24 DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. ticism, and that of all previous critics, from Plutarch to Voltaire, we still turn with confidence to the pages of the old Homer of History,' believing that there we find much true and valuable information as to the nations of antiquity which no other work contains, and that we there have a striking and, on the whole, a faithful picture of the ancient world as it appeared to a Greek traveller five centuries before the Christian era." DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. Diogenes was a native of Sinope, in Pontus, which he and his father, who was a banker, were compelled to quit, for coining false money. On settling at Athens, he studied philosophy under Antisthenes. From his writings being lost, the extent of his information and his discoveries in science are unknown. That he had the reputation of being a great genius seems undeniable; although much of his celebrity may be referred to the strictness of his tenets, contempt of comfort, and oddity of manner. It must not be inferred that because he despised riches he cultivated humility: on the contrary, he looked down with scorn upon the whole world, censured with the dignity of a magistrate all mankind, and considered every philosopher as greatly his inferior. Extreme poverty, the result of his despising riches, obliged him to beg—a state to which his raiment was not superior; yet, when Alexander the Great offered him riches, he spurned at the proposal, and said, "All I ask is, do not stand between me and the sun.' In after-life, Diogenes was taken by pirates, who carried him into Crete, and sold him to Xeniades, a Corinthian, in whose family he lived as tutor, and refused to be ransomed by his friends, giving as a reason, that "a lion was not the servant of his feeders, but their master." He died in the same year, and, according to one account, on the same day, with Alexander the Great (323 B.C.), at the age of ninety years. Of him Plato may be said to have given a just character in a few words, that "he was Socrates run mad." His dress was a coarse double robe, which served him as a cloak by day and a coverlet by night, and carried a wallet to receive alms of food. His abode was a cask in the temple of Cybele. In the summer he rolled himself upon the burning sand, and in the winter clung to the images in the street covered with snow, in order that he might accustom himself to endure all kinds of weather. The smart things and witty repartees of Diogenes were collected by his kinsman, Diogenes Laertius; and of them Professor de Morgan has, in the Athenæum, collected some specimens. 66 'Diogenes is not a Cynic: that is a name for the snapping school which he raised into fame, nominally founded by Antisthenes. He is as much more than a Cynic as Plato is more than a Platonist. I am Alexander the great king. And I am Diogenes the Dog (kvwv).' The school frequented the Cynosargus at Athens; whence some thought the name was derived. Very likely; and in this way: dirty mendicants haunting a place so called would be called dogs, and philosophic pride would adopt the name. DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. 25 66 Diogenes, like R. B. Sheridan, must have every stray joke sworn to him. But the genuine stock is in Laertius. He was asked why gold is so pale, and he replied, Because so many are lying in wait for it. Very likely the querist expected Diogenes to answer that he did not know, and would then have answered his own question with-Because it is afraid you and your father will put a wrong stamp on it. For Icesias and Son were bankers at Sinope, and were driven away for operations on the coinage. When Diogenes was afterwards reproached with this, his answer was—I was once what you are now; what I am now you never will be. "When should a man dine? If rich, said Diogenes, when he likes poor, when he can. 66 "Why, said some one, who wanted to be very smart upon the poor tub-tenant who lived by his wit, do people give cheerfully to the lame and blind, but not to philosophers? Because said Diogenes, people feel they may (novo) become lame and blind themselves, but they have no fear of becoming philosophers. He begged of a stingy man who was very slow about producing anything: My friend! said he, what I ask for is to feed me, not to bury me. "The well-known house, or bed, in which the sage lived-when at Athens, at least; no doubt Xeniades found him a better lodging-has produced a comparison. Granger said that the large hoop-apparatus which the ladies wore in his day was no more a petticoat than Diogenes's tub was his breeches. Would they now let Diogenes, tub and all, into an omnibus? "The humility of Diogenes was of that kind which is 'aped by pride,' and is, perhaps, the best understood point of his enigmatical character. It did not impose upon Plato, whose repartee is equally well known. Byron embodies it in one of the stanzas of Don Juan :— Trampling on Plato's pride, with greater pride, As did the cynic on some like occasion: The same idea is illustrated in a different way by Sir Thomas Browne: "Diogenes I hold to be the most vain inglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all honours than Alexander in rejecting none."-Religio Medici. The tub story has been demolished: "And why?" says De Morgan. "Because it is not mentioned by Cicero, Plutarch, Arrian, and Valerius Maximus; only by Lucian, Laertius, Juvenal, and Seneca." Diogenes desired to be buried head downwards, feeling sure, he said, that things would soon be topsy-turvy: this was an allusion to the growth of Macedonia. Diogenes was imitated by the eccentric Major Labellière, who was buried on the most north-western brow of Box Hill, in Surrey, with his head downwards, in order, he said, that as the world was turned topsy-turvy, it was fit he should be buried so, that he might be right at last." 66 26 THE PLAINS OF TROY. XERXES AND HIS EXPLOITS. Ancient authors differ respecting the number of the army under Xerxes in his invasion of Greece. Justinus makes it consist of 700,000 native troops and 300,000 auxiliaries, adding that it had not been improperly recorded that rivers had been drunk up by his armies, and that his fleet consisted of 14,000 ships. That historian says: "His army wanted a commander: that, in considering the king, you may praise his wealth, but see him as a general: that he was first in flight, last in war, timid in perils, and puffed up when not in personal danger. Before he made trial of war, from confidence of his strength, he seemed the lord of nature itself, levelled mountains, filled up valleys, covered certain seas with bridges, and contributed to the advantage of navigation by the invention of shorter methods. His entrance into Greece was as terrible as his retreat was dishonourable. When he came down upon Greece, Leonidas, with 4000 men, guarded the Straits of Thermopylæ for three days against the whole army of Xerxes, and would probably have successfully repelled the invaders (though, according to Diodorus, there were at least 7000, or even 12,000, if we may believe Pausanias), had not the enemy, by the treachery of a Grecian, been conducted to the top of a hill which overhangs the pass. The obstinate bravery of Leonidas and his men had nearly proved fatal to the king himself, who, in his retreat, crossed the Hellespont in a fishing-boat, traversing the space in thirty days, and returned to Persia; traversing a space in thirty days over which it took six months to march with his army. Such mortality prevailed among the troops who accompanied him, that the birds of prey marked his track, and feasted on the bodies of the Persians. Before the naval engagement, Xerxes sent 4000 armed men to plunder Delphi, who fell by showers and lightning. He made war a second time on Greece, and was defeated by Cimon, son of Miltiades, both by land and sea. These unsuccessful attacks on Greece rendered Xerxes contemptible in the eyes of his own subjects; and Artabanus, his prefect, put him to death, in order to procure the crown for himself. THE PLAINS OF TROY. The histories of the Troad and the city of Troy are either mythical or entirely lost to us. Of the latter, although it was one of the most celebrated cities of antiquity, its site has been the subject of much discussion in modern times by travellers and antiquaries. Some have denied the existence of ancient Troy altogether, or have declared it to be a useless task to investigate its site, since it was totally destroyed by the Greeks, and abandoned by its inhabitants. But this last opinion is too sweeping; since, although Troy may have been destroyed by the Greeks, Homer, who cannot have been mistaken on this point, clearly suggests, and is borne out by Strabo, that after the calamity that befel Troy in the reign of Priam, it continued, at least for some time, to be ruled over by the Æneada, a branch of the house of Priam. The city of Troy, which SOLIMAN "THE MAGNIFICENT.” 27 Xerxes (Herodotus) and afterwards Alexander the Great visited, may have been of later origin, but it is nevertheless attested that it was built on the site of the ancient Troy. This town gradually decayed after the time of Alexander, and a new town of the same name was built, which the Romans regarded and treated as the genuine ancient Troy, from which they derived their descent. After a siege of nine years, the Greeks took and destroyed the city of Troy, about the year 1184 B.C. Thenceforth, the history of Troy, which, until then, is thoroughly mythical, is completely lost to us; although, as indicated above, it must have continued for a considerable time afterwards. At the time of the Trojan war, the inhabitants of the Troad had reached a higher state of prosperity than their opponents, the Achæans. There seems, however, to have been no considerable town in the district, except the capital, Ilium or Troy: the cities mentioned by Homer would seem, from the ease with which they were taken, to have been nothing more than villages. The strength and resources of Troy baffled the united efforts of all Greece for nine years. Catullus has beautifully described the enormous carnage of its bloody siege in a single line:-"Iniquitous Troy, the common grave of Europe and Asia." The Trojan walls were built by Neptune and Apollo for a certain sum, which they were to receive from Laomedon, but out of which he defrauded them. Webster, who visited the plains of Troy in 1830, describes them as now barren and desolate. The classic Scamander is but a muddy stream, winding through an uncultivated plain, covered with stunted oaks, underwood, and rushes. At the opposite extremity of the plain, stood the tombs of Hector and Achilles; that of the latter near the Hellespont, where the Greek fleet was moored. Near is the grave of his friend Patroclus. Thus, Athenian glories are now reduced to a few tumuli about thirty feet high. ແ Here is a specimen of the barbarity with which this historical butcher treated his fellow-creatures : Among the many distinctions of Soliman's reign must be noticed the increased diplomatic intercourse with European nations. Three years after the capture of Rhodes appeared the first French ambassador at the Ottoman Porte: he received a robe of honour, a present of two hundred ducats, and, what was more to his purpose, a promise of a campaign in Hungary, which should engage on that side the army of Charles and his brother, Ferdinand. Soliman kept his promise. At the head of 100,000 men and 300 pieces of artillery, he commenced this memorable campaign. On the fatal field of Mohacs the fate of Hungary was decided, in the year 1526, in an unequal fight. Louis II., as he fled from the Turkish sabres, was drowned in a morass. The next day the Sultan received in state the compliments of his officers. The heads of 2000 of the slain, including those of seven bishops, and many of the nobility, 28 HISTORY OF EARLY ROME. were piled up as a trophy before his tent. Seven days after the battle a tumultuous cry arose in the camp to massacre the prisoners and peasants, and, in consequence, 10,000 men were put to the sword. The keys of Buda were sent to the conqueror, who celebrated the feast of Bairam in the Castle of the Hungarian Kings. Fourteen days afterwards he began to retire, bloodshed and devastation marking the course of his army. To Maroth, belonging to the Bishop of Gran, many thousands of the people had fled with their property, relying on the strength of the castle. The Turkish artillery, however, soon levelled it, and the wretched fugitives were indiscriminately butchered. No less than 25,000 fell here; and the whole number of the Hungarians destroyed in the barbarous warfare of this single campaign amounted to at least 200,000 souls. HISTORY OF EARLY ROME. The early history of Rome has undergone some strange ups and downs within the memory of man. A generation which is hardly yet extinct, believed it as it stood. Niebuhr taught us to disbelieve the old history; he gave a history of his own making to believe instead of it; though his statements too often rested not on any tangible evidence, but on a power of "divination" vested in Niebuhr himself. Much that Niebuhr had rejected, Mr. Newman believed. The last history of Rome, that of Mommsen, like Niebuhr's, pulls down and builds up, but never quotes authorities. Meanwhile, Sir George Cornewall Lewis assailed Niebuhr's whole system, scoffed at the power of divination, denied the right of any man to assert anything which he could not prove, and maintained that next to nothing could be proved as to the times embraced in the first Decade of Livy. Yet, Sir G. C. Lewis did not deny that many of the leading events in earlier times had a real historical groundwork; and he only laid it down, that without contemporary evidence it is impossible to distinguish the truth from falsehood, while he did infinite service in utterly discrediting the wild notion of " divination," and in exposing the reckless dogmatism with which Niebuhr had imposed upon the world statements unsupported by a shadow of evidence. The result of Sir G. C. Lewis's labours is, in effect, to wipe Niebuhr out altogether, and to leave the early books of Livy as a beautiful story, a sort of prose Iliad, which we may read and enjoy, without believing it. For history, he would send us to the later days of Rome; to those mighty struggles with Hannibal and Philip, which have been so strangely neglected for myths about Romulus and Coriolanus. The one fact of early Roman history for which real contemporary evidence can be shown, is the fact that Rome was taken by the Gauls. Roman history, in the highest and fullest sense of the word, begins only with the war with Pyrrhus. Up to the invasion, all is chaos; all records have perished; we can be sure of nothing. The political history of Rome, if we like to believe it, begins with Romulus and Tatius. That Romulus made a treaty with Tatius is in itself more credible than that |