by the enemy, the father, to redeem them, was obliged to come to an accommodation with the Athenians, by which it was stipulated, that he should depart out of Attica in five days' time. Accordingly, he actually retired within the time limited, and setAnt. J. C. 508. tled at Sigæum,, a town in Phrygia, seated at the mouth of the river Scamander.

A. M. 3496.

Pliny observes, that the tyrants were driven out of Athens the same year the kings were expelled Rome. Extraordinary honours were paid to the memory of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Their names were infinitely respected at Athens in all succeeding ages, and almost held in equal reverence with those of the gods. Statues were forthwith erected to them in the market-place, which was an honour that had never been conferred on any man before. The very sight of these statues, exposed to the view of all the citizens, kept up their hatred and detestation of tyranny, and daily renewed their sentiments of gratitude to those generous defenders of their liberty, who had not scrupled to purchase it with their lives, and to seal it with their blood. Alexander the Great, who knew how dear the memory of these men was to the Athenians, and how far they carried their zeal in this respect, thought he did them a sensible pleasure in sending back to them the statues of those two great men, which he found in Persia after the defeat of Darius, and which Xerxes had formerly carried thither from Athens. Pausanias ascribes this action to Seleucus Nicanor, one of the successors of Alexander; and adds, that he also sent back to the Athenians their public library, which Xerxes had carried off with him into Persia. Athens, at the time of her deliverance from tyranny, did not confine her gratitude solely to the authors of her liberty, but extended it even to a woman who had signalized her courage on that occasion. This woman was a courtesan, named Leæna, who by the charms of her beauty, and skill in playing on the harp, had particularly captivated Hermodius and Aristogiton. After their death, the tyrant, who knew they had concealed nothing from this woman, caused her to be put to the torture, in order to make her declare the names of the other conspirators. But she bore all the cruelty of their torments with an invincible constancy, and expired in the midst of them; showing the world that her sex is more courageous, and more capable of keeping a secret, than some men imagine. The Athenians would not suffer the memory of so heroic an action to be lost; and, to prevent the lustre of it from being sullied by the consideration of her character as a courtesan, they endeavoured to conceal that circumstance, by representing her in the statue which they erected to her honour, under the figure of a lioness without a tongue.

Plutarch, in the life of Aristides, relates a circumstance which does great honour to the Athenians, and shows to what a pitch they † Plin. 1. xxxiv. c. 8. Id. 1. vii. c. 23. 1. xxxiv. c. 8.

* Plin. 1. xxxiv. c. 4. Page 335.

carried their gratitude to their deliverer, and their respect for his memory. They had learned that the grandaughter of Aristogiton lived at Lemnos, in very mean and poor circumstances, nobody being willing to marry her upon account of her extreme indigence and poverty. The people of Athens sent for her, and, marrying her to one of the most rich and considerable men of their city, gave her an estate in land in the town of Potamos for her portion.

Athens seemed, in recovering her liberty, to have also recovered her pristine courage. During the reigns of her tyrants, she had acted with indolence and indifference, as knowing what she did was not for herself, but for them. But after her deliverance from their yoke, the vigour and activity she exerted was of a quite different kind; because then her labours were her own.

Athens, however, did not immediately enjoy a perfect tranquillity. Two of her citizens, Clisthenes, one of the Alcmæonidæ, and Isagoras, who were men of the greatest power in the city, by contending with each other for superiority, created two considerable factions. The former, who had gained the people on his side, made an alteration in the form of their establishment, and instead of four tribes, whereof they consisted before, divided that body into ten tribes, to which he gave the names of the ten sons of Ion, whom the Greek historians make the father and first founder of the nation. Isagoras, seeing himself inferior in credit to his rival, had recourse to the Lacedæmonians. Cleomenes, one of the two kings of Sparta, obliged Clisthenes to depart from Athens, with 700 families of his adherents. But they soon returned with their leader, and were restored to all their estates and fortunes.

The Lacedæmonians, stung with spite and jealousy against Athens, because she took upon her to act independent of their authority; and repenting also that they had delivered her from her tyrants upon the credit of an oracle, of which they had since discovered the imposture, began to think of reinstating Hippias, one of the sons of Pisistratus; and to that end sent for him from Sigæum, whither he had retired. They then communicated their designs in an assembly of the deputies of their allies, whose assistance and concurrence they were anxious to secure, in order to render their enterprise successful.

The deputy of Corinth spoke first on this occasion, and expressed great astonishment that the Lacedæmonians, who were themselves avowed enemies of tyranny, and professed the greatest abhorrence for all arbitrary government, should desire to establish it elsewhere: he exposed to their view, in the fullest light, all the cruel and horrid effects of tyrannical government, which his own country, Corinth, had but very lately felt by woful experience. The rest of the deputies applauded his discourse, and were of his opinion. Thus the enterprise came to nothing; and had no other effect than to discover the base jealousy of the Lacedæmonians, and to cover them with shame and confusion.

Hippias, defeated of his hopes, retired into Asia to Artaphernes, governor of Sardis for the king of Persia, whom he endeavoured by every method to engage in a war against Athens; representing to him, that the taking of so rich and powerful a city would render him master of all Greece. Artaphernes hereupon required of the Athenians that they would reinstate Hippias in the government; to which they made no other answer, than by a downright and absolute refusal. This was the original ground and occasion of the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, which will be the subject of the following volumes.

ARTICLE IX.

Illustrious men who distinguished themselves in the arts and sciences.

I begin with the poets, as the most ancient.

HOMER, the most celebrated and illustrious of all the poets, is he of whom we have the least knowledge, either with respect to the country where he was born, or the time in which he lived. Among the seven cities of Greece that contended for the honour of having given him birth, Smyrna, seems to have the best title to that glorious distinction.

A. M. 3160.

Herodotus tells us,* that Homer wrote 400 years Ant. J. C. 844. before his time, that is, 340 years after the taking of Troy; for Herodotus flourished 740 years after that expedition.

Some authors have pretended that he was called Homer, because he was born blind. Velleius Paterculus rejects this story with contempt. If any man, says he, believes that Homer was born blind, he must be so himself, and even have lost all his senses. Indeed, according to the observation of Cicero, Homer's works are rather pictures than poems, so perfectly does he paint to the life, and set the images of every thing he undertakes to describe before the eyes of the reader; and he seems to have been intent upon introducing all the most delightful and agreeable objects that nature affords into his writings, and making them in a manner pass in review before his readers.

What is most astonishing in this poet is, that being the first, at least of those that are known, who applied himself to that kind of poetry which is the most sublime and difficult of all, he should however soar so high and with such rapidity, as to carry it at once to the utmost perfection; which seldom or never happens in other arts, but by slow degrees, and after a long series of years.

Lib. ii. c. 53.

† Quem si quis cæcum genitum putat, omnibus sensibus orbus est. Paterc. I. i. e, 5. Tuscul. Quæst. 1. v. n. 114.

Clarissimum deinde Homeri illuxit ingenium, sine exemplo, maximum: qui magnitudine operis, et fulgore carminum, solus appellari Poëta meruit. In quo hoc maximum est, quòd neque ante illum quem ille imitaretur; neque post illum, qui imitari eum possit, inventus est: neque quenquam alium, cujus operis primus auctor fuerit, in eo perfectissimum, præter Homerum et Archilochum reperiemus. Vell. Paterc. 1. i. c. 5.

The kind of poetry we are speaking of is the Epic Poem so, called from the Greek word ros; because it is an action related by the poet. The subject of this poem must be great, instructive, serious containing only one principal event, to which all the rest must refe and be subordinate; and this principal action must have passed in! a certain space of time, which must not exceed a year at most.

Homer has composed two poems of this kind, the Illiad and the Odyssey; the subject of the first is the anger of Achilles, so pernicious to the Greeks, when they besieged Ilion, or Troy; and that of the second is the voyages and adventures of Ulysses, after the taking of that city.

It is remarkable, that no nation in the world, however learned and ingenious, has ever produced any poems comparable to his; and that whoever have attempted any works of that kind, have all taken their plans and ideas from Homer, borrowed all their rules from him, made him their model, and have only succeeded in proportion to their success in copying him. The truth is, Homer was an original genius, and fit for others to be formed upon: Fons ingeniorum Homerus.*

All the greatest men, and the most exalted geniuses that have appeared for these two thousand and five or six hundred years in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere; those whose writings we are still forced to admire; who are still our masters, and who teach us to think, to reason, to speak, and to write; all these, says Madame Dacier,† acknowledge Homer to be the greatest of poets, and look upon his poems as the model on which all succeeding poets should form their taste and judgment. After all this, can there be any man so conceited of his own talents, be they never so great, as reasonably to presume, that his decisions should prevail against such a universal concurrence of judgment in persons of the most distinguished abilities and characters?

So many testimonies, so ancient, so uniform, and so universal, entirely justify Alexander the Great's favourable judgment of the works of Homer, which he looked upon as the most excellent and valuable production of the human mind; pretiosissimum humani animi opus.‡

Quintilian, after having made a magnificent encomium upon Homer, gives us a just idea of his character and manner of writing in these few words: Hunc nemo in magnis sublimitate, in parvis proprietate, superaverit. Idem lætus ac pressus, jucundus et gravis, tum copiâ tum brevitate mirabilis. In great things, what a sublimity of expression; and in little, what a justness and propriety! Diffufusive and concise, pleasant and grave, equally admirable both for his copiousness and his brevity.

HESIOD. The most common opinion is, that he was contemporary

*Plin. l. xvii. c. 5.

† In Homer's life which is prefixed to her translation of the Iliad.

with Homer. It is said, he was born at Cuma, a town in Æolis, but that he was brought up at Ascra, a little town in Boeotia, which has since passed for his native country. Thus Virgil calls him the old man of Ascra.* We know little or nothing of this poet, but by the few remaining poems which he has left, all in hexameter verse; which are, 1st, The Works and Days; 2dly, The Theogony, or the genealogy of the gods; 3dly, The Shield of Hercules; of which last some doubt whether it was written by Hesiod.

1. In the first of these poems, entitled, The Works and Days, Hesiod treats of agriculture, which requires, besides a great deal of labour, a due observation of times, seasons, and days. This poem is full of excellent sentences and maxims for the conduct of life. He begins it with a short, but lively description of two sorts of disputes; the one fatal to mankind, the source of quarrels, discords, and wars; and the other infinitely useful and beneficial to men, as it sharpens their wits, excites a noble and generous emulation among them, and prepares the way for the invention and improvement of arts and sciences. He then makes an admirable description of the four different ages of the world; the golden, the silver, the brazen, and the iron age. The persons who lived in the golden age are those whom Jupiter after their death turned into so many Genii or spirits, and then appointed them as guardians over mankind, giving them a commission to go up and down the earth, invisible to the sight of men, and to observe all their good and evil

actions.

This poem was Virgil's model in composing his Georgics, as he himself acknowledges in this verse:

Ascræumque cano Romana per oppida carmen.‡

And sing the Ascrean verse to Roman swains.

The choice made by these two illustrious poets of this subject for the exercise of their muse, shows in what honour the ancients held agriculture, and the feeding of cattle, the two innocent sources of the wealth and plenty of a country. It is much to be deplored, that in after ages a taste so agreeable to nature, and so well adapted to the preservation of innocence of manners, should have gone to decay. Avarice and luxury have entirely depressed it. Nimirum alii subiere ritus, circaque alia mentes hominum detinentur, et avaritiæ tantùm artes coluntur.§

2. The Theogony of Hesiod, and the poems of Homer, may be looked upon as the surest and most authentic archives and monuments of the theology of the ancients, and of the opinion they had of their gods. For we are not to suppose, that these poets were the inventors of the fables which we read in their writings. They only collected and transmitted to posterity the traces of the religion

* Eclog. vi. v. 70. † Δαίμονας.

Geor. I. ii. v. 176.

Plin. in Proœm. 1. xiv