Chapter IV: Part 4

The moral character of Demosthenes was fiercely assailed during his life, the chief charges being vacillation, unchastity, cowardice, and the receipt of bribes. In weighing these accusations we must remember that they were inspired by personal hatred, and that public life in Demosthenes's day was characterized by almost inconceivable strife and bitterness. There was probably considerable ground for all the allegations, except, perhaps, that of infirmity in purpose. Plutarch believes that the orator was "vindictive in his nature and implacable in his resentments." But the same author wonders how Theopompus could say that he was a man of no steadiness, since it appeared that "he abode by the party and the measures which he first adopted, and was so far from quitting them during his life that he forfeited his life rather than forsake them." "He was never a time-server either in his words or in his actions. The key of politics which he first touched he kept to without variation." But he certainly lacked physical courage. At Chaeronea, a battle which he himself had brought on, he fled ignominiously, throwing away his arms. His cowardice was recognized in the inscription upon the pedestal of the bronze statue which the Athenians erected to him.

"Divine in speech, in judgment, too, divine,
Had valor's wreath, Demosthenes, been thine,
Fair Greece had still her freedom's ensign borne,
And held the scourge of Macedon in scorn."

It is equally certain that he loved gold too well, and sometimes took it when it should have burnt his hands.

For all this, Demosthenes's character was rather a noble one for that age. Among the distinguished Athenians of the day, only Phocion's outshone it. Nearly all that Demosthenes's foes cite to his discredit seems weak considering the known vices of the period, while much of it, as when they taunt him with always drinking water instead of wine, implies on his part a creditable strength of will, which is further attested by his self-discipline in mastering his chosen art. What, after all, speaks the most strongly for the orator's character is the serious moral tone of his orations. This cannot have been simulated, and hence cannot have proceeded from a man with a vicious nature.

The esteem in which Demosthenes was held at Athens is seen in what occurred soon after the battle of Chaeronea, an event which led to Demosthenes' greatest oratorical effort. One Ctesiphon had proposed that the people reward Demosthenes' public services by the gift of a golden crown, and the senate had passed a bill to this effect, for submission to the vote of the assembly. AEschines denied that the orator's conduct gave him any right to be thus honored, and prosecuted Ctesiphon for bringing forward an unconstitutional measure. After years of delay, the trial came on in B.C. 330, AEschines delivering his famous address against Ctesiphon, really an adverse critical review of Demosthenes's public and private life to that time, to which Demosthenes replied by his immortal Oration on the Crown. Demosthenes gained a surprising victory. Although the judges were nearly all of the Macedonian party, AEschines did not secure for his cause a fifth part of their votes, a fact which, according to Athenian law, subjected him to a fine of a thousand drachmas for provoking the litigation. He at once left Athens and never returned.

The most recent judgment of Demosthenes as a statesman differs much from that in which nearly all the standard English and American authorities since Grote agree. Till lately it has been common to think of Athens as a real democracy, favorable to freedom, the bulwark of liberty then for Greece and the world. Philip has been deemed a mere barbarian, whose victory was certain to be, and was, the death of Grecian liberty. This being so, Demosthenes, in opposing Philip and his son Alexander, was not only a sincere patriot but a wise one. This is the view of Greek politics then which one gets from Demosthenes himself. Readers of his masterly orations insensibly adopt it, without due reflection upon the evidence now available to substantiate a different one. Demosthenes is understood to argue for a constitutional form of government, which, to all lovers of such, is an additional reason for siding with him. Grote's history urges the same view in a most enthusiastic and unhesitating way, and has had enormous influence in disseminating it. Thucydides, the original Greek historian most read in our time, makes the fate of everything good in Greece turn upon that of Athens. This great author so trains us in his manner of thought as to disqualify us from coolly considering the question whether the fortunes of Greece might not have risen or fallen in some other way.

The present writer believes the above theory to be almost entirely an error. Doubtless Demosthenes was honest, but he was mistaken in his views of what was best for Greece and even for Athens. Philip and Alexander, however selfish, were neither in purpose nor in fact so hostile to Greek freedom as the mighty orator makes out. Inordinate ambition possessed both. In this they are to be ranked with Napoleon and Julius Caesar rather than with Washington. They, however, clearly saw the vanity of the old Greek _regime_, the total uselessness of trying to unify Greece or to make her independent of Persia through any of the devices paraded by the politicians. Therefore, with patriotism and philanthropy enough to give their cause a certain moral glow in their minds, they set out by force of arms--the only possible way to succeed--first, to unify Greece, and next, to make her eternally independent of Persia. Since Gustav Droysen, in his "Alexander the Great," led off with this theory, the best writers upon Greek history have gradually adopted it, deserting Grote more and more. Droysen went too far. With him Alexander was the veritable demigod whom he sottishly decreed that his subjects should see in him. Droysen, of course, has too little respect for Demosthenes's policy. Victor Duruy is the only late writer of note who still blows the trumpet for our old orator as a statesman. He says that "the result of the Macedonian dominion was the death of European Greece," and he calls it the immortal glory of Demosthenes to have perceived this; yet even he admits that "the civilization of the world gained" by the Macedonian conquest, and hence, after all, places himself, "from the point of view of the world's history, on the side of Philip and his son." The tendency of writers upon this period is thus to exalt the man with a great national policy in his head though with a sword in his hand, at the expense of him who, never so honestly, dinned the populace with his high-sounding pleas for an obstructive course.

We are learning that republicanism or democracy, whichever one pleases to call it, was in ancient times a very different thing from aught that now exists under either name. The various republics of Greece and the republic of Rome were nothing but oligarchies, often atrociously tyrannical. Even at their best estate the rights of individuals in them, of their citizens even, were far less perfectly guarded than in some pretty absolute monarchies of later times.

"The Athenian imperial democracy was no popular government. In the first place there was no such thing as representation in their constitution. Those only had votes who could come and give them at the general assembly, and they did so at once upon the conclusion of the debate. There was no Second Chamber or Higher Council to revise or delay their decisions, no crown; no High Court of Appeal to settle claims against the state. The body of Athenian citizens formed the assembly. Sections of this body formed the jury to try cases of violation of the constitution either in act or in the proposal of new laws.

"The result was that all outlying provinces, even had they obtained votes, were without a voice in the government. But as a matter of fact they had no votes, for the states which became subject to Athens were merely tributary; and nothing was further from the ideas of the Athenians than to make them members of their Imperial Republic, in the sense that a new State is made a member of the American Republic.

"This it was which ruined even the great Roman republic, without any military reverses, and when its domination of the world was unshaken. Owing to the absence of representation, the empire of the Roman republic was in the hands of the city population, who were perfectly incompetent, even had they been in real earnest, to manage the government of the vast kingdoms their troops had conquered. In both cases the outsiders were governed wholly for the benefit of the city crowd.

"The mistakes and the injustices which resulted in the Roman executive were such that any able adventurer could take advantage of the world-wide discontent, and could play off one city faction against the other. It is not conceivable that any other general course of events would have taken place at Athens, had she become the ruler of the Hellenic world. Her demos regarded itself as a sovran, ruling subjects for its own glory and benefit; there can therefore be no doubt that the external pressure of that wide discontent, which was the primary cause of the Peloponnesian war, would have co-operated with politicians within, if there were no enemies without, and that ambitious military chiefs, as at Rome, would have wrested the power from the sovran people either by force or by fraud." (Mahaffy, "Problems in Greek History," 98 foll.)

In other words, however distressing the ills which might happen to Athens through Philip's success, they could not be worse than those which were sure to beset her in any event; while for Greece as a whole, Philip's victory would mean unity and peace such as could have been secured in no other way.

This splendid possibility, which must have impressed the minds of Phocion and Philip, is obscured to our thought by the untimely death of both the great Macedonian generals, before their plans had any time to bear fruit. Desperate chaos follows Alexander's death of course; and when, little by little, order is evolved, it is a new order, not the old one. Never again does Athens sit there as a queen looking out upon her AEgean, but her day of political glory is ended forever.

It is natural to trace all this wild disorder, involving the decline of Athens, the wars of Alexander's successors, small and great, and also the Roman conquest at last, to Philip's victory at Chaeronea. As we read the tangled and bloody record, we say to ourselves: Oh, how much better all would have been had the Athenians roused at the cry of Demosthenes, and beaten Philip instead of being beaten! We assume that had this happened Greece would have kept on its old splendid way, able to have conquered Rome herself when Rome came. Philip ruined Greece; the advice of Demosthenes, had it been followed, would have saved her.

Superficially considered, all this seems clever reasoning; but it is in fact a stupendous fallacy. _Post hoc ergo propter hoc._ Philip conquered and subsequently things went ill with Greece. A man looked at Mars and subsequently had the cholera.

Let us no longer argue so childishly. The evils that befell Hellas were not at all those which Demosthenes prophesied. They are no proof of his foresight. From the point of view of his wishes they were entirely accidental. To see this we need only inquire what would in all probability have come to pass had Alexander lived. One may heavily discount Droysen's adoration of the young conqueror, and yet, from what he achieved while alive and the way in which he achieved it, believe that immeasurable blessings to Greece and to humanity would have resulted from a lengthening of his days. I cannot think it rash to affirm that ten or twenty years added to Alexander's career would probably have changed subsequent history in at least three colossal particulars:

1. Probably Greece would have been more happily, perfectly, and permanently cemented together than was the case, or could in any other way have been the case.

2. Probably Greece would not only have been at last forever free from Asia but would also have become Asia's lord, and this in a manner truly beneficial to both lands.

3. Probably Greece would have ruled Rome instead of being ruled by Rome, and this, too, in such wise as to have benefited both, and the world as well.

[Signature of the author.]

ARISTOTLE

From the French of FENELON

(384-322 B.C.)

]

Of all the philosophers of antiquity, Aristotle was one of the most celebrated; and in every seat of learning, his name, even at this day, is held in esteem.

He was son of Nicomachus, a physician, and friend of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, and was descended from Machaon, son of AEsculapius. He was born at Stagira, a city of Macedonia, in the first year of the 99th Olympiad. He lost his father and mother in his infancy, and was very much neglected by those who had the charge of his education.

In his early years he dissipated almost all his patrimony in libertinism and debauchery. At first he became a soldier; but the profession of arms not suiting his turn of mind, he went to Delphi to consult the Oracle, and fix his determination. By the response of the Oracle, he was directed to go to Athens and pursue the study of philosophy. He was then in his eighteenth year. For twenty years he studied in the academy under Plato, and as he had spent all his inheritance, he was induced, in order to procure a subsistence, to vend medicines at Athens.

Aristotle ate little and slept less. So strong was his passion for study, that in order to resist the oppression of sleep, he kept at his bedside a brazen basin, over which when in bed, he stretched one of his hands in which he held an iron ball, that if he should fall asleep, the noise of the ball dropping into the basin might awake him instantly.

According to Laertius his voice was shrill and squeaking, his eyes small, his legs slender, and he dressed magnificently.

Aristotle was a man of acute parts, and one who easily comprehended the most difficult questions. He soon became master of the doctrines of Plato, and distinguished himself among the other academicians. No question was decided in the academy without the opinion of Aristotle, though it was often subversive of that of Plato. By all his fellow-students he was considered as a prodigy of genius, and his opinions were often followed, in opposition to those of his master. Aristotle left the academy. This excited the resentment of Plato. He could not refrain from treating him as a rebel, comparing him to the chick which pecks its dam.

The Athenians appointed him ambassador to Philip, king of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. Aristotle, having spent some time in Macedonia in settling the affairs of the Athenians, found, upon his return, that Xenocrates had been chosen master of the academy. Seeing that place thus filled he said, "It would be a shame for me to be silent, when Xenocrates speaks." He accordingly established a new sect, and taught doctrines different from those of his master Plato.

The celebrity of Aristotle, who now surpassed all his contemporaries in every kind of science, especially in the departments of philosophy and politics, induced Philip, king of Macedonia, to offer him the care of the education of his son Alexander, then fourteen years of age. Aristotle accepted. He continued Alexander's preceptor for eight years; and according to the testimony of Plutarch, taught him some secret doctrines which he communicated to none other.

The study of philosophy did not render the manners of Aristotle austere. He applied to business, and took an interest in everything that passed at the court of Macedonia. From respect to this philosopher, Philip rebuilt Stagira, his native city, which had been destroyed during the wars, and restored to their possessions all the inhabitants, of whom some had fled and others had been reduced to slavery.

When Alexander's education was finished, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he was well received on account of the mildness with which, for his sake, that city had been treated by Philip. He fixed upon a place in the Lyceum highly beautified with avenues of trees, where he established his school. He used to walk about when teaching and from this circumstance his sect was called _Peripatetic_. The Lyceum was soon thronged by a concourse of students whom Aristotle's reputation had drawn together from every quarter of Greece.

Alexander recommended to him to attend particularly to experiments in physical science. To facilitate his observations he sent him, besides 800 talents to defray expenses, a great number of huntsmen and fishermen to supply him from every quarter with subjects for experiment.

At that time Aristotle published his books of physics and metaphysics. Of this, Alexander who was now in Asia, got information. That ambitious prince, desirous of being in everything the first man in the world, was dissatisfied that the learning of his master should become common.

He showed his resentment by the following letter: "You have not done well in publishing your books on speculative science. If what you taught me be taught to men of all ranks, I shall then have nothing but in common with others. But I would have you consider that I had rather be superior to other men in abstract and secret knowledge, than to surpass them in power."

To appease this prince Aristotle sent him for answer, that he had published his books, but in such a way that in fact they were not published. By this he apparently meant, that his doctrines were laid down in a manner so embarrassed that it was impossible for any one ever to understand them.

Aristotle carefully investigated that question, the great object of moral philosophy, how men might be rendered happy in the present world. In the first place, he refutes the opinion of the voluptuous, who make happiness to consist in corporal pleasures. "Not only," said he, "are these pleasures fleeting, they are also succeeded by disgust; and while they enfeeble the body they debase the mind."

He next rejects the opinion of the ambitious, who place happiness in honors, and, with this object in view, pay no regard to the maxims of equity or the restraints of law. "Honor," he said, "exists in him who honors." "The ambitious," he adds, "desire to be honored in consequence of some virtue of which they wish themselves supposed to be possessed; that consequently, happiness consists in virtue, rather than in honors, especially as these are external and do not depend upon ourselves."

In the last place, he refutes the system of the avaricious, who constitute riches the supreme good. "Riches," he said, "are not desirable on their own account; they render him who possesses them unhappy, because he is afraid to use them. In order to render them really useful it is necessary to use and to distribute them, and not to place happiness in what is in itself detestable and not worth the having."

The opinion of Aristotle is, that happiness consists in the most perfect exercise of the understanding and the practice of the virtues. The most noble exercise of the understanding, he considered to be speculation concerning natural objects; the heavens, the stars, nature, and chiefly the First Being. He observed, however, that without a competency of the good things of fortune suited to a man's situation in life, it was impossible to be perfectly happy, because without this we could neither have time to pursue speculation, nor opportunity to practise the virtues. Thus, for example, one could not please his friends; and to do good to those whom we love is always one of the highest enjoyments of life.

"Happiness depends therefore," he said, "on three things: the goods of mind, as wisdom and prudence; the goods of the body, as beauty, health, strength; and the goods of fortune, as riches and nobility." Virtue he maintained, is not sufficient to render men happy; the goods of the body and of fortune are absolutely necessary; and a wise man would be unhappy were he to want riches or if his share of them were insufficient.

He affirmed, on the other hand: "Vice is sufficient to render men unhappy. Though in the greatest affluence and enjoying every other advantage, it is impossible for a man ever to be happy while the slave of vice. The wise man is not wholly exempted from the ills of life, but his share of them is small." "The virtues and vices," he said, "are not incompatible, for the same man, though intemperate, may be just and prudent."

He mentions three kinds of friendship; one of relationship, another of inclination, and a third of hospitality.

Elegant literature, he thinks, contributes greatly to produce a love of virtue; and the cultivation of letters he affirms to be the greatest consolation of age.

Like Plato, he admitted the existence of a Supreme Being, to whom he attributed providence.

In his politics, he maintains that the monarchical form of government is the most perfect, because in other forms there are more rulers than one. An army under the conduct of one able commander, succeeds better than one conducted by several leaders; and while deputies, or chief men, are employed in assembling and deliberating, a monarch has already finished an expedition and executed his designs. The rulers of a republic do not care though they should ruin the state, provided they enrich themselves. Jealousies are engendered, divisions arise, and the republic is in danger of being finally destroyed and overthrown. In a monarchy, on the other hand, the interests of the prince are those of the state; and the state of course must flourish.

Aristotle was one day asked, "What does a man gain by telling a lie?" "Not to be believed," said he, "even when he tells the truth."

Having been blamed for giving alms to a bad man, he said: "It is not because he is bad, but because he is a man, that I have compassion for him."

To his friends and scholars he used to say, that knowledge is to the soul what light is to the eyes; and that mellowness of the fruit makes up for the bitterness of the root. When irritated against the Athenians, he reproached them with neglecting their _laws_, and using their _corn_; though possessed of the former, as well as the latter.

He was one day asked, "What it is that is soonest effaced?" "Gratitude," replied he. "What is hope?" "A waking man's dream."

Diogenes presented Aristotle with a fig. Aristotle very well knew that were he to refuse it, Diogenes would level his wit against him. He took the fig, therefore, and with a smile said, "Diogenes has at once lost his fig and the use he intended to make of it."

He said there were three things very necessary to children: Genius, exercise, and instruction. When asked the difference between the learned and the ignorant, he replied: "The same as between the living and the dead." "Knowledge," he said, "is an ornament in prosperity, and in adversity a refuge. Those who give children a good education, are much more their fathers than those who have begotten them; the latter communicate mere life to them; the former put it in their power to spend it comfortably." "Beauty," said he, "is a recommendation infinitely stronger than any kind of learning."

He was one day asked, What pupils should do to turn their instructions to the greatest advantage? "They must," said he, "always keep in view those before them, and never look back to those behind them."

A certain person was one day boasting of being the citizen of an illustrious state. "Do not value yourself upon that," said Aristotle; "rather ask yourself whether you deserve to be so?"

Reflecting on human life, he sometimes said: "There are some who amass riches with as much avidity as if they were to live forever; others are as careless about their possessions as if they were to die to-morrow."

When asked, what is a friend? he replied, "One soul animating two bodies." "How," said one to him, "ought we to act to our friends?" "As we would have them to act toward us," replied Aristotle. He used frequently to exclaim, "Ah! my friends, there is not a friend in the world!"

He was one day asked, "How it comes that we prefer beautiful women to those who are ugly?" "You now ask a blind man's question," returned Aristotle.

He was asked what advantage he had derived from philosophy? "To do voluntarily," replied he, "what others do through fear of the laws."

It is said that during his stay at Athens he was intimate with an able Jew, by whom he was accurately instructed in the science and religion of the Egyptians, for the acquisition of which everyone at that time used to go to Egypt itself.

Having taught in the Lyceum for thirteen years with great reputation, Aristotle was accused of impiety by Eurimedon, priest of Ceres. He was so overwhelmed with the recollection of what Socrates had suffered that he hastily left Athens and retired to Chalcis in Euboea. It is said by some that he there died of vexation because he could not discover the cause of the flux and reflux of the Euripus. By others it is added that he threw himself into that sea, and when falling said, "Let the Euripus receive me since I cannot comprehend it." And lastly, it is affirmed by others that he died of a colic in the sixty-third year of his age, two years after the death of his pupil, Alexander the Great.

By the Stagirites, altars were erected to him as a god.

Aristotle made a will, of which Antipater was appointed the executor. He left a son called Nicomachus, and a daughter who was married to a grandson of Demaratus, king of Lacedaemonia.

ARCHIMEDES

By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.

(287-212 B.C.)

]

It is scarcely possible to view the vast steamships of our day without reflecting that to a great master of mechanics, upward of two thousand years since, we in part owe the invention of the machine by which these mighty vessels are propelled upon the wide world of waters. This power is an application of "the Screw of Archimedes," the most celebrated of the Greek geometricians. He was born in Sicily, in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, in the year 287 B.C., and when a very young man, was fortunate enough to enjoy the patronage of his relative Hiero, the reigning prince of Syracuse.

The ancients attribute to Archimedes more than forty mechanical inventions--among which are the endless screw; the combination of pulleys; an hydraulic organ, according to Tertullian; a machine called the HELIX, or screw, for launching ships; and a machine called _loculus_, which appears to have consisted of forty pieces, by the putting together of which various objects could be framed, and which were used by boys as a sort of artificial memory.

Archimedes is said to have obtained the friendship and confidence of Hiero by the following incident. The king had delivered a certain weight of gold to a workman, to be made into a crown. When the crown was made and sent to the king, a suspicion arose in the royal mind that the gold had been adulterated by the alloy of a baser metal, and he applied to Archimedes for his assistance in detecting the imposture; the difficulty was to measure the bulk of the crown without melting it into a regular figure; for silver being, weight for weight, of greater bulk than gold, any alloy of the former in place of an equal weight of the latter would necessarily increase the bulk of the crown; and at that time there was no known means of testing the purity of metal. Archimedes, after many unsuccessful attempts, was about to abandon the subject altogether, when the following circumstance suggested to his discerning and prepared mind a train of thought which led to the solution of the difficulty. Stepping into his bath one day, as was his custom, his mind doubtless fixed on the object of his research, he chanced to observe that, the bath being full, a quantity of water of the same bulk as his body must flow over before he could immerse himself. He probably perceived that any other body of the same bulk would have raised the water equally; but that another body of the same weight, but less bulky, would not have produced so great an effect. In the words of Vitruvius, "as soon as he had hit upon this method of detection, he did not wait a moment, but jumped joyfully out of the bath, and running forthwith toward his own house, called out with a loud voice that he had found what he sought. For as he ran he called out, in Greek, 'Eureka! Eureka!--I have found it! I have found it!'" When his emotion had sobered down, he proceeded to investigate the subject calmly. He procured two masses of metal, each of equal weight with the crown--one of gold and the other of silver--and having filled a vessel very accurately with water, he plunged into it the silver, and marked the exact quantity of water that overflowed. He then treated the gold in the same manner, and observed that a less quantity of water overflowed than before. He next plunged the crown into the same vessel full of water, and observed that it displaced more of the fluid than the gold had done, and less than the silver; by which he inferred that the crown was neither pure gold nor pure silver, but a mixture of both. Hiero was so gratified with this result as to declare that from that moment he could never refuse to believe anything Archimedes told him.

Travelling in Egypt, and observing the necessity of raising the water of the Nile to points which the river did not reach, as well as the difficulty of clearing the land from the periodical overflowings of the Nile, Archimedes invented for this purpose the screw which bears his name. It was likewise used as a pump to clear water from the holds of vessels; and the name of Archimedes was held in great veneration by seamen on this account. The screw may be briefly described as a long spiral with its lower extremity immersed in the water, which, rising along the channels by the revolution of the machine on its axis, is discharged at the upper extremity. When applied to the propulsion of steam-vessels the screw is horizontal; and being put in motion by a steam-engine, drives the water backward, when its reaction, or return, propels the vessel.

The mechanical ingenuity of Archimedes was next displayed in the various machines which he constructed for the defence of Syracuse during a three years' siege by the Romans. Among these inventions were catapults for throwing arrows, and ballistae for throwing masses of stone; and iron hands or hooks attached to chains, thrown to catch the prows of the enemy's vessels, and then overturn them. He is likewise stated to have set their vessels on fire by burning-glasses; this, however, rests upon modern authority, and Archimedes is rather believed to have set the ships on fire by machines for throwing lighted materials.

After the storming of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier, who did not know who he was. The soldier inquired, but the philosopher, being intent upon a problem, begged that his diagram might not be disturbed; upon which the soldier put him to death. At his own request, expressed during his life, a sphere inscribed in a cylinder was sculptured on his tomb, in memory of his discovery that the solid contents of a sphere is exactly two-thirds of that of the circumscribing cylinder; and by this means the memorial was afterward identified. One hundred and fifty years after the death of Archimedes, when Cicero was residing in Sicily, he paid homage to his forgotten tomb. "During my quaestorship," says this illustrious Roman, "I diligently sought to discover the sepulchre of Archimedes, which the Syracusans had totally neglected, and suffered to be grown over with thorns and briars. Recollecting some verses, said to be inscribed on the tomb, which mentioned that on the top was placed a sphere with a cylinder, I looked round me upon every object at the Agragentine Gate, the common receptacle of the dead. At last I observed a little column which just rose above the thorns, upon which was placed the figure of a sphere and cylinder. This, said I to the Syracusan nobles who were with me, this must, I think, be what I am seeking. Several persons were immediately employed to clear away the weeds and lay open the spot. As soon as a passage was opened, we drew near, and found on the opposite base the inscription, with nearly half the latter part of the verses worn away. Thus would this most famous, and formerly most learned, city of Greece have remained a stranger to the tomb of one of its most ingenious citizens, had it not been discovered by a man of Arpinum."

To Archimedes is attributed the apophthegm: "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." This arose from his knowledge of the possible effects of machinery; but however it might astonish a Greek of his day, it would now be admitted to be as theoretically possible as it is practically impossible. Archimedes would have required to move with the velocity of a cannon-ball for millions of ages to alter the position of the earth by the smallest part of an inch. In mathematical truth, however, the feat is performed by every man who leaps from the ground; for he kicks the world away when he rises, and attracts it again when he falls back.

Under the superintendence of Archimedes was also built the renowned galley for Hiero. It was constructed to half its height, by three hundred master workmen and their servants, in six months. Hiero then directed that the vessel should be perfected afloat; but how to get the vast pile into the water the builders knew not, till Archimedes invented his engine called the helix, by which, with the assistance of very few hands he drew the ship into the sea, where it was completed in six months. The ship consumed wood enough to build sixty large galleys; it had twenty tiers of bars and three decks; the middle deck had on each side fifteen dining apartments besides other chambers, luxuriously furnished, and floors paved with mosaics of the story of the "Iliad." On the upper deck were gardens with arbors of ivy and vines; and here was a temple of Venus, paved with agates, and roofed with Cyprus-wood; it was richly adorned with pictures and statues, and furnished with couches and drinking-vessels. Adjoining was an apartment of box-wood, with a clock in the ceiling, in imitation of the great dial of Syracuse; and here was a huge bath set with gems called Tauromenites. There were also on each side of this deck, cabins for the marine soldiers, and twenty stables for horses; in the forecastle was a fresh-water cistern which held 253 hogsheads; and near it was a large tank of sea-water, in which fish were kept. From the ship's sides projected ovens, kitchens, mills, and other offices, built upon beams, each supported by a carved image nine feet high. Around the deck were eight wooden towers, from each of which was raised a breastwork full of loopholes, whence an enemy might be annoyed with stones each tower being guarded by four armed soldiers and two archers. On this upper deck was also placed the machine invented by Archimedes to fling stones of 300 pounds weight and darts eighteen feet long, to the distance of 120 paces; while each of the three masts had two engines for throwing stones. The ship was furnished with four anchors of wood and eight of iron; and "the water-screw" of Archimedes, already mentioned, was used instead of a pump for the vast ship; "by the help of which one man might easily and speedily drain out the water, though it were very deep." The whole ship's company consisted of an immense multitude, there being in the forecastle alone 600 seamen. There were placed on board her 60,000 bushels of corn, 10,000 barrels of salt fish, and 20,000 barrels of flesh, besides the provisions for her company. She was first called the Syracuse, but afterward the Alexandria. The builder was Archias, the Corinthian shipwright. The vessel appears to have been armed for war and sumptuously fitted for a pleasure-yacht, yet was ultimately used to carry corn. The timber for the main mast, after being in vain sought for in Italy, was brought from England. The dimensions are not recorded, but they must have exceeded those of any ship of the present day; indeed, Hiero, finding that none of the surrounding harbors sufficed to receive his vast ship, loaded it with corn and presented the vessel with its cargo to Ptolemy, King of Egypt, and on arriving at Alexandria it was hauled ashore, and nothing more is recorded respecting it. A most elaborate description of this vast ship has been preserved to us by Athenaeus, and translated into English by Burchett, in his "Naval Transactions."

Archimedes has been styled the Homer of geometry; yet it must not be concealed that he fell into the prevailing error of the ancient philosophers--that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. "It was with difficulty," says Lord Macaulay, "that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly, as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science."

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

By REV. W. J. BRODRIBB

(106-43 B.C.)

]

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the foremost orator of ancient Rome, one of her leading statesmen, and the most brilliant and accomplished of her men of letters, lived in those stirring later days of the Roman republic, that age of revolution and civil wars, in which an old and decaying order of things was passing away. It was the age of great and daring spirits, of Catiline, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, with whose history Cicero's life is so closely intertwined.

Born 106 B.C., at an old Italian town, Arpinum in Latium, of a good family, and inheriting from his father, who was a man of considerable culture, a moderate estate, he went as a boy to Rome, and there, under the best teachers and professors, he learned law and oratory, Greek philosophy, and Greek literature, acquiring in fact the universal knowledge which he himself says in his essay "On the Orator" (De Oratore), an orator ought to possess. An orator in the ancient world, we should bear in mind, was first and chiefly a pleader of causes, causes both legal and political--speaker alike, as we should say, at the bar and in parliament. Hence the necessity for knowledge and information of every kind. Cicero's first important speech, in his twenty-sixth year, was the successful defence in a criminal trial of a client against one of the favorites of the all-powerful Sulla, then dictator. After a visit to Athens, and a tour in Asia Minor, where he profited by the society of eminent professors of rhetoric and men of letters, he returned to Rome, and at thirty years of age he was in the highest repute at the Roman bar.

In 76 B.C., having been elected quaestor (a financial secretary, as we may say) by a unanimous popular vote, he held an appointment in Sicily, where he won the good opinion of two highly important interests, apt at times to conflict, the traders and the revenue collectors. To this he owed the glory of his successful impeachment of the infamous Verres, in 70 B.C., which he undertook at the request of the Sicilian provincials. The bad man who had so hideously misgoverned them, felt himself crushed by Cicero's opening speech, and went into voluntary exile. Cicero was now a power in the state, and his rise up the official ladder was sure and rapid; in 66 B.C. he was praetor, and supported in a great political speech (Pro Lege Manilia) the appointment of Pompey to the conduct of the war with Mithridates, which in fact carried with it the supreme control of Asia and of the East. In 63 B.C., at the age of forty-four, he was consul, the highest dignity attainable to a Roman; in that memorable year he foiled by a bold promptitude, the revolutionary plot of Catiline, in which many distinguished Romans--Caesar it was even said among them--were implicated. He was now at the height of his fame; "father of his country" he was actually called, for a brief space he was with all classes the great man of the day. But the tide soon turned; Cicero might have saved the country, but in saving it, it was said he had violated the constitution, according to which a Roman citizen could not be capitally punished but by the sentence of the people in regular assembly. As it was, Roman citizens guilty of complicity with Catiline had, at Cicero's instigation, been put to death simply by an order of the senate; this, it was said, was a dangerous precedent and Cicero must be held responsible for it. His bitter enemy, Clodius, now tribune, pressed the charge against him in inflammatory speeches specially addressed to the lowest class of citizens, and Cicero in despair left Rome in 58 B.C., and took refuge at Thessalonica. That same year saw the "father of his country" condemned to exile by a vote of the Roman people, and his house at Rome and his country houses at Formiae and Tusculum plundered and ruined.

But in those revolutionary days the events of one year were reversed by those of the next; in 57 B.C., with new counsels and new tribunes, the people almost unanimously voted the recall of the exile, and Cicero was welcomed back to Rome amid an outburst of popular enthusiasm. But he was no longer a power in the world of politics; he could not see his way clearly; and he was so nervously sensitive to the fluctuations of public opinion that he could not decide between Pompey and the aristocracy on the one hand, and Caesar and the new democracy on the other. His leanings had hitherto been toward Pompey and the senate and the old republic; but as time went on, he felt that Pompey was a half-hearted man, who could not be trusted, and that he would have ultimately to succumb to his far abler and more far-sighted rival, Caesar. The result was that he lost the esteem of both parties, and came to be regarded as a mere trimmer and time-server. There was all that political indecision about him which may be often observed in eminent lawyers and men of letters. The age wanted strong men such as Caesar; this Cicero certainly was not. He was gentle, amiable, very clever, and highly cultivated, but the last man in the world to succeed in politics. The later years of his life were spent chiefly in pleading at the bar and writing essays. In 52 B.C. he composed one of his finest speeches in defence of Milo, who had killed Clodius in a riot, and was then standing for the consulship; in this he was acting quite against the wishes of Pompey. In the following years (51-50 B.C.) he was in Asia, as governor of the province of Cilicia, and here the best side of his character showed itself in his just and sympathetic treatment of the provincials. In 49-48 B.C. he was with Pompey's army in Greece to fight for the old cause, of which, however, he well-nigh despaired, and after the decisive battle of Pharsalia, at which he was not present, he threw himself on the conqueror's mercy. Caesar, who had certainly nothing to fear from him, received him kindly, and was a great friend to him from that day; but Cicero was not a happy man now that he could no longer make speeches in the senate or in the courts; to all this Caesar's victory had for the time at least put at end. In the years 46, 45, 44 B.C., he wrote most of his chief works on rhetoric and philosophy, living in retirement and brooding mournfully over his griefs and disappointments. In 43 B.C., the year after Caesar's death, he had once again the delight of having his eloquence applauded by the senate. In that year his famous speeches against Antony--Philippics, as he called them after the title of Demosthenes's orations against Philip of Macedon--were delivered. These cost him his life. As soon as Antony, Octavius (afterward the Emperor Augustus), and Lepidus had leagued themselves together in the so-called triumvirate for the settlement of the state, they followed the precedent of former revolutions, a proscription-list of their political enemies. All such were outlawed and given up to destruction. Cicero's name was in the fatal list. Old and feeble, he fled to his villa at Formiae, pursued by the soldiers of Antony, and was overtaken by them as he was being carried in a litter down to the shore, where it had been his intention to embark. With a calm courage (which, to quote Macaulay's words) "has half redeemed his fame," he put his head out of the litter and bade his murderers strike. He died in the December of 43 B.C., in the sixty-third year of his age.

As an orator and a pleader Cicero undoubtedly stands in the first rank. Many of his speeches have come down to us. Of these the most famous, and perhaps the finest, are his speeches against Verres and against Catiline. Eloquence in those days of furious faction and revolution was a greater force than it is with us. As a politician he failed because he did not distinctly realize to himself that the old republic, the government of the senate and of the nobles, had been tried and had been found wanting. He had not the courage to face the great changes which he felt were impending. Pompey, the champion of the old order, was not a leader to whom he could look up with confidence. And so he wavered, and half acquiesced in Caesar's triumph, even though he suspected that with that triumph the Rome which he had known and loved would pass away. To us it is as an essayist and as the writer of a multitude of letters to friends, full of miscellaneous information, that Cicero is particularly attractive; there is a gracefulness and refinement and elevation of tone about his writings which cannot fail to incline the reader to say with Erasmus, "I feel a better man for reading Cicero." His essays on "Old Age" and "on Friendship," his De Officiis or "Whole Duty of Man," as we may paraphrase it, are good and pleasant reading such as we can all enjoy. There is no fairer picture in literature than of him sitting in the garden of his villa at Tusculum, surrounded by admiring friends, and engaged upon his "Tusculan disputations;" while his treatises on the "Nature of the Gods," and on the "True Ends of Human Life" (De Finibus), if they do not show any very deep and original thought, at least give us an insight into the teachings of the various philosophical schools.

AUGUSTUS CAESAR

(63 B.C.-14 A.D.)

]

Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus, son of Caius Octavius and Atia (Julius Caesar's niece), was born in 63 B.C. He was the first and greatest of the Roman emperors, in his way perhaps fully as great as his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. The Octavian family came originally from Velitrae, in the country of the Volsci; and the branch to which Augustus belonged was rich and honorable. His father had risen to the rank of senator and praetor, but died in the prime of life, when Augustus was only four years old. Augustus was carefully educated in Rome under the guardianship of his mother and his step-father; and his talents recommended him to his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, who adopted him as his son and heir. At the time of Caesar's assassination (44 B.C.), Augustus was a student under the celebrated orator Apollodorus, at Apollonia in Illyricum, whither, however, he had been sent chiefly to gain practical instruction in military affairs. He returned to Italy, and now first learning that he was his uncle's heir, assumed the name of Julius Caesar Octavianus. The soldiers at Brundusium saluted him as Caesar, but he declined their offers, and entered Rome almost alone. The city was at this time divided between the republicans and the friends of Mark Antony, but the latter, by adroit manoeuvres, had gained the ascendency, and enjoyed almost absolute power. At first, Augustus was haughtily treated by Antony, who refused to surrender Caesar's property; but after some fighting, in which Antony was worsted and forced to flee across the Alps, Augustus, who had made himself a favorite with the people and the army, obtained the consulship and carried out Caesar's will. He found an able advocate in Cicero, who at first had regarded him with contempt. To himself the great orator seemed to be laboring in behalf of the republic, whereas he really was only an instrument for raising Augustus to supreme power. When Antony returned from Gaul with Lepidus, Augustus threw off the republican mask, and joined them in establishing a triumvirate. He obtained Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily; Antony, Gaul; and Lepidus, Spain. Their power was soon made absolute by the massacre of those unfriendly to them in Italy, and by the victory at Philippi over the republicans under Brutus and Cassius. The Perusian war, excited by Fulvia, wife of Antony, seemed likely to lead to a contest between Augustus and his rival; but was ended by Fulvia's death, and the subsequent marriage of Antony with Octavia, sister of Augustus. Shortly afterward the Roman world was divided anew, Augustus taking the western half, and Antony the eastern. The contest for supremacy commenced. While Antony was lost in luxurious dissipation at the court of Cleopatra, Augustus was industriously striving to gain the love and confidence of the Roman people, and to damage his rival in public estimation. War was at length declared against the Egyptian queen, and at the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C.) Augustus was victorious, and became sole ruler of the whole Roman world. Antony soon afterward ended his life by suicide; and Cleopatra, learning of his death and believing that Augustus intended carrying her in chains to Rome, also killed herself, so that Augustus triumphed only over her dead body, which he found awaiting him. Antony's son by Fulvia, and Caesarion, son of Caesar and Cleopatra, were put to death; and in 29 B.C., after regulating affairs in Egypt, Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor, Augustus returned to Rome in triumph, and, closing the temple of Janus, proclaimed universal peace.

His subsequent measures were mild and prudent. To insure popular favor, he abolished the laws of the triumvirate, and reformed many abuses. Hitherto, since Caesar's death, he had been named Octavian; but now the title of Augustus ("sacred" or "consecrated") was conferred on him. In his eleventh consulship (23 B.C.), the tribunician power was granted him for life by the senate. Republican names and forms still remained, but they were mere shadows; and Augustus, in all but name, was absolute monarch. In 21 B.C., on the death of Lepidus, he had the high title of Pontifex Maximus bestowed on him. The nation surrendered to him all the power and honor that it had to give.

After a course of victories in Asia, Spain, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Gaul, etc., Augustus (9 B.C.) suffered the one crushing defeat of his long rule, in the person of Quintilius Varus, whose army was annihilated by the Germans under Hermann. The loss so afflicted Augustus that for some time he allowed his beard and hair to grow, as a sign of deep mourning, and often exclaimed, "O Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!" Thenceforth he confined himself to plans of domestic improvements and reform, and so beautified Rome that it was said, "Augustus found the city built of brick, and left it built of marble." He also built cities in several parts of the empire; and altars were raised by the grateful people to commemorate his beneficence; while by a decree of the senate the name Augustus was given to the month Sextilis.