Peaceful in Susa, then, sat the Great King ;? 442
And by the trick of treaties, the still waste
Of sly corruption, and barbaric gold,
Effected what his steel could ne'er perform,
Profuse he gave them the luxurious draught,
Inflaming all the land ; unbalanc'd wide
Their tottering states; their wild assemblies rul'd,
As the winds turn at every blast the seas;
And by their listed orators, whose breath

450
Still with a factious storm infested Greece,
Rous'd them to civil war, or dash'd them down
To sordid peace,2—peace that, when Sparta shook
Astonishid Artaxerxes on his throne,
Gave up, fair-spread o'er Asia's sunny shore,
Their kindred cities to perpetual chains !
What could so base, so infamous a thought
In Spartan hearts inspire ? Jealous, they saw
Respiring Athens rear again her walls ;
And the pale Fury fir'd them, once again

460 To crush this rival city to the dust. For now no more the noble social soul Of Liberty my families combin'd; But, by short views and selfish passions broke, Dire as when friends are rankled into foes, They mix'd severe, and wag'd eternal war: Nor felt they, furious, their exhausted force ; Nor, with false glory, discord, madness blind, Saw how the black ’ning storm from. Thracia came. Long years rolld on, by many a battle stain'd,3 470 The blush and boast of Fame! where courage, art, And military glory shone supreme :

But let detesting ages from the scene

473
Of Greece self-mangled turn the sick’ning eye.
At last, when, bleeding from a thousand wounds,
She felt her spirits fail ; and in the dust
Her latest heroes, Nicias, Conon, lay,
Agesilaus, and the Theban Friends :1
The Macedonian vulture mark'd his time,
By the dire scent of Cheronæa2 lur’d,
And, fierce descending, seiz'd his hapless prey.

“ Thus tame submitted to the victor's yoke
Greece, once the gay, the turbulent, the bold;
For every grace, and Muse, and science born ;
With arts of war, of government, elate ;
To tyrants dreadful, dreadful to the best ;
Whom I myself could scarcely rule : and thus
The Persian fetters, that enthrall'd the mind,
Were turn'd to formal and apparent chains.

“ Unless Corruption first deject the pride 490
And guardian vigour of the free-born soul,
All crude attempts of Violence are vain;
For, firm within, and while at heart untouch'd,
Ne'er yet by Force was Freedom overcome.
But soon as Independence stoops the head,
To Vice enslav'd, and Vice-created wants ;
Then to some foul corrupting hand, whose waste
These heighten'd wants with fatal bounty feeds;
From man to man the slack’ning ruin runs,
Till the whole State unnery'd in Slavery sinks." 500

1 Theban Friends :' Pelopidas and Epaminondas. — ? • Cheronæa :' the battle of Cheronæa, in which Philip of Macedon utterly defeated the Greeks.

PART III. ROME

CONTENTS.

As this part contains a description of the establishment of Liberty in Rome,

it begins with a view of the Grecian colonies settled in the southern parts of Italy, which with Sicily constituted the Great Greece of the ancients. With these colonies the Spirit of Liberty and of Republics spreads over Italy. Transition to Pythagoras and his philosophy, which he taught through those free states and cities. Amidst the many small republics in Italy, Rome the destined seat of Liberty. Her establishment there dated from the expulsion of the Tarquins. How differing from that in Greece. Reference to a view of the Roman Republic given in the First Part of this Poem; to mark its Rise and Fall the pecnliar purport of this. During its first ages, the greatest force of Liberty and Virtue exerted. The source whence derived the Heroic Virtues of the Romans. Enumeration of these Virtues. Thence their security at home; their glory, success, and empire, abroad. Bounds of the Roman Empire geographically described. The States of Greece restored to Liberty by Titus Quintius Flaminius, the highest instance of public generosity and beneficence. The loss of Liberty in Rome. Its causes, progress, and completion in the death of Brutus. Rome under the Emperors. From Rome the Goddess of Liberty goes among the Northern Nations; where, by infusing into them her spirit and general principles, she lays the groundwork of her future establishments ; sends them in vengeance on the Roman Empire, now totally enslaved ; and then, with Arts and Sciences in her train, quits earth during the dark ages. The celestial regions, to which Liberty retired, not proper to be opened to the view of mortals.

HERE melting mix'd with air th' ideal fornis
That painted still whate'er the Goddess sung.
Then I, impatient: “From extinguish'd Greece,
To what new region stream'd the human day?"
She softly sighing, as when Zephyr leaves,
Resign'd to Boreas, the declining year,
Resum’d: “ Indignant, these last scenes I fled ;
And long ere then, Leucadia's cloudy cliff

And the Ceraunian hills behind me thrown,
All Latium stood arous'd. Ages before,
Great mother of republics, Greece had pour’d,
Swarm after swarm, her ardent youth around.
On Asia, Afric, Sicily, they stoop’d;
But chief on fair Hesperia's winding shore ;
Where, from Lacinium 1 to Etrurian vales,
They roll'd increasing colonies along,
And lent materials for my Roman reign.
With them my spirit spread; and numerous states,
And cities rose, on Grecian models form’d;
As its parental policy and arts

20
Each had imbib’d. Besides, to each assign'd,
A Guardian Genius, o'er the public weal
Kept an unclosing eye; tried to sustain,
Or more sublime, the soul infus'd by me :
And strong the battle rose, with various wave,
Against the Tyrant Demons of the land.
Thus they their little wars and triumphs knew,
Their flows of fortune, and receding times ;
But almost all below the proud regard
Of story vow'd to Rome, on deeds intent
That Truth beyond the flight of Fable bore.

“Not so the Samian Sage; to him belongs The brightest witness of recording Fame. For these free states his native isle2 forsook, And a vain tyrant's transitory smile, He sought Crotona's pure salubrious air, And through Great Greece 3 his gentle wisdom taught ; Wisdom that calm'd for list’ning years the mind, Nor ever heard amid the storm of zeal.

30

His mental eye first launch'd into the deeps
Of boundless ether; where unnumber'd orbs,
Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky
Unerring roll, and wind their steady way.
There he the full consenting choir beheld ;
There first discern'd the secret band of love,
The kind attraction, that to central suns
Binds circling earths, and world with world unites.
Instructed thence, he great ideas form'd
Of the whole-moving, all-informing GOD,
The Sun of beings! beaming unconfin’d
Light, life, and love, and ever-active pow'r;
Whom naught can image, and who best approves
The silent worship of the moral heart,
That joys in bounteous Heaven, and spreads the joy.
Nor scorn’d the soaring sage to stoop to life,
And bound his reason to the sphere of Man.
He gave the four yet reigning virtues name;
Inspir'd the study of the finer arts,
That civilize mankind, and laws devis'd
Where with enlighten'd justice mercy mix'd.
He even into his tender system took
Whatever shares the brotherhood of life :
He taught that life's indissoluble flame,
From brute to man, and man to brute again,
For ever shifting, runs th' eternal round;
Thence tried against the blood-polluted meal,
And limbs yet quivering with some kindred soul,
To turn the human heart. Delightful truth,
Had he beheld the living chain ascend,
And not a circling form, but rising whole !

“ Amid these small republics one arose, On yellow Tiber's bank,—almighty Rome, Fated for me. A nobler spirit warm'd