[Footnote: Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century
of our era.] 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make
it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can
trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard
with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in
the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen
fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier
name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great
Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion
by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the
exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an
epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared;
[Footnote: In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C. A 'tyrant'
was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to
purposes of lust or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a
'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of
the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the
moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the
mild and bounteous Pisistratus was 'tyrant' of Athens, while a
Christian II. of Denmark, 'the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek
eyes have been one. It was to their honour that they did not allow the
course of the word to be arrested or turned aside by occasional or
partial exceptions in the manner of the exercise of this ill-gotten
dominion; but in the hateful secondary sense which 'tyrant' with them
acquired, and which has passed over to us, the moral conviction,
justified by all experience, spake out, that the ill-gotten would be
ill-kept; that the 'tyrant' in the earlier sense of the word, dogged by
suspicion, fear, and an evil conscience, must, by an almost inevitable
law, become a 'tyrant' in our later sense of the word.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187