Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

formed for the impreffions of paternal love, filial piety, faithful friendship; in order to fulfil the feveral duties connected with thofe fentiments, to animate indifference, and to fhame ingratitude.

Let us now confider the conduct of the Romans in this refpect. Zealous republicans, fond of glory, jealous of liberty and independence, but ambitious of place and power, accustomed to look upon their citizens as fuperior to kings (of whom they fhewed their contempt by dragging them behind their triumphal cars), and to confider Rome as the miftrefs of the world, the Romans, in their attachment to their haughty country, had more of oftentation and vanity, than of fentiment.

The patriotim of the Romans refembled that of the Lacedæmonians. It was a fublime but fevere virtue, an imperious paffion, impatient of controul, and carried almost to the delirium of fanaticifm. This does not carry with it the idea of thofe gentler fentiments, thofe natural attractions, we find in our hearts, and that affection we experience for the place of our nativity. The rage of patriotifm with them ftifled all other fentiments. At the fame time it made them capable of fuch prodigies of valour as aftonished their enemies, and of fuch barbarous facrifices as were fhocking to humanity. The ancient Romans were devoted to the commonwealth, and made themselves victims to its aggrandifement. The Lacedæmonians were of the fame principles. They would live in hardships, and die with joy, to render Sparta the miftrefs of Greece +.

Cicero preached this doctrine to his fellow-citizens, at a time when they were incapable of receiving it. Cari funt Parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; fed omnes omnium caritates patria una complectitur, pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem appetere, fi ei fit profuturus. Nothing was more commonly adopted than the Decorum pro patria mori. It was the motto of that military race of men which gave the world fo magnificent an idea of Rome. The fole idea of the happinefs of their country, their common mother, gave the Greeks more temperate, more pleasing, and confequently more durable fentiments.

menfe plain of waters, tears rifing in his eyes. Surely he only could fhed fuch tears who could imagine them,-the great difciple, not of human fience, but of Nature, the immortal Homer!

Oppian obferves, that Nature has given the fame attachment to animals. De Venat. 1. 2 V. 313.

M. Duclos, fpeaking of this kind of patriotifm, adds, fuch are Our Religious, whom the zeal of the houfe of God hath eaten up. "Their families become ftrangers to them. They know no family but that which they have adopted. The monaltic virtues give way to the genius of monkery.

L13

The

The Greek orators express a fenfibility by no means inferior to that of the Romans, when the love of their country is the fubject. To be fatisfied of this, we need only confult the eulogium of Athens by Ifocrates *.

They, moreover, confirmed their doctrine by their own examples. Demofthenes, when exiled, feeks no other revenge of his fellow-citizens, than that of doing them fresh fervices. When befieged in the temple of Hercules, where he had taken refuge, he chufes rather to end his days by poifon, than to attach himself to the tyrant of Athens.

Dion Chryfoftom, who by his government had embellished and improved his country, notwithstanding the oppofitions, the difgufts, the infults he had encountered, and the dangers to which he had been expofed †, Dion, though long in exile, a fugitive, wandering from one retreat to another to escape the hatred of Domitian, afked no other favour of his friend Nerva, when he fucceeded to the empire, than that he might be permit ted to return to Prufa, his country, and make fome improvements there at his expence. On his return to Bithynia, he made a public fpeech, wherein his affection for his country and his fellow-citizens is expreffed with great energy and fenfibility.

Nothing can be more ftriking than a view of the Greeks returning to their country after a fhort abfence. They invoke their gods; they falute it with all the eagernefs of joy. Imagine to yourself the tranfports of thofe brave foldiers of Xenophon (in the retreat of the ten thousand) on the fight of the fea which opened their way to Greece. They erect trophies in memory of their atchievements and their return; they congratulate each other; they embrace, and, in the first emotions of their general joy, there is no diftinction between officer and foldier | This retreat, fo famous in hiftory, is the moft glorious monument, not only of the courage and firmnets of the Greeks, but of their affection for their country.

Every other fentiment feems to have been abforbed in this. When Athens had the ingratitude to banifh Lycurgus, Ariftides, Miltiades, Phocion, and Themiftocles, thofe virtuous citizens ftill loved their country, as the poet loved his mistress,

Mr. Guys here alludes to the following paffage, "Our origin is fo pure and unmixed, one city having produced us all, and been flill poffeffed by us, that we are the only Greeks who can give our native place the dearest and tendereft of all names, who can call it at once our nurse, our country, and our mother."

+ In an infurrection occafioned by a fcarcity of corn, when the people attempted to burn his houfe.

A city in Bithynia, fometimes called Prufias.
Xenoph. De Cyri Exped. Hift. lib. iv. c. 7.

7

though

though he knew her to be falfe *. If they had divifions among themselves, they ftill united to defend their country. Imprecations were publicly pronounced against him who introduced at foreign army into his country +. In time of peace they employed themselves in embellifhing and adorning their native cities. The decoration of their towns and temples announced the progress of arts, and the zeal of the citizens. It is obfervable, that the genius of the fine arts has always been ambitious of doing honour to the country where they flourished.

The Romans, at the expence of the Greeks, whom they ftripped of their ornaments, had the fame ambition to enrich their country, to tranfport the arts thither, and make them fubmit to the mafters of the world.

One cannot confider the patriotic affection of the Greeks and Romans, different, indeed, in its character and nature, without finding among the modern Greeks the fame features which that virtue wore with their forefathers. It is that natural love of the native place, which Virgil expreffes fo well in the perfon of Melibœus, whofe principal regret feems to arise from his forced desertion of his beloved country,

Nos patria fines, & dulcia linquimus arva;

Nos patriam fugimus, &c.

The fame poet, when he paints the patriotic affection of a virtuous citizen, represents a young Greek, who followed the fortunes of Evander, dying in a foreign country, and at the point of death wholly taken up with the remembrance of his dear Argos:

-Dulces, moriens, reminifcitur Argos.

Thus Ajax, in Sophocles, juft before his death, "Fair Sun, I behold thee for the laft time. Salamis, palace of my fathers, Athens, friends, rivers, fountains, that bore witness to my birth, receive the laft adieus of Ajax.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The poet here alluded to by Mr. Guys is Tibullus, who fays of his miftrefs,

-Quamvis perfida, cara tamen!

The patriotic affection did not, however, always meet with fo ungrateful a return. The city of Mytilene caufed a medal to be ftruck in honour of Potamon, the fon of Lefbonax the philofopher, who was reprefented on the reverfe returning from Rome, where the Emperor Tiberius had loaded him with favours: but he chofe rather to fix his refidence in his native city, and to give his leffons to his fellow-citizens, than to reap the greatest advantages in the capital of the world. The paffport Tiberius gave him on leaving Rome is curious. "If any one dares to infult Potamon, the fon of Leibonax, let him first confi der whether he is able to refift

TIBERIUS,"

+ Efch. Sept. ap. Theb.

The Abbe De Chaulieu has expreffed the fame fentiments, the fame manner, in his tender adieu to Fontenay, the place of his nativity.

mu.

Fontenai, lieu délicieux,

Ou je vis d'abord la lumière;
Bientot au bout de ma carrière,
Firai rejoinare mes ayeux.
Mufes, qui dans ce lieu champêtre
Avec foin me fites nourrir,

Beaux Arbres qui m'avez vú naître,
Bientot vous me verrez mourir.
In English:

Farewell fields of Fontenay,
Where I first beheld the day!
Soon to clofe my aged eye,
Soon to join my ancestry,
When I feek their lowly cell,
Fields of Fontenay, farewell!
When the mufe that wak'd my lyre,
Sees the breath the tun'd expire;
When the groves that wont to wave
O er my flumbers, fhade my grave;
Where I once enjoy'd the day,

Farewell fields of Fontenay'

Let us read the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides, the most interefting tragedy perhaps of the whole Greek theatre, as well on account of its fituations and fentiments, as of that peculiar air of truth and probability which the poet has had the art to give it. Let us hear the chorus of Greek women tenderly bewailing the lois of their country in the fecond and fourth acts. I thall quote only the following ftrophe:

"Far from my dear country, I figh for the fociety of the Greeks. Who will lend me wings to fly to Diana, the Cynthian goddess? When fhall I behold the palms of Delos, the groves of laurel for ever green: the fhades of Olive confecrated by the genial bed of Latona? O lakes, whose waters are covered with fans! Ofwans, friends of the muses, when shall I beheld you again!"

When Iphigenia would bind Pilades by the ftrongeft oath, fhe fays, "If you prove falfe, what fhall be the punishment of your infidelity?" Pilades anfwers, Pilades anfwers, "May I never more return And your punishment, Iphigenia, in the May I never more," the replies, "fee Ar

to my country lik cale?" 61 gos!"

יין

Such was the influence which this patriotic affection, infpired by Nature, had in ancient Greece; and though in modern Greece it appears not with equal eclat, it is fill deeply imprcffed upon the hearts of the people.

The

The Greeks, enamoured of their own country, travel not but for the advantages of learning or commerce, which they always return to enjoy in the place of their nativity. Under the yoke of the Turks, their very chains feem only to bind them more firmly to the country of their ancestors. Modern Greece, covered with the long veil of flaves *, is a captive mother in affliction, whom her children embrace with tendernefs, and affectionately promife that they will never forfake her t.'

Mr. Guys's Letters have one kind of merit which must recommend them to men of learning in general. The intelligent Writer, in most of them, illuftrates and explains the ancient ufages on record by the modern manners and cuftoms of Greece. Of this we fhall give a fpecimen from his fifth letter.

I obferve that now, as in former times, in the principal families of Grecce, the nurfe of the mafter or the miftrefs makes a part of the family. Among the ancients, the woman who had nurfed a young lady never forfook her, even after her marriage 1. She was her governefs, her confidant, her counfellor. Hence it is, that in the ancient Greek tragedies, and in thofe of the Latin written upon the fame plan, no woman of rank ever appears upon the stage without being accompanied by her nurie. This ufage is fo attentively preferved, that the modern name of a nurfe is Paramana, a word of great tenderness, and even more expreffive than the ancient, as it fignifies fecond mother. The nurfe is always lodged in the houfe where the brought up her child, and from that time fhe is adopted into the family.

The Greek ladies ftill refuse to nurfe their children, that they may preferve their beauty, the elegance of their bofoms, and even their health, to which they fuppofe that this contributes. In this, however, they have been often told that they are miftaken, and that, by giving up their children to the nutrition of ftrangers, they make themfelves mere ftepmothers. But the force of cuftom fuperfedes all arguments. Of all that has been written in our times on this interefting fubject, nothing is more to the purpofe than the difcourfe of a great philofopher,

The flave's veil was made longer for the fake of diflinction, particularly when the female flaves were offered to fale.

This fine image naturally reminds us of the medals of Vefpafian and Titus, ftruck upon Jerufalem's being taken by the Romans A woman fitting at the foot of a palm-tree, covered with a long veil, her head reclined and fupported by her hand, with this infcription, Judaa captiva.

This cuftom is of high antiquity. When Rebecca left her country and her father's houte to marry Ifaac, he was accompanied by her nuife.

preferved

« ZurückWeiter »