The Domestic Virtues and Manners of the Greeks and 17 ARGUMENT. OBSERVATIONS on the different estimate of domestic virtues in modern and ancient states. Circumstances which led the Athenians in particular to neglect them. Different situation of the Romans. Character of the conjugal relation in Greece and in Rome. Parental connexion in Rome and in Greece. Connexion between master and slave in Rome and in Greece. Manners of the Greeks and of the Romans. Their amusements and entertainments. Difficulty of drawing a right comparison between the ancients and the moderns. Argument from antecedent probability to prove the superior morality of the moderns. State of the domestic relations, and principles on which they are founded in modern states. Conclusion. The Domestic Virtues and Manners of the Greeks and Romans compared with those of the most refined States of Europe. THERE are few errors more striking in the political philosophy of the ancients than the relative value it assigned to civil and domestic institutions. Justly considering that the perfection of humanity was attainable only in a state of political union, it nevertheless, in admiration of the end, neglected the means by which nature had willed its accomplishment. It sacrificed the domestic affections to the civil duties of man; it gave an unnatural but dazzling ascendancy to social disinterestedness; and in an ambitious pursuit of the "Honestum, it destroyed or debilitated the strongest link which connects the whole progressive chain of virtues with the main principle of our self-love. And hence arises a remarkable distinction in the internal policy of modern and ancient society. The former proposes for its end a solid and substantial advantage in the aggregate accumulation of private happiness; the latter, a mere fiction of abstraction, which resided in the whole, though in none of the B |