INTRODUCTION. 41 



During the period which elapsed between the reign of Cyrus and 

 that of Alexander, the arts were carried to the highest perfection. 

 Though the eastern nations had raised magnificent and stupendous 

 structures, the Greeks were the first people in the world, who, in 

 their works of architecture, added beauty to magnificence, and ele- 

 gance to grandeur. The temples of Jupiter Oiympius and of the 

 Ephesian Diana were the first monuments of good taste. They 

 were erected by the Grecian colonies who settled in Asia Minor 

 before the reign of Cyrus. Phidias, the Athenian, who died in the 

 year B. C. 432, is the first sculptor whose works have been immor- 

 tal. Zeuxis, Parrhasius, and Timanthus, during the same age, first 

 discovered the power of the pencil, and all the magic of painting. 

 Composition, in all its various branches, reached a degree of per- 

 fection in the Greek language, of which a modern reader can scarce- 

 ly form an idea. After Hesiod and Homer, who flourished 1000 

 years before the Christian acra, the tragic poets, jEschylus, Sopho- 

 cles, and Euripides, were the first considerable improvers of 

 poetry. Herodotus gave simplicity and elegance to prosaic writing. 

 Isocrates gave it cadence and harmony; but it was left to Thucy- 

 dides and Demosthenes to discover the full force of the Greek 

 tongue. It was not, however, in the finer arts alone that the Greeks 

 excelled. Every species of philosophy was cultivated among them 

 with the utmost success. Not to mention the divine Socrates, the 

 virtues of whose life, and the excellence of whose philosophy, justly 

 entitled him to a very high degree of veneration ; his three disciples 3 

 Plato, Aristotle, and Zenophon, may, for strength of reasoning, 

 justness of sentiment, and propriety of expression, be considered as 

 the equals of the best writers of any age or country. Experience, 

 indeed, in a long course of years, has taught us many secrets in 

 nature, with which those philosophers were unacquainted, and which 

 no strength of genius could divine. But whatever some vain em- 

 pirics in learning may pretend, the most learned and ingenious men, 

 both in France and England, have acknowledged the superiority of 

 the Greek philosophers, and have reckoned themselves happy in 

 catching their turn of thinking and manner of expression. The 

 Greeks were not less distinguished for their active than for their 

 speculative talents. It would be endless to recount the names of 

 their famous statesmen and warriors ; and it is impossible to mention 

 a few without doing injustice to a greater number. War was first 

 reduced to a science by the Greeks. Their soldiers fought from, 

 an affection to their country and an ardour for glory, and not from a 

 dread of their superiors. We have seen the effects of this military 

 virtue in their wars against the Persians ; the cause of it was the 

 wise laws which Amphictyon, Solon, and Lycurgus, had established 

 in Greece. But we must now leave this nation, whose history, both 

 civil and philosophical, is as important as their territory was incon- 

 siderable, and turn our attention to the Roman affairs, which are 

 still more interesting, both on their own account, and from the rela- 

 tion in which they stand to those of modern Europe. 



The character of Romulus, the founder of the Roman state, when 

 we view him as a leader of a few lawless and wandering banditti, 

 is an object of extreme insignificance. But when we consider „ ^ 

 him as the founder of an empire as extensive as the world, '„ 

 and whose progress and decline have occasioned the two 

 greatest revolutions that ever happened in Europe, we cannot but 



Vol. I. G 



