but of downfall and ruin. We have already spoken of the light in which it was regarded by Thucydides,* and we may here add that its moral and political effects of all sorts have been very forcibly summed up, perhaps even somewhat exaggerated, by Professor Wachsmuth. That is to say, at least, we think all the seeds of decay and corruption had been sown broad cast before that war, and were only brought up a little sooner, and made preternaturally fruitful and teeming by its baneful influences of all sorts; while he appears to regard it not only as the occasion, but to a greater extent than we are ready to admit, the prime cause of much that ensued upon it. At any rate, however, it was an epoch in the history of those commonwealths that of all others most deserved to be treated by the hand of a master, and of just such a master. It was, as was said of a great event of our times, le commencement de la fin, if not the end itself. It found Athens mistress of the greater part of Greece, it left her at its mercy. The proud city narrowly escaped being razed to the ground, and seeing her whole people, gifted then as none other ever has been, sold into slavery. After the mighty events of the Persian invasion, of which the story sounds like mythology, and in which her conduct-nothing short of the sublime heroism-deserved and won for her the title and the influence of liberatress of Greece, she became, partly by the eminent abilities of her own statesmen, partly by the backwardness of Sparta, and her want of a navy, or her aversion to distant enterprises and foreign dominion, partly and perhaps more than all the rest, fron the extreme and deserved odiousness of Pausanias, the head of a confederacy of maritime states, embracing almost all the islands and shores of the Egean Sea. The object of it was defence against the common enemy, the Great King, and each state was to furnish, for that purpose, its quota of troops and money. It was the equitable assessment of this tax that obtained for Aristides his envied but not disputed title of "the just." But this system, projected by the deep policy of Themistocles, and completed by the victories of Cimon, was perverted by Pericles, as he did every thing, to the purposes of demagogy, and the federal contributions were squandered, under his administration, in fostering the arts, and pandering to the pleasures of a voluptuous city. The natural consequence of this injustice, and of the lawless and insolent spirit that led to it, was that her dependencies became impatient of the yoke, and her great * L. I. c. 22, 23, † v. II. pp. 181. sqq., and 393, 4. The former passage is only a paraphrase of Thucydides. See Herder's Gesch. der Mensch. III., 163-166, as to the narrowness of the escape, Isocrates, Areopagit. [Demosth. Tagangεobεias xo'.] The language of Herodotus is express, emphatic, and conclusive. VII. 139. rival was roused up from her drowsy apathy, and, about half a century after the last Persian army was withdrawn, these discontents broke out against the "tyrant state" in a war of twentyseven years. In the course of that war, Athens discovered an extent and variety of resources, a capacity for affairs both civil and military, a patience and constancy under misfortune, and an elastic buoyancy of character, which must strike every one with astonishment. But, coupled with the display of these high qualities, was the progress, every day more rapid, of dissoluteness and misrule, under the miserable demagogues, the Cleons and Hyperboluses, who divided among them the influence which Pericles had exercised without a rival over the popular mind. The bitter fruits of his policy, which his extraordinary abilities, helped by most favorable circumstances, had enabled him to retard or to disguise, now shot forth, on all sides, in the rankest luxuriance. It is just that period of the history of Athens that the great contemporary writer in question has recorded, as he assures us with an impressive seriousness, not for the purpose of a mere occasional display, or to excite curiosity by a brilliant tale, but as a lesson of the deepest import, and "an acquisition for all time," κτημα εις αεί. * He was about forty years of age at the breaking out of the war, and survived it some time. In the seventh year of it, he was a general in the Athenian service, but, having failed to save Amphipolis, where he arrived the day after it fell into the hands of Brasidas, he was, on Cleon's motion, punished for his mishap with banishment, and thereupon retired to his estates (which were very considerable) in Thrace. It was in this tranquil solitude ("under a platane," says one of his biographerst) that he composed his immortal work, which he opens with a masterly view of Greek history from the earliest time, but especially from the Persian to the Peloponnesian war. This latter period, however important, had, he informs us, been neglected by all his predecessors, with the single exception of Hellanicus, who had touched upon it with extreme brevity, however, and without any regard to chronological order. Unfortunately, his narrative reaches only to the twenty-first year of the war. No man ever took greater pains to learn the truth, or was, in every respect, more perfectly master of his subject. His greatness of mind is sufficiently evinced by the stern impartiality and the austere tone of his narrative, in no part of which-unless his portraiture of the worthless Cleon be considered as an exception, is there to be discovered the slightest tincture of resentment for the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of the tyrannical De * L. i. c: 24. + Marcellinns, ed. Bekker, p. 5. + Id. 4. VOL. I.-49 mus.* With every advantage of illustrious birth, ample fortune and finished education, acquired after the fashion of the day, in the school of Anaxagoras the philosopher, and Antiphon the rhetorician-a man who subsequently played a conspicuous part in politics, and of whom he speaks in the highest terms, both as a statesman and an oratort--he found himself surrounded, in his contemporaries, with the greatest minds that ever adorned the annals of his country. Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, "the Olympian" Pericles, Socrates, the chief of thinkers, Phidias, the prince of statuaries--these are names which, if we except Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes, can scarcely be said to have been equalled in a later, or, indeed, any age of Grecian history. Thucydides belonged to the same class of minds, cast in the grandest mould. With habits of comprehensive generalization, and the deep thought nursed in solitude, he combined the sober experience and the practical sagacity of the statesman and soldier, and there is scarcely a page of his work but bears witness to his profound political wisdom, and his power of teaching philosophy by a bare recital of facts. The speeches, which he was the first to introduce, and to make an essential ingredient in ancient history, and which serve, like the chorus in their tragedies, to express public opinion and the spirit of the times, as well as to convey, in a condensed form, statistical details and general views of the character and condition of nations, are signally distinguished by all these rare qualities. In one of these, ascribed by him to Pericles, he gives a full exposé of the ways and means of the republic at the breaking out of the war. In another, supposed to be delivered by the same great personage, as a funeral oration over the brave men who fell in the first encounter with the enemy, we have a truly captivating picture of the democracy, as it had been up to that time, that is to say, in its best and highest estate, and we are thus enabled to measure the extent of its fall, during the fatal period intended to be embraced by his history. Nothing can be more strikingly illustrative of the great object of the work, than the contrast thus presented; but every part of this breviary of statesmen is replete with instruction, for minds capable of discerning, amidst circumstances apparently the most diversified, the great general causes that affect the destinies of nations. He has sketched, in a few chapters, relative to the bloody scenes in Corcyra, a mighty revolution that had taken place in the manners of the country a little before the date of his narrative, and this moral change sufficiently accounts for all the political evils that are to follow. In an * Marcellings contrasts him, in this respect, with Herodotus, c. 5; and see the instance given c. 4. Compare Diony. Halic. Judic. de Thucyd. Hist. c. 8. + L, 8. c. 64. L. 3. c. 82. [ Diod. Sic. xv. 76.] other passage, the whole philosophy of a "reign of terror," the mystery of constructive majorities, by which a few bold and crafty spirits dictate their own opinions to the multitudes they affect to obey, and measures opposed by almost every individual of a great mass are seemingly adopted with perfect unanimity, is revealed in a few words, as exactly descriptive of certain recent events, as if they had been expressly intended as a history of them. It is curious to see what is called, by the political wiredrawers of the day, "party discipline," or in plain English, the art of thinking for the people, as familiar to the demagogues of antiquity as to those even of this privileged age. As to the style and economy of this great work, it does not fall within the scope of the present article to expatiate upon them. One thing, however, is too remarkable to be omitted in this connection, and that is that the author's claim to be regarded as the father of historical criticism is adinitted to be just even by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. We have already adverted to what this rhetorician has to say in one of his works, of the historian's selecting the Peloponnesian war for his subject: he has written another very long and elaborate diatribe,† expressly to show that Thucydides was scarcely more fortunate in his manner of treating that subject than in his choice of it. We shall not enter here into a detailed examination of his objections. They go to form as well as substance, to arrangement and execution, to words and things. He considers the whole plan of the author as bad; finds him bringing out into disproportionate relief some parts of his matter, while others, in the opinion of the critic just as important, are slurred over with a bare passing notice, and wonders why Pericles was brought in delivering the famous speech we have just mentioned with honor. He even ventures on an attempt to show, by examples, how much the work would have been improved had his judgment been consulted in the composition of it. Then the syle and diction are very faulty, full of poetical locutions, long and obscure sentences and hyperbolical exaggeration. It is not for us to imitate the example of Dionysius, by affecting to refute his objections in points of merely verbal criticism. We shall not dispute with a Greek about σχηματα and ῥήματα. It is enough for us that, in this attack upon the reputation of "the first of historians," as he admits he is considered, he feels himself constrained to do homage to public opinion, by a formal apology for the boldness of his strictures; that he fully admits the excellencies that constitute, in our judgment, the superiority of Thucydides over all his rivals; and that, especially, he ascribes to him the honor of hav * L. viii. 64-5. + Judicium de Thucyd. Hist. [Cf. Lucian quomodo sit conscribenda historia.] ing first, with the single exception of Herodotus, and to a much higher degree even than that writer, infused into Greek prose that vigor, earnestness, and elevation, which are described by the familiar and expressive, but untranslatable word, dsworns. It was to acquire this lofty and powerful style that Demosthenes himself, the only rival of his great model, copied out with his own hand, according to the tradition, this whole history eight different times; and Marcellinus well remarks, in regard to the cavils of Dionysius, that to find fault with Thucydides, because his mode of expression is not altogether popular and simple, is to forget that commanding powers, and a strongly marked individuality, never fail to manifest themselves in the form of speech as in every thing else. Le style c'est l'homme. The critic in question does not affect to dispute, nay, he highly extols, the historian's pre-eminent abilities as a painter of the passions, and of the tragical events best fitted to excite them; and we will take it upon us to affirm that some of his descriptions have never been surpassed, if (depth of pathos, as well as picturesque effect, being taken into the account) they have ever been equalled in literature-Livy himself not excepted. It will be enough to mention the famous account of the plague, so often imitated since-and that of the departure of the great armament for the invasion of Sicily, and the cruel catastrophe of the expedition in the capture and destruction of the whole army. Indeed, the seventh book is, throughout, one deep and tragical romance, of an absorbing and agitating interest, which fiction (in prose at least) has yet to rival. Our special admiration for the greatest of historians, has led us to dwell longer upon Thucydides than it was our purpose to have done, but the extent of our remarks is any thing but disproportionate to the importance of his work to the student of the constitutional history of Greece. Yet, as we have already observed, we have many other and most copious sources to draw from for the same purpose, and the philosophers, especially those more familiarly known among the moderns, abound in information of the most valuable kind in relation to the politics, practical and speculative, of their country. What with the progress of literary tastes and pursuits, and what with the daily increasing troubles and disorders of all sorts, that made public life more and more insupportable to people of sensitive tempers and quiet habits, a class was gradually formed that had not, hitherto, had a separate existence in the first of those common wealths. Persons of the highest intelligence withdrew almost entirely from politics to devote themselves to a life of ease and contemplation. But in * Ibid. c. 23.—οὐδὲ τὸ ἐῤῥωμενον και εναγώνιον πνευμα ἐξ ὧν ἡ καλούμενη σεινότης, πλην ένος Ηροδότου. |