struggle was professedly liberty on the one side, while on the other it was in fact the preservation of internal tranquillity,* and the extension of foreign dominion. Mark how far these respective objects were attained! To Persia, the disastrous consequences of her ambitious and mistaken policy did not terminate with the immediate defeat she sustained. The invasions of Darius and his successor were a principal cause of that introduction of Persian interests in the affairs of Greece, which eventually roused the united Greek nations against the empire, and brought about its overthrow by the arms of Alexander. In tracing the progress of the triumphant party, it is curious to observe in how direct a line the victories of Marathon and Salamis led to the subversion of national independence. Indeed the narrative of Grecian history from this period affords a striking exemplification of the law by which a long train of military successes invariably engender pride, ambition, and consequent reverse of fortune. exhibits a series of wars, each kindled at the embers of the preceding, temporary pacifications affording materials for fresh disputes, until all the contending states are finally overwhelmed in one common ruin. It At Athens, the disproportionate ascendency which the populace had acquired from the circumstances of the struggle with Persia; the consequent necessity of gratifying their extravagance by the imposition of heavy burdens on subordinate allies; the power and reputation which had accrued to her navy since the battle of Salamis; the spirit of ambitious enterprise fostered by the memory of recent achievements; t-all united in producing those acts of injustice and oppressive domination, which alarmed the jealousy of neighbouring states, and gave rise to the Peloponnesian war. • The desire for furnishing employment for restless spirits seems to have been a principal motive for Darius's Scythian expedition, and probably had its weight in inducing him to undertake the war with Greece. + The extravagant ambition of Athens is ascribed by her comic poet to the vanity occasioned by her past exploits. "A thousand cities pay tribute to Athens were each ordered to furnish subsistence for only twenty Athenians, twenty thousand of us might live in ease and luxury, in a manner worthy of the lignity of the republic, and the trophies of Marathon."-Aristophanes. A modern French writer correctly describes the conduct of Athens at this period, in the following words:-"Towns taken and pillaged without remorse, the To recite all the instances of barbarity and treachery by which this war was distinguished would be to transcribe the greater part of Grecian history. Among the most prominent are the execution of the conquered Plateans, by the Lacedæmonian commissioners; the decree of the Athenians against Mitylene; the massacre of the Corcyreans under the sanction of Eurymedon the Atheniar admiral; and the murder of the Scionæans. It was customary with the Lacedæmonians wherever they fell in with the merchant ships of the Athenians, or even of their allies among neutral republics, to put the crews indiscriminately to death.* For a short time the power of Athens appeared to be only augmented by opposition; but the animosity of her enemies increasing in proportion to the arrogance she displayed, a transient interruption of the contest was succeeded by redoubled hostilities; her ambitious interference in Sicily terminated in disgrace and misery, and was followed by the revolt of her maritime dependencies. Successive struggles ensued, until Athens the proud, the victorious lay humbled in the dust. Sparta rose upon the fallen fortunes of her rival; similar prosperity was attended by similar effects; the degrading tyranny exercised by Lacedæmon over her allies excited universal indignation; a general confederacy was formed against her, and she saved herself from impending destruction only by the peace of Antalcidas;· a measure that involved all Greece, and conceded to the Persian monarch that sovereignty over the Greek colonies in Asia, which it had been a primary object of the first Persian war to wrest from him.t With returning power the disposition to tyrannize displayed itself as usual, and the despotism of Sparta at Thebes gave rise to a revolution, and general war. The latter terminated in the battle of Mantinea, and left behind it, according to contemporary historians, nothing but increased trouble, indecision, and confusion throughout Greece.‡ The depressed condition to which her rivals had people forced to pay contrioutions, the rights of neutral powers violated, and other republics obliged by the Athenians to combine with them against states which had given them no offence, to produce a war; insolence and injustice carried to the highest pitch; the Athenians treating the ambassadors of other ations with marked contempt, and openly asserting that they knew no other right han force."--Chateaubriand. Xenophon. * Mitford. + Rollin. reduced themselves by mutual contention, left Athens once more in the ascendant, and aroused that ambitious spirit which repeated disgraces had been insufficient to quell. The Social war ensued; it lasted two years, and ended by a treaty wherein every object for which the war had been undertaken on the part of Athens was abandoned, and that haughty republic received the seal of her degradation in the enforced relinquishment of her long-cherished claim of supremacy over her maritime allies.* The event of the battle of Mantinea, the glory of which accrued principally to Thebes, was to no other nation of Greece perhaps so effectually disastrous.† It awakened revenge and avarice, which, mingling with the ever-active desire of aggrandizement, led to measures that in a short time plunged all the Grecian republics into the Sacred war. Thebes was the principal sufferer; but the circumstances of the contest opened a way for the interference of Philip of Macedon in the affairs of Greece. The unprincipled ambition of the Athenians afforded a fair pretext for the farther prosecution of his designs; weakness and distraction of interests, arising from long continued dissensions, prepared the ground for the conqueror; the battle of Charonea was fought, and Greece deprived of her liberty for ever. She sunk under the dominion of Alexander became the spoil of his generals; and the scarceresisting prey of imperial Rome. The Roman yoke was exchanged only for that of different tribes of barbarians, until, about the middle of the fifteenth century, she found a melancholy repose in the stability of the Ottoman empire. Such were the ultimate consequences of the celebrated triumphs of Greece ! Such were * The Oration on Peace delivered by Isocrates upon this occasion, contains passages worthy of notice, as it shows that there were men, even in those days, who were capable of discerning the real tendency of war, and of appreciating the true means of promoting the prosperity of states. "Peace should be made, not only with the Chians, but with all mankind. Opportunity is abundantly open for increasing the power and wealth of the republic in better ways" than by war. “Colonies might in many parts be established, as many have been, without injury to any, and this would better become those ambitious of being esteemed the first people of Greece than what is now the favourite purpose, to be eminent by making continual war with hired troops. Far from such extravagance, it should be our care, not only to make peace but to maintain it. But this will never be, till we are persuaded that quiet is more profitable than disturbance, justice than injus tice, the care of our own than grasping at what belongs to others." + Continuation of Goldsmith's Roman History. the fruits of the spirit fostered by martial enterprise! Yet poetry, oratory, and philosophy,—all the arts which expand the intellect and refine the taste of civilized men, were, it is urged, carried to their highest pitch of excellence during the period of warlike turbulence. They were but not in consequence of that turbulence; or why did not Thebes and Lacedæmon partake the glory? Why have not other nations, equally brave and equally warlike, risen to the same eminence with polished Athens ? Why-excepting that causes remote from military excitement, natural susceptibility, a situation advantageous for commerce, &c. contributed to place her there, and gave birth to poets and historians, whose writings have spread the renown of victories which other nations might have achieved, but have wanted the pen to proclaim. The wars undertaken professedly for the sake of liberty ended in the subversion of national independence while the labours of imagination and intellect have extended their benefits to the 66 barbarous" tribes of a distant age; - benefits alloyed, however, by the results of that fatal connexion of ideas which has led men to crown, with undistinguishing admiration, the trophies of Grecian literature and the achievements of military violence. Having reviewed the wars of republican Greece, the victories of Alexander next claim our attention. The object of this far-famed conqueror, whenever it went beyond the mere gratification of personal vanity, appears to have been the security and extension of his hereditary dominions. The arms of the Macedonians diffused, indeed, over Asia and Egypt the language and learning of Greece;* but the career of the victor was cut short by an untimely death, his empire was broken up, his posterity destroyed; while his native kingdom, Macedon, invaded on every side, and long exposed as a prey to the strongest, finally became the possession of another family. Like the equally celebrated hero of a subsequent age, Julius Cæsar, the advantages he conferred by his conquests were undesigned and contingent; their evils recoiled upon himself and his country. The leading events of the history of Rome, having already been briefly reviewed in a former essay,† will not here be noticed in * Bossuet. + See "An Examination of the Principles which are considered to support the Practice of War," p. 11 B detail. A few remarks only will be hazarded on the ultimate consequences of her unexampled military success. From the destruction of Carthage the real prosperity of Rome began to decline. Her power had risen to such an height that re-action became inevitable: the change which had taken place was too rapid to be permanent. The fierce and bloody struggles of her triumphant generals, the moral corruption and stagnation of industry which necessarily accompany the sudden acquisition of unearned wealth, were the inevitable precursors of that worst of tyrannies, a military despotism. Her foreign possessions continued to increase, but the spring of domestic energy was gone. Exhausted by her conquests, and poisoned by the fruits of her own rapacity," she yielded an ignominious submission to the very troops whom she had been compelled to employ for the preservation of her unwieldy dominions, and ter. minated her political existence in a miserable subjection to the numerous tribes of barbarians, whom her wealth and indolence had attracted to the division of spoil. With respect to the influence of the Roman government upon the interests of conquered nations, it has been observed, that the unlimited extent of her sway was far from producing a state of happiness, or being favourable to the improvement of mankind at large. Like that of all other great empires, the dominion of the Romans degraded and debased the human species. The armies of the republic crushed in Italy and Greece more germs of civilization than they ever planted on the face of the earth; and the vast despotism of the Cæsars, gradually effacing all national peculiarities, and assimilating remotest provinces to each other, augmented the evil.§ Society fell into a state of unparalleled stupefaction." Thus it existed for nearly a thousand years, without making one great discovery in science, or producing one book which is read by any but curious inquirers."|| On the ruins of the empire of Rome was founded, after the lapse of three or four centuries, the wide-spreading monarchy of Charlemagne. The ambition of this prince, availing itself of those pretexts for which ambition is seldom at a loss, and unrestrained by any • Campbell-Lectures to the Students at Glasgow. + Robertson-Introduction to Charles V. § Edinburgh Review. Campbell's Lectures Il Ibid. |