That Athens should ultimately succumb to its enemies after the fatal issue of the conflict against Syracuse was almost a foregone conclusion. It is only strange that for so many as eight or nine years the brave Athenians warded off the coup de grace. Here let us quote the appreciative reflections of Professor Curtius:

However deep the shame of the end of the Decelean War, yet there exists no more splendid testimony to the energy of Athens than the eight years' resistance offered by the city after the Sicilian calamity. Greece, Sicily, and Persia were allied against the doomed city, and yet she was not to be overcome by force; her fleet was victorious as soon as it had its right commander; her citizens were full of courage and love of liberty, steadfast, and ready to make any personal sacrifice on behalf of their country. But the whole war was a struggle of despair, because the Athenians had, so to speak, no ground left under their feet; they fought for the preservation of their State, but that preservation depended upon a number of foreign possessions, the permanent recovery of which surpassed their powers: the only remaining strength of Athens lay in her navy, and this was obliged to be self-supporting. The chief care of the generals had always been to procure supplies and pay; no connected plan of operations could, therefore, be pursued by them, and the war became a savage freebooters' war, which widened the gulf between Athens and her former allies till it became impassable. Money is the main question of the whole Decelean War, and, Sparta being equally without a treasury, the issue depends upon the money of the Great King. For this reason Alcibiades knew no better expedient for kindling the ardor of his troops before the battle of Cyzicus than by calling out to them, "The King's moneys are in the hands of the enemy. If you wish to have the one you must vanquish the other." Athens again and again recovered her naval superiority, but not the supremacy of the sea, which it was impossible for her to secure without a treasure of her own. Hence the aimless character of the fighting, and, notwithstanding the most brilliant victories, a condition of helpless insecurity, from the moment when the Sicilian calamity awakened Athens out of the intoxication of unlimited power.*

But it was not her external foes, after all, that humbled Athens, and brought her to the dire necessity of submitting to the Spartan arms, and to the tyranny of the "Thirty," whose institution Sparta chose to encourage. It was that treasonable

* Curtius, vol. iii, pp. 547, 548. The classical reader may remember how often Demosthenes in the succeeding century complained that by their neglect to furnish money the war against Philip was suffered to degenerate in a similar manner into ληστεία.

party which had long existed at home-a party which coveted victory over the rival party still more than the prosperity of the common country. "Not even during the Persian wars was Attic history free from the blot of treasonable sentiments," says Curtius.* "After the open rupture with Sparta a Lacedæmonian party formed itself, whose efforts were directed to the humiliation of the city." And our author has correctly ascribed the fatal ascendancy which party spirit and party corruption now reached to the working of that miserable system of sophistry whose shallowness and mischievous consequences the philosopher Socrates, in Plato's Gorgias, is made to lay bare to the gaze of the world.

It was the sophistical tendency which mainly contributed to arouse the decomposing forces. This tendency loosened the bonds which held the hearts of the citizens united into one national will; it taught the rising generation of the city to assert their personal wishes with audacious arrogance in the face of all tradition and usage, and to despise the virtues of their fathers. . . . It destroyed faith in the gods, reverence before the law, devotion to home and family, and abhorrence of wrong and of disloyalty. . . . The best intellects became the worst enemies of the commonwealth; education was converted into a prison, consuming the very marrow of the State; and the adversaries of the constitution, who desired to heal the sick State and establish a new aristocracy, a "government of the best," founded upon wealth and culture, were baser, more self-seeking, and more utterly unconscientious than the most vehement among the demagogues.

The accusation is not an empty one. Theramenes, a leader in the oligarchical party, and a prime mover in the plots for instituting the rule of the "Four Hundred," and afterward of the "Thirty," himself declared the course of his colleagues to be in every respect more unjust than that of the sycophants under the democracy.t

The volumes before us close at an important crisis in Grecian history. The destruction of the walls of Athens by her ene mies elicits even now the sympathy of all lovers of free institutions. The wanton insult of turning the hour of humiliation into a season of festive exultation we still resent; and the band of women who played the flute while the massive arms which Athens stretched to the sea, and which once secured her maritime supremacy, were being torn asunder, seem to be *Curtius, ubi supra.

+ Xenophon, Hellenica Book II, chap. iii, § 22, etc.

sounding in our ears a dirge over the fall of the grandest State of heathen antiquity. True, Athens was yet to rise again, and to produce some of the greatest men the world has ever seen, as philosophers, statesmen, patriots, and others; but her decadence had set in, and no mortal arm could stay it. Moral restraints were swept away, even such as were drawn from a false religion earnestly believed in. Meanwhile neither "peace" nor "good-will" prevailed. About three quarters of the population of Attica were in bondage. It was the labor of slaves that principally supported and enriched the citizens. Indeed, he esteemed himself but badly off who had not at least six or seven slaves to wait upon him. Could such a system of oppression in the very nature of things last forever? To suppose it would be to suppose a suspension, in favor of a brilliant but unjust state of society, of God's inflexible laws of moral government.

While heartily commending Professor Curtius's history to the careful perusal of the American reading public, we cannot avoid the expression of regret that the translation bears so many marks of haste and careless revision. Sometimes German expressions are simply Anglicized. Thus we have "bloodbath" for Blutbad, instead of "massacre," (vol. ii, p. 232,) and, "nothing less,” where "any thing rather than" is intended, (p. 271, and other places.) Distances are stated in miles, which, upon reference to the atlas, turn out to be German miles, four or five times the length of the mile in use with us. The Athenians,

we are told, when they started on their disastrous retreat from Syracuse, "on this day advanced the distance of a mile, (vol. iii, p. 380,) where Thucydides, (l. vii, c. 78) says σradiovę wę teoσapákovτα, which makes the march fully four and a half English miles. So in other places. On the whole, however, the translation is sufficiently intelligible and idiomatic; but the colloquial and inaccurate use of language is general, and almost universal. Not to mention others, what shall we say of such words and expressions as these: "The adherents of the oligarchical party befriended themselves with the idea of seeing Alcibiades return," (vol. iii, p. 425;) "he was befallen by the winter storms," (p. 466 ;)"these news had arrived," (p. 484?) Such blemishes as these can so easily be removed with a little care that it is a great pity that they should be allowed to remain and mar the external appearance of a really valuable work.

ART. II.-CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES FROM THE

CATACOMBS.

Roma Subterranea. By PADRE ARINGHI. Lutetiæ Parisiorum: 2 vols. folio. 1659. The Church in the Catacombs. By CHARLES MAITLAND, M.D. London. 1847. The Catacombs of Rome. By CHARLES MAC FARLANE. London. 1852.

Fabiola; or, the Church of the Catacombs. By CARDINAL WISEMAN. London. 1857.

The Catacombs of Rome. By the Right Rev. WM. INGRAHAM KIP, D.D. New York. 1859.

Letters from Rome, By Rev. JOHN W. BURGON, M. A. London. 1862.

Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquioris. By CAVALIERE DI ROSSI. Romae. 1857-1861.

Christian Epitaphs of the First Six Centuries. By Rev. JOHN M'CAUL, LL.D. Toronto and London. 1869.

Les Catacombes de Rome. Par M. PERRET. Paris. 1852-1857.

Roma Sotterranea. BY CAVALIERE DI ROSSI. Romae. 1864.

Roma Sotterranea. By Rev. J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D., and Rev. R. W. BROWNLOW, M.A. London. 1869.

The Testimony of the Catacombs. By Rev. W. B. MARRIOTT, B.D., F.S. A. London. 1870.

"WHAT insight," remarks the learned and eloquent Dean Stanley in his "Eastern Churches," "into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the primitive ages of the Church can be compared with that afforded by the Roman Catacombs! Hardly noticed by Gibbon or Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of those early times beyond that derived from any of the written authorities on which Gibbon or Mosheim repose. The subjects of the sculptures and paintings place before us the exact ideas with which the first Christians were familiar; they remind us, by what they do not contain, of the ideas with which the first Christians were not familiar. . . He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the Catacombs will be nearer to the thoughts of the early Church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or of Origen."

By the study of the inscriptions, paintings, and sculpture of these subterranean cities of the dead we can follow the development of Christian thought from century to century; we can trace the successive changes of doctrine and discipline; we can read the irrefragable testimony, written with a pen of iron in the rock forever, of the simplicity of the primitive faith, and of the gradual corruption which it has undergone.

In this age of Romish assumption and aggression, when the occupant of St. Peter's chair lays claim to personal infallibility of act and word, and invites all Christendom to an Ecumenical Council, not to discuss matters of faith, but merely to bow to the fiat of his will, it may not be inappropriate nor unprofitable to inquire into the credentials of his authority and the alleged sources of his power. In this era of critical investigation of the very foundations of the faith it will be well to examine the vast body of Christian evidences handed down from the believers living in or near the apostolic age, and thus providentially preserved in those subterranean excavations. Christianity has nothing to fear from the comparison of these remains of Christian antiquity with those of the pre-existing Paganism; as little has Protestantism to fear their comparison with the corrupt form of Christianity into which the primitive Church, alas! too soon degenerated. On the one hand may be seen the infinite contrast between the abominable condition of society under the Empire and the purity of life of the early Christians, and on the other the gradual corruption of doctrine and practice as we approach the Byzantine Age.

The discovery of Pompeii and the recent explorations of the Catacombs bring into sharp contrast Christian and pagan civilization. While traversing the deserted streets of the former "two thousand years roll backward," and we stand among the objects familiar to the gaze of the men and maids and matrons of the palmy days of Rome. But what a tale of the prevailing sensuality, what a practical commentary on the scathing denunciations of Juvenal or the light wit of Horace, do we read in the remains of ancient art on every side! Amid the silence and gloom of the Catacombs we are transported again to the dawn of Christianity, and in the pious inscriptions and symbolic paintings we read the sacred truths that sustained the hearts of the martyrs and confessors of the faith amid the fiery trials of that age of persecution. We are brought face to face with the primitive Church, and comprehend more of its spirit and life than from all the writings of the Fathers or the ecclesiastical histories of the times.

Most of the Christian relics, inscriptions, and sculptures are removed from the Catacombs, and are to be found in the numerous museums and churches of Rome, especially in the