THE ENGLISH REVIEW, For APRIL, 1786. ART. I. The Hiftory of Ancient Greece, its Colonies, and Conquefts; from the earlieft Accounts till the Divifion of the Macedonian Empire in the Eaft. Including the Hiftory of Literature, Philofophy, and the fine Arts. By John Gillies, L. L. D. 4to. 2 vols. 21. 2s. boards. Cadell, 1786. HIS ISTORICAL compofition hath affumed a different form, in modern times, from what it difplayed in antiquity. The Greeks, who set the first models in all the arts, gave allo the earliest examples of elegant hiftory. When they began to record their tranfactions, they were deeply tinctured with credulity, and the love of the marvellous; and, partly from the want of authentic materials, partly from the influence of imagination over a people of fuch exquifite fenfibility, they were more ftudious to adorn fables than to investigate truth. The ornaments of oratory, and even of poetry, were not rejected by hiftorians; by the beauties of fancy, and embellishments of ftile, they endeavoured to make atonement for their want of research and information: and the muse of hiftory, as is faid of the angels, frequently covered her eyes with her wings. Among a people who were governed by orators, eloquence was the firft qualification of an author; attic ears were only to be charmed by the happiest and most harmonious combinations of language; the works of Polybius, the most judicious and masterly of all the Greek hiftorians, are pronounced, by a celebrated critic *, not to be legible, on account of the bad arrangement of words. * Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus. ENG. REV. Vol. VI, April 1786. e When When history began to be cultivated by the moderns, the fituation of affairs, and the characters of men, had changed. With lefs fenfibility and imagination than the ancients, their reason was more improved. The accumulation of historical materials, by the invention of printing, prefented an ample field to inquiry; the mifrepresentations of religious and political factions compelled the hiftorian to weigh evidence and inveftigate truth; and henceforth history made an appeal, not to the imagination, but to the understanding and the reason of men. Accurate refearch, judicious comparison, philofophical and political views, are indifpenfable requifites in a modern hiftorian; and, for the want of them, no rhetorical embellifhments, nor beauties of ftile, can ever compenfate. The world, grown wifer as it has grown older, requires discovery inftead of declamation; and prefers the light of philofophy to the colours of eloquence. From the vein of intelligence, penetration, and good fenfe, which runs through the HISTORY OF ENGLAND, David Hume, although his ftile be sometimes. deficient in claffical colouring, and always in harmony, ftill occupies the first place in the lift of modern hiftorians. A history of Ancient Greece, on fuch an enlightened plan, and from the hand of a philofopher, has long been a defideratum in literature; and we are forry to find that the work before us is ill calculated to fupply this defect, as the merit of it is popular, and not philofophical. Dr. Gillies begins his work with a view of the progrefs of civilization and power in Greece preceding the Trojan war. The judicious Thucydides, in the introduction to his history, candidly confeffes, that he could receive no authentic or correct information concerning the antiquities of his country. It has been faid, indeed, that the fcattered fragments of Gre cian ftory were preferved, during thirteen centuries, by oral tradition, in the rhapfodies of the bards, and those of the cyclic poets, who fucceeded them. But are these materials for hiftorical record? In one point of view, Homer is the hiftorian of early Greece. By his invocation to the mufe, at the beginning of his poem, he intimates to the reader, that he was not merely to relate facts; yet, though he arranges his incidents in poetical order, and embellishes heroic action, he builds on tradition; and, as he poffefled all the knowledge of his own times, he gives us the most accurate and perfect information concerning the religion, government, character, and manners. of the heroic ages. Instead of antiquarian remark, or hiftorical criticism, on the Grecian traditions; instead of confidering them as tending to fhew the genius of the people, and forming the materia poetica of all ages; Dr. Gillies regards them as the materials of true hiftory, and repeats the tales which have been a hundred times told concerning the eaily civilization of Greece by means of colonies from Egypt (although it was not civilized for a thousand years after their fuppofed arrival); concerning the Argonautic expedition to obtain the golden fleece; and the wars at Thebes, and at Troy. A history of the Theban and the Trojan wars, in the eighteenth century, is indeed a curiofity; will be equally amufing to the learned and the ignorant; and can only be paralleled by the credulity of those who believe the poems of Offian to be true hiftory. In the fecond chapter we have a differtation on the religion, government, arts, manners, and character of the early Greeks. As, on this part of his fubject, Dr. Gillies has departed from the common run of historians, and delivered opinions of his own, we shall lay them before the reader. After having instituted a comparison between the ancient Germans and the ancient Greeks, he thus proceeds: In the preference of military glory to all other advantages; in the freedom of debate in the public affemblies; and in the protection afforded to the rights and liberties of the meaneft citizen; the treatife of Tacitus will equally apply to the Germans and to the Greeks. But there is one material circumftance wanting in the German, which adds peculiar beauty to the Grecian character. Among the rude inhabitants of ancient Germany, the offices of priest and king were not united in the fame perfon. The rites of religion were admini ftered by a particular order of men, who might abufe the fuperftitious fears of the multitude to promote their own felfish designs; and the dread of fuperior powers, though fometimes employed to enforce the dictates of nature, and to promote the operations of government, might alfo, with equal fuccefs, be employed to weaken the impreffions of the one, and to refift the authority of the other. Befides this unfavourable circumftance, the fuperftition of the Germans was of a dark and gloomy kind, little connected with the ordinary duties of fociety, recommending principally the practice of courage, the only virtue which there was not any occafion to recommend; and promifing, as the reward of what was deemed the highest excellence in life, the enjoyment of an infamous paradife of immortal drunkenness after death. The mythology of the Greeks was of a more agreeable, and of a far more useful nature. The fceptre, which denoted the connection of civil power with facred protection, was conferred on those who, while they continued the humble minifters of the gods, were appointed to be the chief, but accountable guardians of the people. The fame voice that fummoned the warriors to arms, or that decided, in time of peace, their domeftic contentions, conducted the order of their religious worship, and prefided in the prayers and hymns addreffed addressed to the divinity. Thefe prayers and hymns, together with the important rite of facrifice (which likewife was performed by royal hands), formed the ceremonial part of the Grecian religion. The moral was far more extenfive, including the principal offices of life, and the nobleft virtues of the mind. The ufeful quanty of courage was peculiarly acceptable to the ftern god of war; but the virtues of charity and hofpitality were still more pleafing to the more amiable divinities. The fubmiffion of fubjects to their prince; the duty of a prince to preferve inviolate the rights of his fubjects; the obedience of children to their parents; the refpect of the young for the aged; the facred laws of truth, juftice, honour, and decency, were inculcated and maintained by the awful authority of religion. Even the molt ordinary tranfactions of private life were confecrated by the piety of the Greeks. They ventured not to undertake a voyage, or a journey, without foliciting the propitious aid of their heavenly protectors. Every meal (and there were three in a day) was accompanied with a facrifice and libation. The common forms of politenefs, the cuftomary duties of civility, were not decided by the varying tafte of individuals, but defined by the precife voice of the gods. It would have answered little purpose to oppofe falutary laws to the capricious licence of barbarians, without guarding those laws by very powerful fanctions. Whether thefe fanctions be founded on opinion, or on fact, is, with respect to their influence on the mind, a matter of little moment. The dreaded vengeance of imaginary powers may be equally effectual with the fear of the axe and halter. The certainty of this vengeance was firmly established in the Grecian creed; and its operation was fuppofed to be fo immediate and palpable, that it was impoffible for the inattention of men to overlook, or for their addrefs to elude its force. The daring violations of the facred law were speedily overtaken by manifeft marks of the divine difpleafure." The infolence and violence of the corrupted youths," fays Homer," cried aloud to Heaven, whofe decrees were foon executed by the avenging hands of Ulyffes." The judgments inflicted on guilty communities were fo familiar to the minds of men, that the poet introduces them by way of fimilies; and it is evident, from his writings throughout, that every important event, profperous or adverfe, which happened, either to individuals or to nations, appeared, to the pious refignation of the Greeks, the reward of their religion. and virtue, or the punishment of their irreligion and vice. The merit of the father was often acknowledged in the protection of the fon; and the crimes of a guilty progenitor were often vifited on his defcendants to the third and fourth generation. • Thefe obfervations are confirmed, not only by the writings of Homer and Hefiod throughout, but by almost every page of Herodotus, of Pindar, as well as of the Greek tragedians and historians; and yet they feem to have escaped the notice of fome of the most ingenious inquirers into the opinions of antiquity. The authority of Greek writers ftrongly oppofes two fyftems, which have been fupported with great ability, and which have gained confiderable credit in the world. The firft, that the religion of the ancients had little or no connection with morality: the fecond, that the governments of Greece could not have been fupported without the doctrine of a future ftate. The connection between religion and morality is clearly afferted in the various paffages to which we have had occafion to allude; and the belief of a future ftate of retribution cannot, according to the principles of the learned author of the Divine Legation of Mofes, be reckoned neceffary to the government of men, who are fully perfuaded of the actual and immediate interpofition of divine, wisdom and juftice to regulate, by temporal rewards and punishments, the affairs of the prefent life. The nature, the characters, and the occupations of the gods, were fuggested by the lively feelings of an ardent, rather than by the regular invention of a cultivated mind. These celeftial beings were fub ject to the blind paffions which govern unhappy mortals. Their wants, as well as their defires, were fimilar to thofe of men. They required not the grofs nourishment of meat and wine, but they had occafion to repair the wafte of their etherial bodies by nectar and ambrofia; and they delighted in the fteam of the facrifices, which equally gratified their fenfes, and flattered their vanity. The refreshment of fleep was neceffary to restore their exhausted strength; and, with the addition of a fuperior, but limited degree of power, and wifdom, and goodness, the gods of the heroic ages were nothing more than immortal men. • What was wanting in the dignity and perfection, was supplied by the number of the gods. Homer only defcribes the principal and reigning divinities; but Hefiod, who gives the genealogical hiftory of this fanciful hierarchy, makes the whole number amount to thirty thousand. Among thefe, every virtue had its protector; every quality of extenfive power in human life had its patron; and every grove, and mountain, and river, its favourite inhabitants. Twelve divinities, of fuperior rank, prefided over the active principles of the univerfe, and the leading virtues of the mind: but even thefe diftinguished beings, were fubject to the unrelenting power of vengeance and the fates, "who pursue the crimes of men and gods, and never cease from their wrath, till they have inflicted just punishment on the guilty fons of earth and heaven." The materials which fancy had created, poetry formed into beauty, and policy improved into ufe. The creed of the Greeks, thus adorned and enlarged, became the happiest antidote against the furious refentment, the favage cruelty, and the fierce fpirit of fullen independence, which ufually characterize the manners of barbarians. Yet there dreadful paffions fometimes forced their way through every mound which wildom had erected in order to oppofe their courfe. Laws, facred and profane, were feeble barriers against the impetuofity of their rage. The black vengeance of the heart was exerted in deeds of horror. The death of an enemy could not fatisfy their in'human cruelty. They burned with defire to drink his hated blood, to devour his quivering limbs, and to expose his mangled remains to indignities, equally odious and abominable in the fight of gods and men. The powerful influence of religion was directed against the Q3 wild |