Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/363

Rh renowned by the people themselves for his exact justice and knowledge in the law; that Themistocles was a most fortunate admiral, and had got a mighty victory over the great king of Persia's fleet; that Pericles was an able minister of state, an excellent orator, and a man of letters; and lastly, that Phocion, beside the success of his arms, was also renowned for his negotiations abroad, having in an embassy brought the greatest monarch of the world at that time, to the terms of an honourable peace, by which his country was preserved.

I shall conclude my remarks upon Athens with the character given us of that people by Polybius. About this time, says he, the Athenians were governed by two men; quite sunk in their affairs; had little or no commerce with the rest of Greece, and were become great reverencers of crowned heads.

For, from the time of Alexander's captains till Greece was subdued by the Romans, to the latter part of which this description of Polybius falls in, Athens never produced one famous man either for counsels or arms, or hardly for learning. And indeed it was a dark insipid period through all Greece: for, except the Achaian league under Aratus and Philopœmen; and the endeavours of Agis and Cleomenes to restore the state of Sparta, so frequently harrassed by tyrannies occasioned by the popular practises of the ephori, there was very little worth recording. All which consequences may perhaps be justly imputed to this degeneracy of Athens. Rh