of education, and with which the Barbarians were totally unacquainted. Xerxes had scarcely time to consider and deplore the destruction and disgrace of his fleet, when a new spectacle, not less mournful, offered itself to his sight. The flower of the Persian infantry had taken post, as we have already observed, on the rocky isle of Psyttalea, in order to receive the scattered remains of the Grecian armament, which, after its expected defeat, would naturally take refuge on that barren coast. But equally fallacious and fatal was their conjecture concerning the event of the battle. The Greeks, disembarking from their ships, attacked, in the enthusiasm of victory, those astonished troops, who, unable to resist, and finding it impossible to fly, were cut down to a man. As Xerxes beheld this dreadful havoc, he started in wild agitation from his silver throne, rent his royal robes, and, in his first moment of returning tranquillity, commanded the main body of his forces, posted along the Athenian coast, to return to their respective camps. The remains of the Persian fleet, frightened from the coast of Greece, returned to the harbours of Asia Minor, and afterwards assembled and rendezvoused, during the ensuing winter, in the port of Cymé. The transports were ordered to the Hellespont, on the banks of which Xerxes arrived with his troops in forty-five days, after intolerable hardships and fatigue. Famine and pestilence filled up the measure of their calamities; and, excepting the three hundred thousand chosen men committed to Mardonius, a detachment of whom guarded the royal person to the coast, scarcely a remnant was left of so many millions. The bridge ostentatiously erected on the Hellespont would have presented, had it remained entire, a mortifying monument of past greatness. But this magnificent fabric had been destroyed by a tempest: and such is the obscurity with which Xerxes returned from Greece, compared with the blaze of grandeur in which he arrived there, that it is uncertain whether he crossed the channel in a Phoenician ship of war, or only in a fishing-boat. Having returned to Sardis, he endeavoured to compensate for the disappointment of ambition by the gratification of sensuality, and buried himself in pleasures more infamous and degrading, and not less frightfully criminal, than all the disgrace which his pride had incurred, and all the calamities which his subjects had either inflicted or suffered. The Greeks, on the other hand, spent the winter in dividing the spoil; assigning to the different commanders the prizes of conduct and valour; performing the last offices to the dead; celebrating their games and festivals; and displaying, both in the multitude of their prayers, and in the magnificence of their offerings, the warmest gratitude to their protecting divinities. The dedications to the gods were intrinsically valuable. The rewards. bestowed on their generals were simple tokens of public esteem. The first consisted in vases, statues, and other ornaments of gold and silver; the second in a wreath of pine, laurel, or olive: a circumstance which made Tigranes the Persian exclaim, "Heavens! against what men have we come to contend? insensible to interest, they fight only for glory!" (Abridged from Gillies.) STORY OF THE URING the struggles of Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, for the sovereignty of Rome, and in the unsettled state of the empire, Sabinus, a native of Langress, an ambitious and wealthy man, of high quality, put in his claim, among others, to the possession of the throne. Encouraged by his countrymen to this bold undertaking, he pretended to trace his lineage from Julius Cæsar. Having revolted against the Romans, he caused himself, by his followers, to be saluted emperor. But his temerity and presumption quickly received a check: his troops, who were defeated, and scattered in all directions, betook themselves to flight; while of those who fell into the hands of their pursuers, not one was spared. In the heart of Gaul, Sabinus might have found safety, had his tenderness for his wife permitted him to seek it. Espoused to Eponina, a lady of admirable beauty and accomplishments, from whom he could not prevail upon himself to live at a distance, he retired from the field of battle to his country-house. Having here called together his servants, and the remnant of his people, he informed them of his disaster, and of the miscarriage of his enterprise; while he declared to them his resolutions of putting a voluntary period to his existence, to escape the tortures prepared for him by the victors, and avoid the fate of his unfortunate companions. He proceeded to thank them for their services, after which he gave them a solemn discharge; he then ordered fire to be set to his mansion, in which he shut himself up; and of this stately edifice in a few hours nothing TIME OF VESPASIAN. remained but a heap of ashes and ruins. The news of the melancholy catastrophe being spread abroad, reached the ears of Eponina, who, during the preceding events, had remained at Rome. Her grief and despair on learning the fate of a husband whom she dearly loved, and who had fallen a victim to his tenderness for her, were too poignant to be long supported. In vain her friends and acquaintances offered her consolation; their efforts to reconcile her to her loss served but to aggravate her distress. She determined to abstain from nourishment, and to re-unite herself in the grave to him without whom she felt existence to be an intolerable burden. For three days she persevered in her resolution. On the fourth, Martial, a freedman, who had been a favourite domestic in the service of her husband, desired to be admitted by his mistress to a private conference, on affairs of the utmost importance. In this interview Eponina learned, with an emotion that had nearly shaken to annihilation her languid and debilitated frame, that Sabinus, whom she so bitterly lamented, was still living, and concealed in a subterraneous cavern under the ruins of his house, where he waited with impatience to receive and embrace his beloved and faithful wife. This scheme had been concerted in confidence with two of his domestics, in whose attachment Sabinus entirely confided. It had been hitherto concealed from Eponina, that, through her unaffected grief on the supposed death of her husband, greater credit might be given to a report on which his preservation entirely depended. To these welcome tidings Martial presumed to add his advice, that his lady should still preserve the external marks of sorrow, |