pey the Great some verses to this effect:

'Tis our unhappiness has made thee great;(216)

and then addressing the people;

The time shall come when you shall late deplore
So great a power confided to such hands;

the spectators obliged the actor to repeat these verses several times.

Fondness for Theatrical Representations one of the principal Causes of the
Decline, Degeneracy, and Corruption of the Athenian State.

When we compare the happy times of Greece, in which Europe and Asia
resounded with nothing but the fame of the Athenian victories, with the
later ages, when the power of Philip and Alexander the Great had in a
manner reduced it to slavery, we shall be surprised at the strange
alteration in that republic. But what is most material, is the
investigation of the causes and progress of this declension; and these M.
de Tourreil has discussed in an admirable manner in the elegant preface to
his translation of Demosthenes's orations.

There were no longer, he observes, at Athens any traces of that manly and
vigorous policy, equally capable of planning good and retrieving bad
success. Instead of that, there remained only an inconsistent loftiness,
apt to evaporate in pompous decrees. They were no more those Athenians,
who, when menaced by a deluge of barbarians, demolished their houses to
build ships with the timber, and whose women stoned the abject wretch to
death that proposed to appease the great king by tribute or homage. The
love of ease and pleasure had almost entirely extinguished that of glory,
liberty, and independence.

Pericles, that great man, so absolute, that those who envied him treated
him as a second Pisistratus, was the first author of this degeneracy and
corruption. With the design of conciliating the favour of the people, he
ordained that upon such days as games or sacrifices were celebrated, a
certain number of oboli should be distributed amongst them; and that in
the assemblies in which affairs of state were to be discussed, every
individual should receive a certain pecuniary gratification in right of
being present. Thus the members of the republic were seen for the first
time to sell their care in the administration of the government, and to
rank amongst servile employments the most noble functions of the sovereign
power.

It was not difficult to foresee where so excessive an abuse would end: and
to remedy it, it was proposed to establish a fund for the suppor