and the neighbouring islands as well as the Caunians on the continent recognised as subjects their supremacy. Aristides, in order to cheer them after the terrible earthquake, reminds them of the beautiful story of a Rhodian sailor whose ship perished in a storm, but who clung to the helm to the last, and sunk with the words: “I call upon thee, Poseidon, as my witness, that the ship went down standing upright.” The arts and literature also were cherished at Rhodes, though in the earlier times there are not many Rhodian names that can be called great. Cleobulus of Lindos is mentioned as one of the seven sages. But Apollonius is a poet who certainly ought not to be despised; we read his work with pleasure and can learn much from it, though he cannot be compared with Callimachus who lived before him. The wealth of the Rhodians and their taste for the beautiful and magnificent gave great encouragement to the arts. When oratory had died away at Athens, and all vital energy had withdrawn from that city, it took refuge in Rhodes; it had indeed already assumed the character of old age, but still at a time when in Greece proper no good speech was heard, when in the towns of Mysia and Caria literature had degenerated into mere bombast, a _sanum loquendi genus_ was preserved in Rhodes, which is no small praise, though the _sanum_ was sometimes a _siccum_. The constitution of Rhodes is difficult to make out. The part of Cicero’s work, “De Re Publica,” where he spoke of it, is wanting, so that we can form only conjectures; but it would lead me too far to explain them here. Certain it is, that Rhodes, by the peculiarity of its institutions, was so far democratic, that all its citizens took an active part in the administration, and a large number of them in the council. The manner in which this was done is the obscure point. The magistrates, as Polybius says, had very great powers, both the _strategi_ and the _nauarchi_. There existed an _arcanum imperii_, of which the Athenian constitution knows nothing, and to which the Roman state alone presents something analogous: in certain circumstances the nauarchus had the power to conclude treaties, which, however, it would seem were valid only during his term of office, the state not being bound by them for the future. This arose from the fact of the Rhodian fleet being generally very far away from home. Owing to this peculiarity of the constitution, things required by the force of circumstances might be done even contrary to the letter of the law. The republic contrived to make excellent use of this expedient, whenever it wished to enter into a relation without making it permanent. The nauarchus was a kind of plenipotentiary representative of Rhodes with foreign nations. The language of the Rhodians was Doric. Cicero went to Rhodes to cultivate his intellect, and under the first Roman emperors the young Roman nobles very frequently resorted to Rhodes as they had formerly done to Athens.