Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice

Probably no book except the Bible has had more readers than Plutarch’s Lives. These biographies have been translated into every language of the civilized world; they have been among the earliest and most fascinating books for children and youth of many successive generations; and down to the present time, when fiction seems to have almost superseded history and biography, and to have destroyed the once universal appetency for them among young people, they have exercised to a marvellous degree a shaping power over character. They are, indeed, underrated by the exact historian, because modern research has discovered here and there some mistake in the details of events. But such mistakes were in that age inevitable. Historical criticism was then an unknown science. Documents and traditions covering the same ground were deemed of equal value when they were in harmony, and when they differed an author followed the one which best suited his taste, or his purpose for the time being. Thus Cicero, in one case, in the same treatise gives three different versions of the same story. Thus, too, there were several stories afloat about the fate of Regulus; but Roman writers took that which Niebuhr thinks farthest from the truth, yet which threw the greatest odium on the hated name of Carthage. Now I have no doubt that, whenever there were two or more versions of the same act or event, Plutarch chose that which would best point his moral. But it is only in few and unimportant particulars that he has been proved to be inaccurate. It has been also objected to Plutarch, that he attaches less importance to the achievements of his heroes in war and in civic life, than to traits and anecdotes illustrative of their characters. This seems to me a feature which adds not only to the charm of these Lives, but even more to their historical value.…