they did not alter the succession, nor materially reduce the power of the monarchy. The prince, or perpetual archon, for each title is used occasionally, held the government for life, subject notwithstanding to account to the state for the administration of public affairs.

Medon, son of Codrus, succeeded to his father by this new title: thirteen princes reigned under this description from Medon to Alcmæon inclusive, comprehending a period of three hundred and seven

years.

Some authorities maintain that Homer came to Athens in the time of Medon, and was hospitably received by that prince; but it is generally thought the age of Homer does not answer to this date, and that he was born about two hundred years after the siege of Troy: this falls within the time of Archippus, grandson of Medon, and third perpetual archon; in the beginning of whose reign Hesiod was born; Homer some few years after at the close of it: Archippus reigned nineteen years; and this æra seems established by the best chronologists.

Archippus, at the conclusion of whose administration we have placed the birth of Homer, was succeeded by Thersippus, who held the government of Athens for a long incumbency of forty-one years, and he was succeeded by Phorbas, who was thirty years archon; in the period of these seventy-one years we have the Athenian æra of the life of Ho

mer.

This however must in some degree be left to opinion, for before the institution of the Olympiads the Grecian chronicles are so vague and obscure, that the precise age of Homer will for ever remain a subject of conjecture. The above period has at least the merit of holding a middle place between their opinions, who suppose he was born soon after the siege

of Troy, and such as contend he was contemporary with Lycurgus. The late Mr. Robert Wood, in his essay on the original genius and writings of Homer, inclines to think the Iliad and Odyssey were finished about half a century after the capture of Troy; he has offered internal evidence in support of this opinion in Homer's account of the family of Æneas, and his argument is acute and critical: they, who make him contemporary with Lycurgus, have internal evidence against them, which, though perhaps it does not serve to establish Mr. Wood's position, certainly confutes the latter chronologists. Aristotle places Homer in the same epoch with Iphitus and the first Olympiad, but he rests his conjecture upon the weakest of all arguments; whilst the best authorities, as well as the majority in number, point to the period which I have suggested; and here for the present I will leave it.

The last but one of the perpetual archons was Æschylus, and in the second year of his government the Olympiads were first instituted by Iphitus at Elis; from this period we shall proceed with greater chronological precision.

The successor of Æschylus and the last of the perpetual archons was Alcmaon. The people of Athens had new modelled their government upon the death of Codrus, by abolishing the title of King, and reducing their chief magistrate to be in fact rather the first subject of the state, than the monarch: this regulation appears to have been effected without any struggle on the part of the reigning family; thirteen archons in succession had now been permitted to hold the government for life, when, upon the expiration of Alemæon's administration, the people thought fit by a fresh reform to limit the duration of the chief magistracy to the term of ten years. Charops, brother of Alcmæon and son of Eschylus,

was the first decennial archon; and this revolution took place in the first year of the seventh Olympiad. Whilst the Athenian state was by these steps enlarging its liberties, Romulus and Remus were forming the embryo of a mighty empire fated in the course of time to become mistress of the world; these adventurers collected a body of Latin shepherds, amongst whom they had been educated, and, settling themselves on the Palatine Mount, became the founders of Rome: this event is supposed to fall within the period of the seventh Olympiad, when Charops was decennial archon. It is generally supposed, that this mighty empire was set in motion from one spark, which Greece had scattered from the conflagration of Troy, and which lighted on the shores of Italy, where it was kept alive for more than four centuries, till Rome was founded; but Æneas's Italian colonization is a very questionable point, and I am inclined to agree with Mr. Wood, in his treatise above-mentioned, that the posterity of Æneas did not migrate into Italy, but established themselves in the Troade, and reigned over the scattered remains of the Trojans after the destruction of Ilium.

A revolution of eighteen Olympiads produced a third change in the constitution of the Athenian government in favour of popular freedom, by limiting the archons to one year, making the magistracy annual: neither was this all, for the command was no longer lodged in the hands of one person only, but of nine, the first of which was styled by preeminence archon, and from him the year had its name; the second entitled Basileus, took charge of religious ceremonies, and the Polemarc, or third in office, had the conduct of military affairs, whilst all civil and judicial business was referred to the council of the remaining six, called Thesmothetæ. None

but pure Athenians of three descents could be chosen by lot into this council; an oath of office was administered to them publicly in the portico of the palace, purporting that they would execute the laws with justice and fidelity, and take no gifts either from their clients or the people at large. When they had performed their annual functions, and acquitted themselves without impeachment, they were in course aggregated to the Areopagites, and held that dignity for life. Every thing relating to the care of orphans and widows, or the estates of minors, was vested in the principal magistrate, properly styled archon; he had the charge of divorces and the superintendance of the parents and children of soldiers who fell in battle, and of all such citizens who were maintained at the public charge.

Of these annual archons, Creon was the first, and was elected about the twenty-fourth Olympiad.

NUMBER CXVII.

THE Athenian state continued to be governed by annual archons according to the alteration made in its constitution in the twenty-fourth Olympiad, without any thing occurring of importance to merit a recital from the time of Creon to the administration of Draco in the thirty-ninth Olympiad. The Athenians, having reduced the monarchical power to the most diminutive of all kingly representatives, an annual archon had to all appearance effectually established their liberties; but it has been the fate of

freedom to be turned into abuse in all ages, and the licentiousness of the people now seemed in more want of reform, than the prerogative of the king had been in the most arbitrary times. The moral purity of Draco's manners, and the stern inflexibility of his temper, fitted him for an office, that required both rigorous virtue and resolute despatch, for his time was short and his task laborious and full of danger: had his power been permanent, it is probable he would have qualified the severity of those famous laws, which, from their sanguinary nature, were figuratively said to be written in blood, and it is certain they breathe a spirit calculated rather for the extinction of society, than for its reformation. We must, however, admit the difficulty of devising any code of penal statutes, by which degrees of punishment shall be equitably proportioned to degrees of offence. We have no experience or history of any such code now existing, or that ever did exist. A citizen of the world will not estimate crimes and offences by the same rule and standard as a citizen of any one particular community will; local circumstances will give a fainter or deeper colourings to crimes according to the peculir constitution of the state against which they are committed; the Athenians in the time of Draco were governed by annual magistrates; the administration of these magistrates was made subject to popular inquiry upon its ter..ination: they had expunged from their constitution the wholesome though high-sounding principle, that a king cannot do wrong; it was now become scarce possible that his substitute could do right; the people sat in judgement on their governors, and many of the most virtuous citizens in the state suffered under their sentence: fear restrained the timid from exertion, and the allurements of power debauched the interested and ambitious from