Neglected Nature fails; in fordid want Sunk, and debas'd, their beauty beams no more. The Sun himself feems, angry, to regard, Of light unworthy, the degenerate race, 415 420 Fierce was the ftand ere Virtue, Valour, Arts, And the Soul fir'd by Me (that often stung And, as around the partial trophy blush'd, Prepar'd the way for total overthrow. 439 435 Then to the Perfian power, whofe pride they scorn'd, When Xerxes pour'd his millions o'er the land, Sparta by turns, and Athens, vilely fued, Sued to be venal parricides, to fpill Their country's braveft blood,and on themselves 440 To turn their matchless mercenary arms. 445 Peaceful in Sufa, then, fat the Great King*, And by their lifted orators, whose breath 450 Still with a factious form infefted Greece, Gave up, fair-fpread o'er Afia's funny fhore, 455 460 So the kings of Perfia were called by the Greeks. The peace inade by Antalcidas, the Lacedemonian admiral, with the Perfians; by which the Lacedemonians abandoned all the Greeks established in the Leffer Afia to the dominion of the King of Perfia. Athens had been difmantled by the Lacedemonians, at the end of the firft Peloponnefian war, and was at this time restored by Conon to its former splendour. For now no more the noble focial foul 465 But by fhort views and felfish paffions broke, But let detefting ages, from the scene Of Greece, felf-mangled, turn the fickening eye. To tyrants dreadful, dreadful to the best; The Peloponnefian war. + Pelopidas and Epaminondas. 480 485 The battle of Cheronæa, in which Philip of Macedon utterly defeated the Greeks. 1 Whom I Myfelf could fcacely rule; and thus 490 Unless Corruption first deject the pride And guardian vigour of the Free-born foul, All crude attempts of Violence are vain ; For firm within, and while at heart untouch'd, Ne'er yet by Force was Freedom overcome. But foon as Independence ftoops the head, To vice enflav'd, and vice-created wants, Then to fome foul corrupting hand, whose waste Thefe heightened wants with fatal bounty feeds, From man to man the flackening ruin runs, 495 Till the whole State, unnerv'd, in slavery finks. 500 ROME. LIBERTY PART III. The Contents. AS this Part contains a defcription of the oftablishment of Liberty in Rome, ie begins with a view of the Grecian colonies fettled in the fouthern parts of Italy, which, with Sicily, couftituted the Great Greece of the Ancients. With thefe colonies the spirit of Liberty, and of Republics, fpreads over Italy, to ver. 32. Transition to Pythagoras and his philofophy, which he taught through those free flates and cities, to ver. 71. Amidst the many fmall republies in Italy, Rome the diftined fear of Liberty. Her eftablishment there dated from the expulfion of the Tarquins. How differing from that in Greece, to ver. 88. Reference to a view of the Roman Republic given in the First Part of this Poem to mark its rife and fall the peculiar purport of This. During its first ages, the greateft force of Liberty and Virtue exerted, to ver. 103. The fource whence derived the heroic virtues of the Romans. Enumeration of thefe virtues. Thence their fecurity at home; their glory, faccefs, and empire, abroad to ver. 226. Bounds of the Roman Empire geographically described, to ver. 257. The ftates of Greece reftored to liberty by Titus Quintus Flaminius, the highest inftance of public generofity and beneficence, to ver. 3a8. The lofs of Liberty in Rome. Its caufes, progrefs, and completion, in the death of Brutus, to ver. 485. Rome under the Emperors, to ver. 513. From Rome the Goddess of Liberty goes among the Northern nations, where, by infufing into them her spirit and general principles, the lays the ground-work of her future eftablishments; fends them in vengeance on the Roman Empire, now totally enslaved; and then, with Arts and Sciences in her train, quits earth during the dark ages; to ver. 550. The celeftial regions, to which Liberty retired, not proper to be opened to the view of mortals. HERE melting mix'd with air th' ideal forms, |