Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/346

340 In the first place, let us show you how many of the ancient worthies and heroes of antiquity, have been undone and ruined by this deadly sin of avarice.

I shall take the liberty to begin with Brutus, that noble Roman. Does not Ætian inform us, that he received fifty broad pieces for the assassination of that renowned emperor Julius Cæsar, who fell a sacrifice to the Jews, as sir Edmund Bury Godfrey did to the papists?

Did not Themistocles let the Goths and Vandals into Carthage for a sum of money, where they barbarously put out the other eye of the famous Hannibal? as Herodotus has it in his ninth book upon the Roman medals.

Even the great Cato (as the late Mr. Addison has very well observed) though otherwise a gentleman of good sense, was not unsullied by this pecuniary contagion; for he sold Athens to Artaxerxes Longimanus for a hundred rix-dollars, which in our money will amount to two talents and thirty sestertii, according to Mr. Demoivre's calculation. See Hesiod in his seventh chapter of Feasts and Festivals.

Actuated by the same diabolical spirit of gain, Sylla the Roman consul shot Alcibiades the senator with a pistol, and robbed him of several bank bills and 'chequer notes to an immense value; for which he came to an untimely end, and was denied christian burial. Hence comes the proverb incidat in Syllam.

To come near to our own times, and give you one modern instance, though well known and often quoted by historians, viz. Echard, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Virgil, Horace, and others. 'Tis that, I mean, of the famous Godfrey of Bulloigne, one of the great heroes of the holy war, who robbed Cleopatra queen of