Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/223

Rh object, which was the military art. But when virtue fled from Greece, the military art was destroyed by these institutions; people appeared then on the arena, not for improvement, but for debauch.

Plutarch informs us that the Romans in his time were of opinion that those games had been the principal cause of the slavery into which the Greeks were fallen. On the contrary, it was the slavery of the Greeks that had corrupted these exercises. In Plutarch's time, their fighting naked in the parks, and their wrestling, infected the young people with the spirit of cowardice, inclined them to infamous passions, and made them mere dancers. But in Epaminondas's time the exercise of wrestling made the Thebans win the famous battle of Leuctra.

There are very few laws which are not good, while the state retains its principles: here I may apply what Epicurus said of riches; it is not the liquor, but the vessel, that is corrupted.

N Rome the judges were chosen at first from the order of senators. This privilege the Gracchi transferred to the knights: Drusus gave it to the senators and knights; Sylla to the senators only; Cotta to the senators, knights, and public treasurers; Caesar excluded the latter; Antony made decuries of senators, knights, and centurions. Rh