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PREFACE TO THE CIVIL WARS OF ROME.

shall by reading those books, converse with those great d heroic souls of former and better ages. "Tis an idlo and vain study, I confess, to those who make it so, by doing it after a negligent manner, but to those who do

with care and observation, 'tis a study of inestimable fruit and value; and the only one, as Plato reports, the Lacedæmonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall ho not reap as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are principally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; not so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that he died there. That he do not teach him so much tho of which, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we arrative part, as the business of history. The reading apply ourselves unto with the most differing and uncertain measures." North, in his address to the Reader, says: "The profit of stories, and the praise of the Author, Reader: so that I shall not need to make many words are sufficiently declared by Amiot, in his Epistle to the this translation, with your own diligence and good understanding: you shall not need to trust him, you may prove yourselves, that there is no prophane study better Universities than Cities, fuller of contemplation than experience, more commendable in students themselves, every place, reach to all persons, scrve for all times, teach books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen's lives, than to read it in l'hilosophers' writings."

thereof.

than

than

the

And indeed if you will supply the defects of

Plutarch. All other learning is private, fitter for

profitable unto others. Whereas stories are fit for

living, revive the dead, so far excelling all othor

• Cotton's Translation.

GEORGE LONO

LIFE OF PLUTARCH.

PLUTARCH was born probably between A.D. 45 and A.D. 50, at the little town of Chaeronca in Becotia. His family appears to have been long established in this place, the scene of the final destruction of the liberties of Greece, when Philip defeated the Athenians and Baotian forces there in 338 B.C. It was here also that Sulla defeated Mithridates, and in the great civil wars of Rome wo again hear, this time from Plutarch himself, of the sufferings of the citizens of Chacronca. Nikarchus, Plutarch's greatgrandfather, was, with all the other citizens, without any exception, ordered by a lieutenant of Marcus Antonius to transport a quantity of corn from Chacronca to the coast. opposite the island of Antikyra. They were compelled to carry the corn on their shoulders, like slaves, and were threatened with the lash if they were remiss. After they had performed one journey, and were preparing their burdens for a second, the welcome news arrived that Marcus Antonius had lost the battle of Actium, whereupon both the officers and soldiers of his party stationed in Chaeronea at once fled for their own safety, and the provisions thus collected were divided among the inhabitants of the city.

When Plutarch was born, however, no such warlike scenes as these were to be expected. Nothing more than the traditions of war remained on the shores of the Mediterranean. Occasionally some faint echo of strife

LIFE OF PLUTARCII.

Would make itself heard from the wild tribes on the Danube, or in the far Syrian deserts, but over nearly all the world known to the ancients was established the l'ax Romana. Battles were indeed fought, and troops were marched upon Rome, but this was merely to decide who was to be the nominal head of the vast system of tho Empire, and what had once been independent cities, countries, and nations submitted unhesitatingly to whoever represented that irresistible power. It might be

imagined that a

unfavourably

political system which destroyed all

pational individuality, and rendered patriotism in its highest sense scarcely possible, would have reacted nothing of the kind can be urged against the times which produced Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom and Arrian; whilo at Rome, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Martial, and Juvenal From several passages in Plutarch's writings we gather that he studied under a master named Ammonius, at For instance, at the end of his Life of Themis

on the literary character of the age. Yet

were reviving

Athens.

the memories of the Augustan age.

tokles, ho mentions was his fellow-studont at the houso of Ammonius tho philosopher. Again, he tells us that once Ammonius, ob serving at his afternoon lecture that some of his class had indulged too freely in the pleasures of the table, ordered his own son to be flogged, " because," he said, "the young gentleman cannot eat his dinner without pickles," casting his eye at the same time upon the other offenders so as to make them sensible that the reproof applied to them also. By way of completing his education he proceeded to seems to have had a fascination for the Greeks, and at Egypt. The "wisdom of the Egyptians" always period Alexandria, with its fauons library and its memories of the Ptolemies, of Kallimachus and of Theo

a descendant of that great man who

visit

this

kritus,

was an important centro of Greek intellectual

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