Cock-fighting is a practice of high antiquity, like many other detestable and abominable things that still cling to our social fabric. It was much in vogue in Greece and the adjacent isles. There was an annual festival at Athens called 'The Cock-fighting,' instituted by Themistocles at the end of the Persian war, under the following circumstances. When Themistocles was leading his army against the Persians, he saw some cocks fighting; he halted his troops, looked on, and said:--'These animals fight neither for the gods of their country, nor for the monuments of their ancestors, nor for glory, nor for freedom, nor for their children, but for the sake of victory, and in order that one may not yield to the other;' and from this topic he inspirited the Athenians. After his victorious return, as an act of gratitude for this accidental occasion of inspiring his troops with courage, he instituted the above festival, 'in order that what was an incitement to valour at that time might be perpetuated as an encouragement to the like bravery hereafter.' One cannot help smiling at these naive stories of the ancients to account for their mightiest results. Only think of any modern warrior halting his troops to make use of a cock-fight for the purpose of inspiriting them to victory! On one occasion during the Peninsular war, when an important point was to be carried by assault, the officers were required to say something encouraging to their men, in order to brace them up for the encounter; but whilst the majority of the former recalled the remembrance of previous victories, an Irish captain contented himself with exclaiming--'Now, my lads, you see those fellows up there. Well, if you don't kill THEM, SHURE they'll kill YOU. That's all!' Struck with the comic originality of this address, the men rushed forward with a laugh and a shout, carrying all before them. Among the ancient Greeks the cock was sacred to Apollo, Mercury, and aesculapius, on account of his vigilance, inferred from his early rising--the natural consequence of his 'early to bed'--and also to Mars, on account of his magnanimous and daring spirit. It seems, then, that at first cock-fighting was partly a religious, and partly a political, institution at Athens; and was there continued--according to the above legend--for the purpose of cherishing the seeds of valour in the minds of youth; but that it was afterwards abused and perverted, both there and in other parts of Greece, by being made a common pastime, and applied to the purpose of gambling just as it was (and is still secretly) practised in England. An Attic law ran as follows--'Let cocks fight publicly in the theatre one day in the year.'(69) (69) Pegge, in Archoeologia, quoting aelian, Columella, &c.