had received any honour or privilege from the city were under its more peculiar care and protection; and the injuries done to them were resented as public affronts to the whole commonwealth. It was not the individual only that was benefited by these honours, but his posterity also reaped the benefit of his virtues; for if any of his children were left in a poor condition, they seldom failed of obtaining a plentiful provision from the public: thus the two daughters of Aristides were publicly married out of the funds of Prytanium, the city decreeing each of them three hundred drachms for her portion. Nor is it to be wondered at, says Plutarch, that the people of Athens, should take care of those that lived in the city, when hearing that Aristogiton's grand-daughter was in a low condition, in the isle of Lennius, and likely to remain unmarried on account of her poverty, they sent for her to Athens, where they married her to a person of certain quality, and bestowed upon her a large farm, as a dowry.

It is worthy of remark, that whilst Athens preserved her ancient virtue and glory, it was exceedingly difficult to obtain any of her public honours, insomuch, that when Miltiades petitioned for a crown, after he had delivered Greece from the Persian army at Marathon, he received this answer from one of the people, “that when he conquered alone, he should be crowned alone." But, in the days of Aristophanes, honours were become more common; we find him therefore making the following observations. Not one of the generals, in former ages, desired a public maintenance, but now, unless the privilege of having the first seats, and a maintenance is given them, they say they will not fight.

Of the Athenian Laws.

It was asserted by Tully, that most of the arts and inventions which are necessary to the comfort and good order of society, owed their first rise to the Athenians,

from whom they were derived by the other parts of Greece, and thence carried into other countries, for the common benefit of mankind. This was indeed the highest source of arts and science, of literature and of useful inventions that Tully was acquainted with. And with respect to the institution of laws for the regulation of society, which Elian and others attribute to the Athenians, it is an incontrovertible fact, that the wise and excellent institutions of the Israelites, were committed to writing by their great legislator Moses, at a time when the Athenians were but just emerging from a state of barbarism and ignorance; and what is still more worthy of admiration is, that the code of laws drawn up for the regulation of the people of Israel, was the work of one man, and what is more the finished work, undergoing little or no change from their first promulgation, to the final destruction of their government, and thence downwards to the present day, notwithstanding the dispersion of the people over every part of the habitable globe, while the laws of the Athenians were derived from various sources, and some of them are attributed to legislators, who never existed but in name only; while on the other hand, the most celebrated lawgivers of Grecian antiquity were continually re-modelling some parts and abrogating others, in the legislative systems of their respective predecessors; but this subject will come more properly before us in treating of the most ancient state of Grecian mythology. I shall therefore confine myself at this time to noticing such circumstances relat→ ing to the progress of Grecian legislation as come within the grasp of authentic history. In doing this, the reign of Theseus is our remotest boundary, it constitutes the intermediate link between the fabulous and the historic eras of Grecian history.

The first that gave laws to the Athenians after Theseus was Draco, who flourished before Christ.

These laws were remarkable for nothing so much as their unreasonable severity; for by them every little offence was punished with death; and there was no

greater punishment for him who had been guilty of acts of the most atrocious nature; thus, the person that stole an apple, and he who had betrayed his country, were put on an equal footing. But these extremes could not possibly last long, the people soon grew weary of them, and though they were not at once abrogated, yet by a tacit assent they lay dormant, till Solon, the next lawgiver repealed them all, with the exception of those that related to murder; and having received from the people power to make what alterations he thought necessary, new modelled the commonwealth, and instituted a great many new and excellent laws, which, to distinguish them from those of Draco, were called the new laws, and lest through the connivance of the magistrates, they should, in time be neglected like those of his predecessor, he caused the senate to take a solemn oath to observe them, and every one of the Thesmothetæ vowed, that if he violated any of the statutes, that he would dedicate a golden statue, as big as himself, to the Delphian Apollo, and the people he obliged to observe them for a hundred years.

But all this care was not sufficient to preserve his laws from the innovations of ambitious and interested men; for shortly after Pisistratus so far ingratiated himself into the people's favour, that the democracy instituted by Solon was dissolved, and himself invested with sovereign power, which at his death he left in the possession of his sons, who maintained it for some years; and though Pisistratus himself, as Plutarch reports, and his son after him, in a great measure governed according to Solon's laws, yet they followed them not as laws to which they were obliged to conform their actions, but rather seem to have used them as wise and prudent counsels, and deviated from them whenever they found them to interfere with their interests or their inclinations.

Pisistratus's family being driven out of Attica, Chithenes took upon him to restore Solon's institutions; and enacted, besides many new laws, which remained

in force till the Peloponnesian war, in which the form of the government was changed, first, by the four hundred, and then by the thirty tyrants. These storms being over, the ancient laws were again restored under the Archonship of Euclides and others, established at the instigations of Diocles, Ariston, and other leading Imen of the city; last of all, Demetrius, the Phalerean, being intrusted with the government of Athens, by the Macedonians, was the author of many new, but very beneficial and laudable institutions. These seem to have been the chief legislators of Athens, prior to the subjugation of Greece to the Romans.

Solon, and after his example, the rest of those that enacted laws in Athens, committed their laws to writing, differing herein from Lycurgus, and the law-givers of other cities, who thought it better to imprint their laws in the minds of the people, than to engrave them upon tablets, where it was probable they might be neglected and unregarded, as Plutarch informs us in his life of Numa Pompilius. "It is reported," saith he," that Numa's body, by his particular command, was not burned, but that he ordered two stone coffins to be made, in one of which he ordered his body to be laid, and the other to be a repository for his sacred books and writings; and both of them were to be interred under the hill Janiculum;" imitating herein the legislators of Greece, who, having written their laws on tablets, did so long inculcate the contents of them, while they lived, into the minds and hearts of their priests, that their understanding became, as it were, living libraries of the sacred volumes; it being esteemed a profanation of such mysteries to commit their secrets unto dead letters. In some places, especially before the invention of letters, it was usual to sing their laws, the better to fix them in their memories; which custom Aristotle tells us was used in his days, amongst the Agatbyesi, a people near the Scythians. But Solon was of a different opinion, esteeming it the safest way to commit his laws to writing, which would remain entire, and impossible to be corrupted, when the unwritten

tradition of other law-givers, through the negligence and forgetfulness of some, and the subtilty and knavery of others, might either wholly perish in oblivion, or, by continual forgeries and alterations, be rendered altogether unprofitable to the public, but abundantly serviceable to the designs and innovations of seditious and ambitious men; whence we find an express law, that no magistrate should in any case make use of an unwritten law. It was against the law for any man to erase a decree out of any of the tablets, or to make any alteration in them; and, for their greater security, there were certain persons whose business it was to preserve them from being corrupted, and also to transcribe the old laws, and to enter the new ones into the tablets. These persons were elected by the senate, and to make their office more creditable, they had several marks of honour conferred upon them. Lastly, that no man might pretend ignorance of his duty, the laws were all engraved on the wall in the royal portico, and there exposed to public view; but this custom was not begun till after the time of the thirty tyrants. I shall conclude this part of my subject with a few extracts from the Attic laws; and first those relating to divine worship, temples, festivals, and sports.

1. Let sacrifices be performed with the fruits of the earth; this is one of Triptolemus's laws.

2. Let it be a law among the Athenians, for ever sacred and inviolable, to pay due homage in public towards their gods and native heroes, according to the usual customs of the country, and with all possible sincerity to offer in private first fruits, with anniversary cakes. One of Draco's laws. It must be here observed that no strange god could be worshipped at Athens till he had received the sanction of the Areopagite senate. It is ordered that the sacrificer carry some part of the oblation home to his family.

All the remains of the sacrifice are the priest's fees.

All slaves and foreigners are permitted to come to the public temples, whether out of curiosity or for devotion,