Carthagi. nian supre

the paternal language, as has been the case in more recent
times with the descendants of the Spaniards in America. The
wealth of some of these Greek colonial towns is said to have
been incredible. Croton was more than twelve miles in circum-
ference; and Sybaris, another of the Italiot cities, was so luxu
rious and dissipated as even to give rise to a proverb. The pro-
sperity of these places was due to two causes: they were not
only the centres of great agricultural districts, but carried on
an active commerce in all directions, the dense population of the
mother country offering them a steady and profitable market;
they also maintained an active traffic with all the Mediterra-
nean cities; thus, if they furnished Athens with corn, they also
furnished Carthage with oil. In the Greek cities connected with
this colonial system, especially in Athens, the business of ship-
building and navigation was so extensively prosecuted as to
give a special character to public life. In other parts of Greece,
as in Sparta, it was altogether different. In that state the laws
of Lycurgus had abolished private property; all things were
held in common; it was savage life reduced to a system, and
therefore there was no object in commerce. But in Athens,
so far from being dishonourable was commerce regarded, that
some of the most illustrious men, whose names have descended
to us as philosophers, were occupied with mercantile pursuits.
Aristotle kept a druggist's shop in Athens, and Plato sold oil
in Egypt.

It was the intention of Athens, had she succeeded in the conmacy in the quest of Sicily, to make an attempt upon Carthage, foreseeing Mediterra- therein the dominion of the Mediterranean, as was actually

nean.

realized subsequently by Rome. The destruction of that city
constituted the point of ascendency in the history of the Great
Republic. Carthage stood upon a peninsula forty-five miles
round, with a neck only three miles across. Her territory has
been estimated as having a sea-line of not less than 1400 miles,
and containing three hundred towns; she had also possessions
in Spain, in Sicily, and other Mediterranean islands, acquired
not by conquest but by colonization. In the silver-mines of
Spain she employed not fewer than forty thousand men.
these respects she was guided by the maxims of her Phoenician

In

ancestry, for the Tyrians had colonized for depôts, and had forty stations of that kind in the Mediterranean. Indeed, Carthage herself originated in that way, owing her developement to the position she held at the junction of the east and west basins. The Carthaginian merchants did not carry for hire, but dealt in their commodities. This implied an extensive system of depôts and bonding. They had anticipated many of the devices of modern commerce. They effected insurances, made loans on bottomry, and it has been supposed that their leathern money may have been of the nature of our bank

notes.

the Persians

in the Me

In the preceding Chapter we have spoken of the attempts of Attempts of the Asiatics on Egypt and the south shore of the Mediterra- at dominion nean; we have now to turn to their operations on the north diterrashore, the consequences of which are of the utmost interest in nean. the history of philosophy. It appears that the cities of Asia Minor, after their contest with the Lydian kings, had fallen an easy prey to the Persian power. It remained, therefore, only for that power to pass to the European continent. A pretext is easily found where the policy is so clear. So far as the internal condition of Greece was concerned, nothing could be more tempting to an invader. There seemed to be no bond of union between the different towns, and indeed the more prominent ones might be regarded as in a state of chronic revolution. In Athens, since B.C. 622, the laws of Draco had been supplanted by those of Solon; and again and again the government had been seized by violence or gained through intrigue by one adventurer after another. Under these circumstances the Per- Contest_between them sian king passed an army into Europe. The military events and the of both this and the succeeding invasion under Xerxes have been more than sufficiently illustrated by the brilliant imagination of the lively Greeks. It was needless, however, to devise such fictions as the million of men who crossed into Europe, or the two hundred thousand who lay dead upon the field after the battle of Platæa. If there were not such stubborn facts The fifty years' war, as the capture and burning of Athens, the circumstance that and eventhese wars lasted for fifty years would be sufficient to inform us that all the advantages were not on one side. Wars do not Athens.

Greeks.

tual supremacy of

last so long without bringing upon both parties disasters as well as conferring glories; and had these been as exterminating and overwhelming as classical authors have supposed, our surprise may well be excited that the Persian annals have preserved so little memory thereof. Greece did not perceive that if posterity must take her accounts as true, they must give the palm of glory to Persia, who could, with unfaltering perseverance, persist in attacks illustrated by such unparalleled catastrophes. She did not perceive that the annals of a nation may be more splendid from their exhibiting a courage which could bear up for half a century against continual disasters, and extract victory at last from defeat.

In pursuance of their policy, the Persians extended their dominion to Cyrene and Barca on the south, as well as to Thrace and Macedonia on the north. The Persian wars gave rise to that wonderful developement in Greek art which has so worthily excited the admiration of subsequent ages. The assertion is quite true that after those wars the Greeks could form in sculpture living men. On the part of the Persians, these military undertakings were not of the base kind so common in antiquity; they were the carrying out of a policy conceived with great ability, their object being to obtain countries for tribute and not for devastation. The great critic Niebuhr, by whose opinions I am guided in the views I express of these events, admits that the Greek accounts, when examined, present little that was possible. The Persian empire does not seem to have suffered at all; and Plato, whose opinion must be considered as of very great authority, says that on the whole, the Persian wars reflect extremely little honour on the Greeks. It was asserted that only thirty-one towns, and most of them small ones, were faithful to Greece. Treason to her seems for years in succession to have infected all her ablest men. It was not Pausanias alone who wanted to be king under the supremacy of Persia. Such a satrap would have borne about the same relation to the great king as the modern pasha does to the Grand Seignior. However, we must do justice to those able men. A king was what Greece in reality required; had she secured one at this time strong enough to hold her

conflicting interests in check, she would have become the mistress of the world. Her leading men saw this.

quence is

tellectual

gress in art.

The elevating effect of the Persian wars was chiefly felt in The conseAthens. It was there that the grand developement of pure her vast inart, literature, and science took place. As to Sparta, she re- progress. mained barbarous as she had ever been; the Spartans continuing robbers and impostors, in their national life exhibiting not a single feature that can be commended. Mechanical art Her proreached its perfection at Corinth; real art at Athens, finding a multitude not only of true, but also of new expressions. Before Pericles the only style of architecture was the Doric; his became at once the age of perfect beauty. It also became the age of freedom in thinking, and departure from the national faith. In this respect the history of Pericles and of Aspasia is very significant. His, also, was the great age of oratory, but of oratory leading to delusion, the democratical forms of Athens being altogether deceptive, power ever remaining in the hands of a few leading men, who did everything. The true popular sentiment, as was almost always the case under those ancient republican institutions, could find for itself no means of expression. The great men were only too prone to regard their fellow-citizens as a rabble, mere things to be played off against one another, and to consider that the objects of life are dominion and lust; that love, self-sacrifice, and devotion are fictions; that oaths are only good for deception.

Though the standard of statesmanship, at the period of the Persian wars, was very low, there can be no doubt that among the Greek leaders were those who clearly understood the causes of the Asiatic attack, and hence, with an instinct of self-preservation, defensive alliances were continually maintained with Egypt. When their valour and endurance had given to the The treaty Greeks a glorious issue to the war, the articles contained in the final treaty manifest clearly the motives and understandings of both parties. No Persian vessel was to appear between the Cyanean Rocks and Chelidonian Islands; no Persian army to approach within three days' journey of the Mediterranean Sea, B.C. 449.

To Athens herself the war had given political supremacy.

with Persia

She be

comes the

centre of policy and

philosophy.

State of

philosophy

We need only look at her condition fifty years after the battle
of Platea. She was the mistress of more than a thousand miles
of the coast of Asia Minor; she held as dependencies more
than forty islands; she controlled the straits between Europe
and Asia; her fleets ranged the Mediterranean and the Black
Seas uncontrolled; she had monopolized the trade of all the
adjoining countries; her magazines were full of the most valu-
able objects of commerce.
From the ashes of the Persian fire

she had risen up so supremely beautiful that her temples, her
statues, her works of art, in their exquisite perfection, have
since had no parallel in the world. Her intellectual supremacy
equalled her political. To her, as to a focal point, the rays of
light from every direction converged. The philosophers of
Italy and Asia Minor directed their steps to her as to the ac-
knowledged centre of mental activity. As to Egypt, an utter
ruin had befallen her since she was desolated by the Persian
Yet we must not therefore infer that though, as con-
querors, the Persians had trodden out the most aged civiliza-
tion on the globe, as sovereigns they were haters of knowledge,
or merciless as kings. We must not forget that the Greeks of
Asia Minor were satisfied with their rule, or, at all events, pre-
ferred rather to remain their subjects than to contract any per-
manent political connections with the conquering Greeks of
Europe.

arms.

In this condition of political glory, Athens became not only the birthplace of new and beautiful productions of art, founded on a more just appreciation of the true than had yet been attained to in any previous age of the world, and which, it may be added, have never been surpassed, if indeed they had been equalled since, but she also became the receptacle for every philosophical opinion, new and old. Ionian, Italian, Egyptian, Persian, all were brought to her, and contrasted and compared together. Indeed, the philosophical celebrity of Greece is altogether due to Athens. The rest of the country participated but little in the cultivation of learning. It is a popular error that Greece, in the aggregate, was a learned country.

We have already seen how the researches of individual inat this mo- quirers, passing from point to point, had conducted them, in

ment.