Persians fell from the same cause which has destroyed so many nations-by the trunk of the tree becoming too weak to bear the branches: a process which commenced, in their case, from the time when Cyrus led the hardy mountaineers of Persia against the Medes.

In fact, this question can be more satisfactorily elucidated from the negative than the positive aspect of it; that is, from endeavouring to learn and to state accurately the principal causes which have led to the decline of the strength, and ultimately to the ruin, of nations. There are many symptoms by which the disease of the political body manifests itself; and the world is now old enough to supply an induction of facts recorded with sufficient accuracy to furnish some conclusions that may be of use to the present generation. In the following pages I will endeavour to show by such an induction, necessarily more or less imperfect, to what causes some of the most remarkable nations of the history of the world have been indebted, first, for their strength and prosperity, and afterwards for their weakness and ruin.

9

CHAPTER II.

THE SPARTANS.

THE Greeks, in their early and healthy state, paid the greatest possible attention to the cultivation of bodily strength and activity, by instituting public contests in running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, and throwing the quoit. And it is not unworthy of note that the prize was made of small value, that the combatants might be animated by the love of distinction, not of sordid gain. Of the Romans I shall speak in a subsequent chapter.

Among the Greeks, the Spartans, as I have said, were prominent for their cultivation of the physical and moral qualities (I mean those moral qualities that relate to courage, fortitude, and patriotism,) that go to the formation of a nation's strength. One grand peculiarity of Sparta consisted in having military divisions quite distinct from the civil divisions: a distinction which enabled the Spartans to render their military organization much more perfect than it ever was in the other States of Greece.* The special

* See the admirable account of the Spartan institutions, civil and military, in Grote's History of Greece, vol. ii. part ii. chapters vi. & viii.

characteristic of the Spartan system, and the pivot upon which all its arrangements turned, was what was called the enômoty. This was a small company of men, varying from twenty-five to thirty-six, drilled and practised together in military evolutions, and bound to each other by a common oath. Each enômoty had a separate captain, or enômotarch, the strongest and ablest soldier of the company, who always occupied the front rank, and led the enômoty when it marched in single file. In whatever number of ranks the enômoty was drawn up, the enômotarch usually occupied the front post on the left; in technical language, stood on the left flank of the front rank and care was taken that both the front rank man and the rear rank man of each file * should be soldiers of particular merit. These small companies were taught to march in concert, to change rapidly from line to file, to wheel right or left, in such manner that the enômotarch and the other front rank men should always be the persons immediately opposed to the enemy. Their step was regulated by the fife, which played in martial measures peculiar to Sparta, and was employed in actual battle as well as in military practice. So perfect was their discipline,

* To render this clear, it is proper to state that the number of ranks, and the consequent number of men in a file, was more than two. Montecuculi gives the following clear definition of rank and file: "Rang est un nombre de soldats rangés en ligne droite à côté l'un de l'autre. File est un nombre de soldats rangés en ligne droite l'un derrière l'autre."-Mémoires de Montecuculi, p. 5. Paris, 1760.

that if their order was deranged by any adverse accident, scattered soldiers could spontaneously form themselves into the same order, and each man knew perfectly the duties belonging to the place into which chance had thrown him. Above the enômoty there were larger divisions, somewhat corresponding to the modern battalion, or regiment, and brigade, each having its respective commander. Orders were transmitted from the king, as commander-in-chief, to these officers, each of whom was responsible for the proper execution of them by his division; whereas in the Athenian armies the orders of the commanderin-chief were proclaimed to the army by a herald— a very rude and imperfect contrivance.

One element of the Spartan patriotism appears to be assignable to the greater liberty and respect enjoyed by the women of Sparta than by those of the other States of Greece; the patriotism of the men being elevated by the sympathy of the other sex, which manifested itself publicly, in such a manner as not only to confirm the self-devotion of the soldiers, but materially to assist the State in bearing up against public reverses. The Spartan matrons' exhortation to their sons when departing on foreign service, "Return either with your shield, or upon it," was no unmeaning form of words; and one of the most striking incidents in Grecian history is the contrast between the bitter suffering of those mothers who, after the fatal day of Leuctra,

*

had to welcome home their surviving sons in dishonour and defeat, and the comparative cheerfulness of those whose sons had perished. The same spirit which animated the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ, and which dictated the inscription on their monument, "O stranger! tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here obedient to their laws," also dictated the letter of Brasidas to the Ephori, containing only the words, "I will execute your orders in this war, or die :"† as well as the answer of the mother of Brasidas to the ambassadors from the Grecians in Thrace, who said that Brasidas had not left his equal behind him: "You mistake. My son was a man of great merit, but there are many superior to him in Sparta."‡

Now if we examine the condition of Sparta about 200 years later, that is, in the time of Agis III. (about 250 B.C.), we find the old discipline and military training altogether gone, or degenerated into mere forms, and the dignity and ascendancy of the State among its neighbours completely ruined. Together with this result, we find its citizens few in number, the bulk of them miserably poor, all the land in a small number of hands, and a numerous body of strangers or non-citizens domiciled in the town, and forming a powerful moneyed interest. What were the causes of this fatal change?

* Pausan. iii. 226. Strab. ix. 429.

† Plut. Lac. Apophthegm.

+ Diod. xii. 72.