populace, by dividing the original four tribes into ten, which were again subdivided into 100 (or 170) demes. The number of the senate was also increased to 500; many new citizens were made; aliens were admitted; and slaves were freed. By Clisthenes, the vote by ostracism was introduced. Isagoras appealed to Sparta, but without success, and the Assembly remained triumphant,—a democracy, not composed of sober, simple-minded husbandmen, as Solon contemplated, but of wretched labourers and mean mechanics, ready at the beck of every seditious demagogue to indulge in violence and tumult.

In the space of a few years, Athens, freed from the yoke of its tyrants, humbled the pride of Thebes, punished the insolence of the Chalcidians, contended not ingloriously with the people of Ægina, and braved the jealousy of Lacedæmon, at the same time that, enriched by the spoils of its enemies, the city was embellished with new monuments, and preserved in the northern parts of Greece the influence which the Pisistratidæ had begun to enjoy there by means of the establishments on the Hellespont. The family of Miltiades reigned at Cardia, in the Thracian Chersonese, and taught the barbarians to respect the name of his country.

Lacedæmon during this period was far from acting so great a part. The brave but unscrupulous Cleomenes, at the beginning of his reign, 515, conquered the Argives in a bloody battle, and set on fire a sacred wood in which the fugitives had taken refuge. The capital of Argos was saved by the skilful defence of Telesilla, not less celebrated for her courage than for her poetical talents. The different campaigns which Cleomenes conducted in Attica, at one time as the ally, at another as the enemy of the Pisistratidæ, are some years posterior to the disgraceful expedition against Argos.

SEVEN WISE MEN.-Solon, the legislator, was one of the famous wise men of Greece. The rest were Thales of Miletus, 586; Bias of Priene, 586; Chilo of Lacedæmon, 586; Pittacus of Mitylene, 569; Cleobulus of Rhodes, 586; Periander of Corinth, 585. The last of these had no claim to that honourable title, except the merit of having patronised men of genius and virtue. The number is sometimes increased by the addition of the Scythian Anacharsis, and the Cretan Epimenides.

Read: Bulwer's Athens, book i. ch. viii.

ROME.

SERVIUS TULLIUS (578 B. c.), an Etrurian captain of mercenaries, and son-in-law of Tarquin, now ascended the vacant throne, and was successful in several battles against his native

country. He was in many respects the most deserving of the kings, and placed Rome at the head of the Latin confederacy, confirming her position by common religious ceremonies. He extended and completed the stone walls of the city, divided the territory into districts, each with its proper magistrate, instituted the census, and arranged the people, according to their wealth, into five great classes, which were again subdivided into centuries. The necessity of this measure demonstrates the increasing power of the citizens, and by it the framework of the republic was completed. He fell a victim to the ambition of his daughter Tullia and her husband.

TARQUIN THE PROUD seized upon the kingdom without waiting for the approbation of the senate, 534 B. C. He enacted many oppressive laws against the plebeians, and, protected by a strong body-guard, tyrannized also over the patricians; he nevertheless upheld the dignity of the Roman state, and all Latium acknowledged its supremacy. He built a temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, on the summit of the Capitoline hill, in which were deposited the sacred treasures with the mysterious books of the Sibyl. The unbridled passions of his son Sextus caused the expulsion of the dynasty and the abolition of the kingly power, at about the same period in which the Pisistratidæ were driven from Athens, 509 B. c.

NOTE. The history of the last Tarquin is by no means free from difficulty. The story of Lucretia's misfortune, and the consequent expulsion of the royal family, is not confirmed by other facts in history, and is in direct opposition to the account of the Treaty of the first Consuls with Carthage. The circumstances attending the change of government at Athens, on the death of Codrus, may throw some light on the present events. The list of Roman kings is evidently imperfect. It is not likely that seven kings, four of whom met with a violent death, should reign on an average more than thirty-four years. Romulus and Numa are probably mythical; the five others, the remnants of a longer list, presenting the most remarkable names. The stupendous sewers, still existing in their pristine strength, "and the building of the Capitol, attest with unquestionable evidence that the Rome of the later kings was the chief of a great state."

Consult: Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. i.

CONSTITUTION OF ROME.

The municipal constitution of Rome was doubtless copied from the mother city. The senate was a deliberative body of 300, the heads of the ten gentes (houses) into which each of the thirty curia was divided. The patricians were a hereditary nobility, who alone had the privilege of administering the sacred affairs, and who formed a strong political party in opposition to the plebeians, not unlike the state of freemen and ordinary residents in a close city. Besides the original division into tribes and curia, another, according to property, was subsequently introduced, the classes and centuries, out of which arose the two assemblies (comitia)

D

called curiata and centuriata. The religious institutions were closely connected with the state, and few important undertakings were ever begun without first having the sanction of the gods. The discipline and subordination so remarkable in the Roman people, partly originated in the mutual relations of patron and client, a mitigated form of feudalism; in the regulations about marriage; and in the unlimited authority of the parent. To these things, and to the spirit which they generated, they were indebted for all the glories which they subsequently obtained.

Consult: Heeren's Manual of Ancient History.

CHINA.

CONFUCIUS OF CON-FU-TSEE was born about 550 B. c.; and from this celebrated man was descended the only hereditary Chinese nobility. He successively passed through all the ranks and honours of the state, and was not less celebrated as a reformer than as a philosopher. He supposed that men were naturally good and possessed of celestial reason, but that its place, when lost, was supplied by a worldly substitute. Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius, flourished at nearly the same period.

FIFTH CENTURY.

JUDEA.-457, Ezra.-445, Nehemiah.-420, Malachi, d.

PERSIA.-499, Sardis burnt.-401, Retreat of the Ten Thousand. GREECE.-490, Marathon.-480, Salamis. -471, Themistocles exiled.466, Victory at the Eurymedon.-449, Pericles.-440, Samian War; 431, Peloponnesian War.-429, The Plague; Death of Pericles. -415, Sicilian Expedition.-405, Victory at Ægos-Potamos.-404, Death of Alcibiades. 403, Thrasybulus.

ROME. 509, Consuls.-498, Dictator, Titus Lartius.-493, Tribunes of the People.-486, Agrarian Law.-452, Decemvirs-Laws of the Twelve Tables-Volscian and Veientine Wars.

CARTHAGE.-509, Treaty with Rome.-480, Defeat at Himera.-410, Sicilian Wars.

LITERATURE.-490, Pindar; 490, Eschylus and Sophocles; 444, Euripides, Herodotus; 429, Hippocrates, Lysias, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Socrates.

DISCOVERIES.-479, Mnemonics by Simonides; 441, Catapult, &c.; 437, Anatomy and Medicine by Hippocrates.

JUDEA.

EZRA.-The affairs of the Jews were still in a perplexed state. The rebuilding of the temple was completed under Darius Hystaspes, but the Samaritans and others persevered in their

opposition to the restoration of the city walls, during the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes. In the seventh year of the reign of the latter prince, 457, Ezra was sent to Jerusalem, with full civil and ecclesiastical powers; and in 445 Nehemiah was appointed governor. During his twelve years' administration, the walls were completed, and the feast of Tabernacles again celebrated. With Malachi, who died 420 в. C., closes the prophetic roll of the Old Testament, the canon of the history terminating with the death of Nehemiah. Bossuet says, that "God owed it to the majesty of his Son to silence the voices of the prophets during the next 400 years, that the nations might hold themselves in expectation of him who was to be the fulfilment of all oracles."

Judæa was governed by a Persian satrap, but by slow degrees the high priests became the virtual rulers of the nation.

GREECE.

PERSIAN INVASION.-The revolt of the Ionian colonies under Histiæus was supported by the Athenians, and the flames of Sardis (499) gave rise to the great war. Having subdued the rebellious colonists, Darius, at the instigation of the fugitive Hippias, sent into Greece a powerful army of 120,000 men. The invaders were met at MARATHON, a small town of Attica, immortalized by a battle in which the Athenians, almost unassisted, routed the Persian host, 29th September, 490 B. c. A long high barrow covers the remains of those who fell, and the peasant still fancies he hears their spectral cavalry sweeping by night across the plain. Miltiades, on whom his fellowgenerals had conferred the supreme command, was wounded, and Hippias is by some reported to have perished.

By this victory the power of Miltiades was raised to its height. He directed the Athenian arms against Paros, having formed the design of rendering his country the mistress of the sea; and on the failure of his expedition, he was capitally impeached by Xantippus, the chief of the Alcmæonid faction. His principal defence and answer were the names of Marathon and Lemnos; but he was found guilty, and being unable to pay the fine of fifty talents, was thrown into prison, where he died.

THERMOPYLE AND SALAMIS.-The history of Athens now becomes, in some measure, that of individuals. Themistocles and Aristides took the reins of government, and were the real

authors of the power and glory of the Athenian republic. The former, connected with noble families, united in a remarkable degree all the most brilliant qualities of a statesman; the latter, of distinguished birth, was proverbial for integrity. During the administration of these two great men, a more formidable invasion was headed by Xerxes, the successor of Darius, in person. This monarch, with his numerous host, which had gradually swelled to two millions and a half of warriors, met with no check until he reached the celebrated pass of Thermopyla, where about 12,000 men were collected under the Spartan king, Leonidas. After two days' successful fighting, patriotism was overcome by treason. A Greek named Ephialtes led the Persians across a mountain-path, by which they got to the rear of the opposing army. Dismissing the greater part of his troops, that they might not uselessly perish, Leonidas retained only 300 Spartans, 400 volunteer Thespians, 100 Thebans, and 80 warriors from Mycena. These with the Helots, as at Platæa, raised the number to about 2000. All this determined band, save the Thebans, were cut to pieces-non victi sed vincendo fatigati—and the victor marched to Athens, which he plundered and burnt (B. c. 480), the inhabitants, by advice of Themistocles, having taken refuge in the adjoining islands. From the top of a lofty cliff, the Persian ruler had the mortification of beholding his numerous fleet of 1000 galleys, each carrying 230 men, defeated by the Greeks with only 380 sail, between the mainland and Salamis. Xerxes fled hastily, leaving Mardonius behind with an army of 300,000 men, which was routed the next year at Platæa, by the allied Greeks under Pausanias and Aristides. On the same day (20th October), the remnant of the Persian fleet was utterly destroyed off Mycale, in Asia Minor. The day of Thermopyla (4th August) had also been rendered doubly illustrious by a sea-fight with the same enemy, near Artemisium, a promontory of Euboea. It is a pithy remark made by the historian Justin, that the troops of the eastern king wanted nothing but a leader.

The victory of Salamis operated an entire change in the position of the Greeks, both abroad and at home. From being attacked, they became the assailants, and the liberation of their Asiatic compatriots was the motive or the pretext by which they justified the continuance of an advantageous war, in which Sparta preserved the administration. But the treason and fall of Pausanias, who died of famine in the temple to which he had fled for refuge, changed the situation of affairs, The supreme influence passed from the Spartans to the Athenians, who profited by it to form a kind of military confederation of the inferior states. From this epoch dates the jealousy of the two republics, previous to which the numerous petty