vive. The city thus delivered from those pests of society, was restored to its former tranquillity. And indeed, * from calumniators generally arise all feuds and contests, whether of a public or private nature; and yet, according to Tacitus's observation, they are too much tolerated in most governments.

3. He enacted a new kind of law against another species of pests, which in a state generally first occasions depravity of manners; by suffering all those to be prosecuted who should form a correspondence, or contract a friendship with wicked men, and by laying a heavy fine upon them.

4. He required all the children of the citizens to be educated in the Belles Lettres; the effect of which is to polish and civilise the minds of men, inspiring them with gentleness of manners, and inclining them to virtue; all which constitute the felicity of a state, and are equally necessary to citizens of all conditions. In this view he appointed salaries (paid by the state) for masters and preceptors; in order that learning, by being communicated gratis, might be acquired by all. He considered ignorance as the greatest of evils, and the source whence all vices flowed.

5. He made a law with respect to orphans, which appears sufficiently judicious, by instructing the care of their education to their relations by the mother's side, as their lives would not be in danger from them; and the management of their estates to their paternal relations, it being the interest of these to make the greatest advantage of them, since they would inherit them in case of the demise of their wards.

6. Instead of putting deserters to death, and those who quitted their ranks and fled in battle, he only sentenced them to make their appearance during three days, in the city, drest in the habit of women, imagining, that the dread of so ignomini ous a punishment would produce the same effect as putting to death; and being at the same time desirous of giving such cowardly citizens an opportunity of atoning for their fault.

7. To prevent his laws from being too rashly or easily abrogated, he imposed a very severe and hazardous condition on all persons who should propose to alter or amend them in any manner. These were sentenced to appear in the public assem. bly with a halter about their necks; and in case the alteration proposed did not pass, they were to be immediately strangled.

* Delatores, genus hominum publico exitio repertum, et pœnus quidem nunquam satis coercitum. Tacit. Annal. l. iv. c. 30.

There were but three amendments ever proposed, and all of them admitted.

Charondas did not long survive his own laws. Returning one day from pursuing some thieves, and finding a tumult in the city, he came armed into the assembly, though he himself had prohibited this by an express law. A certain person objected to him in severe terms, that he violated his own laws; "I do not violate them," says he, "but thus seal them with my blood;" saying which, he plunged his sword into his bosom, and expired.

IV. ZALLUCUS, another law-giver. At the same time, there arose among the Locrians another famous legislator, Zalecuus by name, who, as well as Charondas, had been Pythagoras's disciple. There is now scarce any thing extant of his, except a kind of preamble to his laws, which gives a most advantageous idea of them. He requires above all things, of the citizens, to believe and be firmly persuaded that there are gods; and adds, that the bare casting up our eyes to the heavens, and contemplating their order and beauty, are sufficient to convince us that it is impossible so wonderful a fabric could have been formed by mere chance or human power. As the natural consequence of this belief, he exhorts men to honour and revere the gods, as the authors of whatever is good and just among mortals; and to honour them, not merely by sacrifices and splendid gifts, but by a sage conduct, and by purity and innocence of manners; these being infinitely more grateful to the immortals than all the sacrifices that can be offered.

After this religious exordium, in which he describes the Supreme Being as the source whence all laws flow, as the chief authority which commands obedience to them, as the most powerful motive for our faithful observance of them, and as the perfect model to which mankind ought to conform; he descends to the particulars of those duties which men owe to one another, and lays down. a precept which is very well adapted to preserve peace and unity in society, by enjoining the individuals of it not to make their hatred and dissensions perpetual, which would argue an unsociable and savage disposition, but to treat their enemies as men who would soon be their friends. This is carrying morality to as great a perfection as could be expected from heathens.

With regard to the duty of judges and magistrates, after

*Diod. . xii. p. 79-85.

representing to them, that in pronouncing sentence, they ought never to suffer themselves to be biasssed by friendship, hatred, or any other passion, he only exhorts them not to behave with the least haughtiness or severity towards the parties engaged in law, since such are but too unhappy, in being obliged to undergo all the toils and fatigues inseparable from lawsuits. The office, indeed, of judges, how laborious soever it may be, is far from giving them a right to use the contending parties with ill nature; the very form and essence of their employment requiring them to behave with impartiality, and to do justice on all occasions; and when they distribute this even with mildness and humanity, it is only a debt they pay, and not a favour they grant.

To banish luxury from his republic, which he looked upon as the certain destruction of a government, he did not follow the practice established in some nations, where it is thought sufficient, for the restraining it, to punish, by pecuniary mulcts, such as infringe the laws made on that occasion; but he acted, says the historian, in a more artful and ingenious, and at the same time more effectual manner. He prohibited women from wearing rich and costly stuffs, embroidered robes, precious stones, ear-rings, necklaces, bracelets, gold rings, and such like ornaments; excepting none from this law but common prostitutes. He enacted a like law with regard to the men, excepting, in the same manner, from the observance of it, such only as were willing to pass for debauchees and infamous wretches. By these regulations he easily, and without violence, preserved the citizens from the least approaches to luxury and effeminacy; for no person was so abandoned to all sense of honour, as to be willing to wear the badges of his shame, under the eye, as it were, of all the citizens, since this would make him the public laughing-stock, and reflect eternal infamy on his family.

V. MILO the champion. We have seen him at the head of an army obtain a great victory. However, he was still more renowned for his athletic strength than for his military bravery. He was surnamed Crotoniensis, from Croton, the place of his birth. It was his daughter whom, as was before related, Democedes the famous physician, and Milo's countryman, married, after he had fled from Darius's court to Greece, his native country.

* More inter veteres recepto, qui satis pœnarum adversus impudicas in ipsa professione flagitii credebant. Tacit. Annal. l. ii. c. 85.

*Pausanias relates, that Milo, when but a child, was seven times victorious in one day at the Pythian games; that he won six victories at wrestling in the Olympic games, one of which was also gained in his childhood; and that challenging a seventh time in Olympia any person to wrestle with him, he could not engage for want of an opponent. He would hold a pomegranate in such a manner, that without breaking it, he would grasp it so fast in his hand, that no force could possibly wrest it from him. he would stand so firm on a discus †, which had been oiled to make it the more slippery, that it was impossible to move him on these occasions. He would bind his head with a cord, after which holding his breath strongly, the veins of his head would swell so prodigiously as to break the rope. When Milo, fixing his elbow on his side, stretched forth his right hand quite open, with his fingers held close one to the other, his thumb excepted, which he raised, the utmost strength of man could not separate his little finger from the other three.

All this was only a vain and puerile ostentation of his strength. Chance, however, gave him an opportunity of making a much more laudable use of it . one day as he was attending the lectures of Pythagoras (for he was one of his most constant disciples), the pillar which supported the cieling of the school in which the pupils were assembled being shaken by some accident, Milo supported it by his single strength gave the auditors time to get away, and afterwards escaped himself

What is related of the voracious appetite of the Athlete is almost incredible. Milo's appetite was scarce satiated with twenty mine (pounds) of meat, the same quantity of bread, and three "congi" of wine every day. Athenæus relates, that this champion having run the whole length of the stadium with a bull of four years old on his shoulders, he afterwards knocked him down with one stroke of his fist, and eat the whole beast that very day. I will take it for granted that all the other particulars related of Milo are true; but is it probable that one man could devour a whole ox in so short a time?

We are told that Milo, when advanced to a very great age, seeing the rest of the champions wrestling and gazing upon his own arms which once were so vigorous and robust,

* Lib. vi. p. 369, 370.

This discus was a kind of quoit, flat and round.

Strab. 1. vi. p. 263.

§ Athen. 1. x. p. 412.

Thirty pounds, or fifteen quarts. Cic. de Senec. n. 27. VOL. III.

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but were then very much enfeebled by time, he burst into tears, and cried, "Alas! these are now dead."

And yet he either forgot or concealed his weakness from himself; the strong persuasion he entertained of his own strength, and which he preserved to the last, proving fatal to him. Happening to meet, as he was travelling, an old oak, which had been opened by some wedges that were forced into it, he undertook to split it in two by his bare strength: but after forcing out the wedges, his arms were catched in the trunk of the tree, by the violence with which it closed; so that being unable to disengage his hands, he was devoured by wolves.

† An author has judiciously observed, that this surprisingly robust champion, who prided himself so much in his bodily strength was the weakest of men with regard to a passion which often subdues and captivates the strongest; a courtesan having gained so great an ascendant over Milo, that she tyrannised over him in the most imperious manner and made him obey whatever commands she laid upon him.

TH

CHAP. III.

THE WAR OF PELOPONNESUS.

HE Peloponnesian war ‡, which I am now entering upon, began about the end of the first year of the 87th Olympiad, and lasted 27 years. Thucydides has written the history of it to the 21st year inclusively. He gives us an accurate account of the several transactions of every year, which he divides into campaigns and winter-quarters. However, I shall not be so minute, and shall only extract such parts of it as ap. pear most entertaining and instructive. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus will also be of great assistance to me on this occasion.

SECTION I.

THE SIEGE OF PLATEA BY THE THEBANS, &c. &c.

THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR.

THE first act of hostility by which the war began § was committed by the Thebans, who besieged Platæa, a city of

* Pausan. 1. vi. p. 370.

A. M. 3573. Ant. J. C 431.

Elian. 1. ii. c. 24.

Thucyd. 1. ii. p. 98-122. Diod. 1. xii. p. 97-100. Plut, in ericl. p. 170.