ymous altars (i. e. altars uninscribed to a particular god), the
memorials of that propitiation."

The order was obeyed--the sacrifice performed--and the phantoms were
seen no more. Although an impostor, Epimenides was a man of sagacity
and genius. He restrained the excess of funeral lamentation, which
often led to unseasonable interruptions of business, and conduced to
fallacious impressions of morality; and in return he accustomed the
Athenians to those regular habits of prayer and divine worship, which
ever tend to regulate and systematize the character of a people. He
formed the closest intimacy with Solon, and many of the subsequent
laws of the Athenian are said by Plutarch to have been suggested by
the wisdom of the Cnossian sage. When the time arrived for the
departure of Epimenides, the Athenians would have presented him with a
talent in reward of his services, but the philosopher refused the
offer; he besought the Athenians to a firm alliance with his
countrymen; accepted of no other remuneration than a branch of the
sacred olive which adorned the citadel, and was supposed the primeval
gift of Minerva, and returned to his native city,--proving that a man
in those days might be an impostor without seeking any other reward
than the gratuitous honour of the profession.

VII. With the departure of Epimenides, his spells appear to have
ceased; new disputes and new factions arose; and, having no other
crimes to expiate, the Athenians fell with one accord upon those of
the government. Three parties--the Mountaineers, the Lowlanders, and
the Coastmen--each advocating a different form of constitution,
distracted the state by a common discontent with the constitution that
existed, the three parties, which, if we glance to the experience of
modern times, we might almost believe that no free state can ever be
without--viz., the respective advocates of the oligarchic, the mixed,
and the democratic government. The habits of life ever produce among
classes the political principles by which they are severally
regulated. The inhabitants of the mountainous district, free, rude,
and hardy, were attached to a democracy; the possessors of the plains
were the powerful families who inclined to an oligarchy, although, as
in all aristocracies, many of them united, but with more moderate
views, in the measures of the democratic party; and they who, living
by the coast, were engaged in those commercial pursuits which at once
pr