X. the Persian wars. He left some poems, of which CHAP. considerable fragments remain, filled with moral and political maxims and reflections. We gather from them, that the oligarchy, which followed the period of anarchy, had been unable to keep its ground; and that a new revolution had taken place, by which the poet, with others of the aristocratical party, had been stript of his fortune and driven into exile. He appears to have been a man of rank; and speaks of the warm reception he had met with at Sparta, and in other foreign lands into which he had wandered, which however could not soothe his impatient longing to return to his country, and be revenged on his political adversaries, whose blood he wishes to drink.2 Yet his keen sense of his personal sufferings is almost absorbed in the vehement grief and indignation with which he contemplates the state of Megara the triumph of the bad (his usual term for the commonalty), and the degradation of the good (the members of the old aristocracy). Sometimes he speaks as one divided between the hope and the fear, that some new tyrant may make himself master of the city; and then, as if such an usurper had already appeared, charges him to trample on the senseless people, to strike it with the sharp goad, and to plant the hard yoke on its neck. But his complaints betray a fact which throws some doubt on the purity of his patriotism, and abates our sympathy for his misfortunes. It is not merely the licence and insolence of the bad that provoke his invectives, but the growing corruption and degeneracy of the good; many of whom, it appears, had so far relaxed the rigour of their aristocratical principles as to mingle their blood with that of wealthy upstarts. Hence, he complains, such confusion had arisen that it was difficult to distinguish the good from the bad : Welcker, p. xvi. 2 τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν· (v. 785. Welck.) 3 v. 717. CHAP. X. Bootia. the people in Megara was no longer the same; for the class which in the good old times had worn the goatskin as the badge of its condition, and had kept aloof from the city, as a stag from the haunts of men, was now admitted into assemblies and courts, to take a part in the business of making and administering the laws.1 Hence it would seem, that the party to which the poet belonged did not comprehend all, nor perhaps even the greater part, of those who by birth and station had the same title to political privileges with himself; and that, while he insisted on maintaining the ancient barrier of law or custom, which separated the families of the noble caste from those of the lower order, there were others who had sacrificed their prejudices on this head, not, it may be, to any sordid motives, but to their conviction that, without this concession, there could be no prospect of union or peace. If his exile was caused or prolonged by his resistance to such salutary innovations, however we may respect his firmness, we cannot think highly of his wisdom. The peculiar circumstances under which Boeotia was conquered, by a people who had quitted their native land to avoid slavery or subjection, would be sufficient to account for the fact that royalty was very early abolished there. It may indeed be doubted whether the chief named Xanthus, who is called king, sometimes of the Boeotians, sometimes of the Thebans, and who was slain by the Attic king Melanthus, was any thing more than a temporary leader. The most sacred functions of the Theban kings seem to have been transferred to a magistrate, who bore the title of Archon, and, like the Archon-king at Athens, was invested rather with a priestly than a civil character. From the death of Xanthus, down to about 500 B. C., the constitution of Thebes continued rigidly aristocratical, having probably been guarded from innova 1 v. 19. CHAP. X. of Philolaus tion as well by the inland position of the city as by the jealousy of the rulers; and the first change, of which we have any account, was one which threw the government into still fewer hands. But, about the thirteenth olympiad, it seems as if discontent had arisen, among the members of the ruling caste itself, from the inequality in the division of property, which had perhaps been increased by lapse of time, until some of them were reduced to indigence. Not long Legislation after that olympiad, Philolaus, one of the Corinthian at Thebes. Bacchiads, having been led by a private occurrence to take up his residence at Thebes, was invited to frame a new code of laws; and one of the main objects of his institutions was to prevent the accumulation of estates, and to fix for ever the number of those into which the Theban territory, or at least the part of it occupied by the nobles, was divided. This object was intimately connected with another, which is not indeed distinctly described, but seems to be indicated by the peculiar title of his laws. It may be collected that he aimed, on the one hand, at preserving the number of families, by some provision for the adoption of children; and, on the other, at limiting the number of individuals in each family, by establishing a legal mode of relieving indigent parents from the support of their offspring. He too was perhaps the author of the law which excluded every Theban from public offices who had exercised any trade within the space of ten years.3 It is probable enough that his code also embraced regulations for the education of the higher class of citizens; and it may have been he who, with the view, as Plutarch supposes, of softening the harshness of the Baotian character, or to counterbalance an excessive fondness for gymnastic exercises, 1 Nóuoi OETIKоí. Aristot. Pol. ii. 12. 2 Elian, ii. 7. The subject of this law, which is probably not accurately described by Elian, seems to afford sufficient ground for ascribing it to Philolaus. 3 Aristot. Pol. iii. 5. CHAP. X. Boeotian confede racy. to which the Thebans were prone, made music an essential part of the instruction of youth. We hear of another Theban law, which imposed certain restrictions on painters and sculptors in the design or execution of their works 2; but, if this was in any way connected with the legislation of Philolaus, its real meaning appears to be lost.3 Our information on the other Baotian towns is still scantier as to their internal condition; but we may safely presume that it did not differ very widely from that of Thebes, especially as we happen to know that at Thespiæ every kind of industrious occupation was deemed degrading to a freeman : an indication of aristocratical rigour which undoubtedly belongs to this period, and may be taken as a sample of the spirit prevailing in Boeotia. The Baotian states were united in a confederacy which was represented by a congress of deputies, who met at the festival of the Pambaotia, in the temple of the Itonian Athené, near Coronea, more perhaps for religious than for political purposes. There were also other national councils, which deliberated on peace and war, and were perhaps of nearly equal antiquity, though they were first mentioned at a later period, when there were four of them. It does not appear how they were constituted, or whether with reference to as many divisions of the country, of which we have no other trace. The chief magistrates of the league, called Bootarchs, presided in these councils, and commanded the national forces. They were, in later times at least, elected annually, and rigidly restricted to their term of office. The ancient festival of the Plut. Pelop. 19. Elian, iv. 4. * Mueller, who ( Orchom. p. 408.) refers it to Philolaus, seems to have been too much swayed by a saying of Alcidamas, quoted by Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 23.), that Thebes flourished when philosophers were its leading men (πроσтáтαι). But it is much more probable that this was an allusion to Epaminondas than to Philolaus. If the law was meant to interdict caricatures, such as Bupalus made of Hipponax, the age of Philolaus seems too early for it. 4 Heracl. Pont. 42. 5 Thục. v. 38. Dædala, in which, at the end of a cycle of sixty years, early to have had the privilege of appointing two, one CHAP. X. tribes. As to the institutions of the Locrian tribes in Locrian Greece, very little is known, and they never took a prominent part in Greek history. Down to a late period the use of slaves was almost wholly unknown among them, as well as among the Phocians. This fact, which indicates a people of simple habits, strangers to luxury and commerce, and attached to ancient usages, may lead us to the further conclusion that their institutions were mostly aristocratical; and this conclusion is confirmed by all that we hear of them. Opus is celebrated, in the fifth century B. C., as a seat of law and order by Pindar3; from whom we also learn that, among its noble families, of which a hundred seem to have been distinguished from the rest, perhaps by political privileges, there 1 Paus. ix. 3. Thuc. ii. 2.; iv. 91.; and Dr. Arnold's note. Hence in Pollux, i. 128., the Theban Bootarch is compared with the Thessalian Tagus. 3 Ol. ix. 4 Thuc. i. 108. καὶ Λοκρῶν τῶν Οπουντίων ἑκατὸν ἄνδρας ὁμήρους τοὺς πλουσίωTáTOUS λabov on which Boeckh, ad Pindar, t. iii. p. 188., observes: Haud dubie ex illis centum optimatium familiis, ex singulis singulos. And this is indeed highly probable; but Boeckh had just before remarked: Apud omnes Locros optimates civitatem regebant, quorum sub imperio Græcæ respublicæ tranquilliores fuerunt quam populo dominante; præerant enim Locris nobiles ex centum familiis quorum nobilitas ex majoribus muliebribus deducebatur. Vide Polyb. xii. 5., et Heyn. Opus. Acad. t. ii. p. 59. sq. This statement is quoted with apparent approbation by Poppo on Thucyd. 1. c., and is adopted by Mueller (Hist. of Greek Literature, ix. § 4. ), as the foundation of a theory about the origin of the Hesiodean 'Hoîal. Yet it seems very questionable for Polybius, in the passage referred to, is speaking only of the Epizephyrian Locrians, whose aristocracy derived its origin from maidens belonging to the Hundred Houses of the parent state, who accompanied the colonists. But neither he nor Heyne state that the Greek Locrians founded their title to nobility (as Mueller asserts) upon their descent from heroines: nor of course is this proved by |