[1] Vol. i. p. 51.

[2] Herod. i. 190.

[3] See the siege of Alesia, vii. 72, or the circumvallation of Pompey at Dyrrachium, by CÆsar’s army, Bell. Civ. iii. 42. The lines of Torres Vedras, drawn by the British in the Peninsular war, may however compete, for their extent and the labour bestowed on them, with any of these ancient works.

[4] After the battle of PlatÆa, the Athenians and LacedÆmonians contending for the aristeia, or prize for having behaved best in the battle, that honour, by the mediation of the Corinthians, was conferred on the PlatÆans, whose signal zeal throughout the Persian war was admitted, on all hands, to deserve such a distinction. At the same time a yearly sacrifice was appointed to be held at PlatÆa in honour of the slain; and a sort of sacred character was conferred both on the PlatÆans and their territory, with the privileges here enumerated.

[5] Dr. Arnold observes that this is a good instance of that feature of Greek polytheism by which the gods were known and honoured as standing in particular relations to mankind, not as the general moral governors of the world. Three classes of gods were here invoked, each as having a special point of honour involved in the observation of the oaths here mentioned: those whose names were pledged to the observance of it, and who would be personally affronted by its violation; the ancestral gods ?e?? pat???? of the LacedÆmonians, who would take it ill that the act of their descendant, Pausanias, should be disregarded, or the tombs of the LacedÆmonians at PlatÆa neglected or profaned; and the local gods ?e?? ????????, to whom the territory was as a home, and who must expect to be denied their worship, if their country should be occupied by strangers, who would bring their own gods along with them.

[6] Such a natural fire, therefore, may have been still greater.

[7] That is, when the star begins to rise before the sun, and so first becomes visible in the morning. This in the case of Arcturus occurred about the middle of September.

[8] Thucyd. ii. 71, 78.

[9] There is no mention of these three hundred where the author relateth the laying of siege; but it must be understood.

[10] Thucyd. iii. 21–24.

[11] Thucyd. iii. 52, 68.

[12] The end of Numantia is rather differently related by Appian, who says, that after being reduced to such extremity as to eat human flesh, they surrendered at discretion, and were sold as slaves; Scipio retaining fifty of them to grace his triumph. The desperate resolution of the Saguntines, also a Spanish people, confirms the probability of Florus’s version. Pressed by Hannibal, the elders of the city collected the most valuable property, both public and private, into a pile, which they consumed by fire, and for the most part threw themselves into the flames. The other male inhabitants slew their wives and children, set fire to their houses, and perished in them, or else fighting to the death.

[13] Florus, ii. c. 18.

[14] Arrian, ii. 19.

[15] Mr. Rooke, the English translator of Arrian, observes, that “the number here must needs be erroneous, though all the copies which I have seen have it the same.” The height certainly is startling, but it is hazardous to conclude that it must be wrong. Not to rely over–much on the walls of Babylon, which, according to the father of history, were about 350 feet high, the battering towers described by Vitruvius, 185 feet in height, were evidently meant to cope with fortifications as gigantic in height as those here described. And after all, the city being built on an abrupt rock, which might perhaps be faced with masonry, if we suppose the whole height from the sea to the battlements to be meant, there is nothing improbable in the statement. The total height of the fortifications of Malta from the sea, we believe, is not much less.

[16] de??t?? ???s??? p??? ???a t?? p?a??t?? ??? t? ???a fa??eta? ?a? ?a??s???.

[17] Bell. Gall., vii. 72.

[18] Fairfax’s Tasso, xviii. 43–5.

[19] William of Tyre.

[20] La RÉole, a town in Gascony.

[21] Boiled leather, “cuir boulu.”

[22] Pavisses were large shields or defences made of plank, &c., which archers and others bore before them, or fixed in the earth, that they might shoot, mine, &c., in partial cover from the shot of the garrison.

[23] Lord Berners’ Froissart, vol. i. cap. 109.

[24] One of these old guns, of remarkable size, made of bars of hammered iron hooped together, is to be seen in Edinburgh Castle, and is called Mons Meg.

[25] See the medal at the head of this chapter.

[26] Bentivoglio, Hist. of Wars in Flanders, translated by Henry, Earl of Monmouth, 1698.

[27] Lotichius, Rerum Germanicarum, lib. xxxvii. p. 1.

[28] Harte’s Life of Gustavus Adolphus.

[29] Legend of Montrose, chap. ii.

[30] Harte’s Life of Gustavus Adolphus.

[31] Venit summa dies, et inevitable fatum,
—— —— fuit Ilium, et ingens
Gloria Parthenopes.

Parthenopes, substituted by the quoter for the original word Teucrorum, has the same meaning as Magdeburg, the maiden city.

[32] Southey, Hist. Peninsular War, chap. ix.

[33] Napier’s History of the Peninsular War, book v. chap. 2.

[34] Attempts made by the French to force their way into the centre of the city from January 29th to February 2d.

[35] Napier, Hist. of Peninsular War, book v. chap. 3.

[36] ????????. The want of public houses of entertainment for travellers was necessarily supplied by private hospitality. He whose fortune it was to entertain to–day, of course expected to be entertained in return when he visited the country of his guest; and thus were formed hereditary connexions of hospitality, held no less sacred than the ties of blood. By a natural extension of the practice, cities formed similar connexions with foreign citizens, who received their ambassadors, and advocated as far as in them lay both the public interests of the community, and the private interests of those of its citizens who required such help. These men were named Proxeni; the bond of mutual obligation was publicly recorded, and entitled them to receive as guests the same hospitality and protection which they afforded as hosts. Etheloproxeni, below translated voluntary hosts, assumed the same duties, but voluntarily; without the connexion being publicly acknowledged, and consequently without being entitled to that public return which the Proxenus claimed as his right.

[37] “Probably vine sticks, round which the vines were trained. To understand the account given in the text, we must suppose that the individuals whom Pithias prosecuted were the tenants of the sacred ground from which the sticks were cut, and possibly had inherited the possession of it from their ancestors, so that they regarded it from long use as their own property: just as the Roman aristocracy thought themselves aggrieved when an Agrarian law called on them to resign the possession of the national lands which they had for so many generations appropriated to themselves without any lawful title. As hereditary tenants of the sacred ground, the Corcyrean nobles had probably been always in the habit of treating it as their own: so that when suddenly charged with sacrilege, in abusing their legal rights as tenants, by cutting down the trees, which belonged not to them, but to the god, the owner of the land, they, like the Roman nobility, had no legal defence to make, and could only maintain their encroachments by violence.” This is Dr. Arnold’s explanation. The Roman aristocracy, however, had a lawful title to the possession, though not to the full property, of the lands in question. See Penny CyclopÆdia, art. Agrarian Law. A lease of certain public lands in Attica is preserved in the British Museum (Elgin Marbles, No. 261), in which the devastation of wood is especially forbidden. See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, English translation, vol. ii. p. 15. The prosecution and amount of fine were, however, evidently dictated by party spirit and revenge.

[38] Dr. Arnold supposes the silver stater, or tetradrachm, to be meant, which is worth, in our coin, between three shillings and three shillings and sixpence; the tetradrachms vary considerably in weight. The golden stater, which was worth twenty drachms, ought therefore to be worth from fifteen shillings to seventeen shillings and sixpence; but a specimen in the British Museum weighs 132–3/5 grains, which is about 9½ grains more than a sovereign. Silver therefore seems to have borne a higher value in relation to gold in Attica than it does in England.

[39] Arrows, darts, stones, and the like missile weapons.

[40] That came with Nicostratus.

[41] The Greeks had rather singular notions as to the sanctity of temples. To kill a person within the sacred precincts, or to drag him away violently, was held sacrilegious; but to wall a suppliant up, and thus preventing his escape to starve him to death, seems to have been considered venial, since this mode of proceeding was adopted, in a former instance, against the king of Sparta, Pausanias. In the latter case, however, the Delphic oracle pronounced the act a pollution, and ordered that amends should be made for it to the goddess whose temple was thus desecrated. See Thucyd. i. 134.

[42] t??? ??????? not few in number, but the leaders of the oligarchical party.

[43] ?et???a? t?? ???t?????, changes of the state of things.

[44] Hobbes seems to consider these ?ta???a? as associations of traders or artizans, such as our corporate companies were in their origin; which is clearly wrong. They would seem to have been more like the clubs of the French Revolution, formed for the advocacy of certain opinions, or to promote the safety, and increase the influence of the several members, by enabling them to act in concert.

[45] By oath.

[46] F????e???a, properly that spite which reigneth in two adversaries whilst they contend, or eagerness in striving. “That is to say, superadded to the definite motives which lead men to embark in political contests; they contract, when once embarked in them, a party spirit wholly distinct from the objects of their party, and which is sometimes transmitted to their descendants, even when no notions of the original cause of quarrel are preserved. Such was the case with the factions of the Circus at Constantinople, and with those deadly feuds which have prevailed from time to time among the lower classes in Ireland. In the outrages committed some years ago by the parties called Caravats and Shanavests, neither the persons who were executed for these outrages, nor any one else, could tell what was the dispute. It was notorious who were Caravats and who were Shanavests, and this was all.”—Arnold.

[47] The eighty–fourth chapter of the third book (which is contained in this paragraph) has recently been pronounced spurious by several distinguished critics. See the question discussed by Dr. Arnold, vol. i. p. 608.

[48] Thucyd. iii. 70, 85.

[49] b.c. 425.

[50] F???d??, signifieth properly, after the manner that mats or hurdles are platted.

[51] Istone.

[52] Thucyd., iv. 46, 48.

[53] See vol. i. chap. v. p. 154.

[54] Arnold’s Thucydides, App. i. p. 633.

[55] For what little is known or supposed, see Muller’s History of the Doric Race, book iii. ch. ix. § 5; English Translation, vol. ii.: the best book of reference for all political information relative to the Dorian states.

[56] ?t???a??? d? ?a? d???e? a?t?? ?? p?e???? p??t?? ??te? t?? p??e??, I. 55.

[57] ?? ????te? t? p???ata, III. 72. ?? ??????, III. 74.

[58] Cade’s speech to Lord Say, Henry VI. part ii. vol. iv. p. 7. The last sentence alludes to the law which gave to persons capitally convicted the benefit of clergy, that is, their lives were spared if they could read; it being presumed that none but clergy could do so.

[59] Holinshed, vol. ii. p. 746.

[60] Frenzy. The adjective wood, or wode, is of common occurrence in the Scottish language.

[61] Lord Berners’ Froissart, vol. i. chap. 182, 183.

[62] Ibid., vol. i. chap. 381.

[63] Decline and Fall, chap. xl.

[64] See ‘Ueber die Parteien der Rennbahn, vornehmlich im Byzantinischen Kaiserthum, von F. Wilken, in von Raumer’s Historisches Taschenbuch.’

[65] Gibbon, chap. xl.

[66] Procopius, Persic., vol. i. chap. 24.

[67] ?? ?fat?? t? e????? d?e????t? ???a.

[68] Procopius, Anecdota, chap. vii.

[69] e?? t? t?a??a??a e???s?eta?. Calopodius is meant. This name in Greek means a last; t?a??????, a shoemaker; t?a??a??a, shoemakers’ offices. Not. in Theoph.

[70] ?ta? e?? ??d???? ?a??d??a?, or ??d?????. ??d?? is an ass: the derivative seems only to occur here. Justinian appears to be meant, who was called the ass, from his habit of moving his ears. See the anecdotes, chap. 8. ???e? ??? ?fe??? ???sta, s???? ?? se?????? t?? ?t??

[71] The father of Justinian.

[72] Theophanes, p. 154, 6, ed. Par. 1655. This last taunt seems rather misplaced in the mouth of the greens, who had murdered 3000 of their enemies in the theatre. It is not always easy to trace the connexion and meaning of the dialogue. This arises partly from the nature of the language, which very often is hardly grammatical, partly from its abruptness and frequent allusions to circumstances unexplained elsewhere. It is also to be found with several various readings in the notes to the Anecdotes of Procopius, vol. ii. p. 134, ed. Par. 1663.

[73] t?? ?a?sa?a p??te??sa? t?? ????? ?? d???. Procop., Pers. iii. xi.

[74] Dulaure, ‘EvÉnemens de la RÉvolution FranÇaise,’ vol. ii. p. 192.

[75] We have not seen his book itself, but there are extracts from it in Dulaure, and among them a very curious account of his examination before the tribunal, vol. ii. p. 198.

[76] Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. ii. p. 47. The authorities for this account are Mignet, Hist. de la RÉvolution FranÇaise; Montgaillard, Hist. de France; and Dulaure, as above quoted.

[77] Mitchell’s Aristophanes, vol. i. p. 139.

[78] With respect to the exact locality of Sphacteria, see the memoir at the end of the second volume of Arnold’s Thucydides.

[79] See vol. i. chap. 2.

[80] North’s Plutarch—Nicias. This reference of all the evils which befell Athens to the indecorous behaviour of one speaker is rather characteristic.

[81] Thucycd., iv. 28.

[82] Thucyd. v. 7.

[83] Philological Museum, vol. ii. p. 706.

[84] Mus. Crit. vol. ii. p. 75, seq.

[85] Mus. Crit., vol. ii. p. 207.

[86] See the Frogs.

[87] Comedy is divided by the Grecian critics into three branches; the old, the middle, and the new. Of the two latter we know little, since the works of Aristophanes, the only perfect comedies extant, belong, with one exception, to the first. It would be foreign to our purpose to enter here into a description of them; but it may be generally stated that they were of a milder character; the licence of personality was gradually retrenched, and with it, the political importance of the stage. The lines of distinction cannot be drawn with much precision, but the former of them seems to commence early in the fourth century B.C., the latter in the reign of Alexander, which began B.C. 336. The total loss of the new comedy, and especially of Menander, is perhaps the greatest that classic literature has sustained. It appears from the remaining fragments to have been of a highly polished and moral cast. But a good idea of its general form and tendency may be derived from Plautus and Terence, of whose plays several are little more than translations from it.

[88] Knights, line 231, ed. Bekk., see the Scholia. It was usual for authors to perform a part in their own comedies. Aristophanes had not hitherto complied with this custom.

[89] The following extracts are from Mr. Mitchell’s translation; to whom apology is due for occasional omissions, where the allusions would have required a large body of notes to render them generally intelligible, without being necessary to the general effect of the passage, and a few slight alterations.

[90] The Athenian judges used beans in giving their votes. Each received three obols, about five–pence, for his fee, and in one of the courts the common number of judges was from two to five hundred or more. The poorer classes made a livelihood in this way, and hence there sprung an extraordinary love of litigation, which Aristophanes is continually satirizing. The ‘Wasps’ is expressly directed against it.

[91] Pnyx, the place of general assembly. It was filled with stone seats, to which reference will be made hereafter.

[92] Cleon’s father was a tanner, and the poet is continually twitting him with his dirty trade.

[93] Eucrates.

[94] Lysicles.

[95] A mountain torrent of Attica.

[96] It has been generally said that Cleon lost his popularity and incurred this fine in consequence of the representation of the Knights; but there is no authority for the former supposition, and the latter is disproved by the mention of this fine in the opening of the Acharnians, acted the year before, in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. The prosecution was conducted by the Knights; which probably led to the mistake.

[97] In the original it occupies altogether more than 100 lines in a play of 1400.

[98] Thunder from the right hand was an omen of good fortune. See the original, ver. 639.

[99] A crown or chaplet was the usual reward of such persons as brought good news.

[100] A sacrifice and a public feast were synonymous, for only a small portion of the victims were offered to the gods.

[101] “The sausage–seller in Aristophanes promises to offer a thousand goats to Artemis Agrotera (outbidding in jest the offering of thanks for the battle of Marathon), whenever a hundred trichides, a small kind of fish, were sold for an obolus, which was therefore an impossibility.” Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens.

[102] The seats in the Pnyx.

[103] ??ta ?a????? a?a??? ??a ? t???? t?? ? ?? Sa?a???, v. 783. That the respected member on which the chief stress of the battle of Salamis had fallen, might be exempt in future from all common friction.

[104] Bacis was an ancient Boeotian seer of high reputation, who prophesied the Persian invasion among other things: see Herod, viii. 77. The name and existence of Glanis, like the oracles to be produced, is a ready fiction of the sausage–seller.

[105] We are not answerable for the fidelity of Mr. Mitchell’s translation of this, or of some other lines. The corresponding line in the original is indeed hardly susceptible of translation.

[106] A city of Arcadia. A word of similar sound means “lame.”

[107] The Grecians indulged their luxury in the article of drinking–vessels in an extravagant degree, and every sort of cup had its peculiar appellation. There is no allusion contained in the names introduced here.

[108] Pallas, the tutelary deity of Athens.

[109] Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

Hamlet. Aye, sir, that soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing, and then, sponge, you shall be dry again.—Hamlet, iv. 2.

Mr. Mitchell’s translation is plainly modelled on this passage; and is more like that than the original. Vespasian is said to have promoted the most rapacious collectors to the highest offices, whom he was commonly said to use as sponges, that he might squeeze them out when they had sucked up enough.—Sueton. c. 16.

[110] Where he had served Demosthenes the same trick, see p. 232–3.

[111] Cleon had received a chaplet in full assembly from the people.

[112] The lowest tradesmen only took their stand at the gates of the town: every answer is made to show the utter baseness of Cleon’s rival, and thus to place himself in the most ignominious light.

[113] Parodied from Euripides’ description of the dying Alcestis taking leave of her bridal bed, v. 181.

[114] Jupiter, the protector of Greece.

[115] Thucyd. v. 16.

[116] Evelyn’s Memoirs.

[117] Roger North, Examen, p. 204.

[118] Queen Elizabeth’s birth–day. These processions were in 1679 and 1680.

[119] Life of Edmund Calamy, vol. i. p. 84.

[120] Burnet, Hist. of his own Times, p. 430. Oates had before only deposed to a plot among the Jesuits to murder the king.

[121] North’s Examen, p. 186. Oates, in addition to his personal peculiarities, which are described in a passage presently to be quoted, was remarkable for a drawling way of speech, which is caricatured above, “I, Titus Oates,” &c.

[122] Howell’s State Trials, vol. vii. p. 56.

[123] State Trials, vol. vii. p. 120.

[124] Burnet, p. 468.

[125] So in the original. The sense seems to require “not without.”—Evelyn’s Memoirs.

[126] Evelyn’s Memoirs.

[127] Hist. of his own Times, p. 428.

[128] The readiness of the Athenians to listen to unfounded and malicious accusations has been noticed in the Knights, and is a favourite subject of ridicule and reproach throughout Aristophanes. The following passage of the Wasps is worth notice:—

Be the fault great or small, this cuckoo song
Of tyranny rings ever in our ears;
These fifty years it slept, but now the cry
Is bandied even at Billingsgate, as stale
As mackerel in July. Suppose a turbot
Should suit your palate, straight the sprat–seller
Next stall exclaims, “Why, this is tyranny!
No tastes aristocratical in Athens!” Or if you buy anchovies, and demand,
Gratis, a leek for sauce, some herb–woman,
Squinting, growls out, “So you’re for tyranny,
Dost think the state will furnish you with garnish?”

Ver. 488.

[129] See Aristophanes, every where, more particularly in the Knights. Demus demands from Cleon his ring of office:—

Why, how now, rogue?

This is no ring of mine—it tallies not
With my device, or much my eyes deceive me.

Saus. Allow me, sir,—what might be your impression?
Dem. A roasted thrium,(1) with thick fat enclosed.
Saus. (looking at the ring) I see no thrium.
Dem.—————————What the impression, then?
Saus. A wide–mouthed gull, seated upon a rock,

In act to make a speech.

Mitchell, p. 245. See also ver. 1260. (Ed. Bekk).

(1) In case the reader should have any curiosity about Athenian cookery, the following is the recipe for a thrium. Take a certain quantity of rice, fine flour or grain, boil it till enough done, then pour off the water, and mix it with soft cheese and a few eggs: roll the mixture in fig–leaves, tie it in a cloth, and stew it for some time in gravy. Then remove the cloth, pour over it a plate of fresh boiling honey, and let it stew till it becomes yellow, observing to turn it continually. Serve it up with the honey poured over it. Another recipe gives brains and cheese, mixed up with a rich and highly–esteemed fish–pickle, as the ingredients.

[130] Burnet, p. 424–5.

[131] North, Examen, p. 225.

[132] North, Examen. p. 176.

[133] Ib. p. 204.

[134] L’Estrange, Dialogue between Zekiel and Ephraim.

[135] State Trials, vol. x. p. 1316.

[136] Hist. of his own Times, p. 627. In Narcissus Luttrell’s MS. Brief Narration, &c., it is said, under date August 11, 1688, “Titus Oates stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, according to annual custom.” State Trials, vol. x. p. 1317.

[137] North, Examen, p. 225.

[138] Life of Calamy, p. 120.

[139] Greece, p. 74.

[140] Thucyd. vii. 87.

[141] Thucyd. vi. 1.

[142] Thucyd. vi. 24.

[143] t????a??a???? The heavy expense of equipping ships of war was thrown chiefly upon individuals of wealth. Sometimes, as here, the state provided ships, and the trierarch only the equipment; at others the trierarch was obliged to build the vessels. The subject is too intricate to be treated in a note; the curious reader will find it fully handled in Wolff’s Prolegomena to the Oration against Leptines. See also a short notice in Dr. Arnold’s note, vi. 31.

[144] About nine–pence halfpenny.

[145] ?p??es?a?. Petty officers, as the pilot, boatswain, &c. See Arnold’s notes on the passage.

[146] T?a??ta?. There being three banks of oars one above another, the uppermost were called ThranitÆ, the middlemost ZeugitÆ, and the lowest ThalamitÆ, whereof the thranitÆ managed the longest oar, and therefore in respect of their greater labour might deserve a greater pay.

[147] S?e?a. The images which being set on the fore–part of the galley did give it the name for the most part.

[148] Thucyd. vi. 30. 32.

[149] Grecian citizens on service were always attended by slaves, as we have often had occasion to observe, who served as light infantry. The Athenians, however, also employed regular light–armed mercenaries, archers, and slingers from Crete and elsewhere.

[150] The rock of the citadel. So in Cumberland and Westmoreland there a score of Castle Crags.

[151] Supposing that the enemy had already occupied the valley of the Cacyparis; and hoping to reach the interior by turning up this valley.

[152] Goeller and Arnold read fifty stadia only.

[153] “The Syracusan heavy–armed infantry seems to have been of a very inferior description, and never to have encountered the Athenians with effect, except when supported by their cavalry. So the disciplined troops of Peloponnesus under Gylippus alone, ventured to close with the enemy, while the Syracusans confined themselves to harassing them from a distance with their missiles.”—Arnold.

[154] That is, such as the captors concealed, to make slaves of them for their own private advantage.

[155] A minute account of the transactions of the siege, of the geography of the neighbourhood of Syracuse, and the portion of country traversed by the Athenians, will be found at the end of the third volume of Arnold’s Thucydides.

[156] Sphacteria.

[157] A small measure about half a pint.

[158] Free men, that is.

[159] Thucyd., vi. 1.

[160] “And though it were thus great, yet the Athenians longed very much to send an army against it out of a desire to bring it all unto subjection (which was the true motive), but as having withal this fair pretext of aiding their kinsmen and new confederates.”—vi. 6.

[161] ?pe?es?a?.—See above.

[162] Thucyd., viii. 1.

[163] See vol. i. p. 229.

[164] SÉgur, Gourgaud, Napoleon in Russia.

[165] Sismondi, Hist. Rep. Ital. Poggio Bracciolini, Hist. Florent.

[166] Thucyd. viii. 97.

[167] Xenophon, Hellenica, lib. i. c. 7.

[168] Xenoph. Hellen., lib. i. cap. 6, 7.

[169] Temple, ‘Essay on the Origin and Nature of Government.’

[170] Temple, ‘Observations on the United Provinces,’ ch. ii.

[171] ‘Histoire de la Vie et de la Mort des deux illustres FrÈres, Corneille et Jean de Witt.’ Liv. ii. c. 11.

[172] ‘Histoire de la Vie et de la Mort des deux illustres FrÈres, Corneille et Jean de Witt.’

[173] ‘General Biography.’

[174] Fox, ‘History of James II.,’ p. 29.

[175] Clinton, ‘Fast. Hellen.’ For a notice of this worthy, see the Frogs of Aristophanes, v. 677, ed. Bekker.

[176] ?p?sfa?e?—slew him with his own hand, it should seem; a pleasant office for the commander–in–chief of a civilized nation. Xenoph. Hellen. ii. c. 1.

[177] Life of Lysander.

[178] Xen. Hellen. ii. c. 2.

[179] Memorabilia, book i. chap. 1, p. 10.

[180] Those readers who wish to inquire into it will find a learned and able paper on this subject by Schleiermacher, in the Berlin Transactions, translated in the Philological Museum, vol. ii. No. 6, “On the worth of Socrates as a philosopher.”

[181] Ibid., p. 544.

[182] The earliest extant notice of this curious question is contained in the recently discovered Republic of Cicero, edited by Maii, lib. i. c. 10. As this treatise is not contained in the general editions of the philosopher we shall translate it:—“You have heard, Tubero, that after the death of Socrates, Plato, to acquire knowledge, travelled first to Egypt, then to Sicily and Italy, that he might learn the discoveries of Pythagoras; and that he had much intercourse with Archytas of Tarentum and TimÆus the Locrian, and got possession of the Commentaries of Philolaus; and that, as the name of Pythagoras was then in much credit in those parts, he devoted himself to men of the Pythagorean school and to those studies. Therefore since he loved Socrates singly, and wished to refer everything to him, he blended the Socratic humour and subtlety of language with the obscurity of Pythagoras and that air of gravity given by so many kinds of learning.”

[183] Tusc. QuÆst. v. 4.

[184] Schleiermacher, as above. The rest of this paragraph is taken, with some trivial alterations, from the History of Greece.

[185] For an account of this class of men, see vol. ii. pp. 153–157.

[186] Mr. Cumberland, in the ‘Observer,’ has made a violent attack on the moral character of Socrates. Mr. Mitchell has taken a more moderate and candid tone in the ‘Preliminary Discourse’ to his translation of Aristophanes. We have to acknowledge ourselves indebted to his extensive acquaintance with the Socratic writings, for references to several valuable and characteristic passages.

[187] This is described by Xenophon in his Banquet, in a passage which we must regard as his genuine recollection of a similar pleasantry on the part of Socrates. Had it been found in Plato, this might have been doubtful; but it is not Xenophon’s habit to introduce his master in this ludicrous manner. At a drinking party in the house of Callias, Socrates is introduced contesting the point of beauty with Critobulus. To prove his own superiority, he asks, “whether beauty resides in man only, or in other things?”

Critobulus. I think, by Jupiter, that it exists in a horse also, and an ox, and many inanimate things: as, for instance, I know of a handsome shield, or sword, or spear.

Socrates. And how is it possible that these things, being all unlike each other, should all be handsome?

Critob. If things are well fitted for the purposes for which we have them, or are well constituted by nature for useful ends, even these things are handsome.(a)

Socr. Do you know, then, for what you want eyes?

Critob. Plainly, to see.

Socr. On this ground, then, my eyes would be handsomer than yours.

Critob. How so?

Socr. Because yours see straight forward only; but mine, which project, can see to the side also.

Critob. You say, then, that a crab is the best eyed of animals?

Socr. By all means: since it has eyes the best constituted for that which is the purpose of eyes.

Critob. Granted. But of our noses, which is the handsomest, mine or yours?

Socr. I indeed think mine the handsomest, if the gods, in truth, made noses for us to smell with: for your nostrils point downwards to the ground, while mine are spread open, so as to collect smells from all quarters.

Critob. But how can a pug nose be handsomer than a straight one?

Socr. Because it constitutes no barrier, but lets the eyes look straight where they choose; but a high nose, as if out of insolence, sets a wall between the eyes.

Critob. For the mouth, I give up: for if mouths were made to bite with, you can take a much bigger mouthful than I.

Socr. And do you consider it no proof that I am handsomer than you that the Naiads, who are goddesses, have for children Sileni, who are more like me than you?