Another maxim(187) advanced by Eteocles in the tragedy called the _Phœnicians_, and which Cæsar had always in his mouth, is no less pernicious: “If justice may be violated at all, it is when a throne is in question; in other respects, let it be duly revered.” It is highly criminal in Eteocles, or rather in Euripides, says Cicero, to make an exception in that very point, wherein such violation is the highest crime that can be committed. Eteocles is a tyrant, and speaks like a tyrant, who vindicates his unjust conduct by a false maxim; and it is not strange that Cæsar, who was a tyrant by nature, and equally unjust, should lay great stress upon the sentiments of a prince whom he so much resembled. But what is remarkable in Cicero, is his falling upon the poet himself, and imputing to him as a crime the having advanced so pernicious a principle upon the stage. Lycurgus, the orator,(188) who lived in the time of Philip and Alexander the Great, to reanimate the spirit of the tragic poets, caused three statues of brass to be erected, in the name of the people, to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and having ordered their works to be transcribed, he appointed them to be carefully preserved amongst the public archives, from whence they were taken from time to time to be read; the players not being permitted to represent them on the stage. The reader expects, no doubt, after what has been said relating to the three poets, who invented, improved, and carried tragedy to its perfection, that I should point out the peculiar excellencies of their style and character. For that I must refer to father Brumoi, who will do it much better than it is in my power. After having laid down, as an undoubted principle, that the epic poem, that is to say Homer, pointed out the way for the tragic poets; and having demonstrated, by reflections drawn from human nature, upon what principles and by what degrees this happy imitation was conducted to its end, he goes on to describe the three poets above mentioned, in the most lively and brilliant colours. Tragedy took at first from Æschylus its inventor, a much more lofty style than the _Iliad_; that is, the _magnum loqui_ mentioned by Horace. Perhaps Æschylus, who had a full conception of the grandeur of the language of tragedy, carried it too high. It is not Homer’s trumpet, but something more. His pompous, swelling, gigantic diction, resembles rather the beating of drums and the shouts of battle, than the noble harmony of the trumpets. The elevation and grandeur of his genius would not permit him to speak the language of other men, so that his Muse seemed rather to walk in stilts, than in the buskins of his own invention.