les replied by showing a charm
or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck--a proof
how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive
subject in the hands of others.

And according to another anecdote which we read--yet more interesting
and equally illustrative of his character--it was during his last
moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that
the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life,
and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so
many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was
past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking: "What you praise in my
life belongs partly to good fortune--and is, at best, common to me with
many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you
have not noticed--no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any
action of mine."

DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE

B.C. 413

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

(That great writer of the history of the Romans, Thomas Arnold, says of
the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse: "The Romans knew not, and
could not know, how deeply the greatness of their own posterity, and the
fate of the whole western world, were involved in the destruction of the
fleet of Athens in the harbor of Syracuse. Had that great expedition
proved victorious, the energies of Greece during the next eventful
century would have found their field in the West no less than in the
East; Greece, and not Rome; might have conquered Carthage; Greek instead
of Latin might have been at this day the principal element of the
language of Spain, of France, and of Italy; and the laws of Athens,
rather than of Rome, might be the foundation of the law of the civilized
world."

The foregoing, the author's own selection, really sums up all that need
be said as to the importance of the great event so finely treated by
Creasy.)

Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and
mediaeval times than has the city of Syracuse. Athenian, Carthaginian,
Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman have in turns beleaguered
her walls; and the resistance which she successfully opposed to some of
her early assailants was of the deepest importance, not only to the
fortunes of the generations then in being, but to all the subsequent
current of human events. To adopt the eloquent expressions of Arnold
respecting the check wh