Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/14

 thought of the Romans who were great from the earliest days of the city far down into the dark of the dying empire, they should be made to consider how glorious the fewer Greeks were in the few short centuries which compassed in time the rise and fall of their republics. As they read Mr. Gould's stories from Plutarch they should be reminded that both Greece and Rome were republican after a brief time, when they were misruled by tyrants, until that long, long time when they sank again under the sway of kings and emperors; the long time which continues yet for most of the European states, but has ceased throughout the whole of America except in the democratic Dominion of Canada. Yet they should be taught that the Roman republic was always a state where even without kings the few ruled the many as they do in Spanish America now, while in the Grecian republics the whole people came nearer the likeness of our own people in their self-government. The freedom of both these states, they should also be taught, was based upon the bondage of men who might be killed or whipped and put to the cruelest shame at the pleasure of their masters because they had suddenly, while free, rich, learned citizens of their native countries, been taken in war, or stolen and sold by pirates. The children should be told that such an immortal sage as Plato was bought for a hundred dollars, and Epictetus, whose