It would have been useful, and even necessary, to have given some idea of the ancient authors from whence I have extracted the facts which I here relate. But the course itself of the history will naturally give me an opportunity of mentioning them.

The judgment we ought to form of the auguries, pro

digies, and oracles,

of the ancients.

In the mean time, it may not be improper to take notice of the superstitious credulity with which most of these authors are reproached, on the subject of auguries, auspices, prodigies, dreams, and oracles. And, indeed, we are shocked to see writers, so judicious in all other respects, lay it down as a kind of law, to relate these particulars with a scrupulous accuracy; and to dwell gravely on a tedious detail of trifling and ridiculous ceremonies, such as the flight of birds to the right or left hand, signs discovered in the smoking entrails of beasts, the greater or less greediness of chickens in pecking corn, and a thousand similar absurdities.

It must be confessed, that a sensible reader cannot, without astonishment, see persons among the ancients in the highest repute for wisdom and knowledge; generals who were the least liable to be influenced by popular opinions, and most sensible how necessary it is to take advantage of auspicious moments; the wisest councils of princes perfectly well skilled in the arts of government; the most august assemblies of grave senators; in a word, the most powerful and most learned nations in all ages: to see, I say, all these so unaccountably weak, as to make to depend on these trifling practices, and absurd observances, the decision of the greatest affairs, such as the declaring of war, the giving battle, or pursuing a victory-deliberations that were of the utmost importance, and on which the fate and welfare of kingdoms frequently depended.

But, at the same time, we must be so just as to own, that their manners, customs, and laws, would not permit men, in these ages, to dispense with the observation of these practices that education, hereditary tradition transmitted from immemorial time, the universal belief and consent of different nations, the precepts, and even examples, of philosophers; that all these, I say, made the practices in question appear venerable in their eyes and that these ceremonies, how absurd soever they may appear to us, and are really so in themselves, constituted part of the religion and public worship of the ancients.

This religion was false, and this worship mistaken; yet the principle of it was laudable, and founded in nature: the stream was corrupted, but the fountain was pure. Man assisted only by his own light, sees nothing beyond the present moment. Futurity is to him an abyss invisible to the most keen, the most piercing sagacity, and exhibits nothing on which he may with certainty fix his views, or form his resolutions. He is equally feeble and impotent with regard to the execution of his designs. He is sensible that he is dependent entirely on a Supreme Power, that disposes all events with absolute authority, and which, in spite of his utmost efforts, and of the wisdom of the best concerted schemes, by raising

only the smallest obstacles and slightest disappointments, renders it impossible for him to execute his measures.

This obscurity and weakness oblige him to have recourse to a superior knowledge and power: he is forced, both by his immediate wants, and the strong desire he has to succeed in all his undertakings, to address that Being who he is sensible has reserved to himself alone the knowledge of futurity, and the power of disposing it as he sees fitting. He accordingly directs prayers, makes vows, and offers sacrifices, to prevail, if possible, with the Deity, to reveal himself, either in dreams, in oracles, or other signs which may manifest his will; fully convinced that nothing can happen but by the divine appointment; and that it is a man's greatest interest to know this supreme will, in order to conform his actions to it.

This religious principle of dependence on, and veneration of, the Supreme Being, is natural to man: it is imprinted deep in his heart; he is reminded of it by the inward sense of his extreme indigence, and by all the objects which surround him; and it may be affirmed, that this perpetual recourse to the Deity, is one of the principal foundations of religion, and the strongest band by which man is united to his Creator.

Those who were so happy as to know the true God, and were chosen to be his peculiar people, never failed to address him in all their wants and doubts, in order to obtain his succour, and to know his will. He accordingly vouchsafed to reveal himself to them; to conduct them by apparitions, dreams, oracles, and prophecies; and to protect them by miracles of the most astonishing kind.

But those who were so blind as to substitute falsehood in the place of truth, directed themselves, for the like aid, to fictitious and deceitful deities, who were not able to answer their expectations, nor recompense the homage that mortals paid them, any otherwise than by error and illusion, and a fraudulent imitation of the conduct of the true God.

Hence arose the vain observation of dreams, which, from a superstitious credulity, they mistook for salutary warnings from heaven; those obscure and equivocal answers of oracles, beneath whose veil the spirits of darkness concealed their ignorance; and, by a studied ambiguity, reserved to themselves an evasion or subterfuge, whatever might be the event. To this are owing the prognostics with regard to futurity, which men fancied they should find in the entrails of beasts, in the flight and singing of birds, in the aspect of the planets, in fortuitous accidents, and in the caprice of chance; those dreadful prodigies that filled a whole nation with terror, and which, it was believed, nothing could expiate but mournful ceremonies, and even sometimes the effusion of human blood in fine, those black inventions of magic, those delusions, enchantments, sorceries, invocations of ghosts, and many other kinds of divination.

All I have here related was a received usage, observed by the heathen nations in general and this usage was founded on the principles of that religion of which I have given a short account.

We have a signal proof of this in that passage of the Cyropædia," where Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, gives that young prince such noble instructions; instructions admirably well adapted to form the great captain and great king. He exhorts him, above all things, to pay the highest reverence to the gods; and not to undertake any enterprise, whether important or inconsiderable, without first calling upon and consulting them; he enjoins him to honour the priests and augurs, as being their ministers and the interpreters of their will, but yet not to trust or abandon himself so implicitly and blindly to them, as not by his own application, to learn every thing relating to the science of divination, of auguries, and auspices. The reason which he gives for the subordination and dependence in which kings ought to live with regard to the gods, and the benefit derived from consulting them in all things, is this: How clear-sighted soever mankind may be in the ordinary course of affairs, their views are always very narrow and bounded with regard to futurity; whereas the Deity, at a single glance, takes in all ages and events. As the gods, says Cambyses to his son, are eternal, they know equally all things, past, present, and to come. With regard to the mortals who address them, they give salutary counsels to those whom they are pleased to favour, that they may not be ignorant of what things they ought, or ought not, to undertake. If it is observed, that the deities do not give the like counsels to all men, we are not to wonder at it, since no necessity obliges them to attend to the welfare of those persons on whom they do not vouchsafe to confer their favour.

Such was the doctrine of the most learned and most enlightened nations, with respect to the different kinds of divination; and it is no wonder that the authors who wrote the history of those nations, thought it incumbent on them to give an exact detail of such particulars as constituted part of their religion and worship, and was frequently, in a manner, the soul of their deliberations, and the standard of their conduct. I therefore was of opinion, for the same reason, that it would not be proper for me to omit entirely, in the ensuing history, what relates to this subject, though I have, however, retrenched a great part of it.

Archbishop Usher is my usual guide in chronology. In the history of the Carthaginians I commonly set down four eras: The year from the creation of the world, which, for brevity's sake, I mark thus, A. M.; those of the foundation of Carthage and Rome; and lastly, the year before the birth of our Saviour, which I suppose to be the 4004th year of the world; wherein I follow Usher and others, though they suppose it to be four years earlier.

We shall now proceed to give the reader the proper preliminary information concerning this work, according to the order in which it is executed.

To know in what manner the states and kingdoms were founded, that have divided the universe; the steps whereby they rose to that w Xenoph. in Cyrop. l. i. p. 25, 27.

pitch of grandeur related in history; by what ties families and cities were united, in order to constitute one body or society, and to live together under the same laws, and a common authority; it will be necessary to trace things back, in a manner, to the infancy of the world, and to those ages in which mankind, being dispersed into different regions, (after the confusion of tongues,) began to people the earth.

In these early ages every father was the supreme head of his family; the arbiter and judge of whatever contests and divisions might arise within it; the natural legislator over his little society; the defender and protector of those, who by their birth, education, and weakness, were under his protection and safeguard, and whose interests paternal tenderness rendered equally dear to him as his

own.

But although these masters enjoyed an independent authority, they made a mild and paternal use of it. So far from being jealous of their power, they neither governed with haughtiness, nor decided with tyranny. As they were obliged by necessity to associate their family in their domestic labours, they also summoned them together, and asked their opinion in matters of importance. In this manner all affairs were transacted in concert, and for the common good.

The laws which paternal vigilance established in this little do mestic senate, being dictated with no other view than to promote the general welfare; concerted with such children as were come to years of maturity, and accepted by the inferiors with a full and free consent; were religiously kept and preserved in families as an hereditary polity, to which they owed their peace and security.

But different motives gave rise to different laws. One man, overjoyed at the birth of a first-born son, resolved to distinguish him from his future children, by bestowing on him a more considerable share of his possessions, and giving him a greater authority in his family. Another, more attentive to the interest of a beloved wife, or darling daughter whom he wanted to settle in the world, thought it incumbent on him to secure their rights and increase their advantages. The solitary and cheerless state to which a wife would be reduced in case she should become a widow, affected more intimately another man, and made him provide before-hand, for the subsistence and comfort of a woman who formed his felicity. From these different views, and others of the like nature, arose the different customs of nations, as well as their rights, which are infinitely various.

In proportion as every family increased by the birth of children, and their marrying into other families, they extended their little domain, and formed, by insensible degrees, towns and cities.

These societies growing, in process of time, very numerous; and the families being divided into various branches, each of which had its head, whose different interests and characters might interrupt the general tranquillity; it was necessary to intrust one person with the government of the whole, in order to unite all these chiefs or heads under a single authority, and to maintain the public peace

с

by a uniform administration. The idea which men still retained of the paternal government, and the happy effects they had experienced from it, prompted them to choose from among their wisest and most virtuous men, him in whom they had observed the tenderest and most fatherly disposition. Neither ambition nor cabal had the least share in this choice; probity alone, and the reputation of virtue and equity decided on these occasions, and gave the preference to the most worthy.*

To heighten the lustre of their newly-acquired dignity, and enable them the better to put the laws in execution, as well as to devote themselves entirely to the public good; to defend the state against the invasions of their neighbours, and the factions of discontented citizens; the title of king was bestowed upon them, a throne was erected, and a sceptre put into their hands; homage was paid them, officers were assigned, and guards appointed for the security of their persons; tributes were granted; they were invested with full powers to administer justice, and for this purpose were armed with a sword, in order to restrain injustice and punish crimes.

At first,+ every city had its particular king, who, being more solicitous to preserve his dominion than to enlarge it, confined his ambition within the limits of his native country. But the almost unavoidable feuds which break out between neighbours; jealousy against a more powerful king; a turbulent and restless spirit; a martial disposition, or thirst of aggrandisement; or the display of abilities ; gave rise to wars, which frequently ended in the entire subjection of the vanquished, whose cities were possessed by the victor, and increased insensibly his dominions. Thus,‡ a first victory paving the way to a second, and making a prince more powerful and enterprising, several cities and provinces were united under one monarch, and formed kingdoms of a greater or less extent, according to the degree of ardour with which the victor had pushed his conquests.

But among these princes were found some, whose ambition being too vast to confine itself within a single kingdom, broke over all bounds, and spread universally like a torrent, or the ocean; swallowed up kingdoms and nations; and fancied that glory consisted in depriving princes of their dominions, who had not done them the least injury; in carrying fire and sword into the most remote countries, and in leaving every where bloody traces of their progress Such was the origin of those famous empires which included a great part of the world.

!

Princes made a various use of victory, according to the diversity of their dispositions or interests. Some, considering themselves as absolute masters of the conquered, and imagining they were sufficiently indulged in sparing their lives, bereaved them, as well as

*Quos ad fastidium hujus majestatis non ambitio popularis, sed spectata inter bonos moderatio provehebat. Justin. 1. i. c. 1.

+ Fines imperii tueri magis quàm proferre mos erat. Intra suam cuique patriam regna finiebantur. Justin. ibid.

t Domitis proximis, cùm accessione virium fortior ad alios transiret, et proxima quæque victoria instrumentum sequentis esset, totius orientis populos subegit. Justin. ibid.