sent to prison, and prohibition made against proposing any thing of that kind for the future.

In this deplorable condition, Theramenes declared in the assembly, that if he were sent to Lysander, he would know whether the proposal made by the Lacedæmonians for dismantling the city was intended to facilitate its ruin, or to prevent a revolt. The Athenians having deputed him accordingly, he was more than three months absent, no doubt with the view of reducing them by famine to accept any conditions that should be offered. On his return, he told them that Lysander had detained him all that time, and that at last he had been given to understand that he might apply to the Ephori. He was therefore sent back with nine others to Sparta, with full powers to conclude a treaty. When they arrived there, the Ephori gave them audience in the general assembly, where the Corinthians and several other allies, especially the Thebans, insisted that it was absolutely ne cessary to destroy the city, without hearkening any farther to a treaty. But the Lacedæmonians, preferring the glory and safety of Greece to their own grandeur, made answer, that they would never be reproached with having destroyed a city that had rendered such great services to all Greece, the remembrance of which ought to have much greater weight with the allies than the resentiment of private injuries received from it. The peace was therefore concluded under these conditions: "That the fortifications "of the Piræus, with the long wall that joined that port to the city, should "be demolished; that the Athenians should deliver up all their galleys, 12 "only excepted; that they should abandon all the cities they had seized, "and content themselves with their own lands and country; that they "should recal their exiles, and make a league offensive and defensive with "the Lacedæmonians, under whom they should march wherever they "thought fit to lead them."

The deputies on their return, were surrounded with an innumerable throng of people, who apprehended that nothing had been concluded; for they were not able to hold out any longer, such multitudes dying every day famine. The next day they reported the success of their negociation; the treaty was ratified, notwithstanding the opposition of some persons; and Lysander, followed by the exiles, entered the port. It was upon the very day the Athenians had formerly gained the famous naval battle of Salamin. He caused the walls to be demolished to the sound of flutes and trumpets, and with all the exterior marks of triumph and rejoicing, as if all Greece had that day regained its liberty. Thus ended the Peloponnesian war, after having continued during the space of 27 years.

Lysander, without giving the Athenians time to look about them, changed the form of their government entirely, established 30 archons, or rather tyrants, over the city, put a good garrison into the citadel, and left the Spartan Callibius, harmostes, or governour. Agis dismissed his troops. Lysander, before he disbanded his, advanced against Samos, which he pressed so warmly, that it was at last obliged to capitulate. After having established its ancient inhabitants in it, he proposed to return to Sparta with the Lacedæmonian galleys, those of the Piraus, and the beaks of those he had taken.

He had sent Gylippus, who had commanded the army in Sicily, before him, to carry the money and spoils, which were the fruit of his glorious campaigns, to Lacedæmon. The money, without reckoning the innumerable crowns of gold given him by the cities, amounted to 1500 talents, that is to say, 1,500,000 crowns. Gylippus, who carried this considerable

* About SS7,000l. sterling.

sum, could not resist the temptation of converting some part of it to his own use. The bags were sealed up carefully, and did not seem to leave any room for theft. He unsewed them at the bottom, and after having taken out of each of them what money he thought fit, to the amount of 300 talents, he sewed them up again very neatly, and thought himself perfectly safe; but when he arrived at Sparta, the accounts which had been put up in each bag discovered him. To avoid punishment, he banished himself from his country, carrying along with him in all places the disgrace of having sullied, by so base and sordid an avarice, the glory of all his great actions.

From this unhappy example, the wisest and most distinguished of the Spartans, apprehending the all-powerful effects of money, which enslaved not only the vulgar, but even the greatest of men, extremely blamed Lysander for having acted so contradictorily to the fundamental laws of Sparta, and warmly represented to the Ephori, how incumbent it was upon them to banish * all that gold and silver from the republic, and to lay the heaviest curses and imprecations upon it, as the fatal bane of all other states, introduced only to corrupt the wholesome constitution of the Spartan government, which had supported itself for so many ages with vigour and prosperity. The Ephori immediately passed a decree to proscribe that money, and ordained that none should be current, except the usual pieces of iron. But Lysander's friends opposed this decree, and sparing no pains to retain the gold and silver in Sparta, the affair was referred for further deliberation. There naturally seemed only two methods to be considered, which were, either to make the gold and silver species current, or to cry them down and prohibit them absolutely. The men of address and policy found out a third expedient, which in their sense reconciled both the others with great success: this was wisely to choose the mean betwixt the vicious extremes of too much rigour and too much neglect. It was therefore resolved, that the new coin of gold and silver should be solely employed by the public treasury; that it should only pass in the occasions and uses of the state; and that every private person in whose possession it should be found should be immediately put to death.

A strange expedient, says Plutarch! As if Lycurgus had feared the species of gold and silver, and not the avarice they occasion; and avarice, less to be extinguished by prohibiting to particulars the possession of it, than inflamed by permitting the state to amass and make use of it for the service of the public; for it was impossible, whilst that money was in honour and esteem with the public, that it should be despised in private as useless, and that people should look upon that as of no value in their domestic affairs which the city prized, and were so much concerned to have it for its occasions; bad usages, authorized by the practice and example of the public, being a thousand times more dangerous to particulars than the vices of particulars to the public. The Lacedæmonians therefore, continues Plutarch, in punishing those with death who should make use of the new money in private, were so blind and imprudent as to imagine, that the placing of the law and the terror of punishment as a guard at the door, was sufficient to prevent gold and silver from entering the house: they left the hearts of their citizens open to the desire and admiration of riches, and introduced themselves a violent passion for amassing treasure, in causing it to be deemed a great and honourable thing to become rich.

It was about the end of the Peloponnesian war, that Darius Nothus,

*Αποδιοπομπείσθαι παν το αργύριον, καὶ το χρυσίον ωσπερ κήρας επαγωγικές. † A. M. 3800. Ant. J. C. 401.

king of Persia died, after a reign of 19 years. Cyrus had arrived at the court before his death, and Parysatis his mother, whose idol he was, not contented with having made his peace, notwithstanding the faults he had committed in his government, pressed the old king to declare him his successor also, after the example of Darius the first, who gave Xerxes the preference before all his brothers, because born, as Cyrus was, after his father's accession to the throne. But Darius did not carry his complaisance for her so far. He gave the crown to Arsaces, his eldest son by Parysatis also, whom Plutarch calls Arsicas, and bequeathed only to Cyrus the provinces he had already.

BOOK IX.

THE

HISTORY

OF THE

PERSIANS AND GRECIANS,

CONTINUED DURING THE

FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS OF THE REIGN OF ARTAXERXES MNEMOM.

CHAPTER I.

THIS chapter contains the domestic troubles of the court of Persia; the

death of Alcibiades; the re-establishment of the liberty of Athens; and Lysander's secret designs to make himself king.

CORONATION OF ARTAXERXES

SECTION I.

MNEMON.-CYRUS ATTEMPTS TO ASSASSINHIS BROTHER.-REVENGE OF STATIRA.-DEATH AND CHARACTER OF ALCIBIADES.

ATE

ARSACES, upon ascending the throne, assumed the name of Artaxerxes, the same to whom the Greeks gave the surname of * MNEMON, from his prodigious memory. † Being near his father's bed when he was dying, he asked him a few moments before he expired, what had been the rule of his conduct during so long and happy a reign as his, that he might make it his example. "It has been," replied he, "to do always what justice "and religion required of me." Words of deep sense, and well worthy of being set up in letters of gold in the palaces of kings, to keep them perpetually in mind of what ought to be the guide and rule of all their actions. It is not uncommon for princes to give excellent instructions to their children on their death-beds which would be more efficacious if preceded by their own example and conduct; without which they are as weak and impotent as the sick man who gives them, and seldom survive him long.

* Which word signifies in the Greek, one of a good memory. † A. M. 3600. Ant. J. C. 404. Athen. 1. xii p. 458.

VOL. II.

30

*Soon after Darius' death, the new king set out from his capital for the city of Pasargades, in order to his coronation, according to custom, by the priests of Persia. There was in that city a temple of the goddess who presided in war, in which the coronation was solemnized. It was attended with very singular ceremonies, which no doubt had some mysterious sense; though Plutarch does not explain it. The prince at his consecration took off his robe in the temple, and put on that worn by the ancient Cyrus before he came to the throne, which was preserved in that place with great veneration. After that he ate a dry fig, chewed some leaves of the turpentine tree, and drank a draught composed of milk and vinegar. This might signify, that the sweets of sovereign power are mingled with the sours of care and disquiet, and that if the throne be surrounded with pleasures and honours, it is also attended with pains and anxieties. It seems sufficiently evident, that the design in putting the robes of Cyrus upon the new king was to make him understand that he should also clothe his mind with the great qualities and exalted virtues of that prince.

Young Cyrus, whose soul was all ambition, was in despair upon being for ever prevented from ascending a throne his mother had given him, and on seeing the sceptre, which he thought his right, transferred into the hand of his brother. The blackest crimes cost the ambitious nothing. Cyrus resolved to assassinate Artaxerxes in the temple itself, and in the presence of the whole court, just when he took off his own to put on the robe of Cyrus. Artaxerxes was apprized of this design by the priest himself, who had educated his brother, to whom he had imparted it. Cyrus was seized, and condemned to die, when his mother Parysatis, almost out of her senses, flew to the place, clasped him in her arms, tied herself to him with the tresses of her hair, fastened her neck to his, and by her shrieks, and tears, and prayers, prevailed so far as to obtain his pardon, and that he should be sent back to his government of the maritime provinces. He carried thither with him an ambition no less ardent than before, was animated besides with resentment of the check he had received, and the warm desire of revenge, and armed with an almost unbounded power. Artaxerxes upon this occasion acted contrary to the most common rules of policy, which do not admit the nourishing and enflaming by extraordinary honours the pride and haughtiness of a bold and enterprising young prince like Cyrus, who had carried his personal enmity to his brother so far as to have resolved to assassinate him with his own hand, and whose ambition for empire was so great as to employ the most criminal methods for the attainment of its end.

Artaxerxes had espoused Statira. Scarce had her husband ascended the throne, when she employed the power her beauty gave her over him, to avenge the death of her brother Teriteuchmes. History has not a more tragical scene, nor a more monstrous complication of adultery, incest, and murder; which, after having occasioned great disorders in the royal family, terminated at length in the most fatal manner to all who had any share in it. But it is necessary, for the reader's knowledge of the fact, to trace it from the beginning.

Hidarnes, Statira's father, a Persian of very great quality, was governour of one of the principal provinces of the empire. Statira was a lady

*Plut. in Artax. p. 1012.

A city of Persia built by Cyrus the Great.

Ne quis mobiles adolescentium animos præmaturis honoribus ad superbiam extolleret. Tacit. Annal, l. iv. c. 17.

Etes. c. li. lv.