too long and loose for him to walk in, although he sometimes finds it convenient for a covering. Euthymedes the philosopher made this discovery, to which perhaps others may lay equal claim. After the lesson he had been giving her, which amused her in the dictation, she stood composed and thoughtful, and then said hesitatingly, " But would it be quite proper ? would there be nothing of insincerity and falsehood in it, my Critolaus ? " He caught her up in his arms, and, as in his enthusiasm he had raised her head above his, he kissed her bosom. She reproved and pardoned him, making him first declare and protest he would never do the like again. " soul of truth and delicacy ! " cried he aloud ; and Thelymnia, no doubt, trembled lest her lover should in a moment be forsworn ; so imminent and inevitable seemed the repetition of his offence. But he observed on her eyelashes, what had arisen from his precipitation in our presence, A hesitating long suspended tear. Like that which hangs upon the vine fresh-p mined, Until the morning kisses it away. The Nymphs, who often drive men wild (they tell us) have led me astray : I must return with you to the grot. We gave every facility to the stratagem. One slipt away in one direc- tion, another in another ; but, at a certain distance, each was desirous of joining some comrade, and of laughing together; yet each reproved the laughter, even when far off, lest it should 366 P. SCIPIO JEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. do harm, reserving it for the morrow. While they walked along, conversing, the words of Euthymedes fell on the ears of Thelymnia softly as cistus-petals, fluttering and panting for a moment in the air, fall on the thirsty sand. She, in a voice that makes the brain dizzy as it plunges into the breast, replied to him, " Euthymedes ! you must have lived your whole life-time in the hearts of women to know them so thoroughly : I never knew mine before you taught me." Euthymedes now was silent, being one of the few wise men whom love ever made wiser. But, in his silence and abstrac- tion, he took especial care to press the softer part of her arm against his heart, that she might be sensible of its quick pulsation : and, as she rested her elbow within the curvature of his, the slenderest of her fingers solicited, first one, then another, of those beneath them, but timidly, briefly, incon- clusively, and then clung around it pressingly for countenance and support. Pansetius, you have seen the mountains on the left hand, eastward, when you are in Olympia, and perhaps the little stream that runs from the nearest of them into the Alpheus. Could you have seen them that evening ! the moon never shone so calmly, so brightly, upon Latmos, nor the torch of Love before her. And yet many of the stars were visible ; the most beautiful were among them; and as Euthymedes taught Thelymnia their names, their radiance seemed more joyous, more effulgent, more beneficent. If you have ever walked forth into the wilds and open plains upon such moon- light nights, cautious as you are, I will venture to say, Pansetius, you have often tript, even though the stars were not your study. There was an arm to support or to catch Thelymnia : yet she seemed incorrigible. Euthymedes was patient : at last he did I know not what, which was followed by a reproof, and a wonder how he could have done so, and another how he could answer for it. He looked ingenuously and apologetically, forgetting to correct his fault in the mean- while. She listened to him attentively, pushing his hand away at intervals, yet less frequently and less resolutely in the course of his remonstrance, particularly when he complained to her that the finer and more delicate part of us, the eye, may wander at leisure over what is in its way; yet that its dependents in the corporeal system must not follow it ; that they must hunger and faint in the service of a power so rich P. SCIPIO .EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 367 and absolute. " This being hard, unjust, and cruel/' said he, " never can be the ordinance of the gods. Love alone feeds the famishing ; Love alone places all things, both of matter and of mind, in perfect harmony ; Love hath less to learn from TTisdorn than Wisdom hath to learn from Love." " Modest man ! " said she to herself, " there is a great deal of truth in what he says, considering he is a philosopher." She then asked him, after a pause, why he had not spoken so in the conversation on love, which appeared to give animation, mirth, and wit, to the dullest of the company, and even to make the wines of Chios, Crete, and Lesbos, sparkle with fresh vivacity in their goblets. " I who was placed by the fountain-head," replied he, " had no inclination to follow the shallow and slender stream, taking its course toward streets and lanes, and dipt into and muddied by unhallowed and uncleanly hands. After dinner such topics are usually introduced, when the objects that ought to inspire our juster sentiments are gone away. An indelicacy worse than Thracian ! The purest gales of heaven in the most perfect solitudes, should alone lift up the aspiration of our souls to the divinities all men worship." u Sensible creature ! " sighed Thelymnia in her bosom, " how rightly he does think ! " "Come, fairest of wanderers," whispered he softly and persuasively, " such will I call you, though the stars hear me, and though the gods too in a night like this pursue their loves upon earth . . the moon has no little pools filled with her light under the rock yonder ; she deceives us in the depth of these hollows, like the limpid sea. Beside, we are here among the pinks and sand-roses : do they never prick your ankles with their stems and thorns ? Even their leaves at this late season are enough to hurt you." " I think they do," replied she, and thanked him, with a tender timid glance, for some fresh security his arm or hand had given her in escaping from them. " now we are quite out of them all ! How cool is the saxifrage ! how cool the ivy-leaves ! " " I fancy, my sweet scholar ! or shall I rather say (for you have been so oftener) my sweet teacher ! they are not ivy- leaves : to me they appear to be periwinkles." ei I will gather some and see," said Thelymnia. Periwinkles cover wide and deep hollows : of what are they 368 P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, POLTBIUS, PANOTITIS. incapable when the convolvulus is in league with them ! She slipped from the arm of Euthymedes, and in an instant had disappeared. In an instant too he had followed. PANOTITIS. These are mad pranks, and always end ill. Moonlights ! can not we see them quietly from the tops of our houses, or from the plain pavement? Must we give challenges to mastifs, make appointments with wolves, run after asps, and languish for stonequarries ? Unwary philosopher and simple girl ! Were they found again ? POLTBIUS. Yea, by Castor ! and most unwillingly. SCIPIO. I do not wonder. "When the bones are broken, without the consolation of some great service rendered in such misfortune, and when beauty must become deformity, I can well believe that they both would rather have perished. POLTBIUS. Amaranth on the couch of Jove and Hebe was never softer than the bed they fell on. Critolaus had advanced to the opening of the cavern : he had heard the exclamation of Thelymnia as she was falling . . he forgave her . . he ran to her for her forgiveness . . he heard some low sounds . . he smote his heart, else it had fainted in him . . he stopped. Euthymedes was raising up Thelymnia, forgetful (as was too apparent) of himself. " Traitor ! w exclaimed the fiery Critolaus, " thy blood shall pay for this. Impostor ! whose lesson this very day was, that luxury is the worst of poisons/'' " Critolaus/' answered he calmly, drawing his robe about him (for, falling in so rough a place, his vesture was a little disordered), "we will not talk of blood ; but as for my lesson of to-day, I must defend it. In few words then, since I think we are none of us disposed for many, hemlock does not hurt goats, nor luxury philosophers/' Thelymnia had risen more beautiful from her confusion; but her colour soon went away, and, if any slight trace of it were remaining on her cheeks, the modest moonlight and the severer stars would let none show itself. She looked as the statue of Pygmalion would have looked, had she been destined the hour after animation to return into her inanimate state. P. SCIPIO jEMILIANUS, POLYBITJS, PANOTITIS. 369 Offering no excuse, she was the worthier of pardon : but there is one hour in which pardon never entered the human breast, and that hour was this. Critolaus, who always had ridiculed the philosophers, now hated them from the bottom of his heart. Every sect was detestable to him, the Stoic, the Platonic, the Epicurean; all equally; but especially those hypocrites and impostors in each, who, under the cloak of philosophy, come forward with stately figures, prepossessing countenances, and bland discourse. PAN^TIUS. We do not desire to hear what such foolish men think of philosophers, true or false ; but pray tell us how he acted on his own notable discovery ; for I opine he was the unlikeliest of the three to grow quite calm on a sadden. POLYBIUS. He went away; not without fierce glances at the stars, reproaches to the gods themselves, and serious and sad reflec- tions upon destiny. Being however a pious man by consti- tution and education, he thought he had spoken of the omens unadvisedly, and found other interpretations for the stones we had thrown down with the ivy. " And ah ! " said he sighing, "the bird's nest of last year too ! I now know what that is!" PANOTITIS. Polybius, I considered you too grave a man to report such idle stories. The manner is not yours : I rather think you have torn out a page or two from some love-feast (not generally known) of Plato. POLYBIUS. Your judgment has for once deserted you, my friend. If Plato had been present, he might then indeed have described what he saw, and elegantly ; but if he had feigued the story, the name that most interests us would not have ended with a You convince me, Polybius. PANOTITIS. I join my hands, and give them to you. POLYBIUS. My usual manner is without variety. I endeavour to 370 P. SCIPIO JUMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. collect as much sound sense and as many solid facts as I can, to distribute them as commodiously, and to keep them as clear of ornament. If anyone thought of me or my style in reading my history, I should condemn myself as a defeated man. SCIPIO. Polybius, you are by far the wisest that ever wrote history, though many wise have written it, and if your facts are sufficiently abundant, your work will be the most interesting and important. POLYBIUS. PAN^TIUS. Live then, Scipio ! ■The gods grant it ! POLYBIUS. I know what I can do and what I can not (the proudest words perhaps that ever man uttered), I say it plainly to you, my sincere and judicious monitor \ but you must also let me say that, doubtful whether I could amuse our iEmilianus in his present mood, I would borrow a tale, unaccustomed as I am to such, from the libraries of Miletus, or snatch it from the bosom of Elephantis. SCIPIO. Your friendship comes under various forms to me, my dear Polybius, but it is always warm and always welcome. Nothing can be kinder or more delicate in you, than to diversify as much as possible our conversation this day. Pansetius would be more argumentative on luxury than I : even Euthymedes (it appears) was unanswerable. PANJSTIUS. the knave ! such men bring reproaches upon philosophy. SCIPIO. 1 see no more reason why they should, than why a slattern who empties a certain vase on your head in the street, should make you cry, " Jupiter ! what a curse is water ! " PANOTITIS. I am ready to propose almost such an exchange with you, iEmilianus, as Diomedes with Glaucus . . my robe for yours. SCIPIO. Pansetius, could it be done, you would wish it undone. P. SCIPIO yEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS 371 The warfare you undertake is the more difficult : we have not enemies on both sides, as you have. VAJUMTTUS. If you had seen strait, you would have seen that the offer was, to exchange my philosophy for yours. You need less meditation, and employ more, than any man. Now if you have aught to say on luxury, let me hear it. SCIPIO. It would be idle to run into the parts of it, and to make a definition of that which we agree on; but it is not so to remind you that we were talking of it in soldiers ; for the pleasant tale of Thelymnia is enough to make us forget them, even while the trumpet is sounding. Believe me, my friend (or ask Polybius), a good general will turn this formidable thing luxury to some account. He will take care that, like the strong vinegar the legionaries carry with them, it should be diluted, and thus be useful. PAX^TIUS. Then it is luxury no longer. SCIPIO. True; and now tell me, Pansetius, or you Polybius, what city was ever so exuberant in riches, as to maintain a great army long together in sheer luxury ? I am not speaking of cities' that have been sacked, but of the allied and friendly, whose interests are to be observed, whose affection to be conciliated and retained. Hannibal knew this and minded it. POLYBIUS. You might have also added to the interrogation, if you had thought proper, those cities which have been sacked; for there plenty is soon wasted, and not soon supplied again. SCIPIO. Let us look closer at the soldier's board, and see what is on it in the rich Capua. Is plentiful and wholesome food luxury? or do soldiers run into the market-place for a pheasant ? or do those on whom they are quartered pray and press them to eat it? Suppose they went hunting quails, hares, partridges; would it render them less active ? There are no wild-boars in that neighbourhood, or we might expect from a boar-hunt a visitation of the gout. Suppose the men drew their idea of B B 2 372 P. SCIPIO CHILIAN US, POLYBIUS, PANJETIUS. pleasure from the school or from the practices of Euthymedes. One vice is corrected by another, where a higher principle does not act, and where a man does not exert the proudest dominion over the most turbulent of states . . . himself. Hannibal, we may be sure, never allowed his army to repose in utter inactivity ; no, nor to remain a single day without its exercise ... a battle, a march, a foraging, a conveyance of wood or water, a survey of the banks of rivers, a fathoming of their depth, a certification of their soundness or unsoundness at bottom, a measurement of the greater or less extent of their fords, a review, or a castrametation. The plenty of his camp at Capua (for you hardly can imagine, Pansetius, that the soldiers had in a military sense the freedom of the city, and took what they pleased without pay and without restriction) attached to him the various nations of which it was composed, and kept together the heterogeneous and discordant mass. It was time that he should think of this : for probably there was not a soldier left who had not lost in battle or by fatigue his dearest friend and comrade. Dry bread and hard blows are excellent things in themselves, and military requisites . . to those who converse on them over their cups, turning their heads for the approbation of others on whose bosom they recline, and yawning from sad dis- quietude at the degeneracy and effeminacy of the age. But there is finally a day when the cement of power begins to lose its strength and coherency, and when the fabric must be kept together by pointing it anew, and by protecting it a little from that rigour of the seasons which at first compacted it. The story of Hannibal and his army wasting away in luxury, is common, general, universal : its absurdity is remarked by few, or rather by none. POLTBIUS. The wisest of us are slow to disbelieve what we have learned early : yet this story has always been to me incredible. Beside the reasons I have adduced, is it necessary to remind you that Campania is subject to diseases which incapacitate the soldier ? Those of Hannibal were afflicted by them : few indeed perished ; but they were debilitated by their malady, and while they were waiting for the machinery which (even if they had had the artificers among them) could not have been P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 373 constructed in double the time requisite for importing it, the period of dismay at Rome, if ever it existed, had elapsed. The wonder is less that Hannibal did not take Rome, than that he was able to remain in Italy, not having taken it. Considering how he held together, how he disciplined, how he provisioned (the most difficult thing of all, in the face of such enemies) an army in great part, as one would imagine, so intractable and wasteful; what commanders, what soldiers, what rivers, and what mountains, opposed liim ; I think, Polybius, you will hardly admit to a parity or comparison with him, in the rare union of political and military science, the most distinguished of your own countrymen; not Philopcemen, nor Philip of Macedon; if indeed you can hear me without anger and indignation name a barbarian king with Greeks. When kings are docile, and pay due respect to those who are wiser and more virtuous than themselves, I would not point at them as objects of scorn or contumely, even among the free. There is little danger that men educated as we have been should value them too highly, or that men educated as they have been should eclipse the glory of Philopoemen. People in a republic know that their power and existence must depend on the zeal and assiduity, the courage and integrity, of those they employ in their first offices of state ; kings on the contrary lay the foundations of their power on abject heaxts and prostituted intellects, and fear and abominate those whom the breath of God hath raised higher than the breath of man. Hence, from being the dependents of their own slaves, both they and their slaves become at last the dependents of free nations, and alight from their cars to be tied by the neck to the cars of better' men. SCIPIO. Deplorable condition! if their education had allowed any sense of honour to abide in them. But we must consider them as the tulips and anemones and other gaudy flowers, that shoot from the earth to be looked upon in idleness, and to be snapped by the stick or broken by the wind; without our interest, care, or notice. We can not thus calmly contemplate the utter subversion of a mighty capital; we can not thus indifferently stand over the strong agony of an expiring 374 P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLTBIUS, PANOTITIS. nation, after a gasp of years in a battle of ages, to win a world, or be for ever fallen. Seldom are we prone to commiserate the misfortunes of our enemies : the reason is, they are seldom great or virtuous men; and when they are, we are apt to think otherwise. But Hannibal hath shown greatness both in prosperity and adversity. He hath conciliated both the most barbarous and the most civilised of mankind, the most frugal and the most luxurious, the mountaineers of Helvetia, the princes of Campania ; and, if truth is ever painful to utter, it is painful now, he hath van- quished the most experienced in war. Again I see the Alps rise up before me ; and I witness the discomfiture of that commander whose name I reverence and bear. Resentment hath no place in my bosom : I can pity the man whom an ungrateful country helped his enemies to throw down ; who flies from potentate to potentate for protection; who is destined to die not in the land that nurtured him, probably not in the field of battle, probably not with kindred or friends about him. Enough ! enough ! somewhat of this may befall even those who are now prosperous and triumphant. PANOTITIS. We see little when we are cast down ; and when we are raised high we are ill-inclined to see all we might. Ingratitude is a monster not peculiar to Africa. POLTBIUS. The breed will never be exterminated. PANOTITIS. Never ; be sure of that : but there are men, however few of them, in all countries, who know a remedy for its venom. POLTBIUS. What can that be ? PANOTITIS. Covering the fresh wound with fresh kindness. It is not every one who has the privilege of making an ingrate ; there must be power and will to benefit. Hannibal, at all events, owes but small gratitude to the Roman Senate; yet, if his character is indeed so exalted as I am willing to suppose it, he would not be insensible to the praises his vanquisher hath bestowed on him. You estimate, O iEmilianus, the abilities of a general, not by the number of battles he has won, nor P. SCIP10 iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. 375 of enemies he hath slain or led captive, but by the combinations he hath formed, the blows of fortune he hath parried or avoided, the prejudices he hath removed, and the difficulties of every kind he hath overcome. In like manner we should consider kings. Educated stil more barbarously than other barbarians, sucking their milk alternately from Vice and Folly, guided in their first steps by Duplicity and Flattery, whatever they do but decently is worthy of applause ; whatever they do virtuously, of admiration. I would say it even to Caius Gracchus ; I would tell him it even in the presence of his mother; unappalled by her majestic mien, her truly Roman sanctity, her brow that can not frown, but that reproves with pity ; for I am not so hostile to royalty as other philosophers are . . perhaps because I have been willing to see less of it. Cornelia is dearer to me for her virtues than even for our consanguinity ; and I reciprocate the fondness of her brave and intelligent sons, whose estrangement from our order I fear to trace and grieve to reprehend. Let us rather look once again toward your own country, Greece. Many have been signally courageous, signally judicious, in battle ; many by their eloquence have been leaders at Rome, where tumults and mutinies are more ready to break out and more difficult to quell ; many have managed the high and weighty magistratures with integrity and discretion, with hand equally firm and pure. Any one of these qualities is sufficient to constitute a memor- able man. But, Pansetius and Polybius, we do not find in the records of history, we do not find in the regions of fable, a greater than your Pericles, your Epammondas, your Philopcemen. POLYBIUS. Praise from you, iEmilianus, would have supported the heart of Philopcemen, which sank only under the ruins of our country. Of such materials as this praise, such glorification from superior minds, are the lamps that shine inextinguishable in the tomb. Eternal thanks to the Romans ! who, whatever reason they may have had to treat the Greeks as enemies, to traverse and persecute such men as Lycortas my father, and as Philopcemen my early friend, to consume our cities with fire, and to furrow our streets with torrents (as we have heard lately) issuing from the remolten images of gods and heroes, have 376 P. SCIPIO iEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANOTITIS. however so far respected the mother of Civilisation and of Law, as never to permit the cruel mockery of erecting Barbarism and Boyalty on their vacant bases. PAN^TIUS. Our ancient institutions in part exist ; we lost the rest when we lost the simplicity of our forefathers. Let it be our glory that we have resisted the most populous and wealthy nations, and that, having been conquered, we have been conquered by the most virtuous ; that every one of our chief cities hath produced a greater number of illustrious men than all the remainder of the earth around us ; that no man can anywhere enter his hall or portico, and see the countenances of his ancestors from their marble columels, without a commemorative and grateful sense of obligation to us ; that neither his solemn feasts nor his cultivated fields are silent on it ; that not the lamp which shows him the glad faces of his children, and prolongs his studies, and watches by his rest; that not the ceremonies whereby he hopes to avert the vengeance of the gods, nor the tenderer ones whereon are founded the affinities of domestic life, nor finally those which lead toward another ; would have existed in his country, if Greece had not conveyed them. Bethink thee, Scipio, how little hath been done by any other nation, to promote the moral dignity or enlarge the social pleasures of the human race. What parties ever met, in their most populous cities, for the enjoyment of liberal and specu- lative conversation? What Alcibiades, elated with war and glory, turned his youthful mind from general admiration and from the cheers and caresses of coeval friends, to strengthen and purify it under the cold reproofs of the aged ? What Aspasia led Philosophy to smile on Love, or taught Love to reverence Philosophy ? These, as thou knowest, are not the safest guides for either sex to follow • yet in these were united the gravity and the graces of wisdom, never seen, never imagined, out of Athens. I would not offend thee by comparing the genius of the Roman people with ours : the offence is removable, and in part removed already, by thy hand. The little of sound learning, the little of pure wit, that hath appeared in Rome from her foundation, hath been concentrated under thy roof: one tile would cover it. Have we not walked together, Scipio, by starlight, on the shores of Surrentum METELLUS AXD MAEIUS. 377 and Baioe, of Ischia and Caprea, and hath it not occurred to thee that the heavens themselves, both what we see of thein and what lieth above our vision, are peopled with our heroes and heroines ? The ocean, that roars so heavily in the ears of other men, hath for us its tuneful shells, its placid nymphs, and its beneficent ruler. The trees of the forest, the flowers, the plants, passed indiscriminately elsewhere, awaken and warm our affection; they mingle with the objects of our worship ; they breathe the spirit of our ancestors ; they lived in our form ; they spoke in our language ; they suffered as our daughters may suffer; the deities revisit them with pity; and some (we think) dwell among them. SCIPIO. Poetry ! poetry ! PAXiETIUS. Yes ; I own it. The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it . . and it falls, /firrrilianus, even from me, SCIPIO. It is from Greece I have received my friends Pangetius and Polybius. PANOTITIS. Say more, JEmilianus ! You have indeed said it here already ; but say it again at Rome : it is Greece who taught the Romans all beyond the rudiments of war : it is Greece who placed in your hand the sword that conquered Carthage. METELLUS AND MAEIUS. — ♦ — METELLUS. Well met, Cains Marius ! My orders are to find instantly a centurion who shall mount the walls ; one capable of obser- vation, acute in remark, prompt, calm, active, intrepid. The Numantians are sacrificing to the gods in secresy : they have sounded the horn once only; and hoarsely, and low, and mournfully, 378 METELLUS AND MAEIUS. MARIUS. Was that ladder I see yonder among the caper-bushes and purple lilies, under where the fig-tree grows out of the rampart, left for me ? METELLUS. Even so, wert thou willing. Wouldst thou mount it ? MARIUS. Eejoicingly. If none are below or near, may I explore the state of things by entering the city ? METELLUS. Use thy discretion in that. What seest thou? Wouldst thou leap down? Lift the ladder. MARIUS. Are there spikes in it where it sticks in the turf ? I should slip else. METELLUS. How ! bravest of our centurions, art even thou afraid ? Seest thou any one by ? MARIUS. Ay; some hundreds close beneath me. METELLUS. Retire then. Hasten back ; I will protect thy descent. MARIOS. May I speak, Metellus, without an offence to discipline ? METELLUS. Say. MARIUS. Listen ! Dost thou not hear ! METELLUS. Shame on thee ! alight, alight ! my shield shall cover thee. MARIUS. There is a murmur like the hum of bees in the beanfield of Cereate ; # for the sun is hot, and the ground is thirsty. When will it have drunk up for me the blood that has run, and is yet oozing on it, from those fresh bodies ! * The farm of Marius, near Arpinum. METELLUS AND MARIUS. 379 METELLUS. How ? We have not fought for many days ; what bodies then are fresh ones ? MARIUS. Close beneath the wall are those of infants and of girls : in the middle of the road are youths, emaciated; some either unwounded or wounded months ago ; some on their spears, others on their swords : no few have received in mutual death the last interchange of friendship ; their daggers unite them, hilt to hilt, bosom to bosom. METELLUS. Mark rather the living . . what are they about ? MARIUS. About the sacrifice, which portends them, I conjecture, but little good, it burns sullenly and slowly. The victim will lie upon the pyre til morning, and stil be unconsumed, unless they bring more fuel. I will leap down and walk on cautiously, and return with tidings, if death should spare me. Never was any race of mortals so unmilitary as these Numantians : no watch, no stations, no palisades across the streets. METELLUS. Did they want then all the wood for the altar ? MAEIUS. It appears so . . I will return anon. METELLUS. The gods speed thee, my brave honest Marius ! MARIUS (RETURNED). The ladder should have been better spiked for that slippery ground. I am down again safe however. Here a man may walk securely, and without picking his steps. METELLUS. Tell me, Caius, what thou sawest. MARIUS. The streets of Numantia. METELLUS. Doubtless ; but what else ? 380 METELLUS AND MAEIUS. MARIUS. The temples and markets and places of exercise and foun- tains. METELLUS. Art thou crazed, centurion ! what more ? speak plainly, at once, and briefly. MARIUS. I beheld then all Numantia. METELLUS. Has terror maddened thee ? hast thou descried nothing of the inhabitants but those carcases under the ramparts ? MAEIUS. Those, Metellus, lie scattered, although not indeed far asunder. The greater part of the soldiers and citizens, of the fathers, husbands, widows, wives, espoused, were assembled together. METELLUS. About the altar ? MAEIUS. Upon it. METELLUS. So busy and earnest in devotion ! but how all upon it ? MAEIUS. It blazed under them and over them and round about them. METELLUS. Immortal gods ! Art thou sane, Caius Marius ? Thy visage is scorched : thy speech may wander after such an enterprise : thy shield burns my hand. MARIUS. I thought it had cooled again. Why, truly, it seems hot : I now feel it. METELLUS. "Wipe off those embers. MARIUS. 'Twere better : there will be none opposite to shake them upon, for some time. The funereal horn that sounded with such feebleness, sounded not so from the faint heart of him who blew it. Him I saw ; him only of the living. Should I say it ? there was another : there was one child whom its parent could not kill, could not HETELLUS AND MARK'S. 381 part from. She had hidden it in her robe, I suspect ; and, when the fire had reached it, either it shrieked or she did. For suddenly a cry pierced through the crackling pinewood, and something of round in figure fell from brand to brand, until it reached the pavement, at the feet of him who had blown the horn. I rushed toward him, for I wanted to hear the whole story, and felt the pressure of time. Condemn not my weakness, Cheilitis ! I wished an enemy to live an hour longer ; for my orders were to explore and bring intelligence. When I gazed on him, in higlith almost gigantic, I wondered not that the blast of his trumpet was so weak : rather did I wonder that Famine, whose hand had indented every limb and feature, had left him any voice articulate. I rushed toward him however, ere my eyes had measured either his form or strength. He held the child against me, and staggered under it. " Behold," he exclaimed, C( the glorious ornament of a Eoman triumph ! " I stood horror-stricken ; when suddenly drops, as of rain, pattered down from the pyre, I looked; and many were the precious stones, many were the amulets and rings and bracelets, and other barbaric ornaments, unknown to me in form or purpose, that tinkled on the hardened and black branches, from mothers and wives and betrothed maids ; and some too, I can imagine, from robuster arms, things of joyance won in battle. The crowd of incumbent bodies was so dense and heavy, that neither the fire nor the smoke could penetrate upward from among them; and they sank, whole and at once, into the smouldering cavern eaten out below. He at whose neck hung the trumpet, felt this, and started. " There is yet room," he cried, " and there is strength enough yet, both in the element and in me." He extended liis withered arms, he thrust forward the gaunt links of his throat, and upon knarled knees, that smote each other audibly, tottered into the civic fire. It, like some hungry and strangest beast on the innermost wild of Africa, pierced, broken, prostrate, motionless, gazed at by its hunter in the impatience of glory, in the delight of awe, panted once more, and seized him. I have seen within this hour, MeteUns ! what Borne in the cycle of her triumphs will never see, what the Sun in his eternal course can never show her, what the Earth has borne 382 METELLUS AND MARIUS. but now and must never rear again for her, what Victory herself has envied her . . a Numantian. METELLUS. We shall feast to-morrow. Hope, Cams Marius, to become a tribune : trust in fortune. Auguries are surer : surest of all is perseverance. METELLUS. I hope the wine has not grown vapid in my tent : I have kept it waiting, and must now report to Scipio the intelligence of our discovery. Come after me, Caius. MARIUS (aLOXE). The tribune is the discoverer ! the centurion is the scout ! Caius Marius must enter more Numantias. Light-hearted Csecilius, thou mayest perhaps hereafter, and not with humbled but with exulting pride, take orders from this hand. If Scipio' s words are fate, and to me they sound so, the portals of the Capitol may shake before my chariot, as my horses plunge back at the applauses of the people, and Jove in his high domicile may welcome the citizen of Arpinum. Marius was young at the siege of Xumantia, and, entering the army with no advantage of connexion, would have risen slowly; but Scipio had marked his regularity and good morals, and desirous of showing the value he placed on discipline, when he was asked who, in case of accident to him, should succeed in the chief command, replied, Perhaps this man, touching the shoulder of Marius. Caius Caecilius Metellus was the youngest of four brothers : he served as tribune before isumantia, where Scipio said of him, Si quintum pareret mater ejus, asinum fuisse parituram. He was the kinsman of that Metellus by whose jealousy Marius was persecuted in the ISfumidian war. LUCULLUS AND CESAR. 583 LUCULLrS AND CJESAE. Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended, for reasons which you will know ; confiding, I dare not say in your friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but in your generous and disinterested iove of peace. Hear me on. Cneius Porapeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had, on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor affinitv can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife ; he would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn: he would poison his own nascent love at the suggestion of Ambition. Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a reverse of fortune ; since no concession can assuage his malice, divert his envy, or gratify his cupidity, Xo sooner could I raise myself up, from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner my own private afflictions might become the least noxious to the republic. Into whose arms then could I throw myself more naturally and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign more sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country, than his who laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the vigour of youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity solicited, when Friend- ship urged, entreated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself invited and beckoned to him, from the senatorial order and from the eurule chair ? Betrayed and abandoned by those we had confided in, our next friendship, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will venture in those places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to what is most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of Lucullus. Lucrixrs. I had always thought Pompeius more moderate and more reserved than you represent Mm, Cains Julius ! and yet I am 384 LUCULLUS AND CJESAR. considered in general, and surely you also will consider me, but little liable to be prepossessed by him. CESAR. Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you recently, by the administration of that worthy whom last winter his partisans dragged before the senate, and forced to assert publicly that you and Cato had instigated a party to circumvent and murder him; and whose carcase, a few days afterward, when it had been announced that he had died by a natural death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and dislocations. LUCULLUS. You bring much to my memory which had quite slipped out of it, and I wonder that it could make such an impression on yours. A proof to me that the interest you take in my behalf began earlier than your delicacy will permit you to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which I ought to have perceived before. C^SAR. Not at all : the fresh air has given me life and alertness : I feel it upon my cheek even in the room. LUCULLUS. After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the remainder of the day on the subject of your visit. OESAR. Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver with cold upon the mountain here ; and truly I myself was not insensible to the change of climate, in the way from Mutina. What white bread ! I never found such even at Naples or Capua. This Pormian wine (which I prefer to the Chian) how exquisite ! LUCULLUS. Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites his lip with displeasure. How ! surely it bleeds ! Permit me to examine the cup. aaESAR. I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the carriage : the gold is rough there. LUCULLUS. Marcipor ! let me never see that cup again. No answer, I LUCULLUS AND CiESAR. 385 desire. My guest pardons heavier faults. Mind that dinner be prepared for us shortly. CESAR. In the meantime, Lucullus, if your health permits it, shall we walk a few paces round the villa ? for I have not seen anything of the kind before. LUCULLUS. The walls are double : the space between them two feet : the materials for the most-part earth and straw. Two hundred slaves, and about as many mules and oxen, brought the beams and rafters up the mountain : my architects fixed them at once in their places : every part was ready, even the wooden nails. The roof is thatched, you see. C^SAR. Is there no danger that so light a material should be carried off by the winds, on such an eminence ? None resists them equally well. OESAR, On this immensely high mountain I should be apprehensive of the lightning, which the poets, and I think the philosophers too, have told us, strikes the highest. LUCULLUS. The poets are right ; for whatever is received as truth, is truth in poetry ; and a fable may illustrate like a fact. But the philosophers are wrong ; as they generally are, even in the commonest things; because they seldom look beyond their own tenets, unless through captiousness ; and because they argue more than they meditate, and display more than they examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my opinion, after our Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept apart to the demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the rest are good writers and good disputants ; but unfaithful suitors of simple Science ; boasters of their acquaintance with gods and goddesses ; plagiarists and impostors. I had forgotten my roof, although it is composed of much the same materials as the philosophers'. Let the lightning fall : one handful of silver, or less, repairs the damage. c c 386 LUCULLTJS AND (LESAR. CAESAR. Impossible ! nor indeed one thousand ; nor twenty, if those tapestries* and pictures are consumed. LUCULLTJS. True ; but only the thatch would burn. Tor before the baths were tessellated, I filled the area with alum and water, and soaked the timbers and laths for many months, and covered them afterward with alum in powder, by means of liquid glue. Mithridates taught me this. Having in vain attacked with combustibles a wooden tower, I took it by stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum, which, if a great hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in the attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners : but my instruments were purple robes and plate, and the only w r heel in my armoury, destined to such purposes, was the wheel of Fortune. CESAR. I wish, in my campaigns, I could have equalled your clemency and humanity : but the Gauls are more uncertain, fierce, and perfidious, than the wildest tribes of Caucasus ; and our policy can not be carried with us ; it must be formed upon the spot. They love you, not for abstaining from hurting them, but for ceasing ■ and they embrace you only at two seasons ; when stripes are fresh or when stripes are imminent. Elsewhere I hope to become the rival of Lucullus in this admirable part of virtue. I shall never build villas, because . . but what are your proportions ? Surely the edifice is extremely low. LUCULLUS. There is only one floor : the highth of the apartments is twenty feet to the cornice, five above it ; the breadth is twenty- five ; the length forty. The building, as you perceive, is quadrangular : three sides contain four rooms each : the other has many partitions and two stories, for domestics and offices. Here is my salt-bath. C2ESAR. A bath indeed for all the Nereids named by Hesiod, with room enough for the Tritons and their herds and horses. * Caesar would regard such things attentively. " In expeditionibus tessellata et seetitia pavimenta circumtulisse ; signa, tabulas, operis antiquij semper animosissime comparasse," says Suetonius. LUCULLUS AND OESAH. 387 Next to it, where yonder boys are carrying the myrrhine vases, is a tepid one of fresh water, ready for your reception. CESAR. I resign the higher pleasure for the inferior, as we all are apt to do ; and I will return to the enjoyment of your conversation when I have indulged a quarter of an hour in this refreshment. LUCULLUS. Meanwhile I will take refuge with some less elegant philo- sopher, whose society I shall quit again with less regret. {Caesar returning.) It is useless, Caius Julius, to inquire if there has been any negligence or any omission in the service of the bath : for these are secrets which you never impart to the most favored of your friends. I have "often enjoyed the luxury much longer, but never more highly. Pardon my impatience to see the remainder of your Apennine villa. LUCULLUS. Here stand my two cows. Their milk is brought to me with its warmth and froth; for it loses its salubrity both by repose and by motion. Pardon me, Caesar : I shall appear to you to have forgotten that I am not conducting Marcus Varro. C^SAR. You would convert him into Cacus : he would drive them off. What beautiful beasts ! how sleek and white and cleanly ! I never saw any like them, excepting when we sacrifice to Jupiter the stately leader from the pastures of the Clitumnus. Often do I make a visit to these quiet creatures, and with no less pleasure than in former days to my horses. Nor indeed can I much wonder that whole nations have been consentaneous in treating them as objects of devotion : the only tiling wonderful is, that gratitude seems to have acted as powerfully and extensively as fear; indeed more extensively; for no object of worship whatever has attracted so many worshipers. Where Jupiter has one, the cow has ten : she was venerated cc 2 388 LUCULLUS AND CJESAIt. before he was born, and will be when even the carvers have forgotten him. C^SAR. Unwillingly should I see it ; for the character of our gods hath formed the character of our nation. Serapis and Isis have stolen in among them within our memory, and others will follow, until at last Saturn will not be the only one emasculated by his successor. What can be more august than our rites ? The first dignitaries of the republic are emulous to administer them : nothing of low or venal has any place in them, nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial monsters of the Kile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place of the Lemures. But men can not bear to be deprived long together of anything they are used to ; not even of their fears ; and, by a reaction of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by fanaticism, and fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually. ! LTJCULLUS. The religion of our country, as you observe, is well adapted to its inhabitants. Our progenitor Mars hath Venus recum- bent on his breast, and looking up to him, teaching us that pleasure is to be sought in the bosom of valour and by the means of war. No great alteration, I think, will ever be made in our rites and ceremonies ; the best and most imposing that could be collected from all nations, and uniting them to us by our complacence in adopting them. The gods themselves may change names, to flatter new power : and indeed, as we degenerate, Eeligion will accommodate herself to our propen- sities and desires. Our heaven is now popular : it will become monarchal; not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors and satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for carrying to their stern dark-bearded master prayers and supplications. Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense rise amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their places ; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our contentions for power, and in the necessary LUCULLUS AND OESAU. 389 extinction both of ancient families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them : but a religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it should prevail among the Eomans, it must prevail alone : for nations more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close upon them, trample them under foot ; and the name of Roman, which is now the most glorious, will become the most opprobrious upon earth. CESAR. The time I hope may be distant ; for next to my own name I hold my country's. LUCULLUS. Mine, not coming from Troy or Ida, is lower in my estima- tion : I place my country's first. You are surveying the little lake beside us. It contains no fish : birds never alight on it : the water is extremely pure and cold : the walk round is pleasant ; not only because there is always a gentle breeze from it, but because the turf is fine, and the surface of the mountain on this summit is perfectly on a level, to a great extent in length ; not a trifling advantage to me, who walk often and am weak. I have no alley, no garden, no inclosure : the park is in the vale below, where a brook supplies the ponds, and where my servants are lodged; for here I have only twelve in attendance. CESAR. What is that so white, toward the Adriatic ? The Adriatic itself. Turn round and you may descry the Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among the highest of the Apennines . . . Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is ready. Pass this way. OESAR. What a library is here ! Ah Marcus Tullius ! I salute thy image. Why frownest thou upon me ? collecting the consular 390 LUCULLUS AND (LESAR. robe and uplifting the right-arm, as when Rome stood firm again, and Catiline fled before thee. LUCULLUS. Just so ; such was the action the statuary chose, as adding a new endearment to the memory of my absent friend. CESAR. Sylla, who honored you above all men, is not here. LUCULLUS. I have his Commentaries : he inscribed them, as you know, to me. Something even of our benefactors may be forgotten, and gratitude be unreproved. C^SAR. The impression on that couch, and the two fresh honeysuckles in the leaves of those two books, would show, even to a stranger, that this room is peculiarly the master's. Are they sacred ? LUCULLUS. To me and Caesar. C^SAR. I would have asked permission . . LUCULLUS. Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius and Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the table. CESAR. Thucydides ! the most generous, the most unprejudiced, the most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus, you whose judgment in style is more accurate than any other Roman's, do tell me whether a commander, desirous of writing his Commen- taries, could take to himself a more perfect model than Thucydides. LUCULLUS. Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be : the scholar of Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in military science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and forensic ; the calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom he was defeated, his defender, his encomiast. To talk of such men is conducive not only to virtue but to health. OESAR. We have no writer who could keep up long together his LUCULLUS AND GESAB,. 391 severity and strength. I would follow him ; but I shall be contented with my genius, if (Thucydides in sight) I come many paces behind, and attain by study and attention the graceful and secure mediocrity of Xenophon. LUCULLUS. You will avoid, I think, Caesar, one of his peculiarities ; his tendency to superstition. CESAR. I dare promise this ; and even to write nothing so flat and idle as his introduction to the Cyropcedia. The first sentence that follows it, I perceive, repeats the same word, with its substantive, four times. This is a trifle : but great writers and great painters do miracles or mischief by a single touch. Our authors are so addicted of late to imitate the Grecian, that a bad introduction is more classical than a good one. Not to mention any friend of yours, Crispus Sallustius, who is mine, brought me one recently of this description ; together with some detached pieces of a history, which nothing in our prose or poetry hath surpassed in animation, LUCULLUS. We ought to talk of these things by ourselves ; not before the vulgar ; by which expression I mean the unlearned and irreverent, in forum and in senate. Our Cicero has indeed avoided such inelegance as that of Xenophon : one perhaps less' pardonable may be found repeatedly in Ins works : I would say an inelegance not arising from neglect, or obtusity of ear, but coming forth in the absence of reflection. He often says, " mirari soleo" Now surely a wise man soon ceases to wonder at anything, and, instead of indulging in the habitude of wonder at one object, brings it closer to him, makes it familiar, discusses, and dismisses it. He told me in his last letter *of an incredible love and affection for me. Pardon me, Caesar ! pardon me, Genius of Rome ! and Mercury ! I exclaimed, " the clown I " laughing heartily. He would not that I should really have thought his regard incredible ; on the contrary, that I should believe in it and confide in it to its full extent, and that I should flatter myself it was not only possible but reasonable. In vain will any one remark to me, " such phrases are common." In our ordinary language there are many beauties, more or less visible according to their place and. season, which a judicious writer and forcible 392 LUCULLUS AND (LESAR. orator will subject to his arbitration and service : there are also many things which, if used at all, must be used cautiously. I may be much at my ease without being in tatters, and without treading on the feet of those I come forward to salute. I arrogate to myself no superiority, in detecting a peculiar and latent mark upon that exalted luminary : his own effulgence showed me it. From Cicero down to me the distance is as great, as between the prince of the senate and the lowest voter. I influenced the friends of order ; he fulminated and exter- minated the enemies : I have served my country : he hath saved it. This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes. OESAR. I misunderstood . . I fancied . . LUCULLUS. Eepose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside you, the sphynx on either of those obelisks, right or left. CESAR. Let me look at them first. LUCULLUS. The contrivance was intended for one person, or two at most, desirous of privacy and quiet. The blocks of jasper in my pair, and of porphyry in yours, easily yield in their grooves, each forming one partition. There are four, containing four platforms. The lower holds four dishes, such as sucking forest-boars, venison, hares, tunnies, sturgeons, which you will find within; the upper three, eight each, but diminutive. The confectionary is brought separately : for the steam would spoil it, if any should escape. The melons are in the snow thirty feet under us : they came early this morning from a place in the vicinity of Luni, so that I hope they may be crisp, independently of their coolness. CESAR. I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in Lucullus : but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seemed to have cooked for us, and magicians to be our attendants. LUCULLUS. The absence of slaves from our repast is the luxury : for Marcipor alone enters, and he only when I press a spring with LTJCULLTJS AND CESAR. 393 my foot or wand. When you desire his appearance, touch that chalcedony, just before you. I eat quick, and rather plentifully : yet the valetudinarian (excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears to equal the traveler in appetite, and to be contented with one dish. LUCULLUS. It is milk : such, with strawberries, which ripen on the Apennines many months in continuance, and some other berries of sharp and grateful flavour, has been my only diet since my first residence here. The state of my health requires it ; and the habitude of nearly three months renders this food not only more commodious to my studies and more conducive to my sleep, but also more agreeable to my palate, than any other. OESAR. Returning to Rome or Baise, you must domesticate and tame them. The cherries vou introduced from Pontus are now */ growing in Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, and the largest and best in the world perhaps are upon the more sterile side of Lake Larius. LUCULLUS. There are some fruits, and some virtues, which, require a harsh soil and bleak exposure for their perfection. In such a profusion of viands, and so savoury, I perceive no odour. LUCULLUS. A flue conducts heat through the compartments of the .obelisks ; and if you look up, you may observe that those gilt roses, between the "astragals in the cornice, are prominent from it half a span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between which and the outer is a perpetual current of air. We are now in the dog-days ; and I have never felt in the whole summer more heat than at Rome in many days of March. Usually you are attended by troops of domestics and of dinner-friends, not to mention the learned and scientific, nor your own family, your attachment to which, from youth upward, 394 LUCULLUS AND CJESAE. is one of the higher graces in your character. Your brother was seldom absent from you. LUCULLUS. Marcus was coming : but the vehement heats along the Arno, in which valley he has a property he never saw before, inflamed his blood ; and he now is resting for a few days at Faesulse, a little town destroyed by Sylla within our memory, who left it only air and water, the best in Tuscany. The health of Marcus, like mine, has been declining for several months : we are running our last race against each other : and never was I, in youth along the Tiber, so anxious of first reaching the goal. I would not outlive him : I should reflect too painfully on earlier days, and look forward too despond- ently on future. As for friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and they spawn not amid the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company with more than two, is a Gaulish and German thing. I can hardly bring myself to believe that I have eaten in concert with twenty • so barbarous and herd- like a practice does not now appear to me : such an incentive to drink much and talk loosely ; not to add, such a necessity to speak loud : which is clownish and odious in the extreme. On this mountain-summit I hear no noises, no voices, not even of salutation : we have no flies about us, and scarcely an insect or reptile, CESAR. Your amiable son is probably with his uncle : is he well ? LUCULLUS. Perfectly : he was indeed with my brother in his intended visit to me : but Marcus, unable to accompany him hither, or superintend his studies in the present state of his health, sent him directly to his uncle Cato at Tusculum, a man fitter than either of us to direct his education, and preferable to any, excepting yourself and Marcus Tullius, in eloquence and urbanity. CESAR. Cato is so great, that whoever is greater must be the happiest and first of men. LUCULLUS. That any such be stil existing, Julius, ought to excite no groan from the breast of a Roman citizen. But perhaps I LUCULLUS AND OESAR. 395 wrong you : perhaps your mind was forced reluctantly back again, on your past animosities and contests in the senate. C^SAR. I revere him, but can not love him. LUCULLUS. Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with reason ; and I would pity rather than reprove you. On the ceiling, at which you are looking, there is no gilding, and little painting . . a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and the heads, shoulders, and arms, rising from the cornice only, of boys and girls climbing up to steal them, and scram- bling for them : nothing over-head : no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and Venus caught at mid- day, no river-gods pouring out their urns upon us : for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat ceiling, I think nothing so absurd as a storied one. Before I was aware, and without my parti- cipation, the painter had adorned that of my bedchamber with a golden shower, bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my expostulation, his excuse was, that he knew the Danae of Scopas, in a recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The walls, behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days the whole fabric was put together and habitable. The wine has probably lost its freshness : will you try some other ? CESAR. Its temperature is exact ; its flavour exquisite. Latterly I have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to pass through the other apartments, if you will trust me. LUCULLUS. I attend you. CESAR. Lucullus ! who is here ? what figure is that on the poop of the vessel ? can it be . . . LUCULLUS. The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it. C^SAR. Oh how beautifully is the water painted ! how vividly the sun strikes against the snows on Taurus ! the grey temples and pier-head of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monu- 396 LTJCULLUS AND CLESAR. mental mount on the left is half in shade. In the countenance of those pirates I did not observe such diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back : I did not indeed mark them or notice them at all. LUCULLUS. The painter in this fresco, the last work finished, had dissatisfied me in one particular. "That beautiful young face/' said I, " appears not to threaten death." " Lucius/' he replied, " if one muscle were moved, it were not Csesar's : beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved." " I am contented with your apology, Antipho : but what are you doing now ? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk and argue. The lines of that smaller face in the distance are the same." " Not the same," replied he, " nor very different : it smiles : as surely the goddess must have done, at the first heroic act of her descendant." CESAR. In her exultation and impatience to press forward, she seems to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the shell, which rises up behind out of the water ; and she takes no notice of the terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would detain her, nor of this who is flying off and looking back. The reflection of the shell has given a warmer hue below the knee : a long streak of yellow light in the horizon is on the level of her bosom ; some of her hair is almost lost in it : above her head on every side is the pure azure of the heavens. ! and you w^ould not have led me up to this ? You, among whose primary studies is the most perfect satisfaction of your guests. LUCULLUS. In the next apartment are seven or eight other pictures from our history. There are no more : what do you look for ? I find not among the rest any descriptive of your own exploits. Ah Lucullus ! there is no surer way of making them remembered. This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, is the music-room. LUCULLUS AND CJESAR. 397 LUCULLUS. No indeed ; nor can I be said to have one here : for I love best the music of a single instrument, and listen to it willingly at all times, but most willingly while I am reading. At such seasons a voice or even a whisper disturbs me : but music refreshes my brain when I have read long, and strengthens it from the beginning. I find also that if I write anything in poetry (a youthful propensity stil remaining) it gives rapidity and variety and brightness to my ideas. On ceasing, I com- mand a fresh measure and instrument, or another voice; which is to the mind like a change of posture or of air to the body. My health is benefited by the gentle play thus opened to the most delicate of the fibers. Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be soon removed. What is it thought to be ? LUCULLUS. There are they who would surmise and signify, and my physician did not long attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms of iEsetes have supplied me with some other plants than the cherry, and such as I should be sorry to see domesticated here in Italy. C^SAR. The gods forbid ! Anticipate better things. The reason of Lucullus is stronger than the medicaments of Mithridates ; but why not use them too ? Let nothing be neglected. You may reasonably hope for many years of life : your mother stil enjoys it.* LUCULLUS. To stand upon one's guard against Death, exasperates her malice and protracts our sufferings. CJJSAR. Rightly and gravely said : but your country at this time can not do well without you. LUCULLUS. The bowl of milk which to-day is presented to me, will shortly be presented to my Manes. * Cicero relates that lie went from his villa to attend her funeral a few years afterward. 398 LUCULLUS AND CLESAE. C^SAR. Do you suspect the hand ? LUCULLUS. I will not suspect a Roman : let us converse no more about it. C^SAR. It is the only subject on which I am resolved never to think, as relates to myself. Life may concern us, death not ; for in death we neither can act nor reason, we neither can persuade nor command ; and our statues are worth more than we are, let them be but wax. Lucius, I will not divine your thoughts : I will not penetrate into your suspicions, nor suggest mine. I am lost in admiration of your magnanimity and forbearance ; that your only dissimulation should be upon the guilt of your assassin ; that you should leave him power, and create liim virtues. LUCULLUS. Cains Julius, if I can assist you in anything you meditate, needful or advantageous to our country, speak it unreservedly. CESAR. I really am ashamed of my association with Crassus and Pompeius : I would not have anything in common with them, not even power itself. Unworthy and ignominious must it appear to you, as it does' to me, to compromise with an auctioneer and a rope-dancer ; for the meanness and venality of Crassus, the levity and tergiversation of Pompeius, leave them no better names. The bestiality of the one, the infidelity of the other, urge and inflame me with an inextinguishable desire of uniting my authority to yours for the salvation of the republic. LUCULLUS. I foretold to Cicero, in the words of Lucretius on the dissolution of the world, Tria talia texta Una dies dabit exitio. C^lSAR. Assist me in accomplishing your prophecy: or rather, accept my assistance : for I would more willingly hear a proposal from you than offer one. Reflections must strike you, Lucullus, no less forcibly than me, and perhaps more justly ; you are calmer. Consider all the late actions of LL'CriJXS AND CESAR, 39fl Cneius, and tell me who has ever committed any so indecorous with so grave a face ? He abstained in great measure from the follies of youth, only to reserve them accumulated for maturer age. Human life, if I may venture to speak fanci- fully in your presence, hath its equinoxes. In the vernal its flowers open under violent tempests : in the autumnal it is more exempt from gusts and storms, more regular, serene, and temperate, looks complacently on the fruits it has gathered; on the harvests it has reaped, and is not averse to the graces of order, to the avocations of literature, to the genial warmth of honest conviviality, and to the mild necessity of repose. Thrown out from the course of nature, this man stood aside and solitary, and found everything around him unattractive. And now, in the decline of life, he has recourse to those associates, of whom the best that can be said is, that they would have less disgraced its outset. Repulsing you and Cicero and Cato, the leaders of his party and the propagators of his power, Pompeius the Great takes the arm of Clodius, and walks publicly with him in the forum ; who nevertheless the other day headed a chorus (I am informed) of the most profligate and opprobrious youths in Rorne, and sang respon- sively worse than Pescennine songs to his dishonour. Where was he ? Before them ? in court ? defending a client ? He came indeed with that intention; but sat mortified, speechless, and despondent. The senate connived at the mdignity. Even Gabinius, his flatterer and dependent, shuns him. The other consul is alienated from him totally, and favors me through Calpurnia, who watches over my security and interests at home. Julia my daughter was given in marriage to Pompeius for this purpose only : she fails to accomplish it : politically then and morally, the marriage loses its validity by losing its intent. I go into Gaul, commander for five years : Crassus is preparing for an expedition against the Partliians : the senate and people bend before Pompeius, but reluctantly and indignantly. Everything would be more tolerable to me, if I could permit lrim to boast that he had duped me : but my glory requires that, letting him choose his own encamp- ment, square the declivities, clear the ground about the eminence, foss and pale it, I should storm, and keep it. Whatever he may boast of his eloquence and military skill, I fear nothing from the orator who tells us what he would have spoken, nor from the general who sees what he should 400 LUCULLTJS AND C^SAE. have done. My first proposal for accommodation and concord shall be submitted to you (if indeed you will not frame it for me), and should you deem it unfair shall be suppressed. No successive step shall be made by me without your concurrence : in short, I am inclined to take up any line of conduct, in conjunction with you, for the settling of the commonwealth. Does the proposal seem to you so unimportant on the one hand, or so impracticable and unreasonable on the other, that you smile and shake your head ? LUCULLTJS. Caesar ! Csesar ! you write upon language and analogy ; no man better. Tell me then whether mud is not said to be settled when it sinks to the bottom ? and whether those who are about to sink a state, do not in like manner talk of settling it? CESAR. I wish I had time to converse with you on language, or skill to parry your reproofs with equal wit; for serious you can not be. At present let us remove what is bad ; which must always be done before good of any kind can spring up. The designs of Cneius are suspected by many in the senate, and his pride is obnoxious to all. Your party would prevail against him ; for he has enriched fewer adherents than you have ; and even his best friends are for the most-part in a greater degree yours. LUCULLUS. I have enriched no adherents^ Caius Julius. Many of my officers, it is true, are easy in their circumstances : they how- ever gained their wealth, not from the plunder of our confederates, not from those who should enjoy with security their municipal rights and paternal farms in Italy, but from the enemy's camps and cities. , C^SAR. We tw r o might appease the public mind, preparing the leaders of the senate for our labours, and intimidating the factious. LUCULLUS. Hilarity never forsakes you, Csesar ! and you are the happiest man upon earth in the facility with which you com- municate it. Hear me, and believe me. I am about to mount higher than triumviral tribunal or than triumphal car. LUCULLTJS AND (LESAR. 401 They who are under me will turn their faces from me ; such are the rites : but not a voice of reproach or of petulance shall be heard, when the trumpets tell our city that the funereal flames are surmounting the mortal spoils of Lucullus. CJESAR. Mildest and most equitable of men ! I have been much wronged; would you also wrong me? Lucius, you have forced from me a tear before the time. I weep at magna- nimity ; which no man does w T ho wants it. LUCULLUS. "Why can not you enjoy the command of your province, and the glory of having quelled so many nations ? I can not bear the superiority of another. The weakest of women feel so : but even the weakest of them are ashamed to acknowledge it : who hath ever heard any one ? Have you, who know them widely and well ? Poetasters and mimes, laboring under such infirmity, put the mask on. You pursue glory : the pursuit is just and rational ; but reflect that statuaries and painters have represented heroes calm and quiescent, not straining and panting like pugilists and gladiators. From being for ever in action, for ever in contention, and from excelling in them all other mortals, what advantage derive we ? I would not ask what satisfaction? what glory? The insects have more activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, even inert matter more firmness and stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the exercise of this every country lies open : and neither I eastward nor you westward have found any exhausted by contests for it. Must we give men blows because they will not look at us ? or chain them to make them hold the balance evener ? Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what you would be ; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the bier. There was a time when the most ardent friend to Alexander of Macedon, would have embraced the partisan for his enthusiasm, who should have compared him with Alexander of Pherse. It must have been 402 LUCULLUS AND (LESAR. at a splendid feast, and late at it, when Scipio should have been raised to an equality with Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been whispered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, " If he goes on so, he will tread down the sandal of Marcus Antonius in the long run, and perhaps leave Hortensius behind." Officers of mine, speaking about you, have exclaimed with admiration, " He fights like Cuma." Think, Caius Julius ! (for you have been instructed to think both as a poet and as a philosopher) that among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom we may attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course, what appears great is small, and what appears small is great. Our estimate of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often leave those we should keep by us, run after those we should avoid, and call importunately on others who sit quiet and will not come. We can not at once catch the applause of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise. What are parties ? Do men really great ever enter into them ? Are they not ball -courts, where ragged adventurers strip and strive, and where disso- lute youths abuse one another, and challenge and game and wager ? If you and I can not quite divest ourselves of infir- mities and passions, let us think however that there is enough in us to be divided into two portions, and let us keep the upper undisturbed and pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in dreariness and in clouds, variable and stormy ; but it is not the highest : there the gods govern. Your soul is large enough to embrace your country : all other affection is for less objects, and less men are capable of it. Abandon, Csesar ! such thoughts and wishes as now agitate and propell you : leave them to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and miry intellects. Fortunate may we call ourselves to have been born in an age so productive of eloquence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us would be excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these honours. He who can think dispassionately and deeply as I do, is great as I am ; none other : but his opinions are at freedom to diverge from mine, as mine are from his ; and indeed, on recollection, I never loved those most who thought with me, but those rather who deemed my sentiments worth discussion, and who corrected me with frankness and affability. MARCUS TULLTUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 403 CiESAR. Lucullus ! you perhaps have taken the wiser and better part, certainly the pleasanter. I can not argue with you : I would gladly hear one who could, but you again more gladly. I should think unworthily of you if I thought you capable of yielding or receding. I do not even ask you to keep our con- versation long a secret ; so greatly does it preponderate in your favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence, and of argument. I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities, and sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep soundly. You go early to rest, I know. LUCULLUS. Not however by daylight. Be assured, Caius Julius, that greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it shall escape my lips. If you approach the city with arms, with arms I meet you ; then your denouncer and enemy, at present your host and confident. OfflSAR. I shall conquer you. LUCULLUS. That smile would cease upon it : you sigh already. CESAR. Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my oppressor : I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me ; and many more will follow : but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of I^^^his, mindful of this day. ^on,*^ 1 * MAECUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICEEO. The last calamities of our country, my brother Quinctus, have again united us ; and something like the tenderness of earlier clays appears to have returned, in the silence of ambition and in the subsidence of hope. It has frequently occurred to me how different we are from the moment when the parental roof bursts asunder, as it were, and the inmates are scattered dd2 404 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. abroad, and build up here and there new families. Many, who before lived in amity and concord, are then in the condition of those who, receiving intelligence of a shipwreck, collect at once for plunder, and quarrel on touching the first fragment. QUINCTUS. We never disagreed on the division of any property, unless indeed the state and its honours may be considered as such ; and although in regard to Csesar, our fortune drew us different ways latterly, and my gratitude made me, until your remon- strances and prayers prevailed, reluctant to abandon him, you will remember my anxiety to procure you the consulate and the triumph. You can not and never could suppose me unmindful of the signal benefits and high distinctions I have received from Csesar, or quite unreluctant to desert an army, for my services in which he often praised me to you, while I was in Britain and in Gaul. Such moreover was his generosity, he did not erase my name from his Commentaries, for having abandoned and opposed his cause. My joy there- for ought not to be unmingled at his violent death, to whom I am indebted not only for confidence and command, not only for advancement and glory, but also for immortality. When you yourself had resolved on leaving Italy to follow Cneius Pompeius, you were sensible, as you told me, that my obliga- tions to Csesar should at least detain me in Italy. Our disputes, which among men who reason will be frequent, were always amicable : our political views have always been similar, and generally the same. You indeed were somewhat more aristocratical an(J senatorial : and this prejudice hath ruined both. As ifjleso immortal gods took a pleasure in confounding us by the diknculty of our choice, they placed the best men at the head of the worst cause. Decimus Brutus and Porcius Cato held up the train of Sylla ; for the late civil wars were only a continuation of those which the old dictator seemed, for a time, to have extinguished in blood and ruins. His faction was in authority when you first appeared at Rome ; and although among your friends and sometimes in public, you have spoken as a Roman should speak of Caius Marius, a respect for Pompeius, the most insincere of mortals, made you silent on the merits of Sertorius ; than whom there never was a better man in private life, a magistrate more upright, a general more vigilant, a citizen more zealous for the prerogative MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 405 of our republic. Caius Caesar, the later champion of the same party, overcame difficulties almost equally great, and having acted upon a more splendid theater, may perhaps appear a stil greater character. MARCUS. He will seem so to those only who place temperance and prudence, fidelity and patriotism, aside from the component parts of greatness. Caesar, of all men, knew best when to trust fortune : Sertorius never trusted her at all, nor ever marched a step along a path he had not patiently and well explored. The best of Romans slew the one, the worst the other. The death of Caesar w T as that winch the wise and virtuous would most deprecate for themselves and for their children; that of Sertorius what they would most desire. And since, Quinctus, we have seen the ruin of our country, and her enemies are intent on ours, let us be grateful that the last years of life have neither been useless nor inglorious, and that it is likely to close, not under the condemnation of such citizens as Cato and Brutus, but as Lepidus and Antonius. It is with more sorrow than asperity that T reflect on Caius Caesar. ! had Ins heart been unambitious as his style, had he been as prompt to succour his country as to enslave her, how great, how incomparably great, were he ! Then perhaps at this hour, Quinctus, and in this villa, we should have enjoyed his humorous and erudite discourse ; for no man ever tempered so seasonably and so justly the materials of conver- sation. How graceful was he! how unguarded! His whole character was uncovered ; as we represent the bodies of heroes and of gods. Two years ago, at this very season, on the third of the Saturnalia, he came hither spontaneously and unex- pectedly to dine with me ; and although one of his attendants read to him, as -he desired while he was bathing, the verses on him and Mamurra, he retained his usual good-humour, and discoursed after dinner on many points of literature, with admirable ease and judgment. Him I shall see again ; and, while he acknowledges my justice, I shall acknowledge his virtues, and contemplate them unclouded. I shall see again our father, and Mutius Scaevola, and you, and our sons, and the ingenuous and faithful Tyro. He alone has power over my life, if any has ; for to him I confide my writings. And our worthy Marcus Brutus will meet me, whom I would embrace among the first : for, if I have not done him an 406 MARCTJS TULLIUS AND QTJINCTUS CICERO. injury, I have caused him one. Had I never lived, or had I never excited his envy, he might perhaps have written as I have done ; but for the sake of avoiding me he caught both cold and fever. Let us pardon him ; let us love him. With a weakness that injured his eloquence, and with a softness of soul that sapped the constitution of our state, he is no unworthy branch of that family which will be remembered the longest among men. happy day, when I shall meet my equals, and when my inferiors shall trouble me no more ! Man thinks it miserable to be cut off in the midst of his projects : he should rather think it miserable to have formed them. For the one is his own action, the other is not ; the one was subject from the beginning to disappointments and vexations, the other ends them. And what truly is that period of life in which we are not in the midst of our projects? They spring up only the more rank and wild, year after year, from their extinction or change of form, as herbage from the corruption and dying down of herbage. 1 will not dissemble that I upheld the senatorial cause for no other reason than that my dignity was to depend on it. My first enthusiasm was excited by Marius ; my first poem was written on him. We were proud of him as a fellow- citizen of Arpinum. Say no more of him. It is only the most generous nature that grows more generous by age : Marius, like Pompeius, grew more and more austere. I praised his exploits in the enthusiasm of youth and poetry ; either of which is sufficient excuse for many errors ; and both together may extort somewhat more than pardon, when valour in a fellow-townsman is the exciter of our praise. But, sitting now in calmer judgment, we see him stript of his victorious arms and sevenfold consulship; we see him in his native rudeness, selfishness, and ferocity ; we see him the murderer of his colleague in the consulship, of his comrade in the camp. Scarcely can we admire even the severity of his morals, when its principal use was to enforce the discipline needful to the accomplishment of his designs. QUINCTUS. Marius is an example that a liberal education is peculiarly necessary where power is almost unlimited. Quiet, social, philosophical intercourse, can alone restrict that tendency to MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 407 arrogance which war encourages, and alone can inculcate that abstinence from wrong and spoliation which we have lately seen exercised more intemperately than even by Marius or by Sylla, and carried into the farms and villas of ancient friends and close connections. MARCUS. Had the party of our townsman been triumphant, and the senate (as it would have been) abolished, I should never have had a Catilinarian conspiracy to quell, and few of my best orations would have been delivered. QUINCTUS. Do you believe that the Marian faction would have annulled our order ? MARCUS. I believe that their safety would have required its ruin, and that their vengeance, not to say their equity, would have accomplished it. The civil war was of the senate against the equestrian order and the people, and was maintained by the wealth of the patricians, accumulated in the time of Sylla, from the proscription of all whom violence made, or avarice called, its adversaries. It would have been necessary to con- fiscate the whole property of the order, and to banish its members from Italy. Any measures short of these would have been inadequate to compensate the people for their losses ; nor would there have been a sufficient pledge for the maintenance of tranquillity. The exclusion of three hundred families from their estates, which they had acquired in great part by rapine, and their expulsion from a country which they had inundated with blood, would have prevented that partition- treaty, whereby are placed in the hands of three men the properties and lives of all. .There should in no government be a contrariety of interests. Checks are useful : but it is better to stand in no need of them. Bolts and bars are good things : but would you establish a college of thieves and robbers to try how good they are ? Misfortune has taught me many truths, which a few years ago I should have deemed suspicious and dangerous. The fall of Eome and of Carthage, the form of whose governments was almost the same, has been occasioned by the divisions of the ambitious in their senates : for we conscript fathers call that ambition which the lower ranks call avarice. In fact the only 408 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QTJINCTUS CICERO. difference is, that the one wears fine linen, the other coarse ; one covets the government of Asia, the other a cask of vinegar. The people were indifferent which side prevailed, until their houses in that country were reduced to ashes ; in this, were delivered to murderers and gamesters. QUINCTUS. Painful is it to reflect, that the greatness of most men originates from what has been taken by fraud or violence out of the common stock. The greatness of states, on the contrary, depends on the subdivision of property, chiefly of the landed, in moderate portions; on the frugal pay of functionaries, chiefly of those who possess a property; and on unity of interests and designs. Where provinces are allotted, not for the public service, but for the enrichment of private families, where consuls wish one thing and tribunes wish another, how can there be prosperity or safety? If Carthage, whose government (as you observe) much resembled ours, had allowed the same rights generally to the inhabitants of Africa ; had she been as zealous in civilising as in coercing them ; she would have ruined our commonwealth and ruled the world. Rome found the rest of Italy more cultivated than herself, but corrupted for the greater part by luxury, ignorant of military science, and more patient of slavery than of toil. She conquered ; and in process of time infused into them somewhat of her spirit, and imparted to them somewhat of her institutions. Nothing was then wanting to her policy, but only to grant voluntarily what she might have foreseen they would unite to enforce, and to have constituted a social body in Italy. This would have rendered her invincible. Ambition would not permit our senators to divide with others the wealth and aggrandisement arising from authority : and hence our worst citizens are become our rulers. The same error was committed by Sertorius, from purer principles, when he created a senate in Spain, but admitted no Spaniard. The practice of disinterestedness, the force of virtue, in despite of so grievous an affront, united to him the bravest and most honorable of nations. If he had granted to them what was theirs by nature, and again due for benefits, he would have had nothing else to regret, than that they had so often broken our legions, and covered our commanders with shame. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 409 "What could be expected in our country, where tlie aris- tocracy possessed in the time of Sylla more than half the land, and disposed of all the revenues and offices arising from our conquests ? It would be idle to remark that the armies were paid out of them, when those armies were but the household of the rich, and necessary to their safety. On such reasoning there is no clear profit, no property, no possession : we can not eat without a cook, without a husbandman, without a butcher : these take a part of our money. The armies were no less the armies of the aristocracy than the money that paid and the provinces that supplied them ; no less, in short, than their beds and bolsters. Why could not we have done from policy and equity what has been and often will be done, under another name, by favour and injustice ? On the agrarian law we never were unanimous : yet Tiberius Gracchus had among the upholders of his plan the most prudent, the most equitable, and the most dignified in the republic : Lselius, the friend of Scipio, whose wisdom and moderation you have lately extolled in your dialogue; Crassus, then Pontifex Maximus; and Appius Claudius, who resolved by this virtuous and patriotic deed to wipe away the stain left for ages on his family, by its licen- tiousness, pride, and tyranny. To these names another must be added ; a name which we have been taught from our youth upward to hold in reverence, the greatest of our jurists, Mutius Scsevola. The adversaries of the measure can not deny the humanity and liberality of its provisions, by which those who might be punished for violating the laws should be indemnified for the loss of the possessions they held illegally, and these possessions should be distributed among the poorer families ; not for the purpose of corrupting their votes, but that they should have no temptation to sell them. You smile, Marcus ! MAECUS. For this very tiling the Conscript Fathers were inimical to Tiberius Gracchus, and accused him of an attempt to intro- duce visionary and impracticable changes into the common- wealth. Among the elder of his partisans some were called ambitious, some prejudiced ; among the younger, some were madmen, the rest traitors; just as they were protected or unprotected by the power of their families or the influence of their friends. 410 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS C1CE110. QUINCTUS. The most equitable and necessary law promulgated of latter times in our republic, was that by Caius Gracchus, who, finding all our magistratures in the disposal of the senate, and wit- nessing the acquittal of all criminals whose peculations and extortions had ruined our provinces and shaken our dominion, transferred the judicial power to the equestrian order. Cepio's law, five-and-twenty years afterward, was an infringement of this ; and the oration of Lucius Crassus in its favour, bearing with it the force of genius and the stamp of authority, formed in great measure, as you acknowledge, both your politics and your eloquence. The intimacy of Crassus with Aculeo, the husband of our maternal aunt, inclined you perhaps to follow the more readily his opinions, and to set a higher value, than you might otherwise have done, on his celebrated oration. You must remember, my brother, that I neither was nor professed myself to be adverse to every agrarian law, though I opposed with all my energy and authority that agitated by Eullus. On which occasion I represented the two Gracchi as most excellent men, inflamed by the purest love of the Roman people, in their proposal to divide among the citizens what was unquestionably their due. I mentioned them as those on whose wisdom and institutions many of the solider parts in our government were erected ; and I opposed the particular law at that time laid before the people, as leading to the tyranny of a decemvirate. The projects of Caesar and Pompeius on this business were unjust and pernicious ; those of Gracchus I now acknowledge to have been equitable to the citizens and salutary to the state. Unless I made you this concession, how could I defend my own conduct a few months ago, in persuading the senate to distribute among the soldiers of the fourth legion and the legion of Mars, for their services to the republic, those lands in Campania which Caesar and Pompeius would have allotted in favour of their partisans in usurpation ? Caius Gracchus on the contrary would look aside to no advantage or utility ; and lost the most powerful of his friends, adherents, and relatives, by his inflexible recti- tude. Beside those letters of his which are published, I remember one in answer to his mother, which Scsevola was fond of quoting, and of which he possessed the original. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 411 QUINCTUS. Have we the transcript of it ? MARCUS. The words of Cornelia, as well as I can recollect them, are these : " I have received the determination of Lselius and Scipio, in which they agree, as usual. He tells me that he never shall cease to be the advocate of so righteous a cause, if you will consent that the soldiers, who subdued for our republic the cities of Carthage and Numantia, shall partake in the public benefit. That Scipio is well aware how adverse the proposal would render the senate to him ; and at the same time how unpopular he shall be among his fellow citizens at Rome, which may excite a suspicion in bad and thoughtless men that he would gratify the army in defiance of each authority. He requests you to consider that these soldiers are for the greater part somewhat elderly ; and that granting them possessions, on which they may sit down and rest, can not be the means an ambitious man would take for his aggrandisement. He wishes to render them inclined to peace, not alert for disturbances, and as good citizens as they have been good soldiers ; and he entreats you, by the sanctity of your office, not to deprive them of what they should possess in common with others, for no better reason than because they defended by their valour the property of all. If you assent to this proposal, it will be unnecessary for him, he says, to undertake the settlement of the Commonwealth, referred to him by the Senate, not with- out danger, my dear Caius, though rather to his life than to his dignity. So desirable a measure, he adds, ought never to be carried into effect, nor supported too pertinaciously, by the general of an army." QUINCTUS. I never knew of this letter. Scsevola, I imagine, would not give it out of his hands for any one to read, in public or at home. Do you remember as much of the answer ? MARCUS. I think I may do : for the language of the Gracchi was among my exercises : and I wonder that you have not heard me rehearse both pieces, in the practice of declamation. Caius answers his mother thus : " Mother, until you have exerted your own eloquence to 412 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. persuade me, if indeed you participate in the opinions of Leelius, never shall I agree that the soldiers of Scipio have an allotment of land in Italy. When we withdraw our veterans from Spain and Africa, barbarian kings will tread upon our footsteps, efface the traces of our civilisation, and obliterate the memorials of our glory. The countries will be useful to us : even if they never were to be, we must provide against their becoming injurious and pernicious, as they would be under any other power. Either we should not fight an enemy, or we should fight until we have overcome him. Afterward to throw away what we have taken, is the pettishness of a child ; to drop it is the imbecility of a suckling. Nothing of wantonness or frowardness is compatible with warfare, or con- genial with the Roman character. To relinquish a conquest is an acknowledgment of injustice, or incapacity, or fear. " Our soldiers, under the command of Scipio, have subdued two countries, of a soil more fertile than ours, and become by a series of battles, and by intestine discord, less populous : let them divide and enjoy it. The beaten should always pay the expenses of the war, and the instigators should be deprived of their possessions and their lives. Which, I pray you, is the more reasonable ; that the Roman people shall incur debts by having conquered, or that the weight of those debts shall fall totally on the vanquished ? Either the war was unjust against them, or the conditions of peace against us. Our citizens are fined and imprisoned (since their debts begin with fine and end with imprisonment) for having hurt them. What ! shall w r e strike and run away ? or shall our soldier, when he hath stripped the armour from his adversary, say, ' No, I will not take this : I will go to Rome, and suit myself with better ! ' " Let the army be compensated for its toils and perils : let it enjoy the fruit of its triumphs on the soil that bore them : for never will any new one keep the natives in such awe. Those who fight for slavery should at all events have it : they should be sold as bondmen. The calamities of Carthage and of Numantia strike the bosom even of the conqueror. How many brave, how many free, how many wise and virtuous, perished within their walls ! But the petty princes and their satellites should be brought to market : not one of them should have a span of earth, or a vest, or a carcase of his own. Spaniards and Africans, who prefer the domination of a tetrarch to the protection of the laws, ought to be sold for the MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICEItO. 413 benefit of our legionaries in Spain and Africa, whether by the gang or the dozen, whether for the mine or the arena. "While any such are in existence, and while their country, of which they are unworthy, opens regions unexplored before us and teeming with fertility, I will not permit that the victorious army partake in the distribution of our home domains. Write this to Laelius ; and write it for Scipio's information, imploring him so to act as that he never may enfeeble the popular voice, nor deaden the world's applause. Eemind him, O mother, for we both love liim, how little it would become a good citizen and brave soldier, to raise up any cause why he should have to guard himself against the suspicions and stratagems of the senate/' QUINCTUS. The attempt to restore the sounder of our institutions, was insolently and falsely called innovation. For, from the building of our city, a part of the conquered lands was sold by auction under the spear ; an expression which hath since been used to designate the same transaction within the walls ; another part was holden in common : a third was leased out at an easy rate to the poorer citizens. So that formerly the lower and inter- mediate class possessed by right the exclusive benefit of two- thirds, and an equal chance (wherever there was industry and frugality) of the other. Latterly, by various kinds of vexation and oppression, they had been deprived of nearly the whole. Cornelia was not a woman of a heart so sickly tender as to awaken its sympathies at all hours, and to excite and pamper in it a false appetite. Like the rest of her family, she cared little or nothing for the applauses and opinions of the people : she loved justice : and it was on justice that she wished her children to lay the foundation of their glory. This ardour was inextinguished in her by the blood of her eldest son. She saw his name placed where she wished it ; and she pointed it out to Caius. Scandalous words may be written on the wall under it, by dealers in votes and traffickers in loyalty ; but little is the worth of a name that perishes by chalk or charcoal. The moral, like the physical body, hath not always the same wants in the same degree. We put off or on a greater or less quantity of clothes according to the season ; and it is to the season that we must accommodate ourselves in government, 414 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. wherein there are only a few leading principles which are never to be disturbed. I now perceive that the laws of society in one thing resemble the laws of perspective : they require that what is below should rise gradually, and that what is above should descend in the same proportion, but not that they should touch. Stil less do they inform us, what is echoed in our ears by new masters from camp and schoolroom, that the wisest and best should depend on the weakest and worst; and that, when individuals, however ignorant of moral discipline and impatient of self-restraint, are deemed adequate to the management of their affairs at twenty years, a state should never be ; that boys should come out of pupilage, that men should return to it ; that people in their actions and abilities so con- temptible as the triumvirate, should become by their own appointment our tutors and guardians, and shake their scourges over Marcus Brutus, Marcus Yarro, Marcus Tullius. The Eomans are hastening back, I see, to the government of here- ditary kings, whether by that name or another is immaterial, which no virtuous and dignified man, no philosopher of what- ever sect, hath recommended, approved, or tolerated ; and than which no moralist, no fabulist, no visionary, no poet, satirical or comic, no Pescennine jester, no dwarf or eunuch (the most privileged of privileged classes), no runner at the side of a triumphal car, in the uttermost extravagance of his licentiousness, has imagined anything more absurd, more indecorous, or more insulting. What else indeed is the reason why a nation is called barbarous by the Greeks and us ? This alone stamps the character upon it, standing for whatever is monstrous, for whatever is debased. What a shocking sight should we consider an old father of a family led in chains along the public street, with boys and prostitutes shouting after him ! and should we not retire from it quickly and anxiously? A sight greatly more shocking now presents itself : an ancient nation is reduced to slavery, by those who vowed before the people and before the altars to defend her. And is it hard for us, Quinctus, to turn away our eyes from this abomination ? or is it necessary for a Gaul or an Illyrian to command us that we close them on it. QUINCTUS. No, Marcus, no. Let us think upon it as our forefathers always thought, and our friends lately. MAItCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 415 MARCUS. I am your host, my brother, and must recall you awhile to pleasanter ideas. How beautiful is this Tormian coast ! how airy this villa ! Ah whither have I beckoned your reflec- tions ! it is the last of ours perhaps we may ever see. Do you remember the races of our children along the sands, and their consternation when Tyro cried c the Lcestrygons ! the Lcestry- gons ! } He little thought he prophesied in Ins mirth, and all that poetry has feigned of these monsters should in so few years be accomplished. The other evening, an hour or two before sunset, I sailed quietly along the coast, for there was little wind, and the stillness on shore made my heart faint within me. I remembered how short a time ago I had con- versed with Cato around the villa of Lucullus, whose son, such was the modesty of the youth, followed rather than accom- panied us. Gods ! how little then did I foresee or appre- hend that the guardianship of this young man, and also of Cato's son, would within one year have devolved on me, by the deplorable death of their natural protector. A. fading purple invested by degrees the whole promontory : I looked up at Misenus, and at those solitary and silent walks, enlivened so lately by friendship and philosophy. The last indeed of the thoughts w r e communicated were sorrowful and despondent, but, heavy as they were, they did not pain me like those which were now coming over me in my loneliness on the sea. For there only is the sense of solitude where everything we behold is unlike us, and where we have been accustomed to meet our friends and equals. QUINCTUS. There is something of softness, not unallied to sorrow, in these mild winter days and their humid sunshine. I know not, Quinctus, by what train or connection of ideas they lead me rather to the past than to the future ; unless it be that, when the fibers of our bodies are relaxed, as they must be in such weather, the spirits fall back easily upon reflection, and are slowly incited to expectation. The memory of those great men who consolidated our republic by their wisdom, exalted it by their valour, and protected and defended it by their constancy, stands not alone nor idly : they draw us after them, they place us with them. Quinctus ! I wish I could 416 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERtf. impart to you my firm persuasion, that after death we shall enter into their society; and what matter if the place of our reunion be not the capitol or the forum, be not Elysian meadows or Atlantic ilands ? Locality has nothing to do with mind once free. Carry this thought perpetually with you ; and Death, whether you believe it terminates our whole existence or otherwise, will lose, I will not say its terrors, for the brave and wise have none, but its anxieties and inquietudes. QUINCTUS. Brother, when I see that many dogmas in religion have been invented to keep the intellect in subjection, I may fairly doubt the rest. MARCUS. Yes, if any emolument be derived from them to the colleges of priests. But surely he deserves the dignity and the worship of a god, who first instructed men that by their own volition they may enjoy eternal happiness ; that the road to it is most easy and most beautiful, such as any one would follow by preference, even if nothing desirable were at the end of it. Neither to give nor to take offence, are surely the two things most delightful in human life ; and it is by these two things that eternal happiness may be attained. We shall enjoy a future state accordingly as we have employed our intellect and our affections. Perfect bliss can be expected by few : but fewer will be so miserable as they have been here. QUINCTUS. A belief to the contrary, if we admit a future life, would place the gods beneath us in their best properties, justice and beneficence. MARCUS. Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason : and I see not why we should not gratify it as unreluctantly as the baser. Religion does not call upon us to believe the fables of the vulgar, but on the contrary to correct them. QUINCTUS. Otherwise, overrun as we are in Rome by foreners of every nation, and ready to receive, as we have been, the buffooneries of Syrian and Egyptian priests, our citizens may within a few years become not only the dupes, but the tributaries, of these impostors. The Syrian may scourge us until we join him in MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 417 his lamentation of Adonis ; and the Egyptian may tell us that it is unholy to eat a chicken, and holy to eat an egg ; while a sly rogue of Judaea whispers in our ear, " that is superstition : you go to heaven if you pay me a tenth of your harvests." This, I have heard Cneius Pompeius relate, is done in Judsea. MARCUS. True, but the tenth paid all the expenses both of civil government and religious ; for the magistracy was (if such an expression can be repeated with seriousness) theocratical. In time of peace a decimation of property would be intolerable.* Pisistratus and Hiero did exact it ; but they were usurpers, and the exercise of their power was no more legitimate than the assumption. Among us likewise the tribunes of the people have complained, in former times, that taxes levied on the commons went to abase and ruin them. Certainly the senate did not contribute in the same proportion; but the commons were taxed out of the produce of what had been allotted to them, in the partition of conquered lands ; and it was only the stipend of the soldier for preserving by arms the property that his arms had won. The Jews have been always at war ; natives of a sterile country and borderers of a fertile one, acute, meditative, melancholy, morose. I know not whether we ourselves have performed such actions as they have, or whether any nation has fought with such resolution and pertinacity. We laugh at their worship ; they abominate ours. In this I think we are the wiser ; for surely on specu- lative points it is better to laugh than to abominate. But whence have you brought your eggs and chickens ? I have heard our Yarro tell many stories about the Egyptian ordi- nances ; but I do not remember this among them ; nor indeed did his friend Turranius, who resided long in that country, and was intimately versed in its antiquities, nor his son Manius, a young man of much pleasantry, ever relate it in conversation when we met at Yarro's. QUINCTUS. Indeed the distinction seems a little too absurd, even for the worshipers of cats and crocodiles. Perhaps I may have * The Spaniards had been a refractory and rebellious - people, and therefor were treated, we may presume, with little lenity : yet T. Livius tells us that a part of Spain paid a tenth, another part a twentieth. Lib. xliii. See also Tacitus on the subject of taxation, Ann. xiii., and Burmann Be Vectigali. E E 418 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QTJINCTUS CICERO. wronged them : the nation I may indeed have forgotten, but I am certain of the fact : I place it in the archives of super- stition, you may deposit it in its right cell. Among the Athenians the Priestess of Minerva was entitled to a measure of barley, a measure of wheat, and an obol, on every birth and death.* Some eastern nations are so totally subjected to the priesthood, that a member of it is requisite at birth, at death, and, by Thalassius ! at marriage itself. He can even inflict pains and penalties; he can oblige you to tell him all the secrets of the heart ; he can call your wife to him, your daughter to him, your blooming and innocent son; he can absolve from sin ; he can exclude from pardon. MARCUS. Now, Quinctus, egg and chicken, cat and crocodile, disappear and vanish : you repeat impossibilities : mankind, in its lowest degradation, has never been depressed so low. The savage would strangle the impostor that attempted it; the civilised man would scourge him and hiss him from society. Come, ; come, brother ! we may expect such a state of things, when- ever we find united the genius of the Cimmerian and the courage of the Troglodyte. Eeligions wear out, cover them with gold or case them with iron as you will. Jupiter is now less powerful in Crete than when he was in his cradle there, and spreads fewer terrors at Dodona than a shepherd's cur. Proconsuls have removed from Greece, from Asia, from Sicily, the most celebrated statues ; and it is doubted at last whether those deities are in heaven whom a cart and a yoke of oxen have carried away on earth. When the civil wars are over, and the minds of men become indolent and inactive, as is always the case after great excitement, it is not improbable that some novelties may be attempted in religion : but, as my prophecies in the whole course of the late events have been accomplished, so you may believe me when I prognosticate that our religion, although it should be disfigured and deterio- rated, will continue in many of its features, in many of its pomps and ceremonies, the same. Sibylline books will never be wanting while fear and curiosity are inherent in the composition of man. And there is something consolatory in this idea of duration and identity : for whatever be your philosophy, you must acknowledge that it is pleasant to think, * Aristot. (Econom. 1. 2. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 419 although you know not wherefor, that, when we go away things visible, like things intellectual, will remain in great measure as we left them. A slight displeasure would be felt by us, if we were certain that after our death our houses would be taken down, though not only no longer inhabited by us, but probably not destined to remain in the possession of our children; and that even these vineyards, fields, and gardens, were about to assume another aspect. QUINCTUS. The sea and the barren rocks will remain for ever as they are ; whatever is lovely changes. Misrule and slavery may convert our fertile plains into pestilential marshes • and who- ever shall exclaim against the authors and causes of such devastation, may be proscribed, slain, or exiled. Enlightened and virtuous men (painfullest of thoughts !) may condemn him : for a love of security accompanies a love of study, and that by degrees is adulation which was acquiescence. Cruel men have always at their elbow the supporters of arbitrary power ; and although the cruel are seldom solicitous in what manner they may be represented to posterity, yet, if anyone among them be rather more so than is customary, some projector will whisper in his ear an advice like this. " Oppress, fine, imprison, and torture, those who (you have reason to suspect) are or may be philosophers or historians : so that, if they mention you at all, they will mention you with indignation and abhorrence. Your object is attained : few will implicitly believe them ; almost everyone will acknowledge that their faith should be suspected, as there are proofs that they wrote in irritation. This is better than if they spoke of you slightingly, or cursorily, or evasively. By employing a hang- man extraordinary, you purchase in perpetuity the title of a clement prince." ' MARCUS. Quinctus, you make me smile, by bringing to my recollection that, among the marauders of Pindenissus, was a fellow called by the Eomans Poedirupa, from a certain resemblance no less to his name than to his character. He commanded in a desert and sandy district, which his father and grandfather had enlarged by violence ; for the family were, from time immemo- rial, robbers and assassins. Several schools had once been established in those parts, remote from luxury and seduction ; E E m 420 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. and several good and learned men taught in them, having fled from Mithridates. Fcedirupa assumed on a sudden the air and demeanour of a patriot, and hired one Gentius to compose his rhapsodies on the love of our country, with liberty to promise what he pleased. Gentius put two hundred pieces of silver on his mule, rode to the schools, exhibited his money, and promised the same gratuity to every scholar who would arm and march forth against the enemy. The teachers breathed a free and pure spirit, and, although they well knew the knavery of Gentius, seconded him in his mission. Gentius, as was ordered, wrote down the names of those who repeated the most frequently that of country, and the least so that of Fcedirupa. Even rogues are restless for celebrity. The scholars performed great services against the enemy. On their return they were disarmed; the promises of Tcedirupa were disavowed; the teachers were thrown into prison, accused of violating the ancient laws, of perverting the moral and religious principles, and finally of abusing the simplicity of youth, by illusory and empty promises. Gentius drew up against them the bills of indictment, and offered to take care of their libraries and cellars while they remained in prison. Fcedirupa cast them into dungeons ; but, drawing a line of distinction much finer than the most subtile of them had ever done, " I will not kill them/'' said he ; "I will only frighten them to death." He became at last somewhat less cruel, and starved them. Only one was sentenced to lose his head. Gentius comforted him upon the scaffold, by reminding him how much worse he would have fared under Mithridates, who would not only have com- manded his head to be cut off, but also to be fixed on a pike, and by assuring him that, instead of such wanton barbarity, he himself would carry it to the widow and her children, within an hour after their conference. The former words moved him little ; he hardly heard them ; but his heart and his brain throbbed in agony at the sound of children, of widow. He threw his head back ; tears rolled over his temples, and dripped from his grey hair. " Ah my dear friend," said Gentius, " have I unwittingly touched a tender part? Be manful; dry your eyes ; the children are yours no longer ; why be concerned for what you can never see again? My good old friend," added he, " how many kind letters to me has this ring of yours sealed formerly ! " Then, lifting up the hand, he drew it slowly off, overcome by excess of grief. It fell into his MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. 421 bosom, and to moderate his grief he was forced to run away, looking through the corner of his eye at the executioner. The rogue was stoned to death by those he had betrayed, not long before my arrival in the province; and an arrow from an unseen hand did justice on Foedirupa. QunrcTUS. I have seen in my life-time several rogues upon their crosses, although few, if any, so deserving of the punishment as Gentius and his colleague. Spectacles of higher interest are nearer and more attractive. It would please me greatly if either the decline of evening: or the windings of the coast would allow me a view of Misenus : and I envy you, Marcus, the hour or two before sunset, which enabled you to contemplate it from the unruffled sea at your leisure. Has no violence been offered to the retirement of Cornelia ? Are there any traces of her residence left amid our devastations, as there surely ought to be, so few years after her decease ? MARCUS. On that promontory her mansion is yet standing ; the same which Marius bought afterward, and which our friend Lucullus last inhabited ; and, whether from reverence of her virtues and exalted name, or that the gods preserve it as a monument of womanhood, its exterior is unchanged. Here she resided many years, and never would be induced to revisit Eome after the murder of her younger son. She cultivated a variety of flowers, naturalised exotic plants, and brought together trees from vale and mountain; trees unproductive of fruit, but affording her, in their superintendance and management, a tranquil expectant pleasure. " There is no amusement," said she, " so lasting and varied, so healthy and peaceful as horticulture." We read that the Babylonians and Persians were formerly much addicted to similar places of recreation. I have scarcely any knowledge in these matters ;* and the first time I went thither, I asked many questions of the gardener's boy, a child about nine years old. He thought me even more ignorant than I was, and said, among other such remarks, " I do not know what they call this plant at Eome^ or whether they have it there ; but it is among the commonest here, * " De hortis quod me admones, nee firi unquam valde cupidus. et nunc domus suppeditat raihi hortorum amoenitatem." Ad Q. Fratr. 1. 3. ep. 4. 422 MAECUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS C1CEE0. beautiful as it is, and we call it cytisus." "Thank you, child \" said I, smiling ; " and," pointing toward two cypresses, u pray what do you call those high and gloomy trees at the extremity of the avenue, just above the precipice ? w " Others like them," replied he, " are called cypresses; but these, I know not why, have always been called Tiberius and Cams." QUINCTUS. Of all studies the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface ; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true : lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. MAECUS. I have collected facts about Cornelia, worth recording ■ and I would commemorate them the rather, as, while the Greeks have had among them no few women of abilities, we can hardly mention two. QUINCTUS. Yet ours have advantages which theirs had not. Did Cornelia die unrepining and contented ? MAECUS. She was firmly convinced to the last that an agrarian law would have been just and beneficial, and was consoled that her illustrious sons had discharged at once the debt of nature and of patriotism. Glory is a light that shines from us on others, and not from others on us. Assured that future ages would render justice to the memory of her children, Cornelia thought they had already received the highest approbation, when they had received their own. QUINCTUS. If anything was wanting, their mother gave it. MAECUS. No stranger of distinction left Italy without a visit to her. You would imagine that they, and that she particularly, would avoid the mention- of her sons : it was however the subject on which she most delighted to converse, and which she never failed to introduce on finding a worthy auditor. I have heard from our father and from Scsevola, both of whom in their adolescence had been present on such occasions, that she MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 423 mentioned her children, no longer indeed with the calm com- placency and full content with which she showed them to the lady of Campania as her gems and ornaments, but with such an exultation of delight at their glory, as she would the heroes of antiquity. So little of what is painful in emotion did she exhibit at the recital, those who could not comprehend her magnanimity at first believed her maddened by her misfortunes; but so many signs of wisdom soon displayed themselves, such staidness and sedateness of demeanour, such serene majestic suavity, they felt as if some deity were present ; and when wonder and admiration and awe permitted them to lift up their eyes again toward her, they discovered from her's that the fondest of mothers had been speaking, the mother of the Gracchi. QUINCTUS. I wish you would write her life. MARCUS. Titus Pomponius may undertake it ; and Titus may live to accomplish it. All times are quiet times with him; the antagonist, the competitor of none ; the true philosopher ! He knows the worth of men and the weight of factions, and how little they merit the disturbance of our repose. Ah Quinctus ! that I never looked back until I came upon the very brink of the whirlpool ! that, drawing all my glory from my lungs, I find all my peace in exhaustion ! Our Atticus never did thus ; and he therefor may live to do what you propose for me, not indeed too late in the day, but with broken rest, and with zeal (I must acknowledge it) abated. Your remark on biography is just; yet how far below the truth is even the best representation of those whose minds the gods have illuminated ! How much greater would the greatest man appear, if anyone about him could perceive those innumer- able filaments of thought, w r hich break as they arise from the brain, and the slenderest of which is worth all the wisdom of many at whose discretion lies the felicity of nations ! This in itself is impossible ; but there are fewer who mark what appears on a sudden and disappears again (such is the conversation of the wise) than there are who calculate those stars that are now coming forth above us : scarcely one in several millions can apportion, to what is exalted in mind, its magnitude, place, and distance. We must be contented to be judged by that 424 MAUCUS TULLITJS AND QTJINCTUS C1CEU0. which people can discern and handle : that which they can have among them most at leisure, is most likely to be well examined and duly estimated. Whence I am led to believe that my writings, and those principally which instruct men in their rights and duties, will obtain me a solider and more extensive reputation than I could have acquired in public life, by busier, harder, and more anxious labours. Public men appear to me to live in that delusion which Socrates, in the Plmdo, would persuade us is common to all our species. " We live in holes/'' says he, " and fancy that we are living in the highest parts of the earth. - " What he says physically I would say morally. Judge whether my observation is not at least as reasonable as his hypothesis ; and indeed, to speak ingenuously, whether I have not converted what is physically false and absurd into* what is morally true and important. QUINCTUS. True, beyond a question, and important as those whom it concerns will let it be. They who stand in high stations, wash for higher ; but they who have occupied the highest of all, often think with regret of some one pleasanter they left below. The most wonderful thing in human nature is the variance of knowledge and will, where no passion is the stimulant : whence that system of life is often chosen and persevered in, which a man is well convinced is neither the best for him nor the easiest. Pew can see clearly where their happiness lies ; and, in those who see it, you will scarcely find one who has the courage to pursue it. Every action must have its motive ; but weak motives are sufficient for weak minds ; and whenever we see one which we believed to be a stronger, moved habitually by what appears inadequate, we may be certain that there is (to bring a metaphor from the forest) more top than root. Servius Tullius, a prudent man, dedicated to Fortune what we call the narrow temple, with a statue in proportion, expressing his idea that Fortune in the condition of mediocrity is more reasonably than in any other the object of our vows. He could have given her as magnificent a name, and as magnifi- cent a residence, as any she possesses ; and you know she has many of both ; but he wished perhaps to try whether for once she would be as favorable to wisdom as to enterprise.* * Plutarch, in his Problems, offers several reasons, each different from this. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. 425 If life allows us time for the experiment, let us also try it.* Sleep, which the Epicureans and others have represented as the image of death, is, we know, the repairer of activity and strength. If they spoke reasonably and consistently, they might argue from their own principles, or at least take the illustration from their own fancy, that death like sleep may also restore our powers, and in proportion to its universality and absoluteness. Pursuers as they are of pleasure, their unsettled and restless imagination loves rather to brood over an abyss, than to expatiate on places of amenity and composure. Just as sleep is the renovator of corporeal vigour, so, with their permission, I would believe death to be of the mind's ; that the body, to which it is attached rather from habitude than from reason, is little else than a disease to our immortal spirit; and that, like the remora, of which mariners tell marvels, it counteracts, as it were, both oar and sail, in the most strenuous advances we can make toward felicity. Shall we lament to feel this reptile drop off ? Or shall we not, on the contrary, leap with alacrity on shore, and offer up in gratitude to the gods whatever is left about us uncorroded and unshattered? A broken and abject mind is the thing least worthy of their acceptance. QUINCTUS. Brother, you talk as if there were a plurality of gods. MARCUS. I know not and care not how many there may be of them. Philosophy points to unity : but while we are here, we speak as those do who are around us, and employ in these matters . * That Cicero began to think a private life preferable to a public, and that his philosophical no less than his political opinions were unstabile, is shown nowhere so evidently as in the eighth book of his Epistles. " Nam omnem nostram de republica curam, cogitationem, de dicenda in senatu sententia, &c, abjechnus, et in Epicuri nos, adversarii nostri, castra con- jecimus." Several years before the date of this he writes to Atticus, " Malo in ilia tua sedicula quam habes sub imagine Aristotelis sedere, quam in istorum sella curuli, tecumque apud te ambulari quam cum eo quocum video esse ambulandum : sed de ista ambulatione sors viderit, aut siquis est qui curet deus." L. iv. E. ix. Demosthenes in his later days entertained the opinion that if there were two roads, the one leading to government, the other to death, a prudent man would choose the latter. 426 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. the language of our country. Italy is not so fertile in hemlock as Greece ; yet a wise man wall dissemble half his wisdom on such a topic ; and I, as you remember, adopting the means of dialogue, have often delivered my opinions in the voice of others, and speak now as custom not as reason leads me. QUINCTUS. Marcus, I stil observe in you somewhat of aversion to Epicurus, a few of whose least important positions you have controverted in your dialogues : and I wish that, even there, you had been less irrisory, less of a pleader ; that you had been, in dispassionate urbanity, his follower. Such was also the opinion of two men the most opposite in other things, Brutus and Caesar. Religions may fight in the street or over the grave, Philosophy never should. We ought to forego the manners of the forum in our disquisitions, which if they con- tinue to be agitated as they have been, will be designated at last not only by foul epithets drawn from that unsober tub, but, as violence is apt to increase in fury until it falls from exhaustion, by those derived from war and bloodshed. I should not be surprised if they who write and reason on our calm domestic duties, on our best and highest interests, should hereafter be designated by some such terms as polemical and sarcastic. As horses start aside from objects they see imper- fectly, so do men. Enmities are excited by an indistinct view ; they would be allayed by conference. Look at any long avenue of trees by which the traveler on our principal high- ways is protected from the sun. Those at the beginning are wide apart ; but those at the end almost meet. Thus happens it frequently in opinions. Men, who were far asunder, come nearer and nearer in the course of life, if they have strength enough to quell, or good sense enough to temper and assuage, their earlier animosities. Were it possible for you to have spent an hour with Epicurus, you would have been delighted with him ; for his nature was like the better part of yours. Zeno set out from an opposite direction, yet they meet at last and shake hands. He who shows us how Pear may be reasoned with and pacified, how Death may be disarmed of terrors, how Pleasure may be united with Innocence and with Constancy, he who persuades us that Vice is painful and vindictive, and that Ambition, deemed the most manly of our desires, is the most childish and illusory, deserves our gratitude. Children MAUCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICEHO. 427 would fall asleep before they had trifled so long as grave men do. If you must quarrel with Epicurus on the principal good, take my idea. The happy man is he who distinguishes the boundary between desire and delight, and stands firmly on the higher ground ; he who knows that pleasure not only is not possession, but is often to be lost and always to be endangered by it. In life, as in those prospects which if the sun were above the horizon we should see from hence, the objects covered with the softest light, and offering the most beautiful forms in the distance, are wearisome to attain, and barren. In one of your last letters, you told me that you had come over into the camp of your old adversary. MARCUS. I could not rest with him. As we pardon those reluctantly who destroy our family tombs, is it likely or reasonable that he should be forgiven, who levels to the ground the fabric to which they lead, and to which they are only a rude and temporary vestibule ? QUINCTUS. Socrates was heard with more attention, Pythagoras had more authority in his lifetime ; but no philosopher hath excited so much enthusiasm in those who never frequented, never heard nor saw him ; and yet his doctrines are not such in themselves as would excite it. How then can it be ? other- wise than partly from the innocence of his life, and partly from the relief his followers experienced in abstraction from unquiet and insatiable desires. Many, it is true, have spoken of him with hatred : but among his haters are none who knew him. Which is remarkable, singular, wonderful : for hatred seems as natural to men as hunger is, and excited like hunger by the presence of its food ; and the more exquisite the food, the more excitable is the hunger. MARCUS. I do not remember to have met anywhere before with the thought you have just expressed. Certain it is however that men in general have a propensity to hatred, profitless as it is and painful. We say proverbially, after Ennius or some other old poet, the descent to Avernus is easy : not less easily are we carried down to the more pestiferous pool whereinto we would drag our superiors and submerge them. It is the destiny of 428 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. the obscure to be despised ; it is the privilege of the illustrious to be hated. Whoever hates me, proves and feels himself to be less than I am. If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage-ground and overcome him. For he who, in order to attack a little man (and every one calls his adversary so) ceases to defend the truth, shows that truth is less his object than the little man. I profess the tenets of the New Academy, because it teaches us modesty in the midst of wisdom, and leads through doubt to inquiry. Hence it appears to me that it must render us quieter and more studious, without doing what Epicurus would do ; that is, without singing us to sleep in groves and meadows, while our country is calling on us loudly to defend her. Never- theless I have lived in the most familiar way with Epicureans, as you know, and have loved them affectionately. There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from ourselves. If they have weighed the matter in dispute as carefully, it is equitable to suppose that they have the same chance as we have of being in the right : if they have not, we may as reasonably be out of humour with our footman or chairman : he is more ignorant and more careless of it stil. I have seen reason to change the greater part of my opinions. Let me confess to you, Quinctus, we oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable. One would imagine that every man in society knows the nature of friendship. Similarity in the disposition, identity in the objects liked and disliked, have been stated (and stated by myself) as the essence of it : no- thing is untruer. Titus Pomponius and I are different in our sentiments, our manners, our habits of life, our ideas of men and things, our topics of study, our sects of philosophy ; added to which our country and companions have these many years been wide apart ; yet we are friends, and always were, and, if man can promise anything beyond the morrow, always shall be. QUINCTUS. Tour c idem velle atqiie idem nolle, 3 of which you now perceive the futility, has never been suspected ; not even by those who have seen Marius and Sylla, Caesar and Pompeius, at variance and at war, for no other reason than because they sought and shunned the same thing ; shunning privacy and MARCUS TULLIUS AND QTJINCTUS CICERO. 429 seeking supremacy. Young men quote the sentence daily; those very young men perhaps who court the same mistress, and whose friendship not only has not been corroborated, but has been shattered and torn up by it. Few authors have examined any one thing well, scarcely one many things. Your Dialogues are wiser, I think, than those of the Greeks ; certainly more animated and more diversified ; but I doubt whether you have bestowed so much time and labour on any question of general interest to mankind, as on pursuing a thief like Yerres, or scourging a drunkard like Piso, or drawing the nets of Yulcan over the couch of Clodius. For which reason I should not wonder if your Orations were valued by posterity more highly than your Dialogues : although the best oration can only show the clever man, while Philosophy shows the great one. MARCUS. I approve of the Dialogue for the reason you have given me just now j the fewness of settled truths, and the facility of turning the cycle of our thoughts to what aspect we wish, as geometers and astronomers the globe. A book was lately on the point of publication, I hear, to demonstrate the childishness of the Dialogue ; and the man upon the bench a little way below the Middle Janus, who had already paid the writer thirty denars for it, gave it back to him on reading the word childish. For Menander or Sophocles or Euripides had caught his eye, all of whom, he heard, wrote in dialogue, as did Homer in the better parts of his two poems : and he doubted whether a young man ignorant of these authors, could ever have known that the same method had been employed by Plato on all occasions, and by Xenophon in much of his Recollections, and that the conversations of Socrates would have lost their form and force, delivered in any .other manner. He might perhaps have set up himself against the others ; but Ins modesty would not let him stand before the world opposed to Socrates under the Shield of Apollo. Moras, the man below the Middle Janus," is very liberal, and left him in possession of the thirty denars, on condition that he should write as acrimoniously against as eloquent and judicious an author, whenever called upon. The Middle Janus is mentioned by Horace. It has usually been considered as a temple, and the remains of it are pointed out as such ; but in fact it was only the central arch of a market-place. 430 MAltCTJS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. QUINCTUS. Speaking of Plato in the earlier series of your philosophical disquisitions, you more highly praised his language than you appear to have done lately. MARCUS. There is indeed much to admire in it \ but even his language has fewer charms for me now, than it had in youth. Plato will always be an object of admiration and reverence, to men who would rather see vast images of uncertain objects reflected from illuminated clouds, than representations of things in their just proportions, measurable, tangible, and convertible to household use. Therefor, in speaking on the levity of the Greeks, I turned my eyes toward him ; that none, whatever commendations I bestowed upon his diction, might mistake me in describing the qualities of his mind. Politics will gain nothing of the practical from him, philosophy nothing of what is applicable to morals, to science, to the arts, or the conduct of life. Unswathe his Egyptian mummy ; and from the folds of fine linen, bestrewn and impregnated with aromatics, you disclose the grave features and gracile bones of a goodly and venerable cat. Little then can you wonder if I have taken him as one of small authority, when I composed my works on Government, on the Social Duties, or on the Nature of the Gods. QUINCTUS. You have forborne to imitate his style, although you cite the words of a Greek enthusiast, who says that if Jupiter had spoken in Greek he would have spoken in the language of Plato. MARCUS. Jupiter had no occasion for philosophy ; we have. QUINCTUS. I prefer your method of conducting the dialogue, although I wish you had given us a greater variety both of topics and of characters. MARCUS. If time and health are granted me, perhaps I may do somewhat more than I or others have accomplished in this department. QUINCTUS. Why do you smile ? at your confidence of succeeding ? MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 431 MARCUS. No indeed ; but because all strong and generous wine must deposit its crust before it gratifies the palate ; and are not all such writings in the same predicament ? QUINCTUS. Various pieces of such criticism have been brought to me. One writer says of you, " He would pretend to an equality in style and wisdom with Theophrastus." Another, " We remember his late invectives, which he had the assurance to call Philippics, fancying himself another Demosthenes ! " A third, " He knows so little of the Dialogue, that many of his speakers talk for a quarter of an hour uninterruptedly ; in fact, until they can talk no longer, and have nothing more to say upon the subject." MARCUS. Bare objection ! As if the dialogue of statesmen and philo- sophers, which appertains by its nature to dissertation, should resemble the dialogue of comedians, and Lselius and Scsevola be turned into Davus and Syrus ! Although I have derived my ideas of excellence from Greece, out of which there is nothing elegant, nothing chaste and temperate, nothing not barbarous, nevertheless I have a mind of my own equal in capacity and in order to any there, indebted as I acknowledge it to be to Grecian exercises and Grecian institutions. Neither my time of life nor my rank in it, nor indeed my temper and disposition, would allow me to twitch the sleeves of sophists, and to banter them on the idleness of their disputations with trivial and tiny and petulant interrogatories. I introduce grave men, and they talk gravely ; important subjects, and I treat them worthily. Lighter, if my spirits had the elasticity to give them play, I should touch more delicately and finely, letting them fly off in more fantastic forms and more vapoury particles. But who indeed can hope to excell in two manners so widely different ? Who hath ever done it, Greek or Boman ? If wiser men than those who appear at present to have spoken against my dialogues, should undertake the same business, I would inform them that the most severe way of judging these works, with any plea or appearance of fairness, is, to select the best passages from the best writers I may have introduced, and to place my pages in opposition to theirs in equal quantities. Suppose me introducing Solon or Phocion, iEschines or 432 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. Demosthenes ; that is, whatever is most wise, whatever is most eloquent; should it appear that I have equalled them where so little space is allowed me, I have done greatly more than has ever been done hitherto. Style I consider as nothing if what it covers be unsound : w r isdom in union with harmony is oracular. On this idea, the wiser of ancient days venerated in the same person the deity of oracles and of music : and it must have been the most malicious and the most ingenious of satirists, who transferred the gift of eloquence to the god of thieves. QUINCTUS. I am not certain that you have claimed for yourself the fair trial you would have demanded for a client. One of the inter- locutors may sustain a small portion of a thesis. MARCUS. In that case, take the whole Conversation ; examine the quality, the quantity, the variety, the intensity, of mental power exerted. I myself would arm my adversaries, and teach them how to fight me ; and I promise you, the first blow I receive from one of them, I will cheer him heartily : it will augur w r ell for our country. At present I can do nothing more liberal than in sending thirty other denars to the mortified bondman of Moras. I have performed one action ; I have composed some few things, which posterity, I would fain believe, will not suffer to be quite forgotten. Fame, they tell you, is air : but without air there is no life for any : without fame there is none for the best. And yet, who knows whether all our labours and vigils may not at last be involved in oblivion ! What treasures of learning must have perished, which existed long before the time of Homer ! For it is utterly out of the nature of things, that the first attempt in any art or science should be the most perfect : such is the Iliad : I look upon it as the sole fragment of a lost world. Grieved indeed I should be to think, as you have heard me say before, that an enemy may possess our city five thousand years hence : yet when I consider that soldiers of all nations are in the armies of the triumvirate, and that all are more zealous for her ruin than our citizens are for her defence, this event is not unlikely the very next. The worst of barbarism is that which ema- nates, not from the absence of laws, but from their corruption. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 433 So long as virtue stands merely on the same level with vice, nothing is desperate, nothing is irreparable ; few governments in their easy decrepitude care for more. But when rectitude is dangerous and depravity secure, then eloquence and courage, the natural pride and safeguard of states, become the strongest and most active instruments in their overthrow. QUINCTUS. I see the servants have lighted the lamps in the house earlier than usual, hoping, I suppose, we shall retire to rest in good time, that to-morrow they may prepare the festivities for your birth-day, MARCUS. They are bringing out of the dining-room, I apprehend, the busts our Atticus lately sent me. Let us hasten to prevent it, or they may place Homer and Solon with the others, instead of inserting them in the niches opposite my bed, where I wish to contemplate them by the first light of morning, the first objects opening on my eyes. For, without the one, not only poetry, but eloquence too, and every high species of literary composition, might have remained until this day, in all quarters of the globe, incondite and indigested : and without the other even Athens herself might have explored her way in darkness, and never have exhibited to us Romans the prototype of those laws on which our glory hath arisen, and the loss of which we are destined to lament as our last and greatest . QUIXCTUS. "Within how few minutes has the night closed in upon us ! Nothing is left discernible of the promontories, or the long irregular breakers under them. AYe have before us only a faint glimmering from the shells in our path, and from the blossoms of the arbutus. MARCUS. The little solitary Circean hill, and even the nearer, loftier, and whiter rocks of Anxur, are become indistinguishable. We leave our Cato and our Lucullus, we leave Cornelia and her children, the scenes of friendship and the recollections of greatness, for Lepidus and Octavius and Antonius ; and who knows whether this birth-day, between which and us so few days intervene, may not be, as it certainly will be the least pleasurable, the last ! 43 i MAECUS TULLTUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. QUINCTUS. Do not despond, my brother ! I am as far from despondency and dejection as from joy and cheerfulness. Death has two aspects : dreary and sorrowful to those of prosperous, mild and almost genial to those of adverse fortune. Her countenance is old to the young, and youthful to the aged : to the former her voice is importunate, her gait terrific : the latter she approaches like a bedside friend, and calls in a whisper that invites to rest. To us, my Quinctus, advanced as we are on our way, weary from its perplexities and dizzy from its precipices, she gives a calm welcome ; let her receive a cordial one. If life is a present which anyone foreknowing its contents would have willingly declined, does it not follow that anyone would as willingly give it up, having well tried what they are ? I speak of the reasonable, the firm, the virtuous ; not of those who, like bad governors, are afraid of laying down the powers and privileges they have been proved unworthy of holding. Were it certain that the longer we live the wiser we become and the happier, then indeed a long life would be desirable : but since on the contrary our mental strength decays, and our enjoyments of every kind not only sink and cease, but diseases and sorrows come in place of them, if any wish is rational, it is surely the wish that we should go away unshaken by years, undeprest by griefs, and undespoiled of our better faculties. Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else : and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it ; or that which we can not put aside if w r e would, and indeed can anticipate but little. There are few who can regulate life to any extent ; none who can order the things it shall receive or exclude. What value then should be placed upon it by the prudent man, when duty or necessity calls him away ? or what reluctance should he feel on passing into a state where at least he must be conscious of fewer checks and inabilities ? Such, my brother, as the brave commander, when from the secret and dark passages of some fortress, wherein implacable enemies besieged him, having performed all his duties and exhausted all his munition, he issues at a distance into open dav. MARCUS TULLIUS AND QU1NCTUS CICERO. 435 Everything lias its use ; life to teacli us the contempt of death, and death the contempt of life. Glory, which among all things between stands eminently the principal, although it has been considered by some philosophers as mere vanity and deception, moves those great intellects which nothing else could have stirred, and places them where they can best and most advantageously serve the commonwealth. Glory can be safely despised by those only who have fairly Avon it : a low, ignorant, or vicious man should dispute on other topics. The philosopher who contemns it, has every rogue in his sect, and may reckon that it will outlive all others. Occasion may have been wanting to some ; I grant it : they may have remained their whole lifetime like dials in the shade, always fit for use and always useless : but this must occur either in monarchal governments, or where persons occupy the first station who ought hardly to have been admitted to the secondary, and whom jealousy has guided more frequently than justice. It is true there is much inequality, much inconsiderateness, in the distribution of fame ; and the principles according to which honour ought to be conferred, are not only violated, but often inverted. Whoever wishes to be thought great among men, must do them some great mischief; and the longer he continues in doing things of this sort, the more he will be admired. The features of Fortune are so like those of Genius as to be mistaken bv almost all the world. We t/ whose names and works are honorable to our country, and destined to survive her, are less esteemed than those who have accelerated her decay : yet even here the sense of injury rises from and is accompanied by a sense of merit, the tone of which is deeper and predominant. When we have spoken of life, death, and glory, we have spoken of all important things, except friendship : for eloquence and philosophy, and other inferior attainments, are either means conducible to life and glory, or antidotes against the bitterness of death. We can not conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could. I have observed your impatience : you were about to appeal in behalf of virtue. But virtue is presupposed in friendship, as I have mentioned in my Lmlius ; nor have I ever separated it from philosophy or from glory. I discussed the subject most at large and most methodically F F 2 436 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. in my treatise on our Duties, and I find no reason to alter my definition or deductions. On friendship, in the present condition of our affairs, I would say but little. Could I begin my existence again, and what is equally impossible, could I see before me all I have seen, I would choose few acquaintances, fewer friendships, no familiarities. This rubbish, for such it generally is, collecting at the base of an elevated mind, lessens its highth and impairs its character. What requires to be sustained, if it is greater, falls ; if it is smaller, is lost to view by the intervention of its supporters.* In literature great men suffer more from their little friends than from their potent enemies. It is not by our adversaries that our early shoots of glory are nipped and broken off, or our later pestilentially blighted ; it is by those who lie at our feet, and look up to us with a solicitous and fixed regard until our shadow grows thicker and makes them colder. Then they begin to praise us as worthy men indeed and good citizens, but rather vain, and what (to speak the truth) in others they should call presumptuous. They entertain no doubt of our merit in literature ; yet justice forces them to declare that several have risen up lately who promise to surpass us. Should it be asked of them who these are, they look modest, and tell you softly and submissively, it would ill become them to repeat the eulogies of their acquaintance, and that no man pronounces his own name so distinctly as another's. I had something of oratory once about me, and was borne on high by the spirit of the better Greeks. Thus they thought of me; and they thought of me, Quinctus, no more than thus. They had reached the straits, and saw before them the boundary, the impassable Atlantic, of the intellectual world. But now I am a bad citizen and a worse writer : I want the exercise and effusion of my own breath to warm me : I must be chafed by an adversary : I must be supported by a crowd : I require the forum, the rostra, the senate : in my individuality I am nothing. * These are the ideas of a man deceived and betrayed by almost every- one he trusted. But if Cicero had considered that there never was an elevated soul or warm heart which has not been ungenerously and unjustly dealt with, and that ingratitude has usually been in proportion to desert, his vanity if not his philosophy would have buoyed up and supported him. He himself is redundant in such instances. To set Pompeius aside, as a man ungrateful to all, he had spared Julius Csesar in his consulate when he was implicated in the conspiracy of Catiline. Clodius, Lepidus, and MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTU3 CICERO. 437 QUIXCTUS. I remember the time when, instead of smiling, you would have been offended and angry at such levity and impudence. MARCUS. The misfortunes of our country cover ours, and I am imper- ceptible to myself in the dark gulf that is absorbing her. Should I be angry? Anger, always irrational, is most so here. These men see those above them as they see the stars : one is almost as large as another, almost as bright ; small distance between them. They can not quite touch us with the fore- finger; but they can almost. And what matters it? they can utter as many things against us, and as fiercely, as Polyphemus did against the heavens. Since my dialogues are certainly the last things I shall compose, and since we, my brother, shall perhaps, for the little time that is remaining of our lives, be soon divided, we may talk about these matters as among the wisest and most interesting : and the rather if there is anything in them displaying the character of our country and the phasis of our times. Aquilius Cimber, who lives somewhere under the Alps, was patronised by Cains Caesar for his assiduities, and by Antonius for his admirable talent in telling a story and sitting up late. He bears on his shoulders the whole tablet of his nation, reconciling its incongruities. Apparently very frank, but intrinsically very insincere ; a warm friend while drinking ; Antonius. had been admitted to his friendship and confidence : Octavius owed to him his popularity and estimation: Philologus.* whom he had fed and instructed, pointed out to his pursuers the secret path he had taken to avoid them : and Popilius, their leader, had by his eloquence been saved from the punishment of one parricide thatjhe might commit another. It were well if Cicero had been so sincere in his friendship as perhaps he thought he was. ■ The worst action of his life may be related in his own words. ■'•' Qualis futura sit Caesaris Vituperatio contra Laudationem meam perspexi ex eo libro quern Hirtius ad me misit, in quo colligit vitia Catonis, seel cum maximis laudibus meis : itaque misi librum ad Muscam, ut tuis librariis daret, volo enim mm divalgari." Ad Attic, xii. 40. A honest man would be little gratified by the divulgation of his praises accompanied by calumnies on his friend, or even by the exposure of his faults and weaknesses. * So his name is written by Plutarch, who calls him 'airekevOepos Koiurov. We may doubt whether it should not be Philogonus, for a freed-man of Quinctus with that name is mentioned in the Epistles (ad Q. F. 1. 3). 438 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. cold, vapid, limber, on the morrow, as the festal coronet he had worn the night before. QUINCTUS. Such a person, I can well suppose, may nevertheless have acquired the friendship of Antonius. MARCUS. His popularity in those parts rendered him also an object of attention to Octavius, who told me he was prodigiously charmed with his stories of departed spirits, which Aquilius firmly believes are not altogether departed from his country. He hath several old books relating to the history, true and fabulous, of the earlier Cimbri. Such is the impression they made upon him in his youth, he soon composed others on the same model, and better (I have heard) than the originals. His opinion is now much regarded in his province on matters of literature in general ; although you would as soon think of sending for a smith to select an ostrich feather at the milliner's. He neglects no means of money-getting, and has entered into an association for this purpose with the booksellers of the principal Transpadane cities. On the first appearance of my dialogues, he, not having read them, nor having heard of their tendency, praised them ; moderately indeed and re- servedly ; but finding the people in power ready to persecute and oppress me, he sent his excuse to Antonius, that he was drunk when he did it ; and to Octavius, that the fiercest of the Lemures held him by the throat until he had written what his heart revolted at. And he ordered his friends and relatives to excuse him by one or other of these apologies, according to the temper and credulity of the person they addressed. QUINCTUS. I never heard the story of Aquilius, no less amusing than the well-known one of him, that he went several miles out of his road to visit the tomb of the Scipios, only to lift up his tnnic against it in contempt. He boasted of the feat and of the motive. MARCUS. Until the worthies of our times shone forth, he venerated no Roman since the exiled kings, in which his favorite is the son of the last : and there are certain men in high authority who assure him they know how to appreciate and compensate so heroic and sublime an affection. The Catos and Brutusses MARCUS TULLIUS AND QTJINOTUS CICERO. 439 are wretches with him, and particularly since Cato pardoned him for having hired a fellow (as was proved) to turn some swine into his turnip-field at Tusculum. Looking at him or hearing of him, unless from those who know his real character, you would imagine him generous, self-dependent, self-devoted : but this upright and staunch thistle bears a yielding and palpable down for adulation. QUIXCTUS. Better that than malice. Whatever lie may think or say of you, I hope he never speaks maliciously of those whose liveli- hood, like his own, depends upon their writings ; the studious, the enthusiastic, the unhardened in politics, the uncrossed in literature. MARCUS. I wish I could confirm or encourage you in your hopes : report, as it reaches me, by no means favors them. QUINCTUS. This hurts me ; for Aquilius, although the Graces in none of their attributions are benignant to lii.m, is a man of industry and genius. MARCUS. Alas, Quinctus ! to pass Aquilius by, as not concerned in the reflection, the noblest elevations of the human mind have in appertenance their sands and swamps ; hardness at top, putridity at bottom. Friends themselves, and not only the little ones you have spoken of, not only the thoughtless and injudicious, but graver and more constant, will occasionally gratify a superficial feeling, which soon grows deeper, by irritating an orator or writer. You remember the apologue of Critobulus ? QUINCTUS. No, I do not. ' MARCUS. It was sent to me by Pomponius Atticus soon after my marriage : I must surely have shown it to you. QUINCTUS. Not you indeed ; and I should wonder that so valuable a present, so rare an accession to Rome as a new Greek volume, could have come into your hands, and not out of them into mine, if you had not mentioned that it was about the time of your nuptials. Let me hear the story. 440 MAB.CUS TULLIUS AND QTJINCTUS CICERO. MARCUS. "I was wandering/' says Critobulus, "in the midst of a forest, and came suddenly to a small round fountain or pool, with several white flowers (I remember) and broad leaves in the center of it, but clear of them at the sides, and of a water the most pellucid. Suddenly a very beautiful figure came from behind me, and stood between me and the fountain. I was amazed. I could not distinguish the sex, the form being youthful and the face toward the water, on which it was gazing and bending over its reflection, like another Hylas or Narcissus. It then stooped and adorned itself with a few of the simplest flowers, and seemed the fonder and tenderer of those which had borne the impression of its graceful feet : agd having done so, it turned round and looked upon me wi£l an air of indifference and unconcern. The longer I fixed my eyes on her, for I now discovered it was a female, the more ardent I became and the more embarrassed. She perceived it, and smiled. Her eyes were large and serene ; not very thoughtful, as if perplexed, nor very playful, as if easily to be won; and her countenance was tinged with so delightful a colour, that it appeared an effluence from an irradiated cloud passing over it in the heavens. She gave me the idea, from her graceful attitude, that, although adapted to the perfection of activity, she felt rather an inclination for repose. I would have taken her hand : c You shall presently/ said she ; and never fell on mortal a diviner glance than on me. I told her so. She replied, c You speak well/ I then fancied she was simple, and weak, and fond of flattery, and began to flatter her. She turned her face away from me, and answered nothing. I declared my excessive love : she went some paces off. I swore it was impossible for one who had ever seen her to live without her : she went several paces farther. c By the immortal gods!' I cried, 'you shall not leave me/ She turned round and looked benignly; but shook her head. 'You are another's then ! Say it ! say it ! utter the word once from your lips . . and let me die/ She smiled, more melancholy than before, and replied, e Critobulus ! I am indeed another's ; lama God's/ The air of the interior heavens seemed to pierce me as she spoke ; and I trembled as impassioned men may tremble once. After a pause, 'I might have thought it!' cried I: c why then come before me and torment me ? ' She began to play and trifle with me, as became her age (I fancied) rather MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUIXCTUS CICERO. 441 than her engagement, and she placed my hand upon the flowers in her lap without a blush. The whole fountain would not at that moment have assuaged my thirst. The sound of the breezes and of the birds around us, even the sound of her own voice, were all confounded in my ear, as colours are in the fulness and intensity of light. She said many pleasing things to me, to the earlier and greater part of which I was insensible; but in the midst of those which I could hear and was listening to attentively, she began to pluck out the grey hairs from my head, and to tell me that the others too were of a hue not very agreeable. My heart sank within me. Presently there was hardly a limb or feature without its imperfection. '01' cried I in despair, ' you have been used to the Gods : you must think so : but among men I do not believe I am con- sidered as ill-made or unseemly/ She paid little attention to my words or my vexation ; and when she had gone on with my defects for some time longer, in the same calm tone and with the same sweet countenance, she began to declare that she had much affection for me, and was desirous of inspiring it in return. I was about to answer her with rapture, when on a sudden, in her girlish humour she stuck a thorn, where- with she had been playing, into that part of the body which supports us when we sit. I know not whether it went deeper than she intended, but catching at it, I leaped up in shame and anger, and at the same moment felt something upon my shoulder. It was an armlet inscribed with letters of bossy adamant, c Jove to his daughter Truth/ " She stood again before me at a distance, and said grace- fully, ' Critobulus ! I am too young and simple for you ; but you will love me stil, and not be made unhappy by it in the end. Farewell/ " QUINCTUS. Why did you not insert this allegory in some part of your works, as you have often many pages from the Greek ? MARCUS. I might have done it, but I know not whether the state of our literature is any longer fit for its reception. QUINCTUS. Confess, if it is not, that the fault is in some sort yours, who might have directed the higher minds, and have carried the lower with them. 412 MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. MARCUS. I regard with satisfaction the efforts I have made to serve my country : but the same eloquence, the merit of which not even the most barbarous of my adversaries can detract from me, would have enabled me to elucidate large fields of philosophy, hitherto untrodden by our countrymen, and in which the Greeks have wandered widely or worked unprofit- ably. QUINCTUS. Excuse my interruption. I heard a few days ago a pleasant thing reported of Asinius Pollio : he said at supper, your language is that of an Allobrox. MARCUS. After supper, I should rather think, and with Antonius. Asinius, urged by the strength of instinct, picks from amid the freshest herbage the dead dry stalk, and dozes and dreams about it where he can not find it. Acquired, it is true, I have a certain portion of my knowledge, and consequently of my language, from the Allobroges : I can not well point out the place : the wails of Romulus, the habitations of Janus and of Saturn, and the temple of Capitoline Jove, which the con- fessions I extorted from their embassadors gave me in my consulate the means of saving, stand at too great a distance from this terrace. QUIXCTUS. Certainly you have much to look back upon, of what is most proper and efficacious to console you. Consciousness of desert protects the mind against obloquy, exalts it above calamity, and scatters into utter invisibility the shadowy fears of death. Nevertheless, Marcus ! to leave behind us our children, if indeed it will be permitted them to stay behind, is painful. MARCUS. Among the contingencies of life, it is that for which we ought to be the best prepared, as the most regular and ordi- nary in the course of nature. In dying, and leaving our friends, and saying, "I shall see you no more," which is thought by the generous man the painfullest thing in the change he undergoes, we speak as if we shall continue to feel the same desire and want of seeing them. An inconsistency so common as never to have been noticed : and my remark, which you would think too trivial, startles by its novelty MARCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. 443 before it conciliates by its truth. We bequeathe to our children a field illuminated by our glory and enriched by our example: a noble patrimony, and beyond the jurisdiction of praetor or proscriber. Nor indeed is our fail itself without its fruit to them : for violence is the cause why that is often called a calamity which is not, and repairs in some measure its injuries by exciting to commiseration and tenderness. The pleasure a man receives from his children resembles that which, with more propriety than any other, we may attribute to the Divinity : for to suppose that his chief satisfaction and delight should arise from the contemplation of what he has done or can do, is to place Mm on a level with a runner or a wrestler. The formation of a world, or of a thousand worlds, is as easy to him as the formation of an atom. Virtue and intellect are equally his production; yet he subjects them in no slight degree to our volition. His benevolence is gratified at seeing us conquer our wills and rise superior to our infirmities ; and at tracing day after day a nearer resemblance in our moral features to his. We can derive no pleasure but from exertion : he can derive none from it : since exertion, as we understand the word, is incompatible with omnipotence. QUINCTUS. Proceed, my brother ! for in every depression of mind, in every excitement of feeling,, my spirits are equalised by your discourse ; and that winch you said with too much brevity of our children, soothes me greatly. MARCUS. I am persuaded of the truth in what I have spoken ; and yet . . ah Quinctus ! there is a tear that Philosophy can not dry, and a pang that will rise as we approach the Gods. Two things tend beyond all others, after philosophy, to inhibit and check our ruder passions as they grow and swell in us, and to keep our gentler in their proper play : and these two tilings are, seasonable sorrow and inoffensive pleasure, each moderately indulged. Nay, there is also a pleasure, humble, it is true, but graceful and insinuating, which follows close upon our very sorrows, reconciles us to them gradually, and some- times renders us at last undesirous altogether of abandoning them. If ever you have remembered the anniversary of some day whereon a dear friend was lost to you, tell me whether that anniversary was not purer and even calmer than the day 444 MAKCUS TULLIUS AND QUINCTUS CICERO. before, The sorrow, if there should be any left, is soon absorbed, and full satisfaction takes place of it, while you perform a pious office to Friendship, required and appointed by the ordinances of Nature. When my Tulliola was torn away from me, a thousand plans were in readiness for immor- talising her memory, and raising a monument up to the magnitude of my grief. The grief itself has done it : the tears I then shed over her assuaged it in me, and did everything that could be done for her, or hoped, or wished. I called upon Tulliola ; Rome and the whole world heard me : her glory was a part of mine and mine of hers ; and when Eternity had received her at my hands, I wept no longer. The tenderness wherewith I mentioned and now mention her, though it suspends my voice, brings what consoles and comforts me : it is the milk and honey left at the sepulcher, and equally sweet (I hope) to the departed. The Gods, who have given us our affections, permit us surely the uses and the signs of them. Immoderate grief, like everything else immoderate, is useless and pernicious ; but if we did not tolerate and endure it, if we did not prepare for it, meet it, commune with it, if we did not even cherish it in its season, much of what is best in our faculties, much of our tenderness, much of our generosity, much of our patriotism, much also of our genius, would be stifled and extinguished. When I hear any one call upon another to be manly and to restrain his tears, if they flow from the social and kind affections I doubt the humanity and distrust the wisdom of the counsellor. Were he humane, he would be more inclined to pity and to sympathise than to lecture and reprove ; and were he wise, he would consider that tears are given us by nature as a remedy to affliction, although, like other remedies, they should come to our relief in private. Philosophy, we may be told, would prevent the tears by turning away the sources of them, and by raising up a rampart against pain and sorrow. I am of opinion that philosophy, quite pure and totally abstracted from our appetites and passions, instead of serving us the better, would do us little or no good at all. We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish. I have never had leisure to write all I could have written on the subjects I began to meditate and discuss too late. And where, O Quinctus ! where are those men gone, whose approbation MARCUS TULLIUS AXD QUINCTUS CICERO. 4.45 would have stimulated and cheered me in the course of them ? Little is entirely my own in the Tascidan Disputations ; for I went rather in search of what is useful than of what is specious, and sat down oftener to consult the wise than to argue with the ingenious. In order to determine what is fairly due to me, you will see,, which you may easily, how large is the pro- portion of the impracticable, the visionary, the baseless, in the philosophers who have gone before me ; and how much of application and judgment, to say nothing of temper and patience, was requisite in making the selection. Aristoteles is the only one of the philosophers I am intimate with (except you extort from me to concede you Epicurus) who never is a dreamer or a trifier, and almost the only one whose language, varying with its theme, is yet always grave and concise, autho- ritative and stately, neither running into wild dithyrambics, nor stagnating in vapid luxuriance. I have not hesitated, on many occasions, to borrow largely from one who, in so many provinces, hath so much to lend. The whole of what I collected, and the whole of what I laid out from my own, is applicable to the purposes of our political, civil, and domestic state. And my elocpience, whatever (with PolhVs leave) it may be, would at least have sufficed me to elucidate and explore those ulterior tracts, winch the Greeks have coasted negligently and left unsettled. Although I think I have done somewhat more than they, I am often dissatisfied with the scantiness of my store and the limit of my excursion. Every question has given me the subject of a new one, winch has always been better treated than the preceding ; and, like Archimedes, whose tomb appears now before me as when I first discovered it at Syracuse, I could almost ask of my enemy time to solve my problem. Quinctus ! Quinctus ! let us exult with joy : there is no enemy to be appeased or avoided. TTe are moving forward, and without exertion, thither where we shall know all we wish to know, and how greatly more than, whether in Tusculum or in Eormise, in Rome or in Athens, we could ever hope to learn ! 446 TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. — ♦ — TIBULLUS. Messala ? this is indeed a delight to me. A visit in Rome would have been little better than an honour. MESSALA. My dear Tibullus ! didst thou not promise me a great reward if I would come to thy villa in the autumn ? Confident that no urbanity can escape thy memory or thy performance, here I am. TIBULLUS. Little, too little, is whatever I could have promised. MESSALA. Little ? didst thou not promise me in presence of all the Muses, that Delia should cull the ripest apples for me ? and thou well knowest how fond I always was of them. TIBULLUS. On the Garumna and on the Liger, after a tedious march, we often found them refreshing. MESSALA. "What then must they be, gathered by the hand of Delia, the beloved of my brave Tibullus ? TIBULLUS. She shall gather them instantly. Come, Delia ! come from behind that curtain. Here is Messala. Do not let his eloquence win thy heart away from me, and forget for a moment all thou hast ever heard about his military actions and his high nobility. DELIA. Albius ! Albius ! for shame ! how dare you take such a liberty with so great a man as to put my hand into his ? TIBULLUS. Because he is what thou callest him : I take no liberty with anv other. TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. 447 Albius Tibullus ! I never tliouglit thee such a flatterer before. Were I in power, or in favour with the powerful, thou wouldst be more discreet and silent. Neither the heir of Julius, nor his bosom friend the patron of poets, have ever won a verse or a visit from thee. And never shall, though each of them I believe hath his merit. Was it to either I owe the preservation of half my patrimony ? of this villa ? of the apple that is growing on the tree for thee ? Friends who watch over us are to be thanked ; not robbers who leave us bruised on the road, throwing back into our faces a few particles of the booty. MESSALA. Come along, come along ; let us gather the apple. tibullus (to delia). He will not hear me ; thanks pain him, much as he loves the grateful. Go on, my Delia. DELIA. Say more about him before we reach the orchard, TIBULLUS. His intervention, his authority, his name, saved for us all we have. But come ; we must overtake him : he walks swiftly on. Messala ! you were always first in the field of battle : I will be up with you in this. MESSALA. the active girl ! she has caught thee by the tunic in ten paces. DELIA. Sir ! sir ! what are you doing ? MESSALA. My pretty one, I am lifting thee up to gather me two or three of those red and yellow apples : they are . better than such as are nearer the bottom of the tree. Well done ! what ! another, and another, and another ? Throw the next down into the bosom of Albius, who is making 448 TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. a sack of his vest for its reception : and now put one, only one, into thy own. Behold ! thou art now safe down again. Give me the apple out of its hiding-place. How she blushes ! Ha ! she runs away. Albius ! that little girl is the delight of thy youthful years, and will be, I augur, the solace of thy decline. TIBULLUS. She stands listening behind the statue, pretending to admire it, or to see somewhat in its features she never saw before. Didst thou hear him, my Delia ? Light of my life ! art thou sorrowful ? DELIA. I did hear ; I own it. Sorrowful ! no, no. But how can I hope, sir, to be always a delight to him ? What on earth, as my mother used to say, is always ? I was fifteen years old, and two more are nearly gone, since. . . MESSALA. Since Albius was made happy and Delia was made immortal. Is it so ? DELIA. I must grow old at last ! TIBULLUS. And so must L DELIA. Oh ! no, no, no, that can never be. MESSALA. Lady, it is well to think so : Aurora thought it of Tithonus. Your ages united are somewhat under mine. Never take such notice of my scanty and grey hairs ; frightful as they are, they are truthful. DELIA. If they seem grey it is only because you are in the sunlight. MESSALA. Ah Delia ! I am much nearer the starlight than the sunlight. Day is fast closing with me. But my life has not been unserviceable to my friends or to my country. Yet what, after all, am I ? Ye glories of the world, how rapidly, how irrevocably, ye depart ! Men who have shaken the forum and the senate- TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. 449 house with their eloquence, are soon deserted, soon forgotten. The stoutest are in need of support ; and their props are often of the most carious materials. Brief is the glimmer of the sword. The timber of the chariot which hath borne up the conqueror to the Capitol, outlasts him ; and the cicada, who lives her three days, lives all her three more merrily than he his proudest. TIBULLUS. Light are our ashes ; our wishes, our hopes, our lives, are lighter. Who then upon earth is great and powerful ? MESSALA. The poet. The poet is the assessor of the gods : he receives from them, and imparts to whomsoever he chooses, the gift of immortality. It is several years, fair Delia, since Albius wrote a panegyric on me, and you were beginning to try what you could do toward the framework of another. TIBULLUS. I do not repent that I wrote it, Messala, though I never wrote anything so badly since. I was almost a boy, and the weight of the matter bore me down. MESSALA. Certainly it is less excellent, and it ought to be, than what Delia hath since inspired. Tell me, Delia, now we are in confidence and at home all three, do not you think our Albius a fine handsome creature ? Come, I will allow you to blush a little, it is so becoming, but not allow you to be silent any longer. DELIA. Make him answer first whether he really thinks me so ; for he would never tell a story to you. MESSALA. Shame upon him ! it appears that he has already told you one so incredible. DELIA. Morning, noon, and . . MESSALA. Go on, go on. DELIA. I have spoken. MESSALA. And you believed him ? 450 TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. DELIA. Bather more at first than now ; but never quite. sir ! make him tell the real truth; pray do. MESSALA. I will answer for Albius that he always proves his word, sooner or later. DELIA. I do not desire it just at present ; I can wait. Fie, Albius ! Albius ! do men ever snatch up our hands and kiss them in presence of the great ? MESSALA. Let me intercede and answer for him. In the presence of the happy they do, whether of mortals or gods. DELIA. You too are a little in fault, if I may dare to say it. I have not forgotten the apple-tree, sir ! MESSALA. What a memory ! Are you certain there may not be some- thing of the fabulous in so remote an occurrence ? TIBULLUS. To-morrow we will retrace our steps, and learn over again this dubious and half-obliterated page of history : what say you, Delia ? DELIA. Ask what says our noble guest. But it will be your turn to-morrow, my Albius, to throw down the apples. It made me tremble all over. That is no reason why we should not go into the orchard at some early hour of the morning, were it only to see whether any thieves have broken in ; for they do not heed the dogs, although loose. Audacious ! audacious ! and you smile, do you ? Ah ! you may well look down. Certain men have methods of making dogs lie quiet, when they resolve on committing a robbery in the dark. I have half a mind to tell Messala of somebody I know, very sly and treacherous, who, within my recollection, made even Molossians lie quiet and forget their duty. You blush ; that is proper. "Well, perhaps I may let you off this once, and say nothing about it now you are penitent. Beside, TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. 451 it was a good while ago, and not here. Mother thought it was witchcraft, and she lustrated the house with eggs and sulphur. MESSALA. If any task is to be imposed on him, order him to write another elegy, complaining of your severity and atoning for his offence. Apollo will punish him for extolling me above my merits by making him inadequate to yours. Tibullus ! it occurs to me that he, whom I have heard you mention as the best poet of the present day, wrote two poems in his youth such as I wonder he should acknowledge and republish ; the Culex and the Ceiris. He compensated for them soon after, by verses more harmo- nious than ever had been heard before in our tongue. How beautiful are those at the commencement of the first eclogue, and those of the goatherd at the close of it; and those to Lycoris traversing the Alps, in the last ! MESSALA. You have cited the few verses worth remembrance. He says somewhere that Apollo pulled his ear and admonished him. The god should have pulled it again, and harder, for neglecting his admonition when he composed his Pollio. He did indeed take away from him on that one occasion the gift of harmony. TIBULLUS. Kestored soon. How admirable are some passages in that poem on husbandry, which he has given us lately. MESSALA. Admirable in parts, but disproportionate. In the exordium he has amplified Varro's Portico, which already was too spacious for the edifice. TIBULLUS. Indeed there was exordium quite sufficient at Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis ; which would be followed appropriately by the distant line Da facilem cursum. G G2 452 TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. MESSALA. What think you of the Scorpion drawing his arms in, that Octavius may have room enough ? or the despair of Tartarus at missing such a treasure ? or the backwardness of Proserpine to follow her mother ? Here are together eight such verses as I would give eighty bushels of wheat to eradicate from the poetry of a friend. The Greeks by the facility of their versi- fication are often verbose and languid, but they never exhaust so much breath before they start. A husbandman does his work badly with a buskin fastened round the ancle, and an ampulla swinging at the girdle. Our Mantuan's Winter is unworthy of even a secondary poet : no selection of topics, no arrangement, no continuity ; instead of which, there is a dreary conglomeration, where little things and great are confounded. Was ever bathos so profound as in iEraque dissiliunt vulgo vestesque rigescunt, unless two lines lower, where Solidam in glaciem vertere lacunae, Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis. TIBULLUS. Let us climb over the ice and snow, leap across the lacuna, and wipe away the stiria. His summer storm is such as Jupiter might have sent down to show his power, and Apollo might have hymned to his father's glory. MESSALA. Very soon you will take Proteus under your patronage. There are some, I am told, who really find in the story of Eurydice a noble effort of poetry. TIBULLUS. It grieved me to see that excrescence. MESSALA. Proteus had no pity for Cyrene, whom he must have known from his infancy, but abundance of it for a dead man's head which he never could have heard of while it was on the shoulders, which head moreover was carried down a river a thousand miles distant from his haunts, and sang all the way. Prigid was indeed the tongue that sang there, and almost as frigid the tongue that sang about it. TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. 453 Such puerility is scarcely for the schoolroom, but rather for the nursery, and comes very nigh the cradle. We have talked about this before, by ourselves, and without any intention of gratifying the malignity of minor songmen. TIBULLUS. Propertius tells me that he has lately seen the commence- ment of an epic by him, and that, if the remainder is equal to the two first books, it will rival the Iliad. May we live to read it ! at all events may he to complete it ! TIBULLUS. Pleasant will it be to me to feel the slight shudder of Delia on my bosom when I read to her the battles. MESSALA. Where is she ? she has slipt out. TIBULLUS. Perhaps she is gone to crown the Penates, for she is pious and grateful. MESSALA. Two qualities not always found together. Frequently have I remarked, in the most devout, the most arrogant, quarrel- some, and unjust. Have you room in your chapel for Caius Julius, our latest god? TIBULLUS. Highly as I esteem him, I have not procured his statue. Gods are great by necessity, mortals by exertion : and what exertions were ever so animated or so unremitted as his ? MESSALA. All of them tended to the glory of his country, out of which parent soil his own shot up exuberantly, and at last (it seems) reached the heavens. In my humble opinion, and I hope I am falling into no impiety when I say it, we have gods enow already. Those of Egypt we have in our kitchens, and those of Gaul are not worth conveyance from their woods. We require no importations. 454 TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. MESSALA. Formerly gods made men; at present men make gods. Where will this fashion have an end ? Perhaps yon may live to enlarge your sacristy. TIBULLUS. I find an object of worship in every field. Wherever there is a stake or a stone crowned with flowers,* I bend before it, and thank the gods for inspiring the hearts of men with gratitude. I feel confident they are well-pleased at these oblations, how- ever poor their worshiper, and however he mispronounce their names. MESSALA. While the gods came from the potter, men were virtuous and happy ; when they came from the goldsmith they retained the heat of the furnace, and dazzled and deluded. Priests assumed their similitude, and encrusted one another with the same metal. TIBULLUS. Barbarous nations have beheld these prodigies ; may Rome never see within her walls a worse Pontifex than Caius Julius. MESSALA. Nevertheless, by his oration in the senate, as Crispus Sallustius hath recorded it, he seems to have verged on atheism. I do not mean hereby to question his aptitude for the office, which others at Eome, after him, have equally well discharged with no firmer belief in the deity, and less resem- blance. TIBULLUS. If you enter our little sanctuary, you will see the Lares not crowned as usual with rosemary and myrtle, but with myrtle only. The reason is : Delia had gathered both from under the villa-wall, to decorate the little deities, inobservant that a bee was inside the blossom of a rosemary, and, beginning to press it round one of the images, she was stung. The sting was forgotten in the omen. MESSALA. What omen is there in so ordinary an occurrence ? TIBULLUS. " Albius !" cried she, " something sad will happen, my piety is rejected, and my love, my love" . . . Sobs interrupted * Nam veneror seu stipes habet desertus in agris, Seu vetus in. trivio florida serta lapis. TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. 455 her ; and she would never tell me afterward what she was then about to say. MESSALA. Simpleton ! But at present there are no signs either of sting or omen. Propertius, whom you just now mentioned, is an imitator of yours, at a distance. His elegies are apparently tasks undertaken by order of a schoolmaster. He is uneasy at the loss of a little farm under Perusia, which the triumvirate allotted to the legions. Civil wars bring down these curses ; and not always the most heavily on those who took a prominent part in them. Probably he is more poet than philosopher ; and he may never have reflected that many things occur, in the course of every man's life, which he deems unfortunate, and which his friends deem so too, and upon which they not only condole with him at the time, but commemorate and discourse upon long after. Little are they aware that unless these very things had happened, the pleasure they are enjoying at that moment, in social intercourse with him, might not exist. Fortune, who appears to have frowned on him with her worst malignity, in debarring him from that which he groaned for, and was within a step of attaining, may there have been his very best friend. If the farm of Propertius had been larger, it might have cost him his life. Such prices, we know, have been paid occasionally. When in the heat of midsummer I went to visit a neglected property of mine among the hills near Sulmo, I was visited by his friend "* Ovidius Naso, with whose Epistles of Heroes and Heroines, on their appearance last winter, you were, I remember, much delighted. He, like the generality of young poets, meditates a grand work ; and, unlike the generality, is capable of executing it. Practice itself can hardly add to his facility; and love itself is hardly more ingenious and inventive. He excels in sentences, never dogmatical, never prolix, never inopportune. In every department of eloquence, and particularly in poetry, we look for depth and clearness ; a clearness that shows the depth j here we find it. * Tibullus and Propertius, with few more, enjoy the good fortune to escape from mutilation in the extremities of the name. Following the French, but neither the Italians nor Germans, we treat Ovid and Virgil and Horace less ceremoniously ; and appear to be more familiar with them than their contemporaries were. It would be affectation in common discourse to say Virgilius, or Ovidius, or Horatius : it would be worse than affectation to represent a Roman saying Horace, or Virgil, or Ovid. 456 TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. Before I left Ovidius when I returned his visit, he read to me the commencement of some amatory pieces, at which, if I smiled, it was in courtesy, not in approbation. From the mysteries of religion the veil is seldom to be drawn, from the mysteries of love never. For this offence the gods take away from us our freshness of heart and our susceptibility of pure delight. The well loses the spring that fed it, and what is exposed in the shallow basin soon evaporates. I wish well to Ovidius, for he speaks well of everybody. Poets are enrolled in the Cadmean legion : each one cuts down his comrade : but Ovidius stands apart, gentle and generous, uniting the moral to the sensual voluptuary. He is kinder to Propertius than Horatius Flaccus is, who turns him into ridicule under the name of Callimachus. Our pleasant lyrist is disposed to praise nobody at a distance from the Palatine. TIBULLUS. Judicious in his choice, he praises Yirgilius and Yalgius and Varius and Tucca. In his Satires he is equally discreet, equally refined. Satire ought to strike at the face, as Csesar ordered the soldier to do on the field of Pharsalia ; far from mortal, the stroke should never be outrageous or repeated. Coarseness and harshness are no proof of strength, as some would fain inculcate. On the contrary, there is no true satire which departs from graceful pleasantry, and which either runs into philosophical sententiousness or acrimonious declamation. Satire draws neither blood nor tears : laughter and blushes are the boundaries of her dominion. MESSALA. Perfectly just remark ; and Horatius is no violator of them. Many of his Odes are so light, so playful, so graceful, that nothing is comparable to them in the literature of Greece. Seldom is he energetic or impressive ; seldomer, even when he attempts it, pathetic. He who tickles the bosom is the least likely to touch the heart. I could pardon him a few of his deficiencies, if he were less parsimonious of praise toward men like you, and if his nymphs poured less of cold water into the cup containing it. TIBULLUS. Conscious of his own merits, as every man who possesses any must be, however he may dissemble it, Horatius can ill endure that Catullus and Calvus should be preferred to him, as they are by many. TIBULLUS AND MESSALA. 457 MESSALA. I think I have allowed him all his due. TIBULLUS. Not quite : add also his great variety. Recent or ancient, surely none is comparable to him in this. MESSALA. In the stock of his Gynsecseurn, none. Seriously, it is a pity that he who, on his Tiburtine and Sabine farm, is master of so many true and solid, should in worse wantonness have devised so many fabulous mistresses. It takes away from us all illusion, all sympathy : we laugh at an Ixion raising a cloud to embrace it. But is there any man, Albius, who can read without tenderness your Te spectem? Believe me, you are the only elegiac poet, Greek or Eoman, whom Posterity will cherish. Imperishable are those things only which have been created in the heart. TIBULLUS. Forget not then your favorite Catullus, the creator there. MESSALA. Earnest and impressive, no poet rests so perfectly on the memory. He is the only one whose verses I could remember after the first reading ; I mean his Hendecasyllables and Scazons. TIBULLUS. Painful, very painful is it, that the lover of Lesbia should revile her so coarsely as he did before he left her ; if indeed he ever left her at all, or ever possest her. For it appears to me quite impossible that a tender heart, however rancorous it may have become under infidelities and indignities, should ever lose its fineness of fiber, should ever sink into deep corruption. Willingly then would I believe that many of his poems, as you suppose of Horatius's, are merely exercises of ingenuity. MESSALA. In the elegiac measure, excepting the verses on his brother's funeral, he was less successful. Ovidius hath utterly ruined it. Of all meters, the pentameter is the least harmonious, and the least adapted to the expression of sorrow, to which Mimnermus and Tyrtseus and Solon never applied it. Frisky as it is, it is not frisky enough for Ovidius. With better judgment, you correct the gambols of the first hemistych by the gravity of the spondee : he, wherever he can, renders it 458 TIBULLTJS AXD MESSALA. dactylic. Often have I defended him against the charge of affectation, but there is no defence for it in terminating every pentameter with a dissyllable. This is a trick unworthy of a schoolboy : Catullus and you have scorned it : Propertius hath followed your example : the Genius of our language cries out against the entanglement, and snaps the chain. TIBULLUS. That bust in the corner of the room is the bust of Lucretius; and I know not whether there is any other of him : I bought it at the decease of his widow. How different from the opposite ! poor Cicero's. He always carried anxiety and hurry in his countenance : that little head of his appears as if it never could lie down to rest. TIBULLUS. I saw him but once, and it was shortly before his departure. Lucretius I never saw at all. I wish he had abstained from his induperator and endogredi. Language is as much corrupted by throwing decayed words into it as by the rank and vapid succulence of yesterday's sudden growth. If part is ancient, let all be ancient. "When Lucretius complains of our poverty in language, he means only in terms of art and science. Let us stand up for its dignity, and appeal to Plautus for its responsibility. Cicero and Csesar have brought it to perfection ; there are already signs of its decline. Many of those who were educated at Athens have introduced lately a variety of hellenisms : the young poets are too fond of them : among your merits is abstinence from this (not very unpardonable) intoxication. Plautus and Terentius, who drew largely from Greek originals, are less Greek in their phraseology than many who write now. Lucretius I see is lying on the table. Ovidius, who admires even his contemporaries, is a warm admirer of him, and declares that his work on Nature will perish only with Nature herself. Nothing is so animated and so august as his invocation. His friend Memmius outlived him ; but not long enough to see the termination of those discords which he prayed Mars, at the intercession of Venus, to abate. Little did he imagine that a youth who claims descent from her TIBULL1JS AND MESSALA. 459 should be enabled to compose them. Octavius was then a boy, thirteen or fourteen years old, just sent by the munificence of his uncle, Caius Julius, to study at Athens. Happily he found there a protector, in a wealthy and clever tho' dissolute friend a few years older, Cilnius Mecsenas, to whose counsels he owes probably his life, certainly his station and security. TIBULLUS. It is the glory of Mecsenas to have derived no part of his riches from the proscriptions. MESSALA. He had large estates in the most fertile districts of Etruria: but that is no diminution of his merit : others as affluent were rapacious and insatiable. His weakness, one among many, lies in his affectation of family. Were he really a descendant of a Lucumon, the pedigree would have been drawn out and exhibited : indeed it is a wonder that a fictitious one never was substituted. Maccus says that his ancestors, both maternal and paternal, had formerly commanded " great legions." There is no record of these great legions having performed great actions. If they ever had, he would have pointed to them and have named the battle-field. He has not omitted to tell us who slew Asdrubal, nor the name of the river on whose banks he fell. He brings forward his patron's royal origin on every occasion, and truly with small dexterity. It seldom or never has anything to do with the subject. Take for instance the first ode ; the worst in the book, excepting the second. And there are other places quite as remarkable for a similar want of connection. TIBULLUS. "With various little weaknesses he is really an estimable man, altho' it never may have occurred to him that no one has a right to claim antiquity of family unless he can distinctly show an ancestor who hath rendered a signal service to the common- wealth. MESSALA. To Cilnius however it is mainly owing that our manners are softened, our dissentions pacified, our laws emended, and the remainder of our properties secured. TIBULLUS. And commonwealth ? The old nut has only a maggot and dust within it ; and the squirrel at the top of the tree, having 460 TIBULLUS AND MESS ALA. laid up or eaten all the sounder, thinks it ill worth while to co^ne down and crack it. We are safe at present ; and that is somewhat : but who on earth can insure us that Thracian or Dacian, or Gaul or German, shall not, within a century or two, advance on Eome? MESSALA. Blindness is the effect of straining the eye too far. Empires have fallen, and will fall : the harder crush the softer and soften too. Destruction and renovation are eternal laws. A decayed nation, like a decayed animal, fattens the field for enterprize and industry. Egyptians, Babylonians, Medes, the mountaneers of Macedon and Epirus, have vanquisht in succession, and now are lying like idle and outcast beggars at the gates of Eome. Albius ! be certain of this : if we ever lose our preponderance we shall deserve to lose it. A weak nation, when it is reduced to subjection, may be pitied; but a nation once powerful by its institutions, military and civil, when it falls, altho' short of subjugation, is despised. The genius of Julius Caesar, a man without an equal in the history of the world, would have restored our State. Generals whose sole ability lay in the arts of corruption were opposed to him ; and, fortunately for the senate who appointed them, they failed. In Spain and Africa there stil breathed a military spirit ; but in his presence it breathed its last. Antonius and Cassius were the only great leaders who survived him : Cassius outlived his cause ; Antonius his glory. Agrippa, when he had driven him into Pelusium and upon his sword, turned his heel on the luxuries of Egypt, stood aloof from those of Rome, and was venerated at his death greatly more than those who have recently been deified. Bepose is necessary now to our exhaustion. "We must look carefully to our agriculture ; we must conciliate our provinces. In no case, however, is military discipline to be neglected, or the soldier to be kept long inactive. We will enjoy the Saturnian age when Saturn comes back again : meanwhile, let us never be forgetful that Mars is the progenitor of our race. TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. 461 TIBEEIUS AND VIPSANIA.* Vipsania, my Vipsania, whither art thou walking ? VIPSANIA. Whom do I see? my Tiberius? TIBERIUS. Ah ! no, no, no ! but thou seest the father of thy little Drusus. Press him to thy heart the more closely for this meeting, and give him . . VIPSANIA. Tiberius ! the altars, the gods, the destinies, are between us . . I will take it from this hand ; thus, thus shall he receive it. TIBERIUS. Raise up thy face, my beloved ! I must not shed tears. Augustus ! Livia ! ye shall not extort them from me. Vip- sania ! I may kiss thy head . . for I have saved it. Thou sayest nothing. I have wronged thee ; ay ? VIPSANIA. Ambition does not see the earth she treads on : the rock and the herbage are of one substance to her. Let me excuse * Vipsaaia, the daughter of Agrippa, was divorced from Tiberius by- Augustus and Livia, in order that he might marry Julia, and hold the empire by inheritance. He retained such an affection for her, and showed it so intensely when he once met her afterward, that every precaution was taken lest they should meet again. There can be no doubt that the Claudii were deranged in intellect. Those of them who succeeded to the empire were by nature no worse men than several of their race in the times of the republic. Appius Claudius, Appius Ccecus, Publius, Appia, and after these the enemy of Cicero, exhibited as ungovernable a temper as the imperial ones, some breaking forth into tyranny and lust, others into contempt of, and impre- cations against, their country. Tiberius was meditative, morose, suspicious. In the pupil of Seneca were dispositions the opposite to-these, with many- talents, and some good qualities. They could not disappear on a sudden without one of those shocks under which had been engulfed almost every member of the family. 462 TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. you to my heart, Tiberius. It has many wants ; this is the first and greatest. TIBERIUS. My ambition, I swear by the immortal gods, placed not the bar of severance between us. A stronger hand, the hand that composes Rome and sways the world . . . VIPSANIA. . . Overawed Tiberius. I know it; Augustus willed and commanded it. TIBERIUS. And overawed Tiberius ! Power bent, Death terrified, a Nero ! What is our race, that any should look down on us and spurn us ! Augustus, my benefactor, I have wronged thee ! Livia, my mother, this one cruel deed was thine ! To reign forsooth is a lovely thing ! womanly appetite ! Who would have been before me, though the palace of Caesar cracked and split with emperors, while I, sitting in idleness on a cliff of Ehodes, eyed the sun as he swang his golden censer athwart the heavens, or his image as it overstrode the sea.* I have it before me ; and though it seems falling on me, I can smile at it ; just as I did from my little favorite skiff, painted round with the marriage of Thetis, when the sailors drew their long shaggy hair across their eyes, many a stadium away from it, to mitigate its effulgence. These too were happy days : days of happiness like these I could recall and look back upon with unaching brow. land of Greece ! Tiberius blesses thee, bidding thee rejoice and flourish. Why can not one hour, Yipsania, beauteous and light as we have led, return ? VIPSANIA. Tiberius ! is it to me that you were speaking ? I would not interrupt you ; but I thought I heard my name as you walked away and looked up toward the East. So silent ! * The Colossus was thrown down by an earthquake during the war between Antiochus and Ptolemy, who sent the Ehodians three thousand talents for the restoration of it. Again in the time of Vespasian, " Cose Veneris, item Colossi refectorem congiario magnaque mercede donavit." Suetonius in Vesp. The first residence of Tiberius in Ehodes was when he returned from his Armenian expedition, the last was after his divorce from Vipsania and his marriage with Julia. TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. 463 TIBERIUS. Who dared to call thee ? Thou wert mine before the gods . . do they deny it ? Was it my fault . . VIPSANIA. Since we are separated, and for ever, Tiberius, let us think no more on the cause of it. Let neither of us believe that the other was to blame : so shall separation be less painful. TIBERIUS. mother ! and did I not tell thee what she was ? patient in injury, proud in innocence, serene in grief ! VIPSANIA. Did you say that too ? but I think it was so : I had felt little. One vast wave has washed away the impression of smaller from my memory. Could Livia, could your mother, could she who was so kind to me . . . TIBERIUS. The wife of Caesar did it. But hear me now, hear me : be calm as I am. No weaknesses are such as those of a mother who loves her only son immoderately ; and none are so easily worked upon from without. Who knows what impulses she received ? She is very, very kind ; but she regards me only ; and that which at her bidding is to encompass and adorn me. All the weak look after power, protectress of weakness. Thou art a woman, Vipsania ! is there nothing in thee to excuse my mother ? So good she ever was to me ! so loving ! VIPSANIA. 1 quite forgive her : be tranquil, Tiberius ! TIBERIUS. Never can I know peace . . never can I pardon . . anyone. Threaten me with thy exile, thy separation, thy seclusion ! remind me that another climate might endanger thy health ! . . There death met me and turned me round. Threaten me to take our son from us ! our one boy ! our helpless little one ! him whom we made cry because we kissed him both together. Rememberest thou ? or dost thou not hear ? turning thus away from me ! VIPSANIA. I hear ; I hear. cease, my sweet Tiberius ! Stamp not upon that stone : my heart lies under it. 464 TIBERIUS AND YIPSANIA. TIBERIUS. Ay, there again death, and more than death, stood before me. she maddened me, my mother did, she maddened me . . she threw me to where I am at one breath. The gods can not replace me where I was, nor atone to me, nor console me, nor restore my senses. To whom can I fly ? to whom can I open my heart ? to whom speak plainly ? * There was upon the earth a man I could converse with, and fear nothing : there was a woman too I could love, and fear nothing. What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, my young bride ! How could those who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon virtue ! VIPSANIA. These words cool my breast like pressing his urn against it. He was brave : shall Tiberius want courage ? TIBERIUS. My enemies scorn me. I am a garland dropt from a triumphal car, and taken up and looked on for the place I occupied : and tossed away and laughed at. Senators ! laugh, laugh ! Your merits may be yet rewarded . . be of good cheer ! Counsel me, in your wisdom, what services I can render you, conscript fathers ! VIPSANIA. This seems mockery : Tiberius did not smile so, once. TIBERIUS. They had not then congratulated me. VIPSANIA. On what ? TIBERIUS. And it was not because she was beautiful, as they thought her, and virtuous as I know she is, but because the flowers on the altar were to be tied together by my heart-string; On this they congratulated me. Their day will come. Their sons and daughters are what I would wish them to be : worthy to succeed them. * The regret of Tiberius at the death of Agrippa may be imagined to arise from a cause of which at this moment he was unconscious. If Agrippa had lived, Julia, who was his wife, could not have been Tiberius's, nor would he and Yipsania have been separated. TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA. 465 VIPSANIA. Where is that quietude, that resignation, that sanctity, that heart of true tenderness ? TIBERIUS. Where is my love ? my love ? VIPSANIA. Cry not thus aloud, Tiberius ! there is an echo in the place. Soldiers and slaves may burst in upon us. TIBERIUS. And see my tears ? There is no echo, Yipsania ! why alarm and shake me so ? We are too high here for the echoes : the city is below us. Methinks it trembles and totters : would it did ! from the marble quays of the Tiber to this rock. There is a strange buzz and murmur in my brain ; but I should listen so intensely, I should hear the rattle of its roofs, and shout with joy. VIPSANIA. Calm, my life ! calm this horrible transport. Spake I so loud ? Did I indeed then send my voice after a lost sound, to bring it back ; and thou fanciedest it an echo ? Wilt not thou laugh with me, as thou wert wont to do, at such an error ? What was I saying to thee, my tender love, when I commanded . . I know not whom . . to stand back, on pain of death ? Why starest thou on me in such agony ? Have I hurt thy fingers, child ? I loose them : now let me look ! Thou turnest thine eyes away from me. Oh ! oh ! I hear my crime ! Immortal gods ! I cursed then audibly, and before the sun, my mother ! H H 466 EPICTETUS AND SENECA. EPICTETUS AND SENECA. SENECA. Epictetus ! I desired your master Epaphroditus to send you hither, having been much pleased with his report of your con- duct, and much surprised at the ingenuity of your writings. EPICTETUS. Then I am afraid, my friend . . . SENECA. My friend ! are these the expressions . . Well, let it pass. Philosophers must bear bravely. The people expect it. EPICTETUS. Are philosophers then only philosophers for the people ? and, instead of instructing them, must they play tricks before them ? Give me rather the gravity of dancing dogs. Their motions are for the rabble ; their reverential eyes and pendent paws are under the pressure of awe at a master; but they are dogs, and not below their destinies. SENECA. Epictetus ! I will give you three talents to let me take that sentiment for my own. EPICTETUS. I would give thee twenty, if 1 had them, to make it thine. SENECA. You mean, by lending to it the graces of my language. EPICTETUS. I mean, by lending it to thy conduct. And now let me console and comfort thee, under the calamity I brought on thee by calling thee my friend. If thou art not my friend, why send for me ? Enemy I can have none : being a slave, Fortune has now done with me. Continue then your former observations. What were you saying ? EPICTETUS AND SENECA. 467 EPICTETUS. That which thou interruptedst. SENECA. What was it ? EPICTETUS. I should have remarked that, if thou foundest ingenuity in my writings, thou must have discovered in them some devia- tion from the plain homely truths of Zeno and Cleanthes. SENECA. We all swerve a little from them. EPICTETUS. In practice too ? SENECA. Yes, even in practice, I am afraid. EPICTETUS. Often? SENECA. Too often. EPICTETUS. Strange ! I have been attentive, and yet have remarked but one difference among you great personages at Eome. SENECA. What difference fell under your observation ? EPICTETUS. Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us, that our desires were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city, their acute and inventive scholars take us aside, and show us that there is not only one way, but two. SENECA. Two ways ? EPICTETUS. They whisper in our ear, " These two ways are philosophy and enjoyment : the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding it, the alternative." Thou reddenest. SENECA. Monstrous degeneracy. EPICTETUS. What magnificent rings ! I did not notice them until thou liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of such effeminacy and impudence. H H 2 468 EPICTETUS AND SENECA. SENECA. The rings are not amiss : my rank rivets them upon my fingers : I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me one, Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay them aside a single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those whom they love the most worthily. EPICTETUS. Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers, like the arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross. SENECA. horrible ! Eind some other resemblance. EPICTETUS. The extremities of a fig-leaf. SENECA. Ignoble ! EPICTETUS. The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned. SENECA. You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in eloquence and rhetoric : you want topics and tropes and figures. EPICTETUS. 1 have no room for them. They make such a buzz in the house, a man's own wife can not understand what he says to her. SENECA. Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you right, and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat rustic education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest. EPICTETUS. Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked or defective is susceptible of decoration : what is decorated is simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in exchange for it ; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst preserve it inviolate. It is no wonder that we mortals, little able as we are to see truth, should be less able to express it. SENECA. You have formed at present no idea of style. EP1CTETUS AND SENECA. 469 EPICTETUS. I never think about it. First I consider whether what I am about to say is true; then whether I can say it with brevity, in such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly as I do in the light of truth ; for if they survey it as an ingenuity, my desire is ungratified, my duty unfulfilled. I go not with those who dance round the image of Truth, less out of honour to her than to display their agility and address. SENECA. We must attract the attention of readers by novelty and force and grandeur of expression. EPICTETUS. We must. Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing so forcible, nothing so novel. SENECA. Sonorous sentences are wanted, to awaken the lethargy of indolence. EPICTETUS. Awaken it to what ? Here lies the question ; and a weighty one it is. If thou awakenest men where they can see nothing and do no work, it is better to let them rest : but will not they, thinkest thou, look up at a rainbow, unless they are called to it by a clap of thunder ? SENECA. Your early youth, Epictetus, has been I will not say neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and unskilful hands. EPICTETUS. I thank God for it. Those rude instruments have left the turf lying yet toward the sun • and those unskilful hands have plucked out the docks. SENECA. We hope and believe that we have attained a vein of eloquence,, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto laid open to the world. EPICTETUS. Than any in the Greek ? SENEGA. We trust so. EPICTETUS. Than your Cicero's ? 470 EPICTETUS AND SENECA. SENECA. If the declaration may be made without an offence to modesty. Surely you can not estimate or value the eloquence of that noble pleader. EPICTETUS. Imperfectly 5 not being born in Italy ; and the noble pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I regret that having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance from the pumping up of foul words, against thieves, cut-throats, and other rogues : and that he lied, sweated, and thumped his head and thighs, in behalf of those who were no better. SENECA. Senators must have clients, and must protect them. EPICTETUS. Innocent or guilty ? SENECA. Doubtless. EPICTETUS. If it becomes a philosopher to regret at all, and if I regret what is, and might not be, I may regret more what both is and must be. However it is an amiable tiling, and no small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play at their leisure hours with philosophy. It can not be expected that such a personage should espouse her, or should recommend her as an inseparable mate to his heir. SENECA. I would. EPICTETUS. Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the match for ; and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given him before he could consummate the marriage. Every man wishes his sons to be philosophers while they are young; but takes especial care, as they grow older, to teach them its insufficiency and unfitness for their intercourse with mankind. The paternal voice says, " You must not be particular : you are about to have a profession to live by : follow those who have thriven the best in it/' Now among these, whatever be the profession, canst thou point out to me one single philosopher ? SENECA. Not just now. Nor, upon reflection, do I think it feasible. EPICTETUS AND SENECA. 471 EPIOTETUS. Thou indeed mayest live much to thy ease and satisfaction with philosophy, having (they say) two thousand talents. SENECA. And a trifle to spare . . pressed upon me by that godlike youth, my pupil Nero. EPICTETUS. Seneca ! where God hath placed a mine, he hath placed the materials of an earthquake. SENECA. A true philosopher is beyond the reach of Fortune. EPICTETUS. • The false one thinks himself so. Fortune cares little about philosophers ; but she remembers where she hath set a rich man, and she laughs to see the Destinies at his door. # * In order of time the Lucian would come last, but it seemed better to separate Greek and Roman. 472 REFLECTIONS ON THE KEFLECTIONS ON THE CONVEBSATION OF THE CICEEOS. Some of the opinions here attributed to Cicero, and particularly those on the agrarian law, are at variance with what he has expressed, not only in his Orations, but also in his three books Be Officiis, which he appears to have written under a vehement fear that either this or some- thing similar would deprive him of his possessions. Hence he speaks of the Gracchi with an asperity which no historian has countenanced, and of Agis, without a word of commendation or pity. When, however, he perceived that in the midst of dangers his property was untouched, it must have occurred to so sagacious a reasoner, that if an agrarian law had been enacted, the first triumvirate could never have existed, and that he himself had remained, as he ought to have been, the leader of the commonwealth. It is to be lamented that he should have mentioned Crassus as a man he did not hate. Dion Cassius, in his twenty-ninth book, says he wrote some tremendous things against him, and a good many of them : iroWars drj teal 5e*ra : giving the manuscript sealed up into the hands of his son, and ordering that it should be pub- lished after his death. Such a politician ought to have foreseen that the injunction was unlikely to be carried into effect. As there was no danger impending over the life of Cicero while Crassus held a place in the triumvirate, it may be suspected that the sealed paper related to another of its members ; for it would be impossible to add anything worse to what he already had published against Crassus. For instance, " Qui videt domi tuse pariter accusatorum atque judicum consociatos greges ; qui nocentes et pecuniosos reos eodem te auctore corruptelam judicii molientes; qui tuas mercedum pactiones in patrociniis, intercessiones pecuniarum in coitionibus candidatorum, dimissiones libertorum ad fcenerandas diripien- dasque provincias ; qui expulsiones vicinorum ; qui latrocinia in agris ; qui cum servis, cum libertis, cum clientibus societates ; qui possessiones vacuas ; qui proscriptiones locupletum ; qui csedes muniGipiorum ; qui illam Sullani temporis messem recordetur; qui testamenta subjecta, qui sublatos tot homines, qui denique omnia venalia, delectum, decretum, alienam, suam, sententiam, forum, domum, vocem, silentium." Parad. VI. The description of such a government is sufficient to recommend its abolition. He illustrates it further. " Desitum est videri quidquam in socios iniquum, cum extitisset etiam in cives tanta crudelitas . . Multa prseterea commemorarem nefaria in socios, si hoc uno solo quidquam vidisset indignius . . . Optimatibus tuis nihil confido. Sed video nullam esse rempublicam, nullum senatum, nulla judicia, nullam in ullo nostrum dignitatem . . . Jure igitur plectimur: nisi enim multorum impunita CONVERSATION OF THE CICEROS. 473 scelera tulissemus, &c. . . . Non igitur utilis ilia L. Philippi Q. filii sententia,, quas civitates L. Sulla pecunid acceptd ex SC. liberavisset, ut hae rursus vectigales essent, neque his pecuniam quam pro libertate dedis- sent redderemus : turpe imperio ! piratarurn enim melior fides quam senatus." It follows then, a fortiori, that if pirates should be destroyed, the senate should. Cicero never entertained long together the same opinion of Pompeius. A little before the death of Ciodius he writes thus: " Pompeius nostri amoves, quod mihi summo dolori est, ipse se afnixit." Soon after thus : " Pompeius a me valde contendit de reditu in gratiam ; sed adhuc nihil profecit, nee, si ullam partem libertatis tenebo, proficiet." He speaks of him to Atticus as follows : " ISTon mihi satis idonei sunt auctores ii qui a te probantur : quod enim unquam in republica forte factum extitit ? aut quis ab iis ullam rem laude dignam desiderat? nee mehercule laudandos existimo qui trans mare belli parandi causa profecti sunt . . . Quis autem est tanta quidem de re quin varie secum ipse disputet 1 Simul et elicere cupio sententiam tuam ; si manet, ut firmior sim, si mutata est, ut tibi assentiar." The character and designs of Pompeius and his legitimates are developed thus : " Mirandum in modum Cneius noster Sullani regni similitudinem concupivit. Consilium est suffocare urbem et Italiam fame ; deinde agros vastare, urere. Promitto tibi, si valebit, tegulam ilium in Italia nullam relicturum. Mene igitur socio? contra mehercule meum judicium, et contra omnium antiquorum auctoritatem . . . Quae minae municipiis ! quae nominatim viris bonis ! quas denique omnibus qui remanissent ! quam crebro illud, Sulla potuit, ego non potero V The conduct of the Gracchi was approved by the wisest and most honest of their contemporaries. Laelius, the friend of Scipio, desisted from his support of Tiberius only when, as Plutarch says, he was compelled by the apprehension of greater evil. But surely a man so prudent as Laelius must have foreseen all the consequences, and have known the good or the evil of them, and would not have desisted when, the matter having been agitated and the measure agreed on, every danger was over from taking it, and the only one that could arise was from its rejection, after the hopes and expectations of the people had been stimulated and excited. Hence we may be induced to believe that Scipio, in compliance with the wishes of the senate, persuaded his friend to desist from the undertaking. Cicero, in mentioning it, expresses himself in these words : " Duos sapientissimos et clarissimos fratres, Publium Crassum et Publium Scasvolam, aiunt Tiberio Graccho auctores legum fuisse, alterum quidem, ut videmus, palam, alterum, ut suspicamur, obscurius." Acad. Qucest. iv. Mutianus Crassus (brother of Publius) and Appius Claudius were also his supporters. It is beyond a doubt that Tiberius Gracchus was both politic and equitable in his plan of dividing among the poorer citizens, whose debts had been incurred by services rendered to their country, the lands retained by the rich in violation of the Licinian law. He was called unjust toward the inhabitants of Latium and the allies, in proposing to deprive them of that which the Romans had given them, but instead of which, to indemnify themselves for the grant, they had imposed a tribute. Gracchus wished to allay the irritation of the people, and to render them inoffensive to the state, by giving them useful occupations in the cares and concerns of property. The 474 REFLECTIONS ON THE Latins and allies would have been indemnified : for the tax imposed on them would have been removed, and the freedom of the city granted to them. The senate would perhaps have been somewhat less hostile to Tiberius Gracchus, had he not also proposed that the money left by Attalus to the Roman people should go to its destination. They were stimulated, if not by interest, by power, to invoke the assistance of Scipio against the popular party ; and he was conducted home by them the day before his death ; which appears rather to have been hastened by the fears and jealousy of the senate than by the revenge of the opposition, none of whom at that time could have had access to him, his house being filled and surrounded by their adversaries. The senate had reasons, suddenly but not vainly conceived, for suspicion of Scipio. They dreaded the dictatorial power to be conferred on him, in order that he might settle the common- wealth : they were dissatisfied at the doubts he entertained of guilt in Gracchus, of whom he declared his opinion that he was justly slain if he had attempted to possess the supreme power : which expression proves that he doubted, or rather that he disbelieved it, and is equivalent to the declara- tion that he did not deserve death for any other of his actions or intentions. They clearly saw that a man of his equity and firmness would not leave unpunished those of their order who had instigated Popilius Lsenas, Opimius, and Metellus, to their cruelties against the partisans of Gracchus. Opimius alone had put to death by a judicial process no fewer than three thousand Roman citizens, whose only crime was that of demanding what had been left them by Attalus, and promised them by the rulers of the state. A clever satirist, often a philosopher, and sometimes a poet, asks " Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes ?" The answer is : any dispassionate man. For there is no sedition in claiming a due ; there is none in resisting the robbery of earnings ; but there is in conspiring to murder, or to drive from house and home such opponents. The worst of all seditions is the seditio sedentium. The newly-found treatise of Cicero, De Re Publicd, supplies us with a few more sentences of illustration and subjects of remark. It is amusing to see with what eagerness a sentence that leans toward kingship is seized by the editor. He exclaims, " Notalile Ciceronis dictum de monarchic prsestantia ! quam in sententiam plerique sen veteres sen recentiores politici pedibus eunt." The sentence is, " Nam ipsum regale genus civitatis non modo non est reprehendendum, sed haud scio an reliquis simplicibus longe anteponendum, si ullum probarem simplex reipublicas genus : sed ita quoad statum suum retinet ; is est autem status, ut unius perpetua potestate et justitia, omnique sapientia, regatur salus et aequabilitas et otium civium." Certainly, if a king were perfectly just and perfectly wise, his government would be preferable to any other; but it is childish to speculate on such an occurrence, with the experience of ages before us, leading us to so different a conclusion. Scipio speaks of a republic with a king presiding over it ; the editor talks of monarchy, as we understand the word. Scipio adds, " Desunt omnino ei populi multa qui sub rege est, in primis libertas, quce non in eo est ut justo ulamur domino, sed ut nutto." Can anything be more temperate and rational than these CONVERSATION OF THE CICEROS. 475 expressions ? The first of which designate only the utility of the form, and that conditionally ; and the last give an excellent reason why even the form itself should not be admitted, proving the utility of the form to be incomparably less than what must be given up for it. In going on, he praises L. Brutus, " Vir ingenio et virtute prsestans, &c. primusque in hac civitate docuit in conservanda civium libertate esse privatum neminem ;" which the editor calls immanent injustamque sententiam. Could he not perceive that he should have placed wjustam before immanem, if he wished to avoid the ridicule of men and boys 1 And was he ignorant that a man capable of pronouncing a sentence which is unjust and outrageous is unworthy of quotation as an authority ] Yet he runs toward him agape for it, when he fancies h,e can pluck out from the looser folds of his gown something to invigorate and support him. Cicero in his own person uses nearly the same words (Epist. x. ad Familiar es) : " Kullo publico consilio rempublicam liberasti, quo etiam est ilia res major et clarior." The same opinion is also given by him in the Tusculan Questions. " Xunquam privatum esse sapientem, &c." (iv.) Scipio, in commending the advantages that, under conditions quite problematical, may attend the government of one magistrate, adds, " Sed tamen inclinatum et quasi prorwtm ad pernicio- sissimum statum:" and afterward, " Quis enim hunc hominem rite dixerit, qui sibi cum suis civibus, qui denique cum omni hominum genere nullam juris communionem, nullam humanitatis societatem velit." Here is indeed the nobih Ciceronis dictum, which ought to be engraven on every public building, from the school-room to the palace. The education of kings leaves few either wise or honest. The better citizens receive the better education : they are mutual checks one upon another, while kings are mutual guards and fosterers of each other's tyranny. That in fact, whatever it be, is the best form of government, which the most effectually excludes the wicked and unwise, and the most readily admits the wise and virtuous. The two worst are ochlocracy and despotism, both for the same reason : in both there is will without counsel, energy without object, and action without reflection. Ochlocracy is the more tolerable as being the more transient : one always passes into the other, as its first step. Scipio argues weakly, and Cicero perhaps intends that he should do so, in saying, "Illud tamen non adsentior tibi, prsestare regi optimates : si enim sapientia est quae gubernat rem publicam, quid tandem interest haec in uno ne sit an in pluribus?" Here is a petitio principii which on no account can be granted. It is surely more probable that wisdom should reside among many, and those the best educated and of mature age, than with one only, and him the worst educated, often of age not mature, and more often bearing thick upon him throughout life the vices of youth and the incon- siderateness of childhood. If Cicero spoke sincerely, he was both foolish and flagitious in praising those who slew Caesar : for never was there a man so capable of governing alone and well. I will not believe that he was led astray by Plato, who asserts in his fourth book that it is of little consequence whether a state be governed by many or one, if that one is obedient to the laws. Surely a king can more easily find those who will assist him in subverting them than simple citizens can, and is usually more inclined to do it, and is more easily persuaded that it is his interest. Aristoteles, as usual, speaks less idly : what is remarkable is, that his 476 REFLECTIONS ON THE opinion squares perfectly with the Epicurean doctrine. TeAos fikv ovv iroXeccs rb ev Qjir tovto 5' can rb £rju €vbai/j.6uoos kclI KaAoos. Now this is impossible under men worse and less wise (as hath been the case nine hundred and thirty years in the thousand) than those who occupy the middle ranks in life, to say nothing of those who are uncontaminated by their example and undebased by their tyranny ; such men as would exist if they did not. Governments must be constituted according to the habits and propensities of the governed, in which the moral springs from the physical. The Arab will always be free : the Frenchman often, but never long : in the Englishman there exists what ought to be expected from the union of Norman and Saxon : combinations of various kinds militate against the Italian, from whom all traces of ancient institutions have been effaced for ages, excepting of religion. The Roman people was merely the people of one city; its physical peculiarities could not extend themselves, and were entirely lost in a succession of conquerors. But the voice of history refutes the conclusion, which certain writers would draw from the treatise of Cicero, and teaches us that the republican form of government was best adapted to the nation, and that under it the Romans were virtuous and powerful, to a degree which they never attained under kings and emperors. Their seven kings, after two centuries, left a dominion less extensive than an English county or an American estate. In the same number of years, under a republic, the same people, if subjects and citizens may be called the same, conquered nearly the whole known world : whatever was wealthy, whatever was powerful, whatever was tyrannical and despotic, fell down before them, or followed in dejection their triumphal car. We have seen what their kings did : let us now see what the wisest and powerfullest of their emperors could do. Augustus lost his army in Germany, and commemorated by a trophy the capture of a few castles on the Alps : so greatly and so suddenly had fallen the glory of Rome, although ruled by a sagacious prince, when the discretion of one was substituted for the councils and interests and energies of many. It has been the fashion, and not only of late years, but for ages, to represent the Roman form of government (when unperverted) as aristo- cratical: this is erroneous. Cicero himself says, "nihil sacrosanctum esse potest, nisi quod plebs populusve jusserit" The people chose all the great functionaries, excepting the interex : he appointed the dictator, who is falsely thought to have possessed absolute power, even during the short period for which he was created. Polybius, an author to be depended on in whatever he relates as fact, mentioning the appointment of Fabius Maximus to the dictatorship, goes out of his road to pay hornage to the fasces of the Tribunes. " Whereas the consul" says he, " is preceded by twelve axes, the dictator is preceded by sixteen : the consuls must refer many things to the senate ; but the dictator is independent of every other power, excepting the tribunes" B. 6. Now dependency is not headship. Polybius, who wrote thus, lived intimately with Scipio ; and Scipio is represented as hostile to the constitution of his country, and a stickler for royalty ! He certainly was no zealous advocate of the tribunitial power : yet his friend had no hesitation in speaking thus of it ; for such was its acknow- ledged rank and dignity. When Fabius Maximus would have punished Minutius, the tribunes interposed their authority. The senatorial formula, CONVERSATION OF THE CICEROS. 477 1 Videant Consules ne quid detrimenti capiat Res Publica,' hath misled many, and indeed misled even Cicero himself, who offended against the forms of law when he saved the commonwealth from Catilina. The supreme power was never legally in the consuls, but constantly in the tribunes of the people ; so that Sigonius is wrong in his assertion, " Consules ab omnibus magistratibus concionem avocare potuisse, ab Us neminem" Nothing is more common than the interference of the tribunes against the consuls. T. Livius (1. xliv.) relates that the effects of Tiberius Gracchus the elder, who had been consul and censor, were consecrated (which in arbitrary governments is called confiscated) because he had disobeyed an order of the tribune L. Flavius ; a tribune committed to prison the consul Metellus : the censor Appius was punished in the same manner by the tribunitian authority. Carbo, who had been thrice consul, was condemned to death by Pompeius from the tribunitian chair. Drusus, as tribune, sent the consul Philippus to prison with a halter round his neck, obtritd gula (Florus, civ.). One Vectius was slain for not rising up before a tribune. Arrogantly and unjustly as the power in this instance was applied, it was constitutionally. Plutarch relates part of a speech by Tiberius Gracchus, in which the authority is mentioned as a thing settled. " It is hard," he says, " if a consul may be thrown»into prison by a tribune/ and a tribune can not be removed from office by the people." With all these facts in his memory, Cicero stil would consider the legitimate government of Rome as an aristocracy; for otherwise how could he himself be aristocratical, which he avows he was] He wrote his treatise De Republicd ten years before his death, when the more costly part of his experience was wanting. In our dialogue he is represented as on the verge of a political world, of w T hich he had been the mover and protector, while the elements of it announce to him that it is bursting under his feet. Hardly is that man to be called inconsistent, who, guided by recent facts, turns at last to wiser sentiments, opposite as they may be to those he entertained the greater part of his life. If anyone shall assert that here is attributed to Cicero an inconsistency unwarranted by his writings, the answer is, that there is manifestly a much greater between the facts he states in these quotations and the conclusions he appears by his line of policy to have drawn from them ; and that, taking his own statement, no injustice is done to his discernment and ratiocination, in bringing home to him a new inference. Whatever be the defects of this memorable writer, we should disclose them hesitatingly and reluctantly ; for in compa- rison with the meanest of his productions, how inelegant is the most elaborate composition of our times ! Few have grasp enough to comprehend at once all the greatness of a great writer ; somewhat is generally near at hand to distract their atten- tion ; some salient point to allure them : they fly toward it just as birds towards a sudden flash in the night, narrow as may be its space, and brief its duration. There are critics who take their station on glittering vanes or fretted pinnacles, and seem to have an appetite for wind. Usually they alight on something strange, and call it original ; on some- thing perverse, and call it strong ; on something clamorous, and call it eloquent. Cicero is not the author for them; to them he is yet in exile. 478 REFLECTIONS, ETC. Attentive study, scrupulous examination, strict comparison, are insuf- ficient ; yet even these are wanting to many gentlemen who take the chair and talk fluently about his writings. Now let us pass from the philosopher and pleader to the man. Morally he was among the best public men of his age ; perhaps the very best, being quite exempt from its besetting sin, peculation. He had no vices ; few faults ; weaknesses he had, as all men have : his vanity was exorbitant, insatiable ; and, more effeminately than any Roman, he was prostrated by calamity. Many deplored his death, many stil commiserate it : unreason- ably. It was without long suffering, without time for vain regrets, and equally vain expectations. Worse days than the past were coming ; had come. Preferable was it to die by the sudden stroke of a murderer than by a slowly corroded heart. From M. Antonius, against whom he had inveyed without remission, and whom he would have driven out of his country and have prosecuted unto death, from M. Antonius, who forgot no adherent and forgave no enemy, well might he foresee what befell him. His enfeebled health and broken spirit could ill have raised him up against the contemptuous neglect of the colder and crueler and more ungrateful Pompeius. Happily for him and for Italy, the sands of Egypt had drunk the blood of the blood-thirsty ; find a generous enemy, (if enemy he must be called) paid to Cicero those honours which, from his first reception at Pharsalia, he never had received, Caesar knew perfectly what the other never could be taught, the glory of preserving one grand pillar, although not erect, amid the demolitions and cinders of the Commonwealth. INDEX. N.B. — The names printed in small capitals are those of the Interlocutors in a Conversation. Abstinence, axiom concerning, 251 Absurdities, gross, usually proceed from the gravest men, 117 ; 'the adoption of another's, inexcusable, it. ; escape notice by familiarity, 176 Academy, the New, tendency of its tenets, 428 Achilles and Helena, 1 Action, in oratory, 158 ; not used by Peri- cles, 159 ; remark ou motives to, 424 Activity, necessary to a people, 47 iEsCHINES AND PhOCION, 172 JEschines, his gratitude to Phocion, 172, 173; his unpopularity, ib. ; his rivalry with and jealousy of Demosthenes, 179, et seq. - as a man, a captain, and an orator, 205, 206 ; his style, the model of Aristoteles, 205 Phraseology, simplicity of, recommended in composition, 101, 102 Pigs, uncleanly from love of cleanliness, 314 Pinasters, rarely embraced by twining plants, 221 Pindar, his dithyrambics, 90, 213 ; statue erected to him by the Athenians, 232 Piraeus, at Athens, 64, and note PlSISTRATUS AND SOLON, 33 Pisistratus, his character and actions, 33, et seq. Pity, on whom bestowed by man and by woman, 30 Plato and Diogenes, 73 Plato, his envy of Aribto teles, 80; his mode of dress ridiculed by Diogenes, 83 ; absent at the death of Socrates, 84; his mis representations of the genius and philo- 488 INDEX. sophy of Socrates, 87, et seq.; his -writings arid opinions criticised, 88, et seq.; his system of punishments discussed, 88—92; character and propensities of his scholars, 93, 199, 304; his plagiarism of ideas, 96, 97, 117, 118; criticism on his argument for the immortality of the soul, 97 — 99; his style, 100, et seq., 152, 214 not?, 215, 301, 305, et seq., 430; his eloquence considered, 101—103, 305, 306 ; his whim sical ideas of beauty, 105, 106 ; his failure as a historian, 107—111, 300, 305 ; remarks on his residence with Dionysius, 111 — 113; his political opinions, 113 — 115, 475; his notion of the Androgyne, 116, and note, 300; his imagination wholly unlike Shakspeare's, 116 note ; his anti- quarian and other absurdities, 117, 300, 301 ; his conception of the Deity, 118, 119; defects of his Dialogues, 119, 120; his inexact definitions, 122 — 124; poverty of his wit, 125, 302, 303, 305 ; his Defence of Socrates, 126; estimate of his merits and dements by Demosthenes, 152, 153; irony in his Dialogues, 153; makes Socrates appear a Sophist, ib. ; his jealousy, 158 ; strictures on his system respecting women and property, 206— 208; fate of his poetry, 215; the only florid writer possessing animation, ib. ; his scheme of government compared with that of Aristoteles, 215 — 217 ; his blameahle conduct toward other philo- sophers, 217 ; passages in his writings indefensible, 299 ; his genius considered, 300, et seq-. ; criticism on his Banquet, 300, 301 ; compared with Aristophanes, 303 ; his imagination, as displayed in his Polity, 304 ; conduct of his followers, ib. ; his grandiloquence, 305, 306, 311, 312; fails to win the affections, 306 ; extolled too highly by his disciples, ib. ; his allegories, ib., 307 ; his character little understood, 310 ; wanted heart, 311 ; compared with Epictetus, 312 ; his writings unpractical, ib., 430 ; by whom admired, 430 ; of small authority in philosophy and politics, ib. Platonic School, fondness of the, for subtle speculations, 93 ; for talking and dis- puting, 199 Plautus, his phraseology, 458 Pleasure, produces callousness, 121 ; true, incompatible with impurity, 333 ; bene- ficial effects of moderate, 443 Plutarch, his character, 327 ; his friendship with Trajan, 328 Pcecile, at Athens, 64, and note Poet, requisites of the, 303; business of the, 306 ; why great and powerful, 449 Poetry, the difficulty of marking its degrees, 53; the finest, contains the finest philo- sophy, 90; remark on the beautiful in, 116 note; its mysteries, 180; delight its object, 250; the highest kind of, tragic, ib. ; tragic, compared with epic, ib. ; alle- gory not a basis for the highest, 306 ; its truthfulness, 385 Poets, invention the primary part of, 43; not all dishonest. 47; their mental con- stitution, 112; their vocation allied to sycophancy, ib.-, remarks on the exclu- sion of, from Plato's commonwealth, 213, 217 Polemics, character of, 248, 249 Policy, wisdom of a liberal, even in war, 349 Politeness, a virtue, 241, 242 Politician, fatal delusion of the, 256 Politicians, prone to duplicity, 295 Politics, considered as a subject of con- versation, 163; evoke the worst passions between friends, ib. ; danger of novelties in, 177 Polity, a position in Plato's, disputed, 113 ; Plato's, written before that of Aristoteles, 215 note; of Aristoteles compared with Plato's, 215, and note, et seq. ; Plato most imaginative in his, 304 Pollio, Virgil's, 451 Polybius, Scipio, and Panotitis, 342 Polvbius, style and character of his history, 369, 370 POLYCRATES AND ANACREON, 43 Poly crates, story of his ring, 44 ; friendly advice given to him by Anacreon, ib., et seq. ; his meditated invasion of Lydia, 45; his subjugation of Samos, 46; his treatment of his brothers, ib. Polydeukes and Kastor, description of, 6 Polytheism, discussed by Xenophon and Cyrus, 135—137 Pomneius (Cneius). his conduct censured by* Caesar, 383,_398, 399 ; his character, 404, 406, 436, 478; Cicero's opinion re- specting, 473 Pomponius (Titus), his character, 423 ; his friendship with Cicero, 428 Pontif, object of the early Christians in electing a supreme, 288 Poor, political conduct of the, 216 Possessions, usual effect of great, 323 Poverty, when not disgraceful, 30 ; exces- sive, follows in the train of excessive wealth, 215 Power, curse that befalls the possessors of despotical, 38, 39; an increase of, not an increase of happiness, 41 ; those stript of, the most implacable enemies of their country, 57 ; exertion of superior, its operation, 58; weakening effects of im- moderate, 70; only relative, 77; curses of kingly, 113 — 115 ; affects even the wise, 152; a liberal education necessary to control, 406, 407 ; those possessed ot arbitrary, incited to oppress philosophers and historians, 419 Praise, iniquity of great writers in with- holding, where due, 110; advice on the bestowal of, 180 ; often awarded out of enmity to others, 255 Praises of the dead, what to be aimed at aud avoided in, 108 Priest, the High, at Jerusalem, Peter's treatment of his servant censured, 287, 288 Priestess, of Apollo, her declaration con- cerning Socrates, 128; of Minerva, her perquisites, 418 Priests, of Cybele, 7 ; remark on the choice of, 145; assumption of divine authority by, ib.; their cruelties and commina- tions, 146; influx of Egyptian, into Greece, ib. ; pernicious effects of their wealth and undue influence in a state, 147, 288 ; of Diana, 283, 284 ; of Isis, 297, INDEX. 489 298; Syrian and Egyptian, in Rome, 416, I 417 Priesthoods, quarrels of, under Trajan, 287 ; subjection of some eastern nations to their, 418 Princes, had better be fortunate than wise, 44 ; reason why they are never envied, ib. ; enrich those who pamper their foi- bles, 171 Professions, barbarian mode of distinguish- ing, 68 Projects, observations on man's, 406 Propertius, character of his elegies, 455 ; deprived of his farm under Perusia, ib.; his name unabbreviated by the moderns, ib. note ; ridiculed by Horace, 456 Property, observations on Plato's scheme respecting, 207, 208; the desire of, na- tural to m an, 207 Propylea, of Pericles, 64 note Prose, faulty if not intelligible, 179; pieces of verse occurring in, 213, and note, 214; no writer of florid, a good poet, 215 ; has its probabilities as well as poetry, 313 Prosperity, not promotive of piety, 188 Puanepsion, month of, 234, and note Punishment, of poisoning and incantation, 89; of robbery and sacrilege, 91; effect of public, ib. ; doctrine of eternal, con- sidered, 293 ; should come from the ma- gistrate, 294 Punishments, Plato's system of, considered, 89, 91 ; tendency and effects of, 89, 90 ; inequality of, 91; should be adminis- tered secretly, 92 Pythagoras, his opinion on the faculty of contemplation, 97 ; character of, 111 ; a purifier of courts, ib. ; effect of his teach- ings in Italy, 111, 154; his investigations of Nature, 127; a true lover of wisdom, 154; adapted, his institutions to the people, ib.; his method of instructing the Gauls, 155, 156; his residence at Massilia, 156; did not enforce his doc- trines beyond his school, 157; justly revered as a father, 207 ; posthumous observance of his dictates, 282 Query as to the originality of the Iliad, 203, 204 Quotations, a blemish in composition, £08; writers in whose works none are found, ib. Reading, compared with conversation, 200, and with dramatic spectacle, 253 Reason, the courage of, 206 ; preferable to eloquence and martial glory, 257; assisted by belief, 281; an uncertain support, as compared with faith, 326 Reflection, definition of, 16 Reflections on the Conversation of the Ciceros, 472—478 Religion, of the Persians, compared with that of the Greeks, 136, et seq. ; of Egypt, spread of its doctrines in Greece, 146, and Rome, 388; effect of an effeminat- ing, 147, 148; which is the best, 149; one intended for the uncivilised must contain marvels, 155; advice with refer- ence to our country's, 156 ; of the Druids, contrasted with that of the Greeks, 157; endangered by admitting too much, 230; doctrines of the Christian, discussed, 280, et seq. ; august character of the ancient Roman, 388, and prophecy con- cerning it, ib., 389, 418; consequences of one altogether pacific, 389 Religions, lalse, relished in proportion to their absurdities, 97 ; their tendency to wear out, 418 Renovation and destruction, remark on, 460 Repetition of sentiments, remarks on an author's, 81, 82 ; shows no want of inven- tion, 181 Reproof, unpleasantness of, 9 Republic, a, best adapted to the Roman nation, 476 Republican, reason why every man is not a, 171 Republics, who most commended in, 171; disadvantage attending, in a war with kings, 177; their stability endangered by a monopoly of wealth, 216 ; founda- tion of their power, 373 Revenge, compared with malice, 124; re- quires energy, ib. Rhadamistus and Zenobia, 275 Rhadamistus, his crimes, 277 ; his death, 279 Rhodope and ^Esop, 7 Rhodope, account of her being sold to slavery, 27, et seq. Riches, effects of, in a community, 215, 216 Ridicule, legitimate employment of, 280; unavailing against truth, 281 Rites and ceremonies of the ancient Ro- mans, 388, 389; anticipated transfusion of them into a new creed, ib., 418 Rituals, change in, made for lucre, 140 Robbery and sacrilege compared, 91 Roman language, its poverty in terms of art and science, 458 ; brought to perfec- tion by Caesar and Cicero, ib.] invaded by Hellenisms, ib. Roman people, the people of one city, 476 ; its physical peculiarities lost under con- querors, ib. Romans, error of Hannibal in employing elephants against them, 352; learned military science and whatever was use- ful from the Greeks, 355, 377; their cha- racter formed by that of their gods, 388 remarks on their religious rites, ib., 389, 418; indebted to Athens for their laws, 433; most virtuous and powerful under a republic, 476; their form of government not aristocratical, ib., 477 Rome, humble character of her structures in the time of Corinth and Carthage, 349; possibility of being taken by Hannibal considered, 353, 354; victo- rious through her liberal policy, ib.', admission of foren gods and priests into, 388, 416, 417, 453 ; cause of her fall, 407, 408 Royal families, prevalence of insanity in, 70 Royalty, farthest of all things from reci- 490 INDEX. procity, 48 ; pleasures in, 53 ; disadvan- tages attending, 138 ; its aliment, and operation on mankind, 152 Rulers, the knowledge requisite for, 75; of barbarians, their character, 203, 218; reverence due to, as compared with writers, 233 Russia, Napoleon's invasion of, contrasted with that of Greece by Xerxes, 64 Sacrifices to the gods, remarks on, 40, 55, 56, 138 Sacrilege, nature and punishment of, con- sidered, 91 Sais, antiquity of its records, 117 Sallustius (Crispus), animated style of his history, 391 Salvation, Christian meaning of the term, 291 Samos, subjugation of, by Polycrates, 46 ; its fertility, 48 Satire, essentials of true, 456 Scsevola (Mutius), 405, 409 Scipio, POLYBIUS, AND PAN.ZETIUS, 342 Scipio, his emotions at the destruction of Carthage, 342, et seqr, his conduct with respect to the Agrarian law, 411 — 413, 473 ; excites the suspicions of the Senate, 474 Scriptures, eclectic interpretation of the, 322, 323 Scoffing at abuses, the privilege of an honest man, 292 Scourging slaves, its propriety discussed, 88,94 Sea, the, a tranquillizer of the soul, 107 Sectarians, their injustice to tradesmen of a different creed, 335 Sedition, what is, and what is not, 474; the worst kind of, ib. Selfishness,, excluded from the domestic circle, 206 Self-love, extinguishes all other love, 229 Senate of Rome, intended suppression of the, by the Marian faction, 407 Senators, of Rome, and of Carthage, con- sequences of their ambition, 408 Seneca and Eptctetus, 466 Seneca, his unphilosophical conduct and mode of dress, 466, et seq. Sensibility, effects of great, in men, 245 Sentence, elongation of the last member of a, recommended by Aristoteles, 158 Sentiment, few writers repeat a kind, 82 ; criteria of a divine, 228 Sentiments, the adoption of wiser, not inconsistency, 477 Sertorius, character and conduct of, 404, 405; his death compared with Csesar's, 405 ; error committed by him in Spain, 408 Sesostris, power of Egypt in the reign of, 147 ; pillars erected by, destroyed by Alexander, 203; estimate of, 313 Shakspeare, his imagination wholly unlike Plato's, 116, note; his poetical version of the Androgyne, ib. Shepherds of Egypt, see Pelasgians' Sight, definition of the best, 310; certain proof of a defective, 328 Silliness, alone escapes suspicion in courts, 47 Simplicity, does not admit of decoration, 468 Sincerity, not usually a characteristic of the moderate, 87 ; Avhen most to be looked for, ib. Singularity, of individuals, remarks on the, 180, 181 ; when detestable, 181 Slave, remark of Diogenes concerning a runaway, 306 Slavery, when nof disgraceful, 30 ; remarks on, 94, 95 ; opinion of early Christians as to the abolition of, 321, 322 Slaves, propriety of scourging, discussed, 88,94; who only should, be made, 94; laws regarding, 306 Sleep, Epicurean opinion respecting, 425 Smiles, of men and women, difference between, 8 Society, philosophical sense of the word, 254 ; what is required by its laws, 414 Socrates, a great man, 79 ; too little at home, ib. ; character of his disciples, 80 ; his genius and opinions misrepresented by Plato, 88, et seq.; simplicity of his language, 107 ; remarks on his marriage with Xantippe, 120, 121 ; his opinions respecting the sun and moon, 126, 127"; denounced all physical speculations, 127, 128 ; the declaration of the Delphic Oracle concerning him a- fiction, 128 ; made by Plato to appear a Sophist, 153; nature of his discourses, 209 Soldiers, art of swimming essential to, 59 ; evils to be apprehended from, when a distinct class, 95 ; in a free state, how to be raised, 96; their alleged indulgence in luxury considered, 371 Solon and Pjsistratus, 33 Solon, falsehoods attributed to him by Plato, 117 ; his doctrines more sublime than Plato's, 299 ; his life consistent with them, 300; legislative services of, 433; his use of the pentameter, 457 Sophocles and Pericles, 64 Sophocles, his dramatic contest with iEschylus, 65, and note; his liberal character, 65 note; verses by, on the completion of the Pirseus and Poecile, 72 Sorrow, uses of seasonable, 443, 444 Soul, criticism on Plato's argument for its immortality, 97, 98; inference of the presence of one in animals, 314 Souls, effect of a belief in the transmigra- tion of, 155 Speaker, public, definition of a bad, 159 Speculations, physical, denounced by Socrates, 127, 128 ; absurdity of profitless, whether in religion or philosophy, 328, 334 Spleen, and its effects, description of, 264 Stations, remark on the occupiers of high, 424 Statuaries and painters, their peculiar power, 64 Statues, of illustrious men, their uses, 232 ; places appropriate for, ib. ; remark on the juxtaposition of, ib., 233 Strategy, only a constituent part of a com- mander, 64 Studies, benefits accruing from, 200 Study, a love of, accompanied by a love of security, 419 INDEX. 491 Stvle. of Aristophanes, 303: of Aristotle. 108 158, 158 -■ 5, 213, 214, 2J ofCsesar, -. ~ 58 57, 458; of Cicero, 430, 443, 458,477; of Demo- critus. 157: of Demosthenes, 150, 166; 179—183, 205, 306; of Epictetus, 3j 469: of Herodotus. 102, 152, 225. - : of Homer, 102 : of Horace. 456. 457. 459; of Lsseus, 152; of Livy. 214 5; of Lucretius. 45S : of Ovid. 455. 457. 458; of Pericles. 65. 153. 257, of Phocion. 173. 200, 205; of Pindar. 90. 213: of Plat-. 10). et seq.. 152. 153.214 . 215. 305—312, 430: of Plautus, 4: B ; of Polybins, 369. 370 : of Propeitius. 455. 458; of Sallust. 391: of Socrates. 107 : of Terence. 4E ] re sti - 256, 26t 261 : of Thucvdides. 153. 3" 8, : Tibullus. 457. 458 : of Virgil. 451—453 : : : Xenophon. 152. 391 : remarks on. 468. 469 Suddenness, enhances the pleasure of an acquisition, 41 Suu. adoration of the, by the Persians, 56. 136. 137 : singular opinion respecting its size, 136: advantages of its worship in a hot climate. 137 Superhuman beings, belief in ranks and - orders of. 332 : opinion as to their con- nexion with the human race. ib. Superstition concerning eggs and chickens. 417 Sympathv. want of, with our species, a proof of hardness of hear:. 85 Syria, priests of. in Rome. 416 Swimming, art of. necessary to a soldier. 59 Talkative men. observations on. 200 Tartarus, belief in the locality of. by the ancients. 298 Taxos. its silver mir.es. 15S. and noU . when unwise to restrain them, 444: a remedy for affliction, ib. Teios, delight fulness c:. 48 Telling and teaching, a difference between. 293 Temperance, its rank as a virtue. 242 ; includes justice, Terentius. His phraseology, 458 Tbkotssa, Epicubus, asd Leosttost, 219 Theater, reason -why women should visit it but rarely. 252 : censurable conduct of auditors at. ib.. 253 Theophrastus. his opposition to the doc- trines of Epicurus, 244. 247. 249: his style and merits as a writer. 24$ 260, 261: partiality of Aristoteles : r, 256. 257 Thesmophoria. religious rite of the, 104 Thmking, power of, opinion as to its locality, 97 Thoughts, of the wise and virtuous, their company. 74 Thoutmosis. siege of Aoudris by, 116 Thraciaus. their inoralitv. 10. li Thrasybiilns. estimate of, 109. 110 Thucydid-s, his style. 153. 308. 390. 391 : his character as a historian, 390 TlBEEIL'5 AND YlPSAXIA. 431 Tiberiu-. his meeting with his divorced wife Vipsania, 461, and note; tendency of his family to insanity, ib. note ; his own character, ib. ; his residence at Rhod Tibullus axd Mf.ssala. 446 Tibullus, befriended by Mes-ala. 447; his love for Delia. 448: his piety, 454. and • his name unabbreviated by the moderns. 455 note ; unrivalled in elegy, 457 : purity of his language. 458 Tim. - methnes needful. 33 Tyrants, less pernicious than king-. 36 ; will not believe that their alarm? and sorrows are the fruit of their tyranny, 85: singers and buffoons their most imate associa:es. 39: isolated from their species, ib. : perish from folly. 52 Tyro, his character. 405; the trustee of Cicero's writing-. ib. Tyrtaeus. his use of the pentameter. 457 Tythes. among the Jews, ^17 : exacted by Pisistratus and Hiero, ib. ; in Spain, ib. note Unfortunate, bearing hard on the, the worst of wickedness. 37 Untrue, difference between the false and the. i Usurper, reason for preferring the craelest. to the mildest king.. 36 Usurpers, qualities necessary for. 50: their use of fraud. 52; must be taken off iraietly, 51 : virtually outlaws. Ill; duty of destroying, 169 492 INDEX. Vanity, the usual accompaniment of small stature and distortion, 10 Vengeance, legitimate mode of, 255 Vices, beneficial effect of some men's, 296 Vipsania and Tiberius, 461 Vipsanin, notice of, 461 note; her meeting with Tiberius, ib. Virgil, early works of, 451 ; remark on his Pollio, ib. ; criticism on his Georgics, 451 —453 Virtue, presupposed in friendship, 4 Virtues, the four, 76; all contained in tem- perance and beneficence, ib. ; their origin in some men, 296 Vote, soliciting a, an unworthy action, 174 War, less pernicious to a state than priests, 147 ; evils of the most righteous, 169 ; way to render it rare, 178 Warrior, character of the great, 295 Wealth, consequences of priestly, 147, 288; excessive, always brings with it exces- sive poverty, 215 Whipping, infliction of, after death, 57 note Wickedness, the worst of, 37 Will, effect of the variance of knowledge and, 424 Wills, the right and expediency of making, considered, 174 Wisdom, flies low for her food, 75; is tri- partite, 129; distinction between know- ledge and, 212 Wit, what is true, to every man, 186 ; no man possesses a variety of, 303 ; banter, the worst species of, ib. Witticism, every, an inexact thought, 125 Women, Plato's system respecting, con- sidered, 206, 207; common among the Etrurians, 206 ; friendships and enmities of, 231 ; most attracted to men by courage, 241 ; should visit the theater but rarely, 252; cannot bear another's superiority, 401 Words, the simplest and easiest, recom- mended in composition, 101, 102; im- portance of, in the intellectual world, 296; evils resulting from the use of ambiguous, 297 ; magnificent, not often employed by genius, 305, 306 World (moral), how to conquer the, 228 World, belief of the early Christians in its impending extinction, 307 ; probable consequences, were such belief universal, 308 Writer, every great, a writer of history, 109; few can at once duly estimate a great, 477 Writers, obligation of great, to point out objects for our reverence or hatred, 110; benefits conferred by great, 200, 201, 233 ; reverence due to great, as compared with rulers, 233; the best, the most intelligible, 304 Writings, of great men, preferable to their conversation, 200 Xeniades, his children educated by Diogenes, 131 ; his estimate of him, ib. Xenocrates, Alexander's presents to, 199, 202 ; his character, 199 Xenophon and Cyrus the Younger, 131 Xenophon and Alcibiades, 141 Xenophon, his superstition, 80, 391; his stvle, 152, 391; defects in his Cyropcedia, 209, 391 Xerxes and Artabanus, 55 Xerxes, his preparations for the invasion of Greece, 55, et seq.; immense sacrifice offered by, 55, 56 ; his allies, 57 ; reason for his scourging the sea, ib., 58; gorgeous equipment of his troops con- demned, 58, 59 ; his dream, 61, 64; his invasion of Greece contrasted with Napoleon's invasion of Russia, 64; not so imprudent as Napoleon, ib. Years, increase of, inclines us to morose- ness, 326 Youth, value of, 142 ; incited to the admiration of false glories by historians and pedagogues, 329, 330 Zeno, his character, 295 ; his doctrine, 467 Zenobia and Rhadamistus, 275 Zenobia, probably ignorant of the guilt of Rhadamistus, 277 note ; her death, 279 THE END. LONDON BRADBURY AND EVANS PRINTERS WHITEFRIARS. / iiiiiMiymtmnii LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 494 556 6 # MM i ! V 91