for any good-looking or saucy-looking slave, and stab him to the heart on the highway. It is certain that at one time, when the helots had stood their masters in good stead in battle, they were desired, by way of reward, to choose out 2000 of their best men, that they might receive their freedom, and be enrolled as Spartans, and that these 2000 men were all silently murdered soon after. At another time, when danger was apprehended from the growing numbers and petty wealth of the boors, the senate enacted the farce of declaring war against them, and coolly murdered many thousands, in order to thin their numbers and break their spirit. Had there been any redeeming trait in the Spartan character to compensate for such barbarity, one would have wondered less at the respect which is sometimes paid them; but their military fame only adds another instance to the many already on record, that the most ignorant and savage tribes make the most dogged soldiers.
Athens. We now turn to Athens, long the principal seat of Grecian
learning. Athens is said to have been founded by Cecrops, 1550 B. C., and
in the most ancient times was called Cecropia. It probably received the
name of Athens from the goddess Minerva, who was called also Athena, by
the Greeks, and to whom an elegant temple had been erected in the city. The
old city spread from the mount of the Acropolis over a wide and pleasant vale
or low peninsula, formed by the junction of the Cephesus and Ilissus. Its
distance from the sea-coast was about five miles. In the course of time
Athens became populous and surpassingly elegant in its architecture, while
its citizens contrived to take a lead in the affairs of the communities around.
At first they were governed by kings, but, as in the case of the Spartan
citizens, they became dissatisfied with their existing constitution, and about
the year 600 B. C. invited Solon, one of the wisest men in Greece, to reörganize
their political constitution. Solon obeyed the summons, and constituted
the government on a broad republican basis, with a council of state,
forming a judicial court, consisting of 400 members, and called the Areopagus.
This court of Areopagus besides its other duties, exercised a censorship
over public morals, and was empowered to punish impiety, profligacy,
and even idleness. To this court every citizen was bound to make an annual
statement of his income, and the sources from which it was derived.
The court was long regarded with very great respect, and the right was
accorded to it of not only revising the sentences pronounced by the other
criminal tribunals, but even of annulling the judicial decrees of the general
assembly of the people. The regulations of Solon were not maintained
for any great length of time, although the republican form of government,
in one shape or other, continued as long as the country maintained its independence.
Clesthenes, the leader of a party, enlarged the democratic
principle in the state; he introduced the practice of ostracism, by which
any person might be banished for ten years, without being accused of any
crime, if the Athenians apprehended that he had acquired too much influence,
or harbored designs against the public liberty. Ostracism was so
called, because the citizens, in voting for its infliction, wrote the name of
the obnoxious individual upon a shell (ostreon). It is said that Clesthenes
was the first victim of his own law, as has happened in several other remarkable
cases, ancient and modern.
For a period of about two centuries after the settlement of a republican
