perishing under the evils of a government which, like that of Sparta, favoured an exceedingly unequal distribution of property. The French Revolution, amid many crimes, may certainly be said to have regenerated the French nation as Agis proposed to regenerate the Spartan nation, and by means nearly similar to those proposed by him. It is remarkable, too, that the French king, Louis XVI., a man, like Agis, eminent for his virtues, met with the fate of Agis. As Agis, whose sincerity is attested by the fact that his own property and that of his female relatives, among the largest in the State, were cast in the first sacrifice into the common stock, became the dupe of unprincipled coadjutors, and perished in the vain attempt to realize his scheme by persuasion;* so Louis, with probably as sincere a desire to do what was best for the French nation, perished, like Agis, through the intrigues of the unprincipled people about him. But, though the fate of Louis was like that of Agis, the fate of France was very different from that of Sparta.

* Grote, vol. ii. p. 528.

CHAPTER III.

THE ATHENIANS.

We have the evidence of the most unexceptionable witnesses, of Socrates, in so far as Plato can be considered as a trustworthy expounder of the opinions of Socrates, of Plato, of Thucydides, of Demosthenes, that, at the point of time whereof Adam Smith speaks, Athens no longer possessed, as he affirms, a "gallant and well-exercised militia."

The Athenian system of military training was never, at its best time, to be compared for excellence to the Spartan. Yet the result at Marathon, and on many other occasions, proved that in its earlier and better days, the Athenian armed force well deserved the description of a "gallant and well-exercised militia." The fact, too, of such a citizen as Socrates serving repeatedly as a private soldier, proves that then the soldier-citizen system was effectually carried out. At the siege of Potidæa, Socrates won the prize of valour, but voluntarily yielded it to his pupil Alcibiades. Alcibiades himself confessed that he owed his life to Socrates; and that in a certain

action, where he was severely wounded, Socrates alone prevented both his person and his arms from falling into the hands of the enemy. At the battle of Delium, during the Peloponnesian war, where the Athenians were defeated by the Boeotians, Socrates also behaved with the greatest bravery; and it is said that he saved the life of Xenophon, who had fallen from his horse: Strabo says he carried him several furlongs, till he was out of danger. After the battle, as Socrates was retiring with Laches and Alcibiades, he told them that he had just received an admonition not to follow the road that most of their men had taken. They who continued in that road were pursued by the enemy's cavalry, who, coming up with them, killed many on the spot, and took the others prisoners; while Socrates, who had taken another route, arrived safe at Athens with those who accompanied him. The division of labour had not then reached that point when philosophers and politicians could sit in whole skins at home, and with a 66 dastardly spurt of the pen," or as dastardly a wag of the tongue, send their brethren forth to battles, the dangers of which they did not share.

But if the time for such division of labour had not then actually come, it was fast coming, and was very near at hand. The poison of the orators was rapidly doing its work upon the Athenian democracy; and we have the testimony of Plato for the fatal effect

it produced during the course of one generation. Pericles first introduced the practice of paying the Athenians for attending at the public assemblies, and hearing him harangue. Plato, by the mouth of Socrates in his dialogue the “ Gorgias," thus describes the consequences of this measure:- "I hear it said," says Socrates, "that Pericles made the Athenians idlers, and cowards, and gossips, and covetous; being the first who established the system of wages. The Athenian sovereign multitude found it far pleasanter to be paid for listening to Pericles than to earn an honest subsistence by any sort of labour; and they also found it very far pleasanter to hire foreign mercenaries to fight their battles than to fight those battles themselves; in fact, without going farther than the evidence of those very orators, the public orations of Demosthenes afford abundant proof that, in his time, the Athenian government had fallen into a condition of hopeless imbecility.

Never, perhaps, was the decline of a nation's strength

* Plat. Gorg. p. 148. Bip:—Ταυτὶ γὰρ ἔγωγε ἀκούω Περικλέα πεποιηκέναι Αθηναίους ἀργοὺς, και δειλοὺς, καὶ λάλους, καὶ φιλαργύρους, εἰς μισθοφορὰν πρῶτον καταστήσαντα. The answer to the argument of Demosthenes ("Contra Timokrat." c. 26) that if this payment were suspended the judicial as well as the administrative system of Athens would at once fall to pieces, is, that Athens was stronger before the establishment of it, and the vices and weakness of her government were so great under it, that the falling to pieces of such a system could not make things worse, and might have a chance of making them better.

ment.

coincident with the increase of its wealth (using "wealth" not in its primary sense of "weal" or "wellbeing," but in its now usual sense of "riches") more signally exemplified than in the case of Athens. As the power of Athens extended, and brought tribute from her subject States, the Athenians thus obtained the means of living without labour, and of amusing themselves with poets, painters, sculptors, and orators. The same thing happens, indeed, more or less in the case of every State, as its revenue becomes great. Those who enjoy its revenues become rich, and can afford to devote themselves wholly to amuseBut the result, when those who, in the capacity of sovereign, divide the revenue among them constitute the whole nation, as at Athens, has the effect of making the whole nation averse to labour, and, it would seem, also averse to danger. To use the illustration of Socrates, they are crammed with ports, and docks, and fortifications, and revenues, till they are in a state of bloated repletion, and are neither so healthy nor so strong as when they had no foreign revenues, and a small town so unfortified that they considered it indefensible against the host of the Persians. The result, according to the testimony of Plato, who had the best means of being well-informed on the matter, was to make the Athenians idlers and cowards. The opinion attributing this effect altogether to the mismanagement of Pericles, probably awards to that orator rather more