The Parthians are often called Scythians, but the countenances on their coins are thoroughly Persian or Afghan; in fact, are very Jewish. They have absolutely nothing of the Mongol in eyebrows, nose or beard. The contests of aspirants to the throne, in the absence of a fixed law of succession, gradually weakened them: yet the Indus and the Euphrates were long their limits. Armenia was generally in dependent alliance to them. From about B.C. 256 to A.C. 226 (481 years) is the duration of their rule. The dynasty is called the Arsacida.

The monarchy of the Sassanide which followed was splendid and chivalrous, and controlled the Roman empire more effectually than the Parthians had done. But Rome was no longer what she had been. Decay, decrepitude, internal wars wasted her; and first Goths, then other Germans aided to pull her down. The Sassanidæ remained as a majestic and specious power, until the new-born Mohammedan enthusiasm overwhelmed the entire realm :—an event which terminates Ancient History in the East.

END OF FOURTH LECTURE.

FIFTH LECTURE.

ON THE REPUBLICAN FORM IN GENERAL;

Especially ATHENS.

It was regarded as an axiom by ARISTOTLE, that a Constitution, (or Polity, as he named it,) could only exist while the citizens were in moderate number. To have so many as a hundred thousand, would make legal freedom impossible, and doom the state to fall under the power of royalty or of tyrants. Absolute royalty seemed the natural condition of Persia or India. On the contrary, when states were small, royalty was but an accident, constitutionalism was the normal state; and royalty was likely to be, or gradually to become, constitutional, by just such steps and processes as in Europe we well understand.

But in all the small states of Greece and Italy the movement tended to the total overthrow of royalty; for this reason, that constitutional royalty, as it exists in England, is far too expensive for a little state. To keep a king for show, and get ministers and generals to do his work, was too great a burden. In Greece, only Sparta endured it; but there splendour was forbidden and impossible. Moreover the Spartan kings, though shorn of civil power, were actual generals of the army, and did real work; certainly more than an English royal duke who happens to be commander-in-chief. Although HOMER talks grandly of that king of kings, AGAMEMNON, yet when he would display to us a true home-scene, he curiously represents 'the king" as standing in the harvest field to superintend his reapers and rejoice in their industry. An English baronet

might have been to HOMER's notion a king, and a duke a king of the chief rank. A superior king, like ACHILLES, had subordinate judges, who heard and decided causes in his stead An ordinary king was not only warrior and captain, as in the Iliad, but carpenter and pilot as in the Odyssey, and judge as in Hesiod. When a king grew old, as PELEUS father of ACHILLES, or LAERTES father of ULYSSES, he was displaced, as of course, and his son succeeded him. The rule was strictly personal: a minor could not be king, nor could any one reign without bearing the entire responsibility of the government. As all states sooner or later have misfortune and discontent, and either are or seem to be misgoverned, every dynasty accumulated ill-will, and in a small state could be overthrown by slight effort, whenever odium was general. Republicanism did not necessarily follow at once. A king might be elected from a new family; and if the state were warlike, needing always a general, elective royalty might become systematic; but this did not happen in Greece. It was not uncommon in Italy, and perhaps was derived from the Tuscans. In Sparta the fall of royalty was broken and delayed by having two kings, both hereditary. But a civil government was put right over their heads; they were in truth only hereditary generals, though called kings. We also hear of Protectors and Dictators; but these, as in modern times, could only be temporary and transitional. It is probable that in such matters the same causes worked, with the same general result, in Phœnicia, Carthage and Etruria, as in Greek and Latin states. Some of them may have been always republics, and never have had kings at all: but at any rate, they became republics at last.

What then was the general character and description of this republicanism, so widely diffused among small states? This is the topic which at present I am about to discuss. With numerous points of difference, they had also much in common; much also which it would not occur to a mere Englishman to expect.

First of all, it needs to be strongly impressed that Repub

licanism with none of them meant human equality. Even citizens might have great diversity of political rank and right, as in modern Europe peers and commoners differ. Likewise, as with us some noblemen are legislative peers, others have a title but not a seat in parliament, so in Rome a few nobles were in the Senate, a large number were not. Again, it was possible to be a half citizen. Aliens, when fixedly resident, received peculiar rights, short of the full franchise and certain friendly states might by treaty be admitted to such half rights without continuous residence. So too, freedmen had an imperfect franchise. Thus far they differed from us less in substance than in words. They might have called our nobles Patricians, or Wellborn; our enfranchised commoners, the Plebs or Demos; our non-franchised citizens were like their Freedmen or their Resident aliens. Nevertheless, in two points of principle we are greatly opposed to them. First, we insist on equality before the law: next, we hold that local birth entitles every one to the ordinary benefits of citizenship.

A peer of Parliament has in England a few exceptional privileges in regard to the processes of a criminal suit; but they do not deserve to have stress here laid on them. To speak broadly, the law both criminal and civil is the same for every one in the community. Except in the very critical case of slaves, a double code was no more imagined by ancient states than by ourselves. Nevertheless, full citizens were in most republics favoured in regard to degrading punishments, and sheltered from summary tribunals; and in the practical result citizens had often a harsh and unjust advantage at law over foreigners or half citizens, and their crimes were difficult to punish. Crimes of Roman nobles against provincials were more unpunishable under the republic than in any known historical empire. Even a Persian satrap or Turkish pasha has always to fear retribution from the great monarch. We must confess; every where, in a newly conquered empire, office-bearers get a frightful license against foreign subjects,

especially if their cruelties, however illegal, have some public and imperial design. But it is the reproach of all the ancient aristocracies, and of Rome preëminently, that a noble had an almost entire impunity of selfish crime against persons of inferior grade. No events oftener induced insurrection and revolution in petty states than outrages of the aristocracy against women; which were seldom punishable by the ordinary course of law. The root of the evil was, that the idea of human equality was never for a moment admitted as the basis of law. The State was understood to rest, not on morality, but on conquest. Even when the times of rudeness and coarse barbarism were past, law was never allowed to shift and underprop itself on morality; for every where Slavery stood at the side of the citizens, as a perpetual memento that brute force, not right, was sovereign. This was the poisonous element in every ancient republic, however plausible, which doomed it to early decay, after very transient brilliancy. From the battle of Marathon to the thirty tyrants of Athens (B.C. 490-404) is less than 90 years: such is the chief period of Athenian glory. But if we count from the expulsion of the sons of PEISISTRATUS to the death of DEMOSTHENES we have in all barely 180 years of democracy, after which Athens is an inglorious shadow of herself. Rome began her career of internal vigour only from the year in which she admitted the Latin cities into full and final equality with herself. But let us go back one generation, and count from the plebeian consulate, B.C. 365. The inward forces of life increase until the war of HANNIBAL, B.C. 218; only 147 years. Thenceforward she wastes frightfully from within. The numbers of her citizens are recruited only by the adoption of foreigners. Italian cultivation declines; large estates, thinly peopled by slaves and cattle, increase: the armies are filled, first by foreign Italians, only half citizens, next by Illyrians, Spaniards and Gauls; and then the republic vanishes, conquered by its own foreign troops. As early as the time of TIBERIUS GRACCHUS, who was killed B.C. 133, the state of the Roman