to Greece.b For Aratus, who had enjoyed that honour thirty-three years, could not bear the thought of having it wrested from him by so young a Prince, whose glory he envied as much as he dreaded his valour. Finding therefore all other methods ineffectual, he had recourse to the desperate remedy of calling in the Macedonians to his assistance, and sacrificed the liberty of his own country, as well as that of Greece, to his own private pique and jealousy. Thus the most publick-spirited assertor of liberty, and the most implacable [64] enemy to all tyrants in general, brought back those very people into the heart of Greece, whom he had driven out formerly purely from his hatred to tyranny, and sullied a glorious life with a blot never to be erased, from the detestable motives of envy and revenge. A melancholy proof, as Plutarch moralizes upon the occasion, of the weakness of human nature, which with an assemblage of the most excellent qualities is unable to exhibit the model of a virtue completely perfect. A circumstance which ought to excite our compassion towards those blemishes, which we unavoidably meet with in the most exalted characters.
Cleomenes supported this unequal war against the Achaeans and the whole power of Macedon with the greatest vigour, and by his success gave many convincing proofs of his abilities; but venturing a decisive battle at Sallasia, he was totally defeated by the superior number of his enemies,
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and the treachery of Damoteles, an officer in whom he greatly confided, who was bribed to betray him by Antigonus. Out of six thousand Spartans, two hundred only escaped, the rest with their king Euclidas were left dead on the field of battle.64 Cleomenes retired to Sparta, and from thence passed over to Ptolemy Euergetes king of Egypt, with whom he [65] was then in alliance, to claim the assistance he had formerly promised. But the death of that Monarch, which followed soon after, deprived him of all hopes of succour from that quarter. The Spartan manners were as odious to his successor Ptolemy Philopator, a weak and dissolute prince, as the Spartan virtue was terrible to his debauched effeminate courtiers. Whenever Cleomenes appeared at court, the general whisper ran, that he came as a lion in the midst of sheep; a light in which a brave man must necessarily appear to a herd of such servile dastards. Confined at last by the jealousy of Ptolemy, who was kept in a perpetual alarm by the insinuations of his iniquitous minister Sosybius, he with about twelve more of his generous Spartan friends broke out of prison, determined upon death or liberty. In their progress through the streets, they first slew one Ptolemy, a great favourite of the King’s, who had been their secret enemy; and meeting the governor of the city, who came at the first noise of the tumult, they routed his guards and attendants, dragged him out of his chariot, and killed him. After this they ranged uncontrouled through the whole city of Alexandria, the inhabitants flying every where before them, and not a man daring either to assist or oppose them. Such terror could thirteen brave men only strike into one of the [66] most populous cities in the universe, where the citizens were bred up in luxury, and strangers to the use of arms! Cleomenes, despairing of assistance from the citizens, whom he had in vain summoned to assert their liberty, declared such abject cowards fit only to be governed by women. Scorning therefore to fall by the hands of the despicable Egyptians, he with the rest of the Spartans fell desperately by their own swords, according to the heroism of those ages.a
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The liberty and happiness of Sparta expired with Cleomenes.a For the remains of the Spartan history furnish us with very little after his death, besides the calamities and miseries of that unhappy state, arising from their intestine divisions. Machanidas, by the aid of one of the factions which at that time rent that miserable republick, usurped the throne, and established an absolute tyranny. One Nabis, a tyrant, compared to whom even Nero himself may be termed merciful, succeeded at the death of Machanidas, who fell in battle by the hand of the great Philopaemen. The Aetolians treacherously murdered Nabis, and endeavoured to seize the dominion of Sparta; but they were prevented by Philopaemen, who partly by [67] force, partly by persuasion, brought the Spartans into the Achaean league, and afterwards totally abolished the institutions of Lycurgus.b A most inhuman and most iniquitous action, as Plutarch terms it, which must brand the character of that hero with eternal infamy. As if he was sensible that as long as the discipline of Lycurgus subsisted, the minds of the Spartan youth could never be thoroughly tamed, or effectually broke to the yoke of foreign government. Wearied out at last by repeated oppressions, the Spartans applied to the Romans for redress of all their grievances; and their complaints produced that war which ended in the dissolution of the Achaean league, and the subjection of Greece to the Roman domination.
I have entered into a more minute detail of the Spartan constitution, as settled by Lycurgus, than I at first proposed; because the maxims of that celebrated lawgiver are so directly opposite to those which our modern politicians lay down as the basis of the strength and power of a nation.
Lycurgus found his country in the most terrible of all situations, a state of anarchy and confusion. The rich, insolent and oppressive; the poor groaning under a load of debt, mutinous from despair, and ready to [68] cut the throats of their usurious oppressors. To remedy these evils, did this wise politician encourage navigation, strike out new branches
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of commerce, and make the most of those excellent harbours and other natural advantages which the maritime situation of his country afforded? Did he introduce and promote arts and sciences, that by acquiring and diffusing new wealth amongst his countrymen, he might make his nation, in the language of our political writers, secure, powerful, and happy?68 Just the reverse. After he had new-modelled the constitution, and settled the just balance between the powers of government, he abolished all debts, divided the whole land amongst his countrymen by equal lots, and put an end to all dissentions about property, by introducing a perfect equality. He extirpated luxury and a lust of wealth, which he looked upon as the pests of every free country, by prohibiting the use of gold and silver; and barred up the entrance against their return by interdicting navigation and commerce, and expelling all arts, but what were immediately necessary to their subsistence. As he was sensible that just and virtuous manners are the best support of the internal peace and happiness of every kingdom, he established a most excellent plan of education for training up his countrymen, from their very infancy, in the strict-[69]est observance of their religion and laws, and the habitual practice of those virtues which can alone secure the blessings of liberty, and perpetuate their duration. To protect his country from external invasions, he formed the whole body of the people, without distinction, into one well armed, well disciplined national militia, whose leading principle was the love of their country, and who esteemed death in its defence, the most exalted height of glory to which a Spartan was capable of attaining. Nor were these elevated sentiments confined solely to the men; the colder breasts of the women caught fire at the glorious flame, and glowed even with superior ardour. For when their troops marched against an enemy, “to bring back their shields, or to be brought home
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upon them,”a was the last command which the Spartan mothers gave their sons at parting.
Such was the method which Lycurgus took to secure the independency and happiness of his country; and the event shewed, that his institutions were founded upon maxims of the truest and justest policy. For I [70] cannot help observing upon the occasion, that from the time of Lycurgus to the introduction of wealth by Lysander in the reign of the first Agis, a space of five hundred years, we meet with no mutiny amongst the people, upon account of the severity of his discipline, but on the contrary the most religious reverence for, and the most willing and chearful obedience to, the laws he established. As on the other hand, the wisdom of his military institutions is evident from this consideration; That the national militia alone of Sparta, a small insignificant country as to extent, situated in a nook only of the Morea,69 not only gave laws to Greece, but made the Persian monarchs tremble at their very name, though absolute masters of the richest and most extensive empire the world then knew.
I observe farther, that the introduction of wealth by Lysander, after the conquest of Athens, brought back all those vices and dissentions which the prohibition
