vantageous situation, reputation in arms, and very powerful in itself, and by its allies. The Romans artfully applied to the small states of Greece, from whom they had less to fear, and endeavoured to gain them by the attractive charms of liberty, which was their darling passion, and of which they knew how to awaken in them their ancient ideas. After having with great address made use of the Greeks to reduce and destroy the Macedonian power, they subjected all those states one after another, under various pretexts. Greece was thus swallowed up at last in the Roman empire, and became a province of it under the name of Achaia.

d

It did not lose with its power that ardent passion for liberty, which was its peculiar character. The Romans, when they reduced it into a province, reserved to the people almost all their privileges; and Sylla, who punished them so cruelly sixty years after, for having favoured the arms of Mithridates, did not abridge those of their liberty who escaped his vengeance. In the civil wars of Italy, the Athenians were seen to espouse with warmth the party of Pompey, who fought for the republic. Julius Cæsar revenged himself upon them no otherwise than by declaring, that he pardoned them out of consideration for their ancestors. But, after Cæsar was killed, their inclination for liberty made them forget his clemency. They erected statues to Brutus and Cassius near those of Harmodius and Aristogiton, the ancient deliverers of Athens, and did not take them down till solicited by Anthony, when become their friend, benefactor, and magisstrate.

After having been deprived of their ancient power, they still retained another sovereignty, which the Romans could not take from them, and to which

Strab. 1. ix.

* Plut, in Sylla.

• Dio. l. xliii. p. 191 & 1. xlvii. p. 339.

themselves were obliged to pay homage. Athens continued always the metropolis of the sciences, the school of polite arts, and the centre and standard of refined taste in all the productions of the mind. Several cities, as Byzantium, Cæsarea, Alexandria, Ephesus and Rhodes, shared that glory with Athens and after her example opened schools which became very famous. Rome, haughty as she was, acknowledged this glorious empire. She sent her most illustrious citizens to be finished and refined in Greece. They were instructed there in all the parts of sound philosophy, the knowledge of mathematics, the science of natural philosophy, the rules of moral duties, the art of reasoning with justice and method: all the treasures of eloquence were imbibed there, and the method taught of treating the greatest subjects with propriety, force, elegance, and perspicuity.

A Cicero, already the admiration of the bar, conceived he wanted something, and did not blush to become the disciple of the great masters whom Greece then produced. Pompey, in the midst of his glorious conquests, did not think it a dishonour to him, in passing through Rhodes, to hear the celebrated philosophers who taught there with great reputation, and to make himself in some measure their disciple.

Nothing shews better the respect retained for the ancient reputation of Greece, than a letter of' Pliny the younger. He writes in this manner to Maximus who was appointed governor of that province by Trajan; "Call to mind, my dear Maximus, that you are

going into Achaia, the true Greece, the same "Greece where learning and the polite arts had "their birth; where even agriculture was invented, according to the common opinion. Remember, "that you are sent to govern free cities and free men, "if ever any such there were; who by their virtues,

f Lib. viii. ep. 24.

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"actions, alliances, treaties, and religion, have known how to preserve the liberty they received from nature. Revere the gods, their founders; respect their heroes, the ancient glory of their nation, and "the sacred antiquity of their cities, the dignity, great exploits, and even fables and vanity of that people. Remember, it is from those sources that we have derived our code of equity; that we did not impose our laws upon them, after we had conquered them, but that they gave us theirs at our request, before they were acquainted with the power "of our arms. In a word, it is to Athens you are

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going; it is at Lacedæmon you are to command. "It would be inhuman and barbarous to deprive them of that faint image, that shadow which they "retain of their ancient liberty."

Whilst the Roman empire was declining, that empire of genius, of the mind, always supported itself, without participating in the revolutions of the other. Greece was resorted to for education and improvement from all parts of the world. In the fourth and fifth centuries, those great lights of the Church, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrysostom, went to Athens, to imbibe, as at their source, all the profane sciences. The emperors themselves, who could not go to Greece, brought Greece in a manner home to them, by receiving the most celebrated philosophers into their palaces, in order to intrust them with the education of their children, and to improve themselves by their instructions. Marcus Aurelius, even whilst he was emperor, went to hear the philosophers Appollonius and Sextus, and to take lessons from them as a common disciple.

g

By a new kind of victory, unknown before, Greece had imposed its laws on Egypt, and the whole East, from whence she had expelled barbarism, and intro

Titus, Antoninus, M. Aurelius, Lucius Verus, &c.

duced a taste for the arts and sciences in its room; obliging, by a kind of right of conquest, all those nations to receive her language and adopt her customs: a testimonial highly for the glory of a people, and which argues a much more illustrious superiority, than that which is not founded on merit, but solely upon the force of arms. Plutarch observes somewhere, that no Greek ever thought of learning Latin, and that a Roman who did not understand Greek, was in no great estimation.

ARTICLE III.

IT might be expected, that after the subjection of Macedonia and Greece to the Romans, our history, confined for the future to two principal kingdoms, those of Egypt and Syria, should become more clear and intelligible than ever. I am, however, obliged to own, that it will be more obscure and perplexed than it has been hitherto, especially in regard to the kingdom of Syria, in which several kings not only succeed one another in a short space, but sometimes reign jointly, and at the same time to the number of three or four, which occasions a confusion difficult to unravel, and from which I find it hard to extricate myself. This induces me to prefix in this place the names, succession, and duration of the reigns of the kings of Egypt and Syria. This short chronological abridgment may contribute to cast some light upon facts, which are exceedingly complex, and serve as a clue to guide the reader in a kind of labyrinth, where the most clear-sighted will have occasion for assistance. It enlarges the work a little, but it may be passed over, or be referred to only when it is necessary to be set right: I insert it here only with that view.

This third article contains the space of an hundred

years for the kingdom of Egypt, from the twentieth year of Ptolemy Philometor, to the expulsion of Ptolemy Auletes from the throne; that is, from the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and forty-five, to the year three thousand nine hundred and forty-six.

As to the kingdom of Syria, the same article contains also almost the space of an hundred years from Antiochus Eupator to Antiochus Asiaticus, under whom Syria became a province of the Roman empire; that is, from the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and forty to the year three thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine.