first prevailed at court, then spread itself into the cities and provinces, and in a little time infected the whole nation, and was one of the principal causes of the ruin of that empire, which he himself had founded. What is here said of the fatal effects of luxury, is not peculiar to the Persian empire. The most judicious historians, the most learned philosophers, and the profoundest politicians, all lay it down as a certain, indisputable maxim, that whenever luxury prevails, it never fails to destroy the most flourishing states and kingdoms; and the experience of all ages, and all nations, does but too clearly demonstrate the truth of this maxim. What then is that subtle, secret poison, that thus lurks under the pomp of luxury and the charms of pleasure, and is capable of enervating at the same time both the whole strength of the body, and the vigour of the mind? It is not very difficult to comprehend why it has this terrible effect. When men are accustomed to a soft and voluptuous life, can they be very fit for undergoing the fatigues and hardships of war? Are they qualified for suffering the rigour of the seasons; for enduring hunger and thirst; for passing whole nights without sleep upon occasion; for going through continual exercise and action; for facing danger and despising death? The natural effect of voluptuousness and delicacy, which are the inseparable companions of luxury, is to render men subject to a multitude of false wants and necessities, to make their happiness depend upon a thousand trifling conveniences and superfluities, which they can no longer be without, and to give them an unreasonable fondness for life, on account of a thousand secret ties and engagements, that endear it to them, and which by stifling in them the great motives of glory, of zeal for their prince, and love for their country, render them fearful and cowardly, and hinder them from exposing themselves to dangers which may in a moment deprive them of all those things wherein they place their felicity. SECTION 11. The abject submission and slavery of the Persians. We are told by Plato, that this was one of the causes of the declension of the Persian empire. And indeed what contributes most to the preservation of states, and renders their arms victorious, is not the number, but the vigour and courage of their armies; and, as it was finely said by one of the ancients,* from the day a man loseth his liberty, he loseth one half of his ancient virtue. He is no longer concerned for the prosperity of the state, to which he looks upon himself as an alien; and having lost the principal motives of his attachment to it, he becomes indifferent to the success of public affairs to the glory or welfare of his country, in which his circumstances * Hom. Odyss. P. v. 322. allow him to claim no share, and by which his own private condition is not altered or improved. It may truly be said that the reign of Cyrus was a reign of liberty. That prince never acted in an arbitrary manner; nor did he think, that a despotic power was worthy of a king; or that there was any great glory in ruling an empire of slaves. His tent was always open; and free access was allowed to every one that desired to speak to him. He did not live retired, but was visible, accessible, and affable to all; heard their complaints, and with his own eyes observed and rewarded merit; invited to his table not only the generals of his army, not only the principal officers, but even subalterns, and sometimes whole companies of soldiers. The simplicity and frugality of his table made him capable of giving such entertainments frequently.* His aim was to animate his officers and soldiers, to inspire them with courage and resolution, to attach them to his person rather than to his dignity, and to make them warmly espouse his glory, and still more the interest and prosperity of the state. This is what may truly be called the art of governing and commanding. In reading Xenophon, we observe with pleasure, not only those fine turns of wit, that justness and ingenuity in their answers and repartees, that delicacy in jesting and raillery; but at the same time that amiable cheerfulness and gaiety which enlivened their entertainments, from which all pomp and luxury were banished, and in which the principal seasoning was a decent and becoming freedom, that prevented all constraint, and a kind of familiarity which was so far from lessening their respect for the prince, that it gave such a life and spirit to it, as nothing but a real affection and tenderness could produce. I may venture to say, that by such a conduct as this a prince doubles and trebles his army at a small expense. Thirty thousand men of this sort are preferable to millions of such slaves as these very Persians became afterwards. In time of action, on a decisive day of battle, this truth is most evident, and the prince is more sensible of it than any body else. At the battle of Thymbra, when Cyrus's horse fell under him, Xenophon takes notice of what importance it is to a commander to be loved by his soldiers. The danger of the king's person became the danger of the army; and his troops on that occasion gave incredible proofs of their courage and bravery. Things were not carried on in the same manner, under the greatest part of his successors. Their only care was to support the pomp of sovereignty. I must confess, their outward ornaments and ensigns of royalty did not a little contribute to that end. A purple robe richly embroidered, and hanging down to their feet, a tiara, worn upright on their heads, and encircled by a superb diadem, a golden sceptre in their hands, a magnificent throne, a numerous and splendid court, a multitude of officers and guards; these things Tantas vires habet frugalitas Principis, ut tot impendiis, tot erogationibus sola sufi. ciat Plin. in Paneg. Traj. must needs conduce to heighten the splendour of royalty; but all this, when this is all, is of little or no value. What is that king in reality, who loses all his merit and his dignity when he puts off his ornaments? Some of the Eastern kings, conceiving that they should thereby procure the greater reverence to their persons, generally kept themselves shut up in their palaces, and seldom showed themselves to their subjects. We have already seen that Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, at his accession to the throne, introduced this policy, which afterwards became very common in all the Eastern countries. But it is a great mistake, to imagine that a prince cannot descend from his grandeur, by a sort of familiarity, without debasing or lessening his greatness. Artaxerxes did not think so; and Plutarch observes, that that prince, and queen Statira, his wife, took a pleasure in being visible and of easy access to their people; and by so doing were but the more respected. Among the Persians no subject whatsoever was allowed to appear in the king's presence without prostrating himself before him; and this law, which Seneca with good reason calls a Persian slavery,t Persicam servitutem, extended also to foreigners. We shall find afterwards, that several Grecians refused to comply with it, looking upon such a ceremony as derogatory to men born and bred in the bosom of liberty. Some of them, less scrupulous, did submit to it, but not without great reluctance; and we are told, that one of them, in order to cover the shame of such a servile prostration, purposely let fall his ring when he came near the king, that he might have occasion to bend his body on another account. But it would have been criminal for any of the natives of the country to hesitate or deliberate about a homage, which the kings exacted from them with the utmost rigour. What the Scripture relates of two sovereigns, whereof the one commanded all his subjects on pain of death, to prostrate themselves before his image; and the other under the same penalty suspended all acts of religion, with regard to all the gods in general, except to himself alone; and on the other hand, of the ready and blind obedience of the whole city of Babylon, who ran all together on the first signal to bend the knee before the idol, and to invoke the king exclusively of all the powers of heaven: all this shows to what an extravagant excess the Eastern kings carried their pride, and the people their flattery and servitude. So great was the distance between the Persian king and his subjects, that the latter, of what rank or quality soever, whether satrapæ governors, near relations, or even brothers to the king, were looked upon only as slaves; whereas the king himself was always considered, not only as their sovereign lord and absolute master, but * In Artax. p. 1013. † Lib. iii. de Benef. c. 12. et lib. iii. de Irâ, c. 17. Elian. 1. i. Var. Histor. cap. xxi. Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. iii.` Darius the Mede, Dan, vi. as a kind of divinity. In a word,* the peculiar character of the Asiatic nations, and of the Persians more particularly than any other, was servitude and slavery; which made Cicero say, that the despotic power which some were endeavouring to establish in the Roman commonwealth, was an insupportable yoke, not only to a Roman, but even to a Persian. It was therefore this arrogant haughtiness of the princes on one hand, and this abject submission of the people on the other, which, according to Plato, were the principal causes of the ruin of the Persian empire, by dissolving all the ties wherewith a king is united to his subjects, and the subjects to their king. Such a haughtiness extinguishes all affection and humanity in the former; and such an abject state of slavery leaves the people neither courage, zeal, nor gratitude. The Persian kings governed only by threats and menaces, and the subjects neither obeyed nor marched, but with unwilling ness and reluctance. This is the idea Xerxes himself gives us of them in Herodotus, where that prince is represented as wondering how the Grecians, who were a free people, could go to battle with a good will and inclination. How could any thing great or noble be expected from men, so dispirited and depressed by habitual slavery as the Persians were, and reduced to such an abject servitude; which, to use the words of Longinus,§ is a kind of imprisonment, wherein a man's soul may be said in some sort to grow little and contracted? I am unwilling to say it; but I do not know, whether the great Cyrus himself did not cor tribute to introduce among the Persians both that extravagant pride in their kings, and that abject submission and flattery in the people. It was in that pompous ceremony, which I have several times mentioned, that the Persians (till then very jealous of their liberty, and very far from being inclined to make a shameful prostitution of it by any mean behaviour or servile compliances) first bent the knee before their prince, and stooped to a posture of adoration. Nor was this an effect of chance; for Xenophon intimates clearly enough, that Cyrus,|| who desired to have that homage paid him, had appointed persons on purpose to begin it; whose example was accordingly followed by the multitude. In these little tricks and stratagems, we no longer discern that nobleness and greatness of soul which had ever been conspicuous in that prince till this occasion: and I should be apt to think, that being arrived at the utmost pitch of glory and power, he could no longer resist those violent attacks wherewith posterity is always assaulting even the best of princes, secundæ res sapientium animos fatigant; and that at last pride and vanity, which are almost inseparable from sovereign power, forced him, and in a manner tore him, from himself and his own naturally good inclinations; Vi dominationis convulsus et mutatus?** Plut. in Apophth. p. 213. t Lib. x. Epist. ad Attic. Lib. iii. de Leg. p. 697. **Tacit. Annal. I. vi. c. 48. SECTION III. The wrong education of their princes another cause of the declension of the Persian Empire. It is Plato still, the prince of philosophers, who makes this reflection; and we shall find, if we narrowly examine the fact in question, how solid and judicious it is, and how inexcusable Cyrus's conduct was in this respect. Never had any man more reason than Cyrus to be sensible how highly necessary a good education is to a young prince. He knew the whole value of it with regard to himself, and had found all the advantages of it by his own experience. What he most earnestly recommended to his officers,† in that fine discourse which he made to them after the taking of Babylon, in order to exhort them to maintain the glory and reputation they had acquired, was to educate their children in the same manner as they knew they were educated in Persia, and to preserve themselves in the practice of the same manners as were observed there. Would one believe, that a prince, who spoke and thought in this manner, could ever have entirely neglected the education of his own children? Yet this is what happened to Cyrus. Forgetting that he was a father, and employing himself wholly about his conquests, he left that care entirely to women, that is, to princesses, brought up in a country where pomp, luxury, and voluptuousness reigned in the highest degree; for the queen his wife was of Media. And in the same taste and manner were the two young princes, Cambyses and Smerdis, educated. Nothing they asked was ever refused them: all their desires were anticipated. The great maxim was, that their attendants should cross them in nothing, never contradict them, nor ever make use of reproofs or remonstrances with them. No one opened his mouth in their presence, but to praise and commend what they said and did. Every one cringed and stooped and bent the knee before them; and it was thought essential to their greatness to place an infinite distance between them and the rest of mankind, as if they had been of a different species from them. It is Plato that informs us of all these particulars; for Xenophon, probably to spare his hero, says not one word of the manner in which these princes were brought up, though he gives us so ample an account of the education of their father. What surprises me the most is, that Cyrus did not, at least, take them along with him in his last campaigns, in order to draw them out of that soft and effeminate course of life, and to instruct them in the art of war; for they must needs have been of sufficient years: but perhaps the women opposed his design, and overruled him. Whatever the obstacle was, the effect of the education of these |