244 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°^ s. No 91., Sept. 26. '57. 



by the enemy, and who afterwards returned to 

 Sparta, were subject to civil disqualifications. 

 Those who returned from that battle were so 

 numerous and powerful that it became impossible 

 to enforce the law. Agesilaus was thereupon in- 

 vested with a legislative dictatorship in order to 

 provide for the case ; but he made no alteration in 

 any existing law. He contented himself with de- 

 claring that for that day the laws in question 

 should sleep, and for the future resume their 

 vigour. The words of Plutarch, who gives this 

 account in his Life of Agesilaus, c. 30. are : i-n 

 Tovs vd/xovs Se? ff-fj/iepof iau KaOevSeiv, He repeats 

 the substance of this account in his Apophthegms, 

 p. 191. C, p. 214. B. It also recurs in Polyaen. 

 li. 1. 13. Compare Grote, vol. x. p. 261-2. 



A similar suspension of this disqualification was 

 made in favour of the Lacedaemonians who escaped 

 from the defeat of Agis by Antipater in 330 B.C. 

 (Diod. xix. 70.) 



No reasonable doubt can exist that the event 

 to which Appian referred was the act of Agesilaus 

 after the battle of Leuctra, and that his memory 

 misled him in referring the expression about the 

 slumber of the laws to the more celebrated case 

 of the prisoners at Pylos. 



The severity with which the military republics 

 of antiquity treated their own citizens who al- 

 lowed themselves to fall alive into the hands of 

 the enemy, instead of dying in battle, is illustrated 

 by the debate in the Roman senate, reported by 

 Livy, upon the application of the Roman prisoners 

 who had survived the battle of Cannas to be ran- 

 somed by the state. The Senate refused the 

 ransom, and returned them to Hannibal. The 

 spokesman of the prisoners admits his conviction, 

 "nuUi unquam civitati viliores fuisse captivos 

 quam nostrae," xxii. 59., and afterwards Rome is 

 called a "civitas minime in captivos jam inde an- 

 tiquitas indulgens," c. 61. The "captivi" here 

 alluded to are not prisoners of war taken from the 

 enemy, but Roman soldiers who have allowed 

 themselves to be made prisoners of war by the 

 enemy. Cicero, Off. iii. 32., in alluding to this in- 

 cident, says : " Eos senatus non censuit redimen- 

 dos, cum id parva pecunia fieri posset ; ut esset 

 insitum militibus nostris aut vincere, aut emori." 



The same feeling as that which animated the 

 Lacedaemonians and which determined the refusal 

 of the Roman Senate to ransom their own pri- 

 soners after the battle of Cannae, but which has 

 almost disappeared in modern times, is forcibly 

 expressed in the celebrated Ode of Horace on the 

 return of Regulus to Carthage (iii. 5.) : 



" Hoc caverat mens provida Regali 

 Dissentientis conditionibus 

 Fcedis, et exemplo trahenti 

 Perniciem veniens in a3vuin, 

 Si non periret immiserabilis 

 Captiva pubes," 



And asain : 



' Si pugnat extricata densis 



Cerva plagis, erit ille fortis 

 Qui perfidis se credidit hostibus ; 

 Et marte Poenos proteret altero, 

 Qui lora restrictis lacertis 

 Sensit iners, timuitque mortem." 



INTRODTTCTION OF STAGE COACHES. 



We have recently seen in the Memoirs of Geo. 

 Stephenson what prejudices travelling by railway 

 had to encounter ; and no one can now in his 

 holiday ramble pass any country town without 

 hearing the moans of landlords and tradesmen 

 over the decay of inns, because stage coaches have 

 ceased to change horses, and because certain ten- 

 pounders are licensed by the excise, and not by 

 the magistrates, to sell beer " to be drunk on the 

 premises," instead of being limited to the former 

 jingle of 



" Table beer ? 

 Sold here." 



The accompanying extract from a pamphlet 

 that was looked upon as a fair authority in the last 

 quarter of the seventeenth century may interest 

 your readers, and show that the general use of 

 stage coaches was met with objections, and the 

 decay of inns with as much concern, as serious and 

 as conclusive as any made against the modern 

 locomotive and beer shops. The extract also gives 

 the middle of the century as the period when 

 stages first became common. 



In the Trade of England Revived, 4to, Lon- 

 don, printed by Dorman Newman in 1681, p. 26- 

 7. sec. xiii., concerning stage coaches, the author 

 thus pours forth his lamentations : — 



"There is another late grievance which doth prejudice 

 and injure all those trades before premised (i.e. the Wool- 

 len and Silk Trades, and Hawkers). For were it not for 

 these there would be abundance of cloth and stutf and 

 trimming of suits used and worn out, then now there 

 is. And they do not only wrong these trades, but many 

 others also, as the Tailor, the Hatter, the Sadler, the 

 Shoemaker, and the Tanner; for were it not for these 

 coaches, there would be far more of the commodities used 

 and vended then now there are. And they do not a little 

 incommode all the innes in all the cities and market- 

 towns in England ; for where are no coaches frequenting 

 the innes, they have very little (if any thing) to do ; and 

 they who have them, get no such advantage by them, 

 being forced to take such under rates for their horse-meat, 

 that the loss they thereby sustain is greater than can be 

 regained by the guests which those coaches do bring unto 

 their innes ; and then the owners of them do receive so 

 little benefit that many of late years have been utterly 

 undone hj them. And then they carry multitudes of 

 letters which otherwise would ba sent by the post, and 

 were it not for them there would be more wine, beer, and 

 ale drank in the inne then is now, which would be a 

 meaus to augment the King's custom and excise. Fur- 

 thermore they hinder the breed of horses in this kingdom, 

 because many would be necessitated to keep a good horse 



