Astonish'd Artaxerxes on his throne, Gave up, fair-spread o'er Asia's sunny shore, But by short views, and selfish passions, broke, But let detesting ages, from the scene Of Greece self-mangled, turn the sickening eye. * Athens had been dismantled by the Lacedæmonians, at the end of the first Peloponnesian war, and was at this time restored by Conon to its former splendour. + The Peloponnesian war. l'elopidas and Epaminondas. The Macedonian vulture mark'd his time, "Unless Corruption first deject the pride, 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 slackening ruin runs, Till the whole state unnerv'd in slavery sinks." * The battle of Charonea in which Philip of Macedon utterly defeated the Greeks. ROME: BEING THE THIRD PART OF LIBERTY, A POEM. The Contents of Part III. 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 peculiar purport of this. During its first ages, the greatest force of Liberty and virtue exerted. The source whence derived the heroic virtues of the RoEnumeration of these virtues. Thence their security at home: their glory, success, and empire, abroad. Bounds of the Roman empire, geographically described. The states mans. of Greece restored to Liberty by Titus Quintus 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 em perors. From Rome, the goddess of Liberty goes among the Northern nations; where, by infusing into them her spirit and general principles, she lays the ground-work 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 forms, With them my spirit spread; and numerous states As its parental policy, and arts, The last struggles of liberty in Greece. Each had imbib'd. Besides, to each assign'd He sought Crotona's pure salubrious air, [taught; His mental eye first lanch'd into the deeps * Pythagoras. +Samos, over which then reigned the tyrant Polycrates. The southern parts of Italy, and Sicily, so called because of the Grecian colonies there settled. § His scholars were enjoined silence for five years. |