ne, its social institutions, were the same. Agesilaus,
during whose reign the change took place, was the ablest of its kings.
Yet the Spartan armies were frequently defeated in pitched battles,--an
occurrence considered impossible in the earlier ages of Greece. They are
allowed to have fought most bravely; yet they were no longer attended by
the success to which they had formerly been accustomed. No solution of
these circumstances is offered, as far as I know, by any ancient author.
The real cause, I conceive, was this. The Lacedaemonians, alone among
the Greeks, formed a permanent standing army. While the citizens of
other commonwealths were engaged in agriculture and trade, they had no
employment whatever but the study of military discipline. Hence, during
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, they had that advantage over their
neighbours which regular troops always possess over militia. This
advantage they lost, when other states began, at a later period, to
employ mercenary forces, who were probably as superior to them in the
art of war as they had hitherto been to their antagonists.) Each pursuit
therefore became first an art, and then a trade. In proportion as the
professors of each became more expert in their particular craft, they
became less respectable in their general character. Their skill had been
obtained at too great expense to be employed only from disinterested
views. Thus, the soldiers forgot that they were citizens, and the
orators that they were statesmen. I know not to what Demosthenes and his
famous contemporaries can be so justly compared as to those mercenary
troops who, in their time, overran Greece; or those who, from
similar causes, were some centuries ago the scourge of the Italian
republics,--perfectly acquainted with every part of their profession,
irresistible in the field, powerful to defend or to destroy, but
defending without love, and destroying without hatred. We may despise
the characters of these political Condottieri; but is impossible
to examine the system of their tactics without being amazed at its
perfection.

I had intended to proceed to this examination, and to consider
separately the remains of Lysias, of Aeschines, of Demosthenes, and of
Isocrates, who, though strictly speaking he was rather a pamphleteer
than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in such a
disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions compels me
to postpone this part of the subject to a