Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/46

22 STATESMEN AND SAGES who, after piety followed by apostasy, comes back to piety with the conclusion that after all, " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Through his writings and sayings Solomon's genius flashed from Jerusalem into the surrounding darkness of the heathen nations, and lighted by its rays, as mariners by the beacon in the light-house tower, there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wis- dom, (i Kings x. i-io.) The celebrated visit of the Queen of Sheba is a deeply interesting illustration of these royal visits to the court of Israel's splendid king. Such was King Solomon the magnificent, and such the life of one of earth's most famous men. But, after all, he is a striking illustration of Plato's saying, that " Princes are never without flatterers to seduce them, ambition to deprave them, and desires to corrupt them." So, forgetting that as a king he was God's vicegerent, he lived more and more to gratify his lusts and ambitions, and to please his flatterers, especially his heathen wives. These finally seduced him into permitting temples to be built to Moloch and their other false gotls. This ended in Solomon's becoming idolatrous himself. Then his wealth gradually melted away, his allies plotted against him, and, in the midst of life, being about fifty- eight years old, he died in the year 975 B.C., leaving a terrible legacy to his sons : a corrupted religion, a depleted treasury, and a discontented and broken people. Although there is every reason to believe that Solomon died a penitent man, yet his sins and the consequent wretchedness of soul, and the ruin of his king- dom, teach most emphatically the weakness of human nature, even when accom- panied by the greatest genius, the perils of material prosperity, and the real in- sufficiency of all possible earthly good to satisfy the wants of the soul of man. LYCURGUS* BY REV. JOSEPH T. DURYEA (ABOUT 884-820 B.C.) ^CHOLARS generally agree in the judgment that Lycurgus was a real person. It is probable that he was born in the ninth century B.C., and that, in the later part of the same century (850-820), he was an important, if not the principal, agent in the reconstruction of the Dorian state of Sparta, in the Peloponnesus. According to Herodotus, he was the uncle of King Labotas, of the royal line of Eurysthenes. Others, whom Plutarch follows, describe him as the uncle and guardian of King Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.