under the same general, against the Boiotians at the battle of Coroneia; and this so displeased his countrymen, the Athenians, that they banished him; but to be banished was to any Athenian a matter of too common occurrence to be much dreaded or deplored; and to one who had been so great a wanderer surely no extreme punishment. Still he appears ever to have felt kindly to to his country, and to have rejoiced and gloried in the name Athenian, though he was indebted to the Lakedaimonians for his beautiful home, and rich estates at Skilluns, in Elis, where he lived the remainder of his days, happy and peaceful, in the practice of philosophy and piety, in the possession of easy affluence and literary leisure, in the society of his sons and his wife Phitesia, up to the advanced age of ninety-three years; when he died as calmly as though half his life had not been spent in the most tumultuous of tempests-that of human warfare. Were I asked to sum up his character in a few words, I should say that so far as we know or can learn of him, he lacked no quality which a soldier, general, or man should have, nor possessed any which they should not have. As a general I should rate him not lower than the third of all the old world ever saw; Hannibal being first beyond compare, and perhaps Epaminondas second, though between Xenophon and him I doubt. If it be objected, that he did little by which to hold so high a place in arms, I would reply that there was much, if not all of strategy, in that little; that it is qualities, not opportunities, which make the general; and that, judging from all that he did, I can conceive nothing which he could not have done.

As a philosopher he is the only Greek, unless it be, perhaps, Plato, for whom I have any considerable degree of respect; most of their private lives were filthy, infamous and odious; most of their pretensions to philosophy were mere cant, mere dogmatism, and mere humbug-most of themselves-might I not say all? so tainted, not excluding Socrates himself, with quackery, buffoonery,

and charlatanry, that we scarce know whether to loathe them as Tartuffe, laugh at them as Grimaldi, or scorn them as any one of fifty humbugs of our own day.

In one word, and to conclude, I fear that as a man in moral duties, and—so far as light was vouchsafed to him-in pious faith and practice, also, many a profossed Christian might look for an example in the heathen Xenophon.

VI.

EPAMINONDAS,

THE THEBAN.

HIS CAMPAIGNS, BATTLES OF LEUKTRA AND MANTINEIA,
CHARACTER, AND CONDuct.

WITH the life and career of no one man, in the ages of authentic history, were the prosperity and pre-eminence of his native city ever so exactly contemporary and co-existent, as those of Thebes with those of her best and greatest son, Epaminondas. For, previous to his coming upon the stage, and taking the lead in the administration of her affairs, she had never aspired to more than a secondary position among the independent states of Hellas, little indeed, if at all, superior to that of Korinth, Arkadia, and Argolis, nor dreamed of contesting the supremacy with Attika, or Lakedaimon. Yet, so soon as this great man rose to the head of her affairs, she sprang at once to the leading and mastery of the Greek states, which she wrested from the iron hands of Sparta, then at her loftiest pitch of power; and still maintained it, sometimes at the head of her allies, oftener single-handed, so long as his political wisdom and mode ration ruled her councils; so long as his military science fought her battles.

In what year he was born does not appear distinctly, but we know that, with his friend and brother in arms, Pelopidas, he was of one among the noblest of the Boiotian families. It is

to be regretted, that of this highly interesting period, and this its most interesting personage, we possess fewer and far less authentic documents than of the events and characters immediately preceding and succeeding it. Of Plutarch's lives, Epaminondas is one of the missing; and. as the biographer was a fellow countryman of the general, and himself by no means destitute of patriotic and party spirit, it is not to be doubted that he had laid himself out on the career and character of this, the greatest soldier and statesman of his nation. We may therefore esteem this a real loss; although, in general, Plutarch's lives are to be regarded rather as gossipping collections of stray anecdotes, and pleasant compilations, than as authentic histories. And it is to be regretted, the rather, because the magnificent and most veracious history of Thukydides closes before his career began, unless it was in the first fight at Mantineia that he drew his maiden sword; and because Xenophon, who continued that great. work in his Hellenika, has, from partiality to his friend Agesilaos, described the campaigns and battles of his rival with a brevity and lack of appreciation so different from the minute and graphic details, the energy and life, which we meet in every page of the Anabasis, that we recognize neither the author, nor the glorious actor, whom he deals with, I regret to say, almost in a spirit of detraction.

It was in the second year of the ninetieth Olympiad, B. C. 419,* if we may believe Plutarch, that the Thebans, being then

* Plut. Pelopid. IV. Such is the narrative of Plutarch. I must, however, regard it as apocryphal; since this battle of Mantineia being fought B. C. 419, that of Leuctra in 371, and the second battle of Mantineia, when Epaminondas fell, in 363, allowing the friends to have been but fifteen, at this period, Epaminondas, at his death, must have been at least seventy-one years old; whereas there is no hint to be found in history that he was at all advanced in years; but, on the contrary, a general report, that he was young at Leuktra, and that he died, cut off in his mid career.

in close alliance with the Lakedaimonians, and sending an auxiliary force to serve with them, Epaminondas and Pelopidas fought side by side in that first fierce battle of Mantineia, in which Agesipolis defeated, with so terrible a slaughter, the combined forces of the Argives, Mantineians, Arkadians and Athenians. In the shock of that dreadful encounter, the chosen band of Argive youths a thousand strong, broke the left wing, in which the Thebans fought, and drove a large portion of it clear off the field; but the two friends, as he asserts, with some comrades, linking their shields, resisted desperately, when all around them were in full flight; and, when Pelopidas fell, with seven wounds all in front, Epaminondas stood over him, though he believed him to be dead, defending him and his armor, until he too had received a spear-thrust in the breast and a sword-cut in the arm, when they were rescued, timely, by the arrival of Agesipolis from the right, where he had carried all before him, who now came up, restored, and won the battle. From this time forth, we are told, the young men were inseparable friends; for they both recovered from their wounds, to do their country better service; although it was not until after the lapse of several years that we find them again acting together, as it were, with one hand and a single spirit.

This I have inserted as a pleasing story, illustrative both of the times and of the character of the men of whom it is narrated; as popular traditions, if they are apt to err, like this, in preserving exact synchronism, are wont to adhere very closely to the veri similitude of things and the individuality of characters; and this it is, which renders it at times difficult to discriminate between them and authentic history.

In the first year of the ninety-fourth Olympiad, B. C. 404, the Peloponnesian war, which for the space of twenty-seven years had raged incessant throughout Greece, was closed by the survender of Athens at discretion, the demolition of her walls, and