Chap. IX. ANT I EN T METAPHYSICS, 193 



as Ifocrates tells us in the end of his Areopagiticus. He there fays 

 a thing, that I fhould not have believed but upon the faith of a 

 cotemporary author of fuch reputation, that there were citizens 

 then in Athens, who went about afking charity from thofe they 

 met in the ftreets, to the difgrace, as he very properly adds, of the 

 city. Till 1 read that, I did not believe that any antient ftate was 

 ever funk to fuch a degree of mifery and infamy. 



One reafon, among others, of fuch ill fuccefs in their wars, was 

 their jealoufy of all their men of eminence, and their fufpicion that 

 they afpired to the government of the ftate, and to put an end to their 

 democracy. And, accordingly, Xenophon, in the accounts that he 

 has given of their polity, tells us, that they were the declared ene- 

 mies of all men of great eminence among them. And they had a 

 form of proceeding, moft extraordinary, againft fuch men, which 

 they called Oflracifm ; whereby, without accufation or trial, they 

 banilhed them for 10 years. 



In this way, as Cornelius Nepos has informed us, they treated 

 Miltiades, who had gained for them the famous battle of Marathon, 

 where 10,000 Athenians defeated 100,000 Peifians; and which 

 may be faid to have been the prelude to all the victories the 

 Greeks afterwards obtairred over the Perfians, who, till that time, 

 were reckoned invincible; fo that, even at the battle of Platae^e, the 

 Spartans dreaded thein fo much, that they yielded the poft of ho- 

 nour to the Athenians, in order that they might encounter the Per- 

 fians, And yet chis Miltiades they condemned to pay a fine, that 

 he was not able to pay : And fo the deliverer of Athens and of 

 Greece died in a jail. And what aggravated their cruelty exceedingly 

 was, that Miltiades had never (hown the lead of the difpofition 

 of a tyrant, but on the contrary, the grcateft humanity, courtefy, 

 and affability, in his whole life and condu(fl:. Ijuc, fays our author. 

 Vol. IV. B b Populu: 



