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Updated: May 10, 2025
A kingdom, as we have said, partakes much of the nature of an aristocracy, and is bestowed according to worth, as either virtue, family, beneficent actions, or these joined with power; for those who have been benefactors to cities and states, or have it in their powers to be so, have acquired this honour, and those who have prevented a people from falling into slavery by war, as Codrus, or those who have freed them from it, as Cyrus, or the founders of cities, or settlers of colonies, as the kings of Sparta, Macedon, and Molossus.
In this instance the circumstantial evidence is rather strong, for we are told by a commentator that Valgius, an early friend of Vergil's, wrote elegies to the memory of a "Codrus," identified by some as Cornificius: Codrusque ille canit quali tu voce canebas, Atque solet numeros dicere Cinna tuos.
I observe he is particularly touched with the conduct of Codrus, who plotted his own death, because the oracle had said, if he were not killed, the enemy should prevail over his country.
Thus it was that Codrus, the Athenian king, has ever since been honored for the tradition that he gave his own life to secure the safety of his people; and there is a touching story, with neither name nor place, of a heathen monarch who was bidden by his priests to appease the supposed wrath of his gods by the sacrifice of the being dearest to him.
One year long had the noblest women of Attica wrought on it, and all the love and art that might breathe through a needle did not fail. It was a sheen of glowing colour. The strife of Athena with the brutish giants, her contest with Arachne, the deeds of the heroes of Athens—Erechtheus, Theseus, Codrus: these were some of the pictures.
You will find a host of people who will tell you that they have found nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; but nobody will deny that Codrus' devotion to his people was very beautiful, supposing it to be true. There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise on beauty.
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