Historical essays

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

from the collection of
Professor Koppel S. Pinson

HISTOBICAL ESSAYS.

HISTORICAL ESSAYS

EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., HON. D.C.L.,

LATK FELLOW OP TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.

SECOND SERIES.

' I will at leant hope that these volumes may encourage a spirit of research into
history, and may in some measure assist in directing it ; that they may con-
tribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a whole, and according
to its philosophical divisions, not such as merely geographical and chronological ;
that the history of Greece and Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and
forgotten institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much
for the curiosity of the scholar, as the instruction of the statesman and the
citizen.'— ARNOLD, Preface to Thucydides, vol. iii.

Bonbon;
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1873.
[ A II riyhU reserved.]

OXFORD:

By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner. E. Pickard Hall, and J. H. Stacy,
PRINTEHS TO THE T7NIVEE8ITT.

PEEFACE.

THE present collection is that which was spoken of in the
Preface to the second edition of my former series of Essays.
The Essays now reprinted chiefly relate to earlier periods of
history than those which were dealt with in the former volume
— to the times commonly known as 'ancient' or 'classical.'
I need hardly say that to me those names simply mark con-
venient halting-places in the one continuous history of
European civilization. They mark the time when political
life was confined to the two great Mediterranean peninsulas,
and when the Teutonic and Slavonic races had as yet hardly
shown themselves on the field of history. I should be well
pleased some day to connect the two series by a third, which
might deal with the intermediate times, with those times which
I look on as the true Middle Ages, the times when the
Roman and Teutonic elements of modern Europe stood side
by side, and had not yet been worked together into a third
thing distinct from either.

In reprinting these Essays, I have followed nearly the same
course which I followed in the former series. As most of
them were written before those which appeared in my former
series, they have, on the whole, needed a greater amount of
revision, and a greater number of notes to point out the times
and circumstances under which they were written. In the
process of revision I have found myself able to do very much
in the way of improving and simplifying the style. In
almost every page I have found it easy to put some plain
English word, about whose meaning there can be no doubt,
instead of those needless French or Latin words which are
thought to add dignity to style, but which in truth only add
vagueness. I am in no way ashamed to find that I can write
purer and clearer English now than I did fourteen or fifteen
years back ; and I think it well to mention the fact for the
encouragement of younger writers. The common temptation

vi PREFACE.

of beginners is to write in what they think a more elevated
fashion. It needs some years of practice before a man fully
takes in the truth that, for real strength and above all for real
clearness, there is nothing like the old English speech of our
fathers.

All the Essays in this volume, except the first, were written
as reviews. When the critical part of the article took the
shape of discussion, whether leading to agreement or to dif-
ference, of the works of real scholars like Bishop Thirl wall,
Mr. Grote, and Dr. Merivale, I have let it stand pretty much
as it was first written. But the parts which were given to
pointing out the mistakes of inferior writers I have for the
most part struck out. On this principle I had to sacrifice
nearly the whole of the article headed ' Herodotus and his
Commentators,' in the National Review for October 1862.
I have kept only a small part of it as a note to one of
the other Essays. I have done this, not because there is a
word in that or in any other article of the kind which I now
differ from or regret, but because, while the unflinching
exposure of errors in the passing literature of the day is the
highest duty of the periodical critic, it is out of place in
writings which lay any claim to lasting value. I do not think
I have sinned against my own rule in reprinting my articles
in the Saturday Review on the German works of Mommsen
and Curtius. Both are scholars of the highest order, and, as
such, I trust that I have dealt with them with the respect that
they deserve. But if, as there seems to be some danger, Curtius
should displace Grote in the hands of English students, and
if Mommsen should be looked up to as an infallible oracle,
as Niebuhr was in my own Oxford days, I believe that the
result would be full of evil, not only for historical truth, but,
in the case of Mommsen, for political morality also.

I have to renew my thanks to the publishers of the Edin-
burgh Review and to the editors and publishers of the other
periodicals in which the Essays appeared, for the leave kindly
given to me to reprint them in their present form.

SOMERLEAZE, "WELLS.

January yth, 1873.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

ANCIENT GREECE AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY (Oxford Essays,

1857) 1

Note from ' Herodotus and his Commentators '

(National Review, October 1862) .. .. 47

MB. GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE

(National Review, July 1858) . . . . . . 52

THE HISTORIANS or ATHENS (National Review, January

1858) 94

THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY (North British Review, May

1856) .. • .; 1-07

Appendix on Curtius' History of Greece (Saturday
Review, July 31, September 19, October 3,
1868 ; July 10, 1869 ; May 27, July 10, 1871) 148

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (Edinburgh Review, April 1857) 161

GREECE DURING THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD (North British

Review, August 1854) 207

MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME (National Review, , April

1859) 234

Appendix from Saturday Review, March 28, 1868 . . 266
Lucius CORNELIUS SULLA (National Review, January 1 862.) 271
THE FLAVIAN C.ESARS (National Review, January 1863) 307

HISTORICAL ESSAYS.
I.

ANCIENT GREECE AND MEDIEVAL ITALY.

THE history of the Italian peninsula forms, in many respects,
the most important and the most fascinating chapter in the
history of the middle ages. Every part indeed of the his-
tory of those wonderful times has its own special charm ;
each has its special attraction for minds of a particular
class. Upon the English statesman or jurist, the early annals
of our own country have a claim ahove all others. But
a knowledge of those annals is very imperfect without some
knowledge both of the kindred nations of Northern Europe
and of the once kindred and then antagonistic powers of
Gaul. To minds of another class, who view history with
philological or antiquarian rather than with political eyes,
the laws, the languages, the monuments of Scandinavia
and Northern Germany will be of primary, instead of sub-
sidiary, value. The long struggle between the Christian
and the Saracen, the early liberties of Aragon and Castile,
clothe the Iberian peninsula with an interest at once poli-
tical and romantic. Even the obscure annals of the Sla-
vonic nations are not without a charm of their own, and they
have a most important bearing upon recent events. But to
the scholar, whose love for historical research has been first
kindled among the remains of Greek and Roman antiquity,
no delight will be so great as that of tracing out every relic
of their influence, every event or institution which can be
connected with them either by analogy or by direct deriva-
tion. The mere student of words, the mere dreamer over

B

2 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

classic lore, is indeed tempted to cast aside the mediaeval and
modern history both of Greece and Italy as a mere profana-
tion of the ancient. But a more enlarged and practical love
of antiquity will not so dwell upon the distant past as to
neglect more recent scenes which are its natural complement
and commentary. And the scenes which thus attract the
scholar may challenge also the attention of the political and
ecclesiastical inquirer. Our knowledge of the political life of
Rome, of the intellectual life of Greece, of the religious life
of early Christendom, is imperfect indeed without some
knowledge of the long annals of the Eastern Empire.
There we may behold the political immortality of one race,
the literary immortality of another ; there we may learn
how a language and a religion can reconstruct a nation ; we
may trace the force and the weakness of a centralized des-
potism, and may marvel at the destiny which chose out such
a power to be the abiding bulwark of Christianity and civili-
zation. But over the other classic peninsula a higher interest
lingers. If both Greece and Rome still lived on in the
mingled being of the Byzantine Empire, they rose again
to a more brilliant life among the Popes, the Caesars, and the
Republics of mediaeval Italy. The political power of Rome
still survived in theory in the hands of German Emperors,
while in very truth the lordly spirit of the Imperial city
sprang into new being, and founded a wider empire, under
the guidance of Italian Pontiffs. And besides this twofold
life of Rome, the life of Hellas lives once more in the rise
and fall, the wars and revolutions, of countless independent
commonwealths. The theatre was less favourable ; the results
were less splendid ; but the reproduction was as close as such
a reproduction can ever be, and the text and the commentary
should never be studied apart.

To the general English reader the history of mediaeval
Italy is commonly very little known. It forms no part of
the stereotyped educational course for either sex. Few remain
wholly ignorant of Greece and Rome in the old world, of

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 3

France and England in the new ; few are altogether with-
out some idea of those later wars and treaties which have
changed the general face of Europe. But this forms the
usual boundary of the historical course ; further inquiry is left
to those who pass their lives in deciphering illegible records
or in harmonizing discordant chronicles. Most people carry
in their memories the succession of all the Kings of England
and of most of the Kings of France, but nobody remembers
the Doges of Venice any more than the Emperors of Constan-
tinople. And yet a certain aspect of the historic life of Italy
is familiar to every one. No land has produced more names
which are familiar to the lips of every man, woman, and child.
Every one can talk of Dante and Petrarch and Ariosto ; every
one knows ' the age of Leo the Tenth/ and most people know
that his character of Maecenas was one which he inherited
from his forefathers. It were well for Italian history, as for
Italy itself, if its reputation of this kind had been somewhat
less splendid. As the Medici destroyed Italian freedom, so
their fame has overshadowed the purer fame of Italy. The
like fate indeed has befallen ancient Greece likewise. Athens
is, in popular conception, the parent of art and philosophy, far
more than the parent of civil justice and political freedom.
Athenian poetry and speculation have overshadowed the glory
of Athenian democracy; Sophokles and Plato have dimmed the
brighter fame of Kleisthenes and Perikles. In like manner
Italy is looked upon so wholly as the land of poetry and art,
as to obscure its higher character as the land which affords
greater treasures of political science than any other land save
Greece itself. And this more popular aspect has tended to
throw a very false colouring over those parts of political his-
tory which are inseparably connected with the history of art
and literature. If the earlier times are thought of at all, it is
because the wars of Guelf and Ghibelin are needed as a key to
Dante, instead of Dante being needed as a commentary on the
wars of Guelf and Ghibelin. And in later times, the blaze of
poetic and artistic splendour makes men forget that the age of
Italy's apparent glory was in truth that of her real degrada-

B 2,

4 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

tion. Everything is judged by a false standard. It is enough
for a Pope or a prince to have gathered together the works of
ancient genius, and to have encouraged those of contemporary
skill. It is enough if he filled his palace with pictures and
statues, and surrounded himself with flatterers who could sing
his praises alike in Latin and in Italian verse. These merits
will wipe out the overthrow of a dozen free constitutions; they
will fully atone for stirring up unjust wars, for public per-
fidy and private licentiousness. Of this mode of treatment
the writings of Mr. Roscoe are the foremost example. He
tells us in his preface 'that the mere historical events of the
fifteenth century, so far as they regarded Italy, could not
deeply interest his countrymen in the eighteenth,' but ' that
the progress of letters and arts would be attended to with
pleasure in every country where they were cultivated and
protected.' No rational person will ever undervalue either
the practice or the history of ' letters and arts ; ' but surely
the progress and decay of political freedom is a subject the
most interesting of all to every country which professes to
enjoy and to value the greatest of merely human blessings.

That few people go deeper into the matter than this, though
it is to be regretted, is hardly to be wondered at. Italian
history is highly important ; but it is, of all histories, the
most difficult to carry in one's head. The details are hope-
less. The brain grows dizzy among the endless wars and
revolutions of petty tyrants and petty commonwealths ; three
or four schemes of policy and warfare twine round one another;
and no such factitious aid is supplied to the memory as is
afforded by the succession of reigns and dynasties in France
and England. Can any man living repeat — we do not say
all the Tyrants of Rimini or Faenza, but all the Popes, all
the Doges, all the Lords, Dukes, and Marquesses of Milan
and Ferrara? It would need a faculty savouring as much
of Jedediah Buxton as of Niebuhr, to say without book how
many times Genoa became subject to Milan and how many
times to France ; how often the Adorni drove out the Fregosi,
and how many times the Fregosi did the like by the Adorni.

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 5

As long as the Western Emperors still kept any real sovereignty
in Italy, the chronology of their reigns afford something like
a clue ; but, alas, it guides us only a very little way, and it fails
us just when a clue becomes most needful. We are driven to
aid our recollection by arbitrary synchronisms. The death of
Manfred, the birth of Dante, and the death of Simon of
Montfort; the establishment of Mahomet at Constantinople
and the establishment of Francesco Sforza at Milan; the
Castilian conquest of Granada and the invasion of Italy by
Charles the Eighth; — all these are sets of events which
respectively come within two or three years of each other.
But one date beams across our path like a solitary guiding
star ; the year 1378 claims the everlasting gratitude of the
baffled chronologer; it must have been some gracious decree
of destiny for his especial benefit, which procured that a single
revolution of the seasons should witness the beginning of the
War of Chioggia, of the Sedition of the Ciompi, and of the
Great Schism of the West.

It is then nothing very astonishing if a history which the
professed student cannot undertake always to keep in his
memory, should seem to the ordinary reader to be one which
he may pass by altogether. It is a fact that there are those
whom an identity of name and numeral has misled into the
belief that the prince who stood barefoot at the gates of
Canosa was one and the same with the prince whose white
plume served as oriflamme upon the field of Ivry. Pity not
to have carried out the process to its full extent, and to have
landed the triple- bodied Geryon by the headland of Raven-
spur and guided him in safety through the fight of Shrewsbury.
We once saw, in a popular description of Milan Cathedral, an
expression of wonder that so vast a work should have been
undertaken by ' the petty lord of that and a few other neigh-
bouring towAS.' If these are fair samples of the average
Englishman's belief as to Italian chronology and Italian
politics, it is really high time for that belief to be very largely
set right. To confound Henry of Franconia and Henry of
Navarre is sheer ignorance, possibly of the invincible class.

6 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

To have heard of Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, and to mistake him
for a ' petty lord/ is really the greater sin of the two. Such
an error could only arise either from a profound reverence for
a mere title, or else from an incapacity to look beyond the
extent which a country occupies on the map. The Lord of
Milan was not a King ; till he received the ducal coronet he
did not belong to any class of acknowledged sovereigns; his
territory was far smaller than that of France or England or
Castile. But in wealth, in population, in every element of
material prosperity, this ' petty ' territory surpassed every
land beyond the Alps, and its rulers directed its resources
with a far more absolute command than princes of higher
dignity held over their wider domains. Gibbon remarks that,
when John Palaiologos came to Ferrara, the Roman Emperor
of the East found in the Marquess of that city a sovereign
more powerful than himself. In like manner the ' petty lord '
of Milan was in very truth a prince of greater weight in
European politics than the Bohemian Caesar of whom, for an
empty title, he stooped to profess himself the vassal.

The fact is that many of the particular facts of Italian
history, as they are extremely hard to remember, are really
by no means worth remembering. The particular event,
looked at by itself, touched perhaps the interests only of an
inconsiderable district, and it had no great direct influence
over the particular events which followed it. The same
stages repeat themselves over again in the history of a
hundred cities ; every town gradually wins and as gradually
loses its liberties; in each the demagogue stealthily grows
into the chief of the commonwealth; in each the chief
of the commonwealth stealthily or forcibly grows into the
Tyrant; in many the Tyrant or his successor wins an
outward legitimacy for the wrong by some ceremony which
admits him into the favoured order of acknowledged sove-
reigns. The general outline of events in a few of the greater
states should of course be carefully remembered ; but, beyond
this, little can be attempted, except the general picture which
the details serve to produce, and the deep political lessons

L] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 7

which ought to be drawn from its contemplation. We read
the details, and we are content to forget them ; but we keep
in our memories the great characteristics of one of the most
stirring times of man's being. We learn that the powers of
the human heart and intellect are not dwarfed or cramped by
confinement to a seemingly narrow field of action. We learn
that the citizen of the pettiest commonwealth is a being of a
higher nature than the slave of the mightiest despotism. We
learn that man, under the same circumstances, is essentially
the same in the most distant times and countries. The small
commonwealths of Italy could not help playing over again a
part essentially the same as that which the small common-
wealths of Greece had played so many ages earlier.

Rightly to treat a history of this kind is indeed a hard, if a
noble, task, and it calls for an historical genius of the highest
order. It is no small matter to group and harmonize together
the contemporary stories of endless states all full of life and
energy ; at once to avoid wearying the reader with needless
detail, and to avoid confounding him between five or six
parallel streams of narrative. The task has been accomplished
in a manner perhaps as nearly approaching perfection as
human nature allows in the immortal work of Sismondi. If
even in his pages weariness sometimes creeps over us as we
follow the endless series of wars and revolutions, it is soon
forgotten in the eloquence with which he adorns the more
striking portions of the narrative, and in the depth and clear-
ness with which he draws forth the general teaching of the
whole. If he fails in anything, it is in his arrangement of the
parallel narratives. Italy often witnessed at the same moment
a war of aggrandizement in Lombardy and a domestic revo-
lution at Genoa or Florence. Rival Popes were troubling the
Christian world with bulls and counter-bulls, with Councils
and counter-Councils. Rival Kings meanwhile were wasting
the fields of Campania and Apulia in quarrels wholly per-
sonal and dynastic. In reading the history of such times,
we sometimes find that Sismondi hurries us rather too
suddenly from place to place, and joins on one unfinished

8 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

narrative to another. He had not quite mastered that wonder-
ful power by which Gibbon contrived to avoid confusion in
describing- the various contemporary events of a wider, though
hardly a busier scene. As for graver charges against him,
that Sismondi is a party writer may be freely confessed. But
what historian who understands the time of which he writes
can fail to be so ? Sismondi draws republics in their best
colours; Roscoe does the same by Popes and princes. The
reader must make his option, and decide as he best may be-
tween the two contending advocates.*

The point of view which gives to medieval Italy its
highest importance in the general history of mankind is one
on which Sismondi himself has only partially entered. This
is the point of view which takes in in a single glance the
history of mediaeval Italy, and of ancient Greece. The really
profitable task is to compare together the two periods in which
the highest civilization of the age was confined to a cluster of
commonwealths, small in point of territory, but rising, in all
political and social enlightenment, far above the greatest con-
temporary empires. The two periods can never be understood
unless they are studied in this way, side by side. Thucydides
and Villani, Sismondi and Grote, should always lie open at
the same moment. And close as is the analogy between the
two periods, yet a subject of study perhaps still more profitable
is afforded by the points of contrast which they suggest.

It may be well to pause at starting, in order to deal with
an objection which may be brought against this whole treat-
ment of the subject. Many students of history have a
general dislike to any system of historical analogies. Nor can

* [I have struck out a paragraph of criticism on some modern English books
of no great importance, but I have left what I said of Sismondi, as it records
my impression of his work in itself, before I had read much of the original
authorities of any part of his history. Since then I have, as I hope I have
shown in my former volume of Essays, given some attention( to the original
sources of at least some parts of Italian history. But I have not since then
read Sismondi through ; I am therefore hardly able to say how far the com-
parison of his work with his authorities would either confirm or modify what
I have said of him.]

I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 9

the dislike be called wholly unreasonable, when we think of
the extravagant and unphilosophical way in which such ana-
logies have sometimes been applied. It is certain that no age
can exactly reproduce any age which has gone before it, if
only because that age has gone before it. The one is the first
of its class, the other the second ; the one is an original, the
other is at least a repetition, if not a direct copy. And besides
this, no two nations ever found themselves in exactly the same
circumstances. Distance of space will modify the likeness be-
tween two societies, otherwise analogous, which are in being
at the same time. Distance of time will bring in points of
unlikeness between parallels which repeat themselves even on
the same ground. In fact, in following out an analogy, it is
often the points of unlikeness on which we are most tempted
to dwell. But this is in very truth the most powerful of
witnesses to their general likeness. We do not stop to think
of differences in detail, unless the general picture presents
a likeness which is broad and unmistakeable. We may reckon
up the points of contrast between ancient Greece and medi-
aeval Italy; but we never stop to count in how many ways
a citizen of Athens differed from a subject of the Great King,
or what are the points of unlikeness between the constitution
of the United States from that of the Empire of all the
Bussias.

On the other hand, analogies which really exist are often
passed by, merely because they lie beneath the surface. The
essential likeness between two states of things is often dis-
guised by some purely external difference. Thus, at first
sight no difference can seem greater than that which we see
between our present artificial state of society and politics and
the primitive institutions of our forefathers before the Norman
Conquest. Yet our position and sentiments are, in many
important respects, less widely removed from that ruder time
than from intermediate ages whose outward garb hardly differs
from our own. In many cases, the old Teutonic institutions
have come up again, silently and doubtlessly unwittingly, under
new names, and under forms modified by altered circumstances.

10 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

Thus the Folcland of early times, the common estate of the
nation, was, as the royal power increased, gradually turned
into the Terra Regis, the personal estate of the sovereign.
Now that the Crown lands are applied to the public service
under the control of the House of Commons, what is it but a
return to the old institution of Folcland in a shape fitted to
the ideas of modern times?* Again, the remark has been
made that there can be no real likeness between ancient
Athens and modern England, because the press, confessedly
so important an engine among ourselves, had no being in
the commonwealth of Perikles. The difference here is ob-
vious at first sight ; it is moreover the sign of a more real
and more important difference ; but neither of them is enough
to destroy the essential analogy. The real difference is, not
that the Athenians had no printing, but the far more im-
portant difference that they had very little writing. Now
this is simply the difference which cannot fail to exist be-
tween the citizen of a southern state confined to a single city,
and the citizen of an extensive kingdom in a northern
climate. The one passed his life in the open air ; the
other is driven by physical necessity to the fireside either of
his home or his club. The one could be personally present
and personally active in the deliberations of the common-
wealth ; the other needs some artificial means to make up for
his unavoidable absence from the actual scene of debate.
The one, in short, belonged to a seeing and hearing, the other
belongs to a reading public ; the one heard Perikles, Nikias,
or Kleon with his own ears, the other listens to his Cobden,
his Disraeli, or his Palmerston only through the agency
of paper and printer's ink. The difference between read-
ing in print and reading in manuscript is a wide one ;
the difference between reading in manuscript and not read-
ing at all is wider still: but the widest difference of all
lies between free discussion in any shape and the absence

* [This subject, with oiie or two kindred ones, has been worked out more
fully in the third chapter of my ' Growth of the English Constitution.' See
pp. 132-134-]

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 11

of free discussion. The narrow strait between Athens and
England sinks into nothing beside the impassable gulf
which fences off both from Sparta or Venice or ' imperial '
France. Where there is free discussion of every subject
of public interest, where no man is afraid to speak his
mind on the most important aifairs of the commonwealth,
it matters comparatively little whether the intercourse be-
tween citizen and citizen is carried on with their own tongues
or through the medium of type and paper. Thoughts pent
up under the bondage of a despotism or an oligarchy
would gladly catch at either means of expression, without
being over-nice as to the comparative merits of the two
methods.

In the case both of ancient Greece and of mediaeval Italy,
the nation which, at that particular period, stood far above
all others in every material and intellectual advantage is
found incapable or careless of a combined national govern-
ment : each is split up into endless states, many of them of
the smallest possible size. This system of ' separate town-
autonomy7 is indeed by no means peculiar to old Greece or
to mediaeval Italy. These two lands are merely those which
supplied its most perfect examples, those which showed it
forth on the greatest scale, and adorned it with the richest
accompaniments of art, literature, and general cultivation. The
separate city-community, as Mr. Grote has shown, was the
earliest form of organized freedom. It is the simplest and the
most obvious form. To unite a large territory into a federal
commonwealth or a constitutional monarchy implies a much
higher and later stage of political progress. Or it might be
more accurate to say that it needs such a higher and later
stage to show that those forms of government are really
capable of combining freedom and order. For, in old Greece
and the neighbouring states, it was precisely the most ad-
vanced states which clung most fondly to their separate
town-autonomy. It is only among the less advanced and
half-barbaric portions of the race that we find the rude germs

12 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

of the other two forms of freedom. Aitolia, Phokis,* and
other backward portions of the Hellenic race, had something
like federal commonwealths. The half-barbarian states of
Macedonia and Molossis had something like constitutional
monarchies. Yet no one would think of setting their
governments on a level with the democracy of Athens, or
even with such moderate oligarchies as Corinth, Chios, or
Rhodes. In the same way, in primaeval Italy, the principle of
town-autonomy was greatly modified in the Latin, Etruscan,
and Samnite federations. The one Italian city which always
clave to its distinct autonomy was the one which rose to the
empire of Italy and the world. In mediaeval Switzerland
again there arose a freedom purer, if less brilliant, than that
of mediaeval Italy ; but there town-autonomy was still more
largely modified. It was modified by the relation, lax as it was,
of the federal tie, and by the existence of rural democracies
alongside of the urban commonwealths. And, during the best
days of the League, it was further modified by an acknow-
ledgement of the power of the Emperors far more full than
they ever could win in Italy. In other parts of Germany,
free cities flourished indeed ; but they were mere exceptions
to princely rule ; they were closely connected with the chief
of the Empire ; they rejoiced in the title of ' free Imperial
city/ which, in the ears of a Greek, would have sounded like
a contradiction in terms. In France the cities maintained,
for a while, their internal republican constitutions ; in Spain
they were even invested with supremacy over considerable
surrounding dictricts ; but, in both cases, they fell before a
kingly power stronger and more encroaching than that of
the German Emperors. England had mere municipalities;
the greater strength of the central power, the more general
diffusion of political rights, neither allowed nor needed the
formation of even tributary republics. But, had the monarchy
founded by the Conqueror possessed no greater inherent

* I do not mention Bceotia, because the hardly disguised sovereignty of
Thebes hinders it from being regarded as a truly federal state.

I] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 13

vigour than the monarchy founded by Charles the Great, it is
easy to conceive that London, York, and Bristol might have
imitated, though they would hardly have rivalled, the career of
Florence, Bern, and Niirnberg.*

It may perhaps be worth noting that freedom, and freedom
too in this particular form of town-autonomy, has never been
left without a witness upon earth. Hellenic freedom was far
from utterly wiped out, either at the fight of Chaironeia or
at the sack of Corinth. The commonwealths of Rhodes and
Byzantion, the wise confederacy of Lykia, kept at least an
internal independence till Rome was becoming an acknow-
ledged monarchy. And even then, one shoot of the old tree con-
tinued to flourish on a distant soil. Far away, on the northern
shores of the Inhospitable Sea, for a thousand years after
Sparta and Athens had sunk in bondage, did the Hellenic
city of Cherson remain, the only state in the world where
freedom and civilization were not divorced. In close con-
nexion with the lords of Rome and Constantinople, the old
Megarian colony still retained a freedom far more than
municipal ; its relation might be that of a dependent ally,
but it was still alliance and not subjection. How many of
the warriors and the tourists, how many of the ephemeral
writers of the day, who have compassed the fortress of Sebas-
topol, so much as knew that they were treading on the ruins
of the last of the Greek republics. Such was Cherson up to
the ninth century ; still free, still Greek, ruled by Hellenic
Presidents, who slew Barbarian Kings in single combat. In
the ninth century, under the Byzantine Theophilos, she ceased
to be free ; in the tenth, under the Russian Vladimir, she
well nigh ceased to be Hellenic. But, by that time, freedom
had begun to show itself once more in the western world.
Free commercial commonwealths again arose on the Hadriatic
and on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Venice, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi
might, as vassals or slaves^ of the Byzantine Csesar, withstand

* [See History of the Norman Conquest, iv. 208.]

•f ^fifis 5ov\ot Qt\opfv thai rov 'Ptufuucav £laai\f<us — See Gibbon, cap. Ix.
note 37.

14 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

the claims of his Teutonic rival : but, in truth, they flourished
in possession of a freedom with which neither Empire inter-
fered. Venice, in later years, may be deemed to have more in
common with despotic than with republican states ; but the
Campanian republics handed on the torch of freedom to those
of Lombardy ; Milan and Alessandria handed it on to Florence
and Sienna, to Zurich, Bern, and Geneva. Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden, the most thrilling' names of all, needed neither
precept nor example to guide them to a democracy more
perfect than the world had seen since Antipatros entered
Athens. But the freedom of the mountains is distinct from
the freedom of the cities ; the old uncontaminated Switzer was
not an Athenian or a Florentine, but an Aitolian who had
unlearned, or had never fallen into, the turbulence and bri-
gandage of his race.

The results of this system of town-autonomy seem strange
to us in these days of wide-spread empires. We are tempted
to mock at political history on so small a scale ; we are tempted
to despise the revolutions of independent commonwealths less
populous than many an English borough. Both in Greece
and in Italy, towns which, in most lands, would have merely
swelled the private estate of some neighbouring lord took
to themselves every attribute of sovereignty, and, in their
external relations and their internal revolutions, they exhibited
greater political activity than the mightiest contemporary
kingdoms. Each city has its own national being, around
which every feeling of patriotism gathers ; each calls its
citizens under its banner, to harry the fields and homesteads
of its neighbour, or to defend its own from the like harm.
Each has its own internal political life ; each is rent by its
own factions ; each witnesses the alternate sway of democracy
and oligarchy, or beholds both fall beneath the rod of some
foreign or domestic tyrant. Greece and Italy alike set before
us a scene of endless war — of war of a kind at once more
terrible and more ennobling than the political contests of
later times. In the wars of a great monarchy the subject
has no voice on the question of war and peace ; he has often

L] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 15

but a faint knowledge indeed of the reasons why a war is
either begun or ended. Except in the case of invasion, war,
to all but a professional class, means simply increase of
taxation and the occasional loss of a friend or kinsman.
Even when a country is invaded, it can only be a very small
part of a great kingdom on which the scourge directly
lights. Very different was the warfare of the old Greek and
Italian commonwealths. Every citizen had a voice in the
debate and a hand in the struggle. Each was ready personally
to inflict, and personally to suffer, all the hardships of war.
Each man might fairly look forward, some time in his life,
to witness the pillage of his crops and the burning of his
house, even if he and his escaped the harder doom of
massacre, violation, or slavery. In Greece and Italy alike
war went through two stages. In the first, it was carried
on by a citizen militia, of whom every man had a personal
interest in the strife. In the second, the duty of doing or
warding off injury was entrusted to hireling banditti, heed-
less in what cause their lances were levelled. In Greece
and Italy alike, the internal history of each city shows us a
picture of every stage of political progress; each grows
and decays with a swiftness to which larger states hardly
ever afford a parallel. In each case we see that these
little communities could cherish a warmth of patriotism, an
intensity of political life, beyond example in the records of
extensive kingdoms. A large well-governed state secures the
blessings of order and tranquillity to a greater number ; but
it does so at the expense of condemning a large proportion
even of its citizens to practical nonentity. Citizenship is less
valued, and it is therefore more freely conferred. But in the
single city, each full citizen has his intellectual and political
faculties nourished and sharpened to the highest pitch.
Athens and Florence could reckon a soldier, a statesman, or a
diplomatist, in every head of a free household. Citizenship
then was a personal right and a personal privilege ; it was
a possession far too dearly valued to be granted at random to
the mob of slaves or foreigners. In such a state of things,

16 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

patriotism was not a sober conviction or a grave matter of
duty; it was the blind and fervent devotion of a child to his
parent, or rather of a lover to his mistress. To the Athenian
or the Florentine his country was not a mere machine for
defending life and property ; it was a living thing, whose
thoughts worked in his own brain, whose passions beat in
his heart, whose deeds were done by his hands. Such
a patriotism might be narrow, ill-regulated,* inconsistent
with still better and loftier feelings; but it worked up the
individual citizen to the highest pitch. Strange to say, it
spread itself even among classes wholly cut off from political
rights. ' Viva San Marco,' was as stirring a cry to the Venetian
citizen, and even to the Lombard peasant, as to the foremost
of the Zenos and the Morosini. When republican France
stained herself with the greatest of recorded crimes, the
German subject of Bern fought well nigh as zealously for
his patrician master f as the freeman of Unterwalden fought
for a democracy more full and true than that preached by the
apostles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

But both Greece and Italy teach us that the political life
of these small states, more intense, more vigorous, more
glorious, while it lasts, either runs its course in a shorter
time, or else sinks into more utter decay than that of states
of greater extent. Three centuries, at the utmost, measure
the political life of Athens and of Florence. At the end
of that term Florence fell gloriously before irresistible
enemies ; Athens lingered on in far deeper degradation under
Macedonian and B/oman lordship. But a great nation, still
more a great empire which is not a nation, may survive

* ' Es war in unsern Vatern, zur Zeit als die ersten biirgerlichen Gesetze
sie ziihmten, kein Begriff noch Geftihl von allgemeinen Rechten der Mensch-
heit ; bei ihnen war Summe der Moral, dass die Burger gut und herzhaft
seyen fur ihre Stadte, die Hitter fur ihren Stand und Fiirsten.' — J. von
Muller, Gesch. der Schweiz, b. i. c. 16, § 7.

•f For an instance of similar feelings extending themselves to soldiers, at
least, belonging to subject races much worse off than the Italian and German
subjects of Venice and Bern, see the famous speech of Brasidas in Thucydides,
iv. 126, and Mr. Grote's comment, vol. vi. p. 610.

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 17

and flourish, age after age, by its mere power of silently
recruiting the national life by new blood. This process can
hardly take place, hardly at least without open revolution, in
any community which, whether it be oligarchic or democratic,
is grounded on the exclusive hereditary freedom of a single
city. It may be the blood of conquerors, of subjects, or of
refugees; the foreign element may either be silently assimi-
lated or it may become openly dominant : in either case the
nation is born anew. Rome was, in her origin, a single
city; but she grew from a city into a nation, from a nation
into an Empire, by granting her citizenship more freely than
any other city on record. She grew up by the side of
Greece, she conquered her, and, to all appearance, she out-
lived her. And yet, by the working of the same law,
Greece outlived Rome. The blood, and even the language,
of Rome died out; but her political being went on without
a break in a Grecian city. The combined work of Greece
and Rome, strengthened by a hundred rills of energetic
barbarian blood from various quarters, survived every con-
temporary state in political duration, and still survives, as
a vigorous and progressive nation, to our own times. So too
with our own nation, one which, like the Greek, draws at once
its name and its true being from one dominant stock, but
which has been strengthened by the influx of successive waves
of subjects, conquerors, and exiles. The germ of English
freedom had begun to blossom centuries before the forma-
tion of the Lombard League ; it did not put forth its full
fruit till long after Italy was given up to the domination of
French and Austrian and Spanish masters. Both Greece and
Italy teach us the same lesson, that a nation divided into small
states can, under ordinary circumstances, keep its independ-
ence only so long as its political world is confined to its own
limits. When greater powers come vigorously and perma-
nently on the scene, it must either fall altogether, or at most
it may be allowed to drag on a degraded and precarious ex-
istence, if such a boon chance to fall in with schemes dictated
by the mutual jealousies of the rival powers around it.

18 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

Besides this more general analogy, the history of Greece
and Italy presents a fair parallel in the different periods into
which it may, in each case, most naturally be divided. The
most brilliant period in each is a time of strife indeed, of war
and bloodshed and revolution ; but it is still a time of lofty
principles and feelings, in which even strife and confusion
seem to go on according to a certain fixed law. Next comes
a time when the national strength and virtue are fearfully
impaired, and when no fixed principles can be traced out in
the dealings of one state with another. But still the national
independence lives on ; it is still a strife of Greek against
Greek, of Italian against Italian. At last we reach the lowest
stage of overthrow and of degradation. Greece and Italy
become the battlefields of contending strangers, the theatre of
conflicts in which no patriotic native has any interest save
simply to deliver his country from the presence of all the
combatants alike. The analogy between these several periods
in each country must not be pressed too far ; it cannot be
pressed nearly so far as the general analogy between the two
political systems. A striking likeness however there really
is, which it will be worth our while to trace out a little more
in detail.

To the old struggle between Athens and Sparta there
attaches that special kind of interest which belongs to a strife
in which our sympathies cannot be exclusively claimed by
either party. Among all the horrors of a wasting warfare
and the still more fearful horrors of internal discord, notwith-
standing Melian and Plataian massacres, Korkyraian seditions
and Argeian skytalisms, there is still an ennobling spirit which
reigns over the whole, to redeem the scene of perfidy and
slaughter. We see that the conflict was inevitable, and that it
was not wholly selfish on either side ; it was not a struggle for
private aggrandizement, but for political superiority ; it was a
war of contending races and contending principles ; either side
could afford scope, not only for military and political skill,
but for the purest virtue and the most heroic self-devotion.
The war is not waged by foreign hirelings careless as to

I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 19

the cause in which they fought ; it is not even entrusted to a
professional class in the contending- cities. The man whose
head devises the political scheme is the man who carries out in
his own person the military operations which are needed for it.
The orator who proposes an enterprise is himself the general
who executes it ; the citizens who applaud his proposal are the
soldiers who march under his command. No feeling of deadly
hatred is to be seen between the two great opposing powers.
Athens was stirred to far less bitterness by the political rivalry
of Sparta than by her pettier contests with her neighbours
of Megaris and Boaotia. Sparta too, in the full swing of her
power, with all Greece crouching before her harmosts and her
dekarchies, with the might of the Great King himself ready
at her call, could yet cast aside with scorn the suggestion to
carry vengeance beyond the bounds of political necessity. It
might suit the border hatred of Thebes to make a sheep-walk
of a dangerous neighbour-city ; but Sparta knew her own
greatness too well to deprive herself of her yokefellow and to
put out one of the eyes of Greece.

The parallel to this period is to be found in those heroic
days of mediaeval Italy when the names of Guelf and Ghibelin
were no unmeaning badges of hereditary feud, but were the
true and speaking watchwords of the highest principles that
can stir the breast of man.* It was indeed a strife of giants,

* It may perhaps be thought that a truer parallel to the struggle of the
Lombard cities against the Swabian Emperors is to be found in the struggle
of the Hellenic cities against the Persian Kings. It is easy to answer that
the war of Guelf and Ghibelin was not mere resistance to foreign invasion ;
that it was an internal conflict in Italy itself; that, though the Imperial claims
were backed by German armies, yet many Italian cities enrolled themselves with
no less zeal under the Imperial banners. The rejoinder is no less easy, namely,
that the Persian "War may also be called an internal struggle in Greece itself,
because many Greek cities enrolled themselves under the banners of Xerxes.
But it is impossible to look on an acknowledged Emperor of the Romans,
even of Teutonic blood, as so wholly external to Italy as the King of the
Medes and Persians was to Hellas. It is impossible to look on the Ghibelina
of Italy as such mere traitors as the medizing Greeks. The fact is that, as
none of these parallels can be perfectly exact, the first struggle against
Frederick Barbarossa has many points in common with the Persian War ;
while the second conflict with his grandson forms the best analogy to the

C 2

20 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

when the crozier of the Pontiff and the sceptre of the Caesar
met in deadly conflict. The vigorous youth of the Teutonic
race had decked itself in the Imperial garb of elder days, and
appealed to the proudest associations, both of the old and of
the new state of things. And a yet truer heir of that ancient
sway sat as the homeborn guardian of Rome and Italy, the
successor of the Fisherman, the maker and the deposer of
Kings and Emperors. One disputant called on the political
loyalty of either race alike. The Roman Caesar demanded the
humble duty of the subject, laid down for ever in Rome's
imperishable Law. The King of Italy appealed to a truer
and loftier fidelity, to those sacred engagements which riveted
the personal bond of suzerain and vassal. His rival called
on the mysterious powers of an unseen world ; his empire
acknowledged no earthly boundaries, as his authority rested
on no human grant. He stood forth as the vicegerent of his
Creator, to bind and to loose, to build up and to pluck down ;
his ban could sweep either crown from the brow of his rival,
and could release alike from the obligations of Roman slavery
and of Teutonic freedom. All things to all men, the Pontiffs
of those days knew when to bless the swords of conquerors
and when to hallow the aspirations of insurgents. And now
beneath the shadow of their lofty claims grew up that germ
of freedom which the deep policy of Rome knew alike when
to cherish and when to stifle in the bud. Hildebrand pitted
against Henry, Alexander against Barbarossa, Innocent
against the second Frederick, was indeed a strife which no
man could stand by and not draw his sword either for the
throne of Caesar or the chair of Peter. Each cause had in it

Peloponnesian War. Frederick the Second could hardly be deemed a foreigner
in Italy ; the enmity which he awakened was political and religious, hardly at
all strictly national. But the Guelf and Ghibelin contest, so long as those
names retained any real meaning, can hardly be looked on as other than a
single whole, and that whole certainly bears more analogy to the Pelopon-
nesian War than to anything else in Grecian history.

[I have since spoken more fully of the characteristics of this period of
Italian history, in the Essay headed ' Frederick the First, King of Italy ' in
my former series of Essays.]

I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 21

an element of truth and righteousness. One side might boast
that it maintained the lawful rights of civil government at
once against priestly despotism and against political licentious-
ness. Twofold might be the answer of his rival. The priestly
despot did but assert the claims of man's spiritual element
against the brute force which had usurped the name of
government. The political rebel did but maintain the cause
of municipal and national freedom against the arbitrary exac-
tions of feudal lords and alien Emperors. A warfare like this
could not fail to call forth on either side man's highest and
noblest feelings ; each cause was supported from the purest
enthusiasm and the most unselfish principles of duty. Who
can doubt but that the loyalty of Pisa and Pavia to the
Imperial cause was as true and ennobling a feeling as any
that roused their foes for the Holy Church and the liberties
of Milan ? And the chiefs on either side alike displayed the
surest proof of true nobility ; they were greatest in the hour
of adversity. Never was the spirit of Hildebrand or of Alex-
ander more unbroken than when they marched forth to exile ;
never were their claims more lofty than when all the powers
of earth seemed arrayed against them. Henry indeed was
unworthy of his cause ; but the spirit of Innocent himself was
not more truly lordly than that of the Caesars of Hohenstaufen .
Frederick the Second, deposed and excommunicated, branded
as a tyrant and a heretic, brought forth the diadems of all
his realms, and dared the world to touch the heirlooms of
Augustus and of Charles the Great. But he had his vices
and his weaknesses. The meteoric splendours of his course
must pale before the steady and enduring glory of his illus-
trious grandfather. Few characters in history can awaken a
warmer feeling of sympathy than the indomitable Barbarossa.
He might be hard, while opposition lasted, to an extent which
our age justly brands as cruelty ; yet his untiring devotion
to claims which he deemed founded on eternal right, his re-
solution while the struggle lasted, his faithfulness* to his

* A single breach of faith is all that has ever been alleged against Frederick
during the whole of this long struggle. (See Sismondi, ii. 211, 272.) In the

22 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

engagements even in the hour of triumph, are qualities only
less honourable than the prudence and generosity with which,
when the day had finally turned against him, he accepted a
destiny which he could no longer withstand, with which he
threw himself honestly into altered circumstances, and dwelled
as an ally where he was no longer accepted as a master. Yet
who can fail to do equal honour to the no less noble spirits
who won the victory against him ? Cold indeed must be
the heart which could refuse to beat in concert with that burst
of zeal for Church and freedom which scattered the chivalry of
Swabia before the charge of the Company of Death,* and
drove the Emperor of the Romans, the King of Germany and
Italy, to seek safety in ignominious flight before the armed
burghers of a rebellious city.

In one part of the field indeed the scene puts on another
character. Sicilian history hardly forms part of the history of
Italy, though it is closely connected with it. This is true even
of the continental, and much more so of the insular kingdom.
Neither presents the ordinary phsenomena of Italian history.
Neither formed part of the Western Empire or of the Kingdom
of Italy. While Henry the Third held a nearly absolute sway
over his German and Italian realms, the greater part of the
modern Neapolitan kingdom still obeyed the throne of Con-
stantinople, and the island of Sicily was still numbered among
the possessions of the Arabian Prophet. The earliest Italian
commonwealths, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, arose indeed in
what afterwards became Sicilian territory ; there was even,
after the death of Frederick the Second, a short republican
period in Sicily itself; but neither country developed any
lasting system of commonwealths, like those of Lombardy
and Tuscany. Their position is rather analogous to that of
those great fiefs at the other end of Italy which have grown

age of Henry the Second and Philip Augustus, this is really no slight praise
for a prince whose good faith was so often and so severely tried.

[My reference here was to Frederick's breach of faith at the siege of
Alessandria, of which I have said something in my former series, p. 276.]

* At the battle of Legnano, A.D. 1176. (See Sismondi, ii. 219, 221.)

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 23

up into the modern kingdom of Sardinia.* Both have much
more in common with the feudal states in other parts of
Europe than with other Italian governments, whether repub-
lican or tyrannical. During the whole period with which we
are concerned, both the Sicilies possessed hereditary monarchs
and a feudal nobility. They were indeed torn by civil wars
and revolutions, but the object of the struggle was always to
put one King in the room of another, not to put freedom in
the room of both.

Still it could hardly fail that the divisions and revolutions
of Sicily should, as it were, group themselves under the
two great parties which divided the rest of Italy. Their
history shows us a peculiar and instructive modification of the
controversy between Guelf and Ghibelin. It took the form
which was naturally impressed upon it by the monarchic tra-
ditions of the country. What was in northern Italy a strife
of principles became in the south a mere struggle between
nations and dynasties — between the house of Hohenstaufen
and the house of Anjou — in the end between the power of Spain
and the power of France. The strife which began between
Manfred of Swabia and Charles of Anjou is carried on at
intervals down to the days of Francis of Valois and Charles of
Austria. The claims of the old Imperial family pass away
into the line of Aragon, till the remote descendant of that line
is again enabled to back them with the majesty of the Roman
Empire and with the more real might of Burgundy and Cas-
tile. In the earlier stages of the conflict it differs from the
form which it took in Northern Italy, inasmuch as one side
alone can enlist our sympathies. We may be balanced in our
regard between Hildebrand and Henry, between Alexander
and Frederick, but every heart must beat for Manfred and
Conradin and Frederick of Aragon against the foreign tyrants
and hireling Pontiffs with whom they struggled. Yet small
indeed was the lasting good which arose even from the
righteous and heroic conflict which delivered insular Sicily

* [This was written, it must be remembered, before Piedmont had grown
into Italy, even before it had recovered Milan.] ,

24 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

from her foreign masters. Sicily cast off the yoke, but it
was only by the fatal help of the stranger. The vesper-bell
of Palermo rang the knell of French domination, but it
summoned the more lasting oppressor of Aragon to take pos-
session of the spoil. One wise and valiant ruler did Sicily gain
from the foreign stock : the noble Frederick threw himself
honestly into her interests, and ruled her as her native sove-
reign. But his line died out in a succession of faineants, and
their foreign kinsman presently grasped the opportunity of
joining the island to his ancestral kingdom. Naples and
Sicily alike failed of the highest glory and happiness; but
the contrast of their destiny was strange. Sicily, which cast
off the yoke of the Angevin, sank first into utter insignifi-
cance, and then into the deadening position of a subject
province. Naples, which patiently bore his tyranny, though
torn by civil wars and disputed successions, still kept for
two centuries and a half an independent place among the
powers of Europe, an important, sometimes a dominant, place
among those of Italy.

Coming back to our more general subject, we may mark
that, during the whole of the first pair of parallel periods,
both in Greece and Italy, there is little difficulty in remem-
bering the political and military relations of the several
states. It is throughout a strife of principles* each city acts
according to an attachment of long standing to the Athenian
or the Lacedaemonian alliance, to the cause of the Church or
of the Empire. Corinth leagued with Athens or Plataia with
Sparta, Florence false to the cause of freedom or Pisa for-
saking the Imperial eagles, would be something little less
than a contradiction in terms. How thoroughly Greece was
divided between the two great political ideas which were em-
bodied in Athens and Sparta is best shown in the fruitless
attempt made by the Spartan allies, in a moment of pique, to
put together confederacies upon other principles. All the
intrigues of Alkibiades, in the period which immediately
followed the Peace of Nikias, did but" bring about a temporary

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 25

confusion ; the cities speedily settled themselves again in
their old positions as followers of the two ruling- states. The
neutral Argos was indeed won to the side of Athens, but no
member of the rival confederacy permanently fell away. If any
seeming exceptions are found, if cities suddenly changed their
policy, it only shows how deeply the contending principles
had in each case divided the national mind. Men often loved
their party better than their city, and they often forced their
city to shape its policy to meet the interests of their party.
Such a change implies no fickleness, no change of sentiment
in an existing government : it bespeaks an internal revolution
which has placed in other hands the guidance of the policy of
the state. The oligarchs are triumphant or the people have
won the victory ; the Ghibelin has vanquished the Guelf or
the Guelf has avenged his wrongs upon the Ghibelin ; the
haughty leader at least exchanges places with the homeless
exile, even if no sterner doom is the penalty for the evil deeds
of his own day of triumph. Does Korkyra open her harbours
to the Athenian fleet which her rulers have so lately driven
from her shores ? It is because the people have won the day,
and have taken a fearful vengeance upon sacrilege and op-
pression. Does the banner of Manfred float on the walls of that
Florence which was so lately the chosen citadel of the Guelf?
The field of Arbia has been won, and Farinata has saved his
country from her doom, though the good deed may not
deliver himself from his burning grave. Till the power of
Athens is broken at Aigospotamos and the insolence of
Sparta loses her the affections of her allies — till Roman
Csesars sink into heads of a Germanic Federation and Roman
Pontiffs into tools of the Kings of France — this fixedness of
purpose in parties and commonwealths prevails through both
the analogous periods, and renders their study far more fasci-
nating and far less perplexing than that of the times which
immediately follow them.

In the next period this steadiness of principles is altogether
lost ; wars and alliances are begun and broken off according
to the immediate interest of the moment ; instead of two

26 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

parties ranged permanently and consistently under their
several leaders, we behold an ever-shifting scene in which
Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Elis, and Mantineia, or
Home, Milan, Venice, Naples, Florence, and Genoa, figure in
every possible variety of friendship and enmity. In Greece
the old ruling states become thoroughly worn out, and new
powers flash across the scene with meteoric brilliancy. Athens
becomes materially, and Sparta morally, incapable of acting
as leader of a great confederacy. The genius and virtue of
Epameinondas raise Thebes to a momentary greatness, but
they prove only how much and how little even the best and
greatest of men . can do to raise a state whose citizens at
large are not animated by his spirit. Lykomede's does the
same, on a smaller scale, for Arkadia ; Philomelos, in a less
worthy cause, for Phokis ; while the Man of Macedon looks
on, steadily waiting for the moment when internal discord
shall at last place the prize within his grasp. So too in
the later parallel. The Empire well nigh withdraws from
the scene, and it had been well for the reputation of the
Church if she had withdrawn also. Many Kings of the
Romans were content to reign in Germany alone, and forsook
Italy altogether. Some of the noblest, as Rudolf and Albert
the Second, never even claimed the rite which should invest
them with the rank of Emperor. Of those who did cross the
Alps, Henry of Liizelburg alone crossed them for any other
purpose than to expose himself and his authority to contempt.
The papacy sinks through three successive stages of degra-
dation. The Babylonish captivity of Avignon removed the
Roman Pontiff from his native seat, and changed the Vice-
gerent of Christ into the despised hireling of a French master.
The Great Schism showed the world the spectacle of a
spiritual sovereignty contested, like a temporal throne, between
selfish and worthless disputants. At last the gap is healed,
and Rome again receives her Pontiffs ; but she receives them
only that men might see the successors of Hildebrand and
Innocent in the character of worldly and profligate Italian
princes, bent only on the aggrandizement of their families or,

I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 27

at best, on making good the pettiest temporal claims of the
Holy See. Venice is following her schemes of crooked policy,
only begi-nning to be redeemed by her nobler character as

' Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite.'

Milan, once the chosen home of freedom, is ground down
beneath the vilest of tyrannies. Genoa, tossed by endless
revolutions, is glad to throw herself into the arms of any
despot who can ensure an hour of repose. Florence alone
is left ; but the noblest laurels of the Guelf city are now won
in strife against a hostile Pontiff, and the eight Saints of
the War are canonized by the voice of their country for
withstanding the power to whose cause their fathers had
been devoted. At last her hour comes ; she sinks, gradually
and well nigh willingly, under the gilded tyranny of citizens,
Guelfs, and plebeians. Her ancient glories are past, her last
dying glory is yet to come ; but her degradation under Medi-
cean rule might have moved her own poet to pity rather than
to indignation. War is as endless, and it is yet more relent-
less than in earlier times, but it has lost its redeeming and en-
nobling features. Athens and Florence alike have ceased to
be defended by the arms of their own citizens. Hireling ban-
ditti, without a cause and without a country, sell themselves
to the highest bidder, and commonly prove a greater curse to
those whom they profess to defend than to those against whom
they are paid to wage warfare. Each land is speedily ripening
for foreign bondage ; each is ready to become the battle-
field of foreign quarrels fought out upon her soil — quarrels
which might now and then awaken a momentary interest, but
which could never appeal to those high and ennobling feelings
which were called forth by the warfare of an elder time.

What the struggles between the successors of Alexander
were to Greece the wars of the early part of the sixteenth
century were to Italy. The part of Polysperchon, Kassan-
dros, Demetrios, and Antigonos was acted over again in all
its fulness by Charles and Lewis and Ferdinand, and that
Francis and that other Charles who have won for themselves
a fame which has been unfairly denied to their victims.

28 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY .

During this period all traces of consistency, almost all traces of
patriotism, are lost. The names of Guelf and Ghibelin indeed
are still heard, but they now carry with them no more of
meaning than the Shanavests and Caravats of a nearer field
of discord. For the nobler feelings which they once embodied
there could indeed be no room, now that every question was
decided by the mere brute force of the stranger. The Mace-
donian plunderers could set forth no claim of right, not even
the shallow blind of family or dynastic pretensions. Each
competitor laid hands on whatever came in his way, and
kept it till the law of the stronger adjudged the right to
some more fortunate claimant. The subtler diplomacy of
modern Europe helped the competitors in the later struggle
to words and forms of legalized wickedness which their
elder brethren might perchance have envied, perchance have
honestly despised. When a French prince laid waste a pro-
vince or slaughtered the garrison of a city, it was because
his great-grandmother had drawn her first breath beneath
its sky, and had handed on to him the right, thus strangely
exercised, to be its lawful governor and protector. When
Charles of Austria handed over city after city to a more ruth-
less and more lasting scourge, when for months and months
every atrocity which earth or hell could devise was dealt
out to the wretched people of Rome and Milan, it was all
in support of the just rights of their King and Emperor ;
the majesty of Cssar could not allow that claims should be
any longer trampled on which, in most cases, had slept since
the days of the Hohenstaufen. But even such pretexts as
these were wanting to the insatiable and perfidious ambition
of that Caesar's grandfather. Kassandros or Ptolemy Kerau-
nos could hardly have devised a more unprovoked and
flagrant wrong than when the Catholic King parted out
by treaty with his Most Christian brother the territories of
his own ally and kinsman of Naples ; when he lulled to
sleep the suspicions of his victim till the blow could be effec-
tually struck ; when he at last turned his arms against his
partner in evil, and carried off the whole spoil, without even

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 29

a shadow of rig-lit, from him who could at least bring forward
some worn-out genealogy to justify his share in the wrong-.
And it is with a feeling-, in some sort, of yet deeper indig-
nation that we see the lance of the free Switzer too often
levelled in warfare hardly more righteous than that of Austrian,
French, and Spanish tyrants. The boasted age of Francis
the First and Leo the Tenth is to the lover of right and
freedom simply an age of well nigh unmixed evil, of evil
even more unmixed than the warfare of the Successors them-
selves. The wars of Italy afford no such relief as the earliest
and best days of Demetrios, when, before his head was turned
by flattery and indulgence, he eagerly caught at the title of
the chosen head of independent Greece. No province handed
over to Spanish or Medicean rule underwent so mild a des-
tiny as Egypt under the early Ptolemies, or even Macedonia
under some of her better Kings. Both pictures show forth
human nature in its darkest colours ; selfishness, cruelty, and
treachery stalk forth undisturbed in each ; but it must be
confessed that, as far as Kings and princes are concerned, the
advantage is on the side of the earlier chamber of horrors.
The upstart brig-ands of Macedonia do not, with all their
crimes, show themselves in hues quite so dark as the chiefs of
the Holy Roman Empire, as the Eldest Sons of the Church,
as the leaders of that Castilian chivalry which boasted of
overcoming the Moslem at home and the idolater beyond
the Ocean.

But in both pictures, among all the crimes of foreign
oppressors, a gleam of native virtue shines forth. In Italy
it sheds a ray -of light over the darkest g-loom of bondage ;
in Greece it is like a short polar day between her first and
her last night of overthrow. Florence, so long the nearest
parallel to Athens, holds, in her latest days, a place which
rather answers to that of the Achaian League. The last
time of freedom at Florence came in the darkest days of Italy ;
it even had its birth in the greatest of national misfortunes.
The invasion of Charles the Eighth led to the first, the sack of
Borne to the second, driving out of the Medici. During the

30 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

first short interval, she enjoyed a truer freedom and more of
domestic peace than she had known in the proudest days of her
former greatness ; during the second, she defied the power of
Pope and Emperor, who forgot their quarrels to destroy a
freedom hateful to both alike. She fell only when a single
city, without an ally at home or abroad, could no longer
stand, in the mere strength of truth and right, against
the spiritual thunders of the Pontiff and the secular arm
of the mightiest potentate in Europe. Achaia ran a longer
course, but she ended by a less noble fate. The better
days of Aratos wrought more of lasting good than the gon-
faloniership of Soderini ; but the devotion of ' lily to lily,'
unreasonable and unrequited as it was, never betrayed Flo-
rence into such deeds of treason as disgraced his later years.
Florence never swerved : but the deliverer of Siky6n and
Corinth undid his own work; he betrayed Greece to the
Macedonian whom he had driven out, because a worthier than
himself had arisen to contest her championship with him.
If Italy gave birth to no Agis and no Kleomenes, the fame
of her last bulwark is not tarnished by a surrender of Corinth
or by a victory of Sellasia. Florence fell at once and glori-
ously, the last blow in the general overthrow of Italy ; Achaia
stooped to drag on a feeble and lingering life under the
degrading patronage of Macedonia and Rome. The course
of both lands seemed to have been run ; one indeed lived
on, led captive her conquerors, and ruled in their name for a
thousand years. The cannon and the scimitar of Mahomet at
last wrought a conquest more thorough than the pilum and
broadsword of Mummius. A yoke which could not be light-
ened has since been rent asunder : the very soil of Marathon
and Thermopylai has again been dyed with the blood of
vanquished Barbarians; Mesolongi has outdone the fame of
Eira and Plataia; and Greece, amid cruel difficulties and
more cruel calumnies, has again taken her place among the
nations. Must we deem that the last struggle of the sister
peninsula has been made in vain ? that the elder two-headed
bird of prey must tear at his will the entrails of Milan and of

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 31

Venice, and his younger single-headed brother gorge himself
for ever with the blood of Rome ? Will force for ever trample
upon right ? or must we deem that there is something in the
yoke of Habsburg even more grinding, deadening, and cor-
rupting than in that of the barbarian infidel himself? *

An incidental reference in the last paragraph may suggest
a third form of our comparison, but one which it is even less
safe to press into minute particulars than either of the others.
This is the analogy between the position and destinies of par-
ticular cities. Florence, the great democracy of Italy, bears
undoubtedly a general analogy to Athens, the great demo-
cracy of Greece. From the thirteenth century onward, we
can hardly help looking at Italian affairs from a Florentine,
just as we look at Greek affairs from an Athenian point of
view. The oligarchy of Sparta may suggest a fainter like-
ness to the oligarchy of Venice. Sismondi likens the momen-
tary greatness of Lucca under Castruccio to the momentary
greatness of Thebes under Epameinondas. A still fainter
likeness may suggest itself in the position, among a system of
neighbouring commonwealths, of the monarchy of Macedonia
and the monarchy of Naples, f But in this part of our sub-

* [The vehemence with which I wrote fifteen years ago seems almost
amusing when we think how utterly the state of things which called it forth
has passed away. Of the two birds of prey one has ceased to be a bird of
prey, the other has had his claws cut at least for a season. But the men-
tion of the two-headed eagle leads to the remark that it would be well if
the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke, would give up an ensign to
which he has no kind of right, and which constantly leads people astray.
Many people fancy that the two-headed eagle, and not the lion, is the bearing
of Austria, and thence they are led to go on to cry out 'Austria' whenever
they see a two-headed eagle. At the same time it must be remembered that
the two heads of the Imperial bird were a comparatively modern innovation.]

•f- The states of Savoy would be a closer parallel, both in their geographical
position and in their only half Italian character. The Burgundian Count has
moved downwards upon Lombardy and Genoa, much as the Macedonian moved
down upon Amphipolis and Thessaly. But, unlike the Macedonian, he has left
the greater part of his older dominions behind him. But Savoy was of so
little account in Italy during Italy's best days that it is hardly needful to
enter on the comparison.

[This was how matters struck me when the Duke of Savoy and Prince of

32 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

ject especially, the comparison will be found more instructive
in points of difference than in points of agreement. Mace-
donia was a state at least half Barbarian, though it was ruled
by Hellenic Kings ; Naples was an Italian land whose Kings
were, by descent at least, Barbarians. Epameinondas was the
leader of a free democracy ; Castruccio was a Tyrant, though
a Tyrant undoubtedly of the nobler sort. The oligarchy of
Sparta was born from the intrusion of a conquering race :
the oligarchy of Venice gradually arose out of a people who
had started on equal terms for a common stock. Sparta was
great while she abode on the mainland : she failed when she
attempted distant and maritime conquest. Venice was essen-
tially maritime and colonizing, and she never erred so deeply
as when she set up for a continental power. But some of the
points of the two great oligarchic constitutions may be profit-
ably compared. The analogy between the Spartan King and
the Venetian Doge is striking indeed. Our first impulse
is to underrate the importance of both princes in their re-
spective commonwealths. We are led to compare the Duke
of Venice with the Duke of Milan, to compare the King of
the Lacedaemonians with the King of Macedon, or even with
the Great King himself. A prince fettered by countless
restrictions, a prince liable to deposition, fine, exile, or even
death, seems to be no prince at all. He sinks below the level
of a Florentine Prior, almost down to that of an Athenian
Archon. Looked at as princes, the Spartan King and the
Venetian Doge may indeed seem contemptible; but, looked
at as republican magistrates, they filled a more commanding
position than any other republican magistrates in Greece
or Italy. No Greek save a Spartan Herakleid was born
to the permanent command of his country's armies ; no
other was born to a place in her Senate which needed
no popular renewal and could be forfeited only by treason
against the state. No Italian citizen save the Venetian Duke

Piedmont reigned on both sides of the Alps. The process by which the House
of Savoy has, ever since the sixteenth century, gone on losing Burgundian and
gaining Italian territory has since"been carried out in all its fulness.]

I] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 33

was chosen to a position which clothed him for life at once
with an honorary precedence, and with an important voice,
if nothing- more, in the direction of public affairs. The
legal authority of the King and the Doge was most narrowly
limited, but his opportunities of gaining influence were
unrivalled. Holding a permanent position, while other magis-
trates were changed around him, a King or Doge of any
ability could win for himself a personal authority far beyond
any which belonged to his office. He could not indeed com-
mand, but he could always advise, and his advice was very
often followed. We find therefore that the personal character
of Kings and Doges was by no means so unimportant as the
narrow range of their legal powers might at first lead us to
think. A vigorous prince, an Agesilaos or a Francesco
Foscari, might, during the course of a long reign, gain an
influence over the counsels of the republic which was not
within the reach of any other citizen, and which made him
virtually, as well as in name, the sovereign of his country.

Enough has perhaps been said to show that between the
general position and the general course of events in ancient
Greece and in medieval Italy the parallel is as near as any
historical parallel is ever likely to be. It only remains to
make the likeness still nearer by pointing out the special
diversities which it is easy to see between the two.

Nearly all of these diversities spring from the same source.
In Greece everything was fresh and original, while the con-
dition of mediaeval Italy was essentially based upon an earlier
state of things. Greece was the first country which reached
anything worthy of the name of civilization, if by that word
we understand, not the pomp and luxury of kingly or priestly
despots, but the real cultivation of man's intellectual and
political powers. The history of Greece springs out of a
mythical chaos, out of which we can at least learn thus
much, that all that made the greatness of the nation
was strictly of native birth. No earlier or foreign system
underlies the historical civilization of Hellas : what is not

34 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

strictly immemorial is no less strictly self-developed. No
one capable of any historical criticism will now put faith in
those tales of Barbarian settlements in Greece of which
Homer at least had never heard. No one possessed of any
aesthetic perception will derive the glorious forms of Doric and
Attic skill from the heavy columns and lifeless idols reared by
the adorers of apes and onions. The pure mythology of
the Iliad is indeed akin to the splendid fictions of Hindo-
stan or Scandinavia, but no one who has a heart to feel or
a mind to understand will trace it to the follies of Egyp-
tian or to the abominations of Semitic idolatry. But in
mediaeval Italy nothing is strictly original ; politics, religion,
literature, and art are all developements or reproductions of
something which had existed in earlier times. Others la-
boured, and she entered into their labours ; she succeeded
to the good and the evil of two, we might perhaps say of
three, earlier systems. Her political institutions rose out of
the feudalism which had overshadowed the Roman Empire,
just as the Roman Empire had itself arisen from the gradual
fusion of the independent states of primaeval Italy. The
Greek system was the first of its class ; that of mediaeval
Italy was in some sort a return to that of times before
Roman supremacy began. It carries us back to the days
when twelve cities of Etruria gathered under the banner of
Lars Porsena, and thirty cities of Latium under the banner
of the Tusculan Mamilius, to humble the upstart asylum of
shepherds and bandits which had encroached upon their imme-
morial dignity. Even in this primaeval Italy town-autonomy
was far less perfectly developed than in contemporary Greece ;
in mediaeval Italy we see only its revival, and a revival modi-
fied by the events of fifteen intervening centuries.

The grand distinguishing feature between the two systems
is that over the whole period of Italian freedom there still
hung the great, though shadowy, conception of the Roman
Empire.* To this there is nothing analogous in the Hel-

* [All this has since been worked out more fully both hi Mr. Bryce's Essay
and in my own remarks on it in my former series. But I leave the passage

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 35

lenic prototype. The sovereign independence of the Grecian
cities is strictly immemorial. No time can be pointed out
when every town did not at least pretend, though power
might often fail to support the pretension, to a distinct poli-
tical being. The several cities arise out of the mythical dark-
ness in the shape of sovereign states, each governed by its
independent King, soon to be exchanged for its independent
commonwealth. The dynasty represented by the names of
Atreus and Agamemnon probably exercised a kind of suze-
rainty over the whole of Peloponnesos ; but this seems to
have been a mere passing domination ; everything tells
against the notion of the separate Grecian commonwealths
being fragments of an earlier Grecian empire. But in the
mediaeval parallel the case is conspicuously reversed. The
separate Italian commonwealths were essentially fragments
of an earlier Italian empire. The republics of Lombardy
and Tuscany were members of the Roman Empire and of the
Kingdom of Italy, which had gradually grown from simple
municipalities into sovereign commonwealths. Their liberties
were won by local struggles against the petty lord of each
several district ; they were confirmed by a common struggle
against the Roman Emperor himself. Sismondi likens
Frederick Barbarossa to Xerxes.* One is half inclined to
be angry at seeing one of the noblest of men placed side by
side with one of the most contemptible ; but, had the com-
parison lain between Cyrus and Wenceslaus, there is the all-
important difference that, while the Persian was simply
extending his empire, the German was striving to win back
rights which his predecessors had held, and of which he
deemed himself to be unjustly deprived. The old Imperial
ideas never lost their general hold upon men's minds, and
new circumstances were continually happening to clothe
them with new prominence. Strange as it may seem, it

pretty much as I first wrote it, to show how things had struck me before
Mr. Bryce's Essay appeared.]

* ' Le redoubtable Xerxes du moyen age,' vol. ii. p. 8. See above, the
remarks in p. 19, note.

D a

36 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

was assumed as an axiom not to be gainsayed that the prince
who styled himself Emperor of the Romans, however alien
from Rome and Italy in blood and policy and language, was
still the lawful successor of Augustus and Constantine. A
thousand years of history will always be misunderstood,
unless we bear in mind that, throughout the early middle
age, the Roman Empire was not merely acknowledged as
an existing fact, but was believed in as something grounded
on the eternal fitness of things. We are tempted to
overlook the importance of this belief as a fact, because
to us it seems so unreasonable as a principle. In theory
the Roman Empire never became extinct, though its sover-
eignty was handed on from race to race, though its seat
of government wandered from city to city. Up to 476,
Italy still kept her resident Emperors of her own blood.
From 476 to 800 the Old Rome stooped to acknowledge
the authority, sometimes nominal, sometimes real, of the
masters of the New. In 800 she again set forth her pre-
scriptive rights, and chose the Frank Charles, not as the
restorer of a power which had passed away, but as the lawful
successor of Constantine the Sixth in opposition to his
usurping mother.* From that moment we have again two
distinct, and now two rival, lines of princes, each alike foreign
to Rome and Italy, but each claiming to be no longer a mere
colleague in a divided government, but the true and only
representative of the undivided monarchy, the one lawful
Emperor of the Romans. For nearly three centuries after the
coronation of Charles, the German Caesar of the West was at
least the nominal sovereign of Northern Italy, while the
Greek Caesar of the East retained a far more practical pos-
session of a large portion of its southern provinces. The power
of the Byzantine Emperors in Italy was at last rooted out by
the Norman settlers ; but circumstances continually arose to

* It is curious to see how quietly this is assumed in those of the old chro -
nicies, which, like that of Radulfua Niger, follow the order of the Imperial
reigns. 'Leo, Constantinus, Carolus, Ludovicus,' follow in the most peaceable
succession.

L] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 37

invest their Teutonic rivals with both a moral and a material
authority over Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome itself. From
Saxon Otto to Austrian Charles, the dignity which the East
reverenced so long in her unbroken succession of Emperors,
was acknowledged by the West as belonging to every G erman
prince who could win for himself the Papal benediction. The
iron crown of Monza made him, as King of Italy, the feudal
superior of every Lombard and Tuscan state ; the golden
diadem of Rome clothed him, as Caesar and Augustus, with
higher and vaguer claims well nigh co-extensive with the
sovereignty of the world. One age revives the study of the
Civil Law ; and its professors at once invest the Frankish
or Swabian overlord with all the rights and powers of
the old Roman despotism. Another age beholds the an-
cient poets again assert their supremacy, and all that Virgil
and Horace had sung of the Julian house is at once trans-
ferred to sovereigns of whose native tribes Germanicus him-
self had hardly heard. Albert of Habsburg is reproached by
Dante for forsaking the garden of his Empire, and the Eternal
City is earnestly bidden to be no longer stepdame unto
Csesar. Henry of Liizelburg came down from the Alps amid
the applause of Italy. Poets, orators, and civilians alike
pressed to welcome the barbarian chief of a petty northern
principality, claiming the lawful jurisdiction over Rome and
Italy, with the sword of Germany in the one hand and the
books of Justinian in the other. Both cities and Tyrants were
always found to support the Imperial claims in their fulness ;
the stoutest Guelf of Florence would hardly have denied
the abstract theory that some superiority over his com-
monwealth belonged to Csesar Augustus, however narrow
miffht be the bounds within which he would confine his

o

practical authority. If a large proportion of the ancient
kingdom formally disowned the supremacy of the Emperor,
it was because the Imperial rights were held to have been
handed over to another lord. Ferrara, Bologna, and Perugia
acknowledged no superiority in the Roman Emperor ; but it
was only because they looked up to a temporal as well as a

38 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

spiritual master in the Roman Pontiff. Throughout the
middle ages, no one dreamed that full and absolute sover-
eignty belonged to any Italian city. The notion of an
Italian kingdom perhaps hardly outlived the Hohenstaufen ;
but the vaguer claims of the Empire, the more practical claims
of the Popedom, still lived on within their respective boundaries.
Every prince, every commonwealth, held either of the Pope or
the Emperor as superior lord. The authority of either lord was
often but nominal ; but the bare existence of such never-for-
gotten claims at once distinguishes the princes who asserted
them from mere foreign invaders like Xerxes at Thermopylae
or Mahomet at Constantinople. The Imperial rights, even
when anything like government was out of the question,
could often be successfully used as a means of extorting money ;
when they were at last backed by the might of Castile and
Burgundy, they laid Italy as prostrate as she had ever lain
before Belisarius, Charles, or Otto. In like manner, the
feudal claims of the Papacy could be successfully asserted after
centuries of abeyance. Thus Bologna lost her republic and her
demagogues, Urbino lost her magnificent Dukes, in the com-
mon wilderness of ecclesiastical misgovernment. Venice alone,
strong in her lagoons and her islands, contrived to escape
the pretensions both of the spiritual and the temporal master.
She escaped all prescriptive right in the Western Caesar by
preserving, as long as prudence bade her, her nominal al-
legiance to his Byzantine rival. She destroyed all tradi-
tionary authority in the master of the East by the still more
practical process of overturning his throne and partition-
ing his Empire. In the ninth century, she drove back the
Frankish King of Italy, by asserting the lawful claims of
the true Caesar by the Bosporos. Four centuries later, she
could divide that Caesar's realm and capital with fellow-rob-
bers of the same Frankish blood.* Her style and title had

* [It would seem that when I wrote this sentence I had not fully learned
to distinguish between Franks and Frenchmen. The Latin conquerors of Con-
stantinople are rightly called Franks in the sense which that word bears
throughout the East, and the chances are that many of the leaders of the

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 39

strangely altered in the interval. ' The slaves of the Em-
peror of the Romans could now invest their Doges with that
arithmetical title, so worthy of a merchant prince, ' Lord of
one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania/

The independence of the Greek cities was thus strictly
immemorial, while that of their Italian antitypes arose from
the bosom of an earlier feudal* monarchy. From this it almost
necessarily follows that in Greece the cities were everything,
while in" Italy they indeed became predominant, but could
never wholly wipe out all traces of the earlier state of things.
In proper Greece there was no spot of ground which did not
belong to some city. That city might be democratically,
aristocratically, or tyranically governed; it might even be in
bondage to some stronger city ; but there was no such thing
as an independent chief who had nothing to do with the
organized government of any acknowledged city-common-
wealth. But in Italy feudalism had existed, and was never
wholly rooted out. Not only did there exist in its southern
portion a powerful kingdom which remained unconnected
with the Western Empire ; within the Kingdom of Italy
itself the territory of the towns never took in the whole
country. The liberties of each city were won from the feudal
chief of its own district. When those liberties were esta-
blished within, the city usually grew to be dominant without ;
the neighbouring feudal lords were brought under its autho-
rity, and were often changed into a civic nobility within the
town. But this process was never carried out through the
whole extent of the kingdom. In its north-western portion
powerful feudal princes went on reigning over Piedmont,

Fourth Crusade would, as a matter of genealogy, really be of Frank ish blood.
Still the expression is a misleading one. When we speak of ' Gesta Dei per
Francos,' we use the word Francus in its later and not in its earlier sense ;
in the sense in which Francus and Francigena, are used in Domesday — the
sense of persons using the French language, whether subjects or vassals to the
King of the French or not.]

* [The word 'feudal* is 'patient' of a correct meaning ; I therefore leave
it ; but every one should be on his guard against believing that any such thing
as a ' feudal system' ever existed anywhere.]

40 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

Montferrat, and Saluzzo; even elsewhere feudal chieftains of
less dignity maintained their wild independence in many
mountain holds. In short, the brood of petty rulers, holding
nominally of the Emperor, and neither citizens nor Tyrants of
any city, was for the most part driven into inaccessible holes
and corners, but it was never wholly rooted out.

The feudal origin of the Italian aristocracies brought with
it another important difference between them and those of
Greece. A Grecian aristocracy was often a body of invaders
who had settled in a conquered city, and who handed on
exclusive political rights to their descendants. Sometimes a
privileged class arose by a gradual process from among the
body of their fellow-citizens. And this last process has been
at work in later times also ; to it was owing the closest and
most unscrupulous, and at the same time the most orderly
and sagacious of all such bodies, the long-lived oligarchy of
Venice. A somewhat intermediate process produced the less
brilliant, but far more righteous and hardly less prudent
aristocracy of Bern. A city which contained a large patrician
element from its first foundation enlarged its territory by
repeated conquests and purchases, till the civic oligarchy
found itself changed into the corporate despot of an extensive
dominion. Hence the Grecian, and in after-times the Venetian
and Bernese, oligarchies acted strictly as an oligarchic class,
bound together by a common spirit and interest. But in
most Italian cities the half-tamed feudal lords were gathered
into the town not a little against their will. They therefore
naturally kept on within the walls much of the 'isolation
and lawlessness ' of the old life which they had led in the
mountains. The Venetian noble might boast of his palace,
but in most Italian cities the patrician mansion was not a
palace, but a fortress, fitted and accustomed to defend itself
alike against rival nobles and against the power of the com-
monwealth itself. This state of things was unheard of in
Greece. No such licence was allowed to any citizen or any
King of Sparta ; nor can we imagine anything like it in
aristocratic Chios or Corinth. Even in democratic Athens

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 41

wealth and birth assumed a strange practical licence. Meidias
indulged himself in the practice of assault and battery;* but
it was only the corporate vfipts of the Four Hundred which
was followed by a band of armed retainers. Alkibiades was
lord of a private castle ;f but it stood on the shores of the
Chersonesos, not within the walls of Athens ; even the
house in which he held the unwilling Agatharchos could
hardly have been ready to stand a siege against the united
power of the Ten Generals.

Another difference between a Greek and an Italian com-
monwealth is to be found in the origin of the commonwealths
themselves. As the Italian republics were municipalities
which had gradually grown into sovereign states, they natu-
rally kept on much of the mercantile constitution of the old
communes. A Grecian city had indeed its smaller political
divisions. It was either artificially partitioned into local wards
or districts, or sometimes the city itself was formed by the union
of earlier villages which still survived as wards or districts of
the city. But commercial guilds, if they existed at all in
Greece, were nowhere of any political importance. In many
Italian cities they were the very soul of the constitution. The
Athenian acted directly as a citizen of the commonwealth ; the
Florentine acted only indirectly as a member of some incor-
porated trade.

From all these causes working together it followed that the
true republican spirit was very weak in mediaeval Italy, as
compared with its full growth in ancient Greece. The natural
tendency of a commonwealth is to vest all authority, as far as
may be, in some Senate or Assembly, meeting often and con-
stantly looking into public affairs. The constitution of such
Assembly of course depends upon the aristocratic or democratic
constitution of the commonwealth. But in either case, each

* [I almost suspect that this strange insolence of individual men of which
Meidias and Alkibiades were examples is more likely to be found in a
democracy than in an oligarchy. In an oligarchy, members of the privileged
order at least will be safe from it. And a wise and legal oligarchy will have
the sense for its own interest to protect the non-privileged classes also.]

f T<i tavrov rtixn- Xen. Hell. i. 5, 17; cf. ii. I, 25.

42 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

citizen who is possessed of the fullest franchise deems him-
self entitled to a direct voice in all important affairs. Even
Sparta, oligarchy within oligarchy as she was, notwithstand-
ing the lofty position of her Kings and Gerontes and the
more practical authority of her Ephors, did not, like con-
stitutional England, entrust questions of war and peace to
Ministers acting in the dark, but had them freely debated in
the General Assembly of the privileged order. The highest
developement of this tendency is of course to be found in the
Public Assembly of Athens. Demos made himself an absolute
monarch, and cut down all magistrates to the position of mere
executors of his decrees. The Archons had once been sove-
reign, but their powers were gradually cut down to a peaceful
routine of police and religious ceremonial, which carried with it
no political influence whatever. The Generals indeed acted as
Foreign Secretaries, but they confined themselves to the
functions of Secretaries ; they could not irrevocably commit
the commonwealth to a policy for which the Assembly could
only censure them after the fact. But in the most democratic
states of mediaeval Italy, even in Florence herself, a constantly
superintending popular Assembly was altogether unknown, or
appeared only in her latest day. At the very utmost, the
assembled people were only called together now and then, to
declare peace or war or to agree to some important constitu-
tional change. At Florence, for a long time, they only as-
sembled when the purposes of faction called for the gathering
of a tumultuous Parliament, whose first act commonly was
to vote away its own liberties. The old commonwealth
had indeed its Councils, but a real Assembly, entitled in any
way to speak in the name of the people, arose only in the
revived commonwealth under the gonfaloniership of Soderini.
To individual magistrates it was everywhere usual, and indeed
it often was necessary, to entrust a power over the lives and
liberties of the citizens at which an Athenian would have
stood aghast. And no wonder, when it was perhaps less
often their business to preside at a peaceful tribunal than to
march at the head of the armed people to put down some

L] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 43

rebellious noble who stood out in utter defiance of all legal
authority. Hence the excessive shortness of the terms for
which magistrates were elected : no man could be trusted to
wield such tremendous powers for more than the shortest
possible time. But hence too the fluctuations and confusions
of a commonwealth which changed its rulers six times in
every year. Hence again an Italian commonwealth afforded
very little of that political education of the entire people
which was the noblest result of the Athenian democracy.
The citizen of Athens had his wits sharpened by the constant
practice of 'ruling and judging.' The Florentine could at
most look forward to enjoy, some day or other, a two months'
share in the exercise of a despotic power to which during the
rest of his life he must bow down. The ordinary Athenian
was necessarily a judge and a statesman ; the ordinary Floren-
tine had hardly the opportunity of so much political education
as the Englishman may contrive to pick up in the jury-box,
the parish vestry, * or the quarter- sessions.

From this comparative weakness of the republican spirit it
could not fail to follow that the foundation of tyrannies was
more easy in mediaeval Italy than it ever was in Greece.
It followed also that they became more lasting and, in out-
ward show at least, more lawful. Civil liberty, as Sismondi
has drawn out, was but little known or valued even in the
republican states. The wishes of the people were satisfied if
rulers were popularly chosen or drawn, and if they kept their
office only for a short term. While their power lasted, it
hardly differed in extent from that of any permanent des-
potism not of the most outrageous kind. It followed that
the change from a republic to a tyranny was, in its begin-
nings at least, less violent than in Greece. Moreover, the first
generation of each dynasty of Tyrants were almost always
men of ability ; they were not always quite devoid of virtue ;

* [For the Parish Vestry I should perhaps now say the Board of Guardians,
the Highway Board, the School Board, perhaps the County Financial Board of
the future.]

44 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

they were men who had at least been brought up as citizens
and had not been born in the purple. The saying that

'Nemo repente fuit turpissimus*

seems to apply to families as well as to individuals. It was not
till after several generations of sovereignty that the viper of
the Visconti began to hatch the monstrous brood of Bernabos
and Gian-Marias. In many Italian cities, the mass of the
people were so used to aristocratic insolence, they were so cut
off from all real share in the government, that the establish-
ment of a despot might easily look to them like the coming of
a deliverer. At any rate it might look like the coming of one
oppressor instead of many. The high magistracies were often
practically confined to a few distinguished families, even where
technical nobility was no longer needed. It was to them alone
that the change would involve any great political loss ; and the
less exalted spirits among them would easily find compensa-
tion in the honours and flatteries of a court. It is true that, in
nearly every case, the people came to rue their error. The most
imperfect form of law, the most turbulent form of freedom,
was found to be better than deadening submission to a single
despotic will. The Tyrant too commonly deserved his name
in the popular as well as in the technical sense; Malatestas
were more common than Montefeltros ; Francesco Sforza left
his coronet to Galeazzo-Maria. But, at the moment of change,
the setting up of a tyranny was far less offensive to Italian
than it had been to Grecian feelings. The government of
a single person was far less strange to the Italian mind. To
the Greek monarchical power in any shape seemed to be one of
the characteristics which distinguished the Barbarian from
himself. But Italy was familiar with monarchs of every size
and degree. The existence of feudal princes side by side with
the commonwealths, the feudal notions kept up by many of
the nobles within the cities, the acknowledged overlordship
of the Emperors, all joined together to give an impulse to
monarchical government in Italy. The position too both
of the Pope and of the Emperor afforded a means of bestow-
ing an outward legitimacy on those who became possessed of
sovereign power. The means were indeed not quite so easy

L] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 45

as they have become in later times. In our days nothing
is simpler than the change of an elective President into
a hereditary Emperor. It may be done with equal success
on either side of the Atlantic ; the skin of the son of fortune
may be indifferently white or black ; it matters not whether
the work is done by simple violence or with some outward
show of legality. In either case might makes right, and the
crown covers all defects. In old Greece and Italy the art of
a Soulouques and a Buonaparte appeared only in a much ruder
form.* Neither in Greece nor in Italy did the God or the
saint whom he had sworn by always keep back an ambitious
leader from the luxury of a coup (C etat. But the Greek was
commonly high-minded enough to despise the mere gewgaws
of kingship, and even the Italian was modest enough to
abstain from the highest of earthly titles. Rumour said
that Gian-Galeazzo had a royal crown in his treasure-house
designed for his own brow ; but respect for his feudal superior
hindered him from forestalling the lofty style of their Csesarean
majesties of France and Hayti. Old Greece was far behind
the march of modern improvement ; she drew a distinction
between rvpavvos and (3acn\€vs which our age seems to have
forgotten, and she afforded no means, violent or legal, of con-
verting one into the other. Italian politics equally drew the
perfectly analogous distinction between the hereditary prince
of a feudal lordship and the Tyrant who arose in a civic re-
public.f But the Italian Tyrant, far as he lagged behind more
recent professors, at least possessed means of changing his title
which were denied to his Grecian forerunners. The partizan
chief who, half by force, half by election, became ' Lord ' or
' Tyrant ' of an Italian commonwealth, was himself not unfre-
quently the hereditary feudal prince of some smaller territory,
and the distinct sources of his authority over the two states

* [Soulouques and Buonapartes are now happily swept away from the list of
rulers. But the loathsome flattery with which the fallen Tyrant has been
greeted in this country shows something very wrong in the moral feelings of
the age, and makes one fear that Soulouques and Buonapartes may not have
passed away for ever.]

t The indifferent term ' signore,' exactly translates the indifferent term
Svvaarrjs.

46 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

might easily come to be confounded. Thus the Marquesses of
Este became Lords of Modena and Ferrara, and they were often
spoken of as Marquesses of the latter city before they had
gained any formal right to the title. In any case, the position
of a feudal prince, independent in fact, though nominally
holding of a superior lord, was one perfectly familiar both
to the ruler and to his subjects, and it was one to which an
easy process could raise him. It only needed the outlay of
some small part of what he levied on his countrymen to buy
from the Pope or the Emperor a diploma changing the
fallen commonwealth into a duchy or marquisate to be held
by himself and his heirs for ever. Such a document at once
changed, legally at least, his usurped and precarious power
into an acknowledged and lawful sovereignty, handed on
according to a definite law of succession, and subject to all the
accidents of a feudal lordship. But such a process often carried
with it the seeds of its own destruction. When Gian-Galeazzo
bought the investiture of a Duke of the Empire from the
careless Wenceslaus, he paved the way for all the wars which
devastated his duchy, and for the final loss of its independence.
When Borso of Este became a Papal vassal for his new Duchy
of Ferrara, he took the first step towards its ultimate absorp-
tion into the immediate domain of the Roman See.

This phenomenon of Tyrants is one which seems to be
peculiar to Greece and Italy among the various systems of
town-autonomy. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, a
demagogue* now and then won an influence which prac-
tically made him the temporary sovereign of his own city.
But no such demagogue ever founded a permanent tyranny ;
much less did he ever change his position into an acknow-
ledged sovereignty. Again, between Greece and Italy we
may discern some chronological differences. In the Greek
colonies the Tyrant was a phenomenon to be found in all
ages, and his position seems to have differed less than else-
where from lawful kingship. Not only the laureate

* [I do not use the word contemptuously : fypaywyos — a name given to
Periklfis himself — is surely the highest title that man can bear.]

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 47

Pindar, but Herodotus himself does not scruple to apply
the title of /3a<nAeus to various Sicilian and Italian rulers.*
In the Macedonian times, when Greece had become familiar
with king-ship, the title was of course more freely assumed.
But in Greece itself tyranny was a phenomenon confined
almost wholly to two periods. There were the dema-
gogue-Tyrants of the early days of the republics, .partizan
chiefs who commonly ruled with the good-will of at least
a portion of the people. There were the military Tyrants
of a later time, who ruled by sheer violence at the head
of bands of mercenaries, and who were practically mere

* [On looking more narrowly into this matter, I doubt whether Herodotus,
speaking in his own person, ever does give the title of fiaai\fvs to any one
who was strictly rvpavvos. I add an extract from an Essay of mine which
deals too much with details to be reprinted in full. (' Herodotus and his Com-
mentators,' National Review, October 1862, p. 300.)

' Nothing is more clearly marked in Greek political languages than the dif-
ference between King and Tyrant, (iaffi\tvs and rvpavvos. The fiaaiXtvs, we need
hardly say, is the lawful King, the hereditary or elective prince of a state whose
constitution is monarchic. It is applicable alike to a good King and to a bad one,
to the despotic empire of Persia and to the almost nominal royalty of Laceda?mon ;
but it always implies that kingship is the recognized government of the country.
The rvpavvos, on the other hand, is the ruler who obtains kingly power in a
republic, and whose government therefore, whether good or bad in itself, is
unlawful in its origin. In the same way it is applicable to the lawful King
who seizes on a degree of power which the law does not give him ; it is there-
fore applied, by their respective enemies, to Pheid6n of Argos and to the last
Kleomenes of Sparta. It is clear then that f$aai\tvs is a title of respect,
while rvpavvos implies more or less of contempt or hatred. The Tyrant would
wish to be called /3affi\evs, and would be so called by his flatterers, but by
nobody else. But in republican language, especially in days when lawful
Kings hardly existed in Greece itself, lawful kingship might often be spoken of
as tyranny. Now all these distinctions are carefully attended to by Herodo-
tus; to translate the words @aai\(vs and rvpavvos as if Herodotus used
them indiscriminately is utterly to misrepresent the author. Herodotus clearly
observes the distinction. He applies the word (iaai\fvs to foreign Kings, and
to the princes of those Greek states where royalty had never been abolished.
He gives us Kings of Kyrene, Kings of Cyprus, Kings of Sparta, a King of
Thessaly, — meaning doubtless the Tagos (v. 63) ; but never, when speaking in
his own person, does he give us Kings of Athens or Corinth. When therefore
we find a King of Zankl£ (vi. 2, 3) and a King of the Tarentines (iii. 136) we
may fairly infer that at ZanklS and Tarentum kingly government had not
gone out of use up to the time of Herodotus. The address Si &aai\(v, at the
beginning of the angry speech of the Athenian envoys (vii. 161), may well be
sarcastic.']

48 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

Macedonian viceroys. Neither class were ever acknowledged
as Kings, but the later class were still further from such
acknowledgement than the earlier. Between the two periods
comes the real republican period, from Kleisthenes to Demo-
sthenes, during which Tyrants are but seldom heard of, and
scarcely ever in the most illustrious cities. But in Italy,
the phsenomenon of tyranny did not begin at all till the
republican spirit had begun to decay, and, as we have seen,
it gradually changed into what was looked upon as legi-
timate sovereignty.

Lastly, as the Greek nation was the first which developed
for itself anything worthy of the name of civilization, Greece
and the Greek colonies naturally formed the whole extent of
their own civilized world. Other nations were simply outside
Barbarians. In the best days of Greece the interference of a
foreign power in her internal quarrels would have seemed as
if the sovereign of Morocco or China should claim the presi-
dency of a modern European congress. In later times indeed
Sparta and Thebes and Athens, each in turn, found it con-
venient to contract political alliances with the Great King at
Ekbatana, or with their more dangerous neighbour at Pella.
But the Mede always remained a purely external enemy
or a purely external paymaster ; the Macedonian had him-
self to become a Greek before his turn came to be the
dominant power of Greece. But in mediaeval Italy the case
was widely different. She affected indeed to apply the name
Barbarian to all nations beyond her mountain-bulwark. Nor
did the assumption want some show of justification in her
palpable pre-eminence in wealth, in refinement, in literature,
in many branches of art, above all in political knowledge
and progress. But, notwithstanding this, it was impossible
to place mediaeval Italy so far above contemporary France
or Spain or Germany, as ancient Greece stood above the
rest of her contemporary world. All the states of Western
Christendom were fragments of a single Empire, whose
laws and language and general civilization had left traces

I.] AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY. 49

among- them all. A common religion too united them
against the paynim of Cordova or Bagdad, too often against
the schismatic who filled the throne of Constantino. Italy
for ages saw the lawful successor of her Kings and Caesars
in a Barbarian of the race most alien to her feelings and
language. Most of her highest nobility drew their origin
from the same foreign stock. No wonder then if nations
less alien to her tongue and manners played a part in her
internal politics which differed widely from any interference
of Barbarians in the affairs of Greece. Italian parties ranged
themselves under the German watchwords of Guelf and
Ghibelin, and fought under the standards of Angevin,
Proven9al, and Aragonese invaders. Florence looked to
France — lily to lily — as her natural ally and her chosen
protector. Sicily sought for her deliverer from French
oppression in the rival power of a Spanish King. French
and Spanish princes had been so often welcomed into
Italy, they had so often filled Italian thrones and guided
Italian politics, that men perhaps hardly understood the
change or foresaw the consequences, when for the first
time a King of France entered Italy in arms as the claimant
of an Italian kingdom. Gradually, but only gradually, the
strife which had once been a mere disputed succession be-
tween an Angevin and an Aragonese pretender grew into
a strife between the mightiest potentates of the West for
the mastery of Italy and of Europe.

The coronation of Charles the Fifth ends the history of
independent Italy. It ends also the history of the Western
Empire. No Roman Emperor ever again came down into
Italy to claim the golden crown at the hands of the
Roman Pontiff. Moreover, since the days of Justinian, no
Roman Emperor had ever held the same unbounded sway
through the whole length of the Italian peninsula. That
sway he indeed handed on to his successors, not indeed to
his successors in the shadowy majesty of the Empire, but to
those who wielded the more real might of Spain and the

E

50 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY

Indies. If in later times his power in Italy came back to
German princes who still bore the Imperial title, it came
back to them, not as chiefs of a Roman or even a German
Empire, but as those who wielded the power of the hereditary
states of the Austrian House. The real history alike of the
Empire and of the commonwealths ends with the fall of
Florence and the pageant of Bologna. The formal close of
Italian independence may indeed be put off till the last
conquest of Sienna some twenty years later. One Italian
state indeed had yet to run a course of glory, but it was
hardly in the character of an Italian state. Venice still
continued her career as the withstander, sometimes the con-
queror, of the infidel. Bragadino had yet to die in torments
— the penalty of trusting to an Ottoman capitulation. The
fruitless laurels of Lepanto were yet to be won, and Morosini
had yet to drive out the Barbarian from the plains of Argos
and the Akropolis of Corinth. Genoa still kept her republican
forms, and for one moment she showed the true republican
spirit. Her patrician rulers had sunk in slumber ; but the
people of the Proud City had still, hardly a century back,
strength left for a rising which drove forth the Austrian
from her gates. But as a whole, Italy was dead. We have
ourselves seen her renewed struggles for life ; we have
again seen her crushed down under the yoke of the brother
tyrants of Austria and France. For eight years she has
crouched in voiceless and seemingly hopeless bondage. That
she has fallen for ever we will not willingly believe. But
in what form shall she rise again? Her town-autonomy
can never be restored in an age of Emperors and standing
armies. Yet no lover of Italy could bear to see Milan
and Venice and Florence and the Eternal City itself sink
into provincial dependencies of the Savoyard. The other
and more fortunate home of freedom supplies the key. If
right and freedom should ever win back their own, the
course of Aratos and Washington, of Furst and Stauffacher
and Melchthal,* must be the guiding star of the liberators

* [I have since learned that the ' Three Men ' are mythical ; but the lesson
of Swiss history is none the less useful.]

I.] AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. 51

of Italy. The union which, she failed to work in the
twelfth century the bitter experience of ages may lead her
to work in these later times. We cannot indeed look to
see Italy, any more than Greece, become once more the
central point of European history; but it may not be too
wild a dream, if only foreign intermeddlers will stand aloof,
to hope that an Italian Confederation may yet hold an
independent and honourable place in the general system
of Europe. *

* [I leave this as I wrote it. The question of an Italian Confederation has
now become as purely a matter of history as the question of a Boeotian Con-
federation. Italy has chosen her own form of government ; that form of
government every Italian is bound loyally 'to accept, and every lover of Italy
is bound to wish it well. Nor can I wonder that the name of a Confederation
became hateful in Italy after Buonaparte had put forth the insidious scheme of
an Italian Confederation as one of his devices for hindering Italian unity and
freedom. The proposal of the sham Confederation was quite enough to hinder
the establishment of a real one. Yet I may be allowed to doubt whether
Italy has not been somewhat hasty in her choice, and whether something of a
Federal form would not have been better for a constitution which was to take
in lands differing so widely from one another in their social state and in their
historical associations as do some of the provinces of the present Italian
Kingdom.]

E 2

II.

MR. GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE
HOMERIC AGE.*

Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon.
W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L., M.P. for the University of
Oxford. 3 vols. Oxford, 1858.

THESE three volumes of Mr. Gladstone's form a great, but
a very unequal work. They would be a worthy fruit of a
life spent in learned retirement. As the work of one of
our first orators and statesmen, they are altogether won-
derful. Not indeed that Mr. Gladstone's two characters
of scholar and statesman have done aught but help and
strengthen one another. His long experience of the world
has taught him the better to appreciate Homer's wonderful
knowledge of human nature ; the practical aspect of his
poems, the deep moral and political lessons which they teach,
become a far more true and living thing to the man of busy
life than they can ever be to the mere solitary student. And
perhaps his familiarity with the purest and most ennobling
source of inspiration may have had some effect in adorning

* [I have left this Essay substantially as it was first written. I have made
some verbal improvements, and I have left out some passages which had lost
their point through lapse of time, but I have not altered any actual expres-
sions of opinion. I should now perhaps write a little less enthusiastically on
one or two points than I did then, but I have seen no reason to change the
general views which I held then. I still believe that we have in the Iliad and
Odyssey, the genuine works — allowing of course for a certain amount of inter-
polation— of a real personal Homer. There are of course difficulties about such
a belief, but the difficulties the other way seem to me to be greater. The theory
of Mr. Paley, the most unbelieving of all, I hope some day to have an oppor-
tunity of examining in detail.]

MR. GLADSTONE'S HOMER, &c. 53

Mr. Gladstone's political oratory with more than one of its
noblest features. He is not unlike the Achilleus of his own
story. He may at least say with equal right,

yop IJLOI KtTvos, 6fuas 'AtSao irtiXtjaiv,
pov n\v Ktv9(i eVt <f>pfalv,

What strikes one more than anything else throughout Mr.
Gladstone's volumes is the intense earnestness, the loftiness of
moral purpose, which breathes in every page. He has not taken
up Homer as a plaything, nor even as a mere literary enjoy-
ment. To him the study of the Prince of Poets is clearly a
means by which himself and other men may be made wiser
and better. Here lies an immeasureable distance between
him and a purely literary critic like -Colon el Mure. Indeed
Mr. Gladstone's morality, pure and noble as it is, is, we think,
somewhat overwrought. It sometimes sinks into asceticism,
sometimes into over-scrupulousness. So, in the more purely
intellectual portions of his inquiry, we can easily see that
same over-subtlety with which his censors reproach him in
his speeches. Everywhere minute, everywhere ingenious, he
often attempts to prove too much, and to find meanings in
Homer of which Homer certainly never dreamed. In short,
every one of the noblest qualities which adorn, every one of
the defects which mar, the political portraiture of the most
earnest and eloquent of living statesmen, is to be found trans-
ferred in all its fullness to the Studies on Homer and the
Homeric Age.

In one point at least of his subject, and that the greatest
of all, Mr. Gladstone certainly stands unrivalled. In his
pages Homer has, for the first time for many ages, had full
justice done to him. This, saying may seem strange, after
Homer has so long been alike the text-book of school-boys
and the delight of riper scholars ; but it is true, after all,
that Mr. Gladstone has been the first to teach us to admire
Homer as we ought. He claims for him, and that most justly,
a place differing, not only in degree but in kind, from all who
have come after him. He is the first of poets, to whom Dante

54 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

and Shakespere alone could ever be seriously compared ; and
he is set above Dante and Shakespere by the fact of his being
the first in time, with every thought native and unborrowed.
Homer is moreover not only a poet, but, indirectly at least,
he is a historian, a moralist, and a divine ; he is our sole
witness to the events, the manners, and the creed of Greece
in her heroic age. Yet, as Mr. Gladstone truly complains,
for ages past men have not learned to draw the proper line
between him and all who came after him. They have not
even learned to come to the fountain-head, and to quaff for
themselves at the true well of inspiration. Men's ideas of
the Homeric age are largely drawn, not from Homer himself,
but from modern descriptions or abridgements, or at best
from the later Greek and Latin writers. The popular con-
ception of the Homeric characters comes, not so much from
Homer himself, as from poets like Virgil and Euripides, who
treat Homeric subjects in a non-Homeric manner, and in
whose hands both the spirit of the heroic age and the likeness
of the individual heroes is utterly defaced and degraded.
The school-boy reads Homer as his first Greek poet ; but
he does not read through the Iliad and Odyssey, and, if he
did, he would be unable to fathom their full depth and
greatness. In the Universities Homer is strangely neglected
for the tragedians. In general life many a man keeps up
some knowledge of Latin literature and Latin poets, while,
if he has ever gained any real knowledge of those of Greece,
he has altogether let it slip. In the very assembly where
Mr. Gladstone holds so high a place, it is quite regular to
quote the heartless and egotistical talk of the pious -^Eneas,
while one word of the living oratory of Achilleus spoken
in his own tongue would be at once cried out against as a
breach of order. That unhappy habit, continued in blind
imitation of mediaeval practice, by which we begin education
with the artificial literature of Rome, instead of going at once
to the fountain-head of immortal Greece, has done endless
harm to Homeric and to all Hellenic study. Mr. Gladstone
himself has not escaped. The example of many earlier

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 55

scholars, strengthened by the authority of Bishop Thirlwall
and Mr. Grote, has fully established the practice of calling-
the Greek Gods by their own names, instead of those of the
analogous Italian deities ; yet Mr. Gladstone goes back to the
bygone fashion of calling Zeus Jupiter and Athene Minerva.
He disapproves of the practice, but he does it all the same.
Now really nothing is more fatal than this. In the first place
it is simply a blunder. It is confounding two distinct and
very different religions. There is just as much and just as
little reason for calling Zeus Jupiter as there is for calling him
Woden or Brahma.* And the practice is utterly inconsistent
with the aim which Mr. Gladstone so specially seeks after, the
separation of the Homeric poems from all later, and inferior
literature. Mars, Venus, Vulcan, are thoroughly vulgarized ;
so are Jupiter and Juno somewhat less thoroughly. But the
real Olympian Gods are still untouched. Poetasters do not
scribble about Ares and Aphrodite ; penny-a-liners do not dub
the village blacksmith Hephaistos ; nor does any sportsman
that we ever heard of call his pointer after the wife and sister
of Zeus. Mr. Gladstone, of all men, was bound to keep the
Homeric Olympos pure from the introduction of what are
practically degrading nicknames. So, in rescuing the hero of
Ithaca from the calumnies of Virgil, we would" also rescue his
name from the perversions of Latin tongues. Ulysses may
pass, and welcome, as the cruel and crafty sinner of the yEneid,
but let us keep unhurt in name as well as in character the
true and brave and wise Achaian hero, the divine Odysseus
of Homer.

Mr. Gladstone scarcely enters at all into what is called the
( Homeric controversy.' He takes for granted, and we think
quite fairly as regards all the main points, that the controversy
exists no longer ; that the matter has been set at rest by the
unanswerable arguments of Colonel Mure. It shows indeed
how truly Mr. Gladstone may complain of Homer being
imperfectly understood, when the critics of one age undertook

* [Practically Woden answers to Zeus ; philologically the English cognate
of Zeus is Tiw — the eponymos of Tuesday.]

56 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

to run him down, and the critics of the next thought it a
great exploit to tear him in pieces. How little could men
have understood the epic art of Homer, how little could they
have entered into the wonderful dramatic power by which
every character is clearly conceived and consistently kept
up from Alpha of the Iliad to Omega of the Odyssey, when
they looked upon the poems as mere chance assemblages
of detached ballads ! It is to the honour of English common
sense that these notions were never very prevalent among us,
and that it is by English scholarship that they have been
finally overthrown. Mr. Grote, though a partial unbeliever,
raised a vigorous protest against the worst forms of unbelief.
Colonel Mure and Mr. Gladstone have done the business more
thoroughly, and have cast the whole wretched theory to the
winds. It is impossible to go through the works of these
two great scholars without feeling more and more convinced
that the old critics of Alexandria were more skilful in their art
than the modern critics of Germany. They have given back
to us the living personal Homer, the first of bards and the
first of sages, the painter of the whole life of heroic Greece, the
man who drew Achilleus and Odysseus, Helen and Penelopeia,
and who peopled Olympos with the grand assemblage of
deities created after the likeness of man. They have set up
again the true Homeric faith. We have again our Homer,
the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, and of the Iliad and
Odyssey only, with his works handed down to us in a state
nearly as pure as any other part of the ancient literature of
Hellas.

But, while Mr. Gladstone has done no more than justice in
claiming for Homer his place at the head of the poets of all
ages, in claiming for him a paramount authority as the one
trustworthy expounder of the heroic life of Greece, we cannot
but think that he goes a great deal too far in the amount of
positive historical credit which he allows to him. Mr. Glad-
stone seems almost willing to accept the Iliad as a substantially
true metrical chronicle. The case seems to us to be this.
Homer is a very high historical authority in a certain sense.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 57

We have no doubt that his heroic age is a real age. It is
drawn with all the simplicity and artlessness of a picture
taken from the life. Homer describes the sort of scenes
which he had seen himself and had heard of from his father.
No doubt he describes the heroic life in its best colours;
but it is still a real life and not an imaginary one. In a
conscious and reflecting age a writer may, by a combination
of antiquarian knowledge and poetical genius, produce a vivid
picture of a long past age. But such a picture smells of
the lamp; it needs an historical student either to produce
or thoroughly to enter into it. Or again, a great poet may
produce a grand picture out of an utterly fictitious tale, with
no reproduction of any age in particular. The former has
been at least the aim of writers like Scott and Bulwer.
The latter we see in Shakespere's King Lear.* Now nothing
is plainer than that the Iliad belongs to neither of these
classes. In Homer we cannot talk of either knowledge or
ignorance. He simply sets before us the life which he
himself lived, described doubtless in its fairest and noblest
aspect, but still essentially the real life of his own time.
For all points of archaeology, all customs, forms of govern-
ment, modes of religious belief, we refer to Homer with
unshaken faith. And, if we accept him as an authority at
all, it clearly follows that we must, with Mr. Gladstone,
accept him as a paramount authority, differing in kind from
all others. For he alone is a direct witness ; every one else
speaks at secondhand.

But this is quite another matter from following Mr.
Gladstone in his whole length of accepting Homer, as he
really seems to do, as strictly an historical authority, if not
on the level of Thucydides, at any rate on that of Herodotus.
To justify us in this we need something like corroborative
evidence, something like testimony as to the time when he
lived, and the means of knowledge which he had. But

* [I might add Macbeth ; for, though Lear is an imaginary person, while
Macbeth and his much calumniated wife really lived, they have been changed
into imaginary persons in the hands of legend-makers.]

58 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

such corroborative testimony utterly fails us. We know
nothing either of Homer or of the Homeric heroes except
from Homer himself. We have no kind of chronology, no
means of judging how long a time passed between the events
themselves and the bard who sang of them. He may, as a boy,
have seen Odysseus as an old man, or he may have thought
of Odysseus as living ages before himself. We cannot tell
one way or another. Mr. Gladstone himself has shown how
little is proved either way by such sayings as that about
otoi vvv fipoToi civ i. Now, in either case, we may be sure
that Homer's picture of Odysseus faithfully sets forth the
manners and feelings of his own time, whether his own time
was really the time of Odysseus or not. Such is always the
case with a purely native and unlearned poetry. In either
case he is equally great as a poet, equally valuable as an
archaeological witness. But the two supposed cases make
simply all the difference as to his strictly historical credit.
In short we are not in a position to judge. We have no
means of cross-examining our witness. We can neither
accept his story nor cast it aside.

Analogy may indeed help us a little. Homer gives us a
poetical account of events of which we have no historical
record. Now other ages give us poetical or romantic accounts
of events of which we have also the real history*. In these
cases we commonly find a certain foundation of fact, but
the truth is covered over with fictitious details. A few
leading persons, a few leading events, are still preserved, but
the great bulk of the tale is fabulous. The names of Attila
and Theodoric may be just seen, and no more, in the old
Teutonic romances. There is an Arthur and a Charlemagne
of history, an Arthur and a Charlemagne of romance.f Of

* [I have since said something on this head in the Essay on the Mythical
and Romantic Elements in Early English History, in my former series.]

•}• [I should now say a Charles of history and a Charlemagne of romance.
The distinction is convenient, and I wish that we had one of the same kind to
distinguish the real Arthur who fought against Cerdic from the mythical
subject of so many romances and poems.]

II] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 59

the Arthur of history we can only say that he was a British
prince who withstood the English invaders. In Geoffrey of
Monmouth he does exploits rather in the style of the
Seven Champions of Christendom. Of the Charlemagne of
history, thanks to Eginhard and the Capitularies, we know
far more than of many much later Kings. But the Charle-
magne of romance, with his adventures at Constantinople
and Jerusalem, is quite another person from the Charles
who beheaded the Saxons and was crowned by Pope Leo at
Rome. Whenever we have the means of judging in such
cases, we find that there is a kernel of truth; but it is a
kernel so overlaid with fiction, that, without external help,
it is impossible to distinguish the two.

We have here taken an analogy very unfavourable to
Homer, but it is one which we think justifies us in assuming
that the Homeric poems do contain some portion of true
history. We cannot fancy that they are less trustworthy
than the romances of Charlemagne and Arthur. It is very
likely that they are much more trustworthy. It is very likely
that Homer lived much nearer to the events which he records,
and that he was much more careful of truth in recording
them. The chances are greatly in favour of the Homeric
poems containing very much more historical truth than
the mediaeval romances. But we are not in a position to
measure the exact amount of truth. We cannot dogmatize
either way. In the worst case we may be pretty sure there
is some truth ; in the best case we may be pretty sure there
is a good deal of fiction. But we cannot say how much is
truth and how much is fiction, except when we can find
some external evidence, either to corroborate or to confute,
or else when there is some internal evidence which carries
with it an overwhelming conviction either of truth or of
falsehood.

Now for some points of the Homeric story strong external
evidence may be brought in corroboration. It is the fault
of the school represented by Sir G. C. Lewis to rely too
much upon written books only, and almost to put out of sight

60 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

the growing sciences of archaeology and ethnology. But
these last sometimes step in very opportunely to confirm the
legend. The Iliad speaks of a great King of Mykene as
warring on the coast of Asia. To one who knew Greece
only from Herodotus and Thucydides the story would seem
absurd. In their pages Mykene appears utterly insignifi-
cant ; Homer's picture of it as the capital of Peloponnesos
might be cast aside as wholly incredible. But go to the place
itself, look at the wonderful remains of early magnificence
which are still there, and the difficulty at once vanishes.
Legend and archaeology between them have kept alive a truth
which history has lost. We may fairly set down the Pelopid
dynasty as a real dynasty. But, if we are asked whether
Atreus and Agamemnon were real persons, we have no
evidence to make us decide either way. Again, the settle-
ment of large bodies of Greeks on the Asiatic shore is an
undoubted fact. And it is impossible not to connect with
this undoubted fact the legend of the Trojan war. It is
impossible not to believe that the warfare of Agamemnon
represents some stage or other of the process which made
the western coast of Asia Hellenic. Again, ethnological
evidence alone would lead us to believe that the Greeks found
there a people separated from themselves by no very wide
ethnical barrier. This exactly falls in with Homer's portrai-
ture of the Trojans. They are inferior to the Greeks, but they
are not broadly distinguished from them in creed, manners, or
language. Here ethnology supports legend. That Greeks
did war on the Hellespont is certain ; that a Mykenaian
King may have led them is highly probable. Here then
we have clear external evidence corroborating the bare
historical kernel around which the poetry of the Iliad has
gathered.

Again, there are some places in which internal evidence
leads us to the belief that Homer meant to make direct and
accurate statements of historical fact. We have never doubted
for a moment that the Catalogue in the Iliad is a real picture
of the Greek geography of the tune. It is quite unlike any

II] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 61

such catalogues in other poems or romances, where distance
either of time or space allowed the author to invent at pleasure,
and to tickle his audience with strange or high-sounding names.
The exact amount of its historical value, the degree to which
we are justified in appealing to it to prove the existence of
particular persons, depends upon the question which we
cannot answer, How long did Homer live after his heroes?
But we may surely trust it for the names and the position of
cities, for the boundaries of regions, and for their importance
relatively to one another. We may be quite sure that, even
if Homer's heroes lived ages before him, he would give us
the geography of his own times and not that of any other ;
and in the geography of his own times he could not venture
to be otherwise than accurate, with all Greece ready to
criticize and confute him.* Again, when he makes Poseidon
foretell that, after Priam and his city had fallen, the
children's children of Aineias would still go on reigning
in the Troad, it is impossible not to believe that there
was, in the poet's days, an existing dynasty, sprung or
claiming to spring from Aineias. And on negative points
the historical testimony of Homer becomes of the highest
importance. If he had ever heard of those Egyptian and
Asiatic settlements in Greece which are dreamed of by later
writers, it is utterly impossible that there should have been,
as there now is, not the slightest reference to them in any
portion of the poems. The lines in which Homer describes
the passing of the sceptre from father to son along the line
of Pelops may or may not be enough evidence to prove the
real existence of each of the potentates which they speak of,
but, as other evidence has led us to believe that the dynasty
is a real dynasty, so this passage may lead us to believe that
it was not a dynasty of foreign blood. Had Homer believed
the patriarch of the house of Agamemnon to have been of

* [Every time I read the Homeric Catalogue I am the more convinced that
we have in it a real picture of early Greek geography. No conceivable motive
can be thought of for its invention at any later time.]

62 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

Lydian birth, he would hardly have left the fact to be first
told to us by Pindar.

But we must remember, on the other hand, that the silence
of Homer on any point is not absolutely conclusive. It is con-
clusive only when the point is one which we Cannot fancy him
failing to speak of, had he heard of it. This applies both in
divine and in human affairs. Nothing is more certain than that
Homer did not invent, however much he may have embellished,
either his Olympian mythology or his Trojan war. The con-
stant references which the Odyssey contains to matters which
do not come within the range of the Iliad, fully show that
there was a great mass of floating Troic legend, of which
Homer only wrought up so much as suited his own purpose.
Again, it is equally clear that Homer allowed his own taste
or discretion to settle the prominence to be allowed to different
portions of his theological system. The series of revolutions
by which Zeus was enthroned on Olympos were clearly not
unknown to Homer; but, while ^Eschylus has chosen to
bring them prominently forward, Homer has chosen to
keep them in the background. It may therefore sometimes
happen that even very late and inferior writers may
preserve traditions which fill up Homeric gaps or explain
Homeric allusions. But we fully grant to Mr. Gladstone
that Homer's authority is absolutely paramount ; that every
other testimony is merely secondary ; that, though we may
admit some things which -are not in Homer, we must admit
nothing which is inconsistent with Homer.

In what we have already said we have gone through pretty
nearly all that we have to say on Mr. Gladstone's Prolego-
mena, and we have forestalled some parts of the later divisions
of his work. Of its three volumes, the first contains ' Pro-
legomena' and 'Achaeis, or the Ethnology of the Greek
Races ;' the second is wholly devoted to ' Olympus, or the
Religion of the Homeric Age ;' the third contains ' Agore,
Politics of the Homeric Age ;' ' Ilios : Trojans and Greeks
compared ;' ' Thalassa : the Outer Geography ;' ' Aoidos :
some points of the Poetry of Homer.' Here is matter

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 63

enough, matter whose full examination would need a volume
rather than an essay, if we were to examine with any minute-
ness. The treatment of the different sections too is widely
different, both in kind and in merit. Rightly to deal with
some of them would involve a minute examination of nearly
the whole Homeric text. Other parts are of a more general
character, and to them we shall chiefly confine our attention.

The division headed { Thalassa ' we shall not go into at all.
It is entirely devoted to points of minute mythical geography,
which, if examined at all, must be examined in great detail.
It is better to pass it by than to deal with it cursorily and
unworthily. We will only say that it shows Mr. Gladstone's
never-failing minuteness and never-failing ingenuity in a
high degree ; but we decline to pronounce any opinion for or
against the accuracy of his theory.

' Achseis ' is a division which we cannot undertake to
examine in detail, and which yet we cannot pass by quite
so briefly as ' Thalassa.' It is, to our minds, the weakest
part of the book : and we shall presently give our reasons
for thinking so.

' Olympus' is perhaps the most important part of the
work, and it shows most fully all the strength and all
the weakness of the author's mind. ' Agore,' ' Ilios,' and
'Aoidos,' all contain much attractive and admirable matter,
mingled with things here and there from which we dissent.
To these four sections we shall give our chief attention, with-
out binding ourselves minutely to follow Mr. Gladstone's
arrangement.

But, first, for a few words as to the ethnological portion of
the work, the section headed t Achseis.' It is no disparage-
ment to Mr. Gladstone to say that he is not an ethnologer.
He is so many things that are great and good that he can
afford to be told that he has made a mistake in entering at
all on this particular field. We do not know how far our
conjecture is really correct ; but it seems to us that while
Mr. Gladstone has always kept up his general scholarship
in other respects, he is a kind of serus fstudiorum in this

64 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

special branch. Now ethnology, like every other science,
needs a preliminary discipline, and the greatest mind cannot
deal with the subject offhand. Of Mr. Gladstone's wonder-
fully minute study of the poems, of the wonderful ingenuity
of his mind, this section gives perhaps the fullest proof of
any. But it is equally clear that he has no scientific way of
looking at ethnological problems. He seems to have no clear
view of the general relations between the great divisions of the
human family. He is carried away by small points of inci-
dental likeness and unlikeness. He finds a kindred between
Pelasgians and Egyptians, because both are agricultural and
neither (according to him) maritime. At the end of his
inquiry, he seems to identify Medes, Egyptians, and Pelas-
gians with the remains of the Allophylian races in western
and northern Europe. If this means anything, it must
mean that Medes, Egyptians, and Pelasgians were all Tura-
nian, a view which certainly struck us with no small amaze-
ment. We had long ago made up our own minds that the
Pelasgians and the Hellenes differed pretty much as the
different branches, or rather as the different stages, of the
Teutonic nations ; as Danes from Germans, or rather perhaps
as Anglo-Saxons* from modern Englishmen. These Tura-
nian Pelasgians were, according to Mr. Gladstone, overlaid
by the Aryan Hellenes fresh from Persia. His arguments seem
to be, that the names "EAAoi and "EXArjve? come near to that
of the Eelleats in modern Persia ; that, on the other hand,
the name of Fars or Persia is met with again in the hero
Perseus and the goddess Persephone ; that Achaimenes and
Achaia may be connected ; that there is some likeness between
the manners of the heroic Greeks and those of the nomad
tribes of modern Persia. Now there is a good deal of
Turkish blood in modern Persia ; and one would like to be
quite sure how many of Mr. Gladstone's Eelleats are true
Iranians of the land of light, and how many are Turanian

* [I should not now talk about ' Anglo-Saxons ' as opposed to ' modern
Englishmen.' But it should be remembered that the word 'Anglo-Saxon'
is a perfectly good word, if people would only use it in its right meaning.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 65

impostors from the land of darkness. But granting1 that the
forefathers of every living- Eelleat were found under the
banner of Roostam, what does it all prove ? We really never
knew a man of a fourth part of Mr. Gladstone's understand-
ing patch up a theory on such wretchedly slender evidence.
Undoubtedly the Hellenes and the Persians are connected,
because both are members of the great Aryan family ; but we
cannot see the slightest sign of any more special connexion.
Greeks and Persians are kindred ; so are Greeks and Hindoos,
Greeks and Teutons, Greeks and Slaves, Greeks and Celts.
But Mr. Gladstone's special Hellene-Persian brotherhood seems
to us to rest upon no good ground whatever. It is just the
sort of thought which might come into the mind of an
ingenious man who had heard of some of the discoveries of
modern ethnology, but who had not learned to look at them
in their scientific bearings. But ,it is quite unworthy of Mr.
Gladstone. He is a man whom we may fairly ask to forbear
from dealing with any subject except the many of which he
is master.

We will now turn to the Olympian division of the work.
In treating the mythological side of the Homeric poems, there
are two obvious ways of dealing with the subject. The com-
mentator may, if he will, strictly keep himself to the Homeric
text ; he may bring out, as far as may be, the belief about
his Gods which was held by Homer himself; he may compare
passage with passage, and, if need be, he may contrast the
Homeric picture with that of other poets and philosophers.
In short, he may deal with the Gods simply as divine actors
in the poems ; he may comment on their functions and
characters as conceived by the poet, and he may draw what-
ever lessons, poetical or moral, may be suggested by the
part which they play in the story. In such a view as this
the origin of the Hellenic mythology, its relation to other
religious systems, are altogether beside the question. But in
another aspect, these latter questions become altogether para-
mount, while the mode of dealing with the subject which

F

66 MB. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

may have been followed by Homer or any other Greek poet be-
comes important only as part of the evidence. Professor Max
Miiller, in his most striking paper in the Oxford Essays, has
shown that there is a science of Comparative Mythology, just
as there is a science of Comparative Philology.* The two
sciences follow the same process of argument, and indeed, to a
great extent, they work upon the same set of facts. Neither
the Greek language nor the Greek mythology stands alone ;
each is a member of a family. Neither of them therefore can
be fully understood without reference to the other languages
and the other mythologies of the same family. A man who
understands neither Sanscrit nor Teutonic may indeed reach
to a high degree of Greek scholarship of a certain kind ; he
may know all the minutest usages of the language, and he
may be able fully to enter into every literary beauty of the
poet or the orator. So may a man who knows nothing of
Indian or Scandinavian mythology no less fully enter into the
poetical or the political character of the mythology of Greece ;
he may fully understand its part in the drama of the Iliad ;
he may trace its gradual change in later times ; he may see
clearly how it influenced, and how it was- influenced by, the
character of the nation. He can indeed, in either case, carry
on his researches from Homer onwards into the historic age,
but he cannot carry them from Homer backwards into times
when even poetical and mythical evidence fails us. With-
out a knowledge of the languages and the mythologies of
ancient India and of the other kindred races, no man can
ever deal with the origin either of the Greek language or of
the Greek mythology, f

Now with the purely Hellenic and Homeric side of the
subject no man is better fitted to deal than Mr. Gladstone.
Though the Hellenic mythology is historically a mere frag-

* [It must be remembered that this was written when Comparative Mytho-
logy was quite a new subject, and when even Comparative Philology had not
made much way in England ; otherwise there now seems something1 amusing
in the way in which I wrote then.]

+ [This requirement of knowledge must be taken with the limitations which
I have made in my Rede Lecture on the Unity of History, p. 1 7.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 67

merit of a common earlier system, yet practically, poetically,
and politically it is the original creation of the Hellenic mind.
In the shape in which we behold it, it bears the full impress
of the Hellenic character, the stamp of all that distinguishes
the Greek from the other branches of the Aryan stem. As far
as the student of Greek literature and of Greek political history
is concerned, it is of native Hellenic birth. And it is in the
poems of Homer that we find the Hellenic mythology in its
earliest and purest form. With this portion of the subject
Mr. Gladstone's Hellenic scholarship and Homeric enthusiasm,
his keen observation and refined taste, enable him to deal
with a master's hand. Allowing for that vein of exaggeration
and over-subtlety which runs through the whole work, allow-
ing also for a strange ascetic tone of which we shall again
speak, the dramatic character of the Homeric Gods as actors
in the Homeric poems, the practical effect of the Homeric
religion upon the thoughts and acts of the Homeric man, have
been handled in Mr. Gladstone's Olympian volume with a
depth, a vigour, a minuteness, and a fullness, with which they
have never been handled before. But unluckily Mr. Gladstone
has also thought it his duty to set forth a theory of the
historical, or rather archaeological, origin of the Greek re-
ligion. And here he utterly and lamentably fails. He fails
for the same reason that he fails in his ethnological section.
Scientific ethnology he attempts without being master of it ;
scientific mythology he does not even attempt. Though he
once quotes Professor Miiller's Essay, he seems practically not
to know that there is such a thing as Comparative Mytho-
logy. That the origin of the Greek mythology is to be
sought for in some common source with the mythology of
India, of Italy, and of Scandinavia is a thought which plainly
never came into his mind.

The fact is that Mr. Gladstone has sacrificed the scientific
treatment of his subject to a supposed theological necessity.
Throughout the book he shows a strange fondness for bring-
ing in references to Scripture, and a strange mixture of
timidity and daring in his way of dealing with them. Be-

p a

68 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

cause he holds the Old Testament to be the Word of God, be-
cause he holds the Hebrews to have been God's chosen people,
he forbids us to yield any literary homage to Hebrew writers,
or any historical admiration to Hebrew warriors and statesmen.
Yet, with a .daring which many would call irreverent, he sees
a shadow of the Christian Trinity in Zeus, Poseidon, and
Ai'doneus ; he sees the seed of the woman in Phoibos Apollon
and the Divine Wisdom in Pallas Athene. Now this kind of
thing is not to be borne. It is fit only for those divines
who combine thorough weakness of intellect with a certain
amount of school-boy learning, just as mere vulgar reviling
of heathens and heathenism befits that other class of divines
who find it a hard task to construe either their Homer or
their Greek Testament. Mr. Gladstone does not indeed be-
long to the very worst form of the school ; he does not fancy
that the Greeks really borrowed, directly or indirectly, from
the Jews. He divides the Greek divinities into two classes,
Traditive and Inventive. The former he holds to come from
recollections, however fragmentary and perverted, of original
patriarchal tradition. This tradition was, among the Hebrews,
miraculously preserved. Among other nations, it was left to
its fate. It was therefore, not indeed wholly lost, but dis-
torted, 'disintegrated/ and mixed up with mere human inven-
tions. From this last source spring the Inventive deities,
pure devices cf man, embodiments of ' nature-worship,' ' pas-
sion-worship,' and mere poetic caprice. Some are of Pelasgian,
some are of Hellenic birth, some were brought in from foreign
lands. But all are mere human invention ; they do not
preserve even a distorted form of the genuine patriarchal
tradition.

Now our first answer to all this is that Mr. Gladstone's
division into ' Traditive' and ' Inventive' deities is a purely
arbitrary one. Those deities in which he personally can see
traces of primitive tradition he puts in one class, and all the
rest he puts in another. The whole thing is pure theory, with-
out a shadow of any external evidence. Another writer might
see traces of primitive tradition in Hermes and Aphrodite, and

s
IT.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 69

none at all in Athene and Apollon. And, for the reason which
we have just given, we maintain that Mr. Gladstone has not
earned for himself the right to theorize upon the subject.
It is evident that the Aryan nations, before their separa-
tion, had made certain advances in knowledge and culture,
while certain further advances were made by each separate
branch of the race after the dispersion. Now surely, what-
ever amount of primitive truth is preserved in the Hellenic
mythology must have been part of this common intellectual
stock of the whole Aryan family. If, after the dispersion,
the Hellenes learned any additional truths of which Hin-
doos or Teutons remained in ignorance, knowledge so gained
could not be unbroken patriarchal tradition; it would come
near to that special and direct biblical derivation which
Mr. Gladstone rightly casts aside. We" do not at all dog-
matically deny that traces of patriarchal tradition may
survive in the Hellenic mythology ; but we do say that
a man can never find them out by merely sitting down
with his Homer on one side and his Bible on the other.
He must first of all find out how much of the Hellenic
mythology is distinctively Hellenic, how much belongs
to the common stock of the whole Aryan family. Other-
wise he is acting exactly like a philologer of the last century
who derived some Greek word from Hebrew, without think-
ing of asking whether the root was found in German or
Sanscrit. It is highly probable that, both in language and
in belief, there is a certain element common to the Aryan
and the Semitic families. But it does not do to look for
Semitic analogies for any one Aryan language or any
one Aryan mythology. The only scientific process is, to
ask, First, What have Hellenes, Hindoos, Teutons, &c. in
common ? Secondly, What have Hebrews, Arabs, &c. in
common ? Thirdly, What have these two original stocks in
common? When Mr. Gladstone has found out the common
element in the Greek, Italian, Persian, Indian, Teutonic,
Celtic, and Slavonic mythologies, he may then fairly ask
how much of this common element is of patriarchal origin,

70 MB. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

and how much is due to human invention before the dis-
persion. Till h*e has done this, he has no right arbitrarily to
set down some Hellenic deities as.'Traditive,' and others as
' Inventive.'

And further still, even if we were in a position to deal with
a common Aryan mythology instead of with a merely Hellenic
mythology, we should still protest against the particular
kind of analogies which are sought for by Mr. Gladstone.
In the Homeric mythology he finds traces of the doctrines
of the Trinity, of the fall of man, of the promise of Messiah,
of the existence and the rebellion of Satan. Now we are here
treading on dangerous ground, as we wish, while dealing with
the present question, to avoid as far as possible all points of
dogmatic theology. But it really seems to us that Mr. Glad-
stone might just as well go to his Homer for evidence for or
against Mr. Gorham or Archdeacon Denison. We say nothing
for or against the doctrines for which either of those divines
have been called in question ; we only say that we cannot find
their confirmation or their refutation either in Homer or in
the Pentateuch. We say exactly the same of the doctrines
for which Mr. Gladstone seeks in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Surely the primitive patriarchal tradition of which Mr.
Gladstone speaks can be found nowhere else but in the book
of Genesis. And we trust that we shall give no offence to
the most orthodox mind, if we say that most of the doc-
trines of which Mr. Gladstone speaks are not to be found in
the book of Genesis. It is the very essence of Christianity to
be a religion of progression ; even before we come to actual
Christian teaching, nothing can be plainer than that far
clearer and loftier ideas of the divine nature were granted to
the Prophets than any that can be found in the Law. It
is thoroughly weak to try to prove that the contemporaries
of Abraham had equal light with the contemporaries of
Saint Paul, or even with the contemporaries of Isaiah. We
claim the right to do for Moses the same good service which
Mr. Gladstone has done for Homer. We can accept nothing
as patriarchal tradition except what we can find in a literal

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 71

and grammatical construction of the text of the book of
Genesis. We are so much in the habit of reading the Hebrew
records by the light of Christian and later Jewish glosses
that few people know what is there and what is not. We
have known people who fully believed that the book of
Genesis said, in so many words, that 'the Devil tempted
Eve,' and we have seen them stand altogether aghast at
finding that there was nothing of the kind there. Now
surely no one who reads the book of Genesis, forgetting as
far as possible all later books, will find in it any of those
doctrines of which Mr. Gladstone sees traces in the Homeric
poems. * Genesis tells us of a serpent beguiling Eve by his
natural subtlety, and of the mutual hatred thence following
between men and serpents. Genesis tells us of giants be-
gotten between the sons of God and the daughters of men.
Genesis and the books which follow it contain passages
which, if they were found in Homer, would certainly be
understood as implying highly anthropophuistic views of
Deity. It is in the image of God that man was created.
The Lord God walked in the garden .in the cool of the day.
God smelled a sweet savour from Noah's sacrifice. The Lord
went his way after communing with Abraham. The elders
saw God, and did eat and drink. Moses saw the back parts
of God, but might not see his face. On the other hand, we
find no reference whatever to a future state; we find not a
word against polygamy ; we find marriages with an aunt,
a wife's sister, a man's own half-sister, having at least the
sanction of patriarchal example. We presume not to com-
ment or to interpret ; we only say what is in the book. To
us nothing can be clearer than that, through the whole
history of Judaism and Christianity, new light has been con-
tinually given ; indeed, no Christian, to be a Christian at
all, can deny this, though he may weakly strive to escape

* [Let me say that in all this passage I simply gave the results of my own
thought. I never read a word of any of the German writers on biblical
matters, and later controversies in our own tongue had not b£gun when this
was written.]

72 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

the consequences. All Mr. Gladstone's doctrines are later
doctrines ; they are later deductions, later developements,
later revelations, if he pleases, which he has no right to set
down as forming any part of patriarchal tradition. The
personification of the Logos or the Wisdom cannot be traced
back beyond the book of Proverbs, and there it appears only in
a most rudimentary shape. Yet this is the doctrine of which
Mr. Gladstone finds a traditionary vestige in Athene1. There
is not a shadow of evidence that the ancient Hebrews had any
distinct,* if any, idea of a Divine Trinity, that they had
any idea at all of a future Deliverer at once divine and
human, or any idea of evil spirits at warfare with, or in
rebellion against, the Most High.f We find the first clear
traces of these doctrines in writings much later than the
time of Homer. Mr. Gladstone has no right to take for
granted that they were handed down from the beginning
by unwritten tradition. He brings no sort of proof, and all
probability is against it. He cannot show that they formed
any part of the patriarchal creed ; he has therefore no right
to look for even the most perverted vestiges of them in the
primitive mythology of Hellas.

While dealing with Mr. Gladstone's treatment of this
portion of his subject, we cannot help expressing our
amazement at the chapter which concludes the Olympian
volume ; that headed, ' The Office of the Homeric Poems
in relation to that of the early Books of Holy Scripture.'
We must copy the following passage at length : —

' Should we, like some writers of the present day, cite the Pentateuch
before the tribunal of the mere literary critic, we may strain our generosity

* We speak thus guardedly, because of two remarkable passages, which will
at once occur to the reader, in the early part of Genesis. But few scholars
now believe that even these passages have the meaning which was formerly
so often attributed to them, and certainly the general mode of speaking
throughout that book would not suggest the idea of a plurality of persons in
the Godhead.

+ If we rightly understand Mr. Gladstone, he looks upon Kronos as a
representative of Satan, and yet holds that the Kronid brothers represent the
divine Trinity. One stands aghast at this amazing piece of theogony.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 73

at the cost of justice, and still only be able to accord to it a secondary place.
The mistake surely is to bring it there at all, or to view its author otherwise
than as the vehicle of a divine purpose, which uses all instruments, great,
insignificant, or middling, according to the end in view ; but of which all the
instruments are perfect, by reason, not of what is intrinsic to themselves, but,
simply and solely, of their exact adaptation to that end.

If, however, we ought to decline to try the Judaic code by its merely po-
litical merits, much more ought we to apply the same principle to the sublimity
of the prophecies, and to the deep spiritual experiences of the Psalms. In the
first, we have a voice speaking from God, with the marks that it is of God so
visibly imprinted upon it, that the mind utterly refuses to place the prophetical
books in the scale against any production of human genius. And all that
is peculiar in our conception of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, does not tend so much
to make them eminent among men, as to separate them from men. Homer,
on the other hand, is emphatically and above all things human : he sings by
the spontaneous and the unconscious indwellings of nature; whereas these are
as the trumpet of unearthly sounds, and cannot, more than Balaam could,
depart from that which is breathed into them, to utter either less or more.

But most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of philoso-
phical or poetical competition. In that book, for well-nigh three thousand
years, the piety of saints has found its most refined and choicest food ; to such
a degree, indeed, that the rank and quality of the religious frame may in
general be tested, at least negatively, by the height of its relish for them.
There is the whole music of the human heart, when touched by the hand of
the Maker, in all its tones that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear,
for every joy and pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude
and rest. There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul
to God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had its
foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged book it was
permitted to anticipate His coming.

We can no more, then, compare Isaiah and the Psalms with Homer, than
we can compare David's heroism with Diomed's, or the prowess of the
Israelites when they drove Philistia before them with the valour of the
Greeks at Marathon or Plataa, at Issus or Arbela. We shall most nearly
do justice to each by observing carefully the boundary -lines of their re-
spective provinces.'

All this is evidently heartfelt, and it almost deserves the
name of eloquence ; yet it is to us simply unintelligible.
Mr. Gladstone, by way of reverence for certain writings,
actually goes out of his way to disparage them. Why cannot
he accept the Hebrew writings for all that he says, and yet
not deny the palpable fact that they are also the literature of
the Hebrew nation, — its whole literature, historical, political,
and poetical, as well as strictly theological? Why should
the Pentateuch, as a literary work, be content with a secondary

74 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

place? Could Homer or ^Eschylus or Dante surpass the
grandeur of the Song- of Moses ? What is there that ' sepa-
rates Isaiah and Jeremiah from men' ? What is more truly
and beautifully human than the lament of Jeremiah over the
city sitting solitary which once was full of people? What
Lombard dreaming of the rending of the yoke of Habsburg,
what Greek or Bosnian looking for the final overthrow of the
trembling Ottoman, could desire a truer paean of a nation's
vengeance than Isaiah's hymn of triumph over the doomed
tyrant of Babel?* What is there in the noblest of the
Psalms, in the seventy-eighth, in the hundred and fourth
and those which follow it, which need ' refuse the challenge
of poetical competition' against the noblest poetry of the
whole* wo rid? And the last paragraph, seemingly designed
to explain, only makes matters darker still. We do not
compare the prowess of the Israelites at Gath or Gob with
that of the Greeks at Plataia or Arbela, simply because
we doubt whether the Hebrews knew any such skilful order
as the Dorian phalanx, or wielded any weapon so effective as
the Macedonian sarissa. But why we may not compare the
heroism of David and that of Diomedes is altogether beyond
our understanding. May we compare Greeks and Jews only
in their sins, and not in their virtues? Mr. Gladstone
himself, in one place, draws out an elaborate comparison
between the demeanour of Bathsheba and that of Helen.
But must we look upon the mutual love of Jonathan and
David as less touching, less thoroughly human, than that of
Achilleus and Patroklos, because one is recorded in a Hellenic,
and the other in a Hebrew volume ?

We wonder then not a little at the strange mixture of
daring and timidity which Mr. Gladstone shows in his way
of dealing with the Old-Testament records; and we dissent
altogether from the way in which he tries to connect those
records with the Greek mythology. We therefore altogether
reject that division into Traditive and Inventive deities

* [Surely that glorious hymn never sounded in men's ears with a more
thrilling voice than in September 1870.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 75

which forms the groundwork of his whole system. And
with our notions of the relations between Pelasgians and
Hellenes, we see hardly more ground for his division of
the Inventive deities into Pelasgian and Hellenic, or for his
derivation of some of them from Phoenician or other foreign
sources. We hold the Greek mythology to be, exactly like
the Greek language, a Hellenic developement from the
common primaeval stock of the Aryan races. The scientific
problem is to show how much is shared by other Aryan
nations, how much is distinctively Hellenic. The next en-
quiry would be, what Asiatic elements were mingled in the
later Greek religion after the date of the Greek settlements
in Asia. It is clear that the later Greeks practised both
Barbarian rites and Barbarian vices ; but in Homer we find
no trace of either. Of these two questions, the latter hardly
comes within Mr. Gladstone's scope ; the former, in the
view he has chosen to take of his subject, certainly does so ;
but he has nowhere even tried to examine it.

We think then that the general principle of Mr. Glad-
stone's ' Olympus ' is altogether inadmissible. But we can
hardly speak too highly of the services in detail which he
has done to the study of the Homeric religion. The dramatic
aspect of the several deities, the conception which Homer had
formed of each, their powers, their functions, their physical
and moral attributes, the features in which Homer's idea of
each differs from that of later writers, — all these points have
been studied by him with minute and affectionate care, and
they are brought out in his work with a fullness and accuracy
of detail, with an union of taste and moral feeling, such as
we have never seen before. Every reader of the poems must
have remarked the vast superiority of Apollon and Athene
over all their fellow divinities ; but few probably have taken
the trouble to bring together the evidence of their superiority
in the way in which it has been brought together by Mr.
Gladstone. They are clearly not subject either to the same
physical restrictions or to the same moral weaknesses as
the other dwellers on Olympos. All this, according to

76 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

Mr. Gladstone, shows them to be Traditive deities ; the proofs
which he brings together to that end, are most valuable for
other purposes, but the main argument altogether fails. For
Zeus too is a Traditive deity, and Zeus is pursued by Mr.
Gladstone with a relentless enmity. Smile-loving Aphrodite,
golden Aphrodite, fares no better. Mr. Gladstone is a stern
moralist, and will have no pity on the transgressions of either
father or daughter. Altogether we think that Mr. Gladstone's
picture of Olympos is a little over-drawn. He tells us that
the Homeric men are much better than the Homeric Gods.
This, to a certain extent, is true; though Mr. Gladstone is
certainly a little over-partial to the Homeric men, and, we
think, a little over-severe upon the Homeric Gods. But is
not something of what Mr. Gladstone complains almost in-
herent in any polytheistic system? May not its rudiments
be found in every attempt of man to conceive of Deity at
all ? The Homeric Gods live regardless of the restraints
which they themselves impose on men. Their moral standard
is lower ; they are more selfish, more capricious, more sensual,
than their worshippers. Now it is hardly possible to conceive
of a divine being as governed by the same moral laws which
rule mankind. Many Christian divines tell us that morality
is simply conformity to the Divine will. The Deity is here
looked at as the maker of the moral law, but not as being
himself bound by it; and there is probably no religion
in which devout men do not find difficulties in recon-
ciling what they believe of the object of their worship
with the rules which they follow in shaping their own
earthly life. Now, in a monotheistic creed, the Deity may
be thus placed, as it were, above human morality, and no
immoral influences need follow. But when we come to a
polytheistic system, to many anthropophuistic Gods dwell-
ing in an organized society, in such a case to be above
human morality easily slides into being below human mo-
rality. A monotheistic religion looks on the Godhead as
all-wise and all-powerful. Polytheism cannot make each of
its deities separately all-wise and all-powerful ; power and

II.] . HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 77

wisdom must at any rate be divided among- them. The
idea of deity in any case implies superior happiness to that
of mortals ; the Gods, free from death and from old age,
cannot lead man's life of pain and labour. But, if so,
they can hardly be made subject to the rules of law and
responsibility in the same manner as their worshippers.
Each God may find hindrances to the carrying out of his
personal will ; but the Gods, as a body, must exercise a will
uncontrollable and irresponsible. Deity, in any case, carries
out its own pleasure ; but it is easy to see what must be
the pleasure of a company of anthropophuistic Gods. The
loftiest virtues of man are those which arise most directly
out of the imperfection of man's nature : deity allows no
scope for their exercise. No wonder then if the Homeric
Gods are selfish, capricious, and sensual ; it is rather to the
credit of Homer and his contemporaries that they are no-
thing- worse. The Gods of many mythologies are positively
malevolent and cruel, — attributes which we can hardly fasten
even upon the Ares of Homer. The Hellenic Gods may be
both sensual and selfish; but neither cruelty nor obscenity
forms any part of their worship. The Hellenic Gods are at
least men ; those of many mythologies are brutes or fiends.

Closely connected with all this is one of the most remark-
able features of Mr. Gladstone's work ; the ascetic, the almost
monastic, sternness of its moral tone. We honour him alike
for the loftiness and for the straightforwardness of his
teaching ; it is certainly far better to talk with him in plain
words about ' lust ' and ' adultery,' than to speak in the
common flippant way of ' amours,' ' intrigues,' ' gallantries,'
and the like. We believe that Mr. Gladstone is essentially
right ; but he certainly goes too far ; in short, he becomes
monastic. It is in this respect, above all others, that he is
unfairly hard upon his Gods and unfairly partial to his men.
The first aspect of the Homeric creed in this respect shows
us two opposite phaenomena. On the one hand, the pas-
sions of the Gods are far more unrestrained than those of
men ; but, on the other hand, there is in Olympos something

78 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

like that monastic reverence for virginity of which we find no
trace on the Hellenic earth. The sexual morality of the
Homeric Greeks was manifestly far purer than that of their
successors, far purer than that of Eastern nations. But of
the mediaeval notion of virginity there is not a trace. The
virgin must remain a virgin till she becomes a matron, but a
virgin she must some time cease to be. In Olympos, on the
other hand, the Gods, Zeus above all, practise polygamy,
adultery, and seduction, without scruple. But to set against
that, we have in Athene, in Artemis, in Hestie, the virgin cha-
racter as distinctly marked as in any mediaeval saint; it is
more remarkable still if, as seems highly probable, we are to
look on the same character as a feature of the male deity
Apollon. It seems as if two opposite notions were striving for
the mastery. It seems naturally to follow that anthropophu-
istic beings should beget and be begotten ; and, once granting
this, it would be hard to conceive how powers raised above
human law and responsibility could be tied down by the
restraints of human matrimonial rules. To be placed above
humanity becomes, in this respect, almost the same thing as
to be placed below it. Yet it is clear that in all this there is
something very repugnant to any idea of deity, especially to
any idea of female deity. As regular monogamy was the idea
of the divine condition least easy to be imagined, the Greek
carried out the two opposite conceptions in all their fullness on
either side. He pictured to himself libertine deities and virgin
deities, but few or no regular and respectable married couples.
Hence we get the profligate Zeus and the pure Apollon, the
adulteress Aphrodite and the chaste maiden Athene. The
purity of Apollon and Athene is brought out strongly by
Mr. Gladstone in his portraits of them as ' Traditive' deities ;
but he has hardly given prominence enough to the general
idea of virgin deities as a set-off against the idea of libertine
deities.

If the sexual vices of the gods are looked on as the
natural result of their position, it would seem that lack of
shame about such matters would almost unavoidably follow.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 79

Mr. Gladstone complains bitterly that so it is : men and-
women, if they err, are at least ashamed of their errors ; Gods
and Goddesses unblushingly avow theirs. But we are not
sure that such is altogether the case. It would be quite
logical if it were so ; but an anthropophuistic creed would
easily, at the expense of logic, transport shame, as well as
other human feelings, into the breasts of the immortals.
Now surely the whole song of Demodokos assumes such a
feeling of shame. Ares and Aphrodite are heartily ashamed
of being caught ; while it is the same feeling of shame — that
eu8co? about which Mr. Gladstone has much to say — which
hinders the Goddesses from coming to see them in the toils
of Hephaistos. Mr. Gladstone says that the trespass of an
immortal is never dealt with in so tender and delicate a
tone as that of the maiden Astyoche,

irapOevos alSoit], vitepwiov tlaavafiaaa.

If we may break Mr. Gladstone's canon of never stepping
beyond the Iliad and Odyssey, we would appeal to the
beautiful ' Homeric ' hymn to Aphrodite. Mr. Gladstone's
rule seems to be, that after Homer things could never get
better, but only get worse. Now certainly the Aphrodite of
the hymn is very far from the grossly sensual Aphrodite on
whom Mr. Gladstone is so severe. Certainly, as Colonel
Mure says, * ' The author has here treated a licentious
subject, not merely with grace and elegance, but with an
entire freedom from meretricious ornament.' Colonel Mure
looks on the poem, and we fully go along with his opinion,
as being probably indeed not Homeric, but certainly as being
in no way unworthy of Homer.

The morals of the Gods can hardly be separated from the
morals of the heroes. As we said, the sexual morality of
heroic Greece is far above that of later Greece, far above that
of any Eastern people. The higher position of women in
the Homeric age has been admirably worked out by Mr.
Gladstone. He also distinctly brings forward the marked

* Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. iii. p. 346.

80 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

difference between early and later Greece in the absence in
early times of those strange perversions of the passions which
really had a most important effect upon later Greek society.
We must remember that the tie which bound Harmodios and
Aristogeiton, which united men like Solon, Aristeides, and
Epameinondas to the objects of their affections, was not the
mere brutality of a Turkish pasha; the whole set of senti-
ments implied in the notion of romantic love had been thus
strangely turned away from their natural direction. Hence
this strange side of later Greek society went hand in hand
with the later Greek seclusion of women. Both customs
doubtless, notwithstanding the strange assertion of Herodotus
the other way, were corruptions which were brought into
Greece from an Eastern source. The harlot again, — a charac-
ter familiar enough in later Greece, not unknown at an
early stage of Oriental life, — is nowhere seen in the Homeric
poems. But Mr. Gladstone certainly tries to make out some-
what too strict a monogamy for his heroes. His notion is
that the only breach of the strict law of marriage which the
heroic code tolerated was that each of the chiefs, when away
from home before Troy, allowed himself a single captive con-
cubine. Briseis, in his view, is the wife of Achilleus, or at least
she stands to him in a relation hardly to be distinguished from
marriage.* The damsels offered to him by Agamemnon were,
according to Mr. Gladstone, not intended as concubines. To
us it is clear that they were to be whatever Briseis was ; they
and Briseis are classed together. In Agamemnon's offer f we
find the words —

Suffft 5* iiTTCi fvvaiKas a pv novas, epy' tlSvias,
At<r/9«5as, &s, ort \ta$ov tvKTifiivrjv f\es avrbs,

t r6rf «aAA« tv'tKcav <pv\a -yvvat/wv.
piv rot Swatt, /i«rd 6' tffatrai, fy TOT' dvrjvpa

* [Something, I conceive, like the marriage more Danico of which we hear
a good deal in early Norman and English history. It must be remembered that
Briseis herself (II. xix. 299) draws the distinction between her own position
and that of a wife.]

t II. ix. 270. [Cf. xix. 246.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 81

So again in the speech of Aias in the same book * —

ffol 5' ak\rjKTOV Tf KO.KOV T«

Bvfjidv tvl arijOtaffi Ofol Oiaav, tivt/ea tcovprjt
otr/s' vw 5f rot lirrd naplffxofuv «£ox" dpiaras,
d'AAa Tt TroAA' tirl r^ai.

Were these Lesbian women to be prized only as epy' elbvlai ?
One of their countrywomen certainly was thought worthy
to fill the place of Briseis herself. When the messengers
were gone,

'Ax'M-cvs fuSf ftvxip n\tair]s ttwfyemf
rlf 5" &pa napKareXfUTO yvvfy, rrjf Ata/366tv 7)76,
, Aiofj,-f]5rj Ka

The fact is that the heroes evidently allowed- themselves full
Mahometan privileges with regard to ' those whom their right
hands did possess.' Regular marriages were the law of heroic
Hellas ; adultery was abhorred ; prostitution was unheard of ;
but concubinage with captives clearly brought no discredit
on either party. And is not the relation of Gods to mortals
very like that of conquerors to captives ? The irregularity in
either case was not so much immoral as extra-moral ; it im-
plied no corruption and it carried with it no dishonour. And
it may be doubted whether, on this particular point, historic
Greece was not more scrupulous than heroic Greece. The
conduct which is recorded of Achilleus as a matter of course is
brought up as an unheard-of crime against Alkibiades. Alki-
biades, who counselled the destruction of Melos, had a son by
a Melian captive. This, according to Andokides or whoever
speaks in his name, was something worse than the evil deeds of
all the sinners represented on the tragic stage, and the birth of
the child is spoken of as more unlawful than that of Aigisthos. J

* n. ix. 632. t ibid. 659.

J *Os rrjXiKaiiras iroteirai TUV a./MprrjijArctn' virtpfio\a$, laart wtpl r&v Mj?A(W
•yvuiprjv airo<}>r]vdfi.fvos t£av$pairo8i£(a0a.i, -npi&fitvos "fwaTica Ttav oJL-^(jM.K^Ttav vlov
(£ aiiTTJs irfiroirjrai, fcs roaovry irapavoftxartpois AlfiaOov ytfovtv, S>ar' IK TUV
(•)(9iaroiv d\\7jA.ots trityvict, teal riav oiKfioTaTow virapxft avrif TO tffxara T°v* P&V
•nciroitj/ctvai TOVS 5i irfirovQivac &£tov 6i rty r6\fiav avrov aatpfffrfpov Irt 5i(\0(iv
(which is done at some length). 'AvSoK. KO.T. 'A\K. 22. Surely the moral of
the case is not greatly affected by the difference between t\tt alrb* and ^vd^v
tvos (favSpawoSi^fffOcu, between Atff066fv fyf and wpidfitvot.
G

82 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

The language is certainly exaggerated ; the story may be true
or false ; the speech may be genuine or spurious ; but there is
the sentiment, one which the lovers of Chryseis and Briseis
would certainly not have entered into.

The language of Homer on all these subjects is simply
natural. He is neither prudish nor prurient, neither monastic
nor meretricious. He sets forth the whole life of his Gods and
of his heroes ; whether he is speaking of Zeus or of Achilleus,
of Alkinoos or of Odysseus, the companion of his bed, whether
wife or concubine, is recorded in precisely the same matter-
of-fact way as the materials of his dinner. Mr. Gladstone is
scandalized at the advice which Thetis gives, in plain language,
to her mourning son,"* and he comforts himself that it is only
a divine and not a human mother who uses it. But does
Thetis do anything more than say straightforwardly what
other people think, but do not say? Make the language a
little less direct ; talk about

4 Lovely Thais sits beside thee ;
Take the gifts the gods provide thee;'

and it may with propriety be read aloud in a family : dilate
and dilute it a little more into mere commonplaces about
love and beauty, and no ears and no tongues will shrink
from what is essentially the same doctrine. Homer doubt-
less thought that he was simply stating an undoubted fact
of man's nature, the truth of which the wise Odysseus and
the chaste Penelopeia did not scruple practically to acknow-
ledge. f

We have dwelled perhaps over long on these subjects be-
cause of the prominence which Mr. Gladstone has given to
them, and the very curious way in which he has treated them.
But his general picture of the heroic Greeks is very true and

* Tficvov f'/ioc, rto H*XPl* oSvpofitvo* Hal
a^y tStat KpaSirjv, fjLtfj.vTjfj.tvof oiiSe n ffirov,
OUT' ti-v>,$ ; afafftiv 5i fwcuiei vtp tv (piXdrijTi
fuffffffO'. II. xxiv. 128.

Achilleus, as Mr. Gladstone says (ii. 464), makes no direct answer ; but, later
in the book (xxiv. 676), he practically accepts his mother's counsel.
t Od. xxiii. 295-300.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 83

noble. There is in it indeed somewhat of exaggeration.
Mr. Gladstone, after so many years in the House of Com-
mons, seems to be getting rather tired of the nineteenth
century. The age of Perikles or Demosthenes is one too like
to his own to give him any relief ; he plunges with increased
enthusiasm into a state of things more distant and more un-
like. How thoroughly and genially he has gone into the
life and feelings of those old times may be seen from his
highly wrought description of the life of an Achaian of the
heroic times.* It is one of the gems of the book : it would,
as a description, be a gem in any book; but we suspect
that Homer himself would hardly have known his heroes
again in a picture from which nearly all the shades are
left out.

The last volume is, we think, on the whole, the best of the
three. It gives more room for the exercise of the higher
qualities of the author's mind, and less for the display of
his ethnological and theological crotchets. On the section
' Thalassa,' as we before said, we give no opinion ; nor do
we mean to dwell at length on some minute and veiy in-
genious criticisms on the sense of number and of colour
in Homer, which are contained in the section ' Aoidos.' We
have then the sections ' Agore' and 'Ilios/ and the remain-
ing portions of ' Aoidos,' left before us.

The section ' Agore ' is one which could hardly have been
written by any man but one in whom the characters of
statesman and scholar are so happily united as Mr. Gladstone.
Brim-full as it is of true Homeric scholarship, almost every
page contains some little touch or other which shows that
it comes from one who is no solitary student, but a man to
whom the (BovXai and the ayopai of real life are matters of
every- day experience. In several parts of his argument, Mr.
Gladstone grapples very successfully with Mr. Grote. Mr.
Grote's strong point lies in historic Greece ; his great glory is

* Vol. ii. 468—470.
G a -

84 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

to have vindicated the character of democratic Athens. But
to this darling object of his affections he has sacrificed some
other objects not wholly unworthy of regard. Like the
Thracian potentate in Aristophanes,

iv roifft TOI'XOJ* typa<f>', 'Adrjvaioi iea\oi

but he has forgotten that something worthy of his admiration
might have been found in federal Achaia, something perhaps
even in monarchic Macedonia, still more than either in the
common source of all, in the institutions of heroic Hellas.
Mr. Grote can see nothing in the Homeric state of things
but a degrading picture of submission on the part of the
people towards their princes, This is simply because Homer
does not record any formal division, any solemn telling of votes,
such as Mr. Grote is familiar with both in Saint Stephen's
and upon the Pnyx. Also perhaps because of the chastise-
ment dealt out by Odysseus to Thersites, which would hardly
appear scandalous on the other side of the Atlantic.* Mr.
Gladstone, less enamoured of democracy, while an equal hater
of tyranny, sees more clearly into the truth of the matter.
Possibly he goes too far the other way, for it would seem that he
looks on the institutions of historic Greece as corruptions rather
than developements of the heroic model. Mr. Grote complains
that in the Homeric Assembly nobody but the princes talk,
nobody at all votes, and that the will of the King of Men
always prevails. He is therefore half inclined to look upon
the whole thing as a sham. Mr. Gladstone reminds him that
the other princes often oppose Agamemn6n, and that the
mass of the army, if they do not talk, at any rate cheer.
Now to cheer, as he most truly argues, is in truth to take
a very practical share in the debate. Mr. Gladstone most
happily compares the Homeric Assembly to such a scene as
an English county meeting, where it seldom happens that
the speaking goes beyond a select few, where a volunteer

* [I was thinking, I believe, of the dastardly attack on Mr. Sumner in the
Senate-House— an act largely approved in the Southern States — which was
then a fresh story.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 85

speaker is far from meeting' with encouragement, where a vote
taken otherwise than by acclamation is decidedly the excep-
tion, but which yet affords a genuine expression of public
feeling, and where a vote contrary to the popular will could not
possibly be carried. Within the Hellenic world the Homeric
Agore went on in the Military Assembly of the Macedonians,
where Alexander and a few chiefs have most of the talk,
where we do not read of any divisions or tellers, but where
the mass of the army still know how to express a real will of
their own, and where, if they sometimes condemned, they some-
times also acquitted, those whom their King and demigod
denounced to them as traitors. The Homeric Assembly is in
everything a youthful institution ; it shares the nature of all
youthful institutions ; it is imperfect, but it is a reality as far
as it goes. The early institutions of a nation may fail of fully
carrying out their ends, but there is no make-belief as to what
those ends are. We may well believe that the Old-English
Witenagemot was an imperfect way of expressing public
opinion ; the King and a few great Earls had doubtless most
of the talk; and to cry, 'Nay, nay,' instead of ' Yea, yea,' was
most likely a rare and extreme measure. But we may be sure
that the spirit of the thing was exactly opposite to the spirit
which has brought about nearly the same external phenomena
in Louis Napoleon's Legislative Assembly. There is all the
difference in the world between an Assembly which dares not
oppose and an Assembly which has not yet formed the wish to
oppose. In the one case it is the relation of slaves to their
master, in the other it is that of children to their father.
Mr. Gladstone remarks of the Homeric Agore, as Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton does of the English Witenagemot, that in both
we find that public speaking is a real instrument of public
policy ; and, wherever this is so, they both most truly argue
that the real essence of liberty is there. Odysseus and God-
wine could sway assemblies of men by the force of eloquence.
We need no further argument to show that the assemblies
which they addressed were assemblies of freemen.

86 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

Of the sections 'Ilios' and 'Aoidos,' some of the most
important parts, those namely which relate to the characters
of the poems, run closely into one another. The latter part
of ' Aoidos ' consists of articles reprinted from the Quarterly
Review. We do not know in what order the different parts
of Mr. Gladstone's book were written ; but we find a cer-
tain amount of repetition in these two parts. This strikes
us especially in the estimate of the characters of Paris —
why not give him his Homeric name of Alexander,* and
shut out Virgilian ideas altogether ? — and of Argeian Helen.
But this estimate is one of the very best things in Mr.
Gladstone's book, and we can well afford to have it twice over.
Mr. Gladstone nowhere shines more than in dealing with the
persons of the Homeric tale, and in distinguishing the true
Homeric conceptions from the perversions palmed off upon
the world by Euripides and Virgil. Of the whole dealing
of Virgil with the Trojan story Mr. Gladstone has made
a thoroughly withering exposure. A modern Roman could
not be an old Achaian ; the court-poet of Augustus could not
rival the nature and simplicity of the singer of the Hellenic
people; thus far the fault was that of the age and not of the
man. But Virgil might have spared us his wilful perversions
both of great matters and of small, alike of the character
of Helen and of the comparative bigness of Simoeis and
Skamandros. From the Cyclic poets down to Dryden and
Racine, the whole world seems to have conspired to disfigure
the glorious conceptions of Homer, to mar alike the unrivalled
power and the incomparable delicacy of his touch. Odysseus,
the wise and valiant, becomes a vulgar rogue; Achilleus
sinks into a mere brutal soldier, far below the Homeric Aias ;
the brave, the generous, the affectionate Menelaos becomes
a coward and a sophist, ^schylus alone seems to have kept
some little reverence for the heroes and for him who drew
them. He has given us an Agamemnon who perhaps unduly

* The double name is curious. Homer does sometimes use the name
Paris, but far more commonly that of Alexander. But the latter name
gradually disappears in later writers.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 87

surpasses the Agamemnon of Homer ; but in return even
he seems not to have been able to touch without defilement
the Homeric conception of Achilleus and Patroklos.* But
the wretched treatment which the Homeric characters have
undergone rises to its height in the ruthless way in
which later writers have marred and defiled the master-
piece even of Homer's art, the picture of the Homeric Helen.
Even Colonel Mure, who has done so much for Homer and
the Homeric personages, here fails us ; it has been reserved
for Mr. Gladstone to set once more before us the Helen of
Homer in all her beauty. The Helen of the later poets is a
vain and wanton adulteress ; the Trojce et patriot communis
Erinnys, who can at best only excuse herself by laying her
own sins to the charge of Fate and Aphrodite. Not such is
the Helen of the Iliad and the Odyssey. There the crime of
Alexander is not seduction, but high-handed violence ; he is
not the corrupter, but the ravisher : Helen is not the willing
partner, but the passive victim ; her fault is at most a half-
reluctant submission after the fact. No sign of passion or
affection does she show for her worthless lover ; her heart
yearns for Greece and Menelaos, for her forsaken home and
her worse than motherless child. The Helen of Homer is,
in fact, the most perfect, perhaps indeed the only, example of
humility and repentance of the Christian type conceived by
a heathen writer. Every word on which a worse view of her
conduct might be founded is put into her own mouth ; like a
true penitent, she despises herself, and paints her own doings
in colours in which no one else would have dared to paint
them. Readers who carry about with them the vulgar post-
Homeric conception have always stumbled at the Helen of
the Odyssey, restored to her hearth and home and to her
husband's love, as though she had never gone in the well-

* The strange fragments of the MvpjuSovu certainly show that ^Eschylus
was guilty of degrading the relations of Achilleus and Patroklos, just as the
calumnious pen of Niebuhr has degraded the equally beautiful picture of
Alexander and Hephaistion.

88 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

oared ships, nor come to the citadel of Troy.* . But on the
Helen of the Iliad, far more sinned against than sinning,
the Helen of the Odyssey follows as the natural afterpiece.
All that Mr. Gladstone has said on these two characters of
Paris and Helen is worthy the deepest attention of every
Homeric student. Had he written nothing else, this alone
would be enough to place him in the first rank of Homeric
critics.f

The whole section ' Ilios ' is highly interesting and in-
genious ; but some things, as usual, strike us as being over-
done. It is here, above all, that Mr. Gladstone treats the Iliad
too much as a chronicle in verse. He admits indeed in words
that the question of historical truth and falsehood is not
altogether to the point ; that, in any case, it is the part of the
critic distinctly to find out what was the conception in the
mind of the poet, whether that conception was historical or
fictitious. He admits also in words that, whether as chronicler
or as poet, Homer was not bound to give us the same minute
picture of the life of Troy as he gives us of the life of Greece.
But in practice Mr. Gladstone hardly carries out his theory.
His exaggerated notion of the historical trustworthiness of the
Iliad leads him to seek for historical signs of Trojan manners
and institutions in every single word of the poet which can
anyhow be pressed into such a service. Now we have ad-
mitted that Homer is a real historical witness, at least for a
real state of things in Greece. But, even if we fully admitted
the historical reality of the Trojan War, we could not admit

* oiiK £<TT' trvfios \6yos olroy
ov yap l/3a$ tv vrjvfflv tvfff\/Aoti,
ov5' iKfo irfpyafM Tpoia$. — Stesichoros' Palinodia.

t While Mr. Gladstone's version of Paris and Helen is undoubtedly that
which best harmonizes the various statements in different parts of the Iliad
and Odyssey, we still think that he builds rather too much upon the mere use
of the word apirdfa. Surely, as far as we understand such matters, the two
processes run so much into one another that apvAfa might be not inaccurately
used of a case in which the element of seduction overcame the element of
violence. And what says Herodotus of this whole class of legends ? SJjAa yap
8») on, tl fit) aural c/3oi>Ac'aro, ovx kv fipird^ovro. i. 4.

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 89

Homer as an equally trustworthy authority for Trojan affairs.
He would assuredly describe the Trojans after the pattern of
the Greeks of his own day, or at the utmost — though even
this is supposing a rather unlikely striving after accuracy —
after the pattern of the inhabitants of the Troad in his own
day. But we have no right to assume that either of these
pictures would be an accurate representation of the historical
Trojans, if historical Trojans there ever were. Again, we
have said that in no case was Homer bound to be equally
minute in his descriptions of Greek and of Trojan affairs.
Negative arguments therefore prove very little. Homer's
silence as to the existence of any Greek practice in Troy
does not prove that he purposely meant to imply that it did
not exist there. But hence the opposite line of argument
gains increased strength. Any positive account of things
Trojan is of great importance. And here the minute re-
searches of Mr. Gladstone have brought out some very curious
points. Everybody has doubtless observed that Priam lives
in clearly marked polygamy, while the Greek princes at most
practise concubinage. But everybody probably has not
observed that, while in Greece the women attract the love
of the Gods, in Troy the men attract the love of the God-
desses. Again, in Greece we hear little or nothing about
priests, but a great deal about prophets. In Troy, considering
our slender means of knowledge, the priests cut a great
figure. These touches cannot be accidental. They may be
genuine elder traditions ; they may be the result of Homer's
own observations on that later Dardanian dynasty for whose
historical being we hold him to be a trustworthy witness.
Nor can it be without some reason or other that Homer
always dwells with such delight upon the good and valiant
Lykians. They are clearly the only people on the hostile
side whom he looked upon as worthy foes of his own
countrymen. We do not know whether it is to the purpose
or not, but it certainly is a curious coincidence that, while
Achaian and Lykian are the two names in Europe and in
Asia which Homer most delights to honour, so it was in the

90 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

Achaian and Lykian Confederations that the greatest share
of freedom and good government lingered on till all was
engulfed in the universal dominion of Rome.*

Homer's general picture of his Trojans as compared with
his Greeks is very skilfully commented on by Mr. Gladstone.
The Trojans are a kindred people; they are not widely dis-
tinguished from the Greeks in manners, religion, or polity.
They are not papfiapoQavoi ; they are not a\\60pooi avdp^noi.
No such broad line parts them off from the Hellenic world as
that which parts off the savage Kyklopes and Laistrygonians,
or even the wholly foreign Egyptians and Phoenicians. But,
though they are clearly a kindred people, they are no less
clearly in every way, as men and as soldiers, an inferior people.
But they are not too greatly inferior. They are inferior enough
to be beaten ; but they are not so inferior as to make it
inglorious to beat them. This train of ideas, in which Homer's
patriotism plainly rejoiced, is very minutely and ingeniously
worked out by Mr. Gladstone.

So far as we can conjecture, the picture thus given by
Homer may be supposed fairly to represent the facts of the
case. If by the Trojans we understand the race whom the
./Eolian and Ionian colonists found in possession of the
western coast of Asia, one can hardly doubt their near
kindred with the Greeks. Everything tends to show that
they belonged to that race, call it Pelasgian or what we
will, of which the Hellenic nation formed the most
illustrious member. The little we find recorded of them in
authentic history — the local nomenclature of their country,
which corresponds in so striking a way with that of the
other side of the ^Egsean — the ease with which the whole
land was hellenized, — all point to them, along with Sikels,
Epeirots, and Macedonians, as a kind of undeveloped Greeks,
capable of receiving full Hellenic culture, though not capable
of developing it for themselves. This exactly falls in with

* [This parallel came home to me again in the History of Federal Govern-
ment, i. 216.]

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 91

the true Homeric portrait of the Trojans. But here again
the true Homeric portrait must be carefully distinguished
from the later shapes which it puts on in the hands of Sopho-
kles, Euripides, and Virgil. In their hands every touch of
Homer's picture is lost. Achaians and Trojans are broadly
distinguished as "EAAqves and fidpfiapoi. The subjects of
Priam are degraded into Phrygians. The Achaians sometimes
figure as Dorians, sometimes as Pelasgians. Homer is, on all
these points, probable and self-consistent. Euripides treats
them in a spirit about as historical as when he makes the
supposed wantonness^ of Argeian Helen the natural result of
the scanty clothing which the discipline of Lykourgos allotted
to the virgins of Dorian Sparta.

Not the least, to our mind, of Mr. Gladstone's services
to Homer is his defence of the ninth book of the Iliad.
In his section 'Aoidos' he has thoroughly overthrown Mr.
Grote's idea of an Achilleid developed into an Iliad, and he
has fully vindicated the plot of the poem in its received
form. Mr. Grote thinks the ninth book inconsistent with
much that follows; all possible satisfaction has been offered
Achilleus, and yet in later books he still wishes to see
Agamemnon and the Greeks humbled and suppliant before
him. Mr. Gladstone answers that in the ninth book no
real satisfaction is offered to the wounded spirit of the
hero. Agamemnon strives, as it were, to buy his return by
costly offers, which, in plain truth, are simply bribes. But
there is no real atonement, no humiliation, no confession of
error. There is therefore no real compensation to the injured
honour of Achilleus. The wrath of the hero was not to be
appeased by gifts, not even by the restitution of Briseis.
He need not have given her up, and he refuses to receive her
again. Such a feeling as the wrath of Achilleus was not to
be bought off by gifts, even if it might have been appeased
by repentance. Homer gives it a far grander and more
characteristic end ; it is neither bought off nor appeased ; it
is swallowed up in a still mightier passion. In the grief of

92 MR. GLADSTONE'S [ESSAY

Achilleus for the loss of Patroklos, in his longing to avenge
him, no room is left in his heart for memory of the wrong
done to him by Agamemnon. In this view, the ninth book,
the record of the fruitless embassy, is altogether needful to
the developement of the story. And, as part of the picture
of Achilleus, as a specimen of the grand old heroic rhetoric,
no part of the poems surpasses it. Those few words of
sarcasm, which Mr. Gladstone is so fond of quoting as the
climax of Achilleus' oratory,

povvoi <(>i\fov
'Arpt'tScu ;

might alone have made the fortune of a poet or a rhe-
torician.

We thus part from these noble volumes, worthy alike of
their author and of their subject, the freshest and most genial
tribute to ancient literature which has been paid even by an
age rich in such offerings. Mr. Gladstone will not rate our
admiration the less because we have plainly stated our wide
dissent from some important parts of his book. He has, we
think, dealt with ethnology without the needful training, and
he has treated mythology from a wholly false point of view.
But he has done such justice to Homer and his age as
Homer has never received out of his own land. He has vin-
dicated the true position of the greatest of poets ; he has
cleared his tale and its actors from the misrepresentations
of ages. With an ordinary writer, we might end with the
almost conventional compliment, that we trust we are not
meeting him for the last time. With Mr. Gladstone we feel
that there is truth in the words with which he winds up his
Homeric labours, words which the records of the present
parliamentary session have shown to be no empty boast :

• Nemesis must not find me,

$1 vvv SijOwovr', •?) vffrtpov alGis I6vra.

To pass from the study of Homer to the ordinary business of the world, is to
step out of a palace of enchantment into the cold gray light of a polar day.
But the spells in which this sorcerer deals have no affinity with that drug from

II.] HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. 93

Egypt, which drowns the spirit in effeminate indifference : rather they are like
the (pap^aKov \aO\bv, the remedial specific, which, freshening the understanding
by contact with the truth and strength of nature, should both improve its
vigilance against deceit and danger, and increase its vigour and resolution for
the discharge of duty.' *

* [It must be remembered that this appeared in July, 1858. In the
February of that year the famous 'Conspiracy Bill' was brought in. While
Lord Palmerston was cowering before the threats of French Colonels and
proposing to change the laws of England at the bidding of a French Tyrant,
Mr. Gladstone, along with Mr. Milner Gibson and Lord John Russell, was
among those who stood up for the independence of his country. His speech
on February igth was a noble exposure of the way in which Lord Palmerston
and his ally Lord Clai'endon had cringed to Buonaparte whenever they had a
chance. So, later in the year, after the article was published, Mr. Gladstone
was striving for the good of the Greek nation in the Ionian Islands, while Lords
Palmerston and Clarendon were the guests of the Tyrant at Compiegne, at the
very moment when he was persecuting the Count of Montaleinbert for no
crime but that of good will to England.]

III.

THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS.*

IT is indeed a wonderful thought, that Herodotus and
Thucydides were contemporary writers, perhaps not so widely
removed in age as is commonly the case between father and
son. As Colonel Mure remarks, an interval of centuries would
seem to have passed away between them. The question of
their comparative merit can hardly arise ; the two writers are
wholly different in kind. It would be as easy to compare
an old Greek, a writer of the middle ages, and a writer of our
own time. Herodotus is a Greek of the fifth century before
Christ. His archaic tastes indeed make him rather a Greek
of a century earlier. Xenophon is a Greek of the following
age, a far less favourable specimen of his age than Herodotus
is of his. But Thucydides belongs to no age or country; he
is the historian of our common humanity, the teacher of
abstract political wisdom. Herodotus is hardly a political
writer at all ; the few political comments which he makes
are indeed always true and generous ; but they are put forth
with an amiable simplicity which comes near to the nature of
a truism. When he infers from the growth of Athens after
she had driven out her Tyrants that 'freedom is a noble thing,'f
the comment reads like the remark of an intelligent child, or
like the reflexion of an Oriental awakening to the realities of

* [This is part of an article which was originally headed ' Colonel Mure
and the Attic Historians.' I have changed the title, because Herodotus,
though not an ' Attic Historian,' may be fairly called a ' Historian of
Athens.' I have also left out all the minute criticisms on Colonel Mure's
book, and I have worked in some matter which at first formed part of the
next Essay, but which seemed more in place here.]

•f TI Iffrjyopii) is tffri XMI**1 ffvovSaiov. Herod, v. 78.

THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 95

European life. Xenophon writes from the worst inspiration of
local and temporary party-spirit. He writes history, not to
record facts or to deduce lessons, but, at whatever cost of truth
and fairness, to set up Agesilaos and to run down the Thebans.
But Thucydides, living- at a time when the political life of
man had as yet hardly been spread over two ages, seems to
have drawn from that short time the lessons of whole millen-
niums. From the narrow field which lay before his eyes he
could draw a political teaching which should apply to every
age, race, and country. There is hardly a problem in the
science of government which the statesman will not find, if
not solved, at any rate handled, in the pages of this universal
master. The political experience of Thucydides could have
set before him only two sets of phenomena — the small city-
commonwealth and the vast barbaric kingdom. But we feel
that he would have been equally at home under any other
state of things. If we could think of Herodotus or Xenophon
as suddenly set down in the feudal France or Germany of a
past age, in the constitutional England or the federal America
of our own time, everything would doubtless bear in their eyes
the air of an insoluble problem. But we can imagine that
Thucydides would at once behold real analogy through seeming
unlikeness, and would see that phenomena so unlike anything
within his own experience were merely fresh instances of the
general principles which he had learned from another state of
things. No truth seems harder for men to receive than the
doctrine that history is really one whole ; that ( ancient,'
' modern,' ' mediaeval,' mark convenient halting-places and
nothing more ; that man's political nature is essentially the
same under every change of outward circumstances. But
there is no witness which more overwhelmingly confirms its
truth than the fact that the political wisdom of all ages was
thus forestalled by the citizen of a small commonwealth living
twenty-three centuries ago.

Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides were men of their own
age. The mind of Herodotus clearly lived in past times. The
stern truth of chronology tells us that he was contemporary

96 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [ESSAY

with Perikl£s, perhaps with Alkibiad£s. But no one thinks
of the fact while reading his enchanting chronicle. While so
engaged, we fully believe him to have been an eye-witness of
Marathon and Salamis. We are indeed hardly clear whether he
may not have stood by at the return of Peisistratos, or even
have been an unseen looker-on in the sleeping-chamber of
Kandaules. Nothing connects him with his own age, except
a few brief, sparing, sometimes doubtful, references to events
later than his main subject. The genial traveller of Halikar-
nassos loved to gather together, to set in dramatic order, to
garnish here and there with religious or moral sentiment, the
antiquities and legends of every age and country except the
Greece of the Peloponnesian War. His own age, we may be-
lieve, he tried to forget ; a more dignified form of love for
the past than that which shows itself in querulous long-
ings after what is gone and petulant sarcasms upon what is
present. Herodotus is the liberal, well-informed, antiquary
and scholar, who lives out of his own age; he is not the
disappointed politician, who lives in it only to carp at every-
thing around or beyond him.

In Xenophon, on the other hand, notwithstanding much
that is personally attractive and estimable, we see, as a po-
litical writer, only the man of a particular time and place
in the smallest and most malignant form of that character.
Herodotus lived in the past, Thucydides lived for the future ;
Xenophon reflects only the petty passions of the moment. He
writes not like a historian, whether antiquarian or political, but
like a petulant journalist who has to decry the troublesome
greatness of an opposite party. Yet even his writings may
indirectly lead us to the same lesson as those of Thucydides.
One teaches us that much of our modern wisdom might be
reached by a powerful mind while human thought was yet
in its infancy. The other shows that, if old Greece could fore-
stall modern political science, it could also forestall the pettiest
forms of modern political rivalry. Thucydides, without Xeno-
phon, might make us place the ideal Greek historian at a
superhuman height above us. Xenophou, without Thucydides,

III.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 97

might lead us to drag him down to the level of a very inferior
modern pamphleteer. But the two together teach the same
lesson, the lesson that man is essentially the same everywhere,
that an old Greek was a being of like passions with a modern
Englishman, that each could show, in the shapes belonging to
their several ages, alike the highest and the lowest phases of
our common nature.

In fact, no one can thoroughly know what Thucydides is,
if he does not make use of Xenophon as a foil. Without com-
paring the two, we might be led to think that Thucydidean
dignity and impartiality was an easy commonplace quality
which did not entitle its possessor to any special honour. When
we turn to the Hellenics, we at once see how great were the
temptations to a contrary course which surrounded a Greek who
wrote the history of his own time. How many opportunities
must Thucydides have had, how many must he have cast
aside, for colouring, omitting, exaggerating. How easy was
it to pass by the good or the bad deeds of one or the other
party. How hard a task to keep the bitter revengeful spirit
of the exile from showing itself in every page. Thucydides,
after all, was a man and a Greek, an Athenian of oligarchic
tendencies banished under the democracy. The wonderful
thing is that such a position did not warp his statements in
every page. Yet all that has ever been alleged against him is
that once, or at most twice, in his history he has shown that
he could not deal with perfect fairness between himself and a
bitter personal and political enemy. That Thucydides does
bear hard upon Kleon (and upon Hyperbolos) is to our mind
perfectly clear. His way of speaking of them is all the more
marked from its standing out in such utter contrast to his
way of speaking of people in general. Nothing is more striking
throughout his history than the way in which he commonly
abstains from direct censure of any one. Yet he never brings
in Kleon's name without some unfavourable insinuation or
some expression of disparagement. We may freely allow that
for once the impartiality of Thucydides failed him. But, even
when it did so, we have no reason to doubt the thorough honesty

98 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [ESSAY

of his narrative. It bears about it in fact one most convincing
proof of honesty ; the story, as he tells it, does not bear out
the epithets which he applies to the actors in it. But, after
all, what does the utmost that can be made out against him
amount to ? That he once pronounces a judgement which his
own narrative does not bear out : in short that, though he
never ceased to be a truthful witness, lie had not reached that
more than human height of virtue which enables a man to
be a perfectly fair judge in his own cause. Think of this
one flaw, and compare it with the moral state of the man
who could describe the Theban revolution without bringing
in the name of Pelopidas ; who, when recording at large the
history of his own times, could hold forth at impertinent
length on the smallest doings of his Spartan hero, and
deliberately leave out all mention of the deliverance of Mes-
senia and the foundation of Megalopolis. Thucydides himself
was not absolutely perfect ; but perhaps no other actor in
important events ever told them with so great an amount of
impartiality. In Xenophon we have to brand, not merely
an unpardonable degree of weakness and passion, but sheer
want of common honesty, a deliberate breach of the first moral
laws of the historian's calling.

But the greatness of Thucydides is, after all, of a somewhat
cold and unattractive character. He does not, like many other
writers, draw us near to himself personally. What reader of
Herodotus does not long for a talk face to face with the
genial and delightful old traveller, who had been everywhere
and had seen everything — who could tell you the founder
of every city and the architect of every temple — who could
recite oracles and legends from the beginnings of things to
his own day, and who could season all with a simple moral
and political commentary, not the less acceptable for being a
little commonplace ? What would one not give for the chance
of asking why it was, after all, that the Scythians blinded
their slaves, or of finding out, in some unguarded moment,
in honour of what deity the Egyptians submitted themselves
to the discipline? Xenophdn again would evidently not

in.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 99

have been the less agreeable a companion on account of his
unpatriotic heresies and his historical unfairness. If he was
a bitter enemy and an unscrupulous partizan, his very faults
arose from carrying- into excess the amiable character of a
zealous friend. The pupil of Sokrates could not help being
unfair to the government by which his master was condemned ;
the officer of Agesilaos could not mete out common justice to
those pestilent Thebans by whom all the schemes of Agesilaos
were brought to nought. But Thucydides awakens no feel-
ings of the kind. We might have highly esteemed the privi-
lege of sitting at his feet as a lecturer ; but we should hardly
have been very eager for his company in our lighter moments.
Genial simplicity, hearty and unconscious humour, are, after
all, more attractive than the stern perfection of wisdom ; a
little superstition and a little party-spirit, if they render a
man less admirable, do not always make him less agreeable.
Impartiality is a rare and divine quality ; but a little human
weakness sometimes commends itself more to frail mortals.
There is something lofty in the position of a man who records
the worst deeds of Athenian and Lacedaemonian alike, as a
simple matter of business, without a word of concealment,
palliation, or rebuke for either. But we feel quite sure
that Herodotus would have told us that the massacre of
Plataia and the massacre of Melos were each of them a wpr/yjua
ot>x oa-iov. We suspect that Xenoph6n would have been so
ashamed of the evil deed of that side on which his own feel-
ings might be enlisted that he would not have set down both
crimes in his history. But we get a little puzzled as to
the moral condition of the man who minutely dissects the
intellectual and political characters of Themistokles and
Perikles without a word of moral praise or dispraise of either.
Our perplexity grows when we find the historian recording
the treachery of Paches towards Hippias without a word of
comment.* It grows yet more when we find him honestly
recording the assassinations in which Antiphon was at least

* Thucydides iii. 54.
li 2

100 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [ESSAY

an accomplice, and yet pronouncing this same Antiphdn to
have been inferior to no Athenian of his day — Kon6n and
Thrasyboulos among them, — not only in ability but in virtue.*
Herodotus would have lifted up his hands in pious horror;
Xenophdn would either have shirked so unpleasant a subject,
or would at least have found out some ingenious sophism to
cloak the crime Then again, human nature craves for some-
thing like religion, and it does not always kick at a little
superstition. We do not think the worse of Herodotus,
Xenophon, Pausanias, and Arrian for believing in oracles,
visions, and the whole art and mystery of divination. It is
perhaps very admirable, but it .is not altogether amiable, in
Thucydides to have got so far in advance of his age as to
make it pretty certain that he believed in nothing of the
kind, and to leave it by no means clear whether he believed in
any Gods at all. Finally, we cannot forget, possibly even a
contemporary Greek could not forget, how easy, how pleasant,
it is to read Herodotus and Xenophon, how very hard it often
is to read Thucydides. We admire, but we cannot bring our-
selves to love, the man who has clothed the words of wisdom,
with a veil so hard to uplift. We are sometimes tempted to
prefer a teaching less profound in substance, but more con-
formable to the ordinary laws of human and Hellenic grammar.
There is no denying that a speech of Thucydides is far more
profitable than one of Xenophon, or even than one of Herodotus.
But there are times of weakness when we prefer pleasure to
profit, — the rjbv to the xPWWov, — times when, even in spite of
the repeated exhortations of Perikle's to prefer deeds to words,
we still for a moment prefer the dywi'io-^a e? TO Trapa\prjp.a
even to the KTrj^a es dei.

In fact, the wonderful way in which Thucydides soars intel-
lectually over the men of his own age, and indeed of any age,
while it makes his history the eternal treasure-house of po-
litical wisdom, makes him, in some incidental points, less

* Thuc. viii. c. 68. 'AvTi<f>wv, avfy 'AOrfvaiiuv rtuv xa.6' iavrbv dpfTrj oudtvbt
fartpot, K.T.A., where see Dr. Arnold's note.

III.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 101

instructive than a very inferior writer might have been, as the
immediate chronicler of his own particular age. Colonel Mure
truly remarks that the Greek historians commonly looked on
the internal politics of the several states as something which did
not come within their province. A knowledge of them is taken
for granted in a well-informed Greek reader. The historian,
for the most part, deals only with the cities in their interna-
tional— in what, as Mr. Grote suggests, might more properly
be called their interpolitical, aspect. It is only when internal
revolutions bear on foreign affairs that they are set down at
any length. Thus Thucydides records the Athenian revolu-
tions of the year 41 1 in full detail, because the part which was
taken in them by the fleet at Samos brings them within the
immediate sphere of his military narrative. But in his
Summary he does not give a line to the constitutional changes
introduced by Aristeides, -Ephialtes, and Perikles, though he
records military and diplomatic events which were certainly
not of greater importance. Kleon, Nikias, Alkibiades, are
brought in only when they begin to have an influence on
foreign affairs. Of the assaults made on Perikles by Kleon,
of the demagogues who arose for a short space in the time
between the death of the one and the confirmed influence of
the other, Thucydides tells us not a word. Still less, as
Colonel Mure observes, does he tell us anything directly as
to the literary, artistic, and philosophic being of Athens
in her greatest splendour. We should never have learned
from him that ^Eschylus, Euripides, Pheidias, or Anaxa-
goras ever lived. From Thucydides alone we should never
have found out that the Sophokles who figures as an
admiral in the Samian war was at least not less illustrious
as the author of the CEdipus and the Electra. Had Thucy-
dides lived to tell the tale of Arginousai, we may well doubt
whether the name of Sokrates would have been found in
his report of the great debate on the amendment of Eury-
ptolemos. One might have expected that the enemy of
Kleon would have looked with some sympathy on the author
of the Knights; but the name of Aristophanes is nowhere

102 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [ESSAY

found in the history of the Peloponnesian War. Even in deal-
ing with PerikleX his great artistic works appear only in the
melancholy position of items in a budget. Even the pictures
of the heroes of his narrative are in a manner imperfect,
because they appear as beings wholly political and military.
We see in all his greatness the Perikl£s who guided the
democracy through the horrors of war and pestilence. But
we hear nothing of the lover of Aspasia, of the founder of
the Parthenon, nothing even of the reformer who levelled the
last relics of oligarchy, and placed the popular tribunal in
the room of the venerable Senate on the hill of Ares.

On all these points we should doubtless have learned much
more from either the earlier or the later historian. Had
Herodotus deigned to record the events of his own age, his very
love of genial gossip would have led him to tell us a great
deal on which Thucydides keeps a dead silence, and which we
are driven to pick up secondhand from Plutarch and other in-
ferior writers. Herodotus may, as Mr. Grote has shown, not
have understood the full depth and meaning of the democratic
changes of Kleisthenes. But he has at least recorded their
outward forms, while Thucydides has not done even thus
much by those further changes which brought the work of
Kleisthenes to completion. We can hardly fancy that the
antiquary who was so curious about the temples of the Samian
Here and the Egyptian Ammon could have been altogether
blind to the pile reared under his own eye to Athene of the
Akropolis. He who has recorded the innovations made by
Kleisthenes of Sikyon in the choric ritual of his own city
could hardly have listened unconcerned to the strains which
told the glories of Kolonos, or to those in which the over-
whelming burst of satire was hurled upon the head of the
devoted Paphlagonian. Still less can we fancy the prose
narrator of the fight of Salamis listening, without at least a
generous rivalry, to the tale of defeat as told in the palace
of Susa, or to the picture of the glories of Persia under the
sway of that Darius who, in his own tale, seems less divine
and invincible. Thucydides either cared for none of these

III.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 103

things, or he unluckily thought them ' beneath the dignity
of history.' If the old Halikarnassian could but have been
brought to deal with things of his own time, we feel sure
that his less exalted standard would have found room for an
enchanting picture of the social and artistic, as well as of
the political, aspect of Athens in the days of her glory.

And as with Herodotus, so, in another way, with Xenophon.
The smaller historian has fittingly allotted to him the smaller
hero. But Xenophon gives us a far more vivid picture of
Age'silaos than Thucydides gives us of Perikles. In the one
we simply admire the statesman, in the other we are brought
into daily intercourse with the man. And again the tendency
to personal gossip incidentally helps us to valuable political
knowledge. We doubt whether Thucydides would have en-
lightened us as to the singular and discreditable means by
which Sphodrias escaped the punishment of his unprovoked
and treacherous inroad into Attica. Xenophon, in his blind
zeal for his hero, lets us behind the curtain, and thereby shows
us what strange causes might warp the course of justice amid
the secret workings of an oligarchy, and how much personal
influence lay within the reach of a King who kept hardly a
shadow of constitutional power. Again, while we reverence
the set speeches of Thucydides for the deep teaching which
they contain, we cannot but feel that the shorter and livelier
addresses and rejoinders preserved or invented by Xenophon
give us a truer picture of the real tone of a debate in a Greek
assembly. And though a critical judgement may go along
with Colonel Mure in condemning Xenophon's profusion of
small dialogue and petty personal anecdote, we cannot, at this
distance of time, regret anything which helps to give us a
more perfect picture of the manner and tone of feeling of an
age from the hand of a contemporary and an actor.

One word more as to Thucydides' estimate of Kleon. We
have said that all that has ever been alleged against Thucy-
dides is, that he has allowed personal feelings to colour his
inferences from facts, while it is not even suggested that he has
reported the facts inaccurately. Because we owe so much to

104 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. [ESSAY

Thucydides, people commonly leap to the conclusion that his
banishment by the Athenian people must have been unjust.
It was Mr. Grote who dared for the first time to hint
that his own narrative of his command at Amphipolis and
Eion gave no ground for arraigning the judgement of his
countrymen. Kleon again was a personal and political
enemy of Thucydides ; he is well nigh the only person in
speaking of whom the historian deserts his usual unim-
passioned dignity Mr. Grote was bold enough to hint that
the historian's prejudice had coloured, not indeed his nar-
rative, but his commentary; and that his own statement of
the case did not fully bear out his unfavourable judgement.
Mr. Grote's case was that, when Amphipolis was threatened,
the Athenian commander ought to have been nowhere but
at Amphipolis ; least of all should he have been at Thasos,
which the land force of Brasidas did not and could not
threaten. He is at the very least called on to show cause why
he was anywhere else, and such cause he nowhere attempts to
show. Colonel Mure went a step further than Mr. Grote, and
hinted very broadly what the real cause was. Thucydides, as
he himself tells us, was a mining proprietor in that part of
the world. Colonel Mure ventures to say,

' May not this very 'fact, his extensive interest as a proprietor in that
extremity of his province, furnish an explanation of his preference of Thasus
to Amphipolis or Eion as his head-quarter? The centre of the Thracian
mining district, where his own possessions were situated, was Scaptesyle, on
the coast immediately opposite Thasus; and the principal town and port of
that island was also the chief emporium of the mineral trade of Thrace. In
the absence, therefore, of all other apparent motive for his being stationary in
the extreme* north of his province, while Brasidas was conquering the prin-

* We must confess that we do not understand Colonel Mure's geography.
How is Thasos the ' extreme north of his province" more than Amphipolis ?
Did Colonel Mure think that Amphipolis lay ' south ' of Tbasos ? He says so
directly in the page before. ' It (Thasos) lay as far from Amphipolis to the
north, as the scene of the Spartan warrior's earliest successes from the same
city to the south.' Now Akanthos, the city already won by Brasidas, cer-
tainly lies as nearly as possible due south of Amphipolis. The island of Thasos
lies, not north, but south-east. The island, as a whole, is decidedly south of
Amphipolis; the city of Thasos, in the extreme north of the island, is very
nearly on the same parallel as Amphipolis, but still a little south of it.

III.] THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS. 105

cipal cities of its south and centre, it is not very uncharitable to suppose that
the fault laid to his charge, and not without reason, was his having been more
occupied with his own affairs than with his official duties, at a time when the
latter had an imperative claim on his undivided attention.' (p. 40.)

Now as to Kleon. Mr. Grote fully accepts Thucydides'
narrative, both as to the scene in the Assembly, and as to the
campaign at Pylos. He simply thinks that, for once, personal
enmity has betrayed Thucydides into a comment which his own
statement does not bear out. Thucydides says that a certain
scheme was ' mad,' which his own narrative shows to have been
quite feasible. Mr. Grote refuses to believe either the satires
of Aristophanes or the invectives of Thucydides, because he
holds that the facts, as reported by Thucydides himself, do
not justify them. Aristophanes represents Kleon as stealing
away the well-earned prize from Demosthenes. Certainly no
one would find this out from the fourth book of Thucydides.
Aristophanes represents Kleon as winning his influence over
the people by the basest and most cringing flattery. Thucy-
dides puts into his mouth a speech on the affair of Mitylene,
which counsels indeed a wicked line of policy, but which,
of all speeches in the world, is the least like the speech of a
flatterer of the people. In fact, it is a bitter invective against
the people. Nothing that Demosthenes did say, nothing that
Perikles can have said, could outdo the boldness of the censures
which Kleon passed on his own hearers. The exact amount of
historic reality which belongs to the Thucydidean orations is
very doubtful, and it probably differs much in different cases.
But we may be quite sure that Thucydides would not put into
the mouth of Kleon a speech more austere and dignified than
became his character. And as for the general conduct of the
much reviled demagogue, we may make an extract from
Colonel Mure which is the more valuable because it is some-
what inconsistent with his general tone about the matter.

Another evidence of impartiality [on the part of Thucydides] is the circum-
stance, that while those authorities represent the whole career of the dema-
gogue as one unmitigated course of folly or mischief, Thucydides gives him
credit for a conduct in some of his undertakings not very easy to reconcile
with the incapacity displayed in others. The apparent inconsistency implies

106 THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS.

at least a disposition to award him such merit as he really possessed. In his
campaign of Amphipolis, Cleon certainly figures in a contemptible light, both
as a soldier and a general. But his other military operations are not repre-
sented as open to censure. Thucydides, indeed, withholds from him the merit
of having made good his ' insane promise' to capture the Spartan garrison of
Sphacteria. He describes Demosthenes as having already matured his
measures for the success of that enterprise, and as the director-in-chief of
their execution. But there is no hint of Cleon, as the honorary commander-
in-chief on the occasion, having shown any want of capacity or courage. In
the early part of his ensuing Tbracian campaign, his operations are repre-
sented not only as successful, but as well planned and vigorously executed.
He even, on one important occasion, outmanoeuvred the formidable Brasidns,
by whom he was afterwards defeated ; and, by a curious coincidence, much
in the mode in which Thucydides himself had been discomfitted not long
before by the same able adversary.'

After all, what is the accusation against Thucydides?
Simply, as we have already said, that though he has nowhere
misstated facts, he has in one instance allowed political or
personal pique to warp his judgement. All honour to the
contemporary historian against whom this is the heaviest
charge ! Think of the temptations, not merely to a single
false judgement, but to constant misrepresentation of fact,
which beset every political chronicler; above all, those
which must have beset a Greek of the days of the Pelopon-
nesian War. Think, in a word, what Xenophon was — what
Thucydides might have been, and was not. We may well
admit that Thucydides was prejudiced against Kleon, and
that he himself failed of his duty at Amphipolis, without
taking away one jot from the sterling worth of his immortal
history.

IV.
THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.*

A History of Greece. By GEORGE GROTE, Esq.
Twelve Volumes. London, 1846-56.

Mr. GROTE'S great work is at last brought to an end.
For ten years his massive octavos have been gathering upon
our shelves, and they have won for themselves a place from
which it is hard to fancy that they can ever be dislodged.
Few reputations indeed seem to be less lasting than that which
proclaims a man to be the great historian of times which have
long since gone by. Hooke and Mitford have passed away :
if Sir George Lewis is to be trusted, Niebuhr and Arnold
ought to pass away after them. We therefore cannot posi-
tively affirm that Grote may not be to our grandchildren
what Mitford is to ourselves. Yet the thought that it may
be so is one very hard to take in. Mr. Grote has done so
much, he has throughout shown so much real vigour and
originality, he has thrown so much clear and practical light
upon points which had been hitherto misunderstood, that,
though we may conceive him being surpassed, we can hardly
conceive him being wholly forgotten.

That one thoroughly good history need not wholly set aside
another thoroughly good history of the same people, is very

* [The references to Mr. Grote's book were so thoroughly interwoven with
the framework of this Essay that I have thought it better to leave it, like that
on Mr. Gladstone's Homer, in its first shape of a review. Beside verbal im-
provements, I have only left out or modified a few passages of only temporary
interest, and I have given the Essay a title of which I think that Mr. Grote
would not have disapproved.]

108 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

clearly shown by the case of Mr. Grote himself. The pub-
lication of his history in no way sets aside the sterling
work of Bishop Thirlwall. Each has its own use. The
professed historical student cannot do without either. But
there are doubtless many persons who have no special
devotion to Grecian history, but who still wish to study its
main outlines in something higher than a mere school-book.
To such readers we should certainly recommend Thirlwall
rather than Grote. The comparative shortness, the greater
clearness and terseness of the narrative, the freedom from
discussions and digressions, all join to make it far better
fitted for such a purpose. But for the political thinker, who
looks to Grecian history chiefly in its practical bearing, Mr.
Grote's work is far better fitted. The one is the work of a
scholar, an enlarged and practical scholar indeed, but still
one in whom the character of the scholar is the primary one.
The other is the work of a politician and man of business,
a London banker, a Radical Member of Parliament, whose
devotion to ancient history and literature forms the most
illustrious confutation of the charges brought against such
studies as being useless and unpractical. Till some one arises
who can cast both alike into the shade, we trust that these
two great writers will continue to be honoured side by side.*
High indeed is the honour which each of them deserves from
all who see in the history of ancient freedom no vain and
lifeless inquiry into a state of things which is as though it
had never been, but one of the most living and instructive
pursuits for the ruler and the citizen. Still, of the two we
must give the higher place to the more zealous and fervent
champion of the parent state of justice and liberty, the
great Democracy of Athens.

Mr. Grote's work is so vast, and it may be looked at from

* [At the risk of being thought behind the age, I must say that I do not
look on the German work of Curtius as throwing either of them into the shade.
I add, by way of Appendix to this Essay, some extracts from various notices
of the earlier volumes of Curtius which I have contributed to the Saturday
Keview.]

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 109

so many different points of view, that it will be better to try-
to do justice to one only of its many aspects, and to give but
a few words to the other parts of the work. Which aspect it
is that we have chosen we have perhaps already made known.
Mr. Grote is, to our mind, greatest as the historian of Athenian
Democracy. It is therefore as the historian of Athenian
Democracy that we intend specially to look at him. We
choose this particular subject at once from its intrinsic interest,
from the misrepresentations under which it has suffered, and
from the masterly and original manner in which it has been
dealt with by Mr. Grote. The common misrepresentations of
the Athenian Democracy have to a great extent arisen from
sheer ignorance of its real nature, combined with a prejudice
against democratic government in general. But there is no
doubt that, in popular conception also, the literary glory of
Athens has been allowed to overshadow her political greatness.
Now, in truth, the pre-eminence of Athens in literature, phi-
losophy and art, was simply the natural result of her pre-
eminence in freedom and good government. We have now
to speak, not of the result, but of the cause, and of the cause
more specially as dealt with by Mr. Grote. After some short
general criticisms on his work as a whole, we shall go on
to examine his conception of the origin, the greatness, and
the fall of the most illustrious of commonwealths.

In point of mere style, Mr. Grote is not specially pleasing ;
but either he improves by practice as he goes on, or else his
readers become reconciled to his manner. Certainly, from
one cause or the other, we think him a better writer now
than we did ten years ago. His style is diffuse and heavy ;
it often lacks both dignity and simplicity. In his anxiety
to make his meaning plain from all points of view, he is
like Macaulay. But nothing can be more unlike than the
means by which the two historians go about to compass this
praiseworthy end. Instead of epigrammatic sentences and
brilliant antitheses, it is by dint of ponderous and paren-
thetical repetitions that Mr. Grote seeks to hinder any scrap
of his meaning from escaping the reader. Yet his style is not

110 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [Ess AY

unpleasing when one is used to it, and it gives a favourable
impression of Mr. Grote as a man. Writers who are clearly
artificial, like Gibbon and Macaulay, we admire, but at the
same time we rather distrust them. But the noble simplicity
of Arnold was clearly not more natural to him than a wholly
different style of writing is to Mr. Grote. We feel quite sure
with both of them, while we do not feel quite sure with
Gibbon and Macaulay, that neither of them ever sacrificed a
single atom of truth to improve the turn of a period or to
sharpen the poignancy of an epithet.

Mr. Grote indeed strikes us as an eminently conscientious
writer. He is an avowed partizan, therein differing from
the more than judicial coldness which Dr. Thirlwall shows
through a large part of his work. His partizanship is
moreover tinged with a certain love of paradox. It is a
real delight to him to differ from every earlier writer.
But both partizanship and love of paradox are kept within
bounds, not only by scrupulous honesty, but by the calm
and dignified tone which runs through the whole work.
Mr. Grote's political views colour his judgements, but they
in no way colour his statements. He always argues, and
never assumes or insinuates. He always fully and fairly sets
forth the whole evidence, and places elaborately before his
reader the grounds of his own judgement. The pupil of
Mr. Grote, though he should never see any other history, will
never be surprised into an opinion ; he always has full oppor-
tunity, if he be so disposed, of dissenting from the decisions of
his teacher. And Mr. Grote is altogether free from the vice
to which his somewhat aggressive and paradoxical position
specially lays him open. He is painstaking and merciful
towards all previous writers. He never condemns, he hardly
even dissents, without telling us at full length why he con-
demns or dissents. Even Mitford,* at whom Dr. Thirlwall

* Mitford was a bad scholar, a bad historian, a bad writer of English. Yet
we feel a lingering weakness for him. He was the first writer of any note who
found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing.
We of course hold that he applied it the wrong way. He hated DSmo-

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. Ill

sneers till we feel a reaction in his favour, is never set aside
unheard. Mr. Grote stops to wonder at him, to argue with
him, to prove, as well as to assert, that he is very much
in the wrong-. Everything that Mr, Grote does is serious
and earnest. Twice perhaps in his volumes we think we can
see his features relaxing into a stern smile. Mr. Grote
loves a parallel both well and wisely. But when Iphikrates
is coupled with Wellington and Bliicher as ' having lent an
honourable denomination to boots and shoes,'* we cannot
ourselves keep down a slight tendency to laughter, one which
we would fain justify by the hope that the historian himself
intended to arouse it.

In fact, Mr. Grote's praiseworthy desire to be full and ac-
curate on every point, and to give his reasons for everything,
has sometimes led him astray. To his office as historian
of Greece, he very needlessly adds the quite distinct func-
tions of a commentator on the text of Thucydides. He is
always filling up his pages with notes of frightful length and
tediousness, proposing and elaborately defending new trans-
lations of particular passages. Now most of these digressions
are by no means called for by his subject. Mr. Grote more-
over is a great historian, but he is not a great Greek scholar.
He understands the Greek language quite well enough to
make excellent use of his Greek books. He does not under-
stand it well enough to enter into elaborate discussions on
minute grammatical points. By thus attempting a line

sthenes ; we love and reverence him. But it was a great step to find out that
Demosthenes could be the object of any human emotion. For the young
student or for the general reader Mitford's History would be simply mislead-
ing ; but it is quite worth reading by any one who wishes to look at Grecian
history from every possible point of view.

* Vol. ix. p. 468. So in vol. vi. p. 174, speaking of the odd abodes to
which the Athenians were driven during the Peloponnesian war, 'in sheds,
cabins, tents, or even tubs,' he adds, 'Aristophanes, Equites, 789, olnovvr'
tv rais iriOatevaiai tt\v yvirapiois «a! irvpyiSiots. The philosopher Diogene's, in
taking up his abode in a tub, had thus examples in history to follow.' Surely
Mr. Grote laughed over both the boots and the tub. We are not so clear
whether he laughed when, describing the Scythian expedition of Darius
(vol. iv. p. 361), he speaks of Mr. Kenrick as being 'among those who cannot
swim the Dniester.'

112 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

which is not really his own, he has laid himself open to the
puny and insolent attacks of men to whose small minds his
real greatness is simply unintelligible. There is a story of
King- Philip trying to set a harper right after dinner, and
receiving for answer, ' You ought to be ashamed if I did not
know such things better than you.' * When a politician and
historian like Mr. Grote wanders into the narrow field of verbal
criticism, he might well have received an answer of the same
kind from a man who could find nothing better to do with
twenty years of his life than to devote them to the empirical
study and teaching of Greek pronouns. If Mr. Grote, in the
course of his great work, has now and then made a slip or
given a judgement which cannot be maintained, we can only
say, with Sir Archibald Alison, that such things will cease
' when human nature is other than it is, but not till then.'
No man that ever wrote is surer and sounder than Bishop
Thirlwall; but we have found inaccuracies even in him.
Nay, more, in one or two placesf we have found Mr. Grote
himself in pieces of false construing which he makes the
foundation of historical arguments. Yet it never came into
our mind to write an impertinent pamphlet against either of
them. Great men may now and then err ; small men may
now and then set them right : yet, after all, there is a certain
decent respect owing from the small men to the great.

From the general character of Mr. Grote's style, it follows
almost necessarily that he is greater in comment than in nar-
rative. His narrative is always full and clear; but it is
seldom graphic or eloquent. But he is ever on the watch
for the moral and political teaching of every incident. Per-

* Plut. Apoph. Phil. 29. (Moralia, ii. 20. Tauchnitz.)

•f- Vol. v. p. 481, Mr. Grote's translation of TO, 5i SiKaar-^pia nt(rOo<f>6pa
Kartffrijaf Hfpuc\7,i, is quite untenable ; but this passage we shall probably
have to refer to again. In vol. iv. p. 145 (compare Thirlwall, vol. ii. p. 68)
Mr. Grote is clearly wrong, and Dr. Thirlwall clearly right, in his translation
of the passage from Herodotus.

In vol. ii. p. 585, vol. x. p. 463, vol xi. p. 681, we find Mr. Grote reviving,
wholly or partially, interpretations of Mitford's which Dr. Thirlwall (vol. v.
p. 200, vol. vi. p. 66 of the old edition ; compare vol. vi. p. 103 of the new)
had scornfully set aside.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 113

haps he overdoes it in this way ; but Grecian history has
been so much misunderstood, and most of Mr. Grote's com-
ments are so weighty, that it is quite a fault on the right
side.

Mr. Grote divides his work into two portions of very un-
equal length — Legendary and Historical Greece. In the
former he makes it his business to tell all the myths at full
length; from his point of view, we really cannot understand
why. To tell them fittingly as legends, as Dr. Arnold has
done with the Roman stories, he does not even try, and it
would certainly be quite out of his line to do so. And his
code of historical belief expressly forbids all attempts to find
historical truth in them, in the way which has been carried
out by Niebuhr. Mr. Grote is not quite so strict in point
of evidence as Sir George Lewis ; but it is only with the first
Olympiad, B.C. 776, that he sees anything like even the "first
glimpse of real history. Now we are quite as far as either
Mr. Grote or Sir George Lewis from the old uncritical belief
in poetic fables, which, if they contain any kernel of truth,
hide it under such disguises that it can no .longer be seen.
But surely both of them cast aside one whole source of
knowledge of a very different kind. It is clear that neither
of them has the least turn for prae-historic or ethnological
researches. They have hardly a word to tell us about the
Pelasgians* or the Leleges. Speculations of this kind rest,
they say, on no evidence. Sir George Lewis especially would
seem to rank them almost below the legends of the poets.
Certainly they rest on no contemporary written evidence;
but surely they rest on an evidence of their own. That
evidence is of the same kind as that which , forms the ground-
work of philology and of some branches of natural science —
of geology, for instance, which is simply archaeology before
man. Moreover it sometimes happens, as in the case of the

* On the historical Pelasgians of Krestdn and Plakia Mr. Grote has one of
his best notes, vol. ii. p. 351. He shows very clearly, against Dr. Thirl wall,
that in the well-known passage of Herodotus xaPaKT^P niust be interpreted
by fiapfiapos, not @apfiapos by xaPalCT'np-

I

114 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

legendary greatness of Mykene", that archaeological and legen-
dary evidence coincide so wonderfully as to leave no doubt that
the legend has preserved the memory of a real state of things.*

Mr. Grote's chapters on Sparta, her gradual developement
and her distinctive constitution, form a most valuable contri-
bution to early Grecian history. He shows very clearly how
thoroughly Argos was the leading state «0f Peloponnesos in
the early Doric times; how very slowly it was that Sparta
rose to the post of honour ; how obstinately Argos clung
to the assertion of her ancient position, long after she had
lost all means of practically enforcing it. Highly valuable
also are the chapters which, at various stages of the work, are
given to the fortunes of the Sicilian Greeks. In the pro-
minence which Mr. Grote gives to them he agrees with
Mitford, though no contrast can be greater than that which
is shown in the treatment of the subject by the two writers.
Dr. Thirlwall, somewhat unaccountably, takes very little notice
of this important part of the Hellenic world.

The Homeric poems are another subject to which Mr. Grote
gives much of his attention. His general philosophical re-
marks on the origin and growth of legend are among the pro-
foundest things in his work ; but in purely literary criticism
he is hardly equal to Colonel Mure, His view is one which
lies between the ' Wolfian hypothesis ' of disjointed lays,
and Colonel Mure's belief in the essential unity of both
poems.t The Odyssey Mr. Grote looks on as an integral
whole, the Iliad as a poem enlarged out of an earlier Achilleid.
This view he very ably supports, but on the whole we incline
to Colonel Mure. It is instructive indeed to contrast these
two eminent men, to whom Grecian literature is so deeply
indebted. Each is so well fitted for his own task ; neither is
quite safe when he handles the task of the other. The one
has all the strength and depth of the political historian,
the other the taste and ac'uteness of the refined literary critic.

* [See above p. 60. I have struck out a passage to the same effect as what I
said there.]

t [This was written before the appearance of Mr. Gladstone's book.]

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 115

Sir George Lewis, Colonel Mure, and Mr. Grote, may all be
classed tog-ether as illustrious examples of a love of learning
kept on in the midst of busy life. Three public men, — one
a distinguished son of Oxford, another brought up at a
foreign University, a third without any academic training at
all, — are all, among pursuits which do not commonly lead men
to such researches, equally led to profound research into
the literature and politics of distant times. No argument can
be more overwhelming against those who gainsay the useful-
ness of such studies.

But we must hasten on to our real subject, the origin and
working of the Athenian Democracy. What old Greece was
to the rest of the contemporary world, Athens emphatically
was to Greece itself. Every tendency which marked off
the Greek from the Barbarian marked off, in its highest
developement, the Athenian from every other Greek. The
Athenian, in short, was the highest form of the Hellenic type.
By nothing is the Greek more emphatically distinguished
from every nation with which he came in contact during
his best days, than by the presence of what Mr. Grote calls
a ' constitutional morality.' Political liberty was grounded on
a habit of fairly hearing both sides, and then deciding ; it
was understood that the minority should peaceably yield to
the will of the greater number. This is a doctrine which
was wholly unknown to the Persian or the Egyptian, who
knew no choice but either blind submission to a master or
open rebellion against him. But in every Greek city the
theory was thoroughly well known, though it was by no
means in every Greek city that the theory was fully or con-
stantly carried out. It is in democratic Athens that we find
the nearest approach, and that positively a very near approach,
to its perfect fulfilment.

Old Greece, taking in under that name not only the original
Hellas, but all the settlements of the Greek nation every-
where, was, we must always remember, a system of cities
wholly independent of one another. It was moreover a system

i 2

116 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

which, during its best days, was co-extensive with its own
civilized world. In ancient and in mediaeval Italy, in mediaeval
and in modern Switzerland, a like system of what Mr. Grote
calls 'town-autonomy,' has more or less largely prevailed.
But it is in old Greece alone that the system is seen in its
full perfection. The City was the highest and the lowest
political unit which the Greek willingly acknowledged. He
must have a city ; a mere village was not enough for him : he
did not want the wild independence of the mountaineer, but
the settled legal freedom of the citizen. There must be an
authority to obey, but of that authority he must himself
form a part. But for such authority he did not willingly
look beyond his own city ; he had no mind to merge the full
sovereignty of that city even in a federation, much less in an
empire. The full and perfect sovereignty of each separate
city formed the political ideal of the Greek mind. The less
advanced members of the Hellenic race did not fully attain
to the conception, because they did not fully attain to the per-
fection of Greek city-life. In later times Greece learned by
bitter experience the need of closer union; and at last the
.Achaian League was the result. But among the most ad-
vanced Greeks in the best days of Greece the sovereignty
of each city was the acknowledged political theory. If it
was never fully carried out, it was only because every city
had not physical resources to maintain its independence.
But every city looked on perfect independence as its natural
right ; every city asserted its independence whenever it could ;
every city deemed itself wronged if it were hindered from so
doing by superior force.

Now in the earliest times into which we can get any
insight, this system of small separate communities formed
the whole political world of which the Greek had any know-
ledge. In old Greece, above all, he never met, either as
friend or foe, with any but a Greek neighbour. Even in the
early colonies the Greek never came across any foreigner
able to meet him on equal terms either of friendship or of
hostility. In this state of things the bond between Greek and

IV. ] THE A THE NT A N DEMOCRA CY. 117

Greek differed little from the bond between man and man.
But the colonizing system first gave birth to a feeling which
the rise of great Barbarian states strengthened, a feeling that
the Greek race did not stand alone in the world. In Thrace,
in Asia, in Sicily, the Greek learned the existence of the Bar-
barian ; and as Lydia, Carthage, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome
arose one after the other, he learned that the friendship or
enmity of the Barbarian might be a matter of moment to
the Greek. But he learned at the same time that the
Greek could boast of something whereby to distinguish him-
self from the Barbarian. He learned that, over and above
the independent political being of the several Grecian cities,
there was a higher national being in which every Greek could
claim a share. From Spain to the Taurie Chersonesos, every
Greek shared a common language, a common religion, com-
mon political and intellectual tendencies. The Greek of the
Iberian Zakynthos and the Greek of the Borysthenic Olbia
might meet and contend in those games, by the banks of
the Alpheios or beneath the crags of Delphi, from which
even the Macedonian and the Thesprotian were hopelessly
shut out. He began to feel that his brother Greek might by
chance be an enemy, but that he was still in himself a
countiyman. He felt that even to a hostile Greek he stood
in a relation in which he did not stand to the outside
foreigner, whose language, manners, and worship were alto-
gether strange to him. Thus the feeling of ' separate town-
autonomy ' began to be somewhat modified by the wider feel-
ing of ' Pan-hellenic obligation.' As Mr. Grote several times
suggests, the proper union and harmony of these two tenden-
cies would have led to the establishment of a Federal Govern-
ment. No such Federal Government could have taken in the
whole Hellenic race ; but a Federal Government might easily
have taken in all the Grecian cities around the ^Egsean. It
might have taken in all Greeks from Epidamnos to Sinop£, a
range nearly answering to the extent of the Greek race at
the present day. But the only really effective Federal Govern-
ment which Greece ever saw arose too late to do the work, and

118 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

never spread to any purpose beyond the bounds of Peloponne"sos.
As it was, the natural inclination of all communities to extend
their dominion, whether rightfully or wrongfully, too often
clashed alike with town-autonomy and with Pan-hellenic
patriotism. At no time of their history did Greeks scruple to
hold dominion over other Greeks. And as soon as they had the
means, they did not scruple to win and to uphold such do-
minion by the help either of barbaric steel or of barbaric gold.

Now Athens stands out prominently as the highest de-
velopement of all these tendencies. She is the most illustrious
example alike of the single autonomous city, of the Pan-hellenic
leader against the Barbarian, and of the Greek state bearing
rule over other Greeks. In all these characters she has been
thoughtfully examined and clearly described by the great
historian with whom we are dealing. In the sketch of the
Athenian Democracy which we are now about to attempt, our
readers will understand that we are chiefly following Mr.
Grote, and that we mean to set the seal of our full agreement
to his general views, — of course not pledging ourselves to
every minute detail, — whenever we do not stop formally to
argue against them.

As a single autonomous city, Athens was in two ways the
greatest in Greece. No other single city could boast of so
great a number of citizens ; in no other did those citizens so
directly and thoroughly hold the government of their own
city. A glance at the map of Greece will show that Attica
was far larger than the territory of any other single city.
Sparta of course ruled over a far larger extent of country ;
but that was because Sparta held the sovereignty over many
other cities, which were thereby thrust down to the rank
of subjects. Attica was nearly as large as Boeotia ; but while
Bceotia formed an ill-contrived and inharmonious federation,
Attica formed one indivisible body-politic. Attica was in fact
about as large a territory as could, according to Greek notions,
form one indivisible body-politic. Had the land been much
larger, each qualified citizen could no longer have exercised a
personal share in the government. This happy position was

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 119

owing to an event which comes to us in the form of legend, but
which is supported by so great a weight of probability that
we may fairly set it down as a historical fact. That Attica
once contained twelve independent cities, and that they were
led to give up their separate political life and to be merged
into the one city of Athens, we may undoubtedly believe.
But as to the exact date of the change, whether it took place
at once or gradually, — whether some cities kept their inde-
pendence longer than others, — whether their inhabitants re-
ceived the full Athenian citizenship at once, or after struggles
like those of the Roman Commons, — whether any of the
early dissensions in Attica were owing to distinctions between
Athenians and Atticans, are questions at which we can do little
more than guess. But it is plain that the change had been
fully wrought out before the time of Drakdn and Solon. The
Athens for which they legislated was an Athens in whose
rights and in whose wrongs all Attica shared alike. Marathon,
Aphidnai, and Eleusis * had no longer any distinct political
being ; they were merged into the higher whole of Athens.
It is the utter disappearance of the Attic towns as political
bodies which forms the distinguishing phenomenon of Athe-
nian history. Several of them kept on a large population and
considerable municipal importance ; but they had given up all
claims to separate sovereignty. Their relation to Athens was
one neither of subjection nor of federation. A Laconian town,

* Mr. Grote (vol. iii. p. 94) remarks that the story of Tellos, which is put
into the mouth of Solon at the Lydian Court, ' assumes the independence of
Eleusis in earlier times.' We think that it does even more : it seems to show
(so far as we can trust it at all) that the union of Eleusis and Athens was not
in Sol6n's days of very long standing. The tale certainly does not sound like
an event of mythical antiquity, but rather like something of which Sol6n might
have heard from his grandfather. Mr. Grote also infers, with much force, from
the Homeric hymn to Demfiter, that Eleusis formed an independent state at
the time when that hymn was made, perhaps as late as the middle of the
seventh century before Christ. If the union of the Attic towns was gradual,
so important a place as Eleusis would doubtless be one of the last to come in,
much like Orchomenos in Bceotia or Akanthos in Chalkidike. It is even pos-
sible that the choice of Eleusis, rather than any other Attic town, to form
a separate state under the oligarchy, after they were driven from Athens, may
point to some abiding memory of its ancient independence.

120 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

whatever municipal rights it might keep, was politically in
utter bondage to Sparta. Its citizens had no share whatever
in the general government of their country. A Boeotian town
formed a distinct commonwealth, whose sovereign rights were
somewhat curtailed by its federal relations towards its fellow
Boeotian towns, and still more so by the practical supremacy
of Thebes over the whole Boeotian League. The burgher of
Thespia or Orchomenos was a Boeotian ; but he was in no sense
a Theban. The burgher of Eleusis or Marathon had well nigh
lost the name of Attican in that of Athenian.* By this
happy diffusion of equal political rights over the whole of
Attica, Athens became the greatest of Hellenic cities. Other
cities ruled over wider domains and more numerous subjects ;
no other city could marshal so great a number of free and equal
citizens. Whether this great event was owing to force or to
persuasion, to some happy accident or to long-sighted political
wisdom, — whether we see in it the gradual result of pre-
disposing causes or attribute it to the single genius of some
nameless f statesman of an unrecorded age, — in any case, it
stands forth as one of the foremost events in the history of the
world. As the determining cause of the greatness of Athens,
it was the determining cause of the distinctive and lasting
greatness of Hellas. As such, the union, the £WOLKHTIS, of
Attica becomes nothing less than the beginning of the poli-
tical history/ of mankind.

The union of the old Attic towns made Athens and Attica
words of the same political meaning; but it was very far
from wiping out all political distinctions between the several
classes of their inhabitants. Eleusinians and Athenians no
longer strove with each other upon the field of battle ; but

* [Dikaiarchos (Perie'gSsis, 4) says of Attica Ttuv 8' ivotKovvrow ol p*v avruiv
'A.TTIKOI, ol 8' "AOrjvaioi, and he goes on to draw a distinction between the
characters of the two. C. Miiller, in his note, has brought together a few
other cases of this rare use of the word.]

t The legend attributes it to the mythical King Theseus. In this change, as
in most others, some one man was most likely the chief agent ; several things
look as if it was at least begun before kingship was done away with ; the King
who had the chief hand in it may as well have been called Theseus as anything
else ; but this is as much as we can say.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 121

the poor Eleusinian and the poor Athenian had alike to
bear the yoke, personal and political, of the oligarchy which
ruled over their common country. Such is the aspect of
Athenian affairs when we first begin to see them in anything
like detail, at the time of the Solonian legislation. Theseus
and Solon were the two great names round which the loving
memory of Athens gathered. Her orators and poets sometimes
scrupled not to attribute her full-grown democracy to Theseus
the King, no less than to Solon the Archon. Of Theseus we
can say nothing ; of the reforms of Solon we can happily
make out a good deal. If Theseus'* founded a democracy, it
was assuredly not a lasting one. Even of Sol6n the utmost
we can say is that his reform took a decidedly democratic
turn. The most distinctively democratic of Athenian in-
stitutions were undoubtedly of later date.

The questions which have been so often raised as to the
so-called four Ionic tribes we shall pass by, as not directly
bearing on our immediate subject. It is enough for our
purpose that they formed an oppressive oligarchy. The
question which immediately concerns us is, How far did Solon
break down the barriers of this oligarchy ? We all know how
he made a division into classes according to property, and how
under his system the rich alone could be chosen to the great
offices of the state. But here an important question arises, Who
were the persons thus classified ? According to one answer,
Solon could hardly have even looked in the direction of de-
mocracy. Niebuhr,t at one time at least, held the Solonian
timocracy to have been a mere change within the patrician order
itself; the poor noble was to be shut out from office, while the
rich plebeian was not let in. Surely such a change would have

* If we may trust the sage Diod6ros, democracy could look still higher for
its founder. Zeus himself established that form of government, not only at
Athens, but throughout the world. iire\6tiv 8' avrov [A/a] «at rty oiKovfifvrjv
aX(fi"v oiiraaav, rovs fj.lv \yffTas teal d(T«#efs avaipovvra, rty 8" IffurrjTa xal rfjv
SrjfiOKpaTiav tlsrjyovp.(vov. Diod. v. 71. One would certainly never have
found this out from the Prometheus of ^Eschylus.

•f History of Rome, vol. ii. pp. 384, 385. In his Lectures on Ancient
History, vol. i. p. 288, he seems to take a different, but less intelligible, view.

122 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

been merely to make the oligarchy still narrower than it was
before. Surely it is inconsistent with the well-known saying*
of Solon himself, which, whatever be its exact meaning, clearly
implies that he gave the mass of the people some power. It
would be easier to believe that the timocracy simply took the
place of the oligarchy, that wealth became the qualification
instead of birth, that the rich plebeian was qualified no
less than the rich patrician, and the poor patrician dis-
qualified no less than the poor plebeian. But this view seems
inconsistent with the fact, which is allowed on all hands,
that the Four Tribes went on as real political divisions down
to the legislation of Kleisthenes. We are therefore driven,
though not without some doubt and difficulty, to the be-
lief that the timocracy extended only to the patrician
order, and that the whole body of the plebeians, rich and
poor, were placed, together with the poorest patricians, in the
fourth or lowest class. This seems to be the view taken both
by Dr. Thirl wallf and by Mr. Grote. J

Athens then, after the Solonian reform, was still a modified
oligarchy. Solon § preserved the old Senate of Areiopagos,

* A^/tip fttv yap iSaiKa roaov Kparos oaffov tirapKft. + Vol. ii. p. 45.

J Mr. Grote seems decidedly to assert this, when he formally describes the
Solonian constitution. He there (vol. iii. p. 1 76) speaks of persons not included
in the Four Tribes, who still were citizens with votes in the Assembly, and
adds, ' It seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the Four Tribes,
whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to
political privilege as the fourth and lowest class of the Solonian census.' Yet
afterwards (vol. iv. p. 169), when he describes the legislation of Kleisthenes, he
says, ' the political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both
before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes,
each of which was an aggregate of so many close corporations or quasi families,
the gentes and phratries ; none of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those
included in some gens or [and ?] phratry, had any part in the political franchise.
. . . Kleisthene's broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted
the political franchise to the excluded mass.' We cannot reconcile these two
statements, and we greatly prefer the former one. The latter seems to agree
with the view of Niebuhr quoted above, according to which Solon really made
the oligarchy more oligarchical.

§ Mr. Grote has, we think, clearly made out that the Senate of Areiopagos
was the original one, older than Sol&n, and that the yearly Senate was of his
foundation.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 123

which was made up of all who had served the office of Archon
with credit. But he set up alongside of it another Senate
of a somewhat more popular kind. A hundred patricians
chosen from each tribe formed a yearly Senate. The chief
executive and judicial powers — those which had been vested
in the ancient Kings, and in their successors, the Archons for
life, for ten years, for one year — Solon found and left in the
hands of nine yearly Archons. These, by his legislation,
were to be chosen from the first class of the census, so that
their qualification implied both noble birth and the possession
of the highest degree of wealth in the community. What
then did the people gain by the Solonian reform ? Very little,
as compared with their power in after times ; but very much,
as compared with their earlier state of utter political nothing-
ness. They still shared in nothing, but they now had the
disposal of everything. They still had masters, but they were
masters of their own choosing. The Public Assembly, the
famous Ekklesia, now arose, in which every Athenian citizen
had an equal vote. Here the poor or ignoble citizen, himself
shut out from office, chose and sat in judgement upon those
who ruled him. Here the yearly Senate and the yearly
Archons were chosen by the common suffrage of the people.
Here the same Archons, after their year of office, underwent
the eutliyne or examination, without honourably passing
through which they could not take their seat in the per-
manent Senate of Areiopagos.

The constitution of Solon had hardly time to show itself in
practical working, before the tyranny * of Peisistratos practi-
cally set it aside. Peisistratos, as is acknowledged on all
hands, respected the forms of the constitution. Senate,
Assembly, and Archons — all doubtless went on, but their
practical power was probably about as great as when, ages

* We keep to the common usage of 'Tyrant' and ' tyranny,' to express TU-
pavvos and its derivatives, rather than Mr. Grote's ' Despot ' and 'despotism.'
Neither ' Tyrant ' nor ' Despot,' in its usual English meaning, exactly expresses
rvpavvos ; either word must be used in a fixed technical sense. We see there-
fore no reason for departing from established custom.

124 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

after, Athens was enrolled as a favoured ally of Nero. But
the rule of the Tyrants, by bringing nobles and people
under one common bondage, indirectly helped the cause of
democracy. When the tyranny was overpassed, it was found
impossible to call back the old distinctions into practical
life. Still, as the constitutional forms had been respected,
there was an established system to fall back upon and to
reform. Under the unwitting guidance of Peisistratos and
Hippias, the Athens of Solon had become ripe for its
change into the Athens of Kleisthenes. Democracy had now
fairly begun its course, though it was still far from having
reached the goal.

From Kleisthenes to Perikles, reforms were so steadily
going on in a democratic direction that it is not easy to fix
the exact date of each change. But three great stages may
clearly be made out. First come the reforms of Kleisthenes
himself, after the driving out of the Tyrants : secondly, the
changes which were wrought immediately after the Persian
War, some of which are attributed to Aristeides : thirdly,
those which brought about the perfect consummation of
democracy under Ephialtes and Perikles.

What Kleisthenes himself did seems to have been wholly
to sweep away all distinctions founded on birth, and greatly to
lessen the strictness of those founded on property. The Four
Tribes, as a political institution, ceased to exist. The gentes
and phratries of which they are made up went on as religious
and social unions, but they no longer determined a man's
political rank. The whole people — patricians, commoners,
together with many slaves and foreigners who now received
the franchise for the first time — were divided into Ten Tribes.
These tribes were again subdivided into Demoi or Parishes.
These last were essentially local divisions, each Demos forming
a larger or smaller municipality. Full scope was thus given
for the working of those local feelings which were very strong
in the Attic bosom. But a wise arrangement, whereby the
Demoi forming each Tribe did not lie together, hindered these
local feelings from having any bad political effect, such as

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 125

they had had in the time between Solon and Peisistratos. The
ten Tribes were the immediate constituent members of the
body-politic. On them all the arrangements of - the state,
both military and civil, depended. The citizens of each tribe
were marshalled together in battle, while a board of ten
Generals, one from each tribe, was placed at the head of
military affairs. The yearly Senate now -consisted of five
hundred members, fifty from each tribe; and the Senators of
each tribe in turn enjoyed the presidency in the Public
Assembly. The aristocracy of birth was thus legally swept
away, but the Solonian timocracy 'was only modified. The
Archonship, confined by Solon to the first class of his census,
was now opened to the first three, into which all citizens who
had the legal amount of wealth were now admitted. The
fourth and poorest class alone were still shut out.

Between Kleisthenes and Perikles three great changes were
gradually wrought, which, as Mr. Grote clearly shows, all
hang together. All citizens became eligible for all offices.
The Archons and the yearly Senate began to be named
by lot instead of by election. The Archons, the successors
of the ancient Kings, were cut down to that routine of police
and religious ceremony which is all that we find left to them
under the full-grown Democracy. Of these three changes,
the earliest must, in the nature of things, have been that
which admitted all citizens without distinction to office. As
Mr. Grote observes, the use of the lot implies that this change
had taken place. As long as restrictions were left, the intro-
duction of the lot would not have been any gain to democracy.
As long as the high offices were confined to rich men, the
poor man's influence lay in his vote, by which he decided
among the rich candidates. He clearly would not give up
this form of power till the loss was made good by his being
himself made admissible to office.

But, if the lot implies universal admissibility to the archon-
ship, it no less implies a diminished power in the office of
Archon. The Archons, like the Roman Consuls, took the place
of the ancient Kings. Indeed the single Archon, whether for

126 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

life, for ten years, or for one year only, held a still more
commanding position than the Roman Consul. But while
Rome kept on the powers of the consulship, with compara-
tively little change, down to the" end of the commonwealth,
Athens was always lessening the once kingly powers of her
Archons. Even under the oligarchy, a board of nine Archons
took the place of a single ruler. Under the Democracy, whether
from jealousy of the old patrician magistracy, or from what-
ever cause, the Archons sank into something like aldermen
or police magistrates. They still kept a summary jurisdiction
in small cases, but they had to bring weightier matters before
the popular courts, which had succeeded to their old judicial
powers and where they themselves kept only a barren presi-
dency. Their old administrative and military functions, so far
as Demos did not take them upon himself, were handed over
to his favourite magistracy, the Ten Generals. We may be
quite sure that this change was at least far advanced before
the lot was made to decide their appointment. The lot was
never applied at Athens to offices which called for any special
fitness.* Generals and ambassadors were always chosen by
the Assembly. It follows that, so long as the Archons were
still the effective heads of the state, they were appointed
in the same way. The lot could only have come in after
the Archons had been cut down to mere routine duties,
which it was held that any respectable citizen was able to
go through. Notoriously discreditable persons would either
be shut out by the Doklmasia or examination before admis-
sion to office, or else punished by the Euthyne or examination
after their term of office was over.

The following then must have been the order of the three
changes. First, All citizens were made admissible to the
archonship. Secondly, The powers of the archonship were so
cut down as to be within the competence of any respectable
citizen. Thirdly, The Archons were appointed by lot. But it
is allowed on all hands that all citizens were not admissible

* To K\T)p<uras tlvcu ras apxas tj irdaas fj oaai P.T) c/j.ir(ipias Seovrai nal
Arist. Pol. vi. 2. 5.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 127

to the archonship till after the battle of Plataia. It follows
therefore that, at least up to that time, the Archons were
elected,* and that they still held powers which needed special
qualifications. As for the yearly Senate, where the same
special qualifications were not needed in each individual
member, f it is possible, though by no means certain, that the
lot may have been applied to their appointment as early as
the time of Kleisthenes.

The reforms of Kleisthenes and the reforms of Aristeides,
mark two great stages in the democratic march. Under
Peisistratos and his sons, patrician and plebeian were con-
founded in one common bondage, which most likely pressed
more heavily upon the patrician. Liberty was brought back,
and the legal distinction between patrician and plebeian was
swept away by the legislation of Kleisthenes. During the
Persian invasion rich and poor showed themselves equal in
suffering and in heroism ; the Thes did and suffered side by
side with the Pentakosiomedimnos. Their common country was
won back, and the legal distinction between rich and poor was
swept away by the legislation of Aristeides. The lot and the
lessened powers of the Archons must soon have followed, till
at last the full-grown Democracy showed itself under Ephialtes
and Perikles. What the Athenian constitution became under
them, such it went on being — with the short interruptions of
the Four Hundred and the Thirty — during the whole remain-

* The only objection to this view is the expression of Herodotus with regard
to Kallimachos at Marathon, 6 TU Kva.fj.ca \a\wv woXe/iap^os. Now Herodotus
directly bears witness to the fact that the Polemarch then still held high
military command. This is essential to the story, and it is a point on which
he could hardly be mistaken. But the mention of the lot is a mere obiter
dictum, in which Herodotus might easily transfer the language of his own
.day to an earlier period. Herodotus shows that in B.C. 490 the Polemarch
acted as a General. Now the Generals were always elected ; surely then in
B.C. 490 the Polemarch must have been elected. There is also the direct
witness of Isokrates and of Idomeneus of Lampsakos quoted by Plutarch.
Their direct authority is much lower than that of Herodotus ; but their positive
statement on a point to which they are specially referring, may counterbalance
his mere casual allusion. See Grote, vol. iv. p. 197.

t See Lysias c. Evan. § 14. The whole speech should be studied as
illustrative of the Dokimasia.

128 TUE AT II EN I AN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

ing period of Athenian independence. It was only bj the
Macedonian Antipatros — Philip and Alexander had spared her
thus much — that Athens was driven once more to set up a
money qualification for the exercise of her now narrowed and
dishonoured citizenship.

•

And now what was the true nature of the full-grown
Athenian constitution, that great Democracy which has been
made the object of such unsparing abuse, and of which Mr.
Grote stands forth as the defender ? The essence of this typi-
cal Greek Democracy is that it unites all power, legislative,
executive, and judicial, in the Assembly of the People. The
essence of pure Democracy, as it \\ as understood by Demos him-
self, was that the assembled people should be Tyrant; the name
at which he shuddered when applied to a ' single person,' he
seems rather to have rejoiced in when it was applied to his
own collective majesty.* In the popular Assembly, where
every citizen, rich or poor, has an equal vote, centres the whole
authority, legislative, judicial, and executive. It may be con-
venient to delegate some of its functions to committees taken
by lot from its own number; hence we have a probouleutic
Senate and popular courts of judicature ; but these bodies
never lose the character of committees of the sovereign As-
sembly; the courts of justice are by the orators who address
them constantly identified with the political Ekklesia, and
they are held to be animated by the same views and passions.
Hence too magistrates have no independent authority ; the
Archon, and even the General, is the mere executor of the will
of the sovereign People ; the former indeed is charged with
little more than to carry out, formally and ministerially,
certain routine duties of police and ceremonial religion.
The division of powers which we look on as so essential to

* Arist. Eq. 1027, 1113, 1329, 1331. Thuc. ii. 63, iii. 37. Isok. Areop. 29.
(Ls ot awr6[U8S tltrdv, iKtlvoi SifyvcuKores ?jaa.v on Set rov ArjfMov, &sir(p
Ttipavvov, KaOlcrraiai rat dpx&s >fol Ko\6.£(ir TOVS f^afiipravovras ical Kpivtiv
vtpl TWV an(piaf$r}Tovii.ivQ}V, rovs 5t ffxo\},i> &y(iv Svvafj.tvovs Kal fiiov 'deavov
KtKnjpivois «ir«/«A€r<70cu roiv KOIVUV Sisirtp oiKtras. Cf. Mitford, chap. 37,
sect. vii.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 129

good government was at Athens never heard of. Demos was
himself King, Minister, and Parliament. He had his smaller
officials to carry out the necessary details of public business,
but he was most undoubtedly his own First Lord of the Trea-
sury, his own Foreign Secretary, his own Secretary for the
Colonies. He himself kept up a personal correspondence both
with foreign potentates and with his own officers on foreign
service; the ' despatches' of Nikias and the 'notes' of Philip
were alike addressed to no officer short of the sovereign him-
self; he gave personal audience to the ambassadors of other
states, and clothed his own with just so great or so small a
share as he deemed good of his own boundless authority. He
had no need to entrust the care of his thousand dependencies
to the mysterious working of a Foreign Office ; he himself sat
in judgement upon Mitylenaian rebels ; he himself settled the
allotment of lands at Chalkis or Amphipolis ; he decreed by
his own wisdom what duties should be levied at the Sound
of Byzantion ; he even ventured on a task of which two-and-
twenty ages have not lessened the difficulty, and undertook,
without the help of a Lord High Commissioner, to adjust the
relations and compose the seditions even of Korkyra and
Zakynthos.* He was his own Lord High Chancellor, hie
own Lord Primate, his own Commander-in-Chief. He listened
to the arguments of Kleon on behalf of a measure, and to the
arguments of Nikias against it, and he ended by bidding Nikias
to go and carry out the proposal which he had denounced as
extravagant or unjust. He listened with approval to his own
'explanations'; he passed votes of confidence in his own
policy ; he advised himself to give his own royal assent to the
bills which he had himself passed, without the form of a
second or third reading, or the vain ceremony of moving that
the Prytaneis do leave their chairs.

Demos then was Tyrant ; and now the question comes, Did
he use his despotic powers well or ill? Did he truly bring

* [Let Englishmen be thankful that this responsibility no longer lies upon
them.]

K

130 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

himself under the censure of a great historian, who lays
down the rule that an assembly of even five or six hundred
persons has 'a tendency to become a mob;' and that 'a
country of which the supreme executive council is a mob is
surely in a perilous situation'?* This is doubtless very good
constitutional doctrine for an age of Cabinet Councils and
diplomatic conferences ; but a Greek of the fourth or fifth cen-
tury before Christ might well have doubted it. The supreme
executive council of his most illustrious city was a mob, not
merely of five or six hundred, but of five or six thousand,
conceivably of from twenty to thirty thousand. This mob
restrained itself just where a modern Parliament gives itself
full freedom, and it gave itself full freedom just where a modern
Parliament restrains itself. Its legislative powers were greatly
narrowed by one of its own committees ;t but its executive
powers were unbounded. This mob, as we have seen, made
peace and war ; it appointed generals and gave them instruc-
tions ; it gave audience to foreign ambassadors and discussed
their proposals; it appointed its own ambassadors, and gave
them instructions for foreign powers. J If comparative secrecy
was ever needed in a diplomatic transaction, the larger mob
which counted its thousands handed over its powers to the
smaller mob of five hundred which formed the Senate of the
republic. § Generals, ambassadors, and other ministers, were
of course allowed a certain liberty and authority, but so are
the generals and ambassadors of the most absolute despot.
But the control which Demos exercised over generals and
ambassadors was the control of a ' Government,' not merely
the control of a Parliament. The Athenian system admitted
of individual Ministers, but it admitted of nothing in the
shape of a Ministry. Even the probouleutic Senate did not
take on itself the functions of a Cabinet. It was by the Sove-
reign Assembly that all public servants were directly ap-

* Macaulay's History of England, vol. iv. p. 434.
f The sworn Nomothetai. See Grote, vol. v. p. 500.

J 'O y&p T^V \eipa, vyJav fj.(\\w> afpfiv, olros 6 irpfff/3fvow iffriv, bitlnfp &v
avrol Sony, ical rtfv tifrqv^v ical rbv w6\(^ioy iroifiv. Andok. Tlfpl E//>. p. 41.
§ See Grote, vol. xi. p. 332.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 131

pointed ; it was to the Sovereign Assembly that they were
directly responsible.

Now a fair examination of Grecian history will assuredly
lead us to the conclusion that this mob clothed with exe-
cutive functions made one of the best governments which
the world ever saw. It did not work impossibilities ; it
did not change earth into paradise nor men into angels;
it did not forestall every improvement which has since
appeared in the world ; still less did it forestall all the
improvements which we may trust are yet in store for man-
kind. But that government cannot be called a bad one
which is better than any other government of its own time.
And surely that government must be called a good one which
is a marked improvement upon every government which has
gone before it. The Athenian Democracy is entitled to both
these kinds of praise. Demos was guilty of some follies and
some crimes ; but he was guilty of fewer follies and fewer
crimes, and he did more wise and noble deeds, than any
government of his own or of any earlier age.

First then, the Democracy of Athens was the first great
instance which the world ever saw of the substitution of law
for force. Here, as usual, we find in Athens the highest
instance of a tendency common to all Greece. The rudest
Greek community had a far more advanced conception of
law than any barbarian state which it came across. The
Athenian Democracy carried the conception into more perfect
working than any other state in Greece. The history of an
eastern despotism is commonly a history of usurpations,
rebellions, and massacres. Blood is shed without mercy to
decide which of two rival men shall be the despot. In too
many Greek commonwealths, blood was shed with hardly more
of mercy to decide which of two political parties should have
the upper hand. But even here, as the aim of the Greek is
one degree nobler, so are his means one degree less cruel.
The barbarian mutilates, impales, crucifies : the Greek simply
slays. Again, what the Greek of Argos or Korkyra is to the
Barbarian, the Greek of Athens is to the Greek of Argos or

K 2

132 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

Korkyra. The Athenian, at least the democratic Athenian,
does not even slay. Demos put some men to death unjustly,
some illegally : the Generals at Arginousai died by a bill of
attainder worthy of a Tudor Parliament ; but Demos was
never guilty of massacre or assassination in any civrl struggle.
The dagger of the assassin, the hemlock administered without
trial, were the weapons only of his enemies. Their use was
confined to the good, the noble, the refined, the men of birth
and culture, the boasted /3e'An<rroi and KaXoKqyaQoi who shared
the power, and abetted the crimes, of the Four Hundred and
the Thirty. Never did the history of the world show forth
nobler instances of moderation and good faith than the con-
duct of the Athenian People on each occasion of its restoration.
In no other city could such a triumph have been wrought with-
out wholesale massacres and confiscations. The victorious
Demos was satisfied with the legal trial and execution of a few
notorious traitors. For the rest an amnesty was proclaimed,
oaths were sworn, and, as even the oligarchic historian point-
edly tells us, the People abode by its oaths.* Such was the
result of a form of government in which every citizen partook,
where every question was fairly argued on both sides, and
where the minority peaceably yielded to an adverse vote.

But we are told that the Athenian people were jealous
and suspicious of their most distinguished citizens. Aris-
teides was ostracized, Perikles was fined, Sokrates was put
to death, Iphikrates and Chabrias dared not live at home
for fear of popular jealousy. No rich man had a moment's
quiet between liturgies on the one hand and sycophants on
the other. Base and selfish demagogues enjoyed the con-
fidence from which high-born and virtuous aristocrats were
debarred. Such is the picture commonly drawn of the prac-
tical working of Athenian freedom. Let us group together all
these charges into two or three. First, then, what was the
general condition of a rich man at Athens ?

The real ground of complaint brought against the Athenian

To?s ZpKots (fjififvfi 6 ^IJLOS. Xen. Hell. ii. 4, 43.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 133

Democracy by its aristocratic enemies was simply that it kept
them from somewhat of that licence to do evil which they en-
joyed elsewhere. We may judge of the real nature of their
wrongs by one charge which is gravely brought against
Athens by her own apostate citizen. She did not indeed fore-
stall our own fathers and grandfathers by abolishing either
slavery or the slave-trade ; but she at least did something to
lighten the yoke of the slave. At Athens, says Xenoph6n,*
a man did not dare to beat a foreigner or another man's
slave : in well-regulated Sparta such liberty seems to have
been allowed. But what did the rich really suffer ? All legal
advantages had been taken away both from birth and wealth ;
but in all ages birth and wealth carry with them certain
natural advantages which no legislation can take away. And
these advantages the Athenian aristocrats enjoyed only too
freely. What licence the rich practically exercised even under
the full-grown Democracy we see in the stories of Alkibiade"s
and Meidias. What licence they deemed themselves entitled
to we see in the share taken by the whole equestrian
order in the vilest deeds of the Thirty. The high and
honourable offices of the commonwealth fell all but exclusively
to their share. It was rare indeed that the fleets and armies
of Athens were commanded by other than men of old aristo-
cratic blood. If the rich man was burthened with heavy
and costly liturgies, if he had to furnish a chorus or to
fit out a trireme, we commonly find that he laid out a sum
far beyond his legal liability, in order to make political
capital out of his munificence, f

Again, did the Athenian Demos deserve either the charge of
inconstancy so commonly brought against it, or that other
charge which Macaulay brings in its stead against ' the com-
mon people/ namely, that 'they almost invariably choose their
favourite so ill, that their constancy is a vice and not a virtue ?' J
Do* the ' common people' of Athens, the mob of lamp-makers,

* De Eep. Ath. i. 10.

t See Lysias, 'Air. Awp. § 2-9. Ai7/i. Kar. § 16. Iltpl Evav. § 4.

J History of England, vol. i. p. 627.

134 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

lyre-makers, and leather-sellers, fairly come under either charge?
With regard to measures, their fault was certainly rather
obstinacy than inconstancy. Till their energy began to fail
them altogether, they were, as the fatal Sicilian expedition
proved, only too slow to change, too fully bent on cleaving to
a policy after it had been shown to be hurtful. But, if they
were obstinate about measures, were they fickle about men ?
Were they either inconstant in their attachments, or did they
form those attachments on slight grounds ? They are said to
have been inconstant because Miltiades was fined. This charge
Mr. Grote* has tossed to the winds. No man can dare to
bring it up again, unless he is ready to lay down the principle
that one great public service is to secure a man from punish-
ment for all his after offences. In fact, instead of fickleness,
the Athenians seem rather to have been remarkable for strange
constancy to their favourites. Take the case of Nikias at
one stage of their history, and that of Phokion at another.
Nikias, on whom we hold that Mr. Grote is unduly hard, was
a rich man, a man of decided aristocratic tendencies, but one
who never found that either his wealth or his politics laid him
open to public jealousy or mistrust. Phokion was poor; but
of all men he was the last to be called a flatterer of the
People; he was rather remarkable for saying the most
unpleasant things in the most unpleasant way. Yet, year
after year, first Nikias, and then Phokion, were elected
Generals of the commonwealth. Nikias kept to the last a
confidence which proved fatal both to himself and to the
state. Phokion at last drank the hemlock juice ; but it was
not till Athens had lost her freedom ; it was not till he had
been the accomplice of her oppressors ; and even then, it was
not by the lawful sentence of the People, but by the voice of
an irregular rabble, hounded on by a foreign deliverer or
conqueror. In the greatest crime that the People ever did,
the execution of the Generals at Arginousai, what we have
a right to condemn is the breach of the ordinary securities
which the law had provided for accused persons. On the

* Vol. iv. p. 497.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 135

guilt or innocence of the Generals themselves it is hardly safe
to pronounce with confidence.*

But what has the apologist of Athens to say to the insti-
tution of Ostracism ? Aristeides, Themistokles, Kimon, Thucy-
dides son of Melesias, were all ostracized; all, that is, were
banished without crime — banished, we might almost say,
avowedly on account of their merits. Mr. Grote has, we think,
made out a very fair case in behalf of the ostracism. It was
a rude and imperfect means of meeting a temporary danger,
while the Democracy was still in a rude and imperfect state.
In the fully developed Democracy ostracism had no place ; it
was never formally abolished, but it silently dropped out of
use. It was bad in theory ; it could have no place in a
fixed and settled polity ; but it was meant to meet — and
perhaps no other means could have met — a real danger
during the infancy of the commonwealth. In most Grecian
cities, the triumph of one political party carried with it the
slaughter, exile, and confiscation of the other. Ostracism
was meant to hinder these horrors ; it did hinder them very
thoroughly. Ostracism stood instead of revolutions, proscrip-
tions, bills of attainder. When civil strife seemed to hang
over the state, the People were called on to decide who was
the dangerous person. If six thousand secret votes agreed
in naming the same person, he had to go abroad for ten
years. He could hardly be said to be banished ; still less
was he dishonoured. f His property was untouched ; his
political rights were merely suspended ; in many cases he
was actually recalled before his whole time of absence was
over. Ostracism then might be an evil, perhaps a wrong ;
but it was the only way that showed itself of hindering far
greater evils and far greater wrongs. The honourable exile

* Mr. Grote's remarks on this event are throughout most weighty. He
leans however a little more to the unfavourable side, as regards the Gene-
rals than we are disposed to do.

[I shall say something more on this head in the Appendix to this Essay.]
•f The pseudo-Andokides (c. Alcib. 4) says that ostracism was too heavy
a punishment for private, too light for public offences ; roiv 8e Sijuoatoav piKp&v
Kdl ovSfvos a£iav •fftovfuat ^ijftlav, ffiiv Ko\a£ftv xprfmaoi Kal Sfffny Kal 6avaT(f>.

136 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

of one stood instead of the proscription of many. Ostracism
did its work and then disappeared. It became as wholly out
of date under the later Democracy as the far sterner safeguard
of impeachment has now become in England. In both cases
liberty has grown strong enough to dispense with any ex-
ceptional safeguard. It has been found that party-spirit can
be kept within legal and constitutional bounds without re-
sorting to extra-legal means for its restraint.

But Demos not only banished his statesmen; he allowed
himself to be led by his Demagogues. Now on this head not
only is there a great popular misconception afloat, but we can-
not help thinking that Mr. Grote himself labours under a
certain amount of misconception. Mr. Grote delights to call
the Demagogues ' opposition speakers,' in contrast to the great
men of action whom he half looks on as an executive Cabinet.
He evidently has in his mind the vision of Joseph Hume
calling the ministerial estimates over the coals, or of his own
annual motion for the ballot defeated by the frowns of the
Treasury benches or the apathy of the Opposition itself.*
He does not always remember, what no man knows better
than himself as matter of fact, that at Athens there were
no Treasury benches, no ministerial estimates, and there-
fore no opposition speakers. He allows that the term is not
strictly accurate : to us it seems not only not to be strictly
accurate but to be altogether misleading. There is hardly any
analogy between the two cases. The direct sovereignty vested
in the Assembly admitted of nothing answering to office and
opposition. Mr. Grote looks on Nikias as being in office, and
Kleon as being in opposition. Now undoubtedly, as one of the
Generals of the commonwealth, Nikias was, in a certain sense,
' in office.' He held one of the highest places of trust and
authority in the state. But he was not in office in the same
sense in which Lord Palmerston or Lord Derby was in office
among ourselves. He was not even in office in the same sense
in which Quintus Fabius or Manius Curius was in office at

* [Pity that the historian could not see the fruit of his own labours in
1877.]

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 137

Rome, or in which Aratos or Lydiadas was in office in the
Achaian "League. With us a minister whose policy is no longer
followed is held to be no longer trusted, and he no longer retains
office. But Nikias constantly saw his policy set aside, while he
himself still continued to be trusted, and still continued to retain
office. Out of the Assembly Nikias was a great officer of the
commonwealth, armed with high authority to carry out the
bidding of the Assembly. In the Assembly Nikias was one
citizen out of some thousands, a citizen who was always listened
to with respect, but whose advice was sometimes followed and
sometimes not. Kleon, in the Assembly, stood in the same
position as Nikias. He often canvassed the doings of men in
office ; but he often persuaded the People to follow his policy
rather than theirs. Now the idea of an ' opposition speaker '
implies that his policy is not at present followed. We hold
then that it is not merely not strictly accurate, but that it
is thoroughly misleading, to apply the name to an Athenian
Demagogue.*

The word Demagogue means simply ' a leader of the people,'f
and it belongs to Themistokles and Perikles as much as to
Kleon and Hyperboles. But, apart from any invidious mean-
ing, it means, in its later use, a political leader who is not
also a military leader. The Demagogue is a citizen whose
advice the Assembly habitually takes, but whom it does not
place at the head of its armies. In early times political

* The late Professor Grote, in a pamphlet in answer to a puny attack on
his brother, acutely remarked that Mr. Grote had been somewhat misled by
assuming the position of Kle6n at Athens as being the same as that of AthSna-
goras at Syracuse. Now the speech of Athdnagoras in Thucydides does read
like that of an ' opposition speaker.' He talks like one who has been rather
kept in the dark about public affairs, and who wants to get an answer out of
men in office. We do not know the details of the Syracusan constitution, and
the probability is that at this time it entrusted individual magistrates with
greater powers than was the case at Athens. Such is the natural inference
from the debate in Thucydides, while Aristotle distinctly says that Syra-
cuse became, after the Athenian invasion, more democratic than before. See
Grote, vol. x. p. 538. In no case can we safely argue from one Grecian city
to another.

•f Lysias does not scruple to speak of dyaOol 817/40701701, and to point out
their duties. KarA 'Ewi*. § n.

138 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

and military authority always go together. Homer's perfect
ruler is

dft({>6Tfpov &aat\fvs r' dfaOos /epartpos r' alx^ft)*-

And this Homeric sentiment long survived the establishment
of democracy. Miltiades, Aristeides, and Themistokles, were
great alike on the battle-field and in the Assembly. But,
as both military and political science advanced, it was found
that the highest merit in the one was not always found in
company with the highest merit in the other. The cha-
racters of the military commander and the political leader
were gradually separated. The first germs of this division
we find in the days of Kimdn and Perikles. Kimon was no
mean politician ; but his real genius clearly called him to
warfare with the Barbarian. Perikles was an able and suc-
cessful general ; but in him the military character was quite
subordinate to that of the political leader. It was a wise
compromise which entrusted Kimon with the defence of the
state abroad and Perikles with its management at home.
After Perikles the separation widened. We nowhere hear of
Demosthenes and Phormion as political leaders ; and even in
Nikias the political is subordinate to the military character.
Kleon, on the other hand, was a politician but not a soldier.
But the old notion of combining military and political position
was not quite lost. It was still deemed that he who proposed
a warlike expedition should himself, if it were needful, be able
to conduct it. Kleon in an evil hour was tempted to take
on himself military functions : he was forced into command
against Sphakteria ; by the able and loyal help of Demosthenes
he acquitted himself with honour. But his head was turned
by success ; he aspired to independent command ; he measured
himself against the mighty Brasidas ; and the fatal battle of
Amphipolis was the result. It now became clear that the
Demagogue and the General must commonly be two distinct
persons. The versatile genius of Alkibiades again united the
two characters ; but he left no successor. The soldier Thrasy-
boulos needed the help of the civilian Archinos to give its
new life to the restored Democracy. Konon, Iphikrates,

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 139

Chabrias, Timotheos, were almost exclusively generals ; Kal-
listratos, Demosthenes, Hyperides, and ^Eschines, were quite
exclusively demagogues. Phokion alone united something of
both characters. But Phokion was primarily a general : in
the Assembly he was more truly an ' opposition-speaker ' than
Kleon ; at least he commonly spoke in opposition to the pre-
vailing opinions of his time.

In fact, as times advanced, the separation between the two
characters became too wide. Their final separation is closely
connected with ihat decay of military spirit in Greece which is
so instructively dealt with by Mr. Grote in his eleventh volume.
Under the old system, citizen and soldier, political and mili-
tary leader, had been convertible terms. The orator who
proposed an expedition was the general who commanded it.
The citizens who voted for his proposal were the soldiers
who served under his command. But the later Athenians
shrank from military service in their own persons. Nor was
the evil peculiar to Athens. Throughout Greece there arose a
class of professional soldiers. Now in Greece a professional
soldier could hardly be distinguished from a mercenary, and
a mercenary could hardly be distinguished from a brigand.
Professional soldiers of this kind needed professional generals,
just as naturally as the citizen-soldiers of earlier times needed
orator-generals. We are told that it was because of the
jealousy of the people that Iphikrates and Chabrias commonly
lived away from Athens. The real case is very plain. Iphi-
krates and Chabrias were professional generals. When their
country was at war, they served their country. When their
country was at peace, they liked better to serve some one else
than to live quietly at home. Iphikrates even went so
far as to help his barbarian father-in-law in a contest with
Athens. From professional generals of this kind there is
surely but one step to professional robbers like Chares and
Charidemos of Euboia.

A Demagogue then was simply an influential speaker of
popular politics. Demosthenes is commonly distinguished as
an orator, while Kleon is branded as a Demagogue ; but the

140 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

position of the one was the same as the position of the other.
The only question is as to the wisdom and the honesty of the
advice given either by Kleon or by Demosthenes. Now no
part of Mr. Grote's History took the world more by surprise
than his elaborate vindication of Kleon. A vindication we may
fairly call it, though it leaves many points in Kleon's character
open to blame, when we compare it with the unmeasured invec-
tive of every other writer. We suspect that Mr. Grote at once
enjoyed the paradox, and felt himself bound to say something
on behalf of the Demagogue. We do not wholly go along with
him, but we must say that his defence is more than plausible ;
it is perfectly good on several of the counts. Two remarks we
must make. We are told that the Demagogues flattered the
People. Now nothing can be less like flattery of the People
than Kledn's speech in the debate on Mitylene. It is as full
of reproaches against the People as the speeches of Demo-
sthenes eighty years later. Again, we are told that Kleon was
so frightfully abusive. He could hardly be more abusive than
both Demosthenes and ^Eschines. Now in Demosthenes and
./Eschines, every one regrets their abusive language as a fault ;
no one looks on it as wholly destroying their claim to honour.
Why then should Kleon receive harder measure ?

With the character of Kleon the character of Thucydides
is inseparably bound up. Mr. Grote has brought some censure
upon himself by putting forth two opinions on this point.
First, that Thucydides was to blame for the loss of Am-
phipolis ; secondly, that the disparaging character which he
gives of Kleon was partly the result of personal enmity.
Now Thucydides is our only witness, and we have perfect
right to cross-question him. And we think Mr. Grote clearly
shows that Thucydides should have been nowhere but at
Amphipolis when Amphipolis was in danger; at all events,
Thucydides gives no good reason for his being at Thasos.
Mr. Grote in no way disputes the truthfulness of Thucydides ;
he only disputes the propriety of his military conduct as re-
ported by himself. The Athenian People, by whom Thucy-
dides was banished, clearly took the same view as Mr. Grote.
As for the case between Thucydides and Kleon, of that we

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 141

have spoken elsewhere.* Here we need only ask why, as no
one thinks himself bound to accept Thucydides' judgement of
Antiphon, it should be thought such frightful heresy in Mr.
Grote to make use of the like discretion as to Thucydides'
judgement of Kleon?

The judicial system of the Democracy formed a most re-
markable feature in Athenian life, and Mr. Grote's remarks
upon the working of the popular courts of justice are among
the most valuable things in his work. But we think that he
is not quite clear in his historical view as to their introduction.
When speaking of Kleisthenes, he seems to attribute more to
his early reform than he afterwards does when he speaks of
Perikles. f This judicial system, which at any rate received its
final perfection from the hands of Perikles, was, as Mr. Grote
truly says, an exaggeration of jury trial, both in its merits
and its defects. We should remember that the Athenian juris-
prudence was much less complicated than our own, and that
there was no class of professional lawyers. The question was,
Who shall judge ? an individual Archon or a large body of
citizens ? All Grecian experience showed that, where a single
magistrate judged, there was far more danger of corruption,
oppression, and sacrifice of justice to private interest. That the
popular courts were always inclined to undue severity is a mere
calumny. Their fault was a tendency to listen to irrelevant
matter on both sides alike. They doubtless pronounced some
unrighteous condemnations and some unrighteous acquittals,
but the unrighteous acquittals were at least as common as the
unrighteous condemnations.!

* See above p. 108.

t We have already mentioned Mr. Grote's mistranslation of the passage
in Arist. Pol. ii. 12, 4. rd. 81 SiKaffTTjpia (iiado<p6pa Kartarrfat TlepiK\r)s, which
he renders ' Perikles first constituted the paid dikasteries ; that is, the
dikasteries as well as the pay were of his introduction.' Mr. Grote's version,
we need hardly say, would require T& SiKaffT'fipia TOL fuaOotyopa. But it is just
possible that the meaning may be (paraphrastically) something of this kind :
'Perikle's, in instituting the Smaar-qpia, made them paid rather than gra-
tuitous.' But, on turning back to Mr. Grote's account of Kleisthene's (vol. iv.
p. 187) we find that he allows very considerable judicial powers to have been
vested in popular bodies by his constitution,

J On this head see especially Dem. Ilfpl Tlapatrp. § 252, and the opening of
Lysias" speech against Nikomachos.

142 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

The Athenian system of jurisprudence is moreover closely
bound up with one of the most important subjects of all. It
is bound up with the relations of Athens to her dependencies
among- other Grecian cities. Athens, as we have already said,
was the most illustrious of Greek states, not only as an indi-
vidual autonomous city, but as a ruler over other Greeks, and
as a Pan-Hellenic leader against the Barbarian. In the latter
character at least she stands unrivalled. When Crresus sub-
dued the Ionic cities, Sparta was the ally of the first Barbarian
who bore rule over Greeks. When the same cities revolted
against Darius, Athens fought by their side in the first Greek
War of Independence. During the great Persian War, Athens
was the one Grecian city whose endurance never failed for a
moment. While Northern Greece fought on the side of the
invader, while Peloponnesos thought of Peloponnesian interests
alone, Athens never flinched, never faltered. Her fields were
harried ; her city was destroyed ; the most favourable terms
of submission were offered to her ; but neither fear nor hope
moved her for a moment. She rose far above that local
jealousy which was the common bane of Hellas. When her
contingent was two-thirds of the whole fleet, she cheerfully
gave up the command to a Lacedsemonian landsman. On
the field of Plataia, the victors of Marathon were ready to
yield the place of honour to the presumptuous pretensions of
Tegea. Athens, more than any other state, drove back the
invader from Greece itself; Athens, without any help from
the mainland, carried a triumphant war into his own terri-
tory. She freed the ^Egaean from the presence of barbarian
fleets, and the Greeks of Asia from the presence of barbarian
tribute-gatherers. And from this glorious position she never
willingly drew back. The Democracy of Athens was never
numbered among the pensioners of the Great King, till the
oligarchy of Sparta drove her to such a course in self-defence.
It was Sparta who first betrayed the Greeks of Asia as the
price of barbarian help. It was Sparta who negotiated the
shameful peace of Antalkidas ; it was Sparta who again ac-
knowledged the Greeks of Asia as the subjects, and the Greeks

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 143

of Europe as something- very like the vassals, of the power
which Athens had kept back three days' journey from the
shores of the Grecian seas.

These thoughts lead us at once to the character and po-
sition of Athens as a ruler over other Greeks. When the
Spartans withdrew from the war with Persia, the Greek cities
of Thrace, Asia, and the .ZEgsean islands, formed themselves
of their own free will into the confederacy of Delos, under the
presidency of Athens. Mr. Grote has well shown how, by
the gradual working of circumstances, and without any single
coup d'etat, this Athenian presidency was changed into an
Athenian empire. This empire began in a pre-eminence
honourably won and willingly bestowed ; it ended in a su-
premacy, not positively oppressive, but offensive to Greek
political instincts, and exercised with little regard to aught
but the interests of the ruling city. That is to say, Athens,
like every other recorded state, ancient or modern, kingdom or
commonwealth, could not withstand the temptation to unjust
though plausible aggrandizement. But certainly Athens, as a
ruler of dependencies, need not be ashamed of a comparison
with other states in the same position. The subject of Athens
gained some solid advantages : he saw the sea kept clear alike
from pirates and from hostile fleets ; he was wholly at rest as
to all danger from the Great King ; if one city had a quarrel
with another, the supremacy of Athens afforded means for a
peaceful, instead of a warlike, settlement of differences. Far
less oppression was exercised by Athenian than by Persian or
Spartan commanders ; and, when instances of oppression did
happen, the chance of redress was far greater than commonly
lies open to subject commonwealths. Here we see one great
advantage of the Athenian system of judicature, of the numer-
ous judges, the publicity of proceedings, the free licence alike
of accusation and defence. The popular courts of Athens, as
even their enemies acknowledged, were ever ready to punish
the wrong-doer. Nor does it appear that Athens, as a general
rule, interfered with the form of internal government in the
allied cities. But all these advantages which the allied cities

144 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

enjoyed under the rule of Athens were purchased at the
cost of what the Greek loved more than all of them, the
position of his city as a sovereign state. It is of this political
degradation, much more than of any practical oppression, that
the orators hostile to Athens always complain. The Athenian
sway was not hated ; but it was acquiesced in without affection.
Revolts were almost always the work of a few leading men,
without the consent, sometimes directly against the will, of
the people. But, on the other hand, the people were not
often found ready to do or to suffer anything in the cause
of Athens. Athens, in short, was not an oppressive sovereign,
but she was a sovereign; and the mere existence of a sovereign
was hateful to the political instincts of Greece.

But let us see what happened when the Athenian Empire
came to an end, when Sparta gave herself out as the
liberator and president of Greece. Freedom, under her, cer-
tainly put on a strange form. Athens had at least kept back
the Barbarian : Sparta gave up the Asiatic Greeks to be
subjects of Persia. Athens, satisfied with tribute, left the in-
ternal government of the cities to themselves : Sparta set up a
narrow oligarchy in each, and backed it by a Spartan governor
and garrison. Truly the subject states must have longed
for the restoration of Athenian bondage, when each Asiatic
city bowed to a Persian satrap, and each European city to
a Spartan harmost. One main principle of Spartan govern-
ment was never to punish, much less to redress, the evil deeds
of Spartan commanders abroad. Phoibidas seized the Theban
Kadmeia : justice was mocked by the infliction of a fine on
the offender, while his government continued to profit by his
offence. Sphodrias invaded Attica in time of peace : private
interest rescued the wrong-doer from even the pretence of
judicial censure. When the Athenian Paches carried off two
free women of Mitylene and slew their husbands, the injured
women accused him before an Athenian tribunal : his con-
demnation was certain, and he stabbed himself in open
court. But when two Spartan officers did the like outrage
by the daughters of Skedasos of Leuktra, the father in vain

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 145

sought for redress at Sparta, and not the ravishers, but their
victims, were driven to self-destruction.

The best tribute to the comparative merit of the Athenian
empire is the voluntary reconstruction of the confederacy
under Timotheos. The insular cities had found that Athenian
supremacy was at least the second best thing when absolute
independence was not to be had. Again was Athens installed
as constitutional president of an equal confederacy. Again
she began gradually to change into an autocrat. Again she
grasped at the absolute possession of various cities. And
moreover, under the new state of things, her professional
generals and mercenary soldiers proved far greater scourges
to the allied cities than the orator-generals and citizen-
soldiers of her first empire. These causes at last led to
the Social War, which left both parties ready victims for
the Macedonian aggressor.

Athens then, as a ruler of Greeks, deserves at least com-
parative praise. Not but that some of her individual acts
were both cruel and impolitic. The massacres which she
decreed at Mitylene, which she carried out at Skione and
Melos, are sad blots on her fame. But, even here, we should
remember the harshness of the Greek laws of war. The life
of the prisoner, apart from any special compact, was in no way
sacred. The victor might at pleasure enslave or put him to
death. These massacres were only very harsh instances of a
very harsh rule, carried out on a scale which gives them a
character of fearful atrocity. That at Melos, above all, is
clothed with additional blackness when we think that the war
itself was an utterly unprovoked aggression. But think of
the deeds of oligarchic Sparta. Viler than any Athenian
deed of blood was the Spartan massacre at Plataia. Athens
relentlessly carried out a cruel law of war ; but the Plataian
captives were no longer prisoners of war : they were prisoners
at the bar of justice, mocked by the promise of a fair trial, and
slaughtered, not by a military, but by a judicial murder. Even
in this catalogue of crime, we find our usual three degrees.
Athens massacred her prisoners by wholesale; Sparta murdered

146 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

the unarmed merchants of neutral states. But at least both
Athens and Sparta were satisfied with simple murder : the re-
finements of torture and mutilation were left to the Barbarians
of Persia and of Carthage.

Such is a picture of the Democracy of Athens, drawn chiefly
after the great historian with whose noble work we have been
dealing. We thus see how that great commonwealth, the
first fully developed free constitution that the world had seen,
not only gave the political life of each citizen a fuller and wider
action than any constitution that has ever been, but also secured
life and property and personal freedom better than any other
government of its own age, or of many ages afterwards. Its
defect was that it was the offspring of an enthusiasm too high-
strung, and of a citizenship too narrow, to allow of lasting
greatness. Demos was but the shadow of his former self after
his ' happy restoration ' by the Albemarle of Democracy, the
hero of Phylai and Peiraieus. At the age of two centuries he
became politically and morally dead under the care of his two
rival Deme'trioi, and from thenceforth he did but drag on a
weary second childhood till he disappeared under a Flavian
Emperor in the vast charnel-house of Roman dominion. But
his real life, short as it was, was as glorious as it was short.
English writers are too apt to argue on this head from what
they see around them at home. Mitford was right enough
when he assumed that an English county meeting reached the
very height of political ignorance; only he should not have
thence leaped to a similar conclusion as to the assembled people
of Athens. Certainly squires and farmers alike, gathered
together at times few and far between under some political
excitement, are utterly incapable of really entertaining a
political question, or of getting beyond some party watch-
word of ' Liberal' or ' Conservative,' ' Free-Trade' or ' Protec-
tion.' * But we must not thence infer that the Ekklesia of

* [I believe however that I was not BO much thinking of meetings gathered
for any real political purpose, as of the Ephesian mobs — largely made up of

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 147

Athens presented a scene equally deplorable. Such writers
forget that, as Maeaulay has shown in a brilliant passage
which every one should be able to call to mind, the common
life of the Athenian was itself the best of political educations.
We suspect that the average Athenian citizen was, in political
intelligence, above the average English Member of Parliament.
It was this concentration of all power in an aggregate of
which every citizen formed a part, which is the distinguishing
characteristic of true Greek democracy. Florence had nothing
like it ; there has been nothing like it in the modern world :
the few pure democracies which have lingered on to our own
day have never had such mighty questions laid before them,
and have never had such statesmen and orators to lead them.
The great Democracy has had no fellow; but the political
lessons which it teaches are none the less lessons for all time
and for every land and people.

It is not without some important points of dissent, but
it is with deep and heartfelt admiration, that we part com-
pany with the illustrious subject of this essay — rbv ptyav
"AyyXov ioTopioypdtyov Fewpyioi; FpoVe, as we are glad to find
him called in the land of which he writes. * His work is
one of the glories of our age and country. Honourable as
it is to the intellectual, it is still more honourable to the
moral, qualities of its author. His unwearied research, his
clearness of insight, his depth and originality of thought, are
more easily to be paralleled than his diligent and conscien-
tious striving after truth, and the candour with which he
marshals in their due order even the facts which tell most
strongly against his own conclusions. And when we think
that we can place him side by side with another writer of the
same age and country, and devoted to the same studies — a
writer of merit equal in degree, though widely different

well-dressed persons — which came together to roar against religious liberty at
the time of the so-called 'Papal Aggression.' For that folly some of our
statesmen have since stood on the stool of repentance.]

* In the Lectures of Professor Constantino Paparregopoulos of Athens, vtpl
rfjs 'Apx^s *a» T*/* AianopQiaatws rov dpxaiov 'E\\T)Vtnov lOvovt, p. 3.

L 2

148 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

in kind — we may say that it is no small tribute that the
England of the nineteenth century has paid to the first
founders of art and freedom and civilized life. If the
mighty men of old Hellas can look out of their graves,
they may be well pleased to see two such minds as those
of George Grote and Connop Thirlwall give long years
of busy life to set forth their thoughts and deeds as a lesson
of wisdom for the men of lands of which they themselves
had never heard.

CURTIUS'S HISTORY OF GREECE.
I.

THE Grecian History of Ernst Curtius is doubtless already well known to
all those students of the subject who do not shrink from reading a German
book in the original. It is really wonderful how many histories of Greece
may be written, each of them thoroughly good in its own way, and yet none
of which allows us to dispense with the others. We believe that the im-
petuous generation which now presides over education at Oxford has long ago
thrown Bishop Thirlwall behind the fire. Yet no rational English student of
Grecian history would think that he had mastered his subject, unless he had
compared both Thirlwall and Grote with one another and with the original
writers. So now, though we should recommend every such student to read
Curtius without fail, we in nowise hold that his reading of Curtius at all lets
him off from the duty of reading both Grote and Thirlwall also. In study-
ing what is called ancient history, where the original authorities are for the
most part scanty, good modern guides are a matter of distinct necessity as com-
mentators and harmonizers. But where a great deal must always be matter of
inference, theory, and even conjecture, it is highly dangerous to follow any one
modern guide imph'citly. Inferences and theories, however ingenious and pro-
bable, must not be put on the same level as ascertained facts. Five-and-twenty
years ago the theories of Niebuhr were accepted as if they rested on the evidence
of eye-witnesses. A faith yet more self-sacrificing seems now to be given to
the more novel theories of Mommsen. All this is thoroughly bad. The use of
a modern historian is to collect and sift the original writers, and to act as their
interpreter, not to act as a prophet on his own account. In a subject like
Grecian or Roman history, it is specially mischievous to rely on any one modern
guide. Each writer, if he is fit for his work, will suggest valuable matter
for thought ; but none of them can be entitled to implicit submission. Each
will look at things differently, according to his natural turn of mind, according
to his place of birth, his political party, and the many other influences which
affect a man's point of view. One writer will succeed best in one part of his
subject, another in another. Thirlwall, Grote, Curtius, others besides, all have

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 149

their use ; each teaches something which the others do not teach ; each is the
strongest in some particular part of their common subject. A careful student
will read and weigh all of them, but he will decline to pledge himself as the
bondslave of any one among them.

The work of Curtius appears in the same series with the work of Mommsen,
and it is impossible to avoid comparing the two. There is no trace in Curtius
of that boisterous dogmatism with which Mommsen, in well nigh every page, sets
forth some startling theory without deigning to give any shadow of a reason,
and hurls some epithet of abuse at all who refuse to believe on the spot. The
one very startling thing which Curtius has to put forward in his first volume
is put forth quietly and soberly, not the least in the knock-me-down style of his
fellow- worker, and it is moreover supported by an Excursus at the end. In
another point also Curtius has greatly the advantage over Mommsen. A Ger-
man, professing to write in German, he does not shrink from what he professes.
No one can give the honourable name of High-Dutch to the half- Welsh jargon
of Mommsen, in which about every third word is some needless French or Latin
intruder. There is nothing of this kind about Curtius. Few modem books,
German or English, are freer from this wretched affectation. In his hands the
stores of his own noble language are shown to be fully capable of dealing with
his subject, as with any other subject. And, more than this, his book is one
of the few books in German prose which can be read with real pleasure. He is
always clear and graceful, and, though some even of his sentences might be
shortened with advantage, they at least do not go rambling over whole pages.
As a mere work of literature, apart from its historical value, we are disposed to
place the work of Curtius in a very high rank.

The first volume of the original text goes down to the Ionic revolt and the
battle of LadS. It thus contains the whole of that ethnological and mythological
matter which must form the beginning of any History of Greece, the introduc-
tion to its strictly historical portions, and it also carries on the story some way
into far more strictly historic times. In going again through matters which
have so often been gone through before, we look, if not for actually new facts,
at least for some new way of looking at them, for some new light thrown upon
them. Without some such claim as this on our attention, we do not admit a
new writer's right to call us to listen again to so old a story. But Curtius un-
doubtedly makes out his claim to attention by a display of special excellence in
one branch of his subject. His strong point seems to us to be geography.
Curtius was known as a traveller and a geographer before he was known as an
historian ; and his knowledge of the country, and his keen eye for the charac-
teristic features of the whole land and of its several portions, stand him in good
stead in every page. The first chapter seems to us the best, simply be-
cause it is the most geographical. We never read a more vivid sketch of the
aspect of any country. Curtius gives us an elaborate picture of the whole land,
marking with a most delicate touch all that distinguishes every valley and sea-
board from every other. He brings out, as clearly as words can bring out, the
physical conformation, the climate, the products, of the different countries round
the u^Egaean Sea, and the way in which the course of their history has been in-
fluenced by these geographical features. The whole thing is done with a kind
of enthusiasm which communicates itself to the reader, and which could only
be kindled by one who is personally and minutely familiar with the land of

150 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

which he is writing. Mr. Grote bestowed great pains on the geographical
part of his work, but we believe that he never visited Greece, and we sus-
pect that, even if he had, he would not have given us the same vivid picture as
Curtius has done. The difference lies in the turn of mind and way of looking
at things natural to the two men. We might perhaps say that Curtius has
a direct love, a sort of personal regard, for Greece — that is, for Hellas in the
widest sense — for the land itself, as for a personal friend whose acquaintance
he has made and enjoyed. To Mr. Grote, on the other hand, Greece is simply
the scene of certain great political events. He has studied the geographical
and other features of the country with minute and conscientious care, because
a knowledge of them is essential to an understanding of the events which
happened among them. But it is only in this secondary way that the country
itself has any attraction for him. He cannot, as Curtius can, throw a fascina-
tion over a geographical lesson. Next to the opening part, the description of
Greece — taking in of course Asiatic as well as European Greece — comes, in
our eyes, the chapter on Greek colonization. Here again the geographical
powers of Curtius are called out with admirable effect. But of course he can-
not produce the same fascinating picture of settlements in Spain or in the
Tauric Chersonesos as he can when he is describing European Greece itself,
and those Asiatic islands and shores which cannot be separated from it as a
geographical and historical whole.

But, to keep everything in its proper proportion, when we turn to the strictly
political parts of the history, we find the balance of merit no less distinctly in
favour of the English writer. In these parts of the history, it is to the English
writer that we have to look for originality, vigour, and clearness — for sug-
gestions which strike at the time, and which we carry off to dwell upon after-
wards. To read the political part of Mr. Grote's history, even in these its
earliest portions, is an epoch in a man's life. Sol&n, Peisistratos, Kleisthene's,
are names with which we had been familiar from childhood ; it was in the
hands of Mr. Grote that they received a life and meaning which had never be-
longed to them before. But we have read the parts of Curtius' history which
answer to them without receiving any marked new impression. It is all good and
clear and accurate, and we often light upon very suggestive remarks. But the
whole is not specially striking. In the geographical parts of the book, just as in
the political parts of Grote, we feel that a really new light has come upon us ; we
do not feel this in the political parts of Curtius. The difference is no doubt in some
degree owing to the different forms of the two works. Mr. Grote could discuss
and argue ; he could illustrate by examples, he could explain and confirm by re-
ferences, to any amount that he thought good. Curtius has been cut off from
much of this liberty by the fetters in which he has evidently been working, at
any rate in his first volume. He never falls into the offensive dogmatism of
Mommsen, but his work unavoidably takes a shape in which the writer calls
on his readers to take down a great deal simply because he says that it is so.
Now this kind of treatment does thoroughly well for the geographical and
other descriptive portions. The observer and describer is here himself an ori-
ginal authority, and we receive what he tells us as such. The same treatment
may also suit a flowing narrative, where we lave no reason to suspect the good
faith and accuracy of the writer, or where, even if we have, his mere power
of narration carries us away with him. But it does not at all suit a political

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 151

history like the early history of Greece and Italy. In those histories a great
deal must depend upon conjecture, or at any rate upon inferences drawn from
scattered notices, which allow of room for great varieties of opinion. In such
cases we allow a reasonable deference to the opinion of a man who is evidently
learned and thoughtful; but we refuse to pin our faith upon any one. We like
to know, and we think we have a right to ask, a man's reasons and authorities
for every one thing that he says. Mr. Grote fully satisfies this demand. He
gives us full means of accepting or rejecting whatever he tells us. Curtius does
not do so ; not, we feel sure, from any lack of good will, but because the
scheme of this part of his work hindered him. In this sort of case even the
violence of Mommsen has an incidental advantage over his better-mannered
colleague. We may not believe — perhaps we are even set against believing —
but we at any rate understand and remember. We must confess that we have
read a good deal of Curtius' political history, without carrying away anything
in particular.

The point of greatest novelty in Curtius' work is that he has given us, as far
as we know, the first History of Greece in which any attempt is made to con-
nect Grecian history with the results both of Comparative Philology and of
Eastern research. When Bishop Thirlwall wrote, those studies were hardly
advanced enough to have been applied to Grecian history to much purpose,
and, even when- Mr. Grote wrote, they were far from being so advanced as
they are now. The ethnological part of Bishop ThirlwalPs history, what he
has to say about Pelasgians and so forth, is certainly the least satisfactory
part of his work. Mr. Grote, perhaps more prudently, throws the Pelasgians
overboard altogether. In truth, the practical and political turn of Mr. Grote's
mind is hardly suited for pure ethnological research. He thoroughly masters
and clearly sets forth the historical and political relations of the various
neighbouring nations to the Greeks ; but for their exact relations, as a
matter of race and speech, even to the Greeks, much more to one another, he
seems to care very little. In one respect this tendency has done Mr. Grote's
history a serious damage. It has combined with his position as the historian of
Athenian Democracy to make him distinctly unfair to Alexander and to Mace-
donia in general. Now Curtius comes to his Grecian history thoroughly pre-
pared with the last results of ethnological and philological study. This is a
most valuable qualification, and it gives him so far a great advantage over both
his English predecessors. We are not quite so clear about his Eastern studies.
Purely Western scholars, classical or mediaeval, have not yet made up their
minds about the results of Egyptian and Assyrian research. They do not take
upon themselves to reject what they have often had no opportunity of minutely
examining. But they are by no means prepared implicitly to believe every-
thing. They cannot help seeing that the Eastern scholars do not always seem
to know their own minds, and they feel that they are constantly asked to be-
lieve statements about Egypt and Nineveh on evidence which they would not
think enough for a statement about Athens or England. It is easy to see that
Curtius' standard of belief is much laxer than that of Mr. Grote ; much more
then is it laxer than that of Sir George Lewis. He clearly holds that a good deal
of history, the history of the successions of states and dynasties, if not of indi-
viduals, may be recovered out of mythical times. It is by no means our wish
to say that no such history can be recovered, but we must confess that Curtius

152 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

sometimes goes on faster than we can follow him. It is rather a call on our
faith to be asked to believe, if not in Min&s personally, at any rate in his Tha-
lassocracy. The Pelopid dynasty at Myke'ne' is another thing ; Homer and
the existing monuments are two distinct kinds of evidence which corroborate
and explain one another. Indeed our chief objection to Curtius' treatment of
prehistoric times is that he believes a great deal which Homer implicitly
contradicts. The Lydian origin of Pelops, the Egyptian origin of other Greek
patriarchs, seem to us to be mere dreams of after-times, of which Homer had no
knowledge. In the system of Curtius all these supposed immigrations play an
important part.

It must not however he thought that Curtius is at all an advocate of the
exploded notions of past days about purely barbarian settlements in Greece.
He accepts from Niebuhr and Bunsen, but he works out in full for himself, the
theory of extensive Hellenic or quasi-Hellenic colonization — though coloniza-
tion is not exactly the right word — in prehistoric times. Greeks were spread
over the Asiatic coast, and they had made settlements in various places, Egypt
among them, ages before the date of that later Greek colonization which followed
the Dorian migration. When the European lonians settled in the Asiatic Ionia,
they were but returning to an older Ionic land. The distance to which Greek
colonies had spread in very early times is said to be shown by the occurrence of
the lonians — the Uinim of the Egyptians, the Javan of the Hebrews — among
the subjects of the early Egyptian Kings. But then the Egyptologists are at
loggerheads amongst themselves about the meaning of the inscription in which
these early Uinim are said to be mentioned. What Lepsius admits, Bunsen
rejects, and far be it from us to decide between them. Indeed for strictly
Grecian history the point is not of much moment. As it is made use of by
Curtius, the effect, if any, of this early connexion between Greece and Egypt
must have been that a chance of improvement was offered to Egypt,
of which Egypt, in true Egyptian fashion, made no use. Curtius asks us to
believe that colonists from Lydia and Egypt settled in Peloponne'sos ; but he
does not ask us to believe that Lydian and Egyptian Barbarians settled there.
His Lydians and Egyptians are Lydian and Egyptian Greeks. This is indeed
somewhat of a relief, but it is surely simpler to cast aside these utterly un-
ivuthentic immigrations altogether.

We confess that we cannot always follow Curtius in detail in his speculations
about what he calls Old-Ionians and the like. But this whole part of the book,
especially what may be called the prehistoric history of Peloponnesus, is
throughout most ingenious and interesting, and it is, in the original, set forth
with a charm of style which some may perhaps have thought that neither the
subject nor the German language admitted. And we should not have a word
of complaint to make, if Curtius would be satisfied with our believing that the
inhabitants of a large region from Sicily to Asia were closely allied to the
Greeks, that the Greeks in settling among them were not settling among utter
strangers, and that this original ethnical kindred accounts for the speedy,
thorough, and in many places lasting, hellenization of those districts. This we
believe to be one of the most certain, and one of the most important, facts in
Grecian history. Hound Greece Proper we find a circle of nations, neither
strictly Greek nor strictly Barbarian, not Greek in the fuller sense, but capable
of easy hellenization — half-developed Greeks, whom a slight intercourse with

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 153

their more advanced neighbours easily raised to their level. Such a quasi-
Greek people we find in Epeiros, the original seat of the Greek name, and
the scene of national migrations which Curtius has set forth in his best
manner.

We will take a leap from the beginning of the present volume to the end.
In all these inquiries, whether we agree with the author in every detail or not,
Curtius is plainly in his element, and his treatment of all these matters is
most masterly. He is, we think, less successful, because he is on ground which
is less thoroughly his own, when he attempts to grapple with Mr. Grote on a
point of the developement of the Athenian Democracy. We cannot think, with
Curtius, that the lot came in with Kleisthenes. What is the evidence ? On
the one side is an obiter dictum of Herodotus, who is not examining into the
matter ; on the other side is a direct statement of Isokrate's, who is examining
into the matter, and also, as we think, the probability of the case.

II.

The main strength of Curtiua seems to us to lie, not so much in narrative,
not so much in military or political history, as in drawing a picture of those
other parts of the life of a nation which some historians neglect and which do
not enter into the plan of others. The mere narrative power of Curtius, though
by no means small, is hardly of the first order, and his way of dealing with
political history is feeble by the side of Mr. Grote's. To Mr. Grote, with his poli-
tical experience and his political views, the political life and development of
Athens was a real and living thing in a way in which it can never be to a mere
student. No other historian ever entered as Mr. Grote has entered into the
real spirit of such a body as the Athenian Assembly ; no one therefore has ever
drawn so full and clear a picture of its nature. But on the other hand this
greatest merit of Mr. Grote's work led directly to its greatest defect. His
history is, after all his strivings to make it otherwise, Athenian rather than
Hellenic, and this purely Athenian way of looking at things makes him unfair
both to the earliest and to the latest ages of Greece. No charge of this sort
can be brought against Curtius, and this though he has given a more full and
vivid picture of Athens as a whole than Mr. Grote has. But then Curtius'
picture of Athens as a whole is a picture of Athens as the intellectual centre
of Greece, as the abode of art, philosophy, and inquiry of every sort, rather
than as the great example of democratic freedom. Curtius in no way neglects the
political history ; we have little direct fault to find with his way of treating it,
but it clearly has not been to him the same intense labour of love which it
evidently was to Mr. Grote. The two great chapters in the present volume
are undoubtedly those headed ' The Unity of Greece ' and ' The Years of
Peace.' They are the best pictures we ever saw of the general mind and life
of Greece at the two dates fixed upon — at the time before the Persian War and
in the age of Perikles. In both of these we find a great deal of matter, some
of which is actually new, while much more is not to be found in other His-
tories of Greece, worked together with great skill, so as to make a vivid and
interesting picture. The developement of Greek poetry, science, and art at the
time when art and the later poetry had reached their highest point, is here set

154 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

forth in a full, clear, and connected way, such as we have never seen elsewhere.
Curtius looks at all these matters with a thoroughly artistic eye ; they are
plainly the parts of his subj ect on which he best loves to dwell, and yet he
never gives them any exaggerated importance or puts them in more than their
proper relation to the general march of the history. This is a great point to
have gained. Some writers and talkers, both on ancient Greece and mediaeval
Italy, have utterly wearied us with poets, artists, and philosophers, till we
have sometimes been tempted to wish that neither Greece nor Italy had ever
produced any poets, artists, or philosophers at all. Curtius never errs in this
way. He never forgets that, if Athens did great things in the way of literature
and art, it was only by virtue of her position of a great and free city that she
was enabled to do so. Curtius has ever before his eyes the memorable words of
PeriklSs himself, how to make Athens the school and ornament of Greece was
a distinct part of his plans, but a plan conceived with a definite political object,
and one which really had important political results. In this point of view,
the architectural splendours of the Akropolis, the dramatic splendours of the
Dionysiac Festivals, are clothed with a twofold interest. They have an interest
strictly their own, and they have a still higher interest as parts of the political
system and the general life of the great Democracy. This Curtius always
bears in mind, and we look on it as the greatest merit of this part of his
History that he has done so.

Somewhat of the same nature is the earlier general chapter, headed ' The
Unity of Greece.' This chapter is, in effect, a picture of Greek religion as dis-
tinguished from Greek mythology. There are some things in it which startle
us somewhat, some things for which we should have been well pleased to have
fuller references, some things which we should ask for longer time before we
either accept or reject. But it is a chapter at once most interesting and most
suggestive, which supplies abundant materials for thought, and which contains
many propositions that commend themselves at once to our acceptance. One
great point on which Curtius insists is the importance of religious and sacred
rites, above all of the Delphic temple and oracle, in the formation of Greek
national life. He skilfully and elaborately traces out the effects of the position
of Delphoi and the growth of the importance of the oracle as the religious
centre of Greece. We are not sure that he does not sometimes press matters
too far, and clothe Apolldn with even greater authority than really belonged to
him ; still there is nothing that he says which does not at least deserve to be
most carefully weighed. At the very outset he clearly sets forth the influence
which the Apolldn worship had on the process by which the Hellenes disen-
tangled themselves, so to speak, from among the mass of neighbouring and
kindred tribes and stood forth, not indeed as a political unit, but still as a
nation in every higher sense of the word. He then goes on to point out the
importance of Dorian influences upon the developement of Delphoi. It was of
course the great Dorian Migration and Conquest of Peloponne'sos which mainly
extended the influence and authority of Delphi, but this extension was merely
a development of a connexion which began at an earlier period, when the
Dorians first settled at the foot of Parnassos.

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 155

III.

We have remarked in notices of his earlier volumes that Curtius' way of
dealing with the strictly political side of his subject was by no means equal to
his way of dealing with the more artistic and general side of it. The deficiency
comes out yet more strongly in the latter part of the second volume of the
German original, which takes in the history of the Peloponnesian War. The
treatment of this part of the history is the most memorable thing in Mr. Grote's
work. We by no means profess ourselves unreserved followers of all Mr. Grote's
views. He is throughout a partizan, the champion of a side. The Athenian
Democracy is to him as a party or a country, and he says all that is to be said
for it. We read what he says, not as the sentence of a judge, but as the
pleading of an advocate ; but it is a great thing to have the pleading of such
an advocate. We may not be prepared to go all Mr. Grote's lengths on every
matter, but we should have thought that no reader of Mr. Grote ever shut up
his book in exactly the same frame of mind in which he opened it. If he does
not think exactly as Mr. Grote does about Sophists and Demagogues, about
Kle&n and Kleoph&n, he will not think exactly the same about them as he did
when he began. He will at least have seen that there is another side to
a great many things of which he had hitherto only looked at one side. And
even if we admit that Mr. Grote, besides his political bias, has a certain love
of novelty for its own sake, such a tendency, on his particular subject does
much more good than harm. Our knowledge of Grecian history comes from
a very few original sources. The mass of so-called classical writers are no
more original sources than Grote and Curtius are ; their only value is that
they wrote with original sources before them which are now lost. A writer
under the Roman Empire had far better means than a modern scholar of
getting at the facts of Greek republican history, but he had not nearly such
good means of forming a judgement on those facts as the modern scholar has.
He lived in an age which, in point of time, in language, in all outward circum-
stances, came much nearer to the time of which he wrote than our own time
does. But in real fellow-feeling for the earlier time, in real power of under-
standing it, a writer of the age of Plutarch was further removed from the age
of Thucydides than we are. And he had not the same habit of drawing histo-
rical analogies as the modern scholar, nor had he the same wide field of
historical experience to seek his analogies in. And a writer of the age of
Plutarch was really all the further removed from the age of Thucydides,
because the great men of that age had in his day already grown into a sort of
canonized heroes. A conventional way of looking at Grecian history therefore
grew up very early ; the same statements, tinged by this conventional view,
were repeated over and over again from so-called classical times to our own
day, till Grecian history, instead of a living thing of flesh and blood, be-
came a collection of formulae, of misunderstood models, and of sentiments
fit only for a child's copy-book. Mitford, with all his blunders and all hia
unfairness, did good service in showing that Plutarch's men were real human
beings like ourselves. The calm judgement and consummate scholarship of
Bishop Thirlwall came in to correct, sometimes a little too unmercifully, the
mistakes and perversions of Mitford. But it was Mr. Grote who first thoroughly

156 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

tested our materials, who first looKed straight at everything, without regard
to conventional beliefs, by the light of his own historical and political know-
ledge. Bishop Thirlwall had clearly drawn the line between primary and
secondary authorities. Mr. Grote went further, by hinting that primary
authorities themselves are not infallible. We may or we may not agree with
Mr. Grote's strictures on Thucydides in the matter of Amphipolis or in the
matter of Kle6n ; still it is a useful thing to be reminded that Thucydides was,
after all, a fallible human being; that, in a matter which touched himself
personally, he gave his own view on the matter, and that there was most likely
something to be said on the other side. We read Mr. Grote with a respectful
freedom, and we use our own judgement upon each detail of his conclusions.
But we feel that his work is the great landmark in the study of Grecian
history. He has done a work which had never been done before him, and
which can never be done again.

With these feelings we turn to Curtius, and we find with regret that, in the
most important points, he is simply prce-Grotian. He has his own sphere in which
he rises far above Mr. Grote, or, more truly, he has a sphere in which Mr. Grote
has no part or lot whatever. But, after all, the highest side of history is its
political side ; its highest object is to set man before us in his highest character
as a member of a free state. It is here that Mr. Grote has shown his pre-eminent
qualifications, his power of bringing his practical knowledge of public life to bear
upon wide reading and deep thought. It is here that Curtius altogether breaks
down. He does not enter with any spirit into either military or political events ;
he can give a brilliant picture of a country or of a city, but he has very little
power of giving a lifelike narrative of a campaign or a debate. The greater
part of Mr. Grote's views, whether we call them theories or discoveries, are
passed by without any notice. Curtius speaks of the Demagogues and the
Sophists pretty much as if Mr. Grote had never written. Of course it may be
that he has come to different conclusions from Mr. Grote, but is hindered by
the scale of his work from entering on the grounds of his conclusions. But it
will hardly apply to his treatment of two or three of the most remarkable
passages of the history which come towards the end of the present volume.
Every reader of Mr. Grote, indeed every reader of Xenophdn, must have
admired the heroic character of Kallikratidas, the man who had the lofty
courage to run counter to the evil habit of the whole Greek nation and to
declare that no Greek should be sold into slavery by his act. The words stand
out even in the bald narrative of Xenophon ; OVK t<f>ij, tavrov -ye apxovros, ovdtva
'EAA^raiv ts rovKfivov Swardv dvSpairoStaOijvai. Mr. Grote's comments on the
' grandeur and sublimity of this proceeding,' ' unparalleled in Grecian history,'
carry him beyond himself. No one, we should have thought, could have for-
gotten his picture of ' Kallikratidas, unfortunately only shown by the Fates
and not suffered to continue in the Grecian world.' We turn to Curtius, and
we are told how great a man Kallikratidas was, how he united the merits both
of a Spartan and of an Athenian (' Er vereinigte in seltenster Weise den
hochherzigen und stolzen Sinn eines Altspartaners mit der Thatkraft und
Gewandtheit, wie sie der Beruf eines Flottenfiihrers in lonien verlangte '), but
he leaves out this most signal example of his rising high above either character.
Me'thymna is taken — alpti KarcL apdros according to Xenophon, ' sie musste sich
ergeben ' according to Curtius — but the striking scene that follows, the demand

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 157

of the allies for the sale of the prisoners, the refusal of Kallikratidas, the mag-
nanimous declaration which gladdens Mr. Grote's heart, find no place in
Curtius's narrative. A little time before Mr. Grote had dwelled at some length
on the circumstances of the battle of Notion, which led to the final disgrace of
Alkibiadgs. Alkibiades left the Athenian fleet in command of Antiochos,
forbidding him to fight with Lysandros — /MJ linir\*iv km rcis A.v<rdvSpov vavs.
This Antiochos was no qualified commander at all, but the pilot of Alkibiade's'
own ship, and a personal favourite of his. Xenoph&n simply calls him rov
O.VTOV KvfSfpvfjTtjv ; Plutarch adds that he was dyaOos tcvfifpvTjTTjs, dvor/ros 51
ra\\a ical (popriicos. In Curtius he becomes 'einer der trefflichsten Schiffs-
fiihrer.' This Antiochos, thus put in a post for which he was utterly unfit,
challenged Lysandros in a way which was simply frantic, and the defeat of
Notion followed. On this the Athenians deprived Alkibiades of his command,
oiuptvoi Si' d(j.t\tidv re ical dnpa.T(iav diro\oj\eKtvai ras vavs, says Xenophon ;
and Plutarch adds that he was charged with neglecting his duties for banquets
and the company of Ionian women. His removal from his command of course
forms the ground for one of the stock charges of ingratitude against the Athe-
nian people. Mr. Grote argues with great power that the removal was fully
deserved, that Alkibiade's left the fleet when he ought to have been with it,
and left it in the hands of one who was quite unfit to command it. He was
therefore responsible for the disasters into which his unworthy representative
led it. Now why did Alkibiade's leave the fleet ? The contemporary Xenophdn
gives an account which by itself is quite unintelligible ; atcovaas ®paavfiov\ov
(£(u 'E\\rjair6vTov rJKOvra rtixiCttv ^ojxaiav, Sitir\(vfff irpos avr6v. Plutarch
makes him go dp-fvpo\oyfiffcijv iirl Kapias. Diodflros sends him to Klazomenai ;
but Mr. Grote works in a story which Dioddros gives two chapters afterwards
about Alkibiade's attacking KymS, a town in alliance with Athens, on which
the Kymaians very naturally sent a charge to Athens against him. Curtius
tells us, 'Es war eine Ehrenschuld des Alkibiades, lonien, dessen Abfall sein
Werk war, den Athenern wieder zu verschaffen.' He therefore leaves the
fleet with Antiochos, 'wahrend er selbst bei Phokaia den Eroberungskrieg
begann, der natiirlich darauf berechnet war, dass ein Flottensieg den Feldzug
eroffnen und sein Gelingen erleichtern sollte.' It is hard to see all this in any
of the Greek writers, and we certainly hold with Mr. Grote that no case is made
out to excuse Alkibiade's for leaving the fleet in the care of a man so incompe-
tent as Antiochos, especially when such an enemy as Lysandros was near. But
Curtius makes the following wonderful comment, ' Alkibiades war ohne Schuld
an diesem Ungliicke ; auch Antiochos trug sie nicht allein. Denn er hatte
alien Schiffen Befehl gegeben, sich kampfbereit zu halten, und dieser Befehl
war nicht befolgt worden.' We do not know what this last sentence means,
but what excuse can there be for an officer who disobeys the direct commands
of his chief, and disobeys them in a way which, if he had been himself in com-
mand, would have been simple madness ? Antiochos met with a fate too good
for him by dying in the battle. But certainly nothing could be more just than
the sentence which the Athenian people pronounced upon Alkibiade's. Now
our charge against Curtius is, not simply that he differs from Mr. Grote, which,
when he has a good reason for so doing, he is perfectly right to do ; but
that he seems to have made absolutely no use of Mr. Grote on a matter which
Mr. Grote has made thoroughly clear, and still more that, as it seems to us,

158 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. [ESSAY

his own statements are, setting Mr. Grote quite aside, not borne out by his
Greek authorities. Good books, as we have been lately told with much
solemnity, may commonly be written in German, but in this case we venture
to think that the better book is written in English.

Here then is more than one passage in Curtius's History in which we hold
that Mr. Grote's treatment far surpasses his in judgement and accuracy. We
have another passage to speak of, in which Curtius distinctly calls Mr. Grote's
views in question, and in doing so shows that he altogether misunderstands
them. This is with regard to the treatment of the Generals after the battle of
Arginousai. Of this matter we have two accounts, that of Xenophon and that
of Dioddros, besides a few allusions in Lysias and in Xenoph6n himself at a
later stage. Xenophdn is contemporary, but his account is thoroughly unsatis-
factory and unfair on the face of it. This is allowed even by those who, like
Bishop Thirlwall, are inclined to put more faith in it than Mr. Grote does.
Dioddros wrote long after, and he was thoroughly stupid and careless, but he
had original writers before him whom we have not. The allusions in Lysias
and in the later speech of Th6ramen6s in Xenophdn himself are incidental
allusions in the speeches of orators, and every student of Grecian history knows
how often such allusions are quite inaccurate, even when made very soon after
the events. And inaccuracy of this kind is certainly not confined to Athenian
debates. Our materials then, though fairly full, are by no means good in
quality, and we must make use of our own judgements upon them. One thing
however is perfectly plain, that the sentence by which the Generals died was
monstrously illegal. All the forms of Athenian jurisprudence were trampled
under foot. By Athenian law each man ought to have been tried separately
before a sworn court ; he ought to have been heard in his own defence, and to
have been convicted or acquitted by a vote of the judges which touched him-
self only. Instead of this, the whole body of accused men were condemned by
a single vote of the unsworn Assembly, and they were not heard in their own
defence, except so far as some at least of them had spoken on the subject in an
earlier debate. The Generals in short died by a Bill of Attainder, very much
like those which gladden the heart of Mr. Froude. It is perfectly plain that,
if any of us had been present in the Assembly, we should have voted against
the proposal of the Senate and for the amendment of Euryptolemos, who de-
manded that the Generals should be fairly tried according to law. But this does
not at all prove whether, if we had sat on a court for trying any one of the
Generals, we should have acquitted or convicted him. These two questions
are perfectly distinct ; but Mr. Grote seems to be the only writer who
thoroughly distinguishes them. The utter injustice of the vote by which the
Generals died is plain on any showing, and Mr. Grote asserts it as strongly as
any man. But as to the circumstances which led the People to this unhappy
vote, as to the probable guilt or innocence of the Generals themselves, our ac-
counts are confused and contradictory, and it is not wonderful if different readers
of the story come to different conclusions. Mr. Grote comes to one conclusion ;
Curtius or any other man has a perfect right to come to another. Mr. Grote
does not see any elaborate oligarchical plots on the part of The'ramene's for
the destruction of the Generals or of anybody else ; he looks on the People as led
away by overpowering family feelings. He points out — what many have failed
to see, though Curtius does see it — that what the Generals were charged with

IV.] THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 159

was not merely neglecting to take up dead bodies for burial — though that alone,
according to Greek religious ideas, was a heinous crime — but leaving their
wounded and drowning comrades to perish. Mr. Grote too accepts as
genuine the lamentations and accusations of the kinsfolk of the forsaken
men, who are commonly represented as being no kinsfolk at all, or at any
rate as being stirred up and bribed by The'ramene's. Xenoph&n mentions
that certain mourners appeared ; so does Diod6ros. But Xenophdn adds,
while Dioddros does not, that these mourners were not real mourners, but
people set to work by The'ramene's. Mr. Grote shows the impossibility of
this story in itself. Besides this, the appearance of the mourners was a fact
about which there could be no doubt ; that they were bribed by The'ramen^s
was a surmise, about which Xenophdn or anybody else might be mistaken,
and which the writers whom Diodoros followed did not accept. So again a
certain man came forward (impT)\8e) in the Assembly, saying that he had, in
the wreck, saved himself on a meal-tub, &c. &c. Till Mr. Grote wrote, every
modern writer represented this man also as an instrument of The'ramene's.
He was 'produced,' 'brought forward,' and the like — ' wurde endlich auch ein
Mann vorgefiihrt,' as Curtius has it — though no such meaning can be got out
of -napr)\6e. As to the guilt of the Generals and the guilt of The'ramene's, all
that we can say is that Mr. Grote and Curtius come to different conclusions.
Our own conclusion, if it is worth anything, would be that some of the Generals
were guilty, and some innocent; whether the guilty ought to have been
punished with death is a question of Athenian law and feeling, which is hard to
settle at this distance of time. But it is hardly fair in Curtius to leave out of
sight that we cannot condemn The'ramene's so strongly as he does, without in
some degree also condemning Thrasyboulos, who clearly had a share, although
a less prominent one, in the first accusation. But it is really too bad to say,
as Curtius does, after quoting a work unluckily unknown to us, Herbst's Die
Schlacht bei den Arginusen : —

1 In dieser Schrift ist gegen Grote's Versuch, das Verfahren der Biirgerschaft
zu rechtfertigen und die Feldherren als schuldig darzustellen, das richtige
Sachverhaltniss entwickelt, wie es sich aus Xenophon ergiebt. X. gegeniiber
kann Diod. xiii. 101 keine Autoriat sein und es ist unstatthaft, Theramenes
Verfahren als eine nothgedrungene Selbstvertheidigung zu enschuldigen.'

Now Herbst may possibly have refuted Mr. Grote on any of the points
which are open to controversy. He may have proved the innocence of all the
Generals ; he may have shown that Theramenes bribed the supposed mourners
or even the man who said that he had escaped on the meal-tub ; but he can-
not have refuted any attempt of Mr. Grote's to justify the proceedings of the
Assembly, because no such attempt was ever made. Mr. Grote as distinctly
condemns the doings of the Assembly as Curtius or Herbst can do. On
the very heading of one of his pages may be read the words ' Causes of the un-
just sentence.' In his text he speaks of the ' temporary burst of wrong,' of the
' enormity ' of the proposal of the Senate, of its ' breaking through the esta-
blished constitutional maxims and judicial practices of the Athenian de-
mocracy,' of its ' depriving the Generals of all fair trial,' and of the ' well-merited
indignation ' with which ' it was heard by a large portion of the Assembly.' It
was an • illegal and unconstitutional proposition ;' the Athenians 'dishonoured
themselves ;' ' under a momentary ferocious excitement they rose in insurrec-

160 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.

tion not less against the forms of their own democracy than against the most
sacred restraints of their habitual constitutional morality.' We do not see
what stronger language Herbst can have used, or what stronger language Cur-
tius can have wished any one to use ; and it is hard indeed, when Mr. Grote
has expressed himself so plainly, that he should be charged, in a sort of pass-
ing contemptuous sneer, with having defended what he most righteously
condemned. The truth plainly is that Curtius has neither the same political in-
stincts nor the same knowledge of human nature as Mr. Grote. He seemingly
cannot understand that a sentence may be utterly monstrous both in a legal and
a moral point of view, and yet that the persons condemned may not be wholly
free from blame.

We have thought it right to point out these things clearly, because there
seems every chance that Curtius may depose Grote, and we believe that such a
deposition would be a great evil. In all these political matters Curtius is behind
his generation ; he is behind the generation to which Mr. Grote has explained
so many matters which before were dark. But even in this matter of the con-
demnation of the Generals, we may mention one point of detail in which we
think that Curtius has the better of Grote. Mr. Grote rejects, on grounds
which seem to us very inconclusive, the speech which Diod&ros puts into the
mouth of Diomeddn as he is led to execution. Curtius silently accepts it. But
an incidental advantage like this goes for little when the whole story is so
completely misconceived.

Nearly the same objections will apply to Curtius's treatment of most of the
subjects in which he comes into collision with Mr. Grote ; that is to say, of most
of the political questions which arise during the Peloponnesian War. We
cannot express our feeling better than by saying that Curtius is behindhand,
pree-Grotian. He writes with the notions and prejudices of a time which we
thought had passed away. But there are better things in the present volume
than these. What Curtius does grasp, no man can set forth more clearly or
effectively. His picture of Perikles is thoroughly well done ; so is his general
narrative of Sicilian affairs. Both these subjects carry us a little out of the
beaten track of Athenian politics. This may seem a strange thing to say of the
great organizer of Athenian Democracy. But if Perikles was the organizer of
the Athenian Democracy, he was many other things as well. He stands out
as a man so completely by himself that questions about the exact nature of his
dealings with the Areiopagos or with the law courts seem of secondary moment.
Into the many sides of the character of Perikl£s Curtius thoroughly enters, and
he works them up into a portrait in his best style. So again, Sicily, the island
which so largely filled Greek imagination, with its cities and their revolutions,
with its ancient legends and its contending races, a land which to the dweller
within the ordinary range of Greek history is a land half familiar and half un-
accustomed, supplies Curtius with a far better field for his peculiar powers than
he finds in the everyday walk of the Athenian commonwealth. Curtius could,
it strikes us, have given us a series of monographs of Greek subjects of brilliant
excellence ; many particular parts of his subject he has treated as they have
never been treated before ; but the continuous march of Greek political and
military events is not his strong point, and, in attempting them, he falls, to our
thinking, far below the level of either of our great English historians.

V.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

History of Greece. By GEORGE GROTE, Esq. Vol. XII.
London: 1856.

MR. GROTE has fixed the end of his great work at an earlier
point than we could have wished. It is indeed that which he
chose at the beginning of his labours ; but we had hoped
that he might be led to think over the matter again, and not
to lay down his pen till he had traced the history of Grecian
freedom down to its final overthrow. As it is, he contents him-
self with tracing the decline of Athenian independence down
to its lowest pitch of degradation. The historian of the great
Democracy cannot bring himself to go on with his labours in
times when Athens vanishes into political insignificance, and
when the main interest of the drama gathers around kingly
Macedonia and federal Achaia. His contempt for the 'Greece
of Polybios,' we must confess, surprises us. The Greece of Poly-
bios stands indeed very far below the Greece of Thucydides ;
but it is still Greece, still living Greece, Greece still free and
republican. It was indeed but a recovered freedom which it
enjoyed, a freedom less perfect, less enduring, than that of the
elder time ; but it was still, as Pausanias calls it, a new shoot
from the old trunk.* But Mr. Grote has turned away with
something of disdain from a subject which we think is worthy
of him, and which we are sure that no other man living is

* "Ore 8?) leal p-6*/n, o-ff «« StvSpov \t\u@T]iJitt'ov nal tv6v rcL itKdova, di>ff3\aff-
rrjafv in rrjs 'EXXdSos TO >Ax«*<5«', vii. 17. 2. Mr. Grote himself quotes the
passage, xii. 527.

M

162 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

so fit to treat. Excellently as it has been dealt with by
Bishop Thirlwall, there is still something .to be added from
Mr. Grote's own special point of view. No one could have so
well compared the Achaian institutions with: those of earlier
and of later commonwealths. Mr. Grote is 'strongly anti-
Macedonian, but we should have expected that his very dislike
of Macedonia would have led him to look with special in-
terest on the revolution which freed so large a part of
Greece from Macedonian bondage. It is indeed strange to
find Mr. Grote dismissing, in two or three contemptuous
lines, the revival and the final struggles of that Hellenic
liberty which is so dear to him. And strange too we think
it, in so careful an observer of the affairs of Switzerland, to
pay so little heed to one df the first and most successful
attempts to solve the great problem of Federal Government.

With regard to the Macedonian aspect of the subject, we
must confess that we hold a different opinion. Mr. Grote
is admirably fitted to be the historian of Achaia;-he is not
so well fitted to be the historian of Macedonia. Indeed, in
the present volume and in the one next before it, he has
given us a history of Macedonia in its most brilliant period,
which we cannot but look upon as the least satisfactory part
of his noble work. Mr. Grote's History is so great a work
that some points fairly open to discussion could not fail to
be found in it. He puts forth so much that is new and startling
that he must be prepared for a certain amount of dissenj; even
among admirers who study him in his own spirit. And we '
ourselves have so often set forth our admiration for his general
treatment of his subject, we have borne such full and willing
witness to all that Mr. Grote has done for the truth of history,
that we have fairly earned the right to dispute any special
point, however important. Such a special point of contro-
versy we find in his treatment of the history of Macedonia,
and especially of its greatest sovereign. From Mr. Grote's
view of Alexander the Great, we respectfully but very widely
dissent, and our present object is to set forth our reasons for
so dissenting.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 163

Mr. Grote has many claims on the gratitude of the his-
torical student ; but it is as the historian of the Athenian
Democracy that his claims are highest and most enduring.
In that character he has won abiding fame. He has grappled
with popular errors :" he has put forth truths which, but for
the weighty arguments with which he has supported them,
would have been at" once cast aside as paradoxes. He has
justified ostracism ; he has found something to say for Kleon ;
he has shown that, even in the condemnation of Sokrates,
though the People erred and erred deeply, yet their error was
natural and almost pardonable. Demos is the darling of his
affections ; he watches him from his cradle, and forsakes him
only when he has sunk into a second childhood from which no
Sausage-seller on earth could call him up again. Now it was
by Macedonian hands that this cherished object was trampled
down, degraded, corrupted, well nigh wiped out from the list
of independent states. That Mr. Grote should be perfectly
fair to Macedonia and Macedonians would have been too much
to hope for. But the result is that Mr. Grote, in this part
of his history, sinks far below the level of his great prede-
cessor. Bishop Thirlwall's narrative of this period it would
indeed be hard to outdo. The clear and vivid narrative,
the critical appreciation of evidence, the thorough impar-
tiality which can fully sympathize with the cause of Athens
and yet yield all due honour to Alexander and even to
Philip, "all are here in the pages of Bishop Thirl wall, but
they are not found in those of Mr. Grote. Alexander, with
him, becomes a vulgar destroyer, a mere slaughterer of men.
He overthrows Greece and Persia alike, and founds nothing
in their stead. That Philip and Alexander put an end to the
brightest glory and fullest independence of Greece, cannot
be gainsaid. But it is another thing when Mr. Grote
deals with them as mere barbarian invaders, as aggressors as
thoroughly external as Darius and Xerxes. Whether the
claims which Philip and Alexander made to a Hellenic cha-
racter for themselves or their people were just or unjust, it was
only under that Hellenic character that they took on them

M 2

164 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

the dominion of Hellas. That their conquests brought a large
portion of the world within the pale, not indeed of Greek
political city-freedom, but of Greek social life and intellectual
culture, can as little be gainsaid as anything that is said against
them. And it is surely not unreasonable to believe that Alex-
ander looked forward to such a result, and that he adapted
means to such an end. In our view, Alexander founded a
great deal. He founded the civilization of Alexandria and
Constantinople. He founded the modern Greek nation. On
such a point as this, Mr. Finlay, who fully appreciates the
great Macedonian, is a better judge than Mr. Grote. To the
one Alexander is the end of his subject ; to the other he is its
beginning. Yet even here, where we think that his judgement
is thoroughly warped, we must bear our thankful testimony to"
Mr. Grote's careful and conscientious collation of every state-
ment and every authority. In this he presents throughout a
most honourable contrast to another great writer who shares
his view of the subject. Niebuhr's Lectures on the age of
Philip and Alexander are throughout conceived in the spirit of
the too famous oration of Kallisthenes.* Everything Mace-
donian is brought in only to be reviled. Every recorded scandal
against Alexander is eagerly seized upon, without regard to the
evidence on which it rests. Even for actions which the whole
world has hitherto agreed to admire Niebuhr is always ready
to find out some unworthy motive. And all is put forth with
overbearing dogmatism, on the mere ipse dlxit of Barthold
Niebuhr. Wholly unlike this is the conduct of Mr. Grote.
Even here his laborious honesty never fails him. Mr. Grote
does not refuse, even to a Macedonian, the right, no less
Macedonian than Athenian, of being heard before he is con-
demned. The evidence is, as ever with Mr. Grote, fully and
fairly marshalled ; the reader who has not gone through the
original authorities for himself is put in a position to dissent,
if he pleases, from the decision of the judge. Hardly ever
does Mr. Grote fail to bring forward the passages which tell

* Ov TTJS SftvSrrjTog 6 Ka\\taOfvr]s, d\\a rrjs Svantveias McuefS^ffiv diroSdfiv
Plut. Alex. 53.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 165

most strongly against his own view. He believes much
against Alexander which we hold that the evidence does not
warrant : but he never invents scandal or attributes motives
after the manner of Niebuhr.* Niebuhr is simply incapable
of understanding a hero; Mr. Grote merely fails to rise
to the heroic point of fully appreciating an enemy. With
Niebuhr, Alexander becomes a monster instead of a man ;
with Mr. Grote he becomes at the worst a Barbarian instead
of a Greek. In short, Niebuhr is, in this case, a mere reck-
less calumniator ; Mr. Grote is simply one who, after weighing
a mass of conflicting authorities, has come to a conclusion less
favourable to Alexander of Macedon than we ourselves have
come to after weighing the same authorities.

Of the life of Alexander we have five consecutive narratives,
besides numerous allusions and fragments scattered up and
down various Greek and Latin writers. Of these last, the
greatest in number and the most curious in detail are to be
found in the strange miscellany of Athenaios; but the most
really valuable are due to the judicious and accurate Strabo.
Of our five writers, Arrian and Quintus Curtius have given
us separate histories of the great conqueror. The work of
Arrian has come down to us whole, with the exception of
a single gap. In the work of Curtius there are several such
gaps, and the whole of his two first books are wanting.
Plutarch has devoted to Alexander one of his longest biogra-
phies ; Diodoros bestows on him a whole book of his Universal
History ; Justin gives a shorter narrative in his abridgement
of Trogus Pompeius. But we have again to regret a very con-
siderable gap in the narrative of Diodoros, which however is
partially supplied by the headings of the chapters being
preserved.

Here, it might be thought, are authorities enough ; but
unluckily, among all the five, there is not a single contempo-
rary chronicler. All five write at secondhand ; the earliest of

* [Of these Lectures of Niebuhr's something more will be found in the next
Essay.]

166 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

them writes about three centuries after Alexander's death.
The value of all, it is clear, must depend upon the faithfulness
with which they represent the earlier writings which they had
before them, and upon the amount of critical power which
they may have brought to bear upon their examination.
Unluckily again, among all the five, one only has any claim
to the name of a critic. Arrian alone seems to have had at
once the will and power to exercise a discreet judgement upon
the statements of those who went before him. Diodoros we
believe to be perfectly honest, but he is, at the same time,
impenetrably stupid. Plutarch, as he himself tells us, does
not write history, but lives; his object is rather to gather
anecdotes, to point a moral, than to give a formal narrative of
political and military events. Justin is a feeble and careless
epitomizer. Quintus Curtius is, in our eyes, little better than
a romance-writer; he is the only one of the five whom we
should suspect of any wilful departure from the truth.

The contemporary historians of Alexander's exploits were
by no means few, but most of them seem to have been of
very inferior character. His own generation gave birth to
no Thucydides, and the next to no Herodotus. Both Arrian
and Strabo * constantly complain of the contradictions in
their statements, and of the way in which most of them
trifled with their subject. They tell us of their wild fables,
their gross exaggerations, their constant sacrifice of truth to
effect. Kleitarchos, Onesikritos, Hegesias, the unfortunate
Kallisthenes, all have a very bad name among later writers.
Even Chares of Mytilene, though an author of higher
character, has handed down to us some very doubtful state-
ments. Some seem to have been wilful liars t; others were

* OvSi ToTs irtpl 'A\(£dv8pov 81 avyypdtf/aaiv ficftitov martvfiv rots TroAAofs,
K.T.\. Strabo, xi. 6 (vol. ii. p. 424, Tauchnitz). Aj/Aovcrt 8t /idXtora TOVTO
ol TO.S 'A\f£dvSpov irpdffis dvaypdif/avTts, irpoffTiOtfTts n\v TTO\V xal TO TT/S
Ko\a.Kfia$ tlSos. xvii. i (vol. iii. p. 459).

t Such at least seems to have been Strabo's judgement of Onesikritos, xv. I
(vol. iii. p. 269). 'OvijaiitpiTOS, bv OVK 'A\e£dv8pov fjid\\ov t) TWV irapaSJfew
opxtKV&fpffiTrjv irpocrtiirot TIS av iravTts plr yap ol TTfpl 'AXefavSpov TO OavpaaTov
dt>Ti Td\i]0ovs dwfSfxovTO fjia\\ov virtpf)d\\((rOai 5i 8o«e? TOVS TOOOVTOVS tictivos

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 167

nothing worse than dreaming pedants, whose accounts of
military and political affairs seemed ridiculous to practical
men like Polybios and Arrian.

Of the guides that we have, it is plain that Diodoros and
Curtius drew largely from the same sources, but they do not
often quote their authorities. Of these two, Diodoros, we
have no doubt, honestly repeated what he found in his books,
as far as he understood it ; but he had not the slightest
critical power to judge between one statement and another.
In fact, as we find from his narrative of times when we are
better able to test him, he could not always grasp the
meaning of a plain story when it was set before him. Cur-
tius, whoever he was and whenever he lived, was a man of
far higher powers. Like Livy, he tells his tale to perfection
as a mere matter of rhetoric. But then rhetoric is all that
he has to give us ; his constant sacrifice of everything to
oratorical display, his palpable blunders in history and geo-
graphy, his manifest exaggerations, his love of the wonderful
and the horrible wherever he can find them — all show that he
represents the most extravagant and inaccurate among the
earlier writers ; they even suggest the thought that a great
deal may in truth come from his own imagination. In fact,
in reading Curtius, we feel that we are already on the road to
the wild romance of the false Kallisthenes, and to the yet
stranger imaginings of the Eastern historians. It is highly
dangerous to accept any statement on his witness alone. *

The object of Plutarch, as we have already said, was anec-
dote or biography rather than history. He may therefore
fairly be judged by a less severe standard that any of the
other writers. And certainly, of the two, we look far more
favourably upon the anecdotes of Plutarch than upon the
marvels of Curtius. We are far from accepting them in the

* Curtius, we suspect, was capable of better things. He once or twice (see
ix. 5. 21) attempts criticism ; he once really gives us a piece of it. There was
a tale that Alexander once caused Lysimachos, the future King, to be exposed
to a lion. Curtius acutely finds the origin of the fable in an encounter be-
tween Lysimachos and a lion at a hunting-party in Alexander's presence (viii.
1.17).

168 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

mass as literal facts. Anecdotes are easy to invent and easier
to improve ; indeed the man is a sort of martyr to truthful-
ness who can withstand the temptation of making a good story
still better. But, for an anecdote to pass current at all, it
must have a kind of truth. It must have a certain degree of
probability ; it must at least be the kind of thing which might
have happened, even if it never actually did happen. Stories
of this kind may therefore generally be accepted as throwing
light upon the character of the persons of whom they speak.
Plutarch, again, is more valuable than Curtius or Diodoros,
from his frequent references to his authorities. Among these
he often refers to one source of information which would be
the highest of all, could we only feel sure of its genuineness,
namely, the private letters of Alexander himself. Of the
letters which claimed to be Alexander's we should like to
know more than we can find out from Plutarch's occasional
quotations. It is well known that letters are easily forged,
and that they often were forged in those times. We cannot
therefore look upon these documents, which seem to have
been unknown to Arrian,* with any great measure of trust.
At most they can only be looked on as one source of know-
ledge among others.

Arrian, as he himself tells us, chose the two narratives of
Ptolemy and Aristoboulos as the groundwork of his own.

* Arrian indeed (vii. 23, 9) refers to a letter sent by Alexander to Kleo-
menes, his Satrap in Egypt ; but he merely works its contents into his narra-
tive, as if he had read in Ptolemy or Aristoboulos that such a letter was sent.
Had he known and believed in the collection of epistles referred to by Plu-
tarch, he would surely have placed them above either of his favourite authori-
ties.

Bishop Thirlwall (vol vii. p. 386) argues in favour of the genuineness of one
of the letters quoted by Plutarch, that it is ' placed beyond doubt by its direc-
tion [Kparepy Kcd 'A.TTa\y teal *A\#tTqi], which would not have occurred to a
forger.' Surely this turns upon the skill of the forger and the means of
knowledge at his command.

Strabo (xv. i ; vol. iii. p. 275, Tauchnitz) quotes a letter from Krateros to
his mother, which may belong to the same collection. Either the letter must
have been a forgery, or Krateros must have been a liar of the first order.
Strabo himself calls it iiriffro\f)v iro\\d rt dAAa irapa8o£a <ppa£ovffav KO! ovx.
6po\oyovffcu> ovStvi. It makes Alexander reach the Ganges.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 169

Both, he tells us, were companions of Alexander ; both wrote
after his death, when they had nothing- to hope or to fear
from him : Ptolemy moreover was a King-, in whom false-
hood would be specially unlikely. We do not profess to
share Arrian's ultra-royalism on this last head ; but we think
that we can see good reasons for placing- Ptolemy among- our
most trustworthy authorities. On two occasions, when his
name was honourably put forward by other writers — probably
his own flatterers — he himself disclaimed all merit. When
Alexander received his famous wound among the Malli,
Ptolemy, according- to some stories, was one of those who
first came to his help. According to Ptolemy himself, he
was in command of another division of the army in another
part of the country.* In the like sort, according to Diodoros
and Curtius, Ptolemy was once wounded by a poisoned arrow,
and the means of relief were revealed to Alexander in a
vision. As Arrian speaks of nothing of the kind, we may
infer that Ptolemy spoke of nothing either : f for the tale was
one which, had it rested on any tolerable evidence, Arrian
would not have been inclined to cast aside. For Arrian, like
Pausanias, was a devout pagan, and he loved tales of omens
and prodigies, which he sometimes tells at disproportionate
length. But he is quite free from that general love of ex-
aggerated and horrible stories which is so rife among the
inferior writers. It was doubtless the sober and practical
tone of the narratives of Ptolemy and Aristoboulos, as con-
trasted with the monstrous fables of Onesikritos and Kleit-
archos, which led him to follow them before all others.

We hold then that Arrian ought to be our chief guide;
and yet we can grant to Mr. Grote that his silence does not
always absolutely set a statement aside. But our reason is
not quite the same as Mr. Grote's. The other writers often
contain stories to the discredit of Alexander, which are not
found in Arrian. Mr. Grote infers that the other writers
preserved the truth, which was kept back by Ptolemy and

* Arrian, vi. n. t See Ste Croix, p. 409.

170 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

Aristoboulos, in their zeal for Alexander's good name. Arch-
deacon Williams of Cardigan, on the other hand, will have it
that the writers of what he calls ' republican Greece ' did
nothing but invent tales to the disparagement of the royal
Macedonian. This phantasy has been tossed to the winds by
the stronger hand of his Diocesan.* The mass of Greek
writers, at all events of later Greek writers, certainly did not
run down Alexander either as a King or as a Macedonian.
They had got over their hatred of Kings, and they had learned
to look on Macedonians as Greeks. The chief vice which Strabo
lays to their charge, is not depreciation, but flattery and love
of the marvellous. And no small appetite they do indeed
show for the extravagant, the horrible, and the scandalous.
Among all this, Alexander of course comes in for his share ;
but so do his enemies likewise. Deeds of wrong are laid to
the charge of both which most likely neither of them ever
did. But on the other hand, it is not necessary to believe
that Ptolemy and Aristoboulos were such formal apologists
for Alexander as Mr. Grote seems to take for granted. To
suppose that they wilfully left out Alexander's crimes implies
that they looked on them as crimes. But there is no reason
to give Ptolemy and Aristoboulos credit for a higher moral
standard than that of Alexander himself. If Alexander, as Mr.
Grote believes,f massacred the Branchidai as an act of piety,
Ptolemy or Aristoboulos would be quite as likely to applaud
as to condemn the deed. If, out of zeal for Alexander's good
name, they left out the kiss publicly given by him to BagoasJ
in the theatre, we must infer that their morals were sterner
than those of the assembled Macedonians, Greeks, and Per-

* Perhaps every one of Bishop ThirlwaLTs endless sarcasms against Arch-
deacon Williams's ' Life of Alexander,' is in itself strictly deserved. Yet the
book, as a whole, is not so bad as might be thought from the specimens thus
embalmed. Among a good many blunders and a great deal of partiality, it
shows some thought and research, and it is written in a specially agreeable
manner.

f Vol. xii. p. 275.

J See Plut. Alex. 67 (compare, on the other hand, c. 22) ; Athen. xiii. 80
(p. 603) ; compare on the other hand, x. 45 (p. 435). Compare also the
counter story about Agesilaos, Xen. Ages. v. 4.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 171

sians, who called for and who applauded the act. It is far
more likely that they passed by the one tale as untrue, the
other perhaps as untrue, anyhow as trivial. Still it must he
known that the silence of Arrian is not of itself conclusive
against a statement. Arrian was himself a military man of
some reputation, fond both of the theory and the practice of
his art. His history therefore is primarily a military one,
and he sometimes passes lightly over matters which do not
bear on military affairs. But both the assertions and the
silence of Arrian afford strong a priori grounds of historical
presumption, against which the statements of the other
writers must be weighed at whatever they are worth.

It is no wonder then that, from such a mass of conflicting
evidence, different minds should draw different conclusions,
and that Alexander should appear one kind of being to
Mitford, Droysen, and Archdeacon Williams, and quite
another to Ste Croix, Niebuhr, and Mr. Grote. Among these,
Droysen and Niebuhr form the two extremes oil either side,
for blind and often unfair idolatry, and for still more blind
and unfair depreciation. High above them all, the serene
intellect of Bishop Thirlwall holds the judicial balance. He
can sympathize with the fall of Athenian freedom without
denying the common rights of mankind to its destroyers.
He can reverence Lykourgos and Demosthenes, and can yet
see a hero in Alexander, and not an unmixed monster even in
Philip. He can understand how a man exposed to the most
fearful of temptations may sink into many faults and occa-
sional crimes, and yet keep a heart sound at its core. He
will not deny to such an one, though he may have been the
author of much incidental evil, his claim to be ranked
among the benefactors of mankind. The oftener we read
Bishop Thirl wall's narrative of this period, the more disposed
are we to see in it the nearest approach to the perfection of
critical history. The acute appreciation, the calm balancing
of evidence, the deep knowledge of human nature, the clear
and vigorous narrative, the eloquence and feeling with which
he sums up the character of the conqueror, would be alone

172 ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

enough to place their author in the very first rank of his-
torical writers. In his treatment of the internal affairs of
Athens in earlier times Mr. Grote far outshines Bishop
Thirlwall ; but nowhere does he equal, or even approach, the
Bishop's admirable narrative of the period from the accession
of Philip to the death of Demetrios Poliorketes. It is there-
fore, on the whole, the Alexander of Thirlwall, rather than
the Alexander either of Grote or of Droysen, who deserves to
live in the memory of mankind and to challenge the admira-
tion of the world.

The first leading fact in Alexander's history is that a King
of the Macedonians overthrew the Persian empire, in the cha-
racter of Captain-general of Hellas and in the name of Hellenic
vengeance for wrongs wrought on Hellas by the Barbarians
of a past generation. The second fact is that, when he had
carried out this work, he began to identify himself with the
empire which he had overthrown, that he took on himself
the character of King of Asia, that he began a series of con-
quests in which neither Greece nor Macedonia had either real
or sentimental interest, and, that he was cut off while engaged
in organizing a world-wide dominion of which both Greece
and Macedonia would have been, in geographical extent,
insignificant corners. In looking at such a career, its hero
must be judged by the standard of his own times, and not
by any standard, whether moral or political, which is either
purely Christian or purely modern. Alexander cannot be
fairly judged by a higher standard, except on a view which is
of itself the greatest homage to him — namely, that he was a
man of such greatness as to belong to all time, one to whom
men might reasonably look to forestall the progress of future
ages. But in all fairness, Alexander must be looked on
simply as a heathen Greek warrior of the fourth century
before Christ. It is enough if his career, allowing for his
special circumstances and temptations, be found to be not less
honourable than that of Agesilaos or Pelopidas. Mr. Grote,
who looks at Alexander not as a Greek but as a Barbarian,

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 173

should in fairness judge him by a standard still less strict ;
he should not condemn him if he reaches the measure of the
better class of Persian rulers, of the first Darius, of the elder
or the younger Cyrus.

Nothing would be easier than to set forth in glowing
language the wretchedness which must have been the im-
mediate result of Alexander's conquests, and to lament that
the lives of countless thousands should have been sacrificed to
the insatiable ambition of a single man. But these are ob-
jections, not to Alexander, but to war in the abstract. The
real questions are, Were the wars of Alexander unjust accord-
ing to the principles of his own age ? Were they carried on
with any circumstances of cruelty or perfidy contrary to the
laws of war which were then acknowledged ?

The notions which were held, not only by Greek soldiers,
but by Greek philosophers also, as to the relations between
Greek and Barbarian, were of a kind which it is not easy for
modern Europe to enter into. They may be compared with the
line which Islam draws between the true believer and the in-
fidel. Between those two classes there is to be an endless holy
war modified only by the obligations which may spring out of
special treaties, or rather truces. Unless he is under the safe-
guard of such special engagements, the infidel has nothing to
look for but death or submission. Not very unlike this
was the light in which, for some ages at least, the Chris-
tians* of Europe looked on the heathens of Asia, Africa,
and America. The old Greek deemed the Barbarian, unless
he was protected by some special compact, to be his natural foe
and his natural slave. War between the two was looked upon
as the regular order of things. And war, it should be re-
membered, even when waged by Greek against Greek, carried
with it utter havoc and devastation. Fruit-trees were cut
down, corn-fields were trampled, houses were burned, every
kind of wanton ravage was wrought, not only from the
incidental necessities of a battle, but as the ordinary con-
sequence of a march through an enemy's country. Nothing

* See Arnold, Thucydides, vol. i. p. 28.

174 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

but a special capitulation could even secure the life and
freedom of the prisoner. To slaughter the men and sell the
women and children of a captured town was looked on indeed
as harshness, but as harshness which occasion might justify,
and which was no breach of the received laws of war. If
we look at it by these principles, we shall hardly pronounce
Alexander's attack on the Persian Empire to have been unjust
in itself; we shall certainly not pronounce it to have been
carried out with wanton harshness in detail.

Long before Alexander was born, long before Macedonia
rose to greatness, a Pan-Hellenic expedition against Persia
had been the day-dream alike of Greek statesmen and of
Greek rhetoricians. It was the cherished vision of the long
life of Isokrates. It had been planned by the Thessalian
Tagos Jason. It had been actually begun by the Spartan
King Agesilaos. Demosthenes himself would hardly have
said anything against it on the score of abstract justice. In
his view it was untimely, it was impolitic, it was dangerous
to Athenian and even to Hellenic interests. Persia was no
longer to be feared, while Macedonia was of all powers the
one that was most to be feared. These arguments settled the
matter as against a Pan -Hellenic attack on Persia under
Macedonian headship. But there is no reason to think that
such a warfare, under more favourable circumstances and
with a less dangerous leader, would have sinned against any
abstract moral instinct in any Athenian or Lacedaemonian
statesman.

The question now arises, How far had Alexander any right to
put himself forward as the champion of united Hellas against
the Barbarian ? According to Mr. Grote, Alexander himself
was no Greek, but a mere Barbarian or half-Barbarian, who
had at most put on some superficial varnish of Hellenic cul-
ture. He was a mere ' non-Hellenic conqueror/ almost as
external as Darius or Xerxes. Instead of the champion, he
was the destroyer, the tyrant, of independent Hellas. Grecian
interests lay on the side of Persia, not on that of Macedonia.
The victory of Alexander at Gaugamela brought about sub-

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 176

stantially the same results as would have followed a victory of
Xerxes at Salamis. In fact, if a cry of Hellenic liberty or
Hellenic vengeance was to be raised, it was the despot of
Pella, not the despot of Susa, against whom the national
crusade ought to have been preached.

In all this there is much of truth. Indeed, the purely
political portion of the theory cannot be disputed. It had
been before put forth, with no difference that we can see, by
Bishop Thirlwall himself. Archdeacon Williams indeed
holds, with the Corinthian Demaratos, that the sight of
Alexander on the throne of Darius ' must have been a source
of the greatest pride and exultation to every Greek who
possessed a single spark of national feeling.1 * But even he
can see that the Macedonians at Issos ' conquered not the
Persians alone, but the united efforts of Southern Greece and
Persia.' f Undoubtedly Grecian interests, in the narrower
sense, lay on the Persian, and not on the Macedonian side.
A Persian victory at Gaugamela would have been almost as
great a gain for the political freedom of Athens as was the Per-
sian defeat at Marathon. The old Greek system of independent
city-commonwealths was in no wise threatened by Persia ; it
was more than threatened by Macedonia. We see all this
now; Athenian and Spartan statesmen saw it at the time.
It was natural that every Athenian patriot should see a friend
in his old enemy the Great King, a foe and an oppressor in the
self-styled champion of Greece. Nor is it unnatural that the
modern champion of Athenian freedom should see the whole
matter from an Athenian point of view, and should set
down the claims of Alexander to Hellenic championship as
mere mockery and pretence. But all this by no means proves
that there was not another side to the question, one which
might be fairly taken, and which actually was taken, both by
Alexander' himself and by a large part of the Greek nation.

The exact ethnical relation between the Greek and the
Macedonian people is a difficult question, and one on which

* Life of Alexander, p. 176. t Ibid, p. in.

176 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

we need not here enter. * Very different statements are found
in different authorities. Alexander assumes Macedonia to
be beyond doubt part of Greece, f Demosthenes reckons
Philip not only as no Greek, but as among the vilest of
Barbarians. J Both these statements are clearly interested
exaggerations in opposite directions. The Macedonian was
certainly not strictly a Greek, yet neither was he strictly a
Barbarian ; § he had at least a power of adopting Greek
culture which was not shared by the Persian or the
Egyptian. Throughout the campaigns of Alexander, we
always feel that Greeks and Macedonians, w"hatever might
be the amount of difference among themselves, form one
class as opposed to the mere Asiatic Barbarian. It is not
only that they were fighting under the same banners, — so
were Greek and Barbarian on the opposite side, — it is that
Greek and Macedonian alike display those peculiar military
qualities which have always distinguished the European from
the Asiatic, and of which the Greek had hitherto been the
great example. The Macedonian, in short, if not a born
Greek, became a naturalized Greek. He was the first-fruits
of that artificial Greek nation which was to play so important
a part in later times, and whose nationality is still vigorous
and progressive in our own day. Indeed, from the highest
Hellenic type at Athens the descent is very gradual down to the
non-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic Epeirots and Macedonians. The
latter surely did not stand so far below the Greek of ^Etolia
or Thessaly as the Greek of JEtolia or Thessaly stood below
the Greek of Athens. The few traces which we have of the old
Macedonian language show it to have been a speech not strictly
Greek, but still closely allied to Greek. It may even have

* [See above, p. 90.]

•t MaKftioviav «at TT)V d\\rjv 'EAAaSa. (Arrian, ii. 14.)

J ov i*6vov ovx *E\\r)vos OVTOS oi>S( npoa^icovTos ovSiv TOIS "EXXijtrtK, dAA.'
ovbe fiap&apov tvrtvOfv oOtv xaXov tlirtiv, aX\' o\46pov Ma/c(S6vos, K.T.\. Dem.
Phil. iii. 40 (p. 119).

§ ' Greeks, Macedonians, Barbarians' are spoken of as three distinct classes,
not only by Arrian (ii. 7, iv. n) but by Isokrat£s, Philip, 178. So Plutarch,
Alex. 47 (cf. 51).

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 177

beeu no further removed from Attic purity than was the
speech of the wild -ZEtolians.*" At all events, Greek of
respectable purity soon became the one tongue of Macedonian
government, literature, and business. A nation which could
so soon take up with the language, manners, and religion of
Greece cannot be looked upon as a horde of outside Bar-
barians like the Persian invaders. Nor did the adoption of
Greek manners by the Macedonians merely answer to their par-
tial adoption in after days by the Roman conquerors of Greece.
The Roman never lost his separate national being and his
national dominion. He never looked on himself as a Greek
or laid aside the language of Latium. But the Macedonian
sunk his distinct nationality in that of his subjects. He
was content with the position of the dominant Greek among
other Greeks.

But whatever the Macedonian people were, the Macedonian
Kings were undoubtedly Hellenic. Isokrates loves to point
to the willing subjection of Macedonia to its Greek rulers as
one of the noblest tributes to the inborn superiority of the
Greek, f In much earlier times the judges of Olympia had
acknowledged another Alexander as a Greek, an Argive, a
Herakleid. In the veins of the son of Philip and Olympias the
blood of Herakles was mingled with the blood of Achilleus.
Not only Philip, but earlier Macedonian Kings, had striven,
and not without fruit, to bring their subjects within the pale of
the civilization of their own race. Philip first showed himself
to the south of Olympos, not as a Barbarian conqueror, but as
the champion of Apollon, chosen by the Amphiktyonic Synod
to lead the armies of the God against the sacrilegious Phokian.
His services were rewarded by the admission of himself and
his successors as members of the great religious Council of
Greece. From that moment Macedonia is clearly entitled to
rank as a Greek state.

The object of Philip clearly was, not to macedonize Hellas,

* "Oirep [Evpvraj'ts] neyiarroy ptpos karl TUV Alroa\S>v, d'yvcaffroraroi 8i
fXaiaaav nal unio^cr/ot tldiv, ws \tyovTai. (Thuc. iii. 94.)
f Isok. Philip. 125, 6.

N

178 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

but to hellenize Macedonia. Macedonia was acknowledged
as a Greek state ; the next step was to make it the dominant
Greek state. The supremacy, the ^ye/ioina, of Greece, which
had so often been struggled for among her leading cities, was
now to be claimed by the King of the Macedonians, not as a
foreign invader, but by virtue of his Hellenic position as chief
of the most powerful of Greek states. By the confederacy of
Corinth, Macedonia was clothed with the same supremacy
which, after the battle of Aigos Potamos and again after the
peace of Antalkidas, had been held by Sparta. The existence
of such a supremacy in both cases sinned against Greek
political instincts, and in both cases it led to much practical
oppression. But we have no reason to think that the
supremacy of Macedonia was at all more oppressive than the
supremacy of Sparta. Demosthenes, or rather some con-
temporary orator under his name,* has drawn a dark enough
picture of Macedonian rule; but hardly so dark a picture as
Isokrates had before drawn of Spartan rule.f Philip and
Alexander do not seem to have systematically interfered with
the governments of the Greek cities. J Athens, under the
supremacy of Sparta, was put under the tyranny of the
Thirty. Under the supremacy of Macedonia, she kept her
democracy, and listened to Demosthenes pleading for the
Crown. In Asia, Lysandros everywhere set up oligarchies ; §
Alexander, in several places at least, restored democracies. ||
We need not believe that he had any enthusiasm for popular
rights, but he at least had not that abstract hatred of freedom

* See the oration Ufpi ruv wpu* 'A* {£iv£pov ffwOrj/cwv throughout.

t Paneg. 144. et seq. Panath. 57. et seq. &c.

J In two cases, that of MessenS and of the Achaian Pelle'ne', Alexander is
accused (Dem. irtpl TWV irpus 'A. 5. 12., Pausanias, viii. 7. 27) of forestalling
the policy of his successors and of setting up a Tyrant in a Grecian city.
But these acts seem to stand quite alone. Elsewhere we find him (Arrian,
v. 25) expressing admiration for the aristocratical constitutions which he
found in some Indian states. He would doubtless favour whatever form of
government best suited his policy in each particular case.

§ See Isok. Panath. 58.

|| Arrian, ii. 17, 18 ; ii. 5.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 179

which has been the leading feeling- of so many Kings. The
supremacy of Philip and Alexander was naturally hateful to
great cities like Thebes, Athens, and Sparta, which strove
to set up a similar supremacy of their own. But we can
hardly doubt that many of the smaller states hailed them as
deliverers, and gave their votes in the synod of Corinth with
hearty good will.

The main difference between the Macedonian supremacy
and the earlier supremacy of Athens, Thebes, or Sparta, lay
in this — that those states were republics, while Macedonia
was a monarchy. Mr. Grote seems to argue that Philip
and Alexander could not be Greeks, because they were
Kings.* In another place f he far more truly speaks of
Alexander as being, in many respects, a revival of the
Homeric Greek. But the Homeric Greek was surely a
Greek and not a Barbarian ; one main difference between
Greece and Macedonia was that Macedonia had kept on the
old heroic kingship which Greece had cast aside. Such was
the case with Molossis also, the land of Alexander's mother,
a state where, just as in Macedonia, Greeks of heroic descent
reigned over a people who were at most only half Hellenic.
Molossis, like Macedonia, became Greek ; indeed it went a
step farther than Macedonia, and became a democratic con-
federation.

We hold then that Alexander has the fullest right to all the
honours of the Hellenic name, though his sympathies may
well have lain more warmly with the heroic Greeks of the
Homeric age than with the republican Greeks of his own day.
Yet he did not appear among those republican Greeks as a
barbarian conqueror. It was his ambition to attack the Bar-
barian in the character of the chosen champion of Hellas, and
that rank was formally bestowed upon him, with the out-
ward consent of all,| and doubtless with the real good will
of many. As such, he crossed over to Asia, he overthrew

Vol. xii. p. 3. f Ibid. p. 95.

£ Arrian, i. I. Sparta alone refused.
N 2

180 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

the Persian dominion, and solemnly destroyed the palace of
the Persian Kings in revenge for the ravages wrought by
Xerxes in Greece. The championship of Hellas was, at least
during this stage of his life, always strongly put forward;
and who has the right to say that it was dishonestly put
forward ? The inscription on his votive offering was, ' Alex-
ander the son of Philip, and the Greeks, the Lacedaemonians
excepted, from the Barbarians who inhabit Asia.' * The place
chosen for the offering was not Dion or Pella, but the Akro-
polis of Athens. In his passage through Grecian Asia, he
proclaimed himself as a Grecian deliverer, and, as we have
seen, he restored to the Grecian cities their democratic freedom.
If he dealt harshly with Greeks in the Persian service, it
was because they had transgressed the common decree of the
nation ;f &n(l ne carefully distinguished between those who
had enlisted before and those who had enlisted after his
own acknowledgement as Pan-Hellenic Captain-general. J

There is no doubt that the mercenary Greeks who fought
for the Great King against that Pan-Hellenic Captain-general
were in truth fighting the battles of Hellas. So, if Persia
had taken mercenary Greeks into her service against Agesilaos,
they would have fought the battles, perhaps of Hellas, at any
rate of Thebes and of Athens. But the battles of Hellas were

* Arrian, i. 16.

t Ibid. i. 1 6. 29 ; iii. 23. Mr. Grote, somewhat strangely to our mind,
likens Alexander's relation towards the Greek Confederacy to Buonaparte's
relation towards the Confederation of the Rhine (vol. xii. p. 70). He quotes
an instance of the distinction made by Buonaparte, in his Russian campaign,
between native Russians and Germans in the Russian service. The former
were honourable enemies doing their duty ; the latter were his own rebellious
subjects, whom he might deal with as traitors. This, Mr. Grote tells us,
answers to Alexander's treatment of the Greeks in the Persian service. But,
to make the analogy good for anything, Buonaparte should have proclaimed
himself as a German, the chosen head of Germany, the Germanizer of France,
the invader of Russia to avenge German wrongs. Alexander did not say that
the Greek prisoners were his 'subjects,' as Buonaparte did with the Germans.
He said that they were ' Greeks, fighting against Greece, contrary to the
common agreement of all the Greeks' (dSittf'iv ykp /j.CY<i\a roi/s ffTpartvofieyovt
fvavna rrj 'EAAdSi, -rrapa rots fiopfrapois, irapcL rci SdffMTa rci '

J Arrian, Ui. 24.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 181

fought in the one case, they would have been fought in the
other, in an indirect and underhand way. One can hardly
believe that the Greeks who fought for Persia at Issos and
Gaugamela shared the same feelings of Hellenic patriotism
as the Greeks who fought openly for Greece at Chaironeia
and at Krannon. The show and sentiment of Hellenic
nationality must have been throughout on the side of Alex-
ander. An Athenian patriot lamenting the degradation of
his own once ruling city, indeed a keen-sighted politician in
any Grecian city, might wish well to Darius and ill to Alex-
ander.*" But the sight of a hero-King, sprung from the most
venerated heroes of Grecian legend, devoting himself to
avenge the old wrongs of Greece upon the Barbarian, must
have had a charm about him which it was hard indeed to
withstand. Alexander at least fully believed in his own
mission ; and such of his Macedonians as took up any Hel-
lenic position at all, would, with the usual zeal of new con-
verts, feel such influences even more strongly than the Greeks
themselves.

Nor does Alexander's conduct within Greece itself, at all
events during the earlier years of his reign, at all belie these
Hellenic claims. The destruction of Thebes was indeed an
awful blow, but it was a blow in no wise more awful than
Hellenic cities had often suffered at each other's hands. As
far as human suffering went, the vengeance of Alexander
upon Thebes was less extreme than the vengeance of Athens
upon Skione and Melos. The fate of Thebes moreover was
referred by Alexander to his own Greek allies, to Plataians
and Orchomenians, whose own cities had been overthrown by
Thebes in her day of might, and who now hastened with
delight to wreak their vengeance upon their oppressor.

* [In my Essay, as it was published in the Edinburgh Review, the following
words followed this sentence : ' As many of the French emigres and some of the
friends of liberty in 1814 supported the cause of the Allies against the cause of
Napoleon.' What these words mean, what they have to do with the matter, is
beyond my power even of guessing. The interpolator, whoever he was, must
explain.]

182 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

What seemed so specially awe-striking in the fate of Thebes
was not the mere amount of misery that was wrought, but,
as Mr. Grote says,* the breach of Hellenic sentiment in the
destruction of so great a city, a city of such historical and
legendary fame, and the danger of offending local Gods and
heroes by putting an end to their accustomed local worship.
Had Alexander merely driven out or enslaved the existing
Thebans, and had handed over the walls and temples to a
new Theban community formed out of his own Greek allies,
but little would have been said of his cruelty. As it was, the
destruction of Thebes was held to follow him through life.
The native city of Dionysos was overthrown, and the destroyer
had to look for the vengeance of the patron-God. He paid
the penalty when Kleitos fell by his hand, and when his army
refused to march beyond the Hyphasis.f But, even in earlier
days, he repented of the deed, and he tried to make amends
by showing special kindness to such Thebans as the chances
of war threw in his way. J

Against harshness towards Thebes we may, in the case
both of Philip and Alexander, set generosity towards Athens.
Both of them, it is plain, had a strong feeling of reverence for
the intellectual mistress of Hellas. Such a feeling was likely
to be far stronger in Macedonians who had adopted Grecian
culture than it would be in contemporary Spartans or Thebans,
to whom Athens was merely an ordinary enemy or ally. Athens
was a political adversary both to Philip and to Alexander ;
both of them humbled her so far as their policy called for ;
but neither of them ever thought in her case of those acts of
coercion and vengeance which they deemed needful in the
case of Thebes. When Thebes received a garrison from
Philip, Athens was only called on to give up her foreign
possessions. When Thebes was levelled with the ground
by Alexander, Athens was only called on to give up her
obnoxious orators, and even that demand was not finally

* xii. 57. t Plut. Alex. 13.

J Arrian, ii. 15.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 183

pressed.* As we have seen, Alexander's first barbarian spoils
were dedicated in Athenian temples ; from the captured palace
of the Great King he sent back to Athens the statues of her
tyrannicides. Even the anecdote told by Plutarch, f which
sets forth Athenian praise as the chief object of his toils, exag-
gerated as it doubtless is, shows at least that the Macedonian
conqueror, though his conquests might carry with them the
overthrow of the political greatness of Athens, was in no way,
in spirit or feeling, the foe of Athens or of Greece.

Three great battles and several great sieges made Alex-
ander master of the Persian empire. And it is worth remark
that the immediate results of the three battles, Granikos, Issos,
and Gaugamela, coincide with lasting results in the history
of the world. The victory of the Granikos made Alexander
master of Asia Minor, of a region which in the course of a
few centuries was thoroughly hellenized, and which remained
Greek, Christian, and Orthodox, down to the Turkish inva-
sions of the eleventh century. The territory which Alexander
thus won, the lands from the Danube to Mount Tauros,
answered very nearly to the extent of the Byzantine Empire
for several centuries, and it might very possibly have been
ruled by him, as it was in Byzantine times, from an European
centre. The field of Issos gave him Syria and Egypt, lands

* Mr. Grote (vol. xii. p. 63) has a note on the details connected with
Alexander's demand for the extradition of the orators, into which we need
not enter. But we may mention thus much. Mr. Grote says : —

' I think it highly improbable that the Athenians would by public vote
express their satisfaction that Alexander had punished the Thebans for their
revolt. If the Macedonising party at Athens was strong enough to carry so
ignominious a vote, they would also have been strong enough to carry the
subsequent proposition of Phokion, — that the ten citizens demanded should be
surrendered.'

But surely it is on thing to pass a vote which, however ignominous, did no
actual harm to anybody, another to hand over illustrious citizens to exile, bonds,
or death. Doubtless many votes would be given for the one motion, which
would be given against the other.

f Alex. 60. <5 'Adrjvaioi, Spa -ye itiartvaaiT &v f)\iicovs vno^tvca KivSvvov*
tvtKa rfjs irap' vfttv (v$o£ias ; This is put into his mouth at the crossing of the
Hydaspes, just before the great battle with Pdros.

184 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

which the Macedonian and the Roman kept for nearly a
thousand years, and which for ages contained, in Alexandria
and Antioch, the two greatest of Grecian cities. But Syria
and Egypt themselves never became Greek; when they
became Christian, they failed to become Orthodox, and they
fell away at the first touch of the victorious Saracen. Their
government called for an Asiatic or Egyptian capital, but
their ruler might himself still have remained European and
Hellenic. His third triumph at Gaugamela gave him the
possession of the whole East; but it was but a momentary
possession : he had now pressed onward into lands where
neither Grecian culture, Roman dominion, nor Christian
theology proved in the end able to strike any lasting root.

Mr. Grote remarks that Philip would most likely have
taken the advice of Parmenion, so scornfully cast aside by
Alexander, and would have accepted the offer of Darius to
give up the provinces west of the Euphrates. Alexander him-
self might well have taken it could he have foreseen the future
destiny which fixed the Euphrates as the lasting boundary
of European dominion in Asia. But for the sentiment of
Hellenic vengeance — we may add for Alexander's personal
spirit of adventure — it was not enough to rob Persia of her
foreign possessions ; he must overthrow Persia herself. Per-
sian Kings had taken tribute of Macedonia and had harried
Greece ; Greek and Macedonian must now march in triumph
into the very home of the enemy. As Xerxes had sat in state
by the ruins of Athens, so must the Captain-general of Hellas
stand in the guise of the Avenger over the blackened ruins of
Persepolis. But the conquest of Persia at once changed the
whole position of the conqueror. The whole realm of the
Achaimenids could neither be at once hellenized, nor yet
turned into a dependency of Macedonia. The limited King of
the Macedonians, the elective Captain-general of Greece, was
driven to take to himself the position of the Great King, and
to reign on the throne of Cyrus, as his lawful successor, and
not as a foreign intruder.

Here was the rock upon which Alexander's whole scheme

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 185

of conquest split. He had gone too far ; yet his earlier
position was one which would hardly have allowed him to
stop sooner. Till he crossed the Persian Gates, he had
appeared rather as a deliverer than as an enemy to the
native inhabitants of all the lands through which he passed.
The Greek cities of Asia welcomed a conqueror of their own
race, a King who did not shrink from giving back to them
their democratic freedom. Even to the barbarian inhabitants
of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, Alexander might well appear
as a deliverer. A change of masters is commonly welcome to
subject nations ; and men might fairly deem that a Greek
would make a better master than a Persian. Against Phoe-
nicians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Alexander had no mission of
vengeance ; he might rather call on them to help him against
the common foe. If they had served in the army of Xerxes,
so had his own Herakleid forefathers.* If the Gods of Attica
had been wronged and insulted, so had the Gods of Memphis
and Babylon. In Western Asia therefore Alexander met with
but little strictly native opposition, save only from those fierce
tribes which had here and there still kept their independence
against the Persian, and which had as little mind to give
it up to the Macedonian. But at last he reached Persia
itself; he entered the royal city, where the Great King
reigned, not, as at Susa and Babylon, as a foreign conqueror,
but as the chief of his own people, in the hearth and cradle of
his empire. He saw the palace of the Barbarian arrayed with
the spoils of Greece ; he threw open his treasure-house rich
with the tribute of many Grecian cities, and of his own once
subject kingdom. The destruction of the Persepolitan palace
might well seem to him an impressive act of symbolical
vengeance, a costly sacrifice to the offended Gods of Greece
and Macedonia, of Babylon and Syria and Egypt.

* Mr. Grote would seem (vol. xii. p. 56) to imply that this fact barred
Alexander from all right to avenge the Persian invasion ; at all events that
it barred him from all right to reproach Thebes with her share in it. But
the earlier Alexander, in following Xerxes, only bowed to the same constraint
as all Northern Greece ; and it is clear that his heart was on the side of
Athens, while Thebes served the Barbarian with hearty good will.

186 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

But in this impressive scene at Persepolis Alexander
showed himself for the last time in the character of Hellenic
avenger. Not long afterwards, the fortunate crime of Bessos
handed over to the invader all the gains, without any of the
guilt, of the murder of Darius. From this moment Alexander
appears as the Great King, the successor of Cyrus. On his
change of position naturally followed many changes in other
respects. He began to claim the same outward marks of
homage as had been shown to his predecessors, a homage
which, according to Greek and Macedonian notions, was de-
grading, if not impious. We readily allow that from this
time the character of Alexander changed for the worse ;
that his head was in some degree turned by success ; that his
passions, always impetuous, now became violent;* that, in
short, with the position of an Eastern despot, he began to
share a despot's feelings, and now and then to be hurried into
a despot's crimes.

His position was now a strange one. He had gone too far for
his original objects. Lasting possession of his conquests beyond
the Tigris could be kept only in the character of King of the
Medes and Persians. Policy bade him to put on that character.
We can also fully believe that he was himself really dazzled
with the splendour of his superhuman success. His career had
been such as to outdo the wildest dreams which he could have
cherished either in his waking or his sleeping moments. The
Great King, the type of earthly splendour and happiness, had
fallen before him ; he himself was now the Great King ; he
was lord of an empire wider than Grecian imagination had
assigned to any mortal ; he was master of wealth which in
Grecian eyes might enable its possessor to enter into the lists
with Zeus himself, f But no feature of the Hellenic character
is more remarkable, as Mr. Grote himself has so often shown,
than inability to bear unlooked-for good luck. A far lower

* Arrian, vii. 8. fy fap ST) ofvrfpos tv ry rort, Kail diro TTJS f}apl3apiKT)s
Otpairtias ovKfTt wt va\ai irridx^s is TOVS MaKtSovas. •

t Herod, v. 49. I \6vr(s 8J ravrrjv rty vo\iv, [Sovffa] Oapffewres 77877 r<y Au
ir\ovrov iTtpt kpi^trt.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 187

height had turned the heads of Miltiades, Pausanias, and
Alkibiades. Was it then wonderful that, on a height such as
none of them had dreamed of, the head of Alexander should
be turned also? We may believe that the conduct which
policy dictated was also personally agreeable ; that he took a
delight, unreasonable indeed to a philosopher, but natural to
a man, in the splendours of his new position ; that he may
even have been beguiled into some of its besetting vices, into
something of the luxury and recklessness of an eastern King.
The mind of Alexander was one which lay specially open to
all heroic and legendary associations ; he was at once the off-
spring and the imitator of Gods and heroes. His own deeds had
outdone those which were told of any of his divine forefathers
or their comrades ; Achilleus, Herakles, Theseus, Dionysos,
had done and suffered less than Alexander. Was it then
wonderful that he should seriously believe that one who had
outdone their acts must come of a stock equal to their own ?
Was it wonderful if, not merely in pride or policy, but in
genuine faith,* he disclaimed a human parent in Philip, and
looked for the real father of the conqueror and lord of earth
in the conqueror and lord of the heavenly world ?

We believe then that policy, passion, and genuine super-
stition were all joined together in the demand which Alexander
made for divine, or at least for unusual, honours. He had
taken the place of the Great King, and he demanded the
homage which was held to be due to him who held that place.
Such homage his barbarian subjects were perfectly ready to
pay ; they would most likely have had but little respect for
a king who forgot to call for it. But the homage which to
a Persian seemed only the natural expression of respect for the
royal dignity, seemed to Greeks and Macedonians an invasion
of the honour due only to the immortal Gods. Yet Alexander
could hardly, with any prudence, draw a distinction between
the two classes of his subjects. He certainly could not put
up with a state of things in which every Persian who came to

* Mr. Grote admits this, vol. xii. p. 202.

188 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

do his ordinary service to his King was left open to the coarse
jeers of Macedonian soldiers and to the more eloquent rebukes
of Grecian sophists.* The claim of divine birth was not needed
to impose upon Orientals ; it was needed to impose upon
Europeans. The Orientals were ready enough to pay all that
Alexander asked for to a mere earthly sovereign. For a man
to be the child of a God was an idea utterly repugnant to the
Persian religion, while nothing was more familiar to Grecian
notions. Least of all would Alexander, in order to impose
upon his Persian subjects, have chosen as his parent a God
of the conquered and despised Egyptians. This was no diffi-
culty to the Greeks and Macedonians, who looked on the
Egyptian Ammon as the same God with their own Zeus.
The homage which they refused to an earthly King they
might willingly pay to the son of Zeus, the peer of Herakles
and Dionysos. Nor was Alexander the first who had re-
ceived the like or greater honours even during his lifetime.
Lysandros, the Spartan citizen, had supplanted Here in the
worship of the Samians ;t and Philip, the Macedonian King,
had, on one memorable day, marched as a thirteenth among
the twelve great Gods of Olympos. J At what time the idea
of a divine birth first came into the mind of Alexander or
of his courtiers is far from clear. The inferior writers give
us full details of the reception which his divine father gave
him at his Libyan oracle ; but the sober Arrian keeps a dis-
creet silence.

Probably no other way could be found to reconcile his
European subjects to a homage which was absolutely neces-
sary to maintain his Asiatic dominion. But nothing shows
more clearly the incongruous nature of Alexander's position as
at once despotic King of Asia, constitutional § King of the

* See Arrian, iv. 12. Compare Plut. Alex. 74.

+ Plut. Lys. 18. t Diod. xvi. 92. 95.

§ We think we may fairly use this word. Of course, as Mr. Grote often
tells us, the will of the King, and not the declared will of the people, was
the great moving cause in Macedonian affairs. But the Macedonians were
not slaves. Alexander himself (Arrian, ii. 7) contrasts the Macedonians as

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 189

Macedonians, and elective President of the Hellenic Confede-
racy. It is not wonderful if it led him in his later days to
deal with his European subjects and confederates in a way
widely different from any in which they had been dealt with
in the early part of his reign. He not only sent round to all
the cities of Greece to demand divine honours, which were
perhaps not worth refusing,* but he ordered each city to
bring back its political exiles. This last was an interference
with the internal government of the cities which certainly
was not warranted by Alexander's position as head of the
Greek Confederacy. And, in other respects also, from this
unhappy time all the worst failings of Alexander become
more strongly developed. Had he not been from the first
impetuous and self-confident, he could never have begun his
career of victory. Impetuosity and self-exaltation now grew
upon him, till he could bear neither restraint nor opposition.
In one sad instance we even find these dangerous tendencies
going together with something like the suspicious temper
of an Eastern despot. Kleitos might perhaps have fallen by
his hand in a moment of wrath at any stage of his life;f
but we cannot believe that the fate of Philotas and Parmenidn
could have happened at any moment before his entry into
Persepolis. It is not safe to rely on the details of that un-
happy story as given by Curtius and Plutarch ; and we hardly
know enough to pronounce with confidence upon the guilt or
innocence of the victims. We need not believe that Alexander
invited Philotas to his table after he had made up his mind to
destroy him, nor that he listened to and mocked the cries of

€\tvO(pot with the Persians as Sov\ot ; Curtius (iv. 7. 31) speaks of them
as, 'Macedones assueti quidem regio imperio, sed majore libertatis umbrsl
quam cseterse gentes.' Certainly a people who kept in their own hands the
power of life and death, and before whom their sovereign pleaded as an
accuser— sometimes as an unsuccessful accuser — cannot be confounded with
the subjects of an Eastern despotism.

* See Thirlwall, vol. vii. p. 163.

f The scene between Alexander and his father recorded by Plutarch
(Alex. p. 9) certainly shows the germ of those failings which afterwards led
to the murder of Kleitos.

190 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

his former friend when in the agonies of the torture. But
we can plainly see that Alexander brought a charge and
sought a condemnation on grounds which, to say the
least, were not enough for a fair verdict of guilty. For
once the narrative of Arrian gives us the impression that
there was something which he or his authorities wished to
slur over ; and one would like to know the grounds which
led the judicious Strabo to his seeming conviction of the
guilt of the accused.* We are told that the Macedonian law
of treason sentenced the kinsfolk of the condemned traitor
to the same punishment as himself. We are also told by
Diodorosf that Parmenion was formally condemned by the
military Assembly, the constitutional tribunal when the life
of a Macedonian was at stake. We may add that the acquital
of some of the persons whom Alexander accused shows that
that Assembly did exercise a will of its own, and did not
always meet merely to register the royal decrees. It is there-
fore quite possible that the death of Parmeniou, as well as
that of Philotas, may have been strictly according to the
letter of the law. But we may be far more sure that Alex-
ander would never have put such a law in force against his
old friend and teacher in the days when he handed Parme-
nion's own accusing letter to his physician, and drank off the
draught in which death was said to lurk.

We have already quoted the remark of Mr. Grote that the
character of Alexander recalled, to a great extent, that of the
heroes of legendary Greece. By virtue of the same features,
it forestalled, to a great extent, that of the heroes of mediaeval
chivalry. Bishop ThirlwaliJ truly says that his disposition
was ' rather generous than either merciful or scrupulously
just,' but that 'cruelty, in the most odious sense of the word,
wanton injustice, was always foreign to his nature.' Reck-
lessness of human suffering is a necessary characteristic of
every conqueror ; but we have no reason to attribute it to

* xv. 2 (vol. iii. p. 312). $i\u7av avft\f rbv Tlapntv'uuvos vlbv, fytupdaas
iirtf}ov\f,v.

f xvii. So. J Vol. vii. p. 71.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 191

Alexander in any greater degree than to all other aggres-
sive warriors. But in Alexander, a general of the highest
order and at the same time a man full of the highest
spirit of personal adventure, we find, it may be, a greater
delight in the practice of war for its own sake than in the
warriors of the Grecian commonwealths. In Alexander too,
a royal warrior, we find a feature of the chivalrous character
which could not show itself in his republican predecsssors.
This is his extreme courtesy and deference to persons of his
. own rank ; his almost overdone generosity to the family of
Darius, and to Darius himself when he was no more. This
is still more impressively set before us in his famous dialogue
with the captive Poros, a foe indeed after his own heart.
The death and misery of innocent thousands are easily for-
gotten in the excess of chivalrous respect which is thus ex-
changed between the royal combatants who use them as their
playthings. All these faults grew upon Alexander during
the latter stages of his career. It is impossible to look with
the same complacency upon his Indian campaigns as upon
his warfare in Bithynia and Syria. The mission of Hellenic
vengeance was then over. Personal ambition and love of
adventure had been strongly mingled with it from the first ;
they now became the ruling passions. Yet Alexander's posi-
tion, even in his later expeditions, is one easy to understand,
if not altogether to justify. He was the Great King, partly
winning back provinces which had been torn away from his
predecessors, partly making good their vague claims to the
universal empire of Asia. But he was also the Hellenic
warrior, asserting the natural right of the civilized man
over the Barbarian. He was the demigod, the son of Zeus,
commissioned, like Theseus or Herakles, at once to conquer
and to civilize the earth. He was the ardent searcher after
knowledge, eager to enlarge the bounds. of human science,
and to search out distant lands which could be searched out
only at the point of the sword. In his later campaigns we
can see a larger measure of arrogance, of rashness, of reckless-
ness of human suffering ; but it is nowhere shown that he

192 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

ever sinned against the received laws of war of his own age ;*
and certainly, even in his most unprovoked aggressions, we
may still see traces of a generosity of spirit, a nobleness of
purpose, which at once distinguish him from the vulgar herd
of conquerors and devastators.

The unfulfilled designs of Alexander must ever remain in
darkness ; no man can tell what might have been done by
one of such mighty powers who was cut off at so early a
stage of his career. That he looked forward to still further
conquests seems beyond doubt, f The only question is,
Did his conquests, alike those which were won and those
which were still to be won, spring from mere ambition and
love of adventure, or is he to be looked on as in any degree
the intentional missionary of Hellenic culture? That such
he was is set forth with much warmth and some extrava-
gance in a special treatise of Plutarch ; J it is argued more
soberly, but with true vigour and eloquence, in the seventh
volume of Bishop Thirlwall. § Mr. Grote denies him all
merit of the kind. But Mr. Grote too thoroughly identifies
' Hellenism ' with republicanism to be altogether a fair judge.
He will hardly allow that there could be such a thing as
Hellenic culture under a monarchy. Yet surely there is a
difference between Greek and Barbarian before and above
any distinction as to forms of government. Alexander is
said to have found both aristocracies and democracies in
India, but surely such aristocracies and democracies might
need hellenizing by his Macedonian monarchy. That Alex-

* Plutarch (Alex. 59) says of one occasion in the Indian war : fftrtiaafttvot
lv nvi ir(5X€i irpbs airrovs diriovras tv 65$ Xa&uv airavras airtKTfive • Kal rovro
Tcils wo\ffJUKoi* avrov fpyott r&AAa voftif^oas Kal paai\iKus voXffirjaai'Tos wffirtp
KT]\ls irp6atffTiv. The place intended must be Massaga. If so, the narrative
in Arrian (iv. 27) does not bear out Plutarch's censure. The capitulation was
clearly broken on the other side. We may accept Bishop Thirlwall's (vol. vii.
p. 8) censure, that ' Alexander exhibited less generosity than might have been
expected from him, even if mercy was out of the question ; ' but there was no
breach of faith.

+ Arrian, vii. I ; ib. 19.

£ U(pl TTJS 'A\(£a

§ P. 121 et seq.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 193

under did carry Hellenic culture into a large portion of the
world is an undoubted fact. That he intended to do so is
but an inference ; but surely it is a very natural one.

Mr. Grote however somewhat strangely depreciates the
merit of Alexander in this respect, in order by comparison to
extol his successors.* So far as Asia was hellenized at all, it
was, he tells us, not Alexander, but the Ptolemies and Seleu-
kids, who hellenized it. No doubt the details of the process
were carried out by them ; but they did nothing but follow the
impulse which had been given to them by their great master.
No doubt also, as Mr. Grote points out, their circumstances
were in some respects more favourable than those of Alexander
for carrying on the work. Alexander himself could not do so
much in eleven years of marching and countermarching as
they could do in two centuries of comparative peace. Again,
Asia Minor, as the event proved, could receive a lasting
Hellenic culture, and Syria and Egypt could at least receive
lasting Hellenic colonies. But no lasting Hellenic culture
could flourish on the banks of the Indus and the Jaxartes.
Yet it surely speaks much for Alexander's zeal in the cause,
when we find him labouring for it under such unfavour-
able circumstances. At every promising spot he founds a
Greek city, an Alexandria, and plants in it a Greek or Mace-
donian colony, whose language and manners might be spread
among their barbarian fellow-citizens. Nor was his labour,
even in those far-off lands, altogether thrown away. A
Greek kingdom of Bactria flourished for some ages; several
of his cities, though no longer Greek, flourish to this day;
one at least, Candahar, still keeps the name of its founder.
Mr. Grote himself does not deny that 'real consequences
beneficial to humanity arose from Alexander's enlarged and
systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased
means of communication among its inhabitants.'f Bishop
Thirlwall, as might be expected, is far more copious and
eloquent on this point : —

* Vol. xii. p. 362. t Vol. xii. p. 368.

194 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

' Let any one contemplate the contrast between the state of Asia under
Alexander, and the time when Egypt was either in revolt against Persia, or
visited by her irritated conquerors with the punishment of repeated insurrection,
when almost every part of the great mountain chain which traverses the length
of Asia, from the Mediterranean to the borders of India, was inhabited by
fierce, independent, predatory tribes': when the Persian kings themselves were
forced to pay tribute before they were allowed to pass from one of their capitals
to another. Let any one endeavour to enter into the feelings, with which a
Phoenician merchant must have viewed the change that took place in the face
of the earth, when the Egyptian Alexandria had begun to receive and pour
out an inexhaustible tide of wealth : when Babylon had become a great port :
when a passage was open both by sea and hind between the Euphrates and the
Indus : when the forests on the shores of the Caspian had begun to resound
with the axe and the hammer. It will then appear that this part of the
benefit which flowed from Alexander's conquest cannot be easily exaggerated .

'And yet this was perhaps the smallest part of his glory.' *

Still more strangely, to our minds, does Mr. Grotef specially
depreciate the merit of the greatest of Alexander's foundations.
On a spot whose advantages had, for we know not how many
thousand years, been overlooked by the vaunted wisdom of
Egypt, a glance and a word of the Macedonian called into
being the greatest mart and hearth of the commerce and
cultivation of the world. But Mr. Grote tells us that the
greatness of Alexandria was not owing to Alexander, but
to the Ptolemies. As a single city of Alexander's universal
empire, it could never have become what it did become as
the royal seat of the smaller monarchy. Perhaps not: yet
two points are worth noticing : first, that, if we may believe
Niebuhr, Alexander designed Alexandria as the capital of his
universal empire ; secondly, that the commerce of Alexandria
became far greater when it had sunk into a provincial city
of the Roman dominion than it had been under at least the
later Ptolemies. J And surely, after all, it is no disparage-
ment to an originally great conception, if circumstances give
it in the end a still greater developement than its first
designer could have hoped for.

Nor does Alexander's partial adoption of Asiatic manners
really prove anything against his civilizing intentions. The

* Vol. vii. p. 1 20. t Vol. xii. p. 200.

t See Merivale's Home, vol. iv. p. 125.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 195

Barbarian could not be won to the higher calling which was
set before him unless his teachers stooped in some degree to
his own prejudices. Greek sophists and Macedonian soldiers
saw in the Persians merely born slaves with whom it was de-
grading to hold intercommunion. Alexander thought better of
his new subjects. If he himself wore the costume of a Persian
King, he taught the chosen youth of Persia the tongue of
Greece, the arms and discipline of Macedonia. * This surely
does not justify the doctrine of Mr. Grote, that 'instead of
hellenizing Asia, he was tending to asiatize Macedonia and
Hellas. 'f Mr. Grote is again deceived by his unwillingness
to look at the case from any but a political point of view.
Alexander seems to him to be ' tending to asiatize Macedonia
and Hellas/ because he increased the royal power in Mace-
donia, and extended it over Hellas. And we cannot help
remarking how often, throughout his whole argument, Mr.
Grote, who looks on Alexander and his Macedonians as utterly
non-Hellenic, is driven to speak of Greece and Macedonia as
forming a single whole in opposition to the Barbarians of
Asia.

On the general merits of Alexander in his purely military
capacity there is the less need for us to enlarge, as no one
has ever done more full justice to them than Mr. Grote him-
self. The carping spirit of Niebuhr seems half inclined, if
it were possible, to depreciate him in this respect also. The
campaigns of Alexander are the earliest in which we can
study war on a grand scale, carried out with all the appliances
of art which was then known. Above all, he was conspicuous
for his skill in the harmonious employment of troops of dif-
ferent kinds. Horsemen, phalangists, hypaspists, archers,
horse-archers, all found their appropriate places in his armies.
But our object is less to extol Alexander as a soldier than
to vindicate him as a conqueror, to claim for him a higher
moral ' and intellectual rank than can ever belong to the
mere soldier, however illustrious. We have always delighted
to look on Alexander as one who, among all the temptations

* See Thirhvall, vol. vii. p. 89. t Vol. xii. p. 359.

O 2

196 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

of the King- and the warrior, still kept his love for elegant
literature and scientific discoveiy. "We were therefore sur-
prised indeed at finding the last paragraph of Mr. Grote's
ninety-fourth chapter thus analysed in the margin : ' Interest
of Alexander in literature and science not great' Yet in
the text he allows that Alexander probably gave Aristotle
help in his zoological researches, and he adds that ' the intel-
lectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry,
and history.' He goes on to quote the instances given by
Plutarch of his sending for historical and poetical works on
his distant campaigns. To us it seems as much as can well
be asked of a general on a distant march if he keeps up his
personal taste for literature, poetry, and history, and encou-
rages others in the pursuit of physical science.

We have thus far striven to defend the general character
of Alexander against the view of him taken by Niebuhr, and,
in a milder form, by Mr. Grote. We have implied that there
are many particular cases in which, out of various conflicting
reports, Mr. Grote adopts those which are most unfavourable
to Alexander, and that on what seems to us to be incon-
clusive grounds. It is quite beyond our power to examine
all of them in detail. We will therefore choose three of the
most remarkable, namely, the conduct of Alexander at Tyre,
at Gaza, and at Persepolis.

Of the first two of these enterprises each was the crowning
of one of Alexander's earlier victories, the third was the formal
gathering in of his final success. At Granikos, at Issos, and
at Gaugamela he overthrew the hosts of the Great King in
open fight ; at Tyre and at Gaza he overcame the most stub-
born resistance of his feudatories and lieutenants ; at Persepolis
he entered into undisputed possession of his home and treasure.
We must confess that we cannot enter into Mr. Grote's con-
ception of the siege of Tyre.* He seems to look on it, laying
aside moral considerations, as a mere foolhardy enterprise,

* Vol. xii. p. 182.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 197

a simple waste of time which, from Alexander's own point
of view, might have been better employed. Sympathy may
be enlisted on the side of the Tyrians on many grounds.
In the narrative of any siege our feelings almost unavoidably
side with the beleaguered party. Whatever may be the right
or wrong of the original quarrel, the besiegers are, then and
there, the aggressors and the besieged are the defenders,
and the besieged too are commonly the weaker party. The
Tyrians again, from their former history, their commercial
greatness, their comparative political freedom, have a claim
on our sympathy far beyond the ordinary subjects of Persia.
They were fully justified in braving every extremity on behalf
of their allegiance to the Persian King. They were more
than justified in braving every extremity in behalf of
their independence of Persian and Macedonian alike. Nor
should we be very hard upon them, if they first of all sub-
mitted to the invader, and then repented, drew back, with-
stood him to the death. But we must look at the matter from
Alexander's point of view also. The question of abstract
justice must of course apply to the war as a whole, not to
each particular stage of its operations. If Alexander was
to conquer Persia, he must conquer Tyre. Tyre offered her
submission without waiting to be attacked ; she acknowledged
Alexander as her sovereign, and promised obedience to all his
commands. * His first command was an announcement,
conveyed in highly complimentary language, of his wish to
enter the city, and to offer sacrifice in the great temple of
Herakles. The request was doubtless half religious, half
political. Alexander would be sincerely anxious to visit and
to honour so renowned a shrine of his own supposed forefather.
But he would be also glad to avail himself of so honourable
a pretext for trying the fidelity of his new subjects. We
really cannot see that this was, as Mr. Grote calls it, 'an
extreme demand ; ' and, in any case, the Tyrians had promised
to comply with all his demands, extreme or otherwise. When

* Arrian, ii. 15.

198 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

the demand was refused, it was utterly impossible to leave
the refusal unpunished. So to have done would at once have
broken the charm, of success, and would have made the con-
quest of Western Asia imperfect. Had Tyre, with her power-
ful fleet, been left to defy Alexander unchastised, anti-Mace-
donian movements might have been always set on foot in
Greece and Asia Minor. Nor could he leave Tyre, like the
Halikarnassian citadel, to be blockaded by a mere division
of his army. The work called, as the event proved, for
his own presence and his whole force. This famous siege had
undoubtedly the unhappy result of ' degrading and crushing
one of the most ancient, spirited, wealthy, and intelligent
communities of the ancient world;' but that community most
undoubtedly brought its destruction upon itself, and we cer-
tainly cannot admit that its conquest was ' politically unprofit-
able ' to the conqueror.

Now how did Alexander treat his conquest? Tyre, after
a noble resistance, was taken by storm. The Macedonians,
according to Arrian, * were kindled to extreme wrath be-
cause the Tyrians had habitually killed their prisoners before
the eyes of their comrades, and had thrown their bodies
into the sea. The mere slaughter of the prisoners was no
breach of the Greek laws of war, though it would doubtless
be felt as a special call to vengeance. But the mockery and
the denial of burial were direct sins against all Greek religious
notions. We therefore cannot be surprised that the successful
assault of the city was followed by a merciless slaughter.
Such would most likely have been the case with the most
civilized armies of modern times. But did Alexander add to
these horrors in cold blood ? Arrian tells us that he spared
all who took refuge in the temple of Herakles — who happened
to be the King and the principal magistrates — and that he
sold the rest as slaves, the common doom of prisoners in
ancient warfare. According to Diodoros and Curtius, a
certain number of the captives were hanged or crucified by

11. 24.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 199

Alexander's order.* Mr. Grote accepts this tale. We see no
ground to believe it. It is, to our mind, an instance of the
mere love of horrors, which, as in other cases, shows itself in
the invention of additional crimes on both sides. Curtius,
who speaks of Alexander as crucifying Tyrian prisoners, also
speaks of the Tyrians as murdering Macedonian heralds.f
Arrian records neither atrocity ; and we believe neither.
Mr. Grote accepts the charge against Alexander and rejects
the charge against his enemies.

The like, as seems to us, is the state of the case with regard
to the atrocity laid to the charge of Alexander after his second
great siege, that of Gaza. Mr. Grote here brings up again
a tale which, as far as we are aware, has found acceptance
with no other modern writer, and which Bishop Thirlwall
passes by with the scorn of silence. Mr. Grote would have us
believe that Alexander, after the capture of Gaza, caused its
brave defender, the eunuch Batis, to be dragged to death
at his chariot- wheels, in imitation of the treatment of Hektor's
dead body by Achilleus. This tale comes from Curtius ; he
most likely got it from Hegesias, who is quoted by Dionysios
of Halikarnassos in one of his critical treatises. J Arrian,
Plutarch, and Diodoros are alike ignorant of the story. The
passage from Hegesias is quoted by Dionysios, without any
historical object, as an instance of bad rhythm and bad taste.
Mr. Grote truly says that 'the bad taste of Hegesias as a
writer does not diminish his credibility as a witness.' But his
credibility as a witness is not a little diminished by the general

* Diod. xvii. 46. 6 6t jSctffiAeus rtKva pev KcH ywcuicas ffavS
TOVS 5£ vtovs biravras Svras ovtc lAarrovs rwv 5tffxiA.<W, f/eptfJ-affe.

Curtius iv. 4. 'Triste deinde spectaculum victoribus ira praebuit Regis.
Duo millia, in quibus occidendi defecerat rabies, crucibus affixi per ingena
littoris spatium pependerunt.'

Mr. Grote, here and elsewhere, translates tnplna.at, hanged, Bishop Thirl-
wall, crucified. It need not imply the latter, and, between Dioddros and
Curtius, a tale of hanging might easily grow into a tale of crucifixion.
Similarly Plutarch has, in one place (Alex. 72) avearavpotaf, where Arrian
(vii. 14) has eKptfMfff.

+ iv. 2.

J Vol. v. p. 125, ed. Reiske.

200 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

witness of antiquity against him on more important points. *
The tale seems to us utterly incredible. Mr. Grote allows that
it ' stands out in respect of barbarity from all that we read
respecting- the treatment of conquered towns in antiquity.'
Curtius acknowledges that it is repugnant to the usual
character of Alexander, f We might add that Alexander,
if he wished to copy Achilleus, could hardly have forgotten
that Hektor was dead, while Batis was living, and moreover
he would hardly have copied Achilleus in an action which
Homer expressly condemns. J But Mr. Grote should surely
not have left out the fact that those who attribute this
cruelty to Alexander speak of it as an act of revenge for
a treacherous attempt which had been made upon Alexander
on the part of Batis. § Both Hegesias and Curtius tell us
that an Arab of the garrison, in the guise of a suppliant or
deserter, obtained admission to Alexander, that he attempted
to kill him, and was himself killed by the King. The tale
reminds one of the stories, true or false, of the fate of the Seljuk
Sultan Togrel Beg and of the Ottoman Amurath the First. ||
Mr. Grote leaves out all mention of it, the only instance in
which we have found him fail to put forth the whole evidence
against his own view. To us the whole story, in both its
parts, seems to be merely another instance of the way in
which the love of marvels and horrors triumphed over simple
truth. Imaginary crimes are heaped, certainly with praise-
worthy impartiality, alike upon Alexander and upon his
enemies.

And now as to Persepolis. We have already shown that
we agree with Mr. Grote in believing that the destruction
of the Persepolitan palace was Alexander's deliberate act.
We have no doubt that the tale of Thais at the "banquet is

* See Smith's Diet, of Biog., art. Hegesias.

•f ' Alias virtutis etiam in boste mirator.'

J H. xxii. 395. $ £a, Kal "EKropa 5iov dti/eta /tjySfro (pya.

§ He'ge'sias clearly implies this. The words fjua^aas i<p' ofs t&t&ov\.tvro must
refer, not to the general resistance, but to the special attempt against Alex-
ander's life.

|| [And of the story of the death of Stesagoras in Herodotus, vi. 38.]

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 201

a mere romantic invention. Arrian indeed* blames the act
of destruction, because it could be no punishment to the real
offenders, the Persians of a century and a half earlier. This
is rather an objection to the whole war than to this particular
action. No doubt to Alexander the destruction of the palace
seemed a high symbolic rite, setting forth Grecian victory
and barbarian overthrow. The deed was done against the
remonstrance of Parmenion, who argued that it did not be-
come Alexander to destroy what was his own, and that so
to do would lead the Asiatics to look on him as a mere passing
devastator, and not as a permanent sovereign. To Alexander
such arguments would doubtless sound like the suggestions of
base avarice to stay the hand of vengeance. Nor do we see,
with Bishop Thirl wall, f that this view is at all inconsistent
with the fact that he repented of the deed in after times.
The destruction was the act of the Captain-general of Greece ;
the repentance was the sentiment of the King of Asia. When
the deed was done, he did not yet feel that the home of the
Barbarian was his own. With altered circumstances and
altered feelings, he might well look back with regret on the
ruin of one of the choicest ornaments of his empire.

Mr. Grote J indeed would add to this symbolic and im-
posing manifestation of vengeance an act of quite another
kind, namely, a general massacre of the male inhabitants
of Persepolis, done, if not at Alexander's bidding, at least
with his approval. In his version, in short, a city which
seems to have made no resistance is described as undergoing
the worst fate of a city taken by storm. This version he takes
from Curtius § and Diodoros, || on whose accounts, we think,
he somewhat improves. For neither author directly says
that Alexander ordered the massacre, while Curtius does say
that he stopped it in the end. Arrian says nothing about

* iii. 1 8.

•)• Vol. vi. p. 287. He argues again that this deliberate destruction is
inconsistent with the reverence shown by Alexander to the tomb of Cyrus.
But Cyrus was guiltless of Marath&n and Salamis, while the buildings at
Persepolis were actually the works of Darius and Xerxes.

J Vol. xii. p. 239. § v. 6. 3-7. |1 xvii. 70, 71.

202 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

the whole story, nor yet, in our judgement, does Plutarch.
Mr. Grote refers indeed to a letter of Alexander's quoted by
Plutarch, in which the King- speaks of a slaughter as having
taken place by his order ' on grounds of state policy.' But
this reference occurs in a most confused and incoherent
passage, in which Plutarch jumbles together the passage
of the Persian Gates and the seizure of the Persepolitan
treasure. Of neither event does he give any geographical
description more exact than is implied in the words ' Persia'
and ' Persians.' We have no doubt that the slaughter
referred to by Plutarch means the slaughter at the Persian
Gates. * There Alexander met with a most desperate resist-
ance. To bid his soldiers to refuse quarter, horrible as it
seems to us, would be nowise repugnant to Greek laws of
war. A slaughter there might very likely ' be profitable to
him ' (aura \v<riT€\elv) as tending to strike fear into others
who might otherwise have thought of resistance. But no
such motive of policy could apply to the massacre of an

* [The whole passage runs thus. Plut. Alex. 37. TT}* oi TltpaiSos ovarjs Sid
rpa\vrr]Ta. Svofpfiokov teal <pv\aTTOfi.tvij* virb ~ftvva.ioTa.Tcw Tlfpauv (AapfTos i*tv
fcip f7r€<p€i>7«j) yiyvfTai TIVOS irtpiooov KVK\OV k\ovar)S ov iroXvv f)y(fj.wv O.VTW
Sii\oicraos dvdpoairos IK Trarpbs \VKIOV, (nrjTpbs 8^ TlfpaiSos ytyovws- ov <paaiv, tri
iraiSbs OVTOS 'A\((av5pov, rty TlvOtav irpotiirfiv, us \VKOS (OTai KaOrjyt/jiwv 'A\t£-
avSpy TTJS (irl Tlfpaas iroptias. &ovov fj.lv ovv kvravOa iro\vv TUJV a\iaieo(jifv(uv
"ytvtffOcu owtirfffe' ypa<{>ti fap avT&s, us vofu^cav aiiry TOVTO \vffiTe\tiv («f\€vtv
d.TTOff<pa,TTeo6cu TOUS dvOpunrovs' fo/x/ff/iaTos 6' fvptw it\ri&os oaov tv Sovcrois, TTJV
S' a\\i]v KaTacrKfvfjv KO.I TOV TT\OVTOV (KKOfuaOf/vai (firjai pvpiois opiKoit £fv~ftoi Kai

It seems impossible to believe that this can refer to anything except the
slaughter at the Persian Gates, which is described by Arrian (iii. 18) in the
earlier part of the same chapter in which he describes the destruction of the
palace at Persepolis. But it is clear from Arrian, as indeed the geography
proves, that the two things were wholly distinct, and he has not a word to make
us fancy that the destruction of the palace was accompanied by any slaughter.
Curtius (v. 2), describes the slaughter at the Gates as well as the supposed
slaughter at Persepolis. But between the two he brings in a moving story of the
Macedonian army being met by four thousand Greek captives who had been
mutilated in various ways by the Persians. Justin and Diodfiros tell the same
story, but cut the nunxber down to eighty. If we accept this, we get, as in the
cases of Tyre and Gaza, a special motive for the alleged cruelty done at
Persepolis. But the whole story of these inferior writers seems to me to be not
a little doubtful. Arrian alone gives us a clear and probable narrative.]

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 203

unarmed people. Such a deed would be fully open to the
objection urged by Parmenion ; it would not strike terror, but
horror ; if submission earned no better fate than resistance,
all men would choose the bolder alternative. A massacre at
Persepolis could only have been allowed, as Mr. Grote seems
to imply, under the influence of some perverted and horrible
form of the same feeling which prompted the destruction of
the palace. But this feeling was something quite different
from state policy ; it was even, as Parmenion very soundly
argued, quite repugnant to it. In fact Mr. Grote this time
treats his authorities rather loosely. Diodoros and Curtius
speak of the massacre ; they also speak of the destruction of
the palace as a drunken freak suggested by Thais. Arrian
says nothing of the massacre, and speaks of the destruction
of the palace as deliberate. Mr. Grote takes something from
each narrative to work up, together with some touches of his
own, into a picture of savage and cold-blooded ferocity on the.
part of Alexander which is not to be found in either. We
follow Arrian ; but the other story may well be, as is so often
the case, the exaggeration or distortion of something which
really happened. The destruction of the palace may have
been accompanied by a licence to plunder ; still more probably
would it be seized on as an occasion for unlicensed plunder.
In such a scene of confusion, some lives might easily be
lost ; and this would be quite groundwork enough for rhe-
torical historians to work up into the moving picture which
we find in Curtius and Diodoros.*

* We have already referred to another horrible tale, which Mr. Grote
accepts (vol. xii. p. 275), but on which Bishop Thirl wall is silent, namely, the
massacre of the Branchidai in Sogdiana. On this we will remark thus
much : —

First, that the second of the passages from Strabo which Mr. Grote
quotes does not imply a massacre. Strabo merely says, TO TUIV Bpayxid&v
aarv dvt\eiv.

Secondly, that in the third passage the grounds of Alexander's supposed
special devotion to the oracle of Branchidai are introduced by Strabo with
great contempt : vpoaTpaycvSei 6e TOVTOIS & Ka\\ia6evr)s, K.T.\.

Thirdly, that the whole story of the Sogdian Brancbidai and their origin
js very difficult to reconcile with the narrative of Herodotus. The tale in
Strabo and Suidas reads very like a perversion of that in Herodotus vi. 20.

204 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. [ESSAY

Perhaps, as we have already hinted, Alexander would have
better consulted his own truest glory and the lasting benefit of
mankind, had he kept himself to Tyre and Gaza, and had he
never entered Persepolis at all. His strictly Hellenic mission
called him to the conquest of those lands only which his suc-
cessors, Macedonian, Roman, and Byzantine, proved in the
end able to keep. But it was not in human nature to stop
in such a career. Had he turned back when Parmenidn
counselled him, he must needs have been, as Eastern writers
paint him, not only Iskender the Conqueror, but Iskender
the Prophet, And a prophet perchance, in an indirect and
unwitting way, he really was. As the pioneer of Hellenic
cultivation, he became in the end the pioneer of Christianity.
He paved the way for the intellectual empire of the Greek and
for the political empire of the Roman.* And it was the extent
of that empire, intellectual and political, which has marked
the lasting extent of the religion of Christ. As the champion
of the West against the East, Alexander foreshadowed the
later championship of the Cross against the Crescent. He
pointed dimly to a day when the tongue which he spoke and
the system which he founded should become the badge and
bulwark of a creed which to him would have seemed the most
alien to all his schemes and all his claims. That creed first
arose in a land where his name was cherished; it received
its formal title in the greatest city of his successors ; it allied
itself with the intellectual life of that yet more famous city
which still hands down to us his name. Jerusalem,t Antioch,

* Nowhere has fuller justice been done to the effects of Alexander's con-
quests than in the opening chapter of Mr. Finlay's ' Greece under the Romans.'
The two great historians, of Greece independent and Greece enslaved, are
here well contrasted. The historian of the Athenian Democracy curses the
Macedonian as a destroyer; to the historian of the Byzantine Empire he
seems entitled to the honours of a founder.

t It is not needful for our purpose to go into the famous details of Alex-
ander's supposed visit to Jerusalem. But. if the tale, as it stands, be a fable,
it at least points to favours bestowed by Alexander upon the Jews and to
gratitude felt by the Jews towards Alexander. Cyrus and Alexander, the
Persian and the Macedonian founder, fill a place in Jewish history most unlike
that of most heathen rulers.

V.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 205

Alexandria, all revered the Macedonian conqueror as in some
sort their founder or benefactor. The son of Ammon, the
worshipper of JBelus, made ready the path for a faith which
should overthrow the idols of Egypt and Assyria. The
heroes of a later age, who bore up against the Fire- worshipper
and the Moslem, did but tread in his steps and follow out the
career which he had opened. If he overthrew the liberties of
Hellas in their native seat, he gave to the Hellenic mind a
wider scope, and in the end a yet nobler mission. He was the
forerunner of Heraclius bringing home the True Cross from
its Persian bondage, of Leo beating back the triumphant
Saracen from the walls of the city which Philip himself had
besieged in vain. The victories of Christian Emperors, the
teaching of Christian Fathers, the abiding life of the tongue
and arts of Greece far beyond the limits of old Hellas, per-
haps the endurance of Greek nationality down to our own
times, all sprang from the triumphs of this, it may be, ' non-
Hellenic conqueror,' but, in the work which he wrought, most
truly Hellenic missionary. And though we may not give him
in his own person the praise of results which neither he nor
any mortal could have looked for, let us at least do justice to
the great and noble qualities, the wide and enlightened aims,
which marked his short career on earth. Many faults, and a
few crimes, indeed stain his glory ; but perhaps none of
mortal birth ever went through such an ordeal. It would
indeed have been a moral miracle if a fiery and impulsive
youth had passed quite unscathed through such temptations
as had never beset mortal man before. A youth, a Greek, a
warrior, a King, he would have been more than man, had he
looked down quite undazzled from the giddy height of what
he might well deem more than -human greatness. The fame
of even the noblest of conquerors must yield to that of the
peaceful benefactors of mankind, or of the warriors whose
victories do but secure the liberties of nations. We do not
place Alexander beside Lednidas or Washington, beside Alfred
or William the Silent. But we do protest against a view
which places him in the same class with Attila and Jenghiz

206 ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

and Timour. Their warfare was havoc for its own sake ; his
was conquest which went hand in hand with discovery and
improvement. Theirs was a wild beast's thirst of blood, a
barbarian's lust of mere dominion; his was 'an ambition
which almost grew into one with the highest of which man is
capable, the desire of knowledge and the love of good.' J
Such is the judgement of one who yields to none in the extent
of his research, and who, if he may yield to some of his
rivals in the brilliancy of original discovery, yet surpasses
all in those calm and judicial faculties, without which re-
search and brilliancy are vain. By the judgement of that
great historian we still abide. Not the petty malignity of
Niebuhr, not the weighty accusations of Grote, can avail to
tear away the diadem of unfading glory which the gratitude
of ages has fixed for ever on the brow of Alexander, the
son of Philip, the Macedonian.*

* Thirlwall, vol. ii. p. 119.

VI.

GREECE DURING THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD.*

Lectures on Ancient History, from the Earliest Times to the
Taking of Alexandria Ity Octavianus ; comprising the History
of the Asiatic Nations, the Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians,
and Carthaginians. By B. G. NIEBUHR. Translated from
the German edition of Dr. Marcus Niebuhr, by Dr. LEON-
HAED SCHMITZ, &c. &c. London, 1852.

THERE is perhaps no part of the history of the civilized
world which has of late years, in this country at least, re-
ceived a degree of attention less proportioned to its import-
ance than the later or Macedonian sera of Greece, under which
name we must take in the contemporary history of those
more distant lands which then became part of the Grecian
world. True it is that this period is forced upon our notice
from our earliest years ; none is richer in that literature of anec-
dotes of which the Lives of Plutarch form the great store-
house ; stories of Alexander and Pyrrhos rush naturally to the
mind of the school-boy to furnish illustrations for his theme
on the dangerous consequences of drunkenness or the need
of bridling a hasty temper. But this precocious and super-

* [I have preserved this Essay, or at least some parts of it which seemed
worth preserving, because it was in some sort the germ of the first volume —
as yet, but I trust not for many years longer, the only volume — of my His-
tory of Federal Government. I have struck out a good deal, and I have trans-
ferred some passages to other Essays, where, in the present arrangement of
the collection, they seemed more in place. But I have left my general sketch
of Macedonian and Achaian affairs as a kind of introduction to the great subject
with part of which I have already dealt, and which I hope one day to take up
again.]

208 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

ficial knowledge seldom forms the groundwork of any after
knowledge of a more solid kind. Philip and his sou are
household words in every mouth ; but we suspect that they
often fare like those standard works in every language, of
which it is caustically said, that they are quoted by everybody
but read by none. Of the ' Successors/ to give them their
old technical name, men commonly have the vaguest notions ;
we suspect that not a few fair classical scholars would be sore
put to if called on to draw any minute distinction between
Demetrios Poliorketes and Demetrios Phale'reus. We suspect
that there are plenty of learned persons who know the exact
number of courses in the walls of Plataia, and who can accu-
rately describe every evolution of Phormion's fleet, who still
have nothing but their school-boy recollections of the Anabasis
to remind them that deeds of no small note were done both
among Greeks and Barbarians, at a later time than a certain
sacrifice with which Tissaphernes honoured the Ephesian Ar-
temis. The orators may perhaps carry on a few to behold
the death-struggle of Athens ; but that death-struggle is too
often hastily assumed to have been that of Greece also. At
all events, when Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes
have all failed us, none but the professed historian can be
called on to wade through a period where he has to pick his
way at every step amid the careless blunders of Plutarch and
the impenetrable stupidity of Diodoros, where constant refer-
ences have to be made to the scandalous gossip of Athenaios
and the antiquarian twaddle of Pausanias, and where the very
purest and most familiar atmosphere that we are allowed to
breathe consists of the scattered fragments of Polybios and of
those out-of-the-way decades of Livy which nobody ever
thinks of reading.

There is doubtless force in all this; it at least shows
that this period cannot be so easily made a subject of
minute academical study as the history of the Persian and
Peloponnesian Wars.* Had we the whole work of Polybios,

* [That is to say, Polybios could hardly be taken up as a look, as Thucy-
dides is ; but the part of Grecian history with which we are concerned might

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 209

the case would be widely different. It is sad indeed when,
at some critical point of warfare or negotiation, the too familiar
break in the text warns us that we have to fill up the gaps of
the historian and the statesman with the double-filtered talk
of moralists, topographers, and anecdote-mongers. But it is
something to have even such fragments as we still have of
such a work as that of Poly bios is still. To him, through a
happy though mournful fate which befell no other historian,
the old local politics of Greece and the wide-spreading diplo-
macy of the Eternal City were alike living and familiar things.
His lot was cast, now among party feuds in BcBotia and
Arkadia and border warfare of Messene and Megalopolis,
now among those scenes of vast intrigue and conquest which,
to a vulgar mind, might have made the events of his youth
seem but combats of the kites and crows. He who had borne
the urn of the last of Hellenic heroes — the last who had
organized a Grecian commonwealth for war and peace, the
last who had fought, Greek against Greek, at no Macedonian
or Roman bidding —lived to stand beside the conqueror of
mighty Carthage, when he wept over the predestined fate of
Rome amid the ashes of her proudest rival.*

While then our great authority has come down to us only in a
patched and fragmentary state, it is no wonder that the want
of a text-book is enough to frighten away those who are used
to such guidance as that of Herodotus and Thucydides from
venturing themselves among the shoals and quicksands of so
dangerous a coast. And, besides this, we must allow 'that the
history itself is, in many respects, far from an attractive one.
We are working among the dregs of a nation, the vigour of
whose political and literary life has for ever passed away.
Conscious speculation on the science of commonwealths and

well be taken up as a subject or period. I am glad to see it recommended for
this purpose in Mr. A. W. Ward's suggestions for the reform of the History
Tripos at Cambridge.]

* [On the position of Polybios see History of Federal Government, i. 228.
I also found something to say about him in my Rede Lecture on the Unity of
History.]

P

210 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

kingdoms has taken the place of the inborn and experimental
wisdom of Themistokles and Perikles. The grammarian and
the imitative poet strive, at a still wider distance, to make up
for those glorious days of Homer or of ^Eschylus which are
gone from us for ever. It is a shock to old and high asso-
ciations when, in the heading or the index, we see the death-
less names of Thermopylai and Salamis attached to unfamiliar
and comparatively ignoble conflicts. The city of Teukros and
Evagoras so keenly suggests the memory of its more famous
parent,* that one is grieved to find that so glorious a name
now recalls only the selfish warfare of Macedonian robbers.
The very spot where Leonidas had fallen beholds indeed
Europe revenge its old wrongs upon the rival continent, but
our sympathies are well nigh called forth for the fallen despot,
when it is not the patriot fervour of old Greece, but the cold
and selfish ambition of the masters of the world before which
the pride of Eastern tyrants has now to bend.

In short, there is quite enough to account for, though we
cannot bring ourselves to think that there is enough to justify,
the neglect into which this part of history has commonly
fallen. We have always looked upon the period from the
second battle of Mantineia to the reduction of Macedonia
and Achaia into Roman provinces f as by no means lacking
either in interest to the reader or in value to the general
historian of Greece and of the world. The rise of the Mace-
donian state under its two great princes, the spread of Hel-
lenism in Asia through the conquests of Alexander, the great
political phenomenon of the Achaian League, even the mo-
mentary glory of Young Sparta under the last Kleomenes,
are surely events of a kind at once highly important and
highly interesting. They are less important and less in-

* We may here reverse the words of ./Eschylus —

.... SaXa/wVa Tt, rds viv (MTp6iro\ts rHyS'
airi'a ffTevayiMuv. Pers. 864.

•f [By the reduction of Macedonia and Achaia into Roman provinces, I
doubtless meant what happened in B.C. 146. But, though Achaian liberty
came practically to an end at that time, Achaia did not formally become a
Roman province till long after. See History of Federal Government, i. 7oj.]

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 211

teresting, we fully grant, than the old days of Marathon and
Thermopylai, of Arginousai and Aigospotamos, but they are
still very far from deserving to be wholly passed by in a
historical survey either of Greece or of the world at large.

We were therefore naturally well pleased to find thorough
sympathy with these feelings set forth by no less an authority
than Niebuhr, and the more so as Mr. Grote seemed to have
fallen into the common error of undervaluing this period.
Niebuhr, on the other hand, we are told, had made these
times the object of more careful study than any other part
of ancient history, and in his great course of professorial
lectures by far the most elaborate and valuable part is
given to its examination, while the lecturer himself several
times directly sets forth his opinion that this period had
been in general unduly neglected.

The time with which we have now to do naturally divides
itself into two great periods — the age of Philip and Alex-
ander and their immediate Successors ; and that of the Achaian
League and the Antigonid dynasty.

The first period takes in the organization of Macedonia
under Philip, first as a Greek state, and then as the ruling
Greek state, the wonderful career of Alexander, and the endless
wars among his immediate Successors till the kingdoms which
they founded were brought into something like a settled order.
Now, except the romantic tales of Alexander's own conquests,
there is but little in this period to please, and in its last
stage there is, at first sight, little to interest. The reign of
Philip was a triumph of slavery over freedom, and it wrought
the degradation of the city to which every real student of
history, every real lover of literature and art, must for ever
look as the most sacred shrine of his intellectual pilgrimage.
Again, the last stage, the wars of the Successors, loses the
interest which attaches to the glorious struggle of Demo-
sthenes, and sinks, at first sight, into little beyond a mere
record of crimes.

While the narrative of this period by Bishop Thirlwall is

P2

212 GREECE DURING 'THE [ESSAY

by far the greatest portion of his great work, the way in
which Niebuhr has treated it is one which we cannot but call
altogether unworthy both of his intellectual and moral nature.
We may believe that this defect was chiefly owing to the pe-
culiar form of lectures, and that in a History of Greece, answer-
ing to his greatest work, he would have written in quite
another way. Lectures delivered extempore, and printed,
without the author's revision, from notes taken by the pupils
who heard them, are something which must be measured by
quite a different standard from an elaborate work written in
the writer's study, with every means for reference and second
thoughts. It would be vain to look in these volumes for entire
freedom from slips and contradictions, but it would be unfair,
under such circumstances, to make them the subject of un-
favourable criticism. It shows in fact the wonderful range of
Niebuhr's knowledge, and his still more wonderful power of
applying his knowledge without external help, that the amount
of errors or inconsistencies which his editor has pointed out,
or which we have found out for ourselves, does not greatly
exceed in number or importance the allowance which would
be fairly pardonable in a work of the same bulk written or
dictated at the author's fireside. The lectures also, in their
present form, have a peculiar value, as shewing us the workings
of Niebuhr's mind, and the manner in which his opinions were
worked out. There are many passages in which it is clear, not
only that the lecturer spoke extempore, but that the thoughts
themselves came into the speaker's mind while he was in the
act of speaking. Of course such illustrations or conjectures do
not carry with them the weight of Niebuhr's mature judge-
ment, but they are specially valuable as illustrating Niebuhr's
own self. Again, in his History Niebuhr appears as far more
happy in what he thought than in his way of telling us
why he thought it. Many of his views need only to be
stated in order at once to carry conviction with them,* but

* [When I wrote tbis, I could hardly have thrown off that idolatry of
Niebuhr which was the natural result of the Oxford training of thirty years
back j not that the idol of the present moment is any improvement.]

vi.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 213

the reader's confidence is anything but increased by toiling
through the maze of argument in which theorem and de-
monstration are confused together. In the Lectures, on the
other hand, all is clear and straightforward ; results are given
and little more, which is just what we want. It is enough to
be told Niebuhr's opinion ; the grounds of it, for the most
part, any other man could explain better than himself.

But, on the other hand, this mode of delivery has brought
out certain characteristics which, while they greatly enhance
the value of the work as an index of the author's mind,
certainly lessen its trustworthiness as an historical guide.
This is specially the case in the period with which we are
now dealing. Niebuhr was a man of ardent and indeed
hasty feelings ; his love and his enmity were strongly felt
and strongly expressed, and he had a wonderful power of
throwing himself into the feelings of past ages, and of look-
ing on the men of two thousand years back in the light of
living friends and foes. Now all these qualities, as could
not fail to be the case, appear in these lectures in their most
exaggerated form. In throwing himself into the cause of
right and freedom Niebuhr failed to do justice to those
whom circumstances made its enemies. In his admiration
of the high, heroic, unselfish, virtue of Demosthenes, he
sometimes forgot that language which was natural in the
mouth of the orator in the Pnyx was no longer becoming
when it fell from the mouth of the Professor in his lecture-
room at Bonn. The business of Demosthenes was to call on
his hearers to arm against Philip or Alexander ; the business
of Niebuhr was calmly and judicially to set before his hearers
the right and wrong of the cause in which those mighty men
were the actors. The first aspect of Niebuhr's" treatment of
this period is that of simple unscrupulous malignity towards
everything bearing the Macedonian name. The two great
Kings are reviled to an extent which might have wearied the
willing ears of Demos himself; their crimes are exaggerated,
their virtues depreciated, their motives distorted ; every piece
of scandalous gossip is raked up against them on evidence

214 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

which Niebuhr himself is the first to cast aside when it
tells against his own favourites. Now in all this we see

O

no ground for charging Niebuhr with intentional disin-
genuousness ; we fully believe that in the solitude of his
closet he would have drawn his pen through most of the
passages of which we complain; he must certainly have been
both a worse historian and a worse man than we have ever
deemed him, if he could, in his calmer moments, have ven-
tured to brand Alexander as the murderer of his father, and
to sully one of the most amiable features of his character
with the foulest of imputations. We believe the case simply
to be that Niebuhr had so thoroughly thrown himself into
the position of Demosthenes and Hyperides, that he had
become even less capable than they were of doing justice to
their mightiest adversary.

From Niebuhr we may turn to our own great historian of
the same period. If Bishop Thirlwall is not so ardent as
Niebuhr for Athens and Demosthenes, it is because it is neither
his nature nor his principle to be so ardent about anything.
But he shows with equal clearness where his sympathies lie.
and which side he holds to be the side of truth and justice.
Here and there a burst of indignant eloquence shows that his
convictions are as deeply rooted as those of Niebuhr himself.
But he never lowers himself to reviling or misrepresentation
of the other side. On his showing, we see in Philip the very
founder of intrigue and diplomacy, unscrupulous when his
ends were to be served, but far from lacking generous feel-
ings, and never allowing himself to be hurried into an useless
crime. It is highly unfair to class men of this stamp with
monsters like Ochus or Nero, Rufus or John, Gian-Maria
Visconti or Galeazzo Sforza, who seem to have revelled in
evil for its own sake. To raise his own country, to make
Macedonia a Greek state and the first of Greek states, was
surely no mean or paltry ambition, no worse surely than
exploits which have attached lasting honour to the names of
many Christian potentates. And Alexander, whom for two
thousand years the world has rejoiced to reckon among the

VI] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 215

first of its heroes, can never be changed into a mere monster
of wickedness and weakness, even though the wand of the
historical Kirke be grasped by the hand of Barthold
Niebuhr.

Between the years B.C. 280 and 270, we may place the boun-
dary which parts the two periods into which we have divided
the later history of Greece. The storm of Macedonian conquest
has passed by, and its results now begin to appear in the
comparatively settled state of Grecian Europe ; that of Gre-
cian Asia, so far as it can be said to have ever been settled at
all, may fairly date from the field of Issos. The deaths of
Demetrios, Pyrrhos, Lysimachos, and Seleukos, the Gaulish
invasion and the first great display of power on the part of
the ^Etolians, the establishment of the Antigonid dynasty in
Macedonia and the first beginnings of the Achaian League,
all come within about twelve years of each other, a period of
far smaller practical extent at that point of Grecian history
than it was in either an earlier or a later generation. From
this point Niebuhr's treatment of his subject wonderfully
improves. He seems to have got over his abstract hatred
of Macedonians ; he can see some merit in the later Anti-
gonids, while his treatment of the affairs of the League is
most just and valuable. It was evidently, as his editor tells
us, a favourite period, which he dealt with thoroughly as a
labour of love. And, when we look at the whole time under
his guidance, we soon see how great a mistake it is to look
on the whole period with the usual scorn. It is a time
which sets before us the political fall of Greece, accompanied
by an increased spread of Grecian influence over the world;
it shows to us the slow and sure advance of Rome, and how,
in the meshes of her policy, the former masters of the civilized
world were led down the gradual descent of alliance, depend-
ence, subjugation, and amalgamation. Surely every one who has
traced Grecian history and literature through its earlier and
more brilliant stages must feel some share of what Niebuhr
calls a natural ' Pietas ' towards Greece, which is of itself

216 GREECE DURING THE [Ess AY

enough to make us wish to follow out its history to the
end. Wretched indeed as was the last century and a half
of Athenian existence,* it is still the duty of those who
have walked in the full blaze of its earlier day, at least
to watch the glimmering- light till it is wholly put out.
And again, Athens is not Greece; other states will give us
real political and historical lessons down to the last moment.

But while Greece itself is thus falling, Greeks are rising
to the height of their intellectual sway in other lands. The
spread of Hellenism in the East through the Macedonian
conquests is in itself a phenomenon worthy of study, and
it becomes of yet greater importance when we think of its
bearing on the spread of Christianity, and its close con-
nexion with the Apocryphal, and even with the New Tes-
tament history. The Greek language became the badge at once
of European civilization and of Orthodox Christianity ; Asia
Minor was really hellenized ; Syria and Egypt had only a
few great Hellenic cities scattered over them. Hence these
latter countries first fell aside into heresies or national
churches, and afterwards became an easy prey to Mahometan
conquest. The thoroughly Greek provinces, on the other
hand, withstood Monophysite and Nestorian, Saracen and
Turk, for many ages longer. When Gibbon spoke of Antioch
retaining ' her old allegiance to Christ and Caesar/ he doubt-
less meant a scoff, but he none the less set forth a great
historical truth.

Again, if the gradual advance of Roman power, and its
still more gradual decline, contain, as in truth they do, the
whole history of the civilized world, it is surely no uninstruc-
tive task to trace the steps by which Rome gradually wound
the toils of her crooked diplomacy around the fairest of her
conquests. Bishop Thirlwall truly says that in such arts
the Roman Senate surpassed every cabinet, ancient and

* [Again I must have forgotten that Athens, still less than Achaia, did
not formally come to an end in B.C. 146. It must be remembered that
Hadrian was an Archon, and Constantino a General, of the Athenian De-
mocracy.]

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 217

modern; and it was to them, more than to her pilum and
broadsword, that Rome owed the reduction of Macedonia and
Achaia into provinces of a city of which Demosthenes and
Philip may have barely heard the name. And again, if we
remember how the hellenized nations took up the name and
position of Romans, how they kept on the political life of
the Roman Empire in a Megarian and a Milesian* colony, for
hundreds of years after the old Rome had forgotten her
ancient mission, it can be no fruitless speculation to trace
the steps by which the first impulse was given to so strange
and lasting an union between the intellectual supremacy of
Greece and the political eternity of Rome.

And when we carry on our view beyond the limits of direct
cause and effect, when we take in the wider field of analogy
and historical parallelism, this period becomes clothed with
yet deeper interest. The history of old Greece and the history
of mediaeval Italy can never be thoroughly understood unless
the two are constantly employed to illustrate one another, f
And the fall of each country presents a picture, in which,
though the likeness is certainly less strong than in the earlier
periods, it is still marked enough to make it worth while to
point out some of the chief features, both where the parallel
clearly exists and where it must be allowed to fail.

As Greece was the elder, the more native, in every sense
the nobler, of the two great developements of republican splen-
dour, it seems only right that Greece should, even in her
corruption and her fall, keep more of dignity than her me-
diaeval antitype. J

* [Trapezous, which became, ages after, the seat of that Empire of Tre-
bizond which outlived that of Constantinople, was a colony of Sinope', and
so a granddaughter of Miletos.]

+ [I have cut short this comparison, which I afterwards expanded into the
First Essay in this Series. But I have left one or two points on which I
said little or nothing there.]

J [This may seem to contradict what I have said above in p. 30, but
I do not think that it really does so. The point is that, after the wars of the
Successors, Greece had a time of revived freedom, which Italy, since the time
of the French, Spanish, and German wars, never had till our own day.]

218 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

'Magna feres tacitas solatia mortis ad umbras
A tanto cecidisse viro.' *

Italy, in fact, has no parallel to the age of Philip and
Alexander, when Greece might forget her bondage in the
dazzling glory of a hero who boasted of her blood, and whose
pride it was to bear her language and civilization into realms
which had never obeyed the voice of Assyrian or Persian
despot. It is clear that both the great Macedonians really
loved and revered Greece, Athens above all. To humble her
politically was an unavoidable part of their policy ; but they
always kept themselves from doing her any wrong beyond
which their policy called for. They felt as Greeks, and they had
no temptation to destroy what they claimed as their mother
country. They had clearly no wish to swallow up Greece in
Macedonia, but rather to make Macedonia, as a Greek state,
the ruling power of Greece, f Such was undoubtedly the aim of
Philip, and it was that of Alexander too, till, from the throne
of the Great King, he may have learned to look on both
Greece and Macedonia as little more than corners of his
empire, nurseries of his most valiant soldiers.

But the desolation of Greece under Alexander's immediate
Successors very fairly answers to the desolation of Italy
by French, Spanish, Swiss, and German invaders. As in
the later parallel, the history of these endless wars is indeed
little more than a revolting record of crime ; still we cannot
help looking even on them with somewhat more of favour
than they receive from Niebuhr. Selfish and unscrupulous
as they were, we cannot set them down as mere monsters ;
even the blood-stained Kassandros must not be ranked with
a Phalaris or an Eccelino. Treachery and murder were
familiar to them all when they served their purpose; but,
when they were once established in their kingdoms, we
do not find that they became such mere savage scourges
of mankind as Kings and rulers have too often shown
themselves. Ptolemy's hands were no cleaner than those

* [I have since used this quotation for another purpose. ' Willelmus Mag-
nus ' may surely rank in the same class as ' Alexander Magnus.*]
f See above, p. i 78.

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 219

of his fellows ; he won his way to his throne by equal crime ;
yet when he was once seated there, the unanimous voice
of history has placed him in the first rank of sovereigns.
Such rulers as Augustus, as Francesco Sforza, as our own Cnut,
form a far truer parallel to the better class of Macedonian
princes, to Antigonos, Ptolemy, or Seleukos, than the mere
loathsome tyrants either of classical or of mediaeval Italy.

For one prince of these troubled times, whom Niebuhr
holds up to special hatred, we must confess a certain ten-
derness,— it may be a weakness. This is Demetrios Polior-
ketes, the Alkibiades or Antonius of his age. An ambition
not only selfish, but utterly reckless and extravagant, a
private profligacy of the wildest and most revolting kind,
a haughty carelessness of others, and all this joined with an
utter lack of those arts of the ruler and the statesman which
distinguish a Seleukos and a Ptolemy, might, at first sight,
seem to stamp him with hopeless infamy, as the vilest speci-
men of a vile time. But, as in his Athenian prototype —
open to all these charges but the last, and towards whom
Niebuhr is by no means harsh — there is still something about
Demetrios which renders it impossible to look on him with
unmixed dislike. In his first expedition we may fairly attri-
bute to him a really generous ambition to become the chosen
prince of independent Hellas, and as such Athens at least was
ready to receive him. And when we think how Athens re-
ceived him, we may deem that it was nothing wonderful if
a fiery and voluptuous youth had his head utterly turned
by such incense as had never before been offered to mortal
man. Demetrios would have had no claim to rank even as a
naturalized Greek, could he have gone unscathed through a
milder ordeal than that of being formally acknowledged as the
peer of Zeus and Athene, and of having his will solemnly de-
clared to be the measure of holiness and justice. It is perhaps
only because we judge him by a higher standard that we speak
so harshly of his private life; that it went far beyond the
bounds even of Athenian licence cannot be denied, but it would
have seemed nothing wonderful in the seraglios of Nineveh

220 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

or Susa. He seems to have won the affections of his many
wives, and he certainly was not in the habit of divorcing or
murdering them, like many of his contemporaries and suc-
cessors. The harmony which reigned between himself and his
father, and afterwards between himself and his son, forms a
beautiful picture in itself, and it is a remarkable character-
istic of the whole family, in contrast to the fearful domestic
tragedies which disgraced almost every other Macedonian
palace. Till the quarrel in the last generation between Per-
seus and the last Demetrios, no Antigonid ever stained his
hands with the blood of father, son, or brother ; none ever
even stood forth as the enemy or rival of his nearest kinsman.
Against the Besieger himself no special deed of blood or
perfidy is distinctly proved; haughty and overbearing in
prosperity, faults which lost him the Macedonian throne,
he does not seem even there to have sunk into an actual
oppressor. Adversity no man knew better how to bear ; the
rebound was always greater than the fall. Throughout his
whole career, whether dealing with Ptolemy, with Rhodes, or
with Athens, we see touches of a generous and chivalrous
spirit, which he shares with Alexander and Pyrrhos, but with
perhaps no other prince of his age. Surely he deserves at
least as much tenderness as Niebuhr grants, with full justice
we allow, to his descendant, degenerate indeed, but not
wholly unlike him, the last Philip of Macedon.

And if Italy has no exact parallel to the age of Philip and
Alexander, still less has she a parallel to the days of revived
freedom which in Greece followed the age of the Successors.
Stern as was the doom of Greece, it was still not to be com-
pared to the doom of her antitype ; her race was as yet by
no means run, the day of her final overthrow was still far
off. Even during the period of confusion, Greece was never of
so little account among the struggles of her masters as Italy
was during the analogous time; her attachment was eagerly
sought after, both from the reverence which she inspired, and
still more from the substantial force which she still held,
a force quite enough in most cases to turn the scale between

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 221

two contending- potentates. And when thing's began to fall
Lack again into something* like settled order, a new sera of
freedom and glory arose, shorter and less bright indeed than
her elder day, but still at least a worthy old age for such
a youth. And it was the more true and vigorous because
it was no mere superficial restoration, but a developement
really fitted to the political circumstances of the age. With
this period Italy has nothing to compare, unless we may
venture to see in the successful working of constitutional
government in Piedmont at the present moment, a harbinger
of still brighter days for Italy than those of federal liberty in
Greece.*

By one of those strange cycles which are often found in
history, the last people who kept up the glory of the Grecian
name were the people who first came forth into historic being
from the darkness of the old prse-histonc time. It was as
Achaians that the Greeks gathered round the walls of Ilios ;
it was as Achaians that they fell beneath the tardy vengeance
of a people whose boast it was to trace their origin to that
sacred source. The cities of Perikles and Epameinondas had
sunk into utter insignificance ; Lykourgeian Sparta had indeed
done a work worthy of her old fame when she drove back the
hero of Epeiros from her gates ; but it was the last work of
Lykourgeian Sparta; as the city of the Herakleids she had
still to run a short course of glory, but as the city of the Dorian
she was no more. Achaia, a land which had lived on through
Persian, Peloponnesian, and Macedonian warfare, perhaps at
once the most respectable and the most insignificant part of
proper Greece, now becomes the field for this second crop of
Grecian freedom and dignity, though it must be confessed
that the harvest was for the most part reaped for her by
generals and statesmen who were Achaians only by adoption.

The great value of the Achaian League to the student of
history comes from its being the best known example of the
ancient Federal constitutions, indeed the only genuine confede-
ration of equal cities which ever rose to much importance in
* [Cf. the note on p. 51.]

222 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

Greece itself.* Mr. Grote has fully set forth how deeply the
pervading notion of the ' autonomous city ' was rooted in the
Grecian mind; in truth, the more highly developed and civi-
lized a Grecian state was, the more strongly did it cleave to its
separate independence, the more it shrank from Federal rela-
tions with any other. It might find it expedient or needful
to acknowledge, to a certain extent, the external supremacy,
the fiyfjjiovia, of some ruling city, but no Grecian town in
historic times willingly consented to sink its separate being
in any general confederacy. This is the more to be noted,
because several phsenomena are found which at first sight
look very like such an union, but which at all events differ
very widely from its fully developed Achaian form.

A Federal union of the whole nation was a thing which
was never thought of; the Amphiktyonic Council has often
been mistaken for such an one ; but such an opinion is now
thoroughly thrown aside by scholars. In fact, the existence
of the Amphiktyonic Council tells the other way ; without
being really a Federal union, it came near enough to such an
union to have suggested the idea, and to have formed the germ
of such an institution, had the want of it been at all felt by
the Greek mind. If indeed the Council had ever taken such
a character on itself, its first act must certainly have been
to pass a Reform Bill, as its constitution was strikingly like
that of the House of Commons up to 1832. The Malians and
Phthiotic Achaians, 'rotten' states, in which the Tagos of

* Hellenic cities beyond the bounds of proper Greece seem to have had far
less dislike to Federal relations, doubtless because, as strangers scattered in a
foreign land, they often found it needful to join together against powerful
barbarian neighbours. Thus we find several confederations, more or less close,
among the Hellenic and hellenized states in Asia Minor. There was also the
great Olynthian Confederacy, of which Mr. Grote lias given so clear an account,
and whose forcible suppression was one of the most crying sins of Spartan
ascendency. But here there was one predominant city, which at once dis-
tinguishes it from our Achaian state.

[On the Olynthian Confederacy see History of Federal Government, i.
190-197. Later thoughts on the matter carried me further away from Mr.
Grote's view of the constitution of the Confederacy. But none the less thanks
are owing to him for first bringing out the Olynthian scheme into its fitting
prominence.]

VI] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. . 223

Thessaly 'enjoyed,' according- to the modern euphemism,
' considerable influence/ must have gone the way of Gatton
and Old Sarum. In like manner, the same principle which
gave parliamentary being to Birmingham and Manchester
must have given distinct votes to Sparta, Corinth, and Argos,
and the system which gave an enlarged representation to the
English counties might even have bestowed the Amphi-
ktyonic franchise upon the enlightened and independent free-
holders of Arkadia. In truth, the one fact that the Amphi-
ktyonie votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by cities, at
once shuts it out from our present comparison, and shows it
to be a mere vestige of a bygone state of things, alien to
the common tendency of Grecian feeling in its best days.
In truth, 'the shadow at Delphi'* hardly pretended to any
political functions at all, till it suited the policy of Thebes
and of Philip to push it into a factitious importance.

The other confederations which meet our notice among
the Grecian states may well have suggested ideas to the
founders of the League, but none of them, not even the
Arkadian League under Lykomedes, so thoroughly forestalled
it as to show, in actual and lasting working, a combination of
many equal cities united, for all external purposes, into one
indivisible Federal republic. The League stands distinguished,
alike from mere alliances, however close they may be made
by traditional sentiment — from combinations of cities which,
like that of Boeotia, acknowledge a greater or less degree of
supremacy in some leading state — and from those irregular
unions among the less developed branches of the Greek
nation, which were confederations of tribes rather than of
cities. The ^Etolians, Akarnanians, and the like, never reached
to the full developement of Greek city life. One of these
unions, that of the brigands of ^Etolia, attained a strange and
unnatural amount of power during the times we are now con-
sidering; but every recorded act of that confederation only
shows how utterly incapable it was of exercising political

* OVKOW tvr]9es Kal KOfuSri a\tT\wv .... irpos irivras iff pi TTJS iv AcX-
<f>ots aicias vvvl iro\ffjifjffai ; Dem. de Pace, ad fin.

224 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

power, and in truth its reckless conduct brought about the
final ruin of Greece.*

Unlike all these, the Achaian League was, in the strictest
sense, a confederation of cities united on equal terms. The
cities of the original Achaia, which formed its kernel, seem
to have been united in the same kind of way before the
Macedonian times. These therefore did little more than
restore an old connexion on still closer terms ; but all the
historical importance of the League was owing to its non-
Achaian members, Sikyon, Corinth, and Megalopolis. For all
external purposes the united cities formed one state ; no single
city could treat with a foreign power, still less could it make
war upon any other member of the League. But the several
towns still kept much more than a mere municipal being,
as is shown by the very fact that it was needful to forbid
diplomatic intercourse with foreign powers. Still, it is clear
that the general tendency of the League was to a far closer
union, even in internal matters, than Greece had ever before
witnessed among distinct cities. In the end Polybios could
boast, with only a slight exaggeration, that all Peloponnesos
was united under the same government and the same laws.
Any tendency to separation seems, unless when stirred up
by foreign intrigues, to have been wholly confined to those
cities which, like Sparta and Messene, had been unwillingly
incorporated with the League, and which therefore added
nothing to its real strength.

The constitution of the League was professedly democra-
tic : and herein it affords us a great political lesson, as the
first instance in Greece of a democratic government on so
large a scale. Now this mere fact of its extent, to say
nothing of any unlikeness in the characters of the two
nations, at once brought with it most important differences
in the Achaian democracy, as compared with the typical de-

* [This is true ; but the mere constitutional forms of the ^Stolian League
differed very little from those of Achaia.

The Akarnanian League on the other hand, though always secondary in
point of power, was of all Greek commonwealths the most upright in its
policy and the most faithful to its engagements.]

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD, 225

mocracy of Athens. * In the new state the purely demo-
cratic ideal had to be greatly modified. Every free Achaian
of full age, no less than every free Athenian, might attend
and speak in the sovereign Assembly of his country ; but
then that Assembly was not held weekly at his own doors,
but twice a year in a distant city. Such a franchise could
have but little attraction for any but the high-born and
wealthy, who alone could afford the cost of the journey, and
who alone would be likely to be listened to when the As-
sembly met. Again, such a franchise, the exercise of which
came so seldom, could of itself have given but little political
education ; and, though each citizen had his share in the in-
ternal management of his own town, yet a vote in the petty
local affairs of Dyme or Tritaia must have been a very different
thing from a voice in the direction of the vast and complicated
relations of a ruling city like Athens. As the meetings of the
Assembly were so rare, the powers of individual magistrates
were necessarily far greater than could have been endured
under the Athenian system ; and here it is perhaps that we
find the most marked difference between the two constitutions.
At Athens, as we have seen, Demos himself was the real execu-
tive power ; magistrates were the mere ministerial instruments
of his sovereign will. But the Achaian Assembly took up
only six days in its two ordinary sessions; therefore, when
no extraordinary Assembly happened to be summoned, the
sovereign authority was suspended for three hundred and
fifty- three days in each year, during which time the
executive power had to be lodged somewhere. The natural
result was a far nearer approach than Athens ever beheld
to the system of modern commonwealths, monarchical or re-
publican. We find foreshadowings by no means dim of a
Council of Ministers and of a President of the Republic.
There was a Senate which held far greater authority, and was
far more independent of the Assembly, than the mere Com-
mittee of Five Hundred at Athens; there was a Cabinet of

* [A picture of the Athenian Democracy which followed here I have trans-
ferred to the Essay specially devoted to that subject.]

Q

226 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

ten Demiourgoi, a body which Demos would never have borne ;
lastly, the Republic had a ' single person ' at its head. For
the two Generals whom the League in its first form chose
year by year a single one was afterwards substituted, who
was indeed appointed by annual election, but who, during his
year of office, held a position such as no Athenian had ever
held since the decennial Archons came to an end. During his
time of office he was clearly the very soul of the State. * Not
indeed that Aratos exercised a greater practical authority than
Perikles ; but, while the Athenian, a single citizen to whom
the other citizens habitually looked for wise counsels, owed
all his influence to his personal qualities, the Sikyonian stood
before his countrymen with all the weight of official position*
like a Premier or President of our own day. We do not
indeed find that any Achaian General ever showed any wish
to change his elective and temporary magistracy into a here-
ditary empire, or even into a consulate for life ; but his place
was a place of dignity enough to lead more than one well-
disposed Tyrant to lay aside his sovereignty and to unite his
city to the League. f Lydiadas doubtless enjoyed a far greater
personal influence over Grecian politics as the elective magis-
trate of the Achaian democracy than he had ever wielded as
irresponsible despot of the single city of Megalopolis.

It is clear that, where there was a President and Cabinet, as
we may fairly call them, of such a kind, the whole executive
power must have been lodged in their hands, and that, even
without formal enactments to that effect, they must have held a
practical initiative in the Assembly at least as fully as a modern
Ministry holds it. Moreover the right of individual citizens
to make proposals in the Assembly was very narrowly restricted
by law; a precaution which was perhaps not needless in a
session of three days. The real business of the Assembly was
to choose the magistrates, and to say Yea or Nay to their pro-
posals. After the somewhat unfair monopoly which Aratos
so long enjoyed had come to an end, it was clearly in the
election of the General that the parliamentary warfare of

* See Thirl wall, viii. 93. t See Polyb. ii. 41, 44.

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 227

the League found its fullest scope. We often find the policy
of the Republic fluctuating- from year to year, according as
one party or another had succeeded in placing its leader at
the head of the state. Each election might, in fact, bring on
what we should call a change of Ministry ; but to the grand
device of constitutional monarchies Achaia never reached.
Every year the Ministry and its policy were put in jeopardy,
but, when that ordeal was past, they were safe for another
twelvemonth. Achaia had not hit upon our happy plan by
which the executive power is held at the silent pleasure of the
Legislature, by which the real rulers may be kept on for
an indefinite time, or may be sent away at a moment's
notice, according as they behave themselves. *

These parliamentary functions were probably discharged by
a few of the leading men of each city, together with a some-
what undue proportion of the inhabitants of Aigion. Though,
by the Achaian constitution, the presence of any dispropor-
tioned number of citizens of a particular town had no direct
effect on the reckoning of the votes, still the men of Aigion
must have had an unfair monopoly as long as the Assembly
was invariably held in their city. Philopoimen acted like a
truly liberal statesman when he procured that its meetings
should be held in each city of the League in turn. But so
long as the place of meeting was confined to any one city,
Aigion, as one of the less considerable members of the Con-
federation, was a good choice ; had the Assembly been always
held at Corinth or Megalopolis, one can fancy that some pre-
tension to supremacy on the part of those great cities might
have gradually arisen.

The practical working of such a system was doubtless that
of a mild and liberal aristocracy , f which, existing solely on
sufferance, could not venture upon tyrannical or unpopular
measures. The material well-being of the people may have

* [The result of the general election of 1868 showed that, under the Eng-
lish constitution, this power can on occasion be exercised, not only by the
House of Commons, but by the people themselves in their polling-booths.]

f [Aristocracy in the strictest sense ; not its counterfeit oligarchy.]

Q2

228 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

been equal to that of Attica in its best days, but for the
intense vigour of Athenian political and intellectual life there
was no room. The individual Achaian was a free citizen,
and not the slave of a Tyrant or of an oligarchy ; but
he was not himself Minister, Senator, and Judge, in the
same way as a member of the typical Democracy. His per-
sonal happiness, as far as human laws can secure it, may
have been equally great, and his political life was certainly
more peaceful ; but he could not, by the hand which he
held up or by the bean which he dropped, exercise a con-
scious influence over the greatest questions of his own age,
and an unconscious one over those of all the ages that were
to come.

One more remark must be made. The votes in the
Assembly were not counted by heads, but by cities. Whether
one Corinthian or a thousand were present, Corinth had one
vote, and no more. Here, as Niebuhr justly says, lay the
great fault of the constitution, that great cities like Argos
and Corinth had no greater weight in the councils of the
united nation than the petty towns of the original Achaia.
Had any proportion of this kind been observed, as it after-
wards was in the Lykian Confederation, the constitution would
have been very nearly a representative one ; and, in such a
case, the final step could hardly have been delayed of each
city sending just as many deputies as it had votes in the
Assembly. *

* [I am not sure that, when I wrote this, or even when I wrote what I
said upon the same matter in the History of Federal Government, i. 273,
774, I fully understood that in a perfect Federal constitution it is neerlful
to have two Houses, one of which represents the sovereignty of the united
nation, and in which the vote to be taken is that of the majority of the
whole people or their representatives, while the other House represents the
separate sovereignty of the several Cantons, and must give an equal voice to
each Canton, great or small. This object is gained in the United States by
the Senate and House of Representatives, as distinct and equal branches of
the Federal legislature. In Switzerland it is gained, not only by the same
constitution of the Federal Legislature, the Stdnderath and Nationalrath
answering to the Senate and House of Representatives, but also by the dis-
tinct votes of the Cantons and of the People which are taken in the case of

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 229

But while the great political phenomenon of the League is
certainly the first object of attraction in later Grecian history,
there are not wanting others of no small importance. The his-
tory of the Macedonian monarchy is in itself one of high
interest. A small nation, of uncertain origin in its first be-
ginnings, gradually swells into a civilized kingdom ; under
several energetic princes it becomes Greek and the ruling
state of Greece ; it overthrows the throne of Cyrus, and for a
while the single realm of Macedon stretches from the Hadri-
atic to the Hyphasis. Such an empire as this could not be
lasting ; but the Macedonian race gave rulers and a lasting
civilization to vast regions of the East, and the Kingdom of
Macedonia itself kept its place as the leading power of Greece,
as the dreaded rival of Rome. This is hardly the history of
so worthless a people as Niebuhr, and even Thirlwall, seem
to deem them. We cannot go along with Niebuhr in the
way in which he identifies the Macedonian royalty with that
of Eastern kingdoms. It is more like an irregular mediaeval
monarchy, which, under a weak prince, sank into mere
anarchy, while an able and popular prince had everything
his own way. The Macedonian government was indeed
essentially monarchical ; there was no formal constitution, and
probably few or no written laws ; the absence of a Legislative
Assembly is expressly asserted by Polybios ;* and Demosthenes

a constitutional amendment. No arrangement of votes in a single assembly,
whether primary or representative, can in the same way give their due weight
to each of the two elements of that divided sovereignty which is the essence
of a Federal state. But there is no need to blame either the Achaian or
the Lykian Confederation for not at once reaching to the latest refinements
of modern political science. We must always remember that in all these
commonwealths representation was unknown, though, as specially in the case
of the Lykian League, they often trembled on the very verge of it. And
in Greece at least, the coordinate power of two legislative chambers was
altogether unknown, though something like it may be seen in the relations
between the Senate and the Popular Assembly in the best days of Rome.]

* xxxi. 12. MaitfSovas drjOfts ovras SruJLOKpariK^s Hal ffvvfSpiaitijs iro\iT(las.

[I perhaps inferred too much from this passage, which relates to the diffi-
culties which the Macedonians felt in adapting themselves to the constitutions
of the four commonwealths into which Macedonia was divided by the Romans
after the fall of Perseus. We do not know exactly what the constitutions of

230 GREECE DURING TUB [ESSAY

witnesses that the personal agency of the King himself was
the primary moving power of everything,* contrasting Mace-
donia on this point with the republican governments of Greece.
Still the Macedonians were clearly anything but slaves like
the Asiatics ; though political liberty may have had no
settled being, there were certain barriers of civil liberty
which the King could not venture to overpass. There was
evidently something answering to trial by jury ; Alexander, in
the height of his conquests, did not venture to put a free
Macedonian to death in the way of public justice, till he had
been brought before the judgement of his peers. Again, the
Asiatic pomp, both of Alexander himself and afterwards of
Demetrios, is expressly said to have offended a people who
were used to very different treatment at the hands of their
rulers. The mere existence of a Macedonian monarchy is in
itself a remarkable phenomenon, as no other civilized Euro-
pean state, save the neighbouring land of Epeiros, so long kept
on the ancient kingship. Macedonia, and Epeiros also, till a
democratic revolution cut off the line of Pyrrhos, look like
continuations, on a larger scale, of the old heroic monarchies
which in Greece and Italy were done away with at a much
earlier time.

We see then that, even in a political point of view, Mace-
donia is far from being an utterly barren subject, while, when
looked at as a matter of ethnology, it is of the very highest
interest. We will not however now enter on the question of
the exact amount of national kindred between Greeks and
Macedonians, a subject which involves the whole Pelasgian
controversy, and which cannot be settled without a full exami-

these four states were, but their citizens may well have been puzzled how to
supply the loss of the old familiar kingship. A s for the Macedonian Assemblies
in earlier times, we are of course not to suppose that they met as regularly
as the Assemblies of Athens or Achaia, and they were doubtless far less
orderly when they did meet. But it is plain that they were called together
on occasion both for judicial and other purposes. Of course iu such a state
of society the army was the Assembly and the Assembly was the army, just
as it was in the heroic days of Greece, the institutions of which went on
in Macedonia after they had died away in Greece itself.]
" Phil. iii. 59, 60.

VI.] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 231

nation of all the ethnological phenomena of Greece, Italy ^
and Lesser Asia. We will at present only express our belief
that the Macedonians were a branch of that great Pelasgian
family — using the word in what we take to be Niebuhr's
sense of it — which spread over all those countries. * That bar-
barian, especially Illyrian, elements were largely intermingled
in the Macedonian nationality is perfectly clear ; but it is to
our mind no less clear that the predominant aspect of the
Macedonian people is, like that of the Sikels, the Epeirots,
even of the Lykians and Karians, one of a quasi-Greek cha-
racter. Their language was not Greek ; therefore in the Greek
sense it was barbarous ; but it was clearly akin to Greek,t in the
same way as the different Teutonic tongues are akin to one
another. The whole region which we have spoken of is clearly
marked by the recurrence of similar local names in widely
different districts, by a similar style of primaeval architecture,!
and by the singular ease with which all its inhabitants adopted
the fully developed Hellenic language and civilization.

The only other Greek state of any note during the Mace-
donian period was Sparta. The later history of this once
ruling city is highly important in a political point of view,
and it is interesting, far beyond that of any contemporary
state, in the pictures which it gives us of personal cha-
racter and adventure. Macedonia, after Alexander, gives
us, unless we may venture to put in a word for Demetrios,
no character which really calls forth our interest; Antigonos
Doson was certainly a good King, but we know compara-
tively little about him, and there is nothing specially attrac-
tive in what we do know. Even the chiefs of the League

* [The Pelasgians are better left untouched. But I fully believe in the
close connexion of all these nations with the Greeks. The researches of Curtius
and Hahn have made it probable that we must draw a wider circle again,
and take in Thracians, Illyrians, and Phrygians, as more distant kinsmen.]

•f See Miiller's Dorians, i. 3, 486.

J [Since the preaching of Mr. Tylor's science, whatever it is to be called,
this argument does not prove very much, but it is none the less curious to
trace the various strivings after the arch both in Greece and in Italy.

232 GREECE DURING THE [ESSAY

are not men to awaken much enthusiasm on their behalf.
The character of Aratos was always stained by many weak-
nesses, and towards the close of his life it assumed a deeper
dye ; of the gallant Lydiadas we know less than we could
desire; even the brave, prudent, and honest Philopoimen
is, after all, a hero of a somewhat dull order. But far
different is the case when we have to tell how the gallant,
unselfish, enthusiastic, Agis won the glory of the martyr in
the noblest but most hopeless of causes, and how his mantle
fell upon an abler, though a less pure, successor. Here, for
once, we may turn with pleasure from the prejudiced nar-
rative of Polybios to the picture given us by Plutarch of
the happy union of kingly virtues with every amiable quality
of domestic life. Nowhere either in Grecian or in any other
history can we find a character more fitted to call forth our
sympathies than the heroic wife of the two last Herakleids ;
nowhere are more touching scenes recorded than the martyr-
dom of Agesistrata by the side of her slaughtered son, or the
parting of Kleomenes from his mother in the temple of Posei-
don, parent and child alike ready to sacrifice all for the
good of Sparta. There can be no doubt but that the designs
of Kleomenes would have borne lasting* fruit, but for the

O *

envious treason with which Aratos stained the glory of his
earlier exploits. Agis perished because he undertook the
hopeless task of restoring a state of things which had for
ever passed away ; Kleomenes, a keener and less scrupulous
statesman, adapted himself to the circumstances of the time.
The Dorian element was dying out in Sparta, just as the Nor-
man and Prankish elements died out in England and France.*
Sparta was again Achaian, as France again became Celtic,
and England again became Teutonic. The only difference
was that at Sparta formal barriers had to be got rid of,
while in the other cases the silent working of time has been
enough. Kleomenes, a Herakleid prince of the old Achaian
blood, had no sympathy with Dorian oligarchs. He became

* [That is in ' Francia Latina ' in the strict sense. South of the Loire there
were no Prankish, though there may have been Gothic, elements to die out.]

VL] MACEDONIAN PERIOD. 233

the true leader of the people. He swept away, by his un-
scrupulous energy, distinctions which had outlived their pur-
pose, and set up again the throne of Tyndareos rather than
the throne of Agesilaos. That Aratos could not bear the
glory of such a rival ; that, rather than submit to a cordial
and equal alliance with the Spartan King, he chose to undo
his own work, and to hand over the Greece that he had freed
to the grasp of a Macedonian ruler, is one of the most pain-
ful instances on record of the follies and crimes of otherwise
illustrious men. Sparta and the League cordially allied, — an
union closer than alliance they could hardly have made, —
might have braved the power of Antigonos and Philip, and
might perhaps have put off for some generations the fated
absorption of all in the vast ocean of Roman conquest.

But time would fail us to tell of Laconian heroism and
Achaian treason, of Roman diplomacy and ^Etolian rashness.
We must forbear to speak of the days when, at Kynoskephale
and Pydna, the shield and the sarissa which had borne
the literature and civilization of Greece into the wilds of
Scythia and the burning plains of Hindostan were them-
selves doomed to fall before the mightier onslaught of

'the good weapons
That keep the war-God's land.'

We have yet to see the successor of Philip and Alexander
toiling his weary way, as a dishonoured captive, along the
bellowing forum and the suppliant's grove; we have yet
to witness the last throes of Grecian freedom, disgraced as
they were by the rashness and selfishness of a Diaios and a
Kritolaos, but still calling on us to let fall a tear over the
last day of plundered and burning Corinth. But we stop, how-
ever much against our will, throwing ourselves in full con-
fidence upon the judgement of our readers, and looking for
their favourable verdict in the cause which we have striven to
maintain — that of the high interest and value of Grecian
history in all its stages, even down to the latest and saddest
days of all.

VII.
MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME.*

Romische Geschichte> von THEODOR MOMMSEN. Three volumes,
Leipzig and Berlin^ 1854-6.

THE history of Rome is the greatest of all historical subjects,
for this simple reason, that the history of Rome is in truth
the same as the history of the world. If history he read,
not as a mere chronicle of events, recorded as a form and
remembered as a lesson, but as the living science of causes
and effects, it will be found that, if we would rightly under-
stand the destiny of what is truly called the Eternal City,
our researches must be carried up to the very beginnings of
history and tradition, and must be carried on without break
to the present hour. Palestine, Greece, Italy, are the three
lands whose history contains the history of man. From
Palestine we draw our religion, from Greece comes art and
literature, and, in a manner, law and freedom. But the
influence of Palestine and Greece is, to a large extent, an in-
fluence of mere example and analogy ; even where it is a real
influence of cause and effect, it is at best an indirect influence,
an influence working through the tongues and the arms of
strangers. The history of civilized man goes on in one un-
broken tale from Theseus to our own day ;f but the drama

* [This article represents my first impressions, drawn mainly from its
earlier parts, of what, with all its faults, is undoubtedly a great work. As an
Appendix I have added a later notice, which was written when Mommsen's
book was plainly beginning to have an effect in England, which it had not had
time to have when the earlier article was written. Perhaps I was also myself
only then beginning to shake off the spell with which we in our island are
apt to be affected by ' the last German work ' on any subject.]

•f [ I of course did not mean to pledge myself to the personal existence of
Theseus, but we may fairly take his name as representing the fwoixiffit of
Attica. See above, p. 119.]

MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 235

shifts its scenes and changes its actors ; Greece can reach us
only by way of Italy ; the Athenian speaks to modern Europe
almost wholly through a Roman interpreter. We profess a
religion of Hebrew birth ; but the oracles of that religion
speak the tongue of Greece, and they reached us only through
the agency of Rome. Among the old states of the world,
the history of Carthage and of Palestine merges itself for ever
in that of Rome. Greece, like one of her own underground
rivers, merges herself also for a while; she shrouds herself
under the guise and title of her conqueror, and at last she
shows herself again at such a distance that some refuse to
know her for herself. To understand Roman history aright,
we must know the history of the Semitic and Hellenic races
which Rome swallowed up, and the history of those races of the
further East which Rome herself never could overcome. We
must go yet further back : we must, by the aid of philological
research, grope warily beyond the domain of history or legend.
We must go back to unrecorded days, when Greek and Italian
were one people ; and to days more ancient still, when Greek,
Italian, Celt, Teuton, Slave, Hindoo, and Persian, were as yet
members of one undivided brotherhood. And, if the historian
of Rome is bound to look back, still more is he bound to look
onwards. He has but to cast his eye upon the world around
him to see that Rome is still a living and abiding power.
The tongue of Rome is the groundwork of the living speech
of south-western Europe ; it shares our own vocabulary with
the tongue of our Teutonic fathers. * The tongue of Rome is
still the ecclesiastical language of half Christendom ; the days

* [I should hardly have written this sentence now, because, though literally
true, it is misleading. In an English dictionary, even after striking out mere
technical terms and mere pieces of vulgar affectation, there will most likely
be as many Romance as Teutonic words. Many of these Romance words
are thoroughly naturalized, and may now rank on a level with native
English words. Still, even words of this class, which it needs philological
knowledge to distinguish from real Teutonic words — please, pay, money, have
nothing on the face of them to distinguish them from tease, say, honey — are a
mere infusion, and not a co-ordinate element. We may make sentence after
sentence out of Teutonic words only ; we cannot make a single full sentence
out of Romance words only.]

236 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

are hardly past when it was the common speech of science
and learning. The Law of Rome is still quoted in our courts
and taught in our Universities ; in other lands it forms the
source and groundwork of their whole jurisprudence. Little
more than half a century has passed since an Emperor of
the Romans, tracing his unbroken descent from Constan-
tine and Augustus, still held his place among European
sovereigns, and, as Emperor of the Romans, still claimed
precedence over every meaner potentate. And the title of a
Roman office, the surname of a Roman family, is still the
highest object of human ambition, still clutched at alike by
worn-out dynasties and by successful usurpers. Go eastward,
and the whole diplomatic skill of Europe is taxed to settle the
affairs of a Roman colony, which, cut off alike by time and
distance, still clings to its Roman language and glories in
its Roman name.* We made war but yesterday upon a
power whose badge is the Roman eagle, on behalf of one
whose capital has not yet lost the official title of New Rome.
Look below the surface, and the Christian subjects of the Porte
are found called and calling themselves Romans; go beyond
the Tigris, and their master himself is known to the votary
of Ali simply as the Roman Csesar. Even facts like these,
which hardly rise above the level of antiquarian curiosities,
still bear witness to an abiding power such as no other
city or kingdom ever knew. And, far above them all, in deep
and vast significance, towers the yet living phenomenon of
the Roman Church and the Roman Pontiff. The city of the
Caesars has for ages been, it still is, and, as far as man can
judge, it will still for ages be, the religious centre, the holy
place, the sacred hearth and home, of the faith and worship of
millions on each side of the Atlantic. The successor of the
Fisherman still in very truth sits on the throne of Nero,
and wields the sceptre of Diocletian. It is indeed a throne
rocked by storms ; Gaul and German may do battle for its

* [The Rouman Principalities on the Danube were, when this was written,
as indeed they have often been since, one of the standing difficulties of Euro-
pean politics.]

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 237

advocacy ; they have done so in ages past, and they may do
so for ages to come ; but the power which has lived through
the friendship and the enmity of Justinian and Liudprand,
of Charles and Otto, of the Henries and the Fredericks, of
Charles of Austria and Buonaparte of France, may well live
to behold the extinction, however distant it may be, of both
the rival lines of Corsica and Habsburg.* Look back to the
first dim traditions of the European continent, and we look
not too far back for the beginnings of Roman history. Ask
for the last despatch and the last telegram, and it will tell
us that the history of Rome has not yet reached its
end. It is in Rome that all ancient history loses itself;
it is out of Rome that all modern history takes its source.
Her native laws and language, her foreign but naturalized
creed, still form one of the foremost elements in the intel-
lectual life of every European nation ; and, in a large portion
of the European continent, they not only form a foremost
element, but are the very groundwork of all.

The history of Rome dies away so gradually into the
general history of the middle ages, that it is hard to say at
what point a special Roman history should end. Arnold
proposed to carry on his History to the coronation of Charles
the Great. Something may doubtless be said for this point,
and something also for other points, both earlier and later.f The
Roman history gradually changes from the history of a city

* [The Papacy has now seen the extinction, as Italian powers, of both the
foreign oppressors of Italy. One has lost the power to do evil, the other has
lost both the power and the will. The extinction of the temporal power of the
Papacy itself has indeed followed, but any one who remembers the deathbe I
of Gregory the Seventh may doubt whether the real power of the spiritual
Rome is not strengthened by its seeming loss.]

•I* [I now feel that Arnold was right, and that the coronation of Charles is
the proper ending for a strictly Roman history. Before that point it is impossible
to draw any line. The vulgar boundary of A.D. 476 would shut out Theodoric
the Patrician and Belisarius the Consul. But when the Roman Empire prac-
tically becomes an appendage to a German kingdom, the old life of Rome is
gone. The old memories still go on influencing history in a thousand ways,
but the government of Charles was not Roman in the same sense as the
government of Theodoric.]

238 MOMM8B1T8 HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

into the history of an Empire. The history of the Republic is
the history of a municipality which bore sway over an ever-
increasing- subject territory ; it differed only in its scale from
the earlier dominion of Athens and Carthage, from the later
dominion of Bern and Venice. Under the Empire this
municipal character died away ; the Roman citizen and the
provincial became alike the subjects of Caesar ; in process of
time the rights, such as they then were, of the Roman citizen
were extended to all the subjects of the Roman monarchy.
During the middle ages the strange sight was seen of a
Greek and a German disputing- over the title of Roman
Emperor, while Rome itself was foreign ground to both alike.
But this was only the full developement of a state of things
which had begun to arise, which indeed could not fail to
arise, long- before the period commonly given as the end of
the true Roman Empire. The importance of the capital,
even under the Emperors, was far greater than that of the
capital of a modern state. But it was no longer what it
had been under the Republic. When from the Ocean to
the Euphrates all alike were Romans, the common sovereign of
all ceased to be bound to Rome itself by the same tie as the
old Consuls and Dictators. Rome gradually ceased to be an
Imperial dwelling-place. The truth of the case is clouded
over when we are told that Constantino translated the seat of
Empire from Rome to Byzantion. What Constantine did was
to fix at Byzantion a throne which had already left Rome, but
which had as yet found no other lasting- resting-place. The
predecessors of Constantine had reigned at Milan and Niko-
medeia ; his successors reigned at Ravenna and at what now
had become Constantinople. Constantius and Honorius did
but visit Rome now and then ; they came more peacefully
than the Ottos and Henries of a later age, but they came quite
as truly as passing strangers. And when the seat of govern-
ment— always for a large part, sometimes for the whole —
of the Roman Empire was for ever transferred to Con-
stantinople, it is wonderful to see how truly that city became,
as it was called, the New Rome. Greece indeed in the end

VII. J MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 239

won back her rights over the old Megarian city ; the Byzan-
tine Empire gradually changed from a Roman to a Greek
state ; but at what moment the change was fully wrought
it is impossible to say. Up to the coronation of Charles, the
Byzantine Emperor was at least nominal lord of the Old as
well as of the New Rome. With Charles begin the various
dynasties of German Caesars, which kept up more of local
connexion with Old Rome, but much less of the true Roman
tradition, than their rivals at Byzantion. There is at least
thus mucji to be said for the point chosen by Arnold, that,
down to the coronation of Charles, there was still one Roman
Empire and one undisputed Roman Emperor. Heraclius and
Leo ruled Italy from Constantinople, as Diocletian had ruled
it from Nikomedeia. After the year 800 East and West are
formally divided ; there are two Roman Empires, two Roman
Emperors. Of these, the one is fast tending to become de-
finitively German, the other to become definitively Greek.

Wre know not to what point the author of the History
before us means to carry on his work. As yet he has carried
it up to the practical establishment of a practical monarchy
under the first Csesar. He shows how one Italian city con-
trived to conquer the whole Mediterranean world, and how
unfit the municipal government of that city proved itself to
be for the task of ruling the whole Mediterranean world.
This is indeed a subject, and a very great subject, by itself ;
it is one of the greatest of political lessons ; it is, in fact, the
whole history of the City of Rome as the conquering and
governing municipality ; what follows is the history of the
Empire, which took its name from the city, but which was
gradually divorced from it. The point which Mommsen has
now reached might almost be the end of a Geschickte von
Rom; but his work calls itself a Romische Gesckichte, and
it may therefore be fairly carried to almost any point which
the historian may choose.

The Roman History of Mommsen is, beyond all doubt, to be
ranked among those really great historical works which do so

240 MOMMSEN '8 HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

much honour to our own day. We can have little doubt as to
calling it the best complete Roman History that we have. For
a complete History, as we have just shown, we may call it, even
as it now stands ; it is not a mere fragment, like the works of
Niebubr and Arnold. And even the ages with which Niebuhr
and Arnold have dealt may be studied again with great ad-
vantage under Mommsens guidance. And the important
time between the end of Arnold's third volume and the
opening of Dr. Merivale's History Mommsen has pretty well
to himself among writers who have any claim to be looked
on as his peers. In short, we have now, for the first time,
the whole history of the Roman Republic really written in a
way wortby of the greatness of the subject. Mommsen is
a real historian ; his powers of research and judgement are
of a high order ; he is skilful in the grasp of his whole sub-
ject, and vigorous and independent in his way of dealing
with particular parts. At the same time, there are certain
inherent disadvantages in the form and scale of the work.
Mommsen's History, like Bishop Thirlwall's, is one of a series.
Most readers of Bishop Thirlwall must have marked that the
fact of writing for a series, and a popular series, threw certain
trammels around him during the early part of bis work, from
which he gradually freed himself as he went on. Momm-
sen's work is the first of a series, the aim of which seems to
be to popularize — we do not use the word as one of depreci-
ation— the study of classical antiquity among the general
German public.* Such a purpose does not allow of much
citation of authorities, or of much minute discussion of contro-
verted points. The writer everywhere speaks as a master to
an audience whose business it is to accept and not to dispute
his teaching. But this mode of writing has its disadvantages,
when it is applied by a bold and independent writer like
Mommsen to a period of the peculiar character which belongs
to the early history of Rome. That history, we need not say,

* ' Es wird damit eine Reihe von Handbiicaern eriiffnet, deren Zweck ist,
das lebendigere Verstandniss des classichen Alterthums in weitere Kreise zu
bringen.'

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 241

is one which does not rest on contemporary authority. That
Rome was taken by the Gauls seems to be the one event
in the annals of several centuries which we can be absolutely
sure was recorded by a writer who lived at the time.* Yet of
these ages Dionysios and Livy give us a history as detailed as
Thucydides can give of the Peloponnesian War or Eginhard
of the campaigns of Charles the Great. Till the time of
Niebuhr, all save a solitary sceptic here and there were ready
to give to the first decade of Livy as full a belief as they
could have given to Thucydides or Eginhard. And the few
sceptics that there were commonly carried their unbelief to so
unreasonable a length as rather to favour the cause of a still
more unreasonable credulity. Till Arnold wrote, Hooke's was
the standard English History of Rome ; and Hooke no more
thought of doubting the existence of Romulus than he thought
of doubting the existence of Csesar. Then came the wonder-
ful work of Niebuhr, which overthrew one creed and set up
another. The tale which our fathers had believed on the
authority of Livy sank to the level of a myth, the invention
of a poet, the exaggeration of a family panegyrist ; but in its
stead we were, in our own youth, called upon to accept another
tale, told with almost equal minuteness, on the perspnal au-
thority of a German doctor who had only just passed away
from among men. Niebuhr's theory in fact acted like a spell ;
it was not to argument or evidence that it appealed ; his fol-
lowers avowedly claimed for him a kind of power of ' divi-
nation.' Since that time there has been, both in Germany and
in England, a reaction against Niebuhr's authority. The in-
surrection has taken different forms : one party seem to have
quietly fallen back into the unreasoning faith of our fathers.f
Others are content to adopt Niebuhr's general mode of

* See the latter part of the twelfth chapter of Sir G. C. Lewis's Credibility of
Early Roman History. It seems clear that Greek contemporary writers did re-
cord the Gaulish invasion ; possibly the account of Polybioa may fairly represent
their version of the event.

t Sir George Lewis quotes, as taking this line, ' Die Geschichte der Romer,
von F. D. Gerlach und J. J. Bachofen,' of which we can boast of no further
knowledge. [The same line has since been taken up in England by Dr. Dyer.]

R

242 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. . [ESSAY

inquiry, and merely to reverse his judgement on particular
points. This is the case with the able but as yet fragmentary
work of Dr. Ihne.* Lastly, there comes the party of absolute
unbelief, whose champion is no less a person than the late
Chancellor of the Exchequer, f Beneath the Thor's hammer
of Sir George Cornewall Lewis the edifice of Titus Livius
and the edifice of Barthold Niebuhr fall to the ground side
by side. Myths may be very pretty, divinations may be very
ingenious, but the Right Honourable member for the Radnor
boroughs will stand nothing but evidence which would be
enough to hang a man. Almost every child has wept over the
tale of Virginia, if not in Livy, at least in Goldsmith. Niebuhr
and Arnold connect the tragic story with deep historical and
political lessons ; but Sir George Lewis coldly asks, ' Who saw
her die ?' and as nobody is ready to make the same answer as
the fly in the nursery legend, — as Virginius and Icilius did
not write the story down on a parchment roll, or carve it on
a table of brass, — he will have nothing to say to any of them.
' That the basis ' of the decemviral story ' is real, need not
be doubted.' J But that is all ; how much is real basis, how
much is imaginary superstructure, Sir George Lewis cannot
undertake to settle.

To that large body of English scholars who have been
brought up at the feet of Niebuhr, but who have since learned
in some measure to throw aside his authority, there will be
found something unsatisfactory, or perhaps more truly some-
thing disappointing, in Mommsen's way of dealing with the

* Researches into the History of the Roman Constitution. By W. Ihne
Ph. D. London, 1853. [Dr. Ihne's complete History has since appeared
both in German and English.]

t [It will be remembered that this was written during the life-time of Sir
George Lewis. I still believe that that great scholar went too far in his un-
belief, owing to his looking too exclusively to mere documentary evidence and
passing by equally important evidence of other kinds. Nothing can be more
thorough than Sir George Lewis's overthrow of many of Niebuhr's particular
notions. But I still believe that Niebuhr's general method, if it were only
more judiciously carried out, is the right one. Mr. Tylor's new science would
be our best guide to many of the facts in early Roman History.]

£ Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. ii. p. 292.

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 243

Kings and the early Republic. The spell of Niebuhr's fascina-
tion is one which is not easily broken : it is, in fact, much more
than a spell ; the faith with which we looked up to him in our
youth was exaggerated, but it was not wholly misplaced. Sir
George Lewis has, beyond all doubt, done a lasting service to
historical truth by convicting Niebuhr of a vast amount of
error in detail — of inaccuracies, inconsistencies, hasty induc-
tions, instances of arrogant dogmatism ; but we cannot think
that he has shown Niebuhr's general system to be a wrong
one. Niebuhr's method, at once destructive and constructive,
is surely essentially sound. His doctrine that the current state-
ment, probably far removed from the literal truth, still con-
tains a basis of truth, Sir George Lewis himself does not
venture wholly to deny. That a process, not indeed of ' divi-
nation,' but of laborious examination and sober reflexion, may
in many cases distinguish the truth from the falsehood, does
not seem in itself unreasonable. Our own belief is that
Niebuhr's arrogant and self-sufficient dogmatism did but
damage a cause which was essentially sound. Sir George
Lewis, while successfully demolishing the outworks, has made,
in our judgement, no impression upon Niebuhr's main fortress.
In such a state of mind, we cannot help looking at every
page of the early Roman history as essentially matter of con-
troversy ; every step must be taken warily ; no assertion must
either be lightly accepted or lightly rejected, and no decision
must be come to without weighing the arguments on one side
and on the other. It is therefore somewhat disappointing, not
to say provoking, when in Mommsen's History of this period
we find difficulties passed over without a word, when we find
statements made, which sometimes command our assent, which
sometimes arouse our incredulity, but of which, in either case,
we never heard before, and which make us eager to know
Mommsen's grounds for adopting them. It is easy to see
that Mommsen is quite capable of holding his own ground
against either Niebuhr or Sir George Lewis. We feel sure
that he has gone carefully through every point of controversy
in his own mind ; we only wish that we ourselves might be

R a

244 MO MM SEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

admitted to witness the process as well as the result. We in
no way blame Mommsen for a defect which springs at once
from the scale and nature of his work. To have treated the
whole subject controversially, to have examined every state-
ment at length and cited every authority in full, would have
swelled the book to an extent which would have been quite
unfitted for the classes of readers for which it was in the first
instance meant. But the lack of reasons and references makes
this part of the book less valuable to the professed scholar
than either that which goes before or that which follows it.
Mommsen shines most in one part in which he himself exer-
cises a ' divination ' as ingenious and more sound than that of
Niebuhr, and in another part in which the whole business of
the historian is to narrate and to comment upon facts whose
general truth has never been called in question. The two
subjects in dealing with which Mommsen has been most
successful are the prse-historic age of the Italian nations,
and the steps, military and diplomatic, by which a single
city of one of them rose to universal empire. It is greatly
to his credit that he should have achieved such striking
success in two subjects which call for such different modes
of treatment.

The prse-historic chapters of Mommsen's book form one of
the best applications that we have ever seen of the growing
science of Comparative Philology.* They show how much
we may learn, from evidence which cannot deceive, of the
history of nations for ages before a single event was set
down in writing. We are thus enabled to go back to days
earlier even than those which are, in a manner, chronicled by
poetry and tradition. In the Homeric poems we have our
first written record of the Greek people.f But Comparative

* [It must be remembered here, as in some other parts of these Essays, that
Comparative Philology was only just beginning to make its way in England
when they were written. I have struck out a good deal which was new when
I wrote it, but which has now become a thrice-told tale.]

t [I have here again cut short my argument as being practically the same as
what I have said in my Essay on Mr. Gladstone's book. See above p. 58.]

VII.] MOMMSSN'B HISTORY OF ROME. 245

Philology goes far beyond the tale of Troy, far beyond the
settlement of the Hellenes in the land of the many islands
and of all Argos. And its evidence is the surest evidence of
all, evidence thoroughly unconscious. Comparative Philology
and prae-historic archaeology do for man what geology does for
his dwelling-place. Their mode of inquiry is the same. There
may be indeed minds to which it would fail to carry con-
viction. The phenomena of human language and the phae-
nomena of the earth's strata may be alleged to be the result
of accident. Different strata may not really represent different
periods ; the whole may be the work of one act of creation,
on which the Creator may have impressed such appearances
from its birth. So the likeness between Greek, Teutonic, and
Sanscrit may be said to be no likeness at all ; it may be said to
be an accident ; it may be said to prove, if anything, only the
confusion of tongues at Babel. Certainly neither geology nor
Comparative Philology can bring strict mathematical proof to
bear upon the mind of a determined objector. Possibly indeed
they might retort that geometry itself has its postulates. When
the ge&logist or the philologer demands a certain amount
of blind submission, he hardly does more than Euclid himself
does, when he assumes, without proving, certain positions
about parallels and angles which, though undoubtedly true,
are certainly not self-evident. Geology has made its way ; it
has become popular; hardly any one seriously disputes its con-
clusions. Comparative Philology is still struggling; and its
attendant, Comparative Mythology, is only just beginning to
be heard of. The fact is, that to the uneducated mind the
first principles of etymology are a great mystery. The real
likenesses of words need a certain education to make them
familiar ; people catch at purely accidental likenesses, and fail
to grasp those which are essential. . We have no doubt that
many of those who learn both French and German believe
French to be the language more nearly akin to English.
Comparative Philology only asks for a little faith at the
beginning : the believer soon begins to see with his own eyes,
and he shortly makes discoveries of his own, which he in turn

246 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

finds the outer world slow to put any faith in. And we are
not sure that perverted ingenuity does not sometimes do even
more harm than unbelieving- ignorance. We once came across a
book, whose name we have forgotten, which undertook to prove
the kindred between the early inhabitants of Gaul and Britain
by the likeness between the modern Bret -Welsh and French
languages. Now it would be hard to find any two descen-
dants of the original Aryan stock which have less to do with
one another than the speech of the modern Cymrian and the
speech of the modern Frenchman. But a few traces of primitive
kindred may still be seen. And, while Latin of course forms
the whole groundwork of French, a few Latin words have,
naturally enough, strayed into Welsh. Between these two
classes our writer gathered together a rather large stock of
Welsh words which are very like the words which translate
them in French. Cefl was undoubtedly akin to ckeval ; eglwys
was still more clearly akin to eglise. Whether our philologer
got so far as to see that gosper and vepres were also akin,
we do not remember. But, at any rate, his collections quite
satisfied him that the Celt of Gaul and the Celt of 'Britain
were closely akin ; a proposition which nothing could lead
any one to doubt except the fact that it had been supported
by such a wonderful argument.

We need hardly say that the Comparative Philology of
Mommsen is not exactly of the same kind as that of our
Celtic searcher after truth. Starting from the doctrine of the
common origin of the Aryan nations, a comparison of their
several languages, and of the amount of cultivation which
language shows each branch to have reached before it finally
parted asunder, enables him to put together something like
a map of their wanderings, by which he gradually comes down
to his own theme of the history of Italy. After the Asiatic
Aryans had parted off to the East, the European Aryans still
formed a single people. A step further still shows that the
Italians and the Hellenes remained one people after Celt and
Teuton and Slave had parted from them, and that they had
made considerable advances in cultivation before they again

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 247

parted asunder, each to occupy its own peninsula, and to meet
again in each, through colonization and conquest, in after times.
With regard to the earliest inhabitants of Italy Mommsen's
general conclusions are these : Ancient Italy contained three
distinct races — first, the lapygians in the south ; secondly,
those whom Mommsen distinctively calls ' Italians' in the
middle ; thirdly, the Etruscans in the north and north-west.
Their geographical position would seem to show that this was
the order in which the three nations entered the peninsula.
Of the lapygians we know but little ; history shows them to
us only in a decaying state, and all that we know of their
language comes from certain inscriptions which are as yet
uninterpreted. .This evidence however tends to show that
their language was Aryan, distinct from the Italian,* and
possessing certain affinities with the Greek. With this also falls
in the fact that in historic times they adopted Greek civiliza-
tion with unusual ease. The Italians of Mommsen's nomencla-
ture are the historical inhabitants of the greater portion of
the peninsula. This is the nation the history of whose tongue
and government becomes one with the history of civil-
ized man ; for of their language the most finished type is the
Latin, and of their cities the greatest was Rome. The Etrus-
cans Mommsen holds to be wholly alien from the Italian
nations ; their language is most likely Aryan, but that is all
that can be said. He rejects the story of their Lydian origin,
and seems inclined to look upon Rsetia as the cradle of their
race.f He makes two periods of the Etruscan language, of
which the former one is to be found in those inscriptions
on vases at Caere or Agylla, which Mr. Francis Newman J

* We are here merely setting forth Mommsen's views, without binding our-
selves either to accept or to refute them. We think however that he should
at least have noticed the seeming identity of the names lapyges, Apuli, Opici,
which, so far as it goes, tells against him.

•\- [The latest results of praehistoric research — in this case quite as important
as any documentary evidence — on Etruscan matters will be found in the article
on the ' Present Phase of Prehistoric Archaeology,' in the British Quarterly
Review for October, 1870, p. 470 et seqq.]

j Regal Rome, p. 7. It is certainly hard to see how this sort of language
can, as Mommsen supposes, have developed into the later Etruscan.

248 MO MM SEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

quotes as Pelasgian. Into the endless Pelasgian controversy
Mommsen hardly enters at all. For that controversy turns
almost wholly on points of legend or tradition, hardly at all
on Comparative Philology. On the other hand, he passes by
in yet more utter silence some theories the evidence for
which is wholly of a philological kind. We mean the theory
supported by Mr. Newman and others,* which sees a Celtic,
and specially a Gaelic, element in the old Italian population,
and that which supposes a race of Basque or Iberian abori-
gines to have occupied Italy before the entrance of its his-
torical inhabitants, f

The Italians, in Mommsen's special sense, were then a
people closely allied to the Hellenes, and they had made no
small advances in cultivation before the two stocks parted
asunder. The Italian stock again divides itself into two, the
Latin and the Umbro-Samnite, the difference between which
he compares to that between Ionic and Doric Greek. The
Umbro-Samnite branch again divides itself into the Oscan
and the Umbrian, analogous, according to our author, to the
Doric of Sicily and the Doric of Sparta. Rome is a city
purely Latin, and the head of Latium. The Tiber was at
once the boundary of Latium against the Etruscan stranger,
and the natural highway for the primitive commerce of the
early Latins. The site of Rome thus marks it out as at once
the commercial capital of Latium and the great bulwark of
the land against the Etruscan. Such was the earliest mission
of Rome. It may have been merely by a happy accident
that one of the Latin cities was placed on a site which
enabled it to take such a mission on itself; it may have
been founded expressly to discharge it, either by the com-
mon will of the Latin confederacy, or by the wisdom of some
clear-sighted founder of unrecorded times. Rome may have

* Regal Rome, pp. 1 7 et seqq.

t [The Basque occupation of Italy, and of large regions besides Italy, seems
to have all probability in its favour ; but I suspect that Mr. Newman's Gaelic
element proves nothing more than the original Aryan kindred of Latin and
Celtic.]

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 249

been either the eldest or the youngest of Latin cities. But
the chances seem greatly in favour of her being rather the
child than the parent of the League. All tradition calls
Rome an Alban, that is a Latin, colony. As soon as we get
anything like a glimpse of real history, we find Rome essen-
tially a Latin city, we find her unmistakeably the chief among
the cities of Latium. But Rome is not only far greater than
any other Latin city ; she appears as something in a manner
outside the League ; we find her in the very position, in short,
which was likely to be taken by a younger city which had out-
stripped its elders. She is a Latin city, she is closely bound to
the other Latin cities ; but she is hardly an integral member
of their confederacy ; in the times of her greatest recorded
weakness she treats with the League as an equal ; the single
city of Rome is placed on an equal footing with the whole
body of the other thirty. And, through the advantage which a
single powerful state always has over a confederacy of smaller
states, the equal alliance between Rome and Latium grew into
a practical supremacy of Rome over Latium. Rome clearly
held this power under her Kings, and, if she lost it by her
revolution, she gained it again by the League of Spurius
Cassius. Rome and Latium were in form equal allies; the
Hernicans were united in the League on the same terms;
but it is impossible to doubt that Rome was the soul of the
confederacy during the whole time that it lasted. The
^Equian and Volscian invasions again fell far more heavily
upon the Latin allies than upon Rome herself. Many Latin
cities were wholly, lost, others were greatly weakened. All
this would of course greatly increase the proportionate
importance of Rome ; the Latins would be led to look more
and more to Rome as the natural head of their nation, and
to seek, not for independence, but for union on closer and
juster terms. The demands of the Latin allies at the out-
break of the great Latin War are the best comment on the
relations between Rome and Latium. Their feeling to-
wards Rome was clearly that of excluded citizens under an
oligarchy, rather than that of an oppressed nation under

250 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

a foreign government. They do not ask to shake off the
Roman yoke or to forsake the Roman alliance ; what they
ask is to become wholly Roman themselves. They are ready
to wipe out the Latin name- and the separate being of the
Latin League. Their demands are almost the same as the
demands of the plebeians in Rome itself hardly a generation
earlier. As the Licinian laws ordained that one Consul should
be a plebeian, the Latins now asked that one Consul should be
a Latin. The Senate was to be half Latin ; the Latin cities
would probably have been reckoned each one as a Roman tribe.
Terms like these Rome held it beneath her dignity to grant ;
but, after the conquest of Latium, the mass of the Latin nation
did gradually gain Roman citizenship in one way or another.
This is, in short, the constantly repeated history of Rome and
her allies, from the earliest to the latest period. Men seek to
get rid of their bondage to Rome, but they do not seek to get
rid of it by setting up wholly for themselves ; what they seek
is to become Romans, and, as Romans, to help to rule both
themselves and others. The first recorded struggle, that between
patrician and plebeian, was in its beginning much more truly
a struggle between distinct nations than a struggle between
different orders in the same nation. But the demand of the
plebeians was, not to overthrow the patrician government, but
to win a share in it for themselves. It was only in some des-
perate moment, when every demand was refused, that they
resorted to the extreme measure of a ' secession'; that is, they
threatened to leave Rome, and to found a new city for them-
selves. On the struggle between patrician and plebeian fol-
lowed the struggle between Roman and Latin ; but the Latin
was driven into a war against Rome only when he could not
obtain his desire of incorporation with Rome. The Samnite
wars, and the wars with the Etruscan, Gaulish, and Epeirot
allies of Samnium, brought the whole of Italy into the state
of dependent alliance with Rome. Italy was now latinized
step by step; but at the same time the yoke of Rome was
found to be no light one. Still no signs are seen of any wish
to throw it off, except in such strange exceptional cases as the

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 251

solitary revolts of Falerii and Fregellse. The Italians gradually
put on the feelings of Romans ; like the plebeians, like the
Latins, they sought not independence, but full incorporation.
The claims of the Italian Allies formed the most important
political question of the seventh century of the city. The
rights of the Italians, admitted by the best men both of the
senatorial and of the democratic party, were opposed to the
vulgar prejudices of Senate and People alike. When each
party alike had failed them, then the Allies took arms, not for
Samnite or Marsian independence, but for a New Rome of
their own, a premature republican Constantinople, the city
Italy. This New Rome, like the Old, had its Senate, its
Consuls, its Praetors, its citizenship shared by every member
of the allied commonwealths. Like the Latins of the fifth
century, the Italians of the seventh were at last admitted
piecemeal to the rights for which they strove. Every Italian
was now a Roman ; save where Hellenic influence had taken
lasting root, all Italy was now latinized. But by this time
vast regions out of Italy had begun to be latinized also.
Latin civilization spread over Spain, Gaul, and Africa; the
policy of the Emperors tended to break down the distinction
between citizen and provincial, and at last the franchise of
the Roman city was extended to all the subjects of the Roman
Empire. Western Europe became thoroughly romanized ;
even the Greek and his eastern proselytes became Roman in
political feeling, and learned to glory in that Roman name to
which some of them still cleave. In Syria and Egypt alone
did the old national feelings abide. Elsewhere, save some wild
tribe here and there, the Mediterranean world was wholly
Roman. Its unity was constantly rent by civil wars, by the
claims of rival Emperors, by peaceful division between Im-
perial colleagues. But from the Ocean to Mount Taurus no
Roman citizen thought of laying aside his Roman character.
Emperors reigned in Gaul and Britain ; but they were not
Gaulish or British sovereigns ; they were still Roman Caesars,
holding a part of the Roman Empire, and striving after the
possession of the whole. During the whole history of Rome,

252 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

both Old and New, from the first mythical King- to the last
phantom Emperor, it would be hard to find a city or a pro-
vince which, when it had been once thoroughly welded
into the Roman system, willingly threw aside its Roman
allegiance. Provinces might helplessly submit to foreign con-
querors, but they never asserted their own national inde-
pendence.'5*' Till Monophysite Egypt welcomed a deliverer in
the Mussulman Arab, it does not appear that barbarian in-
vaders ever met with actual help from the provincials any-
where within the Roman territory. Italy indeed, in the seventh
century of our sera, revolted against the Eastern Emperor and
gave herself of her own free will to a Frankish master. But
her Frankish master himself came as a Roman Patrician, a
Roman Caesar, to assert the rights of the Old Rome against
the usurpation of the New. Through the whole of this long
series of centuries, all who come in contact with the original
Romulean city, — the plebeian, the Latin, the Italian, at last
the inhabitants of the whole Mediterranean world, — all, one
by one, obtained the Roman name ; and none of them willingly
forsook it.

The workings of a law which went on in full force for
above two thousand years have carried us far away from
Mommsen's immediate subject. And yet we have perhaps not
spoken of the earliest instance of its working. Rome, as we
have said, is in Mommsen's view strictly a Latin city. He
casts aside with scorn the notion of the Romans being a
mongrel race, ein Mischvolk, an union of elements from the
three great races of Italy. Of the three old patrician tribes,
the Titienses were indeed most likely of Sabine origin ; but
they were Sabines who had been thoroughly latinized, who at
most, as other incorporated nations did in later times, brought
some Sabine rites into the Roman religion. The really Latin

* Whether the so-called revolt of Britain and Armorica in the fifth century
is to be reckoned as a solitary exception depends on two very difficult ques-
tions : First, How far had Britain and Armorica really become Roman ?
Secondly, What is the meaning of the not very intelligible narrative in the
last book of Z6simos ?

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 253

character of Rome was no more touched by them than when,
under the early Republic, the Sabine Attus Clausus, with his
clan and following, were changed into the Claudian gens and
tribe. Here then in days totally unrecorded, before the strug-
gles of Latin or of plebeian, we find the first instance of that
inherent power of assimilation or incorporation on the part of
the Roman commonwealth, which went on alike under Kings,
Consuls, and Caesars. The legend of Romulus is, in Mommsen's
view, a comparatively late one, as is shown by the name of
the eponymous hero being formed from the later form of the
name of the city and people. The oldest form is not Romani,
but Ramnes, that of the first patrician tribe ; and that form
points to the name of the Eternal City as having had in
the first days the same meaning as our own Woottons and
Bushburies. *

The other strong point of Mommsen, besides his treatment
of the primaeval archaeology, is his treatment of what we may
call the diplomatic history of Rome. In Rome's gradual march
to universal empire two great stages are marked, the com-
plete subjugation of Italy, and the conquest of Macedonia at
the battle of Pydna. Mommsen wholly throws aside the notion
that the Roman Senate and People acted through successive
centuries on any deliberate and systematic scheme of universal
dominion. War and conquest were undoubtedly as agreeable
to them as they have commonly been to most other nations ;
but their distant conquests were in some cases almost forced
upon them, and they often drifted into foreign wars as much
through the result of circumstances as from any deliberate
intent. It certainly seems to have been so throughout the
time of Rome's greatest glory. Rome was at the true
height of her greatness, within and without, in the fifth and
sixth centuries of her history. The days of her early civil
strife were over, the days of her later civil strife had not yet

* ' So dass der Name Roma oder Rama vielleicbt urspriinglich die Wald-
oder Buschstadt bezeichnet.'

254 MOMMSEN' S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

come. The old political struggle between patrician and
plebeian had become a thing of the past, and the far more
fearful struggle between rich and poor was still a thing of the
future. The Romans of those ages not only knew how to win
victories, they had learned the far harder lesson how to bear
defeat. The victories of Pyrrhos and Hannibal would have
broken the spirit of almost every other nation of any age.
But the endurance of Rome was never shaken; she could
dare to proclaim publicly in her forum, ' We have been
overcome in a great battle,' and her Senators could go forth
to thank the defeated demagogue'5*' who had riot despaired
of the Republic. Her political constitution may seem an
anomaly ; the sovereign Senate side by side with the no less
sovereign popular Assembly, the Consul all-powerful to act,
the Tribune all-powerful to forbid, may seem inconsistent, im-
practicable, unable to be worked. But the proof of the Roman
system is seen in two centuries stained by nothing worthy
to be called civil strife ; it is seen in the conquest of Italy,
in the driving back of Pyrrhos and of Hannibal, in tribu-
tary Carthage and tributary Macedonia. What the Roman
system in these ages really was is shown by the men whom
it brought forth ; men always great enough, and never
too great ; men ready to serve their country, but never
dreaming of enslaving it. What the true Roman national
being was is shown to us in the hereditary virtues of the
Decii and the Fabii, in the long-descended Scipio and in
the lowly-born Curius and Regulus ; we see it allied with
Grecian culture in Titus Quinctius Flamininus and standing
forth in old Italian simplicity in Marcus Porcius Cato.
Rome in these ages bore her full crop of statesmen and
soldiers, magistrates and orators, ready to be the rulers of one
year and the subjects of the next. But as yet she brought
forth neither a traitor nor a tyrant, nor, in any but the older
and nobler sense, a demagogue. To this splendid period
Mommsen is far from doing full justice ; he understands, but he

* Mommsen seems to us unduly harsh on M. Terentius Varro, as well as
on C. Flaminius. Arnold does them far more justice.

VII.] MOMMSEN' S HISTORY OF ROME. 255

does not always feel; his narrative constantly seems cold and
tame after that of Arnold. We miss the brilliant picture of
the great men of the fifth century;* we miss the awful vision
of Hannibal ;f we miss the pictures of Gracchus and his en-
franchised slaves and of Nero's march to the ' fateful stream '
of the Metaurus. Both tell us how the old Marcellus died by
a snare which a youth might have avoided; but in how
different a strain ! Mommsen gives us indeed the facts with
all truth and clearness :

' Bei einer unbedeutenden Recognoscirung wurden beide Consuln von einer
Abtheilung africanischer Reiter iiberfallen ; Marcellus, schon ein Sechziger,
fochte tapfer den ungleichen Kampf, bis er sterbend vom Pferde sank; Cris-
pinus entkam, starb aber an den im Gefecht empfangenden Wunden.'J

Turn we now to Arnold :

'Crispinus and the young Marcellus rode in covered with blood and fol-
lowed by the scattered survivors of the party ; but Marcellus, six times consul,
the bravest and stoutest of soldiers, who had dedicated the spoils of the Gaulish
king, slain by his own hand, to Jupiter Feretrius in the Capitol, was lying
dead on a nameless hill ; and his arms and body were Hannibal's. '§

The policy of Home during these two glorious ages had,
according to Mommsen, for its primary object, first to win,
and then to hold, a firm dominion in Italy. Its dealings with
the provinces and with foreign states were simply means to
secure this primary end. Italy was won ; its various states
were brought to the condition of dependent allies. This con-
dition deprived them of all practical sovereignty, and made
them in all their external relations the passive subjects of
Rome. But they kept their own local governments ; they
served Rome with men, not with money ; and Rome's con-
stant wars gave their individual citizens many chances of
winning both wealth and honour. Doubtless, as they had
constantly more and more to do with distant nations, they
began to feel a wider Italian patriotism, and to glory in the
triumphs which they had helped to win for the greatest of
Italian cities. This feeling on the one hand, and on the other

* Arnold, ii. 272. f Ibid, iii. 70.

% Mommsen, i. 464. § Arnold, iii. 354.

256 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

hand the occasional excesses of Roman officers in more degene-
rate times, combined to bring- about that yearning after full
Roman citizenship which we have so often spoken of already.
The old Latin League was no longer in being ; some of its
states had vanished from the earth, others had been incor-
porated with Rome. But its place was in a manner filled by
those Latin colonies, those children of Rome, on which, for
some not very apparent reason, the Latin, and not the full
Roman, franchise was bestowed. These were, in fact, Roman
garrisons, scattered over the peninsula, serving to watch over
the allied states, and to keep them in due dependence. Such
was the state of things from the Rubico to the Strait of
Messina. But for the full and safe possession of Italy some-
thing more was needed. Italy had no natural frontier nearer
than the Alps ; Cisalpine Gaul was therefore to be conquered.
And, looking beyond the Hadriatic and the Libyan Sea, Rome
had to settle her relations with the Carthaginian republic and
the Macedonian kingdom. The balance of power was in those
days an idea altogether unknown. To a modern statesman, could
he have been carried into the third century before Christ, the
great problem would have been to keep up such a balance be-
tween Rome, Carthage, and Macedonia. No rational English,
French, or Russian diplomatist wishes to make any one of the
other countries subject or tributary to his own ; his object is
not positively to weaken the rival state, but merely to keep
down any undue encroachment.* But, from a Roman point of
view, for Rome to be strong it was needful that Carthage
and Macedonia should be positively weak. It may perhaps
be doubted whether the modern system does not bring about
just as many material evils as the other ; but the two theories
are quite different. A war between Rome and Carthage could
end only in the overthrow, or at least the deep humiliation, of
one or other of the contending powers. But let France and

* [We had not then heard the thoroughly Roman doctrine that France
could not be safe unless Germany and Italy were divided, and that, because
Prussia had made conquests — not at the expense of France — therefore France
must needs get a ' compensation ' for the losses of other people.]

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 257

Austria go to war to-morrow, and the result will not be that
either Paris or Vienna will cease to be the capital of a power-
ful and independent state ;* those who pay the price will
be the unhappy scapegoats of Lombardy or Wallachia.f
But, in the view of a Roman statesman, Italy could not be
strong save at the direct cost of Carthage and Macedonia. A
first war with Rome, like a modern war, led at most only to a
payment in money or to the loss of some distant dependency;
but a second led to the loss of political independence;
a third led to utter overthrow. Thus the first Punic Wai-
cost Carthage Sicily and Sardinia, the second made Carthage
a dependent state, the third swept her away from the face of
the earth. The results of the first Macedonian War were
almost wholly diplomatic ; the second brought Macedonia
down to the dependent relation ; the third swept away the
kingdom and cut it up into four separate commonwealths ;
the fourth, if it deserves the name, made Macedonia a Roman
province. The difference in the processes of the two conquests
is a good commentary on Mommsen's theory. The problem
was for Rome to preserve a direct and unshaken dominion
over Italy ; everything beyond that was only means to an end.
But Sicily and Sardinia were natural appendages of Italy;
their possession by a state of equal rank might be directly
dangerous. Rome therefore called on Carthage to give them,
up, Sicily by the terms of peace with Carthage, Sardinia
as the price of its continuance a few years after. Their pos-
session was almost as necessary as the possession of Cisalpine
Gaul. But Macedonia had no such threatening colonies.
The first treaty with Philip was concluded nearly on equal

* [This was written shortly before the famous time when France made
war ' on behalf of an idea,' and ended by betraying Verona and Venice to
Austria. I was therefore by no means a false prophet. But it is worth mark-
ing how in those days the rivalry seemed still to lie between France and
Austria, not between France and either Prussia or Germany as a_whole.]

•f [Lombardy is now safe ; Wallachia and Moldavia I cannot but think
would be better off under the rule of Hungary — perhaps even as Hungary
now stands ; certainly when Austria is reunited to Germany, and when Hungary
stands forth in her proper place as the central state of south-eastern
Christendom.]

258 MOMMSEN 'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

terms ; the Macedonian frontier was simply ' rectified ' by the
loss of some points and the addition of others. Macedonia
too had to pass through a more gradual descent than Car-
thage. Even the third war, the war of Pydna, did not in-
volve destruction, or even formal incorporation with the
Roman dominion ; for Macedonia had sent no Hannibal to
Cannae, and her total humiliation was not so clearly an Italian
necessity as the humiliation of Carthage.

The original Roman system then was to maintain direct
rule in Italy ; to endure no equal power, but to weaken all
neighbouring states, to reduce them to what Mommsen calls
the condition of clientage. But it is evident that this system
could not fail to lead Rome more and more into the whirl-
pool of distant conquest. It is just like our own dominion in
India, where we have our immediate provinces and our client
princes answering exactly to those of Rome. In either case,
when intermeddling has once begun, there is no way to stop
it. Policy, or even sheer self-defence, leads to one conquest ;
that conquest leads to another ; till at last annexation is loved
for its own sake, the independent state becomes a dependency,
and the dependency becomes a province. The Roman policy
of surrounding Italy with a circle of weak states did not
answer ; it laid her open all the sooner to the necessity of a
struggle with the powerful states which still remained behind.
Macedonia was made, first a dependency and then a province ;
this only made it needful as the next stage to do the like by
Syria. The like was done Syria ; that only made it needful to
try to do the like by Parthia, with which the like could not be
done. In this last particular case, Mommsen shows very clearly
that the result of the Roman policy was hurtful alike to the
immediate interests of Rome and to the general interests of
the world. The monarchy of the Seleukids, the truest heirs
of Alexander's empire, whatever else it was, was at least, then
and there, champion of European cultivation. It was the
bulwark of the West against the East, the follower of Mil-
tiades and Agesilaos, the forerunner of Leo the Isaurian and
Don John of Austria. Now the policy of Rome brought the

VII.] MOMMSEN 'S HISTORY OF ROME. 259

Syrian monarchy to precisely that point in which the King
of Antioch could no longer defend his own eastern borders,
and in which it was not as yet either the clear duty or the
clear interest of Rome to defend them for him. The effect of
this is pointed out by Mommsen in a brilliant passage,
which shows how well he understands the relation of his own
immediate subject to the general history of the world.

' Diese Umwandlung der Volkerverhaltnisse im inneren Asien ist der
Wendepunct in der Geschichte des Alterthums. Statt der Volkerfluth, die
bisher von Westen nach Osten sich ergossen und in dem grossen Alexander
ihren letzten und hochsten Ausdruck gefunden hatte, beginnt die Ebbe. Seit
der Partherstaat besteht, ist nicht bloss verloren, was in Baktrien und am
Indus etwa noch von hellenischen Elementen sich erhalten haben mochte,
sondern auch das westliche Iran weicht wieder zuriick in das seit Jahrhun-
derten verlassene, aber noch nicht verwischte GeLeise. Der romische Senat
opfert das erste wesentliche Ergebniss der Politik Alexanders und leitet damit
jene riicklaufige Bewegung ein, deren letzten Auslaufer im Alhambra von
Granada and in der grossen Moschee von Constantinopel endigen. So lange
noch das Land von Ragae und Persepolis bis zum Mittelmeer dem Konig von
Antiocheia gehorchte, erstreckte auch Roms Macht sich bis an die Grenze der
grossen Wuste ; der Partherstaat, nicht weil er so gar machtig war, sondern
weil er fern von der Kiiste, im inneren Asien seinen Schwerpunct land, konnte
niemals eintreten in die Clientel des Mittelmeerreiches. Seit Alexander hatte
die Welt den Occidentalen allein gehort und der Orient shien fur diese nur
zu sein was spater Amerika und Australien fur die Europaer wurden ; mit
Mithradates trat er wieder ein in den Kreis der politischen Bewegung. Die
Welt hatte wieder zwei Herren.'*

But mixed up with much of the policy of Rome's Eastern
dealings there was undoubtedly a large amount of what would
nowadays be called philhellenic feeling. That the Roman
Senate, as Bishop Thirlwall says, surpassed all recorded govern-
ments in diplomatic skill, we can readily admit ; and yet we
need not attribute all their doings to some unfathomably
subtle line of policy. To hold that Rome acted, through a
long series of years, on a deliberate plan of gradual conquest —

* Vol. ii. p. 59. We are not quite sure however that Mommsen has not
too closely identified the Parthian dominion with the native Persian race and
religion. The rise of Parthia was, as he describes it, a great reaction of the
East against the West. But the Parthians seem to have been not quite
beyond the influence either of Greek cultivation or of Christianity. The final
blow was struck when a really national Persian state arose again in the third
century A.D.

8 2,

260 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

that she systematically made use of her allies, and cast them
off when they were done with — that she formed a league with
a state with the settled purpose of reducing- it to a dependency
in the next generation, and to a province in the generation
after that, — to think all this is really to clothe what is after
all an abstraction with rather too much of the attributes of a
living and breathing man. The characteristics both of the
Roman nation and of particular Roman families have so
strong a tendency to pass on from father to son that Rome
does seem clothed with something more like a personal being
than almost any other state. Venice and Bern are the two
nearest parallels in later times. But the policy even of Rome
or Venice still, after all, means the policy of the men who at
any given time took the lead in the Roman or Venetian
commonwealth. Even in those grave Senates everything
was not so much matter of precedent and tradition that no
fluctuating circumstances, no individual passions, could ever
affect their counsels. States, like individuals — for the de-
cisions of states are really the decisions of individuals —
commonly act from mixed motives ; and, as most men would
feel no small difficulty in analysing their own motives, we
may feel still more difficulty in analysing those of the Roman
Senate. So much generosity as to shut out all thought for
self, so much selfishness as to shut out all thought for others,
are both of them the exception in human affairs. To act
generously, provided it does no great harm to yourself, is,
we fancy, the commonest rule both with rulers and with
private men. There is no need to think that, when Fla-
mininus proclaimed the freedom of Greece, it was mere
hypocrisy on the part either of him or of his government.
But we cannot think that either Flamininus or the Roman
Senate would knowingly have sacrificed a jot of Rome's real
power or real interest to any dream of philhellenic generosity.
It is easy however to see that a strong philhellenic feeling
did really exist in the mind of Flamininus and of many other
Romans of his day. Greece was then newly opened to Roman
inquirers ; Greek civilization and literature were beginning to

VII] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 261

make a deep impression upon the Roman mind, both for good
and for evil. The famous cities of Greece had already become
places of intellectual pilgrimage. The natural result was that,
for at least a generation, both Greek allies and Greek enemies
received better treatment than allies or enemies of any other
race. Achaia and Athens were favoured and, as it were,
humoured to the highest degree that was not clearly incon-
sistent with Roman interests. But the tide must have turned
not a little before Mummius destroyed Corinth, even before
Lucius ^milius Paullus was forced, against his will, to destroy
the Epeirot cities. The phenomenon may well have been
analogous to one of our own days with regard to the same
land. A generation back men looked for results from the
emancipation of Greece which were utterly extravagant and
chimerical. The fashion now is to decry everything to do
with independent Greece, and to deny the real progress she
has made, because impossible expectations have not come
to pass. A generation of Mummii has, in short, succeeded
to a generation of Flaminini. Mommsen, we should remark,
by no means shares or approves of the philhellenism of the
victor of Kynoskephale.* He has throughout a way of deal-
ing more freely with established heroes, of casting about
censure with a more unsparing hand, than is altogether
consistent with the sort of vague and half superstitious
reverence with which one cannot help looking on the
men of old. Indeed, he sometimes passes from criticism
and censure into the regions of sarcasm, almost of mockery ;
he deliberately quizzes ' Plutarch's men ' with as little com-
punction as Punch quizzes the men of our own time. Con-
temporary events have brought this home very strongly to
our mind. While reading Mommsen's account of what we
may call the Lord High Commissionership of Titus Quinctius
Flamininus, we could more than once have fancied that we
were reading an attack in some English paper on him whom

* [Against Mommsen's treatment of these matters I was stirred up to make
a protest in my History of Federal Government, i. 640.]

262 MOMM8SJSTS HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

modern Hellas delights to honour as 6 Treptyrjuo? K<H ^l

Mommsen, following- Polybios, makes the battle of Pydna

one great stage in his history. Rome's work of conquest was

now practically over ; there was now little left to do but to

gather in the spoil. She had yet many battles to fight, many

provinces to win, but there was no longer any Mediterranean

power able to contend with her on equal terms for the lord-

ship of the Mediterranean world. And now she began to

show how little fitted her constitution was to administer an

universal empire. Men commonly look to this period of

Roman history for arguments for or against monarchy, aris-

tocracy, or democracy. Possibly all such may be found ; but

the most truly instructive lesson which it teaches is one into

which those questions do not immediately enter. That lesson

is one which, to the nineteenth century, has become almost

matter of curiosity ; but it was a practical lesson as long as

Venice ruled over Corfu and Kephallenia, as long as Vaud

obeyed the mandates of the oligarchy of Bern. That lesson

is this, one well set forth by Mommsen in several passages,

that a municipal government is unfitted to discharge imperial

functions. Such a municipal government may be either aris-

tocratic or democratic; but in either case it governs solely

in the interest of the ruling city. It need not be tyrannical —

Bern was far from being so; but the subject states, the

provinces or dependencies, have no share in their own

government, and their interest is not the object of those who

rule them. This warning will of course apply to all states

which hold colonies or dependencies ; but the cause is not the

same. The Roman Government, with its Senate, its popular

Assembly, its annually elected magistrates, was a government

essentially municipal ; it was fitted only for the government

of a single city. It had indeed, as if its founders had foreseen

the danger, something of a representative element from the

beginning. The ruling principle of the ancient city govern-

* [This was of course written when Mr. Gladstone's mission to the Ionian
Islands was fresh in men's minds.]

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 263

merits, aristocratic and democratic alike, was, we need hardly
say, that every member of the ruling body, be that body the
widest democracy or the narrowest oligarchy, should have his
personal share in the government, that he should give his
direct vote in the sovereign Assembly. But the territory of
the Roman city spread, at a very early time, over a region
far too wide to allow every Roman citizen to appear habitually
in the comitia. Had the voting gone by heads, the dwellers
in the city would have had it all their own way. This
was hindered by the tribe system. Each of the thirty-five
tribes had one vote. On the day fixed for an election or
for voting on a law, half a dozen citizens from a distant
tribe had the same voice as the hundreds or thousands of a
nearer one. In fact, as Niebuhr suggests, those half-dozen
rural voters might really be the chosen delegates of the
hundreds or thousands of their neighbours. Hence the
importance of the legislation of Appius Claudius and of the
counter-legislation of Fabius and Decius. Appius divided the
freedmen, the turbaforensis, the Lambeth and Tower Hamlets
of Rome, among all the then existing tribes ; that is, he put
the votes of all the tribes into their hands. Fabius and Decius
removed them all into the four city tribes, so that they could
command four votes only. But, even with this modification,
the Roman popular Assembly became, what the Ekklesia
never became at Athens, a body utterly unmanageable, which
could only cry ' Yea, yea,' to the proposals of the magistrates,
and in which debate was out of the question. And, after all,
Senate and Assembly alike represented purely Roman in-
terests; the Allies, still less the provinces, had no voice in
either body. It was as if the liverymen of London were to pass
laws and appoint to offices for the whole United Kingdom.
Under the municipal system of Rome there was no help.
Had Italy and the world been received into the old tribes, or
mapped out into new tribes, it would only have made the
Assembly yet more unwieldy than it was already. A repre-
sentative or a federal system would have solved the problem
without any sacrifice of freedom. But a representative system

264 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

the ancient world never knew; though the Achaian, the
Lykian, though, as we have seen, the Roman system itself,
hovered on the verge of it. Federalism was indeed at work
in its most perfect form iu Lykia and Achaia; but it would
have been vain to ask Roman pride to allow conquered nations
to set up Senates and Assemblies of equal rank with those of
Rome herself. The monarchy of the C»sars cut the knot in
another way : the provincial could not be raised to the level
of the citizen, but the citizen could be dragged down to the
level of the provincial. Both now found a common master.
The provincials no doubt gained by the change. It is indeed
true that the municipal origin of the Roman Empire, and the
covert way in which monarchy gradually crept in under re-
publican forms, caused the capital always to keep an undue
importance, and made, first Rome and then Constantinople,
to flourish at the cost of the provinces. But the evil was far
less under the Empire than it had been under the Republic.
The best Emperors did what they could to rule in the interest
of the whole Empire, and the worst Emperors were most
dangerous to those to whom they were nearest. The overthrow
of the Roman Republic, the establishment of the CaBsarean
despotism, was the overthrow of the very life of the Roman
city ; but to the Roman Empire it was a bitter remedy for a
yet more bitter disease. It proves nothing whatever in favour
of despotism against liberty ; it establishes no law that de-
mocracy must lead to military monarchy. Athens and
Schwyz had to bend to foreign invaders; but no Prytanis
or Landammann ever wrought a coup-(Felat. What the later
history of Rome does prove is that a single city cannot
govern an empire ; that for a subject province one master is
less to be dreaded than seven hundred thousand. Those seven
hundred thousand citizens were, among themselves, a frantic
mob rather than an orderly democracy : as against the millions
of Roman subjects from the Ocean to the Euphrates, they
were an oligarchy as narrow and exclusive as if they had all
been written in the Golden Book of Venice. The experience
of the last age of Roman history proves nothing against any

VII.] MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 265

form of freedom, be it Athenian democracy, English monarchy,
or Swiss or Achaian federalism. If it has any immediate
practical warning- for our own time, it is a warning against
the claims of overgrown capitals. It has lately become the
fashion to call the seat of government the ' metropolis,' and
the rest of the kingdom the ' provinces ' ; names unknown
to English law, and foreign to all English feeling. If we
begin to give eight members to the Tower Hamlets, the words
may perhaps begin to have a meaning; and Manchester and
Arundel, Caithness and Tipperary, may alike have to look out
for a Fabius and a Decius to deliver them from the tiirla,
forensis of a single overgrown city.*

* [Since this was written we have had an other lie form Bill, which, though it
has increased the number of ' metropolitan' members, l.>as not done so to any
frightful extent. It has always struck me that, though members should not be
given or refused to places in the haphazard way in which they still are, even
after the last changes, it would none the less be a mistake to allot members in
exact proportion to numbers. I could never agree to jumble together towns and
counties, large towns and small towns, without regard to their distinct feelings
and interests. And the greater a constituency is, the fewer members it needs
in proportion to its numbers, because it has greater means of influencing
Parliament and the country in other ways. In the case of London this reaches
its height ; every member of Parliament is in some sort member for London ;
his mind is open to London feelings and influences in a way in which it is not
open to influences from Cornwall, Galway, or Orkney. The money of the people
of Galway and Orkney is very likely to be spent on objects which concern only
the people of London ; the money of the people of London is not at all likely
to be spent on objects which concern only the people of Galway or Orkney.
The interests of the smaller constituencies need therefore to be protected,
in the House by giving them a proportionately larger number of members.
But this object is not fa;rly reached by giving, as at present, members purely
at random to certain towns, while other towns of the same class are without
any. The true solvent is the grouping of the smaller towns for electoral pur-
poses. In strictness of speech, London, though the capital of England and of the
United Kingdom, is the metropolis of nothing except its own colony London-
derry. The parliamentary and vulgar use of the word ' metropolis ' most likely
comes from the fact that, while ' London ' would hi legal language mean
nothing but the City of London, a word was wanted to express that great col-
lection of houses which forms London in the popular and practical sense.
As for ' provinces,' the application of the name to any part of Great Britain,
except in an ecclesiastical sense, is simply insulting. A province is a subject
state ruled by a Proconsul, Satrap, or Viceroy. The word has no meaning in
an island every corner of which has equal rights. How far Ireland, as long as
she cleaves to the obsolete pageant of a nominal Satrap, may not be looked on
as sinking to the level of a province of her own free will, is another question.]

266 MO MM SEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME.*

FIVE-AND-TWENTY years ago the Roman History of Niebuhr was donrinant
at Oxford. An examination in Livy was practically an examination in
Niebuhr. If any shrank from the task of getting up Niebuhr himself in the
crib— few in those days ventured on the High-Dutch text — to such Arnold
acted as the prophet of Niebuhr. Men whom oceans now separate took in
those days sweet counsel together, in college gardens or by the banks of
canals, strengthening each other's memory in the wars of the ^Equians and
Volscians as mapped out by the great authority. But an University is, beyond
all others, the place of change, the place where the wisdom of forefathers,
and even of elder brothers, is least regarded. Since those days, generation
after generation has passed through the world of Oxford, each knowing less of
Niebuhr than the one before it. The fall of Niebuhr was, we believe, followed
by a period — shall we call it a period of anarchy or of tyranny ? — when no in-
spired modern interpreter was recognized, but when men fell back on the text
of Livy himself. The Commonwealth, in short, was without a master ; Sulla
had gone, and Caesar had not yet appeared. Dr. Liddell's attempt at grasping
the vacant post came hardly to more than the attempt of Marcus Lepidus. At
last Mommsen arose, and, at the time of our last advices, Mommsen ruled in
the University without a competitor. We speak cautiously, because of the
swift march of all Oxford doings. We never have any certainty whether the
brilliant discovery of last term may not be a sign of old fogyism this term. The
statutes passed by acclamation a year back are by this time dragged through
the dirt like the images of Sejanus. So we do not affirm positively that Momm-
sen is at this moment the supreme authority on Roman History at Oxford.
We only say that he was so the last time that we heard any news upon
the subject.

We half regret, but we are not in the least surprised at the position which
Mommsen 's work has won. It is a position which in many respects is fully
deserved. Mommsen has many of the highest qualities of an historian. First
of all, he has the qualification which is the groundwork of all others ; he is a
thorough, a consummate, scholar. We stand aghast at some of his statements
and inferences, but we never catch him in a blunder. On the contrary he is
thoroughly master — master in a way of which few men ever have been — of the
history, the antiquities, the language and philology, of the people of whom he
writes. He has worthily won the right to be heard on any point on which he
speaks, and the corresponding right, whenever we think him wrong, to be
answered. If we hold him, as we do, to be in many ways an untrustworthy
guide, it is on grounds poles asunder from any charge of ignorance, careless-
ness, or inaccuracy.

To this sterling merit Mommsen adds another merit equally sterling. He
always tells his story clearly ; he often tells it with extraordinary force. We

* [This is printed nearly as it was written, merely leaving out one or two
sentences whose point was only temporary.]

VII.] MO MM SEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 267

quarrel with much both in his matter and in his manner, but his book con-
tains many passages of the highest historic power. To take instances from
the parts which, coming last, we have last read, it would be very hard to sur-
pass Mommsen's description of the state of Gaul at the time of Caesar's in-
vasion, of the warfare of the Parthians against Crassus, and, above all, of the
whole career, especially the legislation, of Caesar. We are here fairly carried
away in spite of ourselves. We think of another historian of Caesar, and we
try to measure the gap, not by stadia but by parasangs.

In this last quality Moinmsen is the exact opposite of Niebuhr. Niebuhr
could not tell a story ; he oould hardly make an intelligible statement. His
setting forth of his own opinions is so jumbled up with his citations and his
arguments that it is no slight work to know what his opinions are. He pours
forth as it were the whole workings of his own mind upon the subject, and we
cannot always tell the last stage from the first. Mommsen, on the other
hand, without troubling us with the process, gives us the results in the clearest
shape. We should very often like to ask him his reason or authority for
saying this or that. We never feel any need to ask him, as we should very
often like to ask Niebuhr, what it is that he means to say.

Here then are merits real and great, enough of themselves to account for
Mommsen's having many and zealous disciples. And, though we have a long
bill of indictment to bring against him, most of our charges are charges of
faults which have somewhat of the nature of merits, or which at any rate may
easily be mistaken for merits. Mommsen has faults, but we cannot say that he
has failings. His errors are never on the side of weakness or defect. They
are errors on a grand scale. If Mommsen made history instead of writing it,
we could fancy him committing a great crime ; we could not fancy him
playing a shabby trick. He might level a city with the ground ; he might be-
head four thousand prisoners in a day ; but he would not vex an unlucky news-
paper editor with the small shot of a Correctional Police. There is nothing
weak or petty about him from beginning to end. His faults are all of them
of a striking, of what to many people is a taking kind. Foremost among
these faults we reckon his daring dogmatism — the way in which he requires
us to believe, on his sole ipse dixit, without the shadow either of argument or of
authority, things which we have never before heard of, as if they were things
which no man had ever thought of doubting. But we have no doubt that
to many people this very daring is attractive. We can fancy its being especi-
ally attractive to the present generation of young Oxford men. It gratifies
the love of novelty and paradox, and it gratifies it in a grand sort of way.
There is a special temptation blindly to follow a man who clearly is not a fool,
who no doubt could, if he chose, give a reason for everything that he says,
but who deals with things too much in the grand style to stoop to give any
reasons. Niebuhr gives you elaborate theories about the early history of
Rome, but he also gives you, though in a somewhat clumsy way, his reasons
for forming those thoories. In this there is a certain confession of weakness.
But when Mommsen gives you theories equally startling in a calm way as if
there never had been, and never could be, any doubt about them, his very con-
fidence in himself is apt to breed confidence in a certain class of readers.
Mommsen and Niebuhr, in short, remind us of the story of the general who,
when appointed to the governorship of a West India island, found that he had

268 MOMMSEN 'S HISTORY OF ROME. [ESSAY

also to act as a judge. As long as he did not give his reasons, his judgements
gave universal satisfaction ; but when, fancying himself a great lawyer, he ven-
tured to give his reasons, his judgement was at once appealed against. So we
suspect that there is a class of readers who never think of appealing from
Moinmsen, while they would at once appeal from Niebuhr. On ourselves we
confess that the effect is different. We see that what Moinmsen pays is always
very clear and very taking; we think it very likely that he has good reasons
for what he says ; but we certainly should be better pleased if he gave us his
reasons and quoted his authorities.

We can fancy again tliat many tastes are pleased, though our own are dis-
tinctly offended, at the way in which Mommsen deals with various matters,
and especially with various persona whom other writers have taught us to
reverence. Mommsen can be grave and earnest when he chooses, but he too
often chooses to treat things and persons in a vein of low sarcasm which we
must look upon as altogether unworthy of his subject. Whatever and whoever
displeases Mommsen is sure to be set upon by him with a torrent of what we
can call nothing but vulgar slang. All sorts of queer compounds, of strange
and low allusions, are hurled at the heads of men for whom 'we are ol<l-
fashioned enough to confess a certain respect. Why are Pompeius and Cato
always to be called names ? Though to be sure, as to Cato Mommsen does
not keep on to the end exactly as he begins. At first he does nothing but
mock at him ; but towards the end of his tale Mommsen seems for once to be
impressed with the real grandeur of an honest man. And worse still is his
treatment of Cicero. The weaknesses of Cicero's character are manifest, and
no honest historian will try to hide them. But surely he is not a man whom
it is right or decent to make a mere mark for contemptuous jeers, for his name
never to be uttered without some epithet of scorn. This kind of thing seems
to us to be bad in every way. It ia bad in point of taste and art, and it is
thoroughly unfair as a matter of history.

This last point is closely connected with another fault. We mean Momm-
sen's custom of using strange words, and common words in strange senses —
words and senses which often seem still stranger in the English than they do
in the German. We believe that it is just allowable in German to call Sulla
a ' Regent' ; it certainly is not allowable in English. Here, it may be said, the
fault lies directly, not with Mommsen, but with his English translator. We do
not think so. Mommsen has a way of using words like this ' Regent,' words
which would pass unnoticed if they came only casually, as if they were technical
terms. In fact Mommsen confers titles on his characters out of his own head. If
we find Sulla and others systematically called ' Regent," even in German, much
more in English, it is hard for the reader to avoid the notion that ' Regent ' was
a real description used at the time. It is still worse when Mommsen constantly
speaks of Caesar as ' Monarch ' and even as ' King.' We see what he means ;
it is meant as a forcible way of saying that Caesar's power was really kingly,
that the commonwealth had become a practical monarchy. We suspect also
that he means to contrast the despotism of the first Caesar— certainly the more
openly avowed of the two — with the more carefully veiled despotism of the
second. Still we cannot think that it ia a right way of expressing the truth
to call Caesar, not in a bit of passing rhetoric, but frequently and deliberately,
Monarch and even King. It cannot fail to convey a false idea to the reader.

VII.] MOMM SEN'S HISTORY OF ROME. 269

Mommsen too is not free from the fashionable way of personifying this and
that, Kevolution and Reaction and so forth, though he does not carry the
fashion so far as many French writers. And he has throughout a way of using
words of his own making or choosing in this sort of technical fashion of which
we cannot approve. The Regency of Sulla and the Monarchy of Caesar are only
two cases among many. This tendency can hardly be separated from views of
facts which we cannot but look upon as erroneous. Mommsen, with the rise
of the coming Empire in his head, goes back as far as the Gracchi, and thinks
that Caius contemplated, or at least dreamed of, something like kingship. For
this we cannot see a shadow of evidence.

Mommsen's style, strictly so called, is a matter rather for German than for
English critics ; yet the interest which we take in a noble and kindred tongue,
a tongue whose European importance is daily growing, compels us to say a few
words. We are doubtless behind the age when we pronounce Mommsen to be
one of the worst corrupters of our common Teutonic speech. High-Dutch,
like English, is just now exposed to an inroad of Latin, or rather French,
words, which it seems to bs looked on as high-polite to prefer to the tongue of
our common fathers. And there is a difference between the two cases which
makes the fault on the part of our continental brethren still more unpardon-
able than it is among ourselves. An Englishman cannot speak perfectly pure
Teutonic, if he wishes ; a High-Dutchman may. First of all, owing to early
events in our history, there is a certain class of Romance words which have
been naturalized in English for ages, and against which no one wishes to say
anything. Secondly, our language seems to have to a great degree lost its
flexibility and power of throwing off new words, so that the stoutest Teutonic
purist cannot forbid the use of Romance words to express ideas which are at
all technical or abstract. We are of course using them freely as we now
write. But neither of these necessities is laid on the High-Dutchman. There
is nothing in his tongue answering to what we may call the Norman, as op-
posed to the Latin or French, infusion into our language, and the number of
the purely Latin words introduced at an earlier date is not very large. And
as for new words, the High-Dutch tongue, unlike our own, can make them as
readily now as it could a thousand years back. If a German wants a new
word for a new thought, he has nothing to do but to make it in his own
tongue. Yet, in defiance of all this, the German language is being flooded
with every kind of absurd French invention, orientiren, bornirt, nobody knows
what ; we look for a speedy day when mangiren and diren will supplant essen
and sagen. No one is a greater sinner in this way than Mommsen ; he seems
to take a distinct delight in corrupting the speech of his fathers to the ex-
tremest point. Why talk about ' Insurgenten ' and ' Concurrenten ' and
' Proclamationen ' and ' Patrouillen* ? why give us such foul compounds as
' Coteriewesen ' and ' Rabulistenart' ? We have not come across any German
writer of the same pretension as Mommsen who is in this respect so guilty as
Mommsen. His fellow-worker in the series in which his history is published,
Ernst Curtius, the historian of Greece, writes a language which, though per-
haps not quite the language of a hundred years past, is at any rate Dutch and
not Welsh. ' Lond uns tiitsch blyben,' said the old Swabian ; 'die walsch Zung
ist untrii.' But Mommsen at least acts on quite another principle.

At the same time we must add in fairness that Mommsen's stvle. allowing

270 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME.

for his strange words and strange uses of words, is singularly clear, and often
forcible. One has not with him, as with some German writers, to wander up
and down a sentence in hopeless ignorance where one is, and to seek for the
verb among thickets and quagmires miles away from its nominative case. But
then this is equally true of Curtius, without the sad drawback of Mommsen's
language. Dr. Dickson's translation, as far as we have compared it with the
original, which we have done through many pages, is carefully and accurately
done. He very seldom mistakes his author's meauing, and he commonly
expresses it with all clearness. His fault is rather that he sticks so closely
to the words of his author that his own sentences are rather German than
English. This makes the English translation a little unpleasant to read.

But there is a fault in Mommsen's work, far graver than any of which we
have spoken, and one which we think is of itself enough to make the book
unfit for the position which it now holds at Oxford. It is not too much to say
that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong, It is not so much
that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to know that right
and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more
clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome
gradually reduced the States round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence
— what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a
state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best
parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's un-
blushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can
have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be
anything but a fool. Every patriotic Greek, every Roman philhellen, is
accordingly brought upon the stage to be jeered at only less brutally than
Cicero himself. His treatment of Caesar is also characteristic in this way.
Caesar's still more famous biographer gives himself great trouble to justify
every action of his hero, to prove that Caesar was throughout a perfect patriot,
unswayed by any motive save the purest zeal for the public good. All this is
ridiculous enough ; still it is, after all, a certain homage paid to virtue. Momm-
sen is intellectually above any such folly ; at any rate he never trifles with
facts, and it seems perfectly indifferent to him whether Caesar, or anybody else,
was morally right or wrong. It is enough for him that Caesar was a man of
surpassing genius, who laid his plans skilfully and carried them out success-
fully. The only subject on which Mommsen ever seems to be stirred up to
anything like moral indignation is one not very closely connected with his
immediate subject, namely American slavery. It is however some comfort
that he does not, like Mr. Beesly, go in for Catilina.

We need not revie-v in detail a book which every one who cares for its
subject is likely to have read already. We admire Mommsen's genius, hia
research, his accuracy, as warmly as any of his followers can. We hold that his
book is most valuable for advanced scholars to compare with other books, to
weigh his separate statements, and to come to their own conclusions. But a
book which gives no references, which puts forth new theories as confidently
as if they were facts which had never been doubted — above all, a book which
seems perfectly indifferent to all considerations of right and wrong, seems to
us, when put alone into the hands of those who are still learners, to be
thoroughly dangerous and misleading.

VIII.

LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA.*

IN a former Essay we touched slightly on some of the political
phenomena of the last age of the Roman Commonwealth, but
without going into any details, and without examining in-
dividual characters at any length. We now propose to work
out rather more fully some of the points which were there
casually brought in, especially as they are illustrated by the
life and character of the most wonderful man of his genera-
tion, the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Among the many writers by whom the time of Marius
and Sulla has been treated in our own times, it is not needful
to speak here of more than two. Mommsen has dealt with it
at great length, and with all his usual power. Of Sulla him-
self he has drawn one of his most elaborate pictures, traced
with that vigorous hand every touch of which is striking
and instructive, whether it commands assent in every detail
or not. Here, as elsewhere, Mommsen errs on the side of
being wise above that which is written ; a few strokes here
and there are plainly due to the imagination of the painter.
But when any one has, by careful study of his authorities,
gained such an idea of a man or a period as those authorities
can give him, it is pardonable, and indeed unavoidable, to fill

* [This Essay, in its original state, had as its heading the names of several
works, German and English. But as the part of the Article which was given
to the criticism of those works could easily be separated from the general
historical matter, I have cut out all the critical part, save a reference here and
there, as being of merely temporary interest. But, for those who may remem-
ber the article as it stood in the National Review, I think it right to add that
there is not a word in those criticisms, any more than in those which were
contained in the article quoted in page 47, which I see any reason to with-
draw or regret on its own account.]

272 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

up an outline which cannot fail to be imperfect with a few
conjectural strokes of his own. It is a great matter to know
clearly what kind of idea of Sulla, or of any other man, is
conveyed to the mind of a judge like Mommsen by the
writings on which we have to depend. Even when there
are points on which we claim to ourselves the right utterly
to dissent, the result is very different from the blunders of
men who do not read their books with care, or from the
solemn emptiness of men who read with all their might, but
whom nature has forbidden to understand.

Long before Mommsen, in a time indeed which is now per-
haps wholly forgotten, Dr. Arnold wrote for the Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana that sketch of the later Roman History which
has since been republished as a continuation of his imperfect
History of Rome. It was a comparatively youthful produc-
tion, and it certainly does not show that full maturity of power
which comes out in the matchless narrative of the Hannibalian
War. But it was the worthy beginning of a great work;
and it is quite in its place as the best, though doubtless an
imperfect, substitute for what Arnold would have given us
had he been longer spared. It already shows that clear con-
ception of the politics of the time which shines forth so
conspicuously in Arnold's finished History ; and, in the part
with which we are now concerned, he displays less of that
partizan feeling which comes out, perhaps too strongly, in
his narrative of the wars of Caesar and Pompeius. And, above
all, Arnold showed then, as ever, that pure and lofty morality,
that unflinching determination to apply the eternal laws of
right and wrong to his estimate of men of every age and
country, which distinguishes him above every other writer of
history. Perhaps he sets up too high a standard ; perhaps he
is now and then hard upon men who may fairly claim to be
judged according to their own light. But it is something to
have history written by one who does not worship success.;
by one who never accepts intellectual acuteness, literary power,
or firmness of purpose, as any substitute for real moral worth ;
by one who never swerves from the doctrine that the same

V1IL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 273

moral law must judge of dealings between commonwealth and
commonwealth, between party and party, which judges of deal-
ings between man and man. Never did Arnold rise to a higher
pitch of moral grandeur than in his character of Sulla himself.
He refuses to accept Sulla's taste for elegant literature as the
slightest set-off against his crimes ; he tells us plainly that
the indulgence of intellectual tastes is as much a personal
gratification as the indulgence of sensual tastes, and that the
one is not in itself, apart from the ends to which it is used,
entitled to one jot more of moral approbation than the other.

We will now turn to our ancient authorities. We have for
the age of Sulla, as for so many other important periods of
history, no one consecutive contemporary narrative. This is to
be the more regretted, as the contemporary materials must have
been specially rich. The age of Sulla was an age of memoir-
writing at Rome, just like the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in France. Sulla himself left an autobiography, and
so did many other eminent men of the age. But all their
writings have perished ; for the age of Marius and Sulla we have
no such contemporary stores as we have in abundance for the
age of Caesar and Pompeius. Of that age too we have no com-
plete contemporary narrative ; but then we have the countless
letters and orations of Cicero for the whole time, and we have
the narratives of Csesar and his officers for a part of it. Of
Sulla's Memoirs we have not so much as fragments ; we have
no letters and very few speeches; the earliest orations of
Cicero belong to the last days of Sulla. As for writers not
contemporary, among formal writers of history Sallust comes
nearest to the time, and next to him Livy. We have also
Appian's History of the Civil War, and Plutarch's Lives of
Marius and Sulla ; there are also numerous allusions to events
of the Sullan age both in Cicero and in later and inferior
writers.*

* [There is also the account given in the sketch of Eoman History written by
Velleius in the early days of the reign of Tiberius, and the fragments of the
great work of Di6n Cassius. Velleius is of special importance, as he writes
in some sort from the point .of view of the Italian Allies. He gives

T

274 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

When we say that Sallust was not a contemporary writer,
we mean that he could not write from actual personal know-
ledge. He was born in B.C. 86, the year of the death of
Marius, and eight years before the death of Sulla. Still the
events of Sulla's dictatorship were such as must have made
some impression on an intelligent child ; he had plenty of op-
portunities of conversing with spectators and actors ; and he
had access to the documents, speeches, and memoirs of the
time while they were still in their freshness. Sallust there-
fore, if we had his guidance throughout, would be an authority
all but contemporary. But unluckily the work in which he
treated of the Social and Civil Wars has perished. In his
Jugurthine War however we have the narrative of the earliest
important exploits of the two rivals. We have characters of
both drawn by a master's hand ; and we have a speech, whose
substance at least is probably genuine, from Caius Marius
himself. Among the fragments of Sallust we have also a
speech against Sulla from the Consul Marcus ^Emilius Lepidus,
and a speech against Lepidus by Lucius Marcius Philippus,
both belonging to the year of Sulla's death.

Of Livy's History of this age we have only the Epitomes,
but these Epitomes form a complete, though, of course, far
from a detailed narrative. They sometimes help us to facts,
at all events to statements, which are not found elsewhere.
Thus it is only in the Epitome of Livy that we are dis-
tinctly told that Marius and Cinna entered on the consul-
ship in B.C. 86 simply by their own will and pleasure, with-
out even the form of an election. What we have lost in these

important details of the war, and his characters of Marius and Sulpicius
are specially striking. Di6n, a Senator and Consul under the Emperors from
Pertinax to Alexander Severus, is in point of date the latest of our authorities,
but his thorough knowledge of the Roman history and constitution, and his
access to and use of official documents, make him practically nearer to the
time than Plutarch or Appian. But of Di6n's History at this time we have
nothing but a few scraps, till we get to Sulla's proscription, which an extant
fragment describes in some detail. Both Velleius and Didn seem to believe in
a sudden change in Sulla's character, which strikes me as neither historical
nor philosophical.]

VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 275

books of Livy can hardly be guessed at. The carelessness and
ignorance which disfigure his treatment of early times would
not have affected his narrative of days so near to his own ; the
charm of his style would have been joined with real knowledge
of his subject, and, we have every reason to believe, with as
fair a judgement of men and things as we have any right
ever to expect.

Our main authorities then, after all, are the later Greek
writers, Plutarch and Appian. Plutarch, living under the
Emperors from Nero to Hadrian, is about as far removed from
the age of Marius and Sulla as we are now from the last half
of the seventeenth century. Appian comes a generation later ;
Marius and Sulla were to him as Charles the First and his
adversaries are to us. They therefore could write of the age of
Sulla only as we can write of it ourselves, by examining and
judging of such materials as they had at hand. They are
therefore merely authorities at secondhand. Had we any con-
temporary writers, we should doubtless cast Appian aside as
utterly as we cast aside Diodoros when we can get Thucy-
dides ; the charm of Plutarch's delightful biographies would
probably save him in any case. As it is, we are thankful to
them for preserving to us much of the substance of those
original writers which they had before them, but which we
have not. But in using them we exercise our own judge-
ment in a degree which we do not venture to do when we
read Thucydides, or when we read those parts of Polybios
where he writes from his own knowledge. Here, as in the
days of Aratos and Kleomenes, we have to stop and think
whence our informants got their matter, and how far the
narratives which they read were tinged with the passions of
the time. Aratos and Sulla left autobiographies ; there were
no autobiographies of Lydiadas or of Marius. Plutarch,
though his sound moral sense utterly abhorred Sulla's
atrocities, clearly writes on the whole from the Sullan side.
Doubtless Sulla's autobiography was one of his chief sources.
Hence he is perhaps unfair to Marius ; we may say, almost
with certainty, that he is unfair to the Tribune Sulpicius,

T 2

276 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

whose character is certainly one of the hardest problems of the
age. One German critic of these times * rules that Appian is
to be preferred as an authority to Plutarch. We are inclined to
agree with him, on the condition that no censure of Plutarch is
implied. Plutarch writes with a special object, Appian with
a general object. Plutarch tells us plainly that he does not
write history ; he writes the lives of great men with a moral
purpose ; he uses their actions only to throw light on their
characters ; he tells us that men's behaviour in small matters
often throws more light on their character than their behaviour
in great matters ; therefore he dwells as much or more upon
small anecdotes and sharp sayings as upon the gravest matters
of politics. He might perhaps even have gone on to say that
an apocryphal anecdote often throws as much light on a man's
character as an authentic one. Current stories about people
are often, perhaps generally, exaggerated ; but the peculiar
qualities which are picked out for exaggeration are pretty sure
to show what a man's character really is. All this doubtless
lessens Plutarch's direct value as an historical witness, but it
does not at all lessen the merit of his work from his own
point of view. Appian, a writer in every way inferior to
Plutarch, does attempt, perhaps not very successfully, but still
to the best of his power, to write a political history. We are
perhaps unduly set against Appian by his narrative of the
Hannibalian War, where we can compare him with first-rate
historians, ancient and modern. In that narrative he un-
doubtedly falls as far below Livy as Livy himself falls below
Polybios. But his narrative of the Civil War is evidently a
more careful composition ; he doubtless had more and better
authorities before him, and he was better able to understand such
authorities as he had. He at least tries to master the politics
of the time, and we owe to him several pieces of information
which are of great importance in illustrating them. Thus it is
from him alone that we hear of the marked separation between
the urban and the rural citizens during the tribuneship of

* [Lucius Cornelius Sulla: cine Biografie. Von Dr. Thaddseus Lau.
Hamburg, 1855.]

VIII] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 277

Saturninus, and of the strange temporary alliance between the
aristocracy and the mob of the Forum. On the whole, Appian
seldom contradicts Plutarch, though he often explains his
difficulties and fills up his blanks. On the other hand, we
must add that in the European part of the Mithridatic War
Plutarch had an advantage of local knowledge above all
writers of any age. Sulla's two great battles, Chaironeia and
Orchomenos, were both fought in Plutarch's native province,
and one of them close to his native town.

Such are the authorities, partly fragmentary, partly second-
hand, from which we have to gather up our knowledge of this
remarkable period, and of the two remarkable men who were
the leading actors in it. We may fairly wish that we had
fuller and more thoroughly trustworthy accounts ; but, com-
pared with our knowledge of some other ages, we have reason
to be thankful for what we have. There is quite enough, we
think, if it be carefully and critically weighed, to enable us to
put together a fairly accurate picture both of Marius and Sulla
personally, and of the age in which they lived.

In a former Essay a general sketch was given of the relations
which existed between the Roman Commonwealth and the states
which stood to her in various degrees of subjection or dependent
alliance. We there left Rome, after the victory of Pydna, still
far from possessing the universal empire of after days, but
already without a rival on equal terms in the lands round
the Mediterranean. In the sixty years between the battle of
Pydna and the first appearance in history of Marius and Sulla,
the Roman dominion had been greatly extended, but it may be
doubted whether the real power of Rome had been at all
increased in proportion. We left Carthage still a flourishing
city, internally free, if externally dependent on Rome ; we left
Achaia still a free confederation, whose dependence was in
theory even slighter than that of Carthage. Now those free
states have sunk into the Roman provinces of Africa and
Achaia, and the great cities of Carthage and Corinth have
vanished in one year from the face of the earth. Pergamos,

278 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

then a powerful kingdom, a cherished ally of Rome, is now
the Roman province of Asia. Macedonia, which, on the over-
throw of her King, had received a mockery of freedom, is now
a province also. The Roman power was now fast advancing
in Gaul, and Roman colonies were beginning to be planted
beyond the Alps. Numidia still kept her Kings, but after
Massinissa they were the vassals rather than the allies of
Rome. Syria, Egypt, Mauritania, were the only Mediter-
ranean kingdoms which still kept any share of independ-
ence. Republican freedom lived on only in the Lykian
Confederation and in a few outlying Greek islands and cities.
But each of Rome's territorial acquisitions gave her a new
frontier to defend, and new enemies to defend it against.
Rome was no longer threatened by Gaulish invaders, but
Roman Gaul had to be defended against independent Gauls
and wandering Germans. Macedonia was no longer the
oppressor of Greece and the rival of Rome ; but Rome had
now to do Macedonia's old duty of guarding the civilized
world against the Barbarians of Thrace and Moasia. Rome
had now firmly planted her foot on the Asiatic mainland;
but she now had to do for herself what Pergamos had once
done for her, to keep in check the rising and reviving powers
of the further East. The municipal system of Rome, admi-
rable as it was as the goverment of a single city and its
immediate territory, was wholly unfit either to administer so
vast a dominion, or to carry on the wars which its possession
constantly brought with it. The conduct of a war fell, by
Roman law, to one of the Consuls of the year. Now, to say
nothing of the not uncommon case of actual corruption or
cowardice, it clearly would often happen that a Consul who
was quite fit to be the civil chief of the commonwealth, who
was quite fit to carry on a war of the old local Italian kind,
would utterly break down when sent to carry on war in
distant lands against unknown and adventurous enemies.
Hence a Roman war of this period commonly begins with
two or three years of defeat and disgrace, followed by com-
plete victory as soon as the right man, Flamininus or Scipio

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 279

or Metellus or Marius, is sent to retrieve the blunders or the
treachery of his predecessors. The cause is plain enough.
The People of Rome, till they became open to bribes, were
quite fit to choose ordinary magistrates for their own com-
monwealth ; they were not fit to choose generals and adminis-
trators for the whole civilized world.

Within the commonwealth matters were^ worse still. The
old distinctions of patrician and plebeian — distinctions whose
historical and religious origin did something to lessen their
bitterness — had utterly passed away. The glorious age of
harmony and victory which followed their abolition had now
passed away also. Instead of patricians and plebeians, we
now see the nobles and the people, the rich and the poor.
The nobles were fast shrinking up into a corrupt and selfish
oligarchy. The people were fast sinking into a venal and
brutal mob. The old plebeian yeomanry, the truest glory of
Rome, were fast dying out ; their little farms were swallowed
up in vast estates tilled by slaves ; and the Consul or Tribune
who spoke to the Quirites in the Forum now commonly spoke
to a mongrel rabble of naturalized strangers and enfranchised
bondsmen. The Italian Allies, who had done so much for
Rome's greatness, were still legally free, but they were exposed
to all kinds of irregular oppression. Now indeed they were
beginning to ask for Roman citizenship, and to see their
righteous claims turned into a means to help on the schemes of
political parties at Rome. The two Gracchi had done what
they could to bring back a better state of things. Both of
them had perished, and the blood of Tiberius was the first-
fruits of the long civil wars and massacres of Rome. Step by
step, the little that Caius had really done was undone by an
encroaching oligarchy, by a thoughtless and ungrateful people.
The old constitution was thoroughly worn out ; the theoretical
sovereignty of the People was used only to seal its own
bondage and degradation ; the wrongs of the Allies were
making themselves heard more and more loudly. Subjection
to the true Roman People, to the descendants of their con-
querors, might perhaps have been borne ; but subjection to

280 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

the vile populace who now filled the Roman Forum was a
bondage too galling for the countrymen of Lars Porsena and
Caius Pontius. Still the Italians could at least make their
complaints heard ; but the provincials had to suffer in silence,
or to seek a mockery of justice from courts where the oppressor
was judged by the partners of his guilt. Such was the state
of the Roman commonwealth at the beginning of the memor-
able war with Jugurtha. It may be that, as Niebuhr says, we
attribute an undue importance to that war. It may be that
it was really only one of many like struggles, and that it
only looks greater because it alone happens to have been
chosen for a monograph by a great historian. Yet it is hard
to believe that many of the barbarian chiefs with whom Rome
had to strive on her vast frontier could have rivalled Jugurtha,
either in his crimes, in his undoubted natural powers, or in
the advantages of his half- Roman education. And however
this may be, the Jugurthine war must ever be memorable as
the first field on which Caius Marius and Lucius Sulla showed
themselves to the eyes of after ages.

These two men, of whom each alike may be called at once the
preserver and the destroyer of his country, were born in widely
different ranks, but both were men who rose wholly by their
own powers. Marius was by birth a man of the people in the
best sense ; he sprang neither from the proud nobility nor yet
from the low populace of the Forum. He was a yeoman's son*

* This seems, on the whole, pretty well to express the position of the family
of Marius. Mommsen surely goes too far in making him the son of a poor
labourer (eines armen Tagelohner's Sohn). Marius married a Julia ; he most likely
married her late in life, when he had already risen to distinction : still one can
hardly fancy a Julia sinking, in any case, so low as the son of a day-labourer.
There is moreover no sign of his ever being in difficulties for want of money.
That quickly vanishing class among ourselves, intermediate between the
higher farmers and the smaller gentry, would perhaps, better than any other,
answer to his real position. Such a man may have even reached the equestrian
census, — 'natus equestri loco,' says Velleius, which it is dangerous to change
into ' agresti,' — and yet have been looked down on by the nobles for his rustic
breeding and utter want of family honours.

[The whole portrait of Marius given by Velleius (ii. il) is very striking.
' C. Marius, natus equestri loco, hirtus atque horridus, vitaqtie sanctus,

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 281

in the territory of the Volscian town of Arpinum, whose citi-
zens had been admitted to the full Roman franchise only thirty
years before his birth. Family honours he had none, liberal
education he had none ; his temper was rude and coarse, and
on provocation brutally ferocious ; he had little eloquence or
skill in civil affairs, but he was not without a certain cunning,
with which he tried to supply their place. On the other hand,
he was a good soldier, a good officer, and we see no reason why
we should not add, a good general. He rose from the ranks to
his six consulships mainly, if not wholly, by his own merit.
And to his new rank he carried with him many of the virtues
of the state of life from which he rose : his morals were pure ;
he was a stern punisher of vice in others,* and the determined
foe of luxury and excess of every kind. Above all, his sym-
pathies lay wholly with the best element which was still left
among the inhabitants of Italy. The villager of Arpinum, whose
grandfather had not been a full citizen, felt with the remnant
of the old rural plebeians ; still more strongly perhaps did he feel
with the unenfranchised Allies. If the daring plebeian bearded
the nobles to their faces, the stout yeoman looked with no favour
on the law which distributed corn among the idle populace of
the city. The one act of his life which looks like truckling to
the mere mob is capable of another meaning. Hitherto no one
had served in the Roman army who had not some stake in the
Roman state ; Caius Marius was the first to enlist everybody
who came. To him we may well believe that fighting and
ploughing seemed the only callings worthy of a citizen; to
turn lazzaroni into soldiers might seem a charitable work ; if
they died, the commonwealth was well rid of them ; if they
lived through the campaign, he had turned useless citizens
into useful ones. The language of satire is not always the
language of truth, but certainly no saying was ever truer
than the noble lines of Juvenal, which set forth the glory and

quantum bello optimus, tantum pace pessimus, immodicus glorise, insatiabilis,
impotens, semperque inquietus.']

* See the story of Trebonius and Lusius in Plutarch, Marius 14.

282 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

happiness of Marius, had he never shown himself on any stage
but his own element, the field of battle.*

We will now turn to his rival. Lucius Cornelius Sulla had
in his veins some of the oldest and proudest blood of Rome, and
yet he owed almost as little to hereditary descent as Marius
himself. He was a patrician of the patricians, a member of
that great Cornelian Gens which gave Rome her Cossi and her
Scipios, but his immediate forefathers were obscure, and his
inherited wealth was probably smaller than that of the Volscian
yeoman. Men might almost have looked to see him take the
popular side, as that which was more natural to his position than
the side of the nobles. But he was twenty years younger than
Marius ; his rival was committed to the one party, and he could
become great only as the chief of the other. But neither rivalry
with Marius nor the desire of personal greatness was at all the
ruling passion in the heart of Sulla. If any man ever was a
born aristocrat, he was one. Amidst all his vices and crimes,
we cannot help yielding a certain admiration to the sincere, we
might almost say disinterested, steadiness with which he clave
to the political party which he had chosen. Sulla was not
exactly ambitious, at least he at all times loved pleasure better
than power; he utterly looked down on his fellow-creatures, and
could not stoop to the ordinary arts of the demagogue. Had
it been otherwise, he might no doubt have risen to sovereign
power by the same course as Dionysios and Caesar. His
genius both for war and for politics was consummate ; but he
loved ease and luxury better than either ; he took to public
life as it were by fits and starts, and he at least professed to
have been driven into the Civil War without any choice of his
own. But, when he was once fairly on the scene, he carried out
his object without flinching. That object was the restoration
of what he held to be the old, uncorrupted, aristocratic govern-

* Juvenal, x. 298.

' Quid illo cive tulisset

Natura in terris, quid Roma beatius uruquam,
Si circumducto captivorum agmine, et omni
Bellorum pompii, aniinain exhalSssct opimam,
Quum de Teutonico vellet descendere curru ? '

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 283

ment of Rome. To bring- that about, neither law nor con-
science stood in his way. He was not cruel in the sense of
delighting1 in human suffering; his natural character indeed
is said to have been eminently the reverse. He was easily
moved to pity; he was capable of love, perhaps of friendship,
in a high degree. But he stuck at no sort of crime which
could, even indirectly, tend to compass his ends. ' Stone dead
hath no fellow;' so he got rid of his prisoners and his political
opponents by the most fearful massacres in European history.
And more than this ; as long as it suited his purpose, he
winked at crimes of every kind in those whom he thought
likely to be won by such licence to be useful tools for his
purpose. An unscrupulous partizan was worth having ; for
the sake of such an one he would add names to the pro-
scription-list which his own political ends would not have
placed there. We may believe that Marius thoroughly
enjoyed a massacre of his enemies, but that he would have
shrunk from the wanton murder of any man who was not
his enemy. Sulla took no pleasure in bloodshed,* but he
would shed any amount of blood, guilty or innocent, which
was likely to serve his ends. When his object was once
gained, his cruelties came to an end. There is nothing in the
rule of Sulla like the frantic tyranny of some of the Emperors,
or of some Italian tyrants of later days. Nero lighted up
Rome with burning Christians ; Gian-Maria Visconti amused
himself with hunting his subjects through the streets with
bloodhounds. Sulla was never guilty of crimes of so foolish
a kind. He did not kill people for mere sport, neither did he
put them to death by torture, f To be sure, even when the

* Another German biographer of Sulla says : — ' Aber es ist ein Unterschied
zu machen, zwischen jener muthwilligen Grausatnkeit, welche sich ihrer
Unthaten erfreut, oder aus Rachsucht oder zur Befriedigung einer andern
kleinichen Leidenschaft mordet, und zwischen der Grausamkeit, welche, um
einen grossen, an rich oder in den Augen des Handelnden, loblichen Zweck
zu erreichen, kein Opfer fur zu gross halt." (Zacnaria, Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
177 ; Mannheim, 1850.) The words are tinged with the author's spirit of
apology for the crimes of Sulla, but they contain much truth.

•f Marcus Marius Gratidianus was put to death in a horrible way during
the proscription, but this was the private brutality of Catilina. That it was

284 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

proscription was over, he ever and anon reminded the People
that they had given him power of life and death. When
Ofella, one of his best officers, sued for the consulship in an
illegal manner, Sulla had him cut down before all men in
the Forum. By a more unjustifiable stretch of power, after
he had laid down his dictatorship, he caused Granius of
Puteoli to be strangled before his eyes for attempting to
shirk or embezzle the local contribution to the rebuilding of
the Capitol.* Of these two acts, the latter was a mere murder
done by a private man, but it was a murder with a purpose,
and that a public purpose. Through the whole of Sulla's
tyranny there is nothing passionate ; it is not so much cruelty
as recklessness of human life ; it is the cold, deliberate, ex-
terminating, policy of a man who has an object to fulfil, and
who will let nothing stand in the way of that object. We do
not say this in justification, or even in palliation. The cold-
blooded, politic, massacres of Sulla seem to us to imply a
lower moral state than the ferocious revenge of Marius, or even
than the bloody madness of Caius or Nero. In these latter
cases indeed the very greatness of the crime becomes its own
protection. Its doers seem to be removed out of the class of
responsible human beings into the class of madmen or of wild
beasts. But the massacres of Sulla were the deliberate acts
of a man whose genius as scholar, statesman, and general
altogether bars him from the poor excuse of those tyrants
whom we charitably believe to have lost their senses. That
such a man should have done such deeds puts human nature
in a far more fearful light than it is put by the frantic crimes

done by Sulla's order is not to be inferred from the few words of Livy's
Epitomator.

* The story of Ofella is given most fully by Appian (i. 101), who supplies
the legal objection to Ofella's candidature, which is passed by in Plutarch
and in the Epitome of Livy. One of Sulla's laws required that men should
rise to the offices of the state in regular order : the Praetor must have served
as ^Edile, and the Consul must have served as Praetor. Quintus Ofella sued for
the consulship per saltum, without having been Praetor or ^Edile. Sulla bade
him desist ; and when he continued his canvass, he ordered a centurion to kill
him.

VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 285

of silly youths whose heads were turned by the possession of
absolute power.

It is a very paltry and superficial view to attribute the acts
of Sulla to 'passion' and 'fury/ and to hold that his end
throughout was merely his own self-indulgence. Those who
talk in this way must have read history carelessly indeed.
That Sulla loved pleasure better than power we have already
said ; but, when once roused to political life, he had a political
object which he followed out unflinchingly. His old patrician
blood forbade him. alike to aspire to be a King and to sink
to be a demagogue. He would win back for the Roman
aristocracy all its ancient pride and power. He would have
no more turbulent mobs, no more factious Tribunes ; he would
have no more discontented Allies claiming to intrude them-
selves into the Roman Senate or the Roman Forum. The
Senate of Rome should again rule Italy and the world. Etru-
ria, Samnium, Lucania, dared to set themselves in array against
the majesty of the Roman commonwealth. The strong arm
of the Dictator came down on the rebels with the heaviest
vengeance. Prisoners of war were slaughtered by thousands ;
cities were swept away and whole districts were wasted ; the
revolted nations were, as far as nations can be, swept from
the face of the earth. Their annihilation secured Rome's
supremacy, and their lands stood ready to reward the faithful
soldiers of Rome and her Dictator. Inside the walls of Rome
he followed out as vigorous a policy to secure the power of
the Senate as he followed outside them to secure the power
of Rome over Italy. Every tradition of the past was bound
up in the honoured formula of the Senate and People. To
have taken away all power from the People, to have made
Rome like a narrow Greek oligarchy, would have been the act,
not of a restorer but a revolutionist. But Sulla could lessen
the power of the popular element by every restriction which
savoured of antiquity, and he could do much to make the
people degraded and subservient. At one blow he enfran-
chised ten thousand slaves whom his proscription had set free
from their masters. They bore his name, they owed to him

286 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

their political being; ten thousand citizens, ten thousand
Cornelii, were at once called into being to guard his person
and to vote as he bade them. A Fabius or a Scipio would
have shrunk with horror from tainting the Roman People
with such a plague-spot. But Sulla was an aristocrat of the
school of the old Claudii ; he acted in the spirit of the Censor
Appius when he scattered the freedmen through all the tribes.
A degraded and mongrel people would be more subservient
than the genuine, high-spirited plebeians of old. What Sulla
least wished to see was a Commons of the old type, strong in
the assertion of their own rights, but reverencing law and order ;
acting under the guidance of worthy leaders, but not prepared
to be the satellites and bravos of any man. All his political
legislation tended at once to degrade the popular character
and to lessen the popular power. Legislation was transferred
from the Assembly of the Tribes to that of the Centuries, where
property had more weight than numbers ; and even this more
trustworthy body was allowed to vote only on such proposals
as were laid before it by the Senate. The tribuneship was
too old an institution to be swept away, but it might be
made harmless. No man could now be Tribune who had not
been at least Quaestor ; the Tribune could no longer summon
assemblies and propose laws ; he who had been Tribune could
not aspire to the loftier offices of Prsetor and Consul. Men
could henceforth only rise to the higher magistracies by regu-
larly passing through the lower, with fixed intervals between
each. The six successive consulships of the elder Marius, the
consulship of the younger at the age of twenty, were thus
wholly shut out. In everything, in the spirit if not in the
letter, Rome was to go back to what she was before the Lici-
nian Laws, almost to what she was before the Decemvirate.

In all this Sulla acted strictly as an aristocratic leader.
He did not aspire to kingship, or even to tyranny. He
founded no dynasty. He had children and kinsmen ; but he
did nothing to secure for them any superiority above other
Roman nobles. He did not even keep his own power for his
lifetime. Created Dictator, with absolute authority for an

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 287

unlimited time, he wielded his boundless powers with terrible
effect till he looked on his work as done. He then laid down
his office ; he offered to account to all the world for his
actions ; and he withdrew to enjoy those pleasures, intellectual
and sensual, which he loved better than governing the world.
His crimes were greater in degree than those of either Csesar
or of either Buonaparte ; but there is something in all this
which sets him above any of the four. To say that Sulla had
a conscience, to say that he followed any object because he
thought it right, might be going too far; but he had an
object before him which was not wholly selfish ; he was above
the vulgar ambition of becoming a King and the father of
Kings. When the man who had killed — the reckoning is
Appian's — fifteen Consulars, ninety Senators, two thousand six
hundred knights, who had confiscated their goods and declared
their children incapable of office, who had moreover wasted
whole cities and lands, and had slaughtered a hundred thou-
sand Romans and Italians either in his battles or in massacres
after his battles, — when the man who had done all this offered
to explain to any one his reasons for doing it, and walked home
without a single lictor, — there was something in all this of
mockery, something of utter contempt for mankind ; but there
was also something of a feeling that he had not been working
and sinning only for his own gain or his own vanity ; there
was a kind of patriotism in the man, perverted and horrible
as was the form which it took.

The private life of Sulla was as wide a contrast as can be
thought of to the private life of Marius. Everything we hear
of Marius leads us to believe that his household was an old
Roman household of the best kind. But he was utterly with-
out intellectual tastes or acquirements of any sort. Sulla, on
the other hand, was a man of taste, a man of learning ; he
studied both Greek and Latin authors; he busied himself in
writing the history of his own times down to the day of his
death. He was a sensual and intellectual voluptuary ; he was
well pleased to unbend, to leave public affairs behind him ;
he loved sportive and merry conversation ; he loved the com-

288 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

pany of actors and artists of all kinds, from men of high
character like the great Quintus Roscius down to the lowest
instruments, male and female, of his pleasures and his amuse-
ments. He indulged, seemingly through his whole life, in
every form of sensual vice. And yet even his domestic life is
not without its redeeming features. How far he was capable
of friendship, as distinguished from political partizanship, we
can hardly judge. Certainly towards his partizans, Pom-
peius, Crassus, and the viler Catilina, his error was on the
side of indulgence. But the strangest part of his character
in this way is shown in his relations to his successive wives.
For an unfaithful husband to be also an affectionate husband is
no very strange phenomenon ; the annals of royal houses will
supply examples enough. But Sulla was something much
more than an unfaithful husband, he was a man given up to
every kind of foul and unnatural debauchery, and yet he
evidently both loved and was loved by those of his wives of
whom we have any account. He married five times. Of his
two first wives we know nothing but the names ; the third,
CaBlia, he divorced on pretence of barrenness, in order to marry
Csecilia Metella. Metella plays no unimportant part in his
history, and the relations of the pair were throughout those
of confidence and affection. If he divorced her on her very
death-bed, it was from a motive of religion, and by the order
of the chiefs of the national worship ; he was holding a solemn
feast, and his house might not at such a time be defiled by
mourning. But he made what amends he could by giving
her a magnificent funeral, in defiance of one of his own laws.
He ended by a strange love-match with a Valeria, the details
of which, as given by Plutarch, remind us of a cause which has
lately exercised the ingenuity of Irish and Scottish lawyers.*

* She sat next him at a show of gladiators and drew the hem of his toga
over her, to share in his good luck. Then follows a whole story of courtship,
a curious episode in such a life as that of Sulla. (Plut. Sulla 35.)

[The story is also told in a fragment of Di6n, i. 146 of Dindorf's edition.
Both Plutarch and Didn call this Valeria a sister of the great orator Hortensius,
which can hardly be. See Drumann, Geschichte Roms, ii. 508.]

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 289

He had children by three of his wives. His only surviving son
was of tender age when he died ; but he left also a brother
and a nephew, fuller materials for a Cornelian dynasty than
Cfflsar left for a Julian dynasty. But son, daughter, brother,
nephew, were all left in their native rank of Roman patricians,
to win such honours as the Roman People might give them.

The religion or superstition of Sulla is a curious subject,
which Dr. Merivale, alone among the English historians of
the time, has set forth as it deserves. Caius Marius, we have
no doubt, sincerely and honestly, like a good citizen, said his
prayers and offered his sacrifices to Jupiter of the Capitol and
to Mars the father of Rome. If he carried about with him a
Syrian — perhaps a Jewish — prophetess named Martha, we
must remember that Jupiter and Mars were tolerant deities,
who, as long as they were duly worshipped themselves, had
nothing to say against strange Gods being worshipped also.
Sulla's creed was more remarkable and personal. He was
certainly not an Epicurean in the sense of shutting out the
Gods from all care for human affairs. He had the deepest
belief in fortune, in his own good luck ; but that good luck
did not come to him by blind chance, it was his portion as
the special favourite of the Gods. But Sulla's religion was
rather Greek than Roman. He was the favourite of Aphro-
dite* : she gave him victories of all kinds ; through her grace
women yielded to him their favours, and his enemies yielded
to him trophies and triumphs. He gave himself the title of
Felix ; he called his children by the hitherto unknown names
of Faustus and Fausta; but his own Greek translation of
Felix was Epaphroditos, the darling, not of blind chance, but
of Aphrodite. He carried also, reminding one of Lewis the
Eleventh, an image of the Delphian Apollo in his bosom,
which he drew forth and addressed in fervent prayer in the
heat of his great battle by the Colline Gate. In the
height of his power, he dedicated a tenth of his substance to
Hercules,* and it was in the midst of this festival that the

* [Mommsen makes the Latin Hercules to be an original Italian ffer-
culus or Herclus. Preller (Komisch Mythologie, 640) rejects this. At any

U

290 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

priests made him divorce Metella. He paid strict heed to
dreams and omens, he set them down in his Memoirs, and
he bade his lieutenant Lucullus to attend above all things to
the warnings which were thus given him by the Gods.* He
put faith in Chaldsean soothsayers, who, in the midst of his
greatness, dared to tell him when it was time for him to
die. He believed in another world, and looked for a place in
some paradise of his own, of whose nature one would like to
hear more. Shortly before his death, — our authority is Sulla
himself, — his young son Lucius, the deceased child of Metella,
appeared to him in a dream, and bade him come and live
with his mother in a land of rest and freedom from care. He
had then, blood-stained and debauched as he was, some dream
of a better state of things to which the Gods would admit
their favourite, where wars and tumults were to be at an end,
where the chaste love of Metella would still be in its place,
but from which we may deem that Marius and Sulpicius,
Nikopolis and Metrobios, would all alike be shut out. It is
wonderful indeed thus to see the author of the Proscription
going out of the world with hopes for the future such as
might almost have cheered the death- bed of a Christian
saint.

We have thus tried to draw the characters of these two
mighty men, and we have drawn that of Sulla, as by far the
more remarkable study of human nature, at much greater
length than that of his rival. In so doing we have of course
forestalled the mention of many particular actions of both.
It is now time to see their characters more fully at work in a
summary, however short, of the main events of their lives.
The ancient writers delight in contrasts between the earlier
and the later character both of Marius and of Sulla. The
deliverer from the Cimbri and the deliverer from Mithridates
form a fine subject for rhetorical opposition to the party-
rate, by Sulla's time Hercules and the Greek HSraklSs were thoroughly
confounded.]

* Plutarch, Sulla, 6.

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 291

leaders who deluged Italy with the blood of citizens. Now
we have no doubt that Marius and Sulla, like so many other
men, lived to do deeds of which they would once have believed
themselves to be incapable. The young officer whom Scipio
^Emilianus marked out for honour at Numantia, the young
Quaestor who found out his marvellous diplomatic powers at
the court of Bocchus, most surely neither of them looked for-
ward to the day when each would lead hostile armies to the
gates of Rome. But we do not believe in sudden changes in
men's characters. Men's dispositions are born with them ;
their special developement is due to education, to after cir-
cumstances— in really wise and virtuous men, to diligent
training of themselves. The deliverer of Rome was, in each
case, not another man from her tyrant, but essentially the same
man under different circumstances. Neither Marius nor Sulla
did any great crime till comparatively late in life ; had Sulla
died at the age of fifty, and Marius at sixty, they would have
filled a much smaller place in history than they do ; but such
place as they would fill would be in the character of faithful
and useful servants of their country. But we do not believe
in any sudden corruption. Each found himself in his later
years placed under circumstances and laid open to tempta-
tions from which his youth had been free. The later man was
something very different from the earlier, but the difference
was one which was wholly brought about by the calling into
full play of qualities which had hitherto slumbered or had
been only feebly called forth.

Marius was more than fifty years old when he is brought
before us by Sallust in the Jugurthine War. But he had
already distinguished himself as an officer; he had won the
marked approval of the younger Scipio ; he had been Tribune
of the Commons, and, as such, he had acted the by no means
demagogic part of opposing the distribution of corn to the
people. But he had won the hatred of the nobility by carry-
ing a measure the object of which was, by some mechanical
means, to give more freedom to the popular vote. He had
filled the office of Prsetor, and had administered a province

u 2

292 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

with credit. He had thus risen to curule rank, and would
hand down some small share of nobility to his descendants.
But he had won the bitter hatred of the class into which he had
thus partially thrust himself. The new man at least should
not be Consul. The new man himself was making ready
by every means to compass his own elevation to the highest
place in the state. Some of his arts, as recorded by Sallust,
seem rather paltry ; but, even among ourselves, men say
things on the hustings which they would not say anywhere
else. Metellus, his commander in Africa, a man otherwise of
pure and noble character, deemed it his duty to throw every
hindrance in his way. For a Marius to be Consul seemed then
as monstrous to a Metellus as, two hundred and fifty years
before, the like elevation of a Metellus would have seemed
to Appius Claudius. A foolish insult on the part of Metellus
brought matters to a head. Marius might stand for the
consulship some day when the young Metellus was of age to
be his colleague — that is, Marius might stand, if he pleased,
when he was drawing near the age of eighty. Marius became
Consul, Proconsul ; he subdued Numidia ; he led Jugurtha in
triumph through the streets of Rome.* He was chosen,
contrary to all law and custom, Consul for a second, a third,
a fourth, a fifth time, in successive years, as the one man who
could save Rome from the great Northern invasion. Save her
he did, and that thoroughly ; the hosts of the Cimbrians and
Teutones were utterly cut off ; the Massaliots fenced in their
vineyards with the bones of the slaughtered Northmen.
Marius was ranked with Romulus and Camillus as the Third
Founder of Rome ; men poured out drink-offerings to him

* The horrible death of Jugurtha, struggling for six days with cold and hun-
ger in a Roman dungeon, is not the less horrible because of the fearful crimes
of which he had been guilty. But why was he not simply beheaded, like
Caius Pontius, like Vercingetorix, like the many other noble victims whom
Rome led in bonds through her streets and murdered in cold blood? One
cannot help suspecting that there was some superstitious motive which forbade
the shedding of blood in this particular case. Perseus of Macedonia, accord-
ing to one very doubtful story, was worried to death by being kept from sleep.
If this be true, the superstition is intelligible, for Perseus had surrendered, and
his slaughter would have been a breach of faith.

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 293

together with the Gods — the first beginning, it may be, of
that impious flattery which Rome, a hundred years later,
lavished as a matter of course upon all her tyrants. That
the great salvation of Aquae Sextise was due to Marius no
man ever doubted; that he had but a small share in the
crowning mercy of Vercellse is told us indeed by his biographer,
but it is told us on the authority of Sulla. His country
hearkened to no such whispers ; she hailed the yeoman of
Arpinum, and not the noble Catulus, as her true deliverer;
she honoured in him the union of modesty and valour, when
he declined a triumph over the Teutones in which his army
could not share, and while the host of the Cimbrians had yet
to be overcome. Well indeed had it been for his fame had he
died as he came down from his Teutonic chariot.*

Thus far had the career of Marius been great and glorious,
because the baser side of his character had had as yet but
small opportunity to display itself. He had raised himself,
by sheer good service to his country, from a humble Volscian
farm to a place alongside of heroes and demigods. He had
shown all the virtues of the old Roman plebeian ; if he had
shown too something of the rougher side of that character,
so had men no less venerated by later ages than Fabricius,
than Manius Curius, than Marcus Porcius Cato. He had won
victories at home and abroad ; he had won the consulship, in
his own words, from the nobles, like spoils from a vanquished
enemy ; he had, new man as he was, shown the moral courage
to withstand the licentiousness of the low rabble of the Forum ;
he had led a dreaded King in triumph ; he had saved Rome
from a foe more fearful than Hannibal himself. But amid all
this glory we can see the germs of his future crimes. We can
see in him the beginnings of personal vanity and of incapacity
to bear a rival. He envies Metellus, he envies Catulus ;
above all, he envies Sulla. The fierce conqueror, untutored
and unrefined, half grudged, half despised, the wonderful
diplomatic powers of his patrician lieutenant. It was Sulla,
after all, who, by winning over Bocchus to the side of Rome,

* [See my former volume of Essays, p. 398.]

294 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

at last brought about what the arms of Metellus and Marius
had failed to bring about, the final capture of Jugurtha. Both
in the Jugurthine and the Teutonic wars, Sulla served under
Marius in high but still subordinate offices, such as became a
rising man twenty years younger than his chief. In those
offices he had won fame enough to make men foretell his
future greatness, but not so much fame that a man who had
been five times Consul, who had won two triumphs and de-
clined a third, had any real need to envy him. Scipio ^Emi-
lianus had nobly and generously pointed out Marius as the
man who might one day fill his own place. Marius had no
such feeling towards his own brilliant young officer. Sulla
was young, noble, gifted with powers in which Marius knew
that he himself had no part. Marius hated him from .the day
when he engraved the capture of Jugurtha on his ring. But
years had to pass before Rome was to feel the full effects of
the hatred of the plebeian against the patrician, of the mere
soldier against the man who was soldier, scholar, and lawgiver
in one.

After his triumph, Marius was again chosen to a sixth
consulship. For this breach of all established rule there was
no longer any pretext : the Northern invaders were destroyed ;
there was no war of any moment elsewhere ; the deepest political
questions were indeed ready to arise at any moment, but Borne
had many citizens to whom she could intrust the care of her
welfare in days of civil danger far more safely than to Caius
Marius. But Marius had tasted the sweets of power, and he
would not willingly come down again from his height. To
shut out Metellus from the consulship, he did not scruple to ally
himself with the most infamous of men. He became the partner
of Saturninus and Glaucia ; of Saturninus, who, when he failed
in a legal contest for the tribuneship, murdered his successful
competitor, and seized his place by virtue of a sham election.
In this disgraceful year (B.C. 100) the reputation of Marius
was damaged for ever ; yet many of the measures which he
supported were thoroughly good in themselves, if they had
only been proposed by more reputable men, and in a more

VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 295

lawful manner. Marius and his allies were the friends of the
agricultural plebeians and of the Italian allies ; that is, they
were the friends of the best elements which Italy still con-
tained ; the mob of the Forum was in alliance with the aristo-
crats against them. Marius had already, without any legal
right, bestowed citizenship on a whole division of the Italians
who had distinguished themselves in his wars. Amid the din of
arms, he could not hear the voice of the laws. To give grants
of land to the deliverers of Italy was no more than the fit
reward of merit ; it was a course suggested by the precedents of
the best days of Borne ; it was a measure which, of all others,
would do most to preserve the rapidly lessening class to whom
Rome owed her greatness. Unluckily, thanks to the encroach-
ments of the nobles and the thoughtlessness of the people,
there were no more lands which could be honestly divided.
The materials for the grant were to be found in a foul abuse
of the rights of conquest. Cisalpine Gaul had been conquered
from the provincials by the Cimbrians ; the Roman People
had conquered it again from the conquerors ; it had thus, it
was argued, ceased to be the property of the provincials, and
had become the prize, first of the Cimbrians, and then of the
Roman People. The Roman and Italian veterans were thus
to be provided for at the expense of Roman subjects who had
already undergone all the horrors of a barbarian invasion. On
the other hand, to satisfy the mere mob, who would have no
share in the division of land, a new law was brought in for
distributions of corn, which this time Marius did not with-
stand. But the populace valued their own corn less than they
envied the lands of the veterans. Honest men of all parties
were indignant at the proposed robbery of the provincials ;
the mere oligarchs opposed anything which was proposed by
Saturninus and supported by Marius. The Consul had thus
brought three classes of enemies into alliance against him ;
the year was passed in strife and conflict, which at last grew
into open rebellion. The agricultural plebeians, when their
blood was once up, were no more sparing of violence than the
populace ; and the conduct of Marius himself was a disgraceful

296 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

mixture of low cunning and moral weakness. He neither
stood by his friends nor yet by the commonwealth. He had
the poor satisfaction of causing the exile of Metellus ; but
he had soon to go out of the way to avoid beholding his
triumphant recall.*

Marius had now utterly fallen in public esteem, but his
ambition was as insatiable as ever. He had found that the
Forum and the Senate-house were theatres where he was
likely to win no glory. But a day might come when Rome
should again call for the sword of her Third Founder. A new
Jugurtha, a new Teutobochus, might again make it needful
that the command of the armies of the commonwealth should
be intrusted to no weaker hands than those of Ca^us Marius.
Perhaps such a happy day might even be hastened. Mithri-
dates was rising to power in the far East : a war with him
might lead to richer spoils and more stately triumphs than
could be won at the cost of Numidians and Teutones. The
restless Marius, under a religious pretext, actually went into
Asia to do what he could to stir up strife between the Pontic
King and his country.

Meanwhile Sulla was rising into eminence slowly but surely.
He despised the office of -5idile, and stood at once for the
prffitorship. He failed from a cause which is worth remark.
Sulla was the friend of King Bocchus; King Bocchus was*
lord of the land of lions ; the friend of Bocchus should have
been ^Edile in regular course, and, as .^Edile, he should have
got lions from his friend to be butchered in such a Roman
holiday as no JEdile before him had ever made. We in
England do not ask for lions from our candidates ; but time
was when some boroughs looked to their members to supply
the materials of an annual bull-bait, and the members' plate

* [It is however only fair to quote the judgement of Velleius (ii. 12) on this
consulship. ' Sextus consulatus ei veluti praemium ei meritorum datus. Non
tamen hujus consulatus fraudetur gloria, quo Servilii Glaucise, Saturninique
Apuleii furorem, continuatis honoribus rempublicam lacerantium et gladiis
quoque et casde comitia discutientium consul armis compescuit hominesque
exitiabiles in Hostilia curia morte mulctavit.']

VIII. ] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 297

at the local races is not left off even in our age of humanity
and purity of election. Next year Sulla got his prsetorship,
but he got it by being liberal of money before the election,
and of lions after it. He then visited Asia as well as Marius,
but he went in the legal character of Propraetor, to restore to
his throne one of the friendly Kings whom Mithridates had
driven out. He succeeded in his object, and he had the hon-
our of being the first Roman who had any dealings with the
distant and mighty power of Parthia. Sulla received a Par-
thian ambassador, and he received him in a style which, in
Roman ideas, was but keeping up the dignity'of the common-
wealth, but which carried with it such degradation in Eastern
eyes that the envoy was put to death by his sovereign for sub-
mitting to it.

Were we writing the history of Rome, and not commenting
on the lives and characters of two particular Romans, there is
no part of the history of those times on which we should be
more tempted to dwell than on the tribuneship of the younger
Marcus Livius Drusus. But neither Marius nor Sulla is
mentioned in any direct connexion with the career of that
remarkable and perplexing statesman. If not at the same
moment, at any rate within a very short time, Drusus played
the part of Marius and of Sulla in one. He restored to the
Senate a share in the administration of justice ; but he was
also a founder of colonies, a distributor of corn, a promoter of
the claim of the Italians to the franchise, He was murdered,
and his laws died with him. But his tribuneship forms the
turning-point in the struggle. The failure of his schemes
drove the Italians to take up arms, and the Civil War of
Marius and Sulla was essentially a continuation of the Social
War with the Italians.*

The rivalry between Marius and Sulla was meanwhile
growing more and more deadly. Both chiefs had gone into
Asia ; but Marius had gone only as a private man ; Sulla had

* • So erscheint er [der Biirgerkrieg] als eine Folge von dem Kriege mit den
Bundesgenossen, ja in der That nur als die Fortsetzung dieses Krieges.'
(Zacharia, i. 96.)

298 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

gone as a public officer. He had succeeded in the errand on
which he was sent, and, if he had not extended the bounds
of the Roman dominion, he had brought a new land within
the terror of the Roman name. Marcus Marcius Censorinus,
a strong partizan of Marius, brought a charge against Sulla,
but he found it wiser to withdraw it before trial, a sort of
bootless attack which is sure only to strengthen the party
assailed. King Bocchus too made an offering in the Capitol,
a group of golden figures which represented himself giving
up Jugurtha, not to the Consul Marius, but to his lieutenant
Sulla. By all these things we are told that the wrath of
Marius was kindled. But we must again remember that our
main authority for these events is the history of Sulla himself,
and that, if Marius had had Sulla's gift of memoir-writing,
he might perhaps have told a different story.

And now came the Social War ; a war on whose character
and objects we made some remarks in a former Essay.*
Both the disease and the remedy arose from causes inherent
in that system of purely municipal government which was the
only form of freedom known to the ancient world. To a single
city indeed that system gave the highest form of freedom ; but
to a large territory it carried with it a bondage worse than that
of despotism. Rome was felt to be a proud and cruel mistress
to her Allies; but the remedy sought for was, not to throw
off her yoke — not to set up either a federal union or a repre-
sentative system — but to get the franchise of the Roman city
for all the people of Italy. The cause of the Allies was taken
up, as it suited their purposes, by the noblest and by the vilest
of the Romans, by Saturninus and Glaucia no less than by
Caius Gracchus and Marcus Drusus. To Sulla and the high
oligarchs no cause could be more hateful ; it was a lowering

* [Velleius (ii. 15) says of the cause of the allies, ' quorum ut fortuna atrox,
ita caussa fuit justissuna. Petebant enim earn civitatem cujus imperium
annis tuebantur ; per omnes annos atque omnia bella duplici numero se
militum equitumque fungi, neque in ejus civitatis jus recipi, quae per eos in
id ipsum pervenisset fastigium, per quod homines ejusdem et gentis et san-
guinis, ut externos alienosque fastidire posset.']

VIIL] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 299

of the dignity of Rome, and it was something which touched
themselves yet more deeply. To the Roman populace the
enfranchisement of the Allies was hateful on low selfish
grounds, as an infringement of their monopoly of power. To
the oligarchs it was hateful on a ground no less low and
selfish. It would be a real strengthening of the people. They
were willing enough to degrade the people by the wholesale
enfranchisement of slaves and strangers, Sulla's Cornelii and
the like ; but to raise the people by the enfranchisement of
honest yeomen and gallant soldiers from the Marsian and
Samnite lands would be to make it more worthy of its
constitutional functions, and therefore less subservient to
their will. Then too the allied commonwealths contained
nobles as proud and ancient as any of Rome's own patricians,
Etruscan Lucumos and Samnite Imperators. Make these
men Roman citizens, and the existing nobles must either be
content to divide with them their monopoly of high office,
or else they must stand by and see them pass into the most
dangerous leaders of a regenerated Roman People. It was, in
fact, the old struggle between patrician and plebeian over
again. The Italian Allies were now what the plebeians had
been in earlier days;* the union between the high aristocracy
and the low populace had its parallel in the days when
Appius Claudius allied himself with the mere populace against
such patricians as Quintus Fabius and such plebeians as
Publius Decius. The war broke out; the Allies, denied the
Roman franchise, set up, as we before said, a counter Rome of
their own. Rome had now to struggle, not with Epeirots and
Macedonians, champions of a rival military discipline, not with
northern or southern Barbarians, dreaded only for their num-
bers and brute force, but with men of her own race, schooled
in her own wars, using her own weapons, skilled in her own
tactics, led on by chiefs whom her system confined to inferior
commands, but whom a more generous policy would have
made her own Praetors and Consuls. In the new war success

* [See the speech of Claudius in Tacitus, Annals, si. 24, 'Plebei magistratus
post patricios : Latini post plebeios ; ceterarum Italiae gentium post Latinos.]

300 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

was very varied ; but Home had the advantage of her unity ;
she kept Etruria from revolting ; she won back one by one the
states which did revolt, by the grant of that franchise which
might have been granted before. The grant was, as the Allies
soon found, given in such a shape as to be little better than a
cheat ; but the offer was enough to do its work at the time.
One by one the allied states came in, save only Samnium and
Lucania, where the war still smouldered, ready, when the time
came, to break forth again yet more fiercely. The neighbouring
nations more nearly akin in language and habits, more easy
of access to the capital, gladly became Romans ; among the
countrymen of Caius Pontius, the old hate, which had doubtless
never wholly died away, now sprang up again to renewed life.
Their wish, as we shall soon see, was not to become Romans,
but to destroy Rome.

In this war both Marius and Sulla served ; Sulla increased
his reputation, Marius tarnished his. Some plead for him age
and illness ; some say that he was able to triumph over Bar-
barians, but not to contend with skilful generals and civilized
armies. Our belief is that the key to this contrast between
the two rivals is to be mainly found in their several feelings
and positions. Marius went forth against the allies, as he had
in civil strife gone forth against Saturninus, with only half a
heart. Sulla went forth in all the concentrated energy of his
mighty powers. The Roman patrician, the proud Cornelius,
went forth to fight for Rome, to spare none who disobeyed her
bidding or dared to parody her majesty. But the heart of the
Volscian yeoman had at least half its sympathies in the camp
of the enemy. He was not a traitor to betray the cause in
which he armed, but he was a lukewarm supporter, who could
not bring himself to fight against Marsians and Samnites
as he had fought against Cimbrians and Numidians. His
weakness, his want of success, lowered him still further in
public esteem ; perhaps the consciousness of his further
fall made him pant yet more eagerly for a field where he
could again display the powers which he felt were still within
him.

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 301

And now came the struggle with Mithridates. The Pontic
King had occupied all Asia ; he had massacred every Roman
and Italian to be found there ; his armies had passed into
Greece, and Greece had welcomed them as deliverers. He had
been, and still was, in league with the rebellious Samnites.
Such a foe was one very different from the Numidian who
kept within his own continent ; he was almost more dangerous
than the Cimbrian or the Teutonic invader. Home needed
her foremost chief to win back her lost provinces and to defend
what was left to her. But who was that foremost chief?
Consuls were to be chosen, Consuls to wage the war with
Mithridates. Twelve years before, every tribe would have
voted for Caius Marius and for whatever colleague Caius
Marius chose to name. Now the choice of the Roman People
fell on Quintus Pompeius Rufus and Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

We have now reached the famous tribuneship of Publius
Sulpicius. On this puzzling matter we think that much light
has been thrown by Sulla's German biographer, Lau.* It
has always been a problem how such a man as Sulpicius, the
first orator of his time, an aristocrat by birth and politics,
a man whose general character up to this time had stood as
high as that of any man in Rome, suddenly turned into a
fierce and violent Tribune like Saturninus. It has been usual
to look on Sulpicius as a mere tool of Marius, to look on the un-
just and unconstitutional proposal of transferring the command
from Sulla to Marius as the main object of their union, and
on the bill for bettering the condition of the new citizens by
distributing them through all the tribes as a mere means for
getting that measure through the Assembly. But we must

* [Lucius Cornelius Sulla, 187 et seqq. The account given by Velleius (ii. 18)
brings strongly out the supposed incomprehensible change in the character of
Sulpicius. 'P. Sulpicius tribunus plebis, disertus, acer, opibus, gratia, ami-
citiis, vigore ingenii atque animi celeberrimus, quum antea rectissima voluntate
apud populum maximam quaesisset dignitatem, quasi pigeret eum virtutum
suarum et bene consulta ei male cederent, subito pravus et praeceps, C. Mario
post Ixx. annum omnia imperia et omnes provincias concupiscent! addixit,
legemque ad populum tulit, qua Sullae imperium abrogaretur, C. Mario bellum
decerneretur Mithridiaticum, aliasque leges pernioiosas et exitiabiles, neque
tolerandas liberae civitati tulit.*]

302 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

again remember that the version which we have of these
thing-s is the Sullan version. The Sulpician Reform-Bill was
a bill for giving to the new citizens, instead of a franchise
which was a mere mockery, a weight in the commonwealth
proportioned to their numbers and character. It would, if it
had stood by itself, have won the approval of all, and history
would have set it before us as one of the best measures of one
of Rome's best men. Lau looks on it as really being so. The
bill for transferring the Mithridatic war from Sulla to Marius
he looks on as a mere afterthought, a stroke of defence on
the side of Sulpicius after Sulla and Pompeius had violently,
and indeed illegally, thrown hindrances in the way of his
constitutional reforms. On this again turns the question,
Who began the Civil War ? That Sulla struck the first blow
no man doubts; but he who begins a war is not always he
who strikes the first blow, but he who makes the striking of
that blow unavoidable. On the common view of the Sulpician
Law, Sulla had at least that excuse; he, the Consul, with-
stood a base and unconstitutional conspiracy to deprive him
of his constitutional powers. But the case is altered if we
hold that the first blow was really struck when Sulla placed
illegal hindrances in the way of a good and wholesome law of
Sulpicius, and that the bill for depriving him of his command
was merely a punishment for so doing, or rather a measure of
self-defence against him. We see nothing in the facts of the
case to contradict this view, which altogether gets rid of the
inconsistent light in which Sulpicius otherwise appears.
That, when he was violently opposed, he grew violent also
is not very wonderful ; but again we must remember that we
have no memoir from Marius or Sulpicius.* The Civil War
may now be said to begin ; it is worth notice that the first
and last act of generosity which was shown in its course

* The savage abuse of Sulpicius in Plutarch (Sulla, 8) must come from Sulla
himself. Among other things, he is said to have gone about surrounded by a
band of youths of equestrian rank, who were ready for anything, and whom he
called his Anti-Senate (avriavyK\r}Tos). One would have thought it incredible
that any mortal man could have confused so plain a story, and have said that
Sulpicius called them ' his Senate.'

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 303

comes from the side of Marius. Sulla, in one of the tumults
caused by the first Sulpician Law, sought shelter in the house
of Marius. His rival let him go free. Sulla spared no man,
because his cruelty was a cold, determined, adaptation of means
to an end. The cruelties of Marius were cruelties of passion ;
before passion had reached its height, there was room for
more generous feelings now and then to share the dominion
of his heart.

We must not seek to follow the rivals through the details
of the Mithridatic and the Civil Wars, and we think that we
have said enough to bring out forcibly the characters of the
two men. The first slaughter and pursuit of illustrious victims
came from Sulla ; Marius repaid them tenfold ; Sulla repaid
them tenfold again. Sulla was the first to lead a Roman army
against Rome, but it was only the Marian party that allied
itself with Rome's enemies. At the last moment of the war,
when the younger Marius was besieged in Prseneste, the old
spirit of Samnium again sprang to life. Another Pontius, a
descendant it may be of the hero who spared Rome's army
and whom Rome led in chains and beheaded, burst forth to
strike greater fear into Roman hearts than had been struck
by Hannibal himself. He came to deliver Prseneste, to deliver
Marius, but he came too to root up the wood which sheltered
the wolves who so long had ravaged Italy.* Rome had now
to do, what in Hannibal's time she never had to do, to fight a
pitched battle for her very being close to her own gates.
Sulla had saved the Roman power at Chaironeia and Orcho-

,* [The character of this stage of the war is brought out with wonderful
vigour by the Italian memories of Velleius (ii. 27). 'Pontius Telesinus dux
Samnitium, vir domi bellique fortissimus penitusque Romano nomini infes-
tissimus, contractis circiter quadraginta millibus fortissimae pertinacissimaeque
in retinendis armis juventutis, Carbone ac Mario consulibus, abhinc annos cxi,
Kal. Novembribus ita ad portam Collinam cum Sullam dimicavit ut ad summum
discrimen et eum et rempublicam perduceret. Quse non majus periculum
adiit Hannibalis intra tertium milliarium castra conspicata, quam eo die quo
circumvolans ordines exercitus sui Telesinus, dictitansque adesse Romania
ultimum diem, vociferabatur eruendam delendamque urbem, adjiciens num-
qnain defuturos raptores Italics libortatis lupos ; nisi silva, in quam refugere
solerent, esset excisa.']

304 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. [ESSAY

menos; he now saved Rome herself when he overcome
Pontius before the Colline Gate. But the salvation of Rome
was the destruction of Samnium and Etruria. Whatever
work the hand of Sulla found to do, he did it with all his
might.

At first sight Sulla seems to have lived wholly in vain. To
restore the power of the Roman aristocracy was a scheme
vainer than the scheme of the Gracchi for regenerating the
Roman People. This part of Sulla's work was soon swept away ;
but, because part, even the chief part, of a man's work comes
to nothing, it does not follow that he leaves no lasting results
behind him. Charles the Great himself seems to many to have
lived in vain, because Gaul and Germany have not, for nearly
a thousand years, obeyed a single ruler. Those who thus
speak do not see that the whole later history of Germany and
Italy bears the impress of his hand for good and for evil. So
the political work of Sulla soon perished ; but as the codifier
of the Roman criminal law, he ranks as a forerunner of Theo-
dosius and Justinian, and in another way his work is still
living at this day. It was Sulla who first made Rome truly
the head of Italy. He crushed every other nationality within
the peninsula ; he plucked down and he built up till he made
all Italy Roman. His harrying of Samnium still abides in its
fruit ; southern Italy never recovered from it ; that Apulia
and Calabria are not now what Lombardy and Tuscany are is
mainly the work of Sulla. But that every Italian heart now
looks to Rome as the natural centre of Italy is the work of
Sulla too. From his day to ours, Rome, republican, Impe-
rial, or Papal, has kept a supremacy without a rival.
When Italy was most divided in the middle ages, Rome was
still the object of a vague reverence which no other city could
share with her. And now Italy is felt to be cut short till she
can win back what every Italian looks on as her capital. Had
Pontius carried out his threat, had he won, as once he seemed
likely to win, in that most fearful of battles by the Colline
Gate, had he and Mithridates together so much as seriously

VIII.] LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA. 305

weakened the Roman power, the fate of Italy and the world
must have been far different from what it has been. The
first King of Italy who enters Rome may indeed sit on the
throne of Caesar, but he will reign in a city preserved for him
by Sulla.*

Why is it that those two names, Sulla and Caesar, call up
such different feelings? Of the two Dictators, one is never
spoken of without abhorrence, the other is never spoken of
without some degree at least of admiration. Yet there is
much likeness in the two men, and there are points in which
Sulla has the advantage. Sulla and Caesar alike were at once
generals, statesmen, scholars, and profligates. On the military
details of their campaigns military men must decide ; but the
results of the warfare of Sulla were assuredly not less than the
results of the warfare of Caesar. If Caesar conquered Gaul,
Sulla reconquered Greece and Asia ; if Caesar overthrew Pom-
peius, Sulla overthrew Pontius Telesinus. The political career
of Sulla is far more honourable and consistent than that of
Caesar. Both led armies against their country ; both gave out
that they were driven to do so only by the intrigues of their
enemies. Sulla struggled, we might say for a principle, at
any rate for a party, at any rate for something beyond him-
self; he scorned the gewgaws of royalty ; he aspired not to
keep perpetual dominion for himself, still less to found a
dynasty of Kings or Dictators in his own house. Caesar's
career was purely selfish ; it may be that the sway of one was
at the moment the best thing for Rome and the world; it
may be that Caesar knew and felt this ; still his career was a
selfish one. He sought his own advancement; he sank even
to the low ambition of titles and ornaments ; he wanted to be
called a King, and to wear a diadem. As private men, there is
little to choose between the two ; both were steeped in every
vice — refined, accomplished, scholar-like, debauchees. Why
then do we hate Sulla, and in a manner love Caesar ? Success
may have something to do with it ; Sulla's aristocracy passed

* [Italy has again won back her capital ; whether the man who saved Rome
was remembered at the moment may be doubted.]

X

306 LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA.

away ; Caesar's Empire fell for a moment, but it had strength
enough to rise again under his adopted son, and to live on, we
may almost say, till the present hour. The other Dictator has
left no such memorials before our eyes and ears; no month is
called Cornelius, no modern potentate calls himself Sulla as
his proudest title. But this is not all : the real difference
lies much deeper. Caesar, with all his crimes and vices, had a
heart. He was a man of battles, but not a man of proscrip-
tions. He was a warm friend and a generous enemy.* In
one point of view, Sulla's was the wiser policy. Sulla never
spared or forgave, and he died in his bed ; Caesar forgave, and
he died by the daggers of those whom he had forgiven. Most
men indeed would choose the bloody death of Caesar — a death
which admirers might call martyrdom — rather than the foul
and lingering disease of Sulla. But there is the fact; the
merciful conqueror died by violence, the wholesale murderer
went unmolested to his grave. Sulla really had in him more
of principle than Caesar ; but Caesar was a man, Sulla was
like a destroying angel. Caesar one might have loved, at Sulla
one could only shudder ; perhaps one might have shuddered
most of all at the careless and mirthful hours of the author of
the proscription. Great he was in every natural gift ; great,
one might almost say, in his vices ; great in his craft of
soldier and ruler, great in his unbending will, great in the
crimes which human wickedness never can outdo. In his
strange superstition, the most ruthless of men deemed himself
the special favourite of the softest of the idols with which his
heaven was peopled. We too can acknowledge the heaven-sent
luck of Sulla, but in another sense. If Providence ever sends
human instruments to chastise a guilty world, we may see in
the all-accomplished Roman aristocrat, no less than in the
Scythian savage, one who was, beyond all his fellow-men,
emphatically the Scourge of God.

* [To Roman enenties certainly ; but Vercingetorix must not be forgotten.
No captives were slain at the triumph of Pompeius.]

IX.

THE FLAVIAN OESARS.

A History of the Romans tinder the Empire. By CHARLES
MERIVALE, B. D. * Vols. VI. and VII. London, 1858-62.

are sorry that Mr. Merivale has made up his mind to
bring- his work to an end at a point earlier than that which he
first fixed upon. His first purpose was to carry on his his-
tory to the time of Constantino ; he has now ended it with the
death of Marcus Aurelius. Each of these points makes a good
ending for the book, because each marks the end of a distinct
period in the annals of the Empire. We should have better
liked the later date, partly because it marks the completion
of a still more marked change than the other, partly because
it would have given us the advantage of Mr. Merivale's
companionship over a longer space. By leaving off where he
has left off, Mr. Merivale indeed avoids any show of rivalry
with Gibbon. He now leaves off where Gibbon begins, and
the two may be read as a consecutive history. But we do
not think that Mr. Merivale, or any scholar of Mr. Meri-
vale's powers, need be frightened off any portion of the wide
field between Commodus and the last Constantine, simply
through dread of seeming rivalry with Gibbon. That
Gibbon should ever be displaced seems impossible. That
wonderful man monopolized, so to speak, the historical genius
and the historical learning of a whole generation, and left
little indeed of either for any of his contemporaries. He
remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom
modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set

* [Now D.D. and Dean of Ely.]
X 3

308 THE FLA VI AN C^SARS. [ESSAY

aside. We may correct and improve in detail from the
stores which have been opened since Gibbon's time ; we may
write again large parts of his story from other, and often
truer and more wholesome, points of view. But the work of
Gibbon, as a whole, as the encyclopedic history of thirteen
hundred years, as the grandest of historical designs carried
out alike with wonderful power and with wonderful accuracy,
must ever keep its place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon
must be read too. But, for that very reason, the scholar who
reproduces any particular part of Gibbon's History, Dean
Milman or Mr. Finlay, — we wish we could add Mr. Merivale,
— does not really enter into any rivalry with his great pre-
decessor. The two things are different in kind, and each may
be equally good in its own way. We do not think of com-
paring the man who deals with the whole of a vast subject
with the man who deals — necessarily at far greater detail —
with one particular part of it. And, after all, we hardly
feel that we have reached Gibbon's proper and distinctive
field, till we have reached a later period than that which he
and Mr. Merivale would have had in common. Gibbon is
before all things the historian of the transition from the Roman
world to the world of modern Europe. But that transition
can hardly be said to have openly begun till we reach the
point which Mr. Merivale at first set before him as the goal
of his labours.

Still, as it is, Mr. Merivale has the advantage of occupying,
absolutely without a rival in his own tongue, the period of
history which he has chosen for himself. It is only in his
opening volumes that he comes into competition with Arnold,
and there only with Arnold before he had reached the fulness
of his powers. The history of the Emperors he has, among
writers of his own class, wholly to himself. Yet it must not
be thought that he owes his vantage-ground solely to the
lack of competition. His history is a great work in itself,
and it must be a very great work indeed which can outdo it
within its own range. In days of licensed blundering like
ours, it is delightful indeed to come across the sound and

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 309

finished scholarship, the unwearied and unfailing accuracy, of
Mr. Merivale. It is something to find, for once, a modern
writer whom one can trust, and the margin of whose book
one has not to crowd with corrections of his mistakes. On
some points we hold that Mr. Merivale's views are open to
dispute ; but it is always his views, never his statements.
With Mr. Merivale we may often have to controvert opinions
which are fair matters of controversy ; we never have to cor-
rect blunders or to point out misrepresentations. We have
somewhat of a battle to fight with him, so far as he is in
some sort an advocate of Imperialism ; but it is all fair fighting
with a fair and moderate advocate. Compared with Arnold's
noble third volume, Mr. Merivale's narrative seems heavy,
and his style is cumbered with needless Latinisms, savouring,
sometimes of English newspapers, sometimes of French histo-
rians and politicians. Still he always writes with weight and
clearness, often with real vigour and eloquence. That he is
lacking in the moral grandeur of Arnold, his burning zeal for
right, his unquenchable hatred of wrong, is almost implied in
the choice of his subject and the aspect in which he views it.
But the gift of rising to the dignity of a prophet without
falling into the formal tediousness of a preacher is something
which Arnold had almost wholly to himself. And even that
gift had its disadvantages. Arnold could have written the
history of the Empire only in the spirit of a partizan. Arnold
was never unfair, but the very keenness of his moral sense
sometimes made him unjust. He was apt to judge men by
too high a standard. Mr. Merivale's calmer temper has
some advantages. If he does not smite down sin like Arnold,
he lets us see more clearly the extenuating circumstances and
temptations of the sinner. He has, as we think, somewhat of
a love of paradox, but it is kept fairly in check by a really
sound and critical judgement. While we cannot help setting
down Mr. Merivale as, in some degree, an apologist of Im-
perial tyranny, we are never sorry to see any cause in the
hands of an apologist so competent and so candid. Indeed,
when we compare his history with the fanatical advocacy of

310 THE FLA VI AN C&SARS. [ESSAY

Mr. Congreve, we hardly feel that we have any right to call
him an apologist at all. *

We said that both the point at which Mr. Merivale first
intended to stop, and that at which he has actually laid down
his pen, each marked the close of a distinct period in the
Imperial history. The history of the Roman Empire is the
history of two tendencies, working side by side, and greatly
influencing one another. The one is the gradual change from
the commonwealth to the avowed monarchy; the other is the
gradual extension of the name and character of Romans over
the inhabitants of the whole empire. Of the former the be-
ginnings may be seen for some time before the usurpation of
either Caesar ; of the latter we may trace the beginnings up to
the very foundation of the Roman city. The age of Constan-
tine, the point first chosen by Mr. Merivale, marks the final
and complete triumph of both these tendencies ; it is also
marked by the first appearance, as really visible and dominant
influences, of the two great elements of modern life — the
Christian and the Teutonic element. The mere beginnings
of both of course come far earlier, but it was in the third
century that they began directly and visibly to influence the
course of Roman affairs. When the Christian Emperor reigns
at Constantinople, when all purely pagan and all local Roman
ideas have become the merest shadows, when Caesar presides
in the Councils of the Church and has to defend his Em-
pire against Goths and Vandals, we feel that the purely
classical period is over, that the middle ages have in truth
begun. The last Constantine hardly differs so much from
the first as the first does from the first Augustus. Here
then is the most important stopping-point of all. But the
tendencies which reached their height under Constantine
had been working all along. It was Diocletian rather than
Constantine who really forsook the Old Rome; what Con-

* [Mr. Congreve's Lectures on the Roman Empire of the West are perhaps
best remembered through the crushing review by Mr. Goldwin Smith in the
Oxford Essays.]

IX.] THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. 311

stantine did was to find a better and more lasting place for
the New. * From Diocletian onwards, Rome never won back
her place as an Imperial dwelling-place. This forsaking of
the local Rome was indeed the consummation of the ten-
dency whose first beginning we see in the mythical history
of Romulus and Titus Tatius. Quirites, Latins, Italians,
Provincials, had all become equally Romans. The common
master of all might dwell, as the needs of his Empire bade
him, at Nikomedeia or at Byzantium, at Milan or at York,
anywhere rather than in the true Roman city itself. On
the other hand, this forsaking of Rome had a most impor-
tant influence on the future history of the world. When
Caesar definitely changed from a republican magistrate into
an avowed despot, he forsook the scene of the old republican
memories. Those memories were therefore able to keep on a
certain vague and fitful life down to our own age ; and, what
proved of greater moment still, the departure of the Emperor
left room for the developement of the Pope. Had the successor
of Augustus and the successor of St. Peter gone on dwelling
within the same walls, the Patriarch of the Old Rome might
never have reached any greater height than the Patriarch of
the New. The age of Constantine then is, above all others,
the point where old tendencies find their consummation, and
where new tendencies find their beginning. We should be
well pleased if Mr. Merivale would, even now, think over his
decision, and carry his history at least down to this most
important a3ra of transition.

Here then is the great turning-point, at the change begun by
Diocletian, and completed by Constantine. But, in the course
of the three hundred years which divide them from Augustus,
we may make several convenient resting-places. One of these
is to be found at the extinction of the first Csesarean line
in Nero. The founder of the Empire himself was a Julius, or
a patrician at all, only by adoption ; but both he and his suc-
cessors, down to Nero, were Cresars according to that familiar
legal fiction, and both Augustus himself and all his successors

* [See above, p. 238.]

3 1 2 THE FLA VIA N CJESA RS. [Ess AY

but one had real Julian blood in them by the female line.*
But with Nero the family succession, even as a matter of legal
fiction, came wholly to an end. Whatever family sentiment
might cleave to the divine race, to the heirs and kinsmen,
if not the literal offspring, of the deified Dictator, came to
an end with the last and vilest of the stock. The line of
^Eneas and Aphrodite was at an end ; their place was now
open to every Roman, a name which was soon to take in
every free inhabitant of the Roman Empire. Here then is
one marked point of change. The Caesar Augustus who
owed his power purely to the vote of the Senate or to the
acclamation of the soldiers was something different from the
Caesar Augustus around whom lingered a kind of religious
reverence as the representative of Gods and heroes. On the
fall of the Julii, after a short period of anarchy, followed
the Flavii. Vespasian came nearer to founding a real here-
ditary dynasty than any Emperor before him, or indeed than
any that came after him, till we reach the second Flavian
dynasty, the house of Constantine. Vespasian was followed
by his two sons, his only offspring, in peaceful succession. On
the death of Domitian, Nerva was peacefully chosen, and from
him the Empire passed, by a series of adoptions, to Marcus
Aurelius and his son Commodus. At the extinction of this
artificial house of the Antonines we may place, with Mr. Meri-
vale, another great break. We have now lost anything like a
dynasty; the last traces of the hereditary feeling are seen in
the attempt of Severus to connect himself with the Antonines,
and in the further attempt to connect the Syrian youths
Elagabalus and Alexander with Severus. But the unbroken
line of adopted Emperors, which begins with Nerva, ends with
Commodus. Here is the real break. Mr. Merivale should, in

* The grandmother of Augustus was a Julia, a sister of the Dictator.
Caius was the grandson, and Nero the great-grandson, of Julia, the daughter
of Augustus, through their mothers, the elder and younger Agrippina.
Claudius, though not a descendant of Augustus, was a grandson of his sister
Octavia, and therefore had as much Caesarean blood in him as Augustus
himself. Tiberius alone was a purely artificial Caesar, a complete stranger in
blood to the Julian house.

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 313

consistency, have at least taken in Commodus in his history
as well as his father. But it is with Commodus that Gibbon
begins, and Marcus makes a more impressive and honourable
ending- for his Imperial series.

The period dealt with in Mr. Merivale's last volume, the
period from Vespasian to Marcus Aurelius, is distinguished
in many ways, both from the days of the Julian dynasty which
went before it and from the days of military anarchy which
came after it. In most respects it contrasts very favourably
with both periods. From the accession of Vespasian in
A.D. 69 to the death of Commodus in A.D. 193, the Empire
was under a really settled government. Of nine Emperors
seven were good rulers, and those seven died — we were going
to say, in their beds, only the first of them, as all the world
knows, died standing. Two only, the tyrants Domitian and
Commodus, died by violence, and they died, not by military
insurrection, but by private conspiracy. In both cases a vir-
tuous successor was at once found. The death of Commodus
and the accession of Pertinax read like a repetition of the
death of Domitian and the accession of Nerva. But the
military element was now too strong ; Emperors were for the
future to be set up and put down at the will of the army ;
most of them were murdered by their soldiers or by their
successors; till Rome, under her Imperial High Pontiff, became
like the grove of Juno at Aricia in old times :

'Those trees in whose deep shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.'

In fact, with a few short exceptions, the whole period of
ninety-two years, from Pertinax to Diocletian, seems little more
than an expansion on a gigantic scale of the year of anarchy
between Nero and Vespasian. With the organized despotism
of Diocletian an approach to settled order begins again, a
very imperfect approach as compared with the time of the
Flavii and the Antonines, but still a vast improvement on
the fearful century which went before it.

314 THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. [ESSAY

We thus get three great settled periods — the Julian dynasty,
the Flavian and Antonine period, and the period of Diocletian
and Constantine ; the first being divided from the second by
a short, and the second from the third by a long, interval of
military anarchy. Three sets of princes, whose names, order,
and actions it is easy to remember, are divided by groups of
others, who flit by, one after another, like a procession of
ghastly shadows. This sort of alternation goes on down to
the last days of the Byzantine Empire. The groups and
dynasties of Emperors which we remember, the houses of
Theodosius, Justin, Heraclius, Leo, Basil, Komnenos, Angelos,
and Palaiologos, are divided from one another by groups of
ephemeral princes, who rise, fall, and are forgotten. And
something analogous, though of course not owing to the same
cause, may be seen in the succession of the Popes as well as
of the Caesars. A group of Pontiffs of some mark, each of
whom reigned for some years and whose actions live in the
memory, is divided from another group of the same kind by
a herd of momentary Popes, pressing on one another with
puzzling haste, and who seem to have come into being only in
order to add to the number of Johns, Gregories, or Leos.
But perhaps no group in the whole line, either of Popes or
of Emperors, is so clearly marked out as that of which, and
especially of its first three members, we are about to treat
somewhat more at length. This is the series of nine Caesars
which begins with Vespasian and ends with Commodus,
among whom we mean more especially to dwell on the three
Flavii, Vespasian himself and his two sons.

The nature and origin of the Imperial sovereignty has been
well explained by Mr. Merivale in one of his earlier volumes.
The causes which made it a kind of necessity we have our-
selves spoken of in a former essay.* The constitution of the
Roman Commonwealth, which had worked so well as the con-
stitution of a single city, broke down when it was applied
to the government of an Empire which took in all the nations

* See above, p. 264.

IX.] THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. 315

around the Mediterranean. A federal or a representative form
might have done something to lessen the evil ; but both of
them were practically out of the question. As long therefore
as the Commonwealth lasted, the essentially municipal govern-
ment of a single city held absolute sway over the whole Roman
dominion. The only way by which the subject races, the
Latins, Italians, and Provincials, could be admitted to any
share in the general government was by clothing them —
sometimes as individuals, sometimes as whole communities —
with the local franchise of the Roman city, a franchise which
could be exercised nowhere but in the Roman city itself. It
was not till the votes of the people had ceased to be of any
importance that Augustus devised a plan by which the votes
of non-resident citizens might be collected in their own towns.
Such a system was too unnatural to last. The Empire itself
was a relief. If, instead of our representative constitution,
the supreme power over the wrhole of the British dominions
were vested in a primary Assembly of the citizens of London,
even though every inhabitant of Great Britain received the
local franchise, we should most likely welcome any Csesar
or Buonaparte who would deliver us from such a state of
things. This tendency towards monarchy may be traced back
at least to the days of Marius and Sulla, — even, according to
Mommsen, as far back as those of Caius Gracchus. The usur-
pation of Cinna, the dictatorship of Sulla, the extraordinary
commands and the sole consulship of Pompeius, the dictator-
ship of the first Caesar, were all steps in the same direction.
Csesar indeed dared to clutch at actual kingship, but popular
feeling was too strong for him ; and a thousand years had to
pass before any man ventured to call himself King of the
Romans. The second Csesar took warning, and established a
virtual despotism on a purely republican groundwork. The
form of the Roman monarchy may be best described as an extra-
ordinary commission which went on for ever. The republic
was not abolished ; Senate, People, Magistrates, retained their
old rights; but certain powers were specially vested in one
particular magistrate, which practically cut down all the rest

316 THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. [ESSAY

to shadows. A single citizen was at once Imperator of the
army, Prince of the Senate, and High Pontiff of the national
religion. If he was not actually Consul, one vote clothed
him with the active powers of the consulship ; if he was not
actually Tribune, another vote clothed him with the negative
powers of the tribuneship.* At once Consul and Tribune
within the city, he held the authority of Proconsul in every
province of the Commonwealth. A Magistrate clothed with
such accumulated powers, one who held all at once the various
offices which were meant to act as checks upon one another,
one who could at once command as Consul and forbid as
Tribune, was practically as absolute a ruler as any King or
Tyrant. Still, in form he was not a King, but a Magistrate ;
the various powers and titles which together made up sove-
reignty had to be specially conferred on each succeeding
Emperor ; they were not always conferred by a single vote,
nor always accepted at once by the prince on whom they were
pressed. Augustus indeed would not even accept his special
powers for life ; he had them renewed to him over and over
again for periods of five or ten years. The Caesar was thus
in truth an absolute monarch, and his Greek subjects, from
the very beginning, did not scruple to give him the kingly
title, f But in theory he was only a citizen, a senator, a
magistrate — the first of citizens, the first of senators, the first
of magistrates. Doubtless there was something of solemn
hypocrisy in all this ; but the peculiar hidden nature of the
Imperial power had some very practical results. As compared

* Each Emperor commonly assumed the actual consulship at least once,
often much oftener. Augustus could not assume the actual tribuneship, be-
cause, though a plebeian by birth, he had been adopted into the patrician
house of the Julii. Hence both he and succeeding Emperors obtained the
grant of the tribunitian power without holding the office, and it was in this
particular tribunitian power, more than in anything else, that their sovereignty
was felt really to dwell.

t The formal equivalent of Imperator is of course avroKp&Toip • but it is
clear from the New Testament, to go no further, that the provincials freely
spoke of even the Julian Caesars as @aai\tvs. It is curious to trace how, in
the progress of the Empire, fiaat\tvs obtained the special sense of Emperor,
while mere Kings were only pf

IX.] THE FLA VI AN CJ2SARS. 317

with acknowledged kingship, we shall hardly be wrong in
saying that it made the rule of a good Emperor better, and
the rule of a bad Emperor worse.

The Caesar then and his family had no court, no position
wholly distinct from that of other Roman nobles. The very
fact that the Roman Empire took in the whole civilized
world of itself hindered the growth of any royal caste.
There were no foreign princesses for the Emperor to marry ;
there was no privileged order out of whom candidates were to
be chosen for the vacant throne. Any man of R/oman birth
might, by election, adoption, or force, become Csesar and
Augustus; no man of other than Roman birth could dream
of such a post for a moment. Any woman of Roman birth
might become the wife and mother of Caesars and Augusti ;
but the thought of a foreign Queen, the daughter of Ptolemy
or the daughter of Herod, was something from which every
Roman shrank as an abomination. And the citizen who was
thus raised to the first rank among citizens was not placed in
any position outwardly to lord it over his brethren. Practically
they were his slaves, but no court-etiquette reminded them of
their slavery. The Emperor gave his vote in the Senate like
another Senator ; as Prince of the Senate he gave the first
vote ; but it was open either to patriots or to subtle flatterers
to vote another way. His household was like that of any other
Roman noble ; he mixed with other Roman nobles on terms
of social, equality ; he had no crowns and sceptres, no bend-
ings of the knee, no titles of Majesty or Highness. The
master of the world was addressed by his subjects by the
simple name of Caesar, half his hereditary surname, half his
official title. No Chief Butlers or High Falconers or Lord
Stewards swelled the pomp of an Augustus ; no Cornelia or
^Emilia waited as Maid of Honour or Lady in Waiting upon
the bidding of the proudest Augusta. Such personal services
as the first of citizens needed were done for him, as for all
other citizens, by the hands of his own slaves and freedmeu.
No Roman would have felt himself honoured by tying the
Imperial shoe-latchet or serving at the Imperial table. It

3 1 8 THE FLA VIA N C^ESA RS. [ESSAY

was unusual to appoint any but freedmen even to really
honourable offices in the Imperial service.* The children and
kinsfolk of the monarch were not Princes and Princesses;
they were magistrates, Senators, or simple citizens, according
to the rank which they might personally reach. f We might
perhaps say, that under the best Emperors the Senate filled
the place of a constitutional King, while the Emperor was its
inevitable and irremovable Prime Minister. His position was
that of a virtually absolute monarch ; but he was a monarch
who reigned without a particle of royal show, who consulted
the Senate on all matters, and respected the formal functions of
other magistrates. And surely such a position has something
in common with the position of the private peer or commoner,
undistinguishable from other peers or commoners, who prac-
tically commands the sovereign who is his formal master, whose
word can create the Dukes, Archbishops, and high officers of
the state, after whom, when he has created them, he humbly
walks, as many degrees their inferior in formal rank. J

It is evident that this lack of what we may call personal
royalty had, in the hands of the better Emperors, the effect of
greatly lightening the yoke of their practical despotism. The
Romans were slaves, but the badges of their slavery were not
ostentatiously thrust in their faces. The will of Caesar had
practically as much effect as the will of a barbarian King ; but
it was exercised in such a way that the Romans could, with

* Spartianus (Hadr. 22) says that Hadrian was the first to employ Roman
knights, even in what we should think the honourable office of private secretary.
' Ab epistolis et libellis primus equites Romanes habuit.' But according to
Tacitus (Hist. i. 58), Vitellius had long before employed knights in all the
offices usually filled by freedmen. 'Ministeria principatus, per libertos agi
solita, in equites Romanes disponit.' Probably the innovation of Vitellius was
not followed by his successors, and had therefore been forgotten in the time of
Hadrian.

t Claudius Csesar, for instance, held no office at all till his nephew Caius
made him Consul. Till then, he seems not to have been a Senator, therefore
he was only a knight.

J [This comparison was of course meant to apply only to the relations
of the Prime Minister to the King, as compared with those of the Emperor
to the Senate, not at all to the relation of the Prime Minister to Parliament
or to the nation.]

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 319

just pride, compare the dominion of Law under which they lived
with the arbitrary rule of the Parthian despot. The good side
of this civil sovereignty is never so clearly shown as during
the Flavian and Antonine reigns. Under such princes the
forms of the Commonwealth had a practical good effect. They
allowed greater scope for the good intentions of the ruler, and
they removed him from many of the temptations of an acknow-
ledged monarch. The good Emperors were men of various
personal dispositions, but they all agreed in the general cha-
racter of their rule. Trajan the new Romulus and Anto-
ninus the new Numa, the homely plebeian Vespasian and the
meek philosopher Marcus, all agreed in the strictly legal nature
of their government, in their deference to the Senate, in their
respect for the old traditions of the Commonwealth. The forms
of modern royalty would have altogether hindered the simple
and genial mode of life which, in the persons of the good
Emperors, veiled and lightened the reality of their absolute
power.

But, if the peculiar nature of the Imperial power gave a
wider field to the goodness of the good Emperors, there can
be no doubt that it heightened the wickedness of the bad.
It is plain that the deeds of some of the worst Caesars are
wholly without parallel in the annals of European royalty in
any age. Both the Macedonian kingdoms of old and the
kingdoms of modern Europe have been disgraced by many
cruel, foolish, and profligate monarchs ; but it would be hard
to find the like of Caius or Nero or Elagabalus. A perfect
parallel, we suspect, could hardly be found even in the worst
Oriental despotism. So far as there ever was any approach
to it in Europe, it must be looked for, not among the lawful
Kings of any age, but among some of the worst of the Tyrants
of old Greece and of mediasval Italy. But even the worst of
these — and bad enough they were indeed — hardly supply any
real parallel to the frantic excesses of combined lust and
cruelty which we see in the vilest of the Emperors. Several
of them, we may believe, had, in some sort, lost their senses.
Caius, it is clear, at last became a mere madman. But if

320 THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. [ESSAY

they lost their senses, it was through the practice of unre-
strained wickedness that they lost them. And here comes in
the seeming- paradox that the Caesar, the first citizen, the
Consul, the High Pontiff, the social equal of other patricians,
had really, because he was all this, more means given him for
the practice of unrestrained wickedness than even an Eastern
despot. The formal etiquette of royalty, the traditional re-
straints and trammels which check the personal action even of
an absolute monarch, if they cut him off from much good, cut
him off also from much evil. The position of a King exposes
him to many temptations, but it also provides him with
some safeguards. The worst King commonly retains some re-
gard for the dignity of his person and office ; even a Sultan
finds his caprices checked by various conventional forms which
it is not easy for him to escape from. A King who cannot
set foot in public without being surrounded by a certain degree
of ceremony cannot play off before the world the utterly mad
freaks of the worst of the Roman Caesars. He may be cruel,
he may be lustful ; but the very necessity of his position
drives him in some degree to moderate, or at any rate to
veil, both his cruelty and his lust. The influence of Chris-
tianity and of modern European civilization has doubtless
largely helped towards this happy result, but it is not the
whole cause; the excesses of the Roman Caesars stand, as we
have said, alone, even in the ancient and heathen world.
If we find a feeble approach to Imperial cruelty in a few
Sicilian Tyrants, it is precisely because they were Tyrants,
and therefore were not under the same restraints, either of
shame or of usage, as a lawful King. The will of the Roman
Caesar was practically unrestrained ; and, precisely because he
was merely Caesar and not King, he was set free from the moral
restraints of royalty. That lack of court-etiquette which en-
abled Vespasian and Antoninus to live on terms of equality
with virtuous Senators no less enabled Nero and Commodus
to live in a partnership of unutterable vice with the very vilest
of mankind. The pride of the Roman citizen, which looked
on personal service to the sovereign as the duty of slaves and

IX.] THE FLA VIAN C^SARS. 321

freedmen, handed over a weak or viciously disposed Emperor
to the unrestrained influence of the basest and most rapacious
of flatterers. The corrupting influence of the Imperial position
on a mind at all predisposed to evil is clearly shown by the fact
that nearly all the worst Emperors began well. The reigns
of even absolute princes under other forms of administration
do not often show the utter contrast which we see between
the first and the last days of Gains or Nero or Domitian.

The unacknowledged character of the Imperial power had
also another evil effect, and that one which is most strongly
marked in the reigns of the good Emperors. The only
advantage or palliation of the Imperial despotism was that
it allowed, better than the Commonwealth could allow, of the
fusion together of all races within the Empire, and of the ex-
tension of equal rights to all the subjects of a common master.
The boon was, after all, a very poor substitute either for
national independence or for full federal or municipal freedom ;
still it was better than the absolute bondage of the whole
world to the Senate and People of a single city. But the
republican forms which were kept on under the Empire tended
greatly to check this result. The Empire had its local habi-
tation in the one city just as much as the republic had.* As
Consul, Tribune, High Pontiff, and Prince of the Senate, the
Caesar was nowhere fully at home but in the capital ; even in
the provinces he appeared as the Imperator of the Roman
army, as the Proconsul of the ruling city. All this tended to
keep the provinces in a state of greater inferiority than if their
ruler had been an avowed King, who held equal powers over
all his dominions, and who was equally at home in every part
of them. Every period of reform, while the old constitution
kept any shadow of life, took the shape of a reaction, of
a falling back upon old Roman traditions. Now those tradi-
tions were of course wholly founded on the one principle of the
greatness of the local Rome ; they taught the wide difference

* [I was of course thinking mainly of the Julian, Flavian and Antonine
periods ; at all events of the times before the changes represented by Diocletian
and Coustantine.]

Y

322 THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. [ESSAY

between the citizen, the stranger, and the slave ; their whole
object was Roman conquest and Roman dominion. The
Dictator Caesar seems, more than any one either before or
after him, to have risen above these local prejudices; but they
reigned in full force from Sulla to Trajan. Caesar wished to
be King over the subjects of Rome, doubtless as a step to
being King over Rome herself. He filled the Senate with
Gauls, and gave away the Roman franchise broadcast. But
when his successor found that the dream of avowed royalty
was hopeless, he necessarily fell back upon the traditions of
republican exclusiveness. Augustus crucified, or sent back
into slavery, the enfranchised slaves who had fought under
Sextus Pompeius. His legislation threw hindrances in the
way of any large manumission of that wretched class. Such
legislation was a sin against the rights of mankind, but it
was absolutely necessary if the Roman people was to keep
up any kind of purity as a dominant race. Claudius — whom,
as far as intention goes, we may fairly rank among the better
Emperors — did something for the slave class, but he most
likely thought himself a new Scipio or ./Emilius when he
destroyed the freedom which Lykia had kept down to his
time. The Imperial antiquary doubtless rejoiced in adding
a province to the Empire at each end. Nero, on the other
hand, had no Roman feelings at all ; he hated the Senate
which was the resting-place of Roman traditions, while he
sought after a certain popularity both among the provincials
and among the mixed multitude which called itself the People
of Rome. But even he did nothing really to break down the
middle wall of partition ; all that he could do for his favourite
Greeks was to set himself up as a kind of mock Flamininus,
and to give back to them a local freedom which they had lost
all power of using. In Nero the series of strictly Roman Em-
perors ends ; the Flavii are Italians ; with Nerva begins the
series of provincial rulers.* But Italians and provincials alike

* See two remarkable passages of Aure'ius Victor, De Caesaribus xi. 13 :
' Hactenus Romae, seu per Italiam orti imperium rexere, hinc advenae ; nescio
quoque an, ut in Frisco Tarquinio, longe ineliores. Ac mini quidem audient j

IX] THE FLA VIAN C^SARS. 323

fall back for some while upon old Roman precedents. The
Sabine Vespasian gathered in the last gleanings of Greek
freedom. Rhodes, Byzantium, and other outlying Hellenic
commonwealths had never been conquered by Rome ; they
had kept their independence for two hundred years after the
conquest of Macedonia and Achaia. Vespasian, without any
assigned reason, incorporated them in the Empire by whose
provinces they had long been surrounded. The Spaniard
Trajan fought and conquered as thoroughly in the interest
and for the glory of the local Rome as any Camillus or Fabius
of old time. It was Hadrian, as Mr. Merivale points out,
who first really ruled in the interest of the whole Empire. He
was the first to look on his dominions in general as some-
thing more than mere farms for the enrichment of the Prince
and the People of a single town. Nero's visit to Greece
was the freak of a madman; but Hadrian passed through all
parts of his Empire in the spirit of a master anxious for the
welfare of all alike. Through the whole period there is no
doubt some truth in the remark which Tacitus puts into the
mouth of Cerialis, * that the whole Empire reaped the advan-
tage of the virtues of a good prince, while the wickedness of a
bad one was most felt by those who were nearest to him. A
good prince doubtless did what he could to reform the adminis-
tration of the provinces as well as that of the city. But as the
virtues of a good prince commonly took the form of a falling
back upon antique Roman models, it followed that the better
princes were commonly those who did least to break down the
barriers which divided the different classes of their subjects.
It is for exactly the same reason that we find so many of the
best Emperors persecuting the Christians, while some of the
worst showed them more favour. The better Emperors
were striving to keep up the old traditions of the Common-

multa legentique, plane compertum, urbem Romanam externorum virtute,
atque insitivis artibus, prsecipue crevisse.' In the Epitome, xi. 1 5, the last two
paragraphs are : ' Unde compertum est, urbem Eomam externorum virtute
crevisse. Quid enim Nerva prudentius aut moderatius ? quid Trajano divinius ?
quid prsestantius Hadriano ? '
* Tac. Hist. iv. 74.

Y 2

324 THE FLA VI AN CJ1SARS. [ESSAY

wealth, and at those traditions Christianity aimed the dead-
liest of all blows. To put the citizen and the provincial on a
level, to tolerate a sect which refused the worship that every
Roman owed to the Roman Jupiter, were both of them sins
against the traditions of the ancient commonwealth, — sins
which might well be expected to bring down the wrath of
the patron Gods of Rome upon the Prince and People who
endured such iniquity among them.

The Flavian age was a period of reaction — for the most
part, of wholesome reaction — in every way. The Julian
reigns had, at least from the death of Tiberius, been a
period of licensed madness, not only of cruelty, but of folly
and caprice of every kind. Claudius, well-disposed pedant as
he was, always needed to be cajoled and bullied into crime
by his wives and freedmen ; but the crimes were done, though
Caesar hardly knew of them. Under Nero Imperial wickedness
reached its height; every Roman tradition was trampled on,
and the only steadfast principle of the tyrant was an abiding
hatred of the Senate. Then came the fearful year of the civil
war, a year full of events which must have shocked every
Roman feeling as bitterly as either the murders or the fiddlings
of Nero. A real national feeling was thoroughly aroused.
When Vitellius led his army of Gauls and Germans into Italy,
things seemed to have gone back to the days when the
younger Marius allied himself with the last Samnite Pontius,
or when Antonius led the forces of his Egyptian * paramour
against the Commonwealth and the Gods of Rome. When the
Capitol was stormed and burned by the barbarian legions,
men felt that Rome had undergone a greater blow than ever
Porsena or Brennus had dealt against her.f The homely
Sabine burgher came to restore Rome after what was really

* We employ Roman language to express Roman feelings ; but to con-
found the Macedonian Queen, the daughter of all the Ptolemies, with her
Egyptian subjects, was pretty much — to use an illustration of Lord Macaulay's
— as if one were to paint Washington as a Red Indian brandishing a
tomahawk.

t See the emphatic lament of Tacitus, Hist. iii. 72.

IX.] THE FLA VIAN C^SARS. 325

occupation at the hands of a foreign enemy, a foretaste of
future barbarian conquests, from Alaric down to our own day.*
Vespasian restored the dominion of Law at least, if not of
liberty, and reigned in Rome as a Roman, the Prince of the
Roman Senate, the Tribune of the Roman People. He was
indeed the choice, not of the Senate or People, but of an
army quartered far from Rome ; but it was an army warring
for Rome's greatness in the hardest of her later struggles,
an army which was certainly not an army of Jews and
Syrians in the same way that the Vitellian host was prac-
tically an army of Gauls and Germans. But there was one
thing which the new ruler needed. Rome, and the rest of
the world, had long looked for something of divinity in its
rulers. The lord of men must be himself something more than
man. We have elsewhere spoken of the divine homage which
was paid to Philip and Alexander, and, long before their day,
to the Spartan Lysandros. The successors of Alexander had
received, and seemingly delighted in, the same impious flat-
tery. The Athenian People had quartered Demetrios and his
hai'em in the temple of his virgin sister Athene, and a
General of the Achaian League had sung paeans in honour
of the Macedonian whom he brought to overthrow the free-
dom of Peloponnesos. f So each successive Caesar, who at
Rome was only a magistrate of the Commonwealth, had re-
ceived divine worship at the hands of the provincials. Rome
herself was gradually taught to see something more than
human in the Julian house, the descendants of Rome's divine
ancestress ; Augustus himself, simple citizen as he demeaned
himself, did not quarrel with the belief which made him
the son of Apollo; % he took it kindly if men held down
their eyes before the divine brightness of his countenance.

* [This was of course written while Rome was still under the yoke of her
last Gaulish invaders.]

•f [See History of Federal Government, i. 492.]

J It must be remembered that, as the connexion of Augustus with the
Julian house was wholly through the female line, to give him a divine father
did not throw the same slur on his human legitimacy which it did in the case
of Alexander and others.

326 THE FLA VI AN CAESARS. [Ess AY

But it was hopeless to clothe Vespasian, a man with as
little divinity as might be either in his countenance or in his
pedigree, with any kind of godhead, either hereditary or per-
sonal. His strong good sense cast aside the flatteries of
genealogists, who invented for him a descent from heroes
and demi-gods. In his last illness he mocked at the usual
practice of canonizing deceased Emperors ; when his mortal
strength was failing, he felt himself beginning to be a God.
But a Roman Emperor, above all one whose rise was so re-
markable as that of Vespasian, could not be left without a
sanctity about him of some kind or other. The sanctity of Ves-
pasian took a form which was characteristic of the Eastern lands
in which he rose to greatness, and which was utterly unlike
anything which we find in any form of Greek or Roman
religion. Earlier Kings and Emperors had received divine
worship, but they seem never to have exercised any divine
power. But Vespasian works miracles, exactly after the like-
ness of the miracles in the Christian Scriptures. The blind
and the lame pray him to touch them with his sacred foot,
or to anoint them with his sacred spittle. For some time
he withstands their importunity, but at last he goes through
the needful ceremony, * and, as the story runs, works the
needful cure. These tales are not to be taken as mockeries
or imitations of the Christian miracles. The Old and New
Testaments of themselves clearly show that miracles of heal-
ing, hardly heard of in Western religions, were, by the Jews
and the neighbouring nations, looked for from all who either
themselves professed to be, or were acknowledged by others as
being, clothed with any special function as prophets, teachers,
or reformers. Vespasian laid no claim to the prophetic office,
but Eastern admirers might naturally clothe him with it. He
was eminently a political reformer, and we are apt to forget
how thoroughly the idea of political reformation was implied
in the mission of a Hebrew prophet. In an age when a vague
expectation seemed to be everywhere spread that some great

* [Compare the unwillingness of William the Third to touch for the evil.
Macaulay, iii. 478.]

IX.] THE FLA VI AN CAESARS. 327

ruler and deliverer was coming from the East, the chief who
was called from a Syrian command to the Empire of the world
might well, in Eastern. eyes, put on somewhat of the character
of a Messiah. The religious halo thus spread about Vespasian
was one of a purely Eastern kind ; but as soon as he had put
on a mysterious and miraculous character of any kind, the sub-
stitute had at once been found for that earlier type of divinity
which had died out with the Julian name and blood. Men's
minds were better disposed to receive a prince who was thus
clearly marked out as a favourite of the Gods ; and the cure
of the Alexandrian beggars, whether an instance of cringing
imposture or of genuine superstition, may not have been
without its share in enabling Vespasian to form what, after
the ephemeral reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, might well
be called a lasting dynasty.

One chief object of Mr. Meri vale's present volume is to
claim for the Flavian period a share in that admiration which
is commonly confined to the five reigns beginning with Nerva.
In his view, the accession of Nerva marks indeed an epoch,
but it is an epoch, so to speak, within another. The Flavian
and Antonine periods together form a whole, as distinguished
from the periods before and after them. Undoubtedly the
change from Italian to provincial Emperors was a real change,
as is pointed out in the passages of Victor which we have
already quoted. In this way, the accession of Nerva is a
marked point in the Imperial history. But the cause which
generally tempts us to make the fall of Domitian a point of
greater moment than it really was is very different, and is
indeed somewhat ludicrous. Suetonius happened to stop in
his series of Imperial biographies with the life of the twelfth
Caesar. The work of Suetonius was the popular source of
knowledge on the subject; the full number of twelve was a
taking one ; and thus arose the popular notion of the Twelve
Caesars, as if there were some wider gap between the twelfth
Caesar and the thirteenth than there was between any two of
the first twelve. But, in truth, as we have already seen, the

328 THE FLAVIAN CdtSARS. [ESSAY

widest gap of all comes between the sixth and the tenth, be-
tween Nero and Vespasian. We do not meet with such another
marked change till we come to the point which marks off the
legal government of the Antonines from the alternate military
despotism and military anarchy which succeeded it. The dif-
ficulty of classing the Flavian and Antonine princes together
chiefly arises from the tyranny of Domitian and his violent
end, coming, as they do, in the midst of a period which is
otherwise one of unbroken good government and peaceful suc-
cession. But, after all, the fall of Domitian was simply the pri-
vate assassination of a single tyrant: the praetorians grumbled,
but there was no civil war, no general disturbance of any kind.
And again, the tyranny of Domitian must not altogether be
confounded with the tyranny of some of those who went
before him and of some of those who came after him. The
character of this strange prince has been very carefully worked
out by Mr. Merivale, and we think that his view bears a
greater impress of truth than is the case with some of his
Imperial portraits. We must never forget, among the many
merits of Mr. Merivale, that he is still, in some degree, an
apologist for the Caesarean despotism, and that it is a kind of
duty in his eyes to make out as good a case as he can for any
particular Csesar. In some of the earlier reigns, we cannot
think that his success was very great. He has indeed rescued
Claudius from a good deal of unmerited popular contempt ;
but no fair person ever could confound the weak, well-mean-
ing, hen-pecked, antiquary with a madman like Caius or a
monster like Nero. As for the others, Mr. Merivale is doubt-
less quite justified in his general cautions as to the nature of
our materials. We have, as he says, no contemporary history
of the earlier Emperors. Our authorities — Suetonius, Tacitus,
Dion — all wrote long after the time. Suetonius is a mere
collector of anecdotes ; Dion loves to find fault with every-
body ; Tacitus writes the history of the Empire by the light
of senatorial and republican traditions. Undoubtedly, in read-
ing narratives of this sort, we must allow for a certain amount
of hostile colouring. But, after making every allowance on

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 329

this score that can fairly be made, the undoubted facts, which
Mr. Merivale does not dispute for a moment, are enough to
stamp the Claudian Csesars, as a whole, as a succession of some
of the vilest of mankind. This or that particular story may be
false ; the general picture which we draw from the whole mass of
stories may be exaggerated ; but even scandal generally pays
some regard to probability ; it exaggerates real faults, but
it seldom invents qualities which have no being at all. Pos-
sibly Nero may not have been quite so bad, nor Antoninus
Pius quite so good, as popular belief makes them out ;
but there is quite evidence enough to show that Nero was
very bad and Antoninus very good. After making every pos-
sible allowance, the lusts and cruelties of the early Csesars still
far surpass the average of the lusts and cruelties even of the
worst tyrants. And their cruelty is a loathsome, capricious,
purposeless cruelty ; even Nero's abiding hatred to the Senate
is quite unworthy of the name of principle, or even of party-
feeling. With Domitian the case is different ; he was a tyrant
of a very remarkable kind ; and Mr. Merivale has, as it seems
to us, given a very successful and probable portrait of him
and his government.

Tyrants may perhaps be divided into three classes. There
are some whose cruelty is simply military or judicial severity
carried too far, whose blows smite men who really deserve to
be smitten, only not with so heavy a stroke. A tyranny of
this kind is not inconsistent with many personal virtues, and
it of itself implies a real zeal for the public good. Again, there
are some tyrants whose cruelty has a definite object, who strike
in order to destroy or to weaken some hostile party, who are
ready to inflict any amount of suffering which suits their own
ends, but who take no pleasure in oppression, and who are
capable of becoming mild and beneficent rulers as soon as oppo-
sition ends. Such were the authors of both the first and the
second proscription. Sulla and Augustus alike shed blood with-
out mercy as long as anything was to be gained by shedding
it ; but neither of them had any appetite for slaughter and con-
fiscation when the need for them had passed by. Lastly, there

330 THE FLA VI AN CAESARS. [ESSAY

are tyrants whose tyranny is utterly reckless and capricious, and
in whom the frequent practice of cruelty seems at last to create
a sort of enjoyment in cruelty for its own sake. Such was the
cruelty of Caius and Nero. The second and third classes are
distinguished from each other by the fact that tyrants of the
second class commonly get better, while tyrants of the third
class commonly get worse. The horrors of the second proscrip-
tion were followed in due course by the long paternal reign of
Augustus. On the other hand, both Caius and Nero began
with a professed hatred to cruelty of every kind, which we
have no right to assume was mere acting. The one form of
tyranny is the cruelty of statesmen, reckless as to the means
by which an end is to be compassed ; the other is the cruelty
of men in whom weakness and frivolity are united with a
childish delight in the mere exercise of power. But the
tyranny of Domitian was something which stands quite by
itself. He may be said to have begun with a tyranny of the
first type, which gradually changed into one of the third.
Without being a man of any real power of mind, Domitian was
neither a madman like Caius, nor a mere pedant like Claudius,
nor a monster of vice and emptiness like Nero. He began as
a reformer, as a restorer of old Roman manners and of the
old Roman faith. He assumed, unlike earlier Emperors, a
perpetual censorship, and, as Censor, he made war upon the
vices and luxury of the age. There is no reason to doubt his
sincerity. Eveiy thing seems to show that he started as a
conscientious worshipper of the Gods of Rome, full of an
honest wish to bring back Roman life to its ancient purity,
and fully determined to carry on the duties of the pontificate,
the censorship, and every other magistracy which he held,
with the most exemplary and unsparing righteousness. The
seeming inconsistency of all this reforming zeal, civil and re-
ligious, in a man of Domitian's personally depraved life, is well
explained by Mr. Merivale. Neither the Gods of Rome nor the
laws of Rome asked for moral purity in their votaries. They
may have done so in the early ages of the Republic, but the
idea of personal morality had, in Domitian's age, long been

IX.] THE FLA VI AN CAESARS. 331

divorced from the ideas of religious and political duty. Par-
ticular forms of vice were censured by Law, not as morally
wrong, but as hurtful to the welfare of the state, or as de-
grading to the dignity of a Roman citizen. In so doing, the
Roman Law did in truth keep within the proper limits of
human legislation. The business of an earthly lawgiver is
certainly not to punish sins or vices as such, but to hinder,
and with that end to punish, crimes against society. The
difference between Roman and modern ideas on this subject
consists in the difference which the Roman Law drew
between Roman citizens and other persons. The adultery
of a Roman citizen and a Roman matron was a crime
against the state and against the Gods. It led to the
confusion of family rights and family worship ; it checked
the succession of the lawful race of Rome's citizens ; it was a
personal affront to the Gods to whom the marriage-bed was
sacred. Other yet worse forms of vice were equally forbidden,
as degrading to the lofty character of a citizen of Rome. But
beyond these limits, neither the State nor the Gods cared for
any man's private vices. Domitian, himself a man of infamous
life, punished as High Pontiff the frailty of the erring Vestals,
as Censor he put in force the Julian and Scantinian Laws,
without any inconsistency in his own eyes or those of others.
Excesses of which only strangers were the instruments did not
violate the sanctity of either character. He did not scruple —
so we are universally told — to live in incest with his own
niece ; but he had shrunk in horror from the proposal of marry-
ing her. No doubt the one crime was a less glaring breach of
formal enactments than the other. * In everything Domitian
proclaimed himself as a strict and righteous minister of the
ancient laws. But, when a man with no real moral principle,
with no real force of character, sets himself up as the severe
reformer of a corrupt age, he is almost sure to bring in worse
evils than any that he takes away. The merciless exercise

* [So for several centuries of ecclesiastical Tiistory the concubinage of the
Clergy was looked on as a less evil than their marriage.]

332 THE FLA VIAN CtfSARS. [ESSAY

of a merely formal justice will very easily sink into capri-
cious and indiscriminate cruelty. So it proved with Domitian.
The strict reformer and unbending judge gradually sank into a
tyrant, never perhaps quite so contemptible, but fully as hateful
and bloodthirsty, as the vilest of those who went before him. He
began by chastising real crimes, and he probably never ceased to
do so in his worst days. He has at least the credit of swiftly
punishing any deeds of wrong done by his governors in the
provinces. But, in his zeal to spare no offender, he encour-
aged the vile brood of informers ; and thus the innocent were
often condemned, while one class at least of the worst offenders
was openly favoured. At last he became utterly hardened
in cruelty; after the revolt of Antonius had thoroughly fright-
ened him, he began to live in constant fear of rebellions and
conspiracies, and at last his reign became, as Mr. Merivale
truly calls it, emphatically a reign of terror. And it would
almost seem that the possession, and the habitually harsh exer-
cise, of absolute power had in some measure turned his brain.
Otherwise, it is certainly strange that a political and religious
reformer, such as Domitian began by being, should have
plunged into excesses of insolent and impious tyranny almost
beyond any of the oppressors who went before him. Since the
frantic Caius, no one had so openly indulged in the fancy for
deification ; Rome's human inhabitants and her divine protec-
tors were alike insulted, when the modest style of the first
Caesars was exchanged for the frightful formula of " our Lord
and God."* Mr. Merivale remarks that this assumption of
divinity may possibly have been connected with the fact that
he stood in a closer relation to deified predecessors than any
earlier Ca?sar. His own father, his own brother, were enrolled
among the Gods ; he may have learned to think that the god-
head of the Flavian house was not confined to its deceased

* ' Dominus et Deus noster,' Suet. Dom. 13. Dominus in this formula must
not be confounded with the Christian use of the word. The impiety lies
wholly in the Deus. But dominus, implying a master of slaves, was a title
which no magistrate under the Republic, and seemingly till now none under
the Empire, had ever ventured to claim.

[See Growth of the English Constitution, p. 169.]

IX.] THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. 333

members, but had become incarnate in the person of its only
living- representative. Other freaks of moody, and generally
gloomy, caprice marked the latter years of his reign, which
seem to show that his intellect was at least weakened, if it
had not wholly given way, Altogether, the sanctimonious
pretences with which he began only served to make his
tyranny more frightful in itself, and more hateful from its
inconsistency. Few, if any, of the long line of Roman tyrants
went out of the world as the object of a more universal
hatred ; the memory of none has been the subject of more
universal and unalleviated condemnation.

We have closely followed Mr. Merivale in his masterly por-
trait of the last Flavian Emperor, the only Flavian tyrant. It
is a portrait which we think may fairly be drawn from our
scanty notices. In this case Mr. Merivale neither throws doubt
on his authorities, nor does he say anything which can be fairly
called an apology for crime. The utmost that he does is to hint
that the evidence against Domitian is ' suspiciously harmo-
nious,' and to give an ' admonitory caution' about the ' frightful
temptations of his position.' But, when we find him the only
thoroughly bad prince in a series of eight, we really cannot
see so much excuse for him on the ground of temptations which
the others contrived, more or less successfully, to overcome.
We do not quarrel with Mr. Merivale's ' admonitory caution,'
as we do not find that it at all leads him to try to evade the
overwhelming testimony of the facts. His account of Domitian
explains, without at all excusing, a sort of wickedness which
took a very peculiar form. In fact, Domitian properly takes
his place in the series from Vespasian to Marcus. He was
indeed bad, while the others may, on the whole, be called
good ; still, he was a prince whose government aimed at the
same general objects ; his crimes were the excess and corrup-
tion of their virtues, not something utterly different and con-
tradictory. He fairly takes his place in the series of reactionary
or reforming Emperors ; he became in truth as bad as Nero
himself, yet his reign may be truly reckoned as part of the
period of revulsion which the excesses of Nero called forth.

334 THE FLA VI AN C^SARS. [ESSAY

We have spoken throughout of the Flavian and Antonine
Caesars in that language of respect which, on the whole, they
deserve. The men themselves deserve far more praise than
blame. Doubtless all had their faults ; those certainly had of
whose actions we possess any detailed account. Few of them
wholly escaped from the degrading vices of the age. Few re-
mained wholly uncorrupted by the temptations of unrestrained
power. But, on the whole, all, save Domitian, played their
part well. Their faults, whether as men or as rulers, are alto-
gether outshone by their merits. It would be easy to charge
Vespasian with inflicting on his country the miseries of a civil
war. But, in a moment of anarchy, when there was no legiti-
mate or universally acknowledged Emperor, we cannot fairly
blame the man best worthy to rule for obeying the call of his
troops to put in his claims among others. For the special horrors
of the war, for the fearful sack of Cremona, for the arbitrary
and cruel acts of Mucianus and Antonius Primus, Vespasian
can hardly be made personally responsible. So, when we
come to Trajan, though the giving up of so many of his con-
quests by his successor is the best comment on their real
value, we can hardly blame a Roman soldier and reformer
for treading in the steps of all the most famous worthies of
the Commonwealth. And, transient as were his Eastern
victories, one of Trajan's conquests had results which have
lasted to this day, and which take their turn among the
other questions which occupy the busy pens of ambassadors
and foreign ministers. The Rouman provinces, attached
to the Old Rome by their language, as they are to the
New Rome by their creed, bear witness to the strong hand
with which Trajan founded his new dominion north of the
Danube. The government of Hadrian was not free from faults ;
but the first prince who really cared for the provinces is entitled
to lasting honour. Altogether, the Emperors of this period
formed a succession of wise and good rulers, to which it would
not be easy to find a parallel. "We may well look with admira-
tion on so long a period of comparative good government, when
we think of what went before, and of what followed. But, while

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C&SARS. 335

we do every justice to men who did all that could be done in
their position, we must not be blinded to the utterly unrighteous
nature of that position itself. We must not forget, in the
splendours of the Empire, in the virtues of many of its rulers,
the inherent wickedness of the Empire itself. On this head it
is well, after the txtravagant advocacy of Mr. Congreve, even
after the more measured apology of Mr. Merivale, to turn to
the voice of truth and righteousness speaking through the
mouth of Mr. Goldwin Smith. His vigorous setting forth of
the essential unrighteousness of the Roman Empire is one of
those utterances where simple truth of itself becomes the
highest eloquence. The Roman Empire did its work in the
scheme of Providence ; it paved the way for the religion and
civilization of modern Europe : but this is simply one of the
countless cases in which good has been brought out of evil.
The Empire may have been a necessary evil ; it may have been
the lesser evil in a choice of evils ; but it was in itself a
thing of evil all the same. It showed, with tenfold aggrava-
tion, all that we look upon with loathing in the modern despot-
isms of Austria* and Russia. The worst of modern despots is
placed under some restraint by the general public opinion of the
world, by the religion which he professes, by the civilization in
which all Europe shares, by the existence of powerful free states
side by side with despotisms, by the very jealousies and rivalries
of the despotic powers themselves. But the Roman Empire stood
alone in the world ; there was no influence or opinion beyond it.
Its subjects, even in the worst times, would hardly have gained
by flying to the wilds of independent Germany, or by exchang-
ing the civilized despotism of Rome for the barbarian despotism
of Parthia. But, whatever were its causes, whatever were its
results, however necessary it was in its own time, it was in
itself a wicked thing, which, for so many ages, crushed all
national, and nearly all intellectual, life in the fairest regions of
three continents. There is life as long as old Greece keeps the

* [Austria as it then was ; not the « Oesterreichisch-ungarische Monarchic '
that is now.]

336 THE FLAVIAN CAESARS. [ESSAY

least relic of her freedom ; there is life again as soon as we reach
the first germ of Christian and Teutonic Europe ; nay, life
shows itself again in the Empire itself, when its place and its
object are changed, when it has taken up the championship of
Christianity against fire-worship and Islam, and when it has in
the end become coextensive with that artificial nation — Greek
in one aspect and Roman in another — which for so many ages
boasted of the Roman name. But, from Mummius to Augustus,
the Roman city stands as the living mistress of a dead world ;
and, from Augustus to Theodoric, the mistress becomes as life-
less as her subjects. For the truest life of man, for the political
life of Perikles and Aratos, of Licinius and the Gracchi, the
world had now no scope ; the Empire allowed but one field for
the exercise of man's higher faculties, when the righteous soul
of a Tacitus or a Juvenal was stirred up to brand the evil deeds
of the Empire itself. The bane did, in some slight degree,
prove its own antidote, when such stern preachers of truth
were called forth to take the place of the courtly elegance of
the hired poets of Augustus. Of the great legacy of Rome
to later times, the legacy of the Roman Law, the best
parts were simply inherited by the Empire from the days
of the Republic. The Republic may indeed have ceased
to be possible; but we may remember that, under the Re-
public, the virtues of Titus and Trajan would have found a
field for their exercise, while there was no field for the crimes
of Caius or Nero or Domitian. The Verres of a single pro-
vince sank before the majesty of the Law and the righteous
eloquence of his accuser : against the Verres of the world
there was no defence except in the dagger of the assassin.
A chain is of the strength of its weakest link, and a system
of this kind may fairly be judged by the worst princes that
it produces. A system under which a Nero and a Commodus
are possible and not uncommon is truly a system of Neros
and Commodi, though they may be relieved by a whole
series of Trajans and Antonines. For the Trajans and the
Antonines have their parallels elsewhere ; their virtues were
not the result of the Imperial system ; they simply existed

IX.] THE FLA VIAN CJSSARS. 337

in spite of it. But the crimes of Nero and Commodus are
without parallels elsewhere ; they are the direct and distinctive
product of the system itself, when left to its own developement.
In a free state Caius would have found, his way to Bedlam,
and Nero to Tyburn ; Domitian, under the checks of the re-
publican system, might perhaps have made as useful a Censor
as Cato. We cannot end a view of even the best period of
the Roman monarchy without echoing1 the fervent wish of the
Oxford Professor that the world may never see its like again.

We have one more remark to make on Mr. Merivale's way
of looking at the establishment of the Empire. He is fond of
speaking of both the elder and the younger Csesar as the chiefs
of a popular party, who set up their dominion on the ruins
of an oligarchy. This is of course true in a sense ; the mob
of Rome were favourable to Csesar, and his party historically
represented the party of his uncle Marius. But we need not
take long to show what is the real nature of a pseudo-demo-
cratic despotism. It is a device which neither Csesar had all
to himself. There were Dionysii before their time, and
there have been Buonapartes since. It is undoubtedly true
that, in one sense, the party of Csesar was a popular party,
and that the party of the Republic was an aristocratic party ;
but they were not popular and aristocratic parties in any
sense which would make us sympathize with the popular
party against the aristocratic party. As long as there was a
real Roman People, capable and worthy of political rights, we
go along with all its struggles against the domination of any
exclusive caste. But sympathy with a people against an olig-
archy does not carry us on to sympathize with a mob against
a Senate. Great as were the faults of the Roman Senate in
the last stage of its freedom, it was at least the only body left
where free discussion was possible ; it was the only assembly
where two opinions could be expressed, where the arguments
for both of them were fairly hearkened to, and a free vote
taken between them. As such it was the salt of the earth,
the last abiding-place of freedom. And we must not carry on

z

338 THE FLAVIAN CASARS. [ESSAY

into those days ideas which belong only to the older struggle
between the orders. Many of the most illustrious nobles were
technically plebeians ; every Licinius and Csecilius and Luta-
tius, the Great Pompeius, the Triumvir Antouius and the
tyrannicide Brutus, Cato and Milo and Hortensius and the
second Caesar himself, — all belonged to the order which the
old Appii had striven to shut out from the fasces and the
senate-house. And the doors of the senate-house were not
open only to those who were indeed formally plebeians, but
who were practically as much members of a noble class as
any Cornelius or ^Emilius in Rome. A new man at Rome,
as everywhere else, lay under disadvantages; but his dis-
advantages might be overcome, and it rested wholly with
the People itself whether they should be overcome or not.
That government cannot be called a mere oligarchy in which
the Tribes still chose Prsetors, Consuls, Censors, and High
Pontiffs ; where the highest places in the commonwealth were
not refused to Caius Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Any deliberative body where two sides can be fairly heard,
whether it take the form of a democratic Assembly or of an
aristocratic Senate, is essentially a safeguard of freedom, a
check on the will either of a mob or of a despot. Even in
the days of the Empire, the Senate, the last shadow of the
free state, still kept life enough for the good Emperors to
respect it and for the bad Emperors to hate it. It is then
with the Senate that the sympathies of the real lover of
freedom lie in the last age of the Republic, rather than with
the frantic mob which disgraced the once glorious name
of the Roman Commons. No assembly that ever was devised
was less fitted to undertake the championship of freedom
than the old Parliament of Paris ; but, when the Par-
liament of Paris was the one representative of right against
might left in all France, when the feeble opposition of the
magistracy was the sole check upon a despot's arbitrary will,
our sympathies lie wholly with the Parliament in all its strug-
gles with the royal power. It is something when even a
Sultan has to ask a Sheikh-ul-Islam whether his wishes are in

IX.] THE FLAVIAN C^SARS. 339

agreement with the Law of the Prophet. He may indeed, like
our James the Second, depose a too unbending expounder of the
Law, and may supply his place with one who will know no
law but the prince's will ; but the mere formality is some-
thing ; the mere delay is something ; it is something when a
despot has to ask a question to which the answer may perhaps
run counter to his wish. And so, as the last check on the
despotism at once of the mob of the Forum and of the Csesar
on the Palatine, we still hold that the Senate where Cicero
denounced Catilina and Antonius, where the last dying notes
of freedom were heard from the lips of Thrasea and Helvidius,
was an assembly which well deserves the grateful remem-
brance of mankind.

On many points then, and those points the most important
of all, we look on the history of the Caesars with widely
different eyes from those of their last historian. But, on
the very ground which makes us differ from him, we can
never regret a difference from an advocate at once so candid
and so competent. Mr. Merivale is a real scholar, in an age
when real scholars are not so common that we can afford to,
lose or to undervalue a single one of the order. In all the
highest qualities of a historian, there are few living men
who surpass him. We look with sadness on his seventh volume,
when we hear that his seventh volume is to be his last. If
our words can have any influence with him, — and he may
receive them as the words, not of flatterers, but in some degree
of antagonists, — he will even now change a purpose which
all scholars must have heard with sorrow, and will carry on
his great work down at least to the limit which he first set
before him as its close.

THE END.

• » * 3 »

BEDFORD STREET, COYENT GARDEN, LONDON,
April, 1872..

MACMILLAA &- Co:s CATALOGUE of Works
in the Departments of History, Biography,
and Travels ; Politics, Political and Social
Economy, Law, etc.; and Works connected
with Language. With some short Account
or Critical Notice concerning each Book.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, and TRAVELS.

Baker (Sir Samuel W.) — Works by Sir SAMUEL BAKER
M.A., F.R.G.S.:—

THE ALBERT N'YANZA Great Basin ot the Nile, and Explora-
tion of the Nile Sources. New and Cheaper Edition. Maps and
Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6j.

" Bruce won the source of the Blue Nile ; Speke and Grant won the
Victoria source of the great White Nile ; and I have been permitted to
succeed in completing the Nile Sources by the discovery: of the great
reservoir of the equatorial waters, the Albert N'yanza, from which the
river issues as the entire White Nile." — PREFACE. "-As a Macaulay
arose among the historians" says the READER, "so a Baker has arisen
among the explorers." " Charmingly written;" says the SPECTATOR,
"full, as might be expected, of incident, and free from that wearisome
reiteration of usgless facts which is the drawback to almost all books of
African travel."

THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA, and thi?. Sword
Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. With Maps and Illustrations.
Fourth and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8yo. 6&
A. I. A

2 MACMILLAtfS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months* exploration, during
which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia,
including the Atbara, Sittite, Royan, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Dinder,
and the Blue Nile. The interest attached to these portions of Africa differs
entirely from that of the White Nile regions, as the -whole of Upper Egypt
and Abyssinia is capable of development, and is inhabited by races having
some degree of civilization; while Central Africa is peopled by a race of
savages, whose future is more problematical. The TIMES says: " It solves
finally a geographical riddle -which hitherto had been extremely perplexing,
and it adds much to our information respecting Egyptian Abyssinia and
the different races that spread over it. It contains, moreover, some notable
instances of English daring and enterprising skill ; it abounds in ani-
mated tales of exploits dear to the heart of the British sportsman; and it
•will attract even the least studious reader, as the author tells a story welly
and can describe nature -with uncommon power."

Barante (M. De). — SeeGuizor.

Baring-Gould (Rev. S., M. A.)— LEGENDS OF OLD

TESTAMENT CHARACTERS, from the Talmud and other
sources. By the Rev. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. Author of
" Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," " The Origin and Develop-
ment of Religious Belief," " In Exitu Israel," &c. In Two Vols.
Crown 8vo. i6j. Vol. I. Adam to Abraham. Vol. II. Mel-
chizedek to Zechariah.

Mr. Baring-Gould 's previous contributions to the History of Mythology
and the formation of a science of comparative religion are admitted to be
of high importance ;. the present work, it is believed, will be found to
be of equal value. He has collected from the Talmud and other sources,
Jewish and Mohammedan, a large number of curious and interesting
legends concerning the principal characters of tJie Old Testament, corn-
faring these frequently with similar legends current among many of the
Peoples, savage and civilized, all over the world. " These volumes contain
much that is very strange, and, to the ordinary English reader, very
novel." — DAILY NEWS..

Barker (Lady). — See also BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUE.

STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND. By LADY BARKER.
Second and Cheaper Edition. Globe 8vo. 3^. 6d.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 6- TRAVELS. 3

These letters are the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter
and less practical side of colonization. They record the expeditions, ad-
ventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the -wife of a New
Zealand sheep-farmer ; and, as each was written -while the novelty and
excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh upon her, they may succeed
in giving here in England an adequate impression of the delight and free-
dom of an existence so far removed from our own highly -wrought civiliza-
tion. " We have never read a more truthful or a pleasanter little book." —
ATHEN^UM.

Bernard, St.— See MORISON.

Blanford (W. T.)— GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY OF
ABYSSINIA. By W. T. BLANFORD. 8vo. 2is.

This work contains an account of the Geological and Zoological
Observations made by the author in Abyssinia, when accompanying the
British Army on its march to Magdala and back in 1868, and during a
short journey in Northern Abyssinia, after the departure of the troops.
Parti. Personal Narrative; Part II. Geology; Part III. Zoology.
With Coloured Illustrations and Geological Map. " 77ie result of his
labours," the ACADEMY says, "is an important contribution to the
natural history of the country. "

Bryce. — THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By JAMES BRYCE,
D.C.L., Regius Professor of Civil Law, Oxford. New and Re-
vised Edition. Crown 8vo. 7-f. 6d.

The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history of
the countries included in the Romano- Germanic Empire— Italy during the
Middle Ages, Germany from theninth century tothenineteenth — as to describe
the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the wonderful offspring
of a body of beliefs and traditions which have almost wholly passed away
from the world. To make such a description intelligible it has appeared
best to give the book the form rather of a narrative than of a dissertation ;
and to combine with an exposition ofw-kat may be called the theory of the
Empire an outline oj the political history of Germany, as well as some
notice of the affairs of mediizval Italy. Nothing else so directly Knked the
old world to the new as the Roman Empire, which exercised over the minds of
men an influence such as its material strength could never have commanded.
It is of this influence, and the catises that gave it po^ver, that the present
-work is designed to treat. '''It exactly supplies a wanf ; it. affords a key

A 2

4 M 'ACMILLA N'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

fa much which men read of in their books as isolated facts, but of which they
have hitherto had no conducted exposition set before them. We know of no
wt iter -who has so thoroughly grasped the real nature of the mediaval
Empire, and its relations alike to earlier and to later times. " — SATURDAY
REVIE\V.

Burke (Edmund).— ^MORLEY (JOHN).

Cameos from English History .— &* YONGE (Miss).

Chatterton.—Ste WILSON (DANIEL).

Cooper. — ATHENE CANTABRIGIENSES. By CHARLES
HENRY GOOBER, F.S.A., and THOMPSON COOPER, F.S.A.
Vol. J. 8yo,, 1500—85, i8j. ; Vol. II., 1586—1609, i8j.

This elaborate work, which is dedicated by permission to I^ord Macaulay,
contains lives of the eminent men sent Jorth by Cambridge, after the
fashion of Anthony a Wood, in his famous " Athence Oxonienses."

Cox (G. V., M.A.)— rRECOLLECTIONS OF OXFORD.
By G. V. Cox, M.A., New College, late Esquire Bedel and
Coroner in the University of Oxford. Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo.
6s.

"An affliising,fqrrago of anecdote, an,d wil.l pleasantly recall in many
a country parsonage the memory of youthful days." — TIMES. " Those
who -wish to make acquaintance with the Oxford of their grandfathers,
and to keep tip the intercourse with Alma Mater during their father 's time,
ruen to the latest novelties in fashion or learning of the present day, will do
well to procure this pleasant, unpretending little volume. " — ATLAS.

" Daily News."— THE DAILY NEWS CORRESPOND-
ENCE of the War between Germany and France, 1870 — I. Edited
with Notes and Comments. New Edition. Complete in One
Volume. With Maps and Plans. Crown 8vo. 6s.

This Correspondence has been translated into German. Jn a Preface
the Editor says: —

" Among the various pictures, recitals, and descriptions which have
appeared, both of our gloriously ended national war as a whole, and of its
several episodes, we think that in laying before the German public, through

HtsfORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 5

a translation, the following War Letters -which appeared first in the DAILY
NEWS, and -Mere afterwards published collectively, ive are offering them a
picture of the events of the war of a quite peculiar character. Tluir com-
munications have the advantage of being at once entertaining and instruc-
tive, free from every romantic embellishment, and nevertheless written
in a vein intelligible and not fatiguing to the general reader. The writers
linger over events^ and do not disdain to surround the great and heroic
war-pictures with arabesques, gay and grave, taken from camp-life and
the life of the inhabitants of the occupied territory. A feature which
distinguishes these Letters from all other delineations of the war is that they
do not proceed from a single pen, but were written Jrom the camps of both
belligerents." " These notes and comments" according to the SATURDAY
REVIEW^ " are in reality a very well executed and continuous history."

Dilke.— GREATER BRITAIN. A Record of Travel in English-
speaking Countries during 1866-7. (America, Australia, India. )
By Sir CHARLES WENTWokTM DILKE, M.P. Fifth Editien.
Crown 8vo. df.

" Mr. Dilke" says the SATURDAY REVIEW; " has written a book which
is probably as well worth reading us any book of the same aims and
character that ever was written. Its merits are that it is written in a
lively and agreeable style, that it implies a gt-eat deal oj physical pluck,
that no page of it fails to show an acute and highly intelligent observer,
that it stimulates the imagination as well as the judgment of the reader,
and that it is on perhaps the most interesting subject that can attract an
Englishman who cares about his country." " Many of the subjects dis-
cussed in these pages" says the DAILY NEWS, "are of the widest interest,
and such as no man who cares for the future of his race and of the world
can afford to treat with indifference."

Diiref (Albfeeht). — S* H£ATON (MRS. C.)

Europ'eari History, Narrated in a Series of Histerica
Selection's from the best Authorities. Edited and arranged by
E. M. SEWELL and C. M. YONGE. First Series, crown 8vo. 6s. ;
Second Series, 1088- T228, cro\vn 8vo. 6s.

When young children have acquired tke outlines of history from abridg-
ments and catechisms, and it becomes desirable to givt a more enlarged
view of the subject^ in order to render it really useful and Interesting, a

6 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

difficulty often arises as to the choice of books. Two courses are open, either
io take a general and consequently dry history of facts, such as Russell 's
Modern Europe, or to choose some luork treating of a particular period or
subject, such as the -works of Macaulay and Froude. The former course
usually renders history uninteresting ; the latter is unsatisfactory, because
it is not sufficiently conipreJiensive. To remedy this difficulty, selections,
continuous and chronological, have in the present volume been taken from
the larger -works of Freeman, Milman, Palgrave, Lingard, Hume, and
others, ivhich may serve as distinct landmarks of historical reading.
" We know of scarcely anything," says the GUARDIAN, of this volume,
"-which is so likely to raise to a higher level the. average standard of English
education."

Fairfax (Lord). — A LIFE OF THE GREAT LORD FAIR-
FAX, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Parliament of
England. By CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, F.S.A. With Portraits,
Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. Demy 8vo. i6>.
No full Life of the great Parliamentary Commander has appeared;
and it is here sought to pi-oduct one — based upon careful research in con-
temporary records and upon family and other docummts. " Highly
useful to the careful student of the History of the Civil War. . . . Pro-
bably as a military chronicle Mr. Markham's book is one of the most full
and accurate that -we possess about the Civil War." — FORTNIGHTLY
REVIEW.

Field (E. W.)— s« SADLER.

Freeman. — Works by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., D.C.L.

"That special power over a subject -which conscientious and patient
research can only achieve, a strong grasp of fads, a true mastery over
detail, -with a clear and manly style — all these qualities join to make
the Historian of the Conquest conspicuous in the intellectual arena." —
ACADEMY.

HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, from the Foun-
dation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United
States. Vol. I. General Introduction, History of the Greek
Federations. 8vo. 2 U.

Mr. Freematfs aim, in this elaborate and valuable -work, is not so
much to discuss the abstract nature of Federal Government, as to exhibit
its actual -working in ages and countries ividely removed from one another.
Four Federal Commonwealths stand out, in four different ages of- the -world,
as commanding above all others the attention of students of political history,

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 6- TRAVELS. 7

Freeman (E. A.)— continued.

viz. the Achaian League, the Swiss Cantons, the United Provinces, the
United States. The first volume, besides containing a General Introduc-
tion, treats of the first of these. In writing this volume the author has
endeavoured to combine a text which may be instructive and interesting to
any thoughtful reader, whether specially learned or not, with notes which
may satisfy the requirements of the most exacting scholar. " The task
Mr. Freeman has undertaken" the SATURDAY REVIEW says, "is one
of great magnitude and importance. It is also a task of an almost
entirely novel character. No other work professing to give the history of
a political principle occurs to us, except the slight contributions to the
history of representative government that is contained in a course of
M. Guizofs lectures .... The historv of the development of a principle
is at least as important as the history of a dynasty, or of a race. '

OLD ENGLISH HISTORV*. With Five Coloured Maps. Second
Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo., half-bound. 6s.

"Its object," the Preface says, "is to show that clear, accurate, and
scientific views of history, or indeed of any subject, may be easily given to
children from the very first. . . . I have throughout striven to connect the
history of England with the general history of civilized Europe, and I have
especially tried to make the book serve as an incentive to a more accurate
study of historic geography. " The rapid sale of the first edition and the
universal approval with which the work has been received prove the correct-
ness of the author's notions, and show that for such a book there was ample
room. The work is suited not only for children, but will serve as an &r-
cellent text-book for older students, a clear and faithjul summary of the
history of the period for those who wish to revive their historical know-
ledge, and a book full of charms for the general reader. The work is
preceded by a complete chronological Table, and appended is an exhaustive
and useful Index. In the present edition the whole has been carefully revised,
and such improvements as suggested themselves have been introduced.
" The book indeed is full of instruction and interest to students of all
ages, and he must be a well-informed man indeed who will not rise from
its perusal with clearer and more accurate ideas of a too much negleclea
portion of English history." — SPECTATOR.

HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS,
as illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old
Foundation. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d.

8 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS /A

Freeman (E. A.)— continued.

' I have here" the author says, " tried to treat the history of the
Church of Wells as a contribution to the general history of the Church
and Kingdom of England, and specially to the history of Cathedral
Churches of the Old Foundation. . . . I wish to point out the general
principles of the original founders as the model to which the Old Foun-
dations should be brought back, and the New foundations reformed after
their pattern." " The history assumes in Mr. Freeman's hands a signi-
ficance, and, -we may add, a practical value as suggestive of what a cathe-
dral ought to be, which make it well worthy of mention." — SPECTATOR.

HISTORICAL ESSAYS. Second Edition. 8vo. roj. 6d.

The principle on which these Essays have been chosen is that
of selecting papers which refer to comparatively modern times, or, at
least, to the existing stales and nations of Europe. By a sort of accident
a number of the pieces chosen have thrown themselves into something like
a continuous series bearing on the historical causes of the great events of
1870 — 71. Notes have been added whenever they seemed to be called f or ;
and whenever he could gain in accuraty of statement or in force or clear-
ness of expression, the author has freely changed, added to, or left out,
what he originally wrote. To many of the Essays has been added a short
note of the circumstances under which they were written. It is needless to
say that any product of Mr. Freeman's pen is war thy of attentive perusal ;
and it is believed that the contents of this volume will throw light on
smeral subjects of great historical importance and the widest interest.
The following is a list of the subjects: — I. The Mythical and Romantic
Elements in Early English Histoiy ; 2. The Continuity of English
History ; 3. The Relations belween the Crowns of England and Scotlatid ;
4. Saint Thomas oj Canterbury and his Biographers ; 5- The Reign of
Edward the Third; 6. 7*he Holy Roman Empire ; 7. The Franks and
the Gauls ; 8. '1 'he Early Sieges of Parts ; 9. Frederick the First, King
of Italy ; 10. The Emperor Frederick the Second ; n. Charles the Bold ;
12. Presidential Government. "He never touches a question without
adding to our comprehension of it, withottt leaving the impression of an
ample knowledge, a righteous purpose, a clear and poiverful under-
standing."— SATURDAY REVIEW.

THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION FROM
THE EARLIEST TIMES, In the press.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &• TRAVELS. 9

Galileo. — THE PRIVATE LIFE or GALILEO. Compiled

principally from his Correspondence and that of his eldest
daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, Nun in the Franciscan Convent of
S. Matthew in Arcetri. With Portrait. Crown Svo. "js. bd.

It has been the endeavour of the compiler to place before the reader a
plain, ungarbled statement of facts ; and*, as a means to this end, to allow
Galileo, his friends, and his judges to speak for themselves as far as possible.
All the best authorities have been made use of, and all the materials which
exist for a biography have been in this volume put into a symmetrical form .
The result is a most touching picture skilfully arranged of the great heroic
man of science and his devoted daughter, whose letters are full of the deepest
reverential love and trust, amply repaid by the noble soul. The SATUR-
DAY REVIEW says of the book, "// is not so much the philosopher as the
man who is seen in this simple and life-like sketch-, and the hand which,
portrays the features and actions is mainly that of one who had studied the
subject the closest and the most intimately. This little volume has done
much within its slender compass to prove the depth and tenderness of
Galileo's heart.'1''

Gladstone (Right Hon. W. E., M.P.)— JUVENTUS

MUNDI. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. Crown Svo.
cloth. With Map. IOT. 6d. Second Edition.

This work of Mr. Gladstone deals especially with the historic element
in Homer, expounding that element and furnishing by its aid a full
account of the Homeric men and the Homeric religion. It starts, after
the introductory chapter, with a discussion of the several races then existing
in Hellas, including the influence of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It
contains chapters on the Olympian system, with its several deities ; on the
Ethics and the Polity of the Heroic age ; on the Geography of Homer ; On
the characters of the Poems • presenting, in fine, a view of primitive life
and primitive society as found in the poems of Homer. To this New
Edition various additions have been made. "Seldom," says the ATHE-
NAEUM, " out of the great poems themselves, have these Divinities looked
se majestic and respectable. To read these brilliant details is like standing'
on the Olympian threshold and gazing at the ineffable brightness within. "
" There is," according to ^WESTMINSTER REVIEW, ''"probably no other
writer now living who could have done the work of this book. . . It would
e difficult to point out a book that contains so much fulness of knmuledge
long, with so much freshness of perception and clearness of presentation"

io MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

GuiZOt. — M. DE BARANTE, a Memoir, Biographical and Auto-
biographical. By M. GUIZOT. Translated by the Author of
"JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.

" ft is scarcely necessary to write a preface to this book. Its lifelike,
portrait of a true and great man, fainted unconsciously by himself in his
Liters and autobiography, and retouched and completed by the tender hand
of his surviving friend — the friend of a lifetime — is sure, I think, to be
appreciated in England as it was in France, where it appeared in the
Revue de Deux Mondes. Also, I believe every thoughtful mind will
enjoy its clear reflections of French and European politics and history for
the last seventy years, and the curious light thus thrown upon many present
events and combinations of circumstances." — PREFACE. " The highest
purposes of both history and biography are answered by a memoir so life-
like, so faithful, and so philosophical." — BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
" This eloquent memoir, which for tenderness, gracefulness, and vigour,
might be placed on the same shelf with Tacitus' Life of Agricola. . . . Mrs.
Craik has rendered the language of Guizot in her own sweet translucent
English."— DAILY NEWS.

Heaton (Mrs. C.) — HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF AL-
BRECHT DURER, of Niirnberg. With a Translation of his
Letters and Journal, and some account of his Works. By Mrs.
CHARLES HEATON. Royal 8vo. bevelled boards, extra gilt y.s. 6a".

This work contains about Thirty Illustrations, ten of which art produc-
tions by the Autotype (carbon) process, and are printed in permanent tints
by Messrs. Cundall and Fleming, under licence from the Autotype Com-
pany, Limited; the rest are Photographs and Woodcuts.

Hole. — A GENEALOGICAL STEMMA OF THE KINGS
OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By the Rev. C. HOLE,
M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. On Sheet, is.
TTie different families are printed in distinguishing colours, thus facili-
tating reference.

Hozier (H. M.) — Works by CAPTAIN HENRY M. HOZIER,
late Assistant Military Secretary to Lord Napier of Magdala.

THE SEVEN WEEKS' WAR; Its Antecedents and Incidents.
New and Cheaper Edition. With New Preface, Maps, and Plans.
Crown Svo. 6s.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, <S- TRAVELS. n

Hosier (H. M.)— continued.

This account of the brief but momentous Austro- Prussian War of 1866
claims consideration as being the product of an eye-witness of some of its
most interesting incidents. The author has attempted to ascertain and
to advance facts. Two maps are given, one illustrating the opera-
tions of the Army of the Maine, and the other the operations from
Koniggriitz. In the Prefatory Chapter to this edition, evcii'.s resulting
from the war of 1866 are set forth, and the current of European history
traced down to the recent Franco- Prussian war, a natural consequence
of the war whose history is narrated in this volume. " Mr. Hazier
added to the knowledge of military operations and of languages, which
he had proved himself to possess, a ready and skilful pen, and ex-
cellent faculties of observation and description. . . . All that Mr.
Hazier saw of the great events of the war— and he saw a large share
of them — he describes in clear and vivid language.'" — SATURDAY
REVIEW. "Mr. Hazier 's volumes desei've to take a permanent place
in the literature of the Seven Weeks' War. " — PALL MALL GAZETTE.

THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO ABYSSINIA. Compiled from
Authentic Documents. 8vo. <)s.

Several accounts of the British Expedition have been published.
They have, however, been written by those who have not had access to those
authentic documents, which cannot be collected directly after the termination
of a campaign. The endeavour of the author of this sketch has been to
present to readers a succinct and impartial account of an enterprise which
has rarelv been equalled in the annals of war. " This" says the
SPECTATOR, "will be the account of the Abyssinian Expedition for
professional reference, if not for professional reading. Its literary
merits are really very great. "

THE INVASIONS OF ENGLAND. A History of the Past, with
Lessons for the Future. In the press.

Huyshe (Captain G. L.)— THE RED RIVER EXPE-
DITION. By Captain G. L. HUYSHE, Rifle Brigade, late on
the Staff of Colonel Sir GARNET WOLSELEY. With Maps. 8vo.
ioj. 6d.

This account has been written in the hope of directing attention
to the successful accomplishment of an expedition which was attended with
more than ordinary difficulties. The author has had access to the official

12 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

documents of the Expedition, and has also availed himself of the reports on
the line of route published by Mr. Dawson, C.E., and by the Typogra-
phical Department of the War Office. The statements made may therefore
be relied on as accurate and impartial. The endeavour has been made to
aveid tiring the general reader with dry details of military movements, and
yet not to sacrifice the character of the -work as an account of a military
expedition. The volume contains a portrait of President Louis Kiel, and
Maps of the route. The ATHEN^UM calls it " an enduring authentic
record of one of the most creditable achievements ever accomplished by the
British Army."

Irving.— f HE ANNALS OF OUR TIME. A Diurnal of Events,
Social and Political, Home and Foreign, from the Accession of
Queen Victoria to the Peace of Versailles. By JOSEPH IRVING.
Second Edition. 8vo. half-bound. i6s.

Every occurrence, metropolitan or provincial, home or foreign, "which
gave rise to public excitement or discussion, or became the starting point for
new trains of thought affecting our social life, has been judged proper matter
for this volume. In the proceedings of Parliament, an endeavour A&s
been made to notice all those Debates which were either remarkable as
affecting the fate of parties, dr led to important changes in our relations
with Foreign Poitiers. Brief notices have been given of the death of all
noteworthy persons. Though the events are set down day by day in their
order of occurrence, the book is, in its way, the history of an important
and well-defined historic cycle. In these 'Annals,' the ordinary reader
may make himself acquainted with the history of his own time in a Way
that has at least the merit of simplicity and readiness ; the more cultivated
student will doubtless be thankful for the opportunity given him of passing
down the historic stream undisturbed by any other theoretical or party
feeling than what he himself has at hand to explain the philosophy of our
national story. A complete and useful Index is appended. The Table
of Administrations is designed to assist the reader in following the various
political changes noticed in their chronological order in the 'Annals? —
In the ntiv edition all errors and omissions have been rectified, 300 pages
been added, and as many as 46 occupied by an impartial exhibition of the
wonderful series of events marking the latter half of 1870. " We
have be/ore us a trusty and ready guide to the events of the past thirty
•years, ai'ailable equally for the statesman, the politician, the public
writer, and the general reader. If Mr. Irving' s object has been to bring
before the reader all the most noteworthy occurrences which have happened

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &• TRAVELS. 13

since the beginning of her Majesty 's reign, he may justly claitn the credit
of having done so most briefly, succinctly, and simply, and in such a
manner, too, as to furnish him with the details necessary in each case to
comprehend the event of which he is in search in an intelligent manner. "
—TIMES.

Kmgsley (Ganon). — Works by the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY,
M.A., Rector of Eversley and Canon of Chester. (For other
Works by the same Author, see THEOLOGICAL and BELLES
LETTRES Catalogues. )

ON THE ANCIEN REGIME as it existed on the Continent before
the FRENCH REVOLUTION. Three Lectures delivered at the
Royal Institution. Crown 8vo. 6s.

These three lectures discuss severally (l) Caste, (2) Centralization, (3)
The Explosive Forces by -which the Revolution was superinduced. The
Preface deals at some length with certain political questions of the present
day.

AT LAST : A CHRISTMAS in the WEST INDIES. With nearly
Fifty Illustrations. New and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo.
IQJ. (id.

Mr. Kingsley's dream of forty years was at last fulfilled, when he
started on a Christmas expedition to the West Indies^ for the purpose of
becoming personally acquainted with the scenes which he has so vividly
described in " Westward Ho !" These two volumes are the journal of his
•voyage. Records of natural history, sketches of tropical landscape, chapters
on education, views of society, all find their place in a work written, so to
say, under the inspiration of Sir Walter Raleigh and the other adventurous
men who three hundred years ago disputed against Philip II. the possession
ef the Spanish Main. " We can only say that Mr. Ringsley*s account of
a '• Christmas in the West Indies ' is in every way worthy to be classed
among his happiest productions." — STANDARD.

THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. A Series of Lectures
delivered before the University of Cambridge. 8vo. izr.

CONTENTS : — Inaugural Lecture ; The Forest Children ; The Dyin%
Empire; The Human Deluge ; The Gothic Civilizer ; Dietrich's End; The
Nemesis of the Goths ; Paulus Diaconus ; The Clergy and the Heathen
The Monk a Ciri/izer ; Tlie Lombard Laws ; The Popes and tht Lombard? ;

14 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

The Strategy of Providence. "He has rendered" says the NONCON-
FORMIST, "good service and shed a new lustre on the chair of Modern
History at Cambridge .... He has thrown a charm around the work
by the marvellous fascinations of his own genius, brought out in strong
relief those great principles of which all history is a revelation, lighted
up many dark and almost unknmvn spots, and stimulated the desire to
understand more thoroughly one of the greatest movements in the story of
humanity. "

Kingsley (Henry, F.R.G.S.) — For other Works by same
Author, see BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUE.

TALES OF OLD TRAVEL. Re-narrated by HENRY KINGSLEY,
F.R.G.S. With Eight Illustrations by HUARD. Third Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

In this volume Mr. Henry Kingsley re-narrates, at the same time
preserving much of the quaintness of the original, some of the most fasci-
nating tales of travel contained in the collections of Hakluyt and others. The
CONTENTS are — Marco Polo; The Shipwreck of Pelsart ; The Wonderful
Adventures of Andreia Battel ; The IVanderings of a Capuchin; Peter
Carder; The Preservation of the " 'Terra Nova ;" Spitzbergen; D1 Erme-
nonville's Acclimatization Adventure; The Old Slave Trade; Miles Philips ;
The Sufferings of Robert Everard ; John Fox; Alvaro Nunez; The Foun-
dation of an Empire. " We know no better book for those who want
knowledge or seek to refresh it. As for the 'sensational,' most novels are
tame compared with these narratives" — ATHENAEUM. "Exactly the
book to interest and to do good to intelligent and high-spirited boys." —
LITERARY CHURCHMAN.

Macmillan (Rev. Hugh). — Forother Works by same Author,
see THEOLOGICAL and SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUES.

HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS ; or, Rambles and Incidents in
search of Alpine Plants. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s.

The aim of this book is to impart a genera! idea of the origin, character,
and distribution of those rare and beautiful Alpine plants which occur on
the British hills, and which are found almost everyivhcre on the lofty
mountain chains of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The informa-
tion the author has to give is con-'cvcd in untechiiiicJ language,** a
setting of personal adventure, and associated with descriptions of the

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &• TRAVELS. 15

natural scenery and the peculiarities of the human life in the midst of which
the plants were found. By this method the subject is made interesting to
a very large class of readers. ' ' Botanical knowledge is blended with a
love of nature, a pious enthusiasm, and a rich felicity of diction not to be
met with in any works of kindred character, if we except those of Hugh
Miller." — TELEGRAPH. "Mr. M.'s glowing pictures of Scandinavian
scenery." — SATURDAY REVIEW.

Martin (Frederick) — THE STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK :

See p. 36 of this Catalogue.

Martineau. — BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 1852—1868.

By HARRIET MARTINEAU. Third and Cheaper Edition, with
New Preface. Crown 8vo. 6s.

A Collection of Memoirs under these several sections: — (i) Royal, (2)
Politicians, (3) Professional, (4) Scientific, (5) Social, (6) Literary. These
Memoirs appeared originally in the columns of the DAILY NEWS. " Miss
Martineau 's large literary powers and her fine intellectual training make
these little sketches more instructive, and constitute them more genuinely
works of art, than many more ambitious and diffuse biographies." —
FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. " Each memoir is a complete digest of a
celebrated life, illuminated by the flood of searching light which streams
from the gaze of an acute but liberal mind." — MORNING STAR.

Masson (David). — For other Works by same Author, see PHILO-
SOPHICAL and BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUES.

LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connection with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By
DAVID MASSON, M. A., LL. D., Professor of Rhetoric and English
Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Vol. I. with Portraits.
8vo. i8j. Vol. II., 1638—1643. 8vo. i6j. Vol. III. in the
press.

This work is not only a Biography, but also a continuous Political,
Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of England through Aliltorfs whole
time. In order to understand Milton, his position, his motives, his
thoughts by himself, his public words to his countrymen, and the probable
effect of those words, it was necessary to refer largely to the History of his
Time, not only as it is presented in well-known books, but as it had to be
rediscovered by express and laborious investigation in ori& inal and forgotten

16 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

records : thus of the Biography, a History grew : not a mere popular
compilation, but a work of independent search and method from first to
/as(t -which has cost more labour by Jar than the Biography. The second
volume is so arranged that the reader may select or omit either the History
or Biography. The NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, speaking of the first
volume of this work said, " The Life of Milton is here written once for
all." The NONCONFORMIST, in noticing the second -volume, says, "Its
literary excellence entitles it to take its place in the first ranks of our
literature, while the whole style of its execution marks it as the only book
that has done anything like adeqtiate justice to one of the great masters of our
language, and one of our truest patriots, as well as our greatest epic poet."

Mayor (J. E. B.)_ WORKS Edited By JOHN E. B. MAYOR,
M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

CAMBRIDGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Part II.
Autobiography of Matthew Robinson. Fcap. 8vo. 55. 6d.

This is the second of the Memoirs illustrative of " Cambridge in the
Seventeenth Century, " that of Nicholas Farrar having preceded it. It gives
a lively picture of England during the Civil Wars, the most important
crisis of our national life; it supplies materials for the history of the
University and our Endowed Schools, and gives us a view of country
clergy at a time when they are supposed to have been, with scarce an ex-
ception, scurrilous sots. Mr. Mayor has added a collection of extracts and
documents relating to the history of several other Cambridge men of note
belonging to the same period, all, like Robinson, of Nonconformist leanings.

LIFE OF BISHOP BEDELL. By his SON. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d.

This is the third of the Memoirs illustrative of" Cambridge in the I "Jth
Century. " The life of the Bishop of Kilmore here printed for the first time
is preserved in the Tanner MSS., and is preliminary to a larger one to be
issued shortly.

Mitfbrd (A. B.)— TALES OF OLD JAPAN. By A. B.

MITFORD, Second Secretary to the British Legation in Japan.
With upwards of 30 Illustrations, drawn and cut on Wood by
Japanese Artists. Two Vols. crown Svo. zis.

Under the influence of more enlightened ideas and of a liberal system of
felicy, the old Japanese civilization is fast disappearing, and will, in a.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 17

few years, be completely extinct. It was important, therefore, to preserve
as far as possible trustworthy records of a state of society which, although
venerable from its antiquity, has for Europeans the dawn of novelty ;
hence the series oj narratives and legends translated by Mr. Mitford,
and in which the Japanese are very judiciotisly left to tell their own tale.
The two volumes comprise not only stories and episodes ilhtstrative of
Asiatic superstitions, but also three sermons. The preface, appendices,
and notes explain a number of local peculiarities ; the thirty-one woodcuts
are the genuine work of a native artist, who, unconsciously of course, has
adopted the process first introduced by the early German masters. " These
very original volumes will always be interesting as memorials of a most
exceptional society, while regarded simply as tales, they are sparkling, sensa-
tional, and dramatic, and the originality of their ideas and the quaintness
of their language give them a most captivating piquancy. The illustra-
tions are extremely interesting, and Jor the curious in such mailers have
a special and particular value." — PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Morley (John). — EDMUND BURKE, a Historical Study. By
JOHN MORLEY, B.A. Oxon. Crown 8vo. fs. 6a".

" The style is terse and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point.
It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have
disowned. Its sustained power of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation
and reflection, its elevated ethical and social tone, stamp it as a work of
high excellence." — SATURDAY REVIEW. "A model of compact conden-
sation. We have seldom met with a book in which so much matter was
compressed into so limited a space." — PALL MALL GAZETTE. "An essay
of unusual effort." — WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

Morison. — THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAINT BERNARD,
Abbot of Clairvaux. By JAMES COTTER MORISON, M. A. Cheaper
Edition. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d.

The PALL MALL GAZETTE calls this " one of the best contributions in
our literature towards a vivid, intelligent, and worthy knowledge of
European interests and thoughts and feelings during the twelfth century.
A delightful and instructive volume, and one of the best products of the
modern historic spirit." "A work" says the NONCONFORMIST, "of
great merit and value, dealing most thoroughly with one of the most in-
teresting characters, and one of the most interesting periods, in the Church
history of the Middle Ages. Air. Morison is thoroughly master of //is subject,

IS MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

and writes with great discrimination and fairness, and in a chaste and
elegant style." The SPECTATOR says it is "not only distinguished by
research and candour, it has also the great merit of never being dull"

Palgrave (Sir F.)— HISTORY OF NORMANDY AND
OF ENGLAND. By Sir FRANCIS PALGRAVE, Deputy Keeper
of Her Majesty's Public Records. Completing the History to the
Death of William Rufus. Four Vols. 8vo. ,£4 4?.

Volume I. General Relations of Mediaval Europe — The Carlovingian
Empire — The Danish Expeditions in the Cauls — And the Establishment
of Rollo. Volume II. Tlie Three First Dukes of Normandy ; Rollo,
Guillaume Longue-Epte, and Richard Sans-Peur — The Carlovingian
line supplanted by the Capets. Volume III. Richard Sans-Peur —
Richard Le-Bon — Richard III. — Robert Le Diablc — William the Con-
queror. Volume IV. William Rufus — Accession of Henry Beauclerc.
It is needless to say anything to recommend this work of a lifetime to all
students of history ; it is, as the SPECTATOR says, "perhaps the greatest
single contribution yet made to the authentic annals of this country" and
" must" says the NONCONFORMIST, " always rank among our standard
authorities."

Palgrave (W. G.) — A NARRATIVE OF A YEAR'S
JOURNEY THROUGH CENTRAL AND EASTERN
ARABIA, 1862-3. By LIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, late of
the Eighth Regiment Bombay N. I. Sixth Edition. With Maps,
Plans, and Portrait of Author, engraved on steel by Jeens. Crown
8vo. 6j.

" The work is a model of what its class should be ; the style restrained,
the narrative clear, telling us all we wish to know of the country and
people -visited, and enough of the author and his feelings to enable us to
trust ourselves to his guidance in a tract hitherto untrodden, and dangerous
in more senses than one. . . He has not only written one of the best books
on the Arabs and one of the best books on Arabia, but he has done so in a
manner that must command the respect no less than the admiration of Ms
fellow-countrymen." — FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. " Considering the extent
of our previous ignorance, the amount of his achievements, and the im-
portance of his contributions to our knowledge, we cannot say less of him
than was once said of a far greater discoverer — Mr. Palgrave has indeed
given a new world to Eutv/>e." — PAI.L MALL GAZETTE.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, fr TRAVELS. 19

Paris. — INSIDE PARIS DURING THE SIEGE. By an
OXFORD GRADUATE. Crown 8vo. 7.1-. 6d.

This volume consists of the diary kept by a gentleman who lived in Paris
during the whole of its siege by the Prussians. He had many facilities for
coming in contact with men of all parties and of all classes, and ascertain-
ing the actual motives which animated them, and their real ultimate aims.
These facilities he took advantage of, and in his diary, day by day, care-
fully recorded the results of his observations, as well as faithfully but
graphically photographed the various inculents of the siege which came
under his own notice, the actual condition of the besieged, the sayings and
doings, the hopes and fears of the people among whom he freely moved.
In the Appendix is an exhaustive and elaborate account of the Organization
of the Republican party, sent to the author by AI. Jules Andrieu ; and a
translation of the Manifesto of the Commune to the People of England,
dated April 19, 1871. " The author tells his story admirably. The
Oxford Graduate seems to have gone etieryivhere, heard what everyone had
to say, and so been able to give us photographs of Paris life during the
siege which we have not had from any other source." — SPECTATOR.
"He has written brightly, lightly, and pleasantly, yet in perfect good
taste." — SATURDAY REVIEW.

Prichard. — THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA. From

1859 to 1868. The First Ten Years of Administration under the
Crown. By ILTUDUS THOMAS PRICHARD, Barrister-at-Law.
Two Vols. Demy 8vo. With Map. 2U.

In these volumes the author has aimed to supply a full, impartial, and
independent account of British India between 1859 and 1868 — which is
in many respects the most important epoch in the history of that country
that the present century has seen. " It has the great merit that it is not
exclusively devoted, as are too many histories, to military and politieal
details, but enters thoroughly into the more important questions of social
history. We find in these volumes a well-arranged and compendious
reference to almost all that has been done in India during the last ten
years ; and the most important official documents and historical pieces are
well selected and duly set forth." — SCOTSMAN. "It is a work which
every Englishman in India ought to add to his library." — STAR OK

B 2

20 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN
Robinson (H. Crabb)— THE DIARY, REMINISCENCES,

AND CORRESPONDENCE, OF HENRY CRABB ROBIN-
SON, Barrister-at-Law. Selected and Edited by THOMAS
SADLER, Ph.D. With Portrait. Third and Cheaper Edition.
Two Vols. Crown 8vo. i6j.

The DAILY NEWS says: " The two books which are most likely to
survive change of literary taste, and to charm while instructing generation
after generation, are the 'Diary' of Pepys and BoswelFs 'Life of
Johnson. ' The day will come when to these many will add the ' Diary of
Henry Crabb Robinson. ' Excellences like those which render the personal
revelations of Pepys and the observations of Boswell such pleasant reading
abound in this work . ... In it is to be found something to suit every taste
and inform every mind. For the general reader it contains much light and
amusing matter. To the lover of literature it conveys information which
he will prize highly on account of its accuracy and rarity. The student of
social life will gather from it many valuable hints whereon to base
theories as to the effects on English society of the progress of civilization.
For these and other reasons this ' Diary ' is a work to which a hearty
welcome should be accorded."

Rogers (James E. Thorold). — HISTORICAL GLEAN-
INGS : A Series of Sketches. Montague, Walpole, Adam Smith,
Cobbett. By Prof. ROGERS. Crown 8vo. ^s. 6J. Second Series.
Wiklif, Laud, Wilkes, and Home Tooke. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Professor Rogers 's object in these sketches, which are in the form of
Lectures, is to present a set of historical facts, grouped round a principal
figure. The author has aimed to state the social facts of the time in
which the individual whose history is handled took part in public business.
It is from sketches like these of the great men who took a prominent
and influential part in the affairs of their time that a clear conception of
the social and economical condition of our ancestors can be obtained.
History learned in this way is both instructive and agreeable. " His Essays, "
the PALL MALL GAZETTE says, " are full of interest, pregnant, thoughtful,
and readable." " They rank far above the average of similar perfor-
mances" says the WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

Raphael.— RAPHAEL OF URBINO AND HIS FATHER

GIOVANNI SANTI. By J. D. PASSAVANT, formerly Director
of the Museum at Frankfort. With Twenty Permanent Photo-
graphs. Royal 8vo. Handsomely bound. 3U. 6d.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, S- TRAVELS. 21

To the enlarged French edition of Passavant 's Life of Raphael, that
painter's admirers have turned •whenever they have sought information,
and it will doubtless remain for many years the best book of reference on
all questions pertaining to the great painter. The present work consists
of a translation of those parts of Passavant' s volumes which are most
likely to interest the general reader. Besides a complete life of Raphael, it
contains the valuable descriptions of all his known paintings, and the
Chronological Index, which is of so much service to amateurs who wish to
study the progressive character of his works. The Illustrations by
Woodbury's new permanent process of photography, are taken from the
finest engravings that could be procured, and have been chosen with the
intention of giving examples of Raphael's, various styles of painting. The
SATURDAY REVIEW says of them, " We have seen not a feiv elegant
specimens of Mr. Woodbury's new process, but we have seen none that
tqtial these."

Sadler. — EDWIN WILKINS FIELD. A Memorial Sketch-
By THOMAS SAD.LER, Ph. D. With a Portrait Crown 8vo. 4^. 6</.

Afr. Field was well known during his life-time not only as an eminent
lawyer and a strenuous and successful advocate of law reform, but, both
in England and America, as a man of wide and thorough culture, varied
tastes, large-heartcdness, and lofty aims. His sudden death was looked
upon as a public loss, and it is expected that this brief Memoir will be
acceptable to a large number outside of the many friends at whose request
it has been -written.

Somers (Robert) — THE SOUTHERN STATES SINCE
THE WAR. By ROBERT SOMERS. With Map. 8vo. 9.?.

This work is the result of inquiries made by the author of all authorities
competent to afford him information, and of his own observation dziring a
lengthened sojourti in the Southern States, to ivhich writers on America so
seldom direct their steps. The author's object is to give some account of the
condition of the Southern States under the new social and political system
introduced by the civil war. He has here collected such notes of the progress
of their cotton plantations, of the state of their labouring population and of
their industrial enterprises, as may help the reader to a safe opinion of
their means and prospects of development. He also gives such information
of their natural resources, railways, and other public works, as may
tend to shw to what extent they are fitted to become a profitable field of

22 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

enlarged immigration, settlement, and foreign trade. The volume contain]
many valuable and reliable details as to the condition of the Negro popula-
titn, the state of Education and Religion, of Cotton, Sugar, and Tobacco
Cultivation, of Agriculture generally, of Coal and Iron Mining, Manu-
factures, Trade, Means of Locomotion, and the condition of Towns and of
Society. A large map of the Southern States by Messrs. W. and A. K.
Johnston is appended, -which shows with great clearness the Cotton, Coal,
and Iron districts, the railways completed and projected, the State boundaries,
and other important details. " Full of interesting and valuable informa-
tion.'"— SATURDAY REVIEW.

Smith (Professor Goldwin). — THREE ENGLISH

STATESMEN. See p. 37 of this Catalogue.

Streets and Lanes of a City. — Su BUTTON (AMY) p. 31
of this Catalogue.

TacitUS. — THE HISTORY OF TACITUS, translated into
English. By A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BROURIBB, M.A.
With a Map and Notes. 8vo. IOJ. (yd.

The transJators have endeavoured to adhere as closely to the original as
was thought consistent with a proper observance of English idiom. At
the same time it has been their aim to reproduce the precise expressions of
the author. This work is characterised by the SPECTATOR as " a scholarly
and faithful translation."

THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA. Translated into English by
A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BROURIBB, M.A. With Maps
and Notes. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

The translators have sought to produce such a version as may satisfy
scholars who demand a faithful rendering of the original, and English
readers who are offended by the baldness and frigidity which commonly
disfigure translations. The treatises are accompanied by Introductions,
Notes, Maps, and a chronological Summary. The ATHENJEUM says of
this work that it is " a version at once readable and exact, which may be
paused with pleasure by all, and consulted with advantage by the classical
student;" and the PALL MALL GAZETTE says, " WJiat the editors have
attempted to do, it is not, we think .probable that any living scholars could
have done better."

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 23

Taylor (Rev. Isaac). — WORDS AND PLACES. See

p. 44 of this Catalogue.

Trench (Archbishop). — For other Works by the same Author,
see THEOLOGICAL and BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUES, and p. 45
of this Catalogue.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS : Social Aspects of the Thirty Years'
War. By R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin.
Fcap. 8vo. 2s, 6d.

' ' Clear and lucid in style, these lecttires will be a treasure to many to
whom the subject is unfamiliar.''1 — DUBLIN EVENING MAIL. " These
Lectures are -vivid and graphic sketches: the first treats of the great
King of Sweden, and of his character rather than of his actions ; the
second describes the condition of Germany in that dreadful time when
famine, battles, and pestilence, though they exterminated three-fourths of the
population, were less terrible than the fiend- like cruelty, the utter lawless-
ness and depravity, bred of long anarchy and suffering. The substance of
the lectures is drawn from contemporary accounts, which give to them
especial freshness and life." — LITERARY CHURCHMAN.

Trench (Mrs. R.)— Remains of the late MRS. RICHARD
TRENCH. Bdng Selections from her Journals, Letters, and
other Papers. Edited by ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. New and
Cheaper Issue, with Portrait. 8vo. 6s.

Contains Notices and Anecdotes illustrating the social life of the period
— extending over a quarter of a century (1799 — 1827). // includes also
Poems and other miscellaneous pieces bv Mrs. Trench.

\Vallace. — Works by ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. For other
Works by same Author, see SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUE.

Dr. Hooker, in his address to the British Association, spoke thus of the
author : — " Of Mr. Wallace and his many contributions to philosophical
b'ology it is not easy to speak without enthusiasm ; for, putting aside tkeit
great merits, he, throughout his writings, with a modesty as rare as I
believe it to be unconscious, forgets his own unquestioned claim to the honour
of having originated, independently of Mr. Dawin the theories which
he so ably defends."

24 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN

Wallace (A. R.)_ continued.

A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON AND
RIO NEGRO, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Obser-
vations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the
Amazon Valley. With a Map and Illustrations. 8vo. 12s.
Mr. Wallace is acknowledged as one of the first of modern travellers

and naturalists. This, his earliest work, will be found to possess many

charms for the general reader, and to be full of interest to the student of

natural history.

THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO : the Land of the Orang Utan
and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel with Studies
of Man and Nature. With Maps and Illustrations. Third and
Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d.

' ' The result is a iiivid picture of tropical life, which may be read with
unflagging interest, and a sufficient account of his scientific conclusions to
stimulate our appetite wit/tout wearying us by detail. In short, we may
safely say that we have never read a more agreeable book of its kind." —
SATURDAY REVIEW. "His descriptions of scenery, of the people and
their manners and customs, enlivened by occasional amusing anecdotes,
constitute the most interesting reading we have taken up for some time." —
STANDARD.

Ward (Professor).— THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA IN THE

THIRTY YEARS' WAR. Two Lectures, with Notes and Illus-
trations. By ADOLPIIUS W. WARD, M.A., Professor of History
in Owens College, Manchester. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
T7tese two Lectures were delivered in February, 1869, at the Philosophical
Institution, Edinburgh, and arenow published with Notes and Illustrations,
bear more thoroughly the impress of one who has a true and vigorous grasp
" We have never read," says the SATURDAY REVIEW, " any lectures which
of the subject in hand." " They are" the SCOTSMAN says, "the fruit of
much labour and learning, and it would be difficult to compress into a
hundred pages more information"

Warren.— AN ESSAY ON GREEK FEDERAL COINAGE.

By the Hon. J. LEICESTER WARREN, M.A. 8vo. zs. 6d.
The present essay is an attempt to illustrate Mr. freeman's Federal
Goz'ernment by erndence deduced from the coinage of the times and countries
therein treated of.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 25

WedgWOOd.— JOHN WESLEY AND THE EVANGELICAL
REACTION of the Eighteenth Century. By JULIA WEDGWOOD.
Crown 8vo. 8s. (>d.

This book is an attempt to delineate the influence of a particular man
upon his age. The background to the central figure is treated •with
considerable minuteness, the object of representation being not the -vicissitude
of a particular life, but that element in the life 'which impressed itself on
the life of a nation, — an element which cannot be understood luithout a
study of aspects of national thought which on a superficial vieiv might
appear wholly unconnected with it. " In style and intellectual pozver, in
breadth of view and clearness of insight, Miss Wedgivood's book far
surpasses all rivals" — ATHEN^UM. "As a short account of the most
remarkable movement in the eighteenth century, it must fairly be described
as excellent." — PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Wilson. — A MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON, M. D.,
P\R. S.E., Regius Professor of Technology in the University of
Edinburgh. By his SISTER. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

" An exquisite and touching portrait of a rare and beautiful spirit.'1'' —
GUARDIAN. " He more than most men of whom we have lately read
desei~ved a minute and careful biography, and by such alone could he be
understood, and become loveable and influential to his fellow-men. Such
a biography his sister has written, in which letters reach almost to the
extent of a complete autobiography, with all the additional charm of being
unconsciously such. We revere and admire the heart, and earnestly praise
the patient tender hand, by which such a worthy record of the earth-story
of one of God's true angel-men has been constructed for our delight and
profit." — NONCONFORMIST.

Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.) — Works by DANIEL WILSON,
LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature in University
College, Toronto : —

PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND. New Edition,
with numerous Illustrations. Two Vols. demy 8vo. 36^.

One object aimed at when the book first appeared was to rescue archa:ological
research from that limited range to -which a too exclusive devotion to classical
studies had given rise, and, especially in relation to Scotland, to ptcwe how
greatly more comprehensive and important are its native antiquities than all

26 MACMILLANS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN
Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.)— continued.

the traces of intruded art. The aim has been to a large extent effectually
accomplished, and such an impulse given to archceological research, that in
this new edition the whole of the work has had to be remodelled. Fully a
third of it has been entirely re- written ; and the remaining portions have
undergone so minute a revision as to render it in many respects a, new
work. The number of pictorial illustrations has been greatly increased,
and several of the former plates and woodcuts have been re-engraved
from new drawings. This is divided into four Parts. Part 1. deals
with The Primeval or Stone Period : Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral
Memorials, Dtuellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, etc. etc. ;
Fart 21. The Bronze Period : The Metallurgic Transition, Primitive
Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic Habits, with
other topics ; Part III. The Iron Period : The Introduction of Iron, The
Roman Invasion, Strongholds, etc. etc.; Part IV. The Christian Period :
Historical Data, the Norrifs Law Relics, Primitive and Mediceval
Ecclesiology, Ecclesiastical and Miscellaneous Antiquities. The work is
furnished with an elaborate Index. " One of the most interesting, learned,
and elegant works we have seen for a long time." — WESTMINSTER
REVIEW. " The interest connected with this beautiful volume is not
limited to that part of the kingdom to which it is chiefly devoted ; it will be
consulted with advantage and gratification by all who have a regard for
National Antiquities and for the advancement of scientific Archceology" —
ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL.

PREHISTORIC MAN. New Edition, revised and partly re-written,
with numerous Illustrations. One vol. 8vo. 2U.

This work, which carries out the principle of the preceding one, but with
a wider scope, aims to " view Man, as far as possible, unaffected by those
modifying influences which accompany the development of nations and the
maturity of a true historic period, in order thereby to ascertain the sources
from whence such development and maturity proceed. These researches
into the origin of civilization have accordingly been pursued under the belief
•which influenced the author in previous inquiries that the investigations
of the archaologist, when carried on in an enlightened spirit, are replete
with interest in relation to some of the most important problems of modern
science. To reject the aid of archeology in the progress of science, and
especially of ethnological science, is to extinguish the lamp of the student
•when most dependent on its borrmved rays." A prolonged residence on
some of the newest sites of the Neva World has afforded the author many

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &> TRAVELS, 27

Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.)— continued.

opportunities of investigating the antiquities of the American Aborigines,
and of bringing to light many facts of high importance in reference to
primeval man. 7'he changes in the new edition, necessitated by the great
advance in Archaeology since the first, include b?th reconstruction and
condensation, along with considerable additions alike in illustration and
in argument. " We find ," says the ATHEN^UM, " the main idea of his
treatise to be a pre-eminently scientific one, — namely, by archaeological
records to obtain a definite conception of the origin and nature of man's
earliest efforts at civilization in fhe New World, and to endeavour to dis-
cover, as if by analogy, the necessary conditions, phases, and epochs through
which man in the prehistoric stage in the Old World also must necessarily
have passed." The NORTH BRITISH REVIEW calls it "a mature and
mellow work of an able man ; free alike from crotchets and from dog-
matism, and. exhibiting on every page the caution and moderation of a
well-balanced judgment. "

CHATTERTON : A Biographical Study. By DANIEL WILSON,
LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature in University
College, Toronto. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.

The author here regards Chatter ton as a poet, not as a "mere resetter
and defacer of stolen literary treasures. " /Reviewed in this light, he has
found much in the old materials capable of being turned to new account ;
and to these materials research in various directions has enabled him to
make some additions. He believes that the boy-pod has been misjudged, and
that the biographies hitherto written of him are not only imperfect but
untrue. While dealing tenderly, the author has sought to deal truthfully
with the failings as well as the virtues of the boy : bearing always in
remembrance, what has been too frequently lost sight of, that he was but a
boy ; — a boy, and yet a poet of rare power. The EXAMINER thinks this
" the most complete and the purest biography of the poet which has yet
appeared." The LITERARY CHURCHMAN calls it "a most charming
literary biography."

Yonge (Charlotte M.)— Works by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,
Author of "The Heir of RedclyiTe," &c. &c. : —

A PARALLEL HISTORY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND :

consisting of Outlines and Dates. Oblong 4to. 3.?. 6J.
This tabular history has been drawn up to supply a, "want felt by many
teachers of some means of making their pupils realize it-hat events in the

28 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE.

Yonge (Charlotte M.)— continued.

two countries were contemporary. A skeleton narrative has been constructed
of the chief transactions in either country, placing a column between for
•what affected both alike, by -which means it is hoped that young people may
be assisted in grasping the mutual rtlation of events.

CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. From Rollo to Edward
II. Extra fcap. 8vo. Second Edition, enlarged. $s.
A SECOND SERIES, THE WARS IN FRANCE. Extra fcap.
8vo. S.T.

The endeavour has not been to chronicle facts, but to put together a series
of pictures of persons and events, so as to arrest the attention, and give
some individuality and distinctness to the recollection, by gathering together
details of the most memorable moments. The ' ' Cameos " are intended as
a book for young people just beyond the elementary histories of England,
and able to enter in some degree into the real spirit of events, and to be
struck with characters and scenes presented in some relief. " Instead of
dry details," says the NONCONFORMIST, " we have living pictures, faithful,
vivid, and striking. "

Young (Julian Charles, M.A.)— A MEMOIR OF

CHARLES MAYNE YOUNG, Tragedian, with "Extracts
from his Son's Journal. By JULIAN CHARLES YOUNG, M.A.
Rector of Ilmington. With Portraits and Sketches. ATew and
Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d.

Round this memoir of one who held no mean place in public estimation
as a tragedian, and who, as a man, by the unobtrusive simplicity and
moral purity of his private life, won golden opinions from all sorts of men,
are clustered extracts from the author's yournals, containing many
curious and interesting reminiscences of his father's and his awn eminent
and famous contemporaries and acquaintances, somewhat after the manner
of H. Crabb Robinson's Diary. Every page will be found jull both of
entertainment and instruction. It contains four portraits of the tragedian,
and a few other curious sketches. " In this budget of anecdotes, fables, and
gossip, old and new, relative to Scott, Moore, Chalmers, Coleridge, Words-
worth, Croker, MatJiews, the third and fozirth Georges, Bowles, Beckford,
Lockhart, Wellington, Peel, Louis Napoleon, D'Orsay, Dickens,
Thackeray, Louis Blanc, Gibson, Constable, and StaiifiM, etc. etc. the
reader must be hard indeed to please who cannot find entertainment. " —
PALL MALL GAZETTE.

POLITICS, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
ECONOMY, LAW, AND KINDRED
SUBJECTS.

Baxter. — NATIONAL INCOME : The United Kingdom. By
R. DUDLEY BAXTER, M.A. Svo. 3-r. 6d.

The present work endeavours to answer systematically tuck questions
as the following: — What are the means and aggregate wages of our
labouring population ; what are the numbers and aggregate profits
of the middle classes ; what the revenues of our great proprietors
and capitalists ; and what the pecuniary strength of the nation to
bear the burdens annually falling upon us ? What capital in
land and goods and money is stored up for our subsistence, and for
carrying out our enterprises ? The author has collected his facts
from every quarter and tested them in -various ways, in order to
make his statements and deductions valuable and trustworthy.
Part I. of the work deals with the Classification of the Population
into — Chap. I. The Income Classes ; Chap. II. The Upper and
Middle and Manual Labour Classes. Part II. treats of the In-
come of the United Kingdom, divided into — Chap. III. Upper
and Middle Incomes ; Chap. IV. Wages of the Manual Labour
Classes — England and Wales ; Chap. V. Income of Scotland ;
Chap. VI. Income of Ireland ; Chap. VII. Income of the
United Kingdom. In the Appendix will be found many valuable
and carefully compiled tables, illustrating in detail the subjects
discussed in the text. •

Bernard.— FOUR LECTURES ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED

WITH DIPLOMACY. By MOUNTAGUE BERNARD, M.A.,
Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Oxford.
8vo. s.

30 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF

These four Lectures deal with — /. " The Congress of Westphalia ; "
IL " Systems of Polity ;" II L " Diplomacy, Past and Present ;"
IV. "The Obligations of Treaties." — "Singularly interesting
lectures, so able, clear, and attractive." — SPECTATOR. "The
author of these lectures is full of the knowledge -which belongs to
his subject, and has that power of clear and vigorous expression
which results from clear and vigorous thought" — SCOTSMAN.

Bright (John, M. P.)— SPEECHES ON QUESTIONS OF
PUBLIC POLICY. By the Right Hon. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P.
Edited by Professor THOROLU ROGERS. Author's Popular Edition.
Globe 8vo. 3.?. 6J.

The speeches which have been selected for publication in these -volumes
possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no
person will be likely to underrate. The speeches have been selected
with a view of supplying the public with the evidence on which Mr.
Bright 's friends assert his right to a place in the front rank of
English statesmen. They are divided into groups, according
to their subjects. The editor has naturally given prominence to
those subjects witk which Mr. Bright has been specially identified,
as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and Parliamentary
Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on which
Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes. ''Mr.
Brighfs speeches will always deserve to be studied, as an apprentice-
ship to popular and parliamentary oratory ; they will form
materials for the history of our time, and many brilliant passages,
perhaps some entire speeches, will really become a part of the living
literature of England." — DAILY NEWS.

LIBRARY EDITION. Two Vols. 8vo. With Portrait. 25*.

Christie.— THE BALLOT AND CORRUPTION AND
EXPENDITURE AT ELECTIONS, a Collection of Essays and
Addresses of different dates. By W. D. CHRISTIE, C.B.. formerly
Her Majesty's Minister to the Argentine Confederation and to
Brazil ; Author of " Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. " Crown
8vo. 4*. 6tf.

Mr. Christie has been well known for upwards of thirty years as a
strenuous and able advocate for the Ballot, bet ft in his place in
Parliament and elsewhere. The papers and speeches here collected

WORKS /A7 POLITICS, ETC 31

are six in number, exclusive of the Preface and Dedication to Pro-
fessor Maurice, which contains many interesting historical details
concerning the Ballot. " You have thought to greater purpose on
the means of preventing electoral corruption, and are likely to be of
more service in passing measures for that highly important end,
than any other person that I could name." — J. S. Mill, in a
published letter to the Author, May 1868.

Corfield (Professor W. H.)— A DIGEST OF FACTS
RELATING TO THE TREATMENT AND UTILIZATION
OF SEWAGE. By W. H. CORFIELD, M.A., B.A., Professor of
Hygiene and Public Health at University College, London. 8vo.
los. 6d. Second Edition, corrected and enlarged.

In this edition the author has revised and corrected the entire work,
and made many important additions. The headings of the eleven
chapters are as follow: — /. "Early Systems: Midden- Heaps and
Cesspools." II. "Filth and Disease — Cause and Effect." III. "Im-
proved Midden-Pits and Cesspools; Midden-Closets, Pail-Closets,
etc." IV. " The Dry- Closet Systems." V. "Water- Closets." VI.
" Sewerage." VII. "Sanitary Aspects of the Water- Carrying
•System." VIII. "Value of Sewage ; Injury to Rivers." IX.
Town Sewage; Attempts at Utilization." X. "Filtration and
Irrigation." XI. "Influence of Sewage Farming on the Public
Health." An abridged account of the more recently published
researches on the subject will be found in the Appendices, while the
Summary contains a concise statement of the views which the author
himself has been led to adopt; references have been inserted through-
out to show from what sources the numerous quotations have been
derived, and an Index has been added. "Mr. Corfield' s work is
entitled to rank as a standard authority, no less t/tan a convenient
handbook, in all matters relating to sewage." — ATHENAEUM.

Button (Amy). — STREETS AND LANES OF A CITY:
being the Reminiscences of AMY DUTTON. With a Preface by
the BISHOP OF SALISBURY. Pp. viii. 159. Globe 8vo. 3^-. 6d.

This little volume records "a portion of the experience, selected out of
overflowing materials, of two ladies, during several years of devoted
•work as district parochial visitors in a large population in the
North of England." T/te "Reminiscences of Amy Dutton" sci~i<e

32 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF

to illustrate the line of argument adopted by Miss Stephen in her
work on the "Service of the Poor," because they show that as in one
aspect the lady visitor may be said to be a link between rich and
poor, in another she helps to blend the "religious" life -with the
" secu/ar," and in both does service of extreme value to the Church
and Nation. "A record only too brief of some of the real por-
traits of hit inanity, painted by a pencil, tender indeed and sympa-
thetic, but with too clear a sight, too ready a sense of humour, and
too conscientious a spirit ever to exaggerate, extenuate, or aught set
down in malice." — GUARDIAN.

FawCCtt. — Works by HENRY FAWCETT, M.A., M.P., Fellow of
Trinity Hall, and Professor of Political Economy in the University
of Cambridge : —

THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE BRITISH
LABOURER. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s.

This work formed a portion of a course of Lectures delivered by the
author in the University of Cambridge, and he has deemed it
advisable to retain many of the expositions of the elementary prin-
ciples of Economic Science. In the Introductory Chapter the
author points out the scope of the work and shows the vast import-
ance of the subject in relation to the commercial prosperity and even
the national existence of Britain. Then follo-M five chapters on
" The Land Tenure of England," "Co-operation," "The Causes
which regulate Wages," "Trade Unions and Strikes," and
"Emigration." The EXAMINER calls the work "a very scholarly
exposition on some of the most essential questions of Political
Economy;" and the NONCONFORMIST says "it is written with
charming freshness, ease, and lucidity."

MANUAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. Third and Cheaper
Edition, with Two New Chapters. Crown 8vo. IDJ. &/.

In this treatise no important branch of the subject has been omitted,
and the author believes that the principles which are therein ex-
plained will enable the reader to obtain a tolerably complete view of
the whole science. Mr. Fawcett has endeavoured to show how
intimately Political Economy is connected with the practical ques-
tions of life. For the convenience of the ordinary reader, and
especially for those who may use the book to prepare themselves Jor

WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 33

FawCCtt (YL.)— continued.

examinations, he has prefixed a very detailed summary of Contents,
which may be regarded as an analysis of the work. TTie new
edition has been so carefully revised that there is scarcely a
page in which some improvement has not been introduced. The
DAILY NEWS says: "It forms one of the best introductions to the
principles of the science, and to its practical applications in the
problems of modern, and especially of English, government and
society." " The book is written throughout," says the EXAMINER,
"with admirable force, clearness, and brevity, every important
part of the subject being duly considered."

PAUPERISM : ITS CAUSES AND REMEDIES. Crown 8vo.

In its number for March i if A, 1871, the SPECTATOR said: " We wish
Professor Fawcett would devote a little more, of his time and energy
to the practical consideration of that monster problem of Pauperism,
for the treatment of which his economic knowledge and popular
sympathies so eminently fit him." The volume now published may
be regarded as an answer to the above challenge. The seven
chapters it comprises discyss the following subjects : — /. "Pauperism
and the old Poor Law." II. " The present Poor Law System."
III. " The Increase of Population." IV. " National Education ;
its Economic and Social Effects." V. "Co-partnership and Co
operation." VI. " The English System of Land Tenure." VII.
" The Inclosure of Commons." The ATHEN^UM calls thework "a
repertory of interesting and well-digested information."

ESSAYS ON POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS. By PRO-
FESSOR FAWCETT, M.P., and MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.
8vo. lew. 6d.

This volume contains fourteen papers, some of which have appeared
in various journals and periodicals ; others have not before been
published. They are all on subjects of great importance and uni-
versal interest, and the names of the two authors are a sufficient
guarantee that each topic is discussed with full knowledge, great
ability, clearness, and earnestness. The folloT.s.nng are some of the
titles: — " Modern Socialism ;" " Free Education in its Economic
Aspects ;" ' ' Pauperism, Charity, and the Poor Law ;" " National
Debt and National Prosperity ;" " What can bt done for the
c

34 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF

Agricultural Labourers ;" " The Education of Women;" " The
Electoral Disabilities of Women;" " The I louse of Lords." Each
article is signed with the initials of its author.

Fawcett (Mrs.)— POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR BEGIN-
NERS. WITH QUESTIONS. By MILLICENT GARRETT
FAWCETT. i8mo. 2s. 6d.

In this little work are explained as briefly as possible the most im-
portant principles of Political Economy, in the hope that it -will be
useful to beginners, and perhaps be an assistance to those who are
desirous of introducing the study of Political Economy to schools.
In order to adapt the book especially for school use, questions have
keen added at the end of each chapter. ITie DAILY NEWS calls it
"clear, compact, and comprehensive;" and the SPECTATOR says,
"Mrs. Fawcetfs treatise is perfectly suited to its purpose."

Freeman (E. A., M.A., D.C.L.)— HISTORY OF
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. See p. 6 of preceding HIS-
TORICAL CATALOGUE.

Godkin (James). — THE LAND WAR IN IRELAND. A

History for the Times. By JAMES 'GoDKiN, Author of "Ireland
and her Churches," late Irish Correspondent of the Times. 8vo.
I2J.

A History of the Irish Land Question. " There is probably no other
account so compendious and so complete. " — FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.

Guide to the Unprotected, in Every Day Matters Re-
lating to Property and Income. By a BANKER'S DAUGHTER.
Third Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d.

Many widows and single ladies, and all young people, on first
possessing money of their own, are in want of advice -when they
have commonplace business matters to transact. The author of
this work writes for those who know nothing. Her aim throughout
is to avoid all technicalities ; to give plain and practical directions,
not only as to what ought to be done, but how to do it. "Many an
unprotected females will bless the head which planned and the hand
which compiled this admirable little manual. . . . This book was
very much wanted, and it could not have been better done." —
MORNING STAR.

WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 35

Hill. — CHILDREN OF THE STATE. THE TRAINING OF
JUVENILE PAUPERS. By FLORENCE HILL. Extra fcap.
8vo. cloth. 55.

In this work the author discusses the various systems adopted in this
and other countries in the treatment of pauper children. The
BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZEJTE calls it "a valuable contribution
to the great and important social question which it so ably and
thoroughly discusses; and it must materially aid in producing a
wise method of dealing with the Children of the State."

Historicus.— LETTERS ON SOME QUESTIONS OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW. Reprinted from the Times, with
considerable Additions. Svo. Js. 6d. Also, ADDITIONAL
LETTERS. Svo. 2s. 6d.

The author's intention in these Letters was to illustrate in a popular
form clearly-established principles of law, or to refute, as occasion
required, errors which had obtained a mischievous currency. He
has endeavoured to establish, by sufficient authority, propositions
which have been inconsiderately impugned, and to point out the
various methods of reasoning which have led some modern writers
to erroneous conclusions. The volume contains: Letters on "Recog-
nition;" "On the Perils of Intervention;" " The Rights and
Duties of Neutral Nations ;" "On the Law of Blockade;" "On
Neutral Trade in Contraband oj War;" " On Belligerent Viola-
tion of Neutral Rights ;" "The Foreign Enlistment Act ;" "The
Right of Search ;" extracts from letters on the AJfair of the
Trent; and a paper on the " Territo riality of the Merchant
Vessel" — "// is seldom that the doctrines of International Law on
debateable points have been stated with more vigour, precision, and
certainty. " — SATURDAY REVIEW.

Jevons. — Works by W. STANLEY JEVONS, M.A., Professor of
Logic and Political Economy in Owens College, Manchester. (For
other Works by the same Author, see EDUCATIONAL and PHII.U
SOPHICAL CATALOGUES.)

THE COAL QUESTION : An Inquiry Concerning the Progress
of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines.
Second Edition, revised. Svo. los. 6rf.
c 2

36 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF

JCVOnS (W.S.}— continued.

"Day by day," the author says, "it becomes more evident that the
coal we happily possess in excellent quality and abundance is the
mainspring of modern material civilization." Geologists and
other competent authorities have of late been hinting that the
supply of coal is by no means inexhaustible, and as it is of vast
importance to the country and the world generally to know the real
state of the case, Professor Jevons in this work has endeavoured to
solve the question as far as the data at command admit. He
believes that should the consumption multiply for rather more than
a century at its present rate, the average depth of our coal mines
would be so reduced that we could not long continue our present rate
of progress. "We have to make the momentous choice," he believe;,,
tlbetween brief greatness and long-continued prosperity." — "T/ie
question of our supply of coal," says the PALL MALL GAZETTE, " be-
comes a question obviously of life or death. . . . The whole case is
stated with admirable clearness and cogency. . . . We may regard
his statements as unanswered and practically established."

THE THEORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 8vo. 9*.

In this work Professor Jevons endeavours to construct a theory of
Political Economy on a mathematical or quantitative basis, believing
that many of the commonly received theories in this science are per-
niciously erroneous. The author here attempts to treat Economy
as the Calculus of Pleasure and Pain, and has sketched out, almost
irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science, as it
seems to him, must ultimately take. The theory consists in apply-
ing the differential calculus to the familiar notions of Wealth,
Utility, Value, Demand, Supply, Capital, Interest, Labour, and
all the other notions belonging to the daily operations of industry.
As the complete theory of almost every other science involves the use
of that calculus, so, the author thinks, we cannot have a true theory
of Political Economy without its aid. " 'Professor Jevons has done
invaluable service by courageously claiming political economy to be
strictlv a branch of Applied Mathematics." — WESTMINSTER
REVIEW.

Martin.— THE STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK: A Statistical
and Historical Annual of the States of the Civilized World.
Handbook for Politicians and Merchants for the year 1872. By

WORKS IN POLITICS, -ETC. 37

FREDERICK MARTIN. Ninth Annual Publication. Revised after
Official Returns. Crown 8vo. los. 6d.

The Statesman's Year-Book is the only work in the English language
which furnishes a clear and concise account of the actual condition
of all the States of Europe, the civilized countries of America,
Asia, and Africa, and the British Colonies and Dependencies in
all parts of the "world. The new issue of the work has been revised
and corrected, on the basis of official reports received direct from the
heads of the leading Governments of the world, in reply to letters sent
to them by the Editor. Through the valuable assistance thus given,
it has been possible to collect an amount of information, political,
statistical, and commercial, of the latest date, and of unimpeachable
trustworthiness, such as no publication of the same kind has ever
been able to furnish. The new issue of the Statesman's Year-
Book has a Chronological Account of the principal events of the
past momentous twelve months. "As indispensable as Bradshaw."
— TIMES.

Phillimore. — PRIVATE LAW AMONG THE ROMANS,

from the Pandects. By JOHN GEORGE PHILLIMORE, Q.C. 8vo.
i6s.

The author's belief that some knowledge of the Roman System of
Municipal Law will contribute to improve our own, has induced
him to prepare the present work. His endeavour has been to select
those parts of the Digest which would best shmv the grand manner
in which the Roman jurist dealt with his subject, as well as those
which most illustrate the principles by which he was guided in
establishing the great lines and propositions of jurisprudence, which
every lawyer must have frequent occasion to employ. ' ' Mr. Philli-
more has done good service towards, the study of jurisprudence in
this country by the production of this volume. The work is one
which should be in the hands of every student." — ATHEN/EUM.

Smith. — Works by Professor GOLDWIN SMITH :—

A LETTER TO A WHIG MEMBER OF THE SOUTHERN
INDEPENDENCE ASSOCIATION. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s.

This is a Letter, written in 1864, to a member of an Association
formed in thiscounlry, the purpose of which was "to lend assistance

38 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF

Smith (Prof. G.)— continued.

to the Slave-muncrs of the Southern States in their attempt to effect a
disruption of the American Commonwealth, and to establish an
independent Power, having, as they declare, Slavery for its corner-
stone." Mr. Smith endeavours to show that in. doing so they
would hare committed a great folly and a still greater crime.
Throughout the Letter many points of general and permanent
importance are discussed.

THREE ENGLISH STATESMEN: PYM, CROMWELL,

PITT. A Course of Lectures on the Political History of England.

Extra fcap. 8vo. New and Cheaper Edition. $s.

"A work which neither historian nor politician can safdy afford to

neglect." — SATURDAY REVIEW." " There are outlines, clearly and

boldly sketched, if mere outlines, of the three Statesmen -who give the

titles to his lectures, whichare well deservingof study."— SPECTATOR.

Social Duties Considered with Reference to the
ORGANIZATION OF EFFORT IN WORKS OF BE-
NEVOLENCE AND PUBLIC UTILITY. By a MAN OF
BUSINESS. (WILLIAM RATHBONE.) Fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d.
The contents of this valuable little book are — /. "Social Disintegra-
tion." If. "Our Charities — Done and Undone." III. "Organiza-
tion and Individual Benevolence — their Achievements and Short-
comings." IV. " Organization and Individualism — their Co-
operation Indispensable." V. " 'Instances and Experiments." VL
' ' The Sphere of Government. " ' ' Conclusion. " The views urged
are no sentimental theories, but have grown out of the practical ex-
perience acquired in actual work. "Mr. RathbonJs earnest and
large-hearted little book will help to generate both a larger and wiser
charily." — BRITISH QUARTERLY.

Stephen (C. E.)— THE SERVICE OF THE POOR;
Being an Inquiry into the Reasons for and against the Establish-
ment of Religious Sisterhoods for Charitable Purposes. By
CAROLINE EMILIA STEPHEN. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d.

Miss Stephen defines Religious Sisterhoods as "associations, the
organization of which is based upon the assumption that works of
chnri.'y are either acts of worship in themselves, or means to an end,
that rv/y /V/;// the spiritual welfare of the injects or the performers

WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 39

of those works." Arguing from that point of view, she devotes the
first part of her volume to a brief history of religious associations,
taking as specimens — /. The Deaconesses of the Primitive Church.
II. TheBeguines. III. The Third Order of S. Francis. IV. The
Sisters of Charity of S. Vincent de Paul. V. The Deaconesses of
Modern Germany. In the second part, Miss. Stephen attempts to
show what are the real wants met by Sisterhoods, to what extent the
same wants may be effectually met by the organization of corre-
sponding institutions on a secular basis, and what are the reasons
for endeavouring to do so. ' ' The ablest advocate of a better line of
work in this direction than we have ever seen.'"- — EXAMINER.

Stephen (J. F.)— A GENERAL VIEW OF THE
CRIMINAL LAW OF ENGLAND. By JAMES FITZJAMES
STEPHEN, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, Member of the Legislative
Council of India. 8vo. i8j.

The object of this work is to give an account of the general scope,
tendency, and design of an important part of our institutions,
of which surely none can have a greater moral significance, or be
more closely connected with broad priycifiles of morality and
politics, than those by which men rightfully, deliberately, and in
cold blood, kill, enslave, and otherwise torment their fellw-
creaturcs. The authdr believes it possible to explain the principles,
of such a system in a manner both intelligible and interesting.
The Contents are — /. " The Province of the Criminal Law."
II. "Historical Sketch of English Criminal Law." III. li Defi-
nition of Crime in Genei-al." IV. " Classification and Definition
of Particular Crimes." V. "Criminal Procedure in General."
VI. "English Criminal Procedure." VII. "The Principles of
Evidence in Relation to the Criminal Law." VIII. "English
Rules of Evidence." IX. "English Criminal Legislation.'"
The last 150 pages are occupied with the discussion of a number
of important cases. "Readers feel in his book the confiilence which
attaches to the writings of a man who has a great practical
acquaintance with the matter of which he writes, and lawyers will
agree that it fully satisfies the standard of professional accuracy"
— SATURDAY RKVIKW. " His style is forcible and 'perspicuous, and
singularly free from tlte unnecessary use of professional terms." —
SPECTATOR.

40 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE.

Thornton. — ON LABOUR: Its Wrongful Claims and Rightful
Dues ; Its Actual Present State and Possible Future. By WILLIAM
THOMAS THORNTON, Author of" A Plea for Peasant Proprietors,"
etc. Second Edition, revised. 8vo. I4J.

The object of this volume is to endeavour to find "a cure for human
destitution" the search after which has been the passion and the
Work of the author's life. The -work is divided into four books,
and each book into a number of chapters. Book I. " Labour's
Causes of Discontent." II. "Labour and Capital in Debate."
III. "Labour and Capital in Antagonism." IV. " Labour and
Capital in Alliance." All the highly important problems in Social
and Political Economy connected with Labour and Capital are
here discussed -with knowledge, vigour, and originality, and for a
noble purpose. The new edition has been thoroughly revised and
considerably enlarged. ' ' We cannot fail to recognize in his work
the result of independent thought, high moral aim, and generous
intrepidity in a noble cause. . . . . A really valuable contribution.
The number of facts accumulated, both historical and statistical,
make an especially valuable portion of the work." — WESTMINSTER
REVIEW.

WORKS CONNECTED WITHTHE SCIENCE
OR THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE.

{For Editions of Greek and Latin Classical Authors, Gram-
mars, and other School works, see EDUCATIONAL CATALOGUE.)

Abbott.— A SHAKESPERIAN GRAMMAR: An Attempt to
illustrate some of the Differences between Elizabethan and Modern
English. By the Rev. E. A. ABBOTT, M.A., Head Master of the
City of London School. For the Use of Schools. New and
Enlarged Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s.

The object of this work is to furnish students of Shakespeare and
Bacon with a short systematic account of some points of difference
between Elizabethan Syntax and our own. The demand for a third
edition within a year of the publication of the first, has encouraged
the author to endeavour to make the work somewhat more useful,
and to render it, as far as possible, a complete book of reference for
all difficulties of Shakesperian Syntax or Prosody. For this purpose
the whole of Shakespeare has been re-read, and an attempt has been
made to include within this edition the explanation of every
idiomatic difficulty (where the text is not confessedly corrupt) that
comes within the province of a grammar as distinct from a glossary.
The great object being to make a useful book of reference for students
and for classes in schools, several Plays have been indexed so fully,
that with the aid of a glossary and historical notes the references
will serve for a complete commentary. "A critical inquiry, eon-
ducted with great skill and knmvledge, and with all the appliances
of modern philology.1" — PALL MALL GAZETTE. "Valuable not
only as an aid to the critical study of Shakespeare, but as tending to
familiarize the reader with Elizabethan English in general." —

ATHKN/BUM.

42 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF

Besant.— STUDIES IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY. By
WALTER BESANT, M.A. Crown 8vo. 8*. &/.

A sort of impression rests on most minds that French literature begins
ivith the "siecle de Louis Quatorze;" any previous literature being
for the most part unknown or ignored, few know anything of the
enormous literary activity that began in the thirteenth century, was
carried on by Rulebeuf, Marie de France, Gaston de Foix, Thibaull
de Champagne, and Lorris ; was fostered by Charles of Orleans,
by Margaret of Valois, by Francis the First; that gave a crowd of
versifiers to France, enriched, strengthened, developed, and fixed the
French language, and prepared the -way for Corneille and for
Racine. The present work aims to afford information and direction
touching these early efforts of France in poetical literature. "/« one
moderately sized volume he has contrived to introduce us to the very
best, if not to all of the early French poets." — ATHEN/EUM.
" 'Industry, the insight of a scholar, and a genuine enthusiasm for
his subject, combine to make it of very considerable value." —
SPECTATOR.

Helfenstein (James).— A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR
OF THE TEUTONIC LANGUAGES : Being at the same
time a Historical Grammar of the English Language, and com-
prising Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Early English, Modern English,
Icelandic (Old Norse), Danish, Swedish, Old High German,
Middle High German, Modern German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian,
and Dutch. By JAMES HELFENSTEIN, Ph.D. 8vo. i8s.

This -work traces the different stages of development through -which the
various Teutonic languages have pasted, and the laws which have
regulated their gro?vth. The reader is thus enabled to study the
relation which these languages bear to one another, and to the Eng-
lish language in particular, to which special attention is devoted
throughout. In the 'diopters on Ancient and Middle Teutonic
languages no grammatical form is omitted the knowledge of which
is required for the study of ancient literature, whether Gothic or
Anglo-Saxon or Early English. To each chapter is prefixed a
j/iv •/<•// showing tii? rtlaiion of the Teutonic to the cognate languages,
Grft'k, Latin, and Sanskrit. 77/<>.v who have mastered the book
will be in a position to proceed with intelligence to the more elaborate
works of Grimm, Bopp, Pott, Schlcicher, and others.

WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 43

Morris.— HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF ENGLISH ACCI-
DENCE, comprising Chapters on the History and Development
of the Language, and on Word-formation. By the Rev. RICHARD
MORRIS, LL.D., Member of the Council of the Philol. Soc.,
Lecturer on English Language and Literature in King's College
School, Editor of "Specimens of Early English," etc., etc.
Fcap. 8vo. 6s.

Dr. Morris has endeavoured to write a work which can be pi-ofitably
used by students and by the upper forms in our public schools. His
almost unequalled knowledge of early English Literature renders
him peculiarly qualified to- write a work of this kind ; and English
Grammar, he believes, without a reference to the older forms, must
appear altogether anomalous, inconsistent, and unintelligible. In
the writing of this volume, moreover, he has taken advantage of the
researches into our language made by all the most eminent scholars
in England, America, and on the Continent. The author shows
the place of English among the languages of the world, expounds
clearly and -with great minuteness " Grimm's Law" gives a brief
'history of the English language and an account of the various
dialects, investigates the history and principles of Phonology,
Orthography, Accent, and Etymology, and devotes several chapters
to the consideration of the various Parts of Speech, and the final
one to Derivation and Word-formation.

Peile (John. M.A.)— AN INTRODUCTION TO GREEK
AND LATIN ETYMOLOGY. By JOHN PEILE, M.A.,
Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Christ's College, Cambridge,
formerly Teacher of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge.
New and revised Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d.

These Philological Lectures are the result of Notes made during the
author's reading for some years previous to their publication. These
Notes were put into the shape of lectures, delivered at Christ's
College, as one set in the "Intercollegiate" list. They have been
printed -with some additions and modifications, but substantially
as 1hcy were </<//rv;vv/. '•'•The book mav be accepted as a very
valuable contribution to the science <>/ /alienage."— SATURDAY
REVIEW.

44 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF

Philology.— THE JOURNAL OF SACRED AND CLAS-
SICAL PHILOLOGY. Four Vols. 8vo. 12s. t>d.

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY. New Series. Edited by W.
G. CLARK, M.A., JOHN E. B. MAYOR, M.A., and W. ALDIS
WRIGHT, M.A. Nos. I. II., III., and IV. 8vo. q>- &*• each.
(Half-yearly.)

Roby (H. J.) — A GRAMMAR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE,
FROM PLAUTUS TO SUETONIUS. By HENRY JOHN
ROBY, M.A., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
Part I. containing : — Book I. Sounds. Book II. Inflexions.
Book III. Word Formation. Appendices. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

This work is the result of an independent and careful study of the
•writers of the strictly Classical period, the period embraced between
the time of Plautus and that of Suetonius. The author's aim has
been to give the facts of the language in as few words as possible. It
will be found that the arrangement of the book and the treatment of
the various divisions differ in many respects from those of previous
grammars. Air. Roby has given special prominence to the treat-
ment of Sounds and Word-formation; and in the First Book he has
done much towards settling a discussion which is at present largely
engaging the attention of scholars, viz., the Pronunciation of the
Classical languages. In the full Appendices will be found various
valuable details still further illustrating the subjects discussed in the
text. The author's reputation as a scholar and critic is already
well known, and the publishers are encouraged to believe that his
present work will take its place as perhaps the most original, exhaus-
tive, and scientific grammar of the Latin language that has ever
issued from the British press. " 'The book is marked by the clear
and practical insight of a master in his art. It is a book which
would do honour to any country." — ATHENAEUM. "Brings before
the student in a methodical form the best results of modern philology
bearing on the Latin language." — SCOTSMAN.

Taylor (Rev. Isaac).— WORDS AND PLACES ; or,

Etymological Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography.
By the Rev. ISAAC TAYLOR. Second Edition. Crown 8vo.

i2s. r.,/.

WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 45

This work, as the SATURDAY REVIEW acknowledges, "is one which
stands alone in our language." The subject is one acknowledged to
be of the highest importance as a handmaid to History, Ethnology,
Geography, and even to Geology ; and Mr. Taylor's work has
taken its place as the only English authority of value on the subject.
Not only is the work of the highest value to the student, but will be
found full of interest to the general reader, affording him wonderful
peeps into the past life and wanderings of the restless race to which
he belongs. Every assistance is given in the way of specially pre-
pared Maps, Indexes, and Appendices ; and to anyone who wishes
to pursue the study of the subject further, the Bibliographical List of
Books will be found invaluable. The NONCONFORMIST says, "The
historical importance of the subject can scarcely be exaggerated."
"His book,1" the READER says, "will be invaluable to the student of
English history." "As all cultivated minds feel curiosity about
local names, it may be expected that this will become a household
book," says the GUARDIAN.

Trench. — Works by R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop of
Dublin. (For other Works by the same Author, see THEOLOGICAL
CATALOGUE.)

Archbishop Trench has done much to spread an interest in the history
of our English tongue. He is acknowledged to possess an un-
common power of presenting, in a clear, instructive, and interesting
manner, the fruit of his own extensive research, as well as the
results of the labours of other scientific and historical students
of language ; while, as the ATHENAEUM says, " his sober judgment
and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of
arbitrary hypotheses. "

SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. New Edition,
enlarged. 8vo. cloth. \2s.

The study of synonyms in any language is valuable as a discipline for
training the mind to close and accurate habits of thought; more
especially is this the case in Greek — " a la nguage spoken by a people of
the finest and subtlest intellect; who saw distinctions where others saw
none; who divided out to different words what others often were
content to huddle confusedly under a common term." This work is
recognized as a valuable companion to every student of the New
Testament in the original. This, the Seventh Edition, has been

46 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF

Trench (R. C.)— continued.

carefully revised, and a considerable number of new synonyms added.
Appended is an Index to the synonyms, and an Index to many other
words alluded to or explained throughout the work. "He is," the
ATHENAEUM says, "a guide in this department of knowledge to
whom his readers may entrust themselves with confidence."

ON THE STUDY OF WORDS Lectures Addressed (originally)
to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training School, Winchester.
Fourteenth Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. qs. 6</.

This, it is believed, was probably the first work which drew general
attention in this country to the importance and interest of the
critical and historical study of English. It still retains its place as
one of the most successful if not the only exponent of those aspects
of. Words of which it treats. The subjects of the several Lectures
are— I. "Introductory." II. "On the Poetry of Words." III.
" On the Morality of Words." IV. "On the History of Words."
V. "On the Rise of New Words." VI. "On the Distinction of
Words." VII. "The Schoolmaster's Use of Words."

ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT. Seventh Edition, revised
and improved. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6d.

This is a series of eight Lectures, in the first of which Archbishop
Trench considers the English language as it now is, decomposes some
specimens of it, and thus discovers of what elements it is compact. In
the second Lecture he considers what the language might have been
if the Norman Conquest had never taken place. In the following
six Lectures he institutes from various points of viav a comparison
between the present language and the past, points out gains which it
has made, losses which it has endured, and generally calls attention
to some of the more important changes through which it Jias passed,
or is at present passing.

A SELECT GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH WORDS USED

FORMERLY IN SENSES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR

PRESENT. Third Edition. Fcap. Svo. 4*

This alphabetically arranged Glossary contains many of the most

important of those English words which in the course of time have

gradually changed their meanings. The author's object is to point

out some of these changes, to suggest how many more there may be,

WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 47

Trench (R. C.)— continued.

to show how slight and subtle, while yet most real, these changes
have often been, to trace here and there the progressive steps by
which the old meaning has been put off and the new put on — the
exact road which a word has travelled. The author thus hopes to
render some assistance to those who regard this as a serviceable dis-
cipline in the training of their own minds or the minds of others.
Although the book is in the form of a Glossary, it will be found as
interesting as a series of brief well-told biographies.

ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN OUR ENGLISH DICTION-
ARIES : Being the substance of Two Papers read before the
Philological Society. Second Edition, revised and enlarged.
8vo. 3.!-.

The following are the main deficiencies in English dictionaries pointed
oztt in these Papers, and illustrated by an interesting accumulation of
particulars: — /. "Obsolete words are incompletely registered." II.
"families or groups of words are often imperfect." III. "Much
earlier examples of the employment of words oftentimes exist than
any which are cited, and much later examples of words now
obsolete." IV. " 'Important meanings and uses of words are passed
over." V. "Comparatively little attention is paid to the distinguish-
ing of synonymous words." VI. "Many passages in our literature
are passed by, which might be carefully adduced in illustration of
the first introduction, etymology, and meaning of words." VII.
" Our dictionaries err in redundancy as well as defect."

Wood.— Works by H. T. W. WOOD, B.A., Clare College,
Cambridge : —

THE RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH AND
FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6et.

This Essay gained the Le Bas Prize for the year 1869. Besides a
general Introductory Section, it contains other three Sections on
" The Influence of Boileau and his School ; " " The Influence of
English Philosophy in France;" "Secondary Influences — the
Drama, Fiction" etc. Appended is a Synchronological Table of
Events connected with English and French Literature, A.D. 1700 —
A.D. 1800.

48 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE.

Wood (H. T. V/. Continued.

CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BETWEEN
THE PUBLICATION OF WICLIF'S BIBLE AND THAT
OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION ; A.D. 1400 to A. D. 1600.
Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

This Essay gained the Le Bas Prize for the year 1870. Besides the
Introductory Section explaining the aim and scope of the Essay,
there are other three Sections and three Appendices. Section II.
treats of '" English before Chaucer." III. " Chaucer to Caxton."
IV. t''From Caxton to the Authorized Version." — Appendix: I.
"Table of English Literature," A.D. 1300 — A.D. 1611. //.
"Early English Bible." III. "Inflectional Changes in the Verb."
This will be found a most valuable help in the study of our language
during the period embraced in the Essay. "As we go with him,"
the ATHEN^UM says, "we learn something new at every step."

Yonge.— HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN NAMES. By CHAR-
LOTTE M. YONGE, Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." Two
Vols. Crown 8vo. \l. is.

Miss Yonge's work is acknowledged to be the authority on the interest-
ing subject of which it treats. Until she wrote on the subject, the
history of names — especially Christian Names as distinguished from
Surnames — had been but little examined ; nor why one should be
popular and another forgotten — why one should flourish through-
out Europe, another in one country alone, another around some
petty district. In each case she has tried to flnd out whence the
name came, whether it had a patron, and whether the patron took
it from the myths or heroes of his own country, or from the mean-
ing of the words. She has then tried to classify the names, as to
treat them merely alphabetically would destroy all their interest and
connection. They are classified first by language, beginning with
Hebrew and coming down through Greek and Latin to Celtic,
Teutonic, Slavonic, and other sources, ancient and modern ; then
by meaning or spirit. "An almost exhaustive treatment of the
subject . . . The painstaking toil of a thoughtful and cultured mind
on a most interesting theme." — LONDON QUARTERLY.

R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, LONDON.