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gine that the victorious general who had lately | federacy was to protect the Greeks in the isldefeated the power of Persia was able to re- ands and the coasts of the Egean from the agstore it. He eagerly caught at the new hopegression of the Persians, and to weaken and held out to him, and sent Artabazus to take the humble the barbarians. All who shared the government of the satrapy which included the benefit were to contribute, according to the provinces on the northwest coast of Asia, and measure of their ability, to the common end: was called the Dascylian, from the Bithynian Athens was to collect their forces, to wield and town Dascylium, where the satrap held his direct them, not, however, with absolute and court, that he might keep up an active corre-arbitrary power, but as the organ of the public spondence with the Spartan in Byzantium, and will, possessing only the influence and authorsupply him with money and every other aid.ity due to the greater sacrifices she made to When Pausanias learned that his treachery the common cause. Least of all was she to inwas welcome to Xerxes, he began to act as if terfere in the constitution and internal adminno farther obstacle lay in his way, and as if it istration of any of the allied cities. All were was scarcely necessary any longer to dissemble to be independent of her and of each other, exhis intentions. Happily, the extreme of rash-cept so far as they were bound together by the ness is nowhere more commonly found than in same danger and the same interest. Aristides cases where the consciousness of evil thoughts executed the difficult and delicate task of fixing might have been expected to suggest the most the assessments of the numerous members of watchful caution and the closest reserve. He the confederacy, so as to satisfy all, without inassumed the state of a Persian satrap, imitated curring even a suspicion of having turned one the luxury and the fashions of the barbarians in among so many opportunities of gain to his his table and in his dress, and, as if with the own advantage. Perhaps other Greeks might intention that the bent of his views might be also have resisted the temptation: he seems to the more clearly understood, he journeyed have been the only one that was acknowledged through Thrace, escorted by a guard of Per- to be above calumny. Some of the allies were sians and Egyptians. His folly, had it been to furnish money: the more powerful were to confined to this, might not have been attended equip ships. The whole amount of the yearly with consequences deeply affecting any but contribution was settled at 460 talents, about himself; by carrying it one step farther, he be- 115,000 pounds. Delos, the ancient centre of came the occasion of a very important revolu- Ionian commerce and religion, was chosen for tion. In his vision of greatness he forgot the the treasury of the confederates, and its temple tics by which he was still bound, and gave vent as the place where their deputies were to hold to his ambitious hopes in arrogance and harsh- their congress. ness towards the freemen over whom he held a responsible command. He chastised slight faults with severe and degrading punishments; made himself difficult of access, and terrified or incensed those who obtained an interview with him by his violence and peevishness. The Jonians, who had just asserted their independence, were provoked by treatment worse than they had commonly experienced from their barbarian governors. On the other hand, the Athe-val, that they must be content with a subordinian generals displayed qualities which were the more winning from their contrast with the character and deportment of the Spartan commander; and their new allies could not help reflecting how much happier would have been their condition if they had been subject to the mild and equitable Aristides, the generous and gentle Cimon. This, too, seemed to be what nature and reason prescribed; for Athens, not Sparta, was the parent to whom most owed their origin. So the wish gradually ripened into a resolution; and the unanimous voice of all the confederates, except the Peloponnesian states and Egina, called upon the Athenians to accept the supremacy of rank and authority in the common affairs of the alliance which had hitherto been enjoyed by Sparta.

It was Aristides who had the glory of establishing his country in this honourable and wellearned pre-eminence, as his personal character had been most instrumental towards inspiring the confidence on which it was founded. After ascertaining that the proposal of the Ionians was the result, not of hasty passion, but of a settled purpose, he undertook the task, which was intrusted to him by general consent, of regulating the laws of the union, and of its subordination to Athens. The object of the con

In the mean while, complaints had reached Sparta of the conduct of Pausanias, and rumours of his meditated treason. The ephors immediately recalled him, and sent out other commanders, among whom Dorcis is named, with a small force. But this step had been taken too late the islanders and the Asiatic Greeks were irrevocably lost to Sparta, and Dorcis and his colleagues found, on their arri

nate rank. This was repugnant alike to the pride and the policy of Sparta; and, as she could not undo what had happened, or recover her station, she retired from the field where her rival was now triumphant, with the less reluctance, as it was not that on which she could hope to reap honour or advantage. Her forces were withdrawn; and henceforth, in the room of the single general confederacy of the Greeks, of which she had been the head, two separate associations divided between them the whole strength of the nation ;* for, as that over which Athens presided was foreign to Sparta, so her sway was exclusively acknowledged by her Peloponnesian allies, whom the rising power

* Mueller, Dor., i., 9, 7, and Prolegom., p. 412, takes an entirely different view of this transaction. He conceives Sparta not to have considered herself as having parted with her ancient ascendency, but only as having transferred the prosecution of the war in Asia, and the management of the concerns relating to it, as a commission, to the Athenians, whom she regarded as still subject to her supremacy. That this was for a time the tone at Sparta, and even the way in which the matter was viewed there, is probable enough; it appeared at Athens. In the passage of his work on the but the question still is, how it really stood, and in what light Dorians, i., 9, 7, Mueller's brevity would deceive a reader who did not consult Thucydides; for, omitting all mention voluntarily abandoning the Asiatic war as soon as she found of the expedition under Dorcis, he represents Sparta as

it necessary to recall Pausanias.

of Athens and the Ionian confederacy united now let in to the highest dignity of the state. more closely than ever round their ancient lead- This change had in some degree been prepared er. Thus Sparta had fallen back into her ori-by the gradual alterations that had taken place ginal sphere, while Athens had risen into a new since the time of Solon in the value of property, one, which nature had evidently destined her which rendered the archonship accessible to a to fill. It might have seemed that no turn of much more numerous body than the old lawevents could have been more favourable to the giver ventured to admit into it. Aristides himtranquillity of Greece than one which placed self was archon, though his fortune was beeach of these states in the situation most con- low mediocrity. But the admission of the lowgenial to its habits and character, and assigned est class evidently rested on a different ground: to each the functions which it was best quali- on the supposition that every Athenian citizen fied to discharge, enabling the one without in- was entitled, by his birth alone, to aspire to terruption to pursue its hereditary round, and every office in the state which did not, from its watch over the stability of the national institu- nature, render the possession of a certain share tions, and furnishing the active spirit of the of wealth necessary for the security of the pubother with constant employment in repelling or lic, as those which concerned the custody or attacking the common enemy. Perhaps even expenditure of public money; and, certainly, if a statesman would not have deserved the re-there was ever a time in the history of Athens proach of shortsightedness who had cherished when a statesman like Aristides might have the pleasing hope that this happy distribution, thought that justice required the acknowledgso peaceably effected, might have prevented ment of this principle, it was after the heroic them from coming into hostile conflict, or, at exertions that all classes had made in the Perleast, might have averted the danger of their sian wars; and there may have been many instrength being wasted in a long struggle with stances of families reduced from affluence to each other; and if political affairs had ever poverty by the misfortunes of the times, and been regulated by the pure light of reason, such even by their own patriotic sacrifices, which, hopes might have been fulfilled. By what pas- by calling aloud for particular exceptions to the sions this fair prospect was overclouded, and law, where it manifestly tended to exclude the how the equipoise between the two powers be-most deserving, may have seemed to show the came the cause through which they at length wisdom and equity of abolishing the distinction ground each other to dust, will be the subject altogether. If, however, we adopt the other of the ensuing part of this history. An entirely view which Plutarch suggests, and suppose Arnew period begins from the epoch at which we istides to have been moved, not only or chiefly have now arrived, and new actors come for- by the merit of the people, but by his conviction ward on the scene; and though the public life of the necessity of the measure, we may easily of the men who principally contributed to bring conceive that such a necessity may have beabout the new order of things is not precisely come apparent, not, perhaps, immediately after terminated by this point of time, yet what re- the return from Platea, but after Themistocles mains of their career belongs so much more to had formed a new population in Piræus, dependbiography than to history, that the clearness of ing entirely on maritime pursuits, and, conseour narrative seems likely to gain, if we antici-quently, on the labour of the Thetes who manpate a little the course of events, and immedi-ned the fleet, and disposed to scorn, as antiquaately subjoin the later occurrences of their livested prejudices, the opinions that may still have to the transactions which made their names memorable, and which give their private fortunes a claim to our attention.

prevailed in the upper city in favour of artificial distinctions. At all events, the change could not have been long delayed after the Athenian people had assumed the rank it acquired as chief of the Ionian confederacy, for then all minute shades of dignity were lost in the new lustre of the Athenian name; and how hard must it have seemed to exclude from the honours of the Republic the class on which its maritime supremacy was mainly founded?

The regulation of the Ionian confederacy was the greatest work of Aristides, and as it was that which displayed the noblest features of his character in the clearest light, so it is the last we hear of. It is possible, however, that it may have preceded, and have had some share in producing a change in the Athenian Constitution, of which he is said to have been the Aristides lived to see the order he had estabchief mover, and which, according to Plutarch, lished in the confederacy, for the benefit both he introduced immediately after the battle of of the members and their head, broken, as will Platea. He threw down the barrier of privi-be hereafter mentioned, in a material point, by lege which separated the highest of Solon's a violation of the original compact, which he classes from the lower, by opening the archon-condemned, but could not prevent. The close ship, and, consequently, the council of Areop-of his life is so obscure that it is not certain agus, to the poorest of the citizens. Such, at whether he died in or out of Athens; but it least, is the description Plutarch gives of the innovation; and though in other cases there may be ground to suspect that some of the steps which separated successive stages in the development of the democracy at Athens have been overlooked, and that changes which occupied a whole period have been crowded to gether without any interval in the same epoch. it seems certain that this measure of Aristides had really the extent that is commonly ascribed to it, and that the fourth class, the Thetes, vere

seems clear that he preserved to the last the unabated respect of his countrymen. He died poor; his fortune, small at first, was probably diminished, since it was not augmented, by his public employments. It was, perhaps, only a rhetorical exaggeration to say that he did not leave behind him wherewith to defray his funeral, though his monument was built at the public charge; but it is beyond a doubt that his posterity for several generations were pensioned by the state: a fact which, though it may

not prove their utter indigence, any more than I would probably have bathed Sparta in blood, similar rewards in modern times, may in Athens be admitted as a sufficient proof that their ancestor was believed to have deserved well of his country.

and have established a tyranny no less odious than the government which it overthrew, and more dangerous to the liberties of Greece; its end would perhaps have been a counter-revolution, which would have plunged the emancipated slaves into aggravated wretchedness. But it seems to have been as improvidently concerted as it was recklessly adopted. It was betrayselves, probably because they saw that it was hopeless and ruinous. But even on this information the ephors forbore to act, exercising, Thucydides observes, their usual caution in requiring unquestionable proofs before they proceeded to extremities with a Spartan, and, per

Very different was the end of the two men with whom Aristides had shared some of his most glorious days. Pausanias, recalled to Sparta, was subjected to a severe inquiry, and to various charges for injuries inflicted on indi-ed to the ephors by some of the Helots themviduals under his command. On some of these he was convicted and condemned to slight penalties; but for the gravest accusation, that of correspondence with the barbarians, no evidence was brought to light that could ground more than a very strong suspicion. It was dropped. But Pausanias found himself trans-haps, reluctant to divulge so dangerous a charge. ported from a high and splendid station to an They therefore dissembled their suspicions till obscure and narrow sphere, where he was fetter- chance converted them into certainty, or suped by many irksome restraints, and surrounded plied them with evidence which they could safeby watchful and jealous observers. Unable to ly produce. Pausanias continued his correendure the change, and having no prospect of spondence with Persia; but he used the precauobtaining a release from his domestic thraldom tion of desiring the Persian satrap to put to by another foreign command, he cast aside the death the bearers of his letters. He at length authority of the ephors, and without their leave selected a Spartan, named Argilius, whom he quitted Sparta, and embarked in a vessel of Her- had already employed more than once in his mione for Byzantium. That city was still in treasonable negotiations, to execute one of the hands of his creature Gongylus, an Eretrian, these fatal commissions. The suspicions of whom he had employed in his negotiation with Argilius were awakened; he counterfeited the Xerxes, and had left in his place when he obey-seal of Pausanias, opened the letter intrusted ed the call of the ephors. On his arrival he re-to him, and found his apprehensions confirmed newed his treasonable practices, and the Athe-by the contents. As he had enjoyed a peculiar nians, who saw through them, compelled him degree of intimacy with Pausanias, his resentto leave Byzantium. He then retired to Colonæ ment was roused by the indifference with which in Troas, where he took so little pains to dis- he proposed to sacrifice his life to his selfish guise his criminal intrigues, that a report of fears, and he revealed the secret to the ephors. them was soon brought to Sparta, and he was They now hesitated no longer, and devised a once more interrupted in his dreams of great-plan for the conviction and punishment of the ness by a short message from the ephors, bid- traitor, which was executed in the following ding him follow the bearer under pain of being manner : proclaimed a public enemy. As his plans were far from ripe, and as he could scarcely hope to mature them in the condition of an exile and an outlaw, he obeyed the command, and returned to Sparta. On his arrival, he was thrown into prison, as a punishment, it would appear, for having gone abroad without leave; but he soon obtained his liberty, and demanded a trial. Still, however, the ephors had not procured evidence of his treason, such as would warrant them in proceeding to the last extremity against a man of his rank; again they let the affair drop: and if Pausanias could have remained at rest, he might still have lived secure, and have died without infamy; but he had gone too far in a maze of guilt and folly to stop or to recede. He conceived the design of exciting an insurrection among the Helots, of putting himself at its head, and of maintaining his usurped station by the aid of Persia. The thought of enlarging the narrow system of Lycurgus, of raising the oppressed and degraded serfs into a free commonalty, of admitting the free population of Laconia to a share in the political rights of the Spartans, and for this purpose of breaking the power of the ephors, and restoring the ancient authority of the heroic kings, would have been one worthy of a greater man than Pausanias in his best days. But no one will suppose that justice and humanity prompted his enterprise any more than Napoleon's decree for the abolition of the slave trade. His plan, if it had succeeded, VOL. I.-Oo

On the Peninsula of Tænarus, at the southern verge of Laconia, was a celebrated temple of Poseidon, a revered asylum. Here Argilius took refuge, and within the sacred precincts raised a temporary hovel, divided into two apartments by a thin partition, behind which he concealed some of the ephors, in expectation that Pausanias would soon come to inquire the motive of his conduct. Pausanias came. Argilius reminded him of his past services, of the fidelity and discretion with which he had carried his messages to the Persians, and reproached him with his ingratitude. Pausanias acknowledged the justice of his complaints, and endeavoured to soothe his anger by the most solemn assurances that he should be exposed to no danger in discharging his commission. When the ephors had heard the confession of his guilt from his own mouth, they took measures for arresting him on his return to Sparta in the open street. But as they advanced in a body to apprehend him, his conscience took the alarm at a warning gesture of a friendly member of the college, and he fled to the sanctuary of Athené Chalciœcus,* and took shelter in one of the detached buildings enclosed within the hallowed precincts. To reconcile the claims of justice as far as possible with the respect due to the sacred asylum, the building was unroofed, while the entrance was blocked up, and its *So called from the brass plates with which her temple was lined.

approaches carefully guarded. The aged moth- which are forfeited if they are not disclaimed. er of the criminal is said to have been among After the battle of Salamis, and while the terror the foremost to lay a stone at the doorway for of the invasion was still fresh, his influence at the purpose of immuring her son. When he Athens was predominant, and his power, consewas on the point of expiring, and too weak to quently, great wherever the ascendency of offer any resistance which would have rendered Athens was acknowledged; and he did not althe act sacrilegious, he was taken out of the ways scruple to convert the glory, with which consecrated ground just in time to avoid the he ought to have been satisfied, into a source of pollution which his death would have occasion- petty profit. Immediately after the retreat of ed in it; he breathed his last as soon as he had Xerxes he exacted contributions from the islcrossed its bounds. It was not without some anders who had sided with the barbarians, as opposition that his friends obtained permission the price of diverting the resentment of the to pay the last honours to his remains; the Greeks from them. Another opportunity of ensterner patriots were for throwing his body, as riching himself he found in the factions by that of a vile malefactor, into the Ceadas. But which many of the maritime states were divias this proposal was immediately overruled, so ded. Almost everywhere there was a party or in time the recollection of his services seems to individuals who needed the aid of his authority, have softened the indignation inspired by his and were willing to purchase his mediation. guilt, and to have rendered his fate a subject, That he sold it, and without nicely distinguishfirst of compassion and regret, and at length of ing the merits of the cases, we learn from the inreligious compunction. The Delphic oracle or- vectives, indeed, of an enemy, but of one whose dered an atonement to be made to him, and to enmity seems to have been provoked by the acthe goddess whose protection he had vainly tion which is the ground of his complaint. A sought. By its direction his bones were remo- Rhodian poet, Timocreon of Ialysus, celebrated ved to the spot near the precincts of the temple among his contemporaries for the powers of his where he expired;* and as two persons were appetite, the strength of his body, and the bitto be surrendered to the goddess in the room of terness of his verse, which were commemorathe suppliant she had lost, two brazen statues ted in his epitaph by Simonides, had been uniof Pausanias were dedicated in her sanctuary ted by ties of friendship and hospitality to TheYet as the profanation was thus divinely attest- mistocles, and had expected, as he gave out, ed, while the mode of expiation was only sug upon the faith of a promise, to be restored to gested by human ingenuity, room was still left, his country when his friend became all powerif not for religious scruples, at least for the re-ful in Greece. But the bribes, as he alleged, proach of an enemy, that the land had never been freed from the curse of sacrilege; and a time came when the hypocrisy of Sparta rendered such an accusation a just retort.

The fate of Pausanias involved that of Themistocles. No Greek had yet rendered services such as those of Themistocles to the common country; no Athenian, except Solon, had conferred equal benefits on Athens. He had first delivered her from the most imminent danger, and then raised her to the pre-eminence on which she now stood. He might claim her greatness, and even her being, as his work. Themistocles was not unconscious of this merit, nor careful to suppress his sense of it; he was thought to indicate it too plainly when he dedicated a temple to Artemis under the title of Aristobule (the goddess of good counsel); and the offence was aggravated if he himself placed his statue there, where it was still seen in the days of Plutarch, who pronounces the form no less heroic than the soul of the man. In the same spirit are several stories related by Plutarch of the indiscretion with which he sometimes alluded to the magnitude of the debt which his countrymen owed him. If, on one occasion, he asked them where they would have been without him, and, on another, compared himself to a spreading plane, under which they had taken shelter in the storm, but which they began to lop and rend when the sky grew clear, he would seem not to have discovered, till it was too late, that there are obligations which neither princes nor nations can endure, and

* Εν τῷ προτεμενίσματι. This could not have been within the sanctuary (rò tepov), since Thucydides says just before that he was taken out of it. But Dr. Arnold's remark," that a dead body would not have been buried within the sacred ground," requires limitation, as appears from the case of Euchidas above mentioned, Plut., Arist., 20.

of his adversaries, prevailed with Themistocles against him, and he continued to pine in exile. He avenged his wrongs by a poetical complaint, in which he contrasted the virtues of Aristides with the perfidy, avarice, and cruelty of Themistocles, who for sordid gain had betrayed his friend, and for three talents had consented to do the will of those who bought him, and to banish or recall, to kill or spare at their pleasure. It is the more credible that there was real ground for this charge, since Aristides could reproach his rival with not knowing how to command his hands while he had the disposal of the public money; and he unquestionably accumulated extraordinary wealth on a less than moderate fortune.*

But if he made some enemies by his selfishness, he provoked others, whose resentment proved more formidable, by his firm and enlightened patriotism. He was zealous and vigilant in protecting the interests of Athens against the encroachments of Sparta, and the success of these exertions contributed more to his downfall than any of his misdeeds. Sparta never forgave him the shame he brought upon her by thwarting her insidious attempt to suppress the independence of her rival; and he farther exasperated her animosity by detecting and baffling another stroke of her artful policy. The Spartans proposed to punish the states which had aided the barbarians, or had abandoned the cause of Greece, by depriving them of the right of being represented in the Amphictyonic Congress. By this measure, Argos,

*"A great part of his property was secretly conveyed into Asia by his friends, but that part which was discovered and confiscated is estimated by Theopompus ut a hundred talents, by Theophrastus at eighty; though, before ho engaged in public affairs, all he possessed did not amount to so much as three talents." Plut., Them., 25.

more solid foundation for it than what Plutarch relates that Pausanias, when he saw Themistocles banished, believing that he would embrace any opportunity of avenging himself on his ungrateful country, opened his project to him in a letter. Themistocles thought it the scheme of a madman, but one which he was not bound and had no inducement to reveal. He may have written, though his prudence renders it improbable, something that implied his knowledge of the secret. But his cause was never submitted to an impartial tribunal: his enemies were in possession of the public mind at Athens, and officers were sent with the Spartans, who tendered their assistance, to arrest him and bring him to Athens, where, in the prevailing disposition of the people, almost inevitable death awaited him. This he foresaw, and determined to avoid. In Peloponnesus he could no longer hope to find a safe refuge: he sought it first in Corcyra, which was indebted to him for his friendly mediation in a dispute with Corinth about the Leucadian peninsula, and had by his means obtained the object it contended for. The Corcyræans, however will

Thebes, and the northern states, which had hitherto composed the majority in that assembly, would have been excluded from it, and the effect would probably have been that Spartan influence would have preponderated there. Themistocles frustrated this attempt by throwing the weight of Athens into the opposite scale, and by pointing out the danger of reducing the council to an instrument in the hands of two or three of its most powerful members. The enmity which he thus drew upon himself would have been less honourable to him if there had been any ground for a story which apparently was never heard of till it became current among some late collectors of anecdotes, from whom Plutarch received it: it has been popular, because it seemed to illustrate the contrast between the characters of Themistocles and Aristides, and to display the magnanimity of the Athenians. Themistocles is made to tell the Athenians that he has something to propose which will be highly beneficial to the commonwealth, but which must not be divulged. The people depute Aristides to hear the secret, and to judge of the merit of the proposal. Themistocles discloses a plan for firing the allied fleeting, were unable to shelter him from the united at Pegasæ, or, according to another form of the atory adopted by Cicero, the Lacedæmonian fleet at Gythium. Upon this, Aristides reports to the assembled people that nothing could be more advantageous to Athens than the counsel of Themistocles, but nothing more dishonourable and unjust. The generous people reject the proffered advantage without even being tempted to inquire in what it consists.

power of Athens and Sparta, and he crossed over to the opposite coast of Epirus. He had little time to deliberate, and perhaps he had no better choice. A year sooner, the court of Hiero, Gelo's successor, might have seemed to present a pleasant and secure asylum; though if it is true that Themistocles had instigated the multitude at Olympia to tear down the pavilion erected there in Hiero's name during the Themistocles was gradually supplanted in games, and to exclude his horses from the conthe public favour by men worthy, indeed, to be test, he would have debarred himself from seekhis rivals, but who owed their victory less to ing the protection of the man on whom he had their own merit than to the towering pre-emi- drawn this insult. But Hiero died the year nence of his deserts. He himself, as we have before (B.C. 467), and about the time of the observed, seconded them by his indiscretion in flight of Themistocles, Syracuse was in the their endeavours to persuade the people that he midst of the convulsion by which she shook off had risen too high above the common level to the yoke of Hiero's worthless successor, Thraremain a harmless citizen in a free state; that sybulus. The Molossians, the most powerful his was a case which called for the extraordi- people of Epirus, were now ruled by a king nary remedy prescribed by the laws, against named Admetus, whose descendants claimed the power and greatness of an individual which the son of Achilles as their ancestor, and the threatened to overlay the young democracy. founder of their dynasty. The royal family had He was condemned to temporary exile by the at least a tinge of Greek manners and arts, same process of ostracism which he had him- which distinguished them from their barbarian self before directed against Aristides. He took subjects. But Themistocles, in the day of his up his abode at Argos, which he had served in power, had thwarted the Molossian prince in a his prosperity, and which welcomed, if not the suit which he had occasion to make to the saviour of Greece, at least the enemy of Sparta. Athenians, and had added insult to his disapHere he was still residing, though he occasion-pointment. It might therefore seem a despeally visited other cities of Peloponnesus, when Pausanias was convicted of his treason. In searching for farther traces of his plot, the ephers found some parts of a correspondence between him and Themistocles, which appeared to afford sufficient ground for charging the Athenian with having shared his friend's crime. They immediately sent ambassadors to Athens to accuse him, and to insist that he should be punished in like manner with the partner of his guilt. It does not appear that the documents on which the charge was founded, or any evidence of the fact beyond the assertion of the envoys, was transmitted to Athens. Thucydides does not express any opinion as to the truth or falsehood of the accusation; but, at the utmost, we have no reason to believe that there was any

rate resolution to seek his court as a suppliant; yet, if Themistocles had already formed the design of crossing over to Asia, and his road lay through the dominions of Admetus, there may have been less of boldness than of prudence in the step. The king was fortunately absent from home when the stranger arrived at his gate, and his queen Phthia, in whom no vindictive feelings stifled her womanly compassion, received him with kindness, and instructed him in the most effectual method of disarming her husband's resentment and securing his protection. When Admetus returned he found The

The story, though mentioned by Plutarch on the auly the same that is told of the orator Lysias and the elder thority of Theophrastus, seems doubtful, because it is nearDionysius.

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