Therefore, men feared, respected, worshipped him. All through France was he spoken of. Daily did his estate, his treasure, his vassalage increase. Wouldst thou hear the end of this villain? being stricken with a sword unto death, refusing to repent, and turning away his head from the Lord's body, in such manner he perished: so that it might well be said, ‘Befitting to your life was that death.' You have seen Robert de Belesme, a Norman baron, who when established in his castle was Pluto, Megæra, Cerberus, or any thing that can be named more dreadful. He took pains not to dismiss, but to dispatch his captives. Pretending to be in play he put out his son's eyes with his thumbs, while he was muffled up in a cloak; he impaled persons of both sexes. Horrid slaughter was as a meat pleasant to his soul: therefore was he found in all men's mouths, so that the wonderful doings of Robert de Belesme passed into proverbs. Let us come at length to the end. He who had afflicted others in prison, being at last thrown into prison by King Henry, ended his wicked life by an enduring punishment * "

It was this state of disorder which produced knighterrantry, and there is nothing absurd in believing that equal lawlessness in another country was checked by the same sort of interference. The reality of knight-errantry has, indeed, been questioned; it has been pronounced a fiction, suited to the wants of the period in which it was supposed to exist. If this were so, and the tales of Hercules and Theseus equally groundless, it would still be curious to see that men had been led to imagine the same means of making amends for the want of an executive power: but we do not believe this to be the case. The romances gave system and consistency to the

* Henry of Huntingdon, De Episcopis sui temporis.

scattered acts of individuals; they described the better qualities of knighthood in their own days, and filled up the picture with imaginary virtues, and preter-human prowess, attributes which men are always ready to confer on their ancestors, as Nestor makes the heroes with whom he fought in youth far superior to those whom he lectured in old age, and Homer endows those who fought under Troy with the strength of three or four men, "such as mortals now are." But their productions bear the stamp of copies, not originals, and it is not very easy to believe that they would have invented, or their audience and readers relished, characters and rules of action for which their own experience gave no

warrant.

There is, however, a double Theseus, of historic as well as legendary fame. In his latter capacity, both for the degree of reality, and the nature of his exploits, he may be compared to Arthur; in his former, still to draw an illustration from British history, he is not unworthy to be placed by the side of Alfred. The union of these two, discordant as it may appear, is not more so than that of the poetic and the historical Theseus. Alfred, indeed, signalised his military talents in many hard-fought fields, but his victories were those of a general: the exploits of Theseus were those of a knight. But among the mass of stories of questionable truth or unquestioned falsehood relating to him, it is generally acknowledged that this man, whose very existence we might else have doubted, was the author of extensive and judicious reforms in government, such as proved the foundation of Attic greatness: reforms which he effected by the rarest and most virtuous of all sacrifices, the resignation of his own power*.

* Perhaps this is too positively asserted. No doubt exists as to the political operation, but it has been questioned whether

D

Attica was divided into twelve districts, shires we might call them, except that, taken altogether, they were less than one of the larger English counties. Professedly forming one body, and owning a precarious obedience to one prince, they had still their petty and conflicting interests, and could with difficulty be induced to concur in any measures for the benefit of the whole. Theseus, encouraged by the popularity which he had gained by delivering Athens from its subjection to Crete*, undertook to substitute a better polity. "He went through the several towns, and persuaded the inhabitants to give up their separate councils and magistrates, and submit to a common jurisdiction. Every man was to retain his dwelling and his property as before; but justice was to be administered, and all public business transacted at Athens. The mass of the people came into his measures, and to subdue the reluctance of the powerful, who were loth to resign the importance accruing from the local magistracies, he gave up much of his own authority, reserving only the command of the army, and the care of watching over the execution of the laws. Opposition was silenced by his liberality, together with the fear of his power, ability and courage, and the union of Attica was effected by him, and made lasting. To bind it closer, without disturbing the religious observances of the several towns, he instituted a common festival in honour of Minerva, which was called the feast of union, and (Panathenæa) the feast of all the Athenianst."

This process bears some resemblance to the consolidation of the Saxon Heptarchy, nominally effected

Theseus had a more real existence than the other heroes who gave their names to, or were named after, the several Athenian tribes. See Arnold's Thucyd. Appendix III.

*Greece, p. 5.

+ Ib. p. 6.

by Egbert, but completed, and made truly beneficial by Alfred. The evils which were to be reformed were very different in the two cases; at Athens civil dissension was to be remedied; in England a rude people, intermixed with foreign barbarians more ferocious than themselves, and reduced to poverty by a series of destructive invasions, required a strong curb for the re-establishment of order and security. We must not expect, therefore, to find any resemblance between their institutions: the Saxons required no measures to prevent civil war, and inspire a spirit of nationality: the Athenians, though well inclined to civil broils, respected, from the earliest dawn of history, the security of property, and in consequence far outstripped the rest of Greece in wealth and refinement. Nevertheless the names of these princes may fairly be selected to adorn the same page: both advanced beyond their age in legislative and political science; both directed their wisdom, power, and popularity, to truly noble ends, and therefore merit the respect of all who believe rank and office to have been instituted for other ends than for the advantage of those who possess them.

We have spoken of Hercules and Theseus as indicating the commencement of Grecian history. Previous to them, facts are mentioned which we have no ground to disbelieve, as the various settlements by Phoenician or Egyptian emigrants; but all further particulars of these persons, with the exception of Minos, are of such a nature, that where we find no internal evidence to pronounce them fabulous, we can yet assign but scanty reasons for relying confidently upon their truth. But about this era our knowledge begins to increase. We must refer to it an event of which it is not easy to fix the date with certainty; namely, the celebrated Argonautic expedition, in which both these heroes are said to have

joined: a statement, however, irreconcileable with the accounts of Theseus' introduction to Egeus, and the plot formed against him by Medea *. Without troubling ourselves to account for these discrepancies, it is evident that the expedition, if it ever took place, which there seems reason to believe, in spite of Bryant's opposition, who would ascribe this, and almost all other legends, to some faint traditions of the deluge and preservation of Noah, must have borne a close resemblance to the Danish piratical excursions which we have already described. Not long after occurs the first confederate war mentioned in Grecian history, that of the Seven against Thebes†; an event so closely connected with mythology, that its reality might reasonably be questioned, but for the testimony of Homer and Hesiod. The revolting nature of the struggle between two brothers, for the kingdom of a banished, miserable, and neglected father, would incline us indeed to give as little credit to the concluding tragedy of the house of Laius, as to the series of crimes and misery by which that house had been polluted: but all arguments founded upon the horrors of such fratricidal warfare fall to the ground, when in the brightest period of chivalry we find it revived with no less rancour, and a no less fatal end, and the flower of French knighthood a calm spectator, nay, almost an actor in the scene. The strife

*The arrival of Theseus at Athens roused Medea's jealousy, and she proposed to poison him. She did not arrive at Athens until some time after she had reached Greece with Jason and the Argonauts; while the journey of Theseus from Trozen to Athens appears to have been his first exploit. Either, therefore, Theseus was not an Argonaut, or this charge against Medea is ungrounded.

Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of Edipus, agreed, after the expulsion of their father, to reign alternate years in Thebes. Eteocles, however, at the end of the first year, refused to surrender his power, upon which Polynices laid siege to the city, assisted by six other princes. The brothers met in battle, and fell by each ther's hands.