and amid every species of calamity, public as well as private, one rose pre-eminent above the rest, and wrung a tear from eyes, which beheld the rest unmoved; and what was that? it was to see the people of Athens-that people whose greatest pride was their freedom and origin from the soil-now passing their votes, to give freedom to the slave, citizenship to the stranger, and restoration of rights and franchises to men, who for their crimes had been stript of both! This was indeed a change and a vicissitude of things !-to see that city, which in former times was the first to arm for the general freedom of Greece, now satisfied to secure her own safety-to behold that town, which had formerly swayed it over the whole region of barbarism, now insecure of her own against men of Macedon-to witness that people, whose aid had been formerly solicited by the Lacedæmonians, by the Peloponnesians, by the Greek inhabitants of Asia-now at their prayers and begging help from the islands of Andros and Ceos, from Træzen and Epidaurus! And in such a crisis of complicated terror, danger and disgrace, to desert his native soil, to refuse his body to the ranks, and by a hasty flight to endanger his country's very life and existence-where is the orator, who will aid the traitor by his eloquence? where the juryman who will save the dastard by his vote! Wretch without feeling as without common generosity, who had neither a tear for his country's woes, nor a helping hand for his country's wounds! and that when all beside, even to the most helpless age, had something to contribute towards her relief; the young furnishing their arms, the lifeless earth her timber, and the very dead their sepulchres and graves! If he had nothing else to give, where were his personal exertions? for who was then idle but Leocrates? Some undertook the repairs of the walls; others looked to the trenches, and a third party busied themselves in erecting palisades-and Leocrates!-Think of it, men of Athens! he bore no bleeding body to its grave-he helped no corse to its funeral rites-as far as he is concerned, the patriots of Chæronea lie still without a grave! and yet-unutterable wretch, as he passed their tombs after eight years absence, he dared to consider their inmates as his fellow-citizens, and to speak of their country as his! He!-but treasure it up, I say again, in your memories, and let death be his portion for it!' On a subject so extensive as that of which we are now treating, the mind can hardly fail of recurring to a body of eloquence in our own country, an eloquence naturally growing out of that religion which has to grapple with the mind's propensities in all its times of tribulation and wealth,' and which has to prepare its feelings, as the noble climax of our Liturgy proceeds to express it,' for the hour of death, and for the day of judgment.' Such a species of eloquence as this is not to be expected among the Greek orators; for the state neither trained nor endowed a body of men to supply it. What religious instruction the Greek received, came principally from the stage; and while those who see things on the side of pious feeling, will not always be much edified by its quality, those who regard matters in a political and philosophical philosophical view, will be often surprized at the scoffs, the sarcasms, and impieties which were thrown into the strange mixture. But whatever liberties the tragic or the comic stage might take with the exterior religion of the country, (and take with impunity,) there was an interior religion, which the Greek, with his usual love of contrast, guarded with the most susceptible jealousy, and with which neither dramatist nor philosopher dared to meddle. The scholar will readily perceive that we allude to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and to a subordinate branch of ancient superstition, the Hermaic worship. How the name of Alcibiades became implicated with a real or supposed profanation of these mysteries, the interesting moment at which the implication took place, and the consequences it had upon the fortunes of that extraordinary man, whose united talents, courage, virtues and vices constitute him an Athenian Demus in miniature, the most superficial reader of ancient history need scarcely be reminded. The person, however, who played the most important, though the least notorious part in this transac→ tion, was the orator ANDOCIDES. Though the least guilty of the party, Andocides only escaped with his life to become an exile; and for forty years he had to know the bitterest of human miseries, the salt savour which there is in the bread of strangers; and that hardness of path which the feet experience, when other men's stairs are to be perpetually climbed and descended.* That important political compact, which meets us so continually in the later orators of Greece, at length gave Andocides the power of returning to his still beloved country, and for three years he was allowed to live unmolested, performing not only the ordinary but even the most sacred functions at Athens, and finding in this exercise of his natural talents some compensation for the sorrows and fatigues which he had undergone. But misfortune only slumbered with Andocides. Circumstances, which it is unnecessary to explain, brought him under the displeasure of Callias, one of those monsters of profligacy, who occasionally meet us in Grecian history, and in whom vice appears the more hideous, because it here mixed itself with one of the most sacred of ancient functions—the high priesthood of Ceres. In the face, there fore, of all existing compacts, it was determined to bring Andocides again to trial for an offence in which he had originally been implicated more from youthful imprudence, than design, and for which he had already paid so heavy a penalty. And the gold of Callias found him proper abettors for his guilty purpose;-Ce*Tu proverai, sì come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle Lo scendere e'l salir per l'altrui scale.-Dante. phisius, phisius, formerly a farmer of public property, the profits of which he had appropriated to himself, and who was now in Athens under faith of the same treaties, which also legitimately screened Andocides from fu ther investigation; Melitus, who had been employed by the Thirty tyrants to seize the virtuous Leon, and who, but for the interposition of the same treaties, was liable to an action for murder; and Epichares, who, besides the most infamous private vices, had borne office under the Thirty, and who was consequently, by the old laws of the democracy, at the mercy of every one, to assassinate where, and when, and how he pleased. Whatever other advantages these associates might possess, the force of moral character, it is evident, was not among them; and accordingly the powerful aid of Lysias was called in to give strength to the accusation, and to rebut recrimination. The first he accomplished with his usual eloquence; the second he had the wisdom or the honesty (but the former is most in his character) to decline. From the terms which he uses when anticipating recrimination, it is pretty evident that he thought the most prudent course was silence. The opening of this powerful speech is lost; but enough of it remains to put it in perfect comparison with that of Andocides. Forty years, as we have seen, had elapsed, since the commission of the imputed crime; but Lysias, like his other great compeers, possessed that power of oratory which forces time to disappear, and makes the things that are not, seem like things that are. The case, he knew, was a rotten one; and the whole speech, therefore, consists of an appeal to the feelings. To those who had profaned the Mysteries, it was supposed by the superstitious Greeks, that the elementary sustenance of life became polluted, and that the sin of the soul met its retribution in strange smells and depravities of the senses: and this opinion, with all the popular stories attached to it, the orator takes care to recal to his audience at the very outset. Then passing rapidly to certain unwritten, as well as written laws, by which judicial decision might be guided, he endeavours, by every artifice of oratory, that his hints and insinuations on this head shall not lose their effect. As his appetite for blood rises, he argues upon a lie, and a supposed confession of guilt, which Andocides had never made; and adduces as a mark of extreme impudence, what any unprejudiced person would consider as a proof of confidence and innocence. The travels to which necessity had subjected the wretched exile, are sometimes imputed to him as an ostentation of impiety, and sometimes as proofs of the divine vengeance by the miseries to which they subjected him. If ever a suspicion crosses the blood-thirsty pleader that his victim will escape him, he hangs over his head the eternal memory memory of the gods, and comforts himself with the reflection, that the sins of the father are sometimes visited upon the children, and that though Andocides may escape an earthly tribunal, the vengeance of heaven was yet in store for his guilt. We hasten through a speech glowing with all the fire of oratory to its conclusion. Having treated all the public contracts, which might stand in the way of retribution, with that sophistry or levity which this advocate of democracy usually displayed on such occasions ;* and wakened the feelings of self-interest in his audience by declaring (what he knew to be a falsehood) that Andocides had never served the city as a soldier, had made no contribution in money, had brought the people no corn, the pleader makes his strongest attack in his peroration. He throws himself at once upon the imaginations of his hearers; he calls upon the mind and the mind's eye to accompany him, while he dresses up Andocides in his sacerdotal robe, follows him into the very act of profanation, and mimics the form of attitude and voice with which he spoke the unutterable words.' The rest of the mummery is not forgotten. Once more the priests are swept across the stage in long procession, and the priestesses accompany them: they turn towards the setting sun, they shake their purple robes, and in the chaunt prescribed by law, and ancient rite, they devote this guilty wretch to misery and woe. At this distant age, when these customs have lost their effect, it is scarcely possible to read them without emotion-on Athenian susceptibility they had the influence of magic. A cold shudder ran through the court, the hairs of the audience stood erect; and the speaker had prepared them with the imprecations usual on such occurrences, and which he no doubt expected to find re-echoed to his ears- the curse be upon him,' let there be sin-offerings and expiations'-' away with such a wretch from the face of the earth!" Had the defendant been a common person, the effect of this eloquence would have been to him inevitable death; but Lysias had a master in his own art to deal with; and we shall give at once the best idea of Andocides' skill as an orator by saying that on this occasion he took care to display no oratory at all. He had a simple tale wherewith to put down the accusation, and living witnesses were yet at hand to confirm his allegations; and in such a case the orator knows that the less there is of rhetorical flourish the better. In the speech of Lycurgus, which we last analysed, the circumstances are comparatively nothing, and the eloquence every thing in the present case eloquence was almost unneces Contra Agoratum 507. contra Nicomachum 846. de Evandro 800. de Affectatâ Tyrannide 777.784. sary, sary, for the whole interest lay in the circumstances, and it was merely necessary to tell them simply and without pretension to command attention. And Andocides did so. No person, who wishes to make himself acquainted with ancient oratory, will leave this speech unread; and we may, perhaps, take a future opportu nity of entering more fully into its contents. As concerns the orator in his private capacity, it is a most interesting tale, told in the most interesting manner; as it relates to public life, it is a deep tragedy, conceived in the two great sources of tragedy, pity and terror. Opposed by its very quietness to the vehemence of Lysias, it contrasts as strongly with the vigour displayed by Andocides, in the oratory of his more youthful days. In the speech de Pace, (and only three specimens of the eloquence of Andocides have reached us,) there is every proof of sprightliness and life; in the two speeches on the Mysteries, the wiser and the sadder man' discovers himself at every turn. Both the speeches convey a most favourable impression of the defendant's liberal and generous mode of thinking; while the accuser himself is left in the guilt of corruption, cruelty, and perjury; in shocking profanity, and in incest of so complicated a form, that, of three wives possessed by Callias, his offspring, a boy, stood in the relations of son to the one, brother to the second, and uncle to the third! Some of the most important subjects, which legal oratory could embrace, have now come successively under our notice, and specimens of the art have been produced, with which, to use the gentlest terms, it would certainly be an effort of modern oratory to compete. We now come upon a branch, where the modern may undoubtedly claim the superiority; and those, who are versed in the eloquence of the English bar, will anticipate the branch to which we allude, viz. to that which connects itself with 'the sense of home' and the religion of the hearth.' Age has not yet so chilled our blood, that we profess to behold beauty with absolute indifference; but we are at least at that mature time of life, when, to borrow the passionate but somewhat frothy eloquence of Curran, woman appears in her greatest value, as she sits basking in a husband's love, with the blessing of heaven on her head and its purity in her heart; when she sits among her family, and administers the morality of the paternal board.' If ever, however, she descended with less criminality from this high estate in one country more than another, that country was Greece. There is something peculiarly sad and revolting, according to the most philosophic of modern travellers, in those scenes of animated nature, where man is nothing. There is something still more revolting, the philosophic traveller might have learned, and that is, those scenes of animated nature, where man is every thing, and |