ACHAIA.

1. Was a province of Peloponnesus. It lay on the Corinthian Gulf, and was bounded by Arcadia and Elis. The Achaians were poor, and so attached to peace that they did not join the Greeks against the Persian invaders. Helice was once the principal city of Achaia, but it was destroyed by an earthquake, 373 B. C. Egium was thenceforth the chief town. Achaia, from the earliest times, was divided into twelve cities, and their dependent territory, and deputies assembled yearly at Egium, to transact the public affairs.

2. Achaia, if not the most glorious, was perhaps the happiest state of Greece. The inhabitants were almost without commerce, they lived upon the product of their soil, and were strangers to the desire of conquest; they were not rich enough to invite the rapacity of other nations, and the love of liberty lingered among them after the haughty necks of more powerful states were submitted to the yoke of the invader. All their cities had the same laws and the same magistracy, they formed one body and one state, and an undisturbed union prevailed among the different classes of the citizens.

THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE.

1 From the battle of Chæronea, &c. to the taking of Corinth, 189 years, the states of Greece did not tamely submit to the Macedonian tyranny. Several Greek cities of Achaia united about fifty years after to preserve their liberty; Corinth and some other cities joined the Achaians, and their confederacy was called the Achaian league. The Achaian league carried on wars to assert their independence: Aratus of Sicyon was made their general more than 200 B. C. : he drove the Macedonians from Athens and Corinth; but when the Etolians attacked the Achaians, Aratus was obliged to accept aid from the king of Macedon. A dispute afterwards arose between them and the Macedonian monarch, which caused Aratus to be poisoned. He is reckoned among the last defenders of Greek liberty.

2. The next celebrated general of the Achaian league was Philopomen, a native of Magalopolis, in Arcadia. The Spartans acted in open hostility to the Achaians, and Philopomen turned his arms against them; he took Sparta, B. C. 188.

3. The Messenians had been members of the Achaian league, they revolted, and Philopomen undertook to punish them, but he unfortunately fell into their hands, and they condemned him to the fate of Aratus. He perished thus in his seventieth year, B. C. 183, after he had spent forty of those years to defend the ancient liberties of Greece. He is often called, the last of the Greeks.

ATHENIAN EDUCATION.

When a child was born in Athens, the happy occasion was indicated by a crown of olive hung over the door, if the infant was a boy, and by a lock of wool, if it was a girl. This practice began when the people were in the earliest stage of civilization; when agriculture was the chief occupation of the men, and domestic manufactures of the women.

2. The law permitted the father of a child to determine whether it should live or die: if a new born infant was deformed, or showed any marks of an infirm constitution, the father averted his eyes when the child was first presented to him. This was a sentence of death to the poor child, which was immediately after executed.

3. The Nurse of an infant was cherished and honoured by his parents, and almost always retained in their family. The nurses took the principal care of children among the Athenians, till they were sent to school, at six years of age. The inhabitants of Athens were divided into ten tribes, and these into three curiæ; and each curiæ was subdivided into thirty classes. A class then was the ninetieth part of a tribe. The families of the same curiæ considered one another as brothers, and were associated in their festivals which were of a religious import, in their sacrifices, and in their public worship.

4. A child was recorded by his name in a public register, as belonging to one of the curiæ, before he had reached his seventh year. The solemnity of admitting the children, in this manner, to be ci

tizens, was performed every year, and was very interesting. It was on this occasion, perhaps, that the boy received the first imperfect notion that he was a member of society, as well as of his father's household.

5. Persons of distinguished merit were chosen to be preceptors of children. These endeavoured to make the examples set before their pupils, the conversation addressed to them, their studies, and their bodily exercises, altogether suitable to a sound constitution, an accomplished mind, and a right conduct. Boys, the sons of citizens, were taught reading and writing-the latter on smooth pieces of wood, neatly covered upon the surface with wax, upon which they marked, with a pointed instrument called a Stylus, the forms of let

ters.

6. Select passages of Homer, and other poets, were put into the hands of children, and their memory was exercised in acquiring these verses. They were also taught music, and to celebrate the bounties of the gods and the virtues of heroes, by means of poetry adapted to music. They were carefully taught grammar and rhetoric, and all the beauties of their own delightful language; nor were the mathematical sciences neglected in the Athenian education.

7. Bodily exercises were early taught in all the states of Greece. To be able to swim, to manage a horse, to run in sand, to hurl the javelin, to throw great weights of stone and brass, were necessary to nations of warriors and Athletæ, as much as music and dancing, history and rhetoric, were necessary to young persons who first exhibited themselves in festivals, and at trials of skill

in accomplishments, and who, when they became men, were destined to be orators and legislators.

8. The desire of pleasing, good manners, just expressions, an elegant appearance, deference to parents, and reverence to age, were all made to concur in the graceful, and amiable deportment of the young. The young people went also to the theatres, and were allotted to places in the public festivals. Abroad, they beheld the works of art; and at home, the genius of fine writers, and the discourses of cultivated men, formed their minds.

9. At the age of eighteen the Athenian youth was enrolled in the militia, and then, before the altars of the gods, solemnly promised never to dishonour the republic, and to sacrifice his life, if need were, for the defence of it. At the age of twenty he was admitted to the privileges of a citizen, might attend the public assembles, aspire to the office of a magistrate, and dispose of his fortune, if he should happen to lose his father.

10. The Athenian females were taught to read, write, sew, spin, and to attend to the care of their families. The daughters of the richer citizens, in the latter times of the republic, were brought up with more refinement. From the age of seven years they were assistants in religious solemnities, some carrying baskets of flowers on their heads, others singing hymns, and others performing danThe Greeks were persuaded that offerings made to the gods were more acceptable when presented by youth and beauty.

ces.

11. Why then were the Athenians not better men? why were they ungrateful to their benefactors, and addicted to a multitude of vices, as their history relates, if a nation of virtuous citizens is