UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO the from collection of Professor Koppel S. Pinson HISTOBICAL ESSAYS. HISTORICAL ESSAYS EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., HON. D.C.L., LATK FELLOW OP TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. SECOND SERIES. ' I will at leant hope that these volumes may encourage a spirit of research into history, and may in some measure assist in directing it ; that they may con- tribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a whole, and according to its philosophical divisions, not such as merely geographical and chronological ; that the history of Greece and Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of the scholar, as the instruction of the statesman and the citizen.' ARNOLD, Preface to Thucydides, vol. iii. Bonbon; MACMILLAN AND CO. 1873. [ A II riyhU reserved.] OXFORD: By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner. E. Pickard Hall, and J. H. Stacy, PRINTEHS TO THE T7NIVEE8ITT. PEEFACE. THE present collection is that which was spoken of in the Preface to the second edition of my former series of Essays. The Essays now reprinted chiefly relate to earlier periods of history than those which were dealt with in the former volume to the times commonly known as 'ancient' or 'classical.' I need hardly say that to me those names simply mark con- venient halting-places in the one continuous history of European civilization. They mark the time when political life was confined to the two great Mediterranean peninsulas, and when the Teutonic and Slavonic races had as yet hardly shown themselves on the field of history. I should be well pleased some day to connect the two series by a third, which might deal with the intermediate times, with those times which I look on as the true Middle Ages, the times when the Roman and Teutonic elements of modern Europe stood side by side, and had not yet been worked together into a third thing distinct from either. In reprinting these Essays, I have followed nearly the same course which I followed in the former series. As most of them were written before those which appeared in my former series, they have, on the whole, needed a greater amount of revision, and a greater number of notes to point out the times and circumstances under which they were written. In the process of revision I have found myself able to do very much in the way of improving and simplifying the style. In almost every page I have found it easy to put some plain English word, about whose meaning there can be no doubt, instead of those needless French or Latin words which are add thought to add dignity to style, but which in truth only vagueness. I am in no way ashamed to find that I can write purer and clearer English now than I did fourteen or fifteen back and I think it well to mention the fact for the years ; encouragement of younger writers. The common temptation vi PREFACE. of beginners is to write in what they think a more elevated fashion. It needs some years of practice before a man fully takes in the truth that, for real strength and above all for real clearness, there is nothing like the old English speech of our fathers. All the Essays in this volume, except the first, were written as reviews. When the critical part of the article took the shape of discussion, whether leading to agreement or to dif- ference, of the works of real scholars like Bishop Thirl wall, Mr. Grote, and Dr. Merivale, I have let it stand pretty much as it was first written. But the parts which were given to pointing out the mistakes of inferior writers I have for the most part struck out. On this principle I had to sacrifice ' nearly the whole of the article headed Herodotus and his Commentators,' in the National Review for October 1862. I have kept only a small part of it as a note to one of the other Essays. I have done this, not because there is a word in that or in any other article of the kind which I now differ from or regret, but because, while the unflinching exposure of errors in the passing literature of the day is the highest duty of the periodical critic, it is out of place in writings which lay any claim to lasting value. I do not think I have sinned against my own rule in reprinting my articles in the Saturday Review on the German works of Mommsen and Curtius. Both are scholars of the highest order, and, as such, I trust that I have dealt with them with the respect that they deserve. But if, as there seems to be some danger, Curtius should displace Grote in the hands of English students, and if Mommsen should be looked up to as an infallible oracle, as Niebuhr was in my own Oxford days, I believe that the result would be full of evil, not only for historical truth, but, in the case of Mommsen, for political morality also. I have to renew my thanks to the publishers of the Edin- burgh Review and to the editors and publishers of the other periodicals in which the Essays appeared, for the leave kindly given to me to reprint them in their present form. SOMERLEAZE, "WELLS. January yth, 1873. CONTENTS. PAGE ANCIENT GREECE AND MEDIAEVAL ITALY (Oxford Essays, 1857) 1 ' Note from ' Herodotus and his Commentators (National Review, October 1862) .. .. 47 MB. GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE (National Review, July 1858) . 52 THE HISTORIANS or ATHENS (National Review, January 1858) 94 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY (North British Review, May 1856) .. .; 1-07 Appendix on Curtius' History of Greece (Saturday Review, July 31, September 19, October 3, 1868 1869 148 ; July 10, ; May 27, July 10, 1871) ALEXANDER THE GREAT (Edinburgh Review, April 1857) 161 GREECE DURING THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD (North British Review, August 1854) 207 MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME (National Review, , April 1859) 234 Appendix from Saturday Review, March 28, 1868 . 266 Lucius CORNELIUS SULLA (National Review, January 1 862.) 271 THE FLAVIAN C.ESARS (National Review, January 1863) 307 HISTORICAL ESSAYS. I. ANCIENT GREECE AND MEDIEVAL ITALY. THE history of the Italian peninsula forms, in many respects, the most important and the most fascinating chapter in the history of the middle ages. Every part indeed of the his- of those wonderful times its tory has own special charm ; each has its special attraction for minds of a particular class. Upon the English statesman or jurist, the early annals of our own country have a claim ahove all others. But a knowledge of those annals is very imperfect without some knowledge both of the kindred nations of Northern Europe and of the once kindred and then antagonistic powers of Gaul. To minds of another class, who view history with philological or antiquarian rather than with political eyes, the laws, the languages, the monuments of Scandinavia and Northern Germany will be of primary, instead of sub- sidiary, value. The long struggle between the Christian and the Saracen, the early liberties of Aragon and Castile, clothe the Iberian peninsula with an interest at once poli- tical and romantic. Even the obscure annals of the Sla- vonic nations are not without a charm of their own, and they have a most important bearing upon recent events. But to the scholar, whose love for historical research has been first kindled among the remains of Greek and Roman antiquity, no delight will be so great as that of tracing out every relic of their influence, every event or institution which can be connected with them either by analogy or by direct deriva- tion. The mere student of words, the mere dreamer over B 2 ANCIENT GREECE [ESSAY classic lore, is indeed tempted to cast aside the mediaeval and modern history both of Greece and Italy as a mere profana- tion of the ancient. But a more enlarged and practical love of antiquity will not so dwell upon the distant past as to neglect more recent scenes which are its natural complement and commentary. And the scenes which thus attract the scholar may challenge also the attention of the political and ecclesiastical inquirer. Our knowledge of the political life of Rome, of the intellectual life of Greece, of the religious life of early Christendom, is imperfect indeed without some knowledge of the long annals of the Eastern Empire. There we may behold the political immortality of one race, the of another there learn literary immortality ; we may how a and a can reconstruct a nation language religion ; we may trace the force and the weakness of a centralized des- potism, and may marvel at the destiny which chose out such a power to be the abiding bulwark of Christianity and civili- zation. But over the other classic peninsula a higher interest lingers. If both Greece and Rome still lived on in the mingled being of the Byzantine Empire, they rose again to a more brilliant life among the Popes, the Caesars, and the Republics of mediaeval Italy. The political power of Rome still survived in theory in the hands of German Emperors, in while very truth the lordly spirit of the Imperial city sprang into new being, and founded a wider empire, under the guidance of Italian Pontiffs. And besides this twofold life of Rome, the life of Hellas lives once more in the rise and fall, the wars and revolutions, of countless independent commonwealths.