In later days it prevailed extensively in Greece, whose haughty people deemed themselves justified in enslaving all who were strangers to their manners and institutions. "It is right for Greeks to rule barbarians," was the sentiment of Euripides, one of the first of her poets, echoed by Aristotle, the greatest of her intellects.[13] And even Plato, in his imaginary Republic, the Utopia of his beautiful genius, sanctions slavery. But notwithstanding these high names, we learn from Aristotle himself that there were persons in his day--pestilent Abolitionists of ancient Athens--who did not hesitate to maintain that liberty was the great law of Nature, and to deny any difference between master and slave,--declaring at the same time that slavery was founded upon violence, and not upon right, and that the authority of the master was unnatural and unjust.[14] "God sent forth all persons free; Nature has made no man a slave,"[15] was the protest of one of these agitating Athenians against this great wrong. I am not in any way authorized to speak for any Anti-Slavery Society, even if this were the proper occasion; but I presume that this ancient Greek morality embodies substantially the principles maintained at their public meetings,--so far, at least, as they relate to slavery. [13] Euripid., Iphig. in Taurid., 1400; Aristot., Polit., Lib. I. c. 1. [14] Polit., Lib. I. c. 3. In like spirit are the words of the good Las Casas, when pleading before Charles the Fifth for the Indian races of America. "The Christian religion," he said, "is equal in its operation, and is accommodated to every nation on the globe. _It robs no one of his freedom, violates none of his inherent rights, on the ground that he is a slave by nature, as pretended_; and it well becomes your Majesty _to banish_ so monstrous an oppression from your kingdoms in the beginning of your reign, that the Almighty may make it long and glorious."--Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I. p. 379. [15] A saying attributed by the Scholiast on Aristotle's Rhetoric to Alcidamas, a disciple of Gorgias of Leontini. See Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, tr. Gillies, Vol. II. p. 26. It is true, most true, that slavery stands on force and not on right. It is a hideous result of war, or of that barbarism in which savage war plays its conspicuous part. To the victor belonged the lives of his captives, and, by consequence, he might bind them in perpetual servitude. This principle, which has been the foundation of slavery in all ages, is adapted only to the rudest conditions of society, and is wholly inconsistent with a period of refinement, humanity, and justice. It is sad to confess that it was recognized by Greece; but the civilization of this famed land, though brilliant to the external view as the immortal sculptures of the Parthenon, was, like that stately temple, dark and cheerless within.