which denotes, that they alone knew how to fubdue the paf fions of men, and to render them pliant and fubmiffive to law, in the fame manner as horfes are taught to obey the fpur and the bridle, by being broken and managed, while they are young. For this reafon, Agefilaus advifed Xenophon to fend his children to Sparta, that they might learn there the noblest and greatest of all fciences, that is, how to command and how to obey.

5. Refpect towards the aged.

One of the leffons oftenest and most strongly inculcated upon the Lacedæmonian youth, was, to bear a great reverence and refpect to old men, and to give them proofs of it upon all occafions, by faluting them, by making way for them, and giving them place in the street, (g) by rifing up to fhew them honour in all companies, and pub. lick affemblies; but above all, by receiving their advice, and even their reproofs, with docility and fubmiffion: By thefe characteristicks a Lacedæmonian was known wherever he came; if he had behaved otherwife, it would have been looked upon as a reproach to himself, and a difhonour to his country. An old man of Athens going into the theatre once to fee a play, none of his own countrymen offered him a feat; but when he came near the place, where the Spartan ambaffadors, and the gentlemen of their retinne were firting, they all rose up out of reverence to his age, and feated him in the midst of them. + Lyfander therefore had reafon to fay, that old age had no where fo honourable an ab de as.in Sparta, and that it was an agreeable thing to grow oid in that city.

2. Things blameable in the laws of LYCURGUS.

In order to perceive the defects in the laws of Lycurgus, we fhould only compare them with thofe of Mofes, which we know were dictated by more than human wifdom. But my defign in this place, is not to enter into an exact examination of the particulars, wherein the laws and inftitutions of Lycurgus are faulty: I fhall content myfelf with making fome flight reflections only, which probably may have already occured to the reader, in the perufal of thofe ordinances, among which there are fome, that he will be juftly offended with on the firft reading.

To

(g) Plut. in Lacon. Inftitut. p. 237.

Μαθησομένης τῶν μαθημάτων τὸ [ honefifimum domicilium feneftatis. κάλλιςον, ἄρχεθαι καὶ ἄρχειν. Cic. de Sen. n. 63. "Ev Aaxsdaium + Lyfandrum Lacedemonium di- | nánλıçaynpãos. Plut, in mor, p.795. cere aiunt folitum: Lacedæmone effe

1. The choice

made of the children be brought up or exposed."

that were either to

To begin, for instance, with that ordinance relating to the choice they made of their children, as which of them were to be brought up, and which exposed to perith; who would not be fhocked at the unjust and inhuman custom of pronouncing fentence of death upon all fuch infants, as had the misfortune to be born with a conftitution that appeared too weak to undergo the fatigues and exercises, to which the commonwealth destined all her fubjects? Is it then impoffible, and without example, that children who are tender and weak in their infancy, fhould ever alter as they grow up, and become in time of a robuft and vigorous complexion? Or fuppofe it were fo, can a man no way ferve his country, but by the ftrength of his body? Is there no account to be made of his wifdom, prudence, counfel, generofity, courage, magnanimity, and, in a word, of all the qualities that depend upon the mind and the intellectual faculties? (c) Omnino illud honefum quod ex animo excelfo magnificoque querimus, animi efficitur, non corporis viribus. Did Lycurgus himfelf render lefs fervice, or do lefs honour to Sparta, by establishing his laws, than the greatest generals did by their victories? Agefilaus was of fo fmall a ftature, and fo mean a figure in his perfon, that at the firft fight of him the Egyptians could not help laughing; and yet, as little as he was, he made the great king of Perfia tremble upon the throne of half the world.

But, what is yet stronger than all I have faid, has any other perfon a right or power over the lives of men, fave he from whom they received them, even God himself? And does not a legiflator visibly ufurp the authority of God, whenever he arrogates to himself fuch a power without his commiffion? That precept of the decalogue, which was only a renovation of the law of nature, Thou shalt not kill, univerfally condemns all thofe among the ancients, who imagined they had a power of life and death over their flaves, and even over their own children. The great defect in Lycurgus's laws (as Pla- 2. Their care to and Aristotle have obferved) is, that they only tended to form a warlike and martial body. people. All that legiflator's thoughts feemed wholly bent upon the means of strengthening the bodies of the people, without any concern for the cultivation of their minds. Why should he banish from his commonwealth all arts and fciences, which, besides many other * advantages, have this most happy effect,

confined only to the

that

(c) Cic. 1. i. de offic. n. 79. Ibid. n. 76. Omnes artes quibus ætas puerilis ad humanitatem informari folet. Ci

Orat. pro. Arch.

that they foften our manners, polish our understandings, împrove the heart, and render our behaviour civil, courteous, gentle, and obliging; fuch, in a word, as qualifies us for com pany and fociety, and makes the ordinary commerce of life agreeable? Hence it came to pafs, that there was fomething of a roughness and aufterity in the temper and behaviour of the Spartans, and many times even fomething of ferocity, a failing, that proceeded chiefly from their education, and that rendered them difagreable and offenfive to all their allies.

3. Their barba barous cruelty towards their children.

It was an excellent practice in Sparta, to accustom their youth betimes to fuffer heat and cold, hunger and thirft, and by feveral fevere and laborious exercises to bring the body into fubjection to reafon, whofe faithful and dili. gent minifter it ought to be in the execution of all orders and injunctions; which it can never do, if it be not able to undergo all forts of hardships and fatigues. But was it rational in them to carry their feverities fo far, as the inhuman treatment we have mentioned? And was it not utterly barbarous and brutal in the fathers and mothers to fee the blood trickling from the wounds of their children, nay, and even to fee them expiring under the lafhes without concern?

Some people admire the courage of the 4. The morbers Spartan mothers, who could hear the news of inbumanity. the death of their children flain in battle, not only without tears, but even with a kind of joy and fatiffaction. For my part I fhoul think it much better, that nature fhould fhew herfelf a little more on fuch occafions, and that the love of one's country thouid not utterly extinguish the fentiments of maternal tendernefs. One of our generals in France, who in the heat of battle was told that his fon was killed, feemed to be much wifer by his anfwer: Let us at prefent think, faid he, how to conquer the enemy; to-morrow I will mourn for my fon.

5. Their exceffive

Nor can I fee, what excufe can be made for that law, impofed by Lycurgus upon the SparLeifure. tans, which enjoined the fpending fo much of their time in idleness and inaction, and the following no other bufinefs than that of war. He left all the arts and trades entirely to the flaves, and ftrangers that lived amongst them, and put nothing into the hands of the citizens, but the lance and the fhield. Not to mention the danger there was in fuffering the number of flaves, that were neceffary for tilling the land, to increase

Exercendum corpus, & ita affici-nique poffit in exequendis negotiis & endum eft, ut obedire confilio ratio labore tolerando. Lib. i. de offic.n. 79%

increase to fuch a degree, as to become much greater than that of their mafters, which was often an occafion of feditions and riots among them; how many disorders muft men neceffarily fall into, that have fo much leifure upon their hands, and have no daily occupation or regular labour? This is an inconvenience ftill but too common among our nobility, and which is the natural effect of their wrong education. Except in the time of war, most of our gentry fpend their lives in a most ufelefs and unprofitable manner. They look upon agriculture, arts, and commerce, as beneath them, and what would dero. gate from their gentility. They feldom know how to handle any thing but their fwords. As for the fciences, they take but a very fmall tincture of them, just so much as they cannot well be without; and many of them have not the least knowledge of them in the world, nor any manner of taste for books or reading. We are not to wonder then, if gaming and hunting, eating and drinking, mutual vifits and frivolous difcourfe, make up their whole occupation. What a life is this for men, that have any parts or understanding!

6. Their cruelty towards the Helots.

Lycurgus would be utterly inexcufable, if he gave occafion, as he is accused of having done, for all the rigour and cruelty exercised towards the Helots in his republick. Thefe Helots were the flaves employed by the Spartans to till the ground. It was their custom not only to make these poor creatures drunk, and expose them before their children, in order to give them an abhorrence for so shameful and odious a vice, but also to treat them with the utmost barbarity, as thinking them felves at liberty to destroy them by any violence or cruelty whatfoever, under pretence of their being always ready to rebel.

Upon a certain occafion related by () Thucydides, two thousand of these flaves difappeared at once, without any body's knowing what was become of them. Plutarch pretends, this barbarous cuftom was not practifed till after Lycurgus's time, and that he had no hand in it.

But that wherein Lycurgus appears to be most 7. Modefy and culpable, and what beft thews the prodigious decency entirely neglected. enormities and grofs darkness the Pagans were plunged in, is the little regard he fhewed for modefty and decency, in what concerned the education of girls, and the marriages of young women; which was without, doubt the fource of thofe diforders, that prevailed in Sparta, as Ariftotle has wifely observed. When we compare thefe indecent and licen

(i) Lib. iv.

tious

tious inftitutions of the wifeft legiflator that ever prophane antiquity could boaft, with the fanctity and purity of the evangelical precepts; what a noble idea does it give us of the dignity and excellence of the chriftian religion ?

Nor will it give us a lefs advantageous notion of this preeminence, if we compare the moft excellent and laudable part of Lycurgus's inftitutions with the laws of the gospel. It is, we must own, a wonderful thing, that the whole people should confent to a divifion of their lands, which fet the poor upon an equal footing with the rich; and that by a total exclufion of gold and filver they fhould reduce themfelves to a kind of voluntary poverty. But the Spartan legiflator, when he enacted thefe laws, had the fword in his hand; whereas the chriftian legiflator fays but a word, Bleffed are the poor in Spirit, and thousands of the faithful through all fucceeding generations renounce their goods, fell their lands and eftates, and leave all to follow Jefus Chrift, their master in poverty and want.

ARTICLE VIII.

The government of Athens. The laws of Solon. The biftory of that republick from the time of Solon to the reign of Darius the first.

I

was

HAVE already obferved, that Athens was at firft governed by kings. But they were fuch as had little more than the name; for their whole power, being confined to the command of the armies vanifhed in time of peace. Every man mafter in his own house, where he lived in an absolute state of independence, * Codrus, the laft king of Athens, having devoted himself to die for the publick good, his fons Medon and Nileus quarrelled about the fucceffion. The Athenians took this occafion to abolith the regal power, though it did not much incommode them; and declared, that Jupiter alone was king of Athens; at the very fame time that the Jews were weary of their Theocracy, that is, having the true God for their king, and would abfolutely have a man to reign

over them.

Plutarch obferves, that Homer, when he enumerates the hips of the confedrate Grecians, gives the name of people to none, but the Athenians; from whence it may be inferred, that the Athenians even then had a great inclination to a democratical government, and that the chief authority was at that time vefted in the people.

* Codrus was contemporary with Saul.

In