A FEW DAYS IN ATHENS; BEING THE TRANSLATION OF A GREEK MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERED IN HERCULANEUM. BY FRANCES WRIGHT, AUTHOR OF “VIEWS OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS IN AMERICA.” “——joining bliss to virtue, the glad ease Of Epicurus, seldom understood.” BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY J. P. MENDUM. 1850. TO JEREMY BENTHAM, AS A TESTIMONY OF HER ADMIRATION OF HIS ENLIGHTENED SENTIMENTS, USEFUL LABORS, AND ACTIVE PHILANTHROPY, AND OF HER GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP, THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY FRANCES WRIGHT. London, _March 12th, 1822_. TO THE READER. That I may not obtain credit for more learning than I possess, I beg to acknowledge the assistance I have received in my version of the curious relict of antiquity now offered to the public from the beautiful Italian MSS. of the erudite Professor of Greek in the university of *****. I hesitate to designate more clearly the illustrious Hellenist whose labors have brought to light this curious fragment. Since the establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals throughout the territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in consequence of the ordinance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and most Austrian majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,[1] it has become necessary for the gownsmen of the classic peninsula to banish all profane learning from their lectures and their libraries, and to evince a holy abhorrence of the sciences and arts which they erst professed. The list of the class books now employed in the transalpine schools is exceedingly curious; I regret that I have mislaid the one lately supplied to me by an illustrious Italian exile. My memory recalls to me only that, in the school of rhetoric, the orations of Cicero are superseded by those of the Marquis of Londonderry, and the philippics of Demosthenes by those of M. de Peyronnet; that the professors of history have banished the decades of Livy for _the Martyrs_ of Mons. de