. As written laws, which only can circumscribe the will of the prince and secure the rights of the people, were unknown during the time of the Boeotian kings, a most arbitrary and tyrannic despotism was esta blished. When the kingdom became a republic, the principal officers of state were, the praetor, or stra tegos, who presided in the supreme council, and had the chief command of the army. The bocotarchi, who formed the grand council of the nation, both in civil and military affairs, and who were empowered, not only to assist the praetor with their advice, but L. also to compel him to adopt it. The polemarchi, who administered justice in the various districts, and maintained the internal tranqiiillity of the state. Our knowledge of the Boeotian laws is very imperfect. It appears, however, that though neither merchants nor mechanics were allowed to exercise any office of go vernment, till the expiration of ten years after they had retired from business, yet they were accounted citizens, an honour to which they were not admitted in any other Grecian state : That the parent who exposed his child was capitally punished ; and if he was not able to support it, the magistrate had au thority to assign it, as a slave, to any one willing to receive it : That marriage was contracted by bring ing home the bride in a kind of car ; the axle-tree of which, by being immediately burnt, informed the bride that she was never to desert the house of her husband. Robbery and piracy, which, at least in the early period of the state, were frequently prac tised, rendered property insecure; and the insecurity of property greatly obstructed the progress of agri culture and commerce. As pride and courage were prominent features in the Bccotian character, we al low, that the former sometimes inspired them with insolence, and the latter degenerated into cruelty; but their history, disfigured as it is by poetic fables, will not allow us to imagine that their annals were stained with deeds of greater atrocity than those which black. ened the annals of neighbouring states. When we
likewise recollect that the Sacred Battalion, a band of 300 young warriors, were raised and maintained and disciplined by this state; that '.heir military evo lutions were directed by the harmonious sounds of the flute; that their minds were animated by the most generous and manly sentiments; that their va lour often triumphed over the power of Sparta, and at last covered with their bodies the ground on which they were stationed at the unfortunate battle of Cheronxa; we will readily acknowledge, that though the Berotians might not be free from those vices which universally prevail when civilization is only in its infancy, yet they likewise exhibited, in no com mon degree, those virtues, which, though they may be softened and refined by art, must derive their ori gin and their vigour from nature. The men were generally healthy, strong, and active ; the women tall, elegant, and beautiful. Horace asserts, that their minds were rendered dull by their thick and foggy atmosphere. But a country which could boast of that transcendent wisdom and valour which Epa minondas displayed on the fields of Leuctra and Mantinea—a country which inspired the rural lays of Hesiod, which Virgil did not disdain to imitate ; and fired the suul of Pindar with those daring num. hers, which Horace himself, in the happiest hour of inspiration, could scarcely hope to equal, might hear with contempt the witty sarcasm of that sati rist; and we have no hesitation in attributing the little progress of the Bccotians in literature and the fine arts, not to the niggardness of nature, but to the want of proper education, and to their employments, which were better adapted to improve the powers of their bodies than of their minds. Letters, however, were known in Bccotia from the time of Cadmus, though the alphabet which he introduced contained only sixteen characters, and was not completed till many ages after. Sec Pansan. in &cot. Herod. lib. v. Diodor. lib. iv. Hom. Iliad. lib. iii. iv. Stat. Mob. Bryant, Anal. Anc. Myth. Univers. Mist. vol. ii. p.370. (N)