ANECDOTE OF QUEEN NITOCRIS.

CUSTOMS OF THE BABYLONIANS.

Thucydides, on whom the mantle of Herodotus descended, was born in a village of Attica about 471 B.C. We may believe that he received a polite education, and became proficient in military science at an early age. It was in the prime of manhood, if the oft-repeated story is to be credited, that the history of Herodotus, read before an assembled throng, brought tears to his eyes and fired him with a desire to emulate its distinguished author. Greece was then on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, in which the rival states Athens and Sparta figured as chief actors. Thucydides anticipated the impending storm, and discerned his opportunity; this war should be his subject, and even before it began he was busy collecting preliminary information.

Nor did he serve his country merely in the capacity of historian. He engaged actively in the contest, and received as his reward the command of an Athenian squadron. But he committed an unpardonable sin by failing to save a town, which surrendered to the Spartans before he could arrive with assistance. Instigated by Cleon, his countrymen deprived him of his position and cast him forth an exile.

Thucydides retired to Thrace, where he had a valuable interest in certain gold-mines, and there devoted himself to the preparation of his history, narrowly watching the progress of events and gathering intelligence with the utmost care. His exile of twenty years was indeed “the Muses’ blessing;” it enabled him to pursue his studies without interruption. Long after his death, the plane-tree in whose shadow he was accustomed to compose, was pointed out to travellers.

Thucydides traced the Peloponnesian War to the middle of its twenty-first year (411 B.C.), leaving it to be finished by another. Why he did not complete it himself, being in possession of the necessary materials, does not appear. After the Athenian power was broken by Sparta (404 B.C.), the decree of banishment was revoked; but whether Thucydides ever returned to Athens is a matter of doubt. According to one account, he went back to fall the victim of a conspiracy; from another we are led to infer that he died a natural death in Thrace about 391 B.C.

The “History of the Peloponnesian War” is remarkable for its accuracy and impartiality. Truth was the great object of its author, who, dispassionate and unprejudiced, ignores the ingratitude of his country, betrays no resentment even when he speaks of Cleon, and does full justice to his Spartan foes. He intended his work to be an authority, “a possession for everlasting.” In it we find the first attempts to treat the philosophy of history, to trace events to their ultimate causes, and deduce from the past lessons for the future. His style is nervous, concise, stately, and even rises to the sublime; but lacks harmony, and is sometimes obscure. About one fourth of his work is composed of speeches, which indeed make an agreeable variety, but are often involved, and in parts all but unintelligible. Antithesis is a frequent figure.

Despite its faults, the history of Thucydides has always been a favorite. Charles V. was never without a copy when on a campaign, and the philosopher Hobbes declared that he valued its eight books above all the rest of Greek historical literature. The extract selected is a description of the plague which broke out at Athens in the year 430, while the Lacedæmonians were ravaging Attica, and which the historian contracted himself, but fortunately survived.

THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS.

Xenophon, who in his “Hellenica” continued the story of the Peloponnesian War left unfinished by Thucydides, and carried the history of Greece as far as the battle of Mantine’a, 362 B.C., was born at Athens shortly after the middle of the fifth century. Of his early life we know nothing, save that he was the friend and pupil of Socrates; who, it is related, prepossessed with his intelligent countenance, once stopped him in a narrow way and demanded where men were made good and honest. Confused by the unexpected inquiry from so great a teacher, the boy hesitated; whereupon, the philosopher exclaimed, “Follow me and learn.” Xenophon obeyed, and became a faithful student of his master’s moral and philosophical doctrines. Together they braved the perils of the Peloponnesian War; and in the battle of De’lium (424 B.C.), where the flower of Athens’ chivalry fell, Xenophon’s life is said to have been saved by Socrates.

At the solicitation of his friend, Proxenus the Bœotian, Xenophon joined as a volunteer the famous Expedition of the Ten Thousand, made in the interest of Cyrus the Younger against his elder brother Artaxerxes, who occupied the Persian throne. Feeling the necessity of securing soldiers superior in bravery and discipline to the barbarian hordes through which he must cut his way to the capital, Cyrus supported the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, in order to secure their aid in dethroning Artaxerxes. Accordingly, at his summons, about 10,000 Spartans and other Greeks, deceived at first as to the real object of the campaign, flocked to his standard, and in the spring of 401 B.C., with 100,000 Eastern troops, entered the confines of the Persian Empire.

On the plain of Cunaxa, ninety miles from Babylon, the decisive battle took place between the brothers, Artaxerxes having at his back an army of nearly a million men. Superior numbers, however, availed little against the superior discipline of the Greeks, who quickly routed the wing opposed to them; but Cyrus, already hailed as king, imprudently spurred into the disordered ranks of the foe, and was struck down while engaged in a furious hand-to-hand conflict with Artaxerxes.

The fall of Cyrus was the signal for his Asiatic troops to disperse, and the victors found themselves deserted in the heart of the enemy’s country, more than 1,200 miles from home. Their generals were soon after seized at a conference and put to death. In this crisis, by the advice of Xenophon, inspired as he tells us by a dream, new leaders were chosen, he himself in the place of his friend Proxenus, one of the murdered chiefs. A retreat was determined upon; and during fifteen months of indescribable hardships, he was the patient guide, the sympathetic but vigilant and prudent commander. At last, from a mountain height, the glittering Euxine broke upon the view of the van, a glad shout rent the air—“the Sea! the Sea!”—proclaiming that their sufferings were over, while officers and soldiers wept in each other’s arms. Here, in the neighborhood of Greek settlements, they were safe, and the march home was easy. The 8,600 survivors owed their lives to Xenophon.

This “Retreat” of the Greeks is the subject of Xenophon’s graphic and interesting history in seven books, the “Anabasis” (march up, though most of the work is occupied with what happened on the march down). The chaste, simple style of the author, who throughout modestly speaks of himself in the third person, recommends his pages to readers of every class. He writes to the point; there is no straining for effect. We extract the passage relating to

XENOPHON’S DREAM.

For his sympathy with Sparta, and possibly for sharing the opinions of his beloved teacher Socrates, Xenophon was banished from Athens; but he was recompensed by the Lacedæmonians with a house and piece of land in E’lis. Here, amid lovely meadows and woodlands, he built a temple to the goddess Diana in fulfilment of a vow he had made when encircled by dangers in Asia. Here, free from the cares of public life, he passed many years, happy in the society of his wife, children, and friends, dividing his time among his farm, his hunting-parks, and his study. He died at the age of ninety.—Of his two sons, one fell on the field of Mantinea, after dealing the great Epaminondas his death-blow.

Besides the “Anabasis” and “Hellenica,” Xenophon wrote the “Cy’ropædi’a”(education of Cyrus—the elder Cyrus, king of Persia), a semi-didactic, semi-historical fiction, illustrating a model system of education and setting forth his ideal of government—a perfect monarchy. He is also the author of several works written in defence of Socrates or as expositions of his philosophy, of which the “Memorabilia” (memoirs) is particularly interesting, teeming as it does with sayings and anecdotes of the sage.

In addition to his merits as an historian, Xenophon may justly claim the distinction of having been the first essayist: we have from his pen essays on the Policy of Lacedæmon, on the Chase, Horsemanship, and Cavalry Tactics, not to mention several political treatises ascribed to him. A creditable representative of elegant Attic prose, Xenophon has been called the Attic Muse.

Ctesias, a Greek physician attached to the Persian court, who dressed the wounds of Artaxerxes after the battle of Cunaxa, compiled a history of Persia in twenty-three books, a description of India, and a variety of other works. Of his writings, which were in the Ionic dialect, little has survived.

Theopompus (probably 378-304 B.C.) is also worthy of mention as an historian. He wrote a History of Greece from 411 to 394 B.C., and “Philippica,” in fifty-eight books, in which he sketched the character of Philip of Macedon. Of the latter work numerous fragments remain. Ancient critics give him credit for general accuracy, though he took rather too rose-colored views of his hero Philip as the promoter of Grecian civilization.

PHILOSOPHY.

The earliest philosophical investigations were made by Ionians, and Thales of Miletus is recognized as the founder of Greek philosophy. To him and to Pythagoras the various systems may all be traced.

The Ionic School of Thales, devoted to physical science, rapidly developed, theory after theory being brought forward to explain the universe and the nature of Deity. One philosopher made the Supreme Being an all-pervading, divine air; another, Heracli’tus “the Obscure,” represented God as a subtile flame, and reduced the universe to an eternal fire.

A notable step in advance was taken by Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.), who succeeded to the leadership of this school. The first to make the study of philosophy fashionable at Athens, he became the instructor of some of her great men, Socrates among the number. He represented God as a divine mind, acting on the material world with intelligence and design. Well did Aristotle say that Anaxagoras was like a sober man among stammering drunkards, when compared with earlier philosophers. As an astronomer, he anticipated some of the discoveries of more recent times; he correctly explained eclipses, taught that the sun was a molten ball, that from it the moon borrowed her light, that the lunar surface was diversified with mountains and valleys, and that the earth itself had been the scene of terrible convulsions.

The Italic School had meanwhile been founded by Pythag’oras, of Samos, born about 540 B.C. He settled in Croto’na, a Greek town of southern Italy, and there imparted to his disciples the philosophical principles which he had gathered in other lands, particularly Egypt.

Pythagoras modestly styled himself a lover of wisdom (philosopher), not a wise man (sophist). Among his doctrines were the mysterious theory that number is the first principle of all things, the transmigration of souls, and a system of future rewards and punishments. He forestalled Copernicus in his discovery of the true theory of the solar system—that the sun, and not the earth, as was then believed, is its centre; he taught that the moon was inhabited and described the heavenly bodies as producing harmonious tones in their passage through ether, from which his followers were accustomed to say that to him the gods had revealed “the music of the spheres.”

With such perfect confidence did his disciples regard their master, who usually gave his instructions from behind a thick curtain, that when any one called their doctrines in question they deemed it sufficient to reply, “He said so” (ipse dixit). Indeed, they invested him with supernatural powers, nor, according to his early biographers, did he deny the soft impeachment. On one occasion, we are told, to convince his pupils that he was a god, he showed them his thigh, which was of gold, and declared that he had assumed the form of humanity only the more readily to impart his lessons to mankind.

Pythagoras was the inventor of the monochord, a one-stringed instrument designed to measure musical intervals,—and also of the more useful, if humbler, Multiplication Table. He is the first who practised mesmerism; at least so we may account for his subduing a fierce Daunian bear, and taming beasts and birds by gently passing his hands over their bodies.

There are no genuine remnants of this author. The celebrated “Golden Verses,” long attributed to him, there is reason for supposing to have been inspired by his teachings, but written by one of his pupils:—

FROM THE GOLDEN VERSES.

As the Ionics made physics everything, so the Pythagoreans regarded mathematical science as the summum bonum. In their master’s eyes the world was “a living arithmetic,” and virtue a proportion of all the faculties of the soul. A mystical relation between mathematical and moral truths was a principle of his philosophy.

Prominent among the followers of Pythagoras was Empedocles, of Agrigentum in Sicily (450 B.C.), who combined the previous theories of nature in his own, viz., that four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—enter into the constitution of the universe, and that these are constantly animated by the two opposing forces of Love and Strife. A peculiar doctrine of his was that like is perceived only by like; thus our knowledge of other bodies is due to minute emanations from their substance which enter the pores and impress corresponding elements in our own frames.

Empedocles is said to have arrogated to himself the importance of a god, going about in a purple robe confined with a belt of gold, performing wonderful cures. According to an old legend, he sought to create the belief that he had been translated to heaven, by secretly throwing himself into the crater of Mt. Etna; but the volcano, in a subsequent eruption, cast forth one of his brazen sandals and so exposed the fraud. He probably lost his life by accident while examining the crater.

From the Italic School sprung the sects known as Eleatic, Epicurean, and Skeptic. The Eleatic School was founded by Xenoph’anes (600-500 B.C.), a contemporary of Pythagoras, and derived its name from the town of E’lea in southern Italy.

Xenophanes asserted the unity of the Deity. “There is one god,” he said, “among gods and men the greatest: unlike to mortals in outward shape, unlike in mind and thoughts.” This was truly a sublime stand to take in an age of polytheism; he who feared not to face a superstitious people with such a doctrine, and ridicule even their divine Homer for his degrading pictures of the deities, deserves to be ranked among the greatest philosophers of Greece.

FRAGMENTS FROM XENOPHANES.

The noble conception of Deity entertained by Xenophanes was soon perverted. We find his pupil Parmen’ides “the Great” in the next century doing away with the personality of God, and confounding the divine nature with pure being, which he made equivalent to thought.

Democ’ritus, of Abde’ra in Thrace (460-357 B.C.), known as the laughing philosopher from his constantly deriding the weaknesses of men, put forth the atomic theory,—that the universe is made up of countless minute, intangible atoms, and that in the motion of such atoms, round and fiery, consisted the movements of the mind and soul. God had no place in this philosophy; matter, time, space, and motion, were eternal. Bodies were formed by the fortuitous concurrence of atoms; and by the affinities and motions of atoms in the vacuum that made up the universe, all natural phenomena were produced.

Such was the wisdom of one who laughed at the follies of his fellows, and is stated to have put out his own eyes that nothing might distract the current of his thoughts.

School of Epicurus.—The materialism of Democritus was at a later day elaborated by Epicurus (born on Samos about 340 B.C.) into a system of philosophy which gained so many converts that we are told whole cities could not contain the friends and followers of its author. According to the Epicurean philosophy, chance governed the world of atoms; there was no life beyond the grave. The gods were immortal, but were mere figure-heads, enjoying an emotionless inactivity, indifferent alike to the vices and fortunes of men: most likely Epicurus did not believe in any gods at all, but allowed their existence, as nonentities, that he might not shock the prejudices of the Athenians. Pleasure he made the chief end of life; but with him pleasure was not sensual indulgence; it lay in freedom from pain, the sober exercise of reason, and the nobler enjoyments of man’s higher nature. Such a doctrine, it is plain, was but too easy of perversion. The pure, high-toned “pleasure” of the moral Epicurus degenerated with the voluptuaries and profligates that adopted his tenets into the vilest excesses, and the very name epicure is applied to one unduly addicted to the gratifying of the appetite.

The Skeptical Philosophy.—Pyrrho, who flourished about 300 B.C., was the father of the Skeptics. They held that there was no standard of truth appreciable by the human mind; nothing can therefore be asserted as true. Pyrrho doubted everything; his disciples used to follow him, lest, in practically applying his theory, he should be run over in the streets or walk off a precipice.

The Socratic School.—When Socrates (470-399 B.C.) came upon the stage in the golden period of Athens, it was to denounce the atheistical philosophy of his predecessors, and take the field against the Sophists, who made endless disputation, fallacious but specious, the head and front of their system. “These word-snapping quibblers,” says Felton, “were prodigious favorites with the Athenians,—men who proved that right was wrong, and wrong right, and that there was neither wrong nor right; that knowing one thing is knowing everything, and that there is no such thing as knowing anything at all; that as the beautiful exists by the presence of beauty, so a man becomes an ass by the presence of an ass; and so on, ringing myriads of changes, like the fools in Shakespeare, upon these quirks of jugglery.”

Socrates had an effective way of dealing with these gentry. By cunningly contrived questions, which at first seemed to have no bearing on the point at issue, he led them on from admission to admission, until he involved them in absurdities and convicted them out of their own mouths.

For one like Socrates, the mythology of Greece was too gross, the speculations of the philosophy then current were too unreal and hollow. He aspired to something better. At length the unity of God, the soul’s immortality, and the moral responsibility of man, dawned upon his mind—sublime truths which he might well have drawn from revelation itself. The practice of virtue he inculcated as indispensable to happiness and true religion. A demon, or secret influence, he said, constantly attended him, and was his director in the work of social reform no less than in the every-day affairs of life. Whether he deceived himself in this belief or strove to deceive others into it that he might gain credence for his doctrines, certain it is that his teachings exercised a most wholesome influence. All subsequent Greek philosophy is stamped with their impress. (See Blackie’s “Horæ Hellenicæ.”)

In his domestic relations, Socrates was not happy. Believing it incumbent on him to devote every moment to philosophical inquiry or exhortations of the people to practical morality, he was wont to neglect his legitimate business of stone-cutting, and leave his family to provide for its own support. This was too much for his good wife Xantippe. Something of a shrew even under the best of circumstances, we may imagine that she made his household rather hot, particularly when he brought guests home to dinner and there was nothing in the larder. On one occasion she went so far as to give emphasis to her reproaches with a shower of dish-water. The dripping philosopher, not in the least disturbed, calmly remarked, “I thought after so much thunder, we should have some rain.”

Socrates declined the invitation of a Macedonian prince to live in luxury at his court, with the characteristic reply, “At Athens meal is two-pence the measure, and water may be had for nothing.” He clung to Athens to the last, and so doing won a martyr’s crown. Accused of impiety in corrupting the religious belief of the young committed to his charge, he was condemned to drink the fatal hemlock. Surrounded by sorrowing disciples, who had bribed the jailer and vainly urged him to fly while there was yet time, he calmly placed the cup to his lips, and soon after passed away with not a doubt as to “the undiscovered country.” “I derive confidence,” said he, “from the hope that something of man remains after death, and that the condition of good men will then be much better than that of the bad.”

Socrates failed to commit his philosophy to writing; it is from the pages of Xenophon and Plato, his most devoted admirers, that we have learned his doctrines.

The principal schools that originated in the Socratic were the Academic, Peripatetic, Cynic, and Stoic.

Academic School.—Plato.—The Academic School was founded by Socrates’ pupil, Plato, and derived its name from the grove of Acade’mus, a public garden at Athens in which this philosopher was accustomed to deliver his lectures. Beneath its planes and olives flowed the stream Cephissus; statues and temples were scattered through its shade, and solitary paths invited to rest and meditation.

Plato was noble-born, tracing his descent from King Codrus through one parent and from Solon through the other. His great genius was early seen. After mastering the elementary branches, he turned his attention to painting and poetry; but when he compared an epic on which he had tried his hand with Homer’s, he threw it into the fire in disgust. Chancing to hear Socrates discourse, he forthwith resolved to forsake the ornamental arts and study philosophy. So, when only twenty, Plato attached himself to Socrates; his admiration quickly ripened into an abiding affection; and for eight years he sat at the philosopher’s feet as a pupil, though now and then obtruding new theories of his own. In the dark days of his master’s trial and condemnation, he was still faithful; and when the judges silenced his speech in defence of Socrates, he would have resorted to the money-argument, which then, as now, seldom failed, had not the high-minded sage refused to secure life by such ignoble means.

After the execution of Socrates, Plato pursued his studies in foreign lands. He visited Italy, Sicily, and Egypt, carefully examining their different systems of philosophy, and possibly even making the acquaintance of the Hebrew Scriptures. During this tour he is related to have been sold into slavery at the instigation of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, whom he had offended by his bold expressions.

On his return to Athens, in accordance with a long-cherished plan, Plato opened an humble dwelling in the grove of Academus for the reception of pupils, and founded the famous Academic School. He soon became the most popular man in Athens. Crowds thronged to his lectures and dialogues, which were free to all; and even ladies assumed male attire, that they might mingle unnoticed with the listeners and drink in the eloquence which flowed from his lips. His fame went abroad also. Foreign potentates sought his aid in adjusting political difficulties; and twice, by request, he returned to the Syracusan court to effect a reform in the government—but in this case, without success.

On his eighty-second birthday, while he was pursuing his accustomed occupation, the stylus suddenly fell from Plato’s hand, and he expired. Under the trees so long associated with his kindly instruction, he found a final resting-place; an admiring country preserved his memory by altars and statues; and the verdict of succeeding generations has been that Plato was the greatest philosopher of antiquity.

Plato’s Philosophical System.—Plato was an enthusiast in the pursuit of truth. He believed in a personal God, rational, immutable, eternal. He realized that man could never attain absolute wisdom, possible to God alone; and looked upon philosophy as “a longing after heavenly wisdom.” He sought to correct abuses, to elevate humanity; and made man’s highest duty consist in searching out God and imitating the perfection of the Almighty as his rule of conduct. The four cardinal virtues were wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice; but none could be virtuous without aid from on high. (Read Bulkley’s “Plato’s Best Thoughts.”)

The soul, an emanation from the Supreme Mind, was immortal. It existed before its union with the body, and all earthly knowledge is but the recollection of what it possessed in some former state. When, disembodied, it stood face to face with kindred immaterial essences, it acquired those ideas, or forms, which figure so prominently in the Platonic system—interpreted by some to mean veritable objective existences too subtile to be discerned by the eye of flesh, and by others explained as mere intuitions or generalizations having no objective reality.

Plato regarded men as free agents, to be rewarded or punished in a future life for their deeds in this. His poetical fancy fixed on some distant star as the abode of the blessed. The earth he supposed to occupy the centre of the universe. It was not eternal, but was made by an intelligent God, who breathed into it a soul; so it was a living creature, self-active, and gifted with the beautiful form of the sphere.

Nor did the philosopher forget to train the reasoning powers, by the study of mathematics. The importance he attached to this science may be inferred from the sign on his school: “Let no one enter here who is a stranger to geometry.” Plato has the honor of having been the inventor of geometrical analysis.

Plato’s Works, which have descended to us unimpaired, are in the form of dialogues—a delightful method of conveying philosophical instruction, when, as in Plato’s case, the personages introduced as speakers are salient characters, and their idiosyncrasies are maintained throughout with discrimination. The dull lessons of dialectics are thus enlivened by graphic portraitures and happy strokes of humor. Plato’s language is the perfection of Attic prose, beautified by a poetical tinge. “If Jupiter should speak Greek,” said ancient critics, “it would be Plato’s.” What Socrates dreamed on the night before the young Plato entered his school—that a cygnet came from the grove of Academus, and, after nestling on his breast for a time, took its flight heavenward, singing sweetly as it rose—is recorded as presaging his pupil’s sweet mastery of words.

The Platonic Dialogues, thirty-five in number, discuss various subjects. One of the finest is “Phædo,” written to prove the immortal nature of the soul. It derives its name from the beloved disciple of Socrates, who is here made by Plato, prevented from being present himself, to describe their master’s death-scene and repeat his last discourse. Full of sublime and poetical conceptions, the “Phædo” aims at lifting the mind above the sensual to the spiritual and eternal; at foreshadowing the joys of the heavenly state, and painting death as a thing to be desired rather than feared, since it is the portal of bliss. The philosopher Cleom’brotus, on reading this Dialogue, is said to have thrown himself into the sea to exchange this life for the better one pictured by Plato.

EXTRACT FROM PHÆDO.

(Socrates, having proved the immortality of the soul to the satisfaction of all present in the prison, addresses them as follows.)