The accounts of the earlier ages of this ancient republick are so enveloped in fable, that we must rather apply for them to the poets than to the historians. Pausanias gives us a list of sixteen kings of this country, down from Cadmus inclusive, who evidently belong to the fabulous times of the heroes.[180] He seems indeed to acknowledge as much, since he confesses, that as he could find no better account of their origin, he was obliged to take up with fable.[181] After the death of Xanthus,[182] the last of those kings, the Thebans, as the same author relates, disgusted at monarchy, changed the form of their government into a republick. But it is in vain to search for the cause, or manner how this revolution was effected either in Pausanias, or any other historian. All we can learn of the Thebans or Bœotians from history,[183] is, that they were remarkable for their dulness and stupidity, even to a proverb,[184] that, until the time of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, they made as poor a figure in the art of war as in the sciences: that their form of government was democratick, and that, as usually happens in that kind of government, they were divided into factions. After the famous peace of Antalcidas, by which the honour and true interest of Greece was sacrificed to the ambition of the Spartans, whatever state refused to come into their measures, was condemned to feel the effects of their resentment. They had compelled the Thebans to accede to that treaty, though it deprived them of the dominion over Bœotia; and afterwards, by the perfidy of the aristocratick faction, got possession of their citadel, and reduced them to a state of absolute subjection. This was the wretched state of the Thebans, until they were delivered both from foreign and domestick slavery, and raised to a height of power superior to every other state of Greece by the virtue of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. I have selected therefore this revolution as the most interesting, and most worthy of our attention; because it exhibits a convincing proof, that a brave and warlike people are not the produce of any particular spot,[185] but are the growth of every place and country, where the natives are trained up in a true sense of shame at mean and base actions, and inspired with that manly courage which arises from the emulation after what is just and honourable. And that those who are taught to dread infamy more than the greatest dangers, prove the most invincible, and the most formidable to an enemy. It instructs us too, that the most depressed, and most abject state may be extricated from the calamities of oppression, and raised to superior dignity and lustre by a very small number of virtuous patriots, whilst the spirit of liberty yet remains, and the people second the efforts of their leaders with unanimity and vigour.